Also, the BMI is fucking ridiculous. I've got friend who did/do body building, and they'll tell you that they're actually obese, based on the BMI that is. It's at this point that people say "but but but there's other measures you use in combination", the looser the legal policy is, the more useless this bill is (in fact, it will just add administrative overhead). The tighter it is, the more you're going to be victimizing these other people.
Oh, it should also be noted, that these body building types often put a higher burden on the health care system. They push their bodies to extreme limits, such that they require regular check ups, and can easily end up in a bad situation. Ever seen someone cut weight before? It's pretty fucked.
MOD UP!
I'm one of these lifters [though I do competitive powerlifting versus body buliding, no cutting for me]. I'm 65" and weigh 200 pounds. As part of my job I'm required to have an FAA Medical Pilot Certificate. I've had a doctor almost fail me OVER THE PHONE after asking me my height and weight before I went to the appointment.
In person, things look much different: 34" waist, 16.5" arms, barrel chest, 12% body fat, 45bpm resting heart rate that I can elevate and sustain at 180bpm, good blood pressure, et cetera. I work out 6 or 7 days a week [5 days of lifting, 2 days running 5 miles/day]. Healthy diet of grains, fruits, veggies, lean proteins. But using some shitty metric like BMI makes me out to be 'dangerously overweight'. Upon seeing me in person, the doctor revoked his prior "fail" statement and told me I should be on a recruiting poster somewhere.
And as far as body building types putting a burden on the system, any person who takes athletics seriously may have similar problems: runners with stress fractures / impact issues, hockey players with contact injuries, et cetera -- yet these athletes are probably strengthening their hearts/lungs while abstaining from stupid, risky behavior [tobacco].
Closest I've got for EE is either the classic "Art of Electronics" or an ARRL handbook...
Completely agree on "The Art of Electronics". I'm curious what other people mention. My go-to books as an ECE are TAOCP, TAOE, and "Introduction to Algorithms" by Rivest et. al.
On the second tier are "The Practice of Programming" by Kernighan & Pike, "Hacker's Delight" by Warren, "The Pragmatic Programmer" by Hunt & Thomas, and a bunch of even more specific books on DSP, Stoch, and C. But these are a bit more subject specific and 'opinion' then reference a la the first tier.
I travel very often, and I usually carry-on if at all possible, so I've never been split apart from any checked bag. I'm unsure of the regulation.
While I've never missed a flight for being stuck in security, I'm fairly certain that the "fine print" has some clause about leaving adequate amount of time to get through security and arriving at the gate, and any tardiness to miss a flight is the fault of the flier. I was flying out of Orlando airport earlier this year, and when I arrived to Orlando [MCO], there were announcements and signs that mentioned showing up at least two hours early for our flights out.
I only arrive at the airport less than an hour before my flight departs!
I usually do that with the "shuttle" flights departing from 'business' terminals -- for example, at Logan, there is a section that is only for access to the shuttle flights to New York and DC which leave every hour, and if you miss one, you can hop on the next. But even now, if I have a set time I have to be somewhere and can't afford to be late, I'll have to show up early on the case that I have to decline the Rapiscan and get manually frisked.
There must be some really well connected people lobbying for these machines
Rumblings are former Homeland "Security" exec Michael Chertoff has a financial stake...I'll leave it as an exercise to the reader to verify/follow up on that:]
I would also like to point out that plenty of people fly El Al Israel and subject themselves to invasive questioning for the privilege of secure air travel.
Invasive questioning does not involve anyone violating my body by touching me without permission.
Well, gee. He's got HIV... I should let him go down on me, but only if he doesn't brush his teeth. Oh, wait, no. I guess this is where things like being responsible about sex comes in, but that's a pretty unpopular stance...
I was speaking out of mind of protecting myself as a male, not protecting my partner as a female. I know female-to-male transfer during male-on-female is an extremely low risk activity, but I still like to minimize my risks.
I choose to be responsible about sex...I get myself screened for STIs every three months, I have 'the talk' with partners prior to sexual encounters, but there are several things that are difficult to mitigate. And this assumes that the partners are being 100% honest...
many STIs lie 'dormant' in the body before becoming active and showing symptoms. most are still transferable during this time.
many people will not show symptoms of an STI, even when in a transferable [or outbreak] state. Couple this in with difficulty in screening [very hard to diagnose an asymptomatic male with certain kinds of HPV, for example], and you may be setting yourself up for infection.
Sex is an inherently dangerous act, nowadays. I prefer safer sex, though even that has risks [HSV/HPV can be transferred via kissing or skin-on-skin contact]. And while I use dental dams when I'm going down, if I have brushed my teeth and I feel like I _could_ have a tear or a cut, I will not go down, even with a dam, simply to lower my odds. Getting an STI is not [should not be?] an end-all scarlet-letter "I am disfigured" occurrence, and it is sad it has started to turn into that -- but I have no desire to get infected with anything I don't need to be infected with.
As a citizen of the United States, what are you doing about it?
I've written my three congresscritters [rep & senators] and I've told friends/family about my experiences and started discussion about why this is wrong.
I'm also adding to the discussion here, where I probably reach more people...I am not taking this one lying down.
I would really like to be more outraged on this topic. But the propects of fondling and pornography are just too titilating to me. Damn prudes:-P
I am a straight, sexually-active male, with no image issues -- completely comfortable with my body, my sexuality, and the size of my penis. I don't have any sexual hang-ups, enjoy pornography [especially watching with a partner!], and don't have any "compensation" issues.
But getting my body and penis felt up because I choose to exercise my right [yes, right -- see Shapiro vs. Thompson] to interstate travel, or even intrastate travel for California flights, because I decline the 'privilege' of stepping through a Rapiscan? My body is my business -- and those who I let touch it my business. I have sex on my terms. Similar to the "no one can make you feel inferior without your consent" approach, no one can touch my body without my consent.
Making a joke about people being "prudes" because they don't want to have some random person they have not chosen for a sexual relationship to get intimate with their body is completely undermining the issue. This is a serious matter. If somebody gets touched without consent, it is rape. And, despite what prison-jokes ["he'll get his in jail"] or victim-blaming ["she was asking for it"] jokes you ascribe to, this is a horrible ordeal -- especially for those who have been abused/traumatized and may incur flashbacks as a result of this.
I opted out twice [on business travel, not personal travel where I could have driven] on the week of Thanksgiving [not on opt-out day], and while my 'pat-downers' were extremely friendly about the whole ordeal, it's still something I'd not want to repeat. Especially the second time, when I had to wait thirty minutes for someone to come over and pat me down -- as many of the male staff would get asked and say they did not want to touch anyone -- while my carry-ons sat barely in my vision, and not under close security eye 30 feet away. While I was waiting to be screened, and trying to make sure no one lifted any of my possessions, the female TSA "officer" near me kept making jokes about "opt-out day". When I eventually got screened and scrutinized, I had to run to the gate to catch my flight. A full 70 minutes after getting in the security line.
Then again, I haven't actually flown all that recently. Maybe my opinion will change after I fly cross country with the kids later this month.
Yeah, let's see how you feel when some person you don't know gets to second base with your children. Doing a full body rub, going up their legs to the groin until the "officer" feels "resistance" -- by their definition. Having a full press done on their chest, covering the entire surface. Having their backsides rubbed [with the back of the "officer's" hands, of course]. If some random man or woman did this to your kids on the street, you'd kick the crap out of them and call the cops. Here, it's for our "safety".
Let's not even touch the name on these things -- rapiscan -- I dunno, does that root sound similar to rape? Not doing any conditioning or anything...
Much of Cocks' work is documented in Simon Singh's fantastic treatise on cryptography and stenography through history, 'The Code Book'. This includes thoughts by Cocks' and James Ellis on the secrecy of their work, and their comfort at that -- they knew what they were getting into. Especially telling are Ellis' quotes -- as he died ~1 month before the public announcement was made...
"Promotion of new technologies to support declassification. Striking the critical balance between openness and secrecy is difficult but a necessary part of our democratic form of government. Striking this balance becomes more difficult as the volume and complexity of the information increases. Improving the capability of departments and agencies to identify still-sensitive information and to make declassified information available to the public are integral parts of the classification system."
ie, find the 'resume term-of-the-week' and ask them about it: if the candidate can speak about it intelligibly, they know something about it, and increase the difficulty.
in the past, the big buzzword was Java. Now it tends to be Python.
I sit on the interview committee for my group. I look over all resumes of candidates I interview before they step into my office, so I know what's written and what they 'claim to' know. I'll ask questions, and if the candidate has something on there that cannot be explained or defended, that candidate just failed. I don't like people who add crap to resumes for no reason.
as far as the lamp testing goes:
Linux: - installation [non-package] of the configure, make variety - configuration files, where they sit, how to edit - differences between etcpasswd and etcshadow, and why hashes only [not passwords] are stored and what salts are - chroot jails
MySQL: - how to design a database [ie, here's a DB task. how would you solve/implement?] - how do you [personally] send SQL commands to the server? the mysql command window, perl, php, python, etc. what hooks are you familiar with? - pivot tables, one to many, many to one, foreign keys
Perl/Python/PHP: [preface: I am not a big user of Python] - how would you implement [x data type] in Perl? - External Perl Libraries -- how not to reinvent the wheel - Why to use PHP? Why fully dynamic pages are not good in a high-traffic environment? Ways to have 'dynamic' pages generated while keeping the actual pages 'static' - What resources do you consult? And how?
OOP/MVC: - I ask implementation questions, and get the candidate talking. Someone proficient in OOP/MVC should be able to talk about the concepts easily without much prodding. Why, how, best practices, etc.
Eventually the costs for this will make it a public spectacle and people will question why we're diverting so much money and throwing all these people in jail and ruining their lives and the general public will finally ask the question it should have been asking years ago:
And truthfully? I loved this feature. I would order out to restaurants and at the end it would be like "do you want to share this over Facebook" and I'd be like "Shit why not!" and I'd get a laugh out of my friends criticizing or commending me on my food choice.
that would have been fine. if they had asked me.
the reason why I didn't like beacon is because it linked my facebook account and my yelp account without my consent. my facebook account was displaying my yelp reviews. the two accounts were not linked in any way [email address, openID, et cetera] except for having the same name on record.
add in the fact that beacon was enabled as 'opt-out', not 'opt-in', means that i was unaware that there was activity on my fb account [my account is kept completely devoid of information -- all my profile has is a picture of myself found elsewhere on the web, and the city I presently live in], and it means that my profile was displaying information that I did not approve of.
and, for the record, as a result i closed my yelp account [after purging my reviews as much as possible] and while i have kept my fb account [i'd rather have something in my name than giving someone else the ability to do so], it no longer has any value to me.
I'll second that. My upgrade [48 hours after release] was seamless.
The only thing that could only be considered a problem was that the login screen automatically made itself the 'list all users' version instead of the 'enter user name:' version. Only a slight annoyance to fix that one.
The best? VLC returns to the all-in-one version, instead of the two window [one for controller, one for player] version...
At my job, we use these toughbooks in extreme conditions -- think arctic/antarctic desert and Middle Eastern deserts. Especially in the latter, the toughbook excels because all of the ports are blocked against FOD [foreign objects and debris] -- namely, if there's a sandstorm that kicks up, the sand can't enter the unit in any way.
In addition, try using a regular laptop while riding on a humvee through rocky terrain. No way that disk lasts, whereas the toughbook disks are made to absorb the shock and vibration.
Therefore, if they have a 20-Gbps link to your house, but they offer 7-Mbps of open bandwidth, with 13-Mpbs reserved for their own downloadable movies, they can only advertise 7-Mpbs service.
Makes sense to me... Can anybody poke any logical holes in this (other than "Cable sucks, let's screw them")?
If I had mod points, I would mark you up, but I don't, so I'll expand on this.
Starting from the bottom up, you gain a better understanding of how the machine functions. You can always go up a layer of abstraction once you understand what is happening on the lower levels.
I would have recommended C first, so that the beginner can understand memory management, registers, interrupts -- the 'lower levels' of the machine -- but starting with assembly gives an even better understanding. Once you understand how memory works, pointers, addresses -- you can move to a language that automates the process -- but without the knowledge, you _will_ get bitten at some point.
Between C++ and Java is where I would have put python/perl/${SCRIPTLANGUAGEOFCHOICE} -- and an understanding of when to use a scripting language versus a programming language.
But you hit the nail on the head with the last line -- don't stop learning. Dinosaurs and those unable to evolve go extinct:]
Now, we're getting into something that has given me a nice philosophical question for a long while:
The Sixth Amendment of the Constitution guarantees the right to counsel for the accused. In that case, it can be assumed that some defendants who plead 'not guilty' are in fact, guilty, and their guilt is unquestionable.
The issue that isn't so black or white is the ethics of the lawyer:
is it more ethical to defend 'to the death' (and possibly win the freedom) of a definitively guilty person, or is it more ethical to throw in the towel and 'defend' the definitively guilty person, earning them a stay in a penitentiary for the crime they committed (and the lawyer knows was committed)?
Slashdot Mirror
Also, the BMI is fucking ridiculous. I've got friend who did/do body building, and they'll tell you that they're actually obese, based on the BMI that is. It's at this point that people say "but but but there's other measures you use in combination", the looser the legal policy is, the more useless this bill is (in fact, it will just add administrative overhead). The tighter it is, the more you're going to be victimizing these other people.
Oh, it should also be noted, that these body building types often put a higher burden on the health care system. They push their bodies to extreme limits, such that they require regular check ups, and can easily end up in a bad situation. Ever seen someone cut weight before? It's pretty fucked.
MOD UP!
I'm one of these lifters [though I do competitive powerlifting versus body buliding, no cutting for me]. I'm 65" and weigh 200 pounds. As part of my job I'm required to have an FAA Medical Pilot Certificate. I've had a doctor almost fail me OVER THE PHONE after asking me my height and weight before I went to the appointment.
In person, things look much different: 34" waist, 16.5" arms, barrel chest, 12% body fat, 45bpm resting heart rate that I can elevate and sustain at 180bpm, good blood pressure, et cetera. I work out 6 or 7 days a week [5 days of lifting, 2 days running 5 miles/day]. Healthy diet of grains, fruits, veggies, lean proteins. But using some shitty metric like BMI makes me out to be 'dangerously overweight'. Upon seeing me in person, the doctor revoked his prior "fail" statement and told me I should be on a recruiting poster somewhere.
And as far as body building types putting a burden on the system, any person who takes athletics seriously may have similar problems: runners with stress fractures / impact issues, hockey players with contact injuries, et cetera -- yet these athletes are probably strengthening their hearts/lungs while abstaining from stupid, risky behavior [tobacco].
Closest I've got for EE is either the classic "Art of Electronics" or an ARRL handbook...
Completely agree on "The Art of Electronics". I'm curious what other people mention. My go-to books as an ECE are TAOCP, TAOE, and "Introduction to Algorithms" by Rivest et. al.
On the second tier are "The Practice of Programming" by Kernighan & Pike, "Hacker's Delight" by Warren, "The Pragmatic Programmer" by Hunt & Thomas, and a bunch of even more specific books on DSP, Stoch, and C. But these are a bit more subject specific and 'opinion' then reference a la the first tier.
The number has gone from a high of 16 percent in the fourth quarter of 2007 to just nine percent in the fourth quarter of 2010
16% of what? the article doesn't mention.
16% of the population? 16% of what it used to be?
Note that a large portion of the money for DARPA is going to cybersecurity research with Mudge of the L0pht as the DARPA Program Manager.
[1] http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/219725/government_employs_hackers_in_brave_new_scheme.html
[2] http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2010/08/darpas-star-hacker-looks-to-wikileak-proof-the-pentagon/
[3] http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2011/02/07/internet-creators-ask-hackers-help/
need much better pay to motivate jury $17 a day is way to low and just covers the costs of parking / public transportation.
may jury pay start at $50-$100 day + lunch. and $150 if a over night stay is needed. with added pay for 2 week trials.
Your employer is legally required to pay the difference between the jury stipend and your salary. Even if you are a temporary or seasonal.
Of course, this varies by state. My state [Massachusetts] does. YMMV.
I travel very often, and I usually carry-on if at all possible, so I've never been split apart from any checked bag. I'm unsure of the regulation.
While I've never missed a flight for being stuck in security, I'm fairly certain that the "fine print" has some clause about leaving adequate amount of time to get through security and arriving at the gate, and any tardiness to miss a flight is the fault of the flier. I was flying out of Orlando airport earlier this year, and when I arrived to Orlando [MCO], there were announcements and signs that mentioned showing up at least two hours early for our flights out.
I only arrive at the airport less than an hour before my flight departs!
I usually do that with the "shuttle" flights departing from 'business' terminals -- for example, at Logan, there is a section that is only for access to the shuttle flights to New York and DC which leave every hour, and if you miss one, you can hop on the next. But even now, if I have a set time I have to be somewhere and can't afford to be late, I'll have to show up early on the case that I have to decline the Rapiscan and get manually frisked.
There must be some really well connected people lobbying for these machines
Rumblings are former Homeland "Security" exec Michael Chertoff has a financial stake...I'll leave it as an exercise to the reader to verify/follow up on that :]
I would also like to point out that plenty of people fly El Al Israel and subject themselves to invasive questioning for the privilege of secure air travel.
Invasive questioning does not involve anyone violating my body by touching me without permission.
Well, gee. He's got HIV... I should let him go down on me, but only if he doesn't brush his teeth. Oh, wait, no. I guess this is where things like being responsible about sex comes in, but that's a pretty unpopular stance...
I was speaking out of mind of protecting myself as a male, not protecting my partner as a female. I know female-to-male transfer during male-on-female is an extremely low risk activity, but I still like to minimize my risks.
I choose to be responsible about sex...I get myself screened for STIs every three months, I have 'the talk' with partners prior to sexual encounters, but there are several things that are difficult to mitigate. And this assumes that the partners are being 100% honest...
Sex is an inherently dangerous act, nowadays. I prefer safer sex, though even that has risks [HSV/HPV can be transferred via kissing or skin-on-skin contact]. And while I use dental dams when I'm going down, if I have brushed my teeth and I feel like I _could_ have a tear or a cut, I will not go down, even with a dam, simply to lower my odds. Getting an STI is not [should not be?] an end-all scarlet-letter "I am disfigured" occurrence, and it is sad it has started to turn into that -- but I have no desire to get infected with anything I don't need to be infected with.
Which leads to my question:
As a citizen of the United States, what are you doing about it?
I've written my three congresscritters [rep & senators] and I've told friends/family about my experiences and started discussion about why this is wrong.
I'm also adding to the discussion here, where I probably reach more people...I am not taking this one lying down.
you could give her a yeast infection.
Yeast infections are curable.
HSV 1/2, HPV [too many variants to name], and HIV are not.
I would really like to be more outraged on this topic. But the propects of fondling and pornography are just too titilating to me. Damn prudes :-P
I am a straight, sexually-active male, with no image issues -- completely comfortable with my body, my sexuality, and the size of my penis. I don't have any sexual hang-ups, enjoy pornography [especially watching with a partner!], and don't have any "compensation" issues.
But getting my body and penis felt up because I choose to exercise my right [yes, right -- see Shapiro vs. Thompson] to interstate travel, or even intrastate travel for California flights, because I decline the 'privilege' of stepping through a Rapiscan? My body is my business -- and those who I let touch it my business. I have sex on my terms. Similar to the "no one can make you feel inferior without your consent" approach, no one can touch my body without my consent.
Making a joke about people being "prudes" because they don't want to have some random person they have not chosen for a sexual relationship to get intimate with their body is completely undermining the issue. This is a serious matter. If somebody gets touched without consent, it is rape. And, despite what prison-jokes ["he'll get his in jail"] or victim-blaming ["she was asking for it"] jokes you ascribe to, this is a horrible ordeal -- especially for those who have been abused/traumatized and may incur flashbacks as a result of this.
I opted out twice [on business travel, not personal travel where I could have driven] on the week of Thanksgiving [not on opt-out day], and while my 'pat-downers' were extremely friendly about the whole ordeal, it's still something I'd not want to repeat. Especially the second time, when I had to wait thirty minutes for someone to come over and pat me down -- as many of the male staff would get asked and say they did not want to touch anyone -- while my carry-ons sat barely in my vision, and not under close security eye 30 feet away. While I was waiting to be screened, and trying to make sure no one lifted any of my possessions, the female TSA "officer" near me kept making jokes about "opt-out day". When I eventually got screened and scrutinized, I had to run to the gate to catch my flight. A full 70 minutes after getting in the security line.
Then again, I haven't actually flown all that recently. Maybe my opinion will change after I fly cross country with the kids later this month.
Yeah, let's see how you feel when some person you don't know gets to second base with your children. Doing a full body rub, going up their legs to the groin until the "officer" feels "resistance" -- by their definition. Having a full press done on their chest, covering the entire surface. Having their backsides rubbed [with the back of the "officer's" hands, of course]. If some random man or woman did this to your kids on the street, you'd kick the crap out of them and call the cops. Here, it's for our "safety".
Let's not even touch the name on these things -- rapiscan -- I dunno, does that root sound similar to rape? Not doing any conditioning or anything...
steganography. which apparently isn't in firefox's spell-check dictionary. my fault.
welp.
Much of Cocks' work is documented in Simon Singh's fantastic treatise on cryptography and stenography through history, 'The Code Book'. This includes thoughts by Cocks' and James Ellis on the secrecy of their work, and their comfort at that -- they knew what they were getting into. Especially telling are Ellis' quotes -- as he died ~1 month before the public announcement was made...
source: https://www.fbo.gov/index?s=opportunity&mode=form&id=06a877fddd2dedaf6a52520345f64eda&tab=core&_cview=0
from the fedbizops:
"Promotion of new technologies to support declassification. Striking the critical balance between openness and secrecy is difficult but a necessary part of our democratic form of government. Striking this balance becomes more difficult as the volume and complexity of the information increases. Improving the capability of departments and agencies to identify still-sensitive information and to make declassified information available to the public are integral parts of the classification system."
Play buzzword bingo with the CV:
ie, find the 'resume term-of-the-week' and ask them about it: if the candidate can speak about it intelligibly, they know something about it, and increase the difficulty.
in the past, the big buzzword was Java. Now it tends to be Python.
I sit on the interview committee for my group. I look over all resumes of candidates I interview before they step into my office, so I know what's written and what they 'claim to' know. I'll ask questions, and if the candidate has something on there that cannot be explained or defended, that candidate just failed. I don't like people who add crap to resumes for no reason.
as far as the lamp testing goes:
Linux:
- installation [non-package] of the configure, make variety
- configuration files, where they sit, how to edit
- differences between etcpasswd and etcshadow, and why hashes only [not passwords] are stored and what salts are
- chroot jails
Apache:
- modules. explain
- apache conf
- virtual servers
MySQL:
- how to design a database [ie, here's a DB task. how would you solve/implement?]
- how do you [personally] send SQL commands to the server? the mysql command window, perl, php, python, etc. what hooks are you familiar with?
- pivot tables, one to many, many to one, foreign keys
Perl/Python/PHP: [preface: I am not a big user of Python]
- how would you implement [x data type] in Perl?
- External Perl Libraries -- how not to reinvent the wheel
- Why to use PHP? Why fully dynamic pages are not good in a high-traffic environment? Ways to have 'dynamic' pages generated while keeping the actual pages 'static'
- What resources do you consult? And how?
OOP/MVC:
- I ask implementation questions, and get the candidate talking. Someone proficient in OOP/MVC should be able to talk about the concepts easily without much prodding. Why, how, best practices, etc.
Eventually the costs for this will make it a public spectacle and people will question why we're diverting so much money and throwing all these people in jail and ruining their lives and the general public will finally ask the question it should have been asking years ago:
Is it worth it?
just like the war on drugs?
I just signed up for an account. It asked for your birthday on the page with your address. However, it _was not_ mandatory.
I conveniently skipped the 'birthdate', 'gender', and 'your opinion of these genre' sections.
Where did those extra 2.2 pounds come from?
I put on my robe and wizard hat.
And truthfully? I loved this feature. I would order out to restaurants and at the end it would be like "do you want to share this over Facebook" and I'd be like "Shit why not!" and I'd get a laugh out of my friends criticizing or commending me on my food choice.
that would have been fine. if they had asked me.
the reason why I didn't like beacon is because it linked my facebook account and my yelp account without my consent. my facebook account was displaying my yelp reviews. the two accounts were not linked in any way [email address, openID, et cetera] except for having the same name on record.
add in the fact that beacon was enabled as 'opt-out', not 'opt-in', means that i was unaware that there was activity on my fb account [my account is kept completely devoid of information -- all my profile has is a picture of myself found elsewhere on the web, and the city I presently live in], and it means that my profile was displaying information that I did not approve of.
and, for the record, as a result i closed my yelp account [after purging my reviews as much as possible] and while i have kept my fb account [i'd rather have something in my name than giving someone else the ability to do so], it no longer has any value to me.
I'll second that. My upgrade [48 hours after release] was seamless.
The only thing that could only be considered a problem was that the login screen automatically made itself the 'list all users' version instead of the 'enter user name:' version. Only a slight annoyance to fix that one.
The best? VLC returns to the all-in-one version, instead of the two window [one for controller, one for player] version...
At my job, we use these toughbooks in extreme conditions -- think arctic/antarctic desert and Middle Eastern deserts. Especially in the latter, the toughbook excels because all of the ports are blocked against FOD [foreign objects and debris] -- namely, if there's a sandstorm that kicks up, the sand can't enter the unit in any way.
In addition, try using a regular laptop while riding on a humvee through rocky terrain. No way that disk lasts, whereas the toughbook disks are made to absorb the shock and vibration.
Whoever tagged this article 'Guitarhero' was absolutely correct.
The man's influence on music cannot be stated highly enough.
Between the design (and implementation of the electric guitar) to multitrack recording to delay effects, he really was a renaissance man.
Therefore, if they have a 20-Gbps link to your house, but they offer 7-Mbps of open bandwidth, with 13-Mpbs reserved for their own downloadable movies, they can only advertise 7-Mpbs service.
Makes sense to me... Can anybody poke any logical holes in this (other than "Cable sucks, let's screw them")?
For one thing, 7 Mbps + 13 Mbps is not 20 Gbps
If I had mod points, I would mark you up, but I don't, so I'll expand on this.
:]
Starting from the bottom up, you gain a better understanding of how the machine functions. You can always go up a layer of abstraction once you understand what is happening on the lower levels.
I would have recommended C first, so that the beginner can understand memory management, registers, interrupts -- the 'lower levels' of the machine -- but starting with assembly gives an even better understanding. Once you understand how memory works, pointers, addresses -- you can move to a language that automates the process -- but without the knowledge, you _will_ get bitten at some point.
Between C++ and Java is where I would have put python/perl/${SCRIPTLANGUAGEOFCHOICE} -- and an understanding of when to use a scripting language versus a programming language.
But you hit the nail on the head with the last line -- don't stop learning. Dinosaurs and those unable to evolve go extinct
Now, we're getting into something that has given me a nice philosophical question for a long while:
The Sixth Amendment of the Constitution guarantees the right to counsel for the accused. In that case, it can be assumed that some defendants who plead 'not guilty' are in fact, guilty, and their guilt is unquestionable.
The issue that isn't so black or white is the ethics of the lawyer:
is it more ethical to defend 'to the death' (and possibly win the freedom) of a definitively guilty person, or is it more ethical to throw in the towel and 'defend' the definitively guilty person, earning them a stay in a penitentiary for the crime they committed (and the lawyer knows was committed)?