While you're at it, why not open up the classified ads section in your local newspaper and immediately buy the cheapest used car you can find without doing any research at all. You can round it out by renting the cheapest apartment in the city and shopping for food at the cheapest grocery store, all without doing a bit of research.
Next thing ya know, you'll want people to stop calling themselves "editors" unless they are willing to proofread that single paragraph (a whole paragraph, what a tremendous burden huh?) before submitting it to an audience of many tens of thousands of people.
So we should reign in the name-callers on either side, and empower those people who know how to build cooperation, corporations, and positive feedback loops.
Can we also empower those people who know the difference between the words "reign", meaning the possession of power or authority, and "rein", which is the strap that you use to control a horse?
Then maybe we could rein in some of the worst abuses of the English language.
They're in art school too. They should have their own MacBooks.
I'm reluctant. But telling my compatriots to go to our building supervisor and ask him for a desktop-on-a-cart, as they should do, is considered rude and unfriendly.
Actually, forcing you to give up your personal notebook so that they can do their own work is rude and unfriendly. It sounds like you're just too Canadian to say "Non", so here are a few tips:
(1) Set up a guest account and have your friends log into it. This is fairly simple to set up in just about any modern OS, so the details are left as an exercise for the reader.
(2) If the guest account in (1) is somehow too limited, or doesn't have access to everything that your friends need, then that's too frakkin' bad and they can get their own computer.
(3) Mention to anyone who asks to use your computer just how much damage was caused the last time some yo-yo plugged in an infested USB drive, "just checked some email" on yaoizone.com or got just a little bit too energetic with the trackpad.
(4) Don't mention that the events in (3) have never happened. Yet. It's only a matter of time and you shouldn't have to spend hours cleaning up the mess that someone leaves just because they can't be bothered to spend a few minutes helping themselves.
First off, write a letter explaining what has happened and send it to your school board, city council, and local newspaper-who-might-give-a-crap-about-this-kind-of-thing. Talk with your daughter's teachers, the school principal, and whoever else you need to to get some assurances that they're not going to do this again.
Then, if you're still worried about your children being sent to the off-world colonies while you're not looking, talk with your daughter about what happened and how she can make sure she gets home on the right bus. If you really want a technological solution then buy her a mobile phone, maybe something like one of these beasties which can be locked down to only calling a handful of numbers (not a product endorsement, just giving an example), and make sure she knows how to call you at home if she has trouble again. Keep it charged and have her stash it in her jacket or backpack where she's unlikely to lose it. There's no need to weld it onto a metal cuff around her ankle, just let her use it to call you when she needs to.
Hopefully you can both feel better about her security that way. You need to know that she is safe, and she needs to know that you trust her and that you are able to help her out if she has troubles. Strapping a prisoner restraint collar around her neck and monitoring her every move isn't going to do that.
Can someone please elaborate what this UTC timestamp thing is? With some googling I can just assume it means UNIX timestamp. Can we please not invent new names for everything?
"New names"? The entire world has been using UTC as an international standard for timekeeping since before you were born and were calling it UT or GMT for a hundred years before that. Can we please try to learn about something instead of just whinging about it?
Copying that freshman assignment leads to copying conference reports later on in life.
Actually, copying that freshman assignment _really_ pisses off the poor schmuck who has to grade it. Not only have you just insulted his (or her) intelligence by turning in something that was obviously cribbed from Wikipedia, but also instead of just spending a few minutes reading your paper, scribbling down a grade and then moving on to the next one he has to look up the original source that you copied from, have a chat with the professor in charge of the class, take time out of his day to have a meeting with you and explain exactly how dumb you just were, and then after wasting all that time dealing with your mess, decide whether or not to inform your department head and have you expelled for it.
By that time the only two things keeping you in school at all are the fact that there's an awful lot of paperwork involved in having you expelled, and that your professor may still feel sorry for you. Your best bet is to admit everything, tell a mildly sad story about how you were running out of time and panicked, and then never do it again.
Canada is the only country to succesfully attack the White House, and there are still scorch marks on the walls of that hallowed building to commemorate it.
That's one of your national sports, and only for the past fifteen years. Before 1994 Canada's only national sport was Lacrosse, a game loosely based on an old First Nations game in which hundreds of participants would run around a field beating each other with long sticks while ignoring a small ball. Modern Ice Hockey is just a pale, polite shadow of Lacrosse.
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And around here you can't even get higher than 5.
While you're at it, why not open up the classified ads section in your local newspaper and immediately buy the cheapest used car you can find without doing any research at all. You can round it out by renting the cheapest apartment in the city and shopping for food at the cheapest grocery store, all without doing a bit of research.
Whoever said stupidity wasn't painful enough?
This is blasphemy! This is madness!
Can we also empower those people who know the difference between the words "reign", meaning the possession of power or authority, and "rein", which is the strap that you use to control a horse?
Then maybe we could rein in some of the worst abuses of the English language.
And when they do they are immediately snatched by other squatters and the whole process starts over again.
No no no, it's "Aaaaauuuugggghhhh", from the back of the throat.
That's just to get a rise out of the rabid fanboys who don't understand big words like "precedent". Thanks for playing.
Well that's simple, just change the gravitational constant of the universe.
I never thought I would see the day that an iconic US American brand being sold off to a Chinese company.
This is truly unprecedented.
They're in art school too. They should have their own MacBooks.
Actually, forcing you to give up your personal notebook so that they can do their own work is rude and unfriendly. It sounds like you're just too Canadian to say "Non", so here are a few tips:
(1) Set up a guest account and have your friends log into it. This is fairly simple to set up in just about any modern OS, so the details are left as an exercise for the reader.
(2) If the guest account in (1) is somehow too limited, or doesn't have access to everything that your friends need, then that's too frakkin' bad and they can get their own computer.
(3) Mention to anyone who asks to use your computer just how much damage was caused the last time some yo-yo plugged in an infested USB drive, "just checked some email" on yaoizone.com or got just a little bit too energetic with the trackpad.
(4) Don't mention that the events in (3) have never happened. Yet. It's only a matter of time and you shouldn't have to spend hours cleaning up the mess that someone leaves just because they can't be bothered to spend a few minutes helping themselves.
Well, I guess we all get the government and schools that we deserve.
Or perhaps some variant of "left to her own devices".
First off, write a letter explaining what has happened and send it to your school board, city council, and local newspaper-who-might-give-a-crap-about-this-kind-of-thing. Talk with your daughter's teachers, the school principal, and whoever else you need to to get some assurances that they're not going to do this again.
Then, if you're still worried about your children being sent to the off-world colonies while you're not looking, talk with your daughter about what happened and how she can make sure she gets home on the right bus. If you really want a technological solution then buy her a mobile phone, maybe something like one of these beasties which can be locked down to only calling a handful of numbers (not a product endorsement, just giving an example), and make sure she knows how to call you at home if she has trouble again. Keep it charged and have her stash it in her jacket or backpack where she's unlikely to lose it. There's no need to weld it onto a metal cuff around her ankle, just let her use it to call you when she needs to.
Hopefully you can both feel better about her security that way. You need to know that she is safe, and she needs to know that you trust her and that you are able to help her out if she has troubles. Strapping a prisoner restraint collar around her neck and monitoring her every move isn't going to do that.
Is that lesson that you and all but one of your children are going to die within the first five minutes of the film no matter what you do?
Or have you been watching different Disney films than I have?
I don't think that word means what you think it means.
Either that or your phone company has a much better roaming agreement than mine does.
What part of flying on an airplane requires that you have fingerprints?
And we're all very sorry about that.
When we _all_ know that it was an American who did that.
Al Gore.
Nope, I can't see anything wrong here. Everything is as it should be. Move along, citizens.
"This court finds you guilty and sentences you to having pictures drawn of you in a particularly grimy prison inhabited by tentacle demons."
"But, your honor -- "
"One more word out of you and I'll find you in contempt of court! You could end up as a guest character on Inuyasha like _that_."
"New names"? The entire world has been using UTC as an international standard for timekeeping since before you were born and were calling it UT or GMT for a hundred years before that. Can we please try to learn about something instead of just whinging about it?
...brilliant!
That's...
Actually, copying that freshman assignment _really_ pisses off the poor schmuck who has to grade it. Not only have you just insulted his (or her) intelligence by turning in something that was obviously cribbed from Wikipedia, but also instead of just spending a few minutes reading your paper, scribbling down a grade and then moving on to the next one he has to look up the original source that you copied from, have a chat with the professor in charge of the class, take time out of his day to have a meeting with you and explain exactly how dumb you just were, and then after wasting all that time dealing with your mess, decide whether or not to inform your department head and have you expelled for it.
By that time the only two things keeping you in school at all are the fact that there's an awful lot of paperwork involved in having you expelled, and that your professor may still feel sorry for you. Your best bet is to admit everything, tell a mildly sad story about how you were running out of time and panicked, and then never do it again.
Saying "No, you're wrong, I just forgot one citation but everything else is fine" is not it.
True, but they felt so bad about it afterwords that they apologized a lot and finally burned down their own Parliament buildings about a hundred years later.
That's one of your national sports, and only for the past fifteen years. Before 1994 Canada's only national sport was Lacrosse, a game loosely based on an old First Nations game in which hundreds of participants would run around a field beating each other with long sticks while ignoring a small ball. Modern Ice Hockey is just a pale, polite shadow of Lacrosse.