Just pull the plug, B&N. Concentrate on content distribution, and maintaining the reader app. I think in the long run, the Nook is nothing more than an unnecessary expenditure that exposes them to equally unnecessary financial risks. Hell, if they really want a branded tablet to sell in their stores, they should just re-brand one of those Chinese ones, and cut it out with the custom OS crap that makes it 'not quite an Android device'.
I wonder what the TSA would think if someone had prepared a list of substances they've come in contact with, in advance? In this insane-ass world, I bet that'd be more likely to be seen as suspicious than helpful...
I have absolutely no doubt I would set off the detectors, with all the chemicals and materials I come in contact with. I mean, I chemically etch my own circuit boards using either photo-resist or direct screen-printed resist... I machine stuff from aluminium, brass, oil-bronze, steel, etc. and that involves cutting lubricants, as well as the various lubricants involved in keeping the machines working. There's probably little bits of swarf in my shoe soles... Moldmaking and resin-casting materials... Paints and model supplies... And of course all manner of solvents from the mundane to the industrial.
And this is stuff I do at HOME, so there will be traces of something if any of that is enough for a positive.
The problem with the paranoia-fueled destruction of 'innocent until proven guilty' isn't just that it's wrong, and it isn't just that it doesn't make any sense whatsoever, it's that it's completely counterproductive!
If they ever pulled an actual terrorist out of a line and subjected them to this sort of questioning, (Something that to my knowledge has never happened even ONCE, correct me if I'm wrong.) chances are they either wouldn't comply at all, or their demeanor or body language would very quickly give away that something was wrong.
His willingness to comply and the fact that nothing in his background fit any real profile other than, I guess, being too not-white— either one alone —really should have shifted the tone of the encounter directly to them trying to figure out why they were getting a false positive on the detector.
This whole mess is a disgrace top to bottom, and I have no doubt the police or (more likely) the FBI searched his apartment, probably while he was being questioned, and that disgusts me, frankly. And this is where we get to how counterproductive this whole fiasco is... If incidents like this are disgusting and angering to the average red-blooded American, imagine the propaganda coup for the people who hate us. For every thousand people who read a story like this and grimace, there's someone with the means to do us harm who reads it and says "Fuck America." and eventually their cup fills up with that shit.
Anyway, I got nothin', except to say, maybe stop being so goddamn paranoid all the time, so we stop doing shit like this. It'll be a good first step. A small one, but a good start. (Maybe then we can work on teaching the Police when it's appropriate to shoot a suspect.)
The guy's Indian, and to your average dimwitted, racist TSA goon that's just another variety of "terr'ist sand-nigger." They're not even smart enough to be racist properly.
Yeah, that's basically the level of dumbness I've expected from people blinded by terrorism-induced paranoia. I mean, I guess I can kinda sympathize; the world is getting pretty fucking scary, but a large chunk of that is precisely because everyone's walking around so crazy and paranoid!
Funny story: Back in like 2002, I was living in an apartment over an Indian restaurant, and we had an earthquake— now this was in Vermont, mind you, and I'm from New Jersey so like, earthquake, what? —and I swear to god, my first thought was "Oh shit, some fucking rednecks couldn't tell Indians from Arabs and bombed the restaurant!" (Not one of my finest moments; sprawled out prone on the living room floor, looking like Garfield in a car window.)
I'd just put it on my quadcopter drone and fly that sucker straight up to the FAA-mandated flight ceiling for such craft; 400 feet ABL like it was nothing.
What is it with all these newspapers changing hands lately? Has their lack of relevancy finally reached the point where they've simply been relegated to the status of being used as trading cards for rich people? Does Rupert Murdoch's kid ride around with a couple Brit tabloids clipped in his bicycle spokes? (Actually the noise would probably prove less obnoxious than the news.)
Yeah, and didn't some guy in Japan build a 737 or 747 cockpit sim with such a complete cabin interior that he was asked to loan the use of it to a TV drama for a set? I remember reading something to that effect several years ago...
I just read the summary several times, and the article twice, and I still have no idea what the hell people are getting arrested for...
But I get the feeling that if someone explains it to me, it'll only lead to me yelling "WHAT THE FUCK, AMERICA?!" and I already have a headache, so I would rather just remain ignorant this one time...
My first thought was a leak in the LCVG, which I would have to imagine would already suck big time during a multi-hour spacewalk just from water getting loose in the suit... (Especially if it's getting up into the helmet!) Physiological effects from the cooling failure are just the icing on the cake.
All I can think of when I read this is one of those pics people keep reposting on imgur of a burning house with the caption "I thought I saw a spider..."
If nothing else, I think they probably win 'Most Expensive Overreaction 2013' hands down.
I sincerely hope the idiot responsible for making the decisions that led to this is at Staples right now, shopping for something to type up their resume on, having gone home and smashed their computer, too.
God DAMMIT, if my mod points hadn't apparently just expired, I would've modded you up, since it was obviously meant as a joke. (And I did find it amusing.)
My father does a good job of capturing the sheer absurdity, I think.
Me: So, apparently China says that not only are we just as guilty of attacking them, but it's our own damn fault they were able to get at the data. Him: Let me get this straight, China's response to our accusations of cyber-espionage is basically "I know I am, but what are you?"... I need a moment.
Sometimes I really do think I'm the only person who's never had a single problem with PayPal...
The closest I've ever come, is getting my PayPal debit double-charged because a place I ordered something from apparently doesn't know how to properly handle credit cards. (They made a second charge instead of finalizing or releasing the pre-authorization hold they made.) But I can hardly blame a third party's incompetence on PayPal.
It seems like every other person on the internet has some horror story about PayPal. Which I totally believe, I'm not saying otherwise, but jeez... Is this where I'm using up all my luck?
Oh for fuck's sake... Just pay the domain owner. There's no need to call the cybersquatting arbitration wahmbulance.
It's not like the guy registered that domain name going "I bet you that in like two years they're going to go completely insane and name the next console the Xbox One! Man, I'm gonna be RICH!"
Not everything in life needs to be settled with lawyers.
You are a prime example of what's wrong with this situation; it isn't about male or female. It's about one of the two people in this situation decided to be an ASSHOLE.
Lighter stuff and instrumental music you probably won't hear the difference above 192~256kbit MP3, but anything 'busy' always sounds more flat to me. Like comparing a photograph to the original scene. I also have the misfortune of being able to hear compression artifacts...
Probably because the psychoacoustic models used to design these adaptive transform compression schemes are based on the AVERAGE human and I would charitably be described as 'abnormal'.;)
You know, I try to avoid making comments on things I know are going to be controversial because I'm always going to piss off xx% of people, and I really don't set out to piss off anyone. (Except when I do...) But sometimes, something so heinously, irredeemably, goddamn stupid happens, and I have to vent or I'll simply explode. So here goes all my friggin' karma... PLEASE NOTE: My opinions are simply based on events as they have been described.
While I wish I could be all diplomatic and say that everyone involved shares the blame for this incident, that wouldn't be honest. He's a nerd, making nerd jokes, to another nerd, at a nerd convention. The stuff he supposedly said is just silly. Sure, there's SORT OF innuendo there, but it's like middle school stuff. There was nothing overtly-sexual or graphic about it, and he was having what he thought was an at least semi-private conversation. It was those two computer nerds in WarGames. It wasn't a truck stop on the Jersey turnpike.
I get that she found it offensive, and that's her right. But the fact that she was (supposedly) smiling as she took the damning TwitPic just seems... I don't know. Malicious? What was that supposed to be? "Heh, I'll fix YOU! I'm going to tell the INTERNET!" The whole thing just seems so damned petty.
Replace her phone with a gun, and now we're closer to what happened; *Bang!* There goes your job.
Let's take that analogy and run with it, as one might with a pair of scissors! (Well, as I might, anyway.) If I overhear someone making dumb comments behind me, I'm probably going to just roll my eyes. The most I might do, is tell them to shut up. I'm not going to turn around and SHOOT them. (Probably.)
She defends her actions, saying that in order to make the IT industry safe for women, she HAD to shoot him.
I really don't want to sound biased just because I'm a guy, because on its most fundamental level this has nothing to do with gender. Look at the situation; You have two people carrying on a private conversation, albeit a dumb and juvenile one. A third person overhears them, and instead of asking them to kindly shut the hell up snaps a photograph of them, grabs the internet bullhorn (With which they are apparently quite skilled), and says "Internet, you wouldn't BELIEVE what these two bozos just said!". Then one of those 'bozos' loses his job. Twitter shaming; No less asinine and juvenile than the dongle jokes.
I want to see more women in the tech industries, I want to see more female makers and tinkerers. Why? It's not just because I think we need more beauty to balance out the neckbeards. It's because I think technology and making things are TOTALLY FUCKIN' AWESOME and everyone deserves a turn!
This is not how that happens. This is how the gap gets bigger. Please stop. Sexual harassment is a completely reprehensible thing, and it happens way too often. In the tech industry, in every industry, in society in-general. But every time an incident like this gets ink, it only makes things harder on those experiencing legitimate harassment.
Okay, putting all that aside, so far, this has just been my reaction to what actually happened at PyCon. That was admittedly a very small slice of the pi--incident. (I couldn't go through with it, sorry.) Let's talk about the aftermath.
So, 'Mr-Hank' loses his job... That's really unfortunate... I think his employer overreacted, but the reality is, with the way everything goes viral these days, dropping him like he's radioactive and ON FIRE probably seemed like the best course of action from a PR standpoint, since it was like he was very publicly being accused of sexual harassment, and you don't play around with that. I even feel bad about his apology, because while it was ultimately the right thing to do, it just felt like too much for what he did, like it was just more shaming...
Ms. Richards loses her job, which is also unfortunate, but I can't say that I hold her blameless. Her employer had no choice but to fire her; they're a media
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A while back, my little sister picked up a Nook Tablet for, what was it? Like $170? Back in May I picked up a 7" Android 4.0 tablet from China that kicks its ass for $30. (In fact, I bought four different ones, and one of those 'Android TV stick' devices, for a total of $145, god bless DealExtreme.)
Just pull the plug, B&N. Concentrate on content distribution, and maintaining the reader app. I think in the long run, the Nook is nothing more than an unnecessary expenditure that exposes them to equally unnecessary financial risks. Hell, if they really want a branded tablet to sell in their stores, they should just re-brand one of those Chinese ones, and cut it out with the custom OS crap that makes it 'not quite an Android device'.
I wonder what the TSA would think if someone had prepared a list of substances they've come in contact with, in advance? In this insane-ass world, I bet that'd be more likely to be seen as suspicious than helpful...
I have absolutely no doubt I would set off the detectors, with all the chemicals and materials I come in contact with. I mean, I chemically etch my own circuit boards using either photo-resist or direct screen-printed resist... I machine stuff from aluminium, brass, oil-bronze, steel, etc. and that involves cutting lubricants, as well as the various lubricants involved in keeping the machines working. There's probably little bits of swarf in my shoe soles... Moldmaking and resin-casting materials... Paints and model supplies... And of course all manner of solvents from the mundane to the industrial.
And this is stuff I do at HOME, so there will be traces of something if any of that is enough for a positive.
THREAT LEVEL: *Rubber glove snapping sound*
The problem with the paranoia-fueled destruction of 'innocent until proven guilty' isn't just that it's wrong, and it isn't just that it doesn't make any sense whatsoever, it's that it's completely counterproductive!
If they ever pulled an actual terrorist out of a line and subjected them to this sort of questioning, (Something that to my knowledge has never happened even ONCE, correct me if I'm wrong.) chances are they either wouldn't comply at all, or their demeanor or body language would very quickly give away that something was wrong.
His willingness to comply and the fact that nothing in his background fit any real profile other than, I guess, being too not-white— either one alone —really should have shifted the tone of the encounter directly to them trying to figure out why they were getting a false positive on the detector.
This whole mess is a disgrace top to bottom, and I have no doubt the police or (more likely) the FBI searched his apartment, probably while he was being questioned, and that disgusts me, frankly. And this is where we get to how counterproductive this whole fiasco is... If incidents like this are disgusting and angering to the average red-blooded American, imagine the propaganda coup for the people who hate us. For every thousand people who read a story like this and grimace, there's someone with the means to do us harm who reads it and says "Fuck America." and eventually their cup fills up with that shit.
Anyway, I got nothin', except to say, maybe stop being so goddamn paranoid all the time, so we stop doing shit like this. It'll be a good first step. A small one, but a good start. (Maybe then we can work on teaching the Police when it's appropriate to shoot a suspect.)
Yeah, that's basically the level of dumbness I've expected from people blinded by terrorism-induced paranoia. I mean, I guess I can kinda sympathize; the world is getting pretty fucking scary, but a large chunk of that is precisely because everyone's walking around so crazy and paranoid!
Funny story: Back in like 2002, I was living in an apartment over an Indian restaurant, and we had an earthquake— now this was in Vermont, mind you, and I'm from New Jersey so like, earthquake, what? —and I swear to god, my first thought was "Oh shit, some fucking rednecks couldn't tell Indians from Arabs and bombed the restaurant!" (Not one of my finest moments; sprawled out prone on the living room floor, looking like Garfield in a car window.)
That's a good tip about the clothes, by the way.
I'd just put it on my quadcopter drone and fly that sucker straight up to the FAA-mandated flight ceiling for such craft; 400 feet ABL like it was nothing.
What is it with all these newspapers changing hands lately? Has their lack of relevancy finally reached the point where they've simply been relegated to the status of being used as trading cards for rich people? Does Rupert Murdoch's kid ride around with a couple Brit tabloids clipped in his bicycle spokes? (Actually the noise would probably prove less obnoxious than the news.)
And then Asiana contacts him about training their pilots on the cheap(er)? Hehe.
Yeah, and didn't some guy in Japan build a 737 or 747 cockpit sim with such a complete cabin interior that he was asked to loan the use of it to a TV drama for a set? I remember reading something to that effect several years ago...
I just read the summary several times, and the article twice, and I still have no idea what the hell people are getting arrested for...
But I get the feeling that if someone explains it to me, it'll only lead to me yelling "WHAT THE FUCK, AMERICA?!" and I already have a headache, so I would rather just remain ignorant this one time...
My first thought was a leak in the LCVG, which I would have to imagine would already suck big time during a multi-hour spacewalk just from water getting loose in the suit... (Especially if it's getting up into the helmet!) Physiological effects from the cooling failure are just the icing on the cake.
Hell, they could just pay me and I'll conference in a number they provide on every call.
All I can think of when I read this is one of those pics people keep reposting on imgur of a burning house with the caption "I thought I saw a spider..."
If nothing else, I think they probably win 'Most Expensive Overreaction 2013' hands down.
I sincerely hope the idiot responsible for making the decisions that led to this is at Staples right now, shopping for something to type up their resume on, having gone home and smashed their computer, too.
God DAMMIT, if my mod points hadn't apparently just expired, I would've modded you up, since it was obviously meant as a joke. (And I did find it amusing.)
Hopefully someone else will deliver! :(
My father does a good job of capturing the sheer absurdity, I think.
Me: So, apparently China says that not only are we just as guilty of attacking them, but it's our own damn fault they were able to get at the data. ... I need a moment.
Him: Let me get this straight, China's response to our accusations of cyber-espionage is basically "I know I am, but what are you?"
Sometimes I really do think I'm the only person who's never had a single problem with PayPal...
The closest I've ever come, is getting my PayPal debit double-charged because a place I ordered something from apparently doesn't know how to properly handle credit cards. (They made a second charge instead of finalizing or releasing the pre-authorization hold they made.) But I can hardly blame a third party's incompetence on PayPal.
It seems like every other person on the internet has some horror story about PayPal. Which I totally believe, I'm not saying otherwise, but jeez... Is this where I'm using up all my luck?
Oh for fuck's sake... Just pay the domain owner. There's no need to call the cybersquatting arbitration wahmbulance.
It's not like the guy registered that domain name going "I bet you that in like two years they're going to go completely insane and name the next console the Xbox One! Man, I'm gonna be RICH!"
Not everything in life needs to be settled with lawyers.
Well, guns are pretty much banned in Chicago, New York City, etc. And yet, dozens of shootings every day....
This image has a nice take on it... apparently cold weather causes violence.
http://danieljmitchell.files.wordpress.com/2013/03/houston-chicago-guns-weather.jpg?w=500&h=500
As a Vermonter, sounds totally legit to me.
You are a prime example of what's wrong with this situation; it isn't about male or female. It's about one of the two people in this situation decided to be an ASSHOLE.
DONGLEGATE?! Really?! I thought I made that up, as a joke! People are actually calling it that? Oh man, haha...
Since when is a tech industry-related convention (Especially one for programmers!) not a 'nerd convention'? ;P
Joking aside, I get what you mean, and I agree with your point. That was just some hyperbole to help underline how absurd I feel the whole thing was.
Lighter stuff and instrumental music you probably won't hear the difference above 192~256kbit MP3, but anything 'busy' always sounds more flat to me. Like comparing a photograph to the original scene. I also have the misfortune of being able to hear compression artifacts...
Probably because the psychoacoustic models used to design these adaptive transform compression schemes are based on the AVERAGE human and I would charitably be described as 'abnormal'. ;)
You know, I try to avoid making comments on things I know are going to be controversial because I'm always going to piss off xx% of people, and I really don't set out to piss off anyone. (Except when I do...) But sometimes, something so heinously, irredeemably, goddamn stupid happens, and I have to vent or I'll simply explode. So here goes all my friggin' karma... PLEASE NOTE: My opinions are simply based on events as they have been described.
While I wish I could be all diplomatic and say that everyone involved shares the blame for this incident, that wouldn't be honest. He's a nerd, making nerd jokes, to another nerd, at a nerd convention. The stuff he supposedly said is just silly. Sure, there's SORT OF innuendo there, but it's like middle school stuff. There was nothing overtly-sexual or graphic about it, and he was having what he thought was an at least semi-private conversation. It was those two computer nerds in WarGames. It wasn't a truck stop on the Jersey turnpike.
I get that she found it offensive, and that's her right. But the fact that she was (supposedly) smiling as she took the damning TwitPic just seems... I don't know. Malicious? What was that supposed to be? "Heh, I'll fix YOU! I'm going to tell the INTERNET!" The whole thing just seems so damned petty.
Replace her phone with a gun, and now we're closer to what happened; *Bang!* There goes your job.
Let's take that analogy and run with it, as one might with a pair of scissors! (Well, as I might, anyway.) If I overhear someone making dumb comments behind me, I'm probably going to just roll my eyes. The most I might do, is tell them to shut up. I'm not going to turn around and SHOOT them. (Probably.)
She defends her actions, saying that in order to make the IT industry safe for women, she HAD to shoot him.
I really don't want to sound biased just because I'm a guy, because on its most fundamental level this has nothing to do with gender. Look at the situation; You have two people carrying on a private conversation, albeit a dumb and juvenile one. A third person overhears them, and instead of asking them to kindly shut the hell up snaps a photograph of them, grabs the internet bullhorn (With which they are apparently quite skilled), and says "Internet, you wouldn't BELIEVE what these two bozos just said!". Then one of those 'bozos' loses his job. Twitter shaming; No less asinine and juvenile than the dongle jokes.
I want to see more women in the tech industries, I want to see more female makers and tinkerers. Why? It's not just because I think we need more beauty to balance out the neckbeards. It's because I think technology and making things are TOTALLY FUCKIN' AWESOME and everyone deserves a turn!
This is not how that happens. This is how the gap gets bigger. Please stop. Sexual harassment is a completely reprehensible thing, and it happens way too often. In the tech industry, in every industry, in society in-general. But every time an incident like this gets ink, it only makes things harder on those experiencing legitimate harassment.
Okay, putting all that aside, so far, this has just been my reaction to what actually happened at PyCon. That was admittedly a very small slice of the pi--incident. (I couldn't go through with it, sorry.) Let's talk about the aftermath.
So, 'Mr-Hank' loses his job... That's really unfortunate... I think his employer overreacted, but the reality is, with the way everything goes viral these days, dropping him like he's radioactive and ON FIRE probably seemed like the best course of action from a PR standpoint, since it was like he was very publicly being accused of sexual harassment, and you don't play around with that. I even feel bad about his apology, because while it was ultimately the right thing to do, it just felt like too much for what he did, like it was just more shaming...
Ms. Richards loses her job, which is also unfortunate, but I can't say that I hold her blameless. Her employer had no choice but to fire her; they're a media
Admittedly, IANAL, but I'm pretty sure that's not a valid FOIA exception...
I imagine that, eventually, someone's gonna swing for this mess. Denying a FOIA request isn't going to change that. ;)
Because we don't have enough of THOSE!
They have a problem with the character of Jabba the Hutt...so they're suing LEGO.
Okay. I have stepped off the edge of the world...