How can mass units be "orders of magnitude out of scale" with dimensional units?
That's not even an apples-to-oranges comparison - at least those would both be fruits. Comparing mass and distance is literally nonsensical. What? Are you 3 kg away from me?
Mass relates directly to distance, since 1 liter of water (volume of a cube 0.1m on each side) is approximately a kilogram. Alternately, 1 gram is approximately the mass of a cube of water 0.01m on each side; this was, in fact, the original definition as decreed by the French government.
If the French had chosen the mass of 1m^3 of water as the standard then the unit of mass would be in-scale with the units of distance and volume. In a system like that I could estimate my volume by simply stepping on a scale and reading my mass; the same number would be both my mass and volume, just change the unit label. Instead they chose a system where the volume of the definitive unit mass was 6 orders of magnitude away from the unit volume. As if to confuse matters more, the standard volume unit (liter) is 10^3 smaller than the cube of the unit length and (if holding water) has 10^3 larger mass than the unit mass.
If you don't care about this, that's fine; neither did the French. They cared more about the units being useful on their own in day-to-day life, and were happy that there was an even factor of 10 difference between the scales. The historical fact remains, though, that the French knowingly chose not to unify their units when creating the system, presenting modern geeks with the first-world problem of needing a conversion factor between mass and volume rather than the units being strictly 1-to-1, and affording them the opportunity to complain about it. Just because the complaint is pointless doesn't make it wrong;^)
If California is on par with the rest of the states wrt drivers tests, then yeah, having an autobahn (which I have driven on during a vacation) would be a very, very bad idea in the states. Driving is a privilege not a right, you should have to work hard to get it (learn to drive and be tested accordingly).
Be glad you're in California, it's actually got one of the better driver training & licensing programs in the country. In the Midwest the program seems to be, "let's assume you've been driving your Father's tractor since 8 years old and call that equivalent experience". Out East I've had natives in New Jersey honk at me for not turning left across traffic at a red light; what lack of training is needed to think that is acceptable should be criminal. California may not have the most courteous drivers, but it could be a lot worse...
(dammit Slashdot! Let me edit my damned posts already!!!)
You can edit your posts, it's called the "Preview" button. Once you hit "Submit" others start replying. If you then edit your post a little or a lot, the previous responders might have to edit theirs, ad infinitum (unless you have some kind of thread history like Wikipedia; which on/. would be an unreadable writhing mess--or is that what you're after, you devious wiggles).
And yet, there are other forums that manage just fine, even with editing enabled. It occasionally results in someone revising their statement to make themselves look less foolish, but that's moderated by others quoting their original statement to capture its unaltered idiocy. Hilarity typically ensues. The decision to allow editing or not is at the discretion of the site administrators for forum frameworks that allow it, and while some take Slashdot's (and your) stance, others do not. Commenters who spend more time on edit-friendly boards miss that feature when they come here, because they're used to it.
Please don't talk down to the people who want to edit their comments after submission; you may not prefer that style of forum, but many do and it's a valid preference.
I find your conditions acceptable, provided that they are voluntary. In fact, given the proper circumstances I'd volunteer to serve under them.
Re-reading the Wikipedia page I referenced earlier, the minutemen were "members of teams of select men from the American colonial partisan militia"; in other words, they likely volunteered twice for this duty. If I were in such a unit I'd gladly share my arsenal with my battle-buddies, and I'd find nothing unusual about my unit wanting to inspect and account for my arms. Mandatory attendance at drills would also be par for the course, modern Army National Guard soldiers have similar conditions on their attendance.
I'm not sure you're right, though, about the standardization of arms in these units; that contradicts my memory of lessons from school and the wiki page I've already cited. This is important, since the "bring what you've got" condition is the crux of the issue; you can't bring it if you haven't got it. This is the primary justification I can see for allowing civilian ownership of military-class firearms via a historical interpretation of the 2nd Amendment.
Am I reading that graph right that X86-64 is rising about as fast as ARM is falling? Most of the graph lines are holding fairly steady, with X86-64 rising and another brownish line (ARM? I'm having trouble reading the legend) falling at about the same rate. Considering that the Y-axis is marked in powers of 2 per increment I'm probably mis-interpreting this. On the other hand, it's certainly not stealing share from 32-bit X86. Hopefully it represents a bunch of new installs, and the year of the Linux desktop is finally upon us =)
It most certainly had been, or do you think those 100,000+ combatant battles were armed by 10 expert metalworkers fashioning them piece by piece.
Actually, yes. Well, perhaps made by thousands of 10-man teams, but still, yes. The technology for making anything, let alone weapons, with interchangeable parts was in its infancy at the time of the American Revolution. Eli Whitney's 1801 demonstration to the U.S. Congress was impressive, but post-revolution and still required that the parts be "handmade by skilled workmen". The initial benefit was being able to do field repairs on the rifle instead of needing to have it sent to a gunsmith. In both cases expert metalworkers were still involved.
Armory/production IDs, though, are another story; I have no idea whether they were in use or not. I'd be surprised if there weren't stamps available for making such marks, but their use or not would be dictated by manufacturing and purchasing culture of the time. It would make a fun research project if I ever went back to school for a History degree =)
The definition of "arms" may have shifted somewhat, but a modern combat rifle still bears a much closer relation to a musket than to a pot plant. If I get your meaning right, you're saying that because modern firearms are more effective than their predecessors that they shouldn't be afforded the same protection under the constitution? Let's explore that a bit.
At the time of the U.S. Revolution it was common for private vessels to have cannons mounted for defense against would-be boarders. They were expensive, but not out of reach for large corporations or wealthy individuals. The British East India Company famously owned ships capable of repelling attacks from contemporary war ships. The term "Privateer" referred to privately owned vessels given permission to legally attack warships. Presumably, absent a letter of marque, these same ships could sail peacefully about their own business while still fully armed.
In light of this I find it hard to believe that the Founding Fathers would disqualify a modern firearm from constitutional protection simply because it's "too effective". Those arguing that the Constitution should be interpreted as a static doctrine should more fairly be also arguing that Donald Trump should be able to mount deck guns on the Princess and rent it out as protection against pirates for merchant vessels.
If we want to be honest about changing and adapting the document to modern culture, though, let's consider the minuteman militia. They carried into battle their own personal firearms, some of which (rifles) were the most advanced firearms presently available. They were a match for the best military equipment of the time. If these were the "arms" which the "People" would carry in a "militia", then extending it to modern times it would be reasonable to allow private citizens to own whichever firearm they could afford or build themselves. It would also be reasonable for the government to call on private citizens to defend the Nation against hostile forces marching on our soil, with the expectation that they'd be a match for whatever the enemy brought.
In Iron Man 2 Tony Stark asserts that he's privatized national defense. If my reading of this history books is correct, he wouldn't have been the first; instead, he'd have been continuing a long and noble tradition. And Cody R. Wilson with his "Defense Distributed" project? He sounds quite philosophically close to the minutemen.
On the topic of the SD card for the ATIV S, is it going to still be non-removable? There was a bunch of tooth-gnashing here on Slashdot over that for WP7, but I suspect Microsoft doesn't figure the general public cares (or understands) it well enough to make them change it for WP8.
I just skimmed the article, and it doesn't even really say if the ATIV S has an SD slot, just that WP8 allows for one. If I were new here I might wonder how that got into the summary...
Please recalibrate your sarcasmeter; stephanruby was engaging in deadpan satire, not frank honesty. I'll refer you to my preferred benchmark, Swift's A Modest Proposal.
I heard that exact line far too often while growing up in Utah..... *sadface*
#include no-true-Mormon-fallacy #include anecdote=data-fallacy Wow, I'm ashamed for Utah. I would not expect this would be the case, considering that there's nothing in Mormon doctrine to support that sort of idea. I seem to recall that there was an early church leader that gave his opinion that scripture could be interpreted as creation = 7000yrs, but that's not canon and certainly not the official position of the church. In my experience the "young earth" theory is rare among Mormons, and much more common among Evangelists I've met. I also think that no rational Mormon should believe in a young earth. On the other hand, I once dated a girl whose Dad (a Mormon) believed the "bones were planted" line; I thought he was a lunatic. It saddens me to hear that there are more like him. *sympathysadface*
I looked at the dosage chart on my children's ibuprofen syrup recently and found that the recommended dose for a 12-yr-old was the same as the extra-strength pills for an adult (400mg every 6-8 hrs). For my kids old enough to swallow pills I'll just figure out the dose they need and give it to them in tablets.
For what it's worth, I've never seen the point in buying prescription-strength pills for ibuprofen. I've been on 800mg doses of ibuprofen before, and it was much cheaper to just take 4x 200mg tablets each dose rather than paying for the 800mg tablets. I'm also curious why the dosage-by-weight tables seem to assume that everyone over 100lbs needs the same dose. I doubt that my 100lb daughter, my 150lb wife, and my 300lb neighbor would get the same benefit from 400mg...
Burning karma to plug my favorite sci-fi author, Howard Tayler. His major opus is Schlock Mercenary, a web comic about ambulatory excrement working for a company of space marines for hire. Really, it's better than it sounds! And it's delivered the funny every day without fail since 12 June, 2007.
I'm comfortable submitting him as "underappreciated" due to the obscure medium he's chosen - not a lot of recognition to be gained as a comic artist. Howard's comic demonstrates, though, that thought-provoking hard sci-fi can be delivered in a format other than the novel.
I really hope they don't. As time goes by it gets harder and harder and harder to run legacy apps on modern operating systems. ReactOS is a godsend for those who just want to keep that one ancient service alive. Having XP finally drop completely out of support will make Win32 support in ReactOS more critical, not less.
There are cheap ways to get oxygen absorbers and silica gel desiccants:
Hand warmer = oxygen absorber
(some) kitty litter = desiccant (make sure it has silica gel; Fresh Step Crystals, Petco Crystals are both OK)
The hand warmer will generate more heat than a food-grade oxygen absorber, so make sure it doesn't touch the stuff you want preserved. Also consider putting your kitty litter in a cloth bag to keep it contained.
I read through a couple of the documents (first and last), and it seems that the FBI lawyers either don't get it or are being intentionally evasive about the issues. Their first-amendment counter-arguments, though, seem to boil down to the following:
* The phone records aren't protected by the first amendment because the parties that want to talk are in a business relationship. * This censorship isn't harming the company or the subscriber because even if the NSL were public the company wouldn't lose any customers over it. The FBI is sending these letters to everyone, and everyone else is complying, so it's not like the customer can switch providers to get away from it. * The FBI is interested in the call logs to see who the subscriber is associating with, but this isn't 1960's Alabama, and the customer isn't a member of the NAACP with KKK looking to burn crosses on their lawn as soon as the membership list goes public - the EFF hasn't shown that a specific harm will come to the phone company or the customer as a result of providing the information requested or keeping quiet about it being provided.
The "doesn't get it" part is that the FBI seems intent on ignoring the gag order parts of the NSL in favor of arguing "we totally have a right to that information, and you have no right to keep it from us". It's just amazing, though, that they're able with wide-eyed innocence to ask "what's the harm?" to the judge, as if they were not actively looking to deprive someone of their liberty or life based on associations they'd discover with this request. I guess in their mind that it's OK because it's the FBI instead of the KKK that's doing it - national security and all that. Oh, and the "we're harming everyone the same way, so this specific instance is OK" stance is mind-boggling, too.
Perhaps there's other documents I haven't read that deal with that separately; the most recent filing was a request to compel compliance. I'm sure I'm missing lost of fun details, and that someone with more legal experience could poke more holes in this; it's cases like these that need a running commentary by someone like PJ from Groklaw...
As a scoutmaster in a Mormon troop I felt stung by some of the accusations you leveled here, and did some research to see what truth there is in them. The rejection of the Unitarian religious emblem and barring of Wiccans from membership both seemed out of character for the organization.
From what I can find there is no official ban on Wiccans from BSA membership. There are, in fact, Wiccan units registered with the BSA, just not very many of them (fewer than 25). Things I did find included a Methodist troop asking a Wiccan scout to find another troop to attend (which is unfortunate, but they're in their rights to do so), and the Wiccan religious emblem program being denied recognition due to insufficient membership. I can see how Wiccans would find the religious emblem thing frustrating; asking Wiccans to create a national program is like asking anarchists to elect a president - Wicca just isn't a centralized sort of religion. To the credit of the Methodist community their leaders overturned the scoutmaster's decision, and recognized the validity of the Wiccan scout's faith.
The Unitarian emblem decision is more complex; it seems that the Unitarian Universalist Association (UUA) decided to make a point of using their emblem program as a test case for protesting the BSA policies on homosexuality. To avoid the controversy that caused, the Unitarian Universalist Scouters Organization (UUSO) was created (I'd guess that it's members are scouts of the Unitarian faith, but not members of the Unitarian leadership) and submitted a program that left out the clauses about homosexuality; this was accepted by the BSA, but is not recognized by the UUA.
I think it's not fair to blame the Mormons for either of these situations. There were no Mormons involved in the incident with the Wiccan scout, even indirectly. In the case of the UUA the real issue was homosexuality, not "doctrine"; Mormons are not alone in their position on homosexuality, the National Catholic Committee on Scouting has a similar position.
I don't deny that the Mormons lately have a large influence on BSA policy; unfortunately, it seems our influence is largely due to the size of our program relative to the total number of Scouts in America. I wish the solution to this would become "recruit more scouts", I'd have little problem with the BSA requirements board adjusting the program to accommodate other people's needs as well. In the mean time, I hope that those "social adjustment" merit badges help aspiring scouts learn to balance their check books and get out to vote; the community could certainly use more civic-minded Wiccans speaking their minds and helping others see that a policy of "harm none" is good for everyone.
I'm glad to see we're in agreement here. I think I'd go a step further and claim that game developers trying to tell a story using cutscenes and dialog sequences don't understand the medium and are doing it wrong.
In my opinion the storytelling in a game should be found primarily in the gameplay, as that's the core and strength of the medium. Just like Film is a bad medium for long dialog-driven exposition and Novels are a weak medium for expressing explosive action, Video Games suffer when the storyteller takes control away from the player to start showing a film or have a long conversation.between characters.
I also think that games where the player has to grind through the same encounter over and over miss the point just as badly. Once you've defeated the orc chief in the plains that part of the story has already been told; what point is there in defeating him again? Am I a hero or a bully? If I'm just farming him for gear then I'm beginning to sound like the guy who wrote The Seventy Maxims of Maximally Effective Mercenaries: "21 - Give a man a fish, feed him for a day. Take his fish away and tell him he's lucky just to be alive, and he'll figure out how to catch another one for you to take tomorrow." That works for an anti-hero, if that's how the game is scripted, but having it as a primary game mechanic for a heroic character just doesn't work. Knowing that the game designers are doing it just to push my Pavlovian buttons only makes it worse for me.
Yep, I think about this stuff way too much =) And now you know why I don't play WoW...
In case you're not joking, I'll take this on as a serious question, and give a serious response.
Pacman: A hunter-gatherer struggles in a labyrinthine wilderness to collect enough resources to support his family (don't forget about Ms. Pacman and Jr.!). He is haunted and opposed at every step by supernatural beings who he can overcome, if only temporarily, through the use of rare totems. His successes are temporary, and he must return daily to the labyrinth to face ever more aggressive foes. Inevitably he will eventually fail, his wits and endurance having run out, and leave his family fatherless. (No, I was never any good at Pacman, and found it depressing).
Space Invaders: A lone gunner operates anti-air artillery to defend the Earth against Alien invaders from another world. He is prepared to sacrifice his life to defend his homeworld - it is, in fact, inevitable. Before that happens, though, he'll make sure the enemy pays a high price for their aggression. His infinite supply of ammunition and periodic resupply of ablative shielding allow him to make his last, valiant stand count.
Asteroids: Lost in space, a miner seeks to find his way home. It's a hard journey, through dense fields of space rock and hostile space pirates. Only his skill and wits will help him survive his journey...
Frogger: You're a frog. You're stuck on the wrong side of rush-hour traffic from your lily pad. Make it there alive or you'll never reproduce. Go!
Snake: You are a gluttonous snake. Gorge yourself until you've grown so long that you tear into your own flesh by mistake. (I've never cared much for this simplistic morality tale, Tron did it much better with the light cycles).
Tetris: OK, you've got me there.
Seriously, though, all of these games (except perhaps Tetris) are about taking a role, fulfilling that role's duties, and surviving by wit, skill, and strength. Most of them (Frogger is a rare exception) are only about the journey involved in fulfilling those duties; having a destination at the end would make the story jump the shark. I don't hold that against them, I like the story of the TV show King Fu, too; it would also have ended had he reached his journey's end. There may not be much story line to speak of, but that's the point of interactive fiction. I write the story by my actions. The obstacles set before me (waves of aliens, cars in rush hour traffic, maps, etc) are the settings and villains, and each stage is its own sub-plot with conflict, climax, and resolution.
I'm fine if you want to argue that there isn't much story, that it's simplistic, or that it's not compelling. I am up for debating the relative merits of finite storylines as opposed to never-ending journey tales, too. I don't think, though, that my descriptions of the "stories" for those games were far-fetched or even stretching much. If you pay attention to setting and action then impressive stories can be told, even without dialog or full-motion video. I'm of the opinion that if you were willing to spend hours playing those games then you found the gameplay (setting + action) compelling enough to keep coming back, whether or not you recognized it for the story that it is.
... this "interesting piece of information" will never be published.
I agree with the sentiment, but if the cert is in the virus code then it's available to everyone who has a copy. Stuxnet is fairly widely distributed, and I'm sure every black hat organization that wants it has a copy. The U.S. Government may be able to strong-arm Kapersky and Norton, but I doubt they have much leverage over the Cult of the Dead Cow (or whoever the big player is this week). The U.S. Government may be able to strong arm Rupert Murdoch and the other modern-day Charles Foster Kanes, but there are plenty of bloggers looking to make a name for themselves, never mind all the foreign journalists for agencies like Al Jazeera.
As much as anyone in power may want to suppress this information, it's got literally the same problem as DRM on movie disks - the virus is intentionally broadcasting itself to the world, and needs to have the cert attached to work properly. If it can be analyzed to find incriminating information, and there is anyone motivated and skilled enough to do the analysis, I am sure they will have access to both the virus itself and the means to publish.
Slashdot Mirror
How can mass units be "orders of magnitude out of scale" with dimensional units?
That's not even an apples-to-oranges comparison - at least those would both be fruits. Comparing mass and distance is literally nonsensical. What? Are you 3 kg away from me?
Mass relates directly to distance, since 1 liter of water (volume of a cube 0.1m on each side) is approximately a kilogram. Alternately, 1 gram is approximately the mass of a cube of water 0.01m on each side; this was, in fact, the original definition as decreed by the French government.
If the French had chosen the mass of 1m^3 of water as the standard then the unit of mass would be in-scale with the units of distance and volume. In a system like that I could estimate my volume by simply stepping on a scale and reading my mass; the same number would be both my mass and volume, just change the unit label. Instead they chose a system where the volume of the definitive unit mass was 6 orders of magnitude away from the unit volume. As if to confuse matters more, the standard volume unit (liter) is 10^3 smaller than the cube of the unit length and (if holding water) has 10^3 larger mass than the unit mass.
If you don't care about this, that's fine; neither did the French. They cared more about the units being useful on their own in day-to-day life, and were happy that there was an even factor of 10 difference between the scales. The historical fact remains, though, that the French knowingly chose not to unify their units when creating the system, presenting modern geeks with the first-world problem of needing a conversion factor between mass and volume rather than the units being strictly 1-to-1, and affording them the opportunity to complain about it. Just because the complaint is pointless doesn't make it wrong ;^)
If California is on par with the rest of the states wrt drivers tests, then yeah, having an autobahn (which I have driven on during a vacation) would be a very, very bad idea in the states. Driving is a privilege not a right, you should have to work hard to get it (learn to drive and be tested accordingly).
Be glad you're in California, it's actually got one of the better driver training & licensing programs in the country. In the Midwest the program seems to be, "let's assume you've been driving your Father's tractor since 8 years old and call that equivalent experience". Out East I've had natives in New Jersey honk at me for not turning left across traffic at a red light; what lack of training is needed to think that is acceptable should be criminal. California may not have the most courteous drivers, but it could be a lot worse...
(dammit Slashdot! Let me edit my damned posts already!!!)
You can edit your posts, it's called the "Preview" button. Once you hit "Submit" others start replying. If you then edit your post a little or a lot, the previous responders might have to edit theirs, ad infinitum (unless you have some kind of thread history like Wikipedia; which on /. would be an unreadable writhing mess--or is that what you're after, you devious wiggles).
And yet, there are other forums that manage just fine, even with editing enabled. It occasionally results in someone revising their statement to make themselves look less foolish, but that's moderated by others quoting their original statement to capture its unaltered idiocy. Hilarity typically ensues. The decision to allow editing or not is at the discretion of the site administrators for forum frameworks that allow it, and while some take Slashdot's (and your) stance, others do not. Commenters who spend more time on edit-friendly boards miss that feature when they come here, because they're used to it.
Please don't talk down to the people who want to edit their comments after submission; you may not prefer that style of forum, but many do and it's a valid preference.
I find your conditions acceptable, provided that they are voluntary. In fact, given the proper circumstances I'd volunteer to serve under them.
Re-reading the Wikipedia page I referenced earlier, the minutemen were "members of teams of select men from the American colonial partisan militia"; in other words, they likely volunteered twice for this duty. If I were in such a unit I'd gladly share my arsenal with my battle-buddies, and I'd find nothing unusual about my unit wanting to inspect and account for my arms. Mandatory attendance at drills would also be par for the course, modern Army National Guard soldiers have similar conditions on their attendance.
I'm not sure you're right, though, about the standardization of arms in these units; that contradicts my memory of lessons from school and the wiki page I've already cited. This is important, since the "bring what you've got" condition is the crux of the issue; you can't bring it if you haven't got it. This is the primary justification I can see for allowing civilian ownership of military-class firearms via a historical interpretation of the 2nd Amendment.
Am I reading that graph right that X86-64 is rising about as fast as ARM is falling? Most of the graph lines are holding fairly steady, with X86-64 rising and another brownish line (ARM? I'm having trouble reading the legend) falling at about the same rate. Considering that the Y-axis is marked in powers of 2 per increment I'm probably mis-interpreting this. On the other hand, it's certainly not stealing share from 32-bit X86. Hopefully it represents a bunch of new installs, and the year of the Linux desktop is finally upon us =)
It most certainly had been, or do you think those 100,000+ combatant battles were armed by 10 expert metalworkers fashioning them piece by piece.
Actually, yes. Well, perhaps made by thousands of 10-man teams, but still, yes. The technology for making anything, let alone weapons, with interchangeable parts was in its infancy at the time of the American Revolution. Eli Whitney's 1801 demonstration to the U.S. Congress was impressive, but post-revolution and still required that the parts be "handmade by skilled workmen". The initial benefit was being able to do field repairs on the rifle instead of needing to have it sent to a gunsmith. In both cases expert metalworkers were still involved.
Armory/production IDs, though, are another story; I have no idea whether they were in use or not. I'd be surprised if there weren't stamps available for making such marks, but their use or not would be dictated by manufacturing and purchasing culture of the time. It would make a fun research project if I ever went back to school for a History degree =)
The definition of "arms" may have shifted somewhat, but a modern combat rifle still bears a much closer relation to a musket than to a pot plant. If I get your meaning right, you're saying that because modern firearms are more effective than their predecessors that they shouldn't be afforded the same protection under the constitution? Let's explore that a bit.
At the time of the U.S. Revolution it was common for private vessels to have cannons mounted for defense against would-be boarders. They were expensive, but not out of reach for large corporations or wealthy individuals. The British East India Company famously owned ships capable of repelling attacks from contemporary war ships. The term "Privateer" referred to privately owned vessels given permission to legally attack warships. Presumably, absent a letter of marque, these same ships could sail peacefully about their own business while still fully armed.
In light of this I find it hard to believe that the Founding Fathers would disqualify a modern firearm from constitutional protection simply because it's "too effective". Those arguing that the Constitution should be interpreted as a static doctrine should more fairly be also arguing that Donald Trump should be able to mount deck guns on the Princess and rent it out as protection against pirates for merchant vessels.
If we want to be honest about changing and adapting the document to modern culture, though, let's consider the minuteman militia. They carried into battle their own personal firearms, some of which (rifles) were the most advanced firearms presently available. They were a match for the best military equipment of the time. If these were the "arms" which the "People" would carry in a "militia", then extending it to modern times it would be reasonable to allow private citizens to own whichever firearm they could afford or build themselves. It would also be reasonable for the government to call on private citizens to defend the Nation against hostile forces marching on our soil, with the expectation that they'd be a match for whatever the enemy brought.
In Iron Man 2 Tony Stark asserts that he's privatized national defense. If my reading of this history books is correct, he wouldn't have been the first; instead, he'd have been continuing a long and noble tradition. And Cody R. Wilson with his "Defense Distributed" project? He sounds quite philosophically close to the minutemen.
On the topic of the SD card for the ATIV S, is it going to still be non-removable? There was a bunch of tooth-gnashing here on Slashdot over that for WP7, but I suspect Microsoft doesn't figure the general public cares (or understands) it well enough to make them change it for WP8.
I just skimmed the article, and it doesn't even really say if the ATIV S has an SD slot, just that WP8 allows for one. If I were new here I might wonder how that got into the summary...
Please recalibrate your sarcasmeter; stephanruby was engaging in deadpan satire, not frank honesty. I'll refer you to my preferred benchmark, Swift's A Modest Proposal .
I heard that exact line far too often while growing up in Utah.....
*sadface*
#include no-true-Mormon-fallacy
#include anecdote=data-fallacy
Wow, I'm ashamed for Utah. I would not expect this would be the case, considering that there's nothing in Mormon doctrine to support that sort of idea. I seem to recall that there was an early church leader that gave his opinion that scripture could be interpreted as creation = 7000yrs, but that's not canon and certainly not the official position of the church. In my experience the "young earth" theory is rare among Mormons, and much more common among Evangelists I've met. I also think that no rational Mormon should believe in a young earth. On the other hand, I once dated a girl whose Dad (a Mormon) believed the "bones were planted" line; I thought he was a lunatic. It saddens me to hear that there are more like him. *sympathysadface*
I looked at the dosage chart on my children's ibuprofen syrup recently and found that the recommended dose for a 12-yr-old was the same as the extra-strength pills for an adult (400mg every 6-8 hrs). For my kids old enough to swallow pills I'll just figure out the dose they need and give it to them in tablets.
For what it's worth, I've never seen the point in buying prescription-strength pills for ibuprofen. I've been on 800mg doses of ibuprofen before, and it was much cheaper to just take 4x 200mg tablets each dose rather than paying for the 800mg tablets. I'm also curious why the dosage-by-weight tables seem to assume that everyone over 100lbs needs the same dose. I doubt that my 100lb daughter, my 150lb wife, and my 300lb neighbor would get the same benefit from 400mg...
Why I'd never be able to pull that off:
oblig. XKCD
My TV and Blu-ray player both run Linux, and both take 15 seconds or longer to turn on. This would not be desirable behavior in a car.
... It would take a whole lot of bats to make any appreciable dent in the mosquito population.
On the plus side, though, then we'd have a whole lot of bats!
Burning karma to plug my favorite sci-fi author, Howard Tayler. His major opus is Schlock Mercenary, a web comic about ambulatory excrement working for a company of space marines for hire. Really, it's better than it sounds! And it's delivered the funny every day without fail since 12 June, 2007.
I'm comfortable submitting him as "underappreciated" due to the obscure medium he's chosen - not a lot of recognition to be gained as a comic artist. Howard's comic demonstrates, though, that thought-provoking hard sci-fi can be delivered in a format other than the novel.
I really hope they don't. As time goes by it gets harder and harder and harder to run legacy apps on modern operating systems. ReactOS is a godsend for those who just want to keep that one ancient service alive. Having XP finally drop completely out of support will make Win32 support in ReactOS more critical, not less.
There are cheap ways to get oxygen absorbers and silica gel desiccants:
Hand warmer = oxygen absorber
(some) kitty litter = desiccant (make sure it has silica gel; Fresh Step Crystals, Petco Crystals are both OK)
The hand warmer will generate more heat than a food-grade oxygen absorber, so make sure it doesn't touch the stuff you want preserved. Also consider putting your kitty litter in a cloth bag to keep it contained.
Good luck!
I read through a couple of the documents (first and last), and it seems that the FBI lawyers either don't get it or are being intentionally evasive about the issues. Their first-amendment counter-arguments, though, seem to boil down to the following:
* The phone records aren't protected by the first amendment because the parties that want to talk are in a business relationship.
* This censorship isn't harming the company or the subscriber because even if the NSL were public the company wouldn't lose any customers over it. The FBI is sending these letters to everyone, and everyone else is complying, so it's not like the customer can switch providers to get away from it.
* The FBI is interested in the call logs to see who the subscriber is associating with, but this isn't 1960's Alabama, and the customer isn't a member of the NAACP with KKK looking to burn crosses on their lawn as soon as the membership list goes public - the EFF hasn't shown that a specific harm will come to the phone company or the customer as a result of providing the information requested or keeping quiet about it being provided.
The "doesn't get it" part is that the FBI seems intent on ignoring the gag order parts of the NSL in favor of arguing "we totally have a right to that information, and you have no right to keep it from us". It's just amazing, though, that they're able with wide-eyed innocence to ask "what's the harm?" to the judge, as if they were not actively looking to deprive someone of their liberty or life based on associations they'd discover with this request. I guess in their mind that it's OK because it's the FBI instead of the KKK that's doing it - national security and all that. Oh, and the "we're harming everyone the same way, so this specific instance is OK" stance is mind-boggling, too.
Perhaps there's other documents I haven't read that deal with that separately; the most recent filing was a request to compel compliance. I'm sure I'm missing lost of fun details, and that someone with more legal experience could poke more holes in this; it's cases like these that need a running commentary by someone like PJ from Groklaw...
That's National Airport, I have no idea why people insist on calling it after some Alzheimer victim.
Perhaps because the airport's full, official name is "Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport"? Has been since February 6, 1998 when President Clinton signed a law changing its name?
So, what is it; are you just trolling, ignorant, or feeling betrayed that a Democrat President would honor a Republican?
You're welcome.
My Country 'Tis of Thee (tune of "God Save the King/Queen") isn't the U.S. national anthem...
As a scoutmaster in a Mormon troop I felt stung by some of the accusations you leveled here, and did some research to see what truth there is in them. The rejection of the Unitarian religious emblem and barring of Wiccans from membership both seemed out of character for the organization.
From what I can find there is no official ban on Wiccans from BSA membership. There are, in fact, Wiccan units registered with the BSA, just not very many of them (fewer than 25). Things I did find included a Methodist troop asking a Wiccan scout to find another troop to attend (which is unfortunate, but they're in their rights to do so), and the Wiccan religious emblem program being denied recognition due to insufficient membership. I can see how Wiccans would find the religious emblem thing frustrating; asking Wiccans to create a national program is like asking anarchists to elect a president - Wicca just isn't a centralized sort of religion. To the credit of the Methodist community their leaders overturned the scoutmaster's decision, and recognized the validity of the Wiccan scout's faith.
The Unitarian emblem decision is more complex; it seems that the Unitarian Universalist Association (UUA) decided to make a point of using their emblem program as a test case for protesting the BSA policies on homosexuality. To avoid the controversy that caused, the Unitarian Universalist Scouters Organization (UUSO) was created (I'd guess that it's members are scouts of the Unitarian faith, but not members of the Unitarian leadership) and submitted a program that left out the clauses about homosexuality; this was accepted by the BSA, but is not recognized by the UUA.
I think it's not fair to blame the Mormons for either of these situations. There were no Mormons involved in the incident with the Wiccan scout, even indirectly. In the case of the UUA the real issue was homosexuality, not "doctrine"; Mormons are not alone in their position on homosexuality, the National Catholic Committee on Scouting has a similar position.
I don't deny that the Mormons lately have a large influence on BSA policy; unfortunately, it seems our influence is largely due to the size of our program relative to the total number of Scouts in America. I wish the solution to this would become "recruit more scouts", I'd have little problem with the BSA requirements board adjusting the program to accommodate other people's needs as well. In the mean time, I hope that those "social adjustment" merit badges help aspiring scouts learn to balance their check books and get out to vote; the community could certainly use more civic-minded Wiccans speaking their minds and helping others see that a policy of "harm none" is good for everyone.
I'm glad to see we're in agreement here. I think I'd go a step further and claim that game developers trying to tell a story using cutscenes and dialog sequences don't understand the medium and are doing it wrong.
In my opinion the storytelling in a game should be found primarily in the gameplay, as that's the core and strength of the medium. Just like Film is a bad medium for long dialog-driven exposition and Novels are a weak medium for expressing explosive action, Video Games suffer when the storyteller takes control away from the player to start showing a film or have a long conversation.between characters.
I also think that games where the player has to grind through the same encounter over and over miss the point just as badly. Once you've defeated the orc chief in the plains that part of the story has already been told; what point is there in defeating him again? Am I a hero or a bully? If I'm just farming him for gear then I'm beginning to sound like the guy who wrote The Seventy Maxims of Maximally Effective Mercenaries : "21 - Give a man a fish, feed him for a day. Take his fish away and tell him he's lucky just to be alive, and he'll figure out how to catch another one for you to take tomorrow." That works for an anti-hero, if that's how the game is scripted, but having it as a primary game mechanic for a heroic character just doesn't work. Knowing that the game designers are doing it just to push my Pavlovian buttons only makes it worse for me.
Yep, I think about this stuff way too much =) And now you know why I don't play WoW...
In case you're not joking, I'll take this on as a serious question, and give a serious response.
Pacman: A hunter-gatherer struggles in a labyrinthine wilderness to collect enough resources to support his family (don't forget about Ms. Pacman and Jr.!). He is haunted and opposed at every step by supernatural beings who he can overcome, if only temporarily, through the use of rare totems. His successes are temporary, and he must return daily to the labyrinth to face ever more aggressive foes. Inevitably he will eventually fail, his wits and endurance having run out, and leave his family fatherless. (No, I was never any good at Pacman, and found it depressing).
Space Invaders: A lone gunner operates anti-air artillery to defend the Earth against Alien invaders from another world. He is prepared to sacrifice his life to defend his homeworld - it is, in fact, inevitable. Before that happens, though, he'll make sure the enemy pays a high price for their aggression. His infinite supply of ammunition and periodic resupply of ablative shielding allow him to make his last, valiant stand count.
Asteroids: Lost in space, a miner seeks to find his way home. It's a hard journey, through dense fields of space rock and hostile space pirates. Only his skill and wits will help him survive his journey...
Frogger: You're a frog. You're stuck on the wrong side of rush-hour traffic from your lily pad. Make it there alive or you'll never reproduce. Go!
Snake: You are a gluttonous snake. Gorge yourself until you've grown so long that you tear into your own flesh by mistake. (I've never cared much for this simplistic morality tale, Tron did it much better with the light cycles).
Tetris: OK, you've got me there.
Seriously, though, all of these games (except perhaps Tetris) are about taking a role, fulfilling that role's duties, and surviving by wit, skill, and strength. Most of them (Frogger is a rare exception) are only about the journey involved in fulfilling those duties; having a destination at the end would make the story jump the shark. I don't hold that against them, I like the story of the TV show King Fu, too; it would also have ended had he reached his journey's end. There may not be much story line to speak of, but that's the point of interactive fiction. I write the story by my actions. The obstacles set before me (waves of aliens, cars in rush hour traffic, maps, etc) are the settings and villains, and each stage is its own sub-plot with conflict, climax, and resolution.
I'm fine if you want to argue that there isn't much story, that it's simplistic, or that it's not compelling. I am up for debating the relative merits of finite storylines as opposed to never-ending journey tales, too. I don't think, though, that my descriptions of the "stories" for those games were far-fetched or even stretching much. If you pay attention to setting and action then impressive stories can be told, even without dialog or full-motion video. I'm of the opinion that if you were willing to spend hours playing those games then you found the gameplay (setting + action) compelling enough to keep coming back, whether or not you recognized it for the story that it is.
... this "interesting piece of information" will never be published.
I agree with the sentiment, but if the cert is in the virus code then it's available to everyone who has a copy. Stuxnet is fairly widely distributed, and I'm sure every black hat organization that wants it has a copy. The U.S. Government may be able to strong-arm Kapersky and Norton, but I doubt they have much leverage over the Cult of the Dead Cow (or whoever the big player is this week). The U.S. Government may be able to strong arm Rupert Murdoch and the other modern-day Charles Foster Kanes, but there are plenty of bloggers looking to make a name for themselves, never mind all the foreign journalists for agencies like Al Jazeera.
As much as anyone in power may want to suppress this information, it's got literally the same problem as DRM on movie disks - the virus is intentionally broadcasting itself to the world, and needs to have the cert attached to work properly. If it can be analyzed to find incriminating information, and there is anyone motivated and skilled enough to do the analysis, I am sure they will have access to both the virus itself and the means to publish.