While I will admit that in 98% of the cases the right light cameras are probably working just fine, my issue is that when there is a problem with the camera there is little to no recourse, due to both the distance of time and the lack of a human to argue with if there was some extenuating factor. (I have seen lights with VERY short yellows; somewhere around 1 second, but less than 2 seconds.) There have been numerous news articles about shenanigans either at the private company running the cameras, or at the municipalities, doing such things as short-yellows to increase revenues.
Even worse, in my mind, are the "blocking the box" cameras. More than once I have been pausing before crossing the intersection, to insure that I will not get caught blocking the box by the change in the light, and then right when there is space on the other side and I am part way across the intersection someone turning right-on-red cuts me off, filling the space and leaving me in "the box." Since all the cameras do is take a still photo (you can see the flash), this would not be evident, and it would look like I was in the wrong, when there was really nothing which I could have done to prevent it. Fortunately, none of those times have been at camera intersections.
Perhaps what is needed is a new form of adblock, which actually loads the ads, possibly on a low priority basis*, but doesn't display them.
*Thinking along the lines of accept the first 1k of the ad, then go slow on the TCP responses, until the main-page/non-ad-identified bits have finished. I am looking for a system such that the ads are downloading to/dev/null while I am reading the ad-free page.
Of course the negative response to that will be to put some active content in the ad such that the article will not display until the ad "payload" is actively processed and phones home. Thus blurring the line between ads and malware even more than it is already. (at times)
(If someone is already doing this sort of thing, please don't flame me, just inform. Frankly, although I used to maintain block lists, etc., I gave up years ago. Well not completely; I do attempt to avoid certain publishers, but that is on a more manual basis rather than automated.)
Pissing about shrinking images hasn't done much since the days of Opera Mobile and WAP.
I might agree with the rest of your post. Particularly as what the #^@% is he expending 2G on? I use my phone all the time, and the only time I came close to my 2G cap was the month where I watched every episode (to that date, 5th or 6th season) of Mad Men on it. And that took me most of the month to do so.
I however disagree with your attitude about using appropriate dimensioned images. It is so ridiculous that, with broadband service, it takes longer to load some of the web pages, with little more real content, than it did when I was using dial-up service 20 years ago. Back then I remember reading web design guidelines to resample your images to keep load time to 5 seconds per page (at 56kbps). Now, you can reasonably update the bandwidth*, but you should probably still keep to the 5 second rule. This will require a small amount of resampling/optimization, but probably not so much that anyone will notice, unless they really want to examine the pore structure of your cat's nose in the photo.
* work to a bottom-tier cable modem speed, or something similar.
Admittedly, whining on Slashdot isn't likely to change anything. So there, I agree with you again.
Google may be big, but it isn't that big. IMHO. Nor has it colluded with competitors to set prices. As to the first concept (effective monopoly) I go to Bing all the time, for various reasons. Sometimes, I have searched Google first, and am looking for a different ranking algorithm, in order to see if I can find other high quality links which Google missed somehow. Sometimes, I just like Bing's presentation. Sometimes, I don't have any reason at all. Even though I tend to go to Google first, I know other people who use Bing primarily. There are yet other engines as well, and the cost to switch is exactly zero, so I don't see how lock-in comes about.
Now if you wanted to claim that there is an issue of fraud, you might have a better point. I don't think that would fly either, but I have heard of stranger things.
just witness the hoards of mucking forons spewing forth onto forums parroting bullshit from fox news / talk radio about 'da gubment taking my intertubes'
Normally, I wouldn't agree with your characterization of fox/talk radio. However, in this case you are too close to the truth for comfort. It does vary by talk show host however.
Knowing what I do about the original issue bringing up Net Neutrality, I couldn't figure out what most of them were complaining about. Finally, I heard one of them discuss the fact that this was yet another secret "you can't know what is in it until we enact it" situation. (even congressmen were turned away with no information) The fact that the Whitehouse had a hand in directing the action by the FCC made it even more suspicious. So, given the lack of transparency and public comment period on the proposed regulation, there was some cause for concern of government overreach.
Based on what I have heard so far, it looks to be OK, but I don't exactly trust (any) politicians/bureaucrats much farther than I can throw them. So, we will have to see...
It was Christmas time, and we were at my mother-in-law's house for the holiday, when she received a call. The person on the other end claimed to be my nephew, calling grandma because he had gone for a joy ride with friends and gotten in an accident with the car. (He didn't quite have his license yet, so it was possible, even if slightly out of character.) He said he broke his nose, to explain why his voice sounded funny, and that he was calling from the police station to get bail, but was too embarrassed to call his dad. He wanted to explain what happened face-to-face with his parents, not over the phone.
The acting was very convincing, and really did almost sound like my nephew... with a broken nose. While my wife kept trying to ask questions about what police station he was at, etc, I called his parents on my cell-phone, and found out my nephew was sitting at the breakfast table with them. Before I could relay that however, the scammer must have gotten tired of my wife's questions, because he said the police were taking the phone away, and that his court appointed lawyer would call us back shortly. (We never got the second call from the "lawyer.")
On my side of the family, my mother almost was caught by an overseas bail extortion call. A cousin of mine was travelling in China, where the call claimed a relative was being held. My mother actually got to the credit union to withdraw the money, where the teller (who knows her) stopped her from doing so. I only heard about that one after the fact.
My wife got called by a Nigeria scam (sort of). The person claimed she had won a car in a drawing, but needed her to wire the sales tax for the vehicle. Coincidently, she had recently put a ticket in a drawing at the county fair, so there was a possibility, but a bunch of things didn't pass the "smell test." She kept asking questions, and the final clue was the phone number which the scammer gave for her to call back once she had purchased a Green Dot money card. The number was from one of the Caribbean islands which have an area code like a US call (not an obviously international call), but since it wasn't local, my wife looked it up. (We later got a sales call from a local travel agent regarding the county fair drawing; we didn't win the car, but could visit a timeshare if we wanted.)
. . . if you haven't needed the data on it and transferred it/used it since then, other than the geek dick measuring aspects of it, why in God's name are you doing this? More importantly, why are you bothering us about it? The mid-90's, as far as laptops go, might as well be the dark ages.
It seems to me that there were many applications which, in the effort to become easier to use, have become less functional and/or actually harder to use (unless you happen to want to do the one thing which they assume you want to do in exactly the way they assumed it should be done). As a result, every once in a while I wind up plugging in one of my 15-20 year old machines to do a specific task. It then goes back on the shelf to wait until the next time it is needed.
I know, the original post wasn't speaking of applications, he was looking for data. I was just giving another reason for old machines to exist.
Even worse. IIRC the Japanese lacquer sap, which the self-mummifying drunk, has high concentration urushiol, which is what makes poison ivy itchy and inflammatory.
Helicopter Parents. Protecting them from everything and anything.
Let them play in the mud, eat their own boogers, scrap their knees, eat bugs, roll in the grass and leaves even though the dogs poo there, etc.
When you grow up in a plastic bubble, everything is your enemy.
You wrote almost exactly what I was going to say, but I was also going to add that the attitude goes way beyond what kids do or don't eat. The problem is that even if you want to be a sane parent (vice a helicopter parent) the law is being written/interpreted such that you have no choice. Here in Maryland, a parent is being charged with neglect for letting their child walk home from the park. The weirdest part is that the law being used to charge them is one which prohibits locking a child in a building alone. Being outdoors is being equated to being locked inside. There are a bunch of similar stories reported at http://www.freerangekids.com/
In the Senate, Judiciary Committee Chairman Ron Latz (DFL) had blocked the amendment, stating that he feels it is redundant.
. . .
Thus, Mr. Latz slams the door on the literalists at the expense of appearing redundant.
I would like to agree with Mr. Latz, it should be redundant. The problem is that too many courts, prosecutors, etc. have not considered electronic documents to be "papers" therefore it has already been found to not be redundant.
Yeah, but the implementation has been problematic.
Even though the Constitution makes explicit the powers given to the Federal government, several take the reverse tact of if a protection isn't listed, it doesn't exist. That makes the possible actions by the government infinite and the protections few, and nearly impossible to protect against.
Instead of these piecemeal protections, I'd rather no Bill of Rights, and severe penalties for government overstepping its bounds.
Not disagreeing with several comments here that things have devolved as regards to constitutional rule, but the Bill of Rights explicitly disallows what you contend happened. The tenth amendment reads, "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or the people." Therefore, the fault isn't in the Bill of Rights not providing comprehensive protections, the fault lies securely in lack of vigilance by the populous allowing the slippery slope expansion of the commerce rule et al to encompass everything. (or even so far as the populous crying "increase the dole" and asking for the constitution to be violated.)
There are several other instances where the Bill of Rights says "Congress shall pass NO law regarding..." but Congress does anyway, and says that they are upholding that Right by clarifying it somehow. (what part of NO don't they understand?) Or, if Congress doesn't, then the courts start legislating from the bench, inventing new unwritten rights which somehow trump the explicitly written ones. Again, lack of vigilance to keep the congress honest, lack of impeachment to kick out those in the executive and judicial who violate, etc.
As I said I don't disagree with what you said up front, but I do disagree with your conclusions that the Bill of Rights made things worse somehow, if anything it probably should be reaffirmed and strengthened. Mark Levin has a book proposing one way to approach doing this. (Admittedly, he is hard/painful to listen to on the radio, but his writing is much better.)
The real problem is that computer science classes tend to be set up to appeal to boys. What these classes really need is better marketing.
Ok, I am about 25 years out of high school, so things might have changed, but I fail to see how "write a program to determine if a user input date is before or after a set date" is biased to appeal to a boy.
Does anyone see a "must" in there, as quoted in the summary?
The problem is that it has money attached, and will become a "must" even if that isn't explicitly stated.
The first example I can think of to demonstrate this effect was the 55 mph "national speed limit." Because the speed limits on roads have been held to be a state controlled matter, the federal government couldn't simply set the maximum speed itself. Instead, congress made federal highway funding contingent on a state's adopting a 55mph maximum speed limit. None of the states wanted to lose the opportunity to get their "fair share" of the money, so they all enacted 55mph limits.
As soon as the monetary contingency was removed, states started setting their speed limits higher again.
First: Yes this is anecdotal, but it is my own experience with 'diversity' in the academic environment. It may not happen all the time or everywhere, but I don't believe it is uncommon either.
The summer before my senior year in college I acted as the boy's counselor for a career "summer camp" sponsored by the State of Michigan, aimed at high-school students. There were many different topics offered, but my school (U of M-Dearborn) was providing an engineering focused camp. As a counselor, I was involved in the selection process, which was run by the engineering admissions office. There were many more applicants than we had openings for students (approximately 30 openings), and the state had mandated a diversity goal (including geographic diversity). The result was a process that went like this:
1. Sort the applications. Place all white male applicants in pile 'B', retaining all female and non-white male applications in pile 'A.' (Actually, the gender sorting was retained.) 2. Review female applications and select the best to fill 50% of the openings. 3. Review non-white male applications and select the best to fill the remaining openings. 4. Plot geographic location of selected applicants' hometowns on the state map. Notice that no applications were selected from the Upper Peninsula. (U.P.) 5. Look for U.P. applicants in the A pile. Finding none, go get the 'B' pile (white males) and search for U.P. residents. (two found) 6. Replace bottom two selected males with the two U.P. residents. 7. Congratulate the team that they have done a wonderful job at promoting diversity.
I do not have a poker face and my disgust must have shown, because the Associate Dean of engineering approached me afterward and said "See, we got some white males in the end." What she didn't seem to understand was that what disturbed me wasn't the outcome (which was bad enough), but that if you were a white male applicant, your application wasn't even considered (except for the two Yoopers*, and they wouldn't have been if there had been any in the 'A' pile). Given the topic today, I suppose I should have been happy that they accepted any male applications at all.
*For those who don't know: Yooper = someone who hails from the Upper Peninsula of Michigan (U - per). Conversely, the Yoopers call those of us from the Lower Peninsula "Trolls", because we live "below the bridge." (the Mackinac bridge which connects the two)
You may be right, but I thought the Koran banned making a depiction of any living thing (or perhaps it was any thing created by God). Thus the focus on art forms like calligraphy and complex geometric patterns.
But not being able to read Arabic, I don't really know. Perhaps it is one of those multiple interpretation things, or one of those "we aren't sure where the line is, so play it safe and don't do anything even close" type of prohibitions.
I had a 1992 Integra GS-R when I graduated and got my first engineering job. I had to get rid of it when I had my second child as the child seats wouldn't fit. **sniff** I miss that car. . .
The only problem with it was when both the wife was in the car and the air-conditioning was on, at which point you had two choices accelerating from a stop: either you didn't put quite enough gas in and it was dog slow, or you put just a little more at which point you lit the tires. There really was no happy medium with it. The third option was to momentarily hit the A/C button off, accelerate reasonably but still energetically, and then push it back on once you were done shifting.
(hard to vote for something that contributes to global warming after you've acknowledged that global warming is real.) This amendment is the Democrats fucking with the Republicans, pure and simple.
While I will agree with the statement that this is essentially just political maneuvering, I will disagree with the assertion that creating a pipeline will contribute to global warming. (beyond the actions of the construction equipment) In fact, one could argue that a pipeline reduces the amount of CO2 emitted by the trucks/boats needed to carry the oil otherwise. (both extremely small compared to the amount of oil/carbon flowing IN the pipe) What the pipeline might change is where the oil being refined is coming from. I, for one, would rather give Canada the money than some ISIS supporting nation in the mid-east, or some dictator in South America. (just two examples) My assumption being that the demand for oil is relatively constant, and that one is merely changing the supplier.
While I don't necessarily agree with your apparent conclusions, I think this exposes a good point. Climate change is pretty easy to predict knowing that we are pumping CO2 into the air at an alarming rate and the science tells us that is bad.
Unfortunately, because we have data from so little of he Earth's history, it is difficult to see. As a result there are a lot of people making up "facts" and falsifying studies to convince everyone, so of course you are going to have those people unwilling to believe after being lied to repeatedly.
These exaggerations and outright lies are working against the cause to educate people on climate change. People need to stop trying to push the "OMG we're all going to die the day after tomorrow if we don't do something now" mentality and have a serious discussion about why we need to drastically reduce our CO2 production.
I really wish I had moderator points right now, but as I don't, the best I can do is quote them and say that this is one of the most reasonable statements I have seen summarizing the situation.
As for MY opinion, I really don't know... I am not convinced by the "evidence" of warming, and the way it has been pushed (and who by) makes me automatically suspicious. On the other hand, there is some sense that we should at least be cautious and responsible in our actions; we should be good stewards of the earth for future generations.
As an engineer, efficiency makes sense. On the other hand, many of the touted "efficient" vehicles, etc. don't really deliver when you consider the larger impact beyond the vehicle. (ie the Prius) Note I am using vehicle efficiency as an example only. The same can be said about many other items/fields, like photovoltaics, etc.
After several years of exhaustive research, scientists have found that the greatest single contributor to death is being alive. "In 100% of the cases, the subjects death was preceded by a period of being alive," said one researcher. Even after eliminating other potential contributors, such as accidental death, suicide, etc. and adjusting for the age of the subject, the statistics remain strong. "If you are alive today, then you may die tomorrow."
With the rise of Obamacare, these findings could become even more vital, due to the potential effect that such details could have on the total cost of the program. "I think the insurance industry has known this for years, and has been keeping it away from public knowledge," said one official under condition of anonymity. One possibility would be to establish initiatives to curb the spread of being alive. "By reducing the number of people who are alive, we could significantly decrease the number of deaths, regardless of cause. This could amount to trillions of dollars in government savings, but I am not sure if the general public would be willing to give up on such a well established habit," he continued.
Well, churning your own butter is easy. Just accidentally forget about the cream you were beating in your mixer. Done that before.
I'll do you one better. Although I have started with heavy whipping cream to make butter (on purpose), I have also gotten it accidently. I inadvertently purchased some non-homogenized organic milk (it was on sale). The cream had separated to the top of the jug, and the small bit of shaking on the drive from the store to home caused it to solidify into butter. Surprise!
I poured out the milk into a pitcher, cut the jug open to remove the solidified cream, and kneaded a bit of salt into it to make a very usable half-cup of butter.
Funny thing is that when I read the original electrical tape splice comment, I assumed that he had soldered the wires before taping; probably because that is how I would have done it.
If you want a scary wiring story, and that about the previous generation who is supposedly so good at fixing things, I will tell you about the wiring in my in-laws' house. The hall light (3-way switched) stopped working. My father-in-law had installed the 3-ways about 50 years ago shortly after the house was built, because the contractor didn't have a switch at both ends of the hall. When I opened the switch box, I found that he had done the whole job by only twisting the wires together. (In case you haven't done the job, 3 way switches require you to join wire-to-wire at various points; not everything goes to a switch or other hardware with terminals.) At least he put some tape over the wires (which had long since lost it tackiness). Some corrosion between the loosely connected wires had interrupted the circuit.
As to using wire nuts in general, they work great in static situations like house-wiring (inside the boxes). Where they don't work as well is in dynamic situations like an appliance cord. Even in the static situation the nuts should be taped over as well, although you can usually get away without. (I'm not sure what code requires now.*) More important is to be sure you have the correct size nut for the number and type of wires being connected. Besides "biting" into the wire, the nut should apply enough compression to the set of wires to insure good contact.
*Disclaimer: Dammit Jim! I'm an engineer, not a licensed house electrician. So, I am speaking from the standpoint of what works, not what is legal WRT electrical code.
Slashdot Mirror
While I will admit that in 98% of the cases the right light cameras are probably working just fine, my issue is that when there is a problem with the camera there is little to no recourse, due to both the distance of time and the lack of a human to argue with if there was some extenuating factor. (I have seen lights with VERY short yellows; somewhere around 1 second, but less than 2 seconds.) There have been numerous news articles about shenanigans either at the private company running the cameras, or at the municipalities, doing such things as short-yellows to increase revenues.
Even worse, in my mind, are the "blocking the box" cameras. More than once I have been pausing before crossing the intersection, to insure that I will not get caught blocking the box by the change in the light, and then right when there is space on the other side and I am part way across the intersection someone turning right-on-red cuts me off, filling the space and leaving me in "the box." Since all the cameras do is take a still photo (you can see the flash), this would not be evident, and it would look like I was in the wrong, when there was really nothing which I could have done to prevent it. Fortunately, none of those times have been at camera intersections.
Perhaps what is needed is a new form of adblock, which actually loads the ads, possibly on a low priority basis*, but doesn't display them.
*Thinking along the lines of accept the first 1k of the ad, then go slow on the TCP responses, until the main-page/non-ad-identified bits have finished. I am looking for a system such that the ads are downloading to /dev/null while I am reading the ad-free page.
Of course the negative response to that will be to put some active content in the ad such that the article will not display until the ad "payload" is actively processed and phones home. Thus blurring the line between ads and malware even more than it is already. (at times)
(If someone is already doing this sort of thing, please don't flame me, just inform. Frankly, although I used to maintain block lists, etc., I gave up years ago. Well not completely; I do attempt to avoid certain publishers, but that is on a more manual basis rather than automated.)
Pissing about shrinking images hasn't done much since the days of Opera Mobile and WAP.
I might agree with the rest of your post. Particularly as what the #^@% is he expending 2G on? I use my phone all the time, and the only time I came close to my 2G cap was the month where I watched every episode (to that date, 5th or 6th season) of Mad Men on it. And that took me most of the month to do so.
I however disagree with your attitude about using appropriate dimensioned images. It is so ridiculous that, with broadband service, it takes longer to load some of the web pages, with little more real content, than it did when I was using dial-up service 20 years ago. Back then I remember reading web design guidelines to resample your images to keep load time to 5 seconds per page (at 56kbps). Now, you can reasonably update the bandwidth*, but you should probably still keep to the 5 second rule. This will require a small amount of resampling/optimization, but probably not so much that anyone will notice, unless they really want to examine the pore structure of your cat's nose in the photo.
* work to a bottom-tier cable modem speed, or something similar.
Admittedly, whining on Slashdot isn't likely to change anything. So there, I agree with you again.
Forgive me but what law or regulation defines that as a requirement?
That would be covered under the US antitrust laws. There are several: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U...
Google may be big, but it isn't that big. IMHO. Nor has it colluded with competitors to set prices.
As to the first concept (effective monopoly) I go to Bing all the time, for various reasons. Sometimes, I have searched Google first, and am looking for a different ranking algorithm, in order to see if I can find other high quality links which Google missed somehow. Sometimes, I just like Bing's presentation. Sometimes, I don't have any reason at all. Even though I tend to go to Google first, I know other people who use Bing primarily. There are yet other engines as well, and the cost to switch is exactly zero, so I don't see how lock-in comes about.
Now if you wanted to claim that there is an issue of fraud, you might have a better point. I don't think that would fly either, but I have heard of stranger things.
just witness the hoards of mucking forons spewing forth onto forums parroting bullshit from fox news / talk radio about 'da gubment taking my intertubes'
Normally, I wouldn't agree with your characterization of fox/talk radio. However, in this case you are too close to the truth for comfort. It does vary by talk show host however.
Knowing what I do about the original issue bringing up Net Neutrality, I couldn't figure out what most of them were complaining about. Finally, I heard one of them discuss the fact that this was yet another secret "you can't know what is in it until we enact it" situation. (even congressmen were turned away with no information) The fact that the Whitehouse had a hand in directing the action by the FCC made it even more suspicious. So, given the lack of transparency and public comment period on the proposed regulation, there was some cause for concern of government overreach.
Based on what I have heard so far, it looks to be OK, but I don't exactly trust (any) politicians/bureaucrats much farther than I can throw them. So, we will have to see...
It was Christmas time, and we were at my mother-in-law's house for the holiday, when she received a call. The person on the other end claimed to be my nephew, calling grandma because he had gone for a joy ride with friends and gotten in an accident with the car. (He didn't quite have his license yet, so it was possible, even if slightly out of character.) He said he broke his nose, to explain why his voice sounded funny, and that he was calling from the police station to get bail, but was too embarrassed to call his dad. He wanted to explain what happened face-to-face with his parents, not over the phone.
The acting was very convincing, and really did almost sound like my nephew... with a broken nose. While my wife kept trying to ask questions about what police station he was at, etc, I called his parents on my cell-phone, and found out my nephew was sitting at the breakfast table with them. Before I could relay that however, the scammer must have gotten tired of my wife's questions, because he said the police were taking the phone away, and that his court appointed lawyer would call us back shortly. (We never got the second call from the "lawyer.")
On my side of the family, my mother almost was caught by an overseas bail extortion call. A cousin of mine was travelling in China, where the call claimed a relative was being held. My mother actually got to the credit union to withdraw the money, where the teller (who knows her) stopped her from doing so. I only heard about that one after the fact.
My wife got called by a Nigeria scam (sort of). The person claimed she had won a car in a drawing, but needed her to wire the sales tax for the vehicle. Coincidently, she had recently put a ticket in a drawing at the county fair, so there was a possibility, but a bunch of things didn't pass the "smell test." She kept asking questions, and the final clue was the phone number which the scammer gave for her to call back once she had purchased a Green Dot money card. The number was from one of the Caribbean islands which have an area code like a US call (not an obviously international call), but since it wasn't local, my wife looked it up. (We later got a sales call from a local travel agent regarding the county fair drawing; we didn't win the car, but could visit a timeshare if we wanted.)
. . . if you haven't needed the data on it and transferred it/used it since then, other than the geek dick measuring aspects of it, why in God's name are you doing this? More importantly, why are you bothering us about it? The mid-90's, as far as laptops go, might as well be the dark ages.
It seems to me that there were many applications which, in the effort to become easier to use, have become less functional and/or actually harder to use (unless you happen to want to do the one thing which they assume you want to do in exactly the way they assumed it should be done). As a result, every once in a while I wind up plugging in one of my 15-20 year old machines to do a specific task. It then goes back on the shelf to wait until the next time it is needed.
I know, the original post wasn't speaking of applications, he was looking for data. I was just giving another reason for old machines to exist.
Now, Get off my lawn!
Even worse. IIRC the Japanese lacquer sap, which the self-mummifying drunk, has high concentration urushiol, which is what makes poison ivy itchy and inflammatory.
Helicopter Parents. Protecting them from everything and anything.
Let them play in the mud, eat their own boogers, scrap their knees, eat bugs, roll in the grass and leaves even though the dogs poo there, etc.
When you grow up in a plastic bubble, everything is your enemy.
You wrote almost exactly what I was going to say, but I was also going to add that the attitude goes way beyond what kids do or don't eat. The problem is that even if you want to be a sane parent (vice a helicopter parent) the law is being written/interpreted such that you have no choice. Here in Maryland, a parent is being charged with neglect for letting their child walk home from the park. The weirdest part is that the law being used to charge them is one which prohibits locking a child in a building alone. Being outdoors is being equated to being locked inside. There are a bunch of similar stories reported at http://www.freerangekids.com/
In the Senate, Judiciary Committee Chairman Ron Latz (DFL) had blocked the amendment, stating that he feels it is redundant.
. . .
Thus, Mr. Latz slams the door on the literalists at the expense of appearing redundant.
I would like to agree with Mr. Latz, it should be redundant. The problem is that too many courts, prosecutors, etc. have not considered electronic documents to be "papers" therefore it has already been found to not be redundant.
Yeah, but the implementation has been problematic.
Even though the Constitution makes explicit the powers given to the Federal government, several take the reverse tact of if a protection isn't listed, it doesn't exist. That makes the possible actions by the government infinite and the protections few, and nearly impossible to protect against.
Instead of these piecemeal protections, I'd rather no Bill of Rights, and severe penalties for government overstepping its bounds.
Not disagreeing with several comments here that things have devolved as regards to constitutional rule, but the Bill of Rights explicitly disallows what you contend happened. The tenth amendment reads, "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or the people." Therefore, the fault isn't in the Bill of Rights not providing comprehensive protections, the fault lies securely in lack of vigilance by the populous allowing the slippery slope expansion of the commerce rule et al to encompass everything. (or even so far as the populous crying "increase the dole" and asking for the constitution to be violated.)
There are several other instances where the Bill of Rights says "Congress shall pass NO law regarding..." but Congress does anyway, and says that they are upholding that Right by clarifying it somehow. (what part of NO don't they understand?) Or, if Congress doesn't, then the courts start legislating from the bench, inventing new unwritten rights which somehow trump the explicitly written ones. Again, lack of vigilance to keep the congress honest, lack of impeachment to kick out those in the executive and judicial who violate, etc.
As I said I don't disagree with what you said up front, but I do disagree with your conclusions that the Bill of Rights made things worse somehow, if anything it probably should be reaffirmed and strengthened. Mark Levin has a book proposing one way to approach doing this. (Admittedly, he is hard/painful to listen to on the radio, but his writing is much better.)
The real problem is that computer science classes tend to be set up to appeal to boys. What these classes really need is better marketing.
Ok, I am about 25 years out of high school, so things might have changed, but I fail to see how "write a program to determine if a user input date is before or after a set date" is biased to appeal to a boy.
Does anyone see a "must" in there, as quoted in the summary?
The problem is that it has money attached, and will become a "must" even if that isn't explicitly stated.
The first example I can think of to demonstrate this effect was the 55 mph "national speed limit." Because the speed limits on roads have been held to be a state controlled matter, the federal government couldn't simply set the maximum speed itself. Instead, congress made federal highway funding contingent on a state's adopting a 55mph maximum speed limit. None of the states wanted to lose the opportunity to get their "fair share" of the money, so they all enacted 55mph limits.
As soon as the monetary contingency was removed, states started setting their speed limits higher again.
First: Yes this is anecdotal, but it is my own experience with 'diversity' in the academic environment. It may not happen all the time or everywhere, but I don't believe it is uncommon either.
The summer before my senior year in college I acted as the boy's counselor for a career "summer camp" sponsored by the State of Michigan, aimed at high-school students. There were many different topics offered, but my school (U of M-Dearborn) was providing an engineering focused camp. As a counselor, I was involved in the selection process, which was run by the engineering admissions office. There were many more applicants than we had openings for students (approximately 30 openings), and the state had mandated a diversity goal (including geographic diversity). The result was a process that went like this:
1. Sort the applications. Place all white male applicants in pile 'B', retaining all female and non-white male applications in pile 'A.' (Actually, the gender sorting was retained.)
2. Review female applications and select the best to fill 50% of the openings.
3. Review non-white male applications and select the best to fill the remaining openings.
4. Plot geographic location of selected applicants' hometowns on the state map. Notice that no applications were selected from the Upper Peninsula. (U.P.)
5. Look for U.P. applicants in the A pile. Finding none, go get the 'B' pile (white males) and search for U.P. residents. (two found)
6. Replace bottom two selected males with the two U.P. residents.
7. Congratulate the team that they have done a wonderful job at promoting diversity.
I do not have a poker face and my disgust must have shown, because the Associate Dean of engineering approached me afterward and said "See, we got some white males in the end." What she didn't seem to understand was that what disturbed me wasn't the outcome (which was bad enough), but that if you were a white male applicant, your application wasn't even considered (except for the two Yoopers*, and they wouldn't have been if there had been any in the 'A' pile). Given the topic today, I suppose I should have been happy that they accepted any male applications at all.
*For those who don't know: Yooper = someone who hails from the Upper Peninsula of Michigan (U - per). Conversely, the Yoopers call those of us from the Lower Peninsula "Trolls", because we live "below the bridge." (the Mackinac bridge which connects the two)
You may be right, but I thought the Koran banned making a depiction of any living thing (or perhaps it was any thing created by God). Thus the focus on art forms like calligraphy and complex geometric patterns.
But not being able to read Arabic, I don't really know. Perhaps it is one of those multiple interpretation things, or one of those "we aren't sure where the line is, so play it safe and don't do anything even close" type of prohibitions.
at least your Muhammad is a happy depiction.
[Censored]
*~~O
^^^^^^ Angry Muhammad with a bomb. (Image of the Prophet has been censored to avoid causing international tensions.)
When I saw the headline for this article, my first thought was "I didn't know the prophet Mohammed had a facebook account."
I'd like to see their implementation of Tic Tac Toe. Lets have it in the standard 3x3 matrix. Go...
"A strange game. The only winning move is not to play." --Joshua/WOPR
So I guess the Tic Tac Toe game implementation would simply be
RTS
I had a 1992 Integra GS-R when I graduated and got my first engineering job. I had to get rid of it when I had my second child as the child seats wouldn't fit.
**sniff** I miss that car. . .
The only problem with it was when both the wife was in the car and the air-conditioning was on, at which point you had two choices accelerating from a stop: either you didn't put quite enough gas in and it was dog slow, or you put just a little more at which point you lit the tires. There really was no happy medium with it. The third option was to momentarily hit the A/C button off, accelerate reasonably but still energetically, and then push it back on once you were done shifting.
(hard to vote for something that contributes to global warming after you've acknowledged that global warming is real.) This amendment is the Democrats fucking with the Republicans, pure and simple.
While I will agree with the statement that this is essentially just political maneuvering, I will disagree with the assertion that creating a pipeline will contribute to global warming. (beyond the actions of the construction equipment) In fact, one could argue that a pipeline reduces the amount of CO2 emitted by the trucks/boats needed to carry the oil otherwise. (both extremely small compared to the amount of oil/carbon flowing IN the pipe) What the pipeline might change is where the oil being refined is coming from. I, for one, would rather give Canada the money than some ISIS supporting nation in the mid-east, or some dictator in South America. (just two examples) My assumption being that the demand for oil is relatively constant, and that one is merely changing the supplier.
Or perhaps they are simply scoring points on your demonic ignorance? :D
I for one am happy to remain personally ignorant of the doings of demons. Demons are not something which I wish to experience.
(other than perhaps the daemons which make my Linux box run quite nicely... what a difference the 'a' makes!)
An anonymous coward wrote:
While I don't necessarily agree with your apparent conclusions, I think this exposes a good point. Climate change is pretty easy to predict knowing that we are pumping CO2 into the air at an alarming rate and the science tells us that is bad.
Unfortunately, because we have data from so little of he Earth's history, it is difficult to see. As a result there are a lot of people making up "facts" and falsifying studies to convince everyone, so of course you are going to have those people unwilling to believe after being lied to repeatedly.
These exaggerations and outright lies are working against the cause to educate people on climate change. People need to stop trying to push the "OMG we're all going to die the day after tomorrow if we don't do something now" mentality and have a serious discussion about why we need to drastically reduce our CO2 production.
I really wish I had moderator points right now, but as I don't, the best I can do is quote them and say that this is one of the most reasonable statements I have seen summarizing the situation.
As for MY opinion, I really don't know... I am not convinced by the "evidence" of warming, and the way it has been pushed (and who by) makes me automatically suspicious. On the other hand, there is some sense that we should at least be cautious and responsible in our actions; we should be good stewards of the earth for future generations.
As an engineer, efficiency makes sense. On the other hand, many of the touted "efficient" vehicles, etc. don't really deliver when you consider the larger impact beyond the vehicle. (ie the Prius) Note I am using vehicle efficiency as an example only. The same can be said about many other items/fields, like photovoltaics, etc.
Being Alive Shown to be Deadly.
After several years of exhaustive research, scientists have found that the greatest single contributor to death is being alive. "In 100% of the cases, the subjects death was preceded by a period of being alive," said one researcher. Even after eliminating other potential contributors, such as accidental death, suicide, etc. and adjusting for the age of the subject, the statistics remain strong. "If you are alive today, then you may die tomorrow."
With the rise of Obamacare, these findings could become even more vital, due to the potential effect that such details could have on the total cost of the program. "I think the insurance industry has known this for years, and has been keeping it away from public knowledge," said one official under condition of anonymity. One possibility would be to establish initiatives to curb the spread of being alive. "By reducing the number of people who are alive, we could significantly decrease the number of deaths, regardless of cause. This could amount to trillions of dollars in government savings, but I am not sure if the general public would be willing to give up on such a well established habit," he continued.
Well, churning your own butter is easy. Just accidentally forget about the cream you were beating in your mixer. Done that before.
I'll do you one better. Although I have started with heavy whipping cream to make butter (on purpose), I have also gotten it accidently. I inadvertently purchased some non-homogenized organic milk (it was on sale). The cream had separated to the top of the jug, and the small bit of shaking on the drive from the store to home caused it to solidify into butter. Surprise!
I poured out the milk into a pitcher, cut the jug open to remove the solidified cream, and kneaded a bit of salt into it to make a very usable half-cup of butter.
Funny thing is that when I read the original electrical tape splice comment, I assumed that he had soldered the wires before taping; probably because that is how I would have done it.
If you want a scary wiring story, and that about the previous generation who is supposedly so good at fixing things, I will tell you about the wiring in my in-laws' house. The hall light (3-way switched) stopped working. My father-in-law had installed the 3-ways about 50 years ago shortly after the house was built, because the contractor didn't have a switch at both ends of the hall. When I opened the switch box, I found that he had done the whole job by only twisting the wires together. (In case you haven't done the job, 3 way switches require you to join wire-to-wire at various points; not everything goes to a switch or other hardware with terminals.) At least he put some tape over the wires (which had long since lost it tackiness). Some corrosion between the loosely connected wires had interrupted the circuit.
As to using wire nuts in general, they work great in static situations like house-wiring (inside the boxes). Where they don't work as well is in dynamic situations like an appliance cord. Even in the static situation the nuts should be taped over as well, although you can usually get away without. (I'm not sure what code requires now.*) More important is to be sure you have the correct size nut for the number and type of wires being connected. Besides "biting" into the wire, the nut should apply enough compression to the set of wires to insure good contact.
*Disclaimer: Dammit Jim! I'm an engineer, not a licensed house electrician. So, I am speaking from the standpoint of what works, not what is legal WRT electrical code.