The reality is that Clinton cut the same deal with Greenspan that greenspan had with bush (I will lower the interest rate if you lower the deficit). Clinton, like poppa bush, complied and paid attention to gov. deficits.
Your definition of "complied" must be different from mine. Deficits soared during GHW Bush's term, reaching a historically unprecedented $290 billion in his last year. A record that stood until 2003, when it reached a whopping $377 billion.
I totally agree with this comment. I'd rather listen to/read a different perspective, albeit completely orthogonal to my own views, than see a suppression of the freedom of expression (especially in the f***ing internet).
You're in good company:
I am really mortified to be told that, in the United States of America, a fact like this can become a subject of inquiry, and of criminal inquiry too, as an offense against religion; that a question about the sale of a book can be carried before the civil magistrate. Is this then our freedom of religion? And are we to have a censor whose imprimatur shall say what books may be sold and what we may buy? And who is thus to dogmatize religious opinions for our citizens? Whose foot is to be the measure to which ours are all to be cut or stretched? Is a priest to be our inquisitor, or shall a layman, simple as ourselves, set up his reason as the rule for what we are to read and what we must believe? It is an insult to our citizens to question whether they are rational beings or not, and blasphemy against religion to suppose it cannot stand the test of truth and reason.
If M. de Becourt's book be false in its facts, disprove them; if false in its reasoning, refute it. But, for God's sake, let us freely hear both sides if we choose....
- Thomas Jefferson
It's too bad they don't make presidents like they used to.
Will a third party have the chance to examine the contents?
Maybe. But would any third party, assuming they get this through unofficial channels just as Cheryl Kagan did, be willing to risk the litigation (or worse) that would inevitably be aimed their way if they ever went public with thier findings, or even with the fact that they looked at it, especially if there IS a "smoking gun" in there? I know I would fear for my safety and that of my family were I in that position.
Simple and inexpensive solution:
Get a set of old-fashioned, fully enclosed, around-the-ear headphones. It blocks a lot of the outside noise, so you don't have to crank it as loud. And it keeps most of your own noise from escaping.
It used to be that anything short of the the hundred dollar + ones sounded awful. But there are now a few inexpensive ones that sound remarkably good.
You might be thinking, "Why not use a more modern and lighter weight noise cancelling headphone?". Two reasons: 1) more expensive, and 2) only blocks noise one way. Still a good solution, just 2nd best unless you need the lighter weight for portable use like riding your bike or the train to work. But for sitting at your desk, a well-chosen enclosed headphone is unbeatable.
1. Duke Nukem (the old one, not DN2 or 3D)
This is by far the one I reach for most often as a "wind down at the end of a long day" game.
2. Trolls and Tribulations
This is my all-time favorite Commodore 64 game. I played it so much back in 1984 that it started infiltrating my dreams. I even dreamed up and played through several entirely plausible new levels, and was quite dismayed when I discovered that these didn't actually exist. I stopped playing for a while because that just can't be healthy. I still play it fairly often on a C64 emulator.
3. Minesweeper.
Honorable mentions:
1. Wizard of Wor (standup arcade machine)
I bought one of these used from a video arcade in 1985 and had it in my livingroom for a couple of years before selling it. It was definitely my #1 "comfort game" for those two years. It might still be if I still had it. I played it so much that my finger would ache from pounding the fire button, so I modified the machine (by means of a little homebrew oscillator board) to fire continuously when the fire button was held.
There were some seriously compelling reasons to upgrade to 95, 98, 2k, and XP.
At work, I have my old Win2K box humming along right next to my shiny new WinXP box. At home, I still use this old Win98 box most of the time. And when it comes to just plain operating the machine and getting work done, there's little practical difference between the three. Sure, I notice the difference in the speed of the hardware. But within the range of things that all of them can do reasonably well, they're so similar that I rarely think at all about which OS I'm using. They're interchangeable. Even Win95 wouldn't widen the gap very much. Nor would it make any significant difference to actual productivity.
Win2k is the newest OS I have running at home, and I have a strong inclination to keep it that way. When XP first came out, a friend asked if I was going to upgrade (I used to stay up to date with such things). Having read about the product activation hassles and seeing no real benefit, I said I'd sooner shit in my hand and smear it on my monitor than to put XP on my hard drive. I still feel that way about it. Yes, it's stable. And it works quite well for me at work. But the real, practical, everyday productivity benefits are so miniscule as to be practically non-existent. And not even close to enough to get past the heebie-geebies that it gives me to give up that much control over MY computer.
And now I'm hearing about Vista taking what I dislike most about XP and making it even worse, and once again bringing little practical benefit.
The only thing that threatens to overcome my resistance is that applications are slowly dropping support for the older OS's. There's already a fair number that no longer support Win98. Win2K is still supported by almost everything, but that will change over time. When Vista is getting long in the tooth and its successor is looming large on the horizon, I might finally break down and acquire an XP box. That is if I haven't abandoned Windows entirely by then.
That being said, why not just add Wikipedia to the database and catch 99.9% of students, heh.
Sure, you'll catch your 99% that way. But only until the smart cheaters get wise to it and start using other sources and checking those against wikipedia themselves. After that, you'll only catch 98%.
Don't think they need an intravenous device to stay keep on going.
Do you think a guy who gets a degree this fast has time to waste with unproductive things like eating and drinking? An IV and a catheter could put lots of time back in to a busy student's schedule.
All security is "security through difficulty". That's true even of security through obscurity. In fact, lack of difficulty is really the only thing wrong with security through obscurity. The trouble is that any difficulty it has shrinks drastically once the method is discovered. And discovery itself is sometimes much less difficult than hoped once someone actually makes the attempt. Much better to use methods that remain difficult even when well understood. Methods that have already endured and survived all but the most expensive efforts. But I don't think there's anything wrong with adding a layer of obscurity or other weak security methods on top of that. Stealth, deception, surprise, and nimble movement can keep your enemies from getting a bead on you as often. Just know that none of that will help you once they do.
I am not a security expert. Just a guy who sometimes ponders such things.
I used some 3M Citrus based spray cleaner to get some old labels and label glue off of a monitor. After letting the cleaner sit for a few minutes, the label glue wiped off easily, as did the Dell logo. Totally clean, as if it had never been there. The plastic housing was unharmed. Didn't even dull the surface.
3. strip the attorney that validated the transaction of his citizenship and forfeit all of his assets, to cover the price of reimbursing the victims, then promptly deport him.
Why? Unless he was working with the fraudulent seller, or was grossly negligent in identifying said seller (any GOOD identity thief will be able to provide convincing documentation, at least some of which will likely appear legit even if followe up), then the lawyer's been scammed just as much as the buyer. I'd much rather see the authorities persue the one(s) who actually committed the crime, even if unsuccessfully, than to just go after the easy target with the deepest pockets. Otherwise, you're just transferring the "victimhood" from one innocent party to another.
What happens when the robot tilts forward and so needs to move forward to correct its balance, but runs into something before it has moved far enough to correct itself? Does it simply fall over?
Of course. Short of having something to push against or grab onto, and an appendage with which to push or grab it, falling over is the only option in that situation. Humans sometimes fall over for the same reason. That's what happens when you trip over something. Some object impedes the motion of your foot, which prevents you from correcting your balance. Another example that I've personally experienced is when I got my bicycle wheels in a rut going down a rather steep hill. I could no longer correct my balance because the bike could not freely move side to side. The result was me lying injured (all minor, fortunately) on the ground next to my damaged bike. If you need to correct, but can't, you fall.
2) The new discs would not play on normal CD players, meaning consumers could not simply pop their new discs into their car stereos or other players. And users would not be able to copy the main audio mix onto their computers
And there goes consumer interest as well.
If this format fails (and I expect it will), it won't be for that reason. Every format that has ever achieved such success as to be considered mainstream has overcome that problem*. If it has real, compelling, advantages, it will succeed. Just as CD's succeeded even though you couldn't play them on your turntable.
Though, come to think of it, a CD with a short analog recording on one side and a turntable spindle adapter in the package might make a pretty nifty "special edition" collector's item.
* Except perhaps the transition from monophonic to stereophonic records, which were both forward and backward compatibile.
There is Dragon Naturally speaking 9, which apparently is pretty good, but will SR ever really be the Star Trek kind?
Probably. But it will have to get much better at using context. They're already using grammar as a cue, but it's going to take much more than that. Humans draw on memories of previous conversations, knowlege about the interests and mannerisms of the person speaking, and knowlege of the situation at hand. Even just knowing what's big in the news can help.
As for ambient noise, there's often useful contextual information there too. Ambient noise can give information about where the speech is occurring and about what is happening at that location. In some rare cases the ambient noise might even be responsive to the speech itself. The audience laughing in the example was a clue that a) an audience is watching, and b) the system made a mistake. A human would have recognized that and used it to advantage. For a speech recognition system to work as well as a human, it will not only have to get better at separating speech from ambient noise, but it will need to be able to recognize the ambient noise.
Pretending pro-life is about a bunch of religious zealots trying to push their religion on you completely and utterly misses the point. It's bordering on an ad hominem fallacy, to be sure.
This is no more about religious belief as it is about believing in freedom.
Causation is questionable. But the correlation is obvious. To claim that it isn't about religious belief is even less defensible than claiming that it is. There clearly IS a relationship of some kind. And regardless of whether you agree that it's religiously motivated, the pro-life movement clearly IS trying to push it's position on others. Legal abortions do not force any pro-lifer to act against his or her conscience. But making abortion illegal most definitely does force the pro-lifers' beliefs on others.
"pro life" and "pro choice" people are talking past each other anyway. Pro lifers believe everything with the potential for becoming life (zygote onwards in some cases) should be protected, while pro choicers believe things that only things which would be viable life forms outside of the womb should be protected.
That's the root of it. But the "talking past each other" extends further. Stemming largely from their belief that life (or really, personhood) begins at or near conception, the pro-life side believes that abortion is morally wrong, even murder, and therefore should be illegal in most (if not all) cases. While many on the pro-choice side, believing either that a fetus is not truly a person until much later, or simply acknowleging that this is inherently a very subjective and uncertain question, believe that it is a decision that should be decided by the individual(s) involved, not dictated by government. In fact, there are some on the pro-choice side that do believe that life begins at or near conception and that abortion is morally wrong. They just don't think that it is such a clear-cut issue that the government should force everyone else to abide by their belief.
Not only are the two sides arguing from fundamentally different ideas about when life begins, but they're engaging in two entirely different debates. It's "right vs. wrong", vs. "who has the right to decide".
Slashdot Mirror
Reference: Historical Budget Data
It's too bad they don't make presidents like they used to.
ABC News is running a poll titled Is Your Vote Safe? that asks:
"Are you confident that your vote is safe and will be counted in the election?"
Oddly, this poll seems to be suffering some voting irregularities itself. Repeatedly refreshing the results yields this strange sequence:
approx 12:30am, 10-23-06
no: 738 yes: 101 ns: 86 tot: 925
12:53am
no: 743 yes: 101 ns: 87 tot: 931
12:54am
no: 737 yes: 101 ns: 86 tot: 924
12:55am
no: 746 yes: 101 ns: 88 tot: 935
12:56am
no: 670 yes: 84 ns: 80 tot: 834
12:57am
no: 721 yes: 99 ns: 85 tot: 905
12:58am
no: 734 yes: 101 ns: 86 tot: 921
Simple and inexpensive solution:
Get a set of old-fashioned, fully enclosed, around-the-ear headphones. It blocks a lot of the outside noise, so you don't have to crank it as loud. And it keeps most of your own noise from escaping.
It used to be that anything short of the the hundred dollar + ones sounded awful. But there are now a few inexpensive ones that sound remarkably good.
You might be thinking, "Why not use a more modern and lighter weight noise cancelling headphone?". Two reasons: 1) more expensive, and 2) only blocks noise one way. Still a good solution, just 2nd best unless you need the lighter weight for portable use like riding your bike or the train to work. But for sitting at your desk, a well-chosen enclosed headphone is unbeatable.
chirp...
All of my comfort games are oldies.
1. Duke Nukem (the old one, not DN2 or 3D)
This is by far the one I reach for most often as a "wind down at the end of a long day" game.
2. Trolls and Tribulations
This is my all-time favorite Commodore 64 game. I played it so much back in 1984 that it started infiltrating my dreams. I even dreamed up and played through several entirely plausible new levels, and was quite dismayed when I discovered that these didn't actually exist. I stopped playing for a while because that just can't be healthy. I still play it fairly often on a C64 emulator.
3. Minesweeper.
Honorable mentions:
1. Wizard of Wor (standup arcade machine)
I bought one of these used from a video arcade in 1985 and had it in my livingroom for a couple of years before selling it. It was definitely my #1 "comfort game" for those two years. It might still be if I still had it. I played it so much that my finger would ache from pounding the fire button, so I modified the machine (by means of a little homebrew oscillator board) to fire continuously when the fire button was held.
2. Hocus Pocus
3. Cosmo's Cosmic Adventure
4. Commander Keen series
Win2k is the newest OS I have running at home, and I have a strong inclination to keep it that way. When XP first came out, a friend asked if I was going to upgrade (I used to stay up to date with such things). Having read about the product activation hassles and seeing no real benefit, I said I'd sooner shit in my hand and smear it on my monitor than to put XP on my hard drive. I still feel that way about it. Yes, it's stable. And it works quite well for me at work. But the real, practical, everyday productivity benefits are so miniscule as to be practically non-existent. And not even close to enough to get past the heebie-geebies that it gives me to give up that much control over MY computer.
And now I'm hearing about Vista taking what I dislike most about XP and making it even worse, and once again bringing little practical benefit.
The only thing that threatens to overcome my resistance is that applications are slowly dropping support for the older OS's. There's already a fair number that no longer support Win98. Win2K is still supported by almost everything, but that will change over time. When Vista is getting long in the tooth and its successor is looming large on the horizon, I might finally break down and acquire an XP box. That is if I haven't abandoned Windows entirely by then.
All security is "security through difficulty". That's true even of security through obscurity. In fact, lack of difficulty is really the only thing wrong with security through obscurity. The trouble is that any difficulty it has shrinks drastically once the method is discovered. And discovery itself is sometimes much less difficult than hoped once someone actually makes the attempt. Much better to use methods that remain difficult even when well understood. Methods that have already endured and survived all but the most expensive efforts. But I don't think there's anything wrong with adding a layer of obscurity or other weak security methods on top of that. Stealth, deception, surprise, and nimble movement can keep your enemies from getting a bead on you as often. Just know that none of that will help you once they do.
I am not a security expert. Just a guy who sometimes ponders such things.
I used some 3M Citrus based spray cleaner to get some old labels and label glue off of a monitor. After letting the cleaner sit for a few minutes, the label glue wiped off easily, as did the Dell logo. Totally clean, as if it had never been there. The plastic housing was unharmed. Didn't even dull the surface.
Ok. I hereby declare that I will NOT be spending my vacation in Alaska this winter.
Gee, who knew protesting could be so painless.
Maybe that's the same thing all the other suckers are thinking when they buy spam promoted stocks.
Though, come to think of it, a CD with a short analog recording on one side and a turntable spindle adapter in the package might make a pretty nifty "special edition" collector's item.
* Except perhaps the transition from monophonic to stereophonic records, which were both forward and backward compatibile.
As for ambient noise, there's often useful contextual information there too. Ambient noise can give information about where the speech is occurring and about what is happening at that location. In some rare cases the ambient noise might even be responsive to the speech itself. The audience laughing in the example was a clue that a) an audience is watching, and b) the system made a mistake. A human would have recognized that and used it to advantage. For a speech recognition system to work as well as a human, it will not only have to get better at separating speech from ambient noise, but it will need to be able to recognize the ambient noise.
Not only are the two sides arguing from fundamentally different ideas about when life begins, but they're engaging in two entirely different debates. It's "right vs. wrong", vs. "who has the right to decide".
Perhaps you should have chosen a US-built economy car instead.