Suing a teacher for something like that is unbelievable.
The REALLY important point here. They're not suing her. They've convicted her of a criminal felony There is a HUGE difference. Most importantly, she faces prison time. Hard time. This isn't 50 hours picking up trash on the side of the highway. She will likely go to pound-me-in-the-ass prison. She will be placed among society's worst. Then when she gets out, she'll have to register as a sex offender so that she can be publicly rediculed and forced not to live near schools, churches or daycare centers. In addtion, wherever she moves, all residents within a mile of her home will get letters telling that a pervert is living near them, so be sure to keep their kids locked up. On every job application, she will have to list herself as a perverted sexual deviant, and she really stands little chance of ever having a normal life.
The most important distinction, however, is that it's not some hairbrained idiot at the school that decided to levy these charges. Anybody can sue anyone at any time for any reason. No, this charge was levied by the people. By people representing you and me. The real responsibility for this miscarriage of justice rests on the prosecutor that was elected by the people, and who decided to prosecute this case. He or she needs to be held accountable for ruining the life of another human being.
Don't talk about this like it's something that could really suck for this woman. It already does suck. She's already been convicted. Sure, she can appeal, and based on what I know from this case, she stands a chance of winning, but that black mark is on her record forever. Appeals are not based on the merit of the original conviction, but rather on the fact that she had a fair trial. Until you are convicted, you are innocent until proven guilty. Once you are convicted, you are guilty until proven innocent. It's a whole different ballgame.
As someone who regularly uses a computer in front of children as an educational tool, and as an IT professional, this story scares the hell out of me. Although I know how to keep my computer free of spyware, there isn't one person on/. that hasn't been stuck in a random porn loop that they themselves didn't cause. I don't visit bad sites, and I don't open up bad emails, but more than once I have had a porn loop pop up on my PC. Now, after this story, I am seriously faced with the prospect of never using the computer as an educational tool again.
You're making it much more complicated than it needs to be. They don't have to level the whole island. They just have to "entice" backbone providers to cut their peering points. After all, whether it's an island or not, someone would have to supply the MASSIVE amount of bandwidth coming into and out of that place. Just convince the world's largest ISP's not to run cable out there. If nothing can get to the Internet cloud on Sealand, it really doesn't matter what they're hosting out there.
Thanks for the laugh. The wealthy in the US have always had more rights than the poor. Sorry to say it, but it's true. They get better jobs, have access to better schools, have more opportunities. Yeah, everyone's got a story about a poor inner city youth that worked hard, stayed out of trouble and went on to be CEO of a fortune 500 company, but for every one of those, I could find 10,000 stories about a poor inner city youth that went on do jail or was shot to death before his 18th birthday.
Oh, and they don't have to stand in line for video game systems.:)
What are you talking about? 24 was a beacon of high-tech accuracy.
JACK: I need you to open a socket so that I can upload the data from my thumb drive!
EDGAR: Jack, I can't. The terrorists have overloaded the router with IP addresses!
JACK: Can you borrow some bandwith from Division?
EDGAR: I can try to sneak in through a subnet, but they might notice.
JACK: Do it, I need to get this data to Chloe quickly. She said it could take hours to decrypt!
As much as I loved that show, it was difficult for me to watch, as I would imagine it's difficult for a doctor to watch House or Scrubs...
Here's some cocktail napkin math to back up my point.
Cost of war in Iraq - $350 billion (so far)
Cost of the first large scale solar power tower - $100 million (cost declines with each plant built)
So if, instead of going to war in Iraq, we had diverted 100% of that money into producing renewable power, we could have built at least 3500 solar power plants in Nevada. At approx. 40 MW each, this would produce a total of 140,000 MW, or 87 times as much as the largest nuclear plant in the world. (which won't even be finished until 2010)
Not many people will deny that Iraq was a war about oil and control of said oil. So, instead of going to war in Iraq, we COULD HAVE built enough solar power generation to replace hundreds of coal and oil burning power plants with clean, efficient, low maintenance solar towers. So tell me again, which type of power is more efficient?
Actually both are space hogs, especially if you are talking about actual wind or solar 'powerplants'.
It is so common to see solar power plants dismissed out of hand as impractical. I don't understand why this mindset is so pervasive in our society. I guess the oil propaganda has really worked.
While it would require some serious engineering and changes to our power distribution system, I don't think they are at all impractical. Do you realize how much open desert there is on this planet? You could build hundreds of thousands of these plants in the desert and more than meet the energy needs of the planet. I'm talking large scale power plants, not photo cells like we normally think of. Currently, all of that energy is being absorbed by the sand in the desert and more or less wasted. You could cover less than 9% of the state of Nevada and meet all the US energy needs. What's more, these plants are dead simple in how they operate. Very few moving parts, very little chance of breakdown and very little maintenance. Sure, the would take an investment of time and money to build, but you could permanently solve the power problem in about a generation. Of course, it would cut the oil companies out of the deal entirely, but perhaps those rich executives could find other things to do, like knitting or flying model airplanes.
It's all well and good that I can write my own implementation of Diffie-Hellman key exchange, but if my mother can't go to a site and quickly and easily create a login, it's not going to work. I'm not at all saying it's a bad idea. Technically, it's a wonderful idea, but it has to be made so simple that anyone can access it, otherwise people are going to continue to use stupid services list Microsoft Passport.
my sources are telling me Sony will be making a surprising announcement in January. They'll be pulling out, throwing their wieght behind the Wii
Can I PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE have some of whatever you just smoked?
Not that I don't think it would be worth considering for Sony, but they have too much invested and too many egos would be bruised if they conceded. Now, if you were talking January 2010, you might have something, but not 2007.
I can second this. I heard it on NPR yesterday as well. No, I can't tell you the exact time, who said it, which reporter conducted the interview, but I did hear it.
IANASB, but by the time you read the spam email, it's probably already too late. These people buy stocks before they blast out the spam, and sell them to the suckers that think they are going to get in early and dump later. Now, if you were really clever, you could probably figure a way to make money shorting them, but that would be unethical as well, not to mention very risky.
It doesn't have to be a massive, organized conspiracy. The presidential race in 2000 was decided by 537 people. You could easily boil that down to a single precinct with an overly "committed" volunteer that had the desire to affect the outcome of the election.
Here in Ohio, we had a "committed" Secretary of State in the 2004 election. It is a fact that poor urban (read: Democrat) areas had fewer voting machines per capita than the wealthy suburban (read: Republican) areas. Now, I can't say for sure whether or not it was intentional, nor can I say whether or not it affected the election, but it certainly was a close election. It was raining that day, and I don't know how many people in the urban areas were willing to wait for hours out in the rain to cast a vote. In some precincts the wait was as long as 2-3 hours. If it were some sort of scientific data gathering for statistical research purposes, it would have certainly been unusable and invalidated due to bias.
Sounds like a great way to get some free ideas for applications. A lot of companies have been doing this lately. Nothing like giving away your intellectual property for free!
Honestly, I don't see what the big deal is. Cloning is exactly like forcing twins. Are cows that are born as twins any less healthy than non-twin cows? All you are doing is creating a genetic copy, something which happens all the time in nature. I think people scared of cloning have watched too many Star Wars prequels. Sure, there is an evil use for cloning, but there is an evil use for almost everything.
That's not the reply I got from the Stern show when I emailed them. It might not have been accurate, but the person who answered the email (I have no idea who it was - the email wasn't signed, so it was probably an intern) said that Howard was concerned that the Internet broadcasts couldn't be "locked down" and until Sirius could ensure that, his show would not be broadcast on the net. Again, I'm not speaking as a voice of authority. That might be a BS line that they were told to use when people asked about Internet streaming, but that was the response I got from the show. (I got the response from the show, not from Sirius.)
I was on the bandwagon and all reared up ready to get Sirius at the beginning of the year for the sole purpose of listening to Stern. Sadly, Sirius (and probably Howard in particular) was unwilling at the time to embrace Internet broadcasts. Rumor has it, Stern was paranoid that people would steal his show and rebroadcast it so that he wouldn't get as much money. My commute into work is 7 minutes long, and I wasn't willing to pay for a subscription to listen to 7 minutes a day. Sure, I could've probably purchased additional receivers and listened in my office, or a boom box, but honestly, that's hundreds of dollars in outlay, not to mention a PITA to set up, just to listen to something that makes me chuckle every few minutes. Had Internet streaming been available, I would have not only subscribed to Sirius, but probably paid a few bucks extra to get Internet streaming so I could listen at home and at work without having to hook up a bunch of extra hardware.
Now it's 10 months later, and frankly, I'm over Stern. I didn't think I could live without listening to his show, but due to his and his company's paranoia, I was forced to. Now, I have no desire to subscribe to Sirius. I started listening to the show that replaced his, and while not as funny as Stern, it's funny enough. I can listen over the Internet, in my car, and from my regular stereo at home.
Lesson that they should have learned: strike while the iron's hot. I would have subscribed back then, and I'd still be a subscriber. I'm sure I'm not alone. There's absolutely no justifiable reason to have not put streaming in place 10 months ago. Hell, they were already doing it with their music channels. It's not like they didn't have the technology already. Plus, they can DRM the hell out of those streams, making it practically impossible to save the digital stream. Sure, someone could've ran their line out into their line in and recorded the show and put it up on BitTorrent, but they could do that with any of the regular Sirius equipment just as easily. I suppose that's what you get when your business people don't listen to your technology people.
Just because it exists doesn't mean it's not a con.
Case in point: Gizmondo. That device existed. It even worked. Not too badly, considering the whole thing was really big, convincing scam.
Re:If so close, then why even wireless?
on
HP's Memory Spot Chip
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
You miss the crucial point. If you make it a maximum distance of 1mm, you can enclose the chip in plastic or some other water-proof material. This is the same philosophy as making rechargable items that charge by induction. (Such as electric razors, toothbrushes, etc.) Induction (as it's implemented in these devices) is very inefficient and only works over a very short distnace, however, they can completely seal the plastic case of the device to eliminate the possibility that water can get in there. (Water + electricity = sadness) If they have a "wireless" device, even if it only works over 1mm, that is still enough to completely encase the device in plastic so that it can withstand the elements. You may still need to touch the device to the reader, but the radio signal travels through the 1mm of plastic it's encased in.
A standard human brain will read an analog watch far, far, faster than a digital one
That even sounds funny. "Sure, over here you got yer standard human brain, but if you take a look around the corner over there, you see the deluxe model. It's only $400 more, and it's got 10% more horsepower than the standard model, and it comes with the deluxe trim package and free undercoating..."
What exactly is a standard human brain? Everyone's though processes are unique. I can promise you that I read a digital display much faster than an analog one. I can glance at my watch for literally 1/4 of a second and know exactly what time and date it is. I don't have to forward the date by one day for every month with less than 31 days, either. (Although I think Pulsar makes an analog watch that tracks what month it is so you don't have to adjust the date every other month.)
I would like to see some studies that show that the "standard human brain" processes analog displays better than digital. I seriously doubt that in any trials anyone could show that reading an analog dial is faster. You have to look at the watch for more than a couple seconds to determine exactly what tick between the 6 and 7 the minute hand is pointing to. I'm not really interested if it's "about 6:30." I want to glance ay my watch and know it's 6:32'35. It makes a difference to me, and you just don't get that kind of accuracy with an analog watch dial.
Wow... that IS a nice one. Looks just about perfect for what I was looking for. Granted it's about $1500 versus my $175 Pulsar, but I DID say that I was looking for a nice watch.:) Thanks for the tip. I definitely missed that one in my search.
Slashdot Mirror
The most important distinction, however, is that it's not some hairbrained idiot at the school that decided to levy these charges. Anybody can sue anyone at any time for any reason. No, this charge was levied by the people. By people representing you and me. The real responsibility for this miscarriage of justice rests on the prosecutor that was elected by the people, and who decided to prosecute this case. He or she needs to be held accountable for ruining the life of another human being.
Don't talk about this like it's something that could really suck for this woman. It already does suck. She's already been convicted. Sure, she can appeal, and based on what I know from this case, she stands a chance of winning, but that black mark is on her record forever. Appeals are not based on the merit of the original conviction, but rather on the fact that she had a fair trial. Until you are convicted, you are innocent until proven guilty. Once you are convicted, you are guilty until proven innocent. It's a whole different ballgame.
As someone who regularly uses a computer in front of children as an educational tool, and as an IT professional, this story scares the hell out of me. Although I know how to keep my computer free of spyware, there isn't one person on
You're making it much more complicated than it needs to be. They don't have to level the whole island. They just have to "entice" backbone providers to cut their peering points. After all, whether it's an island or not, someone would have to supply the MASSIVE amount of bandwidth coming into and out of that place. Just convince the world's largest ISP's not to run cable out there. If nothing can get to the Internet cloud on Sealand, it really doesn't matter what they're hosting out there.
A cup of bleach works very well, too. This medicine thing isn't as hard as all those fancy doctors make it out to be.
Hahahahahahahaha.....
:)
Equal Rights...
Thanks for the laugh. The wealthy in the US have always had more rights than the poor. Sorry to say it, but it's true. They get better jobs, have access to better schools, have more opportunities. Yeah, everyone's got a story about a poor inner city youth that worked hard, stayed out of trouble and went on to be CEO of a fortune 500 company, but for every one of those, I could find 10,000 stories about a poor inner city youth that went on do jail or was shot to death before his 18th birthday.
Oh, and they don't have to stand in line for video game systems.
What are you talking about? 24 was a beacon of high-tech accuracy.
JACK: I need you to open a socket so that I can upload the data from my thumb drive!
EDGAR: Jack, I can't. The terrorists have overloaded the router with IP addresses!
JACK: Can you borrow some bandwith from Division?
EDGAR: I can try to sneak in through a subnet, but they might notice.
JACK: Do it, I need to get this data to Chloe quickly. She said it could take hours to decrypt!
As much as I loved that show, it was difficult for me to watch, as I would imagine it's difficult for a doctor to watch House or Scrubs...
Here's some cocktail napkin math to back up my point.
Cost of war in Iraq - $350 billion (so far)
Cost of the first large scale solar power tower - $100 million (cost declines with each plant built)
So if, instead of going to war in Iraq, we had diverted 100% of that money into producing renewable power, we could have built at least 3500 solar power plants in Nevada. At approx. 40 MW each, this would produce a total of 140,000 MW, or 87 times as much as the largest nuclear plant in the world. (which won't even be finished until 2010)
Not many people will deny that Iraq was a war about oil and control of said oil. So, instead of going to war in Iraq, we COULD HAVE built enough solar power generation to replace hundreds of coal and oil burning power plants with clean, efficient, low maintenance solar towers. So tell me again, which type of power is more efficient?
While it would require some serious engineering and changes to our power distribution system, I don't think they are at all impractical. Do you realize how much open desert there is on this planet? You could build hundreds of thousands of these plants in the desert and more than meet the energy needs of the planet. I'm talking large scale power plants, not photo cells like we normally think of. Currently, all of that energy is being absorbed by the sand in the desert and more or less wasted. You could cover less than 9% of the state of Nevada and meet all the US energy needs. What's more, these plants are dead simple in how they operate. Very few moving parts, very little chance of breakdown and very little maintenance. Sure, the would take an investment of time and money to build, but you could permanently solve the power problem in about a generation. Of course, it would cut the oil companies out of the deal entirely, but perhaps those rich executives could find other things to do, like knitting or flying model airplanes.
What are you talking about!?! This is a FANTASTIC idea! This means all games will be free, right?
It's all well and good that I can write my own implementation of Diffie-Hellman key exchange, but if my mother can't go to a site and quickly and easily create a login, it's not going to work. I'm not at all saying it's a bad idea. Technically, it's a wonderful idea, but it has to be made so simple that anyone can access it, otherwise people are going to continue to use stupid services list Microsoft Passport.
Not that I don't think it would be worth considering for Sony, but they have too much invested and too many egos would be bruised if they conceded. Now, if you were talking January 2010, you might have something, but not 2007.
I can second this. I heard it on NPR yesterday as well. No, I can't tell you the exact time, who said it, which reporter conducted the interview, but I did hear it.
IANASB, but by the time you read the spam email, it's probably already too late. These people buy stocks before they blast out the spam, and sell them to the suckers that think they are going to get in early and dump later. Now, if you were really clever, you could probably figure a way to make money shorting them, but that would be unethical as well, not to mention very risky.
It doesn't have to be a massive, organized conspiracy. The presidential race in 2000 was decided by 537 people. You could easily boil that down to a single precinct with an overly "committed" volunteer that had the desire to affect the outcome of the election.
Here in Ohio, we had a "committed" Secretary of State in the 2004 election. It is a fact that poor urban (read: Democrat) areas had fewer voting machines per capita than the wealthy suburban (read: Republican) areas. Now, I can't say for sure whether or not it was intentional, nor can I say whether or not it affected the election, but it certainly was a close election. It was raining that day, and I don't know how many people in the urban areas were willing to wait for hours out in the rain to cast a vote. In some precincts the wait was as long as 2-3 hours. If it were some sort of scientific data gathering for statistical research purposes, it would have certainly been unusable and invalidated due to bias.
Too late... Simpsons already did it.
Sounds like a great way to get some free ideas for applications. A lot of companies have been doing this lately. Nothing like giving away your intellectual property for free!
Honestly, I don't see what the big deal is. Cloning is exactly like forcing twins. Are cows that are born as twins any less healthy than non-twin cows? All you are doing is creating a genetic copy, something which happens all the time in nature. I think people scared of cloning have watched too many Star Wars prequels. Sure, there is an evil use for cloning, but there is an evil use for almost everything.
That's not the reply I got from the Stern show when I emailed them. It might not have been accurate, but the person who answered the email (I have no idea who it was - the email wasn't signed, so it was probably an intern) said that Howard was concerned that the Internet broadcasts couldn't be "locked down" and until Sirius could ensure that, his show would not be broadcast on the net. Again, I'm not speaking as a voice of authority. That might be a BS line that they were told to use when people asked about Internet streaming, but that was the response I got from the show. (I got the response from the show, not from Sirius.)
I was on the bandwagon and all reared up ready to get Sirius at the beginning of the year for the sole purpose of listening to Stern. Sadly, Sirius (and probably Howard in particular) was unwilling at the time to embrace Internet broadcasts. Rumor has it, Stern was paranoid that people would steal his show and rebroadcast it so that he wouldn't get as much money. My commute into work is 7 minutes long, and I wasn't willing to pay for a subscription to listen to 7 minutes a day. Sure, I could've probably purchased additional receivers and listened in my office, or a boom box, but honestly, that's hundreds of dollars in outlay, not to mention a PITA to set up, just to listen to something that makes me chuckle every few minutes. Had Internet streaming been available, I would have not only subscribed to Sirius, but probably paid a few bucks extra to get Internet streaming so I could listen at home and at work without having to hook up a bunch of extra hardware.
Now it's 10 months later, and frankly, I'm over Stern. I didn't think I could live without listening to his show, but due to his and his company's paranoia, I was forced to. Now, I have no desire to subscribe to Sirius. I started listening to the show that replaced his, and while not as funny as Stern, it's funny enough. I can listen over the Internet, in my car, and from my regular stereo at home.
Lesson that they should have learned: strike while the iron's hot. I would have subscribed back then, and I'd still be a subscriber. I'm sure I'm not alone. There's absolutely no justifiable reason to have not put streaming in place 10 months ago. Hell, they were already doing it with their music channels. It's not like they didn't have the technology already. Plus, they can DRM the hell out of those streams, making it practically impossible to save the digital stream. Sure, someone could've ran their line out into their line in and recorded the show and put it up on BitTorrent, but they could do that with any of the regular Sirius equipment just as easily. I suppose that's what you get when your business people don't listen to your technology people.
You miss the crucial point. If you make it a maximum distance of 1mm, you can enclose the chip in plastic or some other water-proof material. This is the same philosophy as making rechargable items that charge by induction. (Such as electric razors, toothbrushes, etc.) Induction (as it's implemented in these devices) is very inefficient and only works over a very short distnace, however, they can completely seal the plastic case of the device to eliminate the possibility that water can get in there. (Water + electricity = sadness) If they have a "wireless" device, even if it only works over 1mm, that is still enough to completely encase the device in plastic so that it can withstand the elements. You may still need to touch the device to the reader, but the radio signal travels through the 1mm of plastic it's encased in.
What exactly is a standard human brain? Everyone's though processes are unique. I can promise you that I read a digital display much faster than an analog one. I can glance at my watch for literally 1/4 of a second and know exactly what time and date it is. I don't have to forward the date by one day for every month with less than 31 days, either. (Although I think Pulsar makes an analog watch that tracks what month it is so you don't have to adjust the date every other month.)
I would like to see some studies that show that the "standard human brain" processes analog displays better than digital. I seriously doubt that in any trials anyone could show that reading an analog dial is faster. You have to look at the watch for more than a couple seconds to determine exactly what tick between the 6 and 7 the minute hand is pointing to. I'm not really interested if it's "about 6:30." I want to glance ay my watch and know it's 6:32'35. It makes a difference to me, and you just don't get that kind of accuracy with an analog watch dial.
Wow... that IS a nice one. Looks just about perfect for what I was looking for. Granted it's about $1500 versus my $175 Pulsar, but I DID say that I was looking for a nice watch. :) Thanks for the tip. I definitely missed that one in my search.