Actually, this case is more concerning to me than the drone strike.
The guy killed by the drone was operating as a military enemy in a foreign country where there was no prospect of him coming into the custody of Federal law enforcement. That sort of action on a US citizen is rare and was approved by the National Security Council.
The person in this article was in custody and being interviewed in a controlled environment by law enforcement. There seems to be no excuse for the FBI not following proper procedure and requesting his return for an appropriate interrogation and investigation.
Of course, it appears that this action was legal, but that feels like something that should be changed by law or at least better regulations.
Not having a good theory to understand what is going on makes even a space test sort of iffy.
Someone was looking at building a cubesat to evaluate this, but space tests are expensive and mass budget is limited. Hopefully, they are able to demonstrate this properly without a space test, or they may never get their chance to test it sufficiently at all.
1) they aren't presenting a theory as to what is causing it which can be evaluated. 2) the lack of said theory means that there is a violation of a well accepted principle of the Conservation of Momentum and no one is explaining why that isn't the case, or how that could be possible. 3) there is reason to believe that the experimental apparatus is unable to account for all variables and noise, particularly for the very small discrepancy which has been observed.
and of course,
4) they think it is quackery because of where it came from and don't want to be associated with it.
Eagleworks is an actual lab at the Johnson Space Center, and it does have a budget and NASA employees.
The problem is that their budget is very, very small, and that this is effectively something they are doing on their spare time.
There's real concern that such a small budget isn't enough to build sufficient apparatus to be able to adequately test the claims being made, and that's a pretty fair reason to believe that there is some error in the experiment.
However, this isn't the case of some guys from out of nowhere leasing a warehouse at NASA to make it look like they work for NASA.
Unlike the experiments that have been done by a number of quacks, experimentation is being done by third parties and are showing the expected results. This alone puts the apparatus above the quackery of various Cold Fusion devices, for instance. There's no secrecy or begging for grant money.
Nevertheless, all this means is that it is worth further investigation. There are significant amount of reasons to believe that this is not really working as suggested, but it is not a matter of "working because I said so".
Much of the controversy comes from the suggestion that this violates the Conservation of Momentum, but this comes from critics who don't see any other way that this could work.
However, the creators are suggesting no such thing. The reaction mass or what it is pushing against could exist via an unknown principle, thus maintaining conservation of momentum.
I tend to look at this is more interesting than the usual quackery, but as with the FTL neutrino experiment, I'm mostly just waiting for someone to tell me how they messed up the experiment apparatus.
Yes, even a slight constant acceleration gets us where we want to go if it remains constant over long period of time.
A reactionless drive, or perhaps a drive that simply reacts on an unknown principle, could allow us to build ships that could feasibly make interstellar trips. If you don't have to carry your reaction mass around with you and throw it out the back, you have a range only limited by the amount of energy you can produce, and the amount of mass you have to accelerate is significantly lessened. A small nuclear reactor on a ship would be heavy, but not as heavy as tons and tons of propellant and it could produce a significant amount of energy for decades.
I believe that there have been some attempts to do that.
However, two things. First, the cartels are already experts on doing business secretly. They aren't soft targets in terms of process or operational security.
Second, they have threatened to kill the shit out of anyone who tries it. Any "whistleblowers" aren't sent to jail and mistreated a little, they are tortured and killed. And their families are tortured and killed.
It's hard to say if they will be able to find the people carry out their threats on, but there is no reason to doubt their sincerity and their capability to commit organized, and violent, crime.
Presumably, they will provide proof that can be fact checked independently.
If they don't provide that, then there is no point in accepting any suggesting that they have "verification". "Anonymous" has no reputation to stake on this, so there is no reason to trust their word.
And really, the point of Anonymous doing these things is to release information for review. They may say it is a list of KKK members, but anyone who understands how Anonymous works understands that they are there to simply release things that may not have otherwise seen the light of day. It's up to you to believe them or fact check them or not.
Let's hope they didn't just pick a list of Republicans that everyone loves to hate, and then just rely on everyone nodding their heads and going with the narrative.
If the information released under the name of Anonymous is backed with verifiable facts, then we won't need to believe them, we'll be able to fact check it ourselves. And the most effective "operations" are ones where the information is found is released so that it can be checked.
However, it is true that what "Anonymous" says about someone is meaningless without proof being provided to back it up. The very attribution of this to Anonymous literally means that anyone could be releasing it for any reason. Even just for the lulz.
In the case of the person who "released" the list early, it appears to have been for a reason other than to provide facts.
If they're being paid to make the case of Israel or any other government, then they need to register like anyone else.
However, if they're parroting those lines on their own, because they believe in it, that's not the same thing.
If China wants to spread their propaganda the old fashioned way, then they need to buy a news network just like everyone else does.
Seriously, though. I'm not really happy with the ability of any of the media to argue their favorite side instead of being impartial, but everyone does it, from left to right. It's not just Fox News who makes their partisan case below a thin veneer of objectivity. If only there was an information source who was able to facts without editorial, but I suppose that's never going to happen.
Registration of a lobbyist or foreign power doesn't restrict them from having free speech. They can talk all they want. They just have to admit who they are speaking for.
The Constitution refers to "We the People of the United States..." There is no reference to the people of China. And the rights under the Constitution should not be asserted as to belong to anyone other than a US citizen.
Now, a corporation is not a citizen, but if it is made up of US citizens, then you have an issue where regulating a US corporation's speech may be preventing US citizens from expressing their opinion, which would be unconstitutional.
So the position you seem to think is odd makes perfect sense.
Of course, corporations having the ability to pretend to be a citizen, by dint of having citizens employed by it, may well be a problem, but that situation is on significantly more firm ground than letting foreigners spread propaganda without having to at least acknowledge their influence. After all, the corporations have their influence right out there in the open and we do make corporations register their donations. You can find out what the corporations are supporting, if you want to.
There is nothing about registering as a foreign lobbyist that is against the First Amendment. They won't get shut down, they just won't be able to pretend that they aren't rebroadcasting foreign propaganda.
In any event, foreign governments aren't protected by the First Amendment. And speech which represents a clear and present danger to the US can be censored, so it stands to reason that you would be allowed to determine who might constitute that danger and ensure that you could monitor them for that practice.
Now, if they do try and shut down that station, that might be a First Amendment issue, if the owner is a US citizen and it is not wartime.
No, it's not lack of confidence, it's them trying to get into the streaming business, just like Voyager being on UPN was Paramount's attempt to get their own network off the ground. They're actually confident that it will draw viewers, although perhaps they are overconfident.
An interesting thought, but Fox would probably not part with the rights to it and that would be that.
In fact, that is a big reason things never get picked up, even when there is interest. The corp that owns the rights doesn't want to share or only wants to share under its own terms.
Having the roots is the only reason there was a TNG to begin with. I agree with your assessment of their actual implementation of TNG in the first two seasons, but you weren't going to restart Trek without Gene. Now once TNG got on the rails, you had other people who could keep it going, although it eventually went to shit.
Of course, Trek was destined to go to shit because it was formed with the premise of a Mary Sue Federation. Shows like DS9 helped by being on the edges of that, and that was a plus. Voyager failed because ship was thrown far away from it (promising), but still managed to be superior even 70,000 LY away from the Federation and their struggles were all quickly resolved without any real sacrifice.
Not using doublespeak doesn't mean you have to be an ass about it. You can be perfectly civil, and at the same time, blunt and honest.
Linus' rant is an emotional response. He's human, so he gets to have those happen, just like everyone else does. I'm less concerned about that than I am about the people who I see who seem to thinks that is how developers should operate in general.
Linus gets away with that because he's Linus. Anyone else who hasn't got his level of notoriety needs to think about it and then not do it. Consider the complaints about Linus to be a warning to those who think they get to act like the creator of the Linux kernel and justify it by thinking that they are "un-PC" and avoiding "doublespeak". Not even Linus is doing that, he's simply getting away with it because he can, just like every other celebrity or person with power.
I've only rarely had a boss who does have to rant. And most of those bosses who do rant were CEOs, and it really didn't help much even then.
I do know that bosses like that exist. I have had the good fortune of not having to work in a field where I have to tolerate that shit.
Mind you, I've been chewed out before, but it was always done privately and based directly on what it was perceived that I did wrong. I didn't always agree, but I never felt like I had a bad boss of the sort that would pull a Linus. If I had, I'd be looking for a new job.
If I end up belittling a member of my team's efforts publicly, whether they deserve it or not, then I've failed as a supervisor. Unless you're working in a shark tank, that shit just drives down morale. Even *if* you're working in a shark tank, it's unnecessary.
If there is an issue that needs to be addressed publicly, you tell the team to not do that thing directly, but calmly. If they haven't been heeding your instructions purposely, or they are failing to measure up for some other reason, you pull them in and explain to them what is wrong and what needs to be done about it. If they continue to fail, you fire them after explaining that the team needs to work in a certain way.
Being professional doesn't mean being a pussy. It just means understanding the big picture. Drama doesn't help teams. If one person is causing it with their shitty code, then you spend the time with them to see what is happening. If they don't catch up, then perhaps they need to work somewhere else.
Honestly, Linus has blow ups because he *can*, not because it is good a idea. People will continue to contribute to Linux in spite of that, not because of that.
Even shit code like this only requires a private talking-to about it to the maintainer, and a public email about how it should be done. If the maintainer doesn't meet standards, he gets replaced. None of that requires a public fit.
Germany, in various incarnations, is one of the oldest countries in Europe. It's just that it was not strongly politically centralized in the time that it was the Holy Roman Empire. The culture and language has been, perhaps not exactly the same, but relatively similar everywhere in the German speaking areas for centuries. Germans might live in Prussia or Bavaria or even Austria, but they know they are ethnically German because they do have a shared culture from a very long association as part of the Empire.
There's German names in Argentina, Brazil, and some other places in SA.
There's Japanese in Peru (former President Fujimori, for example)
It certainly isn't the same sort of situation that the US is for immigration from everywhere, but some of those countries, for instance, had a lot of Germans come over to develop the railroads or industry in the late 19th Century/early 20th. That's one reason that those places became safe places for former SS/Nazi party members after WWII.
There is nothing unreasonable about faith. Faith is the understanding that you will not be able to investigate the underlying mechanism of the thing you are dealing with. Most people have to exercise at least a little of that every day, when even when discussing scientific topics.
Generally, religions have been matters of revelation, and not investigation. This does not imply that they are unreasonable, just that they cannot be investigated scientifically. You can reasonably choose to discard items of faith, if you choose to limit yourself to that which you can investigate scientifically, but faith is not the opposite of reason.
Science and the scientific method was the outgrowth of quite a few people, particularly minor clerics, who eventually developed the concepts of Reason and the scientific method. Preachers and such may certainly be irrational, but their job description does not make it automatically so, nor does faith mean that they disable their "reason" to accept it. It is eminently reasonable to accept that there is something out there that you don't understand and can't investigate which, nevertheless, may be true. Certainly, the concept of things like atoms and smaller particles were an object of speculation without the ability to investigate for thousands of years before we could design experiments for them. I wouldn't have called those ancient philosophers "irrational".
Space mining and energy production are two good reasons to go, but you're right, they are long term benefits which will need a lot of money and time to exploit.
Of course, when we can finish that project, we'll have moved humanity to a completely different level.
In any event, the real reason to do it is to have done it, and to keep doing it. If we really wanted to, we could drop our population down to some level, somehow maintain ourselves at an equilibrium, and then navel gaze until an asteroid comes for us, or the Sun engulfs us. What a horrible fate. We'd probably lose purpose and just kill ourselves somehow.
The reason to go to Mars is to go to Mars, because we haven't been there and we need to go. The very long term goals of exploitation and colonization are simply a part of the payoff at the end. The real payoff is going places we haven't gone before and saving our species from it's ultimate demise due to being inward looking and provincial.
Unless advanced civilization falls apart, we're eventually going to have a nuclear war or two. The clock is ticking for us to do useful things with our technology before the inevitable destructive things overtake what good we have been able to do.
Slashdot Mirror
Actually, this case is more concerning to me than the drone strike.
The guy killed by the drone was operating as a military enemy in a foreign country where there was no prospect of him coming into the custody of Federal law enforcement. That sort of action on a US citizen is rare and was approved by the National Security Council.
The person in this article was in custody and being interviewed in a controlled environment by law enforcement. There seems to be no excuse for the FBI not following proper procedure and requesting his return for an appropriate interrogation and investigation.
Of course, it appears that this action was legal, but that feels like something that should be changed by law or at least better regulations.
Not having a good theory to understand what is going on makes even a space test sort of iffy.
Someone was looking at building a cubesat to evaluate this, but space tests are expensive and mass budget is limited. Hopefully, they are able to demonstrate this properly without a space test, or they may never get their chance to test it sufficiently at all.
It didn't get past peer review because:
1) they aren't presenting a theory as to what is causing it which can be evaluated.
2) the lack of said theory means that there is a violation of a well accepted principle of the Conservation of Momentum and no one is explaining why that isn't the case, or how that could be possible.
3) there is reason to believe that the experimental apparatus is unable to account for all variables and noise, particularly for the very small discrepancy which has been observed.
and of course,
4) they think it is quackery because of where it came from and don't want to be associated with it.
Eagleworks is an actual lab at the Johnson Space Center, and it does have a budget and NASA employees.
The problem is that their budget is very, very small, and that this is effectively something they are doing on their spare time.
There's real concern that such a small budget isn't enough to build sufficient apparatus to be able to adequately test the claims being made, and that's a pretty fair reason to believe that there is some error in the experiment.
However, this isn't the case of some guys from out of nowhere leasing a warehouse at NASA to make it look like they work for NASA.
Unlike the experiments that have been done by a number of quacks, experimentation is being done by third parties and are showing the expected results. This alone puts the apparatus above the quackery of various Cold Fusion devices, for instance. There's no secrecy or begging for grant money.
Nevertheless, all this means is that it is worth further investigation. There are significant amount of reasons to believe that this is not really working as suggested, but it is not a matter of "working because I said so".
Much of the controversy comes from the suggestion that this violates the Conservation of Momentum, but this comes from critics who don't see any other way that this could work.
However, the creators are suggesting no such thing. The reaction mass or what it is pushing against could exist via an unknown principle, thus maintaining conservation of momentum.
I tend to look at this is more interesting than the usual quackery, but as with the FTL neutrino experiment, I'm mostly just waiting for someone to tell me how they messed up the experiment apparatus.
But if they haven't screwed up.... hmm.
Yes, even a slight constant acceleration gets us where we want to go if it remains constant over long period of time.
A reactionless drive, or perhaps a drive that simply reacts on an unknown principle, could allow us to build ships that could feasibly make interstellar trips. If you don't have to carry your reaction mass around with you and throw it out the back, you have a range only limited by the amount of energy you can produce, and the amount of mass you have to accelerate is significantly lessened. A small nuclear reactor on a ship would be heavy, but not as heavy as tons and tons of propellant and it could produce a significant amount of energy for decades.
I believe that there have been some attempts to do that.
However, two things. First, the cartels are already experts on doing business secretly. They aren't soft targets in terms of process or operational security.
Second, they have threatened to kill the shit out of anyone who tries it. Any "whistleblowers" aren't sent to jail and mistreated a little, they are tortured and killed. And their families are tortured and killed.
It's hard to say if they will be able to find the people carry out their threats on, but there is no reason to doubt their sincerity and their capability to commit organized, and violent, crime.
Presumably, they will provide proof that can be fact checked independently.
If they don't provide that, then there is no point in accepting any suggesting that they have "verification". "Anonymous" has no reputation to stake on this, so there is no reason to trust their word.
And really, the point of Anonymous doing these things is to release information for review. They may say it is a list of KKK members, but anyone who understands how Anonymous works understands that they are there to simply release things that may not have otherwise seen the light of day. It's up to you to believe them or fact check them or not.
Let's hope they didn't just pick a list of Republicans that everyone loves to hate, and then just rely on everyone nodding their heads and going with the narrative.
If the information released under the name of Anonymous is backed with verifiable facts, then we won't need to believe them, we'll be able to fact check it ourselves. And the most effective "operations" are ones where the information is found is released so that it can be checked.
However, it is true that what "Anonymous" says about someone is meaningless without proof being provided to back it up. The very attribution of this to Anonymous literally means that anyone could be releasing it for any reason. Even just for the lulz.
In the case of the person who "released" the list early, it appears to have been for a reason other than to provide facts.
If they're being paid to make the case of Israel or any other government, then they need to register like anyone else.
However, if they're parroting those lines on their own, because they believe in it, that's not the same thing.
If China wants to spread their propaganda the old fashioned way, then they need to buy a news network just like everyone else does.
Seriously, though. I'm not really happy with the ability of any of the media to argue their favorite side instead of being impartial, but everyone does it, from left to right. It's not just Fox News who makes their partisan case below a thin veneer of objectivity. If only there was an information source who was able to facts without editorial, but I suppose that's never going to happen.
Registration of a lobbyist or foreign power doesn't restrict them from having free speech. They can talk all they want. They just have to admit who they are speaking for.
The Constitution refers to "We the People of the United States..." There is no reference to the people of China. And the rights under the Constitution should not be asserted as to belong to anyone other than a US citizen.
Now, a corporation is not a citizen, but if it is made up of US citizens, then you have an issue where regulating a US corporation's speech may be preventing US citizens from expressing their opinion, which would be unconstitutional.
So the position you seem to think is odd makes perfect sense.
Of course, corporations having the ability to pretend to be a citizen, by dint of having citizens employed by it, may well be a problem, but that situation is on significantly more firm ground than letting foreigners spread propaganda without having to at least acknowledge their influence. After all, the corporations have their influence right out there in the open and we do make corporations register their donations. You can find out what the corporations are supporting, if you want to.
There is nothing about registering as a foreign lobbyist that is against the First Amendment. They won't get shut down, they just won't be able to pretend that they aren't rebroadcasting foreign propaganda.
In any event, foreign governments aren't protected by the First Amendment. And speech which represents a clear and present danger to the US can be censored, so it stands to reason that you would be allowed to determine who might constitute that danger and ensure that you could monitor them for that practice.
Now, if they do try and shut down that station, that might be a First Amendment issue, if the owner is a US citizen and it is not wartime.
No, it's not lack of confidence, it's them trying to get into the streaming business, just like Voyager being on UPN was Paramount's attempt to get their own network off the ground. They're actually confident that it will draw viewers, although perhaps they are overconfident.
They sort of did that with DS9. That's where the Dominion lives.
An interesting thought, but Fox would probably not part with the rights to it and that would be that.
In fact, that is a big reason things never get picked up, even when there is interest. The corp that owns the rights doesn't want to share or only wants to share under its own terms.
Having the roots is the only reason there was a TNG to begin with. I agree with your assessment of their actual implementation of TNG in the first two seasons, but you weren't going to restart Trek without Gene. Now once TNG got on the rails, you had other people who could keep it going, although it eventually went to shit.
Of course, Trek was destined to go to shit because it was formed with the premise of a Mary Sue Federation. Shows like DS9 helped by being on the edges of that, and that was a plus. Voyager failed because ship was thrown far away from it (promising), but still managed to be superior even 70,000 LY away from the Federation and their struggles were all quickly resolved without any real sacrifice.
Not using doublespeak doesn't mean you have to be an ass about it. You can be perfectly civil, and at the same time, blunt and honest.
Linus' rant is an emotional response. He's human, so he gets to have those happen, just like everyone else does. I'm less concerned about that than I am about the people who I see who seem to thinks that is how developers should operate in general.
Linus gets away with that because he's Linus. Anyone else who hasn't got his level of notoriety needs to think about it and then not do it. Consider the complaints about Linus to be a warning to those who think they get to act like the creator of the Linux kernel and justify it by thinking that they are "un-PC" and avoiding "doublespeak". Not even Linus is doing that, he's simply getting away with it because he can, just like every other celebrity or person with power.
I believe there is a wooosh sound I just heard.
I've only rarely had a boss who does have to rant. And most of those bosses who do rant were CEOs, and it really didn't help much even then.
I do know that bosses like that exist. I have had the good fortune of not having to work in a field where I have to tolerate that shit.
Mind you, I've been chewed out before, but it was always done privately and based directly on what it was perceived that I did wrong. I didn't always agree, but I never felt like I had a bad boss of the sort that would pull a Linus. If I had, I'd be looking for a new job.
If I end up belittling a member of my team's efforts publicly, whether they deserve it or not, then I've failed as a supervisor. Unless you're working in a shark tank, that shit just drives down morale. Even *if* you're working in a shark tank, it's unnecessary.
If there is an issue that needs to be addressed publicly, you tell the team to not do that thing directly, but calmly. If they haven't been heeding your instructions purposely, or they are failing to measure up for some other reason, you pull them in and explain to them what is wrong and what needs to be done about it. If they continue to fail, you fire them after explaining that the team needs to work in a certain way.
Being professional doesn't mean being a pussy. It just means understanding the big picture. Drama doesn't help teams. If one person is causing it with their shitty code, then you spend the time with them to see what is happening. If they don't catch up, then perhaps they need to work somewhere else.
Honestly, Linus has blow ups because he *can*, not because it is good a idea. People will continue to contribute to Linux in spite of that, not because of that.
Even shit code like this only requires a private talking-to about it to the maintainer, and a public email about how it should be done. If the maintainer doesn't meet standards, he gets replaced. None of that requires a public fit.
Germany, in various incarnations, is one of the oldest countries in Europe. It's just that it was not strongly politically centralized in the time that it was the Holy Roman Empire. The culture and language has been, perhaps not exactly the same, but relatively similar everywhere in the German speaking areas for centuries. Germans might live in Prussia or Bavaria or even Austria, but they know they are ethnically German because they do have a shared culture from a very long association as part of the Empire.
Mexico has immigrants too. Believe it or not.
There's German names in Argentina, Brazil, and some other places in SA.
There's Japanese in Peru (former President Fujimori, for example)
It certainly isn't the same sort of situation that the US is for immigration from everywhere, but some of those countries, for instance, had a lot of Germans come over to develop the railroads or industry in the late 19th Century/early 20th. That's one reason that those places became safe places for former SS/Nazi party members after WWII.
There is nothing unreasonable about faith. Faith is the understanding that you will not be able to investigate the underlying mechanism of the thing you are dealing with. Most people have to exercise at least a little of that every day, when even when discussing scientific topics.
Generally, religions have been matters of revelation, and not investigation. This does not imply that they are unreasonable, just that they cannot be investigated scientifically. You can reasonably choose to discard items of faith, if you choose to limit yourself to that which you can investigate scientifically, but faith is not the opposite of reason.
Science and the scientific method was the outgrowth of quite a few people, particularly minor clerics, who eventually developed the concepts of Reason and the scientific method. Preachers and such may certainly be irrational, but their job description does not make it automatically so, nor does faith mean that they disable their "reason" to accept it. It is eminently reasonable to accept that there is something out there that you don't understand and can't investigate which, nevertheless, may be true. Certainly, the concept of things like atoms and smaller particles were an object of speculation without the ability to investigate for thousands of years before we could design experiments for them. I wouldn't have called those ancient philosophers "irrational".
Space mining and energy production are two good reasons to go, but you're right, they are long term benefits which will need a lot of money and time to exploit.
Of course, when we can finish that project, we'll have moved humanity to a completely different level.
In any event, the real reason to do it is to have done it, and to keep doing it. If we really wanted to, we could drop our population down to some level, somehow maintain ourselves at an equilibrium, and then navel gaze until an asteroid comes for us, or the Sun engulfs us. What a horrible fate. We'd probably lose purpose and just kill ourselves somehow.
The reason to go to Mars is to go to Mars, because we haven't been there and we need to go. The very long term goals of exploitation and colonization are simply a part of the payoff at the end. The real payoff is going places we haven't gone before and saving our species from it's ultimate demise due to being inward looking and provincial.
Unless advanced civilization falls apart, we're eventually going to have a nuclear war or two. The clock is ticking for us to do useful things with our technology before the inevitable destructive things overtake what good we have been able to do.