VIPR is allegedly not a response to any particular threat
The threat is very clear - budget cuts. With Osama gone, Al Qaeda a thin shadow of its former self (which was really never much to begin with) and no significant acts of terrorism for the last 10 years, the TSA and the DHS are in jeopardy of being pared back to a size much more appropriate to the risk -- i.e. practically nothing.
Incidentally, the whole thing of Americanising/Anglicizing your name seems a bit pointless if you look Asian anyway. When it was people with obviously Jewish sounding names you can see the point, as anti-semites can't really identify someone as Jewish from their appearance.
Non-westerners don't anglicise their names to avoid discrimination. at least not directly, they do it to improve communication. When someone gets stuck trying to figure out how to say your name, it distracts from the business at hand. After the hundredth time it gets really old too.
If I saw someone's name listed as "Edward Park" or "Sarah Park" I wouldn't assume they were Korean.
2 to 1 odds of being Korean if you limit it to the US population alone. Closer to 80 to 1 if you look at the world population.
That link you provided says nothing about frequency. I'm pretty sure that the 6.2 million Koreans named Park dwarfs the number of anglo Parks by practically two orders of magnitude.
It is not Nicole Bilderback. Even if she hadn't personally denied it, she's an established actress. Not A-list but she's got credits going back to the Fresh Prince of Bel-Air - that does not qualify as "up and coming."
The article barely touches on the real problem here - she paid for an "IMDb Pro" account and Amazon used that info to pull an "above the line" credit report on her. These "above the line" reports contain: name, mother's maiden name, date of birth, sex, address, prior addresses, telephone number, and the Social Security Number and have no legal protection. That's where they got her age from.
So she basically paid Amazon and they used the billing information for purposes other than which she intended. That's the kind of shit that makes me never want to pay for anything on the net - and only use cash in real life too.
I'll see you one useless and raise you a dangerous.
With a normal phone other drivers have a decent chance to notice the person with their hand up to their ear and give them a wider berth. But with the various handsfree laws in many states there is basically no way to distinguish between a normal driver and one who has half their mind on the other end of a telephone conversation.
The only study to ever show a significant improvement in safety with a handsfree phone versus a handheld phone was commissioned by Plantronics - maker of phone headsets. These handfree laws are just another case of "This situation is terrible! Something must be done! The wrong thing is something! So we must do the wrong thing!"
Unless there was some serious gender wage discrimination happening (I wouldn't be surprised if there were), "bank vice president" is not and never will be a middle class job.
Sounds like you don't know much about banks - it's a well-worn joke that everybody at a bank who isn't a teller is a vice president. They hand out titles instead of raises.
That would make all kinds of sense except that the Tea Party, currently a major part of the GOP support is NOT largely made up of social conservatives just fiscal.
The current lead candidate in the GOP primary race is a Mormon, not even recognized as a Christian by the traditional Moral Majority Zelots.
Tied at just 21% (as of yesterday) isn't a particularly strong endorsement. Meanwhile just about every explicitly tea party candidate in any race has been a Christian conservative.
Obama's private schooling was mostly paid for by scholarships because she didn't have the income for it.
Because the grandmother instead (quite reasonably) financed her daughter's PhD in a non-science?
Your question is unclear and your point even less so. How does Obama's mother attending a state college on scholarship or without a scholarship mean anything? Having more than a passing familiarity with both Punahou and UH Manoa, I'm pretty sure Punahou was more expensive than in-state tuition at UH Manoa, a lot more expensive.
Don't presume what others understand as "banker".
Ok, then your mentioning of her having a middle-class job was a NOP, sorry for assuming that you had a point.
Except that he is part of the 1% (his mother was a banker,
His grandmother was a bank teller who worked her way up to vice president at a community bank, she lived and eventually died in a modest condo in a middle-class neighborhood. Obama's private schooling was mostly paid for by scholarships because she didn't have the income for it. His mother was basically a human rights worker with a Phd in anthropology who at one point got involved with the nobel-prize winning microfinance program in Indonesia. A program that traditional banks had basically no interest in at the time.
Neither lady qualifies as a "banker" in the way most people understand the term - i.e. an investment banker.
As for him now being part of the 1% - so what? I'm a member of the 1% myself, but that hasn't stopped me from realizing that the status quo is unhealthy for us all.
this is the mentality that's breeding all these inane GUIs nowaday
You miss the point. The term "learning curve" is far too ambiguous. You want it to mean "the effort required to use a powerful and functional interface." However the "all users are idiots" mentality leads to learning curves that are generally "the effort required to figure out the programmer's point of view and mimic it."
Most people don't stick their hands into tablesaw blades out of willful idiocy, but due to carelessness, tiredness, or trying to do something the machine really isn't well-suited for
And that's where the power-tool analogy falls apart. Nobody sincerely tries to use software by accident.
If you can't be bothered to learn how to use the tool well and safely
The difference here is you assume willful idiocy whereas I'm talking about users who are sincere in their goals. Worrying about wilful idiocy is pointless - no amount of design can overcome someone who just does not care. I'd even go so far as to say that someone who is not sincere in their goals doesn't qualify as a user in the first place.
My intro CS prof always told us that "The first rule of programming is.... the user is an idiot."
He's wrong. Totally, 180 degrees, wrong.
Users know what they want. They may not know all the of steps to get there, and they usually don't know all of the implications and side-effects of those steps. But they do know where they want to end up. It's the software's job to help them get there, in fact that is the one and only job of software. When a user screws up the root cause is a failure of the software to help them take the correct steps to accomplish their goals.
One might argue that there is no practical difference between a user that makes a mistake because they are an idiot and a user that makes a mistake because the application didn't help them enough. But there is a huge difference - you can't fix an idiot, but you can fix your software.
I'm not saying it's easy, in fact user interface stuff is really hard. Which, I think is one of the reasons a lot of developers take the attitude of your prof -- it is so much easier to put the responsibility somewhere else because then the developer is only responsible for "idiot-proofing" their software rather than the much harder job of designing it to enable the user.
Maybe he doesn't want those particular things to be affected, or is willing to do without them (good luck).
Or maybe he's just using the system to try to reform the system.
Nobody thinks its hypocritical for itunes to include cd-ripping support, even though no ipod ever has, or ever will, support CD playback. In all of those cases the new are simply making use of the infrastructure that's in place in order to build towards something better.
But I do know that while in school the evils of the Christian Crusaders was repeated many times, while even the very *fact* that Muslims invaded Holy Land was *completely* glossed over as if they had always been there. And this was 35 years ago in a sectarian school with no Anti-Christian bias.
What you are describing is actually a pro-christian bias. Since pretty much everything the muslims did is left out of high-school history courses that really shouldn't be much of a surprise.
Forget 3D, what I'd like to know is how good is the video codec support under linux? Specifically de-interlacing and pulldown of 1080i video for mpeg2, h264 and vc1? I'd really like to dump my windows box, but so far the very best de-interlacing - both quality and coverage - seems to be with nvidia under windows
Other glaciers in Canada are *growing* (an inconvenient truth), like Helm, Pace and on Mount Logan. In one swoop, this proves......
I like it when people post references for their claims. I tried to verify yours on my own and was not successful.
The claim that Helm Glacier is growing seems to be out right false.
The claim about Mount Logan seem to be based on an increase in height - the assumption being that it's due to ice accumulation, but that does not translate one way or the other to the total mass of the glacier, just the thickness at one point.
I couldn't easily find what "Pace" refers to since the word "pace," as in speed, is commonly used with the word "glacier" so I couldn't verify your claim either way.
For instance many religious people want to ban gay marriage because it's against their religious beliefs: are you saying that if they didn't have religion they would find some other reason to ban gay marriage?
In the case of your example, yeah I do think most would be opposed because gay sex is "icky." Religion is just a convenient way for them to transfer their own personal dislike to something that they don't have to accept responsibility for. Without religion as their scapegoat they would be making all the same non-religious arguments that are made today - its not natural, marriage is for procreation, yada, yada, yada.
that every single evil deed committed in the name of religion would have been committed in a world without religion, but in the name of something else?
Without religion I'm sure the world would be a different place and thus things would play out differently. But on balance yes - both the good done in the name of religion and the bad done in name of religion would still happen. People would just find other rationalizations.
Slashdot Mirror
VIPR is allegedly not a response to any particular threat
The threat is very clear - budget cuts. With Osama gone, Al Qaeda a thin shadow of its former self (which was really never much to begin with) and no significant acts of terrorism for the last 10 years, the TSA and the DHS are in jeopardy of being pared back to a size much more appropriate to the risk -- i.e. practically nothing.
If they don't remind us to be scared, who will?
Incidentally, the whole thing of Americanising/Anglicizing your name seems a bit pointless if you look Asian anyway. When it was people with obviously Jewish sounding names you can see the point, as anti-semites can't really identify someone as Jewish from their appearance.
Non-westerners don't anglicise their names to avoid discrimination. at least not directly, they do it to improve communication. When someone gets stuck trying to figure out how to say your name, it distracts from the business at hand. After the hundredth time it gets really old too.
If I saw someone's name listed as "Edward Park" or "Sarah Park" I wouldn't assume they were Korean.
2 to 1 odds of being Korean if you limit it to the US population alone.
Closer to 80 to 1 if you look at the world population.
Really.
That link you provided says nothing about frequency.
I'm pretty sure that the 6.2 million Koreans named Park dwarfs the number of anglo Parks by practically two orders of magnitude.
I'd be shocked if they didn't require her to provide a legal name instead of a stage name anyhow; how else can a contract for ToS be valid?
If it is a name you commonly use then it's not an impediment, the intention of the contract is still quite clear.
It is not Nicole Bilderback. Even if she hadn't personally denied it, she's an established actress. Not A-list but she's got credits going back to the Fresh Prince of Bel-Air - that does not qualify as "up and coming."
"Grace" is not Americanised from "Jee Un"??
Park is, for all practical purposes, solely a Korean family name.
The article barely touches on the real problem here - she paid for an "IMDb Pro" account and Amazon used that info to pull an "above the line" credit report on her. These "above the line" reports contain: name, mother's maiden name, date of birth, sex, address, prior addresses, telephone number, and the Social Security Number and have no legal protection. That's where they got her age from.
So she basically paid Amazon and they used the billing information for purposes other than which she intended. That's the kind of shit that makes me never want to pay for anything on the net - and only use cash in real life too.
"This situation is terrible! Something must be done! The wrong thing is something! So we must do the wrong thing!"
It is something ...
LOL
I meant the assumption that all users are idiots
Yeah, I don't really see how anyone would call that a learning curve.
The headset is nearly useless.
I'll see you one useless and raise you a dangerous.
With a normal phone other drivers have a decent chance to notice the person with their hand up to their ear and give them a wider berth. But with the various handsfree laws in many states there is basically no way to distinguish between a normal driver and one who has half their mind on the other end of a telephone conversation.
The only study to ever show a significant improvement in safety with a handsfree phone versus a handheld phone was commissioned by Plantronics - maker of phone headsets. These handfree laws are just another case of "This situation is terrible! Something must be done! The wrong thing is something! So we must do the wrong thing!"
Will I finally be able to buy my own vanity timezone for $200,000?
Who cares? I just want to know where the .XXX timezone is so I can move there!
Unless there was some serious gender wage discrimination happening (I wouldn't be surprised if there were), "bank vice president" is not and never will be a middle class job.
Sounds like you don't know much about banks - it's a well-worn joke that everybody at a bank who isn't a teller is a vice president. They hand out titles instead of raises.
$66K - Average Bank Vice President Salaries
That would make all kinds of sense except that the Tea Party, currently a major part of the GOP support is NOT largely made up of social conservatives just fiscal.
"They are mostly social conservatives, not libertarians on social issues. Nearly two-thirds (63%) say abortion should be illegal in all or most cases, and less than 1-in-5 (18%) support allowing gay and lesbian couples to marry."
46% of Tea Party adherents cite religion as the prime influence on their abortion views, compared to 40% of Republicans.
The current lead candidate in the GOP primary race is a Mormon, not even recognized as a Christian by the traditional Moral Majority Zelots.
Tied at just 21% (as of yesterday) isn't a particularly strong endorsement. Meanwhile just about every explicitly tea party candidate in any race has been a Christian conservative.
Obama's private schooling was mostly paid for by scholarships because she didn't have the income for it.
Because the grandmother instead (quite reasonably) financed her daughter's PhD in a non-science?
Your question is unclear and your point even less so. How does Obama's mother attending a state college on scholarship or without a scholarship mean anything? Having more than a passing familiarity with both Punahou and UH Manoa, I'm pretty sure Punahou was more expensive than in-state tuition at UH Manoa, a lot more expensive.
Don't presume what others understand as "banker".
Ok, then your mentioning of her having a middle-class job was a NOP, sorry for assuming that you had a point.
Except that he is part of the 1% (his mother was a banker,
His grandmother was a bank teller who worked her way up to vice president at a community bank, she lived and eventually died in a modest condo in a middle-class neighborhood. Obama's private schooling was mostly paid for by scholarships because she didn't have the income for it.
His mother was basically a human rights worker with a Phd in anthropology who at one point got involved with the nobel-prize winning microfinance program in Indonesia. A program that traditional banks had basically no interest in at the time.
Neither lady qualifies as a "banker" in the way most people understand the term - i.e. an investment banker.
As for him now being part of the 1% - so what? I'm a member of the 1% myself, but that hasn't stopped me from realizing that the status quo is unhealthy for us all.
this is the mentality that's breeding all these inane GUIs nowaday
You miss the point. The term "learning curve" is far too ambiguous. You want it to mean "the effort required to use a powerful and functional interface." However the "all users are idiots" mentality leads to learning curves that are generally "the effort required to figure out the programmer's point of view and mimic it."
Most people don't stick their hands into tablesaw blades out of willful idiocy, but due to carelessness, tiredness, or trying to do something the machine really isn't well-suited for
And that's where the power-tool analogy falls apart. Nobody sincerely tries to use software by accident.
If you can't be bothered to learn how to use the tool well and safely
The difference here is you assume willful idiocy whereas I'm talking about users who are sincere in their goals. Worrying about wilful idiocy is pointless - no amount of design can overcome someone who just does not care. I'd even go so far as to say that someone who is not sincere in their goals doesn't qualify as a user in the first place.
My intro CS prof always told us that "The first rule of programming is.... the user is an idiot."
He's wrong. Totally, 180 degrees, wrong.
Users know what they want. They may not know all the of steps to get there, and they usually don't know all of the implications and side-effects of those steps. But they do know where they want to end up. It's the software's job to help them get there, in fact that is the one and only job of software. When a user screws up the root cause is a failure of the software to help them take the correct steps to accomplish their goals.
One might argue that there is no practical difference between a user that makes a mistake because they are an idiot and a user that makes a mistake because the application didn't help them enough. But there is a huge difference - you can't fix an idiot, but you can fix your software.
I'm not saying it's easy, in fact user interface stuff is really hard. Which, I think is one of the reasons a lot of developers take the attitude of your prof -- it is so much easier to put the responsibility somewhere else because then the developer is only responsible for "idiot-proofing" their software rather than the much harder job of designing it to enable the user.
Maybe he doesn't want those particular things to be affected, or is willing to do without them (good luck).
Or maybe he's just using the system to try to reform the system.
Nobody thinks its hypocritical for itunes to include cd-ripping support, even though no ipod ever has, or ever will, support CD playback. In all of those cases the new are simply making use of the infrastructure that's in place in order to build towards something better.
But I do know that while in school the evils of the Christian Crusaders was repeated many times, while even the very *fact* that Muslims invaded Holy Land was *completely* glossed over as if they had always been there. And this was 35 years ago in a sectarian school with no Anti-Christian bias.
What you are describing is actually a pro-christian bias.
Since pretty much everything the muslims did is left out of high-school history courses that really shouldn't be much of a surprise.
Anyone with outlier body problems is a suspect now.
DHS is now waging war against the disabled
It's not just the diasbled, the "War on Terror" has effectively been a "War on Dignity" since practically day one.
Forget 3D, what I'd like to know is how good is the video codec support under linux? Specifically de-interlacing and pulldown of 1080i video for mpeg2, h264 and vc1? I'd really like to dump my windows box, but so far the very best de-interlacing - both quality and coverage - seems to be with nvidia under windows
Other glaciers in Canada are *growing* (an inconvenient truth), like Helm, Pace and on Mount Logan. In one swoop, this proves......
I like it when people post references for their claims.
I tried to verify yours on my own and was not successful.
The claim that Helm Glacier is growing seems to be out right false.
The claim about Mount Logan seem to be based on an increase in height - the assumption being that it's due to ice accumulation, but that does not translate one way or the other to the total mass of the glacier, just the thickness at one point.
I couldn't easily find what "Pace" refers to since the word "pace," as in speed, is commonly used with the word "glacier" so I couldn't verify your claim either way.
For instance many religious people want to ban gay marriage because it's against their religious beliefs: are you saying that if they didn't have religion they would find some other reason to ban gay marriage?
In the case of your example, yeah I do think most would be opposed because gay sex is "icky." Religion is just a convenient way for them to transfer their own personal dislike to something that they don't have to accept responsibility for. Without religion as their scapegoat they would be making all the same non-religious arguments that are made today - its not natural, marriage is for procreation, yada, yada, yada.
that every single evil deed committed in the name of religion would have been committed in a world without religion, but in the name of something else?
Without religion I'm sure the world would be a different place and thus things would play out differently. But on balance yes - both the good done in the name of religion and the bad done in name of religion would still happen. People would just find other rationalizations.