And Rutgers University chimed in. Well, someone at Rutgers.
If your point was that Fox News got snookered, well, they are in good company. If your point was that this is jsut another example of Fox News incompetence, well, you can use the same brush to tar CNN and the BBC. Though what the threee have in common escapes me. Oh, wait, I know.
They all purport to deliver the truth.
Right.
Nice try though. Keep swinging. In baseball, succeeding once in 4 at bats will get you a decent job. In politics and Slashdot, you need much less. Way much less.
Netbook sales have both eaten into notebook/laptop sales, and propped up low-end notebook prices. Actually, netbooks are horribly overpriced, but enough of that heresy for now...
So hopefully, as the iPad settles in and assumes its long-term share of the market, the toybois will get off of the netbooks, which will drop to a rational share, and low-end notebooks will drop in price as well.
This is good for me. I need more than a 10 inch screen. Actually, I need more than a 12 inch screen usually, but my X41 Tablet has its purposes. Get these baby-screen things off the market, so some manufacturing capacity is free for what *I* want, which is a new cheap notebook for my wife so she stops breaking my current one in half. I'm tired of soldering this thing back together.
"but the fact is, doing a scene where a sysadmin bangs around in a terminal typing commands just isn't fun for the viewer"
Maybe not for you, but watching two sysadmins bang out single-line bash scripts that redirect all elecrical power from the entire U.S. into an experimental fusion reactor to blast an asteroid out of the sky, while the evil aliens pound on their control panels in frustration works for me. Especially while the hot one keeps shedding clothes. Human or alien, it almost doesn't matter, so long as she is still in her Natasha Henstridge form. After she molts, well the ship's blowing up anyways, so we can watch all the wacky space physics of explosions, fireballs and all.
Bonus points for coding a quick alien DVD playback routine in Python - in less than 20 seconds. While complaining about their failed marriage, and all the great sex they used to have in between marathon coding sessions. Or was it great code in between marathon sex sessions?
Moore's Law works until the required elements are smaller than quantum objects. Actually, in our current state of technology and anything practical on the horizon, it works until the required elements are smaller than single atoms. Then there is no way to make stuff faster...
Sort of.
While GPUs might 'save Moore's Law', actually they just add other CPUs to each system. So more cores = more performance, and Moore's Law is still relevant.
Now, to change the entire computing paradigm to actually take advantage of parallel processing. GPUs do it, sort of, but we need entirely new operating systems, and probably new physical architecture.
Not that it matters that much to me. I'll just buy whatever is reasonably fast, and leave the bleading edge to those with more money to spend.
returning it is an interewtin diea, but how about a Wii(rx) that just runs therapeutic software?
Sure, WiiFit and all that exist now, but some clever physical therapists will jump on this and create customizeable software that offers specific exercises. Hey, can it report back via the Internet, or give you the report codes do you can call the office and verify you completed the assigned exercises successfully? Download new ones as you progress? Encouraging/helpful messages from your therapist? Next thing you know, there is an industry for blood pressure cuff and blood sugar controllers, etc.
Do I need to patent this? Or is just stating the idea sufficient prior art to make it unpatentable?
"In the department that I work in, however, many of the employees (myself included) bring their own personal machines to work every day."
The IT department made a mistake there. Not acceptable to allow confidential data on a private machine. Their error, not yours. If your department doesn't have budget for IT services, perhaps it needs to be managed properly or shut down. Obviously, they will manage it properly.
"the hospital is now demanding that any machine that is used to check email (via email clients or webmail directly) be encrypted", including desktop-style machines at home"
BlackBerry Problem solved. If they balk at handing out BBs, then you don't need offsite or portable email access. Problem solved.
I'm astonished that they let you bring your own machine in to do work with confidential data. Entirely unacceptable, no matter how diligent you are about your machine's security. It is responsible. They cannot be responsible if they don't control the environment, including the hardware and software. I'm equally astonished they aren't using a VPN with certificates.
But I am not unfamiliar with Massachusetts hospitals, so I am not greatly astonished. One Boston-area hospital got a cool teleradiology contract with a hospital I worked at back in the 90s, and gave us the stern lectures about security, data encryption, etc. And emailed the user IDs and passwords to everyone on the department mailing list, even the CEO and CFO. Nice, guys. How about taking out an ad in the Globe next time, ok? It would be safer, nobody reads that.
So Arizona could, in fact, elect a non-resident of the state and present them to the Senate, who could, in fact, seat them?
This does make sense, at least by the letter of the law.
But if Arizona chose to restrict nomination or inclusion on the ballot to state residents, this is state election law, which I do not think defers to the Senate determining the qualifications of its members... Indeed, does the Senate claim the right to seat a member not even elected and presented by a state? What an interesting concept...
I would think that at least under Article 10 states have the right to choose whom they send to the Federal Legislature. The Senate for sure, and probably the House, can choose to seat them or not, but if it is constitutional for the Senate to determine the qualifications of its members, are you implying that it could even select a member itself, without election by the state? Sure would have been much simpler for the Democrats to ignore the Massachusetts election and pick someone other than Scott Brown to take Teddy Kennedy's seat...
No, I think states have the right to conduct their elections, so long as they are fair and otherwise constitutionally correct, as they wish. There is not even any federal rule on how to replace Senators who vacate their seat for whatever reason that I am aware of. Requiring that they be residents of the state they intend to represent seems entirely fair. Even ensuring they would be of legal age at some reasonable point in time (like before the last year of a six-year term) seems reasonable also.
And by extension, requiring that candidates for President also be actually constitutionally eligible for the office seems fair to me. Remember, the first recent discussion of a candidate's constitutional eligibility for the office of President was concerning John McCain. Even before his nomination.
"Mozilla has unveiled a build for handsets running Android 2.0 or above."
So I can wait around for TMO to declare that 2.0+ will NOT be released for my G1. I'll have to root it.
Ok, one more reason.
And for you who ask 'why would I rerplace Webkit with this?', I offer you some reasons:
1. Rather than usae Steel, Firefox might let you set the user agent to 'Desktop' or equivalent, allowing you to get your regular fully-featured version of iGoogle instead of the neutered, 'mobile' version. Google has decided, in their infinte wisdom, to force mobile brwsers to use mobil renders of their pages wherever possible. This is, from a Google blog, 'intended to give mobile users a consistent user experience'. If I wanted a consistently mobile experience, I would have gotten a BlackBerry. I wanted a BETTER experience, so I got an Android phone. Evil, you are. Subvert, I will. Root, I must.
2. Better UI? Everything beyond typing in a URL or clicking requires the Menu button in the stock Browser. Steel gives you an onscreen crescent to go back/forward, swap windows, open new windows, or get bookmarks. I would expect Mozilla to do something like that in Fennec - but we do have to wait and see.
3. Faster? never know...
4. Even more malware blocking? I don't see anything that hurts my phone yet, and I use it to open stuff I distrust just to see what happens. Fennec might be even more fun.
5. It might actually clear the cache on exit, instead of growing like a weed despite having the setting 'clear cache on exit' selected. One can dream...
"the nutty "president must have birth certificate" (Hmm, yes I'm SURE AZ has the authority to make federal election laws)"
Oh. And states don't have a right, or implicit duty, to ensure that candidates for federal office be ELIGIBLE for that office? By that measure, Arizona has no right to require that a candidate for a U.S. Senate seat representing Arizona even be a RESIDENT of Arizona... Right? What would be so illegal about requiring that a candidate for President even be of minimum age as specified byh the Constitution? That alone requires some proof of birth. Let's go, baby. I want this fight.
"AZ is apparently a pretty embarassing place to be a lawyer right now."
With all the injustice you assume, apparently from a distance, Arizona is THE MOST IMPORTANT PLACE TO BE A LAWYER RIGHT NOW. Lawyers, as officers of the court, have an obligation to represent and protect those in need.
You need to get your act together. Come on down and straighten us out, ok? I'm especially interested in how you will fix our election laws so the Reverend Al Sharpton could run for either U.S. Senate seat from Arizona, ok? No tests! Anyone may apply!
With a little engineering, a pull-off for other systems would not be too hard to implement. The specs have to be somewhat public to manufacture receivers, so there are no secrets. And with competing GPS, we can just shut them down in theater and use our own.
Now how to prevent jamming by others. Ah. My methods are not terribly sophisticated. Remember, commercial GPS doesn't even like to be indoors. It doesn't take much to defeat it.
You just made me think of something. While jamming of various kinds is effective, as GPS-guided weapons proliferate, then GPS jamming becomes critical. It wouldn't be too hard to jam GPS within at least a 30km radius, and jamming GPS over 200km would be challenging but possible.
And we could devise jammers that allow *us* to continue to use GPS, but deny useful GPS to enemy weapons for at least a little while.
You do need to accomodate the problem of an incoming missle having gotten good coordinates, a good GPS lock, and established a confident course to target. Carriers don't maneuver fast enough to foil that, and it would not be impossible to correct for course and speed. If the incoming missle is nuclear armed, well, the CEP need only be 2km? Sounds doable. So you need to jam GPS very early, maybe even before launch.
The answers here include denying the enemy accurate (within 8km at least) position data for the asset, be it a carrier or a task group, possibly altering GPS data to divert the missile, or defending against it with the more conventional shoot-down options.
Or maybe denying it terminal data, so hopefully it missed and flys by. Wow. GPS pull-off. That's interesting ECM. I got to patent that. What a cool way to drive geocachers crazy.
We track our users' browser versions, something started in response to a VP who tried to use Safari at home and couldn't make it work. Well, actually, he didn't try any of the workarounds he paid for, but that's another story.
While we get an unusual mix of browsers hitting the site I work with the most, IE is the overwhelming favorite, almost even shared of 7 & 8, with 6 a small fraction. Firefox is growing but still less than 10%, Safari hangs in there at about 1%, and Opera started getting hits. Android makes an appearance - that would be me doing some ad hoc testing... and it's not good, but this is pretty heavy Java site, so I expect my G1 to gag on it.
But we get calls from users complaining we don't support Firefox better, and they universally claim that Firefox is the dominant browser out there and we MUST SUPPORT IT OR OUR SITE WILL DIE.
Um, no, it won't. But I digress.
We have problems with IE8, primarily because of the JVM and the underlying architecture. So this is an issue that is getting significant development funding.
Problem is, our team rightly points out that there are things we need to do that will essentially kill IE6 browsers. And they have early reports that IE9 will require more work, and within this development cycle. We need to be working to make sure IE9 doesn't break anything, while updating to support IE8 better, and then abandoning IE6. And probably breaking some old Fierfox versions. And seeing if we can realistically support Safari to some reasonable extent without coding some sections three times for different browsers. And answering the VP who's kid claims that Opera will rule the world in 2 years. And completing some work to finish the AJAX implementation and get off of ASP. And face a server platform upgrade just as this all comes to production, without any definitive statements from the sever team on what will change, what the JVM will look like, what the actual server will be, and what will break. FWIW, we use a Websphere/Apache platform. It has its moments, like paying Development $2000 to have the copyright date changed on the home page. It will cost us more to get the date fixed on all the pages. So the budget for working on 40+ features, including PDF reporting, spreadsheet-like report pages that may encompass >30,000 rows at >200 rows per page allowed, querying local and remote SQL tables and DB2 tables, all within a corporate single signon environment, is substantial. And add to this browser compatability.
And the problem is that Microsoft seems bent on new browser releases every 2 years. Our current major release cycle is a little more than 2 years, and will be, because this site provides critical information to literally millions of users. Accuracy and reliability is more important than new features. Browser compatability has to be fourth place at best.
But to hear a few vocal users, we are not just behind the curve, we are criminally negligent, and risking their data and systems by forcing them to use 'obsolete' browsers. IE7 is obsolete?
And yes, we also have security concerns. So much so that we broke much of the site in a campaign to further harden the systems agains SQL injection attacks. But in this case, security before functionality was the corporate mission, so we have had an interesting few months. We only have one major patch to complete, and it will only take coordinated and cooperative effort from virtually all of a multi-billion dollar enterprise, of which some groups have stated the changes will not be made because it will break their systems. For the record, their systems are already 'broken', they just don't realize the impact to other systems. The message is being delivered this month, which is what they said last month. Or was it last year... These things tend to blur...
It's all well and good to point out that you should be updating your systems to accomodate current browsers. How about sporting over a few million to cover that, ok? And maybe generating a time
American Football is played on a field 360 by 160 feet, or 109.72m by 48.77m, or 5351.04sq.m. Some of the length is end zones.
IFBA declared a fixed size for a pitch of 105m long and 68m wide, which is 7140 sq.m, instead of instead of a minimum and maximum length - from 100m to 110m - and a minimum and a maximum width - from 64m to 75m. So the olde standard allowed fields from 6400 to 8250 sq.m.
So an American Football field would be from 750 millisoccerfields to 650 millisoccerfields.
Or a pitch would be from 1540 millisoccerfields to 1200 millisoccerfields.
American Football is always played on a narrower, but sometimes longer, field. However, we rarely think of the end zones as playable area, so think of a football field here as 100 yards long. And if you're playing soccer on an American Football field, it *is* about 100 yards long, as the goalposts rarely are moved, and you usually end up giving up most of the end zones. This and the narrow fields many U.S. high schools have available really stunts play, as width is so important in soccer. I would take a 90m field that was 60m wide over a 100m field that was 48m wide.
It immediately caught me that someone somewhere thought an American Football field was larger than a soccer pitch. this is just not so.
Now, hockey was even more interesting to me, where rink size varied greatly. The Montreal Forum had a huge sheet, and they preferred skaters such as Guy LeFler, who could drive you crazy trying to find them, much less check them. The old Boston garden had a small sheet, with tight radius corners. Going into the Bruins' corners with any of the old-style Bruins defensemen coming in pretty much guaranteed you were going to be squashed like a bug. Some old Bruins used to talk of Bobby Orr's stickhandling as playing ping-pong in a phone booth. In the Forum, this was still important, but trying to crash the boards in the Forum often got you nothing but boards.
"If Al-quaeda had managed to get a hold of a nuke, and detonated it in Manhattan, what would Bush & co. have done ?"
Um, afterward? I suspect it would have been Carte Blanche to invade Afghanistan without any real concern for the locals. And more sadness than I would like to contemplate. It would have forced a challenge to our Middle East 'allies'; take sides - renounce Al-Quaeda or join them in the aftermath. Strikes against Syria (a real tragedy), Libya (not sure they do much for A-Q), and genuine threats against Iran, Egypt, various Sultanates and Emirs. Private warning to the Royal Saudi family. And pretty soon after, some strike against Iran's nuclear facilities. Such an attack by A-Q would give us the flimsy but credible excuse to attack most any entity in the Middle East. And increase our support of Israel. And denounce the Palestinian movement leadership.
Escalation would probably include OPEC embargoes, UN condemnation, attacks on most any U.S. embassy and military post, and probably some general terrorist actions against our bigger allies and any place a few American tourists gather.
More escalation - threats over oil, calling out China and Russia to join in sanctioning Iran and N. Korea over their nuclear programs, being rebuffed, and alienating the three 'super'powers. Nothing good comes of this.
The only alternative would be resist the urge for reprisals and swarming over Afghanistan, and instead turning every covert and deniable asset loose to kill A-Q and similar terror suspects anywhere. If the terorrists feared us, they would be wise to flee to Mecca and hug the Holy Mosque. That we would not attack.
There are other scenarios.
You can cling to your assessment of GWB as stupid, but if such a nuclear attack occurred, there would be little place for subtlety. He would have volumes of conflicting advice, and would probably end up relying on the military. The CIA would have lost credibility, and State would be marginalized as unimportant - the time for diplomacy would be past.
We should not pray this happens on Obama's watch. There is no good scenario, and no 'not too bad' ones either. It can only be devastating, and rip the world apart. Which is well within A-Q's and Iran's mission statements. But not within OPEC's, Palestine's, nor most of the rest of the world. In fact, Palestine is the reason Iran would not bomb Jerusalem. Tel Aviv is their target, Unless they intend to try to blame someone else for a nuclear missile attack on Israel. And Israel will not stand still for it, unless they elect even more ineffective leadership. A-Q need not be the ones to create a broken world. A nuke on Tel Aviv would have indistiguishable results.
This is the problem with Al-Quaeda, and with Iran. They don't seem to see world chaos and destruction as an unacceptable result.
Russia shoud realize by now that there is no credible threat of a U.S. nuclear first strike attack:
- There is no advantage gained by crippling Russia economically or socially. A failed Russia causes us more problems than a successful one. See references on the 'end of the Cold War' to see what a successful Russia lead to. No problem for us there. We can do it again.
- Russia's military is sufficiently constrained by economics that it is not the critical, immediate threat it once was. We should be encouraging Russian stability and economic success.
- A nuclear attack of any consequence on Russia would cause multiple environmental disasters of both more immediate and more intense concern than glbal climate change. Rendering much of Eastern Europe, the Caucuses, and potentially China and the Indian sub-continent either uninhabitable or medically dangerous would not serve any purpose. Nuclear attacks on even a regional scale must be considered 'doomsday' responses by all major nuclear powers. In light of this reality, the real threats are North Korea and potentially Iran, since they do not have the resources to make large-scale nuclear attacks, and so could calculate a scenario where an attack could be survivable for them. Mutually Assured Destruction is very near, it not already at, the end of its usefulness.
- Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, their capacity is not only constrained, but their sphere of influence is reduced. Less reason than ever to try to suppress Russian efforts at influence around the world.
But Global Climate Change has taken us down a road of questionable science, apathy by the masses, and governmental distraction from real, solvable problems. Reducing nuclear weapon stockpiles dramatically would solve a lot of problems between the U.S. and Russia, and including the major nuclear powers as the process moves forward would eventually bring us close enough to nuclear disarmament that we could engage the lesser powers and make a credible demand for their disarmament also. Then we can legitimately challenge ALL weapons-grade processing and put a stop to this dance we are in with North Korea and Iran. Sadly, we can't get there in time to address Iran's nuclear ambitions.
A significant nuclear weapons release will do more harm to our climate and planet than the worst the Global Climate Change crowd can imagine. It would render Climate Change unimportant. No one would care about failed crops from land poisoned by fallout. No one would care about UV exposure and sea level rise if they are battling cancer and indirect, long range radiation poisoning. No one would care about lost habitat and lost biodiversity in the midst of massive and fatal mutations. The jig would be up. I would be entirely aghast if both our incoming Presidents and Russian Presidents did not each get through briefings on the impact of even small releases, at least from the civilian agencies interested in this (State, FEMA, DOE, EPA, DOAgriculture, and maybe a few others) and russian counterparts. The military, despite our instincts, generally would prefer to offer an honest view of strategic ware outcomes. They also would have good reason to caution incoming Presidents against nuclear war. I would not be surprised if our secret strategy would be to back down from any threat. How we would handle an 'unexpected' massive first strike, I dunno. Again, if the schoolyard bully knows there's a bigger bully down the street that has a little brother in his school, does he go in and beat up the bigger bully's little brother? Only when he loses restraint, or the bigger bully loses credibility.
So far, we have not lost credibility on either side.
There are fewer reasons than ever to have a nuclear war.
"because the screeners KNOW that they've never pulled a guilty person out of line."
This story and of course this one also, and this one would indicate that at least some people that could legitimately be considered a threat were in fact detained.
Not a stellar record, perhaps, but not failure. And not a record of no actual denials of credible suspects. Imperfect? Yup. Better than nothing? Yup.
False positives are inevitable if we are just using names. I suspect that there will be a change in the system, though in most cases it is the nature of counter-terrorism that all you get is a name. Images might compromise sources, and fingerprints are usually not going to be available.
There is quite a bit of advice on how to get off of a no-fly list. One way NOT to get removed, it would seem, is to be elected to the U.S. Senate... Or get hired as an Air Marshal. feh.
The mainstream media is in the enviable position of being able to pick their product. Soon they will not be able to ignore the alternative media (Fox, blogs ad infinitim, etc.) And will spend much time presenting rebuttals. No original reporting. Investigative work is already shifting to alternatives and well-skilled amateurs.
Consider yourself fortunate to live in a place where you don't experience much loss due to crime. I live in Mesa, Arizona. Between illegal immigrants, meth heads, wannabe gangbangers, and people just down on their luck, if I leave a shovel stuck in a pile of crushed rock in the front yard to go inside and get a bottle of water, it gets stolen. Twice.
And this part of Mesa is considered, by my two friends on the police force, to be relatively safe and crime-free.
Anecdotal evidence aside, if your neighborhood is actually so safe, why worry if the ditzy GF leaves the door open?
Slashdot Mirror
They are not alone...
The BBC has this problem.
As does CNN.
Even Engadget has their finger on this pulse...
And the odd TV station.
And just plain odd sites.
The U.S. Army got in on this one.
And Rutgers University chimed in. Well, someone at Rutgers.
If your point was that Fox News got snookered, well, they are in good company. If your point was that this is jsut another example of Fox News incompetence, well, you can use the same brush to tar CNN and the BBC. Though what the threee have in common escapes me. Oh, wait, I know.
They all purport to deliver the truth.
Right.
Nice try though. Keep swinging. In baseball, succeeding once in 4 at bats will get you a decent job. In politics and Slashdot, you need much less. Way much less.
Netbook sales have both eaten into notebook/laptop sales, and propped up low-end notebook prices. Actually, netbooks are horribly overpriced, but enough of that heresy for now...
So hopefully, as the iPad settles in and assumes its long-term share of the market, the toybois will get off of the netbooks, which will drop to a rational share, and low-end notebooks will drop in price as well.
This is good for me. I need more than a 10 inch screen. Actually, I need more than a 12 inch screen usually, but my X41 Tablet has its purposes. Get these baby-screen things off the market, so some manufacturing capacity is free for what *I* want, which is a new cheap notebook for my wife so she stops breaking my current one in half. I'm tired of soldering this thing back together.
And no, I'm not selfish at all. Thank you.
Well, since iPads don't use IBM hard drives, pixie dust won't help.
Unless you think Jobs is actually growing iPads, in which case pixie dust might work there, too. Or not...
"but the fact is, doing a scene where a sysadmin bangs around in a terminal typing commands just isn't fun for the viewer"
Maybe not for you, but watching two sysadmins bang out single-line bash scripts that redirect all elecrical power from the entire U.S. into an experimental fusion reactor to blast an asteroid out of the sky, while the evil aliens pound on their control panels in frustration works for me. Especially while the hot one keeps shedding clothes. Human or alien, it almost doesn't matter, so long as she is still in her Natasha Henstridge form. After she molts, well the ship's blowing up anyways, so we can watch all the wacky space physics of explosions, fireballs and all.
Bonus points for coding a quick alien DVD playback routine in Python - in less than 20 seconds. While complaining about their failed marriage, and all the great sex they used to have in between marathon coding sessions. Or was it great code in between marathon sex sessions?
You had me at 'fellatio'.
Moore's Law works until the required elements are smaller than quantum objects. Actually, in our current state of technology and anything practical on the horizon, it works until the required elements are smaller than single atoms. Then there is no way to make stuff faster...
Sort of.
While GPUs might 'save Moore's Law', actually they just add other CPUs to each system. So more cores = more performance, and Moore's Law is still relevant.
Now, to change the entire computing paradigm to actually take advantage of parallel processing. GPUs do it, sort of, but we need entirely new operating systems, and probably new physical architecture.
Not that it matters that much to me. I'll just buy whatever is reasonably fast, and leave the bleading edge to those with more money to spend.
returning it is an interewtin diea, but how about a Wii(rx) that just runs therapeutic software?
Sure, WiiFit and all that exist now, but some clever physical therapists will jump on this and create customizeable software that offers specific exercises. Hey, can it report back via the Internet, or give you the report codes do you can call the office and verify you completed the assigned exercises successfully? Download new ones as you progress? Encouraging/helpful messages from your therapist? Next thing you know, there is an industry for blood pressure cuff and blood sugar controllers, etc.
Do I need to patent this? Or is just stating the idea sufficient prior art to make it unpatentable?
Crap. There goes another million-dollar idea.
"In the department that I work in, however, many of the employees (myself included) bring their own personal machines to work every day."
The IT department made a mistake there. Not acceptable to allow confidential data on a private machine. Their error, not yours. If your department doesn't have budget for IT services, perhaps it needs to be managed properly or shut down. Obviously, they will manage it properly.
"the hospital is now demanding that any machine that is used to check email (via email clients or webmail directly) be encrypted", including desktop-style machines at home"
BlackBerry Problem solved. If they balk at handing out BBs, then you don't need offsite or portable email access. Problem solved.
I'm astonished that they let you bring your own machine in to do work with confidential data. Entirely unacceptable, no matter how diligent you are about your machine's security. It is responsible. They cannot be responsible if they don't control the environment, including the hardware and software. I'm equally astonished they aren't using a VPN with certificates.
But I am not unfamiliar with Massachusetts hospitals, so I am not greatly astonished. One Boston-area hospital got a cool teleradiology contract with a hospital I worked at back in the 90s, and gave us the stern lectures about security, data encryption, etc. And emailed the user IDs and passwords to everyone on the department mailing list, even the CEO and CFO. Nice, guys. How about taking out an ad in the Globe next time, ok? It would be safer, nobody reads that.
"people responsible for Lala"
Apple
There, fixed that for ya.
And it still sucks, even more so.
So Arizona could, in fact, elect a non-resident of the state and present them to the Senate, who could, in fact, seat them?
This does make sense, at least by the letter of the law.
But if Arizona chose to restrict nomination or inclusion on the ballot to state residents, this is state election law, which I do not think defers to the Senate determining the qualifications of its members... Indeed, does the Senate claim the right to seat a member not even elected and presented by a state? What an interesting concept...
I would think that at least under Article 10 states have the right to choose whom they send to the Federal Legislature. The Senate for sure, and probably the House, can choose to seat them or not, but if it is constitutional for the Senate to determine the qualifications of its members, are you implying that it could even select a member itself, without election by the state? Sure would have been much simpler for the Democrats to ignore the Massachusetts election and pick someone other than Scott Brown to take Teddy Kennedy's seat...
No, I think states have the right to conduct their elections, so long as they are fair and otherwise constitutionally correct, as they wish. There is not even any federal rule on how to replace Senators who vacate their seat for whatever reason that I am aware of. Requiring that they be residents of the state they intend to represent seems entirely fair. Even ensuring they would be of legal age at some reasonable point in time (like before the last year of a six-year term) seems reasonable also.
And by extension, requiring that candidates for President also be actually constitutionally eligible for the office seems fair to me. Remember, the first recent discussion of a candidate's constitutional eligibility for the office of President was concerning John McCain. Even before his nomination.
"Mozilla has unveiled a build for handsets running Android 2.0 or above."
So I can wait around for TMO to declare that 2.0+ will NOT be released for my G1. I'll have to root it.
Ok, one more reason.
And for you who ask 'why would I rerplace Webkit with this?', I offer you some reasons:
1. Rather than usae Steel, Firefox might let you set the user agent to 'Desktop' or equivalent, allowing you to get your regular fully-featured version of iGoogle instead of the neutered, 'mobile' version. Google has decided, in their infinte wisdom, to force mobile brwsers to use mobil renders of their pages wherever possible. This is, from a Google blog, 'intended to give mobile users a consistent user experience'. If I wanted a consistently mobile experience, I would have gotten a BlackBerry. I wanted a BETTER experience, so I got an Android phone. Evil, you are. Subvert, I will. Root, I must.
2. Better UI? Everything beyond typing in a URL or clicking requires the Menu button in the stock Browser. Steel gives you an onscreen crescent to go back/forward, swap windows, open new windows, or get bookmarks. I would expect Mozilla to do something like that in Fennec - but we do have to wait and see.
3. Faster? never know...
4. Even more malware blocking? I don't see anything that hurts my phone yet, and I use it to open stuff I distrust just to see what happens. Fennec might be even more fun.
5. It might actually clear the cache on exit, instead of growing like a weed despite having the setting 'clear cache on exit' selected. One can dream...
My carrier is fine, dip
"the nutty "president must have birth certificate" (Hmm, yes I'm SURE AZ has the authority to make federal election laws)"
Oh. And states don't have a right, or implicit duty, to ensure that candidates for federal office be ELIGIBLE for that office? By that measure, Arizona has no right to require that a candidate for a U.S. Senate seat representing Arizona even be a RESIDENT of Arizona... Right? What would be so illegal about requiring that a candidate for President even be of minimum age as specified byh the Constitution? That alone requires some proof of birth. Let's go, baby. I want this fight.
"AZ is apparently a pretty embarassing place to be a lawyer right now."
With all the injustice you assume, apparently from a distance, Arizona is THE MOST IMPORTANT PLACE TO BE A LAWYER RIGHT NOW. Lawyers, as officers of the court, have an obligation to represent and protect those in need.
You need to get your act together. Come on down and straighten us out, ok? I'm especially interested in how you will fix our election laws so the Reverend Al Sharpton could run for either U.S. Senate seat from Arizona, ok? No tests! Anyone may apply!
No, stay in New York.
My methods would also jam them effectively.
With a little engineering, a pull-off for other systems would not be too hard to implement. The specs have to be somewhat public to manufacture receivers, so there are no secrets. And with competing GPS, we can just shut them down in theater and use our own.
Now how to prevent jamming by others. Ah. My methods are not terribly sophisticated. Remember, commercial GPS doesn't even like to be indoors. It doesn't take much to defeat it.
Same argument as the OP. Your point?
You just made me think of something. While jamming of various kinds is effective, as GPS-guided weapons proliferate, then GPS jamming becomes critical. It wouldn't be too hard to jam GPS within at least a 30km radius, and jamming GPS over 200km would be challenging but possible.
And we could devise jammers that allow *us* to continue to use GPS, but deny useful GPS to enemy weapons for at least a little while.
You do need to accomodate the problem of an incoming missle having gotten good coordinates, a good GPS lock, and established a confident course to target. Carriers don't maneuver fast enough to foil that, and it would not be impossible to correct for course and speed. If the incoming missle is nuclear armed, well, the CEP need only be 2km? Sounds doable. So you need to jam GPS very early, maybe even before launch.
The answers here include denying the enemy accurate (within 8km at least) position data for the asset, be it a carrier or a task group, possibly altering GPS data to divert the missile, or defending against it with the more conventional shoot-down options.
Or maybe denying it terminal data, so hopefully it missed and flys by. Wow. GPS pull-off. That's interesting ECM. I got to patent that. What a cool way to drive geocachers crazy.
We track our users' browser versions, something started in response to a VP who tried to use Safari at home and couldn't make it work. Well, actually, he didn't try any of the workarounds he paid for, but that's another story.
While we get an unusual mix of browsers hitting the site I work with the most, IE is the overwhelming favorite, almost even shared of 7 & 8, with 6 a small fraction. Firefox is growing but still less than 10%, Safari hangs in there at about 1%, and Opera started getting hits. Android makes an appearance - that would be me doing some ad hoc testing... and it's not good, but this is pretty heavy Java site, so I expect my G1 to gag on it.
But we get calls from users complaining we don't support Firefox better, and they universally claim that Firefox is the dominant browser out there and we MUST SUPPORT IT OR OUR SITE WILL DIE.
Um, no, it won't. But I digress.
We have problems with IE8, primarily because of the JVM and the underlying architecture. So this is an issue that is getting significant development funding.
Problem is, our team rightly points out that there are things we need to do that will essentially kill IE6 browsers. And they have early reports that IE9 will require more work, and within this development cycle. We need to be working to make sure IE9 doesn't break anything, while updating to support IE8 better, and then abandoning IE6. And probably breaking some old Fierfox versions. And seeing if we can realistically support Safari to some reasonable extent without coding some sections three times for different browsers. And answering the VP who's kid claims that Opera will rule the world in 2 years. And completing some work to finish the AJAX implementation and get off of ASP. And face a server platform upgrade just as this all comes to production, without any definitive statements from the sever team on what will change, what the JVM will look like, what the actual server will be, and what will break. FWIW, we use a Websphere/Apache platform. It has its moments, like paying Development $2000 to have the copyright date changed on the home page. It will cost us more to get the date fixed on all the pages. So the budget for working on 40+ features, including PDF reporting, spreadsheet-like report pages that may encompass >30,000 rows at >200 rows per page allowed, querying local and remote SQL tables and DB2 tables, all within a corporate single signon environment, is substantial. And add to this browser compatability.
And the problem is that Microsoft seems bent on new browser releases every 2 years. Our current major release cycle is a little more than 2 years, and will be, because this site provides critical information to literally millions of users. Accuracy and reliability is more important than new features. Browser compatability has to be fourth place at best.
But to hear a few vocal users, we are not just behind the curve, we are criminally negligent, and risking their data and systems by forcing them to use 'obsolete' browsers. IE7 is obsolete?
And yes, we also have security concerns. So much so that we broke much of the site in a campaign to further harden the systems agains SQL injection attacks. But in this case, security before functionality was the corporate mission, so we have had an interesting few months. We only have one major patch to complete, and it will only take coordinated and cooperative effort from virtually all of a multi-billion dollar enterprise, of which some groups have stated the changes will not be made because it will break their systems. For the record, their systems are already 'broken', they just don't realize the impact to other systems. The message is being delivered this month, which is what they said last month. Or was it last year... These things tend to blur...
It's all well and good to point out that you should be updating your systems to accomodate current browsers. How about sporting over a few million to cover that, ok? And maybe generating a time
True. But ask most fans how long the field is, and many if not most will say "100 yards". Then we think "huh. My team's longest return is 108 yards".
American Football is played on a field 360 by 160 feet, or 109.72m by 48.77m, or 5351.04sq.m. Some of the length is end zones.
IFBA declared a fixed size for a pitch of 105m long and 68m wide, which is 7140 sq.m, instead of instead of a minimum and maximum length - from 100m to 110m - and a minimum and a maximum width - from 64m to 75m. So the olde standard allowed fields from 6400 to 8250 sq.m.
So an American Football field would be from 750 millisoccerfields to 650 millisoccerfields.
Or a pitch would be from 1540 millisoccerfields to 1200 millisoccerfields.
American Football is always played on a narrower, but sometimes longer, field. However, we rarely think of the end zones as playable area, so think of a football field here as 100 yards long. And if you're playing soccer on an American Football field, it *is* about 100 yards long, as the goalposts rarely are moved, and you usually end up giving up most of the end zones. This and the narrow fields many U.S. high schools have available really stunts play, as width is so important in soccer. I would take a 90m field that was 60m wide over a 100m field that was 48m wide.
It immediately caught me that someone somewhere thought an American Football field was larger than a soccer pitch. this is just not so.
Now, hockey was even more interesting to me, where rink size varied greatly. The Montreal Forum had a huge sheet, and they preferred skaters such as Guy LeFler, who could drive you crazy trying to find them, much less check them. The old Boston garden had a small sheet, with tight radius corners. Going into the Bruins' corners with any of the old-style Bruins defensemen coming in pretty much guaranteed you were going to be squashed like a bug. Some old Bruins used to talk of Bobby Orr's stickhandling as playing ping-pong in a phone booth. In the Forum, this was still important, but trying to crash the boards in the Forum often got you nothing but boards.
In sports, for sure, size does matter.
"If Al-quaeda had managed to get a hold of a nuke, and detonated it in Manhattan, what would Bush & co. have done ?"
Um, afterward? I suspect it would have been Carte Blanche to invade Afghanistan without any real concern for the locals. And more sadness than I would like to contemplate. It would have forced a challenge to our Middle East 'allies'; take sides - renounce Al-Quaeda or join them in the aftermath. Strikes against Syria (a real tragedy), Libya (not sure they do much for A-Q), and genuine threats against Iran, Egypt, various Sultanates and Emirs. Private warning to the Royal Saudi family. And pretty soon after, some strike against Iran's nuclear facilities. Such an attack by A-Q would give us the flimsy but credible excuse to attack most any entity in the Middle East. And increase our support of Israel. And denounce the Palestinian movement leadership.
Escalation would probably include OPEC embargoes, UN condemnation, attacks on most any U.S. embassy and military post, and probably some general terrorist actions against our bigger allies and any place a few American tourists gather.
More escalation - threats over oil, calling out China and Russia to join in sanctioning Iran and N. Korea over their nuclear programs, being rebuffed, and alienating the three 'super'powers. Nothing good comes of this.
The only alternative would be resist the urge for reprisals and swarming over Afghanistan, and instead turning every covert and deniable asset loose to kill A-Q and similar terror suspects anywhere. If the terorrists feared us, they would be wise to flee to Mecca and hug the Holy Mosque. That we would not attack.
There are other scenarios.
You can cling to your assessment of GWB as stupid, but if such a nuclear attack occurred, there would be little place for subtlety. He would have volumes of conflicting advice, and would probably end up relying on the military. The CIA would have lost credibility, and State would be marginalized as unimportant - the time for diplomacy would be past.
We should not pray this happens on Obama's watch. There is no good scenario, and no 'not too bad' ones either. It can only be devastating, and rip the world apart. Which is well within A-Q's and Iran's mission statements. But not within OPEC's, Palestine's, nor most of the rest of the world. In fact, Palestine is the reason Iran would not bomb Jerusalem. Tel Aviv is their target, Unless they intend to try to blame someone else for a nuclear missile attack on Israel. And Israel will not stand still for it, unless they elect even more ineffective leadership. A-Q need not be the ones to create a broken world. A nuke on Tel Aviv would have indistiguishable results.
This is the problem with Al-Quaeda, and with Iran. They don't seem to see world chaos and destruction as an unacceptable result.
Russia shoud realize by now that there is no credible threat of a U.S. nuclear first strike attack:
- There is no advantage gained by crippling Russia economically or socially. A failed Russia causes us more problems than a successful one. See references on the 'end of the Cold War' to see what a successful Russia lead to. No problem for us there. We can do it again.
- Russia's military is sufficiently constrained by economics that it is not the critical, immediate threat it once was. We should be encouraging Russian stability and economic success.
- A nuclear attack of any consequence on Russia would cause multiple environmental disasters of both more immediate and more intense concern than glbal climate change. Rendering much of Eastern Europe, the Caucuses, and potentially China and the Indian sub-continent either uninhabitable or medically dangerous would not serve any purpose. Nuclear attacks on even a regional scale must be considered 'doomsday' responses by all major nuclear powers. In light of this reality, the real threats are North Korea and potentially Iran, since they do not have the resources to make large-scale nuclear attacks, and so could calculate a scenario where an attack could be survivable for them. Mutually Assured Destruction is very near, it not already at, the end of its usefulness.
- Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, their capacity is not only constrained, but their sphere of influence is reduced. Less reason than ever to try to suppress Russian efforts at influence around the world.
But Global Climate Change has taken us down a road of questionable science, apathy by the masses, and governmental distraction from real, solvable problems. Reducing nuclear weapon stockpiles dramatically would solve a lot of problems between the U.S. and Russia, and including the major nuclear powers as the process moves forward would eventually bring us close enough to nuclear disarmament that we could engage the lesser powers and make a credible demand for their disarmament also. Then we can legitimately challenge ALL weapons-grade processing and put a stop to this dance we are in with North Korea and Iran. Sadly, we can't get there in time to address Iran's nuclear ambitions.
A significant nuclear weapons release will do more harm to our climate and planet than the worst the Global Climate Change crowd can imagine. It would render Climate Change unimportant. No one would care about failed crops from land poisoned by fallout. No one would care about UV exposure and sea level rise if they are battling cancer and indirect, long range radiation poisoning. No one would care about lost habitat and lost biodiversity in the midst of massive and fatal mutations. The jig would be up. I would be entirely aghast if both our incoming Presidents and Russian Presidents did not each get through briefings on the impact of even small releases, at least from the civilian agencies interested in this (State, FEMA, DOE, EPA, DOAgriculture, and maybe a few others) and russian counterparts. The military, despite our instincts, generally would prefer to offer an honest view of strategic ware outcomes. They also would have good reason to caution incoming Presidents against nuclear war. I would not be surprised if our secret strategy would be to back down from any threat. How we would handle an 'unexpected' massive first strike, I dunno. Again, if the schoolyard bully knows there's a bigger bully down the street that has a little brother in his school, does he go in and beat up the bigger bully's little brother? Only when he loses restraint, or the bigger bully loses credibility.
So far, we have not lost credibility on either side.
There are fewer reasons than ever to have a nuclear war.
"because the screeners KNOW that they've never pulled a guilty person out of line."
This story and of course this one also, and this one would indicate that at least some people that could legitimately be considered a threat were in fact detained.
Not a stellar record, perhaps, but not failure. And not a record of no actual denials of credible suspects. Imperfect? Yup. Better than nothing? Yup.
False positives are inevitable if we are just using names. I suspect that there will be a change in the system, though in most cases it is the nature of counter-terrorism that all you get is a name. Images might compromise sources, and fingerprints are usually not going to be available.
There is quite a bit of advice on how to get off of a no-fly list. One way NOT to get removed, it would seem, is to be elected to the U.S. Senate... Or get hired as an Air Marshal. feh.
Oh, that's just petty. :)
The mainstream media is in the enviable position of being able to pick their product. Soon they will not be able to ignore the alternative media (Fox, blogs ad infinitim, etc.) And will spend much time presenting rebuttals. No original reporting. Investigative work is already shifting to alternatives and well-skilled amateurs.
Consider yourself fortunate to live in a place where you don't experience much loss due to crime. I live in Mesa, Arizona. Between illegal immigrants, meth heads, wannabe gangbangers, and people just down on their luck, if I leave a shovel stuck in a pile of crushed rock in the front yard to go inside and get a bottle of water, it gets stolen. Twice.
And this part of Mesa is considered, by my two friends on the police force, to be relatively safe and crime-free.
Anecdotal evidence aside, if your neighborhood is actually so safe, why worry if the ditzy GF leaves the door open?