Agreed. I'm pretty religious (Jewish), but I don't make it a habit to discuss my religion at work. If asked about a certain aspect of Judaism, I'll answer. If I need to take a day off due to a Jewish holiday, I'll talk with my boss about it. Otherwise, my religion and my work are two completely different things.
If one of my co-workers started telling giving me DVDs and pamphlets telling me that I needed to accept Jesus or fry in hell, I'd complain to HR and would expect that this employee would be warned to stop and fired if he/she didn't.
Why does this remind me of the Simpson's episode where they use lizards to kill pigeons, then snakes to kill the lizards, then gorillas to kill the snakes?
"We've cured his alcoholism with LSD." "Yes, but now he's hooked on LSD." "No problem. We can cure that with some cocaine." "But then won't he be addicted to cocaine?" "That's when we introduce him to crystal meth..."
I agree. A mistake would have been "I thought you pushed the button until it beeped once. I didn't realize it needed to beep twice to be properly calibrated." Fraud is "I don't feel like putting effort into this. I'll just mark down that I did it. Who really cares?"
Why am I thinking of the Holy Hand Grenade Monty Python quote, only slightly re-worded?
And the Robot Lord spake, saying, "First shalt thou take out the Holy Pin. Then shalt thou count to three, no more, no less. Three shall be the number thou shalt count, and the number of the counting shall be three. Four shalt thou not count, neither count thou two, excepting that thou then proceed to three. Five is right out. Once the number three, being the third number, be reached, then lobbest thou thy Holy Extinguisher Grenade of Antioch towards thy fiery foe, who, being naughty in my sight, shall be snuffed.
At one point, I thought that the settlement that the RIAA pushed people to accept included clauses that prevented people from talking about the settlement. The RIAA, however, had no such restrictions. This way, the RIAA could say all they want about the "dirty, rotten pirate" they stopped but the sued individual couldn't provide their side. I'm not sure if this is still true, but could be part of the reason why we don't hear of many people on Slashdot who were sued.
What's the average range of these jammers? Could someone on the bus jamming Mr. Loud Talker also jam a 911 call from an apartment building the bus is driving by? Could someone stopping a movie theater talker be hampering a call outside of the theater?
I have this now and I don't need no stickin' Kinect. I just have my child push the cart and it "magically" follows me. Ok, sometimes it veers off a bit towards the toy aisle, but that's a bug I can live with.
No, with these fancy automated carts, you'll get the one with the faulty scanner that makes you stop every 2 feet, turn around, and wave to it so it can find you again.
That gives me an idea. Someone "leak" to the music industry that massive piracy is happening off the coast of Somolia and that they should send wave after wave of lawyers to stop it. If the pirates (of the ship kind) are somehow stopped, hooray! If the music industry exhausts their lawyer supply... Double hooray!
Sounds perfectly reasonable to me provided the trade-off is that the music execs have to publicly disclose their names, bank account information, Social Security numbers (well, Canada's equivalent if they have one), passwords to all online services (yes, including banking), complete medical histories, Internet browsing history, etc. What? That's private information which should only be revealed to police after they've obtained a court order? Well, the same holds true for subscriber information for people accused of copyright infringement. Let me emphasis that a bit more. The same holds true for subscriber information for people ACCUSED of copyright infringement. Once they've presented enough evidence to a judge, they can get the records unlocked, but not before.
FTL doesn't mean instantaneous. It may be that you can travel faster than light, but the trip from one end of the galaxy to another would still be prohibitive. Remember that the Milky Way is about 120,000 light years wide. Even if you could travel at 1,000 times the speed of light (and ignoring any funky relativistic effects of FTL travel), it would take you 120 years to traverse the galaxy. If a hypothetical alien civilization were in another galaxy, their FTL drives might take them thousands of years to reach us. (If they even knew we were here.)
Then again, there's Option D, they're there, have FTL, and know about us, but don't want to interact with those backwater hicks on Earth who don't even know how to get one of their humans past their own moon yet.
Or Option E, there's there, have FTL, know about us, but don't want to come close to us because they're a bunch of xenophobes and don't want to "pollute" their civilization with any "alien" (that's us) ideas.
Just because we haven't seen aliens doesn't mean they're not there. Nor does it mean that FTL is impossible. It just means we don't have proof that aliens ever visited us which could be for a variety of reasons that don't involve aliens not existing or FTL being impossible.
It could be that FTL travel is possible in some manner, but civilizations don't really need to expand beyond their home solar system. Imagine that tomorrow we had a) cheap, reliable FTL travel and b) the tech for building permanent space stations. We could build a few colonies on the Moon, Mars, perhaps some of Jupiter or Saturn's moons, etc. We could also have some colonies that aren't on a rock but just float in space. There's plenty of room for these. Assuming we had the tech to do all this, how many humans could we house in all of them? I'm guessing, with this tech, we could comfortably house billions more humans across the solar system. With all of this room, the drive to find another home planet/solar system would be reduced.
Gopher was my first introduction to the Internet and might illustrate another reason why the Internet didn't take off sooner. My first time on Gopher, I remember clicking around, going from site to site in awe of what was before me. Then I got to a link that said "The Middle East." Suddenly, I became afraid that I'd get in trouble for placing long distance calls at my college.
Yes, I was a complete newbie with no knowledge of how the Internet worked. (I researched it a bit and clicked that link on my second Gopher session.) Still, at that time, local vs long distance was a big deal. You could call people in a phone company defined "local area" for one rate. Anything beyond that started ramping up the price. So if you wanted to connect to the Internet, you needed some place with a local number. Furthermore, Joe User might have been afraid to connect with other people/sites that were too far away for fear of incurring Long Distance Fees.
Coupled with the other reasons people have given, I don't think it's a surprise why an Internet-like service didn't take off in the early 80's. It took until the 90's for the perfect storm to form and for the Internet to explode.
And, in the RIAA's eyes, that's the problem. How dare the Internet (meaning Wikipedia, Google, and the others that spread the word), make people aware of the awful law they were trying to push through? Don't these people know how it goes? The RIAA brib.... I mean lobbies a few members of Congress. They then get those Congressfolk to submit bills that they (the RIAA) have written. Congress passes the bills and everyone is happy. (Where "everyone" equals "The RIAA.") Subverting that process is just unAmerican! (Where "American" equals "what the RIAA wants done.")
If the photographer/journalist committed a crime, then the photos/video shouldn't be deleted as it is evidence.
If they didn't commit a crime, then the photos/videos shouldn't be deleted since the they were engaging in a legal activity.
If a police officer (or worse, security guard) orders you to or seizes your camera to delete a photo/video you've taken, they are either destroying evidence, infringing on your civil liberties, or both.
1995 filing? Maybe I'm missing something, but the US Patent Office site says he filed January 15, 2007: http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect2=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&p=1&u=/netahtml/PTO/search-bool.html&r=1&f=G&l=50&d=PALL&RefSrch=yes&Query=PN/7644122
If this is true, then he's suing Facebook (launched in February 2004), for doing something for 3 years before he filed his (not yet accepted) patent. This patent troll isn't just stupid, he's idiotic!
That sounds about right. I've long thought that I could get very rich by certain shady endeavors if it weren't for my conscience. Someone without one (or with a very lenient one), though, could do more to benefit themselves without thinking of how it impacts others. They would climbs up by using everyone else as a ladder. Of course, you need to (at least at the start) be able to hide your psychopathic tendency and lead people to believe that you are actually helping them by climbing over their backs. Once you get high enough, though, you get enough power to let your psychopathic tendencies run wild.
Of course, this isn't to say that *everyone* who is rich is psychopathic. Some are actually very nice people who did useful things (or perhaps were lucky enough to be in the right place at the right time) and made a lot of money. Still, if you take an ordinary, moral person and an "ordinary", but slightly psychopathic person, I'd wager that the psychopath would wind up with more money. I'd still rather hang around with and work with the moral person, though.
Also, the rich are able to have lawyers on retainer just in case they get into trouble. The very rich can pay... I mean lobby Congress to get their illegal actions legitimized. People who aren't rich, however, can't simply call their hot shot team of lawyers in for every legal infraction. Nor can a single non-rich individual lobby Congress as effectively as a single rich person can. Yes, you can write letters and make calls, but the rich person can fly to D.C., take some Congressfolk to dinner at a fancy restaurant, and talk about that pesky little law that's bugging them. Or the pesky law that they want put into place.
My first thought was of the refrigerator/freezer sections of many supermarkets. At one time, they had the lights in those cases on all day. Then, they realized that they were wasting electricity if nobody was by the aisle. So they installed motion detectors. Now, the case will be dark unless someone walks by. Then it lights up.
Perhaps street lights could have a version of that in place. Detect if there's movement and, if there is, turn on the light. To better account for fast moving cars (so that lights don't turn on as you are already passing them), link the sensors together. So Lamp A's sensor also turns on Lamp B, C and D. Finally, bad weather conditions could lead to the lights not turning on. (e.g. A heavy fog might mean the sensor can't see the car going past.) For situations like this, have the lamps calibrate every so often via some method. For example, a tiny laser light aimed at a reflector on the other side of the highway. If the sensor doesn't get the laser returning, it assumes bad weather and turns the light on until the next calibration regardless of any motion detected.
Slashdot Mirror
Also this Anti-Terrorist Rock that keeps terrorists away. Works on tigers too.
Just to nitpick, @savethehobbit is a Twitter account. A hashtag using the pound sign like so: #SaveTheHobbit
Agreed. I'm pretty religious (Jewish), but I don't make it a habit to discuss my religion at work. If asked about a certain aspect of Judaism, I'll answer. If I need to take a day off due to a Jewish holiday, I'll talk with my boss about it. Otherwise, my religion and my work are two completely different things.
If one of my co-workers started telling giving me DVDs and pamphlets telling me that I needed to accept Jesus or fry in hell, I'd complain to HR and would expect that this employee would be warned to stop and fired if he/she didn't.
Yes, but Luke laughing like the Joker would just be creepy.
Why does this remind me of the Simpson's episode where they use lizards to kill pigeons, then snakes to kill the lizards, then gorillas to kill the snakes?
"We've cured his alcoholism with LSD."
"Yes, but now he's hooked on LSD."
"No problem. We can cure that with some cocaine."
"But then won't he be addicted to cocaine?"
"That's when we introduce him to crystal meth..."
I agree. A mistake would have been "I thought you pushed the button until it beeped once. I didn't realize it needed to beep twice to be properly calibrated." Fraud is "I don't feel like putting effort into this. I'll just mark down that I did it. Who really cares?"
Why am I thinking of the Holy Hand Grenade Monty Python quote, only slightly re-worded?
And the Robot Lord spake, saying, "First shalt thou take out the Holy Pin. Then shalt thou count to three, no more, no less. Three shall be the number thou shalt count, and the number of the counting shall be three. Four shalt thou not count, neither count thou two, excepting that thou then proceed to three. Five is right out. Once the number three, being the third number, be reached, then lobbest thou thy Holy Extinguisher Grenade of Antioch towards thy fiery foe, who, being naughty in my sight, shall be snuffed.
"In this house we obey the laws of thermodynamics!"
At one point, I thought that the settlement that the RIAA pushed people to accept included clauses that prevented people from talking about the settlement. The RIAA, however, had no such restrictions. This way, the RIAA could say all they want about the "dirty, rotten pirate" they stopped but the sued individual couldn't provide their side. I'm not sure if this is still true, but could be part of the reason why we don't hear of many people on Slashdot who were sued.
What's the average range of these jammers? Could someone on the bus jamming Mr. Loud Talker also jam a 911 call from an apartment building the bus is driving by? Could someone stopping a movie theater talker be hampering a call outside of the theater?
I have this now and I don't need no stickin' Kinect. I just have my child push the cart and it "magically" follows me. Ok, sometimes it veers off a bit towards the toy aisle, but that's a bug I can live with.
No, with these fancy automated carts, you'll get the one with the faulty scanner that makes you stop every 2 feet, turn around, and wave to it so it can find you again.
Ahhh, the wonders of technology!
That gives me an idea. Someone "leak" to the music industry that massive piracy is happening off the coast of Somolia and that they should send wave after wave of lawyers to stop it. If the pirates (of the ship kind) are somehow stopped, hooray! If the music industry exhausts their lawyer supply... Double hooray!
Sounds perfectly reasonable to me provided the trade-off is that the music execs have to publicly disclose their names, bank account information, Social Security numbers (well, Canada's equivalent if they have one), passwords to all online services (yes, including banking), complete medical histories, Internet browsing history, etc. What? That's private information which should only be revealed to police after they've obtained a court order? Well, the same holds true for subscriber information for people accused of copyright infringement. Let me emphasis that a bit more. The same holds true for subscriber information for people ACCUSED of copyright infringement. Once they've presented enough evidence to a judge, they can get the records unlocked, but not before.
FTL doesn't mean instantaneous. It may be that you can travel faster than light, but the trip from one end of the galaxy to another would still be prohibitive. Remember that the Milky Way is about 120,000 light years wide. Even if you could travel at 1,000 times the speed of light (and ignoring any funky relativistic effects of FTL travel), it would take you 120 years to traverse the galaxy. If a hypothetical alien civilization were in another galaxy, their FTL drives might take them thousands of years to reach us. (If they even knew we were here.)
Then again, there's Option D, they're there, have FTL, and know about us, but don't want to interact with those backwater hicks on Earth who don't even know how to get one of their humans past their own moon yet.
Or Option E, there's there, have FTL, know about us, but don't want to come close to us because they're a bunch of xenophobes and don't want to "pollute" their civilization with any "alien" (that's us) ideas.
Just because we haven't seen aliens doesn't mean they're not there. Nor does it mean that FTL is impossible. It just means we don't have proof that aliens ever visited us which could be for a variety of reasons that don't involve aliens not existing or FTL being impossible.
It could be that FTL travel is possible in some manner, but civilizations don't really need to expand beyond their home solar system. Imagine that tomorrow we had a) cheap, reliable FTL travel and b) the tech for building permanent space stations. We could build a few colonies on the Moon, Mars, perhaps some of Jupiter or Saturn's moons, etc. We could also have some colonies that aren't on a rock but just float in space. There's plenty of room for these. Assuming we had the tech to do all this, how many humans could we house in all of them? I'm guessing, with this tech, we could comfortably house billions more humans across the solar system. With all of this room, the drive to find another home planet/solar system would be reduced.
I'd reply, but I am already in my pajamas. *dozes off*
Gopher was my first introduction to the Internet and might illustrate another reason why the Internet didn't take off sooner. My first time on Gopher, I remember clicking around, going from site to site in awe of what was before me. Then I got to a link that said "The Middle East." Suddenly, I became afraid that I'd get in trouble for placing long distance calls at my college.
Yes, I was a complete newbie with no knowledge of how the Internet worked. (I researched it a bit and clicked that link on my second Gopher session.) Still, at that time, local vs long distance was a big deal. You could call people in a phone company defined "local area" for one rate. Anything beyond that started ramping up the price. So if you wanted to connect to the Internet, you needed some place with a local number. Furthermore, Joe User might have been afraid to connect with other people/sites that were too far away for fear of incurring Long Distance Fees.
Coupled with the other reasons people have given, I don't think it's a surprise why an Internet-like service didn't take off in the early 80's. It took until the 90's for the perfect storm to form and for the Internet to explode.
Or, to put it another way, imagine clicking to download the parent post and having it fully loaded almost 20 minutes later.
Then you click on this reply and load it in an additional 2.5 minutes.
And, in the RIAA's eyes, that's the problem. How dare the Internet (meaning Wikipedia, Google, and the others that spread the word), make people aware of the awful law they were trying to push through? Don't these people know how it goes? The RIAA brib.... I mean lobbies a few members of Congress. They then get those Congressfolk to submit bills that they (the RIAA) have written. Congress passes the bills and everyone is happy. (Where "everyone" equals "The RIAA.") Subverting that process is just unAmerican! (Where "American" equals "what the RIAA wants done.")
If the photographer/journalist committed a crime, then the photos/video shouldn't be deleted as it is evidence.
If they didn't commit a crime, then the photos/videos shouldn't be deleted since the they were engaging in a legal activity.
If a police officer (or worse, security guard) orders you to or seizes your camera to delete a photo/video you've taken, they are either destroying evidence, infringing on your civil liberties, or both.
1995 filing? Maybe I'm missing something, but the US Patent Office site says he filed January 15, 2007: http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect2=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&p=1&u=/netahtml/PTO/search-bool.html&r=1&f=G&l=50&d=PALL&RefSrch=yes&Query=PN/7644122
If this is true, then he's suing Facebook (launched in February 2004), for doing something for 3 years before he filed his (not yet accepted) patent. This patent troll isn't just stupid, he's idiotic!
That sounds about right. I've long thought that I could get very rich by certain shady endeavors if it weren't for my conscience. Someone without one (or with a very lenient one), though, could do more to benefit themselves without thinking of how it impacts others. They would climbs up by using everyone else as a ladder. Of course, you need to (at least at the start) be able to hide your psychopathic tendency and lead people to believe that you are actually helping them by climbing over their backs. Once you get high enough, though, you get enough power to let your psychopathic tendencies run wild.
Of course, this isn't to say that *everyone* who is rich is psychopathic. Some are actually very nice people who did useful things (or perhaps were lucky enough to be in the right place at the right time) and made a lot of money. Still, if you take an ordinary, moral person and an "ordinary", but slightly psychopathic person, I'd wager that the psychopath would wind up with more money. I'd still rather hang around with and work with the moral person, though.
Also, the rich are able to have lawyers on retainer just in case they get into trouble. The very rich can pay... I mean lobby Congress to get their illegal actions legitimized. People who aren't rich, however, can't simply call their hot shot team of lawyers in for every legal infraction. Nor can a single non-rich individual lobby Congress as effectively as a single rich person can. Yes, you can write letters and make calls, but the rich person can fly to D.C., take some Congressfolk to dinner at a fancy restaurant, and talk about that pesky little law that's bugging them. Or the pesky law that they want put into place.
My first thought was of the refrigerator/freezer sections of many supermarkets. At one time, they had the lights in those cases on all day. Then, they realized that they were wasting electricity if nobody was by the aisle. So they installed motion detectors. Now, the case will be dark unless someone walks by. Then it lights up.
Perhaps street lights could have a version of that in place. Detect if there's movement and, if there is, turn on the light. To better account for fast moving cars (so that lights don't turn on as you are already passing them), link the sensors together. So Lamp A's sensor also turns on Lamp B, C and D. Finally, bad weather conditions could lead to the lights not turning on. (e.g. A heavy fog might mean the sensor can't see the car going past.) For situations like this, have the lamps calibrate every so often via some method. For example, a tiny laser light aimed at a reflector on the other side of the highway. If the sensor doesn't get the laser returning, it assumes bad weather and turns the light on until the next calibration regardless of any motion detected.