DDT is the only way to get rid of them? The birds, fish, etc. were having problems because of the DDT itself getting into the environment and food chain. If the mosquitoes can be made to simply disappear, there is no food chain problem. So unless you can name a species that exclusive eats mosquitoes, you're talking crap.
So exactly which birds are you referring to that live on a diet of nothing but mosquitoes, and would go extinct without them? It's not like other bugs can't increase their numbers to fill the niche.
They can also be watched with this new piece of equipment called an "antenna". I've heard it lets you watch some (not all, but a few) TV channels without paying a monthly bill!
Ah yes, the old "but... but... but... CAR INSURANCE!" argument. That's to cover your financial obligation to someone else when you have a traffic accident. State required insurance doesn't pay for damage to your own vehicle, that's extra, and is often required by your loan company. (though Uninsured Driver insurance when someone else doesn't have insurance is relatively cheap to add)
If you have enough money, It should even possible to tie up the required minimum coverage in escrow without having to constantly pay an insurance company. (Unless the insurance companies have your state government in their pocket, of course.)
The other root problem is that Amber Alerts were originally intended for abductions by strangers, not for non-custodial parents running off with their own kids. That's just in there to pad it with enough events to justify its existence as a line item in the government budget.
Holy crap, that adds a whole new angle of WTF to this alert message. It's bad enough when it's some random place you've never heard of, but when people go to the actual trouble of making bumper stickers about nobody knowing where it is, that's really bad.
it buzzes and it's quite loud with it's own alert tone similar to the one you hear during emergency broadcast
I heard one of those Emergency Alert System noises on someone else's phone once when it got an Amber Alert. You want to the stupid part about using it on a cell phone speaker? It's encoded ASCII text! The EAS noise sounds like that because it's transmitting digital data that a "smart" weather radio, etc. can decode. I have to wonder what data is encoded in that signal (and why!) when it's coming out of a cellphone speaker.
It was Southwestern Bell (aka SBC), you idiot. They gobbled up most of the other baby bells one at a time (Pacific Bell first, then Southern Bell, then I don't know who) until they eventually bought AT&T, which was only a long distance company at the time, but they happily took its name and changed it to lowercase: at&t
They have them here in Austin, TX too. They don't have a catchy name (just "MISSING ELDERLY", city, car description, license plate), but almost all have a city name that I've never heard of. The few that I do recognize seem to be all from the Houston area (over 100 miles away).
Here in Austin, TX we have those highway text signs. Other than default null messages ("buckle up", etc.) about the only thing that ever appears is "Missing Elderly" alerts. These have a description of a car, a license plate number, and the name of some random suburb city that NOBODY who lives more than 50 miles away has ever heard of. (Saying "$BIGCITY area" would be much more useful.) The few that I did recognize apparently all originate out of the Houston area (over 100 miles away), implying that they're the only area sending these alerts. How long before these get added to the Loud Alert list too?
Blasting hundreds of thousands of people with a sudden loud noise (I read at least one account where the poor guy was listening to MP3s with headphones when it happened), for ONE CHILD with misbehaving parents isn't "kind of selfish"? And in the middle of the night (the New York incident) even more so?
Have people forgotten that Firefox's origin was as a fork of Mozilla? The original has changed its name to Seamonkey, but the UI is at the FF 3.x level, without a bunch of useless shiny crap thrown in by UI hipsters. I for one welcome our FF-tinkering overlords, it gives them something to fuck up so that they can leave a decent browser un-fucked.
Honestly, I was expecting something like Google TISP. Because that's one "pipe" coming into your house that you don't need to drill a hole in the wall for! After all, it's all just a series of tubes, right?
But seeing as how it isn't about Google, now I'm feeling down in the dumps. This is a pretty crappy development, if you accept TFA in toto. Or maybe they're just taking the piss.
Back in the 80s and 90s, Japanese products were world-leading in quality (and not just lack of manufacturing defects, but design quality too).
That's mostly because the Japanese asked this guy to teach them about quality. Note that this started in the 50s, so apparently it took a while to kick in.
I divide my officers into four groups. There are clever, diligent, stupid, and lazy officers. Usually two characteristics are combined. Some are clever and diligent -- their place is the General Staff. The next lot are stupid and lazy -- they make up 90 percent of every army and are suited to routine duties. Anyone who is both clever and lazy is qualified for the highest leadership duties, because he possesses the intellectual clarity and the composure necessary for difficult decisions. One must beware of anyone who is stupid and diligent -- he must not be entrusted with any responsibility because he will always cause only mischief.
tl;dr: Persistence is worthless if you're a persistent idiot.
Back in the late '80s, I had lots of fun cracking copy protection on games that ran on the Mac. (Yes, there actually were games for the Mac, but I had usually more fun just breaking the copy protection.) My motivation was that I had a 2 megabyte RAM upgrade, which back in those days meant running a 1.5M ram disk (super fast!) and I wanted to keep it running as long as possible with a debugger installed. (Most copy protection code outright killed a debugger, rather than just detecting it.)
They were usually nested in layers like a matryoshka doll... break one layer, decrypt it, update the executable with the decrypted code (which there was always space for since the old decryption was no longer needed, and they never used compression), then move on to the next layer. As long as I had the original disk with the "special" intentionally bad sector, it was just a matter of enough time and enough work. My motto was "If I can boot it, I can crack it."
Most were obviously done by adding a copy protection wrapper to the code, and by the time the real program started, it didn't know a thing. There was one game called Strategic Conquest (an Empire variant) which had a check that supposedly set it to play at level 17 (you could normally select level 1-15, which affected the computer's production rates), but I didn't have much trouble finding that.
So basically I agree that this is BS. Without an external secret (like a dongle) that encrypts the code, or an operating system that conspires to prevent you from reverse-engineering the code, the "you can't run me" decision at some point can be subverted, even if it requires manually unwrapping multiple layers of crap to get there.
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DDT is the only way to get rid of them? The birds, fish, etc. were having problems because of the DDT itself getting into the environment and food chain. If the mosquitoes can be made to simply disappear, there is no food chain problem. So unless you can name a species that exclusive eats mosquitoes, you're talking crap.
So exactly which birds are you referring to that live on a diet of nothing but mosquitoes, and would go extinct without them? It's not like other bugs can't increase their numbers to fill the niche.
In other words, Skynet will be achieved once computers discover a Killer Joke.
Thanks a lot. Now I can't help but read the other jokes in this thread in Algore's voice.
"Groves" on trees? [/facepalm]
I think you've invented a new eggcorn.
"Hand me my sonic screwdriver. It's the one that says bad arse motherfucker on it!"
FTFY
That's what she said.
They can also be watched with this new piece of equipment called an "antenna". I've heard it lets you watch some (not all, but a few) TV channels without paying a monthly bill!
Ah yes, the old "but... but... but... CAR INSURANCE!" argument. That's to cover your financial obligation to someone else when you have a traffic accident. State required insurance doesn't pay for damage to your own vehicle, that's extra, and is often required by your loan company. (though Uninsured Driver insurance when someone else doesn't have insurance is relatively cheap to add)
If you have enough money, It should even possible to tie up the required minimum coverage in escrow without having to constantly pay an insurance company. (Unless the insurance companies have your state government in their pocket, of course.)
The other root problem is that Amber Alerts were originally intended for abductions by strangers, not for non-custodial parents running off with their own kids. That's just in there to pad it with enough events to justify its existence as a line item in the government budget.
Holy crap, that adds a whole new angle of WTF to this alert message. It's bad enough when it's some random place you've never heard of, but when people go to the actual trouble of making bumper stickers about nobody knowing where it is, that's really bad.
it buzzes and it's quite loud with it's own alert tone similar to the one you hear during emergency broadcast
I heard one of those Emergency Alert System noises on someone else's phone once when it got an Amber Alert. You want to the stupid part about using it on a cell phone speaker? It's encoded ASCII text! The EAS noise sounds like that because it's transmitting digital data that a "smart" weather radio, etc. can decode. I have to wonder what data is encoded in that signal (and why!) when it's coming out of a cellphone speaker.
Maybe instead of startling people nowhere near the incident, and waking them up in the middle of the night, they should use automated plate readers?
It was Southwestern Bell (aka SBC), you idiot. They gobbled up most of the other baby bells one at a time (Pacific Bell first, then Southern Bell, then I don't know who) until they eventually bought AT&T, which was only a long distance company at the time, but they happily took its name and changed it to lowercase: at&t
They have them here in Austin, TX too. They don't have a catchy name (just "MISSING ELDERLY", city, car description, license plate), but almost all have a city name that I've never heard of. The few that I do recognize seem to be all from the Houston area (over 100 miles away).
Now go look up "Boulevard, CA" on a map
Here in Austin, TX we have those highway text signs. Other than default null messages ("buckle up", etc.) about the only thing that ever appears is "Missing Elderly" alerts. These have a description of a car, a license plate number, and the name of some random suburb city that NOBODY who lives more than 50 miles away has ever heard of. (Saying "$BIGCITY area" would be much more useful.) The few that I did recognize apparently all originate out of the Houston area (over 100 miles away), implying that they're the only area sending these alerts. How long before these get added to the Loud Alert list too?
Blasting hundreds of thousands of people with a sudden loud noise (I read at least one account where the poor guy was listening to MP3s with headphones when it happened), for ONE CHILD with misbehaving parents isn't "kind of selfish"? And in the middle of the night (the New York incident) even more so?
Have people forgotten that Firefox's origin was as a fork of Mozilla? The original has changed its name to Seamonkey, but the UI is at the FF 3.x level, without a bunch of useless shiny crap thrown in by UI hipsters. I for one welcome our FF-tinkering overlords, it gives them something to fuck up so that they can leave a decent browser un-fucked.
That's not the only talking toilet around: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g6fu7XB7qbs
Honestly, I was expecting something like Google TISP. Because that's one "pipe" coming into your house that you don't need to drill a hole in the wall for! After all, it's all just a series of tubes, right?
But seeing as how it isn't about Google, now I'm feeling down in the dumps. This is a pretty crappy development, if you accept TFA in toto. Or maybe they're just taking the piss.
Back in the 80s and 90s, Japanese products were world-leading in quality (and not just lack of manufacturing defects, but design quality too).
That's mostly because the Japanese asked this guy to teach them about quality. Note that this started in the 50s, so apparently it took a while to kick in.
Alternatively, China is investing in Africa for the long haul, because China desperately wants access to Africa's vast natural resources.
I'm guessing that includes natural resources like elephant tusks and rhino horns?
But they need to remember to be careful about where they get their plutonium from.
I'm going with http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurt_von_Hammerstein-Equord on this one:
I divide my officers into four groups. There are clever, diligent, stupid, and lazy officers. Usually two characteristics are combined. Some are clever and diligent -- their place is the General Staff. The next lot are stupid and lazy -- they make up 90 percent of every army and are suited to routine duties. Anyone who is both clever and lazy is qualified for the highest leadership duties, because he possesses the intellectual clarity and the composure necessary for difficult decisions. One must beware of anyone who is stupid and diligent -- he must not be entrusted with any responsibility because he will always cause only mischief.
tl;dr: Persistence is worthless if you're a persistent idiot.
Back in the late '80s, I had lots of fun cracking copy protection on games that ran on the Mac. (Yes, there actually were games for the Mac, but I had usually more fun just breaking the copy protection.) My motivation was that I had a 2 megabyte RAM upgrade, which back in those days meant running a 1.5M ram disk (super fast!) and I wanted to keep it running as long as possible with a debugger installed. (Most copy protection code outright killed a debugger, rather than just detecting it.)
They were usually nested in layers like a matryoshka doll... break one layer, decrypt it, update the executable with the decrypted code (which there was always space for since the old decryption was no longer needed, and they never used compression), then move on to the next layer. As long as I had the original disk with the "special" intentionally bad sector, it was just a matter of enough time and enough work. My motto was "If I can boot it, I can crack it."
Most were obviously done by adding a copy protection wrapper to the code, and by the time the real program started, it didn't know a thing. There was one game called Strategic Conquest (an Empire variant) which had a check that supposedly set it to play at level 17 (you could normally select level 1-15, which affected the computer's production rates), but I didn't have much trouble finding that.
So basically I agree that this is BS. Without an external secret (like a dongle) that encrypts the code, or an operating system that conspires to prevent you from reverse-engineering the code, the "you can't run me" decision at some point can be subverted, even if it requires manually unwrapping multiple layers of crap to get there.