"Defendant is willing to accede to the demands of the Chinese autocrats to block the search term 'democracy,'" the complaint states, "but when it comes to the protection and well-being of our nation's innocent children, Defendant refuses to spend a dime's worth of resources to block child pornography from reaching children."
Wow...Meiselman, Denlea, Packman, Carton & Eberz managed to fit human rights in China, child pornography, and availabilty of porn to children in one sentence. A veritable trifecta of outrage.
From the above quote, you might get the idea that Meiselman, Denlea, Packman, Carton & Eberz earn a large percentage of their income from spurious lawsuits based upon righteous indignation. A quick glance at their litigation history would seem to bear out this assumption.
Again, from TFA:
Other recent lawsuits filed by the firm have sought at least $10 million for alleged sex discrimination against Atlantic City, N.J., casino cocktail waitresses and $600 million from the maker of an ephedra-based dietary supplement claimed to cause the death of a Baltimore Orioles pitcher.
Now, I'm against child porn as much as the next guy (or most of them, anyway), but this is looking a lot like a fishing expedition.
Just one more quote from TFA:
Toback, the politician backing the action, describes himself in his biography on Nassau County's Web site as a "quality of life guy" who has focused on legislation promoting open space and recreational areas. He has also co-sponsored a law designed to protect teenagers from tanning beds and has planned this year to pursue a ban of toy guns in the area.
The Tamiflu molecule itself is patented, regardless of how it is made, and Roche holds the rights to the patent. But in 2005 Roche said it would not stop other companies making Tamiflu under license, which is expressly permitted by international law in any case.
Last year $165m passed through the game and the founders of the online Universe expect that to at least double in 2006. The new cash card blurs the boundary between the virtual and physical world even further. It allows people to access their virtually acquired PEDs and convert them into real world money at any cash machine in the world. "We are creating the next level of the online experience," said Mr Welter.
Here's an excerpt of the first comment on the above referenced story (again, emphasis mine):
In the U.S., the Internal Revenue Service will eventually take notice of the phenomena when someone who makes lots of real-world money by selling virtual goods gets audited by an ambitous Revenue Agent. Until then, unless you're actually converting virtual goods into real greenbacks, there's not much to say on the subject.
That sure was quick.
Of course, if this comes to pass, it should also work both ways...e.g. I can write off my Second Life costs as 'business expenses'. IANACPA, but I'm sure other, more fiscally talented individuals could take this idea and run with it.
Firefox and Opera both include a half-dozen or so providers when you install them.
Yes, but MSN search is conspicously absent from Firefox's supplied search engine list (I don't know about Opera's list).
Well, that, and Firefox doesn't have a setting for a "default" provider. It "defaults" to the last one you used
Before you use the search bar, it is defaulted to Google. Looks like a 'default' to me.
Now, I'm a happy FireFox user myself, but in this case, you really have to call it as you see it. IE users can (and probably will) add Google to the search list, just as they can (and probably don't) add MSN to Firefox's list. There's really no ground for a complaint here, unless you want to complain about the core isue of a browser being bundled with the OS in the first place.
This 'pyramid' was actually discovered in October of last year, but all news was suppressed due to 'security concerns'...concerns that would appear to have merit, given Condoleezza Rice's bizzare change in appearance and behavior after she visited the site on a U.S. fact-finding mission.
Scientists also hope that soon breakthroughs in the field of Artificial Intelligence will give rise to a new race of machine intelligences, who will selflessly do all our work for us, freeing us for lives of leisure (and, incidentally, not murder all of us or make us into batteries).
Scientists also hope that soon they will identify the Dishonesty Gene, so that they may excie it from humanity's DNA, creating a race of perfectly honest people who no longer need to safeguard their systems with passwords.
Scientists also hope that soon they will be able to transport our consciousnesses into vast computers, giving each member of humanity a lifespan of eons and a godlike existence.
Me...I just want my goddamned flying car. That's all.
Vint Serf, so-called "father" of the Internet, is among the big names and organizations that have come together to create the SavetheInternet.com Coalition, which hosted a national conference call today.
Just when you thought the ramblings of John C. Dvorak weren't enough reason to stop taking PC Magazine seriously, they go and misspell the name of the Father of the Internet.
While the misspelling was corrected for some reason in the story summary, it's still right there in the first sentence of the PC Magazine article.
The rest of the article is well-enough written, but misspelling Vint Cerf's name pretty much sucks the credibility right out of it. Pity.
I didn't know the TSA employed such software to test their screeners. This incident raises the possibility of tampering with the software to either:
purposely display an image of a dangerous item where none exists, inciting a scare like the one witnessed Wednesday, disrupting thousands of lives and paralyzing a major terminal, or:
display an image of an innocuous item instead of the actual image of the luggage containing a dangerous item, allowing terrorists to smuggle said items onto aircraft. Obviously, this scenario will require far more sophisticated timing of the false image than the previous scenario, but it should still be possible.
Given these possibilities, and given the fact that Wednesday's incident proves that such a thing is possible, I'm betting the TSA is currently debating whether or not the decision to make the scanners capable of displaying false images in the first place was a wise one.
When Robert Plummer states that artists need to charge more for their concerts to make up for sagging records sales due to file sharing, he conveniently leaves out the important fact that it is only the most popular artists that actually see a decline. As David Blackburn of Harvard illustrated in his paper, On-Line Piracy and Recorded Music Sales (PDF warning), the record sales of relatively unknown artists benefit from the exposure P2P file sharing gives them.
So, if the big names want to charge outrageous sums for their concerts, let them. As of now, the tatic seems to be working, but as the situation develops, I think they'll wind up pricing themselves right out of the market.
Yes, but Sysprep depends on all the target computers having identical ACPI support, which I'm betting isn't the case in the submitter's hodgepodge environment.
Using Sysprep on systems with disparate ACPIs yields a target system that BSODs, much like if you just tried to slam an image of the source to it. You need to reinstall Windows on the afflicted system, using the undocumented F5 option during setup to select the proper ACPI, to revive it, and then, you're stuck with having to reinstall all service packs and hotfixes. Not much of a solution.
What does my personality have to do with my ability to perform in a job?
Don't want to be insulting here, but the fact that you even need to ask that question shows that you need work in this area.
Even if all you do all day is sit at your desk and churn out code, you will have to interact with your other employees and your employer at some point or other. Your personality is a part of you that they will have to deal with, and it's no wonder that your prospective employers would like to know what they're getting. Given the choice between two technically equivalent candidates, if one has a cheerful, helpful personality, while the other has a withdrawn, antisocial one, who do you think they're going to go with?
Have any of you had to take a personality test to get a job?
Yes, I've had to take one for every single job I've ever held. They were called interviews .
While I'm sure you'll be interviewed as well, I think they're just trying to cull out some of the undesirable personality types in advance via this test, just as they cull out the unfit applicants in advance by examining resumes and applications.
Should I do it, or just keep looking?
As I said above, your personality will be tested sooner or later...if not by an actual test, then by the interviewer during the interview.
Personally, I'd much rather take the test...it's probably far easier than answering that damned question, 'What do you regard as your greatest weakness?' during the interview...
Re:The problem of nerve impulse conduction
on
An Alternate Human
·
· Score: 1
I don't know where you got those facts, but you ought to demand your money back...
The optic nerve extends from the back of the eye, traverses through the orbit and optic canal to the optic chiasm. The intraocular optic nerve is about 1 mm in length, the intraorbital segment 25 mm, the intracanalicular segment about 9 mm, and the intracranial component is about 16 mm long.
Sorry, but that all adds up to about 51 mm, 5.1 cm, or about 2 inches. Hardly 'stalk' length, and certainly not long enough to justify placing the brain in the chest.
The problem of nerve impulse conduction
on
An Alternate Human
·
· Score: 5, Informative
From TFA:
There's no particular necessity that the brain would form in the head--that's again a product of convenience, since more sensory organs were located in the front of the animal, and induced an enlargement of the local part of the nervous system to cope with their input.
So let's meddle again, and instead put the brain somewhere near the middle of the animal. In that position, it can be better protected by the mass of bone and muscle in the chest, and also be more conveniently located relative to the heart and circulatory system. It changes our head from a bulbous housing for a crucial, delicate organ, all poised on a fragile stalk of a neck, to a flexible sensory and feeding apparatus.
In addition to convenience, there's a good reason the brain is located in the head...in close proximity to the major sensory organs (eyes, ears, nose, mouth). This placement minimizes the time lag of neural impulse conduction, by minimizing the necessary length of nerve connecting the sensory organs to the brain. For this reason, I wouldn't expect many species to evolve with a larger-than-necessary distance between their brain and their sensory organs (unless such creature evolved a much faster method of conducting nerve impulses than we possess).
'Criticised' is a rather ambiguous term...to clarify the issue, I believe some clearer terms are required.
A company, like a scorpion, is by design incapable of understanding morality, and so cannot be held responsible for conducting business in an amoral matter.
However, that is not to say that the company cannot be held accountable for its actions, if they are judged by moral beings to be immoral. If a dog mauls a child, we destroy it. Why? Is this a punishment to the dog? Revenge for the child and his/her family? A deterrent to the other dogs out there who are contemplating mauling children? No. We destroy the dog because it has shown itself to be dangerous. We destroy the dog to prevent possible future maulings. We do not hold the dog responsible for its actions, but we do hold it accountable.
In much the same way, while we cannot reasonably expect moral responsibility from companies, we can and should expect full moral accountbility.
Companies exist to make money. Period. Reporters Without Borders can plead with Yahoo! to end their collaboration with the PRC all they like, but as long as China has that big juicy carrot of marketshare dangling in front of Yahoo!'s nose, Yahoo! will do whatever the PRC wants.
One cannot expect Yahoo! to turn away from such a lucrative market any more than one can expect a scorpion not to sting. It's what they do.
Slashdot Mirror
are you perhaps suggesting Bush has taken on the title of King Bush?
Given that Bush has repeatedly and persistently held himself to be above the law, suggesting that would be an excercise in redundancy.
Well, just because a country calls itself a republic doesn't mean that it is...after all, the United States calls itself a democracy...
From TFA: Wow...Meiselman, Denlea, Packman, Carton & Eberz managed to fit human rights in China, child pornography, and availabilty of porn to children in one sentence. A veritable trifecta of outrage.
From the above quote, you might get the idea that Meiselman, Denlea, Packman, Carton & Eberz earn a large percentage of their income from spurious lawsuits based upon righteous indignation. A quick glance at their litigation history would seem to bear out this assumption.
Again, from TFA: Now, I'm against child porn as much as the next guy (or most of them, anyway), but this is looking a lot like a fishing expedition.
Just one more quote from TFA:
Oh, that's right....it's an election year.
From TFA:
From TFA: It's too bad that our 'biggest hope' is not up to the task, as the following articles assert:
It might be better to just stock up on old-fashioned Jewish penicillin.
From TFA (emphasis mine): Well, prepare yourself for the next level after that...taxation of virtual currency.
Here's an excerpt of the first comment on the above referenced story (again, emphasis mine): That sure was quick.
Of course, if this comes to pass, it should also work both ways...e.g. I can write off my Second Life costs as 'business expenses'. IANACPA, but I'm sure other, more fiscally talented individuals could take this idea and run with it.
The summary states the title of the article as: "The Bad in Email or (Why Steve Ballmer is the CTO of Microsoft)"
Two problems with that:
Problem #2 is especially difficult to understand, as the article itself correctly identifies Ray Ozzie as Microsoft's CTO.
Firefox and Opera both include a half-dozen or so providers when you install them.
Yes, but MSN search is conspicously absent from Firefox's supplied search engine list (I don't know about Opera's list).
Well, that, and Firefox doesn't have a setting for a "default" provider. It "defaults" to the last one you used
Before you use the search bar, it is defaulted to Google. Looks like a 'default' to me.
Now, I'm a happy FireFox user myself, but in this case, you really have to call it as you see it. IE users can (and probably will) add Google to the search list, just as they can (and probably don't) add MSN to Firefox's list. There's really no ground for a complaint here, unless you want to complain about the core isue of a browser being bundled with the OS in the first place.
This 'pyramid' was actually discovered in October of last year, but all news was suppressed due to 'security concerns'...concerns that would appear to have merit, given Condoleezza Rice's bizzare change in appearance and behavior after she visited the site on a U.S. fact-finding mission.
Dubya kree!
Nintendo should hire Threebrain for their marketing program.
Scientists also hope that soon breakthroughs in the field of Artificial Intelligence will give rise to a new race of machine intelligences, who will selflessly do all our work for us, freeing us for lives of leisure (and, incidentally, not murder all of us or make us into batteries).
Scientists also hope that soon they will identify the Dishonesty Gene, so that they may excie it from humanity's DNA, creating a race of perfectly honest people who no longer need to safeguard their systems with passwords.
Scientists also hope that soon they will be able to transport our consciousnesses into vast computers, giving each member of humanity a lifespan of eons and a godlike existence.
Me...I just want my goddamned flying car. That's all.
Sorry...here's the related Slashdot article.
I believe you're referring to the Microsoft/Claria Tryst.
(Related Slashdot article here.)
The mispelling of Cerf's name in the PC Magazine article was corrected mere minutes after my original post.
Apparently, Bary Alyssa Johnson reads Slashdot. ^_^
From TFA:
Just when you thought the ramblings of John C. Dvorak weren't enough reason to stop taking PC Magazine seriously, they go and misspell the name of the Father of the Internet.
While the misspelling was corrected for some reason in the story summary, it's still right there in the first sentence of the PC Magazine article.
The rest of the article is well-enough written, but misspelling Vint Cerf's name pretty much sucks the credibility right out of it. Pity.
I didn't know the TSA employed such software to test their screeners. This incident raises the possibility of tampering with the software to either:
Given these possibilities, and given the fact that Wednesday's incident proves that such a thing is possible, I'm betting the TSA is currently debating whether or not the decision to make the scanners capable of displaying false images in the first place was a wise one.
When Robert Plummer states that artists need to charge more for their concerts to make up for sagging records sales due to file sharing, he conveniently leaves out the important fact that it is only the most popular artists that actually see a decline. As David Blackburn of Harvard illustrated in his paper, On-Line Piracy and Recorded Music Sales (PDF warning), the record sales of relatively unknown artists benefit from the exposure P2P file sharing gives them.
So, if the big names want to charge outrageous sums for their concerts, let them. As of now, the tatic seems to be working, but as the situation develops, I think they'll wind up pricing themselves right out of the market.
Yes, but Sysprep depends on all the target computers having identical ACPI support, which I'm betting isn't the case in the submitter's hodgepodge environment.
Using Sysprep on systems with disparate ACPIs yields a target system that BSODs, much like if you just tried to slam an image of the source to it. You need to reinstall Windows on the afflicted system, using the undocumented F5 option during setup to select the proper ACPI, to revive it, and then, you're stuck with having to reinstall all service packs and hotfixes. Not much of a solution.
With your mix of hardware, slamming an image won't cut it for you. You'll have to created an unattended Windows install.
Here's a pretty good guide on the subject.
What does my personality have to do with my ability to perform in a job?
Don't want to be insulting here, but the fact that you even need to ask that question shows that you need work in this area.
Even if all you do all day is sit at your desk and churn out code, you will have to interact with your other employees and your employer at some point or other. Your personality is a part of you that they will have to deal with, and it's no wonder that your prospective employers would like to know what they're getting. Given the choice between two technically equivalent candidates, if one has a cheerful, helpful personality, while the other has a withdrawn, antisocial one, who do you think they're going to go with?
Have any of you had to take a personality test to get a job?
Yes, I've had to take one for every single job I've ever held. They were called interviews .
While I'm sure you'll be interviewed as well, I think they're just trying to cull out some of the undesirable personality types in advance via this test, just as they cull out the unfit applicants in advance by examining resumes and applications.
Should I do it, or just keep looking?
As I said above, your personality will be tested sooner or later...if not by an actual test, then by the interviewer during the interview.
Personally, I'd much rather take the test...it's probably far easier than answering that damned question, 'What do you regard as your greatest weakness?' during the interview...
I don't know where you got those facts, but you ought to demand your money back...
From eMedicine.com: Sorry, but that all adds up to about 51 mm, 5.1 cm, or about 2 inches. Hardly 'stalk' length, and certainly not long enough to justify placing the brain in the chest.
In addition to convenience, there's a good reason the brain is located in the head...in close proximity to the major sensory organs (eyes, ears, nose, mouth). This placement minimizes the time lag of neural impulse conduction, by minimizing the necessary length of nerve connecting the sensory organs to the brain. For this reason, I wouldn't expect many species to evolve with a larger-than-necessary distance between their brain and their sensory organs (unless such creature evolved a much faster method of conducting nerve impulses than we possess).From TFA:
'Criticised' is a rather ambiguous term...to clarify the issue, I believe some clearer terms are required.
A company, like a scorpion, is by design incapable of understanding morality, and so cannot be held responsible for conducting business in an amoral matter.
However, that is not to say that the company cannot be held accountable for its actions, if they are judged by moral beings to be immoral. If a dog mauls a child, we destroy it. Why? Is this a punishment to the dog? Revenge for the child and his/her family? A deterrent to the other dogs out there who are contemplating mauling children? No. We destroy the dog because it has shown itself to be dangerous. We destroy the dog to prevent possible future maulings. We do not hold the dog responsible for its actions, but we do hold it accountable.
In much the same way, while we cannot reasonably expect moral responsibility from companies, we can and should expect full moral accountbility.
See the difference?
Companies exist to make money. Period. Reporters Without Borders can plead with Yahoo! to end their collaboration with the PRC all they like, but as long as China has that big juicy carrot of marketshare dangling in front of Yahoo!'s nose, Yahoo! will do whatever the PRC wants.
One cannot expect Yahoo! to turn away from such a lucrative market any more than one can expect a scorpion not to sting. It's what they do.