Cap'n Refsmmat

Rhyming ones?

Why? One's moving. It undergoes length contraction. Surely the distances it measures from its frame would be different than the distances the other observer measures, because of length contraction, at the least. Right?

There are conversion tools to make old links continue functioning as redirects to the new threads. I'll be adding [thread] tags as custom BBCode so they will redirect correctly. I'll have to verify this all works properly, but ideally it should.

That doesn't mean they're in the same reference frame, does it?

Holy cow. I know what I'm doing next summer

There was a bathroom stall in my dorm that had "CHOOSE DETERMINISM" carved in the door.

I think the idea of reference frames is best illustrated by this video, and I'm not kidding: akLC_JMjpjA For a moment you think "oh, the train's moving." But it's not. Why? Because we measure velocity by comparing one object to another object. (A car vs. the ground, for example.) So when you compare train vs. station, you see the train moving -- but it might just be the station moving too. For the universe, what do you compare against? Another universe? There's nothing to compare the entire universe's motion against, because it's everything.

The whole "it's illegal" argument is predicated on the fact that the blockade is ineffective compared to the amount of damage it does to Gaza. That is, not blockading would be better, both because there'd be less civilian suffering and because Gazans would be less motivated to fight back. The blockade has merely increased Hamas' hold on Gaza and made it easier for them to recruit fighters and suicide bombers. Would those children joining suicide brigades be doing it if they had functioning schools and parents who could afford to give them food? No. Um, no. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goldstone_Report#Accusations_of_war_crimes_on_the_part_of_Palestinian_armed_groups The Goldstone report blames both sides.

Are there any symptoms of low memory besides things running slowly? For example, I think Task Manager will show you the page file size, and if that's gotten really big things are being swapped to disk. If there aren't any symptoms besides "it gets slow," maybe there's something else going on.

I don't think Israel's "side" mattered in the Goldstone Report's judgment of the legality of the blockade. What mattered was what was happening to the Gazans and whether Israel, as an occupying power, had a legal obligation to provide for their well-being. The Wikipedia article cites the specific page of the report where this is discussed. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goldstone_Report#Composition The Report was not composed by the UN as a whole. It was composed by a South African judge, an English international law professor, a Pakistani lawyer, and an Irish military official. They weren't politicians or representatives of the member countries -- they were legal and military experts.

The United Nations Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict found that the blockade was a violation of international law.

Interesting. On a side note, what's with the extra-long gun barrels? Something to make the crowd control ammunition work correctly?

Fixed. Also, there's only a month left of Microsoft's support for Windows 2000 - after the 13th of July there'll be no more security fixes or upgrades. You might consider upgrading...

Why should the recordings not be popularized or released? The officers are acting in view of the public. Anything that could be recorded could be publicly seen anyway. There's no expectation of privacy as there would be (to use your previous example) in an airplane cockpit.

And if you ban recording, there are no other ways to deal with errant law enforcement officers. If you complain about them, they simply deny it. If you can record them, you can prove it. Denying someone the ability to record video of an officer denies them the ability to collect evidence of that officer's conduct, meaning they are at the whim of whatever the officer says happens.

In Seattle, jaywalking is not a misdemeanor: http://clerk.ci.seattle.wa.us/~scripts/nph-brs.exe?d=CODE&s1=11.40.100.snum.&Sect5=CODE1&Sect6=HITOFF&l=20&p=1&u=/~public/code1.htm&r=1&f=G Note the conspicuous absence of anything specifying it as a criminal offense. It's a city ordinance. That's not my experience at all. I find that most negative stories about police come from random people I meet who are pissed about how the officer treated them when they got their last traffic ticket. It's that "tiny number of bad apples" that makes everyone distrust the police as a collective whole, and makes their jobs harder. The police have to demonstrate that they are trustworthy, and anyone who has had a negative experience with the police do not regard them as trustworthy. It's as simple as that. I also think you're understating the "tiny number." Dunno. If someone's being abused by police and you're not legally allowed to record it, or a recording would not be admissible in court because of its illegality, there's nothing else you can do. It's the only course of action that has a chance of preventing or stopping the abuse. Now, the idea of committing an illegal act because the alternative is also illegal is kind of weird, but one action works, and the other doesn't. Incidentally, calling the idea dangerous and ill-informed isn't really an argument. If there isn't, what justification is there for banning recording? At all?

Bruce Schneier on the issue: http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2010/06/filming_the_pol.html He also links to an essay of his: http://www.schneier.com/essay-208.html Merged post follows: Consecutive posts merged One incident does not justify a global ban. That incident may not be representative of the average encounter an officer has with someone with a camera. No. There are already laws against obstructing a police officer in the course of his duty, as I stated, so if recording becomes a problem, it's treated just the same as standing in front of the officer and refusing to let him move. I don't see why recording has to be banned entirely to prevent it from causing problems in a few cases. Is there a particular case against recording an officer when you are not obstructing his actions in any way at all? For example, if you're in a building across the streat?

Where does mob mentality enter into this? It's certainly possible for a civilian to make a video of a police officer abusing power, then take that video to the police chief or use it to file a civil case against the officer, rather than attempting to break down his door and beat him for his transgression. I doubt most videos of officers are made in cases where the officer is confronted by a mob. They might be someone filming the scene of an accident out of morbid curiosity, someone filming an officer from a distance, or someone recording a protest or riot from a building. Now, it might not be a good idea for someone being detained by an officer to try to film that officer, or for others to interfere to try to get the best video shot. But that's already covered under laws about obstructing an officer of the law or resisting arrest.

I don't think vBulletin supports that. It just embeds at the original image size.

I think when we convert to IPB this may be done automatically. Also, when you're using an image from Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Accretion_disk.jpg You don't have to click the image, get the full-size version, and then link that. Right-click on the small preview image and copy its location, and use that. You'll get this: instead of a monster image.

They lowered a cap that covered the base of the leak. It got clogged with methane hydrates and crap. Hence this method.

Please nobody delete this for the time being. I'm contacting the host.

I have a strong suspicion that Klaplunk here is just a reincarnation of Clipper, who we suspended recently. Same IP addresses and everything, and it's a great coincidence that we suspend someone for their activities in Speculations and then someone with the same IP pops in to complain about Speculations... I don't know how much credence I'd give the Oxford claim. Not much, probably.

South Carolina has open primaries, so you can vote for whichever party you want.

http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2010/06/sc-democratic-primary-getting-weirder.html FiveThirtyEight is suggesting that election fraud is to blame. Or perhaps people just not knowing who the candidates were at all.