Yes, you can- but not with a 12V electrical system. When vehicles switch to 42V electrical systems (which is currently in progress, albeit very slowly), this will become much more feasible.
A few casually racist words on the air may not seem like much but it does imply that racism is okay. It reinforces the idea in the minds of the public and it tacitly condones actions like this: http://www.texasnaacp.org/jasper.htm
Right, and the fact that I think Paris Hilton is a stupid bitch means I have tacitly condoned the idea of raping and murdering her then throwing her body in a river.
The Slashdot libertarian noise machine may claim otherwise, but words matter. Context matters. By not jumping all over Imus and getting rid of him, by giving him a pass on bigotry, we're saying that there's nothing wrong with expressing bigotry.
I agree, and I'd like to expand on this from a different angle. Excuse me for the profanity but seeing this sort of bullshit pisses me off. Humans beings have been around for years, and surprisingly enough we have developed some pretty effective methods of dealing with bullies, but these new age metrosexual hippies want to throw it all out the window in favor of some retarded "SEND THEM TO PRISON!! AND COUNSELING!!!1" heavy handed bullshit. The real solution, the one that works every time and causes the least amount (none) of psychological/permanent damage to anyone, comes in the form of your hand curled into a fist.
The fact is, I was bullied ALL the time in elementary school. My dad was in the Air Force and we moved around a lot. I started school in Arizona, then in 3rd grade my dad left the Air Force and we moved back home to Alabama. Well, it was quite a culture shock for me. There's a big difference between an on-base elementary school populated with kids from all over the country with different backgrounds who respected one another, to an Alabama back woods school populated with kids who grew up hunting and fishing with each other, where outsiders were not welcome and if you said the wrong thing to someone you got your ass whooped. Compounding the problem was the fact that I was a nerd (not to brag, but WAY smarter than 90% of the folks I went to school with), a "yankee" (had a non-southern accent even though I was born in Alabama), I'm a smart ass, I'm hot headed--but not an experienced fighter, AND I was thrown into a completely unfamiliar social culture which I didn't fit into well at first.
So yeah, I got bullied all the time. It didn't help matters that my parents were fighting and going through a divorce, plus I hated the people and climate and was having a hard time adjusting. As time went on I withdrew more and more into books and computers, got a little chubby, and that made matters worse.
One day we were all out on the playground playing soccer and I started getting bullied and made fun of as usual. It kept getting worse and worse with more people joining in. I started getting angry and talking shit back, then one guy knocked me down and jumped on me and started hitting me. This time instead of covering my face and crying I swung at him, punched him in the nose, and he started bleeding. He stopped for a second, felt the blood on his face, and was shocked. All the fight in him was gone. I pushed him off me and he didn't resist me. Everyone around was in shock. Then people started running up to me, laughing and congratulating me, people that were making fun of me minutes before. The (male) teacher in charge of the playground came over and winked at me and said "good job." I never felt so happy in all my life. Everyone RESPECTED me now and NOBODY fucked with me for a long time after that, even though I didn't really do anything all that amazing. I just fought back and stood up for myself. The best part is 10 minutes later me and the guy I fought with were shaking hands and laughing about the fight. He used to bully me all the time, but from that point on he never messed with me again, and we were even sort of friends.
Jesus Christ people, WHY doesn't everyone understand that this is THE time-tested, tried and true method for dealing with bullies? It is the BEST solution. Everyone wants to overreact and come up with some "ZERO TOLERANCE" bullshit that does nothing but make matters worse. What would have happened if all the people who bullied me had been thrown in prison? They would have turned into fucked up sociopaths and I would still be a pussy. But instead I grew a backbone and I'm a way better person for it today; and all the people who bullied me are now normal, good-hearted adults who I would be proud to call friends. Kids are inclined to be bullies and cruel to one another; that's just the way it works. But they grow up to be normal, good people most of the time.
Your talk about Army convoys reminded me of an interesting phenomena I observed when I was in boot camp for the Air Force. During one part of training, I had to march from an encampment down the road a few miles to a rifle range for target practice. It was a massive formation with hundreds, if not over a thousand people. It was sized so that the tallest people were placed in the front and the shortest in the rear. I, being compartively short, was located towards the back.
In a normal sized formation, there is a bit of oscillation going on, but on a very small scale. The vast size of this formation resulted in some pretty interesting (and frustrating) wave effects. Basically, here's what I think was going on: Taller people, in general, take longer steps. Shorter people have to make a conscious effort to extend their step to keep up. One row in the front of the formation would lag behind a hair, maybe only an inch or so, then having perceived themselves to be lagging behind would extend their step a bit to catch back up. The row behind them would then likewise step it out even more to catch up, and so on. As this wave proceeded towards the rear of the formation its magnitude increased substantially. By the time it reached me in the rear of the formation, it would have increased in magnitude to the point where I would have to *run* a good 30-40 feet to catch up, slow down back to a walk for a moment, then run again as another wave hit.. over and over.. for a good 2-3 miles.
2 - They require more land than the typical suburbian/urban lot offers.
Who says you have to live in the suburbs?
4 - building from real materials is also insane expensive. I live in a all brick and Stone home now that is from the 1950's It's beautiful and would cost nearly $1,000,000 to build today. The stonework is real the brickwork is real my walls are 2X6 and then have the stonework on the outside giving me 10-12 inch thick walls, new mansions dont have real stone anymore, they have the faux or created stuff that is in reality only an inch or two thick even for their fireplace stonework (I have real marble and limestone) so building the home to have real thermal capabilities is not possible except for the rich.
Bullshit. I live in north Alabama, on beautiful hilly woodland that cost about $1500 per acre. I have basically an *infinite* supply of large flat rocks thanks to the numerous creeks and streams cutting through here. I plan to build a nice rock cabin here soon using these rocks. There are plenty of free natural resources available to those who would seek them out and put them to use.
6 - efficient designs are hard to get approved by the association... Any home that looks different is considered ugly.
Again.. why seek energy independence, yet enslave yourself to cookie-cutter suburbia?
The common person cant have an efficient home, they cant afford it. Jsut like solar and alternative energy. No average joe can float $5000-8000 for a basic solar install that will pay back in 10 years saving few dollars here and there.
Who says that solar panels are your only options for renewable energy? Here I can take advantage of solar, wind, and could do hydroelectric if there were enough water flow. I have two hands, tools, and ingenuity, and can build my own wind generator, heat engine, or solar water heater.
Additionally, have you ever heard of a Lister engine? It's an extremely efficient slow speed diesel engine that can be run on waste vegetable oil to produce basically free (and very reliable) electricity.
Again, the options are out there, if you have the motivation to pursue them.
(a) something went wrong with the transmission (this covers a lot of professional gaffes, which is good when the person you are accusing is your client), or (b) they have been too busy to respond (which means you should "annoy" them anyway -- busy people like to be gadflied with important items), or (c) they are intentionally ignoring you, which means you should assume #1 or #2 anyway.
I agree, I find Kate to be a pretty damn good programmer's editor. The only thing I've ever used that I liked better was "ConTEXT", but it's for Windows only. But kate is very good, and it's pretty light weight. (Doesn't have a bunch of crap added on, just the basics, and a simple project management system.) I can't say that I'm a big fan of some of the "traditional" build tools, but there are plenty of alternatives, like scons instead of make.
First, people like to overcompensate for things they could never use but for status. Why buy a car that can go 150mph when its illegal and unfeasible to drive it at that speed?
Illegal? Sure, on public roads. Doesn't stop people from doing it. I've been to 150 MPH plenty of times on the interstate and on long, straight, clear highways. And there are plenty of race courses where you can take your car to stretch its legs, legally.
Furthermore, a car that can do 150 MPH generally has a lot more power than one that struggles to break 100, and it will thus accelerate much faster (at all speeds.) You might never get into a race in your life, but you might could use that extra acceleration when executing a tricky merge into heavy traffic.
In conclusion, don't jump to the conclusion that every time someone buys something that you deem "excessive", that it's for the purpose of status or to show off. You are just into different things than other people are. When asked what a car is good for, you might say "getting from point A to point B". To me, the best part is the trip, not the destination.
Re:Editorial Oversight != Truth (i.e. FOX News)
on
When Wikipedia Fails
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· Score: 1
What distinguishes Fox News is that, on average, people who watch it are roughly twice as likely to not know the actual facts, not partisan facts, but really basic stuff like the fact that Sadaam Hussein did not have a meaningful relationship with Al Quaeda.
The icon refers to a specific teacher, and mentioning that one teacher by name raises the icon from of bad taste to a threat. Instead of writing "I'll kill," he created an animated image which clearly demonstrates a violent action. This is no different than releasing a photograph or video depicting someone's murder and subtitling it with "You'll be next,." Death threats are always an expression of frustration (real or imagined), but with the added element of expressing the goal of inflicting very real harm.
The picture that I drew when I was in middle school was actually a comic strip, referring to a specific teacher (not named but it was obvious), clearly demonstrating a violent action (it was very similar to this guy's icon.) It was not a threat in any shape, form, or fashion; there was no intent whatsoever to even contemplate actually carrying out any of the actions portrayed in the drawing. So, I would have to disagree with your opinion that this guy's icon was necessarily a threat. It could have quite possibly been a joke, innocently done just to pass the time, just like my drawing was. If there is no intent, it is not a threat.
Did the school over react? Most definitely. Will a six month suspension (more like an expulsion) ever resolve this kind of situation? Absolutely not. Should this kind of thing be ignored? No, not ever. The school has the right to ensure safety on its grounds for both students and teachers.
Agreed.
An IM icon that advocates the murder of a specific teacher speaks to the possibility, however small, that the action will be carried out by the creator or one of his school mates.
I disagree with this line of reasoning. Unless a drawing, note, or other communication is without a doubt an indication of intent to do wrong, I don't believe a person should be punished for that supposed intent. If I draw a picture of the Brooklyn Bridge exploding and mail it to the White House, there would understandably be some concern. But would this concern justify putting me directly into prison? No, as a U.S. citizen I am entitled to a trial where the prosecution would be burdened with proving my unlawful intent. Only after sufficient evidence against me had been gathered, and a jury of my peers found me guilty would I face punishment -- and that punishment would neither be cruel nor unusual, nor excessive. (Well, that's the idea, anyhow.)
I am not saying trial by jury is the proper way to determine guilt and mete out punishment in a school setting. What I'm saying is that school administration need to chill the fuck out and stop with this zero tolerance B.S. At school, kids learn about the U.S. government and how great our justice system is, and how the U.S. kicks ass because everyone gets the right to a fair trial and everyone's innocent until proven guilty. Well, unless you're in public school, in which case you're automatically assumed to be guilty, nobody listens or cares when you say you're innocent, and your punishment is way out of proportion to the actual offense.
If they had just given this kid a good "talking to", a couple good licks with a paddle, and had him sit down and have a one-on-one, personal conversion with this teacher, that's all it would have taken. He'd have gotten to know the teacher as a person instead of just some unfair asshole and he'd probably have felt ashamed for what he did. They probably never would've had a problem out of him again. But now this kid is going to spend the next 6 months at home thinking about how much the school sucks. He's going to feel justified in his dislike of authority in general (and the math teacher in particular) by this wrong and excessive punishment -- and he's right! He's going to come back to school with a bad taste in his mouth and a bad attitude. Good job, idiots!
I once drew a similar picture about my stupid math teacher when I was in middle school. I got put in "alternative school" for a week, and life went on. The picture was funny as hell. I laughed, my friends laughed. We had a sense of humor, so we laughed about it and life went on. To vent my frustration, I drew a picture; would you guys have preferred it if I had brought a.357 to school and shot up the place instead? What about this kid?
People these days freak the F**K out about the stupidest crap, and to be honest it's really friggin annoying. A death threat is a note written to the teacher saying "I'M GONNA KILL YOU" or a note written to someone else saying "I'M GONNA KILL $TEACHER." A death threat is NOT a picture that someone drew out of boredom to vent some frustration.
Any other day you people would be bitching about Jack Thompson talking trash about gamers. So you guys are saying violence in a game is OK, but violence in a simple, stupid little picture is wrong? Get your story straight.
You guys know as well as I do that school systems take stuff WAY too damn seriously and blow it WAY out of proportion. These days if someone is caught doing something as trivial and harmless as bypassing the Internet filters at school, the school tries to put them in jail for being "cyber-terrorists" and "criminals". Jesus Christ, are you sure you want to defend these idiots?
Heh. I read on the Air Force Portal that they're planning to "lock down" all Air Force workstations in the name of security. Seems they want to guarantee a certain desktop appearance and availability of certain set of applications including Internet Explorer, and Outlook. Worried about security, huh? Nice job, idiots. They are so deep in Microsoft's pocket it's not even funny. If they lock everything down like that, then I'll be forced to put up with the POS that is IE instead of installing Firefox.
I did, very insightfully I would argue, and got moderated flamebait.:( How lame!
Re:It looks cool, so it is cool?
on
KDE 4 Screenshots
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· Score: 0, Flamebait
Regardless of what you tell yourself, you are not better than the rest of us.
That's bullshit. Everyone is not the "same". On average, people are idiots. There are dumber ones, and there are smarter ones. Also, on average, people don't have a friggin clue about what looks good or what is tasteful or useable. Witness the hordes of cars driving around with loud, mismatched body kits, outrageous wings, Japanese writing on American cars, the list goes on for as long as someone cares to discuss.
This extends to the average programmer or developer. They don't have a clue about usability. That's why KDE is cluttered with crap and Gnome is so featureless as to be useless. It's the same idea taken to opposite extremes. Personally, I can program well AND have a good eye for aesthetics/usability too, so in that respect I AM better than most. I am sure there are others who are the same way and who's to say the grandparent isn't? So your assertion that he is not "better than anyone" is unfounded.
How is this flamebait? I happen to agree with him, and I use KDE exclusively on my desktop. KDE has some really neat, cool features (like ioslaves) and is miles ahead of Gnome in many areas, but you just can't beat Gnome's simplicity and clean look. KDE's cluttered, disorganized interface is annoying. It just feels more sluggish, too, though I'm not sure why.
Kind of unrelated, but your post reminded me- have you ever noticed how crappy many of the BOOKS are these days? As an example, at the university library the other day I took a look in an old (like 1960s vintage) algebra book and was amazed at how much better it was. No fancy illustrations, filler, or any of that crap; just simple text (in a much more readable font on better paper) and a few illustrations here and there. You could actually read it comfortably and follow it much more easily than anything I've seen that was written in the past 10-20 years. I was hoping they would have a calculus book along the same lines but the selection there was much more limited.
Kill all the plants! Burn the forests! Bulldoze greehouses! We have to destroy them before they kill us! Huh? What do you mean we need them to survive? Man, they're evil! Didn't you hear, they cause GLOBAL WARMING!!!1
What? I have noticed the exact same thing with Google. No, I don't have ad/trojan/spyware, I run Linux. One day I was searching for information on lost foam casting, and 80% of Google's first page (and subsequent pages) was spam and search page links. I went to Yahoo and 90% of the first page was useful, informative links, exactly what I was looking for. I wrote Google a very nasty, scathing letter telling them how disappointed I was about spending hours wading through spam when Yahoo turned up useful information right away. I think my letter may have actually had some sort of effect, because I just did the same search on Google to use as an example, and now it's turning up much better results. Good job, Google.
As a term of reference for you delightful residents of the US of A, Tasmania is like the US 'south' (rednecks, interbreeding et al) and the 'Liberal' party isn't actually a liberal party, but a conservative party (similar to your Republican party).
Uh, I am an American and in fact a resident of Alabama (part of the "US south" as I am sure you are aware). Rednecks can be found everywhere in the country, and inbreeding is a rare occurence. Yes, we actually have electricity, running water, cars, and other examples of modern technology. As a matter of fact we also have rocket scientists too. What about y'all, what the hell have you guys accomplished lately?
Slashdot Mirror
Yes, you can- but not with a 12V electrical system. When vehicles switch to 42V electrical systems (which is currently in progress, albeit very slowly), this will become much more feasible.
A few casually racist words on the air may not seem like much but it does imply that racism is okay. It reinforces the idea in the minds of the public and it tacitly condones actions like this: http://www.texasnaacp.org/jasper.htm
Right, and the fact that I think Paris Hilton is a stupid bitch means I have tacitly condoned the idea of raping and murdering her then throwing her body in a river.
The Slashdot libertarian noise machine may claim otherwise, but words matter. Context matters. By not jumping all over Imus and getting rid of him, by giving him a pass on bigotry, we're saying that there's nothing wrong with expressing bigotry.
Yeah... and?
.02c?
I agree, and I'd like to expand on this from a different angle. Excuse me for the profanity but seeing this sort of bullshit pisses me off. Humans beings have been around for years, and surprisingly enough we have developed some pretty effective methods of dealing with bullies, but these new age metrosexual hippies want to throw it all out the window in favor of some retarded "SEND THEM TO PRISON!! AND COUNSELING!!!1" heavy handed bullshit. The real solution, the one that works every time and causes the least amount (none) of psychological/permanent damage to anyone, comes in the form of your hand curled into a fist.
The fact is, I was bullied ALL the time in elementary school. My dad was in the Air Force and we moved around a lot. I started school in Arizona, then in 3rd grade my dad left the Air Force and we moved back home to Alabama. Well, it was quite a culture shock for me. There's a big difference between an on-base elementary school populated with kids from all over the country with different backgrounds who respected one another, to an Alabama back woods school populated with kids who grew up hunting and fishing with each other, where outsiders were not welcome and if you said the wrong thing to someone you got your ass whooped. Compounding the problem was the fact that I was a nerd (not to brag, but WAY smarter than 90% of the folks I went to school with), a "yankee" (had a non-southern accent even though I was born in Alabama), I'm a smart ass, I'm hot headed--but not an experienced fighter, AND I was thrown into a completely unfamiliar social culture which I didn't fit into well at first.
So yeah, I got bullied all the time. It didn't help matters that my parents were fighting and going through a divorce, plus I hated the people and climate and was having a hard time adjusting. As time went on I withdrew more and more into books and computers, got a little chubby, and that made matters worse.
One day we were all out on the playground playing soccer and I started getting bullied and made fun of as usual. It kept getting worse and worse with more people joining in. I started getting angry and talking shit back, then one guy knocked me down and jumped on me and started hitting me. This time instead of covering my face and crying I swung at him, punched him in the nose, and he started bleeding. He stopped for a second, felt the blood on his face, and was shocked. All the fight in him was gone. I pushed him off me and he didn't resist me. Everyone around was in shock. Then people started running up to me, laughing and congratulating me, people that were making fun of me minutes before. The (male) teacher in charge of the playground came over and winked at me and said "good job." I never felt so happy in all my life. Everyone RESPECTED me now and NOBODY fucked with me for a long time after that, even though I didn't really do anything all that amazing. I just fought back and stood up for myself. The best part is 10 minutes later me and the guy I fought with were shaking hands and laughing about the fight. He used to bully me all the time, but from that point on he never messed with me again, and we were even sort of friends.
Jesus Christ people, WHY doesn't everyone understand that this is THE time-tested, tried and true method for dealing with bullies? It is the BEST solution. Everyone wants to overreact and come up with some "ZERO TOLERANCE" bullshit that does nothing but make matters worse. What would have happened if all the people who bullied me had been thrown in prison? They would have turned into fucked up sociopaths and I would still be a pussy. But instead I grew a backbone and I'm a way better person for it today; and all the people who bullied me are now normal, good-hearted adults who I would be proud to call friends. Kids are inclined to be bullies and cruel to one another; that's just the way it works. But they grow up to be normal, good people most of the time.
Your talk about Army convoys reminded me of an interesting phenomena I observed when I was in boot camp for the Air Force. During one part of training, I had to march from an encampment down the road a few miles to a rifle range for target practice. It was a massive formation with hundreds, if not over a thousand people. It was sized so that the tallest people were placed in the front and the shortest in the rear. I, being compartively short, was located towards the back.
In a normal sized formation, there is a bit of oscillation going on, but on a very small scale. The vast size of this formation resulted in some pretty interesting (and frustrating) wave effects. Basically, here's what I think was going on: Taller people, in general, take longer steps. Shorter people have to make a conscious effort to extend their step to keep up. One row in the front of the formation would lag behind a hair, maybe only an inch or so, then having perceived themselves to be lagging behind would extend their step a bit to catch back up. The row behind them would then likewise step it out even more to catch up, and so on. As this wave proceeded towards the rear of the formation its magnitude increased substantially. By the time it reached me in the rear of the formation, it would have increased in magnitude to the point where I would have to *run* a good 30-40 feet to catch up, slow down back to a walk for a moment, then run again as another wave hit.. over and over.. for a good 2-3 miles.
2 - They require more land than the typical suburbian/urban lot offers.
Who says you have to live in the suburbs?
4 - building from real materials is also insane expensive. I live in a all brick and Stone home now that is from the 1950's It's beautiful and would cost nearly $1,000,000 to build today. The stonework is real the brickwork is real my walls are 2X6 and then have the stonework on the outside giving me 10-12 inch thick walls, new mansions dont have real stone anymore, they have the faux or created stuff that is in reality only an inch or two thick even for their fireplace stonework (I have real marble and limestone) so building the home to have real thermal capabilities is not possible except for the rich.
Bullshit. I live in north Alabama, on beautiful hilly woodland that cost about $1500 per acre. I have basically an *infinite* supply of large flat rocks thanks to the numerous creeks and streams cutting through here. I plan to build a nice rock cabin here soon using these rocks. There are plenty of free natural resources available to those who would seek them out and put them to use.
6 - efficient designs are hard to get approved by the association... Any home that looks different is considered ugly.
Again.. why seek energy independence, yet enslave yourself to cookie-cutter suburbia?
The common person cant have an efficient home, they cant afford it. Jsut like solar and alternative energy. No average joe can float $5000-8000 for a basic solar install that will pay back in 10 years saving few dollars here and there.
Who says that solar panels are your only options for renewable energy? Here I can take advantage of solar, wind, and could do hydroelectric if there were enough water flow. I have two hands, tools, and ingenuity, and can build my own wind generator, heat engine, or solar water heater.
Additionally, have you ever heard of a Lister engine? It's an extremely efficient slow speed diesel engine that can be run on waste vegetable oil to produce basically free (and very reliable) electricity.
Again, the options are out there, if you have the motivation to pursue them.
(a) something went wrong with the transmission (this covers a lot of professional gaffes, which is good when the person you are accusing is your client), or (b) they have been too busy to respond (which means you should "annoy" them anyway -- busy people like to be gadflied with important items), or (c) they are intentionally ignoring you, which means you should assume #1 or #2 anyway.
I'm confused. What was #1 and #2 again?
yes
I agree, I find Kate to be a pretty damn good programmer's editor. The only thing I've ever used that I liked better was "ConTEXT", but it's for Windows only. But kate is very good, and it's pretty light weight. (Doesn't have a bunch of crap added on, just the basics, and a simple project management system.) I can't say that I'm a big fan of some of the "traditional" build tools, but there are plenty of alternatives, like scons instead of make.
First, people like to overcompensate for things they could never use but for status. Why buy a car that can go 150mph when its illegal and unfeasible to drive it at that speed?
Illegal? Sure, on public roads. Doesn't stop people from doing it. I've been to 150 MPH plenty of times on the interstate and on long, straight, clear highways. And there are plenty of race courses where you can take your car to stretch its legs, legally.
Furthermore, a car that can do 150 MPH generally has a lot more power than one that struggles to break 100, and it will thus accelerate much faster (at all speeds.) You might never get into a race in your life, but you might could use that extra acceleration when executing a tricky merge into heavy traffic.
In conclusion, don't jump to the conclusion that every time someone buys something that you deem "excessive", that it's for the purpose of status or to show off. You are just into different things than other people are. When asked what a car is good for, you might say "getting from point A to point B". To me, the best part is the trip, not the destination.
What distinguishes Fox News is that, on average, people who watch it are roughly twice as likely to not know the actual facts, not partisan facts, but really basic stuff like the fact that Sadaam Hussein did not have a meaningful relationship with Al Quaeda.
Correlation does not imply causation.
The picture that I drew when I was in middle school was actually a comic strip, referring to a specific teacher (not named but it was obvious), clearly demonstrating a violent action (it was very similar to this guy's icon.) It was not a threat in any shape, form, or fashion; there was no intent whatsoever to even contemplate actually carrying out any of the actions portrayed in the drawing. So, I would have to disagree with your opinion that this guy's icon was necessarily a threat. It could have quite possibly been a joke, innocently done just to pass the time, just like my drawing was. If there is no intent, it is not a threat.
Agreed.
I disagree with this line of reasoning. Unless a drawing, note, or other communication is without a doubt an indication of intent to do wrong, I don't believe a person should be punished for that supposed intent. If I draw a picture of the Brooklyn Bridge exploding and mail it to the White House, there would understandably be some concern. But would this concern justify putting me directly into prison? No, as a U.S. citizen I am entitled to a trial where the prosecution would be burdened with proving my unlawful intent. Only after sufficient evidence against me had been gathered, and a jury of my peers found me guilty would I face punishment -- and that punishment would neither be cruel nor unusual, nor excessive. (Well, that's the idea, anyhow.)
I am not saying trial by jury is the proper way to determine guilt and mete out punishment in a school setting. What I'm saying is that school administration need to chill the fuck out and stop with this zero tolerance B.S. At school, kids learn about the U.S. government and how great our justice system is, and how the U.S. kicks ass because everyone gets the right to a fair trial and everyone's innocent until proven guilty. Well, unless you're in public school, in which case you're automatically assumed to be guilty, nobody listens or cares when you say you're innocent, and your punishment is way out of proportion to the actual offense.
If they had just given this kid a good "talking to", a couple good licks with a paddle, and had him sit down and have a one-on-one, personal conversion with this teacher, that's all it would have taken. He'd have gotten to know the teacher as a person instead of just some unfair asshole and he'd probably have felt ashamed for what he did. They probably never would've had a problem out of him again. But now this kid is going to spend the next 6 months at home thinking about how much the school sucks. He's going to feel justified in his dislike of authority in general (and the math teacher in particular) by this wrong and excessive punishment -- and he's right! He's going to come back to school with a bad taste in his mouth and a bad attitude. Good job, idiots!
I once drew a similar picture about my stupid math teacher when I was in middle school. I got put in "alternative school" for a week, and life went on. The picture was funny as hell. I laughed, my friends laughed. We had a sense of humor, so we laughed about it and life went on. To vent my frustration, I drew a picture; would you guys have preferred it if I had brought a .357 to school and shot up the place instead? What about this kid?
People these days freak the F**K out about the stupidest crap, and to be honest it's really friggin annoying. A death threat is a note written to the teacher saying "I'M GONNA KILL YOU" or a note written to someone else saying "I'M GONNA KILL $TEACHER." A death threat is NOT a picture that someone drew out of boredom to vent some frustration.
Any other day you people would be bitching about Jack Thompson talking trash about gamers. So you guys are saying violence in a game is OK, but violence in a simple, stupid little picture is wrong? Get your story straight.
You guys know as well as I do that school systems take stuff WAY too damn seriously and blow it WAY out of proportion. These days if someone is caught doing something as trivial and harmless as bypassing the Internet filters at school, the school tries to put them in jail for being "cyber-terrorists" and "criminals". Jesus Christ, are you sure you want to defend these idiots?
Heh. I read on the Air Force Portal that they're planning to "lock down" all Air Force workstations in the name of security. Seems they want to guarantee a certain desktop appearance and availability of certain set of applications including Internet Explorer, and Outlook. Worried about security, huh? Nice job, idiots. They are so deep in Microsoft's pocket it's not even funny. If they lock everything down like that, then I'll be forced to put up with the POS that is IE instead of installing Firefox.
I did, very insightfully I would argue, and got moderated flamebait. :( How lame!
Regardless of what you tell yourself, you are not better than the rest of us.
That's bullshit. Everyone is not the "same". On average, people are idiots. There are dumber ones, and there are smarter ones. Also, on average, people don't have a friggin clue about what looks good or what is tasteful or useable. Witness the hordes of cars driving around with loud, mismatched body kits, outrageous wings, Japanese writing on American cars, the list goes on for as long as someone cares to discuss.
This extends to the average programmer or developer. They don't have a clue about usability. That's why KDE is cluttered with crap and Gnome is so featureless as to be useless. It's the same idea taken to opposite extremes. Personally, I can program well AND have a good eye for aesthetics/usability too, so in that respect I AM better than most. I am sure there are others who are the same way and who's to say the grandparent isn't? So your assertion that he is not "better than anyone" is unfounded.
How is this flamebait? I happen to agree with him, and I use KDE exclusively on my desktop. KDE has some really neat, cool features (like ioslaves) and is miles ahead of Gnome in many areas, but you just can't beat Gnome's simplicity and clean look. KDE's cluttered, disorganized interface is annoying. It just feels more sluggish, too, though I'm not sure why.
longest (in length) flight
Ah! Thanks for the explanation.
Kind of unrelated, but your post reminded me- have you ever noticed how crappy many of the BOOKS are these days? As an example, at the university library the other day I took a look in an old (like 1960s vintage) algebra book and was amazed at how much better it was. No fancy illustrations, filler, or any of that crap; just simple text (in a much more readable font on better paper) and a few illustrations here and there. You could actually read it comfortably and follow it much more easily than anything I've seen that was written in the past 10-20 years. I was hoping they would have a calculus book along the same lines but the selection there was much more limited.
Kill all the plants! Burn the forests! Bulldoze greehouses! We have to destroy them before they kill us! Huh? What do you mean we need them to survive? Man, they're evil! Didn't you hear, they cause GLOBAL WARMING!!!1
As an American, I agree. It's pathetic.
What? I have noticed the exact same thing with Google. No, I don't have ad/trojan/spyware, I run Linux. One day I was searching for information on lost foam casting, and 80% of Google's first page (and subsequent pages) was spam and search page links. I went to Yahoo and 90% of the first page was useful, informative links, exactly what I was looking for. I wrote Google a very nasty, scathing letter telling them how disappointed I was about spending hours wading through spam when Yahoo turned up useful information right away. I think my letter may have actually had some sort of effect, because I just did the same search on Google to use as an example, and now it's turning up much better results. Good job, Google.
As a term of reference for you delightful residents of the US of A, Tasmania is like the US 'south' (rednecks, interbreeding et al) and the 'Liberal' party isn't actually a liberal party, but a conservative party (similar to your Republican party).
Uh, I am an American and in fact a resident of Alabama (part of the "US south" as I am sure you are aware). Rednecks can be found everywhere in the country, and inbreeding is a rare occurence. Yes, we actually have electricity, running water, cars, and other examples of modern technology. As a matter of fact we also have rocket scientists too. What about y'all, what the hell have you guys accomplished lately?
Why is this a troll? Have the moderators lost their minds?