okay, in theroy caopyrights expire too, but there will be none (in the US) that expire for the next 20 years or so... Patents expire, and in a fairly short timeframe.
When I think of all the old games that I used to love on my 8 bit atari, well all are copyrighted, and so I cannot legally copy them anymore. with 5-1/4 disks going bad all the time there isn't much that we can legally do to save those classics. If those games were patented instead, at least I could legally copy them. (Note, that I still don't think patents should apply to whole games, maybe the concept, but not the game)
I think that software patents should be allowed, but not yet! That is until we get to the point where a new software takes a lot of work to devolpe, and most concepts are worked out we shouldn't allow patents. Once things have settled down, sure you can patent your auto-spell checker in your word processor, because word processors as a concept a mature. However you shouldn't be able to patent a GUI menuing system because these systems are still undergoing research and are not mature. (This is an example, please don't disagree with the examples, disagree with the idea behing them)
Back in the early '90s my local Atari (8 bit) users group got a guest speaker.
We had to decide who we wanted to speak, raise money to pay his hotel and transportation, and we even went and rented a more expensive hotel banquet room. Some memembers took the guy out for meals.
It went off rather well, I remember walking into the hotel, and seeing on their comptuer monitor "Space: talk by jon doe" (I can't remember the guy's name, but Space is/was the St. Paul Atari Users Group) The guy spoke for half an hour (very few people should be allowed to speak for longer!) with questions following.
One other point, keep your speaker busy, but not too busy. For instance if I was to bring Alan Cox in to my hometown I'd have to consider the 8 hour time difference. Somehow we would have to give him time adjust. Then various activities. Some time should be spent with users (In Alan's case your probably ahve a kernel hacker with an interesting problem!). Also plan time for other things. Someone should take him to the local zoo, or a similear activity so he doesn't get burned out. Don't forget time to exercise and time alone!
Do you want to invite family? Linus is much more likely to want to speak in Norway if you fly his wife and kid out too, and give them plenty of time to travel to Finland.
Overall guest speakers are a lot of fun, and well worth doing. however they are expensive (More so if you have to pay the speaker and not just the travel expenses) and a lot of work. Don't try to do more then one or two a year, and don't let those who orginize it get bruned out.
I'm an american. I took some German and spanish classes in college. Despite having enough spanish to be considered bi-lingual (ie I know all the grammer and enough vocabulary) I don't consider myself bi-lingual. Why is simple: I don't use it. If I was around spanish speakers every day I'd consider myself bi-lingual because I would have a use for spanish, and practice. However not having a reason to use it I don't.
If there was a reason to use a different language I would. I've read web pages in danish, and french from time to time, and I have had no traning in either language (other then they look like german or spanish, respectivly. If I needed to I could (re)learn to communicate in any language. I have no doupt that my grammer and spelling would be poor, but I could get my point across, and in the end that is what counts.
After discovering that both Gore and Bush were idiots who I could not vote for I turned my attention to third parties. Why would I care about their running mates, very few vice presidents do anything useful. Once in a while a swing vote in the senate, and it has happened that the president died in office. Both are rare enough not to affect my vote.
My brother tells me that Bush's running mate is better, but I'm not sure why. I've also heard the theory that being jewish, Gore's running mate might provoke trouble in the middle east, something we don't need.
BTW, the last initials are C. and L, but I don't recall which is which.
Unfortunatly all this ignores the more important elections: state and local. There is more then one seat that I need to vote on. I just wish I knew who to vote for.
I've been approached by a private investigator reciently. Someone on disability appears to be running a buisness from his house, the invistigator wants to know if I can break into his comptuer and collect evidence.
Note that I have not aggreed to the above, and will not until I get more information. However we can all agree that IF fraud is committed the evidence I collect would be honest, but if not I would be stepping over the line. So are cracking tools illegal? The private investigator can presumably use lock picks (bugler's tools which are illegal to possess) to break into this person's house to collect evidence. (THe law is very shady here)
A loaded gun does not nessicarly kill someone. I've handled a loaded gun several times, and yet none of those guns have killed someone. If the gun is not treated like it will kill someone, yet it probably will (at some time) injure someone. Even then though, there are few places were you can get shot and killed making accidents more likely to require a hospital stay then a funeral. Ronald Reagon was shot in 1982(?), and it didn't kill him. Many others have been shot and not died.
A gun can kill people. So can a knife. A gun can also put food on a poor person's table. A gun can make for an enjoyable afternoon of target practice. A knife can cut an onion. A baseball thrown at someone's head can kill. A baseball bat can kill someone. Combine the bat and ball and you have America's favorite passtime.
Am I the only one who sees storing credit cards as a problem. Nobody should ever be able to get at my credit card number. If amazon has it in a database it means a cracker has a chance to break in and get it.
Granted the Libratarians are for smaller less intrusive goverment, but the constitution party is also for similear things. There are major diffeences, but they are differences allowed (They would say required in some cases) by the constitution.
The constitution party (if it has a majority in congress and the presidency, otherwise they just end up having to compromise like everyone else) would make goverment smaller then it is.
The major partys lie about their opponants all the time, please keep third partys clean of this - at least as much as we can.
I for one am convinced that crime and antisocial behaviour in general can in very many cases be led back to the way the parents raised the person in question. And crime affects us all in some way.
I've seen many different ways to raise children. I've seen Some rotten parents, and some good ones. I've seen rotten kids, and I've seen good kids. However the corolation is not as strong as you lead us to think. There is some mind you, but I've seen wonderful parents turn out rotten kids, and I've seen rotten parents turn out good kids. I can't think of a reason for either, but I've seen it.
Yes parents should take responsibility for their children and raise them right, but there are very few who are doing such a bad job of raising their kids that I would advocate taking their kids away.
OTOH, there are many parents who are raising their kids in a way I disagree with. Thing like religion, Spanking, other punishment, family activities, day care, allowances, TV, curfews, dating, etc. are all things I've seen parents handle in a way different from me. Some are too strict, others are not strict enough, but then I turn to the next point, and suddently the positions have changed. I know that if I ever have kids people will say exactly the same thing about me.
So yes parents have a role in keeping kids out of trouble. But how much goverment should impose... I'm not willing to commit to that.
No, thinking American's should vote.
on
Should You Vote?
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· Score: 2
If you don't feel you have time to understand the canidates and what they stand for, then please don't vote. Those who vote without thinking about the issues are risking that they vote for someone who would do a bad job in office. Those who understand the issues (Not nessicarly all, but enough that understanding more/others wouldn't change their choice) should vote.
Remember the goal is for the best canidate to win. If you don't know who the best canidate is why vote. If you think you do, then you should help out those who can't be bothered to vote by voting for the right person.
In other words, I've spent a lot of time looking over various canidates, and I know who will get my Presidental vote (Howard Phillips), but am still considering senate and represenitives on national and state levels. Please get out of my way if you havn't put as much thought into the process lest you vote for the wrong person.
If you disagree with me politically and vote for someone else, that is fine with me. If you don't know anything about the canidates and vote for someone else, I have a problem with that.
Okay, it must be a personal decision. However, as a pure tech let me encourage you to do so. I've thought about self-study to get a law degree equivelent myself (I don't know if I'd be allowed to take the bar) just because of all the stupid cases we have seen on/.
Once you do get your degree we would like it best if you would make your night job a technical one that paid the bills, and for the day work on some of these technical cases for those of us without the ability to deal with law. Sort of an EFF lawyer without taking money from the EFF. Since in reality you can't do this, just find something that you can make work for you.
Has anyone taken a look at a list of banned books lately? Consisently in the top five is the Bible. Christian's want some way to keep their kids from being exposed to evil, but not at the expense of preventing someone interested from reading their religious documents.
I've read several of the top 10 books, and in my expirence, half are worthless trash that should never have been written, and half are absolute treasures worth being required reading everywhere. Most people agree with that statement, but disagree with the which books belong to each list.
I still like Minnesota's solution to this problem: it is illegal to view poronographic material in a public place. You can see it at home if you want (I think libraries can have it in a backroom) but you cannot view it in public - which few people would anyway. This nicely side steps the issues like "Is breast cancer research porn or not?" (For most 15 year old males it is, but some have relatives affected by breast cancer it is not)
10 months ago a large part of the big people on my project quit. Orginially I thought I would have to work harder (or quit) to pick up the slack, but now I see that I only have to work harder to clean up the mess they left orginialy.
To be fair to those who left the mess, they were sheilding me from upper management that was incompitent. When several of them turned in their resignation in the same week it got the CEOs attention, the management who was causing the problem was forced to resign, and things have been looking up since, though until a couple months ago it SEEMed they were worse.
In other words if you leave you can force them to see the problems they should fix. So as a junior technical person I beg of you quit for my sake. The rest of us are better off in the long run when you leave. Not always of course, but if you can't fix the problem at least expose it.
I agree. Thats why I'm looking at Howard Phillips. Of course if his party were to win everything for 100 straight years they would probably go to far in the wrong direction, but for now we need their likes in office.
There are other canidates. Take it as your duty to NOT vote for any canidate you don't agree with the most, no matter what that person's chance of winning is. For most people Bush and Gore don't fit.
Tell me about it. I took one of those online which canidate is right for you, and discovered I agreed with bush about 40% of the time, and gore 20%. I'm not surprized. I'm also not voting for either. But I think I have a fairly reasonable choice for senate that I'm hoping can keep the worst people off the surpreem court.
Accually though, I like voting for the loser. This way I can tell people "I didn't vote for him, and I did vote. So it must be your fault." Makes them think, and puts responsibility on their shoulders (Since most people don't vote, it is their fault for not voting for the other guy, and many who do vote voted for the guy in, I'm fairly safe accusing others of causing the problem with their vote.)
They choose to ignore the overwhelming statistics that show that gun related accidents, including those that resulted in death, are exponentially higher in the United States of America, than in countries with sensible gun control policies.
Maybe you should check again. The Us is not any worse off then the UK or Austrillia, both of which have heavy handed gun control. Japan has different numbers, but the culture in the US is different so you can't look at them.
As for your milita, most states define their milita as every able bodied male betwen 18 and 45. (Exactly details vary of course, the essentialls are there. Some include women, ages vary, and felons are probably excluded)
Just remember, while your trying to take the rights from gun owners, others are trying to take your free speach rights, and still others are attacking: privacy, search warrents, and the right to secure your belongings. Since my speech does not include swearing, I'd want to be in favor of laws restricting your rights to swear, watch voilent (or sexual) movies, and so on - but I know that true freedom means that I conceede your right to do such stupid things, and you concede my rihgt to do stupid things - so long as nobody is directly harming others in so doing.
Hey rob, can you put in a option for me to directly note this post is off topic and shouldn't get the loged in uses +1 bonus? Some topics are too inflamitory to leave untouched even when off topic.
Japanese is such a tough language to read that 9th grade reading level is considered normal for newspapers. In the US 6th grade is normal because english is an easier language to read. (Note, this is mostly related to alphabit from when I understand, japenese appearently like their one symbol per word written language for most communication, but is means you have to memorize many more symbols - when/if they use their other alphabit system the difference dissappears) This despite the 20 hour a day study habbits the japanise are noted for, they have so much more to learn that they are not better for it.
Speaking of study habbits, you learn more from your books when you spend more time in school. However Most of life's important lessions are gained outside of the classroom. If you are the smartest person in a room with 10 others, you are (Unless you pick a sample well outside the bell curve) still not as smart as their combined intellegence - IF they work togather well.
Finially I question the need to be number one in math. What is the advantage to science if your students can multiply 1325 by 46562 in 10 seconds, and it takes an american over a minute? turns out none because any reasonable person will put that into a calculator to avoid mistakes. So as long as you know how to do arithmatic on very large numbers that you can do it fast isn't a good point, and if it takes away from other time (play, but learning to communicate) it is accually a liability!
Many of the students I went to school with were mentally unprepared to deal with algebra, so as a finial data point, let me suggest that we are better off being behind out of high school if it means the fundamental thinking skills are worked on longer for those students. To re-phase that, it is better to have students who understand algebra then students who partially understand calculas and algebra. (This should be combined with my arithmatic example about, there is a fine line between studing something to death and not understanding it)
Is any of the above correct? I don't know. I know that I'm not convinced that more school is the answer to all complaints that someone else is smarter then me.
Back when distirbtued.net first started (rc5-56, and a ppro-200 was a mean machine) I calculated that enough 386s to equal one ppro-200 would use enough more electrisity that in a year you would have been better off buying the ppro.
Of course if you want the geek factor, or don't pay utilities, then enjoy. Otherwise think twice about a ne machine.
Compilers optimazers used to be rated (mayb still are, but now a says gcc is all I look at) by running bemchmarks. However it turned out that some venders wrote code to optimize best for the situations of the benchmarks, even though it ment a 1 in a million case was the best optimized while more useful optimizations are ignored (due to lack to time to impliment)
I seem to recall a video card maker that detected benchmarks being run on the card, and didn't do anything other then report it was did what was asked.
The post office generally just throws things that appear much too heavy in the trash without cost to the company you want to hurt. Too many people have tried that trick before.
You can get a similear effect that will go through if you have lots of papers in there, then it becomes borderline and they are likely to deliver it. Just make sure it looks on the outside like you just had a big letter to send to them.
PS, I'm not sure if you can accually attach a postage paid envelope to something else. Just stuff their envelope.
For those who don't see where I'm going: one of the early unix guys (Ken Thompson if I remember right) created a version of login with a backdoor for him to get in. Then he created a C compiler that could tell if login was being compiled and if so insert his backdoor. Then he modified the C compiler to check if it was compiling itself and if so insert both hacks. Soon he was able to (but claims he never did) distribute a C compiler that looked normal, yet would give him access to any machine.
It wouldn't have been hard to put this hack into compilers, so long as they started early and had some assistence. There must be someone at mit who can be bribed (there always is) to put it into any binaries on ftp.gnu.org. Sun is a closed company, and easially bribed to put it into their code. Of course we are today in a maze of unix's, all different. (4 BSDs, SCO, linux, Solaris, Irix, Aix, HPux, and probably others I've forgotten) You get the idea though.
Of coruse any good reporter protects his sources, and will have no problem interviewing a bunch of anonymous athlites and then publishing. I worked for a newspaper (Not in a position where my poor english would matter) and we continiously pubbed it into reporters that it is better to go to prison then revieal your anonymous sources.
Well, we don't have digital radio (and I'm not sure why I want it, FM is good enough for most of the trash that gets put on the radio - AM is great for talk stations, and you can make a reciver from a pencile, razor blade a magnet and some wire it is hard to see a reason to switch to something more complex). All the music stations are FM, which better then cassette tape, and good enough.
My cell phone though is GSM only (And 4 oz seems about right), and it works almost everywhere I want to go. I've considered an analog module, but I don't have one and don't really need it.
digital TV is avaiable, but nobody I know wants it. I don't watch TV myself so I don't care.
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okay, in theroy caopyrights expire too, but there will be none (in the US) that expire for the next 20 years or so... Patents expire, and in a fairly short timeframe.
When I think of all the old games that I used to love on my 8 bit atari, well all are copyrighted, and so I cannot legally copy them anymore. with 5-1/4 disks going bad all the time there isn't much that we can legally do to save those classics. If those games were patented instead, at least I could legally copy them. (Note, that I still don't think patents should apply to whole games, maybe the concept, but not the game)
I think that software patents should be allowed, but not yet! That is until we get to the point where a new software takes a lot of work to devolpe, and most concepts are worked out we shouldn't allow patents. Once things have settled down, sure you can patent your auto-spell checker in your word processor, because word processors as a concept a mature. However you shouldn't be able to patent a GUI menuing system because these systems are still undergoing research and are not mature. (This is an example, please don't disagree with the examples, disagree with the idea behing them)
Back in the early '90s my local Atari (8 bit) users group got a guest speaker.
We had to decide who we wanted to speak, raise money to pay his hotel and transportation, and we even went and rented a more expensive hotel banquet room. Some memembers took the guy out for meals.
It went off rather well, I remember walking into the hotel, and seeing on their comptuer monitor "Space: talk by jon doe" (I can't remember the guy's name, but Space is/was the St. Paul Atari Users Group) The guy spoke for half an hour (very few people should be allowed to speak for longer!) with questions following.
One other point, keep your speaker busy, but not too busy. For instance if I was to bring Alan Cox in to my hometown I'd have to consider the 8 hour time difference. Somehow we would have to give him time adjust. Then various activities. Some time should be spent with users (In Alan's case your probably ahve a kernel hacker with an interesting problem!). Also plan time for other things. Someone should take him to the local zoo, or a similear activity so he doesn't get burned out. Don't forget time to exercise and time alone!
Do you want to invite family? Linus is much more likely to want to speak in Norway if you fly his wife and kid out too, and give them plenty of time to travel to Finland.
Overall guest speakers are a lot of fun, and well worth doing. however they are expensive (More so if you have to pay the speaker and not just the travel expenses) and a lot of work. Don't try to do more then one or two a year, and don't let those who orginize it get bruned out.
I'm an american. I took some German and spanish classes in college. Despite having enough spanish to be considered bi-lingual (ie I know all the grammer and enough vocabulary) I don't consider myself bi-lingual. Why is simple: I don't use it. If I was around spanish speakers every day I'd consider myself bi-lingual because I would have a use for spanish, and practice. However not having a reason to use it I don't.
If there was a reason to use a different language I would. I've read web pages in danish, and french from time to time, and I have had no traning in either language (other then they look like german or spanish, respectivly. If I needed to I could (re)learn to communicate in any language. I have no doupt that my grammer and spelling would be poor, but I could get my point across, and in the end that is what counts.
Every election year my mom goes back to her closet and digs up that old button.
Every once in a while someone gets the point.
After discovering that both Gore and Bush were idiots who I could not vote for I turned my attention to third parties. Why would I care about their running mates, very few vice presidents do anything useful. Once in a while a swing vote in the senate, and it has happened that the president died in office. Both are rare enough not to affect my vote.
My brother tells me that Bush's running mate is better, but I'm not sure why. I've also heard the theory that being jewish, Gore's running mate might provoke trouble in the middle east, something we don't need.
BTW, the last initials are C. and L, but I don't recall which is which.
Unfortunatly all this ignores the more important elections: state and local. There is more then one seat that I need to vote on. I just wish I knew who to vote for.
I've been approached by a private investigator reciently. Someone on disability appears to be running a buisness from his house, the invistigator wants to know if I can break into his comptuer and collect evidence.
Note that I have not aggreed to the above, and will not until I get more information. However we can all agree that IF fraud is committed the evidence I collect would be honest, but if not I would be stepping over the line. So are cracking tools illegal? The private investigator can presumably use lock picks (bugler's tools which are illegal to possess) to break into this person's house to collect evidence. (THe law is very shady here)
A loaded gun does not nessicarly kill someone. I've handled a loaded gun several times, and yet none of those guns have killed someone. If the gun is not treated like it will kill someone, yet it probably will (at some time) injure someone. Even then though, there are few places were you can get shot and killed making accidents more likely to require a hospital stay then a funeral. Ronald Reagon was shot in 1982(?), and it didn't kill him. Many others have been shot and not died.
A gun can kill people. So can a knife. A gun can also put food on a poor person's table. A gun can make for an enjoyable afternoon of target practice. A knife can cut an onion. A baseball thrown at someone's head can kill. A baseball bat can kill someone. Combine the bat and ball and you have America's favorite passtime.
Am I the only one who sees storing credit cards as a problem. Nobody should ever be able to get at my credit card number. If amazon has it in a database it means a cracker has a chance to break in and get it.
Granted the Libratarians are for smaller less intrusive goverment, but the constitution party is also for similear things. There are major diffeences, but they are differences allowed (They would say required in some cases) by the constitution.
The constitution party (if it has a majority in congress and the presidency, otherwise they just end up having to compromise like everyone else) would make goverment smaller then it is.
The major partys lie about their opponants all the time, please keep third partys clean of this - at least as much as we can.
Tried in in the primaries, if there are no marks on the voting card the machine won't accept the ballot.
Note that you don't have to vote for all open positions, and I presume you could vote for a write in canidate.
I for one am convinced that crime and antisocial behaviour in general can in very many cases be led back to the way the parents raised the person in question. And crime affects us all in some way.
I've seen many different ways to raise children. I've seen Some rotten parents, and some good ones. I've seen rotten kids, and I've seen good kids. However the corolation is not as strong as you lead us to think. There is some mind you, but I've seen wonderful parents turn out rotten kids, and I've seen rotten parents turn out good kids. I can't think of a reason for either, but I've seen it.
Yes parents should take responsibility for their children and raise them right, but there are very few who are doing such a bad job of raising their kids that I would advocate taking their kids away.
OTOH, there are many parents who are raising their kids in a way I disagree with. Thing like religion, Spanking, other punishment, family activities, day care, allowances, TV, curfews, dating, etc. are all things I've seen parents handle in a way different from me. Some are too strict, others are not strict enough, but then I turn to the next point, and suddently the positions have changed. I know that if I ever have kids people will say exactly the same thing about me.
So yes parents have a role in keeping kids out of trouble. But how much goverment should impose... I'm not willing to commit to that.
If you don't feel you have time to understand the canidates and what they stand for, then please don't vote. Those who vote without thinking about the issues are risking that they vote for someone who would do a bad job in office. Those who understand the issues (Not nessicarly all, but enough that understanding more/others wouldn't change their choice) should vote.
Remember the goal is for the best canidate to win. If you don't know who the best canidate is why vote. If you think you do, then you should help out those who can't be bothered to vote by voting for the right person.
In other words, I've spent a lot of time looking over various canidates, and I know who will get my Presidental vote (Howard Phillips), but am still considering senate and represenitives on national and state levels. Please get out of my way if you havn't put as much thought into the process lest you vote for the wrong person.
If you disagree with me politically and vote for someone else, that is fine with me. If you don't know anything about the canidates and vote for someone else, I have a problem with that.
Okay, it must be a personal decision. However, as a pure tech let me encourage you to do so. I've thought about self-study to get a law degree equivelent myself (I don't know if I'd be allowed to take the bar) just because of all the stupid cases we have seen on /.
Once you do get your degree we would like it best if you would make your night job a technical one that paid the bills, and for the day work on some of these technical cases for those of us without the ability to deal with law. Sort of an EFF lawyer without taking money from the EFF. Since in reality you can't do this, just find something that you can make work for you.
Has anyone taken a look at a list of banned books lately? Consisently in the top five is the Bible. Christian's want some way to keep their kids from being exposed to evil, but not at the expense of preventing someone interested from reading their religious documents.
I've read several of the top 10 books, and in my expirence, half are worthless trash that should never have been written, and half are absolute treasures worth being required reading everywhere. Most people agree with that statement, but disagree with the which books belong to each list.
I still like Minnesota's solution to this problem: it is illegal to view poronographic material in a public place. You can see it at home if you want (I think libraries can have it in a backroom) but you cannot view it in public - which few people would anyway. This nicely side steps the issues like "Is breast cancer research porn or not?" (For most 15 year old males it is, but some have relatives affected by breast cancer it is not)
10 months ago a large part of the big people on my project quit. Orginially I thought I would have to work harder (or quit) to pick up the slack, but now I see that I only have to work harder to clean up the mess they left orginialy.
To be fair to those who left the mess, they were sheilding me from upper management that was incompitent. When several of them turned in their resignation in the same week it got the CEOs attention, the management who was causing the problem was forced to resign, and things have been looking up since, though until a couple months ago it SEEMed they were worse.
In other words if you leave you can force them to see the problems they should fix. So as a junior technical person I beg of you quit for my sake. The rest of us are better off in the long run when you leave. Not always of course, but if you can't fix the problem at least expose it.
I agree. Thats why I'm looking at Howard Phillips. Of course if his party were to win everything for 100 straight years they would probably go to far in the wrong direction, but for now we need their likes in office.
There are other canidates. Take it as your duty to NOT vote for any canidate you don't agree with the most, no matter what that person's chance of winning is. For most people Bush and Gore don't fit.
are there any decent contenders? sigh
Tell me about it. I took one of those online which canidate is right for you, and discovered I agreed with bush about 40% of the time, and gore 20%. I'm not surprized. I'm also not voting for either. But I think I have a fairly reasonable choice for senate that I'm hoping can keep the worst people off the surpreem court.
Accually though, I like voting for the loser. This way I can tell people "I didn't vote for him, and I did vote. So it must be your fault." Makes them think, and puts responsibility on their shoulders (Since most people don't vote, it is their fault for not voting for the other guy, and many who do vote voted for the guy in, I'm fairly safe accusing others of causing the problem with their vote.)
They choose to ignore the overwhelming statistics that show that gun related accidents, including those that resulted in death, are exponentially higher in the United States of America, than in countries with sensible gun control policies.
Maybe you should check again. The Us is not any worse off then the UK or Austrillia, both of which have heavy handed gun control. Japan has different numbers, but the culture in the US is different so you can't look at them.
As for your milita, most states define their milita as every able bodied male betwen 18 and 45. (Exactly details vary of course, the essentialls are there. Some include women, ages vary, and felons are probably excluded)
Just remember, while your trying to take the rights from gun owners, others are trying to take your free speach rights, and still others are attacking: privacy, search warrents, and the right to secure your belongings. Since my speech does not include swearing, I'd want to be in favor of laws restricting your rights to swear, watch voilent (or sexual) movies, and so on - but I know that true freedom means that I conceede your right to do such stupid things, and you concede my rihgt to do stupid things - so long as nobody is directly harming others in so doing.
Hey rob, can you put in a option for me to directly note this post is off topic and shouldn't get the loged in uses +1 bonus? Some topics are too inflamitory to leave untouched even when off topic.
Japanese is such a tough language to read that 9th grade reading level is considered normal for newspapers. In the US 6th grade is normal because english is an easier language to read. (Note, this is mostly related to alphabit from when I understand, japenese appearently like their one symbol per word written language for most communication, but is means you have to memorize many more symbols - when/if they use their other alphabit system the difference dissappears) This despite the 20 hour a day study habbits the japanise are noted for, they have so much more to learn that they are not better for it.
Speaking of study habbits, you learn more from your books when you spend more time in school. However Most of life's important lessions are gained outside of the classroom. If you are the smartest person in a room with 10 others, you are (Unless you pick a sample well outside the bell curve) still not as smart as their combined intellegence - IF they work togather well.
Finially I question the need to be number one in math. What is the advantage to science if your students can multiply 1325 by 46562 in 10 seconds, and it takes an american over a minute? turns out none because any reasonable person will put that into a calculator to avoid mistakes. So as long as you know how to do arithmatic on very large numbers that you can do it fast isn't a good point, and if it takes away from other time (play, but learning to communicate) it is accually a liability!
Many of the students I went to school with were mentally unprepared to deal with algebra, so as a finial data point, let me suggest that we are better off being behind out of high school if it means the fundamental thinking skills are worked on longer for those students. To re-phase that, it is better to have students who understand algebra then students who partially understand calculas and algebra. (This should be combined with my arithmatic example about, there is a fine line between studing something to death and not understanding it)
Is any of the above correct? I don't know. I know that I'm not convinced that more school is the answer to all complaints that someone else is smarter then me.
Back when distirbtued.net first started (rc5-56, and a ppro-200 was a mean machine) I calculated that enough 386s to equal one ppro-200 would use enough more electrisity that in a year you would have been better off buying the ppro.
Of course if you want the geek factor, or don't pay utilities, then enjoy. Otherwise think twice about a ne machine.
Compilers optimazers used to be rated (mayb still are, but now a says gcc is all I look at) by running bemchmarks. However it turned out that some venders wrote code to optimize best for the situations of the benchmarks, even though it ment a 1 in a million case was the best optimized while more useful optimizations are ignored (due to lack to time to impliment)
I seem to recall a video card maker that detected benchmarks being run on the card, and didn't do anything other then report it was did what was asked.
The post office generally just throws things that appear much too heavy in the trash without cost to the company you want to hurt. Too many people have tried that trick before.
You can get a similear effect that will go through if you have lots of papers in there, then it becomes borderline and they are likely to deliver it. Just make sure it looks on the outside like you just had a big letter to send to them.
PS, I'm not sure if you can accually attach a postage paid envelope to something else. Just stuff their envelope.
For those who don't see where I'm going: one of the early unix guys (Ken Thompson if I remember right) created a version of login with a backdoor for him to get in. Then he created a C compiler that could tell if login was being compiled and if so insert his backdoor. Then he modified the C compiler to check if it was compiling itself and if so insert both hacks. Soon he was able to (but claims he never did) distribute a C compiler that looked normal, yet would give him access to any machine.
It wouldn't have been hard to put this hack into compilers, so long as they started early and had some assistence. There must be someone at mit who can be bribed (there always is) to put it into any binaries on ftp.gnu.org. Sun is a closed company, and easially bribed to put it into their code. Of course we are today in a maze of unix's, all different. (4 BSDs, SCO, linux, Solaris, Irix, Aix, HPux, and probably others I've forgotten) You get the idea though.
Including my own ...hometown newspaper
Of coruse any good reporter protects his sources, and will have no problem interviewing a bunch of anonymous athlites and then publishing. I worked for a newspaper (Not in a position where my poor english would matter) and we continiously pubbed it into reporters that it is better to go to prison then revieal your anonymous sources.
Well, we don't have digital radio (and I'm not sure why I want it, FM is good enough for most of the trash that gets put on the radio - AM is great for talk stations, and you can make a reciver from a pencile, razor blade a magnet and some wire it is hard to see a reason to switch to something more complex). All the music stations are FM, which better then cassette tape, and good enough.
My cell phone though is GSM only (And 4 oz seems about right), and it works almost everywhere I want to go. I've considered an analog module, but I don't have one and don't really need it.
digital TV is avaiable, but nobody I know wants it. I don't watch TV myself so I don't care.