In case anyone doesn't know, the parent is spoofing a song by Murray Head entitled One Night in Bangkok.
We knew, but the song is by Björn Ulvaeus and Benny Andersson (of ABBA fame) from their musical Chess which was a big hit in London's West End (and elsewhere). Murray Head sung "the American" in the studio recording.
"You can't extract that information, yet . But what happens when a better method for dna sequencing is devloped that can sequence the entire genome?"
That's not the point. The DNA sample as such can probably be used to extract the information, but the samples are (usually not, maybe California will do it differently than e.g. Sweden) not kept, just a "fingerprint" of the DNA, and THAT can't be used other than to match another DNA sample.
At least with fingerprints you KNOW all they can do is match them to other fingerprints.
That's what you think. However, physical fingerprints contain minute traces of your DNA...;)-
In Sweden, as in many other countries, votes are correctly counted within three or four hours of closing the poll stations. By hand. Recounted and verified within three days. Has never failed.
Amazing. How do they do it?
The trick is to have different ballots for competing parties: Pick the ballot that carries the name of the party you want to vote for, put it in the envelope. Also, if you have more than one election at the same time, have separate ballots for each (yellow, white and blue for national, regional and local elections as it happens).
Much more difficult to make a mistake than with half-punched holes in butterfly ballots like in Florida. (Oh, yeah, it probably helps that we have a national standard on what a ballot looks like, counties do not get to design their own)
(Since we have list elections, it is slightly more complicated than that, but to the first order, you can ignore the order on the list...)
I've seen the Zaurus boot before and it was nearly "instant on". It was certainly faster than my Nokia cell phone.
That's because your Zaurus doesn't have to deal with a SIM card. Authenticating towards the SIM, and reading a few files from it, plus trying to find a network does make phones slow to startup.
Instead of memorizing street names or distances, you could just say "I'll turn when I see this, I'll turn when I see that..." You could be completely illiterate and still navigate.
Hmm. In Managua they don't have street names. Instead the adressess are relative well-known land mark, such as "From where the store 'La Vicky' used to be, one block towards the lake, 25 meters towards the sunrise" and that's not just directions you give the cabbie. It is official enough that it is what is used in phone directories, what fill out in government forms etc.
low-light photography, slow shutter-speed photography (i.e., those cool pictures of a city at night with all the streaky red lights from the vehicles)
The #1 digital advantage is of course instant gratification, but #2 is that you can crank up the amplification of the sensor to emulate faster film. Picture by picture.
With film, you have to change films to do that, or carry around extra bodies. Most people don't shoot enough pictures for that to really be an option, and if you do, you spend a lot of time changing films! (And it was a long time since I saw an ISO3200 colour film in the local convenience store...)
Also color fidelity
Being able to change colour spaces on the fly (or even afterwards) is a similar advantage that does away with a lot of filter changing.
and saturation
This I agree with. The dynamic range of digitals is still a lot worse than colour negative film (although comparable to slide film).
Does this guy know how much energy that goes into mining the Uranium?
There are quite some environmental problem with uranium mining, but it is not the only thing that you can burn in a nuclear reactor.
Some years ago, Nobel laureate Carlo Rubbia suggested a subcritical reactor that was kept running by a proton beam (a spallator) that could be fueled by e.g. thorium. Thorium is quite common in the crust of the Earth, it is reasonably safe to mine and you can't make a bomb with it. This, and the fact that, being subcritical, it could not have a meltdown and would not require extensive security measures meant that it could be put in the hands of politically unstable low resource countries without risking either nuclear arms proliferation or an enviromental catastrophy.
And that is important. Even if the west would start to conserve huge amounts of energy, the threat that awaits us is the industrialization of the third world.
Anyway, this was some 10-15 years ago and it doesn't seem that the technology got very far. I don't know whether this is mainly for political reasons or that it proved more difficult than expected to realize.
The simplest reason A4 won't take off in the US is that A4 doesn't fit in our file cabinets! We'd have to get rid of our file cabinets and folders and get new ones. Any A4 papers I have get all messed up in my filing cabinet as they don't fit!
Technology lock in is not as strong argument as you would think. All of Europe have switched from various local standards to the A4 et al. and that is quite recent. Hell! If Sweden could change from left hand side driving to right hand side driving it can't be difficult to change paper sizes!
Why doesn't Europe get ONE FREAKING TYPE OF ELECTRICAL PLUG!
We do. The europlug. Works everywhere (except Britain...). It is even designed to be a bit flexible to fit in French sockets!
No, definitely not insightful. Your line of reasoning is not to far off for religions that are unversalistic in nature -- i.e. that by definition are for all people (as seen from inside that religion). Christianity and islam are in this category. For a christian (moslem) it is a good thing if all people would accept christianity (islam).
This leads to all kind of pitying for and/or missioning among people who don't share those beliefs.
However, there are religions that do not have the aspiration to be for all people and that do not have opinions on whether rejecting *their* beliefs makes *you* go to hell or not.
Now, today things are changing so that some christians do accept that there might be other ways to salvation that do not go through Christ or the christian belief system, but that is a relatively new and not universal (sic!) phenomenom.
Anyone else notice that in every picture the streets are empty? Not a single person outside other than the protestors. Nobody even knew they were protesting...
No, they were hungover. Walpurgis Night (April 30) is an age old drinking fest in Sweden.
Re:why May 1 as the 'traditional' day of protest?
on
Swedish Pirate Demo
·
· Score: 1
Of course, the significance of May 1st, itself, with Maypoles, pagans, and whatnot is much, much earlier than all this.
Actually no. Maypoles are later than this. Maypoles belong on Midsummer's eve.
They [Sweden] are far more socialist than the US. This means that they pay a LOT more taxes. Like around 65% income tax in the top brackets, not to mention other taxes.
No, we are not more socialist than the US. Sweden is a lot less regulated than you might think. And the US is a lot more regulated than you might think. Think California. Think electric power. That's socialism for you!
And the income tax is not around 65% in the top bracket, it is more 55-60, but then most of your income is usually in a lower bracket where you pay 30-35%, so in the end maybe your income tax lands at 40-45%. All in all, Swedish taxes are at about 55% of GNP, which is, of course, very high, but not ridiculously extreme.
And, yes, just having filled out my tax returns, I wish taxes could be lower.
You don't want to tease an American customs or immigration officer as a foreigner. They can and will throw you out of the country if they get pissed on you, no appeal, no coming back for at least six months and you have to explain every time you do come back why you were thrown out that one time ("Well sir, I was teasing this customs officer and he took it badly...").
No, I haven't done it, but I read what it says just above where you sign on the entry cards.
The article is pretty light on that point. I think anyone who downloads "UT2K4 Keygen.exe" or "Photoshop Full.exe" knows exactly what they are trying to get, and they know the risks of what they are doing. And therefore, if someone wants to write an app that phones home and tells the companies that someone is trying to use a crack, what's the harm?
Especially since Photoshop does phone home (doing online registration)...
Can someone please explain to me how one is so wrong yet the other is so right?
Vigilantilism is wrong. Period. Rule of law is characterized by a state monopoly on justice. If you don't like rule of law, there are plenty of countries where it doesn't apply.
Or, in a language your mother would use: Two wrongs don't make one right.
It is a race between the ATM designers and the crooks. At least in Sweden, most new ATMs have all sorts of funny protruding nobs around the card and money slots and stuff to prevent people from attaching things. But then someone finds out another way. It'll always be like that.
Some twenty years back, a Swedish author wrote about a scam that involved setting up an entire fake ATM in a passage in central Stockholm, recording the card number and PIN and giving one of those all-too-common "Sorry, no contact with your bank." messages to all who tried to use it. After a few days they took it away and replaced it with a blue door (ATMs are an early 80's blue in this country) so that when the ATM operators got there they assumed that people complaining about the non-functioning ATM had just been imagining.
Imagine my surprise when just last year, someone did that exact scam. One would have thought that being published in a fairly popular novel would have inspired some countermeasures...
The article is about a magnetic field alternating 60 times per second. The Earth's magnetic switches polarity over hundreds of thousands of years; it is DC for the purpose of the article.
When you get out of bed in the morning the field rotates 90 degrees through your body very quickly. Might be a reason many people feel pain getting up.
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It was a blind listening test.
Since blind, as we know, have more acute hearing.
In case anyone doesn't know, the parent is spoofing a song by Murray Head entitled One Night in Bangkok.
We knew, but the song is by Björn Ulvaeus and Benny Andersson (of ABBA fame) from their musical Chess which was a big hit in London's West End (and elsewhere). Murray Head sung "the American" in the studio recording.
"You can't extract that information, yet . But what happens when a better method for dna sequencing is devloped that can sequence the entire genome?"
;)-
That's not the point. The DNA sample as such can probably be used to extract the information, but the samples are (usually not, maybe California will do it differently than e.g. Sweden) not kept, just a "fingerprint" of the DNA, and THAT can't be used other than to match another DNA sample.
At least with fingerprints you KNOW all they can do is match them to other fingerprints.
That's what you think. However, physical fingerprints contain minute traces of your DNA...
None found! Seems DNA doesn't stick on web pages...
DNA fingerprints are akin to hashes on subsegments of your DNA. You can't use it to extract information on your genes.
In Sweden, as in many other countries, votes are correctly counted within three or four hours of closing the poll stations. By hand. Recounted and verified within three days. Has never failed.
Amazing. How do they do it?
The trick is to have different ballots for competing parties: Pick the ballot that carries the name of the party you want to vote for, put it in the envelope. Also, if you have more than one election at the same time, have separate ballots for each (yellow, white and blue for national, regional and local elections as it happens).
Much more difficult to make a mistake than with half-punched holes in butterfly ballots like in Florida. (Oh, yeah, it probably helps that we have a national standard on what a ballot looks like, counties do not get to design their own)
(Since we have list elections, it is slightly more complicated than that, but to the first order, you can ignore the order on the list...)
World's largest aircraft carrier Gotland remains where it has always been.
I've seen the Zaurus boot before and it was nearly "instant on". It was certainly faster than my Nokia cell phone.
That's because your Zaurus doesn't have to deal with a SIM card. Authenticating towards the SIM, and reading a few files from it, plus trying to find a network does make phones slow to startup.
Instead of memorizing street names or distances, you could just say "I'll turn when I see this, I'll turn when I see that..." You could be completely illiterate and still navigate.
Hmm. In Managua they don't have street names. Instead the adressess are relative well-known land mark, such as "From where the store 'La Vicky' used to be, one block towards the lake, 25 meters towards the sunrise" and that's not just directions you give the cabbie. It is official enough that it is what is used in phone directories, what fill out in government forms etc.
Here: http://photos.pagesjaunes.fr/x/home_paris.htm Quite handy.
low-light photography, slow shutter-speed photography (i.e., those cool pictures of a city at night with all the streaky red lights from the vehicles)
The #1 digital advantage is of course instant gratification, but #2 is that you can crank up the amplification of the sensor to emulate faster film. Picture by picture.
With film, you have to change films to do that, or carry around extra bodies. Most people don't shoot enough pictures for that to really be an option, and if you do, you spend a lot of time changing films! (And it was a long time since I saw an ISO3200 colour film in the local convenience store...)
Also color fidelity
Being able to change colour spaces on the fly (or even afterwards) is a similar advantage that does away with a lot of filter changing.
and saturation
This I agree with. The dynamic range of digitals is still a lot worse than colour negative film (although comparable to slide film).
How's that for intangible benefit?
Does this guy know how much energy that goes into mining the Uranium?
There are quite some environmental problem with uranium mining, but it is not the only thing that you can burn in a nuclear reactor.
Some years ago, Nobel laureate Carlo Rubbia suggested a subcritical reactor that was kept running by a proton beam (a spallator) that could be fueled by e.g. thorium. Thorium is quite common in the crust of the Earth, it is reasonably safe to mine and you can't make a bomb with it. This, and the fact that, being subcritical, it could not have a meltdown and would not require extensive security measures meant that it could be put in the hands of politically unstable low resource countries without risking either nuclear arms proliferation or an enviromental catastrophy.
And that is important. Even if the west would start to conserve huge amounts of energy, the threat that awaits us is the industrialization of the third world.
Anyway, this was some 10-15 years ago and it doesn't seem that the technology got very far. I don't know whether this is mainly for political reasons or that it proved more difficult than expected to realize.
The simplest reason A4 won't take off in the US is that A4 doesn't fit in our file cabinets! We'd have to get rid of our file cabinets and folders and get new ones. Any A4 papers I have get all messed up in my filing cabinet as they don't fit!
Technology lock in is not as strong argument as you would think. All of Europe have switched from various local standards to the A4 et al. and that is quite recent. Hell! If Sweden could change from left hand side driving to right hand side driving it can't be difficult to change paper sizes!
Why doesn't Europe get ONE FREAKING TYPE OF ELECTRICAL PLUG!
We do. The europlug. Works everywhere (except Britain...). It is even designed to be a bit flexible to fit in French sockets!
"What units do you want the database delivered in?"
- [SARCASM BOLD] "We are a scientific company.[/SARCASM BOLD]>
"Oh, right."
Natural units?
Actually, it won't. That's why there are no A5 envelopes. There are C5 envelopes, that are slightly larger than an A5, so that an A5 will fit inside.
No, definitely not insightful. Your line of reasoning is not to far off for religions that are unversalistic in nature -- i.e. that by definition are for all people (as seen from inside that religion). Christianity and islam are in this category. For a christian (moslem) it is a good thing if all people would accept christianity (islam).
This leads to all kind of pitying for and/or missioning among people who don't share those beliefs.
However, there are religions that do not have the aspiration to be for all people and that do not have opinions on whether rejecting *their* beliefs makes *you* go to hell or not.
Now, today things are changing so that some christians do accept that there might be other ways to salvation that do not go through Christ or the christian belief system, but that is a relatively new and not universal (sic!) phenomenom.
Anyone else notice that in every picture the streets are empty? Not a single person outside other than the protestors. Nobody even knew they were protesting...
No, they were hungover. Walpurgis Night (April 30) is an age old drinking fest in Sweden.
Of course, the significance of May 1st, itself, with Maypoles, pagans, and whatnot is much, much earlier than all this.
Actually no. Maypoles are later than this. Maypoles belong on Midsummer's eve.
They [Sweden] are far more socialist than the US. This means that they pay a LOT more taxes. Like around 65% income tax in the top brackets, not to mention other taxes.
No, we are not more socialist than the US. Sweden is a lot less regulated than you might think. And the US is a lot more regulated than you might think. Think California. Think electric power. That's socialism for you!
And the income tax is not around 65% in the top bracket, it is more 55-60, but then most of your income is usually in a lower bracket where you pay 30-35%, so in the end maybe your income tax lands at 40-45%. All in all, Swedish taxes are at about 55% of GNP, which is, of course, very high, but not ridiculously extreme.
And, yes, just having filled out my tax returns, I wish taxes could be lower.
You don't want to tease an American customs or immigration officer as a foreigner. They can and will throw you out of the country if they get pissed on you, no appeal, no coming back for at least six months and you have to explain every time you do come back why you were thrown out that one time ("Well sir, I was teasing this customs officer and he took it badly...").
No, I haven't done it, but I read what it says just above where you sign on the entry cards.
The article is pretty light on that point. I think anyone who downloads "UT2K4 Keygen.exe" or "Photoshop Full.exe" knows exactly what they are trying to get, and they know the risks of what they are doing. And therefore, if someone wants to write an app that phones home and tells the companies that someone is trying to use a crack, what's the harm?
Especially since Photoshop does phone home (doing online registration)...
Can someone please explain to me how one is so wrong yet the other is so right?
Vigilantilism is wrong. Period. Rule of law is characterized by a state monopoly on justice. If you don't like rule of law, there are plenty of countries where it doesn't apply.
Or, in a language your mother would use: Two wrongs don't make one right.
It is a race between the ATM designers and the crooks. At least in Sweden, most new ATMs have all sorts of funny protruding nobs around the card and money slots and stuff to prevent people from attaching things. But then someone finds out another way. It'll always be like that.
Some twenty years back, a Swedish author wrote about a scam that involved setting up an entire fake ATM in a passage in central Stockholm, recording the card number and PIN and giving one of those all-too-common "Sorry, no contact with your bank." messages to all who tried to use it. After a few days they took it away and replaced it with a blue door (ATMs are an early 80's blue in this country) so that when the ATM operators got there they assumed that people complaining about the non-functioning ATM had just been imagining.
Imagine my surprise when just last year, someone did that exact scam. One would have thought that being published in a fairly popular novel would have inspired some countermeasures...
The article is about a magnetic field alternating 60 times per second. The Earth's magnetic switches polarity over hundreds of thousands of years; it is DC for the purpose of the article.
When you get out of bed in the morning the field rotates 90 degrees through your body very quickly. Might be a reason many people feel pain getting up.