Who's in charge? You or "your" secretary? Neither - Our boss. But, between she and I, she probably has more pull because she can foul up more things that I need than vice versa (scheduling meeting rooms, shipping packages, handling orders, etc.)
Unfortunately, in some arenas, replacing employees who aren't doing their jobs can be very difficult. So, even when they're blatantly ignoring or refusing their duties, they stay in place.
Astrology is sort of a flawed mental shortcut for understanding the world Aren't all scientific models / theories just (potentially) flawed mental shortcuts for understanding the world? Astrology just happens to be more flawed than most. When I drop my pen, it accelerates at 9.8 m/s/s. I realize that neglects air resistance. I realize that rounds off acceleration due to gravity. I realize that ignores my distance from the center of the earth. I realize that ignores relativistic effects.
Like astrology, Newtonian physics is a model that has been proven wrong. I'm convinced that it is a more useful model than astrology, but that's a matter of opinion. And, it's good enough for me to understand what my pen is doing and, in this circumstance, the flaws don't matter.
I think that the questions at stake are: * How flawed can her model be before the annoyance outweighs the things you like about her? * If you're pursuing a long-term relationship that may involve kids, are you willing to expose the kids to that model?
It's intention is to delude you into purchasing something on issues aside from the products qualities. I feel filthy standing up for advertisers - Ads have become a blemish on the planet and I'm sick of being attacked in every possible venue by random images telling me that I need random things. In fact, I'm of the opinion that prescription drug ads should be illegal.
However, I still think it's a little inaccurate to say that all ads are trying to get you to buy something based "on issues aside from the products qualities". That's often true - Fear-mongering / Band-wagon attacks / etc are common. But ads do exist that do nothing more than try to make you aware of a product's qualities rather than trying to delude you.
So why shouldn't I adblock not only slashdot, but every website? I don't recall ever clicking an ad either but, if I blindly speculate correctly, some ad-revenue is generated based on targeted viewing rather than purely click-through.
Feel free to correct me if anyone has actual knowledge/data. I reject the argument that white-listing is stupid because advertisers suck - I know they do but, if they pay sites I like to provide content to me without forcing me to subscribe, I'll put up with them. But, if white-listing slashdot (et al.) really does not help them at all, then I'll clean out my white-list.
Thanks Adblock! I also use Adblock (I'm sure that a lot of this audience does), but try to use it responsibly. If you completely Adblock pages that you like that rely largely in ad revenue to stay afloat, you are ensuring that the level of service will degrade or that other (possibly more invasive) methods of generating revenue will be implemented. For sites you want to keep going (e.g. slashdot), especially ones with well-targeted ads, remember the white-list option.
Every time you Adblock slashdot, the gods flip a bit on your hard drive.
My wife refuses to buy anything online because of stuff like this We can't even get our secretary to order things online using the company card - We have to go to another group's purchaser if we want to use a vendor that won't accept phone orders.
At the risk of straying off-topic, I'd like to see a "mainstream media" story about the different security risks/exposures between internet purchases, phone purchases, and in-store purchases. Tracking behavior is certainly easier online, but cutting people out of the loop does good things for security. Although imperfect, I trust automated billing a lot more than inmates working phone banks or high-schoolers swiping cards at their summer employment and throwing away paper receipts.
Talking about energy levels, "baselines", and using words from every field that is even remotely sciency. That was always the breaker for me. Back in college, I found myself at more than a couple of parties where somebody passionate about their own particular slant on the afterlife would learn (either from me directly or from someone who I'd shared the same discussion with previously) that I didn't believe in souls or any literal afterlife. The typical attack was in line with "You're an EE - You should know about energy. If there's no heaven [reincarnation/ghosts/whatever], what happens to a person's energy after they die."
I tried arguing the point a couple of times, but eventually learned that arguing just made it more likely that the topic would come up in future get-togethers. When somebody starts throwing sciency stuff at faith issues, just finish your beer and go home.
you would have to show how much of it was from drinking the water... My guess is that it would be insignificant. From what I've seen, we (US) are a nation of OTC/prescription junkies...
who are these dot-slashers of which you speak? dot-slasher: 1: A person who trolls a particular online forum occasionally posting comments. Often quite nerdy, with tendencies toward typos, poor proof-reading, and bouts of spelling-nazism. SYN:./er,/.er, slashdotter ANT: digger, b-tard
...got to go there if you truly adore this book. Like all good./ers, I of course love the books. But, I find the original radio show very enjoyable and have listened to it far more times than I've read Hitchhiker's. In case you weren't aware, the BBC rounded out the radio show a couple of years back using as many as possible of the original cast as possible. All available on CD, for those who are interested.
...about another 570,792,046,090 years. Only if you track time using an unsigned integer - You know about the problems that caused in some programs storing dates prior to 1970.
What if we want to reference an event before the universe existed? I think the best solution is just to keep a sign bit and re-evaluate the issue in 278.54 billion years.
Some parts of WhiteSands are tightly controlled, others not so much (per wikipedia, it's 3200 square miles.) The Trinity Site is only open to the public 2 days a year (the first Saturdays of April and October). And they frown on people taking home souvenirs.
BTW - Leave the sand in the jar. It's almost certainly safe, just don't accidentally ingest any.
...some javascript redirects me to a child porn page am I: 1. A criminal.
IANAL but, under current law as I understand it, you're now guilty of possession of child pornography. If you choose to self-report or are caught through other means, the best you can do is hope that you're not prosecuted because it was an accident. The same goes (I believe) for possession of stolen goods ("But I paid $$ for it in a pawn shop and had no idea it was stolen!") or possession of narcotics ("He said they were just OTC pills to help keep me from dozing off!")
If I walk into a Gym and no one IDs me, I think "hey, cool. public gym. didn't know they still existed". I've got to call BS on that one. You may think, "Hey - They failed to put up a members only sign or check ID. I can work out and, if they stop me, pretend that this is my first day in the modern world and didn't know that they expect payment." But you'd have to be really disconnected from society if you honestly thought that you just found a free gym...
Now, if you click a link to a site that was showing video and stuck around to see what they had, pleading ignorance may be a little more realistic. But, once you learn that you're only able to watch that video due to a huge oversight by the site owner, I'd say the gym analogy is apt.
But it seems to me that you were authorized. Fair enough. Maybe I should have said "improperly authorized" rather than "unauthorized".
In both cases, guards overstepped their authority by waving me on. The guards (for good reason) are not in charge of setting the security policies, just enforcing them. Now, is a guard exercising his own personal judgment and bending the rules a little to cut a break for someone that they decide isn't a threat necessarily a dangerous security breach? Probably not. But, in any case, the potential consequences are obvious and allowing folks in a national security environment to exceed their authority is a terrible precedent to allow.
it follows - for all slashdot readers who are not self-employed - that your employer should be able to watch you. In most cases, if you're on-the-clock, your employer can watch you. There have been multiple cases of firing because of on-the-job conduct caught by cameras that the employee was unaware of.
Sorry - I didn't post it because I don't find it as interesting as the flower incident and wasn't sure anyone would even care to hear about the flower incident.
Basically, I got lost. Really lost. (I've been known to get lost in elevators - Really. That can be embarrassing to explain.) I was driving from El Paso to Las Cruces with all of my stuff in my car because I was moving to go to school. That included my pet rat who would ride either in his cage on my passenger seat or on my shoulder. Anyway, I somehow wound up on the wrong side of the Organ mountains (I should have noticed that I'd lost the highway when I realized that there was no traffic and that somebody had installed tank-crossing signs along the road.) The road dead-ended at a guard station - I didn't realize that until the last minute because it was after midnight (dark) and I was tired. The guards (3) came out as I was scrambling to get my rat back in his cage. Before the guard that approached my car could ask WTF I was doing there, I started with "Where the hell am I?" With that, the other two guards chuckled and went back in the building.
The guard that remained was obviously more interested in my rat than he was me and asked a few questions as to why in the hell I would have a rat with me. (Wouldn't a better question be "Why are you driving up to a military guard post at 0030?) I explained that I was moving had gotten turned around. He warned me that the missile range was closed except to personnel working there and told me to drive straight through without deviating. I did.
That's it - End of story. It disturbed me a little that I was let in, but turning me around would have taken 1 hour+, so I won't complain.
Depending on the guard/base, getting on is not always difficult - I accidentally sneaked onto an Air Force base a few years ago (my second time driving onto a military base where I was unauthorized.) I pulled up to the guard station expecting to be turned away - I just wanted to ask the guard for directions to the badge office so that I could get a day-pass for my car. As expected, he asked to see my vehicle pass but, before I could respond, he noticed that I had flowers on my passenger seat (they were given to me earlier that day as congratulations on the birth of my first son.) He told me that if I was just delivering flowers not to worry about it. But, he did mention that I shouldn't spend too long on base before waving me on.
So that's it - You want to sneak onto base, arm yourself with flowers.
(As a side note, on my first breach - a missile range - I was armed with a rat. But that's another story...)
I heard somewhere that it would take an average Cuban about 5 months' worth of salary to afford a $100 OLPC FTA, 1-hour of internet access costs $5 - About 1/3 of the average Cuban's monthly salary. I'm starting to think that Cuba may not be the paradise that Michael Moore made it outto be...
But why not just copy hard drives? With 500 GB for $100, that's a heck of a lot of music. That's what we did back in college. 5 or 6 of us that were all active in collecting large sets of large files would each bring a couple of drives to one of our houses, set up a couple of boxes for copying, and share 100's of GB of data in a matter of hours. Of course, that was before DVD-burners and thumb drives were accessible to college students so who knows what the popular methods are these days...
Hey wait - Anyone know what the popular methods are these days? I've been out of the loop for a while.
Wow, and I thought back when I was playing Quake MY lag was bad! Actually, I believe that there was an attempt to port Quake so that it's playable via Sneakernet.
Slashdot Mirror
Unfortunately, in some arenas, replacing employees who aren't doing their jobs can be very difficult. So, even when they're blatantly ignoring or refusing their duties, they stay in place.
Welcome to the government...
How about we petition the mods to change the terms of service making anything posted to /. free to duplicate for non-commercial use? =)
Like astrology, Newtonian physics is a model that has been proven wrong. I'm convinced that it is a more useful model than astrology, but that's a matter of opinion. And, it's good enough for me to understand what my pen is doing and, in this circumstance, the flaws don't matter.
I think that the questions at stake are:
* How flawed can her model be before the annoyance outweighs the things you like about her?
* If you're pursuing a long-term relationship that may involve kids, are you willing to expose the kids to that model?
However, I still think it's a little inaccurate to say that all ads are trying to get you to buy something based "on issues aside from the products qualities". That's often true - Fear-mongering / Band-wagon attacks / etc are common. But ads do exist that do nothing more than try to make you aware of a product's qualities rather than trying to delude you.
I'm not saying, I'm just saying...
Feel free to correct me if anyone has actual knowledge/data. I reject the argument that white-listing is stupid because advertisers suck - I know they do but, if they pay sites I like to provide content to me without forcing me to subscribe, I'll put up with them. But, if white-listing slashdot (et al.) really does not help them at all, then I'll clean out my white-list.
Every time you Adblock slashdot, the gods flip a bit on your hard drive.
At the risk of straying off-topic, I'd like to see a "mainstream media" story about the different security risks/exposures between internet purchases, phone purchases, and in-store purchases. Tracking behavior is certainly easier online, but cutting people out of the loop does good things for security. Although imperfect, I trust automated billing a lot more than inmates working phone banks or high-schoolers swiping cards at their summer employment and throwing away paper receipts.
I tried arguing the point a couple of times, but eventually learned that arguing just made it more likely that the topic would come up in future get-togethers. When somebody starts throwing sciency stuff at faith issues, just finish your beer and go home.
I'd like to see the levels present in the average American's blood-stream.
1: A person who trolls a particular online forum occasionally posting comments. Often quite nerdy, with tendencies toward typos, poor proof-reading, and bouts of spelling-nazism.
SYN:
ANT: digger, b-tard
...got to go there if you truly adore this book. Like all goodMuch fun!
...about another 570,792,046,090 years. Only if you track time using an unsigned integer - You know about the problems that caused in some programs storing dates prior to 1970.What if we want to reference an event before the universe existed? I think the best solution is just to keep a sign bit and re-evaluate the issue in 278.54 billion years.
Some parts of White Sands are tightly controlled, others not so much (per wikipedia, it's 3200 square miles.) The Trinity Site is only open to the public 2 days a year (the first Saturdays of April and October). And they frown on people taking home souvenirs.
BTW - Leave the sand in the jar. It's almost certainly safe, just don't accidentally ingest any.
...some javascript redirects me to a child porn page am I: 1. A criminal.IANAL but, under current law as I understand it, you're now guilty of possession of child pornography. If you choose to self-report or are caught through other means, the best you can do is hope that you're not prosecuted because it was an accident. The same goes (I believe) for possession of stolen goods ("But I paid $$ for it in a pawn shop and had no idea it was stolen!") or possession of narcotics ("He said they were just OTC pills to help keep me from dozing off!")
Awkward laws... Any idea of a fix?
Now, if you click a link to a site that was showing video and stuck around to see what they had, pleading ignorance may be a little more realistic. But, once you learn that you're only able to watch that video due to a huge oversight by the site owner, I'd say the gym analogy is apt.
In both cases, guards overstepped their authority by waving me on. The guards (for good reason) are not in charge of setting the security policies, just enforcing them. Now, is a guard exercising his own personal judgment and bending the rules a little to cut a break for someone that they decide isn't a threat necessarily a dangerous security breach? Probably not. But, in any case, the potential consequences are obvious and allowing folks in a national security environment to exceed their authority is a terrible precedent to allow.
Of course, following you home is another issue.
Sorry - I didn't post it because I don't find it as interesting as the flower incident and wasn't sure anyone would even care to hear about the flower incident.
Basically, I got lost. Really lost. (I've been known to get lost in elevators - Really. That can be embarrassing to explain.) I was driving from El Paso to Las Cruces with all of my stuff in my car because I was moving to go to school. That included my pet rat who would ride either in his cage on my passenger seat or on my shoulder. Anyway, I somehow wound up on the wrong side of the Organ mountains (I should have noticed that I'd lost the highway when I realized that there was no traffic and that somebody had installed tank-crossing signs along the road.) The road dead-ended at a guard station - I didn't realize that until the last minute because it was after midnight (dark) and I was tired. The guards (3) came out as I was scrambling to get my rat back in his cage. Before the guard that approached my car could ask WTF I was doing there, I started with "Where the hell am I?" With that, the other two guards chuckled and went back in the building.
The guard that remained was obviously more interested in my rat than he was me and asked a few questions as to why in the hell I would have a rat with me. (Wouldn't a better question be "Why are you driving up to a military guard post at 0030?) I explained that I was moving had gotten turned around. He warned me that the missile range was closed except to personnel working there and told me to drive straight through without deviating. I did.
That's it - End of story. It disturbed me a little that I was let in, but turning me around would have taken 1 hour+, so I won't complain.
Depending on the guard/base, getting on is not always difficult - I accidentally sneaked onto an Air Force base a few years ago (my second time driving onto a military base where I was unauthorized.) I pulled up to the guard station expecting to be turned away - I just wanted to ask the guard for directions to the badge office so that I could get a day-pass for my car. As expected, he asked to see my vehicle pass but, before I could respond, he noticed that I had flowers on my passenger seat (they were given to me earlier that day as congratulations on the birth of my first son.) He told me that if I was just delivering flowers not to worry about it. But, he did mention that I shouldn't spend too long on base before waving me on.
So that's it - You want to sneak onto base, arm yourself with flowers.
(As a side note, on my first breach - a missile range - I was armed with a rat. But that's another story...)
Hey wait - Anyone know what the popular methods are these days? I've been out of the loop for a while.