I will admit that what worries me more is that to far too many Slashdot posters the "really guilty party" can't be the geek, no matter what the charge.
How about we just look at this case, where google had nothing to do with the assault or the video, other than providing a venue where people could post any video? Google removed the video as soon as they received a complaint. I'd still like to know how Google violated a law here.
From the article:
The delay in removing the offensive video was the result of a failure to apply to the right authority, Pisapia said. When the complaint reached Google Inc., which controlled Google Video, the video was removed within hours, he said. "The first complaint went to the wrong address, so the people who had the power to remove it were unaware of the problem."
Italian law does not lay any responsibility on hosting providers to monitor the content they upload onto Internet, Pisapia said. "Their only responsibility, established under a 2003 law, is to remove content when ordered to do so by the judicial authorities."
Did these models predict the warming accurately or did they say that the warming was going to be 10x what it actually was? Did the models predict the cooling over the past decade or did they fail to actually predict anything other than warming? If I gave the model the data for 1950 through 2000, would it be able to predict what happened in 2005?
Uhh.. maybe for electronics, but usually for power generation you start small scale and build much larger versions.
In terms of power production, yes. In terms of power to physical size ratio, no. The first fusion bomb was the size of a small building. Electrical generators and other devices were much larger in the early days compared to modern counterparts. They are trying to provide proof of concept here. The sheer amount of power required to produce fusion is the cause of the sheer size of this, nothing more. If you could produce fusion using 6 joules of power, there would be no need for it to be so big and you could probably do it in a single room.
Sheltered? BWAHAHAHAHA. I went to college who with people who started the weekend with a fifth of vodka or a 30-rack of beer. Then there were the Furries and Rocky Horror fans. I've met and seen scores of people who were drunk. None of them got violent.
50 megajoules per kilogram is only a problem if the net is not affected by the impact. Have the net take on some of the momentum of the impact and you can absorb a lot of the energy. You can also use an elyptical orbit to decreases the relative velocity.
Cochran says the NIF laser is still not powerful enough. Even if it were, he says, "these machines are just going to be too big, and too costly, and they'll never be competitive."
Proof of concept devices area always oversized and more costly than the production versions. Once you know it works and how it works, you can start shrinking it down and since the development is done, the cost per unit goes down further.
To be honest, alcohol is one of the worst drugs for the fact that it's one of the most addictive (compare, e.g. with THC/Cannabis, Psylocibin/'Shrooms or LSD, which are not addictive), most toxic and socially most destructive (because it increases agressiveness).
Source? Study? Proof? That it's one of the worst, one of the most addictive and that the other drugs you list are not addictive. By the way, I've never known anyone who gets aggressive when drunk. Happy or silly, yes. Aggressive, no.
There is a big difference between murder as the sub-plot to a country implementing a selfish and morally ambiguous agenda through force, and individuals who (as part of their job description) protect the general population from people who are trying to kill them, applying as a general rule non-lethal means.
Depending on the law, I'm pretty sure I could apply that phrase "a country implementing a selfish and morally ambiguous agenda through force" to a country's own citizens. A few dictatorships come to mind. And while police officers in the US try to use non-lethal means first, they still have the force of guns as a the final backup. All laws are ultimately enforced by guns, even if it is only the threat of the use of guns.
As the OP said:
Apparently you don't have family who were in the military. And don't give me that crap about it being justifiable homicide just because Uncle Sam told you to kill them. There is no pacifist branch of the military, and you can't claim the moral high ground when you kill people for a living.
Police officers perform the same function as military, enforcement of a countries laws and policies, the only difference is who it is enforced upon. Both are authorized to use deadly force by the government.
Actually, in this case, the solution is the suppression of speech: If such speech is harmful. Slander and libel cases in this country move forward and information is removed from the internet all the time on this basis. You can't change other people's minds -- there's always going to be some person or group that believes they are right and the law is wrong. Unfortunately for them, the law is better armed.
Slander and libel are not for speech that is merely harmful. If it was, we wouldn't be able to publish anything about corruption in government. Slander and libel are for speech that is FALSE and harmful. If you can not prove it is false, it is nto slander or libel.
Studies have shown that life in prison and the death penalty have a 0% recidivism rate./sarcasm
That said, I do agree that one purpose of the prison system should be reform. However, hiding what someone has done in the past doesn't necessarily help the people they are around or to reform them. In fact, hiding somones criminal past can make it easier for them to comit crimes again. Say, a convicted imbezzler working with large amounts of cash? The question between balancing the protection of the public vs. the convict continuing their life is an interesting balancing act. I think Germany has gone a bit too far towards the convict in this law.
Ah, thank you. The original article I read about fuses being in the plug made not mention that boxes/panels had been added back into the houses. Only that they were put in the plugs so boxes/panels could be skipped.
Ah, that plug. As an electrical engineer, the UK plug makes me cringe. There's nothing there to prevent a short in the walls from melting the wire. Well, unless you finally started putting fuse boxes/circuit breaker panels into the houses again.
A few things to note about the US plug. We have a two pin and a three pin, the three pin is much sturdier. Second, we do have other plugs for higher current situations, such as on clothes driers and electric ranges (ovens). The least sturdy plug is the two prong plug because it is made for low power devices. Last, the flat prongs on the plug are better than round pins. They have a higher surface area leading to lower contact resistance. Even the two prong plugs do a pretty good job of holding themselves into the wall.
Itaipu's lines are not the only ones from Parana to Sao Paulo.
Please do not distort my arguments for your own purposes.
You're the one not making any sense, not me. If Parana is connected to the grid, then they are receieving some power from Itaipu. Otherwise, they wouldn't go down when Sao Paulo went down.
Because (1) it is in the state of Parana, (2) it uses Parana's (and Paraguay's) river resources and (3) Parana actually lost the 7 Quedas touristic attraction (it was submerged by the dam's water).
BTW Brazil is a Federative republic, I don't remember Parana being a vassal state of Sao Paulo.
I never said or implied Parana was a vassal state of Sao Paulo. However, it is a vassal state of Brazil, which owns the dam. So why should Parana get money from Sao Paulo when Brazil owns the dam? If Parana is to get money, it should get money from Brazil, not Sao Paulo.
It looks like they decided it would be good because almost all of North America, Japan and a portion of South America use the same plug and a very close electrical standard (voltage wise). So it was essentially already an international standard for everyone using 60hz 100-120. Why write a standard completely incompatible with what is already a defacto standard?
Remember, this is just for 100-120VAC, not for the 220-240VAC like Europe uses.
You're right that switching power supplies would be ok (at least universal ones, anyway) provided the power was still above 100. But refrigerators (the motor in the compressor) and a number of other electronics may have had some issues if it was running below the rated voltage. Motors don't like being run at an undervoltage as it causes them to heat up. I'm not sure about the effect on CFLs, but since they aren't purely resistive loads like an incandescent, I'm not sure it was good.
A question for you on the IEC 60906 international standards. I did some searching for IES60906-2 (100-120VAC) and the best I could figure out is that it is identical to the current North American plug. Doesn't that mean that the countries currently using that plug are using it, even if they haven't codified it into law?
Well, the '03 blackout was definitely longer than three hours. However, long blackout events like that are far and few between. The ones that come from weather are also rare. The fact that we have come to just expect the electric grid to be there is a testament to its reliability, the same way we expect the wire phone network to just work. My cable/inernet goes out more than either of those two.
...I would also be very worried about the fact that you use suspended power wires even inside many of your larger cities (check out Miami, f.e. - sheesh!), as opposed to dug-down cabling.
Funny. I can't remember the last time I saw suspended power lines in a city. New York City doesn't have them. Nor does Washington DC. Are you sure you weren't in the suburbs?
Slashdot Mirror
I will admit that what worries me more is that to far too many Slashdot posters the "really guilty party" can't be the geek, no matter what the charge.
How about we just look at this case, where google had nothing to do with the assault or the video, other than providing a venue where people could post any video? Google removed the video as soon as they received a complaint. I'd still like to know how Google violated a law here.
From the article:
The delay in removing the offensive video was the result of a failure to apply to the right authority, Pisapia said. When the complaint reached Google Inc., which controlled Google Video, the video was removed within hours, he said. "The first complaint went to the wrong address, so the people who had the power to remove it were unaware of the problem." Italian law does not lay any responsibility on hosting providers to monitor the content they upload onto Internet, Pisapia said. "Their only responsibility, established under a 2003 law, is to remove content when ordered to do so by the judicial authorities."
And that validates the models that claim to predict the future how?
Did these models predict the warming accurately or did they say that the warming was going to be 10x what it actually was? Did the models predict the cooling over the past decade or did they fail to actually predict anything other than warming? If I gave the model the data for 1950 through 2000, would it be able to predict what happened in 2005?
You ever see how much a master plumber, electrician, carpenter or welder get paid?
Uhh.. maybe for electronics, but usually for power generation you start small scale and build much larger versions.
In terms of power production, yes. In terms of power to physical size ratio, no. The first fusion bomb was the size of a small building. Electrical generators and other devices were much larger in the early days compared to modern counterparts. They are trying to provide proof of concept here. The sheer amount of power required to produce fusion is the cause of the sheer size of this, nothing more. If you could produce fusion using 6 joules of power, there would be no need for it to be so big and you could probably do it in a single room.
Sheltered? BWAHAHAHAHA. I went to college who with people who started the weekend with a fifth of vodka or a 30-rack of beer. Then there were the Furries and Rocky Horror fans. I've met and seen scores of people who were drunk. None of them got violent.
50 megajoules per kilogram is only a problem if the net is not affected by the impact. Have the net take on some of the momentum of the impact and you can absorb a lot of the energy. You can also use an elyptical orbit to decreases the relative velocity.
Cochran says the NIF laser is still not powerful enough. Even if it were, he says, "these machines are just going to be too big, and too costly, and they'll never be competitive."
Proof of concept devices area always oversized and more costly than the production versions. Once you know it works and how it works, you can start shrinking it down and since the development is done, the cost per unit goes down further.
To be honest, alcohol is one of the worst drugs for the fact that it's one of the most addictive (compare, e.g. with THC/Cannabis, Psylocibin/'Shrooms or LSD, which are not addictive), most toxic and socially most destructive (because it increases agressiveness). Source? Study? Proof? That it's one of the worst, one of the most addictive and that the other drugs you list are not addictive. By the way, I've never known anyone who gets aggressive when drunk. Happy or silly, yes. Aggressive, no.
There is a big difference between murder as the sub-plot to a country implementing a selfish and morally ambiguous agenda through force, and individuals who (as part of their job description) protect the general population from people who are trying to kill them, applying as a general rule non-lethal means.
Depending on the law, I'm pretty sure I could apply that phrase "a country implementing a selfish and morally ambiguous agenda through force" to a country's own citizens. A few dictatorships come to mind. And while police officers in the US try to use non-lethal means first, they still have the force of guns as a the final backup. All laws are ultimately enforced by guns, even if it is only the threat of the use of guns.
As the OP said:
Apparently you don't have family who were in the military. And don't give me that crap about it being justifiable homicide just because Uncle Sam told you to kill them. There is no pacifist branch of the military, and you can't claim the moral high ground when you kill people for a living.
Police officers perform the same function as military, enforcement of a countries laws and policies, the only difference is who it is enforced upon. Both are authorized to use deadly force by the government.
What credit card are you using? No credit card I have has any fee other than late charges and interest.
Actually, in this case, the solution is the suppression of speech: If such speech is harmful. Slander and libel cases in this country move forward and information is removed from the internet all the time on this basis. You can't change other people's minds -- there's always going to be some person or group that believes they are right and the law is wrong. Unfortunately for them, the law is better armed.
Slander and libel are not for speech that is merely harmful. If it was, we wouldn't be able to publish anything about corruption in government. Slander and libel are for speech that is FALSE and harmful. If you can not prove it is false, it is nto slander or libel.
Not everything out of academia. The engineering & sciences side is pretty realistic when it comes to the world. The liberal arts side, not so much.
Would you include the police officers with those that "kill people for a living"? Because really, there is no difference between military and police.
Studies have shown that life in prison and the death penalty have a 0% recidivism rate. /sarcasm
That said, I do agree that one purpose of the prison system should be reform. However, hiding what someone has done in the past doesn't necessarily help the people they are around or to reform them. In fact, hiding somones criminal past can make it easier for them to comit crimes again. Say, a convicted imbezzler working with large amounts of cash? The question between balancing the protection of the public vs. the convict continuing their life is an interesting balancing act. I think Germany has gone a bit too far towards the convict in this law.
If you think that is wrong, move to Germany and change the laws, but don't advocate just ignoring the laws.
Can we apply that same rule to this case, which would keep the killers name in the wikipedia article?
Better, actually. You can still be paying into social security (if you have income) even once you reach retirement age.
Ah, thank you. The original article I read about fuses being in the plug made not mention that boxes/panels had been added back into the houses. Only that they were put in the plugs so boxes/panels could be skipped.
Ah, that plug. As an electrical engineer, the UK plug makes me cringe. There's nothing there to prevent a short in the walls from melting the wire. Well, unless you finally started putting fuse boxes/circuit breaker panels into the houses again.
A few things to note about the US plug. We have a two pin and a three pin, the three pin is much sturdier. Second, we do have other plugs for higher current situations, such as on clothes driers and electric ranges (ovens). The least sturdy plug is the two prong plug because it is made for low power devices. Last, the flat prongs on the plug are better than round pins. They have a higher surface area leading to lower contact resistance. Even the two prong plugs do a pretty good job of holding themselves into the wall.
No, I do not.
Itaipu's lines are not the only ones from Parana to Sao Paulo.
Please do not distort my arguments for your own purposes.
You're the one not making any sense, not me. If Parana is connected to the grid, then they are receieving some power from Itaipu. Otherwise, they wouldn't go down when Sao Paulo went down.
Because (1) it is in the state of Parana, (2) it uses Parana's (and Paraguay's) river resources and (3) Parana actually lost the 7 Quedas touristic attraction (it was submerged by the dam's water).
BTW Brazil is a Federative republic, I don't remember Parana being a vassal state of Sao Paulo.
I never said or implied Parana was a vassal state of Sao Paulo. However, it is a vassal state of Brazil, which owns the dam. So why should Parana get money from Sao Paulo when Brazil owns the dam? If Parana is to get money, it should get money from Brazil, not Sao Paulo.
It looks like they decided it would be good because almost all of North America, Japan and a portion of South America use the same plug and a very close electrical standard (voltage wise). So it was essentially already an international standard for everyone using 60hz 100-120. Why write a standard completely incompatible with what is already a defacto standard?
Remember, this is just for 100-120VAC, not for the 220-240VAC like Europe uses.
You're right that switching power supplies would be ok (at least universal ones, anyway) provided the power was still above 100. But refrigerators (the motor in the compressor) and a number of other electronics may have had some issues if it was running below the rated voltage. Motors don't like being run at an undervoltage as it causes them to heat up. I'm not sure about the effect on CFLs, but since they aren't purely resistive loads like an incandescent, I'm not sure it was good.
A question for you on the IEC 60906 international standards. I did some searching for IES60906-2 (100-120VAC) and the best I could figure out is that it is identical to the current North American plug. Doesn't that mean that the countries currently using that plug are using it, even if they haven't codified it into law?
Well, the '03 blackout was definitely longer than three hours. However, long blackout events like that are far and few between. The ones that come from weather are also rare. The fact that we have come to just expect the electric grid to be there is a testament to its reliability, the same way we expect the wire phone network to just work. My cable/inernet goes out more than either of those two.
...I would also be very worried about the fact that you use suspended power wires even inside many of your larger cities (check out Miami, f.e. - sheesh!), as opposed to dug-down cabling.
Funny. I can't remember the last time I saw suspended power lines in a city. New York City doesn't have them. Nor does Washington DC. Are you sure you weren't in the suburbs?
That was the 1st large scale blackout in 38 years. That sounds pretty reliable to me. Or are you demanding 100% uptime?