You're trying to tell me that this is the first guy to be a jerk and taunt a tiger in a cage? I kinda doubt that.
Not at all! Other certainly must have taunted it, and didn't get tiger mauled. These guys went ABOVE AND BEYOND the call of stupid, harassing the poor beast to an extent it never had been before. They must have spent a good bit of time deliberately trying to drive the creature mad, and hey look it worked!
Just HOW stupid does someone have to be before they become responsible for the consequences of their own stupid actions? If they had climbed into the enclosure and poked the tiger with a stick, would that be their fault? Or would responsibility solely lie with the zoo for not making an impassable fence? If they had cut through the fence with a cutting torch, would the zoo be responsible for not making a cutting-torch-proof enclosure?
To the rest of your argument, I guess we simply disagree about where responsibility lies.
Well we at least partly agree because you think the zoo is responsible, and so do I. The part we disagree on is whether the people were responsible, too. If you think blame is a zero-sum game and only one part can be responsible, then we disagree on the fundamental nature of blame. I can say the zoo is at fault for their faulty enclosure, AND that these people were at fault for harassing the tiger. Given that the enclosure has *always* been faulty but has never before resulted in an attack -- or, for that matter, an *attempted* attack -- that these guy's actions were a direct factor in causing the attack, and thus they must be considered at least partially responsible.
Like I said, the technique of "I will be safe if I don't do X" has demonstrably worked -- the only ones who ended up not-safe in the history of the zoo were the ones who did X. You can disagree with me on responsibility, but on this matter you are simply factually wrong.
After all, police usually stay out of other situations until the dust has settled.
No, they usually don't if they arrive while the scene is on-going. If they arrive at an armed robbery, they don't just wait until the robber leaves, if they arrive at a fight in a park, they break up the fight. Columbine is just one case. The UT Tower Sniper was another, and they sure as hell didn't wait until "the dust settled" before responding.
The police would have had no way of knowing if the tiger was going to continue to attack people after it had taken out the ones who had taunted it. Should they have just waited to see if the tiger wanted to maim any innocent bystanders, and only after the tiger was done try to go after it?
I can't say I don't wish the tiger had finished off all three of them. But to expect the cops to just sit there and watch it happen is, frankly, retarded, SCOTUS decisions notwithstanding.
Am I the only one who finds it fascinating that the ONLY ones the tiger directly attacked were the 3 guys who were taunting it? That it specifically hunted down the 3 individuals who pissed it off? And they had moved away from the area...
Nope, I find that very interesting too. It pretty much proves to me that this was their own stupid fault. This was not some random man-killing tiger who escaped on a whim and hunted a human. This thing was pissed, it was out for revenge, and there's no way it was going to those lengths just because it was mildly annoyed. Out of all the visitors to ever walk past the cage, these were the only ones to taunt it in any way? Not bloody likely. They must have gone above and beyond the call of stupid duty to provoke this attack.
Just another variation on "the world is under my control, as long as I don't do thing X".
Yeah well that philosophy seemed to have worked for the thousands upon thousands of daily visitors over the course of decades who refrained from viciously taunting an apex predator!
This is a case of the world NOT being in your control. The Tiger escaped. It wasn't supposed to be able to. Do you think going to a Zoo is supposed to be a "risky" thing to do? I don't.. but hey, maybe it is.
You can make any activity "risky" through egregious stupidity. You probably think using a computer isn't very risky... until your drunken friends convince you to play "Headbutt the CRT".
Of course the enclosure should have been safer such that escape was impossible. It's obvious that thinking they were completely safe was the only reason these jackasses felt confident enough to taunt a tiger. Yet at the same time, the level of safety that was provided was sufficient for every other zoo-goer in the history of the exhibit, and without their actions, they would still be alive.
It's not as if the tiger escaped on a whim then attacked a random person who was minding their own business. It escaped from the enclosure because they infuriated it. It escaped from the enclosure because it wanted them. It was so pissed, it wanted them dead. Once it had escaped, it didn't run off, it didn't attack some other random zoo go-er. It wasn't hungry, it didn't stop to feast on its kill. It chased the two still-living people down hundreds of yards away from its enclosure past plenty of other zoo-goers, but it only wanted them, the source of its anger.
What happened was a direct consequence of their actions. They didn't need to control "the world", they only needed to control themselves. That's all the control they needed. "the world is under my control, as long as I don't do thing X" -- well THEY DID THING X and it was stupid and got them killed.
Talking about how this makes going to the zoo "risky", as if this is something that could have randomly happened to anyone, ignores this simple cause-and-effect relationship. And if you want to talk about "risk" as though you're doing statistical risk analysis, look at the actual numbers -- one attack in how many years, how many visitors? But of course any REAL risk analysis would divide the analysis based on risk FACTORS. Statistical risk to idiots who taunt tigers? HIGH. Statistical risk to non-idiots who don't taunt tigers? ZERO.
Quite tragic, as tigers are nearly extinct in the wild. Why does the myth of animals thirsting for human blood after killing a person continue to persist?
Because in the case of tigers, it is a very real danger? At least, a tiger who eats a human (whether the tiger killed the human or simply ran across a body) is liable to start to see humans as food, and a tiger will hunt and kill anything it sees as food.
This tiger didn't actually eat anyone... but it wasn't killed due to the fear of it being a future man-eater, it was killed because it was in the process of mauling two people after having killed one already, and when the police distracted it the tiger ran at them. Ideally they could have used tranquilizers, but this wasn't a planned recovery mission, it was an emergency response. It's hard for me to fault the police for doing their job of protecting people and themselves with the tools they had on hand when they showed up.
I agree though that this is exceedingly tragic. It's a disaster as far as I'm concerned. And the fools who mis-constructed (and mis-certified) the enclosure, and the retards who lacked the common sense to not taunt a large predator, directly contributed. Is there any hope for these animals in the face of simple, common, everyday human stupidity?
You've got it the wrong way around - its' MY parties he wants to join.
Pfft, if satan had a soul for every time someone claimed that he wouldn't need to corrupt mortals any more.
What a fucked-up place - no sex. So what happens with your privates? They fall off or something? That sort of god sounds more like Jim Jones.
No, your privates are in the box where they buried the meat-suit you shed when you died, providing worms with food.
Or maybe what he meant was that since there's no marriage in heaven, there's no prohibition about only screwing your spouse so you can get it on with whoever you like.
But that'd be pretty hard without your meat-suit.
Seriously, there is no god. Not even any real proof that there was some guy named jesus. You can believe all you want - won't make it true. Faith that isn't grounded in reality is a tragic waste.
Faith and proof are opposites, didn't you know? But don't worry -- you can't actually prove anything at all about objective reality, so you're still chock full o' faith.
Of course, that would demonstrate that god can't control everything, and as such, isn't god.
Nonsense. God *could* control you and stop you from spitting in his eye, but he's given you free will to do as you please, including spit on him.
You have to try harder than that to prove God's non-divinity! The Devil won't invite you to his awesome parties for such a half-arsed attempt, you know.
There's already a simple solution to this problem. You stick the ballot into the Scantron machine. The Scantron machine tries to read the ballot. If the ballot is invalid, then it spits the ballot back out, and the voter either corrects it or has that ballot replaced.
This at least gets rid of the over-votes, and could get rid of the under-votes if the Scantron has a "possibly read a filled bubble but not sure" threshold (I really don't know).
One interesting tidbit from the 2000 Florida election that often gets ignored in favor of controversies over the felon lists and the nature of the butterfly ballots themselves, is that the machines they used were in fact capable of this! It was an optional setting, the machine could either take the bad ballot as-is but just not count it, or it could reject the ballot back into the voter's hand for correction. As you may have guessed, voting machines in the precincts with high rates of bad ballots had this option disabled, and ones with low rates of bad ballots had it enabled. But we weren't told that, and were instead just left to assume that the people in the high-error precincts were simply dumber than everyone else, and we just accepted it! But in reality, errors are common, but most get a chance to correct it when the machine spits it out.
That said, I do agree that the best thing to do is have the computer print out the ballot so as to minimize the possibility of error. It's really the best of both worlds: The accessability of a voting machine that lets you edit your choices, read more about propositions, and enforces rules like no over-votes, but you still get a human-readable paper ballot that serves as the vote of record and can be recounted by anyone with working eyes. And if you make the printed ballot machine readable -- I prefer an OCR-friendly font so it's the *same* markings that are both human and machine readable -- you can still use a machine counter to get your instant-gratification.
It's not that hard to design a working voting system that minimizes voter error, maximizes accessibility, and most importantly maximizes openness and transparency. Just... nobody that I can tell has actually come forward and put the pieces together in a real system intended to be sold.
They also have Linux Annoyances for Geeks and Mac Annoyances book. What that says about Linux that specifically geeks are annoyed is unclear.
I don't know, but I imagine it's things like "Annoyance #373: Mail application uses a GUI config wizard anyone can understand instead of an opaque text file!":)
Only potential tripping point is which wireless card you decided on.
Which is why -- if possible, of course -- you (rhetorical 'you' btw) should find out which wireless cards are well supported under linux and buy based on that. Going the other way -- having a card and hoping it works under linux -- can be problematic.
Oh, and don't do like I did and assume that since Linksys had awesome linux support in the past that it still will... They got bought by Cisco, and I had a fair bit of trouble with some of their cards. Fortunately I found a linux driver on the chipset vendor's website.
But as the review explains, many of the fixes probably aren't suitable for the intended audience of the book, which kind of makes that a moot point.
It's not the books fault if the solution to a particular problem is perhaps too sophisticated for some users. Unless there's an obvious simpler answer that the book overlooks, then this is simply a fact of life. The whole point is that they're trying to help out with an annoying piece of software they didn't write. What else could they do? Do what you originally said and just list the annoyance and show no solution? Or even worse -- list the annoyance, say that there's a solution, but then don't say what it is on the basis that it's too hard?
If the book can help users get over some of their problems, then it isn't a moot point at all. If by providing solutions that may be beyond the average reader, they encourage some of those readers to push their limits and become more comfortable, then that's even better.
That issue aside, when it comes to making changes that you're not entirely comfortable with (which presumably you wouldn't be if you needed a book to tell you how)
Some people are a lot more comfortable doing things if they have a book to tell them how. E.g. I'm no tool maven, and I would be terrified of actually trying to fix any of my plumbing if left to my own devices, but I am confident enough with tools that given an appropriate book explaining what to do that I could do it.
I get your point about a static book not necessarily being the best companion to a dynamic piece of software, but for some people especially beginners a book they can easily refer to and work through at their own pace is a better starting point than a web forum where they have to deal with human factors of entering some geek forum as well (e.g. the way I'd feel walking up to a group of contractors and plumbers and going "Der, how do I stop my faucet from leaking?" and then being confused by their answer).
I am not saying "guilty until proven innocent" or anything like that.
Well if the BSA comes around you better believe they are operating under than philosophy.
My point is that if someone is tipping off the BSA then SOMEONE at your company realises that you are not in compliance.
Copypasta:
It couldn't possibly be that it's a disgruntled ex-employee who called in a bogus tip simply to harass their former employer. It couldn't possibly be a disgruntled ex-employee who was themselves responsible for the licensing and thus the lack of compliance, and they were the only ones who knew it.
Not copypasta:
Actually that last one has happened, I know of one case where a guy brand new to an IT job discovered that the guy he was replacing, who had been fired, had done a lousy job of keeping up with necessary license documentation. That being a big part of the job description and thus solely that person's responsibility. And then, lo and behold, an "anonymous" tip caused the company to be hit by a BSA audit for which they were completely unprepared. Despite, to their knowledge, having properly paid of all software and simply not being able to produce the documentation.
The only way that the BSA is going to come after you is if they get tipped off that you are violating your license. If that happens it means that people at your company knew they were infringing.
If you're accused you must be guilty. Yeah, that's a safe assumption.
It couldn't possibly be that it's a disgruntled ex-employee who called in a bogus tip simply to harass their former employer. It couldn't possibly be a disgruntled ex-employee who was themselves responsible for the licensing and thus the lack of compliance, and they were the only ones who knew it.
I'm sorry, but in my world thats not gray, thats black. Having one valid license to a software product that was copied 200 times doesnt make it "gray".
And is having 200 valid licenses to a software product that was installed 201 times because someone forgot to delete one copy off an old computer black as well?
Is having 200 valid licenses to a software product that was installed 200 times, but someone didn't obey the specific terms of the EULA and moved the software from one computer to another also black?
Is having 200 valid licenses to a software product that was installed 200 times in complete accordance with the license terms, but not being able to meet the strict (and poorly specified) accounting to prove this to the BSA when they raid your company also black?
Therefore a big company is likely to have an IT department that does a good job of making sure it has licenses for everything and doesnt cut corners to save a few bucks here and there.
Yes, that's very true, the big company can afford to pay people solely to look after their licensing.
It also has to do with the kinds of licensing small business vs large ones can afford. A large corporation can afford site licenses or bulk-licenses where a large number of users are covered by a single license. It's much easier to keep track of, and to know whether any particular user of the software is legal (either they all are, or any machine that can get a license from the license server is), and easy to know when it expires (there's one date).
Whereas a small company that has to buy individual licenses (especially in the form of shrink-wrapped boxes which means the license is in paper form) has a lot more to keep track of, like when each piece of software was purchased and thus when it expires, and more documentation to dig up when the BSA comes knocking. Plus the BSA is notorious for going after technical violations of licenses where things like moving a hard drive from one machine to another is against the terms, so even though Software In Use == Legal Software Licenses and thus the software vendor got all the money they deserve, the BSA will still force them to pay a fine.
So stop bothering us with vapid talk of how rational you are.
I always laugh when some geek tries to present themselves as being a completely rational person.
Sorry, but they're human, and humans are emotional mammals first and foremost; rationality is just a useful trick we've learned, but our brains are still fundamentally as emotional -- and thus irrational -- as ever. A person truly striving to be rational would accept this fact. However someone who wants to present themselves as being superior must delude themselves into thinking that they are completely rational. Self-delusion is itself irrational, and thus they are hoisted by their own petards.
One other interesting tidbit he told us is that it fired a non-conductive plastic like ball. Everything I've seen written on rail guns online seems to contradict this design possibility, they require a conductive ball that conducts the current between the plates.
I've heard of one rail gun idea where the projectile itself wasn't the conductor. In this conception, you actually use something like a piece of gold as the conductor between the rails. The idea is that when you dump the current across it, the gold would vaporize but continue to conduct and it's actually the cloud of gold vapor that is pushed by the magnetic force and thus pushes the projectile down the rails. I guess the advantage is that friction on the rails isn't as big an issue since the gold vapor has low friction and you can coat the projectile in something like teflon without worrying about conductivity.
But this is my half-assed remembering of something I read somewhere, probably a discussion on/., so you may not have enough salt handy to take with this post.:P
Isn't the armor also subject to spalling (molten chunks of the armor zipping through the interior)?
Apparently (and to no surprise considering who was in charge at the time) the actual war planners hadn't seen that movie (or the real tests behind it), since they deployed those pieces of shit into Iraq with disastrous results. Those things are nothing but RPG bait. They're worse than HUMMVEEs as far as personnel carriers go, since it at least takes two RPGs to kill eight soldiers in two HUMMVEEs.
Seems like they've wised up though and largely stopped using them. Those mine-hardened vehicles are the popular APC now.
I would suspect that the Naval interest in rail-gun technology is probably aimed at point-defense (i.e: shooting down incoming anti-ship missiles) more then anything else.
Nope, the Navy is actually specifically looking at rail guns to serve much the same purpose as cruise missiles do today -- striking specific stationary targets from a great distance and with high accuracy.
Advantages of a rail gun over cruise missiles (imo): 1) Vastly lower cost per projectile -- a slug of metal vs a self-contained rocket-propelled flying machine. 2) Vastly reduced danger of secondary explosions because it's non-explosive ordinance. 3) Higher capacity because of (1) and they're also smaller and lighter than cruise missiles. 4) Much harder to shoot down, since cruise missiles fly relatively low and slow, while rail gun rounds would hit their target in minutes after firing at several times the speed of sound. 5) Much higher rate of fire. You can't just plug in GPS coordinates into a cruise missile and hit "go", each firing is a complicated and carefully planned mission unto itself since you must account for terrain, and I've read most missile destroyers are limited to a couple launches per day. A ballistic trajectory would make this much simpler, so the main limit is charging the capacitors and they estimate they could achieve a rate of fire of 1 every 6 minutes (according to TFA).
Disadvantages: 1) Much lower range -- 220m for the 64 MJ rail gun, around 700m for a Tomahawk. 2) The same force experienced by the projectile is experienced by the rails, so it tends to destroy itself. 3) For high precision some simple guidance would be required for the last leg of the journey, and yes this is a potential problem, but it's not like they need anything approaching the guidance in a missile. 4) Due to (2) and (3) doesn't actually exist in working form yet.:(
If they pan out, rail guns won't replace cruise missiles in the Navy's arsenal, but they will provide a very potent tool for similar missions.
I know Michael Schumacher could chat with the pit crew while winning F1 races:).
So at least some people can drive and talk at the same time. Maybe it's a matter of practice (but some people can't even walk safely while talking;) ).
Most people can talk with somebody who is in the car and drive at the same time, as well.
I think the fundamental difference is that when you're on the phone, the person on the other end of the phone expects you to be granting them your full attention -- it's considered rude not to -- and they are not aware of your current context so they don't know that the reason you're denying them your full attention is because of some road hazard or other thing. Whereas someone who is in the car with you can see the same things you can, and fully expects that you will devote as much attention to driving as you need to (since their arse is on the line too) so when you need to adapt to changing road conditions they're aware and willing to let you do so. Unless it's a kid, in which case you should have developed the ability of every sane parent to tune out their kids at will.:)
Michael Shumacher certainly has a leg up due to his driving skill, but at the same time I doubt his crew chief is going to be asking Mike about his opinion regarding changing tires at the next pit stop when Mike's trying to negotiate through the smoke and wreckage of a crash that occurred in front of him. Like a passenger in your car, the pit crew is aware of Mike's driving context and thus in tune with when the focus of his attention needs to shift between them and driving.
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Please Do Not Feed The Tiger With Face
You're trying to tell me that this is the first guy to be a jerk and taunt a tiger in a cage? I kinda doubt that.
Not at all! Other certainly must have taunted it, and didn't get tiger mauled. These guys went ABOVE AND BEYOND the call of stupid, harassing the poor beast to an extent it never had been before. They must have spent a good bit of time deliberately trying to drive the creature mad, and hey look it worked!
Just HOW stupid does someone have to be before they become responsible for the consequences of their own stupid actions? If they had climbed into the enclosure and poked the tiger with a stick, would that be their fault? Or would responsibility solely lie with the zoo for not making an impassable fence? If they had cut through the fence with a cutting torch, would the zoo be responsible for not making a cutting-torch-proof enclosure?
To the rest of your argument, I guess we simply disagree about where responsibility lies.
Well we at least partly agree because you think the zoo is responsible, and so do I. The part we disagree on is whether the people were responsible, too. If you think blame is a zero-sum game and only one part can be responsible, then we disagree on the fundamental nature of blame. I can say the zoo is at fault for their faulty enclosure, AND that these people were at fault for harassing the tiger. Given that the enclosure has *always* been faulty but has never before resulted in an attack -- or, for that matter, an *attempted* attack -- that these guy's actions were a direct factor in causing the attack, and thus they must be considered at least partially responsible.
Like I said, the technique of "I will be safe if I don't do X" has demonstrably worked -- the only ones who ended up not-safe in the history of the zoo were the ones who did X. You can disagree with me on responsibility, but on this matter you are simply factually wrong.
After all, police usually stay out of other situations until the dust has settled.
No, they usually don't if they arrive while the scene is on-going. If they arrive at an armed robbery, they don't just wait until the robber leaves, if they arrive at a fight in a park, they break up the fight. Columbine is just one case. The UT Tower Sniper was another, and they sure as hell didn't wait until "the dust settled" before responding.
The police would have had no way of knowing if the tiger was going to continue to attack people after it had taken out the ones who had taunted it. Should they have just waited to see if the tiger wanted to maim any innocent bystanders, and only after the tiger was done try to go after it?
I can't say I don't wish the tiger had finished off all three of them. But to expect the cops to just sit there and watch it happen is, frankly, retarded, SCOTUS decisions notwithstanding.
Am I the only one who finds it fascinating that the ONLY ones the tiger directly attacked were the 3 guys who were taunting it? That it specifically hunted down the 3 individuals who pissed it off? And they had moved away from the area...
Nope, I find that very interesting too. It pretty much proves to me that this was their own stupid fault. This was not some random man-killing tiger who escaped on a whim and hunted a human. This thing was pissed, it was out for revenge, and there's no way it was going to those lengths just because it was mildly annoyed. Out of all the visitors to ever walk past the cage, these were the only ones to taunt it in any way? Not bloody likely. They must have gone above and beyond the call of stupid duty to provoke this attack.
Just another variation on "the world is under my control, as long as I don't do thing X".
Yeah well that philosophy seemed to have worked for the thousands upon thousands of daily visitors over the course of decades who refrained from viciously taunting an apex predator!
This is a case of the world NOT being in your control. The Tiger escaped. It wasn't supposed to be able to. Do you think going to a Zoo is supposed to be a "risky" thing to do? I don't.. but hey, maybe it is.
You can make any activity "risky" through egregious stupidity. You probably think using a computer isn't very risky... until your drunken friends convince you to play "Headbutt the CRT".
Of course the enclosure should have been safer such that escape was impossible. It's obvious that thinking they were completely safe was the only reason these jackasses felt confident enough to taunt a tiger. Yet at the same time, the level of safety that was provided was sufficient for every other zoo-goer in the history of the exhibit, and without their actions, they would still be alive.
It's not as if the tiger escaped on a whim then attacked a random person who was minding their own business. It escaped from the enclosure because they infuriated it. It escaped from the enclosure because it wanted them. It was so pissed, it wanted them dead. Once it had escaped, it didn't run off, it didn't attack some other random zoo go-er. It wasn't hungry, it didn't stop to feast on its kill. It chased the two still-living people down hundreds of yards away from its enclosure past plenty of other zoo-goers, but it only wanted them, the source of its anger.
What happened was a direct consequence of their actions. They didn't need to control "the world", they only needed to control themselves. That's all the control they needed. "the world is under my control, as long as I don't do thing X" -- well THEY DID THING X and it was stupid and got them killed.
Talking about how this makes going to the zoo "risky", as if this is something that could have randomly happened to anyone, ignores this simple cause-and-effect relationship. And if you want to talk about "risk" as though you're doing statistical risk analysis, look at the actual numbers -- one attack in how many years, how many visitors? But of course any REAL risk analysis would divide the analysis based on risk FACTORS. Statistical risk to idiots who taunt tigers? HIGH. Statistical risk to non-idiots who don't taunt tigers? ZERO.
Quite tragic, as tigers are nearly extinct in the wild. Why does the myth of animals thirsting for human blood after killing a person continue to persist?
Because in the case of tigers, it is a very real danger? At least, a tiger who eats a human (whether the tiger killed the human or simply ran across a body) is liable to start to see humans as food, and a tiger will hunt and kill anything it sees as food.
This tiger didn't actually eat anyone... but it wasn't killed due to the fear of it being a future man-eater, it was killed because it was in the process of mauling two people after having killed one already, and when the police distracted it the tiger ran at them. Ideally they could have used tranquilizers, but this wasn't a planned recovery mission, it was an emergency response. It's hard for me to fault the police for doing their job of protecting people and themselves with the tools they had on hand when they showed up.
I agree though that this is exceedingly tragic. It's a disaster as far as I'm concerned. And the fools who mis-constructed (and mis-certified) the enclosure, and the retards who lacked the common sense to not taunt a large predator, directly contributed. Is there any hope for these animals in the face of simple, common, everyday human stupidity?
You've got it the wrong way around - its' MY parties he wants to join.
Pfft, if satan had a soul for every time someone claimed that he wouldn't need to corrupt mortals any more.
What a fucked-up place - no sex. So what happens with your privates? They fall off or something? That sort of god sounds more like Jim Jones.
No, your privates are in the box where they buried the meat-suit you shed when you died, providing worms with food.
Or maybe what he meant was that since there's no marriage in heaven, there's no prohibition about only screwing your spouse so you can get it on with whoever you like.
But that'd be pretty hard without your meat-suit.
Seriously, there is no god. Not even any real proof that there was some guy named jesus. You can believe all you want - won't make it true. Faith that isn't grounded in reality is a tragic waste.
Faith and proof are opposites, didn't you know? But don't worry -- you can't actually prove anything at all about objective reality, so you're still chock full o' faith.
Of course, that would demonstrate that god can't control everything, and as such, isn't god.
Nonsense. God *could* control you and stop you from spitting in his eye, but he's given you free will to do as you please, including spit on him.
You have to try harder than that to prove God's non-divinity! The Devil won't invite you to his awesome parties for such a half-arsed attempt, you know.
Huh? No idea what you're talking about, and I never said what you quoted. You must have misclicked when replying.
There's already a simple solution to this problem. You stick the ballot into the Scantron machine. The Scantron machine tries to read the ballot. If the ballot is invalid, then it spits the ballot back out, and the voter either corrects it or has that ballot replaced.
This at least gets rid of the over-votes, and could get rid of the under-votes if the Scantron has a "possibly read a filled bubble but not sure" threshold (I really don't know).
One interesting tidbit from the 2000 Florida election that often gets ignored in favor of controversies over the felon lists and the nature of the butterfly ballots themselves, is that the machines they used were in fact capable of this! It was an optional setting, the machine could either take the bad ballot as-is but just not count it, or it could reject the ballot back into the voter's hand for correction. As you may have guessed, voting machines in the precincts with high rates of bad ballots had this option disabled, and ones with low rates of bad ballots had it enabled. But we weren't told that, and were instead just left to assume that the people in the high-error precincts were simply dumber than everyone else, and we just accepted it! But in reality, errors are common, but most get a chance to correct it when the machine spits it out.
That said, I do agree that the best thing to do is have the computer print out the ballot so as to minimize the possibility of error. It's really the best of both worlds: The accessability of a voting machine that lets you edit your choices, read more about propositions, and enforces rules like no over-votes, but you still get a human-readable paper ballot that serves as the vote of record and can be recounted by anyone with working eyes. And if you make the printed ballot machine readable -- I prefer an OCR-friendly font so it's the *same* markings that are both human and machine readable -- you can still use a machine counter to get your instant-gratification.
It's not that hard to design a working voting system that minimizes voter error, maximizes accessibility, and most importantly maximizes openness and transparency. Just... nobody that I can tell has actually come forward and put the pieces together in a real system intended to be sold.
Vista is as horrible as the Holocaust
You jerk!
They also have Linux Annoyances for Geeks and Mac Annoyances book. What that says about Linux that specifically geeks are annoyed is unclear.
:)
I don't know, but I imagine it's things like "Annoyance #373: Mail application uses a GUI config wizard anyone can understand instead of an opaque text file!"
Only potential tripping point is which wireless card you decided on.
Which is why -- if possible, of course -- you (rhetorical 'you' btw) should find out which wireless cards are well supported under linux and buy based on that. Going the other way -- having a card and hoping it works under linux -- can be problematic.
Oh, and don't do like I did and assume that since Linksys had awesome linux support in the past that it still will... They got bought by Cisco, and I had a fair bit of trouble with some of their cards. Fortunately I found a linux driver on the chipset vendor's website.
Why Windows: The Windows monopoly.
Why Windows Vista: The OEM agreement.
Got it now?
But as the review explains, many of the fixes probably aren't suitable for the intended audience of the book, which kind of makes that a moot point.
It's not the books fault if the solution to a particular problem is perhaps too sophisticated for some users. Unless there's an obvious simpler answer that the book overlooks, then this is simply a fact of life. The whole point is that they're trying to help out with an annoying piece of software they didn't write. What else could they do? Do what you originally said and just list the annoyance and show no solution? Or even worse -- list the annoyance, say that there's a solution, but then don't say what it is on the basis that it's too hard?
If the book can help users get over some of their problems, then it isn't a moot point at all. If by providing solutions that may be beyond the average reader, they encourage some of those readers to push their limits and become more comfortable, then that's even better.
That issue aside, when it comes to making changes that you're not entirely comfortable with (which presumably you wouldn't be if you needed a book to tell you how)
Some people are a lot more comfortable doing things if they have a book to tell them how. E.g. I'm no tool maven, and I would be terrified of actually trying to fix any of my plumbing if left to my own devices, but I am confident enough with tools that given an appropriate book explaining what to do that I could do it.
I get your point about a static book not necessarily being the best companion to a dynamic piece of software, but for some people especially beginners a book they can easily refer to and work through at their own pace is a better starting point than a web forum where they have to deal with human factors of entering some geek forum as well (e.g. the way I'd feel walking up to a group of contractors and plumbers and going "Der, how do I stop my faucet from leaking?" and then being confused by their answer).
I am not saying "guilty until proven innocent" or anything like that.
Well if the BSA comes around you better believe they are operating under than philosophy.
My point is that if someone is tipping off the BSA then SOMEONE at your company realises that you are not in compliance.
Copypasta:
It couldn't possibly be that it's a disgruntled ex-employee who called in a bogus tip simply to harass their former employer. It couldn't possibly be a disgruntled ex-employee who was themselves responsible for the licensing and thus the lack of compliance, and they were the only ones who knew it.
Not copypasta:
Actually that last one has happened, I know of one case where a guy brand new to an IT job discovered that the guy he was replacing, who had been fired, had done a lousy job of keeping up with necessary license documentation. That being a big part of the job description and thus solely that person's responsibility. And then, lo and behold, an "anonymous" tip caused the company to be hit by a BSA audit for which they were completely unprepared. Despite, to their knowledge, having properly paid of all software and simply not being able to produce the documentation.
The only way that the BSA is going to come after you is if they get tipped off that you are violating your license. If that happens it means that people at your company knew they were infringing.
If you're accused you must be guilty. Yeah, that's a safe assumption.
It couldn't possibly be that it's a disgruntled ex-employee who called in a bogus tip simply to harass their former employer. It couldn't possibly be a disgruntled ex-employee who was themselves responsible for the licensing and thus the lack of compliance, and they were the only ones who knew it.
I'm sorry, but in my world thats not gray, thats black. Having one valid license to a software product that was copied 200 times doesnt make it "gray".
And is having 200 valid licenses to a software product that was installed 201 times because someone forgot to delete one copy off an old computer black as well?
Is having 200 valid licenses to a software product that was installed 200 times, but someone didn't obey the specific terms of the EULA and moved the software from one computer to another also black?
Is having 200 valid licenses to a software product that was installed 200 times in complete accordance with the license terms, but not being able to meet the strict (and poorly specified) accounting to prove this to the BSA when they raid your company also black?
Is there any gray at all in your world?
Therefore a big company is likely to have an IT department that does a good job of making sure it has licenses for everything and doesnt cut corners to save a few bucks here and there.
Yes, that's very true, the big company can afford to pay people solely to look after their licensing.
It also has to do with the kinds of licensing small business vs large ones can afford. A large corporation can afford site licenses or bulk-licenses where a large number of users are covered by a single license. It's much easier to keep track of, and to know whether any particular user of the software is legal (either they all are, or any machine that can get a license from the license server is), and easy to know when it expires (there's one date).
Whereas a small company that has to buy individual licenses (especially in the form of shrink-wrapped boxes which means the license is in paper form) has a lot more to keep track of, like when each piece of software was purchased and thus when it expires, and more documentation to dig up when the BSA comes knocking. Plus the BSA is notorious for going after technical violations of licenses where things like moving a hard drive from one machine to another is against the terms, so even though Software In Use == Legal Software Licenses and thus the software vendor got all the money they deserve, the BSA will still force them to pay a fine.
So stop bothering us with vapid talk of how rational you are.
I always laugh when some geek tries to present themselves as being a completely rational person.
Sorry, but they're human, and humans are emotional mammals first and foremost; rationality is just a useful trick we've learned, but our brains are still fundamentally as emotional -- and thus irrational -- as ever. A person truly striving to be rational would accept this fact. However someone who wants to present themselves as being superior must delude themselves into thinking that they are completely rational. Self-delusion is itself irrational, and thus they are hoisted by their own petards.
Consider it like the 127.0.0.1 goatse.ch line in your /etc/hosts file.
Why, I do believe you have come across the simplest explanation of the system's motivation that a slashdotter would understand.
Odds are very good that this Aboriginal resource DB was rigged by request from the community itself, so why the hullabaloo?
Jingoism and bigotry posing as rational smug superiority. Nothing more.
One other interesting tidbit he told us is that it fired a non-conductive plastic like ball. Everything I've seen written on rail guns online seems to contradict this design possibility, they require a conductive ball that conducts the current between the plates.
/., so you may not have enough salt handy to take with this post. :P
I've heard of one rail gun idea where the projectile itself wasn't the conductor. In this conception, you actually use something like a piece of gold as the conductor between the rails. The idea is that when you dump the current across it, the gold would vaporize but continue to conduct and it's actually the cloud of gold vapor that is pushed by the magnetic force and thus pushes the projectile down the rails. I guess the advantage is that friction on the rails isn't as big an issue since the gold vapor has low friction and you can coat the projectile in something like teflon without worrying about conductivity.
But this is my half-assed remembering of something I read somewhere, probably a discussion on
Isn't the armor also subject to spalling (molten chunks of the armor zipping through the interior)?
Apparently (and to no surprise considering who was in charge at the time) the actual war planners hadn't seen that movie (or the real tests behind it), since they deployed those pieces of shit into Iraq with disastrous results. Those things are nothing but RPG bait. They're worse than HUMMVEEs as far as personnel carriers go, since it at least takes two RPGs to kill eight soldiers in two HUMMVEEs.
Seems like they've wised up though and largely stopped using them. Those mine-hardened vehicles are the popular APC now.
I would suspect that the Naval interest in rail-gun technology is probably aimed at point-defense (i.e: shooting down incoming anti-ship missiles) more then anything else.
:(
Nope, the Navy is actually specifically looking at rail guns to serve much the same purpose as cruise missiles do today -- striking specific stationary targets from a great distance and with high accuracy.
Advantages of a rail gun over cruise missiles (imo):
1) Vastly lower cost per projectile -- a slug of metal vs a self-contained rocket-propelled flying machine.
2) Vastly reduced danger of secondary explosions because it's non-explosive ordinance.
3) Higher capacity because of (1) and they're also smaller and lighter than cruise missiles.
4) Much harder to shoot down, since cruise missiles fly relatively low and slow, while rail gun rounds would hit their target in minutes after firing at several times the speed of sound.
5) Much higher rate of fire. You can't just plug in GPS coordinates into a cruise missile and hit "go", each firing is a complicated and carefully planned mission unto itself since you must account for terrain, and I've read most missile destroyers are limited to a couple launches per day. A ballistic trajectory would make this much simpler, so the main limit is charging the capacitors and they estimate they could achieve a rate of fire of 1 every 6 minutes (according to TFA).
Disadvantages:
1) Much lower range -- 220m for the 64 MJ rail gun, around 700m for a Tomahawk.
2) The same force experienced by the projectile is experienced by the rails, so it tends to destroy itself.
3) For high precision some simple guidance would be required for the last leg of the journey, and yes this is a potential problem, but it's not like they need anything approaching the guidance in a missile.
4) Due to (2) and (3) doesn't actually exist in working form yet.
If they pan out, rail guns won't replace cruise missiles in the Navy's arsenal, but they will provide a very potent tool for similar missions.
I know Michael Schumacher could chat with the pit crew while winning F1 races :).
;) ).
:)
So at least some people can drive and talk at the same time. Maybe it's a matter of practice (but some people can't even walk safely while talking
Most people can talk with somebody who is in the car and drive at the same time, as well.
I think the fundamental difference is that when you're on the phone, the person on the other end of the phone expects you to be granting them your full attention -- it's considered rude not to -- and they are not aware of your current context so they don't know that the reason you're denying them your full attention is because of some road hazard or other thing. Whereas someone who is in the car with you can see the same things you can, and fully expects that you will devote as much attention to driving as you need to (since their arse is on the line too) so when you need to adapt to changing road conditions they're aware and willing to let you do so. Unless it's a kid, in which case you should have developed the ability of every sane parent to tune out their kids at will.
Michael Shumacher certainly has a leg up due to his driving skill, but at the same time I doubt his crew chief is going to be asking Mike about his opinion regarding changing tires at the next pit stop when Mike's trying to negotiate through the smoke and wreckage of a crash that occurred in front of him. Like a passenger in your car, the pit crew is aware of Mike's driving context and thus in tune with when the focus of his attention needs to shift between them and driving.