I am not saying that no employers should use drug screening but instead that we should take a rational approach. Having someone running around with a gun smacked out of his mind on god knows what is a far cry from having that same person stocking shelves in the local supermarket or cutting code for some fancy new webapp.
Where one person is responsible for the lives of many others (pilot, bus driver, surgeon that sort of thing) drug screening (including alcohol) seems prudent. It is a new tool that we can use to lower risk. It should not however be used as a means of control.
A business doesn't need to be "pot friendly" to not pry into the personal lives of it's employees. If the employee is able to perform their job function to 100% of their ability so what if they smoke pot at the weekend. If it impares their ability then sure sack them on the spot if not though then why does the employer want to know? Is it perhaps because it makes the employee easy to get rid off when they are not wanted anymore?
There are plenty of other things that a company might want to know about. What if the employee is particularly promiscuous. (S)He could easily come down with something nasty and have to take a great deal of sick leave. Should the company force the employee to reveal details of their sex life while attached to a lie detector?
As for taking a dim view of most young men I feel sorry for you. You were once a young man (I presume) and I am sure most adults took a dim view of you even when you didn't deserve it just like you are taking of them now. While not every teenage boy is a saint most aren't evil personified either. They are regular young people and should be treated with the same respect you would expect them to treat you with until you know different. Have you ever considered that the reason they rebel is because you take the view you do?
Just because you got older it doesn't mean you have to abandon your ideals. Perhaps in a few years when my kids grow up and reach that age I will agree with you but I doubt it.
I fully understand you reason for drug testing but doesn't it just seem wrong to you? While I am not saying this is the case here I think the employee would feel like the employer distructs them which get the relationship off to a bad start. A distrustful emploee is likely to not be loyal meaning higher staff turn overs and lower productivity because they don't believe in the same ideals as the company. In the end you may be worse off than if you hadn't done the screening and taken the hit on the insurance cost. Having said that I think I would probably end up doing the same if the difference in rates was large enough.
Cheers, while I was fairly sure Saumas' post was more dry wit than troll I felt that it expressed widely held world views which I find troubling. It certainly wouldn't be the first time that I have heard such views expressed with honesty and conviction. I too hope that both are read as I feel they portray two very different world views that are becoming more separated with every passing day.
I intended it more as a rebuttal of the given world view than an attack on Seuma personally.
You have got to be a troll. I can't honestly believe any grown adult (I presume you are an adult as you appear to work) would hold such a narrow minded view of the world.
I wouldn't normally lay into someone expressing their opinion on a public forum but I believe you, and the thousands like you, who adopt the view given to them by the media are stealing the rights and freedoms of the thinking people.
The mass media has the sole goal of making as much money as possible and will attempt to achieve that by any (legal) means. This means that they are not necessarily out to protect your best interests even if they appear to be. Therefore you have to make a judgement call about how much you can trust their information.
Several years ago I gave up television the only mass media I really partook in, I never read newspapers and only really listened to music radio, and the change in my world view has been amazing.
It took time and I only realize it now but I am no longer paranoid. I actually it find quite scary to listen to many of the sheeple now-a-days. They have been whipped up into a frenzy about terrorists and see evil round every corner. You might argue that I have become insular and lack a world view but I still get a daily dose of news from the Internet and am knowledgeable of world affairs. The difference is my intake is more controlled and it is easier to ignore the hyperbole.
As an example take your comment about weekend pot smokers. Why is there wide spread paranoia about them? I believe that it is almost entirely mass media induced. The media need something to scandalize the masses about so they pick something new, because sheeple all suffer from neophobia, and something that a weak portion of society enjoys, because they have no voice with which to defend themselves.
There is little evidence that pot has any negative effects beyond those caused by the tabacco it is often smoked with and the studies that do show it has an effect only appear to indicate that extremely heavy usage is harmful (IIRC somewhere in the region of 20 joints a day). Over here in Europe we don't have the same paranoia of pot and drug tests are almost unheard of in civilian jobs. Amazingly the world hasn't come to an end and our productivity hasn't dropped through the floor. So I ask you: why are you employers insisting on drug tests? Could it perhaps be a form of control? Something to help make you ascribe to their world view?
I'm not saying that there is a big conspiracy. I don't believe there is. I think it is human nature. People will always want to dominate people whether they realise it or not and grouping together under a common banner is a good way to achieve that end. The problem is that it causes wide spread exclusion and the victimisation of minority groups. Once gangs, clubs, parties, etc begin to form and grow it is easy to view people that don't subscribe to the same world view as evil or wrong which is the mistake I believe you are making.
The pot smokers and "black people" are still people they just don't agree that your world view is right. I suggest that you learn to live with the fact that the universe doesn't have a concept of right and wrong and try and accept the people around you because surprisingly most aren't actually out to get you. I hope that you think about what I have said. We can create a relaxed world where we get along it just takes a little understanding.
They are much much cheaper now. I recently saw one at a home building exabition that was going for around £400 with installation (IIRC it was £200 on it's own). It's designed to fit between the roof trusses so there is limited modification to the roof. Just lift a few tiles, fit the cap and start piping light into a dark place (I'm sure it's probably not that easy unless you have done a few;o).
As for the idea not being new I considered doing something like this a few years back. What I thought would be useful is to remove the lighting circuits in the house. Just have one central light box with fibers running to each room. No danger of fires caused by dodgy wiring and possibly an economy of scale saving with the lighting. I couldn't think of a cheap way of getting the light into the fibre though so I gave up.
2MB is certainly growing in popularity but you would be very hard pushed to say that it is the norm. I'm still on.5MB (upgrading to 1MB in a couple of months time) and find it pretty quick. I don't see myself upgrading to 2MB anytime soon as there is nothing I do that I feel requires it (and yes I do large downloads). Even downloading TV shows IMHO doesn't require more than 1MB if you can plan your time in the slighest.
... make it about as hard as possible, if not impossible, to impliment a completely free open source operating system. I reckon that is all but guaranteed.
My bet wpuld be on some weird and wonderful, not very good, patented DRM technology that will be forced on it by one of the partners and cross licensed to the others for peanuts. Of course those won't be the licensing terms given to other people
Thinking of licensing terms I have another grumble but I think I'll spare you that one for now [walks off to grumble elsewhere]...
I have often wondered why there isn't a push for browsers to support real grown up session tracking that is properly user configurable. Session tracking is something that has to be done so frequently I'm amazed someone has come up with a better solution.
At it's simplest session tracking could be implimented as a cookie that contains a fragment of XML (or maybe just formatted text if you're alergic to XML) which gives various pieces of information identifying the site.
To ensure that it's all above board make sure that the session identifier is digitally signed. By default the browser would be set to accept session requests (as happens now) but could query a repository of "abusers" and block certain sessions (much like email black lists only more effective because it's digitially signed).
Since this system only does one little thing it should be easy to implement and you could probably turn off other cookies.
Anyway just thought you might like to kick that idea about a bit and see how it fits.
Ok, that all seems sensible enough but can you answer me this: why do I crave peanut butter? I don't just like the stuff I am a peanut butter junkie. I have to gt my peanut butter fix every day or I just can't stop thinking about that stuff. You probably think that I am joking but I'm not. I would love to know what it is that I'm addicted to.
The "intergrated mouse" and the "hold it in your arm and use the mouse easily" features have already been implimented on a laptop. Admitedly the laptop I have used them on must have been pushing 15 years old. Seems like they knew more about erganomics then. On the right hand side was a clip in mouse with track ball that could be used fairly easily while holding hte laptop. It was a bit of a pain when it was put down actually.
While I don't want to stick up for Windows I ahve to say that I think you have sold it a little short and I struggle to believe number 3.
I have been running Debian for a number of years and Red Hat before that and while installing both was fairly easy it was harder than windows and not all the hardware was detected on some machines. I would say though Windows and Linux are about the same on installation.
As for configuring things Windows wins hands down. The problem with Linux is that no two things work the same. Even on a distribution like Debian that is massively analy retentive about placing configuration files in well definied places no two configuration files seem to work the same. This does seem to be getting better though. Things that are apache like or work with apache seem to adopt the apache style configuration and names which is helpful. While I don't mind getting my hands dirty at a command line I would much prefere a GUI tool to configure most things. A command like and emacs just feels like we are throwing away years of interface research. Having said all that some things are a pig to configure on Windows as well. I think because all the services (like mail servers, DNS, etc) are free on Linux I tend to play with them and run them and I wouldn't on Windows.
Maintainence is, as I said, the one I really disagree about. My Debian boxes are forever needing a good tweaking to make them work. I recently moved up to unstable but I have was running testing before that and it was no better. I suppose if I want no maintainence I should run stable but then I could go and live like a caveman as well. The problem is the upgradign of packages. No matter how much testing is done on them breakages occur. On Linux there is a never ending stream of updates on Windows it tends to be all or nothing uber upgrades once a year. The Microsoft updates don't ever seem to go wrong which is more than I can say for apt updates.
Anyway I'm sure no one will read this far. I'm off to bed:o)
I have to say that I broadly agree with you. The Internet has for the most part been run very well and quite fairly.
As for certain countries with "problems" having a say I don't really think that is much of a problem. We have to assume that the number of crackpots is going to be small compared to the number of fairly rational individuals.
A mandate dictating what the controlling body will provide should pretty much stop any dumb ideas being implimented.
I think it probably is a control thing in reality. While the US certainly has a large percentage of the online population it's probably not the majority anymore and I think it makes the rest of hte world a little twitchy that at any moment one country could decide to do something rash.
The good thing about having the UN control the Internet is that everyone feels like they have a say but it's got so much bureaucracy that nothing ever happens. Hopefully that will provide the stability the Internet needs.
Either way the score for the message is currently 0 so it looks like people want it based in the US.
I am sure that there is something witty or even intellegent to say about this but it's just another case of USA vs Rest of World. I vote that we have a little poll here on slashdot about who should get to control the Internet. Now I know that I would never ever get a poll accepted so I vote that we use this message as a poll (karma be damned).
Any one who wants the UN to control the Internet (root servers) mod this message up.
Any one who wants to see the USA run the Internet mod this message down.
This has got to be the most vomit inducing story I have ever read.
Has this kid got nothing better to do then study for these exams (which will be meaning less by the time she is old enough to use them). I can't help feeling that this has more to do with the parents than the kid. Shame she won't get to grow up like most children. I can see it now. Most of us look back and say that childhood was the best time in our lives (well an ok taime at least) she'll look back and wonder why she was studying for an MCP exam.
What I am supprised about is that I was under the impression that India was still suppressing it's women. Looks like at least some areas are changing.
How did this get modded insighful? Are the mods on drugs or something? There is no law against putting up a billboard containing contact details for drug dealers.
In this crazy mixed up world you might be done for incitement but IMHO even that's stretchng it a bit. While I agree such a billboard is questionable I don't in any way feel that it shouldn't be made illegal.
In this case I can to some extent see the judges point of view. The guy was acting like a class one tit and was just asking to be done for something. It could be argued that this guy (or the ISP) recieved some form of payment for the this sight and that they knew that payment was coming from the supply of illegal goods. It would be difficult to impossible to prove what they knew or didn't know about the source of money and any case like this would be a mine field of strong counter arguments.
That has got to be the most pointless mod (I suppose you would call it) ever. I can't see any possible functional use for it. It places the keyboard at a height where you can't type and even if you could it would give you RSI in about 5 minutes. Worse though is the sort of dead space that it creates under it. I mean what are you going to do with that weird 30cm gap between the desk and laptop. At best you could use it as a sort of book shelf but then you could have just put your lapton on top of the books.
You had it lucky. In my day we didn't even have walls. We had to take the subatomic particles produced by the big bang and put them together, one by one I might add, to even get real matter. Only then could we actually start using our newly created pointy sticks to scratch our data into our newly created rocks. You young'uns don't know how easy you've got it.
I have often wondered why humans are so devoid of hair compared to other animals and the only conclusion I can come to is that we need the extra cooling that not having hair would provide.
The clothes idea is good but I don't believe we have ben wearing substantial amounts of clothing for long enough to make that a reason for change. There also isn't, as far as I can see, any reason to loose hair because you wear clothes so the evolutionary pressure would be quite small.
Our one big difference with other animals is our brain. Our brain IIRC consumes something like 20% of our bodies energy which is going to produce quite a lot of heat. Fortunatly nature has installed a wicked liquid cooling system in the form of blood vessels but the heat has got to be dumped somewhere. We could have grown whacking great ears but I think nature instead chose for us to loose our hair thus letting our body act like one big heat sink. Of course we still have hair on our head which seems somewhat counter productive but there are two good reasons I can see for retaining it. Firstly it is there to stop the head from getting to hot or cold. Regulation of the brains temperature is, quite correctly, managed by the whole body. The secodn reason is as a seconddary sexual characteristic but perhaps that has iteslf come about because nature felt the hair on your head might as well be attractive if you have to keep it anyway because of point one.
As for current hairyness I don't think that there it is a coincidence that Europeans are much hairer than Africans and Asians.
The first (dark skinned + high latitude) was mentioned. They also mentioned light skinned individuals living in far northern regions. Both of which make a lot of sense.
Yes, I did consider the fact that most cancers occur after humans stop reproducing (we seem to have very few reproductive years, as a portion of our total life span, compared with other animals as well) however the advice on sun exposure was that none is the only option meaning that there must be quite a risk even for young people. Hence natural selection could take place fairly quickly. I suppose it must have happend at some point and now our biological systems are good enough that only old people die of cancer. (oooh - heartless mode off)
I hardly think that natural selection would have picked a human that can't tolerate any sun. It is only in the last few hundred years that we have realistically had the ability to either stay out of the sun or totally protect ourselves.
Having said that we are a some what freakish animal. The lack of substantial bodily hair / fur and our tendency to walk around in the sun marks us out as somewhat unique. Most other animals that have little or no hair / fur live away from the sun. Perhaps UV resistance is rare and badly developed in the animal world. As most animals with a good thick coat wouldn't have much call for it and so it wouldn't develop.
Slashdot Mirror
I am not saying that no employers should use drug screening but instead that we should take a rational approach. Having someone running around with a gun smacked out of his mind on god knows what is a far cry from having that same person stocking shelves in the local supermarket or cutting code for some fancy new webapp.
Where one person is responsible for the lives of many others (pilot, bus driver, surgeon that sort of thing) drug screening (including alcohol) seems prudent. It is a new tool that we can use to lower risk. It should not however be used as a means of control.
A business doesn't need to be "pot friendly" to not pry into the personal lives of it's employees. If the employee is able to perform their job function to 100% of their ability so what if they smoke pot at the weekend. If it impares their ability then sure sack them on the spot if not though then why does the employer want to know? Is it perhaps because it makes the employee easy to get rid off when they are not wanted anymore?
There are plenty of other things that a company might want to know about. What if the employee is particularly promiscuous. (S)He could easily come down with something nasty and have to take a great deal of sick leave. Should the company force the employee to reveal details of their sex life while attached to a lie detector?
As for taking a dim view of most young men I feel sorry for you. You were once a young man (I presume) and I am sure most adults took a dim view of you even when you didn't deserve it just like you are taking of them now. While not every teenage boy is a saint most aren't evil personified either. They are regular young people and should be treated with the same respect you would expect them to treat you with until you know different. Have you ever considered that the reason they rebel is because you take the view you do?
Just because you got older it doesn't mean you have to abandon your ideals. Perhaps in a few years when my kids grow up and reach that age I will agree with you but I doubt it.
I fully understand you reason for drug testing but doesn't it just seem wrong to you? While I am not saying this is the case here I think the employee would feel like the employer distructs them which get the relationship off to a bad start. A distrustful emploee is likely to not be loyal meaning higher staff turn overs and lower productivity because they don't believe in the same ideals as the company. In the end you may be worse off than if you hadn't done the screening and taken the hit on the insurance cost. Having said that I think I would probably end up doing the same if the difference in rates was large enough.
Cheers, while I was fairly sure Saumas' post was more dry wit than troll I felt that it expressed widely held world views which I find troubling. It certainly wouldn't be the first time that I have heard such views expressed with honesty and conviction. I too hope that both are read as I feel they portray two very different world views that are becoming more separated with every passing day.
I intended it more as a rebuttal of the given world view than an attack on Seuma personally.
You have got to be a troll. I can't honestly believe any grown adult (I presume you are an adult as you appear to work) would hold such a narrow minded view of the world.
I wouldn't normally lay into someone expressing their opinion on a public forum but I believe you, and the thousands like you, who adopt the view given to them by the media are stealing the rights and freedoms of the thinking people.
The mass media has the sole goal of making as much money as possible and will attempt to achieve that by any (legal) means. This means that they are not necessarily out to protect your best interests even if they appear to be. Therefore you have to make a judgement call about how much you can trust their information.
Several years ago I gave up television the only mass media I really partook in, I never read newspapers and only really listened to music radio, and the change in my world view has been amazing.
It took time and I only realize it now but I am no longer paranoid. I actually it find quite scary to listen to many of the sheeple now-a-days. They have been whipped up into a frenzy about terrorists and see evil round every corner. You might argue that I have become insular and lack a world view but I still get a daily dose of news from the Internet and am knowledgeable of world affairs. The difference is my intake is more controlled and it is easier to ignore the hyperbole.
As an example take your comment about weekend pot smokers. Why is there wide spread paranoia about them? I believe that it is almost entirely mass media induced. The media need something to scandalize the masses about so they pick something new, because sheeple all suffer from neophobia, and something that a weak portion of society enjoys, because they have no voice with which to defend themselves.
There is little evidence that pot has any negative effects beyond those caused by the tabacco it is often smoked with and the studies that do show it has an effect only appear to indicate that extremely heavy usage is harmful (IIRC somewhere in the region of 20 joints a day). Over here in Europe we don't have the same paranoia of pot and drug tests are almost unheard of in civilian jobs. Amazingly the world hasn't come to an end and our productivity hasn't dropped through the floor. So I ask you: why are you employers insisting on drug tests? Could it perhaps be a form of control? Something to help make you ascribe to their world view?
I'm not saying that there is a big conspiracy. I don't believe there is. I think it is human nature. People will always want to dominate people whether they realise it or not and grouping together under a common banner is a good way to achieve that end. The problem is that it causes wide spread exclusion and the victimisation of minority groups. Once gangs, clubs, parties, etc begin to form and grow it is easy to view people that don't subscribe to the same world view as evil or wrong which is the mistake I believe you are making.
The pot smokers and "black people" are still people they just don't agree that your world view is right. I suggest that you learn to live with the fact that the universe doesn't have a concept of right and wrong and try and accept the people around you because surprisingly most aren't actually out to get you. I hope that you think about what I have said. We can create a relaxed world where we get along it just takes a little understanding.
They are much much cheaper now. I recently saw one at a home building exabition that was going for around £400 with installation (IIRC it was £200 on it's own). It's designed to fit between the roof trusses so there is limited modification to the roof. Just lift a few tiles, fit the cap and start piping light into a dark place (I'm sure it's probably not that easy unless you have done a few ;o).
As for the idea not being new I considered doing something like this a few years back. What I thought would be useful is to remove the lighting circuits in the house. Just have one central light box with fibers running to each room. No danger of fires caused by dodgy wiring and possibly an economy of scale saving with the lighting. I couldn't think of a cheap way of getting the light into the fibre though so I gave up.
2MB is certainly growing in popularity but you would be very hard pushed to say that it is the norm. I'm still on .5MB (upgrading to 1MB in a couple of months time) and find it pretty quick. I don't see myself upgrading to 2MB anytime soon as there is nothing I do that I feel requires it (and yes I do large downloads). Even downloading TV shows IMHO doesn't require more than 1MB if you can plan your time in the slighest.
... make it about as hard as possible, if not impossible, to impliment a completely free open source operating system. I reckon that is all but guaranteed.
My bet wpuld be on some weird and wonderful, not very good, patented DRM technology that will be forced on it by one of the partners and cross licensed to the others for peanuts. Of course those won't be the licensing terms given to other people
Thinking of licensing terms I have another grumble but I think I'll spare you that one for now [walks off to grumble elsewhere]...
I have often wondered why there isn't a push for browsers to support real grown up session tracking that is properly user configurable. Session tracking is something that has to be done so frequently I'm amazed someone has come up with a better solution.
At it's simplest session tracking could be implimented as a cookie that contains a fragment of XML (or maybe just formatted text if you're alergic to XML) which gives various pieces of information identifying the site.
To ensure that it's all above board make sure that the session identifier is digitally signed. By default the browser would be set to accept session requests (as happens now) but could query a repository of "abusers" and block certain sessions (much like email black lists only more effective because it's digitially signed).
Since this system only does one little thing it should be easy to implement and you could probably turn off other cookies.
Anyway just thought you might like to kick that idea about a bit and see how it fits.
running around carjacking cars
Erm, what else would you carjack? Zimmer frames maybe?
Ok, that all seems sensible enough but can you answer me this: why do I crave peanut butter? I don't just like the stuff I am a peanut butter junkie. I have to gt my peanut butter fix every day or I just can't stop thinking about that stuff. You probably think that I am joking but I'm not. I would love to know what it is that I'm addicted to.
The "intergrated mouse" and the "hold it in your arm and use the mouse easily" features have already been implimented on a laptop. Admitedly the laptop I have used them on must have been pushing 15 years old. Seems like they knew more about erganomics then. On the right hand side was a clip in mouse with track ball that could be used fairly easily while holding hte laptop. It was a bit of a pain when it was put down actually.
Phew for a minute there I though to said have sex with your dog and play with your wife.
I know geeks have touble finding a partner but gawd that pushing the limits.
While I don't want to stick up for Windows I ahve to say that I think you have sold it a little short and I struggle to believe number 3.
I have been running Debian for a number of years and Red Hat before that and while installing both was fairly easy it was harder than windows and not all the hardware was detected on some machines. I would say though Windows and Linux are about the same on installation.
As for configuring things Windows wins hands down. The problem with Linux is that no two things work the same. Even on a distribution like Debian that is massively analy retentive about placing configuration files in well definied places no two configuration files seem to work the same. This does seem to be getting better though. Things that are apache like or work with apache seem to adopt the apache style configuration and names which is helpful. While I don't mind getting my hands dirty at a command line I would much prefere a GUI tool to configure most things. A command like and emacs just feels like we are throwing away years of interface research. Having said all that some things are a pig to configure on Windows as well. I think because all the services (like mail servers, DNS, etc) are free on Linux I tend to play with them and run them and I wouldn't on Windows.
Maintainence is, as I said, the one I really disagree about. My Debian boxes are forever needing a good tweaking to make them work. I recently moved up to unstable but I have was running testing before that and it was no better. I suppose if I want no maintainence I should run stable but then I could go and live like a caveman as well. The problem is the upgradign of packages. No matter how much testing is done on them breakages occur. On Linux there is a never ending stream of updates on Windows it tends to be all or nothing uber upgrades once a year. The Microsoft updates don't ever seem to go wrong which is more than I can say for apt updates.
Anyway I'm sure no one will read this far. I'm off to bed :o)
I have to say that I broadly agree with you. The Internet has for the most part been run very well and quite fairly.
As for certain countries with "problems" having a say I don't really think that is much of a problem. We have to assume that the number of crackpots is going to be small compared to the number of fairly rational individuals.
A mandate dictating what the controlling body will provide should pretty much stop any dumb ideas being implimented.
I think it probably is a control thing in reality. While the US certainly has a large percentage of the online population it's probably not the majority anymore and I think it makes the rest of hte world a little twitchy that at any moment one country could decide to do something rash.
The good thing about having the UN control the Internet is that everyone feels like they have a say but it's got so much bureaucracy that nothing ever happens. Hopefully that will provide the stability the Internet needs.
Either way the score for the message is currently 0 so it looks like people want it based in the US.
I am sure that there is something witty or even intellegent to say about this but it's just another case of USA vs Rest of World. I vote that we have a little poll here on slashdot about who should get to control the Internet. Now I know that I would never ever get a poll accepted so I vote that we use this message as a poll (karma be damned).
Any one who wants the UN to control the Internet (root servers) mod this message up.
Any one who wants to see the USA run the Internet mod this message down.
Ooooh I can smell the karma buring already.
This has got to be the most vomit inducing story I have ever read.
Has this kid got nothing better to do then study for these exams (which will be meaning less by the time she is old enough to use them). I can't help feeling that this has more to do with the parents than the kid. Shame she won't get to grow up like most children. I can see it now. Most of us look back and say that childhood was the best time in our lives (well an ok taime at least) she'll look back and wonder why she was studying for an MCP exam.
What I am supprised about is that I was under the impression that India was still suppressing it's women. Looks like at least some areas are changing.
How did this get modded insighful? Are the mods on drugs or something? There is no law against putting up a billboard containing contact details for drug dealers.
In this crazy mixed up world you might be done for incitement but IMHO even that's stretchng it a bit. While I agree such a billboard is questionable I don't in any way feel that it shouldn't be made illegal.
In this case I can to some extent see the judges point of view. The guy was acting like a class one tit and was just asking to be done for something. It could be argued that this guy (or the ISP) recieved some form of payment for the this sight and that they knew that payment was coming from the supply of illegal goods. It would be difficult to impossible to prove what they knew or didn't know about the source of money and any case like this would be a mine field of strong counter arguments.
That has got to be the most pointless mod (I suppose you would call it) ever. I can't see any possible functional use for it. It places the keyboard at a height where you can't type and even if you could it would give you RSI in about 5 minutes. Worse though is the sort of dead space that it creates under it. I mean what are you going to do with that weird 30cm gap between the desk and laptop. At best you could use it as a sort of book shelf but then you could have just put your lapton on top of the books.
You had it lucky. In my day we didn't even have walls. We had to take the subatomic particles produced by the big bang and put them together, one by one I might add, to even get real matter. Only then could we actually start using our newly created pointy sticks to scratch our data into our newly created rocks. You young'uns don't know how easy you've got it.
What will they think of next?
these people produced 20TB of something we can even see? If I download the video what an I going to get? 10 hours of watching a black screen?
I have often wondered why humans are so devoid of hair compared to other animals and the only conclusion I can come to is that we need the extra cooling that not having hair would provide.
The clothes idea is good but I don't believe we have ben wearing substantial amounts of clothing for long enough to make that a reason for change. There also isn't, as far as I can see, any reason to loose hair because you wear clothes so the evolutionary pressure would be quite small.
Our one big difference with other animals is our brain. Our brain IIRC consumes something like 20% of our bodies energy which is going to produce quite a lot of heat. Fortunatly nature has installed a wicked liquid cooling system in the form of blood vessels but the heat has got to be dumped somewhere. We could have grown whacking great ears but I think nature instead chose for us to loose our hair thus letting our body act like one big heat sink. Of course we still have hair on our head which seems somewhat counter productive but there are two good reasons I can see for retaining it. Firstly it is there to stop the head from getting to hot or cold. Regulation of the brains temperature is, quite correctly, managed by the whole body. The secodn reason is as a seconddary sexual characteristic but perhaps that has iteslf come about because nature felt the hair on your head might as well be attractive if you have to keep it anyway because of point one.
As for current hairyness I don't think that there it is a coincidence that Europeans are much hairer than Africans and Asians.
Anyway they are just my thoughts about hair.
The first (dark skinned + high latitude) was mentioned. They also mentioned light skinned individuals living in far northern regions. Both of which make a lot of sense.
Yes, I did consider the fact that most cancers occur after humans stop reproducing (we seem to have very few reproductive years, as a portion of our total life span, compared with other animals as well) however the advice on sun exposure was that none is the only option meaning that there must be quite a risk even for young people. Hence natural selection could take place fairly quickly. I suppose it must have happend at some point and now our biological systems are good enough that only old people die of cancer. (oooh - heartless mode off)
I hardly think that natural selection would have picked a human that can't tolerate any sun. It is only in the last few hundred years that we have realistically had the ability to either stay out of the sun or totally protect ourselves.
Having said that we are a some what freakish animal. The lack of substantial bodily hair / fur and our tendency to walk around in the sun marks us out as somewhat unique. Most other animals that have little or no hair / fur live away from the sun. Perhaps UV resistance is rare and badly developed in the animal world. As most animals with a good thick coat wouldn't have much call for it and so it wouldn't develop.