As a Canadian looking from the outside in, it certainly does look like the US president has become some kind of monarchy, complete with all the worship, ceremony, etc.
And, as we've seen, this president and vice-president think they are descended from god, performing god's will, etc.
I'm pretty sure he does far more for the environment than you ever did. It's such a cheap shot - a guy with bigger house will always have a bigger heating bill. Does that not make sense to you?
If I were religious, which I am not, and was embarked on a suicide mission on behalf of [insert deity here], convinced it would please aforementioned deity and I'll be richly rewarded for it somehow, wouldn't I be rather calm, unafraid, maybe even happy to be about to reap my reward?
Does it seem like this sort of "mal-intent detection" apparatus would be easily defeated by simple faith or belief?
They're wrongly assuming terrorists think and behave like criminals.
Something is wrong with the documents. The plaintiff's closing arguments are missing, as are the judge's instructions to the jury. Pages 575 through 636 of volume III are blank.
Is it just me or does 100 Terrabytes seem rather paltry, especially if a good chunk of that is video? I have a 2 TB NAS I use for video clips and it's not enough...
My guess is that the "unknown formats not previously dealt with" refers to shitloads of the photos being in ridiculously large RAW or TIFF format, or digital vids in likewise raw formats that can only be accessed with software like Premiere, AfterEffects, etc.
Maybe Bush & Co. didn't know they could adjust the settings on their cameras? Heh, every camera was good for maybe 5 shots?
If I decide to disappear, none of my current friends and acquaintances would know where to find me. Facebook would be useless.
What the authorities would need to do is find all the long lost childhood friends and acquaintances from any one of the many places I used to live as a kid, assuming they would remember anything if found.
HOWEVER, having said that, I didn't grow up on Facebook, kids these days are different. With Facebook their childhoods are pretty much on record.
Makes me wonder if children should be prohibited from using Facebook, hrm.
I hate unions. I would never want to work at a place that has IT people in a union. I would never want to work for a union. In IT, the success of a project depends on everyone involved. If you have a bunch of lazy schlubs who are basically unfireable, then you have some sucky co-workers. That impacts you directly.
Unions, like corporations and any other kind of organization, can be a force of good or bad. There's nothing about unions as such which makes them always and inherently bad.
I hate my current union but recognize that a unions are only as good as the people behind them.
Also, you'll get the lazy schlubs in a non-union environment too, management just has to A) be especially careful to avoid hiring lazy and non-qualified staff in the first place, B) be creative when they need to get rid of them (e.g. lateral "promotion" to a job that does fit them).
Unionized workplaces usually have a lot of flexibility in terms of hours, part-time, mat/pat leave, benefits, leave of absence, etc. The only way to lose your job is to do something really stupid and indefensible, your employer can't just sack you, they have to prove their case.
Working at a non-profit means profit isn't the be all and end all, the focus is on service instead. There's a different mentality and work philosophy, people work at non-profits mostly because they're either useless at any other job or they really do believe in the cause.
Of course, this combo is guaranteed to keep your wages down...
Note: The teacher automatically assumed the gaggle of giggling boys was up to no good (not sure how they were being disruptive?)
She probably stormed over and grabbed the laptop. Upon finding only a spinning cube, she was probably embarassed - but still apparently convinced they were up to no good.
Whereupon she confiscated the disks...
I'm sorry to say, crying or not, by her own comportment it seems to be more than just a basic ignorance of fact - this is a case of the elevator just not going to the top floor.
This is important, because this WILL have an impact on the children under her care. If anything, those kids now have little respect for at least one adult (perhaps this is WHY they were disruptive, if they were), and they probably felt the situation was unjust, unwarranted and unfair, in which case they got an early lesson in FUBAR.
Not a bad lesson to learn, actually, but geez...to be brutally honest, some people shouldn't be teachers, ok?
This reminds me of the time on IRC when one channel operator, a network administrator in real life, insisted all channel participants must speak on the channel using their own nicks, if they spoke from behind a bot they were summarily banned. His argument was that the internet was not built for anonymity, that speaking from behind a bot was subverting the original purpose and intent of the internet.
And don't have a driver's license, nor will I. The government has no recent photos of me. I'm rather proud of this fact.
So I guess if someone stole my identity and used their own mugshot for a driver's license, I'd be flagged as an imposter when/if I try to get my own license?
What then?
By the way, none of the 9/11 attackers stole anyone's identity.
That's true, but fortunately for us this sort of fact-checking is very easy to do. Simply observe any dairy farm and note how many cattle are raised, how much water or grain is consumed, etc., versus the food output. The math simply doesn't add up. Cattle as food is simply environmentally unsustainable and economically irresponsible.
Plus, at current market prices raising cattle isn't even economically feasible in most countries without massive government subsidization (e.g. your tax dollars).
If people were sensible, logical and driven by these sorts of observations, they would all be vegetarians by default.
Animals fed on grain, and those that rely on grazing need far more water than grain crops. According to the USDA, growing the crops necessary to feed farmed animals requires nearly half of the United States' water supply and 80 percent of its agricultural land. Additionally, animals raised for food in the U.S. consume 90 percent of the soy crop, 80 percent of the corn crop, and a total of 70 percent of its grain.
When tracking food animal production from the feed trough to consumption, the inefficiencies of meat, milk and egg production range from 4:1 up to 54:1 energy input to protein output ratio
Hollywood is the US national religion, more popular even than Christianity. The mere sight of a film star drives the masses to ecstasy, people want to touch them...
Some religions would hold that at least one commandment is being violated - something about false gods or idols or something
What the heck does creationism have to do with science? Why would you teach it in a science class?
Science education shouldn't always be about whatever the scientific establishment accepts, but it should sure as hell be about science. Imagine teaching Shakespeare in math class, or history in gym class, or whatever. Religion has no place whatsoever in any science class, just as it has no place in math, history, or any other class not about religion. Unless, of course, you want to turn America into some sort of Taliban-like theocracy....
You make the assumption that it's only useful for spying on people IFF the resolution is good enough to recognize them if they were standing, walking, etc. You say a few pixels/dots aren't useful. But then you go on to say it's useful for tracking cars. How is tracking cars not the same as spying on people?
Suppose you're considered a troublemaker, you're labeled a domestic terrorist so it's useful to know who you're interacting with. With this technology we'll know you visited a particular restaurant at a particular time. From there, we can get a list of all credit cards and cell phones used in the vicinity in that time frame, each gives us a list of names, addresses, SSN's, etc. From triangulating the cell phone locations we additionally determine which cell phones were used in which cars. Since we'll have, as you say, wide area video footage of all the cars in the vicinity we'll also be able to track the movements of those cars, where they went, and their associations too. Therefore from this "highly dubious" technology we can generate quite a thorough list of all known and possible associations. This is especially true since nowadays most people practically live through their cars.
It's almost guaranteed this will be used against common everyday people, just for holding particular beliefs or political viewpoints, or for voting for the wrong party. Ordinary protesters are already being labeled as terrorists and put on lists, entered into criminal databases, etc. Civil disobedience, violent or not, is already considered terrorism. It might be a good idea to start thinking about how you'll deal with it when it happens.
Sure, forget the military angle, one domestic use for such a technology is simply to transport people to and fro. Wings, especially if they can flap stingray style, would allow for quiet transport. Anything using propellers or supercavitation would produce a lot of noise, the underwater equivalent of pollution.
If such a vehicle can also fly through air then it would allow for quick transport to a mid-ocean destination, since air travel will always be faster than (under)water travel.
It's completely ass-backwards that the big funders for ideas like this are military rather than domestic or commercial, that a "national security" gets first dibs at any technology that might come of this.
Would the internet be around if the military hadn't decided the way to keep wired communications going through a nuclear attack was to make it free and widely available? Unlikely.
Any submersible technology is worth developing/exploring for the obvious reason that the planet is getting overpopulated.
Slashdot Mirror
As a Canadian looking from the outside in, it certainly does look like the US president has become some kind of monarchy, complete with all the worship, ceremony, etc.
And, as we've seen, this president and vice-president think they are descended from god, performing god's will, etc.
I'm pretty sure he does far more for the environment than you ever did. It's such a cheap shot - a guy with bigger house will always have a bigger heating bill. Does that not make sense to you?
Why these cables can't be buried? Of course if you just plop them down on the seabed then you're going to run into trouble.
Eh? Why does New York State have your prints? What did you do wrong?
Why does it have to be New Jersey? Can the algae be harvested from or grown on the vast ocean or something?
in hardware review from a site that can't keep itself up during a slashdotting?
If I were religious, which I am not, and was embarked on a suicide mission on behalf of [insert deity here], convinced it would please aforementioned deity and I'll be richly rewarded for it somehow, wouldn't I be rather calm, unafraid, maybe even happy to be about to reap my reward?
Does it seem like this sort of "mal-intent detection" apparatus would be easily defeated by simple faith or belief?
They're wrongly assuming terrorists think and behave like criminals.
Something is wrong with the documents. The plaintiff's closing arguments are missing, as are the judge's instructions to the jury. Pages 575 through 636 of volume III are blank.
Is it just me or does 100 Terrabytes seem rather paltry, especially if a good chunk of that is video? I have a 2 TB NAS I use for video clips and it's not enough...
My guess is that the "unknown formats not previously dealt with" refers to shitloads of the photos being in ridiculously large RAW or TIFF format, or digital vids in likewise raw formats that can only be accessed with software like Premiere, AfterEffects, etc.
Maybe Bush & Co. didn't know they could adjust the settings on their cameras? Heh, every camera was good for maybe 5 shots?
Hrm, not quite.
If I decide to disappear, none of my current friends and acquaintances would know where to find me. Facebook would be useless.
What the authorities would need to do is find all the long lost childhood friends and acquaintances from any one of the many places I used to live as a kid, assuming they would remember anything if found.
HOWEVER, having said that, I didn't grow up on Facebook, kids these days are different. With Facebook their childhoods are pretty much on record.
Makes me wonder if children should be prohibited from using Facebook, hrm.
Unions, like corporations and any other kind of organization, can be a force of good or bad. There's nothing about unions as such which makes them always and inherently bad.
I hate my current union but recognize that a unions are only as good as the people behind them.
Also, you'll get the lazy schlubs in a non-union environment too, management just has to A) be especially careful to avoid hiring lazy and non-qualified staff in the first place, B) be creative when they need to get rid of them (e.g. lateral "promotion" to a job that does fit them).
The benefits are twofold.
Unionized workplaces usually have a lot of flexibility in terms of hours, part-time, mat/pat leave, benefits, leave of absence, etc. The only way to lose your job is to do something really stupid and indefensible, your employer can't just sack you, they have to prove their case.
Working at a non-profit means profit isn't the be all and end all, the focus is on service instead. There's a different mentality and work philosophy, people work at non-profits mostly because they're either useless at any other job or they really do believe in the cause.
Of course, this combo is guaranteed to keep your wages down...
Note: The teacher automatically assumed the gaggle of giggling boys was up to no good (not sure how they were being disruptive?)
She probably stormed over and grabbed the laptop. Upon finding only a spinning cube, she was probably embarassed - but still apparently convinced they were up to no good.
Whereupon she confiscated the disks...
I'm sorry to say, crying or not, by her own comportment it seems to be more than just a basic ignorance of fact - this is a case of the elevator just not going to the top floor.
This is important, because this WILL have an impact on the children under her care. If anything, those kids now have little respect for at least one adult (perhaps this is WHY they were disruptive, if they were), and they probably felt the situation was unjust, unwarranted and unfair, in which case they got an early lesson in FUBAR.
Not a bad lesson to learn, actually, but geez...to be brutally honest, some people shouldn't be teachers, ok?
This reminds me of the time on IRC when one channel operator, a network administrator in real life, insisted all channel participants must speak on the channel using their own nicks, if they spoke from behind a bot they were summarily banned. His argument was that the internet was not built for anonymity, that speaking from behind a bot was subverting the original purpose and intent of the internet.
And don't have a driver's license, nor will I. The government has no recent photos of me. I'm rather proud of this fact.
So I guess if someone stole my identity and used their own mugshot for a driver's license, I'd be flagged as an imposter when/if I try to get my own license?
What then?
By the way, none of the 9/11 attackers stole anyone's identity.
Oh, and the source is the USDA.
That's true, but fortunately for us this sort of fact-checking is very easy to do. Simply observe any dairy farm and note how many cattle are raised, how much water or grain is consumed, etc., versus the food output. The math simply doesn't add up. Cattle as food is simply environmentally unsustainable and economically irresponsible.
Plus, at current market prices raising cattle isn't even economically feasible in most countries without massive government subsidization (e.g. your tax dollars).
If people were sensible, logical and driven by these sorts of observations, they would all be vegetarians by default.
I haven't seen a anyone say anything here about becoming a vegetarian for environmental reasons.
The meat-eating lifestyle is environmentally unsustainable.
Quick factoids from Wikipedia, for instance:
Hollywood is the US national religion, more popular even than Christianity. The mere sight of a film star drives the masses to ecstasy, people want to touch them...
Some religions would hold that at least one commandment is being violated - something about false gods or idols or something
Oh sure it does.
In an epic class entitled "History of Violence In The World."
What the heck does creationism have to do with science? Why would you teach it in a science class?
Science education shouldn't always be about whatever the scientific establishment accepts, but it should sure as hell be about science. Imagine teaching Shakespeare in math class, or history in gym class, or whatever. Religion has no place whatsoever in any science class, just as it has no place in math, history, or any other class not about religion. Unless, of course, you want to turn America into some sort of Taliban-like theocracy....
You make the assumption that it's only useful for spying on people IFF the resolution is good enough to recognize them if they were standing, walking, etc. You say a few pixels/dots aren't useful. But then you go on to say it's useful for tracking cars. How is tracking cars not the same as spying on people?
Suppose you're considered a troublemaker, you're labeled a domestic terrorist so it's useful to know who you're interacting with. With this technology we'll know you visited a particular restaurant at a particular time. From there, we can get a list of all credit cards and cell phones used in the vicinity in that time frame, each gives us a list of names, addresses, SSN's, etc. From triangulating the cell phone locations we additionally determine which cell phones were used in which cars. Since we'll have, as you say, wide area video footage of all the cars in the vicinity we'll also be able to track the movements of those cars, where they went, and their associations too. Therefore from this "highly dubious" technology we can generate quite a thorough list of all known and possible associations. This is especially true since nowadays most people practically live through their cars.
It's almost guaranteed this will be used against common everyday people, just for holding particular beliefs or political viewpoints, or for voting for the wrong party. Ordinary protesters are already being labeled as terrorists and put on lists, entered into criminal databases, etc. Civil disobedience, violent or not, is already considered terrorism. It might be a good idea to start thinking about how you'll deal with it when it happens.
Sure, forget the military angle, one domestic use for such a technology is simply to transport people to and fro. Wings, especially if they can flap stingray style, would allow for quiet transport. Anything using propellers or supercavitation would produce a lot of noise, the underwater equivalent of pollution.
If such a vehicle can also fly through air then it would allow for quick transport to a mid-ocean destination, since air travel will always be faster than (under)water travel.
It's completely ass-backwards that the big funders for ideas like this are military rather than domestic or commercial, that a "national security" gets first dibs at any technology that might come of this.
Would the internet be around if the military hadn't decided the way to keep wired communications going through a nuclear attack was to make it free and widely available? Unlikely.
Any submersible technology is worth developing/exploring for the obvious reason that the planet is getting overpopulated.
Granted, DARPA gave us the internet, but this being military it will more likely be used more for evil rather than good.
People contribute if their greed or jingoistic patriotism (some might call it sense of duty) trump their humanity and wisdom.