(However, many earthquake-insurance policies in the state exclude coverage for induced earthquakes.)
So, if the insurance company can prove the quakes were man-made, they don't have to pay out. But if they can prove it, that goes against claims by many in the state and oil industry. The oil industry would likely try to hound/silence/sue the insurance company.
If they deny a claim with loose evidence that it's man-made, the claimant could (theoretically) prove it was a natural occurrence. Because proving such is to the benefit of the oil industry, they would jump at the chance to "help", and perhaps have the state "investigate" the insurance company for fraud or questionable practices or something.
It seems to me that, despite whatever exclusions the insurance company has, they will likely pay out for any and all earthquake claims with the oil industry helping them cover that pay out behind the scenes in order to keep any proof or claims of "induced" earthquakes out of the public eye.
began to take the form of whatever our politicians fever-dreamed the nature of crime to be.
I agree with most of what you said except this. I don't believe that most our politicians give a rat's patoot one way or the other about crime, except whatever crime happens to them. Instead, they fever-dreamed whatever stats would convince voters that there are massive crime epidemics everywhere, created policies would be easy to play to the voters, and then appear "tough on crime" (as you mentioned) and use that as a stick to beat down any opponent who dare mumbled "well, wait, this isn't actually helping us, and we have huge recidivism, and it's costing us a lot of mon-*THWACK*".
Most of these politicians are at least moderately smart, in the same way that an actor is smart: They are able to play whatever part they feel they need to play to maintain their power and prestige.
For instance, we currently lack a nationwide network of stations that offer full-service for your trucks. It's certainly doable, but so far as I know it's not currently in place, and that's one of the simpler problems to address.
As I've thought about the problem of fuel for automated trucks, my mind turns to mid-air refueling: A plane stays aloft while another plane hooks up to it and adds more fuel. The other plane can go back to the ground and load up again, keeping the desired plane in flight for as long as refueling planes get to it.
Could the same thing be possible for trucks? Have a tanker (also automated) come in behind a truck, have a nozzle hooked up, and fuel it while driving. The tanker can then drive back to a refuel area specifically set up for them to reload. You could even have fuel lanes added to long, mostly-empty stretches of highway, where the truck being fueled can slow down without bothering traffic and the tankers can easily enter/exit to loop around.
Another possibility is that, without the need of a driver, the entire cab can be turned into a giant fuel tank. Not without its own problems, but something to consider.
the only things stopping me from stealing them being a trucker and my sense of what's right.
If someone is a thief, their sense of what is right is already out, so that just leaves the trucker as the only problem. A gun or a steel pipe can take care of that. Perhaps the thought of (potentially) hurting a human is a deterrent, but there non-violent ways to get the driver out of the picture. I imagine insurance for drivers is quite a bit, so companies will be happy to be rid of that cost as well. Various deterrents and anti-theft devices can be put in place, and without a proper cab (see above) the content would have to be unloaded on the spot, making it easy for a company that gets an alarm to call the local PD.
The weigh station one is easy, the trucks just have RFID tags that give the information as it passes through a weigh station or will automatically connect the officer at the station with whoever is monitoring the trucks through the cab. It can even have a basic LCD screen on either side to allow 'face to face' communication. The remote monitor can then instruct the cab to move into a designated space; if no one can be contacted, the cab can automatically go into a space until contact can be established or a representative can physically arrive.
There might be a standard (or five) created to allow the station to direct the cab itself, given proper credentials, without interaction from the trucking company. (This goes into things like encryption etc., but doable.)
A similar motorcycle acts as a delivery van. covered with drawers, each of which can lock or unlock independently. It goes to a destination, sends a message to the people inside the building and waits ten minutes. after the person inside authenticates with their cell phone (maybe by taking a picture of the drone) the drone unlocks the one drawer, and waits for the person to remove or add a package.
Groceries and package delivery (UPS/Fedex/etc.) These will be the biggest things affect by self-driving vehicles. Groceries: it's far more efficient (and green) for someone to pick out your groceries, put them in a truck with other orders from nearby people, and drive to you, rather than having each person drive to the grocery. Packages: While they wouldn't be able to hold as many, they also wouldn't be beholden to the shipping company's schedule. So if you have a package you don't want left on your doorstep, you can pay a bit extra and have it stored in a self-delivery vehicle and "call" it when you are at home. Doesn't matter what time, you just call and it works its way towards you.
There will be some problems with theft of/from the self-delivery vehicles, but I imagine that will be taken care of quickly with cameras added (that can also be used for identification of customers and the self-driving.)
the driver-less stuff will be relegated to delivery vehicles and DUI offenders
Also buses (unless you were counting those as part of delivery vehicles; in which case, sorry.)
But the thing is that the auto-driving car that becomes ubiquitous will not show up fully formed. Over the years new vehicles will add more and more features that lower the burden of the driver; between adaptive cruise control and lane keeping assist, cars can already handle 80% of distance highway driving by themselves. We also have various forms of automatic parking already. A ton of different collision avoidance options.
We'll slowly get new features like signal-change monitoring that will stop for red and go for green, stop sign recognition, merge assistance, etc. The tech will eventually cover 95% of use cases, and the remaining 5% will be edge cases that get worked out slower (the "long tail", so to speak). I think it will take 10, maybe 20 years to get to that 95%, and at that point the new vehicles will likely have everything they need for full self-driving, only downloading firmware updates for the remaining 5% as it gets tackled.
Sort of: it's a Dicevertisement. Nerval's Lobster is the sockpuppet that Dice uses to post its own stories to Slashdot (without any disclaimer that Slashdot is owned by Dice.)
shared between a number of individuals (like one car per family, once the father has reached work he sends the car back home so that the mother can take the kid to kindergarden, etc).
My personal prediction is that, once self-driving cars become a majority, the desire to own a car will be reduced drastically (especially in urban areas.) Instead, people will belong to "auto clubs", which will maintain a fleet of the vehicles. With a monthly membership fee you get X rides/miles; the fee includes insurance, and since insurance rates will drop drastically for those who allow their car to primarily auto-drive, I think that some auto insurance companies will actually be the ones to start these auto clubs (perhaps partnering with a car rental company, maybe even some of the mechanic chains will join in, like Big O Tires or Jiffy Lube, since electric vehicles will eventually be the majority as well and they'll start to lose a lot of business in regular maintenance visits.)
You can pay an extra amount to reserve a particular car and/or pickup time. Otherwise, you use your phone app to order a car to your current or a nearby location, and the car sends you a text when it's outside.
There will also be non-auto cars, and there will be people who own cars (both auto and non), but these will become collectors/upper class things. I can see a larger family, like a generational household where you have kids, parents, grandparents, maybe an aunt or uncle, with their own, personal auto or two.
Perhaps we should consider changing the university system so that when someone goes in, they choose a "focus" and a "study". The "focus" is the normal degree, something that has fairly direct application to jobs, like Mechanical Engineer, and guides their "technical" classes. The "study" is something that interests them, like your Medieval French Lit, and guides their non-technical classes.
Unlike a Major and a Minor, this system wouldn't require more classes for the Minor/"study", and the ratio would be 60/40 between them.
Welcome to April Fools Day. I regret to inform you that not all attempts at humor are successful, and even those that are never succeed at humoring every single individual. From your low-digit ID I assume you've been around a while; that Slashdot does something on April Fools should not be a surprise to you, so you should know to either avoid Slashdot (since no real news will be posted today) or just deal with the jokes they put in place.
I mean what's the chance he's going to be productive those two weeks anyway?
This is actually a great way to test how an employee's absence will change things. Ask him (or her) to spend a day or two cleaning up their own stuff both physical and digital, then being "on call" the remaining time, checking his corporate e-mail once or twice a day. Have the remaining employees go ahead and start dividing up his work and see where things come to a screeching halt, and sending him questions via e-mail. This way, he's still on payroll if they realize that they need his help, and you can slowly remove his account's access to see if any process somehow got tied to it. Once he's formally gone, it will be a lot harder (and likely more expensive) to get his help.
Seems like a win-win-win to me. Sure, you can have him write up how-tos and manuals for stuff he thinks others will need to do that he once did, but trial by fire would be much better at identifying gaps while you still have a proverbial fire department sitting right outside.
As a youngin' in the early-mid 90s, we would watch these slide shows *BEEP* These had corresponding audio tapes, that would tell to change the slide with a *BEEP* Can't remember what topics, and they were always boring as *BEEP* Only useful for taking a quick nap or being amused when the teacher didn't change the slide *BEEP* Just changing to video over slides doesn't fix the underlying lack of interactivity or entertainment to keep the students stimulated. *BEEP BEEP*
Of course, terrorists are well known as the most law abiding citizens on the planet.
To play devil's advocate: By outlawing encryption, the amount of "law-abiding citizens" that use it will drop precipitously. Then, when the NSA intercepts an encrypted signal, it becomes far more likely that both ends are $BOOGEYMAN, and their resources won't be spread as thin. Even if both ends are decidedly not $BOOGEYMAN, they are either foreigners, citizens with little regard for the law, or a combination of the two, and so need to go on one of the myriad of watchlists anyway.
So even though outlawing encryption won't end encryption, it will make the NSA/FBI/Europol/etc.'s job of getting leads much easier.
That's my loose take on it. (Raised Lutheran, pastor's kid, but now lazy atheist.) Paul, formerly Saul, who directed much of the early Catholic Church co-opted Jesus (or the story of Jesus) for his own means. There's a lot said in books ostensibly written by him or sourced through him that are a bit counter to Jesus's largely "peace and love" rhetoric. All from a man who started out as a persecutor of disciples of Jesus.
I think that Saul figured out that it was easier to control the budding religion by spearheading it, rather than spearing heads. So he had his "vision", used a local believer (was he said to be a prophet? Can't remember) as a patsy, was "cured" of his blindness, and turned to "following" the teachings of Jesus Christ and leading others in the same. Worked out very well for him, I'd say.
That's all assuming at least some of the Bible is factual, though.
I have a history of depression, and there's a common survey that medical offices use to get a rough feel for a person's depression and/or anxiety level. In fact, it is so common that in the four states I have filled out the survey, I'm pretty sure that every single one was a generational photocopy of the same document. In many cases it has a slight "right" lean and offset that is recognizable; in others there's a "blur" along the left side, as though it was copied with a stack of papers on top of it or from a book.
The same thing happened in the military with "official" forms that were readily (and sloppily) photocopied.
Not that a letterhead should be what makes something legitimate, but when I'm paying a few hundred for a 15 minute visitation it would be nice if the photocopies looked decent...
I don't know enough about Canada to say for sure, and I don't know how familiar you are with American states, but would you say that Quebec is Canada's reverse-Texas?
Standby mode can be convenient because (I think) all of the consoles will download updates/newly purchased games while in standby (maybe a slightly elevated level).
But, if you are truly concerned with power usage from consoles (and other devices) on standby, here's my advice: Get an outlet adapter that has a remote. These can be had for super cheap shortly after Christmas, as they're mainly used for switching external or Christmas tree lights on/off at will. I have one between the outlet and my entertainment center's surge protector, so my TV, media center, and consoles are all 100% off while I'm not using it. I don't know how much power the switch draws, but I reckon it's far less than even one of the consoles on standby.
Perhaps part of the issue is that auditors (appear to) only ever look for negatives. If they had to look for positives as well, and apply weights to the two sides, it would work out better for everyone.
Male engineers and programmers are often stereotyped as "nerds" before someone even meets with them, and high school (with Hollywood backing) has taught everyone that "nerds" are super-easy to push around. Thus, if someone has an agenda, they'll go after whom they see as the softest target first, which is why there seems to be such a big blowup about gender inequality in tech-related fields vs any other field (but I get most of my news from/., so I could be biased.)
Any actual outcome is immaterial so long as it can be painted in a light positive to those trying to push an agenda.
You don't think the guy would be capable of doing the same thing if a clueless flight attendant was there while pilot is taking a leak ?
Well, the "clueless" flight attendant would be less clueless after the nose-dive started. Then they'd know to unlock the door for the pilot. I guess the co-pilot could have subdued him/her first. But, unless the co-pilot was a ninja, there would have been a struggle of some sort, which would have alerted front-row passengers, who would have alerted the pilot. (Or the pilot would be alerted himself, if the head was right outside the cabin.) The flight attendant may also have been able to fling open the door, so that even if s/he was overwhelmed other passengers could go in and try to wrest control while awaiting the pilot.
But, even if the co-pilot was a secret ninja, having a second person in there would have immensely lowered the possibility of his success. The attendant could have been an unwitting distraction to him until they passed over the mountains or the pilot came back; the guy might have done this as sheer end-of-the-world depression and having another physical human could have dissuaded him; maybe the attendant's idle banter while waiting could have made the co-pilot tip his hand, at least putting the attendant on guard.
Perhaps incorporate emergency biometric scanner or something like that on the door that can override the "unlock" option ?
(I assume you mean lock and not unlock.) Yes, because let's use technology to completely defeat the purpose of the technology put in place already. Then someone trying to hijack the plane can wait for a pilot to come out, grab him, and use his thumb/eye/whatever to get in even after the copilot flips the switch to "locked". You could use a remote system from the control tower to override the lock, but good luck keeping it completely uncrackable (or just having someone storm the tower and threaten the air control).
I'm a big computer guy and think we'll get some incredible tech in the future, but there will still be many times when human presence is still miles beyond any tech, even after the AI singularity.
I used to be the same way, but then I started getting mice with buttons on the left side that my thumb could use and the concern alleviated completely. Now I have one of those buttons assigned to "middle click" and it works better because my index finger can stay on M1 at hair trigger.
No, I think it's apt. "Programming" (ideally) involves the discipline of being able to plan out how to approach a problem, testing, best practices, etc. "Coding" is just hacking away until something seems to work and then moving on to the next thing. We use the term "code monkey", as in "a million monkeys with a million typewriters" saying, but the term isn't apropos in layman circles, so "coder" and "coding" suffices.
95%+ of the kids that come out of these classes will not be budding programmers. A good programming class will include the basics of planning/bug catching, but most students will be "coders" at best.
We had a similar thing at my workplace. We have a number of network drives assigned by GP, to all accounts, but over time most have become obsolete. Two years ago we migrated to from WinServer2003 to 2008. In 2008 or an update installed shortly thereafter, you couldn't assign a username/password when making a network connection through GP due to it being a big security hole, and without that one of the network drives always failed to connect. However, that drive was not used anymore, so it wasn't a problem
What was a problem was the "Could not connect all network drives" message that every user got every time they logged in. Some people actually did ask me about that (I'm not really IT, but I do a lot of IT-ish stuff) and, while I reported it to the boss/owner who does oversee all of that stuff, nothing happened. Now it's white noise to the end-users. I finally convinced her recently to disable the GP, just to have less white noise, and hopefully in time the other employees will become unused to that and report when they actually have a problem with network drives. (It also put entries into the Event Log when the connection fails, making it more annoying to track down problems.)
We have other problems like this, but one at a time. Of course, it won't stop people from just hitting OK: I had a guy who was trying to remove a password from a PDF in Adobe Acrobat. He would clear the password and it would show him an error message. He asked me what to do and I had him to repeat his steps; the second paragraph of that message explained exactly what he had to do, he just never read it and hit Cancel instead. Too often non-experienced computer users assume that if there's an unexpected message of any kind that they are completely incapable of dealing with it, and so will ignore it or send a non-helpful report to the support desk.
While I agree in general, I don't think that yearly installments are necessarily a bad idea, they've just been handled very poorly for the reasons you mentioned.
Consider Marvel's Cinematic Universe: We're getting multiple movies per year for the same universe, each of which costs about the same as a AAA video game to make. Video game franchises with established or potential enormous universes could go well, if approached correctly: 1) Games would have to be made by different studios on a rotating basis[1] 2) Games cannot be mere iterations off each other (this is the main failure of Battlefield/CoD in their yearly releases) 3) Games should explore different aspects/facets of the universe they reside in to avoid fatigue (another failure of Battlefield/CoD) The benefit is that the plot/universe could be built up and maintained by a small handful of people, so the devs only have to focus on the smaller details. Having such a setup also makes it easy to expand into other things, like books, comics, and "graphic adventure games" (like Telltale did with Borderlands). Going back to Marvel, I'm sure someone has a giant Word document/Wiki that has the basic overview of the universe and how all movie plots will progress through at least 2017.
[1] Battlefield (I think, might be CoD) is on a three-year rotation now, one dev per year, with Hardline as the first game from this new rotation. Prior to this, both Battlefield and CoD were on two-year rotations, which crunched the devs quite hard
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So, if the insurance company can prove the quakes were man-made, they don't have to pay out. But if they can prove it, that goes against claims by many in the state and oil industry. The oil industry would likely try to hound/silence/sue the insurance company.
If they deny a claim with loose evidence that it's man-made, the claimant could (theoretically) prove it was a natural occurrence. Because proving such is to the benefit of the oil industry, they would jump at the chance to "help", and perhaps have the state "investigate" the insurance company for fraud or questionable practices or something.
It seems to me that, despite whatever exclusions the insurance company has, they will likely pay out for any and all earthquake claims with the oil industry helping them cover that pay out behind the scenes in order to keep any proof or claims of "induced" earthquakes out of the public eye.
I agree with most of what you said except this. I don't believe that most our politicians give a rat's patoot one way or the other about crime, except whatever crime happens to them. Instead, they fever-dreamed whatever stats would convince voters that there are massive crime epidemics everywhere, created policies would be easy to play to the voters, and then appear "tough on crime" (as you mentioned) and use that as a stick to beat down any opponent who dare mumbled "well, wait, this isn't actually helping us, and we have huge recidivism, and it's costing us a lot of mon-*THWACK*".
Most of these politicians are at least moderately smart, in the same way that an actor is smart: They are able to play whatever part they feel they need to play to maintain their power and prestige.
As I've thought about the problem of fuel for automated trucks, my mind turns to mid-air refueling: A plane stays aloft while another plane hooks up to it and adds more fuel. The other plane can go back to the ground and load up again, keeping the desired plane in flight for as long as refueling planes get to it.
Could the same thing be possible for trucks? Have a tanker (also automated) come in behind a truck, have a nozzle hooked up, and fuel it while driving. The tanker can then drive back to a refuel area specifically set up for them to reload. You could even have fuel lanes added to long, mostly-empty stretches of highway, where the truck being fueled can slow down without bothering traffic and the tankers can easily enter/exit to loop around.
Another possibility is that, without the need of a driver, the entire cab can be turned into a giant fuel tank. Not without its own problems, but something to consider.
If someone is a thief, their sense of what is right is already out, so that just leaves the trucker as the only problem. A gun or a steel pipe can take care of that. Perhaps the thought of (potentially) hurting a human is a deterrent, but there non-violent ways to get the driver out of the picture. I imagine insurance for drivers is quite a bit, so companies will be happy to be rid of that cost as well. Various deterrents and anti-theft devices can be put in place, and without a proper cab (see above) the content would have to be unloaded on the spot, making it easy for a company that gets an alarm to call the local PD.
The weigh station one is easy, the trucks just have RFID tags that give the information as it passes through a weigh station or will automatically connect the officer at the station with whoever is monitoring the trucks through the cab. It can even have a basic LCD screen on either side to allow 'face to face' communication. The remote monitor can then instruct the cab to move into a designated space; if no one can be contacted, the cab can automatically go into a space until contact can be established or a representative can physically arrive.
There might be a standard (or five) created to allow the station to direct the cab itself, given proper credentials, without interaction from the trucking company. (This goes into things like encryption etc., but doable.)
Groceries and package delivery (UPS/Fedex/etc.) These will be the biggest things affect by self-driving vehicles. Groceries: it's far more efficient (and green) for someone to pick out your groceries, put them in a truck with other orders from nearby people, and drive to you, rather than having each person drive to the grocery. Packages: While they wouldn't be able to hold as many, they also wouldn't be beholden to the shipping company's schedule. So if you have a package you don't want left on your doorstep, you can pay a bit extra and have it stored in a self-delivery vehicle and "call" it when you are at home. Doesn't matter what time, you just call and it works its way towards you.
There will be some problems with theft of/from the self-delivery vehicles, but I imagine that will be taken care of quickly with cameras added (that can also be used for identification of customers and the self-driving.)
Also buses (unless you were counting those as part of delivery vehicles; in which case, sorry.)
But the thing is that the auto-driving car that becomes ubiquitous will not show up fully formed. Over the years new vehicles will add more and more features that lower the burden of the driver; between adaptive cruise control and lane keeping assist, cars can already handle 80% of distance highway driving by themselves. We also have various forms of automatic parking already. A ton of different collision avoidance options.
We'll slowly get new features like signal-change monitoring that will stop for red and go for green, stop sign recognition, merge assistance, etc. The tech will eventually cover 95% of use cases, and the remaining 5% will be edge cases that get worked out slower (the "long tail", so to speak). I think it will take 10, maybe 20 years to get to that 95%, and at that point the new vehicles will likely have everything they need for full self-driving, only downloading firmware updates for the remaining 5% as it gets tackled.
Sort of: it's a Dicevertisement. Nerval's Lobster is the sockpuppet that Dice uses to post its own stories to Slashdot (without any disclaimer that Slashdot is owned by Dice.)
My personal prediction is that, once self-driving cars become a majority, the desire to own a car will be reduced drastically (especially in urban areas.) Instead, people will belong to "auto clubs", which will maintain a fleet of the vehicles. With a monthly membership fee you get X rides/miles; the fee includes insurance, and since insurance rates will drop drastically for those who allow their car to primarily auto-drive, I think that some auto insurance companies will actually be the ones to start these auto clubs (perhaps partnering with a car rental company, maybe even some of the mechanic chains will join in, like Big O Tires or Jiffy Lube, since electric vehicles will eventually be the majority as well and they'll start to lose a lot of business in regular maintenance visits.)
You can pay an extra amount to reserve a particular car and/or pickup time. Otherwise, you use your phone app to order a car to your current or a nearby location, and the car sends you a text when it's outside.
There will also be non-auto cars, and there will be people who own cars (both auto and non), but these will become collectors/upper class things. I can see a larger family, like a generational household where you have kids, parents, grandparents, maybe an aunt or uncle, with their own, personal auto or two.
Perhaps we should consider changing the university system so that when someone goes in, they choose a "focus" and a "study". The "focus" is the normal degree, something that has fairly direct application to jobs, like Mechanical Engineer, and guides their "technical" classes. The "study" is something that interests them, like your Medieval French Lit, and guides their non-technical classes.
Unlike a Major and a Minor, this system wouldn't require more classes for the Minor/"study", and the ratio would be 60/40 between them.
Welcome to April Fools Day. I regret to inform you that not all attempts at humor are successful, and even those that are never succeed at humoring every single individual. From your low-digit ID I assume you've been around a while; that Slashdot does something on April Fools should not be a surprise to you, so you should know to either avoid Slashdot (since no real news will be posted today) or just deal with the jokes they put in place.
Okay, I admit it, this one made me laugh (mainly because I expected a different direction when reading the headline.)
This is actually a great way to test how an employee's absence will change things. Ask him (or her) to spend a day or two cleaning up their own stuff both physical and digital, then being "on call" the remaining time, checking his corporate e-mail once or twice a day. Have the remaining employees go ahead and start dividing up his work and see where things come to a screeching halt, and sending him questions via e-mail. This way, he's still on payroll if they realize that they need his help, and you can slowly remove his account's access to see if any process somehow got tied to it. Once he's formally gone, it will be a lot harder (and likely more expensive) to get his help.
Seems like a win-win-win to me. Sure, you can have him write up how-tos and manuals for stuff he thinks others will need to do that he once did, but trial by fire would be much better at identifying gaps while you still have a proverbial fire department sitting right outside.
As a youngin' in the early-mid 90s, we would watch these slide shows *BEEP*
These had corresponding audio tapes, that would tell to change the slide with a *BEEP*
Can't remember what topics, and they were always boring as *BEEP*
Only useful for taking a quick nap or being amused when the teacher didn't change the slide *BEEP*
Just changing to video over slides doesn't fix the underlying lack of interactivity or entertainment to keep the students stimulated. *BEEP BEEP*
To play devil's advocate: By outlawing encryption, the amount of "law-abiding citizens" that use it will drop precipitously. Then, when the NSA intercepts an encrypted signal, it becomes far more likely that both ends are $BOOGEYMAN, and their resources won't be spread as thin. Even if both ends are decidedly not $BOOGEYMAN, they are either foreigners, citizens with little regard for the law, or a combination of the two, and so need to go on one of the myriad of watchlists anyway.
So even though outlawing encryption won't end encryption, it will make the NSA/FBI/Europol/etc.'s job of getting leads much easier.
That's my loose take on it. (Raised Lutheran, pastor's kid, but now lazy atheist.) Paul, formerly Saul, who directed much of the early Catholic Church co-opted Jesus (or the story of Jesus) for his own means. There's a lot said in books ostensibly written by him or sourced through him that are a bit counter to Jesus's largely "peace and love" rhetoric. All from a man who started out as a persecutor of disciples of Jesus.
I think that Saul figured out that it was easier to control the budding religion by spearheading it, rather than spearing heads. So he had his "vision", used a local believer (was he said to be a prophet? Can't remember) as a patsy, was "cured" of his blindness, and turned to "following" the teachings of Jesus Christ and leading others in the same. Worked out very well for him, I'd say.
That's all assuming at least some of the Bible is factual, though.
I have a history of depression, and there's a common survey that medical offices use to get a rough feel for a person's depression and/or anxiety level. In fact, it is so common that in the four states I have filled out the survey, I'm pretty sure that every single one was a generational photocopy of the same document. In many cases it has a slight "right" lean and offset that is recognizable; in others there's a "blur" along the left side, as though it was copied with a stack of papers on top of it or from a book.
The same thing happened in the military with "official" forms that were readily (and sloppily) photocopied.
Not that a letterhead should be what makes something legitimate, but when I'm paying a few hundred for a 15 minute visitation it would be nice if the photocopies looked decent...
Because the American citizenry apparently has no limit with incompetence, seeing as how often it's elected into office.
I don't know enough about Canada to say for sure, and I don't know how familiar you are with American states, but would you say that Quebec is Canada's reverse-Texas?
Standby mode can be convenient because (I think) all of the consoles will download updates/newly purchased games while in standby (maybe a slightly elevated level).
But, if you are truly concerned with power usage from consoles (and other devices) on standby, here's my advice: Get an outlet adapter that has a remote. These can be had for super cheap shortly after Christmas, as they're mainly used for switching external or Christmas tree lights on/off at will. I have one between the outlet and my entertainment center's surge protector, so my TV, media center, and consoles are all 100% off while I'm not using it. I don't know how much power the switch draws, but I reckon it's far less than even one of the consoles on standby.
Perhaps part of the issue is that auditors (appear to) only ever look for negatives. If they had to look for positives as well, and apply weights to the two sides, it would work out better for everyone.
Male engineers and programmers are often stereotyped as "nerds" before someone even meets with them, and high school (with Hollywood backing) has taught everyone that "nerds" are super-easy to push around. Thus, if someone has an agenda, they'll go after whom they see as the softest target first, which is why there seems to be such a big blowup about gender inequality in tech-related fields vs any other field (but I get most of my news from /., so I could be biased.)
Any actual outcome is immaterial so long as it can be painted in a light positive to those trying to push an agenda.
Well, the "clueless" flight attendant would be less clueless after the nose-dive started. Then they'd know to unlock the door for the pilot. I guess the co-pilot could have subdued him/her first. But, unless the co-pilot was a ninja, there would have been a struggle of some sort, which would have alerted front-row passengers, who would have alerted the pilot. (Or the pilot would be alerted himself, if the head was right outside the cabin.) The flight attendant may also have been able to fling open the door, so that even if s/he was overwhelmed other passengers could go in and try to wrest control while awaiting the pilot.
But, even if the co-pilot was a secret ninja, having a second person in there would have immensely lowered the possibility of his success. The attendant could have been an unwitting distraction to him until they passed over the mountains or the pilot came back; the guy might have done this as sheer end-of-the-world depression and having another physical human could have dissuaded him; maybe the attendant's idle banter while waiting could have made the co-pilot tip his hand, at least putting the attendant on guard.
(I assume you mean lock and not unlock.) Yes, because let's use technology to completely defeat the purpose of the technology put in place already. Then someone trying to hijack the plane can wait for a pilot to come out, grab him, and use his thumb/eye/whatever to get in even after the copilot flips the switch to "locked". You could use a remote system from the control tower to override the lock, but good luck keeping it completely uncrackable (or just having someone storm the tower and threaten the air control).
I'm a big computer guy and think we'll get some incredible tech in the future, but there will still be many times when human presence is still miles beyond any tech, even after the AI singularity.
I used to be the same way, but then I started getting mice with buttons on the left side that my thumb could use and the concern alleviated completely. Now I have one of those buttons assigned to "middle click" and it works better because my index finger can stay on M1 at hair trigger.
No, I think it's apt. "Programming" (ideally) involves the discipline of being able to plan out how to approach a problem, testing, best practices, etc. "Coding" is just hacking away until something seems to work and then moving on to the next thing. We use the term "code monkey", as in "a million monkeys with a million typewriters" saying, but the term isn't apropos in layman circles, so "coder" and "coding" suffices.
95%+ of the kids that come out of these classes will not be budding programmers. A good programming class will include the basics of planning/bug catching, but most students will be "coders" at best.
We had a similar thing at my workplace. We have a number of network drives assigned by GP, to all accounts, but over time most have become obsolete. Two years ago we migrated to from WinServer2003 to 2008. In 2008 or an update installed shortly thereafter, you couldn't assign a username/password when making a network connection through GP due to it being a big security hole, and without that one of the network drives always failed to connect. However, that drive was not used anymore, so it wasn't a problem
What was a problem was the "Could not connect all network drives" message that every user got every time they logged in. Some people actually did ask me about that (I'm not really IT, but I do a lot of IT-ish stuff) and, while I reported it to the boss/owner who does oversee all of that stuff, nothing happened. Now it's white noise to the end-users. I finally convinced her recently to disable the GP, just to have less white noise, and hopefully in time the other employees will become unused to that and report when they actually have a problem with network drives. (It also put entries into the Event Log when the connection fails, making it more annoying to track down problems.)
We have other problems like this, but one at a time. Of course, it won't stop people from just hitting OK: I had a guy who was trying to remove a password from a PDF in Adobe Acrobat. He would clear the password and it would show him an error message. He asked me what to do and I had him to repeat his steps; the second paragraph of that message explained exactly what he had to do, he just never read it and hit Cancel instead. Too often non-experienced computer users assume that if there's an unexpected message of any kind that they are completely incapable of dealing with it, and so will ignore it or send a non-helpful report to the support desk.
While I agree in general, I don't think that yearly installments are necessarily a bad idea, they've just been handled very poorly for the reasons you mentioned.
Consider Marvel's Cinematic Universe: We're getting multiple movies per year for the same universe, each of which costs about the same as a AAA video game to make. Video game franchises with established or potential enormous universes could go well, if approached correctly:
1) Games would have to be made by different studios on a rotating basis[1]
2) Games cannot be mere iterations off each other (this is the main failure of Battlefield/CoD in their yearly releases)
3) Games should explore different aspects/facets of the universe they reside in to avoid fatigue (another failure of Battlefield/CoD)
The benefit is that the plot/universe could be built up and maintained by a small handful of people, so the devs only have to focus on the smaller details. Having such a setup also makes it easy to expand into other things, like books, comics, and "graphic adventure games" (like Telltale did with Borderlands). Going back to Marvel, I'm sure someone has a giant Word document/Wiki that has the basic overview of the universe and how all movie plots will progress through at least 2017.
[1] Battlefield (I think, might be CoD) is on a three-year rotation now, one dev per year, with Hardline as the first game from this new rotation. Prior to this, both Battlefield and CoD were on two-year rotations, which crunched the devs quite hard