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I think you over-interpret

starving people have no food allergies

Not every food allergy is deadly. Some, perhaps most, are only very inconvenient. Flatulence, bad rashes, whatever. While in normal times people rightfully stay away from perhaps embarrassing or even painful, but not immediately deadly side effects, starving people don't have this luxury. I think above proverb quite nicely summarizes this fact.

I've always been curious as to what happens when you do. How much do they want for the fake viagra? Do they just take the money and run, or send you a bottle of sugar pills? Do some people buy again?

I think what you said is kind of obvious. No one says "starving people have no food allergies" expecting that to mean that starvation magically cures allergies.

Either die from their food allergies or figure out how to survive them. It doesn't mean they don't have them.

There is a crazy part of our population that thinks that what ever we did before we had civilization was better. Like "modern medicine" is somehow worse than eating some crazy diet that people think (despite double blind tests to the contrary) solves the same problem. This "starving people have no food allergies" is of the same thinking. Its like people forget how high our mortality rate used to be, and how short our life expectancy was.

This reminds me of the work by Neal Stephenson which was also a good read about trans-oceanic cables.

Spam will persist as long as anyone chooses the last option; even if it's over a billion-to-one odds against it and the whole planet hates you.

Plus, alterations in the Atlantic currents could be disastrous for a good part of europe.

Reminds me of one of my favorite quotes, direct from the History Channel's Modern Marvels episode on toilets & sanitation:

You realize how bad the situation was if you look at the palace of Versailles. A fortune was spent in constructing it. It had these wonderful halls of mirrors, elaborate chandeliers, and you might have a thousand people being entertained. Eating and drinking copiously, but where did they go to the bathroom? There was not a single bathroom in the entire elaborate palace. And the answer is, they went in the stairwells. One of the reasons the French applied so much perfume during that period was to overcome all of the indoor odors from people relieving themselves.

And the idea that a man walks on the left side of the female dates back to this time. It was polite for him to get hit by the contents of the chamber pot and spare the woman.

Side benifit being a better meat.industry

Viva ventilation!!!

The overarching thought for centuries was that the chimney was invented to flue smoke from an abode. Not so, it seems, given the coincidence of chimney technology against the upswing of cheese consumption by lactose intolerant people.

With flash you could have a call back at the end of the video to indicate that it was played all the way through. Of course if you know that it calls back at the end you could just simulate that call back...

The visibility of it is kind of impossible to enforce, as far as I know. At the end of the day you are sending software to run on a random, foreign environment, its not going to be easy to make sure it does what you want it to, especially in a sand-boxed environment.

I imagine its a back and forth cat and mouse between those trying to simulate views and those paying the advertising bills.

I guess if the question is if a human is present, you'd need a captcha. But Who the hell want's to fill out a captcha in order to view an advertisement?

So you have people you want to view your ad actively trying to avoid it, while those you don't want to see the ad ( robots ) want to see the ad. That's a tough nut to crack.

Your point is that he built his theory from the work of people before him? Like pretty much every scientist throughout history?

"If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants." -Newton

Run off back to stormfront..

Every element of E=m(c^2) can be found in the work of Einstein's predecessors.

Einstein gets credit for being the first to line up all the elements correctly but he wasn't the one who identified the mathematical elements - energy, mass, and the speed of light as a mathematical constant were introduced into the narrative by others whom do not receive anywhere near as much credit as they should.

1850: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fizeau-Foucault_apparatus
1881: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michelson-Morley_experiment (Michaelson)
1887: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michelson-Morley_experiment (Michaelson-Morley)
1892: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Length_contraction (Lorentz)
1904: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lorentz_equations (Lorentz)
1904: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lorentz_transformation#cite_note-4 (Poincare)
1904: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lorentz_transformation#cite_note-5 (Larmor)
1905: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lorentz_transformation#cite_note-6 (Poincare)
1905: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lorentz_transformation#cite_note-7 (Einstein)

Einstein was not a genius.

He wasn't no saint, either.

He has a great Jewish press corps, though, and they just won't fuckin' shut up ... 'cuz Einstein's tattered reputation helps prop up their fading ethnic propaganda about being God's Chosen, the best and the brightest the planet has to offer.

Note that none of the people listed in that chronology are Jewish - EXCEPT for Einstein - and some say his wife did all the heavy lifting in that relationship.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mileva_Marić#Role_in_physics

But even if she DIDN'T do all the heavy lifting ... neither did Einstein ... most of the heavy lifting came from his predecessors.

Please quit beating that dead horse and let others share the limelight.

I can't say I care what one person who happened to work at TPB happens to think. His complaints are just a bunch of whiny nonsense, and since TPB hasn't become what HE would have liked, he'd rather see it destroyed entirely, like any child taking his ball and going home.

I'm more interested in the collateral damage. From Wikipedia:

On 9 December 2014, The Pirate Bay was raided by the Swedish Police, who seized servers, computers, and other equipment.[18][19][20][21][22][23] Several other torrent related sites including EZTV, Zoink, Torrage and the Istole tracker are also down in addition to The Pirate Bay's forum Suprbay.org, which is also offline.[19]

I'm no expert, but I'm pretty sure they can force window focus, and probably that it remains in focus for a certain percentage of the video running time, and the person|bot not skipping/closing/muting is enough to count

I think it's going to end up in the same situation, or verty similar situation, to firearms since they have the same combination of being extremely useful tools for some situations yet with a massive potential for abuse. Perhaps the pro-BitTorrent mantra could draw on that too: "BitTorrent doesn't infringe copyright, people do".

So what's a "view" in this story? That is, how would one determine that a video has been "viewed"? Does merely downloading it count? Do they have some way of determining that it has been shown in some window? And that the window is visible on the screen?

Just curious.

I have this playing in the background as I read this article: http://www.oneofflethal.com/

So it's something like the Open Invention Network but with much simpler "application". Awesome!
Not sure how this "public declaration" will interact with legal systems worldwide, but I hope they made their license compatible with the patent terms of the GPLv3 and Apache License 2.0.

Say I had to guess who is making the cash.. I think it's probably the site owner serving the ads that they hire botnets to view, more than enough money to go around.

It's probably a pretty safe investment too.. yeah, you're hiring botnet dudes, but there's probably no paper trail between the two groups, and as they're not using the botnet to DDOS, or steal CC info, I'd imagine they're pretty low down on the LEO most wanted lists..

I found something recently on tpb that was nowhere else so it was still relevant. Guess people just moved on. In a world of millions of torrents few were on tpb. The ads were just porn in the end.

Wonder what the world and history will say about the bittorrent protocol someday though. What a wonderful thing, and yet it's so easy to vilify the protocol as a vehicle for piracy, which isn't exactly fair.

We'll put it up there next to Napster and Limewire, et al.

Testaments to the fact that just because tech can do something, and do it really well, that doesn't naturally translate into it being legal/just/unnecessary to evolve.

Oblig xkcd http://xkcd.com/1458/

I was just engaging in a spot of successful percussive maintenance today. I swear the damn thing knows when its my gf at the deck cause it just does not like me

Uhhhh...you DO know that the reason they are having to go slower than they like is because of INTEL, yes? That HDCP is Intel's property and if they release anything that could put Intel's DRM at risk they'll get sued, you DO know this right? Intel doesn't have the same restriction because they built their CPUs around HDCP DRM and thus have a section of the chip dedicated to HDCP, AMD doesn't waste space on DRM and instead uses the GP-GPU to handle HDCP which is why they have to tread lightly. if you don't like how fast they are doing things? Tell Intel to take the cuffs off with HDCP.

Nah just follow Johnny Carson's lead and make sure every girl you marry afterwards has the same first name...problem solved!

Try hitting a computer chip with a hammer. Then try the same thing with your car's engine. Still think solid-state is always superior?

I don't think hitting with a hammer is neither the normal mode of operation for computer chips, nor for car engines.

But nevertheless, it is interesting. I would never have expected that such a motor can run reliably over years. Not only because of the moving parts, but also because of the helium. Helium is not the easiest material to contain. Especially not heated helium.

I would think something without moving parts would be superior.

Try hitting a computer chip with a hammer. Then try the same thing with your car's engine. Still think solid-state is always superior?

Both SRGs and RTGs are designed (and tested) with the same lifetimes in-mind. The SRGs even lose less capacity over time (thermo-electric materials decay). And NASA has done the testing to prove that SRGs can operate continuously for the necessary lifetimes.

I am certainly not an expert, but from a gut feeling I would say RTGs are more robust than SRGs. A moving piston? Over years? Yes, maybe for manned missions, where repairs or exchanges are possible. But for something like New Horizons? I would think something without moving parts would be superior.

I am sure the uneducated mobocracy tried its best to throw a monkey wrench into the works.

The WP article says there were only about 30 protesters, far less than previous missions. The DoE just isn't churning out Pu-238 in mass quantities like it used-to, and it's much more expensive as a result, too.

My question is, why isn't NASA getting more efficient (so that it only needs a fraction as much Pu) since the "T" in RTG is only 5-8% efficient?

They've been extensively developing SRGs to replace RTGs for quite a few decades, requiring only 1/4 as much Pu for the power, yet haven't ever put a single one in space.

Or it could have been to the acute shortage of the fissionable material, don't assign to malice, etc etc.

Sadly, it may not have been a mobocracy intentionally trying to gum up the works. It may have simply been a run-of-the-mill bureaucracy incapable of producing any other result.

That's no moon!

Is our civilisation advanced and mature enough to offer psychological support to a planet, err moon ahh far orbiting large rock oh hell whateverwearerankingitastoday

Some geologists, non-geophysicists at that, know Maxwell, too

Women are garbage. The ancients knew this. That is why their brides were girl children, not women.

Hans Reiser had the correct solution to the problem you describe.

Hans Reiser did the right thing.

You seem to be uninformed if you think "who's only contribution to the free software community is a crappy casino game"
Very uninformed. But I guess that's good. You can't attack what you don't know about.

Men would be better off without feminists.
Feminists should be killed.

14 is a young woman, not a girl.
So yes, really.

I am happy to read that New Horizons has a nuclear power battery: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Horizons#Power
Ok, hard to go without one in that kind of mission, but when I read this:

Less than the original design goal was produced, due to delays at the United States Department of Energy, including security activities, which held up production.

I am sure the uneducated mobocracy tried its best to throw a monkey wrench into the works.

When it left, Pluto was a planet. Then it wasn't. And now perhaps it will be again.

If I gave the impression that I want to belittle the Roman accomplishments... nope definitely not my intention. And of course, nothing wrong with trial an error. But on the other hand one should not make the mistake to ascribe the Roman some 'magical' understanding of what they were doing. Do you really think the Romans had laboratories where they experimented with different mixtures? Had huge fields with pieces of walls all with different cement to see which wall piece looked best after 500 years? All meticulously documented in lab-journals? I think not. So yes, trial and error....and plenty of luck. This does not make what they did with their cement less impressive.

don't knock trial and error... how do you think we got here!

Count me among the legions of dispassionate dyspeptics
Who regard this time of year, as a maudlin insincere
Cheesy crass commercial travesty of all that we hold dear.

http://www.elviscostello.info/wiki/index.php/There_Are_Much_Worse_Things_To_Believe_In

Their setup is very good - http://www.coolshite.net/about-us/

Well, you can still see the apartments that were around Rome in places, but yeah, it is entirely possible that the importance of a building might make people less likely to use it as a building site.. or it might have made the Vandals less likely to light it on fire when they invaded, and so on.. there are many many explanations for why much of the cement romans used hasn't survived, being crap is only one on a long list of possibilities.

Yeah, it would be, but it's not unheard of.. the Murano glassmakers of Venice seem to have help onto a lot of their secrets for a long while.

I just find it odd that the examples we can see are often projects that were started by emperors, which would have then had little impediments either monetarily, or hiring the best cement mixers, etc.

I don't find it odd. Even if the best cement was available for 'the middle class', how likely is it that an average house survives 2000 years? Nobody would demolish the colosseum to build the next bypass road, but the house of Nonimportus Averageus?

You are ignoring a third possibility, that making good cement was something that you had to be part of a guild to learn.. and guilds can be very protective of their trade secrets. That's why there is very little written down.

I know of guilds in the middle ages, but have no idea if and how common they were in ancient Rome. But the Roman empire existed for more than 1000 years. Now, the perfect cement might not have existed from year one on, but if the mixture was a guild secret, this guild still must have kept their secret for several hundred years.... this really would be an impressive feat. Even for today.