There is no magic way to design electronics that are RF immune...
He didn't say it should be immune, he said it should be tolerant. Ensuring that zero external RF emission gets in may be impossible, but making sure that once it's there you can handle it without crashing certainly isn't.
The only avionics components that should be even remotely susceptible to Wi-Fi interference are RF sensors whose measurements might be skewed by the presence of external EMI. Protecting even the most sensitive computational and display circuitry from Wi-Fi and other low-level RF interference is something we've been able to do for decades.
If your display goes blank when someone fires up their Wi-Fi card, you haven't failed to solve a difficult problem -- you've failed to solve an easy one. It makes me wonder what else in your design isn't fault-tolerant.
If Dell's engineers could design a laptop 10 years ago with a Wi-Fi transmitter *built in* that didn't crash when you surfed the web and sell it to the consumer for $2K, I have to believe that this achievement is not out of reach in 2011 for top-end engineers who design aircraft nav/display units that sell for tens of thousands.
So...my kid goes off and surfs somewhere stupid and the family computer gets infected. The ISP cuts me off from the rest of the world, making the internet a safer place for everyone else.
Great. What happens next? Am I stuck in Paypal-like purgatory where they're "reviewing" my account ad nauseum while I have no access to the outside? Do they start snail-mailing me CDs with antivirus software? What would be the EXACT path a customer follows to get back online? Until that's unquestionably clear, nobody should be cutting anybody off.
That's the problem with this, right there. When you introduce legislation as "Precious Little Snowflake's Law", you get a free pass on the whole unpleasantness of having to appeal to people's rationale. Instead, you get unfettered access to their "OH MY GOD MY BABY!!!!" instinct. It's a fail-safe strategy (how many "Whosit's Law" measures have failed to be ratified?). Simply brilliant.
This is a HUGE problem with our legal system across the board. What should be important when we pass a law is the statistical validity of cause and effect -- not the one-off tragedy that one family experienced, no matter how great.
Whether this particular drunk-driving law is prudent or not is hardly even relevant. The real issue is that it should be illegal to include any victim's (or other person's) name in the title, text, summary or advertising of a proposed bill. The "Brady Bill", "Megan's Law", "Leandra's Law", etc., etc., etc. should be required to pass muster on their merits (which they may possess, and that's fine as long as there's rational analysis and critical reasoning involved) instead of getting rubber-stamped on an emotional tear jerk.
"You go ahead and do whatever you think is best. I'd rather not know".
It's actually more like "You go ahead and do whatever you think is best, given all the things you've considered and I probably haven't. I'd rather the enemy not know."
Or are we so humane and politically correct now that that word isn't part of our vocabulary, even in wartime?
Let's make an analogy to the corporate world for a second (as much as we all like to hate "evil corporations"). If you're a shareholder in a company, you have a vote at shareholder meetings - just like you vote in elections and referendums if you're a citizen of the country. However, that does not -- and should not -- mean that you get to be privy to every management decision and the details of every internal action the company takes. Why? Because it is imperative to the success of that company -- and to your success as its stakeholder -- that some things remain private so as to maintain competitive advantage.
Not everything single thing the company does will be something you agree with. And not everything it does will be pretty, but it's important to understand that people higher than you might have a better perspective on the sometimes-unfortunate cost of staying in business.
Yes - sometimes a government agent who has infiltrated a drug cartel or other organized crime ring has to do some regrettable things to achieve the ultimate success of an operation. If you take the "information wants to be free" approach, go full Assange and expose each instance of such an action, all it will mean is that these actions were taken for nothing.
The world isn't perfect, and sometimes there is collateral damage in performing necessary tasks in keeping your ship afloat. Total opacity isn't the right answer either, but there IS a middle ground. Unfortunately getting to that middle ground requires some genuine thinking, which neither Assange nor his supporters seem willing to do.
"Information wants to be free" is simple. "Rights come with responsibilities" is a little more complicated.
In the end, the guy pleaded guilty not just on the internet but in a court of law.
He's a scared 19-year-old up against a police department that wants to have him up on a cross. His parents (who obviously failed to teach him when it's OK to push your luck and when it's not) are probably siding with the cops to now "teach him a lesson", so he's got no one in his corner.
Put yourself in that position, and imagine the DA (or whatever Canadian equivalent) gives you a choice between pleading guilty and not driving for half a year, or facing jail time if you contest the charge. You'd plead guilty too, even if it IS a gross violation of due process - you don't have the requisite tools/experience to fight the system, and knowing that you were legally right is of little consolation when you're being savaged by your cell mate.
This guy may or may not have been speeding.If he actually was (which I personally do think, but that's irrelevant), there is no way a witness could identify him. At 87mph, you can't read a license plate or even identify the model of the car. The best you can do is say a white BMW went by really fast. If we're really saying that's good enough to convict someone who has a white BMW because, well, he's a teenager and should be taught to slow down -- despite how the law is written -- then we may as well do away with police and courts altogether and go back to lynch mobs.
(Incidentally, if you actually read the thread where he posted his boast, you'll see that after enough people pointed out the error of his ways he came around and agreed with them. Lesson learned. The best education comes from your peers and the people you look up to, not the people you're afraid of.)
As an aside, the snitch in question who thought the best use of his time in the U.S. was to call Canada and report that one of their citizens might have been speeding should be outed and dealt with appropriately.
I admit I didn't have time to read the study thoroughly, but:
(a) The study specifically talks about hybrid cars, not pure electrics; the headline is misleading.
(b) Let's take a very conservative estimate and say an electric car draws an average of 10hp when driving. That's about 7.5kw. Let's round that up to 8 for simplicity's sake, and if we assume 100% efficiency, the car needs to spend 4 minutes on the charger for every 1 minute it spends on the road. If we charge it overnight (8 hours), that's 2 hours of driving time, or 60 miles if you average (as many drivers do) somewhere around 30mph - before you have to plug it back in for another 8 hours. And that's in the absolutely best case.
I might be missing something, but 2kw to charge sounds very unrealistic to me.
I find that there are parallels between the climate science and evolution and vaccines. All are under attack by those who distrust science and especially intellectuals.
Wrong. I trust science - in fact, as far as observing the physical world goes, I think I can say I only trust science.
But when a "scientist" says, straight-faced and without irony, "Why should I make the data available to you, when your aim is to try and find something wrong with it?", that is NOT science.
I am in no way a creationist. That said, I'm not afraid to admit there IS scientific doubt about Darwin's theory of evolution (why should I be?). That's why it's called a theory, not a fact or axiom. That's how science works.
Why are you afraid to admit that there is scientific doubt about human-caused climate change -- or whatever the politically-correct title for it is this week -- and why are you so eager to sweep this skepticism under the rug by claiming that it comes from Big Energy, rather than from some legitimate, apolitical scientists (as it does)?
These men knew that this document meant that they very well might be swinging at the end of the gallows, but the cause was still worth it.
The reason that these men fought the American revolution, and were willing to die for it, is so that future generations of Americans could live in a society where they could enact major change WITHOUT having to get dead or injured. That was the sacrifice they made - "the cause," as you call it, that was worth it.
It goes beyond the fear of physical injury or death. Let's say you oppose gay marriage, for whatever reason. Who knows - you might have perfectly rational, well founded reasons for your stance, and you certainly have your right to support whatever political beliefs you hold. The trouble is, nobody is interested in your reasons. Your beliefs are politically incorrect. Your name goes in a searchable registry of gay marriage opponents.
Now, let's say you're a software engineer (or work in any other field where politics aren't a factor in your performance). Let's further say you're very good at what you do. You apply for a job. The hiring manager -- or even the first-tier reviewer in HR -- does a Google search on your name. It doesn't matter that you're highly decorated in your field and hold an Ivy league Ph.D. It doesn't matter what your references say about you, because it'll never get that far. As soon as your name shows up on that registry of political pariahs, you're untouchable. You won't get the job. Or the next one. Or the other one you're qualified for. Thanks to this SCOTUS ruling, because you signed your name to a political petition, you can no longer make the living that your hard work entitles you to make.
If I'm not mistaken, the forefathers of the fighters in the American revolution left their home countries to escape exactly this paradigm.
Also - if your signature on a petition should be a matter of public record, why is there a shroud around the voting booth and how come you don't put your name on the ballot you turn in?
There's a "next time" happening continuously. It just doesn't make the news because (A) it's not politically correct to vilify African regimes, and (B) sad pictures of oil-soaked birds in the Gulf of Mexico sell western guilt better than pictures of oil-slicked water in Nigeria where there aren't any more birds left to pull at bleeding heart strings.
"Over time, staying outside the DPL alliance would become a costly choice for companies whose products might infringe patents."
Geez - labor unions meet the Godfather. "Of course you don't have to join The Alliance, but if you don't join The Alliance you better watch your step veeeery closely..."
The law of unintended consequences is strong in this one.
First of all - fahrbot, I'm very sorry for your loss. Seriously...that's more relevant to real life than anything else we'll discuss here.
I didn't suggest that sexual congress between older men and younger women is de facto "safer" for families. I said that sexual congress outside the family is more of a threat to that family than sexual (or other) congress when there isn't a family to threaten in the first place.
Statistically, fahrbot's situation is an exception to an overwhelming rule: there are many more older men in relationships (and certainly in marriages; check the stats) with younger women than there are older women in relationships with younger men.
There are very few young (20s) men who set out wanting to marry a woman past her mid-30s. Again, I don't care enough about this to run around collecting statistics, but it should be fairly self-evident that a large portion of young men who list themselves on CougarLife are either in an experimental phase, looking for an easy lay, or - more likely - frustrated by their failure with women in their own age group and looking to boost their self-confidence through attention and affirmation from older women. Older women are well aware of this, and in all honesty don't generally come to a "cougar bar" (sorry, I know it's an awful term) or a site like CougarLife looking for a serious relationship unless they're either delusional or part of an outlying minority (not a judgment, just a statement of fact) of women who really do strongly prefer younger men.
On dating sites where older men seek younger women (and vice versa), obviously there is more than a fair share of married/committed sleaze-bags as well. The difference that I see, though, is that this is a more self-regulating scenario. A young woman looking for an older man is much more often looking for stability and commitment than a young man looking for an older woman. On a site like CougarLife, a woman looking for a "nonfamily safe" tryst is more likely to find a willing partner, whereas an older man on a different site looking for such a tryst with a younger woman is more likely to get a swift education and/or face the threat of exposure.
Remember - the question being discussed is: "Is a network that facilitates matches between older women and younger men more 'nonfamily safe' than a site connecting women with similarly-aged or older men?" An open discussion of that requires recognizing that men and women are different and aren't always motivated by the same factors - that isn't "sexist". If you consider a statement to be "moronic" or a rationalization to be "absurd", please provide explanations - not insults.
In most cases, an older woman seeking out a younger man is looking for a hook-up (women aren't morons, they know that men 10-20 their junior won't marry them). I don't have enough interest in this subject to do in-depth research, but I'm willing to bet a significant portion of CougarLife's clients are married women with children looking for something on the side - which is indeed "nonfamily safe".
In contrast, an older man dating a younger woman is much more likely to end up in a relationship or marriage, and while an older man actively looking for a younger woman is clearly looking to hook up as well, he is also much more likely to be looking for something more substantial, which means he's in a position to do so - meaning, not married and not in a situation where the outcome of the services provided by [his dating site of choice] will be a threat to his family.
Turning down CougarLife's ads might be wrong based on other factors, but the "nonfamily safe" rational itself seems pretty sound to me.
Holy wow relax. I was alluding to how it's suddenly big news that ANDROID IS GOING TO HAVE A WI-FI HOTSPOT FEATURE SOON when others already have it on the market, and also pointing out that it's available for free today while this next-generation product listed here will offer it for $30 bucks a month.
While it's a fact that nothing exists until Google invents it, Palm has the Wi-Fi hotspot feature integrated into their Pre and Pixi handsets today. Not only that, Verizon is offering that feature at no additional cost for as long as you have the phone activated on your plan. I have one. It works great.
5-10 year patents on physical gizmos might be okay.
It often takes 2-4 years to bring an idea for a physical gizmo to market, depending on the gizmo's complexity. It then takes a further 2-3 years to gain market acceptance, if you're lucky.
So what you're saying is, if I invent a physical gizmo, patent it, and invest my time and money to develop and market it, my IP protection should expire just about the time the effort begins to come to fruition -- opening the door for anyone to compete with me on price, which they're able to do because they don't need to recoup the R&D and marketing investment?
What do you expect will become of most good, but R&D-intensive, ideas if we accept your proposal?
If you don't have dogmatic sexual restrictions (sex before marriage is a crime and/or draws severe social stigma that totally fucks up your life), society's morals drift. Society will then eventually stabilize at a point where you can just walk up to anyone and suggest fucking, and get it right there; sex flows freely, about as easy as hugs and handshakes.
Huh. You say this like it's a bad thing...
Also, it's bullshit. That's about as valid as the argument that legalizing gay marriage will lead to people marrying multiple partners, goats, and furniture.
A kid doesn't need to learn the Brand X version of a particular sort of software.
That's just nonsense perpetrated by middle aged idiots that couldn't adapt to something new if their life literally depended on it.
The trouble is, a kid DOES need to learn Brand X of a particular sort of software, because the people he'll be working for/with use it and if he doesn't know it, they'll hire someone who does. In a sense, his life does depend on it.
For all the fervor of the FOSS hype, here in the real world people need to make a living, and they go to school to learn the skills they need to do that. Beg, borrow or steal if you must, but if you are a school, your ultimate responsibility is to teach the skills that enable your students to succeed in the framework of a sometimes-inconvenient reality.
"As a computer science teacher at an East Coast high school, Smith became concerned when the district bought single-user licenses of Adobe Creative Suite and Microsoft Office, then installed them on network servers where 5,000 users could access them.
Smith says he approached his superiors and the district's IT department and explained why that was wrong, but to no avail. So one day he called the Business Software Alliance and reported them...a few months after he contacted the BSA, his employers purchased legal licenses for its software."
With what money, you self-righteous scumbag? This is a SCHOOL, and they're making do with what they have. It's not a for-profit corporation that's making money at the expense of another corporation's loss.
To be sure, the school isn't in the right. But sinking to an even lower level of wrong isn't the solution. There's the letter of the law, and then there's doing the right thing. Looks like someone missed that chapter in ethics class.
The N1 is an inch shorter, but almost exactly twice as thick. That's probably a better combination for some people, but it doesn't work for me. Also, no keyboard.
As far as the display, 320 x 400 at 2.63" is apparently enough to comfortably read/. and post this comment:-) But like I said, to each his own. I just hope the technology sticks around so we continue to have this opyion, too.
Not compelling enough? Quick: name two smartphones that have a touchscreen AND a physical keyboard on one surface, with no (other) moving parts. The Pre may not be a godsend, but the Pixi certainly is.
I have the Pixi Plus with Verizon service. Other than battery life (which is a well-documented issue that has several acceptable solutions), I cannot find a SINGLE thing I don't love about it.
It's a shame the app store isn't on par with Apple's. As devices go, it's not only one of the most technically capable phones on the market, it's also the ONLY real smartphone that fits in the pocket of a pair of jeans. For someone who doesn't carry a purse, that is a huge factor.
One of the problems is that in all the side-by-side reviews, the Pre always beats out the Pixi because...wait for it...it can't run as many apps at once. (Note: the iPhone presently can't run more than one, and reviewers worship it.) So people buy the Pre, and then aren't happy with it because the form factor is annoying and the keyboard is unusable (and because they expect their battery to last three days while they watch videos over Wi-Fi). And Palm gets a bad rap, even though they make a device that people would fall in love en masse with if they weren't talked out of giving it half a chance.
To each his own, but for me Palm offers a product that nothing else today can compete with. I really hope the market gives them a fair shake before letting their technology fade away.
The "artificial economic entity" has rights to employ lots of people, who pay lots of taxes.
It is beyond me how people consistently fail to understand this. The fair way to calculate how much a company pays in taxes is to sum up the income taxes from each of its employees.
According to Wikipedia, General Electric has 323,000 employees (as of 2008). Let's be conservative and say that 2/3 of those are in the US. Let's be even more conservative and say that each one earns an average of $35K/year. A person earning $35K in 2009 paid $4,938 in federal taxes.
That means that if the evil, tax-avoiding artificial economic entity that is GE didn't exist, or existed elsewhere, over $1 billion in tax revenue would be lost to the federal government alone -- not to mention revenue to states and municipalities through income, sales and other taxes, and to say nothing of the sales tax revenue generated through the sale of GE's products.
But other than all that, yeah: "BIG BAD CORPORATION PAYS NO TAXES. EEEEVIIIIIIIILLLL!"
- Independent Power & Glory Switches
- Continuously Variable This/That Level
- Full-Function Ecstacy Generator
- Variable This to That Crossover Frequency
- Here-There Pan (Back Again Switching)
- Program Dependent Sheen Removal
- Anti-Resonant Concrete Chassis
- Proprietary Paint to Reflect Odd Harmonic Light Frequencies to Reduce Nono-Linear Photon Radiation Interference
- Time Warp Compression/Expansion to Synchronize Here/There Time Coordinates
"Most of your job while driving is not keeping the vehicle running down the street straight. A six year old can do that"
Since we are talking about "interstate truck and bus drivers", actually it IS. And since most truckers and bus drivers are presumably more developed than a six-year-old, maybe it's not necessary to force them into highway hypnosis by making them do nothing else at all while keeping the vehicle running down the street straight.
"Correlation is strong evidence suggesting a link, and a little common sense points out the obvious factors."
Obvious != true. It is obvious that ice cream causes skin cancer, since places where people eat more ice cream have a substantially higher incidence of skin cancer. More to the point, it is obvious that talking on the phone while driving causes more accidents. Except that it doesn't.
No, of course we don't need a scientist to tell us everything. But we DO need to avoid the cargo-cult approach to passing laws. For most of my life I've lived in a country where we don't impose restrictions without measurable benefit merely for the sake of imposing restrictions. I would kind of like that to continue.
"To sum it all up, you sir, are a dumbass."
That was well thought-out, eloquent and appropriate. It is the kind of comment that adds value to the conversation, substantiates your point of view, and encourages others to re-evaluate theirs.
Slashdot Mirror
There is no magic way to design electronics that are RF immune...
He didn't say it should be immune, he said it should be tolerant. Ensuring that zero external RF emission gets in may be impossible, but making sure that once it's there you can handle it without crashing certainly isn't.
The only avionics components that should be even remotely susceptible to Wi-Fi interference are RF sensors whose measurements might be skewed by the presence of external EMI. Protecting even the most sensitive computational and display circuitry from Wi-Fi and other low-level RF interference is something we've been able to do for decades.
If your display goes blank when someone fires up their Wi-Fi card, you haven't failed to solve a difficult problem -- you've failed to solve an easy one. It makes me wonder what else in your design isn't fault-tolerant.
If Dell's engineers could design a laptop 10 years ago with a Wi-Fi transmitter *built in* that didn't crash when you surfed the web and sell it to the consumer for $2K, I have to believe that this achievement is not out of reach in 2011 for top-end engineers who design aircraft nav/display units that sell for tens of thousands.
So...my kid goes off and surfs somewhere stupid and the family computer gets infected. The ISP cuts me off from the rest of the world, making the internet a safer place for everyone else.
Great. What happens next? Am I stuck in Paypal-like purgatory where they're "reviewing" my account ad nauseum while I have no access to the outside? Do they start snail-mailing me CDs with antivirus software? What would be the EXACT path a customer follows to get back online? Until that's unquestionably clear, nobody should be cutting anybody off.
That's the problem with this, right there. When you introduce legislation as "Precious Little Snowflake's Law", you get a free pass on the whole unpleasantness of having to appeal to people's rationale. Instead, you get unfettered access to their "OH MY GOD MY BABY!!!!" instinct. It's a fail-safe strategy (how many "Whosit's Law" measures have failed to be ratified?). Simply brilliant.
This is a HUGE problem with our legal system across the board. What should be important when we pass a law is the statistical validity of cause and effect -- not the one-off tragedy that one family experienced, no matter how great.
Whether this particular drunk-driving law is prudent or not is hardly even relevant. The real issue is that it should be illegal to include any victim's (or other person's) name in the title, text, summary or advertising of a proposed bill. The "Brady Bill", "Megan's Law", "Leandra's Law", etc., etc., etc. should be required to pass muster on their merits (which they may possess, and that's fine as long as there's rational analysis and critical reasoning involved) instead of getting rubber-stamped on an emotional tear jerk.
"You go ahead and do whatever you think is best. I'd rather not know".
It's actually more like "You go ahead and do whatever you think is best, given all the things you've considered and I probably haven't. I'd rather the enemy not know."
Or are we so humane and politically correct now that that word isn't part of our vocabulary, even in wartime?
Wow, that is incredibly short-sighted.
Let's make an analogy to the corporate world for a second (as much as we all like to hate "evil corporations"). If you're a shareholder in a company, you have a vote at shareholder meetings - just like you vote in elections and referendums if you're a citizen of the country. However, that does not -- and should not -- mean that you get to be privy to every management decision and the details of every internal action the company takes. Why? Because it is imperative to the success of that company -- and to your success as its stakeholder -- that some things remain private so as to maintain competitive advantage.
Not everything single thing the company does will be something you agree with. And not everything it does will be pretty, but it's important to understand that people higher than you might have a better perspective on the sometimes-unfortunate cost of staying in business.
Yes - sometimes a government agent who has infiltrated a drug cartel or other organized crime ring has to do some regrettable things to achieve the ultimate success of an operation. If you take the "information wants to be free" approach, go full Assange and expose each instance of such an action, all it will mean is that these actions were taken for nothing.
The world isn't perfect, and sometimes there is collateral damage in performing necessary tasks in keeping your ship afloat. Total opacity isn't the right answer either, but there IS a middle ground. Unfortunately getting to that middle ground requires some genuine thinking, which neither Assange nor his supporters seem willing to do.
"Information wants to be free" is simple. "Rights come with responsibilities" is a little more complicated.
In the end, the guy pleaded guilty not just on the internet but in a court of law.
He's a scared 19-year-old up against a police department that wants to have him up on a cross. His parents (who obviously failed to teach him when it's OK to push your luck and when it's not) are probably siding with the cops to now "teach him a lesson", so he's got no one in his corner.
Put yourself in that position, and imagine the DA (or whatever Canadian equivalent) gives you a choice between pleading guilty and not driving for half a year, or facing jail time if you contest the charge. You'd plead guilty too, even if it IS a gross violation of due process - you don't have the requisite tools/experience to fight the system, and knowing that you were legally right is of little consolation when you're being savaged by your cell mate.
This guy may or may not have been speeding.If he actually was (which I personally do think, but that's irrelevant), there is no way a witness could identify him. At 87mph, you can't read a license plate or even identify the model of the car. The best you can do is say a white BMW went by really fast. If we're really saying that's good enough to convict someone who has a white BMW because, well, he's a teenager and should be taught to slow down -- despite how the law is written -- then we may as well do away with police and courts altogether and go back to lynch mobs.
(Incidentally, if you actually read the thread where he posted his boast, you'll see that after enough people pointed out the error of his ways he came around and agreed with them. Lesson learned. The best education comes from your peers and the people you look up to, not the people you're afraid of.)
As an aside, the snitch in question who thought the best use of his time in the U.S. was to call Canada and report that one of their citizens might have been speeding should be outed and dealt with appropriately.
I admit I didn't have time to read the study thoroughly, but:
(a) The study specifically talks about hybrid cars, not pure electrics; the headline is misleading.
(b) Let's take a very conservative estimate and say an electric car draws an average of 10hp when driving. That's about 7.5kw. Let's round that up to 8 for simplicity's sake, and if we assume 100% efficiency, the car needs to spend 4 minutes on the charger for every 1 minute it spends on the road. If we charge it overnight (8 hours), that's 2 hours of driving time, or 60 miles if you average (as many drivers do) somewhere around 30mph - before you have to plug it back in for another 8 hours. And that's in the absolutely best case.
I might be missing something, but 2kw to charge sounds very unrealistic to me.
I find that there are parallels between the climate science and evolution and vaccines. All are under attack by those who distrust science and especially intellectuals.
Wrong. I trust science - in fact, as far as observing the physical world goes, I think I can say I only trust science.
But when a "scientist" says, straight-faced and without irony, "Why should I make the data available to you, when your aim is to try and find something wrong with it?", that is NOT science.
I am in no way a creationist. That said, I'm not afraid to admit there IS scientific doubt about Darwin's theory of evolution (why should I be?). That's why it's called a theory, not a fact or axiom. That's how science works.
Why are you afraid to admit that there is scientific doubt about human-caused climate change -- or whatever the politically-correct title for it is this week -- and why are you so eager to sweep this skepticism under the rug by claiming that it comes from Big Energy, rather than from some legitimate, apolitical scientists (as it does)?
These men knew that this document meant that they very well might be swinging at the end of the gallows, but the cause was still worth it.
The reason that these men fought the American revolution, and were willing to die for it, is so that future generations of Americans could live in a society where they could enact major change WITHOUT having to get dead or injured. That was the sacrifice they made - "the cause," as you call it, that was worth it.
It goes beyond the fear of physical injury or death. Let's say you oppose gay marriage, for whatever reason. Who knows - you might have perfectly rational, well founded reasons for your stance, and you certainly have your right to support whatever political beliefs you hold. The trouble is, nobody is interested in your reasons. Your beliefs are politically incorrect. Your name goes in a searchable registry of gay marriage opponents.
Now, let's say you're a software engineer (or work in any other field where politics aren't a factor in your performance). Let's further say you're very good at what you do. You apply for a job. The hiring manager -- or even the first-tier reviewer in HR -- does a Google search on your name. It doesn't matter that you're highly decorated in your field and hold an Ivy league Ph.D. It doesn't matter what your references say about you, because it'll never get that far. As soon as your name shows up on that registry of political pariahs, you're untouchable. You won't get the job. Or the next one. Or the other one you're qualified for. Thanks to this SCOTUS ruling, because you signed your name to a political petition, you can no longer make the living that your hard work entitles you to make.
If I'm not mistaken, the forefathers of the fighters in the American revolution left their home countries to escape exactly this paradigm.
Also - if your signature on a petition should be a matter of public record, why is there a shroud around the voting booth and how come you don't put your name on the ballot you turn in?
...Unfortunately there will be a next time.
There's a "next time" happening continuously. It just doesn't make the news because (A) it's not politically correct to vilify African regimes, and (B) sad pictures of oil-soaked birds in the Gulf of Mexico sell western guilt better than pictures of oil-slicked water in Nigeria where there aren't any more birds left to pull at bleeding heart strings.
"Over time, staying outside the DPL alliance would become a costly choice for companies whose products might infringe patents."
Geez - labor unions meet the Godfather. "Of course you don't have to join The Alliance, but if you don't join The Alliance you better watch your step veeeery closely..."
The law of unintended consequences is strong in this one.
First of all - fahrbot, I'm very sorry for your loss. Seriously...that's more relevant to real life than anything else we'll discuss here.
I didn't suggest that sexual congress between older men and younger women is de facto "safer" for families. I said that sexual congress outside the family is more of a threat to that family than sexual (or other) congress when there isn't a family to threaten in the first place.
Statistically, fahrbot's situation is an exception to an overwhelming rule: there are many more older men in relationships (and certainly in marriages; check the stats) with younger women than there are older women in relationships with younger men.
There are very few young (20s) men who set out wanting to marry a woman past her mid-30s. Again, I don't care enough about this to run around collecting statistics, but it should be fairly self-evident that a large portion of young men who list themselves on CougarLife are either in an experimental phase, looking for an easy lay, or - more likely - frustrated by their failure with women in their own age group and looking to boost their self-confidence through attention and affirmation from older women. Older women are well aware of this, and in all honesty don't generally come to a "cougar bar" (sorry, I know it's an awful term) or a site like CougarLife looking for a serious relationship unless they're either delusional or part of an outlying minority (not a judgment, just a statement of fact) of women who really do strongly prefer younger men.
On dating sites where older men seek younger women (and vice versa), obviously there is more than a fair share of married/committed sleaze-bags as well. The difference that I see, though, is that this is a more self-regulating scenario. A young woman looking for an older man is much more often looking for stability and commitment than a young man looking for an older woman. On a site like CougarLife, a woman looking for a "nonfamily safe" tryst is more likely to find a willing partner, whereas an older man on a different site looking for such a tryst with a younger woman is more likely to get a swift education and/or face the threat of exposure.
Remember - the question being discussed is: "Is a network that facilitates matches between older women and younger men more 'nonfamily safe' than a site connecting women with similarly-aged or older men?" An open discussion of that requires recognizing that men and women are different and aren't always motivated by the same factors - that isn't "sexist". If you consider a statement to be "moronic" or a rationalization to be "absurd", please provide explanations - not insults.
If I may play devil's advocate for a second:
In most cases, an older woman seeking out a younger man is looking for a hook-up (women aren't morons, they know that men 10-20 their junior won't marry them). I don't have enough interest in this subject to do in-depth research, but I'm willing to bet a significant portion of CougarLife's clients are married women with children looking for something on the side - which is indeed "nonfamily safe".
In contrast, an older man dating a younger woman is much more likely to end up in a relationship or marriage, and while an older man actively looking for a younger woman is clearly looking to hook up as well, he is also much more likely to be looking for something more substantial, which means he's in a position to do so - meaning, not married and not in a situation where the outcome of the services provided by [his dating site of choice] will be a threat to his family.
Turning down CougarLife's ads might be wrong based on other factors, but the "nonfamily safe" rational itself seems pretty sound to me.
Holy wow relax. I was alluding to how it's suddenly big news that ANDROID IS GOING TO HAVE A WI-FI HOTSPOT FEATURE SOON when others already have it on the market, and also pointing out that it's available for free today while this next-generation product listed here will offer it for $30 bucks a month.
While it's a fact that nothing exists until Google invents it, Palm has the Wi-Fi hotspot feature integrated into their Pre and Pixi handsets today. Not only that, Verizon is offering that feature at no additional cost for as long as you have the phone activated on your plan. I have one. It works great.
5-10 year patents on physical gizmos might be okay.
It often takes 2-4 years to bring an idea for a physical gizmo to market, depending on the gizmo's complexity. It then takes a further 2-3 years to gain market acceptance, if you're lucky.
So what you're saying is, if I invent a physical gizmo, patent it, and invest my time and money to develop and market it, my IP protection should expire just about the time the effort begins to come to fruition -- opening the door for anyone to compete with me on price, which they're able to do because they don't need to recoup the R&D and marketing investment?
What do you expect will become of most good, but R&D-intensive, ideas if we accept your proposal?
I bought smartphones before Android was around.
They ran Symbian.
Actually, they ran PalmOS.
"Smartphone" is to computer/handset hybrids what what "Xerox" is to photocopiers -- at one time, it was the model of the phone, not a ubiquitous term.
I had one of these for about two years. Browsing the web (however slowly) on a phone in early 2001 was pretty sweet.
If you don't have dogmatic sexual restrictions (sex before marriage is a crime and/or draws severe social stigma that totally fucks up your life), society's morals drift. Society will then eventually stabilize at a point where you can just walk up to anyone and suggest fucking, and get it right there; sex flows freely, about as easy as hugs and handshakes.
Huh. You say this like it's a bad thing...
Also, it's bullshit. That's about as valid as the argument that legalizing gay marriage will lead to people marrying multiple partners, goats, and furniture.
A kid doesn't need to learn the Brand X version of a particular sort of software.
That's just nonsense perpetrated by middle aged idiots that couldn't adapt to something new if their life literally depended on it.
The trouble is, a kid DOES need to learn Brand X of a particular sort of software, because the people he'll be working for/with use it and if he doesn't know it, they'll hire someone who does. In a sense, his life does depend on it.
For all the fervor of the FOSS hype, here in the real world people need to make a living, and they go to school to learn the skills they need to do that. Beg, borrow or steal if you must, but if you are a school, your ultimate responsibility is to teach the skills that enable your students to succeed in the framework of a sometimes-inconvenient reality.
"As a computer science teacher at an East Coast high school, Smith became concerned when the district bought single-user licenses of Adobe Creative Suite and Microsoft Office, then installed them on network servers where 5,000 users could access them.
Smith says he approached his superiors and the district's IT department and explained why that was wrong, but to no avail. So one day he called the Business Software Alliance and reported them...a few months after he contacted the BSA, his employers purchased legal licenses for its software."
With what money, you self-righteous scumbag? This is a SCHOOL, and they're making do with what they have. It's not a for-profit corporation that's making money at the expense of another corporation's loss.
To be sure, the school isn't in the right. But sinking to an even lower level of wrong isn't the solution. There's the letter of the law, and then there's doing the right thing. Looks like someone missed that chapter in ethics class.
The N1 is an inch shorter, but almost exactly twice as thick. That's probably a better combination for some people, but it doesn't work for me. Also, no keyboard.
/. and post this comment :-) But like I said, to each his own. I just hope the technology sticks around so we continue to have this opyion, too.
As far as the display, 320 x 400 at 2.63" is apparently enough to comfortably read
Not compelling enough? Quick: name two smartphones that have a touchscreen AND a physical keyboard on one surface, with no (other) moving parts. The Pre may not be a godsend, but the Pixi certainly is.
I have the Pixi Plus with Verizon service. Other than battery life (which is a well-documented issue that has several acceptable solutions), I cannot find a SINGLE thing I don't love about it.
It's a shame the app store isn't on par with Apple's. As devices go, it's not only one of the most technically capable phones on the market, it's also the ONLY real smartphone that fits in the pocket of a pair of jeans. For someone who doesn't carry a purse, that is a huge factor.
One of the problems is that in all the side-by-side reviews, the Pre always beats out the Pixi because...wait for it...it can't run as many apps at once. (Note: the iPhone presently can't run more than one, and reviewers worship it.) So people buy the Pre, and then aren't happy with it because the form factor is annoying and the keyboard is unusable (and because they expect their battery to last three days while they watch videos over Wi-Fi). And Palm gets a bad rap, even though they make a device that people would fall in love en masse with if they weren't talked out of giving it half a chance.
To each his own, but for me Palm offers a product that nothing else today can compete with. I really hope the market gives them a fair shake before letting their technology fade away.
The "artificial economic entity" has rights to employ lots of people, who pay lots of taxes.
It is beyond me how people consistently fail to understand this. The fair way to calculate how much a company pays in taxes is to sum up the income taxes from each of its employees.
According to Wikipedia, General Electric has 323,000 employees (as of 2008). Let's be conservative and say that 2/3 of those are in the US. Let's be even more conservative and say that each one earns an average of $35K/year. A person earning $35K in 2009 paid $4,938 in federal taxes.
That means that if the evil, tax-avoiding artificial economic entity that is GE didn't exist, or existed elsewhere, over $1 billion in tax revenue would be lost to the federal government alone -- not to mention revenue to states and municipalities through income, sales and other taxes, and to say nothing of the sales tax revenue generated through the sale of GE's products.
But other than all that, yeah: "BIG BAD CORPORATION PAYS NO TAXES. EEEEVIIIIIIIILLLL!"
Reminds me of this product:
- Independent Power & Glory Switches
- Continuously Variable This/That Level
- Full-Function Ecstacy Generator
- Variable This to That Crossover Frequency
- Here-There Pan (Back Again Switching)
- Program Dependent Sheen Removal
- Anti-Resonant Concrete Chassis
- Proprietary Paint to Reflect Odd Harmonic Light Frequencies to Reduce Nono-Linear Photon Radiation Interference
- Time Warp Compression/Expansion to Synchronize Here/There Time Coordinates
"Most of your job while driving is not keeping the vehicle running down the street straight. A six year old can do that"
Since we are talking about "interstate truck and bus drivers", actually it IS. And since most truckers and bus drivers are presumably more developed than a six-year-old, maybe it's not necessary to force them into highway hypnosis by making them do nothing else at all while keeping the vehicle running down the street straight.
"Correlation is strong evidence suggesting a link, and a little common sense points out the obvious factors."
Obvious != true. It is obvious that ice cream causes skin cancer, since places where people eat more ice cream have a substantially higher incidence of skin cancer. More to the point, it is obvious that talking on the phone while driving causes more accidents. Except that it doesn't.
No, of course we don't need a scientist to tell us everything. But we DO need to avoid the cargo-cult approach to passing laws. For most of my life I've lived in a country where we don't impose restrictions without measurable benefit merely for the sake of imposing restrictions. I would kind of like that to continue.
"To sum it all up, you sir, are a dumbass."
That was well thought-out, eloquent and appropriate. It is the kind of comment that adds value to the conversation, substantiates your point of view, and encourages others to re-evaluate theirs.