Hey, there. Just so you have a more lucid dialog than some coward throwing insults, let's touch up on this subject.

1) Of course Russia isn't behind the protests. They'd be on the other side of the fence and be the ones behind outlawing protests to keep Yanukovych, who is pro-Russia, in power and the undercut the power of the protestors and the western half of the country that isn't too friendly with Russia.

2)

You DO realize that the USSR broke up and Ukraine is it's own nation now, right?
I mean, I get your overall point. That the EU is not some holy divine savior and joining the EU might not be the best for Ukraine. You're acusing them of backing or instigating these riots. But you also don't believe that Russia has anything to do with this turmoil, and that Ukraine is simply fated to fall under Russian dominion. Let's talk more about that defeatist attitude:

3) It's been a bit over a week. ONE WEEK. And in that time:

They got:
- Most of the bullshit laws repealed.
- A head position in government axed.
- Amnesty.

Now, Yanukovych remains, and there are still 3 bullshit laws that didn't get repealed. But do you think that all this was a pointless waste of time? Do you think they should have simply "dug in and waited"?

This is a pretty stale thread. News keeps moving forward and introspection isn't popular these days. But I'd really appreciate it if you look back at this and realize you were simply wrong, think about why you were wrong, fix that, and be a better person for it. Some things are worth fighting for.

Well, a free market involves freedom of movement of three elements: capital, goods, and labor. Here you only have 2 out of 3. The result is an imbalance, and since people don't like letting the labor move around they are trying to correct the imbalance using other incentives.

Who gets to even buy these presses if quite tightly controlled.

Are you talking about Canada or the USA?

To a naive person (me), it would seem that (in the USA) controlling who can buy a printing press would fall foul of the First Amendment. Tracking I can see, but controlling? It looks like the top of a very slipperly slope, since one could find an illegal use for just about any type of press.

In 772, Charlemagne began a war of extermination against the heathen Saxons, destroying the Irminsul, the chief seat of their religion. Santa Claus (known as Odin at that time, later Sinterklaus, then Santa) observed this, and at the end of 772, delivered elf-coal, high in carbon-14, to everyone in Charlemagne's forces. In the process, coal dust flew in unprecedented amounts from his sleigh, and this was naturally absorbed by the trees during 773.

I swear, if you people just knew your history a little better, you could maybe make this "science" stuff work better.

wonkey_monkey pointed out:

To which wonkey_monkey responded:

Thanks for calling my attention to his post.

An Anonymous Coward commented:

I sit corrected.

However, I'd like to point out that nothing in your analysis validates wisnoskij's contention that the mass of a black hole has to be considered as existing entirely within this universe, therefore preventing it from acting as a "wormhole" to another one. As I understand it, whether the event horizon is actually a hard boundary or a more diffuse one, we don't currently have a solid cosmological model of what's "on the other side" of that boundary. AFAIK, Hawking's position on the issue of whether information is, in fact, lost once it passes an event horizon has evolved over the years, and his most recent thoughts are more conceptual arguments than mathematical models. (That's apparently more a factor of his increasing communications disability than necessarily a weakness in his logic, but still ... I don't believe he's provided the math to back up his current mental model, yet.)

I'd be happy to have my grasp of the subject debunked by those who truly do understand the math involved. I make no claim whatsoever to that ability, myself - I just contend that wisnoskij was harumphing ex cathedra on the subject from the depths of his hat./p>

Of course Relativity is flawed. The point is that it's far less flawed than Newtonian mechanics.

Exactly.

Over 2,500 years ago, people believed the Earth was flat. Then people believed it was spherical. Then, around 400 years ago, people believed it was an oblate spheroid. Now we believe it's a lumpy potatoid (even taking local topography into account).

Those who believed the Earth was spherical were wrong (only Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo still believe this), but still, they were less wrong than those who believed it was flat.

Relativity is wrong. But it's less wrong than Newtonian mechanics.

If I had a +1 handy, I would mod it up too. Being Right and right is sufficiently rare in public discourse that we should encourage it where we can.

(Lest anyone think I'm having a go at small-government advocates, I am not. I'm lamenting on the execrable state of public discourse.)

wisnoskij blathered:

Sorry, but you can't prove that contention. Period.

In the Standard Model, black holes are singularities. BY DEFINITION, the laws of physics as we observe and understand them break down in singularities. The SM can't explain what is going on inside a black hole, AND NEITHER CAN YOU.

Unless you have a doctorate in cosmology or astrophysics, you doubtless are profoundly unqualified even to have an OPINION on the topic ... so, kindly STFU.

Thank you.

Yeah, we reluctantly buy Prime as a complement to Netflix (our cable is limited basic only). With the price increase, we'll have to decide if it is worth it. Hulu is $96/year, so that becomes a contender for filling out the Netflix "recent TV show gap".

Well, the unions fight pretty hard on this. NYC has had an automated line (the 7) for a couple of years now, but the union until recently made them man it with two people even though the driver was largely superfluous. The conductor has been superfluous for probably 30 years, but that's another discussion...

Personally, I don't mind taking the automation path slowly. Because of human nature, even a single incident could doom automation - despite the fact that there were dozens of human-caused errors in the meantime. And incidents like those in DC a few years ago show that even automation can be unsafe when stupid people chose to ignore repeated errors - the train-sensing circuit had been on the fritz for 18 months. There's probably a fault in the design of a system that can result in a crash after a single circuit fails, but I don't want to go there unless you do :)

The theory seems sound, but they already do this - we've had two fatal accidents this year alone. I think the reality is that robotic trains are more reliable.

That's true today as well. Inattentive drivers are probably more common than failed sensors, especially if said sensors are redundant and a failure of a single sensor results in the vehicle entering a fail-safe routine.

The definition of "tailgating" is a function of braking performance and reaction time. It is not tailgating if the safe distance is shorter because of improved reaction time.

:) More like a parking lot than a highway. GPS doesn't work well on the bottom level of the GW bridge, anyway... pretty much useless. I suspect that reliance on GPS cannot happen for these machines. But we don't rely on GPS - we look at exit numbers and such. No reason a computer can't do this. Heck, the government might even install navigation aids for the computers. As you said, people are already doing stupid things on the highways like driving through walls. With over 30,000 dying on the roads each year and thousands more injured, the computers don't exactly have a high bar to overcome.

I doubt it - they will rely on actuarial data. If these systems are a liability, you will pay more to have them... like a turbocharger or a penis. They are one of the few industries with almost carte blanche license to discriminate. In general, I agree that statistics are a terrible way to discriminate - but you would have to give up significant privacy if you want personalized rates. Some people do this now voluntarily, by letting the insurance company monitor their driving habits with an on-board data collection device. They already personalize your rates somewhat through your public driving record. In any event, you will pay more once computers are, in aggregate, safer drivers than humans.

Is this legal, or even a good plan? I have idea!

You absolutely have no idea.

Yeah, I accidentally missed the word "no" in my posting. I genuinely meant to type "I have no idea"