n experienced driver knows that in a battle between engine and brakes, the engine will win
Wait what? Maybe this is why people need training.
In a battle between engine and brakes the brakes win - every single time. Seriously go try it out, even in first gear your car will come to a stop rather quickly with WOT if you step on the brakes.
The only time this might not be true is with some weird throttle/brake by wire system where the computer disregards the brake signal.
Once upon a time, there was an expectation that the person holding the highest office in the land would conduct themselves in a concise, careful, and wise manner
When? I'm interested if you can rectify your statement with the Andrew Jackson presidency. (also the antebellum presidents were, without exception, hacks, most of the reconstruction presidents were corrupt, then you've got the racist Woodrow Wilson, the oblivious Herbert Hoover, and more recently tricky Dick and our good friend W.)
We've been lucky, as a country to get good presidents when we need them (Washington, Lincoln, FDR, Truman, and JFK) but trite populism has always played well in politics - though Sarah Palin may yet prove to be a new low.
I'm going to take gunner's side, your original post did come off a bit Art-Bellish.
That said, your follow up posts seem to indicate that you're not a paranoid nutjob, just a little overly defensive.
Yes, asbestos is bad for your health, and surprise, you don't want to stick your hands in very basic liquids, like portland cement. But they're incredibly useful, so with the proper safety precautions we still use them.
However, your original post read, at least to me and a few others, as if you were saying that the world is full of hidden dangers - that someone is keeping from us. We know plenty of things are bad, we know we don't fully understand the risks of some things, but we also know that there are plenty of people out there who are trying to draw attention to themselves, and sometimes even make a buck by scaremongering about perfectly safe things- like MMR vaccines, low level EM radiation, power lines, and florinated water.
So try not to take too much offense, but if several people read your post and thought you were paranoid, it's possible that the deficiency isn't in our reading comprehension skills but in your writing - I know I've quickly written out a post that didn't convey what I meant many times.
it's more that they're trying to read tea leaves, and it's called technical analysis. Some of it makes sense (at least from a psychological/sociological perspective - and don't forget, the market is just people), like levels of resistance and support, while other is just shear lunacy, like the famous head-and-shoulders. However, because there are so many people looking at the same things, it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. A head-and-shoulders supposedly means the stock is going to drop. Mind you, there's not fundamental reason why this is so, but because everyone thinks that's what it means they sell their stock, and sure enough, the price drops.
that's not a recommendation, or at least not dynamic recommendations, it's more like a top 10 list. And you don't need a fancy algorithm to display the same recommendations for everyone.
Recommendations are supposed to say: hey, we have a bunch of well liked books, but your likes map to this person's likes - and they also liked this book you haven't read.
In SciFi, that gets corrupted to: these books all suck, but they're all we have in the genre, so this one sold better than the others.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that it will happen the way I described, I just don't think it's a forgone conclusion that the previous success of aggressive empire building foreshadows future success. (your observation that the world is full is an important factor.) Part of acknowledging reality is not to underestimate the propensity for humans to find a reason to kill each other.
In spite of your concerns about the scale of the US, we are a really interesting hybrid between empire and alliance. On the one hand, the states were originally mostly independent entities, on the other, manifest destiny got us from 20ish to 50 states. And if the US is too large to govern, what about India, which is a remarkably stable and vibrant democracy of one billion people?
As for the EU, yeah it's a mess, 20 years ago, were I to guess which region would form a confederation, Europe would have been my last guess - too many longstanding rivalries. Don't forget, the Confederacy of United States of America failed twice already, and yet here we are.
Just because there's a good reason things played out as they did, doesn't make it morally defensible. As a liberal and acknowledge-of-reality I accept that the US ascended to the apex of global political power by a combination of military might and wanton disregard for the feelings of others throughout its ascendancy coupled with the blind luck to be on the other side of an ocean from the most resource-eating wars in history.
But just because that is what successful civilizations have done doesn't mean that (a) it's right, or (b) that future successful civilizations will have to act the same way. Because, while the oppression of the natives, slavery, manifest destiny, etc. certainly helped clear the way for the American century, so too did the Enlightenment era ideals of democracy, freedom of speech, free association, freedom of movement, and even trade unions.
It's not clear to me that the preeminent politic in 2150 will point to its aggressive past as laying the groundwork for it's supremacy, on the contrary, I wouldn't be surprised if EU-like alliances consolidate their power and the lesson we take from that will be that making friends can help you climb to the top of the heap too.
let's assume that that's true - and my head is already hurting from the mental gymnastics required to do that -
Communism is an ideology, complaining that communists infiltrated the government in 1950 would be like complaining that Muslims had infiltrated the government today - complete nonsense, likely to provoke a reaction, and something THAT THERE'S NOTHING WRONG WITH.
Second of all, even if they were foreign directed communists, which would be illegal (and now I'm onto full blown migraine) it STILL wouldn't justify spying on innocent Americans anymore than a handful of Japanese spies justified internment, or border skirmishes justified the trail of tears.
Thirdly, there is ample evidence to suggest that McCarthy and his cross dressing sidekick J. Edger Hoover were more interested in flexing their political muscle than anything else, which is why they focused their efforts primarily on academics, celebrities, and political activists, like Robert Oppenheimer, Lucile Ball, and Martin Luther King Jr.
And finally, you're an idiot. Defending McCarthyism is is kowtowing to authoritarianism which, in an ironic twist, is about as close to un-American as it gets.
I don't see any way to develop these sort of ethics in advance. We can set a bare minimum standard that we won't treat any aliens worse than we treat domestic animals (including domestic food animals.) But really, assuming we ever actually encounter multicellular extra-terrestrial life, we're going to have to make a judgement on the fly. This will be especially tricky when dealing with complex social life forms (again, assuming they exist and don't impose their ethics on us). Unlike science fiction movies, there is unlikely to be a bright animal/sentient being line. If we ever come across an extraterrestrial spiecies that isn't obviously more advanced than us, they'll probably look about as advanced as primates, and we'll probably perform experiments on them. On the flip side, we'll probably look about as advanced as primates to an advanced alien life form, who will probably perform experiments on us.
Gee, I wonder what what would happen if researchers presented the same factual information to individualists and communitarians about religion, especially regarding charity/bigotry.
Actually, science isn't really sure what it is, but one way or another, placebo groups consistently perform better than no-treatment groups for a whole range of issues - the placebo effect plays a role in the treatment of everything from arthritis to cancer.
That's not true - hence the phrase "placebo effect."
You can cure some peoples backpain just by putting on a white coat and asking them some questions, give them pills and a placebo group starts looking a lot better than a no-test group. Start injecting them with saline, and they'll be out dancing. Start with the wikipedia page for placebo, it links to tons of well researched articles.
You don't know what the word scarce means do you? Or do you think there's a heart-bypass fairy that will solve all our problems as long as we don't require pesky regulation - like medical licenses?
Here in reality, poor people are going without care for their diabetes, it has nothing to do with over-regulation, and everything to do with the fact that you can't afford insulin when you're making $10,000 a year.
Well I bet he gets great healthcare, when he leaves the country to get it - like President Umaru Yar'Adua of the comparatively wealthy Nigeria. Getting a doctor to you is only part of the equation, you'd need to build and equip a hospital and fly in a team of experts to get top notch medical care. Not only is it cheaper to go elsewhere (like the US - or in the case of Yar'Adua, Saudi Arabia), you'd likely be dead before the infrastructure is in place.
Eh, these are school laptops, I don't see anything wrong with installing this capability. However, you ought to know damn well that this has a potential for abuse and have iron-clad approval streams for using this feature. Going after stolen laptops is fine. Snapping pictures whenever IT wants to is a giant F-up.
"Hi, I'm a 2009 Graduate of Harriton Highschool. [...] I and a few of my fellow peers were suspicious of this sort of activity when we first received the laptops. The light next to the web cam would randomly come on, whether we were in class, in study hall or at home minding our own business. We reported it multiple times, each time getting the response: "It's only a malfunction. if you'd like we'll look into it and give you a loaner computer."
If this is half as bad as it sounds, they're screwed.
If they deleted the logs expect (more) heads to roll. At this point I wouldn't put anything past the administrators of the school, but god damn, don't look like you're trying to engage in a coverup while your pleading that you didn't do anything wrong. FWIW the school says they're engaging in an audit of those logs.
Slashdot Mirror
unless it changes flavors - then it might be a whatzit or wherezit.
Seriously though, from WIMPs and MACHOs, I wouldn't be shocked in the least if the next generations physics students are learning about thingies.
Wait what? Maybe this is why people need training.
In a battle between engine and brakes the brakes win - every single time. Seriously go try it out, even in first gear your car will come to a stop rather quickly with WOT if you step on the brakes.
The only time this might not be true is with some weird throttle/brake by wire system where the computer disregards the brake signal.
wait till you get to the book!
That's not how it works - stop distorting the invisible hand.
In a true free market, you just pay the fine for killing poor people.
When? I'm interested if you can rectify your statement with the Andrew Jackson presidency. (also the antebellum presidents were, without exception, hacks, most of the reconstruction presidents were corrupt, then you've got the racist Woodrow Wilson, the oblivious Herbert Hoover, and more recently tricky Dick and our good friend W.)
We've been lucky, as a country to get good presidents when we need them (Washington, Lincoln, FDR, Truman, and JFK) but trite populism has always played well in politics - though Sarah Palin may yet prove to be a new low.
I'm going to take gunner's side, your original post did come off a bit Art-Bellish.
That said, your follow up posts seem to indicate that you're not a paranoid nutjob, just a little overly defensive.
Yes, asbestos is bad for your health, and surprise, you don't want to stick your hands in very basic liquids, like portland cement. But they're incredibly useful, so with the proper safety precautions we still use them.
However, your original post read, at least to me and a few others, as if you were saying that the world is full of hidden dangers - that someone is keeping from us. We know plenty of things are bad, we know we don't fully understand the risks of some things, but we also know that there are plenty of people out there who are trying to draw attention to themselves, and sometimes even make a buck by scaremongering about perfectly safe things- like MMR vaccines, low level EM radiation, power lines, and florinated water.
So try not to take too much offense, but if several people read your post and thought you were paranoid, it's possible that the deficiency isn't in our reading comprehension skills but in your writing - I know I've quickly written out a post that didn't convey what I meant many times.
it's more that they're trying to read tea leaves, and it's called technical analysis. Some of it makes sense (at least from a psychological/sociological perspective - and don't forget, the market is just people), like levels of resistance and support, while other is just shear lunacy, like the famous head-and-shoulders. However, because there are so many people looking at the same things, it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. A head-and-shoulders supposedly means the stock is going to drop. Mind you, there's not fundamental reason why this is so, but because everyone thinks that's what it means they sell their stock, and sure enough, the price drops.
that's not a recommendation, or at least not dynamic recommendations, it's more like a top 10 list. And you don't need a fancy algorithm to display the same recommendations for everyone.
Recommendations are supposed to say: hey, we have a bunch of well liked books, but your likes map to this person's likes - and they also liked this book you haven't read.
In SciFi, that gets corrupted to: these books all suck, but they're all we have in the genre, so this one sold better than the others.
well to be honest... that's because most sci fi and fantasy books blow.
No, really, I say this as a fan of the genres.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that it will happen the way I described, I just don't think it's a forgone conclusion that the previous success of aggressive empire building foreshadows future success. (your observation that the world is full is an important factor.) Part of acknowledging reality is not to underestimate the propensity for humans to find a reason to kill each other.
In spite of your concerns about the scale of the US, we are a really interesting hybrid between empire and alliance. On the one hand, the states were originally mostly independent entities, on the other, manifest destiny got us from 20ish to 50 states. And if the US is too large to govern, what about India, which is a remarkably stable and vibrant democracy of one billion people?
As for the EU, yeah it's a mess, 20 years ago, were I to guess which region would form a confederation, Europe would have been my last guess - too many longstanding rivalries. Don't forget, the Confederacy of United States of America failed twice already, and yet here we are.
Just because there's a good reason things played out as they did, doesn't make it morally defensible. As a liberal and acknowledge-of-reality I accept that the US ascended to the apex of global political power by a combination of military might and wanton disregard for the feelings of others throughout its ascendancy coupled with the blind luck to be on the other side of an ocean from the most resource-eating wars in history.
But just because that is what successful civilizations have done doesn't mean that (a) it's right, or (b) that future successful civilizations will have to act the same way. Because, while the oppression of the natives, slavery, manifest destiny, etc. certainly helped clear the way for the American century, so too did the Enlightenment era ideals of democracy, freedom of speech, free association, freedom of movement, and even trade unions.
It's not clear to me that the preeminent politic in 2150 will point to its aggressive past as laying the groundwork for it's supremacy, on the contrary, I wouldn't be surprised if EU-like alliances consolidate their power and the lesson we take from that will be that making friends can help you climb to the top of the heap too.
seriously?
let's assume that that's true - and my head is already hurting from the mental gymnastics required to do that -
Communism is an ideology, complaining that communists infiltrated the government in 1950 would be like complaining that Muslims had infiltrated the government today - complete nonsense, likely to provoke a reaction, and something THAT THERE'S NOTHING WRONG WITH.
Second of all, even if they were foreign directed communists, which would be illegal (and now I'm onto full blown migraine) it STILL wouldn't justify spying on innocent Americans anymore than a handful of Japanese spies justified internment, or border skirmishes justified the trail of tears.
Thirdly, there is ample evidence to suggest that McCarthy and his cross dressing sidekick J. Edger Hoover were more interested in flexing their political muscle than anything else, which is why they focused their efforts primarily on academics, celebrities, and political activists, like Robert Oppenheimer, Lucile Ball, and Martin Luther King Jr.
And finally, you're an idiot. Defending McCarthyism is is kowtowing to authoritarianism which, in an ironic twist, is about as close to un-American as it gets.
I don't see any way to develop these sort of ethics in advance. We can set a bare minimum standard that we won't treat any aliens worse than we treat domestic animals (including domestic food animals.) But really, assuming we ever actually encounter multicellular extra-terrestrial life, we're going to have to make a judgement on the fly. This will be especially tricky when dealing with complex social life forms (again, assuming they exist and don't impose their ethics on us). Unlike science fiction movies, there is unlikely to be a bright animal/sentient being line. If we ever come across an extraterrestrial spiecies that isn't obviously more advanced than us, they'll probably look about as advanced as primates, and we'll probably perform experiments on them. On the flip side, we'll probably look about as advanced as primates to an advanced alien life form, who will probably perform experiments on us.
Gee, I wonder what what would happen if researchers presented the same factual information to individualists and communitarians about religion, especially regarding charity/bigotry.
cf. irony.
it's the power of suggestion.
Actually, science isn't really sure what it is, but one way or another, placebo groups consistently perform better than no-treatment groups for a whole range of issues - the placebo effect plays a role in the treatment of everything from arthritis to cancer.
ever heard of a "4 star" or "5 star" crash rating? Then you've heard of the NHTSA.
That's not true - hence the phrase "placebo effect."
You can cure some peoples backpain just by putting on a white coat and asking them some questions, give them pills and a placebo group starts looking a lot better than a no-test group. Start injecting them with saline, and they'll be out dancing. Start with the wikipedia page for placebo, it links to tons of well researched articles.
I can agree with that. Although, cameras are pretty common in the workplace.
You don't know what the word scarce means do you? Or do you think there's a heart-bypass fairy that will solve all our problems as long as we don't require pesky regulation - like medical licenses?
Here in reality, poor people are going without care for their diabetes, it has nothing to do with over-regulation, and everything to do with the fact that you can't afford insulin when you're making $10,000 a year.
oops.
Well I bet he gets great healthcare, when he leaves the country to get it - like President Umaru Yar'Adua of the comparatively wealthy Nigeria. Getting a doctor to you is only part of the equation, you'd need to build and equip a hospital and fly in a team of experts to get top notch medical care. Not only is it cheaper to go elsewhere (like the US - or in the case of Yar'Adua, Saudi Arabia), you'd likely be dead before the infrastructure is in place.
but we like it when the government takes care of us and protects us from the terrorists.
USA! USA!
Eh, these are school laptops, I don't see anything wrong with installing this capability. However, you ought to know damn well that this has a potential for abuse and have iron-clad approval streams for using this feature. Going after stolen laptops is fine. Snapping pictures whenever IT wants to is a giant F-up.
Thanks for that link. Wow, just Wow.
If this is half as bad as it sounds, they're screwed.
If they deleted the logs expect (more) heads to roll. At this point I wouldn't put anything past the administrators of the school, but god damn, don't look like you're trying to engage in a coverup while your pleading that you didn't do anything wrong. FWIW the school says they're engaging in an audit of those logs.
Holy crap, from the wiki:
# 2 Controversies
* 2.1 Broomstick incident
* 2.2 Underwear incident
* 2.3 Noose incident
* 2.4 Hacking incident
Sounds like the school, and possibly the school district needs all new management.
Also, if we think an administrator was inappropriately inspecting minor's underwear, how does making them a teacher solve a damn thing?