And just how, exactly, do you plan to "hack" a CD? Unless you've got a spare liveCD hidden up your sleeve . . . but I'm sure someone somewhere would notice you taking an awfully long time to cast your vote in there. . ..
Easy for you to say if you don't live in America. Here we have the ghost of Three-Mile Island, which people are somehow still haunted by (read the wiki article—it really wasn't that bad), and President Carter's executive order forbidding the recycling of nuclear material. That pretty well forbids breeder reactors too. I don't know how much of the FUD that's in the air is from Three-Mile Island or from the oil/coal industries, but it's pretty damn pervasive over here.
By the way, has anyone noticed that despite our best efforts nuclear weapons continue to proliferate, as if they have lives of their own?
I'm not so sure that's the case though. There definitely does seem to be more demand than can be quickly supplied. Remember kids, the PS3 was the intentionally shorted console, and now they're on shelves everywhere. The Wii on the other hand is actually selling still and there's tremendous demand for them.
While it may be best to think of corporations as things and not beings (I don't think it's healthy to think of them as best buddies or arch nemeses either), there really isn't much personification going on. They actually are (at least in the US) legally identical to individuals. That's in the sense that they can commit crimes and get sued or pay taxes.
It's probably a good thing that corporations can't get married.
Ok you're a grammar nazi troll but someone just has to lay this out for you. If you paid attention to your English classes, "motor vehicle" is an object in that sentence, NOT the subject. "Reading", "writing" and "sending" form a compound predicate, and the implied subject of the sentence is YOU. "It is a crime for [you] to operate{verb} a motor vehicle{object} while reading{verb}, writing{verb} or sending{verb} electronic message{object}."
I don't have anything to say to the usual grammar nazis because they get it right and everyone ignores them anyway.
The obvious answer is that congress needed an easy way to put something down on paper that they care about energy policy.
Ok. I know Congress isn't doing enough about energy policy to keep us out of crisis territory, you know it, I'd say most of the people on slashdot know it. But seriously now! You're talking about a handful of paragraphs in a 550 page energy bill as if it were just something that they threw together last minute because their dog ate their homework. I don't think the DST switch is worth it either—I had to get up in the dark this morning—but maybe there's something more redeeming elsewhere in the bill. Maybe? We hope? I, like most congressmen, probably won't get around to reading all 550 pages of it.
Unfortunately for you, you never learned real programming
Genuine bona fide web developer, right over here, with a bachelor's in theoretical computer science. Judging by the prejudice in your comment, I'd wager that I've learned a lot more *real* programming than you have, and I practice it both in my web applications and also in my side projects.
The fact of the matter is that web applications are a pretty good idea if what you're trying to do is simple enough that a browser makes sense as a GUI, or is likely to change often enough that you need to constantly update it. And if you've got something where users edit information that has to be publicly available right away (read: CMS systems, calendars, various news sites *cough*slashdot*coughcough*), your publishing is just about as simple as it possibly could be.
For things like desktop applications (read: document preparation software—particularly when the documents should be private—and video games) the web interface thing doesn't make a whole lot of sense. Google's spreadsheet apps are pretty neat but I'm not sure I'd use them for anything really involved, but there are advantages too that even someone like yourself should be able to see. The documents I write on Writely don't disappear if my computer crashes, and I can get to them and edit them from my work machine then go home and keep working on them.
Before you go and diss a huge and growing population of the IT community, you should remember that, out there, there are people like me that just do this for a living and we're every bit as elite as you. Some of us are just a lot more polite.
I think that by "volunteer", really what is meant is that the organization (be it the open source community or the armed forces or your local blood drive) will take anyone on who wants to work with them. The Army will pay you for your work and they'll give you all kinds of benefits, but you're still a volunteer because you volunteered.
You're not a volunteer at your job because you've applied to work there and they have hired you. You have a contractual relationship that can be ended at will by either parties (so you're not coerced like the grandparent post implies). You're not a volunteer at your day job simply because once they hired you, they stopped looking (presumably) for other people to do your job. The Army will take who they can get.
I've heard there are plans to make that into a movie....my understanding is that it also does not "end well".
Maybe that's why it's been delayed and un-announced multiple times since I first heard rumours about it two years ago. I'd love to see it made into a movie, but I don't really know if the general movie-going populace would like it as much as I liked the comic books.
(there is a quantum computing algorithm called Shor's algorithm which could crack prime numbers in O((log N)^3) time, a vast improvement over current algorithms) that would make prime-number algorithms obsolete
Not entirely true. Shor's algorithm provides a quadratic speedup, which is definitely a vast improvement, but that only really means you'd need to double the keyspace to make it just as hard with Shor's algorithm. Add one extra bit to your 128-bit key and you're there. We'll be able to keep up that little arms race until keys become large enough to seriously tax our conventional computers we use to encrypt our data.
The citizens of Kansas should be allowed to determine what their children learn
Um, no. Parent A doesn't have the right to dictate in this way what Parent B's children learn in the classroom. Public education systems are there to teach children, in a secular environment, what can generally be considered the consensus of fact. If you've got any other theories of how the biological systems of the world came to be the way that they are, go ahead and put them forth (flying spaghetti monster, anyone?), but Darwin's whole natural selection thing is pretty much the best secular option we've got. Intelligent design, no matter how you dress it up and try to make it look otherwise, is a religious idea, and teaching it makes certain assumptions about peoples' beliefs.
The ability to admit that your pet theory is not capable of explaining some natural occurrences is what enables us as a people to advance in our understanding.
First of all, I'm not so sure that you can list a convincing number of biological systems or animal traits or anomalies that can't readily be explained by the process of natural selection. Secondly, why does it matter if it doesn't completely explain anything and everything right now? Like all science, it's constantly changing—evolving even—and it may be the case that anything you could come up with we could soon explain easily. So far though, you're in the minority, and I think most people who consider themselves scientists or rationalists if you're not into the whole science thing would agree that there's some process going on out there, and we can see it happening (in new species all the time), and natural selection is a pretty good explaination.
Ignoring the obvious only holds us back.
I could say the same thing about you. But seriously now, where is all this evidence that natural selection is hogwash? If you can come up with a counterexample or six I would gladly capitulate, but if you can't, all you have is faith. There's nothing at all wrong with that, I don't want you to get the wrong idea here, but it is faith, and it's not the place of public schools to teach kids faith. Public schools are there to teach fact, as it's understood in our time.
If you want your kids to learn religion, I have the utmost respect for that and that's why we have the first amendment, but the first amendment also means they're gonna have to go to a private school for that.
Slashdot Mirror
And just how, exactly, do you plan to "hack" a CD? Unless you've got a spare liveCD hidden up your sleeve . . . but I'm sure someone somewhere would notice you taking an awfully long time to cast your vote in there. . . .
If there were a (+1, smackdown!) moderation, I'd apply it here. Right on.
That's why the title says "pranked", not "hacked"
Easy for you to say if you don't live in America. Here we have the ghost of Three-Mile Island, which people are somehow still haunted by (read the wiki article—it really wasn't that bad), and President Carter's executive order forbidding the recycling of nuclear material. That pretty well forbids breeder reactors too. I don't know how much of the FUD that's in the air is from Three-Mile Island or from the oil/coal industries, but it's pretty damn pervasive over here.
By the way, has anyone noticed that despite our best efforts nuclear weapons continue to proliferate, as if they have lives of their own?
I'm shocked....
I'm not so sure that's the case though. There definitely does seem to be more demand than can be quickly supplied. Remember kids, the PS3 was the intentionally shorted console, and now they're on shelves everywhere. The Wii on the other hand is actually selling still and there's tremendous demand for them.
While it may be best to think of corporations as things and not beings (I don't think it's healthy to think of them as best buddies or arch nemeses either), there really isn't much personification going on. They actually are (at least in the US) legally identical to individuals. That's in the sense that they can commit crimes and get sued or pay taxes.
It's probably a good thing that corporations can't get married.
Ok you're a grammar nazi troll but someone just has to lay this out for you. If you paid attention to your English classes, "motor vehicle" is an object in that sentence, NOT the subject. "Reading", "writing" and "sending" form a compound predicate, and the implied subject of the sentence is YOU. "It is a crime for [you] to operate{verb} a motor vehicle{object} while reading{verb}, writing{verb} or sending{verb} electronic message{object}."
I don't have anything to say to the usual grammar nazis because they get it right and everyone ignores them anyway.
My vote: not that much.
I'm a morning person you insensitive clod!!!!
( not really )
Ok. I know Congress isn't doing enough about energy policy to keep us out of crisis territory, you know it, I'd say most of the people on slashdot know it. But seriously now! You're talking about a handful of paragraphs in a 550 page energy bill as if it were just something that they threw together last minute because their dog ate their homework. I don't think the DST switch is worth it either—I had to get up in the dark this morning—but maybe there's something more redeeming elsewhere in the bill. Maybe? We hope? I, like most congressmen, probably won't get around to reading all 550 pages of it.
Seriously! I mean, just look at this example.
You'd be surprised. . . .
Who was it that said no good deed goes unpunished?
Uhhhh yeah! Me too. Let's send in a grant request to them for a couple of cartons of Luckies.
Genuine bona fide web developer, right over here, with a bachelor's in theoretical computer science. Judging by the prejudice in your comment, I'd wager that I've learned a lot more *real* programming than you have, and I practice it both in my web applications and also in my side projects.
The fact of the matter is that web applications are a pretty good idea if what you're trying to do is simple enough that a browser makes sense as a GUI, or is likely to change often enough that you need to constantly update it. And if you've got something where users edit information that has to be publicly available right away (read: CMS systems, calendars, various news sites *cough*slashdot*coughcough*), your publishing is just about as simple as it possibly could be.
For things like desktop applications (read: document preparation software—particularly when the documents should be private—and video games) the web interface thing doesn't make a whole lot of sense. Google's spreadsheet apps are pretty neat but I'm not sure I'd use them for anything really involved, but there are advantages too that even someone like yourself should be able to see. The documents I write on Writely don't disappear if my computer crashes, and I can get to them and edit them from my work machine then go home and keep working on them.
Before you go and diss a huge and growing population of the IT community, you should remember that, out there, there are people like me that just do this for a living and we're every bit as elite as you. Some of us are just a lot more polite.
I think that by "volunteer", really what is meant is that the organization (be it the open source community or the armed forces or your local blood drive) will take anyone on who wants to work with them. The Army will pay you for your work and they'll give you all kinds of benefits, but you're still a volunteer because you volunteered. You're not a volunteer at your job because you've applied to work there and they have hired you. You have a contractual relationship that can be ended at will by either parties (so you're not coerced like the grandparent post implies). You're not a volunteer at your day job simply because once they hired you, they stopped looking (presumably) for other people to do your job. The Army will take who they can get.
As it should!!! I hope you learned your lesson.
Maybe that's why it's been delayed and un-announced multiple times since I first heard rumours about it two years ago. I'd love to see it made into a movie, but I don't really know if the general movie-going populace would like it as much as I liked the comic books.
Double-dare. Extra points if it's Hillary.
This'll really help me finish the rest of these 10,000 paper cranes!
Mod parent (-1, gross!!!)
Not entirely true. Shor's algorithm provides a quadratic speedup, which is definitely a vast improvement, but that only really means you'd need to double the keyspace to make it just as hard with Shor's algorithm. Add one extra bit to your 128-bit key and you're there. We'll be able to keep up that little arms race until keys become large enough to seriously tax our conventional computers we use to encrypt our data.
Yes, there is. The very definition of theft requires there to be intent to deny someone of their property. From the Oxford American Dictionary:
Steal take (another person's property) without permission or legal right and without intending to return it*whoooosh!!!*
Um, no. Parent A doesn't have the right to dictate in this way what Parent B's children learn in the classroom. Public education systems are there to teach children, in a secular environment, what can generally be considered the consensus of fact. If you've got any other theories of how the biological systems of the world came to be the way that they are, go ahead and put them forth (flying spaghetti monster, anyone?), but Darwin's whole natural selection thing is pretty much the best secular option we've got. Intelligent design, no matter how you dress it up and try to make it look otherwise, is a religious idea, and teaching it makes certain assumptions about peoples' beliefs.
First of all, I'm not so sure that you can list a convincing number of biological systems or animal traits or anomalies that can't readily be explained by the process of natural selection. Secondly, why does it matter if it doesn't completely explain anything and everything right now? Like all science, it's constantly changing—evolving even—and it may be the case that anything you could come up with we could soon explain easily. So far though, you're in the minority, and I think most people who consider themselves scientists or rationalists if you're not into the whole science thing would agree that there's some process going on out there, and we can see it happening (in new species all the time), and natural selection is a pretty good explaination.
I could say the same thing about you. But seriously now, where is all this evidence that natural selection is hogwash? If you can come up with a counterexample or six I would gladly capitulate, but if you can't, all you have is faith. There's nothing at all wrong with that, I don't want you to get the wrong idea here, but it is faith, and it's not the place of public schools to teach kids faith. Public schools are there to teach fact, as it's understood in our time.
If you want your kids to learn religion, I have the utmost respect for that and that's why we have the first amendment, but the first amendment also means they're gonna have to go to a private school for that.