Seems to me that a manufacturer could sabotage another manufacturer's products by hacking them (under cover, of course) while they're still available new. That would make the players almost impossible to sell.
Aaah, now I see their dastardly plot... in order to avoid this, manufacturers will be forced to make their products hack-proof. Tricky, eh?
Just to nitpick: the US constitution doesn't guarantee free speech. In its original interpretation, it merely prohibits federal government censorship; in other words, it reserves that power for the states. It has been subsequently been interpreted in a manner that protects many kinds of speech, but still allows the states (and cities and counties) to enact their own censorship laws covering unprotected matters.
In other words, the government is allowed to censor, and the vast majority of US citizens like it that way.
Fair enough, but that's for an entrance exam. The essay author isn't expecting to learn anything from the experience; they don't even expect to see their work again.
However, an essay written for a course isn't just graded; the student has every right to expect specific feedback on their work. How else are they supposed to learn? I don't see a grading program providing useful feedback, except maybe some vague generalities.
The best tutor I ever had - out of many, over many years of university courses - put a huge effort into providing students with feedback. All our work came back with very detailed comments inserted into the text where they were relevant. (This is was using Word and Track Changes.) As a result, we learned a huge amount very quickly. The grades actually seemed pretty secondary compared to that.
Starting a war has never been good for the economy. It's widely believed that it is, but that perception is based in WWII, when the US economy was already emerging from the depression. (And the fact that the depression left the US with significant industrial overcapacity was very important in that particular instance.)
Most wars harm the world economy in various ways. Gulf War I drove oil prices up, for example. The essential truth is that war is inimical to business, and the fact that some businesses profit from war doesn't make up for the disruption elsewhere.
However, a good, stirring war can distract the masses from how bad things are at home... but only a cynic would think that. Right?
Let's see... oil for food: a huge, complex program worth billions that involved hundreds of organisations. How is this comparable to ICANN's job of looking after domain names and IP numbers?
Kofi Annan keeping track of his son: how is this is relevant?
Realistically, the UN is like any other big government. It has inefficiencies and limitations, and some people milk the system. So what? It's no better and no worse than letting corporations exert undue influence on ICANN.
And besides, UN organisations already oversee a lot of international standards programs. That you don't hear much about it only goes to show that they usually do a good job.
In the USA, opening a bank account generally only requires SSN, photo ID, and proof of age. So you can front up to the bank with a driver's license and a phone bill, assuming that the former has your DOB and signature on it.
This is far from the equivalent Australian requirement. Even Australian driver's licenses are very hard to obtain fraudulently, and we have nothing comparable to SSN in terms of lameness as an identifier. (Our tax file number is similar, but providing it is optional, and its use is strictly controlled by law.)
I think you're picking up the wrong end of the problem here.
It's not that these data should be legally kept private to prevent fraud, though there's an argument that they should on privacy grounds.
Rather, it's the fact that the US financial system is so lax on security in general. Australia is a good example of how this sort of thing is handled elsewhere. If you want a credit card or bank account, you need to provide 100 points of identification, which can be made up of a variety of ID items. Here's an example:
You're one-third right - I have said it before. However, unless the brave AC can provide a link to proof that I'm wrong, the brave AC had best rethink the brave AC's position.
You're right, and the system in question is the civil service. The civil service should be independent from the legislative and executive branches, but unfortunately, it isn't. This means that the advice that it provides to both government and pubic is tainted.
People grossly underestimate that importance of the civil service in a democracy. It doesn't help that it has an undeserved reputation for slacking and waste.
For what it's worth, the same politicisation is happening here in Australia.
Your "direct proof of anthropogenic interference to the global climate system" does not, and cannot, exist.
1. Yes, CO2 is a greenhouse gas. 2. Yes, we produce a lot of CO2. 3. Yes, the planet has been getting warmer. 4. No - it isn't possible to prove that 3 is caused by 1+2. The planet's climate changes all the time, even without us to fuck it up. It's simply not possible to provide proof that we're to blame, and few scientists claim to do so. Many will state their belief that it's so, but that's not the same thing.
I'm not sure that "the American way of life" has been without serious government scrutiny since the 1980s. The cold war started it, the War on Some Drugs made it about a hundred times worse, and now the War on Some Terrorists is moving things along nicely.
Try this: your employer's main database server is down. Because of that, the company is losing $500K in revenue per minute. The boss wants it fixed. You are the sysadmin.
My reference was to He3 being used for fusion, even though we don't have fusion reactors that can use the stuff.
Using it for cryogenics is another matter, but I'm not sure that it's worth going to the moon for it. It's actually quite rare there, too, but ubiquitous, like gold in seawater.
It's gonna be just the ISS. They'll spend billions designing amazing machines, the budget will be cut 50%, they'll redesign, the budget will be cut another 50%, they'll redesign again, then they'll put up a half-arsed end result that barely meets its mission requirements.
Then the astronauts will hang out on the moon, kicking rocks and wondering what the hell they're doing there. They'll do a trial collection of Helium 3, but there won't be any point, because there's no use for Helium 3, even if we could get it back to Earth.
Eventually, the engineers will admit publicly that getting to the moon doesn't contribute to getting to Mars in any meaningful way, but boy oh boy, the contractors sure made a shitload of cash off the project, didn't they?
And isn't that what American politics is all about?
1. The protocol. 2. The domain name. 3. Port numbers. 4. Page addresses. 5. Data, such as login names, page parameters, and so on.
The last item, in particular, has far greater scope than an IP address. It's much more like content; it can contain data that you provide for, say, addressing an email, or adjusting an account balance. (Just extemporising here. The actual usage varies enormously.)
The problem is the way that reporters are expected to behave. The reporter isn't allowed to inject his/her own ideas into the story; they are only allowed to report what someone else says.
Therefore, even if the reporter knows full well that correlation is not cause, they can't just *say* that; they have to find someone else who does. They then have two problems: one, finding someone whose comments aren't tainted (for example, the a spammer won't have much credibility in this situation); and two, stopping the subeditor from dropping the last half of the story with those comments because it's not "news". And you can't stop a sub from doing that.
Besides, it isn't the reporters that need to do this, it's our education systems. Unfortunately, basic statistics, scientific method, and logic don't have a high priority in our society.
The original intent was to safeguard states' rights to make their own censorship laws. It was part of a general distrust of the new federal government.
That's why the amendment reads "Congress shall..." and not "No government shall..."
Later supreme court rulings have expanded its application to the latter, however, albeit allowing for some exceptions, such as obscenity laws.
Any major public project that gets off track tends to stumble on too long because nobody is game to pull the plug - the political consequences are too great. For example, if a project is clearly hopeless, and has absorbed, say, $100M, it's difficult for a politician to shitcan it, because people will be up in arms at having spent all that money for nothing. They'll expect the government to throw more money at the project to finish it, rather than "waste" the money already spent, even if that means another $100M down the drain.
This phenomenon is so common that it gets mentioned in financial literature, though I'm too lazy at the moment to look a suitable reference.
It's an example of the sunk cost fallacy. The fact that $100M has already been spent isn't changed by spending another $100M that may or may not make things right. Most businesses are well aware of this, and will pull the plug as soon as it looks like a project is uneconomical. Governments, because they have to keep voters and oversight committees happy, are not so free to act.
What it comes down to this this: if a major government project is canned because of failure, it's a *good* thing. Failing projects need to be abandoned. It's the ones that drag on for years and become fiscal black holes that are bad.
The biggest problem that *I've* seen is that the government gives the contract to a supplier that handed over the biggest campaign contribution, or that just happens to be located in a committee member's district. Whether the contractor can do the work or not is of no great importance.
In these things, I think corruption is just as big an issue as incompetence.
Slashdot Mirror
Seems to me that a manufacturer could sabotage another manufacturer's products by hacking them (under cover, of course) while they're still available new. That would make the players almost impossible to sell.
Aaah, now I see their dastardly plot... in order to avoid this, manufacturers will be forced to make their products hack-proof. Tricky, eh?
Evolution isn't a theory - it's an observable phenomenon. Natural selection is a theory that is intended to explain the results of evolution.
Just to nitpick: the US constitution doesn't guarantee free speech. In its original interpretation, it merely prohibits federal government censorship; in other words, it reserves that power for the states. It has been subsequently been interpreted in a manner that protects many kinds of speech, but still allows the states (and cities and counties) to enact their own censorship laws covering unprotected matters.
In other words, the government is allowed to censor, and the vast majority of US citizens like it that way.
College students conduct prank - film at 11!
Seriously, why should I care about this? I mean, it's about nerds and all that, but... how is it "news for nerds"?
Fair enough, but that's for an entrance exam. The essay author isn't expecting to learn anything from the experience; they don't even expect to see their work again.
However, an essay written for a course isn't just graded; the student has every right to expect specific feedback on their work. How else are they supposed to learn? I don't see a grading program providing useful feedback, except maybe some vague generalities.
The best tutor I ever had - out of many, over many years of university courses - put a huge effort into providing students with feedback. All our work came back with very detailed comments inserted into the text where they were relevant. (This is was using Word and Track Changes.) As a result, we learned a huge amount very quickly. The grades actually seemed pretty secondary compared to that.
Starting a war has never been good for the economy. It's widely believed that it is, but that perception is based in WWII, when the US economy was already emerging from the depression. (And the fact that the depression left the US with significant industrial overcapacity was very important in that particular instance.)
Most wars harm the world economy in various ways. Gulf War I drove oil prices up, for example. The essential truth is that war is inimical to business, and the fact that some businesses profit from war doesn't make up for the disruption elsewhere.
However, a good, stirring war can distract the masses from how bad things are at home... but only a cynic would think that. Right?
Oh yeah, that's insightful.
Let's see... oil for food: a huge, complex program worth billions that involved hundreds of organisations. How is this comparable to ICANN's job of looking after domain names and IP numbers?
Kofi Annan keeping track of his son: how is this is relevant?
Realistically, the UN is like any other big government. It has inefficiencies and limitations, and some people milk the system. So what? It's no better and no worse than letting corporations exert undue influence on ICANN.
And besides, UN organisations already oversee a lot of international standards programs. That you don't hear much about it only goes to show that they usually do a good job.
...until it turns out to be a cover for a space-based laser system! Then he'll hold the world to ransom for... one meeellion dollars!
Nope.
In the USA, opening a bank account generally only requires SSN, photo ID, and proof of age. So you can front up to the bank with a driver's license and a phone bill, assuming that the former has your DOB and signature on it.
This is far from the equivalent Australian requirement. Even Australian driver's licenses are very hard to obtain fraudulently, and we have nothing comparable to SSN in terms of lameness as an identifier. (Our tax file number is similar, but providing it is optional, and its use is strictly controlled by law.)
I think you're picking up the wrong end of the problem here.
4 9834,00.html
It's not that these data should be legally kept private to prevent fraud, though there's an argument that they should on privacy grounds.
Rather, it's the fact that the US financial system is so lax on security in general. Australia is a good example of how this sort of thing is handled elsewhere. If you want a credit card or bank account, you need to provide 100 points of identification, which can be made up of a variety of ID items. Here's an example:
http://www.national.com.au/Business_Solutions/0,,
It's not a foolproof system, but it means that identity theft happens a lot less often in Australia than it does in the US.
Simple!
A "legitimate business" is one that pays the access fee for the data.
You're one-third right - I have said it before. However, unless the brave AC can provide a link to proof that I'm wrong, the brave AC had best rethink the brave AC's position.
You're right, and the system in question is the civil service. The civil service should be independent from the legislative and executive branches, but unfortunately, it isn't. This means that the advice that it provides to both government and pubic is tainted.
People grossly underestimate that importance of the civil service in a democracy. It doesn't help that it has an undeserved reputation for slacking and waste.
For what it's worth, the same politicisation is happening here in Australia.
Your "direct proof of anthropogenic interference to the global climate system" does not, and cannot, exist.
1. Yes, CO2 is a greenhouse gas.
2. Yes, we produce a lot of CO2.
3. Yes, the planet has been getting warmer.
4. No - it isn't possible to prove that 3 is caused by 1+2. The planet's climate changes all the time, even without us to fuck it up. It's simply not possible to provide proof that we're to blame, and few scientists claim to do so. Many will state their belief that it's so, but that's not the same thing.
I'm not sure that "the American way of life" has been without serious government scrutiny since the 1980s. The cold war started it, the War on Some Drugs made it about a hundred times worse, and now the War on Some Terrorists is moving things along nicely.
Clearly, voters aren't learning from history.
Tests? Ffffft!
Try this: your employer's main database server is down. Because of that, the company is losing $500K in revenue per minute. The boss wants it fixed. You are the sysadmin.
Your time starts... now.
Hell no, they don't.
RTFA. People with better short-term memories tend to perform less well under pressure than others.
"Short-term memory" is not "intelligence".
Damn you, finding a hole in my rant!
My reference was to He3 being used for fusion, even though we don't have fusion reactors that can use the stuff.
Using it for cryogenics is another matter, but I'm not sure that it's worth going to the moon for it. It's actually quite rare there, too, but ubiquitous, like gold in seawater.
Yippee!
It's gonna be just the ISS. They'll spend billions designing amazing machines, the budget will be cut 50%, they'll redesign, the budget will be cut another 50%, they'll redesign again, then they'll put up a half-arsed end result that barely meets its mission requirements.
Then the astronauts will hang out on the moon, kicking rocks and wondering what the hell they're doing there. They'll do a trial collection of Helium 3, but there won't be any point, because there's no use for Helium 3, even if we could get it back to Earth.
Eventually, the engineers will admit publicly that getting to the moon doesn't contribute to getting to Mars in any meaningful way, but boy oh boy, the contractors sure made a shitload of cash off the project, didn't they?
And isn't that what American politics is all about?
URLs contain several things.
1. The protocol.
2. The domain name.
3. Port numbers.
4. Page addresses.
5. Data, such as login names, page parameters, and so on.
The last item, in particular, has far greater scope than an IP address. It's much more like content; it can contain data that you provide for, say, addressing an email, or adjusting an account balance. (Just extemporising here. The actual usage varies enormously.)
So no, URLs are very different to IP numbers.
The problem is the way that reporters are expected to behave. The reporter isn't allowed to inject his/her own ideas into the story; they are only allowed to report what someone else says.
Therefore, even if the reporter knows full well that correlation is not cause, they can't just *say* that; they have to find someone else who does. They then have two problems: one, finding someone whose comments aren't tainted (for example, the a spammer won't have much credibility in this situation); and two, stopping the subeditor from dropping the last half of the story with those comments because it's not "news". And you can't stop a sub from doing that.
Besides, it isn't the reporters that need to do this, it's our education systems. Unfortunately, basic statistics, scientific method, and logic don't have a high priority in our society.
The original intent was to safeguard states' rights to make their own censorship laws. It was part of a general distrust of the new federal government.
That's why the amendment reads "Congress shall..." and not "No government shall..."
Later supreme court rulings have expanded its application to the latter, however, albeit allowing for some exceptions, such as obscenity laws.
That isn't quite true. An insurer is liable for whatever is in the policy, and they'll fight tooth and nail to pay even that.
...is the 'sunk cost' fallacy.
Any major public project that gets off track tends to stumble on too long because nobody is game to pull the plug - the political consequences are too great. For example, if a project is clearly hopeless, and has absorbed, say, $100M, it's difficult for a politician to shitcan it, because people will be up in arms at having spent all that money for nothing. They'll expect the government to throw more money at the project to finish it, rather than "waste" the money already spent, even if that means another $100M down the drain.
This phenomenon is so common that it gets mentioned in financial literature, though I'm too lazy at the moment to look a suitable reference.
It's an example of the sunk cost fallacy. The fact that $100M has already been spent isn't changed by spending another $100M that may or may not make things right. Most businesses are well aware of this, and will pull the plug as soon as it looks like a project is uneconomical. Governments, because they have to keep voters and oversight committees happy, are not so free to act.
What it comes down to this this: if a major government project is canned because of failure, it's a *good* thing. Failing projects need to be abandoned. It's the ones that drag on for years and become fiscal black holes that are bad.
The biggest problem that *I've* seen is that the government gives the contract to a supplier that handed over the biggest campaign contribution, or that just happens to be located in a committee member's district. Whether the contractor can do the work or not is of no great importance.
In these things, I think corruption is just as big an issue as incompetence.