Only the title was written by the Slashdot staff, so you can't very well blame them for what the anonymous contributer wrote.
As for the title... groping is defined as "To feel about blindly or uncertainly in search". The TSA agent doing an enhanced patdown is required to feel, without looking, for explosives in the genital are. They are required to grope people. All TSA agents that perform the enhanced patdowns are, by definition, gropers.
But why let mere facts dissuade you from ranting. Carry on.
Yep. For profit companies clearly provide the best execution, SLA and customer service level available. And there are dozens and dozens more similar videos online and hundreds of complaints about both FedEx and UPS if you bother to look.
USPS, UPS and FedEx do not release statistics to show what percentage of packages they lose and what percentage they damage. Without that information, your claims that one is better than the other just shows that you're biased.
> Once you know where things are it does make you work faster.
Have you actually timed how long it takes to move your mouse to the top of the application window to click on something versus the time required to move your mouse to a menu at the top, click and move it down to an item on the menu and let go? Unless you're the most painfully slow human being on earth, it can't be more than half a second and it's just as disruptive since you still have to move the mouse and look at a different location, locate what you want and click.
Assuming you do this 240 times a day (which is most likely not the case), you've saved a whole 2 minutes. How much work are you actually going to do in 2 minutes?
And that's ignoring the fact that for some things, like inserting a column in Excel, you have to go to the tab, click on an item and get a menu that you have to choose an option from.. For those things, you actually have more steps than in previous versions and that's going to take a correspondingly longer time, sucking away those precious half-seconds that you're so proud of saving.
> What ever happend to the sentiment expressed in the 10th amendment, that "powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."?
Time passed, the world changed and the idea became increasingly irrelevant.
The constitution says nothing about:
The Internet. We would not have an internet if it wasn't for federal funding and involvement. Individual network providers would have acted exactly like the cell phone companies do... proprietary standards, locked down hardware, multi-year contracts with steep cancellation fees and ridiculous pricing for data, etc. etc.
Highways. We wouldn't have nearly as useful an interstate system. State roads would exist, but you'd have a hard time convincing the states between Miami and New York that they needed to spend funds on highways that allow people to bypass everything that could generate local revenue.
Aviation. Airlines would most likely base their operations in whichever state offered the lowest requirements for inspection and maintenance of their fleet. States would probably compete in offering the lowest requirements in order to get tax revenue from the ticket sales. Who cares how many people die as a result.
Automobiles. Read "Unsafe at Any Speed: The Designed-In Dangers of the American Automobile" by Ralph Nader. That's what you get without the federal Department of Transportation setting requirements.
Food and Drug regulation. Read Upton Sinclair's "The Jungle" sometime if you think the FDA isn't needed.
I could go on with dozens, if not hundreds, of examples.
Parroting the argument that everything not delegated to the federal government should be controlled by the individual states demonstrates a lack of understanding of how our world works.
The future our founding fathers envisioned in 1787 and wrote laws for isn't the future we got. We have many, many things they could never have imagined and the constitution simply does not give the federal government the ability address everything that needs to be addressed on a federal level in the modern world.
(and no, amendments are not the answer unless you want to hold a national election every month as we develop new technologies and new ways to use the technologies we have)
I think you're greatly underestimating the stubborn stupidity of the small handful of nutcases who constantly get attention from the media because of their controversial views.
Apple didn't sell the first non-DRMed music. Apple didn't even exist when the first non-DRMed music was sold. In point of fact, non-DRM music was sold for nearly a hundred years before there even was such a thing as digital encoded music, much less the digital rights management to protect it.
Selling music dates back to Edison's recorded cylinders in the late 1800s and there was certainly no digital rights management embedded in the wax cylinders. Selling non-DRMed music is not a new thing.
In addition, your assertion that copyright law gives copyright holders the ability to add DRM is ridiculous and completely wrong (in addition to being completely irrelevant to the discussion).
Copyright law doesn't give the ability to add DRM. No law ever prevented adding DRM to music, so copyright owners have had the ability to do so since DRM was invented. No law had to be added to 'give' them that ability.
tl;dr: You obviously have no clue what you're talking about. Please stop making a fool of yourself in public.
Except that people used to buy music on these things called CDs and cassettes and vinyl records.... no DRM, play it in any device that supports the format, etc. etc.
DRM is a modern 'innovation' that was added to music after decades of it being sold without DRM.
Most of the costs imposed by the government are for things like trials to ensure that the drug works and doesn't kill people. Are you seriously suggesting we should just get rid of those and return to the days of snake oil sales?
Add-ons aren't updated all the time. The OP was responding to someone who suggested there was no problem because users could simply open the add-on archive file, edit the proper file and update the archive with it.
Apparently the OP thinks users who want a dumbed-down browser that doesn't show them things like a status bar or version numbers will have no problem with doing that because it's so intuitive that even a caveman could do it.
> Another major factor about "fracking" it has been around for decades since 1947 for gas and oil, the first official use is dated to 1903, Why worry about it now? Sounds like media scare tactics.
Asbestos was used for insulation since 1857 and the first usage of it goes back at least 4,500 years. Why worry about it now?
Radium-laced water was used to cure virtually everything around the start of the 20th century. Why worry about it now?
Thalidomide was used to combat morning sickness since 1957. Why worry about it now?
Maybe because we've actually learned that some of the things done in the past turned out to be staggeringly stupid and short sighted?
"It is speculated, mostly by tech pundits, that considering the sheer amount of effort that itâ(TM)s putting into shoving Chrome down our throats, it would not be in Googleâ(TM)s best interests to re-sign with Mozilla."
Most of Google's revenue comes from advertising, not Chrome. To ensure that revenue, they need to remain the number one search engine. To that end, it is in Google's best interest to remain the default search engine on Firefox as long as Firefox has any significant market share, regardless of Chrome's market share.
Regardless of Google's motivation, the fact that something so stupidly obvious which has been available for years from other companies can be patented is an abomination and is proof that the patent system is broken.
"Since photons contribute to the stress-energy tensor, they exert a gravitational attraction on other objects, according to the theory of general relativity."
You say that as if local governments don't walk all over your rights and local police haven't been shooting and tasing people for virtually any form of disobedience.
You pay more and get less, than a large part of the world (and check out Finland before you say anything about population density).
The only reason infrastructure is getting spread thin is that, for the most part, the major ISPs have been treating customers like cash cows and not investing any of their revenue in upgrades. This benefits them in the short term because it creates a scarcity that doesn't need to exist and justifies constant price increases. In the long term, however, it's causing the US to fall further and further behind the rest of the world.
> If people want internet, they can work for it just like I have to.
Apparently you think the story was about companies being forced to give free internet access. It's not. It's about offering internet access for $10 a month (which they have to work to get) and it's only available to low-income families with school children.
And, since you're probably an old fart with no clue, it is rapidly becoming a necessity for school children to have access to the internet. Homework assignments, extra study material, grades, announcements and other communications are increasingly being put on websites for the students and parents to access.
Explain the puck mouse, then. It routinely winds up on the lists of worst 'innovations.' Style over functionality is about the only explanation for it
And, for that matter, the length of time that they held onto the single-button mouse while the majority of their customers were buying third party replacements.
The Apple III? The one that Jobs himself insisted wouldn't have cooling fans or heat sinks? The one that would get so hot that it would destroy floppy disks and damage the motherboard?
The 20th anniversary Mac? A $7500 machine was basically a Powerbook in a fancy case?
Or how about the iPod HiFi? You can't even blame it on a style over functionality mentality.
How about the $29 earbuds that come apart faster than a cheap hooker's legs? They sound marginally better than the ones that I can get at the dollar store, but they don't last any longer.
Yes, Apple has made some great products, but they've also made some mediocre ones and they've made a few that straight up sucked. Steve Jobs has been at the helm for some of the worst, too *coughpuckmousecough*
> you've got to think about Apple. They may not want to eat your lunch today, but if they ever do, they'll come out with a product that's insanely great, paradigm-shifting, and shiny, and you'll have to deal with them
Yeah! The way the Pippin kicked every other game console's ass!
They've been swiping bits from Opera for years. The most recent versions even have the right click "Paste and Go" for the address bar which was always one of my favorite obscure Opera-centric behaviors.
I'm quite happy it's there, too, but then I'm one of those freakish Opera fans and anything that makes Firefox more like Opera is A-OK with me.
Observation: Thud547 seems to have no problem finding his water dish and it works very well for keeping him hydrated:
Firefox developer: I'll bet he'd like it if we put his water dish at a remote location along the Amazon river! I'll bet nobody has ever thought of this, much less tried it! This is going to be so f'ing awesome!!!!!11
Slashdot Mirror
> "An anonymous reader writes " ... "checkpoint smurf"
Only the title was written by the Slashdot staff, so you can't very well blame them for what the anonymous contributer wrote.
As for the title... groping is defined as "To feel about blindly or uncertainly in search". The TSA agent doing an enhanced patdown is required to feel, without looking, for explosives in the genital are. They are required to grope people. All TSA agents that perform the enhanced patdowns are, by definition, gropers.
But why let mere facts dissuade you from ranting. Carry on.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WAKhtYgoIqE
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=89SKOBQTEuY
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z1mhz1-biEY
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JoCYePvJJmE
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fN7Lmk5ykXI
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N7EJ2wdI1Zo
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D4JWiZbVowk
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Zh9kFJzDnA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=slk6zeM4Of8
Yep. For profit companies clearly provide the best execution, SLA and customer service level available. And there are dozens and dozens more similar videos online and hundreds of complaints about both FedEx and UPS if you bother to look.
USPS, UPS and FedEx do not release statistics to show what percentage of packages they lose and what percentage they damage. Without that information, your claims that one is better than the other just shows that you're biased.
> Once you know where things are it does make you work faster.
Have you actually timed how long it takes to move your mouse to the top of the application window to click on something versus the time required to move your mouse to a menu at the top, click and move it down to an item on the menu and let go? Unless you're the most painfully slow human being on earth, it can't be more than half a second and it's just as disruptive since you still have to move the mouse and look at a different location, locate what you want and click.
Assuming you do this 240 times a day (which is most likely not the case), you've saved a whole 2 minutes. How much work are you actually going to do in 2 minutes?
And that's ignoring the fact that for some things, like inserting a column in Excel, you have to go to the tab, click on an item and get a menu that you have to choose an option from.. For those things, you actually have more steps than in previous versions and that's going to take a correspondingly longer time, sucking away those precious half-seconds that you're so proud of saving.
> What ever happend to the sentiment expressed in the 10th amendment, that "powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."?
Time passed, the world changed and the idea became increasingly irrelevant.
The constitution says nothing about:
The Internet. We would not have an internet if it wasn't for federal funding and involvement. Individual network providers would have acted exactly like the cell phone companies do... proprietary standards, locked down hardware, multi-year contracts with steep cancellation fees and ridiculous pricing for data, etc. etc.
Highways. We wouldn't have nearly as useful an interstate system. State roads would exist, but you'd have a hard time convincing the states between Miami and New York that they needed to spend funds on highways that allow people to bypass everything that could generate local revenue.
Aviation. Airlines would most likely base their operations in whichever state offered the lowest requirements for inspection and maintenance of their fleet. States would probably compete in offering the lowest requirements in order to get tax revenue from the ticket sales. Who cares how many people die as a result.
Automobiles. Read "Unsafe at Any Speed: The Designed-In Dangers of the American Automobile" by Ralph Nader. That's what you get without the federal Department of Transportation setting requirements.
Food and Drug regulation. Read Upton Sinclair's "The Jungle" sometime if you think the FDA isn't needed.
I could go on with dozens, if not hundreds, of examples.
Parroting the argument that everything not delegated to the federal government should be controlled by the individual states demonstrates a lack of understanding of how our world works.
The future our founding fathers envisioned in 1787 and wrote laws for isn't the future we got. We have many, many things they could never have imagined and the constitution simply does not give the federal government the ability address everything that needs to be addressed on a federal level in the modern world.
(and no, amendments are not the answer unless you want to hold a national election every month as we develop new technologies and new ways to use the technologies we have)
I think you're greatly underestimating the stubborn stupidity of the small handful of nutcases who constantly get attention from the media because of their controversial views.
Apple didn't sell the first non-DRMed music. Apple didn't even exist when the first non-DRMed music was sold. In point of fact, non-DRM music was sold for nearly a hundred years before there even was such a thing as digital encoded music, much less the digital rights management to protect it.
Selling music dates back to Edison's recorded cylinders in the late 1800s and there was certainly no digital rights management embedded in the wax cylinders. Selling non-DRMed music is not a new thing.
In addition, your assertion that copyright law gives copyright holders the ability to add DRM is ridiculous and completely wrong (in addition to being completely irrelevant to the discussion).
Copyright law doesn't give the ability to add DRM. No law ever prevented adding DRM to music, so copyright owners have had the ability to do so since DRM was invented. No law had to be added to 'give' them that ability.
tl;dr: You obviously have no clue what you're talking about. Please stop making a fool of yourself in public.
Except that people used to buy music on these things called CDs and cassettes and vinyl records.... no DRM, play it in any device that supports the format, etc. etc.
DRM is a modern 'innovation' that was added to music after decades of it being sold without DRM.
That's the stupidest argument, yet everyone seems to use it online.
X isn't 100% perfect, so it's useless! Who cares if it saves 99% of the lives that would have otherwise been lost!
Most of the costs imposed by the government are for things like trials to ensure that the drug works and doesn't kill people. Are you seriously suggesting we should just get rid of those and return to the days of snake oil sales?
Heh... I used OP to refer to two different people. I'm on a roll today with my 3 hours of sleep. Wooo.
Add-ons aren't updated all the time. The OP was responding to someone who suggested there was no problem because users could simply open the add-on archive file, edit the proper file and update the archive with it.
Apparently the OP thinks users who want a dumbed-down browser that doesn't show them things like a status bar or version numbers will have no problem with doing that because it's so intuitive that even a caveman could do it.
> Another major factor about "fracking" it has been around for decades since 1947 for gas and oil, the first official use is dated to 1903, Why worry about it now? Sounds like media scare tactics.
Asbestos was used for insulation since 1857 and the first usage of it goes back at least 4,500 years. Why worry about it now?
Radium-laced water was used to cure virtually everything around the start of the 20th century. Why worry about it now?
Thalidomide was used to combat morning sickness since 1957. Why worry about it now?
Maybe because we've actually learned that some of the things done in the past turned out to be staggeringly stupid and short sighted?
"It is speculated, mostly by tech pundits, that considering the sheer amount of effort that itâ(TM)s putting into shoving Chrome down our throats, it would not be in Googleâ(TM)s best interests to re-sign with Mozilla."
Most of Google's revenue comes from advertising, not Chrome. To ensure that revenue, they need to remain the number one search engine. To that end, it is in Google's best interest to remain the default search engine on Firefox as long as Firefox has any significant market share, regardless of Chrome's market share.
Regardless of Google's motivation, the fact that something so stupidly obvious which has been available for years from other companies can be patented is an abomination and is proof that the patent system is broken.
"Since photons contribute to the stress-energy tensor, they exert a gravitational attraction on other objects, according to the theory of general relativity."
Source
Feel free to scroll down to reference #85 for the references listings if you should want to make sure that Wikipedia has summarized them correctly.
You say that as if local governments don't walk all over your rights and local police haven't been shooting and tasing people for virtually any form of disobedience.
M-Disc
Meet the M-Disc
It's modern stone-age data storage, you need
M-Disc
Meet the M-Disc
It will store your data till the human race is history
Let's write the data on a piece of stone-like strata
Thanks to the guys at Millenniata
When you use the M-Disk
Your data will last a life time
Even more than a life time
Your data will last a long ass time!
Is my boredom showing?
> The infrastructure is already spread thin - at least judging by my internet speeds and costs.
Look at this for a minute.
You pay more and get less, than a large part of the world (and check out Finland before you say anything about population density).
The only reason infrastructure is getting spread thin is that, for the most part, the major ISPs have been treating customers like cash cows and not investing any of their revenue in upgrades. This benefits them in the short term because it creates a scarcity that doesn't need to exist and justifies constant price increases. In the long term, however, it's causing the US to fall further and further behind the rest of the world.
> If people want internet, they can work for it just like I have to.
Apparently you think the story was about companies being forced to give free internet access. It's not. It's about offering internet access for $10 a month (which they have to work to get) and it's only available to low-income families with school children.
And, since you're probably an old fart with no clue, it is rapidly becoming a necessity for school children to have access to the internet. Homework assignments, extra study material, grades, announcements and other communications are increasingly being put on websites for the students and parents to access.
Angry Birds
> Why do we keep seeing these bogus rightwing "science" stories on /. ?
Because sensationalist articles get lots of pageviews and advertising is a sizable part of slashdot's budget.
I think you meant pronoun.
Explain the puck mouse, then. It routinely winds up on the lists of worst 'innovations.' Style over functionality is about the only explanation for it
And, for that matter, the length of time that they held onto the single-button mouse while the majority of their customers were buying third party replacements.
The Apple III? The one that Jobs himself insisted wouldn't have cooling fans or heat sinks? The one that would get so hot that it would destroy floppy disks and damage the motherboard?
The 20th anniversary Mac? A $7500 machine was basically a Powerbook in a fancy case?
Or how about the iPod HiFi? You can't even blame it on a style over functionality mentality.
How about the $29 earbuds that come apart faster than a cheap hooker's legs? They sound marginally better than the ones that I can get at the dollar store, but they don't last any longer.
Yes, Apple has made some great products, but they've also made some mediocre ones and they've made a few that straight up sucked. Steve Jobs has been at the helm for some of the worst, too *coughpuckmousecough*
> you've got to think about Apple. They may not want to eat your lunch today, but if they ever do, they'll come out with a product that's insanely great, paradigm-shifting, and shiny, and you'll have to deal with them
Yeah! The way the Pippin kicked every other game console's ass!
Wait, what?
They've been swiping bits from Opera for years. The most recent versions even have the right click "Paste and Go" for the address bar which was always one of my favorite obscure Opera-centric behaviors.
I'm quite happy it's there, too, but then I'm one of those freakish Opera fans and anything that makes Firefox more like Opera is A-OK with me.
Observation: Thud547 seems to have no problem finding his water dish and it works very well for keeping him hydrated:
Firefox developer: I'll bet he'd like it if we put his water dish at a remote location along the Amazon river! I'll bet nobody has ever thought of this, much less tried it! This is going to be so f'ing awesome!!!!!11