Not entirely on topic, but I've never really understood where dasher is going. I watched their explanatory video, which talks about looking for a better input device for small screened devices. To me, though, that seems to be exactly where dasher is no good; you need a fairly large screen to be able to see the letters coming up fast enough to get high speed. I can get a decent speed - not touch typing but not bad - on my 19" monitor, but on a 3.5" PDA screen it's massively slower to use. On a low resolution 1" phone screen it would be really difficult to use - especially since you still need to display what you've written.
You seem like you're a fan of it - perhaps you can point out where I've gone wrong in assuming that it's not really anything but an interesting concept.
Er...that translation is really crucial. Are you sure that was a dollar sign in front of the 3? Or are they perhaps paying in Russian Roubles? That would be considerably less favorable, as the Rouble is going for 24 to the U.S. Dollar. Still...$15/hour...maybe my kid will be interested. Sorry, my translation was a bit ambiguous - although in fairness so is the Russian. My interpretation is that the minimum they will pay you is $3 - as in you can't claim your money until you've earned $3. The amount per captcha is probably almost 0.
There isn't a dollar sign before the 3 in the Russian - it's after it:D. But it's definitely dollars! You can even see it in the picture in TFA.
TFA says this is a service SELLING captcha breaking I'm not sure you're right. Why would the page include instructions such as
In no case do not enter random characters!
We pay only correctly recognized pictures! That sounds more like instructions for people doing the CAPTCHA breaking, no? Unfortunately, I can only go by the English translation, somebody who can read Russian would be useful. I think you're right. The article translation gives a pretty good impression of what the page is saying. I googled the Russian, and it seems that that's all there is on the page, so here's a translation:
If you can't identify the image or it doesn't load (if the picture is black, or blank) simply press Enter.
Under no circumstances enter random characters!
If there is a delay in the picture loading, log out, refresh the page and try again.
The system has been tested in: Mozilla Firefox Internet Explorer
Before each payment is made, the identified images are checked by Admin. We pay ONLY for correctly identified images!!!
Payments are made once a day. The minimum sum paid is $3. Those who would like to request a payment should send their application to the admin. If the admin is free, your application will be processed in 10-15 minutes; if they are busy it will be processed when possible.
If there are any problems (questions), write to the admin.
Based on my translation, I'm fairly sure these are instructions for someone being paid to break the captchas. It's definitely saying "If you can't identify the image"; the Russian for "if the image can't be identified" would be quite different.
As for reasons for the low success rate - well, they probably can't read much English. People who speak English are able to compare their interpretation of the letters to the words they know, increasing their accuracy. Given that the people doing these captchas are unemployed in a country that can normally find a job for anyone able to speak English, they probably don't have much more than recognition of the letters and a few basic words. Imagine if I gave you a distorted version of a Russian word - your success rate might not be too great either.
22.6 Kg x 1m x 9.8 m/s^2 / 4 hours = 0.015W if conversion is 100% efficient (which it won't be)
The red led on the front of your modem requires around this amount so the glow will be feable. To get the equivalent of a filament 40W bulb requires around 10W so the system is only around a factor of 1000 out.
Your conclusion is right, but your figures are a bit out. The drop is 58" according to the plan. This gives about 0.022W at 100% efficiency.
For reference, the highest efficiency LEDs that I know of get 131 lumens per watt. If we're generous and allow them 150 lumens/watt, they still need 4W of power. This would require a drop of 255 metres using the 50lbs of weights he claims. Since we can't really go above 1.5m high, we'll need almost 4 tonnes of weights.
You personally have had trouble with a legally purchased copy of Windows Vista and WGA? Or are you just parroting the vocal minority because that's the slashdot way? I have. WGA mistakenly identified my copy of Windows as being pirated; I never found out why. It was extremely annoying to turn on my PC and be unable to do what I wanted for no real reason, plus resolving the problem involved almost an hour on the phone to Microsoft. In fairness to them though, they were very reasonable on the phone and I don't know anyone else who has suffered the same problem. Fortunately for me I use Ubuntu for everything but games, so I didn't miss out on anything important, it was just an irritation. For other people the consequence could be rather more serious, and I'd like to see MS offering something in the way of compensation if they're mistaken.
Your "nuclear arms" argument is the classic strawman when you can't make a coherent argument for your position. No, it's not. He isn't trying to attribute the belief that nuclear arms should be legal to his opponent, which would be a strawman. He's just drawing a logical conclusion: nuclear arms are arms, which Americans have the right to bear. But we don't let people have tactical nukes, because we recognize that there's a point at which the power of the weapon exceeds the scope of the constitution. All he's doing is trying to argue that the point should be lower than it is, which is a reasonable debate to have whether you agree or not.
He doesn't attribute a sentiment to you, he's just presenting a logical argument: "if you believe this, you must believe that". It's a rhetorical device not an actual attribution of a feeling.
Here it is: http://youtube.com/watch?v=NaCPw1s3GFw
I made the same mistake of clicking on the PCWorld link expecting it to go to the actual video... how naive of me...
That's how it works now. What the GGP was suggesting is that the browser analyse the page to see how it renders best, which is a different kettle of fish altogether.
This article is like saying web developers who wrote HTML for Mosaic shouldn't rewrite their code to fit ACTUAL standards, but rather modify their code to work best with Mosaic.
IE is such bloat-ware to begin with, why don't they just have the browser analyze the code, and see which engine it will render with better, IE...,5,6,7,8,... But how does the browser know how the page is meant to render? Unless it already knows what the page should look like there's no way it can tell which engine renders it "right". Even if you could give it enough AI to tell which version looks best or most like a web page, that won't work unless the web designers start making pages that look like decent web pages...
Yes, that falls into the other two categories I gave--either it's busy work, or it's something you would be doing anyway, even without the ideology. (Having to read a chemistry text is something they should be doing anyway--the only reason they wouldn't would be to route around them not properly learning to read early on.)
You're absolutely right - if they want to get the best possible grades reading around the subject is something they should be doing. The problem is that they aren't. Sure, some do, and from the sounds of things you were one of them. But these measures aren't designed to help or hinder those who already read on their own; like a lot of measures that schools have to put in place to help those who struggle, they make no real difference to those in the top 50%.
What's important is that this is not a technique designed to stop children learning, it's a technique designed to help them learn. Integrating English teaching across the curriculum doesn't mean writing poems in science, it means making sure that children know all the words they need to do the science course - it's very easy to assume that words like "litmus", "solid", "acid" or "comet" have been explained at an earlier stage; the initiative means not assuming that but rather checking. It's easy to assume that children understand what their percentage score means, or how to submit their essays for the best overall mark - but maybe they don't. No subject can be taught in isolation - what use is chemistry without any physics, let alone without English, maths or IT skills - school isn't designed to create specialists, it has to prepare the children for further education or work, and English, maths and IT are essential for both of those.
That sounds like it could easily become the worst possible system. By analogy, if I'm learning German and physics at the same time, trying to get through a physics textbook written in German only pisses me off and holds me back from learning either. How the hell can you learn any one thing when doing so requires applying other skills you haven't finished learning yet? And if you've already learned the skill enough to apply it, applying it in unrelated ways just makes for more busy work (i.e. having to typeset your English assignments using DTP software). And if you have learned the skills enough to usefully apply them in other studies, then you'd be applying them anyway, ideology or no ideology (i.e. word problems--who didn't have to do this in math class as a kid?) You're exaggerating. No one's planning on having children study their physics in German. The suggestion is that children should apply their core skills in all their lessons, to improve them. Creating a newspaper front page in DTP software was an example from a school local to me; the children improved their English skills by learning about different styles of writing and trying it themselves, and they improved their computer skills by using standard DTP software, with skilled users on hand to help out. The idea is to emphasize the importance of transferable skills - the idea that English, maths and IT skills are important no matter what you want to do when you're older. It helps students to improve their core skills, and it shows that these skills are relevant to them, which can help motivate them to learn.
There is no plan for people to "learn one thing.. [using] skills you haven't finished learning yet". That would indeed be silly. No children are being given their chemistry in sonnet form, or having to solve equations to get at their English notes. The initiative is much more subtle than that; integrating English skills into chemistry might mean that the students are set reading as homework - background information for the course material. Integrating maths into geography could be the teacher guiding the pupils through statistical analyses. None of it is heavy stuff.
I think where you're seeing problems it's because you're looking at the idea from the point of view of someone who doesn't need this help. Integrating reading and writing into every lesson isn't designed to get more A-grades, it's to reduce the number of people who get through school without ever learning to read and write fluently. Children that hit secondary school (age 12) unable to write, or unable to write well, have been missed out by the emphasis on reading and writing at primary school. Continuing to emphasize "key skills" in secondary school helps these children both by giving them the chance to learn, and by showing them that it's important that they do.
Likewise, the original question wasn't looking to get children from a B to an A, it was looking for a way to introduce otherwise uninterested children to science and maths.
Not to disagree with you, necessarily, but just to suggest the opposite approach. Over here (England), teachers are required to work some skills into all their lessons - these skills are numeracy (maths), literacy (English) and IT. The head of a department issues guidelines as to what skills are particularly valuable to the children, and other teachers help to reinforce these skills. For example, an English teacher might incorporate a lesson creating a newspaper using DTP software - this both teaches the children about the style of newspaper copy and lets them practice what they've learnt in IT lessons. Similarly, a maths teacher might incorporate wordy questions to practice English skills, a science teacher might make use of statistical analyses, a geography teacher might have the children do calculations to work out population growth rates, and so on.
The system works well - regular practice at something is far more effective than concentrated teaching for a lot of students.
My suggestion would be to try something like that. First of all, you're not really asking the right people here. We don't know what skills your students need to practice and we don't know what's involved in your lessons. Speak to the heads of maths and science, or your pupils' maths and science teachers. They can probably suggest things to work in to your lessons, and may even be able to support you - you may not be qualified to answer all your students questions. Secondly, accept that you're not the only person with this sort of opinion. Chances are the science and maths teachers feel that the students have poor English skills and would like to see this improved; they might even appreciate some guidance on helping the students with their English. For a lot of your students, a solid grasp of grammar and spelling will stand them in better stead than extra encouragement with science, and you need to be careful not to stray too far from the basics.
I wouldn't worry about doing anything so complex if you want to backup your files. Simply archive your filesystem - or as much of it as you can store at a time - and then split the files and burn them to DVDs. Rather simpler and you don't have to hunt through everything to find the files you wanted, they're exactly where you'd expect on the FS after you restore.
It's nice to know that there are so many things wrong with my statement that you can't name any of them. You must have been overwhelmed, I suppose.
Your last reply? That was your first reply. I don't understand what you mean by my "replies" and "statements". There has been one. Which you have picked apart cleverly by calling it pathetic and calling me a spammer. I just don't know what to say... I'm going to have to think hard to come up with a reply to that logic!
Now I know you said you wouldn't reply again, but in the interests of rational debate - which was what I was aiming for - I have some questions and some comments on your reply.
- You say I used 'WAAAY to [sic] many "what if's"[sic]' to make my point. I don't quite understand. Taking that literally, I didn't use the a single "what if" - that is, the phrase doesn't appear in my reply. Taking it less literally, my reply contained three different analogous situations, and three "what if" ideas. Since an analogy is, unavoidably, going to need you to imagine a different set of circumstances I don't really think that was avoidable. If you could explain what you meant I'll try to remedy it, but I don't really understand your objection here.
- When you speak of the situations I'm "trying to use as examples", I think you've confusing me with someone else - two other people in fact. This seems to be the case again later when you refer to my "replies". I don't see where this misconception comes from. That was my first reply, and I was using the examples you mentioned in your post.
- You say there are laws to protect you from the situation I describe. I'm not a lawyer, so I need a little more information than that. What laws exactly would protect you while leaving e360 high and dry? You've both been alleged to have committed a crime, in both cases the publishing entity has claimed their information may not be accurate. What's the important difference? Forgive me if I'm missing something obvious.
- Which part of my post suggested I was a spammer? Can people not disagree with you without some financial incentive? Or did I trigger some long-lost bit of Slashcode that sent my reply to hundreds of people?
If you reply, I hope we can return this discussion to a more civil level. If not, well, that rather speaks for itself.
That rather depends. If I had two candidates, equal in every way except that one was on a list of murderers, I'd hire the one that wasn't a listed murderer. There's always the possibility that the police have got it wrong, or you're in witness protection, or you've stolen someone's identity, and the only person to have found out the truth is the PI that made the list.
But anyway, the Spamhaus list is much more like the list of employees that have stolen pens and pencils. If you are given a list like that, you can either use it or you can't; there's no checking possible except anecdotal. You can call the previous employer, but all they can say is "I never noticed them stealing any". They can't guarantee the list is wrong. And you know that using the list in the past has reduced stationery theft - why should it be wrong this time? The Spamhaus list is much the same; all you can do is say that you don't know of anyone spammed by a certain person, you can't ever be sure that an entry on the list is incorrect - maybe you just didn't ask anyone that they spammed.
e360 were put on this list by Spamhaus. Spamhaus don't guarantee the list, but that makes no difference to e360. There's no way for them to show it's not true, and people hate spammers. They're going to assume they're lying, they're going to assume they're guilty. There's no way for them to recover. The "shotgun approach" blocks a lot of spam, but it will mean blocking legitimate businesses, and if SpamHaus don't remove them they are stopping them doing business.
If it doesn't matter what I say as long as I don't guarantee it's true, would you not hold me responsible for anything? What if I put up a billboard near your local school with your photo and "PEDOPHILE". In small print it will say "we don't know, but he might be". When people smash your windows at night will you still be quite so at ease with libel?
What you have to bear in mind is that the wireless aspect is largely irrelevant; it is only the delivery method. What is actually the issue - and what is potentially scarce - is the bandwidth being used to communicate over the internet. Whether you access it through a wire or over WiFi, you are using their internet connection without authorization - and if you aren't sure whether they are intentionally providing free connectivity or not, you can always find them and ask.
But this isn't like that - no one is forcing you to use the bandwidth. Using someone else's wireless access is a choice, you don't suddenly get drenched by it if you walk into range. To use your analogy, the water isn't going into your garden, you're catching it by leaning over the fence.
If someone shoots you because the switch they thought would deactivate a weapon actually caused it to fire, would you hold them fully responsible? Even if that switch had been designed to look exactly like a standard safety, despite actually doing nothing? How about if they run someone over because their car was designed so that pumping the brake makes it go faster instead of slowing down? (Pumping deliberately chosen because it's something people expect to be a good way to stop, but isn't a standard check when you start your car - just like a close button on an application).
And what if the user couldn't tell that those actions hadn't stopped the gun/car?
If the user presses a button whose standard function is to stop what the program's doing, and the program goes away without any warning it's still running, I don't think it's unreasonable for them to assume it has in fact quit - that would be my assumption, and I wouldn't check the system tray if I didn't know it would be there.
Just to point out - in case you weren't aware - Stellarium is rather less detailed than the images that have revealed this phenomenon. It is designed to see what a small telescope sees, whereas this was found using a state-of-the-art space telescope.
These weapons will be controlled by the Government, just like current weapons are. There's currently no way the American population could even hope to defeat its Government and military in a civil war; further technical advances won't make much difference.
There is no legal standard that says a metre has to be a metre, or that a litre is 1000ml. When you advertise a litre or a gallon, it is assumed that you're using the definition standardised; in this case that definition is that it is measured at 60 degrees.
If I buy a pint of milk, the pint has to conform to the standards for a pint - otherwise it would be fraud. If I consistently sold you a pint but took 5% off, the fact that the law doesn't dictate the size of a pint wouldn't change the fact that it's fraud - the legal system doesn't have to codify facts.
The accuracy of the pump is irrelevant, unless its inaccuracy tends to be downward. Ehm no, it's not irrelevant. It's completely relevant.
In the real world all measurements have error. Systematic and random. If the thermal expansion (a systematic error) is well within the legally acceptable pump measurement accuracy then you aren't being ripped off at all.
This isn't a random error though. This is always in the same direction - in favour of the company. The pump error is acceptable because it's a random error, this is completely different. The fact that thermal error is less that the pump error is irrelevant because they don't cancel out; some days the pump will favour me, some days the company, some days it'll be perfectly accurate. The thermal error is just a 0.02% reduction in the amount of fuel, every time.
Imagine the pump was perfectly accurate - would this be acceptable then? What difference does the pump's inaccuracy cause? If the pump was 75% accurate (potentially in either direction) and they were consistently only dispensing 80% as much fuel as they claimed, would this be acceptable - after all, it would be within the pump's margin of error.
The accuracy of the pump is irrelevant, unless its inaccuracy tends to be downward. If the distribution of pump innacuracies is symmetrical they will cancel out.
If you run the calculations for a 0.02% loss of fuel, this equates to paying about a tenth of a cent more for every gallon. (This is at odds with the claims in the article, but I'm not sure how either of you arrived at your answers so I can't judge). This doesn't seem like much. But the US consumes around 360 million gallons a day, at a cost of $216,000 extra if the fuel is being measured in this expanded state. It doesn't sound quite so trivial when it's 79 million dollars a year in fraudulent profit.
Comparisons with tyre pressure or open windows are irrelevant. These things are your choice, unlike a misrepresentation in the amount of fuel you're being provided.
Slashdot Mirror
Not entirely on topic, but I've never really understood where dasher is going. I watched their explanatory video, which talks about looking for a better input device for small screened devices. To me, though, that seems to be exactly where dasher is no good; you need a fairly large screen to be able to see the letters coming up fast enough to get high speed. I can get a decent speed - not touch typing but not bad - on my 19" monitor, but on a 3.5" PDA screen it's massively slower to use. On a low resolution 1" phone screen it would be really difficult to use - especially since you still need to display what you've written.
You seem like you're a fan of it - perhaps you can point out where I've gone wrong in assuming that it's not really anything but an interesting concept.
There isn't a dollar sign before the 3 in the Russian - it's after it
We pay only correctly recognized pictures! That sounds more like instructions for people doing the CAPTCHA breaking, no?
Unfortunately, I can only go by the English translation, somebody who can read Russian would be useful. I think you're right. The article translation gives a pretty good impression of what the page is saying. I googled the Russian, and it seems that that's all there is on the page, so here's a translation:
Based on my translation, I'm fairly sure these are instructions for someone being paid to break the captchas. It's definitely saying "If you can't identify the image"; the Russian for "if the image can't be identified" would be quite different.
As for reasons for the low success rate - well, they probably can't read much English. People who speak English are able to compare their interpretation of the letters to the words they know, increasing their accuracy. Given that the people doing these captchas are unemployed in a country that can normally find a job for anyone able to speak English, they probably don't have much more than recognition of the letters and a few basic words. Imagine if I gave you a distorted version of a Russian word - your success rate might not be too great either.
Regards, Thank you for replying to my comment. It's insightful comments like yours that keep me coming back.
The red led on the front of your modem requires around this amount so the glow will be feable. To get the equivalent of a filament 40W bulb requires around 10W so the system is only around a factor of 1000 out.
Your conclusion is right, but your figures are a bit out. The drop is 58" according to the plan. This gives about 0.022W at 100% efficiency.
For reference, the highest efficiency LEDs that I know of get 131 lumens per watt. If we're generous and allow them 150 lumens/watt, they still need 4W of power. This would require a drop of 255 metres using the 50lbs of weights he claims. Since we can't really go above 1.5m high, we'll need almost 4 tonnes of weights.
A shame really, I'd have rather liked one.
He doesn't attribute a sentiment to you, he's just presenting a logical argument: "if you believe this, you must believe that". It's a rhetorical device not an actual attribution of a feeling.
Here it is: http://youtube.com/watch?v=NaCPw1s3GFw I made the same mistake of clicking on the PCWorld link expecting it to go to the actual video... how naive of me...
That's how it works now. What the GGP was suggesting is that the browser analyse the page to see how it renders best, which is a different kettle of fish altogether.
IE is such bloat-ware to begin with, why don't they just have the browser analyze the code, and see which engine it will render with better, IE
You're absolutely right - if they want to get the best possible grades reading around the subject is something they should be doing. The problem is that they aren't. Sure, some do, and from the sounds of things you were one of them. But these measures aren't designed to help or hinder those who already read on their own; like a lot of measures that schools have to put in place to help those who struggle, they make no real difference to those in the top 50%.
What's important is that this is not a technique designed to stop children learning, it's a technique designed to help them learn. Integrating English teaching across the curriculum doesn't mean writing poems in science, it means making sure that children know all the words they need to do the science course - it's very easy to assume that words like "litmus", "solid", "acid" or "comet" have been explained at an earlier stage; the initiative means not assuming that but rather checking. It's easy to assume that children understand what their percentage score means, or how to submit their essays for the best overall mark - but maybe they don't. No subject can be taught in isolation - what use is chemistry without any physics, let alone without English, maths or IT skills - school isn't designed to create specialists, it has to prepare the children for further education or work, and English, maths and IT are essential for both of those.
There is no plan for people to "learn one thing.. [using] skills you haven't finished learning yet". That would indeed be silly. No children are being given their chemistry in sonnet form, or having to solve equations to get at their English notes. The initiative is much more subtle than that; integrating English skills into chemistry might mean that the students are set reading as homework - background information for the course material. Integrating maths into geography could be the teacher guiding the pupils through statistical analyses. None of it is heavy stuff.
I think where you're seeing problems it's because you're looking at the idea from the point of view of someone who doesn't need this help. Integrating reading and writing into every lesson isn't designed to get more A-grades, it's to reduce the number of people who get through school without ever learning to read and write fluently. Children that hit secondary school (age 12) unable to write, or unable to write well, have been missed out by the emphasis on reading and writing at primary school. Continuing to emphasize "key skills" in secondary school helps these children both by giving them the chance to learn, and by showing them that it's important that they do.
Likewise, the original question wasn't looking to get children from a B to an A, it was looking for a way to introduce otherwise uninterested children to science and maths.
Not to disagree with you, necessarily, but just to suggest the opposite approach. Over here (England), teachers are required to work some skills into all their lessons - these skills are numeracy (maths), literacy (English) and IT. The head of a department issues guidelines as to what skills are particularly valuable to the children, and other teachers help to reinforce these skills. For example, an English teacher might incorporate a lesson creating a newspaper using DTP software - this both teaches the children about the style of newspaper copy and lets them practice what they've learnt in IT lessons. Similarly, a maths teacher might incorporate wordy questions to practice English skills, a science teacher might make use of statistical analyses, a geography teacher might have the children do calculations to work out population growth rates, and so on.
The system works well - regular practice at something is far more effective than concentrated teaching for a lot of students.
My suggestion would be to try something like that. First of all, you're not really asking the right people here. We don't know what skills your students need to practice and we don't know what's involved in your lessons. Speak to the heads of maths and science, or your pupils' maths and science teachers. They can probably suggest things to work in to your lessons, and may even be able to support you - you may not be qualified to answer all your students questions. Secondly, accept that you're not the only person with this sort of opinion. Chances are the science and maths teachers feel that the students have poor English skills and would like to see this improved; they might even appreciate some guidance on helping the students with their English. For a lot of your students, a solid grasp of grammar and spelling will stand them in better stead than extra encouragement with science, and you need to be careful not to stray too far from the basics.
I wouldn't worry about doing anything so complex if you want to backup your files. Simply archive your filesystem - or as much of it as you can store at a time - and then split the files and burn them to DVDs. Rather simpler and you don't have to hunt through everything to find the files you wanted, they're exactly where you'd expect on the FS after you restore.
It's nice to know that there are so many things wrong with my statement that you can't name any of them. You must have been overwhelmed, I suppose.
Your last reply? That was your first reply. I don't understand what you mean by my "replies" and "statements". There has been one. Which you have picked apart cleverly by calling it pathetic and calling me a spammer. I just don't know what to say... I'm going to have to think hard to come up with a reply to that logic!
Now I know you said you wouldn't reply again, but in the interests of rational debate - which was what I was aiming for - I have some questions and some comments on your reply.
- You say I used 'WAAAY to [sic] many "what if's"[sic]' to make my point. I don't quite understand. Taking that literally, I didn't use the a single "what if" - that is, the phrase doesn't appear in my reply. Taking it less literally, my reply contained three different analogous situations, and three "what if" ideas. Since an analogy is, unavoidably, going to need you to imagine a different set of circumstances I don't really think that was avoidable. If you could explain what you meant I'll try to remedy it, but I don't really understand your objection here.
- When you speak of the situations I'm "trying to use as examples", I think you've confusing me with someone else - two other people in fact. This seems to be the case again later when you refer to my "replies". I don't see where this misconception comes from. That was my first reply, and I was using the examples you mentioned in your post.
- You say there are laws to protect you from the situation I describe. I'm not a lawyer, so I need a little more information than that. What laws exactly would protect you while leaving e360 high and dry? You've both been alleged to have committed a crime, in both cases the publishing entity has claimed their information may not be accurate. What's the important difference? Forgive me if I'm missing something obvious.
- Which part of my post suggested I was a spammer? Can people not disagree with you without some financial incentive? Or did I trigger some long-lost bit of Slashcode that sent my reply to hundreds of people?
If you reply, I hope we can return this discussion to a more civil level. If not, well, that rather speaks for itself.
That rather depends. If I had two candidates, equal in every way except that one was on a list of murderers, I'd hire the one that wasn't a listed murderer. There's always the possibility that the police have got it wrong, or you're in witness protection, or you've stolen someone's identity, and the only person to have found out the truth is the PI that made the list.
But anyway, the Spamhaus list is much more like the list of employees that have stolen pens and pencils. If you are given a list like that, you can either use it or you can't; there's no checking possible except anecdotal. You can call the previous employer, but all they can say is "I never noticed them stealing any". They can't guarantee the list is wrong. And you know that using the list in the past has reduced stationery theft - why should it be wrong this time? The Spamhaus list is much the same; all you can do is say that you don't know of anyone spammed by a certain person, you can't ever be sure that an entry on the list is incorrect - maybe you just didn't ask anyone that they spammed.
e360 were put on this list by Spamhaus. Spamhaus don't guarantee the list, but that makes no difference to e360. There's no way for them to show it's not true, and people hate spammers. They're going to assume they're lying, they're going to assume they're guilty. There's no way for them to recover. The "shotgun approach" blocks a lot of spam, but it will mean blocking legitimate businesses, and if SpamHaus don't remove them they are stopping them doing business.
If it doesn't matter what I say as long as I don't guarantee it's true, would you not hold me responsible for anything? What if I put up a billboard near your local school with your photo and "PEDOPHILE". In small print it will say "we don't know, but he might be". When people smash your windows at night will you still be quite so at ease with libel?
Not wanting to go to the effort of asking permission has never been a defense against stealing...
What you have to bear in mind is that the wireless aspect is largely irrelevant; it is only the delivery method. What is actually the issue - and what is potentially scarce - is the bandwidth being used to communicate over the internet. Whether you access it through a wire or over WiFi, you are using their internet connection without authorization - and if you aren't sure whether they are intentionally providing free connectivity or not, you can always find them and ask.
But this isn't like that - no one is forcing you to use the bandwidth. Using someone else's wireless access is a choice, you don't suddenly get drenched by it if you walk into range. To use your analogy, the water isn't going into your garden, you're catching it by leaning over the fence.
If someone shoots you because the switch they thought would deactivate a weapon actually caused it to fire, would you hold them fully responsible? Even if that switch had been designed to look exactly like a standard safety, despite actually doing nothing? How about if they run someone over because their car was designed so that pumping the brake makes it go faster instead of slowing down? (Pumping deliberately chosen because it's something people expect to be a good way to stop, but isn't a standard check when you start your car - just like a close button on an application).
And what if the user couldn't tell that those actions hadn't stopped the gun/car?
If the user presses a button whose standard function is to stop what the program's doing, and the program goes away without any warning it's still running, I don't think it's unreasonable for them to assume it has in fact quit - that would be my assumption, and I wouldn't check the system tray if I didn't know it would be there.
Just to point out - in case you weren't aware - Stellarium is rather less detailed than the images that have revealed this phenomenon. It is designed to see what a small telescope sees, whereas this was found using a state-of-the-art space telescope.
These weapons will be controlled by the Government, just like current weapons are. There's currently no way the American population could even hope to defeat its Government and military in a civil war; further technical advances won't make much difference.
There is no legal standard that says a metre has to be a metre, or that a litre is 1000ml. When you advertise a litre or a gallon, it is assumed that you're using the definition standardised; in this case that definition is that it is measured at 60 degrees.
If I buy a pint of milk, the pint has to conform to the standards for a pint - otherwise it would be fraud. If I consistently sold you a pint but took 5% off, the fact that the law doesn't dictate the size of a pint wouldn't change the fact that it's fraud - the legal system doesn't have to codify facts.
In the real world all measurements have error. Systematic and random. If the thermal expansion (a systematic error) is well within the legally acceptable pump measurement accuracy then you aren't being ripped off at all.
This isn't a random error though. This is always in the same direction - in favour of the company. The pump error is acceptable because it's a random error, this is completely different. The fact that thermal error is less that the pump error is irrelevant because they don't cancel out; some days the pump will favour me, some days the company, some days it'll be perfectly accurate. The thermal error is just a 0.02% reduction in the amount of fuel, every time.
Imagine the pump was perfectly accurate - would this be acceptable then? What difference does the pump's inaccuracy cause? If the pump was 75% accurate (potentially in either direction) and they were consistently only dispensing 80% as much fuel as they claimed, would this be acceptable - after all, it would be within the pump's margin of error.The accuracy of the pump is irrelevant, unless its inaccuracy tends to be downward. If the distribution of pump innacuracies is symmetrical they will cancel out.
If you run the calculations for a 0.02% loss of fuel, this equates to paying about a tenth of a cent more for every gallon. (This is at odds with the claims in the article, but I'm not sure how either of you arrived at your answers so I can't judge). This doesn't seem like much. But the US consumes around 360 million gallons a day, at a cost of $216,000 extra if the fuel is being measured in this expanded state. It doesn't sound quite so trivial when it's 79 million dollars a year in fraudulent profit.
Comparisons with tyre pressure or open windows are irrelevant. These things are your choice, unlike a misrepresentation in the amount of fuel you're being provided.