OK... I know what I'm having nightmares about tonight.
Just the use of the word "face-arm" was creepy and should have been a hint, but I went ahead and watched it dance for a few minutes to let it really sink in.
(Joking aside, that looks like a crazy fun project to work on!)
Both of the examples you listed are also undesirable and I have specifically complained about them in the past. They are also both directly driven by the lack of competition, due largely to consolidation through acquisitions. Why does Google get a pass on this (a pass on people even complaining about it, as you seem to want)? Anyway, it's consolidation and a general lack of competition that's causing stagnation, not just Verizon and AT&T, as the market I live in is stagnant and neither one of those companies operate here.
Google is a big entity with the money to make big waves in any industry they decide to dip their toes into. Seeing them start heading down this road should cause concern, even if they aren't currently the worst player in that regard. I think that fanaticism and loyalty to corporations is stupid, so forgive me if I'm picking on your BFF or something.
I seem to remember that the point of Google launching this Fiber ISP was to introduce competition to stagnant markets and bring gigabit internet to markets that lacked it, with the ultimate goal of putting more people in a position to use their services. Or was that from when "Don't be evil" was still in effect? Acquisitions are anti-competitive and consolidation of the ISP industry is what is driving stagnation.
To be fair to the FBI, just being interviewed, even multiple times is NOT sufficient cause to take away a person's rights.
It's not, but what they hell do you have to be doing to not only get the FBI's attention, but to be collected and interviewed by them - twice?
So you are advocating that if the FBI comes out and asks you questions multiple times that you be banned from buying guns?
Wow, you didn't even make it to the next sentence before you assumed that I was just saying something idiotic, huh. I'll just go ahead and do the same.
They had no actionable cause at that moment, so they stopped paying attention to what he was doing? It's not like the only two options are arrest somebody or let them completely drop off of your radar.
They must have known that he was buying guns, ammo, and body armor because the store owner reported him to the feds for acting suspicious. That alone isn't enough to arrest him, but if he was suspicious enough to have been questioned twice already, that would be enough to start watching him more closely. They could have done this the old fashioned way, with boots on the grounds watching his activities.
I'm not at all in favor of expanding police powers. This seems like a case that could have been solved using established police powers and was handed to the FBI on a silver platter. Even the time frame was convenient, with the gun store report only a few weeks before the shooting. This happened because of investigative incompetence, not legal barriers or "inadequate" police powers.
To be fair to the FBI, just being interviewed, even multiple times is NOT sufficient cause to take away a person's rights.
It's not, but what they hell do you have to be doing to not only get the FBI's attention, but to be collected and interviewed by them - twice?
How somebody could be under that level of scrutiny, then go buy a bunch of guns, ammo, and body armor (while apparently acting suspiciously enough for the shop owner to report it to the authorities) without raising any sort of alarm with them (or without even being noticed?) is pretty hard to believe. I don't think that he was advocating totalitarianism, but some level of awareness of the actions of people who were apparently under continued and/or repeated investigation. This sounds like a failure to to perform normal police work.
It's still not uncommon for appliances and (the electrically simple portions of) durable goods. My c. 2000 clothes washer and dryer, c. 2005 dish washer and furnace, and brand new refrigerator have schematics printed on the inside of the unit or in the manual (though with the logic boards treated as black boxes).
All cars, up to this day, have schematics available from the manufacturer, though sections of the logic boards are again often treated as black boxes.
The logic circuits are often fairly simple and bad components can be identified and replaced, but few people would refab the PCB and rebuild the board from scratch, so it's not surprising that they don't provide schematics for those components.
Beyond replacing discrete modular components in most consumer electronics, there's not much repair that you can do that would require schematics. The biggest issue is the manufacturers gluing the case shut and making the modular components difficult to get at without damaging them.
The expiration of copyright on a compiled work doesn't make the work easily maintainable. The source code is likely not even protected under copyright because it was never published. It's a trade secret and will survive copyright expiration and (without specific intervention) even the death of the company.
I hope that my type of statistic isn't overlooked by HR departments who are always struggling to employ qualified talent.
I'd be surprised if anything wasn't overlooked by HR departments who struggle to identify the crowds of qualified talent who are standing right in front of them. The last time I was job hunting, I talked to several recruiters who had initially tossed my resume in the trash because I didn't specifically mention that I knew how to use MS Word. They seemed shocked that the hiring manager actually wanted to interview me.
Photons are their own antiparticle, so when they interact strongly with each other, the force drops to zero, so the pair doesnt interact with anything else.
Particle-antiparticle interactions imply annihilation, which doesn't occur in typical photon-photon interactions (which are wave-like). Instead, you get a time- or space-localized interference and a change in the probability of finding a photon. There are situations where it makes sense to think of photons as their own antiparticle (largely in the context of matter-antimatter annihilation), but that's not a helpful way of looking at interference. Interference and tunneling are wave-like behaviors.
You also disregard the fact that basic research often helps progress in unexpected ways - including the area of microscopy.
Indeed. My research is in making better microscopes (to cure cancer and whatnot...) and I've been personally looking at some of the advances in interferometry that allowed LIGO to be built (and the analytical techniques that allow useful data to be recovered).
So Midas' criteria has been fulfilled and he can quit his bitching now.
I'd love to continue this discussion if you'd actually debate what I'm saying instead of just calling me names; you'll find I'm actually pretty reasonable and presented a decent argument. I'm not going to bother checking your reply, because it's invariably going to be more strawman-bashing and name calling, but you'll find future debates are much more productive if you:
1) calm down 2) read the opposing argument (for comprehension -- not just to pick up on key words and make assumptions about what is being stated) 3) refute that argument in a well-reasoned manner (If your biggest point centers on hysterical overreaction, name-calling, or attempts at shaming, then try harder. You'll never bring someone over to your way of thinking by repeatedly calling them a sick bastard. Seriously, has that ever worked for you??)
We could have good discussions on this site, and in this country in general, and it'd greatly benefit everybody.
As an (American) scientist, I wish things were reported in actual SI units (with proper use of prefixes and base/derived units), instead of the SI-"accepted" customary units like the tonne and hectare.
You don't NEED to "pick up the values" when it comes to Celsius. Especially when it comes to something like coffee, where 100 is boiling and 0 is frozen.
For the temperatures he was referring to, he (hopefully!) does: 1) "how hot/cold is it in here/out there?" and 2) "do I have a fever?"
As a scientist, who uses exclusively metric every day at work, I still don't have much familiarity with "how hot/cold is it in here/out there?" temperatures in Celsius.
As opposed to Fahrenheit where I still haven't remembered what the upper and lower values are supposed to be in what situations other than vague statements of "well it's what's comfortable" or whatever.
Which is entirely a matter of familiarity. The temperatures at which water freezes and boils are not the most useful reference points for most of our daily interactions with the world. For any temperature scale in use, those interactions require familiarity from daily use.
Preventing the killing of 20+ children or 49 innocent people is a 'minimal' gain? just wow.
Compared to the population of the country and even the combined homicide rates of the US, yes, it is minimal. More children, by at least an order of magnitude each, died from poisoning, drowning, traffic accidents, etc. Death by AR-15 is such a small contribution to mortality that basing policy on it is foolish. How many children do you think would die during the unrest that gun confiscation would cause in the US? Do their deaths matter less because they died to advance your noble cause? Just wow. (See how silly and juvenile "just wow" attempted shaming looks?)
None of these crimes were committed by drug gangs so your proposals would do nothing to prevent these mass shootings.
There are several times more gang-related shootings every year than the entire count of mass-shooting homicides in US history. I'm sure that not being instantly swayed by emotional arguments and "think of the children" rhetoric makes me a monster in your eyes, but being so thoroughly controlled by your emotions makes you one hell of a scary creature in mine. You sound like the fools who are willing to throw away everything out of the sheer terror of statistically unlikely terrorist attacks. Get a hold of yourself, man.
It's so that carts being pushed in opposite directions can pass.
Too bad it never seems to work that way in real life. I don't know about Walmart, but in every grocery I've been to the oblivious person in front of you just suddenly halts in the middle of the aisle and abandons their cart there, blocking all traffic in either direction.
It is mostly gangbangers, but nothing about my wording implied that it wasn't that bad. My point in the second paragraph was that you can be cozy in your armchair railing against "military assault weapons in civilian hands" instead of advocating for actual policy that will reduce the violence and you'll still be safe from it.
Disarmament in the US is not going to be a pretty sight, either, and your interest in seeing that disaster play out shows your personal depravity. And after that, I assume you believe that the drug-trade, experts in procurement and smuggling that they are, won't have access to guns to continue murdering each other?
You were just looking for a reason to say that, weren't you? It's hard to see how fighting poverty and ending drug-trade fueled violence makes me a sick person. Your all too common attitude of needing to divide everybody into opposing ideological teams and vilify the "other team" is what is keeping us all in this sorry state of affairs.
Personally, I'd put an end to the War on Drugs, which is just as violent and destabilizing as alcohol prohibition was. Between that, and working to end the cycle of poverty and poor education, the murder rates in the US would easily drop to European levels. Basically, we can start chasing the real causes instead of getting caught on this subject (guns) every single time.
If that's all too hard or something, we could just do nothing at all. The violent crime rates for most Americans (not involved in gangs or illegal drug trade) is very low. The gang-bangers will continue to kill each other and make up the largest chunk of the murders, interspersed with the occasional nutjob or jealous lover.
Attempting a gun confiscation program in the US would probably not be peaceful, would certainly be unconstitutional, and would likely be accompanied by enabling laws that would make the US a less fun place to live. The price is too too high, especially when the problem is not about guns but culture.
The Australian murder rate was already dropping before confiscation and continued to drop after it. Murder has been steadily dropping in the US over that timeframe, too, even with continued gun sales and more states allowing concealed carry. Pretty weak correlation, if you ask me.
Exactly! Perhaps they're not actually causally related and we can start chasing the real causes instead of getting caught on this subject every single time.
Simple: when you regularly, willingly sacrifice your children and others on a regular basis, you are worshipping your God!
That's just asinine. We lose many more children to automobile accidents, drowning, poisoning, etc than firearms and I don't hear anyone saying that we're worshipping the false God of household cleaners.
Being able to accept that there is a certain amount of risk involved in living is part of maturity and is the only way to make informed and responsible decisions. Bringing up "false gods" and "think of the children" in arguments is almost never an indication of mature, informed, and responsible decision-making.
Universally, more guns by people in a given situation == more stupid shit!
Slashdot Mirror
OK... I know what I'm having nightmares about tonight.
Just the use of the word "face-arm" was creepy and should have been a hint, but I went ahead and watched it dance for a few minutes to let it really sink in.
(Joking aside, that looks like a crazy fun project to work on!)
Both of the examples you listed are also undesirable and I have specifically complained about them in the past. They are also both directly driven by the lack of competition, due largely to consolidation through acquisitions. Why does Google get a pass on this (a pass on people even complaining about it, as you seem to want)? Anyway, it's consolidation and a general lack of competition that's causing stagnation, not just Verizon and AT&T, as the market I live in is stagnant and neither one of those companies operate here.
Google is a big entity with the money to make big waves in any industry they decide to dip their toes into. Seeing them start heading down this road should cause concern, even if they aren't currently the worst player in that regard. I think that fanaticism and loyalty to corporations is stupid, so forgive me if I'm picking on your BFF or something.
I seem to remember that the point of Google launching this Fiber ISP was to introduce competition to stagnant markets and bring gigabit internet to markets that lacked it, with the ultimate goal of putting more people in a position to use their services. Or was that from when "Don't be evil" was still in effect? Acquisitions are anti-competitive and consolidation of the ISP industry is what is driving stagnation.
To be fair to the FBI, just being interviewed, even multiple times is NOT sufficient cause to take away a person's rights.
It's not, but what they hell do you have to be doing to not only get the FBI's attention, but to be collected and interviewed by them - twice?
So you are advocating that if the FBI comes out and asks you questions multiple times that you be banned from buying guns?
Wow, you didn't even make it to the next sentence before you assumed that I was just saying something idiotic, huh. I'll just go ahead and do the same.
They had no actionable cause at that moment, so they stopped paying attention to what he was doing? It's not like the only two options are arrest somebody or let them completely drop off of your radar.
They must have known that he was buying guns, ammo, and body armor because the store owner reported him to the feds for acting suspicious. That alone isn't enough to arrest him, but if he was suspicious enough to have been questioned twice already, that would be enough to start watching him more closely. They could have done this the old fashioned way, with boots on the grounds watching his activities.
I'm not at all in favor of expanding police powers. This seems like a case that could have been solved using established police powers and was handed to the FBI on a silver platter. Even the time frame was convenient, with the gun store report only a few weeks before the shooting. This happened because of investigative incompetence, not legal barriers or "inadequate" police powers.
To be fair to the FBI, just being interviewed, even multiple times is NOT sufficient cause to take away a person's rights.
It's not, but what they hell do you have to be doing to not only get the FBI's attention, but to be collected and interviewed by them - twice?
How somebody could be under that level of scrutiny, then go buy a bunch of guns, ammo, and body armor (while apparently acting suspiciously enough for the shop owner to report it to the authorities) without raising any sort of alarm with them (or without even being noticed?) is pretty hard to believe. I don't think that he was advocating totalitarianism, but some level of awareness of the actions of people who were apparently under continued and/or repeated investigation. This sounds like a failure to to perform normal police work.
It's still not uncommon for appliances and (the electrically simple portions of) durable goods. My c. 2000 clothes washer and dryer, c. 2005 dish washer and furnace, and brand new refrigerator have schematics printed on the inside of the unit or in the manual (though with the logic boards treated as black boxes).
All cars, up to this day, have schematics available from the manufacturer, though sections of the logic boards are again often treated as black boxes.
The logic circuits are often fairly simple and bad components can be identified and replaced, but few people would refab the PCB and rebuild the board from scratch, so it's not surprising that they don't provide schematics for those components.
Beyond replacing discrete modular components in most consumer electronics, there's not much repair that you can do that would require schematics. The biggest issue is the manufacturers gluing the case shut and making the modular components difficult to get at without damaging them.
The expiration of copyright on a compiled work doesn't make the work easily maintainable. The source code is likely not even protected under copyright because it was never published. It's a trade secret and will survive copyright expiration and (without specific intervention) even the death of the company.
Whats the diff between a hunting and assault rifle?
That's easy. The hunting rifle has a wooden stock and the assault rifle has a black stock.
That's an interesting perspective.
No kidding. The current Advanced Encryption Standard in the US (Rijndael) was even created by two Belgian mathematicians.
I hope that my type of statistic isn't overlooked by HR departments who are always struggling to employ qualified talent.
I'd be surprised if anything wasn't overlooked by HR departments who struggle to identify the crowds of qualified talent who are standing right in front of them. The last time I was job hunting, I talked to several recruiters who had initially tossed my resume in the trash because I didn't specifically mention that I knew how to use MS Word. They seemed shocked that the hiring manager actually wanted to interview me.
Photons are their own antiparticle, so when they interact strongly with each other, the force drops to zero, so the pair doesnt interact with anything else.
Particle-antiparticle interactions imply annihilation, which doesn't occur in typical photon-photon interactions (which are wave-like). Instead, you get a time- or space-localized interference and a change in the probability of finding a photon. There are situations where it makes sense to think of photons as their own antiparticle (largely in the context of matter-antimatter annihilation), but that's not a helpful way of looking at interference. Interference and tunneling are wave-like behaviors.
Perhaps pedantic.
You also disregard the fact that basic research often helps progress in unexpected ways - including the area of microscopy.
Indeed. My research is in making better microscopes (to cure cancer and whatnot...) and I've been personally looking at some of the advances in interferometry that allowed LIGO to be built (and the analytical techniques that allow useful data to be recovered).
So Midas' criteria has been fulfilled and he can quit his bitching now.
LOL. So much emotion and so little reason.
I'd love to continue this discussion if you'd actually debate what I'm saying instead of just calling me names; you'll find I'm actually pretty reasonable and presented a decent argument. I'm not going to bother checking your reply, because it's invariably going to be more strawman-bashing and name calling, but you'll find future debates are much more productive if you:
1) calm down
2) read the opposing argument (for comprehension -- not just to pick up on key words and make assumptions about what is being stated)
3) refute that argument in a well-reasoned manner (If your biggest point centers on hysterical overreaction, name-calling, or attempts at shaming, then try harder. You'll never bring someone over to your way of thinking by repeatedly calling them a sick bastard. Seriously, has that ever worked for you??)
We could have good discussions on this site, and in this country in general, and it'd greatly benefit everybody.
As an (American) scientist, I wish things were reported in actual SI units (with proper use of prefixes and base/derived units), instead of the SI-"accepted" customary units like the tonne and hectare.
You don't NEED to "pick up the values" when it comes to Celsius. Especially when it comes to something like coffee, where 100 is boiling and 0 is frozen.
For the temperatures he was referring to, he (hopefully!) does: 1) "how hot/cold is it in here/out there?" and 2) "do I have a fever?"
As a scientist, who uses exclusively metric every day at work, I still don't have much familiarity with "how hot/cold is it in here/out there?" temperatures in Celsius.
As opposed to Fahrenheit where I still haven't remembered what the upper and lower values are supposed to be in what situations other than vague statements of "well it's what's comfortable" or whatever.
Which is entirely a matter of familiarity. The temperatures at which water freezes and boils are not the most useful reference points for most of our daily interactions with the world. For any temperature scale in use, those interactions require familiarity from daily use.
Preventing the killing of 20+ children or 49 innocent people is a 'minimal' gain? just wow.
Compared to the population of the country and even the combined homicide rates of the US, yes, it is minimal. More children, by at least an order of magnitude each, died from poisoning, drowning, traffic accidents, etc. Death by AR-15 is such a small contribution to mortality that basing policy on it is foolish. How many children do you think would die during the unrest that gun confiscation would cause in the US? Do their deaths matter less because they died to advance your noble cause? Just wow. (See how silly and juvenile "just wow" attempted shaming looks?)
None of these crimes were committed by drug gangs so your proposals would do nothing to prevent these mass shootings.
There are several times more gang-related shootings every year than the entire count of mass-shooting homicides in US history. I'm sure that not being instantly swayed by emotional arguments and "think of the children" rhetoric makes me a monster in your eyes, but being so thoroughly controlled by your emotions makes you one hell of a scary creature in mine. You sound like the fools who are willing to throw away everything out of the sheer terror of statistically unlikely terrorist attacks. Get a hold of yourself, man.
As I've stated repeatedly, the good to be gained by doing that is minimal and the downsides are tremendous. So no, I don't agree.
It's so that carts being pushed in opposite directions can pass.
Too bad it never seems to work that way in real life. I don't know about Walmart, but in every grocery I've been to the oblivious person in front of you just suddenly halts in the middle of the aisle and abandons their cart there, blocking all traffic in either direction.
It is mostly gangbangers, but nothing about my wording implied that it wasn't that bad. My point in the second paragraph was that you can be cozy in your armchair railing against "military assault weapons in civilian hands" instead of advocating for actual policy that will reduce the violence and you'll still be safe from it.
Disarmament in the US is not going to be a pretty sight, either, and your interest in seeing that disaster play out shows your personal depravity. And after that, I assume you believe that the drug-trade, experts in procurement and smuggling that they are, won't have access to guns to continue murdering each other?
You were just looking for a reason to say that, weren't you? It's hard to see how fighting poverty and ending drug-trade fueled violence makes me a sick person. Your all too common attitude of needing to divide everybody into opposing ideological teams and vilify the "other team" is what is keeping us all in this sorry state of affairs.
Grow up.
Personally, I'd put an end to the War on Drugs, which is just as violent and destabilizing as alcohol prohibition was. Between that, and working to end the cycle of poverty and poor education, the murder rates in the US would easily drop to European levels. Basically, we can start chasing the real causes instead of getting caught on this subject (guns) every single time.
If that's all too hard or something, we could just do nothing at all. The violent crime rates for most Americans (not involved in gangs or illegal drug trade) is very low. The gang-bangers will continue to kill each other and make up the largest chunk of the murders, interspersed with the occasional nutjob or jealous lover.
Attempting a gun confiscation program in the US would probably not be peaceful, would certainly be unconstitutional, and would likely be accompanied by enabling laws that would make the US a less fun place to live. The price is too too high, especially when the problem is not about guns but culture.
The Australian murder rate was already dropping before confiscation and continued to drop after it. Murder has been steadily dropping in the US over that timeframe, too, even with continued gun sales and more states allowing concealed carry. Pretty weak correlation, if you ask me.
Exactly! Perhaps they're not actually causally related and we can start chasing the real causes instead of getting caught on this subject every single time.
Simple: when you regularly, willingly sacrifice your children and others on a regular basis, you are worshipping your God!
That's just asinine. We lose many more children to automobile accidents, drowning, poisoning, etc than firearms and I don't hear anyone saying that we're worshipping the false God of household cleaners.
Being able to accept that there is a certain amount of risk involved in living is part of maturity and is the only way to make informed and responsible decisions. Bringing up "false gods" and "think of the children" in arguments is almost never an indication of mature, informed, and responsible decision-making.
Universally, more guns by people in a given situation == more stupid shit!
I agree with you there.