This man was shot down in the Vietnam war and a prisoner of war at the famous / infamous "Hanoi Hilton". This man broke both arms and a leg, was tortured and survived. He ejected from his plane back in 1967 and was released in 1974 I do believe. Quite a feat in my book. He might be labeled a bad political choice, but he deserves respect.
Mod parent ad hominem.
This is the danger of judging candidates not by their policy positions, but by their carefully constructed media hype. Remember that with McCain, one could just as easily assert (as some of his opponents will suggest) -- "After finishing fifth from the bottom of his class at the Naval Academy, McCain was a bad enough pilot (probably flying drunk, given his history) that he couldn't keep his plane airborne and out of enemy hands. While in Vietnamese custody, unlike the many prisoners who resisted torture, McCain willingly signed documents 'confessing' to war crimes, and gave the Vietnamese classified information in order to receive more favorable treatment while in prison. Upon returning to the USA, McCain dumped his loyal and long-suffering first wife who had developed back problems, in order to marry a drug-addicted bimbo who had been his physical therapist. He showed poor enough judgment as to take money from Charlie Keating during the S&L scandals of the 1980s, that whether or not he was a crook for taking the money, he was certainly an idiot whose judgment shouldn't be trusted in more important matters."
Why not just judge the man on his policy positions? Oh, they've flip-flopped enough in the last decade that we can't be sure what his positions are, and all we really have to judge by is his history and his character. Oops!
By the way, many assume the bulge on McCain's cheek had something to do with his war injuries. In fact, it's the after-effect of skin cancer surgery.
Is DRM Intrinsically Distasteful?
Would a monitor and speed regulator on your car be Intrinsically Distasteful?
If I could choose between paying $15,000 for a speed-regulated Ferrari (capped at 70mph) vs $250,000 for a non-speed-regulated Ferrari, I might feel I was getting good value in exchange for the "regulation."
If, however, my choice is between non-DRM music for $1/song and DRM-music for $0.50/song, the choice is more difficult. Make it $0.10/song for heavy DRM vs. $1/song for no-DRM, and maybe this will be a compelling choice.
Since I can't imagine the RIAA lowering the price of DRMed content enough to be worthwhile, I think this discussion will remain wholly theoretical, but I do believe there is at least in theory some discounted price at which DRMed content may be acceptable, as long as non-DRMed content is also available at a correspondingly higher price for those who value it enough.
The penalties for gun-based vandalism vary by jurisdiction, but are invariably harsher than the penalties for hunting. If you are arrested for shooting a gun in the course of committing vandalism, you'll be grateful to accept the lesser charge and lesser penalty that goes with illegal hunting.
is an SLR mechanism in a digital camera totally and completely stupid?
Digital SLRs are not "completely stupid." One major benefit is that SLR design almost entirely eliminates the "shutter lag" that is common to most other digital cameras. The top Nikon DSLRs have shutter lag of less than 40 milliseconds; compare that to many non-SLR digital cameras where you sometimes wait half a second (or longer) between when you press the shutter button and when the picture is taken.
Digital viewfinders also use up MUCH more power than SLR designs. Nikon's DSLRs nowadays have a battery life of around 2,000 shots; most cameras that use digital viewfinders can only shoot a tiny fraction of that number without requiring a new battery or a recharge.
Finally, DSLRs allow established photographers to use any of the hundreds (thousands?) of existing lenses for compatible cameras.
Certainly there's a place for cameras with digital viewfinders. But DSLRs offer unique benefits that warrant a place as well.
Just how sweet of a deal will Google get by building a major research park on a so-called federal enclave at Moffett Field that sits just beyond the reach of local tax assessors?
Depends on whom you ask and how you slice it.
NASA/Ames Research Center's Michael Marlaire bristles at the suggestion that his agency's planned partnership with Google, unveiled last week, would provide a tax shelter for the Mountain View-based Internet giant.
Terms of the deal are in the works, but Marlaire said Friday that Google would help build the 1 million-square-foot project, upgrade infrastructure, pay fair-market rent and shell out about $4.5 million a year to NASA/Ames for services, such as fire, police, sewage and other utilities.
``I don't want people to think they are coming here for a sweetheart deal. That is not what is happening,'' said Marlaire, Ames' director of external relations. ``Google isn't going to save a dime for coming here.''
The company might pay less, however, if it builds services that other Ames tenants, such as universities and small tech start-ups, could use, he said.
Still, some local officials, such as Santa Clara County tax assessor Larry Stone, say such a setup would cost local taxing bodies like schools, nearby cities and the county up to $3 million in annual property tax revenue.
Google pays about $850,000 in annual property taxes on the 34-acre site it leases in Mountain View for its world headquarters, Stone said. The company would escape paying local property taxes by building its research center and up to 2,000 homes in NASA's research park, which sits on part of the former military base that local taxing bodies can't touch. State and local tax rules are invalid on land classified as a federal enclave.
Bustling neighborhood
NASA/Ames envisions a bustling 95-acre neighborhood to sprout up around the park -- complete with shops, cafes and parks -- where the chatter on the street is nanotechnology and supercomputers. Like a McDonald's and other shops already located on Moffett Field, those retailers also would probably be off-limits for local taxes, Stone said.
NASA has already prepared a 900-page environmental impact report that paves the way for the project. Mountain View officials will watch closely from the city right outside NASA/Ames' gates. But they won't have much say over the process, which the federal government alone controls and laid out in a 2002 study on the proposed mega-R&D campus.
Bayfront property
NASA's review looked at environmental impacts on air, land, water, traffic and storm water, as well as other issues. It calls for on-site housing and bike paths to reduce congestion and pollution, but environmentalists worry that NASA will overlook many of the ecological and traffic issues on the sensitive bayfront property.
``Nothing against Google, but this plan would have significant impacts,'' said Lenny Siegel, executive director of the Center for Public Environmental Oversight.
Mike Braukus, a spokesman at NASA headquarters in Washington, said the Google project appears to be the biggest of its kind for NASA, whose leaders say they want to transform Ames into something akin to a Silicon Valley company. The two sides have set a February deadline to arrive at a final deal.
Google would join university research groups and small start-ups that also rent space from Ames. Most pay about $4.50 per square foot a year for police, fire and other services.
Randy Nickel, the founder of Nxar, a start-up software company that rents a tiny workspace of a few hundred square feet at Ames, said his company's one-year lease
Text of Google release
on
Google Ant
·
· Score: 5, Informative
Ants unearthed with Google Earth
9/30/2005 10:37:00 AM
Posted by Brian L. Fisher, Associate Curator of Entomology, California Academy of Sciences
At a time when the power of information technology doubles every 12 to 15 months and extends to capture every scrap we have, digitizing biodiversity information is a final frontier for IT. It's an essential step to ensure society maintains and hopefully increases bio-literacy. Toward this end, there's Antweb. It's a project from the California Academy of Sciences that has incorporated the Google Earth interface to provide location-based access to the diversity and wonder of ants: from your backyard to the Congo Basin.
As society advances, literacy increases and bio-literacy decreases. If you're illiterate, you may view a library as thinly sliced stacks of firewood; a Google search engine is meaningless. If you are bio-illiterate, a forest is at best a green blob to be consumed. If you are bio-literate, you see the diversity of the forest and understand that each animal, each plant, tells a story and has a place.
Google has helped us achieve free and democratic access to information, but now, with Google Earth, it's taken an important step to promote bio-literacy. Together with other institutions in the Bay Area, Google is uniquely poised to take on this enormous task.
There are two ways people need to access information on biodiversity: either have a name for which they want more information, or they are at a location and want to know what they will find there. On Antweb, you can access information about ants via location - and Google Earth allows for any scale of access via location. So you can be in Santa Clara County and see what ants you are likely to find. Soon you will be able to create a field guide for ants in any location defined in Google Earth.
We tried to get NASA's help to develop such a system for years with their mapping expertise and data, but Google Earth answered the call first. I am so impressed with Google that I have named an ant I recently discovered in Madagascar Proceratium google. Its bizarrely-shaped abdomen is an adaptation for hunting down obscure prey: spider eggs. Here's what it looks like.
I hope that Google will continue applying its skills to serve biodiversity data to conservation planners and the general public. Google has given us a tool to connect the 6 billion people on earth with our remaining biodiversity. Antweb welcomes any form of collaboration to help achieve this goal - and may the ants be with you.
Confusing the transitory with the long-lasting?
on
Google Ant
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
Two hundred years from now, this ant species will probably still exist. But the name will seem just as silly and puzzling to the scientists of that day as if Dr. Fisher had named the new species Proceratium petsdotcom.
In the long run, this little stunt will probably harm Dr. Fisher's reputation more than it will help Google's.
Never rely on undocumented verbal agreements. If you are in a meeting where a verbal agreement is reached, ALWAYS send an e-mail (or paper memo) documenting what was agreed upon.
Keeping an unassailable 'paper trail' regarding projects, policies and decisions can protect you against the all-too-common managers who like to lie in order to shift blame when something goes wrong.
Slashdot Mirror
Mod parent ad hominem.
This is the danger of judging candidates not by their policy positions, but by their carefully constructed media hype. Remember that with McCain, one could just as easily assert (as some of his opponents will suggest) -- "After finishing fifth from the bottom of his class at the Naval Academy, McCain was a bad enough pilot (probably flying drunk, given his history) that he couldn't keep his plane airborne and out of enemy hands. While in Vietnamese custody, unlike the many prisoners who resisted torture, McCain willingly signed documents 'confessing' to war crimes, and gave the Vietnamese classified information in order to receive more favorable treatment while in prison. Upon returning to the USA, McCain dumped his loyal and long-suffering first wife who had developed back problems, in order to marry a drug-addicted bimbo who had been his physical therapist. He showed poor enough judgment as to take money from Charlie Keating during the S&L scandals of the 1980s, that whether or not he was a crook for taking the money, he was certainly an idiot whose judgment shouldn't be trusted in more important matters."
Why not just judge the man on his policy positions? Oh, they've flip-flopped enough in the last decade that we can't be sure what his positions are, and all we really have to judge by is his history and his character. Oops!
By the way, many assume the bulge on McCain's cheek had something to do with his war injuries. In fact, it's the after-effect of skin cancer surgery.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bread_and_circuses/
Facism = Discrimination against ugly faces, or government by the pretty ones.
If I could choose between paying $15,000 for a speed-regulated Ferrari (capped at 70mph) vs $250,000 for a non-speed-regulated Ferrari, I might feel I was getting good value in exchange for the "regulation."
If, however, my choice is between non-DRM music for $1/song and DRM-music for $0.50/song, the choice is more difficult. Make it $0.10/song for heavy DRM vs. $1/song for no-DRM, and maybe this will be a compelling choice.
Since I can't imagine the RIAA lowering the price of DRMed content enough to be worthwhile, I think this discussion will remain wholly theoretical, but I do believe there is at least in theory some discounted price at which DRMed content may be acceptable, as long as non-DRMed content is also available at a correspondingly higher price for those who value it enough.
The penalties for gun-based vandalism vary by jurisdiction, but are invariably harsher than the penalties for hunting. If you are arrested for shooting a gun in the course of committing vandalism, you'll be grateful to accept the lesser charge and lesser penalty that goes with illegal hunting.
Digital SLRs are not "completely stupid." One major benefit is that SLR design almost entirely eliminates the "shutter lag" that is common to most other digital cameras. The top Nikon DSLRs have shutter lag of less than 40 milliseconds; compare that to many non-SLR digital cameras where you sometimes wait half a second (or longer) between when you press the shutter button and when the picture is taken.
Digital viewfinders also use up MUCH more power than SLR designs. Nikon's DSLRs nowadays have a battery life of around 2,000 shots; most cameras that use digital viewfinders can only shoot a tiny fraction of that number without requiring a new battery or a recharge.
Finally, DSLRs allow established photographers to use any of the hundreds (thousands?) of existing lenses for compatible cameras.
Certainly there's a place for cameras with digital viewfinders. But DSLRs offer unique benefits that warrant a place as well.
From this morning's San Jose Mercury News (URL: http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/news/12 798126.htm )
Is Google's NASA campus a search for a tax break?
By Jessica Portner and Julie Patel, Mercury News
Just how sweet of a deal will Google get by building a major research park on a so-called federal enclave at Moffett Field that sits just beyond the reach of local tax assessors?
Depends on whom you ask and how you slice it.
NASA/Ames Research Center's Michael Marlaire bristles at the suggestion that his agency's planned partnership with Google, unveiled last week, would provide a tax shelter for the Mountain View-based Internet giant.
Terms of the deal are in the works, but Marlaire said Friday that Google would help build the 1 million-square-foot project, upgrade infrastructure, pay fair-market rent and shell out about $4.5 million a year to NASA/Ames for services, such as fire, police, sewage and other utilities.
``I don't want people to think they are coming here for a sweetheart deal. That is not what is happening,'' said Marlaire, Ames' director of external relations. ``Google isn't going to save a dime for coming here.''
The company might pay less, however, if it builds services that other Ames tenants, such as universities and small tech start-ups, could use, he said.
Still, some local officials, such as Santa Clara County tax assessor Larry Stone, say such a setup would cost local taxing bodies like schools, nearby cities and the county up to $3 million in annual property tax revenue.
Google pays about $850,000 in annual property taxes on the 34-acre site it leases in Mountain View for its world headquarters, Stone said. The company would escape paying local property taxes by building its research center and up to 2,000 homes in NASA's research park, which sits on part of the former military base that local taxing bodies can't touch. State and local tax rules are invalid on land classified as a federal enclave.
Bustling neighborhood
NASA/Ames envisions a bustling 95-acre neighborhood to sprout up around the park -- complete with shops, cafes and parks -- where the chatter on the street is nanotechnology and supercomputers. Like a McDonald's and other shops already located on Moffett Field, those retailers also would probably be off-limits for local taxes, Stone said.
NASA has already prepared a 900-page environmental impact report that paves the way for the project. Mountain View officials will watch closely from the city right outside NASA/Ames' gates. But they won't have much say over the process, which the federal government alone controls and laid out in a 2002 study on the proposed mega-R&D campus.
Bayfront property
NASA's review looked at environmental impacts on air, land, water, traffic and storm water, as well as other issues. It calls for on-site housing and bike paths to reduce congestion and pollution, but environmentalists worry that NASA will overlook many of the ecological and traffic issues on the sensitive bayfront property.
``Nothing against Google, but this plan would have significant impacts,'' said Lenny Siegel, executive director of the Center for Public Environmental Oversight.
Mike Braukus, a spokesman at NASA headquarters in Washington, said the Google project appears to be the biggest of its kind for NASA, whose leaders say they want to transform Ames into something akin to a Silicon Valley company. The two sides have set a February deadline to arrive at a final deal.
Google would join university research groups and small start-ups that also rent space from Ames. Most pay about $4.50 per square foot a year for police, fire and other services.
Randy Nickel, the founder of Nxar, a start-up software company that rents a tiny workspace of a few hundred square feet at Ames, said his company's one-year lease
9/30/2005 10:37:00 AM Posted by Brian L. Fisher, Associate Curator of Entomology, California Academy of Sciences
At a time when the power of information technology doubles every 12 to 15 months and extends to capture every scrap we have, digitizing biodiversity information is a final frontier for IT. It's an essential step to ensure society maintains and hopefully increases bio-literacy. Toward this end, there's Antweb. It's a project from the California Academy of Sciences that has incorporated the Google Earth interface to provide location-based access to the diversity and wonder of ants: from your backyard to the Congo Basin.
As society advances, literacy increases and bio-literacy decreases. If you're illiterate, you may view a library as thinly sliced stacks of firewood; a Google search engine is meaningless. If you are bio-illiterate, a forest is at best a green blob to be consumed. If you are bio-literate, you see the diversity of the forest and understand that each animal, each plant, tells a story and has a place.
Google has helped us achieve free and democratic access to information, but now, with Google Earth, it's taken an important step to promote bio-literacy. Together with other institutions in the Bay Area, Google is uniquely poised to take on this enormous task.
There are two ways people need to access information on biodiversity: either have a name for which they want more information, or they are at a location and want to know what they will find there. On Antweb, you can access information about ants via location - and Google Earth allows for any scale of access via location. So you can be in Santa Clara County and see what ants you are likely to find. Soon you will be able to create a field guide for ants in any location defined in Google Earth.
We tried to get NASA's help to develop such a system for years with their mapping expertise and data, but Google Earth answered the call first. I am so impressed with Google that I have named an ant I recently discovered in Madagascar Proceratium google. Its bizarrely-shaped abdomen is an adaptation for hunting down obscure prey: spider eggs. Here's what it looks like.
I hope that Google will continue applying its skills to serve biodiversity data to conservation planners and the general public. Google has given us a tool to connect the 6 billion people on earth with our remaining biodiversity. Antweb welcomes any form of collaboration to help achieve this goal - and may the ants be with you.
Two hundred years from now, this ant species will probably still exist. But the name will seem just as silly and puzzling to the scientists of that day as if Dr. Fisher had named the new species Proceratium petsdotcom.
In the long run, this little stunt will probably harm Dr. Fisher's reputation more than it will help Google's.
Never rely on undocumented verbal agreements. If you are in a meeting where a verbal agreement is reached, ALWAYS send an e-mail (or paper memo) documenting what was agreed upon. Keeping an unassailable 'paper trail' regarding projects, policies and decisions can protect you against the all-too-common managers who like to lie in order to shift blame when something goes wrong.