Video games, chosen carefully and used in moderation, can be less mind-numbing than some children's TV programs. My wife and I swear that Dora's mom must have dropped her on her head when she was a baby. The girl's just DUMB! And don't get my started on Barney or Tele-tubbies. They're banned in our house.
The video games that my son plays are typically geared towards kids and intended to teach certain concepts like math, colors, shapes, etc. The one big exception (and one example I forgot to include in my main post) is Wii Sports Bowling and Golf. My son loves playing Nintendo Wii with me. (With the WiiMote strap firmly in place, of course. I made that mistake once with him and that was it.) He's pretty good at bowling (scored a 121 one time) and even taught himself to aim the ball to pick up spares. Golf, on the other hand, he doesn't quite grasp the concept of. He loves hitting the ball around and doesn't get that you're supposed to get it in the hole in as few strokes as possible. So long as he has fun, though, I'm not going to correct him on that.
That's exactly what I was thinking. Ok, I was thinking of a person carrying around a folder full of papers, but it's the same thing. A police officer can't demand to rifle through your folder full of papers or little black book just because they think something's in there. Well, they can, but you can refuse and there's nothing (legal) they can do about it. If they have a really good reason for rifling through the folder/black book, they can get a search warrant from a judge. The same should be true of an iPhone.
In fact, I think that's already the case. The police investigating that zoo tiger attack had the victims' cars and cell phones and thought they might have evidence as to what happened. However, they couldn't just open the phones up and look in them because that evidence would be inadmissible in court. So they were forced to ask the courts to continue to hold them while they try to get a warrant.
My son's been playing video games since he was 2. (He's 4 now.) When he first started, he didn't quite grasp how to move the mouse to get the pointer to do what he wanted. He quickly picked it up though and became quite the computer whiz. He even figured out how to launch his game from the Start Menu, which is quite impressive since he doesn't even read yet! (That we know of... maybe he's just playing dumb to lull mommy and daddy into a false sense of security.;-) )
While visiting a zoo one day, they had a Fisher Price exhibit and he tried out the SmartCycle. The lady there was amazed that he picked up on all of the controls almost instantly. (He seems to have inherited his daddy's knack for computers.) In December, he got the SmartCycle as a present and loves pedaling, choosing which games to play, and playing all of the games that we've bought him. He doesn't need anyone to show him how something works. He just does it once or twice and figures it out.
Sure, the video games he's playing are educational in nature and not Super Mario Brothers-type games (much less Grand Theft Auto-type games), but I think introducing computers to toddlers is important. Just make sure to balance their activities out.
I was a Netscape user back in the 3.x and 4.x days. I was also a web developer. NS 3.x beat IE 3.x hands down when it came to web development. The 4.x models showed IE pretty much even with Netscape. Then Netscape did something monumentally stupid. They stopped releasing browsers. Sure, they claimed that they were working on something big in the back room, but that didn't help use users and developers. Meanwhile, Microsoft came out with IE 5.x which blew NS 4.x out of the water when it came to development ease and usage. Of course, IE6 was even further ahead of Netscape 4.x. Meanwhile, the back room development was still progressing, or so they said.
Up until this point, IE's dominance was a good thing. It proved that sitting on your laurels won't win you the browser wars. Even if you've got a grand plan, you've got to get regular releases out there or people will just forget about you.
It's just too bad that Microsoft didn't learn this lesson. With their browser safely at 90%+ market share and no real competitors in sight, they stopped development (except for bug fixes, of course). Over time, the wonderful, easy to use browser started showing its age. Alternatives like FireFox started popping up, showing people that a more standards-compliant browser could make development a lot more fun. FireFox started to take off and wonder of wonders, Microsoft decided that maybe they should update cranky old IE6. The IE6 languishing years were the really bad time to be a web developer. Now I'm hoping that IE6 dies off rapidly (though not as much as I kept hoping that Netscape 4.x would die off).
Their last financial report (July '07, they apparently didn't file one for October '07) said that they had $15.79 million in total assets. This isn't taking into account any other debts. That was down $4 million from the previous quarter. Let's suppose that that drop repeated itself the next two quarters (since we're almost out of the current quarter). That means that SCO would have just under $8 million in total assets. So even if Novell took everything SCO had into possession and all other debtors got nothing, Novell wouldn't come close to recouping the money they were owed from Microsoft's $16.6 million Unix license payment. (To say nothing of Sun's $9.3 million license payment or any other payments.)
Another way to look at how much SCO is worth is to look at their market cap. Back in July, SCOX closed at $1.48 per share. Over 21.25 million shares, that's $31.45 million. Today, they're at $0.09 per share for a market cap of $1,912,500. Novell could easily buy up the remaining pieces of SCOX if they wanted to. Any way you slice it, SCO is toast and won't be able to pay Novell back even a fraction of what they owe them.
I could definitely get behind that. Make everything transparent. All votes for/against/abstain/whatever get recorded and made public. All provisions slipped in are tagged with the name of the Senator/Representative who entered it. All holds on votes must be public as well. (See http://porkbusters.org/secrethold.php )
Congress and the President are supposed to be working for *us*. If my boss were to ask what I did on a project and I answered "I can't tell you. It's a secret", I'd be fired. Congress should be forced to report to their bosses (the American People) just what they are doing in office.
I had an Atari 2600 and my father knew someone who could *ahem* acquire *ahem* tons of games for us. The two that stick in my mind were:
1 - Star Raiders. A 3D space simulator back in the days of blocky blobs representing people. You would plan your route on a map, guide your spaceship through hyperspace, fight enemy warships, and defend and refuel at space stations (sometimes blowing them up for fun;-) ). At the end you got a ranking. I don't think I ever ranked above "Garbage Collector" (or something like that), but it was always quite fun.
2 - Abuse. This was a text based "game" in which you typed insulting phrases into the computer and it responded with its own insults. I quickly found out that typing nice things really got the computer upset. Oh, and typing in curse words while my dad was anywhere in sight range of the computer was a no-no.
After the 2600, I remember getting the original NES system and looking at the Super Mario Brothers graphics in amazement. Still, the 2600 holds a special place in my heart. (I still have it too, though I haven't hooked it up in over a decade.)
I've already posted what I would do, but your #4 reminded me of something else:
I'd make it illegal to attach unrelated riders to bills. No more trying to sneak in Patriot Act Part 2 in an otherwise must-pass spending bill. No more sneaking in funds to build a bridge in a completely unrelated bill.
I would also make two changes to how Congress votes on bills. First, I would require all bills to sit for at least 48 hours before being voted on. During that time, Congressfolk would have to (*gasp!*) read the bills they were voting on. I would make provisions for emergency legislation, but it would be severely limited in scope. The other change I would make is that how politicians vote on bills would be a matter of public record. No more "voice votes" where you don't know who voted for and against a particularly controversial piece of legislation. If a politician wants to vote for or against something, let it be recorded where people can see it come next election season.
Assuming that I had the political clout to do whatever I wanted, one of the first things that I would do would be to push through major copyright reform. Specifically, the length of a copyright term would be reduced to 14 years with one optional 14 year extension. I wouldn't be completely cold-hearted to those folks whose large stores of Intellectual Property were suddenly Public Domain, though. I would phase in the new copyright terms for existing works. Starting with 1923, I would have 10 years of works fall into the public domain every year. So, assuming that we begin in 2009 - when the next President takes office - copyrighted materials from 1923-1932 would fall into public domain in 2010. 2011 would see works from 1933-1942 enter public domain and so forth until we were all caught up. I would also assume that any works created 10 years or more ago were renewed.
The other major change I would make is also copyright related. I would split the fines for copyright infringement into two categories. The first would be "For Profit Infringement." These would be the places that buy one CD, run off a thousand copies, and sell them on the streets for a buck each. The fines for this group would be the same as are currently set ($750-$150,000 per infringement). The other category would be "Not For Profit/Home Infringement." This would be for Ma Doe whose 14 year old daughter installed Kazaa and wound up on the wrong end of a RIAA lawsuit. This class of infringement would only be liable for 10x fair market value of the items infringed. For example, suppose the RIAA investigators found 300 songs shared on Ma Doe's system. Fair market value per song is $0.99. So each infringement would be $9.90 and the total fine would be $2,970. Still high, yes, but not so high that an unintended civil offense leads to Ma Doe's bankruptcy. The RIAA would still be able to engage in their lawsuits, but demanding "settle or face a fine of about $3,000" doesn't have the same terrifying ring as "settle of face a fine of 45 MILLION DOLLARS!"
Of course, there's more I would do, but those are the two that spring to mind.
Oh yeah. Also I'd push through a Slashdot Poster Tax Credit.
Identity Theft can lead to bad credit (and years wasted trying to restore your credit) which can mean loss of a house. It can even lead to criminal charges mistakenly being attributed to you. The thieves really are stealing your identity to commit their fraudulent and illegal activities. And even though you still have your identity for your own use, it becomes sullied by the actions of the thieves. (Just in case someone wants to claim that the "copying music online isn't stealing because they still have the music" argument applies to identity theft.)
Make it such that pilots: 1) are under orders not to open the door no matter who dies, 2) won't be held liable for following those orders, and 3) can't override the "We've been hijacked" button.
This way a hijacker that threatens to kill passengers can do so, but it would be futile. Sure there would be an outrage if the plane landed with 300 corpses, but then again if the hijacker took over and crashed the plane into an important building, there would be much worse damage. Once the plane is in the air, the key is to keep the hijacker from gaining any power over the plane.
Mythbusters recently tested the myth that a person with no prior flight experience could be talked into landing a plane by themselves. It was tense (even though they were using a highly realistic simulator), but they finally proved that the myth was plausible (even though the situation has never come up in real life). One interesting point with this, though, was that their expert told them that all modern planes have such sophisticated computers that they can land themselves without any human help.
Assuming this is true (or so nearly true that a little R&D could make it true very soon), the best solution would be to strongly lock the pilot's cabin prior to boarding. Then, if a hijacker tried to take over the plane, the pilot could just press a "We've been hijacked" button and the plane would 1) send out an automated signal informing control towers of this fact, 2) divert course for the nearest airport, and 3) land the plane with no further assistance from the pilot.
This way, even if the hijackers managed to force their way into the cabin, they would be powerless to disable the "We've been hijacked" controls and the plane would land anyway.
This doesn't take into account a plane bomber, but it eliminates the possibility of another 9-11.
But what if you built your house in a public park, bribed a local official (or contacted an incompetent official) to write up a deed, and tried to claim that it (and the fenced in yard) was yours. If someone called you on it and pointed out the corruption/incompetence involved, then the government should indeed come and take away "your" house as it was never really yours to begin with.
The Birthday Song problem would be taken care of if copyright lengths were scaled back. In the meantime, we should come up with a new birthday song, make it public domain, and work to make it popular. It should be as close as possible to the old one. Luckily, there's a public domain song called Good Morning To All which goes as follows:
Good morning to you,
Good morning to you,
Good morning, dear children,
Good morning to all.
Apparently, Good Morning To All was at one point changed into Happy Birthday To You and the added beat in the song (Good=>Hap-py) made it worthy of being copyrighted on it's own. Until 2030 no less. For a song copyrighted in 1935. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Happy_Birthday_to_You#.22Good_Morning_to_All.22 for more information.
My plan would be to add another beat which will either make our song completely different (copyright-wise) from Happy Birthday or will prove that Happy Birthday is just an uncopyrightable variant of Good Morning and thus in Public Domain. We win either way.
So here's the new birthday Song:
Birthday Happiness to you,
Birthday Happiness to you,
Birthday Happiness dear ________,
Birthday Happiness to you.
I hereby release this song to the Public Domain so feel free to sing it in public and not need to pay royalties to anyone. Can anyone else think of any other/better variants?
Last year, while visiting my brother-in-law, we went into Canada. On the way back into the US, the official asked us the usual questions. "Where are you going?" Back home from visiting Canada. "Where are you from?" Albany and Buffalo. "Which one of you wasn't born in the US?"
At this last question, we skipped a beat and all thought HUH? at the same time. This was completely out of the blue. Nothing we had done/said earlier would have given any indication that any of us were from anywhere other than the United States. In fact, we were all born and raised in the US. So my wife (who was driving and thus talking to the official), haltingly said "Uh... none of us. We're all from the US." Then we were allowed to drive on. After leaving, we joked about responses that we definitely wouldn't have said to the official. Still, at the time it did provoke a nervous reaction from us, not because we were doing anything wrong, but because it could have led to us being singled out for closer inspection (with all the time and hassle that that involves).
Now take a situation like that and add a flight that you might miss, terrorism charges that might get stuck on you, and maybe even a fear that you might be mistakenly be sent for a little "vacation" in a certain Cuban bay and the question might be nerve-wracking to even the innocent. And once their nervousness is detected, what's to stop the TSA official from "sensing" terrorism and singling the person out?
The article said:
"In the SPOT program, we have a conversation with (passengers) and we ask them about their trip," said Maccario from his office in Boston. "When someone lies or tries to be deceptive,... there are behavior cues that show it.... A brief flash of fear."
"It's almost irrelevant what your answers are," Maccario said. "It's more relevant how you respond. Vague, evasive responses -- fear shows itself. When you do this long enough, you see it right away."
If a uniformed officer/TSA official stopped me to ask me how my trip was, I think I'd have a brief flash of fear. And if a plainclothes person did the same, I'd probably be vague/evasive (if I even answered at all) possibly even fearful. (Who's this person and why are they stopping me?)
The trial program stopped 70,000 people for secondary screening and only wound up with 600-700 people arrested (none for terrorism apparently). I don't think a 1% detection rate is proof that the program works. You could probably get similar results by stopping 70,000 random people for secondary screening. In fact, I wonder if they did that. Hook up the gate to a random number generator. Stop people on a completely random basis for secondary screening. Then see if the "Facial Profiling" method is any better than Random Profiling.
WiiFit.org used to have 1/1/2008 listed as the launch date. After I posted, I checked the WiiFit.org site and they had changed the release date to "Q1 2008." Hopefully, they will announce the release sometime soon.
I never used the service myself, but apparently, the movies cost $20 each. For that price you could back up to DVD three times, but not to a format that played in a DVD player. Also, you didn't get the extras that typically come on a DVD. So you paid more money, for less content, that could be used in less places. And they wonder why it wasn't successful?
$0.10 * 21.48 million = $2.148 million. Who has an extra $2.2 million lying around to buy all of the shares of SCO?;-) (Putting aside all questions as to why someone would *want* to.)
Interestingly, the market cap on SCO is being reported by Yahoo Finance as 1.80M. This seems to indicate to me that the stock might drop down to 8 cents per share.
Besides which, these types of scams feed upon pure numbers. You might educate 95% of the populace enough for them not to fall for scams, but the scammers will still feed quite well on the remaining 5%. It's a bit like spam. It costs nearly nothing to send out a million spam/scam attempts, so virtually any money that comes in is profit. Five percent of a million is still 50,000 folks waiting to lose a few thousand bucks each. And 50,000 * a few thousand each = lots of cash.... especially in a place like Romania.
Slashdot Mirror
Video games, chosen carefully and used in moderation, can be less mind-numbing than some children's TV programs. My wife and I swear that Dora's mom must have dropped her on her head when she was a baby. The girl's just DUMB! And don't get my started on Barney or Tele-tubbies. They're banned in our house.
The video games that my son plays are typically geared towards kids and intended to teach certain concepts like math, colors, shapes, etc. The one big exception (and one example I forgot to include in my main post) is Wii Sports Bowling and Golf. My son loves playing Nintendo Wii with me. (With the WiiMote strap firmly in place, of course. I made that mistake once with him and that was it.) He's pretty good at bowling (scored a 121 one time) and even taught himself to aim the ball to pick up spares. Golf, on the other hand, he doesn't quite grasp the concept of. He loves hitting the ball around and doesn't get that you're supposed to get it in the hole in as few strokes as possible. So long as he has fun, though, I'm not going to correct him on that.
That's exactly what I was thinking. Ok, I was thinking of a person carrying around a folder full of papers, but it's the same thing. A police officer can't demand to rifle through your folder full of papers or little black book just because they think something's in there. Well, they can, but you can refuse and there's nothing (legal) they can do about it. If they have a really good reason for rifling through the folder/black book, they can get a search warrant from a judge. The same should be true of an iPhone.
In fact, I think that's already the case. The police investigating that zoo tiger attack had the victims' cars and cell phones and thought they might have evidence as to what happened. However, they couldn't just open the phones up and look in them because that evidence would be inadmissible in court. So they were forced to ask the courts to continue to hold them while they try to get a warrant.
My son's been playing video games since he was 2. (He's 4 now.) When he first started, he didn't quite grasp how to move the mouse to get the pointer to do what he wanted. He quickly picked it up though and became quite the computer whiz. He even figured out how to launch his game from the Start Menu, which is quite impressive since he doesn't even read yet! (That we know of... maybe he's just playing dumb to lull mommy and daddy into a false sense of security. ;-) )
While visiting a zoo one day, they had a Fisher Price exhibit and he tried out the SmartCycle. The lady there was amazed that he picked up on all of the controls almost instantly. (He seems to have inherited his daddy's knack for computers.) In December, he got the SmartCycle as a present and loves pedaling, choosing which games to play, and playing all of the games that we've bought him. He doesn't need anyone to show him how something works. He just does it once or twice and figures it out.
Sure, the video games he's playing are educational in nature and not Super Mario Brothers-type games (much less Grand Theft Auto-type games), but I think introducing computers to toddlers is important. Just make sure to balance their activities out.
I was a Netscape user back in the 3.x and 4.x days. I was also a web developer. NS 3.x beat IE 3.x hands down when it came to web development. The 4.x models showed IE pretty much even with Netscape. Then Netscape did something monumentally stupid. They stopped releasing browsers. Sure, they claimed that they were working on something big in the back room, but that didn't help use users and developers. Meanwhile, Microsoft came out with IE 5.x which blew NS 4.x out of the water when it came to development ease and usage. Of course, IE6 was even further ahead of Netscape 4.x. Meanwhile, the back room development was still progressing, or so they said.
Up until this point, IE's dominance was a good thing. It proved that sitting on your laurels won't win you the browser wars. Even if you've got a grand plan, you've got to get regular releases out there or people will just forget about you.
It's just too bad that Microsoft didn't learn this lesson. With their browser safely at 90%+ market share and no real competitors in sight, they stopped development (except for bug fixes, of course). Over time, the wonderful, easy to use browser started showing its age. Alternatives like FireFox started popping up, showing people that a more standards-compliant browser could make development a lot more fun. FireFox started to take off and wonder of wonders, Microsoft decided that maybe they should update cranky old IE6. The IE6 languishing years were the really bad time to be a web developer. Now I'm hoping that IE6 dies off rapidly (though not as much as I kept hoping that Netscape 4.x would die off).
Step 1: Create something.
Step 2: Sue AT&T when it's inevitably pirated.
Step 3: Profit!
I don't know. I'm too busy dodging those stupid flying pigs. Ack! Another one!
Interesting information. Thanks.
;-)
One question though. Is it even possible for the directors to dilute the value of SCO's stock any more?
Their last financial report (July '07, they apparently didn't file one for October '07) said that they had $15.79 million in total assets. This isn't taking into account any other debts. That was down $4 million from the previous quarter. Let's suppose that that drop repeated itself the next two quarters (since we're almost out of the current quarter). That means that SCO would have just under $8 million in total assets. So even if Novell took everything SCO had into possession and all other debtors got nothing, Novell wouldn't come close to recouping the money they were owed from Microsoft's $16.6 million Unix license payment. (To say nothing of Sun's $9.3 million license payment or any other payments.)
Another way to look at how much SCO is worth is to look at their market cap. Back in July, SCOX closed at $1.48 per share. Over 21.25 million shares, that's $31.45 million. Today, they're at $0.09 per share for a market cap of $1,912,500. Novell could easily buy up the remaining pieces of SCOX if they wanted to. Any way you slice it, SCO is toast and won't be able to pay Novell back even a fraction of what they owe them.
I could definitely get behind that. Make everything transparent. All votes for/against/abstain/whatever get recorded and made public. All provisions slipped in are tagged with the name of the Senator/Representative who entered it. All holds on votes must be public as well. (See http://porkbusters.org/secrethold.php )
Congress and the President are supposed to be working for *us*. If my boss were to ask what I did on a project and I answered "I can't tell you. It's a secret", I'd be fired. Congress should be forced to report to their bosses (the American People) just what they are doing in office.
I had an Atari 2600 and my father knew someone who could *ahem* acquire *ahem* tons of games for us. The two that stick in my mind were:
;-) ). At the end you got a ranking. I don't think I ever ranked above "Garbage Collector" (or something like that), but it was always quite fun.
1 - Star Raiders. A 3D space simulator back in the days of blocky blobs representing people. You would plan your route on a map, guide your spaceship through hyperspace, fight enemy warships, and defend and refuel at space stations (sometimes blowing them up for fun
2 - Abuse. This was a text based "game" in which you typed insulting phrases into the computer and it responded with its own insults. I quickly found out that typing nice things really got the computer upset. Oh, and typing in curse words while my dad was anywhere in sight range of the computer was a no-no.
After the 2600, I remember getting the original NES system and looking at the Super Mario Brothers graphics in amazement. Still, the 2600 holds a special place in my heart. (I still have it too, though I haven't hooked it up in over a decade.)
I've already posted what I would do, but your #4 reminded me of something else:
I'd make it illegal to attach unrelated riders to bills. No more trying to sneak in Patriot Act Part 2 in an otherwise must-pass spending bill. No more sneaking in funds to build a bridge in a completely unrelated bill.
I would also make two changes to how Congress votes on bills. First, I would require all bills to sit for at least 48 hours before being voted on. During that time, Congressfolk would have to (*gasp!*) read the bills they were voting on. I would make provisions for emergency legislation, but it would be severely limited in scope. The other change I would make is that how politicians vote on bills would be a matter of public record. No more "voice votes" where you don't know who voted for and against a particularly controversial piece of legislation. If a politician wants to vote for or against something, let it be recorded where people can see it come next election season.
Assuming that I had the political clout to do whatever I wanted, one of the first things that I would do would be to push through major copyright reform. Specifically, the length of a copyright term would be reduced to 14 years with one optional 14 year extension. I wouldn't be completely cold-hearted to those folks whose large stores of Intellectual Property were suddenly Public Domain, though. I would phase in the new copyright terms for existing works. Starting with 1923, I would have 10 years of works fall into the public domain every year. So, assuming that we begin in 2009 - when the next President takes office - copyrighted materials from 1923-1932 would fall into public domain in 2010. 2011 would see works from 1933-1942 enter public domain and so forth until we were all caught up. I would also assume that any works created 10 years or more ago were renewed.
;-)
The other major change I would make is also copyright related. I would split the fines for copyright infringement into two categories. The first would be "For Profit Infringement." These would be the places that buy one CD, run off a thousand copies, and sell them on the streets for a buck each. The fines for this group would be the same as are currently set ($750-$150,000 per infringement). The other category would be "Not For Profit/Home Infringement." This would be for Ma Doe whose 14 year old daughter installed Kazaa and wound up on the wrong end of a RIAA lawsuit. This class of infringement would only be liable for 10x fair market value of the items infringed. For example, suppose the RIAA investigators found 300 songs shared on Ma Doe's system. Fair market value per song is $0.99. So each infringement would be $9.90 and the total fine would be $2,970. Still high, yes, but not so high that an unintended civil offense leads to Ma Doe's bankruptcy. The RIAA would still be able to engage in their lawsuits, but demanding "settle or face a fine of about $3,000" doesn't have the same terrifying ring as "settle of face a fine of 45 MILLION DOLLARS!"
Of course, there's more I would do, but those are the two that spring to mind.
Oh yeah. Also I'd push through a Slashdot Poster Tax Credit.
Vote Levine 2009!
Identity Theft can lead to bad credit (and years wasted trying to restore your credit) which can mean loss of a house. It can even lead to criminal charges mistakenly being attributed to you. The thieves really are stealing your identity to commit their fraudulent and illegal activities. And even though you still have your identity for your own use, it becomes sullied by the actions of the thieves. (Just in case someone wants to claim that the "copying music online isn't stealing because they still have the music" argument applies to identity theft.)
Make it such that pilots: 1) are under orders not to open the door no matter who dies, 2) won't be held liable for following those orders, and 3) can't override the "We've been hijacked" button.
This way a hijacker that threatens to kill passengers can do so, but it would be futile. Sure there would be an outrage if the plane landed with 300 corpses, but then again if the hijacker took over and crashed the plane into an important building, there would be much worse damage. Once the plane is in the air, the key is to keep the hijacker from gaining any power over the plane.
Mythbusters recently tested the myth that a person with no prior flight experience could be talked into landing a plane by themselves. It was tense (even though they were using a highly realistic simulator), but they finally proved that the myth was plausible (even though the situation has never come up in real life). One interesting point with this, though, was that their expert told them that all modern planes have such sophisticated computers that they can land themselves without any human help.
Assuming this is true (or so nearly true that a little R&D could make it true very soon), the best solution would be to strongly lock the pilot's cabin prior to boarding. Then, if a hijacker tried to take over the plane, the pilot could just press a "We've been hijacked" button and the plane would 1) send out an automated signal informing control towers of this fact, 2) divert course for the nearest airport, and 3) land the plane with no further assistance from the pilot.
This way, even if the hijackers managed to force their way into the cabin, they would be powerless to disable the "We've been hijacked" controls and the plane would land anyway.
This doesn't take into account a plane bomber, but it eliminates the possibility of another 9-11.
He would have been much better off just planting an Annoy-o-Tron in the server room somewhere before leaving.
Yes, but these 0's and 1's are on a shiny plastic disk. Never underestimate the power of shiny objects.
But what if you built your house in a public park, bribed a local official (or contacted an incompetent official) to write up a deed, and tried to claim that it (and the fenced in yard) was yours. If someone called you on it and pointed out the corruption/incompetence involved, then the government should indeed come and take away "your" house as it was never really yours to begin with.
The Birthday Song problem would be taken care of if copyright lengths were scaled back. In the meantime, we should come up with a new birthday song, make it public domain, and work to make it popular. It should be as close as possible to the old one. Luckily, there's a public domain song called Good Morning To All which goes as follows:
Good morning to you,
Good morning to you,
Good morning, dear children,
Good morning to all.
Apparently, Good Morning To All was at one point changed into Happy Birthday To You and the added beat in the song (Good=>Hap-py) made it worthy of being copyrighted on it's own. Until 2030 no less. For a song copyrighted in 1935. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Happy_Birthday_to_You#.22Good_Morning_to_All.22 for more information.
My plan would be to add another beat which will either make our song completely different (copyright-wise) from Happy Birthday or will prove that Happy Birthday is just an uncopyrightable variant of Good Morning and thus in Public Domain. We win either way.
So here's the new birthday Song:
Birthday Happiness to you,
Birthday Happiness to you,
Birthday Happiness dear ________,
Birthday Happiness to you.
I hereby release this song to the Public Domain so feel free to sing it in public and not need to pay royalties to anyone. Can anyone else think of any other/better variants?
At this last question, we skipped a beat and all thought HUH? at the same time. This was completely out of the blue. Nothing we had done/said earlier would have given any indication that any of us were from anywhere other than the United States. In fact, we were all born and raised in the US. So my wife (who was driving and thus talking to the official), haltingly said "Uh... none of us. We're all from the US." Then we were allowed to drive on. After leaving, we joked about responses that we definitely wouldn't have said to the official. Still, at the time it did provoke a nervous reaction from us, not because we were doing anything wrong, but because it could have led to us being singled out for closer inspection (with all the time and hassle that that involves).
Now take a situation like that and add a flight that you might miss, terrorism charges that might get stuck on you, and maybe even a fear that you might be mistakenly be sent for a little "vacation" in a certain Cuban bay and the question might be nerve-wracking to even the innocent. And once their nervousness is detected, what's to stop the TSA official from "sensing" terrorism and singling the person out?
The article said:
If a uniformed officer/TSA official stopped me to ask me how my trip was, I think I'd have a brief flash of fear. And if a plainclothes person did the same, I'd probably be vague/evasive (if I even answered at all) possibly even fearful. (Who's this person and why are they stopping me?)
The trial program stopped 70,000 people for secondary screening and only wound up with 600-700 people arrested (none for terrorism apparently). I don't think a 1% detection rate is proof that the program works. You could probably get similar results by stopping 70,000 random people for secondary screening. In fact, I wonder if they did that. Hook up the gate to a random number generator. Stop people on a completely random basis for secondary screening. Then see if the "Facial Profiling" method is any better than Random Profiling.
WiiFit.org used to have 1/1/2008 listed as the launch date. After I posted, I checked the WiiFit.org site and they had changed the release date to "Q1 2008." Hopefully, they will announce the release sometime soon.
I never used the service myself, but apparently, the movies cost $20 each. For that price you could back up to DVD three times, but not to a format that played in a DVD player. Also, you didn't get the extras that typically come on a DVD. So you paid more money, for less content, that could be used in less places. And they wonder why it wasn't successful?
"Domain Tasering"?
;-)
Maybe that's a good idea. Taser these guys right in their... um... "domains."
According to Google Finance, there are 21.48 million shares of SCO stock ( http://finance.google.com/finance?client=ob&q=SCOX ).
;-) (Putting aside all questions as to why someone would *want* to.)
;-)
As I post this, SCOXQ.PK is selling for 10 cents per share ( http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=SCOXQ.PK ).
$0.10 * 21.48 million = $2.148 million. Who has an extra $2.2 million lying around to buy all of the shares of SCO?
Interestingly, the market cap on SCO is being reported by Yahoo Finance as 1.80M. This seems to indicate to me that the stock might drop down to 8 cents per share.
Also interesting, apparently last year Darl acquired 100,000 copies of SCOX ( http://google.brand.edgar-online.com/fetchFilingFrameset.aspx?FilingID=4771077&Type=HTML ) at $2.30 per share. Assuming he still has them (I didn't see any sale documents), they've gone from being worth $230,000 to being worth $10,000. Way to grow that fortune, Darl!
Besides which, these types of scams feed upon pure numbers. You might educate 95% of the populace enough for them not to fall for scams, but the scammers will still feed quite well on the remaining 5%. It's a bit like spam. It costs nearly nothing to send out a million spam/scam attempts, so virtually any money that comes in is profit. Five percent of a million is still 50,000 folks waiting to lose a few thousand bucks each. And 50,000 * a few thousand each = lots of cash.... especially in a place like Romania.