Disclaimer: I do not believe cows suffer unduly as a general rule, and I do not believe that refusing to eat beef on ethical grounds is anything short of dumb. Add a willingness to eat fish despite the ethical objection to beef, and you're a complete hypocrite (fish are suffocated to death, while livestock are usually killed fairly painlessly). Bring on the surf and turf!
I eat fish and avoid beef on ethical grounds. I'm not dumb, or hypocritical. Every morality-based lifestyle choice operates only within certain limits, and the extent of those limits is a manifestation of the degree of importance the individual places on the underlying moral issue. The issue at hand is also not nearly as simple as you claim it to be. My primary concern is not the last five minutes of my food's life, it's everything that happens beforehand. Wild-caught fish live in a completely natural state until they are caught. While many bad things may happen to those fish in nature, humans don't cause those problems! Fish also lack the same type and degree of pain sensation that mammals have (though some studies indicate that they perceive something pain-like). Cows, on the other hand, exist only at the will of their owners, and any suffering they endure is entirely our fault. They process pain the same way humans do. I believe that, in general, livestock are not treated with the degree of care throughout their lives that is owed to a captive sentient being. Therefore, I eat fish and not beef. You may disagree with the value judgments inherent in this argument, and may dispute some of the uncertain facts regarding the nature of suffering and pain sensation (since these issues are legitimately subject to scientific debate), but that does not make my reasoning or my conclusion "dumb" or "hypocritical" any more than yours is.
If I got a random letter saying I had a fatal neurological condition, I'd be slightly sceptical. Maybe that's just me though.
Except these patients already had "undiagnosed neurological conditions". If you had neurological problems, were seeking a diagnosis, had been evaluated inconclusively before, and received a notice from your hospital that you have ALS, you might be less skeptical and more devastated.
Internet relies on multiple other entities pretty much by definition - otherwise it would just be a LAN. The high reliability of radio is due mostly to the lack of reliance on any entity or infrastructure other than the parties at each end. There's no way around this. As you work to progressively increase the reliability of a communications system by changing its design, it starts to look more and more like... 2-way radio.
"keeping the HF bands clear for low signal communication is a bit like keeping the rail tracks clear of fast express trains so that nostalgists can run steam trains over them."
The author's analogy belies the fatal flaw in his though process: HF communications may be older and slower than the internet, but the internet is highly unreliable and fails when communications are most critical. HF always works. HF is the ONLY completely reliable means of long-distance communication that humans have. To destroy mankind's sole means of completely reliable communication in favor of a system which fails when needed most is simply foolish. This isn't about amateur radio. It's merely incidental that most HF communications these days are by hams, and that hams handle disaster comms when the networks go down. These communications could be handled by any group of people, and the result would be the same: without a reliable HF infrastructure, humans screw themselves doubly when nature screws us.
Where did NYCL get his law degree? I would like to know where these "good" law schools are in America.
They're everywhere. It's not the school that matters so much, it's the lawyer. The top third in the class from any law school will be very smart, very sharp thinkers, and excellent game players. The bottom third in the class will not know how to think like a lawyer, will not have a solid grasp of the fundamentals, and will be easily outmaneuvered by opposing counsel. The quality of the students in the middle will vary, as will the capability of the top students when matched against best from other institutions - that's where the school's reputation comes into play. Of course, a good lawyer on a losing case will still probably lose, no matter what his GPA or which his alma mater.
Not many other professions would put up with the lack of resources and total ignorance of planning that a sysadmin puts up with all the time.
What, you think lack of planning and resources are somehow unique to IT? News flash: every aspect of most businesses is run right on the edge of inadequacy. It's the right way, usually. Excess resource availability is a wasteful expense. It is more cost effective to make people do their jobs with scarce resources and at the limit of their capabilities (and occasionally suffer the consequences of that) than it is to make sure everyone is comfy and supplied with everything they think they need and only made to do what they are confident in. There are some limited exceptions to this (like certain aspects of medical care, cutting-edge research, or technical manufacturing) where the consequences of failure are so high that the expense of underutilized resources is justified to ensure a good result, but that is not the case for most aspects of most businesses.
The ruling in the Pepsi points case was based on the unreasonableness of the belief that a military jet would be given as a prize for buying Pepsi points. The airplane was worth tens of millions. Also, the commercial was seen as an advertisement and not an offer to enter into a contract.
So Best Buy could run an add stating that "This Friday, all our computers and big screen TVs are $1 each!" and since it is such an unreasonable offer they'll get away with not following through?
They would not be bound because advertisements are not generally considered offers of contract at all. There are some exceptions (generally for advertisement of a single item, or a definite limited number of items, on very specific terms) but in general businesses are not bound to deliver what they advertise as a matter of contract. There could be statutory violations for false advertising, but not breach of contract. The price/value ratio of the offer has nothing to do with whether they would be bound by it or not.
I had the same reaction, why would meteor data ever be classified????
Did you RTFA? This actually makes some sense when taken in context and explained... as in the article. The problem is that providing the data collected about incoming meteors necessarily describes the functionality and implied limitations of the detection system. Knowing the capabilities and limitations provides a strategic advantage to those who might try to avoid detection. Since the system is so complex and advanced, it is reasonable to believe that the capabilities will not be fully known by other militaries unless the information is leaked - or released in the form of data output.
We have foreigners representing a foreign government attacking a US citizen on US soil for political and religious reasons. That's terrorism by definition.
No, it's assassination by definition. Foreign groups have been assassinating political enemies abroad for centuries.
You just made free power: set up a transmitter and receivers spaced a distance apart, the receivers all get power no matter how many of them I have (according to you) without affecting any more distant receivers. So I set up one receiver and get a few milliwatts from my 500mW transmitter; then add another 1000 receivers... and get a few 1000 mW back [extrapolating what it seems you're saying].
Nope. Several problems with that, including conservation of energy of course. More importantly, though, you're forgetting the "radio shadow" effect of an antenna's near field region. All receivers downrange of an antenna will have their available signal disturbed and reduced by the uprange antenna. The effect is not crisp and easily definable like it is with large objects casting a visible light shadow, because of the ratio of object size to wavelength. However, the behavior is much like a cloud of water mist dispersing light, where each water droplet is like an antenna, diffracting lots of light and absorbing a little bit.
Its not like these antennas suck up the power, it won't bend the radio waves towards it like a magnetic pole would affect magnetic fields.
Well, actually they do. It's not at all significant in the grand scheme of things, but antennas do affect (reduce) the signal in the area near them. Antenna designers refer to an antenna's "aperture", the effective area in space from which it can "suck" signal. This is a very abstracted view, but is a useful analogy to understand how antennas affect electromagnetic waves passing near them. It is as if your power-sucking cell phone device creates a radio shadow a couple feet in diameter, instead of only the size of the antenna. Fortunately, the effect only extends a few wavelengths from the antenna at most (the so-called near field region) and has absolutely no impact on receivers outside that space.
If they discover you're in possession of a stolen car, they MUST notify the police...
I call BS. There is absolutely no legal duty to report someone else's possession of stolen property to the police. A dealership might choose to make it a policy, but that's the dealership's own choice and not mandated by law. If there is a law in your jurisdiction that requires dealerships to do this, then it is specific to your jurisdiction only - and would be highly unusual, since such "duty to report" statutes tend to be very controversial and are usually limited to "think of the children" scenarios. And yes, IAALawStudent.
If you voluntarily incapacitate yourself by getting drunk, you're responsible for any and all contracts you enter into while impaired. See Lucy v. Zehmer, the "heh, sure, I'll sell you my house for $100. I'll even sign a contract. I know you don't have a hundred dollars on you- oh, crap" case.
Intoxication was not a significant factor in Lucy v Zehmer. The court did not believe he was actually drunk at the time. The real issue was whether he was actually joking about the intent to sell. They found that he was not joking, and even if he were, his manifest intention was serious and thus his hidden inner motive was irrelevant.
spoken like a true 'tard. [snip] Say, you have an abusive spouse but you have to share custody. You need to call them but don't want them calling you and abusing you? Hrm, maybe that's a good idea.
If the court is involved to order shared custody, then the court can just as easily issue an injunction prohibiting the abuser from calling the victim. Violation of the order begets jail and fines.
Even in the absence of a court order, the victim could block incoming calls from the abuser's number - assuming this technology is available to defeat ID blocking! All things considered, the ability to block one's originating number seems much more useful for the abuser than the victim.
Advocacy groups for victims of domestic violence are concerned.
Why? Because this doesn't allow victims to harass their abusive partners anonymously? I fail to see what legitimate use caller ID blocking has in a domestic dispute. If anything, this should be a benefit since it destroys the anonymity of a harassing caller.
I would LOVE to see the profit margins on the drug, because I'm guessing by the tiny little vials they are probably making in the 2000-4000% profit range. Because you certainly don't get much for your $67k.
You just can't believe that anything could be that expensive to manufacture, can you? Do you know how they get the stuff? Read your own Wiki link, and the associated pages. It cannot be produced synthetically - it must be extracted from living organisms with functional immune responses. This means using either lab animals or cell cultures and carefully extracting, concentrating, and purifying the antibodies they produce. The difficulty and expense of this process makes all biologically-produced monoclonal antibody "drugs" EXTREMLY expensive. Yours is one of the cheaper ones. Some have to be produced in and extracted from human subjects, and cost an order of magnitude more than yours!
"Light" is almost always used to refer exclusively to the visible (and near-visible [IR, UV]) portion of the EM spectrum.
Well, to be pedantic, scientists often use "light" to refer to higher energy radiation too. It's not commonly used for wavelengths longer than far IR, but it is commonly used for X-ray and even extremely short wavelengths - like "synchrotron light".
Fridges are fairly low power devices with naturally random and uncorrelated cycling. One would think that in any given neighborhood, the normal randomness of the many fridges' cycling would be sufficient to result in a fairly level electrical "base load". I can't see that enforcing the levelness of this distribution could actually offer very much of a reduction in the peak load on the grid. What causes excessive peak loading is the coordinated use of many high-power loads. Typically this is air conditioning in the summer - all the units run simultaneously because it's hot outside, and each unit draws about 50 times more power than a fridge. Clothes dryers and washing machines in the evening also do this to a lesser extent. In the grand scheme of things, I really don't think there's much room for improvement through load-leveling of just fridges.
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Disclaimer: I do not believe cows suffer unduly as a general rule, and I do not believe that refusing to eat beef on ethical grounds is anything short of dumb. Add a willingness to eat fish despite the ethical objection to beef, and you're a complete hypocrite (fish are suffocated to death, while livestock are usually killed fairly painlessly). Bring on the surf and turf!
I eat fish and avoid beef on ethical grounds. I'm not dumb, or hypocritical. Every morality-based lifestyle choice operates only within certain limits, and the extent of those limits is a manifestation of the degree of importance the individual places on the underlying moral issue. The issue at hand is also not nearly as simple as you claim it to be. My primary concern is not the last five minutes of my food's life, it's everything that happens beforehand. Wild-caught fish live in a completely natural state until they are caught. While many bad things may happen to those fish in nature, humans don't cause those problems! Fish also lack the same type and degree of pain sensation that mammals have (though some studies indicate that they perceive something pain-like). Cows, on the other hand, exist only at the will of their owners, and any suffering they endure is entirely our fault. They process pain the same way humans do. I believe that, in general, livestock are not treated with the degree of care throughout their lives that is owed to a captive sentient being. Therefore, I eat fish and not beef. You may disagree with the value judgments inherent in this argument, and may dispute some of the uncertain facts regarding the nature of suffering and pain sensation (since these issues are legitimately subject to scientific debate), but that does not make my reasoning or my conclusion "dumb" or "hypocritical" any more than yours is.
If I got a random letter saying I had a fatal neurological condition, I'd be slightly sceptical. Maybe that's just me though.
Except these patients already had "undiagnosed neurological conditions". If you had neurological problems, were seeking a diagnosis, had been evaluated inconclusively before, and received a notice from your hospital that you have ALS, you might be less skeptical and more devastated.
Internet relies on multiple other entities pretty much by definition - otherwise it would just be a LAN. The high reliability of radio is due mostly to the lack of reliance on any entity or infrastructure other than the parties at each end. There's no way around this. As you work to progressively increase the reliability of a communications system by changing its design, it starts to look more and more like... 2-way radio.
"keeping the HF bands clear for low signal communication is a bit like keeping the rail tracks clear of fast express trains so that nostalgists can run steam trains over them."
The author's analogy belies the fatal flaw in his though process: HF communications may be older and slower than the internet, but the internet is highly unreliable and fails when communications are most critical. HF always works. HF is the ONLY completely reliable means of long-distance communication that humans have. To destroy mankind's sole means of completely reliable communication in favor of a system which fails when needed most is simply foolish. This isn't about amateur radio. It's merely incidental that most HF communications these days are by hams, and that hams handle disaster comms when the networks go down. These communications could be handled by any group of people, and the result would be the same: without a reliable HF infrastructure, humans screw themselves doubly when nature screws us.
It's not already?
Yeah, and isn't that what has made it so great? The lack of structure?
:-), though I would exchange Swiss/ German in Heaven.
You want the Germans in charge of scheduling your eternal peace? I am reminded of the Beck's beer ad, "COMMENCE RELAXATION...NOW!"
Where did NYCL get his law degree? I would like to know where these "good" law schools are in America.
They're everywhere. It's not the school that matters so much, it's the lawyer. The top third in the class from any law school will be very smart, very sharp thinkers, and excellent game players. The bottom third in the class will not know how to think like a lawyer, will not have a solid grasp of the fundamentals, and will be easily outmaneuvered by opposing counsel. The quality of the students in the middle will vary, as will the capability of the top students when matched against best from other institutions - that's where the school's reputation comes into play. Of course, a good lawyer on a losing case will still probably lose, no matter what his GPA or which his alma mater.
Not many other professions would put up with the lack of resources and total ignorance of planning that a sysadmin puts up with all the time.
What, you think lack of planning and resources are somehow unique to IT? News flash: every aspect of most businesses is run right on the edge of inadequacy. It's the right way, usually. Excess resource availability is a wasteful expense. It is more cost effective to make people do their jobs with scarce resources and at the limit of their capabilities (and occasionally suffer the consequences of that) than it is to make sure everyone is comfy and supplied with everything they think they need and only made to do what they are confident in. There are some limited exceptions to this (like certain aspects of medical care, cutting-edge research, or technical manufacturing) where the consequences of failure are so high that the expense of underutilized resources is justified to ensure a good result, but that is not the case for most aspects of most businesses.
The ruling in the Pepsi points case was based on the unreasonableness of the belief that a military jet would be given as a prize for buying Pepsi points. The airplane was worth tens of millions. Also, the commercial was seen as an advertisement and not an offer to enter into a contract.
So Best Buy could run an add stating that "This Friday, all our computers and big screen TVs are $1 each!" and since it is such an unreasonable offer they'll get away with not following through?
They would not be bound because advertisements are not generally considered offers of contract at all. There are some exceptions (generally for advertisement of a single item, or a definite limited number of items, on very specific terms) but in general businesses are not bound to deliver what they advertise as a matter of contract. There could be statutory violations for false advertising, but not breach of contract. The price/value ratio of the offer has nothing to do with whether they would be bound by it or not.
I had the same reaction, why would meteor data ever be classified????
Did you RTFA? This actually makes some sense when taken in context and explained... as in the article. The problem is that providing the data collected about incoming meteors necessarily describes the functionality and implied limitations of the detection system. Knowing the capabilities and limitations provides a strategic advantage to those who might try to avoid detection. Since the system is so complex and advanced, it is reasonable to believe that the capabilities will not be fully known by other militaries unless the information is leaked - or released in the form of data output.
We have foreigners representing a foreign government attacking a US citizen on US soil for political and religious reasons. That's terrorism by definition.
No, it's assassination by definition. Foreign groups have been assassinating political enemies abroad for centuries.
No, what he did was use that existing security feature to lock out all the teachers by automatically entering incorrect passwords repeatedly.
You just made free power: set up a transmitter and receivers spaced a distance apart, the receivers all get power no matter how many of them I have (according to you) without affecting any more distant receivers. So I set up one receiver and get a few milliwatts from my 500mW transmitter; then add another 1000 receivers ... and get a few 1000 mW back [extrapolating what it seems you're saying].
Nope. Several problems with that, including conservation of energy of course. More importantly, though, you're forgetting the "radio shadow" effect of an antenna's near field region. All receivers downrange of an antenna will have their available signal disturbed and reduced by the uprange antenna. The effect is not crisp and easily definable like it is with large objects casting a visible light shadow, because of the ratio of object size to wavelength. However, the behavior is much like a cloud of water mist dispersing light, where each water droplet is like an antenna, diffracting lots of light and absorbing a little bit.
Its not like these antennas suck up the power, it won't bend the radio waves towards it like a magnetic pole would affect magnetic fields.
Well, actually they do. It's not at all significant in the grand scheme of things, but antennas do affect (reduce) the signal in the area near them. Antenna designers refer to an antenna's "aperture", the effective area in space from which it can "suck" signal. This is a very abstracted view, but is a useful analogy to understand how antennas affect electromagnetic waves passing near them. It is as if your power-sucking cell phone device creates a radio shadow a couple feet in diameter, instead of only the size of the antenna. Fortunately, the effect only extends a few wavelengths from the antenna at most (the so-called near field region) and has absolutely no impact on receivers outside that space.
"What about Goecaching!?" Every nerds favorite hobby could be in jeopardy!
"Everyone" is subjective, "hobby" is misleading and "favorite" is relative... very relative. ;)
"nerd" was right on, however.
If they discover you're in possession of a stolen car, they MUST notify the police...
I call BS. There is absolutely no legal duty to report someone else's possession of stolen property to the police. A dealership might choose to make it a policy, but that's the dealership's own choice and not mandated by law. If there is a law in your jurisdiction that requires dealerships to do this, then it is specific to your jurisdiction only - and would be highly unusual, since such "duty to report" statutes tend to be very controversial and are usually limited to "think of the children" scenarios. And yes, IAALawStudent.
This is why the US is falling behind faster than we think. We are more governmentally encumbered and less capitalist than China in many ways!
If you voluntarily incapacitate yourself by getting drunk, you're responsible for any and all contracts you enter into while impaired. See Lucy v. Zehmer, the "heh, sure, I'll sell you my house for $100. I'll even sign a contract. I know you don't have a hundred dollars on you- oh, crap" case.
Intoxication was not a significant factor in Lucy v Zehmer. The court did not believe he was actually drunk at the time. The real issue was whether he was actually joking about the intent to sell. They found that he was not joking, and even if he were, his manifest intention was serious and thus his hidden inner motive was irrelevant.
spoken like a true 'tard. [snip] Say, you have an abusive spouse but you have to share custody. You need to call them but don't want them calling you and abusing you? Hrm, maybe that's a good idea.
If the court is involved to order shared custody, then the court can just as easily issue an injunction prohibiting the abuser from calling the victim. Violation of the order begets jail and fines.
Even in the absence of a court order, the victim could block incoming calls from the abuser's number - assuming this technology is available to defeat ID blocking! All things considered, the ability to block one's originating number seems much more useful for the abuser than the victim.
Advocacy groups for victims of domestic violence are concerned.
Why? Because this doesn't allow victims to harass their abusive partners anonymously? I fail to see what legitimate use caller ID blocking has in a domestic dispute. If anything, this should be a benefit since it destroys the anonymity of a harassing caller.
I would LOVE to see the profit margins on the drug, because I'm guessing by the tiny little vials they are probably making in the 2000-4000% profit range. Because you certainly don't get much for your $67k.
You just can't believe that anything could be that expensive to manufacture, can you? Do you know how they get the stuff? Read your own Wiki link, and the associated pages. It cannot be produced synthetically - it must be extracted from living organisms with functional immune responses. This means using either lab animals or cell cultures and carefully extracting, concentrating, and purifying the antibodies they produce. The difficulty and expense of this process makes all biologically-produced monoclonal antibody "drugs" EXTREMLY expensive. Yours is one of the cheaper ones. Some have to be produced in and extracted from human subjects, and cost an order of magnitude more than yours!
Since when has ICANN been providing DNA?
Since last night with your mom?
"Light" is almost always used to refer exclusively to the visible (and near-visible [IR, UV]) portion of the EM spectrum.
Well, to be pedantic, scientists often use "light" to refer to higher energy radiation too. It's not commonly used for wavelengths longer than far IR, but it is commonly used for X-ray and even extremely short wavelengths - like "synchrotron light".
Fridges are fairly low power devices with naturally random and uncorrelated cycling. One would think that in any given neighborhood, the normal randomness of the many fridges' cycling would be sufficient to result in a fairly level electrical "base load". I can't see that enforcing the levelness of this distribution could actually offer very much of a reduction in the peak load on the grid. What causes excessive peak loading is the coordinated use of many high-power loads. Typically this is air conditioning in the summer - all the units run simultaneously because it's hot outside, and each unit draws about 50 times more power than a fridge. Clothes dryers and washing machines in the evening also do this to a lesser extent. In the grand scheme of things, I really don't think there's much room for improvement through load-leveling of just fridges.
Ad on test: $20
Being able to spell "precident": Priceless.
Snarky comment on spelling: Free
Misspelling the word you complained about being misspelled: Priceless
Your joke sets a bad precedent.