They're facing a catch-22 critical mass problem. There have to be enough places that accept this for consumers to get on board, but retailers aren't going to spend money on new hardware and software to accept a fringe payment system that hardly any consumers use. Remember all the excitement about RFID in credit cards a few years ago? I've got two cards with them, and the only places I get to use this feature are CVS, Chevron and McDonalds, and most of the time the cashier tells me the system isn't working so I have to slide my card anyway. The major credit card companies were pushing this, yet the few retailers that bought into it can't be bothered to maintain the hardware. They already spend a lot of time, effort and money just keeping up with the requirements of the payment card industry (PCI), which is essentially MasterCard, Visa, AMEX, Discover and JCB. PCI has extraordinary power to dictate what retailers must do and sets deadlines for them to do it, but even they couldn't effectively push the move to RFID. Unless PayPal is offering an attractive, secure system that costs far less than the PCI alternatives, retailers will tell them they should be content with having PayPal-branded credit cards from Visa or MasterCard.
Then there are the little problems of PayPal living in regulatory limbo because it's not a bank, and the fact that many people distrust PayPal because of its attitude that it can do practically whatever it wants without accountability because it's not a bank. But the catch-22 problem makes these seem like minor issues.
I'd say this article is just wishful thinking on PayPal's part. "PayPal CEO Says he Wants to Supplant Trillion Dollar Credit Card Industry, and He'd Like A Diamond-Encrusted Flying Pony. Film at 11!"
The new campus would be not far from the existing campus, on the north side of Interstate 280, one exit east, between Wolfe and Tantau, adjacent to the freeway.
The new building would provide office space for 12,000 to 13,000 people starting around 2015.
The new building would have its own auditorium because they don't like having to go up to the Moscone Center in San Francisco (the traditional home of the MacWorld expo, which was once Apple's primary stage for announcements) every time they announce a new products
The property seems like it would be like a large park with a parking structure WAAAY off by the freeway and a lot of parking underground.
Jobs said Apple has learned a lot from building all its Apple stores around the world and as a result can make really big pieces of curved glass that would be used in construction here. There wouldn't be any flat glass on the building. He said he felt architecture students would come from all over to see it.
The land was originally apricot orchards and he has hired a Stanford horticulturist to consult on ensuring indigenous trees are planted, including more apricot orchards.
Jobs mentioned that he called Bill Hewlett at home (looked him up in the phone book because there were no unlisted numbers then) when he was 13 and asked him for some spare parts, and it was about that time that HP bought the land Apple plans to use for this
One member of the city council attempted to haggle with Jobs, listening to his plans for this new campus and suggesting that in exchange for letting Apple stay in the city Apple should provide free WiFi (a la Google in nearby Mountain View). Jobs responded by calling himself a simpleton, and said he's always believed that the city should provide those services using the money Apple pays in taxes as the largest taxpayer in the city. He did offer to provide WiFi if the city would allow Apple an exemption from paying taxes. She played if off like she was joking at that point, but I think she seriously thought she was going to haggle with Jobs over this.
The city asked for their own Apple store so they don't have to go to Apple stores in Santa Clara's Valley Fair mall or downtown Los Gatos, but Jobs said the traffic isn't there to make it work, to which the city replied, "we'll help you make it work." No response from Jobs on this, though. The new campus would be walking distance from the Cupertino Square Mall, which is relatively small, anchored by a Sears, Macy's and JC Penny and underwent a major renovation a few years ago. That brought in a nice new AMC theater which I think does well, but the rest of the mall seems constantly on the brink of folding, with lots of empty spaces (even before the great recession) and cheap no-name stores... Jobs would never say it but Apple doesn't want its brand associated with that.
Sarah Palin fans claim Paul Revere fans defaced Sarah Palin Wikipedia page, to fit the view that Sarah Palin ran for governor by supporting Alaska's federally-funded $442 million "Bridge to Nowhere," despite Palin's insistence to the contrary.
Stay tuned for an updated list of books Sarah Palin doesn't like that have no place in your library!
seizedservers.com and seizedservers.net are on the list. Does this mean that the DOJ actually registered these two names, or that someone else registered them, and the DOJ seized them to prevent them from infringing the DOJ's exclulsive status as the king of domain name seizures?
Here's the letter from TFA (copied and pasted, emphasis mine):
Dear Governor Snyder,
In these tough economic times, schools are hurting. And yes, everyone in Michigan is hurting right now financially, but why aren’t we protecting schools? Schools are the one place on Earth that people look to to “fix” what is wrong with society by educating our youth and preparing them to take on the issues that society has created.
One solution I believe we must do is take a look at our corrections system in Michigan. We rank nationally at the top in the number of people we incarcerate. We also spend the most money per prisoner annually than any other state in the union. Now, I like to be at the top of lists, but this is one ranking that I don’t believe Michigan wants to be on top of.
Consider the life of a Michigan prisoner. They get three square meals a day. Access to free health care. Internet. Cable television. Access to a library. A weight room. Computer lab. They can earn a degree. A roof over their heads. Clothing. Everything we just listed we DO NOT provide to our school children.
This is why I’m proposing to make my school a prison. The State of Michigan spends annually somewhere between $30,000 and $40,000 per prisoner, yet we are struggling to provide schools with $7,000 per student. I guess we need to treat our students like they are prisoners, with equal funding. Please give my students three meals a day. Please give my children access to free health care. Please provide my school district Internet access and computers. Please put books in my library. Please give my students a weight room so we can be big and strong. We provide all of these things to prisoners because they have constitutional rights. What about the rights of youth, our future?!
Please provide for my students in my school district the same way we provide for a prisoner. It’s the least we can do to prepare our students for the future...by giving our schools the resources necessary to keep our students OUT of prison.
Respectfully submitted,
Nathan Bootz, Superintendent, Ithaca Public Schools
I doubt the superintendent wrote this. My high school English teacher would have thrown the book at him! I highlighted all the typo and grammar mistakes in bold. Not only would a superintendent have better writing skills... he would have proofread a letter he was sending to the governor. I'm thinking someone else wrote this and is falsely attributing it to this guy... unless Mr. Bootz is trying to make the point that budget cuts have been so severe the district is only paying for the use of part of his brain.
I want my friend to see a really funny movie from 20 years ago, but they're not convinced it's worth their time. I search YouTube and I find a video of some highlights, so I send my friend the link to the video. I assume the clips fall under fair use because otherwise YouTube would have pulled them, right?
My friend watches the video, likes it, goes down to the store and buys the DVD and thanks me for introducing him to it.
The MPAA "piracy squad" spends all its time searching YouTube for copyrighted videos. It sues YouTube for its records, the logs show that I used their "share" feature to share the link with one person, and that person watched the video twice. The piracy squad watches the video 8 more times and then sicks its lawyers on me. Since I did indeed link to the video, and it was watched 10 times, I am guilty and convicted of a felony. I lose the ability to vote, the ability to work at many jobs, the right to possess firearms, ammunition and body armor, eligibility for welfare, eligibility for federally-funded housing, and the right to serve on a jury. I no longer have any influence in society and am reduced to flipping burgers by day and scanning retail inventory by night to scrape together enough money to live, which presumably keeps me sufficiently occupied to stay out of trouble.
Meanwhile, the MPAA gets a fee from the sale of the DVD that my friend would never have bought otherwise, they tip the balance of power in government further toward themselves by taking one more voter out of commission, and they strike fear in the hearts of anyone who even thinks about doing anything with video. The only previews you will get to see are the ones they force you to watch every time you pop in a DVD you bought from them.
Perhaps we could counterbalance this bill by adding language that makes it a felony to disable the FFWD or MENU button on a consumer's remote control. It's at least as criminal an act as linking to some YouTube video: millions of people are forced to watch 30 seconds to 5 minutes of previews every time they want to watch the movies they paid to "own" in their own homes. Sure, you could pop the movie in 5 minutes before you're ready to watch it, but the amount of productivity and electricity this needlessly wastes on a global scale is staggering. That's criminal.
And Nikola Tesla is spinning in his grave, mumbling "I told you this would happen. I warned you! I said to stick to AC because DC would bring about the end of the universe!"
I've been up and down the entire length 101 from Silicon Valley to the Washington/Oregon border about a half dozen times in the last three years. If you like driving and scenery, this is a good place to go (get some ice cream from the Tillamook Creamery Assn if you pass through). And bring a real camera (don't be that guy standing by the road taking pictures of the sunset with your iPhone). I can't advise on pricing, but i can tell you about coverage. My AT&T iPhone has gotten reception just fine throughout most of it... You only go without reception when you're not near a town. Even when you're not in a town you're usually ok, unless you're on a really remote stretch of road.
is find somewhere to dispose of all the zillions of "blue goo" sheets.
Weave them into blankets and give them to the people of North Korea as aid? Wait... never mind. Kim Jong-il would consider it an endorsement of his nuclear ambitions: "They aided us in our quest to collect radioactive materials, which we took as encouragement to seek more-fissionable materials."
Do they think people are really that unaware of the problems with their network that they'll believe that AT&T LTE will work any better than AT&T as it is?
No, and this is why the Northeast Corridor, Los Angeles, and the Bay Area are not among the places they are launching LTE. I have both Verizon LTE and AT&T 3G and using them in those areas is like watching a race between a semi-pro cyclist and paraplegic retiree. After the retiree falls off his bike for the third time you think, "Is this considered a form of schadenfreude because I paid to watch?" Putting the retiree on a new, super-light carbon fiber racing bike isn't going to be good advertising for the new bike.
People like me who said, "that's the last straw, Sony. I'm never buying another television, audio system, game console, camera, computer, remote control, or set of headphones from you again because you'll eventually tie everything into your worthless, insecure 'PlayStation Network' and everyone who wasted their money on your 'premium' products will be up the creek without a paddle the next time this happens."
Probably not.
I eBay-ed my PS3 last month, replaced it with a standard Blu-Ray player that doesn't need its own separate remote and have spent more time watching movies and less time fiddling with Sony's BS:
startup (wait, I can't watch my movie yet because the PS3 forces me to go to its online store first)
updates (wait, we have to wait an hour before we can stream Netflix to the TV because Sony is forcing us to download an update that has nothing to do with Netflix)
shutdown (wait, turn the TV back on... you can't turn the PS3 off with the remote unless you can navigate out of the Blu-Ray player and to the shut down menu item, which itself takes a few seconds to load).
It wasn't about me making a statement, because I know Sony doesn't care. It was about me deciding that continuing to use Sony's products was blatantly masochistic and it needed to stop. If more people woke up and abandoned Sony, it would be faced with a choice between bankruptcy and providing products people want.
Unfortunately, most people will probably continue taking whatever Sony feeds them.
According to the map there's a giant storm front of jumbled X, O, SQUARE and TRIANGLE symbols headed for Arizona, New Mexico and Texas. That may explain why those states are still offline while California, which should only just get grazed near San Diego, is already up and running. Not sure why Alaska's offline, since the map clearly shows the storm passing far to the north of Barrrow...
With the Microsoft/Ford collaboration, what if Microsoft built Skype into the next version of their car software?
Every time you received a call, you would get a popup with a Clippy-like character asking if you're driving a vehicle. If you click yes, you would have to read a disclaimer advising you that it is dangerous to talk on your phone while driving, and asking if you really want to answer the call. If you click yes, you will be presented with a dialog advising you that wireless communications with your headset could be intercepted by a third party and asking if you're sure the name of the device on the screen is yours. Then, if you haven't hit a tree or 18-wheeler yet you get to answer your phone by finding a small button somewhere on a "ribbon" interface. By then, the person on the other end will have hung up simply by pressing a button on their headset.
"The energy stored in these beams is incredible, crushing our imagination into dust..."
Black hole = awesome.
Black hole swallowing a sun = probably beyond the scope of our comprehension, but not quite so amazing that it can turn an intangible thing like imagination into a tangible thing like dust. The author of the summary may have had his brain turned to dust, but to make a claim like this indicates that the imagination is functioning quite well. Perhaps too well.
Before all the jet setters out there start panicking about the notation regarding radiation exposure on round trip flights, I'd like to point out that the graphic clearly depicts the passenger riding on the outside of the plane... A situation that is even more unlikely and potentially lethal than standing next to the reactor at Chernobyl. Odds are there will be a sheath of glass and metal between you and the radiation that will lower your exposure somewhat. So you may continue your jet setting without concern.
To clarify for anyone who doesn't get the joke, you can't "delete" a facebook account. You can "disable" your account, but facebook still keeps all your data forever. So centuries from now archaeologists can dig up their data center, excavate the hard drive platters and find out who was friends with who and what kind of music they liked. If only we could see Moses's facebook tablet... we'd know so much more about ancient Egypt! Then again, if Pharaoh had seen Jochebed's facebook tablet, he would have seen an entry like this and history would have unfolded very differently:
Put my baby in a basket and floated him down the Nile to escape Pharaoh's decree. Miriam says she saw Pharaoh's daughter pick him up and call him her own. I miss him already! 6,382 people like this
My first thought when I saw this story's headline was, "Who in Algeria can I contact to get my facebook account deleted? Better yet, could take this technology and turn it into a business, with people paying me to delete their accounts?"
Let's pretend for a moment that this was about something other than video games...
I bought a bicycle and a bicycle license to use my bicycle in the park because I love riding in the park. I only have an hour to do so a few days a week, but I find it helps me clear my mind. But some kid spray painted a bench in the park, so the park hired a guard who stops everyone who enters now and frequently asks to see their papers. While I 15 minutes for him to run a background check based on my papers, I am treated to some new billboards blocking my view of the park that were installed to raise ad revenue to offset the cost of paying the guard. Eventually the guard waves me through, but a number of the paths are closed because the park has had to shift funds from maintenance to the guard's salary, and as people stop going to the park because of this, the advertising revenue falls and the situation slowly gets worse. On top of this, the spray paint kid just jumps the fence to avoid the guard and vandalizes more benches the park can't afford to repaint. I'm considering jumping the fence myself to get more riding time in, but somehow I find that I no longer enjoy going to the park.
Does this still sound like a person with an addiction? Would you say he's a sad little man who needs to get over his park addiction? Or would you say the people running the park need to be replaced?
The Better Off Ted episode "Heroes" revolves around growing meat in a lab for the military. They market it as "Beef without Cows," but generally just refer to it as the meat blob. Phil becomes somewhat attached to it:
Phil: "Blobby! Like Bobby, only with an L." Lem: "Don't name it or you won't want to eat it! Remember Chester the Carrot?" Phil: "Yeah, I miss him."
Apparently the meat blob tastes terrible until they figure out it "needs exercise" like real cows and hook it up to electrodes that give it electric shocks at regular intervals overnight.
Tester: It tastes familiar. Ted: Beef? Tester: No. Linda: Chicken? We'll take chicken. Ted: What does it taste like? Tester: Despair. Ted: Is it possible it just needs salt?
A 16 GB iPhone 3G running iOS 3.1.3 (7E18) that I decided to keep for various backup reasons when I got my iPhone 4 (I do use it as a backup alarm, a gaming device so I can play iPhone games against friends who don't have iPhones, etc.).
A 32 GB iPhone 4 running iOS 4.1 (8B117).
I have a variety of times set as non-repeating alarms in both phones, and I turn those alarms on as needed each night before going to sleep. There are few alarm clocks that come with a more irritating sound than the iPhone's "Alarm" sound, so this works for me. Until this year.
On Jan 1, 2 and 3, the iPhone 3G worked as expected, but the iPhone 4 did not go off at all, even this morning, despite Apple's claim that the bug would fix itself. Out of curiosity, I created two new alarms, one repeating and the other not repeating, on the iPhone 4, and they both went off as expected. It seems you have to actually delete any alarms created before Jan 1 and recreate them if you want them to work.
I had an amusing moment on Sunday at 9:00 sitting in my office with my boss when one of my employees called and said he just woke up and had no idea why his alarm didn't wake him up:
Do you have an iPhone?
Yes...
Do you use it as an alarm clock?
Yes!
OK, it's not your fault, there's a bug in the operating system that caused a lot of people to oversleep yesterday and today, but it's going to fix itself tomorrow. Yes, really.
My boss, who also has an iPhone, but apparently uses his 5-year-old son as an alarm clock, just stared at me. I'm sure the same scene will play out today because the bug did not really fix itself. Even though I have a device that's not affected and I understand what's going on, this is still going to impact me because other people around me don't... and some of them were told by me that it would "fix itself" this morning. <SARCASM>This totally undermines my credibility... the next time someone is missing money from their paycheck and I tell them it will "fix itself," they're not going to believe me!</SARCASM>
It seems to me that the time has come for me to file for a patent on my "Method or Process for Obtaining Patents for Things that Other People Did First." To paraphrase Doc Brown, I foresee two possibilities:
The patent clerk will not be able to find prior art and will grant my patent. Patent trolling will come to an end, because no one will ever be able to do this without being sued by me, and the proceeds from any such lawsuit would go into a fund to support a non-profit Foundation for the End of Patent Trolling
The encounter between this patent application and the patent clerk who is able to find prior art could create a patent paradox, the result of which could cause a chain reaction that would the very fabric of the patent continuum and destroy the entire universe. Granted, that's a worst case scenario. The destruction might in fact be very localized, limited to merely corporate America.
Either way, we win. Unless Microsoft sues me for infringement of its patent on innovation.
...I don't understand this idea to put the original cast in it. They left Schwarzenegger out of Terminator 4 for a reason.
Schwarzenegger was left out of Terminator 4 because he's a little busy trying to steer the nation's most-populous state away from bankruptcy (one must have priorities), and he has expressed interest in getting involved in the Terminator franchise again after his term in office is up. Are you implying that Bill Murray and crew are similarly occupied trying to "save" the real world?
Slashdot Mirror
They're facing a catch-22 critical mass problem. There have to be enough places that accept this for consumers to get on board, but retailers aren't going to spend money on new hardware and software to accept a fringe payment system that hardly any consumers use. Remember all the excitement about RFID in credit cards a few years ago? I've got two cards with them, and the only places I get to use this feature are CVS, Chevron and McDonalds, and most of the time the cashier tells me the system isn't working so I have to slide my card anyway. The major credit card companies were pushing this, yet the few retailers that bought into it can't be bothered to maintain the hardware. They already spend a lot of time, effort and money just keeping up with the requirements of the payment card industry (PCI), which is essentially MasterCard, Visa, AMEX, Discover and JCB. PCI has extraordinary power to dictate what retailers must do and sets deadlines for them to do it, but even they couldn't effectively push the move to RFID. Unless PayPal is offering an attractive, secure system that costs far less than the PCI alternatives, retailers will tell them they should be content with having PayPal-branded credit cards from Visa or MasterCard.
Then there are the little problems of PayPal living in regulatory limbo because it's not a bank, and the fact that many people distrust PayPal because of its attitude that it can do practically whatever it wants without accountability because it's not a bank. But the catch-22 problem makes these seem like minor issues.
I'd say this article is just wishful thinking on PayPal's part. "PayPal CEO Says he Wants to Supplant Trillion Dollar Credit Card Industry, and He'd Like A Diamond-Encrusted Flying Pony. Film at 11!"
Sarah Palin fans claim Paul Revere fans defaced Sarah Palin Wikipedia page, to fit the view that Sarah Palin ran for governor by supporting Alaska's federally-funded $442 million "Bridge to Nowhere," despite Palin's insistence to the contrary.
Stay tuned for an updated list of books Sarah Palin doesn't like that have no place in your library!
seizedservers.com and seizedservers.net are on the list. Does this mean that the DOJ actually registered these two names, or that someone else registered them, and the DOJ seized them to prevent them from infringing the DOJ's exclulsive status as the king of domain name seizures?
I doubt the superintendent wrote this. My high school English teacher would have thrown the book at him! I highlighted all the typo and grammar mistakes in bold. Not only would a superintendent have better writing skills... he would have proofread a letter he was sending to the governor. I'm thinking someone else wrote this and is falsely attributing it to this guy... unless Mr. Bootz is trying to make the point that budget cuts have been so severe the district is only paying for the use of part of his brain.
Does he have to spend recess clearing Twitter's old server logs and clap the hard drives together afterward?
Consider This Scenario
I want my friend to see a really funny movie from 20 years ago, but they're not convinced it's worth their time. I search YouTube and I find a video of some highlights, so I send my friend the link to the video. I assume the clips fall under fair use because otherwise YouTube would have pulled them, right?
My friend watches the video, likes it, goes down to the store and buys the DVD and thanks me for introducing him to it.
The MPAA "piracy squad" spends all its time searching YouTube for copyrighted videos. It sues YouTube for its records, the logs show that I used their "share" feature to share the link with one person, and that person watched the video twice. The piracy squad watches the video 8 more times and then sicks its lawyers on me. Since I did indeed link to the video, and it was watched 10 times, I am guilty and convicted of a felony. I lose the ability to vote, the ability to work at many jobs, the right to possess firearms, ammunition and body armor, eligibility for welfare, eligibility for federally-funded housing, and the right to serve on a jury. I no longer have any influence in society and am reduced to flipping burgers by day and scanning retail inventory by night to scrape together enough money to live, which presumably keeps me sufficiently occupied to stay out of trouble.
Meanwhile, the MPAA gets a fee from the sale of the DVD that my friend would never have bought otherwise, they tip the balance of power in government further toward themselves by taking one more voter out of commission, and they strike fear in the hearts of anyone who even thinks about doing anything with video. The only previews you will get to see are the ones they force you to watch every time you pop in a DVD you bought from them.
Perhaps we could counterbalance this bill by adding language that makes it a felony to disable the FFWD or MENU button on a consumer's remote control. It's at least as criminal an act as linking to some YouTube video: millions of people are forced to watch 30 seconds to 5 minutes of previews every time they want to watch the movies they paid to "own" in their own homes. Sure, you could pop the movie in 5 minutes before you're ready to watch it, but the amount of productivity and electricity this needlessly wastes on a global scale is staggering. That's criminal.
And Nikola Tesla is spinning in his grave, mumbling "I told you this would happen. I warned you! I said to stick to AC because DC would bring about the end of the universe!"
Since you mentioned US Route 101...
I've been up and down the entire length 101 from Silicon Valley to the Washington/Oregon border about a half dozen times in the last three years. If you like driving and scenery, this is a good place to go (get some ice cream from the Tillamook Creamery Assn if you pass through). And bring a real camera (don't be that guy standing by the road taking pictures of the sunset with your iPhone). I can't advise on pricing, but i can tell you about coverage. My AT&T iPhone has gotten reception just fine throughout most of it... You only go without reception when you're not near a town. Even when you're not in a town you're usually ok, unless you're on a really remote stretch of road.
is find somewhere to dispose of all the zillions of "blue goo" sheets.
Weave them into blankets and give them to the people of North Korea as aid? Wait... never mind. Kim Jong-il would consider it an endorsement of his nuclear ambitions: "They aided us in our quest to collect radioactive materials, which we took as encouragement to seek more-fissionable materials."
Do they think people are really that unaware of the problems with their network that they'll believe that AT&T LTE will work any better than AT&T as it is?
No, and this is why the Northeast Corridor, Los Angeles, and the Bay Area are not among the places they are launching LTE. I have both Verizon LTE and AT&T 3G and using them in those areas is like watching a race between a semi-pro cyclist and paraplegic retiree. After the retiree falls off his bike for the third time you think, "Is this considered a form of schadenfreude because I paid to watch?" Putting the retiree on a new, super-light carbon fiber racing bike isn't going to be good advertising for the new bike.
Probably not.
I eBay-ed my PS3 last month, replaced it with a standard Blu-Ray player that doesn't need its own separate remote and have spent more time watching movies and less time fiddling with Sony's BS:
It wasn't about me making a statement, because I know Sony doesn't care. It was about me deciding that continuing to use Sony's products was blatantly masochistic and it needed to stop. If more people woke up and abandoned Sony, it would be faced with a choice between bankruptcy and providing products people want.
Unfortunately, most people will probably continue taking whatever Sony feeds them.
According to the map there's a giant storm front of jumbled X, O, SQUARE and TRIANGLE symbols headed for Arizona, New Mexico and Texas. That may explain why those states are still offline while California, which should only just get grazed near San Diego, is already up and running. Not sure why Alaska's offline, since the map clearly shows the storm passing far to the north of Barrrow...
Every time you received a call, you would get a popup with a Clippy-like character asking if you're driving a vehicle. If you click yes, you would have to read a disclaimer advising you that it is dangerous to talk on your phone while driving, and asking if you really want to answer the call. If you click yes, you will be presented with a dialog advising you that wireless communications with your headset could be intercepted by a third party and asking if you're sure the name of the device on the screen is yours. Then, if you haven't hit a tree or 18-wheeler yet you get to answer your phone by finding a small button somewhere on a "ribbon" interface. By then, the person on the other end will have hung up simply by pressing a button on their headset.
That is exactly what would happen.
So this is our last chance to tell it not to come back, saving future generations a lot of trouble and past generations from a mediocre movie.
Book? What's a book? Oh, you mean an ePUB file! Got it.
This post sent back in time from the year 2015.
Black hole = awesome. Black hole swallowing a sun = probably beyond the scope of our comprehension, but not quite so amazing that it can turn an intangible thing like imagination into a tangible thing like dust. The author of the summary may have had his brain turned to dust, but to make a claim like this indicates that the imagination is functioning quite well. Perhaps too well.
Before all the jet setters out there start panicking about the notation regarding radiation exposure on round trip flights, I'd like to point out that the graphic clearly depicts the passenger riding on the outside of the plane... A situation that is even more unlikely and potentially lethal than standing next to the reactor at Chernobyl. Odds are there will be a sheath of glass and metal between you and the radiation that will lower your exposure somewhat. So you may continue your jet setting without concern.
My first thought when I saw this story's headline was, "Who in Algeria can I contact to get my facebook account deleted? Better yet, could take this technology and turn it into a business, with people paying me to delete their accounts?"
Does this still sound like a person with an addiction? Would you say he's a sad little man who needs to get over his park addiction? Or would you say the people running the park need to be replaced?
Apparently the meat blob tastes terrible until they figure out it "needs exercise" like real cows and hook it up to electrodes that give it electric shocks at regular intervals overnight.
Seriously, hasn't Microsoft unleashed enough bugs into the world, in places we really, really don't want them?
I have a variety of times set as non-repeating alarms in both phones, and I turn those alarms on as needed each night before going to sleep. There are few alarm clocks that come with a more irritating sound than the iPhone's "Alarm" sound, so this works for me. Until this year.
On Jan 1, 2 and 3, the iPhone 3G worked as expected, but the iPhone 4 did not go off at all, even this morning, despite Apple's claim that the bug would fix itself. Out of curiosity, I created two new alarms, one repeating and the other not repeating, on the iPhone 4, and they both went off as expected. It seems you have to actually delete any alarms created before Jan 1 and recreate them if you want them to work.
I had an amusing moment on Sunday at 9:00 sitting in my office with my boss when one of my employees called and said he just woke up and had no idea why his alarm didn't wake him up:
My boss, who also has an iPhone, but apparently uses his 5-year-old son as an alarm clock, just stared at me. I'm sure the same scene will play out today because the bug did not really fix itself. Even though I have a device that's not affected and I understand what's going on, this is still going to impact me because other people around me don't... and some of them were told by me that it would "fix itself" this morning. <SARCASM>This totally undermines my credibility... the next time someone is missing money from their paycheck and I tell them it will "fix itself," they're not going to believe me!</SARCASM>
Either way, we win. Unless Microsoft sues me for infringement of its patent on innovation.
Schwarzenegger was left out of Terminator 4 because he's a little busy trying to steer the nation's most-populous state away from bankruptcy (one must have priorities), and he has expressed interest in getting involved in the Terminator franchise again after his term in office is up. Are you implying that Bill Murray and crew are similarly occupied trying to "save" the real world?