Winston S. Churchill: departmental minute (Churchill papers: 16/16) 12 May 1919 War Office
I do not understand this squeamishness about the use of gas. We have definitely adopted the position at the Peace Conference of arguing in favour of the retention of gas as a permanent method of warfare. It is sheer affectation to lacerate a man with the poisonous fragment of a bursting shell and to boggle at making his eyes water by means of lachrymatory gas.
I am strongly in favour of using poisoned gas against uncivilised tribes. The moral effect should be so good that the loss of life should be reduced to a minimum. It is not necessary to use only the most deadly gasses: gasses can be used which cause great inconvenience and would spread a lively terror and yet would leave no serious permanent effects on most of those affected.
The "It is not necessary to use only the most deadly gasses" passage is ambiguous; I see how it can be read to leave deadly gasses as an option, as well as how it can be read to exclude deadly gas.
To the basic point: can mining bring a poor country out of poverty? The answer is clearly 'no'. But, at the same time, mining has a significant positive impact, at least in the financial sense. Each job the industry provides is a job that wasn't there before; each dollar it pays in taxes is a new dollar that can be spent or a dollar that doesn't have to be borrowed.
People employed in mining will often see their standard of living raised; and their spending, in turn, raises the standard of living of some smaller number of people; at the same time, tax revenues make it easier for the government to do its work, whether in public health or some other area of policy. I am convinced that mining can have a significant, positive effect on the standard of living in poor countries.
There aren't many cases where a natural resource, or any single industry, can give an entire nation a decent standard of living. And those cases where a single resource has this power - such as the petrol states - make it clear that 'bonanza' wealth brings its own, serious problems. Experience seems to show that many industries and public programs must be present and act in concert for a country as a whole to come out of poverty. This is what I understand in Taiwan, as well as South Korea, in broad strokes - development through public planning and establishment of varied industries.
Primary industry can play a central role in this, as it creates new wealth. Perhaps most uniquely of all, primary resources cannot be moved; industry must go to where the resources are. Until a resource is exhausted, the country that it sits within will ultimately have ownership of it. This makes primary industry a more predictable source of wealth for a nation than, say, factories, which can jump from continent to continent as markets demand.
They are also a part of nearly all national economies, with the exception of some city-states; primary industry should not be seen as something reserved for the poorest of countries. Large parts of Canada and Scandinevia support a first-world lifestyle with primary industry as the foundation of the local or regional economy. As we all know, Chinese manufacturing has grown at a remarkable rate over the past three decades; at the same time, though, Chinese mineral production has also grown dramatically.
Questions about corruption, and the insidious way that revenues from natural resources can reduce government accountability to the people by reducing government reliance on taxes from the people, are daunting. Put one way, many things can go wrong during assembly if the pieces are not put together properly.
Likewise, concerns about environmental damage are well-founded. This, though, seems to me to be a solvable question of engineering and regulation. It is true that a google search for 'gold cyanide spill' ('gold mercury spill' should not come up with anything current, at least from modern mines; mercury hasn't been used for years) will come up with some examples of pollution or health problems caused by mining. I would only submit that pollution is not a matter of course in modern mining, it is a result of failures - failures of dams, of engineering, of protocol. Which is to say, when things go as planned (as the do, more often than not), mines can be safe.
I've thought in the past that it would not be out of order to have a minimum standard of global mining regulations, legislated in all countries, covering design and operation of mines & refineries & smelters. If such a scheme were in place, it seems it would be much easier for operations in the third and second world to be held to account.
In the meantime, though, I've exhausted this subject for tonight. I hope I've gone some way to addressing your points and explaining mine. Best of luck for your trip to Ghana.
PS - Your point about the questionable nature of claims about so many dollars spent on community development is a fair one. I would only mention that people in mining are like any other people; most want to do
When you visit a location-aware website, SeaMonkey will ask you if you want to share your location.
If you consent, SeaMonkey gathers information about nearby wireless access points and your computer's IP address. Then SeaMonkey sends this information to the default geolocation service provider, Google Location Services, to get an estimate of your location. That location estimate is then shared with the requesting website.
If you say that you do not consent, SeaMonkey will not do anything.
TFA describes a honey-pot based study. It doesn't describe a real-world study of people whose browser histories were actually stolen by actual malicious websites.
I've been using the beta for awhile and I can say without a doubt that it's far better than Office 2003. The ribbon menus, in Word especially, are actually easier to use than the menus of 2003. And some of the other features, like auto-print preview, automatically showing what new formatting will look like, and the navigation sidebar, are actually useful. There are still some bugs, and the interface in Excel isn't as easy to get used to, but in general I'd say 2010 looks like it will be worth the price of the upgrade. I say this as someone who never got used to or liked 2007.
How, precisely, do you 'support the troops'? Do you support them in that you hope they will come back alive? Do you support them in re-integrating into civilian life after discharge? Do you support them by hoping they win their battles? Do you support them in hoping they succeed in their mission?
Although different people would stress different items from your list, a straightforward person would list all of the above.
So by your own words, a straighforward reading of 'support our troops' implies supporting the mission. And you're confused why someone would want to say 'support the troops without supporting the mission'?
If you support the wars in Afghanistan & Iraq, say so. Don't use phrases that confuse concern for the welfare of solders & servicemen with approval of foreign wars.
But you forget that the phrase 'support our troops' is weaselise in the first place.
What, exactly, do you think that the phrase means? How, precisely, do you 'support the troops'?
Do you support them in that you hope they will come back alive? Do you support them in re-integrating into civilian life after discharge? Do you support them by hoping they win their battles? Do you support them in hoping they succeed in their mission?
Make no mistake, 'support our troops' means everything and nothing. Effectively, the phrase was coined to stifle debate, "banking on you and I not wanting to raise a fuss because no one wants to be seen as unsupportive of men and women risking their lives. (link)
Do you distinguish any difference between supporting the troops and supporting the war?
I have to wonder since I hear that phrase a lot. What does it mean for one to "Support the Troops"? Do they have a list local kids who are serving in Iraq for whom they pray each Sunday Mass? Do they decorate their SUVs with magnetic yellow ribbons? It seems to be a phrase that opponents and advocates of this war alike feel obligated to mention as routinely as they breathe. In fact, for any one to say otherwise since September 11th, 2001 is a veritable anathema. It's a useful quote, whether to reiterate your position or cover your ass. Beyond that, I don't pay it much mind.
I am aware that veterans returning from the Vietnam War were picketed, assaulted and stigmatized. I am grateful to have never experienced that, at least not on a scale with what they endured.
I would like to relate a story to you, which I think illuminates my point.
It was the spring of 2004. I had returned from my first tour several months before. I bought a 2-door Geo Metro hatchback with the money I had earned overseas. My girlfriend at the time was an outspoken critic of SUVs, so I figured she would approve. John Kerry's campaign was picking up steam. A good friend of mine who was working for his campaign in Iowa had sent me a "John Kerry for President" bumper sticker, which I proudly placed on the bumper of my car right above my "United States Marine Corps" sticker. I was driving through Westchester County (one of NY State's more affluent areas) and got caught up in a traffic jam. All of a sudden the car behind me, a huge black Escalade, pulled up beside me. The driver, a fat, red-faced man in his late thirties/early forties began to scream at me. "What the Fuck is the matter with you? Do you support the troops or don't you? Yeah, you're a fucking flip flopper!" It took me a moment to realize he was referring to my "politically confused" bumper stickers. The idea that a person could simultaneously support his military and the democratic challenger was evidently too nuanced for him. And off he went, his magnetic yellow ribbon gleaming in the sun. The irony of a fat forty-something who had ostensibly never served in the military, who drives a gas guzzling road monster berating an Iraq War veteran in his Geo Metro for not supporting the troops would be forever lost on him.
I just can't describe what I am trying to say any better than that.
Saying you support the troops is like saying you love Jesus. To insinuate anything to the contrary, even supporting an investigation of troop misconduct, is to open oneself to all points of vituperation. I realize this doesn't really answer your question. I just hear the phrase thrown around so much, abused and misrepresented for political purposes that I can no longer take it at face value.
you're forgetting that all this expensive technology was at least partially developed to avoid mistakes leading to civilian casualties.
At some point, people stop caring that the military is trying to avoid civilian casualties and just focus on the fact that they are causing civilian casualties. Especially given that most seem to happen because we're trying to limit friendly casualties, not win battles - that is, we could still win the battles, but at a higher cost, if we didn't use airstrikes.
Given that our soldiers are - presumably - there to help the local population, it stands to reason that our soldiers should be placed at greater risk if it means protecting more Afghans. I know the current rules have been adjusted to this effect, but too many civilians are still being killed.
Making force protection the primary goal inevitably leads to a cheapening of enemy & civilian life.
Seriously, though, both extremes are bad: 2-party state or 20-party state. While the US 2-party system is bad, the Italian system is bad as well. Having every government be accountable to its coalition partners is just as likely to distort the will of the people as a either-or choice.
In the particular case of parties like the Pirate Party, or the Marijuana Party (another great Canadian political force), they are fine as vehicles to raise a single issue, but that should be the extent of their purpose; ideally, one or more of the major parties will 'steal' their idea, adopt it in their platform, and give voters who support whatever issue it is a serious choice.
The privacy protections regarding census answers were put in place AFTER the Japanese internment camps as a RESPONSE.
Somehow, that sounds much more likely to be true than the frankly shocking allegation in the summary. And, as others have pointed out, the insinuation that something untoward happened with regard to Arabs after 9/11 is also bunk - no private date was released, and releasing aggregate data is what the census is for.
Includes more detail about the algo - Developed with researches at Princeton - Demo'd at SIGGRAPH in Aug. 2009 - Old spot-healing tool tried to find one match for the hole; new tool copies multiple patches from the surrounding BG to fit into the hole, as well as finding & copying surrounding patterns
I would stay in the Chinese market too. But I'd use it as an opportunity to educate: "This page blocked by your government. Go here to sign a petition to have the block removed: [link]"
That's more or less what they were doing before. They would post a disclaimer on the search results page any time a censor-filter was encountered, warning the user that the search results had been censored.
Realistically speaking, though, people would probably ignore that warning most of the time - pulling out of the country sends a much stronger message.
This is a opportunity that Microsoft clearly missed. Sure, they have Windows Update, which is not that bad and does the job for Windows itself, plus some drivers. But they should have offered a real package manager, and allow others to integrate into it. That would have given them big plus points from companies and users.
I don't see what is stopping them now. It's not like someone else has cornered the market on package management on Windows; even Apple has neglected this feature on their own OS.
If and when Microsoft finally gets around to this I fully expect other software publishers will fall into line and use the new service.
Not only that, but civil/mechanical/other engineers usually know exactly what they are dealing with - a Civil engineer may specify the type of concrete used, car engineer may specify the alloy of steel.
But other engineers can't specify all the variables. They have to deal with the real world - rock mechanics, soil mechanics, wind, corrosion, etc. - so they too can never know exactly what they're dealing with. Many of the worst engineering disasters occured because some aspect of the natural world was poorly understood or not accounted for. However, it remains the engineer's responsibility to understand and mitigate those uncertainties.
In my experience most draconian restrictions are imposed by Management. The technical staff is simply more empowered to work around them or ignore them.
Not necessarily. IT people who are responsible for implementing policy abuse their power if they alter the implementation to get some personal advantage (like the discussion board example used in the summary).
The more petty rule breaking by IT people in user roles is not an abuse of power. It is still, in the long run, the wrong way to deal with draconian policy. Bringing about a change to the policy is a much better solution, even though it may be harder.
My father was an engineer for NASA for a few years and one of his colleagues dedicated a few years to writing a science fiction novel based on real physics. Since he was an engineer at NASA, I'm confident the physics were real.
The result was very boring.
Book/Author? Boring or not, my interest is piqued.
You can't mean all data behind the climate models, because some huge faction of it is still available. You must be referring to the small subset of it that was deleted before Climate Change became recognized as the important issue it is.
Heck, a lot of the Original Data behind such famous theories as gravity and a round earth was deleted, too. That has no bearing on the fact that those theories were proven true. Exact same thing with human-caused climate change.
The rocket crash you linked to to happened in 2007, kind of like the rocket mentioned in the summary, which launched in 2005.
Also, Baikonur is very, very far from Norway. Correction: very, very, very far. Like 4,000 km far. Central Asia to Northern Europe far.
The Plesetsk cosmodrome is the one that borders the Nordic states, and is far more likely to be the source of the rocket, if it wasn't a sub testing the new Russkie SLBMs or someting.
The dateline for the proton-m article is 2005 (which mentions satellite AMC-23), giving a launch date of Dec. 6, 2005. It even successfully launched!. I'm pretty sure that particular rocket wasn't responsible for the light show.
They aren't any old non-profit, they are the people who handle the medical blood supply. The lives nearly all surgical patients and all blood donors are in their hands. When people in their position screw up, other people die (indeed, the Red Cross used to handle the blood supply in Canada; they screwed up back in the 80s and a bunch of people got AIDS and hepatitis C. Canadian Blood Services only exists because that mistake made people lose trust in the Red Cross.)
So, given the critical place of Canadian Blood Services in the medical system, they really are bound to be guided by the method least likely to fail - which, so far at least, is the scientific method rather than the pseudoscience method.
Well, you could go back to having regulated monopolies. Wasn't the phone service well-run and replete with legal protections back in the days of Ma Bell?
Slashdot Mirror
That aside, the second tune sounds exactly like Aphex Twin.
Like "equation" off of Windowlicker?
I wonder if the spectrogram of the sun shows RDJ's face...
Fuller quote:
http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/CHU407A.html, repeated at wikipedia
Winston S. Churchill: departmental minute (Churchill papers: 16/16) 12 May 1919 War Office
I do not understand this squeamishness about the use of gas. We have definitely adopted the position at the Peace Conference of arguing in favour of the retention of gas as a permanent method of warfare. It is sheer affectation to lacerate a man with the poisonous fragment of a bursting shell and to boggle at making his eyes water by means of lachrymatory gas.
I am strongly in favour of using poisoned gas against uncivilised tribes. The moral effect should be so good that the loss of life should be reduced to a minimum. It is not necessary to use only the most deadly gasses: gasses can be used which cause great inconvenience and would spread a lively terror and yet would leave no serious permanent effects on most of those affected.
The "It is not necessary to use only the most deadly gasses" passage is ambiguous; I see how it can be read to leave deadly gasses as an option, as well as how it can be read to exclude deadly gas.
To the basic point: can mining bring a poor country out of poverty? The answer is clearly 'no'. But, at the same time, mining has a significant positive impact, at least in the financial sense. Each job the industry provides is a job that wasn't there before; each dollar it pays in taxes is a new dollar that can be spent or a dollar that doesn't have to be borrowed.
People employed in mining will often see their standard of living raised; and their spending, in turn, raises the standard of living of some smaller number of people; at the same time, tax revenues make it easier for the government to do its work, whether in public health or some other area of policy. I am convinced that mining can have a significant, positive effect on the standard of living in poor countries.
There aren't many cases where a natural resource, or any single industry, can give an entire nation a decent standard of living. And those cases where a single resource has this power - such as the petrol states - make it clear that 'bonanza' wealth brings its own, serious problems. Experience seems to show that many industries and public programs must be present and act in concert for a country as a whole to come out of poverty. This is what I understand in Taiwan, as well as South Korea, in broad strokes - development through public planning and establishment of varied industries.
Primary industry can play a central role in this, as it creates new wealth. Perhaps most uniquely of all, primary resources cannot be moved; industry must go to where the resources are. Until a resource is exhausted, the country that it sits within will ultimately have ownership of it. This makes primary industry a more predictable source of wealth for a nation than, say, factories, which can jump from continent to continent as markets demand.
They are also a part of nearly all national economies, with the exception of some city-states; primary industry should not be seen as something reserved for the poorest of countries. Large parts of Canada and Scandinevia support a first-world lifestyle with primary industry as the foundation of the local or regional economy. As we all know, Chinese manufacturing has grown at a remarkable rate over the past three decades; at the same time, though, Chinese mineral production has also grown dramatically.
Questions about corruption, and the insidious way that revenues from natural resources can reduce government accountability to the people by reducing government reliance on taxes from the people, are daunting. Put one way, many things can go wrong during assembly if the pieces are not put together properly.
Likewise, concerns about environmental damage are well-founded. This, though, seems to me to be a solvable question of engineering and regulation. It is true that a google search for 'gold cyanide spill' ('gold mercury spill' should not come up with anything current, at least from modern mines; mercury hasn't been used for years) will come up with some examples of pollution or health problems caused by mining. I would only submit that pollution is not a matter of course in modern mining, it is a result of failures - failures of dams, of engineering, of protocol. Which is to say, when things go as planned (as the do, more often than not), mines can be safe.
I've thought in the past that it would not be out of order to have a minimum standard of global mining regulations, legislated in all countries, covering design and operation of mines & refineries & smelters. If such a scheme were in place, it seems it would be much easier for operations in the third and second world to be held to account.
In the meantime, though, I've exhausted this subject for tonight. I hope I've gone some way to addressing your points and explaining mine. Best of luck for your trip to Ghana.
PS - Your point about the questionable nature of claims about so many dollars spent on community development is a fair one. I would only mention that people in mining are like any other people; most want to do
See http://www.seamonkey-project.org/doc/2.0/geolocation for a description of the how & why. In short, yes, the geolocation info comes from Google.
When you visit a location-aware website, SeaMonkey will ask you if you want to share your location.
If you consent, SeaMonkey gathers information about nearby wireless access points and your computer's IP address. Then SeaMonkey sends this information to the default geolocation service provider, Google Location Services, to get an estimate of your location. That location estimate is then shared with the requesting website.
If you say that you do not consent, SeaMonkey will not do anything.
TFA describes a honey-pot based study. It doesn't describe a real-world study of people whose browser histories were actually stolen by actual malicious websites.
I've been using the beta for awhile and I can say without a doubt that it's far better than Office 2003. The ribbon menus, in Word especially, are actually easier to use than the menus of 2003. And some of the other features, like auto-print preview, automatically showing what new formatting will look like, and the navigation sidebar, are actually useful. There are still some bugs, and the interface in Excel isn't as easy to get used to, but in general I'd say 2010 looks like it will be worth the price of the upgrade. I say this as someone who never got used to or liked 2007.
How, precisely, do you 'support the troops'? Do you support them in that you hope they will come back alive? Do you support them in re-integrating into civilian life after discharge? Do you support them by hoping they win their battles? Do you support them in hoping they succeed in their mission?
Although different people would stress different items from your list, a straightforward person would list all of the above.
So by your own words, a straighforward reading of 'support our troops' implies supporting the mission. And you're confused why someone would want to say 'support the troops without supporting the mission'?
If you support the wars in Afghanistan & Iraq, say so. Don't use phrases that confuse concern for the welfare of solders & servicemen with approval of foreign wars.
But you forget that the phrase 'support our troops' is weaselise in the first place.
What, exactly, do you think that the phrase means? How, precisely, do you 'support the troops'?
Do you support them in that you hope they will come back alive? Do you support them in re-integrating into civilian life after discharge? Do you support them by hoping they win their battles? Do you support them in hoping they succeed in their mission?
Make no mistake, 'support our troops' means everything and nothing. Effectively, the phrase was coined to stifle debate, "banking on you and I not wanting to raise a fuss because no one wants to be seen as unsupportive of men and women risking their lives. (link)
To quote a real Troop:
http://www.uruknet.org.uk/?p=m26522&hd=0&size=1&l=e
Do you distinguish any difference between supporting the troops and supporting the war?
I have to wonder since I hear that phrase a lot. What does it mean for one to "Support the Troops"? Do they have a list local kids who are serving in Iraq for whom they pray each Sunday Mass? Do they decorate their SUVs with magnetic yellow ribbons? It seems to be a phrase that opponents and advocates of this war alike feel obligated to mention as routinely as they breathe. In fact, for any one to say otherwise since September 11th, 2001 is a veritable anathema. It's a useful quote, whether to reiterate your position or cover your ass. Beyond that, I don't pay it much mind.
I am aware that veterans returning from the Vietnam War were picketed, assaulted and stigmatized. I am grateful to have never experienced that, at least not on a scale with what they endured.
I would like to relate a story to you, which I think illuminates my point.
It was the spring of 2004. I had returned from my first tour several months before. I bought a 2-door Geo Metro hatchback with the money I had earned overseas. My girlfriend at the time was an outspoken critic of SUVs, so I figured she would approve. John Kerry's campaign was picking up steam. A good friend of mine who was working for his campaign in Iowa had sent me a "John Kerry for President" bumper sticker, which I proudly placed on the bumper of my car right above my "United States Marine Corps" sticker. I was driving through Westchester County (one of NY State's more affluent areas) and got caught up in a traffic jam. All of a sudden the car behind me, a huge black Escalade, pulled up beside me. The driver, a fat, red-faced man in his late thirties/early forties began to scream at me. "What the Fuck is the matter with you? Do you support the troops or don't you? Yeah, you're a fucking flip flopper!" It took me a moment to realize he was referring to my "politically confused" bumper stickers. The idea that a person could simultaneously support his military and the democratic challenger was evidently too nuanced for him. And off he went, his magnetic yellow ribbon gleaming in the sun. The irony of a fat forty-something who had ostensibly never served in the military, who drives a gas guzzling road monster berating an Iraq War veteran in his Geo Metro for not supporting the troops would be forever lost on him.
I just can't describe what I am trying to say any better than that.
Saying you support the troops is like saying you love Jesus. To insinuate anything to the contrary, even supporting an investigation of troop misconduct, is to open oneself to all points of vituperation. I realize this doesn't really answer your question. I just hear the phrase thrown around so much, abused and misrepresented for political purposes that I can no longer take it at face value.
you're forgetting that all this expensive technology was at least partially developed to avoid mistakes leading to civilian casualties.
At some point, people stop caring that the military is trying to avoid civilian casualties and just focus on the fact that they are causing civilian casualties. Especially given that most seem to happen because we're trying to limit friendly casualties, not win battles - that is, we could still win the battles, but at a higher cost, if we didn't use airstrikes.
Given that our soldiers are - presumably - there to help the local population, it stands to reason that our soldiers should be placed at greater risk if it means protecting more Afghans. I know the current rules have been adjusted to this effect, but too many civilians are still being killed.
Making force protection the primary goal inevitably leads to a cheapening of enemy & civilian life.
With Windows, it's nice to do a clean install every year or so anyway, to handle bitrot.
One name: Ralph Nader
Seriously, though, both extremes are bad: 2-party state or 20-party state. While the US 2-party system is bad, the Italian system is bad as well. Having every government be accountable to its coalition partners is just as likely to distort the will of the people as a either-or choice.
In the particular case of parties like the Pirate Party, or the Marijuana Party (another great Canadian political force), they are fine as vehicles to raise a single issue, but that should be the extent of their purpose; ideally, one or more of the major parties will 'steal' their idea, adopt it in their platform, and give voters who support whatever issue it is a serious choice.
Better clip here.
'You've lost your arms in battle! But you've grown a nice pair of boobs...'
Now, if you want to complain about how things went with our money and AIG (an insurance company) and the automakers, fine.
The automaker bailouts aren't as bad as people make out, either - the GM loan, at least, will be repaid by June.
Chrysler, on the other hand, won't pay back and should have been left to die. Their cars are ugly pieces of shit.
The privacy protections regarding census answers were put in place AFTER the Japanese internment camps as a RESPONSE.
Somehow, that sounds much more likely to be true than the frankly shocking allegation in the summary. And, as others have pointed out, the insinuation that something untoward happened with regard to Arabs after 9/11 is also bunk - no private date was released, and releasing aggregate data is what the census is for.
Includes more detail about the algo
- Developed with researches at Princeton
- Demo'd at SIGGRAPH in Aug. 2009
- Old spot-healing tool tried to find one match for the hole; new tool copies multiple patches from the surrounding BG to fit into the hole, as well as finding & copying surrounding patterns
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S9vbHRcrbdQ&feature=related
I would stay in the Chinese market too. But I'd use it as an opportunity to educate: "This page blocked by your government. Go here to sign a petition to have the block removed: [link]"
That's more or less what they were doing before. They would post a disclaimer on the search results page any time a censor-filter was encountered, warning the user that the search results had been censored.
Realistically speaking, though, people would probably ignore that warning most of the time - pulling out of the country sends a much stronger message.
This is a opportunity that Microsoft clearly missed. Sure, they have Windows Update, which is not that bad and does the job for Windows itself, plus some drivers. But they should have offered a real package manager, and allow others to integrate into it. That would have given them big plus points from companies and users.
I don't see what is stopping them now. It's not like someone else has cornered the market on package management on Windows; even Apple has neglected this feature on their own OS.
If and when Microsoft finally gets around to this I fully expect other software publishers will fall into line and use the new service.
Not only that, but civil/mechanical/other engineers usually know exactly what they are dealing with - a Civil engineer may specify the type of concrete used, car engineer may specify the alloy of steel.
But other engineers can't specify all the variables. They have to deal with the real world - rock mechanics, soil mechanics, wind, corrosion, etc. - so they too can never know exactly what they're dealing with. Many of the worst engineering disasters occured because some aspect of the natural world was poorly understood or not accounted for. However, it remains the engineer's responsibility to understand and mitigate those uncertainties.
In my experience most draconian restrictions are imposed by Management. The technical staff is simply more empowered to work around them or ignore them.
Not necessarily. IT people who are responsible for implementing policy abuse their power if they alter the implementation to get some personal advantage (like the discussion board example used in the summary).
The more petty rule breaking by IT people in user roles is not an abuse of power. It is still, in the long run, the wrong way to deal with draconian policy. Bringing about a change to the policy is a much better solution, even though it may be harder.
My father was an engineer for NASA for a few years and one of his colleagues dedicated a few years to writing a science fiction novel based on real physics. Since he was an engineer at NASA, I'm confident the physics were real.
The result was very boring.
Book/Author? Boring or not, my interest is piqued.
All what original data?
You can't mean all data behind the climate models, because some huge faction of it is still available. You must be referring to the small subset of it that was deleted before Climate Change became recognized as the important issue it is.
Heck, a lot of the Original Data behind such famous theories as gravity and a round earth was deleted, too. That has no bearing on the fact that those theories were proven true. Exact same thing with human-caused climate change.
Troll?
The rocket crash you linked to to happened in 2007, kind of like the rocket mentioned in the summary, which launched in 2005.
Also, Baikonur is very, very far from Norway. Correction: very, very, very far. Like 4,000 km far. Central Asia to Northern Europe far.
The Plesetsk cosmodrome is the one that borders the Nordic states, and is far more likely to be the source of the rocket, if it wasn't a sub testing the new Russkie SLBMs or someting.
The dateline for the proton-m article is 2005 (which mentions satellite AMC-23), giving a launch date of Dec. 6, 2005. It even successfully launched!. I'm pretty sure that particular rocket wasn't responsible for the light show.
They aren't any old non-profit, they are the people who handle the medical blood supply. The lives nearly all surgical patients and all blood donors are in their hands. When people in their position screw up, other people die (indeed, the Red Cross used to handle the blood supply in Canada; they screwed up back in the 80s and a bunch of people got AIDS and hepatitis C. Canadian Blood Services only exists because that mistake made people lose trust in the Red Cross.)
So, given the critical place of Canadian Blood Services in the medical system, they really are bound to be guided by the method least likely to fail - which, so far at least, is the scientific method rather than the pseudoscience method.
Well, you could go back to having regulated monopolies. Wasn't the phone service well-run and replete with legal protections back in the days of Ma Bell?