No, actually, the first wheels were probably made of wood, but were completely solid rather than spoked. Stone is a bad choice for constructing wheels: it's a lot heavier than wood, and harder to shape. And while the Sumerians and other folks who thought to build wheels didn't have all the knowledge we have now, they weren't stupid.
Pirates of the Saskatchewan, by the Arrogant Worms
And it's a hi (hey) ho (hey) coming down the plains, Stealing wheat and barley, and all the other grains. And it's a ho (hey) hi (hey) Farmers bar your doors, when you see the Jolly Rodger on Regina's mighty shores. --------
But seriously, great news, and best of luck to 'em. Now go get those CRIA hosers.
Sometimes laws are complex for useful and legitimate reasons. When the problem domain is a complex beast, the laws governing it are going to be complex. Just like software - complex problems yield complex solutions most of the time. And laws have to deal with things that are far more complicated than software, because software systems are generally deterministic whereas legal systems have to deal with human failings.
For instance, let's take the very simple crime of murder. You'd think it was straightforward - you kill somebody, you go to jail or death row. But it's not, because sometimes killing somebody is justified, sometimes it's an accident, sometimes it's an accident that required the killer to do a whole lot of extraordinarily stupid things, sometimes it's because the person wanted to die, etc. If you make the laws too simple, the judge will be stuck with the sentence for running someone over because your brakes failed (due to poor maintenance) being the same sentence as hiring a hit man to kill someone in their sleep.
In the case of the 1100 page health insurance reform law, it's as big as it is in large part because health care is a hugely difficult problem with both lives and billions of dollars on the line. Yes, there are also a lot of riders, special interest stupidity, loopholes, etc, but you can easily leave 300 pages for that stuff and still have a hugely complex bill.
Guess what else: every study that's been done on the subject corroborates the argument that passengers are at worst a non-factor while cell conversations are a significant distraction. That's why it's an "inevitable response": your anecdotal argument doesn't beat actual evidence.
Your passengers don't have to be considerate, they have to value their lives. Which means that they will help if they are: (a) sober, (b) awake, and (c) more than about 8 years old. Also, even if your passengers are stupid and no help, if the passengers in 9 out of every 10 other vehicles are a help then there's still much more justification for banning hands-free and not banning speaking to passengers.
Put the money toward a decent public transit system so people don't have to choose between keeping in touch and traveling.
The interesting thing is that many cities that have good public transit systems still have the most people commuting by car. The reason has very little to do with the convenience or lack thereof, and a lot to do with having to share the public transit system with those people (which is simply any convenient group of people that the speaker is prejudiced against). Some also see it as a lack of status to commute by public transit.
Americans hating other groups of Americans often gets in the way of good public policy, and transit is no exception.
Err, no, the new communism is called "terrorism". What makes that a better enemy than communism is that the terrorists can't just take their ball and go home like the USSR did.
Here's why I ask: not because he's not a smart technologist - he clearly is, and while I don't love everything about Java it was a pretty darn good idea.
However, from a business standpoint Java was basically a disaster, because it required quite a lot of support from Sun while at the same time not giving them something they could sell. To become a standard, they had to give away the basic tools and describe the standard so that other people could make JVMs. Once they did that, there was really nothing that Sun had to sell that its competitors (including open source projects) couldn't build either better or cheaper.
Now, you could make the same criticism of Microsoft's C# language, except that Microsoft always treated its languages as a loss leader for selling MSDN and Windows server licenses. Since Java was specifically cross-platform, it couldn't do the same for Sun.
In other words, it's far better for users than it used to be.
So long as there's a significant portion of the browser market not using the most dominant browser, web developers have to follow the actual standards, rather than the pseudo-standards of the dominant browser. This is an improvement, because it means that there's a relatively low barrier to entry for new browsers.
End result: browsers compete by offering speed improvements, new features, and better user experience than their competitors. Since the going rate for a web browser license if $0, users win. Since browsers are all standards-compliant, web developers win, because they don't need to write their pages for 15 different browsers. About the only party that doesn't win is one that would like to maintain a dominant browser position without having a better browser.
While interesting, past criminal history actually has no direct bearing as to guilt. It can affect someone's credibility if they're called as a witness, but if, for instance, a defendant never takes the stand, their past criminal history cannot be put to a jury.
And I've been on a jury where I found out after we'd convicted the defendant that he had a long criminal history that the prosecution had never mentioned during the trial. Believe me, if he could have told us, he would have.
Criminal contempt charges require that the offense occur in the courtroom (in front of the judge, prosecutor, etc), or that they must be proven beyond a reasonable doubt (just like any other criminal charge). In this case, the second rule would apply.
That said, generally speaking the last thing you want to do is annoy a judge. Within his/her courtroom, the judge pretty much is the law. If you think the judge is doing something inappropriate, you obey it and use it as grounds for appeal if you lose. The reason is not just the threat of contempt, but because annoying the judge means they'll make it harder for you to win. Not just in this case, but in every other case you have before them.
On the flip side, being respectful to the judge can help you out considerably. My one and only time in a courtroom as a defendant (for a traffic offense) I won my case pro se by doing just that - dressed reasonably nicely, addressed him as "Your Honor", and explaining exactly what had happened.
IANAL, but my mother was for decades, and she was always very clear that it never helps to annoy the judge no matter how justified you may think you are.
I'm fairly certain the 'dwarf planet' classification was so-named because it was a foolish compromise with those who wanted to believe that Pluto was still a planet, because they'd been taught for generations that there were 9 planets. If I remember correctly, changing Ceres from being a planet to an asteroid to a dwarf planet wasn't anywhere near as controversial.
If totally free markets operated as they're supposed to, then the dollar would fall against the renminbi, and that would make it cheaper to produce things in the US again, and the industry would move back. However, the Chinese know this, and are doing everything they can to prevent it (because it's helping them industrialize). Now, you'd think the US wouldn't stand for this and would start threatening tariffs, but many of the multinational corporations who fund most political campaigns (thanks, Justice Roberts) benefit from the trade imbalance and thus will lobby against any move to do anything about it. So as a result, China and multinationals win, while American industrial workers and the cities that American industry was once based in (e.g. Pittsburgh, Cleveland, and Detroit) lose.
And what you don't want sold to you would be a false advertising claim in any decently run government. Of course, what we have instead of government of the corporations, by the corporations, and for the corporations, so it's no surprise that the FTC doesn't give a damn.
Actually, sexual reproduction is very much part of that popular book, starting off with "be fruitful and multiply" and rattling through an awful lot of "some guy slept with his wife, and she conceived,...", well into the last bit when they try to prove that Jesus descended from David. Evolution is a separate issue, but this important work of fiction is very much in favor of marital sex, and doesn't exactly frown on extramarital sex either.
Actually, I'm not even sure whether he believes that this stuff shouldn't be taught. What he may believe is that by writing this letter he can get a lot of support in the next election cycle from the idiotic portion of his constituents who believe that this stuff shouldn't be taught.
Of course, if we were to truly understand that we were nothing but an invisible dot on an invisible dot, infinitely small, our souls would be destroyed.
Re:Creator of the personal computer?
on
The Apple Two
·
· Score: 3, Informative
The first PC Woz made was the Apple I, not the Apple II, in 1976. While the Altair was a computer from a similar era, it had no keyboard or monitor setup, and was run via toggle switches and blinkenlights. So it would be not unreasonable to declare the Apple I to be the first example of anything resembling the modern PC.
Have you ever used Python? I get the distinct impression that you haven't. Especially since you describe the syntax incorrectly.
It's very simple: In any C style, indentation is used to show quickly what is and isn't in a particular code block. Various holy wars were started over where the curly braces go, but the concept of indenting code blocks was pretty consistent. So with Python, you skip the curly braces and just use the indentation. It's not completely idiot-proof (no language is), but it works as well as anything else that's been tried, and I can assure you that I've yet to run into a bug caused by somebody not ending a code block properly.
Oh, and it's not just a C wrapper: It's list manipulation and lambda features make it sometimes downright Lisp-ish at times.
If it was so safe why can't I put fish into it immediately after getting it from the tap?
Because tap water is treated to make it safe for humans to drink, not fish. Specifically, municipal water supplies add in a small amount of chlorine and/or chloramine to kill off various water-borne nasties that you definitely don't want to be drinking unless you enjoy having diarrhea. However, that same chlorine is poisonous to fish, hence the need for further treatment. Your local tap water, by the way, is far safer for humans to drink than just about any other readily available sources of water (including bottled water, many wells, and all springs / streams / rivers / lakes).
As far as I know, there's no group of "stop sending our military to kill browns" that I can give money to.
Actually, there are, but they aren't political parties. One of the longest-running and effective is FCNL, a Quaker lobbying group that's been pushing for a more peaceful stance since 1943. There are also specific candidates you can support on these issues, most notably Dennis Kucinich and Ron Paul (what's interesting is that they arrive at the same conclusions for entirely different reasons).
Of course, the trouble is that these guys only have morality, justice, religion, and sense on their side, whereas the pro-war side has billions of dollars in defense contractor money.
Slashdot Mirror
Is the Pirate Party the first example of a political party that is operating in multiple countries at once?
How soon they forget. The Communists had this sort of thing going on a much larger scale than the Pirates.
No, actually, the first wheels were probably made of wood, but were completely solid rather than spoked. Stone is a bad choice for constructing wheels: it's a lot heavier than wood, and harder to shape. And while the Sumerians and other folks who thought to build wheels didn't have all the knowledge we have now, they weren't stupid.
Of course, your point remains valid.
Pirates of the Saskatchewan, by the Arrogant Worms
And it's a hi (hey) ho (hey) coming down the plains,
Stealing wheat and barley, and all the other grains.
And it's a ho (hey) hi (hey) Farmers bar your doors,
when you see the Jolly Rodger on Regina's mighty shores.
--------
But seriously, great news, and best of luck to 'em. Now go get those CRIA hosers.
Big corporations and governments have too much to lose by attacking Apache this way.
Only if they get caught. And it's not like I can't think of somebody who might be interested in eMbarraSsing the Apache Foundation.
Sometimes laws are complex for useful and legitimate reasons. When the problem domain is a complex beast, the laws governing it are going to be complex. Just like software - complex problems yield complex solutions most of the time. And laws have to deal with things that are far more complicated than software, because software systems are generally deterministic whereas legal systems have to deal with human failings.
For instance, let's take the very simple crime of murder. You'd think it was straightforward - you kill somebody, you go to jail or death row. But it's not, because sometimes killing somebody is justified, sometimes it's an accident, sometimes it's an accident that required the killer to do a whole lot of extraordinarily stupid things, sometimes it's because the person wanted to die, etc. If you make the laws too simple, the judge will be stuck with the sentence for running someone over because your brakes failed (due to poor maintenance) being the same sentence as hiring a hit man to kill someone in their sleep.
In the case of the 1100 page health insurance reform law, it's as big as it is in large part because health care is a hugely difficult problem with both lives and billions of dollars on the line. Yes, there are also a lot of riders, special interest stupidity, loopholes, etc, but you can easily leave 300 pages for that stuff and still have a hugely complex bill.
Haven't you heard? In Australia, the penalty for serious crimes is exile to the United States.
Guess what else: every study that's been done on the subject corroborates the argument that passengers are at worst a non-factor while cell conversations are a significant distraction. That's why it's an "inevitable response": your anecdotal argument doesn't beat actual evidence.
Your passengers don't have to be considerate, they have to value their lives. Which means that they will help if they are: (a) sober, (b) awake, and (c) more than about 8 years old. Also, even if your passengers are stupid and no help, if the passengers in 9 out of every 10 other vehicles are a help then there's still much more justification for banning hands-free and not banning speaking to passengers.
No, he was talking about launching a copy of the Player's Handbook and Monster Manual at the other car, so they'll be scared of his nerdiness.
Put the money toward a decent public transit system so people don't have to choose between keeping in touch and traveling.
The interesting thing is that many cities that have good public transit systems still have the most people commuting by car. The reason has very little to do with the convenience or lack thereof, and a lot to do with having to share the public transit system with those people (which is simply any convenient group of people that the speaker is prejudiced against). Some also see it as a lack of status to commute by public transit.
Americans hating other groups of Americans often gets in the way of good public policy, and transit is no exception.
Err, no, the new communism is called "terrorism". What makes that a better enemy than communism is that the terrorists can't just take their ball and go home like the USSR did.
Here's why I ask: not because he's not a smart technologist - he clearly is, and while I don't love everything about Java it was a pretty darn good idea.
However, from a business standpoint Java was basically a disaster, because it required quite a lot of support from Sun while at the same time not giving them something they could sell. To become a standard, they had to give away the basic tools and describe the standard so that other people could make JVMs. Once they did that, there was really nothing that Sun had to sell that its competitors (including open source projects) couldn't build either better or cheaper.
Now, you could make the same criticism of Microsoft's C# language, except that Microsoft always treated its languages as a loss leader for selling MSDN and Windows server licenses. Since Java was specifically cross-platform, it couldn't do the same for Sun.
In other words, it's far better for users than it used to be.
So long as there's a significant portion of the browser market not using the most dominant browser, web developers have to follow the actual standards, rather than the pseudo-standards of the dominant browser. This is an improvement, because it means that there's a relatively low barrier to entry for new browsers.
End result: browsers compete by offering speed improvements, new features, and better user experience than their competitors. Since the going rate for a web browser license if $0, users win. Since browsers are all standards-compliant, web developers win, because they don't need to write their pages for 15 different browsers. About the only party that doesn't win is one that would like to maintain a dominant browser position without having a better browser.
While interesting, past criminal history actually has no direct bearing as to guilt. It can affect someone's credibility if they're called as a witness, but if, for instance, a defendant never takes the stand, their past criminal history cannot be put to a jury.
And I've been on a jury where I found out after we'd convicted the defendant that he had a long criminal history that the prosecution had never mentioned during the trial. Believe me, if he could have told us, he would have.
Criminal contempt charges require that the offense occur in the courtroom (in front of the judge, prosecutor, etc), or that they must be proven beyond a reasonable doubt (just like any other criminal charge). In this case, the second rule would apply.
That said, generally speaking the last thing you want to do is annoy a judge. Within his/her courtroom, the judge pretty much is the law. If you think the judge is doing something inappropriate, you obey it and use it as grounds for appeal if you lose. The reason is not just the threat of contempt, but because annoying the judge means they'll make it harder for you to win. Not just in this case, but in every other case you have before them.
On the flip side, being respectful to the judge can help you out considerably. My one and only time in a courtroom as a defendant (for a traffic offense) I won my case pro se by doing just that - dressed reasonably nicely, addressed him as "Your Honor", and explaining exactly what had happened.
IANAL, but my mother was for decades, and she was always very clear that it never helps to annoy the judge no matter how justified you may think you are.
I'm fairly certain the 'dwarf planet' classification was so-named because it was a foolish compromise with those who wanted to believe that Pluto was still a planet, because they'd been taught for generations that there were 9 planets. If I remember correctly, changing Ceres from being a planet to an asteroid to a dwarf planet wasn't anywhere near as controversial.
Actually, there's more to the story than that.
If totally free markets operated as they're supposed to, then the dollar would fall against the renminbi, and that would make it cheaper to produce things in the US again, and the industry would move back. However, the Chinese know this, and are doing everything they can to prevent it (because it's helping them industrialize). Now, you'd think the US wouldn't stand for this and would start threatening tariffs, but many of the multinational corporations who fund most political campaigns (thanks, Justice Roberts) benefit from the trade imbalance and thus will lobby against any move to do anything about it. So as a result, China and multinationals win, while American industrial workers and the cities that American industry was once based in (e.g. Pittsburgh, Cleveland, and Detroit) lose.
And what you don't want sold to you would be a false advertising claim in any decently run government. Of course, what we have instead of government of the corporations, by the corporations, and for the corporations, so it's no surprise that the FTC doesn't give a damn.
Actually, sexual reproduction is very much part of that popular book, starting off with "be fruitful and multiply" and rattling through an awful lot of "some guy slept with his wife, and she conceived, ...", well into the last bit when they try to prove that Jesus descended from David. Evolution is a separate issue, but this important work of fiction is very much in favor of marital sex, and doesn't exactly frown on extramarital sex either.
Actually, I'm not even sure whether he believes that this stuff shouldn't be taught. What he may believe is that by writing this letter he can get a lot of support in the next election cycle from the idiotic portion of his constituents who believe that this stuff shouldn't be taught.
Of course, if we were to truly understand that we were nothing but an invisible dot on an invisible dot, infinitely small, our souls would be destroyed.
The first PC Woz made was the Apple I, not the Apple II, in 1976. While the Altair was a computer from a similar era, it had no keyboard or monitor setup, and was run via toggle switches and blinkenlights. So it would be not unreasonable to declare the Apple I to be the first example of anything resembling the modern PC.
Have you ever used Python? I get the distinct impression that you haven't. Especially since you describe the syntax incorrectly.
It's very simple: In any C style, indentation is used to show quickly what is and isn't in a particular code block. Various holy wars were started over where the curly braces go, but the concept of indenting code blocks was pretty consistent. So with Python, you skip the curly braces and just use the indentation. It's not completely idiot-proof (no language is), but it works as well as anything else that's been tried, and I can assure you that I've yet to run into a bug caused by somebody not ending a code block properly.
Oh, and it's not just a C wrapper: It's list manipulation and lambda features make it sometimes downright Lisp-ish at times.
I thought we'd settled this: real programmers use butterflies.
If it was so safe why can't I put fish into it immediately after getting it from the tap?
Because tap water is treated to make it safe for humans to drink, not fish. Specifically, municipal water supplies add in a small amount of chlorine and/or chloramine to kill off various water-borne nasties that you definitely don't want to be drinking unless you enjoy having diarrhea. However, that same chlorine is poisonous to fish, hence the need for further treatment. Your local tap water, by the way, is far safer for humans to drink than just about any other readily available sources of water (including bottled water, many wells, and all springs / streams / rivers / lakes).
As far as I know, there's no group of "stop sending our military to kill browns" that I can give money to.
Actually, there are, but they aren't political parties. One of the longest-running and effective is FCNL, a Quaker lobbying group that's been pushing for a more peaceful stance since 1943. There are also specific candidates you can support on these issues, most notably Dennis Kucinich and Ron Paul (what's interesting is that they arrive at the same conclusions for entirely different reasons).
Of course, the trouble is that these guys only have morality, justice, religion, and sense on their side, whereas the pro-war side has billions of dollars in defense contractor money.