Yeah. Non-story, if you ask me, but that’s just me. Maybe I’m jaded, but any time I see an advertisement that promises “UP TO!”, I assume that a typical case is going to be quite a bit less impressive than the number they quoted.
“Up to 50% off!”: The 2-for-a-dollar packs of store-brand batteries are now on sale 3-for-a-dollar. Everything else in the store is marked down somewhere between 0% and 5%.
“Up to 8 Mbps!”: At 2 AM, if nobody else in your region was using their service at the same time as you.
“Up to 15% energy savings!”: Or it could be 0%. (Worse yet, these ads often “GUARANTEE” it!)
Do you think Doritos would be allowed to sell bags as "up to a pound" when they averaged 9oz and some had quite a bit less?
No, but that’s because the laws are written so as to require Frito-Lay to guarantee their claims of what is in the bag. They have to sell bags that are “at least a pound” if they want to label them 16oz.
There's no good reason why "he" should always be used over "she" and a reasonable case for supporting both so long as you are consistent within paragraphs / examples.
Except perhaps that “he” has always been used over “she” and the PC decision to start using both of them as gender-neutral pronouns is really just confusing?
Alternately, you could look at it from this perspective: it’s bad enough that I have to stop and think to figure out whether “he” means a male or a generic individual – now I’ll have to stop and think to figure out what “she” means too?
Personally I’d just prefer a working “Back” button. Sort of like a regular browser would have if this whole thing were implemented in HTML and hyperlinks... hint hint.
I didn't know about the one-line preview thing as I've never used it.
Eh... not sure how you miss the one-liner previews (unless you just have all comments either hidden or full – it’s the “Abbreviated” threshold in the D2 system). In any case, I suggest also selectively using <quote> instead of <blockquote> when you want the preview to skip the quotation and show your comment.
I.e. the Abbreviated form of your post shows your quotation – “On an unrelated note, if you absolutely must use Slashdot for inconsequential”, but the Abbreviated form of my post will skip the part where I quoted you and instead show the beginning of my reply.
The only time I use <blockquote> is when I specifically want the one-line preview to show the quotation (usually because I’m quoting Wikipedia or somesuch).
Yes... but in the process, you are chasing a diminishing return, and giving up more and more freedom in the process.
First of all, making something illegal does not eliminate it: it discourages it, but people still break the law. Secondly, most of the fatalities were probably caused by people who were drunk – not pleasantly buzzed, not two beers with dinner, not a 0.08 on the breathalyzer – drunk. If lowering the legal BAC limit were going to stop them from drinking and driving, it already would’ve done it.
We can now be pulled over without cause, forced to allow our very body to be searched – required to submit a sample of the air from our very lungs, still without cause! – all so that the police can charge a couple of offenders who weren’t noticeably impaired. What... are we just supposed to put up with the invasive search and be grateful that the breathalyzer tube isn’t anally inserted?
When I read headlines that boast “600 Stopped at Roadside Checkpoints, 12 DUI Arrests Made”, I’m not thinking “Great! 12 drunk drivers off the road!”. I’m thinking, “588 people had to have their rights violated so that 12 people could be arrested for driving with a BAC over the limit?!” No... scratch that. 600 people had their rights violated. Just turns out that in 12 of the cases, the ends justified the means, or so we are supposed to believe.
Indeed. And since when was it equivalent to the median speed?
Looking at the recorded weather statistics from last week, the high temperature was an average of 99 degrees Fahrenheit... but the median temperature was 88! The actual recorded weather data is falsely advertising by 12.5%?
And why the hell are we using median anyway? It makes more sense to use the mean...
Is lowering the limits doing anything more than bringing in revenue? Have traffic deaths from this cause gone down or remained steady?
Even if they have gone down slightly – is it worth the freedom we’re giving up? If 1 drink was really responsible (well, a contributing factor) for a couple of % of the driving fatalities?
Just as a point of practicality... because isn’t that what we’re doing anyway? There are plenty of old, or just plain bad, drivers on the road who shouldn’t be; there’s no such social stigma against them – certainly not that they’re demonized to the extent that somebody who had 1 drink too many is.
Driving is inherently dangerous, to a certain degree. You could easily reduce the driving fatalities to 0 if you just made it illegal to drive altogether... but I think we all agree that this would not be a worthwhile trade-off.
Your point was there in the initial post: but you weren’t clear, and especially since people have been commenting on how the MADD is trying to get mandatory interlocks in all vehicles that would be enabled at all times, it wasn’t at all obvious that you meant it to be disabled by default and only enabled as a punishment.
Wow. I become your Foe? I just pointed out the simple fallacy in claiming that nobody is punished for having the potential to commit a crime: It is easy to punish someone for having the potential to commit a crime, without punishing them for the potential to commit a crime; simply make that a crime, and you are punishing them for a crime.
If going into a bank with a handgun and demanding cash is a crime, how do you punish someone for the potential of that crime?
You make it illegal to own a gun. As they tried to do in D.C. until recently.
If drunkenly driving your car up someone’s ass and totaling both of your vehicles is a crime, how do you punish someone for the potential of that crime?
Were you suggesting that they would be built in to the car, but only required to actually be used after someone was convicted of a DUI?
Because it sounded to me like, if you want them installed on all new cars, you thought that everyone should be required to blow into one to start their car, and that is absurd.
Ok... you are using it in a static, absolute sense; I am using it in a dynamic, fluid sense. Maybe yours is the more generally accepted use.
What I meant to convey was that your canoe, no matter how it is loaded, displaces water until its equilibrium point where its weight matches the weight of the water it has displaced. Add or remove a little bit of weight, and you throw it out of equilibrium, until it finds its new point of equilibrium. At equilibrium, the forces on it are zero: it is essentially weightless. That was my point.
I would technically only consider an object to have a positive buoyancy if the water it displaced weighed more than it did itself. Such an object, naturally, would rise to the surface and float. However, at the surface, it would still then find its equilibrium point where the buoyant force equaled its weight, which I do not call positive buoyancy.
No. An object that is buoyancy neutral has the same density as the fluid it is immersed in.
Any canoe which is neither in the process of sinking nor rising up out of the water of its own accord has the same density as the volume of water it has displaced. It is buoyancy-neutral.
The adjustment layer is more like a layer mask: it can apply the effect at 100%, 0%, or anywhere in-between. To do that in GIMP, you would have to insert step 2.5) create layer mask to set the parts of the image you want to apply the effect to.
It’s more like the layer modes in GIMP, but that only lets you adjust the Hue, Saturation, Color, Value, and a handful of arithmetic adjustments.
It’s the first time I had seen it nested to produce really large text, too... but <b>, <em>, and <strong> have always made the text bigger (in the D2 discussion system), so it’s not surprising that nesting them makes it even bigger.
FWIW, if you put the last <em> tag inside the <strong> tag, the text is in italics; if the <strong> tags are innermost, it isn’t.
Slashdot Mirror
Reminiscent of the US tax system.... 10% of the people pay 90% of the taxes.
Yep. Or, to phrase it similarly to GP’s statement: Over 50% of the people pay less than 50% of the taxes.
Nothing to see here. Moving on...
Yeah, same here, but nothing pisses me off more than when they guarantee the number too...
Lose up to 5 pounds per week – guaranteed!
Yeah. Non-story, if you ask me, but that’s just me. Maybe I’m jaded, but any time I see an advertisement that promises “UP TO!”, I assume that a typical case is going to be quite a bit less impressive than the number they quoted.
“Up to 50% off!”: The 2-for-a-dollar packs of store-brand batteries are now on sale 3-for-a-dollar. Everything else in the store is marked down somewhere between 0% and 5%.
“Up to 8 Mbps!”: At 2 AM, if nobody else in your region was using their service at the same time as you.
“Up to 15% energy savings!”: Or it could be 0%. (Worse yet, these ads often “GUARANTEE” it!)
Yeah... you should write a driver to divert any data that exceeds the 5Mbps threshold to the line printer so that you can return it to them by post.
Do you think Doritos would be allowed to sell bags as "up to a pound" when they averaged 9oz and some had quite a bit less?
No, but that’s because the laws are written so as to require Frito-Lay to guarantee their claims of what is in the bag. They have to sell bags that are “at least a pound” if they want to label them 16oz.
The law makes no such requirements of ISPs.
I’m using a Pentium, you insensitive clod!
Well, that’s just their opinion.
When it’s plural, perhaps? /facepalm
There's no good reason why "he" should always be used over "she" and a reasonable case for supporting both so long as you are consistent within paragraphs / examples.
Except perhaps that “he” has always been used over “she” and the PC decision to start using both of them as gender-neutral pronouns is really just confusing?
Alternately, you could look at it from this perspective: it’s bad enough that I have to stop and think to figure out whether “he” means a male or a generic individual – now I’ll have to stop and think to figure out what “she” means too?
Personally I’d just prefer a working “Back” button. Sort of like a regular browser would have if this whole thing were implemented in HTML and hyperlinks... hint hint.
I didn't know about the one-line preview thing as I've never used it.
Eh... not sure how you miss the one-liner previews (unless you just have all comments either hidden or full – it’s the “Abbreviated” threshold in the D2 system). In any case, I suggest also selectively using <quote> instead of <blockquote> when you want the preview to skip the quotation and show your comment.
I.e. the Abbreviated form of your post shows your quotation – “On an unrelated note, if you absolutely must use Slashdot for inconsequential”, but the Abbreviated form of my post will skip the part where I quoted you and instead show the beginning of my reply.
The only time I use <blockquote> is when I specifically want the one-line preview to show the quotation (usually because I’m quoting Wikipedia or somesuch).
Yes... but in the process, you are chasing a diminishing return, and giving up more and more freedom in the process.
First of all, making something illegal does not eliminate it: it discourages it, but people still break the law. Secondly, most of the fatalities were probably caused by people who were drunk – not pleasantly buzzed, not two beers with dinner, not a 0.08 on the breathalyzer – drunk. If lowering the legal BAC limit were going to stop them from drinking and driving, it already would’ve done it.
We can now be pulled over without cause, forced to allow our very body to be searched – required to submit a sample of the air from our very lungs, still without cause! – all so that the police can charge a couple of offenders who weren’t noticeably impaired. What... are we just supposed to put up with the invasive search and be grateful that the breathalyzer tube isn’t anally inserted?
When I read headlines that boast “600 Stopped at Roadside Checkpoints, 12 DUI Arrests Made”, I’m not thinking “Great! 12 drunk drivers off the road!”. I’m thinking, “588 people had to have their rights violated so that 12 people could be arrested for driving with a BAC over the limit?!” No... scratch that. 600 people had their rights violated. Just turns out that in 12 of the cases, the ends justified the means, or so we are supposed to believe.
Indeed. And since when was it equivalent to the median speed?
Looking at the recorded weather statistics from last week, the high temperature was an average of 99 degrees Fahrenheit... but the median temperature was 88! The actual recorded weather data is falsely advertising by 12.5%?
And why the hell are we using median anyway? It makes more sense to use the mean...
Is lowering the limits doing anything more than bringing in revenue? Have traffic deaths from this cause gone down or remained steady?
Even if they have gone down slightly – is it worth the freedom we’re giving up? If 1 drink was really responsible (well, a contributing factor) for a couple of % of the driving fatalities?
Just as a point of practicality... because isn’t that what we’re doing anyway? There are plenty of old, or just plain bad, drivers on the road who shouldn’t be; there’s no such social stigma against them – certainly not that they’re demonized to the extent that somebody who had 1 drink too many is.
Driving is inherently dangerous, to a certain degree. You could easily reduce the driving fatalities to 0 if you just made it illegal to drive altogether... but I think we all agree that this would not be a worthwhile trade-off.
Right, people can do all of those things... but why is the penalty for “don’t drink” so disproportionately higher than the penalty for the rest?
Your point was there in the initial post: but you weren’t clear, and especially since people have been commenting on how the MADD is trying to get mandatory interlocks in all vehicles that would be enabled at all times, it wasn’t at all obvious that you meant it to be disabled by default and only enabled as a punishment.
Wow. I become your Foe? I just pointed out the simple fallacy in claiming that nobody is punished for having the potential to commit a crime: It is easy to punish someone for having the potential to commit a crime, without punishing them for the potential to commit a crime; simply make that a crime, and you are punishing them for a crime.
If going into a bank with a handgun and demanding cash is a crime, how do you punish someone for the potential of that crime?
You make it illegal to own a gun. As they tried to do in D.C. until recently.
If drunkenly driving your car up someone’s ass and totaling both of your vehicles is a crime, how do you punish someone for the potential of that crime?
You make it illegal to drink and drive.
Were you suggesting that they would be built in to the car, but only required to actually be used after someone was convicted of a DUI?
Because it sounded to me like, if you want them installed on all new cars, you thought that everyone should be required to blow into one to start their car, and that is absurd.
Ok... you are using it in a static, absolute sense; I am using it in a dynamic, fluid sense. Maybe yours is the more generally accepted use.
What I meant to convey was that your canoe, no matter how it is loaded, displaces water until its equilibrium point where its weight matches the weight of the water it has displaced. Add or remove a little bit of weight, and you throw it out of equilibrium, until it finds its new point of equilibrium. At equilibrium, the forces on it are zero: it is essentially weightless. That was my point.
I would technically only consider an object to have a positive buoyancy if the water it displaced weighed more than it did itself. Such an object, naturally, would rise to the surface and float. However, at the surface, it would still then find its equilibrium point where the buoyant force equaled its weight, which I do not call positive buoyancy.
No. An object that is buoyancy neutral has the same density as the fluid it is immersed in.
Any canoe which is neither in the process of sinking nor rising up out of the water of its own accord has the same density as the volume of water it has displaced. It is buoyancy-neutral.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neutral_buoyancy
You are nit-picking, and you aren’t even right.
Ok, I didn’t gather that from what you said. However, that excuse probably won’t help you:
Those who try to help an offender by blowing into an interlock are subject to the same penalty. Most models will be equipped with a camera.
Person A gets pulled over, and the last time the car was started the interlock showed person B starting the car? Not much arguing with that.
Eh, that’s sort of what he wants. Not exactly.
The adjustment layer is more like a layer mask: it can apply the effect at 100%, 0%, or anywhere in-between. To do that in GIMP, you would have to insert step 2.5) create layer mask to set the parts of the image you want to apply the effect to.
It’s more like the layer modes in GIMP, but that only lets you adjust the Hue, Saturation, Color, Value, and a handful of arithmetic adjustments.
And IE is an outstanding example of HTML5 support in the browser wars?
You claim “It’s not HTML5 because IE doesn’t support it”... whereas I’m pretty sure “It’s HTML5; IE doesn’t support it” is a lot closer to the truth.
It’s the first time I had seen it nested to produce really large text, too... but <b>, <em>, and <strong> have always made the text bigger (in the D2 discussion system), so it’s not surprising that nesting them makes it even bigger.
FWIW, if you put the last <em> tag inside the <strong> tag, the text is in italics; if the <strong> tags are innermost, it isn’t.
<b><strong><em></em></strong></b>
<b><em><strong></strong></em></b>
(It’s been around for ages.)