I agree, the entire problem is caused by being able to hold on to a domain for free. If it cost them money, they wouldn't just grab up any domain that some schmoe searched for. If any site was dumb enough to try it, I'd just write up a quick script to do 1 million searches with bogus domain names. Then they'd have bought millions of domains and there'd be no buyers to buy them back.
First of all, that surveillance system for athletes is ridiculous. We could argue about whether it's right to spy on people to keep them honest IF there was any chance such a system would actually work. Of course it could never work and it's a terrible idea.
Computer controlled cars are a lot more plausible. The fact is that people are on average pretty terrible drivers, 40,000 people die on the road every year in the US. Even if computers only took over for emergency maneuvers I think that number could be greatly reduced.
Finally, it's not like anyone is suggesting that you should never be able to drive a car manually. When the horse was obsoleted as a mode of transportation, did people who ride for fun have to stop? No. So I don't see why you assume this would mean the end of driving for fun. I'm all for personal responsibility, and I'm all for keeping government control OUT of people's private property. But highways are NOT private property. They're paid for by federal taxes. Even local roads are built with government money, they're not yours and you can't expect to have the freedom to do as you please on them. Besides you have to admit, there's tons of stuff people used to do manually that you yourself probably are completely dependent on machines to do. Do you wash clothes with a washboard? Do you do keep track of finances with paper and pencil? Do you cook your food over a wood flame? Of course not. Time marches on. When the time comes you'll have to just let it go or become one of those crazy old coots still not trusting them new-fangled "horseless carriages".
I don't know, I am not sure how much Delta's poor service reflects on the COO. First of all, the airline industry is extremely competitive. A lot of air travelers are willing to put up with poor service in return for cheaper tickets. So cutting costs on service isn't a bad business move.
Second, just because cheaping out on service was the strategy at Delta, doesn't mean that's going to be the strategy at Red Hat. I think the guy would have to be a moron not to realize that service is Red Hat's bread and butter. At Delta, service is secondary to getting a traveler from point A to B at minimum cost. Let's give the guy a little credit.
And there we have it, the unthinking assumption that it will be safer if someone else were to take responsibility for moving traffic from A to B. What makes you think that the software is going to make it any safer? I'm happier with sensors that detect poor driving and warn you and maybe in extremis take corrective action, airbags have saved plenty of lives and safe distance detection could save more. Just remember that airbags also kill a few people. I did say "as soon as the technology is ready". I think aviation has shown the safety benefits of computer control pretty clearly.
Besides, why are you bristling at the idea of a computer controlled car? Is it the last bastion of control you still have in your life?
This is all part of an insidious trend that is taking away most of the fun in life. I hope to be dead before the safety lobby enforce computer controlled vehicles. I'm betting that some of you reading this, will one day, remember fondly your youth where you were allowed to drive a car yourself. Driving on public roads isn't supposed to be "fun", it's supposed to get you from point A to point B safely. I would want computer controlled cars on public roads as soon as the technology is ready. I'm sick of these assholes endangering others by driving like idiots just so they can feel like they're 'beating' everyone else to get to work in the morning.
Public roads are not for playing games. If you want to drive for fun, do it on private property.
Things to allow them to provide uninterrupted power to a computer while unplugging and moving it.
Pretty simple. I once did that for a running server. For a laptop it is trivial. Also not anything new. Could have been doen with tech from 50 years ago.
Can someone explain how this is done? I can't think of any solution that doesn't involve stripping insulation off the power cable (or the wires in the power socket), to provide an alternative power source while the original one is disconnected. Is that how it's done?
'YouTube is increasingly a resource people consult for health information'
Um, wow. What else is there to say? Except that at least this may slightly counteract the proliferation of stupid people. Darwin: on you mark, get set, go.
I think that while spammers are far from giving up yet, it's very possible that their days are numbered. Normally in matters like these, the 'cheater' has the advantage. For instance, copy protection - the pirates spend so little to break very expensive protection schemes. In this case though, I think the big bucks companies have invested in filtering are winning. Here's why. Filtering technology is forcing spam to become more and more garbled in order to pass the filter. Think about it. As the years have gone by, spam's "signal" has degraded significantly. The spams that reach our inboxes today have had many of their words replaced with not-quite-sensible synonyms and are filled with random nonsense text. It's getting to the point where the advertising effectiveness very degraded.
I would expect that the number of impressions today's spam has to make to get one sale, is far higher than it used to be, maybe 100x, if not more. I also expect that number to climb ever higher, and eventually hit the point where it is not cost effective - where hiring hackers to pump out spam through botnets costs more than the revenue brought in by that spam.
Of course, I don't want to underestimate the ingenuity of these jerks. They very well may find a whole new way to peddle their viagra. I do however, think that it's entirely possible that spammers' current model will fall apart.
I used to be a competitive swimmer. We called some of our training exercises "cheap buzz", due to the deliberate breathing restrictions (for instance - 10 50's with 1 breath each). But I don't think it brained my damage at all.
600e? Can we talk about machines that were produced this century? I tried at least 3 different T60/p's (different video) and some T4x's, and they all fail hibernate AND suspend. (Well, to be accurate, they fail to resume, but the point is the same).
I know it's the video drivers because if you EXIT X (there go all your open apps), then it works fine. But that's useless, obviously. Just switching to a text console with X still running, via ctrl-alt-f1, the video drivers are still running and will crash the machine on resume.
The point is, linux is miles behind windows on power management. I wish it weren't so, but it is. I hope it changes someday. Until then I have no interest in linux on the desktop, just for servers. If they just had power management and dual monitor support, I'd be happy as can be.
I hate windows, and I keep hoping the latest and greatest linux will let me ditch it, but I am bitterly disappointed time after time after time.
The hardware support simply isn't there, and I don't see this changing any time soon. Good luck getting any kind of power management to work on Thinkpads, and I've tried half a dozen models. In nearly every case (exception: intel video), the video driver crashes the machine on resume. On some models it crashes every time, others it's intermittent. Either way, it turnes a linux laptop into a useless brick. If you want hardware support on a thinkpad, you're stuck with windows. End of story.
Perhaps someday Linux will get video drivers that don't completely suck. All that is available now are half-arsed pieces of crap. The opensource community, no matter how devoted, is not going to be able to write a reliable driver because nVidia/ATI doesn't support them. And the companies certainly don't write decent linux drivers themselves either.
I also think it's especially pathetic that Linux has nearly worthless dual monitor support. Not to mention the original topic, which is power consumption. My experience with Ubuntu Edgy and Feisty was that it eats the battery in under an hour, no matter how much you tweak it. Another way in which it turns a $1500 laptop into a useless brick. Yes, I'm bitter.
Didn't RTFA, but it sounds like this weapon is simple enough to get into the hands of the people. After that it's just a matter of sniping a few high ranking gov't officials with it. After they are done writhing in pain, they'll make sure that's the end of their legality under any circumstances. Unlike a gun, there's no flash or smoke, no permanent damage. Even if the sniper is caught, then the gov't is in a pickle - if they charge the sniper with anything more than assault, they're making a case against the weapon's use by police.
Well, since Java is more or less 100% backwards compatible they could release a new major version every two weeks and nobody should care. That said, there are some gotcha's to watch out for when upgrading to new versions of the JDK. For the company I work for, the move from 1.4's Metal to 1.5's Metal meant going through every screen to make sure the layout was still consistent. That wasn't fun, but the added features of the release more than compensated for it. There was also the change from 1.4 to 1.5 would break your code if you had used any variable called "enum", because enum became a keyword. It could be a lot worse and generally I'm a rah-rah java guy, but it's only *theoretically* that no one should care about upgrading JDK. In reality stuff is going to break. However, my rah-rah java statement is that those problems are easy to fix, in my experience.
The problem here is that wifi hardware (especially in earlier days) are being sold with ridiculous defaults. The defaults are "absolutely no security, please find a local computer guy to set this up for you". (I know, because I AM that computer guy who has to set this up for everyone else). What is so hard about setting a default password (different for each access point, of course) and printing it big letters on the hardware itself or in the docs? If you can stamp a serial number or MAC address, you can stamp a default password.
You're making terrible excuses. I have a Sprint BB 8830 (I'm posting from it, btw) and the gps works perfectly fine. It gets a lock in seconds (slightly longer than a pure bluetooth 'puck'), in any car, new or old. I don't know how well it works in my pocket because there are no apps out there that let you transmit your location. And if you only want to see it on the screen, well, it can't be in your pocket.
While non-lethal technology has the potential to be fantastic, there's a downside to be considered too.
With a gun, there's a certain level of commitment before it's used. An officer of the law must make a determination that he or she is really certain about before shooting, because hitting an innocent person is absolutely unacceptable. As a result, the tendency is to, unless there's no option, NOT shoot someone if you can hold them at bay with the THREAT of shooting. A side effect of this is that an officer given a bad order to shoot is much more likely to abstain, because once he pulls the trigger, it's all over.
As a result, innocent folks are often held at gunpoint until their identity/non-criminalness is confirmed. While traumatic and stressful, this is better than an alternative that's growing increasingly common:
Enter, the taser. Potentially a wonderful tool for stopping an attacker without permanently injuring them, doctrine has instead developed in many police and security departments to 'Zap first, ask questions later'. The 'non-injurious' aspect of the tool means that the bar is that much lower on whether or not to shoot, because "after all, if they're innocent, then it's just a bit of discomfort".
The growing number of non-lethal tools is on the surface a good, even GREAT thing. The real danger though, is a long term one. With the bar set so low, more and more people will be subject to excruciating pain, and eventually, this technology may evolve into a tool of even greater oppression of liberty than anything we have now.
Imagine if a protest can be casually broken up by making everyone vomit or crap themselves uncontrollably. If the government has the ability to casually stop groups of people from coming together or otherwise detaining them while being able to argue "it's not fatal, it's just uncomfortable", then the bar on violating our rights as citizens drops too.
So I'm interested and optimistic about the technologies, but I desperately hope that better effort is invested in making them a net positive for all of humanity and not the boot that might otherwise grind our faces into the dirt. I think you make a good point overall, but the particular device discussed here wouldn't be of much use against non-violent protesters. Since shielding or closing your eyes would render this device useless, I don't see how it can be used to violate our constitutional rights. I'm sure if it fell into the wrong hands (and it would), there'd be some hilarious or dangerous way to abuse it, by using it against people who are moving and/or whose hands are occupied.
The reason a lot of American families own SUVs isn't because they just want to arbitrarily waste gas, but because they have things to tow. Maybe a horse trailer, or some jet skis, or a fishing boat. Hahaha! Yeah, if by "a lot", you mean "a tiny fraction". The only areas where SUV owners tow anything is near recreational hotspots like lakes. Everywhere else they're just a symbol of wealth.
No, there's no way to do it, I can tell you that without even googling it, because it's such a stupid idea that no one with the ability to write such an emulator would ever do it. Wine exists to replace the worst part of the windows experience - the OS, while keeping the best part (compatible apps). You're paying extra for OS X (the nice thing about the mac experience) and then throwing it away. For what? To run Mac apps, which aren't compatible with what the rest of the world uses in the first place. Waste of money - just buy some generic hardware if you're going to run linux, and run wine if Linux apps aren't enough.
Its never been the "authorities" job to protect the public; the public was always supposed to protect itself. Part of the reason I believe the 2nd amendment was added. When you give up your ability (and right) to protect yourself and give it to others, you're just asking for trouble. "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."
Emphasis mine. I think you're reading what you want to read and not understanding the intentions of the amendment.
Don't be daft. Whose right to bear arms does it say shall not be infringed? The people's.
It doesn't say "the armed forces" nor "the National Guard" (which didn't even exist at the time). It says, The people. The Militia doesn't mean the government-run army (whose right to bear arms doesn't need a constitutional amendment), it means private citizens. Ok maybe they need to be organized somehow, that I will grant you, since a bunch of yahoos with guns does not a militia make.
We can debate all day whether gun control is a good idea. What's not up for debate is whether it's constitutional. It's unconstitutional, it's right there in black and white, there's no debate about it. It's a very inconvenient truth for gun control advocates, who go into all kinds of ridiculous logical contortions to explain away the 2nd amendment. I just ask that we repeal an amendment *before* we begin ignoring it.
Quite honestly I think today's gun regulations aren't too bad. But if we really want to pass more, we have to strike the 2nd amendment first. If it doesn't really protect individual rights, then it's useless anyway. Under what scenario would you imagine Congress trying to disarm the National Guard? Would never happen.
What god-given right do people have to borrow money? There's no such right. Because if there were, then someone would be forced to loan it to them. How would you feel if YOU were forced to loan money to some deadbeat, and never get it back?
Loans are business. If these credit report companies are badmouthing you (and a bunch of other people) to the whole world, there ought to be a gold mine of a business opportunity for someone who can determine credit-worthiness more accurately.
There should be thousands of credit-worthy people out there with interest payments in hand just waiting to hand them over to anyone who will give them a loan. Why has no one tapped this enormous market?
I suggest that it's because no one has found a more accurate system that doesn't cost huge amounts of money. If you know of one, I suggest you keep it quiet and find some capital to start loaning out. You'll get real good interest rates.
LYING!!!!
Are you kidding me? The printer companies charge something like $80 for a printer, but $22 AN OUNCE for ink. And they have done all kinds of wrangling to try to prevent you from using market-rate ink. And you wonder if maybe they tampered with the ink sensor?
My ex-gf bought me a canon printer, and it would stop working, claiming "no ink" when the tank was still 1/3 full. Then thing would refuse to print anything until you did a little ink dance to appease it. And when it did finally print, it looked perfectly fine, and continued to have enough ink for dozens more pages until it finally ran out.
It's 2007, most people shouldn't even need printers. I only need a printer when some backwards-ass company is still living in 1985, and makes me print and mail them a form. I might as well carve it on a stone tablet.
Huh, I'm pretty sure that is in fact the purpose, and I don't agree that it's totally useless.
I personally could care less if there were curse words during prime time, but when I have kids, I'll probably be glad there aren't. The last think I want is my kid running around screaming "F*CK! F*CK! F*CK!"
And I'm pretty sure there are plenty of kids, even in this day and age, over the age of 5 who have not yet been exposed to all these words. By 10, yeah, but not 5.
What is the difference? Is it to protect the ears of the young, who would not understand what they were hearing anyway?
It's kind of silly, since adults who don't want to hear "f*ck" have to do some mental gymnastics NOT to insert it over the bleep. But the purpose where kids are concerned is clear: to avoid teaching them the word. They might not understand the word the first time they hear it, but kids DO figure things out from context. Let them sit through a showing of the movie "The Departed", by the end they'll know exactly what it means. (see this to show how many times the word is used) http://www.collegehumor.com/video:1746444
Maybe my education on evolution and biology leaves something to be desired, but some of the things you said sound false on their face.
A huge increase in the number of fungi organisms (eating the dead) couldn't possibly last very long, since dead organisms don't reproduce. I would expect the fungi to increase exponentially in population until all the food was consumed, and that probably wouldn't take long. It only takes them an instant (in evolutionary timescales) to eat what's in your fridge. So I don't see how fungi could have been dominant for "a while" if you mean more than a handful of years. If you say the "food" died slowly then the fungi would not be able to expand exponentially and therefore couldn't have been dominant. Am I missing something?
Also I don't think hundreds of millions of years of evolution were undone. I find it interesting that "53% of marine families, 84% of marine genera, about 96% of all marine species" were wiped out. Notice that the biggest losses were the "leaves" of the evolutionary tree. Half the limbs remained intact. Using the tree analogy (which I think holds in this case), it's a lot easier for a tree to regrow leaves than limbs - as you know trees lose and regrow all their leaves every year.
And I am aware that real trees can lose all their leaves and keep their branches, but the species tree cannot. So obviously the 4% of marine species that survived must have been quite diverse. That's why I don't think hundreds of millions of years of evolution were undone.
Slashdot Mirror
I agree, the entire problem is caused by being able to hold on to a domain for free. If it cost them money, they wouldn't just grab up any domain that some schmoe searched for. If any site was dumb enough to try it, I'd just write up a quick script to do 1 million searches with bogus domain names. Then they'd have bought millions of domains and there'd be no buyers to buy them back.
First of all, that surveillance system for athletes is ridiculous. We could argue about whether it's right to spy on people to keep them honest IF there was any chance such a system would actually work. Of course it could never work and it's a terrible idea.
Computer controlled cars are a lot more plausible. The fact is that people are on average pretty terrible drivers, 40,000 people die on the road every year in the US. Even if computers only took over for emergency maneuvers I think that number could be greatly reduced.
Finally, it's not like anyone is suggesting that you should never be able to drive a car manually. When the horse was obsoleted as a mode of transportation, did people who ride for fun have to stop? No. So I don't see why you assume this would mean the end of driving for fun. I'm all for personal responsibility, and I'm all for keeping government control OUT of people's private property. But highways are NOT private property. They're paid for by federal taxes. Even local roads are built with government money, they're not yours and you can't expect to have the freedom to do as you please on them. Besides you have to admit, there's tons of stuff people used to do manually that you yourself probably are completely dependent on machines to do. Do you wash clothes with a washboard? Do you do keep track of finances with paper and pencil? Do you cook your food over a wood flame? Of course not. Time marches on. When the time comes you'll have to just let it go or become one of those crazy old coots still not trusting them new-fangled "horseless carriages".
I don't know, I am not sure how much Delta's poor service reflects on the COO. First of all, the airline industry is extremely competitive. A lot of air travelers are willing to put up with poor service in return for cheaper tickets. So cutting costs on service isn't a bad business move.
Second, just because cheaping out on service was the strategy at Delta, doesn't mean that's going to be the strategy at Red Hat. I think the guy would have to be a moron not to realize that service is Red Hat's bread and butter. At Delta, service is secondary to getting a traveler from point A to B at minimum cost. Let's give the guy a little credit.
I did say "as soon as the technology is ready". I think aviation has shown the safety benefits of computer control pretty clearly.
Besides, why are you bristling at the idea of a computer controlled car? Is it the last bastion of control you still have in your life?
Driving on public roads isn't supposed to be "fun", it's supposed to get you from point A to point B safely. I would want computer controlled cars on public roads as soon as the technology is ready. I'm sick of these assholes endangering others by driving like idiots just so they can feel like they're 'beating' everyone else to get to work in the morning.
Public roads are not for playing games. If you want to drive for fun, do it on private property.
Pretty simple. I once did that for a running server. For a laptop it is trivial. Also not anything new. Could have been doen with tech from 50 years ago.
Can someone explain how this is done? I can't think of any solution that doesn't involve stripping insulation off the power cable (or the wires in the power socket), to provide an alternative power source while the original one is disconnected. Is that how it's done?
Um, wow. What else is there to say? Except that at least this may slightly counteract the proliferation of stupid people. Darwin: on you mark, get set, go.
I think that while spammers are far from giving up yet, it's very possible that their days are numbered. Normally in matters like these, the 'cheater' has the advantage. For instance, copy protection - the pirates spend so little to break very expensive protection schemes. In this case though, I think the big bucks companies have invested in filtering are winning. Here's why. Filtering technology is forcing spam to become more and more garbled in order to pass the filter. Think about it. As the years have gone by, spam's "signal" has degraded significantly. The spams that reach our inboxes today have had many of their words replaced with not-quite-sensible synonyms and are filled with random nonsense text. It's getting to the point where the advertising effectiveness very degraded.
I would expect that the number of impressions today's spam has to make to get one sale, is far higher than it used to be, maybe 100x, if not more. I also expect that number to climb ever higher, and eventually hit the point where it is not cost effective - where hiring hackers to pump out spam through botnets costs more than the revenue brought in by that spam.
Of course, I don't want to underestimate the ingenuity of these jerks. They very well may find a whole new way to peddle their viagra. I do however, think that it's entirely possible that spammers' current model will fall apart.
I used to be a competitive swimmer. We called some of our training exercises "cheap buzz", due to the deliberate breathing restrictions (for instance - 10 50's with 1 breath each). But I don't think it brained my damage at all.
I know it's the video drivers because if you EXIT X (there go all your open apps), then it works fine. But that's useless, obviously. Just switching to a text console with X still running, via ctrl-alt-f1, the video drivers are still running and will crash the machine on resume.
The point is, linux is miles behind windows on power management. I wish it weren't so, but it is. I hope it changes someday. Until then I have no interest in linux on the desktop, just for servers. If they just had power management and dual monitor support, I'd be happy as can be.
I hate windows, and I keep hoping the latest and greatest linux will let me ditch it, but I am bitterly disappointed time after time after time.
The hardware support simply isn't there, and I don't see this changing any time soon. Good luck getting any kind of power management to work on Thinkpads, and I've tried half a dozen models. In nearly every case (exception: intel video), the video driver crashes the machine on resume. On some models it crashes every time, others it's intermittent. Either way, it turnes a linux laptop into a useless brick. If you want hardware support on a thinkpad, you're stuck with windows. End of story.
Perhaps someday Linux will get video drivers that don't completely suck. All that is available now are half-arsed pieces of crap. The opensource community, no matter how devoted, is not going to be able to write a reliable driver because nVidia/ATI doesn't support them. And the companies certainly don't write decent linux drivers themselves either.
I also think it's especially pathetic that Linux has nearly worthless dual monitor support. Not to mention the original topic, which is power consumption. My experience with Ubuntu Edgy and Feisty was that it eats the battery in under an hour, no matter how much you tweak it. Another way in which it turns a $1500 laptop into a useless brick. Yes, I'm bitter.
Didn't RTFA, but it sounds like this weapon is simple enough to get into the hands of the people. After that it's just a matter of sniping a few high ranking gov't officials with it. After they are done writhing in pain, they'll make sure that's the end of their legality under any circumstances. Unlike a gun, there's no flash or smoke, no permanent damage. Even if the sniper is caught, then the gov't is in a pickle - if they charge the sniper with anything more than assault, they're making a case against the weapon's use by police.
There was also the change from 1.4 to 1.5 would break your code if you had used any variable called "enum", because enum became a keyword. It could be a lot worse and generally I'm a rah-rah java guy, but it's only *theoretically* that no one should care about upgrading JDK. In reality stuff is going to break. However, my rah-rah java statement is that those problems are easy to fix, in my experience.
The problem here is that wifi hardware (especially in earlier days) are being sold with ridiculous defaults. The defaults are "absolutely no security, please find a local computer guy to set this up for you". (I know, because I AM that computer guy who has to set this up for everyone else). What is so hard about setting a default password (different for each access point, of course) and printing it big letters on the hardware itself or in the docs? If you can stamp a serial number or MAC address, you can stamp a default password.
You're making terrible excuses. I have a Sprint BB 8830 (I'm posting from it, btw) and the gps works perfectly fine. It gets a lock in seconds (slightly longer than a pure bluetooth 'puck'), in any car, new or old. I don't know how well it works in my pocket because there are no apps out there that let you transmit your location. And if you only want to see it on the screen, well, it can't be in your pocket.
Carl: According to the map, the cabin should be right here.
Lenny: Hey, maybe there is no cabin. Maybe it's one of them metaphorical things.
Carl: Oh yeah, yeah... Like maybe the cabin is the place inside each of us, created by our goodwill and teamwork.
Lenny: Oh! ...Nah, they said there would be sandwiches.
Or in this case, Vlad said "evil color".
With a gun, there's a certain level of commitment before it's used. An officer of the law must make a determination that he or she is really certain about before shooting, because hitting an innocent person is absolutely unacceptable. As a result, the tendency is to, unless there's no option, NOT shoot someone if you can hold them at bay with the THREAT of shooting. A side effect of this is that an officer given a bad order to shoot is much more likely to abstain, because once he pulls the trigger, it's all over.
As a result, innocent folks are often held at gunpoint until their identity/non-criminalness is confirmed. While traumatic and stressful, this is better than an alternative that's growing increasingly common:
Enter, the taser. Potentially a wonderful tool for stopping an attacker without permanently injuring them, doctrine has instead developed in many police and security departments to 'Zap first, ask questions later'. The 'non-injurious' aspect of the tool means that the bar is that much lower on whether or not to shoot, because "after all, if they're innocent, then it's just a bit of discomfort".
The growing number of non-lethal tools is on the surface a good, even GREAT thing. The real danger though, is a long term one. With the bar set so low, more and more people will be subject to excruciating pain, and eventually, this technology may evolve into a tool of even greater oppression of liberty than anything we have now.
Imagine if a protest can be casually broken up by making everyone vomit or crap themselves uncontrollably. If the government has the ability to casually stop groups of people from coming together or otherwise detaining them while being able to argue "it's not fatal, it's just uncomfortable", then the bar on violating our rights as citizens drops too.
So I'm interested and optimistic about the technologies, but I desperately hope that better effort is invested in making them a net positive for all of humanity and not the boot that might otherwise grind our faces into the dirt. I think you make a good point overall, but the particular device discussed here wouldn't be of much use against non-violent protesters. Since shielding or closing your eyes would render this device useless, I don't see how it can be used to violate our constitutional rights. I'm sure if it fell into the wrong hands (and it would), there'd be some hilarious or dangerous way to abuse it, by using it against people who are moving and/or whose hands are occupied.
No, there's no way to do it, I can tell you that without even googling it, because it's such a stupid idea that no one with the ability to write such an emulator would ever do it. Wine exists to replace the worst part of the windows experience - the OS, while keeping the best part (compatible apps). You're paying extra for OS X (the nice thing about the mac experience) and then throwing it away. For what? To run Mac apps, which aren't compatible with what the rest of the world uses in the first place. Waste of money - just buy some generic hardware if you're going to run linux, and run wine if Linux apps aren't enough.
Emphasis mine. I think you're reading what you want to read and not understanding the intentions of the amendment.
Don't be daft. Whose right to bear arms does it say shall not be infringed? The people's.
It doesn't say "the armed forces" nor "the National Guard" (which didn't even exist at the time). It says, The people. The Militia doesn't mean the government-run army (whose right to bear arms doesn't need a constitutional amendment), it means private citizens. Ok maybe they need to be organized somehow, that I will grant you, since a bunch of yahoos with guns does not a militia make.
We can debate all day whether gun control is a good idea. What's not up for debate is whether it's constitutional. It's unconstitutional, it's right there in black and white, there's no debate about it. It's a very inconvenient truth for gun control advocates, who go into all kinds of ridiculous logical contortions to explain away the 2nd amendment. I just ask that we repeal an amendment *before* we begin ignoring it.
Quite honestly I think today's gun regulations aren't too bad. But if we really want to pass more, we have to strike the 2nd amendment first. If it doesn't really protect individual rights, then it's useless anyway. Under what scenario would you imagine Congress trying to disarm the National Guard? Would never happen.
What god-given right do people have to borrow money? There's no such right. Because if there were, then someone would be forced to loan it to them. How would you feel if YOU were forced to loan money to some deadbeat, and never get it back?
Loans are business. If these credit report companies are badmouthing you (and a bunch of other people) to the whole world, there ought to be a gold mine of a business opportunity for someone who can determine credit-worthiness more accurately.
There should be thousands of credit-worthy people out there with interest payments in hand just waiting to hand them over to anyone who will give them a loan. Why has no one tapped this enormous market?I suggest that it's because no one has found a more accurate system that doesn't cost huge amounts of money. If you know of one, I suggest you keep it quiet and find some capital to start loaning out. You'll get real good interest rates.
LYING!!!!
Are you kidding me? The printer companies charge something like $80 for a printer, but $22 AN OUNCE for ink. And they have done all kinds of wrangling to try to prevent you from using market-rate ink. And you wonder if maybe they tampered with the ink sensor?
My ex-gf bought me a canon printer, and it would stop working, claiming "no ink" when the tank was still 1/3 full. Then thing would refuse to print anything until you did a little ink dance to appease it. And when it did finally print, it looked perfectly fine, and continued to have enough ink for dozens more pages until it finally ran out.
It's 2007, most people shouldn't even need printers. I only need a printer when some backwards-ass company is still living in 1985, and makes me print and mail them a form. I might as well carve it on a stone tablet.
I personally could care less if there were curse words during prime time, but when I have kids, I'll probably be glad there aren't. The last think I want is my kid running around screaming "F*CK! F*CK! F*CK!"
And I'm pretty sure there are plenty of kids, even in this day and age, over the age of 5 who have not yet been exposed to all these words. By 10, yeah, but not 5.
It's kind of silly, since adults who don't want to hear "f*ck" have to do some mental gymnastics NOT to insert it over the bleep. But the purpose where kids are concerned is clear: to avoid teaching them the word. They might not understand the word the first time they hear it, but kids DO figure things out from context. Let them sit through a showing of the movie "The Departed", by the end they'll know exactly what it means. (see this to show how many times the word is used) http://www.collegehumor.com/video:1746444
A huge increase in the number of fungi organisms (eating the dead) couldn't possibly last very long, since dead organisms don't reproduce. I would expect the fungi to increase exponentially in population until all the food was consumed, and that probably wouldn't take long. It only takes them an instant (in evolutionary timescales) to eat what's in your fridge. So I don't see how fungi could have been dominant for "a while" if you mean more than a handful of years. If you say the "food" died slowly then the fungi would not be able to expand exponentially and therefore couldn't have been dominant. Am I missing something?
Also I don't think hundreds of millions of years of evolution were undone. I find it interesting that "53% of marine families, 84% of marine genera, about 96% of all marine species" were wiped out. Notice that the biggest losses were the "leaves" of the evolutionary tree. Half the limbs remained intact. Using the tree analogy (which I think holds in this case), it's a lot easier for a tree to regrow leaves than limbs - as you know trees lose and regrow all their leaves every year.
And I am aware that real trees can lose all their leaves and keep their branches, but the species tree cannot. So obviously the 4% of marine species that survived must have been quite diverse. That's why I don't think hundreds of millions of years of evolution were undone.