For those who don't know, Elon Musk was born in South Africa, and left to avoid Military Service in the 80's (which propped up the Apartheid government). He came over here, built paypal into a powerhouse (thorugh a merger, he didn't found it), founded Tesla motors, and he built a rocketship. Hell yeah.
Oh yeah? Well this morning, I played the Torchlight 2 beta and got an Engineer all the way to Level 12! And then I'm going to the dentist in an hour!
Man, fuck those guys that put my life into perspective. ):
On the first spacewalk, slyly plant a North Korean flag on some random american satellite, with the Korean for "BOOSH, BITCHES!". Wait a few months and watch NASA flip their shit trying to figure out how the North Koreans did it.
We have stuff like Truecrypt that, with a proper key, is pretty much uncrackable.
What happens when we have a filesharing client that reaches this apex? All it takes is some dedicated kid at Caltech or MIT or Basement U to come up with something that would basically be untrackable. Would the government make a completely legal program illegal? Massive spying?
It's going to happen and it will be interesting to see how its handled. I'd pay a hefty sum of money to see the face of the MAFIAA execs when a tech guy tells them "No, there really isn't any way to track this program. It's impossible."
If they were done right, I wouldn't necessarily see what's wrong with ID scanners.
I mean, sure, there's a business building a database of their customers. You know what, though? That already happens. Pay by credit and it wouldn't be all that hard to compile a list of everyone who paid by credit at a bar or club and find out about repeat business.
"Okay guys, I let you put your stupid cameras in my nightclub. Now tell me what the numbers were last night."
"Well, according to this, 134 police officers, 3 entirely separate instances of Prince somehow being there at the same time, 18 registered sex offenders, 22 donkeys, two thirds of the local city council, and an emperor penguin."
Julia Gillard is actually an atheist - and a woman, although that may be less scary. (I suspect the US will have a female president well before it has an atheist one.)
Well, I'm an Atheiest. I'm not like super-vocal about it, but I don't shy away from it either. In a lot of places in the States, "atheist" is tantamount to a slur, like if you called someone a commie in 1950s America.
Make it legal to pull over to the side of the road for any reason whatsoever.
Some businesses require live (or nearly live) communication with drivers on the road. Some people are so goddamned tired but they can't pull over, put down a couple triangles, flip the hazards on, and take a nap because they'll get ticketed and they (stupidly) would rather risk driving tired. Some people have the occasional urgent call or text that they need to take.
What are these people supposed to do here - take an exit off the highway, find parking in whatever town or city they pulled into, finish their business, and then get back on the road?
And, here's the problem, there's still a huge number of genes in the human genome that are not well studied and/or annotated.
Right, because logic and ethics factor in when companies are being discriminatory.
"Our medical research division says there's a chance this gene causes cancer, so we're not going to hire you. Our insurance rates will skyrocket. Have a nice day."
I'm just concerned an "Australian" kangaroo will "spontaneously" explode in some American city, and then before the ink on the infrastructure rebuilding contracts is dry we'll be flying upside-down C-130s and invading down under to "liberate" them from a "terrorist atheist criminal dictator".
Man, the fucked up thing is that the Australians aren't even the most dangerous thing on the continent. We'll probably lose a couple hundred guys just to the local wildlife.
Well yeah, but wouldn't an end-to-end LEO flight be something like 30-60 minutes? I recall reading somewhere the aimed goal is 30 minutes from A to B, where A and B are points anywhere on the world.
It's all the weight he lost recently. He used to be healthier looking, but when you sign the contract and Belial, Lord of Lies rips your netherself from the husk that is left on the mortal coil, you drop about 26-27 lbs.
He's referring to modern Apple hardware, which some might call "overpriced."
While others might call it "rape."
Come on now, be fair. How could you "rape" someone with Apple hardware? Let's compare an iPhone to, say, a vibrator.
A vibrator is sleek, metallic, vibrates, and can be shoved up your ass. That's completely different from an iPhone which is sleek, metallic, vibrates, and can be-
Is there ever going to be a time when the pols realize that throwing massive tax breaks at corporations is a bad idea for the state/city/country they're supposed to be representing?
Even if there is, it won't work.
Pennsylvania won't give tax breaks? I'll set up my company in New York!
East Coast won't give tax breaks? I'll set up my company in the Midwest!
U.S.won't give tax breaks? I'll set up my company in Canada!
Western Hemisphere won't give tax breaks? I'll set up my company in Laos!
A sci-fi short story I wrote has an element of surveillance with the police, but in a different sense than one thinks. They have cameras on each shoulder of their vest facing forwards, backwards, and to the sides. They also have a camera on their communication headset and one at the tip of their firearms. Everything is recorded at all times on their cruiser and uploaded to a secure database at all times. It's a high crime (on the order of tampering with evidence) to ever delete them.
Lofty sci-fi thinking ahead, this sort of technology pretty much exists today. Every cruiser and every cop should be loaded down with cameras. You'd save a hell of a lot of man hours "figuring out what really happened" because it was right there. Make the penalty for fucking with the camera in any way the same as if a cop somehow managed to lose his gun - deep, deep shit. We'd end a lot of the problems we have with law enforcement in a heartbeat.
In the meantime, though, we'll have to rely on good citizens to keep bad police in check.
I haven't seen NYCL (NewYorkCountryLawyer, for the uninformed) in a while and I do terribly miss him. He's one of the nicer things about Slashdot. But, it looks like he started posting again in the last few days! Hello NYCL!
You have to consider other modern conveniences like Netflix. A family of two adults and two kids can go over the cap with Netflix alone.
One of my friends would play games but always ended up getting capped thanks to her sister being a nutter with downloading anything and everything on iTunes.
If you're talking about this, well, it's still up in the air. My cursory read of the articles tells me that it would mainly be about eliminating tariffs between South Asia countries. The cynic in me says that it's all about setting up cheap and exploitable labor in those countries to reduce costs.
And okay, that's where we failed. Shit like NAFTA has, ironically, put the people it was supposed to help out of business (such as Mexican corn farmers, a lot of whom now grow something else entirely). But our government has always been pretty shitty about stuff like this, but what are you gonna do? It won't affect an everyday American's ordinary life like SOPA, PIPA, or ACTA would, so you won't really see any action against it build up any sort of momentum, unfortunately.
tl;dr: America writes up shitty laws just like nearly every other country in history, but on the ones mentioned we're 3 for 4 in keeping those shitty laws from passing.
Slashdot Mirror
For those who don't know, Elon Musk was born in South Africa, and left to avoid Military Service in the 80's (which propped up the Apartheid government). He came over here, built paypal into a powerhouse (thorugh a merger, he didn't found it), founded Tesla motors, and he built a rocketship. Hell yeah.
Oh yeah? Well this morning, I played the Torchlight 2 beta and got an Engineer all the way to Level 12! And then I'm going to the dentist in an hour!
Man, fuck those guys that put my life into perspective. ):
On the first spacewalk, slyly plant a North Korean flag on some random american satellite, with the Korean for "BOOSH, BITCHES!". Wait a few months and watch NASA flip their shit trying to figure out how the North Koreans did it.
We have stuff like Truecrypt that, with a proper key, is pretty much uncrackable.
What happens when we have a filesharing client that reaches this apex? All it takes is some dedicated kid at Caltech or MIT or Basement U to come up with something that would basically be untrackable. Would the government make a completely legal program illegal? Massive spying?
It's going to happen and it will be interesting to see how its handled. I'd pay a hefty sum of money to see the face of the MAFIAA execs when a tech guy tells them "No, there really isn't any way to track this program. It's impossible."
If they were done right, I wouldn't necessarily see what's wrong with ID scanners.
I mean, sure, there's a business building a database of their customers. You know what, though? That already happens. Pay by credit and it wouldn't be all that hard to compile a list of everyone who paid by credit at a bar or club and find out about repeat business.
What could possibly happen?
"Okay guys, I let you put your stupid cameras in my nightclub. Now tell me what the numbers were last night."
"Well, according to this, 134 police officers, 3 entirely separate instances of Prince somehow being there at the same time, 18 registered sex offenders, 22 donkeys, two thirds of the local city council, and an emperor penguin."
"terrorist atheist criminal dictator"
Julia Gillard is actually an atheist - and a woman, although that may be less scary. (I suspect the US will have a female president well before it has an atheist one.)
Well, I'm an Atheiest. I'm not like super-vocal about it, but I don't shy away from it either. In a lot of places in the States, "atheist" is tantamount to a slur, like if you called someone a commie in 1950s America.
Well, here's what would help:
Make it legal to pull over to the side of the road for any reason whatsoever.
Some businesses require live (or nearly live) communication with drivers on the road. Some people are so goddamned tired but they can't pull over, put down a couple triangles, flip the hazards on, and take a nap because they'll get ticketed and they (stupidly) would rather risk driving tired. Some people have the occasional urgent call or text that they need to take.
What are these people supposed to do here - take an exit off the highway, find parking in whatever town or city they pulled into, finish their business, and then get back on the road?
And, here's the problem, there's still a huge number of genes in the human genome that are not well studied and/or annotated.
Right, because logic and ethics factor in when companies are being discriminatory.
"Our medical research division says there's a chance this gene causes cancer, so we're not going to hire you. Our insurance rates will skyrocket. Have a nice day."
I'm just concerned an "Australian" kangaroo will "spontaneously" explode in some American city, and then before the ink on the infrastructure rebuilding contracts is dry we'll be flying upside-down C-130s and invading down under to "liberate" them from a "terrorist atheist criminal dictator".
Man, the fucked up thing is that the Australians aren't even the most dangerous thing on the continent. We'll probably lose a couple hundred guys just to the local wildlife.
I think you're holding it wrong.
Ah, well, I tend to clench my left buttcheek more than my right one.
Well yeah, but wouldn't an end-to-end LEO flight be something like 30-60 minutes? I recall reading somewhere the aimed goal is 30 minutes from A to B, where A and B are points anywhere on the world.
Well, obviously I meant minus the part where it, you know, was horribly unsafe and fell to pieces.
Well, I'm not sure about the "bitch" part seeing as I know pretty much nothing about her, but I wouldn't exactly call her fat.
It's all the weight he lost recently. He used to be healthier looking, but when you sign the contract and Belial, Lord of Lies rips your netherself from the husk that is left on the mortal coil, you drop about 26-27 lbs.
He's referring to modern Apple hardware, which some might call "overpriced."
While others might call it "rape."
Come on now, be fair. How could you "rape" someone with Apple hardware? Let's compare an iPhone to, say, a vibrator.
A vibrator is sleek, metallic, vibrates, and can be shoved up your ass. That's completely different from an iPhone which is sleek, metallic, vibrates, and can be-
Mother of god.
You would have a point if all NASA does is launch delivery ships.
You know, that's actually quite important. SpaceX has some pretty big incentives to improve here.
Any gains they can make in efficiency, size of the ship, etc. would be a huge boon for the company. As time goes by their fleet will grow.
In 10-20 years, LEO point-to-point flights will be the modern equivalent of the Concorde. All of the convenience and none of the sonic boom.
Is there ever going to be a time when the pols realize that throwing massive tax breaks at corporations is a bad idea for the state/city/country they're supposed to be representing?
Even if there is, it won't work.
Pennsylvania won't give tax breaks? I'll set up my company in New York!
East Coast won't give tax breaks? I'll set up my company in the Midwest!
U.S.won't give tax breaks? I'll set up my company in Canada!
Western Hemisphere won't give tax breaks? I'll set up my company in Laos!
A sci-fi short story I wrote has an element of surveillance with the police, but in a different sense than one thinks. They have cameras on each shoulder of their vest facing forwards, backwards, and to the sides. They also have a camera on their communication headset and one at the tip of their firearms. Everything is recorded at all times on their cruiser and uploaded to a secure database at all times. It's a high crime (on the order of tampering with evidence) to ever delete them.
Lofty sci-fi thinking ahead, this sort of technology pretty much exists today. Every cruiser and every cop should be loaded down with cameras. You'd save a hell of a lot of man hours "figuring out what really happened" because it was right there. Make the penalty for fucking with the camera in any way the same as if a cop somehow managed to lose his gun - deep, deep shit. We'd end a lot of the problems we have with law enforcement in a heartbeat.
In the meantime, though, we'll have to rely on good citizens to keep bad police in check.
The same can be said for, well, pretty much every country in the world.
Well, according to the latest laws in Vermont:
WHEREAS Vermont's milkshake has been proven to bring all the boys to that yard
WHEREAS Vermont asserts that damn right, it's better than yours
WHEREAS Vermont acknowledges the possibility of educating others on its milkshake as long as financial remuneration is achieved
WHEREAS Hydraulic fracking has been shown to endanger said milkshake
BE IT RESOLVED that Vermont hereby bans hydraulic fracking in all forms.
I haven't seen NYCL (NewYorkCountryLawyer, for the uninformed) in a while and I do terribly miss him. He's one of the nicer things about Slashdot. But, it looks like he started posting again in the last few days! Hello NYCL!
It's true. Honestly we can't get enough of those fantastic bovines.
I heard in 2015 MIT will invent cow-based bacon, and 94% of our population will die by 2041 as a result.
You have to consider other modern conveniences like Netflix. A family of two adults and two kids can go over the cap with Netflix alone.
One of my friends would play games but always ended up getting capped thanks to her sister being a nutter with downloading anything and everything on iTunes.
Weird, I didn't know you spelled Illinois as "N-E-W J-E-R-S-E-Y", because that's exactly how I feel living here.
SOPA
Failed to pass.
PIPA
Failed to pass.
ACTA
Failed to pass (as of yet), seems unlikely.
Trans Pacific Trade Agreement
If you're talking about this, well, it's still up in the air. My cursory read of the articles tells me that it would mainly be about eliminating tariffs between South Asia countries. The cynic in me says that it's all about setting up cheap and exploitable labor in those countries to reduce costs.
And okay, that's where we failed. Shit like NAFTA has, ironically, put the people it was supposed to help out of business (such as Mexican corn farmers, a lot of whom now grow something else entirely). But our government has always been pretty shitty about stuff like this, but what are you gonna do? It won't affect an everyday American's ordinary life like SOPA, PIPA, or ACTA would, so you won't really see any action against it build up any sort of momentum, unfortunately.
tl;dr: America writes up shitty laws just like nearly every other country in history, but on the ones mentioned we're 3 for 4 in keeping those shitty laws from passing.