They weren't warning of a "shuttle failure", they were warning specifically of an "O-ring failure". I saw a TV show on this, which had interviews with the chief engineer who had been warning about this problem for a long time. When they didn't scrub the mission, when he got home he told his wife that they had just killed the astronauts.
The data on O-ring failure at low temperature is quite extensive. There was evidence of failure on previous missions but it wasn't catastrophic -- leading to a false sense of safety. There has also been lots of evidence of near-failures with nuclear war. It's rather foolish to ignore these warnings signs and wait around before nuclear war happens. You make do with the best data you have.
If we were to ever set some idiotic policy such as "we would never deploy nuclear weapons for any reason", we would no longer have a deterrent and would be inviting attack. I remember in college in a politics class the question was posed "if we were wiped out with nuclear weapons in a surprise first strike, would you not retaliate since it would just be more senseless killing?" And to my shock, all the girls in the class agreed! I thought right then and there that a woman should never be president. But I imagine Hillary would pull the trigger, or Thatcher would have.
As a Slashdot reader, I really don't care about your blog post rehashing the real article. It's also annoying when there's more than one link in a summary without a clear reason -- and a blog rehash is not a good reason.
and stay one step ahead of the Mono folks Actually, with the Novell revenue sharing for patent-protection deal, they don't have to. They'll just sue anybody else out of existence unless they pay their patent money.
Though it's true, the pot will be even sweeter since the Microsoft version will be the de facto standard.
Unemployment numbers have inched up, but are still only around 5.1% (something much of the world would love to have). U-6 is at 9.3%, and even that undercounts people. The official number used for press releases is spin.
It doesn't do anything like create an encrypted tunnel for the traffic, so eavesdroppers at the phone company can still snoop all they want. Wrong:
"Tor anonymizes the origin of your traffic, and it encrypts everything inside the Tor network, but it can't encrypt your traffic between the Tor network and its final destination. If you are communicating sensitive information, you should use as much care as you would on the normal scary Internet -- use HTTPS or other end-to-end encryption and authentication."
That's not perfect, but that's a big difference between the current situation where your ISP can track where you are going and what you are sending. Tor is good for random browsing.
For something like email, people need to start using PGP. Google is not your privacy buddy.
Just sayin'. This has gotten old.
Cripes, I can't buy a response on here these days! Ok, I'll bite. Sorry to ruin it for those who would rather watch you twist in the wind.
The simple answer is that case-based reasoning is limited due to it's static nature. If you can boil your system down to "if this, then that", great. However, many systems are too complex or dynamic for that kind of analysis, and benefit from statistical techniques. Weather forecasting is a classic example. Even "expert" systems, such as for medical diagnosis, make use of probability.
This is a huge field, and the right approach depends on the problem. There are no simple answers.
So I did the standard "mod parent up" post one uses when one has no mod points left. Personally speaking, while this is a common thing to do, I find the practice annoying. When I have mod points, I don't want somebody telling me what to mod up. I'll figure that out for myself.
There is no "secret rule" -- I suppose somebody just felt the way I did and had mod points.
the SWF format is open and documented - yes, creating a player is verboten Then it is not "open", it is proprietary. An open format doesn't place restrictions on who may implement it or for what purposes.
(this is a good thing because it enables one of the player's strengths: consistent playback on all supported platforms) It also means you are locked in to a single provider. For years Adobe left Linux with an old, buggy version of Flash. So much for "consistent playback". They finally got their act together with version 9, but I hear constant grumbling about 64-bit support.
The Internet has benefited tremendously by being based on truly open standards. TCP/IP allows any device from any provider to connect. Can you imagine an Internet based on a format that could only be implemented by a single, for-profit company? The Flash format is a scourge of the Internet.
Which is impressive, given that Java uses garbage collection. You kind of have to work at it to leak memory in a Java program. No, it's quite easy to accidentally get a leak in Java programs. Not nearly as easy as in manually managed memory, but not hard at all. One of the complaints against garbage collection is that it leads people to ignore the problem of memory leaks. Now I don't think that's any reason to abandon garbage collection, but it definitely is a problem.
Why is it that everyone assumes Freenet sucks because of Java? Here I agree. You can find plenty of bloat in C or C++ applications. Look at the memory usage of something like Ubuntu and popular applications -- Gnome, Firefox, OpenOffice, etc.
I don't care. I have an intense opposition to any government that takes more than they need, and in doing so, their claims to positive outcomes are mooted by their abuse. Does that mean you are for completely abolishing government and taxes?
which if not illegal shouldn't be considered because "unfair" is a ridiculous meaningless qualifier that people use to baselessly attack their opponents All human value judgments can be described as above. The government legally takes your money via taxes. Is it "unfair"? Collective sense of what is fair or unfair are what shape the laws.
There is no guarantee that said practices don't produce positive outcomes, even though you seem to be assuming otherwise. Many of the regulations we have today are shaped by abuses of the past. You don't have to look far to see why food, labor, environmental regulations, etc. have come about. There is plenty of historical evidence that extremely wealthy people treat the people below them like dirt to become even more extremely wealthy. Often the people that succeed are those that are the most unethical and uncaring about the society around them.
I read your post, and you agreed with me while not really rebutting anything. It's human nature to reinforce our own beliefs. You accept my agreements, and then trivially dismiss my counter-arguments.
Taxing people cannot be said, with any kind of accuracy, to "benefit the society it was gained from". The level of graft, waste, and corruption means that my answer to that question is, it shouldn't when the government cannot be trusted to intelligently dispose of the tax revenue, and they currently can't. I agree, there is lots of waste and corruption in government spending. However, it's also clear that for certain kinds of issues, government has filled a role that private enterprise just doesn't. Stuff like protecting the environment, food, police, military, interstate highways, etc.
If the government is taking a cent more than it needs, and wasting anything, then they need to get that situation in hand first. I agree, but then that doesn't mean there should be a cap on the taxes the rich pay. It just means that they pay less like everybody else.
Second, those "extra dollars" are capital, and generally, wealthy individuals reinvest their money, thus if they get to keep it, it really does go to benefiting the society it was gained from, instead of being wasted by the government. That's a good point, but as I already said, certain functions are not fulfilled by wealthy individuals acting in their own self-interests. Wealth also tends to be used to build more wealth via monopolistic and unfair practices, leaving society worse off in general.
Do you have reasons for what you believe, or is it just because you've heard?
Tax Break Prompts Millionaires To Create Private Foundations: Many of these same "feel-good" workers, though, have their own opinion about private foundations. And it isn't pretty. In the best of all worlds, they say, private foundations, like their public counterparts, would help address problems like hunger or illiteracy; in truth, they charge, such charities tend to address the whims and agendas of their benefactors, whose motivations don't always fit the notion of "charity."
The trustees' perk that keeps on giving: The foundation's accountant, Martin Logies of Sunnyvale, Calif., defended the benefits, saying they had been approved by the foundation's board of directors. But he acknowledged that Sara and Anders Kierulf are the board's only members, and that they approved the benefits for themselves. As to the work the Kierulfs perform for their pay, Logies demurred. "I couldn't give you that information," he said.
Deduction Ad Absurdum: CEOs Donating Their Own Stock to Their Own Family Foundations: Consistent with their exemption from insider trading law, I find that CEOs' stock gifts occur just prior to significant drops in their firms' stock prices, a pattern that enables the donors to obtain increased personal income tax benefits. This timing is more pronounced when executives donate their own shares to their own family foundations
Tax Me If You Can: FRONTLINE correspondent Hedrick Smith investigates the rampant abuse of tax shelters since the late 1990s. Through interviews with government officials, tax experts, and industry insiders, Smith uncovers an avalanche of bogus transactions -- created by some of America's biggest and most-respected accounting firms, law firms, and investment banks -- that were then aggressively marketed to big corporations and wealthy individuals.
How Tax Shelters Brought Trouble to Billionaire Clan: The panel's senior Democrat, Sen. Carl Levin of Michigan, has been probing offshore tax evasion and money laundering for several years. The panel is also looking into how the elite New York law firm Cravath, Swaine & Moore LLP provided legal advice on offshore tax shelters to wealthy individuals, people familiar with the probe say.
What pray tell is the loophole your multi-millionaire employer used? Something to do with classifying personal property as a farm. Sorry, I don't know the exact details, but he was very clear that it was purely a loophole and that it saved him a lot of money. This wasn't some imaginary conversation or something I heard from somebody else. It was straight from the horse's mouth.
The first thing to recognize is that there is no perfectly fair system. One of the inherent properties of wealth is that it tends to be sticky, so that the more you have the more you gain. This leads to an ever-widening income gap, where people at the bottom turn into indentured servants, and the people at the top are like feudal land owners.
That's not to say that all those who have become rich have not earned it by being smart, resourceful, or hard workers. However, at some point it's clear that the extreme gap in wealth goes beyond individual ability. You have to be good and lucky, but once you have achieved enough wealth, it's much easier to gain more.
Now why shouldn't those extra dollars be taxed in order to benefit the society it was gained from?
It's true that there was a time in the 80's when individual tax shelters were common and capable of reducing the tax burden of the upper class significantly, and that's when this stereotype really built up, but the truth is that in this day and age there really isn't any way for the upper class to cheat the taxman. Do you really think loop holes and tax shelters disappeared in the 80s? The tax code is immense, and there's plenty of ways to unfairly reduce your taxes by gaming the system.
I once met a multi-millionaire corporate tax attorney, and he had a laugh with me over the fact that everyone always expects him to not have to be paying any taxes himself, whereas the truth is there really isn't anything he can do to shelter his individual income. I personally worked for a multi-millionaire, and he justified to me the loophole he used to save himself a lot in taxes. For him it was just fair play, and he even stated that by using the loophole it'll eventually get covered up, so he's doing the system a favor. All part of the game, totally expected, and nothing wrong with it.
Economy is the root of all crimes! No one commits it as a hobby. Well, the serial killers do. There are also crimes of vice (sex, drugs, and gambling). Arsonists. Terrorists. Need I go on?
Here's a report from well before the Scientology attack, mocking the original Fox report on them, but still shows them to be a bunch of asshole griefers:
Fox 11 actually stumbled across the/b/ (NSFW) channel of 4chan (NSFW) (update: could be wrong here, looks like Fox was tipped to the/i/ channel of a similar site - 420chan (NSFW)), a image sharing and posting site where every poster posts as Anonymous. Here supremely bored 15-year olds post obscene pictures and stupid photo-shopped images for others to comment on. They also randomly swarm and try to overwhelm online sites and forums they consider annoying. The thing with "Anonymous" is that anybody that wants to be a "member" can be. Just post your idea and see who follows through. It's mob rules. Your hate for Scientology has blinded you to any disagreeable evidence.
The cult is doing this to make Anonymous look bad. A vigilante group known for being griefers is bad. Just because they attack a despicable organization like the Church of Scientology doesn't all of a sudden change their nature. Maybe it's a false flag attack, maybe it isn't. Either seems plausible.
00s seems fine - but only when written. I and a lot of other people hear a voice in their head when reading. If you can't pronounce it in conversation then it isn't good to write. How would you pronounce 00s if you were reading it aloud? Zeros? Ohs? Naughts?
It's the 00's. Funny. I always here about the 90s or the 80s, or whatever, but never the 00s. It's just awkward. I dug up an article on the coming problem from "way back" (man I feel old) in 1992.
BTW protests are allowed in China as long as it is not too large or involve political topic Not involving a "political topic" is kind of an oxymoron. Though I get what you are saying, some things are protestable, others aren't.
Slashdot Mirror
As a Slashdot reader, I really don't care about your blog post rehashing the real article. It's also annoying when there's more than one link in a summary without a clear reason -- and a blog rehash is not a good reason.
Though it's true, the pot will be even sweeter since the Microsoft version will be the de facto standard.
"Tor anonymizes the origin of your traffic, and it encrypts everything inside the Tor network, but it can't encrypt your traffic between the Tor network and its final destination. If you are communicating sensitive information, you should use as much care as you would on the normal scary Internet -- use HTTPS or other end-to-end encryption and authentication."
That's not perfect, but that's a big difference between the current situation where your ISP can track where you are going and what you are sending. Tor is good for random browsing.
For something like email, people need to start using PGP. Google is not your privacy buddy. Just sayin'. This has gotten old.
The simple answer is that case-based reasoning is limited due to it's static nature. If you can boil your system down to "if this, then that", great. However, many systems are too complex or dynamic for that kind of analysis, and benefit from statistical techniques. Weather forecasting is a classic example. Even "expert" systems, such as for medical diagnosis, make use of probability.
This is a huge field, and the right approach depends on the problem. There are no simple answers.
Yep, you know you're ugly if you both have to get drunk enough to screw each other.
There is no "secret rule" -- I suppose somebody just felt the way I did and had mod points.
The Internet has benefited tremendously by being based on truly open standards. TCP/IP allows any device from any provider to connect. Can you imagine an Internet based on a format that could only be implemented by a single, for-profit company? The Flash format is a scourge of the Internet.
- Tax Break Prompts Millionaires To Create Private Foundations: Many of these same "feel-good" workers, though, have their own opinion about private foundations. And it isn't pretty. In the best of all worlds, they say, private foundations, like their public counterparts, would help address problems like hunger or illiteracy; in truth, they charge, such charities tend to address the whims and agendas of their benefactors, whose motivations don't always fit the notion of "charity."
- The trustees' perk that keeps on giving: The foundation's accountant, Martin Logies of Sunnyvale, Calif., defended the benefits, saying they had been approved by the foundation's board of directors. But he acknowledged that Sara and Anders Kierulf are the board's only members, and that they approved the benefits for themselves. As to the work the Kierulfs perform for their pay, Logies demurred. "I couldn't give you that information," he said.
- Deduction Ad Absurdum: CEOs Donating Their Own Stock to Their Own Family Foundations: Consistent with their exemption from insider trading law, I find that CEOs' stock gifts occur just prior to significant drops in their firms' stock prices, a pattern that enables the donors to obtain increased personal income tax benefits. This timing is more pronounced when executives donate their own shares to their own family foundations
- Tax Me If You Can: FRONTLINE correspondent Hedrick Smith investigates the rampant abuse of tax shelters since the late 1990s. Through interviews with government officials, tax experts, and industry insiders, Smith uncovers an avalanche of bogus transactions -- created by some of America's biggest and most-respected accounting firms, law firms, and investment banks -- that were then aggressively marketed to big corporations and wealthy individuals.
- How Tax Shelters Brought Trouble to Billionaire Clan: The panel's senior Democrat, Sen. Carl Levin of Michigan, has been probing offshore tax evasion and money laundering for several years. The panel is also looking into how the elite New York law firm Cravath, Swaine & Moore LLP provided legal advice on offshore tax shelters to wealthy individuals, people familiar with the probe say.
What pray tell is the loophole your multi-millionaire employer used? Something to do with classifying personal property as a farm. Sorry, I don't know the exact details, but he was very clear that it was purely a loophole and that it saved him a lot of money. This wasn't some imaginary conversation or something I heard from somebody else. It was straight from the horse's mouth.The first thing to recognize is that there is no perfectly fair system. One of the inherent properties of wealth is that it tends to be sticky, so that the more you have the more you gain. This leads to an ever-widening income gap, where people at the bottom turn into indentured servants, and the people at the top are like feudal land owners.
That's not to say that all those who have become rich have not earned it by being smart, resourceful, or hard workers. However, at some point it's clear that the extreme gap in wealth goes beyond individual ability. You have to be good and lucky, but once you have achieved enough wealth, it's much easier to gain more.
Now why shouldn't those extra dollars be taxed in order to benefit the society it was gained from?
Maybe "the new millennium" is more common.