In their rush to paint Christians as idiots, the editors failed to notice this addendum to TFA:
Christian Children's Fund made the decision to decline the gift from Gen Con, LLC as the request presented to us gave the appearance that CCF (the organization) was an endorser or supporter of a gaming convention, which CCF was not. As many non-profit organizations, CCF is selective in its endorsements or support in order to maintain the integrity of its name and logo. We cannot lend our name to an event for which we have no involvement. This decision should in no way be interpreted as CCF holding an opinion on Mr. Gygax, gaming enthusiasts or the game Dungeons and Dragons.
Some of my fellow faith-mates do make the rest of us look pretty silly. But the non-religious folks apparently have a knee-jerk reaction that would make Dr. Dobson proud.
Oddly enough we manage in the UK without laws to stop people from insulting the queen. We don't forbid it, and for the most part people don't do it. Strange that....
Well, there is one obvious example:
God save the Queen Her facist regime They made you a moron Potential h-bomb
God save the Queen She ain't no human being There's no future In England's dreaming
And sure enough, as far as I can tell, Sid Vicious never got arrested... well, not for sayin' the Queen ain't human, at least.
Researchers examining data from the orbiter's Compact Reconnaissance Imaging Spectrometer for Mars have found evidence of hydrated silica, commonly known as opal.
Hydrated silica doesn't sound like much, but I think most people understand what opal is. Granted, you're not going to fund a Mars mission with opals. Wikipedia says the largest uncut opal on *this* planet, the size of a fist, is worth "just" $1.2 million. You'd have to haul back several thousand of them, and pretend you didn't just turn supply-and-demand on its ear.
But surely there's going to be more than just pretty rocks out there. A big vein of gold, with no environmental concerns, might be a boon for semiconductor manufacturers (even if it does put a bunch of commodities traders out on the street). Better yet, finding a big patch of tantalum would put some particularly nasty dictators out of business.
Of course, those elements would be much easier to mine from a passing asteroid. But you've got to go to Mars for the opals.
It really should be "...in that there have never been so many...", if we're going to be pedantic. But granted, yours is A/A- material, where the original is C-grade material.
Hey, don't give me credit/blame... the only-slightly-damaged version came from the story submitter.
I like to think *I* would have gotten the verb form correct... but then, that may just be the tumor talking.
Put that thing next to a speaker, have it ring and then tell me that you don't think it's giving you brain cancer.
Heck, I think this statement from the cell phone expert (from TFA) pretty much proves that our phones are rotting our brains:
Rodman: We're really in an interesting time, radio speaking, in that there hasn't been a time before, certainly in the last five years, maybe the last ten, when there was such an inordinate number of relatively high-powered personal transmitters just wandering loose in the world.
WTF? "an interesting time, radio speaking"? And the tortured grammar in the summary isn't much better: "We're really in an interesting time in that there has never been so many high-powered personal transmitters just wandering loose in the world."
is that the majority of the first population WILL be women. And they will send a large number of 100s or thousands of fertilized zygotes or just eggs and sperms. The reason is for diversity IN CASE separated.
Although that speculation does lend itself to various interesting book and movie plots, I'm hopeful that we're able to find some way for us guys to have a chance. Perhaps the women should be sent to the north polar region, and the men to the south. If nothing else, that would provide a strong incentive to keep the rovers working.
As far as procreation, in vitro or otherwise, I don't think that would be such a good idea at first. Send up some guinea pigs as both a (don't slap me) protein source and a test to see the results of reproduction in a low-gravity environment, with reduced sunlight but increased solar radiation. Let the guinea pigs be, er, guinea pigs for reproduction before we chance it with ourselves.
I think the first one-way colonists will likely be older, and wouldn't mind not being the Adam and/or Eve of a new planet. Though they'd likely need surgical assurance of that, because as long as Adam and Eve are within rover distance, there won't be any lack of trying...
I'm sure, almost certain, that the ripping sound you hear is the sound of a million geeks all pulling about 1.2 inches of tape off of their desktop dispenser.
Bonus points if it's now wrapped around your finger as a memento.
Read all the claims. The patent is not defined by its title, but by its claims. If the claims are too vague, open for interpretation and as a(n indirect) result covers existing inventions and/or obvious implementations - that's when you complain about a patent.
No, silly. If I'm on Slashdot, and I have an excuse to mention patents - that's when I complain about a patent.
From TFA: "The U.S. Patent Office does indeed show Klum, CTO Chad Attlesey and CEO Al Berning with a patent for liquid submersion."
You gotta be kidding me. I've seen "PC in a tank of oil" on Slashdot half a dozen times. Or is it not a real technology company if they don't have at least one bogus patent on an obvious process?
rushes off to patent "Method for legitimizing a company and attracting venture capital by means of a transparently invalid patent application"
I know I need to loosen my tinfoil hat, but the article specifically mentions the Obama campaign's reliance on SMS as an organizational tool. I think it's safe to say that Verizon and its little friends are big fans of the current surveillance-friendly administration, seeing as how the W administration just gave the telcos the world's largest "Get Out Of Jail Free" card with their little "retroactive immunity" bill.
Verizon couldn't have waited until December? Or November 15? Or November 5? No, they flip the switch just in time to make it more difficult for tech-savvy candidates (largely Democratic, hmmm) to send "don't 4get 2 vote!" reminders to their followers. Obama won't have any problems -- he could likely afford the "Free-2-End-User" service -- but smaller campaigns might have to drop their SMS reminder plans completely.
Of course, I'm suspicious of the way gas prices suddenly drop in October of years divisible by 4, too.:)
"Because the asteroid was itentified and tracked days before it entered the atmosphere."
Days? We wish. It was discovered on October 6, 06:38 UTC, and impacted on October 7, 02:46 UTC. That's not days... that's about 20 hours.
It's awesomely cool that we saw this one coming. It's just a baby, though, and as the articles noted they hit us several times a year. What would be awesomely UNcool is if we didn't see its Big Sister until 20 hours before it hits somewhere over the northeast US.
Personal bolide story: I saw a cool one while at the beach earlier this year. I sent myself a text message so I wouldn't forget the details: "3 flashes 20 deg above horiz from moon to 45 deg smoke after first flash 21.50" To clarify, the "moon to 45 deg" means that it traversed the sky (at about 20 degrees elevation) from the vicinity of the moon, southward across the sky about 45 degrees. Sorry if I don't really know the appropriate terminology! But it was, indeed, awesomely cool.
Ha ha only serious. The cell phones I've had seem to be poorly-thought-out portable game consoles with a phone tacked on as an afterthought. If Nintendo made a game console with a phone added in, at least the gaming part wouldn't suck.
In Texas (and in other states, it seems), it is against the law to leave your keys in the ignition. I haven't yet figured out exactly what the purpose is for that law, except to remind people that leaving your keys in the car invites theft. I certainly haven't heard of anyone being prosecuted for the "crime".
Perhaps a similar nominal criminal sanction should be in place for the company that leaves the keys to my identity in their corporate "ignition"? The penalty would be a slap on the wrist, or less -- because a stiff penalty would lead to coverups. But the law would still be on the books.
That would allow the bean counters to add an item on the balance sheet for "secure client data -- compliance required by law". That would carry more weight than "secure client data -- compliance with 'best practices' guidelines".
From TFA: There are now 146 coastal regions in the world in which fish and bottom-feeding life forms have been entirely eliminated because of a lack of oxygen. One dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico is about the size of the city of New Jersey and growing.
I can understand dumbing-down the units of measure to Volkswagens or Libraries of Congress, but the last time I looked at Wikipedia, New Jersey was still the 3rd state admitted to the Union. I mean, come on... it's already the brunt of every New York comedian's jokes, and now you Brits are trying to demote it to a mere "city"?
(Of course, I'm from Texas, where an "area the size of the STATE of New Jersey" would barely be counted as a moderate-sized ranch.)
What do we have to be so darned worried about? It's not like the President would compile an "Enemies List" of people to wiretap, or something. This is America, right?
Those aren't just DDR pads - they look like stainless steel DDR pads. Those things should be in a rest area bathroom.
Well, they *are* in a swamp, after all.
Really, though, that looks like the most awesome set of pads ever. I don't need the darned things to blink, I just want them to register when I step on them -- and to keep registering on a "hold".
But what do I know... I can only do 6-7 footers. Not bad for a 40-year-old, though.
I've posted the topic at the DDRFreak forum. It'll be interesting to see what they have to say. Sadly, there doesn't seem to be a FroggerFreak forum.
What has me curious is this snippet from Universe Today:
The replacement parts are being flown in from Russia today, hand-carried in a diplomatic pouch, and will be added to the payload on board space shuttle Discovery.
A diplomatic pouch isn't just a fancy alternative to Fed Ex, you know. It (and its carrier) are completely immune from examination or questioning by the host country. Wikipedia notes one possible use that might be especially interesting to Slashdot crypto geeks:
In discussions of cryptography, the diplomatic bag is conventionally used as an example of the ultimate secure channel used to exchange keys, codebooks and other necessarily secret materials. Like Alice and Bob, it is an example of a metasyntactic variable when used this way.
In actual practice, diplomatic bags are indeed used for exactly this purpose.
Seems like overkill for replacing a busted space-flapper. It sounds more like the plot for a space-based spy novel -- a Russian agent on board the station "accidentally" disables the one device that would warrant a no-questions-asked addition to the next shuttle. Is it really a coincidence that the toilet went out just a week before the next shuttle? I think nyet!
I can't log in to the new site using Opera. IE works just fine. But with Opera, the system returns me to the screen it should, but not logged in. The login doesn't work in any access technique -- main page, sidebar, even the Ajax-y popup thing.
It's validating, because if I use invalid data, I get "Danger Will Robinson!" But if I use my actual login/pwd, it silently fails.
I'm not about to create a Sourceforge account just for this, though... I suspect they'll find enough bugs without my direct help.
Replying to my own post, far too long after the story ran to get modded up. But the Dallas Morning News *finally* got around to reporting the story -- weeks after a relatively close vote on a DISD bond issue. DISD is under a cloud, withholding audit results that are likely to show the agency in a poor light, and the vote would have clearly been affected by the news that DISD has such a bad truancy problem that they have to put GPS monitors on their students.
The worst thing about the Morning News article is in how it describes the players who stand to benefit from the program.
New York Times: "Paul Pottinger, the chief executive of the company marketing the truancy monitoring system."
Dallas Morning News: "Paul Pottinger, the program's co-director."
This Pottinger fellow is the one asking for a million bucks or so for the program. Whether it has merit or not, it's awfully suspect to fail to report the fact that he will personally receive a sizable portion of that pot.
The biggest surprise in the story is totally off-topic... I thought excite.com (the story link) was long dead. I guess it's been reborn as a handy way to wrap ads around Associated Press stories, but I still remember when they were in the running for King of Search. Now, I can't remember why I stopped using them, but the reason probably starts with G.
Slashdot Mirror
In their rush to paint Christians as idiots, the editors failed to notice this addendum to TFA:
Some of my fellow faith-mates do make the rest of us look pretty silly. But the non-religious folks apparently have a knee-jerk reaction that would make Dr. Dobson proud.
That's the problem with unique usernames, though. I mean, say your name (because your parents are insensitive clods) actually *is* Chevy.
Don't talk like that about my grandmother, you insensitive clod!
- Sincerely, Chevy Chase
Well, there is one obvious example:
And sure enough, as far as I can tell, Sid Vicious never got arrested... well, not for sayin' the Queen ain't human, at least.
From TFA:
Hydrated silica doesn't sound like much, but I think most people understand what opal is. Granted, you're not going to fund a Mars mission with opals. Wikipedia says the largest uncut opal on *this* planet, the size of a fist, is worth "just" $1.2 million. You'd have to haul back several thousand of them, and pretend you didn't just turn supply-and-demand on its ear.
But surely there's going to be more than just pretty rocks out there. A big vein of gold, with no environmental concerns, might be a boon for semiconductor manufacturers (even if it does put a bunch of commodities traders out on the street). Better yet, finding a big patch of tantalum would put some particularly nasty dictators out of business.
Of course, those elements would be much easier to mine from a passing asteroid. But you've got to go to Mars for the opals.
Hey, don't give me credit/blame... the only-slightly-damaged version came from the story submitter.
I like to think *I* would have gotten the verb form correct... but then, that may just be the tumor talking.
Heck, I think this statement from the cell phone expert (from TFA) pretty much proves that our phones are rotting our brains:
WTF? "an interesting time, radio speaking"? And the tortured grammar in the summary isn't much better: "We're really in an interesting time in that there has never been so many high-powered personal transmitters just wandering loose in the world."
'Scuse me, I've got to take this call.
Although that speculation does lend itself to various interesting book and movie plots, I'm hopeful that we're able to find some way for us guys to have a chance. Perhaps the women should be sent to the north polar region, and the men to the south. If nothing else, that would provide a strong incentive to keep the rovers working.
As far as procreation, in vitro or otherwise, I don't think that would be such a good idea at first. Send up some guinea pigs as both a (don't slap me) protein source and a test to see the results of reproduction in a low-gravity environment, with reduced sunlight but increased solar radiation. Let the guinea pigs be, er, guinea pigs for reproduction before we chance it with ourselves.
I think the first one-way colonists will likely be older, and wouldn't mind not being the Adam and/or Eve of a new planet. Though they'd likely need surgical assurance of that, because as long as Adam and Eve are within rover distance, there won't be any lack of trying...
I'm sure, almost certain, that the ripping sound you hear is the sound of a million geeks all pulling about 1.2 inches of tape off of their desktop dispenser.
Bonus points if it's now wrapped around your finger as a memento.
Read all the claims. The patent is not defined by its title, but by its claims. If the claims are too vague, open for interpretation and as a(n indirect) result covers existing inventions and/or obvious implementations - that's when you complain about a patent.
No, silly. If I'm on Slashdot, and I have an excuse to mention patents - that's when I complain about a patent.
From TFA: "The U.S. Patent Office does indeed show Klum, CTO Chad Attlesey and CEO Al Berning with a patent for liquid submersion."
You gotta be kidding me. I've seen "PC in a tank of oil" on Slashdot half a dozen times. Or is it not a real technology company if they don't have at least one bogus patent on an obvious process?
rushes off to patent "Method for legitimizing a company and attracting venture capital by means of a transparently invalid patent application"
I know I need to loosen my tinfoil hat, but the article specifically mentions the Obama campaign's reliance on SMS as an organizational tool. I think it's safe to say that Verizon and its little friends are big fans of the current surveillance-friendly administration, seeing as how the W administration just gave the telcos the world's largest "Get Out Of Jail Free" card with their little "retroactive immunity" bill.
Verizon couldn't have waited until December? Or November 15? Or November 5? No, they flip the switch just in time to make it more difficult for tech-savvy candidates (largely Democratic, hmmm) to send "don't 4get 2 vote!" reminders to their followers. Obama won't have any problems -- he could likely afford the "Free-2-End-User" service -- but smaller campaigns might have to drop their SMS reminder plans completely.
Of course, I'm suspicious of the way gas prices suddenly drop in October of years divisible by 4, too. :)
"Because the asteroid was itentified and tracked days before it entered the atmosphere."
Days? We wish. It was discovered on October 6, 06:38 UTC, and impacted on October 7, 02:46 UTC. That's not days... that's about 20 hours.
It's awesomely cool that we saw this one coming. It's just a baby, though, and as the articles noted they hit us several times a year. What would be awesomely UNcool is if we didn't see its Big Sister until 20 hours before it hits somewhere over the northeast US.
Personal bolide story: I saw a cool one while at the beach earlier this year. I sent myself a text message so I wouldn't forget the details: "3 flashes 20 deg above horiz from moon to 45 deg smoke after first flash 21.50" To clarify, the "moon to 45 deg" means that it traversed the sky (at about 20 degrees elevation) from the vicinity of the moon, southward across the sky about 45 degrees. Sorry if I don't really know the appropriate terminology! But it was, indeed, awesomely cool.
Ha ha only serious. The cell phones I've had seem to be poorly-thought-out portable game consoles with a phone tacked on as an afterthought. If Nintendo made a game console with a phone added in, at least the gaming part wouldn't suck.
That's why I tagged the story "justacigar".
Maybe, maybe not, but I bet you'll have an "interesting" conversation with the friendly officer if you get pulled over for speeding!
In Texas (and in other states, it seems), it is against the law to leave your keys in the ignition. I haven't yet figured out exactly what the purpose is for that law, except to remind people that leaving your keys in the car invites theft. I certainly haven't heard of anyone being prosecuted for the "crime".
Perhaps a similar nominal criminal sanction should be in place for the company that leaves the keys to my identity in their corporate "ignition"? The penalty would be a slap on the wrist, or less -- because a stiff penalty would lead to coverups. But the law would still be on the books.
That would allow the bean counters to add an item on the balance sheet for "secure client data -- compliance required by law". That would carry more weight than "secure client data -- compliance with 'best practices' guidelines".
I'm taking it as a very clever form of satire: confusing New Jersey as a state versus a city; confusing Canada with England.
Um yes, yes, YES.
Clever satire. Exactly what I meant.
(at least that's what I told myself after I pushed the "submit" button...)
From TFA:
There are now 146 coastal regions in the world in which fish and bottom-feeding life forms have been entirely eliminated because of a lack of oxygen. One dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico is about the size of the city of New Jersey and growing.
I can understand dumbing-down the units of measure to Volkswagens or Libraries of Congress, but the last time I looked at Wikipedia, New Jersey was still the 3rd state admitted to the Union. I mean, come on... it's already the brunt of every New York comedian's jokes, and now you Brits are trying to demote it to a mere "city"?
(Of course, I'm from Texas, where an "area the size of the STATE of New Jersey" would barely be counted as a moderate-sized ranch.)
What do we have to be so darned worried about? It's not like the President would compile an "Enemies List" of people to wiretap, or something. This is America, right?
oh crap
I *do* taste like bacon! Why do you ask?
Well, they *are* in a swamp, after all.
Really, though, that looks like the most awesome set of pads ever. I don't need the darned things to blink, I just want them to register when I step on them -- and to keep registering on a "hold".
But what do I know... I can only do 6-7 footers. Not bad for a 40-year-old, though.
I've posted the topic at the DDRFreak forum. It'll be interesting to see what they have to say. Sadly, there doesn't seem to be a FroggerFreak forum.
A diplomatic pouch isn't just a fancy alternative to Fed Ex, you know. It (and its carrier) are completely immune from examination or questioning by the host country. Wikipedia notes one possible use that might be especially interesting to Slashdot crypto geeks:
Seems like overkill for replacing a busted space-flapper. It sounds more like the plot for a space-based spy novel -- a Russian agent on board the station "accidentally" disables the one device that would warrant a no-questions-asked addition to the next shuttle. Is it really a coincidence that the toilet went out just a week before the next shuttle? I think nyet!
I can't log in to the new site using Opera. IE works just fine. But with Opera, the system returns me to the screen it should, but not logged in. The login doesn't work in any access technique -- main page, sidebar, even the Ajax-y popup thing.
It's validating, because if I use invalid data, I get "Danger Will Robinson!" But if I use my actual login/pwd, it silently fails.
I'm not about to create a Sourceforge account just for this, though... I suspect they'll find enough bugs without my direct help.
Replying to my own post, far too long after the story ran to get modded up. But the Dallas Morning News *finally* got around to reporting the story -- weeks after a relatively close vote on a DISD bond issue. DISD is under a cloud, withholding audit results that are likely to show the agency in a poor light, and the vote would have clearly been affected by the news that DISD has such a bad truancy problem that they have to put GPS monitors on their students.
The worst thing about the Morning News article is in how it describes the players who stand to benefit from the program.
New York Times: "Paul Pottinger, the chief executive of the company marketing the truancy monitoring system."
Dallas Morning News: "Paul Pottinger, the program's co-director."
This Pottinger fellow is the one asking for a million bucks or so for the program. Whether it has merit or not, it's awfully suspect to fail to report the fact that he will personally receive a sizable portion of that pot.
Here's the story, DMN style: Dallas ISD uses GPS technology to reduce truancy
The biggest surprise in the story is totally off-topic... I thought excite.com (the story link) was long dead. I guess it's been reborn as a handy way to wrap ads around Associated Press stories, but I still remember when they were in the running for King of Search. Now, I can't remember why I stopped using them, but the reason probably starts with G.