Comment Re:Not seeing the issue here (Score 1) 209
Also, and undercover cop can smoke a bowl with you and still arrest your ass for having/selling/using.
Comment Re:Not seeing the issue here (Score 1) 209
No need to bring Miranda into it. Before you are arrested, anything you say can be used against you, even if you have not been Mirandized. It is only after arrest that Miranda is an issue.
Comment Re:Not seeing the issue here (Score 2, Informative) 209
> And then the public defender you're assigned because you can't afford a decent lawyer
Hold on just a second. There are many fine public defenders who happen to be far better than just "decent". They will not, however, be able to dedicate much time to your case. THAT is the issue with many PD's. Not that they suck or are not "decent" but that they are over worked.
Comment Re:Not seeing the issue here (Score 4, Insightful) 209
> I'm fine with (cops lying to people)
If you or I lie to a cop, we can get charged with obstruction of justice. If they lie to us, they can get a commonadation.
And you're "fine" with that.
Some days it's easier to be a misanthrope than others. This is one of those days. Fuck you.
Comment Re:Science, bitches, that's *how* it works! (Score 2) 197
"wave-particle duality is simply the quantum uncertainty principle" gets a "no shit" straight away from me, though I guess a rigorous proof of it is kind of news.
That's how science work.
That more about how math works. Physicists did not care that the calculus of infinitesimal was not rigorous; see especially the Dirac-Delta function. It gave them answers that agreed with experiment which for a Physicist is the best proof. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I...
Comment Re:News at 11.. (Score 5, Informative) 719
Oh look! An advertisement from 1906 calling copyright infringers "pirates".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Using teh term "pirates" to refer to copyright infringers is nothing new.
Bitching about it, however, is.
Comment Dubious because facts (Score 5, Informative) 182
Marc Rogers disagrees strongly, and poitns at a long list of evidence that make it much more likely that it was a vengeful inside-job badly disguised into a Nork attack for unrelated publicity added-value:
- elements of language that do not fit north-korean lingo
- hardcoded filepaths indicating insider knowledge
- social-network savvyness unlike anything the DPRK ever did
- no mention of The Interview movie until after the possible tie with DPRK was suggested
Comment Re:Sandbox before browsing (Score 4, Informative) 83
> I'm running a browser in a VM... What malware?
Your faith in the security of VM sandboxes is misplaced.
It is trivial to write a program which can detect if it is in a VM. And then, attack the hypervisor and escape the protected environment. As virtualization has become more common, such malware has gone from academic exercises to real-world exploits.
http://www.symantec.com/avcent...
My favorite line:
Finally, the most interesting attack that malicious code can perform against a virtual machine emulator is to escape from its protected environment.
With virtualization becoming more and more common
Comment Re:Someone doesn't understand basic relativity (Score 1) 81
Right, but the sentence you are make fun of is talking about stabilizing the rocket as it is coming back into the atmosphere, ass first in a no longer particularly aerodynamic configuration as it is missing the whole second stage and payload section. Flight stability in the nose going first direction is much better than in the engine going first direction. They are not complaining how hard it is to go that last 10m to the landing; I agree with you that stability control at that point is pretty easy. You know the first attempt they made for power re-entry failed because the axial rotation of the booster caused fuel starvation to the engine due to centrifigal force. Full tanks and no rotation at launch save you from that worry.
And as for less mass being easier to stabilize - can you balance a pencil on your finger? How 'bout a broomstick?
And as for less mass being easier to stabilize - can you balance a pencil on your finger? How 'bout a broomstick?
Comment Re:it can be air filled (Score 4, Interesting) 200
Also mind the day duration: the Venus sidereal day is 243 Earth days. That makes for a worse than polar night, solar panel-wise, and that's not even counting the permanent, thick cloud cover. There just is no point in reaching the venusian ground and its lead-melting heat. It's far better to hang in the high atmosphere, well above the sulfuric acid clouds, and loft around in the 200 mph winds, circling the planet every 4 or 5 Earth days.
Comment Re:As with all space missions: (Score 1) 200
Meat starts cooking at around 60C.
Comment Re:Someone doesn't understand basic relativity (Score 0) 81
And I don't mean the speed of light kind.
At 14 stories tall and traveling upwards of 1300 m/s (nearly 1 mi/s), stabilizing the Falcon 9 first stage for reentry is like trying to balance a rubber broomstick on your hand in the middle of a wind storm.
EXACTLY the same as takeoff. NO difference.
Same amount of fuel? No, so not the same moments of inertia. During launch the engine is pushing in the direction of travel, during re-entry no. During launch, the aerodynamics include that nice fairing on the nose, which should be a bit less chaotic than coming engine first down. The period of 1300 m/s travel that you quote and compare to launch is not during launch (0 m/s) - it is probably closer to the period of maximum dynamic load and clearly during super sonic travel. The reverse part of that travel, the period of maximal dynamic load during re-entry in a non-aerodynamic configuration is rather more difficult than getting off the pad.
Economists Say Newest AI Technology Destroys More Jobs Than It Creates 688
HughPickens.com writes: Claire Cain Miller notes at the NY Times that economists long argued that, just as buggy-makers gave way to car factories, technology used to create as many jobs as it destroyed. But now there is deep uncertainty about whether the pattern will continue, as two trends are interacting. First, artificial intelligence has become vastly more sophisticated in a short time, with machines now able to learn, not just follow programmed instructions, and to respond to human language and movement. At the same time, the American work force has gained skills at a slower rate than in the past — and at a slower rate than in many other countries. Self-driving vehicles are an example of the crosscurrents. Autonomous cars could put truck and taxi drivers out of work — or they could enable drivers to be more productive during the time they used to spend driving, which could earn them more money. But for the happier outcome to happen, the drivers would need the skills to do new types of jobs.
When the University of Chicago asked a panel of leading economists about automation, 76 percent agreed that it had not historically decreased employment. But when asked about the more recent past, they were less sanguine. About 33 percent said technology was a central reason that median wages had been stagnant over the past decade, 20 percent said it was not and 29 percent were unsure. Perhaps the most worrisome development is how poorly the job market is already functioning for many workers. More than 16 percent of men between the ages of 25 and 54 are not working, up from 5 percent in the late 1960s; 30 percent of women in this age group are not working, up from 25 percent in the late 1990s. For those who are working, wage growth has been weak, while corporate profits have surged. "We're going to enter a world in which there's more wealth and less need to work," says Erik Brynjolfsson. "That should be good news. But if we just put it on autopilot, there's no guarantee this will work out."
When the University of Chicago asked a panel of leading economists about automation, 76 percent agreed that it had not historically decreased employment. But when asked about the more recent past, they were less sanguine. About 33 percent said technology was a central reason that median wages had been stagnant over the past decade, 20 percent said it was not and 29 percent were unsure. Perhaps the most worrisome development is how poorly the job market is already functioning for many workers. More than 16 percent of men between the ages of 25 and 54 are not working, up from 5 percent in the late 1960s; 30 percent of women in this age group are not working, up from 25 percent in the late 1990s. For those who are working, wage growth has been weak, while corporate profits have surged. "We're going to enter a world in which there's more wealth and less need to work," says Erik Brynjolfsson. "That should be good news. But if we just put it on autopilot, there's no guarantee this will work out."
ODF Support In Google Drive 40
An anonymous reader writes: Google's Chris DiBona told a London conference last week that ODF support was coming next year, but today the Google Drive team unexpectedly launched support for all three of the main variants — including long-absent Presentation files. You can now simply open ODT, ODS and ODP files in Drive with no fuss. It lacks support for comments and changes but at least it shows progress towards full support of the international document standard, something conspicuously missing for many years.
Comment Re:The video game crash of 1983 (Score 1) 191
The crash happened across platforms, though I have a limited view of it - I co-wrote Repton for Sirius Software, available on Apple II, C-64, and Atari 400/800. Sirius went out of business because 20th Century Fox failed a promised payment of $20mil. But I also worked for Infocom around '85 - and they were also crushed - maybe due to being text based.
