...if they have to reach this far to manufacture a scandal. I guess the whole "lying about WMD's" thing is losing traction when the public can increasingly see democracy, freedom of life, and freedom of speech blossoming in two nations which just a few years ago were two of the most tyranical regimes on the planet.
If you care about the truth, never take an AP story at face value. This story does everything it can to convince you, just short of outright lying, -- as it apparently did convince the OP -- that non-session cookies on government websites are "unlawful". I can assure you that there is nothing in the U.S. code that refers to cookies on web pages. The only story here is that a gvt agency published a web page that wasn't up to par with the guidelines provided for them in a frickin memo from the White House. (Although it would have been up to par if they had gotten permission first.
On the one hand this sort of story is disgraceful, but on the other hand if it makes a few more people aware of what "the media" is all about, I guess it's for the best.
The difference between stem cells and asperin is that all of your cells were created via stem cells (indirectly or directly) and not asperin. In theory, you could regenerate most (if not all) of your dead and dying body cells with stem cells because stems cells are basic building blocks of original cell generation.
"In theory," you could combine the stem cells with snake oil to grow a giant snake man that shoots lasers out of its eyes. It kind of depends on the theory, which is kind of why they call it "experimental."
Maybe the patient should decide what treatments they want to pursue (experimental or otherwise), rather than the government.
It's an appropriate role of the government to protect people in vulnerable situations from being scammed, defrauded and otherwise taken advantage of. Terminal patients being offerred experimental treatments that "might" cure them, are extremely vulnerable, and there plenty of people/companies who would take advantage of them if they could get away with it.
I'm a veteran Windows programmer who had to make the same decision a couple years ago. I decided to take my career in a Java direction, and I'm certain now that I made the right choice. Aside from the language itself being great, the Java community is amazing. You can find free open-source code for ANYTHING you need, and the class library and package naming system makes it simple to use third party code with your code. Bottom line, you can do anything you want with Java without ever having to pay a dime. Plus, of course, there's the whole platform-independence thing. Eclipse is pretty good free Java IDE. (JBuilder is better IDE, but it's not free. There is a free version of it, but it doesn't include a lot of the features for doing enterprise development.)
Since Freud the understanding of human self-awareness has located the "mirror stage" as the key moment in child development, the point at which the child becomes aware of him/herself as an independent "self."
Good points, but the freudian idea of a developmental stage where a child is not aware of himself as an independent "self," was proven to be untrue a while ago. Babies of any age interact with their mother in a way that shows awareness of a clear distinction.
More to the point, these people are just embarassing themselves by suggesting that these robots have some form of consciousness because they have ability to imitate movements and recognize when their movements are imitated. But that's not all!...soon they will start expressing emotions! Please! Don't make me have to go all the way over there to Japan just to slap you!
>Even though there are no clear definition of Fascism there is definititly
>clear that corporatism - the merging of big business and the state - are
>part of Fascism.
You have it backwards. Corporatism has nothing to do either with "big business" or, necessarily, corporations. It's a form of collectivism where the state usurps authority and control of the other civic, economic, or religious groups. A capitalist free market system is the antithisis of coporatism and fascism. If you're going to apply the terms of "left-wing" and "right-wing," then as forms of collectivism, corporatism and fascism are "left-wing." The successful labeling of fascism by advocates for the left as being "right-wing," while communism, its only slightly more extreme form, persists in being called "left-wing," while a huge victory for the left, has left a lot of people awfully confused. Every fascist government that has ever existed has, in both word and deed, been a socialist government. So at least in the way the terms are used in the U.S., the "left" advocates a form of government closer to fascism, while the "right" advocates a form of government closer to libertarianism. You can cite characteristics of the right, such a a greater sense of nationalism, and a greater desire for law and order (the practice of justice, not the TV show), which when taken to the extreme are considered characteristic of fascism. But in terms of philosophy and form of government, the opposite is true. America will never be fascist because it will never tolerate socialism (or "gun control" for that matter). But take your average European country, add an overblown sense of nationalism (you can skip that last step if you chose France), and add a leader who is charismatic and ruthless enough to consolidate power in himself, and presto-chango you have a bona-fide fascism.
As a 35-year-old developer who has made good and bad career moves, I absolutely agree that knowing and -- more importantly -- USING up-to-date technology is essential to having a continuing career path. But up-to-date technology is a different thing than latest-and-greatest technology. 90% of latest-and-greatest technology becomes discarded and useless after 4 or 5 years. Some people seem to have a compulsion to adopt every technology that becomes fashionable, but I would never be satisified in a career where I knew that the vast majority of everything I was learning would soon be useless. After a few years, you can tell if the new stuff has what it takes to stick around. Falling into that trap makes it even more likely that you'll get stuck in the opposite trap -- that of getting stuck with old technology. It's a business reality that old systems need to be maintained, so it's often easy to get into a situation where your entire job is to maintain old systems. If you don't get out of such a position, you will eventually find that you no longer have any marketable skills.
The source article makes several non-consistent claims about what it is that this steam engine increases by 15%, implying that it is either a) the total power of the engine, b) the total kinetic energy output of the engine, or c) the efficiency of the engine, or are they talking about d) the efficiency of the whole car as a system? If it's a, b, or c, then the calculation doesn't take into consideration the added weight of the steam engine, which can't possibly be negligible, and I would guess would increase the car's mass by more than 15%, in which case this whole thing is a big expensive nothing.
When the users of my web application start calling me at home for support... yeah, it's time to get rid of that. I also got rid of my street address. Nor am I going to pay some other company to put their fake info there for me. If someone wants that information for some legitimate purpose, they can request it by email.
Copyright laws give you certain rights in relation to your software -- in particular the right to prevent someone from copying or retransmitting your software to a third person or group of people without your permission. THEY DO NOT give you the right to either a) prevent people from inspecting your software with a particular intent in view, or b) a prevent a certain general class of people from accessing your software. -- If you could do that, then Lauren Hill could put copyright agreements on all her albulms that say that white people can't listen to them!
Actually, it's fairly common to have 12v power wired up -- for example for low-voltage under-cabinet lighting in kitchens. We have this in our house, and I keep thinking that one day I'll mount some cig-lighter adapters and wire them up, so I can power things that inside that I don't have AC adaptors for.
>>Why a pipe? Why are you entombing the pipe in concrete and lead?
A pipe because it is a long piece of metal. Concrete and lead to shield the electrons in the pipe from EM radiation and vibration.
>>How are you getting a potential difference from a static gravitational
>>field? That's perpetual-motion talk.
???...The same reason a person standing a ladder has potential energy from a static gravitational field. The gravitational field exerts a force on the electrons in the metal, producing a slightly larger electron density at the bottom of the pipe than the top. Not sure what that has to do with perpetual motion. I'm definitely not talking about drawing a current!
>>Do you know how small 4,000 picovolts are? That's 0.004 of a millionth of a
>>volt. The thermal noise voltage of that pipe in a 100Hz bandwidth is going
>>to be about 100,000 times greater than that. The thermoelectric effect
>>about 10,000 times that.
It's small, but it's technologically possible to measure. I'm talking about measuring a net effect over an extremely large quantity of electrons.
>>What about the wire going back up from the bottom of the pipe to the
>>voltmeter? Isnt that going to gfenerate about the same voltage, opposite
>>polarity, so there's no difference left at the top?
Not having actually built one, I don't know the best logistical approach, but I'm sure there are ways of getting around the problems. If measuring the potential between the top and bottom is too difficult, you could measure the potential difference between the bottom and a seperate closed system charge, or an earth ground.
>>The speed of gravity is the same as the speed of light.
That's not science, that's dogma. Actually it's obsolete dogma. Available evidence suggests the speed of gravity is at least 2e10 c.
>>You're not going to get much thruput with gravity waves, as generating them
>>requires you wiggle something big. And big things have a *lot* of inertia.
>>You'd be lucky to keep up with smoke signals.
I'm sure that would be the case at first. Like most technology, I suppose it would get smaller and smaller. One example of a solution would be a massive spinning disk to provide the carrier signal, and multiple movable sub-components on the disk... or once the detection capacity is advanced enough, use an EM field to vibrate a smaller mass -- like in a loudspeaker.
>>There are about two billion pistons wiggling up and down at any one time on >>this planet. That's quite a bit of background noise. How's your satellite >>going to compete with every wiggling thing?.
The same way GPS technology does it. It detects a miniscule signal amongst a flood of noise throughout the frequency spectrum it uses. It does so by modulating the signal within a pattern than the reciever is configured to synchronize to. (And a satellite is not needed)
I've always thought it would make more sense to take a long steel pipe, entomb it in concrete and lead, and attach a highly sensitive and highly isolated pico-volt range voltmeter to either end. By my calculation, if a 500 ft pipe was thus situated in a vertical position, the earth's gravity would create a > 4,000 picovolt potential from end to end. I don't know what the limits of our voltage testing ability are, but if we can get precise enough, it seems to me that that's a more reliable (and more directional) way to detect gravity waves.
It also seems obvious that once we figure out how to detect the most infintesimal gravity waves (such as waves that we can also transmit), electromagnetic waves will start to become obsolete. Satellites-based communication will immediately become obsolete, because the same thing can be done cheaper with gravity waves, and without the satellite-induced delay, as gravity waves can take the direct path through the earth undisturbed (and, I suspect, faster than light).
If it is possible for gravity wave communication to replace EM wave communication, then it will. And if it does, then the EM communicating phase of humanity was a microscopic flash in the pan, and by extrapolation will probably be flashes in the pans in any extraterrestrial technological histories. Thus, I have long suspected that searching the skys for alien EM signals is probably pointless, but if the day comes that we can "hear" transmitted gravity waves, we will have plenty to listen to.
I don't think you're right -- if you go from the U.S. to Canada, commit murder, and return to the U.S., I'm pretty sure you cannot be prosecuted in the U.S. for murder. However, you can be prosecuted in Canada, and like any country with whom we have an extradition treaty, they can request your extradition, and the Feds will arrest you and ship you to Canada.
However if you commit murder in the U.S. you can run to Europe and be safe, as they won't extradite you because they're a bunch of pansies who don't believe in capital punishment.
if you ask scientists... 40% [believe] in Theistic evolution.
Wow! Well, since Theistic Evolution is a theory of Intelligent Design, and since our society's definition of "scientific" is that which large pluralities of scientists believe (which by the way, is not even a little bit less anti-intellectual as defining "scientific" to mean that which the Bible says), therefore Intelligent Design is provably "scientific." Great! Arguement settled!
is DNS control even necessary?
Yes, DNS and DNS regulation is necessary -- at least if the Internet is going to remain something beyond a plaything for geeks. What do think, that businesses are going to start advertising, "visit our web site at 123.456.789.012"... or "Google our company name -- we're the third result in the list"?
And what about security? The integrity of the DNS regulating body is the only reason that a person can type, e.g. "www.bankofamerica.com", get a secure connection, and be confident that their information is going where it's supposed to be going.
You want to give that kind of responsibility to the U.N.??? The Internet will remain free and intact only as long as the U.S. is responsible for keeping it that way.
because this lets the exception logger work anywhere where there is web access, and potentially allows exceptions to ultimately go into a database. Even if you are happy having all your exceptions in the form of email, each individual deployment would have to be configured for your customer's SMTP server, or else you'll point to your own SMTP server and probably run into issues of the outgoing SMTP port being blocked.
All the same, between security questions, and only storing the last 100 exceptions, I'd rather write my own Web Services exception handler.
I can just see the FBI breaking into my house to put a bug near my keyboard, and then sitting in a van outside my house for a couple days analysing the sound of my keystrokes with their software -- and not having noticed that my password is on a stick-note on my monitor.
And what do you say to the poor lower class that don't own cars and can't evacuate?
I think this is a non-existant problem, at least in most cities, which was made up by those trying to score political points. The thousands of people who stayed in N.O. were not staying because of the lack of a car. In a city without extensive public transportation there is no shortage of cars. Look at all the thousands of cars you can see now stuck in the mud in the pictures from N.O. which a few days ago you could see in pictures floating in water, and which a few days before that you could see parked end-to-end along the streets. Are those all the extra cars left behind by the super-rich? Uh, I don't think so.
On the other hand, evacuating a city that has extensive public transportation, like N.Y. or D.C. could become a serious problem if the transit system becomes disabled.
Slashdot Mirror
Yes, but A) this type of use constitutes a tiny fraction of the use of these services, and B) it's a web page, not a legal document.
That's funny, when I visited the site it displayed my neighbor's router's IP address. Good thing he's a lawyer...
Well, not such a good thing for you, if you're accessing the Internet through his router!!
...if they have to reach this far to manufacture a scandal. I guess the whole "lying about WMD's" thing is losing traction when the public can increasingly see democracy, freedom of life, and freedom of speech blossoming in two nations which just a few years ago were two of the most tyranical regimes on the planet.
If you care about the truth, never take an AP story at face value. This story does everything it can to convince you, just short of outright lying, -- as it apparently did convince the OP -- that non-session cookies on government websites are "unlawful". I can assure you that there is nothing in the U.S. code that refers to cookies on web pages. The only story here is that a gvt agency published a web page that wasn't up to par with the guidelines provided for them in a frickin memo from the White House. (Although it would have been up to par if they had gotten permission first.
On the one hand this sort of story is disgraceful, but on the other hand if it makes a few more people aware of what "the media" is all about, I guess it's for the best.
"In theory," you could combine the stem cells with snake oil to grow a giant snake man that shoots lasers out of its eyes. It kind of depends on the theory, which is kind of why they call it "experimental."
Maybe the patient should decide what treatments they want to pursue (experimental or otherwise), rather than the government.
It's an appropriate role of the government to protect people in vulnerable situations from being scammed, defrauded and otherwise taken advantage of. Terminal patients being offerred experimental treatments that "might" cure them, are extremely vulnerable, and there plenty of people/companies who would take advantage of them if they could get away with it.
I'm a veteran Windows programmer who had to make the same decision a couple years ago. I decided to take my career in a Java direction, and I'm certain now that I made the right choice. Aside from the language itself being great, the Java community is amazing. You can find free open-source code for ANYTHING you need, and the class library and package naming system makes it simple to use third party code with your code. Bottom line, you can do anything you want with Java without ever having to pay a dime. Plus, of course, there's the whole platform-independence thing. Eclipse is pretty good free Java IDE. (JBuilder is better IDE, but it's not free. There is a free version of it, but it doesn't include a lot of the features for doing enterprise development.)
Good points, but the freudian idea of a developmental stage where a child is not aware of himself as an independent "self," was proven to be untrue a while ago. Babies of any age interact with their mother in a way that shows awareness of a clear distinction.
More to the point, these people are just embarassing themselves by suggesting that these robots have some form of consciousness because they have ability to imitate movements and recognize when their movements are imitated. But that's not all!
>Even though there are no clear definition of Fascism there is definititly
>clear that corporatism - the merging of big business and the state - are
>part of Fascism.
You have it backwards. Corporatism has nothing to do either with "big business" or, necessarily, corporations. It's a form of collectivism where the state usurps authority and control of the other civic, economic, or religious groups. A capitalist free market system is the antithisis of coporatism and fascism. If you're going to apply the terms of "left-wing" and "right-wing," then as forms of collectivism, corporatism and fascism are "left-wing." The successful labeling of fascism by advocates for the left as being "right-wing," while communism, its only slightly more extreme form, persists in being called "left-wing," while a huge victory for the left, has left a lot of people awfully confused. Every fascist government that has ever existed has, in both word and deed, been a socialist government. So at least in the way the terms are used in the U.S., the "left" advocates a form of government closer to fascism, while the "right" advocates a form of government closer to libertarianism. You can cite characteristics of the right, such a a greater sense of nationalism, and a greater desire for law and order (the practice of justice, not the TV show), which when taken to the extreme are considered characteristic of fascism. But in terms of philosophy and form of government, the opposite is true. America will never be fascist because it will never tolerate socialism (or "gun control" for that matter). But take your average European country, add an overblown sense of nationalism (you can skip that last step if you chose France), and add a leader who is charismatic and ruthless enough to consolidate power in himself, and presto-chango you have a bona-fide fascism.
As a 35-year-old developer who has made good and bad career moves, I absolutely agree that knowing and -- more importantly -- USING up-to-date technology is essential to having a continuing career path. But up-to-date technology is a different thing than latest-and-greatest technology. 90% of latest-and-greatest technology becomes discarded and useless after 4 or 5 years. Some people seem to have a compulsion to adopt every technology that becomes fashionable, but I would never be satisified in a career where I knew that the vast majority of everything I was learning would soon be useless. After a few years, you can tell if the new stuff has what it takes to stick around. Falling into that trap makes it even more likely that you'll get stuck in the opposite trap -- that of getting stuck with old technology. It's a business reality that old systems need to be maintained, so it's often easy to get into a situation where your entire job is to maintain old systems. If you don't get out of such a position, you will eventually find that you no longer have any marketable skills.
The source article makes several non-consistent claims about what it is that this steam engine increases by 15%, implying that it is either a) the total power of the engine, b) the total kinetic energy output of the engine, or c) the efficiency of the engine, or are they talking about d) the efficiency of the whole car as a system? If it's a, b, or c, then the calculation doesn't take into consideration the added weight of the steam engine, which can't possibly be negligible, and I would guess would increase the car's mass by more than 15%, in which case this whole thing is a big expensive nothing.
But unfortunately the added horse pollution will give you a net loss in enviro-friendliness.
When the users of my web application start calling me at home for support... yeah, it's time to get rid of that. I also got rid of my street address. Nor am I going to pay some other company to put their fake info there for me. If someone wants that information for some legitimate purpose, they can request it by email.
Copyright laws give you certain rights in relation to your software -- in particular the right to prevent someone from copying or retransmitting your software to a third person or group of people without your permission. THEY DO NOT give you the right to either a) prevent people from inspecting your software with a particular intent in view, or b) a prevent a certain general class of people from accessing your software. -- If you could do that, then Lauren Hill could put copyright agreements on all her albulms that say that white people can't listen to them!
Actually, it's fairly common to have 12v power wired up -- for example for low-voltage under-cabinet lighting in kitchens. We have this in our house, and I keep thinking that one day I'll mount some cig-lighter adapters and wire them up, so I can power things that inside that I don't have AC adaptors for.
>>Why a pipe? Why are you entombing the pipe in concrete and lead?
A pipe because it is a long piece of metal. Concrete and lead to shield the electrons in the pipe from EM radiation and vibration.
>>How are you getting a potential difference from a static gravitational
>>field? That's perpetual-motion talk.
???...The same reason a person standing a ladder has potential energy from a static gravitational field. The gravitational field exerts a force on the electrons in the metal, producing a slightly larger electron density at the bottom of the pipe than the top. Not sure what that has to do with perpetual motion. I'm definitely not talking about drawing a current!
>>Do you know how small 4,000 picovolts are? That's 0.004 of a millionth of a
>>volt. The thermal noise voltage of that pipe in a 100Hz bandwidth is going
>>to be about 100,000 times greater than that. The thermoelectric effect
>>about 10,000 times that.
It's small, but it's technologically possible to measure. I'm talking about measuring a net effect over an extremely large quantity of electrons.
>>What about the wire going back up from the bottom of the pipe to the
>>voltmeter? Isnt that going to gfenerate about the same voltage, opposite
>>polarity, so there's no difference left at the top?
Not having actually built one, I don't know the best logistical approach, but I'm sure there are ways of getting around the problems. If measuring the potential between the top and bottom is too difficult, you could measure the potential difference between the bottom and a seperate closed system charge, or an earth ground.
>>The speed of gravity is the same as the speed of light.
That's not science, that's dogma. Actually it's obsolete dogma. Available evidence suggests the speed of gravity is at least 2e10 c.
>>You're not going to get much thruput with gravity waves, as generating them
>>requires you wiggle something big. And big things have a *lot* of inertia.
>>You'd be lucky to keep up with smoke signals.
I'm sure that would be the case at first. Like most technology, I suppose it would get smaller and smaller. One example of a solution would be a massive spinning disk to provide the carrier signal, and multiple movable sub-components on the disk... or once the detection capacity is advanced enough, use an EM field to vibrate a smaller mass -- like in a loudspeaker.
>>There are about two billion pistons wiggling up and down at any one time on
>>this planet. That's quite a bit of background noise. How's your satellite
>>going to compete with every wiggling thing?.
The same way GPS technology does it. It detects a miniscule signal amongst a flood of noise throughout the frequency spectrum it uses. It does so by modulating the signal within a pattern than the reciever is configured to synchronize to. (And a satellite is not needed)
I've always thought it would make more sense to take a long steel pipe, entomb it in concrete and lead, and attach a highly sensitive and highly isolated pico-volt range voltmeter to either end. By my calculation, if a 500 ft pipe was thus situated in a vertical position, the earth's gravity would create a > 4,000 picovolt potential from end to end. I don't know what the limits of our voltage testing ability are, but if we can get precise enough, it seems to me that that's a more reliable (and more directional) way to detect gravity waves.
It also seems obvious that once we figure out how to detect the most infintesimal gravity waves (such as waves that we can also transmit), electromagnetic waves will start to become obsolete. Satellites-based communication will immediately become obsolete, because the same thing can be done cheaper with gravity waves, and without the satellite-induced delay, as gravity waves can take the direct path through the earth undisturbed (and, I suspect, faster than light).
If it is possible for gravity wave communication to replace EM wave communication, then it will. And if it does, then the EM communicating phase of humanity was a microscopic flash in the pan, and by extrapolation will probably be flashes in the pans in any extraterrestrial technological histories. Thus, I have long suspected that searching the skys for alien EM signals is probably pointless, but if the day comes that we can "hear" transmitted gravity waves, we will have plenty to listen to.
I don't think you're right -- if you go from the U.S. to Canada, commit murder, and return to the U.S., I'm pretty sure you cannot be prosecuted in the U.S. for murder. However, you can be prosecuted in Canada, and like any country with whom we have an extradition treaty, they can request your extradition, and the Feds will arrest you and ship you to Canada.
However if you commit murder in the U.S. you can run to Europe and be safe, as they won't extradite you because they're a bunch of pansies who don't believe in capital punishment.
if you ask scientists... 40% [believe] in Theistic evolution.
Wow! Well, since Theistic Evolution is a theory of Intelligent Design, and since our society's definition of "scientific" is that which large pluralities of scientists believe (which by the way, is not even a little bit less anti-intellectual as defining "scientific" to mean that which the Bible says), therefore Intelligent Design is provably "scientific." Great! Arguement settled!
It says nothing about the reported violations being in any way linked to the Patriot Act.
is DNS control even necessary?
Yes, DNS and DNS regulation is necessary -- at least if the Internet is going to remain something beyond a plaything for geeks. What do think, that businesses are going to start advertising, "visit our web site at 123.456.789.012"... or "Google our company name -- we're the third result in the list"?
And what about security? The integrity of the DNS regulating body is the only reason that a person can type, e.g. "www.bankofamerica.com", get a secure connection, and be confident that their information is going where it's supposed to be going.
You want to give that kind of responsibility to the U.N.??? The Internet will remain free and intact only as long as the U.S. is responsible for keeping it that way.
because this lets the exception logger work anywhere where there is web access, and potentially allows exceptions to ultimately go into a database. Even if you are happy having all your exceptions in the form of email, each individual deployment would have to be configured for your customer's SMTP server, or else you'll point to your own SMTP server and probably run into issues of the outgoing SMTP port being blocked.
All the same, between security questions, and only storing the last 100 exceptions, I'd rather write my own Web Services exception handler.
I can just see the FBI breaking into my house to put a bug near my keyboard, and then sitting in a van outside my house for a couple days analysing the sound of my keystrokes with their software -- and not having noticed that my password is on a stick-note on my monitor.
And what do you say to the poor lower class that don't own cars and can't evacuate?
I think this is a non-existant problem, at least in most cities, which was made up by those trying to score political points. The thousands of people who stayed in N.O. were not staying because of the lack of a car. In a city without extensive public transportation there is no shortage of cars. Look at all the thousands of cars you can see now stuck in the mud in the pictures from N.O. which a few days ago you could see in pictures floating in water, and which a few days before that you could see parked end-to-end along the streets. Are those all the extra cars left behind by the super-rich? Uh, I don't think so.
On the other hand, evacuating a city that has extensive public transportation, like N.Y. or D.C. could become a serious problem if the transit system becomes disabled.
This development means that a woman-only state, municipality, sect, etc. is possible and could conceivably reproduce itself in perpetuity.
Dude, pay a little attention. "This development" has absolutely nothing to do with reproduction without the male contribution.
And seriously, if you going to go to the trouble of getting a graduate degree, get it in something other than "men as sex objects".
If anything, porn has STRENGTHENED our relationship Uh, yeah, you're goung to have a GREAT marraige -- I can tell.