I got a 5/6, which, according to the computer, was extremely well.
Normally, I just let stuff like this pass, but this being a discussion about english essays, I was forced to respond. (plus you were grouching about getting a bad grade)
The proper sentence would read:
I got a 5/6, which, according to the computer, was extremely good. OR
I got a 5/6, which, according to the computer, meant I did extremely well.
All crimes should be prosecuted. Greenpeace was in the wrong.
That's just plain wrong, and I can't say it any plainer than that.
First of all, we prioritize law enforcement all the time. Are you saying we should put cops to enforcing jaywalking laws more stringently? Don't you think that might subtract from the more useful things they could be doing? (like giving out traffic tickets). There are only so many resources to go around, and you have to prioritize to get anything useful done.
Secondly, the indictment should have been a traditional tresspass indictment for the activists who actually did the tresspassing. Instead, the Justice Department tried to indict the entire organization Greenpeace under a law that was last enforced in 1890, that was designed to prevent bawdy houses from "sailor-mongering" by sending prostitutes to woo the sailors on ships.
If the conservative knee-jerk within you cannot admit that this was a blatant misuse of our tax dollars (BTW, the case was thrown out of court, I just found out), well, I just don't know what to say. Balderdash, I suppose.
We're forgetting that Al Gore took the initiative in creating Linux.
Al Gore DID take the initiative in creating the internet (perhaps a bad choice of words but essentially true) by shepherding lots of legislation that made it into the public place it is today.
This got misreported as "invented", and now, instead of him getting credit for something he should get credit for, he gets made fun of.
George Bush says "The question that is rarely asked: is our children learning", and that barely makes an impression in the "liberal" (ha-ha) media.
Wrong. You're thinking of the Declaration of Indepenence.
I'm not usually one to bring up the second amendment, since the NRA already does such a bang-up job of it, but let me repeat it to you now: "A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed."
What were they talking about? How is a well regulated militia necessary to the security of a free state?
Well, if the government oversteps its boundaries, the free states could rise up and overthrow it, that's how. If you read about the authoring of the constitution, that's clearly what they meant.
Beverly uncovered evidence of vote fraud. Is the FBI investigating that? No, they want to investigate Beverly for uncovering it.
I don't usually curse in my/. posts, but that is just fucking priceless.
Reminds me of the justice department investigation (and criminal proceedings against) Greenpeace.
Greenpeace found a ship that was bringing illegal timber from the Amazonian rainforests. So they sent a couple guys to put up a banner on the ship, that said something like "Stop illegal logging now".
So they got caught the Justice department is using a "sailor mongering" law over 100 years old to prosecute **the entire Greenpeace organization**, not just the two chaps who trespassed on the boat. The law was intended to stop prostitutes and bookies and other "low moral characters" from getting on boats at sea.
Never mind the illegal loggers. The justice department is not investigating them, nor suing them, nor prosecuting them. Just the whistleblowers.
Let's get behind Beverly! I for one will be donating money asap!
.... that will let you search your local filesystem efficiently. This is different from, but complementary of, the Google DeskBar that already lets you search the Web.
Ehh....
I translate the above to read "Web != Desktop".
I'm glad to know that. I think I will go "web it up" for a while now. Get the latest on the hip scene from the cats who are down with the groove.
Seriously though. This is slashdot. Don't get so desperate for flavor text that you explain to us about how the Web and our desktops are not the same thing. We already know that. Why don't you go cast magic missle at the darkness (snicker)?
Solar-based renewables and fusion are the only long-run energy solutions.
Is that a fact? Ever do the math on how much energy the ocean could generate? Ever look at a population density map and compare right around the coastline vs inside the mainland?
We could generate a LOT of energy from the oceans. The technology wouldn't have to be all that complex. How about a very large buoy connected to a very large crank at the bottom of the ocean? The tide comes in, lifting the buoy and turning the crank. The tide rolls out, lowering the buoy and turning the crank.
Sure, it would be a pretty big engineering effort, but we could do it with todays tech. And that's not even the only way to generate power from the ocean.
I drive a '99 Toyota Paseo, which has a fuel efficiency rating of 27 mpg in the city, but I consistently get about 35 mpg.
It is very hilly where I live, and I tend to speed on the highway. Why do I get such good mileage?
I think the answer is pretty simple. When I'm coming to a traffic light where I know I'm going to hit the light red, I take the car out of gear and coast. I try to make it to the light just in time to catch the light change so I don't have to brake (not always possible).
This makes impatient people behind me angry, but I don't let it bother me.
I do pretty much the same thing in bumper-to-bumper highway traffic. I leave plenty of room in front of me and try to drive at a constant speed that allows me to drive without braking. Sure, people jump in front of me sometimes, but it's really not a big deal, and it is a hell of a lot less aggravating than clutch shift clutch brake clutch shift, over and over again.
So many people drive really fast just to get to a red light, it continually amazes me. Not only have they not saved time, they waste gas. Take your car outta gear and coast when it makes sense to do that. Try to time your arrival at the light so that you don't have to brake at all, and you can use your inertia all the way through. Starting and stopping uses a LOT of gas. This principle also applies to an automatic transmission, but you won't see such a dramatic increase in efficiency with an automatic, but I'd bet you could get it up over 30.
My last car was an '95 SL2, and I got about 32 mpg. If I didn't speed all the time, I probably could have gotten 35-40.
While the references indicate that the actual mileage is lower than what is claimed, the vehicles do get better gas mileage than standard automobiles.
Actually, my Toyota Paseo gets about 35 mpg in the city. Now, I'm fairly good at gas-conscious driving, but I've been running the A/C (Texas) a little bit lately.
I haven't done a long highway trip yet, but I would expect to get about 40 mpg. And my car certainly has a lot more horses than an insight or a civic hybrid. This guy is reporting 32 mpg. That's pretty awful, considering how much those cars cost, and how much you give up in terms of performance.
Indeed, fiction... "entertaining lies," as the subject would suggest.
[snip definition of fiction]
Of course I understand your point, but here is the difference. When I buy a Harry Potter book in the fiction section of Barnes and Noble, I know it is fiction.
When distortions of real life events are presented in a pseudoscientific light as though the pseudoscience might be correct, it's lies. If it carries the label of fiction, then it's a perfectly acceptable lie. Indeed, I found the pack of lies that made up Joss Whedon's Firefly series a great hoot.
It's when it's presented as a documentary that it becomes a problem for me.
Maybe it's just me, but a 'starting' bid of $5000 with a reserve is a bit much for something with no practicle [sic] use.
No practical use!?!? If it can protect you from grizzlies, don't you think it can also protect you from being grabbed by Arnold Schwarzenegger when he's in a particularly frisky mood?
This isn't a very good example of pseudo-science; it's more like over-dramatized science fiction.
I think that sometimes there's more to it than that. A perfect example is the Fox special about whether the moon landing was faked. All sorts of pseudoscientific nonsense was put forth to support the theory that the landing was faked, but the best critic of the argument that was given any screentime whatsoever just said "Well, there's lots of crackpots out there". They never showed him refuting any of the so-called "evidence"! Some of it sounded good if you didn't know any better, but all of it was total crap if you did know better.
I was able to refute every single one of their pieces of "evidence" with my high-school level physics knowledge, but they had an expert on and made it appear that he didn't have anything interesting to say. The whole program was shameful, and to call it "over-dramatized science fiction" is being very generous.
I mean, what if you had a historical show that claimed the holocaust never happened, showed a lot of "evidence", and didn't offer respectable historians a chance to refute it? Would you call it "over-dramatized historical fiction"? I'd call it a pack of lies.
What does the Hormel product have to do with unsolicited commercial email?
The upper case version of the word is trademarked by Hormel, and is acceptable for breakfast (depending on personal taste). The lower case version of the word refers to unsolicited commercial email and is acceptable for hunting someone down and kicking their ass when they send pictures of hot asian teenagers having sex with men who have enhanced their s1ze and are taking \/1c0d1n and v1@gr4 they bought in an online f4rmecy to your 11 year old kid.
The Society for the Responsible Use of Flying Cars. I haven't been able to come up with much yet, because I don't actually have a flying car yet, but I think it should definitely run on garbage, cause we've got too much of that.
i saw a show on discovery that they think atlantis may be santorini. It had a highly developed civilisation and pretty much disappeared over night when the volcano erupted.
Yes, scientists like to put Atlantis everwhere except the middle of the Atlantic ocean. Doesn't make a lot of sense to me.
Break out a contour map, like I said, and have a look at the mid-atlantic ridge.
It is an non-disputed scientific fact that the water level of the ocean was 300-500 feet lower 11,500 years ago (think Bering strait land bridge that you learned about in grade school).
Now draw on your contour map the area of land that would be exposed on the mid atlantic ridge if the water level was 500 feet lower.
If the water level suddenly rose all over the world, an island-continent in the middle of the Atlantic would appear to "sink" into the ocean.
To me this is the simplest explanation, and it fits the available facts quite nicely. Unfortunately, underwater achaeology is a bitch and a half, so it may be quite some time before I'm proven correct.
Using the flood myth as an example, remember that we're talking about a time when different cultures were just becoming agricultural. It makes sense that a whole bunch of brand new farmers would make up stories about floods. That doesn't mean there wasn't a great flood, but I wouldn't use folk motifs as evidence.
It's possible you are correct, but given the facts I outlined earlier, I think the simplest explanation is that there was a flood. Otherwise you must posit that these people did have contact, or you must conclude that they just came up with essentially the same story because of simultaneous cultural advancement. As I said in my first post, this is still the accepted theory. I just don't think it's going to hold out much longer.
I think it unlikely that an Ark will be found on Ararat.
However, I have pieced together pretty good circumstantial evidence over the years for a flood in ancient times, just as described all over the world by people who had no (or very little) contact with each other.
About 11,400 years ago, we know from glacial core samples that the earth's mean temperature raised anywhere from 5-7 degrees in just a few decades (though some paleoclimatologists say as much as 10 degrees in just a few years). Before the glacial evidence, scientists believed that the temperature changed very slightly over a long period of time, a theory known as steady state earth which is increasingly being discarded in the paleoclimatological community.
Furthermore, as I said earlier, people all over the world have recounted stories of a great flood, the native americans had such a myth, the natives of the mid-atlantic ridge had such a myth, the natives of Australia had a myth, etc.
This global pervasiveness of the flood myth scientists have long explained as a "racial memory", with little or no evidence to support this assertion, because steady-state earth held that such things a global floods could not happen.
We now know that Earth goes through cataclysms periodically, such as the one which wiped out the dinosaurs, and that sometimes really scary global things happen. Scientists have yet to outright admit that there was a great flood, but have begund to tacitly admit it.
For example, we know for certain that before 11,400 years ago, the level of the ocean was 300-500 feet lower than it is today. Accepted wisdom holds that this changed gradually, but this
theory may not last now that we know the mean temperature changed so drastically so rapidly.
Given the proclivity of humans to band around the coast, such a rapid rise would lead to massive casualties the likes of which are unknown to us today. It might indeed seem as though the whole earth flooded. Furthermore, quite interesting archaeological finds are likely to be buried underwater.
Well, here comes the circumstantial evidence I mentioned in the start of the post. Plato said that Atlantis sank about 9000 years before his time. It just so happens that he lived about 2400 years ago. Add up those two numbers, and you get 11,400.
It's quite a coincidence, and it's true.
There is a chain of mountains in the middle of the atlantic ocean called the "Mid-Atlantic-Ridge". If you examine a contour map, you'll see that if the sea were lowered about 300-500 feet, it would be a huge chunk of land, not quite as big as a continent, but not quite as small as what we call an island either.
To my knowledge, I am the only person to put this data together in this way. Those scientists who consider Atlantis to be a possibility place it in the mediteranean ocean.
I'm not saying there were telepathic pyramid building Atlanteans, but I think it is very possible Atlantis existed, and traces will be discovered under the ocean.
TiVo now will have to fight an uphill battle to try to get people to associate the word TiVo only with TiVo-brand PVRs.
Why the hell would they want to do that? Has it hurt Coca Cola, Kleenex, Xerox? Association of their entire industry with their brand name will help, not hurt them. It's difficult to even imagine a scenario where it could be anything but great advertising for them.
"Do you have a tivo?"
"Yes, but it's not a *real* tivo"
This conversation will win them a lot of sales because people will want a *real* tivo, not a knock-off.
If they fight a battle to stop it, they are insane.
Slashdot Mirror
Normally, I just let stuff like this pass, but this being a discussion about english essays, I was forced to respond. (plus you were grouching about getting a bad grade)
The proper sentence would read:
I got a 5/6, which, according to the computer, was extremely good. OR
I got a 5/6, which, according to the computer, meant I did extremely well.
I'll ignore your comma fetish for the time being.
That's just plain wrong, and I can't say it any plainer than that.
First of all, we prioritize law enforcement all the time. Are you saying we should put cops to enforcing jaywalking laws more stringently? Don't you think that might subtract from the more useful things they could be doing? (like giving out traffic tickets). There are only so many resources to go around, and you have to prioritize to get anything useful done.
Secondly, the indictment should have been a traditional tresspass indictment for the activists who actually did the tresspassing. Instead, the Justice Department tried to indict the entire organization Greenpeace under a law that was last enforced in 1890, that was designed to prevent bawdy houses from "sailor-mongering" by sending prostitutes to woo the sailors on ships.
If the conservative knee-jerk within you cannot admit that this was a blatant misuse of our tax dollars (BTW, the case was thrown out of court, I just found out), well, I just don't know what to say. Balderdash, I suppose.
Al Gore DID take the initiative in creating the internet (perhaps a bad choice of words but essentially true) by shepherding lots of legislation that made it into the public place it is today.
This got misreported as "invented", and now, instead of him getting credit for something he should get credit for, he gets made fun of.
George Bush says "The question that is rarely asked: is our children learning", and that barely makes an impression in the "liberal" (ha-ha) media.
I'm not usually one to bring up the second amendment, since the NRA already does such a bang-up job of it, but let me repeat it to you now: "A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed."
What were they talking about? How is a well regulated militia necessary to the security of a free state?
Well, if the government oversteps its boundaries, the free states could rise up and overthrow it, that's how. If you read about the authoring of the constitution, that's clearly what they meant.
I don't usually curse in my /. posts, but that is just fucking priceless.
Reminds me of the justice department investigation (and criminal proceedings against) Greenpeace.
Greenpeace found a ship that was bringing illegal timber from the Amazonian rainforests. So they sent a couple guys to put up a banner on the ship, that said something like "Stop illegal logging now".
So they got caught the Justice department is using a "sailor mongering" law over 100 years old to prosecute **the entire Greenpeace organization**, not just the two chaps who trespassed on the boat. The law was intended to stop prostitutes and bookies and other "low moral characters" from getting on boats at sea.
Never mind the illegal loggers. The justice department is not investigating them, nor suing them, nor prosecuting them. Just the whistleblowers.
Let's get behind Beverly! I for one will be donating money asap!
Ehh....
I translate the above to read "Web != Desktop".
I'm glad to know that. I think I will go "web it up" for a while now. Get the latest on the hip scene from the cats who are down with the groove.
Seriously though. This is slashdot. Don't get so desperate for flavor text that you explain to us about how the Web and our desktops are not the same thing. We already know that. Why don't you go cast magic missle at the darkness (snicker)?
Is that a fact? Ever do the math on how much energy the ocean could generate? Ever look at a population density map and compare right around the coastline vs inside the mainland?
We could generate a LOT of energy from the oceans. The technology wouldn't have to be all that complex. How about a very large buoy connected to a very large crank at the bottom of the ocean? The tide comes in, lifting the buoy and turning the crank. The tide rolls out, lowering the buoy and turning the crank.
Sure, it would be a pretty big engineering effort, but we could do it with todays tech. And that's not even the only way to generate power from the ocean.
It's Unix. It's not *supposed* to work the first time you install it. What would be the fun in that?
Haha. It's nice to see the NRA party line so concisely put together that it can be a sig.
What part of "a well-regulated militia" is so hard to understand?
I drive a '99 Toyota Paseo, which has a fuel efficiency rating of 27 mpg in the city, but I consistently get about 35 mpg.
It is very hilly where I live, and I tend to speed on the highway. Why do I get such good mileage?
I think the answer is pretty simple. When I'm coming to a traffic light where I know I'm going to hit the light red, I take the car out of gear and coast. I try to make it to the light just in time to catch the light change so I don't have to brake (not always possible).
This makes impatient people behind me angry, but I don't let it bother me.
I do pretty much the same thing in bumper-to-bumper highway traffic. I leave plenty of room in front of me and try to drive at a constant speed that allows me to drive without braking. Sure, people jump in front of me sometimes, but it's really not a big deal, and it is a hell of a lot less aggravating than clutch shift clutch brake clutch shift, over and over again.
So many people drive really fast just to get to a red light, it continually amazes me. Not only have they not saved time, they waste gas. Take your car outta gear and coast when it makes sense to do that. Try to time your arrival at the light so that you don't have to brake at all, and you can use your inertia all the way through. Starting and stopping uses a LOT of gas. This principle also applies to an automatic transmission, but you won't see such a dramatic increase in efficiency with an automatic, but I'd bet you could get it up over 30.
My last car was an '95 SL2, and I got about 32 mpg. If I didn't speed all the time, I probably could have gotten 35-40.
Actually, my Toyota Paseo gets about 35 mpg in the city. Now, I'm fairly good at gas-conscious driving, but I've been running the A/C (Texas) a little bit lately.
I haven't done a long highway trip yet, but I would expect to get about 40 mpg. And my car certainly has a lot more horses than an insight or a civic hybrid. This guy is reporting 32 mpg. That's pretty awful, considering how much those cars cost, and how much you give up in terms of performance.
[snip definition of fiction]
Of course I understand your point, but here is the difference. When I buy a Harry Potter book in the fiction section of Barnes and Noble, I know it is fiction.
When distortions of real life events are presented in a pseudoscientific light as though the pseudoscience might be correct, it's lies. If it carries the label of fiction, then it's a perfectly acceptable lie. Indeed, I found the pack of lies that made up Joss Whedon's Firefly series a great hoot.
It's when it's presented as a documentary that it becomes a problem for me.
Boy there's a lot of material here. Other such invention ideas:
An extraterrestrial repellent cologne. Guaranteed to prevent abduction.
A watch that works on interstellar space missions up to 10% of the speed of light.
Scuba gear especially designed for paraplegics
Nuclear bomb shelter (has this been done already?)
Any sort of "adult" toy. Who's gonna return the tickler 2000?
Electronic voting machines (the machine does the vote taking and the auditing, so how would you know).
Okay, mine were pretty lame. Anyone else?
No practical use!?!? If it can protect you from grizzlies, don't you think it can also protect you from being grabbed by Arnold Schwarzenegger when he's in a particularly frisky mood?
Geez, learn to think outside the box a little.
I think that sometimes there's more to it than that. A perfect example is the Fox special about whether the moon landing was faked. All sorts of pseudoscientific nonsense was put forth to support the theory that the landing was faked, but the best critic of the argument that was given any screentime whatsoever just said "Well, there's lots of crackpots out there". They never showed him refuting any of the so-called "evidence"! Some of it sounded good if you didn't know any better, but all of it was total crap if you did know better.
I was able to refute every single one of their pieces of "evidence" with my high-school level physics knowledge, but they had an expert on and made it appear that he didn't have anything interesting to say. The whole program was shameful, and to call it "over-dramatized science fiction" is being very generous.
I mean, what if you had a historical show that claimed the holocaust never happened, showed a lot of "evidence", and didn't offer respectable historians a chance to refute it? Would you call it "over-dramatized historical fiction"? I'd call it a pack of lies.
You see nothing special about the cardboard box
I dunno, isn't a child a derivative work?
What does the Hormel product have to do with unsolicited commercial email?
The upper case version of the word is trademarked by Hormel, and is acceptable for breakfast (depending on personal taste). The lower case version of the word refers to unsolicited commercial email and is acceptable for hunting someone down and kicking their ass when they send pictures of hot asian teenagers having sex with men who have enhanced their s1ze and are taking \/1c0d1n and v1@gr4 they bought in an online f4rmecy to your 11 year old kid.
I'm pretty sure, however, that "Atlantis" is in the "Atlantic".
The mid-Atlantic ridge is my favorite candidate. Someday I'll get off my ass and go find it.
The Society for the Responsible Use of Flying Cars. I haven't been able to come up with much yet, because I don't actually have a flying car yet, but I think it should definitely run on garbage, cause we've got too much of that.
As long as they're making such a killing in profits, they will not care. It's the RIAA you need to worry about.
Yes, scientists like to put Atlantis everwhere except the middle of the Atlantic ocean. Doesn't make a lot of sense to me.
Break out a contour map, like I said, and have a look at the mid-atlantic ridge.
It is an non-disputed scientific fact that the water level of the ocean was 300-500 feet lower 11,500 years ago (think Bering strait land bridge that you learned about in grade school).
Now draw on your contour map the area of land that would be exposed on the mid atlantic ridge if the water level was 500 feet lower.
If the water level suddenly rose all over the world, an island-continent in the middle of the Atlantic would appear to "sink" into the ocean.
To me this is the simplest explanation, and it fits the available facts quite nicely. Unfortunately, underwater achaeology is a bitch and a half, so it may be quite some time before I'm proven correct.
It's possible you are correct, but given the facts I outlined earlier, I think the simplest explanation is that there was a flood. Otherwise you must posit that these people did have contact, or you must conclude that they just came up with essentially the same story because of simultaneous cultural advancement. As I said in my first post, this is still the accepted theory. I just don't think it's going to hold out much longer.
However, I have pieced together pretty good circumstantial evidence over the years for a flood in ancient times, just as described all over the world by people who had no (or very little) contact with each other.
About 11,400 years ago, we know from glacial core samples that the earth's mean temperature raised anywhere from 5-7 degrees in just a few decades (though some paleoclimatologists say as much as 10 degrees in just a few years). Before the glacial evidence, scientists believed that the temperature changed very slightly over a long period of time, a theory known as steady state earth which is increasingly being discarded in the paleoclimatological community.
Furthermore, as I said earlier, people all over the world have recounted stories of a great flood, the native americans had such a myth, the natives of the mid-atlantic ridge had such a myth, the natives of Australia had a myth, etc.
This global pervasiveness of the flood myth scientists have long explained as a "racial memory", with little or no evidence to support this assertion, because steady-state earth held that such things a global floods could not happen.
We now know that Earth goes through cataclysms periodically, such as the one which wiped out the dinosaurs, and that sometimes really scary global things happen. Scientists have yet to outright admit that there was a great flood, but have begund to tacitly admit it.
For example, we know for certain that before 11,400 years ago, the level of the ocean was 300-500 feet lower than it is today. Accepted wisdom holds that this changed gradually, but this theory may not last now that we know the mean temperature changed so drastically so rapidly.
Given the proclivity of humans to band around the coast, such a rapid rise would lead to massive casualties the likes of which are unknown to us today. It might indeed seem as though the whole earth flooded. Furthermore, quite interesting archaeological finds are likely to be buried underwater.
Well, here comes the circumstantial evidence I mentioned in the start of the post. Plato said that Atlantis sank about 9000 years before his time. It just so happens that he lived about 2400 years ago. Add up those two numbers, and you get 11,400.
It's quite a coincidence, and it's true.
There is a chain of mountains in the middle of the atlantic ocean called the "Mid-Atlantic-Ridge". If you examine a contour map, you'll see that if the sea were lowered about 300-500 feet, it would be a huge chunk of land, not quite as big as a continent, but not quite as small as what we call an island either.
To my knowledge, I am the only person to put this data together in this way. Those scientists who consider Atlantis to be a possibility place it in the mediteranean ocean.
I'm not saying there were telepathic pyramid building Atlanteans, but I think it is very possible Atlantis existed, and traces will be discovered under the ocean.
Why the hell would they want to do that? Has it hurt Coca Cola, Kleenex, Xerox? Association of their entire industry with their brand name will help, not hurt them. It's difficult to even imagine a scenario where it could be anything but great advertising for them.
"Do you have a tivo?"
"Yes, but it's not a *real* tivo"
This conversation will win them a lot of sales because people will want a *real* tivo, not a knock-off.
If they fight a battle to stop it, they are insane.