Once you move off the continental shelf area, the ocean is in some ways far less hospitable than the surface of the Moon. You have tremendous pressures and have to go outside in some kind of environment suit. You can't grow your own food outside and there is no life to speak of.
Contrast this with the Moon, where low-pressure atmosphere in tunnels would provide almost unlimited living space.
Being in the ocean also wouldn't offer any protection against drastic seismic or impact events. While it was popular to think of the oceans as a vast toilet where anything we dumped would be recycled harmlessly, that is not really the case once you get beyond some pretty small quantities. This is mostly a result of a huge population - the ocean could absorb all we could throw at it in 1700 but not 2010. So habitats in the ocean aren't going to be immune to that either.
Add in the low gravity on the Moon, and it sounds like a really good starting point for an interplanetary or intersteller civilization.
Long-term, money wins out over both - people would rather have beer than pay for stuff on the Internet. Long term, I'd say that the people growing up with the Internet and knowing that everything is there for the taking will just take and long after the "payers" are gone the Internet and warez will still be there.
Let us assume there were 20 pictures he put on the boss's computer. That means he had possession of 20 pictures. I believe the average is about eight years per picture, so that would be 160 year sentence.
Hard to get much harser than that. About the only thing worse might be getting paroled after 120 years and your decendents having to take you in. For a year.
If there was no consumption, there would be no production. The fact that there is a market and a rather lucrative one at that means children will be bribed, baboozled, coerced and forced into child porn. If someone will pay $100 for a single picture and $100 will pay the rent for six months there are people that will do this.
Child porn isn't something you would use a studio for. It is something that is a home-based business. To stop it you need to have eyes in every third-world hovel in the world because that is where a lot of it is made. It is made there because it is lucrative and these people will do just about anything for the kind of money that child porn brings in.
I guess it is like drugs - maybe some folks think we should just tax it and allow lives to be destroyed. After all, they are going to be destroyed anyway, why not let the government get in on it?
There is no simple answer with child porn because it is so pervasive. In societies where children are viewed as having little or no value until they can work it is easy to convince people to use their children in this manner in exchange for enough money to live on.
And then you have the "believers" that have deluded themselves so completely they think they are loving the little boys and want to show off their love to the rest of their community.
I can at least understand the 15-year-old girl. I can't understand the four-year-old boys, or even younger which is where the real money is at. And for an idea where this gets started look up where the proverb "A woman for duty, A boy for pleasure, But a melon for ecstasy." comes from. This isn't something your neighbors are doing for a little extra cash.
If you have a busy web site today you pay Akami for local caching. They have servers distributed all over the world and some even in ISP facilities to cache their customers content locally.
If you don't have a lot of money, you can't afford it. Should the government put Akami out of business because they are doing something that flies in the face of "net neutrality"?
The thing that you should be thinking about is revising the law such that the CEO of a corporation is legally responsible for all debts and actions by the corporation. This pretty much ends the idea of a corporation completely and makes every one a partnership with no liability protection.
A corporation becomes a means for raising money, if you trust the CEO. Nothing else would matter anymore.
It might eventually happen that things would sort themselves out, but it would probably take 50 years before that happened. It would be 50 years with personal accountability. The one problem might be that you wouldn't have any business that actually needed the liability shield left, but that might be an improvement.
Today, if someone were to invent a new type of battery they might very well never have to work again. The folks that put Facebook together (regardless of how much they stole from others) probably do not actually have to work at anything ever again.
Alternatively, while Stephen King probably doesn't have to work and still gets income (a little) from Carrie (his first sale) I assure you there are plenty of authors that get little or nothing from their efforts. Why? Because Carrie is considered to be "valuable" and the other author's work isn't.
Now if you would like to be rewarded with a permanent income stream then get out there and do something valuable. Until then, you're just whining.
If they aren't making money for someone, why do you believe they still exist? Libraries have a limited amount of space, so they aren't keeping stuff that there is no interest in. There is no gigantic vault with materials that people have lost interest in somewhere - this stuff goes in the trash.
Yes, some might consider it a horrible waste. There just isn't room on the planet to keep everything from the beginning of time, so there has always been some filtering. Today, we have more "nostalgia-minded" people that seem to want to keep everything forever and this is quite different from the way things have been.
We have only a few documents from 1,000 years ago and only those that people in power sought to preserve. Before that, we have far, far less. It might be nice to have a complete record in another 1,000 years but what interest would there be in a complete collection of Esquire magazine, much less Popular Mechanics. Where could you find an archive of Mechanics Illustrated today anyway? It was a less successful competitor to Popular Mechanics that ended publication sometime in the 1960s. It is gone, and there may not be any interest in anyone having a copy of it even on microfilm today.
Sometimes you just gotta let go. And people have been. I suspect most of the works you are thinking of no longer exist in any form whatsoever.
So we have a ban on containers with liquids or gels. This is designed to prevent someone from using a binary explosive on an airplane. Probably one of the best known binary agents is hydrazine and hydrogen peroxide. Upon combining these (roughly 50-50 I believe) they burn quite rapidly. A pint of each in an airplane would almost certainly burn out the entire passenger cabin.
So you have someone dedicated to their cause, dedicated enough to die in the malestrom that would ensue from this. Maybe it would even require two people, pre-liquids ban, each one with a water bottle.
How's this for you - post-liquids ban. Each of dedicated particpant drinks a pint of their component. You could probably live long enough for the plane to take off. Each one barfs on the floor of the plane in one nice juicy pile. Pretty much instant cremation of all passengers.
Millimeter wave scanning would not pick this up and no current technology would prevent it.
No expensive scanners are needed. You show up at the airport five or six hours before your flight and are subjected to a number of interviews. The interviews are supposed to make you nervous and uncertain. The results are evaluated by people that are watching on video and have lots of experience.
Never once has anyone gotten explosives onto a plane from or to Israel, dispite incredible efforts and plenty of motivation. In many circles the only good Jew is a dead Jew and there are plenty of volunteers that would be happy die - as long as they can take lots of Jews with them.
In the US the problem is somewhat more diffuse. We hear about people doing stupid things with explosives which are designed to make us think that all Muslim extremests are idiots. The people that do not tell us about aren't idiots - but we will never know if the TSA is doing anything effective or not. That is part of their charm - secret success or secret failure both add up to a certainity by the traveling public that the TSA (They'll Steal Anything) is just a bunch of yahoos that are just being a nuisance. Keeping what they have (or have not) found a secret is a huge mistake that goes beyond just PR problems.
Yes, but can you install WeatherBug on your Linux live CD? No? Then is isn't going to be of any use to the millions of housewives and grannies that have installed it.
Seriously, a live CD is only of use if you don't want to save anything. And no, you aren't going to get people to boot into an unfamiliar environment to do banking or whatnot.
The "other" problem is that what is really needed is an Internet Appliance for these folks. No software installs, no executable anything. It does email, web browsing, media playing and not much more. Sure, you probably want capacity to add sanctioned applications over time but it needs to operate a whole lot like an iPad - which pretty much is an Internet Appliance. This would be reasonable and could be extremely secure. More secure than the iPad is today as it has way too much capability of having stuff added to it that could be used to exploit it.
We have known about the problem for at least 10 years but nobody has done anything real about it. WebTV and a couple of other devices tried, but they were pretty restricted and oriented towards dial-up access at the time. The iPad is the first such appliance that has come along and it will be a while before it can be seen how effective it is and what the acceptance is. Clearly, we need some more wireless devices that are "appliances" that offer a limited walled garden approach and are designed with the idea of being hack-proof from the beginning.
It might be that ads on phones is a total bust. If it is, Google will have to fall back on services and software.
Absolutely. Look how much Google has had to back off of vacuuming up data from every source (even your router) imaginable and go back to selling services and software.
I'd say if there is a negative reaction to ads on phones with the ads being crammed down the carrier's throat because of platform choice the response would be... more ads. Google has a plan for monetizing Android on phones and it absolutely does not include giving away a valuable operating system to phone carriers so they can offer free services that Google provides. No, it is going to make Google many, many dollars in the coming years.
Remember, Google search was free for a long time. And then the ads started showing up. And then if you weren't bidding on adwords you got left behind by your competition. Who came out ahead when the bidding pushed the prices up? Google.
So I would expect an "upgrade" to Android in the near future that makes is clear your phone is owned by Google and you are getting to use it only if you see the required number of ads per day. Or per hour. Why would Google spend millions on dollars on creating, publishing and maintaining Android? Do you honestly believe it is because the folks at Google just wanted to "give something back" or to improve the lives of Symbian developers (so they could get laid off and find something better to do)? No, Android is something that will impact all of its users in the (probably near) future and it will make money for Google. Lots of money.
It is improper (and potentially criminal) to use the FBI seal in any manner not approved by the FBI. What they are mostly concerned about is the appearance of an endorsement or approval. They do not endorse or approve anything. When the FBI tests something and approves it for internal use you cannot use this information in any way.
I assure you that if you have an FBI seal on a commercial site with the words "Approved by the FBI" your web site isn't going to last the day. They are very, very touchy about this sort of thing and will likely go to extreme lengths to get such materials taken down.
I don't believe it has anything to do with reproducing the image in the form of FBI credentials or a badge, although clearly that is going to get you in trouble as well. I believe their interest in not appearing to endorse or approve anything goes back to the origin of the FBI and problems they had dealing with state and local authorities, but I don't have anything specific in mind.
The place to start with this is doing something like purse shopping. You can go to a Coach store or Prada and find a really nice purse for $1500 and an OK one for $500. Then go to a store that sells similar knock-offs and you can see things that look more-or-less like the Prada ones for $100. Then stop by the street vendor with a absolutely faithful Prada copy for $35.
There are two things that the average Joe learns from this adventure:
Only an idiot would buy a "real" Coach or Prada purse.
There has to be cheaper version of just about everything else.
What this does is by the mere presence of the counterfeit goods in the marketplace is reduce the willingness of the public to buy originals. It doesn't matter what the "original" is, obviously there has to be a cheaper counterfeit version available. This applies to everything from caviar to computers and automobile parts to luggage.
$200 billion lost because of the presence of counterfeit goods? Easy. The direct losses might only be a few million, but pushing the idea of "just as good as" in front of people pushes the originals out completely.
I'd say the one item that is worth thinking about is why would Iran allow a non-functioning state to exist on its border? If there was nobody to stop them, why not just annex the place so they can have law and order?
No, not the TV show - Iran doesn't like Western TV.
Clearly, nobody in Iraq is going to stop a takeover from Iran. The US is going to sit it out as well. So there is nobody left to object. Besides, the Iraq/Iran border was just something made up by the British.
You have missed the point. Google, by vacuuming up every possible bit of data they can collect, now has a vast treasure trove of information that can be sold. They can reduce this information down by demographics and have an extremely marketable database that is continually evolving.
Companies pay millions for simple cash register scanning data, so you can imagine what a database that says people in suburban Wilkes-Barre PA are more interested in X than Y now. If you have a company that makes X it means clearly that a local ad campaign will be successful in that area.
Another example is from studying MAC addresses and SSIDs they likely have a really good database of what wireless routers are being used by consumers. This pretty much translates to sales data by geographic location. How much do you think this is worth to router manufacturers? They know what their sales are, but this gives them a really good window into other manufacturer's sales.
Well, Google has that data and I suspect it is for sale to the right people.
There are plenty of other avenues where Google's data can be extremely valuable in the right hands. And I am sure they are making use of the data they collect. Targeting ads is one aspect of how they can use what they collect, but it clearly isn't the primary use.
There is a difference between "trying to better yourself" and counting on achieving the impossible.
One thing that we have consistently failed to do in the US is to "track" people which is pretty common in Europe. You want to be a doctor in the US and it is just a matter of finding the right school. If you work at it hard enough - sometimes incredibly hard - and you are likely to graduate, regardless of your actual qualifications. My understanding is this is far away from how things work elsewhere - mostly, you take some tests and they tell you that you can't be a doctor and that way is closed to you.
Hence the great democratization of the American university system. If you have the money, loans, grades or luck you can get in. The problem with this approach is now a lot of people would like to eliminate the financial requirements to get in. As we have already had 40-50 years of forcing state schools to admit the unqualified with adding tutoring and remedial courses, you can see where this is going. The state schools will be forced to admit and keep everyone.
Part of the problem in the US is that in 1950 you could graduate from high school and get a well-paying job in a factory. The factories are gone, as are the low-skill jobs that they offered. Today, with no skills, you are going to end up standing on a street corner holding a sign, flipping burgers or collecting garbage. With newer high-tech complicated garbage trucks, low-skill jobs there are going to be a thing of the past. As with every other low-skill job you can imagine that exists today. A lot of these jobs have moved to low-wage countries and they aren't coming back. Any attempt to raise tariffs to block this will earn the US a sharp rebuke from the WTO and that will be the end of that. Remember Bush's disagreement with letting in EU produced steel and how long that lasted? Steel production in the US is down, and likely to disappear simply because other countries can do it cheaper and shipping is cheaper than high US wages.
So what exactly do we do with low-skill people that are mentally unsuited for high-skill jobs? Trying to train someone that just doesn't "get" working with abstract symbols in computer programming, for instance, isn't going to work. They aren't ever going to be able to do it. They probably aren't going to be able to be a stock broker or architect either as both of these require dealing with abstractions and generalities. Right now, there are still some jobs available and going to college isn't what these people need. However, the current goverment plans want to make it so "everyone" goes to college (regardless of the value for them) and still we are left with the "and then what?" question.
So what do we do with these people? There are a lot of them - studies would indicate that 10-20 percent of the population just doesn't "get" higher math, abstract symbol manipulation and stuff like that. That's a lot of people.
You propose something that would discriminate against people? Probably a good portion of those that you would be discriminating against would be disadvantaged. That would never fly in the US.
A huge portion of the class of a any state school is composed of people that aren't going to do terribly well but are managing to get by with the help of tutors and remedial courses. They will never be great thinkers, but they will have a diploma that says they graduated. This by itself is a significant achievement for them and the key to getting a good job. Without that diploma, they aren't going anywhere.
This is a huge difference between the way universities operate in the US and how they work in other parts of the world.
In the US if you had an entrance exam that required you to be at the top of your high school class, the universities would be empty. 5,000 students instead of 50,000. Tuition would be significantly reduced because there would be a lot less physical plant, recreation and other facilities that would be needed. The little problem with this idea is that the "disadvantaged" students would be rioting and the government would step in and tell them more diversity was needed in the student body. Sorry, not going to fly here.
While global warming - or at least some kind of significant climate change - is certainly "undeniable" what remains questionable is where exactly is this change coming from?
What is clearly needed is something that says "Every mile driven in an SUV kills a child in Asia." or something like that. With that information, we can start destroying the SUVs and save some children. Without that information or something like it, as we have seen it is very difficult to stir up the SUV-destroying mobs that are waiting on the sidelines.
Similarly, once it is clear there is a causal link between airline flights and climate change maybe the government will step in and cease all passenger air travel. You know, it really isn't necessary - but if it isn't doing any harm why not let it continue? Do we have some numbers of people that will drown because of sea level changes per airline mile flown?
One thing that might help is some sacrificial folks seeking climate martyrdom. Blow up some airliners (on the ground), start burning cars on a large scale. Sure, you might get arrested but the trial could be good PR. As it is today you can expect some of the "climate scientists" to be driving SUVs and flying in airplanes. Heck, Al Gore even has his very own plane. Talk about lack of committment!
Obviously, coal-fired power plants are putting out a lot of CO2 and it would be nice to just turn them off. However, this would be a serious inconvenience for a lot of people. Crushing every SUV and eliminating passenger air travel wouldn't really be that much of an inconvenience, at least compared to turning off some large percentage of the electricity in the US. We aren't going to have any other sources of electricity for a long time - decades, probably. So doing anything about the coal power plants is probably off the table.
I feel certain that until the people convinced of AGW (especially the "A" part of it) start actually walking the talk, the talking part just isn't going to make much of an impact. So far, I haven't heard anyone destroying anything that is destroying the environment in the name of preserving the planet. Let's see some action. Then maybe people will start to take things seriously.
Then again, if the mission is just to push the standard of living back to around 1870 or so (pre-electric), then maybe nobody is really all that committed. In which case, you can expect nothing to get done.
Yes, but you are ignoring the critical point here: what happens next? There are relatively few options that obviously need to be clearly explained:
The banks could just write off the (likely immense) losses as a cost of providing ATM services to the public at large. Ha ha ha ha.
Banks and ATM service companies could replace their entire ATM networks over the next 6-12 months as soon as some new PKI-based system was available. With each machine being a lot more expensive and the old ones just being scrapped, it would be pretty expensive. Surely you know that would just be passed on to the ATM users, right? So you can start looking for the $5 fee to use the new, improved ATM machines.
Nothing gets done at all, and while there are losses they aren't huge. Again, banks are there to make money and ATM fees just start creeping upward. Again, expect $5 ATM fees with the same old insecure hardware. This is of course the most likely.
Basically, while this is great news to the technically competent that can exploit ATM machines, it really sucks for the rest of humanity that gets to pay the increased fees. Because there isn't any way out of it - fees are going to go up as a result of this. Maybe the machines get replaced, but probably not. Until each an every machine is just spitting out cash to passersby the machines are going to stay put and people just get charged more for using them.
The history of ATM machines shows clearly that the banks decided they were a way to replace tellers originally. Then they figured out that wasn't going to work out so well and ATMs became a convenience item that could be a revenue source. Today there are companies that independently operate ATM-like machines in bars, restaurants and gas stations and are making a tidy profit from the fees to use such machines.
You think a free ATM is somehow a UN-promised right? Check out the machines in Vegas casinos. They aren't content with a fixed dollar amount, they charge a percentage like 5%. This is probably the upper end of where fees can go.
The result of exposing insecure systems is always going to be increased costs and/or hassle for the average, non-thieving users. Nothing is going to be fixed for free, even if the government somehow mandated that it be fixed. The average Joe just trying to get by will end up paying for it in the end with absolutely no benefit to anyone.
The Internet is for distributing things. Pictures. Words. Movies. Music. Software. Whatever.
The point is, once it is on the Internet, Google might index it. Then if I am looking for a picture of something and I can find it with Google I can use it. Just grab it and do whatever the heck I want with it - it was there, so now it is MINE. Be glad if the person "takes" their own copy rather than just linking back to yours.
Same thing goes for anything else digital. Once it is out there people are going to just take and take and take.
Have you had people ask you to make changes for them yet? No? It's coming. With the sense of entitlement that the Internet brings you are going to get all sorts of silly requests. Sort of like "Nice photograph, but I think there is too much green in it. Can you fix it for me?" The idea that maybe your creative work is yours is offensive and discriminatory, maybe even racist.
So you don't want to share? Well then, keep it off the Internet. Everything there is for sharing.
The problem was that it wasn't carrying enough life boats. This was a regulatory problem (although you could argue that this shouldn't need regulation, it was just common sense!).
If you have read any of the accounts of the Titanic sinking it isn't like there were 1500 people standing around wondering what to do now that the lifeboats were gone. It is a lot closer to the truth that they loaded the lifeboats and the ship sank under them as the last boats were loaded. The ran out of time trying to get the collapsable lifeboats launched and never made use of one of them. This would have been the same story if they had a lot more lifeboats.
There were 16 lifeboats. It was estimated that the needed 64. There is absolutely no way that 64 lifeboats could have been loaded and launched given the way it was done. This would be even more true considering that in order to have 64 lifeboats on the Titanic they would have had to be double-hung, further increasing the time to load them. Sure, they might have been able to launch another 8 or 10 in parallel with the launching of the ones they had, but a double-hung configuration on the davits might have doomed even more people simply because it would have taken even more time to launch them.
The Titanic was not designed to sink in two hours. I don't think any existing passenger ship is either. There simply is not enough time move the passengers to lifeboats when such a large ship sinks so quickly. Another factor is that today it is rare to have passenger liners in waters as unforgivingly cold as where the Titanic was. So passengers in the water would not be dying in 15 minutes of hypothermia, giving far more time to rescue people even after the ship went down.
The single aspect of the Titanic sinking that strikes me as incredibly stupid was that they knew the ship couldn't turn worth anything. They also knew that the ship was designed to be "unsinkable". So driving the ship at full speed into an iceberg would have done... nothing. Instead, they tried to avoid the collision - which with the small rudder was almost certainly doomed to fail. By striking the iceberg all along the side of the ship defeated every safety system that was in place. The folks in the wheelhouse knew way too much but were apparently driven by emotion to try to avoid the collision. Once they did that, there was no way most of the passengers were going to survive no matter how many lifeboats there were. There just wasn't time.
Not at all. Google has found a way to monetize providing free services to people. If you buy into it, you are not taking advantage of Google's generousity. You are providing revenue to Google through information (which they sell) and an advertising channel.
The assumption is, in using Google services, that you are getting more out of the deal than they are. This can't possibly be the case or they wouldn't do it. So you just don't know exactly how they are benefiting from providing these services. Trust me, it isn't because they are such nice people.
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Once you move off the continental shelf area, the ocean is in some ways far less hospitable than the surface of the Moon. You have tremendous pressures and have to go outside in some kind of environment suit. You can't grow your own food outside and there is no life to speak of.
Contrast this with the Moon, where low-pressure atmosphere in tunnels would provide almost unlimited living space.
Being in the ocean also wouldn't offer any protection against drastic seismic or impact events. While it was popular to think of the oceans as a vast toilet where anything we dumped would be recycled harmlessly, that is not really the case once you get beyond some pretty small quantities. This is mostly a result of a huge population - the ocean could absorb all we could throw at it in 1700 but not 2010. So habitats in the ocean aren't going to be immune to that either.
Add in the low gravity on the Moon, and it sounds like a really good starting point for an interplanetary or intersteller civilization.
So why do you pay? Convenience? Or guilt?
Long-term, money wins out over both - people would rather have beer than pay for stuff on the Internet. Long term, I'd say that the people growing up with the Internet and knowing that everything is there for the taking will just take and long after the "payers" are gone the Internet and warez will still be there.
I believe in all US jurisdictions the browser cache is not considered to be evidence of intent.
Nobody gets convicted because of their browser cache, at least in the US.
Let us assume there were 20 pictures he put on the boss's computer. That means he had possession of 20 pictures. I believe the average is about eight years per picture, so that would be 160 year sentence.
Hard to get much harser than that. About the only thing worse might be getting paroled after 120 years and your decendents having to take you in. For a year.
I guess it is like drugs - maybe some folks think we should just tax it and allow lives to be destroyed. After all, they are going to be destroyed anyway, why not let the government get in on it?
There is no simple answer with child porn because it is so pervasive. In societies where children are viewed as having little or no value until they can work it is easy to convince people to use their children in this manner in exchange for enough money to live on.
And then you have the "believers" that have deluded themselves so completely they think they are loving the little boys and want to show off their love to the rest of their community.
I can at least understand the 15-year-old girl. I can't understand the four-year-old boys, or even younger which is where the real money is at. And for an idea where this gets started look up where the proverb "A woman for duty, A boy for pleasure, But a melon for ecstasy." comes from. This isn't something your neighbors are doing for a little extra cash.
No, I suspect "Boiling Lobster" refers to the idea that it is real tasty unless you hear it scream when you drop it in the pot.
As long as we're not hearing any screaming, we're just going to love the new arrangement.
Sorry, but that is already happening.
If you have a busy web site today you pay Akami for local caching. They have servers distributed all over the world and some even in ISP facilities to cache their customers content locally.
If you don't have a lot of money, you can't afford it. Should the government put Akami out of business because they are doing something that flies in the face of "net neutrality"?
The thing that you should be thinking about is revising the law such that the CEO of a corporation is legally responsible for all debts and actions by the corporation. This pretty much ends the idea of a corporation completely and makes every one a partnership with no liability protection.
A corporation becomes a means for raising money, if you trust the CEO. Nothing else would matter anymore.
It might eventually happen that things would sort themselves out, but it would probably take 50 years before that happened. It would be 50 years with personal accountability. The one problem might be that you wouldn't have any business that actually needed the liability shield left, but that might be an improvement.
Uh, that isn't exactly true.
Today, if someone were to invent a new type of battery they might very well never have to work again. The folks that put Facebook together (regardless of how much they stole from others) probably do not actually have to work at anything ever again.
Alternatively, while Stephen King probably doesn't have to work and still gets income (a little) from Carrie (his first sale) I assure you there are plenty of authors that get little or nothing from their efforts. Why? Because Carrie is considered to be "valuable" and the other author's work isn't.
Now if you would like to be rewarded with a permanent income stream then get out there and do something valuable. Until then, you're just whining.
If they aren't making money for someone, why do you believe they still exist? Libraries have a limited amount of space, so they aren't keeping stuff that there is no interest in. There is no gigantic vault with materials that people have lost interest in somewhere - this stuff goes in the trash.
Yes, some might consider it a horrible waste. There just isn't room on the planet to keep everything from the beginning of time, so there has always been some filtering. Today, we have more "nostalgia-minded" people that seem to want to keep everything forever and this is quite different from the way things have been.
We have only a few documents from 1,000 years ago and only those that people in power sought to preserve. Before that, we have far, far less. It might be nice to have a complete record in another 1,000 years but what interest would there be in a complete collection of Esquire magazine, much less Popular Mechanics. Where could you find an archive of Mechanics Illustrated today anyway? It was a less successful competitor to Popular Mechanics that ended publication sometime in the 1960s. It is gone, and there may not be any interest in anyone having a copy of it even on microfilm today.
Sometimes you just gotta let go. And people have been. I suspect most of the works you are thinking of no longer exist in any form whatsoever.
So we have a ban on containers with liquids or gels. This is designed to prevent someone from using a binary explosive on an airplane. Probably one of the best known binary agents is hydrazine and hydrogen peroxide. Upon combining these (roughly 50-50 I believe) they burn quite rapidly. A pint of each in an airplane would almost certainly burn out the entire passenger cabin.
So you have someone dedicated to their cause, dedicated enough to die in the malestrom that would ensue from this. Maybe it would even require two people, pre-liquids ban, each one with a water bottle.
How's this for you - post-liquids ban. Each of dedicated particpant drinks a pint of their component. You could probably live long enough for the plane to take off. Each one barfs on the floor of the plane in one nice juicy pile. Pretty much instant cremation of all passengers.
Millimeter wave scanning would not pick this up and no current technology would prevent it.
No expensive scanners are needed. You show up at the airport five or six hours before your flight and are subjected to a number of interviews. The interviews are supposed to make you nervous and uncertain. The results are evaluated by people that are watching on video and have lots of experience.
Never once has anyone gotten explosives onto a plane from or to Israel, dispite incredible efforts and plenty of motivation. In many circles the only good Jew is a dead Jew and there are plenty of volunteers that would be happy die - as long as they can take lots of Jews with them.
In the US the problem is somewhat more diffuse. We hear about people doing stupid things with explosives which are designed to make us think that all Muslim extremests are idiots. The people that do not tell us about aren't idiots - but we will never know if the TSA is doing anything effective or not. That is part of their charm - secret success or secret failure both add up to a certainity by the traveling public that the TSA (They'll Steal Anything) is just a bunch of yahoos that are just being a nuisance. Keeping what they have (or have not) found a secret is a huge mistake that goes beyond just PR problems.
Yes, but can you install WeatherBug on your Linux live CD? No? Then is isn't going to be of any use to the millions of housewives and grannies that have installed it.
Seriously, a live CD is only of use if you don't want to save anything. And no, you aren't going to get people to boot into an unfamiliar environment to do banking or whatnot.
The "other" problem is that what is really needed is an Internet Appliance for these folks. No software installs, no executable anything. It does email, web browsing, media playing and not much more. Sure, you probably want capacity to add sanctioned applications over time but it needs to operate a whole lot like an iPad - which pretty much is an Internet Appliance. This would be reasonable and could be extremely secure. More secure than the iPad is today as it has way too much capability of having stuff added to it that could be used to exploit it.
We have known about the problem for at least 10 years but nobody has done anything real about it. WebTV and a couple of other devices tried, but they were pretty restricted and oriented towards dial-up access at the time. The iPad is the first such appliance that has come along and it will be a while before it can be seen how effective it is and what the acceptance is. Clearly, we need some more wireless devices that are "appliances" that offer a limited walled garden approach and are designed with the idea of being hack-proof from the beginning.
It might be that ads on phones is a total bust. If it is, Google will have to fall back on services and software.
Absolutely. Look how much Google has had to back off of vacuuming up data from every source (even your router) imaginable and go back to selling services and software.
I'd say if there is a negative reaction to ads on phones with the ads being crammed down the carrier's throat because of platform choice the response would be ... more ads. Google has a plan for monetizing Android on phones and it absolutely does not include giving away a valuable operating system to phone carriers so they can offer free services that Google provides. No, it is going to make Google many, many dollars in the coming years.
Remember, Google search was free for a long time. And then the ads started showing up. And then if you weren't bidding on adwords you got left behind by your competition. Who came out ahead when the bidding pushed the prices up? Google.
So I would expect an "upgrade" to Android in the near future that makes is clear your phone is owned by Google and you are getting to use it only if you see the required number of ads per day. Or per hour. Why would Google spend millions on dollars on creating, publishing and maintaining Android? Do you honestly believe it is because the folks at Google just wanted to "give something back" or to improve the lives of Symbian developers (so they could get laid off and find something better to do)? No, Android is something that will impact all of its users in the (probably near) future and it will make money for Google. Lots of money.
It is improper (and potentially criminal) to use the FBI seal in any manner not approved by the FBI. What they are mostly concerned about is the appearance of an endorsement or approval. They do not endorse or approve anything. When the FBI tests something and approves it for internal use you cannot use this information in any way.
I assure you that if you have an FBI seal on a commercial site with the words "Approved by the FBI" your web site isn't going to last the day. They are very, very touchy about this sort of thing and will likely go to extreme lengths to get such materials taken down.
I don't believe it has anything to do with reproducing the image in the form of FBI credentials or a badge, although clearly that is going to get you in trouble as well. I believe their interest in not appearing to endorse or approve anything goes back to the origin of the FBI and problems they had dealing with state and local authorities, but I don't have anything specific in mind.
The place to start with this is doing something like purse shopping. You can go to a Coach store or Prada and find a really nice purse for $1500 and an OK one for $500. Then go to a store that sells similar knock-offs and you can see things that look more-or-less like the Prada ones for $100. Then stop by the street vendor with a absolutely faithful Prada copy for $35.
There are two things that the average Joe learns from this adventure:
What this does is by the mere presence of the counterfeit goods in the marketplace is reduce the willingness of the public to buy originals. It doesn't matter what the "original" is, obviously there has to be a cheaper counterfeit version available. This applies to everything from caviar to computers and automobile parts to luggage.
$200 billion lost because of the presence of counterfeit goods? Easy. The direct losses might only be a few million, but pushing the idea of "just as good as" in front of people pushes the originals out completely.
I'd say the one item that is worth thinking about is why would Iran allow a non-functioning state to exist on its border? If there was nobody to stop them, why not just annex the place so they can have law and order?
No, not the TV show - Iran doesn't like Western TV.
Clearly, nobody in Iraq is going to stop a takeover from Iran. The US is going to sit it out as well. So there is nobody left to object. Besides, the Iraq/Iran border was just something made up by the British.
You have missed the point. Google, by vacuuming up every possible bit of data they can collect, now has a vast treasure trove of information that can be sold. They can reduce this information down by demographics and have an extremely marketable database that is continually evolving.
Companies pay millions for simple cash register scanning data, so you can imagine what a database that says people in suburban Wilkes-Barre PA are more interested in X than Y now. If you have a company that makes X it means clearly that a local ad campaign will be successful in that area.
Another example is from studying MAC addresses and SSIDs they likely have a really good database of what wireless routers are being used by consumers. This pretty much translates to sales data by geographic location. How much do you think this is worth to router manufacturers? They know what their sales are, but this gives them a really good window into other manufacturer's sales.
Well, Google has that data and I suspect it is for sale to the right people.
There are plenty of other avenues where Google's data can be extremely valuable in the right hands. And I am sure they are making use of the data they collect. Targeting ads is one aspect of how they can use what they collect, but it clearly isn't the primary use.
There is a difference between "trying to better yourself" and counting on achieving the impossible.
One thing that we have consistently failed to do in the US is to "track" people which is pretty common in Europe. You want to be a doctor in the US and it is just a matter of finding the right school. If you work at it hard enough - sometimes incredibly hard - and you are likely to graduate, regardless of your actual qualifications. My understanding is this is far away from how things work elsewhere - mostly, you take some tests and they tell you that you can't be a doctor and that way is closed to you.
Hence the great democratization of the American university system. If you have the money, loans, grades or luck you can get in. The problem with this approach is now a lot of people would like to eliminate the financial requirements to get in. As we have already had 40-50 years of forcing state schools to admit the unqualified with adding tutoring and remedial courses, you can see where this is going. The state schools will be forced to admit and keep everyone.
Part of the problem in the US is that in 1950 you could graduate from high school and get a well-paying job in a factory. The factories are gone, as are the low-skill jobs that they offered. Today, with no skills, you are going to end up standing on a street corner holding a sign, flipping burgers or collecting garbage. With newer high-tech complicated garbage trucks, low-skill jobs there are going to be a thing of the past. As with every other low-skill job you can imagine that exists today. A lot of these jobs have moved to low-wage countries and they aren't coming back. Any attempt to raise tariffs to block this will earn the US a sharp rebuke from the WTO and that will be the end of that. Remember Bush's disagreement with letting in EU produced steel and how long that lasted? Steel production in the US is down, and likely to disappear simply because other countries can do it cheaper and shipping is cheaper than high US wages.
So what exactly do we do with low-skill people that are mentally unsuited for high-skill jobs? Trying to train someone that just doesn't "get" working with abstract symbols in computer programming, for instance, isn't going to work. They aren't ever going to be able to do it. They probably aren't going to be able to be a stock broker or architect either as both of these require dealing with abstractions and generalities. Right now, there are still some jobs available and going to college isn't what these people need. However, the current goverment plans want to make it so "everyone" goes to college (regardless of the value for them) and still we are left with the "and then what?" question.
So what do we do with these people? There are a lot of them - studies would indicate that 10-20 percent of the population just doesn't "get" higher math, abstract symbol manipulation and stuff like that. That's a lot of people.
You propose something that would discriminate against people? Probably a good portion of those that you would be discriminating against would be disadvantaged. That would never fly in the US.
A huge portion of the class of a any state school is composed of people that aren't going to do terribly well but are managing to get by with the help of tutors and remedial courses. They will never be great thinkers, but they will have a diploma that says they graduated. This by itself is a significant achievement for them and the key to getting a good job. Without that diploma, they aren't going anywhere.
This is a huge difference between the way universities operate in the US and how they work in other parts of the world.
In the US if you had an entrance exam that required you to be at the top of your high school class, the universities would be empty. 5,000 students instead of 50,000. Tuition would be significantly reduced because there would be a lot less physical plant, recreation and other facilities that would be needed. The little problem with this idea is that the "disadvantaged" students would be rioting and the government would step in and tell them more diversity was needed in the student body. Sorry, not going to fly here.
While global warming - or at least some kind of significant climate change - is certainly "undeniable" what remains questionable is where exactly is this change coming from?
What is clearly needed is something that says "Every mile driven in an SUV kills a child in Asia." or something like that. With that information, we can start destroying the SUVs and save some children. Without that information or something like it, as we have seen it is very difficult to stir up the SUV-destroying mobs that are waiting on the sidelines.
Similarly, once it is clear there is a causal link between airline flights and climate change maybe the government will step in and cease all passenger air travel. You know, it really isn't necessary - but if it isn't doing any harm why not let it continue? Do we have some numbers of people that will drown because of sea level changes per airline mile flown?
One thing that might help is some sacrificial folks seeking climate martyrdom. Blow up some airliners (on the ground), start burning cars on a large scale. Sure, you might get arrested but the trial could be good PR. As it is today you can expect some of the "climate scientists" to be driving SUVs and flying in airplanes. Heck, Al Gore even has his very own plane. Talk about lack of committment!
Obviously, coal-fired power plants are putting out a lot of CO2 and it would be nice to just turn them off. However, this would be a serious inconvenience for a lot of people. Crushing every SUV and eliminating passenger air travel wouldn't really be that much of an inconvenience, at least compared to turning off some large percentage of the electricity in the US. We aren't going to have any other sources of electricity for a long time - decades, probably. So doing anything about the coal power plants is probably off the table.
I feel certain that until the people convinced of AGW (especially the "A" part of it) start actually walking the talk, the talking part just isn't going to make much of an impact. So far, I haven't heard anyone destroying anything that is destroying the environment in the name of preserving the planet. Let's see some action. Then maybe people will start to take things seriously.
Then again, if the mission is just to push the standard of living back to around 1870 or so (pre-electric), then maybe nobody is really all that committed. In which case, you can expect nothing to get done.
Yes, but you are ignoring the critical point here: what happens next? There are relatively few options that obviously need to be clearly explained:
Basically, while this is great news to the technically competent that can exploit ATM machines, it really sucks for the rest of humanity that gets to pay the increased fees. Because there isn't any way out of it - fees are going to go up as a result of this. Maybe the machines get replaced, but probably not. Until each an every machine is just spitting out cash to passersby the machines are going to stay put and people just get charged more for using them.
The history of ATM machines shows clearly that the banks decided they were a way to replace tellers originally. Then they figured out that wasn't going to work out so well and ATMs became a convenience item that could be a revenue source. Today there are companies that independently operate ATM-like machines in bars, restaurants and gas stations and are making a tidy profit from the fees to use such machines.
You think a free ATM is somehow a UN-promised right? Check out the machines in Vegas casinos. They aren't content with a fixed dollar amount, they charge a percentage like 5%. This is probably the upper end of where fees can go.
The result of exposing insecure systems is always going to be increased costs and/or hassle for the average, non-thieving users. Nothing is going to be fixed for free, even if the government somehow mandated that it be fixed. The average Joe just trying to get by will end up paying for it in the end with absolutely no benefit to anyone.
The Internet is for distributing things. Pictures. Words. Movies. Music. Software. Whatever.
The point is, once it is on the Internet, Google might index it. Then if I am looking for a picture of something and I can find it with Google I can use it. Just grab it and do whatever the heck I want with it - it was there, so now it is MINE. Be glad if the person "takes" their own copy rather than just linking back to yours.
Same thing goes for anything else digital. Once it is out there people are going to just take and take and take.
Have you had people ask you to make changes for them yet? No? It's coming. With the sense of entitlement that the Internet brings you are going to get all sorts of silly requests. Sort of like "Nice photograph, but I think there is too much green in it. Can you fix it for me?" The idea that maybe your creative work is yours is offensive and discriminatory, maybe even racist.
So you don't want to share? Well then, keep it off the Internet. Everything there is for sharing.
The problem was that it wasn't carrying enough life boats. This was a regulatory problem (although you could argue that this shouldn't need regulation, it was just common sense!).
If you have read any of the accounts of the Titanic sinking it isn't like there were 1500 people standing around wondering what to do now that the lifeboats were gone. It is a lot closer to the truth that they loaded the lifeboats and the ship sank under them as the last boats were loaded. The ran out of time trying to get the collapsable lifeboats launched and never made use of one of them. This would have been the same story if they had a lot more lifeboats.
There were 16 lifeboats. It was estimated that the needed 64. There is absolutely no way that 64 lifeboats could have been loaded and launched given the way it was done. This would be even more true considering that in order to have 64 lifeboats on the Titanic they would have had to be double-hung, further increasing the time to load them. Sure, they might have been able to launch another 8 or 10 in parallel with the launching of the ones they had, but a double-hung configuration on the davits might have doomed even more people simply because it would have taken even more time to launch them.
The Titanic was not designed to sink in two hours. I don't think any existing passenger ship is either. There simply is not enough time move the passengers to lifeboats when such a large ship sinks so quickly. Another factor is that today it is rare to have passenger liners in waters as unforgivingly cold as where the Titanic was. So passengers in the water would not be dying in 15 minutes of hypothermia, giving far more time to rescue people even after the ship went down.
The single aspect of the Titanic sinking that strikes me as incredibly stupid was that they knew the ship couldn't turn worth anything. They also knew that the ship was designed to be "unsinkable". So driving the ship at full speed into an iceberg would have done ... nothing. Instead, they tried to avoid the collision - which with the small rudder was almost certainly doomed to fail. By striking the iceberg all along the side of the ship defeated every safety system that was in place. The folks in the wheelhouse knew way too much but were apparently driven by emotion to try to avoid the collision. Once they did that, there was no way most of the passengers were going to survive no matter how many lifeboats there were. There just wasn't time.
Not at all. Google has found a way to monetize providing free services to people. If you buy into it, you are not taking advantage of Google's generousity. You are providing revenue to Google through information (which they sell) and an advertising channel.
The assumption is, in using Google services, that you are getting more out of the deal than they are. This can't possibly be the case or they wouldn't do it. So you just don't know exactly how they are benefiting from providing these services. Trust me, it isn't because they are such nice people.