Linux is nice, but it is an OS - not a lifestyle, religion, deus ex machina, or anything along those lines. It is simply a tool, like all other tools, to get a job done.
Just a quick comment - for a IT/CS nerd, an OS can easily be all of the above while also filling the role of parent and/or caring nurturer.
Also, while you posted AC and are a little incendiary, you are right - the DIY attitude is built into the Linux system, for better and worse. While this is one of the reasons why I like it, unfortunately it is ultimately also the reason why Linux will never dominate on home desktops. IT/CS people don't mind compiling things from source - everyone else does.
The fact that you can't see how a game could be a serious depiction of war only says something about your imagination.
I think your missing the point. He isn't saying that it isn't possible from a 'deliver the serious artistic gaming experience' point of view. He is asking if it should happen, because a video game with a story based on events in a *real* life war that is meant to deliver an austere artistic documentary-style experience while also being entertaining as a first person shooter action game, regardless of that war's moral correctness, may ultimately fail in delivering something truly serious or respectable because it will grossly misrepresent that reality of war and death while striving to maintain two incompatible goals both necessary for the success of its original vision.
You don't have to go far before the idea of this video game becomes frightening. What about the younger brother of a soldier lost in the Iraq war playing the mission where his brother died, over and over again? It's just not respectful to have real victims of war act as "Stormtroopers" in your video game.
A fictional war is one thing. A real war - with real people - is another. If I were Konami, I would use the research they gathered as inspirational material to create a completely fictional story. We don't need 'reality video games', especially about war. I don't mind extremely realistic portrayals of war, but I feel that in a video game they should be strictly fictional. Documentaries are one thing, and are an acceptable medium for portraying the events of a war. Video games are a completely different medium, and people need to understand the nuances between cinema and interactive entertainment, especially as video games come closer and closer to interactive cinema and the distinction may become more blurred.
Mod parent up - he makes a few good points, which I would like to respond to here.
I don't think you're really getting at what you mean here. How is the verbose "clear"? I understand you're trying to get at how most programmers find the more concise, expressive code much harder to understand, and seem to only be able to understand code when all of the operations are at very low level. So, for example, they claim that a map function is "unclear," while doing a loop that manually manages an array index counter is "clear." But that's simply not "clearer" in any sense; that's basically missing the forest for the trees.
I feel that the most concise, expressive code is code which is part of rigorously defined, parsimonious model; hence what you mean by "missing the forest for the trees" - one code block/tree does not express succinctly the forest/design or the code block/tree's part in the forest/design. Expressive code does not exist of itself - it exists when it is part of a well designed model and everything around it makes sense. Like last Wednesday's XKCD comic stated in jest (but should be taken quite seriously) , "You will never find a programming language that relieves you of the burden of clarifying your ideas." In corollary, you will never find a way to write one block of code that will ever free you of that burden, either.
There are serious, philosophically interesting differences between some software paradigms, but if somebody's looking for them in C++ vs. Objective C, they're more likely trying to pick nits that don't exist.
Couldn't agree with you more here. Philosophy comes into play more when you start talking about design paradigms, and not the languages themselves. I would agree that certain languages lend themselves more to certain design paradigms, which would then reflect on Philosophy - but I still feel that this article, although lighthearted and undeserving of scrutiny, has got it backwards. You can certainly construct features of one language within another if you really *try*.
As an aside - Socrates as an Assembly programmer? Seriously? That was the one choice I couldn't really let sit. I feel like he was chosen for that because he was the "first" philosopher, and some people view Assembly as the "first" programming language. Personally, I view Assembly more of a Alphabet than a Language (or to be a little more fair, more like Ancient Cuneiform than Latin), and if you were going to pick a philosopher to be a Assembly programmer, you should probably pick a Deconstructionist - Jacques Derrida would have been a good one.
Aside, the WSJ isn't really giving us any new information, is it? Obama was advocating CCS during the election, so is it really surprising that his secretary is now advocating it?
A little offtopic, but I stopped reading the WSJ soon after it was bought out by News Corp - repackaging old information and re-distributing it to produce FUD seems to be their new penchant.
Obama mentioned his support of CCS several times during the election (although notably late in the election), and his position is pretty clearly stated in his Energy Plan, available at: http://my.barackobama.com/page/content/newenergy/.
Go to page 6 - the second paragraph from the bottom is clearly titled "Develop and Deploy Clean Coal Technology".
It does, however, amaze me how the media can restate old information and rattle the chains of the watchdogs. Selective memory is a hell of a thing- and it seems to be a pretty powerful advantage in the media to understand when the populace, or certain sections of it, employ it.
Campus police are not rent-a-cops. They are real police. Sadly.
As an alumni of Boston College I can tell you that the BCPD are not what most people think of when they think of "Campus Police" - they are a bona fide division of the Newton Police Department (in which Boston College resides) and have all of the powers that a normal police officer does - on or off campus. Unfortunately, because of this private/public entanglement, I have seen the BCPD get away with *far more* than any police department would on other college campuses. I've seen people get burned on other campuses (Wesleyean, URI, UConn to name a few) , but nothing like what I have seen at BC. They are very aggressive and care little for your rights.
BC has a pretty Draconian administration - worse than any Jesuit school I have come across. They use the BCPD as a hanging threat - basically, you have to arbitrate any offense committed on campus according to BC's liking (aka, admitting your guilt) or else the case gets handed directly to the real, legal system with a fairly effortless transition, as their "Campus Police" really *are* police officers; their statements and actions transition to the Massachusetts court without a hiccup.
In other words, if you want to defend yourself, you have to go to court - any attempt to do so in the arbitration process is impossible. If you admit guilt, there are many cases where it is still considered a crime, and still gets put on your criminal record even after arbitration -although agreeing to resolve in arbitration absolves you of any sentencing because BC then decides what your punishment will be (which is of course the reason why the option is attractive). I have a friend of mine who tried to enter medical school and once was at a small party where people were smoking Marijuana. He was too afraid to defend himself in a court of law, so he admitted guilt, and in the end he had to explain his charge of possession of marijuana to every school he applied to (He got in eventually).
From what I understand, they also don't need a search warrant from BC for on-campus searches, because technically that space is privately owned by BC, not the college student, and the BCPD is always given tacit consent by the college. Computers and other containers are a different story however- I know a couple of people who got off the hook because the beer they had while they were underage was in their fridge (and hence a container, property of the student that would require a warrant in lieu of permission).
BC does more harm than good by playing Big Brother to all of the student body. BC even goes so far as to have "off-campus RA's", or RA's that "watch" specific buildings known to have lots of students - and they all have the BCPD on speed dial.
If it wasn't for the education, I would have transferred out after my freshman year. I hope this kid's lawyers are good.
Actually - technically this is not a run-on sentence, although it probably could be formed better. Counting the number of 'ands' is a good benchmark, but isn't a hard and fast rule. Most importantly, none of the "ands" in this sentence serve as strict conjunctions between two sentences or independent clauses - they all serve to group elements together or enumerate a list which form one clause.
To illustrate, if we simply remove "and consulting" and "and support" from the sentence, and then add "and" where it should be to properly complete the list, we have something that is more legible:
It's like creating a world-spanning network with submarine cables, microwave links, fiber-optic everything, satellite dishes, protocols out the wazoo, billions of lines of code, huge multinational telecommunications companies to service it, and employing tens of millions in highly skilled work...just to look at some big titties.
The important aspect of a "true" run on sentence is that it combines two independent clauses (The sun is high) and (Put on some sunblock), but does not resolve the "jump" between the two. In this simple example correcting the error is easy - just add "and". However, in most run-on sentences that overuse "and", more than just "and" is needed to resolve the differences between the two or more clauses. Unless your a serious writer, its often more practical to simply split the clauses into two stand-alone sentences, bridged with a transitional sentence; hence the common practice of counting up "ands" and splitting the sentence up if there are two or more.
I think its interesting to note, perhaps as a result of this practice, that "Run-on" sentence is probably the most-often falsely cried grammar error. It seems to be the de-facto standard for people who realize that a sentence is incorrectly written, but can't vocalize why.
As far as other news networks are concerned, there are paid-for satellite radio news networks that you can subscribe to that are pretty independent. If you happen to be a subscriber of SIRIUS XM Radio, you can tune into Channel 110 and listen to POTUS, which has a regular habit of mixing up guests from both the right and the left.
I agree with the grandparent post - you are more likely to get unbiased news when you pay for unbiased news. I don't disagree with your comment on newspapers, however. I think the local nature of the newspaper lends a lot to the nature of its consumer base - and some counties or areas just tend to be "Blue" or "Red". I live on the border of two state counties, one tending blue, and one tending red - not surprisingly, the newspaper issued from the "Red" area is pretty conservative, and the newspaper issued from the "Blue" area is pretty liberal.
I could see, in the case of newspapers, how a free newspaper would be less biased, because you can't scare people away from the advertisements that are your bread and butter with a heavily slanted op-ed - thats commercial suicide. However I feel that with other media (Radio, Cable-TV, Internet), you are probably better off coughing up some dollars for the straight dope.
I used Joomla! (gotta love applications with punctuation in the name) extensively in the past for several sites, but wound up getting frustrated with the amount of effort I had to put into maintaining them. For the work involved, it ended up making more sense to roll a custom "mini-CMS" platform for a couple of sites, which fit the needs of their systems precisely without any extra cruft.
These days, when friends ask for an easy web publishing platform I simply set them up with a WordPress site on one of my servers.
Agreed , for the most part. I used to work at a high-end guitar store that used Joomla! exclusively. After nearly two years of past employees who made crude hacks with no comments, half-installed modules, and little to no documentation, maintaining what should be a simple e-commerce website proved to be onerous for me.
I don't think that this book deserves to be allocated to the male restroom when toilet paper has run dry, however. A lot of e-commerce websites run off Joomla - and a lot of them are run by 'Mom and Pop' stores that do nearly all of their buisness online while having a collective technical background of slim to none. I haven't read this book, but I'm guessing from the review that its written from a fairly non-technical standpoint, and thats exactly what is needed.
I'm sure your average./'er doesn't need this book, but when I was working at said guitar store, I spent my idle hours patrolling the Joomla! Security forums and answering peoples cries for help. There were a *lot* of cries for help. A lot of users didn't know what file permissions were, or what their root public directory was, or (god forbid) what an.htaccess file was or how to set it up to protect against the most basic of 'attack vectors'. In fact, it was so bad that I would often create.htaccess files *for* people - and there were even times when people gave me their root password - after I simply laid out exactly, in plain english, line by line, what they had to do. I was bored and feeling generous, and maybe they were afraid and lazy, but I was often shocked at how quickly people would give me root passwords. Those people need this book.
One of the things I've always liked about software packages like Joomla, WordPress, Drupal & Company is that they empower the non-technically minded to publish themselves on the internet, and even go so far as to forge a web business for themselves. While the technical community doesn't really need software packages like these, because when I want something quick and dirty I use RoR, CI or Django depending on my environment, I feel this is truly a noble goal. The vast majority of Joomla! users are not IT people - but this book is not for IT people. This book is more for the couple in Oregon that sells baby clothing out of their garage.
Would I buy this book for myself? Nope. Would I buy it for my old boss at the guitar store? Yep.
Fair question, a la the recent XKCD-put motif of "A human target is almost always weaker than the tech". Although I don't think you are looking for an answer, I'll bite, mostly because I'm bored and sick. It depends on your DMV, and your DMV worker.
First, all DMV's I've been to (NY/CT/MA) have CCTV cameras all over the place - so convincing a DMV employee to create a fake ID during work time is probably somewhat difficult. I would not be surprised if the machines used to produce licenses were set to shut down and start up on a time lock. Second, every one of those aforementioned DMVs had one or two resident State Troopers, monitoring those cameras and generally enforcing the law. It's not as if you would really need a plurality of civilian witnesses to bring a conviction down on someone, as one cop who is deployed to lawfully perform that specific purpose should do it, and most DMV employees would recognize that risk. Third, the penalty for doing so is a felony for both parties involved, and you cannot work for the DMV (or most government agencies AFAIK) with a felony, so the people at the DMV are probably not career criminals. Fourth, you don't really need a college education to work at the DMV (for most positions) and the DMV pays fairly decent for a HS grad job, so most DMV workers would need a hefty sum of money or a heavy arm twisting to be persuaded to create a false ID; it's a good livelihood with fairly decent job security as long as you can deal with your customers. The ones who do not have college educations would probably like to keep their job and a felony off their record, because most other high-paying HS grad jobs will not look on a felony kindly after you get kicked out of the DMV and released from jail. The ones who have college educations are probably smart enough to know that they would probably get caught, and have other options available to them if they are in need of more money that would quickly shrink in number if they were convicted of a felony.
All said and done, convincing a DMV employee to produce a fake license for you is still a lot harder than making an $250 dollar RFID ripper, which probably won't be CCTV monitored, brought to the policies attention, or land you in danger of acquiring a felony on your record.
One cool thing with new tech is that it lifts the bar for the scammers. With RFID you need a lot more than a photocopier and laminator to make a fake drivers license.
Not in every state of the US.
Some states (see: Connecticut) have drivers licenses that are extremely difficult-if not impossible-to copy physically without having the exact same equipment that the DMV has. Connecticut's licenses in particular have layers of holographs and foil that overlap each other. A printer that can print on plastic combined with a laminator simply wouldn't produce anything even remotely close to the real thing. Anyone familiar with a Connecticut license - even an extremely drunk frat boy - would be able to spot the fake instantly.
Now lets talk passports. I don't think I have to get into this too much , but US passports are incredibly difficult to copy or reproduce. The majority of the time (from what I am told), passports are stolen and modified, not forged from scratch.
For your average scammer, acquiring the equipment to produce either is both expensive and extremely difficult. I'd guess that the companies who develop the machines that are capable of producing licenses or passports probably sign a contract with the state or federal government stating that they won't sell the equipment to unauthorized persons; so your only real alternative is to either get it through the black market or a contact at the company.
Now here is the problem illustrated by this experiment:
Chris Paget only spent 250 dollars on creating a device that can steal RFID's while moving. One of the primary motivating factors leading to the inclusion of the RFID in identification documents was the desire to obtain information about travellers without having to ask them to take their license or passport out of their pocket. Here is the important part: A passport or license that has to be taken out of the pocket is one that will be subject to visual scrutiny. A stolen RFID is not subject to visual scrutiny.
If this is true and reproducible, not only do RFID's present a security risk for their bearers, because I don't even have to see your license to copy its relevant information, but RFID's are not effective in achieving their original goal. If you cannot rely on the information given by RFID's , because someone could 'steal' one with only $250 of equipment, then you have to check each and every travelers' passport or license, then why do you have an RFID system in the first place?
The main thing Jobs did was streamline the business to a few things Apple is good at. Sure he's got charisma by the truckload, cachet as a Silicon Valley luminary, and sway with media heavyweights in Hollywood and elsewhere. But arriving at a sensible business model was his main achievement -- and one that has worked remarkably well for Apple, with nearly all metrics breaking records for several years now.
I agree completely, but I would personally put greater emphasis on the fact that when Jobs re-took Apple's helm, they were in a desperate need of person who would be perceived as a phoenix-like leader who could resurrect their once powerful company from its impending doom. This is probably precisely why some people erroneously assume that the death of Jobs will mean the death of Apple, because he had so much to do with its rebirth. However, a majority of Apple's customer base knows no other Apple but the One Jobs Built Yet Know Not His Name. Does your average iBook wielding, iPod sporting college student really know who Jobs is, and how important he was to the revival of the company? No. Do they like their flashy toys? You bet. Will they buy another one when their last toy broke? Probably.
Oh, and Jobs & Co. managed to convince Microsoft to invest $150 million into the company in 1997, which was effectively announced as a "truce", and helps to underline the fact that Apple was not resurrected by only one man. Read this old Time Magazine article http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,986850,00.html/ (about Microsoft's deal) and this one http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,986849,00.html/ (focusing more on Steve Jobs) - both are in the same issue. I remember it pretty vividly as I was a teenager at the time who was the only kid in school with a Macintosh. At the time, the Apple fanatics (these were *true* apple fanatics, the ones that kept the company on life support for years who make many 'fanboys' today look like milquetoasts) booed at the decision, but I don't believe anyone except for perhaps Steve Jobs and a few others actually knew what it signified. It meant that Apple was essentially withdrawing from the big business game, and Microsoft would help Apple get more into the "Home" game by porting Microsoft Office to the Mac OS - the game that Apple originally started out playing in the first place. It also helped that Apple had a *lot* of good press from Time. I'm not aware of any large joint-stock holders that had large investments in both companies, but I wouldn't be surprised if it were true.
The main issue Apple will have to overcome is the perception issue surrounding Jobs. Case-in-point: on the NBC Nightly News last night, Brian Williams talked for several minutes about dismal news about the economy, devastating job losses, thoughts from economists about how this won't end in 2009, dreary report after dreary report, a ceaseless drumbeat of doom and gloom...until he said (paraphrasing, here) this: by far the most shocking news, shocking I tell you, was that Apple CEO Steve Jobs would be stepping down for a medical leave of absence, and a dedicated story segment followed, complete with Maria Bartiromo from the Exchange floor.
When you've got a cult of personality like that, how can you escape it?
Personally I feel that Apple does not need Jobs any more - they have captured the attention of the market that they have always wanted to serve , casual users and people willing to shell out extra cash for fewer headaches at home. They will survive even in this horrific economy because while people are willing to take fewer risks these days, people will still need personal computers at home. This means that they will look more for reliability, and I will bet that they will be willing to spend a premium on a computer that they percie
This is not good at all. So California makes me get a low-energy TV, but what about me running 4 computers in my house at 500w each, 24/7. Can they stop me? Do you think they should?
There is a completely feasible alternative: Produce more energy. This is not hard to do, and anyone with half a brain knows about all the awesome relatively free energy sources such as wind/solar/geothermal/tidal. The energy produced is so much more valuable than the initial costs that the net gains are huge and the base startup costs are almost irrelevant.
To solve energy crises california could either restrict consumption, or promote production. Restriction leads to nanny-state orwellian loss of freedom-ish ways of living. Promotion of production leads to loss of current energy monopoly capitalization and relatively free energy with nearly all work and production costs of businesses state-wide dropping since the energy is now relatively free. PG&E doesn't like that idea, since they are left with slimmer wallets.... And so we see restrictions.
Actually, shouldn't they do both? Wouldn't that be the most effective solution? That way, you tackle the problem from both ends. By increasing the maximum amount of energy available AND cutting down the energy cost of appliances, they win both ways.
I believe my previous sibling post is implying that this is exactly what the State of California and other states are trying to do.
As an aside, I don't think that the state government should be able to tell you to stop running those 4 computers at 500 W if you want to shell out that kind of cash on utilities, but I don't think thats what this law is aiming to do. It's not attempting to force you into making certain decisions regarding your household appliances, its designed to force companies to spend money on designing energy-efficient household appliances , which are then offered to you. You are then allowed to make your choice, as usual, from there.
Don't get me wrong, a big side of me feels and resonates with the "love of power and energy and brightness and Plasma TV's", but that age may be long gone and it's time that people considered that possibility. Many things are going to change in this country in the next two decades, and not just because Barack Obama was elected as POTUS. Unfortunately for our fantasies, we all need to start thinking a little more sensibly. I own a Plasma TV now, and honestly, while it is beautiful, it is probably the last one I will ever own. It's added about 30 bucks to my electric bill a month ever since I've purchased it, and it may not be a viable thing to own sensibly in the future.
I'm absolutely sure they can modify the code. But I'm also absolutely sure that they haven't yet.
The problem is, if you're going to speculate like that, you might as well speculate that Microsoft wants Windows on the OLPC so they can branch out into third world countries, making them producers in that case, too.
I'm fairly sure that this is exactly why Microsoft wants Windows on the OLPC - outside of making money off of Windows licensing, of course. There is a reason why they sometimes refer to third world nations as "developing countries" (not strictly referring to software/web development) , and Microsoft wants to get in on the ground floor of that development (strictly referring to software/web development).
Also, you might be surprised at how many contributors to Open Source come from countries with fairly low standards of living. Programming, and the computer culture in general, tends to attract escapist intellectuals, if they don't become Philosophers, Mathematicians, or Artists first. Some of these escapists are running from bullies on the school yard - and some of them are hiding in a basement avoiding gunfire.
Granted, its not the majority, but I wouldn't underestimate people in third world countries if I were you. I've met some people in third world countries (where the average income is roughly 52 dollars a month to ground my statement in real metrics) that are very well versed technologically, even in proprietary technologies such as.NET and Oracle.
Climatology is immature in the sense that we don't have a solid base of data that reliably tells us the consequences of a schemes like the one proposed in TFA. A simple check of the accuracy of your local weather forecast reveals the likelihood of a given outcome, e.g. rain, is expressed in percentages. This is a simplistic example, but reflects our current inability to accurately predict even common climatic events. Additionally, these predictions are based more on direct observations rather than an abstracted mathematical model that accurately predicts climatic events - that model just doesn't exist.
You are confusing Climatology with Meteorology. They are not the same. With regards to Climatology, the model does exist, and it has accurately predicted what has happened in the past - this would be the "solid base of data" that you are declaring to be nonexistent. To reiterate: Climatologists came up with a model based on data they discovered, and then found more data that largely backed up the model.
Besides, the simplest and most direct method of dealing with greenhouse gas emissions is to reduce them, not introduce a new and untested variable into an extremely complicated system. You DO know the difference between dependent and independent variables, don't you?
I agree with you here, but I don't think anyone is seriously considering building a device that works on TFA's subject's principle as a near-term solution for... greenhouse gases... or altering the course of the Earth's climate. It's probably more of a desperate measure.
Yes, I do know the difference between a dependent and an independent variable. I would not consider "Water Vapor" to be a "new and untested variable" in our Earth's climate, however.
"Green" activists, in their self righteous zeal to save the planet, have latched on to global warming as a means to further their anti-pollution, anti-industrial political agendas.
I'm not sure I know anyone who is "pro-pollution", but clearly you are directly insinuating that "Green Activists" are anti-industrial. Are you aware that what this person is proposing would probably create an industry - even if it is a crackpot scheme? Are you unaware that you are making the illogical assumption that all industry necessarily creates pollution? Are you further aware that you are insinuating that all "Green Activists" are attempting to "stop our economy", as evidenced by your association of "anti-pollution" with "anti-industrial"?
My guesses to questions, in order, because I doubt you will answer them: No, Yes, Yes.
Planetary climatology is an extremely immature science at best, and I sincerely doubt that any climatologist worth his salt would back any action other than reduction in the gas emissions believed to contribute to climate change.
Uh, you mean as immature as Physics right? Climatology started a long time ago - 10th or 16th century, depending on who is counting - about when people started studying that thing we sometimes call "Gravity" (again, depending on who is counting).
Just because a Science is not as popular as other sciences (which is usually caused more by economic incentive rather than the merit of the science itself) does not make it "immature". There is a lot of evidence to back up many of their claims.
It's really sad that your point - a concern over waste of money fostered by a skeptic attitude towards the effectiveness of the method - was completely clouded by very obvious under-supported biases against environmentalists, environmentalism, and all related sciences. Because honestly, I share that concern. But to voice your concern in such a manner (and yeah, I know, its/.) is pretty "immature" in itself.
Thank you for bringing this up. It is important to remember as we move forward in developing information technology for the future that the process of learning , when driven by the search for information, includes seeing *what we do not want to see*.
It reminds me of a conversation that I had with an old family friend, involving research and the Internet:
Myself: (continuing)"...so my research is greatly aided by the massive amounts of indexed information on Internet. I can access the specific data I need without having to wade through large amounts of information."
Friend: "That's great, but often times I worry that the nature of research is changing because of things like the Internet, Google, Questia, etc. When I was in college, writing research papers, I would have to go to the library, find the relevant books in a card catalog, and then rent out all of those books and pour through them. Now I'm not saying that I didn't skip chapters or pages, but I found that the process of looking through the card catalog, finding all books related to the subject, and reading information that was irrelevant or detrimental to my thesis was more informative than finally arriving at the information that merely supported my thesis. Often times this process of discovery would force me to re-analyze my position resulting in a more robust conclusion. I fear that if people are brought too quickly to what they are looking for, that they will ignore everything else, and that could lead to many problems."
I was young (teenager) when we had this conversation, and at first I disagreed with him. Now, however, I completely agree with him. I think that "compartmentalized" search information could inevitably do more harm than good as it could result in many more 'localized theories' and far fewer rigorously tested truths.
I agree with you that this study claims to be comprehensive but lacks in several fundamental areas pointed out by previous posters (notably, Economics, Cost to Develop Solution in Existing Infrastructure , Requirements, State of Said Technology Worldwide, Fuel Stream Continuity/Abundance), but I would ask that you actually quote the relevant "BS" passage before denouncing it as such. Here it is:
Here, we detail the link between nuclear energy and nuclear weapons and estimate the emissions of nuclear explosions attributable to nuclear energy. The primary limitation to building a nuclear weapon is the availability of purified fissionable fuel (highly-enriched uranium or plutonium). Worldwide, nine countries have known nuclear weapons stockpiles (US, Russia, UK, France, China, India, Pakistan, Israel, North Korea). In addition, Iran is pursuing uranium enrichment, and 32 other countries have sufficient fissionable material to produce weapons. Among the 42 countries with fissionable material, 22 have facilities as part of their civilian nuclear energy program, either to produce highly-enriched uranium or to separate plutonium, and facilities in 13 countries are active. Thus, the ability of states to produce nuclear weapons today follows directly from their ability to produce nuclear power. In fact, producing material for a weapon requires merely operating a civilian nuclear power plant together with a sophisticated plutonium separation facility. The Treaty of Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons has been signed by 190 countries. However, international treaties safeguard only about 1% of the world's highly-enriched uranium and 35% of the world's plutonium. Currently, about 30000 nuclear warheads exist worldwide, with 95% in the US and Russia, but enough refined and unrefined material to produce another 100000 weapons.
Now, nothing about the above paragraph is untrue. 42 Countries have fissionable material - 22 have facilities to produce enriched uranium, and 13 are active. This assumes, essentially, that roughly 25% of countries that have Nuclear Power plants can produce a Nuclear Weapon, or already have one, and that this proportion would likely hold in the future. I think this is a valid assumption. Even allowing for a slip in the ratio , if we had 160 countries with Nuclear Power, and only 10% of them could produce Nuclear Weapons, we would still have 3 more countries that can produce a Nuclear Weapon.
I agree with you in the sense that giving "Mortality" a 22% weight stake in the overall analysis is somewhat hefty, especially given the consideration that there are *other* factors that should belong in that list , if the study was as comprehensive as the Stanford News Service led many to believe, that were not analyzed and would probably reduce the weight of "Mortality" overall were they appropriately included within this analysis.
I do, however, disagree with what I believe to be two implicit assertions in your argument - that the weight of the "Mortality" factor was adjusted merely to make Nuclear Energy an "unfavorable energy source", and more importantly that the proliferation of safe Nuclear Energy technology worldwide would not lead to an increase in the availability of Nuclear Weapons technology. It definitely would.
It should be noted, dually, that this study (and perhaps to its fault) is not merely addressing the United States - it addresses "Energy and Environmental Concerns" worldwide. If the study were to merely concern itself with the United States, then Nuclear Energy would most certainly receive a more favorable rating given the model presented in this study as Mortality issues would become dampened, or if presented as-is in the study , suitably criticizable as pointed out by previous posters. As a side note, I would agree that a Nuclear War is an "Environmental Concern", so I don't think its place in this study is in error if its concern were worldwide.
This study, however, is not titled "A comprehensive lis
The Egyptian Government does not want to consciously allow any foreign body to have greater knowledge on the movements of its citizens than the Egyptian Government itself has.
Granted, there are other devices currently deployed in Egypt that have GPS technology , so either a) the Egyptian government is completely ignorant of these devices (unlikely) or b) it is much more worried about the potential popularity of the iPhone (more likely). A previous poster mentioned that there are "very few cars in Egypt". People in Egypt may not be able to afford a car, but purchasing an iPhone is literally an order of magnitude less on the cost scale - which means that many more potential Egyptians could be potential iPhone users. This is disregarding its potential position as a status symbol, which would also fuel its adoption.
Additionally, while there are many models of cell phones in Egypt , almost all of which have some form of GPS transmitter, the iPhone has a potential to be purchased by a lot of users as a singular model. There may be 50 models of Nokia phones with GPS services in Egypt, but no one of those models (potentially, as is the fear) would have as many users as the iPhone. Unlike GPS devices, where there might be a different platform installed in every car, the iPhone could grab a large portion of the consumer market - lets say 20% - and saturate it with one platform. There are probably security concerns associated with a healthy percentage of Egyptians, who are more likely to be wealthier and located in urban areas due to the affluence associated with buying an expensive phone, using one fairly well featured cell phone model designed by a foreign company.
... pathetic graph I have ever seen. Seriously. Everyone screams- including combinatorics screaming. You have a total potential... 34 to 68 meaningless combinations that aren't even really combinations?
Die. Go hit yourself in the head and die.
My comment may have little in the way of merit, but I'm pretty sure that intelligent Democrats are just as interested in exploring space as intelligent Republicans are. I am a registered Independent but tend to lean Democratic with my votes, and I can tell you that not only am I interested in NASA getting a bigger check, but a lot of my more (to much more)liberal friends are as well. NASA's research, projects, and technological breakthroughs have profound systemic effects throughout our entire economy, and tend to increase our value as an international trade partner.
What you have to worry about are the unintelligent Democrats and Republicans - the ones who lack significant foresight perhaps due to an undeveloped frontal lobe - who could give three metric shit-tons less about what lies beyond our sky.
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Just a quick comment - for a IT/CS nerd, an OS can easily be all of the above while also filling the role of parent and/or caring nurturer.
Also, while you posted AC and are a little incendiary, you are right - the DIY attitude is built into the Linux system, for better and worse. While this is one of the reasons why I like it, unfortunately it is ultimately also the reason why Linux will never dominate on home desktops. IT/CS people don't mind compiling things from source - everyone else does.
I think your missing the point. He isn't saying that it isn't possible from a 'deliver the serious artistic gaming experience' point of view. He is asking if it should happen, because a video game with a story based on events in a *real* life war that is meant to deliver an austere artistic documentary-style experience while also being entertaining as a first person shooter action game, regardless of that war's moral correctness, may ultimately fail in delivering something truly serious or respectable because it will grossly misrepresent that reality of war and death while striving to maintain two incompatible goals both necessary for the success of its original vision.
You don't have to go far before the idea of this video game becomes frightening. What about the younger brother of a soldier lost in the Iraq war playing the mission where his brother died, over and over again? It's just not respectful to have real victims of war act as "Stormtroopers" in your video game.
A fictional war is one thing. A real war - with real people - is another. If I were Konami, I would use the research they gathered as inspirational material to create a completely fictional story. We don't need 'reality video games', especially about war. I don't mind extremely realistic portrayals of war, but I feel that in a video game they should be strictly fictional. Documentaries are one thing, and are an acceptable medium for portraying the events of a war. Video games are a completely different medium, and people need to understand the nuances between cinema and interactive entertainment, especially as video games come closer and closer to interactive cinema and the distinction may become more blurred.
I feel that the most concise, expressive code is code which is part of rigorously defined, parsimonious model; hence what you mean by "missing the forest for the trees" - one code block/tree does not express succinctly the forest/design or the code block/tree's part in the forest/design. Expressive code does not exist of itself - it exists when it is part of a well designed model and everything around it makes sense. Like last Wednesday's XKCD comic stated in jest (but should be taken quite seriously) , "You will never find a programming language that relieves you of the burden of clarifying your ideas." In corollary, you will never find a way to write one block of code that will ever free you of that burden, either.
Couldn't agree with you more here. Philosophy comes into play more when you start talking about design paradigms, and not the languages themselves. I would agree that certain languages lend themselves more to certain design paradigms, which would then reflect on Philosophy - but I still feel that this article, although lighthearted and undeserving of scrutiny, has got it backwards. You can certainly construct features of one language within another if you really *try*.
As an aside - Socrates as an Assembly programmer? Seriously? That was the one choice I couldn't really let sit. I feel like he was chosen for that because he was the "first" philosopher, and some people view Assembly as the "first" programming language. Personally, I view Assembly more of a Alphabet than a Language (or to be a little more fair, more like Ancient Cuneiform than Latin), and if you were going to pick a philosopher to be a Assembly programmer, you should probably pick a Deconstructionist - Jacques Derrida would have been a good one.
A little offtopic, but I stopped reading the WSJ soon after it was bought out by News Corp - repackaging old information and re-distributing it to produce FUD seems to be their new penchant.
Obama mentioned his support of CCS several times during the election (although notably late in the election), and his position is pretty clearly stated in his Energy Plan, available at:
http://my.barackobama.com/page/content/newenergy/.
Go to page 6 - the second paragraph from the bottom is clearly titled "Develop and Deploy Clean Coal Technology".
It does, however, amaze me how the media can restate old information and rattle the chains of the watchdogs. Selective memory is a hell of a thing- and it seems to be a pretty powerful advantage in the media to understand when the populace, or certain sections of it, employ it.
Ouch. Burn. Never learned Latin :)
I'm not sure, in this case, that the students are considered 'tenants'. They certainly didn't treat us like them. IANAL, of course.
As an alumni of Boston College I can tell you that the BCPD are not what most people think of when they think of "Campus Police" - they are a bona fide division of the Newton Police Department (in which Boston College resides) and have all of the powers that a normal police officer does - on or off campus. Unfortunately, because of this private/public entanglement, I have seen the BCPD get away with *far more* than any police department would on other college campuses. I've seen people get burned on other campuses (Wesleyean, URI, UConn to name a few) , but nothing like what I have seen at BC. They are very aggressive and care little for your rights.
BC has a pretty Draconian administration - worse than any Jesuit school I have come across. They use the BCPD as a hanging threat - basically, you have to arbitrate any offense committed on campus according to BC's liking (aka, admitting your guilt) or else the case gets handed directly to the real, legal system with a fairly effortless transition, as their "Campus Police" really *are* police officers; their statements and actions transition to the Massachusetts court without a hiccup.
In other words, if you want to defend yourself, you have to go to court - any attempt to do so in the arbitration process is impossible. If you admit guilt, there are many cases where it is still considered a crime, and still gets put on your criminal record even after arbitration -although agreeing to resolve in arbitration absolves you of any sentencing because BC then decides what your punishment will be (which is of course the reason why the option is attractive). I have a friend of mine who tried to enter medical school and once was at a small party where people were smoking Marijuana. He was too afraid to defend himself in a court of law, so he admitted guilt, and in the end he had to explain his charge of possession of marijuana to every school he applied to (He got in eventually).
From what I understand, they also don't need a search warrant from BC for on-campus searches, because technically that space is privately owned by BC, not the college student, and the BCPD is always given tacit consent by the college. Computers and other containers are a different story however- I know a couple of people who got off the hook because the beer they had while they were underage was in their fridge (and hence a container, property of the student that would require a warrant in lieu of permission).
BC does more harm than good by playing Big Brother to all of the student body. BC even goes so far as to have "off-campus RA's", or RA's that "watch" specific buildings known to have lots of students - and they all have the BCPD on speed dial.
If it wasn't for the education, I would have transferred out after my freshman year. I hope this kid's lawyers are good.
Mod parent up. He is dead on.
Yes, yes it was.
Actually - technically this is not a run-on sentence, although it probably could be formed better. Counting the number of 'ands' is a good benchmark, but isn't a hard and fast rule. Most importantly, none of the "ands" in this sentence serve as strict conjunctions between two sentences or independent clauses - they all serve to group elements together or enumerate a list which form one clause.
To illustrate, if we simply remove "and consulting" and "and support" from the sentence, and then add "and" where it should be to properly complete the list, we have something that is more legible:
Also, run-on sentences can exist without using the word 'and' at all. Example (courtesy of http://grammar.ccc.commnet.edu/grammar/runons.htm ):
The sun is high, put on some sunblock.
The important aspect of a "true" run on sentence is that it combines two independent clauses (The sun is high) and (Put on some sunblock), but does not resolve the "jump" between the two. In this simple example correcting the error is easy - just add "and". However, in most run-on sentences that overuse "and", more than just "and" is needed to resolve the differences between the two or more clauses. Unless your a serious writer, its often more practical to simply split the clauses into two stand-alone sentences, bridged with a transitional sentence; hence the common practice of counting up "ands" and splitting the sentence up if there are two or more.
I think its interesting to note, perhaps as a result of this practice, that "Run-on" sentence is probably the most-often falsely cried grammar error. It seems to be the de-facto standard for people who realize that a sentence is incorrectly written, but can't vocalize why.
As far as other news networks are concerned, there are paid-for satellite radio news networks that you can subscribe to that are pretty independent. If you happen to be a subscriber of SIRIUS XM Radio, you can tune into Channel 110 and listen to POTUS, which has a regular habit of mixing up guests from both the right and the left.
I agree with the grandparent post - you are more likely to get unbiased news when you pay for unbiased news. I don't disagree with your comment on newspapers, however. I think the local nature of the newspaper lends a lot to the nature of its consumer base - and some counties or areas just tend to be "Blue" or "Red". I live on the border of two state counties, one tending blue, and one tending red - not surprisingly, the newspaper issued from the "Red" area is pretty conservative, and the newspaper issued from the "Blue" area is pretty liberal.
I could see, in the case of newspapers, how a free newspaper would be less biased, because you can't scare people away from the advertisements that are your bread and butter with a heavily slanted op-ed - thats commercial suicide. However I feel that with other media (Radio, Cable-TV, Internet), you are probably better off coughing up some dollars for the straight dope.
Agreed , for the most part. I used to work at a high-end guitar store that used Joomla! exclusively. After nearly two years of past employees who made crude hacks with no comments, half-installed modules, and little to no documentation, maintaining what should be a simple e-commerce website proved to be onerous for me.
I don't think that this book deserves to be allocated to the male restroom when toilet paper has run dry, however. A lot of e-commerce websites run off Joomla - and a lot of them are run by 'Mom and Pop' stores that do nearly all of their buisness online while having a collective technical background of slim to none. I haven't read this book, but I'm guessing from the review that its written from a fairly non-technical standpoint, and thats exactly what is needed.
I'm sure your average ./'er doesn't need this book, but when I was working at said guitar store, I spent my idle hours patrolling the Joomla! Security forums and answering peoples cries for help. There were a *lot* of cries for help. A lot of users didn't know what file permissions were, or what their root public directory was, or (god forbid) what an .htaccess file was or how to set it up to protect against the most basic of 'attack vectors'. In fact, it was so bad that I would often create .htaccess files *for* people - and there were even times when people gave me their root password - after I simply laid out exactly, in plain english, line by line, what they had to do. I was bored and feeling generous, and maybe they were afraid and lazy, but I was often shocked at how quickly people would give me root passwords. Those people need this book.
One of the things I've always liked about software packages like Joomla, WordPress, Drupal & Company is that they empower the non-technically minded to publish themselves on the internet, and even go so far as to forge a web business for themselves. While the technical community doesn't really need software packages like these, because when I want something quick and dirty I use RoR, CI or Django depending on my environment, I feel this is truly a noble goal. The vast majority of Joomla! users are not IT people - but this book is not for IT people. This book is more for the couple in Oregon that sells baby clothing out of their garage.
Would I buy this book for myself? Nope. Would I buy it for my old boss at the guitar store? Yep.
Or as they say - In Soviet Linux, disk fscks you!
Fair question, a la the recent XKCD-put motif of "A human target is almost always weaker than the tech". Although I don't think you are looking for an answer, I'll bite, mostly because I'm bored and sick. It depends on your DMV, and your DMV worker.
First, all DMV's I've been to (NY/CT/MA) have CCTV cameras all over the place - so convincing a DMV employee to create a fake ID during work time is probably somewhat difficult. I would not be surprised if the machines used to produce licenses were set to shut down and start up on a time lock. Second, every one of those aforementioned DMVs had one or two resident State Troopers, monitoring those cameras and generally enforcing the law. It's not as if you would really need a plurality of civilian witnesses to bring a conviction down on someone, as one cop who is deployed to lawfully perform that specific purpose should do it, and most DMV employees would recognize that risk. Third, the penalty for doing so is a felony for both parties involved, and you cannot work for the DMV (or most government agencies AFAIK) with a felony, so the people at the DMV are probably not career criminals. Fourth, you don't really need a college education to work at the DMV (for most positions) and the DMV pays fairly decent for a HS grad job, so most DMV workers would need a hefty sum of money or a heavy arm twisting to be persuaded to create a false ID; it's a good livelihood with fairly decent job security as long as you can deal with your customers. The ones who do not have college educations would probably like to keep their job and a felony off their record, because most other high-paying HS grad jobs will not look on a felony kindly after you get kicked out of the DMV and released from jail. The ones who have college educations are probably smart enough to know that they would probably get caught, and have other options available to them if they are in need of more money that would quickly shrink in number if they were convicted of a felony.
All said and done, convincing a DMV employee to produce a fake license for you is still a lot harder than making an $250 dollar RFID ripper, which probably won't be CCTV monitored, brought to the policies attention, or land you in danger of acquiring a felony on your record.
Not in every state of the US.
Some states (see: Connecticut) have drivers licenses that are extremely difficult-if not impossible-to copy physically without having the exact same equipment that the DMV has. Connecticut's licenses in particular have layers of holographs and foil that overlap each other. A printer that can print on plastic combined with a laminator simply wouldn't produce anything even remotely close to the real thing. Anyone familiar with a Connecticut license - even an extremely drunk frat boy - would be able to spot the fake instantly.
Now lets talk passports. I don't think I have to get into this too much , but US passports are incredibly difficult to copy or reproduce. The majority of the time (from what I am told), passports are stolen and modified, not forged from scratch.
For your average scammer, acquiring the equipment to produce either is both expensive and extremely difficult. I'd guess that the companies who develop the machines that are capable of producing licenses or passports probably sign a contract with the state or federal government stating that they won't sell the equipment to unauthorized persons; so your only real alternative is to either get it through the black market or a contact at the company.
Now here is the problem illustrated by this experiment:
Chris Paget only spent 250 dollars on creating a device that can steal RFID's while moving. One of the primary motivating factors leading to the inclusion of the RFID in identification documents was the desire to obtain information about travellers without having to ask them to take their license or passport out of their pocket. Here is the important part: A passport or license that has to be taken out of the pocket is one that will be subject to visual scrutiny. A stolen RFID is not subject to visual scrutiny.
If this is true and reproducible, not only do RFID's present a security risk for their bearers, because I don't even have to see your license to copy its relevant information, but RFID's are not effective in achieving their original goal. If you cannot rely on the information given by RFID's , because someone could 'steal' one with only $250 of equipment, then you have to check each and every travelers' passport or license, then why do you have an RFID system in the first place?
I agree completely, but I would personally put greater emphasis on the fact that when Jobs re-took Apple's helm, they were in a desperate need of person who would be perceived as a phoenix-like leader who could resurrect their once powerful company from its impending doom. This is probably precisely why some people erroneously assume that the death of Jobs will mean the death of Apple, because he had so much to do with its rebirth. However, a majority of Apple's customer base knows no other Apple but the One Jobs Built Yet Know Not His Name. Does your average iBook wielding, iPod sporting college student really know who Jobs is, and how important he was to the revival of the company? No. Do they like their flashy toys? You bet. Will they buy another one when their last toy broke? Probably.
Oh, and Jobs & Co. managed to convince Microsoft to invest $150 million into the company in 1997, which was effectively announced as a "truce", and helps to underline the fact that Apple was not resurrected by only one man. Read this old Time Magazine article http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,986850,00.html/ (about Microsoft's deal) and this one http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,986849,00.html/ (focusing more on Steve Jobs) - both are in the same issue. I remember it pretty vividly as I was a teenager at the time who was the only kid in school with a Macintosh. At the time, the Apple fanatics (these were *true* apple fanatics, the ones that kept the company on life support for years who make many 'fanboys' today look like milquetoasts) booed at the decision, but I don't believe anyone except for perhaps Steve Jobs and a few others actually knew what it signified. It meant that Apple was essentially withdrawing from the big business game, and Microsoft would help Apple get more into the "Home" game by porting Microsoft Office to the Mac OS - the game that Apple originally started out playing in the first place. It also helped that Apple had a *lot* of good press from Time. I'm not aware of any large joint-stock holders that had large investments in both companies, but I wouldn't be surprised if it were true.
Personally I feel that Apple does not need Jobs any more - they have captured the attention of the market that they have always wanted to serve , casual users and people willing to shell out extra cash for fewer headaches at home. They will survive even in this horrific economy because while people are willing to take fewer risks these days, people will still need personal computers at home. This means that they will look more for reliability, and I will bet that they will be willing to spend a premium on a computer that they percie
Actually, shouldn't they do both? Wouldn't that be the most effective solution? That way, you tackle the problem from both ends. By increasing the maximum amount of energy available AND cutting down the energy cost of appliances, they win both ways.
I believe my previous sibling post is implying that this is exactly what the State of California and other states are trying to do.
As an aside, I don't think that the state government should be able to tell you to stop running those 4 computers at 500 W if you want to shell out that kind of cash on utilities, but I don't think thats what this law is aiming to do. It's not attempting to force you into making certain decisions regarding your household appliances, its designed to force companies to spend money on designing energy-efficient household appliances , which are then offered to you. You are then allowed to make your choice, as usual, from there.
Don't get me wrong, a big side of me feels and resonates with the "love of power and energy and brightness and Plasma TV's", but that age may be long gone and it's time that people considered that possibility. Many things are going to change in this country in the next two decades, and not just because Barack Obama was elected as POTUS. Unfortunately for our fantasies, we all need to start thinking a little more sensibly. I own a Plasma TV now, and honestly, while it is beautiful, it is probably the last one I will ever own. It's added about 30 bucks to my electric bill a month ever since I've purchased it, and it may not be a viable thing to own sensibly in the future.
I'm fairly sure that this is exactly why Microsoft wants Windows on the OLPC - outside of making money off of Windows licensing, of course. There is a reason why they sometimes refer to third world nations as "developing countries" (not strictly referring to software/web development) , and Microsoft wants to get in on the ground floor of that development (strictly referring to software/web development).
.NET and Oracle.
Also, you might be surprised at how many contributors to Open Source come from countries with fairly low standards of living. Programming, and the computer culture in general, tends to attract escapist intellectuals, if they don't become Philosophers, Mathematicians, or Artists first. Some of these escapists are running from bullies on the school yard - and some of them are hiding in a basement avoiding gunfire.
Granted, its not the majority, but I wouldn't underestimate people in third world countries if I were you. I've met some people in third world countries (where the average income is roughly 52 dollars a month to ground my statement in real metrics) that are very well versed technologically, even in proprietary technologies such as
Climatology is immature in the sense that we don't have a solid base of data that reliably tells us the consequences of a schemes like the one proposed in TFA. A simple check of the accuracy of your local weather forecast reveals the likelihood of a given outcome, e.g. rain, is expressed in percentages. This is a simplistic example, but reflects our current inability to accurately predict even common climatic events. Additionally, these predictions are based more on direct observations rather than an abstracted mathematical model that accurately predicts climatic events - that model just doesn't exist.
You are confusing Climatology with Meteorology. They are not the same. With regards to Climatology, the model does exist, and it has accurately predicted what has happened in the past - this would be the "solid base of data" that you are declaring to be nonexistent. To reiterate: Climatologists came up with a model based on data they discovered, and then found more data that largely backed up the model.
Besides, the simplest and most direct method of dealing with greenhouse gas emissions is to reduce them, not introduce a new and untested variable into an extremely complicated system. You DO know the difference between dependent and independent variables, don't you?
I agree with you here, but I don't think anyone is seriously considering building a device that works on TFA's subject's principle as a near-term solution for... greenhouse gases... or altering the course of the Earth's climate. It's probably more of a desperate measure.
Yes, I do know the difference between a dependent and an independent variable. I would not consider "Water Vapor" to be a "new and untested variable" in our Earth's climate, however.
"Green" activists, in their self righteous zeal to save the planet, have latched on to global warming as a means to further their anti-pollution, anti-industrial political agendas.
I'm not sure I know anyone who is "pro-pollution", but clearly you are directly insinuating that "Green Activists" are anti-industrial. Are you aware that what this person is proposing would probably create an industry - even if it is a crackpot scheme? Are you unaware that you are making the illogical assumption that all industry necessarily creates pollution? Are you further aware that you are insinuating that all "Green Activists" are attempting to "stop our economy", as evidenced by your association of "anti-pollution" with "anti-industrial"?
My guesses to questions, in order, because I doubt you will answer them: No, Yes, Yes.
Planetary climatology is an extremely immature science at best, and I sincerely doubt that any climatologist worth his salt would back any action other than reduction in the gas emissions believed to contribute to climate change.
Uh, you mean as immature as Physics right? Climatology started a long time ago - 10th or 16th century, depending on who is counting - about when people started studying that thing we sometimes call "Gravity" (again, depending on who is counting).
/.) is pretty "immature" in itself.
Just because a Science is not as popular as other sciences (which is usually caused more by economic incentive rather than the merit of the science itself) does not make it "immature". There is a lot of evidence to back up many of their claims.
It's really sad that your point - a concern over waste of money fostered by a skeptic attitude towards the effectiveness of the method - was completely clouded by very obvious under-supported biases against environmentalists, environmentalism, and all related sciences. Because honestly, I share that concern. But to voice your concern in such a manner (and yeah, I know, its
Thank you for bringing this up. It is important to remember as we move forward in developing information technology for the future that the process of learning , when driven by the search for information, includes seeing *what we do not want to see*.
It reminds me of a conversation that I had with an old family friend, involving research and the Internet:
Myself: (continuing)"...so my research is greatly aided by the massive amounts of indexed information on Internet. I can access the specific data I need without having to wade through large amounts of information."
Friend: "That's great, but often times I worry that the nature of research is changing because of things like the Internet, Google, Questia, etc. When I was in college, writing research papers, I would have to go to the library, find the relevant books in a card catalog, and then rent out all of those books and pour through them. Now I'm not saying that I didn't skip chapters or pages, but I found that the process of looking through the card catalog, finding all books related to the subject, and reading information that was irrelevant or detrimental to my thesis was more informative than finally arriving at the information that merely supported my thesis. Often times this process of discovery would force me to re-analyze my position resulting in a more robust conclusion. I fear that if people are brought too quickly to what they are looking for, that they will ignore everything else, and that could lead to many problems."
I was young (teenager) when we had this conversation, and at first I disagreed with him. Now, however, I completely agree with him. I think that "compartmentalized" search information could inevitably do more harm than good as it could result in many more 'localized theories' and far fewer rigorously tested truths.
Now, nothing about the above paragraph is untrue. 42 Countries have fissionable material - 22 have facilities to produce enriched uranium, and 13 are active. This assumes, essentially, that roughly 25% of countries that have Nuclear Power plants can produce a Nuclear Weapon, or already have one, and that this proportion would likely hold in the future. I think this is a valid assumption. Even allowing for a slip in the ratio , if we had 160 countries with Nuclear Power, and only 10% of them could produce Nuclear Weapons, we would still have 3 more countries that can produce a Nuclear Weapon.
I agree with you in the sense that giving "Mortality" a 22% weight stake in the overall analysis is somewhat hefty, especially given the consideration that there are *other* factors that should belong in that list , if the study was as comprehensive as the Stanford News Service led many to believe, that were not analyzed and would probably reduce the weight of "Mortality" overall were they appropriately included within this analysis.
I do, however, disagree with what I believe to be two implicit assertions in your argument - that the weight of the "Mortality" factor was adjusted merely to make Nuclear Energy an "unfavorable energy source", and more importantly that the proliferation of safe Nuclear Energy technology worldwide would not lead to an increase in the availability of Nuclear Weapons technology. It definitely would.
It should be noted, dually, that this study (and perhaps to its fault) is not merely addressing the United States - it addresses "Energy and Environmental Concerns" worldwide. If the study were to merely concern itself with the United States, then Nuclear Energy would most certainly receive a more favorable rating given the model presented in this study as Mortality issues would become dampened, or if presented as-is in the study , suitably criticizable as pointed out by previous posters. As a side note, I would agree that a Nuclear War is an "Environmental Concern", so I don't think its place in this study is in error if its concern were worldwide.
This study, however, is not titled "A comprehensive lis
The Egyptian Government does not want to consciously allow any foreign body to have greater knowledge on the movements of its citizens than the Egyptian Government itself has.
Granted, there are other devices currently deployed in Egypt that have GPS technology , so either a) the Egyptian government is completely ignorant of these devices (unlikely) or b) it is much more worried about the potential popularity of the iPhone (more likely). A previous poster mentioned that there are "very few cars in Egypt". People in Egypt may not be able to afford a car, but purchasing an iPhone is literally an order of magnitude less on the cost scale - which means that many more potential Egyptians could be potential iPhone users. This is disregarding its potential position as a status symbol, which would also fuel its adoption.
Additionally, while there are many models of cell phones in Egypt , almost all of which have some form of GPS transmitter, the iPhone has a potential to be purchased by a lot of users as a singular model. There may be 50 models of Nokia phones with GPS services in Egypt, but no one of those models (potentially, as is the fear) would have as many users as the iPhone. Unlike GPS devices, where there might be a different platform installed in every car, the iPhone could grab a large portion of the consumer market - lets say 20% - and saturate it with one platform. There are probably security concerns associated with a healthy percentage of Egyptians, who are more likely to be wealthier and located in urban areas due to the affluence associated with buying an expensive phone, using one fairly well featured cell phone model designed by a foreign company.
... pathetic graph I have ever seen. Seriously. Everyone screams- including combinatorics screaming. You have a total potential ... 34 to 68 meaningless combinations that aren't even really combinations?
Die. Go hit yourself in the head and die.
My comment may have little in the way of merit, but I'm pretty sure that intelligent Democrats are just as interested in exploring space as intelligent Republicans are. I am a registered Independent but tend to lean Democratic with my votes, and I can tell you that not only am I interested in NASA getting a bigger check, but a lot of my more (to much more)liberal friends are as well. NASA's research, projects, and technological breakthroughs have profound systemic effects throughout our entire economy, and tend to increase our value as an international trade partner.
What you have to worry about are the unintelligent Democrats and Republicans - the ones who lack significant foresight perhaps due to an undeveloped frontal lobe - who could give three metric shit-tons less about what lies beyond our sky.