It's possible - all you have to do is show that the existance of extraterrestrial travel is a self-contradicting notion. If you cannot, then you have just shown that some planet X -is- being visited by extrasolar aliens from planet Y, and that Earth is just as valid an X as any other planet.
That's not how proof works at all. If I claim that there is an invisible gorilla in my kitchen and you aren't able to disprove the gorilla's existence, that doesn't prove that the gorilla is there. Similarly, if no one disproves the possibility of interstellar travel, that doesn't mean that interstellar travel is actually occurring. (And btw, there are very strong reasons to believe that interstellar travel is impossible, or at least impossible in practice, not the least of which is the special theory of relativity.)
Which brings up an interesting point. Presumption of innocence, lest we forget, is an American concept -- is it also supported in Germany? (That's not a rhetorical question or a troll, I really don't know and am curious.)
Remember going to the gaming clubs?
on
D&D Is 30
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· Score: 2, Interesting
Ah, memories indeed... I remember I first got into D&D in 5th grade (late 1970s) after school, then later progressed to later night sessions at friends' houses in junior high, and finally to wargaming clubs in high school.
D&D itself wasn't played much in the clubs, or at least not in my club -- most of the folks there disdained it for one reason or another. There was a lot of other fun stuff going on there, though... WWII combat sims, Family Business, and of course the Steve Jackson games, which are great. I especially liked Ogre and Illuminati (I'd still be playing Illuminati today, except I'm having trouble finding players). Remember getting the Orbital Mind Control Lasers and beaming the Semiconscious Liberation Army so they'd be Peaceful?
There was also one other game that I'd love to find, but I can't remember the name of it. It was a wargame set in medieval Britain between the Elves and the Trolls. The guy I used to play it with told me that the company went out of business sometime in the 1970s, but I still harbor hope that someday I might be able to find an old copy of it on eBay. I've tried Google searches to find out the name of the game, but no luck so far.
It's hard to believe D&D is thirty years old, jeez... kind of serves to remind me that I'm getting old, too.
Straczynski wanted to be true (well, mostly true, anyway) to the laws of physics in Babylon 5. When he originally created the show, all scenes taking place in outer space took place in silence. When they did a test showing to interested audiences, there was too much negative reaction -- most notably, a lot of people thought that there had been a problem with the sound production, so Straczynski decided to put the sound back in.
It's still really cool, though, that his design for the Starfuries is now being adapted by NASA for use in the future.
Well, that's not the kind of response I was looking for, but considering the source, I suppose it's probably about the best I could have expected. I am disappointed, but not surprised.
Your own postings are half adult, half spoiled child. I'm not going to respond to the puerile part because that's a waste of time. Addressing instead the areas where you've been constructive and/or interesting...
You have an interesting position on questioning authority, but the problem is, it can only go so far. If you take a look at everything you've learned (even at the college level), you'll see that the great majority of it is material that you haven't personally confirmed -- that's the way the world works. The best you can usually do is examine what other people have said and review it. (You're also quite right about the United States having a lousy foreign policy, although I'm not sure how that pertains to "believing" in Uzbekistan or the like.)
My GF (who is a real person, I assure you) and I have, in fact, used Google a fair amount in researching our difficulties, but you missed my point -- I was offering you an opportunity to become my teacher, and you declined it, opting instead for (mostly) further ridicule. As I said, I'm disappointed, but not surprised. I've always found great satisfaction in helping others with their problems, and I've never really understood why most people don't have a similar attitude, choosing instead to sneer at people who need help instead of actually helping them.
Mixed in with the contempt, you did offer a couple of useful suggestions, and for those, I thank you. I'm looking forward to breaking into this area, and I'm sure that experimenting with fink will be a good place to start. (Accepting authority again, btw.)
As for the rest... well, I know it's an old cliché to tell someone to grow up, and I'd prefer to find a way to phrase that more politely. However, subtlety is typically lost on those who most need to be told that they need to address their immaturity.
No, I am not "easily led to believe things". It's just that I tend to take authority figures at the word most of the time, just as most of the rest of the human race does. For example, you've probably never been to Uzbekistan, and you've probably never even met anyone who's been there, but you don't doubt its existence because others with authority have written about it. When I was first researching OS X, the articles that I read on it said that recompiling Linux for OS X required significant effort (most notably in modification of the source code), so I never looked into it any further because I'm not a developer.
In talking about my previous work experience, I was not "bragging", nor was I mentioning anything irrelevant. You called my IT skills into question, and I responded. That is both relevant and factual.
Regarding the Pentagon, I submit for your consideration that you've drawn the wrong conclusion. Rather than assuming that the Pentagon made an error in judgment by hiring me, you should question whether your assessment of my character is accurate, especially since the people who hired me, who recommended me, and so forth obviously know me quite a bit better than you possibly could.
I find it rather hard to comprehend how you misunderstood what I was writing about in my blog, BTW. I am not mystified by the use of email; I am reviewing different email clients and assessing their various strengths and weaknesses, much the same way that software reviewers do for industry periodicals. I would think that that is rather obvious, since I explain their features, features that are lacking, type of server support, and the like (which obviously belies the statement that I am baffled by email).
Finally, if you see me as someone who would rather "bitch and moan than fix things", then that, as well, speaks to your error in judgment regarding my character, especially inasmuch as an IT career requires one to have a very strong desire to investigate difficulties and attempt to resolve them -- and it isn't only in my career, either. Many is the time that my GF and I have sat down together to research and resolve difficulties or to teach things to each other.
I offer you a suggestion. In your childhood, you may have heard your parents tell you to "do something constructive". In that light, instead of heaping me with scorn, why don't you recommend some resources to me for learning about compiling Linux applications for OS X, since, as I've said, I want to pursue it, and you seem to be implying that you know quite a bit about it? Most people (at least, people who are adults) ultimately derive greater satisfaction from mentoring than abusing; perhaps you will be one such person?
Although (last I heard) TSA recommended leaving checked bags unlocked, you are sometimes required by federal law to lock your checked baggage. For instance, if you have a firearm in the suitcase, you are required to have the firearm in a locked case, and you must be the only person who has a key to that case. That case must then be put into a suitcase, and that suitcase, in turn, must also be locked. (Besides which, even if all of this weren't required by law, putting your firearm in an unlocked suitcase would be a really bad idea.)
If these new "TSA locks" become a reality, I wonder what will happen to those of us who fly with firearms. Will we be required to use a TSA lock not only on our suitcases, but on our firearm cases as well? I hope not -- the risk of theft is already high enough to make me pretty nervous as it is.
Jeez, man, that's pretty harsh. There's one area of Macs that I don't know much about, development, and you say that I'm a worthless human being?
As it happens, I did know about porting Unix and Linux apps to OS X, but I had always been led to believe that it was a rather difficult process, so I never pursued it because I didn't think it was worth the effort. Now that I know otherwise, I intend to look into it further.
As to my experience... well, I've been an IT professional for years and have held various positions in systems administration and engineering, including one at the Pentagon (which I only lost because I was denied a security clearance).
Regarding your comments about choosing a partner based on his technical abilities, that's beneath contempt, and I won't even dignify it with a response.
A couple of weeks or so ago, I downloaded demo versions of both Sophos' and Norton's antivirus software (at the time, I was running OS X 10.2.8). Like anyone else here, I receive a lot of Windows viruses in my email, and I wanted to see how Sophos and Norton would handle them. I saved several different Windows virii to my desktop, then turned both Sophos and Norton loose on my PowerBook. They both reported that there were no viruses on my system.
I suppose I can at least be thankful that the manufacturers both gave me a free evaluation so I didn't have to waste any money determining that the products were useless.
Before you ask -- I did check them both to make sure the signatures were up to date. I don't actually remember the details on this, but AFAIK, at least one of them said I couldn't get updated signatures in the evaluation version (which to my mind means that you can't really evaluate it at all, but whatever).
Eminent domain is not always a violation of private property rights. There are times when the government has a legitimate interest in taking private property and putting it to public use. The framers of the Constitution recognized this and wrote an appropriate clause into the Constitution to ensure that the government would do this only for legitimate purposes and would give just compensation to the owner of the private propery being seized.
As to the situation in Hawaii -- I presume you are referring to the dispute between Bishop Estates and its various tenants (I was born and raised in Honolulu and I remember that dispute -- in fact, a rep from Bishop Estates spoke at my social studies class on this topic when I was in high school). The reason for the lawsuit was not simply that the tenants wanted to own the land they had been leasing for so long, although that was certainly a part of it. It was also that Bishop Estates was attempting to grossly increase the tenants' land leasing fees, in many cases by five or six times. If your rent went from six or seven hundred dollars a month to three thousand dollars a month, you'd be upset, too. Not only that, most of these tenants were renting only the land from Bishop Estates -- they had to build their houses themselves, buying all the construction materials, paying the contractors, and so on. This meant that they couldn't exactly say, "The rent on this land is too high -- let's move someplace else." They were stuck there, since the houses that they owned couldn't be moved. Bishop Estates knew that, which is why they tried to get away with the insane price increases. This was what the Supreme Court had a problem with, and that's why they ruled against Bishop Estates.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but don't dictatorial countries such as Laos, China, and Cuba generally centralize Internet access thru government-owned gateways so they can filter any content they don't like? I admit that keeping out "subversive" materials would be easier said than done, but such governments could (for example) firewall access to the Washington Post web site or whatever and make it harder (though obviously not impossible) to read their content. They'd also be able to keep an eye on Internet traffic, perhaps sniffing for certain keywords and phrases, to see whether anyone in the country is accessing "subversive" material.
Thank you for the advice -- I'm already looking into getting a copy of the decision and also appealing the decision. There's not a reason in the world that anyone should think I"m untrustworthy over something like this.
I disclosed everything they asked for, including the name change. They told me that the name change was the reason I was turned down.
I don't blame you for being skeptical -- if it hadn't happened to me, I don't think I would have believed it, either. But it's true.
My now-ex employer told me he wasn't surprised, and that since 9/11 Secrets are a lot harder to get than they used to be. A friend of his who currently has a Secret is now in danger of losing it because his wife is French. Again -- government keeping its priorities straight.
A few months ago, I applied for and received a job as a network engineer at the Pentagon. One of the job requirements was that I had to get a "Secret" security clearance. The company hired me after I told them I was eligible for such a clearance. I started working there while the oh-so sensible and efficient federal government did a background check on me. Two months later, they turned me down, saying that I was a risk to national security because I had my name legally changed thirteen years ago. I therefore lost my job six weeks ago because I went thru a perfectly legal (and public) process that meant nothing more than that I didn't have to have my asshole father's last name anymore. This in spite of the fact that others have received Secret clearances -- and even Top Secret clearances -- after having histories of drug use, mental illness, and even prison sentences, among other things.
This is the same government that says it's going to protect us from Yamir Shitzak blowing us up in the name of Allah. Do you feel any safer? 'Cuz I sure as hell don't.
Though how many g's would a pilot endure at 5000mph?
G force isn't a function of velocity, it's a function of acceleration (actually, G force is acceleration). In other words, it doesn't matter how fast you're going, it matters how fast you get to that speed. If you're in a car, you'll experience more G force if you go from zero to sixty in five seconds than you will if you go from zero to sixty in fifteen seconds. The same princple applies to flight.
OS X 10.0 may have been released on that date, but I wouldn't call that the "real" OS X... most people, including myself, considered that version more of a beta than a final release, even though Apple had already released an official "beta" some months before that. IMO, OS X didn't become a "real" OS until version 10.1.
Microsoft is a greedy monopolist, convicted of illegal behavior to maintain its monopoly. If Apple had had any business sense starting in the mid to late Eighties or so, though, they would be the monopoly today, and frankly, we'd be even worse off under them than we are with the Microsoft monopoly now; Apple is a far, far greedier company even than Microsoft is. Remember how they priced Macs from 1984 to about 1994 or thereabouts? The price discrepancy today is annoying, but back then, it was absolutely appalling. If Apple had managed to dominate, competition would probably never have forced them to start striving for more competitive pricing, and many of us today probably wouldn't even have computers.
Disclosure, for anyone who is wondering or cares: I'm one of the many longtime Macintosh enthusiasts who loves the computer but hates the company that makes it.
Others have already pointed out that the so-called "discounts" offered by loyalty cards really aren't. You're supposed to think that you're getting a discount off the regular price if you use your loyalty card, when the reality is that you're paying a higher-than-standard price if you don't use a loyalty card.
It reminds me of mail-in rebates. Someone not long ago -- I think it was Ed Foster, in his column "The Gripe Line", but I don't remember for sure -- pointed out that when D-Link or whoever offers you a $30 "mail-in rebate" on that WiFi router, they don't actually want to give you a lower price -- if they did, they'd just mark the price down. What they're hoping is that people will be drawn into the store by the lure of the so-called "discount price", buy the router, then decide it's too much of a hassle to fill out all the forms, mail them, and wait six to eight weeks for the check. It's a rather deceptive marketing practice, just like loyalty cards are.
Of course Passport is flopping.
on
Passport to Nowhere
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· Score: 3, Informative
First of all, as others in this thread are already pointing out, the security issues are problematic, to say the least... you want to store all that financial information in a Microsoft server, with Microsoft's terrible security record? No, thanks.
Second, Microsoft already has a ridiculous amount of power over the lives of the ordinary consumer, and the ordinary consumer knows it and deeply resents it. Even if they're not technically literate enough to be able to use non-MS products regularly, they still don't want to give Billgatus of Borg any more power over them than they absolutely have to.
Related to that, Passport is designed to force people to use MS products. I have a Passport ID (which I created only because I have friends on MS Messenger, not because I wanted to), and it's nothing but one solid headache. Just as an experiment, I've tried to log in to a number of sites with Passport using my regular browser, Safari, and it never works. It works fine in Internet Explorer, though -- gee, you don't suppose MS purposely designed it not to function with any browser other than its own, do you? Nah... I mean, they've never done anything like that before...
i know my email will come as a surprise to you as we have had no contact before, but i am urging you to have no concern. i got your name and address from the girl who operates the computer.
my name is gen. imaskammer withnopekker. i have come to you with the blessings of god for an urgent and confidential business proposal to import a dell laptop computer from my home country of lagos, nigeria to your...
We've been advertising our existence for over half a century now. I read somewhere (can't find the source right now) that Earth puts out as much radio flux as a small star. It's a little late to stop, unless we all start subscribing to cable.
Good point, but how far do those signals travel before they're no longer detectable? I'd guess it's a pretty short distance -- no more than a couple of light years or so at most -- but I admit that's a semi-educated guess based only a couple of semesters of college physics.
First of all, "sending a signal to different galaxies" won't work. Among other things, it would take several hundred thousand years for a signal to reach even the closest galaxies to us (the Magellanic Clouds, IIRC). If the signal even got there in the first place, which it probably wouldn't because it would weaken and degrade before it got even a fraction of the distance.
On the more far out and paranoid side, it would probably not be a good idea for us to be advertising our existence. What if the first civilization we found was far more technologically advanced that we are -- and also highly aggressive and hostile? It would be a better idea for us, if we find any other alien civilizations, to study them quietly for a while to see whether we even want them to know about us.
Smaller and lighter is usually a good thing with mobile devices, but doesn't there come a point when you've gone too far? In particular, with a wristwatch PDA, I'd be concerned that the screen is too small to be useful -- even on a regular-size PDA, I sometimes feel "cramped".
For some reason, I didn't think of NATting until after I posted that. Must not have had enough coffee. I think suicide would be a slight overreaction to such an oversight, however.;-)
Slashdot Mirror
It's possible - all you have to do is show that the existance of extraterrestrial travel is a self-contradicting notion. If you cannot, then you have just shown that some planet X -is- being visited by extrasolar aliens from planet Y, and that Earth is just as valid an X as any other planet.
That's not how proof works at all. If I claim that there is an invisible gorilla in my kitchen and you aren't able to disprove the gorilla's existence, that doesn't prove that the gorilla is there. Similarly, if no one disproves the possibility of interstellar travel, that doesn't mean that interstellar travel is actually occurring. (And btw, there are very strong reasons to believe that interstellar travel is impossible, or at least impossible in practice, not the least of which is the special theory of relativity.)
Remember kids, innocent until proven guilty!
Which brings up an interesting point. Presumption of innocence, lest we forget, is an American concept -- is it also supported in Germany? (That's not a rhetorical question or a troll, I really don't know and am curious.)
Ah, memories indeed... I remember I first got into D&D in 5th grade (late 1970s) after school, then later progressed to later night sessions at friends' houses in junior high, and finally to wargaming clubs in high school.
D&D itself wasn't played much in the clubs, or at least not in my club -- most of the folks there disdained it for one reason or another. There was a lot of other fun stuff going on there, though... WWII combat sims, Family Business, and of course the Steve Jackson games, which are great. I especially liked Ogre and Illuminati (I'd still be playing Illuminati today, except I'm having trouble finding players). Remember getting the Orbital Mind Control Lasers and beaming the Semiconscious Liberation Army so they'd be Peaceful?
There was also one other game that I'd love to find, but I can't remember the name of it. It was a wargame set in medieval Britain between the Elves and the Trolls. The guy I used to play it with told me that the company went out of business sometime in the 1970s, but I still harbor hope that someday I might be able to find an old copy of it on eBay. I've tried Google searches to find out the name of the game, but no luck so far.
It's hard to believe D&D is thirty years old, jeez... kind of serves to remind me that I'm getting old, too.
Straczynski wanted to be true (well, mostly true, anyway) to the laws of physics in Babylon 5. When he originally created the show, all scenes taking place in outer space took place in silence. When they did a test showing to interested audiences, there was too much negative reaction -- most notably, a lot of people thought that there had been a problem with the sound production, so Straczynski decided to put the sound back in.
It's still really cool, though, that his design for the Starfuries is now being adapted by NASA for use in the future.
Well, that's not the kind of response I was looking for, but considering the source, I suppose it's probably about the best I could have expected. I am disappointed, but not surprised.
Your own postings are half adult, half spoiled child. I'm not going to respond to the puerile part because that's a waste of time. Addressing instead the areas where you've been constructive and/or interesting...
You have an interesting position on questioning authority, but the problem is, it can only go so far. If you take a look at everything you've learned (even at the college level), you'll see that the great majority of it is material that you haven't personally confirmed -- that's the way the world works. The best you can usually do is examine what other people have said and review it. (You're also quite right about the United States having a lousy foreign policy, although I'm not sure how that pertains to "believing" in Uzbekistan or the like.)
My GF (who is a real person, I assure you) and I have, in fact, used Google a fair amount in researching our difficulties, but you missed my point -- I was offering you an opportunity to become my teacher, and you declined it, opting instead for (mostly) further ridicule. As I said, I'm disappointed, but not surprised. I've always found great satisfaction in helping others with their problems, and I've never really understood why most people don't have a similar attitude, choosing instead to sneer at people who need help instead of actually helping them.
Mixed in with the contempt, you did offer a couple of useful suggestions, and for those, I thank you. I'm looking forward to breaking into this area, and I'm sure that experimenting with fink will be a good place to start. (Accepting authority again, btw.)
As for the rest... well, I know it's an old cliché to tell someone to grow up, and I'd prefer to find a way to phrase that more politely. However, subtlety is typically lost on those who most need to be told that they need to address their immaturity.
No, I am not "easily led to believe things". It's just that I tend to take authority figures at the word most of the time, just as most of the rest of the human race does. For example, you've probably never been to Uzbekistan, and you've probably never even met anyone who's been there, but you don't doubt its existence because others with authority have written about it. When I was first researching OS X, the articles that I read on it said that recompiling Linux for OS X required significant effort (most notably in modification of the source code), so I never looked into it any further because I'm not a developer.
In talking about my previous work experience, I was not "bragging", nor was I mentioning anything irrelevant. You called my IT skills into question, and I responded. That is both relevant and factual.
Regarding the Pentagon, I submit for your consideration that you've drawn the wrong conclusion. Rather than assuming that the Pentagon made an error in judgment by hiring me, you should question whether your assessment of my character is accurate, especially since the people who hired me, who recommended me, and so forth obviously know me quite a bit better than you possibly could.
I find it rather hard to comprehend how you misunderstood what I was writing about in my blog, BTW. I am not mystified by the use of email; I am reviewing different email clients and assessing their various strengths and weaknesses, much the same way that software reviewers do for industry periodicals. I would think that that is rather obvious, since I explain their features, features that are lacking, type of server support, and the like (which obviously belies the statement that I am baffled by email).
Finally, if you see me as someone who would rather "bitch and moan than fix things", then that, as well, speaks to your error in judgment regarding my character, especially inasmuch as an IT career requires one to have a very strong desire to investigate difficulties and attempt to resolve them -- and it isn't only in my career, either. Many is the time that my GF and I have sat down together to research and resolve difficulties or to teach things to each other.
I offer you a suggestion. In your childhood, you may have heard your parents tell you to "do something constructive". In that light, instead of heaping me with scorn, why don't you recommend some resources to me for learning about compiling Linux applications for OS X, since, as I've said, I want to pursue it, and you seem to be implying that you know quite a bit about it? Most people (at least, people who are adults) ultimately derive greater satisfaction from mentoring than abusing; perhaps you will be one such person?
Although (last I heard) TSA recommended leaving checked bags unlocked, you are sometimes required by federal law to lock your checked baggage. For instance, if you have a firearm in the suitcase, you are required to have the firearm in a locked case, and you must be the only person who has a key to that case. That case must then be put into a suitcase, and that suitcase, in turn, must also be locked. (Besides which, even if all of this weren't required by law, putting your firearm in an unlocked suitcase would be a really bad idea.)
If these new "TSA locks" become a reality, I wonder what will happen to those of us who fly with firearms. Will we be required to use a TSA lock not only on our suitcases, but on our firearm cases as well? I hope not -- the risk of theft is already high enough to make me pretty nervous as it is.
Jeez, man, that's pretty harsh. There's one area of Macs that I don't know much about, development, and you say that I'm a worthless human being?
As it happens, I did know about porting Unix and Linux apps to OS X, but I had always been led to believe that it was a rather difficult process, so I never pursued it because I didn't think it was worth the effort. Now that I know otherwise, I intend to look into it further.
As to my experience... well, I've been an IT professional for years and have held various positions in systems administration and engineering, including one at the Pentagon (which I only lost because I was denied a security clearance).
Regarding your comments about choosing a partner based on his technical abilities, that's beneath contempt, and I won't even dignify it with a response.
A couple of weeks or so ago, I downloaded demo versions of both Sophos' and Norton's antivirus software (at the time, I was running OS X 10.2.8). Like anyone else here, I receive a lot of Windows viruses in my email, and I wanted to see how Sophos and Norton would handle them. I saved several different Windows virii to my desktop, then turned both Sophos and Norton loose on my PowerBook. They both reported that there were no viruses on my system.
I suppose I can at least be thankful that the manufacturers both gave me a free evaluation so I didn't have to waste any money determining that the products were useless.
Before you ask -- I did check them both to make sure the signatures were up to date. I don't actually remember the details on this, but AFAIK, at least one of them said I couldn't get updated signatures in the evaluation version (which to my mind means that you can't really evaluate it at all, but whatever).
Eminent domain is not always a violation of private property rights. There are times when the government has a legitimate interest in taking private property and putting it to public use. The framers of the Constitution recognized this and wrote an appropriate clause into the Constitution to ensure that the government would do this only for legitimate purposes and would give just compensation to the owner of the private propery being seized. As to the situation in Hawaii -- I presume you are referring to the dispute between Bishop Estates and its various tenants (I was born and raised in Honolulu and I remember that dispute -- in fact, a rep from Bishop Estates spoke at my social studies class on this topic when I was in high school). The reason for the lawsuit was not simply that the tenants wanted to own the land they had been leasing for so long, although that was certainly a part of it. It was also that Bishop Estates was attempting to grossly increase the tenants' land leasing fees, in many cases by five or six times. If your rent went from six or seven hundred dollars a month to three thousand dollars a month, you'd be upset, too. Not only that, most of these tenants were renting only the land from Bishop Estates -- they had to build their houses themselves, buying all the construction materials, paying the contractors, and so on. This meant that they couldn't exactly say, "The rent on this land is too high -- let's move someplace else." They were stuck there, since the houses that they owned couldn't be moved. Bishop Estates knew that, which is why they tried to get away with the insane price increases. This was what the Supreme Court had a problem with, and that's why they ruled against Bishop Estates.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but don't dictatorial countries such as Laos, China, and Cuba generally centralize Internet access thru government-owned gateways so they can filter any content they don't like? I admit that keeping out "subversive" materials would be easier said than done, but such governments could (for example) firewall access to the Washington Post web site or whatever and make it harder (though obviously not impossible) to read their content. They'd also be able to keep an eye on Internet traffic, perhaps sniffing for certain keywords and phrases, to see whether anyone in the country is accessing "subversive" material.
Thank you for the advice -- I'm already looking into getting a copy of the decision and also appealing the decision. There's not a reason in the world that anyone should think I"m untrustworthy over something like this.
I disclosed everything they asked for, including the name change. They told me that the name change was the reason I was turned down.
I don't blame you for being skeptical -- if it hadn't happened to me, I don't think I would have believed it, either. But it's true.
My now-ex employer told me he wasn't surprised, and that since 9/11 Secrets are a lot harder to get than they used to be. A friend of his who currently has a Secret is now in danger of losing it because his wife is French. Again -- government keeping its priorities straight.
A few months ago, I applied for and received a job as a network engineer at the Pentagon. One of the job requirements was that I had to get a "Secret" security clearance. The company hired me after I told them I was eligible for such a clearance. I started working there while the oh-so sensible and efficient federal government did a background check on me. Two months later, they turned me down, saying that I was a risk to national security because I had my name legally changed thirteen years ago. I therefore lost my job six weeks ago because I went thru a perfectly legal (and public) process that meant nothing more than that I didn't have to have my asshole father's last name anymore. This in spite of the fact that others have received Secret clearances -- and even Top Secret clearances -- after having histories of drug use, mental illness, and even prison sentences, among other things.
This is the same government that says it's going to protect us from Yamir Shitzak blowing us up in the name of Allah. Do you feel any safer? 'Cuz I sure as hell don't.
Though how many g's would a pilot endure at 5000mph?
G force isn't a function of velocity, it's a function of acceleration (actually, G force is acceleration). In other words, it doesn't matter how fast you're going, it matters how fast you get to that speed. If you're in a car, you'll experience more G force if you go from zero to sixty in five seconds than you will if you go from zero to sixty in fifteen seconds. The same princple applies to flight.
...if you do doubt your courage or your strength, come nae further! For death awaits you all, with nasty, big, pointy teeth!
OS X 10.0 may have been released on that date, but I wouldn't call that the "real" OS X... most people, including myself, considered that version more of a beta than a final release, even though Apple had already released an official "beta" some months before that. IMO, OS X didn't become a "real" OS until version 10.1.
Microsoft is a greedy monopolist, convicted of illegal behavior to maintain its monopoly. If Apple had had any business sense starting in the mid to late Eighties or so, though, they would be the monopoly today, and frankly, we'd be even worse off under them than we are with the Microsoft monopoly now; Apple is a far, far greedier company even than Microsoft is. Remember how they priced Macs from 1984 to about 1994 or thereabouts? The price discrepancy today is annoying, but back then, it was absolutely appalling. If Apple had managed to dominate, competition would probably never have forced them to start striving for more competitive pricing, and many of us today probably wouldn't even have computers.
Disclosure, for anyone who is wondering or cares: I'm one of the many longtime Macintosh enthusiasts who loves the computer but hates the company that makes it.
Others have already pointed out that the so-called "discounts" offered by loyalty cards really aren't. You're supposed to think that you're getting a discount off the regular price if you use your loyalty card, when the reality is that you're paying a higher-than-standard price if you don't use a loyalty card.
It reminds me of mail-in rebates. Someone not long ago -- I think it was Ed Foster, in his column "The Gripe Line", but I don't remember for sure -- pointed out that when D-Link or whoever offers you a $30 "mail-in rebate" on that WiFi router, they don't actually want to give you a lower price -- if they did, they'd just mark the price down. What they're hoping is that people will be drawn into the store by the lure of the so-called "discount price", buy the router, then decide it's too much of a hassle to fill out all the forms, mail them, and wait six to eight weeks for the check. It's a rather deceptive marketing practice, just like loyalty cards are.
First of all, as others in this thread are already pointing out, the security issues are problematic, to say the least... you want to store all that financial information in a Microsoft server, with Microsoft's terrible security record? No, thanks.
Second, Microsoft already has a ridiculous amount of power over the lives of the ordinary consumer, and the ordinary consumer knows it and deeply resents it. Even if they're not technically literate enough to be able to use non-MS products regularly, they still don't want to give Billgatus of Borg any more power over them than they absolutely have to.
Related to that, Passport is designed to force people to use MS products. I have a Passport ID (which I created only because I have friends on MS Messenger, not because I wanted to), and it's nothing but one solid headache. Just as an experiment, I've tried to log in to a number of sites with Passport using my regular browser, Safari, and it never works. It works fine in Internet Explorer, though -- gee, you don't suppose MS purposely designed it not to function with any browser other than its own, do you? Nah... I mean, they've never done anything like that before...
hello, dear sir:
i know my email will come as a surprise to you as we have had no contact before, but i am urging you to have no concern. i got your name and address from the girl who operates the computer.
my name is gen. imaskammer withnopekker. i have come to you with the blessings of god for an urgent and confidential business proposal to import a dell laptop computer from my home country of lagos, nigeria to your...
We've been advertising our existence for over half a century now. I read somewhere (can't find the source right now) that Earth puts out as much radio flux as a small star. It's a little late to stop, unless we all start subscribing to cable.
Good point, but how far do those signals travel before they're no longer detectable? I'd guess it's a pretty short distance -- no more than a couple of light years or so at most -- but I admit that's a semi-educated guess based only a couple of semesters of college physics.
First of all, "sending a signal to different galaxies" won't work. Among other things, it would take several hundred thousand years for a signal to reach even the closest galaxies to us (the Magellanic Clouds, IIRC). If the signal even got there in the first place, which it probably wouldn't because it would weaken and degrade before it got even a fraction of the distance.
On the more far out and paranoid side, it would probably not be a good idea for us to be advertising our existence. What if the first civilization we found was far more technologically advanced that we are -- and also highly aggressive and hostile? It would be a better idea for us, if we find any other alien civilizations, to study them quietly for a while to see whether we even want them to know about us.
Smaller and lighter is usually a good thing with mobile devices, but doesn't there come a point when you've gone too far? In particular, with a wristwatch PDA, I'd be concerned that the screen is too small to be useful -- even on a regular-size PDA, I sometimes feel "cramped".
For some reason, I didn't think of NATting until after I posted that. Must not have had enough coffee. I think suicide would be a slight overreaction to such an oversight, however. ;-)