Posts by Schultz

Microsoft [...] is supplying only what is ordered by a judge, according to laws of USA.

FALSE. NSA and co. explicitly intercept the data outside the US borders to circumvent US law and to avoid legal review of their actions.

The NSA claims that interception occurs outside the US to maintain a superficial semblance of legality. But I wouldn't be surprised if that is another white lie. It would be a lot cheaper and easier to tap the cables right in front of the US telecom buildings as opposed to some elaborate underwater tapping or having some daily petabyte data-transfer from the friends in GB.

Management-speak vs. Newspeak

Plusgood: better plausible deniability. The Eigenvalue of all bullet points would be "proactively leverage collaborative information to cognitive processes, Integrate SIGINT agility of the mission and Align business engagement”. Is waterboarding part of that mission? Depends who is asking.

Scrolling patent

Thanks, TJ1, for linking the patent office page.

The "Reexam final rejection" document does raise the hope that the software patent nonsense can be stopped within the existing system. The lengthy document contains much legalese, but the bottom line is: You can't patent obvious things. Of course identifying the previous art that makes something legally obvious must be a devilish amount of work. Good to know that those poor lawyers doing the nasty legwork are well payed and are therefore properly compensated for their pointless suffering :).

I find it interesting that only a handful of references (mostly patents) are sufficient to blow away all of apples multi-touch and scrolling claims. And the document shows some annoyance with the Apple lawyers. E.g., when they claim that a previous patent did not claim a touch sensitive display and they point out the words "touch-sensitive display" in the abstract.

So down from a cool billion to a few hundred millions ... enough to keep the circus running for a few more years.

The government of the USA is incapable of controlling one of it's own agencies ...

The more fundamental question question is whether democracy still works as intended. Obama promised great transparency and reforms before being elected but didn't follow through on any of it. Is he just a weak president? Or is there a systemic problem that the president just really control the bureaucracy anymore? Or did someone dig up enough dirt to keep him quiet? Nice ground for conspiracy theories.

Will future elected governments be able to fulfill the will of the electorate?

"... there aren't the words to describe what's really going on in QM"

Wrong, there is a whole language to describe what's going on in QM. There are words for QM particles that can be observed, there are words to describe the interactions between QM particles, there are words describing the properties of QM particles, ...

It's simply a specialized language. And it describes observations that usually require more than a pair of glasses. But in the end, QM is not more strange than classical mechanics. (Would you believe that a feather falls as fast as an iron ball? Newton made those crazy claims and people believe him.)

If you really think about it, it makes kind of sense that matter comes in discrete 'quantized' blocks. Apples come in quantized units. Newton spent too much time thinking about planets and completely overlooked the tiny apple quanta.

Re: Oh dear

Nothing desperate about climate science, but it's a reminder that the climate models are quite imperfect and can not yet model all relevant factors that influence the climate. Indeed, it appears that the human activities change so many aspect of our atmosphere that the climate cannot be easily extrapolated from the analysis of historic information (i.e., measurements from a few centuries and longer time-scale data from ice-cores, etc.).

The fact that we humans rapidly change the atmospheric composition and thereby change the climate is not in question and is only denied by people who are too lazy to inform themselves. Unfortunately, it became quite hard to sift the information from all the sensational claims made by the climate change deniers and climate change scaremongers.

"no shortage of young men willing to go into [the drug trade]"

It's capitalism 1-01: The price adjusts to balance supply and demand.

Capitalism, aka 'free pursuit of happiness'. You want to fight it? Talk to somebody from the Soviet Union, they gave up fighting after some 70 years.

Comparing Apple / Google with NSA is misleading

Apple and Google are companies and offer a product for a price. The contractual agreement between the company and you is your only interaction and anything beyond the mutually agreed service/use is a breach of contract that can be contested in court.

NSA is a government agency. There is no contract and there is not even any public information of what they do. There is no legal recourse against their actions, there is no accountability among their employees. You have no legal recourse against them if they misuse your data, kill your career with it, or destroy your computer when installing their secret surveillance software. There is a big big difference between dealing with a company and dealing with your government. One can destroy the life of millions (just remember your history classes), the other is just a business vehicle.

The argument that Google prepared (intellectually) the ground for the NSA may be true, but thats about the limit of the comparison.

Re: Total, complete & utter bullshit.

It's not bullshit if the process is not adiabatic.

Let me translate adiabatic: an the adiabatic system is always in its equilibrium. If the hot sample cols adiabatically (== slowly), then it will be at equilibrium when reaching, say, 20 degrees and it obviously can't cool faster than another sample that started at equilibrium at 20 degrees.

If the cooling is not adiabatic, then all kinds of funny things can happen: One sample might go below 0 degrees without crystallizing (supercooled liquid), or a supercooled surface layer might slow down the evaporative cooling process, ... I didn't read up on it so I can't give you anything beyond generalities.

Re: Absolute Cluetard

The NSA and Co. activities are more like wrapping yourself in saran foil in the attempt to isolate yourself from every potential germ out there. The washing hands analogy would be more akin to having a police with reasonable - and limited - powers.

jake: "fairly common knowledge for about a quarter decade"

What the h*ll does the knowledge of somebody else have to do with my understanding of what's right or wrong? It was common knowledge among select groups that the Nazi Germans gassed the jews. It was common knowledge that the Stasi spied and suppressed dissidents.

Please turn on your brain before spewing Meta-arguments.