Indeed. The logos / emblems that some clothes manufacturers put on their products are borderline deal breakers.
Why? Here's an example: La Coste, the alligator shirt people, typically have a sewn on emblem. And the emblem's stitching irritates / rubs against my skin on a hot, sweaty day. I had a green polo from them a few years ago that, combined with a lack of fabric softener, made it an almost unbearable hell to wear. It's also the reason I avoid clothing these days from them.
Indeed. Shills tend to use vague wording that plays up the awesomeness of the product while not answering any of the important deal or no deal questions that determine whether it's worth buying the product. Why? Because they don't use the product, so they aren't aware of its faults.
I guess since I'm a tech, I tend to weigh the negative reviews more highly than the positive ones. Reviewers are more likely to express product defects in a customer review, which normally are suppressed by the manufacturer / marketing. As such, 10 positive reviews roughly weigh one negative review, and I don't count the 'fail-negative' reviews that some shills put up to try and steer things ("It is an okay product, I wish it could slice bread, but it's still worth buying!").
Technically, yes, but the proponents of various environmental reform packages have almost a 'religion' when it comes to changing things.
It goes like this: Mankind is contributing to the increase of temperature of the planet Earth -> this is a problem -> this is a problem that must be dealt with -> this is a problem that must be dealt with by the highest powers -> the solution demands that every atom of carbon placed into the atmosphere be meticulously recorded somewhere to see if humanity is at fault -> if humanity is at fault, they must pay, in one form or another, for the excess carbon -> the people of your country get a shiny new tax, a buttload of propaganda telling them how they are being saved from themselves, and the various corrupt officials / business leaders in on the scheme get a new yacht, while the green police gun down people in the street for littering -> the various countries realize that the only way to ensure, in an obsessed way, that corrupt officials / business types don't skirt the law is to run the factories / businesses themselves -> the countries nationalize their native companies -> corruption continues at an a greater rate, while people are starving in the streets, because they can't carbon-free food.
As with all laws, you can find the truth by taking them to their logical extremes. That is, their LOGICAL extremes, not just to their extremes. Satire works in a similar manner.
Look, it's 2012, and the psychologists are kind of scraping the bottom of the barrel of their discipline to justify their grants / subsidies; it was this, or another 'study' on how some of your food is probably giving you cancer / AIDS.
On another note, I have yet to encounter a psychologist who would describe themselves in any way, shape, or form as a capitalist. Perhaps they are simply too enlightened to fall into the traps that the common man does, or perhaps there is simply an institutional bias.
And criminals tend to be the people most vocal about the failings of the legal system. It must be because it gives them a sense of self-worth, to think that they were wronged somehow, when we all know that the legal system has never sent an innocent man to his death, let alone imprisoned / convicted others with faulty information. It's weird, because some of these criminals are just so far beyond society's help, that they simply cannot recognize their crimes, even when all evidence points to them being innocent.
If you're going to do full-retard meta-logic / navel-gazing psychological profiles, at least understand what you are talking about.
Indeed. Science is run by cut-throat individuals and groups who are constantly trying to prove that another individual or group is a fraud. It's not nice, contrary to what you see on a college campus, and not every controversy is resolved with a hand-shake and a smile (more along the lines of publicly declaring that you wish the other person dead, and may hasten the process).
What you see here is pure intellectual laziness and whining; "Oh, the experiment takes too long to rerun to verify the data!" or "This person is trustworthy, I don't need to double-check the results, because it's not like they could do something silly (since they are apparently not human) like drop a decimal point somewhere; surely the science journal editors of prestigious blah and blah would catch any errors before publishing."
I'm going to be honest with you. I have a mean streak in me, and if I had reason to believe that someone double-checking my work was becoming lax, I'd start introducing errors to catch them in the act.
They were proud to own USA manufactured items when they were the best, or among the best, not because of some witless attempt to appeal to a citizen's 'patriotism.'
I ask you, are American products so terrible that they cannot outclass the creations of other countries? Are they not of such an enlightened design that other countries would choose ours over theirs, even when our own receive no subsidies or state assistance, and theirs has the advantage of home turf? Is a little tag with an American flag on it, and a premium price, all that we have to offer?
Where has that ingenuity that we've heard so much about gone?
Took me a moment, then I started looking for the Onion's logo (still satire, but a different site). Oddly enough, the story does bear a superficial resemblance.
Yes, because crackers / hackers, in general, break into large accounting firms, and (this is the kicker) instead of quietly modifying the servers to send large payments to an account outside of the country, they steal the tax returns of a presidential candidate, and publicly black-mail him. Because they're the kind of people who would turn down a few tens of millions of dollars (or more) since they are apparently so bad at Math, so they could get a million from a guy who is going to have a bee in his bonnet his entire term (if elected) about the damn incident, oh yeah, and have the Secret Service on his ass (which even for the 31337, isn't something you want unless you really, desperately have absolutely no other choice in the matter). And they certainly don't have an entire culture built around operational security, trusting no one, and keeping things quiet in general.
Say what you like, but the FBI was watching Hemingway.
Possible, but I am thinking this is actually part of a larger ploy.
Since anyone of even a modicum of technological capability, who actually uses BitCoins, knows that they are somewhat traceable, I wonder why someone would demand such an outlandish sum in them. Let's see here...we have the key words BitCoins, hackers, and all of it tied to a presidential election.
We all know that for the last several months, the press has been falling over themselves to paint BitCoins in the darkest light possible, playing up every rumoured instanced of malfeasance even remotely tied to them. We also know that the military, for lack of enemies, has recently decided that their next shipment of bread and butter will have to come from the 'cyber-crime' division, and that they are desperate to find a playmate, domestic or otherwise, to justify the purchase orders already signed and dated, in top brass's top drawers. And seeing how the BitCoin community has been relatively effective in educating people with regards to the f*cked up claims the press loves to make, perhaps someone decided to take it to the next level. By launching an attack on a presidential campaign, you are guaranteed coverage in the press, at decibel levels well above the normal white noise; you also guarantee that the attacked opponent will respond with a calculated defence (denial, followed by revenge if / when elected), with the added bonus that since you went after a minor but incredibly irritating election issue (his tax returns, and it is), he will take it personally. If he is elected, he will willingly sign any law that mentions this incident and 'justice'; if he loses, the other guy will do the same, as he doesn't like the idea of what happened to his opponent possibly happening to him or his friends. It's the equivalent of a Morton's fork, where the tech industry is damned if they do, damned if they don't. The military gets paid either way, though they won't be invited to any tech parties for a few years.
Hackers (unknown enemy, up there with the boogey-man these days, hiding under your bed and in your computer, going to get you), BitCoins (another unknown, a 'competing' currency to the US dollar, so it's 'patriotic' to be against it; plus 'hackers' and drug dealers use it, unlike the US Dollar, so it must be bad), and a presidential election (when politicians make a black list, and begin adding names).
The best part is, even if the hackers are arrested, we may never get the people behind it all. Sounds a little conspiracy-ish, but it is in the CIA handbook, that you 'groom' someone else to do the dirty work, then get rid of them.
Sadly, that is the direction that we're heading in.
See, cures for illnesses were too expensive; so we went with just treating them. Then treating them was too expensive, so now they just want you to think you are being treated.
All pain is psychological, which means it's all in your head. This means that painkillers are unnecessary, that it is simply the perception of your pain that needs to be managed. If we can convince you that the pain from your car accident is purely psychological, that your leprosy is purely mythological, that a severed hand is in fact whole, then we can convince you of anything. We can confound your mind, and have you spend your entire life on an assembly line, making products you can't afford to buy. We can tell you where to live, and what to think. When we convince you that your pain is simply some flaw of your own design, we own you. A master cares for his slaves as a father does for his children; that they serve him, never question him, and always know he is right.
Indeed. I thought one of the benefits of the plasma engine was the ability to send large payloads very slowly to a destination for almost peanuts, while astronauts could arrive there very quickly with almost nothing. The linch-pin is that you send the payloads a year or two before the astronauts launch, so they arrive at a similar date.
I have a silly question. Were those metal shavings there as a result of the astronauts' attempts to secure the bolt, or were they there due to improper cleaning before leaving the manufacturer's premises?
Indeed. I feel like this whenever the topic of education is brought up.
What do kids want? To be out playing, having fun with friends, enjoying life. What do parents want? The kids to be learned enough to live on their own. What do educators want? A paycheck and a submissive student body.
You've tried lengthening and shortening the school year to compensate for lower test scores (and everyone hates being in class during the month of June; the heat is tremendous, and it's almost worth calling in a bomb threat just to have a day off), You've tried tweaking the tests to more accurately reflect students' learning. You've tried parent-teacher conferences. You've tried cutting teacher's salaries and increasing them. You've tried changing the teaching methods. You have Montessori schools and Play schools. You've employed off-duty police as security guards to make sure the students are in their classrooms as the appointed times. You've tried using fear, fear of the known and unknown, to motivate kids to learn, because the life you're living is similar to the one they will be living. You've tried honours classes, and you've tried remedial classes. None of it seems to work, does it? Every attempt to increase the yield of better learned students seems to make things worse.
I am here to tell you that you don't know what you want. Could children be taught subjects like Calculus, Physics, and Advanced Humanities at grade 5? Yes, but you have a plan, or someone does, which requires the workforce to maintain a certain number of people; is that not the rally cry these days, why don't the older ones retire, so the younger ones can give it a try? If you created an army of PhD candidates by grade 8, where would all the jobs go for the former generations? Face it guys, this is all social engineering gone awry. You can't have your cake and eat it. You can't have super-intelligent kids at a young age without having to change how things work, but in doing so, everyone older loses out on their 'shares' in the way things are. They're too old to change, to adapt, too unwilling, and doing so means they 'lose' everything. So, make up your minds. Do you want Doctoral candidates by grade 8, or do you want a slightly idiotic workforce that is still maturing well into their 50s? Lengthening or shortening their summers won't do much here, save the students enjoying themselves or growing up to be terribly dull.
Are you giving birth to sentient beings, who have the rights and privileges to be whomever they want to be, or are you putting out a product, for future consumption by some terrible beings? I will play the game however you want to play it. Idiots or geniuses, the choice is yours.
Wonderful ethical question, but if the human race is known for anything, its the non-subscription to the magazine which ponders over such things.
Someone will attempt to bring them back, now argue about how it should be done.
1.) Any species we bring back is going to share the Earth with us for the foreseeable future. 2.) Humans tend not to mix well with other species unless it's already fairly capable on its own. That's why rats, cats, and dogs thrive, while wolves, various forms of trout, and spotted owls are getting kicked in the teeth. 3.) Chances are they will end up in a zoo. That sucks. Safe for human beings, ease of observation, but it's like never being able to move out of your parent's house. 4.) We have no idea if they can even eat / process the food currently available. Bringing back the equivalent of the panda bear or koala might be great for entertainment, but we know nothing about their habits. 5.) The only species we are likely to bring back are those which we consider 'interesting.' So the slug-like Macedonian newt, which squirts pus out of its eyes, probably isn't going to make it (made up species).
If we really want to bring them back, it's going to require like a dozen Earths, one for every few hundred million years. We only have one at the moment. Perhaps we should wait until time-travel is in vogue, thus saving us a lot of work.
That's easy. To find someone capable, conduct a trial by fire, and choose the highest scoring candidate after two weeks.
That means giving them the net admin challenge. Tell them you need two servers, and 5 clients, all using slightly different hardware configurations, up and running after 3 hours, with DNS, DHCP, a Domain Controller / Active Directory, and a forward-facing website. Hand them the hardware, OS discs, and a laptop with Windows already running on it with a working internet connection and an 8GB USB thumb drive. Leave a small spindle of CDs / DVDs (no more than ten of each) in case they need to burn something. Come back in 3 hours, check if you can log onto the domain from a client machine, if you can get on the internet, and if the website can be seen from your cellphone. 1 point for each, 3 points total.
Take away some points / part of one according to their design. For instance, those machines need to be patched to the latest Service Pack (at a minimum), as well as all the little patches in between. A idiot will install the OS on all machines, then try to patch it through Windows Update; it will still be downloading patches when you get back. A semi-reasonable tech will put it on a CD / thumb drive, and copy it onto each machine for an install after the OS. A net admin will slipstream it, and burn it onto several discs.
Time is money, and even when it isn't, the average net admin would rather be 1.) drinking, 2.) sleeping, 3.) working on a pet project (Exchange, rewritten in Ruby, IDK), or 4.) browsing/., reddit, or hacker-news. Or doing maintenance / replacing / retooling a machine, if he's short-handed.
Indeed. Jimmy had an amazing amount of energy; I'm jealous of him, at that age, displaying more energy than I currently have. Plus, all the backgrounds made me kind of sad I won't be visiting the various paradises any-time soon.
And yes, the booze was ridiculous. $14 for a guitar, $30 for a bottle of wine, $45 for a 'premium' bottle wine, ~$14 for a drink with two shots in it, more for a drink with two 'premium' shots in it, $6 for a red bull. For contrast, the wine & spirits shops down the road from me sells a very drinkable reitzling for ~$7.
I can only imagine that the markups must be something ridiculous (1000% profit over costs). Although I must admit that despite the venue being in Camden, NJ, it was nicer than the Mann center (Further); I feel like I am going to die every-time I visit there (the heat is unbelievable, and the food is just terrible). I remember buying a ~$5 power-ade at the Mann during the heat wave, realize it was warm (i.e. environmental temperature), asking for a cold one, and the concessionaire looks me straight in the eye and tells me that they have no cold ones left. So, I just bought a ~80-90 degree thirst-aide, because the Mann is too cheap to put a few extra freezers in, when it's the middle of summer, and we've been having 100-degree heat waves. Thanks guys. And the hot dog...Oh God....I think it died.
And it did not escape my notice that a bank had naming rights to the place in Camden. Not a good time, economically speaking, to have your bank associated with such frightful gouging of customers. Gah, even Regal has gotten smart about the insane pricing of food, and has been offering free popcorn / drinks / candy as of late. Going out to the movies, for two, it's now around $40, while attending a concert (not on the lawn) is around $200-300 for tickets, plus $30 if you and a friend only have one drink each. My wallet is, heaven help me, safer in a casino than these venues.
Actually, I think the larger problem here is that by the time a patent is granted, tech has already disregarded or adopted the material as a standard.
It's all said and good for pharmaceuticals who can use those ~5 years (best case scenario) to work on FDA approval (I imagine the generics won't touch a new drug until the FDA approves it anyways, as they can't take the hit if the FDA doesn't approve it -> lawsuits against low-margin companies can hurt), but the tech sector, when it's running full tilt, completes a revolution in ~18 months. I'm going to make a possibly falsifiable statement here, and say no other industry moves as fast as tech (not that anyone ask it to slow down, the constant stream of improvements are awesome).
But then, the USPTO has been in hell for a while. Congress's buttery fingers really botched the income flow when they (the USPTO) needed it. I swear, this government is like a teenage child sometimes; "I didn't know that diverting income / energy from various systems to other systems would have a definable impact." Gah! It's like that time I found my younger (tech wannabe, no training or understanding, just randomly plugs shit in, relies on presets to work the magic) brother playing with my fabulous home-wired network, and wanted to (get this) improve on the Gig-E throughput by making everything 'wireless.' That's right, he futzed with the switches (still missing an adapter), and starting throwing AirPort Express wireless shit everywhere. He also ripped out my hardware firewall, and replaced it with a $100 Costco POS, which dropped the connection every-time traffic went over a certain amount. Between him, one of his idiot friends who apparently lied and said I was purposefully blocking a Mac from working on the network (I was away at the time, and like any non-retarded person, changed the password to something secure; instead of contacting me, the imbeciles reset the firewall (also resets the password to the default), blowing away my configuration, and somehow configuring it to a different network (IDFK); I came back to find my network throwing up errors everywhere, but they thought it was cool because the Mac worked now; the Mac, which was connecting wirelessly, on the wrong part of the house (magically started working when they moved it to where it could receive a signal), and which also suffers from a bug whereby the IP address is not refreshed when coming out of suspend / hibernate mode; might I also add, that since these clueless morons seem to think Macs magically 'just work,' any-time there is a problem with their internet connection, they think it must be my hardware. That, and the wonderous cable contractor that they hired to put in a few new panels, apparently bitched about the job I and another contractor did before them; MoG, I studied the god damn Ethernet spec, got drilled on it, tested, know more about it than some cable jockey, and while it may not have been 'in spec' as they teach in your 30-minute employee video, it's well within mine; that's right, knowing the spec, and what you're doing, allow you to do what you want with it, including the magic of sending information of barbwire if need be (I used Cat-5 for my install, but you get the point). Bitch-ass cable jockey probably doesn't even know what a vampire tap is, probably confuse a Thickwire segment for a TV cable.
If murder were legal...and yes, I've tried to secure the comms room.
+10 for being pedantic (the best kind of correct, technically correct), -1000 for knowing exactly what I was groping for, but choosing to be pedantic.
Just got back from a late-night concert, and my head hasn't stopped pounding yet (and there is some question of sobriety -> Jimmy Buffet with margaritas). Besides, and I am summoning my inner BOFH here, who teh f*ck would run OpenCl code on a CPU? I've tried, and the only thing I've succeeded in doing is giving my laptop a grand mal seizure.
And no one sane does video-transcoding on a 7-year old machine. No, no, just don't go there.
And ponying up an extra $500 on top of the regular CPU going rate ($200-300) for a new chip, from Intel, when a $150 four-generation displaced video card could / would spank it is a thought not even worth considering. But I digress, someone out there will decide that running a video transcoder, on a non-upgradeable laptop (which they will pay way too much money for this chip), with Intel HD integrated graphics (does it even support OpenCl? Is it still a separate chipset, or has it been integrated on-die?), and absolutely need this feature; they will also probably save the processed video onto a 4,000 RPM USB-1 portable value hard drive.
Comments subject to revision if / when I wake up tomorrow, and shake off that last of this Tequila. I think it's Tequila.
Slashdot Mirror
Indeed. The logos / emblems that some clothes manufacturers put on their products are borderline deal breakers.
Why? Here's an example: La Coste, the alligator shirt people, typically have a sewn on emblem. And the emblem's stitching irritates / rubs against my skin on a hot, sweaty day. I had a green polo from them a few years ago that, combined with a lack of fabric softener, made it an almost unbearable hell to wear. It's also the reason I avoid clothing these days from them.
Indeed. Shills tend to use vague wording that plays up the awesomeness of the product while not answering any of the important deal or no deal questions that determine whether it's worth buying the product. Why? Because they don't use the product, so they aren't aware of its faults.
I guess since I'm a tech, I tend to weigh the negative reviews more highly than the positive ones. Reviewers are more likely to express product defects in a customer review, which normally are suppressed by the manufacturer / marketing. As such, 10 positive reviews roughly weigh one negative review, and I don't count the 'fail-negative' reviews that some shills put up to try and steer things ("It is an okay product, I wish it could slice bread, but it's still worth buying!").
Technically, yes, but the proponents of various environmental reform packages have almost a 'religion' when it comes to changing things.
It goes like this:
Mankind is contributing to the increase of temperature of the planet Earth -> this is a problem -> this is a problem that must be dealt with -> this is a problem that must be dealt with by the highest powers -> the solution demands that every atom of carbon placed into the atmosphere be meticulously recorded somewhere to see if humanity is at fault -> if humanity is at fault, they must pay, in one form or another, for the excess carbon -> the people of your country get a shiny new tax, a buttload of propaganda telling them how they are being saved from themselves, and the various corrupt officials / business leaders in on the scheme get a new yacht, while the green police gun down people in the street for littering -> the various countries realize that the only way to ensure, in an obsessed way, that corrupt officials / business types don't skirt the law is to run the factories / businesses themselves -> the countries nationalize their native companies -> corruption continues at an a greater rate, while people are starving in the streets, because they can't carbon-free food.
As with all laws, you can find the truth by taking them to their logical extremes. That is, their LOGICAL extremes, not just to their extremes. Satire works in a similar manner.
Look, it's 2012, and the psychologists are kind of scraping the bottom of the barrel of their discipline to justify their grants / subsidies; it was this, or another 'study' on how some of your food is probably giving you cancer / AIDS.
On another note, I have yet to encounter a psychologist who would describe themselves in any way, shape, or form as a capitalist. Perhaps they are simply too enlightened to fall into the traps that the common man does, or perhaps there is simply an institutional bias.
And criminals tend to be the people most vocal about the failings of the legal system. It must be because it gives them a sense of self-worth, to think that they were wronged somehow, when we all know that the legal system has never sent an innocent man to his death, let alone imprisoned / convicted others with faulty information. It's weird, because some of these criminals are just so far beyond society's help, that they simply cannot recognize their crimes, even when all evidence points to them being innocent.
If you're going to do full-retard meta-logic / navel-gazing psychological profiles, at least understand what you are talking about.
Indeed. Science is run by cut-throat individuals and groups who are constantly trying to prove that another individual or group is a fraud. It's not nice, contrary to what you see on a college campus, and not every controversy is resolved with a hand-shake and a smile (more along the lines of publicly declaring that you wish the other person dead, and may hasten the process).
What you see here is pure intellectual laziness and whining; "Oh, the experiment takes too long to rerun to verify the data!" or "This person is trustworthy, I don't need to double-check the results, because it's not like they could do something silly (since they are apparently not human) like drop a decimal point somewhere; surely the science journal editors of prestigious blah and blah would catch any errors before publishing."
I'm going to be honest with you. I have a mean streak in me, and if I had reason to believe that someone double-checking my work was becoming lax, I'd start introducing errors to catch them in the act.
Dude, give up while you can. You're dealing with a person who's entire lifestyle revolves around the 'wisdom of the crowds.'
Because Somalia is supposed to how somehow be indicative of real capitalism somehow?
Tell you what, find Somalia for me on this globe. I'll give you a hint, it's not the large, snow-covered land mass at the bottom of this sphere.
They were proud to own USA manufactured items when they were the best, or among the best, not because of some witless attempt to appeal to a citizen's 'patriotism.'
I ask you, are American products so terrible that they cannot outclass the creations of other countries? Are they not of such an enlightened design that other countries would choose ours over theirs, even when our own receive no subsidies or state assistance, and theirs has the advantage of home turf? Is a little tag with an American flag on it, and a premium price, all that we have to offer?
Where has that ingenuity that we've heard so much about gone?
Got the video right here.
At least, I think that's the video you are looking for.
Took me a moment, then I started looking for the Onion's logo (still satire, but a different site). Oddly enough, the story does bear a superficial resemblance.
Yes, because crackers / hackers, in general, break into large accounting firms, and (this is the kicker) instead of quietly modifying the servers to send large payments to an account outside of the country, they steal the tax returns of a presidential candidate, and publicly black-mail him. Because they're the kind of people who would turn down a few tens of millions of dollars (or more) since they are apparently so bad at Math, so they could get a million from a guy who is going to have a bee in his bonnet his entire term (if elected) about the damn incident, oh yeah, and have the Secret Service on his ass (which even for the 31337, isn't something you want unless you really, desperately have absolutely no other choice in the matter). And they certainly don't have an entire culture built around operational security, trusting no one, and keeping things quiet in general.
Say what you like, but the FBI was watching Hemingway.
Possible, but I am thinking this is actually part of a larger ploy.
Since anyone of even a modicum of technological capability, who actually uses BitCoins, knows that they are somewhat traceable, I wonder why someone would demand such an outlandish sum in them. Let's see here...we have the key words BitCoins, hackers, and all of it tied to a presidential election.
We all know that for the last several months, the press has been falling over themselves to paint BitCoins in the darkest light possible, playing up every rumoured instanced of malfeasance even remotely tied to them. We also know that the military, for lack of enemies, has recently decided that their next shipment of bread and butter will have to come from the 'cyber-crime' division, and that they are desperate to find a playmate, domestic or otherwise, to justify the purchase orders already signed and dated, in top brass's top drawers. And seeing how the BitCoin community has been relatively effective in educating people with regards to the f*cked up claims the press loves to make, perhaps someone decided to take it to the next level. By launching an attack on a presidential campaign, you are guaranteed coverage in the press, at decibel levels well above the normal white noise; you also guarantee that the attacked opponent will respond with a calculated defence (denial, followed by revenge if / when elected), with the added bonus that since you went after a minor but incredibly irritating election issue (his tax returns, and it is), he will take it personally. If he is elected, he will willingly sign any law that mentions this incident and 'justice'; if he loses, the other guy will do the same, as he doesn't like the idea of what happened to his opponent possibly happening to him or his friends. It's the equivalent of a Morton's fork, where the tech industry is damned if they do, damned if they don't. The military gets paid either way, though they won't be invited to any tech parties for a few years.
Hackers (unknown enemy, up there with the boogey-man these days, hiding under your bed and in your computer, going to get you), BitCoins (another unknown, a 'competing' currency to the US dollar, so it's 'patriotic' to be against it; plus 'hackers' and drug dealers use it, unlike the US Dollar, so it must be bad), and a presidential election (when politicians make a black list, and begin adding names).
The best part is, even if the hackers are arrested, we may never get the people behind it all. Sounds a little conspiracy-ish, but it is in the CIA handbook, that you 'groom' someone else to do the dirty work, then get rid of them.
Sadly, that is the direction that we're heading in.
See, cures for illnesses were too expensive; so we went with just treating them.
Then treating them was too expensive, so now they just want you to think you are being treated.
All pain is psychological, which means it's all in your head. This means that painkillers are unnecessary, that it is simply the perception of your pain that needs to be managed. If we can convince you that the pain from your car accident is purely psychological, that your leprosy is purely mythological, that a severed hand is in fact whole, then we can convince you of anything. We can confound your mind, and have you spend your entire life on an assembly line, making products you can't afford to buy. We can tell you where to live, and what to think. When we convince you that your pain is simply some flaw of your own design, we own you. A master cares for his slaves as a father does for his children; that they serve him, never question him, and always know he is right.
Indeed. I thought one of the benefits of the plasma engine was the ability to send large payloads very slowly to a destination for almost peanuts, while astronauts could arrive there very quickly with almost nothing. The linch-pin is that you send the payloads a year or two before the astronauts launch, so they arrive at a similar date.
I have a silly question. Were those metal shavings there as a result of the astronauts' attempts to secure the bolt, or were they there due to improper cleaning before leaving the manufacturer's premises?
So, still haven't licked that optical chip problem yet?
Indeed. I feel like this whenever the topic of education is brought up.
What do kids want? To be out playing, having fun with friends, enjoying life.
What do parents want? The kids to be learned enough to live on their own.
What do educators want? A paycheck and a submissive student body.
You've tried lengthening and shortening the school year to compensate for lower test scores (and everyone hates being in class during the month of June; the heat is tremendous, and it's almost worth calling in a bomb threat just to have a day off), You've tried tweaking the tests to more accurately reflect students' learning. You've tried parent-teacher conferences. You've tried cutting teacher's salaries and increasing them. You've tried changing the teaching methods. You have Montessori schools and Play schools. You've employed off-duty police as security guards to make sure the students are in their classrooms as the appointed times. You've tried using fear, fear of the known and unknown, to motivate kids to learn, because the life you're living is similar to the one they will be living. You've tried honours classes, and you've tried remedial classes. None of it seems to work, does it? Every attempt to increase the yield of better learned students seems to make things worse.
I am here to tell you that you don't know what you want. Could children be taught subjects like Calculus, Physics, and Advanced Humanities at grade 5? Yes, but you have a plan, or someone does, which requires the workforce to maintain a certain number of people; is that not the rally cry these days, why don't the older ones retire, so the younger ones can give it a try? If you created an army of PhD candidates by grade 8, where would all the jobs go for the former generations? Face it guys, this is all social engineering gone awry. You can't have your cake and eat it. You can't have super-intelligent kids at a young age without having to change how things work, but in doing so, everyone older loses out on their 'shares' in the way things are. They're too old to change, to adapt, too unwilling, and doing so means they 'lose' everything. So, make up your minds. Do you want Doctoral candidates by grade 8, or do you want a slightly idiotic workforce that is still maturing well into their 50s? Lengthening or shortening their summers won't do much here, save the students enjoying themselves or growing up to be terribly dull.
Are you giving birth to sentient beings, who have the rights and privileges to be whomever they want to be, or are you putting out a product, for future consumption by some terrible beings? I will play the game however you want to play it. Idiots or geniuses, the choice is yours.
Normally, yes, but you are forgetting some of the nasty rules that these types have cooked up. So, yes, complain away.
How about lipids? Putting some soap around the threads of the bolt should help a stubborn bolt screw in.
They do have soap in space, right? Bar soap would be recommended.
Wonderful ethical question, but if the human race is known for anything, its the non-subscription to the magazine which ponders over such things.
Someone will attempt to bring them back, now argue about how it should be done.
1.) Any species we bring back is going to share the Earth with us for the foreseeable future.
2.) Humans tend not to mix well with other species unless it's already fairly capable on its own. That's why rats, cats, and dogs thrive, while wolves, various forms of trout, and spotted owls are getting kicked in the teeth.
3.) Chances are they will end up in a zoo. That sucks. Safe for human beings, ease of observation, but it's like never being able to move out of your parent's house.
4.) We have no idea if they can even eat / process the food currently available. Bringing back the equivalent of the panda bear or koala might be great for entertainment, but we know nothing about their habits.
5.) The only species we are likely to bring back are those which we consider 'interesting.' So the slug-like Macedonian newt, which squirts pus out of its eyes, probably isn't going to make it (made up species).
If we really want to bring them back, it's going to require like a dozen Earths, one for every few hundred million years. We only have one at the moment. Perhaps we should wait until time-travel is in vogue, thus saving us a lot of work.
That's easy. To find someone capable, conduct a trial by fire, and choose the highest scoring candidate after two weeks.
That means giving them the net admin challenge. Tell them you need two servers, and 5 clients, all using slightly different hardware configurations, up and running after 3 hours, with DNS, DHCP, a Domain Controller / Active Directory, and a forward-facing website. Hand them the hardware, OS discs, and a laptop with Windows already running on it with a working internet connection and an 8GB USB thumb drive. Leave a small spindle of CDs / DVDs (no more than ten of each) in case they need to burn something. Come back in 3 hours, check if you can log onto the domain from a client machine, if you can get on the internet, and if the website can be seen from your cellphone. 1 point for each, 3 points total.
Take away some points / part of one according to their design. For instance, those machines need to be patched to the latest Service Pack (at a minimum), as well as all the little patches in between. A idiot will install the OS on all machines, then try to patch it through Windows Update; it will still be downloading patches when you get back. A semi-reasonable tech will put it on a CD / thumb drive, and copy it onto each machine for an install after the OS. A net admin will slipstream it, and burn it onto several discs.
Time is money, and even when it isn't, the average net admin would rather be 1.) drinking, 2.) sleeping, 3.) working on a pet project (Exchange, rewritten in Ruby, IDK), or 4.) browsing /., reddit, or hacker-news. Or doing maintenance / replacing / retooling a machine, if he's short-handed.
Indeed. Jimmy had an amazing amount of energy; I'm jealous of him, at that age, displaying more energy than I currently have. Plus, all the backgrounds made me kind of sad I won't be visiting the various paradises any-time soon.
And yes, the booze was ridiculous. $14 for a guitar, $30 for a bottle of wine, $45 for a 'premium' bottle wine, ~$14 for a drink with two shots in it, more for a drink with two 'premium' shots in it, $6 for a red bull. For contrast, the wine & spirits shops down the road from me sells a very drinkable reitzling for ~$7.
I can only imagine that the markups must be something ridiculous (1000% profit over costs). Although I must admit that despite the venue being in Camden, NJ, it was nicer than the Mann center (Further); I feel like I am going to die every-time I visit there (the heat is unbelievable, and the food is just terrible). I remember buying a ~$5 power-ade at the Mann during the heat wave, realize it was warm (i.e. environmental temperature), asking for a cold one, and the concessionaire looks me straight in the eye and tells me that they have no cold ones left. So, I just bought a ~80-90 degree thirst-aide, because the Mann is too cheap to put a few extra freezers in, when it's the middle of summer, and we've been having 100-degree heat waves. Thanks guys. And the hot dog...Oh God....I think it died.
And it did not escape my notice that a bank had naming rights to the place in Camden. Not a good time, economically speaking, to have your bank associated with such frightful gouging of customers. Gah, even Regal has gotten smart about the insane pricing of food, and has been offering free popcorn / drinks / candy as of late. Going out to the movies, for two, it's now around $40, while attending a concert (not on the lawn) is around $200-300 for tickets, plus $30 if you and a friend only have one drink each. My wallet is, heaven help me, safer in a casino than these venues.
Actually, I think the larger problem here is that by the time a patent is granted, tech has already disregarded or adopted the material as a standard.
It's all said and good for pharmaceuticals who can use those ~5 years (best case scenario) to work on FDA approval (I imagine the generics won't touch a new drug until the FDA approves it anyways, as they can't take the hit if the FDA doesn't approve it -> lawsuits against low-margin companies can hurt), but the tech sector, when it's running full tilt, completes a revolution in ~18 months. I'm going to make a possibly falsifiable statement here, and say no other industry moves as fast as tech (not that anyone ask it to slow down, the constant stream of improvements are awesome).
But then, the USPTO has been in hell for a while. Congress's buttery fingers really botched the income flow when they (the USPTO) needed it. I swear, this government is like a teenage child sometimes; "I didn't know that diverting income / energy from various systems to other systems would have a definable impact." Gah! It's like that time I found my younger (tech wannabe, no training or understanding, just randomly plugs shit in, relies on presets to work the magic) brother playing with my fabulous home-wired network, and wanted to (get this) improve on the Gig-E throughput by making everything 'wireless.' That's right, he futzed with the switches (still missing an adapter), and starting throwing AirPort Express wireless shit everywhere. He also ripped out my hardware firewall, and replaced it with a $100 Costco POS, which dropped the connection every-time traffic went over a certain amount. Between him, one of his idiot friends who apparently lied and said I was purposefully blocking a Mac from working on the network (I was away at the time, and like any non-retarded person, changed the password to something secure; instead of contacting me, the imbeciles reset the firewall (also resets the password to the default), blowing away my configuration, and somehow configuring it to a different network (IDFK); I came back to find my network throwing up errors everywhere, but they thought it was cool because the Mac worked now; the Mac, which was connecting wirelessly, on the wrong part of the house (magically started working when they moved it to where it could receive a signal), and which also suffers from a bug whereby the IP address is not refreshed when coming out of suspend / hibernate mode; might I also add, that since these clueless morons seem to think Macs magically 'just work,' any-time there is a problem with their internet connection, they think it must be my hardware. That, and the wonderous cable contractor that they hired to put in a few new panels, apparently bitched about the job I and another contractor did before them; MoG, I studied the god damn Ethernet spec, got drilled on it, tested, know more about it than some cable jockey, and while it may not have been 'in spec' as they teach in your 30-minute employee video, it's well within mine; that's right, knowing the spec, and what you're doing, allow you to do what you want with it, including the magic of sending information of barbwire if need be (I used Cat-5 for my install, but you get the point). Bitch-ass cable jockey probably doesn't even know what a vampire tap is, probably confuse a Thickwire segment for a TV cable.
If murder were legal...and yes, I've tried to secure the comms room.
+10 for being pedantic (the best kind of correct, technically correct), -1000 for knowing exactly what I was groping for, but choosing to be pedantic.
Just got back from a late-night concert, and my head hasn't stopped pounding yet (and there is some question of sobriety -> Jimmy Buffet with margaritas). Besides, and I am summoning my inner BOFH here, who teh f*ck would run OpenCl code on a CPU? I've tried, and the only thing I've succeeded in doing is giving my laptop a grand mal seizure.
And no one sane does video-transcoding on a 7-year old machine. No, no, just don't go there.
And ponying up an extra $500 on top of the regular CPU going rate ($200-300) for a new chip, from Intel, when a $150 four-generation displaced video card could / would spank it is a thought not even worth considering. But I digress, someone out there will decide that running a video transcoder, on a non-upgradeable laptop (which they will pay way too much money for this chip), with Intel HD integrated graphics (does it even support OpenCl? Is it still a separate chipset, or has it been integrated on-die?), and absolutely need this feature; they will also probably save the processed video onto a 4,000 RPM USB-1 portable value hard drive.
Comments subject to revision if / when I wake up tomorrow, and shake off that last of this Tequila. I think it's Tequila.