It does help to avoid getting into a bitching session with coworkers. Black topics and moods tend to multiply when you and others pay attention to them.
Good advice, and not just for this specific situation. I've worked at places where the bitch session was a company-wide addiction. Needless to say, such companies are in a permanent state of dysfunction!
I still like the notion that there might have been a brief flourishing of technological dinosaur society which decided that the best way to benefit from the resources in the asteroid belt was to move some nearer to earth, but can't seriously imagine that there would be no other surviving evidence of such a society.)
Why? Even assuming that dino-primate artifacts would be recognizably artificial (not a big assumption, but an assumption all the same), absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. The fossils that have actually been dug up are the tinniest fraction of the fossils out there, which in turn are the tinniest fraction of the things that might have been fossilized, but weren't. So just because nobody's found a fossilized can of dino-beer, doesn't mean there never was one!
The dinosaurs that are in the museums are beasts like the tyrannosaur and apatosaur, which flourished for millions of years. Compare that with our noble selves, who've been around for half a million years, but haven't been numerous for more than a few thousand. And at the rate we're going, we're unlikely to make it for another thousand. If your hypothetical dinoguys followed the same pattern, small wander they didn't leave much trace.
The real problem with your theory also has to do with percentages. The odds of accidentally hitting the earth with an asteroid that you were just trying to bring closer are vanishingly small. As you say, the odds are literally astronomical. Now, if somebody were trying to hit the earth...
my hands shake enough in two dimensions thank you very much....
In point of fact, that's exactly the problem I have with gyroscopic mice. I just can't hold the thing steady enough to point at something on the screen. But then, I suck at video games anyway, and for the same reason -- no physical coordination. I would think most people would do better.
Jeez, let's focus a little here. It's one thing for a cop to walk up to you and demand that you identify yourself, under a transparent pretext. It's quite another thing for a cop to respond to a person who initiated a confrontration and who is openly breaking the law. Yeah, "blocking traffic" isn't a major offense, but it's not one he could ignore either.
You may be right about the media all copying each other (I've certainly seen it happen before) but I'm not convinced in this case. The evidence is ambiguous either way. If we wanted to get really rigorous (on Slashdot? snicker) we'd want a direct quote from Rice.
Due Process and Fair Trial are constitutional rights not typically afforded to illegal combatants.
"Typically"? How many cases of "illegal combatants" can you cite? I certainly never heard the term before we invaded The Stan.
Perhaps your right about the legality of this indefinite detention. But that legality has nothing to do with "rights of illegal combatants". They simply found a nice big loophole in the law of due process. As long as these detainees are in Cuba, they're not under the jurisdiction of any court system that the U.S. recognizes. If they were brought to a prison on American soil, or on the soil of any of America's allies, the local courts would have jurisdiction, and probably make the DoD let them go. But through blind luck, we happen to have a military base on the territory of an unfriendly government, so the DoD can keep them out of the reach of any courts.
But I take it back -- they're still breaking the law. The "illegal combatants" business is nonsense -- most of these guys are POWs. International law says that you have to release POWs when the war is over.
(The POW thing is only true for those who were actually captured during the fighting. Many of the detainees were picked up on suspicion of belonging to the Taliban or Al-Qaida.)
Oh wait, you're going to say that the War on Terrorism is still going on, right? Well, yeah, but that's likely to be true for our lifetime. And if you think the U.S. government should have the power to detain anybody for the rest of the lives, without ever having to present any evidence to justify the act... if that doesn't scare you, you really are as stupid as you sound.
I mostly agree with you. But why on Earth does your rant rate as "offtopic"? We can't talk about TIA without talking about civil liberties. And ignorance about civil liberties is precisely why the Bush administration is able to get away with this nonsense.
Not that big a coincidence. They both the "starry background" effect from this site. Of course, the Heavan's Gate bunch also liked the TNG jumpsuit uniforms that made the Enterprise crew look like eunuchs. Hopefully, that's not an issue for the airship people....
My first thought was that Jeremy Rice didn't use the U-Word, but that the reporter grabbed it as convenient journalese. (I have other issues with the reporter's use of language -- see below.) But all the news reports seem to be saying "Unpickable", which can only mean this is an actual claim. Perhaps "pick" in this context refers to the specific technique for physically probing the tumblers of a lock, not just a synonym for "disable".
It's all pretty moot anyway. Spies pick locks, but most of us are more concerned about more prosaic intruders. Who don't waste their time with picks -- they smash or jimmy.
What was my other semantic issue? Oh yeah, "failsafe". Come on people. if you mean "foolproof," say that. I'd like to see "failsafe" preserved for its originalmeaning, though my hopes are dimming!
...no American company and/or project leader that I have had contact with cares at all about internationalisation...
Jeez, who have you worked for, Ross Perot? Every single high-tech company I've worked for in the last 7 years (and I've worked at some of the big names) makes a big issue of Internationalization. We're talking billions of customers here, and belive it or not, a lot of them don't speak English.
bottom line, linux and powerppc are a great match.
I often wonder if this is an element in IBM's pro-Linux policy. I'm sure there are elements in IBM that would love to switch from PCs based on CPUs made by Intel to PCs based on IBMs own PowerPC.
All of which is neither here nor there. To the true-red-white-and-blue right-winger, Kerry and Fonda are not individuals. They're stereotypical left-radical-hippie-dogooder-peaceniks. That's all they need to know.
But why do I have to explain this? It's all encompased by a single word I used in my previous post. If you didn't understand it, you can always look it up.
Hey, I was just a contractor. I took the chair that was given me. Not my job to research its provenance!
I just started a contract at Adobe. I was sitting in a conference room, filling out all the paperwork, when I noticed a strange little tab sticking out of my chair. I pulled on it, and out came a complete operating manual, permanently attached! Probably a good idea.
How often do you think an ergonomic chair should be adjusted for you? Answer: Once.
That's not actually true. One strategy for avoiding RSI is to change your posture periodically, so you're not always straining exactly the same muscles. In any case, chairs are often sat in by more than one people (shared desks, people quit and forget to take their chairs with them), and have to be re-adjusted.
Moot point though. By the time I got this chair, it was in such bad shape I couldn't adjust it at all. Perhaps I would have liked it better if it had been brand new when I got it.
Unless this is an attempt by a right wing organization to discredit Kerry, why waste your time? Especially when you are lying?
Well, it certainly is a right-wing attempt to discredit Kerry. No one else would think that associating Kerry with Jane Fonda would discredit him. To the Right, Fonda is that Bitch Traitor Who Went to Hanoi. But to mainstream America, she's just a has-been-actress who made some fitness videos.
And from that point of view, the photo isn't really a lie. True, Fonda and Kerry never actually stood on the same platform. But they both opposed the war, and that makes them both traitor-liberal-bleedingheart-(add your own insult here). It's a rhetoric based on stereotyping people you disagree with. Stupid, but standard political practice these days.
The problem that I have with micropayments is that if I am going to go to the trouble of handing out a credit card number to an online retailer...
No workable micropayment system would work that way. The credit card system just isn't set up to handle small transactions.
A micropayment system would require some sort of public key infrasturcture. You'd put money in your micropayment account (probably with a credit card, but only when you needed to top it off), and then every time you did something that cost you money, somebody's use your public key to verify that you were who you said you were, and a few pennies would be debited from your account. The whole transaction has to be very simple to work.
Yeah, I know what you thinking. Big opportunity for ripoffs -- steal one penny from one million people, and you've got a big haul. But that's a problem with any payment system.
The really big problem is that there's no public key infrastructure to support micropayments. Which, come to think of it, is also why spam is such a problem -- there's no way to identify people so you can say, "I don't know who this bozo is, but I don't want any more email from him." Hmm, I smell a business synergy....
I've tried the Aeron chair out and it seemed like a decent chair, are they not all they appear?
Officially, the Aeron is an "ergonmic" chair. That means that all the chair's parameters can be set to precisely match the user's physical needs.
Problem: as an ergonomic chair, the Aeron is a piece of kaka. It's expensive because they put a lot of money into a kewl physical design and high-tech materials. But the adjustable parts don't adjust easily, and tend to wear out quickly. At one job, I had an old Aeron where the lumbar support was so worn, it wouldn't stay on the chair! I think you're supposed to replace parts of it as they wear out, but of course nobody does.
Frankly, I think it's all marketing. When the Aeron was developed, people were just beginning to realize that computers meant RSI and other ergonomic issues. HermanMiller wanted to tap into that, but they decided branding and kewlness counted for more than actual ergonomics. Judging from the continued popularity of this pseudo-ergonomic beast, they were completely right.
When I worked at the Java division of Sun, the standard chair was this very ordinary-looking but extremely functional ergonomic task chair. (I'm not certain, but I think it was a Global Granada.) Everything on that beast was adjustable -- you could even tilt it forward so you could squint at your screen without straining your back. That is a real ergonomic chair -- one that's designed to be used, not as a prop in a movie.
A reasonable question. What this is actually about is porn. The sites under debate distribute pictures and stories of people killing and eating other people. Usually the victim is a pretty female. It's a simple sexual fantasy, though I can't explain how eating somebody could have a sexual element. The weird sexual fetishes you can find on the net boggle the mind!
As with all violent porn, the issue is whether there are people who don't get the "this is just a fantasy" bit and actually go out and murder people, for sex or for lunch. They even made a movie about it.
Actually no. Vores (as canibalism fetishists refer to themselves) are actually a kind of necrophile, and often hang out at necrophilia sites. Be afraid...
Gross and unfathomable, no? But I think the same is true of any sexual fetish -- if you're not somebody who shares that fetish!
Slashdot Mirror
The dinosaurs that are in the museums are beasts like the tyrannosaur and apatosaur, which flourished for millions of years. Compare that with our noble selves, who've been around for half a million years, but haven't been numerous for more than a few thousand. And at the rate we're going, we're unlikely to make it for another thousand. If your hypothetical dinoguys followed the same pattern, small wander they didn't leave much trace.
The real problem with your theory also has to do with percentages. The odds of accidentally hitting the earth with an asteroid that you were just trying to bring closer are vanishingly small. As you say, the odds are literally astronomical. Now, if somebody were trying to hit the earth...
In other words, MySQL is an ISAM engine with a pseudo-relational front end.
What's your point?
Jeez, let's focus a little here. It's one thing for a cop to walk up to you and demand that you identify yourself, under a transparent pretext. It's quite another thing for a cop to respond to a person who initiated a confrontration and who is openly breaking the law. Yeah, "blocking traffic" isn't a major offense, but it's not one he could ignore either.
You may be right about the media all copying each other (I've certainly seen it happen before) but I'm not convinced in this case. The evidence is ambiguous either way. If we wanted to get really rigorous (on Slashdot? snicker) we'd want a direct quote from Rice.
Perhaps your right about the legality of this indefinite detention. But that legality has nothing to do with "rights of illegal combatants". They simply found a nice big loophole in the law of due process. As long as these detainees are in Cuba, they're not under the jurisdiction of any court system that the U.S. recognizes. If they were brought to a prison on American soil, or on the soil of any of America's allies, the local courts would have jurisdiction, and probably make the DoD let them go. But through blind luck, we happen to have a military base on the territory of an unfriendly government, so the DoD can keep them out of the reach of any courts.
But I take it back -- they're still breaking the law. The "illegal combatants" business is nonsense -- most of these guys are POWs. International law says that you have to release POWs when the war is over.
(The POW thing is only true for those who were actually captured during the fighting. Many of the detainees were picked up on suspicion of belonging to the Taliban or Al-Qaida.)
Oh wait, you're going to say that the War on Terrorism is still going on, right? Well, yeah, but that's likely to be true for our lifetime. And if you think the U.S. government should have the power to detain anybody for the rest of the lives, without ever having to present any evidence to justify the act ... if that doesn't scare you, you really are as stupid as you sound.
I mostly agree with you. But why on Earth does your rant rate as "offtopic"? We can't talk about TIA without talking about civil liberties. And ignorance about civil liberties is precisely why the Bush administration is able to get away with this nonsense.
Not that big a coincidence. They both the "starry background" effect from this site. Of course, the Heavan's Gate bunch also liked the TNG jumpsuit uniforms that made the Enterprise crew look like eunuchs. Hopefully, that's not an issue for the airship people....
It's all pretty moot anyway. Spies pick locks, but most of us are more concerned about more prosaic intruders. Who don't waste their time with picks -- they smash or jimmy.
What was my other semantic issue? Oh yeah, "failsafe". Come on people. if you mean "foolproof," say that. I'd like to see "failsafe" preserved for its original meaning, though my hopes are dimming!
Stupid? Yes. Ignorant? Absolutely. But hardly flamebait.
Dude, you are stuck in a rut! You need a new schtick. You could make fun of Vietnamese necrophiles.
Except that the Sims isn't a game. It supposedly has gaming elements, but they basically don't work. The Sims is really just an electronic dollhouse.
But why do I have to explain this? It's all encompased by a single word I used in my previous post. If you didn't understand it, you can always look it up.
I just started a contract at Adobe. I was sitting in a conference room, filling out all the paperwork, when I noticed a strange little tab sticking out of my chair. I pulled on it, and out came a complete operating manual, permanently attached! Probably a good idea.
Moot point though. By the time I got this chair, it was in such bad shape I couldn't adjust it at all. Perhaps I would have liked it better if it had been brand new when I got it.
And from that point of view, the photo isn't really a lie. True, Fonda and Kerry never actually stood on the same platform. But they both opposed the war, and that makes them both traitor-liberal-bleedingheart-(add your own insult here). It's a rhetoric based on stereotyping people you disagree with. Stupid, but standard political practice these days.
A micropayment system would require some sort of public key infrasturcture. You'd put money in your micropayment account (probably with a credit card, but only when you needed to top it off), and then every time you did something that cost you money, somebody's use your public key to verify that you were who you said you were, and a few pennies would be debited from your account. The whole transaction has to be very simple to work.
Yeah, I know what you thinking. Big opportunity for ripoffs -- steal one penny from one million people, and you've got a big haul. But that's a problem with any payment system.
The really big problem is that there's no public key infrastructure to support micropayments. Which, come to think of it, is also why spam is such a problem -- there's no way to identify people so you can say, "I don't know who this bozo is, but I don't want any more email from him." Hmm, I smell a business synergy....
Problem: as an ergonomic chair, the Aeron is a piece of kaka. It's expensive because they put a lot of money into a kewl physical design and high-tech materials. But the adjustable parts don't adjust easily, and tend to wear out quickly. At one job, I had an old Aeron where the lumbar support was so worn, it wouldn't stay on the chair! I think you're supposed to replace parts of it as they wear out, but of course nobody does.
Frankly, I think it's all marketing. When the Aeron was developed, people were just beginning to realize that computers meant RSI and other ergonomic issues. HermanMiller wanted to tap into that, but they decided branding and kewlness counted for more than actual ergonomics. Judging from the continued popularity of this pseudo-ergonomic beast, they were completely right.
When I worked at the Java division of Sun, the standard chair was this very ordinary-looking but extremely functional ergonomic task chair. (I'm not certain, but I think it was a Global Granada.) Everything on that beast was adjustable -- you could even tilt it forward so you could squint at your screen without straining your back. That is a real ergonomic chair -- one that's designed to be used, not as a prop in a movie.
As with all violent porn, the issue is whether there are people who don't get the "this is just a fantasy" bit and actually go out and murder people, for sex or for lunch. They even made a movie about it.
Gross and unfathomable, no? But I think the same is true of any sexual fetish -- if you're not somebody who shares that fetish!