> These are the same people who keep buying me candles, picture frames and other tchotchkes when what I really need is a new fucking laptop.
Bah! A real hacker would extract the hydrogen from the carbon in the candles, and build a carbon-reinforced fuel cell to power the picture frame they turned into a new fucking laptop!
> > > I only want it if the spammer's gonads are hanging from the mirror like a pair of fuzzy dice. > > > > If the spammer was Rodona Garst [freewebsites.com] or Laura Betterly [cnn.com], I foresee a problem. Besides, even when possible, they'd have to be Hell's own air fresheners. > > Yeah, that'd be a real chick magnet...
First off, anyone married to Rodona or Laura would probably be begging "Take the gonads! Mine or hers, I don't care!"
And as for chick magnets, what Rodona and Laura may lack in magnetism, they more than make up for it in gravitation.
> It is blocked by the main routers the government owns, which route all internet traffic. It simply checks the TCP header for the destination IP address, if it is bound for a blocked subnet, the packet is dropped.
That's the part I don't get.
Why not let the packet go through, and simply log the session?
Chen Sixpack: Goes to www.freetibet.org, is disgusted by what he sees, and the only thing in his logfile is index.html
Jiang Sixpack: Goes to www.freetibet.org/index.html and spends six hours reading 20-30 pages of material.
If I block both of them at the router, I don't know who's the greater threat to domestic security - because I can't target everyone. If I let the packets through and log session information (particularly if I can aggregate Jiang's web traffic with his IM traffic, for instance -- thereby exposing Jiang's entire social network. Great data mining opportunities:), I can use that data to have a better idea of who's worth targeting.
By blocking at the firewall, the Chinese government is missing the point. A properly-configured Internet is like a self-registration system for domestic security threats.
> I don't rate $1000 per seat as a reasonable price when I could give each developer Windows XP and bulk-licensed Visual Studio for a much lower price.
But if I'm writing a GUI application that I plan to sell to users running Windows, OS X, Linux, and Solaris, I consider $1000 per seat a pretty reasonable cost of doing business.
> The buckyball can withstand slamming into a stainless steel plate at 15,000 mph, merely bouncing back, unharmed. > >
Hmmm... you don't see any commercial potential here?
"Daddy, I hate fishing with hook and line! It's boring!"
"Sorry, Junior, you remember what happened the last time we tried dynamite. You can use a rod and reel all day, and worms are free. Dynamite's expensive - and you only get to use it once."
"Daddy, you suck!"
This ever happen to you? Well, we've got the answer. Now you can say goodbye to one-shotting the pond with dynamite and help your kids pick up the big ones on your next fishing trip!
What's the secret? Well, thanks to the genius of Buckminster Fuller, our scientists at Ronco have developed a product that works even better than dynamite. See it slam into this stainless steel plate at over 15,000 MPH... and see how it it bounces right back! And because it's made of 100% pure buckminster fullerene, there's nothin' better when it comes to killin' fish!
$19.99 plus shipping and handling! Show your kids the real meaning of "Branch to Fishkill" by ordering your Ronco Pocket Fisherman with Buckyco reusable hypersonic cruise missile today!
> How can the rulers get away with screwing up the economy, the health system, the environment, and other things the people care about, without causing a revolt? By scaring the public to death with monsters like terrorism, domestic crime, drugs, welfare queens, and so on. This forces them to prioritise the fight against those and accept sacrifices in those other areas.
They're cleverer than that.
By playing one segment of the population against the other -- and by funding both sides of the debate -- our leaders amplify their power and direct us into harmless activities.
Consider the productive citizen -- half his income goes to the government. The government then uses that money to subsidizes a welfare leech to the tune of $20,000 a year. The leeches crank up their stereos, thumps the bass, breed like fucking rabbits, all the while using and dealing crack (leechus nigrus) or meth (leechus honkius), and generally turning the neighborhood into a living hell for everyone.
The productive citizen begs the government to put the leech in prison. And pays $40,000 per year per imprisoned leech for the privilege. And because he's giving all his money to the government, he can't afford to participate in white flight and live in safety.
So you end up with a violent criminal underclass that's busy killing each other -- and a productive middle class willing to fork over an ever-increasing proportion of their earnings to (1) fund the underclass, (2) imprison the underclass, and (3) fund more cops (the violent middle class:) to protect them from the portion of the welfare-subsidized underclass that aren't yet part of the prison-subsidized underclass. Anyone who escapes the middle class for the upper class becomes a beneficiary of the cycle, and is incentivized to continue it. Pretty fucking clever. I just wish I'd been born on the winning side, it'd be hell of a lot easier and more fun than trying to earn my admission to the winning side:(
> In fact, the checkpoint is probably there exactly to stop average people from doing what she is doing. I won't want anyone going in there that didn't have a professional appreciation of the idea that where you are may be safe but four feet to your right may be death.
More to the point - if you go in, and go four feet to your right, and come back out - you are at risk of harming (over the long term) more than yourself when you get home, because of what might be on your shoes or in your clothing.
Althogh what she was doing was safe - awareness of her surroundings (i.e. the general relationship between geography, surface characteristics, and probable exposure) and a dosimeter as a backup in the event that she stumble upon an unsafe area (they buried what?!?! here?!?!?!) despite her knowledge - the environment is not appropriate for tourism.
One of the most telling sentences in the entire article was the one about the scientist who built and calibrated his own dosimeter -- presumably because that dosimeter was the one he knew he could trust, presumably in conjunction with the other one he was no doubt carrying.
> Nope, they really turned red. They were mostly Scotch pine and they died more or less instantly when the cloud blew over (the aspen and birch trees are more resistant). It's the subject of some research - search for Chernobyl and "Red Forest" to find some. Not just how they turned red, but what happens now with tons of radioactive wood buried and decomposing into the groundwater.
Pictures of the Red Forest - trees vs.
60 Grays. Holy shit.
> for me it makes the effect so much more real, someone telling who is not caring for linguistic perfection, but for pure content delivery, to borrow some jargon from media convergence capitalists.
Agreed. Her English is a hell of a lot better than my Russian.
I have new respect for Heinlein and his ability to write The Moon is a Harsh Mistress.
> She mentions at one point that on the "day of disaster people gothered on the roof of this builing and have been looking at a beautiful shining above Atomic Plant. This was the shinning of radiation."
> >I have never heard of radiation producing visible evidence (immediately, that is), but then again, there was a lot of it. What is this "shinning" all about?
Chernobyl was a graphite fire - the fire is probably what is being described.
There is a visible phenomenon - Cerenkov radiation - a beautiful blue glow produced when fast moving particles strike water (speed of light in a transparent medium is a function of refractive index -- if particles have to "slow down", that energy has to go somewhere - it gets shot out in a cone of radiation).
If you're seeing Cerenkov radiation at the bottom of a reactor pool, it's beautiful. If you're seeing it because the neutron flux through your eyeballs is enough that your vitreous humor is glowing blue, it's probably less than beautiful, given that if you know what you're seeing, you realize that your lifespan is probably best measured in hours/weeks, rather than years.
Given that the only probable reports of seeing Cerenkov radiation from within the eyeball have been criticality incidents at very close range (1946, Tickling the dragon's tail"> and 1999 Japan, Tokaimura), I'm skeptical that the people on top of the building were seeing Cerenkov radiation from within their eyeballs.
Chernobyl wasn't just a graphite fire, however, it was also a steam explosion. It's plausible (I don't have the numbers) that the neutron flux being spewed from the building was high enough to make condensing steam in the nearby air glow blue.
From the account provided, there's insufficient data to sway me one way or the other -- were witnesses seeing light from the burning graphite and related fire, or were they seeing Cerenkov light released when you dump a massive neutron flux into a tower of condensing steam. The simpler hypothesis is that it was merely light from the intense fire.
If I had to choose, I'd go with fire, but a single picture from the rooftop, or an eyewitness reporting blue in the fire would be enough to convince me that the shining was the blue light of Cerenkov radiation brought on by the dumping of insane numbers of neutrons into condensing droplets of water as the steam condensed.
Aside to Elena: Thank you again for documenting this.
> Bummer for the CIO, who now has to go to the plate to fire up a $1 million replacement project.
CIO: Wasn't my fault, CEO. Those damn bastards at $VENDOR got taken over by $SHITCO, and you know how $SHITCO is when they take anything over. I'll need another $1M and another 2 years to finish the project. By the way, how's the wife, kids, and handicap?
CEO: Damn, that sucks. I hate $SHITCO. Here's a million bucks. Wifenkids are good, but I'm looking forward to getting some time away from 'em this summer to work on my backswing.
CIO: SCORE! (I'm so glad $VENDOR got taken over, or I'd have been screwed. Now all I have to do is rm -rf/lastyearcrappyproject, and in return, I get two years of job security and another million bucks' worth of toys to buy! I rule!)
> Again.. as I wrote above, if they are concerned about the roadmap then they need to GET
INVOLVED WITH THE PROJECT and help SET THE AGENDA themselves. As a matter of fact, if they did this their needs would be serviced a lot more quickly and thoroughly than trying to work with any big bloated software company.
SET THE AGENDA?!?! How do you SET THE AGENDA if nobody's paying the bills?
CIO: Hi, we're 2/3 of the way through a $300M 4-year project, and looking for an application that does Foo. I see OpenFoo 0.3 on SourceForge that's pretty close - everything but Feature X with Technology Y - but OpenFoo 0.3 hasn't been updated in about six months.
OpenFoo Leader: Yeah, I got it working as good as I needed it, you can submit your changes to it.
CIO: No, we can't divert resources to OpenFoo - we need to know whan OpenFoo will have Feature X so we can interoperate with Technology Y. When were you planning on implementing it? Feature X would really make our lives easier, 'cuz we've already committed 2 years on Technology Y, and we can't go back.
OpenFoo Leader: Umm, whenever I got around to it. I guess.
CIO: So in the next six to eight weeks?
OpenFoo Leader: Hey man, you want it fixed, you can fix it yourself or whatever! Download the code and figure it out. Who the fuck are you anyways? You wanna use my code, fine, but don't expect, like, a roadmap or anything! I wrote it 'cuz I thought it was an interesting problem to solve. I didn't write the code just so you could use it! Who the fuck are you, man? Like, what makes you think I'm your coding bitch!
CIO: Well, OK, how 'bout we hire you as our coding bitch on short-term contract? $60/hour if you can fix within three weeks?
OpenFoo Leader: Naw, I've already got a day job, don't really have time to dig through all that stuff, and besides, paying for software is wrong.
CIO: Fine, we'll just have to use something other than OpenFoo.
OpenFoo Leader: OK, whatever, man. *click*
CIO: Fuck, we'll just buy 100 licenses from Vendor Z, because Vendor Z has said publicly that they'll have the feature in revision 4.3 that comes out next week, and if not, by 4.4 sometime next quarter, either of which is good enough for us.
> Think about it from this perspective. You are a "good Christian" in a high position of power who sees the country "going to hell in a handbasket" because of all the "immoral things" going on. You feel it is your place to enact laws to stop these "evils" from "infecting" the country.
I'd understand that point of view a lot more if a legislator - just one - would stand in front of a podium and say "I believe homosexuality is wrong. Just like J. Edgar Hoover, however, I also happen to be a flaming cock-sucker. I believe we need a law to prevent gay marriage because without such a law, I might divorce my wife and get married to my gay lover."
Or Tipper Gore standing in front of a podium saying "I heard some rap music on the radio last weekend, and it made me want to go out, get stoned, fuck around, and kill the pigs! I'm asking Congress for a law against violent/sexual/drug lyrics because I'm afraid of what I might do without a law to protect me from the music I hear on the radio."
Or John Ashcroft standing in front of the statue of blind Justice, saying "I like the b00bies on that statue back there, and I also like Janet's b00bie. B00bies make my dick hard! I believe we need a law that mandates standards of decency because I can't fight the terrorists when I'm walking around with a hardon 24/7 because of all the b00bies."
Just give me one example where a do-gooder has ever proposed a law to protect themselves. It's always someone else they're trying to protect, isn't it?
> Those aren't codified in law for moral reasons. They're law to ensure we continue functioning as society, which *is* what government is supposed to do. You can't kill a man because if you could kill at a whim, society would tear itself apart. Likewise, if anything you have could be taken from you, things would fall apart.
If "things would fall apart" in a society in which "anything you have can be taken from you", please explain why everything from asset forfeiture to eminent domain and the IRS haven't resulted in complete social collapse?
Meantime, because we aren't allowed to kill at a whim, I still get 50+ spams a day.
I'm beginning to think these law things are overrated:)
> Flying through windows is a very cool feature, but then what? >Snap a couple of pictures, turn on a dime then fly right back out? > Fly through the other open window on the other side of the building?
Fly through window, Then EXPLODE... Now That would be cool.
Technology demonstration for everything you listed except "snap a couple of pictures while inside" took place two and a half years ago. Research group concluded that it doesn't matter whether the windows are open or not -- you either need much larger windows, or much smaller aircraft.
(What? Where are you taking me, and what's with putting me in a handbasket?)
> I don't know if it's just me, but doesn't the first model in the set of pictures (Nomad Augmented Vision System) look like some random Borg like creature with her headset and red-eye?
I don't know if it's just me, but the first model in the first picture is the only one who looks even half-Borg. What kind of technofashion show is it when the only man-made stuff visible under all that clothing and skin is gonna be the ol' Two of Thirty-Eight? Where's the chrome, dammit?
When I clicked on the link, I'd kinda hoped for something a little more like a wearable technology fashion show. (Ummm, and yes, we do need more women in Engineering.)
Motion to change venue to Fark and let the Photoshoppers have at it. All in favor?
> Buy a cheap computer that is strictly for business. Don't let your wife or kids on it and don't install games or surf for pron on it.
Buy a cheap computer that is strictly for pr0n and work. Don't let your wife and kids on it. (Well, if your wife digs it, what y'all do is your own business.)
The only secure machine is the machine not on a network. Assuming sufficient pr0n on the machine, you won't have to connect it to a network!
I think I smell the rancid stink of innumeracy.
18 years * 10+K/year in food/education/clothing = $180K - call it $200K. 4 years * 20+K/year tuition/room/board - call that $100K.
Problem is, that $100K in 2022 won't buy you a $100K education in 2022. At 3% inflation (and colleges expenses have traditionally risen much faster than inflation), you're looking at $100K * 1.03^18 = $170K in 18 years. Unless you have $100K to invest in 2004, you're not going to get a $100K education in 2022.
So my $500K figure was a little off - it's more like $300K. (The final bill by graduation in 2026 will be $500K in 2026 dollars, but about $300K in 2022 dollars.)
> There are also times when a candidate doesn't answer all the questions voters have in their minds. Online campaign sites give them opportunities to really interact back and forth. Potential voters can ask questions and candidates (or their PR people) can answer back quickly.
What on earth makes you think that candidates are interested in answering voter questions? The only answer worth giving to a voter the one that gets the voter to vote for your candidate.
If I ask "How will $CANDIDATE help me provide for my family", the correct answer is "by smashing the traitorous CEOs who run the evil corporations that oppress you."
If I ask "How will $CANDIDATE protect my job", the correct answer is "by imposing steep duties on cheap foreign imports."
If I ask "How will $CANDIDATE protect my career", "by eliminating obsolete protectionist barriers to growth and trade."
Same question, three demographics, three correct answers.
You can do this in a crowd and get away with it. Nothing's on the record. You can even do it in small gatherings - sorta like how musicians are always awed at how wonderfully awesome the crowd is in your town.
In a national debate, you can't get away with this tactic because all three demographics are watching. The correct answer is then "by enhancing the economy to provide jobs for families", which means whatever the listener wants it to mean.
In an online campaign site, it's got the disadvantage of one-on-one (you can't duck the question), and the disadvantage of being on the record, so you can't tell one thing to one person and something different to the next. Mr. Family reads the thread in which Mr. Career gets his correct answer and Mr. Family recoils in horror... and vice versa.
Online campaign sites with genuine interactivity between candidate and voter will never happen, because the very nature of democracy prohibits it. To win, you must appear to be all things to all people. After you have their support, you claim a mandate and you implement your agenda. It sucks, but it sucks less than the alternatives.
Slashdot Mirror
Bah! A real hacker would extract the hydrogen from the carbon in the candles, and build a carbon-reinforced fuel cell to power the picture frame they turned into a new fucking laptop!
> >
> > If the spammer was Rodona Garst [freewebsites.com] or Laura Betterly [cnn.com], I foresee a problem. Besides, even when possible, they'd have to be Hell's own air fresheners.
>
> Yeah, that'd be a real chick magnet...
First off, anyone married to Rodona or Laura would probably be begging "Take the gonads! Mine or hers, I don't care!"
And as for chick magnets, what Rodona and Laura may lack in magnetism, they more than make up for it in gravitation.
That's the part I don't get.
Why not let the packet go through, and simply log the session?
Chen Sixpack: Goes to www.freetibet.org, is disgusted by what he sees, and the only thing in his logfile is index.html
Jiang Sixpack: Goes to www.freetibet.org/index.html and spends six hours reading 20-30 pages of material.
If I block both of them at the router, I don't know who's the greater threat to domestic security - because I can't target everyone. If I let the packets through and log session information (particularly if I can aggregate Jiang's web traffic with his IM traffic, for instance -- thereby exposing Jiang's entire social network. Great data mining opportunities :), I can use that data to have a better idea of who's worth targeting.
By blocking at the firewall, the Chinese government is missing the point. A properly-configured Internet is like a self-registration system for domestic security threats.
But if I'm writing a GUI application that I plan to sell to users running Windows, OS X, Linux, and Solaris, I consider $1000 per seat a pretty reasonable cost of doing business.
Qt is about cross-platform development.
>
> Hmmm... you don't see any commercial potential here?
"Daddy, I hate fishing with hook and line! It's boring!"
"Sorry, Junior, you remember what happened the last time we tried dynamite. You can use a rod and reel all day, and worms are free. Dynamite's expensive - and you only get to use it once."
"Daddy, you suck!"
This ever happen to you? Well, we've got the answer. Now you can say goodbye to one-shotting the pond with dynamite and help your kids pick up the big ones on your next fishing trip!
What's the secret? Well, thanks to the genius of Buckminster Fuller, our scientists at Ronco have developed a product that works even better than dynamite. See it slam into this stainless steel plate at over 15,000 MPH... and see how it it bounces right back! And because it's made of 100% pure buckminster fullerene, there's nothin' better when it comes to killin' fish!
$19.99 plus shipping and handling! Show your kids the real meaning of "Branch to Fishkill" by ordering your Ronco Pocket Fisherman with Buckyco reusable hypersonic cruise missile today!
They're cleverer than that.
By playing one segment of the population against the other -- and by funding both sides of the debate -- our leaders amplify their power and direct us into harmless activities.
Consider the productive citizen -- half his income goes to the government. The government then uses that money to subsidizes a welfare leech to the tune of $20,000 a year. The leeches crank up their stereos, thumps the bass, breed like fucking rabbits, all the while using and dealing crack (leechus nigrus) or meth (leechus honkius), and generally turning the neighborhood into a living hell for everyone.
The productive citizen begs the government to put the leech in prison. And pays $40,000 per year per imprisoned leech for the privilege. And because he's giving all his money to the government, he can't afford to participate in white flight and live in safety.
So you end up with a violent criminal underclass that's busy killing each other -- and a productive middle class willing to fork over an ever-increasing proportion of their earnings to (1) fund the underclass, (2) imprison the underclass, and (3) fund more cops (the violent middle class :) to protect them from the portion of the welfare-subsidized underclass that aren't yet part of the prison-subsidized underclass. Anyone who escapes the middle class for the upper class becomes a beneficiary of the cycle, and is incentivized to continue it. Pretty fucking clever. I just wish I'd been born on the winning side, it'd be hell of a lot easier and more fun than trying to earn my admission to the winning side :(
More to the point - if you go in, and go four feet to your right, and come back out - you are at risk of harming (over the long term) more than yourself when you get home, because of what might be on your shoes or in your clothing.
Althogh what she was doing was safe - awareness of her surroundings (i.e. the general relationship between geography, surface characteristics, and probable exposure) and a dosimeter as a backup in the event that she stumble upon an unsafe area (they buried what?!?! here?!?!?!) despite her knowledge - the environment is not appropriate for tourism.
One of the most telling sentences in the entire article was the one about the scientist who built and calibrated his own dosimeter -- presumably because that dosimeter was the one he knew he could trust, presumably in conjunction with the other one he was no doubt carrying.
Pictures of the Red Forest - trees vs. 60 Grays. Holy shit.
Agreed. Her English is a hell of a lot better than my Russian.
I have new respect for Heinlein and his ability to write The Moon is a Harsh Mistress.
>
>I have never heard of radiation producing visible evidence (immediately, that is), but then again, there was a lot of it. What is this "shinning" all about?
Chernobyl was a graphite fire - the fire is probably what is being described.
There is a visible phenomenon - Cerenkov radiation - a beautiful blue glow produced when fast moving particles strike water (speed of light in a transparent medium is a function of refractive index -- if particles have to "slow down", that energy has to go somewhere - it gets shot out in a cone of radiation).
If you're seeing Cerenkov radiation at the bottom of a reactor pool, it's beautiful. If you're seeing it because the neutron flux through your eyeballs is enough that your vitreous humor is glowing blue, it's probably less than beautiful, given that if you know what you're seeing, you realize that your lifespan is probably best measured in hours/weeks, rather than years.
Given that the only probable reports of seeing Cerenkov radiation from within the eyeball have been criticality incidents at very close range (1946, Tickling the dragon's tail"> and 1999 Japan, Tokaimura), I'm skeptical that the people on top of the building were seeing Cerenkov radiation from within their eyeballs.
Chernobyl wasn't just a graphite fire, however, it was also a steam explosion. It's plausible (I don't have the numbers) that the neutron flux being spewed from the building was high enough to make condensing steam in the nearby air glow blue.
From the account provided, there's insufficient data to sway me one way or the other -- were witnesses seeing light from the burning graphite and related fire, or were they seeing Cerenkov light released when you dump a massive neutron flux into a tower of condensing steam. The simpler hypothesis is that it was merely light from the intense fire.
If I had to choose, I'd go with fire, but a single picture from the rooftop, or an eyewitness reporting blue in the fire would be enough to convince me that the shining was the blue light of Cerenkov radiation brought on by the dumping of insane numbers of neutrons into condensing droplets of water as the steam condensed.
Aside to Elena: Thank you again for documenting this.
"HE'S Spartacus!"
CIO: Wasn't my fault, CEO. Those damn bastards at $VENDOR got taken over by $SHITCO, and you know how $SHITCO is when they take anything over. I'll need another $1M and another 2 years to finish the project. By the way, how's the wife, kids, and handicap?
CEO: Damn, that sucks. I hate $SHITCO. Here's a million bucks. Wifenkids are good, but I'm looking forward to getting some time away from 'em this summer to work on my backswing.
CIO: SCORE! (I'm so glad $VENDOR got taken over, or I'd have been screwed. Now all I have to do is rm -rf /lastyearcrappyproject, and in return, I get two years of job security and another million bucks' worth of toys to buy! I rule!)
SET THE AGENDA?!?! How do you SET THE AGENDA if nobody's paying the bills?
CIO: Hi, we're 2/3 of the way through a $300M 4-year project, and looking for an application that does Foo. I see OpenFoo 0.3 on SourceForge that's pretty close - everything but Feature X with Technology Y - but OpenFoo 0.3 hasn't been updated in about six months.
OpenFoo Leader: Yeah, I got it working as good as I needed it, you can submit your changes to it.
CIO: No, we can't divert resources to OpenFoo - we need to know whan OpenFoo will have Feature X so we can interoperate with Technology Y. When were you planning on implementing it? Feature X would really make our lives easier, 'cuz we've already committed 2 years on Technology Y, and we can't go back.
OpenFoo Leader: Umm, whenever I got around to it. I guess.
CIO: So in the next six to eight weeks?
OpenFoo Leader: Hey man, you want it fixed, you can fix it yourself or whatever! Download the code and figure it out. Who the fuck are you anyways? You wanna use my code, fine, but don't expect, like, a roadmap or anything! I wrote it 'cuz I thought it was an interesting problem to solve. I didn't write the code just so you could use it! Who the fuck are you, man? Like, what makes you think I'm your coding bitch!
CIO: Well, OK, how 'bout we hire you as our coding bitch on short-term contract? $60/hour if you can fix within three weeks?
OpenFoo Leader: Naw, I've already got a day job, don't really have time to dig through all that stuff, and besides, paying for software is wrong.
CIO: Fine, we'll just have to use something other than OpenFoo.
OpenFoo Leader: OK, whatever, man. *click*
CIO: Fuck, we'll just buy 100 licenses from Vendor Z, because Vendor Z has said publicly that they'll have the feature in revision 4.3 that comes out next week, and if not, by 4.4 sometime next quarter, either of which is good enough for us.
>
> I know how that is! I'm an AMD guy myself, and "Friends don't let friends use Intel."
"When you run SETI@Home on an Athlon, you hunt for aliens with Osama! Only the paranoid survive!"
- Andy Grove
Fark! Mod me redundant. Twisted minds think alike.
>One (1) pair night-vision goggles
> One (1) Field emergency medical kit
> One (1) M-4 rifle
> Eighty (80) rounds 5.56 x 45mm NATO ammuniton
>Ten (10) Meals Ready-to-eat
>One (1) Mosquito micro-UAV
> Ten (10) 30mm propulsion-grade rubber bands
Shoot, a fella could have a pretty good weekend in Vegas with that!
I'd understand that point of view a lot more if a legislator - just one - would stand in front of a podium and say "I believe homosexuality is wrong. Just like J. Edgar Hoover, however, I also happen to be a flaming cock-sucker. I believe we need a law to prevent gay marriage because without such a law, I might divorce my wife and get married to my gay lover."
Or Tipper Gore standing in front of a podium saying "I heard some rap music on the radio last weekend, and it made me want to go out, get stoned, fuck around, and kill the pigs! I'm asking Congress for a law against violent/sexual/drug lyrics because I'm afraid of what I might do without a law to protect me from the music I hear on the radio."
Or John Ashcroft standing in front of the statue of blind Justice, saying "I like the b00bies on that statue back there, and I also like Janet's b00bie. B00bies make my dick hard! I believe we need a law that mandates standards of decency because I can't fight the terrorists when I'm walking around with a hardon 24/7 because of all the b00bies."
Just give me one example where a do-gooder has ever proposed a law to protect themselves. It's always someone else they're trying to protect, isn't it?
If "things would fall apart" in a society in which "anything you have can be taken from you", please explain why everything from asset forfeiture to eminent domain and the IRS haven't resulted in complete social collapse?
Meantime, because we aren't allowed to kill at a whim, I still get 50+ spams a day.
I'm beginning to think these law things are overrated :)
>Snap a couple of pictures, turn on a dime then fly right back out?
> Fly through the other open window on the other side of the building? Fly through window, Then EXPLODE... Now That would be cool.
Technology demonstration for everything you listed except "snap a couple of pictures while inside" took place two and a half years ago. Research group concluded that it doesn't matter whether the windows are open or not -- you either need much larger windows, or much smaller aircraft.
(What? Where are you taking me, and what's with putting me in a handbasket?)
I'd ping it!
VAXen, my children, just don't belong in some places. *rimshot*
I don't know if it's just me, but the first model in the first picture is the only one who looks even half-Borg. What kind of technofashion show is it when the only man-made stuff visible under all that clothing and skin is gonna be the ol' Two of Thirty-Eight? Where's the chrome, dammit?
When I clicked on the link, I'd kinda hoped for something a little more like a wearable technology fashion show. (Ummm, and yes, we do need more women in Engineering.)
Motion to change venue to Fark and let the Photoshoppers have at it. All in favor?
Buy a cheap computer that is strictly for pr0n and work. Don't let your wife and kids on it. (Well, if your wife digs it, what y'all do is your own business.)
The only secure machine is the machine not on a network. Assuming sufficient pr0n on the machine, you won't have to connect it to a network!
I think I smell the rancid stink of innumeracy. 18 years * 10+K/year in food/education/clothing = $180K - call it $200K. 4 years * 20+K/year tuition/room/board - call that $100K.
Problem is, that $100K in 2022 won't buy you a $100K education in 2022. At 3% inflation (and colleges expenses have traditionally risen much faster than inflation), you're looking at $100K * 1.03^18 = $170K in 18 years. Unless you have $100K to invest in 2004, you're not going to get a $100K education in 2022.
So my $500K figure was a little off - it's more like $300K. (The final bill by graduation in 2026 will be $500K in 2026 dollars, but about $300K in 2022 dollars.)
An education isn't cheap. Deal.
What on earth makes you think that candidates are interested in answering voter questions? The only answer worth giving to a voter the one that gets the voter to vote for your candidate.
If I ask "How will $CANDIDATE help me provide for my family", the correct answer is "by smashing the traitorous CEOs who run the evil corporations that oppress you."
If I ask "How will $CANDIDATE protect my job", the correct answer is "by imposing steep duties on cheap foreign imports."
If I ask "How will $CANDIDATE protect my career", "by eliminating obsolete protectionist barriers to growth and trade."
Same question, three demographics, three correct answers.
You can do this in a crowd and get away with it. Nothing's on the record. You can even do it in small gatherings - sorta like how musicians are always awed at how wonderfully awesome the crowd is in your town.
In a national debate, you can't get away with this tactic because all three demographics are watching. The correct answer is then "by enhancing the economy to provide jobs for families", which means whatever the listener wants it to mean.
In an online campaign site, it's got the disadvantage of one-on-one (you can't duck the question), and the disadvantage of being on the record, so you can't tell one thing to one person and something different to the next. Mr. Family reads the thread in which Mr. Career gets his correct answer and Mr. Family recoils in horror... and vice versa.
Online campaign sites with genuine interactivity between candidate and voter will never happen, because the very nature of democracy prohibits it. To win, you must appear to be all things to all people. After you have their support, you claim a mandate and you implement your agenda. It sucks, but it sucks less than the alternatives.