You can't be liable for having knowledge of information that people couldn't be bothered to encrypt. Executives can be lazy with their data and you can't be expected to do special efforts when they didn't do any to begin with.

I completely disagree. It is in fact your job to assist in this if you are IT. You are in a trusted position and if you gain access to something due to that trust, it is a duty to keep that trust (unless it reveals something so unconscionable that you have to remove yourself from that position of trust).

The rest, I agree with. An example was not something that happened to me but to a lawyer in a firm I administrated. The IT for another law firm for the plaintiffs in a lawsuit was having drinks bragging about some things he saw. He was making the statements as if in idolization of a couple of the lawyers at the firm. Turns out, one of the defendants of the same suit was there also and over heard some of the conversations. This led to finding evidence that completely nullified the lawsuit as the contract had been essentially broken but not officially broken by the plaintiffs before the breach in question they were suing over. In essence, the plaintiffs wanted out of a contract and were taking steps to void it before those steps ended up causing a failure in another party to the contract from delivering. Their steps to secure resources when they voided the contract removed the availability of resources from the market making the defendant in default of the contract obligations. Instead of voiding the contract, they decided to sue for the breach to recover expenses of setting up their in house facilities to do the contract work themselves- which they planned to do all along.

So even just telling friends outside of the job can cause things to come back at awkward moments. You have to forget you even noticed the information.

Even so, this shows what happens when you plan a one-shot operation with a single point of failure.

In this case, two: the drill itself and the seals. Either one means failure. When it's a one-shot operation with no provision for pause or repair, you're SOL. Fixable in this case? Yeah. For a fortune.

Repeat Latour's comment here:

(I have added [net] to indicate his argument is net heat transfer there, as Latour has explained many times elsewhere. I have also replaced "less than symbol" with [is less than] due to Slashdot's character restrictions.)

I repeat: you are completely (and wrongly) ignoring real-world conditions that apply to the experiment.

The experiment requires the passive plate to be some unspecified distance from the heat source. (This is a condition of the experiment; no contact is allowed since this is only about radiative transfer.) And no matter its configuration, it will radiate some of its absorbed energy outward to the chamber walls. This much we know.

The chamber walls C are actively cooled, although at a fixed power input. So it absorbs radiation from the internal space. We know at equilibrium T(c) will always be less than T at the source S: T(c) [is less than] T(s) because the wall is actively cooled. (We know for another reason too, but this is sufficient.)

We also know that the passive plate P will always be at a temperature less than that of the source, for the simple reason that no matter what its position, it does not absorb all the radiation from S. Or even if it did, as in the case of completely enclosing S, it would still re-radiate some of its absorbed energy out to the chamber walls C. Therefore as long as the conditions of the experiment are met, no matter what else varies such as relative mass, in this experiment T(p) will be lower than T(s). The amount is of no consequence, as long as it is non-zero (and it is).

Therefore, from S-B law, we can directly infer the following things:

T(c) [is less than] T(s) [net heat transfer is from source to walls, never the other way around]

T(p) [is less than] T(s) [net heat transfer is from source to plate, never the other way around]

We can also infer from the experimental conditions that T(c) [is less than] T(p), but that is irrelevant to the argument.

When equilibrium is achieved, these conditions still hold.

An elementary, obvious, and perfectly sound conclusion from this is that the source is not made hotter under any of these conditions. Even if plate P completely encloses source S, we know for at least two different reasons (greater radiative area, and the simple fact that it does radiate outward to the wall, which cools it) that T(p) will always be less than T(s), even at equilibrium.

Since the temperature of every other object is less than that of the heat source, there is no net heat flow TO the heat source, therefore the heat source does not become hotter. This is, and has been, the whole of Latour's argument, and it is valid. It is not crazy speculation by some nitwit, it is straightforward application of Stefan-Boltzmann law.

Q.E.D., indeed. If the above inequalities hold (and they do), Latour's conclusion is the only one that is mathematically valid.

I admit to being an ass there. Mea culpa. But it's irrelevant. As long as the power used by the source and the power used by the cooler are constant as required, any relationship between them has no bearing on the experiment.

He's making the distinction between phones you can purchase which were never part of a contract compared to those that were part of a contract at one time. It's not a contradiction as it's more redundant on itself if you insist on viewing it that way.

For instance, even if you purchase your phone from the carrier, you can purchase it outright without it ever being under a contract. That would be one not tied to a contract. Of course you can also purchase it under a contract in which it is tied to a contract.

What is this trollfest lately with all the bashing on republicans about shit taken completely out of context. I know there is an election coming up in which they are expected to cream the democrats but It's getting pretty idiotic when it is obvious that the bash is completely contrived, contorted, and shoehorned into the topic under discussion in ways that make reality itself blush for being so stupid.

So lets ride your example and stretch reality a little more.. except this won't be a stretch.

Yes, when those damn republicans insist you are free to do whatever you want with your life, you are able to move around freely without government control, you are able to eat, drink, relax, and participate in recreation at your own volition instead of the scheduled direction of the government, you have the ability to trade effort and value for compensation, you are second class to prisoners. So everyone vote democrat where the government will tell you exactly how to live your life- no large soft drinks for you fatty-, where the government will tell you when to work or where to live, what kind of car you can actually purchase if you are even allowed to get one.

Yes, this will be a triumphant day when there is no distinction between the current treatment of prisoners and wards of the state and the general populace at large. Everyone vote against those damn republicans who according to the GP are the only things holding this reality back.

See, I can pretend to be stupid too.

This is not about political parties, it is about direct responsibility of those in your care. It's why parents are required to provide health insurance and child support for their children after divorce and so on. Except when it is the government, the government is responsible.

I meant what I said. If Q1**4 is proportional to Q2**4, then Q1 is proportional to Q2. I did NOT say "directly" proportional. I don't mind being corrected when I make a mistake but that was not a mistake.

No. I am not aware of any "conservation of power" law.

I think he was being facetious.

Anyone paying attention enough to know congress is a do nothing would have had to pick up on how legislation works in order for that to mean anything to make it worth repeating.

I want to clarify my comment above:

The relevant part should have read:

The outward surface S0 (if that is the outward extent of earth system) has a surface area of 1.002 * Earth's non-atmosphere surface), and therefore its temperature will be measurably lower than that of heat source T. And therefore we have a net heat transfer proportional to T - T0, which is a non-zero quantity.

The same way you know that for traditional taxi services: they don't stay in business.

Sheesh. Is this really a question? How do you know when you buy a plum in the supermarket that it isn't poisoned? Is it just a wild-assed guess? Or is it more likely that purveyors of poisoned plums didn't get any repeat business?

I'm certain the park would issue bar-coded or electronic armbands to each child, so that the consumption could be tagged to a specific parent.

Candy Crush is a massive pig of a game, though. One that is close to collapsing under the weight of the bullshit they've shoved in there. The spash screens, side-game spam and extra garbage that rumbles into your face while you're trying to... well... get to the screens to crush candy, are really annoying. Thank goodness it's such a well-cloned game, because there are many lightweight competitors where you can actually play the game. King, the publishers of Candy Crush Saga, are a Zynga wannabe. Let's hope they die soon, the way Zynga is headed: a company that has grown to the point where they have way too many people trying to chisel money out of the players of their product. When a critical mass develops to the point where they have whole teams working on the splash screens, mini-games and diversions, the cubicle farm needs to be collapsed.

A lot of the games that have IAP are 'pay to win' games. One of the most popular games in the market from one of the successful developers is Hay Day by Supercell. It's essentially a 'play to win' game. My spouse plays it and has a lot of fun doing so but has never, ever, made an In App Purchase to do so. The leaderboards are completely meaningless and irrelevant to people who've never paid for 'gems' though, because the 'Top Players' are entitled rich children (one presumes) who've bought their way to the top. In all categories of 'Leader' on that game, the people who spend money are at the top. That's just how pay-to-win goes, and the game has to be fun on the merits of gameplay to be successful. Which Hay Day is. There is some peculiar sociology going on there, because the game's popularity is clearly NOT geared by being on the Leaderboard.

Nope. It would enable games with a 'trail' shareware version, and a 'paid' full version. There are many games that are distributed this way in the App Store. In particular, one of the market leaders, Minecraft Pocket Edition, is distributed this way.

The 'entitlements' model for 'upgrading' are just an alternative path. With a 'block IAP' checkbox, it would cease to exist.

A 15 minute refund period would be delicious. It would completely destroy the IAP marketplace. I'd be able to again buy high quality games for $5-15 and not be faced with game designers who focus on nickel-and-dime ripping me off. They'd actually have to work on making the game fun enough for me to be willing to pay for the non-trial version. Wolfenstein 3D and later Doom did this well with shareware trial versions. Similarly a whole bunch of games from that era: Jill of the Jungle, Commander Keen, etc.

"Disable In App Purchases" should be a checkbox in the settings for the App Market and it should simply render invisible any games that incorporate In App Purchases, just the way games for the Tablet don't appear in the Google Play market when I open the Google Play app on my cellphone.