A Senator or Congressman can do just about anything since they are exempt from the laws they pass.
Congressmen are in no way exempt from the laws they pass!! While legislators DO hold full immunity in certain countries, the United States is, fortunately, not one of them. James Traficant (OH) and Bill Janklow (SD) are two Congressmen who have been convicted within the last few years for corruption and vehicular manslaughter, respectively. (Following their convictions, Janklow resigned and Traficant was expelled by the House.)
The only immunity that our U.S. Congressmen hold is the privilege that they may not be arrested for anything they say while on the floor of Congress.
Up up down down left right left right B A Select Start.
Yes, but omit the Select if you were like me, playing 1-player because you had nobody to play with. Or reinsert the Select if you were coordinated enough to play with two controllers simultaneously...
It's much safer to evacuate first and ask questions later than to ask questions now and maybe be dead soon.
If a guy's holding a gun to your head and making demands, you follow his orders. You don't call his bluff and ask him if his gun is loaded.... Unless you have a death wish, anyway.
I'm not so sure. It might actually promote impulse buying. Buying something is as easy as clicking the button, and if you get your shopping done more quickly, there's less time to feel guilty about the impulse purchase (and less time to discreetly put it back on the shelf...).
Of course "any other explanation is mumbo-jumbo" but it's still a mildly interesting phenomenon.
And certainly a player who has had a Standout season will likely have a more Average season the following year, but the point of the Madden Curse is that those players who have had Standout seasons who appear on the cover of Madden tend to have really, really bad (or really, really short) seasons the following year.
We all know about probability and statistics, all this is in good fun. (Life's no fun if everything follows a normal distribution.)
That said, I think that the technology is definitely there to put little memory chips in the games, which would open up a whole new market in addition to the short, pithy games.
This market has already been opened up pretty well. Since the GBA can handle quick saving much better than its predecessor, there are now many more successful games that can be plalyed in short bursts, like Tetris, but aren't necessarily over after those short bursts. For example, one of Fire Emblem's biggest advantages is that you can turn it off literally at any time and when you turn it back on you can start again from the exact point at which you left off.
(Of course, this also makes cheating by resetting more difficult.)
At Cincinnati Country Day School, every student from 5th-12th grade must have a laptop (usually a Toshiba Satellite purchased through the school). The outrageous price of such a program is not a problem for most of the students at the school, because compared to tuition it seems pretty insignificant.
The laptops tend not to be that useful in class. They don't replace textbooks, and they aren't used as an integral part of most classes (other than Digital Photo, I suppose). Certain lab science classes use them, but only because the school also purchased some motion detectors, temperature sensors, and other instruments that interface with the computers--this is pretty much just a novelty, as other, cheaper, things (like thermometers) could be used instead.
One theory is that the school started the laptop program in order to make it seem more "modern" and "in touch" with technology. Certainly one advantage is that by high school almost all the students are computer literate, having been forced to learn how to use their computers (or at least having been forced to learn how to properly reboot their computers after Windows crashes). And nobody is ever bored during study halls, thanks to the school-wide wireless network. But the laptops are still pretty much unnecessary.
Theft/loss/damage is also a problem due to the tendency of middle school and high school students to not be very careful with expensive stuff. The damage is easily fixed by the magic of reimaging and warranty coverage, but the theft is a little trickier.
In a CNN article (well, actually Reuters) on the same subject, it is mentioned that one of the spare actuators NASA has on hand also has the gears reversed.
That article also says that this would have caused serious problems had an "emergency landing" ever been necessary, even though the actuator wasn't in the bottom position.
Here's an example of outsourcing being a Bad Thing (TM):
Bigs Rigs: Over the Road Racing has been hailed as the worst game ever, and that seems to have been outsourced to a company called Stellar Stone, LLC. Stellar Stone offers several services, including that "Your music theme can be performed by top Eastern European Orchestras" (which would be fine, except that In Soviet Russia, your music performs the orchestra).
Their website also says: Unlike many development companies, we do not charge our clients on per hour basis. Ah, I guess that would explain why it seems like they spent as little time as possible on Big Rigs.
There is an option on the main menu to view the credits, but when you click this option, the game either displays a blank screen or mysteriously crashes. I guess nobody wants to take credit for it!
This kind of thing is not a good sign for the video game industry.
The naming rules say you name the cation with a -nium suffix
But you don't use a -nium suffix, you use the name of the cation as is, even if it doesn't end in -nium, e.g. ferric oxide, mercurous iodide. It's a coincidence that "ammonium" ends in -nium.
Ammonium hydroxide is NH4OH. It's not so much that "hydronium hydroxide" is "like ammonium hydroxide," as the two don't really have that much in common other than their anion. Water does autoionize into the hydronium ion and the hydroxide ion, however, both at a concentration of about 1.0 x 10^-7 M.
I wish that in real life that whenever you met a minor character, an unimportant and insignificant person, probably annoying and/or ignorant, you could be sure that they were going to die within the next 60 minutes. That would make life much more enjoyable!
But cheesy acronyms are very useful, especially for the public, who can be in most cases assumed to have a short attention span. People are more likely to remember something called "SMART surgery" than some obscure acronym like "PTODPTTBIBT" ("Procedure To Operate On Deep, Previously Thought To Be Inoperable Brain Tumors").
I am puzzled as to why they would pick a goddess of the sea when it doesn't seem likely that the new planet holds much water.
The name was probably picked less for its association with the sea than for its prominence in Inuit mythology. A relatively big object should receive a relatively important name.
The Declaratory Judgment Act, under which HardOCP is "suing," allows "any court of the United States, upon the filing of an appropriate pleading, may declare the rights and other legal relations of any interested party seeking such declaration, whether or not further relief is or could be sought."
Also, "Any such declaration shall have the force and effect of a final judgment or decree and shall be reviewable as such." So even if this isn't technically a "lawsuit," its result will have the same effect as the result of a hypothetical suit against HardOCP.
(You don't really need to be told that IANAL, do you?)
I bet that HardOCP could have let the "lawsuit" slide and an out of court settlement would have happened, if anything.
But that would be taking "the easy and cheap way out of this situation," as Kyle Bennett said, and would be "throwing away [HardOCP.com's] credibility." The point of the countersuit is that HardOCP doesn't want to let this thing slide. That should have been pretty obvious when they posted the threatening letters from Infinium on their site.
Is any attempt made at determining whether these kids get help from their parents? Is it done by the honor system? I would think that meddling from over-excited parents would be a significant factor in these science olympiads (kinda of the equivalent of steroids in the real olympics).
The answer is that no, no attempt is usually made to determine if there was parental aid. Of course there is some parental help in some cases. However, as has been pointed out, having outside help usually only comes in handy on building events, and at most competitions, building events comprise a minority of events (at the Greater Cincinnati regional, 6 of 23 events last year involved building something beforehand).
I am not aware of any specific Science Olympiad policy prohibiting outside help in building something for the competition.
Keep in mind that if you do want to participate in Science Olympiad, you will need a team of about 15 students (and 2 alternates, if you'd like) who are dedicated to their tasks. You can't win Science Olympiad if you're lazy, even if you're talented. It takes a lot of time, and considering that most regional competitions will be taking place within the next several weeks, you may find that there is not enough time to organize a team and prepare your events. Many events don't require thorough preparation, but several of them do.
Check with your regional coordinator to see if you will be allowed to take a partial team (last year my school took a team of 7 students and participated in only 14 of 23 events). It could still be fun to show up and only participate in some events, even if you just want to see if you're interested in next year's competition.
Other science-related high school competitions include the JETSTEAMS Engineering Competition and the National Science Bowl, which is more of a trivia competition. Unfortunately, it is too late to register for or participate in either of these events this year (most Science Bowl regional events are in February, with the Nationals in early May).
Not that it really matters, but it's COPPA - Child Online Privacy Protection Act. Unless this is a different act (I know there are a lot of them:P).
It is in fact a different act. The object of COPA is to regulate questionable and offensive materials on the Internet, while the object of COPPA is to regulate the collection of personal information from those under the age of 13 over the Internet.
Since when is twice as much "only a few bucks more"? Hint: AOL doesn't count as one of "the local dialup providers".
The main local dialup provider in Cincinnati is Fuse, run by Cincinnati Bell, who also provide broadband service (sure, laugh at the name, but I've been happy with my 6+ years of very good service).
Last I checked, Fuse dial-up costs about $17/month, or $12/month when combined in certain ways with other phone services. So the parent poster has a point - $30/month is not exactly "only a few bucks more."
so if somebody decided to put up these materials for free that anybody could view without having to pay, it would be legit?
This is one of the key questions in front of the Court. The 3rd Circuit (from which the case was appealed to the Supreme Court) ruled that COPA's definition of "commercial purposes" was overbroad. We will see in the next few months whether or not the Supreme Court agrees.
This is not the first time COPA has come before the Court. Two years ago, the 3rd Circuit ruled that the definition of "community standards," the standards by which the obscenity of questioned material must be judged, is overbroad. The Supreme Court agreed, but stated that this was not enough to overturn COPA by itself. It remanded the case, and now the 3rd Circuit has come up with even more reasons to overturn it.
What will this do, if anything, to curb spyware on childrens' computers? I remember cleaning kids' machines infested with Bonzi Buddy and crap like that meant to lure children in for marketing purposes.
Any ruling on COPA will likely have no immediate effect on this, since COPA does not attempt to regulate anything other than materials considered "obscene" or "harmful to minors," and specifically only such materials that are on the Internet for "commercial purposes."
The only problem is that it's using the bracket system. There's always a bracket where two really good games/characters go at it and knock one out. Who's to say that if that game were placed in another bracket, it could have either lasted longer or win it all.
This is one of the advantages of a double elimination bracket over a single elimination bracket. Of course, a major disadvantage is that double elimination requires twice as many matches and can take more than twice as long (with 8 or 9 rounds required for a 16-entry bracket instead of 4 rounds).
But, as has been pointed out by nearly everybody, there is no perfect voting system, and no really good way to narrow down a pool of 64 extremely dissimilar video games to just 1 winner.
I think it'll be fairly interesting just to see what the top 64 are.
You are not being graded at all based upon if you can do something or not. You're PE grade has nothing to do with if you did a certain number of situps by a certain ammount of time. Your grade has everything to do with if you bothered to try at all -- If you participated and made the effort.
While I agree that this should be the case, there are still many schools, at least in my area, that still grade PE based on ability and not on effort. (All the schools I know of that do this are public schools.) For example, on one day the instructor will tell the class to go run on the track. He has a clipboard on which he tracks the number of laps completed by each student, and at the end of the class he assigns a grade: A if you completed 15 laps, B if you completed 14 laps, C for 13 laps, D for 12 laps, and F if anything less. The time spent running is usually about half an hour, and so anyone who is unable to run several consecutive 10-minute miles is doomed to fail.
Personally, I have never been able to run a 10-minute mile, except that one time I made it in 8:30 because I lied to the instructor and told him I was on my fourth lap.
Slashdot Mirror
A Senator or Congressman can do just about anything since they are exempt from the laws they pass.
Congressmen are in no way exempt from the laws they pass!! While legislators DO hold full immunity in certain countries, the United States is, fortunately, not one of them. James Traficant (OH) and Bill Janklow (SD) are two Congressmen who have been convicted within the last few years for corruption and vehicular manslaughter, respectively. (Following their convictions, Janklow resigned and Traficant was expelled by the House.)
The only immunity that our U.S. Congressmen hold is the privilege that they may not be arrested for anything they say while on the floor of Congress.
Up up down down left right left right B A Select Start.
Yes, but omit the Select if you were like me, playing 1-player because you had nobody to play with.
Or reinsert the Select if you were coordinated enough to play with two controllers simultaneously...
It's much safer to evacuate first and ask questions later than to ask questions now and maybe be dead soon.
... Unless you have a death wish, anyway.
If a guy's holding a gun to your head and making demands, you follow his orders. You don't call his bluff and ask him if his gun is loaded.
And it might even limit impulse buying.
I'm not so sure. It might actually promote impulse buying. Buying something is as easy as clicking the button, and if you get your shopping done more quickly, there's less time to feel guilty about the impulse purchase (and less time to discreetly put it back on the shelf...).
Of course "any other explanation is mumbo-jumbo" but it's still a mildly interesting phenomenon.
And certainly a player who has had a Standout season will likely have a more Average season the following year, but the point of the Madden Curse is that those players who have had Standout seasons who appear on the cover of Madden tend to have really, really bad (or really, really short) seasons the following year.
We all know about probability and statistics, all this is in good fun. (Life's no fun if everything follows a normal distribution.)
That said, I think that the technology is definitely there to put little memory chips in the games, which would open up a whole new market in addition to the short, pithy games.
This market has already been opened up pretty well. Since the GBA can handle quick saving much better than its predecessor, there are now many more successful games that can be plalyed in short bursts, like Tetris, but aren't necessarily over after those short bursts. For example, one of Fire Emblem's biggest advantages is that you can turn it off literally at any time and when you turn it back on you can start again from the exact point at which you left off.
(Of course, this also makes cheating by resetting more difficult.)
At Cincinnati Country Day School, every student from 5th-12th grade must have a laptop (usually a Toshiba Satellite purchased through the school). The outrageous price of such a program is not a problem for most of the students at the school, because compared to tuition it seems pretty insignificant.
The laptops tend not to be that useful in class. They don't replace textbooks, and they aren't used as an integral part of most classes (other than Digital Photo, I suppose). Certain lab science classes use them, but only because the school also purchased some motion detectors, temperature sensors, and other instruments that interface with the computers--this is pretty much just a novelty, as other, cheaper, things (like thermometers) could be used instead.
One theory is that the school started the laptop program in order to make it seem more "modern" and "in touch" with technology. Certainly one advantage is that by high school almost all the students are computer literate, having been forced to learn how to use their computers (or at least having been forced to learn how to properly reboot their computers after Windows crashes). And nobody is ever bored during study halls, thanks to the school-wide wireless network. But the laptops are still pretty much unnecessary.
Theft/loss/damage is also a problem due to the tendency of middle school and high school students to not be very careful with expensive stuff. The damage is easily fixed by the magic of reimaging and warranty coverage, but the theft is a little trickier.
I think that in this case federal law would actually apply (rather than simply Virginia law), since the communication is across state boundaries.
Federal law is one-party-consent.
In a CNN article (well, actually Reuters) on the same subject, it is mentioned that one of the spare actuators NASA has on hand also has the gears reversed.
That article also says that this would have caused serious problems had an "emergency landing" ever been necessary, even though the actuator wasn't in the bottom position.
Here's an example of outsourcing being a Bad Thing (TM):
Bigs Rigs: Over the Road Racing has been hailed as the worst game ever, and that seems to have been outsourced to a company called Stellar Stone, LLC. Stellar Stone offers several services, including that "Your music theme can be performed by top Eastern European Orchestras" (which would be fine, except that In Soviet Russia, your music performs the orchestra).
Their website also says:
Unlike many development companies, we do not charge our clients on per hour basis.
Ah, I guess that would explain why it seems like they spent as little time as possible on Big Rigs.
There is an option on the main menu to view the credits, but when you click this option, the game either displays a blank screen or mysteriously crashes. I guess nobody wants to take credit for it!
This kind of thing is not a good sign for the video game industry.
The naming rules say you name the cation with a -nium suffix
But you don't use a -nium suffix, you use the name of the cation as is, even if it doesn't end in -nium, e.g. ferric oxide, mercurous iodide. It's a coincidence that "ammonium" ends in -nium.
Hydronium hydroxide (like ammonium hydroxide)
Ammonium hydroxide is NH4OH.
It's not so much that "hydronium hydroxide" is "like ammonium hydroxide," as the two don't really have that much in common other than their anion.
Water does autoionize into the hydronium ion and the hydroxide ion, however, both at a concentration of about 1.0 x 10^-7 M.
I wish that in real life that whenever you met a minor character, an unimportant and insignificant person, probably annoying and/or ignorant, you could be sure that they were going to die within the next 60 minutes. That would make life much more enjoyable!
But cheesy acronyms are very useful, especially for the public, who can be in most cases assumed to have a short attention span. People are more likely to remember something called "SMART surgery" than some obscure acronym like "PTODPTTBIBT" ("Procedure To Operate On Deep, Previously Thought To Be Inoperable Brain Tumors").
"SMART" is also a little bit easier to pronounce.
I am puzzled as to why they would pick a goddess of the sea when it doesn't seem likely that the new planet holds much water.
The name was probably picked less for its association with the sea than for its prominence in Inuit mythology. A relatively big object should receive a relatively important name.
The Declaratory Judgment Act, under which HardOCP is "suing," allows "any court of the United States, upon the filing of an appropriate pleading, may declare the rights and other legal relations of any interested party seeking such declaration, whether or not further relief is or could be sought."
Also, "Any such declaration shall have the force and effect of a final judgment or decree and shall be reviewable as such." So even if this isn't technically a "lawsuit," its result will have the same effect as the result of a hypothetical suit against HardOCP.
(You don't really need to be told that IANAL, do you?)
I bet that HardOCP could have let the "lawsuit" slide and an out of court settlement would have happened, if anything.
But that would be taking "the easy and cheap way out of this situation," as Kyle Bennett said, and would be "throwing away [HardOCP.com's] credibility." The point of the countersuit is that HardOCP doesn't want to let this thing slide. That should have been pretty obvious when they posted the threatening letters from Infinium on their site.
Is any attempt made at determining whether these kids get help from their parents? Is it done by the honor system? I would think that meddling from over-excited parents would be a significant factor in these science olympiads (kinda of the equivalent of steroids in the real olympics).
The answer is that no, no attempt is usually made to determine if there was parental aid. Of course there is some parental help in some cases. However, as has been pointed out, having outside help usually only comes in handy on building events, and at most competitions, building events comprise a minority of events (at the Greater Cincinnati regional, 6 of 23 events last year involved building something beforehand).
I am not aware of any specific Science Olympiad policy prohibiting outside help in building something for the competition.
Keep in mind that if you do want to participate in Science Olympiad, you will need a team of about 15 students (and 2 alternates, if you'd like) who are dedicated to their tasks. You can't win Science Olympiad if you're lazy, even if you're talented. It takes a lot of time, and considering that most regional competitions will be taking place within the next several weeks, you may find that there is not enough time to organize a team and prepare your events. Many events don't require thorough preparation, but several of them do.
Check with your regional coordinator to see if you will be allowed to take a partial team (last year my school took a team of 7 students and participated in only 14 of 23 events). It could still be fun to show up and only participate in some events, even if you just want to see if you're interested in next year's competition.
Other science-related high school competitions include the JETS TEAMS Engineering Competition and the National Science Bowl, which is more of a trivia competition. Unfortunately, it is too late to register for or participate in either of these events this year (most Science Bowl regional events are in February, with the Nationals in early May).
Not that it really matters, but it's COPPA - Child Online Privacy Protection Act. Unless this is a different act (I know there are a lot of them :P).
It is in fact a different act. The object of COPA is to regulate questionable and offensive materials on the Internet, while the object of COPPA is to regulate the collection of personal information from those under the age of 13 over the Internet.
It is COPA that is being challenged by this case.
Since when is twice as much "only a few bucks more"? Hint: AOL doesn't count as one of "the local dialup providers".
The main local dialup provider in Cincinnati is Fuse, run by Cincinnati Bell, who also provide broadband service (sure, laugh at the name, but I've been happy with my 6+ years of very good service).
Last I checked, Fuse dial-up costs about $17/month, or $12/month when combined in certain ways with other phone services. So the parent poster has a point - $30/month is not exactly "only a few bucks more."
so if somebody decided to put up these materials for free that anybody could view without having to pay, it would be legit?
This is one of the key questions in front of the Court. The 3rd Circuit (from which the case was appealed to the Supreme Court) ruled that COPA's definition of "commercial purposes" was overbroad. We will see in the next few months whether or not the Supreme Court agrees.
This is not the first time COPA has come before the Court. Two years ago, the 3rd Circuit ruled that the definition of "community standards," the standards by which the obscenity of questioned material must be judged, is overbroad. The Supreme Court agreed, but stated that this was not enough to overturn COPA by itself. It remanded the case, and now the 3rd Circuit has come up with even more reasons to overturn it.
What will this do, if anything, to curb spyware on childrens' computers? I remember cleaning kids' machines infested with Bonzi Buddy and crap like that meant to lure children in for marketing purposes.
Any ruling on COPA will likely have no immediate effect on this, since COPA does not attempt to regulate anything other than materials considered "obscene" or "harmful to minors," and specifically only such materials that are on the Internet for "commercial purposes."
The only problem is that it's using the bracket system. There's always a bracket where two really good games/characters go at it and knock one out. Who's to say that if that game were placed in another bracket, it could have either lasted longer or win it all.
This is one of the advantages of a double elimination bracket over a single elimination bracket. Of course, a major disadvantage is that double elimination requires twice as many matches and can take more than twice as long (with 8 or 9 rounds required for a 16-entry bracket instead of 4 rounds).
But, as has been pointed out by nearly everybody, there is no perfect voting system, and no really good way to narrow down a pool of 64 extremely dissimilar video games to just 1 winner.
I think it'll be fairly interesting just to see what the top 64 are.
You are not being graded at all based upon if you can do something or not. You're PE grade has nothing to do with if you did a certain number of situps by a certain ammount of time. Your grade has everything to do with if you bothered to try at all -- If you participated and made the effort.
While I agree that this should be the case, there are still many schools, at least in my area, that still grade PE based on ability and not on effort. (All the schools I know of that do this are public schools.) For example, on one day the instructor will tell the class to go run on the track. He has a clipboard on which he tracks the number of laps completed by each student, and at the end of the class he assigns a grade: A if you completed 15 laps, B if you completed 14 laps, C for 13 laps, D for 12 laps, and F if anything less. The time spent running is usually about half an hour, and so anyone who is unable to run several consecutive 10-minute miles is doomed to fail.
Personally, I have never been able to run a 10-minute mile, except that one time I made it in 8:30 because I lied to the instructor and told him I was on my fourth lap.