A certain major medical center in the United States which was built in the late 1960s acts as a Faraday cage "by accident," much to the supreme annoyance of everyone involved. Basically, for whatever reason, when they built the building, they used some chicken-wire-like material that's at just the right dimensions to block 2.4GHz wireless transmissions. They didn't do it consistently, either, because they never thought of this. As a result, there are places where cell phones are Faraday-caged-out, places where WiFi works through an internal wall next to places where it doesn't, and so on. It's such a huge pain in the ass that they've had to put about three times the wireless access points that they otherwise would need to, and they still have dead places.
Of course it's a problem. It's the same crap I went through, which led me to not give a damn about school. That problem followed me all the way into medical school.
If you train a person to believe that 90% of what they learn isn't useful for anything and is well below their capacity to learn it when they actually need to, you do two things. First, you make them disrespect education in general. Second, you train people to learn to use information that they can look up, rather than memorizing it mindlessly (this is a good thing).
Unfortunately, our testing system is oriented far less towards reasoning than it is towards rote memorization. The way I look at it, even now as a physician, is that we should train skills, not memorization of facts. Is memorization necessary? Of course it is. But for God's sake, tell the students how to use it. If they get a hook for it, they'll actually remember it!
The social welfare entitlement mentality is hardly isolated to minorities. Perhaps more minorities, as a percentage of population, are on such programs, but I would figure (without any data to back this up) that if you corrected for percentage of population and socioeconomic status, it would even out. The unfortunate reality is that Americans in general, whether they be white, black, hispanic, or purple, have these days a mentality that the government is there to protect them from whatever stupidity they manage to inflict on themselves. I'm white (of Russian descent, no less), and I'm more embarrassed by the "white trash" that I run into than I am the "(insert ethnic group here) trash" I run into.
I think that's natural. With a society like we have, where race is thrown out continuously, it's natural for people to associate with their own race. I'd argue that's bad. But nevertheless, the people who are well to do in the white community are embarassed by and have a dimmer view of those "trash" elements of the white community. Likewise, I've known plenty of black people who are equally, if not more, disgraced by the "trash" in their communities. (i.e., welfare moms, gangbangers, etc.) (And yes, for reference, the SAME applies to whites, but I think they're more tolerant of it, to their detriment.)
Look, it isn't a race issue. It's a social and cultural issue, and it's one that revolves around social values. Take race totally out of the equation, and you get the same result, therefore race is independent. Sure, perhaps proportionally some races are "worse off" than others and abuse the system more than others, but that isn't the point at all. The point, in fact, is that there are people out there who believe that everyone else should support them. That's the bottom line.
I don't care if you're white, black, hispanic, asian, purple, or Martian. I honestly couldn't care less. I just care what you do. That might have something to do with why I have a lot of Nigerian (read: BLACK) friends who are just as disgusted as I am. Or Mexican (read: HISPANIC) friends, who are just as disgusted as I am.
Now, if someone wants to call me a racist (beyond the typical Slashdot oneliner dare-counter of "Racist!"), feel free. But I care what people do, not what color their skin is.
I got sick of this crap at the hospital I work at. Basically, I get to spend hours upon hours on call as a physician with no meaningful Internet access, and no ability to get into my own systems to get real work and research done.
My solution was to set up an Apache-SSL server on one of my machines, hook a CGI proxy software into it, and run an SSH server on a high port. That then allows me to browse the web and still get into my systems at work. Avoiding the stupidity of remote evesdropping is also alleviated by plugging my laptop into the network and faking to the Windows domain controller.
How many of us here played "Wing Commander IV: The Price of Freedom?" Okay, lots of us.
I can tell you right now that it is not outside the realm of possibility to engineer viruses that kill people who don't meet a certain genetic template. More to the point, if you have a gene for X, it kills you or sterilizes you. "Gene X" could be anything from skin color to blood type to a gene predisposing you to breast cancer or familial hyperlipidemia.
Please don't automatically reboot my machines again when the patch's patch is installed. I have the custom options in MS Update to allow me to control install/reboot for the updates. Well, it ignored that this week and rebooted 2 of my machines for me.
Then, I noticed that The Register had a couple of articles this week about the same thing happening to others.
Just who in the hell does MS think they are?
That's precisely the problem. I, and I assume countless other users, have the automatic update installation turned off because every damned time I go to install an update, I have to reboot the machine, and it annoys the hell out of me, FUBARing applications by stealing focus (or worse, not and not allowing me to abort it) until I do. On the machines that are up for weeks at a time, that means that the updates get installed in batches, not immediately, which is precisely what Microsoft seems to be trying to avoid. the key for Microsoft is going to be coming up with the ability to install updates without forcing a reboot. Then, and only then, will they have a very high level of compliance among systems that truly matter. (i.e., not Bob's dialup machine, but Steve's server he has hanging out on a DSL line 24/7/365).
Slashdot is doing a wonderful job lately of making me want to stop reading it. This is not "news for nerds," and it most surely doesn't matter because it's complete bullshit. I'm becoming convinced that with Slashdot's profit model (ad views on pages), they post this crap just to piss everyone off so that there's a ton of page views, and thus ad income, from the story involved.
Fuck them. I'll continue to burn DVDs to whatever the hell media I want. Or save it on my HDD. Or whatever.
See, here's one way to look at the problem. Let's say I subscribe to HBO. HBO plays "Tears of the Sun," to use an example. I record it on my VCR. That's legal. If I take an A/V output from the satellite box and record it, that's fair use as well. If I then convert the VCR or whatever recording and convert it to a DIVX so I can play it on my PC, that's legal. But if I skip the work myself and grab a copy off the Internet, that's illegal.
The person who is effectively breaking the law by default is the guy who is uploading the movie, not the person downloading it. That isn't to say that the guy downloading it isn't breaking the law as well, but there are plenty of legitimate ways that he could have obtained the same exact result, legally, making the entire argument stupid.
I'm 27 and I can hear it all just fine. I even cranked it up to 21kHz and can hear it. If someone deployed something like this near my house, it would have an encounnter with a baseball bat under cloak of darkness.
It causes pain. It's annoying. It extends off some guy's property into public areas. Someone would be perfectly within their rights to interpret it as assault and rip the thing off the wall. Then the guy has to admit that's what it was doing, since to file a poice report he'd have to acknowledge ownership of the device and say it was on his property in the first place.
Amen. I would love to be abe to download music, movies, and whatever else I desire for a nominal fee. That"s a reasonable fee, not $20 for one song that is played on the radio continuously. That's the bottom line: The *AA have failed MISERABLY to address the new distribution medium, making it worthwhile to deal with bad transfers, torrent sites, and twelve hour distributed download times. They need to get with the program, not keep blaming people who get it.
Ironically, I boycotted both DVDs and CDs when they started their lawsuits, so that's $20 a hit that they aren't seeing.
People, we live in the post-9/11 world. The world has changed. Now I realize that we all have our moral limits, and our views on this, but the reality is that we have to all do our part for the war on terrorism.
The terrorists fight dirty. The only way to fight them is to adopt some of their own tactics. This means that we may have to cooperate with some "unsavory characters." People you don't like, people you don't respect, people you don't want around, people you don't want your kids to interact with, people you wouldn't even allow inside your own home.
So tonight I'm announcing my intention to cooperate with the United States Government.
"Our children" aren't being victimized. Our dumbass, horny teens are. They're old enough to know better. Show me a real kid, ie a person who is a prepubescent 11 year old or younger who has gotten really hurt this way. Where are all of the 7, 8, 9 and 10 year olds getting raped? Uh huh. It ain't children, just adolescents. People who are old enough to understand personal safety, even if they can't fully grok the ramifications of sex.
Surely you jest. The teenagers today are responsible, upstanding citizens, especially on Myspace! Why, just look at this profile!
Perhaps the biggest irony of both the Bush administration and the (mostly Democrat) detractors is that they keep talking about the Geneva Convention. The Administration keeps saying they're in compliance with it. The detractors keep saying that they're violating it.
Unfortunately, the Geneva Convention also requires -- gasp -- a declaration of war. And an opposing force who does not follow the Geneva Convention gives up its rights under it.
Amen. What such studies habitually fail to control for is the perpensity for women to enter these professions versus men. The assumption is that since 51% of the population is female, 51% of any given group should be female. That obviously falls over. It fails to acknowledge that men and women are psychologically and physiologically different, and therefore might personally prefer different professions as a matter of society-wide statistics.
Of course, it's precisely the issue of DRM that keeps me from buying the damned songs online in the first place. Here's a real life example: I heard Christopher Cross's "Ride Like The Wind" on the radio. For whatever reason, I liked the song and wanted to get the thing. Because I don't run Windows, I [b]didn't even bother to look at the legal sources.[/b] I just went to GnutellaNet.
Slashdot Mirror
So yes, it does work.
If you train a person to believe that 90% of what they learn isn't useful for anything and is well below their capacity to learn it when they actually need to, you do two things. First, you make them disrespect education in general. Second, you train people to learn to use information that they can look up, rather than memorizing it mindlessly (this is a good thing).
Unfortunately, our testing system is oriented far less towards reasoning than it is towards rote memorization. The way I look at it, even now as a physician, is that we should train skills, not memorization of facts. Is memorization necessary? Of course it is. But for God's sake, tell the students how to use it. If they get a hook for it, they'll actually remember it!
I think that's natural. With a society like we have, where race is thrown out continuously, it's natural for people to associate with their own race. I'd argue that's bad. But nevertheless, the people who are well to do in the white community are embarassed by and have a dimmer view of those "trash" elements of the white community. Likewise, I've known plenty of black people who are equally, if not more, disgraced by the "trash" in their communities. (i.e., welfare moms, gangbangers, etc.) (And yes, for reference, the SAME applies to whites, but I think they're more tolerant of it, to their detriment.)
Look, it isn't a race issue. It's a social and cultural issue, and it's one that revolves around social values. Take race totally out of the equation, and you get the same result, therefore race is independent. Sure, perhaps proportionally some races are "worse off" than others and abuse the system more than others, but that isn't the point at all. The point, in fact, is that there are people out there who believe that everyone else should support them. That's the bottom line.
I don't care if you're white, black, hispanic, asian, purple, or Martian. I honestly couldn't care less. I just care what you do. That might have something to do with why I have a lot of Nigerian (read: BLACK) friends who are just as disgusted as I am. Or Mexican (read: HISPANIC) friends, who are just as disgusted as I am.
Now, if someone wants to call me a racist (beyond the typical Slashdot oneliner dare-counter of "Racist!"), feel free. But I care what people do, not what color their skin is.
My solution was to set up an Apache-SSL server on one of my machines, hook a CGI proxy software into it, and run an SSH server on a high port. That then allows me to browse the web and still get into my systems at work. Avoiding the stupidity of remote evesdropping is also alleviated by plugging my laptop into the network and faking to the Windows domain controller.
Particularly since his web site doesn't offer a direct link, but instead flat-out doesn't work on my system. Nice.
How many of us here played "Wing Commander IV: The Price of Freedom?" Okay, lots of us.
I can tell you right now that it is not outside the realm of possibility to engineer viruses that kill people who don't meet a certain genetic template. More to the point, if you have a gene for X, it kills you or sterilizes you. "Gene X" could be anything from skin color to blood type to a gene predisposing you to breast cancer or familial hyperlipidemia.
That's precisely the problem. I, and I assume countless other users, have the automatic update installation turned off because every damned time I go to install an update, I have to reboot the machine, and it annoys the hell out of me, FUBARing applications by stealing focus (or worse, not and not allowing me to abort it) until I do. On the machines that are up for weeks at a time, that means that the updates get installed in batches, not immediately, which is precisely what Microsoft seems to be trying to avoid. the key for Microsoft is going to be coming up with the ability to install updates without forcing a reboot. Then, and only then, will they have a very high level of compliance among systems that truly matter. (i.e., not Bob's dialup machine, but Steve's server he has hanging out on a DSL line 24/7/365).
Yeah, I envision it as a regular CTU. Where's Jack Bauer when you need him, tho?
Slashdot is doing a wonderful job lately of making me want to stop reading it. This is not "news for nerds," and it most surely doesn't matter because it's complete bullshit. I'm becoming convinced that with Slashdot's profit model (ad views on pages), they post this crap just to piss everyone off so that there's a ton of page views, and thus ad income, from the story involved.
The guy is flat-out a complete, fucking moron. I thihk that about covers it.
See, here's one way to look at the problem. Let's say I subscribe to HBO. HBO plays "Tears of the Sun," to use an example. I record it on my VCR. That's legal. If I take an A/V output from the satellite box and record it, that's fair use as well. If I then convert the VCR or whatever recording and convert it to a DIVX so I can play it on my PC, that's legal. But if I skip the work myself and grab a copy off the Internet, that's illegal.
The person who is effectively breaking the law by default is the guy who is uploading the movie, not the person downloading it. That isn't to say that the guy downloading it isn't breaking the law as well, but there are plenty of legitimate ways that he could have obtained the same exact result, legally, making the entire argument stupid.
I'm 27 and I can hear it all just fine. I even cranked it up to 21kHz and can hear it. If someone deployed something like this near my house, it would have an encounnter with a baseball bat under cloak of darkness.
It causes pain. It's annoying. It extends off some guy's property into public areas. Someone would be perfectly within their rights to interpret it as assault and rip the thing off the wall. Then the guy has to admit that's what it was doing, since to file a poice report he'd have to acknowledge ownership of the device and say it was on his property in the first place.
Ironically, I boycotted both DVDs and CDs when they started their lawsuits, so that's $20 a hit that they aren't seeing.
Pardon me while I hand out clues for the humor impaired.
The terrorists fight dirty. The only way to fight them is to adopt some of their own tactics. This means that we may have to cooperate with some "unsavory characters." People you don't like, people you don't respect, people you don't want around, people you don't want your kids to interact with, people you wouldn't even allow inside your own home.
So tonight I'm announcing my intention to cooperate with the United States Government.
Surely you jest. The teenagers today are responsible, upstanding citizens, especially on Myspace! Why, just look at this profile!
"Krissy"
How do they handle the fact that the magstripe on my license had a deliberate "encounter" with an 2T MRI machine?
Unfortunately, the Geneva Convention also requires -- gasp -- a declaration of war. And an opposing force who does not follow the Geneva Convention gives up its rights under it.
Absolutely. I think it was also shown pretty well in this work.
Amen, brother.
Amen. What such studies habitually fail to control for is the perpensity for women to enter these professions versus men. The assumption is that since 51% of the population is female, 51% of any given group should be female. That obviously falls over. It fails to acknowledge that men and women are psychologically and physiologically different, and therefore might personally prefer different professions as a matter of society-wide statistics.
Linkage to a comment on it from Duke University School of Law: http://www.law.duke.edu/journals/dltr/articles/200 2dltr0023.html
Of course, it's precisely the issue of DRM that keeps me from buying the damned songs online in the first place. Here's a real life example: I heard Christopher Cross's "Ride Like The Wind" on the radio. For whatever reason, I liked the song and wanted to get the thing. Because I don't run Windows, I [b]didn't even bother to look at the legal sources.[/b] I just went to GnutellaNet.
Nothing new here. Move on.