This joke exists in a superposition of Godzilla Reference and WWII Reference states. Calculate the evolution of the wavefunction over time. Consider the influences of all other sources of humor to be negligible.
In the infamous McDonald's case, the size of the jury award The victim was found partially liable, which reduced her judgement. Later, the judgemnet was reduced much further on appeal.
More than that, it wasn't just a case of "waah, I spilled hot coffee in my lap and it hurts! I'm suing!" The coffee from that particular McDonald's wasn't just hot -- it was dangerously hot, far above normal coffee temperature. Furthermore, they had received several complaints from other customers and had done nothing about it. When the plaintiff spilled the coffee in her lap, it gave her serious burns that required immediate medical attention.
I can't say that giving someone tens of millions of dollars because they were scalded by coffee makes much sense, but OTOH, that McD's fucked up in a big way and a customer suffered because of their incompetence. They deserved to be punished for it. I think that this is something that is often overlooked in the furor over "frivolous" lawsuit awards -- it's not just an award, it's a punishment for the defendant. And a few thousand dollars (or even a few hundred thousand) in "punishment" is not enough for a large corporation to even notice. That's pocket change to them.
The danger of course in not accepting rigorous scientific study of available facts leads us to confusion and obfuscation of truth which leads to jeopardy of person and country. Unfortunately, we have in the last few years gone quite far down this road through decisions made based upon data twisted to represent a prior beliefs rather than letting the data speak and then drawing conclusions from those data.
Indeed. One of the great ironies of the right-wing fundamentalist movement is that they criticize science (particularly evolutionary science) for promoting "moral relativism" -- and they harp continuously on the dangers of such relativism.
Meanwhile, in their efforts to destroy science, they promote a "factual relativism" that is far more insidious than any moral relativism could ever be. After all, if there's no such thing as an independently verifiable fact, then it's impossible to counter the claims (no matter how absurd) of an authority figure. The Religious Right today is furiously at work churning out legions of followers who are trained to think in exactly this way: Facts don't matter, "science" is a fraud, and the only Truth is the Truth of God -- interpreted, of course, by your friendly local religious pundit.
I do find the idea intriguing. However, right off the top of my head I can see some loopholes that will be exploited almost immediately:
Business-to-business purchases for the production of goods and services are not taxed. Are businesses going to be created and defined the same way they are now? Because, in most states at least, it is a fairly trivial matter to obtain a business license. (I know this because my wife looked into the idea once.) So what's to stop everyone, or at least a lot of people, from declaring their own "business" and using it as a front to purchase whatever they want?
Used items are not taxed. How is a "used" item defined? Wouldn't it be easy for a business to stretch this definition? ("This car is used because one of the salesmen used it to go to the supermarket", etc.)
Which is not to say that it's a bad idea; it may still work. But there are certainly issues that need to be dealt with.
I just replaced my desktop with a laptop. Why bother with a bulky desktop when I can get a fast, luggable laptop for cheap?
Throw in a docking station with monitor, keyboard & mouse, and you have the best of both worlds. It looks and feels like a full desktop machine when you're at your desk, but if you want or need to work elsewhere, it's still the same machine, with the same software, data, and configuration. I've been working this way for years.
The good news: enterprising people will figure out a way to make this process accessible to the ordinary person.
The bad news: You'll spend the rest of eternity sending spam.
I have been studying the literature on quantum computation, quantum teleportation, and quantum cryptography for several years now, and I find it all very fascinating, but I have a serious concern. So far, all tests I have read about have been performed with these two individuals named "Alice" and Bob". This brings up a number of serious problems:
Shouldn't user testing be a little more broad before a technology is ready to go to market?
Who are Alice and Bob anyway, and why won't they release their full names? Can we trust a technology tested solely by individuals who are clearly reluctant to talk to the public?
What do Alice and Bob need such powerful cryptography for? Are they having an affair?
In fact, OOo is a perfect platform for this sort of "compare and contrast" education. Since schools already have MS Office, they can keep that and upgrade it (let's face it; they probably will anyway), but since they can also get OOo for free, they can use these two office suites to build lessons that will help the students expand their computer knowledge beyond "double-click the blue W to write a letter".
I'm sure other examples can be thought up based on a commonly used commercial app and its free counterpart(s).
10 Years ago it was Word Perfet. I Think it is a real deservice to not teach childern how to use serveral word processor and spreadsheet so that get a feel for the basics so in 10 Years when Office ZZ or openoffice 600 are given to them they wont go what the hell I am suppose to do now?
Even more to the point, computer classes should be teaching kids the basic abilities they will need to familiarize themselves with new software in general. One thing you can be absolutely certain of is that, as time goes on, new versions of software and totally new software packages will become available. Those who are able to adapt more quickly to these changes (or at least are not intimidated by them) will have an advantage.
There's got to be a beacon incorporated into the design because if that thing (30 cm.) lands in a very deep spot in the ocean it's going to be hard to find!
Yeah, but then Jack Bauer is going to have to spend all his time protecting innocent oceanographers from the terrorists trying to get their hands on the Satellite Black Box they inadvertently found. Do you really think our government needs that kind of waste right now?
Slashdot Mirror
You will get a system with no networking or GUI and all your drives will be read only and a single root prompt (provided you told it you wanted one).
Sounds perfect for my kids.
Next thing you know we'll see people running around naked in courthouses in response to all of these damned activist judges.
They should just buy Celestia and integrate it with Google Earth. That would be cool.
Oh, dammit. A movie studio going to court to defend itself against an abuse of IP Law; I just don't know who to root for here.
Did you pay the licensing fee to use that word when you looked it up?
This joke exists in a superposition of Godzilla Reference and WWII Reference states. Calculate the evolution of the wavefunction over time. Consider the influences of all other sources of humor to be negligible.
We no longer stand on the shoulers of giants because we are crippled by midgets.
I'm still recovering from the last time I was kneecapped by a midget.
In the infamous McDonald's case, the size of the jury award The victim was found partially liable, which reduced her judgement. Later, the judgemnet was reduced much further on appeal.
More than that, it wasn't just a case of "waah, I spilled hot coffee in my lap and it hurts! I'm suing!" The coffee from that particular McDonald's wasn't just hot -- it was dangerously hot, far above normal coffee temperature. Furthermore, they had received several complaints from other customers and had done nothing about it. When the plaintiff spilled the coffee in her lap, it gave her serious burns that required immediate medical attention.
I can't say that giving someone tens of millions of dollars because they were scalded by coffee makes much sense, but OTOH, that McD's fucked up in a big way and a customer suffered because of their incompetence. They deserved to be punished for it. I think that this is something that is often overlooked in the furor over "frivolous" lawsuit awards -- it's not just an award, it's a punishment for the defendant. And a few thousand dollars (or even a few hundred thousand) in "punishment" is not enough for a large corporation to even notice. That's pocket change to them.
They've stopped giving the secretary shit about the time she left the coffee pot on all night.
If you blow my mind, I promise not to think in your mouth.
The danger of course in not accepting rigorous scientific study of available facts leads us to confusion and obfuscation of truth which leads to jeopardy of person and country. Unfortunately, we have in the last few years gone quite far down this road through decisions made based upon data twisted to represent a prior beliefs rather than letting the data speak and then drawing conclusions from those data.
Indeed. One of the great ironies of the right-wing fundamentalist movement is that they criticize science (particularly evolutionary science) for promoting "moral relativism" -- and they harp continuously on the dangers of such relativism.
Meanwhile, in their efforts to destroy science, they promote a "factual relativism" that is far more insidious than any moral relativism could ever be. After all, if there's no such thing as an independently verifiable fact, then it's impossible to counter the claims (no matter how absurd) of an authority figure. The Religious Right today is furiously at work churning out legions of followers who are trained to think in exactly this way: Facts don't matter, "science" is a fraud, and the only Truth is the Truth of God -- interpreted, of course, by your friendly local religious pundit.
I do find the idea intriguing. However, right off the top of my head I can see some loopholes that will be exploited almost immediately:
Which is not to say that it's a bad idea; it may still work. But there are certainly issues that need to be dealt with.
by 2015, whatever vehicle they use will probably have a helpful instruction booklet included.....written in Chinese....
I hope they can get a better translator than the people who did the instructions that came with my chopsticks.
OK, let's see what we've got so far:
- The best golfer is black.
- The most successful rapper is white.
- MS Windows can run on a Mac.
I Wonder what the other four signs are going to be?I just replaced my desktop with a laptop. Why bother with a bulky desktop when I can get a fast, luggable laptop for cheap?
Throw in a docking station with monitor, keyboard & mouse, and you have the best of both worlds. It looks and feels like a full desktop machine when you're at your desk, but if you want or need to work elsewhere, it's still the same machine, with the same software, data, and configuration. I've been working this way for years.
All of those words in the list look perfectly cromulent to me.
"It was... scrumtrillescent!"
I'm a SysAdmin and at one place I worked, I noticed someone had written 'aaaaa' on their monitor.
Maybe he died while he was writing it.
The good news: enterprising people will figure out a way to make this process accessible to the ordinary person. The bad news: You'll spend the rest of eternity sending spam.
I have been studying the literature on quantum computation, quantum teleportation, and quantum cryptography for several years now, and I find it all very fascinating, but I have a serious concern. So far, all tests I have read about have been performed with these two individuals named "Alice" and Bob". This brings up a number of serious problems:
"Every revolutionary idea seems to evoke three stages of reaction. They may be summed up by the phrases:
-Arthur C. Clarke
And a little pot in every chicken.
But remains in a superposition of alive and dead states until you open the box.
In fact, OOo is a perfect platform for this sort of "compare and contrast" education. Since schools already have MS Office, they can keep that and upgrade it (let's face it; they probably will anyway), but since they can also get OOo for free, they can use these two office suites to build lessons that will help the students expand their computer knowledge beyond "double-click the blue W to write a letter".
I'm sure other examples can be thought up based on a commonly used commercial app and its free counterpart(s).
10 Years ago it was Word Perfet. I Think it is a real deservice to not teach childern how to use serveral word processor and spreadsheet so that get a feel for the basics so in 10 Years when Office ZZ or openoffice 600 are given to them they wont go what the hell I am suppose to do now?
Even more to the point, computer classes should be teaching kids the basic abilities they will need to familiarize themselves with new software in general. One thing you can be absolutely certain of is that, as time goes on, new versions of software and totally new software packages will become available. Those who are able to adapt more quickly to these changes (or at least are not intimidated by them) will have an advantage.
There's got to be a beacon incorporated into the design because if that thing (30 cm.) lands in a very deep spot in the ocean it's going to be hard to find!
Yeah, but then Jack Bauer is going to have to spend all his time protecting innocent oceanographers from the terrorists trying to get their hands on the Satellite Black Box they inadvertently found. Do you really think our government needs that kind of waste right now?