Are you aware that ancient Egyptian tombs have been unsealed and were found to contain honey thousands of years old that was still edible? It's an excellent preservative.
I'm aware that this fact is repeated often on the internet but nobody's ever been able to provide a citation that doesn't cite another, that cites another, that leads on in a circle forever. Regardless, such practices are unregulated and there is no tracking or auditing, so if something that wasn't honey made it into production, or if it contained botulism (yes, honey can indeed become infected with pathogens, le gasp)... there would be no way to trace it back to its source. That was my point. If the Egyptians happened to be really good at preserving things, you know, like people and honey, well all the more power to them. However, this is not Egypt during the time of the Parohs.
The FDA is a gimp government department. The only thing it can review in depth is approval for new drugs, and that's only because the corporations submitting the drugs have to pay for that. Funding for everything else, from food and cosmetics inspection to even chasing down advertisers that use the phrase 'FDA approved' illegally, is so hamstrung as to be useless. The only time the FDA gets involved is when there's press coverage on people getting sick and/or dying. Only a very, very small fraction of meat is ever inspected... and there are holes in the system so big you could fly a 737 through it and still have ample room to fit at least a dozen Rush Limbaughs lengthwise through them. Take honey, for example: Honey is mixed and remixed with many other suppliers, such that the expiration date is never known. Should a particular batch of honey be close to expiring or would otherwise fail inspection, it is shipped across the border, mixed in with good honey, and then imported back. This is legal. There's so many examples of this it's not even funny.
Bottom line here: Don't trust the FDA when it comes to food safety. It may be their responsibility to ensure food is safe, but they're so horribly underfunded and compromised by corporate interests that they cannot realistically be expected to succeed.
Can survive being crushed, sat on, folded, spun, submerged in water, thrown up on, run over by a car, heated to several hundred degrees, frozen to near absolute zero, exposed to intense radiation, and the data stored on paper can be read with no special tools under a wide variety of environmental conditions, or using simple tools like a 'lens', can be read at distances of up to several hundred feet or more.
RFID
Can be used with a scanner that has a range of only a few inches. If any part of the chip is damaged, the data is irretrievable. Costs more than paper. Can be destroyed in everyday use, including sitting on it, folding it, getting it wet, etc.
Which one would you pick for storing sensitive information which, if made inaccessible, has the potential to prevent you from ever seeing your loved ones, your home, or any of your possessions again?
Dead as in inert, inactive like a dead volcano. Not everything we describe as dead was ever alive...
These words, they do not mean what you think they mean. In this context, dead is used as an adjective: and in that context it means no longer living, deprived of life, not endowed with life, inanimate, resembling death, bereft of sensation: numb, etc. There is no definition of "dead" which does not imply it was once alive.
The moon is dead. It has been dead for a very long time. It is bereft of life. Nothing grows on the Moon. Nothing is alive on the moon except the occasional man from Ohio which, for yet unknown reasons, compels people who live there to want to flee the planet. Dead. Dead. Very dead. So very very dead. Dead. In the same way every other celestial body save our own is dead, and even ours is only coated in a very thin coat of life, most of which is busy trying to kill off other forms of life either because it is a biological imperative or because they hear voices, call them God, and then occasionally run for political office.
I'm not sure tectonic plate activity really moves a planet over from the 'dead' category to the 'mostly dead' category (also known as 'slightly alive'). Unless of course you just found Thor hanging out there running around banging mountains flat or something.
Perhaps you meant to say "Moon not as geologically stable as we thought." ?
... By using this website, service, or product, (henceforth known only as The Service) you grant The Company the right to robocall using any telephone network or communications medium at our sole discretion. Any attempt to subvert, co-opt, or bypass this provision will render use of The Service illegal, and we reserve the right to take any legal measures available to us to end your use of The Service. An electronic signature is as valid as a physical one for the purposes of enforcing this section of the End User Licensing Agreement.
I'm only saying this so that others may learn from your mistake.
So says Forever Alone guy! Yes, it's a mistake to trust anybody. By trust nobody you can ensure your heart remains perfectly safe and you, perfectly alone. This guy decided to take a risk, and yes, maybe in this one case it didn't work out for him, but at least he tries to have someone in his life who's last name isn't JPEG.
17,000 patents should even things out enough to force the big players to negotiate and co-operate
Yeah, the only thing keeping smaller players in the game as it is right now is that the large manufacturers aren't cooperating. Should this cooperation you speak of happen, you can bet it'll be cooperating to decide who gets to monopolize what. Basically, like the RIAA and MPAA do now: One business per industry please.
...western half of the country were 3G wastelands, particularly in mountainous states such as Idaho and Nevada.
Yes, the economic loss to the nation's economy has been estimated to be in the tens of dollars as people who live in more hospitable areas refuse to subsidize infrastructure for those who lack the brains to move out of unfarmable land with no source of water for hundreds of miles.
If you "Like" something on Facebook, Facebook has every right to let your Facebook Friends know you liked that thing.
Perhaps people are finally realizing that the limits placed on corporations regarding the handling of personal data is grossly in favor of the monentization and re-use of their information for purposes which the majority of people would disagree with? If that is so then any government claiming to be "of and by the people" should draft legislation assuring that the traditions and customs of its citizens be upheld.
This case goes to the heart of that, by weighing a legitimate public interest against a private interest which is worth many billions of dollars and built entirely on a misconception by the public of what information may be shared, and what may not be shared. Let's be clear here: Facebook's entire privacy and business model has been under intense scrutiny by privacy advocates because it often intentionally misleads its users, often reverses itself in the face of criticism, and has been a frequent target of high-profile publicity as people became aware of it. All of this strongly indicates that the people using the Facebook service are fully aware (or told) how this information may be used. Now that it is about to become a publicly traded company, it seems essential this matter of law be resolved.
Afterall, once something is on the internet, it doesn't leave. That can be a real problem for anyone searching for a job, should the wrong thing become public. And by real problem, I mean real unemployment and personal hardship. This is not just a matter of "privacy" -- it has fast become a matter of survival.
it's simply not economically viable to manufacture here in the States.
As long as we continue to allow imports of materials covered in the blood of the workers who produced it, then yes, it will remain "not economically viable". Should we suddenly have an outburst of compassion and decide to ban such imports, I imagine it will magically become economical again to manufacture here. Also.. you're only getting about a 10% discount when you buy products produced by sweatshop as opposed to regulated and safe working conditions.
And let's be clear: The product you're buying isn't essential to your livelihood. It is a status symbol and a material comfort. Is that 10% really worth it? There are some standards that we should not compromise on: We should not allow business with companies or countries that have to place nets on and around their buildings to catch people committing suicide because of it's poor working conditions.
If you're an anti-social shut in who just found out you don't even have to talk to your therapist face to face, what incentive do you have to better yourself?
The success of the web-only series The Guild comes to mind...
VoIP is not as effective as face to face. I'm not saying there's never a reason to use it, just that it's not as effective. A lot of person to person communication is via body language and subtle changes in intonation, etc., that using VoIP will conceal. Teleconferencing would be preferable because it allows the opportunity to communicate with body language as well.
Body language is huge in therapy, because a lot of what therapy is consists of getting the patient to talk about things he or she finds uncomfortable. Discomfort can be hidden much more easily in a person's tone of voice than in their body language cues.
It's not like the people who've been pirating for the last ten years are just going to say to themselves "Hey, let's go back to the way it was in the 90's and forget that we've gotten used to not paying for our movies and getting them instantly.
Interestingly, the most popular items are not movies but television shows. But that's neither here nor there -- Even if the MPAA stopped charging for movies and TV shows "pirate" distribution would continue, because the quality is superior. Let's look at the selling points for "pirate" distribution content;
Available immediately after broadcast
No commercials
Wide variety of TV formats (480p, 720p, 1080p, stereo, 5.1, etc.)
Wide variety of encoding formats.
No DRM; Can be viewed on most devices without restriction or encumberance.
Free trials - if you don't like it, you don't have to pay for it.
Low cost.
The MPAA currently can only compete on one of these points -- cost. And they've been competing like mad here, by sending anyone who even looks like they might download a cease and desist, airdropping lawyers by the hundred on college campuses and filesharing sites, and spending hundreds of millions on political contributions to induce law enforcement to attack downloaders. They aren't trying to win the war by arresting everyone and giving hackers 30 years in the electric chair... they're trying to win by making the cost of downloading look less appealing compared to their own product offerings, through their distribution channels.
99.9999% of end users will never visit anything with a *.verisign.com domain.
There are over 2 billion internet users... so you're saying only 200 people in the world will visit that site? Is now a bad time to note that millions of websites have a 'Verisign Approved' widget on their site that has a referred URL back to the *.verisign.com domain?
It wasn't speech. Speech is what comes out of your mouth. He used an electronic device, which means it's no longer speech, ergo the authorities were justified in detaining him, destroying his life, plastering his picture all over the newspapers, telling him, his family, and everybody he knew he was a terrorist, making repeated threats against his person, etc.
The favored tactic of the oppressors is to simply redefine things. In the United States, for example, citizenship can now be revoked without a trial and the person deported, even if they were born in this country and never left, because the authorities simply redefined what a citizen is to get around that pesky constitution. In this case, since he didn't actually speak the words, but instead typed them, he is not entitled to any free speech protections. Or any protection. At all. Ever.
Oh, you mean like how Microsoft bundles Office with it's distro? You know, the one they call Windows.
I can see an argument being made that people don't want an "operating system", they want a computer. And when most people say computer, they don't mean the box. That's what geeks say. When an average person says computer, they mean all the applications, peripherals, internet access, etc., that all gets packed into the magic box.
Linux and its supporters have never quite managed to grasp the Magic Box school of thought. Until they do, they'll never be a competitor. This is a cultural problem, not a technological one. Look at Apple. First we ignored them, then we laughed at them, then somehow, overnight, OS X became a contender and Apple became a massive corporation. How did that happen?
Hint: Apple doesn't sell 'operating systems' or 'ipads' or whatever. They are selling an experience. And if you ask the average person what the Linux experience is... they'll look at you, facepalm, and say flatly "I couldn't get the damn thing to work."
Linux vendors need to sell an experience, not a product. It needs to be well-supported, preconfigured with everything the average person wants on a computer (or whoever their target demographic is... IT managers, server lackies, whatever...), so all they do is push the button and there it is. It. Just. F*cking. Works.
It could become a real threat to cell phone carriers' 3G data monopoly, and could *snip*
They're deploying this in the US, right? Ok. It's doomed. Move along folks, nothing to see here. Like they'd ever let you have something cutting edge that wasn't owned by a mega corporation. ha ha ha. You're so funny, slashdot.
And so it has been throughout history that whenever an adult takes another adult's toys, they scrawl sexual missives and taunts out to the first adult. Children, being much less mature than adults, feel guilty and turn themselves in, and then share the toy in question.
I can see the advent of the personal computer has done nothing to change this basic dynamic: The older you get, the less responsible with other people's things you become. By the time you're in your mid to late 30s, reaching the epoch of your career, you're probably regularly destroying company property, selling our shareholders, pissing in the sink of the unisex handicap stall (after taking a nice fat dump of course!), and generally misusing everything that's there for you to share with others.
I guess then you should be really careful with your password, otherwise some middle-aged pathologically irresponsible dude will throw feces at it, I guess, is my only point.:}
Would somebody please put together a resume for We the People of Slashdot?
We could, but it would be full of contradictory skills and experiences, an entire year devoted to yelling "First Post!", and would boast certifications like "Made baby jesus cry."
Actually... It's still better than the current crop of presidential hopefuls. PRINT IT.
They might be great against an adversary that knows they're being actively surveilled or to gather data in real time, but there's nothing covert about this. You're not going to see them dropping these on targets of interest that they want to remain unaware that they're being watched.
'For an industry that's pursuing copyright reform, the portrayal of a copyright regime that works against young artists can't be a good thing.'"
Newsflash: They don't care how bad they look. they're like the NRA, tobacco companies, and people who murder orphans, dolphins, and eat babies, then pee on the corpses and set fire to them using antique shredded american flags from the civil war... reputation doesn't matter. Profit matters.
Get 'em hooked young, and a whole generation will grow up clueless about how free the internet used to be...
Slashdot Mirror
Honey doesn't expire or go bad
Citation needed.
Are you aware that ancient Egyptian tombs have been unsealed and were found to contain honey thousands of years old that was still edible? It's an excellent preservative.
I'm aware that this fact is repeated often on the internet but nobody's ever been able to provide a citation that doesn't cite another, that cites another, that leads on in a circle forever. Regardless, such practices are unregulated and there is no tracking or auditing, so if something that wasn't honey made it into production, or if it contained botulism (yes, honey can indeed become infected with pathogens, le gasp)... there would be no way to trace it back to its source. That was my point. If the Egyptians happened to be really good at preserving things, you know, like people and honey, well all the more power to them. However, this is not Egypt during the time of the Parohs.
Bottom line here: Don't trust the FDA when it comes to food safety. It may be their responsibility to ensure food is safe, but they're so horribly underfunded and compromised by corporate interests that they cannot realistically be expected to succeed.
Paper
Can survive being crushed, sat on, folded, spun, submerged in water, thrown up on, run over by a car, heated to several hundred degrees, frozen to near absolute zero, exposed to intense radiation, and the data stored on paper can be read with no special tools under a wide variety of environmental conditions, or using simple tools like a 'lens', can be read at distances of up to several hundred feet or more.
RFID
Can be used with a scanner that has a range of only a few inches. If any part of the chip is damaged, the data is irretrievable. Costs more than paper. Can be destroyed in everyday use, including sitting on it, folding it, getting it wet, etc.
Which one would you pick for storing sensitive information which, if made inaccessible, has the potential to prevent you from ever seeing your loved ones, your home, or any of your possessions again?
Dead as in inert, inactive like a dead volcano. Not everything we describe as dead was ever alive...
These words, they do not mean what you think they mean. In this context, dead is used as an adjective: and in that context it means no longer living, deprived of life, not endowed with life, inanimate, resembling death, bereft of sensation: numb, etc. There is no definition of "dead" which does not imply it was once alive.
The moon is dead. It has been dead for a very long time. It is bereft of life. Nothing grows on the Moon. Nothing is alive on the moon except the occasional man from Ohio which, for yet unknown reasons, compels people who live there to want to flee the planet. Dead. Dead. Very dead. So very very dead. Dead. In the same way every other celestial body save our own is dead, and even ours is only coated in a very thin coat of life, most of which is busy trying to kill off other forms of life either because it is a biological imperative or because they hear voices, call them God, and then occasionally run for political office.
The. Moon. Is. Dead.
Perhaps you meant to say "Moon not as geologically stable as we thought." ?
... By using this website, service, or product, (henceforth known only as The Service) you grant The Company the right to robocall using any telephone network or communications medium at our sole discretion. Any attempt to subvert, co-opt, or bypass this provision will render use of The Service illegal, and we reserve the right to take any legal measures available to us to end your use of The Service. An electronic signature is as valid as a physical one for the purposes of enforcing this section of the End User Licensing Agreement.
If only there were a way to make multiple copies of digital information and not get the pants sued off me.
FTFY.
I'm only saying this so that others may learn from your mistake.
So says Forever Alone guy! Yes, it's a mistake to trust anybody. By trust nobody you can ensure your heart remains perfectly safe and you, perfectly alone. This guy decided to take a risk, and yes, maybe in this one case it didn't work out for him, but at least he tries to have someone in his life who's last name isn't JPEG.
17,000 patents should even things out enough to force the big players to negotiate and co-operate
Yeah, the only thing keeping smaller players in the game as it is right now is that the large manufacturers aren't cooperating. Should this cooperation you speak of happen, you can bet it'll be cooperating to decide who gets to monopolize what. Basically, like the RIAA and MPAA do now: One business per industry please.
...western half of the country were 3G wastelands, particularly in mountainous states such as Idaho and Nevada.
Yes, the economic loss to the nation's economy has been estimated to be in the tens of dollars as people who live in more hospitable areas refuse to subsidize infrastructure for those who lack the brains to move out of unfarmable land with no source of water for hundreds of miles.
If you "Like" something on Facebook, Facebook has every right to let your Facebook Friends know you liked that thing.
Perhaps people are finally realizing that the limits placed on corporations regarding the handling of personal data is grossly in favor of the monentization and re-use of their information for purposes which the majority of people would disagree with? If that is so then any government claiming to be "of and by the people" should draft legislation assuring that the traditions and customs of its citizens be upheld.
This case goes to the heart of that, by weighing a legitimate public interest against a private interest which is worth many billions of dollars and built entirely on a misconception by the public of what information may be shared, and what may not be shared. Let's be clear here: Facebook's entire privacy and business model has been under intense scrutiny by privacy advocates because it often intentionally misleads its users, often reverses itself in the face of criticism, and has been a frequent target of high-profile publicity as people became aware of it. All of this strongly indicates that the people using the Facebook service are fully aware (or told) how this information may be used. Now that it is about to become a publicly traded company, it seems essential this matter of law be resolved.
Afterall, once something is on the internet, it doesn't leave. That can be a real problem for anyone searching for a job, should the wrong thing become public. And by real problem, I mean real unemployment and personal hardship. This is not just a matter of "privacy" -- it has fast become a matter of survival.
it's simply not economically viable to manufacture here in the States.
As long as we continue to allow imports of materials covered in the blood of the workers who produced it, then yes, it will remain "not economically viable". Should we suddenly have an outburst of compassion and decide to ban such imports, I imagine it will magically become economical again to manufacture here. Also.. you're only getting about a 10% discount when you buy products produced by sweatshop as opposed to regulated and safe working conditions.
And let's be clear: The product you're buying isn't essential to your livelihood. It is a status symbol and a material comfort. Is that 10% really worth it? There are some standards that we should not compromise on: We should not allow business with companies or countries that have to place nets on and around their buildings to catch people committing suicide because of it's poor working conditions.
If you're an anti-social shut in who just found out you don't even have to talk to your therapist face to face, what incentive do you have to better yourself?
The success of the web-only series The Guild comes to mind...
Body language is huge in therapy, because a lot of what therapy is consists of getting the patient to talk about things he or she finds uncomfortable. Discomfort can be hidden much more easily in a person's tone of voice than in their body language cues.
It's not like the people who've been pirating for the last ten years are just going to say to themselves "Hey, let's go back to the way it was in the 90's and forget that we've gotten used to not paying for our movies and getting them instantly.
Interestingly, the most popular items are not movies but television shows. But that's neither here nor there -- Even if the MPAA stopped charging for movies and TV shows "pirate" distribution would continue, because the quality is superior. Let's look at the selling points for "pirate" distribution content;
The MPAA currently can only compete on one of these points -- cost. And they've been competing like mad here, by sending anyone who even looks like they might download a cease and desist, airdropping lawyers by the hundred on college campuses and filesharing sites, and spending hundreds of millions on political contributions to induce law enforcement to attack downloaders. They aren't trying to win the war by arresting everyone and giving hackers 30 years in the electric chair... they're trying to win by making the cost of downloading look less appealing compared to their own product offerings, through their distribution channels.
99.9999% of end users will never visit anything with a *.verisign.com domain.
There are over 2 billion internet users... so you're saying only 200 people in the world will visit that site? Is now a bad time to note that millions of websites have a 'Verisign Approved' widget on their site that has a referred URL back to the *.verisign.com domain?
ctrl-c, ctrl-v
ctrl-c, ctrl-v
ctrl-c, ctrl-v ...
The favored tactic of the oppressors is to simply redefine things. In the United States, for example, citizenship can now be revoked without a trial and the person deported, even if they were born in this country and never left, because the authorities simply redefined what a citizen is to get around that pesky constitution. In this case, since he didn't actually speak the words, but instead typed them, he is not entitled to any free speech protections. Or any protection. At all. Ever.
I can see an argument being made that people don't want an "operating system", they want a computer. And when most people say computer, they don't mean the box. That's what geeks say. When an average person says computer, they mean all the applications, peripherals, internet access, etc., that all gets packed into the magic box.
Linux and its supporters have never quite managed to grasp the Magic Box school of thought. Until they do, they'll never be a competitor. This is a cultural problem, not a technological one. Look at Apple. First we ignored them, then we laughed at them, then somehow, overnight, OS X became a contender and Apple became a massive corporation. How did that happen?
Hint: Apple doesn't sell 'operating systems' or 'ipads' or whatever. They are selling an experience. And if you ask the average person what the Linux experience is... they'll look at you, facepalm, and say flatly "I couldn't get the damn thing to work."
Linux vendors need to sell an experience, not a product. It needs to be well-supported, preconfigured with everything the average person wants on a computer (or whoever their target demographic is... IT managers, server lackies, whatever...), so all they do is push the button and there it is. It. Just. F*cking. Works.
It could become a real threat to cell phone carriers' 3G data monopoly, and could *snip*
They're deploying this in the US, right? Ok. It's doomed. Move along folks, nothing to see here. Like they'd ever let you have something cutting edge that wasn't owned by a mega corporation. ha ha ha. You're so funny, slashdot.
I can see the advent of the personal computer has done nothing to change this basic dynamic: The older you get, the less responsible with other people's things you become. By the time you're in your mid to late 30s, reaching the epoch of your career, you're probably regularly destroying company property, selling our shareholders, pissing in the sink of the unisex handicap stall (after taking a nice fat dump of course!), and generally misusing everything that's there for you to share with others.
I guess then you should be really careful with your password, otherwise some middle-aged pathologically irresponsible dude will throw feces at it, I guess, is my only point. :}
Would somebody please put together a resume for We the People of Slashdot?
We could, but it would be full of contradictory skills and experiences, an entire year devoted to yelling "First Post!", and would boast certifications like "Made baby jesus cry."
Actually... It's still better than the current crop of presidential hopefuls. PRINT IT.
They might be great against an adversary that knows they're being actively surveilled or to gather data in real time, but there's nothing covert about this. You're not going to see them dropping these on targets of interest that they want to remain unaware that they're being watched.
'For an industry that's pursuing copyright reform, the portrayal of a copyright regime that works against young artists can't be a good thing.'"
Newsflash: They don't care how bad they look. they're like the NRA, tobacco companies, and people who murder orphans, dolphins, and eat babies, then pee on the corpses and set fire to them using antique shredded american flags from the civil war... reputation doesn't matter. Profit matters.
Get 'em hooked young, and a whole generation will grow up clueless about how free the internet used to be...