... the day certain nefarious organizations start recruiting women...
Which nefarious organizations? The ones we've been carpet-bombing the ever-living bajeessus out of for the past ten years? I think they have bigger things on their mind right now, like finding a new leader who isn't floating face-down in the ocean somewhere.
Who says we do? We did pretty well for a few decades without the TSA or a private firm equivalent. Why the hell do we need them now? Because some loonies pulled one over on us 10 yeas ago? Whoopty-doo. Even the toughest kids on the playground get a black eye from time to time.
I say bring in some bomb sniffing dogs at every airport. Dismantle the scanners and sell the materials on e-bay to pay off some of the debt. Lay-off every single TSA employee. Get on with our lives. I'm tired of living in a country where wanting to travel long distances quickly and conveniently is a reason to suspect someone is a terrorist.
There were a lot of Germans that did that back in the late 1930's. That didn't stop Germany from trying to expand its police state anyways. It is easy to run, to be sure, but that won't actually solve the problem. If you don't want the U.S. to morph into some seven-headed monster of authoritarian imperialism, you have to dig in and make a stand somewhere.
I fail to see how Facebook or any other social network could own your, "most important data." Or is it common practice now to keep your bank account information and genetic sequence stored on the cloud?
I RTFA. The guy has an interesting idea to be sure. However, as he acknowledges, that level of technology is at least a decade away from a flying prototype (I'd wager more like two decades). Furthermore, the whole article was a bit scant on other details. Specifically, I would like to know the power requirements for a piece of equipment like this. If its reaction can sustain the apparatus's own power draw, that would be a huge point in its favor. However, something tells me this particular thruster would require a lot of electricity.
Furthermore, I'd like to see some thermal numbers for the thing. How hot/cold does it need to be to oeprate? Also, how much waste heat does it produce. If it requires a ten square meter black body radiator attached to it to function, it may not prove to be the miracle thruster that it claims to be. All in all it is an interesting concept. I would be surprised to see a prototype developed before 2030 or so though.
I'm noticing a lot more folks that are high strung and on edge lately. A lot of that seems to come from a general depression/disenchantment with the whole economy-crash, government-keeps-sucking, natural-disasters, no-hope-no-change attitude that has permeated the majority of the populace (at least in the U.S.). That kind of extra stress and jitter can lead some folks to have more headaches. I find that a cup of coffee with a shot of whiskey in it is the best way to alleviate such worries.
Has it ever occured to you that Gaia is a made up fantasy creature that stemmed primarily from the psychological projections of primitive cultures that hadn't even discovered basic mathmatics yet? Don't get me wrong, if you like making your life choices based on the whims of a fairy tale creature, go right ahead. The rest of us are going to laugh at you though.
Oh yeah, because it's not like anyone can ever be taught to think critically. All those logic and philosophy classes, all of those hours of mathematical analysis and studying in grammar school don't pay off for squat. Constant exposure to, and the reading of, various thinkers over the years, that doesn't improve abstraction abilities at all. Nope, it is all a simple, binary, you were born with it or you weren't.
Give me a break. A good education can, in fact, pay off and make you more intelligent. I gaurantee you that I think on a much more abstract level now, than I did when I was 14. I will probably be able to say the same thing about my current age ten years from now.
Stop using electric power? So just piss away ~100 years worth of technology and modern convenience because we decided, all of the sudden, in 2011, that we humans are just too irresponsible and incapable of managing a particular natural force that we have ~100 years of managing and mastering?
You have got to be shitting me. Are you trying to stagnate and destroy out society?
First off, according the article, they're not encouraged to search iPhones whenever interacting with the public, but rather when they arrest somebody.
That still seems problematic to me. If I am being arrested for, say, burglary, why should the cops need access to whatever personal data is on my phone? Unless a cop can show some sort of link between the phone and the alleged crime, it seems like a pretty invasive and inappropriate search to me. It's not like the cop is going to get HIV from my phone or anything.
Last I checked, even when you get arrested you have some rights (albeit fewer than a free man). So why would the default assumption be that you surrender the right to a private phone when arrested for a crime not involving the phone?
It's going to be bad engineering decisions pushed on staff because of economic considerations.
Well, unfortunately all of the good engineering decisions, like shutting down plants before their designed lifetime suggests and replacing them with new ones, have been blocked by public hysteria along the lines of, "No new nuclear anything ever!!!!!"
So, yeah, great thing that "wisdom of the masses."
But, but, how can you trust the official page of the power companies? Don't you know that they all conspire to hide the truth about how evil electricity actually is while simultaneously using the profits they reap from us poor, victimized sheeple to purchase gallons of children's tears to wash their baby seal skinned boots in?
You know, if I made the decisions at any of the major power companies in the U.S., I think I would just tell my techs and engineers to shut down every single nuclear power plant on my portion of the grid. Don't demolish them or anything, but just take them off line for a little while. I would let the activists and nuclear power opponents see what life in the U.S. is like without a real, modern, green energy source available for a little while. They might learn something.
Well, that's one clear opinion, certainly. And everything you say applies to people. What's more, on a universal scale we're just seven billion tiny sacks of dirty water rolling about on an irrelevant ball of inorganic molecules orbiting an inconsequential sphere of hydrogen and helium in an unspectacular galaxy in an indifferent universe.
Yup, that's kind of my point. The whole, "sanctity of life," thing isn't nearly as concrete as we may believe it to be. People are going to die everyday. Some will die due to unforseen natural accidents/disasters/whatever. Others will die in some manner useful to another entity (as food, or or maybe as compost). The point is, your chickens need to eat, and if they eat mealworms, feed them some mealworms and stop worrying so much about it. That's just part of how this universe works.
And to be perfectly explicit, I am not, in anyway, trying to say that humans are just as valuable or just as not valuable as mealworms. We humans have this funny talent at organizing energy in a localized manner which seems to trick (at least for a closed system) the second law of thermodynamics. In my opinion, and it is just an opinion, that alone makes us a hell of a lot more special than mealworms. In other words, start fretting about the lives of your mealworms when they start doing mathematics. As long as we humans possess the ability to modify our environment to suit us, rather than simply adapting to the environment we are provided, I would say that we get a ++ on the sanctity of life scale.
And that's all fine and good if you have the free time to make your computer a hobby of convenience. But some of us actually intend to use our computer for actual work, rather than as a fun toy to continually manipulate and play with. If I need to work on a personal project for my career portfolio over the course of the month, and half way through my work period my desktop fails to render because Xorg got replaced, how the hell is that a good thing? At all?
Change and evolution are good. And I certainly do not want to get stuck in any crusty old ways. But there needs to be a balance between dynamic, evolving quality and static, reliable quality. Ubuntu seems to binge on the former, while starving itself of the latter. It is a bit unbalanced.
Why is it that white people seem to be the most vehemently opposed to any measure to deal with illegal immigration?
I find it offensive that you lump white people together so casually. There are a number of us pale-skinned, freckle wearing, fish-bellies that are quite supportive of numerous measures to deal with illegal immigration. However, I will readily admit than many of us are opposed to measures that we consider ineffective.
Jesus Titty-Fucking Christ. Do you realize how ridiculous it is that you are morally fretting over the lives of mealworms? If your partner hadn't gone out and bought the mealworms to feed to the chickens, hell, if the mealworms hadn't been raised as chicken feed, they would just get eaten by some bird or rodent in the wild. You do realize that, in nature, animals kill, mame, and devour each other in a glorious bloody festival all the time right? That's how life grows. That's how things survive long enough to reproduce to allow evoluton. Worrying about the life of every little spec of organic molecules animated via a weak electrical current is absurd. I mean, seriously:
Slashdot Mirror
... the day certain nefarious organizations start recruiting women ...
Which nefarious organizations? The ones we've been carpet-bombing the ever-living bajeessus out of for the past ten years? I think they have bigger things on their mind right now, like finding a new leader who isn't floating face-down in the ocean somewhere.
If the American people want airport security
Who says we do? We did pretty well for a few decades without the TSA or a private firm equivalent. Why the hell do we need them now? Because some loonies pulled one over on us 10 yeas ago? Whoopty-doo. Even the toughest kids on the playground get a black eye from time to time.
I say bring in some bomb sniffing dogs at every airport. Dismantle the scanners and sell the materials on e-bay to pay off some of the debt. Lay-off every single TSA employee. Get on with our lives. I'm tired of living in a country where wanting to travel long distances quickly and conveniently is a reason to suspect someone is a terrorist.
There were a lot of Germans that did that back in the late 1930's. That didn't stop Germany from trying to expand its police state anyways. It is easy to run, to be sure, but that won't actually solve the problem. If you don't want the U.S. to morph into some seven-headed monster of authoritarian imperialism, you have to dig in and make a stand somewhere.
California was desperate and stupid before the recession even began. Now we are just plain crazy and dangerous.
I fail to see how Facebook or any other social network could own your, "most important data." Or is it common practice now to keep your bank account information and genetic sequence stored on the cloud?
I RTFA. The guy has an interesting idea to be sure. However, as he acknowledges, that level of technology is at least a decade away from a flying prototype (I'd wager more like two decades). Furthermore, the whole article was a bit scant on other details. Specifically, I would like to know the power requirements for a piece of equipment like this. If its reaction can sustain the apparatus's own power draw, that would be a huge point in its favor. However, something tells me this particular thruster would require a lot of electricity.
Furthermore, I'd like to see some thermal numbers for the thing. How hot/cold does it need to be to oeprate? Also, how much waste heat does it produce. If it requires a ten square meter black body radiator attached to it to function, it may not prove to be the miracle thruster that it claims to be. All in all it is an interesting concept. I would be surprised to see a prototype developed before 2030 or so though.
They should call it "Grouphug" instead.
My God, I never thought I would see a, "Back in My day," post about MySpace....I really am getting old. :*(
I'm noticing a lot more folks that are high strung and on edge lately. A lot of that seems to come from a general depression/disenchantment with the whole economy-crash, government-keeps-sucking, natural-disasters, no-hope-no-change attitude that has permeated the majority of the populace (at least in the U.S.). That kind of extra stress and jitter can lead some folks to have more headaches. I find that a cup of coffee with a shot of whiskey in it is the best way to alleviate such worries.
Has it ever occured to you that Gaia is a made up fantasy creature that stemmed primarily from the psychological projections of primitive cultures that hadn't even discovered basic mathmatics yet? Don't get me wrong, if you like making your life choices based on the whims of a fairy tale creature, go right ahead. The rest of us are going to laugh at you though.
What if you do all three?
Yeah, we know. That's why our power grid is in shoddy disrepair today. Thanks Grandpa!
Oh yeah, because it's not like anyone can ever be taught to think critically. All those logic and philosophy classes, all of those hours of mathematical analysis and studying in grammar school don't pay off for squat. Constant exposure to, and the reading of, various thinkers over the years, that doesn't improve abstraction abilities at all. Nope, it is all a simple, binary, you were born with it or you weren't.
Give me a break. A good education can, in fact, pay off and make you more intelligent. I gaurantee you that I think on a much more abstract level now, than I did when I was 14. I will probably be able to say the same thing about my current age ten years from now.
Stop using electric power? So just piss away ~100 years worth of technology and modern convenience because we decided, all of the sudden, in 2011, that we humans are just too irresponsible and incapable of managing a particular natural force that we have ~100 years of managing and mastering?
You have got to be shitting me. Are you trying to stagnate and destroy out society?
First off, according the article, they're not encouraged to search iPhones whenever interacting with the public, but rather when they arrest somebody.
That still seems problematic to me. If I am being arrested for, say, burglary, why should the cops need access to whatever personal data is on my phone? Unless a cop can show some sort of link between the phone and the alleged crime, it seems like a pretty invasive and inappropriate search to me. It's not like the cop is going to get HIV from my phone or anything.
Last I checked, even when you get arrested you have some rights (albeit fewer than a free man). So why would the default assumption be that you surrender the right to a private phone when arrested for a crime not involving the phone?
A sane measurement system wouldn't make it as scary sounding.
It's going to be bad engineering decisions pushed on staff because of economic considerations.
Well, unfortunately all of the good engineering decisions, like shutting down plants before their designed lifetime suggests and replacing them with new ones, have been blocked by public hysteria along the lines of, "No new nuclear anything ever!!!!!"
So, yeah, great thing that "wisdom of the masses."
But, but, how can you trust the official page of the power companies? Don't you know that they all conspire to hide the truth about how evil electricity actually is while simultaneously using the profits they reap from us poor, victimized sheeple to purchase gallons of children's tears to wash their baby seal skinned boots in?
You know, if I made the decisions at any of the major power companies in the U.S., I think I would just tell my techs and engineers to shut down every single nuclear power plant on my portion of the grid. Don't demolish them or anything, but just take them off line for a little while. I would let the activists and nuclear power opponents see what life in the U.S. is like without a real, modern, green energy source available for a little while. They might learn something.
Well, that's one clear opinion, certainly. And everything you say applies to people. What's more, on a universal scale we're just seven billion tiny sacks of dirty water rolling about on an irrelevant ball of inorganic molecules orbiting an inconsequential sphere of hydrogen and helium in an unspectacular galaxy in an indifferent universe.
Yup, that's kind of my point. The whole, "sanctity of life," thing isn't nearly as concrete as we may believe it to be. People are going to die everyday. Some will die due to unforseen natural accidents/disasters/whatever. Others will die in some manner useful to another entity (as food, or or maybe as compost). The point is, your chickens need to eat, and if they eat mealworms, feed them some mealworms and stop worrying so much about it. That's just part of how this universe works.
And to be perfectly explicit, I am not, in anyway, trying to say that humans are just as valuable or just as not valuable as mealworms. We humans have this funny talent at organizing energy in a localized manner which seems to trick (at least for a closed system) the second law of thermodynamics. In my opinion, and it is just an opinion, that alone makes us a hell of a lot more special than mealworms. In other words, start fretting about the lives of your mealworms when they start doing mathematics. As long as we humans possess the ability to modify our environment to suit us, rather than simply adapting to the environment we are provided, I would say that we get a ++ on the sanctity of life scale.
Huh. Mine doesn't do that. I suppose that's Linux for you...
Yeah, I think I might look at that once support for 10.04 gets dropped.
And that's all fine and good if you have the free time to make your computer a hobby of convenience. But some of us actually intend to use our computer for actual work, rather than as a fun toy to continually manipulate and play with. If I need to work on a personal project for my career portfolio over the course of the month, and half way through my work period my desktop fails to render because Xorg got replaced, how the hell is that a good thing? At all?
Change and evolution are good. And I certainly do not want to get stuck in any crusty old ways. But there needs to be a balance between dynamic, evolving quality and static, reliable quality. Ubuntu seems to binge on the former, while starving itself of the latter. It is a bit unbalanced.
Why is it that white people seem to be the most vehemently opposed to any measure to deal with illegal immigration?
I find it offensive that you lump white people together so casually. There are a number of us pale-skinned, freckle wearing, fish-bellies that are quite supportive of numerous measures to deal with illegal immigration. However, I will readily admit than many of us are opposed to measures that we consider ineffective.
Jesus Titty-Fucking Christ. Do you realize how ridiculous it is that you are morally fretting over the lives of mealworms? If your partner hadn't gone out and bought the mealworms to feed to the chickens, hell, if the mealworms hadn't been raised as chicken feed, they would just get eaten by some bird or rodent in the wild. You do realize that, in nature, animals kill, mame, and devour each other in a glorious bloody festival all the time right? That's how life grows. That's how things survive long enough to reproduce to allow evoluton. Worrying about the life of every little spec of organic molecules animated via a weak electrical current is absurd. I mean, seriously:
They are just fucking mealworms.