but the carbon can be coming from below the surface of either the land or ocean via thermal vents and volcanoes (either above or below water)
No it can't, because the oceans are absorbing CO2 according to measurements taken near it, not giving the stuff out. They are a carbon sink, not a carbon source - at least, at this moment in time.
EFF - all about preserving freedom and privacy of electronic communications FSF - all about preserving intellectual freedoms and encourage the sharing of code
Islamic Republic of France declared, falls. French half of crew pulled off for home security duty during attempts to supress the gorwing Islamic rebellion.
Uh huh. At what point do the aliens invade, again?
I dunno. Unlike certain new military developments, (coughMissileDefensecough) this seems fairly well targetted and intelligent as a defense investment. Aircraft carriers are the few ships that still have a major role in modern asymmetric warfare - fighting guerillas in urban combat, tanks and so on may deprecate in value but the mobile base of operations + potential of on hand air support + removal of need for politically expensive local airstrips a carrier provides do not.
I think Europe can field very highly trained personnel - Britain in particular has been praised for its troops' performance in Iraq. Skill isn't a question - getting the numbers is.
This project looks like an attempt to replace the UK's ailing fleet with ships of similar capabilities on the cheap. That's a good idea.
Here's the problem: Shells aren't smart. Shells can't be commanded into a holding position above a target, waiting until someone calls for air support. Shells can't distinguish an enemy target from a friendly one. Shells can't abort after they've launched. (Not easily, anyways) Shells can't be used for air or naval defense very effectively.
This thing should be on front page news. Billboards on the side of the street. It should be talked about in pubs, workplaces, everywhere.
HELLO! This country is going to be a dictatorship! Instead, we find it in political chatshows in TV, and in the middle pages of newspapers. The bane of politicians' lives are people who pay attention, and in general, they can't hide it from everybody. But the media have done a good job of hiding it from the majority of people.
So that will be 2 years for writing 'I' So that will be 2 years for writing 'have' So that will be 2 years for writing 'some' So that will be 2 years for writing 'rights' So that will be 2 years for writing '.'
Or maybe they can just reintroduce the death sentence.
I missed how Stallman considers GNU to be 'his'. Is it spelt RMSU? Stallmanu? And I fail to see how Linux - actually named after a single person who is ultimately rather peripheral to the development process - manages to be a much fairer acknowledgement of everyone's work.
In the end, RMS's request is very reasonable from philosophical point of view. The only problems - and yeah, these kill his argument - is that:
1. The public choose to call Linux that way, and even if Linus himself was to pronounce in support of GNU, it wouldn't make a difference. 2. GNU/Linux as a name, spoken out loud, TOTALLY SUCKS.
History has shown that whenever a rag tag army gets together during a militaristic dictatorship, it would be *behind* the dictator, and in fact often culpable of the worst of his crimes. When the at least disciplined professional troops or policemen would decline to be involved in an atrocity, a crazed volunteer bunch would be willing to lend their imaginative efforts.
The first thing such governments do is to turn people against each other. Letting people have guns is meaningless, because the gun owners are the ones who form the militias, and who gets rewarded by the government with the powers to keep the rest of the population in check. Armed mobs of civilians swept the Nazis into power, and then they organised clubs to train the youth in military tactics. Armed and anarchic mobs of students conducted the cultural revolution. Ordinary people, equipped with weapons the state handed out, conducted the Rawandan massacre. When was the last time there was a totalitarian state where the people would rebel - if only they had the guns to do so?
Until people stop being idiots who will buy into any and all propaganda they find, guns in the hands of the majority are just as likely to be tools of oppression as they are liberation.
Yes, but the parliament act isn't what is in question.
What is in question is this new proposed act, that allows any cabinet member to alter any piece of legislation by conducting a single vote with the minimum of debate or discussion. The parliament act is usually only used after ages of battling, so at least we are certain that MPs have looked at and understood what is being passed. With this new act, it would be very easy to sandwich scary ideas into an innoculous looking package, and sneak that through the vote. The worst case scenario is that one such scary bill would be a motion to alter this bill itself - and remove parliament from the process altogether.
Even if we trust the government not to abuse it, this is still a terrifyingly huge loophole. And in fact, the bill is currently *very* close to being passed. It only has a 1-hour final hearing in the commons, and then it's onto the Lords. And if the Lords don't cooperate, a truly malicious government can use the Parliament act to force it through....
Agreed. Let's recognise this essay for what it is - simple karma whoring, to make up for the stupid things he's said in past (especially re: Climate change). It doesn't really take much of an understanding of the issues involved to give the old fashioned populist rant, and so this is exactly what he does.
If the Universe started out in one place, and expanded at less than the speed of light, how can we only now be receiving light from its early days?
Because the Big bang was not an explosion. The universe didn't start in one place - it was one place, and that place - space itself - expanded.
If object A is moving one direction at.6c, and object B is moving the opposite direction at.6c, does each object appear to be moving at >1c from the other object?
No. Because by special relativity, velocities do not add in the Newtonian fashion. The wikipedia article on it is pretty good.
The situation is far more complicated there than 'Maoist bad' etc. The Maoist rebels need to be considered in relation to what they stand in opposition to - the brutal dictatorship under the current king of Nepal. It's no coincidence that at this point, the major political parties in Nepal are siding with the Maoists.
Furthermore, the death toll analysis is not very reliable. For example, much of the death in the GLF was from incompetence and lack of control, rather than authoritarian actions. The Cultural Revolution, meanwhile, was not a centrally organised disaster, but of self igniting fanaticism. And so on and so forth.
While it is easy to make such lists, it is more valuable to look at what connects them - and what connects them has little to do with communism itself - Marx never espoused a dictatorship. What made these cases arise is the raising to high station of an insignificant, paranoid peasant warlord, who becomes obsessed with delusions of self-grandeur. The above sort of thing is not restricted to communism, but occurs in any case where a hated government is removed suddenly by a rebel movement, which then finds itself surrounded by external enemies and half-imagined, half-real remnants of the deposed force. Non-communist examples involve the Taliban, Nazi Germany, the Rwandan massacres, post-Soviet Russia, Saddam-era Iraq......
He could provide a way of checking his IP address so that we know he's actually posting from Iraq, for one thing. (E.g. post an anonymous edit to a wikipedia article - My userpage (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Fangz) would do.) That shouldn't violate any secrecy clauses, since he's revealing it already to the slashdot software, and is fairly hard to fake.
The thing is, he's made a number of dumb assertions elsewhere in the thread. He said that:
we serve all of Afghanistan and Iraq through satellite here in Baghdad.
Rubbish. Manned missions to Moon or Mars are useless scientifically. These schemes are just a large scale version of the old fashioned PR exercise. What the government is great at and should do are in fact these smaller, more theoretical projects that no one else should be interested in, and bring no immediate public adulation or commercial gain. The important experiments they are cancelling cannot be done by any private enterprise.
Manned missions are only meaningful in terms of colonisation or commercial exploitation. They should be left to private enterprises, for them to judge if they are currently worthwhile.
Darwinism is a theory of natural law. It is not a theory of morality. In evolution, there is no such thing as humanity - it's just a temporary stage that will inevitably be replaced. There is no such notion of doing something for the good of the species, only for the propagation of one's own genes.
Saying that forms a reasonable basis for morality is like saying we should jump off a cliff because things naturally fall down.
Tulloch, who has professorships at both Brunel and Cardiff universities, is appalled by the way the photograph was used. "This is using my image to push through draconian and utterly unnecessary terrorism legislation. Its incredibly ironic that the Sun's rhetoric is as the voice of the people yet they don't actually ask the people involved, the victims, what they think. If you want to use my image, the words coming out of my mouth would be, 'Not in my name, Tony'. I haven't read anything or seen anything in the past few months to convince me these laws are necessary."
The automatic reaction to 9/11 or any other terrorist attack should not, and must not be an automatic endorsement of new rules. It is simply wrong to try to use 'remember 9/11' to beat off rational debate.
Slashdot Mirror
but the carbon can be coming from below the surface of either the land or ocean via thermal vents and volcanoes (either above or below water)
No it can't, because the oceans are absorbing CO2 according to measurements taken near it, not giving the stuff out. They are a carbon sink, not a carbon source - at least, at this moment in time.
EFF - all about preserving freedom and privacy of electronic communications
FSF - all about preserving intellectual freedoms and encourage the sharing of code
They aren't the same.
Presumeably, one employee at AT&T had a shred of human decency and decided to leak this information.
Don't worry. He'll be hunted down.
Islamic Republic of France declared, falls. French half of crew pulled off for home security duty during attempts to supress the gorwing Islamic rebellion.
Uh huh. At what point do the aliens invade, again?
I dunno. Unlike certain new military developments, (coughMissileDefensecough) this seems fairly well targetted and intelligent as a defense investment. Aircraft carriers are the few ships that still have a major role in modern asymmetric warfare - fighting guerillas in urban combat, tanks and so on may deprecate in value but the mobile base of operations + potential of on hand air support + removal of need for politically expensive local airstrips a carrier provides do not.
I think Europe can field very highly trained personnel - Britain in particular has been praised for its troops' performance in Iraq. Skill isn't a question - getting the numbers is.
This project looks like an attempt to replace the UK's ailing fleet with ships of similar capabilities on the cheap. That's a good idea.
Most scenarios?
Here's the problem: Shells aren't smart. Shells can't be commanded into a holding position above a target, waiting until someone calls for air support. Shells can't distinguish an enemy target from a friendly one. Shells can't abort after they've launched. (Not easily, anyways) Shells can't be used for air or naval defense very effectively.
Actually, didn't Bond help out the Taliban against the Russians in The Living Daylights?
Yeah. I'm finding this very hard to believe. But it's the European Space Agency...
If true, this would be pretty much the biggest breakthrough since Einstein.
My arse.
This thing should be on front page news. Billboards on the side of the street. It should be talked about in pubs, workplaces, everywhere.
HELLO! This country is going to be a dictatorship! Instead, we find it in political chatshows in TV, and in the middle pages of newspapers. The bane of politicians' lives are people who pay attention, and in general, they can't hide it from everybody. But the media have done a good job of hiding it from the majority of people.
They can sentence you to 2 years per crime.
So that will be 2 years for writing 'I'
So that will be 2 years for writing 'have'
So that will be 2 years for writing 'some'
So that will be 2 years for writing 'rights'
So that will be 2 years for writing '.'
Or maybe they can just reintroduce the death sentence.
I missed how Stallman considers GNU to be 'his'. Is it spelt RMSU? Stallmanu? And I fail to see how Linux - actually named after a single person who is ultimately rather peripheral to the development process - manages to be a much fairer acknowledgement of everyone's work.
In the end, RMS's request is very reasonable from philosophical point of view. The only problems - and yeah, these kill his argument - is that:
1. The public choose to call Linux that way, and even if Linus himself was to pronounce in support of GNU, it wouldn't make a difference.
2. GNU/Linux as a name, spoken out loud, TOTALLY SUCKS.
Rubbish.
History has shown that whenever a rag tag army gets together during a militaristic dictatorship, it would be *behind* the dictator, and in fact often culpable of the worst of his crimes. When the at least disciplined professional troops or policemen would decline to be involved in an atrocity, a crazed volunteer bunch would be willing to lend their imaginative efforts.
The first thing such governments do is to turn people against each other. Letting people have guns is meaningless, because the gun owners are the ones who form the militias, and who gets rewarded by the government with the powers to keep the rest of the population in check. Armed mobs of civilians swept the Nazis into power, and then they organised clubs to train the youth in military tactics. Armed and anarchic mobs of students conducted the cultural revolution. Ordinary people, equipped with weapons the state handed out, conducted the Rawandan massacre. When was the last time there was a totalitarian state where the people would rebel - if only they had the guns to do so?
Until people stop being idiots who will buy into any and all propaganda they find, guns in the hands of the majority are just as likely to be tools of oppression as they are liberation.
Yes, but the parliament act isn't what is in question.
What is in question is this new proposed act, that allows any cabinet member to alter any piece of legislation by conducting a single vote with the minimum of debate or discussion. The parliament act is usually only used after ages of battling, so at least we are certain that MPs have looked at and understood what is being passed. With this new act, it would be very easy to sandwich scary ideas into an innoculous looking package, and sneak that through the vote. The worst case scenario is that one such scary bill would be a motion to alter this bill itself - and remove parliament from the process altogether.
Even if we trust the government not to abuse it, this is still a terrifyingly huge loophole. And in fact, the bill is currently *very* close to being passed. It only has a 1-hour final hearing in the commons, and then it's onto the Lords. And if the Lords don't cooperate, a truly malicious government can use the Parliament act to force it through....
Agreed. Let's recognise this essay for what it is - simple karma whoring, to make up for the stupid things he's said in past (especially re: Climate change). It doesn't really take much of an understanding of the issues involved to give the old fashioned populist rant, and so this is exactly what he does.
Oh hell yeah.
Planescape is really one of the only RPGs to have actual storylines, as opposed to maps or enemy sets to navigate or eliminate.
The implicit sidequest to find the truth behind your beloved is probably the best in all of CRPGdom.
If the Universe started out in one place, and expanded at less than the speed of light, how can we only now be receiving light from its early days?
.6c, and object B is moving the opposite direction at .6c, does each object appear to be moving at >1c from the other object?
Because the Big bang was not an explosion. The universe didn't start in one place - it was one place, and that place - space itself - expanded.
If object A is moving one direction at
No. Because by special relativity, velocities do not add in the Newtonian fashion. The wikipedia article on it is pretty good.
The situation is far more complicated there than 'Maoist bad' etc. The Maoist rebels need to be considered in relation to what they stand in opposition to - the brutal dictatorship under the current king of Nepal. It's no coincidence that at this point, the major political parties in Nepal are siding with the Maoists.
Furthermore, the death toll analysis is not very reliable. For example, much of the death in the GLF was from incompetence and lack of control, rather than authoritarian actions. The Cultural Revolution, meanwhile, was not a centrally organised disaster, but of self igniting fanaticism. And so on and so forth.
While it is easy to make such lists, it is more valuable to look at what connects them - and what connects them has little to do with communism itself - Marx never espoused a dictatorship. What made these cases arise is the raising to high station of an insignificant, paranoid peasant warlord, who becomes obsessed with delusions of self-grandeur. The above sort of thing is not restricted to communism, but occurs in any case where a hated government is removed suddenly by a rebel movement, which then finds itself surrounded by external enemies and half-imagined, half-real remnants of the deposed force. Non-communist examples involve the Taliban, Nazi Germany, the Rwandan massacres, post-Soviet Russia, Saddam-era Iraq......
As I said before, one way to prove this:
Post an anonymous edit to my wikipedia userpage.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Fangz
This will record the IP you are editing from, and should prove whether or not you are editing from Iraq - or at least from a military base.
He could provide a way of checking his IP address so that we know he's actually posting from Iraq, for one thing. (E.g. post an anonymous edit to a wikipedia article - My userpage (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Fangz) would do.) That shouldn't violate any secrecy clauses, since he's revealing it already to the slashdot software, and is fairly hard to fake.
The thing is, he's made a number of dumb assertions elsewhere in the thread. He said that:
we serve all of Afghanistan and Iraq through satellite here in Baghdad.
This makes most people think he's bluffing.
Still, so long as they don't replace grep with a talking dog...
I wonder if MS Office is where Emacs was ten years ago....
I guess OOo is getting the paperclip next year, then.
Rubbish. Manned missions to Moon or Mars are useless scientifically. These schemes are just a large scale version of the old fashioned PR exercise. What the government is great at and should do are in fact these smaller, more theoretical projects that no one else should be interested in, and bring no immediate public adulation or commercial gain. The important experiments they are cancelling cannot be done by any private enterprise.
Manned missions are only meaningful in terms of colonisation or commercial exploitation. They should be left to private enterprises, for them to judge if they are currently worthwhile.
Why did you even bother responding to him?
Darwinism is a theory of natural law. It is not a theory of morality. In evolution, there is no such thing as humanity - it's just a temporary stage that will inevitably be replaced. There is no such notion of doing something for the good of the species, only for the propagation of one's own genes.
Saying that forms a reasonable basis for morality is like saying we should jump off a cliff because things naturally fall down.
Hell yes. And the victims of the attacks themselves are often the ones angry at what is being done in their name.
, 1638838,00.html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/terrorism/story/0,12780
Tulloch, who has professorships at both Brunel and Cardiff universities, is appalled by the way the photograph was used. "This is using my image to push through draconian and utterly unnecessary terrorism legislation. Its incredibly ironic that the Sun's rhetoric is as the voice of the people yet they don't actually ask the people involved, the victims, what they think. If you want to use my image, the words coming out of my mouth would be, 'Not in my name, Tony'. I haven't read anything or seen anything in the past few months to convince me these laws are necessary."
The automatic reaction to 9/11 or any other terrorist attack should not, and must not be an automatic endorsement of new rules. It is simply wrong to try to use 'remember 9/11' to beat off rational debate.