Information about ways to find child porn on the Internet is apparently among one of the heresies of our time, even though it is legal and true. Just like the article describes, people become upset when they see it and try to censor it, while labeling it with some really dirty words I don't want to utter here.
See this Slashdot post for an example of a text which was banned outright from Everything2 (even though one of the gods, a laywer himself, was against the ban and argued it is entirely legal), then it was deleted from Wikipedia in violation of Wikipedia internal content deletion rules (no warning, no waiting period). It was later restored on Wikipedia, only to be bastardised by a joint committee of prudes. It was also rejected by a site selling "Banned CDs" with information about making explosives, drugs, detecting federal agents, etc., etc.
P.S. I fully understand that I go against the recommendations in the article to keep silence. But just like Winston Smith, I believe you are not really free, unless you can say that "2+2=5" and then act on this. P.P.S. Feel free to downmod and thus prove my point.
Good point. And for us old people the worst things are actually the minor irritants. May be because the machine still works and you can't find the will to spend hours to fix it. Just two examples that drive me nuts:
1) My 160Gb Samsung HDD died and I sent it for replacement. The system was on another 120Gb drive and there is also one more 160Gb. The dead drive was Primary Slave, the system is on Primary Master. But for some reason the system (Win2k) doesn't boot. I didn't want to fiddle too much with the system, so I just made a boot disk and edited the config files to point it to the correct partition. The problem is that the first boot attempt after power-on just doesn't work. I am told that because of hardware problems blah-blah-blah Windows can't boot. Ctrl-Alt-Del and this time it boots correctly. Insane. 2) The battery in my cordless Logitech mouse died and I replaced it with the old mouse (which actually works better). I changed the mouse sensitivity (pointer speed) for this new mouse to the comfortable settings (same as for the old mouse - max speed and not acceleration). But for some reason the sensitivity just drops sometimes to about half of what I want. Changin the focus (clicking on desktop or another app) sometimes helps. Switching back sometimes lowers the sensitivity back. Restarting the app where this happened always helps. This happens in different applications including console windows and explorer windows. Insane.
This is the reason why I hated Sun Solaris stations and many Linux machines that I had to use - things would always work in stupid ways (not stupid because I am used to different ways, stupid like in two examples above).
UMBERTO: Tommy!! Tommy, I love you, I love you! Let's go!
TOMMY: Go where? Can't I get a cup of coffee first? UMBERTO: No time for coffee! Besides, I just had one. UMBERTO: We gonna take out the Haitians. http://db.gamefaqs.com/console/ps2/file /grand_thef t_auto_vice_city_script.txt
That's the worst part about Haitians. Nowhere in the game is the phrase "Kill the Haitians!" uttered, if my memory (and this online script) serves me correctly.
Disclaimer: I just hate misinformation. I want to personally kill all the Haitians (and all their WASP laywers) responsible for the lawsuit. I want to kill all journalists responsible for all disinformation regarding the case. And, for the record, it's not the GTA games that made me so voilent. And, actually, I am not violent at all. This is speech I am engaging in, not actual violence.
we don't need laws to keep a sexual predator sim off the store shelves - we leave that up to distributors and consumers. if businesses don't want it on the shelf, and consumers don't want to buy it - it quickly disappears
More like: if some people don't want it on the shelf enough to make a lot of noise, business will stop selling it or start censoring it, even though there is still legitimate demand from others. Independent stores trying to sell the stuff will be harassed by the "community" (its loudest representatives) and driven away by the monopoly practices of large retailers.
Actually, if you read the Canadian law, you will find out that any discussion of any matters related to sex with/between minors may be considered kiddie porn.
Fortunately, here in Russia laws are a little bit on the sane side - only actual child molestation/exploitation are crimes, not posessing the child porn (or kiddie porn art).
And to make the post ontopic, here a 8-year old kid (probably younger kids can do it as well, as long as they are old enough to find their way to the CD-store) can buy GTA3/Vice City alone or with his mom and noone thinks this is somehow inappropriate. Kids also can buy groceries in a supermarket and noone is going to start asking them where are their parents (just saw a bit of Home Alone on TV).
Even if that retard played GTA3, it likely has happened after he got his preconceived notions about it being evil. Since human brains (or rather brains of retarded journalists) evolved to filter incoming information to support the ideas a person already has, it's very likely this moron would see the game as an irrefutable proof that he was right all along.
Given all the negative public sentiment (or should I say, the sentiment of a few loud retards), I might even consider buying a licensed copy of the next GTA game... If they don't tone down the violence, of course. An added bonus would be a mission to teach a journalist, who writes crappy stories, a lesson.
I don't want to sound harsh or impolite, but may be you should find more things to talk about with your girlfriend. I mean, night plans are just overhead and current events are just filler. If you want a rich and interesting relationship there should be other things between you, like talking about life, future plans, philosophy, books you read, movies you saw, projects you work together on, etc., etc. And these topics can't be exausted through an IM-chat.
P.S. Obviously I don't know the details of your relationships, so the above may not apply to you at all. Don't take offence. P.P.S. I am aware that having a rich and fulfilling relationship is not easy. Again, don't be offended.
Because some folks prefer a rough-hackjob-system they designed, built and know how to use to a off-the-shelf solution that has certain limitations and is more expensive. They have the system built around their own thought patterns and it fits them much better.
But. Other people (the majority of them, I must add) prefer a ready-made product that does includes most options any user might need, even though the majority of the functions will not be needed by any one user.
A knowledgeable person can do most real-life file management tasks with DOS shell and MS Word replace function.:))) Still, that doesn't mean more advanced file-management tools and even operating systems are not needed.
Spammers may infect PCs and intercept the ordinary outgoing e-mails (ingoing is also good, except it may itself be spam). They then can use them to send out spam. Examples:
1)
Spammers may infect PCs and intercept the ordinary outgoing e-mails. They then can use them to send out spam. Examples:
BTW, I am typing this on a new Dell computer, check the photo here.
2)
Jenny told me you have a small penis. Wanna increase it?
> Spammers may infect PCs and intercept the ordinary outgoing > e-mails. They then can use them to send out spam. Examples:
3)
Spammers may infect PCs and intercept the ordinary outgoing e-mails. BTW, you can make a lot of money very fast online. They then can use them to send out spam. Examples:
Positively weighted keywords might overweight negative. This will be especially useful when sending mail to people from local addressbook, but might work in other cases as well.
If I pay a marketing firm 1000$ for a promotion campaign, can you hold me responsible when the marketing firm spams a million people? You can't. What if there were 10 layers between me and the spammer? This is the situation with sellers of financial services.
The connection can be more direct in case of Viagra, penis/breast pills and fake degrees, but it's still extremely difficult to get them. They can claim the spammer promised the list is opt-in. They can even tell the truth - the spammer could promise them just that.
So regardless of how difficult is to fight spammers, fighting those who buy spamming services is even more difficult. Of course, the third option is to fight those who buy spammed goods, i.e. suckers, but that is yet more difficult, as their population is well known to replenish at an alarming rate.
Well, every person is capable of committing murder (or manslaughter, or some other form of killing a fellow human), except for a few paraplegics among us. That's why death sentence doesn't stop killing - since the conditions that cause killing persist, the killing will go on.
Spamming is different. Normal people do not spam, only corrupted spawns of the devil do. Only a genetic mutant with a heavily damaged brain can become a spammer. So once we clean our gene-pool, spamming will cease. Ergo death penalty for spam can work.
P.S. I do not speak here about SME owners making a honest mistake with direct marketing that went too far - these are responsible for a very small fraction of total spam and usually understand the errors of their ways after the first talk with the abuse department of their ISP.
You're right - it was incorrect to call it a "fixed scalar number". But what I meant was that the speed of light depends on our accuracy in measuring it. Since early 20th century we knew that it is constant, but could not know exactly how big it is. We were also unlikely to know it to the billionth number after the decimal point (which we can with Pi). What scientists did (and it was merely a convention, as fermion argued) was to agree that c by definition equals 299 792 458 m / s. M/s being the fundamental unit, through which metre is now defined.
We could be still defining metre and second and measuring speed of light, but as I wrote, scientists decided that it makes sense to define c instead (because speed of light is supposed to be constant) and measure the metre. Yes, it makes sense, but it's just a recent development and could have well be done the other way. That's why we called it a convention.
Quibbling is what you did, not me. Go back and reread fermion's post. If we have 3 constants - metre, second and c, we can fix one, two or none of them and deduce the rest. Scientists decided to define metre and second in terms of physical processes/properties of objects and measure them. Since c is constant in special relativity, it has a fixed value for every set of values of metre and second. If we decided to make meter and c measurable, then 1 second could be defined as 299 792 458 m / c and it would be a universal constant. C being a constant (i.e. a fixed scalar number) is indeed merely a convention, as opposed to Pi being a constant.
Actually, to think of it, the meter was defined independently from c till 1983 as the length of 1,650,763.73 wavelengths in vacuum of the orange-red emission line in the spectrum of krypton-86. The second was defined as the duration of 9,192,631,770 periods of the radiation corresponding to the transition between the two hyperfine levels of the ground state of the cesium 133 atom. So speed of light in m/s would be variable and would depend on the precision of our measurements. Only after 1983 the old meter definition was dropped in favour of the length of path traveled by light in vacuum during a time interval of 1/299,792,458 of a second.
looks like disorganised, wasteful anarchy to communists, pisses both off in equal measure. Don't diss communists like that.:) They actually did realise that there is time and place for everything - for organised planned economy (while you are building the production capacity) and for anarchistic fun (after you made nature capable of producing everything people need). As the Chinese said, "One year of persistent labour - one century of unclouded happiness".:)
Install Proxomitron and set it to filter out all tag pairs containing the term you don't like, like <A HREF="...">Britney Spears</A> Be sure to use a RegExp to catch all misppelings as well.
there is a large percentage of the population that I have no desire to see naked.
I don't like seeing disabled people with serious deformities. I don't like seeing dribbling cretins and idiots. I don't like seeing gays and transvestits. I don't like seeing blacks and christians. I want a law to prohibit all these people from walking in public places during the day. And while we are at it, how about a law banning Jews from sidewalks?
On a more serious note, while I might find you and your beliefs disgusting, I would fight for your rights blah-blah-blah. And I believe that the chance to see every once in a while a beautiful girl fully naked in public would more than compensate for watching the ugliest members of our species.:)
A very good point, but I will play devil's advocate. You see, English is simply the best language from the international traveller's point of view. I am Russian, I speak fluent English and I consider that to be enough in most countries. I studies French for two years, but to know avail, it just didn't excite me too much and I abandoned it. Can understand many words and say a few sentences, but wouldn't really try that in Paris. I spent two months learning Finnish, but didn't have much luck either. Polkupyora, perkele, huvyaa ruokasala and a few dozens other words. On my Japanese trip I learned a few words, but they too were quickly forgotten on return flight.
The end result is that it's easier to rely on English. I know that in almost any country I can find someone speaking some English and communicate with them. Most people should speak English anyway, at least most of those worth speaking to. So I can understand perfectly well why some Australians, Britons and Americans don't want to learn another language. It might look like cultural arrogance, but it isn't necessarily it. May be they are just being rational.
The fact that speed of light is 299 792 458 m / sIS merely a convention. We could have just agreed that it is 367 823 m / s if we had different standards for meter and second.
Still, the reason for using c as a ratio between distance and time is that c is apparently constant. But fermion did not claim it do be otherwise - would be strange to not know the truth with a name like that.
Quoting from recent research for the National Renewable Energy Laboratory and the California Energy Commission, they estimate that over the past 20 years, 22,000 birds have died in the Altamont windmills. I haven't checked the original research, but I am very well aware of how much you can stretch the findings to fit your agenda. It is entirely possible that the research talked only about 200 raptors killed by the turbines and these environmentalists extrapolated the numbers to mean 22000 birds in total. I am not saying they did it, just that it might be possible and until we see hard data we should take any such "estimates" with a grain of salt. We already know how creative interpretation can create a story out of nothing. Witness, for instance, the old story of 3 million kids in America involved in prostitution and slave trade - a story manufactured from absolutely zero hard evidence, but powerful enough to scare a nation for decades. Back to the topic - wind power might have certain disadvantages, but the environmentalists surely sound like overstating the seriousness of the problem. Kudos to the journalist for putting things into perspective by covering opposing opinion as well:
Researched by Wyoming-based Western EcoSystems Technology, the report contends that many more birds are killed annually in collisions with vehicles (60 million), window panes (98 million) and communication towers (4 million) than die nationwide in wind turbines (10,000 to 40,000).
While doing GM to control the population of a species is risky, you must consider the benefits and the alternatives. The present situation is clearly bad. Doing nothing is not an option. Yes, GM involves risks, but they are not 100% risks. And if something bad happens, we can fix this later.
It's like going to a hospital for a treatment. Yes, it usually involves some risk, but you still do it, because you've got to do SOMETHING and because doctors are reasonably sure that they will be able to neutralise most side effects. Yes, you might die, but considering all pro and contra, going to a hospital is a good thing. Same with GM methods here (I assume that the ecologists have done all necessary studies and this is really an informed decision).
First, noone can say fast forward is the only natural method for skipping. This is just an artefact of analog playback devices, like VCR. When I play music in Winamp (currently on Flashback radio station from GTA3) or a movie in Sasami2k (or any other player), I don't use fast forward, because it is not available in most computer programs. What I do is forward 5 seconds, or 30 seconds, or 1 minute (or back).
It's only natural that on a digital PVR that stores the program on a HDD we would have fast forward replaced with forward 30 seconds (or 5 sec, or 1 min, or 1 frame). If I ever get a PVR, such function would have extremely substantial non-infriging use for me, because that would be what I would use to move around the recording.
Second, there are already examples where people were allowed to edit copyrighted works without explicit permission. One example is censoring movies for certain markets by cutting questionable scenes (shameless plug: check out LOTR: Two Towers: Purist Edit). Even though a derivative work is created, the courts ruled that it was allowed. Same argument can be made here.
Still, I can see why this is an issue. I just hope that PVR win and broadcasters lose because there are already too much commercials and advertisement is evil anyway.
And they actually do recognize the fact they are not infallible.
No single truth purveyor, no matter how reliable, should be considered an infallible font of accurate information. Folks make mistakes. Or they get duped. Or they have a bad day at the fact-checking bureau. Or some days they're just being silly. To not allow for any of this is to risk stepping into a pothole the size of Lake Superior.
Slashdot Mirror
Information about ways to find child porn on the Internet is apparently among one of the heresies of our time, even though it is legal and true. Just like the article describes, people become upset when they see it and try to censor it, while labeling it with some really dirty words I don't want to utter here.
See this Slashdot post for an example of a text which was banned outright from Everything2 (even though one of the gods, a laywer himself, was against the ban and argued it is entirely legal), then it was deleted from Wikipedia in violation of Wikipedia internal content deletion rules (no warning, no waiting period). It was later restored on Wikipedia, only to be bastardised by a joint committee of prudes. It was also rejected by a site selling "Banned CDs" with information about making explosives, drugs, detecting federal agents, etc., etc.
P.S. I fully understand that I go against the recommendations in the article to keep silence. But just like Winston Smith, I believe you are not really free, unless you can say that "2+2=5" and then act on this.
P.P.S. Feel free to downmod and thus prove my point.
Good point. And for us old people the worst things are actually the minor irritants. May be because the machine still works and you can't find the will to spend hours to fix it. Just two examples that drive me nuts:
1) My 160Gb Samsung HDD died and I sent it for replacement. The system was on another 120Gb drive and there is also one more 160Gb. The dead drive was Primary Slave, the system is on Primary Master. But for some reason the system (Win2k) doesn't boot. I didn't want to fiddle too much with the system, so I just made a boot disk and edited the config files to point it to the correct partition. The problem is that the first boot attempt after power-on just doesn't work. I am told that because of hardware problems blah-blah-blah Windows can't boot. Ctrl-Alt-Del and this time it boots correctly. Insane.
2) The battery in my cordless Logitech mouse died and I replaced it with the old mouse (which actually works better). I changed the mouse sensitivity (pointer speed) for this new mouse to the comfortable settings (same as for the old mouse - max speed and not acceleration). But for some reason the sensitivity just drops sometimes to about half of what I want. Changin the focus (clicking on desktop or another app) sometimes helps. Switching back sometimes lowers the sensitivity back. Restarting the app where this happened always helps. This happens in different applications including console windows and explorer windows. Insane.
This is the reason why I hated Sun Solaris stations and many Linux machines that I had to use - things would always work in stupid ways (not stupid because I am used to different ways, stupid like in two examples above).
My next computer just might be a Mac.
From GTA3: Vice City
e /grand_thef t_auto_vice_city_script.txt
UMBERTO: Tommy!! Tommy, I love you, I love you! Let's go!
TOMMY: Go where? Can't I get a cup of coffee first?
UMBERTO: No time for coffee! Besides, I just had one.
UMBERTO: We gonna take out the Haitians.
http://db.gamefaqs.com/console/ps2/fil
That's the worst part about Haitians. Nowhere in the game is the phrase "Kill the Haitians!" uttered, if my memory (and this online script) serves me correctly.
Disclaimer: I just hate misinformation. I want to personally kill all the Haitians (and all their WASP laywers) responsible for the lawsuit. I want to kill all journalists responsible for all disinformation regarding the case. And, for the record, it's not the GTA games that made me so voilent. And, actually, I am not violent at all. This is speech I am engaging in, not actual violence.
we don't need laws to keep a sexual predator sim off the store shelves - we leave that up to distributors and consumers. if businesses don't want it on the shelf, and consumers don't want to buy it - it quickly disappears
More like: if some people don't want it on the shelf enough to make a lot of noise, business will stop selling it or start censoring it, even though there is still legitimate demand from others. Independent stores trying to sell the stuff will be harassed by the "community" (its loudest representatives) and driven away by the monopoly practices of large retailers.
Actually, if you read the Canadian law, you will find out that any discussion of any matters related to sex with/between minors may be considered kiddie porn.
Fortunately, here in Russia laws are a little bit on the sane side - only actual child molestation/exploitation are crimes, not posessing the child porn (or kiddie porn art).
And to make the post ontopic, here a 8-year old kid (probably younger kids can do it as well, as long as they are old enough to find their way to the CD-store) can buy GTA3/Vice City alone or with his mom and noone thinks this is somehow inappropriate. Kids also can buy groceries in a supermarket and noone is going to start asking them where are their parents (just saw a bit of Home Alone on TV).
Even if that retard played GTA3, it likely has happened after he got his preconceived notions about it being evil. Since human brains (or rather brains of retarded journalists) evolved to filter incoming information to support the ideas a person already has, it's very likely this moron would see the game as an irrefutable proof that he was right all along.
Because in this particular case we are not against the advertisers, we are against the publications like NYP.
Given all the negative public sentiment (or should I say, the sentiment of a few loud retards), I might even consider buying a licensed copy of the next GTA game... If they don't tone down the violence, of course. An added bonus would be a mission to teach a journalist, who writes crappy stories, a lesson.
I don't want to sound harsh or impolite, but may be you should find more things to talk about with your girlfriend. I mean, night plans are just overhead and current events are just filler. If you want a rich and interesting relationship there should be other things between you, like talking about life, future plans, philosophy, books you read, movies you saw, projects you work together on, etc., etc. And these topics can't be exausted through an IM-chat.
P.S. Obviously I don't know the details of your relationships, so the above may not apply to you at all. Don't take offence.
P.P.S. I am aware that having a rich and fulfilling relationship is not easy. Again, don't be offended.
Because some folks prefer a rough-hackjob-system they designed, built and know how to use to a off-the-shelf solution that has certain limitations and is more expensive. They have the system built around their own thought patterns and it fits them much better.
:))) Still, that doesn't mean more advanced file-management tools and even operating systems are not needed.
But. Other people (the majority of them, I must add) prefer a ready-made product that does includes most options any user might need, even though the majority of the functions will not be needed by any one user.
A knowledgeable person can do most real-life file management tasks with DOS shell and MS Word replace function.
Spammers may infect PCs and intercept the ordinary outgoing e-mails (ingoing is also good, except it may itself be spam). They then can use them to send out spam. Examples:
1)
Spammers may infect PCs and intercept the ordinary outgoing e-mails. They then can use them to send out spam. Examples:
BTW, I am typing this on a new Dell computer, check the photo here.
2)
Jenny told me you have a small penis. Wanna increase it?
> Spammers may infect PCs and intercept the ordinary outgoing
> e-mails. They then can use them to send out spam. Examples:
3)
Spammers may infect PCs and intercept the ordinary outgoing e-mails. BTW, you can make a lot of money very fast online. They then can use them to send out spam. Examples:
Positively weighted keywords might overweight negative. This will be especially useful when sending mail to people from local addressbook, but might work in other cases as well.
If I pay a marketing firm 1000$ for a promotion campaign, can you hold me responsible when the marketing firm spams a million people? You can't. What if there were 10 layers between me and the spammer? This is the situation with sellers of financial services.
The connection can be more direct in case of Viagra, penis/breast pills and fake degrees, but it's still extremely difficult to get them. They can claim the spammer promised the list is opt-in. They can even tell the truth - the spammer could promise them just that.
So regardless of how difficult is to fight spammers, fighting those who buy spamming services is even more difficult. Of course, the third option is to fight those who buy spammed goods, i.e. suckers, but that is yet more difficult, as their population is well known to replenish at an alarming rate.
Well, every person is capable of committing murder (or manslaughter, or some other form of killing a fellow human), except for a few paraplegics among us. That's why death sentence doesn't stop killing - since the conditions that cause killing persist, the killing will go on.
Spamming is different. Normal people do not spam, only corrupted spawns of the devil do. Only a genetic mutant with a heavily damaged brain can become a spammer. So once we clean our gene-pool, spamming will cease. Ergo death penalty for spam can work.
P.S. I do not speak here about SME owners making a honest mistake with direct marketing that went too far - these are responsible for a very small fraction of total spam and usually understand the errors of their ways after the first talk with the abuse department of their ISP.
Disclaimer: I work for IBM, but I'm not an IBM spokesman. And my part of IBM still thinks Linux is a funny fringe OS.
That would be "disclosure", not "disclaimer".
You're right - it was incorrect to call it a "fixed scalar number". But what I meant was that the speed of light depends on our accuracy in measuring it. Since early 20th century we knew that it is constant, but could not know exactly how big it is. We were also unlikely to know it to the billionth number after the decimal point (which we can with Pi). What scientists did (and it was merely a convention, as fermion argued) was to agree that c by definition equals 299 792 458 m / s. M/s being the fundamental unit, through which metre is now defined.
We could be still defining metre and second and measuring speed of light, but as I wrote, scientists decided that it makes sense to define c instead (because speed of light is supposed to be constant) and measure the metre. Yes, it makes sense, but it's just a recent development and could have well be done the other way. That's why we called it a convention.
Quibbling is what you did, not me. Go back and reread fermion's post. If we have 3 constants - metre, second and c, we can fix one, two or none of them and deduce the rest. Scientists decided to define metre and second in terms of physical processes/properties of objects and measure them. Since c is constant in special relativity, it has a fixed value for every set of values of metre and second. If we decided to make meter and c measurable, then 1 second could be defined as 299 792 458 m / c and it would be a universal constant. C being a constant (i.e. a fixed scalar number) is indeed merely a convention, as opposed to Pi being a constant.
Actually, to think of it, the meter was defined independently from c till 1983 as the length of 1,650,763.73 wavelengths in vacuum of the orange-red emission line in the spectrum of krypton-86. The second was defined as the duration of 9,192,631,770 periods of the radiation corresponding to the transition between the two hyperfine levels of the ground state of the cesium 133 atom. So speed of light in m/s would be variable and would depend on the precision of our measurements. Only after 1983 the old meter definition was dropped in favour of the length of path traveled by light in vacuum during a time interval of 1/299,792,458 of a second.
looks like disorganised, wasteful anarchy to communists, pisses both off in equal measure. :) They actually did realise that there is time and place for everything - for organised planned economy (while you are building the production capacity) and for anarchistic fun (after you made nature capable of producing everything people need). As the Chinese said, "One year of persistent labour - one century of unclouded happiness". :)
Don't diss communists like that.
Install Proxomitron and set it to filter out all tag pairs containing the term you don't like, like <A HREF="...">Britney Spears</A> Be sure to use a RegExp to catch all misppelings as well.
there is a large percentage of the population that I have no desire to see naked.
:)
I don't like seeing disabled people with serious deformities. I don't like seeing dribbling cretins and idiots. I don't like seeing gays and transvestits. I don't like seeing blacks and christians. I want a law to prohibit all these people from walking in public places during the day. And while we are at it, how about a law banning Jews from sidewalks?
On a more serious note, while I might find you and your beliefs disgusting, I would fight for your rights blah-blah-blah. And I believe that the chance to see every once in a while a beautiful girl fully naked in public would more than compensate for watching the ugliest members of our species.
A very good point, but I will play devil's advocate. You see, English is simply the best language from the international traveller's point of view. I am Russian, I speak fluent English and I consider that to be enough in most countries. I studies French for two years, but to know avail, it just didn't excite me too much and I abandoned it. Can understand many words and say a few sentences, but wouldn't really try that in Paris. I spent two months learning Finnish, but didn't have much luck either. Polkupyora, perkele, huvyaa ruokasala and a few dozens other words. On my Japanese trip I learned a few words, but they too were quickly forgotten on return flight.
The end result is that it's easier to rely on English. I know that in almost any country I can find someone speaking some English and communicate with them. Most people should speak English anyway, at least most of those worth speaking to. So I can understand perfectly well why some Australians, Britons and Americans don't want to learn another language. It might look like cultural arrogance, but it isn't necessarily it. May be they are just being rational.
The fact that speed of light is 299 792 458 m / s IS merely a convention. We could have just agreed that it is 367 823 m / s if we had different standards for meter and second.
Still, the reason for using c as a ratio between distance and time is that c is apparently constant. But fermion did not claim it do be otherwise - would be strange to not know the truth with a name like that.
Quoting from recent research for the National Renewable Energy Laboratory and the California Energy Commission, they estimate that over the past 20 years, 22,000 birds have died in the Altamont windmills.
I haven't checked the original research, but I am very well aware of how much you can stretch the findings to fit your agenda. It is entirely possible that the research talked only about 200 raptors killed by the turbines and these environmentalists extrapolated the numbers to mean 22000 birds in total. I am not saying they did it, just that it might be possible and until we see hard data we should take any such "estimates" with a grain of salt. We already know how creative interpretation can create a story out of nothing. Witness, for instance, the old story of 3 million kids in America involved in prostitution and slave trade - a story manufactured from absolutely zero hard evidence, but powerful enough to scare a nation for decades. Back to the topic - wind power might have certain disadvantages, but the environmentalists surely sound like overstating the seriousness of the problem. Kudos to the journalist for putting things into perspective by covering opposing opinion as well:
Researched by Wyoming-based Western EcoSystems Technology, the report contends that many more birds are killed annually in collisions with vehicles (60 million), window panes (98 million) and communication towers (4 million) than die nationwide in wind turbines (10,000 to 40,000).
While doing GM to control the population of a species is risky, you must consider the benefits and the alternatives. The present situation is clearly bad. Doing nothing is not an option. Yes, GM involves risks, but they are not 100% risks. And if something bad happens, we can fix this later.
It's like going to a hospital for a treatment. Yes, it usually involves some risk, but you still do it, because you've got to do SOMETHING and because doctors are reasonably sure that they will be able to neutralise most side effects. Yes, you might die, but considering all pro and contra, going to a hospital is a good thing. Same with GM methods here (I assume that the ecologists have done all necessary studies and this is really an informed decision).
First, noone can say fast forward is the only natural method for skipping. This is just an artefact of analog playback devices, like VCR. When I play music in Winamp (currently on Flashback radio station from GTA3) or a movie in Sasami2k (or any other player), I don't use fast forward, because it is not available in most computer programs. What I do is forward 5 seconds, or 30 seconds, or 1 minute (or back).
It's only natural that on a digital PVR that stores the program on a HDD we would have fast forward replaced with forward 30 seconds (or 5 sec, or 1 min, or 1 frame). If I ever get a PVR, such function would have extremely substantial non-infriging use for me, because that would be what I would use to move around the recording.
Second, there are already examples where people were allowed to edit copyrighted works without explicit permission. One example is censoring movies for certain markets by cutting questionable scenes (shameless plug: check out LOTR: Two Towers: Purist Edit). Even though a derivative work is created, the courts ruled that it was allowed. Same argument can be made here.
Still, I can see why this is an issue. I just hope that PVR win and broadcasters lose because there are already too much commercials and advertisement is evil anyway.
And they actually do recognize the fact they are not infallible.
No single truth purveyor, no matter how reliable, should be considered an infallible font of accurate information. Folks make mistakes. Or they get duped. Or they have a bad day at the fact-checking bureau. Or some days they're just being silly. To not allow for any of this is to risk stepping into a pothole the size of Lake Superior.
http://www.snopes.com/lost/false.htm