Last I checked, my homeowners policy covers liability due to model aircraft. The personal liability part of the policy excludes aircraft, but the exclusion itself has an exclusion for model aircraft that do not carry passengers or cargo. So why should I pay an extra cent or dollar or whatever?
Of course insurance on model aircraft is tiny because, despite all the noise, they aren't a big liability issue. While a few have been dropped on people (mostly by idiots), that's a very, very few. The larger camera drones have caused some slightly bigger problems, like that power outage in California.. but that was a commercial drone and would be covered under the business's insurance.
The FAA gets its panties in a bunch every time an airline pilot sees a balloon or a light or a GA aircraft or even an actual unmanned aircraft. The media has a fit every time someone crashes one without any damage to anything. But that's just hysteria.
First of all, we should stop the harassment of astronomers and astrophysicists just because they wore tacky shirts in a press conference. Once we're satisfied that's been settled (say, 5 years with no incidents), we can start working on the rest.
The gap between WASPs (however mythological it may have been depending on the time period in the US) and less desirable immigrants from southern/eastern Europe seemed just as large to the people then as the gap between US and Muslim cultures to you.
Between the bad Eurozone (economic) conditions and the recent resurgence of Fascism in Europe, it's looking like Europe's second renaissance may come to an end soon.
If you want to stop a resurgence of fascism, try addressing the issues the Fascists are addressing. Give people the choice of thugs who appear to be on their side, or open minded decent politicians who are willing to allow hostile thugs to run rampant for the sake of their ideology, people will often pick door #1.
That means you do not open the doors wide to people from incompatible cultures, and then demand that your current residents accomodate their culture. And especially you do not tell everyone complaining about crime committed by those migrants that they're racists and should just shut up.
However, a post-modern culture that propagates not through genes but through memes must face the curse of its own thriving, and the only way out is mind upload. Let the lands Europe be occupied by Allah-worshippers. Little of value is lost. The new Europe will be united in a safe place that exists non-physically, out of the touch of Muslims.
Oops, the Ayatollah and the Grand Mufti just declared your computer an abomination and smashed it. So much for Europe.
The parts that wear out are the moving parts, and the power supply. Power supplies tend to be things that can just suddenly go, especially the cheaply made ones. Though it's still not unheard of for one to last 18 years. A HD lasting 18 years is pretty stunning.
I power up my PowerMac 8500 on occasion. The parts that have failed are the CD player.. and the power switch. Not the electrical switch itself, but the piece of plastic that extends to the front panel. The plastic has become brittle over the years.
The hard drive is still good but it hasn't been running continuously, and it wasn't one of the ones subject to "stiction" failures.
My mercury switch thermostat did fail; it would turn the furnace on and off but not at the set-point (and not at a fixed offset either; it would change).
I have a Nest now, but I'm paranoid enough to keep a Honeywell Round (new non-mercury version) around just in case.
For, if each bulb with this technology is going to be significantly more expensive than current offerings, the technology will occupy, at best, a very small market niche.
If it puts out a lot of light, doesn't flicker or buzz (at least undimmed), and works in the cold, it'll have a good-sized niche.
Believing that a vaccine is by nature safe. This article makes it out like it's ridiculous to believe that a vaccine could have serious negative side effects. It's not; being a vaccine doesn't make anything safe. Yes, the data show that Gardasil isn't the cause of the various things some suspected of it. But that wasn't a foregone conclusion.
Well, this is a little misleading. Alcohol is correlated with reduced risks of heart disease and strokes when consumed in moderation.
True, but almost all the studies on moderate alcohol consumption's long-term effects (negative and positive) are correlational. And it's at a _robust_ effect; that is, no matter how many studies they do to try to make it go away (e.g. ascribing it to flavonoids in red wine), it stubbornly remains. To the point where saying "there is no safe level of alcohol consumption" is misleading to the point of deception. Because there is a level of alcohol consumption below which, according to the best evidence, risk of various negative effects increases rather than decreases.
She didn't kill Kylo Ren. Anyway, he was a big baby and a major force only in his own mind. He had one really good trick he was an expert at (stopping a blaster bolt), but other than that he was only good in relation to those with no power at all. Yoda or Vader or Palpatine or Mace Windu would have bent him over their respective knees and given him the spanking of his life, without any effort at all.
Oh my god, there was a hiatus in the warming, whatever shall we do?
Well, satellite temperatures don't show everything, we'll blame it on that.
But wait, surface temperatures show a hiatus too!
Oh, we'll just carefully examine all the datasets for signs of a systemic error in favor of cooling, and correct for each of those errors until the hiatus goes away.
MISSION ACCOMPLISHED.
(Note that the procedure described produces invalid results even if all the systemic errors in favor of cooling actually exist and are correctly accounted for)
Ah, but the satellite data is obviously wrong, because it clearly shows the "hiatus"
that we're assured didn't happen. Every other dataset that has been carefully examined to find and eliminate causes for the "hiatus" has been successfully corrected, it won't be long for this one.
Aren't military medals supposed to be for noble things like bravery, heroism, or honour?
No, some of them are for more mundane things like "good conduct" or "achievement" or "meritorious service". I'd expect a drone medal to be in the latter categories; it's not going to be equivalent to a Silver Star.
What's honourable about taking out an opponent from so far away that the risk to yourself is nonexistent?
Yeah, that argument has been going on since archers were introduced. But the point of a war is to win, not to be a fair fight.
Seems to make sense on the surface, right? Japan goes from being known for cheap copies to being known for high quality merchandise. Korea too, to a lesser extent. But for decades people have been expecting this of China yet it remains the place for cheap copies. Maybe there's something different about China?
Back under W, the South was going to use Celine Dion, but Dick Cheney told them even he couldn't support such a flagrant violation of the Conventions on Torture..
That should be interesting. We could see a tech war between the smugglers and the prisons. They could fly in below the radar, popping up only long enough to clear a fence. They could use an inertial navigation system (try jamming that!). They could use odd frequencies not anticipated by the jamming system. Maybe we'll even see some mini-stealth.
it is the homing robot of Speed Racer which has always had me wondering why trains, espessially super fast ones, don't have a small robot to ID track failures before death and destruction occurs.
Besides the formidable engineering challenges, I believe that usually when a train derails due to track failure, it would have looked fine until the weight of the train hit it. You'd need some way to do a fairly detailed inspection of rails and ballast at speed.
I think there is a pervasive notion that it is stupid to give a cop shit, no matter if you think he's going to shoot you or not. And I agree with that notion. I don't care if a cop is a dick to me, the place to handle that is a complaint to the department and the citizen's review board, not on the side of the road.
Complaining to the department and the citizen's review board will do dick and squat. Unless the cops decide to retaliate for you doing so, which they often do, in which case you'll find yourself cited for every possible violation, real or imagined, for a while thereafter.
And I'd say that expecting women to *be* men is not equality. Men have constructed technological workplaces to fit their culture (and if you believe men and women have identical culture, I'd say you've not met many women). It's perfectly natural. But it naturally excludes a large number of women, and thus it's time for that to change.
You still haven't demonstrated this central premise.
Even if you had, you haven't demonstrated that somehow forcing these workplaces to enforce the culture you desire would be superior. Your ideal "professional" culture which is somehow objectionable to almost no one does not exist and cannot exist. The picture you've painted of a work environment where no one discusses, talks about, displays, or refers to anything outside of work certainly doesn't qualify.
I don't think it's coincidence that you find women far better represented in technology in the sort of large companies that *don't* put up with that sort of B.S.
I don't think you could demonstrate any such thing.
While an intruder can erase logs on a system, or DoS a network connection to a remote syslog server, or even kill printing processes before a laser print has come out, she cannot erase what has been printed out on a line printer.
Unless she can manage to set lp0 on fire. Though this takes Elaine Roberts level hackery.
While Silicon Valley technology companies may be overwhelmingly white male, successful technology companies exist across the entire world. The fact that California is highly diverse, but the hiring isn't, yet diverse technology companies exist elsewhere is, to my mind, pretty strong evidence that candidates who would otherwise be successful are being driven out of the field (or more likely, never entering).
Ah, so you have no evidence. Didn't think so. First of all, Silicon Valley technology companies aren't overwhelmingly white male. Whites are actually underrepresented. And the big tech companies hire throughout the country, so California's demographics aren't particularly relevant.
Second, why do you think tech companies elsewhere are "diverse"? Samsung is 40% female... but only 15% of product development, 30% of sales, and 27% of employees in their home country of Korea are female. They get the number up mostly by hiring huge numbers of female factory employees in China and Southeast Asia. Ericsson, in extremely progressive Sweden, is less than 30% female (over all employees).
Third, why would some demographic imbalance be evidence that your pet reason for it is true?
Now, we've progressed to realizing that alcohol at company functions is not really tolerable when many Muslims have religious strictures against its consumption. The Rib-fest is not a good idea when many are Hindus are vegetarians, etc., etc.
We'd be down to bread (unleavened!) and water if we decided to cater to every religion and culture's strictures. Fortunately, we don't, recognizing that the intolerant strictures of various cultures are not a reason to restrict those who do not share those strictures.
"Acceptable professional behavior" is pretty simple. While you are in a professional environment (i.e. workplace), you devote yourself to your profession, in a manner consistent with the standards of that profession.
That's weaseling. What exactly are the standards of the profession of software development?
In such a fashion, you put everyone who is practicing that profession on an equal footing in the workplace. Personal interests are, in general, restricted to outside hours and workplace.
Yeah, I've heard of places like that. Perot's Electronic Data Systems, telemarketing call centers, that sort of thing. Usually considered hellish places to work. But hey, they're equally hellish for everyone.
Except the evidence is very strong that these "better" jobs are something a significantly larger proportion of the population can do than feel comfortable in such environments.
And this evidence is?
As a moderately hard-core geek, I can assure you that a professional environment is not intolerant of geeks.
So you don't think there's a reason geek-friendly companies have, for many years, shared certain characteristics directly opposed to what other professions consider the norm? In particular, an aversion to a formal dress code and set hours.
It *does* mean that much of the geek-specific social aspects of work do fall by the wayside. (No division closing to see the Star Wars movie, etc.)
Really? So an outing to see what is currently the #2 movie of all time is not "inclusive" enough? Many indubitably "professional" companies are well known to have golf outings; I suspect golf is rather less popular overall than Star Wars.
As I said, a lot less fun, but one in which no-one is an "outsider" (or as some might claim, everyone is equally outside). Acceptable professional behaviour is generally a subset of geek (or any other cultural) behaviour. Basic etiquette is not rocket science. Advanced etiquette (remarks that re acceptable only in context dependent situations) is always optional.
Calling your preferred set of standards "basic etiquette" or "acceptable professional behavior" is no more convincing than calling it "growing up". I don't know what you mean by "acceptable professional behavior" exactly, but I suspect if you were to articulate it, I'd find clashes with geek behavior.
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Last I checked, my homeowners policy covers liability due to model aircraft. The personal liability part of the policy excludes aircraft, but the exclusion itself has an exclusion for model aircraft that do not carry passengers or cargo. So why should I pay an extra cent or dollar or whatever?
Of course insurance on model aircraft is tiny because, despite all the noise, they aren't a big liability issue. While a few have been dropped on people (mostly by idiots), that's a very, very few. The larger camera drones have caused some slightly bigger problems, like that power outage in California.. but that was a commercial drone and would be covered under the business's insurance.
The FAA gets its panties in a bunch every time an airline pilot sees a balloon or a light or a GA aircraft or even an actual unmanned aircraft. The media has a fit every time someone crashes one without any damage to anything. But that's just hysteria.
First of all, we should stop the harassment of astronomers and astrophysicists just because they wore tacky shirts in a press conference. Once we're satisfied that's been settled (say, 5 years with no incidents), we can start working on the rest.
It may have seemed so, but it was not so.
If you want to stop a resurgence of fascism, try addressing the issues the Fascists are addressing. Give people the choice of thugs who appear to be on their side, or open minded decent politicians who are willing to allow hostile thugs to run rampant for the sake of their ideology, people will often pick door #1.
That means you do not open the doors wide to people from incompatible cultures, and then demand that your current residents accomodate their culture. And especially you do not tell everyone complaining about crime committed by those migrants that they're racists and should just shut up.
Oops, the Ayatollah and the Grand Mufti just declared your computer an abomination and smashed it. So much for Europe.
If "responsibility" leads to extinction or submission, I'll take the opposite.
I power up my PowerMac 8500 on occasion. The parts that have failed are the CD player.. and the power switch. Not the electrical switch itself, but the piece of plastic that extends to the front panel. The plastic has become brittle over the years.
The hard drive is still good but it hasn't been running continuously, and it wasn't one of the ones subject to "stiction" failures.
My mercury switch thermostat did fail; it would turn the furnace on and off but not at the set-point (and not at a fixed offset either; it would change).
I have a Nest now, but I'm paranoid enough to keep a Honeywell Round (new non-mercury version) around just in case.
If it puts out a lot of light, doesn't flicker or buzz (at least undimmed), and works in the cold, it'll have a good-sized niche.
Here's Executive Order 26, McGreevy. It's pretty clear that the "individuals" whose medical records are exempt from disclosure are humans; it would be a stretch for it to include dolphins.
As for disclosing the water is polluted, I doubt that's the issue. This is New Jersey, we know the water's polluted.
Believing that a vaccine is by nature safe. This article makes it out like it's ridiculous to believe that a vaccine could have serious negative side effects. It's not; being a vaccine doesn't make anything safe. Yes, the data show that Gardasil isn't the cause of the various things some suspected of it. But that wasn't a foregone conclusion.
True, but almost all the studies on moderate alcohol consumption's long-term effects (negative and positive) are correlational. And it's at a _robust_ effect; that is, no matter how many studies they do to try to make it go away (e.g. ascribing it to flavonoids in red wine), it stubbornly remains. To the point where saying "there is no safe level of alcohol consumption" is misleading to the point of deception. Because there is a level of alcohol consumption below which, according to the best evidence, risk of various negative effects increases rather than decreases.
She didn't kill Kylo Ren. Anyway, he was a big baby and a major force only in his own mind. He had one really good trick he was an expert at (stopping a blaster bolt), but other than that he was only good in relation to those with no power at all. Yoda or Vader or Palpatine or Mace Windu would have bent him over their respective knees and given him the spanking of his life, without any effort at all.
Oh my god, there was a hiatus in the warming, whatever shall we do?
Well, satellite temperatures don't show everything, we'll blame it on that.
But wait, surface temperatures show a hiatus too!
Oh, we'll just carefully examine all the datasets for signs of a systemic error in favor of cooling, and correct for each of those errors until the hiatus goes away.
MISSION ACCOMPLISHED.
(Note that the procedure described produces invalid results even if all the systemic errors in favor of cooling actually exist and are correctly accounted for)
Ah, but the satellite data is obviously wrong, because it clearly shows the "hiatus"
that we're assured didn't happen. Every other dataset that has been carefully examined to find and eliminate causes for the "hiatus" has been successfully corrected, it won't be long for this one.
No, some of them are for more mundane things like "good conduct" or "achievement" or "meritorious service". I'd expect a drone medal to be in the latter categories; it's not going to be equivalent to a Silver Star.
Yeah, that argument has been going on since archers were introduced. But the point of a war is to win, not to be a fair fight.
Seems to make sense on the surface, right? Japan goes from being known for cheap copies to being known for high quality merchandise. Korea too, to a lesser extent. But for decades people have been expecting this of China yet it remains the place for cheap copies. Maybe there's something different about China?
Back under W, the South was going to use Celine Dion, but Dick Cheney told them even he couldn't support such a flagrant violation of the Conventions on Torture..
That should be interesting. We could see a tech war between the smugglers and the prisons. They could fly in below the radar, popping up only long enough to clear a fence. They could use an inertial navigation system (try jamming that!). They could use odd frequencies not anticipated by the jamming system. Maybe we'll even see some mini-stealth.
Besides the formidable engineering challenges, I believe that usually when a train derails due to track failure, it would have looked fine until the weight of the train hit it. You'd need some way to do a fairly detailed inspection of rails and ballast at speed.
Complaining to the department and the citizen's review board will do dick and squat. Unless the cops decide to retaliate for you doing so, which they often do, in which case you'll find yourself cited for every possible violation, real or imagined, for a while thereafter.
You still haven't demonstrated this central premise.
Even if you had, you haven't demonstrated that somehow forcing these workplaces to enforce the culture you desire would be superior. Your ideal "professional" culture which is somehow objectionable to almost no one does not exist and cannot exist. The picture you've painted of a work environment where no one discusses, talks about, displays, or refers to anything outside of work certainly doesn't qualify.
I don't think you could demonstrate any such thing.
Unless she can manage to set lp0 on fire. Though this takes Elaine Roberts level hackery.
Ah, so you have no evidence. Didn't think so. First of all, Silicon Valley technology companies aren't overwhelmingly white male. Whites are actually underrepresented. And the big tech companies hire throughout the country, so California's demographics aren't particularly relevant.
Second, why do you think tech companies elsewhere are "diverse"? Samsung is 40% female... but only 15% of product development, 30% of sales, and 27% of employees in their home country of Korea are female. They get the number up mostly by hiring huge numbers of female factory employees in China and Southeast Asia. Ericsson, in extremely progressive Sweden, is less than 30% female (over all employees).
Third, why would some demographic imbalance be evidence that your pet reason for it is true?
We'd be down to bread (unleavened!) and water if we decided to cater to every religion and culture's strictures. Fortunately, we don't, recognizing that the intolerant strictures of various cultures are not a reason to restrict those who do not share those strictures.
That's weaseling. What exactly are the standards of the profession of software development?
Yeah, I've heard of places like that. Perot's Electronic Data Systems, telemarketing call centers, that sort of thing. Usually considered hellish places to work. But hey, they're equally hellish for everyone.
And this evidence is?
So you don't think there's a reason geek-friendly companies have, for many years, shared certain characteristics directly opposed to what other professions consider the norm? In particular, an aversion to a formal dress code and set hours.
Really? So an outing to see what is currently the #2 movie of all time is not "inclusive" enough? Many indubitably "professional" companies are well known to have golf outings; I suspect golf is rather less popular overall than Star Wars.
Calling your preferred set of standards "basic etiquette" or "acceptable professional behavior" is no more convincing than calling it "growing up". I don't know what you mean by "acceptable professional behavior" exactly, but I suspect if you were to articulate it, I'd find clashes with geek behavior.