Can I get some cash if I go-round breaking windows? Just as demolishing cars made work for assemblyline men, my activity will make work for glaziers.
Speaking of broken windows, I seem to recall reading somewhere that some locales in the US are considering demolishing the houses that were abandoned due to the crash, because otherwise their price might fall to the point where even not-so-rich could afford a nice one. Does anyone know anything about this, or is it just an urban myth?
Yep, because properly labeling and sealing hazardous waste containers is such a mission critical part of the job of launching rockets.
It is a mission critical part of any job that generates hazardous waste. Furthermore, it is, ultimately, a very simple part; if you can't do it properly, why should I expect you to be able to handle any difficult part either?
Besides, let's not forget that each and every disaster of NASA can be tracked back to an oversight. Why did Challenger blow? Because NASAs top brass didn't pay attention when they were told it was too cold for the O-rings. Why did Columbia disintegrate? Because NASAs top brass didn't pay attention when they were told that a piece of foam might have hit the shuttle on takeoff.
Spaceflight with chemical rockets is pushing physics and our technology as far as they go, and physics are eager to push back given any chance. Any oversight provides just such a chance. Complaining about the improper disposal of litter might seem anal-retentive, but the cold truth is that as it stands, spaceflight requires anal-retentive attention to every last detail, least a disaster ensues. And if SpaceX doesn't have such people, it should hire some ASAP.
Won't anybody stop this insanity and think of the adults who crave link-shortened pictures of "a scantily clad lady with some bottle in her hand"?
Better yet, think whether it really makes sense to do business with Islamic countries, especially if your company has anything to do with communication. This is no more than is to be expected from a theocracy.
It's not like Libya has made it secret that they're following Sharia, nor that said law disallows freedom of speech or other human rights. This story is about the same as "man puts hand into fire, gets burned". You always will in the end, if you deal with dictatorships.
Been training in martial arts for forty years now; the very few times violence has been offered to me, I responded in kind and the attacker did not prevail.
You are a bad boy, aren't you? Oh yes you are, you old gangsta you!
The details shall remain fuzzy as I don't subscribe to the "only offer as much force as is offered you" social idiocy; suffice it to say that it would be impossible for that event to repeat itself in the same fashion with the same characters.
Someone called you a mean name in the playground, you hit him, and are now afraid of your mommy finding out yet can't help but brag about how bad a boy you are?
You aren't impressing or intimidating anyone.
The people who claim violence is never appropriate are never very sophisticated individuals.
"Ah, yes, the 'unalienable rights.' Each year someone quotes that magnificent poetry. Life? What 'right' to life has a man who is drowning in the Pacific? The ocean will not hearken to his cries.
Rights are relevant to the relations between humans, not humans and their environment.
What 'right' to life has a man who must die if he is to save his children? If he chooses to save his own life, does he do so as a matter of 'right'?
Again, the "right to life" is a restriction on your behaviour towards others. It does not mean that you can't be killed, it simply means that you shouldn't kill others.
If two men are starving and cannibalism is the only alternative to death, which man's right is 'unalienable'? And is it 'right'?
That there exists situations where two people's rights conflict no more disproves the existence of rights than the existence of Lagrance points disproves the existence of gravity.
Of course, the Marxian definition of value is ridiculous. All the work one cares to add willl not turn a mud pie into an apple tart; it remains a mud pie, value zero.
It will, however, turn a mud pie into a tile or an artwork, both of which have value greater than zero.
Conversely, a great chef can fashion of those same materials a confection of greater value than a commonplace apple tart, with no more effort than an ordinary cook uses to prepare an ordinary sweet.
Yes, and great chefs are hard to come by, so their labour is valued more than not-so-great chefs. And why are great chefs hard to come by? Because it takes a lot of work to become one.
These kitchen illustrations demolish the Marxian theory of value - the fallacy from which the entire magnificent fraud of communism derives - and to illustrate the truth of the common-sense defintion as measured in terms of use.
Air is very useful but not very valuable, for the simple reason that it's easy to come by. Various distillates of air are more valuable, for the simple reason that it takes work to separate them.
I told you that juvenile delinquent is a contradiction in terms. Delinquent means failing in duty.
"Juvenile delinquent" means a youth who acts out, thus failing in his duty to maintain a certain standard of behaviour.
But duty is an adult virtue - indeed a juvenile becomes an adult when, and only when, he acquires a knowledge of duty and embraces it as dearer than the self-love he was born with.
Bullshit. A juvenile becomes an adult when his experience grows and brain matures. Indeed, where are plenty of adults who care for nothing but themselves, the Libertarians Heinlein so loved being amongst them.
There never was, there cannot be, a juvenile delinquent.
There are plenty of them; you are simply trying to redefine the term to mean something it doesn't.
So, paying $30 extra for an expensive luxury item is "crushing those weaker than yourself"? Nice to see you have a sense of proportion there.
No, charging extra for an expensive luxury item is exploiting the stupidity of people. The only reason it's considered ethical is because neo-liberalism has spent decades advocating crushing those weaker than yourself as the pinnacle of ethics.
Now did I express myself clearly enough?
Also, I doubt that the minimum wage guy at Best Buy is on the stepping stones to power.
So? Did that minimum wage employee decide on this charge? If not, then what relevance does your comment have?
Links386, Master of Orion, Master of Magic, Battlecruiser 3000, Day of the Tentacle, etc.
Master of Orion and Master of Magic work perfectly in Dosbox. Day of the Tentacle (and other Lucasarts adventures) work better-than-original (due to nice graphics filters) in ScummVM. Dunno about the other two.
I wonder if one could remake MoM as a mod for the latest Civilization... Civ4 was pretty flexible, and Civ5 is supposed to be even more so.
"A fool and his money are soon parted" isn't really all that different from "an old lady and her purse are soon parted". Preying on the weak is preying on the weak, whether their weakness is one of mind or body.
However, because crushing those weaker than yourself beneath your feet to use as stepping stones to power is the essence of capitalism in general and the oh-so-trendy neo-liberalism in particular, I doubt you'll hear many condemnations against it.
Since ranting on Slashdot was one of only several things I was doing online, I consider multitasking an efficient use of energy.
Of course you do. It's something you like to do, so it's an effective use of energy rather than wasting it for frivolous entertainment. And the same is true of everyone else: whatever they like doing is necessary and efficient, it's always someone else who wastes power. That's why lowering energy usage per person is simply not going to happen.
I mean really did one of the first open source movies have to be about killing your pet dragon because you didn't recognise it?
"Piss Christ" took a lot less effort to create than Sistine Chapel's ceiling, got just as much attention, and had its maker congratulated on his courage. Artists are just as lazy buggers as the rest of us.
Now if it was a bug in the stock exchange software or system itself, then sure you have to roll things back. But a bug in your fancy trading programs? Too fucking bad, eat your losses and die - don't all these free market capitalists always say let the companies that screw up die?
Socialism for the rich, capitalism for the poor; that's the essence of right-wing politics in general and neoliberalism in particular. Personal responsibility is for the peons, not for nobility.
So the Jews are motivated, capable, willing, and utter fucking idiots who reveal everything in easter eggs in the program. It's like dealing with Bush's duller critics all over again - either the Jews are scheming, vicious bastards, or they're just total fucking morons. But you have to choose one of those and stand by it.
No, it's entirely possible to be a vicious, scheming evil genius yet blow the whole thing because you start thinking everyone else is a moron incapable of deciphering your "brilliant" clues. It's also possible that Israel wanted to leave non-binding evidence to act as a threat.
Also, we aren't talking about Jews. We are talking about Israel. The first is a people, the second is a nation-state. They are not synonymous.
I would like to see said agencies going after people making bomb threats to make sure they don't start to make real bombs.
Then again, the copyright lobby is quite infamous for using threat of costly lawsuits to blackmail people, both innocent and guilty, into paying protection money to said lobby. Does it really surprise anyone that such tactics would eventually lead to a violent response? You can't make mockery of law yet expect it to still protect yourself.
The lawyers finally stepped over the invisible line, and are now reaping the consequences - and yes, one of those consequences might very well be getting assasinated. And if it is, they only have themselves to blame. As far as I'm concerned, the only bad thing here is the inevitable disregard of law in other areas of life as well, and the resulting slightly increased instability of society.
Also, the compositors who've worked on 2D to 3D conversion get burned-out by the mindless drudgery of it all. They're effectively creative guys doing beyond-mindless crap.
Sorry, this time you have to write an application in Visual Basic that prints the following text 18,446,744,073,709,551,616 times:
Assuming a printing speed of 1000 lines per second, it would take over 500 million years for the program to run. Windows can't have that much uptime, even if you run it in a virtual machine to get around the hardware deterioration problem.
However, I suppose some kind of distributed printing approach might work.
Yes, because the LAST thing you'd want advertisements to target is SOMETHING YOU'RE ACTUALLY INTERESTED IN !
Exactly. I might be tempted to waste my money if I did.
Seriously, what is your problem with targeted ads ?
They are potentially harder to ignore.
When you go into the same bar every day, the barman gets to know your usual tipple, and will often greet you with "Hello mate, the usual ?". You don't punch the fucker out shouting "stop invading my privacy with your tracking mechanisms".
People go to a bar to buy drinks, and interact with the barman openly. They don't go to Slashdot to buy whatever crap the ads on it are peddling, nor are they necessarily aware that doubleclick or other parasites are tracking them.
I think that stretches the common definition of a civil war beyond anything I've seen before.
Tens of thousands dead in fighting imply war. The fighting is mainly done by domestic factions inside the country, therefore it's civil war. Seems like a pretty straightforward fit to me.
Drug Cartels are trying to take over the entire country. I doubt this fits into the mold of north vs south, or Tamils vs Government.
It's "some bunch of assholes with guns vs. the government". It's what happens when the central government becomes too weak to maintain its monopoly on violence: various groups take advantage and start rebelling.
Of course they'll try, but that won't be USA's military-grade cryptography that legally counts as a munition. As a result it'll be easy for top NSA agents to run their l33t cracking tools, realize that the password is "trustno1", and read the plain-english "let's go over our evil plan once again in detail" -message sent from one Hellholian terrorist to his roommate, titled "For the 3lulz".
What you need to do to ensure the security of a biometric authentication system isn't to keep the biometric secret, it's to protect the integrity of the checkpoint against people holding up pictures or fingerprint molds made of Gummi worms. If you design a system that will fail if a readily observable body part gets copied, you have made an irretrievable design mistake.
It is impossible to design the system so it can't be fooled. Biometrics aren't magical, they are simply physical configurations of a system that cause a series of signals in the sensor of a biometric identification system, and as such can be both copied and forged.
On the other hand, while a memorized password is, of course, still stored as a physical configuration of your brain, getting it out of there without your cooperation is pretty much impossible. As such it's far safer.
Slashdot Mirror
Speaking of broken windows, I seem to recall reading somewhere that some locales in the US are considering demolishing the houses that were abandoned due to the crash, because otherwise their price might fall to the point where even not-so-rich could afford a nice one. Does anyone know anything about this, or is it just an urban myth?
It is a mission critical part of any job that generates hazardous waste. Furthermore, it is, ultimately, a very simple part; if you can't do it properly, why should I expect you to be able to handle any difficult part either?
Besides, let's not forget that each and every disaster of NASA can be tracked back to an oversight. Why did Challenger blow? Because NASAs top brass didn't pay attention when they were told it was too cold for the O-rings. Why did Columbia disintegrate? Because NASAs top brass didn't pay attention when they were told that a piece of foam might have hit the shuttle on takeoff.
Spaceflight with chemical rockets is pushing physics and our technology as far as they go, and physics are eager to push back given any chance. Any oversight provides just such a chance. Complaining about the improper disposal of litter might seem anal-retentive, but the cold truth is that as it stands, spaceflight requires anal-retentive attention to every last detail, least a disaster ensues. And if SpaceX doesn't have such people, it should hire some ASAP.
Better yet, think whether it really makes sense to do business with Islamic countries, especially if your company has anything to do with communication. This is no more than is to be expected from a theocracy.
It's not like Libya has made it secret that they're following Sharia, nor that said law disallows freedom of speech or other human rights. This story is about the same as "man puts hand into fire, gets burned". You always will in the end, if you deal with dictatorships.
You are a bad boy, aren't you? Oh yes you are, you old gangsta you!
Someone called you a mean name in the playground, you hit him, and are now afraid of your mommy finding out yet can't help but brag about how bad a boy you are?
You aren't impressing or intimidating anyone.
As the sig said: it's the last resort.
Rights are relevant to the relations between humans, not humans and their environment.
Again, the "right to life" is a restriction on your behaviour towards others. It does not mean that you can't be killed, it simply means that you shouldn't kill others.
That there exists situations where two people's rights conflict no more disproves the existence of rights than the existence of Lagrance points disproves the existence of gravity.
It will, however, turn a mud pie into a tile or an artwork, both of which have value greater than zero.
Yes, and great chefs are hard to come by, so their labour is valued more than not-so-great chefs. And why are great chefs hard to come by? Because it takes a lot of work to become one.
Air is very useful but not very valuable, for the simple reason that it's easy to come by. Various distillates of air are more valuable, for the simple reason that it takes work to separate them.
"Juvenile delinquent" means a youth who acts out, thus failing in his duty to maintain a certain standard of behaviour.
Bullshit. A juvenile becomes an adult when his experience grows and brain matures. Indeed, where are plenty of adults who care for nothing but themselves, the Libertarians Heinlein so loved being amongst them.
There are plenty of them; you are simply trying to redefine the term to mean something it doesn't.
No, charging extra for an expensive luxury item is exploiting the stupidity of people. The only reason it's considered ethical is because neo-liberalism has spent decades advocating crushing those weaker than yourself as the pinnacle of ethics.
Now did I express myself clearly enough?
So? Did that minimum wage employee decide on this charge? If not, then what relevance does your comment have?
Master of Orion and Master of Magic work perfectly in Dosbox. Day of the Tentacle (and other Lucasarts adventures) work better-than-original (due to nice graphics filters) in ScummVM. Dunno about the other two.
I wonder if one could remake MoM as a mod for the latest Civilization... Civ4 was pretty flexible, and Civ5 is supposed to be even more so.
"A fool and his money are soon parted" isn't really all that different from "an old lady and her purse are soon parted". Preying on the weak is preying on the weak, whether their weakness is one of mind or body.
However, because crushing those weaker than yourself beneath your feet to use as stepping stones to power is the essence of capitalism in general and the oh-so-trendy neo-liberalism in particular, I doubt you'll hear many condemnations against it.
Of course you do. It's something you like to do, so it's an effective use of energy rather than wasting it for frivolous entertainment. And the same is true of everyone else: whatever they like doing is necessary and efficient, it's always someone else who wastes power. That's why lowering energy usage per person is simply not going to happen.
How is that different from buying stock or real estate, apart from gold being less useful than land or factories?
And then you changed back, as evidenced by you wasting power to post your rants on Slashdot.
Burn them for power, thus releasing the carbon back into the atmosphere and starting the cycle anew.
Green plants are basically self-assembling solar collectors.
"Piss Christ" took a lot less effort to create than Sistine Chapel's ceiling, got just as much attention, and had its maker congratulated on his courage. Artists are just as lazy buggers as the rest of us.
Last 50 years? Try last 50,000.
Socialism for the rich, capitalism for the poor; that's the essence of right-wing politics in general and neoliberalism in particular. Personal responsibility is for the peons, not for nobility.
No, it's entirely possible to be a vicious, scheming evil genius yet blow the whole thing because you start thinking everyone else is a moron incapable of deciphering your "brilliant" clues. It's also possible that Israel wanted to leave non-binding evidence to act as a threat.
Also, we aren't talking about Jews. We are talking about Israel. The first is a people, the second is a nation-state. They are not synonymous.
Then again, the copyright lobby is quite infamous for using threat of costly lawsuits to blackmail people, both innocent and guilty, into paying protection money to said lobby. Does it really surprise anyone that such tactics would eventually lead to a violent response? You can't make mockery of law yet expect it to still protect yourself.
The lawyers finally stepped over the invisible line, and are now reaping the consequences - and yes, one of those consequences might very well be getting assasinated. And if it is, they only have themselves to blame. As far as I'm concerned, the only bad thing here is the inevitable disregard of law in other areas of life as well, and the resulting slightly increased instability of society.
LORD: the game where you could have sex with a severed head. Kinda makes modern MMORPGs seem like pussies :).
Sounds like a good candidate for crowdsourcing.
Name one sci-fi film where the characters aren't one-dimensional? It's pretty much a requirement for the genre.
Assuming a printing speed of 1000 lines per second, it would take over 500 million years for the program to run. Windows can't have that much uptime, even if you run it in a virtual machine to get around the hardware deterioration problem.
However, I suppose some kind of distributed printing approach might work.
Exactly. I might be tempted to waste my money if I did.
They are potentially harder to ignore.
People go to a bar to buy drinks, and interact with the barman openly. They don't go to Slashdot to buy whatever crap the ads on it are peddling, nor are they necessarily aware that doubleclick or other parasites are tracking them.
Tens of thousands dead in fighting imply war. The fighting is mainly done by domestic factions inside the country, therefore it's civil war. Seems like a pretty straightforward fit to me.
It's "some bunch of assholes with guns vs. the government". It's what happens when the central government becomes too weak to maintain its monopoly on violence: various groups take advantage and start rebelling.
Of course they'll try, but that won't be USA's military-grade cryptography that legally counts as a munition. As a result it'll be easy for top NSA agents to run their l33t cracking tools, realize that the password is "trustno1", and read the plain-english "let's go over our evil plan once again in detail" -message sent from one Hellholian terrorist to his roommate, titled "For the 3lulz".
It is impossible to design the system so it can't be fooled. Biometrics aren't magical, they are simply physical configurations of a system that cause a series of signals in the sensor of a biometric identification system, and as such can be both copied and forged.
On the other hand, while a memorized password is, of course, still stored as a physical configuration of your brain, getting it out of there without your cooperation is pretty much impossible. As such it's far safer.