Submission Summary: 0 pending, 50 declined, 17 accepted (67 total, 25.37% accepted)
From the start of his presidency, Kennedy feared that the Pentagon brass would overreact to Soviet provocations and drive the country into a disastrous nuclear conflict. The Soviets might have been pleased—or understandably frightened—to know that Kennedy distrusted America’s military establishment almost as much as they did.
TFA puts a bit of historical context into the recent discussions we have been having. "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it". (George Santayana).
Hospital’s network administration desires to provide a reasonable level of privacy, users should be aware that the data they create on the organization’s systems remains the property of... Hospital.
Not sure how that is going to work out overall, seems a bit over arching — like what, precisely, is 'data'? But the thing that really has me annoyed because it clobbers my work flow is the fun statement:
All PCs, laptops and workstations should be secured with a password-protected screensaver with the automatic activation feature set at 10 minutes or less, or by logging-off when the host will be unattended.
My point being that a generic, hardcoded time to lock the workstation is a dumb idea, especially when many of the computers are located within a controlled environment. Logging in a couple of dozen times per day is not how I would define a productive use of my time.
Has anyone else found an 'authorative" pontification of these ideas, especially in regards to healthcare systems in the US? (Hopefully the rest of the world isn't as batshit insane as we are).
Writing for the court, Justice Clarence Thomas said isolated DNA is a “product of nature and not patent eligible merely because it has been isolated.” At the same time, Thomas said synthetic molecules known as complementary DNA, or cDNA, can be patented because they require a significant amount of human manipulation to create.
Seems perfectly sane. Raw genes, the ones you find in nature are, wait for it — natural. Other bits of manipulated DNA / RNA / protein which take skill and time to create are potentially patentable. Oddly, Myriad Genetics stock actually rose on that information.
"In a very small area, less than 10,000 square miles, we have counted more than 100 fountains, or torch-like structures, bubbling through the water column and injected directly into the atmosphere from the seabed," Dr Semiletov said. "We carried out checks at about 115 stationary points and discovered methane fields of a fantastic scale – I think on a scale not seen before. Some plumes were a kilometre or more wide and the emissions went directly into the atmosphere – the concentration was a hundred times higher than normal."
Given that current climate data is indicating that the consensus models may be underestimating the rate and extent of climate change, additional rapid rises of another greenhouse gas may foretell faster and more dramatic changes than are currently being envisioned.
Hold on to your butts.
Cyberwar watchers took notice this month when a leaked intelligence memo claimed Russian hackers had remotely destroyed a water pump at an Illinois utility. The report spawned dozens of sensational stories characterizing it as the first-ever reported destruction of U.S. infrastructure by a hacker.
Except that the report was a completely untrue and the reality much more prosaic. The pump burned out, as they do from time to time. The mysterious Russian connection was due to one of the designers of the system calling in to check some logs after he was urgently contacted about some issues with the plant five months before the pump eventually failed. Normally this would not create a problem except for the small detail that we was on vacation at the time.
In Russia (insert 'In Soviet Russia' jokes here). The fact that someone had logged into the system from a foreign country fully five months before the pump failed was somehow conflated into a Stuxnet-type operation in the bowels of the American security watchdogs.
And we think we're paranoid.
But even in their most dire assessments, some experts had not expected even bursts of re-criticality to occur, because it was unlikely that the fuel would melt in just the right way — and that another ingredient, water, would be present in just the right amounts — to allow for any nuclear reaction. If episodes of fission at Fukushima were confirmed, Mr. Koide said, “our entire understanding of nuclear safety would be turned on its head.”
This view does not seem to be supported by some experts. A report in Nature News Blog notes that
... experts say that small amounts of fission in the reactor core would not be that surprising, and there seems no danger of either a self-sustaining critical chain reaction or significant release of fission products into the environment.
and further
"This does not look like a major release of radiation from the plant, but it is worth noting that even if the fuel is cooled, there is still a small amount of residual natural fission of the large amount of uranium fuel in the core," said Paddy Regan, a nuclear expert at the University of Surrey in the United Kingdom, adding that the amounts released would be far less than were the fuel to go critical. The detected xenon, he said, "does not appear to show any new radiological hazard from the disaster.”
Any one else want to chime in?
"Plastic gun. Ingenious. More coffee, please." -- The Phantom comics