The problem isn't that people with security clearances are disgusting perverts, the problem is that people with security clearances are security risks. As an example, you'll find it difficult to get a clearance if you've declared bankruptcy or even just have a lot of unsecured debt because it makes you more susceptible to bribes. The same thing is true here. If a foreign interest were to find out you were downloading child porn, an offense where just being accused can cause your life to crumble around you, it would be trivial for them to blackmail you into revealing secrets.
10 years, or 10 'man-years'? Heh, I bet they spend a man-year just loading the books onto and off of trucks (lets see, 8 hours a day, 1 hour to unload per store... if they sell at ~3000 stores that seems valid), never mind printing, editing, promoting, and selling. Don't get me wrong, that your husband has worked tirelessly for 10 years shows that he has much more dedication than a publisher ever would, but in terms of cost the publisher's are going to be higher.
I like that the FCC is trying to ensure net neutrality but I have two problems with it.
First and foremost, if you're being honest with yourself, these kinds of decisions are too important to leave up to people in non-elected positions. Just because I agree with the decision they made doesn't make it right to try and do an end run around the politicos to get their way. Imagine if the FCC were doing the opposite, and trying to encourage a non-neutral net.
Secondly, this wouldn't be a law on the books. All it would take for this policy to change would be a new management at the FCC. That means both that businesses couldn't count on it staying the same for any kind of long term and that the next election cycle could see it thrown out the window without so much as a vote in congress.
Put it through congress the way these kinds of policies were always meant to be. At least give the American people the chance to pretend that they can still influence their congressmen and make it a bit more difficult for the policy to be overturned when the political winds change.
That only applies if your product is so enjoyable (or addictive) that you'll make it up in future sales. I don't know, this could easily back fire on them. Having a semi-cohesive population of 90000 people all using the same product (a significant portion of which is forced or at least pressured to do so) is going to bring any problems straight to the front very quickly. Now, if they all report them to the dev team and start working on apps that's a win, but if they go to the press (probably throwing away their job but you know that someone will do it) it could get ugly.
And why would black people have a problem with the word niggardly? It's derived from the same place we get the word nigger.
False.
Niggardly: From the Norse word nigla - "to fuss about small matters" Nigger: From the latin Niger - "Black" through Spanish, Portuguese, or French.
They are false cognates of each other, words that sound the same but have different meanings and origins. It's entirely possible that given how common your misinformed view is that there are people who say 'niggardly' in a racist way, but from a purely linguistically and historical view there is nothing racist about the word. Ignoring that fact and calling everyone who uses the word racist is dishonest at best.
Everything you just said was accurate, and none of it was true.
The tone of the article is that Google will no longer be serving unfiltered search results to users in mainland China. The GPP clearly refuted that tone showing that Google was still making unfiltered search available. Despite what Futurama says, being technically correct isn't the best kind of correct.
Usually when a new best seller first comes out, it will only be available in hardcover, so it's a little worse than simply not supplying enough paperbacks, they don't make them available at all. Think of it as the early adopter fee, if you're willing to wait 6 months you can get the same book in paperback for much less. That annoys me but doesn't really piss me off, yes you have to pay extra for a new release but you get a superior product in the form of a more durable hardcover. What pisses me off is when they charge $10 (or some publishers even $15 now that the courts decided they can decide pricing) for a new release eBook. Now you're getting the exact same product as someone who pays $5 a few months later, and it seems like many books stay at that price point even after the paperback versions are available.
Basically, if you want to see what's wrong with the eBook industry just take a look at this.
Kindle price: 9.17 New Hardcover: 6.70
I shouldn't have to price shop between a purely electronic, zero marginal cost version and a hardcover version. Even assuming the problem is simply that they overestimated demand and now someone has a stock of hardcovers lying around they're trying to get rid of, the Kindle price should be adjusted to at most the lowest available hard cover price.
I think you mean typical media, not just typical slashdot. This is what the study is about, it should be inside the first paragraph, the methods the study uses (3-legged dogs) are much less important to the overall understanding of the subject and should be farther down. But then, that wouldn't make a sensationalist headline, so why would they want to do that.
The 9-11 conspiracy theorists might be off their rocker, but they're right about one thing: The hysteria, paranoia, and nationalistic fervor created by 9-11 are a politician's wet dream. The amazing thing isn't how much our society has let our rights be destroyed over the past 9 years, it's how little the people in power have taken advantage of it. For all that it sucks, the average American would have swallowed much, much more under the guise of security and revenge than what has been pushed through. Don't get me wrong, too much was allowed to happen, too many rights shrugged off so that the paranoid could sleep more easily at night (paranoid about terrorists but oddly trusting of everyone else); I'm just saying that it could have been much worse.
Well, someone was saying the iPhone shows a -24 dBm change when the phone is held from that spot. If true, that is significantly worse than my Droid, I see anywhere from 8-14 dBm drop holding it in my hand (in a variety of positions) compared to laying it flat on the table. How much difference that makes in the real world will depend on a lot of factors, especially what the signal strength was to start with. There's also the issue of attenuating the outgoing signal, which is much harder to measure without equipment; I would think it's inline with the amount of attenuation on the incoming signal, but I'm no antenna designer so I can't say for sure.
I wouldn't agree with the statement "it's still a wheelchair". While it is technically a chair on wheels it solves the vast majority of the problems that wheelchairs have: it can go up and down stairs, it can raise the user to eye level, and doesn't get bogged down in loose terrain. Oh, and it doubles as a chair. I kid but seriously, if you're paralyzed do you really want to get into and out of a robotic contraption every time you want to move somewhere and then sit down and relax?
It's a shame that they couldn't make a profit on the device, I think it really had the chance to change a lot of people's lives for the better.
For something to be dangerous, I think we can all agree it must have a reason, yes? Just being GMO is not a valid reason, it must have some sort of chemical compound, not present in the unmodified counterpart, that is dangerous.
One of the fears that makes the most sense in my mind is allergic reactions. Whether we're unlocking previously dormant DNA in the plants or splicing DNA from one species to another there is a possibility that allergens not previously seen in say wheat might suddenly be found. Basically, someone with a peanut allergy might never know what food could kill them, because any food could contain the peanut allergen.
I know it's bullshit. You know it's bullshit. Probably the vast majority of people on Slashdot know it's bullshit. But I'm not completely convinced that the people in charge of regulating drugs know that it's bullshit; and that's a bit scary (and incidentally the point of posting it here).
I only paid around $1k for my laptop recently and there are no games currently available that I can't run on at least medium settings. And that's even opting for a better screen than graphics card when I made my purchase. Can I game at super hacker leet graphics levels? No, but I can play all modern games with decent settings and a decent framerate.
Well, people did these kinds of jumps as far back as the 60's. That's not quite the same as saying that people have been doing them for that long since no one has done extreme high altitude jumps since then. In other words, the people who know the risks, problems, and solutions that they are likely to encounter are all retired or dead. A lot of the information and technology is being rediscovered and reinvented. They know that this jump is possible because someone did a jump from nearly as high 50 years ago, that knowledge lets them push forward with more confidence than they would otherwise have but it doesn't really help them solve problems when they come up.
To be fair, the same argument that is used against Google could be leveled against Firefox. The browser/search is not the product, it is merely the means to generate the real product: users. The users are the product and they and their habits are sold to the advertisers. Obviously Firefox is still largely community driven, but when you get down to brass tacks it takes money to run a project as large and complex as Firefox has become, that money comes from selling user behavior.
I haven't applied the patch for this exact reason. So far, the only issue has been using the PSN. I haven't yet hit any games or movies that have had problems. I know it's only a matter of time of course but I'm still hoping that they get pressured into reversing the stance before that happens. I'm holding out on nuking my Linux partition until there is something that I really want that I can't get. Luckily, I don't use the Linux partition much, just to play some old emulators that I can do nearly as easily on my PC so it won't affect me much when the inevitable happens.
Poe's Law - Without a winking smiley or other blatant display of humour, it is impossible to create a parody of fundamentalism that someone won't mistake for the real thing.
I've got it! They could give their music away for fee (they don't make any money off it as is so no loss there) and sell concert tickets and merchandise for their income (which is basically what most signed bands now do anyway). So to recap: Consumer gets free and legal music. Musician gets at least what they get now.
The punishment involved the execution of close and extended family members.[3][20] These included:
The criminal's living parents
The criminal's living grandparents
Any children the criminal may have, over a certain age (which is usually variable depending on the time period)
Any grandchildren the criminal may have, over a certain age (which is usually variable depending on the time period)
Siblings and siblings-in-law (the siblings of the criminal and that of his or her spouse, in the case where he or she is married)
Uncles of the criminal, as well as their spouses
The criminal himself
Of course, for a complete wipe you'd want to get nieces and nephews too, a group strangely absent from the list of executed.
No, the lawmakers established a range of $350 - $250,000 per song, depending on the circumstances of the infringement. I refuse to believe that they intended for the top end of that spectrum to be applied to situations such as these. While this was clearly not the most innocent type of infringement (something like burning a mix CD would qualify in my mind (not that I agree that it should be against the law, only that according to the law that is infringement and if it must be punished should be punished with the smallest award legally applicable)). At the same time it is far from the most heinous infringement (something like a major bootlegging operation selling thousands of copies at a profit).
But the judge can take things like remorse, admittance of guilt, hiding/destroying evidence, etc into account when sentencing. Sounds to me like that is exactly what she did here.
Slashdot Mirror
The problem isn't that people with security clearances are disgusting perverts, the problem is that people with security clearances are security risks. As an example, you'll find it difficult to get a clearance if you've declared bankruptcy or even just have a lot of unsecured debt because it makes you more susceptible to bribes. The same thing is true here. If a foreign interest were to find out you were downloading child porn, an offense where just being accused can cause your life to crumble around you, it would be trivial for them to blackmail you into revealing secrets.
10 years, or 10 'man-years'? Heh, I bet they spend a man-year just loading the books onto and off of trucks (lets see, 8 hours a day, 1 hour to unload per store... if they sell at ~3000 stores that seems valid), never mind printing, editing, promoting, and selling. Don't get me wrong, that your husband has worked tirelessly for 10 years shows that he has much more dedication than a publisher ever would, but in terms of cost the publisher's are going to be higher.
I like that the FCC is trying to ensure net neutrality but I have two problems with it.
First and foremost, if you're being honest with yourself, these kinds of decisions are too important to leave up to people in non-elected positions. Just because I agree with the decision they made doesn't make it right to try and do an end run around the politicos to get their way. Imagine if the FCC were doing the opposite, and trying to encourage a non-neutral net.
Secondly, this wouldn't be a law on the books. All it would take for this policy to change would be a new management at the FCC. That means both that businesses couldn't count on it staying the same for any kind of long term and that the next election cycle could see it thrown out the window without so much as a vote in congress.
Put it through congress the way these kinds of policies were always meant to be. At least give the American people the chance to pretend that they can still influence their congressmen and make it a bit more difficult for the policy to be overturned when the political winds change.
That only applies if your product is so enjoyable (or addictive) that you'll make it up in future sales. I don't know, this could easily back fire on them. Having a semi-cohesive population of 90000 people all using the same product (a significant portion of which is forced or at least pressured to do so) is going to bring any problems straight to the front very quickly. Now, if they all report them to the dev team and start working on apps that's a win, but if they go to the press (probably throwing away their job but you know that someone will do it) it could get ugly.
And why would black people have a problem with the word niggardly? It's derived from the same place we get the word nigger.
False.
Niggardly: From the Norse word nigla - "to fuss about small matters"
Nigger: From the latin Niger - "Black" through Spanish, Portuguese, or French.
They are false cognates of each other, words that sound the same but have different meanings and origins. It's entirely possible that given how common your misinformed view is that there are people who say 'niggardly' in a racist way, but from a purely linguistically and historical view there is nothing racist about the word. Ignoring that fact and calling everyone who uses the word racist is dishonest at best.
Everything you just said was accurate, and none of it was true.
The tone of the article is that Google will no longer be serving unfiltered search results to users in mainland China. The GPP clearly refuted that tone showing that Google was still making unfiltered search available. Despite what Futurama says, being technically correct isn't the best kind of correct.
Usually when a new best seller first comes out, it will only be available in hardcover, so it's a little worse than simply not supplying enough paperbacks, they don't make them available at all. Think of it as the early adopter fee, if you're willing to wait 6 months you can get the same book in paperback for much less. That annoys me but doesn't really piss me off, yes you have to pay extra for a new release but you get a superior product in the form of a more durable hardcover. What pisses me off is when they charge $10 (or some publishers even $15 now that the courts decided they can decide pricing) for a new release eBook. Now you're getting the exact same product as someone who pays $5 a few months later, and it seems like many books stay at that price point even after the paperback versions are available.
Basically, if you want to see what's wrong with the eBook industry just take a look at this.
Kindle price: 9.17
New Hardcover: 6.70
I shouldn't have to price shop between a purely electronic, zero marginal cost version and a hardcover version. Even assuming the problem is simply that they overestimated demand and now someone has a stock of hardcovers lying around they're trying to get rid of, the Kindle price should be adjusted to at most the lowest available hard cover price.
Towards the bottom of the article...
I think you mean typical media, not just typical slashdot. This is what the study is about, it should be inside the first paragraph, the methods the study uses (3-legged dogs) are much less important to the overall understanding of the subject and should be farther down. But then, that wouldn't make a sensationalist headline, so why would they want to do that.
The 9-11 conspiracy theorists might be off their rocker, but they're right about one thing: The hysteria, paranoia, and nationalistic fervor created by 9-11 are a politician's wet dream. The amazing thing isn't how much our society has let our rights be destroyed over the past 9 years, it's how little the people in power have taken advantage of it. For all that it sucks, the average American would have swallowed much, much more under the guise of security and revenge than what has been pushed through. Don't get me wrong, too much was allowed to happen, too many rights shrugged off so that the paranoid could sleep more easily at night (paranoid about terrorists but oddly trusting of everyone else); I'm just saying that it could have been much worse.
Well, someone was saying the iPhone shows a -24 dBm change when the phone is held from that spot. If true, that is significantly worse than my Droid, I see anywhere from 8-14 dBm drop holding it in my hand (in a variety of positions) compared to laying it flat on the table. How much difference that makes in the real world will depend on a lot of factors, especially what the signal strength was to start with. There's also the issue of attenuating the outgoing signal, which is much harder to measure without equipment; I would think it's inline with the amount of attenuation on the incoming signal, but I'm no antenna designer so I can't say for sure.
Especially if your company is already named Cyberdyne. You don't suppose that maybe they knew their chosen names were pop culture references do you?
I wouldn't agree with the statement "it's still a wheelchair". While it is technically a chair on wheels it solves the vast majority of the problems that wheelchairs have: it can go up and down stairs, it can raise the user to eye level, and doesn't get bogged down in loose terrain. Oh, and it doubles as a chair. I kid but seriously, if you're paralyzed do you really want to get into and out of a robotic contraption every time you want to move somewhere and then sit down and relax?
It's a shame that they couldn't make a profit on the device, I think it really had the chance to change a lot of people's lives for the better.
For something to be dangerous, I think we can all agree it must have a reason, yes? Just being GMO is not a valid reason, it must have some sort of chemical compound, not present in the unmodified counterpart, that is dangerous.
One of the fears that makes the most sense in my mind is allergic reactions. Whether we're unlocking previously dormant DNA in the plants or splicing DNA from one species to another there is a possibility that allergens not previously seen in say wheat might suddenly be found. Basically, someone with a peanut allergy might never know what food could kill them, because any food could contain the peanut allergen.
I know it's bullshit. You know it's bullshit. Probably the vast majority of people on Slashdot know it's bullshit. But I'm not completely convinced that the people in charge of regulating drugs know that it's bullshit; and that's a bit scary (and incidentally the point of posting it here).
Man, did I ever just get smacked by Poe's Law I honestly cannot tell if you're being serious, making a joke, trolling, or what.
I only paid around $1k for my laptop recently and there are no games currently available that I can't run on at least medium settings. And that's even opting for a better screen than graphics card when I made my purchase. Can I game at super hacker leet graphics levels? No, but I can play all modern games with decent settings and a decent framerate.
Well, people did these kinds of jumps as far back as the 60's. That's not quite the same as saying that people have been doing them for that long since no one has done extreme high altitude jumps since then. In other words, the people who know the risks, problems, and solutions that they are likely to encounter are all retired or dead. A lot of the information and technology is being rediscovered and reinvented. They know that this jump is possible because someone did a jump from nearly as high 50 years ago, that knowledge lets them push forward with more confidence than they would otherwise have but it doesn't really help them solve problems when they come up.
Maybe not clones, but there are definitely people doing genetic engineering at home
To be fair, the same argument that is used against Google could be leveled against Firefox. The browser/search is not the product, it is merely the means to generate the real product: users. The users are the product and they and their habits are sold to the advertisers. Obviously Firefox is still largely community driven, but when you get down to brass tacks it takes money to run a project as large and complex as Firefox has become, that money comes from selling user behavior.
I haven't applied the patch for this exact reason. So far, the only issue has been using the PSN. I haven't yet hit any games or movies that have had problems. I know it's only a matter of time of course but I'm still hoping that they get pressured into reversing the stance before that happens. I'm holding out on nuking my Linux partition until there is something that I really want that I can't get. Luckily, I don't use the Linux partition much, just to play some old emulators that I can do nearly as easily on my PC so it won't affect me much when the inevitable happens.
To be fair:
Poe's Law - Without a winking smiley or other blatant display of humour, it is impossible to create a parody of fundamentalism that someone won't mistake for the real thing.
I've got it! They could give their music away for fee (they don't make any money off it as is so no loss there) and sell concert tickets and merchandise for their income (which is basically what most signed bands now do anyway). So to recap: Consumer gets free and legal music. Musician gets at least what they get now.
Well, there is precedent
The punishment involved the execution of close and extended family members.[3][20] These included:
The criminal's living parents
The criminal's living grandparents
Any children the criminal may have, over a certain age (which is usually variable depending on the time period)
Any grandchildren the criminal may have, over a certain age (which is usually variable depending on the time period)
Siblings and siblings-in-law (the siblings of the criminal and that of his or her spouse, in the case where he or she is married)
Uncles of the criminal, as well as their spouses
The criminal himself
Of course, for a complete wipe you'd want to get nieces and nephews too, a group strangely absent from the list of executed.
No, the lawmakers established a range of $350 - $250,000 per song, depending on the circumstances of the infringement. I refuse to believe that they intended for the top end of that spectrum to be applied to situations such as these. While this was clearly not the most innocent type of infringement (something like burning a mix CD would qualify in my mind (not that I agree that it should be against the law, only that according to the law that is infringement and if it must be punished should be punished with the smallest award legally applicable)). At the same time it is far from the most heinous infringement (something like a major bootlegging operation selling thousands of copies at a profit).
But the judge can take things like remorse, admittance of guilt, hiding/destroying evidence, etc into account when sentencing. Sounds to me like that is exactly what she did here.