White Castle/Krystals a good burger? I'll admit, what they service is tasty and intersting food product. But they're not burgers.
And my experience is that BK burgers have a funny chemical taste to them. It's probably some after effect of the broiler.
The best chain burgers I've had were at In & Out. Burgerville (Pacific NW) makes some good burgers too.
If you're in Portland, OR (and I know there's a lot of Tektronix and Intel employees here), Stanich's, on 49th & Freemont is one of the best - as is the Helvetia Tavern in Hillsboro.
Like I said, I play it very very quietly... I often can't even make out the words - but since I know all the music, my brain fills in the rest.
The biggest problem with headphones is that I tend to hum and sing along. It's reflexive and I don't even think about it. If I hear myself doing it, I can stop pretty easily... but with headphones on, I don't tend to notice that I'm doing it.
And I am absolutely sure the guy would find the humming much much more irritating than the music I play.
Seriously... it's turned way down. If I stand just a couple feet away, the sound of the office printer staying warm totally drowns out the sound of my music.
As for my taste in music... I like my taste in music and I'm happy to share it with people when they ask.
Anyway, most of the time when he's in the office, I just keep the music off.... but then, without thinking about it, I start tapping on the desk with pens, paperclips, my hands, or whatever. I'm like a sitting percussion section. I usually don't even notice it until someone complains... I even had a girlfriend cite it as one of her reasons for breaking up with me.
I think the very quiet music is enough to keep my brain occuppied as it tries to figure out what it's hearing. That keeps me from humming, singing, and tapping.
So in all honesty, I'm not trying to push my music on people... I'm trying to be the least annoying I can be. It's difficult sometimes.
And if you're curious, I'm a big fan of Kurt Elling, Black Eyed Peas, Dar Williams, and Madeleine Peyroux...
I'd rather put all the phone-talkers together in some kind of pit and let everyone else have a nice quiet place to work.
I work with one guy - always on the phone and very loud. Yet when I have music going it's barely audible (can't set the volume any lower - the sound of the printer fan is louder) he'll complain. I *love* the irony. I hate hearing about his personal life, though.
Capisci? Your freedom of speech, or press, or whatever, exist _only_ in your relation to congress. Noone else. Not an airline, not your neighbour, not Slashdot, not your employer, etc.
Congress, and by extension, the government. Most airports are federal government property and the TSA is a government agency. Because of that, the first (and the rest) amendment applies to them.
By your interpretation, someone only has those rights when they are in the congress.
I'm sure if the oil companies "declared war" on California by shutting off the flow of oil that "nationalization" would be a good counter-strike.
Nationalization of oil has tended not to work so well elsewhere because the CIA tends to go in and overthrow any government that attempts it (Kermit Roosevelt's work in Iran is a prime example). Chavez in Venezuela is the only one that seems to have pulled it off... so far.
Corporations are powerful, and the oil corps even more so. But the state can punch back much harder.
There is already precedent for allowing governments to use eminent domain to maximize economic use of property. If the oil companies don't want to make their oil distribution system and properties profitable in California, I'm sure the state would have a lot of fun condemning all the properties and putting them to use with someone else.
It would certainly be an ugly fight, but I think it would be more harmful for the oil companies than the state of California. California is big enough that they could negotatiate directly with some oil producing country to provide the fuel they need while they get their newly-state-owned oil facilities online.
There has to be a way, however, to help ensure the students are learning and doing the work than Turnitin. Frankly, if teachers can't figure out that a kid didn't write the paper they turned in, they're probably not paying much attention.
But on top of that, it's probably much more productive to structure the work and assignments so that it's not easy to cheat. For example, one teacher I had wanted at least 2 drafts turned in during the process of writing the paper... with the whole batch turned in for the final grade. A student might be able to fake the first part, but it will be harder to fake two revisions.
The difference, Mister I-dont-look-for-replies, is that Turnitin isn't republishing the paper, or making it into a made-for-TV movie starring Judith Light, or anything else that reduces the student's ability to resell her work.
Turnitin IS producing a derivative work based on the student's IP, a comparison of it against other submitted papers. And they're making a profit from it.
Unless the students have specifically assigned their IP rights to the school the school does not have the right to give copies to Turnitin.
And even if they're just using md5 sums, it's still a derivative work. If I take a digital photo of a painting and then tweak some of the bits, I don't have the right to make prints of my tweaked version and sell them while claiming it's a different picture.
Ultimately, who really cares if the students cheat? They're only hurting themselves. And there are much better ways to keep them from cheating... having them submit bibliographies and outlines during the course of the assingment, along with rough drafts, etc. Or make them submit a one page hand-written summary (maybe they have to write it in class before submitting it) of their paper along with their paper. In any case, there are ways to make sure the students are doing the work that don't rely on violating copyright laws.
I think you're making my point for me. People can make bad decisions that look good on paper today while sacrificing the future.
I'm definitely not saying that liquidating assets is a good way to make a profit. But in a strict sense, if it makes more money come in than has left, then it's a profit. Anything projected for the future is just a projection and not guaranteed. By focusing on profits right NOW, the decision sacrifices the future.
Now, this is an extreme example. But there are countless examples of companies using the very short-sighted/near-term thinking - making decisions that make things look good on paper today in exchange for a lot of pain in the future. As long as a company's stock price and a manager's bonus are tied to looking good "today" regardless of the future, we'll continue to have this situation.
One possible solution is to make upper management compensation packages reliant on stocks that cannot be sold no sooner than 5 years after the executive leaves office. This would help ensure that they'll make decisions that will help keep the company profitable and valuable over the long term.
Really the 'entire point' of companies is to profit for their shareholders.
Actually, the fiduciary responsibility of a publicly held company is to maximize shareholder value.
Value and profit are two very different things. You can easily make a company profitable by liquidating the assets and firing all the employees. Your profit will be great for a quarter.
The rub comes when you are determining "value", and most importantly, over what period of time. If you presume that shareholders want the company to last and to grow then decisions should be made by looking at the long-term. Sadly, this is rarely the case.
Of course, a non-public company can have any purpose they choose.
Look at the guy who's work in cloning was completely discredited due to sloppy practices, forged data, and unethical practices. He got published plenty through cheating. Of course he got caught, but so did Ken Lay.
I had a teacher in my MBA program point out that in a one-round game/world, it's easy to cheat and win. It's when you have to keep playing round after round that cheating doesn't work so well because you'll screw too many people and eventually be caught.
Because Baghdadis and Ramadis are still armed and can just take the appropriate action and shoot the damn camera. And if they're poor (and most are, with a virtually nonexistant economy), they'll cut down the pole, steal the camera and sell it back to the US for a tidy profit.
It's actually more like being in the checkout line and a guy dressed in a suit with a "Joe Schmuck, Store Manager" name tag on his pocket.
He says, "I'm the store manager and this checkstand's credit card processor is not working right. Let me take your credit card and we'll run it through another processor."
The checker, who really doesn't give a fuck because he hates his job, doesn't interfere.
Milgram's experiments clearly demonstrated that people will go as far as to inflict near lethal shocks as long as someone who appears to be an authority figure tells them to. If you appear to be enough of an authority, most people will fall for your scam. Look at the American voters, for example.
Maybe running out of people at their price points. I'd love to have an iPod, but I don't feel that they're worth $200.
I have a portable CD player that plays CDRs with mp3s. Sure, not as sexy, not quite as convenient, and not all the storage.. but it cost me $25 and I can make more CDs at about 10 cents apiece.
Offer a decent iPod for $99, and I'd probably buy one.
Ironically, the credit score in insurance isn't about being a better or worse driver. It's about who is more likely to file a "$2,500" when you back into someone else's care in a parking lot. People with good credit will probably pay that themselves, where as someone with bad credit is less likely.
I only have liability, have driven for 20 years, and never filed a claim (when I DID have full-coverage). I DO have a lot of debt from getting a masters degree and from being unemployed for 6 months. Why should MY insurance go up? It's not like I can file a claim against my liability insurance - that's only there to protect other drivers.
My guess is that a lot of people with poor credit are driving paid-off cars with only liability coverage. As long as they pay their premiums, there should be no reliance on credit scores.
Of course it's a racket. The credit scoring companies secure huge profits by getting other industries to rely on their scores to make judgements. They don't care if their results are accurate or not. They just want as many industries and companies as possible to use their "services", and they'll do everything they can to make the case that their scoring is the best way to discriminate against people.
Ultimately, we, as a people, should not judged by a scoring system that we cannot see how it works - and cannot hold the scorers liable for inaccuracies and corruption.
In my own studies, I've also noticed that most of them also have a strange fog that stays at about boot-height, accompanied by strange and haunting sounds that are almost musical.
In the end of course, the system administrator is going to catch heat for not having a strong password policy. Even though he/she would've caught hell if there had been one implemented in the first place.
This is where the sysadmin has to figure out how to make a convincing argument that the suits will understand. If he thinks a strong password policy is important, that is.
Suits aren't security experts, and they don't need to be. In fact, they're not necessarily experts in everything/anything. That's where the sysadmin needs to learn the same skills that everyone else uses to influence them. Make a case, with pros and cons, costs and benefits and make a proposal. It doesn't have to be extensive. I just has to have the information needed to make a decision.
Then, let them make the decision. If they say "yes", then you have their backing when enforcing an unpopular policy - and they're already in the know when people complain. If they say "no"... well, you've covered your backside, or if you really believe it in, you need to make a more convincing case.
It's not black magic... but so many IT folks are either unable or unwilling to talk to non-IT decision-makers in a way that gets them to make favorable decisions. It's an important skill.
On another note, I do agree that his system being a Commodore 64 will "complicate investigators' efforts"; but to say that it would be difficult to transfer files "without loss" is disingenuous at best.
"Without loss"... it really means "total loss"... they're stumped because they opened it up and can't figure out where the hard-drive is.
More seriously, the C64 would be great because all you have to do is power it off and everything is gone. I used to use a stupid system (CTT Commander's Tactical Terminal) in the army that was basically a battle-hardened C64 (or apple ][, since it had a green screen), transmitter and huge antenna. It had no hard-drive so that when the enemy came, you could just turn it off. It was basically a stupid text-messaging system that ONLY worked if a particular aircraft was flying in line-of-site. A satellite phone would work way better, be a lot cheaper and not require 3 people to carry it around.
If you are not under arrest, and if they are simply investigating, you don't have as many protections and you can be charged with interfering with a federal investigation. There's some kind of legal "trilemna" that is considered unethical - but is often used by the government to get around the "self-incrimination" issue:
Your three choices are: 1) answer the questions/comply with information requests - which ends up incriminating you 2) refuse to answer the questions - now you can be charged with interfering with the investigation 3) lie - and now you're lying to a federal investigator, which is also a crime
Sure, the 5th ammendment says you're not supposed to be compelled to testify against yourself - but you have to be arrested before that protection really comes into play.
Oh, I know, if you haven't done anything wrong, you have nothing to worry about... because the government never makes mistakes, never does things out of malice, and never has an agenda other than liberty and justice for all.
Slashdot Mirror
So... you get two guys and start two fires... it's totally irrelevant.
If you want to do some kind of terrorist act where you do something in repsonse to the firemen, you simply set up the first event.
White Castle/Krystals a good burger? I'll admit, what they service is tasty and intersting food product. But they're not burgers.
And my experience is that BK burgers have a funny chemical taste to them. It's probably some after effect of the broiler.
The best chain burgers I've had were at In & Out. Burgerville (Pacific NW) makes some good burgers too.
If you're in Portland, OR (and I know there's a lot of Tektronix and Intel employees here), Stanich's, on 49th & Freemont is one of the best - as is the Helvetia Tavern in Hillsboro.
Like I said, I play it very very quietly... I often can't even make out the words - but since I know all the music, my brain fills in the rest.
The biggest problem with headphones is that I tend to hum and sing along. It's reflexive and I don't even think about it. If I hear myself doing it, I can stop pretty easily... but with headphones on, I don't tend to notice that I'm doing it.
And I am absolutely sure the guy would find the humming much much more irritating than the music I play.
Seriously... it's turned way down. If I stand just a couple feet away, the sound of the office printer staying warm totally drowns out the sound of my music.
As for my taste in music... I like my taste in music and I'm happy to share it with people when they ask.
Anyway, most of the time when he's in the office, I just keep the music off.... but then, without thinking about it, I start tapping on the desk with pens, paperclips, my hands, or whatever. I'm like a sitting percussion section. I usually don't even notice it until someone complains... I even had a girlfriend cite it as one of her reasons for breaking up with me.
I think the very quiet music is enough to keep my brain occuppied as it tries to figure out what it's hearing. That keeps me from humming, singing, and tapping.
So in all honesty, I'm not trying to push my music on people... I'm trying to be the least annoying I can be. It's difficult sometimes.
And if you're curious, I'm a big fan of Kurt Elling, Black Eyed Peas, Dar Williams, and Madeleine Peyroux...
I'd rather put all the phone-talkers together in some kind of pit and let everyone else have a nice quiet place to work.
I work with one guy - always on the phone and very loud. Yet when I have music going it's barely audible (can't set the volume any lower - the sound of the printer fan is louder) he'll complain. I *love* the irony. I hate hearing about his personal life, though.
It's likely that the municipality could pass their own laws for the airport. But those laws cannot contradict the US Constitution.
For example, it could not pass a law allowing slavery as the 13th Amendment forbids that.
Capisci? Your freedom of speech, or press, or whatever, exist _only_ in your relation to congress. Noone else. Not an airline, not your neighbour, not Slashdot, not your employer, etc.
Congress, and by extension, the government. Most airports are federal government property and the TSA is a government agency. Because of that, the first (and the rest) amendment applies to them.
By your interpretation, someone only has those rights when they are in the congress.
I'm sure if the oil companies "declared war" on California by shutting off the flow of oil that "nationalization" would be a good counter-strike.
Nationalization of oil has tended not to work so well elsewhere because the CIA tends to go in and overthrow any government that attempts it (Kermit Roosevelt's work in Iran is a prime example). Chavez in Venezuela is the only one that seems to have pulled it off... so far.
Corporations are powerful, and the oil corps even more so. But the state can punch back much harder.
There is already precedent for allowing governments to use eminent domain to maximize economic use of property. If the oil companies don't want to make their oil distribution system and properties profitable in California, I'm sure the state would have a lot of fun condemning all the properties and putting them to use with someone else.
It would certainly be an ugly fight, but I think it would be more harmful for the oil companies than the state of California. California is big enough that they could negotatiate directly with some oil producing country to provide the fuel they need while they get their newly-state-owned oil facilities online.
Good point.
There has to be a way, however, to help ensure the students are learning and doing the work than Turnitin. Frankly, if teachers can't figure out that a kid didn't write the paper they turned in, they're probably not paying much attention.
But on top of that, it's probably much more productive to structure the work and assignments so that it's not easy to cheat. For example, one teacher I had wanted at least 2 drafts turned in during the process of writing the paper... with the whole batch turned in for the final grade. A student might be able to fake the first part, but it will be harder to fake two revisions.
Let's face it; bureaucracies just like to concentrate power and abuse individuals' rights.
The difference, Mister I-dont-look-for-replies, is that Turnitin isn't republishing the paper, or making it into a made-for-TV movie starring Judith Light, or anything else that reduces the student's ability to resell her work.
Turnitin IS producing a derivative work based on the student's IP, a comparison of it against other submitted papers. And they're making a profit from it.
Unless the students have specifically assigned their IP rights to the school the school does not have the right to give copies to Turnitin.
And even if they're just using md5 sums, it's still a derivative work. If I take a digital photo of a painting and then tweak some of the bits, I don't have the right to make prints of my tweaked version and sell them while claiming it's a different picture.
Ultimately, who really cares if the students cheat? They're only hurting themselves. And there are much better ways to keep them from cheating... having them submit bibliographies and outlines during the course of the assingment, along with rough drafts, etc. Or make them submit a one page hand-written summary (maybe they have to write it in class before submitting it) of their paper along with their paper. In any case, there are ways to make sure the students are doing the work that don't rely on violating copyright laws.
I think you're making my point for me. People can make bad decisions that look good on paper today while sacrificing the future.
I'm definitely not saying that liquidating assets is a good way to make a profit. But in a strict sense, if it makes more money come in than has left, then it's a profit. Anything projected for the future is just a projection and not guaranteed. By focusing on profits right NOW, the decision sacrifices the future.
Now, this is an extreme example. But there are countless examples of companies using the very short-sighted/near-term thinking - making decisions that make things look good on paper today in exchange for a lot of pain in the future. As long as a company's stock price and a manager's bonus are tied to looking good "today" regardless of the future, we'll continue to have this situation.
One possible solution is to make upper management compensation packages reliant on stocks that cannot be sold no sooner than 5 years after the executive leaves office. This would help ensure that they'll make decisions that will help keep the company profitable and valuable over the long term.
Really the 'entire point' of companies is to profit for their shareholders.
Actually, the fiduciary responsibility of a publicly held company is to maximize shareholder value.
Value and profit are two very different things. You can easily make a company profitable by liquidating the assets and firing all the employees. Your profit will be great for a quarter.
The rub comes when you are determining "value", and most importantly, over what period of time. If you presume that shareholders want the company to last and to grow then decisions should be made by looking at the long-term. Sadly, this is rarely the case.
Of course, a non-public company can have any purpose they choose.
I suppose it's human nature, sadly.
Look at the guy who's work in cloning was completely discredited due to sloppy practices, forged data, and unethical practices. He got published plenty through cheating. Of course he got caught, but so did Ken Lay.
I had a teacher in my MBA program point out that in a one-round game/world, it's easy to cheat and win. It's when you have to keep playing round after round that cheating doesn't work so well because you'll screw too many people and eventually be caught.
Not being a physicist or even an engineer, my only guess is to come up with an new measure: miles per joule
A kilowatt-hour should have a standard number of joules in it as should a gallon of standard gasoline.
That would compare your engergy per mile.
Then figure out a cost per joule for each and you have a cost comparison.
As long as you state what you're measuring and you're comparing equivalent units, it shouldn't matter much.
Because Baghdadis and Ramadis are still armed and can just take the appropriate action and shoot the damn camera. And if they're poor (and most are, with a virtually nonexistant economy), they'll cut down the pole, steal the camera and sell it back to the US for a tidy profit.
It's actually more like being in the checkout line and a guy dressed in a suit with a "Joe Schmuck, Store Manager" name tag on his pocket.
He says, "I'm the store manager and this checkstand's credit card processor is not working right. Let me take your credit card and we'll run it through another processor."
The checker, who really doesn't give a fuck because he hates his job, doesn't interfere.
Milgram's experiments clearly demonstrated that people will go as far as to inflict near lethal shocks as long as someone who appears to be an authority figure tells them to. If you appear to be enough of an authority, most people will fall for your scam. Look at the American voters, for example.
Maybe running out of people at their price points. I'd love to have an iPod, but I don't feel that they're worth $200.
I have a portable CD player that plays CDRs with mp3s. Sure, not as sexy, not quite as convenient, and not all the storage.. but it cost me $25 and I can make more CDs at about 10 cents apiece.
Offer a decent iPod for $99, and I'd probably buy one.
Ironically, the credit score in insurance isn't about being a better or worse driver. It's about who is more likely to file a "$2,500" when you back into someone else's care in a parking lot. People with good credit will probably pay that themselves, where as someone with bad credit is less likely.
I only have liability, have driven for 20 years, and never filed a claim (when I DID have full-coverage). I DO have a lot of debt from getting a masters degree and from being unemployed for 6 months. Why should MY insurance go up? It's not like I can file a claim against my liability insurance - that's only there to protect other drivers.
My guess is that a lot of people with poor credit are driving paid-off cars with only liability coverage. As long as they pay their premiums, there should be no reliance on credit scores.
Of course it's a racket. The credit scoring companies secure huge profits by getting other industries to rely on their scores to make judgements. They don't care if their results are accurate or not. They just want as many industries and companies as possible to use their "services", and they'll do everything they can to make the case that their scoring is the best way to discriminate against people.
Ultimately, we, as a people, should not judged by a scoring system that we cannot see how it works - and cannot hold the scorers liable for inaccuracies and corruption.
Don't forget the revenue from charging to collect the garbage in the first place. That in itself is a very lucrative business.
In my own studies, I've also noticed that most of them also have a strange fog that stays at about boot-height, accompanied by strange and haunting sounds that are almost musical.
In the end of course, the system administrator is going to catch heat for not having a strong password policy. Even though he/she would've caught hell if there had been one implemented in the first place.
This is where the sysadmin has to figure out how to make a convincing argument that the suits will understand. If he thinks a strong password policy is important, that is.
Suits aren't security experts, and they don't need to be. In fact, they're not necessarily experts in everything/anything. That's where the sysadmin needs to learn the same skills that everyone else uses to influence them. Make a case, with pros and cons, costs and benefits and make a proposal. It doesn't have to be extensive. I just has to have the information needed to make a decision.
Then, let them make the decision. If they say "yes", then you have their backing when enforcing an unpopular policy - and they're already in the know when people complain. If they say "no"... well, you've covered your backside, or if you really believe it in, you need to make a more convincing case.
It's not black magic... but so many IT folks are either unable or unwilling to talk to non-IT decision-makers in a way that gets them to make favorable decisions. It's an important skill.
On another note, I do agree that his system being a Commodore 64 will "complicate investigators' efforts"; but to say that it would be difficult to transfer files "without loss" is disingenuous at best.
"Without loss"... it really means "total loss"... they're stumped because they opened it up and can't figure out where the hard-drive is.
More seriously, the C64 would be great because all you have to do is power it off and everything is gone. I used to use a stupid system (CTT Commander's Tactical Terminal) in the army that was basically a battle-hardened C64 (or apple ][, since it had a green screen), transmitter and huge antenna. It had no hard-drive so that when the enemy came, you could just turn it off. It was basically a stupid text-messaging system that ONLY worked if a particular aircraft was flying in line-of-site. A satellite phone would work way better, be a lot cheaper and not require 3 people to carry it around.
If you are not under arrest, and if they are simply investigating, you don't have as many protections and you can be charged with interfering with a federal investigation. There's some kind of legal "trilemna" that is considered unethical - but is often used by the government to get around the "self-incrimination" issue:
Your three choices are:
1) answer the questions/comply with information requests - which ends up incriminating you
2) refuse to answer the questions - now you can be charged with interfering with the investigation
3) lie - and now you're lying to a federal investigator, which is also a crime
Sure, the 5th ammendment says you're not supposed to be compelled to testify against yourself - but you have to be arrested before that protection really comes into play.
Oh, I know, if you haven't done anything wrong, you have nothing to worry about... because the government never makes mistakes, never does things out of malice, and never has an agenda other than liberty and justice for all.
ummm because the correct syntax is:
# vi example_page.html
Or is it:
# cat > example_page.html
followed by a ctrl-d?