Actually, if you've ever bought a iPhone in certain Asian countries - such as MKB in Bangkok, the phones from small dealers are sold pre-jailbroken and loaded up with pirated Apps, movies and other content, as a "service" to the customer.
And I'm sure all those dealers carefully screened that pre-loaded content for malware, right? Depending on how cynical one is about Apple, this sort of thing is either the #1 or #2 reason they are so tight-assed about the App Store and about jailbreaking.
Not all "vitamins" are equal. For one thing, Recommended Daily Allowances are set to prevent known diseases: e.g., if you don't have scurvy, establishment medicine says you must be getting enough vitamin C. Rarely is research done to discover an optimum level of supplementation. So studies that involve giving people the RDA or a little more aren't as dispositive as they might be.
Second, vitamins vary in quality. Cheapo supermarket multivitamins might have the same quantities listed on the label as something from a high-quality source like LEF, but they won't use the highest-quality sources, the most bio-available kinds, etc.
So my guess is that these "debunking" studies involved people taking Centrum multivitamins or whatever and they didn't see much in the way of results. I'd like to see a study done with LEF multivitamins, which I've taken for years and been happy with.
The widespread use of the term "drone" is actually fairly new and rather media led, as UAVs, UASs, UCAVs etc have been around for well over two decades.
True. In fact, by the traditional definition of the term, this aircraft isn't a "drone," a term that used to be reserved for "target drones" and other relatively unsophisticated aircraft. But "drone" is easy to say and remember, compared to UAV etc. For the media, that's close enough. It's like calling a DSL box a "modem" even though it doesn't actually modulate and demodulate.
What is the deal with flying wings anyway? It seems like everything these days is a flying wing or close to a flying wing.
Is it more efficient or what is the advantage. As an R/C enthusiast I have flown them and they're not that fun because they really aren't very stable or maneuverable.
Flying wings are good because the entire structure provides lift, and the drag of a fuselage and vertical control surfaces is eliminated. Their shape also makes them more stealthy, even without the use of radar-absorbing materials. The control issue was always the limiting factor and was a major reason why the YB-35/YB-49 didn't succeed. Current flying wings would be unflyable without advanced computer "fly by wire" controls (which your R/C planes don't have). In other words, the pilot's controls aren't directly controlling the aircraft's control surfaces: they are telling the computer what he wants the plane to do, and the computer then moves the split ailerons to make that happen.
It takes time to reposition a satellite. Even after changing orbits, enemy forces can make reasonable estimates about when there will be coverage gaps and plan operations accordingly.
Not only can they, they already have. I've read that the Soviets gave us a false picture of the accuracy of their ballistic missiles by timing the tests based on our satellite orbits. After the missile had been launched and hit the target range, but before our satellites passed over again, they'd move the target closer to the impact point.
And, of course, you can only reposition a satellite so many times before it runs out of fuel, and there are limits to the degree of repositioning. With aircraft, you can have it over a particular target within hours of deciding to do so.
The easiest way to make a report is to visit promethease.com. This takes about 10 minutes and costs $5. [...] Promethease is a tool to build a personal DNA report based on SNPedia and a person's genotype (DNA) data. Customers of DNA testing services (23andMe, FamilyTreeDNA, Ancestry.com, Complete Genomics,...) can use it to learn more about themselves completely independently of whichever company produced their data.
I agree -- this is very, very hard work. However, it isn't something that has not been done before.
But over 50% of huge IT projects fail, many of them much more narrow in scope than Healthcare.gov. So based on that and the major levels of incompetence shown so far, I think the odds are better than even that it ultimately fails.
This isn't rocket science. Grab example schema from a private insurance firm, adapt them to this task, and go from there.
But look at this diagram. Healthcare.gov was supposed to exchange data with the IRS, Social Security, Homeland Security, the Treasury, and HHS. Plus all the carriers. Plus 50 state Medicaid systems. In realtime. Securely. I'm no expert, but my understanding is that hooking up pre-existing databases in this way is very, very hard. When we are told that 30-40% of the backend of Healthcare.gov is not yet built, I think this is what they are referring to.
(And yes, I know this diagram is hosted on a Republican website, but it seems to be a pretty straightforward depiction of the structure. I don't see any evidence that the graphic artist was trying to make it look more complex than it really is.)
The chart's hosted on the National Republican Congressional Committee's website. I would take it with a heaping tablespoon of salt, if I were you. It's say to say that chart was designed to look as scary and confusing as possible.
No, this chart is designed to look as scary and confusing as possible. The one I posted is a pretty straight-forward description of the basic site architecture. I have a pretty good understand of information design, and I don't see how the chart I first posted is artificially enhanced to make it look worse than it is.
It definitely explains the problems they've been having.
But this is only part of it. Check out this diagram. I'm no expert, but look at all the government systems in the upper left that Healthcare.gov is supposed to communicate with, in real time. And on the right, 50 state Medicaid systems. And at the bottom, all the insurance companies. Far, far simpler IT projects have failed. This site will not be ready by the end of the month as promised, and there is a good chance that it will never work as planned.
Personally, I think that pro sports players and coaches, and top hip-hop musicians, all make "too much" money. But so what? It's not my business, and envy and resentment are poor foundations for economic policy. They all entered into voluntary contracts, as did CEOs. What CEOs make is up to the boards of directors and the shareholders of the firms. If you think it's too much, don't buy their products or services. Or buy one share of stock and vote to change the board. And remember, we already have the graduated income tax, and the taxes on the top earners fund a disproportionately large share of government.
The "maximum wage" idea is, ironically, pushed by the same folks whose policies were major factors in increasing income disparity. We opened the taps to massive amounts of immigration from the Third World decades ago, and guess what? If you import a tens of millions of poor people, it will increase income disparity. Divorce and single motherhood became much more common since the '60s, which also contributed. And, of course, welfare in effect pays poor women to have children. If you're really worried about income disparity, stop doing things that increase the number of poor people.
How about a law that says movie stars can only make 100 times what the lowest wage guy on the movie set makes? Perhaps recording artists should only make some multiple of what some guy in the studio does? Maybe authors can only make some multiple of what the editors at their publishing houses make?
Does anyone really believe laws like that that would lead to net improvements in those areas, or for society in general? Paging Harrison Bergeron. This way lies madness, folks. As P.J. O'Rourke put it:
''The free market is not a creed or an ideology that political conservatives, libertarians, and Ayn Rand acolytes want Americans to take on faith. The free market is simply a measurement. The free market tells us what people are willing to pay for a given thing at a given moment. That's all the free market does. The free market is a bathroom scale. We may not like what we see when we step on the bathroom scale, but we can't pass a law making ourselves weigh 165. Liberals and leftists think we can."
But, flying across the galaxy to fight bugs with assault rifles at 10 feet?
Oh, this, so much. And the unit tactics were so absurdly bad that even a non-military type like me kept cringing. I kept wanting a sergeant to scream: "SPREAD OUT, you idiots, SPREAD OUT!" When satirizing something, you need to keep as close to what you are satirizing as possible. That makes the satire more biting. If you don't, it just seems sloppy and "off," as this movie did.
And the bug's weapons, that somehow reached escape velocity despite traveling at what looked like 40 mph, were another annoyance. But the movie almost redeemed itself with the scene of the ships colliding and breaking up. That was AWESOME, exactly the sort of thing the movie needed more of.
A movie is something like 50 pages of a book -- a lot must be consolidated and eliminated or glossed over, while still maintaining the feel and "WOW" moments that made the book stand out.
The rule of thumb for screenplays is that one page (dialog, description, or a combination) equals one minute of screen time. And of course screenplay pages have less text than novel pages, so I think you are bit low, but you aren't far off.
The thing is, the tea party stereotype is not so much built on "partisan caricature" but rather based on the people they elect. Michele Bachmann ? Need I say more ?
Both Republicans and Democrats have officeholders who conform to the caricatures of the other side. Both also have officeholders who don't fit the caricatures. It all depends on how even-handed you want to be. If you think "Michelle Bachman, Ha Ha Ha!" is a fair way of dismissing the concerns of the Tea Party and/or Republicans, you can't object when someone dismisses progressives and/or Democrats with "Hank Johnson, Ha Ha Ha!" (Johnson is the Congressman who asked, at a House hearing, if stationing more troops on Guam might cause the island to "tip over and capsize."
I figured out in college that there were smart and dumb people (and informed and ignorant and good and evil ones) on all sides of pretty much any political question. That left emotions as the key issue, and it has never ceased to amaze and depress me how many people think of politics in the the most primitive, emotional ways: name-calling, tribalization, and tons of logical fallacies, all in the service of flinging feces at the Evil Others Who Don't Vote The Right Way.
The Tea Party is an interesting case in point. Their views, boiled down, amount to 1) the federal government should stick to its Constitutional powers, and 2) not spend more money than it has. Those are hardly extreme notions, but you'd never know it from the vicious attacks on them. This is not to say that every Tea Partier is correct on everything, or that their aren't nuts and unsavory types among them, but any political division that encompasses roughly 25-30% of the population will have some nuts and unsavory types.
So I don't find this result terribly surprising, but the people who think Tea Partiers are all ignorant racist/sexist/fascist/homophobes will certainly be surprised.
Final note: anyone interested in the psychology of political belief should check out the work of Jonathan Haidt, particularly his work on moral foundations theory. No matter what you believe politically, it will help you understand why the people who disagree with you think the way they do.
Your sig is a quote from Thomas Jefferson, who went to war with the Barbary pirates, who were arguably not a nation-state. The definition of "war" is a bit fuzzy, but I have no problem including organized foreign groups with intentions to violently overthrow governments as state-equivalent actors, against whom the laws of war apply, not the criminal justice system. I am willing to compromise and say that terrorists caught in the US should go into the criminal justice system, but for foreign attackers on foreign soil, that would be impractical. But we'll just have to agree to disagree on this one.
That's not how war works, and terrorism is a form of warfare. It's impractical and counterproductive to make every intelligence agent get a warrant before he spies on some foreign terrorist making war on the US from foreign soil. Foreign terrorists don't have, and shouldn't have, the same rights as an accused car thief.
While I largely agree, the problem is that some instances don't fall neatly on one side of the law or the other. This is especially true with international crime, terrorism, and war. I'd agree that it's wrong for the NSA to get unconstitutional (IMO) "general warrants" for (e.g.) all of Verizon's phone records for three months. But if the NSA is wiretapping a Somali terrorist in Somalia, and notices that he keeps talking to people in San Diego, it doesn't seem like the descending boot of tyranny for them to call the FBI and say "Check out these guys." As long as the FBI then gets all the warrants it's supposed to, I think I'm OK with it.
But did he have a legitimate expectation of privacy? What if the NSA is listening in on a terror leader in Somalia (which I assume you think is legit), and they hear him talking with some guys in San Diego? Do they just throw up their hands and say, "Oh well, these San Diego guys sending money overseas to a terror group, we didn't have a warrant when we discovered them, so we have to ignore them now"? Or can they call the FBI, who can then get warrants and do standard law enforcement work?
That's what the gist seems to be. The defense is claiming that the first part, the NSA stumbling on these guys, makes everything that follows illegitimate. I don't agree.
The Constitution of the United States is the law of the nation, not of the entire world and everyone in it. My understanding of the legal history is that it applies to US citizens (hopefully), and to non-citizens inside our borders. It does not fully apply to foreign citizens in foreign countries, and certainly not to people making war against the US.
And, as I understand it, what the court said is that merely coming to the attention of the FBI via an NSA surveillance of a foreign terrorist in a foreign country did not violate Mr. Moalin's Constitutional rights. If the NSA hears something that way, and tells the FBI "check out this guy," and the FBI then gets all the needed warrants, then it's off to the slammer for Mr. Moalin.
Regardless, they certainly should require a warrant to intercept - there is no reason that one couldn't at least be required within 24 hours of the start of interception (it could even be retroactive).
But you're not saying we need a warrant to wiretap a known foreign terrorist in another country, right? So what if it turns out he's talking to a US citizen in the US? I don't think the discovery of that information, without a warrant, precludes pursuing the US citizen from then on, with warrants.
That's my biggest beef with these intelligence dragnets - they rely on collecting huge volumes of data from innocent parties to try to spot people who might be suspicious. The way the 4th amendment is written you need to first establish who is suspicious and then target them for search/seizure.
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Actually, if you've ever bought a iPhone in certain Asian countries - such as MKB in Bangkok, the phones from small dealers are sold pre-jailbroken and loaded up with pirated Apps, movies and other content, as a "service" to the customer.
And I'm sure all those dealers carefully screened that pre-loaded content for malware, right? Depending on how cynical one is about Apple, this sort of thing is either the #1 or #2 reason they are so tight-assed about the App Store and about jailbreaking.
Put away your red flag. All of the products formulated by Life Extension are produced in accordance with Good Manufacturing Practice (or GMP) as set forth in 21 CFR Part 111 of the Food Drug and Cosmetics act.
Not all "vitamins" are equal. For one thing, Recommended Daily Allowances are set to prevent known diseases: e.g., if you don't have scurvy, establishment medicine says you must be getting enough vitamin C. Rarely is research done to discover an optimum level of supplementation. So studies that involve giving people the RDA or a little more aren't as dispositive as they might be.
Second, vitamins vary in quality. Cheapo supermarket multivitamins might have the same quantities listed on the label as something from a high-quality source like LEF, but they won't use the highest-quality sources, the most bio-available kinds, etc.
So my guess is that these "debunking" studies involved people taking Centrum multivitamins or whatever and they didn't see much in the way of results. I'd like to see a study done with LEF multivitamins, which I've taken for years and been happy with.
The widespread use of the term "drone" is actually fairly new and rather media led, as UAVs, UASs, UCAVs etc have been around for well over two decades.
True. In fact, by the traditional definition of the term, this aircraft isn't a "drone," a term that used to be reserved for "target drones" and other relatively unsophisticated aircraft. But "drone" is easy to say and remember, compared to UAV etc. For the media, that's close enough. It's like calling a DSL box a "modem" even though it doesn't actually modulate and demodulate.
What is the deal with flying wings anyway? It seems like everything these days is a flying wing or close to a flying wing.
Is it more efficient or what is the advantage. As an R/C enthusiast I have flown them and they're not that fun because they really aren't very stable or maneuverable.
Flying wings are good because the entire structure provides lift, and the drag of a fuselage and vertical control surfaces is eliminated. Their shape also makes them more stealthy, even without the use of radar-absorbing materials. The control issue was always the limiting factor and was a major reason why the YB-35/YB-49 didn't succeed. Current flying wings would be unflyable without advanced computer "fly by wire" controls (which your R/C planes don't have). In other words, the pilot's controls aren't directly controlling the aircraft's control surfaces: they are telling the computer what he wants the plane to do, and the computer then moves the split ailerons to make that happen.
It takes time to reposition a satellite. Even after changing orbits, enemy forces can make reasonable estimates about when there will be coverage gaps and plan operations accordingly.
Not only can they, they already have. I've read that the Soviets gave us a false picture of the accuracy of their ballistic missiles by timing the tests based on our satellite orbits. After the missile had been launched and hit the target range, but before our satellites passed over again, they'd move the target closer to the impact point.
And, of course, you can only reposition a satellite so many times before it runs out of fuel, and there are limits to the degree of repositioning. With aircraft, you can have it over a particular target within hours of deciding to do so.
From snpedia.com:
no it's not.
So, then why is it that years after the site began to be built, and months after it launched, 30-40% of the backend is still not built?
I agree -- this is very, very hard work. However, it isn't something that has not been done before.
But over 50% of huge IT projects fail, many of them much more narrow in scope than Healthcare.gov. So based on that and the major levels of incompetence shown so far, I think the odds are better than even that it ultimately fails.
This isn't rocket science. Grab example schema from a private insurance firm, adapt them to this task, and go from there.
But look at this diagram. Healthcare.gov was supposed to exchange data with the IRS, Social Security, Homeland Security, the Treasury, and HHS. Plus all the carriers. Plus 50 state Medicaid systems. In realtime. Securely. I'm no expert, but my understanding is that hooking up pre-existing databases in this way is very, very hard. When we are told that 30-40% of the backend of Healthcare.gov is not yet built, I think this is what they are referring to.
(And yes, I know this diagram is hosted on a Republican website, but it seems to be a pretty straightforward depiction of the structure. I don't see any evidence that the graphic artist was trying to make it look more complex than it really is.)
The chart's hosted on the National Republican Congressional Committee's website. I would take it with a heaping tablespoon of salt, if I were you. It's say to say that chart was designed to look as scary and confusing as possible.
No, this chart is designed to look as scary and confusing as possible. The one I posted is a pretty straight-forward description of the basic site architecture. I have a pretty good understand of information design, and I don't see how the chart I first posted is artificially enhanced to make it look worse than it is.
It definitely explains the problems they've been having.
But this is only part of it. Check out this diagram. I'm no expert, but look at all the government systems in the upper left that Healthcare.gov is supposed to communicate with, in real time. And on the right, 50 state Medicaid systems. And at the bottom, all the insurance companies. Far, far simpler IT projects have failed. This site will not be ready by the end of the month as promised, and there is a good chance that it will never work as planned.
The free market assumes perfect information.
Actually, it doesn't, and socialism assumes it will have far more information than it ever can.
Personally, I think that pro sports players and coaches, and top hip-hop musicians, all make "too much" money. But so what? It's not my business, and envy and resentment are poor foundations for economic policy. They all entered into voluntary contracts, as did CEOs. What CEOs make is up to the boards of directors and the shareholders of the firms. If you think it's too much, don't buy their products or services. Or buy one share of stock and vote to change the board. And remember, we already have the graduated income tax, and the taxes on the top earners fund a disproportionately large share of government.
The "maximum wage" idea is, ironically, pushed by the same folks whose policies were major factors in increasing income disparity. We opened the taps to massive amounts of immigration from the Third World decades ago, and guess what? If you import a tens of millions of poor people, it will increase income disparity. Divorce and single motherhood became much more common since the '60s, which also contributed. And, of course, welfare in effect pays poor women to have children. If you're really worried about income disparity, stop doing things that increase the number of poor people.
How about a law that says movie stars can only make 100 times what the lowest wage guy on the movie set makes? Perhaps recording artists should only make some multiple of what some guy in the studio does? Maybe authors can only make some multiple of what the editors at their publishing houses make?
Does anyone really believe laws like that that would lead to net improvements in those areas, or for society in general? Paging Harrison Bergeron. This way lies madness, folks. As P.J. O'Rourke put it:
But, flying across the galaxy to fight bugs with assault rifles at 10 feet?
Oh, this, so much. And the unit tactics were so absurdly bad that even a non-military type like me kept cringing. I kept wanting a sergeant to scream: "SPREAD OUT, you idiots, SPREAD OUT!" When satirizing something, you need to keep as close to what you are satirizing as possible. That makes the satire more biting. If you don't, it just seems sloppy and "off," as this movie did.
And the bug's weapons, that somehow reached escape velocity despite traveling at what looked like 40 mph, were another annoyance. But the movie almost redeemed itself with the scene of the ships colliding and breaking up. That was AWESOME, exactly the sort of thing the movie needed more of.
A movie is something like 50 pages of a book -- a lot must be consolidated and eliminated or glossed over, while still maintaining the feel and "WOW" moments that made the book stand out.
The rule of thumb for screenplays is that one page (dialog, description, or a combination) equals one minute of screen time. And of course screenplay pages have less text than novel pages, so I think you are bit low, but you aren't far off.
The thing is, the tea party stereotype is not so much built on "partisan caricature" but rather based on the people they elect. Michele Bachmann ? Need I say more ?
Both Republicans and Democrats have officeholders who conform to the caricatures of the other side. Both also have officeholders who don't fit the caricatures. It all depends on how even-handed you want to be. If you think "Michelle Bachman, Ha Ha Ha!" is a fair way of dismissing the concerns of the Tea Party and/or Republicans, you can't object when someone dismisses progressives and/or Democrats with "Hank Johnson, Ha Ha Ha!" (Johnson is the Congressman who asked, at a House hearing, if stationing more troops on Guam might cause the island to "tip over and capsize."
I figured out in college that there were smart and dumb people (and informed and ignorant and good and evil ones) on all sides of pretty much any political question. That left emotions as the key issue, and it has never ceased to amaze and depress me how many people think of politics in the the most primitive, emotional ways: name-calling, tribalization, and tons of logical fallacies, all in the service of flinging feces at the Evil Others Who Don't Vote The Right Way.
The Tea Party is an interesting case in point. Their views, boiled down, amount to 1) the federal government should stick to its Constitutional powers, and 2) not spend more money than it has. Those are hardly extreme notions, but you'd never know it from the vicious attacks on them. This is not to say that every Tea Partier is correct on everything, or that their aren't nuts and unsavory types among them, but any political division that encompasses roughly 25-30% of the population will have some nuts and unsavory types.
So I don't find this result terribly surprising, but the people who think Tea Partiers are all ignorant racist/sexist/fascist/homophobes will certainly be surprised.
Final note: anyone interested in the psychology of political belief should check out the work of Jonathan Haidt, particularly his work on moral foundations theory. No matter what you believe politically, it will help you understand why the people who disagree with you think the way they do.
Your sig is a quote from Thomas Jefferson, who went to war with the Barbary pirates, who were arguably not a nation-state. The definition of "war" is a bit fuzzy, but I have no problem including organized foreign groups with intentions to violently overthrow governments as state-equivalent actors, against whom the laws of war apply, not the criminal justice system. I am willing to compromise and say that terrorists caught in the US should go into the criminal justice system, but for foreign attackers on foreign soil, that would be impractical. But we'll just have to agree to disagree on this one.
That's not how war works, and terrorism is a form of warfare. It's impractical and counterproductive to make every intelligence agent get a warrant before he spies on some foreign terrorist making war on the US from foreign soil. Foreign terrorists don't have, and shouldn't have, the same rights as an accused car thief.
While I largely agree, the problem is that some instances don't fall neatly on one side of the law or the other. This is especially true with international crime, terrorism, and war. I'd agree that it's wrong for the NSA to get unconstitutional (IMO) "general warrants" for (e.g.) all of Verizon's phone records for three months. But if the NSA is wiretapping a Somali terrorist in Somalia, and notices that he keeps talking to people in San Diego, it doesn't seem like the descending boot of tyranny for them to call the FBI and say "Check out these guys." As long as the FBI then gets all the warrants it's supposed to, I think I'm OK with it.
But did he have a legitimate expectation of privacy? What if the NSA is listening in on a terror leader in Somalia (which I assume you think is legit), and they hear him talking with some guys in San Diego? Do they just throw up their hands and say, "Oh well, these San Diego guys sending money overseas to a terror group, we didn't have a warrant when we discovered them, so we have to ignore them now"? Or can they call the FBI, who can then get warrants and do standard law enforcement work?
That's what the gist seems to be. The defense is claiming that the first part, the NSA stumbling on these guys, makes everything that follows illegitimate. I don't agree.
The Constitution of the United States is the law of the nation, not of the entire world and everyone in it. My understanding of the legal history is that it applies to US citizens (hopefully), and to non-citizens inside our borders. It does not fully apply to foreign citizens in foreign countries, and certainly not to people making war against the US.
And, as I understand it, what the court said is that merely coming to the attention of the FBI via an NSA surveillance of a foreign terrorist in a foreign country did not violate Mr. Moalin's Constitutional rights. If the NSA hears something that way, and tells the FBI "check out this guy," and the FBI then gets all the needed warrants, then it's off to the slammer for Mr. Moalin.
Regardless, they certainly should require a warrant to intercept - there is no reason that one couldn't at least be required within 24 hours of the start of interception (it could even be retroactive).
But you're not saying we need a warrant to wiretap a known foreign terrorist in another country, right? So what if it turns out he's talking to a US citizen in the US? I don't think the discovery of that information, without a warrant, precludes pursuing the US citizen from then on, with warrants.
That's my biggest beef with these intelligence dragnets - they rely on collecting huge volumes of data from innocent parties to try to spot people who might be suspicious. The way the 4th amendment is written you need to first establish who is suspicious and then target them for search/seizure.
I absolutely agree.