I was waiting in line with the others before seventh grade gym class when a girl named Kate came up and said the Challenger had exploded. I didn't see it live on TV, but when I got home, I saw it repeated over and over, that frightfully colorful explosion and the white smoky corkscrews of the SRBs veering away.
The girl was definitely Kate, and I remember looking down while in line, at the green painted wooden bleachers below, and the smell of sweat in the gym. Funny what you remember.
We have to hope that the Chinese government is going through its death throes right now with respect to censorship and political repression. Unless the majority of the population itself really wants it to continue, the trend will be towards free expression, just as recent economic trends have led towards a capitalist society. It's going to take a generation but when it happens China will be the new superpower. I hope their progress in this century won't be retarded by multinational corporations, pervasive political corruption, and backward religious fundamentalists all colluding to consolidate power, as in the U.S.
They're betting their distant future as multibillionaires on the value of their stock and securing their immediate future via cashing in as mere billionaires. Sounds okay with me.
Well, no. While that would be better than the Diebold system, it would still be possible for the person holding your family hostage to demand to see your receipt in order to verify that you voted for the "correct" candidate, thus defeating the purpose of a secret ballot.
I was under the impression that the scheme I read about was immune to such attacks. You could only verify that your vote was posted (whatever it was), and it wasn't publicly visible what that vote actually was.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't there a provably secure, open cryptography-supported way to make sure elections are fair and allow anyone to investigate fraud? I don't have time to search for the URLs at the moment, but there were several methods developed even before the 2000 presidential election in the U.S.
If I understood correctly, we could have a nationwide vote, everyone leaves with a piece of paper with a number printed on it, and can take that number home and verify that their vote was correctly counted on the internet (where public lists of votes are posted), while the whole system remained anonymous. It looked like election fraud could be completely eliminated.
There were more complex schemes with paired barcodes and filtered light or something, but that was the basic idea.
If such a scheme can be mathematically proven to be secure, why aren't we using it?
You have all these measurements that come together consistently, the rate of ice formation, the depth of the ice, these cores are probably consistent with other cores from other areas across a wide range of metrics, you could analyze a million different factors and they all happen to come out in favor of an ancient Earth, not a young earth.
Why won't the fanatics give it up? We need to get with the program and learn as much as we can about this planet before we kill ourselves off permanently.
There are many obvious errors in the methods they used of measuring the age of that ice. Even the pictures in that article are clearly Photoshopped.
I'm a teenager, and my high school biology class here in Topeka School District has already performed a detailed analysis of these biased claims. Since the ice cannot be more than about 6,000 years old, and the article even advocates the "fact" of climate change and microbial evolution, you can easily see how they're trying to destroy religion in America.
This country (and Japan too) is going downhill fast. The end times are near.
Yeah, or a device that makes the entire universe completely screwed up and illogical.
Sorta like an entity that can perceive and then miraculously intervene in human affairs at will. The supernatural. Or does the screwed-up-illogicalness still propagate at the speed of light for some absurd reason?
There's no sign of such an effect. The universe seems to be homogeneous, our galaxy looks just like all the other spiral galaxies at various distances and times.
this device swallows the earth instantly in a big black hole?
Where would all that mass come from?
A related point is that we probably needn't worry about inventing a device that annihilates the entire Universe, either. If such a device could exist, it probably would have already been invented elsewhere, and we wouldn't be here thinking about it.
That's why astronomy and cosmology are so important -- what we see when we look far enough out, is likely all that is possible.
credit cards are unsecure loans, which means that they cannot take your property as collateral for unpaid debts.
While they cannot take your property as collateral, they can sue you if you don't pay up. If they win a judgement, they can take your house, garnish your wages, etc. IANAL and laws differ across states.
What if going into suspended animation for short and/or extended periods became common practice for everyone (or maybe only the elite)? Assuming that the process was safe, reliable and inexpensive? Imagine if you could skip winter every year, or sit out an unfavorable situation until enough time has passed that things would be different when you woke up?
Living spaceships seem like a good way to colonize the rest of our galaxy. The current generation of robotic metal boxes won't get us there.
This again raises the concept of Gaia. Isn't the Earth itself just a big living spaceship? If we want to travel beyond our solar system, we ought to build something like Earth, only smaller.
What a load of crap. Ever met anyone who reached "nirvana"? I think not. Then how do you know it exists? None of your 4 so-called points bear any resemblance to fact.
The whole karma / reincarnation concept is a total crock. Who setup and administers the reincarnation process? Buddhists don't believe in a personal god, but an inpersonal force. However, to orchestrate reincarnation, such a force requires by necessity intelligence and the ability to reason, remember and observe. Said force would need to be omni-present and have a personal interest in justice and human life. Basically what you need for this to actually be real is a personal, ever-present, all-powerful deity..... which buddhists don't believe in. Sheesh!!!
</bigotry>
Who said anything about reincarnation or karma? A load of crap indeed. Instead of deriving your worldview from television and popular culture, calm down and try reading a book or something. Or just sit there for 10 minutes and contemplate your existence. Or are you unable to do that?
The existence of such a pill would contradict everything we know about our brains.
Try integrating what you need to learn with your existing knowledge. It might help to have an emotional reason to remember whatever it is you're trying to remember. Rote memorizing of facts is stupid, because you'll forget them sooner or later.
i.e. This too shall pass, and all of that. A little suffering is inevitable; a lot of suffering is motivational.
1. All worldly life is unsatisfactory, disjointed, containing suffering.
2. There is a cause of suffering, which is attachment or desire, rooted in ignorance.
3. There is an end of suffering, which is Nirvana.
4. There is a path that leads out of suffering, known as the Noble Eightfold Path.
Sadly, not only will Sony face no long term damage, but this will be a blockbuster year for them as they release PS3 and millions of quick-to-forget Slashdotters rush out to buy a PS3.
Not this slashdotter, nor his family nor friends. You neglect the power of the word of mouth. There are a lot of pissed-off consumers out there.
Slashdot Mirror
The girl was definitely Kate, and I remember looking down while in line, at the green painted wooden bleachers below, and the smell of sweat in the gym. Funny what you remember.
We have to hope that the Chinese government is going through its death throes right now with respect to censorship and political repression. Unless the majority of the population itself really wants it to continue, the trend will be towards free expression, just as recent economic trends have led towards a capitalist society. It's going to take a generation but when it happens China will be the new superpower. I hope their progress in this century won't be retarded by multinational corporations, pervasive political corruption, and backward religious fundamentalists all colluding to consolidate power, as in the U.S.
Sorry. Didn't mean to blurt that out, it was in my kill ring.
They're betting their distant future as multibillionaires on the value of their stock and securing their immediate future via cashing in as mere billionaires. Sounds okay with me.
I was under the impression that the scheme I read about was immune to such attacks. You could only verify that your vote was posted (whatever it was), and it wasn't publicly visible what that vote actually was.
A useless assumption that if true, affirms the existence of a deceptive creator. Sorry, deception is incompatible with infinite good and love.
If I understood correctly, we could have a nationwide vote, everyone leaves with a piece of paper with a number printed on it, and can take that number home and verify that their vote was correctly counted on the internet (where public lists of votes are posted), while the whole system remained anonymous. It looked like election fraud could be completely eliminated.
There were more complex schemes with paired barcodes and filtered light or something, but that was the basic idea.
If such a scheme can be mathematically proven to be secure, why aren't we using it?
Why won't the fanatics give it up? We need to get with the program and learn as much as we can about this planet before we kill ourselves off permanently.
I'm a teenager, and my high school biology class here in Topeka School District has already performed a detailed analysis of these biased claims. Since the ice cannot be more than about 6,000 years old, and the article even advocates the "fact" of climate change and microbial evolution, you can easily see how they're trying to destroy religion in America.
This country (and Japan too) is going downhill fast. The end times are near.
Sorta like an entity that can perceive and then miraculously intervene in human affairs at will. The supernatural. Or does the screwed-up-illogicalness still propagate at the speed of light for some absurd reason?
And how do the portions which we can't see matter? Read this, a few links deep.
There's no sign of such an effect. The universe seems to be homogeneous, our galaxy looks just like all the other spiral galaxies at various distances and times.
Where would all that mass come from?
A related point is that we probably needn't worry about inventing a device that annihilates the entire Universe, either. If such a device could exist, it probably would have already been invented elsewhere, and we wouldn't be here thinking about it.
That's why astronomy and cosmology are so important -- what we see when we look far enough out, is likely all that is possible.
Works for me...
While they cannot take your property as collateral, they can sue you if you don't pay up. If they win a judgement, they can take your house, garnish your wages, etc. IANAL and laws differ across states.
What if going into suspended animation for short and/or extended periods became common practice for everyone (or maybe only the elite)? Assuming that the process was safe, reliable and inexpensive? Imagine if you could skip winter every year, or sit out an unfavorable situation until enough time has passed that things would be different when you woke up?
This again raises the concept of Gaia. Isn't the Earth itself just a big living spaceship? If we want to travel beyond our solar system, we ought to build something like Earth, only smaller.
This idea has been well-represented in sci-fi for decades.
What part of "metaphor" do you not understand?
That was fiction. Get out while you still can.
Who said anything about reincarnation or karma? A load of crap indeed. Instead of deriving your worldview from television and popular culture, calm down and try reading a book or something. Or just sit there for 10 minutes and contemplate your existence. Or are you unable to do that?
Fuckin' trolls...
Try integrating what you need to learn with your existing knowledge. It might help to have an emotional reason to remember whatever it is you're trying to remember. Rote memorizing of facts is stupid, because you'll forget them sooner or later.
1. All worldly life is unsatisfactory, disjointed, containing suffering.
2. There is a cause of suffering, which is attachment or desire, rooted in ignorance.
3. There is an end of suffering, which is Nirvana.
4. There is a path that leads out of suffering, known as the Noble Eightfold Path.
The weird thing is, it actually works...
Google cache of PDF A Compression Algorithm for DNA Sequences and Its Applications in Genome Comparison .
Your great-great-great-grandchildren may be kissing Bill Gates or RMS or Linus or Bush or someone else we don't yet know.
Not this slashdotter, nor his family nor friends. You neglect the power of the word of mouth. There are a lot of pissed-off consumers out there.