It may not have any correlation to being smarter. But it has a huge correlation to being more creative.
Creative? No, I don't think so. Random is the word you're looking for. I don't use mind-altering substances but I have observed several people close to me do so. What you're calling creative - which is a popular and historically common - really isn't. Recreational drugs and alcohol serve to suppress coherent cognitive awareness. Users have diminished reasoning skills and what's left is random, less-coherent thought patterns.
For every "brilliant" writing/painting/work-of-art that supposedly couldn't have happened without some drug, there's a bunch of pointless crap produced by a stoner. Douglas Adams slaved ever every word in the Hitchhiker's Guide series. He didn't get wasted. Coherent people can produce brilliantly creative works. Incoherent people sometimes do. Hence random.
That all being said, do what you will. I don't care if someone elects to get out of their mind. Not my business. But the idea that drugs lead to on-average "better" creativity is false.
Excellent. I've been saying for 15+ years that the way to stop spam is to make the fines if caught so high that no matter how much the spamming earns you, the fine will bancrupt you. Everything else means that, taking the low chances for being actually caught into account, the rational choice for spammers remains to continue spamming.
Now this is settled, we can work on raising the conviction rate.
That is precisely the rationale the RIAA/MPAA uses in justifying their absurd fines. "Downloaded an album with ten songs that we sell for $15? You owe us $2,000." It's meant to be a imbalanced as a deterrent.
No. And I never once said or even implied that keeping NAT was ideal. I responded to the original post's rant. While there are plenty of reasons to get rid of NAT, economic impact because "someone had to code it" and "games don't work easily" aren't really good ones. My intent was to knock down the shallow argument.
Your rant would be more compelling if your list didn't consist of "software time", "software, salaries, time", "software" (yes, again), "time setting it up (as if setting up a proper firewall ruleset was any less cumbersome)", and "games". Yes, games. Economic damage indeed.
Look, NAT isn't ideal. I'll grant that. IPv6 is right. But I'd like to point out something. If NAT is seriously as big a deal as you make it out to be, that's man-hours that kept someone employed. Software houses employ people to work in projects that need doing. Working around network realities/idiosyncrasies needs to be done. Remove those realities and the rampaging hordes you envision writing NAT code won't just get a memo saying "hey, we were going to have you work on this uber useful productive project but didn't because you were working on that NAT code but now that it's gone, you're a productive member of society again!"
There's some hyperbole in my post, but the point is clear. At my office we have a phrase, "scripting yourself out of a job". There are a lot of repetitive tasks like new user creation that I'm often tempted to script to save myself (billable) time. Sadly, when everything I do is scripted, I'm not needed. Anyone can punch in values and routine tasks are out of my hands. All that's left is sitting around waiting for something to go wrong. I can't charge for that. That being said, there's an ethical fine line between predatory billing - which we don't ever do - and scripting myself out of a job.
Point is the economic "impact" of NAT isn't something that's worth talking about. If anything it employ[s/ed] people.
I am liking the trend (started primarily by Paizo) of role-playing companies that give Print + PDF bundles for their books. I love having access to reference PDFs on my laptop. When regular ebooks start coming bundled with hardcovers or at a more reasonable price, they will definitely take off. As it is, who wants to pay more than a softcover price for a novel?
Absolutely. We use the physical books at the gaming table and I use the PDFs for character design. Copy & pasting feat descriptions or class features or racial abilities or whatever is REALLY helpful. Especially when I DM.
It's not just you, but it's definitely application.
I wouldn't be very interested in textbooks or many other reference materials in a solely e-book format. On the other hand, service manuals for things like printers and cars have been distributed in PDF format for a while now and that seems to work pretty well because you're rarely reading it end-to-end.
Thing is, where e-book readers shine (not literally) is in fiction. Paperback trashy novels. I picked up a Sony PRS-300 almost half a year ago and am thrilled with it. I have an extensive paperback collection which is packed away as I'm moving soon. No problem... leave the e-book unpacked and I can still read before bed. Going on vacation? Take the e-book, not 20-30 paperbacks. Want to lay by the pool but don't want your books getting damp/wet? No problem. Stick the e-book reader in a zip-lock bag and read through it. Seriously.
My wife and I have found our readers just as easy to read on as typical paperbacks, only more convenient in a LOT of ways. Also, proper e-book readers (as has been pointed out by someone else later) aren't any harder to read then normal paper. The surface is actually completely, totally different from a back-lit LCD.
Two thumbs up. Oh, and my book purchases are up. I'm still buying paper for things that I want in my permanent collection but acquiring e-books for things I don't care about and "acquiring" things that are literally out of print. Nice to read an author's rare, early works to see how they developed. Other than trolling e-bay like mad, there's no real way to do that other than e-books.
I grew up the same way. I'm sure that once or twice I got into something I shouldn't have and broke something that wasn't mine.
Thing is that none of my stuff was particularly fragile. Kid's toys generally weren't. Today there's an abundance of DVD-based media specifically targeted at children. Finding Nemo, Dora the Explorer... all kinds of stuff. There's an age where changing platters for the child becomes inappropriate. Children should be permitted to be self-sufficient to a certain degree. Once you hit that age, giving them access to the collection makes sense. Except that age is below the one where they're likely to stop having "accidents". Scratches will happen. Period.
I have no children but I'd never condemn a parent for wanting to make a backup copy of a DVD or similar platter so they can let the kid use the copy.
He's right about that. Legal offices are the last holdouts on Word Perfect. The formatting is quite precise and predictable. Legal office workers are quite adept at editing with WP's "show codes" mode to ensure than everything is formatted exactly and correctly. While I believe it is true that MS Word also offers a feature like this, I'm not sure that people actually use it... or know how to for that matter.
Try again. Legal offices are stuck on WordPerfect because it's cheap and their users are entrenched. Legal assistants aren't like typical clerical staff. Their training and expertise is in legal paperwork, not computer operation. New staff get taught what they're supposed to use and old staff are resistant to change.
I do IT for a number of law offices. By and large they've got the oldest hardware, oldest software, and least inclination to update anything anywhere.
Okay, that's not fair. I've got tool & mold shops with 10 year old CNC controllers, but there the gear just feeds programming into the milling machines that was created elsewhere.
As I teacher, I've seen more than my fair share of siblings where the one is a goody-two-shoes straight-A student, and the other was the classic problem child who didn't care about failing as they were too busy learning to light fires, etc etc etc.
Would you praise the parents for the one child while condemning them for the other? They were raised in the same environment, came from the same set of genes.
Parents can have an influence on how a child turns out, but they do not have the last say.
I happen to think you're right, partly. But... devil's advocate. It's been noted that first children tend to be the over-achievers. Middle children try too hard to live up to their older sibling's standard, but are basically okay. Third and subsequent children tend to rebel, "knowing" they can't be as "good" as the older kids, and get their attention through doing "bad" things.
Or is it that parents do their best on their first child, then increasingly relax? Your first child you're ridiculously careful with, read all the books about parenting, basically spend ludicrous efforts to make sure this new life you've brought into the world is given every gift you can give it. The rest of the kids get emotional and physical hand-me-downs. You love them, you care about them, but you don't make the same "mistakes" in rigidity and authority you did the first time around... plus... you've got more brats to spread your attention to.
I dunno. Nature, nurture.
Maybe the answer is people should have fewer children and treat more of them like first-borns.
Not really, no. And I've got a programmer that would let me do it in one button press. Aside from what Burning1 says below (ie. it'd be useless for me), my tires are rated for 150MPH max. That's 240KPH. My car should be able to edge a little over that, but it'd be unsafe for yet another reason... blowouts.
I strongly encourage you, and everyone else to attend a local SCCA trackday or auto cross event. You don't need to have a race car - the family sedan is more than capable of some very impressive speeds if driven properly, and the experience will both help develop skills, and really open your eyes to the realities of driving on the streets. If you do happen to own a sports car, you really owe it to yourself to drive it properly, at least once.
I absolutely agree. I unfortunately haven't made the time to do exactly what you describe. Almost.
I drive a family sedan. A 350+ hp family sedan that's electronically limited to 150 MPH. To date it's remained shackled and limited to the odd 0-60MPH run (mid-5s). I really should be learning more about its handling.
I'm skeptical of the claim that higher speeds to not lead to higher collision rates. At higher speeds it takes longer to brake to a stop, which means more collisions with stationary (or near-stationary) objects. It's also harder to recover if you lose control in an avoidance maneuver or go off-pavement for any reason. Are there any actual data to back up the claim?
I actually didn't say that. Really the thrust of my post was that overall speed isn't the most critical factor in road safety. As I illustrated above, when a limit is posted too low, you'll have more extreme variance in vehicle speeds which is a big factor. It's entirely possible that there's a sweet spot where the posted limit could be higher and reduce collisions because the bottom-end slower drivers speed up to match the faster drivers.
And honestly, while you're saying "citation required", I got my information from ten minutes of random Google-walking the topic "speed limit". That's why I didn't make numeric claims, merely logical claims. Oh, except the "8-12 MHP for 85%" thing. That's from the Wiki for Speed Limit. Go nuts.
CUE INCREASE IN ACCIDENTS - I have no doubt this will make them money, but it will also make them look much worse on traffic accident statistics vs. other states.
Interestingly, this isn't a given. Well, not in the dramatic sense you imply. Yes, increased speed means that in the event of a collision there's more energy involved to be disbursed and absorbed, leading to more severe injuries and frequent deaths in the event of a collision. On the other hand, it's not a given that a higher speed limit will result, for a number of reasons.
Traffic tends to flow at rates generally in excess of speed limits. Speed limits are generally set (in the U.S.) 8 to 12 MPH below the speed 85% of traffic typically flows. This is done deliberately as one of the biggest purposes behind speed limits is to set a calibration number that most traffic will aim for. The goal is to have most vehicles going the same general speed. That is to say, it's important to reduce variance in vehicle speed. You set your limit expecting almost all traffic to flow within a few MPH of that limit.
See, the problem is that if a road is well-engineered and conditions are clear, many drivers will push well beyond the speed limit if it's posted "too low". Folks (like me) who are afraid to get pulled over (I drive a tempting and obvious target) stay down very close to the speed limit. The result is that the variance in vehicle speed increases, which is inherently likely to cause more accidents.
You want to reduce the number of accidents, then consider the severity of those accidents. Not the other way around. By setting limits wisely, even erring on the high side sometimes, you may actually make things safer. That's why you see so many different numbers on the roads.
Final note: all of what I just wrote is why this plan is horrible. I'd [i]love[/i] to open up my car and go play. But allowing a small percentage of the traffic to flow potentially 50% faster than the rest is likely to result in more accidents. The will coincidentally involve worse injuries.
You need to be modded up, but I can't do that for you.
Vibrators... batteries go in one end and orgasms come out the other end. I mean, a lot of women find climaxing complicated, time-consuming, and not at all guaranteed. Add something that goes bzzzzzzzz and in my experience things change pretty dramatically.
So hey, I'm not intimidated at all by my wife's collection. 20 minutes of careful, thoughtful, sustained manual efforts may or may not do the trick. Three minutes with something that takes D cells and it's a guaranteed event. There's nothing wrong with me... there's just everything right about it.
If they abide by the laws of the land and provide the government of India access to Indian citizens' communications they're removing privacy from those citizens. Thing is that according to the Indian government their citizens aren't evidently entitled to that privacy. So RIM can "cave in" and abide by the Indian officials' demands but at the cost of a moral high-ground. Citizens lose, government wins, RIM maintains status quo.
If they refuse to "cave in", they get shut down and those very same citizens have to buy new phones from wonderful vendors like Apple and the government will tap those communications. Citizens lose, government wins, RIM loses customers.
I think it is arrogant and counterproductive to Islamic/US relations for them to build this symbol near ground zero, but the laws of this land say they can. That's what makes the US different than, e.g., Iran or just about any Islamic nation. I wonder what the world's reaction would be were Jews to build a huge synagogue on the site of the first Iranian nuclear reactor they bomb into smithereens. Or the liberal reaction had Bush said that the muslims have the right to build next to Ground Zero.
How close is too close? If it were another block would it be okay? Another block plus five feet?
I ask this to illustrate that it's completely arbitrary and unjustified. You feel uncomfortable because you're equating a mosque with Islamic radicals. You feel uncomfortable because you're reminded about a bunch of American deaths. This mosque isn't about radicals, Islamic or otherwise, and it isn't about American deaths. It's not a slap in the face or an insult to those who died. It's not a declaration of superiority or disrespectful to the dead.
It's a place of worship. Period.
Do I think the proponents are foolish for proposing to build this two blocks from Ground Zero? Absolutely. I fully expect them to get bombed by Christian radicals.
Do I think people against the building are overreacting? Absolutely. It's irrational to object. If the idiots who hijacked those planes were ultra-conservative Christian anti-abortionist PETA members you wouldn't hear a single voice objecting to a Christian church being built today. It's unfair and unfounded and bigoted to object to this mosque.
My diatribe is relevant in the sense that the people objecting to Medal of Honor are equally bigoted and in pretty much the same way, for the same reason. We get it. Arabs bad, white folks good. Gotcha.
Trying to ban firearms or a class of firearms always gets attention and instant opposition.
They are part of the nation's history and founding mythologies, plus rights of possession are in the Constitution.
Would you support the ending of free speech for one type of speech, say newspapers or the Internet?
Arms. The right to bear arms. Arms = weapons. That's it. It doesn't say your citizens have the right to bear guns. They're entitled to have weapons.
You don't allow your citizens to have nuclear weapons despite this constitutional right to weapon-ownership. You don't allow your citizens to have chemical or biological weapons despite the same amendment. Private ownership of military-grade weapons are prohibited in many cases.
Why is this? Simple. Because your governments have tried to apply reasonable limitations upon the citizens' constitutional right. What I - and the rest of the world - am telling you is that you're still allowing unreasonably free access to guns. Stop it.
The next time someone claims they've got the legal right to own a gun, throw a dictionary at them.
Just out of curiosity, what do people who live out in the middle of nowhere do to defend themselves against thieves? It's one thing when the police are minutes away in the city, but in the outback, I'm sure that's not always the case.
Two answers.
One: our thieves by and large don't have guns because they're not trivial to come by for petty criminals. In the US, any citizen can get a gun so they're more widely available. Two: our cultures by and large aren't fed by fear. B&Es are rare. The odds of actually getting broken into if you don't live in a slum are pretty low. We're not constantly living in fear. Funny, that.
Bonus answer number three: in our cultures, killing someone who's trying to steal your TV isn't considered reasonable response. This isn't the Wild West.
I'm not a really pro-gun person, but really, considering they're selling something that's illegal to make, traffic and sell... I can't see them having a hard time making, trafficking or selling guns either if they were illegal.
Do it slowly. Like cigarettes. It's a cultural thing, you understand. Other countries don't have the problem the US does, because here we're not taught that guns are cool, or necessary, or our right, or our civic duty. Guns are despised as what the bad guys have. We don't want to be like the bad guys. So we don't want, have, or allow guns. Generations of this and you won't have guns just laying around.
Yes, trying to suddenly ban handguns in the US would fail hard. But like drunk driving if you slowly reduce the legal limits and impose sensible restrictions, you might find your problem goes away.
Guns aren't like drugs in the sense that drugs have a very immediate, intense, and tangible high associated with them. Guns merely have biggus dickus proxy self-esteem moderation value.
I'd love to see CCW holders allowed to legally carry on airplanes. 9/11 would have ended differently if somebody on those planes had been armed. I doubt it will ever happen but I can dream.
If it doesn't happen you still don't need to go any further than metal and explosives detectors. Even a trained Special Forces operator isn't going to be able to defeat dozens of people before someone takes him down. It's absurd to attach all of this security to flying.
Oh come on. Go the whole way. Ban CCW permits. I want CVW permits. Carry Visible Weapon. Concealment has never made sense to me. It's not a deterrent, that's for sure.
No. Let's issue everyone who gets on an airplane a machete and brass knuckles. They turn them in when they land safely.
As it happens, that was a weird language/location/regional mode that arbitrarily flipped on my workstation for no obvious reason. It wasn't anything to do with my Blackberry.
Internals are a bit disappointing. Why are they only putting a 624Mhz processor in their new flagship device? HTC, Apple, Moto & Samsung are all using 1ghz ARM variants in their flagship phones--with higher speeds and dual core phones on the near horizon.
Get this... if you don`t spend all your processing time making animated zooming window borders and other GUI frills, you don`t NEED an insane processor. What does a cell phone need to do?
Make calls... doesn`t need much processing power. Look up contacts. Make appointments. Access memos... doesn`t need much processing power. Take pictures. Display low-res video. Encode and decode music... doesn`t need much processing power.
If your phone seems slow, it`s because it`s full of glitzy crap. My Bold 9700 does everything I ask it to do, immediately. It doesn`t lag. It isn`t slow. It doesn`t - in a nutshell - need a faster processor.
You know what? That fact has absolutely no importance and never has. Let's see why.
First, there are two types of news: things that are interesting and things that are important. Things that are important threaten my life or my lifestyle, or those around me. I need to react, and react quickly. This story isn't in that category, and most of what's posted on Slashdot aren't. I don't come here for urgent breaking-news issues, and I shouldn't. On the other hand, things that are interesting generally remain interesting for more than a few moments. The discovery of a new (and interesting) species of fish is an interesting bit of trivia that won't be any less interesting if I read about it today, tomorrow, or a month from now. It's timeless news.
Secondly, it's very hard for the administrators to know how many readers have heard about a particular story yet. They filter through submissions and make decisions based on how interesting a story is. Thing is... I hadn't heard about this anywhere else in the last two to three weeks. If Slashdot hadn't accepted this submission and posted it, I wouldn't have heard about it. Which says that at least in this case - in my case - this acceptance worked exactly as desired. If you already heard about this, feel free to ignore the story.
Third and finally, you imply that because this news isn't 0-day it's not news. What's the threshold? 0-day? 0-minute? Who are you to decide when information is no longer "fresh" enough to merit further dissemination. I'll agree that posting a story announcing the exciting new 80486 processor would be inappropriate but you're quibbling about a few weeks in a story about a new-to-us species of fish.
You should have tried to make a fished p0st instead of complaining about this.
Now Sony can also sue him because he published the email's content. See the disclaimer on the bottom: "This email and any files transmitted with it are confidential and intended solely for the use of the individual or entity to whom they are addressed. ":-)
That doesn't mean what you're suggesting it means. He is the entity that the contents et al were addressed to. He's making use of those contents by sharing them with others. That's entirely fine.
That idiotic boilerplate is pointlessly applied to tonnes of corporate e-mail under the crazy thought that if it's sent to the wrong person (as in the sender gets the address wrong), the incorrect recipient legally isn't allowed to act upon anything they've learned. I'm not a lawyer but I'm pretty convinced that's utterly unenforceable regardless.
Slashdot Mirror
It may not have any correlation to being smarter. But it has a huge correlation to being more creative.
Creative? No, I don't think so. Random is the word you're looking for. I don't use mind-altering substances but I have observed several people close to me do so. What you're calling creative - which is a popular and historically common - really isn't. Recreational drugs and alcohol serve to suppress coherent cognitive awareness. Users have diminished reasoning skills and what's left is random, less-coherent thought patterns.
For every "brilliant" writing/painting/work-of-art that supposedly couldn't have happened without some drug, there's a bunch of pointless crap produced by a stoner. Douglas Adams slaved ever every word in the Hitchhiker's Guide series. He didn't get wasted. Coherent people can produce brilliantly creative works. Incoherent people sometimes do. Hence random.
That all being said, do what you will. I don't care if someone elects to get out of their mind. Not my business. But the idea that drugs lead to on-average "better" creativity is false.
Excellent. I've been saying for 15+ years that the way to stop spam is to make the fines if caught so high that no matter how much the spamming earns you, the fine will bancrupt you. Everything else means that, taking the low chances for being actually caught into account, the rational choice for spammers remains to continue spamming.
Now this is settled, we can work on raising the conviction rate.
That is precisely the rationale the RIAA/MPAA uses in justifying their absurd fines. "Downloaded an album with ten songs that we sell for $15? You owe us $2,000." It's meant to be a imbalanced as a deterrent.
No. And I never once said or even implied that keeping NAT was ideal. I responded to the original post's rant. While there are plenty of reasons to get rid of NAT, economic impact because "someone had to code it" and "games don't work easily" aren't really good ones. My intent was to knock down the shallow argument.
Your rant would be more compelling if your list didn't consist of "software time", "software, salaries, time", "software" (yes, again), "time setting it up (as if setting up a proper firewall ruleset was any less cumbersome)", and "games". Yes, games. Economic damage indeed.
Look, NAT isn't ideal. I'll grant that. IPv6 is right. But I'd like to point out something. If NAT is seriously as big a deal as you make it out to be, that's man-hours that kept someone employed. Software houses employ people to work in projects that need doing. Working around network realities/idiosyncrasies needs to be done. Remove those realities and the rampaging hordes you envision writing NAT code won't just get a memo saying "hey, we were going to have you work on this uber useful productive project but didn't because you were working on that NAT code but now that it's gone, you're a productive member of society again!"
There's some hyperbole in my post, but the point is clear. At my office we have a phrase, "scripting yourself out of a job". There are a lot of repetitive tasks like new user creation that I'm often tempted to script to save myself (billable) time. Sadly, when everything I do is scripted, I'm not needed. Anyone can punch in values and routine tasks are out of my hands. All that's left is sitting around waiting for something to go wrong. I can't charge for that. That being said, there's an ethical fine line between predatory billing - which we don't ever do - and scripting myself out of a job.
Point is the economic "impact" of NAT isn't something that's worth talking about. If anything it employ[s/ed] people.
I am liking the trend (started primarily by Paizo) of role-playing companies that give Print + PDF bundles for their books. I love having access to reference PDFs on my laptop. When regular ebooks start coming bundled with hardcovers or at a more reasonable price, they will definitely take off. As it is, who wants to pay more than a softcover price for a novel?
Absolutely. We use the physical books at the gaming table and I use the PDFs for character design. Copy & pasting feat descriptions or class features or racial abilities or whatever is REALLY helpful. Especially when I DM.
Paizo are awesome.
Am I the only one who prefers reading real books?
I stare at a computer screen enough.
It's not just you, but it's definitely application.
I wouldn't be very interested in textbooks or many other reference materials in a solely e-book format. On the other hand, service manuals for things like printers and cars have been distributed in PDF format for a while now and that seems to work pretty well because you're rarely reading it end-to-end.
Thing is, where e-book readers shine (not literally) is in fiction. Paperback trashy novels. I picked up a Sony PRS-300 almost half a year ago and am thrilled with it. I have an extensive paperback collection which is packed away as I'm moving soon. No problem... leave the e-book unpacked and I can still read before bed. Going on vacation? Take the e-book, not 20-30 paperbacks. Want to lay by the pool but don't want your books getting damp/wet? No problem. Stick the e-book reader in a zip-lock bag and read through it. Seriously.
My wife and I have found our readers just as easy to read on as typical paperbacks, only more convenient in a LOT of ways. Also, proper e-book readers (as has been pointed out by someone else later) aren't any harder to read then normal paper. The surface is actually completely, totally different from a back-lit LCD.
Two thumbs up. Oh, and my book purchases are up. I'm still buying paper for things that I want in my permanent collection but acquiring e-books for things I don't care about and "acquiring" things that are literally out of print. Nice to read an author's rare, early works to see how they developed. Other than trolling e-bay like mad, there's no real way to do that other than e-books.
I grew up the same way. I'm sure that once or twice I got into something I shouldn't have and broke something that wasn't mine.
Thing is that none of my stuff was particularly fragile. Kid's toys generally weren't. Today there's an abundance of DVD-based media specifically targeted at children. Finding Nemo, Dora the Explorer... all kinds of stuff. There's an age where changing platters for the child becomes inappropriate. Children should be permitted to be self-sufficient to a certain degree. Once you hit that age, giving them access to the collection makes sense. Except that age is below the one where they're likely to stop having "accidents". Scratches will happen. Period.
I have no children but I'd never condemn a parent for wanting to make a backup copy of a DVD or similar platter so they can let the kid use the copy.
He's right about that. Legal offices are the last holdouts on Word Perfect. The formatting is quite precise and predictable. Legal office workers are quite adept at editing with WP's "show codes" mode to ensure than everything is formatted exactly and correctly. While I believe it is true that MS Word also offers a feature like this, I'm not sure that people actually use it... or know how to for that matter.
Try again. Legal offices are stuck on WordPerfect because it's cheap and their users are entrenched. Legal assistants aren't like typical clerical staff. Their training and expertise is in legal paperwork, not computer operation. New staff get taught what they're supposed to use and old staff are resistant to change.
I do IT for a number of law offices. By and large they've got the oldest hardware, oldest software, and least inclination to update anything anywhere.
Okay, that's not fair. I've got tool & mold shops with 10 year old CNC controllers, but there the gear just feeds programming into the milling machines that was created elsewhere.
As I teacher, I've seen more than my fair share of siblings where the one is a goody-two-shoes straight-A student, and the other was the classic problem child who didn't care about failing as they were too busy learning to light fires, etc etc etc.
Would you praise the parents for the one child while condemning them for the other? They were raised in the same environment, came from the same set of genes.
Parents can have an influence on how a child turns out, but they do not have the last say.
I happen to think you're right, partly. But... devil's advocate. It's been noted that first children tend to be the over-achievers. Middle children try too hard to live up to their older sibling's standard, but are basically okay. Third and subsequent children tend to rebel, "knowing" they can't be as "good" as the older kids, and get their attention through doing "bad" things.
Or is it that parents do their best on their first child, then increasingly relax? Your first child you're ridiculously careful with, read all the books about parenting, basically spend ludicrous efforts to make sure this new life you've brought into the world is given every gift you can give it. The rest of the kids get emotional and physical hand-me-downs. You love them, you care about them, but you don't make the same "mistakes" in rigidity and authority you did the first time around... plus... you've got more brats to spread your attention to.
I dunno. Nature, nurture.
Maybe the answer is people should have fewer children and treat more of them like first-borns.
Have you considered removing the speed limiter?
Not really, no. And I've got a programmer that would let me do it in one button press. Aside from what Burning1 says below (ie. it'd be useless for me), my tires are rated for 150MPH max. That's 240KPH. My car should be able to edge a little over that, but it'd be unsafe for yet another reason... blowouts.
I strongly encourage you, and everyone else to attend a local SCCA trackday or auto cross event. You don't need to have a race car - the family sedan is more than capable of some very impressive speeds if driven properly, and the experience will both help develop skills, and really open your eyes to the realities of driving on the streets. If you do happen to own a sports car, you really owe it to yourself to drive it properly, at least once.
I absolutely agree. I unfortunately haven't made the time to do exactly what you describe. Almost.
I drive a family sedan. A 350+ hp family sedan that's electronically limited to 150 MPH. To date it's remained shackled and limited to the odd 0-60MPH run (mid-5s). I really should be learning more about its handling.
I'm skeptical of the claim that higher speeds to not lead to higher collision rates. At higher speeds it takes longer to brake to a stop, which means more collisions with stationary (or near-stationary) objects. It's also harder to recover if you lose control in an avoidance maneuver or go off-pavement for any reason. Are there any actual data to back up the claim?
I actually didn't say that. Really the thrust of my post was that overall speed isn't the most critical factor in road safety. As I illustrated above, when a limit is posted too low, you'll have more extreme variance in vehicle speeds which is a big factor. It's entirely possible that there's a sweet spot where the posted limit could be higher and reduce collisions because the bottom-end slower drivers speed up to match the faster drivers.
And honestly, while you're saying "citation required", I got my information from ten minutes of random Google-walking the topic "speed limit". That's why I didn't make numeric claims, merely logical claims. Oh, except the "8-12 MHP for 85%" thing. That's from the Wiki for Speed Limit. Go nuts.
CUE INCREASE IN ACCIDENTS - I have no doubt this will make them money, but it will also make them look much worse on traffic accident statistics vs. other states.
Interestingly, this isn't a given. Well, not in the dramatic sense you imply. Yes, increased speed means that in the event of a collision there's more energy involved to be disbursed and absorbed, leading to more severe injuries and frequent deaths in the event of a collision. On the other hand, it's not a given that a higher speed limit will result, for a number of reasons.
Traffic tends to flow at rates generally in excess of speed limits. Speed limits are generally set (in the U.S.) 8 to 12 MPH below the speed 85% of traffic typically flows. This is done deliberately as one of the biggest purposes behind speed limits is to set a calibration number that most traffic will aim for. The goal is to have most vehicles going the same general speed. That is to say, it's important to reduce variance in vehicle speed. You set your limit expecting almost all traffic to flow within a few MPH of that limit.
See, the problem is that if a road is well-engineered and conditions are clear, many drivers will push well beyond the speed limit if it's posted "too low". Folks (like me) who are afraid to get pulled over (I drive a tempting and obvious target) stay down very close to the speed limit. The result is that the variance in vehicle speed increases, which is inherently likely to cause more accidents.
You want to reduce the number of accidents, then consider the severity of those accidents. Not the other way around. By setting limits wisely, even erring on the high side sometimes, you may actually make things safer. That's why you see so many different numbers on the roads.
Final note: all of what I just wrote is why this plan is horrible. I'd [i]love[/i] to open up my car and go play. But allowing a small percentage of the traffic to flow potentially 50% faster than the rest is likely to result in more accidents. The will coincidentally involve worse injuries.
You need to be modded up, but I can't do that for you.
Vibrators... batteries go in one end and orgasms come out the other end. I mean, a lot of women find climaxing complicated, time-consuming, and not at all guaranteed. Add something that goes bzzzzzzzz and in my experience things change pretty dramatically.
So hey, I'm not intimidated at all by my wife's collection. 20 minutes of careful, thoughtful, sustained manual efforts may or may not do the trick. Three minutes with something that takes D cells and it's a guaranteed event. There's nothing wrong with me... there's just everything right about it.
RIM's in a no-win situation here.
If they abide by the laws of the land and provide the government of India access to Indian citizens' communications they're removing privacy from those citizens. Thing is that according to the Indian government their citizens aren't evidently entitled to that privacy. So RIM can "cave in" and abide by the Indian officials' demands but at the cost of a moral high-ground. Citizens lose, government wins, RIM maintains status quo.
If they refuse to "cave in", they get shut down and those very same citizens have to buy new phones from wonderful vendors like Apple and the government will tap those communications. Citizens lose, government wins, RIM loses customers.
So really, what should they do?
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares?"
Intents and.
I think it is arrogant and counterproductive to Islamic/US relations for them to build this symbol near ground zero, but the laws of this land say they can. That's what makes the US different than, e.g., Iran or just about any Islamic nation. I wonder what the world's reaction would be were Jews to build a huge synagogue on the site of the first Iranian nuclear reactor they bomb into smithereens. Or the liberal reaction had Bush said that the muslims have the right to build next to Ground Zero.
How close is too close? If it were another block would it be okay? Another block plus five feet?
I ask this to illustrate that it's completely arbitrary and unjustified. You feel uncomfortable because you're equating a mosque with Islamic radicals. You feel uncomfortable because you're reminded about a bunch of American deaths. This mosque isn't about radicals, Islamic or otherwise, and it isn't about American deaths. It's not a slap in the face or an insult to those who died. It's not a declaration of superiority or disrespectful to the dead.
It's a place of worship. Period.
Do I think the proponents are foolish for proposing to build this two blocks from Ground Zero? Absolutely. I fully expect them to get bombed by Christian radicals.
Do I think people against the building are overreacting? Absolutely. It's irrational to object. If the idiots who hijacked those planes were ultra-conservative Christian anti-abortionist PETA members you wouldn't hear a single voice objecting to a Christian church being built today. It's unfair and unfounded and bigoted to object to this mosque.
My diatribe is relevant in the sense that the people objecting to Medal of Honor are equally bigoted and in pretty much the same way, for the same reason. We get it. Arabs bad, white folks good. Gotcha.
Trying to ban firearms or a class of firearms always gets attention and instant opposition.
They are part of the nation's history and founding mythologies, plus rights of possession are in the Constitution.
Would you support the ending of free speech for one type of speech, say newspapers or the Internet?
Arms. The right to bear arms. Arms = weapons. That's it. It doesn't say your citizens have the right to bear guns. They're entitled to have weapons.
You don't allow your citizens to have nuclear weapons despite this constitutional right to weapon-ownership. You don't allow your citizens to have chemical or biological weapons despite the same amendment. Private ownership of military-grade weapons are prohibited in many cases.
Why is this? Simple. Because your governments have tried to apply reasonable limitations upon the citizens' constitutional right. What I - and the rest of the world - am telling you is that you're still allowing unreasonably free access to guns. Stop it.
The next time someone claims they've got the legal right to own a gun, throw a dictionary at them.
Just out of curiosity, what do people who live out in the middle of nowhere do to defend themselves against thieves? It's one thing when the police are minutes away in the city, but in the outback, I'm sure that's not always the case.
Two answers.
One: our thieves by and large don't have guns because they're not trivial to come by for petty criminals. In the US, any citizen can get a gun so they're more widely available.
Two: our cultures by and large aren't fed by fear. B&Es are rare. The odds of actually getting broken into if you don't live in a slum are pretty low. We're not constantly living in fear. Funny, that.
Bonus answer number three: in our cultures, killing someone who's trying to steal your TV isn't considered reasonable response. This isn't the Wild West.
I'm not a really pro-gun person, but really, considering they're selling something that's illegal to make, traffic and sell... I can't see them having a hard time making, trafficking or selling guns either if they were illegal.
Do it slowly. Like cigarettes. It's a cultural thing, you understand. Other countries don't have the problem the US does, because here we're not taught that guns are cool, or necessary, or our right, or our civic duty. Guns are despised as what the bad guys have. We don't want to be like the bad guys. So we don't want, have, or allow guns. Generations of this and you won't have guns just laying around.
Yes, trying to suddenly ban handguns in the US would fail hard. But like drunk driving if you slowly reduce the legal limits and impose sensible restrictions, you might find your problem goes away.
Guns aren't like drugs in the sense that drugs have a very immediate, intense, and tangible high associated with them. Guns merely have biggus dickus proxy self-esteem moderation value.
I'd love to see CCW holders allowed to legally carry on airplanes. 9/11 would have ended differently if somebody on those planes had been armed. I doubt it will ever happen but I can dream.
If it doesn't happen you still don't need to go any further than metal and explosives detectors. Even a trained Special Forces operator isn't going to be able to defeat dozens of people before someone takes him down. It's absurd to attach all of this security to flying.
Oh come on. Go the whole way. Ban CCW permits. I want CVW permits. Carry Visible Weapon. Concealment has never made sense to me. It's not a deterrent, that's for sure.
No. Let's issue everyone who gets on an airplane a machete and brass knuckles. They turn them in when they land safely.
As it happens, that was a weird language/location/regional mode that arbitrarily flipped on my workstation for no obvious reason. It wasn't anything to do with my Blackberry.
Internals are a bit disappointing. Why are they only putting a 624Mhz processor in their new flagship device? HTC, Apple, Moto & Samsung are all using 1ghz ARM variants in their flagship phones--with higher speeds and dual core phones on the near horizon.
Get this... if you don`t spend all your processing time making animated zooming window borders and other GUI frills, you don`t NEED an insane processor. What does a cell phone need to do?
Make calls... doesn`t need much processing power.
Look up contacts. Make appointments. Access memos... doesn`t need much processing power.
Take pictures. Display low-res video. Encode and decode music... doesn`t need much processing power.
If your phone seems slow, it`s because it`s full of glitzy crap. My Bold 9700 does everything I ask it to do, immediately. It doesn`t lag. It isn`t slow. It doesn`t - in a nutshell - need a faster processor.
This was news like 2-3 weeks ago
You know what? That fact has absolutely no importance and never has. Let's see why.
First, there are two types of news: things that are interesting and things that are important. Things that are important threaten my life or my lifestyle, or those around me. I need to react, and react quickly. This story isn't in that category, and most of what's posted on Slashdot aren't. I don't come here for urgent breaking-news issues, and I shouldn't. On the other hand, things that are interesting generally remain interesting for more than a few moments. The discovery of a new (and interesting) species of fish is an interesting bit of trivia that won't be any less interesting if I read about it today, tomorrow, or a month from now. It's timeless news.
Secondly, it's very hard for the administrators to know how many readers have heard about a particular story yet. They filter through submissions and make decisions based on how interesting a story is. Thing is... I hadn't heard about this anywhere else in the last two to three weeks. If Slashdot hadn't accepted this submission and posted it, I wouldn't have heard about it. Which says that at least in this case - in my case - this acceptance worked exactly as desired. If you already heard about this, feel free to ignore the story.
Third and finally, you imply that because this news isn't 0-day it's not news. What's the threshold? 0-day? 0-minute? Who are you to decide when information is no longer "fresh" enough to merit further dissemination. I'll agree that posting a story announcing the exciting new 80486 processor would be inappropriate but you're quibbling about a few weeks in a story about a new-to-us species of fish.
You should have tried to make a fished p0st instead of complaining about this.
Now Sony can also sue him because he published the email's content. See the disclaimer on the bottom: "This email and any files transmitted with it are confidential and intended solely for the use of the individual or entity to whom they are addressed. " :-)
That doesn't mean what you're suggesting it means. He is the entity that the contents et al were addressed to. He's making use of those contents by sharing them with others. That's entirely fine.
That idiotic boilerplate is pointlessly applied to tonnes of corporate e-mail under the crazy thought that if it's sent to the wrong person (as in the sender gets the address wrong), the incorrect recipient legally isn't allowed to act upon anything they've learned. I'm not a lawyer but I'm pretty convinced that's utterly unenforceable regardless.