I work at a major defence contractor. Currently we were not allowed to use a cellphone within 6 metres of a pc connected to the secure (ie. seperated from the world by air) network, which is awkward, but work-around-able.
Cameras at work are absolutely forbidden, however. Pretty soon it will be impossible to buy a new cellphone that I, or my co-workers, can bring to work.
Which suits me just fine, as I hate the fukken things.
"...Among other things, closing duties included putting a long-play videotape in the VCR attached to the store security cameras... ... of course, the night I forgot to do it, which also happened to be the night I got a call from security around 1 AM, to let me know the alarms had been triggered and I'd have to go down to meet the police and see what had happened. About a $1000 loss in stolen display merchandise, and no evidence..."
I'm the dean of Space University here at NASA, where we train all the astronauts how to do the important stuff like gathering a tear in the corner of one eye while the anthem's being played - that sorta stuff.
My role is largely administrative, so I don't do much hands on teaching, although I still run "Duct Tape 101" and "Swallowing Floating Globules Of Water (Advanced)". I like to keep my hand in: But I digress...
I just wanted to assure the parent poster that Mission To Mars is indeed one of our required course materials. We also use Apollo 13 (obviously!), The Right Stuff (which is the core of "Practical Heroics"), and many, many others. We steer our students away from Capricorn One, and prefer it if they don't view 2001 too many times.
"... you will find a higher correlation between all of those "features" [3rd world perils] and a lack of a middle-class than you will with rates of taxation..."
A good point well made.
Is it fair to say, then, that some/many of the real shithole places in the world have such a distorted wealth to headcount curve that you get a massive spike close to zero net worth, it drops off to nothing until right at the top end there's a massive spike for the super-rich? A bit like a bath-tub curve.
Where are all the middling people in this scenario? Do they get pushed towards the bottom? Do they push towards the top? Do they get the hell out when they see which way the wind is blowing? (I'm assuming that the middle classes include skilled professionals who have some opportunity for mobility). Maybe a combination of all three?
"...About %50 of my income goes to paying tax of one sort or another. I get almost nothing in return..."
You're talking about the tangible benefits of living in a (relatively) high tax / high spending state.
The intangible benefits of living in a liberal stable democracy? Hard to quantify, since they're intangible.
I'm far too fukken lazy to look up the CIA world factbook or the Colonel Saunders' World Almanac, and correllate avg. % taxation vs. frequency of kidnapping , car-jacking, robbery, murder, civil war, invasion, torture (for criticising El Prezidente), being "disappeared", "ethnically cleansed" etc etc...
Of course, to some, I may have just said the unsayable, so I'm right on topic!
"...I get a fair amount of spam, but I am not afraid. It is all filtered..."
Good for you.
But the key point about all this spam that you're hiving off into a seperate folder at +9 on the SpamAssassin scale, or that your ISP is bouncing on the basis of blacklists is: You've already paid for it!
Your ISP is paying for the bandwidth, the storage and the processing power to cope with this junk, and as they wish to stay in business and make a profit, they pass the charge right along the food chain to you the paying customer.
It doesn't matter that you and people like you never get to see the spam bar the subject heading - I suspect that you would never buy anything from a spam-supported business even if you had a pistol to your head.
But filtering email is like a Usenet kill-file: Although you might not be seeing the posts, they're still there for others to see. The spammers will continue to get through to those who are naive, gullible, or just plain stupid. People who have no idea how to enable blacklist based blocking at their ISP, or how to use a filter...
And enough of those people will reply to spam to make up the fractional percentage response that makes spam profitable.
"... you are still not guilty of anything, but they can confiscate your house and sell it in an auction anyway. Apparantly the legal justification for this is that the house is guilty of a crime or something like that..."
That's about the top and bottom of it. This kind of Civil Forfeiture is known as in rem forfeiture. "In rem" refers to a legal action directed solely against the property based on a legal finding that the property itself is used in an illegal manner.
The act of suing inanimate objects is (to me at least) an utterly bizarre legal fiction. Those who are interested can read more at F.E.A.R, which contains some good stuff, as well as links to "hard" (as in "by lawyers for lawyers") legal background materials.
"I'd just like to point out that designing airplanes is one third engineering and two thirds economics."
I forget where the quote originated, (Neville Shute?) but "an engineer is a person who can do for a penny what any fool can do for a pound".
I trained as a mechanical engineer, and we are well aware that cost is a key constraint: If it costs too much it will *never* get built, just as much as if it can't support the imposed load or environment.
Engineers around the world strain their wits daily to shave pennies off a design, as it all affects the bottom line, especially in mass production scenarios. You do engineers a disservice by suggesting they have little appreciation of economic realities.
I'm filthy rich and I like the speed and convenience of flying transatlantic via Concorde. Now, what's going to affect my choice of air travel...?
Is it:
a) Seeing office towers crumble to dust after being hit by commonplace commodity airliners?
b) Seeing 1 of the 14 (or 1 of the 7, if you're talking about British Airways) exact planes I would choose to travel on going down in flames and exploding near Paris on national TV 24 hours a day? Oh, and the talking head keeps on about no-one knows why it happened...
IBM could go the AMD route and surround the RISC core with an Intel personality, doing translation on the fly either to native instructions or some intermediate sorta-kinda p-code.
During the unaccustomedly (is that a word? It is now!) UK summer this year, I underclocked my XP1800+ to about 1.2GHz (native speed IIRC is 1.46).
My temps were nudging 55+ on the hottest days, where temps in some places hit 100F+ - bear in mind that in this country home air conditioning is still the preserve of the rich and shameless...
I barely notice the difference, still get a good game of Max Payne out of the damn thing while the CPU ticks over at 40-42C, and the internet still runs as fast as ever. Or not.
"I'd love to see a cable science channel as is being discussed. However, unless you're going to stock this channel full of shows narrated by people like Richard Feynman, who could explain difficult concepts in everyday language"
Well, if you made a show that was narrated by Richard Feynman, then you'd have to involve the psychics, and everyone would be happy....
The scene: A darkened TV studio. The personell: Troy McLure & Norah, a psychic.
Troy:"Well Norah, are you getting anything?
Norah:"Yes Troy... It's a Richard... Richard Feynman... he says he's very happy now, but that his old co-researcher Ed should revisit their 1969 paper in 'Mathematical Physics Proceedings' in light of Steven Hawking's latest publications..."
"...[Rush Limbaugh's] serious answer [as to why he would never run for the presidency] does cut to the heart of it. The job is entirely too demanding and it would require a compromise of his beliefs.
Look how the conservatives treated Clinton, look how the liberals are treating Bush. It is a wonder that either one of those men got anything accomplished at all. It seems a rare day when someone isn't gunning for them"
Translation: Rush likes dishing it out, but isn't too sure he'd enjoy having to take it. Oh, and all that responsibility would be a drag, too.
Slashdot Mirror
I work at a major defence contractor. Currently we were not allowed to use a cellphone within 6 metres of a pc connected to the secure (ie. seperated from the world by air) network, which is awkward, but work-around-able.
Cameras at work are absolutely forbidden, however. Pretty soon it will be impossible to buy a new cellphone that I, or my co-workers, can bring to work.
Which suits me just fine, as I hate the fukken things.
T&K.
"Firings will continue until project moral improves", Eh?
Look at this coin I'm holding up. See how it glints and glitters in the bright sunbeams. Shiny, shiny coin. Bright light and moving sparkles...
See: You're hypnotised already. Congratulations on being an ideal employee!
T&K.
"...Among other things, closing duties included putting a long-play videotape in the VCR attached to the store security cameras...
... of course, the night I forgot to do it, which also happened to be the night I got a call from security around 1 AM, to let me know the alarms had been triggered and I'd have to go down to meet the police and see what had happened. About a $1000 loss in stolen display merchandise, and no evidence..."
Did you get a decent cut?
T&K.
... was the "It isn't enough that I succeed: Someone else must fail" kind of mentality that underscored the IRC messages from JPL.
If someone goes around shouting "We No.1, We No 1!", and they really are number one, fine. They're a bit OTT and demonstrative, but still, fine.
It's when someone, anyone, goes around shouting "We No. 1 - you shit!", that patience wears a bit thin.
Best,
T&K.
Hi!
I'm the dean of Space University here at NASA, where we train all the astronauts how to do the important stuff like gathering a tear in the corner of one eye while the anthem's being played - that sorta stuff.
My role is largely administrative, so I don't do much hands on teaching, although I still run "Duct Tape 101" and "Swallowing Floating Globules Of Water (Advanced)". I like to keep my hand in: But I digress...
I just wanted to assure the parent poster that Mission To Mars is indeed one of our required course materials. We also use Apollo 13 (obviously!), The Right Stuff (which is the core of "Practical Heroics"), and many, many others. We steer our students away from Capricorn One, and prefer it if they don't view 2001 too many times.
Best Wishes,
Rex Uranus.
"... you will find a higher correlation between all of those "features" [3rd world perils] and a lack of a middle-class than you will with rates of taxation..."
A good point well made.
Is it fair to say, then, that some/many of the real shithole places in the world have such a distorted wealth to headcount curve that you get a massive spike close to zero net worth, it drops off to nothing until right at the top end there's a massive spike for the super-rich? A bit like a bath-tub curve.
Where are all the middling people in this scenario? Do they get pushed towards the bottom? Do they push towards the top? Do they get the hell out when they see which way the wind is blowing? (I'm assuming that the middle classes include skilled professionals who have some opportunity for mobility). Maybe a combination of all three?
"...About %50 of my income goes to paying tax of one sort or another. I get almost nothing in return..."
You're talking about the tangible benefits of living in a (relatively) high tax / high spending state.
The intangible benefits of living in a liberal stable democracy? Hard to quantify, since they're intangible.
I'm far too fukken lazy to look up the CIA world factbook or the Colonel Saunders' World Almanac, and correllate avg. % taxation vs. frequency of kidnapping , car-jacking, robbery, murder, civil war, invasion, torture (for criticising El Prezidente), being "disappeared", "ethnically cleansed" etc etc...
Of course, to some, I may have just said the unsayable, so I'm right on topic!
T&K.
"...I get a fair amount of spam, but I am not afraid. It is all filtered..."
Good for you.
But the key point about all this spam that you're hiving off into a seperate folder at +9 on the SpamAssassin scale, or that your ISP is bouncing on the basis of blacklists is: You've already paid for it!
Your ISP is paying for the bandwidth, the storage and the processing power to cope with this junk, and as they wish to stay in business and make a profit, they pass the charge right along the food chain to you the paying customer.
It doesn't matter that you and people like you never get to see the spam bar the subject heading - I suspect that you would never buy anything from a spam-supported business even if you had a pistol to your head.
But filtering email is like a Usenet kill-file: Although you might not be seeing the posts, they're still there for others to see. The spammers will continue to get through to those who are naive, gullible, or just plain stupid. People who have no idea how to enable blacklist based blocking at their ISP, or how to use a filter...
And enough of those people will reply to spam to make up the fractional percentage response that makes spam profitable.
T&K.
"... you are still not guilty of anything, but they can confiscate your house and sell it in an auction anyway. Apparantly the legal justification for this is that the house is guilty of a crime or something like that..."
That's about the top and bottom of it. This kind of Civil Forfeiture is known as in rem forfeiture. "In rem" refers to a legal action directed solely against the property based on a legal finding that the property itself is used in an illegal manner.
The act of suing inanimate objects is (to me at least) an utterly bizarre legal fiction. Those who are interested can read more at F.E.A.R, which contains some good stuff, as well as links to "hard" (as in "by lawyers for lawyers") legal background materials.
T&K.
Just point your browser at Snopes , Urban legends or Wikipedia or just about anywhere on the web to find out what utter bullshit this is.
God, I hate these smug, tedious, sub-"Reader's Digest: It's a funny world", lying little fairy stories.
T&K.
"I'd just like to point out that designing airplanes is one third engineering and two thirds economics."
I forget where the quote originated, (Neville Shute?) but "an engineer is a person who can do for a penny what any fool can do for a pound".
I trained as a mechanical engineer, and we are well aware that cost is a key constraint: If it costs too much it will *never* get built, just as much as if it can't support the imposed load or environment.
Engineers around the world strain their wits daily to shave pennies off a design, as it all affects the bottom line, especially in mass production scenarios. You do engineers a disservice by suggesting they have little appreciation of economic realities.
T&K.
Hmmm... lessee...
I'm filthy rich and I like the speed and convenience of flying transatlantic via Concorde. Now, what's going to affect my choice of air travel...?
Is it:
a) Seeing office towers crumble to dust after being hit by commonplace commodity airliners?
b) Seeing 1 of the 14 (or 1 of the 7, if you're talking about British Airways) exact planes I would choose to travel on going down in flames and exploding near Paris on national TV 24 hours a day? Oh, and the talking head keeps on about no-one knows why it happened...
It's a stumper, ain't it?
T&K.
Manipulative, violent, dominating, thrill-seeking, risk-taking, doesn't understand or respect society's rules...
Sounds like this PSYCHOPATH is exactly where he belongs. And exactly where I'd like him to stay.
T&K.
Maybe, maybe not.
IBM could go the AMD route and surround the RISC core with an Intel personality, doing translation on the fly either to native instructions or some intermediate sorta-kinda p-code.
T&K.
No you're not.
During the unaccustomedly (is that a word? It is now!) UK summer this year, I underclocked my XP1800+ to about 1.2GHz (native speed IIRC is 1.46).
My temps were nudging 55+ on the hottest days, where temps in some places hit 100F+ - bear in mind that in this country home air conditioning is still the preserve of the rich and shameless...
I barely notice the difference, still get a good game of Max Payne out of the damn thing while the CPU ticks over at 40-42C, and the internet still runs as fast as ever. Or not.
T&K.
I musta read this about a dozen times you tedious fucking whore.
T&K.
Same old piss in a different bottle...
T&K.
Ah well, just pelt 'em with tripe, and all will be well...
T&K.
You let your kitten go feral and expect to be taken seriously?
Really - of all the cheek!
T&K.
"I'd love to see a cable science channel as is being discussed. However, unless you're going to stock this channel full of shows narrated by people like Richard Feynman, who could explain difficult concepts in everyday language"
Well, if you made a show that was narrated by Richard Feynman, then you'd have to involve the psychics, and everyone would be happy....
The scene: A darkened TV studio.
The personell: Troy McLure & Norah, a psychic.
Troy:"Well Norah, are you getting anything?
Norah:"Yes Troy... It's a Richard... Richard Feynman... he says he's very happy now, but that his old co-researcher Ed should revisit their 1969 paper in 'Mathematical Physics Proceedings' in light of Steven Hawking's latest publications..."
T&K.
On a related note, I too have decided to quit the international tennis circuit.
I anticipate that this will have about the same impact on the world of tennis as Anna's retirement.
T&K.
Well, "knowing someone personally" isn't the same thing as counting them as a personal friend, at least...
About Dan, though. Would you say he's:
Glib with superficial charm?
Constantly and recklessly seeking excitement and stimulus?
Lacking in long term goals?
Irresponsible?
Posessed of a grandiose sense of self worth?
A pathological liar?
Callous and lacking in empathy?
Impulsive
Unwilling to accept responsibility for his actions? ...and...
Does he have a history of bedwetting in early adulthood, fire starting and cruelty to animals?
- I'd really be interested to know...
Best, T&K.
A tech support dude who can't type "acronym phb" into Google...
O that I lived to see such evil days!
T&K.
"...[Rush Limbaugh's] serious answer [as to why he would never run for the presidency] does cut to the heart of it. The job is entirely too demanding and it would require a compromise of his beliefs. Look how the conservatives treated Clinton, look how the liberals are treating Bush. It is a wonder that either one of those men got anything accomplished at all. It seems a rare day when someone isn't gunning for them"
Translation: Rush likes dishing it out, but isn't too sure he'd enjoy having to take it. Oh, and all that responsibility would be a drag, too.
T&K.
The worst battle cry ever, has to be:
"Come on boys, let's get our throats cut!"
I forget where I read it...
T&K.