A friend of mine teaches women's self defense classes. He (my friend) taught his student's that they WILL lose if they try to fight an attacker unless they get the element of surprise in a strike to the balls, throat, or eyes.
Yes, that's very good advice for a self defense class, where the idea is to teach a woman how to defend herself from an attacker, and the attacker isn't going to wait until she's a 5th degree black belt before assaulting her. Most women taking the course aren't trying to become bad-ass warriors, they're trying to make it harder for some dude to rape them.
I mean really, for the vast majority of cases the best self defense advice is simply "kick em in the nuts and run like hell". When your goal isn't to win UFC, that's all you need, especially if you don't want to limit your students to those women who actually have the potential to be fighters.
It's simple physics, a 200lb man needs only swing his arm clothesline style to take out nearly any woman he would attack.
Unless you're assuming a 90lb waif trembling because she hasn't eaten in two days, that's pretty funny. If we're assuming a woman who is in shape, unless this ridiculous clothesline swing actually connects with a fist to the head, it's not going to do much.
I'm 5'11, 190lbs, and I've had girls I know who are all I AM WOMAN HEAR ME ROAR and take karate/self defense classes say they are just as strong as a man/can take one. Every single one ended on the ground with me mounting them quite effortlessly. All the karate and self defense shit you learn means shit when it's the equivalent of a mac truck running over a motorcycle.
Person Taking Karate Thinks They Are Bigger Badass Than They Really Are, I think would be the Onion headline for that amazing story.
If "all the karate and self defense" doesn't mean shit when some mere 190lb dude is coming at you, then you didn't learn shit, and that's probably a terrible class. Karate might be a bad choice, since it's a very direct style. Judo would be perfect, it's a style designed around using your opponent's momentum against them, and a "mac truck" has a lot of momentum. But really, just about every style deals with methods of redirecting an attacker who is larger and stronger. These girls you beat up on just didn't know crap about that, so they lost.
For an actually skilled woman, which I readily grant tends to be a rarer thing than for men, your 5'11" 190lb as ain't even close to a "mac truck". I have personally witnessed such a woman drop a 6'6" 250+ man who bench pressed 400lbs like he was a sack of potatoes. And he himself could do a little better than clothesline swings and mad bull charges.
It's fair to say that on average women have less strength and less mass, and therefore the physics wins out. That's what your friend's self defense class advice is based upon, and it is sound advice. But your general statement that a woman can't beat a man unless she's ridiculously strong, or the man is drunk, is silly and wrong.
but the reality is that even if most athletic women went up against a normal, decently in shape man, they would get badly hurt in one-on-one fighting.
That's just plain bullshit.
If the average woman went up against the average man, then the man would probably win.
If the best woman went up against the best man, then the man would probably win.
If the best woman went up against the average man, the average man would get his sorry ass handed to him and would have to hire the Mossad to help him find the remains of his balls.
You're taking a statistical measure of central tendency, and trying to apply that to the extreme cases. That just doesn't work. In actual practice, a strong and skilled woman can kick the ever loving crap out of most men. Its only when you get to the upper echelons that their disadvantage in upper body strength (which is really a disadvantage of development tendencies, and in any particular man-woman matchup it is certainly possible that the woman is the stronger) limits them at all.
It sounds like Hollywood is your only experience with ass-kicking women, and you naturally assume that Hollywood is full of it. Well, they are to be sure, but in the reality of an actual matchup between a real man and a real woman, a "normal, decently in shape" man is in no way an equal to the "most athletic woman".
This is do to primarily to the inflation of money injected into the economy with daily quests. It's very easy to farm money for any level 70, and as such, they transfer that money to alts. Not wanting to spend endless hours leveling up trade skills (again), they just purchase the trade goods off the Auction House, and they're willing to spend 5g-10g for a stack of 20 wool cloth, to save them 20 mins farming it.
Likewise, some nice class stat green items are selling for several gold for levels in the teens. However, the main point is the same. This is a major disadvantage to new players. Players whom I've come to hand out 100g to just so they can buy some decent stuff.
The thing is, it's no harder for that low-level character to gather the trade items than it was before, so if they themselves are trying to craft things, it's the same as before.
But on the other hand, the trade goods that the low-level character gathers are now worth much more than they used to be. This means things whose costs are fixed like skill training and the level 40/60 mounts are now much easier to afford. I started a brand new character on a new server after the expansion hit, and that character was swimming in money by the time they hit level 60. Another new character started after the dailies hit was also swimming in money, even loaning some to my level 70 to afford their epic flying mount, and was also able to frequently buy upgrades.
So there are plusses and minuses. Mostly plusses, I think, if you know how to work the system. But for a new player who will probably want to try everything and not know the best ways to make money, yeah, it's probably tough.
"On hold" is nice, but will there be an investigation or backlash regarding how it was passed in the first place? Or has the process of buying a standard just become a cost of doing business?
I think it's safe to assume there will be no investigation or backlash. However if OOXML is ultimately rejected as a standard, then it would mean that the attempt to buy a standard failed, thanks to the pressure put on ISO by the states that participate, which ultimately stemmed from organizations in those states who saw what was happening and protested. It would mean that while the ISO process is vulnerable, it is possible to have oversight over its proceedings. No more just coasting and assuming anything that comes into ISO must be okay, but that's probably a good thing that should have been the case all along.
I'm not saying this will completely save ISO, but it could certainly help.
That's odd... When I look at the ncap ratings, SUVs (particularly and especially older ones) do not get the highest ratings. While they are commonly perceived to be safer, that does not seem to be the case.
Well that's because a lot of the tests assume a direct head-on collision, obviously the kind the GP was thinking about. But most impacts are somewhat oblique, where the impact vector is not directly aligned with the SUV's center of mass. And then their high center of mass works against them, the forward momentum becomes lateral momentum and the bastards flip over like nobody's business.
Once more of the auto testing started to incorporate this kind of test (Europe has been doing this for a long time I understand), and once actual accident reports started being accounted for, the alleged safety of SUVs vanishes. But the memory of how safe they are, and the overly simplistic big=safe equation, continue to exist as common beliefs.
You know, the Bush administration supported Quanta in this case. TFA says so. This wasn't a conservative/liberal issue--this was a commercial dispute between two corporate giants--and the fact that the decision was unanimous attests to that.
No, it wasn't. Which makes it even less of a surprise that Slashdotters could support this decision and not be the hypocrites that the OP's troll tried to imply.
I want to point out that the Court is not on the same left/right continuum as most of American politics. For example, check out U.S. v. Santos, where a plurality composed of Scalia, Thomas, Souter, and Ginsburg (Stevens concurred separately) interpreted a criminal statute in a solidly pro-defendant manner. I'm not saying that political orientation is irrelevant in predicting the Court, but the splits in the Court is much more based on legal philosophy than politics, like whether statutes should be read literally or purposively; the proper amount of deference to administrative agencies, the President, and Congress; the original meaning of the Constitution (and whether that's even relevant); etc. Remember that the most liberal Justice, Stevens, was appointed by Ford, and Souter (another "liberal" Justice) is a Bush I appointee.
Exactly. Exactly. Thank you, that's what I was trying to get at, thanks for the info. The whole "left/right" issue affects SCOTUS at a completely different wavelength than it does Congress and the Pres. I think that's why they do a better job of upholding the Constitution. Also why the more politically minded think they are doing the opposite.
WTF?! SCOTUS shouldn't be "left" or "right" wing! I want a Supreme Court that will read the Constitution as-is and from the beginning of it's creation. That last thing we need is for SCOTUS to interperate it in a shape/form that fits with "modern times". Screw that! If a line isn't drawn in drawn in the sand from the get go, what's the point of having this core document?
Which, as I was trying to point out, is largely the case. You can't possibly prevent the justices from holding what you might call conservative or liberal viewpoints. Yet despite this, and despite efforts to deliberately get as many of a certain viewpoint on the bench as possible, the Supreme Court of the U.S. remains largely centrist. Overall, they have done a better job of respecting and sticking to the Constitution by far than either of the other two branches. They are the "line in the sand" you refer to, and they've done a very good job of stopping people from crossing it.
In so much as they can. I mean, they don't have the ability to rule on arbitrary issues, so as long as warrantless wiretapping doesn't come before them in a case, they have no ability to rule on it.
Sorry for my ranting folks, but this just bugs the hell outta me. If you want the Constitution changed, then vote to ammend it. I do not want some judge changing the original meaning to fit with their own political ideology and/or dreams for a different future.
Which has been happening far, far less often than you probably think. The fact is that everyone colors their interpretation of the Constitution and what it means "from the beginning of its creation" with the political ideology. I consider myself very much a constructionist (or I guess origionalist), yet I don't delude myself that my reading of what "the Founding Father's intended" isn't affected by my own beliefs.
The demonstrated ability of SCOTUS to resist this influence in their rulings is rather impressive to me, especially compared to the other two examples. All this screaming about "activist judges" changing the Constitution to suit their whims (in either direction, "left" or "right") is vastly overplayed, if not played out.
...that it is the very same conservative US Supreme Court that liberal slashdotters have been damning for years are the ones that strike this blow for freedom.
Haha, actually I've been cheering them because despite being stacked with conservatives, they have still handed Bush his most significant legal setbacks of his entire eight years. Something the majority Democrat Congress has been unable to do. It's the Republicans who have been gnashing their teeth at the Supreme Court for being 'activist judges' when they won't let Congress or the President do something for no more reason than the Constitution says they can't.
Personally, I just take this to mean that in the eyes of the least politically motivated branch of government, even when stacked with conservative opinions, Bush is way out on the right on a great many things. Yet another sign of how our country's "left-right" barometer is currently skewed heavily to the right. So don't worry. Even when some liberal justices get appointed, it won't cause the court to significantly skew to the left. While in some ways counter-intuitive, it's amazing how our least Democratic branch of government is in a unique position to protect our Democracy.
In WoW, while NE were popular, humans were clearly the most commonly played race on the Alliance.
All the stats I've seen put Nelves and Humans as being roughly as popular (within a couple percent), and together they represent roughly half of all players in the game. Still, I'd call them both "normal" races, or more to the point "pretty", one just has pointy ears for a tiny bit of escapism and fantasy.
That was pre-expansion, I haven't really looked (cus I don't care) about the new situation. Obviously the blood elves and draenai are going to be popular. And they're both fairly 'normal' and pretty.
This only applies when you're talking about binomial distributions (ie: Either Yes/No, On/Off, Orgasm/No Orgasm).
Well Orgasm/No Orgasm is what I'm talking about, so yes, I'm glad we agree that my scoring system is quantifiable.
For example, Final Fantasy Fanboys love Final Fantasy Games. Even when they're crap (FF8), there are still a lot of people who love it, simply because of the FF designation.
Did they love it to the point of spontaneous ejaculation? No? Then it scores a Zero on the Burke Scale.
Remember, "quantifiable" and "subjective" are neither opposites nor mutually exclusive. You can have a quantifiable metric that may vary from person to person, but is still measurable and can thus give a solid indication of how you may react to a game. What quantifiable "fun" metric am I talking about? Well think about what is both fun and measurable and I think you'll see the obvious answer: I'm talking about orgasms.
And no, pleasuring yourself (or having someone else do it -- ha!) while playing doesn't count. Only orgasms resulting from the game itself counts. As you can see, this is a completely quantifiable measure, and while the result is certainly subjective, its measure is not (well, for males, it can be a little iffy with females). How much better is that than a traditional "score" where not only is the reviewer's enjoyment of the game completely subjective, but how they translate that enjoyment into the numerical score is essentially arbitrary.
Now how do games stack up with the Burke Metric? Well, every game I've ever played has a Burke Score of 0, making them all equally bad. Except Rez, which at a score of 1 is objectively the best game I've ever played.
Okay, well what if it was called "EveryoneWhoUsesThisFileSystemFucksBabyBoys"? Would you still feel comfortable answering the question "what file system do you use?"
If that was the nature of the discussions, then there would be no discussion at all. Reiser has been convicted. There's no reason for him to talk to the DA unless he wants to, and if he doesn't want to try to make a deal, then he can tell the DA to shove off. Talking can only hurt him.
I realize that the problem with this logic is that this is what his lawyer would be telling him, and as we already know, Reiser doesn't put much stock in that (though I'd hope he'd learned something). So maybe Reiser is engaged in exactly that discussion, just because he wants to be able to continue talking about how innocent and also brilliant he is.
Still, "ongoing discussions" does make me think that they are at least discussing the possibility of some kind of deal.
Curiously, in C++, that definition would be invalid, even if the underlying implementation of NULL was in fact not 0.
IBM didn't really care; they would happily ignore the spec and do it what they considered "the right way".
Another example that I recall was that their compiler disallowed catch(...). The logic was that your code should never throw an unexpected type of exception, so your catch() blocks should always specify exactly what they're expecting, such that if anything unexpected does happen, it will hit the uncaught exception handler and let you know something is busted. You'd think this could be a coding guideline (same with the "use if(pointer == NULL)" thing), but nope, they wanted to make sure it never happened.
I can't think of any language or system offhand in which NULL implies zero. What are you referring to?
C and C++, for starters. In what system where "NULL" (as distinct from "null") is actually a defined term does it not mean zero*?
NULL is valueless, empty, nothing. It might be used in the context of a null set, in which case the set is empty, but this isn't the same as a set which contains a single entry that is a zero, it is simply outright empty. If you ask if 0 == 0, the result is true, if you ask if NULL == 0, the answer is false, because the NULL is nothingness. If you ask if NULL == NULL, the answer is still false, because neither value can match anything.
No, NULL is a pointer, and a pointer is an unsigned integer. You can't assign the value of "valueless" to an integer. You can assign zero. In the vast majority of systems, the comparison of "NULL == 0" is true, and thus of course "NULL == NULL" is also true.
Hell, even in java, "null == null" would return true. That's the whole point of having a 'null' value; being able to compare other pointers and references to this value, to see if they are valid.
* Of course since it's just a #define value in C, it can be different and there are always exceptions. In fact I worked on a system at IBM where they defined NULL as some non-zero 64-bit value, simply because they wanted to force programmers to use if (pointer != NULL) instead of the lazier (but usually equally correct) if (pointer). Personally I think this created as many bugs as it prevented.
Such large companies may be able to sway the market, but do not necessarily become abusive. Most likely they do, of course - power corrupts.... Indeed, that's a very good point, and it's equally worth pointing out that as long as the monopoly is not abusive, then it isn't breaking any laws.
Monopolies aren't "punished for success" as I heard a few thousand too many times during the MS anti-trust trial. Monopolies are punished for parlaying that success and resulting market power into back room deals designed to prevent any competition from getting a leg up.
Well, maybe you've got these employees, and you want to manage them. You could attempt to perform 100% of this management in the form of getting people into a conference room. And you might find that wasn't very effective - the worker/manager meetings might end up more like supplier/customer meetings. I can see why a manager might want more tools than 'meeting in conference room' in their toolbox.
My manager is in Bangalore, most of his team is in Texas. It works just fine. "Getting people into a conference room" vs "getting people into a conference room and then getting the robot into a conference room", or "getting the robot to wherever the people are", sounds like basically the same organizational problem: Agreeing on a time and place to meet, with appropriate technology to communicate. What's the idea? That the "manager-bot" is going from cube to cube going "Harumph! Keep up the good work, Johnson!"
Micro-management by robot proxy sounds like a bad idea to me.
Also, having a videoconferencing system in your boardroom isn't going to get any trade magazine articles written about you.
Conferences happen in conference rooms, and conference rooms don't need to move. You put an LCD and a camera on the wall of the conference room, get better bandwidth and a better picture, waste less space in the cramped conference room despite having a larger screen, don't have to worry about whether the robot is in the room or needs to be moved, and most of all it's cheaper.
I mean they say they discarded video conferencing as too expensive... So how is this cheaper? Because it's just a web cam and not some custom video conferencing setup from a vendor with super high markup? Okay... Well why not ditch the unnecessary robot, and just get a nice screen and a web cam? Seems like you could get that $8k cost down quite a bit and still end up with better looking video conferences.
Oh, right, because robots are cool. Well as long as I still get my bonus then I'm not going to complain if my boss wants to buy one...
Wasn't his anti-torture bill changed by an unconstitutional "signing statement"? I'm sure he can come in from criticism for a lot of other things but ultimately there isn't a lot you can do in this situation when the leader of your party doesn't believe in the rule of law. He could have stood for his principles and possibly be remembered as a "character" in years to come, or he could appease the various monarchists and thieves in his party and stand a chance for President until it's Jeb's turn.
Um, yeah. Sorry, I very much did not mean to imply by saying that I'd lost most of my respect for McCain due to his changing stance on torture, that I considered him ANYWHERE near as bad as the current President. Back in early 2004, I was rather ready to vote for him, and I'm still very much of the opinion that the country is going to be better of in 2009 no matter what happens in the election.
When I forgot my trusty TI-81 in a calculus class, a friend tried to do that to me by handing me an HP calculator. I was very confused at first, and my friend had a laugh, but he didn't know how much assembly programming I had done and manipulating stacks wasn't exactly foreign to me.
That's my "i'm smart" story since I have to admit I was never very good at Rubik's Cube.:(
@they suck comments - apparently they're still doing something right if people are still buying their music, merchandise, and concert tickets...
You're right, adults only care about commercial success when deciding whether or not something is good or not.
@generic, parroted napster comments - how about i take what you use to make a living and give it away to everyone else for free so you see no revenue; remember, napster was one of the first "mainstream" ways to steal music and few groups, like metallica, actually own and control their music
Uh-huh. A band that is already filthy stinking rich, and got their big break because they encouraged their fans to spread their music through bootlegging, but now that they've had their taste of uber-bucks they don't want anyone sharing the love? Yeah. I'm real sympathetic here. Cryin' my eyes out.
@dry, old sell out comments - come on... really? people have said that band sold out every time they released an album. apparently the only way a band cant sell out is if they never move beyond club shows and never record a single album. Remember **this band controls their own music** and they dont answer to "the big bad record label". Get over it.
Naw, people didn't start saying that until Master of Puppets, not more than a few said it before And Justice, and it wasn't obvious that they -had- sold out until the Black album.;)
Slashdot Mirror
A friend of mine teaches women's self defense classes. He (my friend) taught his student's that they WILL lose if they try to fight an attacker unless they get the element of surprise in a strike to the balls, throat, or eyes.
Yes, that's very good advice for a self defense class, where the idea is to teach a woman how to defend herself from an attacker, and the attacker isn't going to wait until she's a 5th degree black belt before assaulting her. Most women taking the course aren't trying to become bad-ass warriors, they're trying to make it harder for some dude to rape them.
I mean really, for the vast majority of cases the best self defense advice is simply "kick em in the nuts and run like hell". When your goal isn't to win UFC, that's all you need, especially if you don't want to limit your students to those women who actually have the potential to be fighters.
It's simple physics, a 200lb man needs only swing his arm clothesline style to take out nearly any woman he would attack.
Unless you're assuming a 90lb waif trembling because she hasn't eaten in two days, that's pretty funny. If we're assuming a woman who is in shape, unless this ridiculous clothesline swing actually connects with a fist to the head, it's not going to do much.
I'm 5'11, 190lbs, and I've had girls I know who are all I AM WOMAN HEAR ME ROAR and take karate/self defense classes say they are just as strong as a man/can take one. Every single one ended on the ground with me mounting them quite effortlessly. All the karate and self defense shit you learn means shit when it's the equivalent of a mac truck running over a motorcycle.
Person Taking Karate Thinks They Are Bigger Badass Than They Really Are, I think would be the Onion headline for that amazing story.
If "all the karate and self defense" doesn't mean shit when some mere 190lb dude is coming at you, then you didn't learn shit, and that's probably a terrible class. Karate might be a bad choice, since it's a very direct style. Judo would be perfect, it's a style designed around using your opponent's momentum against them, and a "mac truck" has a lot of momentum. But really, just about every style deals with methods of redirecting an attacker who is larger and stronger. These girls you beat up on just didn't know crap about that, so they lost.
For an actually skilled woman, which I readily grant tends to be a rarer thing than for men, your 5'11" 190lb as ain't even close to a "mac truck". I have personally witnessed such a woman drop a 6'6" 250+ man who bench pressed 400lbs like he was a sack of potatoes. And he himself could do a little better than clothesline swings and mad bull charges.
It's fair to say that on average women have less strength and less mass, and therefore the physics wins out. That's what your friend's self defense class advice is based upon, and it is sound advice. But your general statement that a woman can't beat a man unless she's ridiculously strong, or the man is drunk, is silly and wrong.
but the reality is that even if most athletic women went up against a normal, decently in shape man, they would get badly hurt in one-on-one fighting.
That's just plain bullshit.
If the average woman went up against the average man, then the man would probably win.
If the best woman went up against the best man, then the man would probably win.
If the best woman went up against the average man, the average man would get his sorry ass handed to him and would have to hire the Mossad to help him find the remains of his balls.
You're taking a statistical measure of central tendency, and trying to apply that to the extreme cases. That just doesn't work. In actual practice, a strong and skilled woman can kick the ever loving crap out of most men. Its only when you get to the upper echelons that their disadvantage in upper body strength (which is really a disadvantage of development tendencies, and in any particular man-woman matchup it is certainly possible that the woman is the stronger) limits them at all.
It sounds like Hollywood is your only experience with ass-kicking women, and you naturally assume that Hollywood is full of it. Well, they are to be sure, but in the reality of an actual matchup between a real man and a real woman, a "normal, decently in shape" man is in no way an equal to the "most athletic woman".
This is do to primarily to the inflation of money injected into the economy with daily quests. It's very easy to farm money for any level 70, and as such, they transfer that money to alts. Not wanting to spend endless hours leveling up trade skills (again), they just purchase the trade goods off the Auction House, and they're willing to spend 5g-10g for a stack of 20 wool cloth, to save them 20 mins farming it.
Likewise, some nice class stat green items are selling for several gold for levels in the teens. However, the main point is the same. This is a major disadvantage to new players. Players whom I've come to hand out 100g to just so they can buy some decent stuff.
The thing is, it's no harder for that low-level character to gather the trade items than it was before, so if they themselves are trying to craft things, it's the same as before.
But on the other hand, the trade goods that the low-level character gathers are now worth much more than they used to be. This means things whose costs are fixed like skill training and the level 40/60 mounts are now much easier to afford. I started a brand new character on a new server after the expansion hit, and that character was swimming in money by the time they hit level 60. Another new character started after the dailies hit was also swimming in money, even loaning some to my level 70 to afford their epic flying mount, and was also able to frequently buy upgrades.
So there are plusses and minuses. Mostly plusses, I think, if you know how to work the system. But for a new player who will probably want to try everything and not know the best ways to make money, yeah, it's probably tough.
"On hold" is nice, but will there be an investigation or backlash regarding how it was passed in the first place? Or has the process of buying a standard just become a cost of doing business?
I think it's safe to assume there will be no investigation or backlash. However if OOXML is ultimately rejected as a standard, then it would mean that the attempt to buy a standard failed, thanks to the pressure put on ISO by the states that participate, which ultimately stemmed from organizations in those states who saw what was happening and protested. It would mean that while the ISO process is vulnerable, it is possible to have oversight over its proceedings. No more just coasting and assuming anything that comes into ISO must be okay, but that's probably a good thing that should have been the case all along.
I'm not saying this will completely save ISO, but it could certainly help.
That's odd... When I look at the ncap ratings, SUVs (particularly and especially older ones) do not get the highest ratings. While they are commonly perceived to be safer, that does not seem to be the case.
Well that's because a lot of the tests assume a direct head-on collision, obviously the kind the GP was thinking about. But most impacts are somewhat oblique, where the impact vector is not directly aligned with the SUV's center of mass. And then their high center of mass works against them, the forward momentum becomes lateral momentum and the bastards flip over like nobody's business.
Once more of the auto testing started to incorporate this kind of test (Europe has been doing this for a long time I understand), and once actual accident reports started being accounted for, the alleged safety of SUVs vanishes. But the memory of how safe they are, and the overly simplistic big=safe equation, continue to exist as common beliefs.
You know, the Bush administration supported Quanta in this case. TFA says so. This wasn't a conservative/liberal issue--this was a commercial dispute between two corporate giants--and the fact that the decision was unanimous attests to that.
No, it wasn't. Which makes it even less of a surprise that Slashdotters could support this decision and not be the hypocrites that the OP's troll tried to imply.
I want to point out that the Court is not on the same left/right continuum as most of American politics. For example, check out U.S. v. Santos, where a plurality composed of Scalia, Thomas, Souter, and Ginsburg (Stevens concurred separately) interpreted a criminal statute in a solidly pro-defendant manner. I'm not saying that political orientation is irrelevant in predicting the Court, but the splits in the Court is much more based on legal philosophy than politics, like whether statutes should be read literally or purposively; the proper amount of deference to administrative agencies, the President, and Congress; the original meaning of the Constitution (and whether that's even relevant); etc. Remember that the most liberal Justice, Stevens, was appointed by Ford, and Souter (another "liberal" Justice) is a Bush I appointee.
Exactly. Exactly. Thank you, that's what I was trying to get at, thanks for the info. The whole "left/right" issue affects SCOTUS at a completely different wavelength than it does Congress and the Pres. I think that's why they do a better job of upholding the Constitution. Also why the more politically minded think they are doing the opposite.
WTF?! SCOTUS shouldn't be "left" or "right" wing! I want a Supreme Court that will read the Constitution as-is and from the beginning of it's creation. That last thing we need is for SCOTUS to interperate it in a shape/form that fits with "modern times". Screw that! If a line isn't drawn in drawn in the sand from the get go, what's the point of having this core document?
Which, as I was trying to point out, is largely the case. You can't possibly prevent the justices from holding what you might call conservative or liberal viewpoints. Yet despite this, and despite efforts to deliberately get as many of a certain viewpoint on the bench as possible, the Supreme Court of the U.S. remains largely centrist. Overall, they have done a better job of respecting and sticking to the Constitution by far than either of the other two branches. They are the "line in the sand" you refer to, and they've done a very good job of stopping people from crossing it.
In so much as they can. I mean, they don't have the ability to rule on arbitrary issues, so as long as warrantless wiretapping doesn't come before them in a case, they have no ability to rule on it.
Sorry for my ranting folks, but this just bugs the hell outta me. If you want the Constitution changed, then vote to ammend it. I do not want some judge changing the original meaning to fit with their own political ideology and/or dreams for a different future.
Which has been happening far, far less often than you probably think. The fact is that everyone colors their interpretation of the Constitution and what it means "from the beginning of its creation" with the political ideology. I consider myself very much a constructionist (or I guess origionalist), yet I don't delude myself that my reading of what "the Founding Father's intended" isn't affected by my own beliefs.
The demonstrated ability of SCOTUS to resist this influence in their rulings is rather impressive to me, especially compared to the other two examples. All this screaming about "activist judges" changing the Constitution to suit their whims (in either direction, "left" or "right") is vastly overplayed, if not played out.
...that it is the very same conservative US Supreme Court that liberal slashdotters have been damning for years are the ones that strike this blow for freedom.
Haha, actually I've been cheering them because despite being stacked with conservatives, they have still handed Bush his most significant legal setbacks of his entire eight years. Something the majority Democrat Congress has been unable to do. It's the Republicans who have been gnashing their teeth at the Supreme Court for being 'activist judges' when they won't let Congress or the President do something for no more reason than the Constitution says they can't.
Personally, I just take this to mean that in the eyes of the least politically motivated branch of government, even when stacked with conservative opinions, Bush is way out on the right on a great many things. Yet another sign of how our country's "left-right" barometer is currently skewed heavily to the right. So don't worry. Even when some liberal justices get appointed, it won't cause the court to significantly skew to the left. While in some ways counter-intuitive, it's amazing how our least Democratic branch of government is in a unique position to protect our Democracy.
In WoW, while NE were popular, humans were clearly the most commonly played race on the Alliance.
All the stats I've seen put Nelves and Humans as being roughly as popular (within a couple percent), and together they represent roughly half of all players in the game. Still, I'd call them both "normal" races, or more to the point "pretty", one just has pointy ears for a tiny bit of escapism and fantasy.
That was pre-expansion, I haven't really looked (cus I don't care) about the new situation. Obviously the blood elves and draenai are going to be popular. And they're both fairly 'normal' and pretty.
Also, I've never played Rez, and now I'm scared to.
:)
Rez comes with a rather unique accessory, called the "Trance Vibrator". You can figure out the rest.
This only applies when you're talking about binomial distributions (ie: Either Yes/No, On/Off, Orgasm/No Orgasm).
Well Orgasm/No Orgasm is what I'm talking about, so yes, I'm glad we agree that my scoring system is quantifiable.
For example, Final Fantasy Fanboys love Final Fantasy Games. Even when they're crap (FF8), there are still a lot of people who love it, simply because of the FF designation.
Did they love it to the point of spontaneous ejaculation? No? Then it scores a Zero on the Burke Scale.
The system works!
Remember, "quantifiable" and "subjective" are neither opposites nor mutually exclusive. You can have a quantifiable metric that may vary from person to person, but is still measurable and can thus give a solid indication of how you may react to a game. What quantifiable "fun" metric am I talking about? Well think about what is both fun and measurable and I think you'll see the obvious answer: I'm talking about orgasms.
And no, pleasuring yourself (or having someone else do it -- ha!) while playing doesn't count. Only orgasms resulting from the game itself counts. As you can see, this is a completely quantifiable measure, and while the result is certainly subjective, its measure is not (well, for males, it can be a little iffy with females). How much better is that than a traditional "score" where not only is the reviewer's enjoyment of the game completely subjective, but how they translate that enjoyment into the numerical score is essentially arbitrary.
Now how do games stack up with the Burke Metric? Well, every game I've ever played has a Burke Score of 0, making them all equally bad. Except Rez, which at a score of 1 is objectively the best game I've ever played.
Okay, well what if it was called "EveryoneWhoUsesThisFileSystemFucksBabyBoys"? Would you still feel comfortable answering the question "what file system do you use?"
If that was the nature of the discussions, then there would be no discussion at all. Reiser has been convicted. There's no reason for him to talk to the DA unless he wants to, and if he doesn't want to try to make a deal, then he can tell the DA to shove off. Talking can only hurt him.
I realize that the problem with this logic is that this is what his lawyer would be telling him, and as we already know, Reiser doesn't put much stock in that (though I'd hope he'd learned something). So maybe Reiser is engaged in exactly that discussion, just because he wants to be able to continue talking about how innocent and also brilliant he is.
Still, "ongoing discussions" does make me think that they are at least discussing the possibility of some kind of deal.
Curiously, in C++, that definition would be invalid, even if the underlying implementation of NULL was in fact not 0.
IBM didn't really care; they would happily ignore the spec and do it what they considered "the right way".
Another example that I recall was that their compiler disallowed catch(...). The logic was that your code should never throw an unexpected type of exception, so your catch() blocks should always specify exactly what they're expecting, such that if anything unexpected does happen, it will hit the uncaught exception handler and let you know something is busted. You'd think this could be a coding guideline (same with the "use if(pointer == NULL)" thing), but nope, they wanted to make sure it never happened.
I can't think of any language or system offhand in which NULL implies zero. What are you referring to?
C and C++, for starters. In what system where "NULL" (as distinct from "null") is actually a defined term does it not mean zero*?
NULL is valueless, empty, nothing. It might be used in the context of a null set, in which case the set is empty, but this isn't the same as a set which contains a single entry that is a zero, it is simply outright empty. If you ask if 0 == 0, the result is true, if you ask if NULL == 0, the answer is false, because the NULL is nothingness. If you ask if NULL == NULL, the answer is still false, because neither value can match anything.
No, NULL is a pointer, and a pointer is an unsigned integer. You can't assign the value of "valueless" to an integer. You can assign zero. In the vast majority of systems, the comparison of "NULL == 0" is true, and thus of course "NULL == NULL" is also true.
Hell, even in java, "null == null" would return true. That's the whole point of having a 'null' value; being able to compare other pointers and references to this value, to see if they are valid.
* Of course since it's just a #define value in C, it can be different and there are always exceptions. In fact I worked on a system at IBM where they defined NULL as some non-zero 64-bit value, simply because they wanted to force programmers to use if (pointer != NULL) instead of the lazier (but usually equally correct) if (pointer). Personally I think this created as many bugs as it prevented.
That wouldn't work, since as we all know it was actually his wife who wrote Linux!
Though what that means is that if Linus killed anyone, we could just change Linux back to its original name, Tovix.
Monopolies aren't "punished for success" as I heard a few thousand too many times during the MS anti-trust trial. Monopolies are punished for parlaying that success and resulting market power into back room deals designed to prevent any competition from getting a leg up.
Well, maybe you've got these employees, and you want to manage them. You could attempt to perform 100% of this management in the form of getting people into a conference room. And you might find that wasn't very effective - the worker/manager meetings might end up more like supplier/customer meetings. I can see why a manager might want more tools than 'meeting in conference room' in their toolbox.
My manager is in Bangalore, most of his team is in Texas. It works just fine. "Getting people into a conference room" vs "getting people into a conference room and then getting the robot into a conference room", or "getting the robot to wherever the people are", sounds like basically the same organizational problem: Agreeing on a time and place to meet, with appropriate technology to communicate. What's the idea? That the "manager-bot" is going from cube to cube going "Harumph! Keep up the good work, Johnson!"
Micro-management by robot proxy sounds like a bad idea to me.
Also, having a videoconferencing system in your boardroom isn't going to get any trade magazine articles written about you.
Now that I believe.
Conferences happen in conference rooms, and conference rooms don't need to move. You put an LCD and a camera on the wall of the conference room, get better bandwidth and a better picture, waste less space in the cramped conference room despite having a larger screen, don't have to worry about whether the robot is in the room or needs to be moved, and most of all it's cheaper.
I mean they say they discarded video conferencing as too expensive... So how is this cheaper? Because it's just a web cam and not some custom video conferencing setup from a vendor with super high markup? Okay... Well why not ditch the unnecessary robot, and just get a nice screen and a web cam? Seems like you could get that $8k cost down quite a bit and still end up with better looking video conferences.
Oh, right, because robots are cool. Well as long as I still get my bonus then I'm not going to complain if my boss wants to buy one...
No, he did. First he sponsored an anti-torture bill, and good for him, but then recently he voted for a bill which authorized water boarding.
Wasn't his anti-torture bill changed by an unconstitutional "signing statement"? I'm sure he can come in from criticism for a lot of other things but ultimately there isn't a lot you can do in this situation when the leader of your party doesn't believe in the rule of law. He could have stood for his principles and possibly be remembered as a "character" in years to come, or he could appease the various monarchists and thieves in his party and stand a chance for President until it's Jeb's turn.
Um, yeah. Sorry, I very much did not mean to imply by saying that I'd lost most of my respect for McCain due to his changing stance on torture, that I considered him ANYWHERE near as bad as the current President. Back in early 2004, I was rather ready to vote for him, and I'm still very much of the opinion that the country is going to be better of in 2009 no matter what happens in the election.
When I forgot my trusty TI-81 in a calculus class, a friend tried to do that to me by handing me an HP calculator. I was very confused at first, and my friend had a laugh, but he didn't know how much assembly programming I had done and manipulating stacks wasn't exactly foreign to me.
:(
That's my "i'm smart" story since I have to admit I was never very good at Rubik's Cube.
I just buy a new one.
@they suck comments - apparently they're still doing something right if people are still buying their music, merchandise, and concert tickets...
;)
You're right, adults only care about commercial success when deciding whether or not something is good or not.
@generic, parroted napster comments - how about i take what you use to make a living and give it away to everyone else for free so you see no revenue; remember, napster was one of the first "mainstream" ways to steal music and few groups, like metallica, actually own and control their music
Uh-huh. A band that is already filthy stinking rich, and got their big break because they encouraged their fans to spread their music through bootlegging, but now that they've had their taste of uber-bucks they don't want anyone sharing the love? Yeah. I'm real sympathetic here. Cryin' my eyes out.
@dry, old sell out comments - come on... really? people have said that band sold out every time they released an album. apparently the only way a band cant sell out is if they never move beyond club shows and never record a single album. Remember **this band controls their own music** and they dont answer to "the big bad record label". Get over it.
Naw, people didn't start saying that until Master of Puppets, not more than a few said it before And Justice, and it wasn't obvious that they -had- sold out until the Black album.