Exactly how would a National ID Card make people safer?
Because criminals of the Hannibal Lector type would have to carve your face and finger tips off to pass off as you! Therefore you're more... uh.. safe.
WASHINGTON, DC (SD-NFN:YRO) Secretary Michael Chertoff, head of the Department Homeland Security has announced that beginning in 2006 US citizens will be
required to carry around an ID carrying french citizen for positive identification. "If the french citizen is male, they must be wearing a beret, if female they must
attempt to look as much like Audrey Hepburn as possible."
Civil rights groups have been on watch, expecting a move by Homeland Security, requiring americans to posess biometric or
more detailed identification, voicing concern of violation of constitutional rights. Elizabeth Rall, speaking for the ACLU stated this clearly would present a problem as there are more
american citizens than french and require rationing. "Ms. Ralls concerns as just more bleeding heart liberal whining", retorted embattled House Majority Leader, Tom DeLay, "this is for the good of
all americans and their personal safety."
The State Department will shortly be convening a task force for the partition of France to breed more identity carriers. The Whitehouse welcomed this
unexpected help from the french who strongly sided against the invasion of Iraq. "It's the least they can do for America", said White House press secretary Scott McClellan. Experts expect the french Biometric chip to resemble former
french president Charles de Gaul, while an american counterpart, expected on the within 10 years will resemble former US president Ronald Reagan.
You know what's really scary? When you fall asleep and find yourself playing the game in your dreams!
I've done that with Tetris, Bejewelled, Doom and Counter-Strike, so obviously a mark of quality.
Been there, done that. The mind replays a lot of what has been recently burned into it. In college I remember one dream, after a marathon session of euchre, where I had all four jacks and a nine. I've been euchred on such in the past, so it was kind of a nightmare.
there are three traits that are likely to make an application popular: it is cool or attractive in some way, it provides easy entry, and it is addictive.
Ah. It makes sense now...
MS Office Opium
MS Office Morphine, to help you break your addiction to MS Office Opium
MS Office Heroin, to help you break your addiction to MS Office Morphine
Clearly businesses do have alternatives, we just didn't know the code names.
next up: MS Office Crack, soon to be followed by Out-Of-Money and switching to Open Office to break the cycle.
Sounds more like video games, as they can be very addictive, but I don't ever recall lying awake
at night, with the shakes, because it's been 36 hours since my last hit of Excel.
Easy entry, I'd assume means
easy to access the application and use it, getting desired results with a minimum of fuss. I can't say this
is exclusive to proprietary software, because some highly successful packages have very steep learning curves
and can vary from version to version in ways which can be maddening. (I recently replaced a several step process
for producing lists with a one-button application and the end-user was alarmed because the page count didn't match
what they expected. Well, I added an extra item per page because I had space, guess I should have explained that one, eh? But
it completely bypassed the need for Office Tools, which were a large source of frustration in a frequently run process.)
Reliability seems to be overrated, however, as I've seen any number of vendor packages blow up, and an IT manager simply
say, "well let me know when you get it fixed" Even when it's a desktop app that several users may be using (and man, will they whine
when they lose even a minutes work!)
Perhaps what proprietary software is best at is concealing easter eggs.
Enron, World Con^Hm, big tobacco were hiding dirty business. Apple was trying to keep a new product under wraps until scheduled announcement. These are, um, apples and oranges.
What do expect from newpapers, clear, unbiased, and accurate information?
I wouldn't expect them to endorse industrial espionage.
Enron, World Con^Hm, big tobacco were hiding dirty business. Apple was trying to keep a new product under wraps until scheduled announcement. These are, um, apples and oranges.
But just how safe and secure will these new automated lines be? The radio links that provide data communication between the trains and the control center are encrypted, but how long until a hacker manages to crack it?"
Worry more about the failsafes. Are they independent systems, or would a single point of failure allow to trains to attempt to pass through each other? A good failsafe system should keep passengers safe from accident even if some cracker gets in.
Hopefully it won't be a matter of life and death because some programmer who actually worked on the system suffered a brain-fart and assumed 1 based instead of 0.
As for the 20 year estimate, that sounds more the result of negotiations with the transit workers union than ability to get things switch over. You know City Hall, when it comes to a budget, they suddenly know the value of each penny and would switch
the whole thing over in a couple years, tops.
On the subject of anniversaries... 2005 will be the 50th of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
I once saw a fly racing competition where the contestants must get their flies to weave through a course.
They used water pistols filled with fruit juice. Flies' response time was slow but accuracy was extremely high.
If you're not watching it anymore than how would you be able riff negatively about it so well.
I don't have cable, which is not the same as saying, "I don't watch it." I still catch it here and there, at friends or at the pub or elsewhere.
I remember when it used to be nothing but videos, then they added a show here and there, including Bevis and Butthead, next thing I knew there were only videos in blocks of a few hours and those hours got shorter and shorter... until it wasn't music anymore. Now it's not just shows, but shows which are about as interesting as regular network TV. Funny how they gravitate back to that, no matter what the original theme of a cable channel was.
I was contemplating the other day that if the control systems of Vi and Emacs were crossed, you'd end up with something a lot like Nethack. Heck, half the challenge of the game is learning all the commands!
I found it took weeks to get the Amulet of Yendor out of the dungeon in NetHack. I imagine it takes a bit less time to get it out of Emacs.
The clever golgafrinchans who stayed behind were wiped out by a disease caught from an
unsanitary telephone. Does this study suggest we're on a similar path (unless we begin training
keyboard sanitizers) or is it possible they are helping keep out immune systems regularly tested
by the evils which lurk beneath the h, j, k and l keys.
Makes me want to go buy an airplane/auto salvage yard and Ebay off parts as "possible relics of the Soviet space program" which "may possibly" have crash landed in Bumfluck, Nebraska.
How about that guy in Florida, years ago (IIRC) who found a depleted uranium nose cone in his junk yard. He thought it made neat sparks when he hit it with a screw driver.
Be the govt would go ape-sh!t if something like that moved through the mail.
Mr Beasely: "Your package sure is heavy, Dagwood, what's in it?"
Dagwood: "About 20 pounds of uranium."
The one in the last sentence of that excerpt you pasted.
That's why I pasted it. It wasn't mentioned except in passing in the post and wasn't in any of the immediate links, so I went digging for information on it -- which led me to the DoJ site, which would have been better linked to the post.
'Mr. Ary, on behalf of the Cosmosphere, continued to sign documents reporting and verifying to NASA that the watch was still in its possession and collection,' said U.S. Attorney Eric Melgren.
What 'watch'?
The NASA Omega Mock-up Watch
38. Sometime prior to January of 2000, the exact date being unknown to the Grand
Jury, the Cosmosphere loaned several artifacts to a space exhibit in the Philippines. The
Cosmosphere became aware that some of these items were lost or damaged when some of
the items were returned on or about April 1998. The items loaned to the Philippine exhibit
included: a Shuttle In-flight garment, a Russian Soyuz Space Suit, American Space Food
(five packages), an Apollo Liquid Cooling garment, a Beta cloth stowage bag, an Omega
17
mock-up watch, an astronaut ink pen, a Gemini spacesuit, an Apollo In-flight garment.
39. The Omega astronaut watch was a mock-up watch that the Cosmosphere had
received pursuant to an exhibit loan agreement from NASA.
Sounds more like mismanagement, if it was still reported as present, yet missing or damaged.
Though a href="http://www.usdoj.gov/usao/ks/press/apr2005/a pril7a.html">this looks pretty damning and has more of the detail.
You know who watches the networks? All of AARP. You know who's in the target demographic for the XBOX2? Few members of AARP.
You might be closer to the truth then you think. Most people paying for Cable are probably AARP or close to it, meanwhile they have to buy XBoxes for their children/grandchildren who want one for Christmas/Birthday/Rightthisdamnminute
Video games all look really cool until someone breaks out the Tinker Toys....
'It doesn't make sense to unveil the product behind a closed door, at a trade-only event,' according to Microsoft corporate VP Peter Moore. 'We wanted to talk directly to the consumer first.'"
So they put it on a Pay-TV channel? Ok, maybe I'm the last person in the USA without cable. I'll just have to wait for the regular network commercials to tell me how cool this thing is that I don't really need, but will feel
strangely compelled to buy anyway.
The Rationale: "We'll introduce it on MTV because it worked for Bill Clinton."
Things to look forward to:
Blue Music Video of Death
Some unknown girl/guy in the special will eventually rise to stardom for no apparent reason than they look good and/or can dance and sing
Days^H^H^H^HHours after the first XBox 2 hits a store shelf before Linux is up and running on one
First worm to hit XBoxes, which will be virtually impossible to remove due to the closed nature ot the system
I know I will get slammed (again) for saying this, but education is overrated. Most people do not use the kind of knowledge taught in school on their actual jobs. A think a "Just in Time" education system would be more flexible. One could get certificates in requested specialties and topics. The idea that you jam a bunch of info into somebody's head when they are 15 and expect them to remember it all when they reach 30 is ridiculous.
Sounds like you understand very little of the reasons and methods of education. It's not so much about cramming stuff into your grey matter to pop up later on demand, but to train the mind for learning. Remember, human body and mind develop slowly for a long lifespan. Most education is actually training with increasing levels of cognitive exercise. Hopefully, too, somwhere along the way to adulthood the student will determine, from all they have been exposed to in the process, what they want to specialize in, which is where college takes over.
JIT education? Man... you really have no idea how hard it is to train/educate humans. Fine for unskilled labor, like ditch digging, but where are you going to get accountants, engineers, even auto mechanics these days without a long training process?
"Hi, I'll be your JIT trained surgeon, what is it I'm working on today?"
In my day, you had to get bitten by a mutant spider or become accidentally exposed to uranium to become a mutant. Do you have any idea how short lived mutant spiders are???
Everything handed to you on a gold plate, I tell ya...
Actually it was a bit inspired by Calvin & Hobbes, where Calvin wants to mutate and does something and says, "Ah, I can feel myself mutating already!"
Various other bits are from elsewhere, but the general inspiration comes from the fact that radiation in space could really be a danger to any procreation.
Slashdot Mirror
Because criminals of the Hannibal Lector type would have to carve your face and finger tips off to pass off as you! Therefore you're more ... uh .. safe.
that's the ticket, yeah...
Also known as suing your socks off in a defamation suit. Even if you're right, it'll cost ya.
Been there, done that. The mind replays a lot of what has been recently burned into it. In college I remember one dream, after a marathon session of euchre, where I had all four jacks and a nine. I've been euchred on such in the past, so it was kind of a nightmare.
Man. I sure have. I'm not addicted anymore, I've pretty much got that out of my system.
Now I'm addicted to suffering and ride a bicycle to prove it.
Ah. It makes sense now...
- MS Office Opium
- MS Office Morphine, to help you break your addiction to MS Office Opium
- MS Office Heroin, to help you break your addiction to MS Office Morphine
Clearly businesses do have alternatives, we just didn't know the code names.next up: MS Office Crack, soon to be followed by Out-Of-Money and switching to Open Office to break the cycle.
Sounds more like video games, as they can be very addictive, but I don't ever recall lying awake at night, with the shakes, because it's been 36 hours since my last hit of Excel.
Easy entry, I'd assume means easy to access the application and use it, getting desired results with a minimum of fuss. I can't say this is exclusive to proprietary software, because some highly successful packages have very steep learning curves and can vary from version to version in ways which can be maddening. (I recently replaced a several step process for producing lists with a one-button application and the end-user was alarmed because the page count didn't match what they expected. Well, I added an extra item per page because I had space, guess I should have explained that one, eh? But it completely bypassed the need for Office Tools, which were a large source of frustration in a frequently run process.)
Reliability seems to be overrated, however, as I've seen any number of vendor packages blow up, and an IT manager simply say, "well let me know when you get it fixed" Even when it's a desktop app that several users may be using (and man, will they whine when they lose even a minutes work!)
Perhaps what proprietary software is best at is concealing easter eggs.
I wouldn't expect them to endorse industrial espionage.
Enron, World Con^Hm, big tobacco were hiding dirty business. Apple was trying to keep a new product under wraps until scheduled announcement. These are, um, apples and oranges.
D'oh! Brain fart! Good thing I'm not a coder on the NYC Subway!
now to get back to my robotics for performing open heart surgery..
Worry more about the failsafes. Are they independent systems, or would a single point of failure allow to trains to attempt to pass through each other? A good failsafe system should keep passengers safe from accident even if some cracker gets in. Hopefully it won't be a matter of life and death because some programmer who actually worked on the system suffered a brain-fart and assumed 1 based instead of 0.
As for the 20 year estimate, that sounds more the result of negotiations with the transit workers union than ability to get things switch over. You know City Hall, when it comes to a budget, they suddenly know the value of each penny and would switch the whole thing over in a couple years, tops.
On the subject of anniversaries... 2005 will be the 50th of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
It's all fun and games unless it's your maggot!
I don't have cable, which is not the same as saying, "I don't watch it." I still catch it here and there, at friends or at the pub or elsewhere.
I remember when it used to be nothing but videos, then they added a show here and there, including Bevis and Butthead, next thing I knew there were only videos in blocks of a few hours and those hours got shorter and shorter... until it wasn't music anymore. Now it's not just shows, but shows which are about as interesting as regular network TV. Funny how they gravitate back to that, no matter what the original theme of a cable channel was.
IIRC (it's been years) I summoned a demon which ate the wizard then I turned it to stone.
I found it took weeks to get the Amulet of Yendor out of the dungeon in NetHack. I imagine it takes a bit less time to get it out of Emacs.
The clever golgafrinchans who stayed behind were wiped out by a disease caught from an unsanitary telephone. Does this study suggest we're on a similar path (unless we begin training keyboard sanitizers) or is it possible they are helping keep out immune systems regularly tested by the evils which lurk beneath the h, j, k and l keys.
How about that guy in Florida, years ago (IIRC) who found a depleted uranium nose cone in his junk yard. He thought it made neat sparks when he hit it with a screw driver.
Be the govt would go ape-sh!t if something like that moved through the mail.
Mr Beasely: "Your package sure is heavy, Dagwood, what's in it?"
Dagwood: "About 20 pounds of uranium."
That's why I pasted it. It wasn't mentioned except in passing in the post and wasn't in any of the immediate links, so I went digging for information on it -- which led me to the DoJ site, which would have been better linked to the post.
I'd personally like to thank the people who made sure the keyboard loses USB focus (or whatever it is) every few seconds and drops keystrokes.
What 'watch'?
Sounds more like mismanagement, if it was still reported as present, yet missing or damaged.
Though a href="http://www.usdoj.gov/usao/ks/press/apr2005/a pril7a.html">this looks pretty damning and has more of the detail.
You might be closer to the truth then you think. Most people paying for Cable are probably AARP or close to it, meanwhile they have to buy XBoxes for their children/grandchildren who want one for Christmas/Birthday/Rightthisdamnminute
Video games all look really cool until someone breaks out the Tinker Toys....
No, it'll be the yaXBox
to be followed by the XBoxeon and XBoxium
Wait, wait... Let me get this straight, there is MUSIC on MTV!? This must be like MTV Europe or something...
I heard a rumor that they were going to rename it Hip-Hop and Dumb Hotel Heiress Network.
I used to do my Econ homework with MTV on, now I can't stand the stuff (MTV, not Econ.)
So they put it on a Pay-TV channel? Ok, maybe I'm the last person in the USA without cable. I'll just have to wait for the regular network commercials to tell me how cool this thing is that I don't really need, but will feel strangely compelled to buy anyway.
The Rationale: "We'll introduce it on MTV because it worked for Bill Clinton."
Things to look forward to:
- Blue Music Video of Death
- Some unknown girl/guy in the special will eventually rise to stardom for no apparent reason than they look good and/or can dance and sing
- Days^H^H^H^HHours after the first XBox 2 hits a store shelf before Linux is up and running on one
- First worm to hit XBoxes, which will be virtually impossible to remove due to the closed nature ot the system
Remember when MTV was only about Music Videos?Sounds like you understand very little of the reasons and methods of education. It's not so much about cramming stuff into your grey matter to pop up later on demand, but to train the mind for learning. Remember, human body and mind develop slowly for a long lifespan. Most education is actually training with increasing levels of cognitive exercise. Hopefully, too, somwhere along the way to adulthood the student will determine, from all they have been exposed to in the process, what they want to specialize in, which is where college takes over.
JIT education? Man... you really have no idea how hard it is to train/educate humans. Fine for unskilled labor, like ditch digging, but where are you going to get accountants, engineers, even auto mechanics these days without a long training process?
"Hi, I'll be your JIT trained surgeon, what is it I'm working on today?"
Actually it was a bit inspired by Calvin & Hobbes, where Calvin wants to mutate and does something and says, "Ah, I can feel myself mutating already!"
Various other bits are from elsewhere, but the general inspiration comes from the fact that radiation in space could really be a danger to any procreation.