Sad thing about that website is that she looked pretty good in the 'before' photo.
People should realize the risks of any surgery before they make minor cosmetic changes to their appearance. Executive summary: Plastic surgery decisions are rarely rationality-based
The purpose of PR is to generate a market where non exists (or, in some cases, should> exist). This includes plastic surgery.
I had one girlfriend who everybody around me said that she was very beautiful in just about every way (and I agreed). Nonetheless, she decided to have a nose job.... this despite complaining that she had to be careful about how she dressed, or she'd run the risk of causing traffic accidents.
There was one study where they asked women what part most needed improvement -- and asked their partner what part they most liked... They were the same, more than 50% of the time.
Well, as a general rule, I'd expect that the "director of facial plastic and reconstructive surgery at UC Davis Medical Center." is, at worst, not likely to be a fly-by-night quack.
No matter how good he is, however, a bad result is always a possibility (even if remote). That this woman ended up on the short end of the stick still doesn't affect the validity of her tail -- if only as a warning of what really can go wrong if you're unlucky. I know one woman who is intensely ashamed of her breasts as a result of the side effects of augmentation surgery. She will no longer wear revealing clothing, because it's too likely to expose the scarring.
That's not the kind of information that you're likely to get in the advertising brochures, or the 'reality television' shows that ("incidently") highlight a different plastic surgeon every week.
Now, since Vista is securebydesign, it too no longer need I guess that's why MS is now selling an anti-virus 'solution' they figure that even if it doesn't work, it won't make any difference.
People can get paid for doing environmentalist work, but it's rarely the kind of money that you can get for working for Big Oil. For example, one Oil lobbyist was offering $10K for someone willing to 'critique' the recent IPCC report on Global Warming. For many environmentalists, that $10K would pay for about 6-10months worth of work.
and as for the claim "... that sustainable living will cost money.", yes it will, but unsustainable living will cost even more -- it's just that the cost is delayed by a bit.
You can understand this more easily if you jump back to the arguments over deficit financing... because money i little more than a mathematical artifice, it's easy to see that running a deficit now will force our kids and/or grandchildren to pay for our high life. With things like global warming, overfishing, groundwater depletion etc. etc. we are running an ecological deficit. The difference is that it's easier for a group of PR weenies to convince people that Global Warming (and/or it's causes) are unproven, and harder to convince Mother nature that it's a bad idea to call in the loan.
What they hell is wrong with touch screen machines with a spit-out paper trail? Yeesh. People had problems with the touch screens reacting in strange ways and sometimes not accepting votes for certain candidates, etc.
With an OCR system, even if the computer melts down, you can go ahead with the vote, and (as long as the paper ballot is designed properly), you have clear knowledge of what a voter wanted to mark.... At that point, the computer simply becomes a method of providing a quick vote result, rather than a possible bottleneck in the system.
Imagine user A -- he cleans his disk in preparation for a vista install, then starts the install. Vista complains that that he doesn't have an old version of Windows on his machine... How's he going to find out about this workaround now???
The user is 'forced' to go back and re-instal XP just to install Vista again.... Ends up with a slightly bastardized system (bits of XP left hanging off the disk). May, or may not, eventually find out about the work around and kick self.
Now if MS really is stupid enough to actually invalidate the XP key as a part of the upgrade process, (s)he is going to be sooo toast if there is ever a (perceived) need for a re-install.
This fix is great for the 1-2% of the population that reads slashdot and perhaps another 10-20% that ask us for help, but the rest of the population is gonna be toast if something happens (either on purpose or by accident) to the partition that XP was originally installed on.
The Get A First Life people need to find a lawyer to slam Linden Labs for denying him work, and suggesting that he could get an injunction against the 'proceed and permit' letter under `restraint of trade` laws.
It's almost trivial to support a product in the Linux market -- Release the docs. Pretty much nothing else is needed for any product that isn't in such a small niche that no Linux geek will notice that it's there. The Linux community is more than happy to produce drivers for just about anything they can figure out how to drive.
Back in the late '90s there were a large number of products that, among other things, advertised Linux support... Then Microsoft recognized Linux as a legitimate threat. About the time that Microsoft started signing drivers, I saw advertisements of Linux support quietly disappear from hardware boxes.
Yes, it may just be coincidence, but to have manufacturers drop support for a growing market is pretty suspicious to my mind.
Yeah, watch Microsoft try that against AMD, Intel, Nvidia (The three primary video card manufacturers, of which Intel already opensources its drivers, and AMD which open sources old specs + is considering open sourcing new specs), HP, TI, or any of the larger peripheral vendors. Well those three are big enough that they might be able to get away with thumbing their nose at MS because MS needs them about as much as they need MS, but I would note that HP, TI, DELL, et al. seem to have bowed down to the forces of evil and provide limited support of their own -- even though though they actually sell a lot of Linux hardware.
I mean, what is there to even consider in terms of AMD open sourcing it's new specs, other than fear of MS retribution? More importantly, where are you going to get the proof that MS is black^h^h^h^h^h putting pressure on manufacturers, given that there are probably gobs of NDA's -- not to mention the fear of MS.... unh, having multiple 'accidents' (yeah! That's the ticket!) on the road to certification of your drivers for XP and/or Vista?
It gets even worse with Vista because, if they don't certify you, your product will not work properly, Period. At least with XP, users would (just) get these annoying messages about how this new driver will blow up their computer and make their children blind.
The difference I was thinking of was Axial vs centrifugal. I didn't realize that the Germans first came up with centrifugal, but it's worth noting t hat they ended up being more comfortable with the Axial.
Clearly, I'm not an aero engineer, and if both the Germans and Brits came up with centrifugal engines first, I can easily believe one of them stole it from the other -- but it still stands that they put recognizably different engines into production.
And I still stand by my point that the MS's patent is far too similar to the Blue Jay product to accept that it really was an independent creation without some sort of proof in that direction. I can see having a lot that's similar, but there comes a point of diminishing probabilities, and MS seems to have passed it.
Hopefully they're next on the list for prosecution. Problem is, I'm guessing that the trail from the drug manufacturers to the spammers are a bit better laundered.. It's going to take a little more work to track the flow, and prove who knew what about drug spam.
It's a slim difference between buying adware and producing it. If companies like Cingular and Priceline weren't paying for that garbage, nobody would have any incentive to produce it. Those people don't produce adware as a hobby any more than the companies buy it on a lark. It was a very carefully considered decision that the market cost of using adware was considered less than the profit to be had from them.
Cingular, Priceline, and Travelocity have been fined for buying advertising displayed through adware programs produced by others.
, I'm dismayed that this is probably the solution most people think should be applied. It's not the solution, but it's certainly a very useful action. I think that a lot of people here would agree with me.
I will probably never complain about going after the people who do these sorts of things (although I my complain about the specifics of a sleazy attack, I will always say that somebody needs to go after them).
-- and yes, there will always be spammers, but there really needs to be a two-pronged approach. One is to educate the user community to avoid the scams, and the other is to penalize the scammers. The less that it profits the scammers, the less likely they are to engage in the activity. If you place the burden of the proof on the users, then the scammers will always be upgrading the style of their attacks to deal with the education of the population... we've already seen that with the ever-increasing sophistication of the phishing attacks.
Ultimately, the only way to stop (and/or slow down) these attacks is to make them unprofitable for the scammer. Just about anything (sleazy or otherwise) from selling food to live child porn that makes the seller money will find someone to engage in the process.
Where there are victims, they need to be assisted not blamed, and the victimizers need to be discouraged.
Sir Frank Whittle (UK) and Hans von Ohain (Germany) both invented jet engines on their own. They both invented jet engines, but different jet engines. This patent application was apparently little more than documentation of core parts of the Blue Jay product. Generally independent developments of similar ideas will have the fingerprints of the inventor on them. The fingerprints on this patent don't seem to be from MS.
It's like if I walk up to you in the parking lot, while you're opening your car I put a gun to your head and pull the trigger.
Then when the gun jams, I ask you for a light and go on about how "Oooh, how did that thing end up in my hand? I was really just here to ask you for a light... and the guy with the body bag goes slinking off into the back alley.
Yes, this may be innocent, but MS has a history of stealing other people's IP and claiming it as their own... Even here, we now have the second example of them trying to claim this almost-10 year old invention.
If the three people who signed on to this patent didn't know about Blue Jay, then someone higher up made an explicit decision to hide the source of the enhancement request from them. Those higher ups would have also been more likely to have seen this patent request as it went through the levels. As you go up the levels in this, the pool of possibly innocent management gets smaller and smaller.
When you have a rap sheet like Microsoft's the presumption of innocence, in a case like this, starts to look more like suspension of disbelief.
Apollo 12 even brought back pieces of Surveyor III. ((The referenced page (astronomy picture of the day) shows surveyor 3 from a distance of.... oh, 50 feet. and the Apollo 12 lunar module from abut 600 feet.))
Yep... The moon's seen it's first example of the very human activity known as looting.
I don't want to be a dick or anything, but is there any proof this has actually happened? yes. He's in a secret prison in Syria.... Would you like to join^W meet him?
The point is that the Bush administration claims the right. They wouldn't claim the right if they weren't planning to exercise it.
Don't they swear them in with an oath to protect the Constitution? That's right protect it. The constitution's just a piece of paper The oath didn't say anything about obeying it, or respecting it, did it!??!.
Sheesh.... get a law degree, you dweeb.
Oh yeah... tell that to Voyager.
Lightning doesn't strike the same spot twice. (obviously false (ouch!)) Well after lightning strikes the first time, that place (ouch) is never going to be the same again.
A watched pot never boils. etc...
There's actually some truth to that... If you take the lid of a pot that you're trying to boil, the escaping steam carries away heat and helps to cool the pot -- It also lowers the vapour pressure of the steam, which allows more steam to be generated (allowing the water in the pot to cool faster). That way, a watched pot boils a lot slower than an unwatched pot -- and if the heat is low enough, then removing the lid actually will make the differnce between boiling, and just evaporating at a high temperature.
This message brought to you by the society for the anal retentive (I had to say that, or they'd browbeat me to death).
That's just a case of OO trying to be bug-compatible with MS-Office.
Personally, I'd prefer if they'd figure out which features don't save well in.DOC (or whatever) and only complain when those features are being used in the file that's being saved.
Yes they did, but what I'm impressed with is that they actually managed to fit OO on one of those machines..... I mean, do you swap out to paper tape? -- and how did you build a C compiler for wire-wrap?
The real problem is that it's much more effective to use subsonic ammunition with a suppressor, otherwise there's that whole "sonic boom" thing to contend with. The seals tried it in Vietnam. Besides the issues you mentioned, it also tended to reduce the killing power of the bullet so much that one victim reacted as if he'd just been bit by a bug, rather than hit with a bullet.
Disabling the first robot doesn't disable the second robot that the team just happened to bring along in case the first one got shot.
Even better yet -- bring a bunch of little $10 boxes (OK. $500 boxes once they go through military procurement procedures), that look like a sniper bot, and even move like a sniper bot, but that's all they do. (maybe you can even slave them to the prime sniper bot(s) so that they swivel in the direction of the sniper when the prime bot senses a sniper (makes it harder to recognize the real 'bot)). That way the sniper will have no way to figure out which box to shoot at.... By the time he takes them all out. You've put a hole in his (or her) head.
And, yeah.. put a kevlar layer in the real box. Decoys or not, you still want it to be able to take a sniper hit or two and keep on ticking.
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No matter how good he is, however, a bad result is always a possibility (even if remote). That this woman ended up on the short end of the stick still doesn't affect the validity of her tail -- if only as a warning of what really can go wrong if you're unlucky. I know one woman who is intensely ashamed of her breasts as a result of the side effects of augmentation surgery. She will no longer wear revealing clothing, because it's too likely to expose the scarring.
That's not the kind of information that you're likely to get in the advertising brochures, or the 'reality television' shows that ("incidently") highlight a different plastic surgeon every week.
and as for the claim "... that sustainable living will cost money.", yes it will, but unsustainable living will cost even more -- it's just that the cost is delayed by a bit.
You can understand this more easily if you jump back to the arguments over deficit financing... because money i little more than a mathematical artifice, it's easy to see that running a deficit now will force our kids and/or grandchildren to pay for our high life. With things like global warming, overfishing, groundwater depletion etc. etc. we are running an ecological deficit. The difference is that it's easier for a group of PR weenies to convince people that Global Warming (and/or it's causes) are unproven, and harder to convince Mother nature that it's a bad idea to call in the loan.
Hopefully, this time, they'll get it right.
With an OCR system, even if the computer melts down, you can go ahead with the vote, and (as long as the paper ballot is designed properly), you have clear knowledge of what a voter wanted to mark.... At that point, the computer simply becomes a method of providing a quick vote result, rather than a possible bottleneck in the system.
The user is 'forced' to go back and re-instal XP just to install Vista again.... Ends up with a slightly bastardized system (bits of XP left hanging off the disk). May, or may not, eventually find out about the work around and kick self.
Now if MS really is stupid enough to actually invalidate the XP key as a part of the upgrade process, (s)he is going to be sooo toast if there is ever a (perceived) need for a re-install.
This fix is great for the 1-2% of the population that reads slashdot and perhaps another 10-20% that ask us for help, but the rest of the population is gonna be toast if something happens (either on purpose or by accident) to the partition that XP was originally installed on.
The Get A First Life people need to find a lawyer to slam Linden Labs for denying him work, and suggesting that he could get an injunction against the 'proceed and permit' letter under `restraint of trade` laws.
Back in the late '90s there were a large number of products that, among other things, advertised Linux support ... Then Microsoft recognized Linux as a legitimate threat. About the time that Microsoft started signing drivers, I saw advertisements of Linux support quietly disappear from hardware boxes.
Yes, it may just be coincidence, but to have manufacturers drop support for a growing market is pretty suspicious to my mind.
I mean, what is there to even consider in terms of AMD open sourcing it's new specs, other than fear of MS retribution? More importantly, where are you going to get the proof that MS is black^h^h^h^h^h putting pressure on manufacturers, given that there are probably gobs of NDA's -- not to mention the fear of MS .... unh, having multiple 'accidents' (yeah! That's the ticket!) on the road to certification of your drivers for XP and/or Vista?
It gets even worse with Vista because, if they don't certify you, your product will not work properly, Period. At least with XP, users would (just) get these annoying messages about how this new driver will blow up their computer and make their children blind.
Clearly, I'm not an aero engineer, and if both the Germans and Brits came up with centrifugal engines first, I can easily believe one of them stole it from the other -- but it still stands that they put recognizably different engines into production.
And I still stand by my point that the MS's patent is far too similar to the Blue Jay product to accept that it really was an independent creation without some sort of proof in that direction. I can see having a lot that's similar, but there comes a point of diminishing probabilities, and MS seems to have passed it.
Hopefully they're next on the list for prosecution. Problem is, I'm guessing that the trail from the drug manufacturers to the spammers are a bit better laundered.. It's going to take a little more work to track the flow, and prove who knew what about drug spam.
I will probably never complain about going after the people who do these sorts of things (although I my complain about the specifics of a sleazy attack, I will always say that somebody needs to go after them).
-- and yes, there will always be spammers, but there really needs to be a two-pronged approach. One is to educate the user community to avoid the scams, and the other is to penalize the scammers. The less that it profits the scammers, the less likely they are to engage in the activity. If you place the burden of the proof on the users, then the scammers will always be upgrading the style of their attacks to deal with the education of the population... we've already seen that with the ever-increasing sophistication of the phishing attacks.
Ultimately, the only way to stop (and/or slow down) these attacks is to make them unprofitable for the scammer. Just about anything (sleazy or otherwise) from selling food to live child porn that makes the seller money will find someone to engage in the process.
Where there are victims, they need to be assisted not blamed, and the victimizers need to be discouraged.
It's like if I walk up to you in the parking lot, while you're opening your car I put a gun to your head and pull the trigger. Then when the gun jams, I ask you for a light and go on about how "Oooh, how did that thing end up in my hand? I was really just here to ask you for a light ... and the guy with the body bag goes slinking off into the back alley.
Yes, this may be innocent, but MS has a history of stealing other people's IP and claiming it as their own... Even here, we now have the second example of them trying to claim this almost-10 year old invention.
If the three people who signed on to this patent didn't know about Blue Jay, then someone higher up made an explicit decision to hide the source of the enhancement request from them. Those higher ups would have also been more likely to have seen this patent request as it went through the levels. As you go up the levels in this, the pool of possibly innocent management gets smaller and smaller.
When you have a rap sheet like Microsoft's the presumption of innocence, in a case like this, starts to look more like suspension of disbelief.
Yep... The moon's seen it's first example of the very human activity known as looting.
You actually believe the story that the LLRE was placed by a live astronaut? You've obviously lost your tinfoil hat liner!
The point is that the Bush administration claims the right. They wouldn't claim the right if they weren't planning to exercise it.
Sheesh
Now I know what to do the next time I get stuck in a -40C blizzard. I'll just pull out my magnifying glass and Halogen light and .... wait....
What goes up must come down. (suspected true)
Oh yeah... tell that to Voyager. Lightning doesn't strike the same spot twice. (obviously false (ouch!)) Well after lightning strikes the first time, that place (ouch) is never going to be the same again.A watched pot never boils. etc...
There's actually some truth to that... If you take the lid of a pot that you're trying to boil, the escaping steam carries away heat and helps to cool the pot -- It also lowers the vapour pressure of the steam, which allows more steam to be generated (allowing the water in the pot to cool faster).That way, a watched pot boils a lot slower than an unwatched pot -- and if the heat is low enough, then removing the lid actually will make the differnce between boiling, and just evaporating at a high temperature.
This message brought to you by the society for the anal retentive (I had to say that, or they'd browbeat me to death).
Personally, I'd prefer if they'd figure out which features don't save well in .DOC (or whatever) and only complain when those features are being used in the file that's being saved.
Yes they did, but what I'm impressed with is that they actually managed to fit OO on one of those machines..... I mean, do you swap out to paper tape? -- and how did you build a C compiler for wire-wrap?
- Disabling the first robot doesn't disable the second robot that the team just happened to bring along in case the first one got shot.
Even better yet -- bring a bunch of little $10 boxes (OK. $500 boxes once they go through military procurement procedures), that look like a sniper bot, and even move like a sniper bot, but that's all they do. (maybe you can even slave them to the prime sniper bot(s) so that they swivel in the direction of the sniper when the prime bot senses a sniper (makes it harder to recognize the real 'bot)). That way the sniper will have no way to figure out which box to shoot at.... By the time he takes them all out. You've put a hole in his (or her) head.And, yeah .. put a kevlar layer in the real box. Decoys or not, you still want it to be able to take a sniper hit or two and keep on ticking.