Can't find a cite, but there was a thought-provoking story I read as a child featuring a researcher who was arguing that the human memory was like a box full of index cards where we stored individual memories and sights. What he feared is that, with the advent of television, the human brain was cataloguing thousands of images each minute and would eventually run out of index cards. Near the end of the story, the president went on TV to issue the warning, and froze up as his brain reached capacity reading the cues on the closed-circuit TV in front of him.
Personally, I suspect there is eventually an upper limit, but probably it's like a disk drive wherein the sectors which lack pointers to them will be the first to be over-written. Really lazy garbage collection perhaps? ^_^
As a side note to that, you know those people who reuse disposable plates and cups? Bad idea... the styrofoam holds onto all kinds of nasty bacterial organisms through repeated washings and most of the disposable materials release chemicals on washing. *wry grin* I will admit that I've never seen a good reputable cite on this, but it's been rpeated over and over again on the Internet so it must be true, right?
I cannot comment on the EPA regulations, but I know that at the least, Air Force Bases are not legally considered within the same legal bounds as the states they reside in. That's why Air Force Bases have their own laws on what consitutes a deadly weapon, age of consent (It's 16 on any Air Force Base, no matter the state is) and moral behavior (Most bases that I know of still have rules on the book forbidding oral or anal sex). I am not in the Air Force myself, but from the friends I have in it, I get the impression that bases are considered to be a state of their own, kind of like the situation with foreign embassies.
No, they don't really. If they scare enough people off of uploading files, what will happen is that all these people will uncheck the "Share Files" option. It won't make an impact when a few people start doing it, but as the trend grows, people will find that suddenly they can't find files as people withdraw from offering. Sure, there will always be a few people who figure they'll get by with it, or cover their tracks peroperly, but the question is, can those few people support the infrastructure? And if people are suddenly unable to find the songs they want, or simply unable to download them in a reasonable amount of time, I'd wager that they'll switch to some other method.
Meh, I think part of the problem here is that most of the people being sued really are guilty of the crime. It's hard to mount a defense when you're well aware that you're guilty of the crime and there's clear evidence. *wry grin* Not that it stops people when they get speeding tickets or get caught driving intoxicated...
That said, I remember that when the first suits came out, there were some clear-cut cases where the RIAA was entirely off base such as with that one elderly grandmother who didn't even own a computer, but got accused of file-sharing. Were those case dropped immediately upon protest or did those people have to go through the legal rigamorale to get the charges dropped? (And were the RIAA fined for wasting the time of the forces of justice?)
What with Disney getting the copyright limit extended each time they risk losing the Mouse and the laws saying that a copyright exists on all works even if not formally copyrighted, unless otherwise stated by the author, there's a good chance that we won't have new books in the public domain for a long time...
I believe they mean the typical psychotic craziness. As one of the other psoters on here has said, schizophrenia was at one point a catch-all diagnosis. I'm only a hobbyist in psychology, so it could be that I've missed recent developments (IANAP?), but classic schizophernia included paranoia, hearing voices, being convinced there were "agents" tracing your every move... Schizophrenia covers all kinds of ground from the paranoid schizophrenic convinced that people are tracking his thoughts and that the voices are radio messages from the implant in his skull to the fellow who stands absolutely still on the street corner, convinced that God has granted him omnipotence and if he so much as twitches a muscle, he could destroy the world.
It's got a definite genetic basis (identical twins develop it more often than non-identical twins), but there seems to be some kind of trigger to it. Once it starts, it keeps getting worse. Psychotherapy won't touch it, as I understand, but drugs sometimes help.
I personally prefer the ones where they betray love by killing their significant other while in a passionate embrace, then coldly informing said SO about how there was never any love, that they were only using them as the SO dies with those words ringing in their ears. A slightly more cruel variant is not killing them in that case. Only thing is I can't remember which movie I saw this in, but I can see it in my head and it was downright chilling.
We have a skating rink in Newark, OH, Roll-A-Way Skating Center, which practices something very similar to this. As I understand it, the owner has been operating his rink for a few decades and he still enforces rules that ban profanity, short shorts, tank tops, mesh shirts, and public displays of affection. (Yes, you can get thrown out of his rink for kissing. It's in the rules posted on the wall and I've seen it happen) As far as I know, he does not have any posted rules on piercings, but I would not be surprised if it eventually makes its way onto the signs (he's got some practical grounding there given that a falling person can put a fair scrape in the finish of a rink... he already bans studs and chains on clothing). In his case, he operates the rink as a family business and therefore feels it appropriate to be sure that his patrons are non-offensive. Probably also helps that we're a small town...
While I know it's not nearly as cool as building your own scanning set or even buying a program and running it, there are commercial services who will take your 8mm films and put them on video or DVD. Type in "8mm" and "dvd" on Google and look at the ads to the right. My grandparents recovered footage of their marriage (admittedly about 5 seconds of the best man and friends twitching nervously followed by 25 seconds of the marriage kiss, but eh) a few years ago.
While Tolkien contributed a lot of the mythos, I've seen arguments which make sense to me that a lot of the style of the world was drawn from Fritz Leiber's Nehwon tales of Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser. *shrug* I guess part of it depends on whether you play the "epic heroes" or the "people surviving and living their lives" type of campaign.
Honestly, it's probably popular because a) it comes pre-installed on almost every Windows computer out there and b) if you have a HotMail or PassPort account, you're already signed up. Lastly, it's got a lot of integrated things from games coming up with a right-click to tons of emoticons. Personally, I'm not altogether fond of it due to its lack of use of italics, etc, but I can see it's appeal for others.
As for the person suggesting Gaim, that's what I use, but I still have to switch to the proprietary clients if I want to do much besides just send messages, especially when my friends don't have up-to-date client versions. Gaim is wonderful for if you don't want 4 icons on your taskbar during chat, but it doesn't really cover all the cases for any particular chat program.
*wry grin* That's the usual reaction I get. I was in Folsom, CA on a co-op position with Intel. However, the place I lived in was only about 3 blocks away from that famous prison. Or so the street maps said... I never managed to tour the facility.
Without stopping? Now admittedly, I have no idea what the actual state of California law, but while I was in Folsom, I had several residents tell me that it was legal in California to turn right on red without stopping first, so long as you checked for incoming traffic. Honestly, I suspect they were either misinformed or cracking a joke about how bad drivers in California are.
IIRC, in the original comics, the Green Goblin is always wearing a mask when he's out. After all, he's also existing as a mild-mannered corporate shark. (And in fact, in later parts, he manages to have his two identities pretty much ignorant of each other) I can't swear for sure on the two Green Goblins that came out after that (And I think there was a 4th one, the Hobgoblin?). And the "Ultimate" series that retconned everything in a more modern manner had him able to transform to the Goblin, a totally different being physically.
I think you're underestimating just how many people are getting fingerprinted for their jobs these days. If you work for the Government, they've got them on file. Ditto for military. And most non-profits including churches are requiring fingerprints and a background check if you will either be dealing with finances or children. You've got banks and grocery stores taking thumb-prints for ID. *sigh* Kind of scary how much info is out there. And yes, Google would indeed be in a good position for this kind of search. Makes "googling" for a person sound rather 1984ish...
It didn't happen to me, but my cubicle-mate, but we work for the Air Force in the area of calibration of measurement instruments. He was given a project where he had to check for a certain set of frequencies. Not a big problem except they wouldn't tell him what the frequency was... it seems that the set of frequencies was classified as Top Secret and he didn't have a sufficient clearance level.
As to how it turned out, he took what information he did have and managed to figure out which values they were looking for. (IIRC, he looked at the limits of the ranges they wanted him scanning and looked at the center frequency of each) And... he nearly got brought up on charges of espionage as "obviously" he could not have found those values on his own.
Why would you want to acquire a US citizenship? There are not no other country in the world wherein one detests citizens. {Maybe "There is no other country which more detests its citizens?"} One has a crazy government with a president who wasn't elected and who serves rich people and their companies. More and more, they remove the rights of the citizens with the aid of the Supreme Court, which is also controlled by the president and his Neo-conservative allies.
Better to go to Canada, which is a million times more sensible than the US.
(My apologies for the errors... I speak French but it is not my mother tongue. I enjoy trying to speak it from time to time) Doesn't anyone know how to use Babelfish anymore?
I haven't spoken French since High School, but I think this is doable:
My advice:
- Marry an American girl.
- Acquire a US citizenship.
- Never return to France
Or do the same thing with a Canadian girl if you like snow.
One of the biggest problems with the clever ads is often they don't really leave a lasting impression of what the product was. I don't know that I'll be able to forget the "shoot-the-hamster through the O" or "Arrange the marching band in our logo then set wild dogs after them" commercials a few years ago, but honestly, I've forgotten who the company was. My dear mother will often watch a commercial then turn to me and say, "That was an interesting commercial. Did you catch what they were advertising?" (Admittedly, this may have something to do with ongoing macular degeneration too...)
In my experience, people sometimes confuse the idea of spam, unwanted commerical email, with mail that's automatically sent to them that they don't want to deal with. There's an online game I play (http://www.eyeplaygames.com) where they email you a reminder when your game gets enough people to start. We've had several people in the group block the emails because they're sent even in cases where you were the last person to sign up, or where you're the only participant. ^_^ Plus most of these people are addicts enough that they're more likely to notice the game started by their compulsive checking than by the email. Anyhow, I'm mildly surprised JoeBot hasn't gotten blacklisted by AOL yet...
Then too, I've seen people use the "Mark as Spam" button as being interchangeable with the "Delete Button." Some sincerely didn't seem to understand the difference as both got rid of the email.
Actually, one of my fellow college graduates makes pretty good money doing that. In the wake of all of these virus attacks, he offers "recovery and immunization services," the immunization step basically consisting of turning on the native security features and running Windows Update. And yes, he does charge per hour while waiting for Windows Update to install... Admittedly, his time is closer to $20 per hour than $50 but it's still kind of slick.
Not to mention that selling your books to the bookstores not only nets you about a tenth of what you paid, but allows the bookstore to sell said book back to your classmates for about nine-tenths of what you paid for it. Break the cycle. Sell your books yourself. It's generally not difficult in the least.
Slashdot Mirror
Can't find a cite, but there was a thought-provoking story I read as a child featuring a researcher who was arguing that the human memory was like a box full of index cards where we stored individual memories and sights. What he feared is that, with the advent of television, the human brain was cataloguing thousands of images each minute and would eventually run out of index cards. Near the end of the story, the president went on TV to issue the warning, and froze up as his brain reached capacity reading the cues on the closed-circuit TV in front of him.
Personally, I suspect there is eventually an upper limit, but probably it's like a disk drive wherein the sectors which lack pointers to them will be the first to be over-written. Really lazy garbage collection perhaps? ^_^
As a side note to that, you know those people who reuse disposable plates and cups? Bad idea... the styrofoam holds onto all kinds of nasty bacterial organisms through repeated washings and most of the disposable materials release chemicals on washing. *wry grin* I will admit that I've never seen a good reputable cite on this, but it's been rpeated over and over again on the Internet so it must be true, right?
I cannot comment on the EPA regulations, but I know that at the least, Air Force Bases are not legally considered within the same legal bounds as the states they reside in. That's why Air Force Bases have their own laws on what consitutes a deadly weapon, age of consent (It's 16 on any Air Force Base, no matter the state is) and moral behavior (Most bases that I know of still have rules on the book forbidding oral or anal sex). I am not in the Air Force myself, but from the friends I have in it, I get the impression that bases are considered to be a state of their own, kind of like the situation with foreign embassies.
No, they don't really. If they scare enough people off of uploading files, what will happen is that all these people will uncheck the "Share Files" option. It won't make an impact when a few people start doing it, but as the trend grows, people will find that suddenly they can't find files as people withdraw from offering. Sure, there will always be a few people who figure they'll get by with it, or cover their tracks peroperly, but the question is, can those few people support the infrastructure? And if people are suddenly unable to find the songs they want, or simply unable to download them in a reasonable amount of time, I'd wager that they'll switch to some other method.
Meh, I think part of the problem here is that most of the people being sued really are guilty of the crime. It's hard to mount a defense when you're well aware that you're guilty of the crime and there's clear evidence. *wry grin* Not that it stops people when they get speeding tickets or get caught driving intoxicated...
That said, I remember that when the first suits came out, there were some clear-cut cases where the RIAA was entirely off base such as with that one elderly grandmother who didn't even own a computer, but got accused of file-sharing. Were those case dropped immediately upon protest or did those people have to go through the legal rigamorale to get the charges dropped? (And were the RIAA fined for wasting the time of the forces of justice?)
What with Disney getting the copyright limit extended each time they risk losing the Mouse and the laws saying that a copyright exists on all works even if not formally copyrighted, unless otherwise stated by the author, there's a good chance that we won't have new books in the public domain for a long time...
I believe they mean the typical psychotic craziness. As one of the other psoters on here has said, schizophrenia was at one point a catch-all diagnosis. I'm only a hobbyist in psychology, so it could be that I've missed recent developments (IANAP?), but classic schizophernia included paranoia, hearing voices, being convinced there were "agents" tracing your every move... Schizophrenia covers all kinds of ground from the paranoid schizophrenic convinced that people are tracking his thoughts and that the voices are radio messages from the implant in his skull to the fellow who stands absolutely still on the street corner, convinced that God has granted him omnipotence and if he so much as twitches a muscle, he could destroy the world. It's got a definite genetic basis (identical twins develop it more often than non-identical twins), but there seems to be some kind of trigger to it. Once it starts, it keeps getting worse. Psychotherapy won't touch it, as I understand, but drugs sometimes help.
Sean Connery.
I personally prefer the ones where they betray love by killing their significant other while in a passionate embrace, then coldly informing said SO about how there was never any love, that they were only using them as the SO dies with those words ringing in their ears. A slightly more cruel variant is not killing them in that case.
Only thing is I can't remember which movie I saw this in, but I can see it in my head and it was downright chilling.
We have a skating rink in Newark, OH, Roll-A-Way Skating Center, which practices something very similar to this. As I understand it, the owner has been operating his rink for a few decades and he still enforces rules that ban profanity, short shorts, tank tops, mesh shirts, and public displays of affection. (Yes, you can get thrown out of his rink for kissing. It's in the rules posted on the wall and I've seen it happen) As far as I know, he does not have any posted rules on piercings, but I would not be surprised if it eventually makes its way onto the signs (he's got some practical grounding there given that a falling person can put a fair scrape in the finish of a rink... he already bans studs and chains on clothing). In his case, he operates the rink as a family business and therefore feels it appropriate to be sure that his patrons are non-offensive. Probably also helps that we're a small town...
While I know it's not nearly as cool as building your own scanning set or even buying a program and running it, there are commercial services who will take your 8mm films and put them on video or DVD. Type in "8mm" and "dvd" on Google and look at the ads to the right. My grandparents recovered footage of their marriage (admittedly about 5 seconds of the best man and friends twitching nervously followed by 25 seconds of the marriage kiss, but eh) a few years ago.
While Tolkien contributed a lot of the mythos, I've seen arguments which make sense to me that a lot of the style of the world was drawn from Fritz Leiber's Nehwon tales of Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser. *shrug* I guess part of it depends on whether you play the "epic heroes" or the "people surviving and living their lives" type of campaign.
Honestly, it's probably popular because a) it comes pre-installed on almost every Windows computer out there and b) if you have a HotMail or PassPort account, you're already signed up. Lastly, it's got a lot of integrated things from games coming up with a right-click to tons of emoticons. Personally, I'm not altogether fond of it due to its lack of use of italics, etc, but I can see it's appeal for others.
As for the person suggesting Gaim, that's what I use, but I still have to switch to the proprietary clients if I want to do much besides just send messages, especially when my friends don't have up-to-date client versions. Gaim is wonderful for if you don't want 4 icons on your taskbar during chat, but it doesn't really cover all the cases for any particular chat program.
*wry grin* That's the usual reaction I get. I was in Folsom, CA on a co-op position with Intel. However, the place I lived in was only about 3 blocks away from that famous prison. Or so the street maps said... I never managed to tour the facility.
Without stopping? Now admittedly, I have no idea what the actual state of California law, but while I was in Folsom, I had several residents tell me that it was legal in California to turn right on red without stopping first, so long as you checked for incoming traffic. Honestly, I suspect they were either misinformed or cracking a joke about how bad drivers in California are.
IIRC, in the original comics, the Green Goblin is always wearing a mask when he's out. After all, he's also existing as a mild-mannered corporate shark. (And in fact, in later parts, he manages to have his two identities pretty much ignorant of each other) I can't swear for sure on the two Green Goblins that came out after that (And I think there was a 4th one, the Hobgoblin?). And the "Ultimate" series that retconned everything in a more modern manner had him able to transform to the Goblin, a totally different being physically.
I think you're underestimating just how many people are getting fingerprinted for their jobs these days. If you work for the Government, they've got them on file. Ditto for military. And most non-profits including churches are requiring fingerprints and a background check if you will either be dealing with finances or children. You've got banks and grocery stores taking thumb-prints for ID. *sigh* Kind of scary how much info is out there. And yes, Google would indeed be in a good position for this kind of search. Makes "googling" for a person sound rather 1984ish...
*blink* -1 Offtopic? Since when is providing a translation off topic? Bleh.
It didn't happen to me, but my cubicle-mate, but we work for the Air Force in the area of calibration of measurement instruments. He was given a project where he had to check for a certain set of frequencies. Not a big problem except they wouldn't tell him what the frequency was... it seems that the set of frequencies was classified as Top Secret and he didn't have a sufficient clearance level.
As to how it turned out, he took what information he did have and managed to figure out which values they were looking for. (IIRC, he looked at the limits of the ranges they wanted him scanning and looked at the center frequency of each) And... he nearly got brought up on charges of espionage as "obviously" he could not have found those values on his own.
Why would you want to acquire a US citizenship? There are not no other country in the world wherein one detests citizens. {Maybe "There is no other country which more detests its citizens?"} One has a crazy government with a president who wasn't elected and who serves rich people and their companies. More and more, they remove the rights of the citizens with the aid of the Supreme Court, which is also controlled by the president and his Neo-conservative allies.
Better to go to Canada, which is a million times more sensible than the US.
(My apologies for the errors... I speak French but it is not my mother tongue. I enjoy trying to speak it from time to time)
Doesn't anyone know how to use Babelfish anymore?
I haven't spoken French since High School, but I think this is doable:
My advice:
- Marry an American girl.
- Acquire a US citizenship.
- Never return to France
Or do the same thing with a Canadian girl if you like snow.
One of the biggest problems with the clever ads is often they don't really leave a lasting impression of what the product was. I don't know that I'll be able to forget the "shoot-the-hamster through the O" or "Arrange the marching band in our logo then set wild dogs after them" commercials a few years ago, but honestly, I've forgotten who the company was. My dear mother will often watch a commercial then turn to me and say, "That was an interesting commercial. Did you catch what they were advertising?" (Admittedly, this may have something to do with ongoing macular degeneration too...)
In my experience, people sometimes confuse the idea of spam, unwanted commerical email, with mail that's automatically sent to them that they don't want to deal with. There's an online game I play (http://www.eyeplaygames.com) where they email you a reminder when your game gets enough people to start. We've had several people in the group block the emails because they're sent even in cases where you were the last person to sign up, or where you're the only participant. ^_^ Plus most of these people are addicts enough that they're more likely to notice the game started by their compulsive checking than by the email. Anyhow, I'm mildly surprised JoeBot hasn't gotten blacklisted by AOL yet... Then too, I've seen people use the "Mark as Spam" button as being interchangeable with the "Delete Button." Some sincerely didn't seem to understand the difference as both got rid of the email.
Actually, one of my fellow college graduates makes pretty good money doing that. In the wake of all of these virus attacks, he offers "recovery and immunization services," the immunization step basically consisting of turning on the native security features and running Windows Update. And yes, he does charge per hour while waiting for Windows Update to install... Admittedly, his time is closer to $20 per hour than $50 but it's still kind of slick.
Not to mention that selling your books to the bookstores not only nets you about a tenth of what you paid, but allows the bookstore to sell said book back to your classmates for about nine-tenths of what you paid for it. Break the cycle. Sell your books yourself. It's generally not difficult in the least.