I can see that. I remember pulling into a convenience store, parking, and then after I got out of my car, I noticed the handicapped sign on the front wall of the store indicating that I had just parked in a handicapped spot.
I just got back into my car and moved it, but when I did I noticed that the ground was in fact painted. It was just so badly faded that I hadn't noticed. If not for the sign, I would have had no clue. Blue paint doesn't take a long time to fade and blend into black asphalt, so I can see why the sign is important.
I wouldn't go so far as to call console controls "inferior" to PC controls. Unless I qualified that with something like a specific application, say FPSes. or RTSes.
But a side scroller? Or an old school beat 'em up like Street Fighter? I'd rather have a gamepad.
To say nothing of the novel uses that have been found for the motion controls like the Wii Remote (I agree it's misused more frequently than it's used right, but when used right, it really shines.)
I keep reading "wrong race" all over the place. Is this legal?
In high school I distinctly remembering sending in a NAACP scholarship to see what happened because they didn't ask any questions about race anywhere on the application. (I didn't get it).
At the time, I assumed that this was because the law prohibited using race as a factor in awarding scholarship monies.
Are you assuming race is a factor, or do you know for a fact?
SpaceX isn't a space program, it's a launch service. It makes sense to be able to deliver stuff to orbit. We do this all the time and there is a commercial need.
There is less commercial demand for studying embryonic development in microgravity, or launching climate observation satellites or experimenting with solar sails.
The two can coexist, and even benefit from one another, but SpacX is *not* a space program by the traditional definition.
I still think this is one of the dumbest stories Slashdot has ever run. But I was not aware of this site's existence, and it's an incredibly useful idea. Thanks for the link!
The people who haven't seen anything about this haven't been paying attention. I've heard "nobody is paying attention!" since day one. Al-Jazeera, MSNBC, CNN, the NY Times, the Guardian, Keith Olbermann on Current TV, and NPR are all sources I've encountered this on, to say nothing of social media. Hell, even Comedy Central's Stephen Colbert covered this. (I don't know if The Daily Show did or not).
The reporting I've seen and heard has all played more or less the same... reporters looking for a story. Most outfits came right out and said if you ask 10 people what the event is about, you get 10 different answers. They go over how they operate as a commune and how they are voting on what they want.
I'm not making that up, they've got a council that's trying to decide what their demand will be. they haven't decided, nor do they even have any illusion that they *do* have a formed demand.
Until there started to be violence against the protesters, I get the impression that most of the reporters were going through the motions of what they sensed was a non-story.
The Tea Party by contrast had some elements to it that were sexy to the media. They were vocal and belligerent. They showed up at town hall meetings and yelled at members of congress, they showed up with guns. Later, they carried misspelled racist signs and got 10x as crazy.
The media shows up at this, sees a hundred or so hippies living in a commune in a part trying to decide what their demand will be. There's nobody opposing them (until the seemingly random violence from some cops), and no story to cover. Nothing that looks good in a 5 second clip on the 9 O'Clock news, and nothing that sounds good and concise in print.
I refuse to use iOS for this reason. I dislike the mandatory walled garden that much. If this goes through as predicted, I may for the first time be looking to go somewhere other than Windows for my desktop.
But that said, you're throwing around words like "illegal" without a proper understanding. Nothing about a Monopoly is illegal in and of itself.
What makes it illegal is when it is ruled by the courts that you used your status *as* a Monopoly to engage in behaviors that are inherently illegal, price fixing, anti-competitive acts, etc.
Microsoft taking up the walled garden approach may be distasteful (it certainly is to me.), but until they abuse it, it is not illegal.
The re-use of the shuttle program's SRBs makes perfect sense. I know folks at NASA were pushing for these kinds of "refine what we already have" ideas for the next space launch system (See: DIRECT).
But I have no idea why they chose the RS-25 (Space Shuttle Main Engines) for the first stage of this thing.
The RS-25s are unique in that they are designed to be re-used. No other liquid fueled rocket engines are.
Other liquid fueled rocket engines are built, test fired, and then run for 8ish minutes before they're discarded into the ocean, or they burn up on reentry.
Because the RS-25s are re-usable, it's my understanding that they're far more complex than disposable engines of comparable thrust.
Since it appears that the stage these engines will be attached to will not be recovered, why select these engines?
Can anyone confirm my understanding of these engines?
Can anyone confirm if this stage is recovered or not?
Can anyone shed light onto this particular design decision?
Not really. Exactly one member of the house and no members of the senate voted not to go into Afghanistan. I don't remember if she gave a "no" vote, or simply abstained.
There is a near-zero probability that any president in the White House in 2001 would have elected not to go into Afghanistan. He might have done things a bit differently, but we would have gone just the same.
Police and Fire pensions are partially funded by the government and a contribution is required to be made by the members as well - In theory. In practice, many states have made no contributions to the public employee pensions for years. My state is claiming it will make a payment this year, but if it does it will be the third time in 11 years it actually has...
I don't know about the whole country, but at least in the Northeast, New York State is the only one that has fully funded it's public employee pensions fund.
Not saying that there aren't reasons to be upset, just that some of your facts are a bit off.
I get upset too when I hear public employees talk sometimes. I've never worked somewhere where everyone knows so perfectly what's due to them, how they can maximize hours, maximize cash out, minimize their time to retirement, or maximize their pay rate when they do retire, etc. I've never seen that in the private sector. No idea why public employees should be so different. There are 9 million rules and lots of public employees look at each rule as a way to game the system.
On the other hand, there are some sensible reasons for cops and firefighters to retire earlier than you or I. Do you want a 60 year old cop responding to a bar fight? Or a domestic assault call? Not everyone can ascend to be a chief or an administrator.
It is hard to imagine a Buddhist group doing anything like this. That said, they seem to be a major exception where their teachings are about non-violence first.
All the other religions I've studied are a mix of "turn the other cheek" and "an eye for an eye" and other violent principals. This is inviting different people to interpret things differently. So you get Christians who run soup kitchens who would never hurt a fly, and other people who are Christians who bomb clinics that perform abortions or attack people because they are Muslims.
Buddhism (from what I know of it) doesn't have these inconsistencies in its teachings, so you get less wild swing in interpretation on this issue as people cherry pick ideas from the teachings.
But even being more consistent, there are *still* some examples of Buddhists turning to violence. Largely in self defense, but the examples are out there.
Absolutely there were political components too! But I was responding to the idea that religion didn't play a part in al-Qaeda's motivation for war on the United States.
Your understanding of certain critical elements is flawed.
We didn't invade Iraq unprovoked (the first time). If you're referring to the second time, yes, that invasion was unprovoked, but that occurred years after 9/11, so it couldn't have been a motive.
In fact, when Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990, we had the entire world on our side. We were virtually unopposed in the campaign to grow a coalition within the U.N.
Also, what fewer people realize: Bin Laden offered his help to Saudi Arabia at the time.
Bin Laden didn't want Infidels in the Kingdom. He realized a war against Iraq to liberate Kuwait and defend Saudi Arabia would have to be based out of Saudi Arabia. So he asked the Saudi royals to let his forces defend the Kingdom rather than allowing foreigners onto holy ground.
The Saudi royalty, seeing the Kuwaiti royalty now living in the Saudi royalty's hotels after narrowly escaping from Kuwait, decided that perhaps they'd rather have real armies to defend them instead of a group of poorly armed rebel freedom fighters.
Wise choice or not, it pissed off Bin Laden. He used to be close with the Saudi royal family, and apparently this created a permanent rift between him and the royals. That Infidels would be stationed on holy land was insult to injury to him. That they would stay after Kuwait was liberated was intolerable.
Why Bin Laden never chose to strike Israel directly, I can't say. But their motives were most definitely religious. Political too to be sure, but unquestionably religious.
Again, it wasn't target selection that was religiously motivated. It was the motives of the war to begin with.
We went to war with Japan because they bombed Pearl Harbor. We didn't only attack targets that were related to Pearl Harbor. That's not how war works.
They weren't upset about general foreign policy points like trade policy or environments policy, or monetary policy. They were upset over things that they perceived to violate tenants of Islam.
You can make secular arguments for all three of their main stated reasons. But that isn't the route they took. Their reasons were explicitly religious.
I called the grandparent post out on his statement that religion always causes wars as bullshit.
Your statement that it doesn't is just as much bullshit.
Just because you are religious and you wouldn't start a war over religion, doesn't mean you can say "theirs isn't really religion" any more than those who would use violence can say yours isn't "real religion" because you won't turn to violence over it.
Osama Bin Laden was religious. His motivations for attacking the west were religiously motivated. Guess what, not all religions are the same. Not all people's interpretation of the SAME religion is the same, as demonstrated by peaceful Muslims you can contrast against Jihadists, or the folks like Eric Prince at Blackwater who contrast peaceful Christians.
You can't just wave your hands and call their religion "fake" because you don't like that some religious people do disgusting things. If you can do that, I can do the same to you.
I agree it's wrong to blame religion in general for this, But the attacks were religiously motivated.
They were conducted by a religious fanatical group, al-Qaeda.
The stated reasons from al-Qaeda for the attacks were threefold:
1) U.S Support of Israel
This could be religious or non-religious, but for al-Qaeda it was probably a religious reason) 2) U.S. presence in Saudi Arabia
This was definitely a religious motivation. al-Qaeda believs that the Koran forbids a long term presence by non-Muslims so close to Mecca. 3) U.S. / Western sanctions against Iraq.
While al-Qaeda had no love for Saddam Hussein, they still listed this as a reason. I've never heard an explanation for why this is a reason, but I presume it's because they perceived the sanctions as harming Muslims living in Iraq.
So religion played more than a small role in the motivations. These statements were made before the attacks (years before) and after.
That said, as an atheist, I still can't make such a sweeping statement that religion is *always* bad, or that it causes things like this. It can motivate people both ways, like politics and lots of other things.
If I have a big back yard, and the neighbor's kids want to camp out on it, it's probably not hurting me. But I'd still like to be asked before they just go ahead and do it.
It's not about if it's harming them or not. It's just the fact that they never asked, they just went ahead and did it. I wouldn't have reacted this way if I were calling the shots at CBS, but it *is* CBS' call to make. Regardless of if I agree with it or not.
The nice thing to do would be to give the authors permission to continue the project. But they're not under any obligation to do the nice thing.
If I were the author of the app, I'd re-skin it to not be star trek themed any more and call it the "not-a-tri-corder", the "quad-corder" or the "CBS-sucks-corder". Nobody's stopping them from continuing in that way.
The new Toshiba FlashAir card can transmit photos and videos to the back-end system, but the really clever bit is that it can also receive data (photos, videos etc) as well.
This means that two people, both equipped with FlashAir-equipped cameras, can transmit photos or other data between their respective devices, in a peer to peer manner.
No, what it means is that you can have a scheme something like:
Pair Card with external device
Take picture
Picture is saved to 8 GB of SD memory
If pairing is still intact, upload image to paired device
Wait for response from paired device that image is saved successfully
Once response is received, delete image from 8 GB SD memory space.
What this means is that a photographer can shoot until their battery runs out while a nearby notebook or WiFi enabled SAN device records the images. Instead of being limited to 32 GB, you can happily fill a terabyte drive or more.
Or if you're concerned about the data's safety locally (journalist working in a dangerous area, someone taking pictures of authorities who might take the camera away) you can even set the device that's receiving the images to upload into a remote FTP or some kind of cloud based service.
They created a neat application that does cool stuff.
But they themed it in a way that borrowed heavily from someone else's work.
That's okay if the someone else approves and gives you permission.
But that someone else got upset.
They can still have a sensor-machine app, but the Star Trek ties are the issue.
Ideally he they would work with CBS, and they'd have a better product for it. But if CBS doesn't want to play ball, why should they have to? Perhaps they want to release their own version of the app?
Slashdot Mirror
I can see that. I remember pulling into a convenience store, parking, and then after I got out of my car, I noticed the handicapped sign on the front wall of the store indicating that I had just parked in a handicapped spot.
I just got back into my car and moved it, but when I did I noticed that the ground was in fact painted. It was just so badly faded that I hadn't noticed. If not for the sign, I would have had no clue. Blue paint doesn't take a long time to fade and blend into black asphalt, so I can see why the sign is important.
Different tools for different applications.
I wouldn't go so far as to call console controls "inferior" to PC controls. Unless I qualified that with something like a specific application, say FPSes. or RTSes.
But a side scroller? Or an old school beat 'em up like Street Fighter? I'd rather have a gamepad.
To say nothing of the novel uses that have been found for the motion controls like the Wii Remote (I agree it's misused more frequently than it's used right, but when used right, it really shines.)
Police could do that. But the military is prohibited from deploying chemical weapons, including tear gas, believe it or not.
I keep reading "wrong race" all over the place. Is this legal?
In high school I distinctly remembering sending in a NAACP scholarship to see what happened because they didn't ask any questions about race anywhere on the application. (I didn't get it).
At the time, I assumed that this was because the law prohibited using race as a factor in awarding scholarship monies.
Are you assuming race is a factor, or do you know for a fact?
I can only speculate, but it's possible China couldn't work with ISS if they wanted to.
NASA is now prohibited by U.S. law from cooperating with China in any way shape or form.
ISS is not an entirely NASA program, but NASA is the lead agency. However I have to believe that China was planning this before this law was passed.
SpaceX isn't a space program, it's a launch service. It makes sense to be able to deliver stuff to orbit. We do this all the time and there is a commercial need.
There is less commercial demand for studying embryonic development in microgravity, or launching climate observation satellites or experimenting with solar sails.
The two can coexist, and even benefit from one another, but SpacX is *not* a space program by the traditional definition.
I still think this is one of the dumbest stories Slashdot has ever run. But I was not aware of this site's existence, and it's an incredibly useful idea. Thanks for the link!
THIS!
The people who haven't seen anything about this haven't been paying attention. I've heard "nobody is paying attention!" since day one. Al-Jazeera, MSNBC, CNN, the NY Times, the Guardian, Keith Olbermann on Current TV, and NPR are all sources I've encountered this on, to say nothing of social media. Hell, even Comedy Central's Stephen Colbert covered this. (I don't know if The Daily Show did or not).
The reporting I've seen and heard has all played more or less the same... reporters looking for a story. Most outfits came right out and said if you ask 10 people what the event is about, you get 10 different answers. They go over how they operate as a commune and how they are voting on what they want.
I'm not making that up, they've got a council that's trying to decide what their demand will be. they haven't decided, nor do they even have any illusion that they *do* have a formed demand.
Until there started to be violence against the protesters, I get the impression that most of the reporters were going through the motions of what they sensed was a non-story.
The Tea Party by contrast had some elements to it that were sexy to the media. They were vocal and belligerent. They showed up at town hall meetings and yelled at members of congress, they showed up with guns. Later, they carried misspelled racist signs and got 10x as crazy.
The media shows up at this, sees a hundred or so hippies living in a commune in a part trying to decide what their demand will be. There's nobody opposing them (until the seemingly random violence from some cops), and no story to cover. Nothing that looks good in a 5 second clip on the 9 O'Clock news, and nothing that sounds good and concise in print.
I refuse to use iOS for this reason. I dislike the mandatory walled garden that much. If this goes through as predicted, I may for the first time be looking to go somewhere other than Windows for my desktop.
But that said, you're throwing around words like "illegal" without a proper understanding. Nothing about a Monopoly is illegal in and of itself.
What makes it illegal is when it is ruled by the courts that you used your status *as* a Monopoly to engage in behaviors that are inherently illegal, price fixing, anti-competitive acts, etc.
Microsoft taking up the walled garden approach may be distasteful (it certainly is to me.), but until they abuse it, it is not illegal.
Brazillion emails?
I'm a bit confused by this.
The re-use of the shuttle program's SRBs makes perfect sense. I know folks at NASA were pushing for these kinds of "refine what we already have" ideas for the next space launch system (See: DIRECT).
But I have no idea why they chose the RS-25 (Space Shuttle Main Engines) for the first stage of this thing.
The RS-25s are unique in that they are designed to be re-used. No other liquid fueled rocket engines are.
Other liquid fueled rocket engines are built, test fired, and then run for 8ish minutes before they're discarded into the ocean, or they burn up on reentry.
Because the RS-25s are re-usable, it's my understanding that they're far more complex than disposable engines of comparable thrust.
Since it appears that the stage these engines will be attached to will not be recovered, why select these engines?
Can anyone confirm my understanding of these engines?
Can anyone confirm if this stage is recovered or not?
Can anyone shed light onto this particular design decision?
Not really. Exactly one member of the house and no members of the senate voted not to go into Afghanistan. I don't remember if she gave a "no" vote, or simply abstained.
There is a near-zero probability that any president in the White House in 2001 would have elected not to go into Afghanistan. He might have done things a bit differently, but we would have gone just the same.
The post office is privately funded.
Police and Fire pensions are partially funded by the government and a contribution is required to be made by the members as well - In theory. In practice, many states have made no contributions to the public employee pensions for years. My state is claiming it will make a payment this year, but if it does it will be the third time in 11 years it actually has...
I don't know about the whole country, but at least in the Northeast, New York State is the only one that has fully funded it's public employee pensions fund.
Not saying that there aren't reasons to be upset, just that some of your facts are a bit off.
I get upset too when I hear public employees talk sometimes. I've never worked somewhere where everyone knows so perfectly what's due to them, how they can maximize hours, maximize cash out, minimize their time to retirement, or maximize their pay rate when they do retire, etc. I've never seen that in the private sector. No idea why public employees should be so different. There are 9 million rules and lots of public employees look at each rule as a way to game the system.
On the other hand, there are some sensible reasons for cops and firefighters to retire earlier than you or I. Do you want a 60 year old cop responding to a bar fight? Or a domestic assault call? Not everyone can ascend to be a chief or an administrator.
It is hard to imagine a Buddhist group doing anything like this. That said, they seem to be a major exception where their teachings are about non-violence first.
All the other religions I've studied are a mix of "turn the other cheek" and "an eye for an eye" and other violent principals. This is inviting different people to interpret things differently. So you get Christians who run soup kitchens who would never hurt a fly, and other people who are Christians who bomb clinics that perform abortions or attack people because they are Muslims.
Buddhism (from what I know of it) doesn't have these inconsistencies in its teachings, so you get less wild swing in interpretation on this issue as people cherry pick ideas from the teachings.
But even being more consistent, there are *still* some examples of Buddhists turning to violence. Largely in self defense, but the examples are out there.
Here's an interesting piece that examines the issue:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/religions/buddhism/buddhistethics/war.shtml
Absolutely there were political components too! But I was responding to the idea that religion didn't play a part in al-Qaeda's motivation for war on the United States.
Your understanding of certain critical elements is flawed.
We didn't invade Iraq unprovoked (the first time). If you're referring to the second time, yes, that invasion was unprovoked, but that occurred years after 9/11, so it couldn't have been a motive.
In fact, when Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990, we had the entire world on our side. We were virtually unopposed in the campaign to grow a coalition within the U.N.
Also, what fewer people realize: Bin Laden offered his help to Saudi Arabia at the time.
Bin Laden didn't want Infidels in the Kingdom. He realized a war against Iraq to liberate Kuwait and defend Saudi Arabia would have to be based out of Saudi Arabia. So he asked the Saudi royals to let his forces defend the Kingdom rather than allowing foreigners onto holy ground.
The Saudi royalty, seeing the Kuwaiti royalty now living in the Saudi royalty's hotels after narrowly escaping from Kuwait, decided that perhaps they'd rather have real armies to defend them instead of a group of poorly armed rebel freedom fighters.
Wise choice or not, it pissed off Bin Laden. He used to be close with the Saudi royal family, and apparently this created a permanent rift between him and the royals. That Infidels would be stationed on holy land was insult to injury to him. That they would stay after Kuwait was liberated was intolerable.
Why Bin Laden never chose to strike Israel directly, I can't say. But their motives were most definitely religious. Political too to be sure, but unquestionably religious.
Again, it wasn't target selection that was religiously motivated. It was the motives of the war to begin with.
We went to war with Japan because they bombed Pearl Harbor. We didn't only attack targets that were related to Pearl Harbor. That's not how war works.
The two are not mutually exclusive. It was about foreign policy, yes.
But al-Qaeda (a religious extremist group,first of all) objected to three foreign policy points on religious grounds.
http://news.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2422714&cid=37367802
They weren't upset about general foreign policy points like trade policy or environments policy, or monetary policy. They were upset over things that they perceived to violate tenants of Islam.
You can make secular arguments for all three of their main stated reasons. But that isn't the route they took. Their reasons were explicitly religious.
I called the grandparent post out on his statement that religion always causes wars as bullshit.
Your statement that it doesn't is just as much bullshit.
Just because you are religious and you wouldn't start a war over religion, doesn't mean you can say "theirs isn't really religion" any more than those who would use violence can say yours isn't "real religion" because you won't turn to violence over it.
Osama Bin Laden was religious. His motivations for attacking the west were religiously motivated. Guess what, not all religions are the same. Not all people's interpretation of the SAME religion is the same, as demonstrated by peaceful Muslims you can contrast against Jihadists, or the folks like Eric Prince at Blackwater who contrast peaceful Christians.
You can't just wave your hands and call their religion "fake" because you don't like that some religious people do disgusting things. If you can do that, I can do the same to you.
Yeah, because to paraphrase Bill Maher:
"I'm sure Al Gore wouldn't be able to point at a map toward Afghanistan and say 'bomb that!'"
I agree it's wrong to blame religion in general for this, But the attacks were religiously motivated.
They were conducted by a religious fanatical group, al-Qaeda.
The stated reasons from al-Qaeda for the attacks were threefold:
1) U.S Support of Israel
This could be religious or non-religious, but for al-Qaeda it was probably a religious reason)
2) U.S. presence in Saudi Arabia
This was definitely a religious motivation. al-Qaeda believs that the Koran forbids a long term presence by non-Muslims so close to Mecca.
3) U.S. / Western sanctions against Iraq.
While al-Qaeda had no love for Saddam Hussein, they still listed this as a reason. I've never heard an explanation for why this is a reason, but I presume it's because they perceived the sanctions as harming Muslims living in Iraq.
So religion played more than a small role in the motivations. These statements were made before the attacks (years before) and after.
That said, as an atheist, I still can't make such a sweeping statement that religion is *always* bad, or that it causes things like this. It can motivate people both ways, like politics and lots of other things.
September 11th very rarely falls in November.
If I have a big back yard, and the neighbor's kids want to camp out on it, it's probably not hurting me. But I'd still like to be asked before they just go ahead and do it.
It's not about if it's harming them or not. It's just the fact that they never asked, they just went ahead and did it. I wouldn't have reacted this way if I were calling the shots at CBS, but it *is* CBS' call to make. Regardless of if I agree with it or not.
The nice thing to do would be to give the authors permission to continue the project. But they're not under any obligation to do the nice thing.
If I were the author of the app, I'd re-skin it to not be star trek themed any more and call it the "not-a-tri-corder", the "quad-corder" or the "CBS-sucks-corder". Nobody's stopping them from continuing in that way.
No, what it means is that you can have a scheme something like:
What this means is that a photographer can shoot until their battery runs out while a nearby notebook or WiFi enabled SAN device records the images. Instead of being limited to 32 GB, you can happily fill a terabyte drive or more.
Or if you're concerned about the data's safety locally (journalist working in a dangerous area, someone taking pictures of authorities who might take the camera away) you can even set the device that's receiving the images to upload into a remote FTP or some kind of cloud based service.
Or am I missing something?
They created a neat application that does cool stuff.
But they themed it in a way that borrowed heavily from someone else's work.
That's okay if the someone else approves and gives you permission.
But that someone else got upset.
They can still have a sensor-machine app, but the Star Trek ties are the issue.
Ideally he they would work with CBS, and they'd have a better product for it. But if CBS doesn't want to play ball, why should they have to? Perhaps they want to release their own version of the app?
Maybe they want to release their own app?