At this point, I have a feeling the terrorists are just shaking their heads and saying "Come on, guys. At first it was cool how you quaked at everything but now we can't even compete with the idiotic 'terrorist around every corner' attitude you've gotten. When everyone's considered a potential terrorist, where's our job security?"
Is it irony if officials wind up preventing terrorism because the terrorists think we're too easy of a target (as in too scared of our own shadow, not as in not enough security) and don't even try attacking us?
In the teacher's defense, they were only following the role of the TSA officers who confiscate "potentially explosive" liquid and then toss it in a bin with everything else right at the security checkpoint. Way to properly dispose of "potential explosives" and protect people from harm!
So let me get this straight, this kid is being arrested and Trump is leading the polls?
Thus proving that, at some point, Biff Tannen got the sports almanac and we're living in the alternate 2015. Can someone please get the Delorean and set things right?
If he is, then I look forward to the news article proclaiming: "Kid arrested in school for having a possible bomb detonator in class. His cell phone was confiscated and the child has been sent to juvenile detention."
In my senior year of high school, the administrators got the brilliant idea to merge the two high schools in our town. Unfortunately, all the students couldn't fit so they shuffled the 9th graders into a building of their own. A building full of 9th graders without any upper classmen to put them in their place. Even seniors didn't want to go near that place. (I'm not sure when, but they stopped this bad experiment but they since went back to two high schools.)
At this point, you could probably cause widespread terror with post-it notes with the word "bomb" written on them. For under $10, a terrorist wannabe could cause major panic.
So until we've gotten it 100% figured out, I'm fine with somebody saying that it's "just a theory", even if they say so multiple times.
I'll agree so long as "just a theory" isn't followed by "and the species could just as easily have been formed when some Intelligent Designer (I'm not saying god but *wink* *wink*) willed them into existence as they are today." Especially if said statement is uttered in a public school science classroom.
I have no problem with people observing their religion so long as they don't try shoving it in my face - which includes trying to get a public school science class to teach Intelligent Design (aka Creationism wearing a badly made Science Halloween costume).
"Our new Homeopathy Jails will hold many more prisoners now that we've dissolved the walls in a solution of Earth's Atmosphere. Let's see the criminals escape now!"
This post started out as a joke, but I'm afraid it might be getting too close to Insightful for a description of how governments views the citizenry - as prisoners who must obey their (the guards'/politicians') whims.
Recently, we were on a cruise. Since we were going to be in international areas and didn't want to come home to a huge phone bill, we switched our phones to airplane mode (data off). We kept our phones on because they could be used to take photos or play games during the trip. I noticed that our battery life was greatly extended when the phone didn't need to maintain a 4G connection at all times. It led me to wonder if someone could make an app that would turn off the 4G connection when the phone isn't being actively used.
Of course, this might result in data-checking apps (e.g. your e-mail app) not getting notifications that an e-mail has arrived. So perhaps it could turn on the data for 5 minutes every hour to allow background apps to pull data. I wonder just how much battery life an app like this would save.
I wonder how the ankle device would cope with a silly walk. At the very least, the workplace would get more interesting as people don't walk from point A to point B in a normal manner.
just how much scrutiny are the luggage handlers under while they work?
About the exact same amount that the TSA provides in actual security - which is to say effectively zero. There are multiple stories from multiple sources of equipment being checked in luggage and then disappearing during transit when the luggage is checked.
Previously, you could lock your luggage to help prevent this (or at least give visible evidence of tampering), but now the TSA mandates that you use their insecure locks or don't lock your luggage at all. That's like an organization requiring all computers to either use "12345" as the password or not have any password on them at all. So now if you want to bring expensive equipment with you, your best bet is to bring it in carry-on or to ship it (FedEx/UPS).
And great-great-great-great-etc-grandpa died of "an imbalance of the humors" or "struck down by a demon/witch posing as a human" (who the village then hunted down and killed). You wouldn't find cancer in many books centuries ago (as shown in this Google NGram chart).
Is it considered irony when you argue against someone who claims that vaccines cause autism and use a word ("retard") that people with autism find offensive?
My son and I are good examples of this. When I was in school, I had trouble socializing and the social workers in school said I was "shy", "introverted", and "wouldn't feel like he fits in until college." (They were right on the last one.) My son is very much like me. When he had problems we had someone observe him and the diagnosis of Asperger's/High Functioning Autism came back. I have no doubts that - were I a child today - I'd have the Autism diagnosis as well. (I could seek a diagnosis for myself as an adult, but money is tight and I don't honestly think me being diagnosed would help me or my son.)
That's why I'd want automatic 14 year copyright followed by a one-time opt-in (i.e. registration submitted) extension of 14 years. For people like me, a 14 year copyright should suffice. I don't need to hold copyright for photos from 2001. For a big company, they can keep the copyright for BIG_BLOCKBUSTER_MOVIE for 14 additional years but let BIG_FLOP go after 14 years... Or renew them both but give them both up after 28 years. This way, also, you'd be able to see whether FUN_VIDEO_GAME's copyright was renewed after 14 years. If so, you could wait 14 years if the ownership was murky (e.g. bankruptcy). If not, you could use it after the initial 14 year period in the case of orphaned works.
Just got back from a cruise to Florida/Bahamas. One thing that I noted was how much stronger the sun felt from upstate NY. At one point, while looking at the sky, I felt like my eyebrows were being singed. It's one thing to know academically that the sun's rays are stronger the closer you get to the equator. It's quite another thing to feel it for yourself. (I don't think I really want to know how much hotter it would get if I kept going south.)
The problem is that the current method for sharing a photo is:
1) Take Photo 2) Post photo on Instagram/Twitter/Facebook/Flickr/etc.
Sometimes there's an optional 1a step where the photo is passed through an editing program, but beyond that it's pretty instantaneous to post photos after taking them. Submitting a copyright application for each photo taken/posted isn't practical. Even if you batched them and did them at some later time, you'd wind up with your online photos unprotected by copyright until your batch job went through. (An app that automatically submitted a copyright application for every photo you took would be interesting, but I would be leery of requiring everyone to install said app or not get their photos copyrighted.)
The people who would benefit from required registration of every work wouldn't be the people (who can't afford to submit an application for each photo they take) but big companies. The latter can afford to: 1) pay people to browse photo sharing sites for photos to use, 2) pay people to submit copyright applications for any works they do produce, and 3) hire a team of lawyers in case they grab a photo which had a copyright application submitted.
But copyright law as recently amended by media corporations means that you can never spend that money, under any circumstances. Either someone steps up to claim it, or no one ever does, in which case you have to keep waiting.
And even if you perform an exhaustive search for the owner of that $100 bill/orphaned work, come up with nothing, and spend the money/use the work, the real owner can step forward after the fact and demand reparations. Even worse, they might not be the real owner and only a lengthy and expensive lawsuit might prove it one way or the other.
As someone who takes photos and occasionally shares them online, I'd hate to have to register every photo I take lest some big company decide that my picture is the perfect image for their ad campaign and that the lack of a copyright registration means they can just use it for whatever they want.
On the other hand, I don't think my photos should be automatically copyrighted for 95 years after I die as an "incentive" to get me to take more photos.
I'm fine with the automatic registration of copyright, but copyright should expire at around the 14 year mark. There can be a one-time extension or an infinite number of extensions - with ever-increasing registrations fees. This way, my photos would be protected for awhile but not for decades upon decades (because I wouldn't renew the copyright). By the same token, a hit mega-movie could have its copyright renewed but would either automatically become public domain after 28 years (how many works from 1987 are really still profitable?) or would keep getting renewed until it wasn't profitable to renew it anymore.
Or they'll have the drone just spray the entire area (crop-duster style as another poster put it). Target gets hit. Collateral damage? Oh well. So you send fifty people to the hospital. It's not like you killed anyone.
Bonus feature: If there's a protest you don't like going on - even a peaceful one, you can get a lot of the protesters in one sweep without putting yourself anywhere near them. After all, you just know that those protesters were turning violent right at that moment and can file that in your report.
It is easy to prove that nut allergies exist and some can be quite lethal. When my wife was teaching, she had a student who would have a severe allergic reaction if she picked up a pencil that had previously been handled by someone who ate a peanut butter sandwich. We're not talking "break out in hives" reaction either, but the "can't breathe, get an EpiPen or she'll die" kind of reaction. In cases like this, denying children nuts in school is a small price to pay.
So the question is: Can the parents prove - via a medically recognized procedure - that their child is actually allergic to WiFi? If so, not only will they win the right to ban all WiFi in the school, but they'll also upend countless studies showing that WiFi sickness doesn't exist. I wouldn't bet money on the parents being able to do this, though.
As someone who has fought with the public school system to get accommodations for my son (who has an actual medical diagnosis for a real condition), it takes more than the parents saying "Johnny gets sick around WiFi" before the school would be forced to turn off all WiFi. So even if this were a public school, they would have an uphill battle and would need to 1) demonstrate that their child really does react badly to WiFi signals and 2) show that there is a solution that can be reached which wouldn't overly impact the education of other students.
It's one thing if you accommodate a peanut allergy by banning peanut products in the school or give a child extra time on tests due to reading disorders. It's quite another if you say that all kids can't take advantage of educational opportunities because one child claims to be allergic to them (but doesn't have a medical diagnosis of any kind).
Bah, we don't need him to sit in a Faraday cage. I'll simply sell them my patent pending WiFi Sickness Rocks. Each rock absorbs the bad components of WiFi via a process called Eam Nihil Penitus Operari. By simply keeping the rock in his pocket, he can be guaranteed that WiFi signals won't cause him any physical harm. All for the low, low price of $19.95 (plus shipping and handling). Order now and I'll throw in my Vaccine Toxin Be Gone rock which removes anything in vaccines that causes autism simply by having it anywhere near your child when the kid gets his vaccines.
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At this point, I have a feeling the terrorists are just shaking their heads and saying "Come on, guys. At first it was cool how you quaked at everything but now we can't even compete with the idiotic 'terrorist around every corner' attitude you've gotten. When everyone's considered a potential terrorist, where's our job security?"
Is it irony if officials wind up preventing terrorism because the terrorists think we're too easy of a target (as in too scared of our own shadow, not as in not enough security) and don't even try attacking us?
In the teacher's defense, they were only following the role of the TSA officers who confiscate "potentially explosive" liquid and then toss it in a bin with everything else right at the security checkpoint. Way to properly dispose of "potential explosives" and protect people from harm!
Thus proving that, at some point, Biff Tannen got the sports almanac and we're living in the alternate 2015. Can someone please get the Delorean and set things right?
If he is, then I look forward to the news article proclaiming: "Kid arrested in school for having a possible bomb detonator in class. His cell phone was confiscated and the child has been sent to juvenile detention."
In my senior year of high school, the administrators got the brilliant idea to merge the two high schools in our town. Unfortunately, all the students couldn't fit so they shuffled the 9th graders into a building of their own. A building full of 9th graders without any upper classmen to put them in their place. Even seniors didn't want to go near that place. (I'm not sure when, but they stopped this bad experiment but they since went back to two high schools.)
At this point, you could probably cause widespread terror with post-it notes with the word "bomb" written on them. For under $10, a terrorist wannabe could cause major panic.
I'll agree so long as "just a theory" isn't followed by "and the species could just as easily have been formed when some Intelligent Designer (I'm not saying god but *wink* *wink*) willed them into existence as they are today." Especially if said statement is uttered in a public school science classroom.
I have no problem with people observing their religion so long as they don't try shoving it in my face - which includes trying to get a public school science class to teach Intelligent Design (aka Creationism wearing a badly made Science Halloween costume).
"Our new Homeopathy Jails will hold many more prisoners now that we've dissolved the walls in a solution of Earth's Atmosphere. Let's see the criminals escape now!"
This post started out as a joke, but I'm afraid it might be getting too close to Insightful for a description of how governments views the citizenry - as prisoners who must obey their (the guards'/politicians') whims.
Recently, we were on a cruise. Since we were going to be in international areas and didn't want to come home to a huge phone bill, we switched our phones to airplane mode (data off). We kept our phones on because they could be used to take photos or play games during the trip. I noticed that our battery life was greatly extended when the phone didn't need to maintain a 4G connection at all times. It led me to wonder if someone could make an app that would turn off the 4G connection when the phone isn't being actively used.
Of course, this might result in data-checking apps (e.g. your e-mail app) not getting notifications that an e-mail has arrived. So perhaps it could turn on the data for 5 minutes every hour to allow background apps to pull data. I wonder just how much battery life an app like this would save.
I wonder how the ankle device would cope with a silly walk. At the very least, the workplace would get more interesting as people don't walk from point A to point B in a normal manner.
About the exact same amount that the TSA provides in actual security - which is to say effectively zero. There are multiple stories from multiple sources of equipment being checked in luggage and then disappearing during transit when the luggage is checked.
Previously, you could lock your luggage to help prevent this (or at least give visible evidence of tampering), but now the TSA mandates that you use their insecure locks or don't lock your luggage at all. That's like an organization requiring all computers to either use "12345" as the password or not have any password on them at all. So now if you want to bring expensive equipment with you, your best bet is to bring it in carry-on or to ship it (FedEx/UPS).
And great-great-great-great-etc-grandpa died of "an imbalance of the humors" or "struck down by a demon/witch posing as a human" (who the village then hunted down and killed). You wouldn't find cancer in many books centuries ago (as shown in this Google NGram chart).
Is it considered irony when you argue against someone who claims that vaccines cause autism and use a word ("retard") that people with autism find offensive?
My son and I are good examples of this. When I was in school, I had trouble socializing and the social workers in school said I was "shy", "introverted", and "wouldn't feel like he fits in until college." (They were right on the last one.) My son is very much like me. When he had problems we had someone observe him and the diagnosis of Asperger's/High Functioning Autism came back. I have no doubts that - were I a child today - I'd have the Autism diagnosis as well. (I could seek a diagnosis for myself as an adult, but money is tight and I don't honestly think me being diagnosed would help me or my son.)
That's why I'd want automatic 14 year copyright followed by a one-time opt-in (i.e. registration submitted) extension of 14 years. For people like me, a 14 year copyright should suffice. I don't need to hold copyright for photos from 2001. For a big company, they can keep the copyright for BIG_BLOCKBUSTER_MOVIE for 14 additional years but let BIG_FLOP go after 14 years... Or renew them both but give them both up after 28 years. This way, also, you'd be able to see whether FUN_VIDEO_GAME's copyright was renewed after 14 years. If so, you could wait 14 years if the ownership was murky (e.g. bankruptcy). If not, you could use it after the initial 14 year period in the case of orphaned works.
Just got back from a cruise to Florida/Bahamas. One thing that I noted was how much stronger the sun felt from upstate NY. At one point, while looking at the sky, I felt like my eyebrows were being singed. It's one thing to know academically that the sun's rays are stronger the closer you get to the equator. It's quite another thing to feel it for yourself. (I don't think I really want to know how much hotter it would get if I kept going south.)
The problem is that the current method for sharing a photo is:
1) Take Photo
2) Post photo on Instagram/Twitter/Facebook/Flickr/etc.
Sometimes there's an optional 1a step where the photo is passed through an editing program, but beyond that it's pretty instantaneous to post photos after taking them. Submitting a copyright application for each photo taken/posted isn't practical. Even if you batched them and did them at some later time, you'd wind up with your online photos unprotected by copyright until your batch job went through. (An app that automatically submitted a copyright application for every photo you took would be interesting, but I would be leery of requiring everyone to install said app or not get their photos copyrighted.)
The people who would benefit from required registration of every work wouldn't be the people (who can't afford to submit an application for each photo they take) but big companies. The latter can afford to: 1) pay people to browse photo sharing sites for photos to use, 2) pay people to submit copyright applications for any works they do produce, and 3) hire a team of lawyers in case they grab a photo which had a copyright application submitted.
And even if you perform an exhaustive search for the owner of that $100 bill/orphaned work, come up with nothing, and spend the money/use the work, the real owner can step forward after the fact and demand reparations. Even worse, they might not be the real owner and only a lengthy and expensive lawsuit might prove it one way or the other.
As someone who takes photos and occasionally shares them online, I'd hate to have to register every photo I take lest some big company decide that my picture is the perfect image for their ad campaign and that the lack of a copyright registration means they can just use it for whatever they want.
On the other hand, I don't think my photos should be automatically copyrighted for 95 years after I die as an "incentive" to get me to take more photos.
I'm fine with the automatic registration of copyright, but copyright should expire at around the 14 year mark. There can be a one-time extension or an infinite number of extensions - with ever-increasing registrations fees. This way, my photos would be protected for awhile but not for decades upon decades (because I wouldn't renew the copyright). By the same token, a hit mega-movie could have its copyright renewed but would either automatically become public domain after 28 years (how many works from 1987 are really still profitable?) or would keep getting renewed until it wasn't profitable to renew it anymore.
Or they'll have the drone just spray the entire area (crop-duster style as another poster put it). Target gets hit. Collateral damage? Oh well. So you send fifty people to the hospital. It's not like you killed anyone.
Bonus feature: If there's a protest you don't like going on - even a peaceful one, you can get a lot of the protesters in one sweep without putting yourself anywhere near them. After all, you just know that those protesters were turning violent right at that moment and can file that in your report.
On the upside, they did teach a lion to eat tofu.
It's not all unicorns, though. Just the invisible pink ones. You've got to watch out for them.
It is easy to prove that nut allergies exist and some can be quite lethal. When my wife was teaching, she had a student who would have a severe allergic reaction if she picked up a pencil that had previously been handled by someone who ate a peanut butter sandwich. We're not talking "break out in hives" reaction either, but the "can't breathe, get an EpiPen or she'll die" kind of reaction. In cases like this, denying children nuts in school is a small price to pay.
So the question is: Can the parents prove - via a medically recognized procedure - that their child is actually allergic to WiFi? If so, not only will they win the right to ban all WiFi in the school, but they'll also upend countless studies showing that WiFi sickness doesn't exist. I wouldn't bet money on the parents being able to do this, though.
As someone who has fought with the public school system to get accommodations for my son (who has an actual medical diagnosis for a real condition), it takes more than the parents saying "Johnny gets sick around WiFi" before the school would be forced to turn off all WiFi. So even if this were a public school, they would have an uphill battle and would need to 1) demonstrate that their child really does react badly to WiFi signals and 2) show that there is a solution that can be reached which wouldn't overly impact the education of other students.
It's one thing if you accommodate a peanut allergy by banning peanut products in the school or give a child extra time on tests due to reading disorders. It's quite another if you say that all kids can't take advantage of educational opportunities because one child claims to be allergic to them (but doesn't have a medical diagnosis of any kind).
Bah, we don't need him to sit in a Faraday cage. I'll simply sell them my patent pending WiFi Sickness Rocks. Each rock absorbs the bad components of WiFi via a process called Eam Nihil Penitus Operari. By simply keeping the rock in his pocket, he can be guaranteed that WiFi signals won't cause him any physical harm. All for the low, low price of $19.95 (plus shipping and handling). Order now and I'll throw in my Vaccine Toxin Be Gone rock which removes anything in vaccines that causes autism simply by having it anywhere near your child when the kid gets his vaccines.