I take it you've never used any of the environmentally friendly inhalers before, because they are fucking terrible. I've been using them for a few years (The EPA went apeshit insane on albuterol a few years ago, and I had no idea that there was an OTC alternative), and they get routinely clogged up by both dust and even dried medicine, and I can ensure you that this was never a problem with the old inhalers. Thankfully, my asthma is really mild and I rarely need these, but if I ever have a real emergency, I'm fucked.
But I'm not sure I would want to use this as a learning tool if I didn't already know how to program computers. From what I can tell based on the video, it teaches you by showing you snippets of code and allowing you to see what they do, which could be confusing for somebody with no prior coding experience. In addition, it seems that code snippets in this game require a basic understanding of vector math/linear algebra - something that's an essential part of games and simulation, but might serve only to increase the learning curve for somebody new to all this.
At any rate, it does look like an interesting way to engage somebody who already knows how to code but doesn't do it unless required by work/school. I definitely plan to try this out and pass it on to my friends if it's as fun as it looks.
I took a similar class in elementary school (except using computers 'cause it was the 90's), and I can honestly say that I didn't learn a damn thing. I was still "hunting and pecking" until I taught myself C when I was in high school.
The moral of this story: people will learn to touch-type if they need to. People who use computers a lot will unconsciously memorize the keys until they realize that they no longer need to look at the keyboard when they type as I did. People who don't use computers a lot will probably keep hunting and pecking for their entire lives, which is totally fine because they don't use computers a lot.
Suppose somebody else didn't steal the device. Suppose the owner loaned it to them, then used LoJack to take pictures of them in their bedroom. Sounds pretty illegal to me -- just because the owner "authorized" LoJack to take the pictures doesn't mean it's not an illegal wiretap.
I'm unsure as to whether or not that's illegal or not (definitely unethical), but it doesn't matter because it's a different circumstance, and what's legal can change depending on the circumstances. For example, it would be illegal for me to pull out a knife and stab somebody under normal circumstances, but if I can prove that I was defending myself then it's alright. In a similar vein, borrowing a computer from somebody is different from stealing it because somebody who borrows a computer has the owner's knowledge and consent.
She is being punished, her private pictures are being distributed around without her permission.
No they aren't, because the only people with access to the photos are lojack, the cops, and (probably) the judge and jury. That doesn't qualify as the photos being "distributed around", that's the photos being presented as evidence for a court case. I agree that these photos are super-private and all, but they're still evidence because she couldn't have taken them without possessing the stolen computer.
And they where not evidence in a criminal case. All they need was location.
No, they need all the evidence they can get. When you watch court proceedings on TV, you will rarely see the prosecution present only a single article because more evidence == stronger case. All the location does is prove that the laptop was used to access the internet from her house, which could mean anything. The defense could argue that the perpetrator might have figured out how to connect to her wifi network, or maybe lojack screwed up and somehow got the wrong IP address. If the prosecution also presents pictures that the defendant took of herself using the webcam, then the prosecution has a much stronger case because they now have evidence that the defendant actually came in contact with the laptop.
Have you ever bought second hand stuff?
How do you know that second hand stuff wasn't stolen?
In fact, you can't even know for sure in shops.
Large part of the issue here is whether the school teacher could be reasonably expected to know the laptop was stolen given the low $60 price she paid for it.
I feel no pity for criminals, but punishing somebody innocent is worse than not punishing somebody guilty.
I feel no pity for criminals, but punishing somebody innocent is worse than not punishing somebody guilty.
She's not being punished; TFA clearly states the charges against her were dropped. She's now suing Absolute and the police for violation of privacy, which is crazy because those photos were taken with the authorization of the laptop's owner and they were legitimate evidence in a criminal case.
Doesn't matter, it's still a violation of her rights. Just because the original owner authorized it, does not mean that they have the right to violate the wiretap laws involved. And in a case like this, the employees that opted to obtain the extra images ought to be prosecuted for doing the illegal wiretapping. Had they just stopped with the location of the device, they would be fine legally.
The owner of the device authorized lojack to gather evidence by accessing the owner's device. Just because somebody else possessed the device doesn't change who the owner is. And these photos were legitimate evidence because they were pictures of the people who possessed the stolen laptop.
I realize that people don't understand that, but this isn't any different than if a landlord puts a secret camera in an apartment. Just because it's your property doesn't mean that you get to wiretap it all you like.
Totally different. When I rent an apartment, I sign an agreement with my landlord which basically gives me the right to treat the apartment as my own so long as I do not damage it, bother the neighbors, etc. A more appropriate analogy would be if I broke into somebody else's house and then complained of wiretapping because his security camera recorded video of me.
Most of the time I read titles like this as "Turning Chinese into Westerners". Applying western values to a Chinese culture (especially business culture) and expecting it to stick is naive at best. Western companies need to adapt to Chinese way of doing things to operate in China.
And how exactly would they do that? It's impossible to compete with somebody giving out free copies of your software when you're footing the cost for development.
Like many things the movement of technology getting cheaper and easier to use will impact how things like wars unfold in the future. Pretty soon the US's dominance in drones and automated warfare will be countered by adversaries with similar means. I think it's only because the current two wars were against essentially backwards nations that the US has escaped relatively unscathed, but what happens when they start flying their own armed drones?
That's how military technology works: Somebody invented a spear, so somebody else invented a shield. Then another person made a bow. Fast forward a few thousand years and we have robot planes that blow people to kingdom come before they even see them coming.
It's inevitable that the rest of the world will get their own version of the drones eventually, so Uncle Sam's just going to have to keep building better weapons like he always does. The entire history of mankind is little more than a massive arms race.
If this didn't happen in such a rural county, there could have been major damage. Virginia doesn't get earthquakes very often, and our buildings aren't made to with stand them. There were some reports of buildings that caved in in Mineral - imagine what would have happened if the epicenter was in a more urban area like Arlington or Richmond.
Not only that, but our emergency crews aren't prepared to respond. Most of our people have never even felt earthquakes.
Abortion opponents all talk about responsibility, but somehow it applies to anybody but them.
My argument is based on the concept of responsibility, so you say that me and those who hold similar opinions should take responsibility for all the world's unwanted children. Let's put your side of the argument through a similar challenge:
Hypothetical situation: a man impregnates a woman. He wants to have the baby, but she doesn't, so she gets an abortion regardless of his opinion. Now let's reverse the genders: She wants the baby, but he doesn't. She decides not to get the abortion, so she takes him to court and he has to either help raise the child or pay child support payments.
Well, you want to force women to conform to your "morality". Because you think that unborn children are precious.
In that case your morality should compel you to give your income to children. It'd be only fair, why the right to chose where you spend your money should be more important than the right of women to chose what they do with their bodies?
Because I don't want to control womens' bodies, I want to protect an innocent life. I'm willing to make exceptions for cases of rape and cases where childbirth poses a risk to the mother's life, but for every other aborted fetus out there, there are two people who should be forced to take responsibility for what they created. I don't feel that abortion should be allowed to be used as a backup for when birth control fails or is forgotten.
I don't have an orphan for the same reason that I don't have any offspring of my own: I don't want to become a parent at this moment of my life. If I made a woman pregnant, though, I would take responsibility for raising the child. I might make the best parent, but I would do my best and I'm pretty sure the child would be happier than if it was dead.
As for Africa, I'm really not very educated on their current social problems. I give some of my money to charities, but they're usually domestic because I'd rather take care of the downtrodden in my own country than those on another continent.
Good, then maybe we could get rid of the whole concept.
If it were public everyone would see what a joke this whole thing is.
Fine, give them extra scrutiny. But if you pass screening, and have no weapons, then what's the risk in letting Joe Jihad fly?
Getting rid of the no-fly lists is totally acceptable and I could get behind that. I'm just worried that making this public would turn it into something akin to the sex-offender lists sans due process.
If it went public but it doesn't get removed, this list could go from being a major pain in the ass to being something that could totally ruin your life.
I would really like to have seen the No-Fly list. My older brother has been "randomly selected" for several flights in a row and I strongly suspect it is a name association with someone else. But our democratic republic uses "secret lists" now to persecute people. What can you do?
If they had published the list, there would've been the problem that everybody has access to it. I imagine that if anybody could read the no-fly list, alot of employers might deny jobs to people on it.
Marvel's been saying that Ultimate Peter Parker is going to die and be replaced by a new hero for months now, and there was very little complaint outside of a few people who didn't want to see Peter die and a few people that didn't think anybody else should be called Spider-Man. Now that we know he's not white, there's articles all over the mainstream media and even slashdot complaining that he's "Politically Correct"?
I can respect people who don't want to see Peter die and people that don't think anybody expect Peter should be Spidey, but if you think that the new Spider-Man is "politically correct", then you're the racist here, not Marvel Comics.
What's more, it seems that they went in with the idea of "we'll make him not a white guy" and worked backward from there.
Is it a problem to have a super hero who is X where X is not "a white male"? Of course not. But in this case, it does look like they set out to create that and then tried to make it make sense. That's what makes it PC, not just what the character is.
How can you say that when his only appearance has been a seven page fight with the Kangaroo in a comic that was released less than 24 hours ago? We still know very little about the new Spidey. Have you even read Ultimate Fallout #4?
They even did it in a parallel universe and then tried to claim it wasn't a publicity stunt.
You make it sound like they created a whole new universe just for Miles Morales. The Ultimate universe has had several ongoing series for 11 years now. There have been 160 issues of Ultimate Spider-Man, which has outsold Amazing Spider-Man on several occasions. It's a pretty well-established part of Marvel's catalog.
On the other hand, if this new character had been an established friend/ally/confidant of Parker's and then took up the mantle when Parker fell, that wouldn't have been PC as it would have been a logical outgrowth of the story that just happened to flow that way.
What if the new Spidey was white but still not an established friend/ally/confidant? Would you still be on/. arguing that Marvel "pulled him out of the ether" for the sake of being "politically correct"?
This is a neat idea, but it would suffer from a lack of geographic unity.
How exactly will an Internet-based political party handle issues like where to build the school in my neighborhood, how high the bridges should be, or what the penalty should be for selling small quantities of marijuana? Wouldn't joining such a party actually harm my ability to influence the laws that actually affect me on a daily basis?
That's why there are separate governments at the state and county/city levels.
Slashdot Mirror
So IBM will be number 1 soon.
Really though. This isn't news for nerds.
No, but it is stuff that matters, which I believe is the second half of slashdot's former slogan.
I take it you've never used any of the environmentally friendly inhalers before, because they are fucking terrible. I've been using them for a few years (The EPA went apeshit insane on albuterol a few years ago, and I had no idea that there was an OTC alternative), and they get routinely clogged up by both dust and even dried medicine, and I can ensure you that this was never a problem with the old inhalers. Thankfully, my asthma is really mild and I rarely need these, but if I ever have a real emergency, I'm fucked.
GameObject.FindByName("Player").win(); That is not a very hard game.
It is when none of those methods are implemented.
But I'm not sure I would want to use this as a learning tool if I didn't already know how to program computers. From what I can tell based on the video, it teaches you by showing you snippets of code and allowing you to see what they do, which could be confusing for somebody with no prior coding experience. In addition, it seems that code snippets in this game require a basic understanding of vector math/linear algebra - something that's an essential part of games and simulation, but might serve only to increase the learning curve for somebody new to all this.
At any rate, it does look like an interesting way to engage somebody who already knows how to code but doesn't do it unless required by work/school. I definitely plan to try this out and pass it on to my friends if it's as fun as it looks.
I took a similar class in elementary school (except using computers 'cause it was the 90's), and I can honestly say that I didn't learn a damn thing. I was still "hunting and pecking" until I taught myself C when I was in high school.
The moral of this story: people will learn to touch-type if they need to. People who use computers a lot will unconsciously memorize the keys until they realize that they no longer need to look at the keyboard when they type as I did. People who don't use computers a lot will probably keep hunting and pecking for their entire lives, which is totally fine because they don't use computers a lot.
Suppose somebody else didn't steal the device. Suppose the owner loaned it to them, then used LoJack to take pictures of them in their bedroom. Sounds pretty illegal to me -- just because the owner "authorized" LoJack to take the pictures doesn't mean it's not an illegal wiretap.
I'm unsure as to whether or not that's illegal or not (definitely unethical), but it doesn't matter because it's a different circumstance, and what's legal can change depending on the circumstances. For example, it would be illegal for me to pull out a knife and stab somebody under normal circumstances, but if I can prove that I was defending myself then it's alright. In a similar vein, borrowing a computer from somebody is different from stealing it because somebody who borrows a computer has the owner's knowledge and consent.
She is being punished, her private pictures are being distributed around without her permission.
No they aren't, because the only people with access to the photos are lojack, the cops, and (probably) the judge and jury. That doesn't qualify as the photos being "distributed around", that's the photos being presented as evidence for a court case. I agree that these photos are super-private and all, but they're still evidence because she couldn't have taken them without possessing the stolen computer.
And they where not evidence in a criminal case. All they need was location.
No, they need all the evidence they can get. When you watch court proceedings on TV, you will rarely see the prosecution present only a single article because more evidence == stronger case. All the location does is prove that the laptop was used to access the internet from her house, which could mean anything. The defense could argue that the perpetrator might have figured out how to connect to her wifi network, or maybe lojack screwed up and somehow got the wrong IP address. If the prosecution also presents pictures that the defendant took of herself using the webcam, then the prosecution has a much stronger case because they now have evidence that the defendant actually came in contact with the laptop.
Have you ever bought second hand stuff? How do you know that second hand stuff wasn't stolen? In fact, you can't even know for sure in shops.
Large part of the issue here is whether the school teacher could be reasonably expected to know the laptop was stolen given the low $60 price she paid for it.
I feel no pity for criminals, but punishing somebody innocent is worse than not punishing somebody guilty.
I feel no pity for criminals, but punishing somebody innocent is worse than not punishing somebody guilty.
She's not being punished; TFA clearly states the charges against her were dropped. She's now suing Absolute and the police for violation of privacy, which is crazy because those photos were taken with the authorization of the laptop's owner and they were legitimate evidence in a criminal case.
Doesn't matter, it's still a violation of her rights. Just because the original owner authorized it, does not mean that they have the right to violate the wiretap laws involved. And in a case like this, the employees that opted to obtain the extra images ought to be prosecuted for doing the illegal wiretapping. Had they just stopped with the location of the device, they would be fine legally.
The owner of the device authorized lojack to gather evidence by accessing the owner's device. Just because somebody else possessed the device doesn't change who the owner is. And these photos were legitimate evidence because they were pictures of the people who possessed the stolen laptop.
I realize that people don't understand that, but this isn't any different than if a landlord puts a secret camera in an apartment. Just because it's your property doesn't mean that you get to wiretap it all you like.
Totally different. When I rent an apartment, I sign an agreement with my landlord which basically gives me the right to treat the apartment as my own so long as I do not damage it, bother the neighbors, etc. A more appropriate analogy would be if I broke into somebody else's house and then complained of wiretapping because his security camera recorded video of me.
Most of the time I read titles like this as "Turning Chinese into Westerners". Applying western values to a Chinese culture (especially business culture) and expecting it to stick is naive at best. Western companies need to adapt to Chinese way of doing things to operate in China.
And how exactly would they do that? It's impossible to compete with somebody giving out free copies of your software when you're footing the cost for development.
You're forgetting about the potential for false positives. Imagine if you accidentally did this to a legitimate customer.
Great to see the US has its priorities straight. Spend money on war and other nonsense but don't spend it on your kids and society. What a joke.
One less cruise missile could keep 100 schools open all week for a whole year.
The state of South Dakota does not shoot cruise missiles at people, although it would be pretty badass if they did.
...he warned that the "maths that computers use to decide stuff" was infiltrating every aspect of our lives.
Maths? In my life?
son of a bitch!
Like many things the movement of technology getting cheaper and easier to use will impact how things like wars unfold in the future. Pretty soon the US's dominance in drones and automated warfare will be countered by adversaries with similar means. I think it's only because the current two wars were against essentially backwards nations that the US has escaped relatively unscathed, but what happens when they start flying their own armed drones?
That's how military technology works: Somebody invented a spear, so somebody else invented a shield. Then another person made a bow. Fast forward a few thousand years and we have robot planes that blow people to kingdom come before they even see them coming.
It's inevitable that the rest of the world will get their own version of the drones eventually, so Uncle Sam's just going to have to keep building better weapons like he always does. The entire history of mankind is little more than a massive arms race.
If this didn't happen in such a rural county, there could have been major damage. Virginia doesn't get earthquakes very often, and our buildings aren't made to with stand them. There were some reports of buildings that caved in in Mineral - imagine what would have happened if the epicenter was in a more urban area like Arlington or Richmond.
Not only that, but our emergency crews aren't prepared to respond. Most of our people have never even felt earthquakes.
Abortion opponents all talk about responsibility, but somehow it applies to anybody but them.
My argument is based on the concept of responsibility, so you say that me and those who hold similar opinions should take responsibility for all the world's unwanted children. Let's put your side of the argument through a similar challenge:
Hypothetical situation: a man impregnates a woman. He wants to have the baby, but she doesn't, so she gets an abortion regardless of his opinion. Now let's reverse the genders: She wants the baby, but he doesn't. She decides not to get the abortion, so she takes him to court and he has to either help raise the child or pay child support payments.
How come being pro-choice only works one way?
Well, you want to force women to conform to your "morality". Because you think that unborn children are precious.
In that case your morality should compel you to give your income to children. It'd be only fair, why the right to chose where you spend your money should be more important than the right of women to chose what they do with their bodies?
Because I don't want to control womens' bodies, I want to protect an innocent life. I'm willing to make exceptions for cases of rape and cases where childbirth poses a risk to the mother's life, but for every other aborted fetus out there, there are two people who should be forced to take responsibility for what they created. I don't feel that abortion should be allowed to be used as a backup for when birth control fails or is forgotten.
I don't have an orphan for the same reason that I don't have any offspring of my own: I don't want to become a parent at this moment of my life. If I made a woman pregnant, though, I would take responsibility for raising the child. I might make the best parent, but I would do my best and I'm pretty sure the child would be happier than if it was dead.
As for Africa, I'm really not very educated on their current social problems. I give some of my money to charities, but they're usually domestic because I'd rather take care of the downtrodden in my own country than those on another continent.
There's a fine line between staging a revolution and looting an electronics store, my friend.
I fail to understand the connection between orphans in Africa and abortions in the United States. Please, enlighten me.
Good, then maybe we could get rid of the whole concept.
If it were public everyone would see what a joke this whole thing is. Fine, give them extra scrutiny. But if you pass screening, and have no weapons, then what's the risk in letting Joe Jihad fly?
Getting rid of the no-fly lists is totally acceptable and I could get behind that. I'm just worried that making this public would turn it into something akin to the sex-offender lists sans due process.
If it went public but it doesn't get removed, this list could go from being a major pain in the ass to being something that could totally ruin your life.
I would really like to have seen the No-Fly list. My older brother has been "randomly selected" for several flights in a row and I strongly suspect it is a name association with someone else. But our democratic republic uses "secret lists" now to persecute people. What can you do?
If they had published the list, there would've been the problem that everybody has access to it. I imagine that if anybody could read the no-fly list, alot of employers might deny jobs to people on it.
No it's not. The application is compiled to CLR at compile time and at run time it's compiled to native code for the platform in which it's running.
Which is almost identical to Java on the JVM.
Marvel's been saying that Ultimate Peter Parker is going to die and be replaced by a new hero for months now, and there was very little complaint outside of a few people who didn't want to see Peter die and a few people that didn't think anybody else should be called Spider-Man. Now that we know he's not white, there's articles all over the mainstream media and even slashdot complaining that he's "Politically Correct"?
I can respect people who don't want to see Peter die and people that don't think anybody expect Peter should be Spidey, but if you think that the new Spider-Man is "politically correct", then you're the racist here, not Marvel Comics.
What's more, it seems that they went in with the idea of "we'll make him not a white guy" and worked backward from there.
Is it a problem to have a super hero who is X where X is not "a white male"? Of course not. But in this case, it does look like they set out to create that and then tried to make it make sense. That's what makes it PC, not just what the character is.
How can you say that when his only appearance has been a seven page fight with the Kangaroo in a comic that was released less than 24 hours ago? We still know very little about the new Spidey. Have you even read Ultimate Fallout #4?
They even did it in a parallel universe and then tried to claim it wasn't a publicity stunt.
You make it sound like they created a whole new universe just for Miles Morales. The Ultimate universe has had several ongoing series for 11 years now. There have been 160 issues of Ultimate Spider-Man, which has outsold Amazing Spider-Man on several occasions. It's a pretty well-established part of Marvel's catalog.
On the other hand, if this new character had been an established friend/ally/confidant of Parker's and then took up the mantle when Parker fell, that wouldn't have been PC as it would have been a logical outgrowth of the story that just happened to flow that way.
What if the new Spidey was white but still not an established friend/ally/confidant? Would you still be on /. arguing that Marvel "pulled him out of the ether" for the sake of being "politically correct"?
This is a neat idea, but it would suffer from a lack of geographic unity.
How exactly will an Internet-based political party handle issues like where to build the school in my neighborhood, how high the bridges should be, or what the penalty should be for selling small quantities of marijuana? Wouldn't joining such a party actually harm my ability to influence the laws that actually affect me on a daily basis?
That's why there are separate governments at the state and county/city levels.