Readiness ratings are based on the Pentagon's "two war" doctrine that proposes extraction from peacekeeping missions, retraining on home bases and deployment to two full size full-scale conflicts e.g., the Pacific and Europe. There's a lot of speculation that such "readiness ratings" are political ploys to get more funding from Congress and cast those who vote against it as unpatriotic. The Cold War is over, and I think if you're going to spend money on security, spend it on intelligence, where it's needed, not on expenditures that are questionable when the biggest threats now are a couple of guys who can't get down with bluejeans and Coke. These problems aren't fixable with a tank, but they're preventable if we know about it.
As for military personnel: you salute the Commander in Chief and I don't give a damn if you're the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs. Presidents are selected by the citizens of the United States of America and you serve at the pleasure of the President. And you don't need a reason past that.
Do you have objective evidence to support that it won't, or is it just a strongly held belief?
It's hard to find objective facts for future events, but we can look at trends: we've had a ratified Bill of Rights since 1791 and been independent since 1776, so yeah, I think it would be prudent to say that it won't all come tumbling down in four years. Of course, I don't know for sure, and neither do you.
We have a pretty good form of term limits; they're called elections. And I have faith in Americans to oust who they believe to be tyrannical or even those they think are ugly. We did it in Concord and we'll do it again. Maybe not this year, but legally winning an election -- and a discussion of the electoral college is for another time -- means the other guys get to take a seat for four years. It sucks, but that's the way it is. If you don't like it, I'm not the one to talk to, at least not this election cycle.
I call it the way I see it, and this is sour grapes. And I'm a liberal Democrat.
I'm not entirely sure if there was a Democratic Senate, House and President that they wouldn't do the same. The issue is not that the political authorities are asserting power, because yanno, it's politics. The problem is that the Republicans are more aggressively pushing their agenda [than normal] without much opposition.
Of all the political quotes I could use here, I'm going to use Dr. Ian Malcolm via Jurassic Park: "Life finds a way." What I mean is, if a majority of people in four years find their life is worse, they vote Bush out. They vote a Democratic congress. People have phenomenal capacity. If you think the people are voting for all the wrong reasons, go back to 11th grade: all men are created equal. People have the right to vote for Bush on an uneducated opinion just as much as people have the right to vote for Kerry.
(For the tin-foil crowd, no, I don't think elections will be made illegal or term limits extended in the next four years. Sorry.)
I hate replying to my own post, but I should note that the difference in the 187'th' has to do with the difference between screen fonts and printer fonts; in the printed version they are aligned perfectly. This was first pointed out by Little Green Footballs.
While I agree with the assertion that these could be retyped, CBS is claiming that's not what has happened, that these are originals.
I've made a superimposed image of Word vs. the documents. They have been lined up according to the period after the '1' in the first paragraph. The 'originals' are in red, the Word version in blue.
You're right; the image in the article should be captioned "scientist demonstrates zooming by enhancing zebra ass, finds fleas". Astounding! Quick, somebody get me $1000, I need a Sony HDTV or my perception of the world will crumble.
Re:And this is an issue because?
on
Open the Debates
·
· Score: 1
I couldnt tell the difference between Kerry and Bush, both wanted to Invade IRAQ, both believe a marriage is between a man and a woman, both want to reform tax
There's a slight, but important flaw you're making here that needs to be pointed out: it's more complex than you're letting on.
Do you think that when somebody casually says something to the press about condoms in the schools or rescheduling marijuana, the President fires them because he cares about it that much and because the penalties for slipping up in the White House are that grave? Absolutely not.
The reason he does it is because it will consume everything the Office is trying to do. It's politics. When you have an opposition party, their job is pretty much to make sure you make those kinds of mistakes or fall on the wrong side of public opinion as much as possible. E.g., the former surgeon general says something about masturbation and suddenly, hearings are scheduled for next Monday, and that's the clip they show in your slam ad. This is the world of professional politics, and what you're hearing is filtered through press secretaries and releases and communications directors and media consultants to keep that from happening.
So when you think of invading IRAQ (which by the way is not an acronym:) think of the fact that it's not as simple as just "he wanted to invade IRAQ". Yes, we're trading lives here, but standing without the Republicans, or in this case, all of Congress in an overwhelmingly lopsided vote, cripples your ability to do anything else. Vote against Iraq, bring gay marriage to the table, bring slavery reps to the table: you will not pass go, not get $200, you will lose the next election to a Republican who's not "soft on terrorism". Soundbite, concession, and suddenly your ability to do just a lot of good in trade for a little you disagree with is replaced by a guy who does 100% of what you disagree with.
And isn't that how it's supposed to work? Our representatives aren't supposed to vote for whatever the hell they choose because "they got gumption", they vote for what will win them elections and keeping people happy, which is our way of them keeping them or firing them.
Frankly, I'm sure many Democratic congressmen would be more than happy to promote gay marriage. But if you have even 51% of a constituency that doesn't want it, you may be going home in two Novembers. Right now, the last thing the Democratic party needs is to put something down as an issue that more than 3/4 of Americans disagree with. Say you're the same as the other guy, and you can focus on other things. The issue will come up in its time, but politics is like a dinosaur: hit it on the head and wait a few years for the tail to move.
They say that politics is the "slow boring of hard boards", and I'm inclined to let it be. We need sweeping changes, yes, we need health care, we need school construction, jobs, etc., but the country runs on compromise much of the time, and if it didn't, 150 million Americans are pissed instead of just grumbling. Everybody gets a little, everybody gives a little, and everyone gets their 15 minutes. Politics is its own check and balance, it insures my President doesn't up and decide to nuke all of Europe one day and burn the constitution in a makeshift Cuban. Though I'm sure right now, that analogy is bad.
I agree that I'm tired of voting for the lesser of who cares, men without conviction who think being President is a good gig. The solution isn't outlawing politics, though, the solution is convincing Good Men to Do Something.
Over the past few days since PoliSlashdot went up, there have been so many discussions of the process it's amazing, and actually very inspiring. But the one thing the Slashdot crowd has yet to discover, in its entire knowledge of every article of the constitution, is that sometimes in a democracy, other people win. "This is the world of professional politics, not adolescent tantrums."
Re:This is much needed!
on
Open the Debates
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
while people are not enthused about John Kerry, they are voting for him because they don't want to vote for Bush
This may be true, but remember that many Presidents have been more passive than Bush and rode the wave of the economy, war, treaties, congress, and so on.
Bush, on the other hand, has been very busy from day one. Literally, I mean the man issued how many executive reversals of generally assumed public policy in his first days?::sigh:: How I wish he would have taken MORE vacation time..
Let's also remember that many people voted Bush not because they wanted to vote Bush, but because of what they felt was a trust issue with the Democratic Party after Clinton. So they were voting for not-Gore. (For those that say Clinton's indiscretions weren't anybody's business but his, remember that his primary indiscretion was never, ever Monica. It was when he lied to the American public in prime time, and made people embarassed for the Office. My father, a straight-down-the-middle moderate, wouldn't vote for anyone from that administration for exactly that reason. I know, I know.. bad reason to vote. But to him, it was immense.)
I don't feel this is totally different from other elections, remember, the presidency is like a four-year term with an option for four more. If it was 2008, it might be different, but this is an election for an incumbent. OF COURSE it's voting for who you don't want.
I understand your point about the electoral college was a little bit different, but I'll tag along because it's a good time to mention it.
In the last four years, I've heard more people talk about reforming the electoral voting system. They proclaim the virtues of direct election without realizing the incredible drawbacks.
We have a senate and a house of representatives in the United States not just for fun, it's because there are states which have miniscule sizes. But, by virtue of geography, tradition, or community, or law, they are designated as one state. California is a state, so is Rhode Island. California gets more votes in the House because they have more people. But Rhode Island gets the same number of votes as California in the *Senate*: 2.
My point is, right now we have Ohio, Michigan, Iowa, Florida -- battleground states. If we implement direct election, then you campaign in New York, Los Angeles, DC, Detroit and Chicago, and you're done; write your speeches.
The electoral college system exists to protect those states with smaller populations from being forgotten. But with the electoral college, as backwards as it may seem, we're campaigning (of all places), in Ohio, Michigan, Iowa, Florida, and places you wouldn't imagine because guess what: their votes count. "And in a country based on the right to be heard, what could be more American than that?"
He was so insistent that everybody who didn't vote Green was ignorant and controlled by the corporations. He used the word ignorant. Nader will save us, he said. Vote Green. Nader for President.
"Nader isn't running as the Green party candidate this year, man. He hasn't been the endorsed candidate for more than a year."
Decisions are made by those who show up.
To do my daily part of that, I read the news. You can be informed and Republican, informed and Democrat, informed and Green, Brown, Libertarian, whatever. Just be informed.
Yes, you patronizing sonofabitch:), we have the "inter-net"; I hear I can order movies with pretty ladies on it. The discussion was about traditional forms of media, which change based on locale.
As for the poster who named all possible television stations: please, feel free to try get reception in the mountains where a majority of the citizens are poor and can't afford cable. It works well.
My point was that if you're not terribly open-minded about this, you could easily suspect that everybody has access to and tunes into national networks. Nope. It doesn't always work that way.
On that subject -- there is cable, and we're familiar. But how liberal do you think the CBS broadcasting to a farming community is going to be?
You guys need to get out more. You're like the people who say, "God, not the command line!" sarcastically to those that have a hard enough time remember where "mail merge" is. There are still places that are free of suburbia and are untouched by businessmen running around with PDAs. And our sunsets are gorgeous. So bite me.
Which is why where I live in Southwestern Virginia, the 700 Club dominates my television programming, and I can't find anything on the radio that isn't conservative talk shows or Gospel.
But 'blatantly false leftist propaganda' is a harsh term for stories that just didn't get covered. Who are you, editor-in-chief of the New York Times? How many doctorates in do you hold to be generalizing 25 stories as 'blatantly false leftist propaganda'?
Yeah, a lot of these are less journalistic professionalism than op-ed pieces, but does it seem odd to anybody that instead of hearing arguments any more, it's just "group-you-disagree-with propaganda"? God forbid we should have a great discussion about things we disagree about, because who needs progress!
Mod parent insightful! This man is clearly taking a well-deserved break, and we should thank him for demonstrating by example. Now somebody, open the scotch, then I plan to drive home on the sidewalk.
Can somebody provide evidence in support of the fact that phones do or do not interfere with air communications systems? I'm not notally convinced by arguments like "this is such bullshit" or "use your phone, and the wings fall off". I'm really looking for facts here, frequencies, etc.
(I recall seeing a Slashdot story a while ago confirming that they did in fact interfere, but I could be wrong.)
As for your conjecture-of-the-post, I can't possibly imagine that button-sized celphones you can practically get for free in your cereal would come anywhere close to being in the same FCC class as airplane communications.
Mathematics is a 'human thought construct', man. The interesting part about it is that these ideas reliably correspond to real things. There's nothing inherent in the universe to say that three apples can't be described some other way, but mathematics describes it as '3' and if I add '2' more, I get '5'.
Realistically, I could argue "what constitutes an apple?" or "are these apples really '1' each?", but as far as mathematics goes, it's the ideals of the numbers matter.
"Random" isn't random when you're talking about coin tosses or roulette, just a very complex and physical "pseudo-random". "Random" is a mathematical ideal, just like "2" apples. While we can't generate truly random, we can get damn close, and certainly close enough to use. (Example: Via's C3 'Padlock' encryption engine takes electrical noise off the chip. Not truly random, but good enough to keep people from reading your e-mail.)
For that reason, when we're talking about one-time pads and the like, the proof of uncrackability has to do with the ideal, not the fact that we're getting our random data set from a monkey at the zoo. Obviously if your "random" data set was a monkey who sat on the "A" key for twenty minutes, that's a factor. But the ideal is what we're talking about, and if we can get close *enough*, we should be fine.
If the dorm fire alarms at your school are anything like most, the freshmen will be spending quite a bit of time outside at 3am. Lock your door. Lock your door. Lock your door.
Laptop locks are handy, but not that secure, and you won't necessarily find the requisite lock receptacles on all desks or tables. You can tie it around a leg, but that's an invitation for somebody to walk by and snag it with a piece of clothing or something and have it crashing to the floor. Restrained, but broken.
The best idea is not to leave stuff unattended in places you don't trust. More often than not you'll be fine, but there's always that one time you go down the hall for a Coke.
A better idea is to get an inconspicuous little suitcase lock and put it on your backpack, or the pocket holding valuables. This may sound silly, but remember that laptops aren't the only expensive thing you have in there: laptops have serials and can be hard to fence. You're about to spend $400 on books, all of which at the beginning and end of the semester can be pawned for cash.
Finally -- it costs marginally more to add items like a laptop, PDA, etc. to insurance. Ask someone who plays an instrument; they'll tell you.
Does it ever make you wonder 'what if computing advanced like mice do'? In some ways, they do, but I mean, we have wireless mice, wireless optical and laser mice, wireless optical laser geneboosted mice that have nine buttons with integrated phone features, and they're all totally transparent, incredibly essential cruxes of the modern computing experience.
can we get somebody from the mouse department over to the HD storage density department? Or the hardware installation department, because I still have to visit my grandfather every time he needs to install RAM. Perhaps, even, we should transfer the entire mouse department over to the user interface department, so they can explain to me why 'Exit' is for the love of god still after 20 years in the 'File' menu (Mac users, you're OK on this one). Those two, after all, have a lot to do with each other. Finally, they could stop over at the Windows dev group and explain to them that I should not have to notify Windows of my intention to disconnect my fully hotswappable device.
That accessory is, unless I'm mistaken, iTunes for Windows.:)
I think it may have more to do with the "last-minute checkout suggestive sell factor", a factor which I just coined, so get down with it.
You know how when you're at a grocery store/Wal-mart/etc. they have everything from socks to cokes to everything you came there for in the first place in the checkout line? The idea is to get people away from thinking that HP is a company run solely by people who carry slide rules in their pocket-protected-pockets along with a roll of tape for their thick Apollo-era glasses.
The fact that thick glasses are in if you're emo is another thing entirely. I think they just want to keep the glasses and change the shirt to an overpriced paper-thin Get Up Kids concert purchase. So now the engineers wear thick glasses, carry an iPod, hide vodka under their bed and cry over the the bygone era of riding those giant one-wheeled bicycles to deliver surprise roses to your crush that has never heard of you.
Selling the iPod is HP's "dell guy", and I doubt the iPod, being a non-sentient, inanimate object -- however cute -- can get arrested for possession.
Re:Glad to see it's still around
on
Enlightenment Lives
·
· Score: 2, Informative
Enlightenment is heavily, heavily based on themeable items -- not just colors, icons, or window bars, I mean *everything*. There are quite a few crappy themes out there, so you have to find the right ones.
Slashdot Mirror
Readiness ratings are based on the Pentagon's "two war" doctrine that proposes extraction from peacekeeping missions, retraining on home bases and deployment to two full size full-scale conflicts e.g., the Pacific and Europe. There's a lot of speculation that such "readiness ratings" are political ploys to get more funding from Congress and cast those who vote against it as unpatriotic. The Cold War is over, and I think if you're going to spend money on security, spend it on intelligence, where it's needed, not on expenditures that are questionable when the biggest threats now are a couple of guys who can't get down with bluejeans and Coke. These problems aren't fixable with a tank, but they're preventable if we know about it.
As for military personnel: you salute the Commander in Chief and I don't give a damn if you're the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs. Presidents are selected by the citizens of the United States of America and you serve at the pleasure of the President. And you don't need a reason past that.
Do you have objective evidence to support that it won't, or is it just a strongly held belief?
It's hard to find objective facts for future events, but we can look at trends: we've had a ratified Bill of Rights since 1791 and been independent since 1776, so yeah, I think it would be prudent to say that it won't all come tumbling down in four years. Of course, I don't know for sure, and neither do you.
We have a pretty good form of term limits; they're called elections. And I have faith in Americans to oust who they believe to be tyrannical or even those they think are ugly. We did it in Concord and we'll do it again. Maybe not this year, but legally winning an election -- and a discussion of the electoral college is for another time -- means the other guys get to take a seat for four years. It sucks, but that's the way it is. If you don't like it, I'm not the one to talk to, at least not this election cycle.
I call it the way I see it, and this is sour grapes. And I'm a liberal Democrat.
I'm not entirely sure if there was a Democratic Senate, House and President that they wouldn't do the same. The issue is not that the political authorities are asserting power, because yanno, it's politics. The problem is that the Republicans are more aggressively pushing their agenda [than normal] without much opposition.
Of all the political quotes I could use here, I'm going to use Dr. Ian Malcolm via Jurassic Park: "Life finds a way." What I mean is, if a majority of people in four years find their life is worse, they vote Bush out. They vote a Democratic congress. People have phenomenal capacity. If you think the people are voting for all the wrong reasons, go back to 11th grade: all men are created equal. People have the right to vote for Bush on an uneducated opinion just as much as people have the right to vote for Kerry.
(For the tin-foil crowd, no, I don't think elections will be made illegal or term limits extended in the next four years. Sorry.)
Often times in a democracy, other people win.
I hate replying to my own post, but I should note that the difference in the 187'th' has to do with the difference between screen fonts and printer fonts; in the printed version they are aligned perfectly. This was first pointed out by Little Green Footballs.
While I agree with the assertion that these could be retyped, CBS is claiming that's not what has happened, that these are originals.
I've made a superimposed image of Word vs. the documents. They have been lined up according to the period after the '1' in the first paragraph. The 'originals' are in red, the Word version in blue.
You're right; the image in the article should be captioned "scientist demonstrates zooming by enhancing zebra ass, finds fleas". Astounding! Quick, somebody get me $1000, I need a Sony HDTV or my perception of the world will crumble.
I couldnt tell the difference between Kerry and Bush, both wanted to Invade IRAQ, both believe a marriage is between a man and a woman, both want to reform tax
:) think of the fact that it's not as simple as just "he wanted to invade IRAQ". Yes, we're trading lives here, but standing without the Republicans, or in this case, all of Congress in an overwhelmingly lopsided vote, cripples your ability to do anything else. Vote against Iraq, bring gay marriage to the table, bring slavery reps to the table: you will not pass go, not get $200, you will lose the next election to a Republican who's not "soft on terrorism". Soundbite, concession, and suddenly your ability to do just a lot of good in trade for a little you disagree with is replaced by a guy who does 100% of what you disagree with.
There's a slight, but important flaw you're making here that needs to be pointed out: it's more complex than you're letting on.
Do you think that when somebody casually says something to the press about condoms in the schools or rescheduling marijuana, the President fires them because he cares about it that much and because the penalties for slipping up in the White House are that grave? Absolutely not.
The reason he does it is because it will consume everything the Office is trying to do. It's politics. When you have an opposition party, their job is pretty much to make sure you make those kinds of mistakes or fall on the wrong side of public opinion as much as possible. E.g., the former surgeon general says something about masturbation and suddenly, hearings are scheduled for next Monday, and that's the clip they show in your slam ad. This is the world of professional politics, and what you're hearing is filtered through press secretaries and releases and communications directors and media consultants to keep that from happening.
So when you think of invading IRAQ (which by the way is not an acronym
And isn't that how it's supposed to work? Our representatives aren't supposed to vote for whatever the hell they choose because "they got gumption", they vote for what will win them elections and keeping people happy, which is our way of them keeping them or firing them.
Frankly, I'm sure many Democratic congressmen would be more than happy to promote gay marriage. But if you have even 51% of a constituency that doesn't want it, you may be going home in two Novembers. Right now, the last thing the Democratic party needs is to put something down as an issue that more than 3/4 of Americans disagree with. Say you're the same as the other guy, and you can focus on other things. The issue will come up in its time, but politics is like a dinosaur: hit it on the head and wait a few years for the tail to move.
They say that politics is the "slow boring of hard boards", and I'm inclined to let it be. We need sweeping changes, yes, we need health care, we need school construction, jobs, etc., but the country runs on compromise much of the time, and if it didn't, 150 million Americans are pissed instead of just grumbling. Everybody gets a little, everybody gives a little, and everyone gets their 15 minutes. Politics is its own check and balance, it insures my President doesn't up and decide to nuke all of Europe one day and burn the constitution in a makeshift Cuban. Though I'm sure right now, that analogy is bad.
I agree that I'm tired of voting for the lesser of who cares, men without conviction who think being President is a good gig. The solution isn't outlawing politics, though, the solution is convincing Good Men to Do Something.
Over the past few days since PoliSlashdot went up, there have been so many discussions of the process it's amazing, and actually very inspiring. But the one thing the Slashdot crowd has yet to discover, in its entire knowledge of every article of the constitution, is that sometimes in a democracy, other people win. "This is the world of professional politics, not adolescent tantrums."
while people are not enthused about John Kerry, they are voting for him because they don't want to vote for Bush
::sigh:: How I wish he would have taken MORE vacation time..
This may be true, but remember that many Presidents have been more passive than Bush and rode the wave of the economy, war, treaties, congress, and so on.
Bush, on the other hand, has been very busy from day one. Literally, I mean the man issued how many executive reversals of generally assumed public policy in his first days?
Let's also remember that many people voted Bush not because they wanted to vote Bush, but because of what they felt was a trust issue with the Democratic Party after Clinton. So they were voting for not-Gore. (For those that say Clinton's indiscretions weren't anybody's business but his, remember that his primary indiscretion was never, ever Monica. It was when he lied to the American public in prime time, and made people embarassed for the Office. My father, a straight-down-the-middle moderate, wouldn't vote for anyone from that administration for exactly that reason. I know, I know.. bad reason to vote. But to him, it was immense.)
I don't feel this is totally different from other elections, remember, the presidency is like a four-year term with an option for four more. If it was 2008, it might be different, but this is an election for an incumbent. OF COURSE it's voting for who you don't want.
I understand your point about the electoral college was a little bit different, but I'll tag along because it's a good time to mention it.
In the last four years, I've heard more people talk about reforming the electoral voting system. They proclaim the virtues of direct election without realizing the incredible drawbacks.
We have a senate and a house of representatives in the United States not just for fun, it's because there are states which have miniscule sizes. But, by virtue of geography, tradition, or community, or law, they are designated as one state. California is a state, so is Rhode Island. California gets more votes in the House because they have more people. But Rhode Island gets the same number of votes as California in the *Senate*: 2.
My point is, right now we have Ohio, Michigan, Iowa, Florida -- battleground states. If we implement direct election, then you campaign in New York, Los Angeles, DC, Detroit and Chicago, and you're done; write your speeches.
The electoral college system exists to protect those states with smaller populations from being forgotten. But with the electoral college, as backwards as it may seem, we're campaigning (of all places), in Ohio, Michigan, Iowa, Florida, and places you wouldn't imagine because guess what: their votes count. "And in a country based on the right to be heard, what could be more American than that?"
I had a debate about this today, actually.
He was so insistent that everybody who didn't vote Green was ignorant and controlled by the corporations. He used the word ignorant. Nader will save us, he said. Vote Green. Nader for President.
"Nader isn't running as the Green party candidate this year, man. He hasn't been the endorsed candidate for more than a year."
Decisions are made by those who show up.
To do my daily part of that, I read the news. You can be informed and Republican, informed and Democrat, informed and Green, Brown, Libertarian, whatever. Just be informed.
http://www.votecobb.org/
Yes, you patronizing sonofabitch :), we have the "inter-net"; I hear I can order movies with pretty ladies on it. The discussion was about traditional forms of media, which change based on locale.
As for the poster who named all possible television stations: please, feel free to try get reception in the mountains where a majority of the citizens are poor and can't afford cable. It works well.
My point was that if you're not terribly open-minded about this, you could easily suspect that everybody has access to and tunes into national networks. Nope. It doesn't always work that way.
On that subject -- there is cable, and we're familiar. But how liberal do you think the CBS broadcasting to a farming community is going to be?
You guys need to get out more. You're like the people who say, "God, not the command line!" sarcastically to those that have a hard enough time remember where "mail merge" is. There are still places that are free of suburbia and are untouched by businessmen running around with PDAs. And our sunsets are gorgeous. So bite me.
Yes, in all forms of media, in all places.
Which is why where I live in Southwestern Virginia, the 700 Club dominates my television programming, and I can't find anything on the radio that isn't conservative talk shows or Gospel.
Not everyone lives in New York.
I agree.. not Slashdot.
But 'blatantly false leftist propaganda' is a harsh term for stories that just didn't get covered. Who are you, editor-in-chief of the New York Times? How many doctorates in do you hold to be generalizing 25 stories as 'blatantly false leftist propaganda'?
Yeah, a lot of these are less journalistic professionalism than op-ed pieces, but does it seem odd to anybody that instead of hearing arguments any more, it's just "group-you-disagree-with propaganda"? God forbid we should have a great discussion about things we disagree about, because who needs progress!
Mod parent insightful! This man is clearly taking a well-deserved break, and we should thank him for demonstrating by example. Now somebody, open the scotch, then I plan to drive home on the sidewalk.
Mod parent (#10152800) up, he's the only one who gets it. The perjury refers to the power of attorney, NOT that they own the works.
Can somebody provide evidence in support of the fact that phones do or do not interfere with air communications systems? I'm not notally convinced by arguments like "this is such bullshit" or "use your phone, and the wings fall off". I'm really looking for facts here, frequencies, etc.
(I recall seeing a Slashdot story a while ago confirming that they did in fact interfere, but I could be wrong.)
As for your conjecture-of-the-post, I can't possibly imagine that button-sized celphones you can practically get for free in your cereal would come anywhere close to being in the same FCC class as airplane communications.
With recent titles such as American Pro Trucker and Mary Kate and Ashley: Sweet 16, it's almost hard to believe they were losing money.
Mathematics is a 'human thought construct', man. The interesting part about it is that these ideas reliably correspond to real things. There's nothing inherent in the universe to say that three apples can't be described some other way, but mathematics describes it as '3' and if I add '2' more, I get '5'.
Realistically, I could argue "what constitutes an apple?" or "are these apples really '1' each?", but as far as mathematics goes, it's the ideals of the numbers matter.
"Random" isn't random when you're talking about coin tosses or roulette, just a very complex and physical "pseudo-random". "Random" is a mathematical ideal, just like "2" apples. While we can't generate truly random, we can get damn close, and certainly close enough to use. (Example: Via's C3 'Padlock' encryption engine takes electrical noise off the chip. Not truly random, but good enough to keep people from reading your e-mail.)
For that reason, when we're talking about one-time pads and the like, the proof of uncrackability has to do with the ideal, not the fact that we're getting our random data set from a monkey at the zoo. Obviously if your "random" data set was a monkey who sat on the "A" key for twenty minutes, that's a factor. But the ideal is what we're talking about, and if we can get close *enough*, we should be fine.
There is in fact no tool available for Media Access Controllers.
:)
There is also no Microsoft Access available for the Macintosh platform.
If the dorm fire alarms at your school are anything like most, the freshmen will be spending quite a bit of time outside at 3am. Lock your door. Lock your door. Lock your door.
Laptop locks are handy, but not that secure, and you won't necessarily find the requisite lock receptacles on all desks or tables. You can tie it around a leg, but that's an invitation for somebody to walk by and snag it with a piece of clothing or something and have it crashing to the floor. Restrained, but broken.
The best idea is not to leave stuff unattended in places you don't trust. More often than not you'll be fine, but there's always that one time you go down the hall for a Coke.
A better idea is to get an inconspicuous little suitcase lock and put it on your backpack, or the pocket holding valuables. This may sound silly, but remember that laptops aren't the only expensive thing you have in there: laptops have serials and can be hard to fence. You're about to spend $400 on books, all of which at the beginning and end of the semester can be pawned for cash.
Finally -- it costs marginally more to add items like a laptop, PDA, etc. to insurance. Ask someone who plays an instrument; they'll tell you.
Does it ever make you wonder 'what if computing advanced like mice do'? In some ways, they do, but I mean, we have wireless mice, wireless optical and laser mice, wireless optical laser geneboosted mice that have nine buttons with integrated phone features, and they're all totally transparent, incredibly essential cruxes of the modern computing experience.
can we get somebody from the mouse department over to the HD storage density department? Or the hardware installation department, because I still have to visit my grandfather every time he needs to install RAM. Perhaps, even, we should transfer the entire mouse department over to the user interface department, so they can explain to me why 'Exit' is for the love of god still after 20 years in the 'File' menu (Mac users, you're OK on this one). Those two, after all, have a lot to do with each other. Finally, they could stop over at the Windows dev group and explain to them that I should not have to notify Windows of my intention to disconnect my fully hotswappable device.
I could go on, but I think you get the idea.
That accessory is, unless I'm mistaken, iTunes for Windows. :)
I think it may have more to do with the "last-minute checkout suggestive sell factor", a factor which I just coined, so get down with it.
You know how when you're at a grocery store/Wal-mart/etc. they have everything from socks to cokes to everything you came there for in the first place in the checkout line? The idea is to get people away from thinking that HP is a company run solely by people who carry slide rules in their pocket-protected-pockets along with a roll of tape for their thick Apollo-era glasses.
The fact that thick glasses are in if you're emo is another thing entirely. I think they just want to keep the glasses and change the shirt to an overpriced paper-thin Get Up Kids concert purchase. So now the engineers wear thick glasses, carry an iPod, hide vodka under their bed and cry over the the bygone era of riding those giant one-wheeled bicycles to deliver surprise roses to your crush that has never heard of you.
Selling the iPod is HP's "dell guy", and I doubt the iPod, being a non-sentient, inanimate object -- however cute -- can get arrested for possession.
Gentlemen, start your erection jokes!
Go! Go! Go!
Enlightenment is heavily, heavily based on themeable items -- not just colors, icons, or window bars, I mean *everything*. There are quite a few crappy themes out there, so you have to find the right ones.
I used to use E on a P100 with 64MB back in high school.. ..Insert candy raver joke here..
and it ran fine. The colors, as always, were beautiful.