Public-key/private-key encryption systems are based on factoring primes and the premise is no one can identify all the primes in a truly huge list of whole numbers starting at zero.
So now that we know what Google can do in corporate spare time with its processors, maybe someone out there with more knowledge that I have can answer the question "Can two-factor encryption be undermined by the computing power Google used today to generate a Pi Day (March 14th) news release?"
The commentator above is correct; scientists define a group as a separate species only if it can't interbreed with other closely related groups.
Leave it to the lawyers to muddy the waters. The misnamed Endangered Species Act apparently defined a species as any separate breeding population (the Florida panthers, for example) in order to "extend the reach" of the law well beyond merely protecting endangered species. This is the usual example of lawyers and legislators using the law to try to redefine words for public relations purposes. The result is that the public- and the lawyers- now don't know what a species is. This is the left wing version of the unborn child gambit on the right.
Personally, I think Neanderthal girls are hot. I keep hoping to meet one at the beach. They're really good at beach volleyball. Do Neanderthals girls qualify for NCAA athletic scholarships?
This is nonsense and Slashdot should get its act together.
Why are they publishing a public relations piece? I believe in global warming. It has affected glaciers and will continue to do so, with consequences that are both good and bad. But this supposed scientific report... let's start with "Who are they and where is this published?"
Who are they? We don't know. All we have is the following: "the Hindu Kush Himalaya Assessment was put together over five years by 210 authors. The report includes input from more than 350 researchers and policymakers from 22 countries. " This appears to be the usual self-appointed group of experts. Again, they may be right or wrong- or more likely giving us the "This is horrible" bad news without the offsetting good news (more arable land, etc). Further tracking reveals all the four named authors are all from something called the "International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD) Kathmandu Nepal" And who funds this? Good luck...
Where was it published? You follow the links in the article and they all lead to springer.com which says they are "Providing researchers with access to millions of scientific documents from journals, books, series, protocols, reference works and proceedings."
NO! I WANT TO KNOW WHERE IT WAS PUBLISHED. IS THIS A PEER REVIEWED JOURNAL ARTICLE OR NOT? The answer appears to be "not" . At https://link.springer.com/book... we finally get the following: "This open access volume is the first comprehensive assessment of the Hindu Kush Himalaya (HKH) region...". This is the usual non-profit funded PR piece trying to affect public opinion and through it public policy. I may agree with the conclusions or I may not but don't kid yourself, this is propaganda by one side of a policy debate and nothing more.
So thirty minutes of digging on my part yields "This is not science it is partisan BS"
Now back to the original question; Why is Slashdot publishing this? Are the Slashdot moderators and editors who select what appears here incompetent or are they so wound up in the left/liberal, phony moral outrage worldview that all an article has to do is agree with their moral posture to get into Slashdot?
Want to stop global warming? Well first stop flying around the world in jet planes, the biggest per-mile contributor to upper atmosphere pollution. Come on outraged snowflakes, forget the snowboarding trip to Colorado and do your part to save the planet. You are, after all, among the world's biggest polluters of the upper atmosphere. As for me, even knowing, I'll still head for Europe this summer. Dear snowflakes let me make it clear; I'm not claiming to be more moral, more pure than you, just less twitishly pompous.
And dear Slashdot moderators and editors; now could we get back to real news about technology for a change?
What does that mean for me and my college roommate? He has a crush on the only cute girl in my econ class. I told him she leaves the Econ Building M-W-F at exactly 11:50, tweets about the class (leaking her position data) while walking across the quad one of two ways to the Student Union and orders a burrito for lunch. So the best way to "accidentally" meet her is to track which path she's using by the tweet location, walk out of the Electrical Engineering building at exactly 11:51 and head either northwest or southwest (depending on the tweet info) then let nature take it's course.
Now I discover I'm probably going to be violating a Facebook patent by telling him the algorithm via a text. It could be worse I guess; I could owe a Chinese company a royalty or get sued by a Boston patent troll.
As an act of civic courage I'd like to say the following
1) I look at Tumblr porn regularly. Actually it is in bursts; sometimes an hour at a time for days on end, other times weeks will go by with no porn. My internal state is reflected in my internet usage. I'm fascinated by the categories and what they mean. There should be more academic research but the academics I know say any publication on the subject is a death sentence professionally. And there is clearly a lot of Russian/foreign influence pedaling and hidden ideology on Tumblr. The new owners want clean hands and they are willing to pay the financial price. I both applaud them and regret what we are loosing.
2) Google searches for porn are revealing. Hit "Safe search off" and check it out. But no Tumblr material shows up unless you specifically ask with a search like "Tumblr, bukakke (sic), interracial (or just IR), and trannie" The results are amazing but largely hidden from the average viewer. This is how censorship now works. And maybe it isn't a bad idea for the corporation and the viewers who don't want to see the stuff.
3) I want to watch it but am deeply troubled by the idea that 11 year-olds are being mentally and emotionally formed by this stuff.; Ask the kids. It is always "Well, some of my friends..."; ask "Do your parents know?" and they give you the "Are you kidding" look. So if you are an adult with kids, ask- privately. Especially the kids of your own gender. The results are everywhere and totally invisible to most adults. Tumblr Ana sites are hugely informative- and dangerous; troubled 18 year-olds with daddy issues know how to suck dick like a pro (and they are smart, thoughtful half-formed little humans). Tumblr legitimizes everything.
4) Congresspeople in both parties are as troubled as I am. I have no idea if this is good legislation or not, but something needs to be done here. How do we balance the need to protect kids, my right to watch all the porn I want and the privacy of people like me? I'm not sure but age has made me a lot more humble about the problems of honorable people grappling with issues like this.
I believe in climate change and most of the report BIG problems with this posting here
1) The person identified as the poster "msmash" is a first timer with no previous Slashdot record (read the heading with her name versus the typical heading) and no profile.
2) Hate Trump as much as you want, but the Slashdot/AP a headline misrepresents what Trump. said. The Slashdot headline: "Trump Says He Doesn't Believe Government Climate Report Finding in a New Low". AP headline: "Trump: ‘I don’t believe’ government climate report finding. Notice where the quotation marks are. "I don't believe" are in quotes but the rest of the headline isn't. I doubt this bit of misleading headline was an accident by the very smart, competent AP editors. And according to the AP article what did Trump actually say? At https://apnews.com/c1dfca3088b... after SIX paragraphs of editorializing we find what he actually said: "The president said he read some of the report “and it’s fine” but not the part about the devastating economic impact. “I don’t believe it,” Trump said, adding that if “every other place on Earth is dirty, that’s not so good.” So Trump AGREES WITH THE REPORT but questions the conclusion about the impact.
And he has good reason to- the report speculates a "worse case" sometime in the future (no date provided) of a an 8.5 degree temperature rise and further speculates on "outdoor labor unable to work because of climate change" to come up with the 10% loss figure. Even the AP article reviewers have a problem with this approach: "Yohe said it was unfortunate that some media jumped on that 10 percent number because that was a rare case of hyperbole in the report. “The 10 percent is not implausible as a possible future for 2100,” Yohe said. “It’s just not terribly likely.” Kopp, on the other hand, said the 10 percent figure seems believable. “This is probably a best estimate,” Kopp said. “It could be larger. It could be smaller.”. This is an example of the permanent government of DC civil servants (who are sometimes right, sometimes not) piling up a rickety pyramid of assumptions-based-on-assuptions, to come up with a scary hypothesis for 80+ years in the future and and then slapping an imagined, highly speculative "cost" on it This sort of nonsense/propaganda is what leads many reasonable people to think the whole Climate Change" thing is a hoax, which it is not.
3) About the comments. At 7:00 am CST we had five up for a postings on slavery and other off-topic comments. This to me suggests that some bots have crept into the "like" system and maybe the original poster may not be real at all. Not an accusation exactly but no profile and no previous Slashdot comments or posting... a bit suspicious.
Readers, just be aware that all sides are now acting like the Russians and you as a reader have to be apply a very critical eye to the stuff you are being fed.
I've had a number of small cameras with 30x lenses. Much better than a cell phone. Both Sony and Canon cameras used to come with a manual the size of the camera and thin. It fit in the camera casse. First, there was no 10 pages of "Do not drop the camera in toilet" junk. Second, they just showed a pic of the camera and then gave you the tree of features for each setting. Short and sweet. Usually about 40 pages. If ANY manufacturer had a small camera with a manual like that it would be my next buy. They don't exist (and I've really looked).
Why the manual and not the internet? I can circle things in the index. I can underline and mark the features I keep forgetting. I don't have to stand in a square in Montenegro, turn on my cell phone and search the internet to find the so-called manual (meaning a brochure of all the add-ons they are trying to sell you plus a long list of half-blank pages with WARNING! in size 4 type inserted by the legal team). I need the equivalent of a Linux cheat sheet.
A note for the Japanese companies making these wonderful but barely usable $300 cameras. There is a real business opportunity here....
About this interchange: The Penn Turnpike was built before the interstates and was a toll road. So the 1950s connector between the new NJ section of I-95 (at exit 7A I think) and the Penn Turnpike was a "turnpike only" connection. Pennsylvania refused to allow it to connect to free roads so when a free interstate was run through Philadelphia there was no connection . The same thing happened in western MD where I-70 came near the Turnpike. PA refused to connect them so all travelers were shuttled through two miles of Pennsylvania Burger Chefs and gas stations in order extract some money before the traveler could get to the Penn Turnpike. It was the county's biggest business.
Two miles west of the NJ Turnpike at exit 7 is the golden north-south road; I-295, which goes through the NJ suburbs of Philadelphia all the way to the Delaware Memorial Bridge and is free. All the trucks going south get off the Jersey Pike at exit 7, gas up, take a snooze and head south on the free road, now- finally- well marked. Until about 2000 the road was never mentioned when you were going south in New Jersey and coming north into NJ across the Delaware Memorial Bridge (which incidentally has a phenomenal view- get in the right-hand lane, go slow and take in the view) there was simply an exit called "route 130". If there is heavy traffic going south on the Jersey Pike (every Sunday in the summer) get off on 295 and get straight to the bridge- no five mile backup to pay the tolls. The whole goal of NJ was to keep you off the free road and keep you paying the NJ highway toll- it was just like the Penn Turnpike.
If it is late fall and your are driving NYC to DC go down the main eastern shore roads and look at the flocks of geese wheeling and landing in the freshly harvested corn fields. They are huge, dignified birds and loud. Stop for 20 minutes and really look. This is the real thing- a National Geographic show in front of your eyes. Children are amazed. Then head to DC via the Bay Bridge at Annapolis- free heading south.
In my early youth dodging tolls was an art form. There were seven 25 cent tolls on the Connecticut Turnpike between RI and NYC; just flip the coin and drive on. Late at night the rich people would often miss, grumble and throw a second coin. So we poverty-stricken college students at 2 am would pretend to miss, get out of the car and usually harvest half-a-dozen quarters before the toll collecters could stop us (they had a nice side job keeping the coins for themselves). By the time we hit NYC we were usually $ 10 richer, enough to pay for the gas (30-50 cents/ gallon and in a price war as low as 19 cents). At the time the federal minimum wage was 85 cents/hour.
I still know the back roads through the Bronx to avoid the horrible NYC jams on the GW Bridge and at least once in your life heading north at 2 am (the best time to go through NYC) you should go through town via the 1920s, two lane Holland Tunnel turn left and surf north on 7th/8th Avenue with the cabs, an endless stream of red lights timed at 25-30 mph going almost 10 miles north to the GW bridge and back onto 95 north. Today heading north I usually go DC to Baltimore, north to Harrisburg and across the mountains with the trucks to the new Tappen Zee and I 84. A bit longer but much nicer.
The driving into New England is so bad that most truckers refuse to do it and if they do drive it must charge very high rates, which is why New England has such lousy fruits and vegetables and at such high prices. If this were Europe they would widen I-81, cross the Hudson north of the Tappen Zee and get straight to the Mass Pike. I've just spent the summer in the Balkans, often traveling by bus. Bosnia and Macedonia now have better interstates that the U.S. and far more interesting truck stops. And you should see how they build the new divided roads- much higher quality than in the U.S.- they are built to last. But then the locals compare the new EU roads to the Roman roads- they expect the bridges to last for 1,000 years.
The folks pushing the message want to call it "an alert", which makes it sound important (sometimes it is), official and mandatory.
A more neutral term is "message", as in "The Feds want to send you a message". We have a long history of people with power trying to force users to listen to or view a message. Corporations embed spam messages in devices ("Your operating system is out of date" and "You haven't backed up your IPhone in four weeks"),. Governments... remember when Amber Alerts were sold as a way to stop child kidnappers? Now the messages on the Amber Alert signs on the highway are about "Granddad didn't come home last night", the 15 year-old girl who ran off with her 18 year-old boyfriend and about divorced spouses who didn't get the kids back home in time after a mandatory visit.
And now we have the end of the line of absurdities; when there is absolutely nothing to report the signs tell us to "Buckle your seat belt", which is pure "public service" advertising. If reading a text while driving is slightly dangerous what about a ticker-tape Amber sign?
Somewhere on those signs may be a real kidnapper or murderer on the loose. But crying wolf too often with vague messages has conditioned us to ignore the message stream, which is too bad for the occasional real Ambers we once claimed to protect.
The federal alert messages may be true or false, important or not important; the issue is "Should you be forced to receive them on your phone?".
Note I said "messages", not "Alerts". There are arguments on both sides. I'm only dealing with the slanted ad-lingo which the word "Alert" represents.
A few years ago somebody got the list of porn tapes a supreme court justice had rented. Suddenly we had a privacy crisis. Soon a law was passed "protecting" these records from public disclosure. The lesson is simple; if we want to have our privacy protected we must invade the privacy of our rulers- the President, the legislators, the judges and all the public figures including the network anchors and the late night TV hosts. They hate being exposed but more than that they hate being laughed at for enjoying an occasional sperm facial tape.
So the hunt is on. Want to know who Bill Clinton's daddy really is? Why just grab an "Abandoned DNA sample" (meaning a water glass he has sipped from) and get a street person to submit it for $79 to 23AndMe or one of the other sites as "My DNA". Then follow the GEDMatch instructions and upload the results. Voila! Party Time. Map Bill's real family
Is Alen Dershowitz 100% Jewish? Is Bill Clinton's real father the lawyer all the locals in Hope, AK think he is? How many Congressmen knocked up a girl in high school ? MLK? Are you a Kennedy? Who in media is part black or part Neanderthal? How many half-sisters and brothers does Sigourny Weaver have lurking in the bushes out in Scarsdale (her daddy Pat was a handsome devil)? You too might be an heir to the Bronfman fortune, one of Charles Manson's kids or General George Patton's grandson..... Family reunions will be a lot more interesting.
Of course our rulers will be shocked, truly shocked, and quickly pass laws to shut down the party but the genetic cat will be out of the bag and some 18 year-old will found D-NApster and host the Obama DNA in Iceland or Tuvalu. Imagine the new forms of blackmail and international terrorism... A bit of Bill Cosby's medicine cabinet to put you to sleep and you wake up and find some Rumanian kid is selling your eggs or sperm on Alibaba...
The article says Greylock can access "fully up-to-date IPhones".
Can Greylock access Iphones that don't allow automatic updating? If Greylock can't, then Apple has given out an update that allows outsiders to access your IPhone. So much for the Apple claim to be a privacy good-guy. Even more interesting is the possibility that Apple has pushed an OS update to phones which have automatic update turned off, something we usually associate with Microsoft.
Is there anyone out there capable of looking at the stream of bits coming-and-going and reading the flash memory that holds the updated code? And if Apple can push an update, what does that mean for the validity of the phone log when the IPhone shows up as a court exhibit? And do IPhones in Europe and China get the same treatment?
The logic of this ia that If we connect people they will interact; If they interact it can be good or bad; examples of good branch are they fall in love and feed the poor- examples of bad branch are they kill each other. Who is responsible?
The logic applies to Slashdot, Facebook, the NYT, every radio playlist... and you and I in our daily activities. I'm glad Facebook is at least thinking about it
So the tension is between those who believe the connecting agency is responsible and those who believe the individuals being connected are responsible. Most of us believe both
Quite appropriate on Good Friday, don't you think?
Advertisements for hemorrhoid treatments; Amber Alerts; "Happy Birthday!" messages; strobe lights to accompany music streams; political adds; soft core porn; hard core porn; racial slurs; state laws deciding which slurs are traffic offenses; biblical verses; prohibitions on Arabic language headlight messages in Alabama; being fired for headlight crimes; going to court and claiming that your headlights were hacked by neo-Nazis..... and... Trump tweets.
I think I'll just drive in daylight and take Uber wearing a blindfold
The first purpose-built American aircraft carriers, the Lexington and Saratoga, had the same lean-to-the-side issue. They were laid down during WW I as battle cruisers, which were the size of battleships with less armor and higher speed. They were designed as scouts.
When the hulls were converted to carriers in the 1920s they were designed to be part of the scouting force that screened the main fleet. So they carried 8 x 8" guns (the same battery as a heavy cruiser) near the superstructure on the right (starboard) side of the ship plus, if I remember correctly, the superstructure was partly armored. Adding 2,000 tons to one side made them tilt so the fuel tanks on the left side of the ship were basically ballast, only usable in an emergency.
During the civil war West Virginia was removed from Virginia and made a separate state. The Constitution didn't matter. Lincoln could either save constitutional government or the union and he choose to save the union. Technically, the suspension of civil rights during the civil war was based on marshall law during an insurrection. That has never been revoked.
Having said "the southern states are still in the union" the federal government was faced with a problem. The 1866 election, based on the 1864 election results, with the southern states now voting, would have led to a Democratic victory. That would have overturned the verdict of the bloodiest war in our nation's history. The Republicans, understandably were not going to let that happen. Thus what we usually call "reconstruction" which was only ended when the 1980 census limited the likelyhood of a Democratic victory. The north with the aid of huge immigrant flows, had now won the war, and got to write the history books.
In any case, West Virginia was removed from Virginia without the concurrence of the state of Virginia in direct violation of the constitution but the post civil war era was also the post constitutional era.
Wonderful term. And like most modern terms tries to disguise the actors.
In this case we have a subject (the "Bros"- meaning guys who want to pay money for sex with cute girls) a verb ("trafficking"), an indirect object (pimp) and a direct object (victim, girl). Who is doing the acting here? Trying to illuminate the agency of the girls is like the old Victorian crusades- the girls were all lured into a life of prostitution by guys with long mustaches and were perfectly innocent. No. Sometimes the bed seems like a better choice than the sweatshop.
Sorry; they are whores. They are not victims. They would prefer to not spend 10hours/day working in a sweatshop back in Thailand or Vietnam so they sign up to rent out their bodies to guys with money. Most of the action in south Asia is now Chinese and Japanese guys but the local U.S. non-profits "doing good" could never get that posted on Slashdot. If the girls were really being lied to and thought they would be cleaning houses in the U.S. the first thing they would do is run to the police. They don't. The whole business may be pretty sad (poor 19 year-old girls from rural Asia; middle-aged guys from the first world who don't want to put up with nagging western women) but the girls are not passive objects being "trafficked".
And the economics? High end Caucasian college girls in the U.S. willing to work as prostitutes are in short supply and are quite expensive. Most of their clients are rich guys looking for "the girlfriend experience", 40 year-old ex-nerds and successful blue-collar entrepreneurs trying to live out the dating experience they never had with the cute cheerleader. I've know the girls; I've known the guys. Both groups are surprisingly likable.
And so are the Asian whores and the guys having sex with them. I know guys who go to Thailand twice a year and I even know something about some of the American guys who run those operations. Human needs are not pretty. But the illegal immigrant girls are no different from the Mexicans working on the construction crews in Austin; upper middle class people want cheap labor and if they have to break a few laws to get it, that's OK. After all, this is one crime the prosecutors will never prosecute.
When I call the police here in Austin, TX they automatically know from my cell phone number who I am and where I live. I assume that all police have the same ability.
If for whatever reason the police can't verify the caller's identity it should be a standard procedure for the police to ask for the number and call it back to verify the caller's ID. If it turns out to be the phone of an Indian telemarketer, a spoofed number or for whatever reason is untraceable it is a phony call. All this can be done in the first 30 seconds after a call is received while the police are responding and before they arrive.
If every pizza delivery service in the U.S. can detect phony phone calls and ignore then why can't the police?
Thought experiment: if the address was for the town's mayor do you think the police would have treated this as a real call?
I'm not saying the police should ignore these calls. But the organizations that represent police departments should be developing best practices, operator training and phone call checking procedures to at least get the first responders up to the skill level of Dominos.
Six people developed COBAL during a set of 1959 allnighters in a NYC hotel room. One was a woman. Did any of the men get a NYT obit?
They were all important figures in their day but only one gets the Times treatment because the NYT is on a "Women in technology" kick. Death as newshook for an editorial.
They did the same thing with Grace Hopper. Now Grace was a shrewd, funny lady. I used to drive her to Mensa meeting in the 1970s. She lived in a high-rise in Arlington, Va and I lived nearby. One time, with rain pouring through a hole in my convertible's roof, I apologized for getting her soaked and we talked about her elderly, leaky, model A Ford, which somehow made it through WWII via a couple of engine rebuilds she did on her kitchen table. She liked guys- they helped her drag the motor up the stairs.
Grace and Miss Sammet did share one thing; they never married and never had children or grandchildren. Making that whole thing work - the relationship; the long, intellectually challenging hours; the reality of raising children- is easier now but, take my word for it, the young tech girls here in Austin still talk about it, especially in private among themselves.
All I can say is "So long Jean. So long Grace.", dying alone in a nursing home. It all makes me a little sad.
To say that the U.S. is "historically" the biggest contributor to CO2 production is true but misleading. It is like saying "China is historically the leading cause of overpopulation" even though China has had a one-child policy for almost 40 years.
Kyoto (1992), Cancun (2010) and Paris (2015) are valid attempts to slow down and end CO2 increase using an international treaty. The problem is in this map:
Today's biggest and fastest growing emitters (China and soon India) are in the third world and are developing countries, which are given a pass by the treaty. Russia, Japan, New Zealand and Canada either never signed up or have dropped out because of the developing world loophole.
The issue is per capita emissions (high in first world and energy producers) and total emissions (high in third world). See http://www.ucsusa.org/global_w...,
CO2 is a real problem but the NYT is filling the knowledge hole with junk and propaganda, which is too bad.
As anybody with even a slight familiarity with Uber and Lyft knows, this argument about criminal checks vs fingerprinting is really about illegals trying to earn a living.
Illegal immigrants and people on student and tourist visas with no U.S. work permit go to Uber, undergo a "criminal check"and drive for a living. A criminal check finds nothing because the person has no record at all. A fingerprint check to NCIS would show the person doesn't match the ID or is a visa-overstayer.
None of these companies use the Federal secure ID system to see if the prospective "contractor" has a right to work in the U.S. They already know the answer. Cheap illegal labor is at the core of the Uber business model.
Either the Texas legislature is full of really dumb people or they are the usual country club Republicans who want cheap, docile servants. I live in Texas. They may be lazy but they aren't dumb. Illegal are dirt cheap and don't talk back like American Blacks do.
If Uber had to depend on American drivers they would be so short of drivers they would have to raise driver payments and prices- which would drive them out of business in short order..
For the record I know people working for Uber on the "sign up new drivers" end and they live on bonuses and commissions. They know the score and that the drivers are not legally allowed to contract with Uber. This is just like the Wells Fargo scandal- employees are given financial incentives to get results and management looks the other way.
Also the number of Uber "drivers" who seem to be working 23 hours/day would suggest they are "hot bunking" the cars and IDs- three guys using one car and one ID.
This is a scam. Yo, Justice Department; subpoena the "criminal check" records from Uber in one city as a test and see how many of the drivers are using real names and are here working legally. Then use the usual conspiracy charges to work your way up the Uber chain to see how far the scam goes.
If any outsider can install and run a program on your computer it is no longer your computer. Javascript is such a program. So is the permission to open a Microsoft docx document. In a corporate environment there is usually a guard dog to protect you. In a home Windows, Apple or Unix-based system you are on your own. If you leave the keys to your car in the ignition don't be surprised if someone takes it for a ride.
The Slashdot PieDiePie article says: "In the video, PewDiePie discusses the recent actions of the Wall Street Journal, whose reporters sent nine cherry-picked and edited videos to Disney, which led directly to Disney's decision to terminate their relationship with him. These video clips and others used to "prove" PewDiePie's guilt have been edited (he claims) to remove all context, to the extent of using a pose of him pointing at something as a Nazi salute and using a clip where other players are creating swastikas in a game and editing out the part where he is asking them to stop."
PewDiePie is either correct (the WSJ reporters did what he said) or he is wrong. Has the WSJ denied his account? Apparently not. So, absent such a denial, I'll assume that WSJ reporters actually created an edited version of the PewDiePie videos and passed them (before publication) to Disney officials asking for comments? If PewDiePie's version is accurate, we have the WSJ (or a rogue operation in the news room) creating fake news. Then instead of publishing the supposed scoop the WSJ reporters showed the excerpts in advance to Disney and used the threat of publication as a way to demand (or extort) instant action by Disney. Disney knew when to fold; the WSJ project stampeded the frightened company into terminating the contract with PieDiePie.
To me it sounds like China, Russia and much of the Third World. Except that in the U.S. the real story oozes out through the cracks because PewDiePie can still hold a press conference and Slashdot can still report PewDiePie's actual words. So a vigilant reader can put together the timeline and make his or her own judgement. With the court-ordered virtual elimination of slander and libel laws in the U.S, PieDiePie has no legal recourse against the WSJ or the reporters. In every other civilized democracy (England, Canada, Japan, all of the EU, Australia, etc) you have a right to your good name and anyone who publishes a lie about you is held responsible. Our Supreme Court eliminated our traditional rights in a mid-60s decision dealing with- no surprise- a misrepresentation by the NYT.
As word spreads of this sort of WSJ article, the WSJ may begin to have the same credibility problem the NYT has. A newspaper can either represent an ideological movement or it can report the news. It can't do both. Traditionally the WSJ editorial page (libertarian and rightist) was totally separate from the news pages (fact-based, professional and sober). The two sections would routinely attack each other.. This PieDiePie report appears to me to be a successful attempt by WSJ news people to create editorial content in the news section; basically "How can we engineer an article on neo-Nazis with an implicit message about the Trump administration?" . All reporting and editing introduces a bias, but when the bias-content overwhelms the news-content the paper quietly begins to die. I usually trust the WSJ to report stories not manufacture them. Is my faith misplaced?
I have an IPhone 4S using wifi and a Consumer Cellular account. Last summer in France I encountered an Apple software problem that locked my phone. The Apple store in Paris fixed it but I turned off automatic updates to stop the problem from repeating while I'm in the lovely French countryside. Apple ignore my "Don't update" instructions; they downloaded the update anyway and installed nagware that "reminds me" every evening that updates are off and I should install the new OS update..
The end result is that Apple Inc. via the nagware blocks me from making a 911 calls for critical seconds in an emergency. Let's say I'm in bed and hear the burglar in the living room. There is an "emergency" icon on the main screen but I'm used to entering my four-digit pass code so I groggily punch it in and go to the "phone" icon to make a 911 call.
But the Apple nagware is linked to the phone button. Suddenly nagware fills my full screen and offers to install the new operating system I've explicitly rejected. It gives me three choices in 3/8" tall letters- "Install now"; "Install later"; "Details" (which is an add). I'm blocked by Apple Inc. from using the phone until I lie and click on "install later". As soon as I click on it a SECOND Apple nag-add pops up and asked if I'm really, really, really sure I don't want them to install the software later tonight. I'm still locked out of making the 911 call until I click the "leave me alone you bastards" icon. FINALLY I can call 911- after fumbling with my phone for 10-15 precious seconds and having to read the fine print in the dark (I'm 72- Where in hell are my glasses?)..
Now am I missing something; I thought blocking 911 calls was a crime? How do I fix this and delete the nagware and the copy of the update? And of course I will NEVER update the OS to fix the nagware problem unless the update is something I can have looked at (uncompiled code) to make sure it does one thing only- delete the nagware.
Slashdot Mirror
Public-key/private-key encryption systems are based on factoring primes and the premise is no one can identify all the primes in a truly huge list of whole numbers starting at zero.
So now that we know what Google can do in corporate spare time with its processors, maybe someone out there with more knowledge that I have can answer the question "Can two-factor encryption be undermined by the computing power Google used today to generate a Pi Day (March 14th) news release?"
The commentator above is correct; scientists define a group as a separate species only if it can't interbreed with other closely related groups.
Leave it to the lawyers to muddy the waters. The misnamed Endangered Species Act apparently defined a species as any separate breeding population (the Florida panthers, for example) in order to "extend the reach" of the law well beyond merely protecting endangered species. This is the usual example of lawyers and legislators using the law to try to redefine words for public relations purposes. The result is that the public- and the lawyers- now don't know what a species is. This is the left wing version of the unborn child gambit on the right.
Personally, I think Neanderthal girls are hot. I keep hoping to meet one at the beach. They're really good at beach volleyball. Do Neanderthals girls qualify for NCAA athletic scholarships?
This is nonsense and Slashdot should get its act together.
Why are they publishing a public relations piece? I believe in global warming. It has affected glaciers and will continue to do so, with consequences that are both good and bad. But this supposed scientific report... let's start with "Who are they and where is this published?"
Who are they? We don't know. All we have is the following: "the Hindu Kush Himalaya Assessment was put together over five years by 210 authors. The report includes input from more than 350 researchers and policymakers from 22 countries. " This appears to be the usual self-appointed group of experts. Again, they may be right or wrong- or more likely giving us the "This is horrible" bad news without the offsetting good news (more arable land, etc). Further tracking reveals all the four named authors are all from something called the "International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD) Kathmandu Nepal" And who funds this? Good luck...
Where was it published? You follow the links in the article and they all lead to springer.com which says they are "Providing researchers with access to millions of scientific documents from journals, books, series, protocols, reference works and proceedings."
NO! I WANT TO KNOW WHERE IT WAS PUBLISHED. IS THIS A PEER REVIEWED JOURNAL ARTICLE OR NOT? The answer appears to be "not" . At https://link.springer.com/book... we finally get the following: "This open access volume is the first comprehensive assessment of the Hindu Kush Himalaya (HKH) region...". This is the usual non-profit funded PR piece trying to affect public opinion and through it public policy. I may agree with the conclusions or I may not but don't kid yourself, this is propaganda by one side of a policy debate and nothing more.
So thirty minutes of digging on my part yields "This is not science it is partisan BS"
Now back to the original question; Why is Slashdot publishing this? Are the Slashdot moderators and editors who select what appears here incompetent or are they so wound up in the left/liberal, phony moral outrage worldview that all an article has to do is agree with their moral posture to get into Slashdot?
Want to stop global warming? Well first stop flying around the world in jet planes, the biggest per-mile contributor to upper atmosphere pollution. Come on outraged snowflakes, forget the snowboarding trip to Colorado and do your part to save the planet. You are, after all, among the world's biggest polluters of the upper atmosphere. As for me, even knowing, I'll still head for Europe this summer. Dear snowflakes let me make it clear; I'm not claiming to be more moral, more pure than you, just less twitishly pompous.
And dear Slashdot moderators and editors; now could we get back to real news about technology for a change?
What does that mean for me and my college roommate? He has a crush on the only cute girl in my econ class. I told him she leaves the Econ Building M-W-F at exactly 11:50, tweets about the class (leaking her position data) while walking across the quad one of two ways to the Student Union and orders a burrito for lunch. So the best way to "accidentally" meet her is to track which path she's using by the tweet location, walk out of the Electrical Engineering building at exactly 11:51 and head either northwest or southwest (depending on the tweet info) then let nature take it's course.
Now I discover I'm probably going to be violating a Facebook patent by telling him the algorithm via a text. It could be worse I guess; I could owe a Chinese company a royalty or get sued by a Boston patent troll.
As an act of civic courage I'd like to say the following
1) I look at Tumblr porn regularly. Actually it is in bursts; sometimes an hour at a time for days on end, other times weeks will go by with no porn. My internal state is reflected in my internet usage. I'm fascinated by the categories and what they mean. There should be more academic research but the academics I know say any publication on the subject is a death sentence professionally. And there is clearly a lot of Russian/foreign influence pedaling and hidden ideology on Tumblr. The new owners want clean hands and they are willing to pay the financial price. I both applaud them and regret what we are loosing.
2) Google searches for porn are revealing. Hit "Safe search off" and check it out. But no Tumblr material shows up unless you specifically ask with a search like "Tumblr, bukakke (sic), interracial (or just IR), and trannie" The results are amazing but largely hidden from the average viewer. This is how censorship now works. And maybe it isn't a bad idea for the corporation and the viewers who don't want to see the stuff.
3) I want to watch it but am deeply troubled by the idea that 11 year-olds are being mentally and emotionally formed by this stuff.; Ask the kids. It is always "Well, some of my friends..."; ask "Do your parents know?" and they give you the "Are you kidding" look. So if you are an adult with kids, ask- privately. Especially the kids of your own gender. The results are everywhere and totally invisible to most adults. Tumblr Ana sites are hugely informative- and dangerous; troubled 18 year-olds with daddy issues know how to suck dick like a pro (and they are smart, thoughtful half-formed little humans). Tumblr legitimizes everything.
4) Congresspeople in both parties are as troubled as I am. I have no idea if this is good legislation or not, but something needs to be done here. How do we balance the need to protect kids, my right to watch all the porn I want and the privacy of people like me? I'm not sure but age has made me a lot more humble about the problems of honorable people grappling with issues like this.
I believe in climate change and most of the report BIG problems with this posting here
1) The person identified as the poster "msmash" is a first timer with no previous Slashdot record (read the heading with her name versus the typical heading) and no profile.
2) Hate Trump as much as you want, but the Slashdot/AP a headline misrepresents what Trump. said. The Slashdot headline: "Trump Says He Doesn't Believe Government Climate Report Finding in a New Low". AP headline: "Trump: ‘I don’t believe’ government climate report finding. Notice where the quotation marks are. "I don't believe" are in quotes but the rest of the headline isn't. I doubt this bit of misleading headline was an accident by the very smart, competent AP editors. And according to the AP article what did Trump actually say? At https://apnews.com/c1dfca3088b... after SIX paragraphs of editorializing we find what he actually said: "The president said he read some of the report “and it’s fine” but not the part about the devastating economic impact. “I don’t believe it,” Trump said, adding that if “every other place on Earth is dirty, that’s not so good.” So Trump AGREES WITH THE REPORT but questions the conclusion about the impact.
And he has good reason to- the report speculates a "worse case" sometime in the future (no date provided) of a an 8.5 degree temperature rise and further speculates on "outdoor labor unable to work because of climate change" to come up with the 10% loss figure. Even the AP article reviewers have a problem with this approach: "Yohe said it was unfortunate that some media jumped on that 10 percent number because that was a rare case of hyperbole in the report. “The 10 percent is not implausible as a possible future for 2100,” Yohe said. “It’s just not terribly likely.” Kopp, on the other hand, said the 10 percent figure seems believable. “This is probably a best estimate,” Kopp said. “It could be larger. It could be smaller.”. This is an example of the permanent government of DC civil servants (who are sometimes right, sometimes not) piling up a rickety pyramid of assumptions-based-on-assuptions, to come up with a scary hypothesis for 80+ years in the future and and then slapping an imagined, highly speculative "cost" on it This sort of nonsense/propaganda is what leads many reasonable people to think the whole Climate Change" thing is a hoax, which it is not.
3) About the comments. At 7:00 am CST we had five up for a postings on slavery and other off-topic comments. This to me suggests that some bots have crept into the "like" system and maybe the original poster may not be real at all. Not an accusation exactly but no profile and no previous Slashdot comments or posting... a bit suspicious.
Readers, just be aware that all sides are now acting like the Russians and you as a reader have to be apply a very critical eye to the stuff you are being fed.
I've had a number of small cameras with 30x lenses. Much better than a cell phone. Both Sony and Canon cameras used to come with a manual the size of the camera and thin. It fit in the camera casse. First, there was no 10 pages of "Do not drop the camera in toilet" junk. Second, they just showed a pic of the camera and then gave you the tree of features for each setting. Short and sweet. Usually about 40 pages. If ANY manufacturer had a small camera with a manual like that it would be my next buy. They don't exist (and I've really looked).
Why the manual and not the internet? I can circle things in the index. I can underline and mark the features I keep forgetting. I don't have to stand in a square in Montenegro, turn on my cell phone and search the internet to find the so-called manual (meaning a brochure of all the add-ons they are trying to sell you plus a long list of half-blank pages with WARNING! in size 4 type inserted by the legal team). I need the equivalent of a Linux cheat sheet.
A note for the Japanese companies making these wonderful but barely usable $300 cameras. There is a real business opportunity here....
I spent 50 years driving DC to Rhode Island.
About this interchange: The Penn Turnpike was built before the interstates and was a toll road. So the 1950s connector between the new NJ section of I-95 (at exit 7A I think) and the Penn Turnpike was a "turnpike only" connection. Pennsylvania refused to allow it to connect to free roads so when a free interstate was run through Philadelphia there was no connection . The same thing happened in western MD where I-70 came near the Turnpike. PA refused to connect them so all travelers were shuttled through two miles of Pennsylvania Burger Chefs and gas stations in order extract some money before the traveler could get to the Penn Turnpike. It was the county's biggest business.
Two miles west of the NJ Turnpike at exit 7 is the golden north-south road; I-295, which goes through the NJ suburbs of Philadelphia all the way to the Delaware Memorial Bridge and is free. All the trucks going south get off the Jersey Pike at exit 7, gas up, take a snooze and head south on the free road, now- finally- well marked. Until about 2000 the road was never mentioned when you were going south in New Jersey and coming north into NJ across the Delaware Memorial Bridge (which incidentally has a phenomenal view- get in the right-hand lane, go slow and take in the view) there was simply an exit called "route 130". If there is heavy traffic going south on the Jersey Pike (every Sunday in the summer) get off on 295 and get straight to the bridge- no five mile backup to pay the tolls. The whole goal of NJ was to keep you off the free road and keep you paying the NJ highway toll- it was just like the Penn Turnpike.
If it is late fall and your are driving NYC to DC go down the main eastern shore roads and look at the flocks of geese wheeling and landing in the freshly harvested corn fields. They are huge, dignified birds and loud. Stop for 20 minutes and really look. This is the real thing- a National Geographic show in front of your eyes. Children are amazed. Then head to DC via the Bay Bridge at Annapolis- free heading south.
In my early youth dodging tolls was an art form. There were seven 25 cent tolls on the Connecticut Turnpike between RI and NYC; just flip the coin and drive on. Late at night the rich people would often miss, grumble and throw a second coin. So we poverty-stricken college students at 2 am would pretend to miss, get out of the car and usually harvest half-a-dozen quarters before the toll collecters could stop us (they had a nice side job keeping the coins for themselves). By the time we hit NYC we were usually $ 10 richer, enough to pay for the gas (30-50 cents/ gallon and in a price war as low as 19 cents). At the time the federal minimum wage was 85 cents/hour.
I still know the back roads through the Bronx to avoid the horrible NYC jams on the GW Bridge and at least once in your life heading north at 2 am (the best time to go through NYC) you should go through town via the 1920s, two lane Holland Tunnel turn left and surf north on 7th/8th Avenue with the cabs, an endless stream of red lights timed at 25-30 mph going almost 10 miles north to the GW bridge and back onto 95 north. Today heading north I usually go DC to Baltimore, north to Harrisburg and across the mountains with the trucks to the new Tappen Zee and I 84. A bit longer but much nicer.
The driving into New England is so bad that most truckers refuse to do it and if they do drive it must charge very high rates, which is why New England has such lousy fruits and vegetables and at such high prices. If this were Europe they would widen I-81, cross the Hudson north of the Tappen Zee and get straight to the Mass Pike. I've just spent the summer in the Balkans, often traveling by bus. Bosnia and Macedonia now have better interstates that the U.S. and far more interesting truck stops. And you should see how they build the new divided roads- much higher quality than in the U.S.- they are built to last. But then the locals compare the new EU roads to the Roman roads- they expect the bridges to last for 1,000 years.
The folks pushing the message want to call it "an alert", which makes it sound important (sometimes it is), official and mandatory.
A more neutral term is "message", as in "The Feds want to send you a message". We have a long history of people with power trying to force users to listen to or view a message. Corporations embed spam messages in devices ("Your operating system is out of date" and "You haven't backed up your IPhone in four weeks"),. Governments... remember when Amber Alerts were sold as a way to stop child kidnappers? Now the messages on the Amber Alert signs on the highway are about "Granddad didn't come home last night", the 15 year-old girl who ran off with her 18 year-old boyfriend and about divorced spouses who didn't get the kids back home in time after a mandatory visit.
And now we have the end of the line of absurdities; when there is absolutely nothing to report the signs tell us to "Buckle your seat belt", which is pure "public service" advertising. If reading a text while driving is slightly dangerous what about a ticker-tape Amber sign?
Somewhere on those signs may be a real kidnapper or murderer on the loose. But crying wolf too often with vague messages has conditioned us to ignore the message stream, which is too bad for the occasional real Ambers we once claimed to protect.
The federal alert messages may be true or false, important or not important; the issue is "Should you be forced to receive them on your phone?".
Note I said "messages", not "Alerts". There are arguments on both sides. I'm only dealing with the slanted ad-lingo which the word "Alert" represents.
Budget season. Public presentation by a four star screaming "Crisis! Give me more money!"
A few years ago somebody got the list of porn tapes a supreme court justice had rented. Suddenly we had a privacy crisis. Soon a law was passed "protecting" these records from public disclosure. The lesson is simple; if we want to have our privacy protected we must invade the privacy of our rulers- the President, the legislators, the judges and all the public figures including the network anchors and the late night TV hosts. They hate being exposed but more than that they hate being laughed at for enjoying an occasional sperm facial tape.
So the hunt is on. Want to know who Bill Clinton's daddy really is? Why just grab an "Abandoned DNA sample" (meaning a water glass he has sipped from) and get a street person to submit it for $79 to 23AndMe or one of the other sites as "My DNA". Then follow the GEDMatch instructions and upload the results. Voila! Party Time. Map Bill's real family
Is Alen Dershowitz 100% Jewish? Is Bill Clinton's real father the lawyer all the locals in Hope, AK think he is? How many Congressmen knocked up a girl in high school ? MLK? Are you a Kennedy? Who in media is part black or part Neanderthal? How many half-sisters and brothers does Sigourny Weaver have lurking in the bushes out in Scarsdale (her daddy Pat was a handsome devil)? You too might be an heir to the Bronfman fortune, one of Charles Manson's kids or General George Patton's grandson..... Family reunions will be a lot more interesting.
Of course our rulers will be shocked, truly shocked, and quickly pass laws to shut down the party but the genetic cat will be out of the bag and some 18 year-old will found D-NApster and host the Obama DNA in Iceland or Tuvalu. Imagine the new forms of blackmail and international terrorism... A bit of Bill Cosby's medicine cabinet to put you to sleep and you wake up and find some Rumanian kid is selling your eggs or sperm on Alibaba...
The article says Greylock can access "fully up-to-date IPhones".
Can Greylock access Iphones that don't allow automatic updating? If Greylock can't, then Apple has given out an update that allows outsiders to access your IPhone. So much for the Apple claim to be a privacy good-guy. Even more interesting is the possibility that Apple has pushed an OS update to phones which have automatic update turned off, something we usually associate with Microsoft.
Is there anyone out there capable of looking at the stream of bits coming-and-going and reading the flash memory that holds the updated code? And if Apple can push an update, what does that mean for the validity of the phone log when the IPhone shows up as a court exhibit? And do IPhones in Europe and China get the same treatment?
And what exactly is a passive shooter?
The logic of this ia that If we connect people they will interact; If they interact it can be good or bad; examples of good branch are they fall in love and feed the poor- examples of bad branch are they kill each other. Who is responsible?
The logic applies to Slashdot, Facebook, the NYT, every radio playlist... and you and I in our daily activities. I'm glad Facebook is at least thinking about it
So the tension is between those who believe the connecting agency is responsible and those who believe the individuals being connected are responsible. Most of us believe both
Quite appropriate on Good Friday, don't you think?
Advertisements for hemorrhoid treatments; Amber Alerts; "Happy Birthday!" messages; strobe lights to accompany music streams; political adds; soft core porn; hard core porn; racial slurs; state laws deciding which slurs are traffic offenses; biblical verses; prohibitions on Arabic language headlight messages in Alabama; being fired for headlight crimes; going to court and claiming that your headlights were hacked by neo-Nazis..... and... Trump tweets.
I think I'll just drive in daylight and take Uber wearing a blindfold
The first purpose-built American aircraft carriers, the Lexington and Saratoga, had the same lean-to-the-side issue. They were laid down during WW I as battle cruisers, which were the size of battleships with less armor and higher speed. They were designed as scouts.
When the hulls were converted to carriers in the 1920s they were designed to be part of the scouting force that screened the main fleet. So they carried
8 x 8" guns (the same battery as a heavy cruiser) near the superstructure on the right (starboard) side of the ship plus, if I remember correctly, the superstructure was partly armored. Adding 2,000 tons to one side made them tilt so the fuel tanks on the left side of the ship were basically ballast, only usable in an emergency.
During the civil war West Virginia was removed from Virginia and made a separate state. The Constitution didn't matter. Lincoln could either save constitutional government or the union and he choose to save the union. Technically, the suspension of civil rights during the civil war was based on marshall law during an insurrection. That has never been revoked.
Having said "the southern states are still in the union" the federal government was faced with a problem. The 1866 election, based on the 1864 election results, with the southern states now voting, would have led to a Democratic victory. That would have overturned the verdict of the bloodiest war in our nation's history. The Republicans, understandably were not going to let that happen. Thus what we usually call "reconstruction" which was only ended when the 1980 census limited the likelyhood of a Democratic victory. The north with the aid of huge immigrant flows, had now won the war, and got to write the history books.
In any case, West Virginia was removed from Virginia without the concurrence of the state of Virginia in direct violation of the constitution but the post civil war era was also the post constitutional era.
Wonderful term. And like most modern terms tries to disguise the actors.
In this case we have a subject (the "Bros"- meaning guys who want to pay money for sex with cute girls) a verb ("trafficking"), an indirect object (pimp) and a direct object (victim, girl). Who is doing the acting here? Trying to illuminate the agency of the girls is like the old Victorian crusades- the girls were all lured into a life of prostitution by guys with long mustaches and were perfectly innocent. No. Sometimes the bed seems like a better choice than the sweatshop.
Sorry; they are whores. They are not victims. They would prefer to not spend 10hours/day working in a sweatshop back in Thailand or Vietnam so they sign up to rent out their bodies to guys with money. Most of the action in south Asia is now Chinese and Japanese guys but the local U.S. non-profits "doing good" could never get that posted on Slashdot. If the girls were really being lied to and thought they would be cleaning houses in the U.S. the first thing they would do is run to the police. They don't. The whole business may be pretty sad (poor 19 year-old girls from rural Asia; middle-aged guys from the first world who don't want to put up with nagging western women) but the girls are not passive objects being "trafficked".
And the economics? High end Caucasian college girls in the U.S. willing to work as prostitutes are in short supply and are quite expensive. Most of their clients are rich guys looking for "the girlfriend experience", 40 year-old ex-nerds and successful blue-collar entrepreneurs trying to live out the dating experience they never had with the cute cheerleader. I've know the girls; I've known the guys. Both groups are surprisingly likable.
And so are the Asian whores and the guys having sex with them. I know guys who go to Thailand twice a year and I even know something about some of the American guys who run those operations. Human needs are not pretty. But the illegal immigrant girls are no different from the Mexicans working on the construction crews in Austin; upper middle class people want cheap labor and if they have to break a few laws to get it, that's OK. After all, this is one crime the prosecutors will never prosecute.
When I call the police here in Austin, TX they automatically know from my cell phone number who I am and where I live. I assume that all police have the same ability.
If for whatever reason the police can't verify the caller's identity it should be a standard procedure for the police to ask for the number and call it back to verify the caller's ID. If it turns out to be the phone of an Indian telemarketer, a spoofed number or for whatever reason is untraceable it is a phony call. All this can be done in the first 30 seconds after a call is received while the police are responding and before they arrive.
If every pizza delivery service in the U.S. can detect phony phone calls and ignore then why can't the police?
Thought experiment: if the address was for the town's mayor do you think the police would have treated this as a real call?
I'm not saying the police should ignore these calls. But the organizations that represent police departments should be developing best practices, operator training and phone call checking procedures to at least get the first responders up to the skill level of Dominos.
Six people developed COBAL during a set of 1959 allnighters in a NYC hotel room. One was a woman. Did any of the men get a NYT obit?
They were all important figures in their day but only one gets the Times treatment because the NYT is on a "Women in technology" kick. Death as newshook for an editorial.
They did the same thing with Grace Hopper. Now Grace was a shrewd, funny lady. I used to drive her to Mensa meeting in the 1970s. She lived in a high-rise in Arlington, Va and I lived nearby. One time, with rain pouring through a hole in my convertible's roof, I apologized for getting her soaked and we talked about her elderly, leaky, model A Ford, which somehow made it through WWII via a couple of engine rebuilds she did on her kitchen table. She liked guys- they helped her drag the motor up the stairs.
Grace and Miss Sammet did share one thing; they never married and never had children or grandchildren. Making that whole thing work - the relationship; the long, intellectually challenging hours; the reality of raising children- is easier now but, take my word for it, the young tech girls here in Austin still talk about it, especially in private among themselves.
All I can say is "So long Jean. So long Grace.", dying alone in a nursing home. It all makes me a little sad.
To say that the U.S. is "historically" the biggest contributor to CO2 production is true but misleading. It is like saying "China is historically the leading cause of overpopulation" even though China has had a one-child policy for almost 40 years.
Kyoto (1992), Cancun (2010) and Paris (2015) are valid attempts to slow down and end CO2 increase using an international treaty. The problem is in this map:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Today's biggest and fastest growing emitters (China and soon India) are in the third world and are developing countries, which are given a pass by the treaty. Russia, Japan, New Zealand and Canada either never signed up or have dropped out because of the developing world loophole.
The issue is per capita emissions (high in first world and energy producers) and total emissions (high in third world). See http://www.ucsusa.org/global_w...,
CO2 is a real problem but the NYT is filling the knowledge hole with junk and propaganda, which is too bad.
As anybody with even a slight familiarity with Uber and Lyft knows, this argument about criminal checks vs fingerprinting is really about illegals trying to earn a living.
Illegal immigrants and people on student and tourist visas with no U.S. work permit go to Uber, undergo a "criminal check"and drive for a living. A criminal check finds nothing because the person has no record at all. A fingerprint check to NCIS would show the person doesn't match the ID or is a visa-overstayer.
None of these companies use the Federal secure ID system to see if the prospective "contractor" has a right to work in the U.S. They already know the answer. Cheap illegal labor is at the core of the Uber business model.
Either the Texas legislature is full of really dumb people or they are the usual country club Republicans who want cheap, docile servants. I live in Texas. They may be lazy but they aren't dumb. Illegal are dirt cheap and don't talk back like American Blacks do.
If Uber had to depend on American drivers they would be so short of drivers they would have to raise driver payments and prices- which would drive them out of business in short order..
For the record I know people working for Uber on the "sign up new drivers" end and they live on bonuses and commissions. They know the score and that the drivers are not legally allowed to contract with Uber. This is just like the Wells Fargo scandal- employees are given financial incentives to get results and management looks the other way.
Also the number of Uber "drivers" who seem to be working 23 hours/day would suggest they are "hot bunking" the cars and IDs- three guys using one car and one ID.
This is a scam. Yo, Justice Department; subpoena the "criminal check" records from Uber in one city as a test and see how many of the drivers are using real names and are here working legally. Then use the usual conspiracy charges to work your way up the Uber chain to see how far the scam goes.
If any outsider can install and run a program on your computer it is no longer your computer. Javascript is such a program. So is the permission to open a Microsoft docx document. In a corporate environment there is usually a guard dog to protect you. In a home Windows, Apple or Unix-based system you are on your own. If you leave the keys to your car in the ignition don't be surprised if someone takes it for a ride.
Make your own decision.
The Slashdot PieDiePie article says: "In the video, PewDiePie discusses the recent actions of the Wall Street Journal, whose reporters sent nine cherry-picked and edited videos to Disney, which led directly to Disney's decision to terminate their relationship with him. These video clips and others used to "prove" PewDiePie's guilt have been edited (he claims) to remove all context, to the extent of using a pose of him pointing at something as a Nazi salute and using a clip where other players are creating swastikas in a game and editing out the part where he is asking them to stop."
PewDiePie is either correct (the WSJ reporters did what he said) or he is wrong. Has the WSJ denied his account? Apparently not. So, absent such a denial, I'll assume that WSJ reporters actually created an edited version of the PewDiePie videos and passed them (before publication) to Disney officials asking for comments? If PewDiePie's version is accurate, we have the WSJ (or a rogue operation in the news room) creating fake news. Then instead of publishing the supposed scoop the WSJ reporters showed the excerpts in advance to Disney and used the threat of publication as a way to demand (or extort) instant action by Disney. Disney knew when to fold; the WSJ project stampeded the frightened company into terminating the contract with PieDiePie.
To me it sounds like China, Russia and much of the Third World. Except that in the U.S. the real story oozes out through the cracks because PewDiePie can still hold a press conference and Slashdot can still report PewDiePie's actual words. So a vigilant reader can put together the timeline and make his or her own judgement. With the court-ordered virtual elimination of slander and libel laws in the U.S, PieDiePie has no legal recourse against the WSJ or the reporters. In every other civilized democracy (England, Canada, Japan, all of the EU, Australia, etc) you have a right to your good name and anyone who publishes a lie about you is held responsible. Our Supreme Court eliminated our traditional rights in a mid-60s decision dealing with- no surprise- a misrepresentation by the NYT.
As word spreads of this sort of WSJ article, the WSJ may begin to have the same credibility problem the NYT has. A newspaper can either represent an ideological movement or it can report the news. It can't do both. Traditionally the WSJ editorial page (libertarian and rightist) was totally separate from the news pages (fact-based, professional and sober). The two sections would routinely attack each other.. This PieDiePie report appears to me to be a successful attempt by WSJ news people to create editorial content in the news section; basically "How can we engineer an article on neo-Nazis with an implicit message about the Trump administration?" . All reporting and editing introduces a bias, but when the bias-content overwhelms the news-content the paper quietly begins to die. I usually trust the WSJ to report stories not manufacture them. Is my faith misplaced?
I have an IPhone 4S using wifi and a Consumer Cellular account. Last summer in France I encountered an Apple software problem that locked my phone. The Apple store in Paris fixed it but I turned off automatic updates to stop the problem from repeating while I'm in the lovely French countryside. Apple ignore my "Don't update" instructions; they downloaded the update anyway and installed nagware that "reminds me" every evening that updates are off and I should install the new OS update..
The end result is that Apple Inc. via the nagware blocks me from making a 911 calls for critical seconds in an emergency. Let's say I'm in bed and hear the burglar in the living room. There is an "emergency" icon on the main screen but I'm used to entering my four-digit pass code so I groggily punch it in and go to the "phone" icon to make a 911 call.
But the Apple nagware is linked to the phone button. Suddenly nagware fills my full screen and offers to install the new operating system I've explicitly rejected. It gives me three choices in 3/8" tall letters- "Install now"; "Install later"; "Details" (which is an add). I'm blocked by Apple Inc. from using the phone until I lie and click on "install later". As soon as I click on it a SECOND Apple nag-add pops up and asked if I'm really, really, really sure I don't want them to install the software later tonight. I'm still locked out of making the 911 call until I click the "leave me alone you bastards" icon. FINALLY I can call 911- after fumbling with my phone for 10-15 precious seconds and having to read the fine print in the dark (I'm 72- Where in hell are my glasses?)..
Now am I missing something; I thought blocking 911 calls was a crime? How do I fix this and delete the nagware and the copy of the update? And of course I will NEVER update the OS to fix the nagware problem unless the update is something I can have looked at (uncompiled code) to make sure it does one thing only- delete the nagware.