I typically put the name of the company in as a part of the email address when I use my email address on the web. This way, I always know who the sellouts are -- as well as those with poor security. And it's always surprising who turns out to either be a sellout or barn door. You can never be sure which. I signed up for the Netscape Developer program a long time ago (remember Netscape?) and today I still get SPAM sent to "fred_netscape@..."
I'm not really into passing laws against this sort of thing, because government never seems to know the balance and always tend to get it wrong. What I'd rather see is a "blacklist" of corporations that failed to protect our privacy either due to selling us out or allowing themselves to be breached.
Yes, I know, there are big potential points of litigation doing that. But then with a cadre of participating lawyers, you could always do a class-action counter-suit!
It is a shame that something that can provide constructive activities to boys can also be laced with bigotry.
I was once a cub scout a long time ago, but was not aware of the BSA policies at the time.
But as a strong supporter of Gays and being an ardent Atheist myself, I find BSA policies very noisome and unacceptable, and I would not let my kids be involved with such a bigoted organization.
Not that it matters to my kids, though -- they are both girls.:-)
And what if those rules also stated that Jews and "Blacks" were also to be excluded? Would you still want to associate with the BSA? Or would the "right thing" to do is have nothing to do with them altogether?
And if that's the case, why should it be any different with Gays and Atheists?
Or perhaps one group is more deserving than another?
Funny the Girl Scouts don't seem to have this problem.
Perhaps if the Boy Scouts gave half a hoot, they seek "cleaner" funding elsewhere. I mean, if some neo-nazi group was funding them, would they also exclude "Blacks" and Jews?
Ah, the wonders of US-produced statistics. Who was it that said, "there are liars, damned liars, and then there are statistics?"
Yes, there is some manufacturing still being done in the US. But what those numbers don't reflect at all is what is being produced, and the level of dependency on foreign suppliers for that production.
Also, The measures of "productivity" has always been suspect for many years because the way productivity is typically measured does a poor job of taking into account the interplay of technology of the "information age". Let's take a case in point: Microsoft. If you were tasked to measure the productivity trends of Microsoft from its inception to today, just how would you proceed in any fashion that would be meaningful? Number of software packages sold? Bottom line? Hours worked per employee vs. profits? How would you gage the "hours worked" by Steve Balmer vs. "hours worked" by some lowly software engineer at Microsoft?
In an idea-driven economy, it is difficult to measure "productivity" realistically.
The Internet give us more choices and more options to discover information, learn knowledge, and find answers to problems.
I see no reason why it would dilute intellectual capacity at all, and in fact, can and does enhance it. If I am doing some research, it is very helpful to me to be able to scan the world quickly to see what else have been done already by others. New ideas may lead to new ways of thinking, and spark innovations that may not otherwise have happened.
However, those adverse to thinking and processing lots of information may indeed fall prey to the temptation of "thought-bytes" -- taking summaries and blips as gospel instead of doing the more rigorous work of finding the high-quality information over the shoddy low-quality stuff the Internet has become known for.
So, the choice is yours. And your brain will be shaped by the choices you make. The Internet offers a plethora of possibilities, including the possibility of hanging yourself. The challenge will be -- as it always is -- in developing the wisdom to know how to proceed though the endless onslaught of possibilities. And that exercise will shape your brain as well -- for the better.
While there is some truth in what you say -- and reporters make copy by selling "bad news", however they spin it -- the real question is: how weak is too weak? If markets begin to skip selling in the US in lieu of more lucrative markets elsewhere, I really don't see this as a "good thing". The US has lost much of its manufacturing and production capacity to other countries, so there is nothing in place to make up the short fall.
The US is a war-driven ecomony, which is unfortunate on many fronts, let alone creating weapons and systems that kill innocents en masse -- there's an associated brain drain, and the goods created in most cases have no material use that would enhance wealth -- but rather, these devices are designed to destroy wealth as well as human lives.
China has manufacturing capability up the ying-yang (no pun intended), and as I've stated before, if they were to choose to stop propping up the USD, the US would have far more to loose than they would. Also keep in mind the Euro markets that they could -- and probably are -- transistion to if they're smart.
No, I'm afraid this is a different situation. It might be "ok" for the dollar to have *some* weakness from time to time, but you can't tell me it would be fine if the bottom fell out on the dollar entirely.
You should ALWAYS do the manual count, period. Use the electronic tallying for quick results, but verify them by hand-counting.
Actually, the entire "Winner takes all" approach to "democracy" has some nasty inherent flaws by design, insuring that the minority will always be beat up by the majority, and if your minority is small enough, you may never see any representation at all.
I will be working on a better system at some point; one in which the minority does NOT have to acquiesce all power to the majority.
And what measure does Brazil have in place to prevent electronic tampering with the results? Do they have any kind of paper trail at all? How easy would it be for a monkey to go to the main database server tallying the votes, alter a few records, and throw the entire election without a trace?
As much as I love technology, I stand firmily against it's use in voting UNLESS there is a strong, physical, foolproof audit trail to back it up, such as paper ballots, that can be hand-counted (and should ALWAYS be hand-counted to verify the electronic votes are correct).
Yes, it takes longer and is not sleek and shiny, but truth being told, it's much harder to foil paper ballots than the electronic variety. Hell, if I knew that Brazil's servers had an Internet connection, I could throw their election from the comforts of my bedroom here in the States with just my laptop.
It is not that it's not difficult to do -- in fact, it's down right easy -- the problem lies in making the technology secure and tamper-free.
In this age of spyware, viruses, trojan horses and the like, anything is possible, especially when political power is involved. Plus, the way e-voting works is beyond the understanding of most people, so there is no confidence in the process.
Truth of the matter is, it's just WAY TOO EASY to tamper with the voting results and there is NO AUDIT TRAIL unless paper is involved. There should ALWAYS be a paper trail to audit the votes, period.
"The new laser, which has been in design since ~2002 will, at 1 kilojoule per 1 picosecond pulse, be the highest energy petawatt scale laser ever created by far. For a fleeting fraction of a second, it will deliver a beam of infrared light at 1054 nm that is more powerful than the total energy consumption of all human activity on the planet,"
More powerful than the total ENERGY consumption of all the human activity on the planet? It's only one kilojoule. It would be much more accuracte to say that the POWER output for a picosecond would be greater than the combined POWER consumption of the entire planet.
But that raises another question: Do most people understand the difference between ENERGY and POWER, anyway? the two words seem to be used almost interchangabily by your average Joe.
Neither approach would be very effective, since most people generally don't think much about the consequences of their actions until after the fact.
I would go so far as to say that auto insurance is also part of the problem, because that assurance lulls drivers into a false sense of complacency, thinking that the insurance company will pick up the tab.
Drivers -- as well as everyone else -- must bear the brunt of the cost of their actions. I know what many would say, but I'd almost say insurance should be abolished and if you are at fault in an accident, you pay out of your hyde to compensate the other driver(s) you've harmed.
So, in essence, the cell phone "problem" is just the tip of a very big iceberg of issues with regards to traffic safety. I want to see something real in place that will actually be effective at reducing the number of annual deaths on the roads 2 fold or greater. The only way to do that is to make drivers much more directly accountable for their foibles, which means they pay directly from their pockets, not from an insurance policy.
I really wish they would find people who ACTUALLY UNDERSTAND SCIENCE to report on science. Not to mention the wording of the summary. One does not "design" an isotope -- what's there to design? All one can do is find ways to create these isotopes in quantities that would actually be useful.
I personally commute about 120km to work every day, and the time I spend in the car is valuable time that I spend thinking about many things. I also use hands-free technology when chatting on the cell phone.
I am highly aware of what level of distraction any given activity creates and compensate for it in my driving in various ways. Like increasing my buffer zone gap, driving a bit slower, maybe shift to a slower lane, etc.
I had one nasty accident back when I was 17, and it was due to a major distraction. I had a girlfriend in the car and I was thinking about dumping her and persuing another girl. I ran a red light at a turn across a busy road and crashed into an oncoming car. Not pretty.
After that experience, I completely reworked how I drive and what I focus and concentrate on. Awareness is the key, as I keep constant awareness of the other drivers around me and occasionly run scenarios through my head of how I'd react if they did something untoward on the road.
Suffice it to say, I have not had another serious accident in 30 years. I've had quite a few of near events, but the majority of them involved the faults of other drivers that I was able to react to in time. I've only had a couple of nears that would've been my fault, but again I was able to react to the situations in time!
What's the point of my story here? That passing laws will NOT make better drivers. Driving is a complex task, a very dangerous task, and becoming a better driver involves a willingness to face the nature of the problem and devise solutions to many, if not all of the possibilities and scenarios that might ensue. It is basically a risk management issue, and if you consider than annually 41,000 people die on the roadways in US, it's one we need to look at. With all the laws passed over the decades, it's done nothing to turn down the annual death toll.
We can bicker and banter over cell phone usage in the car, but that death toll was there before the advent of cell phones, and it will be there in the foreseeable future. The only thing that will work is raising the awareness of the nature of driving to your average driver with the hopes that he or she will take it to heart and begin to do some of the things I have outlined here with my own experiences.
Ah, such a predictable reaction -- pass stiffer laws and the problem will go away. It will not, and all the stiffer laws will result in is giving police more reason to bother us. whether it's warrented or not.
I've notice that police tend to treat new traffic laws like a kid treats new toys -- They become very eager to use them, even when it is not merited. They tie up your time in court and your money in legal expenses all to no avail since the inferior court judge is also eager to "enforce" the new toys -- whoops, I mean laws.
The problem I have with this research is very simple. The test subject *knows* it's a driving simulator and thus if a crash happens, no big deal. And until we can get neural imaging scanners down to the size of a helmet, this will always be the case. So what this research tells you is that in a *driving simulator*, people tend to get distracted.
That's not to say that distraction doesn't happen in actual driving situations, of course. But I would strongly caution jumping to conclusions on the basis of this research.
Also, I have another problem with this research, one that is much more of a deeper problem. Neural imaging or EEG reading only measure gross neural activity. And not even directly. We assume that if activity appears to drop by the measures of the imaging device that it automatically means attention is being diverted or that it's creating a more dangerous situation. I am not entirely convince that that is a reliable assumption to make in all cases. We don't have the foggiest notion of what is really going on at the neural level. It's the same problem with IQ test -- we don't have a definition of "intelligence" that anyone can agree on, and yet we think we can measure it and quantify it with a singular scalar number. And well, we have a whole sordid history of the IQ score being misinterpreted and misused across the board.
So, let's not jump to conclusions until more research is done. For instance, an easy one to do is check accident rates of single drivers against drivers with one or more passengers in the car. Oh, I can see it now -- laws being passed to make it illegal to drive with passengers!!! Which bring up another thorny issue -- the way lawmakers interpret research results. A topic for another time.
Everyone forgets that while there is some MADnesss, it's not symmetric. For starters, China has all of the *Manufacturing* that US no longer has, and as such can market to other countries. What fallback does the US has in this regard? Bombs of Megadeath? Yeah, that'll really fuel the US economy.
Nope -- I'm afraid China has the upper hand here, and already they've been making waves to dump the USD in lieu of stronger currencies, like perhaps the Euro, for instance.
He who *makes* the goods will *always* have the upper hand in a battle of economics. Never forget that. China is also coming into its own lately and could probably go completely self-sufficient if it wants to. The US is simply no longer the only economic powerhouse on the block, boys. Get your heads out of the glory days of the 20th century and smell where the coffee's coming from in the 21st!
Note as well that there is a difference between what the *people* may suffer vs. the *government* that controls. China's *people* may loose out a bit, but China's *government* has options.
When in China, do as the Chinese wants you to.
Don't like it? Then don't do business there.
While I don't like censorship in the least, I also don't like US hegemony either -- either by the government or the businesses. China -- its people and its government -- need to work out their own issues with regards to privacy and censorship and freedom of access to information.
Oh well -- China has the US by its financial balls, so all I see coming out of this is a bunch of whining on the US part with little to no real action.
And of course, the question of what form any possible "action" would take, anyway? Pulling out of the Olympics? That's not fair to all those athletes who devoted a good portion of their lives preparing for this event.
Well, golly. This of course means there is *no* security on Windows computers. It's only a matter of time that this backdoor is cracked and becomes generally available to everyone.
The only thing I use Windows for is to run TurboTax and games. And I'm wondering about the TurboTax even.
But all hope is not lost -- running Windows on a hypervisor would be a bit more secure -- at least you can restart with the same snapshot, eliminating any attempts to embed a rootkit or snooping ware.
But really, with Linux these days, who needs Windows?
"NATIONALIZE THE INTERNET... NOW! and add an amendment to the Constitution that mandates a right to free and unrestricted access to information to all citizens. fucking corporations have ruined everything it is time for the people to take the power away from corporations."
The "people"? Or the government? It would be an even bigger mess if the government took over! And really,do you really expect the government to run the Internet without also snooping on all of our activities even more than they do so now?
Better the Internet stay in the hands of *many* corporations than in the hands of a singular government. Look at what China does as an example. Hint for the clueless!:-)
Not that Godaddy is a saint by any measure -- I hate the fact I have to click through 10 screens or so everytime I register a domain name! But I've been using Godaddy for years, and all I need them to do is keep my domain name registered, which they have done perfectly so far.
Are their cheaper services? Probably, I'm sure. Are there less annoying ones? You bet. But Godaddy is a known evil, and their high-pressure upsale efforts just plain suck. But you know what? I've been with them for years, and I can become my own mini-registar in the future using their API and also reduce my costs by $300/yr. Their customer support is usually good. And they've been around for awhile.
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"Non-lethal weapons"? What an oxymoron. Anyone care to count the number of deaths due to "Non-lethal weapons" over the years?
I'm not really into passing laws against this sort of thing, because government never seems to know the balance and always tend to get it wrong. What I'd rather see is a "blacklist" of corporations that failed to protect our privacy either due to selling us out or allowing themselves to be breached.
Yes, I know, there are big potential points of litigation doing that. But then with a cadre of participating lawyers, you could always do a class-action counter-suit!
From the people who can't distinguish the difference between 0.002 dollars and 0.002 cents, why am I not surprised?
I was once a cub scout a long time ago, but was not aware of the BSA policies at the time.
But as a strong supporter of Gays and being an ardent Atheist myself, I find BSA policies very noisome and unacceptable, and I would not let my kids be involved with such a bigoted organization.
Not that it matters to my kids, though -- they are both girls. :-)
And if that's the case, why should it be any different with Gays and Atheists?
Or perhaps one group is more deserving than another?
Perhaps if the Boy Scouts gave half a hoot, they seek "cleaner" funding elsewhere. I mean, if some neo-nazi group was funding them, would they also exclude "Blacks" and Jews?
Where does it all end?
But don't they realize that many in the OpenSource community are either Atheist or Gay? And if not, sympathies with them?
I would say that until the Boy Scouts changes its position on Gays and Atheists that no one in OpenSource should even give them an eyeblink.
Yes, there is some manufacturing still being done in the US. But what those numbers don't reflect at all is what is being produced, and the level of dependency on foreign suppliers for that production.
Also, The measures of "productivity" has always been suspect for many years because the way productivity is typically measured does a poor job of taking into account the interplay of technology of the "information age". Let's take a case in point: Microsoft. If you were tasked to measure the productivity trends of Microsoft from its inception to today, just how would you proceed in any fashion that would be meaningful? Number of software packages sold? Bottom line? Hours worked per employee vs. profits? How would you gage the "hours worked" by Steve Balmer vs. "hours worked" by some lowly software engineer at Microsoft?
In an idea-driven economy, it is difficult to measure "productivity" realistically.
I see no reason why it would dilute intellectual capacity at all, and in fact, can and does enhance it. If I am doing some research, it is very helpful to me to be able to scan the world quickly to see what else have been done already by others. New ideas may lead to new ways of thinking, and spark innovations that may not otherwise have happened.
However, those adverse to thinking and processing lots of information may indeed fall prey to the temptation of "thought-bytes" -- taking summaries and blips as gospel instead of doing the more rigorous work of finding the high-quality information over the shoddy low-quality stuff the Internet has become known for.
So, the choice is yours. And your brain will be shaped by the choices you make. The Internet offers a plethora of possibilities, including the possibility of hanging yourself. The challenge will be -- as it always is -- in developing the wisdom to know how to proceed though the endless onslaught of possibilities. And that exercise will shape your brain as well -- for the better.
The US is a war-driven ecomony, which is unfortunate on many fronts, let alone creating weapons and systems that kill innocents en masse -- there's an associated brain drain, and the goods created in most cases have no material use that would enhance wealth -- but rather, these devices are designed to destroy wealth as well as human lives.
China has manufacturing capability up the ying-yang (no pun intended), and as I've stated before, if they were to choose to stop propping up the USD, the US would have far more to loose than they would. Also keep in mind the Euro markets that they could -- and probably are -- transistion to if they're smart.
No, I'm afraid this is a different situation. It might be "ok" for the dollar to have *some* weakness from time to time, but you can't tell me it would be fine if the bottom fell out on the dollar entirely.
Actually, the entire "Winner takes all" approach to "democracy" has some nasty inherent flaws by design, insuring that the minority will always be beat up by the majority, and if your minority is small enough, you may never see any representation at all.
I will be working on a better system at some point; one in which the minority does NOT have to acquiesce all power to the majority.
As much as I love technology, I stand firmily against it's use in voting UNLESS there is a strong, physical, foolproof audit trail to back it up, such as paper ballots, that can be hand-counted (and should ALWAYS be hand-counted to verify the electronic votes are correct).
Yes, it takes longer and is not sleek and shiny, but truth being told, it's much harder to foil paper ballots than the electronic variety. Hell, if I knew that Brazil's servers had an Internet connection, I could throw their election from the comforts of my bedroom here in the States with just my laptop.
In this age of spyware, viruses, trojan horses and the like, anything is possible, especially when political power is involved. Plus, the way e-voting works is beyond the understanding of most people, so there is no confidence in the process.
Truth of the matter is, it's just WAY TOO EASY to tamper with the voting results and there is NO AUDIT TRAIL unless paper is involved. There should ALWAYS be a paper trail to audit the votes, period.
More powerful than the total ENERGY consumption of all the human activity on the planet? It's only one kilojoule. It would be much more accuracte to say that the POWER output for a picosecond would be greater than the combined POWER consumption of the entire planet.
But that raises another question: Do most people understand the difference between ENERGY and POWER, anyway? the two words seem to be used almost interchangabily by your average Joe.
That's why I've always wanted to fund my own scientific research. Well, here I am many years later still trying to scrape enough money together...
I would go so far as to say that auto insurance is also part of the problem, because that assurance lulls drivers into a false sense of complacency, thinking that the insurance company will pick up the tab.
Drivers -- as well as everyone else -- must bear the brunt of the cost of their actions. I know what many would say, but I'd almost say insurance should be abolished and if you are at fault in an accident, you pay out of your hyde to compensate the other driver(s) you've harmed.
So, in essence, the cell phone "problem" is just the tip of a very big iceberg of issues with regards to traffic safety. I want to see something real in place that will actually be effective at reducing the number of annual deaths on the roads 2 fold or greater. The only way to do that is to make drivers much more directly accountable for their foibles, which means they pay directly from their pockets, not from an insurance policy.
I really wish they would find people who ACTUALLY UNDERSTAND SCIENCE to report on science. Not to mention the wording of the summary. One does not "design" an isotope -- what's there to design? All one can do is find ways to create these isotopes in quantities that would actually be useful.
I am highly aware of what level of distraction any given activity creates and compensate for it in my driving in various ways. Like increasing my buffer zone gap, driving a bit slower, maybe shift to a slower lane, etc.
I had one nasty accident back when I was 17, and it was due to a major distraction. I had a girlfriend in the car and I was thinking about dumping her and persuing another girl. I ran a red light at a turn across a busy road and crashed into an oncoming car. Not pretty.
After that experience, I completely reworked how I drive and what I focus and concentrate on. Awareness is the key, as I keep constant awareness of the other drivers around me and occasionly run scenarios through my head of how I'd react if they did something untoward on the road.
Suffice it to say, I have not had another serious accident in 30 years. I've had quite a few of near events, but the majority of them involved the faults of other drivers that I was able to react to in time. I've only had a couple of nears that would've been my fault, but again I was able to react to the situations in time!
What's the point of my story here? That passing laws will NOT make better drivers. Driving is a complex task, a very dangerous task, and becoming a better driver involves a willingness to face the nature of the problem and devise solutions to many, if not all of the possibilities and scenarios that might ensue. It is basically a risk management issue, and if you consider than annually 41,000 people die on the roadways in US, it's one we need to look at. With all the laws passed over the decades, it's done nothing to turn down the annual death toll.
We can bicker and banter over cell phone usage in the car, but that death toll was there before the advent of cell phones, and it will be there in the foreseeable future. The only thing that will work is raising the awareness of the nature of driving to your average driver with the hopes that he or she will take it to heart and begin to do some of the things I have outlined here with my own experiences.
I've notice that police tend to treat new traffic laws like a kid treats new toys -- They become very eager to use them, even when it is not merited. They tie up your time in court and your money in legal expenses all to no avail since the inferior court judge is also eager to "enforce" the new toys -- whoops, I mean laws.
Wow, and all at our expense. No thank you!
That's not to say that distraction doesn't happen in actual driving situations, of course. But I would strongly caution jumping to conclusions on the basis of this research.
Also, I have another problem with this research, one that is much more of a deeper problem. Neural imaging or EEG reading only measure gross neural activity. And not even directly. We assume that if activity appears to drop by the measures of the imaging device that it automatically means attention is being diverted or that it's creating a more dangerous situation. I am not entirely convince that that is a reliable assumption to make in all cases. We don't have the foggiest notion of what is really going on at the neural level. It's the same problem with IQ test -- we don't have a definition of "intelligence" that anyone can agree on, and yet we think we can measure it and quantify it with a singular scalar number. And well, we have a whole sordid history of the IQ score being misinterpreted and misused across the board.
So, let's not jump to conclusions until more research is done. For instance, an easy one to do is check accident rates of single drivers against drivers with one or more passengers in the car. Oh, I can see it now -- laws being passed to make it illegal to drive with passengers!!! Which bring up another thorny issue -- the way lawmakers interpret research results. A topic for another time.
Nope -- I'm afraid China has the upper hand here, and already they've been making waves to dump the USD in lieu of stronger currencies, like perhaps the Euro, for instance.
He who *makes* the goods will *always* have the upper hand in a battle of economics. Never forget that. China is also coming into its own lately and could probably go completely self-sufficient if it wants to. The US is simply no longer the only economic powerhouse on the block, boys. Get your heads out of the glory days of the 20th century and smell where the coffee's coming from in the 21st!
Note as well that there is a difference between what the *people* may suffer vs. the *government* that controls. China's *people* may loose out a bit, but China's *government* has options.
Don't like it? Then don't do business there.
While I don't like censorship in the least, I also don't like US hegemony either -- either by the government or the businesses. China -- its people and its government -- need to work out their own issues with regards to privacy and censorship and freedom of access to information.
Oh well -- China has the US by its financial balls, so all I see coming out of this is a bunch of whining on the US part with little to no real action.
And of course, the question of what form any possible "action" would take, anyway? Pulling out of the Olympics? That's not fair to all those athletes who devoted a good portion of their lives preparing for this event.
Gotta love geo-politics.
The only thing I use Windows for is to run TurboTax and games. And I'm wondering about the TurboTax even.
But all hope is not lost -- running Windows on a hypervisor would be a bit more secure -- at least you can restart with the same snapshot, eliminating any attempts to embed a rootkit or snooping ware.
But really, with Linux these days, who needs Windows?
The "people"? Or the government? It would be an even bigger mess if the government took over! And really,do you really expect the government to run the Internet without also snooping on all of our activities even more than they do so now?
Better the Internet stay in the hands of *many* corporations than in the hands of a singular government. Look at what China does as an example. Hint for the clueless! :-)
Are their cheaper services? Probably, I'm sure. Are there less annoying ones? You bet. But Godaddy is a known evil, and their high-pressure upsale efforts just plain suck. But you know what? I've been with them for years, and I can become my own mini-registar in the future using their API and also reduce my costs by $300/yr. Their customer support is usually good. And they've been around for awhile.
So what can I say? We live in an imperfect world.