The ability to resist the mob-mentality and knee-jerk overreaction that occurs after events like Columbine, or the World Trade Center attacks, are precisely what we should look for in our leaders.
I'm glad these guys aren't in the business of selling books, imagine how ape shit they would go if they learned about these places called libraries, that buy the book once, then lend it out free to whoever wants to read it? Hundreds, even thousands of people getting enjoyment from 1 sale, we better make laws against it fast, or book publishing will be doomed for sure!
Despite all their commercial success, Epic (especially cliffyb) seems determined to find excuses why their games aren't the highest selling entertainment product of all time. The PC version of Gears of War stunk, it had framerate and screen tearing issues, lots of bugs, and little to no effort put into adapting it to PC controls. When the sales stunk, they blamed piracy on the PC. Im sure when GoW 2 comes out, and doesn't outsell Halo, GTA , and Madden combined in the first week, he will blame modchips or paid off/bribed reviewers from Sony or whatever other thing he can come up with to massage his own ego. They owe a lot of their success to Id, who basically created the mold for their early games, but if you listen to them talk you'd think they are god's gift to gamers, bringing them ideas so innovative only truly inspired artists could come up with them, like a first person shooter where you fight aliens with guns, and chainsaws, and chain-saw guns.
Most likely the console (the server that monitors and manages the clients) is scheduled to order a scan every once in a while. You should ask your admin to knock it off or reschedule it for a better time.
So, you think your firewall makes you immune? That just stops random scanning from infecting you. If this gets turned into a worm, as I suspect it will if not already has, all it will take is 1 client to get infected to spread through your network like wildfire. Unless all your users can't download attachments or files, can't bring files on cd or usb drives, can't visit web sites without the latest version of flash, java, and whatever web browser they use, and can't get attacked through any number of known security issues that are of a lesser priority, you are vulnerable. The problem is not that a security hole exists that can compromise systems, even the best networks have tons of those when you mix in users. The problem is how easily this attack can be completely automated and spread. 1 compromised machine can compromise the rest (if they aren't patched of course) very quickly. Your everyday security patches are generally about browser exploits, escalation of privilege exploits, etc. that require some user interaction or attack vector that limits their spread.
While this was a security fuckup, if your network is designed right someone having VPN access is not the end of the world. You should never be assuming traffic coming from the LAN side is "safe" anyways, and require additional authentication every step of the way. Lots of orgs give their home employees/remote offices VPN access and these machines can generally be easily compromised. TFA is short on details but if the admins have been doing their job he probably would not have been able to compromise anything more then some network printers. That said, their disposal department needs a good slapping, wiping configs from Cisco devices is ussually very easy.
You have to have an account specifically granted the privilege to do what he is describing, and you can place restrictions on what they can do. In his example, the secretary has the authority to say "my boss will attend this meeting", and that authority translates to his electronic calendar, the same way it would in real life. Sure his secretary could have a breakdown and screw up his schedule, but she could do that anyways just by not doing her job, and how many office environments have you seen where the secretary didn't frequently have physical access to her boss's machine while it was logged in?
That game is fun, but the limited card selection limits the decks you can make, plus it is pretty easy to make a deck that is an almost guaranteed first turn kill (every mox, black lotus, time walk, ancestral recall, time twister, lightning bolt, channel, fireball, regrowth, and some dualies will normally give you infinite turns on turn 1). The AI is pretty dumb also, and manages to kill itself most of the time.
I think it's best to view Mythbusters as the start of the experiment. That is, often when doing science, a scientist will conduct a small experiment with less rigorous standards to get an idea of the scale of the result and to get an idea if there is anything worth investigating. So while the science often leaves something to be desired, they sometimes have some interesting results that hopefully lead to a more rigorous examination.
The main thing they teach, is the spirit of experimentation. Most people go through their entire lives without ever testing anything they are told. The Mythbusters guys show how anyone, even some tv guys with no real science background can test their preconceived notions and have fun doing it. One of the problems modern science faces is we don't feel the need to test most of the myths because the answer is "obvious". While a scientist may be happy with a result calculated on paper using physics, the general public does not understand the laws (and thousands of experiments behind them) used to do so, and so in a way a scientist telling them the laws of physics say its impossible is no different from a priest telling them god did it.
Heck just look at the popularity of "New Age" beliefs in things like crystals etc. Scientists just law it off, because they have limited time and resources, and more credible claims to test, so we need people like the Mythbusters willing to to actually test it. And if they get a result counter to what science tells us, hopefully some real scientists will be moved to perform more rigorous experimentation. And unlike most people, the Mythbusters have shown a willingness to accept they make mistakes and have been wrong, and have dedicated entire shows to revisiting myths they screwed up. So don't think of the mythbusters as a couple failed scientists, when they never claimed to be scientists in the first place, but a group of everyday people willing to some of the more outrageous things we all hear in everyday life to the test.
While it's true that with experience the soles of your feet toughen, but a lot of people have fallen arches, bone splints, etc. that can make walking without proper supportive shoes painful. Just because our feet are capable of getting us around, doesn't mean we aren't a lot better off with shoes, and considering the the major cultures throughout history all over the world have invented various forms of shoes or sandals and considered them important. Unsupported/protected human feet are prone to injury and developing various painful conditions as they get older. Not to mention, I for one don't think having to carefully consider my footsteps when not engaged in rock climbing a plus, less time spent looking at the ground gives you more time to look at the surrounding environment. The evolution our feet seemed to stop after "good enough" for us to get around and last us until we can procreate, but compared to many animals they don't seem particularly well suited. I guess the benefit of big brains is we can make tools (aka shoes) that can be far superior to most animals and can be changed and adapted to the environment at will.
In a way, the existence of filthy bare-footed hippies proves the article's point. If evolution was at work in humans, people who bucked useful tools like shoes just to stick it to them man would die out.
Thanks for the info, I'll admit my tech support days are behind me, and I had not considered gigabit might be more vulnerable. I have not had to use the modem on my laptop, but I will be sure to check more carefully what I plug it into. I will say that hopefully most consumer equipment has taken steps to limit damage, considering it is a common mistake by novice users (and considering the similarities in the connectors and their functions an understandable one) and sometimes absent-minded professionals. I know if called upon to design a product with an ethernet port, it would be one of the first things I tested.
(I apologize this has strayed so far off topic) I won't even comment on your racist "non-white people who survive on government assistance", it's a bullshit argument that can not be supported by any real evidence. As far as Florida relying on income from the federal government, I'd point you here [url]http://www.taxfoundation.org/research/show/26 6.html[/url] in 2004 Florida received $1.02 in federal spending for every $1.00 collected from it in 2004, putting it at #30, New York, California, and New Jersey are all near the bottom, below $0.80. The highest that year was New Mexico, at $2.00, so I'd say your conclusion that the coastal cities are leeching off the rest of the nation are dead wrong. I am not proposing we end government assistance, although I personally do not ask for no expect any, I merely propose we follow the adage "Charity begins at home", as in instead of the behemoth that is the Federal government collecting most of the tax money, and doling it out as political favors, the money is collected from the people of the community it will serve. If New York City wants a new bridge, they raise the money from their citizens, and build it, if California wants to do beach renovations, they collect the money from their citizens and do it. Instead of my money disappearing into a black hole that is the IRS and the Federal Government, I want to see where and how it is being spent with my own eyes, because as the person(s) paying for it, who better to judge if it is money well spent?
I don't get why you think I believe in extreme individualism, I happen to think Ayn Rand was a poor writer and a worse armchair philosopher. I am willing to accept the help of others, and I believe in our community, and out country we should help each other. But there is a difference between asking for and receiving help, and taking what you want by force.
I agree with both of you. It's almost as if this country was segmented in semi-autonomous regions, who could collect taxes and pay for improvements for the people who live in them, without involving the rest of the country. Then, a larger government that helps them get along with each other and only deals with issues that affect the entire country. If only we lived in such a system. Oh that's right, we used to, but then we got tired of having to pay attention to more then 1 election every four years, so we just gave the federal government the authority to take a big chunk out of our paychecks before we even get it, and make it disappear into a giant bureaucracy to be occasionally doled out to us in wasteful pork projects so the various parties can get the swing votes on important issues like gay people getting married (Hey, stopping two dudes from getting married is totally worth footing the bill for a billion dollar road project in Boston, or a military base guarding a corn field in the middle of nowhere). Sure, the tax burden makes it so you can't afford a place to live, but if you can find a sleaziest sleazebag to put in congress then the other states, he can get you some "free" federal housing projects, and if you go degrade yourself in front of some government employee on a power trip, he will hook you up with some "free" food stamps, etc.
So if you ask me, lets get the Feds out of the business of handouts to the states, and let each state pays it's own way. Then if New Orleans needs to rebuild from a hurricane, it can do so without its residents having to worry about building that new water project in Arizona, and vice versa. If living in a certain disaster prone or lacking in resources area is not economically viable, then let them move, the country is a big place, with some of the most fit for human habitation environments on earth(There's a reason people came from countries across the world to settle it)
I live in South Florida, I like it here a lot. We have the occasional hurricane, but we also have great weather, a beautiful natural environment, and a culturally diverse population. I am willing to spend more to live here to compensate for the costs of hurricanes. If a hurricane comes and destroys my house tomorrow, I don't expect someone in Arizona or New Orleans to lift a finger for me. I'll be out the next day, clearing away the debris, salvaging what I can, and making plans for the future. If people, of their own free will, donate their money to help us, I'd gratefully accept. But I don't want a dime from a pack of bullies in the government, handing out a small portion of the taken from us (under penalty of jail time) back and expecting me to jump through their hoops to get it.
I gotta say I've seen RJ11s plugged into RJ45 plenty of times (including a computer lab in a middle school where the resident technology guy was paid 6 figures and set up the whole lab of new iMacs using the phone cable that came with them to plug them into the ethernet network). I've never seen an ethernet adapter damaged by it. It is a common mistake by the exact market the Mac Mini is aimed at, I would expect the adaptor to be more hardy then that. Unless your phone line has much higher then normal voltage on it or something, I'd suspect there was more to it then that, and I would suggest calling Apple about it. If plugging a phone line into the ethernet port is enough to make the port unusable I'd have to say Apple has a pretty serious issue on their hands.
This seems like a perfect argument for making large patent portfolios cost a lot of money to keep. Perhaps a system where you get 1-2 years free then increasingly large fees after that to keep your patent. Of course, the problem would be to find value for the fees that would be affordable for small busninesses while still giving an incentive to large businesses to abandon/sell unused patents. The money could even be put into examining new patents more carefully. Of course thats how a working system would work, sadly as long as the average voter (and your average congressmen for that matter) don't know the difference between a patent and copyright there is little incentive to change a system that rewards the big players so much.
Sounds like your friends either suck at their jobs, and thus don't expect to ever be able to get another one, or they are gluttons for punishment. If your bos expects you to work 70 hr weeks without compensation, or be on call 24/7, or do impossible projects without any money, you should just quit. There are always other jobs out there if you are good at what you do. It sounds to me like your friends will let people walk all over them and their managers know it. Why hire an extra employee when you can get the ones you have to work for free? I don't care if you make $10/hr or $1000/hr, if your boss treats you like shit, and has no respect for you, quit and find a job somewhere else. The only people who can't do that are the ones who managed to sneak their way into a job they weren't capable of doing in the first place, and they will do anything to keep it because they know ir probably won't happen again.
I can understand how these charges could be upheld, after all, a judges job is to uphold the law as it is written, not as they would like it to be. The person who should be ashamed of himself is the district attorney who is pressing charges on what obviously is an unintended consequence of a poorly written law. Is he so desperate for work, he has nothing better to do then go after two teens who are only guilty of being young and stupid? His job is to serve the public and see that justice is done, not waste their time and money on witch hunts. I wonder how many criminal cases got ignored or plea bargained so 2 dumb kids who took pictures of themselves could learn their lesson.
I can only assume he wants to pad the numbers, so he can claim he busted another "kiddie-porn ring" and kept our children safe. It really scares me that in the article, the judges use a lot of reasoning along the line of the pictures "may have" been shown to others later, or the computers "may have" been hacked laster, or something, somehow "may have" gone wrong. When did abstract possibilities becomes illegal? I believe people should be held accountable for the consequences of their actions, but I don't see how they can be held accountable for what happens only in the wild speculation of some judge.
The problem with the falling ceiling tile was not the city's fault, it was the fault of the contractors installing them and the engineer who designed them. As designed, they were structurally sound, the problem was they used epoxied anchors (which are perfectly safe) but the contractors did not have the proper tools or training to install them, because they require very precisely drilled holes, that are very clean, to adhere properly. The failure on the engineers part, was to specify those anchors in such a critical location and not specify stringent testing, as well as personally verifying the testing had in fact been done. The engineering firm responsible for that portion was a well known and respected firm (well as respected as any firm that wins government contracts in Boston can be) and the city had no reason not to be confident that they would perform to expectations. One major problem, and flaw in the design, was that it could give no warning signs if there was a problem (for example, deformation an inspector could notice). The anchors were either working perfectly or not at all, with no easy visual way to tell.
To call a modern and widely used epoxy concrete anchor "glue" is to deliberately misrepresent the facts to make the administration sound incompetent, when in fact the blame rests solely on the engineer responsible for the design, his immediate superiors whose job it is to review the design, and the contractors who could not be bothered to read and follow the directions for the anchors. To blame the city of Boston for this is kind of like buying a new house, only to have it collapse on you, and instead of blaming the people who built it, blaming the realtor who sold it to you.
A bus stop is probably not the best place to gather evidence about the kindness of strangers. I don't know about where you live, but here bus stops tend to gather a rather odd collection of characters, to the point that most bus passengers develop a sort of selective hearing/vision where they ignore the outside world as much as possible. The same thing is true in most cities with subways. where people will completely ignore even completely outrageous things happening right next to them. This is easy to test if you don't mind the possibility of ending up on youtube, in the middle of a bus ride or crowded bus station, burst into song and dance. If you get any reaction at all, it will probably be from the "real" crazy people angry at you moving in on their territory. Ignoring the existence of other people when forced into a confined space with a random group of complete strangers seems to be human instinct.
No matter what business your in, being a jerk and telling someone they are a "danger to any code base" is just bad business. The cost to you of being a professional, and telling them they are not qualified in a polite manner is 0, the cost to you of being a jerk may be 0 or it may be all the business you would have gotten from whatever company he does end up at, or all the business/potential recruits of his friends. In fact it never pays to be a jerk to anyone, from the janitor to the idiot you just fired. You never know when you are going to have to work with someone again, or need something from them. Being rude or playing game with someone because you are in a position of authority over them and they can't do shit about it, doesn't make you a big shot, it makes you an asshole. If someone has no chance at a position, tell them so as politely and directly as you can, and stop wasting their time.
Don't worry, we just need to cleverly get the right to grant exemptions shifted to the patent office. Then everyone and their mother can have as many exemptions as they want. I call dibs on the exemption for the purpose of showing stuff on things.
Your confusing a science problem and an engineering problem. Calculating the force you need to deflect the asteroid is (relatively) simple, figuring out the way to get something capable of doing that into space, getting it to intercept the asteroid, getting it to apply that force correctly, etc. is a difficult engineering problem, and something we've never really done before. Just like landing on the moon was a lot more complicated then calculating the trajectory to get us there. Engineering requires testing, even the best designed machines aren't worth much until they've actually been tried.
The real reason behind this probably has little to do with player demands. Wow has always been plagued with horrible clipping and armor fitting problems. Many of the issues are still around from release. Most likely Blizz realized geting the male armor models to fit the extremely skinny blood elves correctly was going to be difficult. Male BE are now almost identical to male Night elves. I actually support the change, however, because Warcraft elves (before and after their change to blood elves) were thinner then normal humans but never the impossibly thin elves of some fantasy worlds. The new elves look a lot more like the elves in warcraft 3 imo.
I would question the wisdom of buying the rights to the penguin books not already under public domain, simply because Penguin is already doign a great job at publishing and selling them and getting them into bookstores. Most of the books in that package are under $10, which is pretty good considering you are getting a nicely printed and bound book. Even if you don't want to buy it, most of them are available in any public library already, and although it may technically be ilegal, scanned versions are available online if you look for them, and I've never heard of Penguin actually suing anybody. Penguin was actually founded with the goal of getting classic books into the hands of the public cheaply, which is why they publish so many paperbacks. I really don't think the net gain would be all that much, as even freed from copyright, most people would probably still buy the Penguin published versions anyway because of their convenience and quality.
Honestly, no they can't build such a car. It is possible to build frames and chassis;s designed for very long service lifes, 50+ years if not abused, however the powertrain will still need maintenance long before that, and the interior will need to be replaced long before that also. Engines are basically controlled explosions with lots of moving parts, and even the best attempts at making ultra-long lasting and reliable engines still require plenty of maintenance. Seals wear out, metal fatigue sets in, friction slowly wears down components, etc. Then consider the vast majority of car owners dont perform any preventative maintenance beyond changing the oil, and such a long lasting car is not really within our technical reach. People are not going to want to spend a ton of money overhauling their car every 15 years, when they can pay less up front, and pay a relatively small amount more then the cost of the overhaul for a brand new car with all the latest bells and whistles. A lot of people buy new cars long before their old car is anywhere near the end of it's useful life, because they want a more stylish new car. At the end of the day. the economics for a car designed for extremely long life just don't work.
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The ability to resist the mob-mentality and knee-jerk overreaction that occurs after events like Columbine, or the World Trade Center attacks, are precisely what we should look for in our leaders.
I'm glad these guys aren't in the business of selling books, imagine how ape shit they would go if they learned about these places called libraries, that buy the book once, then lend it out free to whoever wants to read it? Hundreds, even thousands of people getting enjoyment from 1 sale, we better make laws against it fast, or book publishing will be doomed for sure!
Despite all their commercial success, Epic (especially cliffyb) seems determined to find excuses why their games aren't the highest selling entertainment product of all time. The PC version of Gears of War stunk, it had framerate and screen tearing issues, lots of bugs, and little to no effort put into adapting it to PC controls. When the sales stunk, they blamed piracy on the PC. Im sure when GoW 2 comes out, and doesn't outsell Halo, GTA , and Madden combined in the first week, he will blame modchips or paid off/bribed reviewers from Sony or whatever other thing he can come up with to massage his own ego. They owe a lot of their success to Id, who basically created the mold for their early games, but if you listen to them talk you'd think they are god's gift to gamers, bringing them ideas so innovative only truly inspired artists could come up with them, like a first person shooter where you fight aliens with guns, and chainsaws, and chain-saw guns.
Most likely the console (the server that monitors and manages the clients) is scheduled to order a scan every once in a while. You should ask your admin to knock it off or reschedule it for a better time.
So, you think your firewall makes you immune? That just stops random scanning from infecting you. If this gets turned into a worm, as I suspect it will if not already has, all it will take is 1 client to get infected to spread through your network like wildfire. Unless all your users can't download attachments or files, can't bring files on cd or usb drives, can't visit web sites without the latest version of flash, java, and whatever web browser they use, and can't get attacked through any number of known security issues that are of a lesser priority, you are vulnerable. The problem is not that a security hole exists that can compromise systems, even the best networks have tons of those when you mix in users. The problem is how easily this attack can be completely automated and spread. 1 compromised machine can compromise the rest (if they aren't patched of course) very quickly. Your everyday security patches are generally about browser exploits, escalation of privilege exploits, etc. that require some user interaction or attack vector that limits their spread.
While this was a security fuckup, if your network is designed right someone having VPN access is not the end of the world. You should never be assuming traffic coming from the LAN side is "safe" anyways, and require additional authentication every step of the way. Lots of orgs give their home employees/remote offices VPN access and these machines can generally be easily compromised. TFA is short on details but if the admins have been doing their job he probably would not have been able to compromise anything more then some network printers. That said, their disposal department needs a good slapping, wiping configs from Cisco devices is ussually very easy.
The best music (IMO of course) was made in the 80's and 90's.
Yeah, and kids these days won't stay off my lawn! Why won't their parents teach them manners like they did back in my day.
You have to have an account specifically granted the privilege to do what he is describing, and you can place restrictions on what they can do. In his example, the secretary has the authority to say "my boss will attend this meeting", and that authority translates to his electronic calendar, the same way it would in real life. Sure his secretary could have a breakdown and screw up his schedule, but she could do that anyways just by not doing her job, and how many office environments have you seen where the secretary didn't frequently have physical access to her boss's machine while it was logged in?
That game is fun, but the limited card selection limits the decks you can make, plus it is pretty easy to make a deck that is an almost guaranteed first turn kill (every mox, black lotus, time walk, ancestral recall, time twister, lightning bolt, channel, fireball, regrowth, and some dualies will normally give you infinite turns on turn 1). The AI is pretty dumb also, and manages to kill itself most of the time.
I think it's best to view Mythbusters as the start of the experiment. That is, often when doing science, a scientist will conduct a small experiment with less rigorous standards to get an idea of the scale of the result and to get an idea if there is anything worth investigating. So while the science often leaves something to be desired, they sometimes have some interesting results that hopefully lead to a more rigorous examination.
The main thing they teach, is the spirit of experimentation. Most people go through their entire lives without ever testing anything they are told. The Mythbusters guys show how anyone, even some tv guys with no real science background can test their preconceived notions and have fun doing it. One of the problems modern science faces is we don't feel the need to test most of the myths because the answer is "obvious". While a scientist may be happy with a result calculated on paper using physics, the general public does not understand the laws (and thousands of experiments behind them) used to do so, and so in a way a scientist telling them the laws of physics say its impossible is no different from a priest telling them god did it.
Heck just look at the popularity of "New Age" beliefs in things like crystals etc. Scientists just law it off, because they have limited time and resources, and more credible claims to test, so we need people like the Mythbusters willing to to actually test it. And if they get a result counter to what science tells us, hopefully some real scientists will be moved to perform more rigorous experimentation. And unlike most people, the Mythbusters have shown a willingness to accept they make mistakes and have been wrong, and have dedicated entire shows to revisiting myths they screwed up. So don't think of the mythbusters as a couple failed scientists, when they never claimed to be scientists in the first place, but a group of everyday people willing to some of the more outrageous things we all hear in everyday life to the test.
While it's true that with experience the soles of your feet toughen, but a lot of people have fallen arches, bone splints, etc. that can make walking without proper supportive shoes painful. Just because our feet are capable of getting us around, doesn't mean we aren't a lot better off with shoes, and considering the the major cultures throughout history all over the world have invented various forms of shoes or sandals and considered them important. Unsupported/protected human feet are prone to injury and developing various painful conditions as they get older. Not to mention, I for one don't think having to carefully consider my footsteps when not engaged in rock climbing a plus, less time spent looking at the ground gives you more time to look at the surrounding environment. The evolution our feet seemed to stop after "good enough" for us to get around and last us until we can procreate, but compared to many animals they don't seem particularly well suited. I guess the benefit of big brains is we can make tools (aka shoes) that can be far superior to most animals and can be changed and adapted to the environment at will.
In a way, the existence of filthy bare-footed hippies proves the article's point. If evolution was at work in humans, people who bucked useful tools like shoes just to stick it to them man would die out.
Thanks for the info, I'll admit my tech support days are behind me, and I had not considered gigabit might be more vulnerable. I have not had to use the modem on my laptop, but I will be sure to check more carefully what I plug it into. I will say that hopefully most consumer equipment has taken steps to limit damage, considering it is a common mistake by novice users (and considering the similarities in the connectors and their functions an understandable one) and sometimes absent-minded professionals. I know if called upon to design a product with an ethernet port, it would be one of the first things I tested.
(I apologize this has strayed so far off topic)6 6.html[/url] in 2004 Florida received $1.02 in federal spending for every $1.00 collected from it in 2004, putting it at #30, New York, California, and New Jersey are all near the bottom, below $0.80. The highest that year was New Mexico, at $2.00, so I'd say your conclusion that the coastal cities are leeching off the rest of the nation are dead wrong. I am not proposing we end government assistance, although I personally do not ask for no expect any, I merely propose we follow the adage "Charity begins at home", as in instead of the behemoth that is the Federal government collecting most of the tax money, and doling it out as political favors, the money is collected from the people of the community it will serve. If New York City wants a new bridge, they raise the money from their citizens, and build it, if California wants to do beach renovations, they collect the money from their citizens and do it. Instead of my money disappearing into a black hole that is the IRS and the Federal Government, I want to see where and how it is being spent with my own eyes, because as the person(s) paying for it, who better to judge if it is money well spent?
I won't even comment on your racist "non-white people who survive on government assistance", it's a bullshit argument that can not be supported by any real evidence. As far as Florida relying on income from the federal government, I'd point you here [url]http://www.taxfoundation.org/research/show/2
I don't get why you think I believe in extreme individualism, I happen to think Ayn Rand was a poor writer and a worse armchair philosopher. I am willing to accept the help of others, and I believe in our community, and out country we should help each other. But there is a difference between asking for and receiving help, and taking what you want by force.
I agree with both of you. It's almost as if this country was segmented in semi-autonomous regions, who could collect taxes and pay for improvements for the people who live in them, without involving the rest of the country. Then, a larger government that helps them get along with each other and only deals with issues that affect the entire country. If only we lived in such a system. Oh that's right, we used to, but then we got tired of having to pay attention to more then 1 election every four years, so we just gave the federal government the authority to take a big chunk out of our paychecks before we even get it, and make it disappear into a giant bureaucracy to be occasionally doled out to us in wasteful pork projects so the various parties can get the swing votes on important issues like gay people getting married (Hey, stopping two dudes from getting married is totally worth footing the bill for a billion dollar road project in Boston, or a military base guarding a corn field in the middle of nowhere). Sure, the tax burden makes it so you can't afford a place to live, but if you can find a sleaziest sleazebag to put in congress then the other states, he can get you some "free" federal housing projects, and if you go degrade yourself in front of some government employee on a power trip, he will hook you up with some "free" food stamps, etc.
So if you ask me, lets get the Feds out of the business of handouts to the states, and let each state pays it's own way. Then if New Orleans needs to rebuild from a hurricane, it can do so without its residents having to worry about building that new water project in Arizona, and vice versa. If living in a certain disaster prone or lacking in resources area is not economically viable, then let them move, the country is a big place, with some of the most fit for human habitation environments on earth(There's a reason people came from countries across the world to settle it)
I live in South Florida, I like it here a lot. We have the occasional hurricane, but we also have great weather, a beautiful natural environment, and a culturally diverse population. I am willing to spend more to live here to compensate for the costs of hurricanes. If a hurricane comes and destroys my house tomorrow, I don't expect someone in Arizona or New Orleans to lift a finger for me. I'll be out the next day, clearing away the debris, salvaging what I can, and making plans for the future. If people, of their own free will, donate their money to help us, I'd gratefully accept. But I don't want a dime from a pack of bullies in the government, handing out a small portion of the taken from us (under penalty of jail time) back and expecting me to jump through their hoops to get it.
I gotta say I've seen RJ11s plugged into RJ45 plenty of times (including a computer lab in a middle school where the resident technology guy was paid 6 figures and set up the whole lab of new iMacs using the phone cable that came with them to plug them into the ethernet network). I've never seen an ethernet adapter damaged by it. It is a common mistake by the exact market the Mac Mini is aimed at, I would expect the adaptor to be more hardy then that. Unless your phone line has much higher then normal voltage on it or something, I'd suspect there was more to it then that, and I would suggest calling Apple about it. If plugging a phone line into the ethernet port is enough to make the port unusable I'd have to say Apple has a pretty serious issue on their hands.
This seems like a perfect argument for making large patent portfolios cost a lot of money to keep. Perhaps a system where you get 1-2 years free then increasingly large fees after that to keep your patent. Of course, the problem would be to find value for the fees that would be affordable for small busninesses while still giving an incentive to large businesses to abandon/sell unused patents. The money could even be put into examining new patents more carefully. Of course thats how a working system would work, sadly as long as the average voter (and your average congressmen for that matter) don't know the difference between a patent and copyright there is little incentive to change a system that rewards the big players so much.
Sounds like your friends either suck at their jobs, and thus don't expect to ever be able to get another one, or they are gluttons for punishment. If your bos expects you to work 70 hr weeks without compensation, or be on call 24/7, or do impossible projects without any money, you should just quit. There are always other jobs out there if you are good at what you do. It sounds to me like your friends will let people walk all over them and their managers know it. Why hire an extra employee when you can get the ones you have to work for free? I don't care if you make $10/hr or $1000/hr, if your boss treats you like shit, and has no respect for you, quit and find a job somewhere else. The only people who can't do that are the ones who managed to sneak their way into a job they weren't capable of doing in the first place, and they will do anything to keep it because they know ir probably won't happen again.
I can understand how these charges could be upheld, after all, a judges job is to uphold the law as it is written, not as they would like it to be. The person who should be ashamed of himself is the district attorney who is pressing charges on what obviously is an unintended consequence of a poorly written law. Is he so desperate for work, he has nothing better to do then go after two teens who are only guilty of being young and stupid? His job is to serve the public and see that justice is done, not waste their time and money on witch hunts. I wonder how many criminal cases got ignored or plea bargained so 2 dumb kids who took pictures of themselves could learn their lesson.
I can only assume he wants to pad the numbers, so he can claim he busted another "kiddie-porn ring" and kept our children safe. It really scares me that in the article, the judges use a lot of reasoning along the line of the pictures "may have" been shown to others later, or the computers "may have" been hacked laster, or something, somehow "may have" gone wrong. When did abstract possibilities becomes illegal? I believe people should be held accountable for the consequences of their actions, but I don't see how they can be held accountable for what happens only in the wild speculation of some judge.
The problem with the falling ceiling tile was not the city's fault, it was the fault of the contractors installing them and the engineer who designed them. As designed, they were structurally sound, the problem was they used epoxied anchors (which are perfectly safe) but the contractors did not have the proper tools or training to install them, because they require very precisely drilled holes, that are very clean, to adhere properly. The failure on the engineers part, was to specify those anchors in such a critical location and not specify stringent testing, as well as personally verifying the testing had in fact been done. The engineering firm responsible for that portion was a well known and respected firm (well as respected as any firm that wins government contracts in Boston can be) and the city had no reason not to be confident that they would perform to expectations. One major problem, and flaw in the design, was that it could give no warning signs if there was a problem (for example, deformation an inspector could notice). The anchors were either working perfectly or not at all, with no easy visual way to tell.
To call a modern and widely used epoxy concrete anchor "glue" is to deliberately misrepresent the facts to make the administration sound incompetent, when in fact the blame rests solely on the engineer responsible for the design, his immediate superiors whose job it is to review the design, and the contractors who could not be bothered to read and follow the directions for the anchors. To blame the city of Boston for this is kind of like buying a new house, only to have it collapse on you, and instead of blaming the people who built it, blaming the realtor who sold it to you.
A bus stop is probably not the best place to gather evidence about the kindness of strangers. I don't know about where you live, but here bus stops tend to gather a rather odd collection of characters, to the point that most bus passengers develop a sort of selective hearing/vision where they ignore the outside world as much as possible. The same thing is true in most cities with subways. where people will completely ignore even completely outrageous things happening right next to them. This is easy to test if you don't mind the possibility of ending up on youtube, in the middle of a bus ride or crowded bus station, burst into song and dance. If you get any reaction at all, it will probably be from the "real" crazy people angry at you moving in on their territory. Ignoring the existence of other people when forced into a confined space with a random group of complete strangers seems to be human instinct.
No matter what business your in, being a jerk and telling someone they are a "danger to any code base" is just bad business. The cost to you of being a professional, and telling them they are not qualified in a polite manner is 0, the cost to you of being a jerk may be 0 or it may be all the business you would have gotten from whatever company he does end up at, or all the business/potential recruits of his friends. In fact it never pays to be a jerk to anyone, from the janitor to the idiot you just fired. You never know when you are going to have to work with someone again, or need something from them. Being rude or playing game with someone because you are in a position of authority over them and they can't do shit about it, doesn't make you a big shot, it makes you an asshole. If someone has no chance at a position, tell them so as politely and directly as you can, and stop wasting their time.
Don't worry, we just need to cleverly get the right to grant exemptions shifted to the patent office. Then everyone and their mother can have as many exemptions as they want. I call dibs on the exemption for the purpose of showing stuff on things.
Your confusing a science problem and an engineering problem. Calculating the force you need to deflect the asteroid is (relatively) simple, figuring out the way to get something capable of doing that into space, getting it to intercept the asteroid, getting it to apply that force correctly, etc. is a difficult engineering problem, and something we've never really done before. Just like landing on the moon was a lot more complicated then calculating the trajectory to get us there. Engineering requires testing, even the best designed machines aren't worth much until they've actually been tried.
The real reason behind this probably has little to do with player demands. Wow has always been plagued with horrible clipping and armor fitting problems. Many of the issues are still around from release. Most likely Blizz realized geting the male armor models to fit the extremely skinny blood elves correctly was going to be difficult. Male BE are now almost identical to male Night elves. I actually support the change, however, because Warcraft elves (before and after their change to blood elves) were thinner then normal humans but never the impossibly thin elves of some fantasy worlds. The new elves look a lot more like the elves in warcraft 3 imo.
I would question the wisdom of buying the rights to the penguin books not already under public domain, simply because Penguin is already doign a great job at publishing and selling them and getting them into bookstores. Most of the books in that package are under $10, which is pretty good considering you are getting a nicely printed and bound book. Even if you don't want to buy it, most of them are available in any public library already, and although it may technically be ilegal, scanned versions are available online if you look for them, and I've never heard of Penguin actually suing anybody. Penguin was actually founded with the goal of getting classic books into the hands of the public cheaply, which is why they publish so many paperbacks. I really don't think the net gain would be all that much, as even freed from copyright, most people would probably still buy the Penguin published versions anyway because of their convenience and quality.
Honestly, no they can't build such a car. It is possible to build frames and chassis;s designed for very long service lifes, 50+ years if not abused, however the powertrain will still need maintenance long before that, and the interior will need to be replaced long before that also. Engines are basically controlled explosions with lots of moving parts, and even the best attempts at making ultra-long lasting and reliable engines still require plenty of maintenance. Seals wear out, metal fatigue sets in, friction slowly wears down components, etc. Then consider the vast majority of car owners dont perform any preventative maintenance beyond changing the oil, and such a long lasting car is not really within our technical reach. People are not going to want to spend a ton of money overhauling their car every 15 years, when they can pay less up front, and pay a relatively small amount more then the cost of the overhaul for a brand new car with all the latest bells and whistles. A lot of people buy new cars long before their old car is anywhere near the end of it's useful life, because they want a more stylish new car. At the end of the day. the economics for a car designed for extremely long life just don't work.