Since your only response was to attack my choice of pronouns and attempt to misdirect the conversation with related but irrelevant factoids, I guess that settles it, eh?
Also, you might want to double check, we're the only foreign country still in Iraq, and of those other countries which did deploy troops to Iraq, most sent token support and many confined their troops to base. NATO didn't enter Afghanistan until almost 2 years after the US, and their role there all along has been as a security force and nothing else. They are not part of counter insurgency, they are not an assault force. They are purely a peace keeping and humanitarian force: basically trying to mitigate the damage being done by the US.
We see dishonesty from head hunters all the time. Personally I'd much rather if there was a mistake on your resume as we have it in front of us, that you point it out. For this reason, it's always good to go to an interview with 5 or so copies of your resume. If you try to cover for the contracting company's rep, now you're starting your relationship with me out by lying and covering something up. Unless you really are trying to cover something up, I guess =).
Especially if you bring correct copies with you, I would easily believe the contracting company misrepresented you. If you're still a fit for the job, I'll be happy to talk to you.
Also, as soon as a contracting company knowingly falsifies data about you or otherwise misrepresents you, make it clear to them that the first time was the last time. If they keep it up, drop them. Unless you're willing to move around the country a lot, there are only so many companies in a given area which are likely to have skill sets that line up with yours. You don't want your contracting company closing doors on you.
Historical precedent for a 21st century problem, nice. Note, I'm not saying no such thing as terrorism existed before 2000, but perspective of it was balanced then: there's always going to be someone who hates any prosperous country and is willing to go to extreme ends to hurt it as much as possible. Just like you can't fix the problem of insane people, you can't fix the problem of terrorism. What's important is that you respond to the thread appropriately, and don't pretend that it's worse than it is.
Humanitarian responses have a much stronger effect on terrorism than military ones. Military responses justify the terrorism in the eyes of the terrorists. "We've been telling you these people are evil, and now look, they bomb your homes." When instead you turn the citizens of the hostile country in your favor by showing them that you're not evil, then the crazies who are out to hurt you no matter what find they receive no support from their countrymen. If Afghani citizens respected and appreciated America, they would be the ones capturing the lunatics who wish to do us harm. We understood the value of converting the local citizenry to your cause in previous centuries, it's a shame that this is no longer valued; somehow we think winning a war is all about might now, and we get shown again and again that this is not the case.
Also I am curious if you are actually implying that the threat of Soviet invasion and nuclear attacks was fabricated by the US government to scare us for some end.
Nope. I don't think they're fabricated. But as I have said several times, I do think they were blown far out of proportion as an excuse to get away with behavior which they would not have been able to do had they properly represented the threats.
As I pointed out to GGP (Shakrai), "terrorism" claims a tiny, tiny fraction of the world population each year. If you want to pretend that our motives are pure, then the purest motive would be to increase the life quality and saves as many lives as possible. In which case, the billions we spend on wars would have been much, much better spent on medical research and foreign aid. One third of global deaths each year are caused by infectious disease. Infectious disease is preventable disease. If you want to pretend that war is good, then pursuing this instead is better.
I'm suspecting your views of international relations and war are incredibly uninformed.
That's funny, I was thinking the same thing about you =)
To which "people who murdered 3,000 innocent people" are you referring? I know you don't mean Iraq civilians, because that number is two orders of magnitude higher. I don't have a total overall, but in 2009 the Afghanistan civilian death toll (as a result of the war there) was half that number as of August, so I know you don't mean that one either.
If our objective is saving innocents, we've done a really abysmal job since far more innocents have dies as a result of our "self defense" than in the events to which we retaliated. And that same money could instead be being used to save tens of thousands, maybe millions of lives.
You can't claim our wars are anything so noble as you try to. We're the big kid on the playground, some little squirt kicked us in the shin, and we put him and a dozen other kids in the hospital in response, most of whom weren't involved in the initial shin kicking. We're so pissed that someone doesn't think we're just the bee's knees, just wait till I tell my God on you!
It's no wonder the world hates America. The fact that they're warming up to us again with attitudes like yours still out there tells me Obama really does deserve this award.
No, I had it right. But even though it was unintentional, you make a good point. "Defending ourselves" hasn't really saved many - or possibly even any lives (certainly it's unlikely the net cost in lives is higher).
You're guilty of the same (likely intentional) misdirection as another respondent. I don't make any claims that there's no danger here, only that the danger is blown out of proportion, and used as an excuse to get away with behavior which would otherwise have been considered unacceptable if the threat was properly represented.
No, I'm saying that claiming the USSR wasn't a threat is either extremely naive or trolling.
Who made this claim? Please don't put words in my mouth. You even demonstrate you understand my point (that being that there's always something that's the keep-the-citizens-scared du jour), yet still choose to misconstrue me.
Terrorism is a threat.
So is infectious disease. Tens of millions of people die to this threat every year, and it accounts for a full third of all deaths globally. Individual preventable diseases are responsible for upwards of 7% of deaths in a year. Can you say the same for terrorism? Let's get some freaking perspective here. The billions of dollars we spend killing people could instead be spent saving lives. These terrorists are a tiny, tiny fraction of the overall global threat, but we devote far more time and energy to combating them than they merit. In fact, this effort in the process of expending global good will is likely to actually increase the number of terrorists who have the US on their agenda. There is no evidence that we're less vulnerable to terrorism today than we were in 2000.
You seem to think that the threats themselves are completely manufactured.
No, I don't think this. I think they're blown out of proportion as an attempt at misdirection.
The appropriate response to terrorism is to find those responsible and kill them.
Eye for an eye, eh? How's that working out for us so far in Iraq and Afghanistan? Have we caught Bin Laden yet?
Afghanistan was a response to the government of that country harboring an organization that murdered 3,000 people.
And how is this approach working out for us so far? Half that number of civilians has died to the war just this year. Now there are 4,500 innocents dead instead of 3,000.
someone from Poland or the Baltic States if Russia was a "nameless, shapeless threat".
So you're saying that US policy in the 80's was based on a threat to a few slavic states in Europe? Wow, that is not how I remember it. We were told the Russians were going to nuke the crap out of us. Pragmatically speaking the cold war in America wasn't about any countries but the US and Russia. Besides, the point is that there's always a shapeless threat. Today it's "Terrorism," previously it was "Drugs," and "Russian Nukes," and "Communism." Just something for the plebes to get worked up about so political leaders can manufacture clout.
Yeah, when terrorists kill innocent people for over 3 decades and we finally get someone willing to do something to try and stop it, that's pretty evil. I'll never understand why idiots like you support terrorism so hard core and why you believe it's better to allow terrorism to continue unchecked than to make the hard decisions and try and stop it.
The appropriate response to terrorism isn't terrorism. You present a false dichotomy: it is indeed possible to be against war (especially unjustified as in the past decade) without being for "terrorism," the generic catch-all enemy du jour. In the past it was the Russians or the Communists, or something else. Always a nameless shapeless threat which is used as excuse for committing unspeakable acts. This is exactly how it works on the other side of the fence too, this is exactly the same sort of failure to reason which leads to actual terrorism.
Invoking terrorism as an excuse for absolutely any deplorable behavior furthers the problem rather than culling it.
Game companies complaining about used game sales is like newspapers complaining about free online news. Some business models work. Some don't. Companies with working business models should succeed, and those with flawed business models (even if they used to be successful) should die out to make room for those who can compete. This is capitalism at its purest, a form of natural selection of companies.
Consumer rights should always be protected, and erosion of those rights should never be used as a crutch to support a failing business model. Do you really think that if they don't figure out a way to crush the used game market, that video games as a business will disappear? The companies which can produce a quality product at a price customers want to pay will discover that just like DVD sales, people will want to own this product. The fact that the used game market thrives so well right now is evidence that the product is overpriced; it's customers who do not believe retail prices of most games are acceptable, and it's customers who bought that game and did not enjoy it enough to want to keep it.
One "adds a stone golem character to the player's party from the beginning of the game, unlocking numerous story options," and the other increases a character's defense against some attacks in-game
The resold version of the game is designed to be harder (one less party member, and increased vulnerability to certain attacks), and includes less content ("numerous story options").
There is a fine line between "bonus content" for first owners and "crippled content" for secondary owners. I'm sure different people will draw distinguishing line at different places. But I'm also quite sure that EA/Bioware draws that line on the side of crippling the content for secondary owners. I sincerely doubt they thought, "Hey, let's give a bonus to the first owners," instead they were thinking, "Let's incent people to buy new by making the game harder if you buy used."
The core problem here is that DLC cannot be resold. That's the real violation here, that's what's really going wrong. There needs to be customer protection in place where fundamental consumer rights are forcibly upheld. Fair use doctrine, first sale doctrine, and other historically legally sound consumer interests need to be upheld by law. It should be illegal for a company to knowingly or even unintentionally interfere with basic consumer rights such as these. Which means that a company should be obligated to provide a means for the consumer's rights to be preserved whenever they enter a new market if some characteristic about that market presents a challenge to it.
I don't purchase DLC because I can't resell it. I buy games on a disc, play them, and when I'm done, I sell the disc at a used game store. This is my right under first sale doctrine, and anything which interferes with this, or which knowingly attempts to subtract value from the resold version is theft.
The bigger concern to me isn't the for-pay DLC, but the for-free DLC that you only get with a new copy of the game. This is a blatant attempt to cripple the used game market, and violate the First Sale Doctrine. They are purposely crippling the character of anyone who buys a used copy of the game.
Depending of course on the culture present where the application is deployed, allowing someone to seize control of a record you have locked can be extremely frustrating. At some companies, people would just make a habit of clicking that option whenever it was presented to them, essentially defeating the purpose.
Much better would be an application session timeout (which we used on the above described app as well). If you haven't moved the mouse or pressed a key within a configured interval (or changed screens since it's a web app), your session expires and any open records are closed (more precisely you're returned to the application login screen). That does of course lead to times when edits are lost (which is the primary reason for all this locking to begin with), so this is really mostly just a stop-gap to protect against a user just keeping the record locked indefinitely. Idle timeout in our case was I think 60 minutes.
Since you're really mostly addressing a corner case at this point (someone goes on an extended leave while leaving the edit screen open, especially as in our case on an app where most edits are under 5 to 10 minutes), there are probably a couple of other better solutions to this (though which we hadn't implemented).
For one, you could have an administrator screen which enables forcibly unlocking records which are locked by a certain user (simply nulling the LOCKED_BY column accomplishes this since the lock maintenance poller only maintains the lock if LOCKED_BY is still the current user, so the client will stop refreshing the lock).
If the "take control of this record" option really is the right solution (eg, this happens frequently for whatever reason and it's too high of an administrative overhead to have only a handful of users capable of seizing control of records), then a LOCKED_AT timestamp seems to be in order, where you can only take control of the record if LOCKED_AT is a certain amount of time in the past.
When a client wanted to know while they were working on a record that someone else had it open (they truly wanted the record locked while one user had it up on the screen), we used a LOCKED_BY and LOCKED_UNTIL field on each relevant record. While editing, records are read-only if LOCKED_UNTIL is in the future and LOCKED_BY is not the current user.
On the edit page, an AJAX call is made on a 10 second interval which updates LOCKED_UNTIL to be +30 seconds (this way even if there are network issues of some sort, three consecutive status updates need to fail in a row). If the browser is closed or the computer blue screens, etc, after 30 seconds the record unlocks itself. When you save the record, LOCKED_BY is nulled, and LOCKED_UNTIL is set to the epoch.
We also employed a version ID so that if all else fails and your client for some reason stops keeping the record locked (eg you suspend your laptop and come back to it later), when you submit your edits; if anyone else had made edits while your client was unable to keep the record locked, you're still given an indication that another user updated the record. The interval update checks the version ID too (a single SQL statement with PostgreSQL's excellent UPDATE RETURNING syntax) and warns the client if somehow someone else updated the version without this client having been able to maintain the lock - as soon as the next update interval succeeds the user gets notice.
The ajax call was basically something like: UPDATE tbl_something SET locked_by = (current_user), locked_until = (time+30) WHERE record_id = (record_id) AND locked_by = (current_user) RETURNING locked_by, version_id
Double check that locked_by is still the current user and version_id is still the known version of this record.
Hmm, I wonder in a bracelet application, which would give better feedback: body orientation being north causing the same point on your wrist to receive sensation (eg, when facing north, the back of your wrist), or the point on your wrist which most closely points north?
I'm actually guessing the latter; even though your wrist may move around a lot in relation to the rest of your body, most people have a very good sense of the position and orientation of their extremities in real space around themselves.
Probably the most functional would be a hat or head band, as you turn your head you get feedback on the direction you're facing. To specifically locate north, you'd look that direction until the sensation moved to the center of your forehead. At that point you can eyeball landmarks.
~220 is a moderate exercise, ~240 is a moderate-hard one. I have mentioned it to my general practitioner, and he said it's anomalous, but not concerning. It's only about 15% higher than the "maximum heart rate" for my age (which ggp points out is a pretty poor predictor), and this seems to be within the spread.
If I don't get my heart running this high, I'm simply not pushing myself.
Yeah, it's like most things, a generalized and very rough guideline tends over time to be perceived (probably largely by those with some financial interest in it) as an absolute law. Then that misinformation gets spread around because it's easier to say, "My maximal heart rate is 180, let's go," than to put much real effort into it (especially since people who are relatively new to exercise don't really understand what a healthy level of exertion feels like).
My resting heart rate is about 60 bpm, and I feel like I really hit my stride when I get up to about 220-240 bpm (which is pretty high by most people's standards, if I'm on a treadmill at the gym that has a HRM built into it, it flashes red at me trying to tell me I'm well outside my range). If I want to push myself, I need to go above that, otherwise I can maintain this rate for hours.
My wife on the other hand is the same age and has a similar RHR, but 180 BPM is really pushing it for her. If she does this for more than half an hour, her recovery time will be too long (it'll be 3 or 4 days before she has really recovered from that run), suggesting she's probably actually hurting herself and not benefiting like she could.
We both seem to be at opposite extremes of the spectrum, which is why even though we're generally the same fitness level as each other, until we started going to a gym we could never really successfully exercise with each other. At the gym we can each set a pace which is right for us, and still spend time together.
For the same reasons parents are expected to pay for pencils, notebooks, backpacks, calculators, and a myriad of other school supplies. In the case of the heart monitor strap, they probably want each child to have one of their own for sanitary reasons. The article just talks about buying the strap, not the HRM itself.
Even still, you can get a HRM wrist watch plus strap for $20 at Walmart, Target, or any sporting goods store. I don't know how much a strap by itself is, but given that it's essentially a couple of electrodes and some fabric and plastic bits to hold it in the right place, I'd be surprised if it was more than a few bucks, especially if the school is able to buy in bulk.
To boot, it's almost certain that parents who are in a bad financial situation to purchase these would be able to qualify for school funded ones (similar to how they get other supplies and lunches for free).
He was purposely making the same sorts of mistakes that people make when they try to disappear. I mean, he was, for example, posting his travels to a twitter account, and following several businesses local to where he was ultimately found.
Being an author who just wrote about the sorts of mistakes people make under these circumstances, he was clearly laying down a bread crumb trail for people to pick up. The point wasn't for him to outsmart the world (honestly anybody can do that for a month if they're really dedicated, just stay offline), the point was to give people a glimpse of what it's like.
If you're really on the run, staying anonymous for one month shouldn't be too hard. It's when it's been a year, or two, or ten, when you start to wonder how your family is doing, etc. that you start to get into trouble. Creating those connections to your former life is what gets people caught.
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Since your only response was to attack my choice of pronouns and attempt to misdirect the conversation with related but irrelevant factoids, I guess that settles it, eh?
Also, you might want to double check, we're the only foreign country still in Iraq, and of those other countries which did deploy troops to Iraq, most sent token support and many confined their troops to base. NATO didn't enter Afghanistan until almost 2 years after the US, and their role there all along has been as a security force and nothing else. They are not part of counter insurgency, they are not an assault force. They are purely a peace keeping and humanitarian force: basically trying to mitigate the damage being done by the US.
We see dishonesty from head hunters all the time. Personally I'd much rather if there was a mistake on your resume as we have it in front of us, that you point it out. For this reason, it's always good to go to an interview with 5 or so copies of your resume. If you try to cover for the contracting company's rep, now you're starting your relationship with me out by lying and covering something up. Unless you really are trying to cover something up, I guess =).
Especially if you bring correct copies with you, I would easily believe the contracting company misrepresented you. If you're still a fit for the job, I'll be happy to talk to you.
Also, as soon as a contracting company knowingly falsifies data about you or otherwise misrepresents you, make it clear to them that the first time was the last time. If they keep it up, drop them. Unless you're willing to move around the country a lot, there are only so many companies in a given area which are likely to have skill sets that line up with yours. You don't want your contracting company closing doors on you.
Historical precedent for a 21st century problem, nice. Note, I'm not saying no such thing as terrorism existed before 2000, but perspective of it was balanced then: there's always going to be someone who hates any prosperous country and is willing to go to extreme ends to hurt it as much as possible. Just like you can't fix the problem of insane people, you can't fix the problem of terrorism. What's important is that you respond to the thread appropriately, and don't pretend that it's worse than it is.
Humanitarian responses have a much stronger effect on terrorism than military ones. Military responses justify the terrorism in the eyes of the terrorists. "We've been telling you these people are evil, and now look, they bomb your homes." When instead you turn the citizens of the hostile country in your favor by showing them that you're not evil, then the crazies who are out to hurt you no matter what find they receive no support from their countrymen. If Afghani citizens respected and appreciated America, they would be the ones capturing the lunatics who wish to do us harm. We understood the value of converting the local citizenry to your cause in previous centuries, it's a shame that this is no longer valued; somehow we think winning a war is all about might now, and we get shown again and again that this is not the case.
Nope. I don't think they're fabricated. But as I have said several times, I do think they were blown far out of proportion as an excuse to get away with behavior which they would not have been able to do had they properly represented the threats.
As I pointed out to GGP (Shakrai), "terrorism" claims a tiny, tiny fraction of the world population each year. If you want to pretend that our motives are pure, then the purest motive would be to increase the life quality and saves as many lives as possible. In which case, the billions we spend on wars would have been much, much better spent on medical research and foreign aid. One third of global deaths each year are caused by infectious disease. Infectious disease is preventable disease. If you want to pretend that war is good, then pursuing this instead is better.
That's funny, I was thinking the same thing about you =)
To which "people who murdered 3,000 innocent people" are you referring? I know you don't mean Iraq civilians, because that number is two orders of magnitude higher. I don't have a total overall, but in 2009 the Afghanistan civilian death toll (as a result of the war there) was half that number as of August, so I know you don't mean that one either.
If our objective is saving innocents, we've done a really abysmal job since far more innocents have dies as a result of our "self defense" than in the events to which we retaliated. And that same money could instead be being used to save tens of thousands, maybe millions of lives.
You can't claim our wars are anything so noble as you try to. We're the big kid on the playground, some little squirt kicked us in the shin, and we put him and a dozen other kids in the hospital in response, most of whom weren't involved in the initial shin kicking. We're so pissed that someone doesn't think we're just the bee's knees, just wait till I tell my God on you!
It's no wonder the world hates America. The fact that they're warming up to us again with attitudes like yours still out there tells me Obama really does deserve this award.
No, I had it right. But even though it was unintentional, you make a good point. "Defending ourselves" hasn't really saved many - or possibly even any lives (certainly it's unlikely the net cost in lives is higher).
You're guilty of the same (likely intentional) misdirection as another respondent. I don't make any claims that there's no danger here, only that the danger is blown out of proportion, and used as an excuse to get away with behavior which would otherwise have been considered unacceptable if the threat was properly represented.
Who made this claim? Please don't put words in my mouth. You even demonstrate you understand my point (that being that there's always something that's the keep-the-citizens-scared du jour), yet still choose to misconstrue me.
So is infectious disease. Tens of millions of people die to this threat every year, and it accounts for a full third of all deaths globally. Individual preventable diseases are responsible for upwards of 7% of deaths in a year. Can you say the same for terrorism? Let's get some freaking perspective here. The billions of dollars we spend killing people could instead be spent saving lives. These terrorists are a tiny, tiny fraction of the overall global threat, but we devote far more time and energy to combating them than they merit. In fact, this effort in the process of expending global good will is likely to actually increase the number of terrorists who have the US on their agenda. There is no evidence that we're less vulnerable to terrorism today than we were in 2000.
No, I don't think this. I think they're blown out of proportion as an attempt at misdirection.
Eye for an eye, eh? How's that working out for us so far in Iraq and Afghanistan? Have we caught Bin Laden yet?
And how is this approach working out for us so far? Half that number of civilians has died to the war just this year. Now there are 4,500 innocents dead instead of 3,000.
So you're saying that US policy in the 80's was based on a threat to a few slavic states in Europe? Wow, that is not how I remember it. We were told the Russians were going to nuke the crap out of us. Pragmatically speaking the cold war in America wasn't about any countries but the US and Russia. Besides, the point is that there's always a shapeless threat. Today it's "Terrorism," previously it was "Drugs," and "Russian Nukes," and "Communism." Just something for the plebes to get worked up about so political leaders can manufacture clout.
The appropriate response to terrorism isn't terrorism. You present a false dichotomy: it is indeed possible to be against war (especially unjustified as in the past decade) without being for "terrorism," the generic catch-all enemy du jour. In the past it was the Russians or the Communists, or something else. Always a nameless shapeless threat which is used as excuse for committing unspeakable acts. This is exactly how it works on the other side of the fence too, this is exactly the same sort of failure to reason which leads to actual terrorism.
Invoking terrorism as an excuse for absolutely any deplorable behavior furthers the problem rather than culling it.
That's funny, that's part of why I like the guy too. We were pretty evil in the last decade.
The international community would seem to disagree with you and agree with GP.
Game companies complaining about used game sales is like newspapers complaining about free online news. Some business models work. Some don't. Companies with working business models should succeed, and those with flawed business models (even if they used to be successful) should die out to make room for those who can compete. This is capitalism at its purest, a form of natural selection of companies.
Consumer rights should always be protected, and erosion of those rights should never be used as a crutch to support a failing business model. Do you really think that if they don't figure out a way to crush the used game market, that video games as a business will disappear? The companies which can produce a quality product at a price customers want to pay will discover that just like DVD sales, people will want to own this product. The fact that the used game market thrives so well right now is evidence that the product is overpriced; it's customers who do not believe retail prices of most games are acceptable, and it's customers who bought that game and did not enjoy it enough to want to keep it.
"Yet" being the operative word =)
From TF Summary:
The resold version of the game is designed to be harder (one less party member, and increased vulnerability to certain attacks), and includes less content ("numerous story options").
There is a fine line between "bonus content" for first owners and "crippled content" for secondary owners. I'm sure different people will draw distinguishing line at different places. But I'm also quite sure that EA/Bioware draws that line on the side of crippling the content for secondary owners. I sincerely doubt they thought, "Hey, let's give a bonus to the first owners," instead they were thinking, "Let's incent people to buy new by making the game harder if you buy used."
The core problem here is that DLC cannot be resold. That's the real violation here, that's what's really going wrong. There needs to be customer protection in place where fundamental consumer rights are forcibly upheld. Fair use doctrine, first sale doctrine, and other historically legally sound consumer interests need to be upheld by law. It should be illegal for a company to knowingly or even unintentionally interfere with basic consumer rights such as these. Which means that a company should be obligated to provide a means for the consumer's rights to be preserved whenever they enter a new market if some characteristic about that market presents a challenge to it.
I don't purchase DLC because I can't resell it. I buy games on a disc, play them, and when I'm done, I sell the disc at a used game store. This is my right under first sale doctrine, and anything which interferes with this, or which knowingly attempts to subtract value from the resold version is theft.
The bigger concern to me isn't the for-pay DLC, but the for-free DLC that you only get with a new copy of the game. This is a blatant attempt to cripple the used game market, and violate the First Sale Doctrine. They are purposely crippling the character of anyone who buys a used copy of the game.
Depending of course on the culture present where the application is deployed, allowing someone to seize control of a record you have locked can be extremely frustrating. At some companies, people would just make a habit of clicking that option whenever it was presented to them, essentially defeating the purpose.
Much better would be an application session timeout (which we used on the above described app as well). If you haven't moved the mouse or pressed a key within a configured interval (or changed screens since it's a web app), your session expires and any open records are closed (more precisely you're returned to the application login screen). That does of course lead to times when edits are lost (which is the primary reason for all this locking to begin with), so this is really mostly just a stop-gap to protect against a user just keeping the record locked indefinitely. Idle timeout in our case was I think 60 minutes.
Since you're really mostly addressing a corner case at this point (someone goes on an extended leave while leaving the edit screen open, especially as in our case on an app where most edits are under 5 to 10 minutes), there are probably a couple of other better solutions to this (though which we hadn't implemented).
For one, you could have an administrator screen which enables forcibly unlocking records which are locked by a certain user (simply nulling the LOCKED_BY column accomplishes this since the lock maintenance poller only maintains the lock if LOCKED_BY is still the current user, so the client will stop refreshing the lock).
If the "take control of this record" option really is the right solution (eg, this happens frequently for whatever reason and it's too high of an administrative overhead to have only a handful of users capable of seizing control of records), then a LOCKED_AT timestamp seems to be in order, where you can only take control of the record if LOCKED_AT is a certain amount of time in the past.
When a client wanted to know while they were working on a record that someone else had it open (they truly wanted the record locked while one user had it up on the screen), we used a LOCKED_BY and LOCKED_UNTIL field on each relevant record. While editing, records are read-only if LOCKED_UNTIL is in the future and LOCKED_BY is not the current user.
On the edit page, an AJAX call is made on a 10 second interval which updates LOCKED_UNTIL to be +30 seconds (this way even if there are network issues of some sort, three consecutive status updates need to fail in a row). If the browser is closed or the computer blue screens, etc, after 30 seconds the record unlocks itself. When you save the record, LOCKED_BY is nulled, and LOCKED_UNTIL is set to the epoch.
We also employed a version ID so that if all else fails and your client for some reason stops keeping the record locked (eg you suspend your laptop and come back to it later), when you submit your edits; if anyone else had made edits while your client was unable to keep the record locked, you're still given an indication that another user updated the record. The interval update checks the version ID too (a single SQL statement with PostgreSQL's excellent UPDATE RETURNING syntax) and warns the client if somehow someone else updated the version without this client having been able to maintain the lock - as soon as the next update interval succeeds the user gets notice.
The ajax call was basically something like:
UPDATE tbl_something
SET locked_by = (current_user), locked_until = (time+30)
WHERE record_id = (record_id)
AND locked_by = (current_user)
RETURNING
locked_by, version_id
Double check that locked_by is still the current user and version_id is still the known version of this record.
Hmm, I wonder in a bracelet application, which would give better feedback: body orientation being north causing the same point on your wrist to receive sensation (eg, when facing north, the back of your wrist), or the point on your wrist which most closely points north?
I'm actually guessing the latter; even though your wrist may move around a lot in relation to the rest of your body, most people have a very good sense of the position and orientation of their extremities in real space around themselves.
Probably the most functional would be a hat or head band, as you turn your head you get feedback on the direction you're facing. To specifically locate north, you'd look that direction until the sensation moved to the center of your forehead. At that point you can eyeball landmarks.
~220 is a moderate exercise, ~240 is a moderate-hard one. I have mentioned it to my general practitioner, and he said it's anomalous, but not concerning. It's only about 15% higher than the "maximum heart rate" for my age (which ggp points out is a pretty poor predictor), and this seems to be within the spread.
If I don't get my heart running this high, I'm simply not pushing myself.
Maybe my wife and I hit a sale, the best I could find for a HRM online was $25.
Still, the kids just need a strap. Here's the first hit on a search for "Heart rate monitor replacement strap":
http://www.amazon.com/Heart-Rate-Monitor-Replacement-Transmitter/dp/B0007ZALHA
It's $7.95.
Yeah, it's like most things, a generalized and very rough guideline tends over time to be perceived (probably largely by those with some financial interest in it) as an absolute law. Then that misinformation gets spread around because it's easier to say, "My maximal heart rate is 180, let's go," than to put much real effort into it (especially since people who are relatively new to exercise don't really understand what a healthy level of exertion feels like).
My resting heart rate is about 60 bpm, and I feel like I really hit my stride when I get up to about 220-240 bpm (which is pretty high by most people's standards, if I'm on a treadmill at the gym that has a HRM built into it, it flashes red at me trying to tell me I'm well outside my range). If I want to push myself, I need to go above that, otherwise I can maintain this rate for hours.
My wife on the other hand is the same age and has a similar RHR, but 180 BPM is really pushing it for her. If she does this for more than half an hour, her recovery time will be too long (it'll be 3 or 4 days before she has really recovered from that run), suggesting she's probably actually hurting herself and not benefiting like she could.
We both seem to be at opposite extremes of the spectrum, which is why even though we're generally the same fitness level as each other, until we started going to a gym we could never really successfully exercise with each other. At the gym we can each set a pace which is right for us, and still spend time together.
For the same reasons parents are expected to pay for pencils, notebooks, backpacks, calculators, and a myriad of other school supplies. In the case of the heart monitor strap, they probably want each child to have one of their own for sanitary reasons. The article just talks about buying the strap, not the HRM itself.
Even still, you can get a HRM wrist watch plus strap for $20 at Walmart, Target, or any sporting goods store. I don't know how much a strap by itself is, but given that it's essentially a couple of electrodes and some fabric and plastic bits to hold it in the right place, I'd be surprised if it was more than a few bucks, especially if the school is able to buy in bulk.
To boot, it's almost certain that parents who are in a bad financial situation to purchase these would be able to qualify for school funded ones (similar to how they get other supplies and lunches for free).
Nah, it's not so complex as that. You have A->B pigeons, and you have B->A pigeons. B just straps A's pigeon to one of his pigeons and sends it back.
He was purposely making the same sorts of mistakes that people make when they try to disappear. I mean, he was, for example, posting his travels to a twitter account, and following several businesses local to where he was ultimately found.
Being an author who just wrote about the sorts of mistakes people make under these circumstances, he was clearly laying down a bread crumb trail for people to pick up. The point wasn't for him to outsmart the world (honestly anybody can do that for a month if they're really dedicated, just stay offline), the point was to give people a glimpse of what it's like.
If you're really on the run, staying anonymous for one month shouldn't be too hard. It's when it's been a year, or two, or ten, when you start to wonder how your family is doing, etc. that you start to get into trouble. Creating those connections to your former life is what gets people caught.