When the scheduling doesn't match the shows, sports games cut in, a program is cut mid-sentence for the much more important commercial brake, the emergency broadcast system cuts in... and I don't even *own* a television set!
First consideration: It is a fairly involved and expensive process to catalogue these objects. Maybe some crazy EE guy could mess with them with a ground based laser for an affordable $20k or whatever (I honestly don't know the feasibility of that) but having to go back and classify near-earth space objects on top of that would probably push it being the range of feasability for any small scale endeavor.
And, another *big part* of defense/offense is simply making it more expensive to engage youl. This is the definition of why defense is always more difficult than offense--the defender has to defend every avenue of attack, the aggressor need only choose the most favorable to themselves. Sure, it might be possible for any modern nation to invest a few billion to making the identifications, and that might nullify the advantage you would have otherwise, but getting them to spend the money is itself an advantage. Even countries that starve their citizens to pay for missiles (ala, north korea) only have limited budgets. The thinner you can spread them, the better off *you* are.
Second consideration: In as much as identifying satellites is a statistical process, i.e., "We've looked at 70% of the objects in the sky, and have identified +/- 20% of those which are satellites " then sharing data is always beneficient in giving you more certain results. This is relevant not only because it means you get more satellites, but especially because the satellites you do get are more defintie to be representative of the whole. If you were going to organize some strategic strike against America's defense satellites, you'd want to get all of them. Otherwise you might waste a bunch of money to get the tactical advantage of taking out the satellites and America will just be like "Whoops, they got some of our satellites, time to change to the backups. Cool, our network is fully functional again. Let's go nuke whoever did that."
Third consideration: I don't think the location of all the 'public' satellites are disclosed. The French are able to identify which are secret satellites because we told them the ones that weren't. Anyone who didn't know that could certainly identify satellite objects in the sky, but they would be unable to distinguish between commercial GPS satellites and secret military missile-commanding GPS satellites.
Now, I don't really know how much any of those come into effect on their own, but my point is that just because it is possible for someone else to gain knowledge without your disclosing it does not mean that it doesn't make a difference whether you simply disclose it or make them work to figure it out.
Point to me any instance of the Catholic church not paying taxes that the law has designated for it to pay.
Or are you just upset that Uncle Sam is willing to give the church 501(c)(3) status?
In general, countries tend to not-tax non-profits for the same reason they don't tax government subsidiaries... it would be stupid. Why would you tax what is already a public service to collect revenues to provide public services? What's next, are you going to charge me income tax on the estimated value of my labor when I go volunteer with Habitat for Humanity?
If you don't like it, whatever... I used to be quite against 501(c)(3) status (for anyone), and am only marginally in favor of it now. But hypocrisy? No, that's ridiculous.
So your assertion is that it is hypocritical for anyone with access to money or power to ever make a statement supporting charity or paying one's taxes?
Well I'll run over and tell the pope that he needs to edict all of the church's remaining savings to some non-profit (maybe a religious organization of some sort...) before he can issue any more moral edicts to his followers.
Well, I think there are actually a lot of arguments both ways.
The downside to having cons sell their goods on the internet is that they cut out the middle man. If a thousand thieves use the same fence, the FBI has a lot of recourses it can use to catch all or most of them just by locating the fence. If a thousand thieves use the internet to unload their wares, then now the FBI must deal with a thousand different 'fences' instead of just one.
It's also easier to conceal transactions. I mean, imagine the boon for dealers if the fed's narcotics agencies couldn't sniffout drugs in the parcel service.
Of course, the listings occur on the internet, which is the intrinsic downside for the thieves, but there's still no way to know that something's stolen unless it's being looked for and serial numbers, etc., have not been effaced. Most local investigative practices (like asking local people questions) no longer works and must be replaced by statistical analyses, identifying strange bank transactions, apparent reporting irregularities to the IRS, etc.
Basically, with ebay, you're definitely going to snagged if you steel a semi and try to sell off its full cago, but a dirty employee who skims a few things off every shipment and sells them might be pretty much immune from any problems.
That's just some speculation... maybe the FBI just thought it would be better to get some publicity for the agency than fight an effective but clandestine campaign against theft. I do think it is probably a complex issue, though, and not immediately evident that giving away their involvement is a bad thing.
I hope future politicians will take note that they should not spare any kind, encouraging, or otherwise positive words for any person, ever, just in case the person in question gets pinned for something.
Also, it is unwise to have any other sort of friendly diplomacy with persons/nations for the same reason.
(Bombing them is ok though... worst case scenario, we'll apologize and move on.)
If the standard model fails, string theorists will laugh, jump and down, and point their fingers at their former naysayers.
If the string theory model fails, it will be replaced with a newer, better version of string theory, with bountiful opportunities for new books, conferences, papers, and maybe even some derivative specialities of study.
YOU CAN'T KILL WHAT LIVES ONLY THE MINDS OF MEN... BUWAHAHAHAHAAAAA!
You've got a lot more than your citations to worry about if you're a physicist and don't know what a quantum computer is. The point of giving such a definition is for clarification... it doesn't introduce any new knowledge to the intended audience (except for maybe casual readers from other fields) it just crystallizes what is already known into something useful and concise.
They could have just as well made up a definition for scratch. It doesn't matter. There is ZERO risk that relying on wiki for the definition would introduce a flaw into their results.
There is admittedly a lot of debate in academia over wikipedia... a lot of people hate it, not least of which because wiki's "no original research" policy seems to give the finger to people who are aren't exactly humble about their wealth of knowledge.
But I've known quite a few professors who have used wiki to give background for their presentations, colloquiums, etc., and to me it just seems rather needlessly stuck-up to say "It is never ever ever ok to cite Wikipedia, because we don't like it!"
You'd be amazed how many people with warrants out for their arrest get caught at routine traffic stops. It is the single most-effective means of catching people 'on the run.'
I know we are going to have a ton of "It's useless! They'll just steal another license plate!" comments, but guess what, as soon as the license plate is reported as stolen, now you're flagged again.
Of course, his would probably be more effective somewhere where people actually drive, vs. take a cab, but I wouldn't be surprised if it metamorphisized into an automatic ticketing system, which will bring in literal millions for the city. (This is the same NYPD that was sent on a traffic citation rampage when the city was overbudget.)
In general, I wouldn't have a problem with it as long as no records were kept of through traffic (just an alert system for flagged plates), but of course it's going to wind up much more extensive, especially given the cops/economic incentive/ to bust you for going 1mph over the speed limit.
I have to drive a hundred miles to get to school and to get to the nearest city that isn't a has more than a thousand people in it... two hundred and thirty miles for the next one after that.
And the truckers who transport food, clothing, everything that isn't made locally have to drive hundreds, possibly as much as two thousand miles. Everytime I buy any of that, I pay for the gas it took to get it to me, to get the parts to the factory, to get the trucker to the factory to pick up the part, etc.... what is the farthest distance in Britain between any given city and any given port?
Don't tell me I can't complain because my government only gouges me for a fraction of the taxes that yours does. You may pay more for gas, but every cent it increases hurts our economy rather more than it does yours.
If there are no limitations about replanting, then what will company X that has spent Y millions of dollars to produce a superior crop do to recoup their expenses? After just *one* person buys seeds, well, that person is in a position to supply the whole rest of the world with those same seeds (directly and indirectly) at normal seed prices, so company X, despite their extra expenses, will not be able to make any more money than they would have simply have sold ordinary seeds int the first place.
So, guess what? The only way they can ensure profit is to maintain total agricultural monopoly on the product itself. And which do you think is more likely to squeeze out the small farmers, continued dependence on seed suppliers, or corporations with vastly superior crops who will not share these crops with anyone else?
I'd say the first is the better choice, although we are making many generalization about what would actually end up being very specific scenarios.
Consider that as long as the farmer's increased crop yields, decreased use of pesticides, fertilizer, etc. all result in more profit than is consumed by the extra expenditure for seeds, then all the farmers, no matter how small they are, are better off for buying the self-terminating seeds than they would be otherwise. Clearly, that is a different situation if they are being gouged, but you can't just blindly say that this is a bad idea.
Whether it benefits the little guy is 100% contingent on the pricing scheme the company offers, and we do need to have some sort of market reward for this kind of work. I personally would much rather have seeds that self-terminate than government laws which simply forbid you to grow such plants without a license.
If there is a salvation to be had, here is the secret: Be kind to each other.
What else could possibly matter?
That is indeed the crux of Christianity, although it is stated a bit more strongly than that: (this is just one verse of many)
My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends. and even
But I say unto you whi hear: Love you enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, and pray for those which spitefully use you.
If you can obey that wholeheartedly, welcome to heaven.
The problem happens when you decide you are going to be selfish and step from the path of the redeemed to the path of the sinner. Suddenly, you have crossed the chasm which leads to imperfection, and we're left with two big questions, (1) How can an infinitely just God forgive the trangression when justice requires that it be punished? (2) How is it possible to unite a wayward, sinful creature, which has chosen selfishness, with a perfect and Holy God?
The Christian answer to both of these questions is the same: Jesus Christ. In regard to question (1) God remains just because he doesn't forgive the penalty of the sin... he pays it himself on our behalf. In regard to question (2) because God has paid our penalty we are able be spiritually reborn through our faith and acceptance of God's offering of free grace.
The big catch which you appear to take issue with is that freewill is still in the equation. Before you chose to be selfish, and so God paved the way for a second chance, but you still have to choose to accept God's offer. And you have to do so sincerely. (Which is to say, if you have what Christians call "faith" you will try to fulfill God's commandments--embodied wholly in showing love to one another--even knowing that you're now covered for mistakes. Just saying the words 'I am a Christian' doesn't prove anything to anybody, least of all God.)
This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.
Because it is based on that expectation that their actions were pursued, and if you do not reward companies which make these 'selfless' maneuvers on behalf of open source, then none will. It's the same as eeking linux loaded comps out of Dell, in regard to which numerous persons have commented on the necessity of now purchasing these comps to validate the move.
Now, I've never used SuSE, and don't really plan to, and I'm not saying everyone should now jump ship to Novell in servile gratitude. But I do think it's fair for us to tender some rescinding of animosity in regard to Novell's previous patent deal--for those persons who were upset about it--or elsewise indicate appreciation of their latest move.
Why shouldn't we be nice to people who are nice to us?
Thailand is hitting YouTube with charges of lese majeste (up to 15 years in prison) YouTube should plead guilty and accept their 15 year prison sentence.
Take that you abstract embodiment of an American corporational contract owned by another abstract entity also with no definite personification! It's off to the pokey!
(1) Who is the single senator? (whose name is apparently much more difficult to type than 'single senator') (2) What makes his objection "outdated"? (For that matter, what *is* the objection?) (3) What is he actually doing that's "holding up" the bill?
At least the main thrust of the article is expounded, but, geez, does this guy run around in a mask and a cape and do all his legislating at night, or why exactly did the submitter feel the need to leave his person and actions cloaked in mystery?
There are plenty of things you can run reactors off of besides uranium. There's actually quite a bit of thorium in the earth's crust, for instance. And other fuels, such as plutonium, can actually be manufactured. Fission outputs plenty of power to justify manufacturing serviceable isotopes from more abundant elements, although, granted, it much better if you have reactor-ready material.
But I think the point of fissile materials running out is set to be quite moot. Fusion reactor output has been increasing exponentially since its inception, and it should not be terribly long before it will be a viable alternative to fission power. Once we're set into fusion, it is basically impossible to run out of fuel. Fusion reactors run off of deuterium, which accounts for about 0.015% of all hydrogen. That is a crapload of deuterium! Consider that the oceans are 2/3 hydrogen (more or less) and heavy water is fairly easy to separate. (*actually, a tritium-deuterium reaction is more preferable for future reactors, but the tritium is refined from the deuterium--there is no natural abundance of tritium since it has a half life of ~17 years)
As a worst case scenario, we can always mine other planetary bodies. But despite the article's hype, don't expect us to run out of reactor fuel anytime this century.
When the great cataclysmic meteorite strikes, only those of us sequestered in basements playing WoW and hacking up patches to the Linux kernel will survive the impact. And, even more certainly, when the atmospheric plume of debris blocks out the sun, others will starve, and only we who subsist on inorganics such as cheetos and mountain dew will live to assert our genes in the remnant ecosystem.
Those children who do sports at school do not burn more calories than those who don't.
Startling--this is apparently the next wave of human evolution--a breed of child that can expend energy without depleting any of its energy reserves.
It is only a matter of time before this unlicensed borrowing from the aether bears grave repercussions for the laws of physics.
In the meanwhile, however, I suggest rigging up these children to some sort of power collection device. We can retard global warming by moving away from fossil fuels to infinite-energy-children fuels, and thereby ensure a safe future for our mutant underlords!
homelessness and crime on the home front, war fighting and terrorism abroad -- our government is seriously going to spend this much money on upgrading peoples' televisions.
First off, I do think this is an example of wasteful government largesse. But I really hate the given justification.
How about, "Innocent people continue to be raped and murdered on their way home at night. And yet, the government continues to spend money on post office boxes. Is your child's life worth less than a post office box?"
The notion that because something is very important that it therefore innately subsumes all lesser priorities is not consistent with any form of logical cost benefit analysis. Rarely if ever is there a linear relation to investment and payoff in terms of moneys allocated to resolving social issues, and the sort of qualitative analysis you mentally apply to "homelessness" vs. "television" is an irrational and inappropriate way to compare what is actually a quantitative analysis of "unit payoff per unit investment to resolve homeless" and the corresponding.
Anyway, I think a better question than "how can the government waste money on instead of ?" might be "why do I trust the government to be responsible for these monies in the first place?" It's pretty much a given that, whatever Uncle Sam does 'for our own good' with our own money, ninety percent of us are going to pissed about it.
"The level of education in the US is also corespondingly low relative to other western countries."
It's kind of ironic to bemoan the flawed sample reference and then go on to make other unfounded self-serving conjectures, don't you think?
I go to a quite rigorous science and technology school and the general populace is more staunchly Christian (and, more broadly, religious) than I remember high school being.
How can you correlate low U.S. education to religious belief when those who are highly educated are also religious?
Religion, I would say, is pretty obviously a culture phenomena.
I use a.forward file at my school just because the local mail is so unreliable (downtime, messages lost, etc.). Even *that* has been a liability when they have managed to crash their RAID array and not have a backup. That was when final projects were due, too. And they limit us to 250 megabytes total on the system. Oh how I yearn for the day they will here my humble petitions and switch to Google Apps.
Slashdot Mirror
Yet another hilarious prank, no doubt. I wonder how many kids scored 1337?
Just watch out when one of them attains the CEO position at your company.
"Hey, you know what would be a really hilarious number for our stock prices to hit?"
Uh oh.
Which would all be really great names for rock bands.
When the scheduling doesn't match the shows, sports games cut in, a program is cut mid-sentence for the much more important commercial brake, the emergency broadcast system cuts in... and I don't even *own* a television set!
First consideration: It is a fairly involved and expensive process to catalogue these objects. Maybe some crazy EE guy could mess with them with a ground based laser for an affordable $20k or whatever (I honestly don't know the feasibility of that) but having to go back and classify near-earth space objects on top of that would probably push it being the range of feasability for any small scale endeavor.
And, another *big part* of defense/offense is simply making it more expensive to engage youl. This is the definition of why defense is always more difficult than offense--the defender has to defend every avenue of attack, the aggressor need only choose the most favorable to themselves. Sure, it might be possible for any modern nation to invest a few billion to making the identifications, and that might nullify the advantage you would have otherwise, but getting them to spend the money is itself an advantage. Even countries that starve their citizens to pay for missiles (ala, north korea) only have limited budgets. The thinner you can spread them, the better off *you* are.
Second consideration: In as much as identifying satellites is a statistical process, i.e., "We've looked at 70% of the objects in the sky, and have identified +/- 20% of those which are satellites " then sharing data is always beneficient in giving you more certain results. This is relevant not only because it means you get more satellites, but especially because the satellites you do get are more defintie to be representative of the whole. If you were going to organize some strategic strike against America's defense satellites, you'd want to get all of them. Otherwise you might waste a bunch of money to get the tactical advantage of taking out the satellites and America will just be like "Whoops, they got some of our satellites, time to change to the backups. Cool, our network is fully functional again. Let's go nuke whoever did that."
Third consideration: I don't think the location of all the 'public' satellites are disclosed. The French are able to identify which are secret satellites because we told them the ones that weren't. Anyone who didn't know that could certainly identify satellite objects in the sky, but they would be unable to distinguish between commercial GPS satellites and secret military missile-commanding GPS satellites.
Now, I don't really know how much any of those come into effect on their own, but my point is that just because it is possible for someone else to gain knowledge without your disclosing it does not mean that it doesn't make a difference whether you simply disclose it or make them work to figure it out.
Or are you just upset that Uncle Sam is willing to give the church 501(c)(3) status?
In general, countries tend to not-tax non-profits for the same reason they don't tax government subsidiaries... it would be stupid. Why would you tax what is already a public service to collect revenues to provide public services? What's next, are you going to charge me income tax on the estimated value of my labor when I go volunteer with Habitat for Humanity?
If you don't like it, whatever... I used to be quite against 501(c)(3) status (for anyone), and am only marginally in favor of it now. But hypocrisy? No, that's ridiculous.
So your assertion is that it is hypocritical for anyone with access to money or power to ever make a statement supporting charity or paying one's taxes?
Well I'll run over and tell the pope that he needs to edict all of the church's remaining savings to some non-profit (maybe a religious organization of some sort...) before he can issue any more moral edicts to his followers.
brb.
Well, I think there are actually a lot of arguments both ways.
The downside to having cons sell their goods on the internet is that they cut out the middle man. If a thousand thieves use the same fence, the FBI has a lot of recourses it can use to catch all or most of them just by locating the fence. If a thousand thieves use the internet to unload their wares, then now the FBI must deal with a thousand different 'fences' instead of just one.
It's also easier to conceal transactions. I mean, imagine the boon for dealers if the fed's narcotics agencies couldn't sniffout drugs in the parcel service.
Of course, the listings occur on the internet, which is the intrinsic downside for the thieves, but there's still no way to know that something's stolen unless it's being looked for and serial numbers, etc., have not been effaced. Most local investigative practices (like asking local people questions) no longer works and must be replaced by statistical analyses, identifying strange bank transactions, apparent reporting irregularities to the IRS, etc.
Basically, with ebay, you're definitely going to snagged if you steel a semi and try to sell off its full cago, but a dirty employee who skims a few things off every shipment and sells them might be pretty much immune from any problems.
That's just some speculation... maybe the FBI just thought it would be better to get some publicity for the agency than fight an effective but clandestine campaign against theft. I do think it is probably a complex issue, though, and not immediately evident that giving away their involvement is a bad thing.
Also, it is unwise to have any other sort of friendly diplomacy with persons/nations for the same reason.
(Bombing them is ok though... worst case scenario, we'll apologize and move on.)
If the standard model fails, string theorists will laugh, jump and down, and point their fingers at their former naysayers.
If the string theory model fails, it will be replaced with a newer, better version of string theory, with bountiful opportunities for new books, conferences, papers, and maybe even some derivative specialities of study.
YOU CAN'T KILL WHAT LIVES ONLY THE MINDS OF MEN... BUWAHAHAHAHAAAAA!
You've got a lot more than your citations to worry about if you're a physicist and don't know what a quantum computer is. The point of giving such a definition is for clarification... it doesn't introduce any new knowledge to the intended audience (except for maybe casual readers from other fields) it just crystallizes what is already known into something useful and concise. They could have just as well made up a definition for scratch. It doesn't matter. There is ZERO risk that relying on wiki for the definition would introduce a flaw into their results. There is admittedly a lot of debate in academia over wikipedia... a lot of people hate it, not least of which because wiki's "no original research" policy seems to give the finger to people who are aren't exactly humble about their wealth of knowledge. But I've known quite a few professors who have used wiki to give background for their presentations, colloquiums, etc., and to me it just seems rather needlessly stuck-up to say "It is never ever ever ok to cite Wikipedia, because we don't like it!"
The use of this is a bit more general than that.
/economic incentive/ to bust you for going 1mph over the speed limit.
You'd be amazed how many people with warrants out for their arrest get caught at routine traffic stops. It is the single most-effective means of catching people 'on the run.'
I know we are going to have a ton of "It's useless! They'll just steal another license plate!" comments, but guess what, as soon as the license plate is reported as stolen, now you're flagged again.
Of course, his would probably be more effective somewhere where people actually drive, vs. take a cab, but I wouldn't be surprised if it metamorphisized into an automatic ticketing system, which will bring in literal millions for the city. (This is the same NYPD that was sent on a traffic citation rampage when the city was overbudget.)
In general, I wouldn't have a problem with it as long as no records were kept of through traffic (just an alert system for flagged plates), but of course it's going to wind up much more extensive, especially given the cops
I have to drive a hundred miles to get to school and to get to the nearest city that isn't a has more than a thousand people in it... two hundred and thirty miles for the next one after that.
And the truckers who transport food, clothing, everything that isn't made locally have to drive hundreds, possibly as much as two thousand miles. Everytime I buy any of that, I pay for the gas it took to get it to me, to get the parts to the factory, to get the trucker to the factory to pick up the part, etc.... what is the farthest distance in Britain between any given city and any given port?
Don't tell me I can't complain because my government only gouges me for a fraction of the taxes that yours does. You may pay more for gas, but every cent it increases hurts our economy rather more than it does yours.
If there are no limitations about replanting, then what will company X that has spent Y millions of dollars to produce a superior crop do to recoup their expenses? After just *one* person buys seeds, well, that person is in a position to supply the whole rest of the world with those same seeds (directly and indirectly) at normal seed prices, so company X, despite their extra expenses, will not be able to make any more money than they would have simply have sold ordinary seeds int the first place.
So, guess what? The only way they can ensure profit is to maintain total agricultural monopoly on the product itself. And which do you think is more likely to squeeze out the small farmers, continued dependence on seed suppliers, or corporations with vastly superior crops who will not share these crops with anyone else?
I'd say the first is the better choice, although we are making many generalization about what would actually end up being very specific scenarios.
Consider that as long as the farmer's increased crop yields, decreased use of pesticides, fertilizer, etc. all result in more profit than is consumed by the extra expenditure for seeds, then all the farmers, no matter how small they are, are better off for buying the self-terminating seeds than they would be otherwise. Clearly, that is a different situation if they are being gouged, but you can't just blindly say that this is a bad idea.
Whether it benefits the little guy is 100% contingent on the pricing scheme the company offers, and we do need to have some sort of market reward for this kind of work. I personally would much rather have seeds that self-terminate than government laws which simply forbid you to grow such plants without a license.
That is indeed the crux of Christianity, although it is stated a bit more strongly than that: (this is just one verse of many)
My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.
and even
But I say unto you whi hear: Love you enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, and pray for those which spitefully use you.
If you can obey that wholeheartedly, welcome to heaven.
The problem happens when you decide you are going to be selfish and step from the path of the redeemed to the path of the sinner. Suddenly, you have crossed the chasm which leads to imperfection, and we're left with two big questions, (1) How can an infinitely just God forgive the trangression when justice requires that it be punished? (2) How is it possible to unite a wayward, sinful creature, which has chosen selfishness, with a perfect and Holy God?
The Christian answer to both of these questions is the same: Jesus Christ. In regard to question (1) God remains just because he doesn't forgive the penalty of the sin... he pays it himself on our behalf. In regard to question (2) because God has paid our penalty we are able be spiritually reborn through our faith and acceptance of God's offering of free grace.
The big catch which you appear to take issue with is that freewill is still in the equation. Before you chose to be selfish, and so God paved the way for a second chance, but you still have to choose to accept God's offer. And you have to do so sincerely. (Which is to say, if you have what Christians call "faith" you will try to fulfill God's commandments--embodied wholly in showing love to one another--even knowing that you're now covered for mistakes. Just saying the words 'I am a Christian' doesn't prove anything to anybody, least of all God.)
This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.
Because it is based on that expectation that their actions were pursued, and if you do not reward companies which make these 'selfless' maneuvers on behalf of open source, then none will. It's the same as eeking linux loaded comps out of Dell, in regard to which numerous persons have commented on the necessity of now purchasing these comps to validate the move.
Now, I've never used SuSE, and don't really plan to, and I'm not saying everyone should now jump ship to Novell in servile gratitude. But I do think it's fair for us to tender some rescinding of animosity in regard to Novell's previous patent deal--for those persons who were upset about it--or elsewise indicate appreciation of their latest move.
Why shouldn't we be nice to people who are nice to us?
Take that you abstract embodiment of an American corporational contract owned by another abstract entity also with no definite personification! It's off to the pokey!
(1) Who is the single senator? (whose name is apparently much more difficult to type than 'single senator')
(2) What makes his objection "outdated"? (For that matter, what *is* the objection?)
(3) What is he actually doing that's "holding up" the bill?
At least the main thrust of the article is expounded, but, geez, does this guy run around in a mask and a cape and do all his legislating at night, or why exactly did the submitter feel the need to leave his person and actions cloaked in mystery?
Au contraire, the surest way to be certain that no one will read the details of a news release is to put it on the front page of slashdot.
After the initial barrage of overlord and soviet russia jokes, they will be pretty much in the clear.
If you want a true null belief, that's agnosticism.
But I think the point of fissile materials running out is set to be quite moot. Fusion reactor output has been increasing exponentially since its inception, and it should not be terribly long before it will be a viable alternative to fission power. Once we're set into fusion, it is basically impossible to run out of fuel. Fusion reactors run off of deuterium, which accounts for about 0.015% of all hydrogen. That is a crapload of deuterium! Consider that the oceans are 2/3 hydrogen (more or less) and heavy water is fairly easy to separate. (*actually, a tritium-deuterium reaction is more preferable for future reactors, but the tritium is refined from the deuterium--there is no natural abundance of tritium since it has a half life of ~17 years)
As a worst case scenario, we can always mine other planetary bodies. But despite the article's hype, don't expect us to run out of reactor fuel anytime this century.
When the great cataclysmic meteorite strikes, only those of us sequestered in basements playing WoW and hacking up patches to the Linux kernel will survive the impact. And, even more certainly, when the atmospheric plume of debris blocks out the sun, others will starve, and only we who subsist on inorganics such as cheetos and mountain dew will live to assert our genes in the remnant ecosystem.
Startling--this is apparently the next wave of human evolution--a breed of child that can expend energy without depleting any of its energy reserves.
It is only a matter of time before this unlicensed borrowing from the aether bears grave repercussions for the laws of physics.
In the meanwhile, however, I suggest rigging up these children to some sort of power collection device. We can retard global warming by moving away from fossil fuels to infinite-energy-children fuels, and thereby ensure a safe future for our mutant underlords!
First off, I do think this is an example of wasteful government largesse. But I really hate the given justification.
How about, "Innocent people continue to be raped and murdered on their way home at night. And yet, the government continues to spend money on post office boxes. Is your child's life worth less than a post office box?"
The notion that because something is very important that it therefore innately subsumes all lesser priorities is not consistent with any form of logical cost benefit analysis. Rarely if ever is there a linear relation to investment and payoff in terms of moneys allocated to resolving social issues, and the sort of qualitative analysis you mentally apply to "homelessness" vs. "television" is an irrational and inappropriate way to compare what is actually a quantitative analysis of "unit payoff per unit investment to resolve homeless" and the corresponding.
Anyway, I think a better question than "how can the government waste money on instead of ?" might be "why do I trust the government to be responsible for these monies in the first place?" It's pretty much a given that, whatever Uncle Sam does 'for our own good' with our own money, ninety percent of us are going to pissed about it.
"The level of education in the US is also corespondingly low relative to other western countries." It's kind of ironic to bemoan the flawed sample reference and then go on to make other unfounded self-serving conjectures, don't you think? I go to a quite rigorous science and technology school and the general populace is more staunchly Christian (and, more broadly, religious) than I remember high school being. How can you correlate low U.S. education to religious belief when those who are highly educated are also religious? Religion, I would say, is pretty obviously a culture phenomena.
2GB of space. POP3. Spam filtering. Cost? $0.
I use a .forward file at my school just because the local mail is so unreliable (downtime, messages lost, etc.). Even *that* has been a liability when they have managed to crash their RAID array and not have a backup. That was when final projects were due, too. And they limit us to 250 megabytes total on the system. Oh how I yearn for the day they will here my humble petitions and switch to Google Apps.