Comment Note to Google Users: (Score 1, Insightful) 131
If Google can "remotely configure" your device, then so can someone else if they're determined enough.
Duh.
Duh.
Could be. If several witnesses see an assailant bludgeon someone on the sidewalk with an obscured object, then run into a house, the police may not be able to ascertain exactly what the weapon is, but they'd certainly have enough evidence for a search, and they could keep a record of any potential weapons seen in the house in case forensics can later get them a better description of the weapon used.
I don't think the question is really whether the judge can order such a thing. I think it's more of a question of whether it is justified in this case.
GP made a very good point. Search warrants are required to be particular, and to specify the particular thing(s) being searched for. If they don't know what they're looking for, broadening the search to turn it into a "fishing expedition" is not allowable.
The general principle is that the search should be as narrowly focused on particular evidence as can practically be managed. Is that the case here? It doesn't seem to be, but I'm not the judge, I don't know the details.
I have no objection to paying for ad-free stuff.
Free and Open Source (for just one example) shows that advertisement-free is a workable model and the people can not only profit from it, but others can benefit from it. Without advertising.
That is why I stopped when I read:
Everyone gets that advertising is what powers the internet, and that our favorite sites wouldn't exist without it
NO. Not everyone "gets" that, because it isn't true. And if your "favorite" site is using that revenue model, then maybe you're visiting the wrong sites.
I have been around long enough to have been on the internet when the most active places were "Bulletin Boards", and the BEST of the net was indeed free. And it continued to be so for a long time.
If it weren't for THAT (and not ad-driven sites) the internet would not have survived. But take away the ads, it would still not only exist, it might be a hell of a lot better.
Since it released hope, please, please open the box*.
"Hope and Change" was released 6 years ago, and pretty much all we've seen since have been the evils.
But there's no room in the budget for that due to the black budget takeover...
What a terrible thing to say about King Obama! Why, now we know it's true: the opposition really is racist!
There's just an opportunity in Siberia - just opened up this week. Current theories are giant sandworms, graboids, pingo's, ufo's or an alien missile base:
The ideal finding, of course, would be all of the above.
"Visitors: to ensure optimum relations with the locals, no anal probes will be allowed beyond this point. You may check them in at Customs and reclaim them on your return home.
"Mind the sandworms."
Without more than a passing familiarity with economics, the point of this exercise seems to me to be to illustrate the way money works without centralization. Isn't this in fact how the international money trade works?
No.
Money, pretty much by definition, is a standard medium of exchange. It might fluctuate in value a bit here or there, but if it isn't relatively stable, then it isn't good money in the first place. An example of that is the hundred trillion dollar note in Zimbabwe currency.
This experiment would remove any standard: a "coin" would be worth vastly more to one person than another, based on completely arbitrary definitions of "value".
So it isn't a standard -- it's kind of the opposite -- therefore it isn't "money", in any conventional sense. But then neither were Zimbabwe dollars.
Figure out what level of energy use, as a whole, is acceptable by your calculations. Then figure out how much that means you get to use. Make sure to include all forms of energy usage, such as heating and energy used in building and delivering goods. Adjust your energy use to meet that level, and see how that goes. Then we can talk. Otherwise, kindly STFU.
The reason I say this is not because I'm against trying to reduce energy consumption, I think conservation is always a good idea when practical, but because I'm sick and tired of hypocritical online eco-whiners. They'll bitch about how "people" should do something yet are unwilling to do it themselves. Somehow they see it as ok to bitch that others should be willing to make sacrifices but don't make any themselves.
So put up or shut up. Don't whine that "people" need to change their energy use, but then continue to live an energy intensive first world lifestyle. You are people too. If you cannot or will not adjust your usage, why would you assume anyone else would be willing?
You are incorrect. The camera's were conceived as an FHWA program for specific intersections to reduce fatalities.
Um, I really hate to have to tell you this, but what they were "conceived" for is very different from what they are actually used for.
The camera's actually did reduce fatalities at some of those high fatality intersections.
But by now we also have LOTS of statistics saying that in many cities, they actually increased not just the number but also the average severity of accidents. I am aware this is counterintuitive, nevertheless it is true.
I think a more accurate description of the Bitcoin community would be "highly greedy" or "has a poor understanding of economics". I don't think technical has anything to do with it. In fact if you've some technical knowledge, some understanding of the size of the financial system, and then knowledge about the bitcoin protocol you quickly come to the realization that it has a deal breaker problem (it has several in fact) and that is that it can't scale to be the amazin' world wide currency the faithful want it to be, it can't handle the transaction load that things like the Visa network does, because of the nature of the protocol.
So all the technically savvy people I know do not involve themselves in bitcoin.
Basically I see a few types of people who are in to bitcoin:
1) Hedge fund traders/scammers/etc. Basically people out to make a quick buck. They don't believe in Bitcoin other than they believe they can make money on it due to the volatility, complete counterparty risk, etc. It is just a market to be exploited and left.
2) Self described "Crypto-anarchists" aka "greedy wannabe libertarians" who think that bitcoin will free them from the tyranny of having to pay taxes for such unnecessary things like roads, clean water, and such. They like it because they think it'll lead to a world where they get to keep their money and be free of laws.
3) Doomsdayers/gold-bugs who have a poor understanding of the concept of money (namely that it is a theoretical construct and always has been, regardless of what item is used to represent it) and think that the world and economy are doomed, but if you have the right magic currency, you'll be ok. Because bitcoin has something "backing it" that makes it worth something no matter what and thus it is great.
4) People using it for money laundering, like the Silk Road. They use it because they figure it is harder to trace than dollars/euros/etc and so use it for payment for illegal items.
You pay taxes in US Dollars in the US. You need to convert anything to that. Like if you sold a bunch of goods to someone in Europe and got paid in euros. No problem, and you can keep some of that in Euros if you like, but you need to sell some of those Euros to a bank (or other entity) and get dollars to pay the IRS. They only take dollars.
The study you linked to about overestimations basically makes the "only atmospheric warming" argument, which is what creates the illusion of "the pause."
The study I linked to makes no such argument. That is a straw-man. What the study shows is that surface temperature warming has been about half of what an average of all models projected. (Note that "surface temperature" is actually atmospheric temperature near the surface.) Regardless of whether there changes happening elsewhere, the models still got it wrong. That is the point. The models are flawed.
In case you weren't looking at the right one, it's this one specifically:
I admit that I had missed your second link. But this is hardly proof of anything. You brought us right back to the original issue: whether (and how) the datasets like GISS, HadCRUT etc. have been manipulated. It isn't valid to use that data as proof of itself. In order to demonstrate anything you have to compare it to something else. Like, for example... satellite data!
I can only assume your problem with the "97%" meta-study result was not considering those that didn't express a position on the issue in their abstract.
I don't know why you can only assume that. Criticism of that purported "study" are all over the place. Here are two examples from a climate scientist. And there are more. Many more. Which are very easy to find with any search engine. Probably the most relevant comment, which many of these criticisms state in various ways, is the following (yes, it's Monckton but pay attention to what he says, not who he is):
"The non-disclosure in Cook et al. of the number of abstracts supporting each specified level of endorsement had the effect of not making available the fact that only 41 papers -- 0.3% of all 11,944 abstracts or 1.0% of the 4014 expressing an opinion, and not 97.1% -- had been found to endorse the quantitative hypothesis, stated in the introduction to Cook et al. and akin to similar definitions in the literature, that 'human activity is very likely causing most of the current GW (anthropogenic global warming, or AGW)'."
They care because anybody can write a label saying "smallpox virus" and stick it on a vial. But if the vial actually *does* contain smallpox virus, then there were flawed procedures that let that virus be sent out to East Bumfuck with no records kept. And those flawed procedures might still be in place, in which case it is urgent that they get fixed.
That does make sense. But the interesting thing is, we already know there are flawed procedures in their improved procedures (reference the containment failures in recent years), so I would argue that they are actually increasing public risks by doing it this way.
I could be wrong. Maybe there are still really big, undiscovered holes in their procedures that need to be fixed. But there are already pretty big known holes.
Meile will do this. It'll cost you though. High end appliances, with a very high end price tag.
To the systems programmer, users and applications serve only to provide a test load.
