Or how about a likely Canadian case : -15C on one side of the panel and +15 or 20 C on the other side? Most side window glass is tempered, not laminated, so it is am amorphous solid that can expand and contract more or less evenly, the tracks have a large enough tolerance to handle that, but would the embedded wires in *any* flat panel do the same? The lamination plastic film in windshields is pretty stretchy, so that is not a problem.
Or an Arizona example : 110F outside, 50F inside, throw in a large value of constant UV bombardment
Oh absolutely; and in fact I participated in a lengthy discussion on exactly that point over at halfbakery.com some time ago. For me, the reason using an inanimate proxy for paedophiles is so unacceptable is that in our culture, paedophilia is considered a mental illness, one which such a taboo and social stigma attached to it that someone who has those urges is expected to "get cured". Using CGI images, text stories or dolls instead sort of treats the issue like a matter of simple sexual orientation, and as long as the person has that semi-acceptable outlet, there is seen to be less social pressure to change his or her ways.
Here in North America, the anti-paedophile sentiment is so strong that even possessing one of these child model sex dolls is itself a crime, as is owning comic books (manga), animated videos (lolicon hentai) and such. From what I have read, plain text stories in the US are technically legal, being granted Free Speech protection, but in practice the authorities use possession of any as sufficient evidence for a warrant to see if you have anything else. Up here in Canada, the B.C. Supreme court ruled that text stories were legal, but as far as I know, the matter hasn't been ruled on by any other provincial court or the federal courts. So basically, the laws in both countries assume that if you want one of these dolls, or consume any of these forms of porn that do not involve real people at all, that you either already doing more than that or that it is only a matter of time before you do.
pre-revolutionary China had a history of Polygyny/Polygamy, at least for the wealthy who could afford to maintain multiple wives/mistresses/et al. Perhaps the Chinese will adopt polyandry? Certainly a gender imbalance like that helps create a "sellers market" for the ladies, perhaps this will also raise the relative status of women in Chinese society.
Actually.....Japan has had dolls superior to the western Real Doll for some time now, and yes, many of them offer customisations. (models are almost exclusively Japanese in appearance obviously)
Here's an example of one manufacturer: Unison-Direct
Being Japan, there are also two trends that we in the west find rather creepy. First is the growing number of men who obsess over their dolls, dressing them up and taking them out on dates, photographing them in ways that makes them seem even more life like and so on. There are several Japanese magazines devoted to the subject. These guys treat their inanimate objects with the sort intense fantasy life that over here would be considered a sign of mental illness....
Even more creepy, even among the Japanese and hence, less talked about is the number of manufacturers who offer "miniature" versions (2/3 scale models of rather women) or straight out child models. To be fair, the child models are usually dolls only and do not have the "love holes" as the trade calls them. I have no doubt though that there are men out there who modify them, probably even enough of them that they have their own forums and swap tips and tricks on how to best perform the "surgery"
Well, there is magneto-optical that was reliable and infinitely re-writeable. It was just slower to write than a comparable SCSI HDD and was more expensive than them. They weren't very popular, so development of capacity didn't keep pace with traditional hard drive platters, but it probably could have been done.
I'll grant you that anyone who has access to my personal information, or even just knows me can reference me on the web, post disparaging comments regarding me and so on. The difference is, that person knows what they are doing when they voice their opinion about me and fairly often I can figure out who it was by the information the post incorporates. That person also only has access to a limited set of data on me.
Ad-based social networking sites like Facebook are another matter entirely. It is almost trivial for them to collect data on me from the profiles of multiple people, and that data is seen as being slightly more reliable than some random guys rants on a web forum. Some guy ranting about Mr Example could be referring to any Mr Example, but the data that (for example) Farmville can collect about me can be more definitively narrowed down. There may be millions of Mr Examples out there in the world, but there are only two or three that would be connected to my mother, grandmother etc. Using data gathered from my friends, you can make a pretty shrewd guess as to my age, sexual preferences and probable political affiliations (if any). Once that is done, you can rule out my relatives with the same name. The problem is, the people providing the information don't know they are doing so. Facebook is just the most egregious offender, but many sites obfuscate the fact that the reason they provide free membership is that your data and the data on your friends that you can inadvertently provide is valuable.
The staff at Facebook have it within their power to craft a website where only the personal data of the actual member is up for grabs and moreover, by default, only data that the user opts-in to show to the general public is available for harvesting. Instead, they do the exact opposite. All data is available by default, even data that I might choose to share only with friends is available to every application those friends install, and they deliberately make the opt-out process confusing. I argue
Oh I do understand that, but what I also understand, all too keenly, is that it doesn't matter if I avoid a site like Facebook, the realities of data mining mean that I don't have to even be a member for unscrupulous third parties to discover a lot of things about me through the applications my friends and family who *do* belong to the site install on their profiles.
One easy example is in tagging photos, indicating that I am in them. I have no problem with my friends having a picture of me enjoying a cold one at a birthday party, after all, they were at the same party, engaged in similar activities and so they are aware of the context in which that photo was taken. However, unbeknownst to most of my friends, by default most of the applications they install (Mafia Wars, Farmville etc) have total access to that information as well. The developers then harvest whatever information that has marketable value. I can easily foresee a company that offers background checks on prospective employees that, among other things, searches for photos with my name attached to them as a tag. They can then say "we found X number of pictures of Mr Example in which drugs or alcohol were being consumed" and there go my prospects of being hired.
Note that I don't have to be actually the one consuming those products, just to appear in the pictures to be labelled as a potential alcoholic or drug user. And this could easily happen completely unknown to me, whether I belong to the site or not. And because neither I nor my friend have any good way of knowing which application developer harvested what information and in turn sold it, we have no good way of suing such a background checker if they provide false or misleading data to my prospective employer.
Sure, I gave that information to my friend freely and he in turn freely gave it to Facebook (as per the TOS), my problem is that sites like Facebook make it as easy as possible to be unaware of this covert data gathering and then make it hard as possible to defend against if/when you do become concerned about it.
As far as I am concerned, no matter what the fine print actually says, sites like Facebook knowingly use misdirection and outright deception to cultivate ignorance on the part of it's members and then make millions exploiting the ignorance they created.
Can you state, with absolute certainty, that every one of your friends and family you have connections to on Facebook will feel the same way?
You also overlook the fact that your profile often has the personal information of people you know. An obvious example is a status update to the effect that you are visiting your mother in the hospital after she's had a diabetic crisis. Does she want all of your Facebook contacts knowing that she is a diabetic? Is she comfortable with the idea that the people responsible for an app like Farmville can find this out from your profile and in turn sell that information to a medical supplies company that is building a database of potential costumers?
I know I am in the minority by a vast margin, but I happen to feel that my private information is literally priceless, in that no amount of money could ever replace it once it has been given or taken away. Moreover, I believe that the ability to decide for myself who gets what parts of my private information and why is a fundamental right. (Or damn well should be)
On the other hand, if your mother opens an account with $BIGBANK, then that bank only has access to the personally identifying information she provides to them, there are some laws in place to control exactly what information the bank is allowed to ask for and exactly how they are supposed to handle it. That bank also would exactly ZERO information about you. By comparison, Facebook makes it incredibly easy to submit far more information than simply name, age and physical address, not only about the user in question, but many of his friends and family. Your mother could add your name to a genealogy app, combined with the fact that she publicly mentions that she has a inherited disease and now it's possible to discover that you are at risk for that same condition, even though you never even joined the site.
On top of that, the information a bank knows about you is, by default, private Your neighbour cannot get your banking information from $BIGBANK without a court order or a certified letter stating that he is now the executor of your estate. Facebook is, and always has been, by default as public as possible. By default, almost every app someone installs has access to all the information found in their profile and the profiles of their friends. Facebook makes it very easy for it's users to remain unaware that their privacy is subject to the decisions made by their friends.
There are other forms of cost aside from money. An easy example is a hobby, which costs you time from your life. We gladly pay that cost for the sake of our hobby, because we enjoy the time spent doing so.
The cost of Facebook is more abstract, it costs us in privacy. There are many people who are unaware of that cost and probably wouldn't care if they did know, but there are also people who put a very high value on their privacy, are very aware of that cost and do not judge the cost to be worth the meager benefits.
I know that there are people who say that if you don't wish to give away your privacy, then you shouldn't use their services. My problem with this also happens to be the main reason I personally hate Facebook: You don't have to be registered with that site in order for them to harvest and exploit a lot of your personal data.
Between circles of friends, schools, genealogy applications and so on, it is possible to build an impressive profile of someone who themselves have never even been to the site.
In my opinion, most people who use Facebook have no concept of the risks or the capabilities of current data mining techniques, they will blithely enter not only their own personal or sensitive data, but that of their friends and family. (It's one thing to get fired for something you posted on your profile, but it is quite possible to get fired for something your drinking buddy posted on *his* profile. I don't know about you, but I don't like the idea of my privacy being at risk in this way.) Facebook clearly has a fixed policy of exploiting that lack of diligence on the part of it's un-savvy members and is making millions of dollars as a result.
Thank you for the suggestion Knuckles, but I have tried Tai Chi, as well as Reikki and Shiatsu massage. About the only thing I haven't tried is medical marijuana. So far, the only noticable relief has been from Cymbalta combined with another anti-depressant and melatonin to make sure I get plenty of deep restful sleep. When I am physically active, even that isn't enough to prevent crippling and depressing flare-ups.
I don't find this story bizarre, quite the opposite in fact. I think this research might be able to shed light on some; as-yet poorly understood, sources of pain, such as Fibromyalgia. Right now, the only real treatment for Fibromyalgia is an anti-depressant called Cymbalta. In the words of my doctor "for a large minority of cases, this drug helps, but we don't know how or why" (for the record, I am among those for whom it is not very effective unfortunately)
In my opinion, any ethically run study on the mechanisms of pain and how they might be linked or related to the mechanisms of depression are a Good Thing
We'll have to agree to disagree on the amount of whitespace that each finds esthetically pleasing. But can you tell me what you consider to be the benefits of iFrames that the new Slashdot layout has? For me, keeping the side pane static is not a plus.
Besides, at one time I could click to reply, write my response and then log in while submitting, allowing me to skip the preview if I want. V2.o took away the ability to log in and still return to where I was commenting, and now v3.0 has taken away my ability to submit without previewing as well.
I have no mod points today or I'd give them to you. I don't like all the whitespace, slashdot hurts my eyes now. The cool green glow has been replaced with a bright white glare.
I second the comment of too much white space, not enough contrast.
In addition:
Overall the whole place now looks "flat" for lack of a better word.
I don't like the fact that the side pane doesn't scroll with the rest of the page. I prefer the single page that moves as a whole model rather than the current layout, which just reminds me WAY too much of bad sites in iFrames.
Finally, here's the weird one. Everything appears right until I log in. The the main pane is shifted about four character spaces to the left, sending the text at the beginning of every line "under" the side pane and out of view.
"haunted" houses are usually old abandoned places. Broken windows, leaky roofs are a recipe for rotten floors. As a kid some friends and I went into a house we all tried to convince each other was "haunted". (just idiot kids trying to freak each other out really)
The floors were creaky as hell and pretty soft or bouncy in spots, even to our light weights. Everything was fine though; until we tried to head upstairs.
Chuck; being the heaviest, went up last and his foot broke right through a rotted out tread. He couldn't pull it out on his own and for a while, none of us dared go back down the now proven unsafe stairs to help him. Albert and I ended up making a long reach and helped him out. We left by crawling out an upstairs window onto the back porch and did a hang drop into the yard. Chuck got some stitches and a tetanus shot, we all got nasty lectures from our parents.
I think you mean RMS Queen Elizabeth or MS Queen Elizabeth(1) and not Her Majesty Elizabeth the Second, by the Grace of God of the United Kingdom, Canada and Her other Realms and Territories Queen, Head of the Commonwealth, Defender of the Faith, at least I certainly hope you do. It could be construed to be Lèse majesté to imply that Her Majesty weighs/displaces 83,673 gross tons or 92,000 gross tons respectively.
(1) The weight you gave of 353,430t / 4 =88357.5t which probably refers to the RMS ship, perhaps in a fully laden configuration.
Slashdot Mirror
Or how about a likely Canadian case : -15C on one side of the panel and +15 or 20 C on the other side? Most side window glass is tempered, not laminated, so it is am amorphous solid that can expand and contract more or less evenly, the tracks have a large enough tolerance to handle that, but would the embedded wires in *any* flat panel do the same? The lamination plastic film in windshields is pretty stretchy, so that is not a problem. Or an Arizona example : 110F outside, 50F inside, throw in a large value of constant UV bombardment
Only if you love gadgets even more than the average /.'er, that is to say, with a degree of obsession unhealthy in an adult.
Here in North America, the anti-paedophile sentiment is so strong that even possessing one of these child model sex dolls is itself a crime, as is owning comic books (manga), animated videos (lolicon hentai) and such. From what I have read, plain text stories in the US are technically legal, being granted Free Speech protection, but in practice the authorities use possession of any as sufficient evidence for a warrant to see if you have anything else. Up here in Canada, the B.C. Supreme court ruled that text stories were legal, but as far as I know, the matter hasn't been ruled on by any other provincial court or the federal courts. So basically, the laws in both countries assume that if you want one of these dolls, or consume any of these forms of porn that do not involve real people at all, that you either already doing more than that or that it is only a matter of time before you do.
pre-revolutionary China had a history of Polygyny/Polygamy, at least for the wealthy who could afford to maintain multiple wives/mistresses/et al. Perhaps the Chinese will adopt polyandry? Certainly a gender imbalance like that helps create a "sellers market" for the ladies, perhaps this will also raise the relative status of women in Chinese society.
Here's an example of one manufacturer: Unison-Direct
Being Japan, there are also two trends that we in the west find rather creepy. First is the growing number of men who obsess over their dolls, dressing them up and taking them out on dates, photographing them in ways that makes them seem even more life like and so on. There are several Japanese magazines devoted to the subject. These guys treat their inanimate objects with the sort intense fantasy life that over here would be considered a sign of mental illness....
Even more creepy, even among the Japanese and hence, less talked about is the number of manufacturers who offer "miniature" versions (2/3 scale models of rather women) or straight out child models. To be fair, the child models are usually dolls only and do not have the "love holes" as the trade calls them. I have no doubt though that there are men out there who modify them, probably even enough of them that they have their own forums and swap tips and tricks on how to best perform the "surgery"
Well, there is magneto-optical that was reliable and infinitely re-writeable. It was just slower to write than a comparable SCSI HDD and was more expensive than them. They weren't very popular, so development of capacity didn't keep pace with traditional hard drive platters, but it probably could have been done.
Grant Imahara is that you?
Ad-based social networking sites like Facebook are another matter entirely. It is almost trivial for them to collect data on me from the profiles of multiple people, and that data is seen as being slightly more reliable than some random guys rants on a web forum. Some guy ranting about Mr Example could be referring to any Mr Example, but the data that (for example) Farmville can collect about me can be more definitively narrowed down. There may be millions of Mr Examples out there in the world, but there are only two or three that would be connected to my mother, grandmother etc. Using data gathered from my friends, you can make a pretty shrewd guess as to my age, sexual preferences and probable political affiliations (if any). Once that is done, you can rule out my relatives with the same name. The problem is, the people providing the information don't know they are doing so . Facebook is just the most egregious offender, but many sites obfuscate the fact that the reason they provide free membership is that your data and the data on your friends that you can inadvertently provide is valuable.
The staff at Facebook have it within their power to craft a website where only the personal data of the actual member is up for grabs and moreover, by default, only data that the user opts-in to show to the general public is available for harvesting. Instead, they do the exact opposite. All data is available by default, even data that I might choose to share only with friends is available to every application those friends install, and they deliberately make the opt-out process confusing. I argue
One easy example is in tagging photos, indicating that I am in them. I have no problem with my friends having a picture of me enjoying a cold one at a birthday party, after all, they were at the same party, engaged in similar activities and so they are aware of the context in which that photo was taken. However, unbeknownst to most of my friends, by default most of the applications they install (Mafia Wars, Farmville etc) have total access to that information as well. The developers then harvest whatever information that has marketable value. I can easily foresee a company that offers background checks on prospective employees that, among other things, searches for photos with my name attached to them as a tag. They can then say "we found X number of pictures of Mr Example in which drugs or alcohol were being consumed" and there go my prospects of being hired.
Note that I don't have to be actually the one consuming those products, just to appear in the pictures to be labelled as a potential alcoholic or drug user. And this could easily happen completely unknown to me, whether I belong to the site or not. And because neither I nor my friend have any good way of knowing which application developer harvested what information and in turn sold it, we have no good way of suing such a background checker if they provide false or misleading data to my prospective employer.
Sure, I gave that information to my friend freely and he in turn freely gave it to Facebook (as per the TOS), my problem is that sites like Facebook make it as easy as possible to be unaware of this covert data gathering and then make it hard as possible to defend against if/when you do become concerned about it.
As far as I am concerned, no matter what the fine print actually says, sites like Facebook knowingly use misdirection and outright deception to cultivate ignorance on the part of it's members and then make millions exploiting the ignorance they created.
Can you state, with absolute certainty, that every one of your friends and family you have connections to on Facebook will feel the same way?
You also overlook the fact that your profile often has the personal information of people you know. An obvious example is a status update to the effect that you are visiting your mother in the hospital after she's had a diabetic crisis. Does she want all of your Facebook contacts knowing that she is a diabetic? Is she comfortable with the idea that the people responsible for an app like Farmville can find this out from your profile and in turn sell that information to a medical supplies company that is building a database of potential costumers?
I know I am in the minority by a vast margin, but I happen to feel that my private information is literally priceless, in that no amount of money could ever replace it once it has been given or taken away. Moreover, I believe that the ability to decide for myself who gets what parts of my private information and why is a fundamental right. (Or damn well should be)
On top of that, the information a bank knows about you is, by default, private Your neighbour cannot get your banking information from $BIGBANK without a court order or a certified letter stating that he is now the executor of your estate. Facebook is, and always has been, by default as public as possible. By default, almost every app someone installs has access to all the information found in their profile and the profiles of their friends. Facebook makes it very easy for it's users to remain unaware that their privacy is subject to the decisions made by their friends.
The cost of Facebook is more abstract, it costs us in privacy. There are many people who are unaware of that cost and probably wouldn't care if they did know, but there are also people who put a very high value on their privacy, are very aware of that cost and do not judge the cost to be worth the meager benefits.
I know that there are people who say that if you don't wish to give away your privacy, then you shouldn't use their services. My problem with this also happens to be the main reason I personally hate Facebook: You don't have to be registered with that site in order for them to harvest and exploit a lot of your personal data.
Between circles of friends, schools, genealogy applications and so on, it is possible to build an impressive profile of someone who themselves have never even been to the site.
In my opinion, most people who use Facebook have no concept of the risks or the capabilities of current data mining techniques, they will blithely enter not only their own personal or sensitive data, but that of their friends and family. (It's one thing to get fired for something you posted on your profile, but it is quite possible to get fired for something your drinking buddy posted on *his* profile. I don't know about you, but I don't like the idea of my privacy being at risk in this way.) Facebook clearly has a fixed policy of exploiting that lack of diligence on the part of it's un-savvy members and is making millions of dollars as a result.
Thank you for the suggestion Knuckles, but I have tried Tai Chi, as well as Reikki and Shiatsu massage. About the only thing I haven't tried is medical marijuana. So far, the only noticable relief has been from Cymbalta combined with another anti-depressant and melatonin to make sure I get plenty of deep restful sleep. When I am physically active, even that isn't enough to prevent crippling and depressing flare-ups.
In my opinion, any ethically run study on the mechanisms of pain and how they might be linked or related to the mechanisms of depression are a Good Thing
If he gets tularemia from one of the bunnies he kills, is it ok to laugh and enjoy it?
and that little glass vial goes into the gun like a battery
All you need to do then is add a SATA based HDD or tape drive and do a dd or similar command using the appropriate write only switches.
but the latency still sucks....
Besides, at one time I could click to reply, write my response and then log in while submitting, allowing me to skip the preview if I want. V2.o took away the ability to log in and still return to where I was commenting, and now v3.0 has taken away my ability to submit without previewing as well.
I have no mod points today or I'd give them to you. I don't like all the whitespace, slashdot hurts my eyes now. The cool green glow has been replaced with a bright white glare.
Oh fer the luva! (insert numerous and very profane comments)
I second the comment of too much white space, not enough contrast. In addition: Overall the whole place now looks "flat" for lack of a better word. I don't like the fact that the side pane doesn't scroll with the rest of the page. I prefer the single page that moves as a whole model rather than the current layout, which just reminds me WAY too much of bad sites in iFrames. Finally, here's the weird one. Everything appears right until I log in. The the main pane is shifted about four character spaces to the left, sending the text at the beginning of every line "under" the side pane and out of view.
"haunted" houses are usually old abandoned places. Broken windows, leaky roofs are a recipe for rotten floors. As a kid some friends and I went into a house we all tried to convince each other was "haunted". (just idiot kids trying to freak each other out really) The floors were creaky as hell and pretty soft or bouncy in spots, even to our light weights. Everything was fine though; until we tried to head upstairs. Chuck; being the heaviest, went up last and his foot broke right through a rotted out tread. He couldn't pull it out on his own and for a while, none of us dared go back down the now proven unsafe stairs to help him. Albert and I ended up making a long reach and helped him out. We left by crawling out an upstairs window onto the back porch and did a hang drop into the yard. Chuck got some stitches and a tetanus shot, we all got nasty lectures from our parents.
(1) The weight you gave of 353,430t / 4 =88357.5t which probably refers to the RMS ship, perhaps in a fully laden configuration.
The European criminals provide their own sex slaves?