I've used this very tactic at home; I started out telling my wife that our entire AV setup is outdated, the larger living room in our new home necessitated a 70" TV and surround sound to fill the room, as well as my aging computer no longer being able to handle the demands of a home theater PC server...
What I actually really wanted: The green-light on building a new computer. We negotiated down from the TV, surround sound and new computer to just the new computer. My wife feels that that she managed to put the breaks on a lot of needless spending and I got exactly what I wanted short-term. In truth, I eventually want all three, but I have the patience to wait a while before complaining loudly that I can never hear the TV properly because of the crappy speakers, and the game will be afoot again. I wonder how long after the passage of SOPA or OPEN before they start complaining loudly that they can't fully protect us without expanding their reach to U.S. sites as well...
No cynical "pay-to-win" options will be implemented, he assured.
No, it's more of a pay-to-not-lose.
Simply wrong; you don't have to spend a dime to be competitive. Even new players can acquire the "key" weapons within a few weeks between earning weapons through (mostly) easy to accomplish class achievements and through the random drop system. The quality of your team-mates will be the determining factor in whether or not your team wins more than any gun you have ever will.
With achievements and random drops, you will either get what you want/need or you will have the raw materials to craft most of what you want/need. Any gaps in your arsenal can be filled by trading, all of which can be done at the cost of $0.00. I know this because I had the complete list of weapons right before the latest update and I spent no money to do it. In fact, I'm now using my pile of duplicate items to start crafting the most recent releases.
The only items that I've seen command high trading values are typically vanity items: Vintage weapons (when the non-vintage are exactly the same except they don't say "vintage", hats (no change to game play in almost all cases) or paint, none of which you need to play well and have fun.
It's a game that is now free; download it, play it and enjoy; but if you feel COMPELLED to pay money to have all the toys immediately yet REFUSE to do so, uninstall TF2 and move on. There's certainly nothing to be cynical about here.
Conan the Barbarian and most of the characters of discworld would disapprove. If you're going to die, do it AWESOMELY.
Cohen the Barbarian would probably be much more upset about you messing up his name, and for my money, dying on your own terms and in a method of your own choosing IS dying awesomely. I applaud you, Sir Terry
We had canines for instance, that if we knew nothing about them other then their fossils, we would probably call different animals. So evolution as in one species becoming another and splitting and become yet another in the fossil record is a little of semantics to begin with.
So there was a time when it was believed that different breeds of dogs were so varied that they could not all be the same species. Then scientific investigation into the matter found that not only are they all part of the same species, they all descend from a common progenitor akin to wolves. An example of people absolutely believing one thing (as you imagine above) that was ultimately undone by sincere scientific inquiry, not leaps of faith and certainly not "semantics" either.
Without the complete chain, it's literally someone's imagination building off the available evidence to come to a conclusion.
Utterly ridiculous. You're claiming that without an absolutely exhaustive display of every conceivable piece of evidence that evolution can be dismissed? Scientists hypothesize based on available facts. They then work to see if those hypotheticals point to new discoveries, and if new discoveries are made that relate to the hypothesis, they test those notions against newly acquired facts. If the hypothesis holds up for long enough in the face of repeated testing it becomes a theory (still open to review and disproving). What doesn't happen is one bloke finding a fossil that appears to be of a fish-like creature going around trying to convince Christians that fish used to live in rocks since fossils are quite 'rock-like' in their consistency just because he's using his "imagination" to determine what he'd like to think is true.
You are essentially asking creationist to trust your imagination over their own because you said so and lots of others agree despite the fact that some other book said so also and a lot of others agree.
Creationists are being asked to do nothing more than be open to the notion that as new information and facts come to light that old beliefs may come crashing down. Sometimes that's in the form of people learning that birds are more closely related to dinosaurs than reptiles are, sometimes it's learning that the fantastic things you were taught about your super-powered invisible friend in the sky are bollocks.
Believe whatever you want to believe, but don't try to suggest that the faithful are entitled to invalidate scientific inquiry because it doesn't have every possible shred of evidence on everything, when they do not require ANY shred of evidence to justify continuing to cling to their childish superstitions.
... set up an area of the border that is a DMZ...nothing human should cross into it...anyone that does, is a criminal, and BANG...taken care of....
So... someone who is crossing into the U.S. illegally to pick fruit for $4 an hour for a couple of months before going back deserves to die now? Perhaps those of you who see life as such a trivial thing to be extinguished for a wide array of offenses ranging from the trivial to the serious are the ones whose lives should be ended. I am not an advocate of the death penalty in any form, but if people need shooting as you seem to suggest, getting rid of the people like you with such violent tendencies is probably a huge step towards reducing a lot of our violent crimes.
The Catholic church is one of the most scientific religions out there
They may be "one of the most scientific religions out there" but they're way... way far away from being scientifically credible in their beliefs:
Transubstantiation
The flood drama
The immaculate conception
Only publicly acknowledging the validity of heliocentric theory in 1992; the earliest known examples of this theory date back to the 3rd century B.C.E.
The whole "invisible omnipotent ever-lasting man who listens to all our prayers and made everything" belief system, and so on...
Science tries to find theories to fit the facts; religions try to find facts to fit their theories. Being the most scientific religion is kind of like being the most "pro-nerd" bully in school. You may not hold the record for kids stuffed in lockers in a single semester, but no mathlete should ever let down his guard enough to turn his back on you...
Sheesh, leave your kids alone. Teach them guitar or the violin, don't geekazoid their ass.
They're going to be learning math no matter what; so what do you care if my kids learn this system as well as the (woefully inadequate) math taught in schools?
In addition to that, I never said that math was all I would teach my kids. Maybe it's your intention to teach only one thing to your children, but it's not mine. For example, I'll be teaching them that acquiring knowledge is nothing to be ashamed of and that people who believe that being a geek is a negative are worthy of nothing but contempt. Enjoy raising your musically inclined mediocrities.
While your grandmother may have had her own way of doing this, complex calculations can be done very quickly using the Trachtenberg system of mathematics.
I actually have the book and swore to myself that (while I didn't need those computational skills) my kids would be taught it... my first is on the way now so I guess it's time to dust it off (the book... not the child).
Many of them are the people who just did they annual enrollment and discovered how much more their premiums went up because of it.
Even insurance companies are admitting that the new healthcare reforms will be responsible for maybe a 1 - 2% increase in their yearly costs. If your premiums jumped up a lot, blame your employer for providing such crappy insurance.
If you have a decent enough insurance plan (and mine is decent enough, not steallar) you won't see much of a shift in premiums. My health insurance cost went up by a lower % this year than last, before the health care bill passed. Guess why? Because my insurance already featured the benefits that the health care bill now requires everyone have access to (no charge for preventative care for example). The new law isn't increasing my insurance company's costs for me, so isn't increasing my costs to them.
As far as the majority opposing the health care reform, I haven't had a conversation yet with one person who opposed the new bill that actually had a lucid argument for opposing; they like the actual benefits (kids covered to 26, no charge for preventative services, children not being excluded due to preexisting illnesses, etc.), they just can't help but use words like "socialist" and "communist" when describing any effort to help the least of us get what should be a guaranteed right in any civilized country.
There may be a cogent argument for repealing the health care bill out there, but I haven't heard it yet. Every objection I've heard so far is the ranting of people who would rather cut off their own nose to spite their face.
would be to focus on the real problem; the kids that are using these methods to pose as other students need to be charged with and convicted of identity theft! It's only when they have been punished to the fullest extent of the law that they will truly appreciate the value of a good education. I'm sure there are high school graduation programs available in Australian prisons and at least there we can be sure they will actually attend.
You can't have a release date until you've had an open beta.
Increasingly companies use the release as their open beta, they just don't mention that in the documentation. Sadly my company is among them.
This definitely won't lead to less freedom...
on
Skeletal Identification
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· Score: 2, Insightful
How long before there's a false-positive (I don't believe that the skeletal structure is so unique that a body scan from a distance will NEVER make a mistake)? And following the false-positive, a plea for all good citizens to submit to a scan for the database, or to sign a release stating the government can have access to your medical records for the purposes of security and to prevent "unfortunate" mix-ups.
Once you're in the system, you're in it; making the notion that you have "paid your debt to society" when you are release from incarceration nothing more than an illusion. You can make whatever arguments you like about the usefulness of databases for certain types of offenders but systems like these mean that if you ever offend and serve time, for anything you will forever be watched; you won't have to be a terrorist or a pedophile.
I'm just glad this is being done in the name of safety, that's gotta be worth a whole bunch of anyone's liberty...
$70-125 to install and another $70-110 per month isn't cheap, especially on top of the major bump in car insurance that they already ate. Given that drunk driving convictions skew to lower income, this has real potential to put even first-time offenders into bankruptcy.
You know what costs more than these devices asshole? Funerals. My parents would have gladly gone bankrupt if it meant my brother wouldn't have died because of some cunt drunk driver. Instead they came closer to bankruptcy burying my brother than the bastard who killed him did.
How the fuck can you have an opinion that the same people who are contemptuous of both the DUI laws and the lives those laws are intended to protect deserve any consideration? You couch this in "anti-prohibitionist" rhetoric; this measure isn't prohibitionist, if anything people who demonstrate themselves to be irresponsible to the point where they will make decisions that threaten the lives of others should not be permitted to drive with ANY alcohol in their system.
The moment alcohol enters your system it begins altering your judgment for the worse; I don't want people who are willingly diminishing the quality of their judgment to be permitted to make the decision for themselves whether or not they are safe to drive. You should either drive, or drink; if you need to drive and you honestly feel that you need to drink too, well that need to drink should tell you something; get some help and stay the fuck off the roads
I stopped just short of wishing that you could learn like my family learned why people with DUI convictions don't deserve consideration when it comes to preventing repeat offenses, but no one should have to know what that is like. Instead I'll hope you never find out but somehow manifest the good sense to realize either people with DUI convictions can be monitored more to prevent at least some senseless loss of life, or they can be let do as they please in the name of "liberty" and the price can be paid by the families of others... again.
And apparently Slashdot's editors, probably for more ad impressions, decided to overlook it and post this anyway.
I don't think that's very fair. I trust that the editors fact check before they post, but if Digg didn't have anything about the update posted, what were the/. editors to do?
The SAS were called in once, to storm the Iranian Embassy, but even then the SAS report to the Home Office directly and are not strictly part of the regular army.
The Iranian embassy is not technically on British soil, just as every embassy in every country is considered to stand on their own soil and not the soil of the hosting country. That being the case, the use of police would not have been justified (police not having international jurisdiction). A military force to rescue hostages would be entirely in keeping with the separation of police and military duties.
Your scenario of a big evil company swooping down and taking the lone hero's invention is more psychological than based on real concern. A big soul sucking company would probably hire the guy who invented stuff with a generous enough salary. He is the expert on the thing after all, since he managed to innovate in the field. The guy wouldn't get millions of dollars, but he would make a decent living, a good enough outcome for most people. Noone needs millions of dollars for a comfortable living.
And as far as no one needing millions of dollars for a comfortable living, if a someone invents something worthwhile, like the above saw guard, they deserve to make millions from it a whole lot more than some faceless corporation that steals the guy's invention deserves to. With worthwhile inventions millions will be made; companies don't have some exclusive right to be the only entities making fortunes.
since when did "dump a bunch of shit on it and hope that plugs it up" become a formal strategy?
I'm guessing that at least one BP exec has gone looking for missing car keys/jewelery/leftover pot roast and discovered a 3 year-old at a newly blocked toilet. How much different can it be 5000 feet under water with oil gushing out at what is now estimated to be more than 50,000 barrels a day?
I will respond to say only that I think it's pathetic that you would post AC and pretend to be a third party speaking "in defense of the GP"
Of course, if you actually read my argument, you'd know I meant...
and to say that your "literal truth" is hate-speech.
It's not that the other ones are 100% peaceful, but it just doesn't compare.
You obviously believe what you say, but I don't believe that you don't know about or remember the details of the crusades, the Spanish inquisition, Salem witch-trials, the Vatican's current scandals with systemic child-rape and subsequent cover-ups, sections of the old testament that encourage all manner of offenses against decency (slavery, mass-murder, et al), etc.
As far as atheism being "innocent", the atrocities committed by so-called atheist states were not carried out because atheist beliefs motivated or compelled the guilty. There was an entirely different agenda in place and the "atheist state" moniker was not at the core of it. Many of the citizens and soldiers of these states did not consider themselves atheists either, rather people of one faith or another who were not free to practice their actual beliefs.
You are exactly the kind of person I dread the most; articulate, intelligent and hateful. Your specious argument may serve to convince others of the legitimacy of your claims; half-truths flanked by lies and misrepresentations.
I will leave you with this quote:
If we could read the secret history of our enemies, we should find in each man's life sorrow and suffering enough to disarm all hostility.
~Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
I wonder what your history contains that explains all this.
The holocaust, the soviet genocides ("engineered famine" is the preferred term, although how exactly that covers shooting civilians is beyond me), the muslim massacre on armenians, the rwanda massacres, the (ongoing) muslim-on-sudanese genocide against blacks,...
If you're going to call out atrocities, be a little more uniform in how you do so. "Soviet genocides" and "Muslim massacre on Armenians" or "Rwanda Massacres" and "Muslim-on-Sudanese genocide"? What religion were the factions in Russia and Rwanda, or does discussing that not serve to inflame anti-muslim sentiment and is therefore of no value to you?
And that's just the 20th century. Many idiots seem to think the 21st century will be different because they live in the by-far longest stable state (ie. the United states) where this hasn't happened for over 200 years.
Japan experienced what is widely accepted to be the longest period of civil and international peace known. The Edo period, from roughly 1625 to 1847. The policies enacted to achieve this are certainly open to criticism, but during that period they had no internal genocide and did not initiate one externally either. I don't know if you just assume that America is the best ever and therefore must have the longest time without a genocide, but if you did, you're wrong.
Meanwhile that inherent human goodness doesn't seem to be stopping sudanese muslims from raiding, killing and enslaving like their religion demands...
Here's a clue for you on the genocide in Darfur... it's Muslims killing other Muslims. Maybe you actually think what's happening over there is a religious fight, or maybe you know better and just hope the people who read your post don't and will blithely accept it as an example of Muslim aggression against non-Muslims when it is anything but that.
I'm not pro-Muslim, I am quietly contemptuous of all organized religion, but I am more contemptuous of hate-mongering bigots like you. You deserve to be called out, fuck the Karma burn and fuck the mods who considered your post "Insightful".
How is the Speed Limit sign something you need to pay attention to and have highlighted in red?
First of all most people drive down the same roads regularly and know the speed limits, this system would pretty soon become irritating and a distraction.
I don't believe that most people remember the speed limits on the roads they drive regularly, and even if they do, speed limits can change. Leaving it to the general populous to assume their knowledge of local speed limits is infallible doesn't sound good to me. I agree that constant reminders of what you are already aware of would be irritating though, like a girlfriend who keeps pointing out that all of your clothes are crap...
The Speed limit for a road is pretty much set by the type of road it is, you really don't need to see a sign to have a good idea of the appropriate speed for a particular road.
Again, I disagree; I live near two towns, one with a 15 MPH speed limit (no, I'm not kidding) on their main street, one with a 40 MPH speed limit on their main street. As with the above, I'm not comfortable assuming the speed limit, so I'm sure as hell not comfortable with you or anyone else assuming it either.
Finally the GPS which your almost certain to have, if you have this system, knows how fast you are travelling and the speed limit for the road.
Red is pretty much always used to indicate danger of something critical it's a bad color to use for that sort of information amber might make more sense if you have to highlight this sort of information. I would save red for things in your path or moving into your path - real dangers.
Speed limits are not setting the speed for a road the road conditions are and the driver needs to be able to evaluate the road conditions and drive at an appropriate speed.
If a driver is incapable of determining appropriate speed and evaluating the road conditions then they really shouldn't be driving.
Not everyone has a GPS unit, I know only two or three people who have and use GPS devices. I have one myself and I can assure you that it gets the speed limit wrong plenty of times, in an out of towns. Sometimes it thinks the speed limit is higher, sometimes it thinks the speed limit is lower, and I've updated it recently...
The bottom line is that people need to take responsibility for the way they drive, but they're not going to. Automatic transmissions, cars that park themselves, traction control, cars that automatically brake if it thinks we're getting too close... all have their good points (except automatic transmissions, man up and learn to drive stick already) but all move us closer to a time when the machines will be doing practically everything for us. The disconnect between driver and the world they are traveling through is widening; I think most people no longer really consider the potential consequences of poor choices/failure to pay attention when driving. The more cars end up doing for us, the more time that leaves us to text, apply make-up, shave, etc... A frightening thought.
If they left their extension cord draped over my privacy fence, damn right I’d be within my rights to plug my radio in.
Exactly! Just like the time when a neighbour of mine parked his car on my driveway while he was shoveling snow off his driveway... I went out and slapped a "for sale" sign on that puppy and made an easy $3,000. He was pissed, but I told him "if something of yours comes on to my property, it's mine to use any way I want".
Good thing he doesn't know about the time his wife came over to drop off some mis-delivered mail...
I've actually never understood this attitude about wanting to end everything. Yeah, granted, life would suck compared to what it could have been, but on the other hand, if you die, you are GONE FOREVER. There is nothing on the other side. You simply cease to exist, and it's as if you had never existed. All your consciousness is gone.
I can see wanting to check out if you're in constant pain and will never recover, but if you have your thoughts, you can at least think and have some hope of someday recovering. And if you can hear, you can occasionally get news of the outside world.
I would want to stick around just to see what happens.
I can understand not wanting to hang around. For anyone that thinks that they can occupy themselves with just their thoughts for months or years on end, try lying perfectly still for a few hours, no moving if you're uncomfortable, no scratching that itch, etc. If you're equal to that challenge, next try doing it for an entire weekend. Maybe it's just me, but about 10 minutes into that and I'd be ready to pack it in.
So.. you're saying that... because we have this technology which we can use to instantly copy things, that we should be paying as much or more than if we didn't have this technology and relied on others to make copies for us?
I always thought that the cheaper something becomes to produce/copy, the less profits the producer/copier can exact from the sale of said something.
I said nothing of the sort. If you want to know what I was saying, read what I wrote. I wrote what I meant, nothing more, saving you the trouble of having to put your words in my mouth.
I would agee with your take on economies of scale, if that serves as consolation
So if I go to my local library and check out a physical DVD and copy it at negligible cost that is OK?
These darn lines are getting blurrier and blurrier....
Where did I say anything about copying media from libraries being ok? Parent was implying that Oink and libraries perform the same service. They don't. That's not a judgement on my part, it's fact.
Just because we may celebrate new ways of sharing information doesn't mean we can create false parallels with established and accepted institutions to legitimize what is currently (right or wrong) either illegal or close enough to garner a lot of scrutiny.
Are you suggesting that we sue libraries out of existence for helping other people access material under copyright?
I don't have a problem with sites like Oink existing but what he was doing and what libraries are doing aren't the same thing. If libraries started making it possible and easy for patrons all over the world to near instantly create perfect replicas (and take permanent ownership) of copyrighted materials, libraries as we know them would not be permitted to exist.
Libraries operate on a lending model; you have to give stuff back or they fine you and only as many people can take that content concurrently as exist purchased copies (eBooks on a subscription model or one-to-many model is the exception).
File sharing sites and networks allow almost limitless numbers of people to simultaneously create their own identical copy of the original material that they intend to keep and in turn distribute. Whether the content they are pursuing is legal (or should be legal) for them to acquire in that manner is a separate issue.
Slashdot Mirror
Exactly this.
I've used this very tactic at home; I started out telling my wife that our entire AV setup is outdated, the larger living room in our new home necessitated a 70" TV and surround sound to fill the room, as well as my aging computer no longer being able to handle the demands of a home theater PC server...
What I actually really wanted: The green-light on building a new computer. We negotiated down from the TV, surround sound and new computer to just the new computer. My wife feels that that she managed to put the breaks on a lot of needless spending and I got exactly what I wanted short-term. In truth, I eventually want all three, but I have the patience to wait a while before complaining loudly that I can never hear the TV properly because of the crappy speakers, and the game will be afoot again. I wonder how long after the passage of SOPA or OPEN before they start complaining loudly that they can't fully protect us without expanding their reach to U.S. sites as well...
No cynical "pay-to-win" options will be implemented, he assured.
No, it's more of a pay-to-not-lose.
Simply wrong; you don't have to spend a dime to be competitive. Even new players can acquire the "key" weapons within a few weeks between earning weapons through (mostly) easy to accomplish class achievements and through the random drop system. The quality of your team-mates will be the determining factor in whether or not your team wins more than any gun you have ever will.
With achievements and random drops, you will either get what you want/need or you will have the raw materials to craft most of what you want/need. Any gaps in your arsenal can be filled by trading, all of which can be done at the cost of $0.00. I know this because I had the complete list of weapons right before the latest update and I spent no money to do it. In fact, I'm now using my pile of duplicate items to start crafting the most recent releases.
The only items that I've seen command high trading values are typically vanity items: Vintage weapons (when the non-vintage are exactly the same except they don't say "vintage", hats (no change to game play in almost all cases) or paint, none of which you need to play well and have fun.
It's a game that is now free; download it, play it and enjoy; but if you feel COMPELLED to pay money to have all the toys immediately yet REFUSE to do so, uninstall TF2 and move on. There's certainly nothing to be cynical about here.
Conan the Barbarian and most of the characters of discworld would disapprove. If you're going to die, do it AWESOMELY.
Cohen the Barbarian would probably be much more upset about you messing up his name, and for my money, dying on your own terms and in a method of your own choosing IS dying awesomely. I applaud you, Sir Terry
We had canines for instance, that if we knew nothing about them other then their fossils, we would probably call different animals. So evolution as in one species becoming another and splitting and become yet another in the fossil record is a little of semantics to begin with.
So there was a time when it was believed that different breeds of dogs were so varied that they could not all be the same species. Then scientific investigation into the matter found that not only are they all part of the same species, they all descend from a common progenitor akin to wolves. An example of people absolutely believing one thing (as you imagine above) that was ultimately undone by sincere scientific inquiry, not leaps of faith and certainly not "semantics" either.
Without the complete chain, it's literally someone's imagination building off the available evidence to come to a conclusion.
Utterly ridiculous. You're claiming that without an absolutely exhaustive display of every conceivable piece of evidence that evolution can be dismissed? Scientists hypothesize based on available facts. They then work to see if those hypotheticals point to new discoveries, and if new discoveries are made that relate to the hypothesis, they test those notions against newly acquired facts. If the hypothesis holds up for long enough in the face of repeated testing it becomes a theory (still open to review and disproving). What doesn't happen is one bloke finding a fossil that appears to be of a fish-like creature going around trying to convince Christians that fish used to live in rocks since fossils are quite 'rock-like' in their consistency just because he's using his "imagination" to determine what he'd like to think is true.
You are essentially asking creationist to trust your imagination over their own because you said so and lots of others agree despite the fact that some other book said so also and a lot of others agree.
Creationists are being asked to do nothing more than be open to the notion that as new information and facts come to light that old beliefs may come crashing down. Sometimes that's in the form of people learning that birds are more closely related to dinosaurs than reptiles are, sometimes it's learning that the fantastic things you were taught about your super-powered invisible friend in the sky are bollocks.
Believe whatever you want to believe, but don't try to suggest that the faithful are entitled to invalidate scientific inquiry because it doesn't have every possible shred of evidence on everything, when they do not require ANY shred of evidence to justify continuing to cling to their childish superstitions.
So... someone who is crossing into the U.S. illegally to pick fruit for $4 an hour for a couple of months before going back deserves to die now? Perhaps those of you who see life as such a trivial thing to be extinguished for a wide array of offenses ranging from the trivial to the serious are the ones whose lives should be ended. I am not an advocate of the death penalty in any form, but if people need shooting as you seem to suggest, getting rid of the people like you with such violent tendencies is probably a huge step towards reducing a lot of our violent crimes.
We, collectively are SO FULL OF SHIT.
The Catholic church is one of the most scientific religions out there
They may be "one of the most scientific religions out there" but they're way... way far away from being scientifically credible in their beliefs:
Science tries to find theories to fit the facts; religions try to find facts to fit their theories. Being the most scientific religion is kind of like being the most "pro-nerd" bully in school. You may not hold the record for kids stuffed in lockers in a single semester, but no mathlete should ever let down his guard enough to turn his back on you...
Sheesh, leave your kids alone. Teach them guitar or the violin, don't geekazoid their ass.
They're going to be learning math no matter what; so what do you care if my kids learn this system as well as the (woefully inadequate) math taught in schools?
In addition to that, I never said that math was all I would teach my kids. Maybe it's your intention to teach only one thing to your children, but it's not mine. For example, I'll be teaching them that acquiring knowledge is nothing to be ashamed of and that people who believe that being a geek is a negative are worthy of nothing but contempt. Enjoy raising your musically inclined mediocrities.
While your grandmother may have had her own way of doing this, complex calculations can be done very quickly using the Trachtenberg system of mathematics.
I actually have the book and swore to myself that (while I didn't need those computational skills) my kids would be taught it... my first is on the way now so I guess it's time to dust it off (the book... not the child).
For anyone interested in learning these skills, here is the Amazon search result page
Many of them are the people who just did they annual enrollment and discovered how much more their premiums went up because of it.
Even insurance companies are admitting that the new healthcare reforms will be responsible for maybe a 1 - 2% increase in their yearly costs. If your premiums jumped up a lot, blame your employer for providing such crappy insurance.
If you have a decent enough insurance plan (and mine is decent enough, not steallar) you won't see much of a shift in premiums. My health insurance cost went up by a lower % this year than last, before the health care bill passed. Guess why? Because my insurance already featured the benefits that the health care bill now requires everyone have access to (no charge for preventative care for example). The new law isn't increasing my insurance company's costs for me, so isn't increasing my costs to them.
As far as the majority opposing the health care reform, I haven't had a conversation yet with one person who opposed the new bill that actually had a lucid argument for opposing; they like the actual benefits (kids covered to 26, no charge for preventative services, children not being excluded due to preexisting illnesses, etc.), they just can't help but use words like "socialist" and "communist" when describing any effort to help the least of us get what should be a guaranteed right in any civilized country.
There may be a cogent argument for repealing the health care bill out there, but I haven't heard it yet. Every objection I've heard so far is the ranting of people who would rather cut off their own nose to spite their face.
would be to focus on the real problem; the kids that are using these methods to pose as other students need to be charged with and convicted of identity theft! It's only when they have been punished to the fullest extent of the law that they will truly appreciate the value of a good education. I'm sure there are high school graduation programs available in Australian prisons and at least there we can be sure they will actually attend.
You can't have a release date until you've had an open beta.
Increasingly companies use the release as their open beta, they just don't mention that in the documentation. Sadly my company is among them.
How long before there's a false-positive (I don't believe that the skeletal structure is so unique that a body scan from a distance will NEVER make a mistake)? And following the false-positive, a plea for all good citizens to submit to a scan for the database, or to sign a release stating the government can have access to your medical records for the purposes of security and to prevent "unfortunate" mix-ups.
Once you're in the system, you're in it; making the notion that you have "paid your debt to society" when you are release from incarceration nothing more than an illusion. You can make whatever arguments you like about the usefulness of databases for certain types of offenders but systems like these mean that if you ever offend and serve time, for anything you will forever be watched; you won't have to be a terrorist or a pedophile.
I'm just glad this is being done in the name of safety, that's gotta be worth a whole bunch of anyone's liberty...
$70-125 to install and another $70-110 per month isn't cheap, especially on top of the major bump in car insurance that they already ate. Given that drunk driving convictions skew to lower income, this has real potential to put even first-time offenders into bankruptcy.
You know what costs more than these devices asshole? Funerals. My parents would have gladly gone bankrupt if it meant my brother wouldn't have died because of some cunt drunk driver. Instead they came closer to bankruptcy burying my brother than the bastard who killed him did.
How the fuck can you have an opinion that the same people who are contemptuous of both the DUI laws and the lives those laws are intended to protect deserve any consideration? You couch this in "anti-prohibitionist" rhetoric; this measure isn't prohibitionist, if anything people who demonstrate themselves to be irresponsible to the point where they will make decisions that threaten the lives of others should not be permitted to drive with ANY alcohol in their system.
The moment alcohol enters your system it begins altering your judgment for the worse; I don't want people who are willingly diminishing the quality of their judgment to be permitted to make the decision for themselves whether or not they are safe to drive. You should either drive, or drink; if you need to drive and you honestly feel that you need to drink too, well that need to drink should tell you something; get some help and stay the fuck off the roads
I stopped just short of wishing that you could learn like my family learned why people with DUI convictions don't deserve consideration when it comes to preventing repeat offenses, but no one should have to know what that is like. Instead I'll hope you never find out but somehow manifest the good sense to realize either people with DUI convictions can be monitored more to prevent at least some senseless loss of life, or they can be let do as they please in the name of "liberty" and the price can be paid by the families of others... again.
And apparently Slashdot's editors, probably for more ad impressions, decided to overlook it and post this anyway.
I don't think that's very fair. I trust that the editors fact check before they post, but if Digg didn't have anything about the update posted, what were the /. editors to do?
The SAS were called in once, to storm the Iranian Embassy, but even then the SAS report to the Home Office directly and are not strictly part of the regular army.
The Iranian embassy is not technically on British soil, just as every embassy in every country is considered to stand on their own soil and not the soil of the hosting country. That being the case, the use of police would not have been justified (police not having international jurisdiction). A military force to rescue hostages would be entirely in keeping with the separation of police and military duties.
Your scenario of a big evil company swooping down and taking the lone hero's invention is more psychological than based on real concern. A big soul sucking company would probably hire the guy who invented stuff with a generous enough salary. He is the expert on the thing after all, since he managed to innovate in the field. The guy wouldn't get millions of dollars, but he would make a decent living, a good enough outcome for most people. Noone needs millions of dollars for a comfortable living.
So wrong...
And as far as no one needing millions of dollars for a comfortable living, if a someone invents something worthwhile, like the above saw guard, they deserve to make millions from it a whole lot more than some faceless corporation that steals the guy's invention deserves to. With worthwhile inventions millions will be made; companies don't have some exclusive right to be the only entities making fortunes.
since when did "dump a bunch of shit on it and hope that plugs it up" become a formal strategy?
I'm guessing that at least one BP exec has gone looking for missing car keys/jewelery/leftover pot roast and discovered a 3 year-old at a newly blocked toilet. How much different can it be 5000 feet under water with oil gushing out at what is now estimated to be more than 50,000 barrels a day?
I will respond to say only that I think it's pathetic that you would post AC and pretend to be a third party speaking "in defense of the GP"
Of course, if you actually read my argument, you'd know I meant...
and to say that your "literal truth" is hate-speech.
It's not that the other ones are 100% peaceful, but it just doesn't compare.
You obviously believe what you say, but I don't believe that you don't know about or remember the details of the crusades, the Spanish inquisition, Salem witch-trials, the Vatican's current scandals with systemic child-rape and subsequent cover-ups, sections of the old testament that encourage all manner of offenses against decency (slavery, mass-murder, et al), etc.
As far as atheism being "innocent", the atrocities committed by so-called atheist states were not carried out because atheist beliefs motivated or compelled the guilty. There was an entirely different agenda in place and the "atheist state" moniker was not at the core of it. Many of the citizens and soldiers of these states did not consider themselves atheists either, rather people of one faith or another who were not free to practice their actual beliefs.
You are exactly the kind of person I dread the most; articulate, intelligent and hateful. Your specious argument may serve to convince others of the legitimacy of your claims; half-truths flanked by lies and misrepresentations.
I will leave you with this quote:
If we could read the secret history of our enemies, we should find in each man's life sorrow and suffering enough to disarm all hostility.
~Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
I wonder what your history contains that explains all this.
The holocaust, the soviet genocides ("engineered famine" is the preferred term, although how exactly that covers shooting civilians is beyond me), the muslim massacre on armenians, the rwanda massacres, the (ongoing) muslim-on-sudanese genocide against blacks, ...
If you're going to call out atrocities, be a little more uniform in how you do so. "Soviet genocides" and "Muslim massacre on Armenians" or "Rwanda Massacres" and "Muslim-on-Sudanese genocide"? What religion were the factions in Russia and Rwanda, or does discussing that not serve to inflame anti-muslim sentiment and is therefore of no value to you?
And that's just the 20th century. Many idiots seem to think the 21st century will be different because they live in the by-far longest stable state (ie. the United states) where this hasn't happened for over 200 years.
Japan experienced what is widely accepted to be the longest period of civil and international peace known. The Edo period, from roughly 1625 to 1847. The policies enacted to achieve this are certainly open to criticism, but during that period they had no internal genocide and did not initiate one externally either. I don't know if you just assume that America is the best ever and therefore must have the longest time without a genocide, but if you did, you're wrong.
Meanwhile that inherent human goodness doesn't seem to be stopping sudanese muslims from raiding, killing and enslaving like their religion demands ...
Here's a clue for you on the genocide in Darfur... it's Muslims killing other Muslims. Maybe you actually think what's happening over there is a religious fight, or maybe you know better and just hope the people who read your post don't and will blithely accept it as an example of Muslim aggression against non-Muslims when it is anything but that.
I'm not pro-Muslim, I am quietly contemptuous of all organized religion, but I am more contemptuous of hate-mongering bigots like you. You deserve to be called out, fuck the Karma burn and fuck the mods who considered your post "Insightful".
How is the Speed Limit sign something you need to pay attention to and have highlighted in red?
First of all most people drive down the same roads regularly and know the speed limits, this system would pretty soon become irritating and a distraction.
I don't believe that most people remember the speed limits on the roads they drive regularly, and even if they do, speed limits can change. Leaving it to the general populous to assume their knowledge of local speed limits is infallible doesn't sound good to me. I agree that constant reminders of what you are already aware of would be irritating though, like a girlfriend who keeps pointing out that all of your clothes are crap...
The Speed limit for a road is pretty much set by the type of road it is, you really don't need to see a sign to have a good idea of the appropriate speed for a particular road .
Again, I disagree; I live near two towns, one with a 15 MPH speed limit (no, I'm not kidding) on their main street, one with a 40 MPH speed limit on their main street. As with the above, I'm not comfortable assuming the speed limit, so I'm sure as hell not comfortable with you or anyone else assuming it either.
Finally the GPS which your almost certain to have, if you have this system, knows how fast you are travelling and the speed limit for the road.
Red is pretty much always used to indicate danger of something critical it's a bad color to use for that sort of information amber might make more sense if you have to highlight this sort of information. I would save red for things in your path or moving into your path - real dangers.
Speed limits are not setting the speed for a road the road conditions are and the driver needs to be able to evaluate the road conditions and drive at an appropriate speed.
If a driver is incapable of determining appropriate speed and evaluating the road conditions then they really shouldn't be driving.
Not everyone has a GPS unit, I know only two or three people who have and use GPS devices. I have one myself and I can assure you that it gets the speed limit wrong plenty of times, in an out of towns. Sometimes it thinks the speed limit is higher, sometimes it thinks the speed limit is lower, and I've updated it recently...
The bottom line is that people need to take responsibility for the way they drive, but they're not going to. Automatic transmissions, cars that park themselves, traction control, cars that automatically brake if it thinks we're getting too close... all have their good points (except automatic transmissions, man up and learn to drive stick already) but all move us closer to a time when the machines will be doing practically everything for us. The disconnect between driver and the world they are traveling through is widening; I think most people no longer really consider the potential consequences of poor choices/failure to pay attention when driving. The more cars end up doing for us, the more time that leaves us to text, apply make-up, shave, etc... A frightening thought.
Trespass?
If they left their extension cord draped over my privacy fence, damn right I’d be within my rights to plug my radio in.
Exactly! Just like the time when a neighbour of mine parked his car on my driveway while he was shoveling snow off his driveway... I went out and slapped a "for sale" sign on that puppy and made an easy $3,000. He was pissed, but I told him "if something of yours comes on to my property, it's mine to use any way I want".
Good thing he doesn't know about the time his wife came over to drop off some mis-delivered mail...
I've actually never understood this attitude about wanting to end everything. Yeah, granted, life would suck compared to what it could have been, but on the other hand, if you die, you are GONE FOREVER. There is nothing on the other side. You simply cease to exist, and it's as if you had never existed. All your consciousness is gone.
I can see wanting to check out if you're in constant pain and will never recover, but if you have your thoughts, you can at least think and have some hope of someday recovering. And if you can hear, you can occasionally get news of the outside world.
I would want to stick around just to see what happens.
I can understand not wanting to hang around. For anyone that thinks that they can occupy themselves with just their thoughts for months or years on end, try lying perfectly still for a few hours, no moving if you're uncomfortable, no scratching that itch, etc. If you're equal to that challenge, next try doing it for an entire weekend. Maybe it's just me, but about 10 minutes into that and I'd be ready to pack it in.
So.. you're saying that... because we have this technology which we can use to instantly copy things, that we should be paying as much or more than if we didn't have this technology and relied on others to make copies for us?
I always thought that the cheaper something becomes to produce/copy, the less profits the producer/copier can exact from the sale of said something.
I said nothing of the sort. If you want to know what I was saying, read what I wrote. I wrote what I meant, nothing more, saving you the trouble of having to put your words in my mouth.
I would agee with your take on economies of scale, if that serves as consolation
So if I go to my local library and check out a physical DVD and copy it at negligible cost that is OK? These darn lines are getting blurrier and blurrier....
Where did I say anything about copying media from libraries being ok? Parent was implying that Oink and libraries perform the same service. They don't. That's not a judgement on my part, it's fact.
Just because we may celebrate new ways of sharing information doesn't mean we can create false parallels with established and accepted institutions to legitimize what is currently (right or wrong) either illegal or close enough to garner a lot of scrutiny.
Are you suggesting that we sue libraries out of existence for helping other people access material under copyright?
I don't have a problem with sites like Oink existing but what he was doing and what libraries are doing aren't the same thing. If libraries started making it possible and easy for patrons all over the world to near instantly create perfect replicas (and take permanent ownership) of copyrighted materials, libraries as we know them would not be permitted to exist.
Libraries operate on a lending model; you have to give stuff back or they fine you and only as many people can take that content concurrently as exist purchased copies (eBooks on a subscription model or one-to-many model is the exception).
File sharing sites and networks allow almost limitless numbers of people to simultaneously create their own identical copy of the original material that they intend to keep and in turn distribute. Whether the content they are pursuing is legal (or should be legal) for them to acquire in that manner is a separate issue.