The reason the guns looked so awesome in Star Wars was because they were made from real guns. Many of them were made from, or based on, real, practical designs. The science fiction element was that they shot laser beams.
If I recall, Han Solo's pistol had a huge rifle scope on it. You think it looks "realistic", but I've read several rants from 'gun nerds' complaining how ridiculous "hollwood" gets things.
The amount of electronics in modern cars is ridiculous, especially when you think about how often electronics break and how easily they're broken.
My mom has a ford escape, there have been two wiring recalls and the wiring has failed on two separate occasions.
Fords have had wiring problems since the late 70's. There was a massive recall (which took lots of pounding by the Feds for Ford to actually do something about) that involved ignition switches causing dashboard fires, while the car sat in people's driveways. Seriously: the switches would fail suddenly and the cars would burn to the ground, often setting people's homes on fire. Ford didn't give a shit- they kept producing the same design year after year, knowing it was defective.
Let's be honest, folks: We're a minority. Not in the sense this word has to day, but really: We're a small group and thus we don't exist for politicians.
Nobody exists for politicians. They serve at our pleasure.
Don't vote for someone because the polls said they'd win.
Don't vote for someone because they look good.
Don't vote for someone because they say catchy things.
Don't vote for someone simply because they're incumbent.
Don't vote for someone because they promise you something, because they're not paying for it: we are.
Vote for someone because you think they represent you. Your primary concern, for example, with any incumbent - is how good a representative they've been.
Eh? Why does anyone sue? To hurt the defendant's feelings? Would the plaintiffs be happy if the Judge said "fair enough" and somehow awarded them MBP's with better screens? Of course not.
If Apple made $10M by using 6 bit screens instead of 8 bit screens *and* lied to customers, then a lawsuit for $10M can be viewed as confiscation of said profits. If they were particularly "evil" about doing it, punitive damages might be involved. Apple cares about profits above everything else, like any other publicly held company. If a 6 bit screen saves them $10M but costs them a $10M-plus-everyone's-legal-fees lawsuit, in theory, they'll either be more upfront next time, or use 8 bit screens.
Lawsuits are perfectly normal and necessary. This whole "OMG OMG, LAWSUITZ ARE TEH EVIL!" crap is really cliche.
I'm not saying that WiFi is dangerous, but as a precedent people have often generally underestimated some dangers with emerging technologies and we should never discount such a thing could happen.
RF is a technology which predates all of the "technologies" you mentioned. It's understood.
There are no health effects, except at very high exposure levels- the kind found in TV/radio transmission equipment. Hundreds of watts or more, in close proximity.
Your microwave oven puts out about 1500W, versus around 100mW. Unless your microwave's shielding is more than 99.993% effective, your microwave is putting out just as much (or more) juice than your laptop.
When you risk getting informants or cops murdered in reprisal killings. That seems like a good line to draw.
Reprisal killings are this big scary monster that is blown way out of proportion. About 50 officers a year are murdered, and in '04, there were ~850,000 officers in the US. That's a homicide victim rate of 0.00058%. Guess what it is nation-wide? 0.0056%. You read that correctly. Police officers have a homicide victim rate that is one tenth that of the general population despite working a job we'd assume puts them at more danger of being murdered. The #1 cause of death for police? Traffic collisions, overwhelmingly. Don't believe me? Go check out the DoJ and FBI statistics; they spend a lot of effort compiling these stats.
On the flip side, "snitches" are a huge problem, as are "expert" witnesses. If you want to be scared out of your mind, read John Grisham's The Innocent Man: Murder and Injustice in a Small Town, ISBN 0385517238. A hick prosecutor and police department, with plenty of help from a state crime lab "expert", put SEVERAL men on DEATH ROW despite massive flaws in the evidence and witnesses against them and horrendously flawed trials.
I've really enjoyed reading lot's of the ignorant comments people are making about the Indy 500, so in short let me explain why this is, not only important from a sporting perspective but also from and environmental and technical perspective as well.
You might want to use better grammar if you're going to complain about ignorance.
1. The Indianapolis is the biggest annual sporting event. Period. More people attend, and more people watch on TV worldwide then any other event.
Bullshit. The Indy 500 is about 110 million viewers. The world cup held in France in 1998 had 2 BILLION people watching.
This year all Indy cars run on Ethanol 85. While this isn't solar, it's far better then the traditional Gas of the past (hell I believe NASCAR is just now *thinking* about phasing out leaded gas).
I know very little about NASCAR, but a quick google search says they're using unleaded gas right now, the 2007 season.
The rest of your post was so rambling and incoherent, I couldn't find any way to respond. It is patently obvious you have never watched any other form of racing (namely, that you're quite ignorant yourself.) Most of the competitive elements you describe are present in most other forms of auto/bike racing.
I don't get the obsession with texting that some teenagers have. Why text when you can talk?
You can do so in a noisy environment (for everyone: bus, train. For students? The cafeteria, etc.)
You can do so in a quiet environment (class)
You can do it in low-signal-strength areas
Like, you totally can't call up Johnny-the-uncool-but-cute boy and say "sure, I'll go to the movies with you friday" with your friends in earshot. But OMG, you can text him and they'll never know!
Texts are also, in general, handy for when you want to get a quick message to someone without forcing them to drop everything. A phone call has more "drop what you're doing and look!", and voicemails are a pain when you can read in 1-2 button-presses what the message is.
Now, I don't understand why parents are obsessed with getting their kids cell phones. I remember NYC was going to ban them, and parents had a SHITFIT, as if being able to call their precious baby would save them from a terrorist attack...
Nothing in this addresses links that show up in email clients or browsers as say, www.yourbankyouknowandlove.com instead of where they really take you- an IP address of some random server run by the phisher.
If email clients were fixed to show the REAL url on mouseover, people wouldn't click the links in the first place. If browsers (well, mostly IE) were fixed such that you couldn't obfuscate the *real* URL, people would realize quickly what was going on.
Working with a lot of office people, they're all sharp enough to pick up on stuff like this pretty quickly (we use all macs, so we have neither problem- Safari and Apple Mail aren't "spoofed.")
An investigation into the failure found that the controllers for the pumps locked up following a spike in data traffic -- referred to as a "data storm" in the NRC notice -- on the power plant's internal control system network. The deluge of data was apparently caused by a separate malfunctioning control device, known as a programmable logic controller (PLC).
"Conversations between the Homeland Security Committee staff and the NRC representatives suggest that it is possible that this incident could have come from outside the plant," Committee Chairman Bennie G. Thompson (D-Miss.) and Subcommittee Chairman James R. Langevin (D-RI) stated in the letter. "Unless and until the cause of the excessive network load can be explained, there is no way for either the licensee (power company) or the NRC to know that this was not an external distributed denial-of-service attack."
Wow. Just...wow. As if you needed more proof that this wasn't a hacking attempt:
"The integrated control system (ICS) network is not connected to the network outside the plant, but it is connected to a very large number of controllers and devices in the plant," Johnson said. "You can end up with a lot of information, and it appears to be more than it could handle."
Seriously, how stupid do you have to be to think "OMG, Haxxors?" Answer: work at Homeland inSecurity, or be a Congresscritter. They already figured it out. It was a controller for a specific piece of equipment that flooded the network and triggered a bug in the variable-frequency-drive controllers for pumps.
Efforts to make computer programming accessible to young people began in the late 1970s with the advent of the personal PC, when another programming language with roots at MIT -- Logo -- allowed young people to draw shapes by steering a turtle around a screen by typing out commands.
From what I remember of Logo, few people in the class "got" it. Everyone in CS harps on and on about how great logo is, but most of my classmates in grade-school just laughed when the "turtle" did stupid things, and asked the teacher for help (ie, to fix it for them.)
To say teaching Logo "teaches programming" is akin to saying that having your kid watch you inflate your tires is "teaching car repair."
Assume everyone is aware of this [chicagotribune.com] unfortunate story from a couple weeks ago. My suggestion is that these teachers and the principle do a little time of their own.
I'm not aware, no- and your link is registration-only.
I think we agree, though: why aren't they in jail and the local DA mulling over terrorism charges? They terrified a couple dozen students...
how can they possibly be doing this, and it not be a problem for other players?
Well, for one thing, the touch-sensitive scroll-wheel is somewhat (though certainly not completely) unique. They use capacitive touch sensing. They utilize a low-voltage, low current AC voltage to measure the change in capacitance when you move your finger over the sensor. The googles say 102kHz is common.
My "second generation" nano produces a high-pitched noise whenever it's on- it's noticeable if you have it within 2 feet or so of your head. I'm pretty sure it is the inverter that generates the AC current, but if it's 120kHz, that shouldn't be possible, unless there's a resonant frequency in the audible range.
Maybe the sensor just happens to use a frequency that confuses pacemakers. Now that Apple is aware of the problem, they might do some testing and change it on future iPods.
Pointing out a potential flaw or bias in a source of data is, in and of itself, a legitimate debate tactic. (And you might look up the meaning of ad hominem - it doesn't mean what you seem to think it means.)
I did look it up. You used ad hominem circumstantial: you said all the people supplying the data showing profitability of solar panels had a "vested interest" and insinuated that their argument was predisposed. Wikipedia (and other sites) define ad hominem circumstantial: "Ad hominem circumstantial involves pointing out that someone is in circumstances such that he is disposed to take a particular position. Essentially, ad hominem circumstantial constitutes an attack on the bias of a person. The reason that this is fallacious is that pointing out that one's opponent is disposed to make a certain argument does not make the argument, from a logical point of view, any less credible; this overlaps with the genetic fallacy (an argument that a claim is incorrect due to its source).
You did this instead of actually providing evidence that the data is wrong, or even presenting alternative data. You simply said, "They're liars!".
Stop using logical fallacies and prove me wrong on the original topic- whether the data showing solar panels pay themselves back within a few months to a few years, usually well before the warranty expires.
Sure, I find many informative pages on the subject - all from people with a vested interest in convincing you that solar power is a good idea, (either because of their politics or because they want to sell the systems to you).
How about challenging the math, instead of the people? Ie, using legitimate debate tactics, instead of engaging in ad hominem?
The output of the panels can be tested and verified, as can solar radiation for a particular area. The cost of electricity, interest rates, etc are all known facts...
You can save more money if you store energy during the cheap period of the night.
[Long, complex, convoluted, yet still oversimplified air-compression-energy-storage system snipped]
Don't bother. Cut your energy usage as much as possible during peak rates, so that you put energy back into the grid from your solar/wind/hydro when you'll earn the most money. Same effect, much, much simpler. Your "plan" made some pretty serious assumptions about scale, safety, and complexity. The devil is in the details.
Do your laundry at night, and if you want something to tinker with, use a thermal reservoir to heat or cool fluid which can be circulated through your central air system, if you have one. The cold or warm water can be used not to keep the house comfortable during the day (when nobody is around), but for right before you get home. It's amazing how much heat can be put into water...1000cc's of water can store ~4kJ from just ONE degree Celcius temperature change. A 55 gallon drum of water has a potential of 832kJ per degree Celcius. Now, let's say you raise its temperature from 20C (room temp) to 60C; you're looking at 33MJ, or (god, I hope I did all my unit conversions and math correctly), 9kWhrs. Naturally there will be some losses even if you use decent insulation, but...
The math with current photovoltaics will not come out in favour until the fossil fuel rises by a factor of at least 10 times. Does not matter what, how, who, where. They are simply too expensive to provide a reasonable ROI. They also have a very high environmental cost to produce so people who buy them are not doing a lot of good to the environment.
This is a myth often repeated. I'm going to simply point to a google search that will net many informative results. You'll find numerous calculations which all come to similar conclusions: solar panels have an "energy payback" of a few months to a few years, and their warranties extend well beyond the point where they become a source of income for the owner. This does NOT apply if you cannot place the panels where they will collect sunlight, or a geographic region which does not get enough solar power; there are plenty of online and physical tools to help with the evaluation of both. Solar power is not for everyone, just like hybrids are not for everyone.
There's one big caveat: wattage ratings for most panels are slightly inflated, because they're based off standardized tests using light sources which generate more light energy than you can find here on planet earth. Some manufacturers and retailers are upfront about this; others are not. Size the system off calculations based on your location, not spec sheets.
Photovoltaics are a gimmick, similar to the hybrid cars which allow metrosexuals and hollywood stars to show off some fake green credentials.
As a horsepower lovin' pistonhead, I eye hybrid owners' "my car runs on lolipops and giggles" attitude with some amusement (buying a car that burns gas does not "help reduce our foreign dependency on oil", if you understand that we have to buy oil from many sources for the nation's economic stability, no matter how much of it we use...and that consumer gasoline usage pales in comparison to commercial sector use, namely, petrochemical and truck/train/plane fuel), but hybrids DO most certainly make sense for heavy urban driving, which is exactly what they were designed for in the countries where they hit the public retail market big time: Japan. When Toyota came out with a full-size hybrid (Camry), they've been popping up all over Boston as taxicabs. The two keys are a)heavy usage and b)urban or other stop-and-go driving. Without the heavy usage, the gas savings don't compensate for the additional energy+materials (and hence additional price), and without the stop-and-go driving, hybrids are no more efficient than cars with similar drag-reducing design but regular powertrains.
Hybrids do not make sense for highway cruising commutes, which many people bought them for in the initial craze, mostly because they didn't do their homework. If your drive does not involve a fair amount of speed changes (ie, heavy stop and go traffic), a hybrid car is not for you. Buy a CDI/TDI diesel, or one of the lighter-weight Honda or Toyota econoboxes from 5-10 years ago. Just be aware, Hondas prior to 2000 or so have abysmal crash ratings (I don't know about Toyotas.) Use the money saved to switch over to energy efficient bulbs, install hot water solar collectors on your house, blow in insulation, buy new windows, etc.
Actually, it is her job to do whatever it takes to identify a fake ID.
No, it isn't. She's tasked with identifying whether it is a fake ID or not, which is done simply by examining the ID itself for relevant seals, holograms, and stamps. It's not rocket science. The exception are IDs issued fraudulently (ie by corrupt registry officials), in which case, she/the bar probably aren't liable, since they have little way of knowing it's fake. She has absolutely no excuse for engaging in (as it turns out, completely invalid) "logical" religious profiling to decide whether or not to serve customers.
And we have no data to suggest that the blogger didn't call the police, or at least notify them in the required fashion. It's perfectly possible (and indeed most likely) that once she has a photo of the fake ID, she turns the fakes in to the proper authorities or otherwise disposes of them in accordance with the local regulations.
So she takes the ID, runs back to her locker, scans the license, calls the police, and then hands over the fake ID to the cops? Riiiiiiiight.
If she had called the cops, she wouldn't have the ID, because they'd collect it as evidence. It's pretty safe to assume that she has never called the cops for any of the IDs she's posted online.
As for your comments about a "ring" getting pissed or about the criminal's (yes, a person using a fake ID is a criminal) family or the criminal themself getting pissed, that's a wonderful sentiment. Let's not take effective measures to shame people because we're afraid that they might be mean to us if we hurt their feelings.
How is it "effective measures" to not call the cops? Hell, if the DA gets wind of this and isn't in a very good mood, she could find herself (or the place she works at) under scrutiny for NOT calling the cops; they're probably required to do so by state law or liquor license stipulations.
It's laughable logic to say that posting scans of illegal IDs is more justifiable than simply reporting it to the police.
Either way, trying to claim it was an original work seems really dangerous as its basically an admission of forgery.
Yep, it was not very smart. Until the DCMA request was filed, the only thing the underage girl could be reasonably convicted of when she hands a fake ID to someone is uttering, ie, presenting forged papers as legitimate. Well, and any additional laws she broke that may be specific to presenting false ID for the purpose of buying alcohol and being underage.
If she filed a DCMA request which implies she's the creator of the work, it's not terribly hard to prove that she's guilty of both forgery and saying.
Sidenote: I've seen half a dozen slashdotters declare "OF COURSE you can't copyright a forged document!", and yet have not offered any citations, explanations (that make any kind of sense) or case history. A cookie to the first poster that does.
Sidenote number two: I'm not really cheering for this waitress. She's got a severe "big fish, little pond" complex going.
It's not her job to play Twenty Questions, or Detective, or engage in religious profiling. Apparently the girl is from a "mostly Jewish" neighborhood, and while Jewish law prohibits desecration of a dead body, that does not mean someone from a "mostly Jewish" town WOULDN'T be an organ donor. Maybe their parents were Jewish, and they're agnostic, for fuck's sake. Why should someone have to explain all that to get a beer?
Confiscating a license, or any other ID, is a great way to end up in a heap of trouble unless it is specifically allowed in your jurisdiction (which it is, in many cases. But stupid if it's not.) The right way: take the ID, walk to the office, call the cops. Wrong way: taunt her, make fun of her, and NOT call the cops.
Posting people's IDs, forged or not, is a great example of spitting into the wind. The state is probably not terribly pleased at seeing examples of counterfeit documents posted, and if it turns out it IS a legitimate ID, now you're doubly fucked, because you just confiscated a valid ID, provided proof, AND copied an official state document, AND posted private information. If the forged ID came from a ring, they're going to be pissed their ID made it onto the net. The girl, her parents, friends, etc are going to be pissed too.That's a great way to wake up one morning and find your tires slashed and a rock through your windshield. Lose, lose, lose situation. And for what? Some attention-whoring on the 'net....
But if this shit becomes the norm, I'll start downloading everything for free, lawsuits be damned. Fuck these sons-of-bitches.
Nobody's holding a gun to your head saying, "LISTEN TO THESE MUSICIANS!", or "BUY COMPACT DISKS".
Go non-RIAA. Or better yet, go to a local concert or show. At least in my city, there's plenty of good stuff to check out, the cover charge is usually rather reasonable, and the bands probably see more of the money despite venue-friendly cover-charge-disbursement policies.
$20 for a CD of just the audio, or ~$5-8 for the full sound, feeling the thump of the drum set in your chest, the smells, the sounds, the spontaneity of a live show, the satisfaction that comes when you see a show where everything comes together, the social connection you may or may not form with your fellow audience members.
No, tough shit *you*. Thailand is enjoying something called sovereignty: the power to rule itself as a country. If they want to make a law banning showing the king next to feet- that's their goddamn right.
If they're happy, then there's no real problem. I'm guessing you're a "fellow" American. I wish people like you would stop giving our country a bad reputation as being full of arrogant, bossy idiots who want to tell everyone how to do things.
It gets kind of ridiculous. If the VT shootings hadn't happened, this whole episode wouldn't have happened. If nobody read his comics, this whole episode wouldn't have happened.
If he had kept his mouth shut at work about describing in graphic detail how to kill someone with a 22 rifle, this whole episode wouldn't have happened. If he hadn't cracked a joke in the termination "meeting" (or invented it in the webcomic) which could pretty clearly be misinterpreted, this whole episode wouldn't have happened.
I read the two comic strips, and I have zero sympathy for him. Both discussions/comments were incredibly stupid, if that's what he actually said. He's a complete idiot if he didn't think describing in graphic detail:
You'd practically have to put it in someone's face and pull the trigger. And even then, fire a few more times to make sure the job is done
Ummm...if I overheard that, I'd probably say something like, "Guys. Not appropriate workplace conversation." Oh, and then it gets better.
But I didn't have any reason to go postal. Well, hypothetically, NOW I do. I mean, wait, no.
Niiiiiiice. Put that on your list of top ten things not to say on the exit interview.
He's guilty of, at most, assault- and before a bunch of slashdotters go screaming about "free speech", guess what? Threatening speech simply needs to leave the victim feeling threatened. It doesn't matter what you thought, meant, felt, whatever. It's how the receiver felt. And I'd be pretty creeped out if I was present at his termination meeting and heard, "well, i didn't have a reason to go postal. Until now." I'd probably write it off as nervous humor, but I'd also have a pretty graphic image of making tomorrow's mid-day news, and NOT in a good way.
Also, he is a contract employee who can be released at any time for any reason, even moreso than a normal at-will employee who also can be released at any time for any reason.
Only within the terms of his contract. Sorry, just couldn't resist after you made "contract" italics and got all righteous. "Contract employee" does not mean "company's little bitch", and in fact, a contract worker can have more protection from sudden termination. Most of us are "at will" employees, and simply having something in your contract that prohibits your employer from firing you for no reason, gives you more rights. If worded reasonably (ie not "I AM UNFIREABLE FOR A YEAR!"), you MAY get that concession.
If you don't like being an at-will employee: get fired for no reason, sue, and get it far up enough to MAYBE be heard by the supreme court, because they're the ones who set the horrendous precedent in the first place. You don't have a prayer of getting legislation even presented, much less making it past committee, because of all the lobbying.
Apache - still one of the most popular web servers out there. One of the most flexible and adaptable. It just rocks.
"Flexible" and "adaptable" are far too polite ways of saying what it really is: complex. Apache, despite being very elderly, isn't mature at all. Its configuration file is haphazard, full of nuances and inconsistencies; for years, most apache installations had "apache.conf" and "httpd.conf", and damned if I ever knew what directives belong where. It's the only software I know of where you have to instruct the software to load shared library modules AND "activate" them. It is a nightmare to troubleshoot. Want a laundry list of examples of how bad it is? See Why I hate the Apache Webserver for the full monty.
I find Apache to be the biggest pain in the ass of any software I've had to configure/use in almost ten years of using Unix/Linux. It's also the slowest and most bloated- servers like lighttpd contain the things that 95% of the market needs, and is hands-down faster in every benchmark I've ever seen. It's my opinion that every distribution that is desktop oriented should install lighttpd (if any webserver at all) to increase competition and encourage the apache people to get on the ball with making their software easier to use and less bloated.
Slashdot Mirror
No "on" switch. No "off" switch. Lame.
The reason the guns looked so awesome in Star Wars was because they were made from real guns. Many of them were made from, or based on, real, practical designs. The science fiction element was that they shot laser beams.
If I recall, Han Solo's pistol had a huge rifle scope on it. You think it looks "realistic", but I've read several rants from 'gun nerds' complaining how ridiculous "hollwood" gets things.
The amount of electronics in modern cars is ridiculous, especially when you think about how often electronics break and how easily they're broken. My mom has a ford escape, there have been two wiring recalls and the wiring has failed on two separate occasions.
Fords have had wiring problems since the late 70's. There was a massive recall (which took lots of pounding by the Feds for Ford to actually do something about) that involved ignition switches causing dashboard fires, while the car sat in people's driveways. Seriously: the switches would fail suddenly and the cars would burn to the ground, often setting people's homes on fire. Ford didn't give a shit- they kept producing the same design year after year, knowing it was defective.
I think the Ford focus set a world record for the most number of recalls (sample google result: http://consumeraffairs.com/news02/ford_focus.html)
Let's be honest, folks: We're a minority. Not in the sense this word has to day, but really: We're a small group and thus we don't exist for politicians.
Nobody exists for politicians. They serve at our pleasure.
Don't vote for someone because the polls said they'd win.
Don't vote for someone because they look good.
Don't vote for someone because they say catchy things.
Don't vote for someone simply because they're incumbent.
Don't vote for someone because they promise you something, because they're not paying for it: we are.
Vote for someone because you think they represent you. Your primary concern, for example, with any incumbent - is how good a representative they've been.
Eh? Why does anyone sue? To hurt the defendant's feelings? Would the plaintiffs be happy if the Judge said "fair enough" and somehow awarded them MBP's with better screens? Of course not.
If Apple made $10M by using 6 bit screens instead of 8 bit screens *and* lied to customers, then a lawsuit for $10M can be viewed as confiscation of said profits. If they were particularly "evil" about doing it, punitive damages might be involved. Apple cares about profits above everything else, like any other publicly held company. If a 6 bit screen saves them $10M but costs them a $10M-plus-everyone's-legal-fees lawsuit, in theory, they'll either be more upfront next time, or use 8 bit screens.
Lawsuits are perfectly normal and necessary. This whole "OMG OMG, LAWSUITZ ARE TEH EVIL!" crap is really cliche.
I'm not saying that WiFi is dangerous, but as a precedent people have often generally underestimated some dangers with emerging technologies and we should never discount such a thing could happen.
RF is a technology which predates all of the "technologies" you mentioned. It's understood.
There are no health effects, except at very high exposure levels- the kind found in TV/radio transmission equipment. Hundreds of watts or more, in close proximity.
Your microwave oven puts out about 1500W, versus around 100mW. Unless your microwave's shielding is more than 99.993% effective, your microwave is putting out just as much (or more) juice than your laptop.
When you risk getting informants or cops murdered in reprisal killings. That seems like a good line to draw.
Reprisal killings are this big scary monster that is blown way out of proportion. About 50 officers a year are murdered, and in '04, there were ~850,000 officers in the US. That's a homicide victim rate of 0.00058%. Guess what it is nation-wide? 0.0056%. You read that correctly. Police officers have a homicide victim rate that is one tenth that of the general population despite working a job we'd assume puts them at more danger of being murdered. The #1 cause of death for police? Traffic collisions, overwhelmingly. Don't believe me? Go check out the DoJ and FBI statistics; they spend a lot of effort compiling these stats.
On the flip side, "snitches" are a huge problem, as are "expert" witnesses. If you want to be scared out of your mind, read John Grisham's The Innocent Man: Murder and Injustice in a Small Town, ISBN 0385517238. A hick prosecutor and police department, with plenty of help from a state crime lab "expert", put SEVERAL men on DEATH ROW despite massive flaws in the evidence and witnesses against them and horrendously flawed trials.
I've really enjoyed reading lot's of the ignorant comments people are making about the Indy 500, so in short let me explain why this is, not only important from a sporting perspective but also from and environmental and technical perspective as well.
You might want to use better grammar if you're going to complain about ignorance.
1. The Indianapolis is the biggest annual sporting event. Period. More people attend, and more people watch on TV worldwide then any other event.
Bullshit. The Indy 500 is about 110 million viewers. The world cup held in France in 1998 had 2 BILLION people watching.
This year all Indy cars run on Ethanol 85. While this isn't solar, it's far better then the traditional Gas of the past (hell I believe NASCAR is just now *thinking* about phasing out leaded gas).
I know very little about NASCAR, but a quick google search says they're using unleaded gas right now, the 2007 season.
The rest of your post was so rambling and incoherent, I couldn't find any way to respond. It is patently obvious you have never watched any other form of racing (namely, that you're quite ignorant yourself.) Most of the competitive elements you describe are present in most other forms of auto/bike racing.
I don't get the obsession with texting that some teenagers have. Why text when you can talk?
Texts are also, in general, handy for when you want to get a quick message to someone without forcing them to drop everything. A phone call has more "drop what you're doing and look!", and voicemails are a pain when you can read in 1-2 button-presses what the message is.
Now, I don't understand why parents are obsessed with getting their kids cell phones. I remember NYC was going to ban them, and parents had a SHITFIT, as if being able to call their precious baby would save them from a terrorist attack...
Nothing in this addresses links that show up in email clients or browsers as say, www.yourbankyouknowandlove.com instead of where they really take you- an IP address of some random server run by the phisher.
If email clients were fixed to show the REAL url on mouseover, people wouldn't click the links in the first place. If browsers (well, mostly IE) were fixed such that you couldn't obfuscate the *real* URL, people would realize quickly what was going on.
Working with a lot of office people, they're all sharp enough to pick up on stuff like this pretty quickly (we use all macs, so we have neither problem- Safari and Apple Mail aren't "spoofed.")
Some choice quotes, emphasis added:
An investigation into the failure found that the controllers for the pumps locked up following a spike in data traffic -- referred to as a "data storm" in the NRC notice -- on the power plant's internal control system network. The deluge of data was apparently caused by a separate malfunctioning control device, known as a programmable logic controller (PLC).
"Conversations between the Homeland Security Committee staff and the NRC representatives suggest that it is possible that this incident could have come from outside the plant," Committee Chairman Bennie G. Thompson (D-Miss.) and Subcommittee Chairman James R. Langevin (D-RI) stated in the letter. "Unless and until the cause of the excessive network load can be explained, there is no way for either the licensee (power company) or the NRC to know that this was not an external distributed denial-of-service attack."
Wow. Just...wow. As if you needed more proof that this wasn't a hacking attempt:
"The integrated control system (ICS) network is not connected to the network outside the plant, but it is connected to a very large number of controllers and devices in the plant," Johnson said. "You can end up with a lot of information, and it appears to be more than it could handle."
Seriously, how stupid do you have to be to think "OMG, Haxxors?" Answer: work at Homeland inSecurity, or be a Congresscritter. They already figured it out. It was a controller for a specific piece of equipment that flooded the network and triggered a bug in the variable-frequency-drive controllers for pumps.
Efforts to make computer programming accessible to young people began in the late 1970s with the advent of the personal PC, when another programming language with roots at MIT -- Logo -- allowed young people to draw shapes by steering a turtle around a screen by typing out commands.
From what I remember of Logo, few people in the class "got" it. Everyone in CS harps on and on about how great logo is, but most of my classmates in grade-school just laughed when the "turtle" did stupid things, and asked the teacher for help (ie, to fix it for them.)
To say teaching Logo "teaches programming" is akin to saying that having your kid watch you inflate your tires is "teaching car repair."
Assume everyone is aware of this [chicagotribune.com] unfortunate story from a couple weeks ago. My suggestion is that these teachers and the principle do a little time of their own.
I'm not aware, no- and your link is registration-only.
I think we agree, though: why aren't they in jail and the local DA mulling over terrorism charges? They terrified a couple dozen students...
how can they possibly be doing this, and it not be a problem for other players?
Well, for one thing, the touch-sensitive scroll-wheel is somewhat (though certainly not completely) unique. They use capacitive touch sensing. They utilize a low-voltage, low current AC voltage to measure the change in capacitance when you move your finger over the sensor. The googles say 102kHz is common.
My "second generation" nano produces a high-pitched noise whenever it's on- it's noticeable if you have it within 2 feet or so of your head. I'm pretty sure it is the inverter that generates the AC current, but if it's 120kHz, that shouldn't be possible, unless there's a resonant frequency in the audible range.
Maybe the sensor just happens to use a frequency that confuses pacemakers. Now that Apple is aware of the problem, they might do some testing and change it on future iPods.
Pointing out a potential flaw or bias in a source of data is, in and of itself, a legitimate debate tactic. (And you might look up the meaning of ad hominem - it doesn't mean what you seem to think it means.)
I did look it up. You used ad hominem circumstantial: you said all the people supplying the data showing profitability of solar panels had a "vested interest" and insinuated that their argument was predisposed. Wikipedia (and other sites) define ad hominem circumstantial: "Ad hominem circumstantial involves pointing out that someone is in circumstances such that he is disposed to take a particular position. Essentially, ad hominem circumstantial constitutes an attack on the bias of a person. The reason that this is fallacious is that pointing out that one's opponent is disposed to make a certain argument does not make the argument, from a logical point of view, any less credible; this overlaps with the genetic fallacy (an argument that a claim is incorrect due to its source).
You did this instead of actually providing evidence that the data is wrong, or even presenting alternative data. You simply said, "They're liars!".
Stop using logical fallacies and prove me wrong on the original topic- whether the data showing solar panels pay themselves back within a few months to a few years, usually well before the warranty expires.
Sure, I find many informative pages on the subject - all from people with a vested interest in convincing you that solar power is a good idea, (either because of their politics or because they want to sell the systems to you).
How about challenging the math, instead of the people? Ie, using legitimate debate tactics, instead of engaging in ad hominem?
The output of the panels can be tested and verified, as can solar radiation for a particular area. The cost of electricity, interest rates, etc are all known facts...
You can save more money if you store energy during the cheap period of the night.
[Long, complex, convoluted, yet still oversimplified air-compression-energy-storage system snipped]
Don't bother. Cut your energy usage as much as possible during peak rates, so that you put energy back into the grid from your solar/wind/hydro when you'll earn the most money. Same effect, much, much simpler. Your "plan" made some pretty serious assumptions about scale, safety, and complexity. The devil is in the details.
Do your laundry at night, and if you want something to tinker with, use a thermal reservoir to heat or cool fluid which can be circulated through your central air system, if you have one. The cold or warm water can be used not to keep the house comfortable during the day (when nobody is around), but for right before you get home. It's amazing how much heat can be put into water...1000cc's of water can store ~4kJ from just ONE degree Celcius temperature change. A 55 gallon drum of water has a potential of 832kJ per degree Celcius. Now, let's say you raise its temperature from 20C (room temp) to 60C; you're looking at 33MJ, or (god, I hope I did all my unit conversions and math correctly), 9kWhrs. Naturally there will be some losses even if you use decent insulation, but...
The math with current photovoltaics will not come out in favour until the fossil fuel rises by a factor of at least 10 times. Does not matter what, how, who, where. They are simply too expensive to provide a reasonable ROI. They also have a very high environmental cost to produce so people who buy them are not doing a lot of good to the environment.
This is a myth often repeated. I'm going to simply point to a google search that will net many informative results. You'll find numerous calculations which all come to similar conclusions: solar panels have an "energy payback" of a few months to a few years, and their warranties extend well beyond the point where they become a source of income for the owner. This does NOT apply if you cannot place the panels where they will collect sunlight, or a geographic region which does not get enough solar power; there are plenty of online and physical tools to help with the evaluation of both. Solar power is not for everyone, just like hybrids are not for everyone.
There's one big caveat: wattage ratings for most panels are slightly inflated, because they're based off standardized tests using light sources which generate more light energy than you can find here on planet earth. Some manufacturers and retailers are upfront about this; others are not. Size the system off calculations based on your location, not spec sheets.
Photovoltaics are a gimmick, similar to the hybrid cars which allow metrosexuals and hollywood stars to show off some fake green credentials.
As a horsepower lovin' pistonhead, I eye hybrid owners' "my car runs on lolipops and giggles" attitude with some amusement (buying a car that burns gas does not "help reduce our foreign dependency on oil", if you understand that we have to buy oil from many sources for the nation's economic stability, no matter how much of it we use...and that consumer gasoline usage pales in comparison to commercial sector use, namely, petrochemical and truck/train/plane fuel), but hybrids DO most certainly make sense for heavy urban driving, which is exactly what they were designed for in the countries where they hit the public retail market big time: Japan. When Toyota came out with a full-size hybrid (Camry), they've been popping up all over Boston as taxicabs. The two keys are a)heavy usage and b)urban or other stop-and-go driving. Without the heavy usage, the gas savings don't compensate for the additional energy+materials (and hence additional price), and without the stop-and-go driving, hybrids are no more efficient than cars with similar drag-reducing design but regular powertrains.
Hybrids do not make sense for highway cruising commutes, which many people bought them for in the initial craze, mostly because they didn't do their homework. If your drive does not involve a fair amount of speed changes (ie, heavy stop and go traffic), a hybrid car is not for you. Buy a CDI/TDI diesel, or one of the lighter-weight Honda or Toyota econoboxes from 5-10 years ago. Just be aware, Hondas prior to 2000 or so have abysmal crash ratings (I don't know about Toyotas.) Use the money saved to switch over to energy efficient bulbs, install hot water solar collectors on your house, blow in insulation, buy new windows, etc.
Actually, it is her job to do whatever it takes to identify a fake ID.
No, it isn't. She's tasked with identifying whether it is a fake ID or not, which is done simply by examining the ID itself for relevant seals, holograms, and stamps. It's not rocket science. The exception are IDs issued fraudulently (ie by corrupt registry officials), in which case, she/the bar probably aren't liable, since they have little way of knowing it's fake. She has absolutely no excuse for engaging in (as it turns out, completely invalid) "logical" religious profiling to decide whether or not to serve customers.
And we have no data to suggest that the blogger didn't call the police, or at least notify them in the required fashion. It's perfectly possible (and indeed most likely) that once she has a photo of the fake ID, she turns the fakes in to the proper authorities or otherwise disposes of them in accordance with the local regulations.
So she takes the ID, runs back to her locker, scans the license, calls the police, and then hands over the fake ID to the cops? Riiiiiiiight.
If she had called the cops, she wouldn't have the ID, because they'd collect it as evidence. It's pretty safe to assume that she has never called the cops for any of the IDs she's posted online.
As for your comments about a "ring" getting pissed or about the criminal's (yes, a person using a fake ID is a criminal) family or the criminal themself getting pissed, that's a wonderful sentiment. Let's not take effective measures to shame people because we're afraid that they might be mean to us if we hurt their feelings.
How is it "effective measures" to not call the cops? Hell, if the DA gets wind of this and isn't in a very good mood, she could find herself (or the place she works at) under scrutiny for NOT calling the cops; they're probably required to do so by state law or liquor license stipulations.
It's laughable logic to say that posting scans of illegal IDs is more justifiable than simply reporting it to the police.
Either way, trying to claim it was an original work seems really dangerous as its basically an admission of forgery.
Yep, it was not very smart. Until the DCMA request was filed, the only thing the underage girl could be reasonably convicted of when she hands a fake ID to someone is uttering, ie, presenting forged papers as legitimate. Well, and any additional laws she broke that may be specific to presenting false ID for the purpose of buying alcohol and being underage.
If she filed a DCMA request which implies she's the creator of the work, it's not terribly hard to prove that she's guilty of both forgery and saying.
Sidenote: I've seen half a dozen slashdotters declare "OF COURSE you can't copyright a forged document!", and yet have not offered any citations, explanations (that make any kind of sense) or case history. A cookie to the first poster that does.
Sidenote number two: I'm not really cheering for this waitress. She's got a severe "big fish, little pond" complex going.
But if this shit becomes the norm, I'll start downloading everything for free, lawsuits be damned. Fuck these sons-of-bitches.
Nobody's holding a gun to your head saying, "LISTEN TO THESE MUSICIANS!", or "BUY COMPACT DISKS".
Go non-RIAA. Or better yet, go to a local concert or show. At least in my city, there's plenty of good stuff to check out, the cover charge is usually rather reasonable, and the bands probably see more of the money despite venue-friendly cover-charge-disbursement policies.
$20 for a CD of just the audio, or ~$5-8 for the full sound, feeling the thump of the drum set in your chest, the smells, the sounds, the spontaneity of a live show, the satisfaction that comes when you see a show where everything comes together, the social connection you may or may not form with your fellow audience members.
It's the deal of the century.
Get the fuck over it. Seriously.
The laws are lame. Tough shit Thailand.
No, tough shit *you*. Thailand is enjoying something called sovereignty: the power to rule itself as a country. If they want to make a law banning showing the king next to feet- that's their goddamn right.
If they're happy, then there's no real problem. I'm guessing you're a "fellow" American. I wish people like you would stop giving our country a bad reputation as being full of arrogant, bossy idiots who want to tell everyone how to do things.
It gets kind of ridiculous. If the VT shootings hadn't happened, this whole episode wouldn't have happened. If nobody read his comics, this whole episode wouldn't have happened.
If he had kept his mouth shut at work about describing in graphic detail how to kill someone with a 22 rifle, this whole episode wouldn't have happened. If he hadn't cracked a joke in the termination "meeting" (or invented it in the webcomic) which could pretty clearly be misinterpreted, this whole episode wouldn't have happened.
I read the two comic strips, and I have zero sympathy for him. Both discussions/comments were incredibly stupid, if that's what he actually said. He's a complete idiot if he didn't think describing in graphic detail:
You'd practically have to put it in someone's face and pull the trigger. And even then, fire a few more times to make sure the job is done
Ummm...if I overheard that, I'd probably say something like, "Guys. Not appropriate workplace conversation." Oh, and then it gets better.
But I didn't have any reason to go postal. Well, hypothetically, NOW I do. I mean, wait, no.
Niiiiiiice. Put that on your list of top ten things not to say on the exit interview.
He's guilty of, at most, assault- and before a bunch of slashdotters go screaming about "free speech", guess what? Threatening speech simply needs to leave the victim feeling threatened. It doesn't matter what you thought, meant, felt, whatever. It's how the receiver felt. And I'd be pretty creeped out if I was present at his termination meeting and heard, "well, i didn't have a reason to go postal. Until now." I'd probably write it off as nervous humor, but I'd also have a pretty graphic image of making tomorrow's mid-day news, and NOT in a good way.
Also, he is a contract employee who can be released at any time for any reason, even moreso than a normal at-will employee who also can be released at any time for any reason.
Only within the terms of his contract. Sorry, just couldn't resist after you made "contract" italics and got all righteous. "Contract employee" does not mean "company's little bitch", and in fact, a contract worker can have more protection from sudden termination. Most of us are "at will" employees, and simply having something in your contract that prohibits your employer from firing you for no reason, gives you more rights. If worded reasonably (ie not "I AM UNFIREABLE FOR A YEAR!"), you MAY get that concession.
If you don't like being an at-will employee: get fired for no reason, sue, and get it far up enough to MAYBE be heard by the supreme court, because they're the ones who set the horrendous precedent in the first place. You don't have a prayer of getting legislation even presented, much less making it past committee, because of all the lobbying.
Apache - still one of the most popular web servers out there. One of the most flexible and adaptable. It just rocks.
"Flexible" and "adaptable" are far too polite ways of saying what it really is: complex. Apache, despite being very elderly, isn't mature at all. Its configuration file is haphazard, full of nuances and inconsistencies; for years, most apache installations had "apache.conf" and "httpd.conf", and damned if I ever knew what directives belong where. It's the only software I know of where you have to instruct the software to load shared library modules AND "activate" them. It is a nightmare to troubleshoot. Want a laundry list of examples of how bad it is? See Why I hate the Apache Webserver for the full monty.
I find Apache to be the biggest pain in the ass of any software I've had to configure/use in almost ten years of using Unix/Linux. It's also the slowest and most bloated- servers like lighttpd contain the things that 95% of the market needs, and is hands-down faster in every benchmark I've ever seen. It's my opinion that every distribution that is desktop oriented should install lighttpd (if any webserver at all) to increase competition and encourage the apache people to get on the ball with making their software easier to use and less bloated.