Ironically taking amphetamines to study isn't even a great strategy. Just going to class and paying attention is a better plan. Being on amphetamines reduces memory retention so much that its not worth the effort.
Well said!
The human brain is perfectly capable of functioning optimally if given enough sleep and supplied with decent food. Performance enhancing substances become a "necessity" only when you've compromised your brain's health. And keeping that up (covering up the health deficit) for any length of time is only going to make matters worse.
Of course, eating well and getting plenty of sleep is just soooo uncool. Better seek salvation in a bottle of pills...
Hmmm, sounds like pretty unlawful search and seize action
IANAL, but United States law has a provision that states you are "innocent until proven guilty". The onus is on the accuser to gather sufficient evidence to prove your guilt.
Many other countries do not have this, so you could call in an anonymous report to the police that so-and-so has been using drugs or has nasty stuff on their computer or whatever and it is then up to the victim to prove somehow that the allegations are false.
It's a ploy to connect the NSA's phone records with your identity. Now the government has a corresponding "business relationship" with you. It may consider you a terrorist for draining them of funds. Instead of merely correllating your calls they can justify actually listening in on them.
And you know the really scary thing? I'm not even sure if I'm joking...
AP Wire (2019): In the news today, once again the military claims to have "lost" an F-22 somewhere on the grounds of Andrews Airforce Base (AFB). Said Captain J. Andrews (no relation): "I could have sworn I parked the thing right over there. Last night's storm must have blown the locator-ribbon off the nose or something."
IANAL but when you're involved in a lawsuit your most prudent course of action is to say nothing whatsoever (in public) about the suit. Let your legal counsel do all the talking. Your lack of legal knowledge could complicate or even compromise your case.
That would certainly explain why he's gone public with this only now.
And given the facts as Jason presents them, I am astounded that the first judge to look at the facts hasn't asked a couple of pointed questions and brought the gavel down on the lawyers who are forcing their representation on Jason against his will and under threat! Is our legal system really so convoluted and messed-up that some lawyer can decide against your will to represent you and you become trapped in obligation as a result? What am I missing here?
I've seen too many supposed programmers become all but worthless as soon as the IDE fails to deliver. They don't know what's wrong because they don't know what the IDE was doing for them in the first place, and as a result are clueless on how to go about fixing the problem or get on with their work.
A programmer who relies on an IDE to the exlusion of real knowledge of the underlying operations is like a car mechanic who can change the oil in your car but couldn't figure out why the car is overheating because he doesn't even know to check the water pump, for example, much less figure out how to replace it.
Never choose convenience over understanding, or one day your clock shall blink 12:00.
When the federal government invokes the "national security" card over and over again as it has in recent months and years, it is no longer national security that's at issue but abuse of power and the covering up of mistakes.
I'm definitely much in favor of Jason's design, too. You can look at any section of the page (scroll a good part down) and it is recognizably Slashdot, just more polished (but without going over the top). The text is the proper (default) size, too (too many sites think the default text should be a lot smaller than my chosen default), and to top it all off the design is clean, functional, and feels just right. My reaction to it was an immediate "oh yes!"
That's right. Implanting the RFID tag robs you of the option of leaving it home when you really don't care to have it around and be trackable, unless your real intention is to explore the psychological implications of being robbed of that choice and having to learn to live with yet another freedom abridged (by free will, no less... how twisted is that?)
Then rip the main title, burn a new DVD with it, and throw the original into a (backup) box in the attic. No more adverts, no stupid menu, and the movie starts when you stick the disc into the player. If you had a girlfriend she'd sure be all over you for that neat trick.
yes, we shape traffic. VOIP traffic gets top priority, ssh second, http third, and bittorrent, or any other p2p app get the lowest priority.
These prioritizations are shared across our client base. That way, if anyone is doing ANYTHING that isn't p2p, it gets priority over p2p traffic. We think this is fair. If you want to run your p2p app overnight when no one else is on, then have fun. If you're doing it during the day, don't expect to get priority over everyone else.
Provided that this policy is advertised and made clear to the customer (and not buried in a sea of light gray 6pt text) I would consider these overall priorities (voip > ssh > http > bt) to be reasonable real world compromises.
What I would object to is being told that I have a certain pipe (implied to be free of any restrictions) when certain services are actually stomped into the carpet at a time when I may require them or are even blocked completely without me even being informed of it.
Handling firearms, driving a car, and skydiving involve potentially life-threatening risks to yourself and/or others. Educating people not to point the gun at your neighbor, obeying traffic laws, and putting your parachute on before you jump out of the airplane are a wee bit more critical than educating people about copyright laws.
Of course, a brief (5 to 10 minutes) mention of copyright law is not a bad idea, so long as it's general and not limited to content of interest only to the RIAA/MPAA, but AB 307 sounds much more comprehensive than that.
In any case I suspect that many (most?) people have a pretty good idea that copyright law exists and that music, video, books, photos, art, etc. shouldn't be duplicated at will. Anyone who engages in copyright violation does it because their personal interest in doing so exceeds their respect for the copyright holder's rights. You can't teach respect. You can't beat it into people. You can only earn it.
KDE is bloated with options, compared to what? I assume you are referring to Gnome which has virtually no options, and little possibility to make it work the way I want it to? A long time ago I was a Gnome user, but one day I started toying around with KDE... and I couldn't bear to go back into Gnome after a while. I could make this desktop work just the way I wanted
And that is exactly what I found recently, too. Gnome seemed to be standing still in terms of features and configurability; It took some wading through KDE's options, but the ability to make the thing behave the way I want is worth all of Gnome and then some, IMNSHO.
No, KDE doesn't win over Gnome in every way, but KDE does address my needs overall better than Gnome. Options are good. More options are better. But that's just me and my needs. I cannot and won't dictate how others address their needs (hence: gimme options!) To each his/her own.
Yes, the technically competent can and will get around this, and those intending to violate copyright law almost certainly won't be stopped by it. The vast majority of people won't care, either, because the law does not affect how they use that content ("I put the disc in my DVD player and it plays. What's the problem?")
So in the end this type of law does not do at all what it says on the surface, but has at least three "hidden" effects that I cannot help but suspect are the actual intent:
It makes life difficult for the more flexible and demanding users of content ("I can't listen to/watch the disc on my computer."),
It creates precedent for other content providers to come up with equivalent restrictive technologies and then clamor for technology endorsement laws to be passed,
With the government's help the content industry won't have to adapt to the evolving market, but is put on "life support", instead, to allow them to reverse the evolution of the market and take control of it.
The bottom line is that government is increasingly collaborating with big business at the cost of freedom, using propaganda (read: marketing speak and misleading agenda) to convince a majority of the population (including those who are supposed to represent us) not to object and just go along with it. It's not an evil plot, just the trend of those in power to distrust the freedoms of others and thus grab more power to secure their own position.
Evil is as evil does. It's not the intent, in other words, but the actions and their results. A company is evil if, as a whole, it harms others when a more benevolent and mutually beneficial act was available.
If Google lives their motto and remains successful, I'll be cheering them on all the way because evil practices have given Microsoft a lot of mileage and I, for one, would rather see a cooperative field where quality and innovation wins out over mere marketing forces.
Not to pick nits, but here in Maryland (USA) it is illegal to record anyone without their knowledge (I don't know what that might mean for traffic and security cameras but that's another issue). It is far easier/safer for call centers to warn all of their callers about possible recordings than to warn only those who happen to be calling from a state that prohibits secret recordings.
That said, messages left on answering machines are legal recordings (at least in Maryland) because the party leaving the message has got to be aware of the fact that they're not in a live conversation but leaving a recording; besides one-sided "conversations" differ fairly obviously from two-sided ones. Such recordings would thus be admissible in a court of law. Leaving threats on an answering machine is a truly dumb idea, for example.
IANAL, but a lawyer explained it to me that way not long ago (as part of legal advise). And yes, laws differ across the states and countries, and may even change over time, so it's best to err on the side of caution.
At this stage SETI is concerned with finding signals that originate from extraterrestial civilizations. Once we've found such a signal, decoded, and understood it, the issue of actually responding to it will likely be discussed for decades (and may die in committee).
Considering that our species is in the process of devouring our world (by converting all of Earth's biomass into human biomass) we seem naturally predisposed to project our own intentions onto another species. Hence Carrigan's FUD (and that from others he quotes).
Statements such as the following...
...the probability of a contaminated SETI signal is difficult to estimate; but if we never consider it the chance of infection is not zero
are blanket bulls--t: the chance of a million apocalyptic scenarios is non-zero; the chance that an interdimensional planet-eating space frog will consume the Earth next Thursday is non-zero, too.
Overall, there are myriad problems vastly more likely to do us (and our world) harm than extraterrestial computer viruses.
50L to go 500kM is 10kM to the liter. Or about 23MPG. Not good.
It depends entirely on the production cost of these pellets, hence the price to the consumer. This price may be high initially but economies of scale should drop it. But even if the price for the consumer is about equivalent to gasoline, the lower (or maybe nil) environmental impact of this type of hydrogen fuel is likely worth the switch.
An occasional spelling error is one thing, pervasive and unabashed sloppiness is quite another.
In face-to-face communication body language (e.g. posture, facial expression, gesticulation) as well as personal appearance and tone are part of the communication. In writing all but the words are stripped away and the form alone must stand in for your appearance and delivery.
When written communication is replete with sloppiness and errors the impression is unavoidable that the writer is lacking in skill or care, perhaps both. The face-to-face equivalent might be of someone with ketchup down the front of his shirt, his zipper down, and shoes untied. That doesn't mean the person or the ideas are unworthy, but it does detract from and likely diminshes the impact of what the person wanted to convey.
Security is an afterthought with Microsoft's stuff. Yes the security capabilities are in place but they're a major hurdle to operability, so for the average user they seem hardly worth using (if the user is even made aware of the capabilities). Microsoft's legacy of offering no security at all (until about five years ago) now requires them to retrain thousands of developers and millions of users who have grown quite accustomed to the way things are. Microsoft has to overcome an enormous(!) momentum of un-security consciousness.
Unix and its offspring, on the other hand, were built with security in mind from day one (more or less). As a result Unix requires a bit more thought from the user but (as mentioned earlier) Redhat and others have demonstrated quite effectively, IMO, that the machine can ask for elevated privileges when necessary at which point things magically "just work."
The question now is whether Microsoft gets enough of it right in their next major release to finally bridge that hurdle, and whether they do it in a new and different way from Unix that doesn't help users jump from one O/S to the other.
Slashdot Mirror
The human brain is perfectly capable of functioning optimally if given enough sleep and supplied with decent food. Performance enhancing substances become a "necessity" only when you've compromised your brain's health. And keeping that up (covering up the health deficit) for any length of time is only going to make matters worse.
Of course, eating well and getting plenty of sleep is just soooo uncool. Better seek salvation in a bottle of pills...
Many other countries do not have this, so you could call in an anonymous report to the police that so-and-so has been using drugs or has nasty stuff on their computer or whatever and it is then up to the victim to prove somehow that the allegations are false.
Where does Sweden fall with respect to this?
ADA? The American Dental Association?!
It's a ploy to connect the NSA's phone records with your identity. Now the government has a corresponding "business relationship" with you. It may consider you a terrorist for draining them of funds. Instead of merely correllating your calls they can justify actually listening in on them.
And you know the really scary thing? I'm not even sure if I'm joking...
AP Wire (2019): In the news today, once again the military claims to have "lost" an F-22 somewhere on the grounds of Andrews Airforce Base (AFB). Said Captain J. Andrews (no relation): "I could have sworn I parked the thing right over there. Last night's storm must have blown the locator-ribbon off the nose or something."
IANAL but when you're involved in a lawsuit your most prudent course of action is to say nothing whatsoever (in public) about the suit. Let your legal counsel do all the talking. Your lack of legal knowledge could complicate or even compromise your case.
That would certainly explain why he's gone public with this only now.
And given the facts as Jason presents them, I am astounded that the first judge to look at the facts hasn't asked a couple of pointed questions and brought the gavel down on the lawyers who are forcing their representation on Jason against his will and under threat! Is our legal system really so convoluted and messed-up that some lawyer can decide against your will to represent you and you become trapped in obligation as a result? What am I missing here?
I've seen too many supposed programmers become all but worthless as soon as the IDE fails to deliver. They don't know what's wrong because they don't know what the IDE was doing for them in the first place, and as a result are clueless on how to go about fixing the problem or get on with their work.
A programmer who relies on an IDE to the exlusion of real knowledge of the underlying operations is like a car mechanic who can change the oil in your car but couldn't figure out why the car is overheating because he doesn't even know to check the water pump, for example, much less figure out how to replace it.
Never choose convenience over understanding, or one day your clock shall blink 12:00.
When the federal government invokes the "national security" card over and over again as it has in recent months and years, it is no longer national security that's at issue but abuse of power and the covering up of mistakes.
I'm definitely much in favor of Jason's design, too. You can look at any section of the page (scroll a good part down) and it is recognizably Slashdot, just more polished (but without going over the top). The text is the proper (default) size, too (too many sites think the default text should be a lot smaller than my chosen default), and to top it all off the design is clean, functional, and feels just right. My reaction to it was an immediate "oh yes!"
Good work, Jason! You have my vote.
Google can't be full, there's still space left on Earth!
That's right. Implanting the RFID tag robs you of the option of leaving it home when you really don't care to have it around and be trackable, unless your real intention is to explore the psychological implications of being robbed of that choice and having to learn to live with yet another freedom abridged (by free will, no less... how twisted is that?)
Provided that this policy is advertised and made clear to the customer (and not buried in a sea of light gray 6pt text) I would consider these overall priorities (voip > ssh > http > bt) to be reasonable real world compromises.
What I would object to is being told that I have a certain pipe (implied to be free of any restrictions) when certain services are actually stomped into the carpet at a time when I may require them or are even blocked completely without me even being informed of it.
Handling firearms, driving a car, and skydiving involve potentially life-threatening risks to yourself and/or others. Educating people not to point the gun at your neighbor, obeying traffic laws, and putting your parachute on before you jump out of the airplane are a wee bit more critical than educating people about copyright laws.
Of course, a brief (5 to 10 minutes) mention of copyright law is not a bad idea, so long as it's general and not limited to content of interest only to the RIAA/MPAA, but AB 307 sounds much more comprehensive than that.
In any case I suspect that many (most?) people have a pretty good idea that copyright law exists and that music, video, books, photos, art, etc. shouldn't be duplicated at will. Anyone who engages in copyright violation does it because their personal interest in doing so exceeds their respect for the copyright holder's rights. You can't teach respect. You can't beat it into people. You can only earn it.
And that is exactly what I found recently, too. Gnome seemed to be standing still in terms of features and configurability; It took some wading through KDE's options, but the ability to make the thing behave the way I want is worth all of Gnome and then some, IMNSHO.
No, KDE doesn't win over Gnome in every way, but KDE does address my needs overall better than Gnome. Options are good. More options are better. But that's just me and my needs. I cannot and won't dictate how others address their needs (hence: gimme options!) To each his/her own.
So in the end this type of law does not do at all what it says on the surface, but has at least three "hidden" effects that I cannot help but suspect are the actual intent:
The bottom line is that government is increasingly collaborating with big business at the cost of freedom, using propaganda (read: marketing speak and misleading agenda) to convince a majority of the population (including those who are supposed to represent us) not to object and just go along with it. It's not an evil plot, just the trend of those in power to distrust the freedoms of others and thus grab more power to secure their own position.
Some people are more equal than others.
Evil is as evil does. It's not the intent, in other words, but the actions and their results. A company is evil if, as a whole, it harms others when a more benevolent and mutually beneficial act was available.
If Google lives their motto and remains successful, I'll be cheering them on all the way because evil practices have given Microsoft a lot of mileage and I, for one, would rather see a cooperative field where quality and innovation wins out over mere marketing forces.
Not to pick nits, but here in Maryland (USA) it is illegal to record anyone without their knowledge (I don't know what that might mean for traffic and security cameras but that's another issue). It is far easier/safer for call centers to warn all of their callers about possible recordings than to warn only those who happen to be calling from a state that prohibits secret recordings.
That said, messages left on answering machines are legal recordings (at least in Maryland) because the party leaving the message has got to be aware of the fact that they're not in a live conversation but leaving a recording; besides one-sided "conversations" differ fairly obviously from two-sided ones. Such recordings would thus be admissible in a court of law. Leaving threats on an answering machine is a truly dumb idea, for example.
IANAL, but a lawyer explained it to me that way not long ago (as part of legal advise). And yes, laws differ across the states and countries, and may even change over time, so it's best to err on the side of caution.
Considering that our species is in the process of devouring our world (by converting all of Earth's biomass into human biomass) we seem naturally predisposed to project our own intentions onto another species. Hence Carrigan's FUD (and that from others he quotes).
Statements such as the following...are blanket bulls--t: the chance of a million apocalyptic scenarios is non-zero; the chance that an interdimensional planet-eating space frog will consume the Earth next Thursday is non-zero, too.
Overall, there are myriad problems vastly more likely to do us (and our world) harm than extraterrestial computer viruses.
No, it's called Microsoft.
Come one, nobody else thought to blame Microsoft? Must be Monday...
Maybe Sony's rootkit was meant to target The Warden: Sony (EverQuest) vs. Blizzard (World of Warcraft)? Conspiracy theories are so much fun!
Maybe they should have paid me the big bucks on my patent "Method for Optimal Evaluation of Patentable Inventions"...
An occasional spelling error is one thing, pervasive and unabashed sloppiness is quite another.
In face-to-face communication body language (e.g. posture, facial expression, gesticulation) as well as personal appearance and tone are part of the communication. In writing all but the words are stripped away and the form alone must stand in for your appearance and delivery.
When written communication is replete with sloppiness and errors the impression is unavoidable that the writer is lacking in skill or care, perhaps both. The face-to-face equivalent might be of someone with ketchup down the front of his shirt, his zipper down, and shoes untied. That doesn't mean the person or the ideas are unworthy, but it does detract from and likely diminshes the impact of what the person wanted to convey.
Security is an afterthought with Microsoft's stuff. Yes the security capabilities are in place but they're a major hurdle to operability, so for the average user they seem hardly worth using (if the user is even made aware of the capabilities). Microsoft's legacy of offering no security at all (until about five years ago) now requires them to retrain thousands of developers and millions of users who have grown quite accustomed to the way things are. Microsoft has to overcome an enormous(!) momentum of un-security consciousness.
Unix and its offspring, on the other hand, were built with security in mind from day one (more or less). As a result Unix requires a bit more thought from the user but (as mentioned earlier) Redhat and others have demonstrated quite effectively, IMO, that the machine can ask for elevated privileges when necessary at which point things magically "just work."
The question now is whether Microsoft gets enough of it right in their next major release to finally bridge that hurdle, and whether they do it in a new and different way from Unix that doesn't help users jump from one O/S to the other.