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Comment Foundations of Meritocracy (Score 1) 172

So left-right (analytical thinking, creativity) balance is cited as increasingly crucial to success in the marketplace, and has been shown to deteriorate when influenced by the promise of monetary gain. Interesting -- if one thought for one moment that given a random sample of the population, the mere promise of financial reward could somehow enhance those qualities. But in science it is often necessary to demonstrate a principle, however obvious, before moving on to more interesting experiments. Any meritocracy should provide numerous tools useful in identifying those few individuals naturally exceptional in this area (absent any incentive), and whose attention top employers will naturally compete for (often financially). For the talented, financial reward is not a stimulant, but potentially a retainer and definitely an enabler -- it ensures these individuals' needs are met outside the workplace, so they are better able to focus on the higher level problems at hand. It would seem the question here becomes: how do organizations identify, attract and foster this talent amongst the general workforce, knowing financial reward is not the answer? It would seem we should continue to focus on predisposition, identifying those individuals demonstrating a high degree of interest in an array of left-right subject areas, and an ability to attack problems in novel ways.

Comment Re:Pre-internet history? (Score 1) 200

SMTP message bodies are quite often HTML. POP and IMAP may suffer the same fate as NNTP in another 10-20 years if the signal-to-noise ratio continues to diminish (goes from 99% to 99.999% spam). BitTorrent uses HTTP for tracker communications, but will never be considered mainstream while it is primarily used for copyright infringement, and IM clients may not be running on port 80 yet but they are increasingly using HTTP (if not HTML formatting as well), specifically to minimize the barrier to adoption posed by firewalls. So these examples support the spirit of my previous observation quite well, thanks.

Comment Re:Enforcement? (Score 2, Interesting) 296

Difficulty in policing something isn't a reason to allow a crime to be legal.

The jury has been out on that for a few hundred years now. Consider 1.) An unenforceable (de jure) law ultimately rewards the dishonest while punishing only the honest who confess their crime (Hobbes). And 2.) From a political standpoint, unenforceable legislation creates the appearance of real moral authority without risk of alienating those constituents who would be punished if were enforceable. Public disregard for enforceability therefore promotes dishonesty of both the citizen and the official -- exactly the sort of business an ethical society should avoid.

Comment Carbon Footprint (Score 1) 251

Ok this may not be quite newsworthy but, it's Sunday right? Anyway, the energy consumed by 26 million CPUs running at or near 100% utilization for 15 or so minutes each day translates to a considerable corporate carbon footprint. It *must* be possible to halve these requirements without impact to actual gameplay.
Space

Europe Launches Flood-Predicting Satellite and Test Probe 28

MikeChino writes to mention that the European Space Agency has launched a pair of satellites, one that will pinpoint accurately the future location and intensity of floods and droughts, and the other aimed at testing new tech. Launched on a Russian rocket launcher from the Plesestk cosmodrome, the SMOS probe will measure soil moisture, plant growth, and ocean salt levels across the globe. The measurements gathered by the SMOS probe can be used to track ocean circulation patterns and soil moisture — data that can be used to predict quickly drought and flood risk in certain areas, as well as the intricacies of the planet's climate cycle. The other satellite, a smaller demonstration probe dubbed Proba 2, will test 17 new technologies ranging from a new wide-angle view camera to a xenon-fed resistojet thruster.

Comment P2P = Honeypot (Score 1) 241

1. Legal interpretation aside, this guy practically turned himself in leaving such an obvious digital trail. Had he been intercepting the mail he would have been much harder to track down. Unless it can be shown that making the act of viewing documents illegal will reduce the incidence of identity theft, it would seem the preservation of freedom on this topic remains in our best interest.

2. Before grabbing document x (most likely shared by mistake), ask yourself whether you want to be on the shortlist with morally-challenged folks like this guy.

Comment Re:irresponsible? (Score 1) 594

The example you cite has nothing whatsoever to do with the program, which defines a 'clunker' as a vehicle that gets a max combined economy of 18 MPG. The new vehicle must get no less than 22 MPG. Assuming most of these trade-ins will not get exactly 18 MPG (say 15 is the avg here), and most trade-ups will not get exactly 22 MPG (say 28 is the avg here), the net effect of the program may be to halve the overall fuel requirements of that portion of the populace who participated in the program.

The sort of freedom you cite, the freedom to disregard, is exactly the sort of attitude that if left unchecked will result in the decline of your country. Cheers.

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