Of course you can. Remember, orbiting is the state of constantly falling towards an object (in this case Earth), but always missing the ground. So the bolt is dropped, falls, and misses the ground over and over. At least until it hits into something else, shoots out into space (unlikely), and/or lowers orbit enough to burn up in the atmosphere.
I don't have the data, but that theory should be easy to test. If Eva's group used to live in North Asia and was then driven into South Asia (and into North America) by outsiders, we should find remains of other "Evas" in North Asia. If we don't, then it is more likely that Eva's group originated in South Asia and managed to cross the Pacific Ocean by some manner.
I can't find the reference now, but I could have sworn that there was a case in which the court ruled that items placed in laws lose their copyright status. Of course, it could just be wishful thinking on my part.
I agree. The author is criticizing Google for something that anyone can do today with normal web tools.
Another problem arises when one of your friends decides to make their name tags public. You could see pictures labeled with your name popping up on the Web without your knowledge. While this information is not necessary included in search results, it can still prove problematic.
One of my friends could take a photo of me then, without my knowledge, upload it to their web site/blog/MySpace page/whatever with the caption "This is Jason Levine." Has Web Host/Blog Software Provider/MySpace/whatever just committed a huge privacy violation? No. If a privacy violation happened (and it would depend on the nature of the photo), the friend is the one who committed it. Google's tool doesn't increase the means for privacy violations.
This is also a larger issue for parents with small children. Other family members could tag photos of your child on the Internet. If a predator were to find pictures labeled with a location and a full name, he could gather enough information on your child to pose as a family friend in an attempt to lure your child from safety.
Whenever someone uses the "child predator" argument, my BS detector goes off. And this is coming from the father of two small children. My wife maintains a blog where she posts photos of our kids and information about what they (and we) have been up to. While I've been comfortable using my real name online for quite some time (see my Slashdot user name), my wife isn't as comfortable with it. So I've helped her keep many things anonymous including our and our childrens' names. I'm sure that a determined individual could track her blog back to my real name, but casual users will need to know us by our initials.
If you are that fearful that a predator will use online tools to stalk your child then:
1. Teach your child about Stranger Danger. (We're attempting to instill this into our 5 year old without having him shut down at the mere sight of a stranger. Yes, he did take it that far at first!) 2. Know what your child is doing online and offline at all times. 3. Don't post things online that you wouldn't want any old person seeing. (Doesn't stop others from posting that stuff online, but how many people post things to their MySpace pages then complain about other people knowing about the stuff.)
A predator could stake out the local playground and look for likely targets. This doesn't mean that you abandon all public playgrounds, but that you be smart about it.
A few years back, just before having kids, my wife and I decided to take a trip to Las Vegas. During our trip, we went to The Star Trek Experience. Overall, it was quite fun, but one experience in particular stands out. My wife had to use the restroom. To get there you went through one door. Past that door was a very short hall with three doors: One for the men's room, one for the women's room, and a door leading to the staff area. As my wife opened the hallway door to go in, a staff member dressed as a Ferengi started walking out. Both were taken by surprise, but what impressed me was that the Ferengi stayed in character the entire time. Even when he shrieked in surprise, it was with a standard "Ferengi shriek." Then he said "Hello hu-mon. Female." and walked off.
Jebus the Psgetti Monster and God of Nasal Messes. Just have faith and pray to him. If the mess isn't cleaned up, it just means you're not praying hard enough.
This is one reason why I was gung-ho for Ron Paul even though I disagreed with him as to the extent of the shrinking that the Federal Government needed. I figured that there would be no way he would get his more extreme cuts past Congress so he would wind up trimming the size of the Federal Government, not hacking and slashing it. (Without Ron Paul in the race, I'm an Obama supporter.)
I wonder how this would affect carbon dating. I'm guessing that any deviations from previously estimated ages of materials would be minor, but the Young Earth Creationists are sure to latch onto this as a reason why the Earth is only 6,000 years old and scientists don't know anything.
We have to always keep in mind that "the government" is not some sort of ethereal force out there. It's a bunch of guys (and women) who happen to have been placed in a position of power, whether it's someone elected to office or that clerk at the local [insert government office here] who likes to be a jerk and inconvenience people because it gives him a power trip to feel like he's the king of some tiny kingdom. We always have to remember that. Just because someone is in "the government" does not make that person special or give that person any special rights whatsoever.
(Not to drift too far OT, but....)
This was just the argument I was making to a friend of mine during a discussion of anti-terrorism laws. He was of the opinion that we shouldn't disallow warrantless surveillance just because it "might" be abused "someday" since it would definitely (in his opinion) help us catch terrorists. He thought that doing otherwise was shackling the hands of law enforcement. I countered that, while law enforcement might like to conduct surveillance without a warrant, it was too ripe for abuse. Our Founding Fathers knew what it was like to live under a government that didn't listen to the people and abused its power. That's why our government is designed with checks and balances. Any law/policy that removes the checks and balances from a governmental agency (say, no warrants required) is highly dangerous and likely unconstitutional.
Of course, my friend chose not to see the danger and just assumed that: 1) he and I wouldn't be targeted, 2) if we were we would have recourse, and 3) the government would give up the powers after the fight was won. I pointed out the flaws in these arguments, but either I didn't do a good enough job or his mind was closed to all debate (probably the latter) because he remains convinced that giving the government unlimited power to "stop the terrorists" is a good idea. In fact, he went so far as to say that he wouldn't forgive me if I supported removal of those governmental powers and we got hit with another terrorist attack.
Then again, this friend also thinks that the fact that Obama's middle name is "Hussein" and his first name rhymes with "Osama" is just too coincidental to not mean something. It's really sad that the future of this country may be decided by people who think that being Conservative means unlimited Federal government power and wanting to curtail the Federal government is a sign of dangerous liberalism.
That still leaves out IE6. My company hasn't pushed out the IE7 upgrade yet (one of our third-party web apps doesn't work with IE7 yet), so most of our internal users are running IE6. Meanwhile, about half of our IE-using external website users have moved to IE7. I can't upgrade my PC to IE7 or I won't be able to test our internal pages with IE6, but I can't continue to run IE6 indefinitely since more and more external users are running IE7.
Now if they would only give us some way of running multiple versions of IE side by side. There are still a lot of people using IE6, so I need to test sites against that. But I can't if I upgrade to IE7. And if I upgrade to IE8, I can't test against IE7 or IE6. We need a standalone version of IE6 for web developers to use for website testing. The time limited VM that they provide is a start, but I don't want to boot up an entire VM of Windows just to test one page.
This can only mean one thing. Radiation from space will mutate them until they are 50 feet tall and they rampage through our cities! Either that, or they will gain superpowers and become evil super-virus-villains bent on world conquest.
So then the question changes to "what constitutes a physical presence?". The largest online merchants such as Amazon have warehouses all over the country, but don't ever actually sell anything on-site, they just ship from there. So does that count as a retail presence, or not?
And just to make things more difficult, the NY law in question isn't even talking about warehouses. It's talking about affiliates. NewEgg is located in California, but they have an affiliate program. I'm an affiliate of theirs and I live in NY. Does that make NewEgg have a physical location in New York state? Of course not. I'm not an employee of NewEgg, I'm just an affiliate. I post a link to NewEgg on my website and get a small kickback for any sales that it generates. The website that I run is hosted by a company in Texas. Does that mean that NewEgg has a "physical presence" in Texas also and should pay Texas sales tax? The whole "affiliate = physical presence" argument is just a money grab. Then again, we shouldn't be surprised. This is the state that also taxes telecommuters on their full income even if they only work inside NY for a short period of time. (See the story of Scott Smallwood: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/20/business/businessspecial2/20tax.html )
Thanks for that. I didn't know there were ever any successful hijackings of El Al planes. Still, only one successful hijacking in 60 years is an impressive track record.
Explosive decompression can occur when a bullet is fired through the fuselage of a pressurized airplane, causing the hole to grow dramatically and possibly cause the plane to break up as seen in movies.
BUSTED
The pressure is not high enough and the hole is too small. Explosive decompression only occurred when a hole the size of a window was made with explosives. Even then, the rush of air could not suck Buster completely out of the hole. Lastly, there are proven instances of explosive decompression where the plane was still able to maintain control and land.
(This myth was revisited in episode 38 and it was re-busted.)
So you could theoretically have armed people on the plane shooting at terrorists and not causing huge problems if they miss. (Well, except for passengers that get in the way.)
I think the best solution is to lock the pilot's door before boarding. Then the pilots are instructed to not open the door under any circumstances. If terrorists threaten to kill passengers, the pilots are to land the plane and won't be held accountable for any deaths that result. After all, giving into the demands to open the door and turn over control of the plane could mean the death of all on board as well as people on the ground. The pilot's door should also be bullet-proof (in case a weapon is smuggled on board).
El Al does this (in addition to other security measures) and they haven't had a single hijacking even though they're a huge target.
Looking on Lego's website, it actually looks like it would be easy to build. First I'd buy a Large Green Baseplate (10"x10") for $4.99 ( http://shop.lego.com/ByCategory/Product.aspx?p=626&cn=146&d=203 ). Then I would buy 2x2 flat tiles in various colors for $0.08 each and possibly some round 2x2 flat tiles for $0.11 each. (Sorry, no direct link. But you can search for "Flat Tile 2x2" on http://shop.lego.com/Product/Factory/PickABrick/PickABrick.aspx?cn=26 ) Assuming I buy 20 square flat tiles and 10 round flat tiles, I'm looking at $2.70. This brings me to $7.69 plus $4.95 shipping, or $12.64. Add in some more for clips and magnets to attach to the flat tiles as well as glue to bind the clips/magnets to the tiles. It should be under $20 for the whole thing. Now I'm tempted to try it.
When my son was little, his uncle bought him the Sesame Street Atom. It was the atom shaped device that rested on a stand. The child would spin it to hear music, sounds, and the voices of various Sesame Street characters. So far, so good. It was actually kind of cool. But when our son was tucked in his crib and we were in bed, we would hear the Atom starting the music/sound/voice sequence from the other room. Apparently, it would rock with the slightest movement and set off the routine. And THERE WAS NO OFF BUTTON! We finally figured out that removing it from the stand at night stopped the noise. (Thankfully, it wasn't connected to the stand in any fashion.) Now that uncle has a little girl of his own. Revenge shall be ours! (Once we find a suitably annoying toy.)
Am I the only one who saw those Lego heads on that big board and thought "It'd be cool to have a Lego bulletin board in my office"? Put some big Lego sheets on the wall and then have special Lego bricks with clips to hold papers that connect to the wall sheets. Perhaps some Lego bricks with magnets embedded in them so you could stick magnetic items to part of the wall.
And some people I talk to are worse. My father, for example, has completely bought into the right-wing arguments about terrorism and the need for these types of steps. He argued with me during the 2004 elections that we couldn't vote for anyone besides Bush. His reasoning was that switching Presidents mid-fight would send the wrong signals to our enemies. Yes, he actually thought that voting non-Republican was somehow equal to supporting the terrorists. (If that's so, label me a terrorist supporter!) A few months back, he was actually telling me about how Obama is a closet Muslim. I tried to counter that with facts, but it makes no difference. Facts are no match for a mind that is completely closed in on its own opinion (or the opinion that certain influential others tell it to have).
I've got to agree. I'm not the best programmer in the bunch when it comes to local apps. I'm not awful, but I couldn't even come close with the folks who code FireFox, Linux, etc. Still, even I could design/write a simple system that would count votes. Give me some extra time and money (and perhaps a semi-talented staff) and I could reasonably secure the system.
Offhand, since I'm a web programmer, I'm thinking some kind of web based system running off of a VPN with all other Internet access blocked. Have the votes stored in a central database which is routinely backed up and contains an audit trail in case things go funky. Now who wants to give me a few million to build this system for them?;-)
Slashdot Mirror
Don't underestimate the power of lizard tongue flicks.
http://www.sheldoncomics.com/archive/070127.html
Squee!
Of course you can. Remember, orbiting is the state of constantly falling towards an object (in this case Earth), but always missing the ground. So the bolt is dropped, falls, and misses the ground over and over. At least until it hits into something else, shoots out into space (unlikely), and/or lowers orbit enough to burn up in the atmosphere.
The cake is fine. I'd watch out for the kool-aid punch they're serving, though.
I don't have the data, but that theory should be easy to test. If Eva's group used to live in North Asia and was then driven into South Asia (and into North America) by outsiders, we should find remains of other "Evas" in North Asia. If we don't, then it is more likely that Eva's group originated in South Asia and managed to cross the Pacific Ocean by some manner.
The Earth *IS* only 6,000 years old. Give or take 4.54 billion years.
I can't find the reference now, but I could have sworn that there was a case in which the court ruled that items placed in laws lose their copyright status. Of course, it could just be wishful thinking on my part.
I agree. The author is criticizing Google for something that anyone can do today with normal web tools.
One of my friends could take a photo of me then, without my knowledge, upload it to their web site/blog/MySpace page/whatever with the caption "This is Jason Levine." Has Web Host/Blog Software Provider/MySpace/whatever just committed a huge privacy violation? No. If a privacy violation happened (and it would depend on the nature of the photo), the friend is the one who committed it. Google's tool doesn't increase the means for privacy violations.
Whenever someone uses the "child predator" argument, my BS detector goes off. And this is coming from the father of two small children. My wife maintains a blog where she posts photos of our kids and information about what they (and we) have been up to. While I've been comfortable using my real name online for quite some time (see my Slashdot user name), my wife isn't as comfortable with it. So I've helped her keep many things anonymous including our and our childrens' names. I'm sure that a determined individual could track her blog back to my real name, but casual users will need to know us by our initials.
If you are that fearful that a predator will use online tools to stalk your child then:
1. Teach your child about Stranger Danger. (We're attempting to instill this into our 5 year old without having him shut down at the mere sight of a stranger. Yes, he did take it that far at first!)
2. Know what your child is doing online and offline at all times.
3. Don't post things online that you wouldn't want any old person seeing. (Doesn't stop others from posting that stuff online, but how many people post things to their MySpace pages then complain about other people knowing about the stuff.)
A predator could stake out the local playground and look for likely targets. This doesn't mean that you abandon all public playgrounds, but that you be smart about it.
A few years back, just before having kids, my wife and I decided to take a trip to Las Vegas. During our trip, we went to The Star Trek Experience. Overall, it was quite fun, but one experience in particular stands out. My wife had to use the restroom. To get there you went through one door. Past that door was a very short hall with three doors: One for the men's room, one for the women's room, and a door leading to the staff area. As my wife opened the hallway door to go in, a staff member dressed as a Ferengi started walking out. Both were taken by surprise, but what impressed me was that the Ferengi stayed in character the entire time. Even when he shrieked in surprise, it was with a standard "Ferengi shriek." Then he said "Hello hu-mon. Female." and walked off.
Jebus the Psgetti Monster and God of Nasal Messes. Just have faith and pray to him. If the mess isn't cleaned up, it just means you're not praying hard enough.
This is one reason why I was gung-ho for Ron Paul even though I disagreed with him as to the extent of the shrinking that the Federal Government needed. I figured that there would be no way he would get his more extreme cuts past Congress so he would wind up trimming the size of the Federal Government, not hacking and slashing it. (Without Ron Paul in the race, I'm an Obama supporter.)
I wonder how this would affect carbon dating. I'm guessing that any deviations from previously estimated ages of materials would be minor, but the Young Earth Creationists are sure to latch onto this as a reason why the Earth is only 6,000 years old and scientists don't know anything.
No, no, no. You don't DRM colors. You trademark them.
(Not to drift too far OT, but....)
This was just the argument I was making to a friend of mine during a discussion of anti-terrorism laws. He was of the opinion that we shouldn't disallow warrantless surveillance just because it "might" be abused "someday" since it would definitely (in his opinion) help us catch terrorists. He thought that doing otherwise was shackling the hands of law enforcement. I countered that, while law enforcement might like to conduct surveillance without a warrant, it was too ripe for abuse. Our Founding Fathers knew what it was like to live under a government that didn't listen to the people and abused its power. That's why our government is designed with checks and balances. Any law/policy that removes the checks and balances from a governmental agency (say, no warrants required) is highly dangerous and likely unconstitutional.
Of course, my friend chose not to see the danger and just assumed that: 1) he and I wouldn't be targeted, 2) if we were we would have recourse, and 3) the government would give up the powers after the fight was won. I pointed out the flaws in these arguments, but either I didn't do a good enough job or his mind was closed to all debate (probably the latter) because he remains convinced that giving the government unlimited power to "stop the terrorists" is a good idea. In fact, he went so far as to say that he wouldn't forgive me if I supported removal of those governmental powers and we got hit with another terrorist attack.
Then again, this friend also thinks that the fact that Obama's middle name is "Hussein" and his first name rhymes with "Osama" is just too coincidental to not mean something. It's really sad that the future of this country may be decided by people who think that being Conservative means unlimited Federal government power and wanting to curtail the Federal government is a sign of dangerous liberalism.
That still leaves out IE6. My company hasn't pushed out the IE7 upgrade yet (one of our third-party web apps doesn't work with IE7 yet), so most of our internal users are running IE6. Meanwhile, about half of our IE-using external website users have moved to IE7. I can't upgrade my PC to IE7 or I won't be able to test our internal pages with IE6, but I can't continue to run IE6 indefinitely since more and more external users are running IE7.
Now if they would only give us some way of running multiple versions of IE side by side. There are still a lot of people using IE6, so I need to test sites against that. But I can't if I upgrade to IE7. And if I upgrade to IE8, I can't test against IE7 or IE6. We need a standalone version of IE6 for web developers to use for website testing. The time limited VM that they provide is a start, but I don't want to boot up an entire VM of Windows just to test one page.
This can only mean one thing. Radiation from space will mutate them until they are 50 feet tall and they rampage through our cities! Either that, or they will gain superpowers and become evil super-virus-villains bent on world conquest.
And just to make things more difficult, the NY law in question isn't even talking about warehouses. It's talking about affiliates. NewEgg is located in California, but they have an affiliate program. I'm an affiliate of theirs and I live in NY. Does that make NewEgg have a physical location in New York state? Of course not. I'm not an employee of NewEgg, I'm just an affiliate. I post a link to NewEgg on my website and get a small kickback for any sales that it generates. The website that I run is hosted by a company in Texas. Does that mean that NewEgg has a "physical presence" in Texas also and should pay Texas sales tax? The whole "affiliate = physical presence" argument is just a money grab. Then again, we shouldn't be surprised. This is the state that also taxes telecommuters on their full income even if they only work inside NY for a short period of time. (See the story of Scott Smallwood: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/20/business/businessspecial2/20tax.html )
Well, some cows spend their time making tools:
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3211/2347642183_714b1ca7b3.jpg?v=0
Thanks for that. I didn't know there were ever any successful hijackings of El Al planes. Still, only one successful hijacking in 60 years is an impressive track record.
The Mythbusters disproved the "hole in the plane causes explosive decompression" myth.
From http://mythbustersresults.com/episode10 :
So you could theoretically have armed people on the plane shooting at terrorists and not causing huge problems if they miss. (Well, except for passengers that get in the way.)
I think the best solution is to lock the pilot's door before boarding. Then the pilots are instructed to not open the door under any circumstances. If terrorists threaten to kill passengers, the pilots are to land the plane and won't be held accountable for any deaths that result. After all, giving into the demands to open the door and turn over control of the plane could mean the death of all on board as well as people on the ground. The pilot's door should also be bullet-proof (in case a weapon is smuggled on board).
El Al does this (in addition to other security measures) and they haven't had a single hijacking even though they're a huge target.
Looking on Lego's website, it actually looks like it would be easy to build. First I'd buy a Large Green Baseplate (10"x10") for $4.99 ( http://shop.lego.com/ByCategory/Product.aspx?p=626&cn=146&d=203 ). Then I would buy 2x2 flat tiles in various colors for $0.08 each and possibly some round 2x2 flat tiles for $0.11 each. (Sorry, no direct link. But you can search for "Flat Tile 2x2" on http://shop.lego.com/Product/Factory/PickABrick/PickABrick.aspx?cn=26 ) Assuming I buy 20 square flat tiles and 10 round flat tiles, I'm looking at $2.70. This brings me to $7.69 plus $4.95 shipping, or $12.64. Add in some more for clips and magnets to attach to the flat tiles as well as glue to bind the clips/magnets to the tiles. It should be under $20 for the whole thing. Now I'm tempted to try it.
When my son was little, his uncle bought him the Sesame Street Atom. It was the atom shaped device that rested on a stand. The child would spin it to hear music, sounds, and the voices of various Sesame Street characters. So far, so good. It was actually kind of cool. But when our son was tucked in his crib and we were in bed, we would hear the Atom starting the music/sound/voice sequence from the other room. Apparently, it would rock with the slightest movement and set off the routine. And THERE WAS NO OFF BUTTON! We finally figured out that removing it from the stand at night stopped the noise. (Thankfully, it wasn't connected to the stand in any fashion.) Now that uncle has a little girl of his own. Revenge shall be ours! (Once we find a suitably annoying toy.)
Am I the only one who saw those Lego heads on that big board and thought "It'd be cool to have a Lego bulletin board in my office"? Put some big Lego sheets on the wall and then have special Lego bricks with clips to hold papers that connect to the wall sheets. Perhaps some Lego bricks with magnets embedded in them so you could stick magnetic items to part of the wall.
And some people I talk to are worse. My father, for example, has completely bought into the right-wing arguments about terrorism and the need for these types of steps. He argued with me during the 2004 elections that we couldn't vote for anyone besides Bush. His reasoning was that switching Presidents mid-fight would send the wrong signals to our enemies. Yes, he actually thought that voting non-Republican was somehow equal to supporting the terrorists. (If that's so, label me a terrorist supporter!) A few months back, he was actually telling me about how Obama is a closet Muslim. I tried to counter that with facts, but it makes no difference. Facts are no match for a mind that is completely closed in on its own opinion (or the opinion that certain influential others tell it to have).
I've got to agree. I'm not the best programmer in the bunch when it comes to local apps. I'm not awful, but I couldn't even come close with the folks who code FireFox, Linux, etc. Still, even I could design/write a simple system that would count votes. Give me some extra time and money (and perhaps a semi-talented staff) and I could reasonably secure the system.
Offhand, since I'm a web programmer, I'm thinking some kind of web based system running off of a VPN with all other Internet access blocked. Have the votes stored in a central database which is routinely backed up and contains an audit trail in case things go funky. Now who wants to give me a few million to build this system for them? ;-)