Both of your analogies are god damn awful and show that you seriously don't understand what's going on.
First of all, the original content maker is typically unaware of every single user pirating their content. So the lawn analogy would only work if:
A- The pirate was invisible
B- You were not told of his presence
As for the photo analogy, not everyone makes money from copyright infringement. In fact, most people don't. What if he printed out a giant copy of your Winter scene, framed it, and hung it in his living room. It's not as high quality as it might've been if, say, he ordered a print from you based on the master; in the same way a DVDRip, for example, isn't as high quality as a DVD. He did not profit off of you, and for the most part, you're likely unaware of the transgression even occurring. Is this a crime worthy of such harsh punishment, when even rape and murder often aren't given life sentences?
That sounds pretty plausible, since I know it wasn't a backronym, as I remember hearing "NT = New Technology" back around the time they were debuting it.
... to see someone make such an absurd conclusion, but the trick isn't quite like the comparisons slashdotters seem to be making (although you're not far off). I think it's a legitimate failure on the columnist's part to realize that as big as the IT Security industry is, the other side is even bigger. The number of malicious code writers, and their system of distribution is staggering. Viruses, Tojans, Worms, Malware, Spyware, Adware, Grayware, Scareware, etc etc ad nauseum. The list is endless. The war is endless. We can no more stop malicious code proliferating through the internet than we can stop terrorism, or the drug industry. Because, like the drug industry, like the terrorists, it is a society that causes it, not poorly written code. People CHOOSE to write viruses. They CHOOSE to break into a network and cause harm. Having a sword, and wielding it against someone are two very different things.
PS- Not that I'm comparing crackers to terrorists, far from it, but the effort to stop them has parallels. And besides, how long will it really be at this rate until hackers are labeled terrorists? It only takes one person to screw it up for everyone.
I never said it was the only place I got the information from. That was just where I remember first reading about white holes and the differences between them and wormholes:P
The rest is mostly other sources.
Black -> White holes was an older theory. That's NOT the theory of wormholes. A Black/White hole system is one way. Matter enters a Black Hole and exits a White Hole. Both are continually connected to one another. Additionally, your history is off, because it wasn't just a thought experiment questioning an opposite. It was an attempt to answer the question "Where does the matter entering a black hole go?" The logical answer (physics aside) would have been a white hole.
Wormhole theory is different. The theory of a wormhole is that under certain conditions, the warping of space-time can be so extreme that two massive distortions can connect to one another. Essentially, that the singularities of 2 black holes touch, and open up a tunnel through space-time, which is shorter than the trip through normal space-time. These connections can last for a single instant or longer, but they are not considered to be permanent, and are, hypothetically, rarely stable last I read.
Whether they connect to other points (black holes) within our own Universe, or within other Universes depends largely on the shape of the Universe and if multi-verse theory is even real. The shape being the major determining factor in a great deal of such very theoretical physics.
Finally, a wormhole looping back on itself would not longer join spans of space, but instead, spans of time. It would connect to it's past or future self, because doing so would involve looping, and a common theory is that the more a wormhole loops, the more it displaces itself within time.
Who knew reading a Brief History of Time so many years ago would eventually pay off?:P
They mocked tubes because it sounded funny really. That's about it. The speech as a whole showed that he didn't get what he was talking about, but the phrase "The internet is a series of tubes. It's not a big truck." sounded really funny in the audio recording, and had become symbolic of his lack of understanding.
And on a side note, those "fake draft cards" were emails which told the recipient to "Report to a polling place near you." Seeing as how you don't register an email with the US Government, it's absurd to confuse it with a real card. Not saying that it's not misleading, because it is by implying it's going to happen, but it was was hardly as sinister as you imply.
PS- And I happen to agree with the fact that the Daily Show makes fun of Republican policies. But when your policy is so absurd I wouldn't be able to help it either:P
First of all, political parties are irrelevant if you're talking about the Daily Show, since they do in fact make fun of Democrats all the time as well (It's just that the majority party typically exposes their flaws more often, and becomes cannon fodder).
Second, Ted Stevens IS a layperson when it comes to technology. I'm sorry, but when discussing something as complicated as Net Neutrality, the Chair of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation, should at least have a rudimentary understanding of what the internet is, and how it works, since a large part of the debate is packet priority. Though "Series of Tubes" may not have been entirely inappropriate, the speech, in context, clearly shows that he misunderstands a great deal of the terminology and technology involved.
Again, this is not someone who can be overlooked. This is not your grandfather. This is the man who, until recently, was in charge of Internet regulation.
Personally, I felt it sounded like a lobbyist against Net Neutrality explained a lot of the concepts to him and he misunderstood some of them. And frankly, I don't put it past him to only hear out one side of an issue to begin with, since, keep in mind, this is the man who threatened to resign from the Senate if the $223 million in funds originally allocated for the "Bridge to Nowhere" were spent to help rescue and recovery operations in the wake of the destruction of New Orleans.
Microsoft had to make the complaint or someone had to on their behalf.
Not true. The Russian government did an inspection of the school and found the pirated version on 12 of the 20 computers in the school. Microsoft didn't even know about this until after they decided to take up a criminal case.
You honestly thought Microsoft was somehow inspecting the computers of rural Russian schools? Come on...
The author of this article should be embarassed for the travesty of a story he's published. I'm not a fan in any way, shape, or form of Microsoft, but this is outright lying.
From TFA: "Possibly bowing to public pressure, Microsoft offered a "peace agreement," which Ponosov, asserting his innocence, refused to accept, according to CNews."
That's interesting considering the fact that Microsoft is in no position to do any such thing. They're not suing him, the Russian government was. That, by definition, is the distinction between a criminal case and a civil case.
Allow me to explain the things the article blatantly ignored:
Russia is notorious for ignoring copyright law and is the second biggest producer of illegal software and entertainment; China being the biggest. In response to pressure from the Russian branch of the MPAA (yes, even in Russia they still use that acronym), and numerous other sources, the local government decided to prosecute the teacher. They had little to no support from the federal government, or from Microsoft. Putin personally called the lawsuit ridiculous, and Microsoft's stance was that they see no reason to sue him personally, and don't want to have anything to do with the lawsuit, but will cooperate with Russian authorities so that "this case resolved in an amicable manner, so that everyone can move forward and Mr. Ponosov can focus all of his attention on his students". For their full reply, see here: http://eng.cnews.ru/news/line/indexEn.shtml?2007/0 2/08/234864
I'm amazed that the immediate response is "ZOMG, MICROSOFT IS SUING PEOPLE" when they're doing no such thing. Even if Microsoft came out and told them they wanted the case stopped, the prosecution has no obligation to do so since the fact that it's Microsoft is irrelevant. It's a violation of piracy law, the specific software pirated is purely academic. It's the local Russian government screwing up by trying to make an example of someone, making both the federal government, and Microsoft, look bad for something they have nothing to do with. They're jumping the gun on trying to enforce piracy laws and in doing so do everyone involved more harm than good (unless you consider anti-Microsoft sentiment a good thing, but that's another issue entirely).
I saw a video demo of the suit yesterday actually. It has a built in fan in the front of the helmet too keep the area around your neck cool (and therefore, the rest of your body since there are so many arteries running through that area. To power it, the back of the helmet contains small power packs that are recharged by small solar cells on the back of the helmet.
It's got a lot of other interesting features as well. I've never been in the military myself, but frankly it seems as if it's a lot more protective than anything I've seen a soldier in recently. And there's still that intimidation factor, because an invading force looks almost inhuman in suits like that.
I'll be honest, I don't see why this is important.
According to the article, it was essentially programmed to notice abnormal changes and begin collecting data if something occurs... How is this in any way intelligent? Just because it wasn't hardcoded to monitor it or manually told to doesn't mean it's "thinking." It did as it was programmed. Somewhere in there is an "if" statement saying that if certain values are out of a certain range, begin collecting data. So... it did exactly what it was programmed to do. Where's the breakthrough?
Now, if it did something that actually wasn't in it's code, that'd be news; like oh, say, actually notifying someone of the change.
I think the fact that you were modded "Funny" is telling, so here's the deal:
It's not a matter of "Yay! They're replacing machine guns with beanbag guns and microwave guns!"
Take a GI who is (for whatever reason) overseeing a protest. Let's even assume it's the National Guard (hypothetically). Now he's holding an assault rifle which he well knows can massacre a line of protestors in a few well aimed bursts. How likely is he to use his weapon on his own people? How likely is he to willingly and knowingly murder American civilians? Even if the protest begins the get out of hand?
Now take the same GI, same situation. Now instead of an assault rifle, arm him with rubber bullets/a beanbag gun/microwave gun, etc. Now these weapons are not 100% non-lethal, since that's not really possible. Occassionally you will hit someone in, say, the face with a beanbag and do serious damage, possibly even kill (like the pictures posted above). BUT, they are considered "non-lethal weapons," and this label, in and of itself makes the person wielding it much more likely to use it. And even if someone does die or get seriously injured, the difference between the headline "US military fires on a crowd of American Citizens" and "US military suppresses protesters" is GIGANTIC.
This doesn't mean non-lethal weapons should be left on a shelf somewhere, but they should be used by local enforcement. If the military begins carrying them it might even make the government more likely to use them in such situations, which is something no real American should want.
To point out two quotes:
When the people fear their government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty.
-Thomas Jefferson
The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions, that I wish it to be always kept alive.
-Thomas Jefferson
It's more important than we realise that the American people have the freedom to cry out and argue and march in protest of their government, and no one, not the military, and especially not the government, should prevent that.
The event horizon is something that any object with mass has, as well. Of course, not on the same scale as a black hole, yet, come to close to the sun and you are doomed. A comet slammed in to Jupiter and disappeared. It will never be seen again. Our moon is stuck to the earth. Without adding energy to the system, the moon will always be a part of the system. The event orizon of a black hole is important because light cannot ever leave the system once inside this critical boundary. That does not mean that other systems possess no event horizon.
Errr, that's not true. By definition, the event horizon is the theoretical threshold of a black hole's gravity well from which point nothing can ever escape under any circumstances under its own power (we're ignoring the ocassional black hole emmission jets which form for now). The Sun has no event horizon, and neither can anything else because light can always escape it. Saying "if you get to close to the sun, you're doomed" means nothing because we're arbitrarily picking the amount of energy human technology can generate to escape the forces of gravity. In the span of a few decades, which, by the standards of the Universe, is almost an instant, that may no longer be true.
The reason it's special is because one of only true constants we know of is the speed of light. It never changes; except when undergoing refraction through materials. And in addition, any object with mass can never match its speed, therefore, when light can no longer escape a black hole's gravity well, nothing else can either.
Errr, I'm going to assume that you're NOT a New Yorker. Because anyone who lives there can refute damn near everything you just said.
The high asthma rate is mostly due not to Manhattan itself but to the borough of NYC called Staten Island, which was used as a gargantuan landfill for generations. The landfill has since closed though and the problem is becoming less severe. However, another cause is believed to be the factories on the Jersey shore which blow all of their pollutans east over the southern boroughs of Staten Island and Brooklyn.
The cyclist problem is one prevalent in many large cities in small geographical areas. However, in recent years many more New Yorkers have given up even owning a car due to parking problems and the issue is resolving itself for the most part.
As for the point of excrement-less grass, have you ever even SEEN Central Park? Or Battery Park? Or any of the parks in any of the boroughs? Yes there's a great deal of trash but it's hardly the pig-stay you pretend to know it to be. The only incredibly filthy place I can think of is the subway, and that's usually manageable.
And finally, as for your comment on the absence of a middle class... First off, you misused the word eviscerated; unless everyone in the middle class has been systematically disembowled that is. And second, that's not true. The middle class has mostly moved from the city to the outlying surburbs on the other boroughs, and not from financial difficulty, but mostly from the desire to "escape the clutter of living in the city." As a single adult living in a city is great, but it's not always the ideal place to relax/raise a family in.
It's mostly a matter of the fact that a large portion of the city is composed of highly commercial zones and since the city proper, that is to say, the island of Manhattan (which most people think of when they think NYC) has limited room since it's actually the smallest of the 5 boroughs. Supply and demand.
Besides, all the boroughs are connected through widely available mass transit anyway.
Granted NYC is not some sort of paradise on Earth, it's still by far beats living in most other places, speaking as someone who's been to many parts of the US, as well as many other countries, and is a native New Yorker.
There's a massive logical falasy in the first part of your post, that being, that Microsoft was either the CHALLENGER (ie. WinCE vs Palm) or began around the same time as the competition. For a younger company to make a massive challenge to them is a new event in their history. If anything, many of the examples you've given are less reinforcing of the idea that Microsoft should not be underestimated and more pertinent to the idea that the newcomer to any field should not be underestimated. And that, underoftunately for Microsoft, is exactly what Google is. As someone mentioned earlier, what worries them predominantly is that they don't know what Google will do. They know how fast they were able to overtake other companies in their youth and wonder if, 10 years from now, people will even remember using apps like Word, just as many computer users today don't remember Lotus Notes or WordPerfect.
A certain favorite quote of mine comes to mind...
[T]here are some things that can beat smartness and foresight? Awkwardness and stupidity can. The best swordsman in the world doesn't need to fear the second best swordsman in the world; no, the person for him to be afraid of is some ignorant antagonist who has never had a sword in his hand before; he doesn't do the thing he ought to do, and so the expert isn't prepared for him; he does the thing he ought not to do; and often it catches the expert out and ends him on the spot.
-Mark Twain A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, Chapter 34
Not to say Google is ignorant or awkward. But they are, in fact, doing what everyone says they should not, in the principle of letting their employees work on fun personal projects and other functional differences they have from most companies which give them their chaotic and unpredictable edge.
I don't post on/. often but the end of this article forced my hand.
Or is Trojan/Erazer-A the ultimate social engineering Trojan, one which fools people into accepting its beneficial promise, only to cause major problems when in its next incarnation as Trojan/Erazer-B or C?
WTF? "Accepting it's beneficial promise"? Are there poeple out there with Kazaa or Limewire downloading gigabyte upon gigabyte of porn, illegal music, and movies unwillingly? Are they too illiterate to use the delete key? Do they have some weird sleep disorder where they unwittingly download?
Last I checked, illegal or not, it's something people WANT. Is PC World trying to imply there's some fuckwit thinking "Oh wow! This virus deletes everything I download! This is great! I'm keeping this!" This virus isn't Charles Bronson "taking the law into its own hands." This virus is Jason Vorhees intruding upon a couple making out in their car.
The assumption is that because the Trojan is only deleting certain file types in specific download directories used by P2P programs -- one of the main sources of inadvertent malware infection -- it is attempting to protect those it manages to infect.
Have the writers of PC World ever even USED a computer? Because last I checked, disabling my antivirus software DOES NOT protect me. That's like someone telling you not to have sex and punching holes in your condoms.
It's possible believe it or not. Several years ago I was copying my Windows directory to another drive because I was formatting my old one and wanted to take my time and pick any settings that I didn't want to lose (this way I made sure I didn't forget everything, and hard drive space wasn't an issue). I accidently clicked cut and didn't notice and after about an hour and a half the system suddenly began gagging and dieing. I was on AIM and all of a sudden my font turned arabic and then expanded to a seamingly impossible resolution. I realized my mistake and tried to abort the operation but to no avail. I'm ashamed to admit the event actually transpired, but yes, your system can chug along for a while as your files get trashed.
And quite frankly, I wouldn't be surprised if it did happen
For this, I'd like to use the analogy made in "Minority Report." You roll a ball across a desk. You know that ball will roll off the desk unless it's stopped by a force. IT's not making the ball roll off by thinking it will, it's just an inference which os rather obvious.
If they caught these guys with proof that they installed a program that captures cedit card info on Lowes computers, then isn't it obvious that they weren't just gonna look at it and go "Oh wow, that was cool!" and then burn it?
It's one thing to hack a computer system for the hell of it, or to point out to the owner that they have an exploitable flaw in their network, but maliciously hacking a system for the sake of monetary gain is wrong.
Slashdot Mirror
Both of your analogies are god damn awful and show that you seriously don't understand what's going on.
First of all, the original content maker is typically unaware of every single user pirating their content. So the lawn analogy would only work if:
A- The pirate was invisible
B- You were not told of his presence
As for the photo analogy, not everyone makes money from copyright infringement. In fact, most people don't. What if he printed out a giant copy of your Winter scene, framed it, and hung it in his living room. It's not as high quality as it might've been if, say, he ordered a print from you based on the master; in the same way a DVDRip, for example, isn't as high quality as a DVD. He did not profit off of you, and for the most part, you're likely unaware of the transgression even occurring. Is this a crime worthy of such harsh punishment, when even rape and murder often aren't given life sentences?
That sounds pretty plausible, since I know it wasn't a backronym, as I remember hearing "NT = New Technology" back around the time they were debuting it.
Ok, now this time try looking things up :)
p .mspx
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/WinHistoryDeskto
HINT: 1993: Windows NT 3.1, paragraph 2
... to see someone make such an absurd conclusion, but the trick isn't quite like the comparisons slashdotters seem to be making (although you're not far off). I think it's a legitimate failure on the columnist's part to realize that as big as the IT Security industry is, the other side is even bigger. The number of malicious code writers, and their system of distribution is staggering. Viruses, Tojans, Worms, Malware, Spyware, Adware, Grayware, Scareware, etc etc ad nauseum. The list is endless. The war is endless. We can no more stop malicious code proliferating through the internet than we can stop terrorism, or the drug industry. Because, like the drug industry, like the terrorists, it is a society that causes it, not poorly written code. People CHOOSE to write viruses. They CHOOSE to break into a network and cause harm. Having a sword, and wielding it against someone are two very different things.
PS- Not that I'm comparing crackers to terrorists, far from it, but the effort to stop them has parallels. And besides, how long will it really be at this rate until hackers are labeled terrorists? It only takes one person to screw it up for everyone.
I never said it was the only place I got the information from. That was just where I remember first reading about white holes and the differences between them and wormholes :P
The rest is mostly other sources.
Black -> White holes was an older theory. That's NOT the theory of wormholes. A Black/White hole system is one way. Matter enters a Black Hole and exits a White Hole. Both are continually connected to one another. Additionally, your history is off, because it wasn't just a thought experiment questioning an opposite. It was an attempt to answer the question "Where does the matter entering a black hole go?" The logical answer (physics aside) would have been a white hole.
:P
Wormhole theory is different. The theory of a wormhole is that under certain conditions, the warping of space-time can be so extreme that two massive distortions can connect to one another. Essentially, that the singularities of 2 black holes touch, and open up a tunnel through space-time, which is shorter than the trip through normal space-time. These connections can last for a single instant or longer, but they are not considered to be permanent, and are, hypothetically, rarely stable last I read.
Whether they connect to other points (black holes) within our own Universe, or within other Universes depends largely on the shape of the Universe and if multi-verse theory is even real. The shape being the major determining factor in a great deal of such very theoretical physics.
Finally, a wormhole looping back on itself would not longer join spans of space, but instead, spans of time. It would connect to it's past or future self, because doing so would involve looping, and a common theory is that the more a wormhole loops, the more it displaces itself within time.
Who knew reading a Brief History of Time so many years ago would eventually pay off?
They mocked tubes because it sounded funny really. That's about it. The speech as a whole showed that he didn't get what he was talking about, but the phrase "The internet is a series of tubes. It's not a big truck." sounded really funny in the audio recording, and had become symbolic of his lack of understanding.
:P
And on a side note, those "fake draft cards" were emails which told the recipient to "Report to a polling place near you." Seeing as how you don't register an email with the US Government, it's absurd to confuse it with a real card. Not saying that it's not misleading, because it is by implying it's going to happen, but it was was hardly as sinister as you imply.
PS- And I happen to agree with the fact that the Daily Show makes fun of Republican policies. But when your policy is so absurd I wouldn't be able to help it either
First of all, political parties are irrelevant if you're talking about the Daily Show, since they do in fact make fun of Democrats all the time as well (It's just that the majority party typically exposes their flaws more often, and becomes cannon fodder).
Second, Ted Stevens IS a layperson when it comes to technology. I'm sorry, but when discussing something as complicated as Net Neutrality, the Chair of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation, should at least have a rudimentary understanding of what the internet is, and how it works, since a large part of the debate is packet priority. Though "Series of Tubes" may not have been entirely inappropriate, the speech, in context, clearly shows that he misunderstands a great deal of the terminology and technology involved.
Again, this is not someone who can be overlooked. This is not your grandfather. This is the man who, until recently, was in charge of Internet regulation.
Personally, I felt it sounded like a lobbyist against Net Neutrality explained a lot of the concepts to him and he misunderstood some of them. And frankly, I don't put it past him to only hear out one side of an issue to begin with, since, keep in mind, this is the man who threatened to resign from the Senate if the $223 million in funds originally allocated for the "Bridge to Nowhere" were spent to help rescue and recovery operations in the wake of the destruction of New Orleans.
Microsoft had to make the complaint or someone had to on their behalf.
Not true. The Russian government did an inspection of the school and found the pirated version on 12 of the 20 computers in the school. Microsoft didn't even know about this until after they decided to take up a criminal case.
You honestly thought Microsoft was somehow inspecting the computers of rural Russian schools? Come on...
The author of this article should be embarassed for the travesty of a story he's published. I'm not a fan in any way, shape, or form of Microsoft, but this is outright lying.
0 2/08/234864
From TFA: "Possibly bowing to public pressure, Microsoft offered a "peace agreement," which Ponosov, asserting his innocence, refused to accept, according to CNews."
That's interesting considering the fact that Microsoft is in no position to do any such thing. They're not suing him, the Russian government was. That, by definition, is the distinction between a criminal case and a civil case.
Allow me to explain the things the article blatantly ignored:
Russia is notorious for ignoring copyright law and is the second biggest producer of illegal software and entertainment; China being the biggest. In response to pressure from the Russian branch of the MPAA (yes, even in Russia they still use that acronym), and numerous other sources, the local government decided to prosecute the teacher. They had little to no support from the federal government, or from Microsoft. Putin personally called the lawsuit ridiculous, and Microsoft's stance was that they see no reason to sue him personally, and don't want to have anything to do with the lawsuit, but will cooperate with Russian authorities so that "this case resolved in an amicable manner, so that everyone can move forward and Mr. Ponosov can focus all of his attention on his students". For their full reply, see here: http://eng.cnews.ru/news/line/indexEn.shtml?2007/
I'm amazed that the immediate response is "ZOMG, MICROSOFT IS SUING PEOPLE" when they're doing no such thing. Even if Microsoft came out and told them they wanted the case stopped, the prosecution has no obligation to do so since the fact that it's Microsoft is irrelevant. It's a violation of piracy law, the specific software pirated is purely academic. It's the local Russian government screwing up by trying to make an example of someone, making both the federal government, and Microsoft, look bad for something they have nothing to do with. They're jumping the gun on trying to enforce piracy laws and in doing so do everyone involved more harm than good (unless you consider anti-Microsoft sentiment a good thing, but that's another issue entirely).
I saw a video demo of the suit yesterday actually. It has a built in fan in the front of the helmet too keep the area around your neck cool (and therefore, the rest of your body since there are so many arteries running through that area. To power it, the back of the helmet contains small power packs that are recharged by small solar cells on the back of the helmet.
n -11-2007_a.html
It's got a lot of other interesting features as well. I've never been in the military myself, but frankly it seems as if it's a lot more protective than anything I've seen a soldier in recently. And there's still that intimidation factor, because an invading force looks almost inhuman in suits like that.
The video btw is here: http://www.hamiltonspectator.com/media_archive/ja
May take a while to load since the site is still getting hammered.
To me it looks like the bastard child of the Spartan suit from Halo (wasn't his name creative? :P) and the corp light in the HL2 mod Dystopia...
I'll be honest, I don't see why this is important.
According to the article, it was essentially programmed to notice abnormal changes and begin collecting data if something occurs... How is this in any way intelligent? Just because it wasn't hardcoded to monitor it or manually told to doesn't mean it's "thinking." It did as it was programmed. Somewhere in there is an "if" statement saying that if certain values are out of a certain range, begin collecting data. So... it did exactly what it was programmed to do. Where's the breakthrough?
Now, if it did something that actually wasn't in it's code, that'd be news; like oh, say, actually notifying someone of the change.
It matters because it might determine who sues whom into oblivion...
It's not a matter of "Yay! They're replacing machine guns with beanbag guns and microwave guns!"
Take a GI who is (for whatever reason) overseeing a protest. Let's even assume it's the National Guard (hypothetically). Now he's holding an assault rifle which he well knows can massacre a line of protestors in a few well aimed bursts. How likely is he to use his weapon on his own people? How likely is he to willingly and knowingly murder American civilians? Even if the protest begins the get out of hand?
Now take the same GI, same situation. Now instead of an assault rifle, arm him with rubber bullets/a beanbag gun/microwave gun, etc. Now these weapons are not 100% non-lethal, since that's not really possible. Occassionally you will hit someone in, say, the face with a beanbag and do serious damage, possibly even kill (like the pictures posted above). BUT, they are considered "non-lethal weapons," and this label, in and of itself makes the person wielding it much more likely to use it. And even if someone does die or get seriously injured, the difference between the headline "US military fires on a crowd of American Citizens" and "US military suppresses protesters" is GIGANTIC.
This doesn't mean non-lethal weapons should be left on a shelf somewhere, but they should be used by local enforcement. If the military begins carrying them it might even make the government more likely to use them in such situations, which is something no real American should want.
To point out two quotes:
It's more important than we realise that the American people have the freedom to cry out and argue and march in protest of their government, and no one, not the military, and especially not the government, should prevent that.
I sue you,
:)
You sue me,
We're all part of a
Broken Copyright Industry,
That contributes little to the public good,
So sue them all you know you should.
Does that rhyme?
It does now
errrr, fuck, gg me for not previewing first -_-
Everything before "Errr, that's not true" is a quote from the parent. The rest is my response.
Note to self: Stop making posts while still half asleep x_x
The event horizon is something that any object with mass has, as well. Of course, not on the same scale as a black hole, yet, come to close to the sun and you are doomed. A comet slammed in to Jupiter and disappeared. It will never be seen again. Our moon is stuck to the earth. Without adding energy to the system, the moon will always be a part of the system. The event orizon of a black hole is important because light cannot ever leave the system once inside this critical boundary. That does not mean that other systems possess no event horizon. Errr, that's not true. By definition, the event horizon is the theoretical threshold of a black hole's gravity well from which point nothing can ever escape under any circumstances under its own power (we're ignoring the ocassional black hole emmission jets which form for now). The Sun has no event horizon, and neither can anything else because light can always escape it. Saying "if you get to close to the sun, you're doomed" means nothing because we're arbitrarily picking the amount of energy human technology can generate to escape the forces of gravity. In the span of a few decades, which, by the standards of the Universe, is almost an instant, that may no longer be true. The reason it's special is because one of only true constants we know of is the speed of light. It never changes; except when undergoing refraction through materials. And in addition, any object with mass can never match its speed, therefore, when light can no longer escape a black hole's gravity well, nothing else can either.
Round Tuit as in "Get around to it" -_- You people suck at reading bad wordplay :P
Errr, I'm going to assume that you're NOT a New Yorker. Because anyone who lives there can refute damn near everything you just said.
The high asthma rate is mostly due not to Manhattan itself but to the borough of NYC called Staten Island, which was used as a gargantuan landfill for generations. The landfill has since closed though and the problem is becoming less severe. However, another cause is believed to be the factories on the Jersey shore which blow all of their pollutans east over the southern boroughs of Staten Island and Brooklyn.
The cyclist problem is one prevalent in many large cities in small geographical areas. However, in recent years many more New Yorkers have given up even owning a car due to parking problems and the issue is resolving itself for the most part.
As for the point of excrement-less grass, have you ever even SEEN Central Park? Or Battery Park? Or any of the parks in any of the boroughs? Yes there's a great deal of trash but it's hardly the pig-stay you pretend to know it to be. The only incredibly filthy place I can think of is the subway, and that's usually manageable.
And finally, as for your comment on the absence of a middle class... First off, you misused the word eviscerated; unless everyone in the middle class has been systematically disembowled that is. And second, that's not true. The middle class has mostly moved from the city to the outlying surburbs on the other boroughs, and not from financial difficulty, but mostly from the desire to "escape the clutter of living in the city." As a single adult living in a city is great, but it's not always the ideal place to relax/raise a family in.
It's mostly a matter of the fact that a large portion of the city is composed of highly commercial zones and since the city proper, that is to say, the island of Manhattan (which most people think of when they think NYC) has limited room since it's actually the smallest of the 5 boroughs. Supply and demand.
Besides, all the boroughs are connected through widely available mass transit anyway.
Granted NYC is not some sort of paradise on Earth, it's still by far beats living in most other places, speaking as someone who's been to many parts of the US, as well as many other countries, and is a native New Yorker.
A certain favorite quote of mine comes to mind...
Not to say Google is ignorant or awkward. But they are, in fact, doing what everyone says they should not, in the principle of letting their employees work on fun personal projects and other functional differences they have from most companies which give them their chaotic and unpredictable edge.
WTF?
"Accepting it's beneficial promise"? Are there poeple out there with Kazaa or Limewire downloading gigabyte upon gigabyte of porn, illegal music, and movies unwillingly? Are they too illiterate to use the delete key? Do they have some weird sleep disorder where they unwittingly download?
Last I checked, illegal or not, it's something people WANT. Is PC World trying to imply there's some fuckwit thinking "Oh wow! This virus deletes everything I download! This is great! I'm keeping this!" This virus isn't Charles Bronson "taking the law into its own hands." This virus is Jason Vorhees intruding upon a couple making out in their car.
Have the writers of PC World ever even USED a computer? Because last I checked, disabling my antivirus software DOES NOT protect me. That's like someone telling you not to have sex and punching holes in your condoms.
Sounds to me like someone's grasping at straws.
It's possible believe it or not. Several years ago I was copying my Windows directory to another drive because I was formatting my old one and wanted to take my time and pick any settings that I didn't want to lose (this way I made sure I didn't forget everything, and hard drive space wasn't an issue). I accidently clicked cut and didn't notice and after about an hour and a half the system suddenly began gagging and dieing. I was on AIM and all of a sudden my font turned arabic and then expanded to a seamingly impossible resolution. I realized my mistake and tried to abort the operation but to no avail. I'm ashamed to admit the event actually transpired, but yes, your system can chug along for a while as your files get trashed. And quite frankly, I wouldn't be surprised if it did happen
For this, I'd like to use the analogy made in "Minority Report." You roll a ball across a desk. You know that ball will roll off the desk unless it's stopped by a force. IT's not making the ball roll off by thinking it will, it's just an inference which os rather obvious. If they caught these guys with proof that they installed a program that captures cedit card info on Lowes computers, then isn't it obvious that they weren't just gonna look at it and go "Oh wow, that was cool!" and then burn it? It's one thing to hack a computer system for the hell of it, or to point out to the owner that they have an exploitable flaw in their network, but maliciously hacking a system for the sake of monetary gain is wrong.