Actually, as it turns out, it doesn't look to be any better than the western counterpart. Then again, maybe all those sites I couldn't read were full of songs, but I doubt it.
Death and Return of Superman is actually a pretty good game. The article claims it's "Final Fight with a Superman paint job," but forgets that Final Fight was a pretty good game.
Yeah, it's annoying that Superman gets hurt when hit by "punk with a mohawk" but that's my only complaint.
Actually I looked at the eyes and I didn't think they looked very concerned and hurt. I thought they looked pissed, honestly.
Wow. That's a whole other experiment right there, we're all seeing different things. To me, they didn't look concerned, hurt, or angry. In fact, it looks rather devoid of any strong emotions. Like the look you get if you happen to ask the stranger next to you what time it is (when he's actually telling you, not when he's initially surprised that you talked to him).
I'm an EE, not a psychologist or anything, but I'm guessing that since we can't see the rest of the face, we don't have enough cues to determine the emotion, and we're filling in the blanks differently based on some type of inner expectations. That sounds really interesting, someone should look into it if they haven't already:)
Do you see people trading more music and movies online that are current or 28 years or more old? HOw about software?
First, 28 years is too much for software. It's way beyond the usability of most products. The idea is that it goes back to the public domain while it's still useful for society. Second, I believe that if people knew that it would eventually fall in the public domain, in time for it to matter, then they would have more respect for the reasons behind copyright. My whole point is that right now people don't respect it at all, so they'll breach copyright whenever it benefits them, regardless of the age of the product.
This is why I don't believe copyright reform is necessary. People are going to illegally distribute intellectual property online because they think they have a right to it, not because it's in the public domain.
That's why I hate the term "intellectual property". It's not a property, and the people do have a right to it. The only reason we agree not to exercise it for a limited time in the form of an exclusive copyright is because in the end, it's better for us. Even if you don't agree with that point, there's a very real need for copyright reform. Everything we build is based on ideas and concepts created before us, standing on the shoulder of giants as it were. If every idea has an owner, we can't move forward. These things need to return to society at some point in order to stimulate growth, and the faster that you can return it to the public domain while still providing enough exclusivity time for there to be an incentive for creating more content the better.
It really surprises me that people in the IT industry can be so apathetic to theft.
I hadn't noticed that. Wow...I'm shocked, shocked! I don't even understand why the connection exists. Is this approval for theft in general or does it include armed robbery? Oh, you mean copyright infringement! Well, nevermind then. I'm not shocked.
My open source code I'm happy to give away, it was fun to write! But please, let me eat with the boring, soulless code I have to write at work.
No one is trying to stop you from earning money for the code you write. Would you please stop trying to take control of what's not yours? See, software is just a bunch of words in the proper syntax and some mathematical algorithms. It's not property. It's like the music, graphics, games, and whatever else you like so much. If you don't want people to copy it, keep it to yourself and don't distribute it, don't sell it. Once I get a copy because you gave it to me (in exchange for money, or because you're a nice guy), I can copy it however many times I want and distribute it without taking anything from you other than what you voluntarily gave to me. That's not theft. In fact, that's my right. Once I got that copy from you, it was mine, I can do whatever I want with it. I can create a sculpture, but once I sell it to you, I can't go into your house and get it back. That's the property. The shape and form of that sculpture isn't a property.
Of course, that would remove the incentive for people to produce more of those things I want, so I'll agree (well, the entire society of which I am a part of will agree) to let you keep exclusive control over distribution for a short time. But that's because it benefits me in the long run not because it's some sort of right you have over it as the creator.
Once copyright gets back down to a sane and short period, you might find out that people will have a bit more respect for it.
No offense there...but even with all those other activities, you're obviously still here. You may have found other ways to spend your time, but they haven't replaced slashdot in the least. You can't even argue that you just do it casually. I took a look at your posting history and you have the same number of posts I have for the month of June (well, this post will put me on top). And I have no life right now. I spend my entire day at slashdot. Sure, I go to my office...and read slashdot while there. I've been watching world cup games...at my other monitor while reading slashdot. Basically, I'm here a lot, and I'm not beating you by a significant number of posts.
Maybe, slashdot's staff is right in thinking the site is still relevant. You may not like the progress it has made, but if you had indeed found something better, you wouldn't be here anymore. And if you still wish to be here talking about the glory days of slashdot, maybe you'd miss it if they shut it down "before it becomes sadder than it already has."
Your second link amusingly proves the stupid Slashdot article wrong
Not really. The article says that holding the metal object could interrupt the so called "flashover" effect that would allow you to survive the hit without getting seriously or fatally injured. That means if you do get hit, you're more likely to be hurt if you have the metal object than if you didn't, not that you're more likely to get hit.
Of course, I'm not arguing in favor of that. I just said that there's not enough information to dismiss it, and the little googling I did at least seems to indicate the flashover effect does exist. Then again, they could be bad sources, I don't know. If you care that much, do better research than the 30 seconds I did:)
Like I said in my previous post, you made logical comments, and I was inclined to agree with you. However, I was curious, so I wanted to look for some statistics, knowing that in addition to lightning phenomenon being awfully complex, as you mentioned, the human body composition is too, and I don't know enough about it to apply my knowledge to it.
Just because some outdoorsy site says something doesn't prove it is true.
Well, I didn't exactly do extensive research on the subject, I just did a quick googling, as I stated. If you care to spend time finding statistics from more reputable sources that claim otherwise, I'm certainly not going to argue against it by citing the "outdoorsy site"
maybe up to 95%, are not direct hits on people
That's fine, I agree. Those stats just said, "hit by lightning", so I think anything goes. Still, maybe carrying metal objects increases your chances of getting a more direct hit, so it'd still result in a higher chance of a fatal encounter.
There is a term called "flashover". There are also terms like "leprechauns", "ghosts", "lucky gum", "win an ipod by punching the monkey".
When you observe leprechauns and ghosts we'll talk. That's why I mentioned observation. The site that mentions that often people will get their clothes burnt, but not themselves is a university, adapted from a lecture by an M.D.. That doesn't guarantee it to be correct, but it's probably more reputable than the "outdoorsy site" you complain about. Still, if you want to spend time doing proper research to prove that site wrong, that's fine. In fact, nothing about what you said seemed wrong to me. However, when you can observe that something different happens, you have to admit that maybe you're not considering all the variables, and something else is happening.
All it takes is a miniscule percent of the lightning strike to burn off your clothes.
Ok, that's just irrelevant. That miniscule percent of the lightning strike is still a lot of energy if it's burning off your clothes. You don't need much current going through your heart to kill you. So, obviously, most of the current is going through the surface of your body and through your clothes, not passing through your heart and killing you. That's what they claim flashover is.
You could just as well argue that a vaporizing cell-phone is going to make the air path to ground more conductive, bleeding away some of the current that would go through the body. There's no way to prove this either way by having 10,000 doctors hand-waving>
TFM was short and didn't explain the exact details of how they get to that conclusion, but since they mentioned examples of people who were hit by lightning while using their cell phones, I imagine that it's pure statistical analysis. "Look: we have all these non-fatal without permanent injury lightning hits. Is there a common element in between those that were fatal or resulted in severe injuries? Yeah, a statistically significant portion of them were carrying metal objects such as cell phones with them. That's not the case in the other group." All the doctors and engineers need to do now is run simulations to find out why that is the case, but if you know that information, you can't dispute the fact that it is indeed the case.
So IMHO, this is an unproven and probably unprovable concern over a miniscule problem, unsettleable either way, and trivial in comparison with the effects of lightning.
It's definitely a miniscule problem, since the odds of getting hit by lightning are awfully low. It may be unproven, since the article didn't explain how they got to their conclusions. Unsetteable is definitely not the case, studies can be made to show it one way o
Well, I'm an EE, not a doctor, so purely in terms of logic, I would agree with your arguments. However, evidence is more important than what I would deduce from current knowledge. Regardless of how I think things should work, observation of how they *do* work is obviously more correct. Simple googling on getting hit by lightning got me the following information:
Now, I won't presume to try to explain exactly why that is because, not knowing much about biology, I don't understand the composition of the human body enough to even make an educated guess. However, considering it is observed to happen you can't argue that flashover doesn't exist.
Campaign finance reform only creates cronyism and preferential treatment of a select few (2 party system). How I spend my money is how I express myself, and it should be completely unregulated.
And your preferred method doesn't give preferential treatment? "Your" money to spend comes in from one or two ways. Either you are ridiculously wealthy, in which case it gives preferential treatment to the wealthy, or you are getting money donated to you from interest groups, in which case said interest groups are going to donate money to candidates they think can actually win, ie, one of the two parties (and it really doesn't matter which one, because this system encourages the candidates to compete for the money, which they do by having views that are closer to what the donating party wants).
This would be my idea of financial campaign reform. You can't campaign at all. The government provides these web servers payed for by tax payers and every candidate gets the same amount of web space. Indicate your plans and merits in that page, and voters should go there in order to do their research.
Before people complain about how certain voters don't have access to the internet, remember that not everyone has access to TV's or radios either. With internet, you can go to your closest public library.
Yes, it was wrong/underhanded/sneaky. The question is...was it illegal?
I'm not even sure it was wrong. Seems to me the open wi-fi is a marketing gimmick to get people to go to the coffee shop. If he's sitting there using his computer, he might get a bit tired, and need a coffee pick-me-up. Store wins.
If they really want to force you to buy stuff from them to use the wi-fi, they should secure their network, and include a code in your receipt that allows you to connect, and that expires in 20 minutes (or whatever). Would they lose some of the attractiveness of having wi-fi there? Yeah, but then that's their choice. It's a trade-off, and they have to decide what's more important to them.
I also don't get the "trespassing" arguments people are throwing out there. They say a parking space for a store isn't a public place. Of course it is. I can't have you arrested for trespassing if you come into my store, look around, and leave without buying anything. It's the same concept that prevents a restaurant from choosing to not serve blacks. Sure, it's "private property," but once you open your doors to the public, it becomes a semi-public place, and you lose some of the rights that you'd have if it were, say, your house.
Any in this case, I think any press would be good press.
I agree that getting noticed is important, but in politics the "there's no such thing as bad publicity" saying really isn't true. Just ask Howard Dean.
At any point that they manage to get noticed, all the opposing parties need to say is, "they claim they want to reform IP Law, but what they really want is to break the law. Look at the name of their party. They support pirates, people who break copyright law. Think of the economy! They're criminals! Would you elect rapists? Think of the children!"
No that's called being stupid. The world of today is even bigger then the world we grew up in. When I was young, I did not have the internet, cable or a iPod.
Yes, this is a bigger world. It's going to get bigger. How can you possibly hope to control every move on your child's part? You can either futilely attempt to do so and risk missing that one opportunity they'll need to go behind your back and ruin their lives forever with a single mistake, or you can talk to them about actions and consequences so that they are capable of making good decisions when you're not there available to decide for them.
This isn't about privacy at all. This is protecting your kids from predators.
And the best way to do that is to let your child know that predators are out there, so that they're thinking about that instead of thinking about how to bypass the ridiculous maximum-security prison that you call your home.
I warn him of the consequence, which is all I can do, and if he fucks up then its his fault. He knows he can talk to me if he does...
Congratulations. You "get it". I can't claim to know anything about raising children myself, but that's how I was raised, and it was largely due to living in an environment like you describe that I never really gave any trouble of the serious kind to my parents.
A child will make their decisions like everyone else. By weighing the consequences of their actions versus the benefits. If a parent is invading their privacy and just basically keeping an eye on everything they do in order to keep them safe, the consequence on the child's mind is being caught by the parent. The moment the parent isn't there to catch them in the act, there's no reason to obey the rules anymore. If you instead sit down and talk to your child about real life consequences to their actions, those don't go away. If they understand that, they'll steer clear from trouble, if they don't understand that, they'll learn from their mistakes, and they have you to help them through the consequences.
In addition, if they fear punishment from you, they're less likely to talk to you about their problems until it's way too late, because they'll be afraid of what your reaction will be.
It's good to see that there are still responsible parents out there.
The difference is that what you said can't be understood, while everyone could understand that the grandparent's meaning was supposed to be synonymous to raising the question.
Words get invented all the time. How new is the word "Trekkie", which I use in my nickname?
bending laguage to suit a point is not evolving language, it is abuse of the language
I think you and the grandparent ascribe malice to where there is none. I don't think he was trying to make a point by pointing out a logical fallacy, he was just using the "raise the question" modern usage of the saying, which is probably how the saying is most commonly used now. The only time I ever see it used "correctly" is at slashdot by people who are trying to teach others.
Language evolved bcause there was no common usage, or institution, or medium to create a commonality.
I'm not an expert in the field (or really know anything about it), but I think the medium creating a commonality has only been accelerating changes. Someone uses the term incorrectly on TV, and suddenly multiple people who are not aware of the correct meaning start using it "incorrectly". Have enough lazy people who want to shorten their text messages, and you're creating a whole new spelling for words. Make global communication simple and possible, and foreign words start creeping into your language at faster paces (and you can bet the meaning of those will often be distorted once they make the language transition).
If I tell you today that a man is gay, you'll believe I meant homosexual. That woudn't have been the case a few decades ago, when you'd have thought I meant he was cheerful. That type of stuff will certainly piss off L'Académie française, but the english language has no such equivalent body.
When people try to seem smart by using legal and scientific terms incorrectly, it just makes them seem dumb to the people who understand the legal or scientific term they are trying to use.
Yes. He is ill school'd in bolted language. Ye did well to check him and approve him a fond fellow.
My sentence is probably gramatically incorrect even in early modern English, but the point is that language evolves, pal. In Shakespeare's writings, "bolted" meant "refined", "check" meant to rebuke, "approve" meant to prove, and "fond" meant foolish. Then people started using words "incorrectly." Check it out here.
The new use of "begging the question" which you hate so much is already more widespread than the old use. He wasn't trying to "seem smart", he was using the widespread expression instead of referring to the logical fallacy.
no omnipotent being could sensibly be as petty and hateful towards mankind as the Catholic church claims God is.
I share the general feeling, however, unless other Christian religions are now completely ignoring the Old Testament, that's not unique to Catholics. The God of the Old Testament is very petty. "Look, people are cooperating and united. They're building a grand city and tower. Can't let that happen, the bastards. Let me make sure they don't understand each other, and let me scatter them around the globe." Moses also got a raw deal, spending so much time taking his fellow people to the promised land, only to die before he could set foot in it. Plenty of other examples to be found.
Yeah, in the New Testament God is loving and forgiving. I'm not aware of any Christian religion that takes the Old Testament to be false, though, and I don't know how you can reconcile the two views of God.
are you using a polymer-based neuro-relay to transit the organic nerve impulses to the central processor of my positronic net? If that is the case, how have you solved the problem of increased signal degradation inherent to organo-synthetic transmission across...
The coffee was near 180 degrees F and caused burns within seconds of touching the woman's skin
Temperature of 180 degrees F isn't unusual for coffee. The recommended brewing temperature is 199 degrees. After brewing, you don't typically wait for the coffee to cool, you serve immediatelly after. It is up to the coffee drinker to determine when it has cooled down sufficiently to drink by sipping, and sipping the 199 degree coffee will not cause you to burn yourself, because you'll realize it's too hot way before you actually take it in.
I've burned myself before by spilling extremely hot coffee on me (yes, of the temperatures described above). There's no way it'd cost $47k for medical expenses. There's no way that you'd even require a doctor's care unless we're talking about continuously pouring the coffee on the same location. You'd expect her reflexes to take over, and she'd jump out of the way as soon as she starts to get burned.
Now, I think a lot of these new tort reforms are really ill conceived and end up stopping people who have legitimate cases from suing. However, you don't need to defend that crappy lawsuit in order to hold that belief.
But you can recharge the fuel cell by pouring in some ethanol or whatever you bought from a store whereas you have to plug the lithion battery in for three hours. That is the benefit of a fuel cell, really.
No, that's the problem with fuel cells. You have to go out and buy stuff, whereas you can just plug in your laptop when you're not away from a socket (and power sockets are everywhere). You can use that laptop while it's recharging, you know.
See the first and fourth amendments, which used to be the law of the land.
Well, that's my point. The judicial branch isn't the one taking away your freedoms. That would be the legislative when laws are passed, and the executive when the NSA gets your phone call history. The judicial branch are the ones who can override them by declaring it unconstitutional. Whether they agree with the legislative and executive is besides the point. Without them, the interpretations of those currently elected are the only ones that count, and there's nobody checking their decisions.
Now, if you don't agree with how they interpret the constitution, that's the people's fault. They're not directly elected, but if you elect Bush, you should expect him to nominate justices which will be extreme moral conservatives and more likely to uphold the rule of big government "for the sake of security" over individual liberties in their judgements.
Which brings us to who is really at fault for our declining freedoms. Democracy is great, but it requires people to work to keep government in check. Or at least stay out of the way. Every election we see all these ads telling people to "get out and vote." It annoys the hell out of me. If you voted for Bush because you agree with what he's doing and what he plans to do, I have no problem with that. That's your choice as an American citizen, and your opinion isn't less valid than mine. If you haven't done your research, but you feel like you should go out to the polls to make sure your Christian candidate keeps those godless liberals away from power, but you have no idea what you're Christian candidate has been up to, you're screwing the voters who actually keep informed (and vice-versa if you decided you're a Bush-hater and will vote for "anyone but Bush", but can't tell me why you dislike him). I can't claim to always take the time to be informed about every aspects of politics, but when I haven't researched all the candidates for a position, I don't vote for that position.
You'd be surprised how the US Supreme Court has warped the Constitution.
"Warped" by whose definition? When people have different interpretations of the text somebody has to have the final word, otherwise the text means nothing.
So it seems the pilot failed to accelerate in time, isn't it? What should the software do, switch to warpdrive?
I think what he's saying is that the computer looked at the current speed without taking into account that the speed was increasing and thus the plane would not have stalled, because by the time the nose was up, the speed would have been higher
Autopilots these days are good. They are really good. In a commercial flight, they do 99.999% of the flying. The problem really only occurs in situations which don't normally happen, as the ones being described by the grandparent. To deal with the tedious and well understood, computers generally do a better job than humans. To deal with the unexpected, a well trained human will always be better than computer programs (until the programs become sentient, at least). A collision situation would be "unexpected" except that how to avoid them really is pretty well understood these days. I didn't read the article (sue me), but the article description says that the pilots "will be instructed and trained to rely on autopilots in most cases." Sounds to me like if the pilot decides to override the system, he can still do it.
When an autopilot gets to override a pilot's best judgement, I think that's unsafe. If the autopilot takes action first but allows the pilot to assess the situation and take control if necessary, then that's saving valuable seconds in most cases, at the expense of wasting some time in the more rare cases. That's probably a fair trade-off.
What's really going on is that a nation decides that there are sufficient cons to murder that they put extensive resources into avoiding it and punishing it if it happens anyway.
Absolutely. There's a social contract. Our society agree that people in it shouldn't commit murder, and people who break that contract are forced out of society (ie, jail). Government gets to enforce that contract.
At the end of the day though, no matter what others do, I choose my own actions...
If your actions break the contract, you face the consequences. If the books don't specifically grant you the right to that particular action, but don't specifically prohibit that action, what then? If rights are given, and nobody gave you that right, you should be punished. That's the problem with the concept of "giving" rights. Who's the one assigning these rights? Why does he have the "right" to do it? If you choose to believe that someone can give you rights, the only way out is being religious (nothing wrong with that, but it kills any chance of us successfully arguing it. You can't convince me the rights you believe your God gave you are the ones that I do have, instead of the rights my God gave me. It becomes a question of whose religious text is right).
Rights cannot be taken, they can only be given.
That's obviously wrong. Whatever authority gave you rights can obviously take them back. If the first amendment gives us the right to free speech, there's nothing stopping a new amendment being created to repeal the first. It happened to the 18th amendment.
Basically, the Bill of Rights wasn't "granting" you rights. It was placing restrictions on the government so that it couldn't easily take existing rights away. It's not that you're given the right to free speech, it's that congress can make no law to supress it.
Slashdot Mirror
I mean...thanks for the advertisement!
Actually, as it turns out, it doesn't look to be any better than the western counterpart. Then again, maybe all those sites I couldn't read were full of songs, but I doubt it.
Death and Return of Superman is actually a pretty good game. The article claims it's "Final Fight with a Superman paint job," but forgets that Final Fight was a pretty good game.
Yeah, it's annoying that Superman gets hurt when hit by "punk with a mohawk" but that's my only complaint.
Wow. That's a whole other experiment right there, we're all seeing different things. To me, they didn't look concerned, hurt, or angry. In fact, it looks rather devoid of any strong emotions. Like the look you get if you happen to ask the stranger next to you what time it is (when he's actually telling you, not when he's initially surprised that you talked to him).
I'm an EE, not a psychologist or anything, but I'm guessing that since we can't see the rest of the face, we don't have enough cues to determine the emotion, and we're filling in the blanks differently based on some type of inner expectations. That sounds really interesting, someone should look into it if they haven't already :)
First, 28 years is too much for software. It's way beyond the usability of most products. The idea is that it goes back to the public domain while it's still useful for society. Second, I believe that if people knew that it would eventually fall in the public domain, in time for it to matter, then they would have more respect for the reasons behind copyright. My whole point is that right now people don't respect it at all, so they'll breach copyright whenever it benefits them, regardless of the age of the product.
That's why I hate the term "intellectual property". It's not a property, and the people do have a right to it. The only reason we agree not to exercise it for a limited time in the form of an exclusive copyright is because in the end, it's better for us. Even if you don't agree with that point, there's a very real need for copyright reform. Everything we build is based on ideas and concepts created before us, standing on the shoulder of giants as it were. If every idea has an owner, we can't move forward. These things need to return to society at some point in order to stimulate growth, and the faster that you can return it to the public domain while still providing enough exclusivity time for there to be an incentive for creating more content the better.
I hadn't noticed that. Wow...I'm shocked, shocked! I don't even understand why the connection exists. Is this approval for theft in general or does it include armed robbery? Oh, you mean copyright infringement! Well, nevermind then. I'm not shocked.
No one is trying to stop you from earning money for the code you write. Would you please stop trying to take control of what's not yours? See, software is just a bunch of words in the proper syntax and some mathematical algorithms. It's not property. It's like the music, graphics, games, and whatever else you like so much. If you don't want people to copy it, keep it to yourself and don't distribute it, don't sell it. Once I get a copy because you gave it to me (in exchange for money, or because you're a nice guy), I can copy it however many times I want and distribute it without taking anything from you other than what you voluntarily gave to me. That's not theft. In fact, that's my right. Once I got that copy from you, it was mine, I can do whatever I want with it. I can create a sculpture, but once I sell it to you, I can't go into your house and get it back. That's the property. The shape and form of that sculpture isn't a property.
Of course, that would remove the incentive for people to produce more of those things I want, so I'll agree (well, the entire society of which I am a part of will agree) to let you keep exclusive control over distribution for a short time. But that's because it benefits me in the long run not because it's some sort of right you have over it as the creator.
Once copyright gets back down to a sane and short period, you might find out that people will have a bit more respect for it.
No offense there...but even with all those other activities, you're obviously still here. You may have found other ways to spend your time, but they haven't replaced slashdot in the least. You can't even argue that you just do it casually. I took a look at your posting history and you have the same number of posts I have for the month of June (well, this post will put me on top). And I have no life right now. I spend my entire day at slashdot. Sure, I go to my office...and read slashdot while there. I've been watching world cup games...at my other monitor while reading slashdot. Basically, I'm here a lot, and I'm not beating you by a significant number of posts.
Maybe, slashdot's staff is right in thinking the site is still relevant. You may not like the progress it has made, but if you had indeed found something better, you wouldn't be here anymore. And if you still wish to be here talking about the glory days of slashdot, maybe you'd miss it if they shut it down "before it becomes sadder than it already has."
I don't care if he gets out, I'm keeping his couch.
Not really. The article says that holding the metal object could interrupt the so called "flashover" effect that would allow you to survive the hit without getting seriously or fatally injured. That means if you do get hit, you're more likely to be hurt if you have the metal object than if you didn't, not that you're more likely to get hit.
Of course, I'm not arguing in favor of that. I just said that there's not enough information to dismiss it, and the little googling I did at least seems to indicate the flashover effect does exist. Then again, they could be bad sources, I don't know. If you care that much, do better research than the 30 seconds I did :)
Like I said in my previous post, you made logical comments, and I was inclined to agree with you. However, I was curious, so I wanted to look for some statistics, knowing that in addition to lightning phenomenon being awfully complex, as you mentioned, the human body composition is too, and I don't know enough about it to apply my knowledge to it.
Well, I didn't exactly do extensive research on the subject, I just did a quick googling, as I stated. If you care to spend time finding statistics from more reputable sources that claim otherwise, I'm certainly not going to argue against it by citing the "outdoorsy site"
That's fine, I agree. Those stats just said, "hit by lightning", so I think anything goes. Still, maybe carrying metal objects increases your chances of getting a more direct hit, so it'd still result in a higher chance of a fatal encounter.
When you observe leprechauns and ghosts we'll talk. That's why I mentioned observation. The site that mentions that often people will get their clothes burnt, but not themselves is a university, adapted from a lecture by an M.D.. That doesn't guarantee it to be correct, but it's probably more reputable than the "outdoorsy site" you complain about. Still, if you want to spend time doing proper research to prove that site wrong, that's fine. In fact, nothing about what you said seemed wrong to me. However, when you can observe that something different happens, you have to admit that maybe you're not considering all the variables, and something else is happening.
Ok, that's just irrelevant. That miniscule percent of the lightning strike is still a lot of energy if it's burning off your clothes. You don't need much current going through your heart to kill you. So, obviously, most of the current is going through the surface of your body and through your clothes, not passing through your heart and killing you. That's what they claim flashover is.
TFM was short and didn't explain the exact details of how they get to that conclusion, but since they mentioned examples of people who were hit by lightning while using their cell phones, I imagine that it's pure statistical analysis. "Look: we have all these non-fatal without permanent injury lightning hits. Is there a common element in between those that were fatal or resulted in severe injuries? Yeah, a statistically significant portion of them were carrying metal objects such as cell phones with them. That's not the case in the other group." All the doctors and engineers need to do now is run simulations to find out why that is the case, but if you know that information, you can't dispute the fact that it is indeed the case.
It's definitely a miniscule problem, since the odds of getting hit by lightning are awfully low. It may be unproven, since the article didn't explain how they got to their conclusions. Unsetteable is definitely not the case, studies can be made to show it one way o
80% of people who get hit by lightning recover and "lightning often flashes over the outside of a victim, sometimes blowing off the clothes but leaving few external signs of injury and few, if any, burns."
Now, I won't presume to try to explain exactly why that is because, not knowing much about biology, I don't understand the composition of the human body enough to even make an educated guess. However, considering it is observed to happen you can't argue that flashover doesn't exist.
And your preferred method doesn't give preferential treatment? "Your" money to spend comes in from one or two ways. Either you are ridiculously wealthy, in which case it gives preferential treatment to the wealthy, or you are getting money donated to you from interest groups, in which case said interest groups are going to donate money to candidates they think can actually win, ie, one of the two parties (and it really doesn't matter which one, because this system encourages the candidates to compete for the money, which they do by having views that are closer to what the donating party wants).
This would be my idea of financial campaign reform. You can't campaign at all. The government provides these web servers payed for by tax payers and every candidate gets the same amount of web space. Indicate your plans and merits in that page, and voters should go there in order to do their research.
Before people complain about how certain voters don't have access to the internet, remember that not everyone has access to TV's or radios either. With internet, you can go to your closest public library.
I'm not even sure it was wrong. Seems to me the open wi-fi is a marketing gimmick to get people to go to the coffee shop. If he's sitting there using his computer, he might get a bit tired, and need a coffee pick-me-up. Store wins.
If they really want to force you to buy stuff from them to use the wi-fi, they should secure their network, and include a code in your receipt that allows you to connect, and that expires in 20 minutes (or whatever). Would they lose some of the attractiveness of having wi-fi there? Yeah, but then that's their choice. It's a trade-off, and they have to decide what's more important to them.
I also don't get the "trespassing" arguments people are throwing out there. They say a parking space for a store isn't a public place. Of course it is. I can't have you arrested for trespassing if you come into my store, look around, and leave without buying anything. It's the same concept that prevents a restaurant from choosing to not serve blacks. Sure, it's "private property," but once you open your doors to the public, it becomes a semi-public place, and you lose some of the rights that you'd have if it were, say, your house.
I agree that getting noticed is important, but in politics the "there's no such thing as bad publicity" saying really isn't true. Just ask Howard Dean.
At any point that they manage to get noticed, all the opposing parties need to say is, "they claim they want to reform IP Law, but what they really want is to break the law. Look at the name of their party. They support pirates, people who break copyright law. Think of the economy! They're criminals! Would you elect rapists? Think of the children!"
Yes, this is a bigger world. It's going to get bigger. How can you possibly hope to control every move on your child's part? You can either futilely attempt to do so and risk missing that one opportunity they'll need to go behind your back and ruin their lives forever with a single mistake, or you can talk to them about actions and consequences so that they are capable of making good decisions when you're not there available to decide for them.
And the best way to do that is to let your child know that predators are out there, so that they're thinking about that instead of thinking about how to bypass the ridiculous maximum-security prison that you call your home.
Congratulations. You "get it". I can't claim to know anything about raising children myself, but that's how I was raised, and it was largely due to living in an environment like you describe that I never really gave any trouble of the serious kind to my parents.
A child will make their decisions like everyone else. By weighing the consequences of their actions versus the benefits. If a parent is invading their privacy and just basically keeping an eye on everything they do in order to keep them safe, the consequence on the child's mind is being caught by the parent. The moment the parent isn't there to catch them in the act, there's no reason to obey the rules anymore. If you instead sit down and talk to your child about real life consequences to their actions, those don't go away. If they understand that, they'll steer clear from trouble, if they don't understand that, they'll learn from their mistakes, and they have you to help them through the consequences.
In addition, if they fear punishment from you, they're less likely to talk to you about their problems until it's way too late, because they'll be afraid of what your reaction will be.
It's good to see that there are still responsible parents out there.
The difference is that what you said can't be understood, while everyone could understand that the grandparent's meaning was supposed to be synonymous to raising the question.
Words get invented all the time. How new is the word "Trekkie", which I use in my nickname?
I think you and the grandparent ascribe malice to where there is none. I don't think he was trying to make a point by pointing out a logical fallacy, he was just using the "raise the question" modern usage of the saying, which is probably how the saying is most commonly used now. The only time I ever see it used "correctly" is at slashdot by people who are trying to teach others.
I'm not an expert in the field (or really know anything about it), but I think the medium creating a commonality has only been accelerating changes. Someone uses the term incorrectly on TV, and suddenly multiple people who are not aware of the correct meaning start using it "incorrectly". Have enough lazy people who want to shorten their text messages, and you're creating a whole new spelling for words. Make global communication simple and possible, and foreign words start creeping into your language at faster paces (and you can bet the meaning of those will often be distorted once they make the language transition).
If I tell you today that a man is gay, you'll believe I meant homosexual. That woudn't have been the case a few decades ago, when you'd have thought I meant he was cheerful. That type of stuff will certainly piss off L'Académie française, but the english language has no such equivalent body.
Yes. He is ill school'd in bolted language. Ye did well to check him and approve him a fond fellow.
My sentence is probably gramatically incorrect even in early modern English, but the point is that language evolves, pal. In Shakespeare's writings, "bolted" meant "refined", "check" meant to rebuke, "approve" meant to prove, and "fond" meant foolish. Then people started using words "incorrectly." Check it out here.
The new use of "begging the question" which you hate so much is already more widespread than the old use. He wasn't trying to "seem smart", he was using the widespread expression instead of referring to the logical fallacy.
I share the general feeling, however, unless other Christian religions are now completely ignoring the Old Testament, that's not unique to Catholics. The God of the Old Testament is very petty. "Look, people are cooperating and united. They're building a grand city and tower. Can't let that happen, the bastards. Let me make sure they don't understand each other, and let me scatter them around the globe." Moses also got a raw deal, spending so much time taking his fellow people to the promised land, only to die before he could set foot in it. Plenty of other examples to be found.
Yeah, in the New Testament God is loving and forgiving. I'm not aware of any Christian religion that takes the Old Testament to be false, though, and I don't know how you can reconcile the two views of God.
are you using a polymer-based neuro-relay to transit the organic nerve impulses to the central processor of my positronic net? If that is the case, how have you solved the problem of increased signal degradation inherent to organo-synthetic transmission across...
Temperature of 180 degrees F isn't unusual for coffee. The recommended brewing temperature is 199 degrees. After brewing, you don't typically wait for the coffee to cool, you serve immediatelly after. It is up to the coffee drinker to determine when it has cooled down sufficiently to drink by sipping, and sipping the 199 degree coffee will not cause you to burn yourself, because you'll realize it's too hot way before you actually take it in.
I've burned myself before by spilling extremely hot coffee on me (yes, of the temperatures described above). There's no way it'd cost $47k for medical expenses. There's no way that you'd even require a doctor's care unless we're talking about continuously pouring the coffee on the same location. You'd expect her reflexes to take over, and she'd jump out of the way as soon as she starts to get burned.
Now, I think a lot of these new tort reforms are really ill conceived and end up stopping people who have legitimate cases from suing. However, you don't need to defend that crappy lawsuit in order to hold that belief.
No, that's the problem with fuel cells. You have to go out and buy stuff, whereas you can just plug in your laptop when you're not away from a socket (and power sockets are everywhere). You can use that laptop while it's recharging, you know.
Well, that's my point. The judicial branch isn't the one taking away your freedoms. That would be the legislative when laws are passed, and the executive when the NSA gets your phone call history. The judicial branch are the ones who can override them by declaring it unconstitutional. Whether they agree with the legislative and executive is besides the point. Without them, the interpretations of those currently elected are the only ones that count, and there's nobody checking their decisions.
Now, if you don't agree with how they interpret the constitution, that's the people's fault. They're not directly elected, but if you elect Bush, you should expect him to nominate justices which will be extreme moral conservatives and more likely to uphold the rule of big government "for the sake of security" over individual liberties in their judgements.
Which brings us to who is really at fault for our declining freedoms. Democracy is great, but it requires people to work to keep government in check. Or at least stay out of the way. Every election we see all these ads telling people to "get out and vote." It annoys the hell out of me. If you voted for Bush because you agree with what he's doing and what he plans to do, I have no problem with that. That's your choice as an American citizen, and your opinion isn't less valid than mine. If you haven't done your research, but you feel like you should go out to the polls to make sure your Christian candidate keeps those godless liberals away from power, but you have no idea what you're Christian candidate has been up to, you're screwing the voters who actually keep informed (and vice-versa if you decided you're a Bush-hater and will vote for "anyone but Bush", but can't tell me why you dislike him). I can't claim to always take the time to be informed about every aspects of politics, but when I haven't researched all the candidates for a position, I don't vote for that position.
"Warped" by whose definition? When people have different interpretations of the text somebody has to have the final word, otherwise the text means nothing.
I think what he's saying is that the computer looked at the current speed without taking into account that the speed was increasing and thus the plane would not have stalled, because by the time the nose was up, the speed would have been higher
Autopilots these days are good. They are really good. In a commercial flight, they do 99.999% of the flying. The problem really only occurs in situations which don't normally happen, as the ones being described by the grandparent. To deal with the tedious and well understood, computers generally do a better job than humans. To deal with the unexpected, a well trained human will always be better than computer programs (until the programs become sentient, at least). A collision situation would be "unexpected" except that how to avoid them really is pretty well understood these days. I didn't read the article (sue me), but the article description says that the pilots "will be instructed and trained to rely on autopilots in most cases." Sounds to me like if the pilot decides to override the system, he can still do it.
When an autopilot gets to override a pilot's best judgement, I think that's unsafe. If the autopilot takes action first but allows the pilot to assess the situation and take control if necessary, then that's saving valuable seconds in most cases, at the expense of wasting some time in the more rare cases. That's probably a fair trade-off.
Absolutely. There's a social contract. Our society agree that people in it shouldn't commit murder, and people who break that contract are forced out of society (ie, jail). Government gets to enforce that contract.
At the end of the day though, no matter what others do, I choose my own actions...
If your actions break the contract, you face the consequences. If the books don't specifically grant you the right to that particular action, but don't specifically prohibit that action, what then? If rights are given, and nobody gave you that right, you should be punished. That's the problem with the concept of "giving" rights. Who's the one assigning these rights? Why does he have the "right" to do it? If you choose to believe that someone can give you rights, the only way out is being religious (nothing wrong with that, but it kills any chance of us successfully arguing it. You can't convince me the rights you believe your God gave you are the ones that I do have, instead of the rights my God gave me. It becomes a question of whose religious text is right).
Rights cannot be taken, they can only be given.
That's obviously wrong. Whatever authority gave you rights can obviously take them back. If the first amendment gives us the right to free speech, there's nothing stopping a new amendment being created to repeal the first. It happened to the 18th amendment.
Basically, the Bill of Rights wasn't "granting" you rights. It was placing restrictions on the government so that it couldn't easily take existing rights away. It's not that you're given the right to free speech, it's that congress can make no law to supress it.