They obviously have far too much cash, if they leave it lying about like that. Perhaps they will learn not to keep cash in their front seat.
What if the cash was used to buy bread for my starving family? not so easy of a choice now is it.
What if the stolen secrets are to be used to protect against an unjustified attack against their country? Still not so easy of a choice.
People can come up with all sorts of justifications for stealing things - I suppose whether or not they are valid justifications depends on which side of the fence you're on.
I don't think China's holdings have that kind of power. If they sell prices would fall, rates would rise. I suspect these events might entice additional demand from other investors causing prices to rise and rates to drop. Also, the U.S. economy is currently growing, not collapsing so there is currently nothing to exacerbate. I would hold off on the bomb shelter for now.
China "owns more about $1.2 trillion in bills, notes and bonds" -- so even if investors wanted to snap up China's holdings as they sell, they'd have to sell other holdings so it would still have a large effect on the world economy.
Entire divisions of intelligence agencies are devoted to stealing secrets from other countries (including "friendly" countries and allies). If the data was readily available, they wouldn't be doing their jobs if they ignored it.
Or are you advocating disbanding all foreign intelligence agencies because no one should be "stealing" any data that's not been made public through official channels?
Whatever, its not like its going to start WW3... moving on.
If the Chinese use the data appropriately, it can stop WW3 from ever starting by giving them the chance to disable our defenses through software without firing a single shot. They just need to get a Chinese Jeff Goldblum to upload a virus to our mother ship with his Chinese made Macbook.
"This is what I was wearing when China stole my weapons schematics. Tell me I asked for it."
Fuck off with your victim blaming, China. Pricks.
Sometimes blaming the victim is warranted. If I park my Ferrari in a bad part of town with the windows open and a buck full of cash on the front seat, I don't have much room to complain when someone steals the cash (and maybe the car).
Likewise, if I have top secret military blueprints that not even an average US citizen is allowed to view, if I don't lock up the data securely, then I really shouldn't whine when someone steals it. I knew the data was valuable, I knew people would want to steal it, so I should have locked it up more securely and the data certainly shouldn't have been available through the internet. Why wasn't the data air-gapped away from the public internet?
Well, considering that the US DOD is just about the only agency that tracks everything into orbit (other than Russia but we cooperate and share significantly with them, so it's about the same) pretty much everyone has to ask their permission first. Otherwise they risk slamming into some piece of space debris, micro satellite or other very bad thing. The Europeans have a pretty good system now, but they don't track as many objects or as many small objects as the US does.
So, really it's about practicality. No insurer and no sane person would put a space plane into orbit without first checking with the DOD that that orbit was safe. Given that most launches I've been party to have had to have their orbit adjusted some either in launch time or actual orbital trajectories due to the potential for collisions, I think that they would have a really, really hard time getting any insurance or any sane person to sign on if the DOD wasn't going to vet the trajectory before launch. Sure, a satellite could risk it, but not an orbital space tourism plane with people on board.
That seems like awfully bad publicity for the US -- "India launched it's first space plane today, which was quickly annihilated with the loss of all on board after slamming into a secret US satellite. When asked for comment the US DoD said 'Well yeah, they asked if it was safe, but since we don't want other countries launching people into space without our permission, we wouldn't tell them that they were going to run into it.'"
Wouldn't the DOJ just LOVE this if they could force manufacturers to give them remote access. With a warrant, of course (wink wink!) Is there nothing in a modern house that can't be re-purposed to spy on us anymore?
The DOJ doesn't need access to the lights and appliances in your home to keep track of you when the power company's smart meter will give them nearly the same information. With detailed power usage, they can easily tell when you're at home, when you go to bed, when you wash your clothes, etc.
Few people have an app or web page to control their home appliances, but we're supposed to believe that we want gesture control?
Home automation is nothing new and there are certainly people that *can* control their home lighting and appliances remotely, but few even bother because it's not that useful in practice.
If I forget to turn off the lights when I leave the house, I'm probably not going to remember that the lights are on when I'm at the office and turn them off from there. I'd be better off with a smarter house that turns on the appropriate level of lighting when I walk in a room and turn off all the lights and appliances for me when I leave.
Gesture based music control would probably be more handy than remote lighting control.
Take this system one step further and then it might actually be useful for helping protect citizens: have the system identify the person the officer is talking to (facial recognition, NFC beacon from my phone, whatever) and when the video is uploaded to the cloud, make it automatically uploaded to the private cloud storage owned by everyone in the video.
Otherwise, the video is likely to "accidentally" disappear when it shows wrongdoing by the police.
Ah fuck off. It's actually a good and interesting question to see what the various specialists come up with.
Nah, it's called getting a set of basic user requirements and then looking through a set of products to see which match the list. This just reeks of laziness and namedropping on slashdot so someone will post the solution for you.
By the way, I'm looking for a toaster on linux, it needs to be able to have 6 settings, usuable by many people (including students). I need to be able to develop toast on it, but it also needs to run an operational toasting environment, preferably on the same hardware. I would like it to be fully scriptable, and I need to be able to hook it up to an LDAP. It would be nice if it came included with a coffeemachine, which should also be fully scriptable. I've found the Coffee HOWTO, but haven't bothered reading it. Could you guys give me an opinion on how to adapt this to my toaster project? I've looked at relays, resistors and capacitors... They all seem very nice.
Please spend a little more time reading the manuals and typing in a few requests in Google before posting this to Ask Slashdot: be a bit more professional.
Fuck it, karma to burn anyway.
You could try doing a little basic research before posting your question.
Here's a toaster that meets more of your requirements, though it runs NetBSD rather than Linux:
Probably the same reason that Greece bought a billion dollars' worth of German submarines in 2010 ( http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703636404575352991108208712.html ). Italy cooperates with Germany on building subs, and they've been buying since 2008. Why? Military-industrial complex: there's sufficient vested interest, so wasteful projects will be pushed through legislatures and bureaucracies because the right people will be paid to support them. The continuation of the projects ensures that funds for corruption will be replenished, because corruption is remarkably self-sustaining (hence why it's so hard to root out).
Or maybe they realized that keeping good relations with an Ally that has the largest defense budget in the world means acting as a puppet for that Ally in a "you're either with us or against us" way, so they want their own defense force so they don't have so much military dependence on that Ally.
How does someone in 2013 miscalculate the displacement of seawater?
In the old days, they would have constructed a scale model before construction even started to measure displacement, drag, etc.
Now that the computer can calculate the exact displacement and model the hydrodynamics of the sub, there's no need to build a model since the computer is always correct.
I bet back then, some engineer with a sliderule would have noticed the discrepancy.
My reaction to your wife complaining about not integrating easily into "American" life. She chose to come here so suck it up. I haven't heard of any other countries accommodating my desire to not have to learn their system when I travel. Would they be anymore likely to accommodate me if I moved there?
What are you talking about? I should forbid her from complaining about it being hard to remember all of the units and the relationships between them?
She's not asking the supermarket to sell milk in liters instead of quarts, but she might ask me how many cups are in a pint (which I can never remember so I have to look it up), or when she sees something in a catalog, she might ask me how big 16" is. I guess I fail as a husband by answering her question instead of telling her to suck it up and look it up herself if it's so damn important to her.
Why is it that "the world" seems to complain about Americans always expecting things to be American everywhere else but they fail to see themselves complaining that in America everything isn't like the rest of the world?
Why is it that America claims to be all about freedom of speech, but if someone from outside of the country dares to complain about some aspect of American society/culture, then that person is told to suck it up and to stop trying to change things because America is just fine the way it is and never needs to change because we're "different" and we like it that way?
As for dividing into five parts instead of four? Why? Just use four and serve slightly larger portions.
That was her point - instead of dividing by four, why not just divide by 5? So the metric system isn't really any worse for dividing portions.
Why is the metric system not natural? It makes for nice even numbers on road signs, instead of the common 35mph and 55mph, you have 50km/hr and 100km/hr.
Considering that 35/55 mph aren't especially close to 50/100 km/hr (35 mph ~ 56 km/h, 55 mph ~ 88 km/h), this piece of "logic" is as specious as any I've seen in this duscussion.
You have a different definition of "close" than me - to me, 13% seems awfully close when dealing with something as imprecise as a speed limit. People certainly drive more than 10% +/- away from the speed limit. If speed limits were somehow scientifically or statistically proven to be accurate to within 10%, then every stretch of road would have a new speed limit every time there's a curve or cross street, and speed limits would often be more exact numbers like 33mph, 37mph, etc.
It would a frivolous waste of money we dont have to fix something thats not broken.
However, what makes it s truly broken unit system is that it uses the unit pound for both mass and weight. Yes there have been "hacks" of the system to bring them inline with physical reality so you have the "avoirdupois pound" meaning a mass and the "pound" meaning force. However this means that the units are not clear: when you say "pound" do you mean force or mass? If you need to tweak your unit system to make it consistent with physics that's not really a good sign is it?
Scientists already use the Metric system, and few people who live on earth and are not scientists need to make a distinction between weight and mass.
Just a big waste of taxpayer money for something purely cosmetic. It would a frivolous waste of money we dont have to fix something thats not broken. I already pay too many taxes as it is. We need to stop spending on frivolous crap like this. It would confuse the hell out of everyone and there are no real reasons or benefits, just nonsense excuses. I actually find the english system to be perfectly fine and useable on road signs. No need to fix something thats not broken. Take your awkward, unnatural metric system back to europe where it belongs. i like the mile and foot just fine and I actually prefer this on our signs.
Why is the metric system not natural? It makes for nice even numbers on road signs, instead of the common 35mph and 55mph, you have 50km/hr and 100km/hr.
I grew up in the USA and can switch seamlessly among metric and american units of length and volume, but I still need to mentally convert units of weight (well, ok, mass, I don't regularly use Newtons) and temperature in my head. My wife didn't move to the USA until she was in her late 20's, so she needs to convert measurements to the metric system to understand it. She learned English in school, but they didn't teach american units.
She still rolls her eyes when I try to explain how the american system is better for dividing into smaller parts -- if you have a recipe that calls for 16 ounces of butter, and you want to cut it by 1/4, then it's easy to use 4 ounces. Then she said "What if you want to cut it by 1/5", and I didn't have a good answer for that.
Try to convert 100km/h to mph while the cop is just behind you, and the driving instructor next you, and you have to make the decision in a few seconds, meaning calculation from one system to another, and taking care of the passing by cars, and the good looking chicken crossing the street, and the singing birds, and...and....
Every car I've owned in the past 10 years has had both km/h and mph markings on the speedometer - though they've all been german and/or Japanese cars.
Do some cars only show mph?
Anyone that runs 10K races will be able to do the conversion quite easily, 10 km=6.2 mi so 100km/hr = 62mph
The biggest battery drain on my phone is always the display, followed by "Cell standby". How is a CPU and chipset able to promise a 50% increase in battery life when it's not even the biggest power user in the phone?
Because if simply making something illegal prevented it from happening, we wouldn't need jails.
So you make activities surrounding the prohibited activity illegal to make it harder to pull off. A truly dedicated criminal will get around all of this, but the more barriers you put up, the more impulsive idiots will be stopped. You won't eliminate the target crime, but you will reduce it. That's the theory of gun control -- you can't stop those who really, really want to kill someone else, but you can make it much more rare and reduce tragedies like suicide.
Right, because the drug laws have virtually stopped all illegal drug use! Well, I guess not - things are so lopsided that I can buy Crystal Meth faster and easier (no need to even get out of my car) than buying over-the-counter sudafed at the Pharmacy.
Sometimes making something illegal just means more people end up in jail without decreasing crime or making anyone safer or better off. It would be nice if a cocaine user could purchase his fix at the corner drug store so he knows he's getting a standard dose that hasn't been cut with drain cleaner or other noxious substances. And maybe it would be affordable enough that he wouldn't have to steal a car to pay for it.
Sure, some people will abuse the drug if it's readily available (just like there are alcholics), but those people are likely *already* abusing the drug through illicit purchases.
Why are ISP's allowed to sell an 'unlimited' plan that has limits? Isn't that against false advertising laws? "Unlimited" has a well known and very specific meaning, and that meaning does not include limits, not even "30,000 percent higher than everyone else".
One word "Statistics".
99.5% of the users will never ever get close to the "cap" , So the powers that be all it to be called unlimited. Combine that with ToSs that almost guarantee that anything that gets you close to the limit would be a ToS violation and you have "unlimited service"
Fine, then make it truly unlimited and eat the cost for that 0.5% that exceed the cap, or set a cap and advertise it so people can shop around for the best deal - if ISP A has an "unlimited" plan with a 50GB cap and ISP B has an "unlimited" plan with a 500GB cap, the consumer shouldn't have to dig through a 10 page ToS to find out what the limit of the unlimited plan is.
The bottom line is that the service is offered for cheaper. If you think everyone wants your 77TB service, you are wrong. The ISP offers a rate and a service that most people find acceptable. They also offer dedicated services for you 77TB folks. The ISP can either charge everyone the same assuming they might be a 77TB user or they can tier their service and offer prices that most people will pay.
I have no problem with tiered prices and different limits and restrictions, as long as those limits and restrictions are clearly spelled out in marketing collateral.
Why are ISP's allowed to sell an 'unlimited' plan that has limits? Isn't that against false advertising laws? "Unlimited" has a well known and very specific meaning, and that meaning does not include limits, not even "30,000 percent higher than everyone else".
The limit isn't on the data here; it's on the form of use. They asked what he was doing, and it turned out that what he was doing qualifies as business, rather than residential use. And at that point they told him that he'd need to change account types.
I don't think that's what TFA says:
[He] wanted to know WTF I was doing. I told him I have a full rack and run servers, and then he said, 'Well, that's against our ToS.'
Does their ToS really say that if you have a server in a rack then it's a violation? I have my home media and DVR servers and disks in a rack (granted, it's a 1/4 rack in the garage, not a full rack). Am I violating some ToS because I put the server in a rack instead of on the floor?
Why are ISP's allowed to sell an 'unlimited' plan that has limits? Isn't that against false advertising laws? "Unlimited" has a well known and very specific meaning, and that meaning does not include limits, not even "30,000 percent higher than everyone else".
Surely it would be better to make killing people illegal and not try to legislate what people can construct at home in 60 seconds after a 3D printing is completely crazy.
If killing people is already illegal, then why do they think that if they make something illegal that can be done secretly and completely undetectable in the privacy of one's home is going to prevent any crime? Surely the criminal that is intent on using a gun illegally isn't going to shy away from downloading plans and printing them.
Whoops, missed a word there. Why is there still no way to edit commands after posting? I'd happily lose mod points on a post if I could edit it to correct typos.
Doubtless they'll try something with bullets. But making your own bullets isn't that hard either.
There are a dozen over the counter chemicals that could be purchased, mixed, and cooked to create explosives similar to gun powder. And then all you're dealing with is the bullet jacket, bullet, and primer. I've seen hunters that refill their own ammunition. They pick up the spent cartridge and save them. Then when they've got nothing better to do they wash them off, replace the primer, fill the cartridge with more powder, and squeeze a new bullet into it. The jackets don't even need to be made out brass or metal for that matter. A fully paper cartridge is entirely possible.
And beyond that, the machines that can print in metal are dropping in price as we speak. Still far beyond the means of the end user but you could say the same thing of the plastic prototype printers in the 1980s. In 30 years we will probably have 3d printers printing in metal.
If you have a CNC miling machine or lathe to shape bullets, then you could design a 3D printable gun that has multiple barrels like a Gatling Gun, just put your gunpowder directly in the barrel before tamping down the bullet.
Reloading would be slow, but most criminals probably aren't in sustained gunfights where they need more than 6 or so shots.
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They obviously have far too much cash, if they leave it lying about like that. Perhaps they will learn not to keep cash in their front seat.
What if the cash was used to buy bread for my starving family? not so easy of a choice now is it.
What if the stolen secrets are to be used to protect against an unjustified attack against their country? Still not so easy of a choice.
People can come up with all sorts of justifications for stealing things - I suppose whether or not they are valid justifications depends on which side of the fence you're on.
I don't think China's holdings have that kind of power. If they sell prices would fall, rates would rise. I suspect these events might entice additional demand from other investors causing prices to rise and rates to drop. Also, the U.S. economy is currently growing, not collapsing so there is currently nothing to exacerbate. I would hold off on the bomb shelter for now.
China "owns more about $1.2 trillion in bills, notes and bonds" -- so even if investors wanted to snap up China's holdings as they sell, they'd have to sell other holdings so it would still have a large effect on the world economy.
Still doesn't justify stealing it.
Entire divisions of intelligence agencies are devoted to stealing secrets from other countries (including "friendly" countries and allies). If the data was readily available, they wouldn't be doing their jobs if they ignored it.
Or are you advocating disbanding all foreign intelligence agencies because no one should be "stealing" any data that's not been made public through official channels?
Whatever, its not like its going to start WW3... moving on.
If the Chinese use the data appropriately, it can stop WW3 from ever starting by giving them the chance to disable our defenses through software without firing a single shot. They just need to get a Chinese Jeff Goldblum to upload a virus to our mother ship with his Chinese made Macbook.
"This is what I was wearing when China stole my weapons schematics. Tell me I asked for it."
Fuck off with your victim blaming, China. Pricks.
Sometimes blaming the victim is warranted. If I park my Ferrari in a bad part of town with the windows open and a buck full of cash on the front seat, I don't have much room to complain when someone steals the cash (and maybe the car).
Likewise, if I have top secret military blueprints that not even an average US citizen is allowed to view, if I don't lock up the data securely, then I really shouldn't whine when someone steals it. I knew the data was valuable, I knew people would want to steal it, so I should have locked it up more securely and the data certainly shouldn't have been available through the internet. Why wasn't the data air-gapped away from the public internet?
Well, considering that the US DOD is just about the only agency that tracks everything into orbit (other than Russia but we cooperate and share significantly with them, so it's about the same) pretty much everyone has to ask their permission first. Otherwise they risk slamming into some piece of space debris, micro satellite or other very bad thing. The Europeans have a pretty good system now, but they don't track as many objects or as many small objects as the US does.
So, really it's about practicality. No insurer and no sane person would put a space plane into orbit without first checking with the DOD that that orbit was safe. Given that most launches I've been party to have had to have their orbit adjusted some either in launch time or actual orbital trajectories due to the potential for collisions, I think that they would have a really, really hard time getting any insurance or any sane person to sign on if the DOD wasn't going to vet the trajectory before launch. Sure, a satellite could risk it, but not an orbital space tourism plane with people on board.
That seems like awfully bad publicity for the US -- "India launched it's first space plane today, which was quickly annihilated with the loss of all on board after slamming into a secret US satellite. When asked for comment the US DoD said 'Well yeah, they asked if it was safe, but since we don't want other countries launching people into space without our permission, we wouldn't tell them that they were going to run into it.'"
Wouldn't the DOJ just LOVE this if they could force manufacturers to give them remote access. With a warrant, of course (wink wink!) Is there nothing in a modern house that can't be re-purposed to spy on us anymore?
The DOJ doesn't need access to the lights and appliances in your home to keep track of you when the power company's smart meter will give them nearly the same information. With detailed power usage, they can easily tell when you're at home, when you go to bed, when you wash your clothes, etc.
Few people have an app or web page to control their home appliances, but we're supposed to believe that we want gesture control?
Home automation is nothing new and there are certainly people that *can* control their home lighting and appliances remotely, but few even bother because it's not that useful in practice.
If I forget to turn off the lights when I leave the house, I'm probably not going to remember that the lights are on when I'm at the office and turn them off from there. I'd be better off with a smarter house that turns on the appropriate level of lighting when I walk in a room and turn off all the lights and appliances for me when I leave.
Gesture based music control would probably be more handy than remote lighting control.
Take this system one step further and then it might actually be useful for helping protect citizens: have the system identify the person the officer is talking to (facial recognition, NFC beacon from my phone, whatever) and when the video is uploaded to the cloud, make it automatically uploaded to the private cloud storage owned by everyone in the video.
Otherwise, the video is likely to "accidentally" disappear when it shows wrongdoing by the police.
Ah fuck off. It's actually a good and interesting question to see what the various specialists come up with.
Nah, it's called getting a set of basic user requirements and then looking through a set of products to see which match the list. This just reeks of laziness and namedropping on slashdot so someone will post the solution for you.
By the way, I'm looking for a toaster on linux, it needs to be able to have 6 settings, usuable by many people (including students). I need to be able to develop toast on it, but it also needs to run an operational toasting environment, preferably on the same hardware. I would like it to be fully scriptable, and I need to be able to hook it up to an LDAP. It would be nice if it came included with a coffeemachine, which should also be fully scriptable. I've found the Coffee HOWTO, but haven't bothered reading it. Could you guys give me an opinion on how to adapt this to my toaster project? I've looked at relays, resistors and capacitors... They all seem very nice.
Please spend a little more time reading the manuals and typing in a few requests in Google before posting this to Ask Slashdot: be a bit more professional.
Fuck it, karma to burn anyway.
You could try doing a little basic research before posting your question.
Here's a toaster that meets more of your requirements, though it runs NetBSD rather than Linux:
http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/1018836/toaster-pc-runs-bsd-makes-toast
Let us know if that doesn't meet your requirements for some reason, there may be some NetBSD packages that can do what you need.
Probably the same reason that Greece bought a billion dollars' worth of German submarines in 2010 ( http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703636404575352991108208712.html ). Italy cooperates with Germany on building subs, and they've been buying since 2008. Why? Military-industrial complex: there's sufficient vested interest, so wasteful projects will be pushed through legislatures and bureaucracies because the right people will be paid to support them. The continuation of the projects ensures that funds for corruption will be replenished, because corruption is remarkably self-sustaining (hence why it's so hard to root out).
Or maybe they realized that keeping good relations with an Ally that has the largest defense budget in the world means acting as a puppet for that Ally in a "you're either with us or against us" way, so they want their own defense force so they don't have so much military dependence on that Ally.
How does someone in 2013 miscalculate the displacement of seawater?
In the old days, they would have constructed a scale model before construction even started to measure displacement, drag, etc.
Now that the computer can calculate the exact displacement and model the hydrodynamics of the sub, there's no need to build a model since the computer is always correct.
I bet back then, some engineer with a sliderule would have noticed the discrepancy.
My reaction to your wife complaining about not integrating easily into "American" life. She chose to come here so suck it up. I haven't heard of any other countries accommodating my desire to not have to learn their system when I travel. Would they be anymore likely to accommodate me if I moved there?
What are you talking about? I should forbid her from complaining about it being hard to remember all of the units and the relationships between them?
She's not asking the supermarket to sell milk in liters instead of quarts, but she might ask me how many cups are in a pint (which I can never remember so I have to look it up), or when she sees something in a catalog, she might ask me how big 16" is. I guess I fail as a husband by answering her question instead of telling her to suck it up and look it up herself if it's so damn important to her.
Why is it that "the world" seems to complain about Americans always expecting things to be American everywhere else but they fail to see themselves complaining that in America everything isn't like the rest of the world?
Why is it that America claims to be all about freedom of speech, but if someone from outside of the country dares to complain about some aspect of American society/culture, then that person is told to suck it up and to stop trying to change things because America is just fine the way it is and never needs to change because we're "different" and we like it that way?
As for dividing into five parts instead of four? Why? Just use four and serve slightly larger portions.
That was her point - instead of dividing by four, why not just divide by 5? So the metric system isn't really any worse for dividing portions.
Considering that 35/55 mph aren't especially close to 50/100 km/hr (35 mph ~ 56 km/h, 55 mph ~ 88 km/h), this piece of "logic" is as specious as any I've seen in this duscussion.
You have a different definition of "close" than me - to me, 13% seems awfully close when dealing with something as imprecise as a speed limit. People certainly drive more than 10% +/- away from the speed limit. If speed limits were somehow scientifically or statistically proven to be accurate to within 10%, then every stretch of road would have a new speed limit every time there's a curve or cross street, and speed limits would often be more exact numbers like 33mph, 37mph, etc.
It would a frivolous waste of money we dont have to fix something thats not broken.
However, what makes it s truly broken unit system is that it uses the unit pound for both mass and weight. Yes there have been "hacks" of the system to bring them inline with physical reality so you have the "avoirdupois pound" meaning a mass and the "pound" meaning force. However this means that the units are not clear: when you say "pound" do you mean force or mass? If you need to tweak your unit system to make it consistent with physics that's not really a good sign is it?
Scientists already use the Metric system, and few people who live on earth and are not scientists need to make a distinction between weight and mass.
Just a big waste of taxpayer money for something purely cosmetic. It would a frivolous waste of money we dont have to fix something thats not broken. I already pay too many taxes as it is. We need to stop spending on frivolous crap like this. It would confuse the hell out of everyone and there are no real reasons or benefits, just nonsense excuses. I actually find the english system to be perfectly fine and useable on road signs. No need to fix something thats not broken. Take your awkward, unnatural metric system back to europe where it belongs. i like the mile and foot just fine and I actually prefer this on our signs.
Why is the metric system not natural? It makes for nice even numbers on road signs, instead of the common 35mph and 55mph, you have 50km/hr and 100km/hr.
I grew up in the USA and can switch seamlessly among metric and american units of length and volume, but I still need to mentally convert units of weight (well, ok, mass, I don't regularly use Newtons) and temperature in my head. My wife didn't move to the USA until she was in her late 20's, so she needs to convert measurements to the metric system to understand it. She learned English in school, but they didn't teach american units.
She still rolls her eyes when I try to explain how the american system is better for dividing into smaller parts -- if you have a recipe that calls for 16 ounces of butter, and you want to cut it by 1/4, then it's easy to use 4 ounces. Then she said "What if you want to cut it by 1/5", and I didn't have a good answer for that.
Try to convert 100km/h to mph while the cop is just behind you, and the driving instructor next you, and you have to make the decision in a few seconds, meaning calculation from one system to another, and taking care of the passing by cars, and the good looking chicken crossing the street, and the singing birds, and...and....
Every car I've owned in the past 10 years has had both km/h and mph markings on the speedometer - though they've all been german and/or Japanese cars.
Do some cars only show mph?
Anyone that runs 10K races will be able to do the conversion quite easily, 10 km=6.2 mi so 100km/hr = 62mph
The biggest battery drain on my phone is always the display, followed by "Cell standby". How is a CPU and chipset able to promise a 50% increase in battery life when it's not even the biggest power user in the phone?
Because if simply making something illegal prevented it from happening, we wouldn't need jails.
So you make activities surrounding the prohibited activity illegal to make it harder to pull off. A truly dedicated criminal will get around all of this, but the more barriers you put up, the more impulsive idiots will be stopped. You won't eliminate the target crime, but you will reduce it. That's the theory of gun control -- you can't stop those who really, really want to kill someone else, but you can make it much more rare and reduce tragedies like suicide.
Right, because the drug laws have virtually stopped all illegal drug use! Well, I guess not - things are so lopsided that I can buy Crystal Meth faster and easier (no need to even get out of my car) than buying over-the-counter sudafed at the Pharmacy.
Sometimes making something illegal just means more people end up in jail without decreasing crime or making anyone safer or better off. It would be nice if a cocaine user could purchase his fix at the corner drug store so he knows he's getting a standard dose that hasn't been cut with drain cleaner or other noxious substances. And maybe it would be affordable enough that he wouldn't have to steal a car to pay for it.
Sure, some people will abuse the drug if it's readily available (just like there are alcholics), but those people are likely *already* abusing the drug through illicit purchases.
Why are ISP's allowed to sell an 'unlimited' plan that has limits? Isn't that against false advertising laws? "Unlimited" has a well known and very specific meaning, and that meaning does not include limits, not even "30,000 percent higher than everyone else".
One word "Statistics".
99.5% of the users will never ever get close to the "cap" , So the powers that be all it to be called unlimited. Combine that with ToSs that almost guarantee that anything that gets you close to the limit would be a ToS violation and you have "unlimited service"
Fine, then make it truly unlimited and eat the cost for that 0.5% that exceed the cap, or set a cap and advertise it so people can shop around for the best deal - if ISP A has an "unlimited" plan with a 50GB cap and ISP B has an "unlimited" plan with a 500GB cap, the consumer shouldn't have to dig through a 10 page ToS to find out what the limit of the unlimited plan is.
The bottom line is that the service is offered for cheaper. If you think everyone wants your 77TB service, you are wrong. The ISP offers a rate and a service that most people find acceptable. They also offer dedicated services for you 77TB folks. The ISP can either charge everyone the same assuming they might be a 77TB user or they can tier their service and offer prices that most people will pay.
I have no problem with tiered prices and different limits and restrictions, as long as those limits and restrictions are clearly spelled out in marketing collateral.
Why are ISP's allowed to sell an 'unlimited' plan that has limits? Isn't that against false advertising laws? "Unlimited" has a well known and very specific meaning, and that meaning does not include limits, not even "30,000 percent higher than everyone else".
The limit isn't on the data here; it's on the form of use. They asked what he was doing, and it turned out that what he was doing qualifies as business, rather than residential use. And at that point they told him that he'd need to change account types.
I don't think that's what TFA says:
[He] wanted to know WTF I was doing. I told him I have a full rack and run servers, and then he said, 'Well, that's against our ToS.'
Does their ToS really say that if you have a server in a rack then it's a violation? I have my home media and DVR servers and disks in a rack (granted, it's a 1/4 rack in the garage, not a full rack). Am I violating some ToS because I put the server in a rack instead of on the floor?
Why are ISP's allowed to sell an 'unlimited' plan that has limits? Isn't that against false advertising laws? "Unlimited" has a well known and very specific meaning, and that meaning does not include limits, not even "30,000 percent higher than everyone else".
Surely it would be better to make killing people illegal and not try to legislate what people can construct at home in 60 seconds after a 3D printing is completely crazy.
If killing people is already illegal, then why do they think that if they make something illegal that can be done secretly and completely undetectable in the privacy of one's home is going to prevent any crime? Surely the criminal that is intent on using a gun illegally isn't going to shy away from downloading plans and printing them.
Whoops, missed a word there. Why is there still no way to edit commands after posting? I'd happily lose mod points on a post if I could edit it to correct typos.
Doubtless they'll try something with bullets. But making your own bullets isn't that hard either.
There are a dozen over the counter chemicals that could be purchased, mixed, and cooked to create explosives similar to gun powder. And then all you're dealing with is the bullet jacket, bullet, and primer. I've seen hunters that refill their own ammunition. They pick up the spent cartridge and save them. Then when they've got nothing better to do they wash them off, replace the primer, fill the cartridge with more powder, and squeeze a new bullet into it. The jackets don't even need to be made out brass or metal for that matter. A fully paper cartridge is entirely possible.
And beyond that, the machines that can print in metal are dropping in price as we speak. Still far beyond the means of the end user but you could say the same thing of the plastic prototype printers in the 1980s. In 30 years we will probably have 3d printers printing in metal.
If you have a CNC miling machine or lathe to shape bullets, then you could design a 3D printable gun that has multiple barrels like a Gatling Gun, just put your gunpowder directly in the barrel before tamping down the bullet.
Reloading would be slow, but most criminals probably aren't in sustained gunfights where they need more than 6 or so shots.