Honestly, the fact the I carry it in my pants pocket is what worries me the most--I'd like to have children some day... Honestly, you should look up the difference between ionizing and non-ionizing raiation.
Paragraph 2 of the Introduction starts with: "At the previous PIERS meeting in Cambridge, MASS, USA, 2006 we presented the design and methodology of an ongoing double-blind controlled laboratory study with the objective to estab-
lish whether RF during mobile phone use had any direct effects on:..." (emphasis added) Double blind just means they attempted to rule out any "subtle cues". The phrase in not a magic wand that makes all such potential cues vanish. Without a more detailed description of their methodology, them saying "double blind" only assures us that they're not complete morons.
They say they performed a "double blind controlled laboratory study" (2007 is a continuation of the 2006 work). That excludes all the possibilities you raise. Negative. That's an appeal to authority. It doesn't matter what "they say" they did. Only an enumeration of the steps taken to make the study double blind is enough to exclude anything. If they overlooked something subtle, yet perceptible, then they would still honestly think they were conducting it double-blind, even though the weren't. That is why the results of scientific studies aren't just taken on the studier's word, but based on the published details. Peer review and all that?
the quality of the picture was so high that you could see the every little unintentional gesture the actors made, every little imperfection in the props. Instead of suspending your disbelief, the format makes it painfully clear that your watching a bunch of dudes in costume recite lines. Yeah, I remember watching Star Wars Ep1 in one of the theaters that were using digital projectors. You could see the spirit gum holding on the fake hair at the edge of Liam Neeson's hairline.
I wouldn't be surprised if the GPS system is turned over to a civilian agency within the next 10 years. I would. A huge portion of the us military's guided munitions aresenal depends upon GPS for guidance. Just because the majority of accurate signal consumers are non-military doesn't suddenly make long-haired GS5 Joe Nosepicker at Dept of Commerce (or whatever) someone the brass hats at the Pentagon are going to trust to keep the system they fielded suitable for their needs.
I could name many; You think you can, anyway.
drive farm equipment in long boring straight lines. Already done, and it was done YEARS ago. WAAS enabled differential GPS allows much greater accuracy than your ass-pulled "3 meters" figure.
Avoid head-on train collisions. Given that trains run on fixed, sensor-equipped lines and have essentially solved the head-on collision problem a CENTURY AGO with signal lights. The trick is not acquiring the information that two trains are going to collide, but to get that message to someone who can do something about it. GPS does not improve over the current hardwired system in that regard.
Drive fuel delivery routes in combat zones. A valid application.
track hospital workers to determine hand washing habits, move warehouse bins from place to place, Vacuum / mop floors. Deliver inter-office mail. I am intrigued. How do you intend to get a clear line of sight on the GPS constellation indoors?
Come back when you actually know how GPS works, and what it's actually good for. Pulling crap out of your ass barely gets you 14% accuracy. The only thing worse than an ignorant man is an ignorant man that is convinced he's not.
just don't breed with someone that isnt part of your own race. Animals don't do it, why should people? The "racial" differences in humans are less than the differences between different breeds of dogs. Mixed-breed dogs are not only common, but they're generally healthier than purebred/inbred dogs. You want to create your own little genetic backwater and bring up all sorts of genetic deficiencies, like hemophilia in the old royal families of Europe, or Tay-Sachs among European jews? Well, that's just fine. You and all your cracker buddies can breed yourselves into decrepit worms. Just don't try to justify it scientifically.
Federalism implies some powers are left to the states. One area that is not is interstate trade. This is not an implied power. It's right there in black and white. The federal government gets to regulate what goods for commercial resale are moved from one state to another. You are correct, to a degree, but the Interstate Commerce Clause is one of the most horribly abused powers of the feds. The general intent initially was to keep states from having pissy little tariff wars between them, but the modern government has "rules lawyered" it into covering just about anything they want. Essentially, the only legitimate use in this case would be to pass a law forbidding the transport of incandescent bulbs across state lines. There's no rational interpretation of the ICC that gives the feds the right to forbid the manufacture and sale of such items within a single state. Of course, lack of any interstate actual relevant commerce doesn't stop the DEA from raiding state-legal cannabis clubs in California, so why should it stop them here?
I would think that making lending organizations tell borrowers the actual interest rate they are going to pay, how high that interest rate can go -- and that it is variable, not inflating appraisals, and that there is no escrow on taxes or insurance would be a good thing. You know - actually being honest with the consumer. You think they're not? Let me let you in on what's been going on. I recently moved to a new house. When it came time to sign the papers, the agent took me into another room alone, away from my family Agent: "you know, I can get you into this house with an interest only loan at HALF the monthly payment you're looking at right now, and with no money down."
Me: "What's the catch?"
Agent: "In three years, you're going to lose the house."
Buyers knew. The lenders knew. They're all fucking thieves. Fuck Countrywide, and fuck the losers who are upset that they can't continue to stay in that $600,000 house on a $900/mo payment. It's shit like that that made what should be $200K houses into $600K houses in the first place.
The effect would be mitigated if everyone would refrain from following other cars so closely.
Yeah.... I tried this for several weeks. Except everyone took the opportunity to sneak in front of me so they could play a game of changing lanes repeatedly to snake their way through traffic faster.
That is the problem. You can do what is best for the group, but then selfish individuals abuse that for their own gain which hurts the group more.. A better way to look at it is that it's a system which seeks equilibrium. Traffic density will tend to stay relatively even. Just like in nature, if you allow a "vacuum" to open up in front of you, the tendency will be for traffic to fill it. What these homespun amateur traffic engineer types like the GP poster fail to really understand is that you cannot change traffic density. "If enough people would just leave a larger space in front of them" is simply an unreasoned way of saying "if only there were fewer cars on the road". You can fit 5 ten foot cars with a 10 foot interval into 100 feet of lane. You can only fit 4 with a 15 foot interval. A larger interval between cars translates to fewer cars per 100 lane feet. That "extra" car has to go somewhere, and where it goes is into the previous 100 feet of lane. Multiply by the number of 100 foot segments of road in the jammed area...
There's just no way around it. Slowing down more carefully and "leaving a bigger gap" just cannot get around the fact that only so many cars can coexist on the roadway at a given speed, and the speed varies inversely with that number. When you cram 5 lanes of cars into 4 lanes, it will slow down. When you pour X number of cars per mile via onramps onto an already crowded roadway, it will slow down. It's really very, very simple. The specific optimums of traffic flow are quite complicated, but the basic "X is slower, Y is faster" isn't.
Does this mean now there's math to support this? Oh, please. Not that guy again. His site is a classic illustration of a failure to understand the complexities of scale. He starts off rather simply enough, illustrating how a single car can somewhat mitigate the "standing wave" effect (valid, to a point), but then goes on to assume such tactics can be effectively scaled up to fix larger traffic problems (not really valid). The example he gives, of two lanes merging to one is a perfect illustration of his failure to grasp scaling. The Animation on the left shows the bad "uncooperative" traffic, and the one on the right the good "cooperative" traffic.
"If only a few drivers will maintain large gaps during heavy traffic, then merging traffic is not forbidden, and the situation in the left-hand diagram can be prevented."
This is crap. If a roadway is carrying 1 car per 20 lane-feet (10 foot car, 10 foot space between), then increasing the space between the cars by (say) a cumulative 5 feet each by having one guy in ten leave a big space in front (his suggestion was even more), then that's one car for every 25 lane-feet. In other words, every 100 feet of lane is carrying only 4 cars instead of 5, a 20% reduction. Essentially what he's suggesting is that a reduction in traffic will cure traffic jams. Holy fucking cow! Stop the fucking presses!
To his minor credit, he does in the next paragraph acknowledge that this only works on very small, localized jams, but in doing so he's reduced his argument to:
If people would brake earlier and less heavily, then getting through small jams would be smoother, requiring less heavy braking
Wow. How insightful. Smoother traffic... runs smoother.
Adding a comment does not clear your mods if you post as Anonymous Coward. Yes it does, so long as you post anonymously by checking the "post anonymously" checkbox, rather than by logging out. Take a look at the moderation score on the GP post: "100% Informative"
Governments actually use tax dollars to subsidize parasites whose amazing contribution to humanity is to jump over a f**king pole. Outstanding. Hey, who modded the above "Troll"? Seriously, people act as if athletics are more than just a stupid pointless game. WHo cares if they cheat? None of it means a damn thing!
[1] Tangent: I read the memoirs of someone who served in the SEALs during the Vietnam War. He related an incident where his patrol was fitted with M-16s, silencers, and sub-sonic ammunition. They were shooting at a Vietnamese in a boat at short range, and the silenced 5.56mm just bounced off the guy's clothing, because that round relies mainly on velocity for its power. I have fired Special Forces issued silenced M-4's (short barrel M-16) on several occasions*. I know for a fact noise-suppressed subsonic 5.56mm ammo will easily penetrate 3/4" plywood. You should always take the stories of former spec-ops guys with a grain of salt. Most of them don't say much of anything, but you'll occasionally find one that is "loud of mouth". The fact that special operations are usually classified and hard to fact check makes it very easy for those fellows to embellish. They repeat their own stories a little bigger, they add in the stories of others as their own--- many of them embellished third-hand stories already. As time goes on, you end up with more and more guys who (for example) were SEAL trained but never were assigned to a SEAL team telling believable but "factually challenged" war stories. Many of them even write "autobiographies" and the publishers don't care because a well-written war story is always a good seller. Suffice to say that anyone claiming subsonic 5.56mm rounds bounced off clothing at short range without some sort of extenuating circumstances, has never actually fired 5.56mm subsonic ammo. He may have been a SEAL, and he may even be a SEAL combat vet, but that story is a definite "stretcher".
* I was not a spec-ops guy. I was a simple intelligence guy in an infantry division. I merely had the good fortune to spend several weeks in garrison in Afghanistan with some very helpful Special Forces guys who offered to teach me some Pashto.
If voting were limited once again to landowners (or real estate), people who are educated enough to have and keep a home, things would turn around pretty quick for the better. Maybe, or maybe we'd see a sort of tyranny of the landed gentry. What is the definition of a "landowner"? Does one need to live on the land? Does it need to be a certain minimum size? Back when the constitution was drafted, becoming a landowner was a fairly simple process: 1) go to frontier. 2) clear some land, 3) live on it. This was hard enough that it was only available to responsible folk willing to work hard. Now, there isn't a square meter of land that isn't owned by somebody, and given the non-rural nature of modern society, buying cheap land to live on is nigh impossible. Cheap land is available, but not anywhere where employment (and thus cash flow) is. Of course, the franchise could be granted even to those not living on their land, but then you'd have "voting rights" companies spring up, selling people 4 square centimeters of property in Montana for $5.95, thereby making them eligible to vote. The net result would be little better than we have already.
A sci-fi nut with ADD, you forgot to add. Heh. "Now wait, there are several very good reasons why Blade Runner is boring. A few of which HEY LET'S GO RIDE BIKES!!!!"
Now we've only got to wait until the U.S. government endures a financial crisis (whoops) and then Fox can attempt to buoy the FCC and FDA and buy them out There is a basic, fundamental difference between government and business. The US Government isn't a corporation where you could buy all its devalued stock and then "own" it. The only thing NewsCorp could conceivably do would be to bribe elected officials through campaign contributions to get favorable treatment. Sadly, it's morons like you that illustrate exactly how close we actually are to an Idiocracy.
Where do people get the idea that censorship is the sole domain of government? A business/school/church/organization/publication/etc. are all capable of censorship. I've never understood this idea where people come and say "it isn't the government doing it, so it can't be censorship". People hear bits and pieces of things, but never bother to actually figure out exactly what they've heard. The more common misunderstanding of censorship is the notion that censorship is unconstitutional under the first amendment. The correction of this misunderstanding is "it's only unconstitutional if the government is engaging in censorship".
Interestingly enough, what we have here if a second degree of misunderstanding, a misinterpretation of the correction: someone thinking that if the government isn't the one doing it, it's not censorship! As you noted, the correct observation is: "it is censorship no matter who does it, but it is only unconstitutional if it's the government doing it."
For example, phone lines should not be owned by the phone companies, but a separate company who has a strong interest in having phone/data services available at minimal cost. Indeed. The fact that the telecom companies provide both infrastructure AND service is arguably an artifact of the 130+ year old analog phone system, where "service" consisted of nothing more than continuous voltage on a copper loop.
Why? What is the worst thing that could happen? If AT&T wins? When have they ever been against innovation? Against? Maybe not against, really, but arguably rather indifferent towards innovation. See, the problem is that the company we now call AT&T is not the same one that operated the giant phone monopoly in the US up to 1984. The current AT&T was called SBC until two years ago, when it bought the burned out husk of the old AT&T (which had sold off most of its parts already) and adopted the name. The parts of the old AT&T that were actually innovative (e.g. Bell Labs, Olivetti & Oracle Research Labs) were either closed (O&O) or reduced-renamed-and-sold (Bell Labs/Lucent, now Alcatel-Lucent). The new AT&T is a large megacorp mostly concerned with increasing its size.
That's a good example of an ad hominem argument. The fact that it was Iran doesn't change the fact that Canada probably has committed such abuses, especially in our treatment of our native people. Nor does it change that fact that the UN is a joke. For god's sake, they chose Libya to chair the UN Commission on Human Rights!
amusingly, amazon's own marketplace sellers typically ship right away, so it's generally faster to order from one of them than amazon directly. This may seem like a bad business method on Amazon's part, encouraging you to use their marketplace sellers, but think of it in terms of overhead. Amazon has complained before that the free shipping thing is eating them alive. If their profit margin is razor thin there after having to pay some goon to pick, box, and ship your order themselves, think how much better the tiny margin they make on an order to a marketplace seller is. No overhead, nothing but a web site sending a couple emails. It's practically free money!
It's relatively standard practice to list any aliases you have used on a resume. Hogwash. You just made that shit up. I challenge you to find a single reputable reference on the subject of CV or resume writing that says listing aliases is standard practice. In some cases, it's standard practice for them to look for aliases or maiden names when doing a pre-hire background investigation, but that's an entirely different thing.
Your much too honest. His much too honest? What about his much too honest?
Any serious geek would create a fake blog/live journal and fill it up with stuff they think the employer would want to hear. Anyone capable of filling a livejournal page with enough quality content to make it look and read in a believable manner is likely talented and hardworking enough that the content might as well be real. Seriously, do you think that the kind of average loser that points to a fake livejoural page is going to be capable of filling it with enough plausible content to get away with it? No, it's going to be filled with thinly veiled "I am so awesome" posts, with "yes, you are so awesome" comments from his three sock puppets.
Concert tickets often go for $500 or more per seat
Boy, I don't know where those concerts are. Though it's been years since I though of going to a concert the last tyme I checked the price of tickets, to a Norah Jones concert in 2000 or 2001, tickets were less than $100. Inflation must of been really high since.
Don't be an ass. He didn't say all tickets are half a kilobuck or more. Go find a front row center ticket to any big name band/artist. Try to buy it from a ticket holder. See if you can get it for less than $500.
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Avoid head-on train collisions. Given that trains run on fixed, sensor-equipped lines and have essentially solved the head-on collision problem a CENTURY AGO with signal lights. The trick is not acquiring the information that two trains are going to collide, but to get that message to someone who can do something about it. GPS does not improve over the current hardwired system in that regard.
Drive fuel delivery routes in combat zones. A valid application.
track hospital workers to determine hand washing habits,
move warehouse bins from place to place,
Vacuum / mop floors.
Deliver inter-office mail. I am intrigued. How do you intend to get a clear line of sight on the GPS constellation indoors?
Come back when you actually know how GPS works, and what it's actually good for. Pulling crap out of your ass barely gets you 14% accuracy. The only thing worse than an ignorant man is an ignorant man that is convinced he's not.
Agent: "you know, I can get you into this house with an interest only loan at HALF the monthly payment you're looking at right now, and with no money down."
Me: "What's the catch?"
Agent: "In three years, you're going to lose the house."
Buyers knew. The lenders knew. They're all fucking thieves. Fuck Countrywide, and fuck the losers who are upset that they can't continue to stay in that $600,000 house on a $900/mo payment. It's shit like that that made what should be $200K houses into $600K houses in the first place.
Yeah.... I tried this for several weeks. Except everyone took the opportunity to sneak in front of me so they could play a game of changing lanes repeatedly to snake their way through traffic faster.
That is the problem. You can do what is best for the group, but then selfish individuals abuse that for their own gain which hurts the group more.. A better way to look at it is that it's a system which seeks equilibrium. Traffic density will tend to stay relatively even. Just like in nature, if you allow a "vacuum" to open up in front of you, the tendency will be for traffic to fill it. What these homespun amateur traffic engineer types like the GP poster fail to really understand is that you cannot change traffic density. "If enough people would just leave a larger space in front of them" is simply an unreasoned way of saying "if only there were fewer cars on the road". You can fit 5 ten foot cars with a 10 foot interval into 100 feet of lane. You can only fit 4 with a 15 foot interval. A larger interval between cars translates to fewer cars per 100 lane feet. That "extra" car has to go somewhere, and where it goes is into the previous 100 feet of lane. Multiply by the number of 100 foot segments of road in the jammed area...
There's just no way around it. Slowing down more carefully and "leaving a bigger gap" just cannot get around the fact that only so many cars can coexist on the roadway at a given speed, and the speed varies inversely with that number. When you cram 5 lanes of cars into 4 lanes, it will slow down. When you pour X number of cars per mile via onramps onto an already crowded roadway, it will slow down. It's really very, very simple. The specific optimums of traffic flow are quite complicated, but the basic "X is slower, Y is faster" isn't.
"If only a few drivers will maintain large gaps during heavy traffic, then merging traffic is not forbidden, and the situation in the left-hand diagram can be prevented."
This is crap. If a roadway is carrying 1 car per 20 lane-feet (10 foot car, 10 foot space between), then increasing the space between the cars by (say) a cumulative 5 feet each by having one guy in ten leave a big space in front (his suggestion was even more), then that's one car for every 25 lane-feet. In other words, every 100 feet of lane is carrying only 4 cars instead of 5, a 20% reduction. Essentially what he's suggesting is that a reduction in traffic will cure traffic jams. Holy fucking cow! Stop the fucking presses!
To his minor credit, he does in the next paragraph acknowledge that this only works on very small, localized jams, but in doing so he's reduced his argument to:
If people would brake earlier and less heavily, then getting through small jams would be smoother, requiring less heavy braking
Wow. How insightful. Smoother traffic... runs smoother.
* I was not a spec-ops guy. I was a simple intelligence guy in an infantry division. I merely had the good fortune to spend several weeks in garrison in Afghanistan with some very helpful Special Forces guys who offered to teach me some Pashto.
Maybe, or maybe we'd see a sort of tyranny of the landed gentry. What is the definition of a "landowner"? Does one need to live on the land? Does it need to be a certain minimum size? Back when the constitution was drafted, becoming a landowner was a fairly simple process: 1) go to frontier. 2) clear some land, 3) live on it. This was hard enough that it was only available to responsible folk willing to work hard. Now, there isn't a square meter of land that isn't owned by somebody, and given the non-rural nature of modern society, buying cheap land to live on is nigh impossible. Cheap land is available, but not anywhere where employment (and thus cash flow) is. Of course, the franchise could be granted even to those not living on their land, but then you'd have "voting rights" companies spring up, selling people 4 square centimeters of property in Montana for $5.95, thereby making them eligible to vote. The net result would be little better than we have already.
Interestingly enough, what we have here if a second degree of misunderstanding, a misinterpretation of the correction: someone thinking that if the government isn't the one doing it, it's not censorship! As you noted, the correct observation is: "it is censorship no matter who does it, but it is only unconstitutional if it's the government doing it."
Anyone capable of filling a livejournal page with enough quality content to make it look and read in a believable manner is likely talented and hardworking enough that the content might as well be real. Seriously, do you think that the kind of average loser that points to a fake livejoural page is going to be capable of filling it with enough plausible content to get away with it? No, it's going to be filled with thinly veiled "I am so awesome" posts, with "yes, you are so awesome" comments from his three sock puppets.
Concert tickets often go for $500 or more per seat
Boy, I don't know where those concerts are. Though it's been years since I though of going to a concert the last tyme I checked the price of tickets, to a Norah Jones concert in 2000 or 2001, tickets were less than $100. Inflation must of been really high since.
Don't be an ass. He didn't say all tickets are half a kilobuck or more. Go find a front row center ticket to any big name band/artist. Try to buy it from a ticket holder. See if you can get it for less than $500.