Can't do nuclear propulsion like Project Orion due to international treaties and what not.
The treaty should be changed if it hampers the progress of our species. No, we shouldn't be setting off nukes in low earth orbit, but we should be using them (or at least open to the possibility of usng them) farther out.
Another good idea is the nuclear thermal rocket. Basically, you use a nuclear reactor to super-heat the propellant, which then expands (quite rapidly) pushing the craft forward. The exhaust gas isn't radio active, any more than the water used to cool a nuclear power plant is radio active.
NTR's have even higher ISPs than this methane rocket. They really do kick ass. And as a bonus, since you're not burning the propellant, you don't need an oxidizer.
But this wont happen either because of that very vocal minority of people who are opposed to any and all progress and want us all to live in caves. These are the same people who were against Cassini because it used RTGs. Why are people like that allowed to have any say in our society?
It's taught in school in the US as well. I can't tell from your comment - did you not know that?
The problem in the US is, we don't actually use it outside of school (science classes mostly) so most people fall back on what's all around them. It's kind of sad. The military uses it though, and some large percentage of Americans have been in the military (in case you couldn't tell, ha ha). The M-16 was designed to be exactly 1 meter long so that every soldier could have a familiar reference. It's still what I think of when I need to estimate meters.
I would also like to point out that people who are against embryonic stem cell research have a vision in their head of an 8.5 month old fetus being chopped up for spare parts. Meanwhile, the people who are for embryonic stem cell research have a vision in their head of basically a blastisist (sp?) with 100 or 200 cells at most that isn't even visible without a microscope.
People aren't even talking about the same things. That's one of the reasons for all the anger. If I'm thinking about a microscopic lump of cells, then of course I think you must be an idiot for calling that a person. On the other hand, if I'm thinking of a fetus with fingers and toes and a heartbeat, then of course I'll see you as a monster for wanting to chop it up.
There are extremists on BOTH sides (yes, both sides) who think even killing sperm is murder, or even killing an 8.5 month old fetus is not murder. Those people are the extremes though. Most people are reasonable. The anger is just because we're talking about different things.
An embryo needs to be fertilised before it even has the chance of becoming a child.
LOL! You're a moron! You don't have a clue what you're talking about! I bet you made fun of that guy who said the internet is a series of tubes, didn't you. Well, how does it feel to eat crow?
It's nerd cred, man!... You can compare it to the feeling you get when you pull up to a restaurant in a Lamborghini. People go, 'Oooo, he must be somebody.'
except that, presumably, number of achievement points is INVERSELY related to change of getting laid.
I see what you're saying, but here's the part I doubt:
Once you're at the point where you can influence the position of a star it's very unlikely that you're going to have a problem noticing other civilizations through pure observation
I wonder if the laws of physics allow seeing any kind of civilization in another galaxy. How big of a telescope do you need to hear normal radio communications in another galaxy (we're NOT talking about an intentional "hello world" signal. we're talking about TV and radar etc.) how would you see that?
Sometimes it's hard to wrap my brain around this, but that fuzzy glow is stars. We can't even see individual stars, just the fuzzy glow. How are we supposed to see radio on a planet around a star when we can't even resolve the individual star?
This is a MUCH bigger problem than searching for life in your own galaxy (that's a huge problem). In order to spot life in another glaxy, they would have to give off enormous amounts of energy.
Why would you bother, though? You won't get heard for millions of years.
you don't do this because you expect to be heard. Remember, the universe that this happens in is one where life is so incredibly rare that you searched your entire galaxy and didn't find any (we're talking a class III civilization here). So, on the off chance that there is life in another galaxy you announce your existance.
You'll never hear a reply - but if you don't do it, they will never hear YOU. On the other hand, if everyone follows my logic, then everyone will announce and you will hear from every civilization. And "hearing" from them probably means getting their version of the encyclopedia galactica. Everybody transmits everything they know.
What more do you want, a conversation? If you transmit your entire body of knowledge and all your history and all your culture, what more is there to talk about anyway? What do you think, you're going to get on the live and go: "a/s/l????"
Youre way of thinking, when you say, "why bother" is tragedy of the commons thinking. You don't want to take any action unless you personally get a return on that action. That's very selfish. If everyone else thinks unselfishly, then everyone will get everyone else's encyclopedia galactica.
what I suggested is NOT for planet-to-planet communication. It's about "what do you do if you're alone in your galaxy." There are more galaxies in the universe than there are stars in any one galaxy. Just transmitting a radio signal (a-la contact) isn't going to get you noticed. Someone would have to point a arecebo-size telescope at your galaxy to hear your signal. That's very unlikely.
So how do you get noticed? Cause a supernova. Or actually, a better idea would be to drop material into a black hole, thus giving off gama rays. You could time the drops to create pulses of gama rays that would be obviously nonrandom.
At any rate, the point is that you need a lot of energy to get civilizations in other galaxies to notice you.
"Some people have asked why we didn't put tabs in IE sooner," Hachamovitch wrote. "Initially, we had some concerns around complexity and consistencywill it confuse users more than it benefits them? Is it confusing if IE has tabs, but other core parts of the Windows experience, like Windows Media Player or the shell, don't have?"
oh ok. that makes sense. They didn't want to change IE because that would confuse people.
But then how do you explain this change in office??
Well obviously, the IE explaination was just a lame excuse. IE didn't have tabs because they didn't care to add them. Quite obviously, they have no problem making major changes that will confuse people. And personally, I don't care. I'm willing to try something new in the hope that it will be better. I just don't like the BS
If, hypothetically, you found yourself to have evolved first or to exist in an otherwise empty galaxy - then you might look for an easy way to get the attention of any civilizations in any other galaxies. If you could move a star (details, details) then this would be a good way to get yourself noticed.
Of course, you would want to do it several times over a short period, and you would want it to coincide with a radio transmission that actually contained some data. So the way it works is, a hundred million years from now another civilization sees the stars go up, so they point their radio telescope at the galaxy, and they hear your message.
I realize this is all just a fantasy, but it's a cool one.
No problem. Read this artcle There's plenty more on the net. Try Google.
yeah. That article itself is biased. For example, this quote:
33% of Fox viewers believed that the "U.S. has found Iraqi weapons of mass destruction" "since the war ended". (Compared with 23% for CBS, 20% for both CNN and NBC, 19% for ABC and 11% for both NPR/PBS)
that shows that Fox viewers are BETTER informed than viewers of other news services. You see, Iraq DID have WMDs and some of them have been found.
Now, I know what you're thinking: "omfg that doesn't agree with what I want to believe therefore I will purge it from my memory." and that's cool. You go right ahead and do that. That will give me the chance to post this link again in the future.
about how they found 500 or so chemical munitions in iraq - you know, WMDs. Now, I know what you're thinking, "omfg those are from before 1991 so therefore I will ignore this story" and that's cool, you go ahead and use that logic. Just like if you're on probation for armed robbery and they catch you with a gun, you can tell the judge you bought the gun before you were on probation so therefore it doesn't count.
Look, I don't care. The fact is, we've got a "respected" news service (CBS) where somebody actually sits down at a computer and types of a memo and prints it and then they try to pass that off as a 1950's memo about Bush. But you guys go on and on about how Fox news is bias. Whatever. It's obvious where the bias is.
>> How hard is it to post something on Youtube, a free service?
uh well, it's easy to post on youtube, but I think you're missing the point.
Most big megacorps don't "get it" Their decision making process involves things like lawyers who always fail on the side of caution. That's why, if you posts some completely made-up allegations about, for example Bank of America, then (if they even noticed what you had done) the Bank of America corporate execs would have a meeting in their conference room on the 400th floor of some far off building. They'd have to call in the CTO to explain to them exactly what this "ewe toob" thing was. Then the lawyers would caution against making any kind of direct rebuttal, because that might be seen as *insert lawyer-speak here*
Meanwhile, Starbucks goes, "wtf, get a webcam we're going to respond to this bullshit"
So you see, the point here isn't the ease or difficulty of youtube. The point is the that one corporation gets it and made a simple, common sense move.
Yeah. Allegedly. In truth, what has lucas ever done that wasn't hokie and childish? The original Star Wars was actually pretty good, but Lucas deserves little credit for that. He lucked out in a major way with Harrison Ford, and Harrison Ford saved Star Wars. Try to imagine the movie with just whiny little Luke Skywalker. It just doesn't work.
Case in point, there is a video on youtube of behind the scenes footage from Empire Strikes Back. There is a great scene in Empire where Solo is being lowered in the carbonite pit and Leia shouts to him, "I love you!" Han looks up at her and say, "I know"
What a great scene! Well guess what, Lucas originally wrote it this way: Leia: I love you Han: I love you too.
Stop for a moment and let the deep, penetrating suckiness of those two lines seep into your being. George Lucas, sitting at his typewriter, no doubt in his underwear, actually typed that, and actually thought it was a good idea. He typed that crap, then he sat back and looked at what he had done and said, "hell yeah, I'm a bloody genius."
Fortunately, when it came time to film that scene, Irvin Kershner was calling the shots and Lucas was (presumably) in a crypt somewhere. Harrison Ford looked at the script and said, "this sucks" and Kershner agreed and they changed it. And we all remember Empire Strikes Back as a great movie.
Well, it is a great movie, but no thanks to Lucas.
If only we had known the truth, then maybe we wouldn't have been so shocked some years later when we were treated to Lucas' drivel in the form of such brain-numbing lines as "omfg sand is the suxor it gets in my eye LOL!!!11" and my personal favorite, "Noooo!!!!"
I have to agree. Come on. If every Sperm Whale out there is eating a hundred of these things every day, then it has to be OK for us to kill one or two so that we can learn about them. It would be better if we could study without harm - but right now that's not possible.
It seems really shortsighted to me to say, "OMFG EWE KILLD TEH PRETTY ANEMAL" as if that is the only issue on the table.
That's like saying spiders are scum. Spiders exist because there are flies. Spiders and spammers fill an ecological niche. Spammers send spam because there exist in the world, legions of brainless, drooling, morons who will get an email for V1g4a and think to themselves, "duh, eye wood really lieke to geet medercine from some a-non-a-moose email, har har."
Those are the people who should die. We should be setting up honeypots to catch them. The government should be sending spam and then executing the people who respond to it. We need some kind of natural selection to weed these people out of the gene pool. It's really bad for our species.
I mean seriously, WHAT THE FUCK are these idiots thinking?
If it made more "sense" to have the brain in the chest, we would have brains in our chests. It's just pointless to argue with mother nature when it comes to design.
You're clearly very ignorant of how evolution works. Here's a quick counter example to disprove your "if it made more sense we'd have it" claim: The photoreceptor cells in your eye actually point backwards - toward the back wall of your eye. The nerve ending that transmits the captured light to the brain is on the front of the cell, and therefore has to be longer than strictly necessary (imagine a bunch of harddrives in a case. You would position the drives so that the cables all went out the back of the case. Now turn the drives around - you'll need longer cables and you'll have to route them along the side of each drive, taking up more room. Your eye is like that.)
So why does your eye have this curious and non-optimal design? Beats the hell out of me. It's just a quirk of evolution. Invertebrates evolved their eyes separately (convergent evolution), and they actually got the correct design. This is why an octopus' eye is so good. The cells are pointed the right way, so you can pack more of them together. It's a more efficient design. But you can't point to humans and say, "no no, don't argue with mother nature, if there was a better way we'd have it!" because that just isn't true. There is a better way. We don't have it. Octopuses have it. We got the shaft.
Evolution is random mutation and non-random selection. The best of the group survives. That in no way implies that the best is optimal. It was just the best available.
Now theoretically, if someone did hack one of Sony's servers and get caught, couldn't that person argue in court that, according to Sony, a reasonable reimbursement is whatever sony can show a reciept for (like a consultant fee) or $175, which ever is lower.
It would at least be worth a try. At least make Sony make a statement explaining the difference between their computer and your computer.
I've converted most of my house - but I keep wondering what's going to happen to all that mercury once they do eventually wear out. I'm not aware of any place in my town that will recycle them.
The student didn't forget his ID. He refused to show it, because it's a stupid rule and because he felt he was being singled out for his ethnicity.
I'll just translate that into non-PC:
He refused to show his ID because he thinks he's special and rules don't apply to him and he's a racist in that he thinks people who his race (btw, I thought the guy was white and I still don't know what his ethnicity is) should NEVER be asked to follow the same rules as everyone else.
These cops could have stopped or chosen some other course of action.
Why did you bother to type that if you weren't going to provide an example of what the cops could do? It sounds like you don't want to have a discussion, you just want to argue.
If you have a suggestion then please post it.
1. obviously talking to the guy didn't work 2. obviously they had trouble carrying him
Not following stupid ruiles is called civil disobedience, and it is sometimes a good idea.
true, but what he did was not for any higher purpose. He wasn't a protestor. He was just another student. The only difference was, he forgot his ID. If he had behaved like an adult and treated others with respect none of that would have happened to him.
In any case, it's not OK to back up procedural rules like this with violence.
ok then, enlighten me, fill in the blank:
cop: excuse me sir, may I see your ID kid: leave me alone cop: uh sir, I need to see your ID kid: I ain't got no ID, fuck off pig cop: sir, if you don't have an ID I have to ask you to leave kid: I ain't leavin cop: ________________
please tell me you have a better answer than the cop saying, "oh, you're not going to leave, ok then I give up."
These things escalate slowly, and at every stage both parties share responsibility for where it goes. Sure, maybe the cop could have gotten down on one knee and begged. Maybe that would have diffused the situation. But most of the responsibility is on the whiny bitch student. He could have avoided getting tased - but he was mad because he got caught without ID. Children get mad and let it control them and throw temper tantrums.
you are assuming that it is the cops' job to give the student "what he deserved".
not at all! It's no more the cops job to give someone "what they deserve" than it is a bus driver's job to give a jaywalker "what he deserves."
HOWEVER, if you step in front of a bus, you're going to get what you deserve, and I'm not going to feel sorry for you.
Well, I mean, if you didn't see the bus that'd be one thing, but if you just think you're special and traffic needs to stop for you, then fuck you, fuck you right in the ear. And fuck this student. Like I said, when he was asked to leave, he should have left. He was wrong. I realize it was all an accident. He didn't mean to forget his ID. But that's life.
I'm not authoritarian at all. When the police really do abuse their power, I'm just as mad as anyone. Fortunately, this wasn't such a case. Post a slashdot article when someone really gets abused and I'm all about it. A whiny little bitch learning that the earth doesn't revolve around him doesn't make me particularly angry.
Imagine if another student had tasered the rent-a-cop to get them to stop tasering the student over and over.
Well, the difference between the two would be:
The cop tasering the student was RIGHT, but the student tasering the cop would be WRONG.
And no, I'm not being sarcastic.
This is such a duh, obvious cut and dry case that anyone who thinking the student DIDNT deserve to get tasered multiple times must be delusional.
The rule is: if you want to be in the computer lab, you have to have ID. That's the rule. If you don't like the rule that's cool, go to the student government and have it changed. You and I don't get to pick and choose what rules we follow. That would be anarchy, and you think that's a good idea you're even more delusional.
The student forgot his ID in his dorm room. OK, no problem. It's really not a big deal. The cops are going to ask you to leave though, and you do have to leave because you are wrong and they are right. You broke the rules. Run back to the dorm to get your shit and you'll be back at your computer in 10 minutes.
Unfortunately, the student in question has an inflated sense of his own worth. He thinks he's special and that he can do whatever he wants. He refused to leave the computer lab. This attitude probably leads him to break other laws too. He'd probably take your ipod or your wallet if he could. Now I know what you're saying - you're saying "no, no he's a good person." But you're wrong. A good person would have said to the cop, "yeah, you're right and I'm wrong. Can I leave my crap here while I run back to the dorm?" A good person wouldn't have been tased, but we're not quite there yet...
Since he refused to obey the lawful and reasonable request of the police officer, the police officer took him by the arm in an attempt to usher him to the door (as one might take a child by the arm, since as we are about to see, this person has the mind of a child).
This is where the video begins, with the cop taking the student by the arm. The student, it turns out, is not only immature (in that he thinks rules do not apply to him), but he's also a whiny little bitch. When the video opens, the student is screaming at the top of his lungs, "GET YOU HANDS OFF ME." Now he's disturbing everybody else who is there trying to work on papers or whatever. God, what a complete douche this guy is.
So the cops taser him. Good for them! He earned that tasering. He worked hard for it. I wouldn't have gotten tasered, because I'm an adult and I treat people like respect. If a cop had asked me for my ID, I would have 1) stood up to talk to the police officer, thus treating him like a person, and not acting like I'm better than he is. I would have offered to give him my SSN so he could look up my status as a student, (and it might work, because when you treat people with respect, they usually respect you back) but if that didn't work I would 2) leave, because I had brokent the rules.
It's not like the cops came sundering into the lab and just started tasering random people. No, they tasered a stuck up, elitist, whiny little bitch. And then after they tasered him, he still didn't grow up, so he got his stupid ass tasered again. But I kind of wish he hadn't gotten tasered the third time. I wish the cops had just grabbed his ankles and dragged him down those stairs, taking car to let his head hit every step along the way - because he deserves that. He deserves to feel pain for wasting MY tax dollars. I pay for that lab and I pay for those cops. I want the lab that I paid for quiet so that all those doctors and scientists or whatever can learn, because they (unlike him) add back to society. And I want the cops out looking for bank robbers, I don't want them wasting their time teaching a child how act.
Slashdot Mirror
Can't do nuclear propulsion like Project Orion due to international treaties and what not.
The treaty should be changed if it hampers the progress of our species. No, we shouldn't be setting off nukes in low earth orbit, but we should be using them (or at least open to the possibility of usng them) farther out.
Another good idea is the nuclear thermal rocket. Basically, you use a nuclear reactor to super-heat the propellant, which then expands (quite rapidly) pushing the craft forward. The exhaust gas isn't radio active, any more than the water used to cool a nuclear power plant is radio active.
NTR's have even higher ISPs than this methane rocket. They really do kick ass. And as a bonus, since you're not burning the propellant, you don't need an oxidizer.
But this wont happen either because of that very vocal minority of people who are opposed to any and all progress and want us all to live in caves. These are the same people who were against Cassini because it used RTGs. Why are people like that allowed to have any say in our society?
metric is taught in school
It's taught in school in the US as well. I can't tell from your comment - did you not know that?
The problem in the US is, we don't actually use it outside of school (science classes mostly) so most people fall back on what's all around them. It's kind of sad. The military uses it though, and some large percentage of Americans have been in the military (in case you couldn't tell, ha ha). The M-16 was designed to be exactly 1 meter long so that every soldier could have a familiar reference. It's still what I think of when I need to estimate meters.
I would also like to point out that people who are against embryonic stem cell research have a vision in their head of an 8.5 month old fetus being chopped up for spare parts. Meanwhile, the people who are for embryonic stem cell research have a vision in their head of basically a blastisist (sp?) with 100 or 200 cells at most that isn't even visible without a microscope.
People aren't even talking about the same things. That's one of the reasons for all the anger. If I'm thinking about a microscopic lump of cells, then of course I think you must be an idiot for calling that a person. On the other hand, if I'm thinking of a fetus with fingers and toes and a heartbeat, then of course I'll see you as a monster for wanting to chop it up.
There are extremists on BOTH sides (yes, both sides) who think even killing sperm is murder, or even killing an 8.5 month old fetus is not murder. Those people are the extremes though. Most people are reasonable. The anger is just because we're talking about different things.
An embryo needs to be fertilised before it even has the chance of becoming a child.
LOL! You're a moron! You don't have a clue what you're talking about! I bet you made fun of that guy who said the internet is a series of tubes, didn't you. Well, how does it feel to eat crow?
It's nerd cred, man! ... You can compare it to the feeling you get when you pull up to a restaurant in a Lamborghini. People go, 'Oooo, he must be somebody.'
except that, presumably, number of achievement points is INVERSELY related to change of getting laid.
I see what you're saying, but here's the part I doubt:
t -07a-00-normal.jpg
Once you're at the point where you can influence the position of a star it's very unlikely that you're going to have a problem noticing other civilizations through pure observation
I wonder if the laws of physics allow seeing any kind of civilization in another galaxy. How big of a telescope do you need to hear normal radio communications in another galaxy (we're NOT talking about an intentional "hello world" signal. we're talking about TV and radar etc.) how would you see that?
Take a look at this image:
http://www.eso.org/outreach/press-rel/pr-2000/pho
Sometimes it's hard to wrap my brain around this, but that fuzzy glow is stars. We can't even see individual stars, just the fuzzy glow. How are we supposed to see radio on a planet around a star when we can't even resolve the individual star?
This is a MUCH bigger problem than searching for life in your own galaxy (that's a huge problem). In order to spot life in another glaxy, they would have to give off enormous amounts of energy.
Why would you bother, though? You won't get heard for millions of years.
you don't do this because you expect to be heard. Remember, the universe that this happens in is one where life is so incredibly rare that you searched your entire galaxy and didn't find any (we're talking a class III civilization here). So, on the off chance that there is life in another galaxy you announce your existance.
You'll never hear a reply - but if you don't do it, they will never hear YOU. On the other hand, if everyone follows my logic, then everyone will announce and you will hear from every civilization. And "hearing" from them probably means getting their version of the encyclopedia galactica. Everybody transmits everything they know.
What more do you want, a conversation? If you transmit your entire body of knowledge and all your history and all your culture, what more is there to talk about anyway? What do you think, you're going to get on the live and go: "a/s/l????"
Youre way of thinking, when you say, "why bother" is tragedy of the commons thinking. You don't want to take any action unless you personally get a return on that action. That's very selfish. If everyone else thinks unselfishly, then everyone will get everyone else's encyclopedia galactica.
Consider our own little planet here:
what I suggested is NOT for planet-to-planet communication. It's about "what do you do if you're alone in your galaxy." There are more galaxies in the universe than there are stars in any one galaxy. Just transmitting a radio signal (a-la contact) isn't going to get you noticed. Someone would have to point a arecebo-size telescope at your galaxy to hear your signal. That's very unlikely.
So how do you get noticed? Cause a supernova. Or actually, a better idea would be to drop material into a black hole, thus giving off gama rays. You could time the drops to create pulses of gama rays that would be obviously nonrandom.
At any rate, the point is that you need a lot of energy to get civilizations in other galaxies to notice you.
well, maybe not hypocritical - but here's something I find amusing:
j html?articleID=163104202&tid=5979%2C5989
For years, IE was the only browser that didn't have tabs. Why didn't it have tabs? Well, according to this article:
http://www.informationweek.com/story/showArticle.
Microsft claims the reason is that:
"Some people have asked why we didn't put tabs in IE sooner," Hachamovitch wrote. "Initially, we had some concerns around complexity and consistencywill it confuse users more than it benefits them? Is it confusing if IE has tabs, but other core parts of the Windows experience, like Windows Media Player or the shell, don't have?"
oh ok. that makes sense. They didn't want to change IE because that would confuse people.
But then how do you explain this change in office??
Well obviously, the IE explaination was just a lame excuse. IE didn't have tabs because they didn't care to add them. Quite obviously, they have no problem making major changes that will confuse people. And personally, I don't care. I'm willing to try something new in the hope that it will be better. I just don't like the BS
If, hypothetically, you found yourself to have evolved first or to exist in an otherwise empty galaxy - then you might look for an easy way to get the attention of any civilizations in any other galaxies. If you could move a star (details, details) then this would be a good way to get yourself noticed.
Of course, you would want to do it several times over a short period, and you would want it to coincide with a radio transmission that actually contained some data. So the way it works is, a hundred million years from now another civilization sees the stars go up, so they point their radio telescope at the galaxy, and they hear your message.
I realize this is all just a fantasy, but it's a cool one.
No problem. Read this artcle There's plenty more on the net. Try Google.
n \archive\200602\NAT20060215c.html
5 2
yeah. That article itself is biased. For example, this quote:
33% of Fox viewers believed that the "U.S. has found Iraqi weapons of mass destruction" "since the war ended". (Compared with 23% for CBS, 20% for both CNN and NBC, 19% for ABC and 11% for both NPR/PBS)
that shows that Fox viewers are BETTER informed than viewers of other news services. You see, Iraq DID have WMDs and some of them have been found.
From this article:
http://www.cnsnews.com/ViewNation.asp?Page=\Natio
Now, I know what you're thinking: "omfg that doesn't agree with what I want to believe therefore I will purge it from my memory." and that's cool. You go right ahead and do that. That will give me the chance to post this link again in the future.
And this there's this story:
http://apps.michigandaily.com/blogs/thepodium/?p=
about how they found 500 or so chemical munitions in iraq - you know, WMDs. Now, I know what you're thinking, "omfg those are from before 1991 so therefore I will ignore this story" and that's cool, you go ahead and use that logic. Just like if you're on probation for armed robbery and they catch you with a gun, you can tell the judge you bought the gun before you were on probation so therefore it doesn't count.
Look, I don't care. The fact is, we've got a "respected" news service (CBS) where somebody actually sits down at a computer and types of a memo and prints it and then they try to pass that off as a 1950's memo about Bush. But you guys go on and on about how Fox news is bias. Whatever. It's obvious where the bias is.
>> How hard is it to post something on Youtube, a free service?
uh well, it's easy to post on youtube, but I think you're missing the point.
Most big megacorps don't "get it" Their decision making process involves things like lawyers who always fail on the side of caution. That's why, if you posts some completely made-up allegations about, for example Bank of America, then (if they even noticed what you had done) the Bank of America corporate execs would have a meeting in their conference room on the 400th floor of some far off building. They'd have to call in the CTO to explain to them exactly what this "ewe toob" thing was. Then the lawyers would caution against making any kind of direct rebuttal, because that might be seen as *insert lawyer-speak here*
Meanwhile, Starbucks goes, "wtf, get a webcam we're going to respond to this bullshit"
So you see, the point here isn't the ease or difficulty of youtube. The point is the that one corporation gets it and made a simple, common sense move.
(btw, I hate Starbucks)
> Any magic he allegedly had 'back in the day'
Yeah. Allegedly. In truth, what has lucas ever done that wasn't hokie and childish? The original Star Wars was actually pretty good, but Lucas deserves little credit for that. He lucked out in a major way with Harrison Ford, and Harrison Ford saved Star Wars. Try to imagine the movie with just whiny little Luke Skywalker. It just doesn't work.
Case in point, there is a video on youtube of behind the scenes footage from Empire Strikes Back. There is a great scene in Empire where Solo is being lowered in the carbonite pit and Leia shouts to him, "I love you!" Han looks up at her and say, "I know"
What a great scene! Well guess what, Lucas originally wrote it this way:
Leia: I love you
Han: I love you too.
Stop for a moment and let the deep, penetrating suckiness of those two lines seep into your being. George Lucas, sitting at his typewriter, no doubt in his underwear, actually typed that, and actually thought it was a good idea. He typed that crap, then he sat back and looked at what he had done and said, "hell yeah, I'm a bloody genius."
Fortunately, when it came time to film that scene, Irvin Kershner was calling the shots and Lucas was (presumably) in a crypt somewhere. Harrison Ford looked at the script and said, "this sucks" and Kershner agreed and they changed it. And we all remember Empire Strikes Back as a great movie.
Well, it is a great movie, but no thanks to Lucas.
If only we had known the truth, then maybe we wouldn't have been so shocked some years later when we were treated to Lucas' drivel in the form of such brain-numbing lines as "omfg sand is the suxor it gets in my eye LOL!!!11" and my personal favorite, "Noooo!!!!"
God, I hate George Lucas.
haha. I was thinking the same thing!
I have to agree. Come on. If every Sperm Whale out there is eating a hundred of these things every day, then it has to be OK for us to kill one or two so that we can learn about them. It would be better if we could study without harm - but right now that's not possible.
It seems really shortsighted to me to say, "OMFG EWE KILLD TEH PRETTY ANEMAL" as if that is the only issue on the table.
Spammers are scum.
That's like saying spiders are scum. Spiders exist because there are flies. Spiders and spammers fill an ecological niche. Spammers send spam because there exist in the world, legions of brainless, drooling, morons who will get an email for V1g4a and think to themselves, "duh, eye wood really lieke to geet medercine from some a-non-a-moose email, har har."
Those are the people who should die. We should be setting up honeypots to catch them. The government should be sending spam and then executing the people who respond to it. We need some kind of natural selection to weed these people out of the gene pool. It's really bad for our species.
I mean seriously, WHAT THE FUCK are these idiots thinking?
If it made more "sense" to have the brain in the chest, we would have brains in our chests. It's just pointless to argue with mother nature when it comes to design.
You're clearly very ignorant of how evolution works. Here's a quick counter example to disprove your "if it made more sense we'd have it" claim: The photoreceptor cells in your eye actually point backwards - toward the back wall of your eye. The nerve ending that transmits the captured light to the brain is on the front of the cell, and therefore has to be longer than strictly necessary (imagine a bunch of harddrives in a case. You would position the drives so that the cables all went out the back of the case. Now turn the drives around - you'll need longer cables and you'll have to route them along the side of each drive, taking up more room. Your eye is like that.)
So why does your eye have this curious and non-optimal design? Beats the hell out of me. It's just a quirk of evolution. Invertebrates evolved their eyes separately (convergent evolution), and they actually got the correct design. This is why an octopus' eye is so good. The cells are pointed the right way, so you can pack more of them together. It's a more efficient design. But you can't point to humans and say, "no no, don't argue with mother nature, if there was a better way we'd have it!" because that just isn't true. There is a better way. We don't have it. Octopuses have it. We got the shaft.
Evolution is random mutation and non-random selection. The best of the group survives. That in no way implies that the best is optimal. It was just the best available.
Now theoretically, if someone did hack one of Sony's servers and get caught, couldn't that person argue in court that, according to Sony, a reasonable reimbursement is whatever sony can show a reciept for (like a consultant fee) or $175, which ever is lower.
It would at least be worth a try. At least make Sony make a statement explaining the difference between their computer and your computer.
I've converted most of my house - but I keep wondering what's going to happen to all that mercury once they do eventually wear out. I'm not aware of any place in my town that will recycle them.
The student didn't forget his ID. He refused to show it, because it's a stupid rule and because he felt he was being singled out for his ethnicity.
I'll just translate that into non-PC:
He refused to show his ID because he thinks he's special and rules don't apply to him and he's a racist in that he thinks people who his race (btw, I thought the guy was white and I still don't know what his ethnicity is) should NEVER be asked to follow the same rules as everyone else.
These cops could have stopped or chosen some other course of action.
Why did you bother to type that if you weren't going to provide an example of what the cops could do? It sounds like you don't want to have a discussion, you just want to argue.
If you have a suggestion then please post it.
1. obviously talking to the guy didn't work
2. obviously they had trouble carrying him
Not following stupid ruiles is called civil disobedience, and it is sometimes a good idea.
true, but what he did was not for any higher purpose. He wasn't a protestor. He was just another student. The only difference was, he forgot his ID. If he had behaved like an adult and treated others with respect none of that would have happened to him.
In any case, it's not OK to back up procedural rules like this with violence.
ok then, enlighten me, fill in the blank:
cop: excuse me sir, may I see your ID
kid: leave me alone
cop: uh sir, I need to see your ID
kid: I ain't got no ID, fuck off pig
cop: sir, if you don't have an ID I have to ask you to leave
kid: I ain't leavin
cop: ________________
please tell me you have a better answer than the cop saying, "oh, you're not going to leave, ok then I give up."
These things escalate slowly, and at every stage both parties share responsibility for where it goes. Sure, maybe the cop could have gotten down on one knee and begged. Maybe that would have diffused the situation. But most of the responsibility is on the whiny bitch student. He could have avoided getting tased - but he was mad because he got caught without ID. Children get mad and let it control them and throw temper tantrums.
you are assuming that it is the cops' job to give the student "what he deserved".
not at all! It's no more the cops job to give someone "what they deserve" than it is a bus driver's job to give a jaywalker "what he deserves."
HOWEVER, if you step in front of a bus, you're going to get what you deserve, and I'm not going to feel sorry for you.
Well, I mean, if you didn't see the bus that'd be one thing, but if you just think you're special and traffic needs to stop for you, then fuck you, fuck you right in the ear. And fuck this student. Like I said, when he was asked to leave, he should have left. He was wrong. I realize it was all an accident. He didn't mean to forget his ID. But that's life.
be happy with your authoritarian friends.
I'm not authoritarian at all. When the police really do abuse their power, I'm just as mad as anyone. Fortunately, this wasn't such a case. Post a slashdot article when someone really gets abused and I'm all about it. A whiny little bitch learning that the earth doesn't revolve around him doesn't make me particularly angry.
Imagine if another student had tasered the rent-a-cop to get them to stop tasering the student over and over.
Well, the difference between the two would be:
The cop tasering the student was RIGHT, but the student tasering the cop would be WRONG.
And no, I'm not being sarcastic.
This is such a duh, obvious cut and dry case that anyone who thinking the student DIDNT deserve to get tasered multiple times must be delusional.
The rule is: if you want to be in the computer lab, you have to have ID. That's the rule. If you don't like the rule that's cool, go to the student government and have it changed. You and I don't get to pick and choose what rules we follow. That would be anarchy, and you think that's a good idea you're even more delusional.
The student forgot his ID in his dorm room. OK, no problem. It's really not a big deal. The cops are going to ask you to leave though, and you do have to leave because you are wrong and they are right. You broke the rules. Run back to the dorm to get your shit and you'll be back at your computer in 10 minutes.
Unfortunately, the student in question has an inflated sense of his own worth. He thinks he's special and that he can do whatever he wants. He refused to leave the computer lab. This attitude probably leads him to break other laws too. He'd probably take your ipod or your wallet if he could. Now I know what you're saying - you're saying "no, no he's a good person." But you're wrong. A good person would have said to the cop, "yeah, you're right and I'm wrong. Can I leave my crap here while I run back to the dorm?" A good person wouldn't have been tased, but we're not quite there yet...
Since he refused to obey the lawful and reasonable request of the police officer, the police officer took him by the arm in an attempt to usher him to the door (as one might take a child by the arm, since as we are about to see, this person has the mind of a child).
This is where the video begins, with the cop taking the student by the arm. The student, it turns out, is not only immature (in that he thinks rules do not apply to him), but he's also a whiny little bitch. When the video opens, the student is screaming at the top of his lungs, "GET YOU HANDS OFF ME." Now he's disturbing everybody else who is there trying to work on papers or whatever. God, what a complete douche this guy is.
So the cops taser him. Good for them! He earned that tasering. He worked hard for it. I wouldn't have gotten tasered, because I'm an adult and I treat people like respect. If a cop had asked me for my ID, I would have 1) stood up to talk to the police officer, thus treating him like a person, and not acting like I'm better than he is. I would have offered to give him my SSN so he could look up my status as a student, (and it might work, because when you treat people with respect, they usually respect you back) but if that didn't work I would 2) leave, because I had brokent the rules.
It's not like the cops came sundering into the lab and just started tasering random people. No, they tasered a stuck up, elitist, whiny little bitch. And then after they tasered him, he still didn't grow up, so he got his stupid ass tasered again. But I kind of wish he hadn't gotten tasered the third time. I wish the cops had just grabbed his ankles and dragged him down those stairs, taking car to let his head hit every step along the way - because he deserves that. He deserves to feel pain for wasting MY tax dollars. I pay for that lab and I pay for those cops. I want the lab that I paid for quiet so that all those doctors and scientists or whatever can learn, because they (unlike him) add back to society. And I want the cops out looking for bank robbers, I don't want them wasting their time teaching a child how act.