Posts by dan1980 2933 publicly visible posts • joined 5 Aug 2013
Ah, so it was NFL/gridiron. Carry on then.
I'm rather partial to cricket and couldn't help feeling you were being a little unfair with the 'armoured' comment; if you've ever been on the receiving end of a cricket ball delivered with a surplus of pace and blocked with deficit of ability then you'd realise that you should have listened when told to strap on your thigh/forearm guard.
Not for nothing are they referred to as 'rocks' when new.
@ElReg!comments!Pierre
I mean the great and glorious game of Australian Rules Football.
If you're talking about Cricket (the only other sport I can think of that's played on an oval) then you want three posts (per end) and these are called "stumps".
The reference to 'overweight armoured dancing queens' threw me a bit, pointing me towards NFL but, as that has neither multiple posts (just the a single, elaborate one) at each end, nor is it played on an oval, I figured that was out.
"I can't think of a of a historical period where a majority of the most-knowledgeable documented figures of the time were not also superstitious."
What about recent history? That's if you take the recognised bodies of science - the various national academies such as the Royal Society in the UK and its equivalents around the world - as being a good example of knowledgeable folk.
Certainly if you go back far enough then sure - tribal leaders may well have been spiritual leaders as well but that does not necessarily mean that they, personally we more superstitious than the rest of the population. (Though they very well may have been.)
HOWEVER, when talking about knowledge vs superstition, we probably have to be a bit more precise as to the type of knowledge being discussed.
Given that belief-systems have been, in part, designed to explain the observed world and phenomena, one must really look at knowledge that showed/shows either:
a.) a discrepancy with the prevailing superstitions, and/or
b.) and alternative explanation.
Knowledge of earthquakes - including measurements and analysis to the point of designing structures resistant to the effects - doesn't serve to dispel superstitions that earthquakes are caused by a supernatural agent.
Knowledge of plate tectonics, however, does help to reduce superstition.
And, while even now many people still believe that such natural disasters are sent as punishment from a deity, you will not find any respected scientists amongst their number.
@bearded bearcan
I don't think it's that "superstition is inversely proportional to . . . knowledge" (though this is likely true) so much as access to competing ideas means that some people will choose those ideas over the previous incumbents.
The reason I sideline 'superstition' for the moment is that this holds true in all areas, from world views, to scientific hypotheses to lasagne recipes (or spelling).
Religion thrives in insular communities and it is no coincidence that cults and even 'mainstream' religious sects often cultivate a strong in-group/out-group mentality, which keeps people surrounded by the preferred ideas of the group and insulated from the competing ideas of the broader community.
The Internet is the broadest community yet realised and, as such, it's home to every stripe of idea, from the profound to the ridiculous. While this study focuses on people leaving religion (as a whole), it's just as likely that access to such a broad spread of ideas will see a Christian replacing on set of superstitions for another (perhaps more marginal) set.
But, again, the same is true in many areas. A small, isolated Italian town might well be intensely Catholic but are just as likely to be strongly devoted to a particular risotto recipe, which they believe to be true and faithful.
Religion is an interesting case in that they are, generally, internally inconsistent and lack any real evidence or explanatory power. This should mean that access to critical analysis from 'outsiders' should cause adherents to abandon their religions in droves. That this does not happen to the extent that one might (naively) think is due in part to the ability of these religions to foster the idea of a besieged group, attacked from all sides by the evil of a 'liberal'/'secular'/'godless' outside world.
Such a mentality often serves to strengthen resolve internally and allows people to reject even the most rational and compelling opposition as (e.g.) the work of Satan.
@LDS
The cat/dog/horse argument is frequently expounded but always COMPLETELY misses the point.
The claim of those who support marriage equality is that if two people are consenting, loving adults, then:
a.) They should be able to marry, and;
b.) Whose business is it anyway?
The central premise - consenting adults - completely voids the argument about marrying animals.
I truly do believe in your right to hold whatever stance you wish on marriage, but when arguing the point with others, you should use logical arguments.
In this case, you use a slippery slope argument - asserting that allowing LGBT marriage will open (has opened?) a 'Pandora['s] Box', leading to worse. This is a valid argument if you can show that there is any causal link between allowing consenting human adults to marry regardless of gender/sexuality and allowing a human to marry a non-consenting, non-human 'partner'.
No such link has yet been found.
At any rate, the argument is a bit strange as surely marriage is not the core problem but sex. After all, bestiality isn't only confined to 'marriage', just as incest isn't.
If you accept that sex between consenting adults - regardless of gender/sexuality - is lawful, then you have already made a massive distinction between allowing LGBT marriages and allowing inter-species marriages, thus weakening your slippery slope argument.
If, however, you don't think homosexuality should be legal then just say so, at which point the whole marriage argument can be laid aside as there is a bigger discussion to be had.
That all said, what Eich did was not merely show his support for 'one-man-one-woman' but to support the removal of an existing right that flows from the equal rights protections in the Californian Constitution.
I think these are important arguments to have. (Even if they can be tiring and repetitive.)
It is good that in a modern society we are grappling with the intersection of freedom and equality. It is not an easy knot to cut.
I think one crucial point, however, is that Eich was not employed as a programmer or designer or cafeteria worker - he was employed to be the CEO; the literal and figurative head of the company. This makes his views more relevant than those of any other employee of the company.
In fairness to Eich, he very explicitly stated his commitment to uphold the current policies of Mozilla which, amongst other things, provides benefits to same-sex (and other non-married) partners equal to those enjoyed by heterosexual married couples. In some states this is mandatory but Mozilla does this across the board and Eich has committed to this policy.
Swinging back the other way, however, what Eich was doing in backing Prop 8 was not 'freedom of speech' per se.
Freedom of speech is saying "I support the concept of traditional marriage as between a man and a woman". Proposition 8 aimed to AMEND THE CONSTITUTION of the state of California so that an existing right (to marry) be expressly denied to those falling outside the scope of the definition supplied in the proposition - one man, one woman.
In 2008 the Supreme Court of California found that equal access to marriage was a fundamental right ensured by the constitution of the state. This meant that previous laws limiting access to marriage on the basis of sexuality or gender were ruled unconstitutional and voided as they violated the rights of those groups to equal treatment.
From this came Proposition 8; as marriage discrimination was found to be unconstitutional, the backers of Prop 8 aimed to change the constitution to remove that right.
This is the key thing here - Brendan Eich supported (and presumably still supports) the removal of an existing, constitutionally-protected right of of the 'LGBT community' - the constitution of California guarantees that right based on the fundamental equality of LGBT couples and heterosexual couples. Backing the removal of that right (which is exactly what the proposition did) is, by extension, a statement that one believes LGBT couples (and thus individuals) are not equal.
That would seem very much at odds with Mozilla's identity.
Again, Eich did not simply support 'traditional marriage' - he supported the removal of an existing right flowing from, and therefore protected by, the equal rights provisions of the constitution of the state of California.
He was not opposing a law to make marriage legal for non-heterosexual couples; he was supporting a watering-down of existing equal-right protections.
RippedAbsXX - "Play this game on the phone with me and I might give you my number . . ."
If that's what passes for enticing then dating really has changed since I was, well, marginally younger than I am now.
WildGrl92 - "I think your* hot - wanna pick up some bargains at Tesco? Or if you wanna take it slow we could help ASDA refine their marketing models . . ."
Hold me back.
* - Yes, yes . . .
On the hardware side, I always try to carry:
For software, beyond those already mentioned, I am always digging up:
* - That's a good point, actually (if I do say so) - for seldom-used tools, I often save some instructions to my USB drive to help in those instances where Internet access is affected and thus I find myself sans-Google. It's as easy as just saving the HTML page - usually sufficient to get you through.
Actually, upon further reflection, a wireless tracker might be unnecessary - especially seeing as you would need to actually attach it to said manager before commencing.
A Kinect (2) sensor would seem to be a superior choice, assuming line of sight. You'd have to be relatively close (<4m) but you could generate a stupendous amount of entropy in a short time that way, given you are monitoring the simultaneous movements of potentially dozens of joints* even before you add in heart rate, muscle and microphone data.
Actually, with that many available data points to generate your entropy, you wouldn't even need to set your boss on fire - you'd only need to startle him/her.
That would be a good entropy generation 'device': a suitably obnoxious horn wired to a large red button on your desk, with the results monitored by a Kinect. Whenever you need a PRNG seed, just hit the button and presto - a colossal stream is on its way.
If you wanted it fire-related I suppose you could hook it up to the fire alarm but first, I'm pretty sure that's illegal and second, if the office is anything like mine, you'd get next to no useful movement.
* - The earlier version could track 20 joints in two active users - 40 total.
@Trevor_Pott
"I now want a fire-based random number generator."
You could attach a wireless motion tracker (of the kind coaches stick on athletes) to that one manager who always complains about having to enter a complex password* and then set him/her on fire.
Those systems sample around 25Hz so you'd only need 5 seconds of flailing and screaming to generate 128 bits of entropy. Given normal clothing adhering to flammability regulations, it shouldn't cause any serious physical injury if you put him out after you've got your seed.
* - And thus helps undermine the whole system.
Talk to someone in a remote location over the phone line = social.
Talk to someone in a remote location over the phone line while also being able to see a graphical representation of them = "not social".
Apparently.
Unless phone calls are not social either. Maybe for Jake they aren't, but mine are quite convivial, at least when I am on the phone by choice.
The important part is interaction and there's no rule to say that you can't have meaningful, fulfilling, social interactions without being physically in the same room. I'll agree that doing so adds an element to the interaction but who's to say that that element is necessary or even beneficial in all instances?
I hate the idea that a tool designed for gaming has now been bought by a company that earns its money from showing people ads but, as always, it doesn't really impact me that much because I neither use Facebook nor was I looking forward to the Rift device.
@JustNiz
A NAS is, generally, a file server-in-a-box - you connect to it's resources in exactly the same way as you'd connect to a shared folder. If you are familiar with file shares on (e.g.) a Windows server, then a NAS is a dedicated appliance that does the same thing without the overhead of a full server.
As such, you access the storage on a NAS using a file sharing protocol - SMB/SAMBA/CIFS or NFS.
A SAN presents storage in the same way that local, 'direct attached' storage ('DAS') is presented and is therefore accessed via disk protocols, such as SCSI (modified as iSCSI) and fibre channel.
One way I explain the difference is by looking at which device manages the file table and read/write operations.
With a NAS, these operations are managed by the NAS, The client requests a file and then the NAS looks up its FAT and then accesses the relevant blocks. The NAS knows what has been requested (a file) and returns a file.
With a SAN, the client looks up its own FAT table and then directly requests the blocks from the SAN. The SAN does not know what the client wants - it just gets a request to read or write blocks and dutifully accepts or retrieves those blocks.
You might think that the NAS is a superior concept because all the client has to do is request a file whereas with a SAN, the client has to actually consult the file table and figure out which blocks it needs. The point is that that those operations have to happen regardless, the question is where.
The more clients you have accessing the storage on a device, the more efficient it will be to have the clients directly requesting the blocks.
You will often find devices that provide both types of functionality so referring to a specific piece of hardware as a SAN or NAS might be a bit ambiguous.
If I wanted to check out if Huawei was back dooring their boxes i would just buy 1 & probe its ass-pipes.
Even if you were 100% thorough and effective in such 'probing', you would have learned this, and only this: the specific piece of hardware you have does/does not contain a back door.
If you find that it does then you have good grounds to believe that there are backdoors in other kit. If you don't find anything, however, it tells you nothing about any other piece of hardware.
Huawei bid for major government and enterprise contracts. If the control from the Gov is there then there is no reason why hardware produced to fulfill a given contract would get special backdoors tailored to the application.
Given the kind of regulations that Abbott dislikes (anything that protects people or stands between us and the unbridled greed of the US) it's probably a good thing that so many of the repeals are pointless.
Let's see if he can't destroy the public health system while he's at it. We had a choice last election - it wasn't a stellar choice - but at least we could have voted to protect those things that make us a social democracy. Sure the ALP would have largely been a lame duck due to infighting and lack of Senate majority but at least that meant they couldn't have screwed things up too much.
At times I see in Tony Abbott some sycophantic junior school boy desperate to impress the older kids, like the kid in formulaic teen flicks who alienates all his friends trying to win the approval of the cool kids, when all the time they are just using him.
That got away from me, sorry.
Actually, I think it's a good idea to only release it for Windows 8.
Not for me - I won't have a bar of it but then I don't really care about getting the ultimate graphics performance out of games on a PC. Actually, I don't even play games on a PC.
The thing people seem to be missing is that MS isn't going to sell DirectX to consumers so the whole "Win 7 or I won't use it" is irrelevant.
I, personally, know people who upgraded from XP to 7 specifically to utilise DirectX 11 for video games.
I expect that there will be very few important differences early on just as was the case with 9 vs 10 and 10 vs 11. But, as time goes on, the difference will be larger and there will be people who upgrade to Win8 for the purpose of utilising DX12.
How exactly will releasing DX12 on Windows 7 help MS?
I agree that they are not explaining themselves to the public well enough.
The problem, however, is that every official statement or response (like this) is almost entirely composed of vague or intentionally un-defined terms. There is too much PR, not enough honesty.
So, only people who are "connected" to "intelligence targets" are of interest to the NSA?
That nice but offers no comfort whatsoever until you define what criteria constitutes an 'intelligence target' and who is 'connected' to that target. Likewise every other statement.
Spying is conducted in a "measured" fashion? Great - 100% is a measure.
You "are not" tapping world leaders' phones? Superb. But were you?
You "have not" spread malware to a million PCs at once. Couldn't be happier, but could you?
As always with politicians and 'public servants'*, ask them a direct question and they'll answer a different one.
* - I use the term so very, very loosely . . .
@MrJonno
Essentially, yes, the security of your bitcoins is based on the security of the encryption.
The encryption is solid - at least within the current and predicted future computing environment. Public key cryptography is based on mathematical problems that are inherently difficult to solve. The security level of any given cryptographic implementation is therefore dependent on exactly how hard the maths is to solve.
Every such setup is 'vulnerable' to a brute-force attack, which is simply trying ever possible combination until one works. Good implementations should be designed so that such brute-force attacks are the only ones possible. In such a system, the security then becomes down to the number of possible combinations.
A huge leap in compute power would render such systems more vulnerable but the only forseen advance of significant magnitude is the much debated 'quantum computing'. We are a ways away from that yet.
Anyways, that just means that someone can't break the cipher without the (private) key. As is often joked, the cheapest way to break encryption is a length of rubber hose - i.e. just obtain the actual key.
A bitcoin 'wallet' is really just a digital keyring. It holds your collection of these private encryption keys and the corresponding parcels ('addresses') of bitcoins they access. This is why you might have heard stories of people losing bitcoins when their PCs have died - the list of private keys existed only on that PC and are thus in retrievable. That is why online wallets are popular - you are protected from losing access to your money due to PC failure. Of course, there is a risk there as well . . .
@MrJonno
You can't truly prove you ever owned a given bitcoin. Apologies if you already understand public key cryptography but, simplifying it, proving you own a bitcoin is like proving you own the contents of a locked briefcase by opening it with the code.
That's generally sufficient but doesn't really prove you own it, just that you know the combination. You might have watched while the real owner entered it or coerced them.
With something like Mt Gox, there is an extra level of credibility because Mt Gox sold you the briefcase and can, presumably, testify that you did indeed buy it. That assurance, however, is only as valuable as the witness's believability. In this case, that's not great . . .
Whether that satisfies the 'beyond reasonable doubt' criteria.
That'd the best non-currency analogy I can come up with at the moment. It's late; I'm tired.
@david Roberts
You are correct - Mt Gox is not a bank, in the traditional sense. I'd argue that an actual bitcoin bank is largely impossible - financially - due to the fluctuating value of BTC. The steady inflation built in to modern fiat currencies encourages investments. If you just hold the money it will decrease in value. So, you take your money and invest it - either directly or by putting it in a bank.
In doing so, you hope what you invest in earns money and thus your pile of money grows. Doing similar with Bitcoin is pointless because it would only be an unnecessary intermediate step. You would be changing your (e.g.) USD to BTC and then depositing in in a bank. To invest it, the bank would effectively have to convert it back to USD to buy shares. So what was the point using BTC?
People buy BTC as an investment - in the hope that it will increase in value. Therefore, the investments a bank might make are not helpful. If you think BTC will increase 20% then why would you want to invest it in shares that might, at a pinch, earn 7%?
I digress.
The thing to understand with Bitcoin is that you can't actually store the bitcoins. If you 'own' a bitcoin is not decided by anything specific you can produce as proof but the Bitcoin network's agreement that a certain amount of BTC has been transferred to you. In other words, to prove you have 1 BTC, you show that the transaction log records 1 BTC being sent to you.
As an analogy, instead of showing someone your bank statement, you show them you payslip.
Regarding duplicating bitcoins, you are right - there can't create bitcoins this way. What happens is that a bitcoin might be transferred to two different locations. Those transfers are then confirmed by the network. (The miners.)
If there are two conflicting transactions, only one will be kept. The simple (to understand, not accomplish) trick is to transfer BTC to a 3rd party and at the same time, to yourself. If your transaction to yourself is the one accepted by the network then the transfer to the 3rd party is now viewed not to have happened.
As you can't store or transfer a bitcoin, what you are effectively transferring is the right to transfer it to someone else. If the Bitcoin community agrees that that right has been transferred to you then you can use the BTC. If they don't, then you can't use it.
In the above exploit the person cheating the system relies on the Bitcon network accepting his transaction to himself rather than the one to the legitimate retailer
So theft, really, is just convincing the Bitcoin community that someone gave you the moneny, honest.
@Onno
The first problem to overcome is what happens if these bitcoins have now been used to may legitimate payments? If I managed to covertly transfer a bitcoin from you to me (i.e. 'steal' it) and then donate that coin to a charity, from whom do you get the coin back?
Or, if I 'steal' 10 bitcoins, add them together with 90 other bitcoins I have and then spend those hundred bitcoins in 100 x 1 BTC transactions, which 10 bitcoins do you recover?
But, let's assume that you aren't talking about actually getting those coins back but the thief having to pay back the value stolen - presumably in the equivalent USD.
The question then becomes identifying the thief. This is the problem and it's built into Bitcoin by design - the ability to achieve near-perfect anonymity.
Bitcoin is a difficult concept to explain to people who don't already understand public key cryptography. Apologies if this either is unintelligible or I am teaching some proverbial egg-sucking.
Imagine the Bitcoin world like a giant room filled with locked boxes. Each box has two components of note - the box number (e.g. A1, C6, etc...) and the key to unlock it. Boxes and keys are 1:1 - each boxes has one and only one key that will open it and each key is only good for unlocking one specific box.
Bitcoins are stored in these boxes and any given person might have any number of them.
These boxes have a small slot in them (like a letterbox or vending machine coin slot) to allow bitcoins to be put into them without requiring the key. If you want to give someone money, you only need the box number. If you want to retrieve that money, you need the key to open it.
These boxes can be created at will by people and there is no record of who created what box. There is no security guard watching over them nor a ledger listing who owns the key to each box. They are secure because only the person with the key can open the box - they are (effectively) unpickable.
If I want to transfer a bitcoin to you, the process goes like this:
1. - You tell me the number of your box (E12)
2. - I use my key to open my box (A3) and put the money in E12.
3. - The transaction is recorded as 1BTC going from A3 to E12.
There is an important addition, however - boxes can be arbitrarily created and destroyed. Both sender and reciever can just use the same box for all their transactions but this is far from necessary. What would 'normally' happen is:
As creation of these boxes is anonymous and not controlled, maintained, authorised or recorded by any central authority, there is no intrinsic method to link a box to it's 'owner'. You might know from previous transactions that I owned box X71 but that says nothing about what other boxes I might own.
The only way to prove who owns a box in practice is to match it to a transaction that requires or records personal details.
For example, if I buy from an online store for delivery, I would have to provide a shipping address. The store would record the transaction and that box number (X71) would be tied to my name.
If the theft went R106(Mt. Gox) > X71(?) > V122(retailer) then you can get information from the retailer to find out who, logically, must own box X71.
Unfortunately, anyone capable of pulling off the theft in the first place can be presumed to be smarter than that.
Of note, as you can arbitrarily create boxes, there is nothing to stop you taking 10 bitcoins from one box and then transferring one each to 10 new boxes, then destroying the original one. If I have 1 BTC in box X71, I can create a new box, Y93 and transfer the 1 BTC into that. I can do that as many times as I want and the transaction will show as:
R106(Mt. Gox) > X71(?) > Y93(?) > Y8373(?) > . . . > Z522(?) > V122(retailer)
Now, you can match Z522 to a name and address via the retailer but that doesn't mean you can match all the previous points in the transaction. It may well be the same person but how can you tell?
Also, to be clear, the thing was stolen is the keys to those boxes. Once the thief has those keys, they can be used to transfer the bitcoins to any specified box.
@Yet Another Anonymous coward
"What is to stop them saying - we were hacked at time X, we will restore all wallets to the point at X-1 from backups - and any transactions since then of those coins are assumed stolen goods?"
Who would they tell?
The raison d'etre of Bitcoin is, in this instance, the 'problem'. There is no central authority or trust source to assess this and then assert that the transactions should be rolled-back.
In the eyes of supporters, this is a virtue but it is not without risks and this is one of them.
Very loosely, one can compare it to SSL certificates. The process you are asking about is like a Certificate Authority (e.g. Verisign) revoking a certificate. This works (in theory) because everyone trusts Versign. This is the hierachical nature of PKI and it concentrates trust to a few entities.
Bitcoin, however, is more like the 'web-of-trust' concept.
This means that a single entity can't easily disrupt the whole system the way a CA could - for example if the US Government ordered Verisign/Symantec to revoke a bunch of otherwise valid certificates, or issue false ones.
This is a good thing but on the flip side results in the inability to revoke/reverse bad transactions*.
* - Of course, like any other transaction, you still have to deal with those funds being passed onto an innocent third party, which makes it rather unfair to reverse the transaction as it could leave honest, innocent people out of pocket. In Bitcoin, there is a further complication here as the anonymity means it is next to impossible to tell if the 'stolen' coins have been used in payment to a third-party. This is because you can transfer them back to yourself and all the network sees is a transfer between two different addresses.
@Tom 13
"First up, IIRC my old earth evolutionary geology . . ."
Also known as "geology".
Of course, in asserting that the flood was a natural process and yet sent by God, the logical extension is that the geological processes that 'caused' the flood had to be there already.
At that point we get into the mess of omnipotence vs omniscience (vs free will)[1].
If the geology was there anyway and simply utilised by God for his rather extreme lesson, then what would have happened if the natural processes were not available? Perhaps, in his omnipotence, he would have just created the required rain. But then why bother with the vents in the first place if that's possible?
If the idea that God had to just 'make do' with what was already in place is far too limiting on the creator of the universe then we must posit that the earth was fashioned with processes such as this for the purpose of wiping out humanity almost to a man and that this potential was sitting there, waiting until it was needed.
That implies either omniscience or rather a large measure of pessimism about his creation - building a doomsday switch into the earth just in case he needed to kill everyone for their wickedness.
If we assume the former premise - that God is omniscient - we must conclude that these world-wide processes were, at least in part, created for the purpose of wiping out humanity at a specific point in time[2]. Now, given that these processes include subduction and sea-floor spreading, which in turn contribute to frequent natural dangers like earthquakes, tsumanis and volcanoes, we are left with the inescapable conclusion that in order to accomplish the one-time genocide of all races and cultures on earth (with the exception of one small family), God created a planet volatile enough that millions of people have died before and since as a side-effect.
Not that a God down with rinsing the earth clean of people[3] would presumably be too concerned with a few children trapped helplessly under rock and rubble, their shattered bodies held in place as they slowly suffocate in pitch dark, or a whole town burnt alive by a super-heated pyroclastic flow, or even entire countries devastated by unstoppable walls of water.
So that's the dilemma. If it is asserted that the processes employed in the biblical flood were 100% natural then you must posit either a lucky God, a prepared but rather pessimistic God or an omniscient but callous God.
The only way to make this truly a natural process and yet caused by God is to accept an omniscient God who, in creating the planet, created a ticking time-bomb, set to go off at a particular moment. Free will, at least to the point of the flood, is, therefore, bunk.
Anything else requires magical intervention - either to open geyers that wouldn't have opened on their own, cause them to discharge water in ways (and volumes) they wouldn't have on their own, or to have created these geyers where they wouldn't have existed otherwise.
The choice is between magical intervention, which denies a purely natural, scientifically sound process or pre-ordained destruction, which denies free will - and also paints God as quite the nasty fellow. That behaviour is like buying a horse you know has a lame leg, then putting it down (by drowning it, no less) when it fails to win a race.
In other words, you can't claim the flood as a process that can be defended scientifically without it being caused by a God who is a right bugger - judging humanity by a measure he knows they cannot reach and then killing them in a most unpleasant manner for failing.
[1] - This paradox plagues the entire Bible but is most troubling in these acts of punishment.
[2] - Of course, an omniscient God could hardly claim to regret creating man (Gen 6:5-7, NIV) as he must have known that this, exactly this, and only this would happen. Which, of course, collides with any concept of free will.
[3] - I wonder if the children, wide-eyed with terror, reached out for their parents as they were swept away. I wonder what last thoughts accompanied those parents' last images - of their children convulsing and flailing helplessly as they tried to breathe, their lungs filling with water, unable to understand what was happening or why.
By my understanding, this is just some nice evidence that supports an already well-established theory: that surface water gets 'recycled' and 'cleaned' through this process, with the salts stripped as the water is carried down by subduction (and at the ridges/fissures) and evaporated and eventually returned to the ocean as fresh water through the geothermal vents*.
If something like this didn't happen, one can see that through evaporation and run-off, the ocean should steadily increase in salinity over time. Which would likely be bad.
The fact (if it is fact) that there may be enough water in the mantle to cover the tallest mountains does not mean that the story of captain two-by-two is suddenly plausible.
There are 3 fundamental problems, which are:
1. - It is highly doubtful that the release, and therefore depletion of such vast quantities of water from the mantle would do nothing more than cover mountains. I can't say what it would do but it seems somewhat similar to saying that just because volcanic activity produces magma, all the volcanoes in the world erupting simultaneously would just mean more magma.
2. - By what mechanism did this unprecedented outpouring suddenly stop? It can't be that all the proposed water was emptied as that would cover higher than the bible asserts.
3. - This process of water 'recycling' through the mantle is, as you can imagine, not quick on a global scale. The idea that the waters would just recede in anything approaching human time-scales is crazy.
In using this process as the proof of the Bibical flood, one must assert that this slow process suddenly accelerated enormously, halted abruptly and then all the extra water went back just as quickly as it came.
Further, even taking such liberties with the planet's otherwise slow and inexorable processes, one must find a way to address concerns about what such a stupendous amount of not only fresh but hot water would do to the ocean, which is governed by gradients in salinity and temperature.
As the saying goes, as well to be hung for a sheep as a lamb so if you're going to magically speed up, halt and reverse an otherwise stable process and then wave away the likely short and long term repercussions, you might as well just make the entire process magical without trying to co-op an existing process.
After all, the more you rely on purely natural processes, the less responsibility and control a magical vengeance fairy has in the affair. At which point, you have to throw out the whole punishment angle. And then the story becomes: "natural disaster threatens entire population; all-powerful and benevolent deity tells family to build boat."
* - The minerals, in turn are returned through volcanic/tectonic processes like the spreading of the sea floor and volcanoes.
Selling off public resources/utilities is never about cost-benefit analysis or the public good or actually achieving anything - it's about an ideological position.
People who hold to the ideological position that sees them selling off public assets always talk about 'market forces' and 'competition' as if these are somehow magical processes that instantly make any system into the best possible version.
In reality, 'market forces' translates to 'as expensive as the market will bear'.
The whole point of public ownership is to provide essential services to all, not just those who can afford them. For that reason, they are subsidised and regulated.
The ideological position that sees these resources privatised is the same position that has people calling for abolition of public health care. It is about business profit rather than social good.
@Phil.T.Tipp
Complicated is correct.
Long term, this planet will absolutely survive any human effects short of us somehow managing to mess-up geothermal processes.
The question really comes in what will happen short-term.
Sure, the planet may well be stable over the next 500,000 years but that doesn't mean it won't fluctuate in between - say in the next few hundred years. In geological scales, such timeframes are less than a blip but they can be pretty important to a single species.
None of that is to say that AGW is a hard fact or that people won't be 'more or less' fine. I simply mean to point out the flaw in the implication that just because the planet might be long-term stable, there is no cause for concern about our near future.
"If partnering with Facebook meant that we had to change our values, we wouldn’t have done it."
I have two comments . . .
First, from what I know of Koum (not much) he seems like a good bloke, focussed and committed. BUT. The calculations I have seen have him at ~$7bn thanks to this 'partnership'. Maybe he is the second-coming and maybe I am much the opposite but I can't think of any value I hold so dear that I wouldn't sell it for seven billion dollars. Can't judge him based on my own failings but damn, that's a lot of beer money.
Second, how would he stop Facebook doing exactly what he claims will never happen? I understand he will be on the FB board once this is done but even if he is as staunch a supporter of privacy in the board room as he claims in the media, he may still find himself 8-v-1 and is thus in no position to assure his customers of anything.
No offence to the guy - he seems nice enough, but if he's promising no changes, I'm not sure he is in a position to deliver - no matter how strong his resolve or good his intentions.
From what I see, this 'partnership', even if it collects no other information than phone numbers can help FB build a strong picture of which FB friends actually communicate with each other in the 'real world'. In the never-ending search for more 'relevance' in online advertising, this information is not trivial when matched up to Facebook profiles.
@wowfood
I'm kind of worried about these changes too. I'm picking up the game later this weekend so I guess I'll see.
The main idea of Dark Souls that really set it apart from other games is that dying is not a hindrance but a learning point. When you died in Dark Souls, there was no lasting damage. If you went the wrong way and died, losing your souls, well, you would try to go and get them back but if not then you tried another approach - no harm, at least nothing a bit of grinding wouldn't fix.
In DSII, there are two mechanics that work counter to this:
1. - When you die, your max health drops until you undo that with a human effigy.
2. - Decreased ability to farm souls through the magic disappearing enemy mechanic.
What that adds up to is dying becoming a hindrance, which is not the Dark Souls way. You should come back STRONGER (through experience) after you die a dozen times in an area, not weaker!!
Depending on the thresholds for (e.g) spawn-rate of effigies and how quickly enemies dissapers, as well as potential other options, such as using items to get the enemies to respawn (that would be nice) so you reset their counter the above points could be either a bit of a pain or largely irrelevant.
I guess I'll see!
"Zucks angry not because of the spying, it's because he might lose a bit of cash."
Maybe the government is acting like a parent and teaching people 'the hard way' that they shouldn't share so much information with people.
Well, of course not, but if that's what comes out of it then at least it's not without ultimate benefit to society. The fact that companies lke Facebook can be worth so much means that people don't really value their private information because they can be enticed to share it in return for the digital equivalent of shiny beads.
Perhaps now that people are waking up to the kinds of things that are done with the data they part with, there'll be a more sober relationship with such sites in the future.
I think my problem with this article is not the sentiment so much as the term used: "sysadmin".
What does that even mean in the context of "large-scale operations at a global scale", where you have entire teams devoted to just storage, others to databases, specific applications teams (with their own internal sub-specialist), network admins, dedicated backup techs, and so on?
Systems Administrator' is necessarily ill-defined until you specify what systems are being administered.
I don't think 'the cloud' - as a rule - is a scam.
It is a quick-start, hands-off option. Kind of like renting space in a serviced office to get going quickly and avoid all the hassle of looking for an office and getting it fitted-out and cabled-up, engaging phone companies, ISPs and insurance agents.
As an IT provider dealing with quite a few SMBs, I can assure you that a great many of them would just not go for it. Yes, saving money is nice and what company doesn't want that but it's just easier to go the Office route for most people.
Maybe that's not your experience but it is certainly mine.
And anyway, at those scales, most companies are buying PCs for people as and when they start and grab an OEM copy of Office for ~$250 at the time. They then keep that PC for 5 years until it becomes too slow or breaks down entirely. They then but a new PC and a new, $250 OEM copy of office.
I don't recommend Office, per se, as the VAST majority of both staff you are supporting and managers you are dealing with already know Office and would have used it in their last job. That means that it is the default choice.
To actively recommend a different product that they are unfamiliar with is opening yourself up for pain. They might love the saving and perhaps, like the AC's wife, even find it easier to use. BUT . . . the first time the CEO/manager/loud, annoying, self-important user runs into a problem, that is forgotten and it's all Dan's fault. (Which might be fine for you, but I happen to be Dan so I'll pass.)
Having dealt with SMBs for over a decade, I can tell you what the price of MS Office buys you: familiarity, features, integration. LibreOffice has some excellent features and for shared features, many of the LibreOffice implementations are far more flexible. That's great, but the first time the MD can't format a table the way he's used to or can't add annoying 'Smart Art' or save an auto-run presentation then a recommendation of LibreOffice will come back to bite you.
Worse when you find out that the latest version of <insert software here> has some whizz-bang feature they want to use but can't because the integration is for Office only. Maybe it's their off-the-shelf CRM system and it will only integrate with Outlook, so instead e-mails are direct SMTP and thus they don't see a copy in their sent items. Cue abuse. Maybe it's some PDF program that only works with Word. Yes, there are powerful PDF features in LO but "I don't understand why I can't just do it the way I always do it". Cue more abuse. Or maybe their accounting software opens reports in Excel. Not XLS format you understand: it directly calls Excel. Hard-coded. "You mean I have to save it first and then open it? It always used to work before!" Cure yet more abuse.
These issues will happen and they will blame you for recommending the software and they will expect you to help them with their issues with it without charge. I care about my clients and I don't want them to waste money but none of us have margins high enough to warrant the risks.
The story may well be different if you have the MD on side and the push comes from them but most small business owners don't want to deal with complaining users and neither do I.
Make no mistake, I use LibreOffice at home (still on XP!) but I am a techie and my needs are non-critical and if something doesn't work, I am happy to find out how to do it or install the appropriate extension and thereafter enjoy the flexibility. Businesses just want things to workt he way they are used to them working so they ask for and recieve MS Office and I don't counsel them to do otherwise.
"If government cyberattacks are normalized then the effects on the general public could be catastrophic, he noted, but there's no sign of a change of policy from the NSA."
Dear <every world government>,Your job - your only job - is to provide a better quality of life for your citizens. Before you do a single thing, make sure it passes that test.
You might want to actually ask those citizens from time-to-time too, just to make sure you're on the right track. Say, whether blanket, warrantless surveillance and widespread cyber attacks make them feel safe, uneasy or outright violated.
Sincerely,
The people (you might have seen us around.)
p.s. - Before you start congratulating yourselves on how well you're protecting your 'national interests' by spying and fighting and generally antogonising each other, ask yourselves if the people enjoyed the dick-measuring contest that was the Cold War, or if a folded flag in exchange for a son is fair trade.
"There was a good reason to go with FTTH."
There are many good reasons.
Sure, it costs more in the short term to do it properly the first time and yes, it would almost certainly have taken longer, but that's the case with most investments - even with the worst estimates of roll-out times, the infrastructure laid down in the FTTH plan would remain viable for decades after that.
* - VDSL(2) may well have a road-map for increased performance with all this talk of 'vectoring' but there are many assumptions there - we KNOW that fibre of the type installed can already support MUCH higher bandwidths. It also means that upgrades take place in fewer locations - the exchanges - rather than having to upgrade all the nodes, saving money and accelerating deployment.
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