I'll first lightly touch on just what an epidemic or a pandemic actually *is*. AFAIK, there is no hard and fast rule about what constitutes an epidemic or a pandemic. The rough guideline seems to be 1) that it be a communicable disease (so no cancer) 2)that it be actually or even just potentially fatal (rules out the common cold) and 3) Must infect more people, or infect them faster than expected. (with "expected" being highly variable depending on the disease in question.)
Does this mean 1 in 100 dying? 1 in 10? In common use, it's my understanding that people mean things like the Black Plague, Spanish Influenza and Smallpox. Diseases so nasty that everyone knew at least one person who had already died from it and were themselves at risk of dying from it at anytime. Diseases that killed at least 10% and sometimes more than 50% of the vulnerable populations.
TFA talks about monitoring tools to keep up with the load, being able to juggle bandwidth, edit hosted content to cope with increased bandwidth demands, remote administration and the like. That has an important spin-off consequence that I don't see being addressed. These tools would allow the survivors to handle the work load of those who were home sick or simply dead. Being able to do that for an emergency period of a few weeks is one thing, but if the tools are sufficiently capable to handle it for months, why would the company ever hire replacements for those who died? The survivors will have proved that they could handle the work load, even under higher than expected demand. Furthermore, being able to do this remotely only makes off-shoring even easier. (In fact, I'd argue that a _good_ *demic plan would HAVE to include an off-shore team as part of your fall-back plans. Doing so would essentially allow the company to re-route it's human workload around the epicentre(s) of infection much as it can already re-route traffic)
There is one aspect of this that I *don't* see being talked about, one that the military has built into it's very structure and that is inheritance of authority. I work for an I.T. services company, one that has a comparatively small staff. If I died, my supervisor or the president/owner of the company would have little trouble recovering data or assuming control over my sphere of responsibility. However, the reverse is not true. If my boss's boss dies, at present we have no easy way to assume control. If only my boss dies, the president can delegate the deceased's duties onto me, but short of a password list kept in the tape safe, we have no way of taking over the presidents job. Given the level of access the owner/president has to the systems of our clientele, security procedures prohibit the tape safe option. (since I could access that list at anytime without leaving a trail.) I suppose we could contact each of our clients directly and get each of them to create new accesses for my supervisor or myself, but we can't guarantee that the person who has the ability to do that would be alive to do so. Worse yet, with a few of our clients, creating a new administrator level access would be something _we_ would normally be doing for them. They have people with the authority/permission levels to do so, but not the technical know-how.
The (sort of) good news is that, if 30%-50% of the people around here are sick or dead a lot of our customers probably wouldn't exist anymore anyway.
The label of SUV is of modern origin but the concept of a station wagon on a truck frame that has at least some off-road capability goes back as least as far as WWII. (With or without 4WD)
And here I always thought the Eureka Advanced Research Facility was in Oregon! I am gonna go waaay out on a limb here and guess your name "eln" is a clever reference to either VAXeln or electronic lab notebooks, either one suggests you are in fact Henry Deacon.....
Just a sec, someone's landing a unmarked chopper in my back-----------------
To quote the Molson commercial/meme "and I don't know Jimmy, Sally or Suzy from Canada,
although I'm certain they're really, really nice." Except that to certain casually speaking relatives, I *am* Jimmy"
I had a bad experience once with RBC and a certain insurance company that uses a lizard as it's spokes-reptile. It seems they tried to pull the funds from my account two days before I got paid, *five* days before the date I'd agreed to pay them on. Did you know that with some of the sleazier insurance companies if you don't pay them even once; they deem your policy to be cancelled for non-payment and that there is a nasty little clause in your contract that essentially says you now owe them the entire balance of the policy, up front, right now and no kidding around? That's what happened to me. They made an error, attempted to take out one months premiums and when that bounced, two days later they tried to take out FIVE months worth of premiums. I found out about all of this the hard way, when my rent cheque bounced. Worse yet, while I was able to get the mouth-breathing micro-cephalic "customer service" rep to admit that they'd made mistake, he was adamant that they could not reinstate my policy once it was cancelled and in fact they were not willing to write me a new policy until the back debt from the existing policy was paid off. Needless to say, having my existing policy cancelled for non-payment made it that mush more expensive to get coverage elsewhere, but only for a year. I've stayed with my current provider ever since. Sure it costs me about 120 Can$ more every year, but it's worth it to avoid such fuck ups and to be able to say "fuck you G***0, fuck you..."
You are right in thinking that Soundexchange even collects money on behalf of artists it doesn't represent. The theory is that Soundexchange collects the money and if the artist isn't represented by Soundexchange then the money gets divvied up between AFTRA and AFM. The non-represented artist then has to ask those two bodies to cough up the monies owed. Since AFTRA and AFM are unions, I would assume that you need to be a union member to get your cut. If performance fees were collected from a radio station's local garage band show, those local garage bands would need to scrape up the cash to join the union before they got to see that money. And I am sure that as long as they are just local bands playing for beer and an open stage, the union dues would amount to more than the performance right royalties.
However, I'm pretty sure U.S. laws still only apply to operations actually *in* the U.S., unfortunately, all of my favorite Internet radio stations are in the U.S. Despite that, there are many good stations out there that are not located in the U.S., worst case scenario I'll have to switch to one of them. (There's some good indie metal coming out of the Nordic countries these days anyway and I've always had a liking for some of the grungier J-rock)
I see no reason why "pirate" Internet Radio hasn't already sprung up all over the place. Find a host somewhere overseas who offers cheap bandwidth and set up a paypal account for your donations. It's easy enough to configure your sample rates and maximum allowed connections to keep under your hosts bandwidth cap. The only problem I can think of is finding a very cheap host who allows you to set up a Shoutcast/Icecast what-have-you server. I've oft been tempted to do just that myself, if only for my own use, but it strikes me as a way of going broke slowly. (Which is what i gather many of the existing Internet Radio stations are doing anyway.)
One last thought, I find it weird as hell that record labels have gone from paying DJ's to play the songs they felt needed promotion (Payola") to having to hit the DJ's over the head with a legal club to force them to pay for the privilege of promoting the band's material. They've cleverly but evilly managed to turn a marketing and promotion expense into another revenue stream, and it's one I have no doubt that the artists themselves don't get a piece of.
in my experience, such uses of peer pressure == violence out of sight of the authorities which in turn == vigilante justice.
I've seen that tried in elementary school too, and then later still in basic training. In school, the bully repeated his behaviors, because from his perspective, he not only got away with it, he got an evil chuckle over the other poor saps who got punished for his actions. Until; that is, until a few kids got fed up and worked him over in the alley after school.
In basic, it was routine to make everyone suffer for the actions or failings (real or imagined) on the part of one. The theory was that this would build unit cohesion. When the training flight thought the alleged infraction was made up just to let the master corporal indulge his sadism, then the technique worked, we all pulled together, united by our resentment of him. However, when the offender really did do something wrong (or failed to do something sufficiently correct) the it sometimes led to the same kind of "tune-up" the school kids in the alley did. I always had a problem with that. It's one thing to give a little "tune-up" to a recruit who's slacking off, not getting his kit squared away, or letting others carry his load for him. It's quite another to sic the mob on some guy who just can't do the requisite number of push-ups or some kid who has learned to beat up the smaller kids in order to feel good about himself. When you prime the mob that way, you are leaving the judgment about right and wrong in their hands, along with punishment and future policing. There are no checks and balances to that sort of thing. That poor kid I saw beat in the alley got one holy hell of a worse beating than anything he'd dished out to his peers. At the time, it felt good to finally get a little payback on that creep and the all of the kids chanting and cheering only encouraged those of us who were actually in there kicking. Later, and to this day, I feel a little sick inside about what happened.
However, your suggestion doesn't quite line up with your anecdote. To use peer pressure as in your experience, or to unleash the mob as in mine would have to mean allowing other companies to inflict harm on the offending company. In the case of RIAA and the recording companies that sponsor it, that would mean penalizing all other companies that do business with them. E.g. fine IBM X number of dollars for leasing all those computers to them, fining the radio/TV stations who purchase broadcast rights for the media. I see two problems with that. First, do you really want to punish WKRP for purchasing those rights, IBM for making that profit? In both cases, they did business in good faith, often well before the "crimes" took place. Second, in a world of International business, how does one country like yours impose fines on that off shore company who is pressing the disks or making the licensed t-shirts, lunch boxes and bobble head figurines?
However, your actual suggestion I think has merit and warrants further discussion. I noted back in my professional and business ethics class that a major flaw in the concept of incorporated businesses is the distribution of blame (and hence risk). This distribution plays a large part in the rise of the corporation, something which has contributed a great deal to the explosion in technology and standard of living. However, it means that it is all too easy for companies to commit crimes and there is no warm body to lock up. I've have believed for years that we need better ways to punish companies that do wrong than simply fining them. (Fines that all too often amount to little more than a slap on the wrist and even go unpaid with no real repercussions)
I would suggest that first, fines that result from misbehavior on the board level be paid for out of the pockets of the board and it's shareholders at the time of the crime and not out of corporate funds. (IMHO C*O's should be held accountable for the consequences of their polices, none of this futz the company and then bail on the golden parachute like we saw with
well, it's a bag of money with a hooker inside. There is still *some* money in the bag, jsut not as much as it appears from the outside.
I read that to mean you now have a total of three categories of objects
bags 1
hookers 1
money variable, but less than you expected because some of the perceived weight was hooker not cash.
just for arguments sake, lets assume the hooker weighs 150 lbs in her thong. Which would you rather have, 150 pounds of money (individual face value unspecified, could be pennies (U$24,576)could be Gold Eagles (U$1,074,000) who presumably is very grateful to be out of that bag and therefore very happy to see you?
Prostitution has been quasi decriminalized in Windsor Ontario, the closest place to me that i can find where an escort has helpfully listed her current rates. Based on her posted rates (sorry I won't be including a link) you're looking at 200$ hr for full service from an average priced "working girl". There's a discount rate for longer times, but lets keep it simple.
If that professional replaced pennies, she'd have to service you for roughly 122 hours before you broke even. (A short week)
If she displaced her weight in gold, that works out to 537 hours of "companionship" that she owes you, or just over 3 weeks.
Personally, I'd be disappointed, there's an awful lot of eager amateurs in this town who'll practically give it away once word got out I had a million and change.
My mother was and still is an ardent feminist and among the early adopters of the Pill in Canada. Over the years, I have been able to learn her, and by extension other women's reasons for jumping on the Pill bandwagon so avidly.
First, the Pill really hit it's stride in the late 60's when it seemed like chemistry had the answers to most of life's ills.* Doctors were prescribing incredible numbers of new medications for problems that used to be considered part of life's burdens. Stressed out trying to keep up with the Jones's? Pop a few Quaalude before hubby gets home. Too much morning sickness? How about some Thalidomide to cure that jumpy tummy? (Remember the flipper babies?)Taking regular doses of synthetic hormones fit right in with those times. It controlled what my grandmother stills calls "The Curse", helped even out the rather nasty mood swings of PMS (even if many doctors didn't really believe it existed at the time, women certainly knew about it)
Second, it tied in so damn well with the entire feminist liberation movement. Women believed (with a lot of justification) that the perceived risk that they might get pregnant and suddenly quit their jobs had a lot to do with the glass ceiling. Also, the only other two really effective methods at the time were barrier based or abstaining. They were still making "fish skins" back then and many States put restrictions on the purchase of condoms. Diaphragms, sponges and natural material condoms were not nearly as effective as the Pill. Most were expensive or a PITA to use. Condoms worked, but were rather thicker (and therefore less sensitive) than modern ones and were fairly expensive and harder to find compared to today. (In my first sex ed. class, we were told that condoms *could* be washed out and reused as long as you didn't use soap.)The worst part though was that it put responsibility and therefore control in the hands of the man. Women saw the Pill as the chance to take control over their own bodies. They could now conceive only when and if they wanted to. It was unheard of for a wife to require her husband to use condoms, but it wasn't that hard to go get a prescription for the Pill and take it every morning while he was at work. Suddenly, women didn't have to have pregnancy after pregnancy until they hit menopause. My grandmother (8 kids that lived to adult hood) and my great grandmother (5 kids that lived, 4 that did not) both thought of menopause as a blessing because it took them off that reproductive treadmill. My mother and her sisters, thanks to the Pill, never got on it in the first place.
Third was the whole Sexual Revolution (surely you've heard of it!) The Pill allowed women to go out and have casual sex with the same risks as any man. Unlike men; who could impregnate a woman and move on, prior to the Pill any woman who had casual sex risked a bastard baby, her "shame" would be there for all to see for months while she gestated. The whole Free Love movement could not have gotten off the ground if it were not for the Pill to prevent unwanted pregnancies and antibiotics to cure gonorrhea, syphilis and chlamydia. 50's sex ed films had been full of the horrors of catching "the clap" and other STD's and they didn't have to exaggerate much to really scare the kids either. Blindness, excruciating pain, insanity and even death could have been what you risked when you had unprotected casual sex back then. Women risked all of that and having a back alley abortion to hide a bastard child on top of it. With the Pill and antibiotics, that all seemed to be ancient history to the young men and women of the 60's and early 70's.
The other methods you mentioned? None are quite as effective as the Pill or it's modern children Norplant and Depo-Provera. Despite the claims of some sex educators, the barrier methods do get in the way of sex. Condoms DO reduce sensation, are often misused, or occasionally break. (I still hear of kids who try to keep the things in their wallets, even though they know it's a no-no)
Except that not every Gmail user goes to the website and logs in to compose and send email. Some, (like myself) use an offline email client to compose messages and then connect via a SSL encrypted SMTP connection. (That way I am not exposed to even Google's well chosen ads.)
Absolutely! As I mentioned in an earlier post, I've tried other interlocking brick systems. In my mind there just isn't any question about it. LEGO is without question the highest quality brick system ever. That's worth some extra bucks right there. Oh sure, there's never enough money to buy all the sets my son wants, I'd love to see them drop the price on that score alone, just so he and I can have that much bigger of a collection to play with. But not if that means cutting the quality in the slightest. The core of my son's collection was a big suitcase of LEGO from my childhood. Oh sure; there are a few broken ones and maybe a few that now fit loose from sheer wear, but between me and my younger brother, some of those bricks had almost 15 years worth of almost daily use before my son got his hands on them. Hell; I'd wager there aren't many consumer goods period that can boast a track record like that. (Well, the Zippo lighter comes to mind, something else my son will inherit, since I got mine from my father)
I can't think of any other toy, at any price that can maintain it's appeal to a child over an entire decade of play, be prized enough that it doesn't get cast aside with the rest of the trappings of childhood and be durable enough that when you have kids of your own to give them to, are as usable as the day they were made.
When all is said and done, LEGO bricks aren't just a toy, they are an investment.
Well there is the "name brand" but still cheaper Mega Bloks, I remember when they first came out, the advertising at the time made a big deal about the fact that the basic bricks are allegedly completely compatible with LEGO. My parents bought me a set or two at the time and believe me, they were not nearly as good as the real LEGO already in a giant suitcase under my bed. Bad "grab", many pieces did not have perfectly flat and parallel sides so they wouldn't stick right even to other Mega Bloks, etc etc. Because of my bad experiences with them back then, I refuse to buy them today for my older son, who is as much a building block fanatic as I was, but wants the movie tie-in sets available only in Mega Bloks. I seem to vaguely recall seeing Loc Blocs out there as well, but Wikipedia says it is out of business.
Recently I spotted what appear to be generic un-branded LEGO knock offs at the local dollar store. On inspection they were nothing like LEGO or even Mega Bloks. These were made of a much softer plastic than the LEGO ABS and were perhaps 30% smaller. (Imagine an army men version of LEGO, crappy detail, sharp mold ridges and all) So there are other interlocking building block systems out there, but none I have seen manage to rival good ol' LEGO.
I was about to reply with Meccano actually. Maybe it's an USA vs Canada thing, but in my memories Meccano sets were both more plentiful in the toy stores and more desired by kids like me than the Erector brand sets. (I remember Meccano sets as having cooler, more complex sets but that was a long time ago.)
I would have to venture a guess and say that there *must* be some upper limit on the number of Gauss a human body can be subjected to before physiological changes are noticed. Whatever that upper limit is though, it is far more powerful than anything you are likely to be exposed to on Earth. MRI machines expose you to fields of 5,000 to 30,000 Gauss. From Wikipedia and other sources I came up with the following values for common sources of magnetic flux energy:
Earth's magnetic field.5 Gauss
small iron magnet 100 Gauss
small neodymium magnet 2,000 Gauss
big electromagnet 15,000 Gauss
Current FDA safety limit 80,000 Gauss (as of 2003)
World's most powerful MRI 94,000 Gauss (Uni of Illinois, makes the sodium ions flip instead of the water molecules. In testing, subjects noted odd sensations while being moved into the field, but once stationary the effects went away)
surface of a neutron star 10^12G (1,000,000,000,000 Gauss)
me: "Oh hi Officer, can I help you with something?"
cop: "Your neighbor was robbed last night and we are hoping someone in the area may have seen something, may I come in?
{hmmmmm}
{pfffft!!}{cop slaps neck}
cop; "what the???"
{FLASH!}
cop: "what the hell was that?"
me: "oh sorry officer, {nervous laugh} I forgot to warn you, that's my radio tag system so now I'll always know where you are....
{really nervous laugh trailing off...}
{cop draws his monadnock}
me: "oh really sir, there's no need for{meaty thud}
me: "ow ow! I'm sorry I'm sorry, look I'll dis{meaty thud}able it!
{meaty thud}
{meaty thud}
{meaty thud}
{meaty thud}
{squishy thwack}
[fade to black]
simple answer short version : have the absolute minimum information possible on that laptop.
Long answer? If it's a company laptop, get the I.T. dept* to perform a fresh ghost to it, and memorize your email passwords, don't use the email client to memorize them for you. Likewise with any passwords you need to access the company servers remotely via VPN or SSH. If you need files for that big business meeting, leave them on the company servers* until you get there and then download them when you arrive, they don't check your computer when you are *leaving* do they? (Even though the idea of software and algorithms being considered important to national security is older than this current BS, so it would make sense to check outbound traffic to make sure there is no high tech secrets on that laptop**) Saving important files while there? Upload them via that same VPN or SSH and then use a secure eraser program to wipe the local copy after you confirmed the successful transfer.
Incidentally, I'm always a little disgusted when I hear about people losing or having stolen laptops which contain valuable or sensitive information on it. I know it's a PITA for your average bean counter who just needs to run some spread sheets over the weekend, but Government tax records, hospital patient records? Come on, given how sensitive these things are, the protection of my proposal makes so much sense I think it would be hard to explain to an auditor later why your I.T. department *didn't* enforce it.
*Or do it yourself. I've seen many people posting here about dual booting on a laptop and how to hide that. In this example, I assume that any geek/nerd who is willing to dual boot a laptop probably has either a home server, a job in technology where VPN's are common or both.
** I know, I know, don't give the DHS any ideas right? As a card carrying pessimist, I assume that this is already in the works. I've already read about how the NSA is already probably reading the vast majority of Internet traffic***.
***Hence the suggestion of an encrypted protocol to transfer your data, oh sure the NSA can break any encryption you could install on a laptop, but having a tough one would at least make them work for it a little.
I seem to recall reading somewhere recently that sending text messages via SMS costs North American mobile carriers essentially nothing. The reason being that apparently cell networks have a reserved amount of bandwidth exclusively for the use of control signals. If I recall correctly, the established standards and protocols require this control signal allowance but in current practice it is either totally unused or drastically underused. SMS messages are sent using that control signal bandwidth and protocol so it is being sent using space that wasn't being used anyway. Thus the net cost of handling a text message is zero. (There may be costs in passing along text messages to another carrier on another network, that would depend on what peering agreements are in place I think.)
However; if I read this right, the creators of the encyclopedia did not steal the results of J.K. Rowling's work. To correct the analogy you used: Say Stephen King creates a readers guide or encyclopedia to the fictional universe he has set a large number of his novels in and plans to publish it first quarter 2009. However I; as a fan of his work, have spent hundreds of hours of my own time and effort reading every book Mr. King ever wrote, every interview I can get my hands on, every piece of source material I can find and have created my own encyclopedia to the King-verse. Mr. King is a popular author and a prolific one, he has book-signings, business conferences and other unrelated books to write, whereas I am simply fan with no real life, hence I get my encyclopedia finished first and manage to find a publisher for the third quarter of 2008.
In this scenario there is no question that my creation is a derivative work, it wouldn't have existed without the prior fiction written by Stephen King. But it is not theft, Mr. Kings own creation is still in his hands and the general public still has no clue what is really in it.
My work would ride the coat-tails of Mr. King's popularity obviously, but I doubt it would hurt sales of his own work very much. Mr. King's Official guide would be, by definition, far more authoritative than my own. It would be highly likely to contain more original material than my own efforts could hope for. No doubt I'd manage to sell some copies, but Mr. King's work would sell far more wouldn't it? In fact, there is a chance his edition would sell more for having mine already out there than it would on it's own, since all the otaku types would want to buy the real version if only to see where all my guesses and projections turned out to be wrong.
J.K. Rowling has always payed such elements very close to the vest, revealing very little until the release of the next book. This gives her the advantage of changing her mind, anywhere the fan-created encyclopedia guessed right or even just a little too close she can simply revise the unrevealed parts of the back story. Just about the only thing an author couldn't change is the actual published events, the meaning and symbolism can be changed. In fact, thanks to retconning, even some of the published facts can be subject to revision. In my mind that is a more effective way of fighting the hangers-on who want to cash in on Rowling's efforts than simply suing.
While we're on the subject of fictional food stuffs and the whole healthy/environmentally sound/morally defensible food concept: I've often wondered how the more uhm, *strident* voiced animal rights or morality based anti meat and fur folks would deal with animals built from the genes up to be food, in fact creatures that are content or even eager to *be* food.
e.g. Bandersnatchii Schmoon or the Ameglian Major Cow
Despite the obvious importance of his work to a celestial arrangement of this kind, the article doesn't refer to Edourad Roche or the Roche Lobethat forms in the region between these two stars. When Roche Lobes overlap, it is a Contact Binary
Errr. know of any site using Flash for something useful?*
*Useful to me; not to advertisers or corporate web designers who think interrupting the flow of my surfing and irritating the hell out of me are good ways to earn my shopping dollars
The computer is also one of two things on the list I can *carry*, an important thing to consider in the scenario of escaping a flaming home. My computer is at floor level, and has lights I can see while crawling on the floor under the smoke. My microwave is at face level, nowhere near the bedroom and when not running, has no illumination.
Finally and most important, my fridge, stove, microwave etc do not have over 600GB of accumulated assignments, family pictures, music, movies and programs stored in them. Much of what is in my computer is flat out irreplaceable (yes it IS backed up, but the back ups take more space and are harder to grab in an emergency than the box itself) I can replace the entire contents of my fridge with a 100$ trip to the grocery store.
Like just about any seemingly pointless, challenging act, there those who just have to ask "Why?" I also like to ask "why?" but not in the accusatory way that those who don't grok geek.
There are at least two ways to ask why in a case like this:
1) "Why??" translation: "why the hell would you do something so pointless/hard/surreal/etc"
example: You see man wearing a clown suit, divers mask and flippers and carrying a live lamb under his arms riding the bus. You ask yourself (with a baffled expression) "Why??"
2) "Why?" translation: Why that thing/that way instead of this thing/this way?
example: Talking to your father-in-law about his train set and he tells you that of course he chose to model a 1920's era Mexican narrow gauge line. You understand the allure of model railroading, but simply don't see the fascination with his chosen subject.
The first version is driven by a need to understand the unknown so one can sort it into comfortable categories. The second reason is driven by a desire to learn.
I would like to ask "Why?" (2nd sense) Did he hope to learn by the experience, maybe show off some impressive Excel skills or, as one poster suggested, serve as a commentary on current graphical programing techniques?
Slashdot Mirror
(Mark 5:9)
Does this mean 1 in 100 dying? 1 in 10? In common use, it's my understanding that people mean things like the Black Plague, Spanish Influenza and Smallpox. Diseases so nasty that everyone knew at least one person who had already died from it and were themselves at risk of dying from it at anytime. Diseases that killed at least 10% and sometimes more than 50% of the vulnerable populations.
TFA talks about monitoring tools to keep up with the load, being able to juggle bandwidth, edit hosted content to cope with increased bandwidth demands, remote administration and the like. That has an important spin-off consequence that I don't see being addressed. These tools would allow the survivors to handle the work load of those who were home sick or simply dead. Being able to do that for an emergency period of a few weeks is one thing, but if the tools are sufficiently capable to handle it for months, why would the company ever hire replacements for those who died? The survivors will have proved that they could handle the work load, even under higher than expected demand. Furthermore, being able to do this remotely only makes off-shoring even easier. (In fact, I'd argue that a _good_ *demic plan would HAVE to include an off-shore team as part of your fall-back plans. Doing so would essentially allow the company to re-route it's human workload around the epicentre(s) of infection much as it can already re-route traffic)
There is one aspect of this that I *don't* see being talked about, one that the military has built into it's very structure and that is inheritance of authority. I work for an I.T. services company, one that has a comparatively small staff. If I died, my supervisor or the president/owner of the company would have little trouble recovering data or assuming control over my sphere of responsibility. However, the reverse is not true. If my boss's boss dies, at present we have no easy way to assume control. If only my boss dies, the president can delegate the deceased's duties onto me, but short of a password list kept in the tape safe, we have no way of taking over the presidents job. Given the level of access the owner/president has to the systems of our clientele, security procedures prohibit the tape safe option. (since I could access that list at anytime without leaving a trail.) I suppose we could contact each of our clients directly and get each of them to create new accesses for my supervisor or myself, but we can't guarantee that the person who has the ability to do that would be alive to do so. Worse yet, with a few of our clients, creating a new administrator level access would be something _we_ would normally be doing for them. They have people with the authority/permission levels to do so, but not the technical know-how.
The (sort of) good news is that, if 30%-50% of the people around here are sick or dead a lot of our customers probably wouldn't exist anymore anyway.
*ahem*
I beg to differ, SUV's were indeed made prior to 1980.
The label of SUV is of modern origin but the concept of a station wagon on a truck frame that has at least some off-road capability goes back as least as far as WWII. (With or without 4WD)
Just a sec, someone's landing a unmarked chopper in my back-----------------
>>>connection reset by peer
To quote the Molson commercial/meme "and I don't know Jimmy, Sally or Suzy from Canada, although I'm certain they're really, really nice." Except that to certain casually speaking relatives, I *am* Jimmy"
I had a bad experience once with RBC and a certain insurance company that uses a lizard as it's spokes-reptile. It seems they tried to pull the funds from my account two days before I got paid, *five* days before the date I'd agreed to pay them on. Did you know that with some of the sleazier insurance companies if you don't pay them even once; they deem your policy to be cancelled for non-payment and that there is a nasty little clause in your contract that essentially says you now owe them the entire balance of the policy, up front, right now and no kidding around? That's what happened to me. They made an error, attempted to take out one months premiums and when that bounced, two days later they tried to take out FIVE months worth of premiums. I found out about all of this the hard way, when my rent cheque bounced. Worse yet, while I was able to get the mouth-breathing micro-cephalic "customer service" rep to admit that they'd made mistake, he was adamant that they could not reinstate my policy once it was cancelled and in fact they were not willing to write me a new policy until the back debt from the existing policy was paid off. Needless to say, having my existing policy cancelled for non-payment made it that mush more expensive to get coverage elsewhere, but only for a year. I've stayed with my current provider ever since. Sure it costs me about 120 Can$ more every year, but it's worth it to avoid such fuck ups and to be able to say "fuck you G***0, fuck you..."
However, I'm pretty sure U.S. laws still only apply to operations actually *in* the U.S., unfortunately, all of my favorite Internet radio stations are in the U.S. Despite that, there are many good stations out there that are not located in the U.S., worst case scenario I'll have to switch to one of them. (There's some good indie metal coming out of the Nordic countries these days anyway and I've always had a liking for some of the grungier J-rock)
I see no reason why "pirate" Internet Radio hasn't already sprung up all over the place. Find a host somewhere overseas who offers cheap bandwidth and set up a paypal account for your donations. It's easy enough to configure your sample rates and maximum allowed connections to keep under your hosts bandwidth cap. The only problem I can think of is finding a very cheap host who allows you to set up a Shoutcast/Icecast what-have-you server. I've oft been tempted to do just that myself, if only for my own use, but it strikes me as a way of going broke slowly. (Which is what i gather many of the existing Internet Radio stations are doing anyway.)
One last thought, I find it weird as hell that record labels have gone from paying DJ's to play the songs they felt needed promotion (Payola") to having to hit the DJ's over the head with a legal club to force them to pay for the privilege of promoting the band's material. They've cleverly but evilly managed to turn a marketing and promotion expense into another revenue stream, and it's one I have no doubt that the artists themselves don't get a piece of.
I would suggest that first, fines that result from misbehavior on the board level be paid for out of the pockets of the board and it's shareholders at the time of the crime and not out of corporate funds. (IMHO C*O's should be held accountable for the consequences of their polices, none of this futz the company and then bail on the golden parachute like we saw with
Prostitution has been quasi decriminalized in Windsor Ontario, the closest place to me that i can find where an escort has helpfully listed her current rates. Based on her posted rates (sorry I won't be including a link) you're looking at 200$ hr for full service from an average priced "working girl". There's a discount rate for longer times, but lets keep it simple. If that professional replaced pennies, she'd have to service you for roughly 122 hours before you broke even. (A short week) If she displaced her weight in gold, that works out to 537 hours of "companionship" that she owes you, or just over 3 weeks.
Personally, I'd be disappointed, there's an awful lot of eager amateurs in this town who'll practically give it away once word got out I had a million and change.
First, the Pill really hit it's stride in the late 60's when it seemed like chemistry had the answers to most of life's ills.* Doctors were prescribing incredible numbers of new medications for problems that used to be considered part of life's burdens. Stressed out trying to keep up with the Jones's? Pop a few Quaalude before hubby gets home. Too much morning sickness? How about some Thalidomide to cure that jumpy tummy? (Remember the flipper babies?)Taking regular doses of synthetic hormones fit right in with those times. It controlled what my grandmother stills calls "The Curse", helped even out the rather nasty mood swings of PMS (even if many doctors didn't really believe it existed at the time, women certainly knew about it)
Second, it tied in so damn well with the entire feminist liberation movement. Women believed (with a lot of justification) that the perceived risk that they might get pregnant and suddenly quit their jobs had a lot to do with the glass ceiling. Also, the only other two really effective methods at the time were barrier based or abstaining. They were still making "fish skins" back then and many States put restrictions on the purchase of condoms. Diaphragms, sponges and natural material condoms were not nearly as effective as the Pill. Most were expensive or a PITA to use. Condoms worked, but were rather thicker (and therefore less sensitive) than modern ones and were fairly expensive and harder to find compared to today. (In my first sex ed. class, we were told that condoms *could* be washed out and reused as long as you didn't use soap.)The worst part though was that it put responsibility and therefore control in the hands of the man. Women saw the Pill as the chance to take control over their own bodies. They could now conceive only when and if they wanted to. It was unheard of for a wife to require her husband to use condoms, but it wasn't that hard to go get a prescription for the Pill and take it every morning while he was at work. Suddenly, women didn't have to have pregnancy after pregnancy until they hit menopause. My grandmother (8 kids that lived to adult hood) and my great grandmother (5 kids that lived, 4 that did not) both thought of menopause as a blessing because it took them off that reproductive treadmill. My mother and her sisters, thanks to the Pill, never got on it in the first place.
Third was the whole Sexual Revolution (surely you've heard of it!) The Pill allowed women to go out and have casual sex with the same risks as any man. Unlike men; who could impregnate a woman and move on, prior to the Pill any woman who had casual sex risked a bastard baby, her "shame" would be there for all to see for months while she gestated. The whole Free Love movement could not have gotten off the ground if it were not for the Pill to prevent unwanted pregnancies and antibiotics to cure gonorrhea, syphilis and chlamydia. 50's sex ed films had been full of the horrors of catching "the clap" and other STD's and they didn't have to exaggerate much to really scare the kids either. Blindness, excruciating pain, insanity and even death could have been what you risked when you had unprotected casual sex back then. Women risked all of that and having a back alley abortion to hide a bastard child on top of it. With the Pill and antibiotics, that all seemed to be ancient history to the young men and women of the 60's and early 70's.
The other methods you mentioned? None are quite as effective as the Pill or it's modern children Norplant and Depo-Provera. Despite the claims of some sex educators, the barrier methods do get in the way of sex. Condoms DO reduce sensation, are often misused, or occasionally break. (I still hear of kids who try to keep the things in their wallets, even though they know it's a no-no)
IUD's work we
Except that not every Gmail user goes to the website and logs in to compose and send email. Some, (like myself) use an offline email client to compose messages and then connect via a SSL encrypted SMTP connection. (That way I am not exposed to even Google's well chosen ads.)
I can't think of any other toy, at any price that can maintain it's appeal to a child over an entire decade of play, be prized enough that it doesn't get cast aside with the rest of the trappings of childhood and be durable enough that when you have kids of your own to give them to, are as usable as the day they were made.
When all is said and done, LEGO bricks aren't just a toy, they are an investment.
Recently I spotted what appear to be generic un-branded LEGO knock offs at the local dollar store. On inspection they were nothing like LEGO or even Mega Bloks. These were made of a much softer plastic than the LEGO ABS and were perhaps 30% smaller. (Imagine an army men version of LEGO, crappy detail, sharp mold ridges and all) So there are other interlocking building block systems out there, but none I have seen manage to rival good ol' LEGO.
I was about to reply with Meccano actually. Maybe it's an USA vs Canada thing, but in my memories Meccano sets were both more plentiful in the toy stores and more desired by kids like me than the Erector brand sets. (I remember Meccano sets as having cooler, more complex sets but that was a long time ago.)
And let us not forget the complete and utter lack of corners...
small iron magnet 100 Gauss
small neodymium magnet 2,000 Gauss
big electromagnet 15,000 Gauss
Current FDA safety limit 80,000 Gauss (as of 2003)
World's most powerful MRI 94,000 Gauss (Uni of Illinois, makes the sodium ions flip instead of the water molecules. In testing, subjects noted odd sensations while being moved into the field, but once stationary the effects went away)
surface of a neutron star 10^12G (1,000,000,000,000 Gauss)
me: "Oh hi Officer, can I help you with something?"
cop: "Your neighbor was robbed last night and we are hoping someone in the area may have seen something, may I come in?
{hmmmmm}
{pfffft!!}{cop slaps neck}
cop; "what the???"
{FLASH!}
cop: "what the hell was that?"
me: "oh sorry officer, {nervous laugh} I forgot to warn you, that's my radio tag system so now I'll always know where you are....
{ really nervous laugh trailing off...}
{cop draws his monadnock}
me: "oh really sir, there's no need for{meaty thud}
me: "ow ow! I'm sorry I'm sorry, look I'll dis{meaty thud}able it!
{meaty thud}
{meaty thud}
{meaty thud}
{meaty thud}
{squishy thwack}
[fade to black]
simple answer short version : have the absolute minimum information possible on that laptop. Long answer? If it's a company laptop, get the I.T. dept* to perform a fresh ghost to it, and memorize your email passwords, don't use the email client to memorize them for you. Likewise with any passwords you need to access the company servers remotely via VPN or SSH. If you need files for that big business meeting, leave them on the company servers* until you get there and then download them when you arrive, they don't check your computer when you are *leaving* do they? (Even though the idea of software and algorithms being considered important to national security is older than this current BS, so it would make sense to check outbound traffic to make sure there is no high tech secrets on that laptop**) Saving important files while there? Upload them via that same VPN or SSH and then use a secure eraser program to wipe the local copy after you confirmed the successful transfer. Incidentally, I'm always a little disgusted when I hear about people losing or having stolen laptops which contain valuable or sensitive information on it. I know it's a PITA for your average bean counter who just needs to run some spread sheets over the weekend, but Government tax records, hospital patient records? Come on, given how sensitive these things are, the protection of my proposal makes so much sense I think it would be hard to explain to an auditor later why your I.T. department *didn't* enforce it. *Or do it yourself. I've seen many people posting here about dual booting on a laptop and how to hide that. In this example, I assume that any geek/nerd who is willing to dual boot a laptop probably has either a home server, a job in technology where VPN's are common or both. ** I know, I know, don't give the DHS any ideas right? As a card carrying pessimist, I assume that this is already in the works. I've already read about how the NSA is already probably reading the vast majority of Internet traffic***. ***Hence the suggestion of an encrypted protocol to transfer your data, oh sure the NSA can break any encryption you could install on a laptop, but having a tough one would at least make them work for it a little.
I seem to recall reading somewhere recently that sending text messages via SMS costs North American mobile carriers essentially nothing. The reason being that apparently cell networks have a reserved amount of bandwidth exclusively for the use of control signals. If I recall correctly, the established standards and protocols require this control signal allowance but in current practice it is either totally unused or drastically underused. SMS messages are sent using that control signal bandwidth and protocol so it is being sent using space that wasn't being used anyway. Thus the net cost of handling a text message is zero. (There may be costs in passing along text messages to another carrier on another network, that would depend on what peering agreements are in place I think.)
However; if I read this right, the creators of the encyclopedia did not steal the results of J.K. Rowling's work. To correct the analogy you used: Say Stephen King creates a readers guide or encyclopedia to the fictional universe he has set a large number of his novels in and plans to publish it first quarter 2009. However I; as a fan of his work, have spent hundreds of hours of my own time and effort reading every book Mr. King ever wrote, every interview I can get my hands on, every piece of source material I can find and have created my own encyclopedia to the King-verse. Mr. King is a popular author and a prolific one, he has book-signings, business conferences and other unrelated books to write, whereas I am simply fan with no real life, hence I get my encyclopedia finished first and manage to find a publisher for the third quarter of 2008. In this scenario there is no question that my creation is a derivative work, it wouldn't have existed without the prior fiction written by Stephen King. But it is not theft, Mr. Kings own creation is still in his hands and the general public still has no clue what is really in it. My work would ride the coat-tails of Mr. King's popularity obviously, but I doubt it would hurt sales of his own work very much. Mr. King's Official guide would be, by definition, far more authoritative than my own. It would be highly likely to contain more original material than my own efforts could hope for. No doubt I'd manage to sell some copies, but Mr. King's work would sell far more wouldn't it? In fact, there is a chance his edition would sell more for having mine already out there than it would on it's own, since all the otaku types would want to buy the real version if only to see where all my guesses and projections turned out to be wrong. J.K. Rowling has always payed such elements very close to the vest, revealing very little until the release of the next book. This gives her the advantage of changing her mind, anywhere the fan-created encyclopedia guessed right or even just a little too close she can simply revise the unrevealed parts of the back story. Just about the only thing an author couldn't change is the actual published events, the meaning and symbolism can be changed. In fact, thanks to retconning, even some of the published facts can be subject to revision. In my mind that is a more effective way of fighting the hangers-on who want to cash in on Rowling's efforts than simply suing.
While we're on the subject of fictional food stuffs and the whole healthy/environmentally sound/morally defensible food concept: I've often wondered how the more uhm, *strident* voiced animal rights or morality based anti meat and fur folks would deal with animals built from the genes up to be food, in fact creatures that are content or even eager to *be* food. e.g. Bandersnatchii Schmoon or the Ameglian Major Cow
Despite the obvious importance of his work to a celestial arrangement of this kind, the article doesn't refer to Edourad Roche or the Roche Lobethat forms in the region between these two stars. When Roche Lobes overlap, it is a Contact Binary
*Useful to me; not to advertisers or corporate web designers who think interrupting the flow of my surfing and irritating the hell out of me are good ways to earn my shopping dollars
The computer is also one of two things on the list I can *carry*, an important thing to consider in the scenario of escaping a flaming home. My computer is at floor level, and has lights I can see while crawling on the floor under the smoke. My microwave is at face level, nowhere near the bedroom and when not running, has no illumination. Finally and most important, my fridge, stove, microwave etc do not have over 600GB of accumulated assignments, family pictures, music, movies and programs stored in them. Much of what is in my computer is flat out irreplaceable (yes it IS backed up, but the back ups take more space and are harder to grab in an emergency than the box itself) I can replace the entire contents of my fridge with a 100$ trip to the grocery store.
Like just about any seemingly pointless, challenging act, there those who just have to ask "Why?" I also like to ask "why?" but not in the accusatory way that those who don't grok geek. There are at least two ways to ask why in a case like this: 1) "Why??" translation: "why the hell would you do something so pointless/hard/surreal/etc" example: You see man wearing a clown suit, divers mask and flippers and carrying a live lamb under his arms riding the bus. You ask yourself (with a baffled expression) "Why??" 2) "Why?" translation: Why that thing/that way instead of this thing/this way? example: Talking to your father-in-law about his train set and he tells you that of course he chose to model a 1920's era Mexican narrow gauge line. You understand the allure of model railroading, but simply don't see the fascination with his chosen subject. The first version is driven by a need to understand the unknown so one can sort it into comfortable categories. The second reason is driven by a desire to learn. I would like to ask "Why?" (2nd sense) Did he hope to learn by the experience, maybe show off some impressive Excel skills or, as one poster suggested, serve as a commentary on current graphical programing techniques?