Somebody else gets it! Of the 6 passwords I have to use on a daily basis, I cannot recite a SINGLE ONE from memory. I have no idea what they are! But if I sit down at the keyboard, I can type them with no problem.
If it's not illegal, what the hell else is there to stop an employer from requiring it? Morality? What are you smoking?
There is no society on earth "good" enough to rely entirely on its citizens' moral fiber to prevent abuse. Bad news, my ass. The sorry condition of humanity is not news to me at all.
Try explaining the Condorcet system to the average Joe. His eyes will get glassy. Nobody is going to approve a voting system that they can't understand (and therefore, trust). Even stupid people understand what "majority" means, so that's what we get.
The two parties are IDENTICAL except for a couple knee-jerk issues that make good sound-bytes but have zero to do with the day to day operation of the government.
As I mentioned in another comment, I've done some very extensive data mining of the Congressional voting records over the past 15 years. The statement that the parties are practically the same is completely ludicrous. However, what is even more important than your party affiliation is who your friends in Congress are. One of the most interesting revelations of my research was that congresspeople form very well-defined cliques and voting is extremely consistent within these cliques.
Yeah, yeah, we all knew that, but it's good to see it borne out by some real statistics.
You have plenty of choice. A vote for a third candidate does not throw your vote away - even if that candidate is not elected, an increase in other party's showing sends a message to the incumbrents.
This statement is bandied about quite often. I've yet to see any proof of its veracity. I'll continue to vote third-party anyway, but I'm not deluding myself.
This is because the Democrat "party line" is more of a confused fractal than an actual line. A few years back for a data mining course I did a load of analysis on the Congressional voting records for the past 15 years. The mutual information (one way to statistically examine the correlation between variables) between various Democratic party issues is much lower on the whole than those of the Republicans. I chalk it up to the fact that the Democrats are trying to please too many people at once.
I didn't vote for this administration. What can I do except continue to vote in ways I think will help? Funny, the bulk of our armed forces are on the other side of the planet right now. Hmm...
Hey, You just identified how google imposed commercial harm to the Miro family. Congratulations! See why companies shouldn't tie other peoples work with their logo? It's none of google's business leaching of of others goodwill.
Now this has got to be THE dumbest thing I've ever heard. Congratulations.
You're saying you couldn't complete the application because the terminal was a piece of crap. How is this an Equal Opportunity violation? Are you saying that perhaps an Asian person (or, if you're Asian, suppose an African) might have better luck operating the machine? Your Equal Opportunity has been denied because people of your race, religion, color, or creed have an inherent disadvantage in operating this particular terminal?
Everybody has an Equal Opportunity to operate this crappy machine. Honestly I have no idea what the hell you're going on about.
This is incorrect, and that Wikipedia article you linked is horrible.
Thanks for letting me know. The text of that article really baffled me when I first saw it, too. Stupidly I decided that it was probably correct, despite the fact that I didn't "get it." I'm still not qualified to update the article but I hope somebody does.
This is a joke, and somebody who doesn't know organic chemistry from his ass thought it was a troll. Dear idiot, the sodium hydroxide combines with the added alcohol to form sodium methoxide, which then reacts with the oil.
This is a common mistake. Mixing methanol and sodium hydroxide does not produce sodium methoxide. This is because water is produced as the NaOH dissolves into the MeOH, and the water breaks down the methoxide.
As somebody who actually makes biodiesel, I assure you that the NaOH is very much intact at the end of the reaction. In fact, it contaminates the glycerin produced and makes it useless without purifying it first. Ask yourself, "where does the sodium go?" It sure as hell doesn't end up in the biodiesel. It remains as lye (or, if there is a great excess of lye, some of it binds to free fatty acids and produces water and soap, which are unwanted byproducts).
The article, in typical mass-media fashion, does not name the alcohol, but I assume this is methyl alcohol. That, and the cost of NaOH, makes this a non-cheap process.
You need to actually do the math before making a claim like that.
At our 330 gallon processing facility (a.k.a., The Barn) it costs us $1.00 per gallon for used oil and another $1.30 per gallon to turn it into biodiesel. The $1.30 includes electricity and other operating costs as well as consumable materials (sulfuric acid, sodium hydroxide, methanol). I don't have the complete cost breakdown handy, but that is what it costs.
$2.30 per gallon of biodiesel is cheaper than I can buy petro diesel around here.
It mentions a byproduct in the conventional method. Am I missing something, or does it not clarify whether or not this new method produces a byproduct?
ANY method of producing biodiesel must leave glycerin as a byproduct. The conversion to biodiesel takes place when the fatty acid chains break off the glycerol and combine with methanol to form a methyl ester. The glycerin is what is left over.
The problem with conventional methods is that the glycerin is contaminated with sodium hydroxide, so it is not directly usable for certain purposes without processing it. The microreactor produces glycerin without NaOH contamination.
(I made 85 gallons of biodiesel over the weekend.)
People really need to quit referring to anything as "unbreakable" or 100% secure. It's never going to happen. Just as making anything idiot proof, they will always build a better idiot. Saying it's unbreakable is just going to challenge someone to do it.
Nope. A one time pad generated from a truly random source, transmitted over a secure quantum encryption channel, is absolutely unbreakable. There are the usual human weak spots, like a moron leaving the pad lying around after the fact, but from a physical and mathematical standpoint the system is PERFECT.
You might as well challenge the truth of the Pythagorean theorem.
it propagates faster than electricity. The individual electrons get hung up on imperfections in the conductor they travel along making them travel considerably slower than the speed of light.
What the hell do imperfections have to do with it? Nothing with mass can move at the speed of light. You seem to be suggesting that if the conductor was perfect, the electrons could move at the speed of light. What sort of crazy talk is that?
Anyway, the electrons have a net speed on the order of just millimeters per second. However, changes in the electric field caused by the motion of the electrons can propagate through the conductor much, much faster.
Are you an idiot? Linus patched the kernel so that the virus WOULD work. Why would he lie about it not working in the first place if he went ahead and fixed the problem?
The logic behind using safe forms of nuclear power has been clear for a long, long time. It's nice to see some greens finally start accepting what has been obvious to some of us for 30 or 40 years.
While I agree that the time for clean nuclear energy is now, I do not agree that this has been obvious for 40 years. Have you forgotten all of these incidents?
Modern nuclear reactor designs are many times safer than those of the past. Yes, we should build them to relieve our dependence on fossil fuel sources. But to suggest that back in the 50's and 60's we should have been building as many plants as possible, when there clearly was such a propensity for terrible accidents, is crazy, IMHO. Nuclear power WAS dirty and unsafe.
For me, a computer is a box that sits on the floor and should remain as inconspicuous as possible
The whole reason I bought my Mac Mini is because it's totally inconspicuous. A giant G5 box on my desk is one thing, but the Mini is great if you want to save desk space. I don't worry about my computer as such, I just have a system that works and I do what I need to do.
Pretty much any time a laptop is shown on TV, you see the Apple logo on the back of the screen. I'm not sure, but I think it has to do with the tendency of producers/writers to want to avoid "generic" stuff in their work. An Apple branded piece of hardware stands out visually more so than your garden variety PC notebook, or at least they believe that to be the case.
How is programming on Linux any different from programming on Windows, Mac, etc? The APIs might be different, but that's just the grease, not the axle. And you've always got the standard library to fall back on.
Slashdot Mirror
Clearly, what we need here is an anti- anti-robot robot robot.
Somebody else gets it! Of the 6 passwords I have to use on a daily basis, I cannot recite a SINGLE ONE from memory. I have no idea what they are! But if I sit down at the keyboard, I can type them with no problem.
How can something be "ok, but not suitable?"
There is no society on earth "good" enough to rely entirely on its citizens' moral fiber to prevent abuse. Bad news, my ass. The sorry condition of humanity is not news to me at all.
It is, however, better than Cheeto fingers...
Try explaining the Condorcet system to the average Joe. His eyes will get glassy. Nobody is going to approve a voting system that they can't understand (and therefore, trust). Even stupid people understand what "majority" means, so that's what we get.
As I mentioned in another comment, I've done some very extensive data mining of the Congressional voting records over the past 15 years. The statement that the parties are practically the same is completely ludicrous. However, what is even more important than your party affiliation is who your friends in Congress are. One of the most interesting revelations of my research was that congresspeople form very well-defined cliques and voting is extremely consistent within these cliques.
Yeah, yeah, we all knew that, but it's good to see it borne out by some real statistics.
This statement is bandied about quite often. I've yet to see any proof of its veracity. I'll continue to vote third-party anyway, but I'm not deluding myself.
This is because the Democrat "party line" is more of a confused fractal than an actual line. A few years back for a data mining course I did a load of analysis on the Congressional voting records for the past 15 years. The mutual information (one way to statistically examine the correlation between variables) between various Democratic party issues is much lower on the whole than those of the Republicans. I chalk it up to the fact that the Democrats are trying to please too many people at once.
I didn't vote for this administration. What can I do except continue to vote in ways I think will help? Funny, the bulk of our armed forces are on the other side of the planet right now. Hmm...
This makes you an even sicker fuck than the OP.
Now this has got to be THE dumbest thing I've ever heard. Congratulations.
Everybody has an Equal Opportunity to operate this crappy machine. Honestly I have no idea what the hell you're going on about.
Thanks for letting me know. The text of that article really baffled me when I first saw it, too. Stupidly I decided that it was probably correct, despite the fact that I didn't "get it." I'm still not qualified to update the article but I hope somebody does.
This is a common mistake. Mixing methanol and sodium hydroxide does not produce sodium methoxide. This is because water is produced as the NaOH dissolves into the MeOH, and the water breaks down the methoxide.
As somebody who actually makes biodiesel, I assure you that the NaOH is very much intact at the end of the reaction. In fact, it contaminates the glycerin produced and makes it useless without purifying it first. Ask yourself, "where does the sodium go?" It sure as hell doesn't end up in the biodiesel. It remains as lye (or, if there is a great excess of lye, some of it binds to free fatty acids and produces water and soap, which are unwanted byproducts).
You need to actually do the math before making a claim like that.
At our 330 gallon processing facility (a.k.a., The Barn) it costs us $1.00 per gallon for used oil and another $1.30 per gallon to turn it into biodiesel. The $1.30 includes electricity and other operating costs as well as consumable materials (sulfuric acid, sodium hydroxide, methanol). I don't have the complete cost breakdown handy, but that is what it costs.
$2.30 per gallon of biodiesel is cheaper than I can buy petro diesel around here.
ANY method of producing biodiesel must leave glycerin as a byproduct. The conversion to biodiesel takes place when the fatty acid chains break off the glycerol and combine with methanol to form a methyl ester. The glycerin is what is left over.
The problem with conventional methods is that the glycerin is contaminated with sodium hydroxide, so it is not directly usable for certain purposes without processing it. The microreactor produces glycerin without NaOH contamination.
(I made 85 gallons of biodiesel over the weekend.)
Uh, you're just parsing the sentence incorrectly. The lakes are moving water, under the ice, for HUNDREDS OF MILES. Get a brain cell.
Nope. A one time pad generated from a truly random source, transmitted over a secure quantum encryption channel, is absolutely unbreakable. There are the usual human weak spots, like a moron leaving the pad lying around after the fact, but from a physical and mathematical standpoint the system is PERFECT.
You might as well challenge the truth of the Pythagorean theorem.
What the hell do imperfections have to do with it? Nothing with mass can move at the speed of light. You seem to be suggesting that if the conductor was perfect, the electrons could move at the speed of light. What sort of crazy talk is that?
Anyway, the electrons have a net speed on the order of just millimeters per second. However, changes in the electric field caused by the motion of the electrons can propagate through the conductor much, much faster.
Are you an idiot? Linus patched the kernel so that the virus WOULD work. Why would he lie about it not working in the first place if he went ahead and fixed the problem?
While I agree that the time for clean nuclear energy is now, I do not agree that this has been obvious for 40 years. Have you forgotten all of these incidents?
Modern nuclear reactor designs are many times safer than those of the past. Yes, we should build them to relieve our dependence on fossil fuel sources. But to suggest that back in the 50's and 60's we should have been building as many plants as possible, when there clearly was such a propensity for terrible accidents, is crazy, IMHO. Nuclear power WAS dirty and unsafe.
The whole reason I bought my Mac Mini is because it's totally inconspicuous. A giant G5 box on my desk is one thing, but the Mini is great if you want to save desk space. I don't worry about my computer as such, I just have a system that works and I do what I need to do.
Pretty much any time a laptop is shown on TV, you see the Apple logo on the back of the screen. I'm not sure, but I think it has to do with the tendency of producers/writers to want to avoid "generic" stuff in their work. An Apple branded piece of hardware stands out visually more so than your garden variety PC notebook, or at least they believe that to be the case.
How is programming on Linux any different from programming on Windows, Mac, etc? The APIs might be different, but that's just the grease, not the axle. And you've always got the standard library to fall back on.