If I understand this properly (and it's not 100% guaranteed that I do), this sounds like an excessively complicated solution that would yield relatively little benefit. The "sandwich" idea from TFA sounds especially counterproductive, if external power is required to keep the hot side hit & the cold side cold.
Instead of trying to harness waste heat to eke out a fraction of a percent of extra processing power, here's an idea: how about sucking that waste heat into a small insulated pipe with a low-voltage van, and running that pipe down to my feet? It's very cold near the floor of my apartment, and some warm air aimed at my tootsies would be greatly appreciated while I use my computer.
Maybe this pipe could have a little door I could close in the summer, when the additional warmth would be less welcome.
Personally (assuming the scammers didn't have any information that could result in them pursuing payment beyond e-mails, i.e. dinging my credit rating), I would remove that particular OpenOffice.org installation from my system and delete the install files. I would then disregard that and all subsequent communication from those scammers, and would go seek out the official, free installation.
Assuming she didn't give them any bank account, credit card or PayPal info (or any other type of payment info along those lines), what could they possibly do if she didn't pay? Keep sending her e-mails? Configuring e-mail filters to send them straight to the trash would quickly take care of that problem.
The fact that they allowed her to download & install the software before attempting to collect payment sounds like one could conceivably consider it to be "trialware", which would mean that deleting it in lieu of paying would be a totally legit response to being billed.
I have nothing against Detroit. The only difference between Chicago and Detroit is that, rather than toiling in slaughterhouses and rock quarries, you twist nuts and bolts together on smokey, soot-encrusted assembly lines.
You see, I was originally born & raised in a hovel belonging to a grizzled old midwife in Flint, and my parents now live in Oakland County, not far from where you currently scratch out your meager, culturally-void existence.
Take heart, fellow prisoner of the vast, unforgiving wasteland between New York and California, for we are brothers in our misery.
nope.. i'll quote the relevant text which makes your fallacious reply ironic:
nope, i've worked in the NE too.
I don't hear "dittoheads" spewing...pseudo-intellectual fallacy....
Okay, I'll bite. My statement is ironic because I'm apparently a follower of Rush Limbaugh (this was the onlydefinition of "dittohead" I was able to find using Google)?
As for the "pseudo-intellectual fallacy" part, I'm fairly certain that this just means "any viewpoint that contradicts my own". There's no point in arguing with me on this "static property", as I'm holding as firm to it as you are to yours regarding the boorish & unintelligent nature of everyone outside of the bubble in which you live.
First of all, I refute the idea that reductio ad absurdum (which is what I assume you're referring to when you say "argument ad absurditum") is a fallacious form of argument. It is in fact a valid form of argument, as long as one is careful to not allow it to become a strawman argument.
While Wikipedia isn't an academically citeable source, its article on this topic starts off with what I found to be an excellent summary, and seems to match up fairly well with the peer-reviewed source cited above:
"Reductio ad absurdum (Latin for "reduction to the absurd")...is a type of logical argument where one assumes a claim for the sake of argument and derives an absurd or ridiculous outcome, and then concludes that the original claim must have been wrong as it led to an absurd result."
I am arguing that your original claim (Every city and county between new york and san francisco is filled to the ears with "adults" who never grew up. (that's not to say there aren't a fair share IN those cities, but the ratio is far higher in what is colloquially referred to as "middle america") is absurd, and am following your claim to its most extreme and ridiculous outcome to argue my viewpoint that your original claim is wrong.
Would it have helped if I'd ended my previous post with Q.E.A.?
Given the nature of the post you are replying to, ironically fallacious.
Are you now saying that you were joking, or being sarcastic? Am I guilty of feeding the troll?
Your generalizations are absolutely correct. I speak from personal experience, as I live in Chicago. I guess you could say I live "downtown", if you could call it that, as it's basically a patch of hard-packed dirt that serves as a "town square" of sorts surrounded by the burnt-out & partially-collapsed shells of once-permanent structures intermingled with crude huts and flimsy market stands.
Our dialect here is a mangled, barely-literate system of monosyllabic grunts that is only vaguely recognizable as having once derived from English.
When we're not engaging in menial labor in deplorable slaughterhouses and rock quarries, we venture out of our rudimentary shelters to beat up minorities, wager our food stamps on cockfights, drink copious amounts of homemade liquor, and, when there are no minorities left to beat up, drunkenly brawl with each other.
On Sundays we all attend Latin mass. At least I think it's Latin...it could be English for all I know (we speak a primarily grunt-based dialect, if you'll recall).
In summary, everything between the coasts is just awful. We are a godforsaken group of sloping-browed heathens who will quite literally eat you alive if you attempt to venture near any of our Mad Max-like settlements. I would advise you and all like-minded coastal urbanites to stay in your cities and not attempt to make any contact with us, for your own safety of course.
So whereas I would recommend it for kids with too much time on their hands or people trapped in a hospital or other institution because it does provide the illusion of actually having accomplished something, I would not recommended it for people who have jobs and kids of their own to support, as they almost certainly have more important things to do with their time.
I'm curious to know, what do you consider to be "appropriate" way for the non-institutionalized and those with jobs/lives/responsibilities to let off some steam, relax a bit, or entertain themselves? Or do parents/working folk not deserve any form of "me time" to get their head together & rest up after the stresses of parenting/jobs? Is the concept that people need downtime a bunch of hippie crap?
Also, although the penalty for dying is very small (mostly costs you time to run from graveyard back to where you died), it still stings when you get killed, and can leave me depressed for the rest of the day.
If this is actually true, and not just hyperbole, then it is indeed a good idea that you opted not to continue playing WoW (or any other video game). In games like this, death happens (quite often, when you're first learning the ropes). If you find yourself taking your player's death that personally or feeling that affected by it, then I would advise against playing them. IANA mental health professional, just my two cents.
I think the grappling hook/chains are pretty sweet.
I haven't been yanked by an abomination unless I was somehow asking for it by somehow getting the mob's attention (by running through its aggro radius, or hitting it with a throwing knife).
Why watch TV? Why go to movies? Why read books? Why build model cars? Why knit scarves?
I understand your question, and don't sense any hostility or sarcasm, so please know that I'm not trying to attack you or anything:)
What I'm trying to say is that, like any other time-pass or hobby, it's something to do that's entertaining/engaging. I myself play WoW very casually (a couple hours at a time, a few times a week) during time that would otherwise be spent watching reruns, playing Bejeweled, and other brainless "downtime" activities.
A vast majority of people who play MMOs like WoW don't actually play for hours & hours on end...instead, they treat their online games the way others treat playing their Xbox, or playing solitaire, or watching reruns on TV: something entertaining to do between keeping up with responsibilities & relationships.
If you think of WoW less like shooting heroin and more like drinking beer, it becomes more understandable: WoW is not an addictive life-destroyer, it's just a pleasurable activity that most do in moderation. A very small minority, however, go overboard & let it destroy their lives.
I always considered murlocs to be irritating, but nothing terrible. After doing the murloc quests in Borean Tundra, I actually started to like them...especially the cute little baby murlocs you have to rescue.
Nagas, on the other hand...I hate them more than any other type of mob I've encountered in the game.
None of your examples are manual labor, whereas community service ofetn includes such work (picking up trash). See the difference? We're requiring people to do manual labor?!
This is the sort of dysfunctional leap in logic that starts those bogus e-mail forwards and sparks semi-literate ranting & raving on political forums.
First of all, community service can include manual labor, but it's not a necessity. We had a 40-hour-per-semester community service in high school (because of National Honor Society...for non-NHS students it was 10 hours per semester). I volunteered at a hospice care facility (no manual labor involved, unless you count making peanut butter & ice cream shakes so that terminal cancer patients can keep their caloric intake up to be manual labor), and ended up doing around 150 hours per semester.
In college I volunteered at the university hospital. It was pretty easy work - discharge patients, wheel patients from ICU to surgery & vice versa, grab stuff from the supply closet when asked, and play a lot of spider solitaire during downtimes. Hardly breaking rocks at the quarry. I ended up doing around 112 hours per term (2 4-hour shifts per week).
Not all community service work is picking up trash on the shoulder of I-90. There are opportunities for clerical work (filing records down at the free clinic), IT work (building a website for your church), working with people (coaching for a special needs soccer team), etc.
I think it would be great if kids were encouraged to do some community service, and I love the idea of using college tuition credits as an enticement.
That said, I do agree with those who have stated that it should not be made mandatory. That seems to me to go against the grain of this country's core ideals. Sure, helping others & contributing to the betterment of society at large is fantastic & is something everyone should do...but have the right to instead choose to sit on your ass & not do a damn thing, while pathetic & sad, is an integral part of our freedoms and should be protected.
I'm not sure how many electoral votes Azeroth has, but it could be a key battleground state.
I think that Azerothian voter turnout will be extremely low.
My predicted exit poll results:
- 55% Ignored the voting booths & farmed HKs instead
- 25% Didn't make it to the voting booths because they were AFK in the starting area
- 15% Made it to the voting booth, but instead of going in & voting, they jumped onto its roof and spammed/dance over & over
- 5% Were too busy repeatedly spamming/bg with "every sucks by me" and "just let them win" to even realize there was an election going on
His point is actually a fantastic one - it doesn't even require much in the way of advanced critical thinking to discern it, as he lays it out quite well.
Imagine, if you will, that you, an upstanding, responsible, law-abiding individual go to a tasteful and classy wine & cheese party. While there, you run into your friend "Crazy Eddie", who is known for being a bit wild & obnoxious. But at this wine & cheese party, he's cleaned up, dressed well, and on his best behavior.
At some point in the evening, Crazy Eddie pulls out his camera and asks someone to take his picture with you. You gladly oblige, and you both assume the traditional "bro" pose: put your arms around each others' shoulders, raise your glasses to the camera, and smile. What a pleasant, friendly picture. Crazy Eddie then goes home, uploads the pic to his Facebook page, and tags it with your name (and thus a link to your Facebook profile) and the caption "Me & my best bud Anonymous Coward chuggin' some vino".
Now cut to 6 months later. A prospective employer is checking you out online, and decides to check out your Facebook profile. You've wisely configured your profile so that it's only viewable by friends. Crazy Eddie, however, has not. The prospective employer finds the photo of you & Crazy Eddie "chuggin' some vino" cozily nestled between a picture of Crazy Eddie skillfully downing the contents of a 20-foot beer bong, Crazy Eddie motorboating a well-endowed, bikini-clad young woman in South Padre, and Crazy Eddie sleeping soundly on the bathroom floor in a puddle of his own vomit.
This prospective employer is not going to look at that and think, "Wow, Crazy Eddie sure cleans up well!" No, he's likely going to think, "Huh. Mr. Coward's resume certainly is impressive, but I don't know if I want to hire someone who's going to be calling in sick because he's hungover or locked in a Mexican jail. Just look at this motorboating sonofabitch!" This is certainly a totally unfair inference - you didn't guzzle the giant beer bong, you didn't memorialize your face-meets-cleavage moment, and you didn't use your own puke for a pillow - that was all Crazy Eddie. But because of that picture, you are guilty by association, because as far as this prospective employer is concerned, your "best bud" is a drunk idiot, so you must be one too.
I believe this is the just the sort of "unwelcome conclusion" to which the GP was referring.
If I ever want to find you, I'll just go to the house with no numbers on it, no mailbox out front, and a lawn full of trenches where utility connections used to be, and will keep opening doors until I find the guy with no fingerprints, dyed hair, and a face like Jocelyn Wildenstein sitting next to the burnt-out shell of a computer.
And if you're not home, it means you're probably out killing the neighbor. I'll either wait for you to come home after you're done hiding the body, or I'll go next door and find you there.
This photo was taken at my sister's friend's cousin's lesbian wedding in Monaco. That's me on lead guitar.
While your whole suggested "backstory" made me chuckle, the "lead guitar" bit was the cherry on top.
The big problem that came to mind is that, were I to try this idea, 80 people would leave Captain-Obvious-style comments on said photo:
"Dude, that's not you"
"Who is that guy?"
"OMG UR SOOOOO FUNY THATS NOT U"
"lol thats not you man!!1!"
"You crack me up, just like you did last Friday at that party you guys had at your place at 1234 W. Main St. in downtown Whoville, corner of Main and 1st (Main is one way going east...if you pass the Kwik-E-Mart you've gone too far). Have fun on your two week vacation during which time your apartment, unit 2E, which has no security system and a bedroom window that unlatches if you jiggle it hard enough, will be empty!"
Okay, maybe that last one was a bit over the top...but you know what I mean:)
I'm a Windows-eschewing user who has embraced all things Google...Gmail, Google Docs, Google Calendar (my wife keeps it up to date, which prevents "You didn't tell me we had plans on Friday!" moments). I also have Facebook, Friendster, and LinkedIn profiles.
It's funny, I went out of my way to keep my social networking site profiles generic (no pictures, no personal info, no personal statements, no likes/dislikes, etc.), and only really used them so that, when friends sent me links saying "Dude, check out this chick I work with" or "Look what this guy we went to high school with us up to now", I could see who they were talking about.
But what I found out is that, if you know people who have profiles, and those people own digital cameras, and you've ever appeared in any of their pictures, there is a chance that your privacy has already gone up in smoke. Facebook as a very irritating feature called "tagging"...Jenny, an avid Facebook user, takes a picture of their friends Bob, Susan and Mike. Jenny then uploads that picture to her Facebook profile and "tags" that picture with the names of all the people in it. If any of those people have Facebook profiles, their names in that tag will link to them. So in this case, this picture would be tagged with Bob, Susan and Mike. Congratulations, your face is now on the web, and has a name attached to it. This tagging feature is optional, but I've found that it seems to be quite popular.
So despite my efforts to keep my image & life details to myself, this has been undermined many times over by Facebook fanatics who have tagged pictures of me, and have added "helpful" details about how the picture was taken at my wife's cousin's wedding, complete with dates & locations.
Your privacy is gone, my friend. You might as well suck it up & try to look at the silver lining: it is sorta fun to make contact with old classmates and to laugh at ex-girlfriends who've really let themselves go.
You should've taken credit for this post, which made me laugh loud enough that the nosy guy in the next office popped his head in to say, "Whatcha laughing at?"
What's the difference between a border guard scanning an RFID chip in order to pull up all kinds of information on you, versus said border guard typing your name, drivers license number, and license-issuing state code into a search form to pull up said information?
This is mostly a rhetorical question, but I'd say the only difference is the amount you waste standing there as you watch the border guard hunt-and-peck your name, realize he mistyped your name, backspace-backspace-backspace, retype your name, (repeat with drivers license number) and hit enter.
I guess what I'm trying to say is, how does having all of your records linked to a code stored in an RFID chip really differ all that much from having all of your records link to your name/drivers license number?
That being said, I totally agree with your "theater of defense" comment...no amount of RFID chips, confiscated laptops, and cavity searches will do anything to prevent a highly-motivated terrorist from perpetrating whatever asshattery he's got in mind, especially when a bunch of armchair geeks like us/.ers can come up with workarounds in less time than it takes to vote in the latest/. poll.
Tight security at a Canadian border crossing? Sneak across the border via some dirt logging trail in northern Minnesota. Border guards confiscating laptops? Encrypt the doc & Gmail it to yourself as an attachment. TSA performing cavity searches? Don't hide stuff in your keister (or if you absolutely must hide stuff in your keister, stick to that logging trail in Minnesota).
The vast majority of people affected by stuff like this are law-abiding folks to whom the government wants to demonstrate: "Check it out, we're keeping you safe! These are your tax dollars at work! Vote Quimby!"
Some of the confusion might also be because of "double jeopardy" the legal defense, which forbids an individual from being tried for the same crime twice.
But yes, you are correct, it's also the stage in the game how "Jeopardy" where each clue's wager amount doubles and Trebek gets so excited that his calm, measured demeanor gets even more calm & measured;)
50 Cent is a great example...in addition to his "gold plated house" and other high-priced tchotchkes, he had the foresight to buy a 10% stake in Glaceau. When Coca-Cola bought it out, he netted a cool $400 million.
So by your logic, the fact that I'm videotaped by surveillance cameras when I stop at the convenience store for a soda automatically means they're treating me like a criminal. Just because convenience stores get robbed doesn't mean that every customer is an armed robber. That's discrimination!
Isn't it possible that having a camera going might give one a sense of well-being, and will most likely record either a) a mundane drive to the grocery store, or b) a routine traffic stop during which the officer was completely professional & by-the-book?
I personally don't plan on installing a camera in my car, and will just hope for the best. But I consider having a video camera in one's car to be similar to having a home security system - 99.99% of the time, it won't be necessary. But in the off chance that things do go wrong, it'll more than prove its worth.
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If I understand this properly (and it's not 100% guaranteed that I do), this sounds like an excessively complicated solution that would yield relatively little benefit. The "sandwich" idea from TFA sounds especially counterproductive, if external power is required to keep the hot side hit & the cold side cold.
Instead of trying to harness waste heat to eke out a fraction of a percent of extra processing power, here's an idea: how about sucking that waste heat into a small insulated pipe with a low-voltage van, and running that pipe down to my feet? It's very cold near the floor of my apartment, and some warm air aimed at my tootsies would be greatly appreciated while I use my computer.
Maybe this pipe could have a little door I could close in the summer, when the additional warmth would be less welcome.
Personally (assuming the scammers didn't have any information that could result in them pursuing payment beyond e-mails, i.e. dinging my credit rating), I would remove that particular OpenOffice.org installation from my system and delete the install files. I would then disregard that and all subsequent communication from those scammers, and would go seek out the official, free installation.
Assuming she didn't give them any bank account, credit card or PayPal info (or any other type of payment info along those lines), what could they possibly do if she didn't pay? Keep sending her e-mails? Configuring e-mail filters to send them straight to the trash would quickly take care of that problem.
The fact that they allowed her to download & install the software before attempting to collect payment sounds like one could conceivably consider it to be "trialware", which would mean that deleting it in lieu of paying would be a totally legit response to being billed.
IMO, IANAL, etc.
Bandwagon jumpers are not welcome among real Mac users. Keep your filthy PC fingers to yourself.
I believe Steve Jobs would beg to differ.
I have nothing against Detroit. The only difference between Chicago and Detroit is that, rather than toiling in slaughterhouses and rock quarries, you twist nuts and bolts together on smokey, soot-encrusted assembly lines.
You see, I was originally born & raised in a hovel belonging to a grizzled old midwife in Flint, and my parents now live in Oakland County, not far from where you currently scratch out your meager, culturally-void existence.
Take heart, fellow prisoner of the vast, unforgiving wasteland between New York and California, for we are brothers in our misery.
just keep being intellectually dishonest.
Translation: Just keep disagreeing with me.
Will do.
nope.. i'll quote the relevant text which makes your fallacious reply ironic:
nope, i've worked in the NE too.
I don't hear "dittoheads" spewing ...pseudo-intellectual fallacy....
Okay, I'll bite. My statement is ironic because I'm apparently a follower of Rush Limbaugh (this was the only definition of "dittohead" I was able to find using Google)?
As for the "pseudo-intellectual fallacy" part, I'm fairly certain that this just means "any viewpoint that contradicts my own". There's no point in arguing with me on this "static property", as I'm holding as firm to it as you are to yours regarding the boorish & unintelligent nature of everyone outside of the bubble in which you live.
Oh yay, argument ad absurditum.
Sadly it's a fallacious form of argument.
First of all, I refute the idea that reductio ad absurdum (which is what I assume you're referring to when you say "argument ad absurditum") is a fallacious form of argument. It is in fact a valid form of argument, as long as one is careful to not allow it to become a strawman argument.
While Wikipedia isn't an academically citeable source, its article on this topic starts off with what I found to be an excellent summary, and seems to match up fairly well with the peer-reviewed source cited above:
"Reductio ad absurdum (Latin for "reduction to the absurd")...is a type of logical argument where one assumes a claim for the sake of argument and derives an absurd or ridiculous outcome, and then concludes that the original claim must have been wrong as it led to an absurd result."
I am arguing that your original claim (Every city and county between new york and san francisco is filled to the ears with "adults" who never grew up. (that's not to say there aren't a fair share IN those cities, but the ratio is far higher in what is colloquially referred to as "middle america") is absurd, and am following your claim to its most extreme and ridiculous outcome to argue my viewpoint that your original claim is wrong.
Would it have helped if I'd ended my previous post with Q.E.A.?
Given the nature of the post you are replying to, ironically fallacious.
Are you now saying that you were joking, or being sarcastic? Am I guilty of feeding the troll?
Your generalizations are absolutely correct. I speak from personal experience, as I live in Chicago. I guess you could say I live "downtown", if you could call it that, as it's basically a patch of hard-packed dirt that serves as a "town square" of sorts surrounded by the burnt-out & partially-collapsed shells of once-permanent structures intermingled with crude huts and flimsy market stands.
Our dialect here is a mangled, barely-literate system of monosyllabic grunts that is only vaguely recognizable as having once derived from English.
When we're not engaging in menial labor in deplorable slaughterhouses and rock quarries, we venture out of our rudimentary shelters to beat up minorities, wager our food stamps on cockfights, drink copious amounts of homemade liquor, and, when there are no minorities left to beat up, drunkenly brawl with each other.
On Sundays we all attend Latin mass. At least I think it's Latin...it could be English for all I know (we speak a primarily grunt-based dialect, if you'll recall).
In summary, everything between the coasts is just awful. We are a godforsaken group of sloping-browed heathens who will quite literally eat you alive if you attempt to venture near any of our Mad Max-like settlements. I would advise you and all like-minded coastal urbanites to stay in your cities and not attempt to make any contact with us, for your own safety of course.
Clearly you need help...but as long as you keep cranking out creepy, funny posts like this one, I'm certainly not going to give it to you.
So whereas I would recommend it for kids with too much time on their hands or people trapped in a hospital or other institution because it does provide the illusion of actually having accomplished something, I would not recommended it for people who have jobs and kids of their own to support, as they almost certainly have more important things to do with their time.
I'm curious to know, what do you consider to be "appropriate" way for the non-institutionalized and those with jobs/lives/responsibilities to let off some steam, relax a bit, or entertain themselves? Or do parents/working folk not deserve any form of "me time" to get their head together & rest up after the stresses of parenting/jobs? Is the concept that people need downtime a bunch of hippie crap?
Also, although the penalty for dying is very small (mostly costs you time to run from graveyard back to where you died), it still stings when you get killed, and can leave me depressed for the rest of the day.
If this is actually true, and not just hyperbole, then it is indeed a good idea that you opted not to continue playing WoW (or any other video game). In games like this, death happens (quite often, when you're first learning the ropes). If you find yourself taking your player's death that personally or feeling that affected by it, then I would advise against playing them. IANA mental health professional, just my two cents.
I think the grappling hook/chains are pretty sweet.
I haven't been yanked by an abomination unless I was somehow asking for it by somehow getting the mob's attention (by running through its aggro radius, or hitting it with a throwing knife).
Why watch TV? Why go to movies? Why read books? Why build model cars? Why knit scarves?
I understand your question, and don't sense any hostility or sarcasm, so please know that I'm not trying to attack you or anything :)
What I'm trying to say is that, like any other time-pass or hobby, it's something to do that's entertaining/engaging. I myself play WoW very casually (a couple hours at a time, a few times a week) during time that would otherwise be spent watching reruns, playing Bejeweled, and other brainless "downtime" activities.
A vast majority of people who play MMOs like WoW don't actually play for hours & hours on end...instead, they treat their online games the way others treat playing their Xbox, or playing solitaire, or watching reruns on TV: something entertaining to do between keeping up with responsibilities & relationships.
If you think of WoW less like shooting heroin and more like drinking beer, it becomes more understandable: WoW is not an addictive life-destroyer, it's just a pleasurable activity that most do in moderation. A very small minority, however, go overboard & let it destroy their lives.
I second this.
I always considered murlocs to be irritating, but nothing terrible. After doing the murloc quests in Borean Tundra, I actually started to like them...especially the cute little baby murlocs you have to rescue.
Nagas, on the other hand...I hate them more than any other type of mob I've encountered in the game.
None of your examples are manual labor, whereas community service ofetn includes such work (picking up trash). See the difference? We're requiring people to do manual labor?!
This is the sort of dysfunctional leap in logic that starts those bogus e-mail forwards and sparks semi-literate ranting & raving on political forums.
First of all, community service can include manual labor, but it's not a necessity. We had a 40-hour-per-semester community service in high school (because of National Honor Society...for non-NHS students it was 10 hours per semester). I volunteered at a hospice care facility (no manual labor involved, unless you count making peanut butter & ice cream shakes so that terminal cancer patients can keep their caloric intake up to be manual labor), and ended up doing around 150 hours per semester.
In college I volunteered at the university hospital. It was pretty easy work - discharge patients, wheel patients from ICU to surgery & vice versa, grab stuff from the supply closet when asked, and play a lot of spider solitaire during downtimes. Hardly breaking rocks at the quarry. I ended up doing around 112 hours per term (2 4-hour shifts per week).
Not all community service work is picking up trash on the shoulder of I-90. There are opportunities for clerical work (filing records down at the free clinic), IT work (building a website for your church), working with people (coaching for a special needs soccer team), etc.
I think it would be great if kids were encouraged to do some community service, and I love the idea of using college tuition credits as an enticement.
That said, I do agree with those who have stated that it should not be made mandatory. That seems to me to go against the grain of this country's core ideals. Sure, helping others & contributing to the betterment of society at large is fantastic & is something everyone should do...but have the right to instead choose to sit on your ass & not do a damn thing, while pathetic & sad, is an integral part of our freedoms and should be protected.
I'm not sure how many electoral votes Azeroth has, but it could be a key battleground state.
I think that Azerothian voter turnout will be extremely low.
My predicted exit poll results: /dance over & over /bg with "every sucks by me" and "just let them win" to even realize there was an election going on
- 55% Ignored the voting booths & farmed HKs instead
- 25% Didn't make it to the voting booths because they were AFK in the starting area
- 15% Made it to the voting booth, but instead of going in & voting, they jumped onto its roof and spammed
- 5% Were too busy repeatedly spamming
...then yes rounding up most of the nation would create a very formatible army.
Would said army use NTFS or FAT32?
His point is actually a fantastic one - it doesn't even require much in the way of advanced critical thinking to discern it, as he lays it out quite well.
Imagine, if you will, that you, an upstanding, responsible, law-abiding individual go to a tasteful and classy wine & cheese party. While there, you run into your friend "Crazy Eddie", who is known for being a bit wild & obnoxious. But at this wine & cheese party, he's cleaned up, dressed well, and on his best behavior.
At some point in the evening, Crazy Eddie pulls out his camera and asks someone to take his picture with you. You gladly oblige, and you both assume the traditional "bro" pose: put your arms around each others' shoulders, raise your glasses to the camera, and smile. What a pleasant, friendly picture. Crazy Eddie then goes home, uploads the pic to his Facebook page, and tags it with your name (and thus a link to your Facebook profile) and the caption "Me & my best bud Anonymous Coward chuggin' some vino".
Now cut to 6 months later. A prospective employer is checking you out online, and decides to check out your Facebook profile. You've wisely configured your profile so that it's only viewable by friends. Crazy Eddie, however, has not. The prospective employer finds the photo of you & Crazy Eddie "chuggin' some vino" cozily nestled between a picture of Crazy Eddie skillfully downing the contents of a 20-foot beer bong, Crazy Eddie motorboating a well-endowed, bikini-clad young woman in South Padre, and Crazy Eddie sleeping soundly on the bathroom floor in a puddle of his own vomit.
This prospective employer is not going to look at that and think, "Wow, Crazy Eddie sure cleans up well!" No, he's likely going to think, "Huh. Mr. Coward's resume certainly is impressive, but I don't know if I want to hire someone who's going to be calling in sick because he's hungover or locked in a Mexican jail. Just look at this motorboating sonofabitch!" This is certainly a totally unfair inference - you didn't guzzle the giant beer bong, you didn't memorialize your face-meets-cleavage moment, and you didn't use your own puke for a pillow - that was all Crazy Eddie. But because of that picture, you are guilty by association, because as far as this prospective employer is concerned, your "best bud" is a drunk idiot, so you must be one too.
I believe this is the just the sort of "unwelcome conclusion" to which the GP was referring.
You call that anonymity? You, sir, are mistaken.
If I ever want to find you, I'll just go to the house with no numbers on it, no mailbox out front, and a lawn full of trenches where utility connections used to be, and will keep opening doors until I find the guy with no fingerprints, dyed hair, and a face like Jocelyn Wildenstein sitting next to the burnt-out shell of a computer.
And if you're not home, it means you're probably out killing the neighbor. I'll either wait for you to come home after you're done hiding the body, or I'll go next door and find you there.
This photo was taken at my sister's friend's cousin's lesbian wedding in Monaco. That's me on lead guitar.
While your whole suggested "backstory" made me chuckle, the "lead guitar" bit was the cherry on top.
The big problem that came to mind is that, were I to try this idea, 80 people would leave Captain-Obvious-style comments on said photo:
"Dude, that's not you"
"Who is that guy?"
"OMG UR SOOOOO FUNY THATS NOT U"
"lol thats not you man!!1!"
"You crack me up, just like you did last Friday at that party you guys had at your place at 1234 W. Main St. in downtown Whoville, corner of Main and 1st (Main is one way going east...if you pass the Kwik-E-Mart you've gone too far). Have fun on your two week vacation during which time your apartment, unit 2E, which has no security system and a bedroom window that unlatches if you jiggle it hard enough, will be empty!"
Okay, maybe that last one was a bit over the top...but you know what I mean :)
I'm a Windows-eschewing user who has embraced all things Google...Gmail, Google Docs, Google Calendar (my wife keeps it up to date, which prevents "You didn't tell me we had plans on Friday!" moments). I also have Facebook, Friendster, and LinkedIn profiles.
It's funny, I went out of my way to keep my social networking site profiles generic (no pictures, no personal info, no personal statements, no likes/dislikes, etc.), and only really used them so that, when friends sent me links saying "Dude, check out this chick I work with" or "Look what this guy we went to high school with us up to now", I could see who they were talking about.
But what I found out is that, if you know people who have profiles, and those people own digital cameras, and you've ever appeared in any of their pictures, there is a chance that your privacy has already gone up in smoke. Facebook as a very irritating feature called "tagging"...Jenny, an avid Facebook user, takes a picture of their friends Bob, Susan and Mike. Jenny then uploads that picture to her Facebook profile and "tags" that picture with the names of all the people in it. If any of those people have Facebook profiles, their names in that tag will link to them. So in this case, this picture would be tagged with Bob, Susan and Mike. Congratulations, your face is now on the web, and has a name attached to it. This tagging feature is optional, but I've found that it seems to be quite popular.
So despite my efforts to keep my image & life details to myself, this has been undermined many times over by Facebook fanatics who have tagged pictures of me, and have added "helpful" details about how the picture was taken at my wife's cousin's wedding, complete with dates & locations.
Your privacy is gone, my friend. You might as well suck it up & try to look at the silver lining: it is sorta fun to make contact with old classmates and to laugh at ex-girlfriends who've really let themselves go.
Kudos, whoever you are.
You should've taken credit for this post, which made me laugh loud enough that the nosy guy in the next office popped his head in to say, "Whatcha laughing at?"
What's the difference between a border guard scanning an RFID chip in order to pull up all kinds of information on you, versus said border guard typing your name, drivers license number, and license-issuing state code into a search form to pull up said information?
This is mostly a rhetorical question, but I'd say the only difference is the amount you waste standing there as you watch the border guard hunt-and-peck your name, realize he mistyped your name, backspace-backspace-backspace, retype your name, (repeat with drivers license number) and hit enter.
I guess what I'm trying to say is, how does having all of your records linked to a code stored in an RFID chip really differ all that much from having all of your records link to your name/drivers license number?
That being said, I totally agree with your "theater of defense" comment...no amount of RFID chips, confiscated laptops, and cavity searches will do anything to prevent a highly-motivated terrorist from perpetrating whatever asshattery he's got in mind, especially when a bunch of armchair geeks like us /.ers can come up with workarounds in less time than it takes to vote in the latest /. poll.
Tight security at a Canadian border crossing? Sneak across the border via some dirt logging trail in northern Minnesota. Border guards confiscating laptops? Encrypt the doc & Gmail it to yourself as an attachment. TSA performing cavity searches? Don't hide stuff in your keister (or if you absolutely must hide stuff in your keister, stick to that logging trail in Minnesota).
The vast majority of people affected by stuff like this are law-abiding folks to whom the government wants to demonstrate: "Check it out, we're keeping you safe! These are your tax dollars at work! Vote Quimby!"
Some of the confusion might also be because of "double jeopardy" the legal defense, which forbids an individual from being tried for the same crime twice.
But yes, you are correct, it's also the stage in the game how "Jeopardy" where each clue's wager amount doubles and Trebek gets so excited that his calm, measured demeanor gets even more calm & measured ;)
50 Cent is a great example...in addition to his "gold plated house" and other high-priced tchotchkes, he had the foresight to buy a 10% stake in Glaceau. When Coca-Cola bought it out, he netted a cool $400 million.
So by your logic, the fact that I'm videotaped by surveillance cameras when I stop at the convenience store for a soda automatically means they're treating me like a criminal. Just because convenience stores get robbed doesn't mean that every customer is an armed robber. That's discrimination!
Isn't it possible that having a camera going might give one a sense of well-being, and will most likely record either a) a mundane drive to the grocery store, or b) a routine traffic stop during which the officer was completely professional & by-the-book?
I personally don't plan on installing a camera in my car, and will just hope for the best. But I consider having a video camera in one's car to be similar to having a home security system - 99.99% of the time, it won't be necessary. But in the off chance that things do go wrong, it'll more than prove its worth.