Bitchin' about nothing you say? This genius Congressman Markey from Massachusetts upset a lot of people who suffer from Seasonal Affective Disorder with no appreciable societal benefit. Even the government's own DST website says that extending DST in the fall past mid-October results in no energy savings. So we're to accept the honorable Congressman's claim that "everybody loves a little more sunshine" without acknowledging the consequences? If you want more sun for after work playtime, change your personal work schedule without forcing the rest of us to comply with your needs. Belittling other people -- "otherwise you just end up looking like a giant douche.... or a turd sandwich" -- doesn't make you look more intelligent or strengthen your argument.
While having a 300 mph train is fascinating, I don't think this can ever work in metro regions of the United States and Amerika. All the posts lamenting of our lack of train travel here forget that we're a very large country. We have an amazing problem in most metro regions: grade crossings. The Blue Line commuter rail from Long Beach to Los Angeles is considered one of the most dangerous commuter trains in the world due to its numerous grade crossings, poorly-marked crossings and signals, and criss-crossing through residential neighborhoods.
Los Angeles may never have a viable subway like New York or London because the population density is way too sparse to make economic sense in most of the county. While a lower density city such as Atlanta has its Marta, you're not going to get Angelinos out of their cars. It's their right to drive solo and demand that their government build more freeways!
Let's make sure that the paper ballots printed by these machines are not the heat-sensitive paper type. Sun, heat, fluorescent lighting, and age can degrade these ballots fairly quickly. The conspiracy theorist in me says that many big box stores switch to heat-sensitive receipts to reduce customer returns and warranty claims. Should you require a receipt for tax purposes, better keep a Xerox copy.
Los Angeles County uses Ink-a-Vote which replaced those punch cards with ink blot bubbles. Nothing beats paper for vote recounts. The ink takes a few seconds to dry and if you don't hold the marking device completely perpendicular, it can skip marking the ballot.
Has anyone conducted a study to determine the net BTUs from converting corn into ethanol? I mean, it must take an awful lot of energy to clear the fields, plant the seeds, add fertilizer, pump the water, reap the crop, sort the seed from the chafe, distill the usable stuff, dispose of the waste, and voila -- E85. To my thinking, we must use a lot of energy in the process. What's the net?
It's like saying that electric vehicles don't pollute. Yeah, right. If you assume that generating electricity is completely non-polluting. Recent studies show that E85 might, ahem MIGHT supplant 5% of our foreign oil imports. How much oil will be used in producing that E85?
Now, what I think will happen, is that Turnitin will advise its clients (schools, universities, etc.) that in order to use the service, they must obtain a release from students that includes permission to upload the files. This way, they'll just offload the responsibility for copyright infringement off on the schools, who will just force students to release their work, or refuse to give them a grade. What you state is already the case. Professors will refuse term papers unless submitted through Turn-it-In which provides ample disclaimers. Students should be complaining to the school district for forcing them to give up rights to their paper. However, this is unlikely to succeed. At the University, only faculty own their research. Students and employees get no rights. Even student thesis papers belong to the University, not the student.
You only need one CD for the entire family. Earlier, I used to buy multiple copies of same albums (for car, house, office etc) You used to buy albums for your car and office? Your employer let you play records in the office. And what is included in this "etc?"
The big companies get to lobby 24/7 and 365 if they want. Consumers only get to lobby every four years, and not enough turn out to vote, and make their preferences felt. Someone needs to revisit their civics class. Members of the House of Representatives are elected every two years; Senators are elected every six. Presidents don't create laws; they either confirm or veto Congressional votes.
Most SlashDot users will disagree with my stance. I'm not a fan of the DMCA or RIAA. However, a two-minute excerpt exceeds fair use principles. Fair use excerpting is about critical review, not just adding some excerpt to your MySpace profile. The emphasis is on criticism, not sampling. For further discussion, do some research or look at the Wikipedia page for a primer. Just because you dislike the recording industry or believe the RIAA is too aggressive in prosecuting downloaders does not justify pirating intellectual property.
I read the research paper a couple days ago after reading about it in the NY Times. Seeing how this research is Microsoft funded and implicates Google, claiming they're syndicators are in cooperation with the spammers, one has to question researcher bias. I'd like to see a peer-reviewed and independently verified article before accepting these outrageous claims. Note that the researchers focused on a few keywords and strictly limited the scope of their efforts. This doesn't mean the findings are untrue, it just calls their methodology into question.
Someone please explain how a virus can update a Skype user's telephone book? Seems like a poorly-designed software that allows voice telephone messages to modify its database.
Beethoven may be dead and his works are public domain. However, recent performances of his music are copyrighted works of art. I doubt Gracenote technology can distinguish the subtleties or whether they'd even bother. How many pimple-faced teens are ripping "classical" music?
Does MySpace actaully permit users to upload MP3s to their servers? I've seen dozens of MySpace users upload their MP3s to our webserver and then MySpace leeches the bandwidth from us instead of MySpace servers. Am I seeing this wrong or are the users loading their MP3s to our servers to avoid MySpace TOS problems? I am not a MySpace user.
On the face this sounds like a great idea. I have one question: what happens to corporate data when an employee leaves or forgets their password? With PGP software, keys are escrowed for disaster recovery. It's great they are performing this in hardware; however, key management is of utmost concern in any encryption scheme. I hope their engineers are examining this.
The article contains a few technical concers. AES is triple-DES; it's a 112-bit scheme, not 128. If BitLocker is encrypting everything on the hard drive, how are users able to boot the computer for the first time or how does the Windows software eventually get encrypted? Looking forward to further reports.
friends of mine are flying home from UK to Australia soon. With two small kids. And under the restrictions, no kids toys. 18 hours with two kids and nothing to keep the occupied.
I suspect the rest of the plane would prefer a terrorist attack.
What a sad state of state of affairs in which we find ourselves! Must every person have a game, laptop computer, I-pod, DVD player, or other electronic gadget to keep themselves preoccupied? What is wrong with reading a book, sitting quietly, meditating, sleeping, quiet conversation, or plain old doing nothing? When did everyone develop a bad case of ADHD? I wonder what people would do at home when the electricity goes out. Seems the public has an overwhelming and narcissistic need for immediate gratification.
The biggest problem that I have with federal legislation is that it usually falls short of providing real protection to victims. Big business lobbies Congress to pre-empt existing state laws, such as California's, which do require notification of potential victims. So much for the Republican rhetoric about Federalism (state rights--look it up). This is one place I don't want to see interference from the current Congress.
This seems like a plum violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act. Employers and potential employers must offer alternative means to submit a job application. Differerntly-abled individuals with visual and motor impairments could make an excellent case. ADA guidelines and
California rules and
interpretations of the law
are already having significant impact on my employer. Web developers who don't consider accessibility might want to consider
alternative employment as your employer may soon be sued.
Before you attack a person with Ad Hominem charges, check out his CV. The gentleman has more scholarly awards than a roomful of SlashDot readers:
Awards
2003 Microsoft Gold Star Award 2003 US/International Patent (Pending) 304064.1 Common Query Runtime System and API 2003 US/International Patent (Pending) 303845.1 Query Optimizer System and Method 2003 US/International Patent (Pending) 301638.1 Query Intermediate Language (QIL) Method and System 2002 US Patent 1911574.1 XML Views Over Relational Data Using XML Schema 1996 NASA Grant NRA-96-10-OSS-055, A Collaborative Environment for the Space Interferometer Mission 1994 Caltech Hinrichs Leadership Award 1993 Caltech Don Shepard Essay Contest Winner 1992 Caltech Robert Andrews Millikan Scholar (again) 1991 Caltech Robert Andrews Millikan Scholar 1990 National Merit Scholar 1990 Oklahoma Academic All-State 1990 Valedictorian, Midwest City High School 1989 1st in seven-state region, American High School Mathematics Exam 1989 Principal Mallet Percussionist, Oklahoma All-State Band 1988 Principal Mallet Percussionist, Oklahoma All-State Orchestra
I am an undergraduate (2nd B/A) in a high-ranking Communication Studies Program at one of the best valued public universities in the nation. In private conversatins with several faculty, they explained the policy banning use of Wikipedia as a credible citation source. The main reason is that its articles not go through the same quality peer-review and editorial processes as do those published in scholarly journals. While some pages are well-researched and include numerous references, most undergraduate students are not properly equipped distinguish the subtle differences.
How does this relate to the ReplayTV. I purchased a Panasonic Showstopper 2000 five years ago. It has similar features to Tivo, some better (30-second skip wasn't in Tivo years ago), some worse (no season pass). Most DVR articles neglect to mention competing products. Has Tivo successfully sued over the ReplayTV?
Salvation Army gets presidential executive order
on
Season's Givings?
·
· Score: 1
Back in January 2001, the very first act of our current president above everything else was to grant the Salvation Army a Presidential Executive Order. The Executive Order exempted the Salvation Army from all EEOP guidelines in non-religous hiring activities. EEOP: Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, rules that prohibit employement discrimination. The act allowed the Salvation Army to refuse hiring non-Christians for jobs. No other employer in the United States has such an exemption.
It's rather difficult to evaluate the effectiveness of The Salvation Army. As a religous organizaiton, they do not file an IRS Form 990. I agree with a previous posters that CARE is considered one of the most efficient secular organizations. Giving should be for the sake of giving (a play on the lyrics to the song Good Saint Nick, "So be good for goodness' sake!" There's nothing as horrible as asking people to convert to some religion while giving a helping hand. True selflessness comes from helping others without religous conversion.
Those who believe this is not stealing might want to answer why phishing is a crime but knowingly buying something because the computer is misprogrammed is not. I'm sure most would complain if the computer overpriced the item. Taking advantage of someone who made a careless mistake may not be criminal; however, it is nonetheless unethical.
How can they use only 21 names with a 26-letter alphabet? What about Xena, Yvonne, and Zella? Use the model employed by fraternities when they run out of one-letter names: Use two-letter names. First would be AA, followed by AB, and AC, etc. The next year that two-letter names are required use BA, BB, and BC. In the third year that they run out of 21 single-letter names, use CA, CB, and CC.
So far, all the evidence seems to point that Bush was, indeed, elected for the second term (suck it up!).
Maybe you forgot about Florida's Kathleen Harris. Harris hired a private company--Voter Identification Services--to purge Florida roles of all the "darkies" because of their tendancy to vote for Democrats. VIS purged some 57,000 voters from the roles
claiming they were ex-felons [more credible sources available--search left to reader as an exercise] and, therefore, ineligible to vote. Nevermind that their accuracy rate was a dismal 5% because their system passed judgment on name alone. If gross incompetence by the head of Florida Bush/Chenney isn't fraud in your book, I wonder what you require as proof.
4. When you select "yes", three things happens. The vote is recorded to a local write once ROM device with a unique ID. This ID and voting information is transferred via an encrypted link back to some central location, so election results can be monitored in real time. The third thing that happens is a piece of paper is printed out with this unique ID and the voting information plainly printed out in the same table format you just read...
A problem with the second thing is that when the vote is sent back to a central location, that information can be used to "get out the vote" and defeat a leading candidate/proposition. The central location needs to be designed in such a way that the tally cannot be monitored in real time until later. Bruce Schnier discusses some excellent ideas in his book Applied Cryptography
Slashdot Mirror
Bitchin' about nothing you say? This genius Congressman Markey from Massachusetts upset a lot of people who suffer from Seasonal Affective Disorder with no appreciable societal benefit. Even the government's own DST website says that extending DST in the fall past mid-October results in no energy savings. So we're to accept the honorable Congressman's claim that "everybody loves a little more sunshine" without acknowledging the consequences? If you want more sun for after work playtime, change your personal work schedule without forcing the rest of us to comply with your needs. Belittling other people -- "otherwise you just end up looking like a giant douche.... or a turd sandwich" -- doesn't make you look more intelligent or strengthen your argument.
While having a 300 mph train is fascinating, I don't think this can ever work in metro regions of the United States and Amerika. All the posts lamenting of our lack of train travel here forget that we're a very large country. We have an amazing problem in most metro regions: grade crossings. The Blue Line commuter rail from Long Beach to Los Angeles is considered one of the most dangerous commuter trains in the world due to its numerous grade crossings, poorly-marked crossings and signals, and criss-crossing through residential neighborhoods.
Los Angeles may never have a viable subway like New York or London because the population density is way too sparse to make economic sense in most of the county. While a lower density city such as Atlanta has its Marta, you're not going to get Angelinos out of their cars. It's their right to drive solo and demand that their government build more freeways!
Let's make sure that the paper ballots printed by these machines are not the heat-sensitive paper type. Sun, heat, fluorescent lighting, and age can degrade these ballots fairly quickly. The conspiracy theorist in me says that many big box stores switch to heat-sensitive receipts to reduce customer returns and warranty claims. Should you require a receipt for tax purposes, better keep a Xerox copy.
Los Angeles County uses Ink-a-Vote which replaced those punch cards with ink blot bubbles. Nothing beats paper for vote recounts. The ink takes a few seconds to dry and if you don't hold the marking device completely perpendicular, it can skip marking the ballot.
Has anyone conducted a study to determine the net BTUs from converting corn into ethanol? I mean, it must take an awful lot of energy to clear the fields, plant the seeds, add fertilizer, pump the water, reap the crop, sort the seed from the chafe, distill the usable stuff, dispose of the waste, and voila -- E85. To my thinking, we must use a lot of energy in the process. What's the net?
It's like saying that electric vehicles don't pollute. Yeah, right. If you assume that generating electricity is completely non-polluting. Recent studies show that E85 might, ahem MIGHT supplant 5% of our foreign oil imports. How much oil will be used in producing that E85?
unless submitted through Turn-it-In which provides ample disclaimers.
Students should be complaining to the school district for forcing them
to give up rights to their paper. However, this is unlikely to succeed.
At the University, only faculty own their research. Students and employees
get no rights. Even student thesis papers belong to the University, not
the student.
Most SlashDot users will disagree with my stance. I'm not a fan of the DMCA or RIAA. However, a two-minute excerpt exceeds fair use principles. Fair use excerpting is about critical review, not just adding some excerpt to your MySpace profile. The emphasis is on criticism, not sampling. For further discussion, do some research or look at the Wikipedia page for a primer. Just because you dislike the recording industry or believe the RIAA is too aggressive in prosecuting downloaders does not justify pirating intellectual property.
I read the research paper a couple days ago after reading about it in the NY Times. Seeing how this research is Microsoft funded and implicates Google, claiming they're syndicators are in cooperation with the spammers, one has to question researcher bias. I'd like to see a peer-reviewed and independently verified article before accepting these outrageous claims. Note that the researchers focused on a few keywords and strictly limited the scope of their efforts. This doesn't mean the findings are untrue, it just calls their methodology into question.
Someone please explain how a virus can update a Skype user's telephone book? Seems like a poorly-designed software that allows voice telephone messages to modify its database.
Beethoven may be dead and his works are public domain. However, recent performances of his music are copyrighted works of art. I doubt Gracenote technology can distinguish the subtleties or whether they'd even bother. How many pimple-faced teens are ripping "classical" music?
Does MySpace actaully permit users to upload MP3s to their servers? I've seen dozens of MySpace users upload their MP3s to our webserver and then MySpace leeches the bandwidth from us instead of MySpace servers. Am I seeing this wrong or are the users loading their MP3s to our servers to avoid MySpace TOS problems? I am not a MySpace user.
On the face this sounds like a great idea. I have one question: what happens to corporate data when an employee leaves or forgets their password? With PGP software, keys are escrowed for disaster recovery. It's great they are performing this in hardware; however, key management is of utmost concern in any encryption scheme. I hope their engineers are examining this.
The article contains a few technical concers. AES is triple-DES; it's a 112-bit scheme, not 128. If BitLocker is encrypting everything on the hard drive, how are users able to boot the computer for the first time or how does the Windows software eventually get encrypted? Looking forward to further reports.
What a sad state of state of affairs in which we find ourselves! Must every person have a game, laptop computer, I-pod, DVD player, or other electronic gadget to keep themselves preoccupied? What is wrong with reading a book, sitting quietly, meditating, sleeping, quiet conversation, or plain old doing nothing? When did everyone develop a bad case of ADHD? I wonder what people would do at home when the electricity goes out. Seems the public has an overwhelming and narcissistic need for immediate gratification.
The biggest problem that I have with federal legislation is that it usually falls short of providing real protection to victims. Big business lobbies Congress to pre-empt existing state laws, such as California's, which do require notification of potential victims. So much for the Republican rhetoric about Federalism (state rights--look it up). This is one place I don't want to see interference from the current Congress.
This seems like a plum violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act. Employers and potential employers must offer alternative means to submit a job application. Differerntly-abled individuals with visual and motor impairments could make an excellent case. ADA guidelines and California rules and interpretations of the law are already having significant impact on my employer. Web developers who don't consider accessibility might want to consider alternative employment as your employer may soon be sued.
Before you attack a person with Ad Hominem charges, check out his CV. The gentleman has more scholarly awards than a roomful of SlashDot readers:
Awards
2003 Microsoft Gold Star Award
2003 US/International Patent (Pending) 304064.1 Common Query Runtime System and API
2003 US/International Patent (Pending) 303845.1 Query Optimizer System and Method
2003 US/International Patent (Pending) 301638.1 Query Intermediate Language (QIL) Method and System
2002 US Patent 1911574.1 XML Views Over Relational Data Using XML Schema
1996 NASA Grant NRA-96-10-OSS-055, A Collaborative Environment for the Space Interferometer Mission
1994 Caltech Hinrichs Leadership Award
1993 Caltech Don Shepard Essay Contest Winner
1992 Caltech Robert Andrews Millikan Scholar (again)
1991 Caltech Robert Andrews Millikan Scholar
1990 National Merit Scholar
1990 Oklahoma Academic All-State
1990 Valedictorian, Midwest City High School
1989 1st in seven-state region, American High School Mathematics Exam
1989 Principal Mallet Percussionist, Oklahoma All-State Band
1988 Principal Mallet Percussionist, Oklahoma All-State Orchestra
I am an undergraduate (2nd B/A) in a high-ranking Communication Studies Program at one of the best valued public universities in the nation. In private conversatins with several faculty, they explained the policy banning use of Wikipedia as a credible citation source. The main reason is that its articles not go through the same quality peer-review and editorial processes as do those published in scholarly journals. While some pages are well-researched and include numerous references, most undergraduate students are not properly equipped distinguish the subtle differences.
How does this relate to the ReplayTV. I purchased a Panasonic Showstopper 2000 five years ago. It has similar features to Tivo, some better (30-second skip wasn't in Tivo years ago), some worse (no season pass). Most DVR articles neglect to mention competing products. Has Tivo successfully sued over the ReplayTV?
Back in January 2001, the very first act of our current president above everything else was to grant the Salvation Army a Presidential Executive Order. The Executive Order exempted the Salvation Army from all EEOP guidelines in non-religous hiring activities. EEOP: Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, rules that prohibit employement discrimination. The act allowed the Salvation Army to refuse hiring non-Christians for jobs. No other employer in the United States has such an exemption.
It's rather difficult to evaluate the effectiveness of The Salvation Army. As a religous organizaiton, they do not file an IRS Form 990. I agree with a previous posters that CARE is considered one of the most efficient secular organizations. Giving should be for the sake of giving (a play on the lyrics to the song Good Saint Nick, "So be good for goodness' sake!" There's nothing as horrible as asking people to convert to some religion while giving a helping hand. True selflessness comes from helping others without religous conversion.
Those who believe this is not stealing might want to answer why phishing is a crime but knowingly buying something because the computer is misprogrammed is not. I'm sure most would complain if the computer overpriced the item. Taking advantage of someone who made a careless mistake may not be criminal; however, it is nonetheless unethical.
How can they use only 21 names with a 26-letter alphabet? What about Xena, Yvonne, and Zella? Use the model employed by fraternities when they run out of one-letter names: Use two-letter names. First would be AA, followed by AB, and AC, etc. The next year that two-letter names are required use BA, BB, and BC. In the third year that they run out of 21 single-letter names, use CA, CB, and CC.
Maybe you forgot about Florida's Kathleen Harris. Harris hired a private company--Voter Identification Services--to purge Florida roles of all the "darkies" because of their tendancy to vote for Democrats. VIS purged some 57,000 voters from the roles claiming they were ex-felons [more credible sources available--search left to reader as an exercise] and, therefore, ineligible to vote. Nevermind that their accuracy rate was a dismal 5% because their system passed judgment on name alone. If gross incompetence by the head of Florida Bush/Chenney isn't fraud in your book, I wonder what you require as proof.
A problem with the second thing is that when the vote is sent back to a central location, that information can be used to "get out the vote" and defeat a leading candidate/proposition. The central location needs to be designed in such a way that the tally cannot be monitored in real time until later. Bruce Schnier discusses some excellent ideas in his book Applied Cryptography