No need to completely redo their initials. Just reverse the T and the S. The STA: The Security Theater Administration - Doing things to claim we're making you safe since 2001.
The good news: It is 100 light years away from Earth so there's no way for it to reach us in time.
The not so good news: 100 light years is nothing cosmic-distance-wise. If our detection capabilities can let us spot a Super-Jupiter sized object 100 light years away, are there smaller object that are closer, but still pose a threat? This is completely unrelated to the Mayan Apocalypse nonsense. We should improve our detection abilities mainly to spot asteroids headed our way in time to prevent a catastrophe.
One problem with limiting the jury to people sharing the profession of the accused is that the jury might be overly sympathetic to the accused. Imagine a group of doctors hearing evidence of possible malpractice. They might weigh the evidence fairly, but they might also feel sympathy for the accused, remembering times when they were in similar situations, and give them the benefit of the doubt.
Another issue would be them applying their own knowledge of the field instead of limiting their deliberations to the evidence presented to them in court. What if a doctor on a malpractice trial's jury knew how to perform the procedure in question? Could his knowledge of the techniques and pitfalls cause him to do exactly what the foreman in the Samsung jury did? He could become the jury's own "expert witness" and they might base their verdict off of what he says instead of the evidence and testimony given during the trial.
In many ways, it seems better to pick up random folks off the street so that they base their decision on the evidence/testimony and not their own knowledge of the field.
If the school board members could get racism classified as a disability, then voters could toss out 2/3rds of them and they could still meet their "33% for disabilities" goal.
I know this is racially and not religiously broken down, but there *is* the stereotype of Jews doing well in math. (We need to in order to become accountants.) So do white Jewish kids have higher acceptable passing rates than white Christian kids?
Or, more to the point, if your sport's coverage can be substantially harmed by twenty one 140-character snippets, perhaps your sport just isn't exciting enough to merit live TV/radio coverage.
Actually, @Todd_Dybas has a follower count of 436. This isn't a lot. I have over 1,000 followers and regularly talk to people on Twitter whose follower count vastly exceeds my own. Were Todd Dybas and I to attend a game and both live tweet it, would he be kicked out since he's a journalist but I'd be allowed because I'm just a spectator? Or would I be kicked out too for daring to tweet more than 20 times during the game?
I'd pit my in-laws' cockatoo against a cat any day.... except it wouldn't be fair to the cat. Cats can be aggressive, but cockatoos are mini-raptors. Their claws and beaks can be deadly if they decide they don't like you.
My wife's parents used to have two Cockatoos. (Only one now - the other passed away.) Both birds figured out how to pick a Master key lock to get out of their cages. And forget the shiv. Their beaks are strong enough to crack right through the bone in your finger if they want to. (Luckily, I don't know this from personal experience.) Do NOT attempt to pet them if they're in a bad mood!
I've been watching CNN a lot and the "I used to live in a Socialist country" ads by Some Rich Businessman (I didn't care enough to memorize his name) were so annoying I'd mute the TV and then forget to unmute it for 3 or 4 commercials afterwards. (The basic gist of Rich Businessman's message: "Don't tax the rich or we all descend into madness, madness I say! Trust me because I'm a Rich Guy.")
When we called it in saying that these people have been dead for a while now, we were initially told to let it be. Why were we trying to take away their right to vote.
Zombies are an important voting demographic. I believe they tend to vote demographic because all of that Republican anti-science leads to shriveled little brains. Good for a quick munch, but not worth shambling out of your way for.
Then how about a screen and keyboard. The ballot could be arranged like this:
1) Barack Obama 2) Mitt Romney 3) Third Party Candidate A 4) Third Party Candidate B
You'd hit the proper number then hit Enter to confirm. (So you could press 2, change your mind, press 1, change your mind again, press 4 and then hit enter.)
Hitting Enter would move you to the next ballot item (Senator, Representative, local judges races, ballot initiatives, etc). If need be, you might even be able to get a custom keyboard with bigger numbers for the vision impaired.
(Of course, this hypothetical system would print out a receipt with both an English language summary of your vote and a machine readable barcode (for quick counting). You'd review it and then put it in a bin which would securely hold them until it was time to count them.
Our usual tactic for "It's not on Netflix but we want to watch it" is "take the DVD out of our local library." In this case, there is a sale to the movie industry, but only for the few copies that the library purchased. Our rental is essentially free. (Yes, we pay taxes to support our local library, but we pay those whether we use the library or not.)
So they kept it off Netflix in an attempt to get me to buy the DVD and, instead of getting paid by Netflix, they got $15 or so from our local library for one copy that gets rented by a few hundred people (if not more). Congrats, movie industry! Your brilliant plan to drive me to DVD sales has effectively netted you a few pennies from me!
One reason Netflix can't offer a premium service with "the good stuff" (and by this I'm guessing you mean popular movies as soon as they hit DVD and TV shows a day or so after they air) is because of the content owners. The content owners think giving content to Netflix means killing DVD sales or driving people away from paying for TV. They see Netflix as an impending apocalypse to be driven away by any means necessary.
They're more than willing to toss some scraps Netflix's way, but they won't release the popular movies without Netflix giving them serious cash. As in "the amount we'd make if everyone who could possibly watch this bought the DVD instead" cash. Nevermind that not everyone on Netflix will even watch their movies and not everyone who watches it would have bought the DVD. They see Netflix as "lost sales" when it is really "found money."
So Netflix can't offer that stuff until the content owners free it up and the content owners won't free it up over unfounded fears that Netflix will kill their sacred DVD sales.
We have something similar with Google Voice. We moved our landline to it ($20 one time fee and another $20 one time fee to keep our old Google Voice number) and have it redirect calls to our cell phones. With Google Voice, you can mark a number as "spam" which means that, if they call again, they'll get a "This number is no longer in service" message.
We've have a series of calls that wind up showing up in Google Voice but not ringing our phones. We were puzzled until we realized that there were probably robocalls from either scammers or politicians. (Cue joke about them being one and the same.) Other people probably marked them as spam so Google decided to mark all instances of calls from those numbers as spam. We can see the number that calls, but we don't get bothered with the actual call.
So the patent is for blocks of active information in boxes? Filed in 2000? Microsoft was doing this with Active Desktop back in 1997 and I'm sure they weren't the first.
When I look people in the eye for too long, I begin to get uncomfortable and need to look away. Of course, talking with someone without looking them in the eye is awkward, so I've learned ways of fooling them into thinking I'm looking at their eyes when I'm not. I'll look behind their head, at their nose, etc. This way I don't get uncomfortable and they don't think I'm not focusing on them.
http://www.wired.com/geekdad/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/muppets_sw.jpg (My son has this set)
http://www.mostlymuppet.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/20110608-091608.jpg (This is a newer set)
I've also seen Animal as Boba Fett (here: http://destinationvinylmation.com/2012/05/more-muppets-star-wars/ ) so I think they're expanding the line even more.
My co-worker and I were talking and came up with Disney's first released Star Wars scene to restore the geek community's faith in their efforts.
Scene opens and Jar-Jar Binks walks on stage. He says "Hi-ya. Meesa Jar-Jar Bink---" and then he falls down the Death Star's reactor shaft never to be seen again.
However, as others have pointed out, such an "immune flu" might be forced to be much milder by giving up structures which are so necessary that they exist in all flu strains. It's possible that, fifty years down the line, kids (immunized with the universal flu vaccine) might think of "getting the flu" the same way we think of "getting a 24 hour bug" today. You don't feel well for a day and then feel much better (as opposed to today's sick in bed and can't move for a week).
Exercise, vitamins and good food are essential for day-to-day health. If you have enough of those in your life, your chance of keeling over due to a heart attack will drop. However, this doesn't protect you against a viral attack. That's something that this stuff won't do a single thing against. Maybe your healthy body will weather the viral infection slightly better than someone who only sits on the couch eating junk food, but not by much. In fact, someone who sits on the couch eating junk food, but who got the flu vaccine, will tend to be better off when faced with the flu than a healthy eater/exerciser who doesn't get the vaccine.
Slashdot Mirror
No need to completely redo their initials. Just reverse the T and the S. The STA: The Security Theater Administration - Doing things to claim we're making you safe since 2001.
But would those police boxes be bigger on the inside?
The good news: It is 100 light years away from Earth so there's no way for it to reach us in time.
The not so good news: 100 light years is nothing cosmic-distance-wise. If our detection capabilities can let us spot a Super-Jupiter sized object 100 light years away, are there smaller object that are closer, but still pose a threat? This is completely unrelated to the Mayan Apocalypse nonsense. We should improve our detection abilities mainly to spot asteroids headed our way in time to prevent a catastrophe.
The bad news is that, by January, the next end of the world nonsense will begin.
One problem with limiting the jury to people sharing the profession of the accused is that the jury might be overly sympathetic to the accused. Imagine a group of doctors hearing evidence of possible malpractice. They might weigh the evidence fairly, but they might also feel sympathy for the accused, remembering times when they were in similar situations, and give them the benefit of the doubt.
Another issue would be them applying their own knowledge of the field instead of limiting their deliberations to the evidence presented to them in court. What if a doctor on a malpractice trial's jury knew how to perform the procedure in question? Could his knowledge of the techniques and pitfalls cause him to do exactly what the foreman in the Samsung jury did? He could become the jury's own "expert witness" and they might base their verdict off of what he says instead of the evidence and testimony given during the trial.
In many ways, it seems better to pick up random folks off the street so that they base their decision on the evidence/testimony and not their own knowledge of the field.
If the school board members could get racism classified as a disability, then voters could toss out 2/3rds of them and they could still meet their "33% for disabilities" goal.
You take the average, of course! So 63.5%.
I know this is racially and not religiously broken down, but there *is* the stereotype of Jews doing well in math. (We need to in order to become accountants.) So do white Jewish kids have higher acceptable passing rates than white Christian kids?
Or, more to the point, if your sport's coverage can be substantially harmed by twenty one 140-character snippets, perhaps your sport just isn't exciting enough to merit live TV/radio coverage.
Actually, @Todd_Dybas has a follower count of 436. This isn't a lot. I have over 1,000 followers and regularly talk to people on Twitter whose follower count vastly exceeds my own. Were Todd Dybas and I to attend a game and both live tweet it, would he be kicked out since he's a journalist but I'd be allowed because I'm just a spectator? Or would I be kicked out too for daring to tweet more than 20 times during the game?
I'd pit my in-laws' cockatoo against a cat any day.... except it wouldn't be fair to the cat. Cats can be aggressive, but cockatoos are mini-raptors. Their claws and beaks can be deadly if they decide they don't like you.
My wife's parents used to have two Cockatoos. (Only one now - the other passed away.) Both birds figured out how to pick a Master key lock to get out of their cages. And forget the shiv. Their beaks are strong enough to crack right through the bone in your finger if they want to. (Luckily, I don't know this from personal experience.) Do NOT attempt to pet them if they're in a bad mood!
I've been watching CNN a lot and the "I used to live in a Socialist country" ads by Some Rich Businessman (I didn't care enough to memorize his name) were so annoying I'd mute the TV and then forget to unmute it for 3 or 4 commercials afterwards. (The basic gist of Rich Businessman's message: "Don't tax the rich or we all descend into madness, madness I say! Trust me because I'm a Rich Guy.")
Zombies are an important voting demographic. I believe they tend to vote demographic because all of that Republican anti-science leads to shriveled little brains. Good for a quick munch, but not worth shambling out of your way for.
Then how about a screen and keyboard. The ballot could be arranged like this:
1) Barack Obama 2) Mitt Romney 3) Third Party Candidate A 4) Third Party Candidate B
You'd hit the proper number then hit Enter to confirm. (So you could press 2, change your mind, press 1, change your mind again, press 4 and then hit enter.)
Hitting Enter would move you to the next ballot item (Senator, Representative, local judges races, ballot initiatives, etc). If need be, you might even be able to get a custom keyboard with bigger numbers for the vision impaired.
(Of course, this hypothetical system would print out a receipt with both an English language summary of your vote and a machine readable barcode (for quick counting). You'd review it and then put it in a bin which would securely hold them until it was time to count them.
Our usual tactic for "It's not on Netflix but we want to watch it" is "take the DVD out of our local library." In this case, there is a sale to the movie industry, but only for the few copies that the library purchased. Our rental is essentially free. (Yes, we pay taxes to support our local library, but we pay those whether we use the library or not.)
So they kept it off Netflix in an attempt to get me to buy the DVD and, instead of getting paid by Netflix, they got $15 or so from our local library for one copy that gets rented by a few hundred people (if not more). Congrats, movie industry! Your brilliant plan to drive me to DVD sales has effectively netted you a few pennies from me!
One reason Netflix can't offer a premium service with "the good stuff" (and by this I'm guessing you mean popular movies as soon as they hit DVD and TV shows a day or so after they air) is because of the content owners. The content owners think giving content to Netflix means killing DVD sales or driving people away from paying for TV. They see Netflix as an impending apocalypse to be driven away by any means necessary.
They're more than willing to toss some scraps Netflix's way, but they won't release the popular movies without Netflix giving them serious cash. As in "the amount we'd make if everyone who could possibly watch this bought the DVD instead" cash. Nevermind that not everyone on Netflix will even watch their movies and not everyone who watches it would have bought the DVD. They see Netflix as "lost sales" when it is really "found money."
So Netflix can't offer that stuff until the content owners free it up and the content owners won't free it up over unfounded fears that Netflix will kill their sacred DVD sales.
Kinect's likely answer to the simple solution: "Camera error. Locking out all media playback."
We have something similar with Google Voice. We moved our landline to it ($20 one time fee and another $20 one time fee to keep our old Google Voice number) and have it redirect calls to our cell phones. With Google Voice, you can mark a number as "spam" which means that, if they call again, they'll get a "This number is no longer in service" message.
We've have a series of calls that wind up showing up in Google Voice but not ringing our phones. We were puzzled until we realized that there were probably robocalls from either scammers or politicians. (Cue joke about them being one and the same.) Other people probably marked them as spam so Google decided to mark all instances of calls from those numbers as spam. We can see the number that calls, but we don't get bothered with the actual call.
So the patent is for blocks of active information in boxes? Filed in 2000? Microsoft was doing this with Active Desktop back in 1997 and I'm sure they weren't the first.
When I look people in the eye for too long, I begin to get uncomfortable and need to look away. Of course, talking with someone without looking them in the eye is awkward, so I've learned ways of fooling them into thinking I'm looking at their eyes when I'm not. I'll look behind their head, at their nose, etc. This way I don't get uncomfortable and they don't think I'm not focusing on them.
Found a couple of photos of the figures:
http://www.wired.com/geekdad/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/muppets_sw.jpg (My son has this set)
http://www.mostlymuppet.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/20110608-091608.jpg (This is a newer set)
I've also seen Animal as Boba Fett (here: http://destinationvinylmation.com/2012/05/more-muppets-star-wars/ ) so I think they're expanding the line even more.
My co-worker and I were talking and came up with Disney's first released Star Wars scene to restore the geek community's faith in their efforts.
Scene opens and Jar-Jar Binks walks on stage. He says "Hi-ya. Meesa Jar-Jar Bink---" and then he falls down the Death Star's reactor shaft never to be seen again.
Cue thunderous applause the world over.
However, as others have pointed out, such an "immune flu" might be forced to be much milder by giving up structures which are so necessary that they exist in all flu strains. It's possible that, fifty years down the line, kids (immunized with the universal flu vaccine) might think of "getting the flu" the same way we think of "getting a 24 hour bug" today. You don't feel well for a day and then feel much better (as opposed to today's sick in bed and can't move for a week).
Exercise, vitamins and good food are essential for day-to-day health. If you have enough of those in your life, your chance of keeling over due to a heart attack will drop. However, this doesn't protect you against a viral attack. That's something that this stuff won't do a single thing against. Maybe your healthy body will weather the viral infection slightly better than someone who only sits on the couch eating junk food, but not by much. In fact, someone who sits on the couch eating junk food, but who got the flu vaccine, will tend to be better off when faced with the flu than a healthy eater/exerciser who doesn't get the vaccine.