Except that a preliminary Mars mission profile says that one possible mission is a short stay, 30 to 90 days. Now, you might ask why you'd go all that way and not stay longer, but realize that we'll be landing on a world we've never been to (not counting robotic probes) and while we are confident we understand the environment, we don't know how much conditions on Mars will differ from simulations. It will important for the first mission to be long enough to justify the expense while at the same time short enough that the astronauts can return and impart what they've learned to the colleagues, to allow for better mission planning, simulation, and training.
The same thing occured with the Moon landings. Neil and Buzz were only on the surface a little over two hours, for the reason that the information they needed to gather in that time was more important than exploration of the Moon's surface and they wanted to ensure that there were sufficient resources available in case of trouble. The first landing on the Moon was a test to ensure that the training and procedures would allow a crew to get down and back up successfully. Mars will be a bigger risk, so landing and then leaving immediately would be expensive and counter-productive, but NASA managers won't want to stay any longer than necessary to minimize the potential risks.
That would be it. What good does it do most of the time to point fingers, call names, and just generally agitate the other guy? Very little. If someone is fanatical about their point of view, no amount of cogent argument or logic is going to sway them. I say, have as little to do with them as possible. This guy wants to sue over a bad review, then he's going to have to do a lot of suing, because his book is on Amazon and most people who read his book are going to probably feel the same way.
I'm not into the gainsaying that goes on here. Everyone is entitled to their opinion, and everyone else is allowed to call them on that. That's freedom of expression and popular discourse. That's the way it's supposed to be. What the Church of Scientology and Uri Geller and their ilk don't understand is that when you put yourself out there in the public eye, you will become a target. You can't run around claiming that no one is allowed to make fun of you.
Well, it's entirely possible my world-view is wrong, but then I'm not out there suing anyone who disagrees with me because I presume I'm right and the rest of you are sadly mistaken. I don't think any one group currently has a corner on the market as far as a view of how the universe works -- I object to people who are so certain they are right and are so intolerant of even the mildest criticism of their world-view that they fell the need to browbeat others into recanting. I prefer discourse to legal briefs; I think if someone has a valid concern about what you say they have every right to make their opinion heard. Defensiveness as a tool of belief is misguided -- it doesn't make your view look too palatable. I was baptized Roman Catholic but I can't say that I'm all that happy with the views of the church. I don't go attacking the church though; I choose not to participate. Frankly I think people take the Scientologists too seriously, giving them power beyond their needs. Like the Jehova's Witnesses', I tend to ignore them.
I'm not sure that L. Ron Hubbard was a Freemason, just a second-rate science fiction writer. While I might find the idea of God having his history written by men 2000 years ago as a little dicey (I was baptized Roman Catholic), the idea of my "religion" being handed down by a science fiction writer id dubious at best. Heck, I write and edit science fiction -- and I wouldn't trust half the ideas writers come up with, let alone a whole "religion".
Well, that was not a lawsuit per se, but the potential threat of one if Slashdot didn't comply with the DMCA. But from reading the full text, it appears that all that did was open up a larger can of worms for the Scientologists, because of all the links to CoS information that they have not been able to stem. The problem is the same for them as anyone else: as soon as information makes it onto the Internet, it might as well be permanent. People look for the information will link to it, mirror it, copy it, and archive it, and there will be nowhere to hide from it. Now, this is a problem is the information is patently false, but it's an even bigger problem when it's information that you don't want anyone to have without going through proper channels.
Which now begs the question: if you go on Amazon, but the book, then review it and tell him he's a crackpot, are you going to be sued to? Can an Amazon review be held against you?
You see a common thread in these lawsuits: an individual or group cannot stand criticism of their ideas. Of course, this is nothing new, hence the Inquisition. Our legal system needs to do a better job in weeding out the frivolous lawsuits, and where a lawsuit has any merit, ensuring that when these individuals/groups lose based on the lack of supporting evidence, they should pay their opponent's legal fees. This might put a halt to Scientology's constant waste of the court system. The fact that people do not take them seriously is based on their own flawed thinking and their superiority complex. After all, their "religion" was based on the maunderings of a science fiction writer (and not a very good one at that).
If someone can be sued for their opinions... then Slashdot users will have to start a collection for a community lawyer pool, because some or all of us are going to get sued at some point.
The data will be archived, then a year or two down the road will resurface as some new system. Now that they've collected all this data, don't think for a second they will let it go quietly into the night.
Yes, well, the only thing they're liable to get on a "fishing expedition" is fish with three eyes. If there's a spill like this, isn't the EPA supposed to be notified? This does come under the heading of "environmental damage" or "inadvertent release of toxic chemicals" doesn't it? If so, there would be a record -- the EPA isn't the Department of Homeland Security.
Funny, but makes the idea of running fiber through the sewers sound pretty good from a security standpoint. There, I've done it -- let the fiber/sewer jokes begin again.
Which points up the fact that it may also be a configuration problem. Depending on how you have the system configured, what you have loaded and running at any time, you're going to get resource highs and lows. I'm not sure where audio/video playback falls on the scale of system resources, but I imagine that they get shoved down the scale by some more intensive processes. I've read through the article, and some people had the problem but turned off some things and had performance kick back up. Mind you, these fixes didn't work for everyone, so maybe it's a pervasive problem with how resources are handled.
Has anyone ever done a study, I wonder, on whether or not Radio America broadcasts were the reason for Cuban refugees to leave Cuba? I'm going to posit a guess that the answer is no; they left Cuba because a) they were tired of being poor, b) they were tired of being oppressed, or c) they had family already in the US.
I think the point is that whether or not this is a good idea may be subject to debate (though I still think it's a bad idea), but the underlying premise, that enough people will get the information to somehow cause the Chinese government problems is flawed. The Chinese people will have to begin any kind of revolution from within, just as the American colonies did. Outside sources could perhaps provide subtle influence, but it takes the internal determination of a people to make the ideas a reality. I don't think an email or a TV/Radio broadcast is going to bring about the fall of the Chinese government.
As you might note, most of the comments are negative to the idea, for the simple reason that it's dumb. You stand to become the Jehova's Witnesses of the Internet. But it's not the method, or even the fact that it seems like a reasonable idea that makes it truly flawed. The flaw is in the audience you are trying to target. The people of China have been living with this form of government for quite a while now and despite dissension by a vocal but oppressed minority, there are no signs of change in the way that country works. We are talking a total population of 1.3 billion people, of which a tiny fraction actually have Internet access or even a reasonable idea what the Internet is. In many cases, you'd be preaching to the choir, the techno-savvy Chinese who understand the intricacies of the Net and who yearn for the freedom to use it as anyone else does. But if you're planning to fient some kind of revolution and bring freedom to the Chinese, then you are wasting your time and marking yourself for reprisal.
Revolution, any revolution, must come from within. Enough people must want change to make it reasonable. Chinese society is not built that way, not will it change any time soon.
As many people will point out, at some point you have to take responsibility for your own information. It's not the data breaches themselves that are really the issue, but the fact that once your data gets into the wild, it can be used for nefarious and often illegal purposes, and that's there is no easy way to deal with the problem. Anyone who gets their identity stolen literally spends years writing letters and making calls to various companies to indicate that in fact their identity was stolen and they are not responsible for the misuse of it. When it comes to clearing things up with the major credit monitoring services, it can be downright frustrating to get them to make necessary and factual changes to your credit report in order to get the matter cleared up.
We don't just need laws to make companies liable, we need a system in place to make sure that when data breaches do occur, that those affected can restore some semblance of normalcy to their lives with the minimum of fuss. And we need laws in place to define just what data any particular company can collect (remember: your SS# is not supposed to be used as any kind of identifier except for tax purposes) and more importantly, how that data should be stored (mandatory encryption).
The point is, sewer pipes are really big and they connect literally every building in any community where there is a city sewer system. If I'm going to run fiber and I don't want to spend a whole lot of time digging up the ground to bury lines and more importantly make them easily accessible for maintenance/upgrade, then the sewer (despite its obvious drawbacks) makes a pretty good place to put them. The problem I can see with this, that unless they plane to lock down all the sewer caps and manhole covers, it would be pretty easy to hack into the lines at some point; perhaps I'm mistaken.
Use a social netowrking site, don't use one. Use MySpace, Facebook, or don't. Is this really a problem? No. Is it bothering anyone else? No. Is this news? No. Nothing to see here -- move along.
Agreed. You get the pitchforks, I'll find the torches... and I think some tar and feathers would be in order to... BTW, where is there HQ again? If we can't find that, their lawyers' offices will do...
Slashdot Mirror
No. And don't try using it any other way... ouch!
Looks more like the Terminator than the Six Million Dollar Man. They need to work on some sort of natural covering.
KITT: Michael, someone's trying to hack into my operating system! Help me Michael!
And pretty soon... Andrew "Dice" Clay, "Dice-K" Matsuzaka, and the Diceman.
Except that a preliminary Mars mission profile says that one possible mission is a short stay, 30 to 90 days. Now, you might ask why you'd go all that way and not stay longer, but realize that we'll be landing on a world we've never been to (not counting robotic probes) and while we are confident we understand the environment, we don't know how much conditions on Mars will differ from simulations. It will important for the first mission to be long enough to justify the expense while at the same time short enough that the astronauts can return and impart what they've learned to the colleagues, to allow for better mission planning, simulation, and training.
The same thing occured with the Moon landings. Neil and Buzz were only on the surface a little over two hours, for the reason that the information they needed to gather in that time was more important than exploration of the Moon's surface and they wanted to ensure that there were sufficient resources available in case of trouble. The first landing on the Moon was a test to ensure that the training and procedures would allow a crew to get down and back up successfully. Mars will be a bigger risk, so landing and then leaving immediately would be expensive and counter-productive, but NASA managers won't want to stay any longer than necessary to minimize the potential risks.
That would be it. What good does it do most of the time to point fingers, call names, and just generally agitate the other guy? Very little. If someone is fanatical about their point of view, no amount of cogent argument or logic is going to sway them. I say, have as little to do with them as possible. This guy wants to sue over a bad review, then he's going to have to do a lot of suing, because his book is on Amazon and most people who read his book are going to probably feel the same way.
I'm not into the gainsaying that goes on here. Everyone is entitled to their opinion, and everyone else is allowed to call them on that. That's freedom of expression and popular discourse. That's the way it's supposed to be. What the Church of Scientology and Uri Geller and their ilk don't understand is that when you put yourself out there in the public eye, you will become a target. You can't run around claiming that no one is allowed to make fun of you.
Well, it's entirely possible my world-view is wrong, but then I'm not out there suing anyone who disagrees with me because I presume I'm right and the rest of you are sadly mistaken. I don't think any one group currently has a corner on the market as far as a view of how the universe works -- I object to people who are so certain they are right and are so intolerant of even the mildest criticism of their world-view that they fell the need to browbeat others into recanting. I prefer discourse to legal briefs; I think if someone has a valid concern about what you say they have every right to make their opinion heard. Defensiveness as a tool of belief is misguided -- it doesn't make your view look too palatable. I was baptized Roman Catholic but I can't say that I'm all that happy with the views of the church. I don't go attacking the church though; I choose not to participate. Frankly I think people take the Scientologists too seriously, giving them power beyond their needs. Like the Jehova's Witnesses', I tend to ignore them.
I'm not sure that L. Ron Hubbard was a Freemason, just a second-rate science fiction writer. While I might find the idea of God having his history written by men 2000 years ago as a little dicey (I was baptized Roman Catholic), the idea of my "religion" being handed down by a science fiction writer id dubious at best. Heck, I write and edit science fiction -- and I wouldn't trust half the ideas writers come up with, let alone a whole "religion".
Well, that was not a lawsuit per se, but the potential threat of one if Slashdot didn't comply with the DMCA. But from reading the full text, it appears that all that did was open up a larger can of worms for the Scientologists, because of all the links to CoS information that they have not been able to stem. The problem is the same for them as anyone else: as soon as information makes it onto the Internet, it might as well be permanent. People look for the information will link to it, mirror it, copy it, and archive it, and there will be nowhere to hide from it. Now, this is a problem is the information is patently false, but it's an even bigger problem when it's information that you don't want anyone to have without going through proper channels.
Which now begs the question: if you go on Amazon, but the book, then review it and tell him he's a crackpot, are you going to be sued to? Can an Amazon review be held against you?
You see a common thread in these lawsuits: an individual or group cannot stand criticism of their ideas. Of course, this is nothing new, hence the Inquisition. Our legal system needs to do a better job in weeding out the frivolous lawsuits, and where a lawsuit has any merit, ensuring that when these individuals/groups lose based on the lack of supporting evidence, they should pay their opponent's legal fees. This might put a halt to Scientology's constant waste of the court system. The fact that people do not take them seriously is based on their own flawed thinking and their superiority complex. After all, their "religion" was based on the maunderings of a science fiction writer (and not a very good one at that).
If someone can be sued for their opinions... then Slashdot users will have to start a collection for a community lawyer pool, because some or all of us are going to get sued at some point.
The data will be archived, then a year or two down the road will resurface as some new system. Now that they've collected all this data, don't think for a second they will let it go quietly into the night.
Yes, well, the only thing they're liable to get on a "fishing expedition" is fish with three eyes. If there's a spill like this, isn't the EPA supposed to be notified? This does come under the heading of "environmental damage" or "inadvertent release of toxic chemicals" doesn't it? If so, there would be a record -- the EPA isn't the Department of Homeland Security.
Funny, but makes the idea of running fiber through the sewers sound pretty good from a security standpoint. There, I've done it -- let the fiber/sewer jokes begin again.
Funny, I thought it said "The walrus is Ballmer"... but maybe it's just my headphones...
Which points up the fact that it may also be a configuration problem. Depending on how you have the system configured, what you have loaded and running at any time, you're going to get resource highs and lows. I'm not sure where audio/video playback falls on the scale of system resources, but I imagine that they get shoved down the scale by some more intensive processes. I've read through the article, and some people had the problem but turned off some things and had performance kick back up. Mind you, these fixes didn't work for everyone, so maybe it's a pervasive problem with how resources are handled.
...his parents must be so proud.
Has anyone ever done a study, I wonder, on whether or not Radio America broadcasts were the reason for Cuban refugees to leave Cuba? I'm going to posit a guess that the answer is no; they left Cuba because a) they were tired of being poor, b) they were tired of being oppressed, or c) they had family already in the US.
I think the point is that whether or not this is a good idea may be subject to debate (though I still think it's a bad idea), but the underlying premise, that enough people will get the information to somehow cause the Chinese government problems is flawed. The Chinese people will have to begin any kind of revolution from within, just as the American colonies did. Outside sources could perhaps provide subtle influence, but it takes the internal determination of a people to make the ideas a reality. I don't think an email or a TV/Radio broadcast is going to bring about the fall of the Chinese government.
As you might note, most of the comments are negative to the idea, for the simple reason that it's dumb. You stand to become the Jehova's Witnesses of the Internet. But it's not the method, or even the fact that it seems like a reasonable idea that makes it truly flawed. The flaw is in the audience you are trying to target. The people of China have been living with this form of government for quite a while now and despite dissension by a vocal but oppressed minority, there are no signs of change in the way that country works. We are talking a total population of 1.3 billion people, of which a tiny fraction actually have Internet access or even a reasonable idea what the Internet is. In many cases, you'd be preaching to the choir, the techno-savvy Chinese who understand the intricacies of the Net and who yearn for the freedom to use it as anyone else does. But if you're planning to fient some kind of revolution and bring freedom to the Chinese, then you are wasting your time and marking yourself for reprisal.
Revolution, any revolution, must come from within. Enough people must want change to make it reasonable. Chinese society is not built that way, not will it change any time soon.
As many people will point out, at some point you have to take responsibility for your own information. It's not the data breaches themselves that are really the issue, but the fact that once your data gets into the wild, it can be used for nefarious and often illegal purposes, and that's there is no easy way to deal with the problem. Anyone who gets their identity stolen literally spends years writing letters and making calls to various companies to indicate that in fact their identity was stolen and they are not responsible for the misuse of it. When it comes to clearing things up with the major credit monitoring services, it can be downright frustrating to get them to make necessary and factual changes to your credit report in order to get the matter cleared up.
We don't just need laws to make companies liable, we need a system in place to make sure that when data breaches do occur, that those affected can restore some semblance of normalcy to their lives with the minimum of fuss. And we need laws in place to define just what data any particular company can collect (remember: your SS# is not supposed to be used as any kind of identifier except for tax purposes) and more importantly, how that data should be stored (mandatory encryption).
The point is, sewer pipes are really big and they connect literally every building in any community where there is a city sewer system. If I'm going to run fiber and I don't want to spend a whole lot of time digging up the ground to bury lines and more importantly make them easily accessible for maintenance/upgrade, then the sewer (despite its obvious drawbacks) makes a pretty good place to put them. The problem I can see with this, that unless they plane to lock down all the sewer caps and manhole covers, it would be pretty easy to hack into the lines at some point; perhaps I'm mistaken.
Can they make it Godzilla-proof?
...who cares?
Use a social netowrking site, don't use one. Use MySpace, Facebook, or don't. Is this really a problem? No. Is it bothering anyone else? No. Is this news? No. Nothing to see here -- move along.
Agreed. You get the pitchforks, I'll find the torches... and I think some tar and feathers would be in order to... BTW, where is there HQ again? If we can't find that, their lawyers' offices will do...