I actually tweeted it during the blip that was the #lameclaimtofame meme on Twitter. Of course, my lame claims to fame are legion. I put all those tweets into a single blog post if anyone's interested. They're all lame, and all true.
Back in 1995, I was working as a salesman at Circuit City and sold a VCR to Steve Cohen, the guy who stole sex.com. He was bragging to me about how he'd been offered a million bucks for it but wasn't going to sell. Then he ended up returning the VCR. What a tool.
Wow, that makes me feel better about the batch of chocolate cheese I whipped up this weekend and the fact that later in the week, I'm going to experiment with substituting it for ganache in a chocolate truffle recipe.
Of course, the study took place in Canada. Skinny, underweight people dying faster in the cold of Canada just seems like a no brainer. I'd like to see the study replicated in the tropics to see if the numbers stand up somewhere that extra insulation doesn't help as much.
Based on the study, I need to lose 24 more pounds to get my BMI into the 25-29.9 range that had the highest longevity and I'm currently in the same longevity range as normal weight people. Woo hoo.
Which wired arm of T-Mobile would you want to integrate their wireless service with?
And that's why I asked if there were potential anti-trust problems preventing such integration by Verizon, AT&T, etc. If they offered "internet anywhere" packages that bundled wired and wireless service, wireless providers without wired solutions could not compete on that playing field.
I know, it's all wow-ee-wow-oo-oo, but I'm still not impressed. If you're on the road a lot and can justify the extra cost of cellular access, yes, it's very cool. For everyone else, not so much. I just can't pay for a home plan and a wireless plan or multiple wireless plans for myself and my family. It's a luxury I can't justify.
We've got phones that are palmtop computing devices, internet access devices, phones, cameras, video cameras, and music/video players all in one. Device makers are embracing the mantra of integration. Is it that the wired arms of the telcos can't vertically integrate home and wireless access into affordable bundles due to anti-trust concerns or is it that they currently see that keeping them separate maximizes profit because the market just isn't demanding "internet anywhere" convenience at a workable price point?
What interests me is how they'll power the car in a 24-hour race. There don't seem to be details on that.
According to their site, there's a large solar-powered charging station (100 square meters of photovoltaic surface) which can be used to charge the car between races, but unless they're seriously loading the thing with batteries, they're either going to need long pit stops for charging or the ability to swap out battery packs as fast as other cars can pit for fuel.
On the other hand, with their target date two years out and the rapidly evolving electric car scene, I wouldn't be surprised if there was some hot new prototype hitting the car show circuit around then that blew their doors off.
A game that doesn't let you break out of the original plot is just a bit of an animated storybook in a way, but if it does, it's not true to the original book. In the long run, games must adhere to the spirit of the material, not the letter, or they;re just going to suck. And any hardcore fan who screams about it not adhering to the letter probably doesn't "get it".
"designed to fail to reinforce the learning process"...
I'm sure that's meant as "designed to fail, so that figuring out why they failed reinforces the learning process" but it reads as they're designed so that they fail to reinforce the learning process.
The problem with zealots and fanatics is that these kinds of setbacks only help to make them believe that they just need to fight harder. It's a sad, sick feedback loop where defeat reinforces their mania instead of chipping away at it. I seriously doubt this is the last we'll hear of Jack Thompson. He'll just come up with new and creative ways to be a thorn in the side of gamers and freethinkers.
Just because he's disbarred, he can still find some rich, old lonely lady to fund his evil plans... much like Lex Luthor did in Superman Returns. But seriously, even though he's not a lawyer anymore, that doesn't stop him from getting one to act as his proxy. He just needs to find another manically deluded soul who either has a law degree or the money to pay for lawyers, and he'll be back.
The Final Sentence of TFA: "The GLA (Greater London Authority) said that the agreed solution represents the best possible outcome within the specific constraints of the scheme and accords with the objectives of London Plan policy 4A.6."
You know, lavishing praise on a project like that is going to make all the other projects jealous.
The Polizia were just following the orders of a local prosecutor who decided he's going to split hairs on Google's legal status. Apparently "Internet Service Providers" are not responsible for what third parties post on their sites, but "Internet Content Providers" are. While most believe Google qualifies as an ISP (instead of an ICP) under the EU and Italian safe harbor laws, this local prosecutor doesn't.
Basically an asshole Italian prosecutor trying to pull off a high-profile publicity stunt to get him the name recognition to jump to a higher elected office. This is like Elliott Spitzer, the crusading Attorney General of New York who parlayed a number of high-profile prosecutions into a successful bid to become Governor... then pissed it all away, but that's another story.
The prosecutor's an asshole, and if there is justice in the world, he'll end up disgraced and out of a job instead of benefitting from wasting everyone's time to aggrandize himself.
I guess this begs the question of just what "open source" means. Just because you can look at the source does not mean you can legally copy or modify it. To legally copy or modify it, you need a license. That license may be a paid license or it may be one of the free open source licenses like the GPL, the BSD license, or a Creative Commons license.
People who implemented or modified and implemented the breathalyzer software that was revealed at trial would still be guilty of various infractions if the breathalyzer manafacturer asserted copyright, whether or not they were compelled to reveal it by a judge.
.
A lot of people tend to think that viewable source means "open source," but we've tended to equate "open source" with software and source that are released under a free license. "Viewable" source (i.e. if you paid a fee to get access to the windows source code so you could hack better drivers) and "open" source (like Apache or Linux) are very different animals, IMO.
Quacks or not, the issue isn't with criticism of the chiro's services, but with his billing rates and practices.
But quackery is relevant here, because the doctor should have used a PR person to help him rebut the detractor's claims and used the threat of libel to make Yelp append the rebuttal directly to the criticism so they had to be viewed together. It would have been less costly all around. Better to defuse your detractor as a crackpot/quack than to sue him and give him legitimacy.
Is the doctor within his rights? If the claims made by Norberg actually are false, then he is. Was this the best way to handle things? Nope.
There's a difference between SLAPP (Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation) and suing someone who has posted claims about you or your business that are patently false. And there's a point at which "opinion" becomes libel. The first thing that doctor's lawyer will ask:
Lawyer: So it was your "opinion" that my client's billing practices were criminal? Defendant: Yes. Lawyer: And which particular statute do you believe he was violating? Defendant: Statute? Lawyer: Well, if you were going to state an opinion that would be so harmful to someone's reputation, you'd have based it on some sort of research that led you to conclude that his behavior was actually criminal, right? You wouldn't just "pull it out of your ass" so to speak? Defendant: Well... Lawyer: Let me rephrase that. Let's say you put some faux fur in an artwork. If one of your clients falsely claimed that artwork contained the fur of baby harp seals that you had clubbed yourself, and that caused other clients to cancel future projects, would you write that off to mere "opinion"? Defendant: No. Lawyer: Why not? Defendant: Because it's a lie. Lawyer: Why can't it just be his opinion that it's harp seal fur from baby seals whose heads you brutally bashed in? Defendant: Because it's not! Lawyer: No further questions, your honor.
Let's put the blame squarely where it lies... on the stupid freakin' parents who were letting a 6-year-old play GTA!
It doesn't take that much effort to monitor your kids. But it does mean saying no and standing up to their whining and crying. It does mean dealing with the inconvenience of not being able to always do what you want to do and having to spend some time actively engaging them.
If this kid was playing GTA, then there should be additional charges filed against his parents.
Or a Quassam-rocket. One of those just killed two sisters aged 12 and 5.
And you might notice those girls were Palestinians. It's sort of sad, because when I saw that article, my first thought was "ha ha, you dumbass terrorists screwed up and killed your own." Then right after it I felt guilty because no child's death should be a source of laughter. I'm just so sick and damn tired of these asswipe terrorists. When they kill their own by accident, it's hard not to gloat.
The thing to note here is that value remains subjective. The actual test didn't show subjects diamond rings or big houses. It showed them simple images of neutral value that then paid off in varying amounts when selected. It was the amount of the payoff that influenced the subject's perception of the object. An object that paid off at $10 generated a stronger response than an item that had paid off at $0.10.
So the concept of a diamond ring registering more highly than junk depends on the "eye of the beholder." The images in the study were associated with receiving a reward. So a guy might not associate a diamond ring with a rewaed, but might see a pile of junk and think of all the fun he could have by building neat stuff with it.
They talk about how this research may give insight into addiction, but I really think it's just a sorting mechanism. It's our way of training ourselves from experience how to pick the most likely target from the herd, sort the best fruits from the pile, etc., in the shortest possible time.
Wow, they've figured out how to store photons for about as long as my three-year-old obeys a command to stop fidgeting.
From TFA: What they did was "find a way to trap a photon in a collection of 10 million neodymium atoms embedded in an yttrium orthovanadate crystal". Now say that 10 times fast.:-)
Slashdot Mirror
I actually tweeted it during the blip that was the #lameclaimtofame meme on Twitter. Of course, my lame claims to fame are legion. I put all those tweets into a single blog post if anyone's interested. They're all lame, and all true.
Back in 1995, I was working as a salesman at Circuit City and sold a VCR to Steve Cohen, the guy who stole sex.com. He was bragging to me about how he'd been offered a million bucks for it but wasn't going to sell. Then he ended up returning the VCR. What a tool.
Forgive me, I'm Canadacally Impaired.
Wow, that makes me feel better about the batch of chocolate cheese I whipped up this weekend and the fact that later in the week, I'm going to experiment with substituting it for ganache in a chocolate truffle recipe.
Of course, the study took place in Canada. Skinny, underweight people dying faster in the cold of Canada just seems like a no brainer. I'd like to see the study replicated in the tropics to see if the numbers stand up somewhere that extra insulation doesn't help as much.
Based on the study, I need to lose 24 more pounds to get my BMI into the 25-29.9 range that had the highest longevity and I'm currently in the same longevity range as normal weight people. Woo hoo.
Which wired arm of T-Mobile would you want to integrate their wireless service with?
And that's why I asked if there were potential anti-trust problems preventing such integration by Verizon, AT&T, etc. If they offered "internet anywhere" packages that bundled wired and wireless service, wireless providers without wired solutions could not compete on that playing field.
I know, it's all wow-ee-wow-oo-oo, but I'm still not impressed. If you're on the road a lot and can justify the extra cost of cellular access, yes, it's very cool. For everyone else, not so much. I just can't pay for a home plan and a wireless plan or multiple wireless plans for myself and my family. It's a luxury I can't justify.
We've got phones that are palmtop computing devices, internet access devices, phones, cameras, video cameras, and music/video players all in one. Device makers are embracing the mantra of integration. Is it that the wired arms of the telcos can't vertically integrate home and wireless access into affordable bundles due to anti-trust concerns or is it that they currently see that keeping them separate maximizes profit because the market just isn't demanding "internet anywhere" convenience at a workable price point?
How many times do we have to see this story? There's the famous stolen SideKick from June 2006, then a few months later there was this story about a stolen phone that automatically mailed pics to Flickr, and on and on and on. This is becoming a cliche "stupid thief" story.
The pledge and volunteer drive for mapping the Swat valley didn't generate nearly as much interest.
What interests me is how they'll power the car in a 24-hour race. There don't seem to be details on that.
According to their site, there's a large solar-powered charging station (100 square meters of photovoltaic surface) which can be used to charge the car between races, but unless they're seriously loading the thing with batteries, they're either going to need long pit stops for charging or the ability to swap out battery packs as fast as other cars can pit for fuel.
On the other hand, with their target date two years out and the rapidly evolving electric car scene, I wouldn't be surprised if there was some hot new prototype hitting the car show circuit around then that blew their doors off.
A game that doesn't let you break out of the original plot is just a bit of an animated storybook in a way, but if it does, it's not true to the original book. In the long run, games must adhere to the spirit of the material, not the letter, or they;re just going to suck. And any hardcore fan who screams about it not adhering to the letter probably doesn't "get it".
"designed to fail to reinforce the learning process"...
I'm sure that's meant as "designed to fail, so that figuring out why they failed reinforces the learning process" but it reads as they're designed so that they fail to reinforce the learning process.
The problem with zealots and fanatics is that these kinds of setbacks only help to make them believe that they just need to fight harder. It's a sad, sick feedback loop where defeat reinforces their mania instead of chipping away at it. I seriously doubt this is the last we'll hear of Jack Thompson. He'll just come up with new and creative ways to be a thorn in the side of gamers and freethinkers.
Just because he's disbarred, he can still find some rich, old lonely lady to fund his evil plans... much like Lex Luthor did in Superman Returns. But seriously, even though he's not a lawyer anymore, that doesn't stop him from getting one to act as his proxy. He just needs to find another manically deluded soul who either has a law degree or the money to pay for lawyers, and he'll be back.
The Final Sentence of TFA: "The GLA (Greater London Authority) said that the agreed solution represents the best possible outcome within the specific constraints of the scheme and accords with the objectives of London Plan policy 4A.6."
You know, lavishing praise on a project like that is going to make all the other projects jealous.
"Id quite like a link to the judge who made this ridiculous ruling too."
Yes, the name of this judge needs to be publicly spread around. He needs his share of the Streisand effect.
The Polizia were just following the orders of a local prosecutor who decided he's going to split hairs on Google's legal status. Apparently "Internet Service Providers" are not responsible for what third parties post on their sites, but "Internet Content Providers" are. While most believe Google qualifies as an ISP (instead of an ICP) under the EU and Italian safe harbor laws, this local prosecutor doesn't.
Basically an asshole Italian prosecutor trying to pull off a high-profile publicity stunt to get him the name recognition to jump to a higher elected office. This is like Elliott Spitzer, the crusading Attorney General of New York who parlayed a number of high-profile prosecutions into a successful bid to become Governor... then pissed it all away, but that's another story.
The prosecutor's an asshole, and if there is justice in the world, he'll end up disgraced and out of a job instead of benefitting from wasting everyone's time to aggrandize himself.
Only decepticon reformers turn it into CO2. Autobot reformers are much more responsible with the carbon.
I guess this begs the question of just what "open source" means. Just because you can look at the source does not mean you can legally copy or modify it. To legally copy or modify it, you need a license. That license may be a paid license or it may be one of the free open source licenses like the GPL, the BSD license, or a Creative Commons license.
People who implemented or modified and implemented the breathalyzer software that was revealed at trial would still be guilty of various infractions if the breathalyzer manafacturer asserted copyright, whether or not they were compelled to reveal it by a judge.
. A lot of people tend to think that viewable source means "open source," but we've tended to equate "open source" with software and source that are released under a free license. "Viewable" source (i.e. if you paid a fee to get access to the windows source code so you could hack better drivers) and "open" source (like Apache or Linux) are very different animals, IMO.
- Greg
Quacks or not, the issue isn't with criticism of the chiro's services, but with his billing rates and practices.
But quackery is relevant here, because the doctor should have used a PR person to help him rebut the detractor's claims and used the threat of libel to make Yelp append the rebuttal directly to the criticism so they had to be viewed together. It would have been less costly all around. Better to defuse your detractor as a crackpot/quack than to sue him and give him legitimacy.
Is the doctor within his rights? If the claims made by Norberg actually are false, then he is. Was this the best way to handle things? Nope.
There's a difference between SLAPP (Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation) and suing someone who has posted claims about you or your business that are patently false. And there's a point at which "opinion" becomes libel. The first thing that doctor's lawyer will ask:
Lawyer: So it was your "opinion" that my client's billing practices were criminal?
Defendant: Yes.
Lawyer: And which particular statute do you believe he was violating?
Defendant: Statute?
Lawyer: Well, if you were going to state an opinion that would be so harmful to someone's reputation, you'd have based it on some sort of research that led you to conclude that his behavior was actually criminal, right? You wouldn't just "pull it out of your ass" so to speak?
Defendant: Well...
Lawyer: Let me rephrase that. Let's say you put some faux fur in an artwork. If one of your clients falsely claimed that artwork contained the fur of baby harp seals that you had clubbed yourself, and that caused other clients to cancel future projects, would you write that off to mere "opinion"?
Defendant: No.
Lawyer: Why not?
Defendant: Because it's a lie.
Lawyer: Why can't it just be his opinion that it's harp seal fur from baby seals whose heads you brutally bashed in?
Defendant: Because it's not!
Lawyer: No further questions, your honor.
Let's put the blame squarely where it lies... on the stupid freakin' parents who were letting a 6-year-old play GTA!
It doesn't take that much effort to monitor your kids. But it does mean saying no and standing up to their whining and crying. It does mean dealing with the inconvenience of not being able to always do what you want to do and having to spend some time actively engaging them.
If this kid was playing GTA, then there should be additional charges filed against his parents.
8,000 leechers, 4 seeders, your download will complete in 1 day, 17 hours, 49 minutes.
Or a Quassam-rocket. One of those just killed two sisters aged 12 and 5.
And you might notice those girls were Palestinians. It's sort of sad, because when I saw that article, my first thought was "ha ha, you dumbass terrorists screwed up and killed your own." Then right after it I felt guilty because no child's death should be a source of laughter. I'm just so sick and damn tired of these asswipe terrorists. When they kill their own by accident, it's hard not to gloat.
The thing to note here is that value remains subjective. The actual test didn't show subjects diamond rings or big houses. It showed them simple images of neutral value that then paid off in varying amounts when selected. It was the amount of the payoff that influenced the subject's perception of the object. An object that paid off at $10 generated a stronger response than an item that had paid off at $0.10.
So the concept of a diamond ring registering more highly than junk depends on the "eye of the beholder." The images in the study were associated with receiving a reward. So a guy might not associate a diamond ring with a rewaed, but might see a pile of junk and think of all the fun he could have by building neat stuff with it.
They talk about how this research may give insight into addiction, but I really think it's just a sorting mechanism. It's our way of training ourselves from experience how to pick the most likely target from the herd, sort the best fruits from the pile, etc., in the shortest possible time.
Just don't get a witch between them (read Terry Pratchett's "Witches Abroad" if you don't understand).
Wow, they've figured out how to store photons for about as long as my three-year-old obeys a command to stop fidgeting.
:-)
From TFA: What they did was "find a way to trap a photon in a collection of 10 million neodymium atoms embedded in an yttrium orthovanadate crystal". Now say that 10 times fast.