Read the full text of the Playboy interview, compliments of the SEC. (Warning: It is a very long HTML file; wait for it to load. If your browser (such as IE) loses the fragment anchor, do a text search to find the beginning of Appendix B.) Of course, if you want the pretty pictures, you're going to have to buy it.
One might go so far as to say that the sort of person who'd press a suit accusing the message board provider of negligence in such a situation was an ambulance-chasing shyster with less personal appeal than the Goatse Guy...
Please. Don't insult the Goatse Guy.
Comparing him to Stephen Galton, who, by the way, is a DUMB SHYSTER, may very well be actionable defamation.
well, if you have transuranics in your urine, you have transuranics in your sperm. Radiation around gametes is a cause of mutation.
Original poster said, "Agent orange and all dibenzofuranes and their ilk have an affinity for DNA... and are transmitted via sperm into the next generation.", then implied that DU could pull the same trick. That doesn't say anything about mutation or the (presumably deleterious) effects of DU: It's a claim that somehow agent orange, DU, et al. can be physically passed as poisons (!?) "into the next generation". I don't see how the original poster could have meant anything else.
On top of this, direct comparison of agent orange and DU in this way is fallacious. Even assuming that DU has all the negative effects ascribed to it (which it does not), I don't think that anybody claims that it is a chemical mutagen or is in any way similar to agent orange. It's a poisonous heavy metal like lead, it emits very small amounts of radiation, and it very slowly decays, evolving relatively tiny amounts of potentially harmful substances such as radon; but I don't see any mechanism for it to have "affinity for DNA".
All in all, that was the funniest line from a very unscientific post.
I presume you say that because it's true that the alpha emissions from U will not penetrate the foil,
Correct.
but please form an airtight seal, because it will evolve Radon gas, which of course is also radioactive.
U238 decays very slowly; I've lived in basement rooms that probably had higher ambient radon levels than a 1kg block of U238 could cause or sustain. It'd probably be better to leave it open and just make sure the room is well-ventilated, which always is a good idea for living quarters anyway.
For Vietnam war vets - Agent orange and all dibenzofuranes and their ilk have an affinity for DNA (especially after hitting the cytochrome P-450 enzyme chain - arene oxides) and are transmitted via sperm into the next generation. If these new vets are pissing DU it is also going into their sperm.
Am I the only one who's going to call bullshit on this little bit of hilarity?
Even for those ignorant enough to fall for "U238 dangerous radioactivity" hoax (and it is a hoax), what half-functioning brain could actually think that a toxin could be "transmitted via sperm into the next generation"!? Have fun explaining the mechanism for that one. I dare you to try. Do it in the name of pseudoscience! And remember, the burden of proof is on the person making extraordinary claims, not the one debunking them.
(Really -- tell your tall tales to your little sister, not to me.)
As for the rest about DU -- I will personally volunteer to have a 1kg block of DU placed underneath my bed for the next ten years, as long as it is wrapped in aluminum foil. (The latter just because I'm paranoid; what else is aluminum foil used for?;-) And, oh yeah, as long as I won't be inhaling or ingesting any particles of uranium or its oxides -- not because of radioactivity, but because it is a heavy metal with chemical effects similar to (and not substantively worse than) lead poisoning. (I'm not afraid of lead, either; I just don't want to eat it.)
This resulted in a spike of specific leukemias and kidney cancers in Basra (Southern Iraq) from 1996 on. I have 6 (5 us and one Mennonite Canadian) friends who saw that cancer ward from 1996 to 2002, and two in June 2003. All came back changed from viewing that pediatric oncology ward.
Yeah. Like Saddam's regime would never have grouped together childhood cancer cases and attributed them to U.S. munitions for the propaganda effect. No, that could never happen.
Really, your post gave me my laugh of the day. Pure anti-nuclear FUD, though very Politically Correct. Only on/. could it have been modded up to +4, "Informative".
[Billboards] essentially make me feel inadequate. Billboards make me feel poor, because I can't afford a new home, or a meal at that expensive restaurant. Spam makes me worry that my penis is too small, my breasts are too small, I'm too fat, I don't send enough money to Nigeria.
I'm still groggy with the earliness of the hour, so I'll bite here and assume that you're being serious.
The answer is simple: Don't allow your self-image to be formed by other people, particularly low-lifes such as spammers. Seriously, do you give two hoots what a spammer thinks of you? Particularly when this is:
Someone who has never met you, and is not even writing to you personally about your penis or breasts, but rather is sending a mass mailing that will reach porn stars who are hung like horses and FF-cup women the same way it reaches you;
Complete and total scum of the earth who is willing to send spam for money (or in an attempt at making money, which is unsuccessful more often than not);
umm... did I say... a SPAMMER? Do you also care what KKK-type skinheads and convicted child molesters think of you?
it's rare that I even see spam anymore. If everyone would use these filters, spam would no longer be as profitable.
Unfortunately, most people aren't so successful with filters, particularly if they cannot tolerate any false positives at all. Even for those who don't have their own mailservers, every decent ISP nowadays offers server-side filtering -- but it is far from perfect, and I doubt you'll find too many people who claim that filtering even comes close to eliminating the spam problem.
You suck at trolling and even starting a troll... You have to do it right.
.NET is a fundamental revolution that will change the world of computer science forever. A well-administered Windows NT system is more secure than Linix, period. IIS on Windows Server 2003 is faster than Apache. FreeBSD is very much alive. GPL and it's proponents are loosers who have no real affect on the world. You would know that if you had RTFA.
Oh yeah: The RIAA/MPAA have a right to stop stealing by pirates (ARRR, Matey!). Software patents are essential to the survival of the IT industry. The third Matrix movie RAWKED. AOL is a good ISP. Code is not speech. The Easter Bunny ate your candy. {Insert the opposite of your viewpoint on abortion or gun rights here.}
I would continue, but you slashbots could never keep up with my super el33tness.
I have had this idea, and I am surely far from alone. There are probably people here who are handy with embedded Linux (or Windows CE, a la Microsoft's own home broadband routers) who have hacked together a similar device. With consumer-market PCMCIA cards that can handle the cellular end and mini-PCI 802.11 cards you can extract from most any home cable/dsl router, this is more of a hardware geek's weekend pleasure hack than a non-obvious, patentable invention.
Build one of these and mount it in your car, and you have Internet access for your laptop, PDA, and other gadgets when you hit the road. Run it on batteries and make a picnic basket or backpack that carries a wireless LAN wherever you go (power requirements shouldn't be huge, especially when the device is configured for use outdoors at very short ranges). The possibilities are endless. (Alas, I don't have the technical knowledge to build one myself.)
Re:Small-scale wifi from balloons.
on
Broadband Blimps
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· Score: 2, Insightful
It'll make a hell of a lightning rod, too, unfortunately.
I found out the hard way when I -- *ahem* -- managed to jerk off on the keyboard of my newest laptop. The keyboard died instantly (although fortunately, no other components were damaged). I even
blogged about it at the time (with some other blogs adding to the discussion).
I still haven't gotten it repaired. I'm currently typing on an external keyboard.
Actually, postmaster and abuse are two accounts that every domain has, but they hardly ever get spam, because spammmers are afraid of us (insert demonic laugh here).
I've said the same thing before, and it did seem to jinx my role accounts. abuse@ has been getting the crap spammed out of it lately on several domains I own.
Of course, I did put my abuse@ addresses in a very bad position: I use them in my domains' WHOIS records. I did this specifically on the logical presumption that spammers would automatically strip abuse@ off of their lists. Whoops.
I have also received spam SMTP envelope addressed to postmaster@ - and to add insult to injury, it appeared to have been part of a dictionary attack. (I've never listed postmaster@ for those domains anywhere that a spambot could pick it up.)
Listwashing of known active spamfighters aside, spammers truly don't seem to care what addresses they have on their lists. AFAIK, they typically get paid for how big those lists are (i.e., their scum clients pay them to "spam 27 million people" or whatnot). So there's no financial incentive at all for them to use clean lists: If it got sent, they got paid for it, even if it bounced from a non-existent address or went straight to an abuse@ role account. In their eyes, bigger lists are better lists with no other considerations.
Nope it isn't a fox bias, it is just further proof that the "liberal media" is a myth...
No, it shows that the mainstream left and right wings are solidly united on some issues, such as censorship of pornography. American society in general hates and fears pornography, and any mainstream news source is going to be heavily biased in its reporting of it. For example, witness the hatchet job PBS Frontline did on the porn industry a few years ago. (Is PBS a right-wing outfit?)
As another poster pointed out, it was Bill Clinton who signed the law in question in the first place. I don't think that that anybody could argue that this shows that Clinton's "liberal" bias is a myth.
Not everything can be predicted by traditional, shallow labels of left and right. The Supreme Court ruled against the law, and that doesn't necessarily mean that they are sympathetic to pornography; it merely shows they are aware of broader free-speech issues involved. On the other hand, I believe strongly in a right to government non-interference in private, consensual activities, and that doesn't mean I lean to the left (far from it!).
(If you can defend graffiti, stop protesting that some "artist" is filling your inbox with an IMPORTANT MESSAGE. They can also claim to be "creative", you know.)
To eliminate himself from suspicion, he should have told them to make the check out to "anybody but Myron Tereshchuk".
pffft. Amateur.
Everybody knows that only an idiot would ask for the check out to himself; so he could use that as an alibi, since nobody would believe that it was him.
Of course, a truly smart criminal would know that a smart investigator would realize that most people know that you shouldn't ask for the check to be written out to your own real name; so he should not have the check written to his own name. But naturally, a well-trained detective would recommend that possibility and immediately discount the possiblity that the name he demanded to be written on the check was his own name; so he should have used his own name.
But the company he was blackmailing was located in Connecticut, which is kind of like a miniature Australia; and everybody knows that Australia is populated by criminals...
I always liked the story about the would-be robber who walked past a police car parked outside and went in to hold up a gun shop.
This, where the guy behind the counter and several customers (including the driver of the aforementioned cop car, who was in there shopping for hardware related to professional duties) were all lawfully armed. (Yes, some states allow this.)
Cases like these kind of add new depth to the idea of natural selection.
This is the same reaction that has been given to new technology since the start of the Industrial Revolution, if not before.
Starting in the nineteenth century, a wave of time-saving devices and new manufacturing processes allowed a few workers to complete jobs that had previously required the laborous attentions of a multitude of skilled craftsmen. For one example out of many, consider the difference between clothing that was either simple and home-made or expensively tailored by a professional seamstress and mass-produced clothing that can be sold as a commodity at Wal-Mart.
Many new advances in technology have increased efficiency and allowed machines to either leverage the effort of a few humans (allowing a few people controlling the machines to replace an entire factory-full of workers) or to replace humans entirely. An outcry (and often, calls for governmental interference) has followed each new advance in labor-saving devices. Doomsday predictions of mass unemployment and poverty have been common -- and always wrong, since increases in efficiency brought about by technology have universally brought about a higher standard of living for everyone. Some people lost their jobs, but other new jobs (and new industries) were created; it's not a zero-sum game. Additionally, higher standards of living have been promulgated across the board. For example, a standard work week used to be 10 hours * 6 days; now, in America it is 8 hours * 5, and in Europe it is even lower (albeit due to government regulation rather than market forces in the latter case).
Now, according to TFA, it is the "knowledge workers" who have their jobs on the cutting block. Boo hoo. While it sucks in the short run for the individuals who may suffer personal turmoil from being made redundant by machines, and there may be temporary economic displacements of labor, in the long run almost everybody will benefit either directly or indirectly from a growing economy where everybody has to work less for a higher standard of living.
AIM was often sited as a rare example of a large company offering up a free service...
And Internet users often cite AIM as a site at which to enjoy the sight of cute and fuzzy emoticons wielded by fellow lonely chat buddies.
The beginnings of many romances have been sited in the virtual space between AIM's colorful chat windows; and many rueful addicts cite AIM as a site at which to waste inordinate amounts of time sighting and sizing up new candidates for "companionship".
I don't know why the porn industry is complaining about this,
I can say with some certainty that the "porn industry" isn't complaining about this. All of the best affiliate programs enforce TOS that prohibit spam. (You spam, you get shut down and lose the $$$ in your account that hasn't yet been paid out.) Don't insult the legitimate porn industry by linking them with spammers.
Saying that the "porn industry" protests this regulation is like saying CVS or Walgreens protests regulations on Viagra spam or OfficeMax protests regulations on inkjet cartridge spam. There are legitimate players in the industry, and there are scam artists feeding at the bottom. Guess which group is responsible for the spam.
Of course, none of this means anything about the regulation itself, which will most certainly be ineffectual at reducing spam or filtering porn spam. IME, the only tool that can produce a real impact on spam is a 2x4 applied forcefully to a spammer's skull.
arresting virus/worm writers once a virus or worm is out in the wild does not stop the virus/wrom from spreading.
Arresting a murderer doesn't bring dead victims back to life. Does this reduce the usefulness of the police initiative to arrest murderers?
(Your analogy is flawed in general. The same applies to "bank robbers or muggers" as you mentioned: Once a crime has been committed, the damage has been done; and if no damage is done, I'd have trouble calling it a "crime".)
Slashdot Mirror
Read the full text of the Playboy interview, compliments of the SEC. (Warning: It is a very long HTML file; wait for it to load. If your browser (such as IE) loses the fragment anchor, do a text search to find the beginning of Appendix B.) Of course, if you want the pretty pictures, you're going to have to buy it.
I've also picked up the Google/Playboy issue on my flagship blog.
Please. Don't insult the Goatse Guy.
Comparing him to Stephen Galton, who, by the way, is a DUMB SHYSTER, may very well be actionable defamation.
Original poster said, "Agent orange and all dibenzofuranes and their ilk have an affinity for DNA... and are transmitted via sperm into the next generation.", then implied that DU could pull the same trick. That doesn't say anything about mutation or the (presumably deleterious) effects of DU: It's a claim that somehow agent orange, DU, et al. can be physically passed as poisons (!?) "into the next generation". I don't see how the original poster could have meant anything else.
On top of this, direct comparison of agent orange and DU in this way is fallacious. Even assuming that DU has all the negative effects ascribed to it (which it does not), I don't think that anybody claims that it is a chemical mutagen or is in any way similar to agent orange. It's a poisonous heavy metal like lead, it emits very small amounts of radiation, and it very slowly decays, evolving relatively tiny amounts of potentially harmful substances such as radon; but I don't see any mechanism for it to have "affinity for DNA".
All in all, that was the funniest line from a very unscientific post.
Off to Google...
Correct.
U238 decays very slowly; I've lived in basement rooms that probably had higher ambient radon levels than a 1kg block of U238 could cause or sustain. It'd probably be better to leave it open and just make sure the room is well-ventilated, which always is a good idea for living quarters anyway.
Am I the only one who's going to call bullshit on this little bit of hilarity?
Even for those ignorant enough to fall for "U238 dangerous radioactivity" hoax (and it is a hoax), what half-functioning brain could actually think that a toxin could be "transmitted via sperm into the next generation"!? Have fun explaining the mechanism for that one. I dare you to try. Do it in the name of pseudoscience! And remember, the burden of proof is on the person making extraordinary claims, not the one debunking them.
(Really -- tell your tall tales to your little sister, not to me.)
As for the rest about DU -- I will personally volunteer to have a 1kg block of DU placed underneath my bed for the next ten years, as long as it is wrapped in aluminum foil. (The latter just because I'm paranoid; what else is aluminum foil used for? ;-) And, oh yeah, as long as I won't be inhaling or ingesting any particles of uranium or its oxides -- not because of radioactivity, but because it is a heavy metal with chemical effects similar to (and not substantively worse than) lead poisoning. (I'm not afraid of lead, either; I just don't want to eat it.)
Yeah. Like Saddam's regime would never have grouped together childhood cancer cases and attributed them to U.S. munitions for the propaganda effect. No, that could never happen.
Really, your post gave me my laugh of the day. Pure anti-nuclear FUD, though very Politically Correct. Only on /. could it have been modded up to +4, "Informative".
I'm still groggy with the earliness of the hour, so I'll bite here and assume that you're being serious.
The answer is simple: Don't allow your self-image to be formed by other people, particularly low-lifes such as spammers. Seriously, do you give two hoots what a spammer thinks of you? Particularly when this is:
Unfortunately, most people aren't so successful with filters, particularly if they cannot tolerate any false positives at all. Even for those who don't have their own mailservers, every decent ISP nowadays offers server-side filtering -- but it is far from perfect, and I doubt you'll find too many people who claim that filtering even comes close to eliminating the spam problem.
Oh yeah: The RIAA/MPAA have a right to stop stealing by pirates (ARRR, Matey!). Software patents are essential to the survival of the IT industry. The third Matrix movie RAWKED. AOL is a good ISP. Code is not speech. The Easter Bunny ate your candy. {Insert the opposite of your viewpoint on abortion or gun rights here.}
I would continue, but you slashbots could never keep up with my super el33tness.
And with the Internet routing around it (perhaps through Belgium?), it can be no more effective than the Maginot Line.
I'll have some "freedom fries" with that, please... ;-)
I have had this idea, and I am surely far from alone. There are probably people here who are handy with embedded Linux (or Windows CE, a la Microsoft's own home broadband routers) who have hacked together a similar device. With consumer-market PCMCIA cards that can handle the cellular end and mini-PCI 802.11 cards you can extract from most any home cable/dsl router, this is more of a hardware geek's weekend pleasure hack than a non-obvious, patentable invention.
Build one of these and mount it in your car, and you have Internet access for your laptop, PDA, and other gadgets when you hit the road. Run it on batteries and make a picnic basket or backpack that carries a wireless LAN wherever you go (power requirements shouldn't be huge, especially when the device is configured for use outdoors at very short ranges). The possibilities are endless. (Alas, I don't have the technical knowledge to build one myself.)
It'll make a hell of a lightning rod, too, unfortunately.
I found out the hard way when I -- *ahem* -- managed to jerk off on the keyboard of my newest laptop. The keyboard died instantly (although fortunately, no other components were damaged). I even blogged about it at the time (with some other blogs adding to the discussion).
I still haven't gotten it repaired. I'm currently typing on an external keyboard.
No, Step 3 should be a re-education process that ideally would include a 2x4, a rat in a bucket, a red hot poker, a pair of pliers, and one of these.
(And see previous posters' comments about shock prods...)
I've said the same thing before, and it did seem to jinx my role accounts. abuse@ has been getting the crap spammed out of it lately on several domains I own.
Of course, I did put my abuse@ addresses in a very bad position: I use them in my domains' WHOIS records. I did this specifically on the logical presumption that spammers would automatically strip abuse@ off of their lists. Whoops.
I have also received spam SMTP envelope addressed to postmaster@ - and to add insult to injury, it appeared to have been part of a dictionary attack. (I've never listed postmaster@ for those domains anywhere that a spambot could pick it up.)
Listwashing of known active spamfighters aside, spammers truly don't seem to care what addresses they have on their lists. AFAIK, they typically get paid for how big those lists are (i.e., their scum clients pay them to "spam 27 million people" or whatnot). So there's no financial incentive at all for them to use clean lists: If it got sent, they got paid for it, even if it bounced from a non-existent address or went straight to an abuse@ role account. In their eyes, bigger lists are better lists with no other considerations.
Wouldn't this automatically solve Gmail's potential legal problems, at least within Fifth Circuit jurisdiction?
Now all we need is the Nineth Circuit ruling the same thing... ;-)
I'm surprised that more people haven't mentioned this.
No, it shows that the mainstream left and right wings are solidly united on some issues, such as censorship of pornography. American society in general hates and fears pornography, and any mainstream news source is going to be heavily biased in its reporting of it. For example, witness the hatchet job PBS Frontline did on the porn industry a few years ago. (Is PBS a right-wing outfit?)
As another poster pointed out, it was Bill Clinton who signed the law in question in the first place. I don't think that that anybody could argue that this shows that Clinton's "liberal" bias is a myth.
Not everything can be predicted by traditional, shallow labels of left and right. The Supreme Court ruled against the law, and that doesn't necessarily mean that they are sympathetic to pornography; it merely shows they are aware of broader free-speech issues involved. On the other hand, I believe strongly in a right to government non-interference in private, consensual activities, and that doesn't mean I lean to the left (far from it!).
\/\/.H.0 5EZ 5|P|A|M|M|E|R|S A,R,N'T CRE@T1VE?
(If you can defend graffiti, stop protesting that some "artist" is filling your inbox with an IMPORTANT MESSAGE. They can also claim to be "creative", you know.)
pffft. Amateur.
Everybody knows that only an idiot would ask for the check out to himself; so he could use that as an alibi, since nobody would believe that it was him.
Of course, a truly smart criminal would know that a smart investigator would realize that most people know that you shouldn't ask for the check to be written out to your own real name; so he should not have the check written to his own name. But naturally, a well-trained detective would recommend that possibility and immediately discount the possiblity that the name he demanded to be written on the check was his own name; so he should have used his own name.
But the company he was blackmailing was located in Connecticut, which is kind of like a miniature Australia; and everybody knows that Australia is populated by criminals...
(Ow, I think my head hurts now.)
I always liked the story about the would-be robber who walked past a police car parked outside and went in to hold up a gun shop.
This, where the guy behind the counter and several customers (including the driver of the aforementioned cop car, who was in there shopping for hardware related to professional duties) were all lawfully armed. (Yes, some states allow this.)
Cases like these kind of add new depth to the idea of natural selection.
This is the same reaction that has been given to new technology since the start of the Industrial Revolution, if not before.
Starting in the nineteenth century, a wave of time-saving devices and new manufacturing processes allowed a few workers to complete jobs that had previously required the laborous attentions of a multitude of skilled craftsmen. For one example out of many, consider the difference between clothing that was either simple and home-made or expensively tailored by a professional seamstress and mass-produced clothing that can be sold as a commodity at Wal-Mart.
Many new advances in technology have increased efficiency and allowed machines to either leverage the effort of a few humans (allowing a few people controlling the machines to replace an entire factory-full of workers) or to replace humans entirely. An outcry (and often, calls for governmental interference) has followed each new advance in labor-saving devices. Doomsday predictions of mass unemployment and poverty have been common -- and always wrong, since increases in efficiency brought about by technology have universally brought about a higher standard of living for everyone. Some people lost their jobs, but other new jobs (and new industries) were created; it's not a zero-sum game. Additionally, higher standards of living have been promulgated across the board. For example, a standard work week used to be 10 hours * 6 days; now, in America it is 8 hours * 5, and in Europe it is even lower (albeit due to government regulation rather than market forces in the latter case).
Now, according to TFA, it is the "knowledge workers" who have their jobs on the cutting block. Boo hoo. While it sucks in the short run for the individuals who may suffer personal turmoil from being made redundant by machines, and there may be temporary economic displacements of labor, in the long run almost everybody will benefit either directly or indirectly from a growing economy where everybody has to work less for a higher standard of living.
It looks like we're back to the era of Internet company shenanigans.
And Internet users often cite AIM as a site at which to enjoy the sight of cute and fuzzy emoticons wielded by fellow lonely chat buddies.
The beginnings of many romances have been sited in the virtual space between AIM's colorful chat windows; and many rueful addicts cite AIM as a site at which to waste inordinate amounts of time sighting and sizing up new candidates for "companionship".
A/S/L??? (Anybody??)
(I hate to reply to my own comment, but Google brings linkage to back up my memory.)
Jonathan Schwartz is Sun's COO (Chief Operating Officer) and President.
Scott McNealy is the CEO (and Chairman).
Jonathan Schwartz is Sun's COO and President.
Scott McNealy is the CEO.
I can say with some certainty that the "porn industry" isn't complaining about this. All of the best affiliate programs enforce TOS that prohibit spam. (You spam, you get shut down and lose the $$$ in your account that hasn't yet been paid out.) Don't insult the legitimate porn industry by linking them with spammers.
Saying that the "porn industry" protests this regulation is like saying CVS or Walgreens protests regulations on Viagra spam or OfficeMax protests regulations on inkjet cartridge spam. There are legitimate players in the industry, and there are scam artists feeding at the bottom. Guess which group is responsible for the spam.
Of course, none of this means anything about the regulation itself, which will most certainly be ineffectual at reducing spam or filtering porn spam. IME, the only tool that can produce a real impact on spam is a 2x4 applied forcefully to a spammer's skull.
Arresting a murderer doesn't bring dead victims back to life. Does this reduce the usefulness of the police initiative to arrest murderers?
(Your analogy is flawed in general. The same applies to "bank robbers or muggers" as you mentioned: Once a crime has been committed, the damage has been done; and if no damage is done, I'd have trouble calling it a "crime".)