"I'm at the point now where I can't talk a whole lot about ongoing proceedings. I am seeing a few common misrepresentations making the rounds, though, that I'd like to set straight:
Some are concluding that, when I was "dumped across the border in shirtsleeves", I had to walk across the Blue Water Bridge in a snowstorm without my coat. No. The bridge is on the US side of the border, which they had to drive me across to dump me on the other side of; and Canadian Customs was on that other side. This was no Starlight Cruise; I was not exposed to the weather unprotected for an inordinately long time. Still. It's winter. And they have my coat.
Others have warned me to delete my previous post, lest the bad guys seize upon it and twist it to their own dark purposes. Having had erroneous quotes attributed to me in the past, I know this is good advice (which is why I won't be commenting in too much detail upon some of the arcane blow-by-blows of the case in question). But my lawyer vetted that post before I put it up; I stand behind it.
Thanks to whoever posted the link to the Times-Herald story. I have three comments about the allegations therein. Firstly, the story claims that I was entering the US, not leaving it: this is empirically false. Secondly, I find it interesting that these guys characterise "pulling away" as "aggressive" behavior; I myself would regard it as a retreat. And thirdly, I did not "choke" anyone. I state this categorically. And having been told that cameras were in fact on site, I look forward to seeing the footage they provide.
That's it for the technical items. I have only two more things to say. Firstly, I am absolutely flabbergasted by the online reaction to this story, and by the support (both moral and financial) that's inundated me over the past few hours. I don't have a hope in hell of answering even a fraction of the incoming traffic at this point, so for the moment let me just say I'm humbled and a little bit scared. I did not start this campaign; it actually started when I was still in jail, and had absolutely no idea what was going on. But to the catalytic folks who orchestrated it, know that I am looking into having my vasectomy reversed so that I can sire a firstborn son and sacrifice him to you. Secondly, I'm going to bed.
I'm reminded of Digby's comments during the Gates incident back in July:
"I have discovered that my hackles automatically going up at such authoritarian behavior is not necessarily the common reaction among my fellow Americans, not even my fellow liberals. The arguments are usually something along the lines of "that guy was an idiot to argue with the cops, he should know better,"...
"Now, on a practical, day to day level, it's hard to argue that being argumentative with a cop is a dangerous thing. They have guns. They can arrest you and can cost you your freedom if they want to do it badly enough. They can often get away with doing violence on you and suffer no consequences. You are taking a risk if you provoke someone with that kind of power, no doubt about it.
"Indeed, it is very little different than exercising your right of free speech to tell a gang of armed thugs to go f*ck themselves. It's legal, but it's not very smart. But that's the problem isn't it? We shouldn't have to make the same calculations about how to behave with police as we would with armed criminals. The police are supposed to be the good guys who follow the rules and the law and don't expect innocent citizens to bow to their brute power the same way that a street gang would do. The police are not supposed wield what is essentially brute force on the entire population.
In SF fandom "Science Fiction" (or speculative fiction, etc) was the general term with "Scifi" (skiffy) used for the late-night B-movie type of SF media.
I'd figured they originally used Sci-Fi to be ironic.
"...accidents cause more than death and injury. They also clog roads, damage vehicles and require extensive emergency response systems. The NHTSA has attempted to quantify the total cost of accidents, and while the numbers are subject to debate. In The Economic Impact of Motor Vehicle Crashes, they cite $230 billion per year, or about 2.3% of the GDP. Other estimates range as high as 4% of the GDP.
"...calculations have also been done to work this figure out as a cost per mile driven, as we do for depreciation and fuel. Estimates I have seen range from 10 cents/mile (using above $230B number) to as high as 30 cents. Numbers for motorcycles go as high as 50 cents/mile. For those who accept higher numbers like 20 cents, this is more expensive than the gasoline (which is 17 cents/mile in a 25mpg car) and in most cases more than the depreciation, which is to say more than the cost of the car itself."
The article you give says the NHTSA thinks the number might be higher than $230B today. And even the AAA analysis has the total cost of accidents at $1050 per person--no small change--and the cost of traffic congestion at $430.
I spend about $.16 per mile for gasoline, so the cost of accidents is higher than gasoline or depreciation for me.
"In summary, we found that obesity did not appear to increase mortality risk in fit men. For long-term health benefits we should focus on improving fitness by increasing physical activity rather than relying on diet for weight control...our data show that fit men had greater longevity than unfit men regardless of their body composition or risk factor status. Obese men should be encouraged to increase their cardiorespiratory fitness by engaging in regular, moderate-intensity physical activity; this should benefit them even if they remain overweight."
The Lee et. al. study shows that the risk of cardiovascular disease goes up with obesity, but even there: "fit, obese men had a lower risk of CVD mortality than did unfit, lean men"
Also, in response to other comments:
1. As to the "a calorie is a calorie, just eat less" idea. Actually, no. Some people have gut bacteria which are much more efficient at extracting calories than others, so that for the same number of calories eaten, one person can get 30% calories out of it. Obese people often have these efficient bacteria (a survival trait for most of human history, and probably no more in their control than genetics)
2. Your family genetics may imply that you're better off with a higher BMI, all other things being equal. If you have lots of heat troubles, 20 may be good. If Parkinson's, 30 might be better.
All to say- first, get fit. Second, understand your genetics. Then worry about your weight.
A. "Science can not demonstrate that science is important, that we ought to teach it in our schools, or that is better than religion. If you believe any of the aforementioned, please realize that these are your beliefs. And if you fervently, even zealously, endeavor to defend, proselytize or promulgate these beliefs- you are a RELIGIOUS person."
CA610. Evolution Religious "Consider some attributes of religion and how evolution compares..."
C. "the THEORY of Evolution is a theory because it's not been proven. If there was a mountain of evidence, as some idiot put it in his comment, it'd no longer be a theory." CA201. Evolution is only a theory. CA202. Evolution has not been proved
D. "Seriously people, Ben Stein is doing a service to the scientific community by encouraging critical thinking and making people challenge the status quo." CA000--CJ533. Do you know how old and tired these challenges are? How worn out but still repeated, over and over they are? The creationist claims are status quo. The scientists' replies change. 50 years ago the creationists would say "Why, Darwinists say Man is like a Mouse, but look, Man is closer to a Cabbage and so Evolution is wrong," and scientists had to go into an extended lecture about comparing molecules. Now, when creationists claim the same thing, scientists can simply say "Go online. Here is the human genome. Here is the ape genome. Here is the mouse genome. Here is the rice genome. Now, what was that again?"
E. "So far, I have yet to see any convincing arguments that mutation can produce innovative changes." One of the 'Even a major creationist group says not to use this argument' arguments. Or if you're saying that while the mutations are positive, they don't create something new... CB101.2 with a list of mutations that caused new features.
And that's just from the last couple of hundred comments.
The creationism / evolution debate has been done many times here on Slashdot. There'll be comments making one or more of the hundreds of old and refuted creationist arguments(1). It's possible that a couple of comments will use arguments even the Answers in Genesis creationist group says not to use(2). Someone will say there's no evidence for Macroevolution and someone else will point out 29 plus evidences for Macroevolution(3).
The point of Expelled is to make people think they've learned about the creation / ID / evolution debate, but to feel that Darwin= Holocaust. Note how they interview scientists of all sorts, but they don't interview academics who cover antisemitism in pre-20th century Europe. Even one hint or reminder that, say, Martin Luther wrote On the Jews and Their Lies in 1543 would ruin the Darwin -->Holocaust propoganda.
---------- (1) "evolution requires faith," "Piltdown," "Midocean magnetic anomalies are not reversals"... (2) "there are no beneficial mutations," "no new species have ever been produced"... (3) Even if there were no fossils, how to explain how biochemistry matches phylogeny? It's one thing to claim the designer re-uses code to explain similarity, but why would a designer reuse broken code?
I assume they might, might be able to handle laptop or camera batteries that are clearly marked as such, with the brand-name visible.
What about the spare batteries you pick up on Ebay, or Fry's, that have obscure amusing texts "Do not sunbath to tan battery"--at best--on them? The sort of batteries one uses for long trips (mine'll run a laptop for 10 hours), or to run medical equipment? (I know people who travel with medical equipment: normally med stuff is protected--it doesn't count towards luggage limits, for example--but I see no exemptions for medical batteries here. Good times for them.)
Imagine trying to work through the math with them: "See how it says it has 2000 milli amp hours?"
"No, it has 2000 mahs. Regulations don't say anything about mahs."
"OK, hold on. That stands for milli amp hour. See also it also says 15 volts? V is for volt. Multiply the two and you get 30,000 milliwatt hours, or 30 watt-hours, and that's well within the limits."
"But what about the 2000 mahs? You're not allowed to bring 2000 mahs onto the plane. I'll have to confiscate this so-called battery. Secondary!"
One purpose of the OLPC that doesn't get much press is that it's designed to replace textbooks: that's one point I heard several times from OLPC folks at a recent conference. The cost and replacement rate for textbooks can be prohibitively expensive-- far more than $200 / child/a couple of years.
Since Mike Godwin now works for the Wikimedia Foundation, the Godwin number for all discussions on, in or about Wikipedia is automatically one, and any subsequent invocations have zero marginal value.
"In summary, we found that obesity did not appear to increase mortality risk in fit men. For long-term health benefits we should focus on improving fitness by increasing physical activity rather than relying on diet for weight control...our data show that fit men had greater longevity than unfit men regardless of their body composition or risk factor status. Obese men should be encouraged to increase their cardiorespiratory fitness by engaging in regular, moderate-intensity physical activity; this should benefit them even if they remain overweight."
The Lee et. al. study shows that the risk of cardiovascular disease goes up with obesity, but even there: "fit, obese men had a lower risk of CVD mortality than did unfit, lean men"
All to say- first, get fit. Then worry about your weight.
"...the key to visibility, on runways as well as on roads, is contrast...The lighting near the mailboxes was of a type that Crawford calls "criminal-friendly": it was almost painful to look at, and it turned the walkway behind the boxes into an impenetrable void. "The eye adapts to the brightest thing in sight," he said. "When you have glare, the eye adapts to the glare, but then you can't see anything darker."
Much so-called security lighting is designed with little thought for how eyes--or criminals--operate. Marcus Felson, a professor at the School of Criminal Justice at Rutgers University, has concluded that lighting is effective in preventing crime mainly if it enables people to notice criminal activity as it's taking place, and if it doesn't help criminals to see what they're doing. Bright, unshielded floodlights--one of the most common types of outdoor security lighting in the country--often fail on both counts, as do all-night lights installed on isolated structures or on parts of buildings that can't be observed by passersby (such as back doors). A burglar who is forced to use a flashlight, or whose movement triggers a security light controlled by an infrared motion sensor, is much more likely to be spotted than one whose presence is masked by the blinding glare of a poorly placed metal halide "wall pack."
i.e. if a passerby's pupils have shrunk to the size of pinholes because of a glaring light, their ability to see their feet, let alone a criminal, will have disappeared for several minutes. The same if they're driving by: they're less likely to see criminals by a house or moving creatures (deer, dogs, running children) by the road. [And then there's how the deer will also be blinded (more than humans for a given glare bomb).]
Previously with crowd control you had to be there, looking at the crowd if not interacting with it. If a few grandmas were in the crowd- by choice or by accident- you knew it. If the "bad" crowd walked by families with small children having a picnic in the park, you'd know that you're about to tear-gas or water-cannon mothers with babies.
At a half mile away, police in Brooklyn (on one side of the East River) could do crowd control for the edge of Manhattan. One guy on the top of the Empire State Building could stampede a crowd on the avenues below. From that distance people look like- and could be thought of as- ants.
Does it have a self-destruct mode for if the device gets stolen? Do they think that bad guys won't ever get their hands on them to stampede crowds as a terrorist act? With two of these devices at a stadium, or any other location with edges and drop-offs, two terrorists could make people jump over balconies to get away from the unbearable pain.
Repressive governments will also find it a handy tool for proving that a dissident was shot for violently resisting arrest. They'll even be able to video it: "See, we ordered him to lie down with his hands over his head- you can hear us saying it over and over. But instead he chose to run towards the guards. They had no choice but to shoot." or "See, we told them to sit down, and instead they jumped off of the ship into the ocean."
The *original* source has a great history of spam
on
The New Yorker On Spam
·
· Score: 2, Informative
This article is a great short history on spam
The author's source material is a great short history of spam, too: I didn't read anything new on the early history of spam in the New Yorker because I'd already read it elsewhere. Yet the New Yorker author only obliquely referenced his source materials when he mentions Brad Templeton (EFF chairman, etc.) via a quote. If I was the editor for that article I'd have pushed for more research credit to be given.
Definitions of spam (unsolicited bulk email from strangers), summaries of current proposed solutions to it, thoughts on specific methods like C/R, and more.
What I think is the Best Essay Ever on Privacy comes from the former privacy commissioner of Canada. In his 2003 overview to his privacy report to Canada he writes why privacy is a fundamental human right, and he warns Canada not to give away rights now eroded or gone in the U.S., especially if it's at the U.S. government's request. It's a short sharp essay, well-worth the reading.
Sad part is that 4 years on Canadians have been forced to adopt what he warned about, and the US has gotten worse. Thing about the proverbial frog in the stovetop bath is that everyone thinks that if you know about the frog in the pot, you can't possibly be the frog in the pot.
A few extracts: "In the months immediately following September 11, I was in fact quite optimistic that, with regard to privacy, the Government was on the whole being balanced and thoughtful in its response. But now the floodgates appear to have burst. Now "September 11" is invoked as a kind of magic incantation to stifle debate, disparage critical analysis and persuade us that we live in a suddenly new world where the old rules cannot apply. If Parliament and the public at large have been slow to react, it is probably because for most people, most of the time, privacy is a pretty abstract concept. Like our health, it's something we tend not to think about until we lose it - and then discover that our lives have been very unpleasantly, and perhaps irretrievably, altered. But though we tend to take it for granted, privacy - the right to control access to ourselves and to personal information about us - is at the very core of our lives. It is a fundamental human right precisely because it is an innate human need, an essential condition of our freedom, our dignity and our sense of well-being.
"The truth is that we all do have something to hide, not because it's criminal or even shameful, but simply because it's private. We carefully calibrate what we reveal about ourselves to others. Most of us are only willing to have a few things known about us by a stranger, more by an acquaintance, and the most by a very close friend or a romantic partner. The right not to be known against our will - indeed, the right to be anonymous except when we choose to identify ourselves - is at the very core of human dignity, autonomy and freedom.
..If we allow the state to sweep away the normal walls of privacy that protect the details of our lives, we will consign ourselves psychologically to living in a fishbowl. Even if we suffered no other specific harm as a result, that alone would profoundly change how we feel. Anyone who has lived in a totalitarian society can attest that what often felt most oppressive was precisely the lack of privacy.
But there also will be tangible, specific harm. [..Examples given...]
If information that is actually about someone else is wrongly applied to us, if wrong facts make it appear that we've done things we haven't, if perfectly innocent behavior is misinterpreted... we will be at risk of finding ourselves in trouble in a society where everyone is regarded as a suspect. By the time we clear our names and establish our innocence, we may have suffered irreparable financial or social harm...If we have to live our lives weighing every action, every communication, every human contact, wondering what agents of the state might find out about it, analyze it, judge it, possibly misconstrue it, and somehow use it to our detriment, we are not truly free..."
" One of the clearest lessons of history is that the greatest threats to liberty come not when times are tranquil and all is well, but in times of turmoil, when fidelity to values and principle seems an extravagance we can ill afford. History also teaches us that whenever we have given in to that kind of thinking, we have lived to regret it. At the time, the loss of freedom might seem small, trivial even, when place
The single biggest reason for this attempted change is the Electronic Frontier Foundation's lawsuit against AT&T.
While $10,000 per violation-- the fine set in federal law-- isn't all of the damages, it certainly adds up to more than AT&T is worth: it could easily run into 100's of billions of dollars.
The EFF started this lawsuit 15 months ago, and is going up against organizations which have 100 times more lawyers than the EFF does. The EFF is a member supported organization. (What, you think they're getting major corporate donations? From who- Apple Computer? Sony? From big-money foundations? Do those foundations even understand why the technologies and policies the EFF fights for need to be fought for?)
Remember the search for the Kim family, lost on a snowy mountain pass in Oregon?
At the time, people wrote about potential ways to make searching distributed: "traditional aerial photography is far better, because it's higher resolution, higher contrast, can be done under clouds, can be done at other than a directly overhead angle, is generally cheaper and on top of all this can possibly be done from existing searchplanes." And if the lost person has a cell phone, then the plane can also have "a small mini-cell base station (for all cell technologies) that could be mounted in a regular airplane and flown over the area." Traditional aerial searches are limited to only a couple of pairs of eyes, but continuous hi-res photos can lead to thousands of viewers. Of course, there was the question of what to do with gigabytes of photos- how to automate distribution.
The Jim Gray search team found a way to distribute aerial photo searches. Using Mechanical Turk was a good idea, because the infrastructure was already there.
Now, for the next lost family, or lost child, it'll be much faster to get photos up and examined.
They're helping physical search enter the 21st century, not because he or his friends were money rich, but because his and his colleagues were data rich. i.e. if you look up petabyte science, Jim Gray's name shows up a bunch. If there was any quid pro quo it wasn't because the searchers were giving agencies money, it was because they gave new methods.
(Disclosure: I know people at the EFF and think they're amazing people)
To be what the EFF is, they have to take positions on issues that might not seem moderate or be popular.
First- they have to start working on issues long before most people even know that a technology exists- things that are obscure, not popular, so less likely to bring in vast numbers of new members. Second- they'll work on the civil liberties implications of what might seem like fine technology- this certainly can make them unpopular. Third- they sue corporations, which obviously isn't going to help with corporate donations. (which is why the EFF needs memberships, they're a small, non-profit, member-based organization, even though all their cases might make them seem much larger. Grants like the one that got them into the secret EU TV DRM meetings are the exception.) Fourth- the defendants they get aren't necessarily going to be angelic posterboys. Governments or corporations (think RIAA) will always try to set precedents with the ugliest and least sympathetic cases first. i.e.The RIAA didn't start with grandmas and orphans, they started with rowdy-seeming college students.
If you look at the ten major areas where they work:
How likely is it that a techie (or anyone) will agree with 100% of all 10 areas? (Pretty unlikely, because I don't think you'd get 100% agreement even by the EFF's people themselves.) As one example, Hamidi v Intel can't be called a crowd pleaser here. And that the EFF focuses on the collateral damage to free speech caused by some anti-spam technologies isn't popular- it's probably their Skokie march- but it follows from their core work.
It's fun to do the math. Remember when a "David Nelson"- one criminal of concern- was on the No Fly List (Perhaps he still is)? His being there put all the 5,000 other David Nelsons on the list. Assuming that each David Nelson flies just twice a year, then well over a year's worth of person-hours were wasted- each time they flew, over and over again- on confirming that the 5,000 weren't the one guy. Time lost to security, and time lost to the Nelsons- who also had the pleasure of being treated like a potential criminal in front of family, friends and fellow passengers.
But at least with flying there's a defined process known to the limited number of players (airlines, TSA) for dealing with a match. If the airline follows it, then they're clear, end of problem, no liability.
In contrast, with the Treasury list, if a match shows up, how can the business know it's really done everything it needs to do? The easy-out for 10's of millions of businesses might be to just not deal with the person at all.
So, this U.S. Treasury list: "Maria Gonzalez"-- there's likely at least 4,000 in the US (probably far more- I used overall percentages multiplied rather than Prob(firstname) given (lastname)) "Jose Gonzalez" -- 3,200. "Oscar Hernandez"--700 "Manual Diaz" or "Rosa Diaz" --500 each And then the list seems to have plenty of the most common Chinese surnames.
"Joshua Kinberg, creator of Bikes Against Bush, was arrested in NYC [original link 404d] for vandalism while being interviewed by MSNBC. Kinberg's website describes his project as 'using a Wireless Internet-enabled bicycle outfitted with a custom-designed printing device, the Bikes Against Bush bicycle can print text messages sent from web users directly onto the streets of Manhattan in water-soluble chalk". Both Wired and Popular Science [original link changed] have done stories on Kinberg's work." Update: 08/30 01:30 GMT by J: Mr. Kinberg has been released; he describes his arrest and brief stay behind bars on this MSNBC blog.
Funny, haven't yet seen the Slashdot story mentioned in this current thread. There's probably a few commenters here who commented then (quickly checks that I didn't).
It sounds like the police, having compiled the 4 page dossier on him, were planning to arrest him as soon as he got to NYC. And they did, because being 'capable of spraying anti-R.N.C.-type messages' is dreadful.
It took months and several thousand dollars to get the case dismissed, a year to get his computer and phone back, and they "lost" his bicycle.
I've seen the comet during the day both yesterday and today. You need binoculars to find it easily- although once you see it, it's obvious- or to see the tail. While I wouldn't let children see me trying this at home, positioning myself in the roof's shadow makes it safe enough to do.
Sure, it is a bit weird pointing the binoculars in that general direction (weird like walking on the glass floor of the CN tower 1000 feet up- some major part of your brain is screaming at you that this ought not be done). But I found a spot where I could lean against the house, so any slip (me, binoculars, earthquake) would move the binoculars away from the sun.
I can even post to Slashdot right after. Although why Slashdot changed their color scheme to "big green blob in the middle of the page" I don't know.
As the Spaceweather link says:
"Binoculars dramatically improve the view of the comet, allowing you to see structure within the tail. But please be super-careful not to look at the sun. Direct sunlight through binoculars can cause permanent eye damage."
They are talking daytime.
If you're looking for it without binoculars, it's outside of the super-bright white area by the sun- the sky is blue behind it. It looks like a fuzzy version of Venus (if you've seen that during the day). If you can be where telephone wires make a grid in the sky, it makes searching easier.
His statements of Cassandraesque knowledge aside, it seems as if he's simply reinvented and added more details to a concept found in science fiction: the human-made or human-loosed wee tiny thing against which our own chemistry can't compete.
As examples: Peter Watts, Starfish, 1999. He posits the existence of a type of life that would out-compete anything in our 3.5 billion years old biosphere. As a character says:
"Two prototypes," Rowan continued. "Three, four billion years ago. Two competing models. One of them cornered the market, set the standard for everything from viruses up to giant sequoias. But the thing is, Yves, the winner wasn't necessarily the best product. It just got lucky somehow, got some early momentum. Like software, you know? The best programs never end up as industry standards."
(Watts also has made his 2006 stand-alone novel Blindsight available under CC. The reviews are right- this is one of the best hard SF books to come out this decade. "[he] has taken the core myths of the First Contact story and shaken them to pieces. The result is a shocking and mesmerizing performance, a tour-de-force of provocative and often alarming ideas. It is a rare novel that has the potential to set science fiction on an entirely new course." Makes a great gift for anyone who reads hard science fiction. (disclaimers- none, I don't know the guy, but I do want him able to afford to write much more like this.)
Kurt Vonnegut, Cat's Cradle, 1963. Ice 9 is the simplest of molecules which will out-crystallize / out-compete anything that life today uses.
Goldstein's worries are just Watts' B-life (or a slightly more complex Ice-9) plus the belief Goldstein can build it.
I called up their Washington DC office. The person who answered didn't know about this issue and the call for an arrest. I made three points:
1. Arresting the messenger doesn't help security- it makes people more afraid to point out security holes. 2. Security holes don't shrink by pretending they don't exist 3. Just before elections isn't the best time to make people in Silicon Valley rethink democrats on security. Markey has usually been thoughtful on security- he should rethink his policy of calling for arresting the messenger.
Slashdot Mirror
Peter Watts has put up a new post on the event. All emphasis mine:
"I'm at the point now where I can't talk a whole lot about ongoing proceedings. I am seeing a few common misrepresentations making the rounds, though, that I'd like to set straight:
That's it for the technical items. I have only two more things to say. Firstly, I am absolutely flabbergasted by the online reaction to this story, and by the support (both moral and financial) that's inundated me over the past few hours. I don't have a hope in hell of answering even a fraction of the incoming traffic at this point, so for the moment let me just say I'm humbled and a little bit scared. I did not start this campaign; it actually started when I was still in jail, and had absolutely no idea what was going on. But to the catalytic folks who orchestrated it, know that I am looking into having my vasectomy reversed so that I can sire a firstborn son and sacrifice him to you.
Secondly, I'm going to bed.
I'm reminded of Digby's comments during the Gates incident back in July:
"I have discovered that my hackles automatically going up at such authoritarian behavior is not necessarily the common reaction among my fellow Americans, not even my fellow liberals. The arguments are usually something along the lines of "that guy was an idiot to argue with the cops, he should know better," ...
"Now, on a practical, day to day level, it's hard to argue that being argumentative with a cop is a dangerous thing. They have guns. They can arrest you and can cost you your freedom if they want to do it badly enough. They can often get away with doing violence on you and suffer no consequences. You are taking a risk if you provoke someone with that kind of power, no doubt about it.
"Indeed, it is very little different than exercising your right of free speech to tell a gang of armed thugs to go f*ck themselves. It's legal, but it's not very smart. But that's the problem isn't it? We shouldn't have to make the same calculations about how to behave with police as we would with armed criminals. The police are supposed to be the good guys who follow the rules and the law and don't expect innocent citizens to bow to their brute power the same way that a street gang would do. The police are not supposed wield what is essentially brute force on the entire population.
In SF fandom "Science Fiction" (or speculative fiction, etc) was the general term with "Scifi" (skiffy) used for the late-night B-movie type of SF media.
I'd figured they originally used Sci-Fi to be ironic.
I think from now on I'm going to call it CeePhee.
He references the NHTSA's study, The Economic Impact of Motor Vehicle Crashes for the cost being $230 Billion.
"...accidents cause more than death and injury. They also clog roads, damage vehicles and require extensive emergency response systems. The NHTSA has attempted to quantify the total cost of accidents, and while the numbers are subject to debate. In The Economic Impact of Motor Vehicle Crashes, they cite $230 billion per year, or about 2.3% of the GDP. Other estimates range as high as 4% of the GDP.
"...calculations have also been done to work this figure out as a cost per mile driven, as we do for depreciation and fuel. Estimates I have seen range from 10 cents/mile (using above $230B number) to as high as 30 cents. Numbers for motorcycles go as high as 50 cents/mile. For those who accept higher numbers like 20 cents, this is more expensive than the gasoline (which is 17 cents/mile in a 25mpg car) and in most cases more than the depreciation, which is to say more than the cost of the car itself."
The article you give says the NHTSA thinks the number might be higher than $230B today. And even the AAA analysis has the total cost of accidents at $1050 per person--no small change--and the cost of traffic congestion at $430.
I spend about $.16 per mile for gasoline, so the cost of accidents is higher than gasoline or depreciation for me.
If you look at studies like Relationship Between Low Cardiorespiratory Fitness and Mortality in Normal-Weight, Overweight, and Obese Men, or especially Lee et. al. in Cardiorespiratory fitness, body composition, and all-cause and cardiovascular disease mortality in men, your premise doesn't quite hold. Their results are that:
"In summary, we found that obesity did not appear to increase mortality risk in fit men. For long-term health benefits we should focus on improving fitness by increasing physical activity rather than relying on diet for weight control...our data show that fit men had greater longevity than unfit men regardless of their body composition or risk factor status. Obese men should be encouraged to increase their cardiorespiratory fitness by engaging in regular, moderate-intensity physical activity; this should benefit them even if they remain overweight."
The Lee et. al. study shows that the risk of cardiovascular disease goes up with obesity, but even there:
"fit, obese men had a lower risk of CVD mortality than did unfit, lean men"
Also, in response to other comments:
1. As to the "a calorie is a calorie, just eat less" idea. Actually, no. Some people have gut bacteria which are much more efficient at extracting calories than others, so that for the same number of calories eaten, one person can get 30% calories out of it. Obese people often have these efficient bacteria (a survival trait for most of human history, and probably no more in their control than genetics)
2. Your family genetics may imply that you're better off with a higher BMI, all other things being equal. If you have lots of heat troubles, 20 may be good. If Parkinson's, 30 might be better.
All to say- first, get fit. Second, understand your genetics. Then worry about your weight.
A. "Science can not demonstrate that science is important, that we ought to teach it in our schools, or that is better than religion. If you believe any of the aforementioned, please realize that these are your beliefs. And if you fervently, even zealously, endeavor to defend, proselytize or promulgate these beliefs- you are a RELIGIOUS person."
CA610. Evolution Religious "Consider some attributes of religion and how evolution compares..."
B. "ID is not open for debate in the scientific community...why not debate the ID folks and send them to an early grave"
CI401. The methodology of science rules out even considering design.
C. "the THEORY of Evolution is a theory because it's not been proven. If there was a mountain of evidence, as some idiot put it in his comment, it'd no longer be a theory."
CA201. Evolution is only a theory.
CA202. Evolution has not been proved
D. "Seriously people, Ben Stein is doing a service to the scientific community by encouraging critical thinking and making people challenge the status quo."
CA000--CJ533. Do you know how old and tired these challenges are? How worn out but still repeated, over and over they are? The creationist claims are status quo. The scientists' replies change. 50 years ago the creationists would say "Why, Darwinists say Man is like a Mouse, but look, Man is closer to a Cabbage and so Evolution is wrong," and scientists had to go into an extended lecture about comparing molecules. Now, when creationists claim the same thing, scientists can simply say "Go online. Here is the human genome. Here is the ape genome. Here is the mouse genome. Here is the rice genome. Now, what was that again?"
E. "So far, I have yet to see any convincing arguments that mutation can produce innovative changes."
One of the 'Even a major creationist group says not to use this argument' arguments. Or if you're saying that while the mutations are positive, they don't create something new...
CB101.2 with a list of mutations that caused new features.
And that's just from the last couple of hundred comments.
Richard Dawkin's " Open Letter to a victim of Ben Stein's lying propaganda" is relevant.
The creationism / evolution debate has been done many times here on Slashdot. There'll be comments making one or more of the hundreds of old and refuted creationist arguments(1). It's possible that a couple of comments will use arguments even the Answers in Genesis creationist group says not to use(2). Someone will say there's no evidence for Macroevolution and someone else will point out 29 plus evidences for Macroevolution(3).
The point of Expelled is to make people think they've learned about the creation / ID / evolution debate, but to feel that Darwin= Holocaust. Note how they interview scientists of all sorts, but they don't interview academics who cover antisemitism in pre-20th century Europe. Even one hint or reminder that, say, Martin Luther wrote On the Jews and Their Lies in 1543 would ruin the Darwin -->Holocaust propoganda.
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(1) "evolution requires faith," "Piltdown," "Midocean magnetic anomalies are not reversals"...
(2) "there are no beneficial mutations," "no new species have ever been produced"...
(3) Even if there were no fossils, how to explain how biochemistry matches phylogeny? It's one thing to claim the designer re-uses code to explain similarity, but why would a designer reuse broken code?
I assume they might, might be able to handle laptop or camera batteries that are clearly marked as such, with the brand-name visible.
What about the spare batteries you pick up on Ebay, or Fry's, that have obscure amusing texts "Do not sunbath to tan battery"--at best--on them? The sort of batteries one uses for long trips (mine'll run a laptop for 10 hours), or to run medical equipment? (I know people who travel with medical equipment: normally med stuff is protected--it doesn't count towards luggage limits, for example--but I see no exemptions for medical batteries here. Good times for them.)
Imagine trying to work through the math with them:
"See how it says it has 2000 milli amp hours?"
"No, it has 2000 mahs. Regulations don't say anything about mahs."
"OK, hold on. That stands for milli amp hour. See also it also says 15 volts? V is for volt. Multiply the two and you get 30,000 milliwatt hours, or 30 watt-hours, and that's well within the limits."
"But what about the 2000 mahs? You're not allowed to bring 2000 mahs onto the plane. I'll have to confiscate this so-called battery. Secondary!"
One purpose of the OLPC that doesn't get much press is that it's designed to replace textbooks: that's one point I heard several times from OLPC folks at a recent conference. The cost and replacement rate for textbooks can be prohibitively expensive-- far more than $200 / child /a couple of years.
Since Mike Godwin now works for the Wikimedia Foundation, the Godwin number for all discussions on, in or about Wikipedia is automatically one, and any subsequent invocations have zero marginal value.
When it comes to your risk of dying, being fat- obese, even- but fit is much less risky than being thin and unfit.
If you look at studies like Relationship Between Low Cardiorespiratory Fitness and Mortality in Normal-Weight, Overweight, and Obese Men, or especially Lee et. al. in Cardiorespiratory fitness, body composition, and all-cause and cardiovascular disease mortality in men, the results are that:
"In summary, we found that obesity did not appear to increase mortality risk in fit men. For long-term health benefits we should focus on improving fitness by increasing physical activity rather than relying on diet for weight control...our data show that fit men had greater longevity than unfit men regardless of their body composition or risk factor status. Obese men should be encouraged to increase their cardiorespiratory fitness by engaging in regular, moderate-intensity physical activity; this should benefit them even if they remain overweight."
The Lee et. al. study shows that the risk of cardiovascular disease goes up with obesity, but even there:
"fit, obese men had a lower risk of CVD mortality than did unfit, lean men"
All to say- first, get fit. Then worry about your weight.
I'd think this gift is more appropriate for nieces and the occasional nerdy nephew.
i.e. if a passerby's pupils have shrunk to the size of pinholes because of a glaring light, their ability to see their feet, let alone a criminal, will have disappeared for several minutes. The same if they're driving by: they're less likely to see criminals by a house or moving creatures (deer, dogs, running children) by the road. [And then there's how the deer will also be blinded (more than humans for a given glare bomb).]
Previously with crowd control you had to be there, looking at the crowd if not interacting with it. If a few grandmas were in the crowd- by choice or by accident- you knew it. If the "bad" crowd walked by families with small children having a picnic in the park, you'd know that you're about to tear-gas or water-cannon mothers with babies.
At a half mile away, police in Brooklyn (on one side of the East River) could do crowd control for the edge of Manhattan. One guy on the top of the Empire State Building could stampede a crowd on the avenues below. From that distance people look like- and could be thought of as- ants.
Does it have a self-destruct mode for if the device gets stolen? Do they think that bad guys won't ever get their hands on them to stampede crowds as a terrorist act? With two of these devices at a stadium, or any other location with edges and drop-offs, two terrorists could make people jump over balconies to get away from the unbearable pain.
Repressive governments will also find it a handy tool for proving that a dissident was shot for violently resisting arrest. They'll even be able to video it: "See, we ordered him to lie down with his hands over his head- you can hear us saying it over and over. But instead he chose to run towards the guards. They had no choice but to shoot." or "See, we told them to sit down, and instead they jumped off of the ship into the ocean."
The author's source material is a great short history of spam, too: I didn't read anything new on the early history of spam in the New Yorker because I'd already read it elsewhere. Yet the New Yorker author only obliquely referenced his source materials when he mentions Brad Templeton (EFF chairman, etc.) via a quote. If I was the editor for that article I'd have pushed for more research credit to be given.
Brad Templeton's collection of essays on spam includes:
Sad part is that 4 years on Canadians have been forced to adopt what he warned about, and the US has gotten worse. Thing about the proverbial frog in the stovetop bath is that everyone thinks that if you know about the frog in the pot, you can't possibly be the frog in the pot.
A few extracts:
"In the months immediately following September 11, I was in fact quite optimistic that, with regard to privacy, the Government was on the whole being balanced and thoughtful in its response. But now the floodgates appear to have burst. Now "September 11" is invoked as a kind of magic incantation to stifle debate, disparage critical analysis and persuade us that we live in a suddenly new world where the old rules cannot apply. If Parliament and the public at large have been slow to react, it is probably because for most people, most of the time, privacy is a pretty abstract concept. Like our health, it's something we tend not to think about until we lose it - and then discover that our lives have been very unpleasantly, and perhaps irretrievably, altered. But though we tend to take it for granted, privacy - the right to control access to ourselves and to personal information about us - is at the very core of our lives. It is a fundamental human right precisely because it is an innate human need, an essential condition of our freedom, our dignity and our sense of well-being.
"The truth is that we all do have something to hide, not because it's criminal or even shameful, but simply because it's private. We carefully calibrate what we reveal about ourselves to others. Most of us are only willing to have a few things known about us by a stranger, more by an acquaintance, and the most by a very close friend or a romantic partner. The right not to be known against our will - indeed, the right to be anonymous except when we choose to identify ourselves - is at the very core of human dignity, autonomy and freedom.
But there also will be tangible, specific harm. [..Examples given...]
If information that is actually about someone else is wrongly applied to us, if wrong facts make it appear that we've done things we haven't, if perfectly innocent behavior is misinterpreted... we will be at risk of finding ourselves in trouble in a society where everyone is regarded as a suspect. By the time we clear our names and establish our innocence, we may have suffered irreparable financial or social harm...If we have to live our lives weighing every action, every communication, every human contact, wondering what agents of the state might find out about it, analyze it, judge it, possibly misconstrue it, and somehow use it to our detriment, we are not truly free..."
" One of the clearest lessons of history is that the greatest threats to liberty come not when times are tranquil and all is well, but in times of turmoil, when fidelity to values and principle seems an extravagance we can ill afford. History also teaches us that whenever we have given in to that kind of thinking, we have lived to regret it. At the time, the loss of freedom might seem small, trivial even, when place
The single biggest reason for this attempted change is the Electronic Frontier Foundation's lawsuit against AT&T.
While $10,000 per violation-- the fine set in federal law-- isn't all of the damages, it certainly adds up to more than AT&T is worth: it could easily run into 100's of billions of dollars.
The EFF started this lawsuit 15 months ago, and is going up against organizations which have 100 times more lawyers than the EFF does. The EFF is a member supported organization. (What, you think they're getting major corporate donations? From who- Apple Computer? Sony? From big-money foundations? Do those foundations even understand why the technologies and policies the EFF fights for need to be fought for?)
Remember the search for the Kim family, lost on a snowy mountain pass in Oregon?
At the time, people wrote about potential ways to make searching distributed: "traditional aerial photography is far better, because it's higher resolution, higher contrast, can be done under clouds, can be done at other than a directly overhead angle, is generally cheaper and on top of all this can possibly be done from existing searchplanes." And if the lost person has a cell phone, then the plane can also have "a small mini-cell base station (for all cell technologies) that could be mounted in a regular airplane and flown over the area." Traditional aerial searches are limited to only a couple of pairs of eyes, but continuous hi-res photos can lead to thousands of viewers. Of course, there was the question of what to do with gigabytes of photos- how to automate distribution.
The Jim Gray search team found a way to distribute aerial photo searches. Using Mechanical Turk was a good idea, because the infrastructure was already there.
Now, for the next lost family, or lost child, it'll be much faster to get photos up and examined.
They're helping physical search enter the 21st century, not because he or his friends were money rich, but because his and his colleagues were data rich. i.e. if you look up petabyte science, Jim Gray's name shows up a bunch. If there was any quid pro quo it wasn't because the searchers were giving agencies money, it was because they gave new methods.
To be what the EFF is, they have to take positions on issues that might not seem moderate or be popular.
First- they have to start working on issues long before most people even know that a technology exists- things that are obscure, not popular, so less likely to bring in vast numbers of new members.
Second- they'll work on the civil liberties implications of what might seem like fine technology- this certainly can make them unpopular.
Third- they sue corporations, which obviously isn't going to help with corporate donations. (which is why the EFF needs memberships, they're a small, non-profit, member-based organization, even though all their cases might make them seem much larger. Grants like the one that got them into the secret EU TV DRM meetings are the exception.)
Fourth- the defendants they get aren't necessarily going to be angelic posterboys. Governments or corporations (think RIAA) will always try to set precedents with the ugliest and least sympathetic cases first. i.e.The RIAA didn't start with grandmas and orphans, they started with rowdy-seeming college students.
If you look at the ten major areas where they work:
How likely is it that a techie (or anyone) will agree with 100% of all 10 areas? (Pretty unlikely, because I don't think you'd get 100% agreement even by the EFF's people themselves.) As one example, Hamidi v Intel can't be called a crowd pleaser here. And that the EFF focuses on the collateral damage to free speech caused by some anti-spam technologies isn't popular- it's probably their Skokie march- but it follows from their core work.
Here are the Census Bureau's lists of the most common first and last names.
It's fun to do the math. Remember when a "David Nelson"- one criminal of concern- was on the No Fly List (Perhaps he still is)? His being there put all the 5,000 other David Nelsons on the list. Assuming that each David Nelson flies just twice a year, then well over a year's worth of person-hours were wasted- each time they flew, over and over again- on confirming that the 5,000 weren't the one guy. Time lost to security, and time lost to the Nelsons- who also had the pleasure of being treated like a potential criminal in front of family, friends and fellow passengers.
But at least with flying there's a defined process known to the limited number of players (airlines, TSA) for dealing with a match. If the airline follows it, then they're clear, end of problem, no liability.
In contrast, with the Treasury list, if a match shows up, how can the business know it's really done everything it needs to do? The easy-out for 10's of millions of businesses might be to just not deal with the person at all.
So, this U.S. Treasury list:
"Maria Gonzalez"-- there's likely at least 4,000 in the US (probably far more- I used overall percentages multiplied rather than Prob(firstname) given (lastname))
"Jose Gonzalez" -- 3,200.
"Oscar Hernandez"--700
"Manual Diaz" or "Rosa Diaz" --500 each
And then the list seems to have plenty of the most common Chinese surnames.
Bikes Against Bush Creator Busted
Funny, haven't yet seen the Slashdot story mentioned in this current thread. There's probably a few commenters here who commented then (quickly checks that I didn't).
It sounds like the police, having compiled the 4 page dossier on him, were planning to arrest him as soon as he got to NYC. And they did, because being 'capable of spraying anti-R.N.C.-type messages' is dreadful.
It took months and several thousand dollars to get the case dismissed, a year to get his computer and phone back, and they "lost" his bicycle.
That's why we said not to look at it with binoculars today.... See what you get for not listening?
I got to see a comet, a comet in the middle of the day. You?
Sure, it is a bit weird pointing the binoculars in that general direction (weird like walking on the glass floor of the CN tower 1000 feet up- some major part of your brain is screaming at you that this ought not be done). But I found a spot where I could lean against the house, so any slip (me, binoculars, earthquake) would move the binoculars away from the sun.
I can even post to Slashdot right after. Although why Slashdot changed their color scheme to "big green blob in the middle of the page" I don't know.
As the Spaceweather link says:They are talking daytime.
If you're looking for it without binoculars, it's outside of the super-bright white area by the sun- the sky is blue behind it. It looks like a fuzzy version of Venus (if you've seen that during the day). If you can be where telephone wires make a grid in the sky, it makes searching easier.
As examples:
Peter Watts, Starfish, 1999. He posits the existence of a type of life that would out-compete anything in our 3.5 billion years old biosphere. As a character says:
(Watts also has made his 2006 stand-alone novel Blindsight available under CC. The reviews are right- this is one of the best hard SF books to come out this decade. "[he] has taken the core myths of the First Contact story and shaken them to pieces. The result is a shocking and mesmerizing performance, a tour-de-force of provocative and often alarming ideas. It is a rare novel that has the potential to set science fiction on an entirely new course." Makes a great gift for anyone who reads hard science fiction. (disclaimers- none, I don't know the guy, but I do want him able to afford to write much more like this.)
Kurt Vonnegut, Cat's Cradle, 1963. Ice 9 is the simplest of molecules which will out-crystallize / out-compete anything that life today uses.
Goldstein's worries are just Watts' B-life (or a slightly more complex Ice-9) plus the belief Goldstein can build it.
1. Arresting the messenger doesn't help security- it makes people more afraid to point out security holes.
2. Security holes don't shrink by pretending they don't exist
3. Just before elections isn't the best time to make people in Silicon Valley rethink democrats on security. Markey has usually been thoughtful on security- he should rethink his policy of calling for arresting the messenger.