What will I get if I pick fast and cheap? If lack of "good" means that a few extra rockets blow up then all we need is a decent escape module on top of the cheap rocket. Sounds good to me.
Aren't "reasonable" and "not smart" mutually exclusive?
That's actually a good question. I think "reasonable" refers to what one expects from other reasonable people. The "not smart" refers to the fact that there are a lot of unreasonable people (aka. dickwads/asshats/griefers) on the net and they sometimes look just like the reasonable people (especially when one doesn't have access to a posting history).
The funny thing is that despite me being unwilling to give money to human panhandlers, I would probably drop a coin into a robot like that. I think I'm just more sympathetic to robots.
So you're only allowed to criticize politicians of your own country? Or are you saying that you should only criticize politicians in countries that you never intend to visit?
When the news went out about that shutdown my nightly spam count (the amount that builds up from when I go to sleep and shut off my machine to when I wake up and turn it on) went from about 900 to about 200.
In the time since then it has edged up to about 400. But it still hasn't gotten back to the 900 level. Beats me why, but I'm not complaining.
(Only 10 or so of the 900 ever got past my spam filters, but even so, it meant waiting for minutes while the app downloaded all the messages.)
In all seriousness, I have long wanted a punch card reader with a USB interface. I have a card puncher and would love to have fun punching out some cards and then reading them in just for the pure nostalgia of it. If you ever find one for a reasonable price, please let me know!
Does anyone know of a general implementation of a google maps-like interface? I'm thinking of something like ExtJS where parts of the map are loaded as needed at various zoom levels with clickable points, etc.
Why does all the hardware need to be located on the suit? If we're talking about the president of the US, the hardware could all be located nearby or inside a podium. The suit would only need to have a way of communicating with the outside hardware and some sort of connection to the presidents muscles so that they could be activated at the appropriate moment if necessary.
For someone like that, having one secret service guy dedicated to this full time would be reasonable. He could program in the type of environment on which the president is walking.
However, given all that, I think a more practical system would be a quick deploying bullet shelf in front of the podium (or wherever the president is standing. No need to jerk the president out of the way, just raise a huge bullet proof wall into the path of the bullet. Or just drop a pope cone on top of him the moment a bullet shot is detected. Or just drop him through the floor.
But yes, beyond someone like the president, it seems unlikely that such technology would have much use. Perhaps it could be used by soldiers in sniper-prone areas. The sensors would be in the vehicles and muscle jerking devices would be attached to all soldiers along with sensors that identify where they are relative to the main vehicle.
Regarding technologies built specifically to thwart this, that is a concern, but it would probably not be a huge concern if the enemy is most likely to be a underfunded rebel group. There is always an arms war with new technology, but underfunded groups will rarely have the best tech.
I used to actually sign when I made credit card purchases. Now I just write the first letter of my name and then make a squiggly line after it. No one seems to care.
The Kinesis keyboard does exactly that. The ctrl, alt, pgup, pgdwn, home, and, delete, backspace, and enter keys are all under your thumbs. The arrow keys are under your forefingers. I can move around my editor and use ctrl-key combinations without leaving my home position.
The keys are also all remappable so you can turn it into a dvorak keyboard if you prefer.
Sadly, it is not perfect. The function keys on the top row are difficult to touch type. And I was forced to use duct tape to put a usb numeric keypad in the middle of the keyboard.
If the function keys were real sized keys above the number row then I'd consider it near perfect.
I think you're shooting a little high on the age bracket. Infocom released Zork in 1980 (according to wikipedia). It continued selling it for years afterward. So, people in their mid-30's played it too.
I've always thought that being hung up on the word "marriage" is the same as being hung up on the word "planet" when people passionately argued about whether or not Pluto was a planet.
Pluto is still there. Homosexuals still live together and fight over who was supposed to wash the dishes last week you dirty lazy slob.
Categorization is important, but I wish people would separate the issues and argue them separately.
What if letting the murderer go free also maintained a right which allowed my brother to go free and prevented the police from manufacturing evidence against my son? I think I would maintain my position in that case.
That's really what this is about. Giving the police/government a free pass to do what they want doesn't just punish the guilty.
I don't understand why that has to result in a loss of money. Is it the cost of the bus driver or the cost of the gas and maintenance?
If it's the latter then buses should be replaced by electric vans during periods of time during which usage is low.
Actually, you could get rid of the driver too if you could automate the buses/vans. Surely the task of automating a vehicle is much easier when the route is fixed like it is with buses.
If someone does all this, please make sure to spend a little of the resulting money on a few good janitors who keep the buses really clean. And make sure to repair the interior often.
A sparkling well repaired interior should help keep fairs coming in.
Don't stop at bus stops if no one is there. Text people to wake them up when they reach their stops. Make sure to make wifi available on everything. Provide good web sites which allow the user to easily plan routes (just enter start and end and it'll give you an optimized trip plan). All these things will encourage people to ride more and they are mostly fixed costs which don't go up with the number of passengers (except the wifi).
I'm sure I could think of more. But there really isn't any point. Smart energized people who want to solve problems are highly unlikely to be the sort of people who work for government transportation organizations.
The waaahmbulance doesn't apply if he took control and switched jobs. It only applies to people who refuse to quit their job but also complain how horrible working conditions are.
If your job sucks then quit and find another. Even in a bad market like this there are always jobs (if you are willing to take a little less pay perhaps). If you haven't saved any fuck-you money (money in the bank which allows you to quit) then that's the time that I call the waaahmbulance.
Are you not essentially using a threat of a perceived loss of social status as an argument there ? A bit of a cognitive dissonance between your words and actions, there
I can't figure out if you are a troll or if you honestly believe what you are saying. I'll assume you honestly believe what you are saying for now.
That's an interesting observation, but my analogy was not part of my argument. It was merely a final summary of my impression of your argument.
Here's another one. I seem to recall a kid's cartoon where they would say "knowledge is power". You seem to have believe it is the other way around.
Power can be gained in many ways. It can be gained because it was given to you by your parents (either via money or by existing political connections).
Power can be gained by personal connections which were themselves gained merely because their parents were able to put them into a school where they met the right sort of people.
Power can be gained through deceit.
Of course, power can also be gained by legitimately pulling yourself up by your own bootstraps. A person with power could very well be a very intelligent person.
Let me make an example from my own experience. Managers have power. Sometimes those managers are very intelligent. Sometimes they have good people skills. Sometimes they have both. The good managers have both. The bad managers have only one or neither of those things.
I have known some very stupid managers who nevertheless had good people skills. My original assertion was that Palin and Bush are these sorts of people. They have good people skills, but they are dumb as rocks.
You have not attempted to prove that either one of them is intelligent. You are just trying to convince me that they obviously must be intelligent because they have power. I'm afraid that I simply do not agree.
You are confusing power with intelligence. Being able to schmooze well is not the same thing as having great knowledge and abilities. Having good connections has nothing to do with intelligence.
You sound like a highschooler who thinks social standing is the most important criteria for human worth.
An IQ of 100 is the 50th percentile. You have exactly half the world stupider than you, and half the world smarter than you.
I've seen a lot of ads which say that Bush and Palin's IQs are over 110. I'm pretty sure those ads are full of shit.
But if they are actually telling the truth then that proves that the concept of IQ is bullshit. There is no way that I will ever believe that 75% of the population is dumber than Bush or Palin. Those two people are practically the definition of below average intelligence.
Palin would get seriously spanked on "Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader?".
The Republicans have proven themselves to be huge fans of certain types of socialism. The Republican party no longer cares about or caters to libertarians of any sort (except very occasionally they throw a small bone to 2nd amendment supporters). Given that, your claim seems like nonsense.
Our choice in this election was between someone who probably has socialist tendencies and a Republican who was almost guaranteed to be a huge socialist.
I voted for civil liberties. At least that's something that differentiates the two parties. Republicans are against them almost 100% of the time while Democrats are sometimes for them.
The city should just go along with them until they lay all the fiber. Then they should use eminent domain to just take over the fiber and give ownership of it to the town.
Any additional actions like sending the company a box of dead rats in the mail are entirely optional.
If aliens are available it'd probably be better to have them do a brain switch so that you would take over the body of the person at the front of the line and then switch back after the concert is over.
Slashdot Mirror
What will I get if I pick fast and cheap? If lack of "good" means that a few extra rockets blow up then all we need is a decent escape module on top of the cheap rocket. Sounds good to me.
That's actually a good question. I think "reasonable" refers to what one expects from other reasonable people. The "not smart" refers to the fact that there are a lot of unreasonable people (aka. dickwads/asshats/griefers) on the net and they sometimes look just like the reasonable people (especially when one doesn't have access to a posting history).
Come on now. We aren't lawyers here. When the average person uses the term "treason" they are broadly referring to any action which fucks our country.
Obviously, what he meant was "Nobody was shot for fucking our country when they endorsed a program that raped the US Constitution.".
The funny thing is that despite me being unwilling to give money to human panhandlers, I would probably drop a coin into a robot like that. I think I'm just more sympathetic to robots.
So you're only allowed to criticize politicians of your own country? Or are you saying that you should only criticize politicians in countries that you never intend to visit?
When the news went out about that shutdown my nightly spam count (the amount that builds up from when I go to sleep and shut off my machine to when I wake up and turn it on) went from about 900 to about 200.
In the time since then it has edged up to about 400. But it still hasn't gotten back to the 900 level. Beats me why, but I'm not complaining.
(Only 10 or so of the 900 ever got past my spam filters, but even so, it meant waiting for minutes while the app downloaded all the messages.)
In all seriousness, I have long wanted a punch card reader with a USB interface. I have a card puncher and would love to have fun punching out some cards and then reading them in just for the pure nostalgia of it. If you ever find one for a reasonable price, please let me know!
Does anyone know of a general implementation of a google maps-like interface? I'm thinking of something like ExtJS where parts of the map are loaded as needed at various zoom levels with clickable points, etc.
Why does all the hardware need to be located on the suit? If we're talking about the president of the US, the hardware could all be located nearby or inside a podium. The suit would only need to have a way of communicating with the outside hardware and some sort of connection to the presidents muscles so that they could be activated at the appropriate moment if necessary.
For someone like that, having one secret service guy dedicated to this full time would be reasonable. He could program in the type of environment on which the president is walking.
However, given all that, I think a more practical system would be a quick deploying bullet shelf in front of the podium (or wherever the president is standing. No need to jerk the president out of the way, just raise a huge bullet proof wall into the path of the bullet. Or just drop a pope cone on top of him the moment a bullet shot is detected. Or just drop him through the floor.
But yes, beyond someone like the president, it seems unlikely that such technology would have much use. Perhaps it could be used by soldiers in sniper-prone areas. The sensors would be in the vehicles and muscle jerking devices would be attached to all soldiers along with sensors that identify where they are relative to the main vehicle.
Regarding technologies built specifically to thwart this, that is a concern, but it would probably not be a huge concern if the enemy is most likely to be a underfunded rebel group. There is always an arms war with new technology, but underfunded groups will rarely have the best tech.
I used to actually sign when I made credit card purchases. Now I just write the first letter of my name and then make a squiggly line after it. No one seems to care.
Just tell him that hotmail is broken and that he needs to use a new site.
The keys are also all remappable so you can turn it into a dvorak keyboard if you prefer.
Sadly, it is not perfect. The function keys on the top row are difficult to touch type. And I was forced to use duct tape to put a usb numeric keypad in the middle of the keyboard.
If the function keys were real sized keys above the number row then I'd consider it near perfect.
I think you're shooting a little high on the age bracket. Infocom released Zork in 1980 (according to wikipedia). It continued selling it for years afterward. So, people in their mid-30's played it too.
I've always thought that being hung up on the word "marriage" is the same as being hung up on the word "planet" when people passionately argued about whether or not Pluto was a planet.
Pluto is still there. Homosexuals still live together and fight over who was supposed to wash the dishes last week you dirty lazy slob.
Categorization is important, but I wish people would separate the issues and argue them separately.
What if letting the murderer go free also maintained a right which allowed my brother to go free and prevented the police from manufacturing evidence against my son? I think I would maintain my position in that case.
That's really what this is about. Giving the police/government a free pass to do what they want doesn't just punish the guilty.
I don't understand why that has to result in a loss of money. Is it the cost of the bus driver or the cost of the gas and maintenance?
If it's the latter then buses should be replaced by electric vans during periods of time during which usage is low.
Actually, you could get rid of the driver too if you could automate the buses/vans. Surely the task of automating a vehicle is much easier when the route is fixed like it is with buses.
If someone does all this, please make sure to spend a little of the resulting money on a few good janitors who keep the buses really clean. And make sure to repair the interior often.
A sparkling well repaired interior should help keep fairs coming in.
Don't stop at bus stops if no one is there. Text people to wake them up when they reach their stops. Make sure to make wifi available on everything. Provide good web sites which allow the user to easily plan routes (just enter start and end and it'll give you an optimized trip plan). All these things will encourage people to ride more and they are mostly fixed costs which don't go up with the number of passengers (except the wifi).
I'm sure I could think of more. But there really isn't any point. Smart energized people who want to solve problems are highly unlikely to be the sort of people who work for government transportation organizations.
The waaahmbulance doesn't apply if he took control and switched jobs. It only applies to people who refuse to quit their job but also complain how horrible working conditions are. If your job sucks then quit and find another. Even in a bad market like this there are always jobs (if you are willing to take a little less pay perhaps). If you haven't saved any fuck-you money (money in the bank which allows you to quit) then that's the time that I call the waaahmbulance.
If we leap one day in a "leap year" then shouldn't leaping a second be called a "leap minute" and not a "leap second"?
I can't figure out if you are a troll or if you honestly believe what you are saying. I'll assume you honestly believe what you are saying for now.
That's an interesting observation, but my analogy was not part of my argument. It was merely a final summary of my impression of your argument.
Here's another one. I seem to recall a kid's cartoon where they would say "knowledge is power". You seem to have believe it is the other way around.
Power can be gained in many ways. It can be gained because it was given to you by your parents (either via money or by existing political connections).
Power can be gained by personal connections which were themselves gained merely because their parents were able to put them into a school where they met the right sort of people.
Power can be gained through deceit.
Of course, power can also be gained by legitimately pulling yourself up by your own bootstraps. A person with power could very well be a very intelligent person.
Let me make an example from my own experience. Managers have power. Sometimes those managers are very intelligent. Sometimes they have good people skills. Sometimes they have both. The good managers have both. The bad managers have only one or neither of those things.
I have known some very stupid managers who nevertheless had good people skills. My original assertion was that Palin and Bush are these sorts of people. They have good people skills, but they are dumb as rocks.
You have not attempted to prove that either one of them is intelligent. You are just trying to convince me that they obviously must be intelligent because they have power. I'm afraid that I simply do not agree.
You are confusing power with intelligence. Being able to schmooze well is not the same thing as having great knowledge and abilities. Having good connections has nothing to do with intelligence.
You sound like a highschooler who thinks social standing is the most important criteria for human worth.
I've seen a lot of ads which say that Bush and Palin's IQs are over 110. I'm pretty sure those ads are full of shit.
But if they are actually telling the truth then that proves that the concept of IQ is bullshit. There is no way that I will ever believe that 75% of the population is dumber than Bush or Palin. Those two people are practically the definition of below average intelligence.
Palin would get seriously spanked on "Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader?".
The Republicans have proven themselves to be huge fans of certain types of socialism. The Republican party no longer cares about or caters to libertarians of any sort (except very occasionally they throw a small bone to 2nd amendment supporters). Given that, your claim seems like nonsense.
Our choice in this election was between someone who probably has socialist tendencies and a Republican who was almost guaranteed to be a huge socialist.
I voted for civil liberties. At least that's something that differentiates the two parties. Republicans are against them almost 100% of the time while Democrats are sometimes for them.
But you apparently used them for at least 3 years. I can only assume then that they must be very cheap compared to other places.
That seems reasonable to me. If they pull crap like that, but the customers don't leave, then why should they spend money to become better?
The city should just go along with them until they lay all the fiber. Then they should use eminent domain to just take over the fiber and give ownership of it to the town.
Any additional actions like sending the company a box of dead rats in the mail are entirely optional.
If aliens are available it'd probably be better to have them do a brain switch so that you would take over the body of the person at the front of the line and then switch back after the concert is over.