First off, there is nothing saying that a visit to the thing would be the best course of action right now. Further study from ground based and space telescopes are probably a better place to start. We could map it's orbit and find the best spot to intercept it, and possibly find out what it's made of.
Secondly, given it's retro orbit, a flyby mission makes much more sense, probably on the way to something else.
You know, ever since that James Damore fiasco, I've begun to look at google completely differently... Google have entered into the 'not trusted' category.
It's not that I disagree with your conclusion, but seriously that was how you go there... Of all the shit google has done that's the one that makes you not trust them?
Downs syndrome is a lot more than a mental handicap. Seizers and heart disease occur for about half of all Downs afflicted people, and there are lots of other complications as well. Your idea of somebody with downs is a reasonably lucky person, the unlucky ones don't live long enough, or spend much of their lives in the hospital.
More over, do you have any idea what it's like to have a child with Downs? I fault no one who chooses to abort such a child.
No, they aren't. They're unsupported ideas about how to explain certain observations. And as soon as they make testable predictions which turn out to actually be the case, they can be science.
In the case of dark matter, the the observation is called the missing mass problem. This is the name we gave to the fact that at very large scales, gravity seemed to act like there was more mass than we had observed. There are two solutions to this problem:
1) There exists more matter that we cannot see, scientists are cheeky so they call it Dark Matter
2) Our existing theories of gravity are wrong.
Scientist have perused both of these the first by hunting for dark matter and the second through modifying gravity to fit observations. Dark matter is an easier theory to work with as it makes a nice, simple, consistent, testable hypothesis; find the missing mass. Modified gravity on the other hand has had it's greatest success by simply statistically fitting new terms to newton's laws and messing with them as new observations are made. Dark Matter has enjoyed more success as a theory, and is considered the most likely solution, but a modified gravity has not been ruled out, and of course there is absolutely no reason it can't be both, and many modified gravity theories posit that neutrinos or other particles contribute to the missing mass problem.
The biggest feather in DM's cap, is that in some observations have shown a center of gravity that is not at the center of observed mass, something that would be very difficult to explain by any modified gravity alone. So while the question is still open saying that Dark Matter is unsupported isn't true.
This lecture, Dark Matter is not Enough at https://www.youtube.com/watch?... is really interesting and worth watching for all the you Dark Matter haters.
This is absolute bullshit, everything you just said, is totally false.
Organ donation isn't even considered until after a patient has been pronounced brain dead. It actually requires more neuro tests before organ donation than would be required to pronounce someone dead. Patients who are to donate are often cared for for over a day before donation, during which time all of their organs are tested and they are under the care of the organ donation doctors.
Literally everything you just said couldn't be more false.
3. The oil prices are set by international traders. You believe it's not possible to influence them? And if you remember 1980-s then you remember that the only real value of dollar after the fall of Bretton Woods is the USA-Saudi agreement and fact that anybody who sells oil for anything except dollar will become democratic - Saddam wanted euros and Iraq is a democracy now. Qaddafi wanted a gold dinar and Libya is a democracy, too. Imagine how much Obama wants to bring democracy to Iran, Syria and Russia. Especially after the SPb, Russia oil exchange began trading oil for yuans.
The price of oil is set, like the price of all goods by supply and demand. There are two ways to influence the price of anything, alter supply or alter demand. Demand is set by many independent actors all buying things, this is very hard for any entity to control. Supply on the other hand is often controlled by a few entities, restrict supply the price goes up, allow more supply the price goes down. This was OPEC's game for years. The price of oil was sky high for years, encouraging more production, which in turn created more supply, which brings prices back down. Not to mention demand decreases as people were driven to more fuel efficient vehicles, and explored alternative energy sources. Add in tough economic conditions around the world causing a softening in demand, all of this combined to crater the price of oil. But that low price will spur demand and that will cause the price to go back up. I know it's not as sexy as a conspiracy theory, but supply and demand curves accurately describe the way prices are set. (Which isn't to say there AREN'T conspiracies, they usually focus on limiting supply however, and how successful they are usually comes down to solidarity).
Obama can't control the price of oil, if he could, he would have dropped the price before the midterm elections that saw his party loose control of the senate.
While it certainly benefits the US that many nations price oil in dollars, it is mostly because the dollar is a strong, stable currency, that maintains it's value. Nobody want's rupels or yuans when they can have dollars instead. Russia's current currency crisis is all that is needed to show why.
Many counrtires, including Russia and China keep reserves of US currency and bonds, to use to prop up their own currency if need be. This is also the only real reason to keep large gold reserves as well.
4. You keep dollar high and gold low. You cannot stop it. And it only means that Putin cheaply buys gold. And he buys gold nonstop. Russian gold resources still grow during all this crisis. Chinese do the same. Imagine how glad is Obama. And how much he wants to make oil cheaper.
I'm not entirely sure what you mean here, it doesn't make a whole lot of sense. The price of gold is up, not down. The dollar's strength is mostly due to the euro being week. Putin and the Chinese can buy all the gold they want, they can keep it in a big vault and swim in it Scrooge McDuck style, who cares?
The bigger problem is that a lot of these channels will probably go away if they get rid of bundling. A lot of the smaller niche channels survive until they can support themselves by being bundled with more popular channels (and many of them never make any money and totally live off of other channels). If bundling is gone, then every channel basically has to be making money in a short amount of time or they will be gone.
For example, I would bet dollars to donuts that the Sci-Fi channel didn't make any money for years. It survived because it was bundled with other channels so cable companies were forced to carry it. Basically, unbundling means the channels downgrade to the lowest common denominator because no one will be willing to spend the money on hoping a channel can find it's audience.
I think this would actually be good. Perhaps then TV quality would go up, the cable channel market is way over crowded (Do we need multiple food network channels? More than one history channel? 3/4 ESPN's?) Most of what would be lost is chaff.
But this is a weak analogy at best. I now pay for a bunch of sports channels and kids TV that I don't care about. Your example of internet access; if I'm not going to use it on the plane I don't have to pay for it. Same thing for the light snack or entertainment. I don't have to pay for it. Or I can bring my own candy bar. But with cable, if I want Channels X & Y, I have no choice but to get the package that offers Channels M through Z whether I want them or not. The idea that now you have to pay for a lot of things individually on airlines that you used to get for "free" assumes that I cared about any of those "free" things in the first place.
The problem is, getting rid of the things that you don't want and only getting the things you want, doesn't necessarily lead to lower prices.
People want unbundling of cable channels because they have done the following math:
200 channels for $100 a month = 50 cents per channel.
Therefore, if I pick only the 50 channels I might ever possibly care about, my bill will be 50 x 0.50 = $25, a substantial savings.
But there's nothing forcing the cable company to charge the same price for every channel. If you have odd tastes and most of the 50 channels you like are very unpopular, you might actually get your 50 channels for around $25.. But there's nothing stopping the cable company from charging much higher prices for the channels they know are the most popular, so, you could end up choosing your 50 channels and still end up paying about the same amount of money that you pay now for 200 channels.
I don't think anybody seriously expects to spend $0.50 a channel, but 5$ each seems reasonable for most with a few (like ESPN) being 10. I'd rather spend 5-10 dollars on a channel I watch than 100 bucks for 100 channels 95 of which I never use.
espouses church teachings on homosexuality, abortion and contraception
So nothing important is going to change then? Or am i misreading that?
So you honestly thought that they would elect a new pope who would didn't agree with long standing church teachings? What is interesting is that the new pope is a non European. As for what it means, or what will change, that has yet to be seen.
It would be cryptographically possible to ensure your vote was correctly counted without reviling who you voted for. With a one way function you could generate a hash of your vote, which would be compared with a second hash generated at counting time.
I don't think the point was to create something directly usuefull. The point is to produce a machine that makes things with solar power to learn about solar powered machines. Often many usless machine's are made before one makes a usueful one. I beleive they are called prototypes.
The goal here is to sidestep the electoral college, if all states send all their electoral votes to the winner of the popular vote then the winner of the popular vote wins. It's an interesting idea, but I think that if you get enough support to pass this in most states, then you could just amend the constitution. But it's a good way to get the ball rolling and it's nice to see someone taking the issue seriously.
These results to me really underscore how important it is to get out and vote. If 300 people who already wanted Gore to win had gone out and bothered to vote, then the country might be in a very different place now. While this is somewhat dishartening, it's also empowering, every vote really does matter.
I'm sure they mention it in the ELUA, but that is AFTER the product is purchased. You have paid for the product and are then later given terms you must agree to or be unable to use the software, and in most cases also unable to get a refund. This is one of the big complaints about ELUA's that they add terms after the purchases of the product.
Bluray doesn't motivate me to go out and buy it, but when I have an HDTV and cheap players are less than 100 bucks and I need a new DVD player anyway I will probbably buy one. As long as it plays all my old DVD's.
If the record company wants the information on a disk to remain their property perhaps they shouldn't send it out in unsolicited mailings. If they were only sending the cd's to people who had agreed to not distribute them before hand that would be one thing. Think of the requirements this puts on the recipient if the cd can remain property of the record company, it would be a huge pain in the butt. There is a way for the record company to require that the information remains secret, get the other party to agree to it before hand.
The argument that things use to be a lot worse isn't really valid. In the earliest part of human history, agriculture was backbreaking, and difficult and carried more risk of crop failure, while being a hunter gatherer was comparatively easy and for the individual more secure (less reliant on a single source of food). Agriculture won out because it could support a larger population which could kill all the hunter gatherers. Large nations exist not because they are better for their inhabitants, but because they are more able to defeat their rives.
Which is the inherent problem with most escapism plans, there is nothing that stops the the USA, China etc from invading and annexing these colonies, after all we just invaded a sovren nation with an army. All it will take is the first NAMBLA to provide the public outrage for it.
Slashdot Mirror
It is, and it would break every VOIP system out there which can set its own Caller ID.
Something has to be done about this however. When >50% of calls are robots or hang ups the system is already broken.
First off, there is nothing saying that a visit to the thing would be the best course of action right now. Further study from ground based and space telescopes are probably a better place to start. We could map it's orbit and find the best spot to intercept it, and possibly find out what it's made of. Secondly, given it's retro orbit, a flyby mission makes much more sense, probably on the way to something else.
You know, ever since that James Damore fiasco, I've begun to look at google completely differently ... Google have entered into the 'not trusted' category.
It's not that I disagree with your conclusion, but seriously that was how you go there... Of all the shit google has done that's the one that makes you not trust them?
"The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated" -Mark Twain, 1897
How are those two things possibly related?
Downs syndrome is a lot more than a mental handicap. Seizers and heart disease occur for about half of all Downs afflicted people, and there are lots of other complications as well. Your idea of somebody with downs is a reasonably lucky person, the unlucky ones don't live long enough, or spend much of their lives in the hospital. More over, do you have any idea what it's like to have a child with Downs? I fault no one who chooses to abort such a child.
Also check out the Q&A after the lecture where this very topic is discussed: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
DE and DM are observations.
No, they aren't. They're unsupported ideas about how to explain certain observations. And as soon as they make testable predictions which turn out to actually be the case, they can be science.
In the case of dark matter, the the observation is called the missing mass problem. This is the name we gave to the fact that at very large scales, gravity seemed to act like there was more mass than we had observed. There are two solutions to this problem:
1) There exists more matter that we cannot see, scientists are cheeky so they call it Dark Matter
2) Our existing theories of gravity are wrong.
Scientist have perused both of these the first by hunting for dark matter and the second through modifying gravity to fit observations. Dark matter is an easier theory to work with as it makes a nice, simple, consistent, testable hypothesis; find the missing mass. Modified gravity on the other hand has had it's greatest success by simply statistically fitting new terms to newton's laws and messing with them as new observations are made. Dark Matter has enjoyed more success as a theory, and is considered the most likely solution, but a modified gravity has not been ruled out, and of course there is absolutely no reason it can't be both, and many modified gravity theories posit that neutrinos or other particles contribute to the missing mass problem.
The biggest feather in DM's cap, is that in some observations have shown a center of gravity that is not at the center of observed mass, something that would be very difficult to explain by any modified gravity alone. So while the question is still open saying that Dark Matter is unsupported isn't true.
This lecture, Dark Matter is not Enough at https://www.youtube.com/watch?... is really interesting and worth watching for all the you Dark Matter haters.
This is absolute bullshit, everything you just said, is totally false.
Organ donation isn't even considered until after a patient has been pronounced brain dead. It actually requires more neuro tests before organ donation than would be required to pronounce someone dead. Patients who are to donate are often cared for for over a day before donation, during which time all of their organs are tested and they are under the care of the organ donation doctors.
Literally everything you just said couldn't be more false.
3. The oil prices are set by international traders. You believe it's not possible to influence them? And if you remember 1980-s then you remember that the only real value of dollar after the fall of Bretton Woods is the USA-Saudi agreement and fact that anybody who sells oil for anything except dollar will become democratic - Saddam wanted euros and Iraq is a democracy now. Qaddafi wanted a gold dinar and Libya is a democracy, too. Imagine how much Obama wants to bring democracy to Iran, Syria and Russia. Especially after the SPb, Russia oil exchange began trading oil for yuans.
The price of oil is set, like the price of all goods by supply and demand. There are two ways to influence the price of anything, alter supply or alter demand. Demand is set by many independent actors all buying things, this is very hard for any entity to control. Supply on the other hand is often controlled by a few entities, restrict supply the price goes up, allow more supply the price goes down. This was OPEC's game for years. The price of oil was sky high for years, encouraging more production, which in turn created more supply, which brings prices back down. Not to mention demand decreases as people were driven to more fuel efficient vehicles, and explored alternative energy sources. Add in tough economic conditions around the world causing a softening in demand, all of this combined to crater the price of oil. But that low price will spur demand and that will cause the price to go back up. I know it's not as sexy as a conspiracy theory, but supply and demand curves accurately describe the way prices are set. (Which isn't to say there AREN'T conspiracies, they usually focus on limiting supply however, and how successful they are usually comes down to solidarity).
Obama can't control the price of oil, if he could, he would have dropped the price before the midterm elections that saw his party loose control of the senate.
While it certainly benefits the US that many nations price oil in dollars, it is mostly because the dollar is a strong, stable currency, that maintains it's value. Nobody want's rupels or yuans when they can have dollars instead. Russia's current currency crisis is all that is needed to show why.
Many counrtires, including Russia and China keep reserves of US currency and bonds, to use to prop up their own currency if need be. This is also the only real reason to keep large gold reserves as well.
4. You keep dollar high and gold low. You cannot stop it. And it only means that Putin cheaply buys gold. And he buys gold nonstop. Russian gold resources still grow during all this crisis. Chinese do the same. Imagine how glad is Obama. And how much he wants to make oil cheaper.
I'm not entirely sure what you mean here, it doesn't make a whole lot of sense. The price of gold is up, not down. The dollar's strength is mostly due to the euro being week. Putin and the Chinese can buy all the gold they want, they can keep it in a big vault and swim in it Scrooge McDuck style, who cares?
The bigger problem is that a lot of these channels will probably go away if they get rid of bundling. A lot of the smaller niche channels survive until they can support themselves by being bundled with more popular channels (and many of them never make any money and totally live off of other channels). If bundling is gone, then every channel basically has to be making money in a short amount of time or they will be gone.
For example, I would bet dollars to donuts that the Sci-Fi channel didn't make any money for years. It survived because it was bundled with other channels so cable companies were forced to carry it. Basically, unbundling means the channels downgrade to the lowest common denominator because no one will be willing to spend the money on hoping a channel can find it's audience.
I think this would actually be good. Perhaps then TV quality would go up, the cable channel market is way over crowded (Do we need multiple food network channels? More than one history channel? 3/4 ESPN's?) Most of what would be lost is chaff.
But this is a weak analogy at best. I now pay for a bunch of sports channels and kids TV that I don't care about. Your example of internet access; if I'm not going to use it on the plane I don't have to pay for it. Same thing for the light snack or entertainment. I don't have to pay for it. Or I can bring my own candy bar. But with cable, if I want Channels X & Y, I have no choice but to get the package that offers Channels M through Z whether I want them or not. The idea that now you have to pay for a lot of things individually on airlines that you used to get for "free" assumes that I cared about any of those "free" things in the first place.
The problem is, getting rid of the things that you don't want and only getting the things you want, doesn't necessarily lead to lower prices.
People want unbundling of cable channels because they have done the following math:
200 channels for $100 a month = 50 cents per channel. Therefore, if I pick only the 50 channels I might ever possibly care about, my bill will be 50 x 0.50 = $25, a substantial savings.
But there's nothing forcing the cable company to charge the same price for every channel. If you have odd tastes and most of the 50 channels you like are very unpopular, you might actually get your 50 channels for around $25.. But there's nothing stopping the cable company from charging much higher prices for the channels they know are the most popular, so, you could end up choosing your 50 channels and still end up paying about the same amount of money that you pay now for 200 channels.
I don't think anybody seriously expects to spend $0.50 a channel, but 5$ each seems reasonable for most with a few (like ESPN) being 10. I'd rather spend 5-10 dollars on a channel I watch than 100 bucks for 100 channels 95 of which I never use.
I'm shocked by some of the replies so far. Some of you are furious because this guy is trying to limit the people who abuse the system?
It's up to the network owner to decide who is abusing the system, not some network user. It's not his system, not his decision who gets to do what.
espouses church teachings on homosexuality, abortion and contraception
So nothing important is going to change then? Or am i misreading that?
So you honestly thought that they would elect a new pope who would didn't agree with long standing church teachings? What is interesting is that the new pope is a non European. As for what it means, or what will change, that has yet to be seen.
It would be cryptographically possible to ensure your vote was correctly counted without reviling who you voted for. With a one way function you could generate a hash of your vote, which would be compared with a second hash generated at counting time.
I don't think the point was to create something directly usuefull. The point is to produce a machine that makes things with solar power to learn about solar powered machines. Often many usless machine's are made before one makes a usueful one. I beleive they are called prototypes.
The goal here is to sidestep the electoral college, if all states send all their electoral votes to the winner of the popular vote then the winner of the popular vote wins. It's an interesting idea, but I think that if you get enough support to pass this in most states, then you could just amend the constitution. But it's a good way to get the ball rolling and it's nice to see someone taking the issue seriously.
These results to me really underscore how important it is to get out and vote. If 300 people who already wanted Gore to win had gone out and bothered to vote, then the country might be in a very different place now. While this is somewhat dishartening, it's also empowering, every vote really does matter.
I'm sure they mention it in the ELUA, but that is AFTER the product is purchased. You have paid for the product and are then later given terms you must agree to or be unable to use the software, and in most cases also unable to get a refund. This is one of the big complaints about ELUA's that they add terms after the purchases of the product.
What type of incriminating things are sex ofenders doing with their iPhones.
Bluray doesn't motivate me to go out and buy it, but when I have an HDTV and cheap players are less than 100 bucks and I need a new DVD player anyway I will probbably buy one. As long as it plays all my old DVD's.
for most if not all video games there are online spoilers available. The point is kinda moot.
That is the best defense of the long tail theory I have ever heard
If the record company wants the information on a disk to remain their property perhaps they shouldn't send it out in unsolicited mailings. If they were only sending the cd's to people who had agreed to not distribute them before hand that would be one thing. Think of the requirements this puts on the recipient if the cd can remain property of the record company, it would be a huge pain in the butt. There is a way for the record company to require that the information remains secret, get the other party to agree to it before hand.
The argument that things use to be a lot worse isn't really valid. In the earliest part of human history, agriculture was backbreaking, and difficult and carried more risk of crop failure, while being a hunter gatherer was comparatively easy and for the individual more secure (less reliant on a single source of food). Agriculture won out because it could support a larger population which could kill all the hunter gatherers. Large nations exist not because they are better for their inhabitants, but because they are more able to defeat their rives.
Which is the inherent problem with most escapism plans, there is nothing that stops the the USA, China etc from invading and annexing these colonies, after all we just invaded a sovren nation with an army. All it will take is the first NAMBLA to provide the public outrage for it.