In one place I worked at, we had a standing rule - if you were bogged down, it was better to just pack up and go home for the day. Get out, get some R&R and get back tomorrow to resolve the issue.
totally. I once had a full hour commute on a rural freeway each way, which was great - I could completely forget about work on the drive home, and start transitioning into code-think while driving in the next day. When I got stuck, I would go home - it made for a 6 to 7 hour day, but I was out-coding the folks who put in 10 hour days.
I only met one guy who was PERFECTLY productive. He worked exactly 8 hours a day, and stopped to smoke two Marlboro light 100's every two hours. At any given moment, he was working as fast as my peak speed.
National laws are one of the dark remanis of the nationalistic era of human history (colonialism, German and Italian national socialism, Great Serbia, etc.) and are, hopefully soon, obsolete. The abolishment of individual nations and all the crap that comes with nationalism is here.
Of course! We should all have the same corrupt government!
Seriously, given that some laws are bad, and some people will not act in my interest, diversity in governments is superior to monolithic international anything.
My homegrown American evil politicians are bad enough, but a set of international laws made up by people like Tony Blair, Robert Mugabe, Pol Pot, and the Red Army? No thanks, comrade. The UN Declaration of Human Rights gives me the 'right' to two weeks paid vacation a year, but not the right to self defense or a jury of my peers. Yuck.
It doesn't take too many tries to find out that if you are told "blue metal" and you pick up the metal key (being that the only item on the table that is blue is also the only item that is metal) -- you get a treat. This seems like nothing more than conditioning to me.
And you would distinguish this kind of conditioning from some sort of higher 'learning' how, exactly?
It's probably not compressed at all. I can't wait for more and more of this type thing. I'm sick of going to movies and seeing flecks on the screen from a poor print, which only gets worse the more it's played.
While you won't get the scratches and spots on a digital projection, you also won't get the same color gamut and saturation. I'm hopeful in the long run, and I look forward to actually get a look at it for comparison, but it's hard to imagine it's superior to film already.
Right now film has excellent color and saturation, but is hampered by fragile media and 24 fps / 72 hz refresh. If they can get the colors right, and increase the frame rate, that would be a real breakthrough.
The first amendment to the US Constitution bars the *United States Government* from abridging a citizen's right to free speech. This does not guarantee anyone the right to say anything they like. It *just* means that the Federal Government can't be the one who stops them.
Good post, but note that the 14th Amendment keeps other levels of Government from infringing your rights also - and USC Title 18 S. 241-242 provide for very stong penalties for anyone found guilty of conspiring to deprive you of those rights, even 'under color of law'. Up to and including death, if violent crimes are commited in the process of violating your rights.
It's rarely been used this way, because of the ridiculous precedent set in US v. Cruikshank. The Court managed to rule there that the 14th Amendment only protects those rights granted by the Government (like voting), not basic human rights (like speech, assembly, and, the court ruled, guns).
There is nothing inherently illegal about MP3's, or copying them, or even sharing them - but you can't say that downloading music you haven't paid for is any more correct or moral than taping a CD borrowed from a friend. Most everybody does it, but it's not right, fair to the artist, or legal.
Most of the efforts to stop MP3 as a format have been analogous to the blank tape tax we suffer here in America. This is different. Metallica and Dre have suffered real (but hard to quantify) financial harm by the actions of these users. My only problem with Metallica's action is that many of these Napster users may have only made the files accessible - it is likely that nobody downloaded Metallica songs from them.
Kids, your actions can trump any gun-packer. With modest martial arts training, simply knowing where to strike and how, and doing so with a modicum of force, your target, even if carrying, is at a loss. Do not telegraph your intent, approach from behind or from concealment, get close quickly and you win. You can even end up with their gun in your hands ready to use on your subject. That is the best of all ironies...to take the "defensive" gun from a gun clown and use it against them. That is a thing of beauty and many belly laughs.
So what I hear you saying is that I will lose a fight to an opponent who has the advantage of surprise, training, and offensive intent. That's news.
The first rule of self defence is to not put yourself in a sitiuation where you need to defend yourself. My experiance has been, that people who look for trouble usually get it. If you have been in several situations where you "needed a gun to protect yourself and your family", you should take a good hard look at yourself and ask yourself why you keep getting into these situations. Here is a news flash, the vast majority of people in the world never have these problems even once, let alone several times in thier lives.
Your point is well taken, but in none of the situations I have been involved could I have NOT been there. I have had a knife pulled on me in the street while walking to the bus stop - I told the man I had no money, and he put the knife away, and I went about my business. I have had a man charge into my house in broad daylight. He went away when two of us pulled guns while another roommate called the police. Lastly, I fled my apartment unarmed, with a wife and daughter (7 mos old at the time) to avoid a gang of about 8 thugs who wanted to kill me, rape her, and take all our stuff. We left, they took all our stuff, and tortured our cat to death. I don't mind the financial loss, but having to move at 2 AM, running a gauntlet to get to the car, and losing the fucking cleaning deposit to get the cat blood out of the carpet are experiences I would rather not repeat.
I moved way the hell out into the country. It hasn't happened since. I disagree that the "vast majority of people in the world" have not had these problems. Extortion and taking by force majeure are not exceptional anywhere in the 2nd and 3rd world, and regrettably common even in America. I had the ability (read: money) to move out, but billions do not.
Maybe you need a lifestyle change if you have as you say "...been in several situations where I needed a gun to protect myself and my family."
Ultimately I moved out of that neighborhood. Consider though, that I could afford to, while my neighbors could not.
If you could run your way out of a situation with a gun, why couldn't you do it without a gun?
In any situation in which I can run away with a gun I can do so without one. I am concerned with the situations where running is not possible. There are many people faster than me. Also, my wife and 5-year-old daughter may not be able to run effectively.
"Treat all guns as if they are loaded" noone is advocating actually leaving ALL guns loaded ALL the time...just that you should always assume a gun is loaded and treat it with the care you would a loaded gun, even if you "know" its not loaded.
Thank you. It had not occured to me that anyone could read Rule One as advocating keeping all guns loaded all the time. Despite being unnecessary (what possible justification would there be for keeping a single-shot.416 Rigby loaded at home? marauding polar bear?), in repeating arms it is reckoned bad for the magazine spring.
Yeah, that's the ticket. Shoot first, ask questions later. I thought that the NRA line was that people need guns for hunting, not shooting people. Guns may not kill people, but people with guns who don't have time [to] think do.
That's not the NRA line, sir. In every issue of American Rifleman there is a page or two of incidents in which guns were used in self defense against humans. In Oregon, my home state, the Constitution specifically enumerates the right to bear arms in self defense.
I have been in several situations where I needed a gun to protect myself and my family, and in some of those I did not have a gun readily available, with unpleasent consequences. In other situations where I was armed, I talked (or ran) my way out of the situation to avoid shooting someone. I have a much better track record of responsible firearms use than, say, the NYPD.
With a loaded gun concealed but ready to hand, one can deal with both situations that require shooting, and those that do not. With a gun drawn, one is escalating a situation that may be better handled otherwise. With no gun at all, one risks being powerless in the hands of one's enemies. That is my thoughtfully considered belief, and it is a world away from "shoot first, ask questions later".
I have a real question for you.. If I'm an adult and I own a fire-arm AND I lock it up and take gun security matters seriously is that bad in your book? Just kinda curious what this crowd thinks.
I think that taking gun security seriously is critical, and if you do that, you are fine by me. However, "gun security" means different things to different people. I think ideally you want to store most of your guns in a big heavy safe with a serious lock on it. You should keep any gun you feel you need fast access to either on your person or (when sleeping, for instance) in one of those little one-gun safes that can be bolted to the floor, probably with a Simplex-type push button lock. This is not going to stop anyone who has time to run through the limited keyset for a Simplex lock, but because it is bolted down, it is very difficult to force it without a crowbar or similar industrial tool.
Trigger locks look useful, but they are no substitute for locking your guns out of the reach of theives and infants, and they can be difficult to remove in a hurry. When you need a gun, you need it now, and trigger locks just don't meet that requirement. Likewise the process of partially disassembling a gun for storage: it stops you from getting your weapon into action quickly, and doesn't really stop theives or bright kids.
They think gun sites are appropiate for kids? I swear on my children's lives to never use a product endorsed, sold or advocated by AOL or any of its subsidiaries.
I don't mind my kids learning about guns on the net. Or yours. Any kids who may be reading, please keep the following in mind:
aim center-of-mass.
focus on the front sight blade. Be IN the front sight blade.
PRESS the trigger. Don't pull.
... and, of course, Col. Cooper's Rules:
All guns are always loaded.
Never let the muzzle cover anything you aren't willing to destroy.
Finger off the trigger until ready to fire.
Be sure of your target and what lies beyond it. Don't shoot at anything you can't positively identify, including presumably hostile muzzle flashes.
The software isn't banned. You can use it for any legal purpose. This guy wasn't.
Just like slim jims (the car entry device, not the alleged food product). OK to have, OK to use on your own car, NOT OK if you have one while snagging somebody else's radio.
No you'll be the one in jail awaiting your right to a speedy trial on murder charges. If you get cleared on those charges you'll be working your buns off to pay off the attorneys defending you on the wrongul death suit in civil court. After you lose and are fined a couple of million you'll be lying on the ground in the street because you just lost your home and all your worldly posessions.
All because you chose to kill somebody instead of giving them your wallet.
Not in Oregon he wouldn't. Not in a lot of States. The right to keep and bear arms is specifically a self-defense right in the Constitutions of much of the American West.
We had a guy in Oregon recently who was fleeing the police, going from house to house looking for hostages, who was forced to drop his weapon by a housewife with a pistol, and on going to the next house, was shot with a.22 rifle by a 12-year-old boy babysitting his younger brother.
Fighting back works. Use a knife if you don't have a gun, use your hands if you have to... but with a gun, it doesn't matter if your attacker is bigger, faster, or has less to lose.
What does "Not a very nice person at all" refer to?
In the last sequence of Tarantino's Pulp Fiction, Samuel L. Jackson's character is revealed to have a wallet emblazoned with "Bad Mother Fucker".
Re:Good, but he's no Tolkein...
on
The Truth
·
· Score: 5
Pratchetts work is good, and I can imagine this "Truth" is probably an interesting read, but I think geeks and slashdot readers might find the Classic fantasy of Tolkein much more rewarding than this 'cyber-fantasy' style of Pratchett.
Also, Tolkein manages to create a rich imaginary world, we can believe in, whereas Pratchett does not.
Tolkein is well and good, but Pratchett's Discworld is NOT un-rich or un-believable. Ankh-Morpork has an actual economy. There are people with actual jobs, making the city run. Golems, trolls, dwarfs, gnomes, vampires, werewolves, and witches all interact in a plausible network, doing valuable work with a sensible division of labor.
I would lump Pratchett in the same category as Rankin or Douglas Adams, a lightweight, using Fantasy as a marketing gimmick, rather than treating it with the seriousness it deserves.
Hardly. The "Guards" stories, Feet of Clay being my favorite, are technically police-procedural mysteries, worthy of favorable comparison to Ed McBain's 87th Precinct books - but the stories would not work outside of a fantasy setting. The "Witches" story arc broke new ground in the genre with practically every book, deconstructing fantasy cliche after fantasy cliche, and giving new life to some very tired ideas. The fantastic elements of the stories are integral and necessary, not a "marketing gimmick".
Pratchett is unquestionably in the vanguard of fantasy authors, having inheirited that position from the late Avram Davidson. There's more to Fantasy than Tolkein (although, again, I am not dissing Tolkein - he produced great stuff, which is none the worse for its age). Great new works are still being produced, and should not be dismissed just because they are popular and funny.
As for the dude who shot up his computer, Please let me shoot HIM. For anyone to decide one day "HEY! I think I'm going to take this computer out back and SHOOT IT!" is totally idiotic. There was almost a guaranteed use for that computer, and I don't mean as a target.
I respectfully submit that it's not your call to make. He used his computer, his gun, his ammo, and his time.
A 386 or better, sure there's a use. A 286, or a case from a Packard Bell with a fried power supply, or some component with terribly bad juju (like a keyboard that fries motherboards) all make fine targets for light caliber plinking. (The keyboard from hell was shattered by a.44 Desert Eagle, and nailed to the wall as a warning to others of it's kind).
I've seen 4'2" Grannies park their SS Devilles into a tree in broad daylight, with no other cars on a straight piece of road.
For this problem new Cadillacs have a sonic rangefinder in the rear bumper, and LED's on the dash that tell you how close you are in back. Of course it is wrong to look at the dashboard while you are backing up, and most of the 4'2" grannies won't use it properly anyhow, but it's a good start.
The other great piece of tech on Caddys: laser raindrop counters to determine when to wipe the windshield.
I'm hardly a leftist, but I think that any game where you get to depose dictators (whoever backs 'em) and / or kill slave traders would be a hell of a lot of fun.
This is what the article describes as 'blatant racism':
Say hello to Ho Chi Minh on your way to hell. An F-8 Crusader bids farewell to a MiG-17 over a rice paddy. Better him than you.
And again:
Welcome to Vietnam, plenty of humidity and all the rice you can eat.
I don't see how references to Ho Chi Minh and rice are racist. Ho was a leader of Vietnamese, rice is a staple of the Viet diet, then and now. There are many rice paddies in Vietnam. Vietnam is known for being humid.
Not one thing in the quoted text maligns the Viet people or culture. That and the incredibly strained logic attempting to link Jane's with 'Western hegemony' makes me think this is all one giant troll. Looking at it that way, it's actually pretty funny.
``In April we will return to Khatanga,'' Mol said. They will use a rack of hair dryers to thaw out the block, layer by layer, and examine every speck of plant matter and animals remains they can find in the soil surrounding the mammoth.
When will we see an "Encyclopaedia Interneta"? A knowledge-oriented, peer-reviewed compendium of human knowledge? How could such a process benefit from the Slashdot model, as seen in the Jane Cyberterrorism story?
I'm certain the key to storing and indexing knowledge is in there somewhere, but I don't think it's been done properly yet. (And I mean no disrespect to Everything.:) )
If I had any moderator points today I'd give you one. 'Everything' is a step down the right path (it actually has a node / path model, which maps well to existing encyclopediae), but Slash (article / discussion model) is closer, in it's own way. The current moderation / karma system is quite good, and will get better, at showing me the good stuff and letting me ignore the crap.
As high-karma individuals wield more and more power in some hypothetical Encyclopedia Interneta, we will need to be more concerned with identity theft. Reputation management is an emerging technology that will ultimately make massive general knowledge databases useable. If it is compromised, such that any twit can claim to be Stephen Hawking, the value of the compiled information falls quickly.
topic drift: One thing I'd like to see is Karma adjusted by number of posts. People who gain karma by simply posting a whole damn lot, some fraction of which gains them points, should not have the same reputation as people who post once or twice a week, but consistently get moderated up.
Slashdot Mirror
totally. I once had a full hour commute on a rural freeway each way, which was great - I could completely forget about work on the drive home, and start transitioning into code-think while driving in the next day. When I got stuck, I would go home - it made for a 6 to 7 hour day, but I was out-coding the folks who put in 10 hour days.
I only met one guy who was PERFECTLY productive. He worked exactly 8 hours a day, and stopped to smoke two Marlboro light 100's every two hours. At any given moment, he was working as fast as my peak speed.
Of course! We should all have the same corrupt government!
Seriously, given that some laws are bad, and some people will not act in my interest, diversity in governments is superior to monolithic international anything.
My homegrown American evil politicians are bad enough, but a set of international laws made up by people like Tony Blair, Robert Mugabe, Pol Pot, and the Red Army? No thanks, comrade. The UN Declaration of Human Rights gives me the 'right' to two weeks paid vacation a year, but not the right to self defense or a jury of my peers. Yuck.
 
While you won't get the scratches and spots on a digital projection, you also won't get the same color gamut and saturation. I'm hopeful in the long run, and I look forward to actually get a look at it for comparison, but it's hard to imagine it's superior to film already.
Right now film has excellent color and saturation, but is hampered by fragile media and 24 fps / 72 hz refresh. If they can get the colors right, and increase the frame rate, that would be a real breakthrough.
Good post, but note that the 14th Amendment keeps other levels of Government from infringing your rights also - and USC Title 18 S. 241-242 provide for very stong penalties for anyone found guilty of conspiring to deprive you of those rights, even 'under color of law'. Up to and including death, if violent crimes are commited in the process of violating your rights.
It's rarely been used this way, because of the ridiculous precedent set in US v. Cruikshank. The Court managed to rule there that the 14th Amendment only protects those rights granted by the Government (like voting), not basic human rights (like speech, assembly, and, the court ruled, guns).
There is nothing inherently illegal about MP3's, or copying them, or even sharing them - but you can't say that downloading music you haven't paid for is any more correct or moral than taping a CD borrowed from a friend. Most everybody does it, but it's not right, fair to the artist, or legal.
Most of the efforts to stop MP3 as a format have been analogous to the blank tape tax we suffer here in America. This is different. Metallica and Dre have suffered real (but hard to quantify) financial harm by the actions of these users. My only problem with Metallica's action is that many of these Napster users may have only made the files accessible - it is likely that nobody downloaded Metallica songs from them.
So what I hear you saying is that I will lose a fight to an opponent who has the advantage of surprise, training, and offensive intent. That's news.
Your point is well taken, but in none of the situations I have been involved could I have NOT been there. I have had a knife pulled on me in the street while walking to the bus stop - I told the man I had no money, and he put the knife away, and I went about my business. I have had a man charge into my house in broad daylight. He went away when two of us pulled guns while another roommate called the police. Lastly, I fled my apartment unarmed, with a wife and daughter (7 mos old at the time) to avoid a gang of about 8 thugs who wanted to kill me, rape her, and take all our stuff. We left, they took all our stuff, and tortured our cat to death. I don't mind the financial loss, but having to move at 2 AM, running a gauntlet to get to the car, and losing the fucking cleaning deposit to get the cat blood out of the carpet are experiences I would rather not repeat.
I moved way the hell out into the country. It hasn't happened since. I disagree that the "vast majority of people in the world" have not had these problems. Extortion and taking by force majeure are not exceptional anywhere in the 2nd and 3rd world, and regrettably common even in America. I had the ability (read: money) to move out, but billions do not.
Ultimately I moved out of that neighborhood. Consider though, that I could afford to, while my neighbors could not.
In any situation in which I can run away with a gun I can do so without one. I am concerned with the situations where running is not possible. There are many people faster than me. Also, my wife and 5-year-old daughter may not be able to run effectively.
Thank you. It had not occured to me that anyone could read Rule One as advocating keeping all guns loaded all the time. Despite being unnecessary (what possible justification would there be for keeping a single-shot .416 Rigby loaded at home? marauding polar bear?), in repeating arms it is reckoned bad for the magazine spring.
That's not the NRA line, sir. In every issue of American Rifleman there is a page or two of incidents in which guns were used in self defense against humans. In Oregon, my home state, the Constitution specifically enumerates the right to bear arms in self defense.
I have been in several situations where I needed a gun to protect myself and my family, and in some of those I did not have a gun readily available, with unpleasent consequences. In other situations where I was armed, I talked (or ran) my way out of the situation to avoid shooting someone. I have a much better track record of responsible firearms use than, say, the NYPD.
With a loaded gun concealed but ready to hand, one can deal with both situations that require shooting, and those that do not. With a gun drawn, one is escalating a situation that may be better handled otherwise. With no gun at all, one risks being powerless in the hands of one's enemies. That is my thoughtfully considered belief, and it is a world away from "shoot first, ask questions later".
Thank you for your time,
I think that taking gun security seriously is critical, and if you do that, you are fine by me. However, "gun security" means different things to different people. I think ideally you want to store most of your guns in a big heavy safe with a serious lock on it. You should keep any gun you feel you need fast access to either on your person or (when sleeping, for instance) in one of those little one-gun safes that can be bolted to the floor, probably with a Simplex-type push button lock. This is not going to stop anyone who has time to run through the limited keyset for a Simplex lock, but because it is bolted down, it is very difficult to force it without a crowbar or similar industrial tool.
Trigger locks look useful, but they are no substitute for locking your guns out of the reach of theives and infants, and they can be difficult to remove in a hurry. When you need a gun, you need it now , and trigger locks just don't meet that requirement. Likewise the process of partially disassembling a gun for storage: it stops you from getting your weapon into action quickly, and doesn't really stop theives or bright kids.
I don't mind my kids learning about guns on the net. Or yours. Any kids who may be reading, please keep the following in mind:
... and, of course, Col. Cooper's Rules:
Hope this helps.
The software isn't banned. You can use it for any legal purpose. This guy wasn't.
Just like slim jims (the car entry device, not the alleged food product). OK to have, OK to use on your own car, NOT OK if you have one while snagging somebody else's radio.
Not in Oregon he wouldn't. Not in a lot of States. The right to keep and bear arms is specifically a self-defense right in the Constitutions of much of the American West.
We had a guy in Oregon recently who was fleeing the police, going from house to house looking for hostages, who was forced to drop his weapon by a housewife with a pistol, and on going to the next house, was shot with a .22 rifle by a 12-year-old boy babysitting his younger brother.
Fighting back works. Use a knife if you don't have a gun, use your hands if you have to... but with a gun, it doesn't matter if your attacker is bigger, faster, or has less to lose.
In the last sequence of Tarantino's Pulp Fiction, Samuel L. Jackson's character is revealed to have a wallet emblazoned with "Bad Mother Fucker".
Tolkein is well and good, but Pratchett's Discworld is NOT un-rich or un-believable. Ankh-Morpork has an actual economy. There are people with actual jobs, making the city run. Golems, trolls, dwarfs, gnomes, vampires, werewolves, and witches all interact in a plausible network, doing valuable work with a sensible division of labor.
Hardly. The "Guards" stories, Feet of Clay being my favorite, are technically police-procedural mysteries, worthy of favorable comparison to Ed McBain's 87th Precinct books - but the stories would not work outside of a fantasy setting. The "Witches" story arc broke new ground in the genre with practically every book, deconstructing fantasy cliche after fantasy cliche, and giving new life to some very tired ideas. The fantastic elements of the stories are integral and necessary, not a "marketing gimmick".
Pratchett is unquestionably in the vanguard of fantasy authors, having inheirited that position from the late Avram Davidson. There's more to Fantasy than Tolkein (although, again, I am not dissing Tolkein - he produced great stuff, which is none the worse for its age). Great new works are still being produced, and should not be dismissed just because they are popular and funny.
A 386 or better, sure there's a use. A 286, or a case from a Packard Bell with a fried power supply, or some component with terribly bad juju (like a keyboard that fries motherboards) all make fine targets for light caliber plinking. (The keyboard from hell was shattered by a .44 Desert Eagle, and nailed to the wall as a warning to others of it's kind).
For this problem new Cadillacs have a sonic rangefinder in the rear bumper, and LED's on the dash that tell you how close you are in back. Of course it is wrong to look at the dashboard while you are backing up, and most of the 4'2" grannies won't use it properly anyhow, but it's a good start.
The other great piece of tech on Caddys: laser raindrop counters to determine when to wipe the windshield.
having read that rant, I am glad the that Jodorowski didn't get to make it.
I'm hardly a leftist, but I think that any game where you get to depose dictators (whoever backs 'em) and / or kill slave traders would be a hell of a lot of fun.
This is what the article describes as 'blatant racism':
I don't see how references to Ho Chi Minh and rice are racist. Ho was a leader of Vietnamese, rice is a staple of the Viet diet, then and now. There are many rice paddies in Vietnam. Vietnam is known for being humid.
Not one thing in the quoted text maligns the Viet people or culture. That and the incredibly strained logic attempting to link Jane's with 'Western hegemony' makes me think this is all one giant troll. Looking at it that way, it's actually pretty funny.
Hair dryers?
Also catch the link at the bottom: Russian Scientist Denies Whole Mammoth Unearthed. Some question as to how much of the beast's remains remain; it may be just wool and bones.
If I had any moderator points today I'd give you one. 'Everything' is a step down the right path (it actually has a node / path model, which maps well to existing encyclopediae), but Slash (article / discussion model) is closer, in it's own way. The current moderation / karma system is quite good, and will get better, at showing me the good stuff and letting me ignore the crap.
As high-karma individuals wield more and more power in some hypothetical Encyclopedia Interneta, we will need to be more concerned with identity theft. Reputation management is an emerging technology that will ultimately make massive general knowledge databases useable. If it is compromised, such that any twit can claim to be Stephen Hawking, the value of the compiled information falls quickly.
topic drift: One thing I'd like to see is Karma adjusted by number of posts. People who gain karma by simply posting a whole damn lot, some fraction of which gains them points, should not have the same reputation as people who post once or twice a week, but consistently get moderated up.