I wonder what this means for Windows Live Writer? My wife and I use this frequently. Granted, even if they kill it, we can still use it for some time, but we actually like this tool and it would be a shame to see Microsoft kill it.
This might actually be great for us. In our area, Verizon has the best coverage but, of course, is very pricey (as is AT&T who has the second best coverage). We could go with the more inexpensive Sprint but have heard conflicting reports about how good their coverage is by us. With a prepaid plan from Verizon, we'd be guaranteed to have the good network.
My questions would be 1) My wife recently won a Verizon Android smartphone, could she use that on StraightTalk and 2) Could we port our existing numbers?
It is true that candidates in the primaries seem to try to "play to the base" (in other words, to the extremes of their party). In the case of the Republicans, this means the God-Created-The-World-In-7-Days, Dinos-Played-With-Men-In-Eden, Global-Warming-Is-A-Liberal-Conspiracy, Science-Is-Brainwashing-Our-Kids, Obama-Is-An-Evil-Muslim-Fascist-Socialist-Destroying-America set. Once they've got the nomination, candidates realize that they have their base sewn up, but that's not nearly enough to win the election. To do this, they need to appeal to the center. Of course, by now they're positioned themselves as an extreme right (or left as the case may be) candidate which won't fly with the center. So the candidates race to the center while still trying not to seem like a total hypocrite abandoning principles they claimed to believe in a few months back. The candidate who can move to the center while hiding his hypocrisy the best stands the best chance of winning.
The only private school in our area that I'd even consider would cost about $16,000 per year. There's no way I can afford that. My wife would sooner home-school him (she's a former teacher), but that's a last resort option.
Not just people, but companies too. Let's say I publish a novel that sells tons of copies and lands on the New York Times best seller list. It's so good that people instantly begin asking about sequels and movies. A year after publication date, I'm in talks with a movie studio to produce a movie version of my novel. I make some demands that the studios don't like (say, a modicum of creative control and a decent cash payout for my novel). They could walk away from the talks, wait a few years, and then use my novel without paying me a cent or letting me have any say in the movie. Even if a studio produced a movie version, ten other studios could produce their own movie versions a couple of years after the original movie was released.
I definitely think copyright needs to be shortened, but 5 years seems too short.
As a parent of a gifted child, I've got to echo this sentiment. If your child is falling behind, there are lots of resources to help them catch up. Now there's nothing wrong with that, per sec, but if your child is craving more intellectual stimulation, you have virtually no recourse. (And, if your bored child starts acting up, your child could get labeled as a problem child when all they really need is more academic challenges.)
As others have said, splash screens let you know that the shortcut you clicked has launched the program. This, in and of itself, isn't a problem. The problem comes when the splash screens:
1) Don't provide useful information. Even if the user doesn't understand what messages are scrolling across the screen, they'll know that something is happening behind the scenes.
and/or
2) Block all other applications. Let me alt+tab to another window and do some work while your app loads. Don't make your splash screen always on top thus forcing me to stop all other computer activity to watch your logo for 3 minutes while your application loads.
Not to take the Heartland Institute's side or anything, but if I wanted to plant a fake document that would really hurt an organization, I'd obtain and leak a bunch of real documents from them and include the fake with the real ones. That way, as the real documents are verified as real and unaltered, it would make the "this is false" claims about the one damaging document seem to be lies. This doesn't mean I think it is faked or true... Just that saying "well the others aren't so this one probably isn't either" isn't a valid argument.
Like I said, that's the difference between Christianity and Judaism. Judaism doesn't believe in the concept of original sin or that you need to believe in Christ to get rid of your sins. We believe that repenting for your sins is the path to redemption. Thus, if Adam and Eve had repented, they would never have been expelled from Eden. It's one of the key differences between Christianity and Judaism's world views.
My kids drink water just fine. In fact, it's the main beverage they drink. Occasionally, they drink milk (mostly plain, rarely chocolate milk) or juice. They never drink soda. There's nothing about water that kids intrinsically reject. It's all how you raise them and what you drink. (If you're drinking only soda and then give them water, chances are they won't drink it.)
The content industry claimed that we needed SOPA/PIPA to take down these horrible sites or they'd lose millions upon billions upon trillions and zombies would rise from the grave (or some such... I tend to lose track of their doomsday scenarios if Technology X isn't stopped). We don't have SOPA and yet MegaUpload and JotForm.com were taken down just fine. This is, of course, putting aside whether or not MegaUpload or JotForm *SHOULD* have been taken down. Clearly, though, they have the capability to take sites down as they see fit so why do they need it codified in law?
The difference being, of course, that Jews don't believe that the Messiah has returned yet, and don't believe that Gentiles can be saved without fully converting to the practices of Judaism.
Well, just to correct this, Jews don't believe the Messiah has come at all (much less returned for a second time). We believe that Jesus was just a rabbi of the time and not a Messiah. As for Gentiles, we believe that they just have to follow the Noachide Laws, 7 laws of Noah ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seven_Laws_of_Noah ):
1. Prohibition of Idolatry 2. Prohibition of Murder 3. Prohibition of Theft 4. Prohibition of Sexual immorality 5. Prohibition of Blasphemy 6. Prohibition of eating flesh taken from an animal while it is still alive 7. Establishment of courts of law
If a Gentile follows all seven of these, they're fine. Jews have to go above and beyond, though, and have many more laws to follow..
Maybe this is a different interpretation, given my Jewish and not Christian upbringing, but I learned that after Adam and Eve ate the apple, they realized they were naked and clothed themselves. God came walking by (metaphorically speaking) and they hid. He asked where they were not because He didn't know, but because it was a test. Adam and Eve revealed themselves and God asked why they ate the fruit of the tree. Here, He was giving them a chance to repent their sins, but they chose to blame each other. Adam blamed Eve and Eve blamed the snake. (Not sure it's recorded who the snake blamed.) Only after they chose not to repent (especially having now learned good from evil), did they get their punishments.
Like I said, though, this might be different interpretations from different religious perspectives. Christianity is big on the "Fall of Man" in Eden leading up to Jesus sacrificing himself to absolve that sin. Judaism, meanwhile, is big on repenting as a means of absolving sins. (See: Yom Kippur when Jews fast and repent in order to have our sins from the past year forgiven.)
If you factor out 114, you get 19, 3, and 2. (19 * 3 * 2 = 114) If you add these up, you get 24. Flip the numbers (since death is the opposite of life) and you get 42. Thus, the answer to life, the universe and everything is 42.
The reason I'm comfortable with the government dictating which vaccines must be taken is because not taking a vaccine doesn't just impact that one person. It also impacts people who are too young to take the vaccine, the elderly who didn't have that vaccine growing up, those who can't take it for a valid medical reason, and people who had the vaccine but didn't gain permanent immunity (it does happen). Usually, these groups of people are small enough that they are protected via herd immunity by the much larger vaccinated group. When one person's actions (e.g. refusing a vaccine) will adversely impact tens or even hundreds or thousands of people, possibly including their deaths, I think it's perfectly reasonable for the government to step in. (If the damage from not taking a vaccine was limited to the person who didn't take it, I'd be extremely opposed to mandatory vaccinations.)
My mom is a nurse, and her best friend was paralyzed from the flu shot. How's that instead of a @#$@ three days of down time?
A friend of mine in junior high school was killed during a baseball game. He pitched the ball, the batter hit it back, he got hit in the temple, he lapsed into a coma and died. Clearly, this means that baseball is an extremely dangerous sport and should be banned entirely.
Either that or my friend had a one in a million event happen and the entertainment benefits of baseball outweigh the tiny risk. Just as the health benefits of vaccination vastly outweigh the tiny risk.
(In case you're wondering, that story is true, by the way.)
"supporting charter schools and the privatization of education"
That's the one that hits close to home for me. Where I live there are a ton of charter schools. They take public school money, but get to 1) pick and choose who to admit, 2) get to report standardized test scores themselves (with no double-checking from a 3rd party), and 3) make a profit on this "education" and funnel it to their board members. As more money gets taken away from public schools, the public schools get worse and the charter school advocates began calling for more charter schools. Meanwhile, they don't take kids with any kind of problem so the public schools get saddled with these kids and dwindling funds. The school district my son's in is effectively paying for 2 school districts with one budget, much of that money being siphoned off to the companies that own the charter schools instead of going to educate kids.
I thought, when they first put these in place, that they claimed you couldn't see a detailed body image. Now they're claiming you could but they "enhanced" it with a privacy filter? Way to change your story while hoping people forget your original tale, TSA!
I don't think I could bring myself to make the kind of noises you're referring to. I'd be too embarrassed in public. I wonder what would happen if I hummed the Jeopardy theme song during a pat-down.
In that case, the terrorists had already seized control. Once they have control of the plane, locking the cabin doors makes no sense (from a passenger perspective as opposed to from the terrorists' perspective).
The locks should be engaged before passengers board. Then, if hijackers threaten to kill people if the pilots don't unlock the door, the pilots should be under strict orders to land at the nearest airport (having radioed the situation in, of course). The pilots would be further told they are not to open the doors under any circumstances no matter how many people get killed.
This one item would reduce a terrorist's options. They could kill everyone on the plane save the pilots or try to smuggle a bomb on-board and blow up the plane. Still, that would be one plane's worth of casualties at most. They wouldn't be able to ram the plane into anything to increase the casualties.
Ah, but you forget, corporations are people too and using their money is just "freedom of expression." So when a company that makes scanners tosses some money to a politician, they are 'expressing" how they'd love to see said scanners installed in every airport. You wouldn't want politicians to stop listening to these people, right? After all, all "people" are equal, but some are just a little more equal than others.
And it likely won't any time soon because nobody wants to be seen as weak on terror. It doesn't matter that 99% of what the TSA does is ineffective security theater. All that matters is that their political opponents could spin "cut out the TSA scanners" as "opened our airports up to the terrorists." No politician wants to risk that. So rather than cutting the scanners (and other TSA security theater), they'll just add some more bureaucracy into the mix (e.g. passenger advocates).
Slashdot Mirror
I wonder what this means for Windows Live Writer? My wife and I use this frequently. Granted, even if they kill it, we can still use it for some time, but we actually like this tool and it would be a shame to see Microsoft kill it.
This might actually be great for us. In our area, Verizon has the best coverage but, of course, is very pricey (as is AT&T who has the second best coverage). We could go with the more inexpensive Sprint but have heard conflicting reports about how good their coverage is by us. With a prepaid plan from Verizon, we'd be guaranteed to have the good network.
My questions would be 1) My wife recently won a Verizon Android smartphone, could she use that on StraightTalk and 2) Could we port our existing numbers?
It is true that candidates in the primaries seem to try to "play to the base" (in other words, to the extremes of their party). In the case of the Republicans, this means the God-Created-The-World-In-7-Days, Dinos-Played-With-Men-In-Eden, Global-Warming-Is-A-Liberal-Conspiracy, Science-Is-Brainwashing-Our-Kids, Obama-Is-An-Evil-Muslim-Fascist-Socialist-Destroying-America set. Once they've got the nomination, candidates realize that they have their base sewn up, but that's not nearly enough to win the election. To do this, they need to appeal to the center. Of course, by now they're positioned themselves as an extreme right (or left as the case may be) candidate which won't fly with the center. So the candidates race to the center while still trying not to seem like a total hypocrite abandoning principles they claimed to believe in a few months back. The candidate who can move to the center while hiding his hypocrisy the best stands the best chance of winning.
Santorum's definition of science: Anything that supports his views that he can attribute to someone called "scientist".
Anything that a "scientist" says that goes against his views is a large controversy at best and a liberal conspiracy at worst.
The only private school in our area that I'd even consider would cost about $16,000 per year. There's no way I can afford that. My wife would sooner home-school him (she's a former teacher), but that's a last resort option.
Not just people, but companies too. Let's say I publish a novel that sells tons of copies and lands on the New York Times best seller list. It's so good that people instantly begin asking about sequels and movies. A year after publication date, I'm in talks with a movie studio to produce a movie version of my novel. I make some demands that the studios don't like (say, a modicum of creative control and a decent cash payout for my novel). They could walk away from the talks, wait a few years, and then use my novel without paying me a cent or letting me have any say in the movie. Even if a studio produced a movie version, ten other studios could produce their own movie versions a couple of years after the original movie was released.
I definitely think copyright needs to be shortened, but 5 years seems too short.
As a parent of a gifted child, I've got to echo this sentiment. If your child is falling behind, there are lots of resources to help them catch up. Now there's nothing wrong with that, per sec, but if your child is craving more intellectual stimulation, you have virtually no recourse. (And, if your bored child starts acting up, your child could get labeled as a problem child when all they really need is more academic challenges.)
As others have said, splash screens let you know that the shortcut you clicked has launched the program. This, in and of itself, isn't a problem. The problem comes when the splash screens:
1) Don't provide useful information. Even if the user doesn't understand what messages are scrolling across the screen, they'll know that something is happening behind the scenes.
and/or
2) Block all other applications. Let me alt+tab to another window and do some work while your app loads. Don't make your splash screen always on top thus forcing me to stop all other computer activity to watch your logo for 3 minutes while your application loads.
Not to take the Heartland Institute's side or anything, but if I wanted to plant a fake document that would really hurt an organization, I'd obtain and leak a bunch of real documents from them and include the fake with the real ones. That way, as the real documents are verified as real and unaltered, it would make the "this is false" claims about the one damaging document seem to be lies. This doesn't mean I think it is faked or true... Just that saying "well the others aren't so this one probably isn't either" isn't a valid argument.
Like I said, that's the difference between Christianity and Judaism. Judaism doesn't believe in the concept of original sin or that you need to believe in Christ to get rid of your sins. We believe that repenting for your sins is the path to redemption. Thus, if Adam and Eve had repented, they would never have been expelled from Eden. It's one of the key differences between Christianity and Judaism's world views.
My kids drink water just fine. In fact, it's the main beverage they drink. Occasionally, they drink milk (mostly plain, rarely chocolate milk) or juice. They never drink soda. There's nothing about water that kids intrinsically reject. It's all how you raise them and what you drink. (If you're drinking only soda and then give them water, chances are they won't drink it.)
The content industry claimed that we needed SOPA/PIPA to take down these horrible sites or they'd lose millions upon billions upon trillions and zombies would rise from the grave (or some such... I tend to lose track of their doomsday scenarios if Technology X isn't stopped). We don't have SOPA and yet MegaUpload and JotForm.com were taken down just fine. This is, of course, putting aside whether or not MegaUpload or JotForm *SHOULD* have been taken down. Clearly, though, they have the capability to take sites down as they see fit so why do they need it codified in law?
Perhaps this is why GoDaddy was a SOPA supporter. So they could have company policy codified into law.
Well, just to correct this, Jews don't believe the Messiah has come at all (much less returned for a second time). We believe that Jesus was just a rabbi of the time and not a Messiah. As for Gentiles, we believe that they just have to follow the Noachide Laws, 7 laws of Noah ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seven_Laws_of_Noah ):
1. Prohibition of Idolatry
2. Prohibition of Murder
3. Prohibition of Theft
4. Prohibition of Sexual immorality
5. Prohibition of Blasphemy
6. Prohibition of eating flesh taken from an animal while it is still alive
7. Establishment of courts of law
If a Gentile follows all seven of these, they're fine. Jews have to go above and beyond, though, and have many more laws to follow..
Maybe this is a different interpretation, given my Jewish and not Christian upbringing, but I learned that after Adam and Eve ate the apple, they realized they were naked and clothed themselves. God came walking by (metaphorically speaking) and they hid. He asked where they were not because He didn't know, but because it was a test. Adam and Eve revealed themselves and God asked why they ate the fruit of the tree. Here, He was giving them a chance to repent their sins, but they chose to blame each other. Adam blamed Eve and Eve blamed the snake. (Not sure it's recorded who the snake blamed.) Only after they chose not to repent (especially having now learned good from evil), did they get their punishments.
Like I said, though, this might be different interpretations from different religious perspectives. Christianity is big on the "Fall of Man" in Eden leading up to Jesus sacrificing himself to absolve that sin. Judaism, meanwhile, is big on repenting as a means of absolving sins. (See: Yom Kippur when Jews fast and repent in order to have our sins from the past year forgiven.)
If you factor out 114, you get 19, 3, and 2. (19 * 3 * 2 = 114)
If you add these up, you get 24.
Flip the numbers (since death is the opposite of life) and you get 42.
Thus, the answer to life, the universe and everything is 42.
Actually, it is happening. See the resurgence in whooping cough or measles. As vaccination rates for those diseases drops, the infection rate rises.
The reason I'm comfortable with the government dictating which vaccines must be taken is because not taking a vaccine doesn't just impact that one person. It also impacts people who are too young to take the vaccine, the elderly who didn't have that vaccine growing up, those who can't take it for a valid medical reason, and people who had the vaccine but didn't gain permanent immunity (it does happen). Usually, these groups of people are small enough that they are protected via herd immunity by the much larger vaccinated group. When one person's actions (e.g. refusing a vaccine) will adversely impact tens or even hundreds or thousands of people, possibly including their deaths, I think it's perfectly reasonable for the government to step in. (If the damage from not taking a vaccine was limited to the person who didn't take it, I'd be extremely opposed to mandatory vaccinations.)
A friend of mine in junior high school was killed during a baseball game. He pitched the ball, the batter hit it back, he got hit in the temple, he lapsed into a coma and died. Clearly, this means that baseball is an extremely dangerous sport and should be banned entirely.
Either that or my friend had a one in a million event happen and the entertainment benefits of baseball outweigh the tiny risk. Just as the health benefits of vaccination vastly outweigh the tiny risk.
(In case you're wondering, that story is true, by the way.)
"supporting charter schools and the privatization of education"
That's the one that hits close to home for me. Where I live there are a ton of charter schools. They take public school money, but get to 1) pick and choose who to admit, 2) get to report standardized test scores themselves (with no double-checking from a 3rd party), and 3) make a profit on this "education" and funnel it to their board members. As more money gets taken away from public schools, the public schools get worse and the charter school advocates began calling for more charter schools. Meanwhile, they don't take kids with any kind of problem so the public schools get saddled with these kids and dwindling funds. The school district my son's in is effectively paying for 2 school districts with one budget, much of that money being siphoned off to the companies that own the charter schools instead of going to educate kids.
I thought, when they first put these in place, that they claimed you couldn't see a detailed body image. Now they're claiming you could but they "enhanced" it with a privacy filter? Way to change your story while hoping people forget your original tale, TSA!
I don't think I could bring myself to make the kind of noises you're referring to. I'd be too embarrassed in public. I wonder what would happen if I hummed the Jeopardy theme song during a pat-down.
In that case, the terrorists had already seized control. Once they have control of the plane, locking the cabin doors makes no sense (from a passenger perspective as opposed to from the terrorists' perspective).
The locks should be engaged before passengers board. Then, if hijackers threaten to kill people if the pilots don't unlock the door, the pilots should be under strict orders to land at the nearest airport (having radioed the situation in, of course). The pilots would be further told they are not to open the doors under any circumstances no matter how many people get killed.
This one item would reduce a terrorist's options. They could kill everyone on the plane save the pilots or try to smuggle a bomb on-board and blow up the plane. Still, that would be one plane's worth of casualties at most. They wouldn't be able to ram the plane into anything to increase the casualties.
Ah, but you forget, corporations are people too and using their money is just "freedom of expression." So when a company that makes scanners tosses some money to a politician, they are 'expressing" how they'd love to see said scanners installed in every airport. You wouldn't want politicians to stop listening to these people, right? After all, all "people" are equal, but some are just a little more equal than others.
And it likely won't any time soon because nobody wants to be seen as weak on terror. It doesn't matter that 99% of what the TSA does is ineffective security theater. All that matters is that their political opponents could spin "cut out the TSA scanners" as "opened our airports up to the terrorists." No politician wants to risk that. So rather than cutting the scanners (and other TSA security theater), they'll just add some more bureaucracy into the mix (e.g. passenger advocates).