I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter: So help me God.
He's quite content to piss all over your Constitution, so why shouldn't he get a law passed allowing more than two terms of office?
Funny, maybe; but what... entity... modded this insightful?
Assuming he doesn't outright completely suspend elections or the constitution (which even a Republican Congress and a packed Supreme Court would go apeshit over), he'd need to have the 22nd Amendment repealed. This would require another amendment, much like the 21st repealed prohibition. This would require ratification of three quarters of the states-- 38, assuming no new states are admitted, and no current states split.
In the2004 presidential election, Bush carried only 32 states. Given that he has not massively increased his popularity since (especially given current sentiments on term limits), I'd consider the 61st Amendment far more likely.
There's also the question of whether such an amendment could realistically happen in time for Bush to run in 2008. A state-called convention seems unlikely. While some amendments have passed really quickly, others took longer. Given that it would be relatively controversial, it seems not unreasonable to believe it would take a year after getting out of congress. Furthermore, given the shennanigans that the Republican Senate lacked the votes to obtain cloture against a filibuster, it seems unlikely they would have be able to pass such an amendment.
5)Wait, while this shit is voted back out of excistance.
There's a problem with step 5: you presume that the Emperor won't disolve the Senate. You could end up left a hapless trooper working on the Death Star, desperately trying to find a bathroom after the rebels have stolen the deck plans.
You're so limited in your concept of nanotech and its applications that you really have no business discussing it publicly.
I work with several engineering researchers in the field, as well as an ethicist whose research into the ultimate potentials (and pitfalls thereof) required a broad survey of both Scientific and SF nanotech literature-- I had read most of the SF. I routinely discuss both the possibilities and practicallities with them over lunch. Given sufficient technological advancement, most of the developments you suggest do not violate the laws of physics. But we won't get to that level before facing the Hubbert Peak. Your post-human state may not be achievable given the present cultural, resource, and technological state. Unfortunately for you, there are many intermediate steps along the way. You can't develop new technology if you don't have a production surplus beyond basic life support.
I believe your optimism overlooks basic principles such as the the time value of resources, the law of scarcity, the resource demands of initial nanofabrication, the difficulties in human intelligence augmentation, a realistic projection of near-term energy supply and demand (and the economics thereof), basic orbital mechanics, the (im)practicality of nucleonic transmutation and the difficulties of isotope separation methods, the effects of radiation on nanomaterials and especially computer circuits, some annoying aspects of exponential growth curves, and the second law of thermodynamics.
However, I wish you luck. Particularly with the intelligence augmentation.
I think that dereliction of duty in top leadership is evil, when the ignored acts are evil.
Ah, but we were originally stipulating his claim might be that he ran a fundraising group without proper supervision. Continuing the error after it has been pointed out would indeed be evil in my book, too. Now, I'm not familiar with the details of the case, but if he didn't at least make heads roll for this when the problems were pointed out, then not only is he evil, but even Machiavelli would give him the boot for stupidity.
How can a statement that is supported by 35 books from reputable publishers be "Flamebait".
The phrase "Re-money-cans" seems clearly Flamebait to me. (No, I'm not Repubican-- I usually vote Libertarian.) Additionally, while the basic points may be sound, your hyperbole is excessive.
Welcome to Slashdot - the geek arm of the Democratic National Committee.
Slashdot seems to be closer to some Libertarian flavors than any of the Democrat varieties. The anti-Bush and anti-Fox I will grant you. (I personally object more to the phonetic than the political tone of FOX-N, myself; they're too loud.) I'd also say the overall Slashdot bias is more theocratiphobic, with a mix of opposition to big business (although in favor of small to mid-sized) and fiscal conservatism added for flavor. There is nowhere near enough Union support and way too much fondness for Big Frigging Guns among Slashdot readers to fully suck up to the Democrats.
Wait until you see how quickly this gets modded as "troll" or "flamebait" because I spoke the truth, thus proving my point!
It's about six hours later. 60% interesting, 20% Troll, 20% Insightful. I'd say it looks like your persecution complex, while not completely unfounded, is an overreaction... like many accusations of liberal media bias.
Nanotech can get you all the oil you want - or render oil unnecessary.
Incomplete, and thus inaccurate. Nanotechnology is likely to make petrochemical synthesis from alternative raw materials possible, and alternate materials may partially replace plastics. (Pla However, the key difficulty in replacing oil is that it is a pre-existing compact form chemical energy storage. Nanotechnology might concievably produce a replacement energy storage technology-- although the high energy profit ratio and reasonable energy density of gasoline make this somewhat questionable. However, if you are using nanotechnology to synthesize a form of energy storage, you still need the energy as an input in one form or another. Nanotechnology is primarily materials science; it does not provide new energy sources.
A space elevator is highly unlikely to be developed before it is rendered unnecessary by other nanotech-based technology.
Um? A space elevator allows for access to space via a Conservative system. Unless losses to entropy are far higher than projections for fullerene conductors indicate, there is NO more long-term economical way for bulk materials space transport; the costs are prinicpally capital set-up costs, of which the bulk are projected for the initial semi-orbital space deployment... of just the sort that a beanstalk can ameliorate.
Furthermore, large scale space solar is the ONLY kind of energy source capable of sustaining humanity to a Singularity scenario, barring a suprise in a GUT breakthough well beyond what is expected at this point from string theory models. Nanotech is primarily an improvement in materials science, not physics. It has the potential to improve energy storage and transportation, but very limited possibilites for improving energy production.
Besides which, I said Transhumans will go off-planet - not every monkey-ass primate who can wipe his nose. If the latter die by the billions, it's NOT a disaster.
Unfortunately, until said Transhumans are living in a self-contained biosphere, they are probably reliant for production of their food supply on said monkey-ass primates. Even then, the transhumans will need a self-sustaining technological infrastructure. Haven't you read Marooned in Realtime? Merely because something is stupid does not mean it is safe to remove from your local economy nor ecology. Additionally, diminished biodiversity within a species-- even (trans)humans-- is generally a bad thing; too much risk of single point of failure from epidemics and the like.
What are the odds that anything in the next fifty years is going to happen so FAST and WORLD-WIDE that all economies are going to evaporate and ALL technological progress is going to stop?
Well, there's
Hubbert's 1956 theory that foolishly predicted a peak in US domestic petroleum production would happen in the mid 1970's, and global production would peak between 2000 and 2015. Er, hang on....
Well, we had predictions of all-out Doomsday fifty years ago, too. Where is that? If you read the crap put out by environmentalists like Erhlich back in the '70's, we should all be starving today
While any number of the environmental doomsday prophets were nothing more than fuzzy minded Chicken Littles with nothing but unreasoned luddite prejudice behind their diatribes, some of them were backed by sound engineering, mathematics, and hard science.
The most scientifically rigorous of those works was the original "Dynamics of Growth in a Finite World". The good news is that Global System behavior thus far is consistent with a scenario between the median and conservative predictive runs, with the worst pessimistic scenarios ruled out. The bad news is that it is consistent with the conservative to median simulation runs... and those mostly end in disaster anyway.
Disaster is still not unavertable; but it is very likely. (Even if it is, it won't be total; an easrly 1800's level of technology should be sustainable even post-collapse... once the population settles.) From where I sit, it looks like the race between disaster and trancendence will be decided by whether the global Hubbert peak beats out deployment of a space elevator. With a space elevator, economical access to space-based resources postpones collapse for on the order or a century; without, a shortage of accessible energy will induce a traditional horsemen collapse.
In fifty years, nanotech will eliminate human stress on the environment
...and "Nuclear Power will make electricity too cheap to meter". Right. Next!
Scientists don't even have an accurate count of how many species there ARE on this planet - they could be off by factors of ten or more.
...however, most of the room for error is in non-animal (plant, bacterial, fungal, and archaea) species, smaller sized (under 30g mass per individual) species, and the deeper (below 200m) aquatic species. The extinction event is clear in larger known land animal species. (You also have not given any argument for why unknown species would demonstrate different extinction patterns.)
Counting "Fans" really isn't quite fair, as it's reached the end of its long and excellent run. Similarly, I wouldn't count "Calvin and Hobbes" to the credit of the UComics syndicate, because while excellent, it's reruns.
-Enrichment levels for uranium meant for power plants is about 20% U-235, not 3%.
No, that's about right. Standard commercial PWR/BWR reactors use 3-5% enrichment; CANDU heavy water reactors can use lower enrichment. Research (and military?) reactors tend to use higher enrichments-- 20-90%. However, the NRC has been strongly encouraging universities to recalculate the load geometries to rely on fuel at the lower end of that range to limit the amount of highly enriched uranium in non-military facilities. The school I studied Nuclear Engineering at downgraded from 95% enriched to 19.9% enriched in 1992 or so.
-The gun and implosion types of bombs aren't tied to the fissile type. You could use either type with either plutonium or uranium.
Actually, I recall that because of the neutron energy profile from fission, Pu-gun type bombs do not work well-- you tend to get only partial fission before it blows apart.
The article says nothing about the composition or manufacture of the membranes used in gaseous diffusion, how to handle the corrosive nature of U-hexaflouride, and mentions NOTHING about Laser isotope separation (let alone useful tidbits like the actual activation frequencies for U235 and U238 hex). The folk running the Manhattan project had better info than this even before they started. Buy a good introductory textbook and you'll get way better instructions with far more technical detail.
I guess the slashdot editor thought it was a slow news day or something....
I imagine plants must be incredibly difficult to "declare extinct", after all - how would you show for sure that none are present in a country the size of America?
Not to mention, how many seeds still are scattered that might yet someday germinate?
I see it as an extension of basic evidence rules -- if there is other evidence suggesting you have bad files and you have intentionally made those file unreadable, the tools you used to do that are possibly relevant.
The problem with this line of arguement is that this is not the only use for such tools. I have the GPG version of PGP on my home and work systems. At home, I use it for encrypting backup copies of my financial records, tax forms, old love letters (yes, the girls were of legal age, they're just embarrasing), and various files associated with my participation in local politics. At work, since I know there is at least some legally protected data on the machine, I have departmental computers backup local desktops to internal hard drives, and then encrypt the backup files whem putting them on the server.
Kind of like pointing out the defendant owned a shredder, there was huge pile of shredded paper by it, and the "smoking gun" documents are no where to be found.
Agreed... but it does not appear that the "huge pile of shredded paper" is present. Normal use of GPG or PGP to erase files leaves portions of the drive with data sectors showing either VERY high entropy, OR purely "zeroed". No mention of such evidence is in the news reports or ruling.
Last, it doesn't exactly sound like PGP was a "factor in his punishment". Rather, it sounds like it was a factor in his conviction. If the court had ruled that the evidence was inadmissible, then a new trial might have been ordered. This would require a finding that the irrelevant evidence was prejudicial enough that it could have formed a basis for the conviction. If the error was not considered substantial, then no new trial would have been ordered.
However, if the error was not considered substantial, the appeals court ruling would have said so; and if they had so ruled, or had ruled for it being inadmissable, there would be much less to this story. Instead, the ruling states "the presence of an encryption program on his computer was relevant to the state's case".
It's bothersome that the idiot testifying didn't know diddly about computers. Macs do NOT come with PGP or GPG installed by default. The FileVault system on OS X.3+ is based on AES-128, an algorithm whose main (sole?) similarity is that it cannot be decrypted by anyone short of the NSA. For that matter, Windows 2K and XP with EFS, based DESX... which probably can't be broken by anyone not willing to buy over ten megabucks of hardware for such jobs.
I also find it worrisome that it was admitted to evidence that he looked up on the web the definition of the crime he was accused of, as that would seem to weaken the right to counsel. Fortunately, that was not part of the basis of his appeal.
...some noticable fraction of your customers continue to buy the book in dead-tree format. I suspect they are likely to continue doing so for some time to come. Resolution is better on dead tree than most CRTs or LCDs, not to mention that dead tree has better portability if you only want to leaf through one book at a time... and the book isn't the OED.
I'm not a hard core libertarian, so my opinion doesn't count. However, I am not comfortable with allowing misleading ads for products of questionable authenticity being sent out under irrelevant subject lines with false claims as to the identity of the sender.
Perhaps among other changes, the law should be modified so that when it can be shown that SPAM was sent to someone by a third party using my e-mail address, I would then be allowed to sue the sender in civil court for the damage to my reputation... with a sizable statutory minimum per recipient.
This is true for XP.
This is *especially* true for Linux.
Yes, it's amazing what you can get Linux to run on if you remove all the eye candy. However, most people these days get upset when you call the GUI "eye candy".
But consider this: It is a big loss for "states rights", because it says that states have no right to control interstate commerce that passes through their borders.
Wrong. The ruling still allows states to prohibit direct to consumer wine sales (or direct sales of alcohol above FOO proof, or even go outright dry); the catch is, if they do so, it has to apply equally to both in-state and out-of-state wineries. The NY Law, for example, banned direct ship sales from out-of-state wineries, but allowed direct ship sales from NY wineries.
It's only a loss for state's rights in that they can't apply protectionist legislation to prop up domestic vinyards (or breweries). However that "right" was already supposed to have been lost around 1789, when the constitution (and the commerce clause) was ratified in the first place.
Slashdot Mirror
That's not their first duty, however:
Specifically: If the laws have changed, changing them back is not conservative, it is reactionary.
Funny, maybe; but what... entity... modded this insightful?
Assuming he doesn't outright completely suspend elections or the constitution (which even a Republican Congress and a packed Supreme Court would go apeshit over), he'd need to have the 22nd Amendment repealed. This would require another amendment, much like the 21st repealed prohibition. This would require ratification of three quarters of the states-- 38, assuming no new states are admitted, and no current states split.
In the2004 presidential election, Bush carried only 32 states. Given that he has not massively increased his popularity since (especially given current sentiments on term limits), I'd consider the 61st Amendment far more likely.
There's also the question of whether such an amendment could realistically happen in time for Bush to run in 2008. A state-called convention seems unlikely. While some amendments have passed really quickly, others took longer. Given that it would be relatively controversial, it seems not unreasonable to believe it would take a year after getting out of congress. Furthermore, given the shennanigans that the Republican Senate lacked the votes to obtain cloture against a filibuster, it seems unlikely they would have be able to pass such an amendment.
There's a problem with step 5: you presume that the Emperor won't disolve the Senate. You could end up left a hapless trooper working on the Death Star, desperately trying to find a bathroom after the rebels have stolen the deck plans.
Unless you're a character in a porn story, if she's willing to let you stimulate her nipples, she already trusts you.
I work with several engineering researchers in the field, as well as an ethicist whose research into the ultimate potentials (and pitfalls thereof) required a broad survey of both Scientific and SF nanotech literature-- I had read most of the SF. I routinely discuss both the possibilities and practicallities with them over lunch. Given sufficient technological advancement, most of the developments you suggest do not violate the laws of physics. But we won't get to that level before facing the Hubbert Peak. Your post-human state may not be achievable given the present cultural, resource, and technological state. Unfortunately for you, there are many intermediate steps along the way. You can't develop new technology if you don't have a production surplus beyond basic life support.
I believe your optimism overlooks basic principles such as the the time value of resources, the law of scarcity, the resource demands of initial nanofabrication, the difficulties in human intelligence augmentation, a realistic projection of near-term energy supply and demand (and the economics thereof), basic orbital mechanics, the (im)practicality of nucleonic transmutation and the difficulties of isotope separation methods, the effects of radiation on nanomaterials and especially computer circuits, some annoying aspects of exponential growth curves, and the second law of thermodynamics.
However, I wish you luck. Particularly with the intelligence augmentation.
Ah, but we were originally stipulating his claim might be that he ran a fundraising group without proper supervision. Continuing the error after it has been pointed out would indeed be evil in my book, too. Now, I'm not familiar with the details of the case, but if he didn't at least make heads roll for this when the problems were pointed out, then not only is he evil, but even Machiavelli would give him the boot for stupidity.
I'd disagree. The latter is merely criminal stupidity, and evidence of unfitness for public office.
Mind you, most of the other charges seem to qualify as evil. But let's be precise while whipping up our lynch mobs, shall we? =)
The phrase "Re-money-cans" seems clearly Flamebait to me. (No, I'm not Repubican-- I usually vote Libertarian.) Additionally, while the basic points may be sound, your hyperbole is excessive.
Slashdot seems to be closer to some Libertarian flavors than any of the Democrat varieties. The anti-Bush and anti-Fox I will grant you. (I personally object more to the phonetic than the political tone of FOX-N, myself; they're too loud.) I'd also say the overall Slashdot bias is more theocratiphobic, with a mix of opposition to big business (although in favor of small to mid-sized) and fiscal conservatism added for flavor. There is nowhere near enough Union support and way too much fondness for Big Frigging Guns among Slashdot readers to fully suck up to the Democrats.
Wait until you see how quickly this gets modded as "troll" or "flamebait" because I spoke the truth, thus proving my point!
It's about six hours later. 60% interesting, 20% Troll, 20% Insightful. I'd say it looks like your persecution complex, while not completely unfounded, is an overreaction... like many accusations of liberal media bias.
Incomplete, and thus inaccurate. Nanotechnology is likely to make petrochemical synthesis from alternative raw materials possible, and alternate materials may partially replace plastics. (Pla However, the key difficulty in replacing oil is that it is a pre-existing compact form chemical energy storage. Nanotechnology might concievably produce a replacement energy storage technology-- although the high energy profit ratio and reasonable energy density of gasoline make this somewhat questionable. However, if you are using nanotechnology to synthesize a form of energy storage, you still need the energy as an input in one form or another. Nanotechnology is primarily materials science; it does not provide new energy sources.
A space elevator is highly unlikely to be developed before it is rendered unnecessary by other nanotech-based technology.
Um? A space elevator allows for access to space via a Conservative system. Unless losses to entropy are far higher than projections for fullerene conductors indicate, there is NO more long-term economical way for bulk materials space transport; the costs are prinicpally capital set-up costs, of which the bulk are projected for the initial semi-orbital space deployment... of just the sort that a beanstalk can ameliorate.
Furthermore, large scale space solar is the ONLY kind of energy source capable of sustaining humanity to a Singularity scenario, barring a suprise in a GUT breakthough well beyond what is expected at this point from string theory models. Nanotech is primarily an improvement in materials science, not physics. It has the potential to improve energy storage and transportation, but very limited possibilites for improving energy production.
Besides which, I said Transhumans will go off-planet - not every monkey-ass primate who can wipe his nose. If the latter die by the billions, it's NOT a disaster.
Unfortunately, until said Transhumans are living in a self-contained biosphere, they are probably reliant for production of their food supply on said monkey-ass primates. Even then, the transhumans will need a self-sustaining technological infrastructure. Haven't you read Marooned in Realtime? Merely because something is stupid does not mean it is safe to remove from your local economy nor ecology. Additionally, diminished biodiversity within a species-- even (trans)humans-- is generally a bad thing; too much risk of single point of failure from epidemics and the like.
Well, there's Hubbert's 1956 theory that foolishly predicted a peak in US domestic petroleum production would happen in the mid 1970's, and global production would peak between 2000 and 2015. Er, hang on....
Well, we had predictions of all-out Doomsday fifty years ago, too. Where is that? If you read the crap put out by environmentalists like Erhlich back in the '70's, we should all be starving today
While any number of the environmental doomsday prophets were nothing more than fuzzy minded Chicken Littles with nothing but unreasoned luddite prejudice behind their diatribes, some of them were backed by sound engineering, mathematics, and hard science. The most scientifically rigorous of those works was the original "Dynamics of Growth in a Finite World". The good news is that Global System behavior thus far is consistent with a scenario between the median and conservative predictive runs, with the worst pessimistic scenarios ruled out. The bad news is that it is consistent with the conservative to median simulation runs... and those mostly end in disaster anyway.
Disaster is still not unavertable; but it is very likely. (Even if it is, it won't be total; an easrly 1800's level of technology should be sustainable even post-collapse... once the population settles.) From where I sit, it looks like the race between disaster and trancendence will be decided by whether the global Hubbert peak beats out deployment of a space elevator. With a space elevator, economical access to space-based resources postpones collapse for on the order or a century; without, a shortage of accessible energy will induce a traditional horsemen collapse.
Scientists don't even have an accurate count of how many species there ARE on this planet - they could be off by factors of ten or more.
Counting "Fans" really isn't quite fair, as it's reached the end of its long and excellent run. Similarly, I wouldn't count "Calvin and Hobbes" to the credit of the UComics syndicate, because while excellent, it's reruns.
Or are you a Chicago Democrat? =)
No, that's about right. Standard commercial PWR/BWR reactors use 3-5% enrichment; CANDU heavy water reactors can use lower enrichment. Research (and military?) reactors tend to use higher enrichments-- 20-90%. However, the NRC has been strongly encouraging universities to recalculate the load geometries to rely on fuel at the lower end of that range to limit the amount of highly enriched uranium in non-military facilities. The school I studied Nuclear Engineering at downgraded from 95% enriched to 19.9% enriched in 1992 or so.
-The gun and implosion types of bombs aren't tied to the fissile type. You could use either type with either plutonium or uranium.
Actually, I recall that because of the neutron energy profile from fission, Pu-gun type bombs do not work well-- you tend to get only partial fission before it blows apart.
I guess the slashdot editor thought it was a slow news day or something....
Not to mention, how many seeds still are scattered that might yet someday germinate?
The problem with this line of arguement is that this is not the only use for such tools. I have the GPG version of PGP on my home and work systems. At home, I use it for encrypting backup copies of my financial records, tax forms, old love letters (yes, the girls were of legal age, they're just embarrasing), and various files associated with my participation in local politics. At work, since I know there is at least some legally protected data on the machine, I have departmental computers backup local desktops to internal hard drives, and then encrypt the backup files whem putting them on the server.
Kind of like pointing out the defendant owned a shredder, there was huge pile of shredded paper by it, and the "smoking gun" documents are no where to be found.
Agreed... but it does not appear that the "huge pile of shredded paper" is present. Normal use of GPG or PGP to erase files leaves portions of the drive with data sectors showing either VERY high entropy, OR purely "zeroed". No mention of such evidence is in the news reports or ruling.
Last, it doesn't exactly sound like PGP was a "factor in his punishment". Rather, it sounds like it was a factor in his conviction. If the court had ruled that the evidence was inadmissible, then a new trial might have been ordered. This would require a finding that the irrelevant evidence was prejudicial enough that it could have formed a basis for the conviction. If the error was not considered substantial, then no new trial would have been ordered.
However, if the error was not considered substantial, the appeals court ruling would have said so; and if they had so ruled, or had ruled for it being inadmissable, there would be much less to this story. Instead, the ruling states "the presence of an encryption program on his computer was relevant to the state's case".
It's bothersome that the idiot testifying didn't know diddly about computers. Macs do NOT come with PGP or GPG installed by default. The FileVault system on OS X.3+ is based on AES-128, an algorithm whose main (sole?) similarity is that it cannot be decrypted by anyone short of the NSA. For that matter, Windows 2K and XP with EFS, based DESX... which probably can't be broken by anyone not willing to buy over ten megabucks of hardware for such jobs.
I also find it worrisome that it was admitted to evidence that he looked up on the web the definition of the crime he was accused of, as that would seem to weaken the right to counsel. Fortunately, that was not part of the basis of his appeal.
Because the chips are cut from a round flat disk of doped silicon, NowSitDownKidAndPleaseShutUp. Next question....
That's inconceivable!
Perhaps among other changes, the law should be modified so that when it can be shown that SPAM was sent to someone by a third party using my e-mail address, I would then be allowed to sue the sender in civil court for the damage to my reputation... with a sizable statutory minimum per recipient.
This is true for XP.
This is *especially* true for Linux.
Yes, it's amazing what you can get Linux to run on if you remove all the eye candy. However, most people these days get upset when you call the GUI "eye candy".
Wrong. The ruling still allows states to prohibit direct to consumer wine sales (or direct sales of alcohol above FOO proof, or even go outright dry); the catch is, if they do so, it has to apply equally to both in-state and out-of-state wineries. The NY Law, for example, banned direct ship sales from out-of-state wineries, but allowed direct ship sales from NY wineries.
It's only a loss for state's rights in that they can't apply protectionist legislation to prop up domestic vinyards (or breweries). However that "right" was already supposed to have been lost around 1789, when the constitution (and the commerce clause) was ratified in the first place.