which began in late June but has only just been confirmed as Ebola
Operative words being "just confirmed" - I'm sure doctors and researchers have known since July 1st that it was Ebola.
The problem is that the governments in these countries are terrified of not the threat of Ebola spreading, but of damage to commerce, particularly tourism - and will coerce researchers and doctors to not discuss or reveal outbreaks.
For nearly a decade, my neighborhood has seen people getting mugged for their iPhones almost nightly.
Basically: there's a public housing complex 2-3 stops up the line. Our neighborhood has a lot of affluent 20-30 year old professionals, grad students, etc.
Guess what? People who think the world Owes Them like an easy commute just as much as you do. They jump off the subway, walk up and down the street until they find someone, mug them, and run off - usually back onto the subway, or get picked up by a buddy a block or two over. In the time it takes to even find someone to call 911 for you, they could have walked several blocks and are effectively gone.
Apple is unique in that their devices are managed heavily by iTunes and their online systems. A blacklist could be implemented within months - Apple has plenty of inhouse resources to make it happen. They'd rather sell you a new phone - every theft is a new sale.
That's probably a list for "Jack Daniels", not the logo. Even if not - the logo doesn't have to be registered in any particular product segments in order to be protected. Your trademark is YOUR MARK. YOURS. Assigned to you. Nobody else. To indicate and brand your products. If someone else makes a product of any kind with a nearly identical logo, that's not allowed, because it causes confusion and leads people to believe the 3rd party product came from you.
"JD has no case here, and should not be sending C&D letters to authors, no matter how nicely worded."
No, the author's artist shouldn't have scanned (and then ever so slightly altered, by adding one or two flourishes) a company's logo for the cover of his book.
The lifting of the log is extremely blatant - the result is predictable, and given the publisher's name and the author's assholeish "fuck the man!" response, I'd say they did it specifically for publicity.
Essentially, the foundation makes donations to organizations both it and the Gates personally own stock in or have other investments with.
If you think that the B&MGF makes donations purely out of the goodness of their hearts, then you a)are naive and b)have no idea what 95% of most celebrity/rich-people foundations are for. Celebrities do it for personal marketing and tax shelters. Sports players do it to employ relatives and tax shelters. Rich people do it for social status and essentially write off the cost of their parties, aka tax shelters.
Tax-writeoffs for charities need to end - you shouldn't get to short the government on infrastructure and stuff that benefits everyone, just to benefit your personal cause. Why should a bunch of rich white asshole golf players get to make a donation to a charity in their hometown where the median income is the highest in the entire state, which goes to benefit waterfowl...and then not pay that money to their state, which paves their roads and pays for the homeless shelters and healthcare services for the poor?
They're not implying that he was killed for the mansion. They're implying that Easton benefited financially from an organ transplant. Perhaps, for example, he looked the other way at whether Jobs was qualified medically to receive the organ. Or received the house so he wouldn't bring it to anyone's attention that Jobs was doing the organ-transplant version of carpetbagging.
Jobs wasn't just "sort of" a jerk - he used his wealth to exploit the organ transplant system by having "residence" in the state with the lowest waiting list.
The doctor never should have accepted the house. The doubt cast on the impartiality of the organ transplant system and medical profession, even if there was nothing actually improper in the doctor's behavior, is trouble enough.
You're seriously using a consumer-level desktop chassis for enterprise routing?
You're not doing enterprise *anything*. See the title of this post.
If you showed up with anything except a 1U rackmount machine, I'd show you the door.
The sections of ship are designed to be isolable from each other. Close a door, shut some duct work to isolate air, and you're fat dumb and happy back in the engine room!
Uh, except commenters and Wikipedia both say that's not true - that the Los Angeles class has only 1-2 bulkhead doors and they most likely had cables and plumbing passed through, making them impossible to seal.
I guess you're just full of shit, then, and lying about serving on one of these subs. Nobody knows you're a dog on the internet, huh?
I'm sure that the nuclear operators stayed at their watch stations during all this
Why? The reactor's probably completely shutdown in drydock anyway, but....SCRAM the reactor, grab your jacket, and exit stage left like everyone else. It's a PWR reactor - not a liquid metal reactor that would be permanently damaged by shutdown.
Is there really a point to sticking around? I'm genuinely curious.
No. Richard Stallman has spent most of his adult life:
having zero political sense or capital
despite the first, hampering the free software movement by presenting extremist, uncompromising views that get him (and the FSF/Open Source movement) laughed out of the room
preaching exclusively his vision of utopia
maintaining a text editor
not giving two shits about what anyone else wants/thinks/believes/needs, which is a problem given he fancies himself a leader and representative
not asking for others opinions, collaborating, or accepting constructive criticism
not having any perception of how he is received, judged, or viewed
He shares a disturbing number of qualities with your average cult leader.
It was only until many other more reasonable voices and non-FSF software appeared that the open source movement gained traction. And what was his response? Continual bitterness, which has shown up in him demanding Linux be called GNU/Linux.
While revered by some geeks, he's almost completely ignored by government, academia, and industry and not taken seriously by anyone with power in any of them. He is a sociopathic egomaniac, and while I wish to hell he'd retire to a small corner of the world - I don't want it to be because of poor health, and I hope he's better soon.
...not attacking us; there's no point. They want to challenge our force projection and protection of other countries, especially those they want land and resources from. They could care fuck-all about North America. They want oil, rare earth metals, and territory buffer/control near them. We've been a thorn in their side, protecting Japan and a whole lot of the rest of Asia from them.
The US outspends China almost 10:1, and has for the past 10 years, that doesn't look to be changing, but China will still be spending more in 13 years than the US, who is spending 10 times as much today.
Did you even TRY to verify your facts before you posted that? Or are you seriously believing the official China figures of $25BN? You're off by an enormous amount:
"Jane's Defence Forecasts in 2012 estimated that China's defense budget would increase from $119.80 billion to $238.20 billion between 2011 and 2015. This would make it larger than the defense budgets of all other major Asian nations combined."
That's about a third of current US military spending. Which is currently declining (as it should.) And was sized to support 2 wars, both of which are largely over. And the current pentagon leadership has declared their spending to be unsustainable for the country.
Demands on the vehicle's systems are such that many cars now have their alternators plumbed into the engine cooling system, and are even shaft-driven because of belt slippage. 12V has proven to be a significant burden on carmakers wiring-wise these days with all of the demand for electronics in the car. It wasn't too long ago that cars only had 2 or so computers - the engine control unit, and the ABS controller. I've got a car with almost a dozen - engine, climate, "chassis" (lights, locking, wipers, etc), suspension control, ABS/traction control, airbag, navigation...god knows what else. No DVD player or "entertainment" system beyond the stereo.
Electric steering pumps are increasingly common - they're compact, easy to locate anywhere, easy to control which simplifies hydraulics, and help with fuel economy since there's much less parasitic load.
Even back in the 80's, it was a problem. Audi located the battery in the back seat for crash safety, engine compartment room, and battery longevity (less temperature extremes) - but the cable that goes to the front is pretty damn massive, and failures where they splice a Y off to the main fusebox is fairly common and cause lots of problems because of the voltage drop. The problem was exacerbated by the use of an electric cooling fan which could draw well over a thousand watts - I think the fuseable link by the fan motor is rated for over 100A.
Car companies have been making noises about switching to 24V systems, with a 12V bus only for cigarette lighter accessories...it'd cut down significantly on the size of the wiring needed (which means cutting down on weight!) and transmission losses, both of which will improve gas economy.
I've seen at least two people's noses broken through accidental contact on a sports field. In one case, there wasn't even much blood. In both cases, you couldn't tell anything was wrong just by looking at them, and these were both people I'd known for years. Yet you expect to judge whether a nose is broken on a dude you've never seen in person, from a blurry, low resolution video? Seriously?
Also, what's with this "forensic voiceprint" bullshit? Is this of the same caliber as "forensic hair analysis", which was used to put hundreds of innocent (and mostly black men) people on death row? This is the most irresponsible bullshit I've ever seen Slashdot come up with - you're helping try him in the court of public opinion, not to mention providing a huge slashvertisement for owen.
If you want an extra sensor for something, they are happy to give it to you - but they will want to know why, and if they don't think it's needed, they'll try to talk you out of it. I had the feeling they actually cared about my interests, and not selling me more equipment.
That's because the more sensors you have, the more likely you are to have false alarms, need warranty service, etc.
They also have additional styles of sensors that the average joe doesn't care about (ones that you install in the door, rather than putting on the outside of the door - i.e. invisible)
You're joking, right? Doorjam sensors have been in popular use for decades. They're not popular among DIY'ers because you have to drill the door and doorjam (and get the alignment of both right), and it's not trivial to get the wiring there (ie a trained installer or electrician is needed.)
Assuming you live in Florida, start by chasing down passers-by with your car and shooting them with your gun.
You forgot the part where you lose sight of the passer-by, the passer-by (who is a foot taller than you) then chases *you* down, starts screaming, punches you in the face knocking you to the ground, and then proceeds to beat the stuffing out of you. In front of witnesses. Just for following him.
Treyvor Martin was a wannabe thug with a chip on his shoulder who was angry at the world for being suspended from school where he was dealing drugs. Funny how nobody is talking about black hatred for non-blacks here, or his drug problems?
Many people have noticed in the online samples that you can't focus clearly on far-away objects; they sorta get sharper, but not anywhere as sharp as foreground details. So that awesome picture of you on top of a mountain? You'll be nice and sharp, but the background never will be. Kind of spoils it, when the whole point is to be able to click and have one or the other be super sharp, right?
Also, it needs absurd amounts of light according to Gizmodo, or image noise becomes horrendous. Which is not surprising, given how hard Nikon and Canon are pushing the edge of what's possible in their sensors + image processors, and how small the individual lenses are. Great for sunny places. Not so much for indoors.
I for one am fed up with the constant assault of cell phone conversations from people who have no idea how to be considerate to those around them.
While you're sitting there like a fat little smug antisocial nerd who thinks the world revolves around him and reading his Ayn Rand in peace and quiet, the psychologist three seats in front of you is desperately hoping that none of his patients are feeling suicidal at that particular moment.
I have friends who are doctors, some of them psychologists. They're on call a great deal of the time, and people don't call their psychologist to talk about the weather. They call with things like "I'm having suicidal thoughts."
I have a friend who is an eye surgeon. When she's on-call, she sometimes gets patients who have hours or less before they could permanently lose their eyesight from an injury or complications from an earlier surgery.
I'm not saying THEY are more important. I'm saying their PATIENTS are. You have not seen panic until you've seen a psychologist who has a private practice and discovers her cell phone ran out of battery at some point, and she's an hour from a charger...
I've actually seen a psych emergency unfold, too - the psychologist-friend working with 911 operators and the police and EMS to find the patient and get them to a hospital. That can't happen unless they can reach their doctor to ask for help. Too bad for them some fat asshole nerd is sitting there giggling with his cell phone jammer.
Even if someone decides to enter S&E career fields, there are very few real jobs offered by real employers -- it is much easier to use "this gun is for hire" contractors that you can REALLY abuse and dump with few consequences.
Contractors are used with great success appropriately. My father contracted out to a number of contractors the company could never justify having full-time, to do specialist work, which is the whole point. For example - a guy who knew CCDs inside and out. Another specialized in PCB layout, generating boards my father (an EE for decades, no stranger to PCB layout) described as "art."
All these guys were well compensated for their work and in some cases had more work than they could handle. So, if you're a programmer - find something that you think has a market which interests you and you're highly qualified in, hone your skills, and market yourself. You will never be able to be a contractor as a Java programmer - you're a total commodity.
If you want to talk about inappropriate use of contractors...well, the IRS has been cracking down on companies that use contractor status to avoid payroll taxes and benefits. My state has been, too.
If the video showed a naked guy with a small penis, or a girl fucking a horrendously ugly guy, that could be every bit as embarrassing for the small-dicked man or the woman in question as this was for the homosexual man.
No, actually, and this goes to show how ignorant you are on GLBT issues.
GLBT individuals don't face "embarrassment." They have to face things like "being disowned by their family" "fired from their jobs" "excommunication from their religious communities", and
"being a target of physical violence."
While we should work towards a society where GLBT people don't have to hide - it's still their choice when they come out and to whom.
You know what this was? This was kid who grew up in a country where being gay is illegal, who found himself living with a gay roommate, was really threatened/offended/bigoted, and decided to "out" the kid to get rid of him. Just spend a few minutes with Google - India's views on homosexuality are amongst the most hostile on the planet.
OK, I really don't mean this to be rude, but what do you consider "a lot"? For example, some people consider walking or yoga to be exercise. That's a start, but it's pretty low on the calories-per-unit-of-time scale. Swimming is one of the highest, as is cross-country skiing and cycling.
If you have tried running but found it to bore you out of your skull, I would heartily suggest Ultimate Frisbee - the people can be really cool (it's a sport started by hippies, so it tends to appeal to a somewhat more friendly crowd), it's a no-intentional-contact sport, and the action will keep you distracted.
... and I've found that my endurance has gone up considerably since I started
Yep, it doesn't take long to notice a change in strength and endurance!
but I'm just as fat as I ever was. At least I'm not gaining any more weight... still undesirably obese though.
Make sure you're exercising in the right heart rate zone - the kind that burns fat is actually pretty low effort. A heartrate monitor, even a really cheap one, will help.
Beyond that, it's a fairly simple equation of calories burned versus calories consumed. Portion control is the name of the game. Lots of studies have found eating a good breakfast will help with through-the-day appetite issues. Nancy Clark's Nutritional Guidebook is a pretty decent read, with a lot of good generation nutritional advice (the short version: eat breakfast, eat enough carbs, eat dairy, don't overeat protein, and eat lots of different colors of foods.)
Also, from someone who got into a lot of exercise/active stuff in the last couple of years: avoid over-use issues and boredom by doing a few different activities. For example: bike, swim, walk/jog, etc. I did a lot of running to start with and had tons of issues with my joints and tendons. When I switched to a bit of biking and running around and swimming, the overuse issues disappeared.
They're a bit late to this game, Amazon is pretty entrenched with Kindles already in most people's hands, and at prices which are far more approachable than iPads.
What's entrenched: Apple, with millions of iPhones, iPod Touches, and iPads in the hands of teenagers and college students.
Slashdot Mirror
which began in late June but has only just been confirmed as Ebola
Operative words being "just confirmed" - I'm sure doctors and researchers have known since July 1st that it was Ebola.
The problem is that the governments in these countries are terrified of not the threat of Ebola spreading, but of damage to commerce, particularly tourism - and will coerce researchers and doctors to not discuss or reveal outbreaks.
For nearly a decade, my neighborhood has seen people getting mugged for their iPhones almost nightly.
Basically: there's a public housing complex 2-3 stops up the line. Our neighborhood has a lot of affluent 20-30 year old professionals, grad students, etc.
Guess what? People who think the world Owes Them like an easy commute just as much as you do. They jump off the subway, walk up and down the street until they find someone, mug them, and run off - usually back onto the subway, or get picked up by a buddy a block or two over. In the time it takes to even find someone to call 911 for you, they could have walked several blocks and are effectively gone.
Apple is unique in that their devices are managed heavily by iTunes and their online systems. A blacklist could be implemented within months - Apple has plenty of inhouse resources to make it happen. They'd rather sell you a new phone - every theft is a new sale.
That's probably a list for "Jack Daniels", not the logo. Even if not - the logo doesn't have to be registered in any particular product segments in order to be protected. Your trademark is YOUR MARK. YOURS. Assigned to you. Nobody else. To indicate and brand your products. If someone else makes a product of any kind with a nearly identical logo, that's not allowed, because it causes confusion and leads people to believe the 3rd party product came from you. "JD has no case here, and should not be sending C&D letters to authors, no matter how nicely worded." No, the author's artist shouldn't have scanned (and then ever so slightly altered, by adding one or two flourishes) a company's logo for the cover of his book. The lifting of the log is extremely blatant - the result is predictable, and given the publisher's name and the author's assholeish "fuck the man!" response, I'd say they did it specifically for publicity.
She and her husband continue to show the best side of capitalism.
http://blogs.edweek.org/teachers/living-in-dialogue/2012/07/the_gates_foundations_leverage.html
Essentially, the foundation makes donations to organizations both it and the Gates personally own stock in or have other investments with.
If you think that the B&MGF makes donations purely out of the goodness of their hearts, then you a)are naive and b)have no idea what 95% of most celebrity/rich-people foundations are for. Celebrities do it for personal marketing and tax shelters. Sports players do it to employ relatives and tax shelters. Rich people do it for social status and essentially write off the cost of their parties, aka tax shelters.
Tax-writeoffs for charities need to end - you shouldn't get to short the government on infrastructure and stuff that benefits everyone, just to benefit your personal cause. Why should a bunch of rich white asshole golf players get to make a donation to a charity in their hometown where the median income is the highest in the entire state, which goes to benefit waterfowl...and then not pay that money to their state, which paves their roads and pays for the homeless shelters and healthcare services for the poor?
They're not implying that he was killed for the mansion. They're implying that Easton benefited financially from an organ transplant. Perhaps, for example, he looked the other way at whether Jobs was qualified medically to receive the organ. Or received the house so he wouldn't bring it to anyone's attention that Jobs was doing the organ-transplant version of carpetbagging.
Jobs wasn't just "sort of" a jerk - he used his wealth to exploit the organ transplant system by having "residence" in the state with the lowest waiting list.
The doctor never should have accepted the house. The doubt cast on the impartiality of the organ transplant system and medical profession, even if there was nothing actually improper in the doctor's behavior, is trouble enough.
I've had an Android app for at least 6 months which can detect heartbeat rates from a person's face.
I'm not sure what MIT "invented" here.
You're seriously using a consumer-level desktop chassis for enterprise routing? You're not doing enterprise *anything*. See the title of this post. If you showed up with anything except a 1U rackmount machine, I'd show you the door.
The sections of ship are designed to be isolable from each other. Close a door, shut some duct work to isolate air, and you're fat dumb and happy back in the engine room!
Uh, except commenters and Wikipedia both say that's not true - that the Los Angeles class has only 1-2 bulkhead doors and they most likely had cables and plumbing passed through, making them impossible to seal.
I guess you're just full of shit, then, and lying about serving on one of these subs. Nobody knows you're a dog on the internet, huh?
I'm sure that the nuclear operators stayed at their watch stations during all this
Why? The reactor's probably completely shutdown in drydock anyway, but....SCRAM the reactor, grab your jacket, and exit stage left like everyone else. It's a PWR reactor - not a liquid metal reactor that would be permanently damaged by shutdown.
Is there really a point to sticking around? I'm genuinely curious.
RMS has spent his life fighting for your rights.
No. Richard Stallman has spent most of his adult life:
He shares a disturbing number of qualities with your average cult leader.
It was only until many other more reasonable voices and non-FSF software appeared that the open source movement gained traction. And what was his response? Continual bitterness, which has shown up in him demanding Linux be called GNU/Linux.
While revered by some geeks, he's almost completely ignored by government, academia, and industry and not taken seriously by anyone with power in any of them. He is a sociopathic egomaniac, and while I wish to hell he'd retire to a small corner of the world - I don't want it to be because of poor health, and I hope he's better soon.
...not attacking us; there's no point. They want to challenge our force projection and protection of other countries, especially those they want land and resources from. They could care fuck-all about North America. They want oil, rare earth metals, and territory buffer/control near them. We've been a thorn in their side, protecting Japan and a whole lot of the rest of Asia from them.
The US outspends China almost 10:1, and has for the past 10 years, that doesn't look to be changing, but China will still be spending more in 13 years than the US, who is spending 10 times as much today.
Did you even TRY to verify your facts before you posted that? Or are you seriously believing the official China figures of $25BN? You're off by an enormous amount:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_budget_of_the_People%27s_Republic_of_China#Comparison_with_other_countries
"Jane's Defence Forecasts in 2012 estimated that China's defense budget would increase from $119.80 billion to $238.20 billion between 2011 and 2015. This would make it larger than the defense budgets of all other major Asian nations combined."
That's about a third of current US military spending. Which is currently declining (as it should.) And was sized to support 2 wars, both of which are largely over. And the current pentagon leadership has declared their spending to be unsustainable for the country.
Electric steering pumps are increasingly common - they're compact, easy to locate anywhere, easy to control which simplifies hydraulics, and help with fuel economy since there's much less parasitic load.
Even back in the 80's, it was a problem. Audi located the battery in the back seat for crash safety, engine compartment room, and battery longevity (less temperature extremes) - but the cable that goes to the front is pretty damn massive, and failures where they splice a Y off to the main fusebox is fairly common and cause lots of problems because of the voltage drop. The problem was exacerbated by the use of an electric cooling fan which could draw well over a thousand watts - I think the fuseable link by the fan motor is rated for over 100A.
Car companies have been making noises about switching to 24V systems, with a 12V bus only for cigarette lighter accessories...it'd cut down significantly on the size of the wiring needed (which means cutting down on weight!) and transmission losses, both of which will improve gas economy.
You wonder why their government might panic at anything that even remotely hints as being climate-related? 100 billion reasons.
But I doubt his broken nose claim is true.
I've seen at least two people's noses broken through accidental contact on a sports field. In one case, there wasn't even much blood. In both cases, you couldn't tell anything was wrong just by looking at them, and these were both people I'd known for years. Yet you expect to judge whether a nose is broken on a dude you've never seen in person, from a blurry, low resolution video? Seriously?
Also, what's with this "forensic voiceprint" bullshit? Is this of the same caliber as "forensic hair analysis", which was used to put hundreds of innocent (and mostly black men) people on death row? This is the most irresponsible bullshit I've ever seen Slashdot come up with - you're helping try him in the court of public opinion, not to mention providing a huge slashvertisement for owen.
If you want an extra sensor for something, they are happy to give it to you - but they will want to know why, and if they don't think it's needed, they'll try to talk you out of it. I had the feeling they actually cared about my interests, and not selling me more equipment.
That's because the more sensors you have, the more likely you are to have false alarms, need warranty service, etc.
They also have additional styles of sensors that the average joe doesn't care about (ones that you install in the door, rather than putting on the outside of the door - i.e. invisible)
You're joking, right? Doorjam sensors have been in popular use for decades. They're not popular among DIY'ers because you have to drill the door and doorjam (and get the alignment of both right), and it's not trivial to get the wiring there (ie a trained installer or electrician is needed.)
Assuming you live in Florida, start by chasing down passers-by with your car and shooting them with your gun.
You forgot the part where you lose sight of the passer-by, the passer-by (who is a foot taller than you) then chases *you* down, starts screaming, punches you in the face knocking you to the ground, and then proceeds to beat the stuffing out of you. In front of witnesses. Just for following him.
Treyvor Martin was a wannabe thug with a chip on his shoulder who was angry at the world for being suspended from school where he was dealing drugs. Funny how nobody is talking about black hatred for non-blacks here, or his drug problems?
Many people have noticed in the online samples that you can't focus clearly on far-away objects; they sorta get sharper, but not anywhere as sharp as foreground details. So that awesome picture of you on top of a mountain? You'll be nice and sharp, but the background never will be. Kind of spoils it, when the whole point is to be able to click and have one or the other be super sharp, right?
Also, it needs absurd amounts of light according to Gizmodo, or image noise becomes horrendous. Which is not surprising, given how hard Nikon and Canon are pushing the edge of what's possible in their sensors + image processors, and how small the individual lenses are. Great for sunny places. Not so much for indoors.
I for one am fed up with the constant assault of cell phone conversations from people who have no idea how to be considerate to those around them.
While you're sitting there like a fat little smug antisocial nerd who thinks the world revolves around him and reading his Ayn Rand in peace and quiet, the psychologist three seats in front of you is desperately hoping that none of his patients are feeling suicidal at that particular moment.
I have friends who are doctors, some of them psychologists. They're on call a great deal of the time, and people don't call their psychologist to talk about the weather. They call with things like "I'm having suicidal thoughts."
I have a friend who is an eye surgeon. When she's on-call, she sometimes gets patients who have hours or less before they could permanently lose their eyesight from an injury or complications from an earlier surgery.
I'm not saying THEY are more important. I'm saying their PATIENTS are. You have not seen panic until you've seen a psychologist who has a private practice and discovers her cell phone ran out of battery at some point, and she's an hour from a charger...
I've actually seen a psych emergency unfold, too - the psychologist-friend working with 911 operators and the police and EMS to find the patient and get them to a hospital. That can't happen unless they can reach their doctor to ask for help. Too bad for them some fat asshole nerd is sitting there giggling with his cell phone jammer.
Even if someone decides to enter S&E career fields, there are very few real jobs offered by real employers -- it is much easier to use "this gun is for hire" contractors that you can REALLY abuse and dump with few consequences.
Contractors are used with great success appropriately. My father contracted out to a number of contractors the company could never justify having full-time, to do specialist work, which is the whole point. For example - a guy who knew CCDs inside and out. Another specialized in PCB layout, generating boards my father (an EE for decades, no stranger to PCB layout) described as "art."
All these guys were well compensated for their work and in some cases had more work than they could handle. So, if you're a programmer - find something that you think has a market which interests you and you're highly qualified in, hone your skills, and market yourself. You will never be able to be a contractor as a Java programmer - you're a total commodity.
If you want to talk about inappropriate use of contractors...well, the IRS has been cracking down on companies that use contractor status to avoid payroll taxes and benefits. My state has been, too.
If the video showed a naked guy with a small penis, or a girl fucking a horrendously ugly guy, that could be every bit as embarrassing for the small-dicked man or the woman in question as this was for the homosexual man.
No, actually, and this goes to show how ignorant you are on GLBT issues.
GLBT individuals don't face "embarrassment." They have to face things like
"being disowned by their family"
"fired from their jobs"
"excommunication from their religious communities", and
"being a target of physical violence."
While we should work towards a society where GLBT people don't have to hide - it's still their choice when they come out and to whom.
You know what this was? This was kid who grew up in a country where being gay is illegal, who found himself living with a gay roommate, was really threatened/offended/bigoted, and decided to "out" the kid to get rid of him. Just spend a few minutes with Google - India's views on homosexuality are amongst the most hostile on the planet.
I've made a point of exercising a lot lately
OK, I really don't mean this to be rude, but what do you consider "a lot"? For example, some people consider walking or yoga to be exercise. That's a start, but it's pretty low on the calories-per-unit-of-time scale. Swimming is one of the highest, as is cross-country skiing and cycling.
If you have tried running but found it to bore you out of your skull, I would heartily suggest Ultimate Frisbee - the people can be really cool (it's a sport started by hippies, so it tends to appeal to a somewhat more friendly crowd), it's a no-intentional-contact sport, and the action will keep you distracted.
Yep, it doesn't take long to notice a change in strength and endurance!
but I'm just as fat as I ever was. At least I'm not gaining any more weight... still undesirably obese though.
Make sure you're exercising in the right heart rate zone - the kind that burns fat is actually pretty low effort. A heartrate monitor, even a really cheap one, will help.
Beyond that, it's a fairly simple equation of calories burned versus calories consumed. Portion control is the name of the game. Lots of studies have found eating a good breakfast will help with through-the-day appetite issues. Nancy Clark's Nutritional Guidebook is a pretty decent read, with a lot of good generation nutritional advice (the short version: eat breakfast, eat enough carbs, eat dairy, don't overeat protein, and eat lots of different colors of foods.)
Also, from someone who got into a lot of exercise/active stuff in the last couple of years: avoid over-use issues and boredom by doing a few different activities. For example: bike, swim, walk/jog, etc. I did a lot of running to start with and had tons of issues with my joints and tendons. When I switched to a bit of biking and running around and swimming, the overuse issues disappeared.
Most of the petrol station was destroyed. It was amazing to see so many people run so fast...
OK, so I know from you calling it "petrol" that this wasn't the US, but...they don't have required fire suppression systems in your country?
Here in the US, every gas station has to have an automatic fire suppression system. When they let go, it's very, very impressive...
They've been hammering at this for years, and we have yet to see anything more than a jacket with buttons for your MP3 player enter the market.
What's the obsession?
They're a bit late to this game, Amazon is pretty entrenched with Kindles already in most people's hands, and at prices which are far more approachable than iPads.
What's entrenched: Apple, with millions of iPhones, iPod Touches, and iPads in the hands of teenagers and college students.