The UK also introduced regulation of larger commercial blogs that publish "news type" material, part of the recommendations of the Leveson enquiry into press standards. Large blogs have to sign up to a press regulator, if not they get fined. It does not matter where the Blog's servers are located, if someone downloads content in the UK, it is published it in the UK and they can be held responsible ("Downloading here can count as publication in the law.").
Links: "Press regulation deal sparks fears of high libel fines for bloggers - Websites could have to pay exemplary damages if they don't sign up to new regulator, claim opponents of Leveson deal "
The 5D Mk. III applies a strong low-pass filter after a rough line-skipping down sampling step when transforming an original 21 megapixel image into 1080p video (the Mk. II is worse). This results in soft looking video with a subjective resolution more like 720p than 1080p. It's an unfair comparison.
However, professional film makers that use the 5D Mk. II and 5D Mk. III cameras shoot in 2K and 4K Raw by using Magic Lantern (no in camera re-sampling or low pass filters, just pure sensor data). Magic Lantern is a end user project that has produced an alternative firmware for Canon DSLRs which has greatly extended camera capabilities and video quality.
The UK and New Zealand recognise Great Apes as non-human individuals / persons; see 174 page in Kolber (2001). Medical experimentation on them is banned.
Kolber, A.J. 2001. Standing Upright: The Moral and Legal Standing of Humans and Other Apes. Stanford Law Review 54, 164–204.
Great Britain and New Zealand already recognise Great Apes as persons e.g. New Zealand’s Animal Welfare Act of 1999. Accordingly, experiments on Great Apes is banned in these countries.
"As indicated above, some countries, including Great Britain and New Zealand have already enacted strong protections for great apes that are geared toward apes as individuals." Kober (2001)
The argument primatologists are putting forwards, Jane Goodall for example, is that Chimpanzees and other Great Apes should be accorded at least some rights of personhood, similar to the rights accorded to young children and the mentally disabled, which they cognitively exceed e.g. self awareness, empathy, complex planning, theory of mind etc.
Kolber, A.J. 2001. Standing Upright: The Moral and Legal Standing of Humans and Other Apes, Rochester, NY: Social Science Research Network. Stanford Law Review, Vol. 54, p. 163. http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=675851
"A small number of epidemiological studies that have found a dose-response relationship between lead exposure in childhood and self-reported and officially recorded criminal offences in young adulthood; and evidence for the biological plausibility of a causal relationship."
Hall, W., 2013. Did the elimination of lead from petrol reduce crime in the USA in the 1990s? F1000Research 2013, 2:156 (doi: 10.12688/f1000research.2-156.v2)
Since the notorious Rosenhan experiment experiment, the diagnosis of mental illness and neurological conditions has vastly improved, your complaint pertains to the 1973 not today. That experiment was one of the reasons why the DSM was developed, that aims to rigorously categorises the symptoms of psychological and neurological conditions.
Admittedly, the DSM still relies on a symptom check list not objective tests but there are exciting recent developments where fMRI, EEG and genetics are beginning to aid diagnosis rather then subjective judgement alone.
Mental illnesses will be routinely diagnosed with the aid of medical scanning eventually.
Ref:
Duffy, F.H. & Als, H., 2012. A stable pattern of EEG spectral coherence distinguishes children with autism from neuro-typical controls - a large case control study. BMC Medicine, 10, 64.
Funai, A., Bharadwaj, H. & Grissom, W., 2009. Final Report: Improved Discrimination of Asperger Patients using fMRI and Machine Learning.
Nieuwenhuis, M., van Haren, N.E.M., Hulshoff Pol, H.E., Cahn, W., Kahn, R.S. & Schnack, H.G., 2012. Classification of schizophrenia patients and healthy controls from structural MRI scans in two large independent samples. NeuroImage, 61, 606–612.
Schnack, H.G., Nieuwenhuis, M., van Haren, N.E.M., Abramovic, L., Scheewe, T.W., Brouwer, R.M., Hulshoff Pol, H.E. & Kahn, R.S., 2014. Can structural MRI aid in clinical classification? A machine learning study in two independent samples of patients with schizophrenia, bipolar disorder and healthy subjects. NeuroImage, 84, 299
No, Georg Lukas didn't blame Oracle, in his own words...
"The change from the strong OpenSSL cipher list to a hardcoded one starting with weak ciphers is either a sign of horrible ignorance, security incompetence or a clever disguise for an NSA-influenced manipulation - you decide!
Java 1.4 uses RFC 2246, which came out in 1999 and uses weak older ciphers that were approved for export during a time when the US restricted the export of strong encryption. It is about the weakest standard that anyone at Oracle or Google could find.
That's rubbish, if they were exposed to excess radiation from accidents that are covered up, nuclear workers in the US would have increased rates of cancer. They don't (Boice et al, 2011).
The overall health of nuclear workers is better than the national average. They have over all, a lower incidence of all cancers and non-cancer illnesses. Only after adjusting carefully for lifestyle factors and closely examining the health rerecords of 100s of thousands of international workers, some of whom worked in the 1950-70s and were exposed to higher levels of radiation in accidents (e.g. some UK Sellafield nuclear workers in the 50-60s were exposed to high level radiation in accidents)... a weak relationship between radiation dose and cancer risk is noted.
Importantly, the average radiation exposure for nuclear workers has fallen considerably in the last two decades, safety standards are now so strict almost no worker gets more than 10 millisieverts per year (1/10th the dose where any effect is seen). Their average dose of nuclear workers is barely higher then the general public (who by virtue of greater ill health are exposed to more radiation from medical examinations and therapy).
As such, it was noted epidemiologist John D. Boice, that modern nuclear workers are now little use in examining the theoretical relationship between radiation dose and cancer risk, their radiation exposure is now far too small (Boice 2010).
I admit this may change with Fukushima. But my main point is, a nominally operating nuclear industry poses no risk to workers or the general public and there's no cover-up going on.
"All cancers taken together (SMR 0.93; 95% CI 0.84–1.02) and all leukemia excluding chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) (SMR 1.21; 95% CI 0.69–1.97) were not significantly elevated." and "Radiation exposure has not caused a detectable increase in cancer deaths in this population, but results are limited by small numbers and relatively low career doses."
Boice, J.D., 2010. Uncertainties in studies of low statistical power. Journal of Radiological Protection: Official Journal of the Society for Radiological Protection, 30, 115–120.
They only looked at the length of applause involving groups of 13 to 20 undergraduate and postgraduate students. This is a special case.
During my time as a postgraduate student I gave many good presentations, but my 1th year presentations were abdominal, I was under prepared and inexperienced, as were many fellow students. People clapped at the end of my terrible talks as long as any other talk as they just wanted to encourage me. It's common for students to suffer a lack of confidence at the early stage of their studies. The audience knows this, especially one composed of fellow students. I can't imagine students singling out a student for a brief slow-hand clap for a poor presentation.
The situation is entirely different at large conferences where speakers and audience members are unrelated. For example, at big conference about meteorites some years ago, the length of applause appeared to be strongly correlated with the quality of a speaker's presentation, one speaker got no applause at all. And there was no kindness given to anxious postgraduate students. I well remember one student's presentation regarding the temperature of formation of Allan Hills 84001. As soon as his talk ended, there was some brief subdued applause, then a scientist immediately leapt up and climbed over 15 rows of seats to the overhead projector. He took the student's slide off the projector and put up his own, then wagged his finger a the student telling him he was wrong and why. The student was nearly in tears. This is completely different from the group of students who are likely to be kind to each other.
Here's a paper that explains why studying "Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic (WEIRD) societies" (i.e. university students) is not good practice...
Henrich, J. Heine, S.J., & Norenzayan, A. (2010). The weirdest people in the world? (free access). Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 33(2-3), 61-83. doi: 10.1017/S0140525X0999152X
There are quite similar to the depressions in Moreux Crater (image PSP_010695_2225 ; 42 degrees N / 44.6 degrees E). They might be Kettle Holes, formed when a retreating ice sheet or glacial flood leaves behind huge chunks of debris rich ice that later melts (or sublimates) creating distinctive hollows in glacial sediment.
Drugs are not legal in Portugal, they are decriminalised. Possession of less than 10 days supply (personal use) is a misdemeanor, involves a small fine and drug rehab. Offenders, young, first time, may have all record of their drug possession expunged after a few years, so it does not effect job prospects. The focus is on treatment not criminal prosecution. However, if you have more than 10 days supply you're deemed a dealer and treated as a criminal. Overall, decriminalisation has been a success, it has not resulted the fall of Portuguese society as some shrill conservatives claimed. Though, there are worries that the gains made in the last decade might slip given Portugal's dire economic situation, which has resulted in cuts to the heath budget.
"The definition of the jurisdiction of publication is not where it was published, but where it was read." - Tim Worstall
Worstall has an interesting blog post on Forbes, explaining the implications of the UK's new libel laws, brought in upon the recommendations of the Leveson Inquiry. In particular, he points out that under UK law, publication happens where the article is read. It doesn't matter where your printing press, news station or internet servers are. Foreign websites could be sued for libellous for material "published" in the UK, on computer monitors and smart phones. This appears to be the line the French courts are taking.
Varanoid.com has just posted an initial analysis of the malware, how it wipes the MBR, forces two popular South Korean anti-virus software programs to shut down and and scans the network for vulnerable systems. It also attempts to wipe the MBR on the Unix systems Linux, HP-UX, and SunOS. It overwrites the MBR with one of these three strings...
PRINCPES
PR!NCPES
HASTATI.
From wiki: "Hastati (singular: Hastatus) were a class of infantry in the armies of the early Roman Republic who originally fought as spearmen, and later as swordsmen."
Weatherley and Henley investigated a mesothermal gold deposit, the Revenge Mine in Australia (also known as orogenic gold deposits). These gold deposits form deep underground during mountain building events, generally 3 to 20 km deep, where greater hydrostatic pressures normally prevent fluids from boiling. Previously, geologists speculated that mesothermal gold ore was deposited when fluids cooled or interacted with other fluids with a different chemistry, not so it seems. Weatherley and Henley claim that, even at great depths and pressures, fluid pressure in a fault zone can momentarily approach zero during an earthquake, this is a great surprise. Also, the (normal) temperature and pressures during the formation of the Revenge Mine deposit was 1675 to 2075 bars and 425 to 525 C, this suggests the water was a Supercritical Fluid. I wonder if a phase change from supercritical fluid to a gas facilitated the precipitation of gold.
Also, it should be pointed out that role of Earthquakes in the formation of gold and other mineral deposits has been acknowledged for decades (in particular the near surface epithermal fault hosted gold-silver veins). Epithermal deposits are formed near the surface (generally less than 1 km), the frequent occurrence of breccias, broken rock fragments and voids in the faults attests to vigorous fluid boiling. One famous example of earthquake provoked mineralisation is the San Andreas fault, where hot springs issuing from the fault zone emit more arsenic and mercury after an earthquake, gold is presumably deposited at depth as well e.g.
Sibson, R.H. 1987. Earthquake rupturing as a mineralizing agent in hydrothermal systems. Geology 15(8), 701-704.
The technology for mapping subsurface voids has been around for decades, at least the 1960s, the most common method is Direct Current / Resistivity Surveying. An electric current is passed though the ground between four electrodes and the apparent resistivity (in Ohms/meter) of the subsurface is measured & mapped. Voids, filled water or clay or even empty space, have a completely different resistivity compared to the surrounding rock.
Modern survey instruments are automated, they use dozens of computer controlled electrodes (2 current and 2 voltage electrodes are active at any one time). On open ground, a survey covering an area football field could be carried out in a few days. Geophysicists were using Resistivity Surveying to map the sinkhole in Seffner, Florida.
However, I don't know if Florida state law quires a subsurface ground survey before homes are built, I wouldn't be surprised if lobbyists managed to keep such a law off the books (like the insurance lobbyists). Also, the home involved in this case might have been built before automated surveying became available in the 1990s, before then it was slower, more expensive, not widely used.
And this reminds me of the Crowd Quake. Most crowd disasters are not due to Stampedes, where mass panic breaks out and people rush headlong into a choke point and get crushed. Researchers looking into the Love Parade Disaster discovered a hitherto unrecognised crowd dynamical process that can kill people in large crows - the Crowd Quake.
In normal crowds there's personal space between people, room to breath and move even a little bit. This personal space accommodates and cushions mass movement. However, at a critical point of density there's no personal space left and people are in full body contact. In this situation, mass movement efficiently transmits extreme forces through the crowd - the Crowd Quake. It's like changing a compressible gas into an incompressible solid, but people aren't incompressible. This is why crowd disasters happen so suddenly, it's like crystallisation from a gas.
Stellar evolution of sun like stars suggests our Sun was ca. 20% dimmer 4 billion years ago, and early opinions were the Sun was too dim and the Earth too cold for liquid water. In the 1970s, Carl Sagan proposed an Ammonia rich atmosphere that produced an efficient Greenhouse effect, but later work on the redox state of the Mantle indicated out gassed volatiles produced a hydrogen rich (mildly reducing atmosphere) that did not easily produce a strong greenhouse. Despite this later research, looking at stable isotopes, suggested the early earth was quite warm ~50 to 60 degrees Celsius. The reappraisal of the Habitable Zone may help dispel the "Faint Young Sun Paradox".
Here is a report for the European Parliament (Pdf) about cyber crime and privacy of Cloud services, co-written by Caspar Bowden, it discusses the ramifications of FISAAA. The salient section is "3.4. The inter-state/states/companies relation" on page 34.
Furthermore, proposed changes to the EU's data protection regulations will facilitate FISAAA. Specifically, if a Security Companies' audit of a Cloud Service uncovers U.S. spying, they will be obligated not to inform an affected EU company. I wonder what pressure the U.S. is applying to get this passed...
"For example, IMCO voted to allow easier profiling of users by companies, and lessen the importance of reporting personal data breaches as soon as they occur. At the same time, most proposals to strengthen regulation were rejected.
Global temperature naturally varies by ±0.20 degrees each year, this "Noise" will swamp the "Signal" expected from 10-years of Global Warming. Thus, short time spans fail to show any convincing evidence of global warming. You haver to look at a longer time span, 17 years of temperature data is the minimum required to detect Global Warming with a degree of certainty.
"Our results show that temperature records of at least 17 years in length are required for identifying human effects on globalmean tropospheric temperature."
Santer, B.D., Mears, C., Doutriaux, C., Caldwell, P., Gleckler, P.J., Wigley, T.M.L., Solomon, S., Gillett, N.P., Ivanova, D., Karl, T.R., Lanzante, J.R., Meehl, G.A., Stott, P.A., Taylor, K.E., Thorne, P.W., Wehner, M.F. & Wentz, F.J., 2011. Separating signal and noise in atmospheric temperature changes: The importance of timescale. Journal of Geophysical Research 116(D22), D22105.
Also, most anthropogenic SO2 stays in the troposphere (the lower atmosphere) where it contributes to smog and acid rain, playing little if any role in cooling the Earth. Volcanic SO2 on the other hand enters the high stratosphere, forming a persistent haze that efficiently reflects the Sun's heat. Anyone remember the milky blue skies in the months after Mt Pinatubo?
Finland's GDP was US$189.4 billion in 2010 v's Apple's revenue of US$156.508 billion in 2012. Hard to compete when you rival's revenue exceeds your own countries' GPD.
Also, the Germans are increasing imports of electricity, from France, who generate most of their electricity via nuclear power. So the Germans are keeping French nuclear reactors in business while they decommission theirs. And they will continue to do so unless they ban the cross boarder importation of electricity generated via nuclear power. Utterly crazy.
Slashdot Mirror
The UK also introduced regulation of larger commercial blogs that publish "news type" material, part of the recommendations of the Leveson enquiry into press standards. Large blogs have to sign up to a press regulator, if not they get fined. It does not matter where the Blog's servers are located, if someone downloads content in the UK, it is published it in the UK and they can be held responsible ("Downloading here can count as publication in the law.").
Links:
"Press regulation deal sparks fears of high libel fines for bloggers - Websites could have to pay exemplary damages if they don't sign up to new regulator, claim opponents of Leveson deal "
BBC News: Will websites/blogs etc be covered?
No, the article says the 5D Mk. III filmed in 1080p, it's the Panasonic G4 that can shoot in 4K raw.
The 5D Mk. III applies a strong low-pass filter after a rough line-skipping down sampling step when transforming an original 21 megapixel image into 1080p video (the Mk. II is worse). This results in soft looking video with a subjective resolution more like 720p than 1080p. It's an unfair comparison.
However, professional film makers that use the 5D Mk. II and 5D Mk. III cameras shoot in 2K and 4K Raw by using Magic Lantern (no in camera re-sampling or low pass filters, just pure sensor data). Magic Lantern is a end user project that has produced an alternative firmware for Canon DSLRs which has greatly extended camera capabilities and video quality.
The results are spectacular:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
The UK and New Zealand recognise Great Apes as non-human individuals / persons; see 174 page in Kolber (2001). Medical experimentation on them is banned.
Kolber, A.J. 2001. Standing Upright: The Moral and Legal Standing of Humans and Other Apes. Stanford Law Review 54, 164–204.
http://www.maf.govt.nz/biosecurity/legislation/animal-welfare-act/index.htm
Great Britain and New Zealand already recognise Great Apes as persons e.g. New Zealand’s Animal Welfare Act of 1999. Accordingly, experiments on Great Apes is banned in these countries.
"As indicated above, some countries, including Great Britain and New Zealand have already enacted strong protections for great apes that are geared
toward apes as individuals." Kober (2001)
Ref.:
Kolber, A.J. 2001. Standing Upright: The Moral and Legal Standing of Humans and Other Apes. Stanford Law Review, Vol. 54, p. 163 to 204.
http://www.maf.govt.nz/biosecurity/legislation/animal-welfare-act/index.htm
The argument primatologists are putting forwards, Jane Goodall for example, is that Chimpanzees and other Great Apes should be accorded at least some rights of personhood, similar to the rights accorded to young children and the mentally disabled, which they cognitively exceed e.g. self awareness, empathy, complex planning, theory of mind etc.
Kolber, A.J. 2001. Standing Upright: The Moral and Legal Standing of Humans and Other Apes, Rochester, NY: Social Science Research Network. Stanford Law Review, Vol. 54, p. 163. http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=675851
"A small number of epidemiological studies that have found a dose-response relationship between lead exposure in childhood and self-reported and officially recorded criminal offences in young adulthood; and evidence for the biological plausibility of a causal relationship."
Hall, W., 2013. Did the elimination of lead from petrol reduce crime in the USA in the 1990s? F1000Research 2013, 2:156 (doi: 10.12688/f1000research.2-156.v2)
Since the notorious Rosenhan experiment experiment, the diagnosis of mental illness and neurological conditions has vastly improved, your complaint pertains to the 1973 not today. That experiment was one of the reasons why the DSM was developed, that aims to rigorously categorises the symptoms of psychological and neurological conditions.
Admittedly, the DSM still relies on a symptom check list not objective tests but there are exciting recent developments where fMRI, EEG and genetics are beginning to aid diagnosis rather then subjective judgement alone.
Mental illnesses will be routinely diagnosed with the aid of medical scanning eventually.
Ref:
Duffy, F.H. & Als, H., 2012. A stable pattern of EEG spectral coherence distinguishes children with autism from neuro-typical controls - a large case control study. BMC Medicine, 10, 64.
Funai, A., Bharadwaj, H. & Grissom, W., 2009. Final Report: Improved Discrimination of Asperger Patients using fMRI and Machine Learning.
Nieuwenhuis, M., van Haren, N.E.M., Hulshoff Pol, H.E., Cahn, W., Kahn, R.S. & Schnack, H.G., 2012. Classification of schizophrenia patients and healthy controls from structural MRI scans in two large independent samples. NeuroImage, 61, 606–612.
Schnack, H.G., Nieuwenhuis, M., van Haren, N.E.M., Abramovic, L., Scheewe, T.W., Brouwer, R.M., Hulshoff Pol, H.E. & Kahn, R.S., 2014. Can structural MRI aid in clinical classification? A machine learning study in two independent samples of patients with schizophrenia, bipolar disorder and healthy subjects. NeuroImage, 84, 299
No, Georg Lukas didn't blame Oracle, in his own words...
"The change from the strong OpenSSL cipher list to a hardcoded one starting with weak ciphers is either a sign of horrible ignorance, security incompetence or a clever disguise for an NSA-influenced manipulation - you decide!
Java 1.4 uses RFC 2246, which came out in 1999 and uses weak older ciphers that were approved for export during a time when the US restricted the export of strong encryption. It is about the weakest standard that anyone at Oracle or Google could find.
That's rubbish, if they were exposed to excess radiation from accidents that are covered up, nuclear workers in the US would have increased rates of cancer. They don't (Boice et al, 2011).
The overall health of nuclear workers is better than the national average. They have over all, a lower incidence of all cancers and non-cancer illnesses. Only after adjusting carefully for lifestyle factors and closely examining the health rerecords of 100s of thousands of international workers, some of whom worked in the 1950-70s and were exposed to higher levels of radiation in accidents (e.g. some UK Sellafield nuclear workers in the 50-60s were exposed to high level radiation in accidents) ... a weak relationship between radiation dose and cancer risk is noted.
Importantly, the average radiation exposure for nuclear workers has fallen considerably in the last two decades, safety standards are now so strict almost no worker gets more than 10 millisieverts per year (1/10th the dose where any effect is seen). Their average dose of nuclear workers is barely higher then the general public (who by virtue of greater ill health are exposed to more radiation from medical examinations and therapy).
As such, it was noted epidemiologist John D. Boice, that modern nuclear workers are now little use in examining the theoretical relationship between radiation dose and cancer risk, their radiation exposure is now far too small (Boice 2010).
I admit this may change with Fukushima. But my main point is, a nominally operating nuclear industry poses no risk to workers or the general public and there's no cover-up going on.
Boice Jr, J.D., Cohen, S.S., Mumma, M.T., Ellis, E.D., Eckerman, K.F., Leggett, R.W., Boecker, B.B., Brill, A.B. & Henderson, B.E., 2011. Updated Mortality Analysis of Radiation Workers at Rocketdyne (Atomics International), 1948-2008. Radiation Research,.
"All cancers taken together (SMR 0.93; 95% CI 0.84–1.02) and all leukemia excluding chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) (SMR 1.21; 95% CI 0.69–1.97) were not significantly elevated." and "Radiation exposure has not caused a detectable increase in cancer deaths in this population, but results are limited by small numbers and relatively low career doses."
Boice, J.D., 2010. Uncertainties in studies of low statistical power. Journal of Radiological Protection: Official Journal of the Society for Radiological Protection, 30, 115–120.
They only looked at the length of applause involving groups of 13 to 20 undergraduate and postgraduate students. This is a special case.
During my time as a postgraduate student I gave many good presentations, but my 1th year presentations were abdominal, I was under prepared and inexperienced, as were many fellow students. People clapped at the end of my terrible talks as long as any other talk as they just wanted to encourage me. It's common for students to suffer a lack of confidence at the early stage of their studies. The audience knows this, especially one composed of fellow students. I can't imagine students singling out a student for a brief slow-hand clap for a poor presentation.
The situation is entirely different at large conferences where speakers and audience members are unrelated. For example, at big conference about meteorites some years ago, the length of applause appeared to be strongly correlated with the quality of a speaker's presentation, one speaker got no applause at all. And there was no kindness given to anxious postgraduate students. I well remember one student's presentation regarding the temperature of formation of Allan Hills 84001. As soon as his talk ended, there was some brief subdued applause, then a scientist immediately leapt up and climbed over 15 rows of seats to the overhead projector. He took the student's slide off the projector and put up his own, then wagged his finger a the student telling him he was wrong and why. The student was nearly in tears. This is completely different from the group of students who are likely to be kind to each other.
Here's a paper that explains why studying "Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic (WEIRD) societies" (i.e. university students) is not good practice...
Henrich, J. Heine, S.J., & Norenzayan, A. (2010). The weirdest people in the world? (free access). Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 33(2-3), 61-83. doi: 10.1017/S0140525X0999152X
85% of autistic people are unemployed, though most are willing and able to work.
http://www.autism.org.uk/living-with-autism/employment.aspx
There are quite similar to the depressions in Moreux Crater (image PSP_010695_2225 ; 42 degrees N / 44.6 degrees E). They might be Kettle Holes, formed when a retreating ice sheet or glacial flood leaves behind huge chunks of debris rich ice that later melts (or sublimates) creating distinctive hollows in glacial sediment.
Moreux Crater Kettle Holes
Drugs are not legal in Portugal, they are decriminalised. Possession of less than 10 days supply (personal use) is a misdemeanor, involves a small fine and drug rehab. Offenders, young, first time, may have all record of their drug possession expunged after a few years, so it does not effect job prospects. The focus is on treatment not criminal prosecution. However, if you have more than 10 days supply you're deemed a dealer and treated as a criminal. Overall, decriminalisation has been a success, it has not resulted the fall of Portuguese society as some shrill conservatives claimed. Though, there are worries that the gains made in the last decade might slip given Portugal's dire economic situation, which has resulted in cuts to the heath budget.
"The definition of the jurisdiction of publication is not where it was published, but where it was read." - Tim Worstall
Worstall has an interesting blog post on Forbes, explaining the implications of the UK's new libel laws, brought in upon the recommendations of the Leveson Inquiry. In particular, he points out that under UK law, publication happens where the article is read. It doesn't matter where your printing press, news station or internet servers are. Foreign websites could be sued for libellous for material "published" in the UK, on computer monitors and smart phones. This appears to be the line the French courts are taking.
The British Government Has Decided To Censor The Entire World's Press And Media
Varanoid.com has just posted an initial analysis of the malware, how it wipes the MBR, forces two popular South Korean anti-virus software programs to shut down and and scans the network for vulnerable systems. It also attempts to wipe the MBR on the Unix systems Linux, HP-UX, and SunOS. It overwrites the MBR with one of these three strings...
PRINCPES
PR!NCPES
HASTATI.
From wiki: "Hastati (singular: Hastatus) were a class of infantry in the armies of the early Roman Republic who originally fought as spearmen, and later as swordsmen."
Varanoid preliminary analysis
Weatherley and Henley investigated a mesothermal gold deposit, the Revenge Mine in Australia (also known as orogenic gold deposits). These gold deposits form deep underground during mountain building events, generally 3 to 20 km deep, where greater hydrostatic pressures normally prevent fluids from boiling. Previously, geologists speculated that mesothermal gold ore was deposited when fluids cooled or interacted with other fluids with a different chemistry, not so it seems. Weatherley and Henley claim that, even at great depths and pressures, fluid pressure in a fault zone can momentarily approach zero during an earthquake, this is a great surprise. Also, the (normal) temperature and pressures during the formation of the Revenge Mine deposit was 1675 to 2075 bars and 425 to 525 C, this suggests the water was a Supercritical Fluid. I wonder if a phase change from supercritical fluid to a gas facilitated the precipitation of gold.
Also, it should be pointed out that role of Earthquakes in the formation of gold and other mineral deposits has been acknowledged for decades (in particular the near surface epithermal fault hosted gold-silver veins). Epithermal deposits are formed near the surface (generally less than 1 km), the frequent occurrence of breccias, broken rock fragments and voids in the faults attests to vigorous fluid boiling. One famous example of earthquake provoked mineralisation is the San Andreas fault, where hot springs issuing from the fault zone emit more arsenic and mercury after an earthquake, gold is presumably deposited at depth as well e.g.
Sibson, R.H. 1987. Earthquake rupturing as a mineralizing agent in hydrothermal systems. Geology 15(8), 701-704.
The technology for mapping subsurface voids has been around for decades, at least the 1960s, the most common method is Direct Current / Resistivity Surveying. An electric current is passed though the ground between four electrodes and the apparent resistivity (in Ohms/meter) of the subsurface is measured & mapped. Voids, filled water or clay or even empty space, have a completely different resistivity compared to the surrounding rock.
Modern survey instruments are automated, they use dozens of computer controlled electrodes (2 current and 2 voltage electrodes are active at any one time). On open ground, a survey covering an area football field could be carried out in a few days. Geophysicists were using Resistivity Surveying to map the sinkhole in Seffner, Florida.
However, I don't know if Florida state law quires a subsurface ground survey before homes are built, I wouldn't be surprised if lobbyists managed to keep such a law off the books (like the insurance lobbyists). Also, the home involved in this case might have been built before automated surveying became available in the 1990s, before then it was slower, more expensive, not widely used.
Engineers Conducing a Resistivity Survey"
2-DAND 3-D RESISTIVITY FOR LOCATING VOIDS BENEATH HIGHWAYS THREE CASE STUDIES"
And this reminds me of the Crowd Quake. Most crowd disasters are not due to Stampedes, where mass panic breaks out and people rush headlong into a choke point and get crushed. Researchers looking into the Love Parade Disaster discovered a hitherto unrecognised crowd dynamical process that can kill people in large crows - the Crowd Quake.
In normal crowds there's personal space between people, room to breath and move even a little bit. This personal space accommodates and cushions mass movement. However, at a critical point of density there's no personal space left and people are in full body contact. In this situation, mass movement efficiently transmits extreme forces through the crowd - the Crowd Quake. It's like changing a compressible gas into an incompressible solid, but people aren't incompressible. This is why crowd disasters happen so suddenly, it's like crystallisation from a gas.
See: Crowd Disasters as Systemic Failures: Analysis of the Love Parade Disaster http://arxiv.org/abs/1302.1886
Stellar evolution of sun like stars suggests our Sun was ca. 20% dimmer 4 billion years ago, and early opinions were the Sun was too dim and the Earth too cold for liquid water. In the 1970s, Carl Sagan proposed an Ammonia rich atmosphere that produced an efficient Greenhouse effect, but later work on the redox state of the Mantle indicated out gassed volatiles produced a hydrogen rich (mildly reducing atmosphere) that did not easily produce a strong greenhouse. Despite this later research, looking at stable isotopes, suggested the early earth was quite warm ~50 to 60 degrees Celsius. The reappraisal of the Habitable Zone may help dispel the "Faint Young Sun Paradox".
Here is a report for the European Parliament (Pdf) about cyber crime and privacy of Cloud services, co-written by Caspar Bowden, it discusses the ramifications of FISAAA. The salient section is "3.4. The inter-state/states/companies relation" on page 34.
http://www.europarl.europa.eu/committees/en/studiesdownload.html?languageDocument=EN&file=79050
Furthermore, proposed changes to the EU's data protection regulations will facilitate FISAAA. Specifically, if a Security Companies' audit of a Cloud Service uncovers U.S. spying, they will be obligated not to inform an affected EU company. I wonder what pressure the U.S. is applying to get this passed...
US lobbying waters down EU data protection reform
"For example, IMCO voted to allow easier profiling of users by companies, and lessen the importance of reporting personal data breaches as soon as they occur. At the same time, most proposals to strengthen regulation were rejected.
Global temperature naturally varies by ±0.20 degrees each year, this "Noise" will swamp the "Signal" expected from 10-years of Global Warming. Thus, short time spans fail to show any convincing evidence of global warming. You haver to look at a longer time span, 17 years of temperature data is the minimum required to detect Global Warming with a degree of certainty.
"Our results show that temperature records of at least 17 years in length are required for identifying human effects on globalmean tropospheric temperature."
Santer, B.D., Mears, C., Doutriaux, C., Caldwell, P., Gleckler, P.J., Wigley, T.M.L., Solomon, S., Gillett, N.P., Ivanova, D., Karl, T.R., Lanzante, J.R., Meehl, G.A., Stott, P.A., Taylor, K.E., Thorne, P.W., Wehner, M.F. & Wentz, F.J., 2011. Separating signal and noise in atmospheric temperature changes: The importance of timescale. Journal of Geophysical Research 116(D22), D22105.
Also, most anthropogenic SO2 stays in the troposphere (the lower atmosphere) where it contributes to smog and acid rain, playing little if any role in cooling the Earth. Volcanic SO2 on the other hand enters the high stratosphere, forming a persistent haze that efficiently reflects the Sun's heat. Anyone remember the milky blue skies in the months after Mt Pinatubo?
Finland's GDP was US$189.4 billion in 2010 v's Apple's revenue of US$156.508 billion in 2012. Hard to compete when you rival's revenue exceeds your own countries' GPD.
Also, the Germans are increasing imports of electricity, from France, who generate most of their electricity via nuclear power. So the Germans are keeping French nuclear reactors in business while they decommission theirs. And they will continue to do so unless they ban the cross boarder importation of electricity generated via nuclear power. Utterly crazy.