Comment Re:Looks interesting but I am wary... (Score 1) 265
--If you're stuck on Windows, try mobaxterm. Way more features than putty.
Submission + - Californians Gets Past the Yuck Factor With 'Toilet to Tap' Water Recycling 1
HughPickens.com writes: From a marketing point of view, using treated sewage to create drinking water is a proposition that has proved difficult to sell to customers. Now John Schwartz writes in the NYT that as California scrambles for ways to cope with its crippling drought and the mandatory water restrictions imposed last month by Gov. Jerry Brown, enticing people to drink recycled water is requiring California residents to get past what experts call the “yuck” factor. Efforts in the 1990s to develop water reuse in San Diego and Los Angeles were beaten back by activists who denounced what they called, devastatingly, “toilet to tap.” Orange County swung people to the idea of drinking recycled water with a special purification plant which has been operating since 2008 avoiding a backlash with a massive public relations campaign that involved more than 2,000 community presentations. The county does not run its purified water directly into drinking water treatment plants; instead, it sends the water underground to replenish the area’s aquifers and to be diluted by the natural water supply. This environmental buffer seems to provide an emotional buffer for consumers as well.
In 2000, Los Angeles actually completed a sewage reclamation plant capable of providing water to 120,000 homes — the Donald C. Tillman Water Reclamation Plant in Van Nuys.The plan was abandoned after public outrage. Angelenos, it seemed, were too good to drink perfectly safe recycled water — dismissed as “toilet to tap.” But Los Angeles is ready to try again, with plans to provide a quarter of the city’s needs by 2024 with recycled water and captured storm water routed through aquifers. ”The difference between this and 2000 is everyone wants this to happen,” says Marty Adams. The inevitable squeamishness over drinking water that was once waste ignores a fundamental fact, says George Tchobanoglous: “When it comes down to it, water is water. Everyone who lives downstream on a river is drinking recycled water.”
In 2000, Los Angeles actually completed a sewage reclamation plant capable of providing water to 120,000 homes — the Donald C. Tillman Water Reclamation Plant in Van Nuys.The plan was abandoned after public outrage. Angelenos, it seemed, were too good to drink perfectly safe recycled water — dismissed as “toilet to tap.” But Los Angeles is ready to try again, with plans to provide a quarter of the city’s needs by 2024 with recycled water and captured storm water routed through aquifers. ”The difference between this and 2000 is everyone wants this to happen,” says Marty Adams. The inevitable squeamishness over drinking water that was once waste ignores a fundamental fact, says George Tchobanoglous: “When it comes down to it, water is water. Everyone who lives downstream on a river is drinking recycled water.”
World Health Organization Has New Rules For Avoiding Offensive Names 186
sciencehabit writes: Last week The World Health Organization (WHO) decided to address not only the physical toll of disease but the stigma inflicted by diseases named for people, places, and animals as well. Among the existing names that its new guidelines "for the Naming of New Human Infectious Diseases" would discourage: Ebola, swine flu, Rift valley Fever, Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, and monkey pox. The organization suggests researchers, health officials, and journalists should use more neutral, generic terms, such as severe respiratory disease or novel neurologic syndrome instead. “It will certainly lead to boring names and a lot of confusion,” predicts Linfa Wang, an expert on emerging infectious diseases at the Australian Animal Health Laboratory in Geelong. “You should not take political correctness so far that in the end no one is able to distinguish these diseases,” says Christian Drosten, a virologist at the University of Bonn, Germany.
Comment Re:We're so screwed. (Score 1) 237
How about we disregard what EVERYONE thinks and go by what the law says. How's that 4th amendment go again?
Thanks, you've just demonstrated my point, pretty much exactly. Can we get some chants for Articles II and III? I'm sure that will be far less popular, but highly relevant.
You can chant "4th Amendment" till you're blue in the face, as is common here, but if the issue at hand isn't covered by the 4th Amendment then the 4th Amendment is irrelevant. Even if the 4th Amendment does apply, its application may not be what you expected.
The 4th Amendment to the US Constitution is simply law, not a magic talisman able to repel all things people here find unpleasant.
Comment Re:We're so screwed. (Score 1) 237
Considering that our country was founded on the idea of consent of the governed [wikipedia.org], I'd say that "what the mob believes" regarding what liberty requires is exactly where that line falls.
If it wasn't for that pesky Constitution and the actual body of law from it.
FWD.us To Laid-Off Southern California Edison Workers: Boo-Hoo 612
theodp writes: Speaking at a National Journal LIVE event that was sponsored by Mark Zuckerberg's FWD.us and Laurene Powell Jobs' Emerson Collective, FWD.us "Major Contributor" Lars Dalgaard was asked about the fate of 500 laid-off Southern California Edison IT workers, whose forced training of their H-1B worker replacements from offshore outsourcing companies sparked a bipartisan Senate investigation. "If you want the job, make yourself able to get the job," quipped an unsympathetic Dalgaard (YouTube). "Nobody's going to hold you up and carry you around...If you're not going to work hard enough to be qualified to get the job...well then, you don't deserve the job." "That might be harsh," remarked interviewer Niharika Acharya. Turning to co-interviewee Pierre-Jean Cobut, FWD.us's poster child for increasing the H-1B visa cap, Acharya asked, "Do you agree with him?" "Actually, I do," replied PJ, drawing laughs from the crowd.
Amazon's Delivery Drones Will Be Able To Track Your Location 99
stowie writes: According to the filing with the USPTO, the e-commerce giant's delivery drones will be able to communicate with each other, find the best flight path available, and update the delivery location as a customer changes location. Package delivery locations will be updated as customers move around, so a package can come to you at work or home, depending on where you are when your shipment is ready — including pulling location data from a smartphone. There will also be relay locations, allowing drones to drop off packages for further transport, or to recharge or swap batteries. Amazon even supplies a mockup of what its delivery drone could look like, including eight propellers, two removable power modules and much more.
Comment Re:We're so screwed. (Score 1) 237
I think if you examine the US Constitution for the acceptable means to alter its contents that street protests and tirades on Slashdot are not among them. The law is what it is until properly changed.
Comment Re:We're so screwed. (Score 1) 237
You can't pardon and release those that aren't imprisoned. How and why were they imprisoned, and by whom? The government is responsible for more than one thing, and is granted the power to do it. Ignoring that fact does not make it go away.
Comment Re:We're so screwed. (Score 1) 237
I disagree. They are not tasked with keeping us safe; they are tasked with safeguarding our liberties.
I guess you aren't a big believer in the US Constitution then. There seem to be things like the army, navy, militia, and common defense mentioned. I also see that the President is given the power to grant Pardons. Might some people be in jail for breach of peace, reducing the "safety" of others? You might think so.
Preamble to the United States Constitution
We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
Clause 1: Command of military; Opinions of cabinet secretaries; Pardons
The President shall be Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the Militia of the several States, when called into the actual Service of the United States; he may require the Opinion, in writing, of the principal Officer in each of the executive Departments, upon any Subject relating to the Duties of their respective Offices, and he shall have Power to grant Reprieves and Pardons for Offenses against the United States, except in Cases of Impeachment.
Your oversight is understandable. People here are all about Amendments 1, 2, 4, and 5. They don't really care much about any other part of the Constitution, and that inattention shows.
Comment Re:We're so screwed. (Score 1) 237
It just goes to show how completely terrible human beings are at estimate the risk of extremely rare events.
As you have just demonstrated again. It is only "extremely rare" (for some values of "extremely) in the West, at present, and not necessarily in other parts of the world. This is subject to change.
Comment Re:The Real Question (Score 1) 237
Senator Rand Paul, a Republican presidential candidate who has made opposition to overbroad surveillance central to his platform, tweeted: “The phone records of law abiding citizens are none of the NSA’s business! Pleased with the ruling this morning.”
How fast would his attitude towards surveillance change if were elected president?
Probably either after his first National Intelligence briefing, or after the first massacre.
Comment Re:We're so screwed. (Score 1) 237
.... keeping in mind that what liberty requires in regard to restrictions may be different than what the mob believes.
Comment Re:For those who can read... (Score 1) 237
Amendment IV
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
The issue here isn't the ability to read, but applying the law, which in this case is the Constitution.
Previous court cases have settled the question regarding the treatment of phone records: they are ordinary business records.
Here is what they are not: your person, your papers, your effects. They aren't kept in your home.
If you don't like the law, work to get it changed. Mod bombing me will have no effect on the law.
Since we're quoting the US Constitution, there is another part of it that applies to these questions that for some reason nobody wants to pay attention to:
Clause 1: Command of military; Opinions of cabinet secretaries; Pardons
The President shall be Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the Militia of the several States, when called into the actual Service of the United States; he may require the Opinion, in writing, of the principal Officer in each of the executive Departments, upon any Subject relating to the Duties of their respective Offices, and he shall have Power to grant Reprieves and Pardons for Offenses against the United States, except in Cases of Impeachment.
As noted above the previous section from Wikipedia:
In the landmark decision Nixon v. General Services Administration Justice William Rehnquist, afterwards the Chief Justice, declared in his dissent the need to "fully describe the preeminent position that the President of the United States occupies with respect to our Republic. Suffice it to say that the President is made the sole repository of the executive powers of the United States, and the powers entrusted to him as well as the duties imposed upon him are awesome indeed."
Microsoft Releases PowerShell DSC For Linux 265
jones_supa writes: Microsoft is announcing that PowerShell Desired State Configuration (DSC) for Linux is available for download in form of RPM and DEB packages. DSC is a new management platform that provides a set of PowerShell extensions that you can use to declaratively specify how you want your software environment to be configured. You can now use the DSC platform to manage the configuration of both Windows and Linux workloads with the PowerShell interface. Microsoft says that bringing DSC to Linux is another step in the company's "broader commitment to common management of heterogeneous assets in your datacenter or the public cloud." Adds reader benjymouse: DSC is in the same space as Chef and Puppet (and others); but unlike those, Microsofts attempts to build a platform/infrastructure based on industry standards like OMI to allow DSC to configure and control both Windows, Linux and other OSes as well as network equipment like switches, etc.
