I highly doubt that you can even buy a car these days that doesn't contain dozens of microprocessors and microcontrollers exercising all sorts of software.
I actually think it would be cool if you could buy a decent car that didn't use this type of technology. A car where you could be reasonably sure that you couldn't be tracked or shut down by the government. Also, something that would remain largely functional or at least something that could be repaired with basic mechanical tools after an EMP event.
Call it the "Ford Paranoia" or the "Chevy Technophobe".
"Unlike some third-world countries, the justice system in this country is not corrupt."
I don't think they would take a bribe to make an arrest, but that doesn't mean they aren't corrupt as hell. How many well-connected elites in the financial sector have been prosecuted for fraud, forgery and perjury? The FBI issued a report in 2003 warning of an "epidemic of fraud" in the home mortgage market, yet no arrests and prosecutions? How many Bush admin officials have been prosecuted for violations of the FISA law, torture, war crimes, etc.?
Selective enforcement of the law is corruption, and it is absolutely pervasive in our so-called "justice" system.
He isn't wanted for a crime in Sweden, only for "questioning" by a prosecutor. He was in Sweden for 5 weeks following the alleged incidents so there was ample opportunity for this. When he left, he wasn't running from the Swedish authorities like a fugitive. He's also willing to speak with the Swedish prosecutor, but he didn't want to go back to Sweden to do it.
"Such statements have no relationship to reality..."
Interesting perspective. I think there is very real evidence to demonstrate that the USA has a habit of bombing other countries and actively overthrowing governments (even elected ones) which refuse to toe the USA line. I wonder how many governments in Central and South America alone have been targeted for "regime change" because the USA didn't like their behavior?
I think the OP has a good point. Ecuador should be watching out for armed rebel groups even if they don't need to be dodging hellfire missiles and smart bombs at the moment.
It's certainly not a direct measurement. They're determining the energy and then deriving the temperature from that. I've no idea how. At normal temperatures, I can see how you could use the specific heat of the material to do that. So much energy with so much material = a certain increase in temperature. I don't think that concept makes sense for a quark-gluon plasma however. The article mentioned that the measurement is relatively uncertain. I can imagine there would be problems associated with loss, and in containing the system. Interesting question.
"The only entity that a DDoS could be expected to be truly effective against would be one too small to be worth using it against."
Depends what you mean by "effective". Knocking out a site permanently? Of course not. Putting it out of service at a time that's critical to the business? It happens.
I read an article where a gambling site was being extorted by a group threatening to do a DDoS attack at critical moments, say, right before some big sporting event. It was actually very effective.
"it's perfectly rational to want to protect information that could be damaging to you."
Yes, but it's not acceptable for the elected government of a supposedly free democratic republic to suppress information because it exposes their incompetence and/or malfeasance.
Government should have very few secrets in general and should never suppress information simply because it might be "damaging" to them in terms of "reputation" or might conflict with the official narrative they are trying to sell to the American public.
I'll always remember the words of my HS maths teacher "A combination lock should be called a permutation lock".
With a safe or a password, "possibilities" means "permutations". 123 is distinct from 132 in that case. If we're talking "combinations", those are the same.
I know we're talking sc-fi, but in Star Trek, they have energy sources far superior to our own (dilythium crystals?) and apparently have the capability to manipulate matter at the atomic level. Hence the transporter and the technology in the cafeteria.
Giant IF... but assuming those conditions existed, and everyone had sufficient power, cheap travel and the ability to transmogrify sand into fish and chips, I'd say that there was more hope for the human race. Many struggles and conflicts are associated with resource concerns.
The original FISA Act made it a CRIME with both civil and criminal penalties for an employee of the Federal government to spy on U.S. citizens without obtaining a warrant.
The FISA law had provisions for what were deemed immediate threats (for example, surveillance could start immediately provided that a warrant was obtained shortly thereafter). The FISA court was also secret and had a policy of basically rubber-stamping warrant applications, but there was at least some modicum of judicial oversight.
Bush made the absurd claim that the AUMF gave him permission to bypass the FISA court and engage in warrantless surveillance. He and his cronies need to be arrested and prosecuted. It tells you how low we've sunk when we can talk about "warrantless surveillance" as if it were no big deal.
If someone has a "natural" advantage, I totally agree with the theory. For instance, banana producers in South America have a natural advantage over their counterparts in Alaska. The theory breaks down when governments set up artificial barriers to competition. In the USA, these barriers would include environmental, minimum wage and health & safety regulations. That's not to say that these things are necessarily "bad", but they undoubtedly put US companies at an "artificial" disadvantage. It is insane to open our markets to products produced in countries which have no similar regulations. If their only value proposition is the fact that they can be produced with slave labor and environmental destruction, tariffs should apply. If they're genuinely superior from a price/quality standpoint when the full costs are taken into account, they should "win" in the marketplace. It would be complicated to calculate the exactly appropriate amounts and the process would be corrupted of course. The goal however should be to negate wage and environmental arbitrage without giving "protection" to certain industries. i.e. don't slap a tariff on Guatemala bananas that is so large that Minnesota banana plantations can meet the same retail price.
"The Extended DVDs came with two discs each worth of movie plus two discs each worth of extras."
Have you watched that stuff? I really enjoyed the extra material from "The Two Towers". It gives you a new appreciation for what went into the films. Did you know that the set for The Golden Hall of Medusel was constructed in a remote and pristine natural area which was then completely restored to its natural condition? I thought that it was very cool how they did it.
"I think the main difference between this and Star Wars is that...
Nothing could POSSIBLY suck as much as Episodes I-III of the Star Wars franchise.
There are many things I would have liked to see different in the LOTR movies, but I'll give Peter Jackson and the team credit for not totally screwing it up. Hollywood + (good fantasy/sci-fi) is a disaster waiting to happen.
I think there's enough material in The Hobbit to avoid any anal extractions.
Who the hell takes algebra in a college/university? I agree, it's a waste of higher education $s because people should have learned it in HS! I'm pretty sure I was taking pre-algebra in Jr. High and went into Algebra 1 as a first year HS student.
Necessary? Absolutely! I think pre-algebra was where the concept of a variable was taught. That alone is rather essential knowledge. Having a basic understanding of functions y = f(x) is incredibly useful. You don't need to be solving equations on a daily basis to make use of the concept that one variable is specified as a function of one or more other variables.
Where do they find these erudite idiots?
If we're going to question what's "necessary", let's consider Poetry/Literature Creative writing Ethnic studies Feminist studies Athletics Art Music
The response he got from the manufacturers and retailers is unbelievable!
I'm not an exec at a big corporation, but if I saw a video of a 3 year old opening a lock box that I was marketing and selling as a "gun safe", I'd at least stop selling new ones. The bean counters would coldly calculate the cost of a recall vs. the cost of settling a few lawsuits for the items already in use, but what motive would they have to keep selling the same junk? I suppose the retailers could just point the finger at the manufacturers of course, but it still makes no sense.
I'm going to forward the source article to the NRA, and I encourage others (esp. members) to do so. Hopefully we can get permission to re-print parts of it in American Rifleman. The last F*&^%!$ thing we need is firearms accidents in cases where people are trying to do the responsible thing by keeping the weapons locked up.
A dog is a very good idea. An alarm system maybe? Keeping a baseball bat handy?
You're rightly paranoid about having a loaded weapon around. If I was in your position, I'd probably have a 12 gauge pump action shotgun mounted on a wall rack. Take your kids out and fire it a couple of times, hopefully scaring the hell out of them.
I know kids can be rather ingenious when it comes to accessing things which are supposedly "out of reach" for them. In this case though, they'd have to reach the weapon, de-activate the safety, figure out how to touch the lever by the trigger guard while simultaneously working the action, and then push the slide forward hard enough to chamber the shell.
A shotgun is also a much better home defense weapon than a pistol because bird shot would not endanger people in an adjacent room.
The only way the U.S. government can make their current Keynesian dog and pony show successful (let's go into huge amounts of debt to "stimulate" the economy) is to duplicate post WW2 conditions. i.e. widespread destruction of industrial infrastructure throughout Europe and Asia.
Maybe the plan is to nuke the BRIC countries, Germany and Japan to once again rid the USA of it's competition? This will not only reduce carbon emissions, but as a fringe benefit, millions of tons of debris will be kicked into the atmosphere causing a cooling effect.
Come up with a solution other than "The government needs to...." and I'll weigh your solution with patience and objectivity, then likely participate.
F*** the government. They just want you to be a serf with a government-issued energy ration card and a electricity monitoring meter on your home.
Not to mention a food voucher, an apartment with X# sq feet of space (as determined by some federal bureaucracy to be what you "need") and a job that pays slave wages from whatever corporation paid the most in campaign contributions.
"global warming" is the new "fear generator" that they need now that they've milked terrorism, "the children" and communism for everything they're worth.
"What's wrong with not using more than is there, and not destroying more than can re-generate? What, exactly, is wrong with that?"
I'm confident that the average slave would have a neutral or perhaps even negative carbon footprint. That doesn't mean that I want 99.99% of the world's population to live in slavery for the purpose of "sustainability".
"If you think you're entitled to not give a fuck, you're wrong"
I don't give a F*** about "climate change" or your opinion regarding my opinion.
If your "call to action" is having a government bureaucrat rationing energy usage for the little people, you can go straight to hell.
The same liberals who are upset about global warming (ahem, "climate change") and decry the energy use of the average person in the U.S. will also oppose border security and deportation of illegals.
If the average USAian is such a bad polluter, why would we want to have more people in the country living the American lifestyle?
There's no way that I'm going to support the idea of giving the government any additional wealth or power for any reason whatsoever. If the "solution" to climate change is more government, then I don't care what the climate scientists say. I'd rather see polar bears go extinct and islands go under water than have the (USAian) government trying to micro-manage energy use.
Maybe at some point in the future, when they've demonstrated that they are capable of acting in the best interests of the people, I'll reconsider.
I won't repeat the arguments of the skeptics, but to the extent that they can prevent more government regulation, I sympathize with them.
Slashdot Mirror
Bonus points to the first person that talks their way out of a traffic ticket with the excuse that their car has been hacked.
I highly doubt that you can even buy a car these days that doesn't contain dozens of microprocessors and microcontrollers exercising all sorts of software.
I actually think it would be cool if you could buy a decent car that didn't use this type of technology. A car where you could be reasonably sure that you couldn't be tracked or shut down by the government. Also, something that would remain largely functional or at least something that could be repaired with basic mechanical tools after an EMP event.
Call it the "Ford Paranoia" or the "Chevy Technophobe".
"Unlike some third-world countries, the justice system in this country is not corrupt."
I don't think they would take a bribe to make an arrest, but that doesn't mean they aren't corrupt as hell. How many well-connected elites in the financial sector have been prosecuted for fraud, forgery and perjury? The FBI issued a report in 2003 warning of an "epidemic of fraud" in the home mortgage market, yet no arrests and prosecutions? How many Bush admin officials have been prosecuted for violations of the FISA law, torture, war crimes, etc.?
Selective enforcement of the law is corruption, and it is absolutely pervasive in our so-called "justice" system.
Listen to Assange's side of the story.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_9309000/9309320.stm
He isn't wanted for a crime in Sweden, only for "questioning" by a prosecutor. He was in Sweden for 5 weeks following the alleged incidents so there was ample opportunity for this. When he left, he wasn't running from the Swedish authorities like a fugitive. He's also willing to speak with the Swedish prosecutor, but he didn't want to go back to Sweden to do it.
I think this reeks of conspiracy.
It beats GITMO or some secret CIA prison in the Middle East.
"Such statements have no relationship to reality..."
Interesting perspective. I think there is very real evidence to demonstrate that the USA has a habit of bombing other countries and actively overthrowing governments (even elected ones) which refuse to toe the USA line. I wonder how many governments in Central and South America alone have been targeted for "regime change" because the USA didn't like their behavior?
I think the OP has a good point. Ecuador should be watching out for armed rebel groups even if they don't need to be dodging hellfire missiles and smart bombs at the moment.
It's certainly not a direct measurement. They're determining the energy and then deriving the temperature from that. I've no idea how. At normal temperatures, I can see how you could use the specific heat of the material to do that. So much energy with so much material = a certain increase in temperature.
I don't think that concept makes sense for a quark-gluon plasma however. The article mentioned that the measurement is relatively uncertain. I can imagine there would be problems associated with loss, and in containing the system.
Interesting question.
"The only entity that a DDoS could be expected to be truly effective against would be one too small to be worth using it against."
Depends what you mean by "effective". Knocking out a site permanently? Of course not. Putting it out of service at a time that's critical to the business? It happens.
I read an article where a gambling site was being extorted by a group threatening to do a DDoS attack at critical moments, say, right before some big sporting event. It was actually very effective.
"it's perfectly rational to want to protect information that could be damaging to you."
Yes, but it's not acceptable for the elected government of a supposedly free democratic republic to suppress information because it exposes their incompetence and/or malfeasance.
Government should have very few secrets in general and should never suppress information simply because it might be "damaging" to them in terms of "reputation" or might conflict with the official narrative they are trying to sell to the American public.
They mistakenly did 2^36 instead of 36^2.
I'll always remember the words of my HS maths teacher "A combination lock should be called a permutation lock".
With a safe or a password, "possibilities" means "permutations". 123 is distinct from 132 in that case. If we're talking "combinations", those are the same.
I know we're talking sc-fi, but in Star Trek, they have energy sources far superior to our own (dilythium crystals?) and apparently have the capability to manipulate matter at the atomic level. Hence the transporter and the technology in the cafeteria.
Giant IF ... but assuming those conditions existed, and everyone had sufficient power, cheap travel and the ability to transmogrify sand into fish and chips, I'd say that there was more hope for the human race. Many struggles and conflicts are associated with resource concerns.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iain_Banks
That's a name you don't hear often.
I thought "Consider Phlebas" was excellent, and "Excession" was brilliant.
"Use of Weapons" and "The Player of Games" were interesting, but not "great" IMO.
The original FISA Act made it a CRIME with both civil and criminal penalties for an employee of the Federal government to spy on U.S. citizens without obtaining a warrant.
The FISA law had provisions for what were deemed immediate threats (for example, surveillance could start immediately provided that a warrant was obtained shortly thereafter). The FISA court was also secret and had a policy of basically rubber-stamping warrant applications, but there was at least some modicum of judicial oversight.
Bush made the absurd claim that the AUMF gave him permission to bypass the FISA court and engage in warrantless surveillance. He and his cronies need to be arrested and prosecuted. It tells you how low we've sunk when we can talk about "warrantless surveillance" as if it were no big deal.
If someone has a "natural" advantage, I totally agree with the theory. For instance, banana producers in South America have a natural advantage over their counterparts in Alaska.
The theory breaks down when governments set up artificial barriers to competition. In the USA, these barriers would include environmental, minimum wage and health & safety regulations. That's not to say that these things are necessarily "bad", but they undoubtedly put US companies at an "artificial" disadvantage. It is insane to open our markets to products produced in countries which have no similar regulations. If their only value proposition is the fact that they can be produced with slave labor and environmental destruction, tariffs should apply. If they're genuinely superior from a price/quality standpoint when the full costs are taken into account, they should "win" in the marketplace.
It would be complicated to calculate the exactly appropriate amounts and the process would be corrupted of course. The goal however should be to negate wage and environmental arbitrage without giving "protection" to certain industries. i.e. don't slap a tariff on Guatemala bananas that is so large that Minnesota banana plantations can meet the same retail price.
"The Extended DVDs came with two discs each worth of movie plus two discs each worth of extras."
Have you watched that stuff? I really enjoyed the extra material from "The Two Towers". It gives you a new appreciation for what went into the films.
Did you know that the set for The Golden Hall of Medusel was constructed in a remote and pristine natural area which was then completely restored to its natural condition? I thought that it was very cool how they did it.
"I think the main difference between this and Star Wars is that ...
Nothing could POSSIBLY suck as much as Episodes I-III of the Star Wars franchise.
There are many things I would have liked to see different in the LOTR movies, but I'll give Peter Jackson and the team credit for not totally screwing it up. Hollywood + (good fantasy/sci-fi) is a disaster waiting to happen.
I think there's enough material in The Hobbit to avoid any anal extractions.
Who the hell takes algebra in a college/university? I agree, it's a waste of higher education $s because people should have learned it in HS! I'm pretty sure I was taking pre-algebra in Jr. High and went into Algebra 1 as a first year HS student.
Necessary? Absolutely! I think pre-algebra was where the concept of a variable was taught. That alone is rather essential knowledge. Having a basic understanding of functions y = f(x) is incredibly useful. You don't need to be solving equations on a daily basis to make use of the concept that one variable is specified as a function of one or more other variables.
Where do they find these erudite idiots?
If we're going to question what's "necessary", let's consider
Poetry/Literature
Creative writing
Ethnic studies
Feminist studies
Athletics
Art
Music
The response he got from the manufacturers and retailers is unbelievable!
I'm not an exec at a big corporation, but if I saw a video of a 3 year old opening a lock box that I was marketing and selling as a "gun safe", I'd at least stop selling new ones. The bean counters would coldly calculate the cost of a recall vs. the cost of settling a few lawsuits for the items already in use, but what motive would they have to keep selling the same junk? I suppose the retailers could just point the finger at the manufacturers of course, but it still makes no sense.
I'm going to forward the source article to the NRA, and I encourage others (esp. members) to do so. Hopefully we can get permission to re-print parts of it in American Rifleman. The last F*&^%!$ thing we need is firearms accidents in cases where people are trying to do the responsible thing by keeping the weapons locked up.
A dog is a very good idea. An alarm system maybe? Keeping a baseball bat handy?
You're rightly paranoid about having a loaded weapon around. If I was in your position, I'd probably have a 12 gauge pump action shotgun mounted on a wall rack. Take your kids out and fire it a couple of times, hopefully scaring the hell out of them.
I know kids can be rather ingenious when it comes to accessing things which are supposedly "out of reach" for them. In this case though, they'd have to reach the weapon, de-activate the safety, figure out how to touch the lever by the trigger guard while simultaneously working the action, and then push the slide forward hard enough to chamber the shell.
A shotgun is also a much better home defense weapon than a pistol because bird shot would not endanger people in an adjacent room.
Good luck with whatever you decide.
The only way the U.S. government can make their current Keynesian dog and pony show successful (let's go into huge amounts of debt to "stimulate" the economy) is to duplicate post WW2 conditions. i.e. widespread destruction of industrial infrastructure throughout Europe and Asia.
Maybe the plan is to nuke the BRIC countries, Germany and Japan to once again rid the USA of it's competition? This will not only reduce carbon emissions, but as a fringe benefit, millions of tons of debris will be kicked into the atmosphere causing a cooling effect.
Come up with a solution other than "The government needs to ...." and I'll weigh your solution with patience and objectivity, then likely participate.
F*** the government. They just want you to be a serf with a government-issued energy ration card and a electricity monitoring meter on your home.
Not to mention a food voucher, an apartment with X# sq feet of space (as determined by some federal bureaucracy to be what you "need") and a job that pays slave wages from whatever corporation paid the most in campaign contributions.
"global warming" is the new "fear generator" that they need now that they've milked terrorism, "the children" and communism for everything they're worth.
Stop being afraid.
Frye: "I sure am glad that global warming didn't close down all of the ski areas!"
Lela: "It did, but the nuclear winter cooled things off again."
"What's wrong with not using more than is there, and not destroying more than can re-generate? What, exactly, is wrong with that?"
I'm confident that the average slave would have a neutral or perhaps even negative carbon footprint. That doesn't mean that I want 99.99% of the world's population to live in slavery for the purpose of "sustainability".
"If you think you're entitled to not give a fuck, you're wrong"
I don't give a F*** about "climate change" or your opinion regarding my opinion.
If your "call to action" is having a government bureaucrat rationing energy usage for the little people, you can go straight to hell.
Exactly.
The same liberals who are upset about global warming (ahem, "climate change") and decry the energy use of the average person in the U.S. will also oppose border security and deportation of illegals.
If the average USAian is such a bad polluter, why would we want to have more people in the country living the American lifestyle?
There's no way that I'm going to support the idea of giving the government any additional wealth or power for any reason whatsoever. If the "solution" to climate change is more government, then I don't care what the climate scientists say. I'd rather see polar bears go extinct and islands go under water than have the (USAian) government trying to micro-manage energy use.
Maybe at some point in the future, when they've demonstrated that they are capable of acting in the best interests of the people, I'll reconsider.
I won't repeat the arguments of the skeptics, but to the extent that they can prevent more government regulation, I sympathize with them.