Well, apparently my sarcasm was just lost... sorry. To restate...
I also can't see how a state run mental institution would cost much more than a state run prison*. Surely diagnosis, cure, and rehabilitation makes more sense than inprisonment after a terrible crime has been committed.
Well, it actually is a lot more expensive, mostly due to staff issues - the number of guards, orderlies, and doctor per patient is higher (and the pay per capita greater) than the number of CO's. But it's not better... Because it's expensive, and people don't want to pay for it (or politicians convince people they don't want to pay for it), the marginal patients get let out, where they end up causing trouble one way or another...
And, well, I think it's kind of obvious that somebody who's seriously lost their mind, and has access to weapons, will figure out something they can do however you look at it. (Although a movie/book/whatever may end up giving them ideas of more creative ways to do evil...)
Now, there are some games are long enough where replay value really doesn't make a difference (Chrono Chross?) because it is physically impossible to play them through more than twice in your lifetime
The trick is, don't bother sleeping for a couple or three weeks, and spend that 50 hours or so a week playing it. Then you can easily finish it three or four times between the Super Bowl and the start of MLB...
Well, come on... we can't remove the weapons from that, that'd be violating the second ammendment. And state-run mental institutions are far, far too expensive (how many of them have been closed down in the last decade or two?). So we've got to take all their good ideas away from them... obviously the crazy people won't figure out how to use the guns/firebombs/whatever without some kind of example... right?
It'd be a whole lot less work to just take a randomly picked section of out another book (or a few personal letters written to your mum, or a couple of recipes for wheat bread) and then just apply a simple hash (first 'a' become upside-down T, second 'a' becomes U with a spike in it, third 'a'...) to it. No need to go to all of the creative effort of making a whole language...
Well, according to the Dec. 1999 (if memory serves me correctly) edition of popular science, we'll probably be able to pull that off in about 2030, maybe 2040. (It was the edition with all the 'super civil engineering' projects - trans-pacific railroad, space elevator, trans-bering bridge, and a bunch of other ridiculous uses of concrete.)
In those places, a simple visual inspection will be made of the card - so you could use a fake card safe in the knowledge that the biometrics will never be checked.
Hmm... I really, really want to disagree with you... but considering how rarely anyone actually checks my credit card signature against the one I put on the paper, I'll have to concede that if the biometric ID system spreads much beyond the airport/border/port area, we are pretty much fucked.
I've been a little confused about this one--exactly *which* rights has the Attorney General taken from you?
Okay, to be more accurate, it was Congress that decided some of those rights weren't important anymore, in the weeks following 9/11. But Ashcroft was invovled in a lot of the pressure put upon the House and the Senate to pass the USA PATRIOT act as quickly as possible, with little debate or ammendment. USA PATRIOT act
The constitutionality of some sections of the USA PATRIOT act has yet to be challenged, probably because most of those its new (or expanded) powers have been used against are either not citizens, but resident aliens; or are unaware of the survelliance. For instance, a "multi-point roving wiretap" warrant can be issued against a person, allowing law enforcement agents to tap computers, phone lines, or cell phone lines.
Upon the suspicion that an intelligence target might use such a facility, the FBI can now monitor all communications transmitted at the facility.
In other words, if a "intelligence target" lives a quarter of a mile from your home, the FBI could monitor any activity at any public phone, cybercafe or library with an internet connection within a "reasonable distance."
And that's just one section of this act.
(And, yes, the caps in the title are intentional. USA PATRIOT is an acronymn. And probably the single stupidiest, most "you're obviously a commie, you voted against being a PATRIOT" name ever. And the sad thing is, it worked. In all, one senator, and about a dozen Reps. voted against it.)
But nobody can ever perfectly "steal" any of your biometrics. Sure, they can make gloves that contain fingerprint whorls good enough to fool the scanners of 2005... but the scanners made in 2006 might also feature a chemical sniffer that determines if its real skin or latex.
And maybe they'll have contact lens in 2007 that will fake out a retinal scan... but the scanners made in 2009 will penetrate at different angles, showing up the lens with no problem.
And the problem with a data hack is the location and the timing - these machines are going to be installed at security checkpoints with (at least in the U.S.) armed guards in airports, train stations, and major ports - and I'm sure they're going to ask some questions if you start pulling panels off of their thirty thousand dollar biometric scanner. And as far as getting into the (I'll hope extremely) secure database with the 'master copy' of all the biometric data... well, if you can get into that, I don't think you're going to be worrying about stealing my identity.:)
If Tom Bombadil was to make an appearance at all, I would suspect a composite character of Bombadil and Beregond. He would of course still turn into the bear. You mean Bombadil and Beorn, right? (Beregond was the human kid.)
Well, I'd have to assume it was the part where the remains of the Fellowship, along with the elves of Imadril, journeyed North after Aragon & Arwen's wedding, and ran into Saruman and Grima after Treebeard let them leave Orthanc... And they'll probably throw Grima's murder of Saruman in there just to close it all up.
One of the more eerie sights I've seen, for the city that never sleeps
We said it never sleeps, not that it never passes out after the fireworks display and a case of Stroh's. There's legally too drunk to drive, and then there's can't-reach-the-car too drunk to drive.
Unless you are the ferret that the world will turn into of course. But then you might get lonely.
You obviously know little about ferrets if you think it only might get lonely if forced to spend thirty seconds (or, dear god! a whole minute!) alone....
That depends on the message size - with a sufficiently large message, with any portion of it being known by the interceptor, you can eventually reverse engineer the encryption method used.
Regardless, a "correctly used" one time pad is pretty much useless. You'd need to have an entire library of them in order to have any kind of two-way communication. And that's a big hole in and of itself - if your library is a digital object, anyone who can gain access to it has your 'unbreakable' code. More importantly, you still have to get the one-time pad to your compadre in the first place - and who's to stop someone intercepting it there, unless you hand it to them? (In which case, why aren't you just telling them face to face?)
I think this is good as it is a step out of the 'Cradle' and probably requires nearly the same energy as a trip to the moon (TLI or whatever).
However the advantage of the moon is that you can burrow in and they might be water at the poles.
While the moon only costs a little bit more to get to, it costs a lot more to leave. That's the whole point of his arguement. An interplanetary spacecraft assembled at L1 wouldn't have to worry about escape velocity - it's already pretty close to it. And if there is any ice, it's a lot more sparse than previously suggesteed - Doubts Resurface about Lunar Ice
Or just read the introduction he wrote for the third (I think) & subsequent (It's still in the version I bought three years ago) edition of the books. He states himself that while the events happening had an unconscious effect on his writing, he never intended any such heavy and crass symbolism. (For it to be like the war, Aragorn would have seized the ring, and made Sauron his slave.)
Anyways, I think leaving out the Scouring is even more of a disappointment than leaving out Tom Bombadil. But that's just me.
I dunno... losing the Scouring is bad, but with no Bombadil... well, that pretty much set the upper limit on how much I was willing to like this series. It's a good story, don't get me wrong, it's just not the books...
It's the scouring of the shire, not the razing of it. It's not completely destroyed - really, only a few hobbits are actually killed - just messed up for a time while they're gone. And it doesn't change the "Good prevails over Evil" syndrome at all - by end of the story in the appendices, everything's better than it was before, Sam's the mayor, Merry the master of Buckland, and Pippin the head Took. (And Frodo gets to ride off into the sunset with Gandalf, Elrond, and the near-last of the elves.)
Slashdot Mirror
I also can't see how a state run mental institution would cost much more than a state run prison*. Surely diagnosis, cure, and rehabilitation makes more sense than inprisonment after a terrible crime has been committed.
Well, it actually is a lot more expensive, mostly due to staff issues - the number of guards, orderlies, and doctor per patient is higher (and the pay per capita greater) than the number of CO's. But it's not better... Because it's expensive, and people don't want to pay for it (or politicians convince people they don't want to pay for it), the marginal patients get let out, where they end up causing trouble one way or another...
And, well, I think it's kind of obvious that somebody who's seriously lost their mind, and has access to weapons, will figure out something they can do however you look at it. (Although a movie/book/whatever may end up giving them ideas of more creative ways to do evil...)
The trick is, don't bother sleeping for a couple or three weeks, and spend that 50 hours or so a week playing it. Then you can easily finish it three or four times between the Super Bowl and the start of MLB...
Well, come on... we can't remove the weapons from that, that'd be violating the second ammendment. And state-run mental institutions are far, far too expensive (how many of them have been closed down in the last decade or two?). So we've got to take all their good ideas away from them... obviously the crazy people won't figure out how to use the guns/firebombs/whatever without some kind of example... right?
It'd be a whole lot less work to just take a randomly picked section of out another book (or a few personal letters written to your mum, or a couple of recipes for wheat bread) and then just apply a simple hash (first 'a' become upside-down T, second 'a' becomes U with a spike in it, third 'a'...) to it. No need to go to all of the creative effort of making a whole language...
As far as price... well, they're cheaper than a Tumi, at least.
Well, according to the Dec. 1999 (if memory serves me correctly) edition of popular science, we'll probably be able to pull that off in about 2030, maybe 2040. (It was the edition with all the 'super civil engineering' projects - trans-pacific railroad, space elevator, trans-bering bridge, and a bunch of other ridiculous uses of concrete.)
Mr. Hopkins? Mrs. Moore holding, line three. Something about that pre-made dinner having an improper ingredient list...
Hmm... I really, really want to disagree with you... but considering how rarely anyone actually checks my credit card signature against the one I put on the paper, I'll have to concede that if the biometric ID system spreads much beyond the airport/border/port area, we are pretty much fucked.
Okay, to be more accurate, it was Congress that decided some of those rights weren't important anymore, in the weeks following 9/11. But Ashcroft was invovled in a lot of the pressure put upon the House and the Senate to pass the USA PATRIOT act as quickly as possible, with little debate or ammendment. USA PATRIOT act
The constitutionality of some sections of the USA PATRIOT act has yet to be challenged, probably because most of those its new (or expanded) powers have been used against are either not citizens, but resident aliens; or are unaware of the survelliance. For instance, a "multi-point roving wiretap" warrant can be issued against a person, allowing law enforcement agents to tap computers, phone lines, or cell phone lines.
Upon the suspicion that an intelligence target might use such a facility, the FBI can now monitor all communications transmitted at the facility.
In other words, if a "intelligence target" lives a quarter of a mile from your home, the FBI could monitor any activity at any public phone, cybercafe or library with an internet connection within a "reasonable distance."
And that's just one section of this act.
(And, yes, the caps in the title are intentional. USA PATRIOT is an acronymn. And probably the single stupidiest, most "you're obviously a commie, you voted against being a PATRIOT" name ever. And the sad thing is, it worked. In all, one senator, and about a dozen Reps. voted against it.)
And maybe they'll have contact lens in 2007 that will fake out a retinal scan... but the scanners made in 2009 will penetrate at different angles, showing up the lens with no problem.
And the problem with a data hack is the location and the timing - these machines are going to be installed at security checkpoints with (at least in the U.S.) armed guards in airports, train stations, and major ports - and I'm sure they're going to ask some questions if you start pulling panels off of their thirty thousand dollar biometric scanner. And as far as getting into the (I'll hope extremely) secure database with the 'master copy' of all the biometric data... well, if you can get into that, I don't think you're going to be worrying about stealing my identity.
If Tom Bombadil was to make an appearance at all, I would suspect a composite character of Bombadil and Beregond. He would of course still turn into the bear.
You mean Bombadil and Beorn, right? (Beregond was the human kid.)
Nope.
Sorry.
You, dear sir (or madam), are completely wrong.
Well, I'd have to assume it was the part where the remains of the Fellowship, along with the elves of Imadril, journeyed North after Aragon & Arwen's wedding, and ran into Saruman and Grima after Treebeard let them leave Orthanc... And they'll probably throw Grima's murder of Saruman in there just to close it all up.
A d20? As in... singular?
(Pause)
Infidel! Burn him!
You were driving around after both of you had your pupils dilated? You should have had your license taken away for that.
Why not have a further graduated system? A bike going 85 isn't going to cause as much damage as a saturn going 75, or a Ford Exploder going 60...
We said it never sleeps, not that it never passes out after the fireworks display and a case of Stroh's. There's legally too drunk to drive, and then there's can't-reach-the-car too drunk to drive.
Pretty much, yeah. Haven't you ever driven on the NJ Turnpike?
You obviously know little about ferrets if you think it only might get lonely if forced to spend thirty seconds (or, dear god! a whole minute!) alone....
That depends on the message size - with a sufficiently large message, with any portion of it being known by the interceptor, you can eventually reverse engineer the encryption method used.
Regardless, a "correctly used" one time pad is pretty much useless. You'd need to have an entire library of them in order to have any kind of two-way communication. And that's a big hole in and of itself - if your library is a digital object, anyone who can gain access to it has your 'unbreakable' code. More importantly, you still have to get the one-time pad to your compadre in the first place - and who's to stop someone intercepting it there, unless you hand it to them? (In which case, why aren't you just telling them face to face?)
That's it! You write scripts for Stargate: SG1, don't you?
While the moon only costs a little bit more to get to, it costs a lot more to leave. That's the whole point of his arguement. An interplanetary spacecraft assembled at L1 wouldn't have to worry about escape velocity - it's already pretty close to it. And if there is any ice, it's a lot more sparse than previously suggesteed - Doubts Resurface about Lunar Ice
Or just read the introduction he wrote for the third (I think) & subsequent (It's still in the version I bought three years ago) edition of the books. He states himself that while the events happening had an unconscious effect on his writing, he never intended any such heavy and crass symbolism. (For it to be like the war, Aragorn would have seized the ring, and made Sauron his slave.)
I dunno... losing the Scouring is bad, but with no Bombadil... well, that pretty much set the upper limit on how much I was willing to like this series. It's a good story, don't get me wrong, it's just not the books...
It's the scouring of the shire, not the razing of it. It's not completely destroyed - really, only a few hobbits are actually killed - just messed up for a time while they're gone. And it doesn't change the "Good prevails over Evil" syndrome at all - by end of the story in the appendices, everything's better than it was before, Sam's the mayor, Merry the master of Buckland, and Pippin the head Took. (And Frodo gets to ride off into the sunset with Gandalf, Elrond, and the near-last of the elves.)