Heh. Yeah, the "If everyone else jumped off a bridge, would you?" always confused me as a child.
Growing up in Oregon, two things we had in abundance were rivers and bridges over them.
Some bridges are too high, or the water too shallow, to jump off the bridge into the river below.
One way to tell is to see where everyone else is jumping in at. If they swim back to shore and climb back up you know it's safe. (For various values of "safe".)
Which is a longish way of saying the answer to the question is, "Well, yeah. Of course."
It'll probably look like Catholicism, or other branches which place higher importance on faith, tradition, and study than on "literal" interpretations of one book.
Not all, or even the majority, of Christians are fundamentalists. They're just the loudest, and the ones most commonly found preaching on TV.
I've never been able to figure out what that key is supposed to do. I've tried at various times in the past to press it while scrolling large amounts of text (tailing logs and such), and, other than turning on a light on my keyboard, it never seems to do anything.
Same with SysRq (which is often combined with Print Screen, which I do occasionally used), and the Pause/Break key.
I've seen these keys since the early IBM PC 101-key keyboard, and I don't think I've ever seen them actually do anything.
The article is incorrect that the keyboard has remained "largely unchanged since the 19th century", though. Typewriters never had a delete or Esc key. Backspace, yes, but the other two are purely for editing on computers.
Caps lock is also a computer key. Typewriters had the slightly less useful Shift Lock key, which was very similar, but would shift the numbers into symbols as well.
And, yeah, ever since IBM started making the numerical pad standard on keyboards, around 1980 or so, having a NumLock key really isn't useful, as all the other functions on that keyboard are duplicated elsewhere.
But he wasn't just stopped. I get stopped all the time, it's annoying, but not a big deal. They not only stopped him, but then read his personal papers, and held him while they questioned him about them.
Papers are not bombs, or weapons. You cannot hijack an airplane with a script, whether it's for a comic book or a movie, or just a pure fantasy scenario you wrote for yourself to pass the time. As such, TSA has absolutely no business, no right, and no authority to read them.
The fact that their employees are so badly trained that they actually believe they have this authority, and the fact that the average citizen is so badly informed that they believe it also, is just scary.
The irony that the papers they were reading were a fictional account of a government agency grabbing more authority than they should have is just the funny part of it all.
From what I understood, it was a pre-screening. So they did a background check before you ever got to the airport, so you didn't have to wait in the long security lines as everyone else.
With this program you, or anyone who looked vaguely like you and got a hold of your ID, could get right on the plane without ever having to have your shoes X-rayed.
It was pure security theater, but for profit. (Not enough profit, I guess.)
If they tried to hide the reasons for doing it, it would completely defeat the purpose.
Attacks like this are never just, or even primarily, to silence the one guy hit. They're to scare all the rest of the people thinking about doing the same thing.
True: this all could have been avoided if the staffer had told them who he was working for and where the money came from.
True. But it could also have been avoided if the TSA agent had answered his question instead of trying to bully him with threats of turning him over to the local police, the DEA, and the FBI.
But he's a guy with a tiny bit of power, and wants to throw it around as much as he can. TSA isn't even actual law enforcement. This guy is, to paraphrase River, a security guard with delusions of standing. A sad little king of a sad little hill.
While the article, and many commenters so far have remarked on the irony of the youngest amateur astronomer finding the smallest supernova, it's pretty remarkable that what she actually found was a completely new astronomical phenomenon.
From what I understand, the mechanisms behind novae and supernovae are pretty well understood. But this is something new altogether. According to the article, they're not even sure it's an actual supernova. Nobody has ever seen this exact behavior in a star before. We're going to learn a lot from this, and it would be pretty damn remarkable even if the discoverer hadn't been a 14 year old amateur.
"think of it as a game, with lots of math and complex rules that at least once a year."
There should have been a "change" after the "that".
Must've fallen off when I hit the submit button.
Re:rock or a UAV
on
Wired for War
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
I agree with you to some extent about dehumanizing war. The more automated it becomes the more likely we are to engage in it. And the more the American people will support it.
I think we're already at the point of the mentality you mention, though: "I believe in this enough to kill others, but I don't want to sacrifice my own life for it." None of the people who made the decisions to start the last couple of wars were going to be risking their lives. And the people actually doing the fighting don't get to make the decisions about where, or whether, they fight.
...the simple fact that lawyers exist should logically mean that ignorance of the law is a valid excuse.
It sometimes is, especially when dealing with tax law and the like.
I've been let off with warnings on speeding tickets because I didn't know that the speed limit of the area I was traveling in differed from the standards.
I've also, on more than one occasion, messed up on my taxes, for example taking deductions I thought I was entitled to but wasn't, and when the IRS caught it, I just had to re-file. The most recent time resulted in an in-person visit from an IRS agent. (Last year, dealing with a problem with my 2002 returns).
(While scary at first - "Oh my gods, there's an IRS Agent at my door!" - everything turned out well.
We got along great, too - turns out IRS agents are all a bunch of nerds. One explained to me that it works best to "think of it as a game, with lots of math and complex rules that at least once a year." "So, big Avalon Hill fans, then?" Yep. The office is a giant cube farm, and there was a Robo-Rally game set up in the break room.)
We don't do the same thing with athletics here as they do with math and science over there. In fact, they do the same thing with athletics as they do with math and science.
That is, they consider athletics to be important and encourage every child to participate in at least one sport.
We, on the other hand, idolize a very small number of top achievers and encourage every child to watch them on TV.
It will only increase costs if people print the entire text book every year.
I can see some students occasionally printing some pages, but why on earth would anyone, let alone everyone, print the whole thing?
Kids these days are pretty much perfectly happy reading content online. Sure, you get the occasional freak who prefers paper books, but that's hardly the majority. Get an e-reader that allows markup, and you can even take notes directly in the "book". To say nothing of the increased search power in an electronic copy.
Slashdot Mirror
s/Except/Yeah,/
Convenient that this thing carries a wood chipper with it, then.
Heh. Yeah, the "If everyone else jumped off a bridge, would you?" always confused me as a child.
Growing up in Oregon, two things we had in abundance were rivers and bridges over them.
Some bridges are too high, or the water too shallow, to jump off the bridge into the river below.
One way to tell is to see where everyone else is jumping in at. If they swim back to shore and climb back up you know it's safe. (For various values of "safe".)
Which is a longish way of saying the answer to the question is, "Well, yeah. Of course."
It'll probably look like Catholicism, or other branches which place higher importance on faith, tradition, and study than on "literal" interpretations of one book.
Not all, or even the majority, of Christians are fundamentalists. They're just the loudest, and the ones most commonly found preaching on TV.
I've never been able to figure out what that key is supposed to do. I've tried at various times in the past to press it while scrolling large amounts of text (tailing logs and such), and, other than turning on a light on my keyboard, it never seems to do anything.
Same with SysRq (which is often combined with Print Screen, which I do occasionally used), and the Pause/Break key.
I've seen these keys since the early IBM PC 101-key keyboard, and I don't think I've ever seen them actually do anything.
The article is incorrect that the keyboard has remained "largely unchanged since the 19th century", though. Typewriters never had a delete or Esc key. Backspace, yes, but the other two are purely for editing on computers.
Caps lock is also a computer key. Typewriters had the slightly less useful Shift Lock key, which was very similar, but would shift the numbers into symbols as well.
And, yeah, ever since IBM started making the numerical pad standard on keyboards, around 1980 or so, having a NumLock key really isn't useful, as all the other functions on that keyboard are duplicated elsewhere.
Well, if I recall correctly, Explosive Runes is only a second level spell...
But he wasn't just stopped.
I get stopped all the time, it's annoying, but not a big deal.
They not only stopped him, but then read his personal papers, and held him while they questioned him about them.
Papers are not bombs, or weapons. You cannot hijack an airplane with a script, whether it's for a comic book or a movie, or just a pure fantasy scenario you wrote for yourself to pass the time.
As such, TSA has absolutely no business, no right, and no authority to read them.
The fact that their employees are so badly trained that they actually believe they have this authority, and the fact that the average citizen is so badly informed that they believe it also, is just scary.
The irony that the papers they were reading were a fictional account of a government agency grabbing more authority than they should have is just the funny part of it all.
From what I understood, it was a pre-screening. So they did a background check before you ever got to the airport, so you didn't have to wait in the long security lines as everyone else.
With this program you, or anyone who looked vaguely like you and got a hold of your ID, could get right on the plane without ever having to have your shoes X-rayed.
It was pure security theater, but for profit. (Not enough profit, I guess.)
That doesn't point to a difference in intelligence, just a different set of needed skills.
If they tried to hide the reasons for doing it, it would completely defeat the purpose.
Attacks like this are never just, or even primarily, to silence the one guy hit. They're to scare all the rest of the people thinking about doing the same thing.
Why? Was the founder dyslexic?
How exactly do you think that happens with a box of cash?
Do you suspect he was going to bribe the pilot with the $4300? "I'll give you this money if you crash the plane"?
True. But it could also have been avoided if the TSA agent had answered his question instead of trying to bully him with threats of turning him over to the local police, the DEA, and the FBI.
But he's a guy with a tiny bit of power, and wants to throw it around as much as he can. TSA isn't even actual law enforcement. This guy is, to paraphrase River, a security guard with delusions of standing. A sad little king of a sad little hill.
So you're telling us that yet another problem would be solved by nuking Florida?
Bush could have been much smarter than I thought, and still be an idiot.
While the article, and many commenters so far have remarked on the irony of the youngest amateur astronomer finding the smallest supernova, it's pretty remarkable that what she actually found was a completely new astronomical phenomenon.
From what I understand, the mechanisms behind novae and supernovae are pretty well understood. But this is something new altogether. According to the article, they're not even sure it's an actual supernova. Nobody has ever seen this exact behavior in a star before. We're going to learn a lot from this, and it would be pretty damn remarkable even if the discoverer hadn't been a 14 year old amateur.
Not that strange.
In fact, it ties directly into what the Nintendo guy was saying.
Like this new technology, wireless joystick's were cool and all, but they didn't become popular until someone found a way to make them not suck.
Which leads to more power to harvest.
Which leads to more devices developed to harvest it.
Which leads to more powerful signals.
Which leads to Tesla's dream of sufficient power being broadcast wirelessly to run all of our electric devices. For free! Woohoo!
(Well, either that, or the amount it takes from the signal is so tiny as to not make any practical difference...)
Also, we applied the cortical electrodes but were unable to get a neural response from either patient.
"think of it as a game, with lots of math and complex rules that at least once a year."
There should have been a "change" after the "that".
Must've fallen off when I hit the submit button.
I agree with you to some extent about dehumanizing war. The more automated it becomes the more likely we are to engage in it. And the more the American people will support it.
I think we're already at the point of the mentality you mention, though: "I believe in this enough to kill others, but I don't want to sacrifice my own life for it." None of the people who made the decisions to start the last couple of wars were going to be risking their lives. And the people actually doing the fighting don't get to make the decisions about where, or whether, they fight.
It sometimes is, especially when dealing with tax law and the like.
I've been let off with warnings on speeding tickets because I didn't know that the speed limit of the area I was traveling in differed from the standards.
I've also, on more than one occasion, messed up on my taxes, for example taking deductions I thought I was entitled to but wasn't, and when the IRS caught it, I just had to re-file. The most recent time resulted in an in-person visit from an IRS agent. (Last year, dealing with a problem with my 2002 returns).
(While scary at first - "Oh my gods, there's an IRS Agent at my door!" - everything turned out well.
We got along great, too - turns out IRS agents are all a bunch of nerds. One explained to me that it works best to "think of it as a game, with lots of math and complex rules that at least once a year." "So, big Avalon Hill fans, then?" Yep. The office is a giant cube farm, and there was a Robo-Rally game set up in the break room.)
What's worse, the quote isn't even true.
We don't do the same thing with athletics here as they do with math and science over there. In fact, they do the same thing with athletics as they do with math and science.
That is, they consider athletics to be important and encourage every child to participate in at least one sport.
We, on the other hand, idolize a very small number of top achievers and encourage every child to watch them on TV.
...proximity to health-care...
I'm an American, you insensitive clod!
(We don't get health care over here.)
It will only increase costs if people print the entire text book every year.
I can see some students occasionally printing some pages, but why on earth would anyone, let alone everyone, print the whole thing?
Kids these days are pretty much perfectly happy reading content online. Sure, you get the occasional freak who prefers paper books, but that's hardly the majority. Get an e-reader that allows markup, and you can even take notes directly in the "book". To say nothing of the increased search power in an electronic copy.