I considered going to the AA one, actually, but I decided grand rapids was closer and it also had more people RSVP'ed. I had fun, though, I'm single and looking and everybody there appeared to be taken, but that's life.
My meetup was cancelled, but there is one happening about an hour from here that I'm gonna head to, hoping to meet some new people.
There were a lot of messages in the Lansing one for people laughing about how it would be a bunch of men hoping to meet women, I laughed because I'm female and will probably be the only female there. 'Twould be nice to meet a fellow female geek. Oh well.
To all of you who have suggested a learners permit, thanks, but it's already been checked out. Michigan laws allow someone with a learners permit to drive with either a parent or an approved guardian (approved in writing by the parent) over 21. I'm not over 21, and her parents live 6 hours away in Ohio. So the learners permit thing won't work.
Michigan does have something similar, but it won't work in her case. Michigan allows one to get a level 1 learners permit which allows a person to drive with a parent or approved guardian over 21 years of age. Her parents live in Ohio, and I'm not 21. She doesn't really have any friends who could let her drive either. It really is a nasty mess.
This is detrimental to those concerned about their privacy and what is done with data about them. Unless you live in a giant city, it is nearly impossible to make a living without a vehicle, essentially forcing you to either drive without a lisence or to give up.
For example, I live in a small (sub)urban area in Michigan. One of my roommates is just getting her life together (mental/emotional issues), and is starting to look for volunteer work in order to build up her resume to find a sustainable job. (She currently doesn't know how to drive, or have a drivers license). There are several volunteer jobs through the local Red Cross that would be perfect for her skills and abilities, but they are well beyond walking distance and the bus either does not go to those areas at all, or does not go often enough (once an hour or less) to make it possible for her to use. Thus, she is stuck with what she can walk to/ride the bus to.
Because of the situation, my other roommate and I have been trying to help her get a vehicle. But it's all a big catch-22. She can't (legally) drive a car until she gets her license and regristration, but she can't get a license and registration until she passes both a written and a road test, which requires her practing by driving a car.
So, she can't buy a car to practice, and she can't practice without a car. It's a big mess. The only forseeable way around it is to let her drive one of our cars illegally until she gets good enough to pass the road test.
While this doesn't have anything specifically to do with biometrics, it's the same catch-22. You can't work without a car, you can't have a car without a license, and you can't have a license without submitting to whatever they tell you to. Move to another state, I guess, but then what if more states pick up this idea?
The whole thing scares me on multiple levels. It has that nasty big-brotherish feel to it, plus making life very difficult for those concerned about personal privacy (myself included). Hopefully, it will get struck down in the courts, but I doubt it. Driving has been held as a privilage, and thus open to (almost) any restrictions the state likes. [sigh] Another restriction on our freedoms. What's new?
I mean, it's been shown that a gun in your home is more likely to kill you or a family member than an intruder.
This statement is likely taken from a study that found that a gun in a home was 53 times more likely to hurt someone living in that home than in self-defense. While I'm not arguing with the validity of the study itself, 51 out of those 53 times result from suicides using guns. Accounting for those (which ovbiously could still have been done without the gun), makes a 2:1 ratio. Still not great, but not nearly so dramatic as the study originally said.
Not only that... but get this. Most albums that go platinum on the first day of release... you know who buys all those albums? The record company who produces it. They then sell it back to the stores. This is so that other people will follow on the bandwagon and buy the crap out of that album. Bottom line is the record industry is shady as hell.
I've been keeping up with the record industry's shady tactics, but I haven't heard of this one? Do you have any details? A link, perhaps?
I had a similar (although less important) situation arise. I had agreed on a deal for two young ferrets (found through yahoo classifieds). We had extensive e-mail communications about what the animals' personalities were, that they were friendly and would not bite/attack people, etc. We had agreed on a set time and I made the hour drive to meet them and possibly purchase them.
I get there, and the person and her brother basically shove the animals in my boyfriend's truck, without me really getting to see them. Right then, red flags should have gone up in my head, but I had talked to the seller extensively and thought I could trust her.
I get the animals home, and it is clear that they are not at all what they were made out to be. One of the ferrets was extremely unfriendly and agressive, every time I would go near her, she would bite me, and she drew blood consistently. I emailed the girl back the next afternoon (a little less than 24 hours later, Michigan state law allows 72 hours to back out of a contract), telling her that I was backing out of the contract due to her untruthfulness. She emailed me back saying that she had contacted her lawyer (on a sunday, no less) and fed me a bunch of legal mumbo jumbo as to why she wouldn't take them back.
Turns out, the girl wasn't even 18 (she had lied to me). I tried to call her parents several times but was never able to get into contact with them. I wanted to take it to small claims court and get my money back, but I didn't think that the emails alone would be enough to prove my side, and finally just let it go and sold the ferrets to someone experienced with agressive ones, for a substantial loss.
I wish I would have known that my emails would have held up in court, I don't even think her parents had a clue what was going on. Ovbiously, it was partially my fault for being so trusting, but I found it hard to believe that someone I had talked to so extensively (probably 50k worth of email) would be so dishonest.
I learned my lesson from the experience, but knowing that my emails could have backed up my story might have made for a different ending for me.
On one hand, it's kind of nice that the SEC is taking steps to protect people from these kind of scams. It's never pretty when people get ripped off by companies that fabricate stories to potential investors enron.
On the other hand, though, it's kind of sad that there are people who actually invest in this kind of stuff. One would think that people would be (more) careful when there is real money involved. There are plenty of brokers out there, and while they may not give the *best* advice, they certainly wouldn't direct innocent people toward investments that are ovbiously scams. If you don't know what you're doing with your money, then take it to someone who does. If you don't, you're just asking for trouble.
On some level, people affected by these scams get what they have coming to them.
In Michigan at least, you can't make a citizen's arrest unless a felony was committed (in the case of shoplifting, stealing $1k or more of goods). Practically, this means that security guards can't detain you unless they know offhand the price of what you stole, because if they are wrong about the value of what you took, they go to jail (kidnapping I believe). Practically, it means nobody can stop a shoplifter.
Although I'm sure a lot of people stop and take a screenshot/photo when they make a big achievement, how easy would it be to forge/alter it. Photos are probably a bit "safer" than screenshots, because of the equipment that would be required to alter a photo, but I would imagine it would be fairly easy for a person to take a screen-shot of a decent score and then "enhance" it somehow. Is there any other way of verifying such things?
24. Metaphors have a profound effect on computing. The desktop metaphor traps us in a "broad" instead of "deep" arrangement of information that is fundamentally wrong for computer screens. Compared to a standard page of words, an actual desktop is big and a computer screen is small. A desktop is easily extended (use drawers, other desks, tables, the floor); a computer screen is not.
It's called screen resolution. If you don't like how small your desktop is, change your resolution. If you can't make your resolution bigger and you don't like it, buy a new monitor where you can. Keeping with his comparison, if your desk is too small, buy a bigger desk.
33. A file should be allowed to have no name, one name or many names. Many files should be allowed to share one name. A file should be allowed to be in no directory, one directory, or many directories. Many files should be allowed to share one directory. Of these eight possibilities, only three are legal and the other five are banned -- for no good reason.
No good reason? I can think of two. It would be much MUCH easier to find a named file than to try to explain to a computer which one you want. And how would programmers make references to other files if those files had no name? You have the same problem if several files share the same name, if you say i want foo.txt and there are 50 foo.txt files, how is anyone (the computer or me) supposed to know which one I want. If there is a link to foo.txt in a local network, how is the program that processes the link supposed to know which one you meant?
32. You shouldn't have to put files in directories. The directories should reach out and take them. If a file belongs in six directories, all six should reach out and grab it automatically, simultaneously.
And who exactly is going to figure out this? If i'm downloading an upgrade to a system file that the system wasn't programmed to see, how is the system supposed to know which file to grab? What about personal directories? If i have one named pictures, how is the pictures directory magically going to know which graphics files i consider "pictures" to go in the file, and which are banner ads, or which are porn shots? How would you program a computer to recgonize the differences?
35. Computers make alphabetical order obsolete.
Alphabetical order makes things easier to find. Ever searched through a directory for 1 file out of 500 when the order of the files in the directory was completely random? How about if, following his earlier suggestion, 50 of those 500 files had the name you were looking for? Pretty hard stuff.
Those are just a couple of logical jumps in his paper, there are many many more. He makes a few good points, but for the most part the way he wants things to be would make an impossible task for programmers. If this comes true, better hope you never have to call a routine. It might have no name!
All I have heard lately is how advertising has "suddenly" stopped working, and how readership is going down the drain and companies that rely on ads are going out of business.
The things that people don't get is that advertising viewership has always been the same.
Let's take a look at the traditional model vs. the internet model for a moment. The traditional model (television/radio) sends out advertisements to the viewership in hopes that it will boost product sales. The internet does the same, except that they look for website readership. So what's the real difference? Website click-throughs can be tracked. TV ads cannot.
Advertisers assume that if an ad is played during a show that people watch, then the people see it. You and I know this, but the Advertising exec's have yet to get it. Websites have the technology to realize that this is absolutely false. Almost nobody watches ads, TV or otherwise, but until there is a way to track TV views physical viewing and comprehending of an ad (designated by a click-through online), the execs will never know that the ads they spend so much money on are simply not effective.
This is a JonKatz article?
on
LonelyNet
·
· Score: 1
When I first read this, then the comments, I had to do a double-take. The article is concise, well-written, and makes a wonderful point. Then I read the comments. Previously, where you were lucky to find one comment of real worth beneath all the 2 year-old mentality flames and trolling, I now see that the S:N ration is insanely high. I have yet to see one Katz flame (although I did see a pretty funny song about him IMHO).
I want to issue Jon a big congratulations on a wonderfully written and well thought-out article. I daresay that this is the best Katz article I have seen on my 1 1/2 years of slashdot reading. Bravo!
I agree with every single point this guy makes. It *has* to be easier for users. I consider myself a power user, I have knowledge of IRQ's and com ports and such, as well as most other things a person would need to install linux. I decided that I wanted to give RedHat 6.0 a try, so I bought a copy from cheapbytes.
When I first went to install, I had problems finding my monitor. I do not know the exact refresh rates, and tried a few things. After about 20 minutes of playing, I got through the install process. My two goals of linux were to be able to surf the web and use ICQ, and once I had those two things I could learn what I need to know. There was no nice dial-up interface that I could locate (later, I was referred to kPPP after several reboots into windows and back), and managed to set that up. I decided on licq for my ICQ client. I downloaded the tar.gz, and that's about as far as I got. I didn't know how to compile or use it, so I ended up requesting the help of/. members. <P> Technos replied to me, and we set out to install licq. First of all, I had none of the needed lib's installed, so I had to do a reinstall. I went to reinstall, got it all re-configured, and windows had suddenly disappeared from my boot options. I check fdisk, and to my horror, RedHat not only overwrote my linux partition, tables, but my fat16 ones as well. <P> After a complete format of both my ext2 and fat16 drives, a reinstall of both redhat and windows, as well as my critical windows applications, I was ready to try again. I recieved instructions from technos using 'talk' while i compiled and configured everything. I finally get everything all set up, go to run licq, and it tells me that my qt-gui isn't installed. I goto install *that*, make it, compile it, wait an hour, and then try to run licq again. Same error. I try to run qt-gui, it tells me my path is set to "" although I know damn well (and.profile confirms) that I have it set to the correct path.<P> The result? I'm still in windows and linux has probably lost a user. I simply don't have the knowledge to do the things that linux requires of me just to set up the basic things that I want to use. And I consider myself knowledgable! Imagine poor grandma who is afraid to turn on her computer trying to use linux. It would be impossible, and this is the main problem with linux. it needs a smooth install process, and a nice friendly newbie GUI that someone who doesn't know linux and is only marginally familiar with windows can use. The average user doesn't know what a com port is, let alone which one their modem uses! Until that is fixed, linux *will* remain the underdog.
I hate to tell you, but unless that was scathing sarcasm, there are NO examples of Christian oppression on that site. In fact, all of it is scathing sarcasm..
1. why am I an atheist? 2. how much actual study have I done on the subject of atheism (and the proofs therein)? 3. how do I know there isn't a God? 4. how much of my belief system comes from my parents?
Although I am not an atheist per-se, I thought I'd answer the questions
1. Because I have yet to find any testable proof that a God exists.
2. Quite a bit, but the first thing to know is that there is no proof. That's the first assertion of atheism, the the burden of proof lies on the asserter.
There are free images available at... hold on.. terraserver.microsoft.com. They are free, and they actually have decent images for the areas that they have covered. The resolution isn't nearly as high as that of this one, but for free I guess you can't complain =)
Most of the eastern US, I believe is available. Last time I checked, at least.
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Maybe i'll try the AA one next time.
There were a lot of messages in the Lansing one for people laughing about how it would be a bunch of men hoping to meet women, I laughed because I'm female and will probably be the only female there. 'Twould be nice to meet a fellow female geek. Oh well.
To all of you who have suggested a learners permit, thanks, but it's already been checked out. Michigan laws allow someone with a learners permit to drive with either a parent or an approved guardian (approved in writing by the parent) over 21. I'm not over 21, and her parents live 6 hours away in Ohio. So the learners permit thing won't work.
Michigan does have something similar, but it won't work in her case. Michigan allows one to get a level 1 learners permit which allows a person to drive with a parent or approved guardian over 21 years of age. Her parents live in Ohio, and I'm not 21. She doesn't really have any friends who could let her drive either. It really is a nasty mess.
For example, I live in a small (sub)urban area in Michigan. One of my roommates is just getting her life together (mental/emotional issues), and is starting to look for volunteer work in order to build up her resume to find a sustainable job. (She currently doesn't know how to drive, or have a drivers license). There are several volunteer jobs through the local Red Cross that would be perfect for her skills and abilities, but they are well beyond walking distance and the bus either does not go to those areas at all, or does not go often enough (once an hour or less) to make it possible for her to use. Thus, she is stuck with what she can walk to/ride the bus to.
Because of the situation, my other roommate and I have been trying to help her get a vehicle. But it's all a big catch-22. She can't (legally) drive a car until she gets her license and regristration, but she can't get a license and registration until she passes both a written and a road test, which requires her practing by driving a car.
So, she can't buy a car to practice, and she can't practice without a car. It's a big mess. The only forseeable way around it is to let her drive one of our cars illegally until she gets good enough to pass the road test.
While this doesn't have anything specifically to do with biometrics, it's the same catch-22. You can't work without a car, you can't have a car without a license, and you can't have a license without submitting to whatever they tell you to. Move to another state, I guess, but then what if more states pick up this idea?
The whole thing scares me on multiple levels. It has that nasty big-brotherish feel to it, plus making life very difficult for those concerned about personal privacy (myself included). Hopefully, it will get struck down in the courts, but I doubt it. Driving has been held as a privilage, and thus open to (almost) any restrictions the state likes. [sigh] Another restriction on our freedoms. What's new?
This statement is likely taken from a study that found that a gun in a home was 53 times more likely to hurt someone living in that home than in self-defense. While I'm not arguing with the validity of the study itself, 51 out of those 53 times result from suicides using guns. Accounting for those (which ovbiously could still have been done without the gun), makes a 2:1 ratio. Still not great, but not nearly so dramatic as the study originally said.
I've been keeping up with the record industry's shady tactics, but I haven't heard of this one? Do you have any details? A link, perhaps?
I get there, and the person and her brother basically shove the animals in my boyfriend's truck, without me really getting to see them. Right then, red flags should have gone up in my head, but I had talked to the seller extensively and thought I could trust her.
I get the animals home, and it is clear that they are not at all what they were made out to be. One of the ferrets was extremely unfriendly and agressive, every time I would go near her, she would bite me, and she drew blood consistently. I emailed the girl back the next afternoon (a little less than 24 hours later, Michigan state law allows 72 hours to back out of a contract), telling her that I was backing out of the contract due to her untruthfulness. She emailed me back saying that she had contacted her lawyer (on a sunday, no less) and fed me a bunch of legal mumbo jumbo as to why she wouldn't take them back.
Turns out, the girl wasn't even 18 (she had lied to me). I tried to call her parents several times but was never able to get into contact with them. I wanted to take it to small claims court and get my money back, but I didn't think that the emails alone would be enough to prove my side, and finally just let it go and sold the ferrets to someone experienced with agressive ones, for a substantial loss.
I wish I would have known that my emails would have held up in court, I don't even think her parents had a clue what was going on. Ovbiously, it was partially my fault for being so trusting, but I found it hard to believe that someone I had talked to so extensively (probably 50k worth of email) would be so dishonest.
I learned my lesson from the experience, but knowing that my emails could have backed up my story might have made for a different ending for me.
Ahh, my mistake. Sorry 'bout that =)
I'm glad they resolved it, mind telling us how it was resolved? I'm an ex-rabid x-files watcher, myself =)
Actually, according to my math, the original poster is right.
.02 dollars = $518.40.
120 listeners * 18 hrs/day * 12 songs/hour *
ethology + pringles = 1 result baby =)
On the other hand, though, it's kind of sad that there are people who actually invest in this kind of stuff. One would think that people would be (more) careful when there is real money involved. There are plenty of brokers out there, and while they may not give the *best* advice, they certainly wouldn't direct innocent people toward investments that are ovbiously scams. If you don't know what you're doing with your money, then take it to someone who does. If you don't, you're just asking for trouble.
On some level, people affected by these scams get what they have coming to them.
In Michigan at least, you can't make a citizen's arrest unless a felony was committed (in the case of shoplifting, stealing $1k or more of goods). Practically, this means that security guards can't detain you unless they know offhand the price of what you stole, because if they are wrong about the value of what you took, they go to jail (kidnapping I believe). Practically, it means nobody can stop a shoplifter.
I wonder how they verify these sorts of things.
Although I'm sure a lot of people stop and take a screenshot/photo when they make a big achievement, how easy would it be to forge/alter it. Photos are probably a bit "safer" than screenshots, because of the equipment that would be required to alter a photo, but I would imagine it would be fairly easy for a person to take a screen-shot of a decent score and then "enhance" it somehow. Is there any other way of verifying such things?
It's called screen resolution. If you don't like how small your desktop is, change your resolution. If you can't make your resolution bigger and you don't like it, buy a new monitor where you can. Keeping with his comparison, if your desk is too small, buy a bigger desk.
33. A file should be allowed to have no name, one name or many names. Many files should be allowed to share one name. A file should be allowed to be in no directory, one directory, or many directories. Many files should be allowed to share one directory. Of these eight possibilities, only three are legal and the other five are banned -- for no good reason.
No good reason? I can think of two. It would be much MUCH easier to find a named file than to try to explain to a computer which one you want. And how would programmers make references to other files if those files had no name? You have the same problem if several files share the same name, if you say i want foo.txt and there are 50 foo.txt files, how is anyone (the computer or me) supposed to know which one I want. If there is a link to foo.txt in a local network, how is the program that processes the link supposed to know which one you meant?
32. You shouldn't have to put files in directories. The directories should reach out and take them. If a file belongs in six directories, all six should reach out and grab it automatically, simultaneously.
And who exactly is going to figure out this? If i'm downloading an upgrade to a system file that the system wasn't programmed to see, how is the system supposed to know which file to grab? What about personal directories? If i have one named pictures, how is the pictures directory magically going to know which graphics files i consider "pictures" to go in the file, and which are banner ads, or which are porn shots? How would you program a computer to recgonize the differences?
35. Computers make alphabetical order obsolete.
Alphabetical order makes things easier to find. Ever searched through a directory for 1 file out of 500 when the order of the files in the directory was completely random? How about if, following his earlier suggestion, 50 of those 500 files had the name you were looking for? Pretty hard stuff.
Those are just a couple of logical jumps in his paper, there are many many more. He makes a few good points, but for the most part the way he wants things to be would make an impossible task for programmers. If this comes true, better hope you never have to call a routine. It might have no name!
In the last paragraph, the second sentence should read "You and I know this IS FALSE..."
The things that people don't get is that advertising viewership has always been the same.
Let's take a look at the traditional model vs. the internet model for a moment. The traditional model (television/radio) sends out advertisements to the viewership in hopes that it will boost product sales. The internet does the same, except that they look for website readership. So what's the real difference? Website click-throughs can be tracked. TV ads cannot.
Advertisers assume that if an ad is played during a show that people watch, then the people see it. You and I know this, but the Advertising exec's have yet to get it. Websites have the technology to realize that this is absolutely false. Almost nobody watches ads, TV or otherwise, but until there is a way to track TV views physical viewing and comprehending of an ad (designated by a click-through online), the execs will never know that the ads they spend so much money on are simply not effective.
I want to issue Jon a big congratulations on a wonderfully written and well thought-out article. I daresay that this is the best Katz article I have seen on my 1 1/2 years of slashdot reading. Bravo!
When I first went to install, I had problems finding my monitor. I do not know the exact refresh rates, and tried a few things. After about 20 minutes of playing, I got through the install process. My two goals of linux were to be able to surf the web and use ICQ, and once I had those two things I could learn what I need to know. There was no nice dial-up interface that I could locate (later, I was referred to kPPP after several reboots into windows and back), and managed to set that up. I decided on licq for my ICQ client. I downloaded the tar.gz, and that's about as far as I got. I didn't know how to compile or use it, so I ended up requesting the help of
Technos replied to me, and we set out to install licq. First of all, I had none of the needed lib's installed, so I had to do a reinstall. I went to reinstall, got it all re-configured, and windows had suddenly disappeared from my boot options. I check fdisk, and to my horror, RedHat not only overwrote my linux partition, tables, but my fat16 ones as well. <P>
After a complete format of both my ext2 and fat16 drives, a reinstall of both redhat and windows, as well as my critical windows applications, I was ready to try again. I recieved instructions from technos using 'talk' while i compiled and configured everything. I finally get everything all set up, go to run licq, and it tells me that my qt-gui isn't installed. I goto install *that*, make it, compile it, wait an hour, and then try to run licq again. Same error. I try to run qt-gui, it tells me my path is set to "" although I know damn well (and
The result? I'm still in windows and linux has probably lost a user. I simply don't have the knowledge to do the things that linux requires of me just to set up the basic things that I want to use. And I consider myself knowledgable! Imagine poor grandma who is afraid to turn on her computer trying to use linux. It would be impossible, and this is the main problem with linux. it needs a smooth install process, and a nice friendly newbie GUI that someone who doesn't know linux and is only marginally familiar with windows can use. The average user doesn't know what a com port is, let alone which one their modem uses! Until that is fixed, linux *will* remain the underdog.
I hate to tell you, but unless that was scathing sarcasm, there are NO examples of Christian oppression on that site. In fact, all of it is scathing sarcasm..
1. why am I an atheist?
2. how much actual study have I done on the subject of atheism (and the proofs therein)?
3. how do I know there isn't a God?
4. how much of my belief system comes from my parents?
Although I am not an atheist per-se, I thought I'd answer the questions
1. Because I have yet to find any testable proof that a God exists.
2. Quite a bit, but the first thing to know is that there is no proof. That's the first assertion of atheism, the the burden of proof lies on the asserter.
3. I don't. Nobody does.
4. Zero. They are both devout Methodists.
Most of the eastern US, I believe is available. Last time I checked, at least.
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Just me or did anyone else get this? How odd..
They are available at copyleft for $15. I just got mine today, in fact, it's a nice quality Tee.. www.copyleft.net