The anonymous rant doesn't even make sense. Government workers are all salaried, how do they steer money into their own pockets? And what benefit does "government" get by cutting costs on safety valves?
Right now, we already have cars with cruise control that can go from 0-highway speed-0. We also have cars with "lane assist" which will steer you back into your lane if you start to drift.
All that's left is figuring out lane control during shitty weather. Though I'm really interested in how self driving cars on all-season tires will handle unplowed streets/highways.
So you want complete freedom of expression as long as others agree with your vision.
There's no such thing as complete freedom of expression. We naturally put limits on expression to prevent assholes from taking advantage and causing us all grief.
Some people see DRM as part of the assholes who would cause us grief.
But, honestly, with the bullshit "we can do a border search at an airport and within 100 miles of the border", they probably figured they didn't need to.
They've already been told they have search powers that are effectively unconstitutional, but some how magically legal.
There's nothing bullshit about the border search exception. It was defacto law before it was dejure law and it was done before The United States were United.
Yes, 100 miles from the border is nonsense, but the basic principle existed long before the Constitution did.
The others aren't just prepared to murder Wilders. They want to abolish democracy and replace it with sharia law, and kill the Untermenschen i.e. the unbelievers.
Please don't try and conflate Islamic fundamentalism and the Nazis. Untermenschen does not mean "the unbelievers" it means "the under-man"
That same year, he also published The New World of Islam where, if you glance at the chapter titles, you'll notice he calls Muslims "Bolsheviks." Unsurprisingly, this is the same label that the Nazis attached to the Jews in an effort to slur them. (And no, Bolshevism and communism are not the same as national socialism. The Nazis weren't commies.)
Reliance upon the government to protect you after you have insulted someone is not freedom
What exactly is it that you think Government does?
Because collective security is the most basic function of Government.
As an example, if you insult the King of Thailand, the only thing keeping the Thai government from crossing borders to take you in for prosecution is your government. Or do you think you can defend yourself against the resources of a nation state?
At first glance, all of these technologies are implemented solely for the purpose for bring in more money to the government.
HOV lanes exist to encourage ride sharing and to reduce the traffic load during rush hour. Ticketing cheaters serves that end and is not exclusively about monetary gain for the State
So yes, you are being cynical, though I wouldn't take off the tin foil hat.
They make deep cycle lead acid batteries for (mostly) boats. Typically they last 5-6 years in a marine application and you can drain them to about 10% without problems
Not sure why you'd want to go to a lithium based technology in a stationary application.
Lithium batteries have much higher charge and discharge rates.
And while you *can* discharge lead acid batteries down to 10%, you *shouldn't*. The best lifespan is with a cycle that only goes down to 50%. A 10% discharge cycle leads to significantly shorter lifespans for lead acid batteries. This is not the case for lithium technologies.
That was a philosophical choice made by NASA: pilots should have as much control as possible over the systems. Sort of like the design choice made by Boeing to let the pilot override the automated systems and break the airplane if he wants to vs Airbus limiting the max g-forces a pilot can generate.
It didn't hurt that Eisenhower told NASA to only recruit military test pilots for the Mercury program. While NASA no longer exclusively recruits test pilots, they still make up a large portion of recruits.
Antitrust isn't really about consumers (although arguable it is ultimately) but about making sure the free market is both a market and free.
You should have prepended that sentence with the qualifier "American" In Europe, anti-trust philosophy and regulation is most definitely focused around consumer welfare.
If you re-read the reporting a bit more carefully, the problem with Google's actions is not that it is bad for competition, but that it is bad for consumer welfare.
This is a major difference in thinking between Europe and the USA. There are other large differences, particularly as a result of the EU's need to integrate markets across its member Countries. That need to integrate was never a factor during the formation of the USA's anti-trust policies.
Google's European headquarter is in Ireland... well, actually, it's an Irish company that is headquartered in Bermuda. Google USA licenses its IP to Google Ireland Holdings (headquartered in Bermuda). In turn, Google Ireland Holdings sub-licenses the IP to its wholly owned subsidiary in the Netherlands: Google Netherlands Holdings B.V. Then Google Netherlands Holdings B.V. sub-sub-licenses the IP to another Google Ireland Holdings subsidiary: Google Ireland Ltd.
To coordinate all this, Google has a network of corporations in individual EU States, usually just "sales support" staff who run the ad-sales and ad-placements.
TLDR: The EU can't break up Google USA, but they can force Google Ireland Holdings to GTFO or change the way it offers services in the EU.
If you have no robots.txt telling them what you want them to ignore, they put it all in the index.
A quick search kicks back FTPs with robots.txt in the root directory. allinurl:ftp:// XXXX robots.txt User-agent: * Disallow: /
It doesn't really seem like Google is indexing the FTP. Instead Google seems to be crawling through and only indexing txt, doc, pdf, html, xls, xml, aspx, rtf, etc.
If Google was indexing ftps, a search like intext:"Up to higher level directory" inurl:ftp:// XXXXXX.net should kick back folder directories, but it doesn't.
If you plan on having the medium survive your house burning down, it'll either have to be something really exotic(CNCed cuneiform tablets?) or something boring inside a sufficiently fireproof safe (which can get costly; but are a well recognized product category).
Fireproof safes (actually fire resistant) are not what you want to use for storing electronics or cd/dvd/bd media.
You specifically want a fire resistant "media" or "data" safe.
The difference is that "fireproof" safes are intended to prevent paper from charring/burning, so their design allows for internal temperatures that are high enough to cook your electronics. Media/data safes maintain a significantly lower interior temperature (and humidity), which safeguards your relatively fragile electronic hardware.
And it's not just enough to avoid high temperatures, your safe needs to be sealed against gasses. In a home fire, you have all types of corrosive and unpleasant chemicals that are created from burning plastics, toilet cleaner, etc. Those chemicals will generally attack any metal and plastic that they come into contact with (YMMV).
TLDR: You get what you pay for, so get the right thing.
So basically, their only challenges left are making it into a decent battery?
If you RTFA, they mention that it puts out close to 2 volts. While that's almost perfect as a replacement for lead-acid batteries, it's not enough to replace two AA batteries (2.4v/3v) or one lithium-ion (3.6~3.7v)
So, if the insurance company can prove the quakes were man-made, they don't have to pay out. But if they can prove it, that goes against claims by many in the state and oil industry. The oil industry would likely try to hound/silence/sue the insurance company.
I'd love to see a fight between Big Oil and Big Insurance, because Big Insurance's profit margins are driven by data and not ideology. No amount of Oil Industry pressure would let them accept a bad legal precedent which could screw with their long term 12%~15% profit margins.
Not to mention that the insurance industry is a very.... entangled business community. Almost everyone who issues insurance policies is also hedging their risk by buying a reinsurance policy from one or more (re)insurance companies. It's never just one insurance company that you're suing.
That's an interesting read. While nothing in the order says criminal penalties it mentions the laws which apparently let one person rule by diktat so I expect that they specify the penalties.
Isn't that the entire point of emergency powers? The order specifically says "national emergency."
Anyways, let's look at the laws that are cited: Termination of existing declared emergencies: 50 U.S.C. 1601 Unusual and extraordinary threat; declaration of national emergency; exercise of Presidential authorities: 50 U.S.C. 1701 General authorization to delegate functions: Section 301 of Title 3 Inadmissible aliens: 8 U.S.C. 1182(f)
50 U.S.C. 1702(b)(2)
(b) Exceptions to grant of authority The authority granted to the President by this section does not include the authority to regulate or prohibit, directly or indirectly--
(1) [not what is cited]
(2) donations, by persons subject to the jurisdiction of the United States, of articles, such as food, clothing, and medicine, intended to be used to relieve human suffering, except to the extent that the President determines that such donations
(A) would seriously impair his ability to deal with any national emergency declared under section 1701 of this title, (B) are in response to coercion against the proposed recipient or donor, or (C) would endanger Armed Forces of the United States which are engaged in hostilities or are in a situation where imminent involvement in hostilities is clearly indicated by the circumstances; or [2]
8 U.S.C. 1182(f)
(f) Suspension of entry or imposition of restrictions by President Whenever the President finds that the entry of any aliens or of any class of aliens into the United States would be detrimental to the interests of the United States, he may by proclamation, and for such period as he shall deem necessary, suspend the entry of all aliens or any class of aliens as immigrants or nonimmigrants, or impose on the entry of aliens any restrictions he may deem to be appropriate. Whenever the Attorney General finds that a commercial airline has failed to comply with regulations of the Attorney General relating to requirements of airlines for the detection of fraudulent documents used by passengers traveling to the United States (including the training of personnel in such detection), the Attorney General may suspend the entry of some or all aliens transported to the United States by such airline.
If the war on terror never ends, neither will these emergency powers.
The problem here isn't the science, it's the pork.
Pork has nothing to do with it and the science isn't all that bad. The problem is that SPOT is a diet-version of Israel's behavioral screening program, which is what makes it a waste of money.
SPOT leaves out the naked profiling that Israel uses and it also completely neglects the intrusive (and lengthy) questioning of travelers. Basically, the two pieces that make it at all effective.
To summarize, the Israeli system could never be fully transplanted into the USA because 1. It profiles based on race, religion, and country of origin 2. It is manpower intensive 3. It puts security before anything, including your family of 5 missing their flight.
So the headline should read, "Oil industry funded think tank announces that a guy who used to belong to Greenpeace is a climate denialist."
Oh come on, give The Heartland Institute some credit. They were also big players in the "tobacco doesn't give you cancer" and "taxes will give you cancer" movements.
Maybe this is for mobile phones, but even then if a mobile phone can get to Facebook then it can obviously get to anywhere else on the internet.
The detail you're missing is "free" Facebook either pays the mobile operator or creates a (advertising) revenue sharing partnership so that mobile access to Facebook is free to that telecom company's customers.
Pretty much exactly what the concept of Net Neutrality is intended to quash.
Which class of laser are they using which can penetrate the canopy of a jungle?
The standard is 1064 nm infrared and 532 nm green (actually 1064nm doubled). The IR is absorbed by water, hence the inclusion of a 532nm wavelength laser.
With a high enough pulse rate, you can penetrate multiple layers of canopy and get excellent resolution.
Also for the larger areas covered it seems like a fixed wing design might be more appropriate.
Fixed wing solutions are neither better nor worse than any other solution. Planes need a plane, an airfield, a mechanic, fuel, a pilot, and an operator for the LIDAR system.
The benefit of using an octo-copter is that all you need is electricity to charge it.
In the last decade coal consumption has sky rocketed.
Past performance is not an indication of future returns. China is embarrassed by the choking pollution from its coal plants and is either replacing them with cleaner energy or moving them to the middle of no where.
The [Chinese] National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) said in its annual report on Thursday that it would implement policies aimed at reducing coal consumption and controlling the number of energy-intensive projects in polluted regions.
China is trying to strike a balance between improving its environment and restructuring away from an economy dominated by energy intensive industries like steel making and construction towards one focused more on consumption and the service sector.
Which is interesting that China is still pursuing the Nicaraguan canal so it can more easily access South America's resources. Before the canal, China was considering building a railway across Columbia as an alternative to the Panama Canal choke point.
Maybe have a slashdot-like karma system, where bad comments on the forums are modded down, and you build up good karma.
Then you have to worry about the down vote brigade./.'s solution is many eyes and meta-moderation Reddit's solution is to complain to the moderators./.'s system is more open to injustice by dedicated trolls Reddit's system, can have better outcomes, but requires manpower and trusted individuals. Wikipedia's system requires politics and the ability to grind down the opposition.
Slashdot Mirror
The anonymous rant doesn't even make sense.
Government workers are all salaried, how do they steer money into their own pockets?
And what benefit does "government" get by cutting costs on safety valves?
It's about as significant as shitting through a recruiting office letterbox in a mall.
Unless they dropped some malware on the site and infected the people who unknowingly visited the page.
Right now, we already have cars with cruise control that can go from 0-highway speed-0.
We also have cars with "lane assist" which will steer you back into your lane if you start to drift.
All that's left is figuring out lane control during shitty weather.
Though I'm really interested in how self driving cars on all-season tires will handle unplowed streets/highways.
So you want complete freedom of expression as long as others agree with your vision.
There's no such thing as complete freedom of expression.
We naturally put limits on expression to prevent assholes from taking advantage and causing us all grief.
Some people see DRM as part of the assholes who would cause us grief.
But, honestly, with the bullshit "we can do a border search at an airport and within 100 miles of the border", they probably figured they didn't need to.
They've already been told they have search powers that are effectively unconstitutional, but some how magically legal.
There's nothing bullshit about the border search exception.
It was defacto law before it was dejure law and it was done before The United States were United.
Yes, 100 miles from the border is nonsense, but the basic principle existed long before the Constitution did.
The others aren't just prepared to murder Wilders. They want to abolish democracy and replace it with sharia law, and kill the Untermenschen i.e. the unbelievers.
Please don't try and conflate Islamic fundamentalism and the Nazis.
Untermenschen does not mean "the unbelievers" it means "the under-man"
The American who first used the term in the context of inherent inferiority, which is how we understand it, said thusly:
"This term is The Under-Man the man who measures under the standards of capacity and adaptability imposed by the social order in which he lives."
That same year, he also published The New World of Islam where, if you glance at the chapter titles, you'll notice he calls Muslims "Bolsheviks."
Unsurprisingly, this is the same label that the Nazis attached to the Jews in an effort to slur them.
(And no, Bolshevism and communism are not the same as national socialism. The Nazis weren't commies.)
Reliance upon the government to protect you after you have insulted someone is not freedom
What exactly is it that you think Government does?
Because collective security is the most basic function of Government.
As an example, if you insult the King of Thailand, the only thing keeping the Thai government from crossing borders to take you in for prosecution is your government.
Or do you think you can defend yourself against the resources of a nation state?
At first glance, all of these technologies are implemented solely for the purpose for bring in more money to the government.
HOV lanes exist to encourage ride sharing and to reduce the traffic load during rush hour.
Ticketing cheaters serves that end and is not exclusively about monetary gain for the State
So yes, you are being cynical, though I wouldn't take off the tin foil hat.
They make deep cycle lead acid batteries for (mostly) boats. Typically they last 5-6 years in a marine application and you can drain them to about 10% without problems
Not sure why you'd want to go to a lithium based technology in a stationary application.
Lithium batteries have much higher charge and discharge rates.
And while you *can* discharge lead acid batteries down to 10%, you *shouldn't*.
The best lifespan is with a cycle that only goes down to 50%.
A 10% discharge cycle leads to significantly shorter lifespans for lead acid batteries.
This is not the case for lithium technologies.
Yeah, they were 'hands on'
That was a philosophical choice made by NASA: pilots should have as much control as possible over the systems.
Sort of like the design choice made by Boeing to let the pilot override the automated systems and break the airplane if he wants to vs Airbus limiting the max g-forces a pilot can generate.
It didn't hurt that Eisenhower told NASA to only recruit military test pilots for the Mercury program.
While NASA no longer exclusively recruits test pilots, they still make up a large portion of recruits.
Antitrust isn't really about consumers (although arguable it is ultimately) but about making sure the free market is both a market and free.
You should have prepended that sentence with the qualifier "American"
In Europe, anti-trust philosophy and regulation is most definitely focused around consumer welfare.
If you re-read the reporting a bit more carefully, the problem with Google's actions is not that it is bad for competition, but that it is bad for consumer welfare.
This is a major difference in thinking between Europe and the USA.
There are other large differences, particularly as a result of the EU's need to integrate markets across its member Countries.
That need to integrate was never a factor during the formation of the USA's anti-trust policies.
And if you think that it's wrong of EU to investigate an American company, think about it this way:
Google is a European company.
Actually, many European companies.
http://www.google.com/about/company/facts/locations/
Google's European headquarter is in Ireland... well, actually, it's an Irish company that is headquartered in Bermuda.
Google USA licenses its IP to Google Ireland Holdings (headquartered in Bermuda).
In turn, Google Ireland Holdings sub-licenses the IP to its wholly owned subsidiary in the Netherlands: Google Netherlands Holdings B.V.
Then Google Netherlands Holdings B.V. sub-sub-licenses the IP to another Google Ireland Holdings subsidiary: Google Ireland Ltd.
To coordinate all this, Google has a network of corporations in individual EU States, usually just "sales support" staff who run the ad-sales and ad-placements.
TLDR: The EU can't break up Google USA, but they can force Google Ireland Holdings to GTFO or change the way it offers services in the EU.
If you have no robots.txt telling them what you want them to ignore, they put it all in the index.
A quick search kicks back FTPs with robots.txt in the root directory.
allinurl:ftp:// XXXX robots.txt
User-agent: *
Disallow: /
It doesn't really seem like Google is indexing the FTP.
Instead Google seems to be crawling through and only indexing txt, doc, pdf, html, xls, xml, aspx, rtf, etc.
If Google was indexing ftps, a search like intext:"Up to higher level directory" inurl:ftp:// XXXXXX.net should kick back folder directories, but it doesn't.
If you plan on having the medium survive your house burning down, it'll either have to be something really exotic(CNCed cuneiform tablets?) or something boring inside a sufficiently fireproof safe (which can get costly; but are a well recognized product category).
Fireproof safes (actually fire resistant) are not what you want to use for storing electronics or cd/dvd/bd media.
You specifically want a fire resistant "media" or "data" safe.
The difference is that "fireproof" safes are intended to prevent paper from charring/burning, so their design allows for internal temperatures that are high enough to cook your electronics. Media/data safes maintain a significantly lower interior temperature (and humidity), which safeguards your relatively fragile electronic hardware.
And it's not just enough to avoid high temperatures, your safe needs to be sealed against gasses.
In a home fire, you have all types of corrosive and unpleasant chemicals that are created from burning plastics, toilet cleaner, etc.
Those chemicals will generally attack any metal and plastic that they come into contact with (YMMV).
TLDR: You get what you pay for, so get the right thing.
So basically, their only challenges left are making it into a decent battery?
If you RTFA, they mention that it puts out close to 2 volts.
While that's almost perfect as a replacement for lead-acid batteries, it's not enough to replace two AA batteries (2.4v/3v) or one lithium-ion (3.6~3.7v)
So, if the insurance company can prove the quakes were man-made, they don't have to pay out. But if they can prove it, that goes against claims by many in the state and oil industry. The oil industry would likely try to hound/silence/sue the insurance company.
I'd love to see a fight between Big Oil and Big Insurance, because Big Insurance's profit margins are driven by data and not ideology.
No amount of Oil Industry pressure would let them accept a bad legal precedent which could screw with their long term 12%~15% profit margins.
Not to mention that the insurance industry is a very.... entangled business community.
Almost everyone who issues insurance policies is also hedging their risk by buying a reinsurance policy from one or more (re)insurance companies.
It's never just one insurance company that you're suing.
That's an interesting read. While nothing in the order says criminal penalties it mentions the laws which apparently let one person rule by diktat so I expect that they specify the penalties.
Isn't that the entire point of emergency powers? The order specifically says "national emergency."
Anyways, let's look at the laws that are cited:
Termination of existing declared emergencies: 50 U.S.C. 1601
Unusual and extraordinary threat; declaration of national emergency; exercise of Presidential authorities: 50 U.S.C. 1701
General authorization to delegate functions: Section 301 of Title 3
Inadmissible aliens: 8 U.S.C. 1182(f)
Presidential authorities: 50 U.S.C. 1702(b)(2)
Banning entry to aliens covered by the order: section 1 of Proclamation 8693 of July 24, 2011 [really long name] (PDF)
Critical infrastructure definitions: Presidential Policy Directive 21
Reporting requirements to Congress on spending for emergency orders: 50 U.S.C. 1641(c)
Reporting requirements to Congress in general for emergency orders: 50 U.S.C. 1703(c)
The only ones that I think worth quoting are:
50 U.S.C. 1702(b)(2)
(b) Exceptions to grant of authority
The authority granted to the President by this section does not include the authority to regulate or prohibit, directly or indirectly--
(A) would seriously impair his ability to deal with any national emergency declared under section 1701 of this title,
(B) are in response to coercion against the proposed recipient or donor, or
(C) would endanger Armed Forces of the United States which are engaged in hostilities or are in a situation where imminent involvement in hostilities is clearly indicated by the circumstances; or [2]
8 U.S.C. 1182(f)
(f) Suspension of entry or imposition of restrictions by President
Whenever the President finds that the entry of any aliens or of any class of aliens into the United States would be detrimental to the interests of the United States, he may by proclamation, and for such period as he shall deem necessary, suspend the entry of all aliens or any class of aliens as immigrants or nonimmigrants, or impose on the entry of aliens any restrictions he may deem to be appropriate. Whenever the Attorney General finds that a commercial airline has failed to comply with regulations of the Attorney General relating to requirements of airlines for the detection of fraudulent documents used by passengers traveling to the United States (including the training of personnel in such detection), the Attorney General may suspend the entry of some or all aliens transported to the United States by such airline.
If the war on terror never ends, neither will these emergency powers.
There's nothing secret about the Specially Designated Nationals and Blocked Persons list (actually lists).
There's also non-SDN lists, which are included in this consolidated list:
http://www.treasury.gov/resource-center/sanctions/SDN-List/Pages/default.aspx
The problem here isn't the science, it's the pork.
Pork has nothing to do with it and the science isn't all that bad.
The problem is that SPOT is a diet-version of Israel's behavioral screening program, which is what makes it a waste of money.
SPOT leaves out the naked profiling that Israel uses and it also completely neglects the intrusive (and lengthy) questioning of travelers.
Basically, the two pieces that make it at all effective.
To summarize, the Israeli system could never be fully transplanted into the USA because
1. It profiles based on race, religion, and country of origin
2. It is manpower intensive
3. It puts security before anything, including your family of 5 missing their flight.
So the headline should read, "Oil industry funded think tank announces that a guy who used to belong to Greenpeace is a climate denialist."
Oh come on, give The Heartland Institute some credit.
They were also big players in the "tobacco doesn't give you cancer" and "taxes will give you cancer" movements.
Maybe this is for mobile phones, but even then if a mobile phone can get to Facebook then it can obviously get to anywhere else on the internet.
The detail you're missing is "free"
Facebook either pays the mobile operator or creates a (advertising) revenue sharing partnership so that mobile access to Facebook is free to that telecom company's customers.
Pretty much exactly what the concept of Net Neutrality is intended to quash.
Which class of laser are they using which can penetrate the canopy of a jungle?
The standard is 1064 nm infrared and 532 nm green (actually 1064nm doubled).
The IR is absorbed by water, hence the inclusion of a 532nm wavelength laser.
With a high enough pulse rate, you can penetrate multiple layers of canopy and get excellent resolution.
Also for the larger areas covered it seems like a fixed wing design might be more appropriate.
Fixed wing solutions are neither better nor worse than any other solution.
Planes need a plane, an airfield, a mechanic, fuel, a pilot, and an operator for the LIDAR system.
The benefit of using an octo-copter is that all you need is electricity to charge it.
In the last decade coal consumption has sky rocketed.
Past performance is not an indication of future returns.
China is embarrassed by the choking pollution from its coal plants and is either replacing them with cleaner energy or moving them to the middle of no where.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/03/05/us-china-parliament-ndrc-idUSKBN0M108V20150305
Mar 5, 2015
The [Chinese] National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) said in its annual report on Thursday that it would implement policies aimed at reducing coal consumption and controlling the number of energy-intensive projects in polluted regions.
China is trying to strike a balance between improving its environment and restructuring away from an economy dominated by energy intensive industries like steel making and construction towards one focused more on consumption and the service sector.
Which is interesting that China is still pursuing the Nicaraguan canal so it can more easily access South America's resources.
Before the canal, China was considering building a railway across Columbia as an alternative to the Panama Canal choke point.
Given that they have U-Verse in a lot of places, I believe they've actually been investing quite a bit.
They have been investing a lot, because laying fiber is very expensive.
But U-Verse is not in a lot of places.
If you look at where fiber has been brought to market (not just by AT&T), it's almost exclusively in cherry picked areas that can afford high prices.
Maybe have a slashdot-like karma system, where bad comments on the forums are modded down, and you build up good karma.
Then you have to worry about the down vote brigade. /.'s solution is many eyes and meta-moderation /.'s system is more open to injustice by dedicated trolls
Reddit's solution is to complain to the moderators.
Reddit's system, can have better outcomes, but requires manpower and trusted individuals.
Wikipedia's system requires politics and the ability to grind down the opposition.
There's no easy answer.