That sounds like a lot of work. I opted-out months ago simply by switching to T-Mobile.
(I wouldn't be surprised if they're doing something similar, but I find Verizon more sinister, and with T-Mobile's pay-as-you-go plan I'm paying about $10/mo for the privilege.)
Whether it's $20MM or a more-reasonable-but-still-high sum, like $500K/yr (more than the President makes) and then force the person to retire forever, it still wouldn't stop such crony antics because there's still no downside or punishment to working for the industry prior and then working for the government to oppose *winkwinknudgenudge* some industry practices. Then the person retires altogether, their evil deeds already done and money absconded with.
Instead there need to be constraints for blocking those who would obviously be conflicted, but writing those rules (or even just guidelines) is no easy task. You can't simply ban everyone who has worked in the industry or hasn't spent the last X years outside the industry, because a clueless person would make things worse by ignorance rather than malice. You can't favor certain companies/groups over others (I'm sure many of us would love to see someone from the EFF be appointed to the FCC) because then it just makes the industries work hard to get "their guy" into the favored company, even as lip service, and then still get the President to appoint the person to do their dirty work. (As a tangentially-related example, see the "approval" for OOXML.)
Really, the problem here (as in most things political these days, it seems) is Congress. Certainly President Obama (and Bush, and whoever replaces Obama in 2016) is no innocent party here, but Congress is able to raise the red flags and block appointing. Unfortunately, any blocking recently has been mostly along party lines and done not because they oppose the appointee for potential corruption/conflict of interest, but because their party doesn't control the White House and so make mostly-unrelated reasons (http://swampland.time.com/2013/10/28/lindsey-graham-vows-to-block-obama-nominees-until-benghazi-survivors-testify/). The "minority" side would be just as happy to pass through such blowhards when their turn comes again.
Of course, "fixing" Congress is a far harder and larger task than fixing the "revolving door", but I don't know how we get that second one done without doing the first. If we, as The People, could start a popular cause to appoint from within (so someone who has been with the department/commission in question for some time), rather than someone who hasn't recently worked there (or ever.) It doesn't guarantee a lack of cronyism, but it would give us a look as to what the person did or proposed for/against the industry (when possible; another issue is that most of their work will be that ordered from the crooked head), rather than just "for" the industry.
(And, of course, Congress could be "fixed" through the will of the people, but the Establishment Party has become quite good at playing the sides off each other so they won't even consider a third party or even someone of their own party who speaks against a "big issue"--which too often is really not that big--for fear of the "other side" gaining power.)
maybe if they spent more time dealing with people who are not then they might find it easier to not treat everyone like they are.
Long ago, when I was still a member of TotalFark, one of the "open" threads started talking about anime. TotalFark is more general (though usually silly) news and so is equal parts jock/average joe/nerd. Here on Slashdot I probably don't have to explain what anime is to anyone, but on TF you might run into the odd person who does.
Anyway, so we're discussing our favorite Anime and giving recommendations, and one guy comes into the thread and just goes apeshit at everyone participating, asking how we could possibly enjoy that filth and accusing us of all sorts of things. After questioning him about just why he thought it was all horrible, we found out that his only experience with Anime was as part of some anti-child-porn group or task force (I believe it had to do with FBI investigations, but this was quite long ago...) and he had only ever seen lolita/CP hentai. Perhaps he was older or somehow managed to avoid any utterance of Dragonball Z in high school, but since that was his only experience with Japanese Animation he thought it was representative of all Japanese Animation. As I recall, it wasn't hard to make him realize that what he experienced was a only small portion of hentai, which was only a small portion of anime in general.
If the police only spend their time dealing with human filth, and the only decent people they meet are police, it could easily explain how many get the us vs. them mentality. It doesn't excuse it, but it does give a starting point to remove it. It might also help explain the "Blue Code of Silence", because they think that even if a fellow cop does something bad it would be worse to turn them over to the criminals (i.e. everyone who is not or was not a cop.)
As with your idea, requiring police to rotate between "enforcement" and "public service" roles would probably do a lot to mellow out the antagonizing ones and be far easier than any current attempt to actually bring them to justice when they abuse their position. It wouldn't solve all the problems, but would go far to bridge that gap.
I'll be honest, I came here not to read his "article" but to read all the posts complaining/slamming him. So perhaps Slashdot is counting on ad revenue from that (except that my Karma gets rid of ads...)
I'm reminded of a cousin's girlfriend (who caused him no small amount of grief, but that's another story) who had a few birth defects, one of which was Amelia (or something similar) on her left arm. Her mother, who sounded like a rather nasty individual, apparently tormented her over the arm and so she learned to hide it as much as possible.
She was rather good, too; while I didn't interact with her too much, I had seen her off and on for about two months before someone clued me into her uniqueness. Only after that did I notice it; she makes it seem as though she just keeps one arm tucked in somewhere (her pocket or purse or whatever) and freely uses the other one, which doesn't seem odd if you only see her now and then.
I help moderate a small 4chan-like website and we started getting hit by Child Porn bots in mid-January. We're moving to different software right now, and in the process we analyzed all of our bans for spam and CP in the past year, finding that Ukraine made up about 70-80% of that (including most of the CP).
So in our new software we just banned the entirety of Ukraine and most of Russia in the hopes of stopping the tide.
Aye! I was with Verizon for three years, but after the BS they tried to pull over Network Neutrality and their firm stance on forcing me to buy a data plan--despite using minimal data (that I only used because I was paying for it, not because I needed it)--because I had an outdated smartphone, I decided to switch. I chose T-Mobile for the exact same reason, getting the pay-as-you-go plan. (They also said they don't force the data plan on smartphones, which I believe, but I got a dumbphone so I couldn't test that.)
Unfortunately I fumbled the switch over and had my number ported too early, meaning I had to pay Verizon's cancellation fee. This revealed to me just how horrible their customer service was (until then I'd had mostly pleasant experiences with them the few times I had to call) in trying to get my last month properly pro-rated.[1] However, now that all is settled and done, I paid $200 for signing up with T-Mobile (half service, half for the phone+taxes), plus an extra $20 to Verizon over what I would have paid for my final month; that was back in October, and since then I haven't had to fill the phone once, meaning I've so far saved $170 (Verizon was approx. $80/mo). I still have >$50 on the phone, too, so this works great for someone like me who makes few calls/texts. And, theoretically, I can easily go to a monthly plan (still no contract) if I think I'll be using a lot in a short time frame, then back down to pay-as-you-go (I imagine I'll lose what minutes I have left when I first change, though.)
[1] WARNING TO EXISTING VERIZON USERS: If you have a contract and wind up in a similar situation as I (porting the number, cancelling the service, being charged the cancellation fee, and then trying to get time paid for pro-rated back), you must explicitly call and tell customer service that your phone number was ported or they won't consider it "cancelled". Their customer service tried to wiggle out of pro-rating me because I didn't do that, despite calling on three different occasions from the ported number, confirming on all three calls (if quickly) that I had full changed over, and them already charging me the cancellation fee. In the end I got my money, but it was a pain in the ass because their customer service kept saying they would do X but not do it or only half do it.
In any case, this game is rated "M" - anything goes.
Not quite. "M" games can get away with a lot of stuff, mainly violence (even gory violence, like Manhunt 2[1] or MadWorld), but if you show too many boobies, sex scenes, or maybe even a single instance of fully-rendered genitals, you get the abhorred Adults-Only (AO) rating. From the ESRB's website:
MATURE Content is generally suitable for ages 17 and up. May contain intense violence, blood and gore, sexual content and/or strong language. ADULTS ONLY Content suitable only for adults ages 18 and up. May include prolonged scenes of intense violence, graphic sexual content and/or gambling with real currency.
AO (roughly equivalent to the NC-17 movie rating you mentioned) is abhorred because no chain in America will stock games with that rating. Some indie video game stores might, but I'm not aware of any particular ones. This is why very few games have the rating. Leisure Suit Larry is probably the most well known AO series; Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas got a retroactive rating of AO after the Hot Coffee scandal. (Warning: NSFW image/details)
Digital releases should make an AO rating far less of an issue, but it seems that even Steam won't allow them[2], so developers still have to release on their own. Were retailers less restrictive about this (perhaps stocking it behind the counter or something), in America they likely would have gone for and gotten the AO rating for Stick of Truth.
When they make a kid show an ID to buy an M-rated game, or enter an R-rated film, it's also not governmental requirements, except in rare cases where local laws have been enacted to piggy-back on them.
These have historically been thrown out as unconstitutional, as well, even when all most do is codify what most chains have as a policy (blocking the sale of M-rated games to minors). I don't know that any state has gone after the AO rating in any fashion or, if they have, that it has been challenged in court.
[1] Manhunt 2 did receive an AO rating originally, but Rockstar edited the game and re-submitted to get the M rating. The "Uncut" edition still has the AO. [2] I can't find neither a specific policy or any AO games on Steam with a quick search, except for an article about them pulling a sex game from Greenlight on day one
My go-to game/hat collection simulator has been Team Fortress 2 for the last six-ish years, but every now and then I'll play something else.
I picked up The Stanley Parable during the last Steam Sale and, I have to say, it is a complete riot. For anyone who's played Bastion (another one I recommend, but it's a few years old now; waiting for Transistor to come out this year) you have the same idea of narration, but The Stanley Parable does it far better (it's pretty much the point of the game) as a "first-person adventure(?)" instead of an "isometric action" game. It's also the closest I've seen to a video game version of the old "Choose Your own Adventure" book series. Wonderfully hilarious and the narration is done by Kevan Brighting so it's super charming, as well.
I haven't done much in the way of console games as late, but I'm now a generation behind anyway. However, if you own a 3DS and are a fan of the Ace Attorney series, I cannot recommend AA5 enough. It's digital only (booooo) but still a little bit cheaper than most 3DS games and the 3D actually seems to add to the wonderful animation.
It's been a while since I read the instructions, so I could have been the one doing it wrong, but as far back as I can remember that's how it was done. Take the plastic pouch out of the cardboard box, put it in inside the heater bag, then add water and wait. You could then put the heater bag inside the now-empty box, which would be useful to hold the flap down, but I never found it worth the hassle.
Though the pouches will fit, but it's a fairly snug fit, which is why you want to put the pouch in THEN add water; doing otherwise means you'll probably get burned by the steam.
Haha, yeah. You definitely don't want to go past the line, because that makes it really likely that the boiling water will force its way out of the bag. At the same time, if you do too little it won't create much heat and, from my experience, if parts of the heater "lit" but others didn't the "lit" parts would somehow render the "unlit" inert.
The way I would do it is to take the element out of the bag, put the packet of food in, fill with water to the line, then put the element back in the bag, laying the bag down on the side where the element is. This seems to provide enough water to keep it rocking for some time (especially in Basic, I would use the heaters to warm myself after eating the food and dumping out the water) without causing it to go over.
The chemical heaters didn't really do that good of a job heating the food.
When I was in the Army (got out at the end of 2011) that wasn't my experience; however, it had to be done a certain way, which there wasn't always time for.
You put the packet of whatever in first, then fill the bag to the line. Once the reaction starts, you want to fold the top over and lean it against something to hold that fold, and that lean should be as close to the ground as possible without allowing any water to spill out. After a few minutes you pick it up, fold the opening the other way, and lay it down on that side so that the hot water can evenly touch both sides.
Because it will heat the part touching the chemical heater the best, if you feel really daring you can take the packet out, flip it over, and put it back in (making sure the opposite side and end are now touching the heater). This is much easier said than done, so I don't recommend it.
In any case, the key after all of this is to massage the packet once you take it out of the heater bag. Even if you only had time to do one side, massaging for 10-20 seconds should distribute the hot contents amongst the rest (also making it easier to eat because you won't have pockets of molten meal.) Very often, though, I found the heat more of a pain than anything; some items actually taste great cold, I particularly liked the Pesto Chicken Pasta under any conditions.
(Thankfully I never had the luck of being forced with an omelet MRE; I could always throw it back in the box and get something edible. I was a cook and in my unit the cooks were responsible for getting and handing out MREs, and we always had a box or two of omelet MREs at the end of every field mission...)
(Psst, I think you meant "deserts".;) ) I completely agree, and I want to add extra focus to this. Food deserts are actually a very large problem that I think most people are unaware of; it's one that I'm only beginning to learn about in these last two months, and I consider myself more well-read than the Average Joe. I think everyone should read up on them.
Food deserts are a far larger problem than most people probably realize when they first hear about them, one that can't be cured just by increasing unemployment benefits. You could have a "decent" income but, with nothing to properly spend it on, you may as well have nothing. Not only do food deserts result in high prices at "local" stores (which, as you pointed out, aren't necessarily that local), but often times these have a severe lack of fresh foods which only increases the problem of obesity.
The thing is, especially for "WASPs" (I used to be one), the idea that there isn't a moderately-stocked grocery store in the vicinity is so foreign that you may as well suggest that poor people can't afford toilets in their homes. Even when growing up in small towns and suburbs in an upper-low income family, we always had grocery stores nearby; even if their prices were higher than average we would get by fine, and once or twice a month drive to a nearby city to stock up on non-perishables in bulk. So this is something that had to be told to me (I first learned about it through a short NPR story) and may never have figured out on my own unless I experienced it first hand.
OTOH, I think this offers a huge opportunity to entrepreneurs who have a huge humanist/charity streak and aren't looking for buckoo profit. I envision a chain of small corner stores, where produce and food can be easily transported by refrigerated vans or small trucks, which can also be used as community centers on upper floors, dispersed throughout rural areas. There are a lot of hurdles that would have to overcome to make it happen, but if they are then I believe such a system could really help a rural area at large.
You laugh, but someone has already combined the Oculus Rift with something like the Novint Falcon attached to a strap around the crotch to create a sex simulator (anime-themed, of course, so probably a Japanese company.) I'd search for the video of it in action, but I'm at work so it would probably be a Bad Idea.:)
Throw a Fleshlight in there somewhere with a stable (and modular, for various positions) housing and, boom, you're a step or two below a holographic sex bot as seen in something like The 7th Day. By 2020 I bet many porn shops will replace their video booths with virtual hooker booths, where the guy picks his "girl" of preference (oh, I can just smell the lawsuits over using the likeness of actresses, models, and video game/fictional characters), puts on the headset, and gets busy with a box.
Not only did they remove them, but in the process they broke much of the scrolling functionality for some users: https://code.google.com/p/chro...
I've received at least one complain from a user of our small company website, then found out that a few of our office folks were having the same problem (they primarily use Chrome, I primarily use FireFox.) It was double fun because I have auto-updating turned off for Chrome and, when I went to update, I wasn't affected by the issue so I had to find someone else's computer that was and do my testing there.
A lot of users who encounter this problem with wrongly blame the issue on the website they're using instead of on Google.
(I'm actually okay with removing the arrows; they were likely removed as stats showed they were rarely used, with people either using the moving part of the bar and dragging it, or just clicking on an "empty" part to jump up or down, or using their scroll wheel; that last functionality was kinda broken in this release, too.)
While I agree that much of this may be about older CxOs not having experience with equipment, this is not a problem that will die with them.
Just like "Kids these days have no respect or aptitude" has been a thing since the days of Socrates (or, rather, Aristophanes?), so to is "Old people just can't understand" (or, "You can't teach an old dog new tricks".) For the past two decades it's been the internet. Before that it was computers in general. In two decades people 30 years our junior will have hushed conversations about how we're having trouble targeting our Brainmemos to certain employees instead of broadcasting to the entire company, wondering why we find it so hard to figure it out.
Those assistants and entitlements will stick around, too, but they'll adjust to different things just as the thing that we can't adjust to will also change.
DOES ANYONE DOUBT AMERICA IS NOW ESSENTIALLY A POLICE STATE??
I do.
Because as bad as things are now, as many privileges the government grants itself (both openly and in secret), as much money is spent on LEO/military gear and gadgets but not on training, as many exceptions as they are claiming from the Constitution, as much "oversight" as they give themselves, as many private prisons are built and those companies push the government to fill them, as much power as the courts happily rubber-stamp for the government, and as much as they claim we need what they are doing for our own protection, we, as a country, still have so much further we can fall.
I can personally attest to this. This past labor day my debit card (which I'd had all of six months) was used to purchase some pharmaceuticals over in Spain to the tune of $300+. Since the debit card is through Visa, their protection services called me to let me know about the odd charge. My credit union I had the card with did diddly to inform me; I had to call them. After some pain with paperwork (which they had to mail/fax and I had to mail/fax back) Visa ruled in favor of the merchant (because it's totally plausible for me to order pills from Spain that were likely shipped to a Spanish address when I've never stepped foot outside the continental US.)
Thankfully, my credit union is really good (aside from not catching the charge themselves) and reimbursed me the total amount after the ruling, but I was still down that amount for about two weeks (and, since I already end each month with no money, this made things quite stressful.) But I will never again use my debit card online.
If someone can't afford all of that to cook, I would be surprised if they were buying multivitamins in the first place.
But, assuming that they do, that seems like a real stretch. It seems tou're trying to convey something in your comment, but I'm not entirely sure what (poor==stupid?); the short version is that a poor person (to the point of not being able to prepare their own meals, even with food stamps) who reads the article will likely continue taking their multi-vitamins, regardless of their intellectual means:
Many a/. article has shown that people up and down all sort of spectrums don't like to be "wrong", even when absolute proof is right in front of them (and this "article" isn't absolute proof.) So, if someone were taking multivitamins under the belief that they were helpful, and found this article, there's a good chance they'd just keep on taking them regardless of both the validity of the article and their level of income.
Furthermore, if said poor person did read the article (and not the/. summary, which is missing important details as usual), they would see that it says the vitamins offer no benefit to those with proper nourishment; the vitamins can be far cheaper than buying the foods necessary to get the same amounts, which means they aren't even wrong about taking them; so if they were intelligent they would continue to take said vitamins since they have trouble eating in the first place. (The Dunning-Kruger effect may lead those without intelligence to see themselves as knowing better than the article/scientists if they miss the part about being well-nurished, and so continue taking it; if they see it, it's reinforces their world-view, and they'll continue taking it. I think they would most likely just not see the article at all, though.)
Indeed. Something else I haven't seen in this topic so far is the initial investment necessary for healthy cooking. To properly cook for yourself (especially from complete scratch, but even using some "in a box" things) you (general you) need pots, pans, utensils, potable water (for cleaning and cooking), soap, a working stove, and gas/electricity (or just electricity and a toaster oven/rotisserie/whatever, but you'll be limited in what you can do). A microwave and tupperware is cheaper still, but you're extremely limited in what you can actually make (if anything.) Oh, and a home/apartment in which to cook. And the means to get the food from shop to home; either it has to be close enough for walking, you can afford the bus fare (which may or may not be on the way to/from work, assuming you have a job), or you have a car.
For most Slashdotters, these seem like no-brainers and we probably give no thought to what it took to get those things. But to someone who grew up in poverty and are unable to land a job or higher education themself, many of these seem like far-off dreams, and if they can afford food they likely get things that don't need to be cooked or purchase from the dollar menu at fast food joints.
(I'm not saying this is the GGP's problem, but too often I see/hear people espouse about how "easy" it is to cook healthily and that poor people should be doing it a lot more, which is making a lot of assumptions, so I wanted to add to your correct statement.)
I agree. So we need to ask the question: Who is her client? Google, the US Government, or the US People?
It has been shown, especially as late, that those employed by the government are not necessarily working for the government. And rare is the case where someone working for the US Government is also working for the US People...
Let's just completely ignore any moral issues or questions of whether it's a good thing or not to live in a world where orwell's wildest nightmares are everyday occurrences and where all communications are monitored by blanket surveilance.
While I agree with you that it is a serious problem beyond the technical/legal, if people like the parent want to paint it in such a narrow scope then I'm okay with that; it's still completely wrong in that regard and--as much as it would be nice to wreck it all at once--I think good change will occur faster if we hit the narrow scopes first and work our way out.
Slashdot Mirror
That sounds like a lot of work. I opted-out months ago simply by switching to T-Mobile.
(I wouldn't be surprised if they're doing something similar, but I find Verizon more sinister, and with T-Mobile's pay-as-you-go plan I'm paying about $10/mo for the privilege.)
Whether it's $20MM or a more-reasonable-but-still-high sum, like $500K/yr (more than the President makes) and then force the person to retire forever, it still wouldn't stop such crony antics because there's still no downside or punishment to working for the industry prior and then working for the government to oppose *winkwinknudgenudge* some industry practices. Then the person retires altogether, their evil deeds already done and money absconded with.
Instead there need to be constraints for blocking those who would obviously be conflicted, but writing those rules (or even just guidelines) is no easy task. You can't simply ban everyone who has worked in the industry or hasn't spent the last X years outside the industry, because a clueless person would make things worse by ignorance rather than malice. You can't favor certain companies/groups over others (I'm sure many of us would love to see someone from the EFF be appointed to the FCC) because then it just makes the industries work hard to get "their guy" into the favored company, even as lip service, and then still get the President to appoint the person to do their dirty work. (As a tangentially-related example, see the "approval" for OOXML.)
Really, the problem here (as in most things political these days, it seems) is Congress. Certainly President Obama (and Bush, and whoever replaces Obama in 2016) is no innocent party here, but Congress is able to raise the red flags and block appointing. Unfortunately, any blocking recently has been mostly along party lines and done not because they oppose the appointee for potential corruption/conflict of interest, but because their party doesn't control the White House and so make mostly-unrelated reasons (http://swampland.time.com/2013/10/28/lindsey-graham-vows-to-block-obama-nominees-until-benghazi-survivors-testify/). The "minority" side would be just as happy to pass through such blowhards when their turn comes again.
Of course, "fixing" Congress is a far harder and larger task than fixing the "revolving door", but I don't know how we get that second one done without doing the first. If we, as The People, could start a popular cause to appoint from within (so someone who has been with the department/commission in question for some time), rather than someone who hasn't recently worked there (or ever.) It doesn't guarantee a lack of cronyism, but it would give us a look as to what the person did or proposed for/against the industry (when possible; another issue is that most of their work will be that ordered from the crooked head), rather than just "for" the industry.
(And, of course, Congress could be "fixed" through the will of the people, but the Establishment Party has become quite good at playing the sides off each other so they won't even consider a third party or even someone of their own party who speaks against a "big issue"--which too often is really not that big--for fear of the "other side" gaining power.)
Honestly, the idea that Humanity is the most advanced race in the universe scares me infinitely more than the thought that we are alone in it.
Long ago, when I was still a member of TotalFark, one of the "open" threads started talking about anime. TotalFark is more general (though usually silly) news and so is equal parts jock/average joe/nerd. Here on Slashdot I probably don't have to explain what anime is to anyone, but on TF you might run into the odd person who does.
Anyway, so we're discussing our favorite Anime and giving recommendations, and one guy comes into the thread and just goes apeshit at everyone participating, asking how we could possibly enjoy that filth and accusing us of all sorts of things. After questioning him about just why he thought it was all horrible, we found out that his only experience with Anime was as part of some anti-child-porn group or task force (I believe it had to do with FBI investigations, but this was quite long ago...) and he had only ever seen lolita/CP hentai. Perhaps he was older or somehow managed to avoid any utterance of Dragonball Z in high school, but since that was his only experience with Japanese Animation he thought it was representative of all Japanese Animation. As I recall, it wasn't hard to make him realize that what he experienced was a only small portion of hentai, which was only a small portion of anime in general.
If the police only spend their time dealing with human filth, and the only decent people they meet are police, it could easily explain how many get the us vs. them mentality. It doesn't excuse it, but it does give a starting point to remove it. It might also help explain the "Blue Code of Silence", because they think that even if a fellow cop does something bad it would be worse to turn them over to the criminals (i.e. everyone who is not or was not a cop.)
As with your idea, requiring police to rotate between "enforcement" and "public service" roles would probably do a lot to mellow out the antagonizing ones and be far easier than any current attempt to actually bring them to justice when they abuse their position. It wouldn't solve all the problems, but would go far to bridge that gap.
I'll be honest, I came here not to read his "article" but to read all the posts complaining/slamming him. So perhaps Slashdot is counting on ad revenue from that (except that my Karma gets rid of ads...)
I'm reminded of a cousin's girlfriend (who caused him no small amount of grief, but that's another story) who had a few birth defects, one of which was Amelia (or something similar) on her left arm. Her mother, who sounded like a rather nasty individual, apparently tormented her over the arm and so she learned to hide it as much as possible.
She was rather good, too; while I didn't interact with her too much, I had seen her off and on for about two months before someone clued me into her uniqueness. Only after that did I notice it; she makes it seem as though she just keeps one arm tucked in somewhere (her pocket or purse or whatever) and freely uses the other one, which doesn't seem odd if you only see her now and then.
I help moderate a small 4chan-like website and we started getting hit by Child Porn bots in mid-January. We're moving to different software right now, and in the process we analyzed all of our bans for spam and CP in the past year, finding that Ukraine made up about 70-80% of that (including most of the CP).
So in our new software we just banned the entirety of Ukraine and most of Russia in the hopes of stopping the tide.
Aye! I was with Verizon for three years, but after the BS they tried to pull over Network Neutrality and their firm stance on forcing me to buy a data plan--despite using minimal data (that I only used because I was paying for it, not because I needed it)--because I had an outdated smartphone, I decided to switch. I chose T-Mobile for the exact same reason, getting the pay-as-you-go plan. (They also said they don't force the data plan on smartphones, which I believe, but I got a dumbphone so I couldn't test that.)
Unfortunately I fumbled the switch over and had my number ported too early, meaning I had to pay Verizon's cancellation fee. This revealed to me just how horrible their customer service was (until then I'd had mostly pleasant experiences with them the few times I had to call) in trying to get my last month properly pro-rated.[1] However, now that all is settled and done, I paid $200 for signing up with T-Mobile (half service, half for the phone+taxes), plus an extra $20 to Verizon over what I would have paid for my final month; that was back in October, and since then I haven't had to fill the phone once, meaning I've so far saved $170 (Verizon was approx. $80/mo). I still have >$50 on the phone, too, so this works great for someone like me who makes few calls/texts. And, theoretically, I can easily go to a monthly plan (still no contract) if I think I'll be using a lot in a short time frame, then back down to pay-as-you-go (I imagine I'll lose what minutes I have left when I first change, though.)
[1] WARNING TO EXISTING VERIZON USERS: If you have a contract and wind up in a similar situation as I (porting the number, cancelling the service, being charged the cancellation fee, and then trying to get time paid for pro-rated back), you must explicitly call and tell customer service that your phone number was ported or they won't consider it "cancelled". Their customer service tried to wiggle out of pro-rating me because I didn't do that, despite calling on three different occasions from the ported number, confirming on all three calls (if quickly) that I had full changed over, and them already charging me the cancellation fee. In the end I got my money, but it was a pain in the ass because their customer service kept saying they would do X but not do it or only half do it.
Am I the only one seeing a disconnect here?
Not quite. "M" games can get away with a lot of stuff, mainly violence (even gory violence, like Manhunt 2[1] or MadWorld), but if you show too many boobies, sex scenes, or maybe even a single instance of fully-rendered genitals, you get the abhorred Adults-Only (AO) rating. From the ESRB's website:
AO (roughly equivalent to the NC-17 movie rating you mentioned) is abhorred because no chain in America will stock games with that rating. Some indie video game stores might, but I'm not aware of any particular ones. This is why very few games have the rating. Leisure Suit Larry is probably the most well known AO series; Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas got a retroactive rating of AO after the Hot Coffee scandal. (Warning: NSFW image/details)
Digital releases should make an AO rating far less of an issue, but it seems that even Steam won't allow them[2], so developers still have to release on their own. Were retailers less restrictive about this (perhaps stocking it behind the counter or something), in America they likely would have gone for and gotten the AO rating for Stick of Truth.
These have historically been thrown out as unconstitutional, as well, even when all most do is codify what most chains have as a policy (blocking the sale of M-rated games to minors). I don't know that any state has gone after the AO rating in any fashion or, if they have, that it has been challenged in court.
[1] Manhunt 2 did receive an AO rating originally, but Rockstar edited the game and re-submitted to get the M rating. The "Uncut" edition still has the AO.
[2] I can't find neither a specific policy or any AO games on Steam with a quick search, except for an article about them pulling a sex game from Greenlight on day one
My go-to game/hat collection simulator has been Team Fortress 2 for the last six-ish years, but every now and then I'll play something else.
I picked up The Stanley Parable during the last Steam Sale and, I have to say, it is a complete riot. For anyone who's played Bastion (another one I recommend, but it's a few years old now; waiting for Transistor to come out this year) you have the same idea of narration, but The Stanley Parable does it far better (it's pretty much the point of the game) as a "first-person adventure(?)" instead of an "isometric action" game. It's also the closest I've seen to a video game version of the old "Choose Your own Adventure" book series. Wonderfully hilarious and the narration is done by Kevan Brighting so it's super charming, as well.
I haven't done much in the way of console games as late, but I'm now a generation behind anyway. However, if you own a 3DS and are a fan of the Ace Attorney series, I cannot recommend AA5 enough. It's digital only (booooo) but still a little bit cheaper than most 3DS games and the 3D actually seems to add to the wonderful animation.
It's been a while since I read the instructions, so I could have been the one doing it wrong, but as far back as I can remember that's how it was done. Take the plastic pouch out of the cardboard box, put it in inside the heater bag, then add water and wait. You could then put the heater bag inside the now-empty box, which would be useful to hold the flap down, but I never found it worth the hassle.
Though the pouches will fit, but it's a fairly snug fit, which is why you want to put the pouch in THEN add water; doing otherwise means you'll probably get burned by the steam.
Haha, yeah. You definitely don't want to go past the line, because that makes it really likely that the boiling water will force its way out of the bag. At the same time, if you do too little it won't create much heat and, from my experience, if parts of the heater "lit" but others didn't the "lit" parts would somehow render the "unlit" inert.
The way I would do it is to take the element out of the bag, put the packet of food in, fill with water to the line, then put the element back in the bag, laying the bag down on the side where the element is. This seems to provide enough water to keep it rocking for some time (especially in Basic, I would use the heaters to warm myself after eating the food and dumping out the water) without causing it to go over.
When I was in the Army (got out at the end of 2011) that wasn't my experience; however, it had to be done a certain way, which there wasn't always time for.
You put the packet of whatever in first, then fill the bag to the line. Once the reaction starts, you want to fold the top over and lean it against something to hold that fold, and that lean should be as close to the ground as possible without allowing any water to spill out. After a few minutes you pick it up, fold the opening the other way, and lay it down on that side so that the hot water can evenly touch both sides.
Because it will heat the part touching the chemical heater the best, if you feel really daring you can take the packet out, flip it over, and put it back in (making sure the opposite side and end are now touching the heater). This is much easier said than done, so I don't recommend it.
In any case, the key after all of this is to massage the packet once you take it out of the heater bag. Even if you only had time to do one side, massaging for 10-20 seconds should distribute the hot contents amongst the rest (also making it easier to eat because you won't have pockets of molten meal.) Very often, though, I found the heat more of a pain than anything; some items actually taste great cold, I particularly liked the Pesto Chicken Pasta under any conditions.
(Thankfully I never had the luck of being forced with an omelet MRE; I could always throw it back in the box and get something edible. I was a cook and in my unit the cooks were responsible for getting and handing out MREs, and we always had a box or two of omelet MREs at the end of every field mission...)
(Psst, I think you meant "deserts". ;) ) I completely agree, and I want to add extra focus to this. Food deserts are actually a very large problem that I think most people are unaware of; it's one that I'm only beginning to learn about in these last two months, and I consider myself more well-read than the Average Joe. I think everyone should read up on them.
Food deserts are a far larger problem than most people probably realize when they first hear about them, one that can't be cured just by increasing unemployment benefits. You could have a "decent" income but, with nothing to properly spend it on, you may as well have nothing. Not only do food deserts result in high prices at "local" stores (which, as you pointed out, aren't necessarily that local), but often times these have a severe lack of fresh foods which only increases the problem of obesity.
The thing is, especially for "WASPs" (I used to be one), the idea that there isn't a moderately-stocked grocery store in the vicinity is so foreign that you may as well suggest that poor people can't afford toilets in their homes. Even when growing up in small towns and suburbs in an upper-low income family, we always had grocery stores nearby; even if their prices were higher than average we would get by fine, and once or twice a month drive to a nearby city to stock up on non-perishables in bulk. So this is something that had to be told to me (I first learned about it through a short NPR story) and may never have figured out on my own unless I experienced it first hand.
OTOH, I think this offers a huge opportunity to entrepreneurs who have a huge humanist/charity streak and aren't looking for buckoo profit. I envision a chain of small corner stores, where produce and food can be easily transported by refrigerated vans or small trucks, which can also be used as community centers on upper floors, dispersed throughout rural areas. There are a lot of hurdles that would have to overcome to make it happen, but if they are then I believe such a system could really help a rural area at large.
Pushing me into Beta? Fuck you, Dice.
When Classic goes, so do I.
You laugh, but someone has already combined the Oculus Rift with something like the Novint Falcon attached to a strap around the crotch to create a sex simulator (anime-themed, of course, so probably a Japanese company.) I'd search for the video of it in action, but I'm at work so it would probably be a Bad Idea. :)
Throw a Fleshlight in there somewhere with a stable (and modular, for various positions) housing and, boom, you're a step or two below a holographic sex bot as seen in something like The 7th Day. By 2020 I bet many porn shops will replace their video booths with virtual hooker booths, where the guy picks his "girl" of preference (oh, I can just smell the lawsuits over using the likeness of actresses, models, and video game/fictional characters), puts on the headset, and gets busy with a box.
Not only did they remove them, but in the process they broke much of the scrolling functionality for some users: https://code.google.com/p/chro...
I've received at least one complain from a user of our small company website, then found out that a few of our office folks were having the same problem (they primarily use Chrome, I primarily use FireFox.) It was double fun because I have auto-updating turned off for Chrome and, when I went to update, I wasn't affected by the issue so I had to find someone else's computer that was and do my testing there.
A lot of users who encounter this problem with wrongly blame the issue on the website they're using instead of on Google.
(I'm actually okay with removing the arrows; they were likely removed as stats showed they were rarely used, with people either using the moving part of the bar and dragging it, or just clicking on an "empty" part to jump up or down, or using their scroll wheel; that last functionality was kinda broken in this release, too.)
While I agree that much of this may be about older CxOs not having experience with equipment, this is not a problem that will die with them.
Just like "Kids these days have no respect or aptitude" has been a thing since the days of Socrates (or, rather, Aristophanes?), so to is "Old people just can't understand" (or, "You can't teach an old dog new tricks".) For the past two decades it's been the internet. Before that it was computers in general. In two decades people 30 years our junior will have hushed conversations about how we're having trouble targeting our Brainmemos to certain employees instead of broadcasting to the entire company, wondering why we find it so hard to figure it out.
Those assistants and entitlements will stick around, too, but they'll adjust to different things just as the thing that we can't adjust to will also change.
I do.
Because as bad as things are now, as many privileges the government grants itself (both openly and in secret), as much money is spent on LEO/military gear and gadgets but not on training, as many exceptions as they are claiming from the Constitution, as much "oversight" as they give themselves, as many private prisons are built and those companies push the government to fill them, as much power as the courts happily rubber-stamp for the government, and as much as they claim we need what they are doing for our own protection, we, as a country, still have so much further we can fall.
And I see us continuing to fall.
That is why and what I fear.
I can personally attest to this. This past labor day my debit card (which I'd had all of six months) was used to purchase some pharmaceuticals over in Spain to the tune of $300+. Since the debit card is through Visa, their protection services called me to let me know about the odd charge. My credit union I had the card with did diddly to inform me; I had to call them. After some pain with paperwork (which they had to mail/fax and I had to mail/fax back) Visa ruled in favor of the merchant (because it's totally plausible for me to order pills from Spain that were likely shipped to a Spanish address when I've never stepped foot outside the continental US.)
Thankfully, my credit union is really good (aside from not catching the charge themselves) and reimbursed me the total amount after the ruling, but I was still down that amount for about two weeks (and, since I already end each month with no money, this made things quite stressful.) But I will never again use my debit card online.
If someone can't afford all of that to cook, I would be surprised if they were buying multivitamins in the first place.
But, assuming that they do, that seems like a real stretch. It seems tou're trying to convey something in your comment, but I'm not entirely sure what (poor==stupid?); the short version is that a poor person (to the point of not being able to prepare their own meals, even with food stamps) who reads the article will likely continue taking their multi-vitamins, regardless of their intellectual means:
Many a /. article has shown that people up and down all sort of spectrums don't like to be "wrong", even when absolute proof is right in front of them (and this "article" isn't absolute proof.) So, if someone were taking multivitamins under the belief that they were helpful, and found this article, there's a good chance they'd just keep on taking them regardless of both the validity of the article and their level of income.
Furthermore, if said poor person did read the article (and not the /. summary, which is missing important details as usual), they would see that it says the vitamins offer no benefit to those with proper nourishment; the vitamins can be far cheaper than buying the foods necessary to get the same amounts, which means they aren't even wrong about taking them; so if they were intelligent they would continue to take said vitamins since they have trouble eating in the first place. (The Dunning-Kruger effect may lead those without intelligence to see themselves as knowing better than the article/scientists if they miss the part about being well-nurished, and so continue taking it; if they see it, it's reinforces their world-view, and they'll continue taking it. I think they would most likely just not see the article at all, though.)
Indeed. Something else I haven't seen in this topic so far is the initial investment necessary for healthy cooking. To properly cook for yourself (especially from complete scratch, but even using some "in a box" things) you (general you) need pots, pans, utensils, potable water (for cleaning and cooking), soap, a working stove, and gas/electricity (or just electricity and a toaster oven/rotisserie/whatever, but you'll be limited in what you can do). A microwave and tupperware is cheaper still, but you're extremely limited in what you can actually make (if anything.) Oh, and a home/apartment in which to cook. And the means to get the food from shop to home; either it has to be close enough for walking, you can afford the bus fare (which may or may not be on the way to/from work, assuming you have a job), or you have a car.
For most Slashdotters, these seem like no-brainers and we probably give no thought to what it took to get those things. But to someone who grew up in poverty and are unable to land a job or higher education themself, many of these seem like far-off dreams, and if they can afford food they likely get things that don't need to be cooked or purchase from the dollar menu at fast food joints.
(I'm not saying this is the GGP's problem, but too often I see/hear people espouse about how "easy" it is to cook healthily and that poor people should be doing it a lot more, which is making a lot of assumptions, so I wanted to add to your correct statement.)
I agree. So we need to ask the question: Who is her client? Google, the US Government, or the US People?
It has been shown, especially as late, that those employed by the government are not necessarily working for the government. And rare is the case where someone working for the US Government is also working for the US People...
While I agree with you that it is a serious problem beyond the technical/legal, if people like the parent want to paint it in such a narrow scope then I'm okay with that; it's still completely wrong in that regard and--as much as it would be nice to wreck it all at once--I think good change will occur faster if we hit the narrow scopes first and work our way out.