This fits Microsoft's perennially pathetic marketing and PR to a T. They're like the clueless geek, always trying too hard to be cool, never succeeding.
Wait. Are you insulting or complimenting them? This is Slashdot, you know. I flatter myself that I have more sense of geeky things than of fashion and hipness.
*ahem*... Sherman absolutely waged war against civilians. He confiscated or destroyed their lifestock, crops and supplies, and burned their houses and barns. Sure, he didn't go around shooting all the civilians in the head, and nobody's suggesting that he even wanted to. If he had, he would likely have been hanged for war crimes. So I'm not sure why you're trying to paint Sherman as some kind of saint exercising great self-restraint.
First let me grant that any innocents who are bereaved or injured as so-called collateral damage certainly are entitled to accuse our joystick wielding soldiers of using cowardly or inappropriate war measures. With that out of the way, let me add that I couldn't care less what al Qaida operatives say about us. Not only are they extensively trained with psychologically effective propaganda lines, but they also are the ones who send their women and children (some of whom are either unaware of what's going on, or else horrendously lied to in order to psych them up for the operation, which amounts to the same thing) to be blown to smithereens along with their targets.
If you've used the same password at multiple sites, you've already exposed yourself to cross-site mischief if one was compromised. LinkedIn looks bad right now, but you know there are a lot of sites that store passwords in plaintext.
Which raises a question -- at what point would it make sense to spend some of their huge piles of campaign money on InTrade bets instead of yard signs and campaign events? If you could weight InTrade your way, that would affect... something. Probably illegal, and probably wouldn't shift things much anyway. Oh well.
Bespoke software (written for hire) that is owned by the customer should typically NOT have an expectation that the developer(s) would come back and fix bugs for free, especially for a time and materials work arrangement. Fixed bids can be different, but typically the customer is responsible to certify that it's "acceptable" on delivery and final payment, and after that point they're on their own (i.e. have to pay for further changes).
Software like Microsoft's that is licensed or purchased does typically have an expectation of free bug fixes from customers, but unless it's in writing the customer should be prepared for the possibility that the company will refuse to fix it, particularly if it's old.
A lot of people are predicting poor sales for Win8 because they dislike Metro; but there is probably going to be more visibility of the new "reset" capabilities of Windows 8, now that malware authors have raised their game to a new level.
Fair enough, dude. I guess it struck me in a quirky way, and perhaps some other people as well, since they modded my joke as funny. That's probably the only reason my post wasn't downmodded into oblivion -- which it may indeed have deserved to be. Cheers!
IANAG[eologist], so I may be totally off base, but it seems like ordinary ocean tides are already a phenomenon that should account for as much or more of differences in water weight on the underlying rock, so at least intuitively I wouldn't expect to see huge changes with a rise in sea level.
So the OP's professor was in grad school circa-1912?
No, there are two theories spoken of here -- the original idea of continental drift a century ago (which showed up without much of an explanation, hence viewed by some as pseudoscience), and the more modern theories about plate tectonics and seafloor spreading, which serve to validate and explain continental drift. The latter were evidently emerging when the prof was in grad school.
It's an awkwardly written summary that jumps back and forth not once, but twice between the Smithsonian writer and the guy's professor. It also inappropriately capitalizes "love" and is redundant right before the beginning of the quote ("century ago" etc.).
And just changing the period to a comma would actually increase the ambiguity from a "I wonder if" to an "aaaugh" level, dude.
"I Love this article in Smithsonian by Richard Conniff. One of my geology professors was in grad school when [...]
It's always the little details that insufferably nag you. For example, after reading this poorly written (or edited) summary, I will always be haunted by the ambiguity of whether Richard Conniff was actually the submitter's geology professor, or if those two references without any explicit tying together are just that. I will carry this burden to my grave.
Why or how was that rant worth posting? Slashdot has been an effective avenue for wasting time for its whole existence (in addition to having some worthwhile articles). The trick is to read the headline, maybe part of the summary, and decide if you want to read further.
I am tired of that chararde [sic] of "only criminals will have guns".
It is unfortunate when security theater experts such as yourself set public policy. They can have my guns when they take them from my cold, dead fingers.
Actually that is expected, because the desktop IE on Windows 8 can run all the same plugins as previous IE versions can. Metro IE can't run (or even install) any plugins, because it is all about sandboxing apps and conserving battery life, just like an iPad, except that they threw this embedded Flash engine in there for the whitelist sites.
if gun-related violent crime rates stay the same, that'll answer the question once and for all
No it won't. Consider for example that guns are used to prevent even non-gun crime. Here in the USA there are a number of gutsy women who have chosen to carry firearms that have actually saved them from being mugged and/or raped. If you only focus on gun crime, you won't see the whole picture of the benefit that guns give to law-abiding citizens.
And no, I'm not interested in hearing the standard liberal talking points in response to that, which go something like, "But dontcha know that typically a big strong rapist will often just grab the gun away from the poor little woman as she fumbles to pull it out of her cute little designer purse, leaving her in even worse shape?" I think we can let women be the judges of what they can and can't handle. (Sorry I know you didn't actually make that objection, just a very common liberal objection that's a pet peeve of mine, so I thought I would go ahead and shoot it in the head, so to speak.)
And of course the other big reason why citizens should be armed is an idea that America's Founding Fathers contemplated -- that having good people who are dangerous when roused populating a nation, is a great defense against tyranny. So the statistical metrics you reference would have to be pretty extreme before I would go along with a conclusion that disarming is best.
The only people who will voluntarily give up firearms (or refrain from buying them on the black market) are by definition law abiding persons. It is amazingly stupid to disarm the good guys. We have some of the same stupidity legislated some places here in the USA.
Microsoft is making a bold (translate: risky) move with the huge changes in Windows 8, and they will need all the consumer sympathy they can muster. I classify the decision to include Flash support for select sites (e.g. disney.com) is in the same category with this default DNT policy. When October comes around, get out the popcorn.
I'm guessing you haven't been to the Outer Banks of NC. It's a huge vacation destination, and that's not going to change anytime soon. It's silly to say that nobody should have ever built there, and it would be silly to suggest that nobody build there in the future.
They ran out of letters for hurricanes a few years back and had to start using greek letters. So I don't know where you got this idea that hurricanes have not increased in the last 30 years. [...] Not to mention that it is just more energy in the system. It can manifest in many different ways.
See, the above is exactly the problem with a lot of AGW alarmists. There's (presently) no firm scientific basis for claiming that global warming will cause more frequent/intense hurricanes. The prime originator of this alarmist urban legend was MIT's Professor of Atmospheric Science, Kerry Emanuel. He published a paper in 2005 (around the time of Hurricane Katrina!) claiming what you apparently believe per the above -- that global warming causes more frequent/intense storms. However, good old scientific observation didn't back him up, so he basically discredited the idea later in a paper published in the 2008 Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society. It was science as usual, but unfortunately the retraction came too late to save Al Gore's credibility, since he prominently featured that apocalyptic claim in his unscientific and alarmist Inconvenient Truth movie.
One major problem is that people like you think "oh gee, higher energy in the system means more violent storms", when that isn't necessarily correct. You typically can't boil a complex system down to a simplistic evaluation, because complex systems are (surprise, surprise) complex.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but current scientific consensus leans toward the view that global warming does not cause more frequent and intense hurricanes. So stop spreading alarmist urban legends.
(yes, AGW "alarmism" is scientific consensus today; go cry to Jesus in a corner)
Is the belief that AGW will increase the frequency and intensity of hurricanes also scientific consensus? Oh, I forgot, that turned out to be a testable prediction which effectively embarrassed the alarmists after they got smacked down by Mother Nature herself, who refused to follow those complex empirically derived models in which Al Gore and others placed so much faith. As a result, scientific consensus leans _against_ that particular alarmist position. Quite ironic, too, since it was basically the basis of the cover art for Al Gore's movie.
Based on the trends of both the scientific community and wider society toward very healthy skepticism toward AGW alarmism, I am more likely to be laughing at this point than "crying in a corner".:D
Slashdot Mirror
This fits Microsoft's perennially pathetic marketing and PR to a T. They're like the clueless geek, always trying too hard to be cool, never succeeding.
Wait. Are you insulting or complimenting them? This is Slashdot, you know. I flatter myself that I have more sense of geeky things than of fashion and hipness.
*ahem* ... Sherman absolutely waged war against civilians. He confiscated or destroyed their lifestock, crops and supplies, and burned their houses and barns. Sure, he didn't go around shooting all the civilians in the head, and nobody's suggesting that he even wanted to. If he had, he would likely have been hanged for war crimes. So I'm not sure why you're trying to paint Sherman as some kind of saint exercising great self-restraint.
First let me grant that any innocents who are bereaved or injured as so-called collateral damage certainly are entitled to accuse our joystick wielding soldiers of using cowardly or inappropriate war measures. With that out of the way, let me add that I couldn't care less what al Qaida operatives say about us. Not only are they extensively trained with psychologically effective propaganda lines, but they also are the ones who send their women and children (some of whom are either unaware of what's going on, or else horrendously lied to in order to psych them up for the operation, which amounts to the same thing) to be blown to smithereens along with their targets.
The exact width of the electron in nanometers is... cloudy.
If you've used the same password at multiple sites, you've already exposed yourself to cross-site mischief if one was compromised. LinkedIn looks bad right now, but you know there are a lot of sites that store passwords in plaintext.
Which raises a question -- at what point would it make sense to spend some of their huge piles of campaign money on InTrade bets instead of yard signs and campaign events? If you could weight InTrade your way, that would affect... something. Probably illegal, and probably wouldn't shift things much anyway. Oh well.
Not necessarily.
Bespoke software (written for hire) that is owned by the customer should typically NOT have an expectation that the developer(s) would come back and fix bugs for free, especially for a time and materials work arrangement. Fixed bids can be different, but typically the customer is responsible to certify that it's "acceptable" on delivery and final payment, and after that point they're on their own (i.e. have to pay for further changes).
Software like Microsoft's that is licensed or purchased does typically have an expectation of free bug fixes from customers, but unless it's in writing the customer should be prepared for the possibility that the company will refuse to fix it, particularly if it's old.
Your average piece of malware can survive a system restore...
I think you use the word "average" differently than I do.
What's at issue is that one side doesn't fucking care that they're in one, and their responses are always reactive/responsive and half-assed.
What does Apple have to do with this story?
A lot of people are predicting poor sales for Win8 because they dislike Metro; but there is probably going to be more visibility of the new "reset" capabilities of Windows 8, now that malware authors have raised their game to a new level.
Fair enough, dude. I guess it struck me in a quirky way, and perhaps some other people as well, since they modded my joke as funny. That's probably the only reason my post wasn't downmodded into oblivion -- which it may indeed have deserved to be. Cheers!
IANAG[eologist], so I may be totally off base, but it seems like ordinary ocean tides are already a phenomenon that should account for as much or more of differences in water weight on the underlying rock, so at least intuitively I wouldn't expect to see huge changes with a rise in sea level.
So the OP's professor was in grad school circa-1912?
No, there are two theories spoken of here -- the original idea of continental drift a century ago (which showed up without much of an explanation, hence viewed by some as pseudoscience), and the more modern theories about plate tectonics and seafloor spreading, which serve to validate and explain continental drift. The latter were evidently emerging when the prof was in grad school.
It's an awkwardly written summary that jumps back and forth not once, but twice between the Smithsonian writer and the guy's professor. It also inappropriately capitalizes "love" and is redundant right before the beginning of the quote ("century ago" etc.).
And just changing the period to a comma would actually increase the ambiguity from a "I wonder if" to an "aaaugh" level, dude.
"I Love this article in Smithsonian by Richard Conniff. One of my geology professors was in grad school when [...]
It's always the little details that insufferably nag you. For example, after reading this poorly written (or edited) summary, I will always be haunted by the ambiguity of whether Richard Conniff was actually the submitter's geology professor, or if those two references without any explicit tying together are just that. I will carry this burden to my grave.
Why or how was that rant worth posting? Slashdot has been an effective avenue for wasting time for its whole existence (in addition to having some worthwhile articles). The trick is to read the headline, maybe part of the summary, and decide if you want to read further.
Right, I'm fuzzy as to whether ARM can even run IE on the desktop.
I am tired of that chararde [sic] of "only criminals will have guns".
It is unfortunate when security theater experts such as yourself set public policy. They can have my guns when they take them from my cold, dead fingers.
Actually that is expected, because the desktop IE on Windows 8 can run all the same plugins as previous IE versions can. Metro IE can't run (or even install) any plugins, because it is all about sandboxing apps and conserving battery life, just like an iPad, except that they threw this embedded Flash engine in there for the whitelist sites.
if gun-related violent crime rates stay the same, that'll answer the question once and for all
No it won't. Consider for example that guns are used to prevent even non-gun crime. Here in the USA there are a number of gutsy women who have chosen to carry firearms that have actually saved them from being mugged and/or raped. If you only focus on gun crime, you won't see the whole picture of the benefit that guns give to law-abiding citizens.
And no, I'm not interested in hearing the standard liberal talking points in response to that, which go something like, "But dontcha know that typically a big strong rapist will often just grab the gun away from the poor little woman as she fumbles to pull it out of her cute little designer purse, leaving her in even worse shape?" I think we can let women be the judges of what they can and can't handle. (Sorry I know you didn't actually make that objection, just a very common liberal objection that's a pet peeve of mine, so I thought I would go ahead and shoot it in the head, so to speak.)
And of course the other big reason why citizens should be armed is an idea that America's Founding Fathers contemplated -- that having good people who are dangerous when roused populating a nation, is a great defense against tyranny. So the statistical metrics you reference would have to be pretty extreme before I would go along with a conclusion that disarming is best.
The only people who will voluntarily give up firearms (or refrain from buying them on the black market) are by definition law abiding persons. It is amazingly stupid to disarm the good guys. We have some of the same stupidity legislated some places here in the USA.
Microsoft is making a bold (translate: risky) move with the huge changes in Windows 8, and they will need all the consumer sympathy they can muster. I classify the decision to include Flash support for select sites (e.g. disney.com) is in the same category with this default DNT policy. When October comes around, get out the popcorn.
I'm guessing you haven't been to the Outer Banks of NC. It's a huge vacation destination, and that's not going to change anytime soon. It's silly to say that nobody should have ever built there, and it would be silly to suggest that nobody build there in the future.
They ran out of letters for hurricanes a few years back and had to start using greek letters. So I don't know where you got this idea that hurricanes have not increased in the last 30 years. [...] Not to mention that it is just more energy in the system. It can manifest in many different ways.
See, the above is exactly the problem with a lot of AGW alarmists. There's (presently) no firm scientific basis for claiming that global warming will cause more frequent/intense hurricanes. The prime originator of this alarmist urban legend was MIT's Professor of Atmospheric Science, Kerry Emanuel. He published a paper in 2005 (around the time of Hurricane Katrina!) claiming what you apparently believe per the above -- that global warming causes more frequent/intense storms. However, good old scientific observation didn't back him up, so he basically discredited the idea later in a paper published in the 2008 Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society. It was science as usual, but unfortunately the retraction came too late to save Al Gore's credibility, since he prominently featured that apocalyptic claim in his unscientific and alarmist Inconvenient Truth movie.
One major problem is that people like you think "oh gee, higher energy in the system means more violent storms", when that isn't necessarily correct. You typically can't boil a complex system down to a simplistic evaluation, because complex systems are (surprise, surprise) complex.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but current scientific consensus leans toward the view that global warming does not cause more frequent and intense hurricanes. So stop spreading alarmist urban legends.
(yes, AGW "alarmism" is scientific consensus today; go cry to Jesus in a corner)
Is the belief that AGW will increase the frequency and intensity of hurricanes also scientific consensus? Oh, I forgot, that turned out to be a testable prediction which effectively embarrassed the alarmists after they got smacked down by Mother Nature herself, who refused to follow those complex empirically derived models in which Al Gore and others placed so much faith. As a result, scientific consensus leans _against_ that particular alarmist position. Quite ironic, too, since it was basically the basis of the cover art for Al Gore's movie.
Based on the trends of both the scientific community and wider society toward very healthy skepticism toward AGW alarmism, I am more likely to be laughing at this point than "crying in a corner". :D