Clearly, you've never worked in law enforcement. There are other purposes in inflating the prices of goods. Pushing the crime into a different category that allows harsher sentencing, getting more departmental resources, sheltering your team from extra cases, and what not.
Back in the 80s, I spent some time as an army 'loan' to civilian law enforcement. I used to feel so superior to them, watching their office politics, and staying above them (mostly, because I had no dog in the fight). What did I know, I had just gotten my first star. Once the army finally decided that they actually had something to use me on, and pulled me back, I realized that the politics and infighting were just as bad, but the players were older, and had less understanding of investigative work.
As soon as quitting no longer meant that I was going to be a janitor for life, I chose a brand new career, in IT. Maybe I've been lucky, but the politics have been a lot less ugly. Or maybe it was going from Commie government organizations to a privately owned American manufacturer.
You managed to read the part about fencing at state level, but failed to understand what making baron in SCA or teaching HEMA means.
Do you really think that those who spend ten or more hours a week training with swords never wonder what real fights entail? Do you think that burly sword geeks never get upset with each other and actually lay on each other? I've broken both ribs and wrists with a wooden sword and dislocated a knee in the plentiful grappling that accompanies HEMA training and grudge fighting (all accidental, I'll swear to anyone) and I have delivered hundreds of bruises, possibly thousands. And I've had cracked ribs and hundreds of bruises myself. For about fifteen years as HEMA enthusiast, it's about normal. No, this does not directly apply to fighting with a sharp blade, but it sure helps.
Yes, fencing is not real fighting. But Princess Bride's swordplay is to fencing as fencing is to sword fighting. In the first 30 seconds of fighting, Hell in the first ten seconds of fighting, we have: - before the fighting starts, a blade is touched with bare hands, and sheathed without being wiped, by its owner, no less. On period steel that supposedly can hold an edge, that's a horrible practice. - the two combatants are standing much too close to each other, even after the fight has started. They are in not just in lunge range, they are even closer. At that distance, whoever thrusts, kills. Signals have no time to travel from your eyes to your brain and then to to your arms to start an effective parry once the opponent starts moving. - none, and I mean none of the swings would land on the opponent, even if they were not parried. But both combatants interpose their swords, or lean back, or duck those whiffs. When they do so, they place themselves completely out of balance. Their feet are too close, they have weight on the wrong foot considering which way they are likely to move next, the works. - then you have what is called flynning. They stand much too close to each other and start swinging high then low at 45 degree angle from the horizontal. The high moves (those are not attacks) do not reach the head, the low moves do not reach the knee. None need to be parried, each leaves you out of position to parry. You wait for it to pass, and you have a direct pathway to the heart. Neither takes it. - and then you have a full spin, outside the range where it could connect, but definitely within lunge range. As icing on the cake, the resulting swing is too high to bother someone who would be lunging at the exposed back.
And frankly, after that there is no point to comment. That spin cannot be topped.
During the whole time, there is one single thrust, not a lunge, and it is (1) too short (2) aimed a foot too high and a foot too far to the opponent's left, and (3) parried after the attacker has achieved extension, i.e.after it would do any good.
Don't get me wrong. I still love the movie - it is being watched in my household at least once an year, and I even enjoy the fight scenes. But its characters would not last any longer against a teenage fencer with a dress sword (as shitty a sword as swords get) any longer than most superheroes would last against a Mob or Organizatsiya crew, or 99.9% of superheroes against a Marines platoon.
That does not make it a bad movie by any means. It's just that it gets a pass from me where Jessica Jones or Luke Cage do not.
You're probably remembering wrong, or just don't know what swordplay actually looks like
I've watched it in the last year, and I've fenced at state level, made baron in the SCA twice with two different weapons, and helped run a HEMA club. So I think I know more about swordwork than most. Maybe not so much about swordplay.
The Princess bride is entertaining, but the fencing is typical Hollywood fare - at close distance, attacks on the weapons to make it visually entertaining, slashes with rapiers and no thrusts to speak of, and never, ever, ever, an attack that would need to be parried.
I know why it is done - the leads are not fencers, flynning is entertaining, shot framing is important, and no one wants to even risk an injury so no attacks that could actually land, and sure as hell no thrusting.
I read what you wrote, and found myself agreeing. And then I remembered enjoying "Back to the Future", "Robocop", "Conan the Barbarian", "The Princess Bride". "Escape from New York", etc.
So, speaking for myself, I've found that the things I really liked when I was younger do not hold up all that well to closer examination. The sword work is laughable, the premises farfetched, the plot holes abundant. Hell, I still enjoy watching those movies, especially the ones I first watched with my now wife. But while I -think- they are better than today's drek, I am not sure how much of that is just nostalgia.
So, I started watching "Wonder Woman", and stopped in disgust - not because of the woman empowerment, whatever that is, but because of how it shat all over World War I history, because of how ignorant it was of any historical martial arts, and because of how plot-hole-riddled it was. I got through "The Black Panther", but I many things annoyed me, would not dream of watching it again. Still, I wonder how much I would have enjoyed it if I had seen it when I was 15. Nowadays I mostly watch things that do not take itself seriously, or things that my wife can't even stand for being too grim and depressing. We just started watching "The Frankenstein Chronicles", and although it looks really good to me, it is too dark for her.
Maybe I am just an old fart, unable to enjoy the lighter things in life?
However, sentient machines aren't a new anxiety. It arguably all started with Ridley Scott's 1982 cult classic, Blade Runner.
Even for an entertainment section, the editors need some brains and some knowledge of what happened before their teenage years.
Nearly one hundred years ago, Karel apek wrote R.U.R. It featured artificial humanoids, and ended with the human race extinct. No, sentient machines, organic (R.U.R. robots) or mechanical (the Golem of Prague) are nothing new, in fiction. And anxiety has always been tagging along.
Cops are not obligated to read you your rights until they begin an official interrogation. As such, it is in their interests to postpone that as long as possible so that you might incriminate yourself before you are Mirandized. Anything you say will be admissible as long as they were not 'questioning' you at the time.
Are you a corrupt cop trying to mislead people, or are you just completely ignorant of what you're talking about?
This is how it works: - first of all, the police are not obligated to read you your Miranda rights, at all. It is in their interest to do so as soon as they detain you. - if you are detained in any way, that is, if your freedom of movement and action is restricted, nothing you can say can be used against you unless you have already been read your Miranda rights. - if you are not under any restrictions, i.e. free to move, leave, etc. but talk to the officers, everything you reveal can be used in court. That includes stuff you show them, contents of areas where you invite them, and of course anything you say.
In the specific case, the police had already arrested the man. They have no interest in delaying the Miranda briefing. What police officers do is NOT detain the person, and just talk to him. Completely different situation.
As for not talking to police officers... it depends. I've been in law enforcement myself (as military, long time ago, in a country far far away) and have talked to US police officers while aware of the pertaining laws multiple times. It's never gotten me in trouble, and has often saved me a lot of inconvenience and probably a fair bit of money. Police are people. They respond well to being treated as such. All you have to do is be less abrasive than the people whose interests conflict with yours... although if those are the police officers themselves, tough shit.
I am not a lawyer, though. Clamming up when confronted by police may save you a ton of trouble! But the first thing you should ask a police officer is "Am I detained, sir/ma'am?"
My wife is professor of Psychology in Claremont McKenna. She spends one session in every class of hers on exactly this topic - how to assess the likelihood that something that you encounter online is deliberately false, or produced with an agenda in mind. So this is hardly a new thing.
I grew up in the 70s, reading Communist propaganda and checking it against the 'trusted people only' bulletin my parents were getting. Yeah, they would have gotten in trouble for me getting at it. No, it was not particularly close to the Truth, either. Yes, there probably were briefing for people who were even more trusted. But the the set of skills you needed to detect most of the falsehoods was not any different.
Nothing new under the sun. It's not that 'They' lie more now. It's just that we are less likely to suspect those of 'Them' who wear 'Our' colors.
Pretty much all primates kill for sport, lust and greed - male gorillas kill infants when they want to take over a female, chimps kill in territorial warfare,etc. Hell even our extended family does - plenty of monkeys gang up and kill group members as a social activity. And it is not just them - elephants and dolphins kill for fun without a fight for resources.
Face it, we are not special, just more powerful right now.
Really? Originally, it was used to describe South-African white males of Dutch descent. Now it is a pejorative term for any white male (males only, because it comes from the male name Jaap)
Where is it used to refer to Japanese people, and why would you assume it is a slur for Japanese in a context where we are talking about Elon Musk, a South-African?
I know you are not serious, and I know you pay little attention to details. But how on Earth do you plan on enforcing this?
The way to realistically do this is not to have a lottery, but just to kill those least likely to be able to defend themselves, or at least those who have no one to defend them, and cannot afford to hire anyone to do so.
So basically, to do it right, the rich have to kill the poor. But it is too early to do it efficiently and risk free. First, drone technology has to advance some more, and gun owners have to be reduced, through gun confiscation, opiate use, drought and famines, etc. Judging from current news, things are progressing along nicely. In most areas of the world, at least one, if not more, of these mechanisms are operating.
It's just a matter of times to see whether the people of quality can pull it off before the canaile wakes up and rises in arms.
Oh, I agree that there is a perfectly good way to solve any single one of the issues I pointed out. It's only when you try to solve them all at the same time that you run into problems which look insurmountable to me.
- how do you avoid charges of moving and storing child porn if the user is underage?
By computing the hashes client-side and transmitting and storing only the hashes, obviously.
So far, so good. But of course, Facebook did not go this way, i.e. no client side application to generate hashes.
- how do you make sure that minor changes to the original picture do not produce completely different signatures?
Wavelet transform. Compute hashes in wavelet space.
Hmm. If I have the client side application that generates the hashes, I will be able to easily experiment with minor modifications, and can automate the process that turns minor changes into significant hash variations. Especially by defining areas of the original which must be preserved, and others which can be altered.
And of course, by using wavelet transforms, you will make it really easy to automatically generate images that suppress valid images from your competitors, whose who say what you dislike, those who post incriminating information about your nefarious activities, etc.
Hell, if this is implemented, I will try to be the first to market a program to take advantage of the problems with your approach.
I would also take you up on that offer. But could you please explain to me, first, how you deal with the things with which Facebook clearly does not: - how do you avoid charges of moving and storing child porn if the user is underage? - how do you make sure that minor changes to the original picture do not produce completely different signatures? - how do you make sure that none of your employees have access to the originals? - how do you make sure people upload only pictures in which they are the subject? - how do you make sure that the mechanism is not used to suppress legitimate pictures? - etc, etc, etc.
Yes, it was chorded keyboard - a French "improvement", in software, on the Microwriter MW4, using two of the devices in tandem. A few years afterward, a further development on the same principle became the DataHand, which a poster references further down.
I do not know about you, but I often think that something may be a good idea, and then reconsider. Or sometimes, I get startled, and my first reflex is quite unsuitable for modern society. Or sometimes, I get upset with somebody, but force myself to wait until some time has passed, and I will not be the prime suspect.
You must be one of the wisest, most coldly rational, and most self-controlled individuals on the planet. Sure, for you and your kind, direct mind control may work. For flawed people like me, a cutoff between impulse and execution is wiser.
Don't these morons get tired? I have been hearing this since the fucking Eighties. If it is not one thing, it's another.
Nothing will make the keyboard obsolete. NOTHING.
It may become much less common it is now, but it will always remain the tool of choice of the person who needs precise control, versatility with a minimum of physical effort. Its looks may change, but as long as we have blocks of keys on a flat(ish) surface, we will have keyboards, and they will be better than the more user friendly, casual, etc. input devices.
I do not want my every twitch interpreted. I do not want my mind read and immediately obeyed. I do not want to have to say five words to specify a less common symbol. I do not want my eyes tracked when lives may depend on a false positive... or even a few dozen dollars.
There is a time and a place for alternatives. But obsolete? Gone and forgotten? Anyone who says that is either ignorant, or trying to provoke a reaction.
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I just spent 30 seconds trying (and failing) to locate an alternative that was being pushed in France in the 80s. It looked like two modern gaming mice, with a ton of buttons that were easy to access without moving your fingers too much. You could create a lot of different inputs with button combinations. I wasted a few days getting better at the contraption than anyone I knew. My father saw me, and asked me to spent eight hours getting better at using a keyboard. Guess what turned out to be faster, more accurate, and not noticeably more tiring?
It depends on your definition of 'legal'. If by 'legal' you mean weapons with the proper paperwork, so that no law enforcement agency will ever bother you, you can get a fully automatic AK47 for less than $3000, which includes the paperwork. AK74 are for some reason cheaper, don't ask me why. Yes, they will be manufactured before 1986, but I would not bet on how long they have actually been in the US.
As for what you can buy at gun shows, and be able to say with a straight face that you believed that the transaction was legal... How good are you at controlling your expressions?
I have personally seen weapons that I know 100% are violating multiple laws for sale, and not from a car trunk behind a 'private club'. At gun shows, I have seen people sell AR15s and the parts to make them fully automatic on the same stand, for a lot less than $10000 combined. Sure, the vendors were, *wink* *wink* unaffiliated.
When law enforcement ignores blatant violation to the spirit of the law, when you cannot tell whether a gun is legal or not without an arrest, and knowing that the gun cannot physically be legal is not probable cause, when no agency will bother enforcing existing laws...
So yes, I am 100% sure some of the weapons used in the shooting were illegal. I am also sure that yesterday, no law enforcement officer would have bothered with any of them. I am also sure that if the shooter had cared, he could have gone through the trouble of making the guns very hard to object to, legally.
Basically, the best way to hide a stick is to drop it on forest floor (the English idiom escapes me). Nevada has so many legal automatic weapons, and so many automatic weapons with defensible paperwork, and so many automatic weapons which are hard to challenge, that law enforcement does not bother with them unless there is a good reason. Well, ~60 dead is a good reason, so we will probably hear that the weapons involved were illegal. I also bet that the parts which went into them were purchased completely legally.
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By the way, I like guns, I own quite a few, and they are all 100% legal, even my old service CZ... But I went to a lot of trouble to do so, and if I had not been financially comfortable and single, I would have never bothered. If a guy wants to acquire a fully automatic rifle in California, it is a lot more work than it is in Nevada. Not that either is very difficult with someone with as much money as the shooter had, at least a few months ago.
Did you listen to the audio of the shootings Multiple bursts of full auto fire. These are illegal
Fully automatic weapons, up to and including machine guns are legal in Nevada. Some require registration, but just like the recently legislated checks, no law enforcement agency wants to be responsible (even the FBI passed) and no one is enforcing even the super permissive laws.
Please educate yourself before you post authoritatively.
The "bug" itself has to be pretty big though, so it's easy to find if you know what you're looking for.
Which is why it is often disguised as part of modern art, lamp sources, ornamentation on furniture, etc.
When the resonating surface is read with the microwave beam, anyone in its path is potentially endangered, especially is the emitter is poorly calibrated, or the operator is incompetent and tries to substitute more power for proper installation and operation.
Without having spend more than a minute of thought on this, my guess is that someone tried to eavesdrop, and harmed the people he was trying to monitor. As to who did it... the usual suspects look pretty good in this case.
The linked story is such crap. It has gotten us talking about sonic weapons, and Cuba's access to them, and on top of that, it suggest, without any sign of evidence that Russia may be the culprit.
Here are a few things that I think are hard to argue against: 1) It only takes some decent knowledge of biology and some 50s tech to create something that deliberately harms a person's hearing. 2) Neither Russia nor Cuba has any interest in harming US or Canadian diplomats 3) There are quite a few parties (Cuban immigrants, unfettered government agents, Cubans hating Americans) who may want to harm US diplomats, whether to destroy Cuban-US relations, or simply to take perceived revenge on Americans. 4) There exist, and have existed for decades, listening devices which are technically passive, but get used through remote application of power. Think a resonating plane or chamber read through lasers, EM radiation, etc. For all I know, some may require inaudible (to humans) sonic waves to operate.
So, as far as I am concerned, the three most likely possibilities are, in no particular order. 0) There's nothing going on, this is all due to a parasite infection, an accident with a misused device belonging to the embassy, etc. 1) Some asshole, working contrary to Cuban interests, deliberately harmed the diplomats, possibly with a low tech, hand made device. 2) The Cubans or Russian fucked up, and harmed the diplomats while trying to spy on them
But nasty Commies deliberately targeting diplomats? I can't see their angle. I'm not saying they would not do it, I am saying I cannot see how they would profit.
> > And yes, it will save the warehouse staff some time, and I or my people will end up supporting it. > How did it come to pass that the old solution is superior to the new one? Purchasing failure? I think you misread what he said. The old solution is not superior. The warehouse staff is keeping the old box in addition to the new one. The new one seems to go wherever the old one was, and the old one is kept in the back of the warehouse to save time to those who happen to be there.
I can see how the staff of a privately owned company would have that discretion. I'd hate to be in IT in a company where such things are allowed, though.
I love Paint.NET, but I do not have it installed at every computer at work. Paint is invaluable to me when I am asking someone at a remote Point of Sale to take a screenshot and e-mail it to me.
Even our own warehouses have computers running WinXP. We send them replacements from corporate, but the manager takes the old PC, and sticks it on a rack near at the back of the warehouse... and claims that 'it saves the company thousands' when I ask for it back. It's a privately owned company, and I am not gong to bother the owner (who is the only one that can can overrule the warehouse managers) because of a box that my department will end up paying to e-waste. And yes, it will save the warehouse staff some time, and I or my people will end up supporting it.
Some of the Mon&Pop stores who buy from us also end up talking to me for tech support that is only remotely connected to their using our catalogue or replenishment sites. And some of them are running 2000 and ME.
So yes, I personally use the lightest of Paint, Paint.NET, or gimp that does what I need, but it is nice to know that all Windows boxes have Paint. And unfortunately, it being available for free on the Windows Store or wherever does little to help. If I have to make them download something, the battle may already be lost.
In at least three Slavic languages, hearing "Covrette" makes you immediately think of "little whore". In at least Bulgarian, Corvette's definite article singular exactly matches whore's diminutive plural.
Not that it matters. Know enough languages and you can smirk at pretty much every word you hear. I'm fluent in only four (and can get around in a couple more) but it is hard to find anyone with a name that does not mean something funny in one of them.
Slashdot Mirror
Clearly, you've never worked in law enforcement. There are other purposes in inflating the prices of goods. Pushing the crime into a different category that allows harsher sentencing, getting more departmental resources, sheltering your team from extra cases, and what not.
Back in the 80s, I spent some time as an army 'loan' to civilian law enforcement. I used to feel so superior to them, watching their office politics, and staying above them (mostly, because I had no dog in the fight). What did I know, I had just gotten my first star. Once the army finally decided that they actually had something to use me on, and pulled me back, I realized that the politics and infighting were just as bad, but the players were older, and had less understanding of investigative work.
As soon as quitting no longer meant that I was going to be a janitor for life, I chose a brand new career, in IT. Maybe I've been lucky, but the politics have been a lot less ugly. Or maybe it was going from Commie government organizations to a privately owned American manufacturer.
You managed to read the part about fencing at state level, but failed to understand what making baron in SCA or teaching HEMA means.
Do you really think that those who spend ten or more hours a week training with swords never wonder what real fights entail? Do you think that burly sword geeks never get upset with each other and actually lay on each other? I've broken both ribs and wrists with a wooden sword and dislocated a knee in the plentiful grappling that accompanies HEMA training and grudge fighting (all accidental, I'll swear to anyone) and I have delivered hundreds of bruises, possibly thousands. And I've had cracked ribs and hundreds of bruises myself. For about fifteen years as HEMA enthusiast, it's about normal. No, this does not directly apply to fighting with a sharp blade, but it sure helps.
Yes, fencing is not real fighting. But Princess Bride's swordplay is to fencing as fencing is to sword fighting. In the first 30 seconds of fighting, Hell in the first ten seconds of fighting, we have:
- before the fighting starts, a blade is touched with bare hands, and sheathed without being wiped, by its owner, no less. On period steel that supposedly can hold an edge, that's a horrible practice.
- the two combatants are standing much too close to each other, even after the fight has started. They are in not just in lunge range, they are even closer. At that distance, whoever thrusts, kills. Signals have no time to travel from your eyes to your brain and then to to your arms to start an effective parry once the opponent starts moving.
- none, and I mean none of the swings would land on the opponent, even if they were not parried. But both combatants interpose their swords, or lean back, or duck those whiffs. When they do so, they place themselves completely out of balance. Their feet are too close, they have weight on the wrong foot considering which way they are likely to move next, the works.
- then you have what is called flynning. They stand much too close to each other and start swinging high then low at 45 degree angle from the horizontal. The high moves (those are not attacks) do not reach the head, the low moves do not reach the knee. None need to be parried, each leaves you out of position to parry. You wait for it to pass, and you have a direct pathway to the heart. Neither takes it.
- and then you have a full spin, outside the range where it could connect, but definitely within lunge range. As icing on the cake, the resulting swing is too high to bother someone who would be lunging at the exposed back.
And frankly, after that there is no point to comment. That spin cannot be topped.
During the whole time, there is one single thrust, not a lunge, and it is (1) too short (2) aimed a foot too high and a foot too far to the opponent's left, and (3) parried after the attacker has achieved extension, i.e.after it would do any good.
Don't get me wrong. I still love the movie - it is being watched in my household at least once an year, and I even enjoy the fight scenes. But its characters would not last any longer against a teenage fencer with a dress sword (as shitty a sword as swords get) any longer than most superheroes would last against a Mob or Organizatsiya crew, or 99.9% of superheroes against a Marines platoon.
That does not make it a bad movie by any means. It's just that it gets a pass from me where Jessica Jones or Luke Cage do not.
You're probably remembering wrong, or just don't know what swordplay actually looks like
I've watched it in the last year, and I've fenced at state level, made baron in the SCA twice with two different weapons, and helped run a HEMA club. So I think I know more about swordwork than most. Maybe not so much about swordplay.
The Princess bride is entertaining, but the fencing is typical Hollywood fare - at close distance, attacks on the weapons to make it visually entertaining, slashes with rapiers and no thrusts to speak of, and never, ever, ever, an attack that would need to be parried.
I know why it is done - the leads are not fencers, flynning is entertaining, shot framing is important, and no one wants to even risk an injury so no attacks that could actually land, and sure as hell no thrusting.
I read what you wrote, and found myself agreeing. And then I remembered enjoying "Back to the Future", "Robocop", "Conan the Barbarian", "The Princess Bride". "Escape from New York", etc.
So, speaking for myself, I've found that the things I really liked when I was younger do not hold up all that well to closer examination. The sword work is laughable, the premises farfetched, the plot holes abundant. Hell, I still enjoy watching those movies, especially the ones I first watched with my now wife. But while I -think- they are better than today's drek, I am not sure how much of that is just nostalgia.
So, I started watching "Wonder Woman", and stopped in disgust - not because of the woman empowerment, whatever that is, but because of how it shat all over World War I history, because of how ignorant it was of any historical martial arts, and because of how plot-hole-riddled it was. I got through "The Black Panther", but I many things annoyed me, would not dream of watching it again. Still, I wonder how much I would have enjoyed it if I had seen it when I was 15. Nowadays I mostly watch things that do not take itself seriously, or things that my wife can't even stand for being too grim and depressing. We just started watching "The Frankenstein Chronicles", and although it looks really good to me, it is too dark for her.
Maybe I am just an old fart, unable to enjoy the lighter things in life?
However, sentient machines aren't a new anxiety. It arguably all started with Ridley Scott's 1982 cult classic, Blade Runner.
Even for an entertainment section, the editors need some brains and some knowledge of what happened before their teenage years.
Nearly one hundred years ago, Karel apek wrote R.U.R. It featured artificial humanoids, and ended with the human race extinct. No, sentient machines, organic (R.U.R. robots) or mechanical (the Golem of Prague) are nothing new, in fiction. And anxiety has always been tagging along.
Cops are not obligated to read you your rights until they begin an official interrogation. As such, it is in their interests to postpone that as long as possible so that you might incriminate yourself before you are Mirandized. Anything you say will be admissible as long as they were not 'questioning' you at the time.
Are you a corrupt cop trying to mislead people, or are you just completely ignorant of what you're talking about?
This is how it works:
- first of all, the police are not obligated to read you your Miranda rights, at all. It is in their interest to do so as soon as they detain you.
- if you are detained in any way, that is, if your freedom of movement and action is restricted, nothing you can say can be used against you unless you have already been read your Miranda rights.
- if you are not under any restrictions, i.e. free to move, leave, etc. but talk to the officers, everything you reveal can be used in court. That includes stuff you show them, contents of areas where you invite them, and of course anything you say.
In the specific case, the police had already arrested the man. They have no interest in delaying the Miranda briefing. What police officers do is NOT detain the person, and just talk to him. Completely different situation.
As for not talking to police officers... it depends. I've been in law enforcement myself (as military, long time ago, in a country far far away) and have talked to US police officers while aware of the pertaining laws multiple times. It's never gotten me in trouble, and has often saved me a lot of inconvenience and probably a fair bit of money. Police are people. They respond well to being treated as such. All you have to do is be less abrasive than the people whose interests conflict with yours... although if those are the police officers themselves, tough shit.
I am not a lawyer, though. Clamming up when confronted by police may save you a ton of trouble! But the first thing you should ask a police officer is "Am I detained, sir/ma'am?"
My wife is professor of Psychology in Claremont McKenna. She spends one session in every class of hers on exactly this topic - how to assess the likelihood that something that you encounter online is deliberately false, or produced with an agenda in mind. So this is hardly a new thing.
I grew up in the 70s, reading Communist propaganda and checking it against the 'trusted people only' bulletin my parents were getting. Yeah, they would have gotten in trouble for me getting at it. No, it was not particularly close to the Truth, either. Yes, there probably were briefing for people who were even more trusted.
But the the set of skills you needed to detect most of the falsehoods was not any different.
Nothing new under the sun. It's not that 'They' lie more now. It's just that we are less likely to suspect those of 'Them' who wear 'Our' colors.
Pretty much all primates kill for sport, lust and greed - male gorillas kill infants when they want to take over a female, chimps kill in territorial warfare,etc. Hell even our extended family does - plenty of monkeys gang up and kill group members as a social activity. And it is not just them - elephants and dolphins kill for fun without a fight for resources.
Face it, we are not special, just more powerful right now.
Really? Originally, it was used to describe South-African white males of Dutch descent. Now it is a pejorative term for any white male (males only, because it comes from the male name Jaap)
Where is it used to refer to Japanese people, and why would you assume it is a slur for Japanese in a context where we are talking about Elon Musk, a South-African?
I know you are not serious, and I know you pay little attention to details. But how on Earth do you plan on enforcing this?
The way to realistically do this is not to have a lottery, but just to kill those least likely to be able to defend themselves, or at least those who have no one to defend them, and cannot afford to hire anyone to do so.
So basically, to do it right, the rich have to kill the poor. But it is too early to do it efficiently and risk free. First, drone technology has to advance some more, and gun owners have to be reduced, through gun confiscation, opiate use, drought and famines, etc. Judging from current news, things are progressing along nicely. In most areas of the world, at least one, if not more, of these mechanisms are operating.
It's just a matter of times to see whether the people of quality can pull it off before the canaile wakes up and rises in arms.
Oh, I agree that there is a perfectly good way to solve any single one of the issues I pointed out. It's only when you try to solve them all at the same time that you run into problems which look insurmountable to me.
So far, so good. But of course, Facebook did not go this way, i.e. no client side application to generate hashes.
Hmm. If I have the client side application that generates the hashes, I will be able to easily experiment with minor modifications, and can automate the process that turns minor changes into significant hash variations. Especially by defining areas of the original which must be preserved, and others which can be altered.
And of course, by using wavelet transforms, you will make it really easy to automatically generate images that suppress valid images from your competitors, whose who say what you dislike, those who post incriminating information about your nefarious activities, etc.
Hell, if this is implemented, I will try to be the first to market a program to take advantage of the problems with your approach.
I would also take you up on that offer. But could you please explain to me, first, how you deal with the things with which Facebook clearly does not:
- how do you avoid charges of moving and storing child porn if the user is underage?
- how do you make sure that minor changes to the original picture do not produce completely different signatures?
- how do you make sure that none of your employees have access to the originals?
- how do you make sure people upload only pictures in which they are the subject?
- how do you make sure that the mechanism is not used to suppress legitimate pictures?
- etc, etc, etc.
What could possibly go wrong?!
Can you survive on $50,000 per year in Silicon Valley? I've got single friends who complain about surviving on $80,000.
Yes, it was chorded keyboard - a French "improvement", in software, on the Microwriter MW4, using two of the devices in tandem. A few years afterward, a further development on the same principle became the DataHand, which a poster references further down.
Do you immediately act on all your desires?
I do not know about you, but I often think that something may be a good idea, and then reconsider. Or sometimes, I get startled, and my first reflex is quite unsuitable for modern society. Or sometimes, I get upset with somebody, but force myself to wait until some time has passed, and I will not be the prime suspect.
You must be one of the wisest, most coldly rational, and most self-controlled individuals on the planet. Sure, for you and your kind, direct mind control may work. For flawed people like me, a cutoff between impulse and execution is wiser.
Don't these morons get tired? I have been hearing this since the fucking Eighties. If it is not one thing, it's another.
Nothing will make the keyboard obsolete. NOTHING.
It may become much less common it is now, but it will always remain the tool of choice of the person who needs precise control, versatility with a minimum of physical effort. Its looks may change, but as long as we have blocks of keys on a flat(ish) surface, we will have keyboards, and they will be better than the more user friendly, casual, etc. input devices.
I do not want my every twitch interpreted. I do not want my mind read and immediately obeyed. I do not want to have to say five words to specify a less common symbol. I do not want my eyes tracked when lives may depend on a false positive... or even a few dozen dollars.
There is a time and a place for alternatives. But obsolete? Gone and forgotten? Anyone who says that is either ignorant, or trying to provoke a reaction.
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I just spent 30 seconds trying (and failing) to locate an alternative that was being pushed in France in the 80s. It looked like two modern gaming mice, with a ton of buttons that were easy to access without moving your fingers too much. You could create a lot of different inputs with button combinations. I wasted a few days getting better at the contraption than anyone I knew. My father saw me, and asked me to spent eight hours getting better at using a keyboard. Guess what turned out to be faster, more accurate, and not noticeably more tiring?
It depends on your definition of 'legal'. If by 'legal' you mean weapons with the proper paperwork, so that no law enforcement agency will ever bother you, you can get a fully automatic AK47 for less than $3000, which includes the paperwork. AK74 are for some reason cheaper, don't ask me why. Yes, they will be manufactured before 1986, but I would not bet on how long they have actually been in the US.
As for what you can buy at gun shows, and be able to say with a straight face that you believed that the transaction was legal... How good are you at controlling your expressions?
I have personally seen weapons that I know 100% are violating multiple laws for sale, and not from a car trunk behind a 'private club'. At gun shows, I have seen people sell AR15s and the parts to make them fully automatic on the same stand, for a lot less than $10000 combined. Sure, the vendors were, *wink* *wink* unaffiliated.
When law enforcement ignores blatant violation to the spirit of the law, when you cannot tell whether a gun is legal or not without an arrest, and knowing that the gun cannot physically be legal is not probable cause, when no agency will bother enforcing existing laws...
So yes, I am 100% sure some of the weapons used in the shooting were illegal. I am also sure that yesterday, no law enforcement officer would have bothered with any of them. I am also sure that if the shooter had cared, he could have gone through the trouble of making the guns very hard to object to, legally.
Basically, the best way to hide a stick is to drop it on forest floor (the English idiom escapes me). Nevada has so many legal automatic weapons, and so many automatic weapons with defensible paperwork, and so many automatic weapons which are hard to challenge, that law enforcement does not bother with them unless there is a good reason. Well, ~60 dead is a good reason, so we will probably hear that the weapons involved were illegal. I also bet that the parts which went into them were purchased completely legally.
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By the way, I like guns, I own quite a few, and they are all 100% legal, even my old service CZ... But I went to a lot of trouble to do so, and if I had not been financially comfortable and single, I would have never bothered. If a guy wants to acquire a fully automatic rifle in California, it is a lot more work than it is in Nevada. Not that either is very difficult with someone with as much money as the shooter had, at least a few months ago.
Did you listen to the audio of the shootings Multiple bursts of full auto fire. These are illegal
Fully automatic weapons, up to and including machine guns are legal in Nevada. Some require registration, but just like the recently legislated checks, no law enforcement agency wants to be responsible (even the FBI passed) and no one is enforcing even the super permissive laws.
Please educate yourself before you post authoritatively.
Which is why it is often disguised as part of modern art, lamp sources, ornamentation on furniture, etc.
When the resonating surface is read with the microwave beam, anyone in its path is potentially endangered, especially is the emitter is poorly calibrated, or the operator is incompetent and tries to substitute more power for proper installation and operation.
Without having spend more than a minute of thought on this, my guess is that someone tried to eavesdrop, and harmed the people he was trying to monitor. As to who did it... the usual suspects look pretty good in this case.
The linked story is such crap. It has gotten us talking about sonic weapons, and Cuba's access to them, and on top of that, it suggest, without any sign of evidence that Russia may be the culprit.
Here are a few things that I think are hard to argue against:
1) It only takes some decent knowledge of biology and some 50s tech to create something that deliberately harms a person's hearing.
2) Neither Russia nor Cuba has any interest in harming US or Canadian diplomats
3) There are quite a few parties (Cuban immigrants, unfettered government agents, Cubans hating Americans) who may want to harm US diplomats, whether to destroy Cuban-US relations, or simply to take perceived revenge on Americans.
4) There exist, and have existed for decades, listening devices which are technically passive, but get used through remote application of power. Think a resonating plane or chamber read through lasers, EM radiation, etc. For all I know, some may require inaudible (to humans) sonic waves to operate.
So, as far as I am concerned, the three most likely possibilities are, in no particular order.
0) There's nothing going on, this is all due to a parasite infection, an accident with a misused device belonging to the embassy, etc.
1) Some asshole, working contrary to Cuban interests, deliberately harmed the diplomats, possibly with a low tech, hand made device.
2) The Cubans or Russian fucked up, and harmed the diplomats while trying to spy on them
But nasty Commies deliberately targeting diplomats? I can't see their angle. I'm not saying they would not do it, I am saying I cannot see how they would profit.
Ah, Petar's wife here, I should have not used his ID.
> > And yes, it will save the warehouse staff some time, and I or my people will end up supporting it.
> How did it come to pass that the old solution is superior to the new one? Purchasing failure?
I think you misread what he said. The old solution is not superior. The warehouse staff is keeping the old box in addition to the new one. The new one seems to go wherever the old one was, and the old one is kept in the back of the warehouse to save time to those who happen to be there.
I can see how the staff of a privately owned company would have that discretion. I'd hate to be in IT in a company where such things are allowed, though.
I love Paint.NET, but I do not have it installed at every computer at work. Paint is invaluable to me when I am asking someone at a remote Point of Sale to take a screenshot and e-mail it to me.
Even our own warehouses have computers running WinXP. We send them replacements from corporate, but the manager takes the old PC, and sticks it on a rack near at the back of the warehouse... and claims that 'it saves the company thousands' when I ask for it back. It's a privately owned company, and I am not gong to bother the owner (who is the only one that can can overrule the warehouse managers) because of a box that my department will end up paying to e-waste. And yes, it will save the warehouse staff some time, and I or my people will end up supporting it.
Some of the Mon&Pop stores who buy from us also end up talking to me for tech support that is only remotely connected to their using our catalogue or replenishment sites. And some of them are running 2000 and ME.
So yes, I personally use the lightest of Paint, Paint.NET, or gimp that does what I need, but it is nice to know that all Windows boxes have Paint. And unfortunately, it being available for free on the Windows Store or wherever does little to help. If I have to make them download something, the battle may already be lost.
In at least three Slavic languages, hearing "Covrette" makes you immediately think of "little whore". In at least Bulgarian, Corvette's definite article singular exactly matches whore's diminutive plural.
Not that it matters. Know enough languages and you can smirk at pretty much every word you hear. I'm fluent in only four (and can get around in a couple more) but it is hard to find anyone with a name that does not mean something funny in one of them.