I notice that the "Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists" has over-extended their reach into opinions on climate science, I just dismiss their standing on the matter. They are not climate scientists.
Exactly: being an expert in one field rarely means you're an expert in another field. Just because I'm a Software Engineer doesn't automatically mean I'm an expert at computer networks or hardware design.
We really didn't understand what was going to happen with the climate in the 1960s. We knew it was probably going to get warmer,
Really? Warmer huh? The TRUTH is that in the 60's and 70's we though it was going to get COLDER. We THOUGHT we understood the system then, just like we think we understand it today. You might want to refresh yourself on what the facts are.
I was born in the 1970s and I remember the scientific community warning about an impeding little ice age (1300-1850) or year without a summer (1816).
Republican efforts to suppress votes that are probably Democratic continue. Currently, the Republicans are much more involved in manipulating elections than Democrats (although this has not always been the case).
Where is your proof that Republicans want to suppress legitimate votes? Why do illegals and the dead overwhelming vote Democrat?
There are 2 number ones: one for elevation, one for height. Everest (or K2) is indeed the highest elevation on earth. Mauna Kea ("White Mountain") on the island of Hawaii, however, is the tallest mountain on earth (the base is miles below sea level).
I've heard the vulgarity of our entertainment defended with the claim that it reflects society - I wonder, then, why those in charge of Hollywood fight so hard against our desire for cleaner entertainment?
Because, why YOU think you're special and righteous in your desire for "no naughty words". The fact is, NO ONE ELSE CARES. Either they like gore and naughty words (like myself) or the just don't care. Your "fight" is one sided, Hollywood is driven by profits, and no matter how important you think you are. The blunt fact is you and those 5 people like you make up a miniscule part of the "viewers" that it is not even worth their time money wise. In fact you're so insignificant, it is not worth their time to put out "edited" versions of popular movies for you. (hint: if they thought for a second they could increase profits, it would exist)
So basically, you thinking their "fighting" against is akin to the Ants in a mound thinking I'm fighting them when my boot lans on them while I walk through the woods.
After the tech bubble burst and I lost my job, I had to work in the call center for a studio which produces family friendly entertainment. I was given a list of people "probably interested" in the product, as referred by friends and family. My job was to raise awareness of the company and obtain names of more people to contact. I was not in sales. I didn't stay there for long, but that's beside the point. Your rant brought to mind some of the abuse and misunderstanding I suffered at that position.
That particular company I worked for provided MORE choices for those interested without removing options for those not interested. No one at VidAngel wants to shut down studios or prevent studios from creating PG-13, R, or NC-17 movies. Same goes for the company I worked at. Both provide a service / product they felt was missing / underrepresented in the marketplace. I have my own standards (that I'm not forcing on you). When watching movies alone or with my wife I'm more tolerant of some content than when my 2-year-old is in the room. OTOH, I have walked out of movies when confronted by 10 f-bombs in the first couple minutes.
I live in Utah (raised in Hawaii) and have been LDS my entire life. I never used VidAngel because I thought this lawsuit was coming. I see a better legal argument for ClearPlay; they send you a patch file to apply to their proprietary player. You need the physical disc to watch the edited version. This has allowed ClearPlay to exist since the 1990s.
Their legal argument is better than I expected it to be. However, there are two big problems with their argument:
As another commenter pointed out, they claim to sell the video for $20, then immediately buy it back for $19, they also stream it the customer (bandwidth costs) and edit it (server farm / cpu costs). It's quite obvious they're charging $1 to stream it to you, the "sell it for $20 and buy it back for $19" is a gimmick, it's bullshit. Nobody is buying movies from them, they're paying $1 to stream it.
It is a way to try skirt copyright / broadcast rights on a technicality. Customers do think of it as $1 to stream the movie, and VidAngel highlights this net cost to customers. I have not searched, but I doubt there's a way for customers to keep the filtered (or even unfiltered) movie (eg. buy the moie for $20 w/o sellingit back). This inability to refuse to sell it back may be legally significant.
Also, I open windows for separate "tasks" and tabs for related information to those tasks. (For example, one window is personal tabs like YouTube music and Gmail.) By time I end a work day, I've had over 180 tabs open.
You well said that you've had over 180 tabs open over the course of a work day (still seems high to me), but how many are open at a given time? Don't you close the tab when you are finished with it? Do you keep all windows open until the end of the day, even when you finish that "task"? I can easily see a use case of a few dozen, but 180 at once???
How about artificial sweeteners (stevia isn't artificial to my knowledge, it comes from some plant in South America I think)? Saccharin, aspartame, sucralose?
Artificial sweeteners in general leave a bad aftertaste. I can mostly overcome that by adding a little real sugar. That's why I like the 10 calorie sodas more than the so-called zero calorie ones.
I remember some chocolate bar from when I was a kid, it was called '100 Grand' or something. It was a bar of chocolate with honey-flavoured rice crisps in it. One day, it just vanished.
I can still find 100 Grand in the variety bags, but it's getting increasingly harder to find by itself. I also remember when we had both Mars bars and Milky Way in the US.
Anybody who's a least a bit chocoholic should try Belgian chocolate. We may not be a chauvinistic country, but we all agree that we've got some of the best beers, and definitely the best chocolate. According to Belgian law, US chocolate cannot even be called chocolate. It has be labeled 'cocoa fantasy'. Chocolate can only be made with cocoa butter - no cheaper fatty substitutes allowed. And of course, to mask the shitty flavor of those ersatz fats, more sugar has to be added to US 'chocolate'.
US law also requires a certain percentage of the fat to come cocoa butter if it is to be labeled chocolate. Many products are required to use a term such as "chocolate flavored" (eg. chocolate flavored confection).
Yay, another chocolate snob. Dark chocolate is horribly bitter with a disgusting aftertaste that can only be washed away with bourbon.
Maybe I'm weird, but I like white chocolate, milk chocolate, and dark chocolate. 75-80% is my personal preference because darker can be bitter unless paired with another flavoring (ever try it with extra sharp white cheddar?).
No. What you're missing is that different people taste these things differently.
As an example, what do you think of cilantro? Do you like it, or does it taste like soap to you? There's a genetic difference in people who think it tastes like soap, and those people are a significant minority of the population, not just a few mutants. It's very likely the same thing is going on with these artificial sweeteners.
I have the "super taster" gene. Raw broccoli florets are bitter (I love the stems raw and the florets cooked). Stevia has a bitter metallic taste. Cilantro tastes like soap to me.
I used to love Sierra Mist but then then they replaced some of the HFCS with stevia and now the soda tastes horrible. I sent back two glasses of it before asking for a different drink thinking that something was really wrong with the soda fountain, it was days later that someone mentioned to me that the formula had recently changed.
Some people appear to be "lucky" in that they somehow can't tell the difference. To me all of the artificial sweeteners taste terrible compared to regular sugar and corn syrup (which I don't consider artificial as it's still made of actual sugar molecules).
Stevia leaves a bitter metallic aftertaste in my mouth. Indeed, most sugar substitutes have a weird aftertaste. To combat this, on the rare occasion I drink soda, I will get a diet soda with a finger or two of the real deal (cane sugar if possible). I like the 10 calorie version of sodas more than the "zero" calorie ones.
I have, and I still turned down positions that weren't what I was looking for because I knew the importance of choosing a place that I actually wanted to work at.
When I was on unemployment insurance (shortly after the 9/11 attacks), I had to answer a questionnaire every week before getting my check. One of the questions was if I refused a job offer. Refusing a job offer would disqualify me for unemployment for two weeks. I would preemptively say something at the end of the interview about it not looking like a good fit before an offer could be extended.
Humm, it would be nice to have 6am be the sun rise time, 12 noon, 6pm the sun set time. Lets make it so that the seconds compress and strech based on your GPS coordinates. If you work from 8 to 5, you always get '2 hours' of sunset in the morning, and 1 in the afternoon. You just get to work a long ass shift if you are in the polar circle.. (but then you also get 6 months off)
The Romans used to have such a system, but that means that you have variable length hours. How do you fairly compensate hourly employees?
You have no idea what a society without religion would look like.
I doubt if ETL would have much negative effect on religion. I know plenty of religious people, and they are MORE likely to believe in aliens than the non-religious people that I know. Mormonism includes an affirmative belief in life on other planets. Back in the late 1800s, it was widely believed that there were canals on Mars, and far more people believed in ETL than believe today. I was not used as an effective argument against religion.
I am Mormon; my family joined the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in the 1830s. There is no official declaration of life on other planets within our solar system, although it was (eg. back in the 1800s) widely believed that the moon had a Quaker-like society. I never heard speculations of civilization on Mars. Officially, we are taught that the star Kolob is the closest to the abode of God, but Kolob has not been identified as any of the stars identified by science. We are also taught that Jesus is the Messiah of all of God's creations, and that all of God's children are created in His image and likeness.
I don't see why any of this matters. If I purchased a PS3 before the announcement with the intention of putting a different OS on it, but had not actually done so by the time the update was sent out, I should still be eligible.
How do you prove "intention"? Anyone who purchased a PS3 before the announcement could claim they had intention of installing a different OS and there would little chance of disproving it. Following through with an intention is much easier to prove / disprove.
Our tithing does not make its way into leaders' pockets.
Then who pays their salaries?
We have a lay clergy. Local leaders have careers outside the Church to earn money to care for their families. Leadership positions do not require studies at a seminary. Only General Authorities (such as the Prophet and the Twelve Apostles) receive a living allowance, as these are full-time responsibilities. All worthy men are eligible for the Priesthood.
I should like to add, parenthetically for your information, that the living allowances given the General Authorities, which are very modest in comparison with executive compensation in industry and the professions, come from this business income and not from the tithing of the people.
During my mission, those from the US paid $350 / month while Brazilians paid R$100 / month. There is a general missionary fund available for those unable to pay.
But the point is that, since the LDS church has billions of tax-free dollars stashed away, it's ridiculous that missionaries have to pay anything.
Wikipedia's article on the finances of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints offers some insight. Most of the Church's estimated 25 billion dollar worth is tied up in temples, chapels, stake centers, mission homes, etc, which do not produce income. Another chunk of the estimated 5 billion dollar annual revenue is used for maintenance. Remember that the for-profit entities (such as Hawaii Reserves Inc) do pay taxes. The Church does pay Social Security for its employees.
There is a standard amount for each missionary based on home country. During my mission, those from the US paid $350 / month while Brazilians paid R$100 / month. There is a general missionary fund available for those unable to pay. All money is pooled together and missionaries get an allowance based on mission. I received about R$100 / month (rent and utilities were paid before I received my allowance). As your dad left the Church at 17, I guess that shows your bias.
It may have changed since then, (in fact, brief googling suggest 1990) but at the time, (early 70's) it was a fact, you HAD to pay for your own mission, unless your parents paid for it.
I had two brothers serve missions in the 70s. At the time the older one served, the amount the missionary paid was based on the mission field. The second one paid based on where the missionary was from. I don't know when the general missionary fund and individual ward (congregation) mission funds became available.
Anyways, my bias probably comes from the Book of Abraham, and maybe the fact that Joseph Smith would divine for water by putting a rock in a hat and stare into it, and his father commented that it never worked. But somehow, miraculously, it worked for translating scriptures that nobody ever saw, and the one that other people besides himself did actually see and read was found to be nowhere close to being what he supposedly "translated" it to. In fact it had nothing at all to do with Abraham or any other biblical figures whatsoever.
It is hard to unweave the fact from fiction which you've heard. Joseph used seer stones to translate the Book of Mormon from "reformed Egyptian" to English. Eleven other men say and handled these plates and published their testimonies to the world. None of these eleven ever denied the Book of Mormon. The papyrus from which the Book of Abraham was translated is lost. The mummy contained multiple papyrus writings, some of which have been found. Joseph did not claim the ability to find water sources, though he tried a few times.
Slashdot Mirror
In case you didn't notice,
I notice that the "Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists" has over-extended their reach into opinions on climate science, I just dismiss their standing on the matter. They are not climate scientists.
Exactly: being an expert in one field rarely means you're an expert in another field. Just because I'm a Software Engineer doesn't automatically mean I'm an expert at computer networks or hardware design.
We really didn't understand what was going to happen with the climate in the 1960s. We knew it was probably going to get warmer,
Really? Warmer huh? The TRUTH is that in the 60's and 70's we though it was going to get COLDER. We THOUGHT we understood the system then, just like we think we understand it today. You might want to refresh yourself on what the facts are.
I was born in the 1970s and I remember the scientific community warning about an impeding little ice age (1300-1850) or year without a summer (1816).
Republican efforts to suppress votes that are probably Democratic continue. Currently, the Republicans are much more involved in manipulating elections than Democrats (although this has not always been the case).
Where is your proof that Republicans want to suppress legitimate votes? Why do illegals and the dead overwhelming vote Democrat?
Especially for the phrase "Out of sight, out of mind"? Or do we get "Invisible Idiot"
For Portuguese: "Out of sight, out of mind" => "fora da vista, longe da mente" (out of sight, far from mind) => "Out of sight, out of mind"
K2! K2! K2! We want measurements now!
There are 2 number ones: one for elevation, one for height. Everest (or K2) is indeed the highest elevation on earth. Mauna Kea ("White Mountain") on the island of Hawaii, however, is the tallest mountain on earth (the base is miles below sea level).
I'm pretty sure Slashdot still uses mod-perl. That was the original "MP" in "LAMP".
I'm pretty sure the original LAMP was Linux, Apache, MySQL, Perl.
I've heard the vulgarity of our entertainment defended with the claim that it reflects society - I wonder, then, why those in charge of Hollywood fight so hard against our desire for cleaner entertainment?
Because, why YOU think you're special and righteous in your desire for "no naughty words". The fact is, NO ONE ELSE CARES. Either they like gore and naughty words (like myself) or the just don't care. Your "fight" is one sided, Hollywood is driven by profits, and no matter how important you think you are. The blunt fact is you and those 5 people like you make up a miniscule part of the "viewers" that it is not even worth their time money wise. In fact you're so insignificant, it is not worth their time to put out "edited" versions of popular movies for you. (hint: if they thought for a second they could increase profits, it would exist)
So basically, you thinking their "fighting" against is akin to the Ants in a mound thinking I'm fighting them when my boot lans on them while I walk through the woods.
After the tech bubble burst and I lost my job, I had to work in the call center for a studio which produces family friendly entertainment. I was given a list of people "probably interested" in the product, as referred by friends and family. My job was to raise awareness of the company and obtain names of more people to contact. I was not in sales. I didn't stay there for long, but that's beside the point. Your rant brought to mind some of the abuse and misunderstanding I suffered at that position.
That particular company I worked for provided MORE choices for those interested without removing options for those not interested. No one at VidAngel wants to shut down studios or prevent studios from creating PG-13, R, or NC-17 movies. Same goes for the company I worked at. Both provide a service / product they felt was missing / underrepresented in the marketplace. I have my own standards (that I'm not forcing on you). When watching movies alone or with my wife I'm more tolerant of some content than when my 2-year-old is in the room. OTOH, I have walked out of movies when confronted by 10 f-bombs in the first couple minutes.
I live in Utah (raised in Hawaii) and have been LDS my entire life. I never used VidAngel because I thought this lawsuit was coming. I see a better legal argument for ClearPlay; they send you a patch file to apply to their proprietary player. You need the physical disc to watch the edited version. This has allowed ClearPlay to exist since the 1990s.
Their legal argument is better than I expected it to be. However, there are two big problems with their argument:
As another commenter pointed out, they claim to sell the video for $20, then immediately buy it back for $19, they also stream it the customer (bandwidth costs) and edit it (server farm / cpu costs). It's quite obvious they're charging $1 to stream it to you, the "sell it for $20 and buy it back for $19" is a gimmick, it's bullshit. Nobody is buying movies from them, they're paying $1 to stream it.
It is a way to try skirt copyright / broadcast rights on a technicality. Customers do think of it as $1 to stream the movie, and VidAngel highlights this net cost to customers. I have not searched, but I doubt there's a way for customers to keep the filtered (or even unfiltered) movie (eg. buy the moie for $20 w/o sellingit back). This inability to refuse to sell it back may be legally significant.
Also, I open windows for separate "tasks" and tabs for related information to those tasks. (For example, one window is personal tabs like YouTube music and Gmail.) By time I end a work day, I've had over 180 tabs open.
You well said that you've had over 180 tabs open over the course of a work day (still seems high to me), but how many are open at a given time? Don't you close the tab when you are finished with it? Do you keep all windows open until the end of the day, even when you finish that "task"? I can easily see a use case of a few dozen, but 180 at once???
How about artificial sweeteners (stevia isn't artificial to my knowledge, it comes from some plant in South America I think)? Saccharin, aspartame, sucralose?
Artificial sweeteners in general leave a bad aftertaste. I can mostly overcome that by adding a little real sugar. That's why I like the 10 calorie sodas more than the so-called zero calorie ones.
you can use honey or orange concentrate, or whatever. This so called "Chocolate obsession" of some people is *imho* more or less a sugar obsession.
I hate to break it to you, but all those things also have sugar in them, just not table sugar.
I remember some chocolate bar from when I was a kid, it was called '100 Grand' or something. It was a bar of chocolate with honey-flavoured rice crisps in it. One day, it just vanished.
I can still find 100 Grand in the variety bags, but it's getting increasingly harder to find by itself. I also remember when we had both Mars bars and Milky Way in the US.
Anybody who's a least a bit chocoholic should try Belgian chocolate. We may not be a chauvinistic country, but we all agree that we've got some of the best beers, and definitely the best chocolate. According to Belgian law, US chocolate cannot even be called chocolate. It has be labeled 'cocoa fantasy'. Chocolate can only be made with cocoa butter - no cheaper fatty substitutes allowed. And of course, to mask the shitty flavor of those ersatz fats, more sugar has to be added to US 'chocolate'.
US law also requires a certain percentage of the fat to come cocoa butter if it is to be labeled chocolate. Many products are required to use a term such as "chocolate flavored" (eg. chocolate flavored confection).
Yay, another chocolate snob. Dark chocolate is horribly bitter with a disgusting aftertaste that can only be washed away with bourbon.
Maybe I'm weird, but I like white chocolate, milk chocolate, and dark chocolate. 75-80% is my personal preference because darker can be bitter unless paired with another flavoring (ever try it with extra sharp white cheddar?).
I do. Lindt Excellence 85% FTW!
My personal preference is 75-80% if plain. 85% is good with fruit, cheese, or salt.
No. What you're missing is that different people taste these things differently.
As an example, what do you think of cilantro? Do you like it, or does it taste like soap to you? There's a genetic difference in people who think it tastes like soap, and those people are a significant minority of the population, not just a few mutants. It's very likely the same thing is going on with these artificial sweeteners.
I have the "super taster" gene. Raw broccoli florets are bitter (I love the stems raw and the florets cooked). Stevia has a bitter metallic taste. Cilantro tastes like soap to me.
I used to love Sierra Mist but then then they replaced some of the HFCS with stevia and now the soda tastes horrible. I sent back two glasses of it before asking for a different drink thinking that something was really wrong with the soda fountain, it was days later that someone mentioned to me that the formula had recently changed.
Some people appear to be "lucky" in that they somehow can't tell the difference. To me all of the artificial sweeteners taste terrible compared to regular sugar and corn syrup (which I don't consider artificial as it's still made of actual sugar molecules).
Stevia leaves a bitter metallic aftertaste in my mouth. Indeed, most sugar substitutes have a weird aftertaste. To combat this, on the rare occasion I drink soda, I will get a diet soda with a finger or two of the real deal (cane sugar if possible). I like the 10 calorie version of sodas more than the "zero" calorie ones.
I have, and I still turned down positions that weren't what I was looking for because I knew the importance of choosing a place that I actually wanted to work at.
When I was on unemployment insurance (shortly after the 9/11 attacks), I had to answer a questionnaire every week before getting my check. One of the questions was if I refused a job offer. Refusing a job offer would disqualify me for unemployment for two weeks. I would preemptively say something at the end of the interview about it not looking like a good fit before an offer could be extended.
If making phones "at home" means America, why aren't they paying their taxes here?
Paying taxes in the US is part of the added cost of manufacturing the iPhone here.
The fact that our Winter comes in June is completely irrelevant.
It's relevant. The idea of Santa Clause on water skis is just wrong!
In Hawaii, Santa rides in a red canoe. For me it's normal.
Humm, it would be nice to have 6am be the sun rise time, 12 noon, 6pm the sun set time. Lets make it so that the seconds compress and strech based on your GPS coordinates. If you work from 8 to 5, you always get '2 hours' of sunset in the morning, and 1 in the afternoon. You just get to work a long ass shift if you are in the polar circle .. (but then you also get 6 months off)
The Romans used to have such a system, but that means that you have variable length hours. How do you fairly compensate hourly employees?
You have no idea what a society without religion would look like.
I doubt if ETL would have much negative effect on religion. I know plenty of religious people, and they are MORE likely to believe in aliens than the non-religious people that I know. Mormonism includes an affirmative belief in life on other planets. Back in the late 1800s, it was widely believed that there were canals on Mars, and far more people believed in ETL than believe today. I was not used as an effective argument against religion.
I am Mormon; my family joined the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in the 1830s. There is no official declaration of life on other planets within our solar system, although it was (eg. back in the 1800s) widely believed that the moon had a Quaker-like society. I never heard speculations of civilization on Mars. Officially, we are taught that the star Kolob is the closest to the abode of God, but Kolob has not been identified as any of the stars identified by science. We are also taught that Jesus is the Messiah of all of God's creations, and that all of God's children are created in His image and likeness.
I don't see why any of this matters. If I purchased a PS3 before the announcement with the intention of putting a different OS on it, but had not actually done so by the time the update was sent out, I should still be eligible.
How do you prove "intention"? Anyone who purchased a PS3 before the announcement could claim they had intention of installing a different OS and there would little chance of disproving it. Following through with an intention is much easier to prove / disprove.
Our tithing does not make its way into leaders' pockets.
Then who pays their salaries?
We have a lay clergy. Local leaders have careers outside the Church to earn money to care for their families. Leadership positions do not require studies at a seminary. Only General Authorities (such as the Prophet and the Twelve Apostles) receive a living allowance, as these are full-time responsibilities. All worthy men are eligible for the Priesthood.
During my mission, those from the US paid $350 / month while Brazilians paid R$100 / month. There is a general missionary fund available for those unable to pay.
But the point is that, since the LDS church has billions of tax-free dollars stashed away, it's ridiculous that missionaries have to pay anything.
Wikipedia's article on the finances of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints offers some insight. Most of the Church's estimated 25 billion dollar worth is tied up in temples, chapels, stake centers, mission homes, etc, which do not produce income. Another chunk of the estimated 5 billion dollar annual revenue is used for maintenance. Remember that the for-profit entities (such as Hawaii Reserves Inc) do pay taxes. The Church does pay Social Security for its employees.
There is a standard amount for each missionary based on home country. During my mission, those from the US paid $350 / month while Brazilians paid R$100 / month. There is a general missionary fund available for those unable to pay. All money is pooled together and missionaries get an allowance based on mission. I received about R$100 / month (rent and utilities were paid before I received my allowance). As your dad left the Church at 17, I guess that shows your bias.
It may have changed since then, (in fact, brief googling suggest 1990) but at the time, (early 70's) it was a fact, you HAD to pay for your own mission, unless your parents paid for it.
I had two brothers serve missions in the 70s. At the time the older one served, the amount the missionary paid was based on the mission field. The second one paid based on where the missionary was from. I don't know when the general missionary fund and individual ward (congregation) mission funds became available.
Anyways, my bias probably comes from the Book of Abraham, and maybe the fact that Joseph Smith would divine for water by putting a rock in a hat and stare into it, and his father commented that it never worked. But somehow, miraculously, it worked for translating scriptures that nobody ever saw, and the one that other people besides himself did actually see and read was found to be nowhere close to being what he supposedly "translated" it to. In fact it had nothing at all to do with Abraham or any other biblical figures whatsoever.
It is hard to unweave the fact from fiction which you've heard. Joseph used seer stones to translate the Book of Mormon from "reformed Egyptian" to English. Eleven other men say and handled these plates and published their testimonies to the world. None of these eleven ever denied the Book of Mormon. The papyrus from which the Book of Abraham was translated is lost. The mummy contained multiple papyrus writings, some of which have been found. Joseph did not claim the ability to find water sources, though he tried a few times.