Even if they patent the "methodology" of making their genetically modified seed... unless someone is producing seeds with that exact same methodology (and no license), it shouldn't be a license violation.
WTF? This isn't even a thinly veiled slashvertisement, it's a full-on ad. I can't wait for the "Watch this 30 second advertisement before Slashdot will load" ads to come.
It'll end up being 60 seconds because the crap Slashcode takes 30 seconds to start working anyway. d=
. In the book he describes a situation in which some cops gunned down an unarmed black kid because they thought he was reaching for his own gun, and not his wallet. In that situation, there was no reason to assume this kid was dangerous, it was just that the kid was black and it was late at night in a bad part of town.
As an aside, for all Slashdotters out there... cops really, really, really don't like it when you reach into your pockets too quickly and/or out of their sight. They automatically assume the worst. Some of them - especially those who have been shot at - have an itchy trigger finger when it looks like someone might pull a weapon on them.
If you're going to reach for anything, do it slooooowwwwlllly. If you have to grab something from a pocket, compartment, etc., do it with the "okay" sign - remove or pick up the item with two fingers, and keep the other three as spread out and extended as possible. It's pretty much impossible to grip and quickly fire a gun or use a knife with just two fingers and it is surprinsingly effective at alleviating their concerns. (You may occasionally hear in movies or the like when someone is asked to remove their gun, the person holding them at gunpoint will say "two fingers!" - that's why.)
This is gonna sound like a weird question, but are you required by law to take a lunch break when you telecommute?
I know it depends on the area, but I really hate the "mandatory" lunch breaks. I'd rather skip lunch and be home 30-60 minutes earlier. I know the law is in there to protect us, but I'd really like to be able to opt-out.
The ideal is to work out a system so efficient (but so elaborately complex) that the company runs really well... but if they fire you and try to replace you with some MBA fresh out of college it all goes in the shitter.
"What the hell does 1-3PM MBA TABS mean?! I HAVE NO IDEA!"
After a couple days of the new guy crying in a bathroom stall and repeating "Productivity is down! Productivity is down!" like a rape victim, you'll be re-hired before you know it.
Having the blinds closed and blacked out with quilts duct-taped to the wall is part of dating a Slashdotter.
Now if she complains about the refrigeration coils on the walls, just tell her it's so the snipers can't spot you on thermal shoot through the wall with armor-piercing rounds. THAT'LL show her.
For those not in the know, this already happened many, many years ago:
One of the best-documented accounts of a prehistoric meal comes at the end of Frozen Fauna of the Mammoth Steppe (1990), by Alaska zoology professor Dale Guthrie. After successfully unearthing and preserving "Blue Babe," a 36,000-year-old steppe bison found near Fairbanks in 1979, Guthrie's team celebrates by simmering some leftover flesh from Babe's neck "in a pot of stock and vegetables." The author reports that "the meat was well aged but still a little tough, and it gave the stew a strong Pleistocene aroma." Now, I'm all for scientific esprit de corps, and I'm not by nature an incurious sort, but I'll say right now I don't see the appeal. Let's keep it simple: frozen meat from tundra = specimen; frozen meat from freezer = dinner. Study the mammoths and eat the burgers, and anyone who craves that great prehistoric taste can wash 'em down with Tab.
My sister called me a few weeks ago. She works 3 days a week as a nurse working 12 hour shifts at a facility about 60 miles from her house. She has a vehicle that gets about 20mpg and is in great shape. More than that, it is 100% paid for. She wanted to know my opinion on getting a new car.
So even if she had a car that was able to get 40mpg, her gas consumption would go from 9 gallons a week down to 4 gallons at best. 5 gallons at $5 a gallon is $25 a week or $100 a month. A new car payment would be better than $250 a month.
I told her as long as her current car was safe and dependable, don't go buy a new car to "save money".
Valid, if you're out to save money in the short term you're not going to do it. However, you neglect to factor in things like maintenance. Don't forget the fact that electric vehicles are typically lacking in things like air filters, oil filters, etc. Maintenance for the late EV-1 was "rotate the tires and top off the wiper fluid". How much would you save if you didn't have to do all of the maintenance related to combustion engines?
Since electric cars are still more than $20,000 more than conventional vehicles, plus you are asking tax payers, many who make less money than you to subsidize an additional $10,000 or more of your auto purchase. that does not seem like much of a bargain to me. Batteries have to be replaced every 5 years. You are not really doing this to save money.
Again, agreed. If you do not have a lot of money to throw around you're not going to save money.
All of the extra nasty non-green things that goes into manufacturing your lightweight car, motors and batteries PLUS using electrical current generated by coal burning plants. All you have done is moved WHERE the environment is polluted at from your exhaust pipe, to someplace else. You are not really saving the environment either.
Yes, that's true. You move the "where" of the pollution. But this is more important than you think.
Let's say a thousand vehicles emit the same amount of pollution as one coal-fired power plant. Which do you think is easier to install and maintain filters on? One coal power plant, or a thousand individual vehicles that may or may not be as well maintained as you'd like?
Even with the "environmental damage" that occurs from mining and the like, it's still all centralized in certain places. That makes containing and reducing that damage much, much easier.
this is the trouble with the "stand your ground" laws. They basically mean you can start a fight as long as the other person is mad enough, then you can shoot them.
Okay, you're not the first person to say this and I definitely have an issue with this.
I live in a "duty to retreat" state. (New Jersey. Fuck New Jersey.) In a "Duty to Retreat" state, you need to (typically) fall back to your home. In some states (like mine), you need to fall back to your second floor (if you live in a house) or bedroom (if you live in an apartment). Only then are you allowed to use force to protect yourself.
"Stand your ground" has no such limitation. At its most basic, it means that if you honestly feel that you are in serious danger you are justified in using force. There is no "duty to retreat" as in the above example. That's it.
I prefer that New Jersey had "stand your ground", but we're really lagging behind on individual rights here. Florida has it right. Sure, there's a chance that a situation could be orchestrated in order to kill someone and claim justifiable homicide. The fact that people can abuse the law is absolutely no fucking reason to do away with it. It'd be like getting rid of the first amendment's free speech protections because some people might say hateful language - it's patently ridiculous.
Lastly, far, far too many people are taking the bait the media laid out for them. Oh no, a poor innocent kid ended up getting shot by a man. Oh no, the kid was black and it was a white man! Clearly it was racism! He was suspected of being a thief so poor little Trayvon got gunned down!
No one considers the opposite side: A man who is in the neighborhood watch is driving around and sees someone he feels is suspicious in his community. He stops and asks him what he's doing there. At some point, Trayvon assaults him and the man, in fear for his life, shoots the kid. It's a snap reaction and it's sad that a kid got killed, but Trayvon shouldn't have attacked him in the first place.
We don't know what happened here. We know they encountered one another, that Zimmerman followed Trayvon, and that Trayvon ended up dead. No matter how you cut it this is a tragedy in every respect, but people are all too ready to chalk it up to a racist white man shooting a poor little black kid with a dangerous gun that probably had an assault clip and tactical sights! Guns are bad, they hurt people!
In fact, until we have more evidence we will probably never know what actually happened. Remember, the umbridge is on the prosecution to get around reasonable doubt. Should there be a more thorough investigation? Absolutely. The police were almost certainly in the wrong at letting Zimmerman go as early as they did without looking into the crime scene more. Damn near every concealed-carry holder knows that if you ever have to use your gun you can expect it to be taken and sit in the evidence room for a few weeks at least. The only major failure here that is clear is the failure of the police to make an attempt at finding out the important details.
When an appeal is in process for something like this, doesn't it usually put a stay on any orders given by the previous judge?
Like, if a judge ordered your house seized but you had an appeal going through, your house presumably wouldn't be seized until your appeals are exhausted or you win...
Towards the end of elementary school for me (so around 1999-2000), this was introduced by my teachers vis-a-vis their English department. It was never brought up in high school as far as I know. Yes, the "rules" for English grammar are very schizophrenic to say the least.
Europe does a lot of stuff I like and a lot of stuff I don't like.
What frustrates me is mankind's desire to reinvent the wheel.
We have a fight in America over nationalized healthcare. Obamacare is a half-assed mix between true socialized healthcare like what is in pretty much every European country and our private system. Why reinvent the wheel when we can just copy what has, say, already been working quite well for the UK since the end of World War 2?
We have issues in our schools with... everything. We're looking at more tests and more hours in school like Asian countries that are often near the top of world rankings. Yet Finland is also very much near the top in those rankings but with shorter school hours and more professional teachers. They are doing something quite right and have been for some time. Why don't we have the people who designed this system coming over here and unfucking ours?
I could go on with many more examples. I wish I could say "They can do it, so we should be able to do it as well!" and have someone respond "Right, let's find out how they did it!" rather than "Let's stubbornly try to figure it out ourselves and give private interests the opportunity to corrupt the system!" Related to business, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is a great idea that gets nowhere because they are essentially stripped of any real power. Private interests got their hands in the cookie jar.
Agreed... I think very few things actually change in the specific fields represented in the K-12 curriculum. As far as I can see, the only potential changes are (some) of the following:
* A new, easier-to-learn methodology to run through a particular type of mathematics.
* A significant, confirmed change in history, or perhaps removal of the bias already existing in history texts (such as the fact that Paul Revere was one of three riders and actually quite lazy - history class should teach history, not legends).
* Changes to grammatical rules (the whole "Lists and a comma before 'and' thing" - for example: it used to be "Jim, John, and Lisa" but apparently it is now supposed to be "Jim, John and Lisa" for... some reason. I think it's idiotic as the first one better represents how one would actually say the sentence, though.)
* Changes to specific tools in the curriculum. For instance, drafting isn't taught much in high school anymore, but AutoCAD is. Cursive is often being dropped in favor of typing. You rarely will see a shop class using a hand drill over a power drill. etc.
* New requirements for education that add new subjects to the curriculum, although what currently exists is pretty well-rounded.
I think you could take a full set of school books from 20 years ago and they'd be almost identical to the ones used today.
You forgot the last point: except for military use, autonomous drones are illegal in most countries.
And you've missed an important point: he lives in an alpine setting. That's not the kind of place where the local sheriff will give a fuck about anything short of someone getting shot.
If you say "Frosty Piss" three times while staring at an empty post reply screen, Frosty Piss appears in your bathroom, pees out ice cubes, and gives you a hug.
I'm all for kids getting creative, but they can't smoosh iPad paint all over the wall.
I'm not saying never let them finger-paint, but I am saying that if they're going to doodle around it's better for your sanity (and your cleaning bill) that they do it on an app rather than, say, write all over the cable bill with a crayon...
The existance of civilian technologies based on military ones does not factor in. DARPA is first and foremost about giving our military the greatest military edge that it can.
An idealist scientist could invent a brilliant AI that could fly a plane by itself with 99.99999% safety. DARPA would take that AI and put it in a missile. The fact that it could (and is) used for something good does not in any way take away from the fact that it's primary purpose is to exert force over others and kill whomever we deem to be our enemy at the time.
Slashdot Mirror
Even if they patent the "methodology" of making their genetically modified seed... unless someone is producing seeds with that exact same methodology (and no license), it shouldn't be a license violation.
1) Attach hydrogen-powered compressor to the solar reactor.
2) Feed hydrogen directly from the reactor into the compressor's fuel tank or battery (hydrogen or electric, whichever is more efficient).
3) Compress hydrogen using hydrogen. Figure out what percentage loss you get due to the compression operation for the lols.
4) Profit!
WTF? This isn't even a thinly veiled slashvertisement, it's a full-on ad. I can't wait for the "Watch this 30 second advertisement before Slashdot will load" ads to come.
It'll end up being 60 seconds because the crap Slashcode takes 30 seconds to start working anyway. d=
Yes, but if it serves as a backup and you never use it, the maintenance will be drastically reduced nevertheless.
Remember, changing oil is rated by miles. The less miles you put on the engine, the less oil you change. It's much the same for many other ICE parts.
. In the book he describes a situation in which some cops gunned down an unarmed black kid because they thought he was reaching for his own gun, and not his wallet. In that situation, there was no reason to assume this kid was dangerous, it was just that the kid was black and it was late at night in a bad part of town.
As an aside, for all Slashdotters out there... cops really, really, really don't like it when you reach into your pockets too quickly and/or out of their sight. They automatically assume the worst. Some of them - especially those who have been shot at - have an itchy trigger finger when it looks like someone might pull a weapon on them.
If you're going to reach for anything, do it slooooowwwwlllly. If you have to grab something from a pocket, compartment, etc., do it with the "okay" sign - remove or pick up the item with two fingers, and keep the other three as spread out and extended as possible. It's pretty much impossible to grip and quickly fire a gun or use a knife with just two fingers and it is surprinsingly effective at alleviating their concerns. (You may occasionally hear in movies or the like when someone is asked to remove their gun, the person holding them at gunpoint will say "two fingers!" - that's why.)
This is gonna sound like a weird question, but are you required by law to take a lunch break when you telecommute?
I know it depends on the area, but I really hate the "mandatory" lunch breaks. I'd rather skip lunch and be home 30-60 minutes earlier. I know the law is in there to protect us, but I'd really like to be able to opt-out.
The ideal is to work out a system so efficient (but so elaborately complex) that the company runs really well... but if they fire you and try to replace you with some MBA fresh out of college it all goes in the shitter.
"What the hell does 1-3PM MBA TABS mean?! I HAVE NO IDEA!"
After a couple days of the new guy crying in a bathroom stall and repeating "Productivity is down! Productivity is down!" like a rape victim, you'll be re-hired before you know it.
Having the blinds closed and blacked out with quilts duct-taped to the wall is part of dating a Slashdotter.
Now if she complains about the refrigeration coils on the walls, just tell her it's so the snipers can't spot you on thermal shoot through the wall with armor-piercing rounds. THAT'LL show her.
For those not in the know, this already happened many, many years ago:
One of the best-documented accounts of a prehistoric meal comes at the end of Frozen Fauna of the Mammoth Steppe (1990), by Alaska zoology professor Dale Guthrie. After successfully unearthing and preserving "Blue Babe," a 36,000-year-old steppe bison found near Fairbanks in 1979, Guthrie's team celebrates by simmering some leftover flesh from Babe's neck "in a pot of stock and vegetables." The author reports that "the meat was well aged but still a little tough, and it gave the stew a strong Pleistocene aroma." Now, I'm all for scientific esprit de corps, and I'm not by nature an incurious sort, but I'll say right now I don't see the appeal. Let's keep it simple: frozen meat from tundra = specimen; frozen meat from freezer = dinner. Study the mammoths and eat the burgers, and anyone who craves that great prehistoric taste can wash 'em down with Tab.
Exactly.
My sister called me a few weeks ago. She works 3 days a week as a nurse working 12 hour shifts at a facility about 60 miles from her house. She has a vehicle that gets about 20mpg and is in great shape. More than that, it is 100% paid for. She wanted to know my opinion on getting a new car.
So even if she had a car that was able to get 40mpg, her gas consumption would go from 9 gallons a week down to 4 gallons at best. 5 gallons at $5 a gallon is $25 a week or $100 a month. A new car payment would be better than $250 a month.
I told her as long as her current car was safe and dependable, don't go buy a new car to "save money".
Valid, if you're out to save money in the short term you're not going to do it. However, you neglect to factor in things like maintenance. Don't forget the fact that electric vehicles are typically lacking in things like air filters, oil filters, etc. Maintenance for the late EV-1 was "rotate the tires and top off the wiper fluid". How much would you save if you didn't have to do all of the maintenance related to combustion engines?
Since electric cars are still more than $20,000 more than conventional vehicles, plus you are asking tax payers, many who make less money than you to subsidize an additional $10,000 or more of your auto purchase. that does not seem like much of a bargain to me. Batteries have to be replaced every 5 years. You are not really doing this to save money.
Again, agreed. If you do not have a lot of money to throw around you're not going to save money.
All of the extra nasty non-green things that goes into manufacturing your lightweight car, motors and batteries PLUS using electrical current generated by coal burning plants. All you have done is moved WHERE the environment is polluted at from your exhaust pipe, to someplace else. You are not really saving the environment either.
Yes, that's true. You move the "where" of the pollution. But this is more important than you think.
Let's say a thousand vehicles emit the same amount of pollution as one coal-fired power plant. Which do you think is easier to install and maintain filters on? One coal power plant, or a thousand individual vehicles that may or may not be as well maintained as you'd like?
Even with the "environmental damage" that occurs from mining and the like, it's still all centralized in certain places. That makes containing and reducing that damage much, much easier.
this is the trouble with the "stand your ground" laws. They basically mean you can start a fight as long as the other person is mad enough, then you can shoot them.
Okay, you're not the first person to say this and I definitely have an issue with this.
I live in a "duty to retreat" state. (New Jersey. Fuck New Jersey.) In a "Duty to Retreat" state, you need to (typically) fall back to your home. In some states (like mine), you need to fall back to your second floor (if you live in a house) or bedroom (if you live in an apartment). Only then are you allowed to use force to protect yourself.
"Stand your ground" has no such limitation. At its most basic, it means that if you honestly feel that you are in serious danger you are justified in using force. There is no "duty to retreat" as in the above example. That's it.
I prefer that New Jersey had "stand your ground", but we're really lagging behind on individual rights here. Florida has it right. Sure, there's a chance that a situation could be orchestrated in order to kill someone and claim justifiable homicide. The fact that people can abuse the law is absolutely no fucking reason to do away with it. It'd be like getting rid of the first amendment's free speech protections because some people might say hateful language - it's patently ridiculous.
Lastly, far, far too many people are taking the bait the media laid out for them. Oh no, a poor innocent kid ended up getting shot by a man. Oh no, the kid was black and it was a white man! Clearly it was racism! He was suspected of being a thief so poor little Trayvon got gunned down!
No one considers the opposite side: A man who is in the neighborhood watch is driving around and sees someone he feels is suspicious in his community. He stops and asks him what he's doing there. At some point, Trayvon assaults him and the man, in fear for his life, shoots the kid. It's a snap reaction and it's sad that a kid got killed, but Trayvon shouldn't have attacked him in the first place.
We don't know what happened here. We know they encountered one another, that Zimmerman followed Trayvon, and that Trayvon ended up dead. No matter how you cut it this is a tragedy in every respect, but people are all too ready to chalk it up to a racist white man shooting a poor little black kid with a dangerous gun that probably had an assault clip and tactical sights! Guns are bad, they hurt people!
In fact, until we have more evidence we will probably never know what actually happened. Remember, the umbridge is on the prosecution to get around reasonable doubt. Should there be a more thorough investigation? Absolutely. The police were almost certainly in the wrong at letting Zimmerman go as early as they did without looking into the crime scene more. Damn near every concealed-carry holder knows that if you ever have to use your gun you can expect it to be taken and sit in the evidence room for a few weeks at least. The only major failure here that is clear is the failure of the police to make an attempt at finding out the important details.
For places that allow it, can't we just stick reactors far enough away from where anyone would live?
If the nearest residence is 20 miles away and a reactor melts down, is there a risk of radiation hitting them? What about 10 miles? 1 mile?
I can see a bunch of scrawny nerds roaming in packs and beating down people with bluetooth headsets on.
"Luddite nooooooobs!" *punch* *punch* *punch*
When an appeal is in process for something like this, doesn't it usually put a stay on any orders given by the previous judge?
Like, if a judge ordered your house seized but you had an appeal going through, your house presumably wouldn't be seized until your appeals are exhausted or you win...
The CIA probably has all kinds of explosives and guns in their headquarters, too! Why hasn't someone called the DHS on these obvious terrorists?!
Media makers like to eat and giving it away free isn't conducive to the goal of feeding oneself.
Really? Jonathan Coulton and loads of other people seem to give their media away (to the general public) and live just perfectly fine.
Yeah, of course UK's NHS isn't perfect, but it is a hell of a lot better than what we have in the United States.
Towards the end of elementary school for me (so around 1999-2000), this was introduced by my teachers vis-a-vis their English department. It was never brought up in high school as far as I know. Yes, the "rules" for English grammar are very schizophrenic to say the least.
Europe does a lot of stuff I like and a lot of stuff I don't like.
What frustrates me is mankind's desire to reinvent the wheel.
We have a fight in America over nationalized healthcare. Obamacare is a half-assed mix between true socialized healthcare like what is in pretty much every European country and our private system. Why reinvent the wheel when we can just copy what has, say, already been working quite well for the UK since the end of World War 2?
We have issues in our schools with... everything. We're looking at more tests and more hours in school like Asian countries that are often near the top of world rankings. Yet Finland is also very much near the top in those rankings but with shorter school hours and more professional teachers. They are doing something quite right and have been for some time. Why don't we have the people who designed this system coming over here and unfucking ours?
I could go on with many more examples. I wish I could say "They can do it, so we should be able to do it as well!" and have someone respond "Right, let's find out how they did it!" rather than "Let's stubbornly try to figure it out ourselves and give private interests the opportunity to corrupt the system!" Related to business, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is a great idea that gets nowhere because they are essentially stripped of any real power. Private interests got their hands in the cookie jar.
Agreed... I think very few things actually change in the specific fields represented in the K-12 curriculum. As far as I can see, the only potential changes are (some) of the following:
I think you could take a full set of school books from 20 years ago and they'd be almost identical to the ones used today.
You forgot the last point: except for military use, autonomous drones are illegal in most countries.
And you've missed an important point: he lives in an alpine setting. That's not the kind of place where the local sheriff will give a fuck about anything short of someone getting shot.
Because writing "<em>-Ethanol-fueled</em>" at the end of a post is only something he can do.
If you say "Frosty Piss" three times while staring at an empty post reply screen, Frosty Piss appears in your bathroom, pees out ice cubes, and gives you a hug.
Frosty Piss! Frosty Piss! Frosty Piss!
I'm all for kids getting creative, but they can't smoosh iPad paint all over the wall.
I'm not saying never let them finger-paint, but I am saying that if they're going to doodle around it's better for your sanity (and your cleaning bill) that they do it on an app rather than, say, write all over the cable bill with a crayon...
The existance of civilian technologies based on military ones does not factor in. DARPA is first and foremost about giving our military the greatest military edge that it can.
An idealist scientist could invent a brilliant AI that could fly a plane by itself with 99.99999% safety. DARPA would take that AI and put it in a missile. The fact that it could (and is) used for something good does not in any way take away from the fact that it's primary purpose is to exert force over others and kill whomever we deem to be our enemy at the time.