"...over time we will have the communications data to solve these horrible crimes on a shrinking proportion of the total use of devices and that is a real problem for keeping people safe."
Ahh, yes, the spectre of bad things that could happen in the future. We can't show any actual evidence of the value of these kinds of programs right now, because it is fictional, but think of what might happen tomorrow! As Wimpy would say, "I will gladly protect you Tuesday for your liberty today."
See, there are two sides to this story and they always talk past each other. One side says drugs are cool, and everyone should do a little, just to see what it's like and if it's not your thing then it's OK. They only see the positive effects. The other side works in emergency rooms and treatment centers and only sees the negative effects, and warns everyone to stay away, don't even try drugs once because we hear that story everyday of the guy who tried it once, liked it, and ruined his previously promising life.
Love it. To put it in a comparative context, I had the same experience with my fire art piece. People who have seen it at Burning Man, in a context that is extremely supportive of fire art, immediately want to build one without grasping that if you do it wrong it explodes and kills people. When I showed the video to my local fire chief he went on a five minute very serious lecture about how fire kills and only crazy people think fire should be used for entertainment.
Like so many things in public policy debate, it boils down to freedom versus safety. Me, I think our society is too safe. I'd rather have more freedom and more risk. I've done my best to reach that conclusion objectively, testing my views on risk with empirical data like this. Not saying I'm necessarily right, just sharing one of my methods for testing my preconceptions.
>> Though let me be clear here; by "probable cause", I mean that a substantial percentage of the people who pass the probable cause bar wind up being found guilty. The notion that anyone crossing the border is subject to search, for example, doesn't pass the test.
> Searching people and objects entering your country is something that law enforcement is empowered to do in every single country on earth and has always been empowered to do in every single country on earth.
I wasn't very clear. I was saying that crossing the border itself doesn't establish probable cause for a search under any reasonable definition of probable cause. It may be that there are justifiable reasons to grant the border agents the authority to search everyone, or that probable cause for a search may rise from a person's actions at the border. It may be that granting border agents broad discretion is necessary because it may be impossible for them to articulate or to defend at court their reasons for becoming suspicious. But the notion that crossing the border is itself probable cause to suspect that a crime has been committed is ridiculous.
According to an email from the U.S. Deputy Attorney General (PDF) to the General Counsel of Google, Facebook, LinkedIn, Microsoft, and Yahoo, the companies can publish:
Ahh, I feel so much better, now. The rich who monitor everything we do have convinced the powerful who monitor everything we do to disclose slightly more about their constant surveillance of us to We The People, sovereigns of this nation.
The shame of it is, if I felt that the NSA was obeying the law, not watching people but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized, I would favor this capability.
Though let me be clear here; by "probable cause", I mean that a substantial percentage of the people who pass the probable cause bar wind up being found guilty. The notion that anyone crossing the border is subject to search, for example, doesn't pass the test.
The sad thing is that the erosion of the middle class in the 1st world countries means that they soon might resemble Brazil, and this is not good, even if you are rich.
A bit of economic data analysis shows that this is true in an absolute income since in the long run as well as the sense of effectively living in a prison. The rise of the middle class in America in the 50's and 60's, fueled largely by the American Dream made possible by the income tax structure of that era (worth looking up if you don't actually know the numbers), was a very direct engine of America's rise to superpower. We wouldn't have our powerhouse economy and its attendant superwealthy were it not for the genuine opportunity for anyone with reasonable intelligence and a will to work to earn a comfortable life and a secure retirement -- an opportunity which is now reserved to the 30% and shrinking.
Specifically, how are the "technology workers" a "corrupt overclass"? Again, how come working for Google is "working against the common good"?
I believe the poster is talking about Perkins and the other 0.01%ers, not the 10%ers that ride the Google Bus. Perkins is disingenuously attempting to draw the technology workers onto his side by calling them 1%ers, but the reality is that very few of them are, or ever will be. The misdirected attacks by the uninformed lower class against the buses are a symptom of a very real problem that Perkins and his peers are creating (I actually believe their intentions are good for the most part, but exceedingly misinformed). Perkins is hoping to get some of the members of the labor class whose wages he and his peers have been intentionally, consciously, premeditatedly suppressing to join his side in the fight as a result of the misdirected but justified anger by the poor.
Because, I'm pretty sure I've seen stories about how the spy agencies have been briefing law enforcement in how to cover up the involvement of the three-letter-agencies.
And what we cannot accept is even one member of such force using unjustified brutality. If it happens, he should be swiftly punished.
Well of course he should be. Just like every terrorist should be caught before he acts and every child should be saved before drowning. That's not the question. Your protestation is not far removed from, "You want the terrorists to win." I do not think that police misconduct should go unpunished -- nobody does.
If that means that all policemen must be recorded 24/7, so be it. They are on the job. There's no expectation of privacy when you're in duty, on the streets.
What if the cost of recording all policemen 24/7 was twenty trillion dollars per year; would that still be justified? The question is not whether police have an expectation of privacy while on the job; it is whether the cost of a mitigating force is justified by the resulting reduction in undesirable events. Public policy must be based on rational analysis of the costs and benefits, not emotionalistic hand-waving.
I'd question those hard numbers because police brutality, like sexual abuse and domestic violence, is severely underreported. However, I don't feel the need to. Look at examples.
Anecdotal evidence is exactly the problem with our terrorism policy. The authoritarians point to 9/11 and say, "You don't want that to happen again, do you?" That is a horrible way to measure the cost/benefit ratio of a mitigating force. It is the reason people waste their money on the lottery; because winning would be so wonderful. Lottery ticket economics is a path to ruin.
I'm not saying you are wrong about underreporting, but provide some evidence. Show how the study from the article was flawed, what you would do to improve it, and how you would estimate a more accurate number based on available evidence. Without empirical evidence to base your decisions on, you are no better than the politicians screeching about the terr'rists.
>> I am not afraid of cops getting free pass on some assaults.
> I'm very sorry to hear that and to see it moderated +5 Insightful. I hope you change your viewpoint on this topic and I also hope nothing too drastic has to occur for you to realize how terrible what you just said is.
It seems that you are saying that any unpunished police assault case is a sign that we must act; that until we reach zero police assaults, we have not done enough. Do you also think there should be zero terrorism and zero cases of children dying in swimming pools?
Here's the thing: Some small fraction of cops are bad people and even the good ones have bad days. So like children drowning and whack-jobs getting lucky with an IED, some police misconduct is going to happen. The question is how much of ourselves do we sacrifice in exchange for reducing the number of such cases. How much liberty do we sacrifice for reduced terrorism, how many swimming pool safety requirements do we accept to reduce child drowning deaths, how much corporate surveillance by proxy do we accept to curtail police wrongdoing?
The first question in this case is how many cases of police wrongdoing are happening now, and what do we have to sacrifice to reduce that number by what percentage? I think you're starting with "We have to do something to make it less" -- but without some numbers to go on, that is as unfounded as the pretense that the TSA is reducing hijacking risk enough to justify its existence, or that the NSA's impact on crime and terrorism is worth the chilling effect on free association.
Cases in which police, prison guards and other law enforcement authorities have used excessive force or other tactics to violate victims' civil rights have increased 25% (281 vs. 224) from fiscal years 2001 to 2007 over the previous seven years, the department says.
281 -- interesting number, that -- about the same number as the average annual US deaths from terrorism since 9/11, including those that died 9/11. To put that figure in perspective, we lose more than ten times that many to drowning, more than one hundred times as many to auto accidents, and more than one thousand times to obesity. Probability is about on par with getting hit by lightning. Police misconduct is a terrible thing -- but statistically speaking, I feel like we're doing pretty good job on prevention.
"In this day and age, with so much important stuff produced by people who are not professionals, it's harder than ever to decide who is a member of the institutional press."
It's easy to distinguish those who are members of the institutional press; they never ask challenging questions of the wealthy and powerful, reliably support one of the overly simplistic two-party positions on all wedge issues, and don't publish stories like the Snowden trove until the non-traditional press has left them no other choice. These are the very reasons that the non-traditional press needs as much or more protection than the mundane, risk-averse mainstream media.
Excellent post. You present an uncommon perspective that is freighted with preconceptions and deftly shatter those biases with plain truth. Well done, you have added a bit of illumination.
Unfortunately the seller came out of his apartment with the hot TV, not letting anyone inside to see all of the other stuff that he had listed on CL. Despite arresting him with stolen merchandise they could not get a warrant to search his apartment.
I do not think that this was right,
I think it is possible, given the description, for that to be the right decision. You don't mention whether the authorities had any evidence that he had a history of negligently receiving stolen goods before, or that any of the other Craig's List listings were stolen. It is possible to conceive an innocent story that matches those events.
I have purchased several tired, used guitars recently from Craig's List. I have fixed them up and will now sell some of them. If it turns out that one of them is stolen, I would argue that does not amount to probable cause that I am warehousing stolen merchandise. Assuming I have a credible explanation for having one stolen guitar, it seems like it is substantially more likely that I am an innocent collateral actor and a warrant is not justified. Or, slightly differently; I would fight the warrant(*) and I think I would win.
I don't know the specifics of the story you are recounting, so your perception may be well founded. Based on the brief synopsis you present, however, it is possible to construct a backstory that would not support a warrant to my mind. I think that is one of the challenges that often eludes us in analysis of suspicious behavior; to consider how likely it is for an innocent person to have stumbled under the inspector's glass.
* if, for example, they found something else illegal, like a refrigerator full of murdered mimes, and attempted to convict based on plain view doctrine
Yes you can plug a standard ergo USB keyboard into a laptop, but that setup requires a desk as it is too big for my lap.
I feel your pain, been there. If you're talking about having to have a place to put the laptop, I can't help you. But if you have a place to put the laptop and it's the width of the keyboard that is causing the problem, you might want to try the new Microsoft Sculpt with the separate number pad. The main keyboard section fits nicely in my lap, between the arms of all the chairs I've tried.
(I kind of hate the billiard-ball shaped mouse, though)
disclaimer (claimer?): I'm a Linux user and a passionate foe of distorted markets, so I only recommend Microsoft products that have substantial distinctive value and are sold in a competitive market segment. I think their keyboards qualify.
"Duty" offers the familiar criticism of Congress and its culture, describing it as "truly ugly." Gates's cold feelings toward the legislative branch stand in stark contrast to his warmth for the military. He repeatedly describes his affection for the troops, especially those in combat.
Gee, he hates the career politicians who constrain his freedom to act, and loves the people in his chain of command? I'm stunned. Really. You could knock me over with a sledgehammer.
Gates's severe criticism is even more surprising -- some might say contradictory -- because toward the end of "Duty," he says of Obama's chief Afghanistan policies, "I believe Obama was right in each of these decisions."... The sometimes bitter tone... contrasts sharply with the even-tempered image that he cultivated during his many years of government service... In "Duty," Gates describes his outwardly calm demeanor as a facade. Underneath, he writes, he was frequently "seething" and "running out of patience on multiple fronts."
So he's saying highly placed officials are under a lot of pressure, try to do what they believe is right, are often in highly contentious situations, have to suppress their emotional reactions, and on sober reflection ultimately support each other? My goodness, these exciting revelations have me so wound up I may go over to the couch and have a little snooze.
Pop media trying to turn pedestrian normality into sizzling drama. Yawn.
You want to do something interesting, Gates? Surprise me. Tell me about your fight against the F-35. Tell me about how hard you fought, the times you really put yourself on the line, to get that boondoggle cut. Oh, you didn't? That's why we're still paying for that stupid porkbarrel piece of shit that you opposed? So you're saying you talk the talk, but didn't walk the walk. You want to get me excited about your dedication to America, show me you took a risk for what you believed in when doing so had no upside for you. Don't just whine about how hard it was because everyone else were jerks; I can get that story from every single person on the planet.
But in cases where you willingly and knowingly 'liked' a page, Facebook and Google+ ought to be able to tell that to your friends in advertisements, without being sued for it.
So if I go to Google and find a query that links to my web site, should I be able to use the Google logo in a commercial saying, "As recommended by Google"? If there's a Facebook page that links to my site, should I be able to use their logo?
Idealism is Good and Harsh
on
Losing Aaron
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
'Clearly I failed,' a tortured Bob Swartz acknowledges. 'There's no question, my son is dead.'
While I appreciate and respect the balanced view he goes on to express, I think even this opening may be harsher than is deserved.
This is a screwed up world; a world of pragmatists and sociopaths. When you send a fiercely idealist person out in into the world today, often it does not end well. That is the nature of the modern human condition. I think it is particularly challenging to idealists when pragmatism appears to be winning in The United States -- a nation founded on idealism -- and even more so at MIT -- an iconic temple of rationalism and truth.
The easiest alternative is to raise a pragmatist instead of an idealist. But the preference for that easy path is the very reason our world is so challenging for idealists. It is better for society, though almost certainly much harder for you, to have tried to make your son a good man and see him lost than to have raised him to compromise his principles. The weight of that can be immense.
This is interesting in light of the recent story stating that the FEC Will Not Allow Bitcoin Campaign Contributions. Maybe the candidate doesn't read Slashdot. I look forward to hearing the FEC respond, and how much of a fuss this guy is ready to make.
When you think of "naked women", you think photoshopped models. Go to the airport and look around, and this time try hard to not overlook all the women of no interest to you (age, with children, etc.) and also all the fat, bald men.
Oh, come on, now. Unattractive (to you) naked people can't hurt you, and you're not being very nice villifying them. Just because you don't want to have sex with someone doesn't mean their body is offensive. Like sacrilegious comedy; if you don't like it, don't look.
'The Trustees of CBEBT and the management of Christian Brothers Services are dedicated to protecting the employers participating in the CBEBT from having to face the choice of violating their faith or violating the law'
I think they must misunderstand. The ACA does not require people who have a religious opposition to birth control to take the pill. Similarly, I'm sure the ACA does not require Jehova's Witnesses to accept blood transfusions, but an insurance company operated by Jehova's Witnesses and catering to them would still have to cover transfusions.
Less useful but still useful are command shells. These provide file management mostly.
Ohhh, baby. If you think ImageMagick is cool by itself (and it is), just wait 'til you start to grok how powerful those "less useful" command shells are for gluing those complex tools together. It will blow your hair back.
Say you have a directory tree with a few hundred images scattered through it, and you want to create thumbnails for all of the images in a parallel directory structure; ImageMagick will do the thumbnail part, CLI-Fu will handle the directory traversal and turn a three hour job in to a three minute one.
Learn these for starters:
sed - text parser and transformer, for mutating file names and munging commands awk - ultra-terse programming language, great for building more complex commands than you would with sed find - traverse a directory tree and list files with conditional matching xargs - process a large list of things (like files found with find) in batches grep - filter out elements of a list based on string pattern matching egrep - enhanced grep, includes more advanced patterns and wildcards sort - sort lists numerically or alphabetically wc - count the elements of a list, words in a line, or other things wget - download a URL curl - read a URL to stdout
Seriously, when you start piping those things together with the more complex command line tools like ImageMagick and FFMpeg, you will be astonished at the mass data processing you can do with a few dozen characters on the command line.
Slashdot Mirror
"...over time we will have the communications data to solve these horrible crimes on a shrinking proportion of the total use of devices and that is a real problem for keeping people safe."
Ahh, yes, the spectre of bad things that could happen in the future. We can't show any actual evidence of the value of these kinds of programs right now, because it is fictional, but think of what might happen tomorrow! As Wimpy would say, "I will gladly protect you Tuesday for your liberty today."
See, there are two sides to this story and they always talk past each other. One side says drugs are cool, and everyone should do a little, just to see what it's like and if it's not your thing then it's OK. They only see the positive effects. The other side works in emergency rooms and treatment centers and only sees the negative effects, and warns everyone to stay away, don't even try drugs once because we hear that story everyday of the guy who tried it once, liked it, and ruined his previously promising life.
Love it. To put it in a comparative context, I had the same experience with my fire art piece. People who have seen it at Burning Man, in a context that is extremely supportive of fire art, immediately want to build one without grasping that if you do it wrong it explodes and kills people. When I showed the video to my local fire chief he went on a five minute very serious lecture about how fire kills and only crazy people think fire should be used for entertainment.
Like so many things in public policy debate, it boils down to freedom versus safety. Me, I think our society is too safe. I'd rather have more freedom and more risk. I've done my best to reach that conclusion objectively, testing my views on risk with empirical data like this. Not saying I'm necessarily right, just sharing one of my methods for testing my preconceptions.
>> Though let me be clear here; by "probable cause", I mean that a substantial percentage of the people who pass the probable cause bar wind up being found guilty. The notion that anyone crossing the border is subject to search, for example, doesn't pass the test.
> Searching people and objects entering your country is something that law enforcement is empowered to do in every single country on earth and has always been empowered to do in every single country on earth.
I wasn't very clear. I was saying that crossing the border itself doesn't establish probable cause for a search under any reasonable definition of probable cause. It may be that there are justifiable reasons to grant the border agents the authority to search everyone, or that probable cause for a search may rise from a person's actions at the border. It may be that granting border agents broad discretion is necessary because it may be impossible for them to articulate or to defend at court their reasons for becoming suspicious. But the notion that crossing the border is itself probable cause to suspect that a crime has been committed is ridiculous.
According to an email from the U.S. Deputy Attorney General (PDF) to the General Counsel of Google, Facebook, LinkedIn, Microsoft, and Yahoo, the companies can publish:
Ahh, I feel so much better, now. The rich who monitor everything we do have convinced the powerful who monitor everything we do to disclose slightly more about their constant surveillance of us to We The People, sovereigns of this nation.
Ted Poe (R - TX), Paul Broun (R - GA), Doug Collins (R - GA), Walter Jones (R - NC), Alan Grayson (D - FL)
Good to see they got a Democrat on board. Here's hoping more of all stripe sign on.
The shame of it is, if I felt that the NSA was obeying the law, not watching people but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized, I would favor this capability.
Though let me be clear here; by "probable cause", I mean that a substantial percentage of the people who pass the probable cause bar wind up being found guilty. The notion that anyone crossing the border is subject to search, for example, doesn't pass the test.
The sad thing is that the erosion of the middle class in the 1st world countries means that they soon might resemble Brazil, and this is not good, even if you are rich.
A bit of economic data analysis shows that this is true in an absolute income since in the long run as well as the sense of effectively living in a prison. The rise of the middle class in America in the 50's and 60's, fueled largely by the American Dream made possible by the income tax structure of that era (worth looking up if you don't actually know the numbers), was a very direct engine of America's rise to superpower. We wouldn't have our powerhouse economy and its attendant superwealthy were it not for the genuine opportunity for anyone with reasonable intelligence and a will to work to earn a comfortable life and a secure retirement -- an opportunity which is now reserved to the 30% and shrinking.
Specifically, how are the "technology workers" a "corrupt overclass"? Again, how come working for Google is "working against the common good"?
I believe the poster is talking about Perkins and the other 0.01%ers, not the 10%ers that ride the Google Bus. Perkins is disingenuously attempting to draw the technology workers onto his side by calling them 1%ers, but the reality is that very few of them are, or ever will be. The misdirected attacks by the uninformed lower class against the buses are a symptom of a very real problem that Perkins and his peers are creating (I actually believe their intentions are good for the most part, but exceedingly misinformed). Perkins is hoping to get some of the members of the labor class whose wages he and his peers have been intentionally, consciously, premeditatedly suppressing to join his side in the fight as a result of the misdirected but justified anger by the poor.
Because, I'm pretty sure I've seen stories about how the spy agencies have been briefing law enforcement in how to cover up the involvement of the three-letter-agencies.
Here's one.
And here's a Wikipedia starting point.
And what we cannot accept is even one member of such force using unjustified brutality. If it happens, he should be swiftly punished.
Well of course he should be. Just like every terrorist should be caught before he acts and every child should be saved before drowning. That's not the question. Your protestation is not far removed from, "You want the terrorists to win." I do not think that police misconduct should go unpunished -- nobody does.
If that means that all policemen must be recorded 24/7, so be it. They are on the job. There's no expectation of privacy when you're in duty, on the streets.
What if the cost of recording all policemen 24/7 was twenty trillion dollars per year; would that still be justified? The question is not whether police have an expectation of privacy while on the job; it is whether the cost of a mitigating force is justified by the resulting reduction in undesirable events. Public policy must be based on rational analysis of the costs and benefits, not emotionalistic hand-waving.
I'd question those hard numbers because police brutality, like sexual abuse and domestic violence, is severely underreported. However, I don't feel the need to. Look at examples.
Anecdotal evidence is exactly the problem with our terrorism policy. The authoritarians point to 9/11 and say, "You don't want that to happen again, do you?" That is a horrible way to measure the cost/benefit ratio of a mitigating force. It is the reason people waste their money on the lottery; because winning would be so wonderful. Lottery ticket economics is a path to ruin.
I'm not saying you are wrong about underreporting, but provide some evidence. Show how the study from the article was flawed, what you would do to improve it, and how you would estimate a more accurate number based on available evidence. Without empirical evidence to base your decisions on, you are no better than the politicians screeching about the terr'rists.
>> I am not afraid of cops getting free pass on some assaults.
> I'm very sorry to hear that and to see it moderated +5 Insightful. I hope you change your viewpoint on this topic and I also hope nothing too drastic has to occur for you to realize how terrible what you just said is.
It seems that you are saying that any unpunished police assault case is a sign that we must act; that until we reach zero police assaults, we have not done enough. Do you also think there should be zero terrorism and zero cases of children dying in swimming pools?
Here's the thing: Some small fraction of cops are bad people and even the good ones have bad days. So like children drowning and whack-jobs getting lucky with an IED, some police misconduct is going to happen. The question is how much of ourselves do we sacrifice in exchange for reducing the number of such cases. How much liberty do we sacrifice for reduced terrorism, how many swimming pool safety requirements do we accept to reduce child drowning deaths, how much corporate surveillance by proxy do we accept to curtail police wrongdoing?
The first question in this case is how many cases of police wrongdoing are happening now, and what do we have to sacrifice to reduce that number by what percentage? I think you're starting with "We have to do something to make it less" -- but without some numbers to go on, that is as unfounded as the pretense that the TSA is reducing hijacking risk enough to justify its existence, or that the NSA's impact on crime and terrorism is worth the chilling effect on free association.
Here's a quick look at one measure:
Cases in which police, prison guards and other law enforcement authorities have used excessive force or other tactics to violate victims' civil rights have increased 25% (281 vs. 224) from fiscal years 2001 to 2007 over the previous seven years, the department says.
281 -- interesting number, that -- about the same number as the average annual US deaths from terrorism since 9/11, including those that died 9/11. To put that figure in perspective, we lose more than ten times that many to drowning, more than one hundred times as many to auto accidents, and more than one thousand times to obesity. Probability is about on par with getting hit by lightning. Police misconduct is a terrible thing -- but statistically speaking, I feel like we're doing pretty good job on prevention.
"In this day and age, with so much important stuff produced by people who are not professionals, it's harder than ever to decide who is a member of the institutional press."
It's easy to distinguish those who are members of the institutional press; they never ask challenging questions of the wealthy and powerful, reliably support one of the overly simplistic two-party positions on all wedge issues, and don't publish stories like the Snowden trove until the non-traditional press has left them no other choice. These are the very reasons that the non-traditional press needs as much or more protection than the mundane, risk-averse mainstream media.
Excellent post. You present an uncommon perspective that is freighted with preconceptions and deftly shatter those biases with plain truth. Well done, you have added a bit of illumination.
Unfortunately the seller came out of his apartment with the hot TV, not letting anyone inside to see all of the other stuff that he had listed on CL. Despite arresting him with stolen merchandise they could not get a warrant to search his apartment.
I do not think that this was right,
I think it is possible, given the description, for that to be the right decision. You don't mention whether the authorities had any evidence that he had a history of negligently receiving stolen goods before, or that any of the other Craig's List listings were stolen. It is possible to conceive an innocent story that matches those events.
I have purchased several tired, used guitars recently from Craig's List. I have fixed them up and will now sell some of them. If it turns out that one of them is stolen, I would argue that does not amount to probable cause that I am warehousing stolen merchandise. Assuming I have a credible explanation for having one stolen guitar, it seems like it is substantially more likely that I am an innocent collateral actor and a warrant is not justified. Or, slightly differently; I would fight the warrant(*) and I think I would win.
I don't know the specifics of the story you are recounting, so your perception may be well founded. Based on the brief synopsis you present, however, it is possible to construct a backstory that would not support a warrant to my mind. I think that is one of the challenges that often eludes us in analysis of suspicious behavior; to consider how likely it is for an innocent person to have stumbled under the inspector's glass.
* if, for example, they found something else illegal, like a refrigerator full of murdered mimes, and attempted to convict based on plain view doctrine
Yes you can plug a standard ergo USB keyboard into a laptop, but that setup requires a desk as it is too big for my lap.
I feel your pain, been there. If you're talking about having to have a place to put the laptop, I can't help you. But if you have a place to put the laptop and it's the width of the keyboard that is causing the problem, you might want to try the new Microsoft Sculpt with the separate number pad. The main keyboard section fits nicely in my lap, between the arms of all the chairs I've tried.
(I kind of hate the billiard-ball shaped mouse, though)
disclaimer (claimer?): I'm a Linux user and a passionate foe of distorted markets, so I only recommend Microsoft products that have substantial distinctive value and are sold in a competitive market segment. I think their keyboards qualify.
Your comments have brought me a great deal of laughter. Thank you.
"Duty" offers the familiar criticism of Congress and its culture, describing it as "truly ugly." Gates's cold feelings toward the legislative branch stand in stark contrast to his warmth for the military. He repeatedly describes his affection for the troops, especially those in combat.
Gee, he hates the career politicians who constrain his freedom to act, and loves the people in his chain of command? I'm stunned. Really. You could knock me over with a sledgehammer.
Gates's severe criticism is even more surprising -- some might say contradictory -- because toward the end of "Duty," he says of Obama's chief Afghanistan policies, "I believe Obama was right in each of these decisions." ... The sometimes bitter tone ... contrasts sharply with the even-tempered image that he cultivated during his many years of government service ... In "Duty," Gates describes his outwardly calm demeanor as a facade. Underneath, he writes, he was frequently "seething" and "running out of patience on multiple fronts."
So he's saying highly placed officials are under a lot of pressure, try to do what they believe is right, are often in highly contentious situations, have to suppress their emotional reactions, and on sober reflection ultimately support each other? My goodness, these exciting revelations have me so wound up I may go over to the couch and have a little snooze.
Pop media trying to turn pedestrian normality into sizzling drama. Yawn.
You want to do something interesting, Gates? Surprise me. Tell me about your fight against the F-35. Tell me about how hard you fought, the times you really put yourself on the line, to get that boondoggle cut. Oh, you didn't? That's why we're still paying for that stupid porkbarrel piece of shit that you opposed? So you're saying you talk the talk, but didn't walk the walk. You want to get me excited about your dedication to America, show me you took a risk for what you believed in when doing so had no upside for you. Don't just whine about how hard it was because everyone else were jerks; I can get that story from every single person on the planet.
But in cases where you willingly and knowingly 'liked' a page, Facebook and Google+ ought to be able to tell that to your friends in advertisements, without being sued for it.
So if I go to Google and find a query that links to my web site, should I be able to use the Google logo in a commercial saying, "As recommended by Google"? If there's a Facebook page that links to my site, should I be able to use their logo?
Commercial endorsement rights cost money.
Not only that, it says "can be compiled for Linux, Mac, and Android". What about Windows?
Perhaps, since Microsoft sends security bugs to the NSA before fixing them, this guy just figures it is frivolous to pretend you can have secure messaging on that platform.
'Clearly I failed,' a tortured Bob Swartz acknowledges. 'There's no question, my son is dead.'
While I appreciate and respect the balanced view he goes on to express, I think even this opening may be harsher than is deserved.
This is a screwed up world; a world of pragmatists and sociopaths. When you send a fiercely idealist person out in into the world today, often it does not end well. That is the nature of the modern human condition. I think it is particularly challenging to idealists when pragmatism appears to be winning in The United States -- a nation founded on idealism -- and even more so at MIT -- an iconic temple of rationalism and truth.
The easiest alternative is to raise a pragmatist instead of an idealist. But the preference for that easy path is the very reason our world is so challenging for idealists. It is better for society, though almost certainly much harder for you, to have tried to make your son a good man and see him lost than to have raised him to compromise his principles. The weight of that can be immense.
This is interesting in light of the recent story stating that the FEC Will Not Allow Bitcoin Campaign Contributions. Maybe the candidate doesn't read Slashdot. I look forward to hearing the FEC respond, and how much of a fuss this guy is ready to make.
When you think of "naked women", you think photoshopped models. Go to the airport and look around, and this time try hard to not overlook all the women of no interest to you (age, with children, etc.) and also all the fat, bald men.
Oh, come on, now. Unattractive (to you) naked people can't hurt you, and you're not being very nice villifying them. Just because you don't want to have sex with someone doesn't mean their body is offensive. Like sacrilegious comedy; if you don't like it, don't look.
Many musical instruments are made of wood. So I guess they are all at risk if the owners come to the US.
Not to mention silk, cotton, and wool. Everybody get naked! All of a sudden I feel like going to the airport could be fun again. :)
'The Trustees of CBEBT and the management of Christian Brothers Services are dedicated to protecting the employers participating in the CBEBT from having to face the choice of violating their faith or violating the law'
I think they must misunderstand. The ACA does not require people who have a religious opposition to birth control to take the pill. Similarly, I'm sure the ACA does not require Jehova's Witnesses to accept blood transfusions, but an insurance company operated by Jehova's Witnesses and catering to them would still have to cover transfusions.
Less useful but still useful are command shells. These provide file management mostly.
Ohhh, baby. If you think ImageMagick is cool by itself (and it is), just wait 'til you start to grok how powerful those "less useful" command shells are for gluing those complex tools together. It will blow your hair back.
Say you have a directory tree with a few hundred images scattered through it, and you want to create thumbnails for all of the images in a parallel directory structure; ImageMagick will do the thumbnail part, CLI-Fu will handle the directory traversal and turn a three hour job in to a three minute one.
Learn these for starters:
sed - text parser and transformer, for mutating file names and munging commands
awk - ultra-terse programming language, great for building more complex commands than you would with sed
find - traverse a directory tree and list files with conditional matching
xargs - process a large list of things (like files found with find) in batches
grep - filter out elements of a list based on string pattern matching
egrep - enhanced grep, includes more advanced patterns and wildcards
sort - sort lists numerically or alphabetically
wc - count the elements of a list, words in a line, or other things
wget - download a URL
curl - read a URL to stdout
Seriously, when you start piping those things together with the more complex command line tools like ImageMagick and FFMpeg, you will be astonished at the mass data processing you can do with a few dozen characters on the command line.