Something that was almost a chicken laid an egg that hatched into a chicken. So, the egg had to have been first.
Yeash, I'm kind of baffled at how this took any time for discussion. I should think any junior high biology student could figure this out. The "chicken and egg" problem is a nice metaphor, but once we discovered DNA the literal question was easily answered.
What I'd like to see is a list of the scientists who were on the fence about the question, so that I can be sure to never pay attention to what they say.
Well in the first place "bunch of guys with guns that steal your money every year and throw you in prison if you refuse" is a dubious benefit... but whatever...
I was thinking more along the lines of "you weren't crippled by polio or shit yourself to death from tainted water", but if you see guys with guns as a benefit, more power to you.
I tell you what then... I'll sell all my possessions, and I'll leave. IF... you can guarentee me that the united states military isn't going to ever invade whatever land I buy in the future. Can you promise that? Can I get that in writing?
I don't want any of the US military's alleged protection, nor any of the federal government's glorious five year plans. I want them to leave us alone. That seems like a reasonable offer... but of course it's one they never seem willing to listen to.
You know exactly how to have the offer accepted -- move away from the US military and US economy and you won't have to deal with the US Military or the US Economy (well, unless you move to somewhere with oil). Nobody in the US government really cares whether you stay or leave, they won't stop you from leaving, but if you stay, then you are a part of the US.
It's not that complicated, you just want all the good parts with none of the bad. There's no way to magically insulate you from all the taxpayer-funded benefits of living here unless you leave.
If your "land in the middle of nowhere" is in fact in the United States, you'll still be protected by the US Military, economic management, etc.
If you revoke your citizenship and buy a random piece of land 8,000 miles away from the United States, I'm sure they'll happily forget you ever existed. But of course, that's rarely what poeople are really asking for -- usually they want their cake and to eat it.
I'm probably going to buy a Wii, and do indeed expect that some of the mario games will be available. Hence my asking which ones I should look at -- I'm not going to buy them all!
I recently got the nostalgic urge to play Super Mario Bros again, but of course my Nintendo is long dead so I grabbed the emulator for playing it on my XBox. Not having followed or played any of the 3,000 Super Mario Bros sequels, can anyone recommend which one(s) are the best (where best = the platform goodness of the original, not into super mario kart and that kind of stuff)?
On the contrary, the founding documents of this nation were very much a suicide pact.
The Declaration of Independence said it quite explicitly:
And for the Support of this Declaration, with a firm Reliance on the Protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honour.
Or, to put it more succinctly, "Give me Liberty or Give me Death".
Life without liberty is not life worth living, and the founding fathers knew quite well that they would either succeeed or be killed as traitors.
And of course the irony is that the only way we would commit "suicide" (ie, kill OURSELVES, as opposed to being destroyed by external forces) is to destroy the Constitution and Bill of Rights, exactly as we're doing so well right now. No terrorist bomb can accomplish that task, we're doing it all on our own.
Apple is selling a product that has the reputation of Gateways and Packard Bells, if you listen to people who've had hinge/connector/power/heat problems in the past.
Oh, puh-leeze. People complain about individual problems, of course. But every survey conducted objectively (Consumer Reports, PC Magazine, etc) that looks at large numbers of customers says unconditionally that Apple is one of the best, if not THE best, manufacturers of computer hardware.
You can find bad hinges, heat problems, etc about every laptop ever made. Apples get more vocal complaints since the customers have higher expectations, but at the end of the day the volume of the complaints does not show up in actual customer satisfaction or hardware failure surveys. Sony, IBM and Apple are the only 3 brands that continually, year after year, survey after survey, show as reliable, well-built, and well-supported when problems do crop up. It's a shame IBM left the one consumer business they were good at.
The only ones judging on the "rumor mill" are those who bash Apple hardware because they think it makes them look cool rather than uninformed, naive, and new to the computer industry. Some guy's brother's website does not constitute a statistical sample, no matter how bad his hinge was.
The Communist Party was a MAJOR third party in the US political landscape from the 1910's into 40s, indeed it was the "trendy" party in the 30s the way Ross Perot's party was in the 90s. There's no evidence whatsoever that the Soviet Union provided any financial support, much less "largely funded and supported" the Communist Party in America.
Even if that had been the case (which is asinine on the face of it, why would a major US political party need financial support from elsewhere when it has millions of members?), it STILL would be a matter of political freedom to belong to such a party, so long as they weren't subverting the government or committing acts of terrorism (both allegations were made frequently yet never with any evidence).
Of course customs can open and inspect any package, nobody is suggesting otherwise.
What concerns me is the possibility that one particular shipper will cooperate with an unrelated private company in such a way that packages with particular materials in them will be singled out for inspection far out of proportion, even though there is no reason to believe those items are any more likely to be breaking the law than another, randomly selected package. If that were the case, then I certainly WOULD switch shippers, to one that does not follow such a ludicrous policy, as we ship those perfectly legal materials on a regular basis and don't want our shipments to be repeatedly "profiled" because of it.
Obviously if the dogs were being used or mandated by the customs service itself, then choosing shippers would make no difference, but the article seems to indicate rather strongly that it is FedEx's activity at this stage that is selecting packages for further inspection.
Uh, yes, that's why I specifically had to note what my response would be if they implimented such a program IN THE USA.
I realize you want to rise to their defense, and that's fine, but please don't misrepresent my statements in order to make your own seem reasonable. If FedEx begins using RIAA-funded dogs to inspect packages in the USA, I will find that highly objectionable. Right now they are only doing it with UK customs in the UK.
And yes, this is solely for the benefit of a third party. You can wave your hands all you like, but customs duties for pirated merchandise benefit neither FedEx nor FedEx customers.
This owuld pretty much stop my company from using FedEx for any shipments if they do this in the USA. We ship burned CDs/DVDs all the time, and I don't want the shipments delayed or damaged because they're constantly being pulled out and opened up for inspection.
Even assuming they have 100% identification of illegal DVD copies vs false positives once they open them up, they're still providing nothing useful to customers, with serious potential for loss or damage of customers' materials, solely for the benefit of a third party. If the MPAA wants to pay for my Fedex shipping, then we can talk, but if I'm paying for it, you can bet your ass I'll be making life miserable for fedex employees when my shipment is delayed or damaged because of this crap.
I would agree with this completely -- the best use of a semester would be to show students how to approach the organization of written information. This should actually be second nature to engineers, as they frequently are called upon to organize and categorize things, yet their writing tends to lack the clarity of purpose that a good writer brings through proper organization.
One thing I notice is that people unaccustomed to writing formal papers tend to adopt a very stilted and affected style, thinking it sounds more "official", but it is usually just confusing. As students are writing, some of the most helpful things you can show them are the areas where they sound unnatural. While there's entirely too many people writing in an overly-conversational way online (essentially writing the words they would speak), one of the keys to compelling writing is to be natural and give it some personality.
You're absolutely right, the statement was much more vague than I was giving it credit for.
On rereading what he said, I think I was projecting my own knowledge of the situation and imagining what he was MEANING, rather than looking at his words which are pretty "anything could happen! on their face.
she lost control of her store at the time she didnt know what was going on, they never called her in advance and told her what was going to happen
So let me get this straight, if 60 people want to go to a store in Manhattan they should call in advance for a reservation? This giant, 2-story Best Buy has never had more than 60 people in the store before?
How did the manager "lose control"? 60 people showed up and hung out at the store for a while. They weren't claiming to be employees, they weren't robbing the place, they weren't trashing the place, they weren't running up and down the aisles naked and screaming, they were just standing around.
If it unnerved her so much, she should have used her managerial authority to walk up to them one at a time with a security guard and say "Sir, I'm the store manager and you need to leave right now, please walk this way." If they refuse, then they're trespassing. The only times they *asked* (note the word ASKED) someone to leave and he sought to clarify, it was made 100% clear that he was NOT being TOLD to leave, only asked.
An eight-year-old could have offered us as much insight.
Well, the difference is the eight year-old would be guessing.
The USGS stating that it's stable now but is capable of changing at any moment without warning is useful information, because it makes explicit that if something terrible is to happen they won't be able to see indicators 24-48 hours in advance and thus warn people away. If you want to get away, there is no precursor activity that will tell you when, so you just basically have to go and wait, potentially for a long time.
Yeah, I appreciate getting the dozens of whitelist confirmations messages every time a spammer uses an email address in my domain for his messages. It's about as useful and productive as sending out helpful "you may have a virus!" messages to whatever email address was pasted on the virus message.
Of course, the most annoying are all the bounce emails I get, since those can't be automatically trashed in case it's a bounce from a real message I sent.
I assume he thinks so because he would be turning around and redeeming it for goods from Amazon and never getting a check. It is, of course, taxable income, but I don't know if Amazon reports credit earned through the affiliate program if it isn't sent as a check, so there wouldn't be any practical way for the IRS to know about it.
And it's still enjoyable today when Watchmen just makes one depressed with its 1980s "the end is nigh" fearmongering.
I agree, that '80s stuff is so dated, I can't believe anyone would think it has any relevance to modern events. Most political commentary really has no relevence beyond a few months from publication date, so I don't understand why anyone would waste their time writing or reading it.
I'd write more, but I'm meeting a friend to see V for Vendetta in a few minutes.
Slashdot Mirror
Something that was almost a chicken laid an egg that hatched into a chicken. So, the egg had to have been first.
Yeash, I'm kind of baffled at how this took any time for discussion. I should think any junior high biology student could figure this out. The "chicken and egg" problem is a nice metaphor, but once we discovered DNA the literal question was easily answered.
What I'd like to see is a list of the scientists who were on the fence about the question, so that I can be sure to never pay attention to what they say.
Well in the first place "bunch of guys with guns that steal your money every year and throw you in prison if you refuse" is a dubious benefit... but whatever...
I was thinking more along the lines of "you weren't crippled by polio or shit yourself to death from tainted water", but if you see guys with guns as a benefit, more power to you.
I tell you what then... I'll sell all my possessions, and I'll leave.
IF... you can guarentee me that the united states military isn't going to ever invade whatever land I buy in the future.
Can you promise that? Can I get that in writing?
Sure, happy to.
I don't want any of the US military's alleged protection, nor any of the federal government's glorious five year plans. I want them to leave us alone. That seems like a reasonable offer... but of course it's one they never seem willing to listen to.
You know exactly how to have the offer accepted -- move away from the US military and US economy and you won't have to deal with the US Military or the US Economy (well, unless you move to somewhere with oil). Nobody in the US government really cares whether you stay or leave, they won't stop you from leaving, but if you stay, then you are a part of the US.
It's not that complicated, you just want all the good parts with none of the bad. There's no way to magically insulate you from all the taxpayer-funded benefits of living here unless you leave.
If your "land in the middle of nowhere" is in fact in the United States, you'll still be protected by the US Military, economic management, etc.
If you revoke your citizenship and buy a random piece of land 8,000 miles away from the United States, I'm sure they'll happily forget you ever existed. But of course, that's rarely what poeople are really asking for -- usually they want their cake and to eat it.
Can I get that in writing?
Sure, but it won't do you any good when you don't have access to the courts to enforce it.
I'm probably going to buy a Wii, and do indeed expect that some of the mario games will be available. Hence my asking which ones I should look at -- I'm not going to buy them all!
I recently got the nostalgic urge to play Super Mario Bros again, but of course my Nintendo is long dead so I grabbed the emulator for playing it on my XBox. Not having followed or played any of the 3,000 Super Mario Bros sequels, can anyone recommend which one(s) are the best (where best = the platform goodness of the original, not into super mario kart and that kind of stuff)?
*whoosh*
talk about missing the joke.
Would you believe fifty security guards and a bloodhound?
The Bill of Rights is not a suicide pact.
On the contrary, the founding documents of this nation were very much a suicide pact.
The Declaration of Independence said it quite explicitly:
And for the Support of this Declaration, with a firm Reliance on the Protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honour.
Or, to put it more succinctly, "Give me Liberty or Give me Death".
Life without liberty is not life worth living, and the founding fathers knew quite well that they would either succeeed or be killed as traitors.
And of course the irony is that the only way we would commit "suicide" (ie, kill OURSELVES, as opposed to being destroyed by external forces) is to destroy the Constitution and Bill of Rights, exactly as we're doing so well right now. No terrorist bomb can accomplish that task, we're doing it all on our own.
In my experience, the trouble is not in writing lots of data to tape, it's in reading it successfully afterwards. /only half-joking
Apple is selling a product that has the reputation of Gateways and Packard Bells, if you listen to people who've had hinge/connector/power/heat problems in the past.
Oh, puh-leeze. People complain about individual problems, of course. But every survey conducted objectively (Consumer Reports, PC Magazine, etc) that looks at large numbers of customers says unconditionally that Apple is one of the best, if not THE best, manufacturers of computer hardware.
You can find bad hinges, heat problems, etc about every laptop ever made. Apples get more vocal complaints since the customers have higher expectations, but at the end of the day the volume of the complaints does not show up in actual customer satisfaction or hardware failure surveys. Sony, IBM and Apple are the only 3 brands that continually, year after year, survey after survey, show as reliable, well-built, and well-supported when problems do crop up. It's a shame IBM left the one consumer business they were good at.
The only ones judging on the "rumor mill" are those who bash Apple hardware because they think it makes them look cool rather than uninformed, naive, and new to the computer industry. Some guy's brother's website does not constitute a statistical sample, no matter how bad his hinge was.
Yeah, remember when Clinton was being impeached and none of the newspapers would cover it because of their "liberal bias"?
Gimme a break. Whoever is in power has a big target on their ass.
The Communist Party was a MAJOR third party in the US political landscape from the 1910's into 40s, indeed it was the "trendy" party in the 30s the way Ross Perot's party was in the 90s. There's no evidence whatsoever that the Soviet Union provided any financial support, much less "largely funded and supported" the Communist Party in America.
Even if that had been the case (which is asinine on the face of it, why would a major US political party need financial support from elsewhere when it has millions of members?), it STILL would be a matter of political freedom to belong to such a party, so long as they weren't subverting the government or committing acts of terrorism (both allegations were made frequently yet never with any evidence).
Of course customs can open and inspect any package, nobody is suggesting otherwise.
What concerns me is the possibility that one particular shipper will cooperate with an unrelated private company in such a way that packages with particular materials in them will be singled out for inspection far out of proportion, even though there is no reason to believe those items are any more likely to be breaking the law than another, randomly selected package. If that were the case, then I certainly WOULD switch shippers, to one that does not follow such a ludicrous policy, as we ship those perfectly legal materials on a regular basis and don't want our shipments to be repeatedly "profiled" because of it.
Obviously if the dogs were being used or mandated by the customs service itself, then choosing shippers would make no difference, but the article seems to indicate rather strongly that it is FedEx's activity at this stage that is selecting packages for further inspection.
Did you not RTFA?
Uh, yes, that's why I specifically had to note what my response would be if they implimented such a program IN THE USA.
I realize you want to rise to their defense, and that's fine, but please don't misrepresent my statements in order to make your own seem reasonable. If FedEx begins using RIAA-funded dogs to inspect packages in the USA, I will find that highly objectionable. Right now they are only doing it with UK customs in the UK.
And yes, this is solely for the benefit of a third party. You can wave your hands all you like, but customs duties for pirated merchandise benefit neither FedEx nor FedEx customers.
This owuld pretty much stop my company from using FedEx for any shipments if they do this in the USA. We ship burned CDs/DVDs all the time, and I don't want the shipments delayed or damaged because they're constantly being pulled out and opened up for inspection.
Even assuming they have 100% identification of illegal DVD copies vs false positives once they open them up, they're still providing nothing useful to customers, with serious potential for loss or damage of customers' materials, solely for the benefit of a third party. If the MPAA wants to pay for my Fedex shipping, then we can talk, but if I'm paying for it, you can bet your ass I'll be making life miserable for fedex employees when my shipment is delayed or damaged because of this crap.
I would agree with this completely -- the best use of a semester would be to show students how to approach the organization of written information. This should actually be second nature to engineers, as they frequently are called upon to organize and categorize things, yet their writing tends to lack the clarity of purpose that a good writer brings through proper organization.
One thing I notice is that people unaccustomed to writing formal papers tend to adopt a very stilted and affected style, thinking it sounds more "official", but it is usually just confusing. As students are writing, some of the most helpful things you can show them are the areas where they sound unnatural. While there's entirely too many people writing in an overly-conversational way online (essentially writing the words they would speak), one of the keys to compelling writing is to be natural and give it some personality.
You're absolutely right, the statement was much more vague than I was giving it credit for.
On rereading what he said, I think I was projecting my own knowledge of the situation and imagining what he was MEANING, rather than looking at his words which are pretty "anything could happen! on their face.
I must have missed the part where the 60 people were assaulting customers.
But yes, if you want to go to Best Buy in a clown costume, feel free. It will certainly bring a smile to many people's face!
she lost control of her store at the time she didnt know what was going on, they never called her in advance and told her what was going to happen
So let me get this straight, if 60 people want to go to a store in Manhattan they should call in advance for a reservation? This giant, 2-story Best Buy has never had more than 60 people in the store before?
How did the manager "lose control"? 60 people showed up and hung out at the store for a while. They weren't claiming to be employees, they weren't robbing the place, they weren't trashing the place, they weren't running up and down the aisles naked and screaming, they were just standing around.
If it unnerved her so much, she should have used her managerial authority to walk up to them one at a time with a security guard and say "Sir, I'm the store manager and you need to leave right now, please walk this way." If they refuse, then they're trespassing. The only times they *asked* (note the word ASKED) someone to leave and he sought to clarify, it was made 100% clear that he was NOT being TOLD to leave, only asked.
An eight-year-old could have offered us as much insight.
Well, the difference is the eight year-old would be guessing.
The USGS stating that it's stable now but is capable of changing at any moment without warning is useful information, because it makes explicit that if something terrible is to happen they won't be able to see indicators 24-48 hours in advance and thus warn people away. If you want to get away, there is no precursor activity that will tell you when, so you just basically have to go and wait, potentially for a long time.
Yeah, I appreciate getting the dozens of whitelist confirmations messages every time a spammer uses an email address in my domain for his messages. It's about as useful and productive as sending out helpful "you may have a virus!" messages to whatever email address was pasted on the virus message.
Of course, the most annoying are all the bounce emails I get, since those can't be automatically trashed in case it's a bounce from a real message I sent.
See "The Ultimate Question" and any Galactus comic book from Marvel in the last 30 years.
erm.. why would that $100/day be tax free?
I assume he thinks so because he would be turning around and redeeming it for goods from Amazon and never getting a check. It is, of course, taxable income, but I don't know if Amazon reports credit earned through the affiliate program if it isn't sent as a check, so there wouldn't be any practical way for the IRS to know about it.
And it's still enjoyable today when Watchmen just makes one depressed with its 1980s "the end is nigh" fearmongering.
I agree, that '80s stuff is so dated, I can't believe anyone would think it has any relevance to modern events. Most political commentary really has no relevence beyond a few months from publication date, so I don't understand why anyone would waste their time writing or reading it.
I'd write more, but I'm meeting a friend to see V for Vendetta in a few minutes.