I've had that happen before as well. They ran the same device through the X-ray machine about a dozen times at different angles before even asking me what the device was or how it worked. Granted it did look like an electronic detonator to fire off blasting caps. They were pretty understanding once I told them what it was and how it worked. They thought it was cool and asked if they could take pictures of the device so they could send it in to TSA HQ for training materials on 'benign electronic devices.'
Actually the airlines are financially responsible if they knowingly transport someone who will be denied entry in their final destination. This is why they do passport control when you board international flights. Not because the US cares that you're leaving, but because the the airline doesn't want to be on the hook. I believe this is something covered by the CAO (a UN body). So this basically covers all international airlines in the world.
I agree. In that case the laws are probably written to increase ticket revenue instead of for safety. But drivers must have some discretion and some small leeway in certain areas of traffic law.
If you had read the bolded part and it's implications you would have discovered that your reply was unnecessary.
What he/she is saying is that by changing the rules to encompass situations you describe, an autonomous vehicle would never have to break any rules. Having an autonomous vehicle which bend or break the rules in certain situations is a sure recipe for accidents and getting sued into oblivion.
In other words, the traffic laws needs to be updated to take into consideration autonomous vehicles. As with all other emerging tech we have laws and regulations that are lagging behind and in some cases they are totally obsolete.
Did you read his entire post? He wants to not only make the rules stricter for computers, but also humans. He wants to use GPS location data or something like that to have a speed limit specific governor on speed. So no, he's not saying that we need to change the rules to allow flexibility. He's saying that we need to make the world much less flexible for everyone. That just does not match reality.
This is nothing more than a sophisticated from of "everybody else is doing it" argument that you get from small children. If the rules aren't working, the solution is to either enforce the rules better or to change the rules. Having everybody ignore the rules and not change them is the worst possible outcome. It creates a situation where things simply can't get better. Nobody can know the real effect of properly enforced rules so there's no data that can be used for improvement of the rules. What we need is better enforcement for human drivers. It's almost inexcusable that neither cars (nor trains) have automatic speed control systems that prevent exceeding the limit. Invariably somebody will point out the fantastical corner case where accelerating and swerving makes sense but those can be easily solved.
You sir, are part of the problem and not the solution. For one thing, it is perfectly reasonable and acceptable to exceed the speed limit in order to safely merge into traffic. If you end up directly next to a car and need to merge then you have two options. One is to speed up and one is to slow down. If you're already going the speed limit then the safest option is not to slow down. You can see in front of you and next to you much more clearly than behind you. So why would you stick to a strict interpretation of the speed limit in order to merge? It's more dangerous than speeding up a few miles per hour, pulling into the gap you can see, and then driving the speed limit. Your inflexibility on the road is unsafe for yourself and everyone around you.
In fact, your strict enforcement of the rules is very difficult in the state of California. The state has a 'basic speed law' for any road with a speed limit under 55MPH. If you are not exceeding 55MPH then you may drive any speed that is safe for the road conditions (certain exceptions apply). So an autonomous car that strictly follows the speed limit could very much be a problem in situations where the basic speed law applies. Roadways are very fluid and dynamic environments. You have to have some leeway. Sometimes you need to be a little more aggressive. Sometimes you need to be a little more cautious. So yes, these autonomous cars should be able to temporarily ignore certain rules in order to increase safety. Of course, these autonomous vehicles can see behind them much more clearly than a human so the same safety guidelines may not apply to them as apply to humans.
Not only that but if he knew WTF he was talking about he wouldn't need to post anything at all. T-Mo has free music streaming too. They have an API for it. All you have to do is register as a developer with them, stream your audio using that API and its free. It doesn't cost the subscriber anything. It's not unusual for a company to line up prominent partners in situations like this. Was anyone complaining when Apple Pay was only initially supported by select payment processors and banks? No. it's open to anyone who wants to use it, it's just that only a select group of businesses were allowed in on the initial offering. Who cares? No one but this clueless jackass.
I think this has more to do with TDP than binning these days. They underclock the CPUs to mark it at a lower TDP. The ones that are capable of higher clock speeds get binned into 'overclockable'. That way they still get to advertise their energy star compliance but allow you to undo that with a flip of a switch in the BIOS. I know my desktop CPU is overclockable but I never bother. The thing will automatically increase its clock speed by ~30% if its really under load.
I think most pilots would prefer to not be shot at all.
The problem with the A-10 is it's whole philosophy is low and slow. You can't build a flying tank. Sure can put some armour on aircraft, but it's a losing proposition. Armour is heavy, and heavy thing don't fly too well. It's also hard to upgrade the armour of a plane. Case in point is the A-10 which was designed to withstand the Soviets 23mm AA, to which the Soviets responded by upgrading their AA to 30mm.
This is why every other plane flies high and fast. It's why everyone is investing in stealthier planes.
High and fast doesn't work well for close air support. For close air support you get low and fast which gives the attacking pilots very little time to engage the enemy. It turns out that low and slow can be terrible for tank engagements with heavy AA support but works out great for most ground engagements once air superiority has been established.
But the A-10 proved too vulnerable to anti-air defences and the job was given to F-16s using laser guided bombs.
Too vulnerable? If you mean vulnerable due to the fact that it's about 15,000 feet closer to the AA then you're right. But I think most pilots would rather be hit by an AA missile in an A-10 than an F-16. Have you seen how resilient those things are? You can land them with one engine missing, one tail missing, and up to 10 feet of wing missing - all at once. One pilot claims to have taken 3 SAM hits and still safely landed his A-10.
Of course there was an Israeli F15 pilot who landed his plane after losing the entire wing in a mid-air collision. That was pretty impressive, too.
I had my cheekbone broken and my infraorbital nerve entrapped in the bone for a year. It took three years for that nerve to stop reporting the gentle breeze as burning hot pain. I sympathize with your wife and hope that some day the nerve returns to a more restive state.
That makes no sense. Sure a young person could get cancer but it'll either kill you, or you'll go into remission and it doesn't matter if you live to be 1000. I can tell you right now that if you have severe joint damage you can live a long time but you may not want to at all. You may be in so much pain that you wished you were not alive. So yes, if you want people to have a quality life for 1000 years then you need to be able to repair damage to their bodies and not assume that whatever treatment that prolongs their lives by over 10x will also prolong their joints and other areas of the body that tend to wear out over time.
This are all old age diseases. We would assume that such a therapy would negate them.
No. I can assure you that young people can have joint issues too. I developed osteoarthritis in my mid 20's after a sports injury. I have a friend who was set to play professional football until a surgeon botched a knee repair and he's had joint issues since his early 20's. Unless they can repair my joint injury and restore it like new, I may not even want to make it past my 70's.
They won't succeed. Everyone knows that the space between the earth's crust and mantle is filled with huge diamonds. Therefore the diamond industry will never let science get that far. Duh.
The antenna was not the entire case, but the band around the edge of the case.
No. This is incorrect. You can order the cellular antenna as a part. The wifi antenna was separate.
That antenna is strictly for CDMA. The only two providers (almost in the entire world) that use CDMA are Sprint and Verizon. But I was wrong. IT was two antennas, not three. See for yourself
In a typical year, just over 300 people are killed by those things in the US.
Huh? That number seems low. As of October 1, according to the Washington Post, there were 294 mass shootings so far in 2015, and that was still with three months left in the year. That accounted for 380 deaths so far, with well over 1,000 injured.
https://www.washingtonpost.com...
How many of those shootings were with long guns versus a hand gun? For instance, in the US, the definition of a long gun is anything with a rifled barrel over 16" and any smooth bore weapon greater than 18". At least for Civilian purposes. The military may have bull-pup rifled long guns that are typically around 14" in barrel length. See Wikipedia for more info on long guns.
I went to the local gun range today and was chatting with the owner. His business spiked since the Paris shootings, with weekly concealed carry classes booked solid through February. With this he's going to have his best Christmas sales season in years.
I'm not sure what scares me more -- random shootings, or the thought of so many yokels with concealed carry permits who've only fired a gun once or twice in their, now life trying to return fire (or thinking they can).
The state of Florida has over 1.3 million concealed weapon permit holders. I can only think of two cases off the top of my head where a lawfully permitted holder has used their weapon in a questionable manner. The first was the case when George Zimmerman shot Trayvon Martin. The second is the case of a retired police officer shooting someone at a movie theater in Tampa (2014 I believe). There may be other incidents, but statistics show that Florida permit holders do not generally cause problems. Of course, I believe that Florida has very strict laws that take affect if you do violate the terms of your permit. You're required to learn those laws and demonstrate safe handling of a gun in Florida. There are 18M people in Florida and approximately 80% of them are of the age of majority (if I am reading the data right). Since you must be over 21 to have a permit in Florida, that would suggest that more than 1 in 14 Floridians have a concealed weapons permit. This data comes from the Census Bureau. It doesn't seem like the yokels in Florida are misbehaving too much. Of course, if you live in a multifamily dwelling you have to have a concealed weapons permit to even own a gun in Florida. This is due to the fact that there is no legal way to transport a firearm to your home if you do not own or rent a single family dwelling.
Well I have T-Mobile and i have intentionally disconnected from the local wifi to try and hit my IP from an external network. Sometimes I forget to reconnect and it works just fine for voice and data. I have an iPhone though, so T-Mobile doesn't have much control outside of basic network configuration settings pushed to the baseband on the phone.
Um, Apple did not use the case as an antenna; the phone did have internal antennas. Some users reported problems with reception but of all the iPhone 4 users I knew, none of them had problems.
It was a huge problem for lefties. I had this phone. The antenna was not the entire case, but the band around the edge of the case. And there were three antennas there. The problem was that for left handed people, a natural grip would cause your hand to bridge the gap separating two of the antennas (wifi and cellular). I could watch my iPhone 4 drop from full bars to 1 or none just by changing my grip.
Now it's just another greedy 0.1%er nomming up cash and playing a good game of sociopathic prisoner's dilemma. Boring.
You say that as if 1%'ers somehow behave differently from the other 99%? *Everyone* acts in their self-interest, you act surprised that having money would somehow change the laws of nature?
Yes but non sociopaths tend to feel pleasure and a sense of pride in helping other people. So they have a self-interest in helping others. Now this often ends up falling along the lines of helping people they can relate to, but at least they, in theory, want to help.
And the punishment for driving on a suspended/revoked license is?
No, there's a simpler solution than that: don't let municipalities keep the money from traffic tickets (or any kind of fine). The payments should be made directly to the state's general fund. Take away the profit motive, no more profit based policing.
That is inadequate because then the state will start pressuring municipalities to issue fines. In fact, in most states, the state already gets a portion and already encourages municipalities to issue fines. The solution is to one of two things: Lump the money from the fines into different categories and issue rebates (income based) to people who do not receive a fine of that type for the year or donate the money to charities. The difficulty with charities is that it would be very easy to subvert that and divert the money to individuals.
Back in 1987 I had just purchased my Casio FX-7000G scientific calculator. I read the whole manual, and made program that output a random number 1d20 number and a 1d6 (sword) number with the touch of a button. My fellow D&Ders were reluctant to let me use it for the game, but I assured them, that it was OK. After a few rounds of poor throws, they seemed OK with it. But as the evening went on all my throws were poor. I kept having to run from monsters.
The next day I made a plot of the numbers from the calculator's uniform random number generator. They were not even close to uniform! The histogram showed many more small numbers than large ones! POS!
And that is how I discovered a poor RNG in my calculator using D&D.
I had an idiot of a stats teacher in college. Wanted us all to use Ti-83 calculators and then taught calculator statistics instead of trying to actually teach us how everything worked properly. Anyway, she would make everyone follow along with her on the calculator in class. Eventually all of our random number generators would be seeded identically and you would get the same 'random' number on every single one. I tried to explain to her what was going on - something any good computer science student would do. But she insisted that what I was saying was completely untrue and that it was just random dumb luck that an entire class of 30 students would get the exact same number over and over and over. This teacher was obviously a peerless statistician. (eyeroll)
I spent a lot of time working for a security company that did high end enterprise systems. I hope they've changed their ways but their idea of security about 15 years ago was to just base64 encode your credentials when you log in. Once you logged in you used a token. Their digital signatures on video frames was inadequate also and it was quite possible to alter a frame and then resign it after the fact. Oh and all of the devices allowed root login and had a shared password across all networks.
I am just merely stating that human beings are irrational by their very nature and that there is no example necessary. Once you identify a particular person or group's irrationality you can easily use it to manipulate them. For some it is GMO, others it is religion.
I find it hard to decide whether banning human assistive technology in sport is a good thing.
My issue with this stuff is it's all so arbitrary. Hockey players aren't forced to use sticks improvised from re-used household materials. Tennis rackets aren't reduced to whatever hardcover books the players can find laying around. Swimmers aren't required to don industry-standard street-wear.
No. Organized sports allow their participants and technology to optimize... until suddenly they don't.
The argument is usually "we want a level playing field", but that's still rubbish. Somali kids don't have access to the carbon-fiber gear kids in the US have. Even access to health-care and nutrition isn't balanced world-wide. When athletes are required to be raised from infants on the borderline-sufficient foods that some people live on, then we can call things "fair". Until then, I don't see a meaningful difference between steroid-use and nutritionally-balanced breakfasts, between cutting-edge broom-heads and custom-fit swimsuits.
These gentleman's agreements are bunk, making the very idea of sports competitions a joke. These are not the best of the best, they're the best of what they feel like allowing - for now.
Peoples talent level is arbitrary also. No one is arguing that you should handicap more talented athletes. The point is to provide a common set of equipment to everyone so that the best athlete wins and not the guy with the most money. It's impossible to balance it out completely, as you've pointed out. People who come from abundant wealth will have more time to devote to their sport. Since they already have this advantage over the Somali swimmer, why would you let them wear a full body suit that has less drag than a person's skin? You're just increasing the gap instead of trying to close it. It leads to poor competitions and nobody wants to watch a complete blow out. Especially when that blow out is due to an obvious discrepancy in financial resources.
Slashdot Mirror
I've had that happen before as well. They ran the same device through the X-ray machine about a dozen times at different angles before even asking me what the device was or how it worked. Granted it did look like an electronic detonator to fire off blasting caps. They were pretty understanding once I told them what it was and how it worked. They thought it was cool and asked if they could take pictures of the device so they could send it in to TSA HQ for training materials on 'benign electronic devices.'
I've apparently done some of his projects and I had no idea who he was either. It's not exactly a name worth remembering from my childhood.
Actually the airlines are financially responsible if they knowingly transport someone who will be denied entry in their final destination. This is why they do passport control when you board international flights. Not because the US cares that you're leaving, but because the the airline doesn't want to be on the hook. I believe this is something covered by the CAO (a UN body). So this basically covers all international airlines in the world.
I agree. In that case the laws are probably written to increase ticket revenue instead of for safety. But drivers must have some discretion and some small leeway in certain areas of traffic law.
If you had read the bolded part and it's implications you would have discovered that your reply was unnecessary.
What he/she is saying is that by changing the rules to encompass situations you describe, an autonomous vehicle would never have to break any rules. Having an autonomous vehicle which bend or break the rules in certain situations is a sure recipe for accidents and getting sued into oblivion.
In other words, the traffic laws needs to be updated to take into consideration autonomous vehicles. As with all other emerging tech we have laws and regulations that are lagging behind and in some cases they are totally obsolete.
Did you read his entire post? He wants to not only make the rules stricter for computers, but also humans. He wants to use GPS location data or something like that to have a speed limit specific governor on speed. So no, he's not saying that we need to change the rules to allow flexibility. He's saying that we need to make the world much less flexible for everyone. That just does not match reality.
This is nothing more than a sophisticated from of "everybody else is doing it" argument that you get from small children. If the rules aren't working, the solution is to either enforce the rules better or to change the rules. Having everybody ignore the rules and not change them is the worst possible outcome. It creates a situation where things simply can't get better. Nobody can know the real effect of properly enforced rules so there's no data that can be used for improvement of the rules. What we need is better enforcement for human drivers. It's almost inexcusable that neither cars (nor trains) have automatic speed control systems that prevent exceeding the limit. Invariably somebody will point out the fantastical corner case where accelerating and swerving makes sense but those can be easily solved.
You sir, are part of the problem and not the solution. For one thing, it is perfectly reasonable and acceptable to exceed the speed limit in order to safely merge into traffic. If you end up directly next to a car and need to merge then you have two options. One is to speed up and one is to slow down. If you're already going the speed limit then the safest option is not to slow down. You can see in front of you and next to you much more clearly than behind you. So why would you stick to a strict interpretation of the speed limit in order to merge? It's more dangerous than speeding up a few miles per hour, pulling into the gap you can see, and then driving the speed limit. Your inflexibility on the road is unsafe for yourself and everyone around you.
In fact, your strict enforcement of the rules is very difficult in the state of California. The state has a 'basic speed law' for any road with a speed limit under 55MPH. If you are not exceeding 55MPH then you may drive any speed that is safe for the road conditions (certain exceptions apply). So an autonomous car that strictly follows the speed limit could very much be a problem in situations where the basic speed law applies. Roadways are very fluid and dynamic environments. You have to have some leeway. Sometimes you need to be a little more aggressive. Sometimes you need to be a little more cautious. So yes, these autonomous cars should be able to temporarily ignore certain rules in order to increase safety. Of course, these autonomous vehicles can see behind them much more clearly than a human so the same safety guidelines may not apply to them as apply to humans.
Not only that but if he knew WTF he was talking about he wouldn't need to post anything at all. T-Mo has free music streaming too. They have an API for it. All you have to do is register as a developer with them, stream your audio using that API and its free. It doesn't cost the subscriber anything. It's not unusual for a company to line up prominent partners in situations like this. Was anyone complaining when Apple Pay was only initially supported by select payment processors and banks? No. it's open to anyone who wants to use it, it's just that only a select group of businesses were allowed in on the initial offering. Who cares? No one but this clueless jackass.
I think this has more to do with TDP than binning these days. They underclock the CPUs to mark it at a lower TDP. The ones that are capable of higher clock speeds get binned into 'overclockable'. That way they still get to advertise their energy star compliance but allow you to undo that with a flip of a switch in the BIOS. I know my desktop CPU is overclockable but I never bother. The thing will automatically increase its clock speed by ~30% if its really under load.
I think most pilots would prefer to not be shot at all. The problem with the A-10 is it's whole philosophy is low and slow. You can't build a flying tank. Sure can put some armour on aircraft, but it's a losing proposition. Armour is heavy, and heavy thing don't fly too well. It's also hard to upgrade the armour of a plane. Case in point is the A-10 which was designed to withstand the Soviets 23mm AA, to which the Soviets responded by upgrading their AA to 30mm. This is why every other plane flies high and fast. It's why everyone is investing in stealthier planes.
High and fast doesn't work well for close air support. For close air support you get low and fast which gives the attacking pilots very little time to engage the enemy. It turns out that low and slow can be terrible for tank engagements with heavy AA support but works out great for most ground engagements once air superiority has been established.
But the A-10 proved too vulnerable to anti-air defences and the job was given to F-16s using laser guided bombs.
Too vulnerable? If you mean vulnerable due to the fact that it's about 15,000 feet closer to the AA then you're right. But I think most pilots would rather be hit by an AA missile in an A-10 than an F-16. Have you seen how resilient those things are? You can land them with one engine missing, one tail missing, and up to 10 feet of wing missing - all at once. One pilot claims to have taken 3 SAM hits and still safely landed his A-10.
Of course there was an Israeli F15 pilot who landed his plane after losing the entire wing in a mid-air collision. That was pretty impressive, too.
I had my cheekbone broken and my infraorbital nerve entrapped in the bone for a year. It took three years for that nerve to stop reporting the gentle breeze as burning hot pain. I sympathize with your wife and hope that some day the nerve returns to a more restive state.
That makes no sense. Sure a young person could get cancer but it'll either kill you, or you'll go into remission and it doesn't matter if you live to be 1000. I can tell you right now that if you have severe joint damage you can live a long time but you may not want to at all. You may be in so much pain that you wished you were not alive. So yes, if you want people to have a quality life for 1000 years then you need to be able to repair damage to their bodies and not assume that whatever treatment that prolongs their lives by over 10x will also prolong their joints and other areas of the body that tend to wear out over time.
This are all old age diseases. We would assume that such a therapy would negate them.
No. I can assure you that young people can have joint issues too. I developed osteoarthritis in my mid 20's after a sports injury. I have a friend who was set to play professional football until a surgeon botched a knee repair and he's had joint issues since his early 20's. Unless they can repair my joint injury and restore it like new, I may not even want to make it past my 70's.
They won't succeed. Everyone knows that the space between the earth's crust and mantle is filled with huge diamonds. Therefore the diamond industry will never let science get that far. Duh.
The antenna was not the entire case, but the band around the edge of the case.
No. This is incorrect. You can order the cellular antenna as a part. The wifi antenna was separate.
That antenna is strictly for CDMA. The only two providers (almost in the entire world) that use CDMA are Sprint and Verizon. But I was wrong. IT was two antennas, not three. See for yourself
In a typical year, just over 300 people are killed by those things in the US.
Huh? That number seems low. As of October 1, according to the Washington Post, there were 294 mass shootings so far in 2015, and that was still with three months left in the year. That accounted for 380 deaths so far, with well over 1,000 injured. https://www.washingtonpost.com...
Even the conservative Wall Street Journal claims "the US leads the world in mass shootings." http://www.wsj.com/articles/u-...
How many of those shootings were with long guns versus a hand gun? For instance, in the US, the definition of a long gun is anything with a rifled barrel over 16" and any smooth bore weapon greater than 18". At least for Civilian purposes. The military may have bull-pup rifled long guns that are typically around 14" in barrel length. See Wikipedia for more info on long guns.
I went to the local gun range today and was chatting with the owner. His business spiked since the Paris shootings, with weekly concealed carry classes booked solid through February. With this he's going to have his best Christmas sales season in years.
I'm not sure what scares me more -- random shootings, or the thought of so many yokels with concealed carry permits who've only fired a gun once or twice in their, now life trying to return fire (or thinking they can).
The state of Florida has over 1.3 million concealed weapon permit holders. I can only think of two cases off the top of my head where a lawfully permitted holder has used their weapon in a questionable manner. The first was the case when George Zimmerman shot Trayvon Martin. The second is the case of a retired police officer shooting someone at a movie theater in Tampa (2014 I believe). There may be other incidents, but statistics show that Florida permit holders do not generally cause problems. Of course, I believe that Florida has very strict laws that take affect if you do violate the terms of your permit. You're required to learn those laws and demonstrate safe handling of a gun in Florida. There are 18M people in Florida and approximately 80% of them are of the age of majority (if I am reading the data right). Since you must be over 21 to have a permit in Florida, that would suggest that more than 1 in 14 Floridians have a concealed weapons permit. This data comes from the Census Bureau. It doesn't seem like the yokels in Florida are misbehaving too much. Of course, if you live in a multifamily dwelling you have to have a concealed weapons permit to even own a gun in Florida. This is due to the fact that there is no legal way to transport a firearm to your home if you do not own or rent a single family dwelling.
Well I have T-Mobile and i have intentionally disconnected from the local wifi to try and hit my IP from an external network. Sometimes I forget to reconnect and it works just fine for voice and data. I have an iPhone though, so T-Mobile doesn't have much control outside of basic network configuration settings pushed to the baseband on the phone.
Um, Apple did not use the case as an antenna; the phone did have internal antennas. Some users reported problems with reception but of all the iPhone 4 users I knew, none of them had problems.
It was a huge problem for lefties. I had this phone. The antenna was not the entire case, but the band around the edge of the case. And there were three antennas there. The problem was that for left handed people, a natural grip would cause your hand to bridge the gap separating two of the antennas (wifi and cellular). I could watch my iPhone 4 drop from full bars to 1 or none just by changing my grip.
Now it's just another greedy 0.1%er nomming up cash and playing a good game of sociopathic prisoner's dilemma. Boring.
You say that as if 1%'ers somehow behave differently from the other 99%? *Everyone* acts in their self-interest, you act surprised that having money would somehow change the laws of nature?
Yes but non sociopaths tend to feel pleasure and a sense of pride in helping other people. So they have a self-interest in helping others. Now this often ends up falling along the lines of helping people they can relate to, but at least they, in theory, want to help.
And the punishment for driving on a suspended/revoked license is? No, there's a simpler solution than that: don't let municipalities keep the money from traffic tickets (or any kind of fine). The payments should be made directly to the state's general fund. Take away the profit motive, no more profit based policing.
That is inadequate because then the state will start pressuring municipalities to issue fines. In fact, in most states, the state already gets a portion and already encourages municipalities to issue fines. The solution is to one of two things: Lump the money from the fines into different categories and issue rebates (income based) to people who do not receive a fine of that type for the year or donate the money to charities. The difficulty with charities is that it would be very easy to subvert that and divert the money to individuals.
Back in 1987 I had just purchased my Casio FX-7000G scientific calculator. I read the whole manual, and made program that output a random number 1d20 number and a 1d6 (sword) number with the touch of a button. My fellow D&Ders were reluctant to let me use it for the game, but I assured them, that it was OK. After a few rounds of poor throws, they seemed OK with it. But as the evening went on all my throws were poor. I kept having to run from monsters. The next day I made a plot of the numbers from the calculator's uniform random number generator. They were not even close to uniform! The histogram showed many more small numbers than large ones! POS! And that is how I discovered a poor RNG in my calculator using D&D.
I had an idiot of a stats teacher in college. Wanted us all to use Ti-83 calculators and then taught calculator statistics instead of trying to actually teach us how everything worked properly. Anyway, she would make everyone follow along with her on the calculator in class. Eventually all of our random number generators would be seeded identically and you would get the same 'random' number on every single one. I tried to explain to her what was going on - something any good computer science student would do. But she insisted that what I was saying was completely untrue and that it was just random dumb luck that an entire class of 30 students would get the exact same number over and over and over. This teacher was obviously a peerless statistician. (eyeroll)
I spent a lot of time working for a security company that did high end enterprise systems. I hope they've changed their ways but their idea of security about 15 years ago was to just base64 encode your credentials when you log in. Once you logged in you used a token. Their digital signatures on video frames was inadequate also and it was quite possible to alter a frame and then resign it after the fact. Oh and all of the devices allowed root login and had a shared password across all networks.
I am just merely stating that human beings are irrational by their very nature and that there is no example necessary. Once you identify a particular person or group's irrationality you can easily use it to manipulate them. For some it is GMO, others it is religion.
I find it hard to decide whether banning human assistive technology in sport is a good thing.
My issue with this stuff is it's all so arbitrary. Hockey players aren't forced to use sticks improvised from re-used household materials. Tennis rackets aren't reduced to whatever hardcover books the players can find laying around. Swimmers aren't required to don industry-standard street-wear. No. Organized sports allow their participants and technology to optimize... until suddenly they don't. The argument is usually "we want a level playing field", but that's still rubbish. Somali kids don't have access to the carbon-fiber gear kids in the US have. Even access to health-care and nutrition isn't balanced world-wide. When athletes are required to be raised from infants on the borderline-sufficient foods that some people live on, then we can call things "fair". Until then, I don't see a meaningful difference between steroid-use and nutritionally-balanced breakfasts, between cutting-edge broom-heads and custom-fit swimsuits. These gentleman's agreements are bunk, making the very idea of sports competitions a joke. These are not the best of the best, they're the best of what they feel like allowing - for now.
Peoples talent level is arbitrary also. No one is arguing that you should handicap more talented athletes. The point is to provide a common set of equipment to everyone so that the best athlete wins and not the guy with the most money. It's impossible to balance it out completely, as you've pointed out. People who come from abundant wealth will have more time to devote to their sport. Since they already have this advantage over the Somali swimmer, why would you let them wear a full body suit that has less drag than a person's skin? You're just increasing the gap instead of trying to close it. It leads to poor competitions and nobody wants to watch a complete blow out. Especially when that blow out is due to an obvious discrepancy in financial resources.