Oh, I got the impression that it was. Well, now I'm wondering if there's a bad breaker on the circuit... or a short in the printer... or... something like that.
It can go the other way, too. At Great Falls High School (Montana), we could always tell which kids had gone to the Catholic junior high, because they came in about a year behind those who'd gone to public schools.
But this was in a VERY good public school system and a very stable community. As another reply notes, in an area with a generally poor public school system, the Catholic school may well be the last bastion of knowledge.
Translations are an interesting thing. I used to collect translations of Plato, and sometimes it was hard to tell they were from the same (or even related) originals (or as near to originals as are available). Tone varied radically; choice of words and syntax altered meanings; some were literal, some were vernacular... etc, etc.
Now, imagine this literary game of Telephone across several languages and multiple generations whose education in those languages came from widely disparate lineages... it's no wonder that eventually, religious organizations (to grossly oversimnplify) just pick one and run with it, to avoid being permanently bogged down by these debates. Whether it's accurate or not... lacking original manuscripts AND translators literate in the language as it was used in contemporary life, we really can't know.
Imagine someone going back with a time machine and asking Mark about his gospel... poor Mark is horrified and says "You tell people I wrote WHAT??";)
Actually, back around 1978 someone wrote and published a book about how Star Wars (1977) proved the correctness of Christianity, and how SW was a parable of the Christ, or some such blather. I don't have a copy and can't find the title offhand, but the notion is hardly unique to Slashdot.
I always tell people the same thing. For about $100 for a decent home-type UPS, you will never have your hardware trashed by power spikes and sags, and you'll never have your work rudely interrupted or destroyed by a power outage.
The docs for every UPS I've ever seen say do NOT attach a laser printer to them, for exactly the reasons you've seen -- when the printer comes on, the startup drawdown is just too much (it's generally about four computers worth).
Your printer should be on a good surge protector, but there is no reason it needs to be attached to the UPS. Some UPSs now have spare plugs for exactly this use -- they provide surge protection but not continuous power.
Also, let's not get confused here -- not all algae is toxic. A fairly good rule of thumb is that if it's green it's safe, but if it's some other colour (notably red) it's not good for you.
As to phosphorus (ie. a major component of fertilizer) being the problem, we've known that for decades -- it's why phosphates were phased out of laundry detergents. Not that there isn't plenty of phosphate in nature already, but detergents in wastewater provided an oversupply which promoted atypical algae growth.
Algae growth can literally FILL a lake in just a few years, in fact this is part of the natural cycle for small lakes, which as they silt up and the water warms up, will fill first to algae beds, then to marsh, and finally to meadow; once started, the entire process can take as little as ten years (I've watched it happen to small natural lakes in Montana). When the incoming water has unnaturally high levels of phosphorus, the process is radically accelerated.
And if we do manage to induce a slingshot effect whilst trying to "fix" something that we don't fully understand and that the environment can probably handle by itself (after all, it has handled massive climate change in the past), we could plunge ourselves into a deadly ice age beyond any the planet has ever seen. Maybe not in our lifetimes, but in a generation or two. Then what -- do we start burning everything that will oxidize in an attempt to build up the greenhouse effect?
You are absolutely right, it's better to stop ADDING crap, and keep hands off and hope for the best, rather than to potentially fuck it up beyond recall.
Indeed -- because once a country starts defining ANY portion of *its own citizenry* as "enemies of the state", anyone and everyone could be so accused, for any or no reason. Maybe the U.S. wouldn't round up its internal "enemies of the state" and shoot them, like some countries I won't mention have been known to do, but there are other ways to take away a dissident's freedom that are just as effective (and won't create martyrs).
So, yes, I agree with you, the Constitutional definition of treason is narrow and specific not only to specify the crime, but far more to protect the citizens.
We need to remember that the Founders' intent was primarily to protect the citizens FROM the state. It was NOT to protect the state from its citizens.
In which case, Teranews' free access would suit you, if you can't get to your preferred addic^H^H^H^H newsgroups any other way -- 50mb/day, tho the 3 minute timeout can be annoying. $3 signup and you never hear from them again (unless you go over bandwidth).
I am an excellent driver, and I have great depth perception... but I drive a vehicle that is slow on the draw and has a couple major blind spots. So I do pretty much the same thing -- I cruise along at the lower end of the traffic flow speed (giving myself and others more time to react, without going so slow as to inhibit the flow of traffic) and I try to avoid changing lanes into my truck's biggest blind spot, which happens to be on the right. (Those truck bypasses, that let trucks always merge *away* from their righthand blind area, are a wonderful thing.)
Which is how I discovered that you can drive all the way from Santa Clarita to Anaheim with only ONE lane change (just south of downtown).
Actually, I've had FAR better luck getting closed-source bugs noticed and fixed, probably because they're more likely to have money motivators (which probably selects for a more professional attitude toward the user's concerns). And as noted, all too often the OSSers reply is "here's the code, fix it yourself." Sure thing, right after I become a programmer -- maybe in my next life.
When I file a bug report, it usually goes more like this:
Me: When I do THIS, your program crashes in this particularly horrible way, which I describe in thoroughly tiresome detail.
Developer: Does not! You can't even do that, the program doesn't allow it!
Me: Wanna bet? Does so, here's a screenshot of me doing THIS! and here's the memory dump! and here's the corrupted file! and...
Developer: goes off muttering to self, and a week later sheepishly reports that they changed Some Completely Unrelated Component in the last build and that's why THIS suddenly was doing THAT.
And actually, it was discovered that acid rain was a myth; the acidity was actually coming from sulphur seams in the rock, which leeched out into the ground water around certain lakes, thus acidifying the soil beyond the point that some vegetation can tolerate. IOW, while dam building could be a culprit, "acid rain" was not. (Tho old-fashioned soot isn't great for anything downwind either.)
If Los Angeles had typical hard coal deposits, it would probably also have sulphur leeching out of the rocks and into the topsoil whenever the ground water levels got high enough. Of course, here we don't get enough rain for it to be mistaken for the culprit.
Yeah, I agree -- after reading the two most recent posts, I'm nodding my head at all the stuff I've said here myself, especially including this choice quote: ======= Where do I file bugs against the Linux community?
On second thought, I guess it wouldn't really make too much difference. All my bugs would just get closed as "luser error, go back to using Windows you MS-paid stupid fuck." =======
Take special note of the statistics covering several countries with draconian gun control, and how if anything, murder rates tend to be inversely proportional to gun ownership. Luxembourg, in the heart of civilized Europe, is the most astonishing example: despite an absolute ban on handguns and near-total ban on other guns, it has the highest murder rate of that contiguous set of countries.
And an article on feelgood laws, and why they don't work:
We seem to be rapidly returning to a society where across the board, a mere accusation is sufficient to determine guilt, and where anyone can scream "WITCH!" and the law will make it stick, valid or not.
It's not just CP and ISPs and DCMA either. Here in California, it's the proposed AB1634, which in its new incarnation allows anyone to accuse without merit, and the accusation WILL be taken as proof of guilt, with absolutely no recourse and no protection from the Bill of Rights. That it happens to target pets is irrelevant. What's truly scary is how it codifies witch-hunting.And once that precedent is back in legal force, ANY aspect of our lives can far more readily follow the same legislative and regulatory path.
====== 1) Usenet is not the problem by anonymous coward on Jul 18th, 2008 @ 10:45am
I always suspected that child pornography isn't nearly as invasive as people say it is, and now I know for sure that's the case.
I have been involved in Usenet for 10 years, and have at times decoded the entire newsfeed, including all of the alt.pictures.erotica groups. There is no child porn there. Even on the newsgroups that supposedly feature it, there is a very small amount, but most is just ads for porn sites and random legal porn that people are cross-posting.
In truth, Usenet is one of the worst places to put illegal images. There is zero privacy, there is no private clubs where you can make sure your illegal activities are viewed by only a few. And there is little anonymity, because almost all ISPs keep logs of Usenet posting.
One wonders if the anti-piracy people are really behind this somehow. Piracy, unlike child pornography, is rampant on Usenet. =========
I dunno if beating them off with a broomstick is acceptable practice, but willing 8 year olds descending on you in droves is, acto the fellow I know, perfectly legal and even expected behaviour there.
So... what happens is that I sell someone 12 apples, but I really only have 10 apples, so before the buyer discovers this I have to go out and find two more apples somewhere?? My brain hurts.
I find myself unable to bake apples into a "naked short" shaped pie at all; please elucidate, in terms an old farm boy can grok.:)
Slashdot Mirror
Oh, I got the impression that it was. Well, now I'm wondering if there's a bad breaker on the circuit... or a short in the printer... or... something like that.
"What are the odds that the ones who knock at my door have a clue? And how can I tell the difference?"
I think your sig adequately explains how ;)
It can go the other way, too. At Great Falls High School (Montana), we could always tell which kids had gone to the Catholic junior high, because they came in about a year behind those who'd gone to public schools.
But this was in a VERY good public school system and a very stable community. As another reply notes, in an area with a generally poor public school system, the Catholic school may well be the last bastion of knowledge.
Translations are an interesting thing. I used to collect translations of Plato, and sometimes it was hard to tell they were from the same (or even related) originals (or as near to originals as are available). Tone varied radically; choice of words and syntax altered meanings; some were literal, some were vernacular... etc, etc.
Now, imagine this literary game of Telephone across several languages and multiple generations whose education in those languages came from widely disparate lineages... it's no wonder that eventually, religious organizations (to grossly oversimnplify) just pick one and run with it, to avoid being permanently bogged down by these debates. Whether it's accurate or not... lacking original manuscripts AND translators literate in the language as it was used in contemporary life, we really can't know.
Imagine someone going back with a time machine and asking Mark about his gospel... poor Mark is horrified and says "You tell people I wrote WHAT??" ;)
Actually, back around 1978 someone wrote and published a book about how Star Wars (1977) proved the correctness of Christianity, and how SW was a parable of the Christ, or some such blather. I don't have a copy and can't find the title offhand, but the notion is hardly unique to Slashdot.
I always tell people the same thing. For about $100 for a decent home-type UPS, you will never have your hardware trashed by power spikes and sags, and you'll never have your work rudely interrupted or destroyed by a power outage.
The docs for every UPS I've ever seen say do NOT attach a laser printer to them, for exactly the reasons you've seen -- when the printer comes on, the startup drawdown is just too much (it's generally about four computers worth).
Your printer should be on a good surge protector, but there is no reason it needs to be attached to the UPS. Some UPSs now have spare plugs for exactly this use -- they provide surge protection but not continuous power.
As one of those appalled by the proliferation of McMansions in the most inappropriate places, I heartily applaud your sentiment :D
Also, let's not get confused here -- not all algae is toxic. A fairly good rule of thumb is that if it's green it's safe, but if it's some other colour (notably red) it's not good for you.
As to phosphorus (ie. a major component of fertilizer) being the problem, we've known that for decades -- it's why phosphates were phased out of laundry detergents. Not that there isn't plenty of phosphate in nature already, but detergents in wastewater provided an oversupply which promoted atypical algae growth.
Algae growth can literally FILL a lake in just a few years, in fact this is part of the natural cycle for small lakes, which as they silt up and the water warms up, will fill first to algae beds, then to marsh, and finally to meadow; once started, the entire process can take as little as ten years (I've watched it happen to small natural lakes in Montana). When the incoming water has unnaturally high levels of phosphorus, the process is radically accelerated.
I guess there's no sulphuric acid on your planet ;)
And if we do manage to induce a slingshot effect whilst trying to "fix" something that we don't fully understand and that the environment can probably handle by itself (after all, it has handled massive climate change in the past), we could plunge ourselves into a deadly ice age beyond any the planet has ever seen. Maybe not in our lifetimes, but in a generation or two. Then what -- do we start burning everything that will oxidize in an attempt to build up the greenhouse effect?
You are absolutely right, it's better to stop ADDING crap, and keep hands off and hope for the best, rather than to potentially fuck it up beyond recall.
Indeed -- because once a country starts defining ANY portion of *its own citizenry* as "enemies of the state", anyone and everyone could be so accused, for any or no reason. Maybe the U.S. wouldn't round up its internal "enemies of the state" and shoot them, like some countries I won't mention have been known to do, but there are other ways to take away a dissident's freedom that are just as effective (and won't create martyrs).
So, yes, I agree with you, the Constitutional definition of treason is narrow and specific not only to specify the crime, but far more to protect the citizens.
We need to remember that the Founders' intent was primarily to protect the citizens FROM the state. It was NOT to protect the state from its citizens.
In which case, Teranews' free access would suit you, if you can't get to your preferred addic^H^H^H^H newsgroups any other way -- 50mb/day, tho the 3 minute timeout can be annoying. $3 signup and you never hear from them again (unless you go over bandwidth).
I am an excellent driver, and I have great depth perception... but I drive a vehicle that is slow on the draw and has a couple major blind spots. So I do pretty much the same thing -- I cruise along at the lower end of the traffic flow speed (giving myself and others more time to react, without going so slow as to inhibit the flow of traffic) and I try to avoid changing lanes into my truck's biggest blind spot, which happens to be on the right. (Those truck bypasses, that let trucks always merge *away* from their righthand blind area, are a wonderful thing.)
Which is how I discovered that you can drive all the way from Santa Clarita to Anaheim with only ONE lane change (just south of downtown).
Actually, I've had FAR better luck getting closed-source bugs noticed and fixed, probably because they're more likely to have money motivators (which probably selects for a more professional attitude toward the user's concerns). And as noted, all too often the OSSers reply is "here's the code, fix it yourself." Sure thing, right after I become a programmer -- maybe in my next life.
When I file a bug report, it usually goes more like this:
Me: When I do THIS, your program crashes in this particularly horrible way, which I describe in thoroughly tiresome detail.
Developer: Does not! You can't even do that, the program doesn't allow it!
Me: Wanna bet? Does so, here's a screenshot of me doing THIS! and here's the memory dump! and here's the corrupted file! and...
Developer: goes off muttering to self, and a week later sheepishly reports that they changed Some Completely Unrelated Component in the last build and that's why THIS suddenly was doing THAT.
And actually, it was discovered that acid rain was a myth; the acidity was actually coming from sulphur seams in the rock, which leeched out into the ground water around certain lakes, thus acidifying the soil beyond the point that some vegetation can tolerate. IOW, while dam building could be a culprit, "acid rain" was not. (Tho old-fashioned soot isn't great for anything downwind either.)
If Los Angeles had typical hard coal deposits, it would probably also have sulphur leeching out of the rocks and into the topsoil whenever the ground water levels got high enough. Of course, here we don't get enough rain for it to be mistaken for the culprit.
Yeah, I agree -- after reading the two most recent posts, I'm nodding my head at all the stuff I've said here myself, especially including this choice quote:
=======
Where do I file bugs against the Linux community?
On second thought, I guess it wouldn't really make too much difference. All my bugs would just get closed as "luser error, go back to using Windows you MS-paid stupid fuck."
=======
It's embarrassing, but he's right.
A study that should be required reading for all gun-control proponents:
http://www.law.harvard.edu/students/orgs/jlpp/Vol30_No2_KatesMauseronline.pdf
Take special note of the statistics covering several countries with draconian gun control, and how if anything, murder rates tend to be inversely proportional to gun ownership. Luxembourg, in the heart of civilized Europe, is the most astonishing example: despite an absolute ban on handguns and near-total ban on other guns, it has the highest murder rate of that contiguous set of countries.
And an article on feelgood laws, and why they don't work:
http://www.naiaonline.org/library/From_Firearms_to_Fido.htm
It's not just CP and ISPs and DCMA either. Here in California, it's the proposed AB1634, which in its new incarnation allows anyone to accuse without merit, and the accusation WILL be taken as proof of guilt, with absolutely no recourse and no protection from the Bill of Rights. That it happens to target pets is irrelevant. What's truly scary is how it codifies witch-hunting. And once that precedent is back in legal force, ANY aspect of our lives can far more readily follow the same legislative and regulatory path.
Welcome to Salem, in the year of our Lord 1689.
Someone commented thusly following TFA:
======
1) Usenet is not the problem by anonymous coward on Jul 18th, 2008 @ 10:45am
I always suspected that child pornography isn't nearly as invasive as people say it is, and now I know for sure that's the case.
I have been involved in Usenet for 10 years, and have at times decoded the entire newsfeed, including all of the alt.pictures.erotica groups. There is no child porn there. Even on the newsgroups that supposedly feature it, there is a very small amount, but most is just ads for porn sites and random legal porn that people are cross-posting.
In truth, Usenet is one of the worst places to put illegal images. There is zero privacy, there is no private clubs where you can make sure your illegal activities are viewed by only a few. And there is little anonymity, because almost all ISPs keep logs of Usenet posting.
One wonders if the anti-piracy people are really behind this somehow. Piracy, unlike child pornography, is rampant on Usenet.
=========
I dunno if beating them off with a broomstick is acceptable practice, but willing 8 year olds descending on you in droves is, acto the fellow I know, perfectly legal and even expected behaviour there.
I see, I think....
So how does this benefit Farmer Jones?? He still has 10 unsold apples, and no profit.
And how does this benefit the market as a whole??
Juggle me some more apples if I'm wrong, but I see upside for the speculator, and downside for everyone else.
So ... what happens is that I sell someone 12 apples, but I really only have 10 apples, so before the buyer discovers this I have to go out and find two more apples somewhere?? My brain hurts.
I find myself unable to bake apples into a "naked short" shaped pie at all; please elucidate, in terms an old farm boy can grok. :)
Congratulations, you've just reinvented FidoNet!!