In that case, our government seems to be sending a mixed message by adding the internet kill-switch back into proposed legislation...
Sensationalist headlines aside, care to point out where the aforementioned bill says anything about shutting down communications? From my reading its about isolating the networks on which high value infrastructure is located, not shutting down anyone's communication. More reading, less rhetoric please.
What you don't seem to get that is that "isolating the networks" is exactly how you shut down communications. How else would you do it, besides pulling the plug entirely?
A company that objects to being subject to the emergency regulations is permitted to appeal to DHS secretary Janet Napolitano. But her decision is final and courts are explicitly prohibited from reviewing it.
So if anything can be declared "critical infrastructure" and isolated without benefit of the courts, any communication can be shut down. The attempt to avoid judicial review is on page 403 of the bill, if you care to read it yourself.
until no one else could replicate the results.... but otherwise no one seriously (or rather, no serious scientist) chases that particular dream anymore.
"Years ago, many scientists were afraid to speak about 'cold fusion' to a mainstream audience," said Jan Marwan, Ph.D., the internationally known expert who organized the symposium. Marwan heads the research firm, Dr. Marwan Chemie in Berlin, Germany. Entitled "New Energy Technology," the symposium will include nearly 50 presentations describing the latest discoveries on the topic....
"The field is now experiencing a rebirth in research efforts and interest, with evidence suggesting that cold fusion may be a reality." Marwan said. He noted, for instance, that the number of presentations on the topic at ACS National Meetings has quadrupled since 2007.
What happened is that to avoid the seemingly near-religious 'skepticism' displayed yourself and others, the actual scientists working on the subject had to refer to their results as "anomalous heat" and refer to the field as "Low Energy Nuclear Reactions" (LENR) to avoid controversy.
So while you are busy deciding if anyone is replicating the results or if the field is worth looking into, a great deal of serious scientific effort has gone into the field for the last 20 years.
Apparently their year-over-year profits are down 54%, to $21 million from over $50 million a year ago, and their Technology sector revenue declined 31%. Apparently this is driven by a lack of demand for their ClearPath server line.
So by pumping this 'intenet kill switch' idea, it may be that they expect to be first in line to implement it, and get some handsome profits from the taxpayer pie in the bargain.
This is about as believable as Bill Gates and other tech leaders trumpeting that there were not enough skilled US IT workers a few years back. Sure there were, just not at the immigrant prices that Gates and others wanted to pay. Here's a video from a recruiter seminar instructing recruiters on how not to find qualified American applicants for jobs while putting in the legally required advertisements. Look for the speaker stating at about 1:44 into the video that "our goal here is clearly not to find a qualified and interested US worker".
Of course corporations are going to release self-serving announcements like this -- it's just fulfilling their legal mandate to act in the best interests of their shareholders. In other news, the sky is blue.
The people who are outraged over Citizens United never found the time to complain when the for-profit New York Times was endorsing political candidates./quot
Nice attempt at raising a false equivalency argument.
Newspapers have always provided news and opinion in America, and many have argued that this is a vital role in a democracy. Publishing the New York Times or any other newspaper, or even broadcasting Fox News was never illegal, so bringing them up is totally irrelevant to the issue at hand.
What was illegal was the use of general treasury union or corporate funds to purchase advertisements 30 days before an election. That's quite different from a journalism company pursuing the normal course of their business.
the reason domestic capacity doesn't exist is because it isn't competitive.
One of the reasons for that is because China is artificially holding down the value of its currency so that we will destroy our own manufacturing base in a mad rush to make a quick buck. For the other countries, often American companies are the ones building the facilities and training the workers over there just for the cheap wages. Our own technology is given away for their cheap labor.
If what you're advocating is protectionism, then I suggest you go read a bit of history on the subject and its reults.
It seems to be working very well in many countries around the world that are smart enough to protect their own industries and work to keep out ours. Why do you think China is creating such problems for Google, and that Baidu is doing so well over there? The point is that if you don't go to extremes, you do very well. The extreme that America has gone into (not protecting our own domestic industries in favor of temporary profits) has really hurt us.
normalizing quality of life in the US down to the rest of the world
You mean make America a 3rd world country? That strategy seems to be working.
Now if they can just admit their service sucks everywhere else too, then they can take some of all that iPhone money and actually improve the service.
What's really amazing about AT&T and the iPhone is that if you are in a large crowd of people (such as a festival), the service becomes overwhelmed and you can't even make or receive a call.
Even just going to LA can make the phone get pretty unresponsive as it waits for a signal from the overloaded tower, so you can't really use it for much.
About 10 years ago I came across a chain of drug stores in the northeast that was able to run 12 cash registers using a 286 as the central server, serving 12 cash registers.
You can imagine my amazement as I watched a 286 that had the power to send prices to 12 registers at once and receive sales back from all 12 registers, run reports and updates, all without blinking an eye! At the time, Windows 95 could barely keep one computer running, so seeing it run 12 registers simultaneously was quite amazing.
That was years ago, but apparently Flex-OS lives on as IBM's 4690 Operating system. It was originally started by Digital Research as "DOS 286" so it's come quite a long way, and hasn't died at all.
These are tiny, quick movements that the eye makes that keep "refreshing" our field of view.
Here's the explanation from Wikipedia:
Humans and other animals do not look at a scene in a steady way. Instead, the eyes move around, locating interesting parts of the scene and building up a mental 'map' corresponding to the scene. One reason for saccades of the human eye is that the central part of the retina, the fovea, plays a critical role in resolving objects. By moving the eye so that small parts of a scene can be sensed with greater resolution, body resources can be used more efficiently.
In addition, the human eye is in a constant state of vibration, oscillating back and forth at a rate of about 30-70 Hz. These microsaccades are tiny movements, roughly 20 arcseconds in excursion and are completely imperceptible under normal circumstances. They serve to refresh the image being cast onto the rod cells and cone cells at the back of the eye. Without microsaccades, staring fixedly at something would cause the vision to cease after a few seconds since rods and cones only respond to a change in luminance.
So while this happens naturally in all of our eyes, our brains compensate for it automatically and we don't notice anything is happening.
On video, though, this would probably make the video unwatchable and/or cause dizziness and nausea for anyone viewing it. It might be help in researching eye-movement patterns, though.
"Like China, authoritarianism works on a population accustomed to it and enjoying a rapidly rising standard of living.">
This is surely incorrect. The USSR functioned for almost seven decades. The people of the Ukraine clearly had a falling standard of living as Stalin starved them but failed to successfully revolt or change the system. Likewise in China, the cultural revolution was not something associated with a huge rise in living standards but Communism survived.
Many people attribute Stalin's success in starving the 10 million + Ukrainians to death in the 1930's to gun control laws enacted earlier when the Communists came to power, and the success of the Chinese Cultural Revolution to the previous government's gun control laws enacted over ten years earlier. If you have guns and the population doesn't, then it doesn't matter whether their standard of living is rising or falling.
FOR gun control; Adolf Hitler, Josef Stalin
"For the first time, a civilized nation has full gun registration! Our streets will be safer, our police more efficient and the world will follow our lead to the future!"
-- Adolf Hitler, 1935
The most foolish mistake we could possibly make would be to permit the conquered Eastern peoples to have arms. History teaches that all conquerors who have allowed their subject races to carry arms have prepared their own downfall by doing so.
Adolf Hitler, 1941
AGAINST gun control; Mahatma Gandhi
"Among the many misdeeds of the British rule in India, history will look upon the act of depriving a whole nation of arms, as the blackest."
-- Mahatma Gandhi (he was against violence, but appreciated the ability of the gun to deter violence - the British did not treat the Indians well at all)
How did you manage to get a video of the event? I have heard of people putting in automatic video systems in their car, but I am wondering how easy and convenient this is - or did you sit there with a camera recording the police?
Tired of thieves stealing his tools, my grandpa electrified the padlock with one of those electric fence units used with cattle and horses. Difference, 3' from the unit instead of 300' of fencing wire.
Has that really worked? I would think that he would get careless and accidentally touch/grab the padlock one day and get the crap shccked out of him. Either that or someone goes to borrow a tool legitimately and gets shocked as well.
Every now and the you hear about somebody that booby-traps his house with shotguns or something, then gets careless one day and that's when they find the body. The electric fence thing sounds really great but I wonder how that works in real life. He should have a hidden camera pointed to it, though, so that if a thief actually does get shocked, we can see the video on the internets.
"So, how long before I can use my OpenID to post on Slashdot?"
So how long before governments require OpenID to eliminate internet anonymity?
Given that the government has been pumping the idea for a while that somehow terrorists are "recruiting" online in places like Second Life , not long at all.
From the first article:
It is certain that virtual reality is doing real damage with intelligence, recruiting, fund raising and the spread of Islamic extremism. This assault may start with bytes, not bullets, but American generals will tell you, its a hot war all the same on a battlefield called "jihad.com."
Asked if the Internet is training up new battalions of those young people, Custer tells Pelley, "It's a self-fulfilling prophesy thats exactly what the jihadist Internet is there to do."
So in the name of protecting your freedom and liberty from terrorism, and protecting the children from the "jihadist internet", OpenID will become required to access any site worth accessing. That way terrorists can have their OpenID revoked, and your "freedom" is saved. It's very convenient, and besides, you have nothing to hide, right?
Uhh, no. He was reaching down to pick up a grenade that fell off his jacket, not knowing it was live.
Well, if you want to get technical about it -- the grenade did not come from his jacket -- it came from the guy next to him, and Cleland had a month left in his tour. The M-26 had a design flaw, in that it came with straight pins, which made them very easy to dislodge. Experienced soldiers knew to either bend the pins or tape them, but the other guy didn't know that and was walking around with a vest full of the dangerous straight pins.
So I didn't remember all the details but the important part is that Max Cleland went to Vietnam, a place full of dangerous things like Viet Cong shooting at you and live grenades that were badly designed. His Republican challenger, Saxby Chambliss, avoided Vietnam on 5 student deferments (University of Georgia 1966; University of Tennessee College of Law 1968) and a medical deferment for "bad knees" caused by football in college.
Democratic Max Cleland, on the other hand, was awarded the Silver Star "for gallantry in action" at the battle of Khe Sanh, one of the Vietnam war's fiercest firefights.
Republican Senator Chuck Hagel actually owned the company that controlled the elctronic voting in the election that he won, in a stunning upset, in every demographic, including many black communities that had never voted Republican before. Nebraska hadn't voted for a Republican for Senate in 24 years.
In Georgia, Democratic Senator Max Cleland (who lost 3 limbs in Vietnam, after he jumped on a grenade to save his fellow troops), was defeated by a Republican that alleged that Cleland was not patriotic enough. Even after the polls indicated that the voters did not actually believe this, the Diebold machines announced the Republican the winner. Surprise! And in another surprise, while the polls indicated that Democractic Governor Roy Barnes was winning, the Diebold machies announced that he lost as well to his Republican challenger. A whistleblower revealed that secret patches were applied to the machines late in the race, violating state law.
Which I found especially hilarious/frustrating when I was required to upgrade the version of Norton on a bunch of lab computers. The upgrade wouldn't work, and told me I had to uninstall the previous version. Turns out uninstalling the previous version was unbelievably difficult.
My dad runs OS X, but got some emails with a note that said a virus had been removed by his email provider. The messages about a virus were worrying enough to him that he asked my brother (a PC user) about it. Norton was buggy, annoying, caused all kinds of problems with surfing and email, and was almost worse than getting a virus. My dad was really annoyed when he found out that Macs essentially don't get viruses and don't need antivirus software. And just like a virus, it was just about impossible to remove.
Funny note -- I had a friend that worked for Mcafee -- she (and her tech support buddies there) were sure that they hired people to write viruses to increase the demand for antivirus software.
I said "real federal laws that actually protected consumer privacy".
Europe has them, or at least has laws that are a darn sight better than ours, privacy wise. I was pointing out the fact that it's not the policy that needs changing, it's the laws. We have to get the money out of the political system before that can happen, though.
If there were real federal laws that actually protected consumer privacy, then the privacy policy of most sites would be very simple, and read as follows:
"We abide by the federal laws that protect your privacy"
1. All the talk about "tracking" is nonsense. An RFID anything has a range measured in inches normally. Stuff it in your wallet sandwiched in between more cards and it pretty much won't work.
Until the next technology comes along -- then you can be tracked with all the range they want. But by then it will be too late to argue about it and you would just look like one those "tinfoil hat" types or a "conspiracy kook" if you questioned it. All Americans want to be tracked to help their government fight "terrorism", don't they?
3. What's the application though? If it is just border crossings, then do border crossings have the infrastructure to process a contactless card?
The application is -- you guessed it -- remote tracking. The newest U.S. Passports as of July of this year all have RFID chips in them as well. It's not perfect, but yet another baby step on the way to "total information awareness" on citizens, just like the East Germans had but without all the fancy technology. It's a pilot program, testing the waters regarding citizen resistance, and inching it into general acceptance. There was a huge revolt against the REAL ID program, so think of this as a "reboot" of that program.
4. Accidentally leaving the card inside a microwave oven while you are warming coffee would harm the chip, so don't ever do that.
That's right. As soon as they get enough of these things in circulation, you will need them to get on airlines, go in government buildings, or maybe pass "illegal immigrant checkpoints". If your RFID chip was disabled, that might mean that you are an illegal immigrant, or a terrorist, or that you just like standing in long lines and being searched thoroughly.
The REAL ID program would have gone into effect on May 11 of this year, except that it was such a tremendous threat against the rights of our citizens that many states openly revolted against it. The REAL ID was an "enhanced drivers license" and you would have needed it to get on airplanes or enter government buildings nationwide by now. The Department of Homeland Security had a deadline of May 13 of this year, and yes, they were planning to put an RFID chip in the REAL ID card as well. Google it -- it's everything that you are arguing that this identical program is not, and it was a planned nationwide program before it got derailed.
Then vote for cultural homogeneity? There seldom seems to be OMG Terrorist! or repressive government problems when you have a homogeneous culture.
That whole "cultural homogeneity" meme is just used as a dismissive tactic to avoid discussing the real reasons the Scandinavian cultures are so successful. Cultural homogeneiety is pretty prevalent in China, Russia, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, etc., just as much as in Denmark, Sweden, Norway, etc, yet those countries don't get any awards for being great places to live.
The difference is that the Scandinavian cultures are highly progressive. Education is free to all, and the government will actually pay the students to go to school, so you end up with citizens that are educated on the issues, smart enough to vote for much better government candidates, and don't fall for the "tricks" that less educated voters fall for. So -- surprise -- they don't end up with repressive govnerments. Surprise! The tax money that is generated actually goes to services that are useful to the people that pay them. The citizens get free health care, housing help, and many other services that keep their society, happy, relaxed, and stable.
In America, our education is hugely expensive, so many people don't get educated. You end up with ignorant voters --> corrupt politicians, deregulation, failing banks, and the current "socialism for the rich", complete with massive government bailouts, but only for rich investors.
In other countries, with even less educated voters, you end up with worse conditions. It's not a mystery.
Re:Why isn't "Expert's Exchange" in the doghouse t
on
Stuck In Google's Doghouse
·
· Score: 2, Informative
I used to do that, but I tried that the other day, and it didn't work. I am looking for answers, not to play games with that website.
Why isn't "Expert's Exchange" in the doghouse too?
on
Stuck In Google's Doghouse
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
One of the greatest annoyances of Google (to those of us techies searching for answers) is "Expert's Exchange". Google gets to see the answers, but anyone searching for those answers doesn't get them, but is told to sign up and pay money for a "premium subscription".
There are ways around this, but this is all an annoyance and a pain to deal with, because the answers are readily and freely available on the Internet, and they would be much easier to find if the search results weren't clogged up with this type of garbage result.
So why aren't they in the "doghouse" too? (while we're at it, It would be great to move all the scientfic access-for-pay journals to a separate "scientific" google while we're at it -- they end up being half the results of my searches sometimes, but at least they aren't the tease that the EE site is)
One doesn't need to be Muslim to be a terrorist. Timothy McVeigh was a Christian. The terrorists who assassinate doctors who perform abortions are Christians. Wikipedia says Bruce E. Ivins was a Roman Catholic. Terrorists can be any religion.
That may be true, but in this case that makes no sense at all. Letters were mailed with the anthrax indicating that Muslims were responsible for the anthrax attacks. Your argument is thus implying that a Christian made attacks to further supposedly Muslim goals while pretending to be a Muslim.
That makes absolutely no sense:
!) Christian carries out attacks while pretending to be a Muslim Terrorist 2) ?????? 3) ??????
Keep in mind that the anthrax letters were sent only to Democratic senators and news outlets critical of Bush, and the National Enquirer photo editor that published unflattering pictures of the Bush twins. The Patriot Act also passed right away with barely any dissenters, giving the government sweeping new powers. There are also reports of highly placed government officials warning "helpful" journalists to get the cure for Anthrax ahead of the attacks. That would make your Christian terrorist acting to further Republican goals. Oh wait...
There was a study done where they paid prisoners to eat massive amounts of food to become truly obese. Then they studied what their bodies did after they stopped making them eat so much. The bodies of the prisoners rejected all the extra weight and they naturally came back to their normal weight within 6 months and without extra exercise. The prisoners bodies would actually raise their metabolisms to help burn off the extra fat
The scientists found that there is a "set point" for weight in people. For many obese people the scientists studied, their body goes into "starvation mode" when they reduce their weight below their normal weight, so that the resting metabolism drops far beyond normal and food cravings start coming at an extreme level.
What the OP posted may well be true -- not everyone's body works the same as yours, and it has been scientifically confirmed (I am too lazy to search for the study).
Slashdot Mirror
In that case, our government seems to be sending a mixed message by adding the internet kill-switch back into proposed legislation...
Sensationalist headlines aside, care to point out where the aforementioned bill says anything about shutting down communications? From my reading its about isolating the networks on which high value infrastructure is located, not shutting down anyone's communication. More reading, less rhetoric please.
What you don't seem to get that is that "isolating the networks" is exactly how you shut down communications. How else would you do it, besides pulling the plug entirely?
Also, the other important piece here is that according to the blll, Judicial Review is explicitly denied
A company that objects to being subject to the emergency regulations is permitted to appeal to DHS secretary Janet Napolitano. But her decision is final and courts are explicitly prohibited from reviewing it.
So if anything can be declared "critical infrastructure" and isolated without benefit of the courts, any communication can be shut down. The attempt to avoid judicial review is on page 403 of the bill, if you care to read it yourself.
until no one else could replicate the results. ... but otherwise no one seriously (or rather, no serious scientist) chases that particular dream anymore.
This is simply not true. There are many scientists who were able to get similar results -- Navy researchers got a paper published in Naturwissenschaften in 2007, and reported further significant results in 2009 .
As a matter of fact, the American Chemical Society hosted a 2-day conference on the subject at their 239th meeting last year in San Francisco.
What happened is that to avoid the seemingly near-religious 'skepticism' displayed yourself and others, the actual scientists working on the subject had to refer to their results as "anomalous heat" and refer to the field as "Low Energy Nuclear Reactions" (LENR) to avoid controversy.
So while you are busy deciding if anyone is replicating the results or if the field is worth looking into, a great deal of serious scientific effort has gone into the field for the last 20 years.
If you google 'Unisys', the first result is an article saying that Profit Tanks at Unisys Corporation
Apparently their year-over-year profits are down 54%, to $21 million from over $50 million a year ago, and their Technology sector revenue declined 31%. Apparently this is driven by a lack of demand for their ClearPath server line.
So by pumping this 'intenet kill switch' idea, it may be that they expect to be first in line to implement it, and get some handsome profits from the taxpayer pie in the bargain.
This is about as believable as Bill Gates and other tech leaders trumpeting that there were not enough skilled US IT workers a few years back. Sure there were, just not at the immigrant prices that Gates and others wanted to pay. Here's a video from a recruiter seminar instructing recruiters on how not to find qualified American applicants for jobs while putting in the legally required advertisements. Look for the speaker stating at about 1:44 into the video that "our goal here is clearly not to find a qualified and interested US worker".
Of course corporations are going to release self-serving announcements like this -- it's just fulfilling their legal mandate to act in the best interests of their shareholders. In other news, the sky is blue.
The people who are outraged over Citizens United never found the time to complain when the for-profit New York Times was endorsing political candidates. /quot
Nice attempt at raising a false equivalency argument.
Newspapers have always provided news and opinion in America, and many have argued that this is a vital role in a democracy. Publishing the New York Times or any other newspaper, or even broadcasting Fox News was never illegal, so bringing them up is totally irrelevant to the issue at hand.
What was illegal was the use of general treasury union or corporate funds to purchase advertisements 30 days before an election. That's quite different from a journalism company pursuing the normal course of their business.
It's not so much about harm as it is about consent.
How does an animal about to be slaughtered for food give consent?
the reason domestic capacity doesn't exist is because it isn't competitive.
One of the reasons for that is because China is artificially holding down the value of its currency so that we will destroy our own manufacturing base in a mad rush to make a quick buck. For the other countries, often American companies are the ones building the facilities and training the workers over there just for the cheap wages. Our own technology is given away for their cheap labor.
If what you're advocating is protectionism, then I suggest you go read a bit of history on the subject and its reults.
It seems to be working very well in many countries around the world that are smart enough to protect their own industries and work to keep out ours. Why do you think China is creating such problems for Google, and that Baidu is doing so well over there? The point is that if you don't go to extremes, you do very well. The extreme that America has gone into (not protecting our own domestic industries in favor of temporary profits) has really hurt us.
normalizing quality of life in the US down to the rest of the world
You mean make America a 3rd world country? That strategy seems to be working.
Now if they can just admit their service sucks everywhere else too, then they can take some of all that iPhone money and actually improve the service.
What's really amazing about AT&T and the iPhone is that if you are in a large crowd of people (such as a festival), the service becomes overwhelmed and you can't even make or receive a call.
Even just going to LA can make the phone get pretty unresponsive as it waits for a signal from the overloaded tower, so you can't really use it for much.
My view is, that the Internet by its very definition does not make it possible for such a treaty to be any more that a pipe dream.
First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win.
So, basically what you're saying is, is that you're at the "ignoring" stage of the whole process?
About 10 years ago I came across a chain of drug stores in the northeast that was able to run 12 cash registers using a 286 as the central server, serving 12 cash registers.
You can imagine my amazement as I watched a 286 that had the power to send prices to 12 registers at once and receive sales back from all 12 registers, run reports and updates, all without blinking an eye! At the time, Windows 95 could barely keep one computer running, so seeing it run 12 registers simultaneously was quite amazing.
That was years ago, but apparently Flex-OS lives on as IBM's 4690 Operating system. It was originally started by Digital Research as "DOS 286" so it's come quite a long way, and hasn't died at all.
I don't think the guy is thinking about Saccades
These are tiny, quick movements that the eye makes that keep "refreshing" our field of view.
Here's the explanation from Wikipedia:
Humans and other animals do not look at a scene in a steady way. Instead, the eyes move around, locating interesting parts of the scene and building up a mental 'map' corresponding to the scene. One reason for saccades of the human eye is that the central part of the retina, the fovea, plays a critical role in resolving objects. By moving the eye so that small parts of a scene can be sensed with greater resolution, body resources can be used more efficiently.
In addition, the human eye is in a constant state of vibration, oscillating back and forth at a rate of about 30-70 Hz. These microsaccades are tiny movements, roughly 20 arcseconds in excursion and are completely imperceptible under normal circumstances. They serve to refresh the image being cast onto the rod cells and cone cells at the back of the eye. Without microsaccades, staring fixedly at something would cause the vision to cease after a few seconds since rods and cones only respond to a change in luminance.
So while this happens naturally in all of our eyes, our brains compensate for it automatically and we don't notice anything is happening.
On video, though, this would probably make the video unwatchable and/or cause dizziness and nausea for anyone viewing it. It might be help in researching eye-movement patterns, though.
"Like China, authoritarianism works on a population accustomed to it and enjoying a rapidly rising standard of living.">
This is surely incorrect. The USSR functioned for almost seven decades. The people of the Ukraine clearly had a falling standard of living as Stalin starved them but failed to successfully revolt or change the system. Likewise in China, the cultural revolution was not something associated with a huge rise in living standards but Communism survived.
Many people attribute Stalin's success in starving the 10 million + Ukrainians to death in the 1930's to gun control laws enacted earlier when the Communists came to power, and the success of the Chinese Cultural Revolution to the previous government's gun control laws enacted over ten years earlier. If you have guns and the population doesn't, then it doesn't matter whether their standard of living is rising or falling.
FOR gun control; Adolf Hitler, Josef Stalin
"For the first time, a civilized nation has full gun registration! Our streets will be safer, our police more efficient and the world will follow our lead to the future!"
-- Adolf Hitler, 1935
The most foolish mistake we could possibly make would be to permit the conquered Eastern peoples to have arms. History teaches that all conquerors who have allowed their subject races to carry arms have prepared their own downfall by doing so.
Adolf Hitler, 1941
AGAINST gun control; Mahatma Gandhi
"Among the many misdeeds of the British rule in India, history will look upon the act of depriving a whole nation of arms, as the blackest."
-- Mahatma Gandhi (he was against violence, but appreciated the ability of the gun to deter violence - the British did not treat the Indians well at all)
How did you manage to get a video of the event? I have heard of people putting in automatic video systems in their car, but I am wondering how easy and convenient this is - or did you sit there with a camera recording the police?
Tired of thieves stealing his tools, my grandpa electrified the padlock with one of those electric fence units used with cattle and horses. Difference, 3' from the unit instead of 300' of fencing wire.
Has that really worked? I would think that he would get careless and accidentally touch/grab the padlock one day and get the crap shccked out of him. Either that or someone goes to borrow a tool legitimately and gets shocked as well.
Every now and the you hear about somebody that booby-traps his house with shotguns or something, then gets careless one day and that's when they find the body. The electric fence thing sounds really great but I wonder how that works in real life. He should have a hidden camera pointed to it, though, so that if a thief actually does get shocked, we can see the video on the internets.
"So, how long before I can use my OpenID to post on Slashdot?"
So how long before governments require OpenID to eliminate internet anonymity?
Given that the government has been pumping the idea for a while that somehow terrorists are "recruiting" online in places like Second Life , not long at all.
From the first article:
So in the name of protecting your freedom and liberty from terrorism, and protecting the children from the "jihadist internet", OpenID will become required to access any site worth accessing. That way terrorists can have their OpenID revoked, and your "freedom" is saved. It's very convenient, and besides, you have nothing to hide, right?
Uhh, no. He was reaching down to pick up a grenade that fell off his jacket, not knowing it was live.
Well, if you want to get technical about it -- the grenade did not come from his jacket -- it came from the guy next to him, and Cleland had a month left in his tour. The M-26 had a design flaw, in that it came with straight pins, which made them very easy to dislodge. Experienced soldiers knew to either bend the pins or tape them, but the other guy didn't know that and was walking around with a vest full of the dangerous straight pins.
So I didn't remember all the details but the important part is that Max Cleland went to Vietnam, a place full of dangerous things like Viet Cong shooting at you and live grenades that were badly designed. His Republican challenger, Saxby Chambliss, avoided Vietnam on 5 student deferments (University of Georgia 1966; University of Tennessee College of Law 1968) and a medical deferment for "bad knees" caused by football in college.
Democratic Max Cleland, on the other hand, was awarded the Silver Star "for gallantry in action" at the battle of Khe Sanh, one of the Vietnam war's fiercest firefights.
I just don't understand why a good paper ballot is so hard to accept...
It's because elections are so much harder to steal if you have a "good paper ballot".
Republican Senator Chuck Hagel actually owned the company that controlled the elctronic voting in the election that he won, in a stunning upset, in every demographic, including many black communities that had never voted Republican before. Nebraska hadn't voted for a Republican for Senate in 24 years.
In Georgia, Democratic Senator Max Cleland (who lost 3 limbs in Vietnam, after he jumped on a grenade to save his fellow troops), was defeated by a Republican that alleged that Cleland was not patriotic enough. Even after the polls indicated that the voters did not actually believe this, the Diebold machines announced the Republican the winner. Surprise! And in another surprise, while the polls indicated that Democractic Governor Roy Barnes was winning, the Diebold machies announced that he lost as well to his Republican challenger. A whistleblower revealed that secret patches were applied to the machines late in the race, violating state law.
Here are other instances of Republicans winning through voting machine irregularities.
Norton is ... ALMOST IMPOSSIBLE TO REMOVE.
Which I found especially hilarious/frustrating when I was required to upgrade the version of Norton on a bunch of lab computers. The upgrade wouldn't work, and told me I had to uninstall the previous version. Turns out uninstalling the previous version was unbelievably difficult.
My dad runs OS X, but got some emails with a note that said a virus had been removed by his email provider. The messages about a virus were worrying enough to him that he asked my brother (a PC user) about it. Norton was buggy, annoying, caused all kinds of problems with surfing and email, and was almost worse than getting a virus. My dad was really annoyed when he found out that Macs essentially don't get viruses and don't need antivirus software. And just like a virus, it was just about impossible to remove.
Funny note -- I had a friend that worked for Mcafee -- she (and her tech support buddies there) were sure that they hired people to write viruses to increase the demand for antivirus software.
I said "real federal laws that actually protected consumer privacy".
Europe has them, or at least has laws that are a darn sight better than ours, privacy wise. I was pointing out the fact that it's not the policy that needs changing, it's the laws. We have to get the money out of the political system before that can happen, though.
If there were real federal laws that actually protected consumer privacy, then the privacy policy of most sites would be very simple, and read as follows:
"We abide by the federal laws that protect your privacy"
Then we would not have this problem.
1. All the talk about "tracking" is nonsense. An RFID anything has a range measured in inches normally. Stuff it in your wallet sandwiched in between more cards and it pretty much won't work.
Until the next technology comes along -- then you can be tracked with all the range they want. But by then it will be too late to argue about it and you would just look like one those "tinfoil hat" types or a "conspiracy kook" if you questioned it. All Americans want to be tracked to help their government fight "terrorism", don't they?
3. What's the application though? If it is just border crossings, then do border crossings have the infrastructure to process a contactless card?
The application is -- you guessed it -- remote tracking. The newest U.S. Passports as of July of this year all have RFID chips in them as well. It's not perfect, but yet another baby step on the way to "total information awareness" on citizens, just like the East Germans had but without all the fancy technology. It's a pilot program, testing the waters regarding citizen resistance, and inching it into general acceptance. There was a huge revolt against the REAL ID program, so think of this as a "reboot" of that program.
4. Accidentally leaving the card inside a microwave oven while you are warming coffee would harm the chip, so don't ever do that.
That's right. As soon as they get enough of these things in circulation, you will need them to get on airlines, go in government buildings, or maybe pass "illegal immigrant checkpoints". If your RFID chip was disabled, that might mean that you are an illegal immigrant, or a terrorist, or that you just like standing in long lines and being searched thoroughly.
The REAL ID program would have gone into effect on May 11 of this year, except that it was such a tremendous threat against the rights of our citizens that many states openly revolted against it. The REAL ID was an "enhanced drivers license" and you would have needed it to get on airplanes or enter government buildings nationwide by now. The Department of Homeland Security had a deadline of May 13 of this year, and yes, they were planning to put an RFID chip in the REAL ID card as well. Google it -- it's everything that you are arguing that this identical program is not, and it was a planned nationwide program before it got derailed.
Then vote for cultural homogeneity? There seldom seems to be OMG Terrorist! or repressive government problems when you have a homogeneous culture.
That whole "cultural homogeneity" meme is just used as a dismissive tactic to avoid discussing the real reasons the Scandinavian cultures are so successful. Cultural homogeneiety is pretty prevalent in China, Russia, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, etc., just as much as in Denmark, Sweden, Norway, etc, yet those countries don't get any awards for being great places to live.
The difference is that the Scandinavian cultures are highly progressive. Education is free to all, and the government will actually pay the students to go to school, so you end up with citizens that are educated on the issues, smart enough to vote for much better government candidates, and don't fall for the "tricks" that less educated voters fall for. So -- surprise -- they don't end up with repressive govnerments. Surprise! The tax money that is generated actually goes to services that are useful to the people that pay them. The citizens get free health care, housing help, and many other services that keep their society, happy, relaxed, and stable.
In America, our education is hugely expensive, so many people don't get educated. You end up with ignorant voters --> corrupt politicians, deregulation, failing banks, and the current "socialism for the rich", complete with massive government bailouts, but only for rich investors.
In other countries, with even less educated voters, you end up with worse conditions. It's not a mystery.
I used to do that, but I tried that the other day, and it didn't work. I am looking for answers, not to play games with that website.
One of the greatest annoyances of Google (to those of us techies searching for answers) is "Expert's Exchange". Google gets to see the answers, but anyone searching for those answers doesn't get them, but is told to sign up and pay money for a "premium subscription".
There are ways around this, but this is all an annoyance and a pain to deal with, because the answers are readily and freely available on the Internet, and they would be much easier to find if the search results weren't clogged up with this type of garbage result.
So why aren't they in the "doghouse" too? (while we're at it, It would be great to move all the scientfic access-for-pay journals to a separate "scientific" google while we're at it -- they end up being half the results of my searches sometimes, but at least they aren't the tease that the EE site is)
One doesn't need to be Muslim to be a terrorist. Timothy McVeigh was a Christian. The terrorists who assassinate doctors who perform abortions are Christians. Wikipedia says Bruce E. Ivins was a Roman Catholic. Terrorists can be any religion.
That may be true, but in this case that makes no sense at all. Letters were mailed with the anthrax indicating that Muslims were responsible for the anthrax attacks. Your argument is thus implying that a Christian made attacks to further supposedly Muslim goals while pretending to be a Muslim.
That makes absolutely no sense:
!) Christian carries out attacks while pretending to be a Muslim Terrorist
2) ??????
3) ??????
Keep in mind that the anthrax letters were sent only to Democratic senators and news outlets critical of Bush, and the National Enquirer photo editor that published unflattering pictures of the Bush twins. The Patriot Act also passed right away with barely any dissenters, giving the government sweeping new powers. There are also reports of highly placed government officials warning "helpful" journalists to get the cure for Anthrax ahead of the attacks. That would make your Christian terrorist acting to further Republican goals. Oh wait...
There was a study done where they paid prisoners to eat massive amounts of food to become truly obese. Then they studied what their bodies did after they stopped making them eat so much. The bodies of the prisoners rejected all the extra weight and they naturally came back to their normal weight within 6 months and without extra exercise. The prisoners bodies would actually raise their metabolisms to help burn off the extra fat
The scientists found that there is a "set point" for weight in people. For many obese people the scientists studied, their body goes into "starvation mode" when they reduce their weight below their normal weight, so that the resting metabolism drops far beyond normal and food cravings start coming at an extreme level.
What the OP posted may well be true -- not everyone's body works the same as yours, and it has been scientifically confirmed (I am too lazy to search for the study).