Holy crap. What sided-die do you use to see if you escape the gas chamber?
That would be the elusive d0, made by Lou Zocchi's evil twin. Roll a 1 or better on a 0-sided die. If Euclidean mathematics collapses around you, your character escapes.
While a good deal of posters will take the objective viewpoint, I don't think you'll find a ton of sympathy for the female players here in slashdot.... Let's face it, most of these folk happen to be guys that are discriminated against by females every day.
That word -- 'discrimination.' I do not think it means what you think it means.
Part of me is wondering if you're trying to be a troll, or if you're trying to make a joke. If you're a troll, congratulations! Many people are feeding your ego! Bon appeteit! If it's a joke, it fell flatter than a coytote under a genuine Acme-made Anvilanian anvil. I'm going to go with the presumption that you're being serious. Gods, how depressing.
It is of course ILLEGAL to deny a person a job, the right to vote, the right to live where they wish to and can afford to, various financial considerations, and business services, based upon their gender or genotype. It is, however, perfectly legal -- not to mention well within a person's rights -- to discriminate about who gets into their drawers, or who they go out on a date with, or who they marry, or who they spawn/breed/nest with.
Now, it is a very progressive and admirable viewpoint to say that nobody should be judged by anything other than their own merits. I think most of the Slashdot crowd can say they agree with that. I think it's also safe to say that anyone who judges another based on the color of skin is shallow and probably a hopeless case anyway. However, let's go over why it's perfectly all right for apparently legions of females to 'discriminate' against what I'm assuming you're referring to as the average ('most of these folks') Slashdot poster.
I'm extrapolating here, but judging by the bitterness percolating in your post, you feel that most females avoid dating most geeks. (Assuming that 'geek' defines the current average Slashdotter.) Well, quite frankly, you're possibly right; I won't say 'probably' because I don't have any hard numbers, and yes, this is the sort of thing you can research.* However, let me ask this: is this perfectly unjustified discrimination?
The fact of the matter is, a lot of geeks are so shy that their social skills are non-existant. How is this appealing? Faceciousness aside, how is a socially disinclined person at all interesting? Being smart and sensitive is NOT ENOUGH to start a relationship. Hell, it's not even enough to CONTINUE a relationship. What anyone, geek and non-geek, looks for in a relationship is someone who fulfills intellectual and emotional -- and sometimes physical and/or spiritual -- desires in their partner. In a nutshell, this means someone who is going to put the effort into reaching out to another person in an appropriate manner. The stereotypical geek is not the kind of person to reach out socially to anyone but other geeks. This makes them *gasp!* uninteresting and not worth the effort! Even the most patient girl will give up after attempting to pull even the nicest geek out of their shell and meeting nothing but at best limited, reluctant success.
It would be very nice for all geeks of the world to be able to find an extroverted person of the appropriate gender who will take the time to pull them out of their shell. But since it's a two-way street from the beginning, any equitable, healthy relationship needs both sides to put effort into reaching the other person. It is not the job of the 'other person' in a relationship to pull the geek out of their shell. I will be the first to say that geeks have a LOT to offer a relationship. In general, we're knowledgable, we tend to be sensitive to the needs of people we care deeply about, we're creative, we're inventive, and what we don't know we can find out. I think in general we also lead 'cleaner' lives that don't put others in jeopardy. But that's not enough. Should it be enough? NO. Because in order to give these things to a potential parter, you have to show them first. And to do that without coming off poo
Wouldn't a neutron star be spinning at tremendous angular velocities, and therefore be deformed along its equator, forming more of a flattened sphere shape? Heck, even spinning at any velocity, it sould deform along the equator. Or am I missing something about neutron stars?
If the antimatter is too heavy to float in the breeze, duct-tape the antimatter to the balloon.
Using WHAT? Anti-duct-tape? BLASPHEMER! There is only one duct-tape, and it is what binds the universe together! How could you postulate an adversarial, anti-duct-tape when there is but one true duct-tape?
I find your lack of faith disturbing. *Vaderlike breathing as a gimp in a black cape wraps duct tape, Dark Side out, around the offender's neck.*
or.."We'd be nuts to outsource...".."because 90% of our products are from China anyways!"
They've come under a lot of fire for all the stuff they sell at cost that doesn't say 'Made in USA.' I know quite a few people who will not buy from them for this reason alone. I think Wal-Mart's executives realize that if they outsource they'll just be putting a nail into their own coffin.
Besides, maybe they LIKE having an integer decimal percentage of the GNP?
You make some good points. As I said above, I was thinking more in terms of direct responsibility. The tone of the post I had replied to seemed to make it sound like 'the American People' had voted in a referendum for the Manhattan Project. That there was no public outcry after the Manhattan Project came to light is pretty much evidence of tacit approval of the people for their leaders' actions.
However, there are plenty of cases where elected officials do things that are less than clean and the people do not learn about it or seem to care. The Iran-Contra scandals come to mind. Adm. Poindexter was still a government official as recently as a year ago when he headed TIA. Ollie North was not, last I saw, in Fort Leavenworth. There was public outcry, but there was apparently not enough, or more than enough apathy, for the events to, in our logic from above, be given tacit approval by the people. This is something I'm not comfortable with and I don't think anyone is. That's the hip I was shooting from when I made my admittedly snarky reply to an only slightly less snarky post.
Unfamiliar with the concept of representative democracy?
No, I'm quite familiar with it, thank you very much. =) I exercise my participation in it every year. I certainly hope you do the same.
You are entirely correct; they were our elected leaders and had the mandate of the people to carry out the will of the people. That there was no hue and cry and subsequent impeachment about the dropping of the bombs is certainly evidence that most people thought they had been a good idea.
The point is, however, saying that 'the American people' were directly responsible for the Manhattan Project is just plain silly. 'The American people' had no idea about the project. Now if you want to talk about responsibility for it through tacit approval, that's another story. If that was your intent from the start, then no issues there, by not calling for heads on spikes following the dropping of the bombs, 'the American people' showed their approval of the decisions of their elected leaders and made them their own.
The Manahttan Project was one of the more secret projects undertaken by the US military during the Second World War, and remained secret even up until the dropping of Little Boy on Hiroshima and Fat Man on Nagasaki. I kind of doubt there was a referendum to the American people to even start the Manhattan Project, let alone drop atomic weapons on those two cities.
Something interesting to note. This took place on Thursday, 09 September. Two days ago. The news is only getting out now.
Anyone else think it quite remarkable that we live in an age where information travels at incredible speeds all over the world... but it took two days for the (at least mainstream) media to report this? Think about it. There are still places in the world where something equivalent to a small nuke can go off -- mushroom cloud and all -- and we don't NOTICE it right away.
Actually this isn't funny at all. This is exactly what's going to happen.
The best thing for an MMORPG that you care about is to find some mechannic that makes the game interesting, but makes it very very difficult to powergame and bowl over other players. It's bad enough in a system where you don't have PvP. It's even worse when someone can waltz up and shellack you for no reason whatsoever. You spend hours and hours learning the ropes, getting reasonably good at the game, dying embarrassingly to a number of mobs, all for what? To be killed by some leet-speak-babbling, profanity-spewing, whiny little PGer who probably hasn't graduated from junior high yet? How long are you really going to want to spend on a game where some 1337 d00d can and will PK you?
World of Warcraft had a good thing with the enforced rest. It's just a shame that the people who only wanted to level up and be the uber-PKinators raised such a huge stink about it that Blizzard had to remove it form the Beta.
A Trek MMORPG would need something good to allow it to compete with the slew of MMORPGs out there. Unfortunately the Trek franchise lends itself to reasonably good role-playing for the most part; at it's very best it can be rousing sci-fi action with moral and ethical questions thrown in. But, I don't think it'll do too well as a MMORPG where the goal of most of the players is to level up, become "uber", beat all the named monsters and get the rare drops, and rub other peoples' faces in it.
...I found the title sadly misleading. No Chapter 11 bankruptcy for Disney.;_;
However, that being said... even though Disney is still an evil corporation and amongst the most evil, this is a nice gesture on their part to make the compressed-air technology available to everyone.
What I'd like to know, however, is why they didn't release it into the public domain? Then again, this is Disney; they abhor the public domain, so it oprobably stands to reason that they wouldn't dare touch that prospect.
The thing is, recording from XM or any radio, for that matter (since XM is billing itself as satellite radio) falls under the time-shifting provisions of fair use. I can record a broadcast for later enjoyment, especially if I'm not able to listen to it when it broadcasts.
So, as far as fair use goes, it's perfectly legal to rip from the XM stream.
[...] but the polls have both parties monitoring, counting, and watching the process. Announcing the fact that the machines aren't fool proof or perfect is a wonderful thing for the process - aka more eyes will be watching and helping protect our election process.
Why was this modded as -1 'Troll?' It's actually reasonably true. You don't see the target of the Nerds' Revenge being the overall nice, inoffensive guy. The guys who get clobbered by the nerds in all those movies are the bullies who think they own everything they survey.
Now, this is an inadequate similie, I know. (Not to mention an uncomfortable one.) But it boils down to the fact that we've pissed off people and that drove some people to become terrorists. Sayng 'They're jealous of us' or 'They're afraid of us' are specious arguments at best. There are documented reasons, from their own mouths, of why terrorists do what they do. Their missions and objectives and purposes are declared; they have to be, else they're not getting their message accoss. And make no mistake, terrorists HAVE a message even if they deliver it in unconsconable ways. Parent is essentially correct. The US has done and continues to do things that they dislike enough to kill a lot of US citizens over.
If you want to fight ANY terrorists you need to know what drove them to this in the first place. In the case of al'Qaeda, it was the US' continued support for Israel and the stationing of troops in Saudi Arabia. To address the issue of terrorism in ignorance of the terrorists' objectives is rank foolishness.
MILES is suitable for war games and similar OPFOR/Red Flag exercises, but the dynamics of a 5.56mm blank and a 5.56mm FMJ round are significant. A blank just will not feel the same as a real round. I'm not exactly sure what it is, if the mass of the round travelling down the barrel has something to do with it, or if the charge in the blank is weaker than in the combat round, or what.
That being said, MILES is certainly preferable to range-only training, and having soldiers run around with wooden or unloaded rifles shouting 'BANG!' at each other. =)
Dan Glickman is an avid Linux user, a well-known consumer advocate, vehemently critical of the DMCA and a member of the EFF. Ha ha. Just kidding, Dave Barry style.
Like PHBs need material like this to look in peoples' cubes. Cameras would be SO much better for that anyway, I bet.
I don't see potential for privacy abuse here. I see possible potential for abuse by criminals using this gear, though I doubt cops will really be hindred by a guy wearing a 'cloaking anorak.' or such. I can definitely see the government geting antsy about this tech simply because they would. But outside of that, this isn't going to let a random pickpocket lift off the wallets of everyone in a city, or a terrorist to get to some foundationstone in a building or even through a city street.
Welcome to/. where technology is either 'So cool!' or 'OMGWTFBBQ this is so open to abuse!!!!11!one!'
Slashdot Mirror
That word -- 'discrimination.' I do not think it means what you think it means.
Part of me is wondering if you're trying to be a troll, or if you're trying to make a joke. If you're a troll, congratulations! Many people are feeding your ego! Bon appeteit! If it's a joke, it fell flatter than a coytote under a genuine Acme-made Anvilanian anvil. I'm going to go with the presumption that you're being serious. Gods, how depressing.
It is of course ILLEGAL to deny a person a job, the right to vote, the right to live where they wish to and can afford to, various financial considerations, and business services, based upon their gender or genotype. It is, however, perfectly legal -- not to mention well within a person's rights -- to discriminate about who gets into their drawers, or who they go out on a date with, or who they marry, or who they spawn/breed/nest with.
Now, it is a very progressive and admirable viewpoint to say that nobody should be judged by anything other than their own merits. I think most of the Slashdot crowd can say they agree with that. I think it's also safe to say that anyone who judges another based on the color of skin is shallow and probably a hopeless case anyway. However, let's go over why it's perfectly all right for apparently legions of females to 'discriminate' against what I'm assuming you're referring to as the average ('most of these folks') Slashdot poster.
I'm extrapolating here, but judging by the bitterness percolating in your post, you feel that most females avoid dating most geeks. (Assuming that 'geek' defines the current average Slashdotter.) Well, quite frankly, you're possibly right; I won't say 'probably' because I don't have any hard numbers, and yes, this is the sort of thing you can research.* However, let me ask this: is this perfectly unjustified discrimination?
The fact of the matter is, a lot of geeks are so shy that their social skills are non-existant. How is this appealing? Faceciousness aside, how is a socially disinclined person at all interesting? Being smart and sensitive is NOT ENOUGH to start a relationship. Hell, it's not even enough to CONTINUE a relationship. What anyone, geek and non-geek, looks for in a relationship is someone who fulfills intellectual and emotional -- and sometimes physical and/or spiritual -- desires in their partner. In a nutshell, this means someone who is going to put the effort into reaching out to another person in an appropriate manner. The stereotypical geek is not the kind of person to reach out socially to anyone but other geeks. This makes them *gasp!* uninteresting and not worth the effort! Even the most patient girl will give up after attempting to pull even the nicest geek out of their shell and meeting nothing but at best limited, reluctant success.
It would be very nice for all geeks of the world to be able to find an extroverted person of the appropriate gender who will take the time to pull them out of their shell. But since it's a two-way street from the beginning, any equitable, healthy relationship needs both sides to put effort into reaching the other person. It is not the job of the 'other person' in a relationship to pull the geek out of their shell. I will be the first to say that geeks have a LOT to offer a relationship. In general, we're knowledgable, we tend to be sensitive to the needs of people we care deeply about, we're creative, we're inventive, and what we don't know we can find out. I think in general we also lead 'cleaner' lives that don't put others in jeopardy. But that's not enough. Should it be enough? NO. Because in order to give these things to a potential parter, you have to show them first. And to do that without coming off poo
Wouldn't a neutron star be spinning at tremendous angular velocities, and therefore be deformed along its equator, forming more of a flattened sphere shape? Heck, even spinning at any velocity, it sould deform along the equator. Or am I missing something about neutron stars?
I hear that OSDN Legal employs some very effective penguin ninjas.
Yeah, you're right, that didn't make sense. =)
I should say, a measurable percentage (if fractional) of the GNP. I think Wal-Mart provides like 0.1% of the US GNP.
I find your lack of faith disturbing. *Vaderlike breathing as a gimp in a black cape wraps duct tape, Dark Side out, around the offender's neck.*
Besides, maybe they LIKE having an integer decimal percentage of the GNP?
Mother of God, that's one scary site.
Thank you for making me unable to sleep tonight. >.
You make some good points. As I said above, I was thinking more in terms of direct responsibility. The tone of the post I had replied to seemed to make it sound like 'the American People' had voted in a referendum for the Manhattan Project. That there was no public outcry after the Manhattan Project came to light is pretty much evidence of tacit approval of the people for their leaders' actions.
However, there are plenty of cases where elected officials do things that are less than clean and the people do not learn about it or seem to care. The Iran-Contra scandals come to mind. Adm. Poindexter was still a government official as recently as a year ago when he headed TIA. Ollie North was not, last I saw, in Fort Leavenworth. There was public outcry, but there was apparently not enough, or more than enough apathy, for the events to, in our logic from above, be given tacit approval by the people. This is something I'm not comfortable with and I don't think anyone is. That's the hip I was shooting from when I made my admittedly snarky reply to an only slightly less snarky post.
You are entirely correct; they were our elected leaders and had the mandate of the people to carry out the will of the people. That there was no hue and cry and subsequent impeachment about the dropping of the bombs is certainly evidence that most people thought they had been a good idea.
The point is, however, saying that 'the American people' were directly responsible for the Manhattan Project is just plain silly. 'The American people' had no idea about the project. Now if you want to talk about responsibility for it through tacit approval, that's another story. If that was your intent from the start, then no issues there, by not calling for heads on spikes following the dropping of the bombs, 'the American people' showed their approval of the decisions of their elected leaders and made them their own.
The Manahttan Project was one of the more secret projects undertaken by the US military during the Second World War, and remained secret even up until the dropping of Little Boy on Hiroshima and Fat Man on Nagasaki. I kind of doubt there was a referendum to the American people to even start the Manhattan Project, let alone drop atomic weapons on those two cities.
But what if it was a subsurface detonation? The video I've seen of subsurface tests have no flash at all.
Something interesting to note. This took place on Thursday, 09 September. Two days ago. The news is only getting out now.
Anyone else think it quite remarkable that we live in an age where information travels at incredible speeds all over the world... but it took two days for the (at least mainstream) media to report this? Think about it. There are still places in the world where something equivalent to a small nuke can go off -- mushroom cloud and all -- and we don't NOTICE it right away.
It's kind of humbling.
Actually this isn't funny at all. This is exactly what's going to happen.
The best thing for an MMORPG that you care about is to find some mechannic that makes the game interesting, but makes it very very difficult to powergame and bowl over other players. It's bad enough in a system where you don't have PvP. It's even worse when someone can waltz up and shellack you for no reason whatsoever. You spend hours and hours learning the ropes, getting reasonably good at the game, dying embarrassingly to a number of mobs, all for what? To be killed by some leet-speak-babbling, profanity-spewing, whiny little PGer who probably hasn't graduated from junior high yet? How long are you really going to want to spend on a game where some 1337 d00d can and will PK you?
World of Warcraft had a good thing with the enforced rest. It's just a shame that the people who only wanted to level up and be the uber-PKinators raised such a huge stink about it that Blizzard had to remove it form the Beta.
A Trek MMORPG would need something good to allow it to compete with the slew of MMORPGs out there. Unfortunately the Trek franchise lends itself to reasonably good role-playing for the most part; at it's very best it can be rousing sci-fi action with moral and ethical questions thrown in. But, I don't think it'll do too well as a MMORPG where the goal of most of the players is to level up, become "uber", beat all the named monsters and get the rare drops, and rub other peoples' faces in it.
Really! That's pretty cool. Thanks for the info!
...I found the title sadly misleading. No Chapter 11 bankruptcy for Disney. ;_;
However, that being said... even though Disney is still an evil corporation and amongst the most evil, this is a nice gesture on their part to make the compressed-air technology available to everyone.
What I'd like to know, however, is why they didn't release it into the public domain? Then again, this is Disney; they abhor the public domain, so it oprobably stands to reason that they wouldn't dare touch that prospect.
The thing is, recording from XM or any radio, for that matter (since XM is billing itself as satellite radio) falls under the time-shifting provisions of fair use. I can record a broadcast for later enjoyment, especially if I'm not able to listen to it when it broadcasts.
So, as far as fair use goes, it's perfectly legal to rip from the XM stream.
Why was this modded as -1 'Troll?' It's actually reasonably true. You don't see the target of the Nerds' Revenge being the overall nice, inoffensive guy. The guys who get clobbered by the nerds in all those movies are the bullies who think they own everything they survey.
Now, this is an inadequate similie, I know. (Not to mention an uncomfortable one.) But it boils down to the fact that we've pissed off people and that drove some people to become terrorists. Sayng 'They're jealous of us' or 'They're afraid of us' are specious arguments at best. There are documented reasons, from their own mouths, of why terrorists do what they do. Their missions and objectives and purposes are declared; they have to be, else they're not getting their message accoss. And make no mistake, terrorists HAVE a message even if they deliver it in unconsconable ways. Parent is essentially correct. The US has done and continues to do things that they dislike enough to kill a lot of US citizens over.
If you want to fight ANY terrorists you need to know what drove them to this in the first place. In the case of al'Qaeda, it was the US' continued support for Israel and the stationing of troops in Saudi Arabia. To address the issue of terrorism in ignorance of the terrorists' objectives is rank foolishness.
I generallly prefer to read up on The Seven Habits of Highly Effective Pirates, myself....
MILES is suitable for war games and similar OPFOR/Red Flag exercises, but the dynamics of a 5.56mm blank and a 5.56mm FMJ round are significant. A blank just will not feel the same as a real round. I'm not exactly sure what it is, if the mass of the round travelling down the barrel has something to do with it, or if the charge in the blank is weaker than in the combat round, or what.
That being said, MILES is certainly preferable to range-only training, and having soldiers run around with wooden or unloaded rifles shouting 'BANG!' at each other. =)
Deus Ex.
Like PHBs need material like this to look in peoples' cubes. Cameras would be SO much better for that anyway, I bet.
/. where technology is either 'So cool!' or 'OMGWTFBBQ this is so open to abuse!!!!11!one!'
I don't see potential for privacy abuse here. I see possible potential for abuse by criminals using this gear, though I doubt cops will really be hindred by a guy wearing a 'cloaking anorak.' or such. I can definitely see the government geting antsy about this tech simply because they would. But outside of that, this isn't going to let a random pickpocket lift off the wallets of everyone in a city, or a terrorist to get to some foundationstone in a building or even through a city street.
Welcome to