Not to mention, this is the same government that partially defends the USA PATRIOT act by claiming that previously it was illegal for computer service providers to report security incidents to law enforcement officials (here, under "Section 217. Interception of computer trespasser communications"), something which I *know* cannot be correct.
That sort of thing tends to make me distrust everything they are telling us.
For the record, I don't prefer webmail. I do pine-over-ssh on a nice shell account here if anyone is interested.
But a fair chunk of my reasons for this would also be reasons to use webmail. I move around a lot. For me, this is because I'm multi-homed(/nomadic/technically homeless/whatever), traveling a great deal (for work or for pleasure) can cause a similar set of problems. If I were to download all my mail onto my main system I would be unable to access it much of the time. If I were to keep address book and similar information on my main system I would have the same problem. Having a webmail or shell account to keep this information means that it's accessible from pretty much any computer with net access.
Though I have to say, webmail will never provide some of the things that I really like about my shell account -- starting with script development (for all the usual things, plus occasional mail box parsing), a nice jump off point for connecting to other systems (particularly nice if you have a box or network that uses inbound IP filtering -- only one IP address or range, and while, yes, that means everyone with a paid account with sdf can *also* ssh in, likely they don't have the passwords and that's still better than the entirety of the 'net -- and then there's surfing written erotica at work without the boss ever knowing;) ), my favorite MUA (one of these days I'll switch to a free alternative, though), a place to run little apps and whatnot, and (perhaps best) even on windows boxen I fear not the email virus, not even the new one that no one is scanning for yet. Oh, and backups (ssh -l username hostname "tar -cvzf -" > backup.tar.gz) are a cinch. I essentially mirror my sdf account to my main system as often as possible, and to a large extent vice versa, so that as long as I can reach *one* I'm just fine. Some webmail providers also have POP3 or IMAP access, which can make this fairly easy, but many don't.
The only real advantages I can see to webmail are that:
A. it can be difficult to find public access terminals with ssh. I can use telnet, though I prefer not to. But even that can be difficult to find. It's rather rare to find a public access terminal without a web browser. At one point my solution to this involved logging in to a second shell-provider's boxes via their web-based java applet and then sshing out to sdf. The other shell provider's account only had 1MB of combined email/file storage, making it somewhat useless as a main account. But 1MB is more than enough to keep all my ssh keys.
B. It *may* be easier to find a stable webmail provider than a shell provider. My only complaint about sdf is that it sometimes goes down, occasionally for days at a time (I think it's been a year or so since that's happened. But it went down for several hours last week, annoying me greatly). OTOH, I just lost one of my junk webmail accounts because the provider suddenly decided they didn't want to provide email anymore, with about two weeks notice, so webmail is hardly a guaranteed proposition. But the large providers (hotmail/yahoo/etc) do seem to be a tad more stable/reliable than my beloved sdf.
C. The GUI interface may be more appropriate for some non-power users (I almost forgot this. bad sysadmin, bad)
The only other real alternative to either shell or webmail accounts in similar situations is a laptop. But the laptop solution is more expensive and the risk of someone walking off with a laptop is much higher than the risk of someone walking off with a large installation in (likely) a secure colo facility. Not to mention it is generally easier to find a computer that is net connected than it is to find a place to connect up a laptop.
Done stupidly, of course it's foolish. Done right it's a more robust system than most people's pop3/outlook (or whatever) setup, whether one chooses a (large stable) webmail provider and backs up with POP3/IMAP or a shell account backed up with tarpipes.
Well, it means that they'll actually have to get a warrant.
I have mixed feelings on these laws. On one hand, I do think that privacy is important. On the other hand, I was in a situation where I was receiving interstate harassing phone calls. I taped some of the calls, but the cops wouldn't even listen to them because both the state they were originating from and the state I was in are two party consent states. So even though I had proof that this person was calling me up and threatening me (specifically saying that if I didn't send her money she would tell the authorities that I had done various illegal things that I hadn't done, nor would ever even consider doing), I couldn't have used it in court, even in my defense if she had later carried out her threat. AFAIK, she never did and eventually she got bored and stopped, but it could have been ugly for me, to say the least.
That's rather what I think, though I haven't seen the problem up close and personal, yet.
However, I *have* 'refurbed' many many 'dead' walkman/personal CD players/portable radios over the years with a little solder and a little quality time with the iron. Probably 100 or so over the years. I give 'em away as I find people who can use them. I haven't had an MP3 player with this problem come across my collective yet, but I figure it's only a matter of time.
There are various things out there (usually with little trigger handles and rubber tipped ends) to help short people with this problem. I imagine any one of them could be altered to work with a robot.
Though, honestly (and I'm 5'0" too) nothing is quite so useful as just crawling up and standing on the counters, imo. I suppose that when I'm 90 and arthritic I'll be looking for better answers.
Or maybe they could give the robot arms like Bender's:)
Now, if we could set up so that every GM plant didn't produce pollen (or even just the ones that we don't grow undercover -- during R&D phases where the plants are always in controlled lab conditions it's not really a concern, it's when it's released into the wild -- or at least into open fields) we would be dealing very nicely both with a fair chunk of the environmental problems and the legal problems.
It doesn't entirely solve the environmental problems -- issues like greater use of herbicides sitll exist. But it would help immensely.
At some point in the future, if we happen to have a GM plant that is both truly useful, is known safe for people and the environment and that the company who owns it is willing to 'give it away for free' (not necessarily the first gen seeds, but subsquescent generations as those plants produce seeds) pollen production could be reintroduced.
This is downright logical. I doubt it will happen.
No, it's unfortunately not FUD. Sure, we *could* make it vunerable to cooking oil (well, I don't know that cooking oil is a good example, but we certainly could make it vunerable to other chemicals) but unless it's profitable, we won't.
We can also make plants that don't produce viable seed, and we do so because it is profitable.
However, we don't make plants that don't produce pollen. It's more profitable not to. If we did, companies couldn't sue people whose plants were accidently pollinated by GM plants for using GM technology without paying licensing fees.
It's sort of like people being sued for including source code from other projects without paying fees (or otherwise violating license agreements)...if bits of source code just randomly wandered about and inserted themselves into other programs without human help.
This is already happening with other crops, it's not a theoretical problem. I don't particularly see why this couldn't possibly happen with this grass, either.
Legislation could help this, but doesn't stop the environmental problems. The issue isn't killing these plants (in which case your ideas would work pretty well) but in killing these plants without killing all the other plants around them.
In fact, anyone who read the article would have read this: A Hollywood consortium, including some of Tinseltown's top directors, has sued Clearplay and others, arguing that they are abusing the films' artistic integrity.
By producing - without permission - altered versions of intellectual property, censors are effectively pirating directors' and studios' work, the lawsuit argues.
Clearplay hopes to escape through a loophole: instead of making new versions of films, it argues, its technology is simply another way of playing the existing movie - no more an abuse than a viewer fast-forwarding a tape in his own home.
The case is pending, but RCA has decided to press ahead regardless.
While the article does not mention exactly which statutes they are suing under, the fact that they are taking legal action ought to count towards something, here.
(It also seems possible that they actually are suing under the DMCA, but I don't have enough information to confidently conclude that.)
Actually, I find the heart rate tracking watch to be a very useful and important thing, for me.
I tend to (thanks to years of phys ed teachers telling me so, I'm sure) think that I'm not working hard enough until I've kicked myself into an asthma attack and am half blind from oxygen deprivation. My heart rate monitor keeps me from doing so -- it gives me warning that I'm pushing too hard before my body does, and since my body's reaction (asthma attack and general physical badness) pretty much puts an end to any exercise I might be doing, is a better choice.
That said, these things should be bought or otherwise acquired with thought - too many people seem to think that buying all the accessories will somehow magically make them physically fit.
A. Because the wonders of cross pollination cause GM DNA to become part of the seeds of organic plants. This has already happened many times and is not theoretical. If an organic plant pollinates a non-organic non-gm plant or vice versa, the difference is not significant.
B. Because then Monsanto comes by and sues anyone who uses seeds, even from their own field, that were accidently cross pollinated by pollen from GM plants. This also is not theoretical.
C. Plants that are genetically modified not to bear fertile seeds only ensure profit for the companies that sell them, they do not prevent these plants from generating pollen that can then fertilize non-GM cultivated plants and wild plants. This is also not theoretical.
D. Doing C may endanger closely related non GM plant strains (wild or cultivated), because the pollen can fertilize other wild or cultivated plants, and those seeds may be sterile. This is underresearched, but afaik, still theoretical.
E. There is minimal research on the safety of GM foods. Some have been well enough tested that we are pretty sure they are safe (though we still haven't done long term testing on humans), but some have shown dangers in animal testing and are still considered okay for humans to eat. Then there are those that are only considered safe for animals that end up cross contaminating human products. Without across the board testing it becomes impossible to know if there is non-safe (or unknown-safe) GM cross contamination. This has many levels of theoretical and non-theoretical. We know that we can definitely create GM organisms that create substances that are harmful or poisonous to humans, and it stands to logic that these should be kept out of the food supply
F. We don't know the environmental damage GM organisms can cause if they get out into the environment. We do know that some of the bt containing GM crops have caused the bugs in the area in which they are grown to become immune to it, which is a massive hit for organic farmers (BT being a popular and previously very effective organic pest control method). How many other things like this are we going to wait to find out after the fact?
Does this mean that we should immediately stop research into all GM organisms and leave things the way god intended them? I don't think so. But it does mean that we should proceed with some logic and caution. You'd think we learned our lesson with DDT, CFCs, etc, but apparently not.
Hey, in california, fairly recently, a judge issued a warrent to search a house suspected of housing a marijauna growing operation. The reason for suspicion and supposed 'probable cause'? An electric bill that was high for the area. When the cops raided the place, they found a mom with three young kids, lots of laundry (she was doing several loads a day. I haven't been able to confirm, but from other things said I think she may have been using cloth diapers on 2 or all three of the kids) and an electric dryer.
I mean, it's one thing to sit outside of hydroponics stores and then watch those people to see if they have unexplained income (though I personally think that's a waste of law enforcement's time as well), it's a completely different thing to search every house that uses more electricity than the neighbors.
The concept of probable cause has been severely eroded by the war on drugs. The war on terror is now doing it's part too. Maybe the lesson to be learned from this is that domestic wars are a bad idea?
It's something I worry about too. I have an autistic spectrum disorder and tourettes. Through high school (esspecially when the tourettes started and then got worse) even my own damn parents believed I was on drugs. They used to search my room with a video camera in hopes of finding proof of this so that they could get me into rehab. They tried just about everything, but they couldn't prove I was taking drugs because I truly and actually wasn't. I didn't even drink or smoke cigarettes until after I left home.
I was in my twenties when I was diagnosed, finally, and it was a relief. Now I can tell people who are giving me that look that I have these disorders, and that they are neurological dysfunctions. But sometimes I go non-verbal and sometimes I have movement problems that make me freeze or make me move in 'funny' ways, and if I think my body or brain have it in for me in that way at any given point, I won't go out in public at that time. My professionals think that this is an anxiety issue, but I think that this is a perfectly reasonable choice, given that the worst case senerios are either spending some time in jail or being sent off to a mental hospital. In the former, do you know how most people in jail (staff and inmates both) will treat someone they consider 'crazy' or a 'retard' (unless that person is beserker crazy, but I'm not)? In the latter, the risk of having that said of professionals accidently misdiagnose me (it's happened to me prior) and force brain damaging drugs on me (also happened to me prior) is too great. It's a terrifying possibility, and given my prior experiences, I think the odds are higher than the pros think. Unfortunately, the APA and NAMI aren't helping the situation.
I don't know that a suit would help -- in this security conscious (ha! freakin' paranoid...security conscious implies a level of logic that is largely lacking in current policies, from local right up to federal) country, arrest first and ask questions later is becoming the standard to ensure 'public safety'. A judge and/or jury (dependant on venue) might well see it that way, unfortunately.
Erm, four years ago the economy was still okay. There were signs that it was going to go down, but it always does (then it goes back up, then it goes down again, then back up again. The only really tricky bit is when). Now we are somewhere in the middle of a down period. Barring major governmental financial policy mismanagement (though I have to say that I wish I was more confident of our current leaders' motivations on that issue) or severe disaster (nuclear bombs, California finally falls into the ocean, etc) in three years the economy ought to be much better.
Where is 'here'? I really want to know more about this, particularly how the theives managed to get a lot of people to 'test' the system by reporting something that isn't happening -- I mean, if someone calls you up and says "Tomorrow at 2:30 we need you to test your local emergency response system by reporting a non-existant event" would you do it? Would anyone? Posing as local officials and having people call up ostensibly to test the system could potentially work, but a whole bunch of people calling up saying "I'm calling to test this like you asked yesterday" doesn't provide as effective a DDOS as getting them to report non-existant emergencies.
Actually, I think it would be quite fair to say that the printing press contributed heavily to many facets of increasing freedom over the last few centuries. The increased information transmission, plus increasing literacy (and a few other social and economic factors) touched off quite a few revolutions.
Radio has also had it's share of successes, given that it's a much younger technology.
No technology is going to reach out and replace corrupt governments, that still takes people. But I think the internet (at something just over a decade in it's present incarnation) is simply too young to make a judgement on it's usefulness in political change.
Honestly, given the choice, I'd rather fight you and your bokken barehanded -- the only use for the keyboard I can see is throwing it at you to set you off your balance, and that's a pretty one time thing.
As far as revolution goes, however, people cannot organize, they don't even know who to shoot at, without information. Written information is easier to pass around relatively unchanged than verbal information (ever play that game "telephone")? Written communication can be hidden in ways that verbal communication cannot.
The strength of the pen lies in the fact that it motivates people to take action. It's been proven again and again that a highly motivated army can triumph over a less motivated army, even though the less motivated army has more in the way of resources. Not always -- the Branch Davidians never had a prayer -- but enough that it is unwise to discount it's effect.
Erm. How the heck would reading one's child's email help one make a decision about which school to place them in? Unless perhaps one found out something so shocking that one decided to place one's child in boot camp.
Actually, I can think of a handful actual uses for such a device, such as backup and data gathering (both of which have already been noted in this thread) as well as a handful of situations where monitoring of keystrokes is warrented.
But in general, if you're reduced to spying on your kid (as opposed to saying "I am monitoring your movements on the computer", which can be done without such things) something has gone very wrong. It might *not* be the parents' fault, but the odds are that they had a lot to do with it.
But the NRA finally pissed me off too much. I'm all for second amendment rights, but the sexist, heterosexist and racist BS they exposed me to was unnecessary and I won't support that.
I would love to see a progressive (read: isn't stuck in the 50s in terms of their views on women, homosexuals, transsexuals and people of color) pro-gun group. Actually, I'm very fond of the pink pistols, but they don't do much in terms of lobbying, and, while they've never given me or anyone I know of difficulty for being male, I'd really like to be in a more gender inclusive group.
Actually, dependent on how much a person has in terms of nutritional reserves (not just fat/stored energy, but also other stored nutrients), their own biochemical makeup and what they were eating before, the part about improved sport (or other) performance could be true.
For instance, if one was eating a relatively nutritious diet (so that they had good nutrient reserves) but one with a lot of sugar, and they also had touchy blood sugar, they might well find that not eating anything, after the first few days, does give them more energy (and particularly, more even energy) because their blood sugar levels even out.
OTOH, if one was not eating a healthy diet before hand, so that they had no nutritional reserves, then they'd probably feel far worse.
Also, there's an in-built mechanism in humans and other animals that increases overall performance when they haven't had enough food, in order to make it more likely that they can obtain that food (finding it, hunting it down if necessary). I've exploited it in studying, and I suspect that it would also apply to sport (perhaps more so, as sport is more like hunting than reading a book is) as well.
And of course, this only can last for so long before one has gone through one's reserves and starts feeling crappy (mostly because one is starving). Not to mention that it's a lousy diet strategy because your body becomes more efficient to deal with the lack of food.
I don't really see a reason why a group of engineers would be more clued about the human body than any other random group of people, though.
I think the idea is that, since scientists have theoretically studied their particular subject more, they would have a better grasp of it than most people. Most of the time, this is a pretty correct statement.
Most people's primary learning style is either visual, auditory or kinsthetic. To figure out which one yours is, consider how you think of things and how you like to organize information. If you learn best from looking at charts and graphs, you're likely either visual or kinsthetic (a lot of kinsthetic learners pick up very quickly how to 'translate' information from other states, else they get labled as 'learning disabled'), if you learn best from reading words, you're either auditory or visual (or a very adaptive kinsthetic), if you learn best from lecture (without considering visuals from an overhead projector/blackboard/etc) you're almost certainly auditory. If you're one of those people who has a heck of a time learning something from reading or lecture, but picks it up quickly from doing it, you're very likely kinsthetic. There's a lot of little quizzes around to help you figure this out, I'd suggest taking a few (try googling on 'learning styles') and seeing which style keeps coming up. Most people can learn using all three styles, but the vast majority do prefer one style over the others.
If you're auditory, sorry, I have no really good advice. Someone else probably will, though. I recommend googling for 'auditory learners' - and don't ignore the pages meant for those who are learning disabled or their parents, as they often have really good ideas whether or not you are learning disabled.
I use a technique that translates well for both visual and kinsthetic learners (I'm kinsthetic) -- in my head I use 'blocks' to do math, and then translate the answers from looking at how many blocks I have. If you're a visual learner you can practice this outside of your head using graph paper and a pen. If you're a kinsthetic learner, the graph paper will work, but legos or similar physical blocks will probably work better. For a very basic problem, say 52+34, one would 'block out' (either on the graph paper or with the blocks) 52 blocks and 34 blocks, and then mentally (or physically, if you're practicing outside your head) putting the blocks together, then seeing how many blocks there are. With practice this is much faster than a calculator or even doing the math the standard way in one's head. For more complex problems, using algebraic simplification, the various 'rules' for multiplication and division, etc can be combined with this method for very quick calculations, even of relatively complex (for humans. Let's not get into complex-for-computers issues) problems. I
It helps immensely if from the very beginning you group your blocks in groups of five or ten, and group those in groups of 50-100 (total blocks) and group those in groups of 500 or 1000 (again, total blocks) and so on to simplify the final count up. (five is a good number because most people can 'eyeball' five without having to explicitely count each piece -- if you can't actually eyeball five, you can almost certainly eyeball two and three, and know that that makes five. Then ten is just eyeballing two groups of five)
Incidently, I've gotten people who were terrified of math and believed that they couldn't do math to do calculations quickly and easily using this method. This probably has more to do with the lousy way math is taught in our schools than the inherent wonderfulness of my brain, though;)
(on a somewhat related note, fractions are best done using circle charts and putting them together in your head, the same way as the blocks. One circle becomes the same as one block. I imagine you could also use squares the same way, but it's easier to make 1/3rd a circle than 1/3rd a square, and you don't end up playing games trying to make your funny shapes fit together in the square -- a wedge is a wedge is a wedge in a circle)
Digitician? I thought Computer Technician was a perfectly reasonable name.
Given the number of people I see who have been told things like their computer is 'hopelessly' virus infested and so they must buy a new computer (guy in question's computer was just fine after I had a little discussion with it and a well known anti-virus program), that getting a new computer will help with IP spoofing that is causing a person not to be able to ping out (near as I could tell, the ISP had ICMP turned off), and other equally likely things, I'd say it's already happening.
I know some of it is ignorance, and some of it is avarice, but I couldn't say how much is which. I think some of it is also plain old laziness.
It has much the same problem as mechanics, in that the average person doesn't know much about thier (car|computer) and thus anything the (digitician|technician|mechanic) could say sounds pretty much the same to them.
In fairness, most of the political feminists I have met (a lot, and I'm one of them) are entirely against the draft. So this omission has to do with not supporting the draft in principal, not with wanting special privileges for women. A bit like why a gay rights activist wouldn't advocate beatings for straight people.
I think we could clean this up very nicely by passing the ERA. Women would be eligible to be drafted, so no more red herring arguments about feminists and the draft. Better, since those who pick wars seem to be largely of the sort of mindset that would make sending one's son off to die heroic but sending one's daughter off to die tragic (I was going to say sexist, but I'd like to avoid the appearance of name calling), I'm all for using their prejudices against them. If the prospect of sending their daughters (or even their constituents' daughters) to war causes them to pause more than just sending their sons to war, then this would be a good thing. We've forgotten the meaning of a defensive military. The day mexico or canada invades, I'd enlist myself (except that the military doesn't want me, period) but that isn't looking particularly likely.
Hmm. How long before the department of homeland security picks me up for not being patriotic?
I've been wondering how the whole gay-people-in-the-military issue was going to play out, should there be a draft. The last time we had a draft, there was significantly more societal stigma associated with being gay (not that there isn't now, but there is significantly less than 30 years ago) -- instead of going to canada, will a new generation of draft dodgers (for reasons good or ill) claim homosexuality? How can the government possibly prove that a person isn't bisexual?
Well, the way I do it is I go dig up information on independently run tests (it's out there) -- usually someone runs tests on several brands of the same stuff at once. Yes, you get to play detective to find out how independent any given group is. If I can't find tests specific to what I want, I stick to manufacturers whose other products have been tested and shown to have what they claim to, under the theory that hopefully their quality control extends to all of their products.
I won't pretend it's an ideal situation. At the same time, the current government regulation on pharmaceuticals has created a situation where the government is no longer reliably an independant party. Granted, I don't have to worry that there is more or less of the active ingredient, but I do have to worry about the safety and efficacy of the of the meds I'm prescribed -- whether the person who okayed this particular med was also a paid consultant for the particular pharmaceutical company and whether or not the data that led to that acceptance was cooked. If the FDA was more independent, then I would be significantly less worried both about them extending their ineffectuality to dietary supplements and herbs and about the possibility that they'd make sure that any dietary supplement or herb that threatened a pharmaceutical company's profit was made unavailable. The amount of PABA available over the counter is restricted because it interferes with sulfa drugs. That sulfa drugs are rarely used anymore and it's unlikely that you would need one administered on an immediate basis without a few days notice (it only takes a few days for PABA, like all B vitamins, to wash out of the body) unless you have one of a few conditions (allergy to all antibiotics, not just penicillin) which you are pretty likely to know about hasn't changed this. AFAIK, this is simply due to convenience, not because of sulfa drugmakers profits, but it's an example of why I really don't want to give them even more opportunity to screw up.
Also, the vast majority of the time when a supplement or herbal preperation does not contain the amount of whatever substance it's supposed to it has *less* of that substance -- fillers are cheaper, so if someone's going to be be purposely sneaky they are going to do it that way. If they simply have loose quality control, it's likely they are also starting with cheaper ingredients, so that is also unlikely to cause a greater concentration of active ingredients. So you have a much greater risk of wasting your money than of accidental OD.
AFAIK, none of the ephedra issues have been due to there being more ephedra in a product than advertised.
If someone were to do such a thing, I would think criminal sanctions would be in order, should the amounts and substance be something that is potentially harmful (a power of ten degree of difference in amount of ephedra is, a small difference would not be [say 52mg instead of 50mg], an even greater degree of difference might be okay if the substance is known to be very safe) -- manslaughter if anyone dies, attempted manslaughter or assault if anyone is seriously harmed. But then, I'm not in charge.
clearly, this is an attempt to solve for the problem of kids hitting puberty earlier. If they aren't allowed to shave, but will get kicked out of school for having a beard, they will put off puberty until the age of 16, when they can finally legally shave.
Slashdot Mirror
Not to mention, this is the same government that partially defends the USA PATRIOT act by claiming that previously it was illegal for computer service providers to report security incidents to law enforcement officials (here, under "Section 217. Interception of computer trespasser communications"), something which I *know* cannot be correct.
That sort of thing tends to make me distrust everything they are telling us.
For the record, I don't prefer webmail. I do pine-over-ssh on a nice shell account here if anyone is interested.
;) ), my favorite MUA (one of these days I'll switch to a free alternative, though), a place to run little apps and whatnot, and (perhaps best) even on windows boxen I fear not the email virus, not even the new one that no one is scanning for yet. Oh, and backups (ssh -l username hostname "tar -cvzf -" > backup.tar.gz) are a cinch. I essentially mirror my sdf account to my main system as often as possible, and to a large extent vice versa, so that as long as I can reach *one* I'm just fine. Some webmail providers also have POP3 or IMAP access, which can make this fairly easy, but many don't.
But a fair chunk of my reasons for this would also be reasons to use webmail. I move around a lot. For me, this is because I'm multi-homed(/nomadic/technically homeless/whatever), traveling a great deal (for work or for pleasure) can cause a similar set of problems. If I were to download all my mail onto my main system I would be unable to access it much of the time. If I were to keep address book and similar information on my main system I would have the same problem. Having a webmail or shell account to keep this information means that it's accessible from pretty much any computer with net access.
Though I have to say, webmail will never provide some of the things that I really like about my shell account -- starting with script development (for all the usual things, plus occasional mail box parsing), a nice jump off point for connecting to other systems (particularly nice if you have a box or network that uses inbound IP filtering -- only one IP address or range, and while, yes, that means everyone with a paid account with sdf can *also* ssh in, likely they don't have the passwords and that's still better than the entirety of the 'net -- and then there's surfing written erotica at work without the boss ever knowing
The only real advantages I can see to webmail are that:
A. it can be difficult to find public access terminals with ssh. I can use telnet, though I prefer not to. But even that can be difficult to find. It's rather rare to find a public access terminal without a web browser. At one point my solution to this involved logging in to a second shell-provider's boxes via their web-based java applet and then sshing out to sdf. The other shell provider's account only had 1MB of combined email/file storage, making it somewhat useless as a main account. But 1MB is more than enough to keep all my ssh keys.
B. It *may* be easier to find a stable webmail provider than a shell provider. My only complaint about sdf is that it sometimes goes down, occasionally for days at a time (I think it's been a year or so since that's happened. But it went down for several hours last week, annoying me greatly). OTOH, I just lost one of my junk webmail accounts because the provider suddenly decided they didn't want to provide email anymore, with about two weeks notice, so webmail is hardly a guaranteed proposition. But the large providers (hotmail/yahoo/etc) do seem to be a tad more stable/reliable than my beloved sdf.
C. The GUI interface may be more appropriate for some non-power users (I almost forgot this. bad sysadmin, bad)
The only other real alternative to either shell or webmail accounts in similar situations is a laptop. But the laptop solution is more expensive and the risk of someone walking off with a laptop is much higher than the risk of someone walking off with a large installation in (likely) a secure colo facility. Not to mention it is generally easier to find a computer that is net connected than it is to find a place to connect up a laptop.
Done stupidly, of course it's foolish. Done right it's a more robust system than most people's pop3/outlook (or whatever) setup, whether one chooses a (large stable) webmail provider and backs up with POP3/IMAP or a shell account backed up with tarpipes.
Well, it means that they'll actually have to get a warrant.
I have mixed feelings on these laws. On one hand, I do think that privacy is important. On the other hand, I was in a situation where I was receiving interstate harassing phone calls. I taped some of the calls, but the cops wouldn't even listen to them because both the state they were originating from and the state I was in are two party consent states. So even though I had proof that this person was calling me up and threatening me (specifically saying that if I didn't send her money she would tell the authorities that I had done various illegal things that I hadn't done, nor would ever even consider doing), I couldn't have used it in court, even in my defense if she had later carried out her threat. AFAIK, she never did and eventually she got bored and stopped, but it could have been ugly for me, to say the least.
That's rather what I think, though I haven't seen the problem up close and personal, yet.
However, I *have* 'refurbed' many many 'dead' walkman/personal CD players/portable radios over the years with a little solder and a little quality time with the iron. Probably 100 or so over the years. I give 'em away as I find people who can use them. I haven't had an MP3 player with this problem come across my collective yet, but I figure it's only a matter of time.
There are various things out there (usually with little trigger handles and rubber tipped ends) to help short people with this problem. I imagine any one of them could be altered to work with a robot.
:)
Though, honestly (and I'm 5'0" too) nothing is quite so useful as just crawling up and standing on the counters, imo. I suppose that when I'm 90 and arthritic I'll be looking for better answers.
Or maybe they could give the robot arms like Bender's
Interesting, must look that up.
Now, if we could set up so that every GM plant didn't produce pollen (or even just the ones that we don't grow undercover -- during R&D phases where the plants are always in controlled lab conditions it's not really a concern, it's when it's released into the wild -- or at least into open fields) we would be dealing very nicely both with a fair chunk of the environmental problems and the legal problems.
It doesn't entirely solve the environmental problems -- issues like greater use of herbicides sitll exist. But it would help immensely.
At some point in the future, if we happen to have a GM plant that is both truly useful, is known safe for people and the environment and that the company who owns it is willing to 'give it away for free' (not necessarily the first gen seeds, but subsquescent generations as those plants produce seeds) pollen production could be reintroduced.
This is downright logical. I doubt it will happen.
No, it's unfortunately not FUD. Sure, we *could* make it vunerable to cooking oil (well, I don't know that cooking oil is a good example, but we certainly could make it vunerable to other chemicals) but unless it's profitable, we won't.
We can also make plants that don't produce viable seed, and we do so because it is profitable.
However, we don't make plants that don't produce pollen. It's more profitable not to. If we did, companies couldn't sue people whose plants were accidently pollinated by GM plants for using GM technology without paying licensing fees.
It's sort of like people being sued for including source code from other projects without paying fees (or otherwise violating license agreements)...if bits of source code just randomly wandered about and inserted themselves into other programs without human help.
This is already happening with other crops, it's not a theoretical problem. I don't particularly see why this couldn't possibly happen with this grass, either.
Legislation could help this, but doesn't stop the environmental problems. The issue isn't killing these plants (in which case your ideas would work pretty well) but in killing these plants without killing all the other plants around them.
In fact, anyone who read the article would have read this:
A Hollywood consortium, including some of Tinseltown's top directors, has sued Clearplay and others, arguing that they are abusing the films' artistic integrity.
By producing - without permission - altered versions of intellectual property, censors are effectively pirating directors' and studios' work, the lawsuit argues.
Clearplay hopes to escape through a loophole: instead of making new versions of films, it argues, its technology is simply another way of playing the existing movie - no more an abuse than a viewer fast-forwarding a tape in his own home.
The case is pending, but RCA has decided to press ahead regardless.
While the article does not mention exactly which statutes they are suing under, the fact that they are taking legal action ought to count towards something, here.
(It also seems possible that they actually are suing under the DMCA, but I don't have enough information to confidently conclude that.)
Actually, I find the heart rate tracking watch to be a very useful and important thing, for me.
I tend to (thanks to years of phys ed teachers telling me so, I'm sure) think that I'm not working hard enough until I've kicked myself into an asthma attack and am half blind from oxygen deprivation. My heart rate monitor keeps me from doing so -- it gives me warning that I'm pushing too hard before my body does, and since my body's reaction (asthma attack and general physical badness) pretty much puts an end to any exercise I might be doing, is a better choice.
That said, these things should be bought or otherwise acquired with thought - too many people seem to think that buying all the accessories will somehow magically make them physically fit.
Clearly, so you can build a subterranean fortress in your suburban home in fewer than fourteen years.
A. Because the wonders of cross pollination cause GM DNA to become part of the seeds of organic plants. This has already happened many times and is not theoretical. If an organic plant pollinates a non-organic non-gm plant or vice versa, the difference is not significant.
B. Because then Monsanto comes by and sues anyone who uses seeds, even from their own field, that were accidently cross pollinated by pollen from GM plants. This also is not theoretical.
C. Plants that are genetically modified not to bear fertile seeds only ensure profit for the companies that sell them, they do not prevent these plants from generating pollen that can then fertilize non-GM cultivated plants and wild plants. This is also not theoretical.
D. Doing C may endanger closely related non GM plant strains (wild or cultivated), because the pollen can fertilize other wild or cultivated plants, and those seeds may be sterile. This is underresearched, but afaik, still theoretical.
E. There is minimal research on the safety of GM foods. Some have been well enough tested that we are pretty sure they are safe (though we still haven't done long term testing on humans), but some have shown dangers in animal testing and are still considered okay for humans to eat. Then there are those that are only considered safe for animals that end up cross contaminating human products. Without across the board testing it becomes impossible to know if there is non-safe (or unknown-safe) GM cross contamination. This has many levels of theoretical and non-theoretical. We know that we can definitely create GM organisms that create substances that are harmful or poisonous to humans, and it stands to logic that these should be kept out of the food supply
F. We don't know the environmental damage GM organisms can cause if they get out into the environment. We do know that some of the bt containing GM crops have caused the bugs in the area in which they are grown to become immune to it, which is a massive hit for organic farmers (BT being a popular and previously very effective organic pest control method). How many other things like this are we going to wait to find out after the fact?
Does this mean that we should immediately stop research into all GM organisms and leave things the way god intended them? I don't think so. But it does mean that we should proceed with some logic and caution. You'd think we learned our lesson with DDT, CFCs, etc, but apparently not.
Hey, in california, fairly recently, a judge issued a warrent to search a house suspected of housing a marijauna growing operation. The reason for suspicion and supposed 'probable cause'? An electric bill that was high for the area. When the cops raided the place, they found a mom with three young kids, lots of laundry (she was doing several loads a day. I haven't been able to confirm, but from other things said I think she may have been using cloth diapers on 2 or all three of the kids) and an electric dryer.
I mean, it's one thing to sit outside of hydroponics stores and then watch those people to see if they have unexplained income (though I personally think that's a waste of law enforcement's time as well), it's a completely different thing to search every house that uses more electricity than the neighbors.
The concept of probable cause has been severely eroded by the war on drugs. The war on terror is now doing it's part too. Maybe the lesson to be learned from this is that domestic wars are a bad idea?
It's something I worry about too. I have an autistic spectrum disorder and tourettes. Through high school (esspecially when the tourettes started and then got worse) even my own damn parents believed I was on drugs. They used to search my room with a video camera in hopes of finding proof of this so that they could get me into rehab. They tried just about everything, but they couldn't prove I was taking drugs because I truly and actually wasn't. I didn't even drink or smoke cigarettes until after I left home.
I was in my twenties when I was diagnosed, finally, and it was a relief. Now I can tell people who are giving me that look that I have these disorders, and that they are neurological dysfunctions. But sometimes I go non-verbal and sometimes I have movement problems that make me freeze or make me move in 'funny' ways, and if I think my body or brain have it in for me in that way at any given point, I won't go out in public at that time. My professionals think that this is an anxiety issue, but I think that this is a perfectly reasonable choice, given that the worst case senerios are either spending some time in jail or being sent off to a mental hospital. In the former, do you know how most people in jail (staff and inmates both) will treat someone they consider 'crazy' or a 'retard' (unless that person is beserker crazy, but I'm not)? In the latter, the risk of having that said of professionals accidently misdiagnose me (it's happened to me prior) and force brain damaging drugs on me (also happened to me prior) is too great. It's a terrifying possibility, and given my prior experiences, I think the odds are higher than the pros think. Unfortunately, the APA and NAMI aren't helping the situation.
I don't know that a suit would help -- in this security conscious (ha! freakin' paranoid...security conscious implies a level of logic that is largely lacking in current policies, from local right up to federal) country, arrest first and ask questions later is becoming the standard to ensure 'public safety'. A judge and/or jury (dependant on venue) might well see it that way, unfortunately.
Erm, four years ago the economy was still okay. There were signs that it was going to go down, but it always does (then it goes back up, then it goes down again, then back up again. The only really tricky bit is when). Now we are somewhere in the middle of a down period. Barring major governmental financial policy mismanagement (though I have to say that I wish I was more confident of our current leaders' motivations on that issue) or severe disaster (nuclear bombs, California finally falls into the ocean, etc) in three years the economy ought to be much better.
Where is 'here'? I really want to know more about this, particularly how the theives managed to get a lot of people to 'test' the system by reporting something that isn't happening -- I mean, if someone calls you up and says "Tomorrow at 2:30 we need you to test your local emergency response system by reporting a non-existant event" would you do it? Would anyone? Posing as local officials and having people call up ostensibly to test the system could potentially work, but a whole bunch of people calling up saying "I'm calling to test this like you asked yesterday" doesn't provide as effective a DDOS as getting them to report non-existant emergencies.
Actually, I think it would be quite fair to say that the printing press contributed heavily to many facets of increasing freedom over the last few centuries. The increased information transmission, plus increasing literacy (and a few other social and economic factors) touched off quite a few revolutions.
Radio has also had it's share of successes, given that it's a much younger technology.
No technology is going to reach out and replace corrupt governments, that still takes people. But I think the internet (at something just over a decade in it's present incarnation) is simply too young to make a judgement on it's usefulness in political change.
Honestly, given the choice, I'd rather fight you and your bokken barehanded -- the only use for the keyboard I can see is throwing it at you to set you off your balance, and that's a pretty one time thing.
As far as revolution goes, however, people cannot organize, they don't even know who to shoot at, without information. Written information is easier to pass around relatively unchanged than verbal information (ever play that game "telephone")? Written communication can be hidden in ways that verbal communication cannot.
The strength of the pen lies in the fact that it motivates people to take action. It's been proven again and again that a highly motivated army can triumph over a less motivated army, even though the less motivated army has more in the way of resources. Not always -- the Branch Davidians never had a prayer -- but enough that it is unwise to discount it's effect.
Erm. How the heck would reading one's child's email help one make a decision about which school to place them in? Unless perhaps one found out something so shocking that one decided to place one's child in boot camp.
Actually, I can think of a handful actual uses for such a device, such as backup and data gathering (both of which have already been noted in this thread) as well as a handful of situations where monitoring of keystrokes is warrented.
But in general, if you're reduced to spying on your kid (as opposed to saying "I am monitoring your movements on the computer", which can be done without such things) something has gone very wrong. It might *not* be the parents' fault, but the odds are that they had a lot to do with it.
I used to be.
But the NRA finally pissed me off too much. I'm all for second amendment rights, but the sexist, heterosexist and racist BS they exposed me to was unnecessary and I won't support that.
I would love to see a progressive (read: isn't stuck in the 50s in terms of their views on women, homosexuals, transsexuals and people of color) pro-gun group. Actually, I'm very fond of the pink pistols, but they don't do much in terms of lobbying, and, while they've never given me or anyone I know of difficulty for being male, I'd really like to be in a more gender inclusive group.
Actually, dependent on how much a person has in terms of nutritional reserves (not just fat/stored energy, but also other stored nutrients), their own biochemical makeup and what they were eating before, the part about improved sport (or other) performance could be true.
For instance, if one was eating a relatively nutritious diet (so that they had good nutrient reserves) but one with a lot of sugar, and they also had touchy blood sugar, they might well find that not eating anything, after the first few days, does give them more energy (and particularly, more even energy) because their blood sugar levels even out.
OTOH, if one was not eating a healthy diet before hand, so that they had no nutritional reserves, then they'd probably feel far worse.
Also, there's an in-built mechanism in humans and other animals that increases overall performance when they haven't had enough food, in order to make it more likely that they can obtain that food (finding it, hunting it down if necessary). I've exploited it in studying, and I suspect that it would also apply to sport (perhaps more so, as sport is more like hunting than reading a book is) as well.
And of course, this only can last for so long before one has gone through one's reserves and starts feeling crappy (mostly because one is starving). Not to mention that it's a lousy diet strategy because your body becomes more efficient to deal with the lack of food.
I don't really see a reason why a group of engineers would be more clued about the human body than any other random group of people, though.
I think the idea is that, since scientists have theoretically studied their particular subject more, they would have a better grasp of it than most people. Most of the time, this is a pretty correct statement.
Most people's primary learning style is either visual, auditory or kinsthetic. To figure out which one yours is, consider how you think of things and how you like to organize information. If you learn best from looking at charts and graphs, you're likely either visual or kinsthetic (a lot of kinsthetic learners pick up very quickly how to 'translate' information from other states, else they get labled as 'learning disabled'), if you learn best from reading words, you're either auditory or visual (or a very adaptive kinsthetic), if you learn best from lecture (without considering visuals from an overhead projector/blackboard/etc) you're almost certainly auditory. If you're one of those people who has a heck of a time learning something from reading or lecture, but picks it up quickly from doing it, you're very likely kinsthetic. There's a lot of little quizzes around to help you figure this out, I'd suggest taking a few (try googling on 'learning styles') and seeing which style keeps coming up. Most people can learn using all three styles, but the vast majority do prefer one style over the others.
;)
If you're auditory, sorry, I have no really good advice. Someone else probably will, though. I recommend googling for 'auditory learners' - and don't ignore the pages meant for those who are learning disabled or their parents, as they often have really good ideas whether or not you are learning disabled.
I use a technique that translates well for both visual and kinsthetic learners (I'm kinsthetic) -- in my head I use 'blocks' to do math, and then translate the answers from looking at how many blocks I have. If you're a visual learner you can practice this outside of your head using graph paper and a pen. If you're a kinsthetic learner, the graph paper will work, but legos or similar physical blocks will probably work better. For a very basic problem, say 52+34, one would 'block out' (either on the graph paper or with the blocks) 52 blocks and 34 blocks, and then mentally (or physically, if you're practicing outside your head) putting the blocks together, then seeing how many blocks there are. With practice this is much faster than a calculator or even doing the math the standard way in one's head. For more complex problems, using algebraic simplification, the various 'rules' for multiplication and division, etc can be combined with this method for very quick calculations, even of relatively complex (for humans. Let's not get into complex-for-computers issues) problems. I
It helps immensely if from the very beginning you group your blocks in groups of five or ten, and group those in groups of 50-100 (total blocks) and group those in groups of 500 or 1000 (again, total blocks) and so on to simplify the final count up. (five is a good number because most people can 'eyeball' five without having to explicitely count each piece -- if you can't actually eyeball five, you can almost certainly eyeball two and three, and know that that makes five. Then ten is just eyeballing two groups of five)
Incidently, I've gotten people who were terrified of math and believed that they couldn't do math to do calculations quickly and easily using this method. This probably has more to do with the lousy way math is taught in our schools than the inherent wonderfulness of my brain, though
(on a somewhat related note, fractions are best done using circle charts and putting them together in your head, the same way as the blocks. One circle becomes the same as one block. I imagine you could also use squares the same way, but it's easier to make 1/3rd a circle than 1/3rd a square, and you don't end up playing games trying to make your funny shapes fit together in the square -- a wedge is a wedge is a wedge in a circle)
Digitician? I thought Computer Technician was a perfectly reasonable name.
Given the number of people I see who have been told things like their computer is 'hopelessly' virus infested and so they must buy a new computer (guy in question's computer was just fine after I had a little discussion with it and a well known anti-virus program), that getting a new computer will help with IP spoofing that is causing a person not to be able to ping out (near as I could tell, the ISP had ICMP turned off), and other equally likely things, I'd say it's already happening.
I know some of it is ignorance, and some of it is avarice, but I couldn't say how much is which. I think some of it is also plain old laziness.
It has much the same problem as mechanics, in that the average person doesn't know much about thier (car|computer) and thus anything the (digitician|technician|mechanic) could say sounds pretty much the same to them.
In fairness, most of the political feminists I have met (a lot, and I'm one of them) are entirely against the draft. So this omission has to do with not supporting the draft in principal, not with wanting special privileges for women. A bit like why a gay rights activist wouldn't advocate beatings for straight people.
I think we could clean this up very nicely by passing the ERA. Women would be eligible to be drafted, so no more red herring arguments about feminists and the draft. Better, since those who pick wars seem to be largely of the sort of mindset that would make sending one's son off to die heroic but sending one's daughter off to die tragic (I was going to say sexist, but I'd like to avoid the appearance of name calling), I'm all for using their prejudices against them. If the prospect of sending their daughters (or even their constituents' daughters) to war causes them to pause more than just sending their sons to war, then this would be a good thing. We've forgotten the meaning of a defensive military. The day mexico or canada invades, I'd enlist myself (except that the military doesn't want me, period) but that isn't looking particularly likely.
Hmm. How long before the department of homeland security picks me up for not being patriotic?
I've been wondering how the whole gay-people-in-the-military issue was going to play out, should there be a draft. The last time we had a draft, there was significantly more societal stigma associated with being gay (not that there isn't now, but there is significantly less than 30 years ago) -- instead of going to canada, will a new generation of draft dodgers (for reasons good or ill) claim homosexuality? How can the government possibly prove that a person isn't bisexual?
Well, the way I do it is I go dig up information on independently run tests (it's out there) -- usually someone runs tests on several brands of the same stuff at once. Yes, you get to play detective to find out how independent any given group is. If I can't find tests specific to what I want, I stick to manufacturers whose other products have been tested and shown to have what they claim to, under the theory that hopefully their quality control extends to all of their products.
I won't pretend it's an ideal situation. At the same time, the current government regulation on pharmaceuticals has created a situation where the government is no longer reliably an independant party. Granted, I don't have to worry that there is more or less of the active ingredient, but I do have to worry about the safety and efficacy of the of the meds I'm prescribed -- whether the person who okayed this particular med was also a paid consultant for the particular pharmaceutical company and whether or not the data that led to that acceptance was cooked. If the FDA was more independent, then I would be significantly less worried both about them extending their ineffectuality to dietary supplements and herbs and about the possibility that they'd make sure that any dietary supplement or herb that threatened a pharmaceutical company's profit was made unavailable. The amount of PABA available over the counter is restricted because it interferes with sulfa drugs. That sulfa drugs are rarely used anymore and it's unlikely that you would need one administered on an immediate basis without a few days notice (it only takes a few days for PABA, like all B vitamins, to wash out of the body) unless you have one of a few conditions (allergy to all antibiotics, not just penicillin) which you are pretty likely to know about hasn't changed this. AFAIK, this is simply due to convenience, not because of sulfa drugmakers profits, but it's an example of why I really don't want to give them even more opportunity to screw up.
Also, the vast majority of the time when a supplement or herbal preperation does not contain the amount of whatever substance it's supposed to it has *less* of that substance -- fillers are cheaper, so if someone's going to be be purposely sneaky they are going to do it that way. If they simply have loose quality control, it's likely they are also starting with cheaper ingredients, so that is also unlikely to cause a greater concentration of active ingredients. So you have a much greater risk of wasting your money than of accidental OD.
AFAIK, none of the ephedra issues have been due to there being more ephedra in a product than advertised.
If someone were to do such a thing, I would think criminal sanctions would be in order, should the amounts and substance be something that is potentially harmful (a power of ten degree of difference in amount of ephedra is, a small difference would not be [say 52mg instead of 50mg], an even greater degree of difference might be okay if the substance is known to be very safe) -- manslaughter if anyone dies, attempted manslaughter or assault if anyone is seriously harmed. But then, I'm not in charge.
clearly, this is an attempt to solve for the problem of kids hitting puberty earlier. If they aren't allowed to shave, but will get kicked out of school for having a beard, they will put off puberty until the age of 16, when they can finally legally shave.