Good point. You're probably right that mindset has a lot to do with it, at least for the relatively small percentage of developers who are actually involved in tool chain development. For the rest of us, though, I think the GUI/command line choice basically boils down to "Which one is the lesser pain in the ass?"
I can't help wondering if maybe the reason there are so few decent IDEs for UNIX/Linux environments is that doing plain, old fashioned command-line builds is so much easier and more pleasant than on Windows. Could it be that Windows IDEs are so much more advanced precisely because the Windows command line facilities are so cumbersome and annoying? I'm guessing so.
I agree, mostly, about things like IP address and what not. I'm not advocating making it illegal to log such data. Rather, I would suggest that those who give a damn about their privacy be more careful which sites they visit.
However, I'm not sure I agree that anything you type into a search engine ought to legally become the property of the search company. Following the logic of "if you type something into our web page, it becomes our property," that means that every email you send through GMail is not your own property, every rant you post on Slashdot is not your own property, etc. Yes, I understand that that may indeed be what Google's TOS says, but nonetheless, I don't think most people would agree that Google should be able to do whatever the hell they want with your private emails.
Given the incredible number and variety of web sites out there (medical sites, financial services, online email, search engines, forums, etc, etc), it is inevitable that a LOT of very private, personal information will end up being shuffled back and forth across the Internet. By your logic, all of that data automatically becomes the property of the website owner, and presumably, this means that they can do with it as they please, without any limits or regulation. Call me crazy, but I don't agree with that.
We all know that looking at a person's search history, you can discover a ton of very private information about them. Given that, I don't think it's appropriate to be so flippant about what companies do with that information. It would seem that current law agrees with your assessment that such data belongs to the search companies, but that's not the same as saying that it should belong to them. Seems to me this is an area where the laws are still lagging way behind the technology, despite the fact that the Internet has been a major component of everyday life for 15+ years now.
Apparently, you're not big on reading peoples' entire comments before posting your own rants in response. If you'd actually bothered to slow down and read my original comment, it should have been clear that I'm quite mistrustful of corporations (although, I'm not one of those "all corporations are evil" types, nor do I believe making a profit is somehow evil). In fact, I explicitly stated that corporations are not to be trusted with your private data.
Seriously, did you even bother to read my whole comment, or were just looking for a spot to insert your little anti-corporate rant, and after skimming the first sentence of my post, decided that it would do?
More like glass half empty if you ask me. The summary should read "Microsoft To Keep Bing IP Data For 6 Months!"
Is this what passes for "respecting privacy" in 2010? Yes, I understand that this is an improvement over it's previous policy, but in my book, logging IPs at all is too much. I'm of the opinion that anonymity is, overall, a good thing, no matter how many "terrorists" use the Internet to look up bomb recipes.
I might be okay with private companies tracking your IP if not for the fact that these private companies are too easily and too often compelled to hand over such data to the government, and if the government's uses of that information were not so frequently frivolous and/or nefarious. Not to mention the cases where companies have been willing participants in illegal government snooping, such as with the AT&T wiretapping case. Can anybody honestly suggest that we should all just trust Microsoft (or Yahoo, Google, etc) to keep our private data safe? Heck, when they're not busy willingly handing it over to the government, they're selling it off as marketing fodder.
Call me old-fashioned, but I believe the government ought to need a proper search warrant if it wants to know everything I've searched for on Google for the past 6 months, or even how many times I've visited the site.
I can't find record of Google saying, "hey, you're stealing our tech!"
Maybe you just used the wrong search keywords. Nobody says "you're stealing our tech". The correct phraseology would be "hey, you're infringing on our IP!"
First of all, being smug doesn't make you right. Feel free to disagree with me, but drop the pedantic tone.
Secondly, did you read TFA? Obama has not "announced" that he's doing anything. In fact, Obama has apparently made no public comment whatsoever on this issue. TFA is talking about a paper that someone on Obama's staff wrote, recommending these actions.
Thirdly, even if Obama had publicly announced that they were doing this, since when does that prove that it definitely must be on the up and up? It wouldn't be the first time that a politician did something really scummy in full public view, along with announcements and all. If they do decide to implement this policy, you can bet that there will be public announcements to the effect of "We are doing this to protect you from some really scary 'extremists'." This country, along with virtually every other country on the planet, past and present, has a long history of doing some pretty shady stuff right in plain view, with a few choice propaganda buzzwords slathered on to make it palatable to the masses.
Your argument that politicians don't announce the bad things they do is short-sighted and overly simplistic. Go read some history.
At this risk of sounding like a broken record (see my previous comment on this topic), this is exactly why we should be wary of this. This is not just an example of the government exercising free speech. This is the government attempting to exert control over the public's perception of truth. In essence, they are trying to rewrite history. Before you mutter "Gimme a break" and dismiss this idea, think about what history is. History is not an exact account of past events, written some perfectly unbiased, detached, all-seeing observer. History is the collective, retrospective understanding of past events, and it is absolutely vital that it be written by more than person, from more than one viewpoint, and that includes all the nutjobs and tinfoil hat guys. Why? Because if we stamp out all those voices, we never have to answer to them, or refute them. And don't forget, as it even says in TFA, sometimes the conspiracy nutjobs are right!
We can't afford to be glib about this. The government ought not to be in control of what constitutes truth. That road leads straight to 1984 and the Ministry of Truth, except that this time it won't be fiction. Yeah, yeah, I know I probably set off a lot of peoples' tinfoil hat detectors by dropping an Orwell reference. I know Orwell references are as cheap and easy and just as frequently pointless as Hitler references, but don't be so quick to dismiss this as just some good ol' fashioned PR. Sure, Orwell's name gets invoked way too often, but that's only because he was right! (oh, and Hitler really was a very bad guy) This is exactly the kind of crap Orwell was warning us about.
Moreover, when the government gets into the business of trying to control what people believe - not just in the friendly, "Hey I'm a good guy, you can trust me" public relations kind of way, but actually trying to mold people's perception of reality - it is essentially trying to assert control over what constitutes "the truth", a la George Orwell's "Ministry of Truth". That's WAAAAAY beyond simple propaganda campaigns such as "Buy War Bonds".
Dammit. Apparently I didn't expand the thread out far enough before I hit the Reply button, and misread the parent as asking for cites on Robertson's previous comments, instead of a cite on Haiti's supposed pact with the devil.
Can't help ya on that one, but I think it's safe to say that the whole devil pact thing is probably just a fable, and that even if it's not, it's probably impossible to find any conclusive evidence that such a pact was ever made.
September 12, 2005 - Robertson not so subtly implies that hurricane Katrina was God's wrath for legalized abortion.
Sure, if you read his exact words, you could interpret it to mean something other than "Katrina was God's wrath," but given his numerous other warnings about various disasters caused by God, and his far less subtle comments about the 9/11 attacks (see below), and now the Haiti earthquake, it's pretty clear what his not-so-hidden message was when he made his Katrina comments.
September 13, 2001 - Robertson and Falwell say that America's liberal, secular society is to blame for the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
Of course, Falwell later tried to backpedal and state that he did not believe that God caused the 9/11 attacks, but rather he "lifted the veil of protection," thereby allowing the attacks to occur. Read the transcript. It's clear what he (and Robertson) meant. He said America had made God "angry," clearly implying that this was God's wrath.
June 8th, 1998 - Robertson warns Orlando that their "Gay Days" celebration might cause earthquakes, tornados, hurricanes, and even terrorist bombs.
Or, in Robertson's own words "I don't think I'd be waving those flags in God's face if I were you.... [A] condition like this will bring about the destruction of your nation. It'll bring about terrorist bombs, it'll bring earthquakes, tornadoes and possibly a meteor."
A meteor? WTF? Really? He probably just got done watching the trailer for Armageddon (note the release date in the IMDb link and the date of his Orlando rant).
Oh, and just for good measure, here's a couple more. Apparently, he also blamed Ariel Sharon's 2006 stroke and the death of two people in a Sedona, Arizona sweat lodge on God's wrath.
If this does not convince you that Pat Robertson believes this crap, just hop on over to YouTube, and you can find a few dozen videos where you can see and hear him spewing it right out of his own mouth.
In the 80 years since the Great Depression, it's been a commonly known "fact" that every successive generation has more wealth and opportunity than the previous generation. Sadly, this has caused many of us in the younger generations to falsely assume that there exists some kind of natural law (i.e., "growth", "progress", "technological advancement", etc) that guarantees this pattern to continue in perpetuity.
As a result, we've acted like a bunch of spoiled children, who value instant gratification above all else, and in fact see it not merely as a way of life, but as an entitlement. We've forgotten all the lessons from the Great Depression that our grandparents learned the hard way, and we are only now beginning to suffer the consequences of our folly.
The parent is correct. The young people now will be the first generation since the Great Depression who actually have less wealth and opportunity than their parents did. Anybody who is still under the impression that today's youth have more opportunity than their parents just hasn't been paying attention the last couple years.
Need proof? Just look at the current levels of debt, both government and personal, and look at the rate at which debt levels have grown over the last 20 years. That's an inconceivably HUGE amount of outstanding debt, and it's not just going to magically disappear all on its own, regardless of what you hear from Obama, or Geithner, or from some loud-mouthed pundit. All of that debt will have to be paid down, and it's going to take a long time to do it. In the meantime, that mountain of debt will continue to be a huge drag on the economy, which will translate into less opportunity for everyone, for years to come.
That depends entirely on whether or not Facebook keeps a cache of your old data. Something tells me if you change your name from Joe Miller to Fred Flintstone, and then cancel your account 10 minutes later, that won't be enough to purge your real name from Facebook's databases. Also, what do you do about photos? It's a near certainty that when you delete a photo from your FB account, that photo still resides somewhere on their server, most likely in multiple locations.
I've actually been considering deleting my Facebook account for some time now, even though Facebook will undoubtedly point to some weasel words in their TOS to claim that they still own my personal data, including (but, of course, "not limited to") the right to use my name, email address, birth date, photos, and all my posts as they please for eternity.
So, even though in all likelihood, I will be unable to completely wrest my personal data away from them, I figure it's better to quit now than to keep adding more personal data to the pile. I was already seriously considering deleting my account because Facebook seemed to not give a damn about my privacy. Now that they are openly hostile to my privacy, I see no reason at all to continue having an account there.
Despite what Zuckerberg claims, for me, Facebook was never about sharing my personal info with the world. Facebook was a way to re-connect with old friends. Period. Not to allow my info to be broadcast to the whole world, or used for marketing purposes. Zuckerberg can go fuck himself. I'm cancelling my account TODAY!
1) Tremors move through the Earth's crust just a little bit faster than the speed of sound. To put this in perspective, it's perhaps just about 50-70% faster than a modern jet airliner cruising at high altitude.
Sorry, but that estimate is WAY off. There are several different types of seismic waves, the SLOWEST of which travels at about 3km/s, or approximately 7000mph, which is about 1400% faster than an airliner's cruising speed (assuming a cruising speed of 500mph).
Sounds like a good idea, but I wonder if it might, in certain circumstances, be more harmful than helpful. What if you're cruising down the freeway at 70mph and all of a sudden your cellphone and/or radio, along with *EVERYONE* else's, starts screaming "EARTHQUAKE! EARTHQUAKE!" ? Seems like every year or two, you hear about a 100-car pile up caused by something stupid like fog or hail. I shudder to imagine what the possible unintended consequences would be if everyone's cellphone started screaming out an alarm.
And not just on the freeway, either. Having lived in the LA area all my life (37 years), I've been through my share of quakes - most small, but also a couple moderate-to-major ones. It seems like every time we have a quake of any significant size, we hear about at least one or two cases of someone dying of a heart attack (presumably due to the stress caused by the sudden violent shaking). I wonder what a sudden, synchronized blaring of cellphone alarms would do. Not to mention the general panic that would ensue. Imagine being in a crowded mall when the alarm goes off that a major earthquake is imminent. People generally don't seem to respond very well in those circumstances. Usually, there's a small fraction of people who stay calm and try to help others, while everyone else just goes ape shit. I mean, this is a country where people have been trampled to death at Walmart trying to get day-after-Thanksgiving deals.
I'm not saying a general emergency alarm system isn't a good idea. In fact, we already have one here in California, and I don't know why the USGS doesn't just tap into that instead of using Twitter - maybe it's because there are more people glued to their computers these days than to their TVs or radios. But with a device as ubiquitous as a cellphone, I have serious concerns about whether or not it would do more harm than good, ESPECIALLY when you're talking about an event such as an earthquake where you're only getting a few seconds of warning. My guess is that there would be an inverse relationship between the number of seconds of advance notice you give people, and the degree of chaos and panic it causes.
Anyway, just something to think about. I'm glad it's not my job to make such decisions.
So if the quake can be detected at the source (under ground) a message can be sent ahead of the shock wave to give a few seconds notice.
I agree that a few seconds notice is definitely better than zero notice, but in all reality, a few seconds notice is not likely to measurably increase your chances of survival. It might help people avoid minor injuries such as is often caused by falling debris, etc. But it won't do much to reduce the overall number of fatalities.
If you're indoors, a few seconds is enough time to perhaps crawl under your desk, or get to the nearest doorway, but for the vast majority of earthquake-related deaths, neither of those things would have substantially increased anyone's survival odds. Most earthquake deaths are caused by buildings or other structures like bridges and freeway overpasses that suffer catastrophic collapses.
I'm all for anything that gives people any kind of advance warning of earthquakes. Such warnings will undoubtedly save many people from injury, and maybe even save a few people from death. But it will not substantially reduce the number of deaths, at least not directly. If anything, reducing the number of people with minor injuries inundating local hospitals and overwhelming local emergency services will free up those vital resources to rescue people with more serious injuries.
But to really make a dent in the number of deaths would require a major infrastructure overhaul. Namely, the quake-proofing of the thousands upon thousands of buildings and other structures that are currently vulnerable to a major earthquake. We in the developed world tend to think of high earthquake-related death tolls as being largely a third world problem, but even here in the Los Angeles area (where we really ought to know better), there are tens of thousands of buildings and structures that would suffer severe damage if LA took a direct hit from a large quake.
So, yeah... A few seconds warning is better than nothing, but just don't count on it to save your life.
Also, don't overlook the fact that not everybody is going to receive that few-second warning in time to do anything about it. Unless you (or someone in close proximity to you) happen to be glued to the USGS Twitter page, chances are the shaking will be your first warning that an earthquake is underway.
I don't know anybody (myself included) who actually keeps track of DVD release dates, much less counts down in anticipation of a DVD being released. Pretty much every movie that I rent from Netflix is something that I've decided I don't mind waiting for, and apart from the 2-3 movies down at the bottom of my Netflix queue that say "Releases mm/dd/yyyy", I literally never have any idea when a given movie is/was/will be released on DVD.
Okay, so maybe not everybody is like me in this respect. Maybe there are hordes of people who will now be thinking to themselves "Damn! I just can't wait another month! I guess I'll have to buy that DVD after all." But I just don't see it happening that way. I don't know anybody who thinks that way. I do know a couple DVD junkies who seem to think they just have to own every movie ever made on DVD, but this isn't going to change their habits anyway.
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Good point. You're probably right that mindset has a lot to do with it, at least for the relatively small percentage of developers who are actually involved in tool chain development. For the rest of us, though, I think the GUI/command line choice basically boils down to "Which one is the lesser pain in the ass?"
I can't help wondering if maybe the reason there are so few decent IDEs for UNIX/Linux environments is that doing plain, old fashioned command-line builds is so much easier and more pleasant than on Windows. Could it be that Windows IDEs are so much more advanced precisely because the Windows command line facilities are so cumbersome and annoying? I'm guessing so.
I agree, mostly, about things like IP address and what not. I'm not advocating making it illegal to log such data. Rather, I would suggest that those who give a damn about their privacy be more careful which sites they visit.
However, I'm not sure I agree that anything you type into a search engine ought to legally become the property of the search company. Following the logic of "if you type something into our web page, it becomes our property," that means that every email you send through GMail is not your own property, every rant you post on Slashdot is not your own property, etc. Yes, I understand that that may indeed be what Google's TOS says, but nonetheless, I don't think most people would agree that Google should be able to do whatever the hell they want with your private emails.
Given the incredible number and variety of web sites out there (medical sites, financial services, online email, search engines, forums, etc, etc), it is inevitable that a LOT of very private, personal information will end up being shuffled back and forth across the Internet. By your logic, all of that data automatically becomes the property of the website owner, and presumably, this means that they can do with it as they please, without any limits or regulation. Call me crazy, but I don't agree with that.
We all know that looking at a person's search history, you can discover a ton of very private information about them. Given that, I don't think it's appropriate to be so flippant about what companies do with that information. It would seem that current law agrees with your assessment that such data belongs to the search companies, but that's not the same as saying that it should belong to them. Seems to me this is an area where the laws are still lagging way behind the technology, despite the fact that the Internet has been a major component of everyday life for 15+ years now.
Apparently, you're not big on reading peoples' entire comments before posting your own rants in response. If you'd actually bothered to slow down and read my original comment, it should have been clear that I'm quite mistrustful of corporations (although, I'm not one of those "all corporations are evil" types, nor do I believe making a profit is somehow evil). In fact, I explicitly stated that corporations are not to be trusted with your private data.
Seriously, did you even bother to read my whole comment, or were just looking for a spot to insert your little anti-corporate rant, and after skimming the first sentence of my post, decided that it would do?
More like glass half empty if you ask me. The summary should read "Microsoft To Keep Bing IP Data For 6 Months!"
Is this what passes for "respecting privacy" in 2010? Yes, I understand that this is an improvement over it's previous policy, but in my book, logging IPs at all is too much. I'm of the opinion that anonymity is, overall, a good thing, no matter how many "terrorists" use the Internet to look up bomb recipes.
I might be okay with private companies tracking your IP if not for the fact that these private companies are too easily and too often compelled to hand over such data to the government, and if the government's uses of that information were not so frequently frivolous and/or nefarious. Not to mention the cases where companies have been willing participants in illegal government snooping, such as with the AT&T wiretapping case. Can anybody honestly suggest that we should all just trust Microsoft (or Yahoo, Google, etc) to keep our private data safe? Heck, when they're not busy willingly handing it over to the government, they're selling it off as marketing fodder.
Call me old-fashioned, but I believe the government ought to need a proper search warrant if it wants to know everything I've searched for on Google for the past 6 months, or even how many times I've visited the site.
I can't find record of Google saying, "hey, you're stealing our tech!"
Maybe you just used the wrong search keywords. Nobody says "you're stealing our tech". The correct phraseology would be "hey, you're infringing on our IP!"
Shut up, troll.
First of all, being smug doesn't make you right. Feel free to disagree with me, but drop the pedantic tone.
Secondly, did you read TFA? Obama has not "announced" that he's doing anything. In fact, Obama has apparently made no public comment whatsoever on this issue. TFA is talking about a paper that someone on Obama's staff wrote, recommending these actions.
Thirdly, even if Obama had publicly announced that they were doing this, since when does that prove that it definitely must be on the up and up? It wouldn't be the first time that a politician did something really scummy in full public view, along with announcements and all. If they do decide to implement this policy, you can bet that there will be public announcements to the effect of "We are doing this to protect you from some really scary 'extremists'." This country, along with virtually every other country on the planet, past and present, has a long history of doing some pretty shady stuff right in plain view, with a few choice propaganda buzzwords slathered on to make it palatable to the masses.
Your argument that politicians don't announce the bad things they do is short-sighted and overly simplistic. Go read some history.
At this risk of sounding like a broken record (see my previous comment on this topic), this is exactly why we should be wary of this. This is not just an example of the government exercising free speech. This is the government attempting to exert control over the public's perception of truth. In essence, they are trying to rewrite history. Before you mutter "Gimme a break" and dismiss this idea, think about what history is. History is not an exact account of past events, written some perfectly unbiased, detached, all-seeing observer. History is the collective, retrospective understanding of past events, and it is absolutely vital that it be written by more than person, from more than one viewpoint, and that includes all the nutjobs and tinfoil hat guys. Why? Because if we stamp out all those voices, we never have to answer to them, or refute them. And don't forget, as it even says in TFA, sometimes the conspiracy nutjobs are right!
We can't afford to be glib about this. The government ought not to be in control of what constitutes truth. That road leads straight to 1984 and the Ministry of Truth, except that this time it won't be fiction. Yeah, yeah, I know I probably set off a lot of peoples' tinfoil hat detectors by dropping an Orwell reference. I know Orwell references are as cheap and easy and just as frequently pointless as Hitler references, but don't be so quick to dismiss this as just some good ol' fashioned PR. Sure, Orwell's name gets invoked way too often, but that's only because he was right! (oh, and Hitler really was a very bad guy) This is exactly the kind of crap Orwell was warning us about.
Moreover, when the government gets into the business of trying to control what people believe - not just in the friendly, "Hey I'm a good guy, you can trust me" public relations kind of way, but actually trying to mold people's perception of reality - it is essentially trying to assert control over what constitutes "the truth", a la George Orwell's "Ministry of Truth". That's WAAAAAY beyond simple propaganda campaigns such as "Buy War Bonds".
Dammit. Apparently I didn't expand the thread out far enough before I hit the Reply button, and misread the parent as asking for cites on Robertson's previous comments, instead of a cite on Haiti's supposed pact with the devil.
Can't help ya on that one, but I think it's safe to say that the whole devil pact thing is probably just a fable, and that even if it's not, it's probably impossible to find any conclusive evidence that such a pact was ever made.
You asked for cites. Here ya go:
September 12, 2005 - Robertson not so subtly implies that hurricane Katrina was God's wrath for legalized abortion.
Sure, if you read his exact words, you could interpret it to mean something other than "Katrina was God's wrath," but given his numerous other warnings about various disasters caused by God, and his far less subtle comments about the 9/11 attacks (see below), and now the Haiti earthquake, it's pretty clear what his not-so-hidden message was when he made his Katrina comments.
September 13, 2001 - Robertson and Falwell say that America's liberal, secular society is to blame for the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
Here's the video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H-CAcdta_8I
Here's the transcript (scroll down): http://www.truthorfiction.com/rumors/f/falwell-robertson-wtc.htm
Of course, Falwell later tried to backpedal and state that he did not believe that God caused the 9/11 attacks, but rather he "lifted the veil of protection," thereby allowing the attacks to occur. Read the transcript. It's clear what he (and Robertson) meant. He said America had made God "angry," clearly implying that this was God's wrath.
June 8th, 1998 - Robertson warns Orlando that their "Gay Days" celebration might cause earthquakes, tornados, hurricanes, and even terrorist bombs.
Or, in Robertson's own words "I don't think I'd be waving those flags in God's face if I were you. ... [A] condition like this will bring about the destruction of your nation. It'll bring about terrorist bombs, it'll bring earthquakes, tornadoes and possibly a meteor."
A meteor? WTF? Really? He probably just got done watching the trailer for Armageddon (note the release date in the IMDb link and the date of his Orlando rant).
Oh, and just for good measure, here's a couple more. Apparently, he also blamed Ariel Sharon's 2006 stroke and the death of two people in a Sedona, Arizona sweat lodge on God's wrath.
If this does not convince you that Pat Robertson believes this crap, just hop on over to YouTube, and you can find a few dozen videos where you can see and hear him spewing it right out of his own mouth.
Apparently your Y chromosome is missing the humor gene.
If anything, candy cigarettes are a gateway drug to overeating and eventual obesity, not to smoking.
In the 80 years since the Great Depression, it's been a commonly known "fact" that every successive generation has more wealth and opportunity than the previous generation. Sadly, this has caused many of us in the younger generations to falsely assume that there exists some kind of natural law (i.e., "growth", "progress", "technological advancement", etc) that guarantees this pattern to continue in perpetuity.
As a result, we've acted like a bunch of spoiled children, who value instant gratification above all else, and in fact see it not merely as a way of life, but as an entitlement. We've forgotten all the lessons from the Great Depression that our grandparents learned the hard way, and we are only now beginning to suffer the consequences of our folly.
The parent is correct. The young people now will be the first generation since the Great Depression who actually have less wealth and opportunity than their parents did. Anybody who is still under the impression that today's youth have more opportunity than their parents just hasn't been paying attention the last couple years.
Need proof? Just look at the current levels of debt, both government and personal, and look at the rate at which debt levels have grown over the last 20 years. That's an inconceivably HUGE amount of outstanding debt, and it's not just going to magically disappear all on its own, regardless of what you hear from Obama, or Geithner, or from some loud-mouthed pundit. All of that debt will have to be paid down, and it's going to take a long time to do it. In the meantime, that mountain of debt will continue to be a huge drag on the economy, which will translate into less opportunity for everyone, for years to come.
That depends entirely on whether or not Facebook keeps a cache of your old data. Something tells me if you change your name from Joe Miller to Fred Flintstone, and then cancel your account 10 minutes later, that won't be enough to purge your real name from Facebook's databases. Also, what do you do about photos? It's a near certainty that when you delete a photo from your FB account, that photo still resides somewhere on their server, most likely in multiple locations.
I've actually been considering deleting my Facebook account for some time now, even though Facebook will undoubtedly point to some weasel words in their TOS to claim that they still own my personal data, including (but, of course, "not limited to") the right to use my name, email address, birth date, photos, and all my posts as they please for eternity.
So, even though in all likelihood, I will be unable to completely wrest my personal data away from them, I figure it's better to quit now than to keep adding more personal data to the pile. I was already seriously considering deleting my account because Facebook seemed to not give a damn about my privacy. Now that they are openly hostile to my privacy, I see no reason at all to continue having an account there.
Despite what Zuckerberg claims, for me, Facebook was never about sharing my personal info with the world. Facebook was a way to re-connect with old friends. Period. Not to allow my info to be broadcast to the whole world, or used for marketing purposes. Zuckerberg can go fuck himself. I'm cancelling my account TODAY!
You'll never reach 0...
Maybe not, but as the old joke about the mathematician and the engineer goes, you'll get close enough!
Yes, but old and rehashed ad infinitum always means bad.
Sorry, but that estimate is WAY off. There are several different types of seismic waves, the SLOWEST of which travels at about 3km/s, or approximately 7000mph, which is about 1400% faster than an airliner's cruising speed (assuming a cruising speed of 500mph).
Sounds like a good idea, but I wonder if it might, in certain circumstances, be more harmful than helpful. What if you're cruising down the freeway at 70mph and all of a sudden your cellphone and/or radio, along with *EVERYONE* else's, starts screaming "EARTHQUAKE! EARTHQUAKE!" ? Seems like every year or two, you hear about a 100-car pile up caused by something stupid like fog or hail. I shudder to imagine what the possible unintended consequences would be if everyone's cellphone started screaming out an alarm.
And not just on the freeway, either. Having lived in the LA area all my life (37 years), I've been through my share of quakes - most small, but also a couple moderate-to-major ones. It seems like every time we have a quake of any significant size, we hear about at least one or two cases of someone dying of a heart attack (presumably due to the stress caused by the sudden violent shaking). I wonder what a sudden, synchronized blaring of cellphone alarms would do. Not to mention the general panic that would ensue. Imagine being in a crowded mall when the alarm goes off that a major earthquake is imminent. People generally don't seem to respond very well in those circumstances. Usually, there's a small fraction of people who stay calm and try to help others, while everyone else just goes ape shit. I mean, this is a country where people have been trampled to death at Walmart trying to get day-after-Thanksgiving deals.
I'm not saying a general emergency alarm system isn't a good idea. In fact, we already have one here in California, and I don't know why the USGS doesn't just tap into that instead of using Twitter - maybe it's because there are more people glued to their computers these days than to their TVs or radios. But with a device as ubiquitous as a cellphone, I have serious concerns about whether or not it would do more harm than good, ESPECIALLY when you're talking about an event such as an earthquake where you're only getting a few seconds of warning. My guess is that there would be an inverse relationship between the number of seconds of advance notice you give people, and the degree of chaos and panic it causes.
Anyway, just something to think about. I'm glad it's not my job to make such decisions.
I agree that a few seconds notice is definitely better than zero notice, but in all reality, a few seconds notice is not likely to measurably increase your chances of survival. It might help people avoid minor injuries such as is often caused by falling debris, etc. But it won't do much to reduce the overall number of fatalities.
If you're indoors, a few seconds is enough time to perhaps crawl under your desk, or get to the nearest doorway, but for the vast majority of earthquake-related deaths, neither of those things would have substantially increased anyone's survival odds. Most earthquake deaths are caused by buildings or other structures like bridges and freeway overpasses that suffer catastrophic collapses.
I'm all for anything that gives people any kind of advance warning of earthquakes. Such warnings will undoubtedly save many people from injury, and maybe even save a few people from death. But it will not substantially reduce the number of deaths, at least not directly. If anything, reducing the number of people with minor injuries inundating local hospitals and overwhelming local emergency services will free up those vital resources to rescue people with more serious injuries.
But to really make a dent in the number of deaths would require a major infrastructure overhaul. Namely, the quake-proofing of the thousands upon thousands of buildings and other structures that are currently vulnerable to a major earthquake. We in the developed world tend to think of high earthquake-related death tolls as being largely a third world problem, but even here in the Los Angeles area (where we really ought to know better), there are tens of thousands of buildings and structures that would suffer severe damage if LA took a direct hit from a large quake.
So, yeah... A few seconds warning is better than nothing, but just don't count on it to save your life.
Also, don't overlook the fact that not everybody is going to receive that few-second warning in time to do anything about it. Unless you (or someone in close proximity to you) happen to be glued to the USGS Twitter page, chances are the shaking will be your first warning that an earthquake is underway.
You're referring to the original theatrical release, not the DVD release, right?
Mod parent up.
I don't know anybody (myself included) who actually keeps track of DVD release dates, much less counts down in anticipation of a DVD being released. Pretty much every movie that I rent from Netflix is something that I've decided I don't mind waiting for, and apart from the 2-3 movies down at the bottom of my Netflix queue that say "Releases mm/dd/yyyy", I literally never have any idea when a given movie is/was/will be released on DVD.
Okay, so maybe not everybody is like me in this respect. Maybe there are hordes of people who will now be thinking to themselves "Damn! I just can't wait another month! I guess I'll have to buy that DVD after all." But I just don't see it happening that way. I don't know anybody who thinks that way. I do know a couple DVD junkies who seem to think they just have to own every movie ever made on DVD, but this isn't going to change their habits anyway.
For a second there, I thought they were talking about a software patch. WTF? NASA is open-sourcing the shuttle???
When I realized they were talking about embroidery...boy, talk about a buzz-kill!