I've had two different teachers (one Chemistry teacher and one Electrical Engineering teacher) include messages in the instructions of a test giving you some trivial task to preform to get extra credit, typically something like underlining your name twice or putting a dot in the lower righthand corner of the third page. It was amazing how many people didn't get extra credit...
Then of course, there are the related urban legends like this, this, and this.
If it's the little beasties in the water, then yes, you may not be vulnerable. For instance, when I was in Russia, we had to boil watr before drinking it (Giardia), but the natives had no problem. It was apparently something where you practically had to grow up there to develop though. If it's something like heavy metals, I'm not sure how far boiling or filtering would take you. Your point about knowing where to drink is pertinent too. Heck, even here in Heath, OH, I know a few places in town where you don't want to get water without boiling it. I suspect that some sources of water in Mexico are safer than others.
BTB, at least within the US, it may be noted that bottled water must pass fewer tests for purity or contamination than tap water does. Then too, don't trust unsealed bottled water. A friend of mine used to work as a waiter in Tijuana, Mexico and if they ran short on bottled water, they'd bottle their tap water and sell it as bottled water.
Personally, I find it kind of weird the number of people at restaurants who insist on bottled water for their drinks, but then drink them in glasses full of ice made from the tap water...
Check out Stiff : the curious lives of human cadavers by Mary Roach. (I'd try to make a link to Amazon, but I'm not sure how to build one that doesn't refer back to me.) There are a lot more options for your body than just burying it. Personally, I think the option of being flash-frozen in liquid nitrogen, then broken up with ultrasonics is an interesting idea. It's a heck of a lot more likely to not leave crunchy bits than cremation is, less polluting too.
On a more serious note, sometimes being insightful is just that: rewording a common conception into a clearer form. In another sense, insight might be said to be the taking of an idea that we all know and take for granted, an idea that's grown stale from being said too many times in tired colloquialisms, and making it fresh again.
I often wind up doing this kind of translation for fellow employees and friends. What's baffling to me is that often what they say and what I say seem almost entirely identical. It sometimes makes you wonder if maybe it's not that effect mentioned earlier in the review of certain people being perceived differently based on appearance. Our engineers have a reputation for being somewhat difficult to understand (Admittedly often for good reason), so when I state the same thing, it's perceived to come from a more understandable source.
Bread and circuses will do that to you.
Damn right... I don't hold with none of this Atkins rheotoric. You'll have to pry my carbohydrates from my dead and stiffening hand.
And honestly, don't circuses (circii? {ducks}) make most people happy? You know, except for the animals and the carnies...
Sure, you spend just as much time sitting motionless in front of your computer monitor, but the radiation (screen's much closer!) helps you maintain that healthy tan.
Ok, so computers tend to be more interactive, but I couldn't pass up the joke. I don't get cable TV either. As for computer time, I spend a decent amount of each day reading online, including the various classics which have slipped into public domain. And it's amazing how many books you get read waiting for websites to load...
Kind of hard to vote against the broadcast flag when none of the candidates are running on that issue. Even if we could get some third-party person to run under that platform, what are the chances we could get enough people to agree on his other platforms? If he's for or against gun control, you're losing about half the voters. Half it again if he has a definite stance regarding abortion. Ditto for tax reform...
Oh, and that's just one congress-critter. Doesn't one need a majority?
Correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't the Difference Engine kind of a singular thing? Most of these gadgets seem to have been mass-produced, although a few of them push that limit in that they only really enjoyed distribution among the military.
Must you really know what the money is being spend on?
If you donate money, you are asking them to continue to offer their great service to you and other people. How they achieve that goal, is up to them, no?
Except, well, every major charitable organization of decent size issues itemized reports as to where the money is budgeted and how last years money was actually spent versus budget. So yes, I will ask the organization how they plan to spend my money before giving it. Well, except for webcomics... After all, we already know they need the money for server costs, pens, crack...ers. Can't do without those saltines.
And meanwhile, they're in a place where they're guaranteed to get nutritious if somewhat bland food, little to do with their time but exercise, and the opportunity to swap tips with others in their profession. Heck, I wouldn't be surprised if many people come out of a long imprisonment in better shape to commit crime than when they went in, assuming they don't get knifed or otherwise crippled along the way.
That said, my experience of prison is entirely from the outside, so if I'm speaking misguidedly, please correct me. *wry grin* And it woiuld be preferable if you did that by way of actually posting an explanation of the error of my ways rather than trying to mod me into oblivion... I learn more that way.
True, borrowing it off of someone else is indeed identity theft. However, if you poke around on various sites about protecting privacy, you'll find a large number of SSNs which pass the checksums but have never been valid. People memorize them to have something to use for those situations where someone requires an SSN for indentification purposes when one is really not needed. (Honestly, why would one need an SSN to buy batteries at Radio Shack?)
Anyhow, I'm just pointing out that there's ways around these things. People not paying their use tax is technically illegal too, but here we are discussing alternatives to paying it.
As an industry insider, I'll tell you that you now need a Social Security number to get a prepaid Visa as of the Patriot Act.
Ah, but a valid SSN is required? And if only valid ones are accepted, what's to keep me from glancing at someone's checkbook or driver's license and lifting the SSN off of there and using it?
And what if I buy something while on vacation in another state that has a different tax rate than my home state?
Absolutely nothing. You will have paid sales tax in the location of purchase. I've seen some Internet sites that allow this also, handy if the state they're located in has a lower tax rate. (Not sure what implications this has for purchases from Rhode Island...) On the other hand, with the large amounts of money flying around, I wouldn't be too surprised if someone decides this lack of extra taxation is an oversight. I know that when I was residing in Kentucky and working in California (co-op program. I was also attending school in Ohio, but that's another matter entirely), I had to pay extra income tax to the state of Kentucky because California taxed me at a lower percentage.
So what you really mean when you say "I've seen it happen" is that you've seen it happen on TV?
Well, we were discussing media depictions of law, so I believe the answer is yes.
Huh. I've only seen a small bit of Devil's Advocate (over at a friend's house for a party and I was more involved with the card game than what was on TV) and I don't think I ever saw The Practice. I hadn't thought too much about movies... my mind was on the various CSI, Law and Order, and such TV shows.
For that matter, under lawyers faced with moral and ethical dilemnas in movies, one might include Liar, Liar. Admittedly, Jim Carrey continues to defend his client who he knew was guilty, even finding ways to get around that nasty moral prohibition against lying to maintain his ethical stance as a lawyer defending his client...
Myself, I'm the son of a lawyer, but he's not a court lawyer. Rather, he was the kind of lawyer you went to to check the legality of property transfers and the like. He now works for one of the local banks, advising them on legal matters. So I've got some practical understanding of law and ethics, despite my joking disclaimer. ^_^ Although I have portrayed a lawyer on stage, so it was honest. Then again, I've also been a marriage counselor, a cult member, a monkey, a teacher, a serial killer, a werewolf, an Egyptian grave-robber, and Lady Enid of Mandercrest. At that, the last three roles were all in the same play.
LOL!!! Thats funny.:) So is the inclusion of tax collector with murderer and copyright infringer:)
Nice to know someone appreciates it. It amused me because there's always that line in the Bible about Jesus eating with prostitutes and tax collecters. Today, tax collecters are considered to be more annoying than immoral, so it seems odd to us. But honestly, I do suspect there are indeed lawyers out there who (perhaps even unconsciously) don't properly represent their client because they don't believe their client should get away with their crime.
That said, ever notice how all these crime and law shows on TV never have the main characters defending someone they know is guilty? Seemingly guilty clients turn out to be innocent or obviously guilty clients confess, but we're never forced with a moral and ethical conflict, at least out of all the episodes I've seen.
I disagree. Yes, in some cases, the parents are pretty clearly not doing their proper jobs as parents. But, as any parent will tell you, you can't keep your child safe. You can't be sure they'll grow up right. The world is a terrifyingly random place and, despite your best efforts, your kid may still become a crazed killer. All you can do is do your best and hope that they wind up making the right choices based upon your example.
On the other hand, parents who clearly have entirely beglected their child, not only those who didn't bother to feed them, but also the ones who leave the raising of the child to nannies and daycares, barely interacting with them, those people should indeed be held liable. I'm sure someone's bound to retort to me that some families, such as single parent or low income, have little choice about being gone for most of the day, but I've known families where it was just the mother and she worked 80-hour weeks. They still interacted as a family. *sigh* Sometimes it seemed even more likely with the two-income executive set... I'm not a proponent of keeping the women in the kitchen, but I am a strong believer that if you have kids younger than school age, one of the parents should take care of the children as their primary job. Heck, given taxes and the cost of daycare, it's sometimes even cheaper...
A lawyer is ethically required to represent his client as best he can within the bounds of the law. He should never lie, but working within loopholes is perfectly fine. They do not swear to uphold any particular morality, though, so a suitably inclined lawyer should have no professional problem with getting a murderer, tax collecter, or copyright infringer off the hook if he can do so legally. So what happens if you really don't believe your client is right? Well, most ethical and moral lawyers would ask to be removed from the case, as they would not be able to properly defend the client. A lawyer lacking morals might defend the client regardless, seeing it as just business as usual. A lawyer who is moral but not ethical might stay on the case and ultimately sabotage it, although that's tricky business as if he's ever discovered to have under-represented his client, it can become a mistrial and he'd likely be disbarred.
Of course, this also doesn't deal with that the average lawyer often has to overcome their moral objections because not every client will be innocent and the lawyer has to eat. *wry grin* Lawyers are like actors or athletes. The topmost ones rake in far too much money and most of them are just barely scarping by. Additionally, to get out of the lower ranks, you have to play the political game and if you're in a firm, refusing a case could easily rule out you going anywhere with your career.
Err come on, it's only theft we're talking about. 11 months of jail is certainly not a little vacation you know, it's enough to have a big impact on your life actually.
Except, with as many convictions as this guy has had, can we really say that jail sentences seem to be having an impact on him? Heck, he probably picked up pointers while he was in there...
Probably not, but once the threath(?) is gone you have to stop. So no kicking while he is on the floor.
Hmmm... I'd have to disagree with that. Maybe if he were on the floor with his hands on his head squealing "I give up! Stop kicking me!" but in most situations, if someone's attacked you, knocking them to the ground doesn't end the fight; you need to neutralize them, particularly if there might be others. I feel the same way about all these self defense classes which advocate knocking the knife out of the attacker's hand, but don't teach you how to use the knife. Like one of my teachers said, if you don't pick it up, they will.
That said, it's a reasonable force thing that's dependent on the situation. If you've got multiple intruders, the courts should be more lenient about you shooting the fallen attacker in the hip to keep him from sneaking up on you versus where it's a lone burglar who's already surrendered his weapons and already zip-tied his hands for you.
I distribute software for a government agency. Because all costs are either handled by the government itself (internal distribution) or through a fund set up between the two governments (foreign sales), I generally don't have to deal with the cost of software. We develop it for these people we're giving it to, so development costs and production costs are essentially covered by our budget. That is, until we get the oddball sale that's not sponsered by any government, but is within our purview. One piece of software, we were told to estimate its value and report it. Thing is, the people asking us had no idea whether they were asking for the cost of development or the cost of duplicating the CD (I suspect the person in question was filling out a field on his forms that simply asked for a per-CD cost). At that, we weren't sure how to price the cost of development, as it had been a flat value when created, evenly distributed among the labs signed up under us. We had no way of gauging the price for a new requester. In the end, we explained the situation, said that it was likely the price of duplication and mailing they were needing, but gave them the other figure (which we wound up getting by dividing the total price of development by the number of people on ID for the software) and explained what it was, just in case. Last I heard, they'd submitted the average of the two numbers. Go figure.
Not necessarily. Just hosting the Wikipedia pages means that Google has a direct link-up to a large amount of information (admittedly a good bit of it incomplete, revert-warred, and just plain wrong) right at their fingertips. Yes, they could do the same thing crawling the Wikipedia pages with their spider, but with a direct connection, they can afford to run a search with every query. Even besides that, this is an excellent PR move for Google. For the price of a handful of servers, they get a reputation boost for support underdogs and charity and all that.
That said, the point made earlier about how withdrawing the servers later could kill Wikipedia is an interesting point...
Except that I don't think Babylon 5 really worked that much like that. I was a casual viewer, watched an episode here or there when it was available and at a convenient time (I remember my brother at one point bemoaning that it was airing at a 1 AM time slot) and while I found later I had missed some subtexts, it was still an entertaining story. The characters and races are well enough defined that you get some idea from the get-go. (Although I will admit that I was confused as to who G'Kar was supposed to be... I had him pegged as a generic warrior-type. It wasn't until much later that I realized the poet and prophet bits)
Just so that we're not exclusively on Babylon 5, Buffy the Vampire Slayer did a decent job at this too. While there was a definite story going on that had been planned out (and included a large number of references towards and fro in the timeline) and things could change quite drastically (Spike's status as enemy, then friend, then enemy, then lover, then psychotic nutcase actually made some sense in the course of the series), you could pick up any one episode and enjoy what was going on. In my opinion, any good TV show or book series, should be like that, enough going on that it rewards people who site down and view it all, enough hints to allow people to step in at the middle, and subtle enough hints that people who are watching all the way through don't get annoyed at the repeated redundancy.
Slashdot Mirror
Then of course, there are the related urban legends like this, this, and this.
BTB, at least within the US, it may be noted that bottled water must pass fewer tests for purity or contamination than tap water does. Then too, don't trust unsealed bottled water. A friend of mine used to work as a waiter in Tijuana, Mexico and if they ran short on bottled water, they'd bottle their tap water and sell it as bottled water.
Personally, I find it kind of weird the number of people at restaurants who insist on bottled water for their drinks, but then drink them in glasses full of ice made from the tap water...
Check out Stiff : the curious lives of human cadavers by Mary Roach. (I'd try to make a link to Amazon, but I'm not sure how to build one that doesn't refer back to me.) There are a lot more options for your body than just burying it. Personally, I think the option of being flash-frozen in liquid nitrogen, then broken up with ultrasonics is an interesting idea. It's a heck of a lot more likely to not leave crunchy bits than cremation is, less polluting too.
On a more serious note, sometimes being insightful is just that: rewording a common conception into a clearer form. In another sense, insight might be said to be the taking of an idea that we all know and take for granted, an idea that's grown stale from being said too many times in tired colloquialisms, and making it fresh again.
I often wind up doing this kind of translation for fellow employees and friends. What's baffling to me is that often what they say and what I say seem almost entirely identical. It sometimes makes you wonder if maybe it's not that effect mentioned earlier in the review of certain people being perceived differently based on appearance. Our engineers have a reputation for being somewhat difficult to understand (Admittedly often for good reason), so when I state the same thing, it's perceived to come from a more understandable source.
Damn right... I don't hold with none of this Atkins rheotoric. You'll have to pry my carbohydrates from my dead and stiffening hand.
And honestly, don't circuses (circii? {ducks}) make most people happy? You know, except for the animals and the carnies...
Ok, so computers tend to be more interactive, but I couldn't pass up the joke. I don't get cable TV either. As for computer time, I spend a decent amount of each day reading online, including the various classics which have slipped into public domain. And it's amazing how many books you get read waiting for websites to load...
Oh, and that's just one congress-critter. Doesn't one need a majority?
Correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't the Difference Engine kind of a singular thing? Most of these gadgets seem to have been mass-produced, although a few of them push that limit in that they only really enjoyed distribution among the military.
Must you really know what the money is being spend on?
If you donate money, you are asking them to continue to offer their great service to you and other people. How they achieve that goal, is up to them, no?
Except, well, every major charitable organization of decent size issues itemized reports as to where the money is budgeted and how last years money was actually spent versus budget. So yes, I will ask the organization how they plan to spend my money before giving it. Well, except for webcomics... After all, we already know they need the money for server costs, pens, crack...ers. Can't do without those saltines.
In Soviet Russia, perhaps...
That said, my experience of prison is entirely from the outside, so if I'm speaking misguidedly, please correct me. *wry grin* And it woiuld be preferable if you did that by way of actually posting an explanation of the error of my ways rather than trying to mod me into oblivion... I learn more that way.
And yet sometimes they truly fail... who ever thought it was a good idea to create the Comittee to RE-Elect the President aka CREEP?
Anyhow, I'm just pointing out that there's ways around these things. People not paying their use tax is technically illegal too, but here we are discussing alternatives to paying it.
As an industry insider, I'll tell you that you now need a Social Security number to get a prepaid Visa as of the Patriot Act.
Ah, but a valid SSN is required? And if only valid ones are accepted, what's to keep me from glancing at someone's checkbook or driver's license and lifting the SSN off of there and using it?
And what if I buy something while on vacation in another state that has a different tax rate than my home state?
Absolutely nothing. You will have paid sales tax in the location of purchase. I've seen some Internet sites that allow this also, handy if the state they're located in has a lower tax rate. (Not sure what implications this has for purchases from Rhode Island...) On the other hand, with the large amounts of money flying around, I wouldn't be too surprised if someone decides this lack of extra taxation is an oversight. I know that when I was residing in Kentucky and working in California (co-op program. I was also attending school in Ohio, but that's another matter entirely), I had to pay extra income tax to the state of Kentucky because California taxed me at a lower percentage.
So what you really mean when you say "I've seen it happen" is that you've seen it happen on TV?
Well, we were discussing media depictions of law, so I believe the answer is yes.
For that matter, under lawyers faced with moral and ethical dilemnas in movies, one might include Liar, Liar. Admittedly, Jim Carrey continues to defend his client who he knew was guilty, even finding ways to get around that nasty moral prohibition against lying to maintain his ethical stance as a lawyer defending his client...
Myself, I'm the son of a lawyer, but he's not a court lawyer. Rather, he was the kind of lawyer you went to to check the legality of property transfers and the like. He now works for one of the local banks, advising them on legal matters. So I've got some practical understanding of law and ethics, despite my joking disclaimer. ^_^ Although I have portrayed a lawyer on stage, so it was honest. Then again, I've also been a marriage counselor, a cult member, a monkey, a teacher, a serial killer, a werewolf, an Egyptian grave-robber, and Lady Enid of Mandercrest. At that, the last three roles were all in the same play.
Nice to know someone appreciates it. It amused me because there's always that line in the Bible about Jesus eating with prostitutes and tax collecters. Today, tax collecters are considered to be more annoying than immoral, so it seems odd to us. But honestly, I do suspect there are indeed lawyers out there who (perhaps even unconsciously) don't properly represent their client because they don't believe their client should get away with their crime.
That said, ever notice how all these crime and law shows on TV never have the main characters defending someone they know is guilty? Seemingly guilty clients turn out to be innocent or obviously guilty clients confess, but we're never forced with a moral and ethical conflict, at least out of all the episodes I've seen.
On the other hand, parents who clearly have entirely beglected their child, not only those who didn't bother to feed them, but also the ones who leave the raising of the child to nannies and daycares, barely interacting with them, those people should indeed be held liable. I'm sure someone's bound to retort to me that some families, such as single parent or low income, have little choice about being gone for most of the day, but I've known families where it was just the mother and she worked 80-hour weeks. They still interacted as a family. *sigh* Sometimes it seemed even more likely with the two-income executive set... I'm not a proponent of keeping the women in the kitchen, but I am a strong believer that if you have kids younger than school age, one of the parents should take care of the children as their primary job. Heck, given taxes and the cost of daycare, it's sometimes even cheaper...
A lawyer is ethically required to represent his client as best he can within the bounds of the law. He should never lie, but working within loopholes is perfectly fine. They do not swear to uphold any particular morality, though, so a suitably inclined lawyer should have no professional problem with getting a murderer, tax collecter, or copyright infringer off the hook if he can do so legally. So what happens if you really don't believe your client is right? Well, most ethical and moral lawyers would ask to be removed from the case, as they would not be able to properly defend the client. A lawyer lacking morals might defend the client regardless, seeing it as just business as usual. A lawyer who is moral but not ethical might stay on the case and ultimately sabotage it, although that's tricky business as if he's ever discovered to have under-represented his client, it can become a mistrial and he'd likely be disbarred.
Of course, this also doesn't deal with that the average lawyer often has to overcome their moral objections because not every client will be innocent and the lawyer has to eat. *wry grin* Lawyers are like actors or athletes. The topmost ones rake in far too much money and most of them are just barely scarping by. Additionally, to get out of the lower ranks, you have to play the political game and if you're in a firm, refusing a case could easily rule out you going anywhere with your career.
Err come on, it's only theft we're talking about. 11 months of jail is certainly not a little vacation you know, it's enough to have a big impact on your life actually.
Except, with as many convictions as this guy has had, can we really say that jail sentences seem to be having an impact on him? Heck, he probably picked up pointers while he was in there...
Hmmm... I'd have to disagree with that. Maybe if he were on the floor with his hands on his head squealing "I give up! Stop kicking me!" but in most situations, if someone's attacked you, knocking them to the ground doesn't end the fight; you need to neutralize them, particularly if there might be others. I feel the same way about all these self defense classes which advocate knocking the knife out of the attacker's hand, but don't teach you how to use the knife. Like one of my teachers said, if you don't pick it up, they will.
That said, it's a reasonable force thing that's dependent on the situation. If you've got multiple intruders, the courts should be more lenient about you shooting the fallen attacker in the hip to keep him from sneaking up on you versus where it's a lone burglar who's already surrendered his weapons and already zip-tied his hands for you.
I distribute software for a government agency. Because all costs are either handled by the government itself (internal distribution) or through a fund set up between the two governments (foreign sales), I generally don't have to deal with the cost of software. We develop it for these people we're giving it to, so development costs and production costs are essentially covered by our budget. That is, until we get the oddball sale that's not sponsered by any government, but is within our purview. One piece of software, we were told to estimate its value and report it. Thing is, the people asking us had no idea whether they were asking for the cost of development or the cost of duplicating the CD (I suspect the person in question was filling out a field on his forms that simply asked for a per-CD cost). At that, we weren't sure how to price the cost of development, as it had been a flat value when created, evenly distributed among the labs signed up under us. We had no way of gauging the price for a new requester. In the end, we explained the situation, said that it was likely the price of duplication and mailing they were needing, but gave them the other figure (which we wound up getting by dividing the total price of development by the number of people on ID for the software) and explained what it was, just in case. Last I heard, they'd submitted the average of the two numbers. Go figure.
That said, the point made earlier about how withdrawing the servers later could kill Wikipedia is an interesting point...
Just so that we're not exclusively on Babylon 5, Buffy the Vampire Slayer did a decent job at this too. While there was a definite story going on that had been planned out (and included a large number of references towards and fro in the timeline) and things could change quite drastically (Spike's status as enemy, then friend, then enemy, then lover, then psychotic nutcase actually made some sense in the course of the series), you could pick up any one episode and enjoy what was going on. In my opinion, any good TV show or book series, should be like that, enough going on that it rewards people who site down and view it all, enough hints to allow people to step in at the middle, and subtle enough hints that people who are watching all the way through don't get annoyed at the repeated redundancy.