And here I thought Zika was going to be the biggest stink... They couldn't clean up ONE body of water over half a decade??
Graft remains endemic
Endemic can't be emphasized enough. Graft and corruption are culture-wide in Latin America, not just Brazil. Native Latinos - usually by no fault of their own initially - are programmed from birth to just expect graft and corruption in all facets of life.
Corrupt police forces that oppress and/or extort. Militaries that become the tools of dictators to oppress. Illicit drug mafias and markets that corrupt politicians. The unnecessarily socialization of various markets (socialized initially to "protect the people" from dirty businessmen but ultimately become another tool of corruption.) The very public murders of any leader that tries to change the status quo...
So where to people turn in dark times? Religion... But consider those countries' primary religious source: the Catholic Church. It has been a corrupt institution for millenia now, led by a clergy with a known history of gay priests, child molestors, bribe takers, (and in the not too distant past, torturers and murderers) - hypocrites of all colors and sizes.
Why should anyone realistically expect any Latin American country to climb up out of its into the "First World" tier anytime soon, with all of that going against everyday citizens. They swim in spiritual/psychological shit everyday; Why would a little actual shit phase them?
A true flat tax (and nationwide sales tax) is doomed because they will "hurt" the poor. Right now, millions of poor people get thousands in earned income credits without working or paying a penny of income tax. Those EICs (aka over-the-top freebies from the gov't) will be eaten up quickly in (or completely removed from) a flat tax system.
And no, people wouldn't suddenly get interested in any congressional action or civics/politics at that point. You'd just have a millions-strong mob of relatively uneducated poor people tearing the country apart before you could say "economic theory".
If the gov't actually got that mess under control, then you'd have a mini-recession due to the loss of income to all the businesses that rely on that infusion of deficit spending fueled cash every spring. The poor go out annually and buy that new hot water heater, even larger TVs, newer and better cell phones to make rap videos about their SNAP cards, the family vacations they couldn't take otherwise, etc.
And don't underestimate the long-term importance of higher income taxes (and inheritance taxes) keeping a class of super-rich people (think old-school European royalty - dukes, etc.) from really taking a firm hold in the USA. Yes, those higher taxes are cruel and patently unfair to the wealthy that work their butts off to get into the top 10%, but they are an unfortunate necessity in a society where too many of the super rich don't share their wealth domestically. Instead, they ship the money out to other countries - all in the name of increased profits, to feed Wall Street's insatiable need for higher stock prices. (Why can't a company's growing profits be re-invested back into society via more R&D expenditures and wages while still turning a handsome profit? Why this unending need for increased profit at the expense of everything else?)
Disclaimer: I'm a GOP guy that loves balanced budgets and is sick of ideological rot within my own party.
Issac Asimov's prequel, Prelude to Foundation, is even more explicit than Foundation in putting this concept on display. People throughout the galaxy forget how to use advanced technology that had been invented in the past. Citizens on Trantor, the galactic empire's capital that's a planet covered with one giant city (think Coruscant in a planetary dome), can't even keep the systems all running right. Eventually even basic knowledge about nuclear power is lost and the galaxy becomes a splintered mess, powered by gas and coal.
In our general arrogance we see going backwards as impossible, but that kind of future could easily happen to us if our increasingly specialized fields aren't continually populated by at least one person willing to study it and keep the knowledge alive (and not just in dusty tomes or stacked SSDs.
There are many other great concepts covered in those books that make you think. They should be required reading for high school, IMO..
Not all conservatives believe this "we need more security" tripe anymore than all liberals think that all abortion should be legal up to the day of birth and the baby parts should then be sold to fund Planned Parenthood (and its employees).
I'm a fiscal conservative, gun owner, and I believe that Edward Snowden was a hero for what he did exposing that trash.
Too many citizens in this country need to stop labeling and stereotyping everyone else into some caricature silo - and need to start considering "the other side" and its views.
Did you actually read the article, or did you just have a bad experience with Drupal (or its community)?
I agree with the GP comment about the article's concerns. That's not saying there aren't real problems with Drupal as a whole when it comes to usability for noobs, or documentation, or getting enthuiastic community support anymore (it has died off some since the D7 to D8 community schism.
But come on. It doesn't take a security team to deal with the article issues. And you don't even have to do manual testing after an update. Just use automatic CI testing (Behat, etc.) to ensure the site holds up after an update. travis-ci.org tied to a Github repo for automatic test execution with each new commit is your friend.
Finally, if you aren't using version control (such as Git) for professional web development - Drupal or not - that's irresponsible, unprofessional, and dangerous. It's like driving drunk without insurance in someone else's car. Sooner or later it's gonna catch up with you - and if you're managing a web site that does more than serve a simple brochure site, that car crash is not gonna be pretty.
Seriously - get with the times. Use Git. Learn "git clone", "git init", "git add somefile.php", "git commit", "git push", "git fetch" (and "git pull"), "git diff", "git log" "git stash", "git reset --hard HEAD~1 (or the commit's hash)" (and what --soft and --mixed mean vs. --hard), "git revert", and you're ready to do 99% of anything you'll ever need to do with Git. It's just not that hard or scary. Really. If you want ridiculously hard, try using the superfluous, bullshit Database API in Drupal 7 to anything beyond a SELECT query. Talk about a waste - was db_query() with sanitation really not good enough, Dries? Backdrop got that part right...:)
And a total waste of time. But people have to feel safe, so why not?
Imagine getting patted down or bodyscanned before entering Wal-Mart during the holday shopping season (after the 2017 Black Friday terrorist bombings and shootings in Ft. Lauderdale, Boise, and Albequerque.)
If you want a great view of what the prequels could have been and burn a few joules off saying, "Damn it," a few more times about what they actually are, here's one man's great takes on Ep. 1 and Ep. 2. It's too bad he wasn't actually a Fox exec...
A great four minute video that breaks down the whole diamond engagement rings scam (which I fell for, too... if I had to do it again - there'd be no rock.)
Isn't sodium really toxic (not good when exposed to air) and explodes on contact with water (youtube.com has plenty of examples of this)? I wonder how long it would be before a lawyer sues the battery makers after someone opens a battery somewhere near water? Maybe they have taken this into account with the battery design?
Also - not everyone that drives fast is an ahole. And not everyone who drives the speed limit is NOT an ahole.
Agressive and inattentive drivers are the problem - slow or fast. Speed cameras and other forms of photo enforcement, however, are just safety theater that happen to make a buck or two for the camera companies.
On Arizona's ugly history with speed and red light cameras (short, short version):
Former governor Janet Napalitano signed a contract for Redflex to put up cameras (fixed and mobile) everywhere in 2008. Janet actually labeled her statewide speed camera system as a revenue source in one of her AZ budgets - but still claimed it was all about safety. Peace didn't ensue, however, and accidents didn't suddenly drop way off (they dropped, but that was ultimately proven to be because of the recession dropping the number of drivers). While some drivers noted that it was "a nicer drive" and not as crazy on the roads, other drivers just accelerated and slowed down between cameras. Angry pro-camera people started driving like self-righteous assholes - refusing to "bow" to speeders. Some of them set their cruise control to just over the speed limit to avoid tickets, while blocking all lanes ("Move over for faster drivers? WHY? JUST SLOW DOWN!"). Anti-camera and/or aggressive drivers got really pissed off and were madder and more aggressive than ever. The rest of AZ just ignored the whole thing - unless they suddenly got flashed in the "high revenue" locations where they weren't "speeding" in their minds. (Cameras were being placed in locations to maximize revenue (where 65 dropped to 55 on interstates, at the bottom of declines/hills, etc.) Soccer moms and grandparents who loved the cameras early on would suddenly turn on the system when they got a ticket they felt like was nothing more than a speed trap. The public debate on and offline turned ugly, with vandalized cameras (including an axe wielder on an interstate), monkey mask rebels ignoring cameras, freeway and local/city protests, court backlogs (years behind), dodged process servers, etc. There was even a fatal freeway shooting of a camera van operator by a really angry "patriot" (he's still in prison, AFAIK). When the CEO of Redflex wasn't bribing city councils, she was weaving tales of blood and gore on the highways if the cameras were ever turned off.
After Janet bailed on AZ in late 2008 to cash in her chips in DC, any attempts by certain GOP state legislators to get a bill on the Gov. Brewer's desk to ban photo enforcement were blocked by camera company lobbyists and a GOP state house speaker that loved photo radar. The tech was seemingly here to stay.
Then Gov. Jan Brewer - yes, the Obama finger wagger and racist-sounding SB1070, "unshackle the police to catch illegals" signer - did the right thing and refused to renew the statewide contract with Redflex - effectively pulling the plug, and turning the heat down. One group (Camerafraud) was coming close to getting a ban on the ballot as a proposition for statewide vote, but after Brewer's contract cancellation they came up about 40K signatures short (120,000 were gathered) because removing the state speed cameras seem to calm enough people down as a compromise. It never ONCE came to a full vote.
Now the state is seemingly in a ceasefire state on the issue. Most people don't care about it anymore - at least as long as the state speed cameras don't come back. At the city level, certain municipalities have stubbornly held onto them for revenue, but most AZ cities got tired of getting screwed over by Redflex and ATS contracts where they actually lost money while the camera companies made serious coin.
Amazingly, after all of that occurred, there are STILL plenty of Arizonans who believe their short-sighted, 90IQ beliefs about photo enforcement, like: "if you don't do anything wrong, you won't get a ticket," "I don't speed - so who cares?",
You're trolling, and I'll bite. Though there are cases where speeds have been calculated incorrectly, they're usually correct.
They have also, however, been just as efficient at exposing the problems with hard speed limits. Sometimes 45 is too fast; other times it's too slow - and machines can't (yet) calculate that. Many speed limits are set due to politics/fearmongering, environmental views, and revenue streams - not science/facts. It's a mini-miracle that we aren't still under the shackles of the 55 MPH national speed limit. (I could see Pres. Obama vetoing any legislation to repeal it if he'd been in office at the time, citing the environment and openly mocking anyone who couldn't see his point of view - while never driving a single mile between far-distant cities in the Western US on wide open roads in desolate areas.)
"Does it sync?" A: Well, kind of - if you use iCloud.
"I don't want a Safari clone with a Firefox branded UI. Shoot..."
I'll try it, but it sounds like it'll be in vain. I've used Mozilla and then Firefox since the dark Netscape 4.x days... and even knowing this was the likely end result, this is still probably the most disappointed I've been about Firefox during that decades-long run. I do not want to switch to "Google Owns You" Chrome, and Safari sucks.
Watching new MST3K episodes wouldn't be nostalgia. And it's not about charm or selling out for another payout. It'd just be a show making jokes about bad movies - and that's still funny, even today in our Internet-first world.
Other thoughts:
* The only thing that really hurts old MST episodes is that some of their humor was pop culture based - especially old TV shows and classic movies. A lot of the jokes go over younger people's heads because they haven't seen Gilligan's Island, Mary Poppins, The Brady Bunch, etc. New episodes would probably be more relevant.
* Joel should try and get Mike Nelson to help with writing. Regardless of whomever any MST3K fan was the funnier guy onscreen, nobody can argue that Mike Nelson was a key writer that drove the show - and that he carried the show on his shoulders alone for the last three seasons after Trace B. (the original voice of Crow T. Robot) left. Without Mike, it just won't have the same charm.
I wanted to be a teacher, teaching music, math, or history - and maybe be an assistant coach for the sports I played. I was talked out of it, however, by a teacher because of the money. The heartbreak you go through over money, he said, just isn't worth it.
Here in Arizona, my own party (GOP) refuses to raise any revenue from new taxes statewide (they've been kicking Janet Napalitano's legacy in the nuts for almost a decade now). As a result, various cities have to pass their own bonds - creating a growing haves/havenots system within our cities. And even the "haves" are asking parents for hundreds of extra dollars in "fees" for everything from sports to textbook help. Starting teachers are paid like janitors... it's a joke.
Bottom line: Unless you want to have both spouses work for sure and still never be even close to comfortable, only staying with a public job for a (possible) future pension, avoid the teaching profession.
Yes, in the real world some cops come off as bullies, and they should be punished or fired when caught doing it.
That has nothing to do with this case, however. The cops didn't even have time to act like a bully before the shooting occurred.
5'7" hooded suspect waving gun at people - making him sound crazy. You pull up hard and tell the suspect to show you his hands. Instead, the suspect pulls out the gun you've been warned he has on him - and unlike the observer who'd been watching the suspect for several minutes, you have a split second to look at the all-black, semi-auto looking gun.
That has ZERO to do with bully cops. And I would bet you could count on one hand the number of cops in the entire state of Ohio that wouldn't have immediately shot and killed that kid in the same circumstances.
As more companies adopt this "we cover it" guarantee, they're going to start having more "costs" dealing with human drivers. Accidents, time/speed inefficiencies (vs. following the letter of the law), etc.
As a result, they'll start pushing the driverless cars harder. For those they can't convince with the carrot of incentives to make the switch, they'll eventually pull out the stick of passing the costs to those human drivers through various lobbying channels - forcing them to deal with higher insurance premiums, more tracking technology, tiered registration costs for cars, etc.
Corporations with any clout always try to cut their costs - one way or another.
Personally I'd be interested in seeing some of that data.
As long as it's only the occupant/owner seeing it, that's totally cool (and like you said, maybe interesting). Google and anyone else seeing all of that data, especially in real-time? No thanks...
I don't know what consumers you're talking about, but the average "consumer" of a car - the middle class Joe - could care less about the info described. Most of the diagnostic data (temps, etc.) is already available via ODBII or the current dash display.
The driving data itself sounds like everything you do to control your car - pedal positions, speed, etc. Why does Google need all that to provide a better experience? Do they want to stream "I Can't Drive 55" or radar detector ads to accurately targeted customers?
Google doesn't want to provide the data to the end user. They want to collect the data and monetize it, whether it's via their own research or selling the data to 3rd parties.
Does this remind anyone else of the Wall-E chairs? Maybe this is BnL's first prototype?
What happened to down time, to just relax and ponder things quietly? I miss down time, like the quiet before movies with boring classical music and still ads on the the screen. I miss the timeouts at sporting events that didn't have every second filled with shiny screen and blaring music. I miss conversations in rooms where over half of the occupants in a room are not holding a screen in front of them. The simple things in life are apparently too simple, I guess.
How could this be done - some form of meta-tagging EVERYTHING in the digital realm with some kind of signature - without having some master database to reference it by? What could possibly go wrong with a universal, non-anonymous Big Brother - I mean, Big Data - system like that?
The only positive to come out of a system like this would be for making it more valuable for the data owners as a resellable commodity.
Slashdot Mirror
And here I thought Zika was going to be the biggest stink... They couldn't clean up ONE body of water over half a decade??
Graft remains endemic
Endemic can't be emphasized enough. Graft and corruption are culture-wide in Latin America, not just Brazil. Native Latinos - usually by no fault of their own initially - are programmed from birth to just expect graft and corruption in all facets of life.
Corrupt police forces that oppress and/or extort. Militaries that become the tools of dictators to oppress. Illicit drug mafias and markets that corrupt politicians. The unnecessarily socialization of various markets (socialized initially to "protect the people" from dirty businessmen but ultimately become another tool of corruption.) The very public murders of any leader that tries to change the status quo...
So where to people turn in dark times? Religion... But consider those countries' primary religious source: the Catholic Church. It has been a corrupt institution for millenia now, led by a clergy with a known history of gay priests, child molestors, bribe takers, (and in the not too distant past, torturers and murderers) - hypocrites of all colors and sizes.
Why should anyone realistically expect any Latin American country to climb up out of its into the "First World" tier anytime soon, with all of that going against everyday citizens. They swim in spiritual/psychological shit everyday; Why would a little actual shit phase them?
A true flat tax (and nationwide sales tax) is doomed because they will "hurt" the poor. Right now, millions of poor people get thousands in earned income credits without working or paying a penny of income tax. Those EICs (aka over-the-top freebies from the gov't) will be eaten up quickly in (or completely removed from) a flat tax system.
And no, people wouldn't suddenly get interested in any congressional action or civics/politics at that point. You'd just have a millions-strong mob of relatively uneducated poor people tearing the country apart before you could say "economic theory".
If the gov't actually got that mess under control, then you'd have a mini-recession due to the loss of income to all the businesses that rely on that infusion of deficit spending fueled cash every spring. The poor go out annually and buy that new hot water heater, even larger TVs, newer and better cell phones to make rap videos about their SNAP cards, the family vacations they couldn't take otherwise, etc.
And don't underestimate the long-term importance of higher income taxes (and inheritance taxes) keeping a class of super-rich people (think old-school European royalty - dukes, etc.) from really taking a firm hold in the USA. Yes, those higher taxes are cruel and patently unfair to the wealthy that work their butts off to get into the top 10%, but they are an unfortunate necessity in a society where too many of the super rich don't share their wealth domestically. Instead, they ship the money out to other countries - all in the name of increased profits, to feed Wall Street's insatiable need for higher stock prices. (Why can't a company's growing profits be re-invested back into society via more R&D expenditures and wages while still turning a handsome profit? Why this unending need for increased profit at the expense of everything else?)
Disclaimer: I'm a GOP guy that loves balanced budgets and is sick of ideological rot within my own party.
Issac Asimov's prequel, Prelude to Foundation, is even more explicit than Foundation in putting this concept on display. People throughout the galaxy forget how to use advanced technology that had been invented in the past. Citizens on Trantor, the galactic empire's capital that's a planet covered with one giant city (think Coruscant in a planetary dome), can't even keep the systems all running right. Eventually even basic knowledge about nuclear power is lost and the galaxy becomes a splintered mess, powered by gas and coal.
In our general arrogance we see going backwards as impossible, but that kind of future could easily happen to us if our increasingly specialized fields aren't continually populated by at least one person willing to study it and keep the knowledge alive (and not just in dusty tomes or stacked SSDs.
There are many other great concepts covered in those books that make you think. They should be required reading for high school, IMO..
Not all conservatives believe this "we need more security" tripe anymore than all liberals think that all abortion should be legal up to the day of birth and the baby parts should then be sold to fund Planned Parenthood (and its employees).
I'm a fiscal conservative, gun owner, and I believe that Edward Snowden was a hero for what he did exposing that trash.
Too many citizens in this country need to stop labeling and stereotyping everyone else into some caricature silo - and need to start considering "the other side" and its views.
Did you actually read the article, or did you just have a bad experience with Drupal (or its community)?
I agree with the GP comment about the article's concerns. That's not saying there aren't real problems with Drupal as a whole when it comes to usability for noobs, or documentation, or getting enthuiastic community support anymore (it has died off some since the D7 to D8 community schism.
But come on. It doesn't take a security team to deal with the article issues. And you don't even have to do manual testing after an update. Just use automatic CI testing (Behat, etc.) to ensure the site holds up after an update. travis-ci.org tied to a Github repo for automatic test execution with each new commit is your friend.
Finally, if you aren't using version control (such as Git) for professional web development - Drupal or not - that's irresponsible, unprofessional, and dangerous. It's like driving drunk without insurance in someone else's car. Sooner or later it's gonna catch up with you - and if you're managing a web site that does more than serve a simple brochure site, that car crash is not gonna be pretty.
Seriously - get with the times. Use Git. Learn "git clone", "git init", "git add somefile.php", "git commit", "git push", "git fetch" (and "git pull"), "git diff", "git log" "git stash", "git reset --hard HEAD~1 (or the commit's hash)" (and what --soft and --mixed mean vs. --hard), "git revert", and you're ready to do 99% of anything you'll ever need to do with Git. It's just not that hard or scary. Really. If you want ridiculously hard, try using the superfluous, bullshit Database API in Drupal 7 to anything beyond a SELECT query. Talk about a waste - was db_query() with sanitation really not good enough, Dries? Backdrop got that part right... :)
And a total waste of time. But people have to feel safe, so why not?
Imagine getting patted down or bodyscanned before entering Wal-Mart during the holday shopping season (after the 2017 Black Friday terrorist bombings and shootings in Ft. Lauderdale, Boise, and Albequerque.)
I think Googles stubborn attitude towards Chrome is ghastly, personally.
Does this sound like Microsoft and IE 15 years ago to anyone else?
watch the best short parodies of it.
The best, IMO - Robot Chicken's Emperor Palpatine going off about the Death Star.
If you want a great view of what the prequels could have been and burn a few joules off saying, "Damn it," a few more times about what they actually are, here's one man's great takes on Ep. 1 and Ep. 2. It's too bad he wasn't actually a Fox exec...
Us GOPers can now safely scratch Carly Fiorina off the primary list permanently.
Adam Ruins Everything - Diamond Engagement Rings
A great four minute video that breaks down the whole diamond engagement rings scam (which I fell for, too... if I had to do it again - there'd be no rock.)
Isn't sodium really toxic (not good when exposed to air) and explodes on contact with water (youtube.com has plenty of examples of this)? I wonder how long it would be before a lawyer sues the battery makers after someone opens a battery somewhere near water? Maybe they have taken this into account with the battery design?
Don't forget that Redflex's CEO was bribing Chicago officials to help get her cameras in there.
Also - not everyone that drives fast is an ahole. And not everyone who drives the speed limit is NOT an ahole.
Agressive and inattentive drivers are the problem - slow or fast. Speed cameras and other forms of photo enforcement, however, are just safety theater that happen to make a buck or two for the camera companies.
On Arizona's ugly history with speed and red light cameras (short, short version):
Former governor Janet Napalitano signed a contract for Redflex to put up cameras (fixed and mobile) everywhere in 2008. Janet actually labeled her statewide speed camera system as a revenue source in one of her AZ budgets - but still claimed it was all about safety. Peace didn't ensue, however, and accidents didn't suddenly drop way off (they dropped, but that was ultimately proven to be because of the recession dropping the number of drivers). While some drivers noted that it was "a nicer drive" and not as crazy on the roads, other drivers just accelerated and slowed down between cameras. Angry pro-camera people started driving like self-righteous assholes - refusing to "bow" to speeders. Some of them set their cruise control to just over the speed limit to avoid tickets, while blocking all lanes ("Move over for faster drivers? WHY? JUST SLOW DOWN!"). Anti-camera and/or aggressive drivers got really pissed off and were madder and more aggressive than ever. The rest of AZ just ignored the whole thing - unless they suddenly got flashed in the "high revenue" locations where they weren't "speeding" in their minds. (Cameras were being placed in locations to maximize revenue (where 65 dropped to 55 on interstates, at the bottom of declines/hills, etc.) Soccer moms and grandparents who loved the cameras early on would suddenly turn on the system when they got a ticket they felt like was nothing more than a speed trap. The public debate on and offline turned ugly, with vandalized cameras (including an axe wielder on an interstate), monkey mask rebels ignoring cameras, freeway and local/city protests, court backlogs (years behind), dodged process servers, etc. There was even a fatal freeway shooting of a camera van operator by a really angry "patriot" (he's still in prison, AFAIK). When the CEO of Redflex wasn't bribing city councils, she was weaving tales of blood and gore on the highways if the cameras were ever turned off.
After Janet bailed on AZ in late 2008 to cash in her chips in DC, any attempts by certain GOP state legislators to get a bill on the Gov. Brewer's desk to ban photo enforcement were blocked by camera company lobbyists and a GOP state house speaker that loved photo radar. The tech was seemingly here to stay.
Then Gov. Jan Brewer - yes, the Obama finger wagger and racist-sounding SB1070, "unshackle the police to catch illegals" signer - did the right thing and refused to renew the statewide contract with Redflex - effectively pulling the plug, and turning the heat down. One group (Camerafraud) was coming close to getting a ban on the ballot as a proposition for statewide vote, but after Brewer's contract cancellation they came up about 40K signatures short (120,000 were gathered) because removing the state speed cameras seem to calm enough people down as a compromise. It never ONCE came to a full vote.
Now the state is seemingly in a ceasefire state on the issue. Most people don't care about it anymore - at least as long as the state speed cameras don't come back. At the city level, certain municipalities have stubbornly held onto them for revenue, but most AZ cities got tired of getting screwed over by Redflex and ATS contracts where they actually lost money while the camera companies made serious coin.
Amazingly, after all of that occurred, there are STILL plenty of Arizonans who believe their short-sighted, 90IQ beliefs about photo enforcement, like: "if you don't do anything wrong, you won't get a ticket," "I don't speed - so who cares?",
You're trolling, and I'll bite. Though there are cases where speeds have been calculated incorrectly, they're usually correct.
They have also, however, been just as efficient at exposing the problems with hard speed limits. Sometimes 45 is too fast; other times it's too slow - and machines can't (yet) calculate that. Many speed limits are set due to politics/fearmongering, environmental views, and revenue streams - not science/facts. It's a mini-miracle that we aren't still under the shackles of the 55 MPH national speed limit. (I could see Pres. Obama vetoing any legislation to repeal it if he'd been in office at the time, citing the environment and openly mocking anyone who couldn't see his point of view - while never driving a single mile between far-distant cities in the Western US on wide open roads in desolate areas.)
and the SLC area isn't heavily Mormon.
Come on - Are us Mormons REALLY bad neighbors? :)
"Awesome - ok... Does it allow addons?" A: No
"Does it block ads?" A: No
"Does it sync?" A: Well, kind of - if you use iCloud.
"I don't want a Safari clone with a Firefox branded UI. Shoot..."
I'll try it, but it sounds like it'll be in vain. I've used Mozilla and then Firefox since the dark Netscape 4.x days... and even knowing this was the likely end result, this is still probably the most disappointed I've been about Firefox during that decades-long run. I do not want to switch to "Google Owns You" Chrome, and Safari sucks.
Watching new MST3K episodes wouldn't be nostalgia. And it's not about charm or selling out for another payout. It'd just be a show making jokes about bad movies - and that's still funny, even today in our Internet-first world.
Other thoughts:
* The only thing that really hurts old MST episodes is that some of their humor was pop culture based - especially old TV shows and classic movies. A lot of the jokes go over younger people's heads because they haven't seen Gilligan's Island, Mary Poppins, The Brady Bunch, etc. New episodes would probably be more relevant.
* Joel should try and get Mike Nelson to help with writing. Regardless of whomever any MST3K fan was the funnier guy onscreen, nobody can argue that Mike Nelson was a key writer that drove the show - and that he carried the show on his shoulders alone for the last three seasons after Trace B. (the original voice of Crow T. Robot) left. Without Mike, it just won't have the same charm.
Dungeons & Dragons...
Cool - hopefully it'll be...
Oh shit - here we go again.
I wanted to be a teacher, teaching music, math, or history - and maybe be an assistant coach for the sports I played. I was talked out of it, however, by a teacher because of the money. The heartbreak you go through over money, he said, just isn't worth it.
Here in Arizona, my own party (GOP) refuses to raise any revenue from new taxes statewide (they've been kicking Janet Napalitano's legacy in the nuts for almost a decade now). As a result, various cities have to pass their own bonds - creating a growing haves/havenots system within our cities. And even the "haves" are asking parents for hundreds of extra dollars in "fees" for everything from sports to textbook help. Starting teachers are paid like janitors... it's a joke.
Bottom line: Unless you want to have both spouses work for sure and still never be even close to comfortable, only staying with a public job for a (possible) future pension, avoid the teaching profession.
Yes, in the real world some cops come off as bullies, and they should be punished or fired when caught doing it.
That has nothing to do with this case, however. The cops didn't even have time to act like a bully before the shooting occurred.
5'7" hooded suspect waving gun at people - making him sound crazy. You pull up hard and tell the suspect to show you his hands. Instead, the suspect pulls out the gun you've been warned he has on him - and unlike the observer who'd been watching the suspect for several minutes, you have a split second to look at the all-black, semi-auto looking gun.
That has ZERO to do with bully cops. And I would bet you could count on one hand the number of cops in the entire state of Ohio that wouldn't have immediately shot and killed that kid in the same circumstances.
As more companies adopt this "we cover it" guarantee, they're going to start having more "costs" dealing with human drivers. Accidents, time/speed inefficiencies (vs. following the letter of the law), etc.
As a result, they'll start pushing the driverless cars harder. For those they can't convince with the carrot of incentives to make the switch, they'll eventually pull out the stick of passing the costs to those human drivers through various lobbying channels - forcing them to deal with higher insurance premiums, more tracking technology, tiered registration costs for cars, etc.
Corporations with any clout always try to cut their costs - one way or another.
Personally I'd be interested in seeing some of that data.
As long as it's only the occupant/owner seeing it, that's totally cool (and like you said, maybe interesting). Google and anyone else seeing all of that data, especially in real-time? No thanks...
I don't know what consumers you're talking about, but the average "consumer" of a car - the middle class Joe - could care less about the info described. Most of the diagnostic data (temps, etc.) is already available via ODBII or the current dash display. The driving data itself sounds like everything you do to control your car - pedal positions, speed, etc. Why does Google need all that to provide a better experience? Do they want to stream "I Can't Drive 55" or radar detector ads to accurately targeted customers? Google doesn't want to provide the data to the end user. They want to collect the data and monetize it, whether it's via their own research or selling the data to 3rd parties.
Does this remind anyone else of the Wall-E chairs? Maybe this is BnL's first prototype?
What happened to down time, to just relax and ponder things quietly? I miss down time, like the quiet before movies with boring classical music and still ads on the the screen. I miss the timeouts at sporting events that didn't have every second filled with shiny screen and blaring music. I miss conversations in rooms where over half of the occupants in a room are not holding a screen in front of them. The simple things in life are apparently too simple, I guess.
How could this be done - some form of meta-tagging EVERYTHING in the digital realm with some kind of signature - without having some master database to reference it by? What could possibly go wrong with a universal, non-anonymous Big Brother - I mean, Big Data - system like that?
The only positive to come out of a system like this would be for making it more valuable for the data owners as a resellable commodity.