Hurricanes, earthquakes, and tsunamis are probably also necessary for life in some way we don't yet understand.
Real world is not such an intelligently designed well balanced video game. Well balanced games DO include weird stuff that is required specifically for a balance. This appears to have no relationship with the real world. Some things, just happen to suck. No hidden positive agenda was necessary for them to exist.
in some way we don't yet understand.
In conclusion,
Math teacher: Not amused. This is the classic dotcom logic in literary form: 1) something 2) something else 3)... 4) success!
This year's elections reflect a very divided country that is uncertain how to proceed.
Sure its not the opposite? A nearly 50/50 means both sides played well and almost perfectly figured the exact lies to tell to get 51% of the electoral vote.
Using made up numbers, its like the stereotypical Right Left value to get 50% of the vote is exactly 7.1, so the right guy played at 7.095 and the left guy played at 7.105 and its all down to who looks nicer on the camera or whatever. I guess its extremely clear the winner will only be 0.05 off the R/L scale compared to what the electorate wants. I claim this is today's situation.
No idea what to do is when its a blowout. Lets say one side has a professional politician and the other side has the village idiot and the same 7.100 R/L gameplay position will win half the votes. So the pro aims at a 7.105 score and the moron goes for 3.995. Well its probably going to be a blow out win for the pro, but all we know "for certain" about what the population wants, is the aggregate will of the electorate is somewhere between 4.000 and 7.100, who really know for sure. I claim this is like Reagan's second term.
Nearly 50/50 means both sides know what lies the population likes to hear. Its only a blowout when one side has absolutely no idea what lies the population likes to hear.
There is also a temporal anomaly in that at least on the R side you need to go hard core neo to get the nomination and then intense middle ground to have a hope of election... so which lies were true? Is he a complete loon or merely slightly right of center? In other words the challenger is always less predictable than the incumbent because of the nomination process.
... alas - I don't see it getting much attention. Maybe if it detects mom coming down the stairs.
Hmm that's a good one AC you actually inspired a genuine good idea to implement. Like most mythtv users, I have a zillion recording groups (for non myth users, these are like independent selectable virtual DVRs, sorta) for all combinations of family members and "video list" directories categorized by family member combinations... Mythtv sees "Mom" "Dad" and "Son" on couch, analyzes Venn diagrams, suggests best bet to play back is "Iron Chef" vs if if was just "Dad" and "Son" mythtv would analyze our preferences and suggest "Mythbusters".
Why would anyone buy a device that does this and gives no benefit to the user?
My marketing guess is it'll be slid in with something psuedo-appealing.
Like a sorta-interactive exercise TV show where trainers try to motivate real world viewers to do stupid exercises while watching live and the least effective/motivational physical trainer as reported by kinect is voted out each week. Frankly I'd rather watch the pr0n equivalent version. Some vaguely gladiatorial combat thing with the viewers holding thumbs up or thumbs down might be cool. Or again, the pr0n version, literal thumbs up or thumbs down for "amihotornot" interactive TV show.
I don't have enough kinect experience to know if it can detect money shots and thumbs up/down and all that.
Regardless, it'll be something "cool" like that which also coincidentally has the turbo-mega-ultra-i-e-cloud-DRM feature. Not just "surprise, here's something that sucks, hope ya like it" although microsoft gets away with it at almost every software release so maybe, maybe...
Good point AC. Wish you had an account logged in so you'd get credit.
I've been planning an "art project" by putting a crime scene photo in front of the Kinect when its supposedly not being used. Then report on what happens (if anything) and when it happens. Assuming the swat team doesn't kill everyone in the house in order to save us as they often do. I'm going to make an (psuedo) anonymous blog and will report back to/. once all this is set up. The main problem I'm facing is I think crime scene photos are gross but worth keeping around for this art project, but I don't think the wife and kids will approve of the project enough to have a really gross icky pix laying around the living room. Maybe I'm thinking an LED illuminated box fitting over the kinect with the crime scene photo inside, so no one has to look at it. I've gotten much more european in my sensibilities as I've grown up, such that I think pr0n is now acceptable but blood and guts are now unacceptable for entertainment purposes, but I can't figure out how to make an "art project" like this using pr0n that wouldn't be too obviously fake (oh look, mr goatse lives at VLM's house... wait a sec, WTF is he a statue now? Or has his hide been stuffed and mounted (oh god the puns)) and would actually result in a response.
Multinational megacorp : 1984 is closer every year, lets monitor and track and dehumanize, all to protect us from terrorists and "Its For The Children(tm)" and we'll purchase govt legislators to legislate our profits into perpetuity and damn the peons, some citizens like corporations are more equal than other citizens like meatbags
Open source mythtv implementation : webcam detects wife entering the room, automatic hands off instant channel change from "Naughty Cheerleaders Car Wash 2012" to "CSPAN". I'm actually kinda surprised no one has implemented this yet. With all the video processing being done in VDPAU the CPU needs something to do to keep warm in the winter, and webcams are cheap, and prototype open source cam monitoring software already exists so...
Now wikipedia is pretty much doing this today, the only real threat is the deletionist a-holes. I "really learned" (as opposed to memorized temporarily in school and promptly forgot) quaternions from the wikipedia article. I just checked and its not been deleted (yet) and its different than when I read it, but not any worse at least.
The deletionist a-holes might someday wipe the article from wikipedia just to feel joy in others pain, but mathworld probably would never delete their quaternion article as its kind of an important concept. However the mathworld article is arguably not as good as the wikipedia article
I wrote a novel aimed at a small student community
there'd need to be more to any future business model i might come up with than 'electronic is free, physical is not'.
The market for small honorariums is pretty much dead, which is too bad. The $5000+expenses model is healthy, as is the "just show up for free" model. Someone could make a shitload of money on the internet as a facilitator of middle size honorariums as a business model. Its dead enough I've never even heard of an online facilitator for it... it might technically be alive but only in Paris and only with 10 speakers or something.
If Baen had done something like this it would have been a blow.
Yeah, a financial blow for Baen. I've spent fat stacks of cash on books that they'd lured me in with free versions. It helps for series sales to release the first novel, but it REALLY helps to release at least one novel per author, so you get a free preview of what they're like, and then the collecting drive kicks in and the amazon boxes start arriving...
It seems there's a substantial psychological hill to climb with non-free publishers "I hate you Fing pirates downloading our books" "Well F you guys I'll buy something from Baen instead if it makes you feel any better" vs "Here's something free you might like. If you like it, there's lots more that's cheap, but not free." "Cool, (VLM whips out credit card)"
This is not theoretical, Baen is making more money off me than they "should" merely via their marketing gimmick.
Ahh that's the problem. I took a university class on pre-civil war american history. That could be updated every month as the historical academic journals publish new papers, but almost nothing would be changed each month and approx zero value would be added, although the price for all that churn would be extremely high. Or you could update the text every generation or so, maybe as what boils down to a PHD's dissertation project. Not sure if that would be an Ed PHD or a history PHD project or a collaboration more likely or.... That's probably good enough, and basically free.
On the other hand, I was forced to take some idiotic IT helpdesk support training type class on Excel '97, which was only one generation obsolete at that time. That textbook obviously has to be completely rewritten every time MS wants to re-cash-in on all the previous Excel sales.
Generally speaking if its a training textbook then an old one is worthless, and if its an education textbook then an old one is perfectly fine.
LOL talk to the automotive industry about that. Weld the case shut so you can't swap out the battery or HD/SSD and its guaranteed trash in a couple years.
Why would anybody have a personal income when they can just register a company to buy them what they want?
This results in gaming the fees and licenses for incorporation papers. Well, we don't have a tax, per se, on corporate income, but it costs $10K of lawyer fees to set it up and if you don't want to get audited you'll have to spend $10K/yr on professional accountant tax filing, etc etc.
One argument for corp income tax is preventing citizen income tax evasion. Too "easy" to boost share value by accumulating tax free cash on the corporate books instead of paying out salary, and then distribute valuable shares instead of payroll, and then get to track when and how each individual share gets sold on the market and cap gains tax each share. It would pretty much have to be a package deal where the cap gains tax AND the income tax are eliminated at the same time. The point is its all inter-related so "messing around" with corp income tax is going to have all sorts of strange interaction with capgains taxes and probably many others.
Another analysis, not paying corp income taxes will mostly result in higher dividend taxes and/or higher cap gains taxes on stock sales, so the net result is more govt tax collection, which is not good. Starve the beast.
Consumption taxes work until you fight over the inevitable and corrupt 8000 exceptions. In my state, cold deli items have no sales tax and hot deli items have full tax. So there's about a 6% incentive to buy fried deli chicken out of the cooler vs off the steam table. Crazy but true. Tax avoidance scheme: Purchase educational self assembly learn electronics at home kit that happens to be a working mp3 player at 0% educational consumption tax rate, vs 50% VAT for an ipod.
Was the LS an actual saturn or a rebadge? I don't remember. My 97 SC2, a genuine saturn not a rebadge, simply wont die although I've had all the "typical saturn" problems.
They start sipping oil at 100K miles about 1 quart every 2K miles. Supposedly a $1500 valve job will perma-fix that, although at $5/qt for fancy synthetic that valve job would take more than the realistic life of the car before I'd break even vs just burning some oil... so I just buy 6 qts or so at each oil change and then dump another in every month or two.
Also the brakes are legendarily bad and need replacement pads and disks every year or so. If you ever, ever take a saturn into a 3rd party service center, maybe to stick a new muffler on or something, they'll put the wheels back on wrong, and warp the disks. Some cars/brakes you can get away with ignoring wheel tightening pattern, but not saturns. Torque one lug nut to 100 or whatever, then the put the next nut and torque it full, repeat until they're all on and you've got a guaranteed warped disk on a Saturn. You're not supposed to install wheel nuts like that but people do anyway.
The ECU goes completely insane if the battery fails and you only get 10 volts on the bus. Absolutely bonkers. The car will crank and even halfway start but the ECU is insane so it'll smoke and ping and go crazy, leading to terror that its going to be a 4 figure repair bill, and then it turns out a simple battery will fix it. Also the battery design is such that you'll have to tighten the battery bolt as the average monkey leaves it too loose, so you'll think "complete electrical failure" and it'll turn out to just be loose battery..
Finally if it misfires for whatever reason you'll get a crankshaft position sensor failure code, which is mystifying once you figure out there is no crank position sensor on a saturn... thats their cute way of saying the ECU detected a misfire, something to do with the current drawn by the coil or something.
Overall a nice unkillable car. I also have no idea what to buy to replace it. GM doesn't want to make cars like Saturns anymore. Probably a new Toyota. My wife's old prius is basically perfect.
As for me at 48, sitting in front of the computer all day just pains me - literally. No matter how often I take breaks, I have a lot of tension that runs down from my neck to my ass.
That's exactly how I felt at age 19 as I was stacking 80 pound salt bags on pallets for roughly $5/hr. About a week after I got my first "real" desk job, the most surprising observation I had, other than the obvious "now I take a shower before work rather than after work" was that I wasn't in some level of constant pain. Getting old is no fun but it beats the alternative, and I'm not thinking there's anything that can help once you get old enough, by that I mean that stacking 80 pound salt bags would probably just kill me at my current age, not make my back feel better. I had back problems a couple years back until I (re-)started serious (as in, need a shower afterwards) weightlifting during lunch hour, the key being if your physical therapist says do X Y and Z do exactly X Y Z no improvising or excuses.
I can't wait for the day when I can tell the computer verbally or draw a picture the algorithm and never ever have to type another line of code - ever.
The bandwidth for that is almost infinitely low compared to typing. You'd basically have to invent your own glyphs and language, or spend hours drawing thousands of pictures. You may want to look into the CAD drafting profession, where you get to spend hours drawing the equivalent of a couple lines of text. Another fun one is wedding photography.
Also try a less verbose language. I've seen 1000+ line java programs replaced by about 5 lines of Perl/CPAN... two use statements, two cpan calls, and an immense line noise appearing regex between them. Unsurprisingly, neither extreme is healthy.
Do you really think cops give two sh*ts about a stolen cell phone? Or stolen anything for that matter? Have you ever had anything stolen? Unless the thief literally falls into their laps, I guarantee they're not going to do anything about it.
It depends how wealthy the location is. Think of minor fender bender parking lot-style car accidents. I or my family members have had the following experiences in the last decade:
Very well off "law and order republicans" suburban area: Cop dispatched, takes pics and makes report onsite before we're allowed to leave. Pulls up with lights on but at least left the siren off. Take statement from both parties, breathalyzer both parties (even though both obviously 0.0%) etc.
So so literally borderline area: Cops demand both parties drive to station immediately. Like right now, or go directly to jail. Desk sgt took report. No on site investigation but they did put down the donut and walk into the station parking lot to take pix. Breathalyzer both parties, the other guy unsurprisingly was drunk.
Urban area: I called 911 they said bye bye, come down to the station and make a report if your insurance requires it within the next week. No injury and no accusation of drunkeness means the police are uninterested (This was Milwaukee WI I believe 3rd district?). Showed up 3 days later at the station in rental car, she took my story, I signed, they gave me a "case number" which I sent to insurance, absolutely nothing else was done.
I suspect a stolen cell phone report given bored suburban cops would result in SWAT dispatch, I know for a fact that in the "urban core" if no one is currently shooting or bleeding all they do is write speeding and parking tickets.
you can never be sure that the used phone you bought today wasn't stolen yesterday and is on the row to be blocked.
Well this has a simple enough protocol. Ask for the IMEI, meet ya second thing tomorrow to make the trade, first thing tomorrow type in the IMEI and see if its stolen, if it is, don't meet.
Don't forget the opposite purpose. What if any authentication is required to put a serial number or whatever in the DB as either a prank (ha ha cube mate) or the stereotypical insane spouse going after the other spouse during divorce or whatever?
If its just a web form somewhere, T minus x minutes until some goofball DDOSes the web form to add all serial numbers from 00000000 to 9999999 psuedorandomly to the stolen DB.
Yeah that's exactly the kind of post I'd write to clear my own name if I was the OP. Unless she knows that I know that she knows... I believe this is a recursive trap we've entered here.
I think this explains why conversations on facebook back when I used to have an account were ridiculous stupid and conversations on/. are usually well above room temp IQ but perhaps lacking in some civility.
FB: "Boo hoo I think I'm catchcing a cold, ironically; I can't figure the first derivative of 1/x"
FB: Oh you poor baby lets play farmville together till you feel better, have you tried aromatherapy yet for the cold?
/. : "Boo hoo I think I'm catchcing a cold, ironically; I can't figure the first derivative of 1/x"
/. : "You Fing idiot you can't even spell catching, don't know what irony is, and if you could spell google correctly instead of spelling it as/., you'd see its -1/x^2"
Usually the epic fail of "fuel in non-fuel rated areas" is the fire chief flips his lid, especially if the sprinkler system is down and/or you're transporting slippery oil via the emergency evac route.
This is just "no cans of gasoline (for scooters, mopeds, etc) allowed in the dorms" writ large.
Slashdot Mirror
So....wait until it sees your wife's face and then changes channels. I can see a flaw with this.
Don't change the channel if she likes it, you mean?
Hurricanes, earthquakes, and tsunamis are probably also necessary for life in some way we don't yet understand.
Real world is not such an intelligently designed well balanced video game. Well balanced games DO include weird stuff that is required specifically for a balance.
This appears to have no relationship with the real world.
Some things, just happen to suck. No hidden positive agenda was necessary for them to exist.
in some way we don't yet understand.
In conclusion,
Math teacher: Not amused. This is the classic dotcom logic in literary form: ...
1) something
2) something else
3)
4) success!
This year's elections reflect a very divided country that is uncertain how to proceed.
Sure its not the opposite? A nearly 50/50 means both sides played well and almost perfectly figured the exact lies to tell to get 51% of the electoral vote.
Using made up numbers, its like the stereotypical Right Left value to get 50% of the vote is exactly 7.1, so the right guy played at 7.095 and the left guy played at 7.105 and its all down to who looks nicer on the camera or whatever. I guess its extremely clear the winner will only be 0.05 off the R/L scale compared to what the electorate wants. I claim this is today's situation.
No idea what to do is when its a blowout. Lets say one side has a professional politician and the other side has the village idiot and the same 7.100 R/L gameplay position will win half the votes. So the pro aims at a 7.105 score and the moron goes for 3.995. Well its probably going to be a blow out win for the pro, but all we know "for certain" about what the population wants, is the aggregate will of the electorate is somewhere between 4.000 and 7.100, who really know for sure. I claim this is like Reagan's second term.
Nearly 50/50 means both sides know what lies the population likes to hear. Its only a blowout when one side has absolutely no idea what lies the population likes to hear.
There is also a temporal anomaly in that at least on the R side you need to go hard core neo to get the nomination and then intense middle ground to have a hope of election... so which lies were true? Is he a complete loon or merely slightly right of center? In other words the challenger is always less predictable than the incumbent because of the nomination process.
What else is on TV? Cop shows? Lawyer shows?
... alas - I don't see it getting much attention. Maybe if it detects mom coming down the stairs.
Hmm that's a good one AC you actually inspired a genuine good idea to implement. Like most mythtv users, I have a zillion recording groups (for non myth users, these are like independent selectable virtual DVRs, sorta) for all combinations of family members and "video list" directories categorized by family member combinations... Mythtv sees "Mom" "Dad" and "Son" on couch, analyzes Venn diagrams, suggests best bet to play back is "Iron Chef" vs if if was just "Dad" and "Son" mythtv would analyze our preferences and suggest "Mythbusters".
Insert bad Sarah Palin joke. (are there any good ones?)
Why would anyone buy a device that does this and gives no benefit to the user?
My marketing guess is it'll be slid in with something psuedo-appealing.
Like a sorta-interactive exercise TV show where trainers try to motivate real world viewers to do stupid exercises while watching live and the least effective/motivational physical trainer as reported by kinect is voted out each week. Frankly I'd rather watch the pr0n equivalent version. Some vaguely gladiatorial combat thing with the viewers holding thumbs up or thumbs down might be cool. Or again, the pr0n version, literal thumbs up or thumbs down for "amihotornot" interactive TV show.
I don't have enough kinect experience to know if it can detect money shots and thumbs up/down and all that.
Regardless, it'll be something "cool" like that which also coincidentally has the turbo-mega-ultra-i-e-cloud-DRM feature. Not just "surprise, here's something that sucks, hope ya like it" although microsoft gets away with it at almost every software release so maybe, maybe...
Whenever we're not using it, the Kinect will be turned around to face some porn!
I like your targeted ads.
Good point AC. Wish you had an account logged in so you'd get credit.
I've been planning an "art project" by putting a crime scene photo in front of the Kinect when its supposedly not being used. Then report on what happens (if anything) and when it happens. Assuming the swat team doesn't kill everyone in the house in order to save us as they often do. I'm going to make an (psuedo) anonymous blog and will report back to /. once all this is set up. The main problem I'm facing is I think crime scene photos are gross but worth keeping around for this art project, but I don't think the wife and kids will approve of the project enough to have a really gross icky pix laying around the living room. Maybe I'm thinking an LED illuminated box fitting over the kinect with the crime scene photo inside, so no one has to look at it. I've gotten much more european in my sensibilities as I've grown up, such that I think pr0n is now acceptable but blood and guts are now unacceptable for entertainment purposes, but I can't figure out how to make an "art project" like this using pr0n that wouldn't be too obviously fake (oh look, mr goatse lives at VLM's house... wait a sec, WTF is he a statue now? Or has his hide been stuffed and mounted (oh god the puns)) and would actually result in a response.
Typical dual use technology
Multinational megacorp : 1984 is closer every year, lets monitor and track and dehumanize, all to protect us from terrorists and "Its For The Children(tm)" and we'll purchase govt legislators to legislate our profits into perpetuity and damn the peons, some citizens like corporations are more equal than other citizens like meatbags
Open source mythtv implementation : webcam detects wife entering the room, automatic hands off instant channel change from "Naughty Cheerleaders Car Wash 2012" to "CSPAN". I'm actually kinda surprised no one has implemented this yet. With all the video processing being done in VDPAU the CPU needs something to do to keep warm in the winter, and webcams are cheap, and prototype open source cam monitoring software already exists so ...
BitTorrent has already done this.
online for peer reviewed update and analysis.
Not seeing how the two connect in any way?
Now wikipedia is pretty much doing this today, the only real threat is the deletionist a-holes. I "really learned" (as opposed to memorized temporarily in school and promptly forgot) quaternions from the wikipedia article. I just checked and its not been deleted (yet) and its different than when I read it, but not any worse at least.
The deletionist a-holes might someday wipe the article from wikipedia just to feel joy in others pain, but mathworld probably would never delete their quaternion article as its kind of an important concept. However the mathworld article is arguably not as good as the wikipedia article
I wrote a novel aimed at a small student community
there'd need to be more to any future business model i might come up with than 'electronic is free, physical is not'.
The market for small honorariums is pretty much dead, which is too bad. The $5000+expenses model is healthy, as is the "just show up for free" model. Someone could make a shitload of money on the internet as a facilitator of middle size honorariums as a business model. Its dead enough I've never even heard of an online facilitator for it... it might technically be alive but only in Paris and only with 10 speakers or something.
If Baen had done something like this it would have been a blow.
Yeah, a financial blow for Baen. I've spent fat stacks of cash on books that they'd lured me in with free versions. It helps for series sales to release the first novel, but it REALLY helps to release at least one novel per author, so you get a free preview of what they're like, and then the collecting drive kicks in and the amazon boxes start arriving ...
It seems there's a substantial psychological hill to climb with non-free publishers "I hate you Fing pirates downloading our books" "Well F you guys I'll buy something from Baen instead if it makes you feel any better" vs "Here's something free you might like. If you like it, there's lots more that's cheap, but not free." "Cool, (VLM whips out credit card)"
This is not theoretical, Baen is making more money off me than they "should" merely via their marketing gimmick.
In fact, if the textbook is old, it is worthless
Ahh that's the problem. I took a university class on pre-civil war american history. That could be updated every month as the historical academic journals publish new papers, but almost nothing would be changed each month and approx zero value would be added, although the price for all that churn would be extremely high. Or you could update the text every generation or so, maybe as what boils down to a PHD's dissertation project. Not sure if that would be an Ed PHD or a history PHD project or a collaboration more likely or .... That's probably good enough, and basically free.
On the other hand, I was forced to take some idiotic IT helpdesk support training type class on Excel '97, which was only one generation obsolete at that time. That textbook obviously has to be completely rewritten every time MS wants to re-cash-in on all the previous Excel sales.
Generally speaking if its a training textbook then an old one is worthless, and if its an education textbook then an old one is perfectly fine.
You can't charge a repeating fee for hardware.
LOL talk to the automotive industry about that. Weld the case shut so you can't swap out the battery or HD/SSD and its guaranteed trash in a couple years.
Why would anybody have a personal income when they can just register a company to buy them what they want?
This results in gaming the fees and licenses for incorporation papers. Well, we don't have a tax, per se, on corporate income, but it costs $10K of lawyer fees to set it up and if you don't want to get audited you'll have to spend $10K/yr on professional accountant tax filing, etc etc.
One argument for corp income tax is preventing citizen income tax evasion. Too "easy" to boost share value by accumulating tax free cash on the corporate books instead of paying out salary, and then distribute valuable shares instead of payroll, and then get to track when and how each individual share gets sold on the market and cap gains tax each share. It would pretty much have to be a package deal where the cap gains tax AND the income tax are eliminated at the same time. The point is its all inter-related so "messing around" with corp income tax is going to have all sorts of strange interaction with capgains taxes and probably many others.
Another analysis, not paying corp income taxes will mostly result in higher dividend taxes and/or higher cap gains taxes on stock sales, so the net result is more govt tax collection, which is not good. Starve the beast.
Consumption taxes work until you fight over the inevitable and corrupt 8000 exceptions. In my state, cold deli items have no sales tax and hot deli items have full tax. So there's about a 6% incentive to buy fried deli chicken out of the cooler vs off the steam table. Crazy but true. Tax avoidance scheme: Purchase educational self assembly learn electronics at home kit that happens to be a working mp3 player at 0% educational consumption tax rate, vs 50% VAT for an ipod.
Was the LS an actual saturn or a rebadge? I don't remember. My 97 SC2, a genuine saturn not a rebadge, simply wont die although I've had all the "typical saturn" problems.
They start sipping oil at 100K miles about 1 quart every 2K miles. Supposedly a $1500 valve job will perma-fix that, although at $5/qt for fancy synthetic that valve job would take more than the realistic life of the car before I'd break even vs just burning some oil... so I just buy 6 qts or so at each oil change and then dump another in every month or two.
Also the brakes are legendarily bad and need replacement pads and disks every year or so. If you ever, ever take a saturn into a 3rd party service center, maybe to stick a new muffler on or something, they'll put the wheels back on wrong, and warp the disks. Some cars/brakes you can get away with ignoring wheel tightening pattern, but not saturns. Torque one lug nut to 100 or whatever, then the put the next nut and torque it full, repeat until they're all on and you've got a guaranteed warped disk on a Saturn. You're not supposed to install wheel nuts like that but people do anyway.
The ECU goes completely insane if the battery fails and you only get 10 volts on the bus. Absolutely bonkers. The car will crank and even halfway start but the ECU is insane so it'll smoke and ping and go crazy, leading to terror that its going to be a 4 figure repair bill, and then it turns out a simple battery will fix it. Also the battery design is such that you'll have to tighten the battery bolt as the average monkey leaves it too loose, so you'll think "complete electrical failure" and it'll turn out to just be loose battery..
Finally if it misfires for whatever reason you'll get a crankshaft position sensor failure code, which is mystifying once you figure out there is no crank position sensor on a saturn... thats their cute way of saying the ECU detected a misfire, something to do with the current drawn by the coil or something.
Overall a nice unkillable car. I also have no idea what to buy to replace it. GM doesn't want to make cars like Saturns anymore. Probably a new Toyota. My wife's old prius is basically perfect.
As for me at 48, sitting in front of the computer all day just pains me - literally. No matter how often I take breaks, I have a lot of tension that runs down from my neck to my ass.
That's exactly how I felt at age 19 as I was stacking 80 pound salt bags on pallets for roughly $5/hr. About a week after I got my first "real" desk job, the most surprising observation I had, other than the obvious "now I take a shower before work rather than after work" was that I wasn't in some level of constant pain. Getting old is no fun but it beats the alternative, and I'm not thinking there's anything that can help once you get old enough, by that I mean that stacking 80 pound salt bags would probably just kill me at my current age, not make my back feel better. I had back problems a couple years back until I (re-)started serious (as in, need a shower afterwards) weightlifting during lunch hour, the key being if your physical therapist says do X Y and Z do exactly X Y Z no improvising or excuses.
I can't wait for the day when I can tell the computer verbally or draw a picture the algorithm and never ever have to type another line of code - ever.
The bandwidth for that is almost infinitely low compared to typing. You'd basically have to invent your own glyphs and language, or spend hours drawing thousands of pictures. You may want to look into the CAD drafting profession, where you get to spend hours drawing the equivalent of a couple lines of text. Another fun one is wedding photography.
Also try a less verbose language. I've seen 1000+ line java programs replaced by about 5 lines of Perl/CPAN... two use statements, two cpan calls, and an immense line noise appearing regex between them. Unsurprisingly, neither extreme is healthy.
Do you really think cops give two sh*ts about a stolen cell phone? Or stolen anything for that matter? Have you ever had anything stolen? Unless the thief literally falls into their laps, I guarantee they're not going to do anything about it.
It depends how wealthy the location is. Think of minor fender bender parking lot-style car accidents. I or my family members have had the following experiences in the last decade:
Very well off "law and order republicans" suburban area: Cop dispatched, takes pics and makes report onsite before we're allowed to leave. Pulls up with lights on but at least left the siren off. Take statement from both parties, breathalyzer both parties (even though both obviously 0.0%) etc.
So so literally borderline area: Cops demand both parties drive to station immediately. Like right now, or go directly to jail. Desk sgt took report. No on site investigation but they did put down the donut and walk into the station parking lot to take pix. Breathalyzer both parties, the other guy unsurprisingly was drunk.
Urban area: I called 911 they said bye bye, come down to the station and make a report if your insurance requires it within the next week. No injury and no accusation of drunkeness means the police are uninterested (This was Milwaukee WI I believe 3rd district?). Showed up 3 days later at the station in rental car, she took my story, I signed, they gave me a "case number" which I sent to insurance, absolutely nothing else was done.
I suspect a stolen cell phone report given bored suburban cops would result in SWAT dispatch, I know for a fact that in the "urban core" if no one is currently shooting or bleeding all they do is write speeding and parking tickets.
you can never be sure that the used phone you bought today wasn't stolen yesterday and is on the row to be blocked.
Well this has a simple enough protocol. Ask for the IMEI, meet ya second thing tomorrow to make the trade, first thing tomorrow type in the IMEI and see if its stolen, if it is, don't meet.
Don't forget the opposite purpose. What if any authentication is required to put a serial number or whatever in the DB as either a prank (ha ha cube mate) or the stereotypical insane spouse going after the other spouse during divorce or whatever?
If its just a web form somewhere, T minus x minutes until some goofball DDOSes the web form to add all serial numbers from 00000000 to 9999999 psuedorandomly to the stolen DB.
(Posting to hopefully clear my own name)
Yeah that's exactly the kind of post I'd write to clear my own name if I was the OP. Unless she knows that I know that she knows... I believe this is a recursive trap we've entered here.
I think this explains why conversations on facebook back when I used to have an account were ridiculous stupid and conversations on /. are usually well above room temp IQ but perhaps lacking in some civility.
FB: "Boo hoo I think I'm catchcing a cold, ironically; I can't figure the first derivative of 1/x"
FB: Oh you poor baby lets play farmville together till you feel better, have you tried aromatherapy yet for the cold?
/. : "Boo hoo I think I'm catchcing a cold, ironically; I can't figure the first derivative of 1/x"
/. : "You Fing idiot you can't even spell catching, don't know what irony is, and if you could spell google correctly instead of spelling it as /., you'd see its -1/x^2"
Usually the epic fail of "fuel in non-fuel rated areas" is the fire chief flips his lid, especially if the sprinkler system is down and/or you're transporting slippery oil via the emergency evac route.
This is just "no cans of gasoline (for scooters, mopeds, etc) allowed in the dorms" writ large.