Jerry-rigged is a racist term first used in ww1 or ww2 by british soldiers. It started in ww1 as jerry-built.
This struck me as odd, seeing as the Brits seem to venerate German engineering, so I went digging. All the sites I read said that it pre-dates WW1 and has nothing to do with Germans.
If the author is surprised (by the grades, not the security), it is because he has never been a teacher.
1. Teachers have to ensure that their class marks have a certain average and median before they submit them. There can't be too many failures either.
2. Teachers know not to give a grade of 49 if the pass is 50 since the student will argue to get that missing point. If you want to be safer, just don't give out anything in the forties.
3. If a test gives letter grades, that equates to a particular number. A = 85, A- = 83, and so on. In that case, no one gets an 84, ever.
My favourite FTL power source is bad news, from Mostly Harmless:
Nothing travels faster than the speed of light with the possible exception of bad news, which obeys its own special laws. The Hingefreel people of Arkintoofle Minor did try to build spaceships that were powered by bad news but they didn't work particularly well and were so extremely unwelcome whenever they arrived anywhere that there wasn't really any point in being there.
our growth is almost entirely based on the use of oil [...]
Cheap energy and exploitation of the new world's crops (esp corn) seem largely responsible for the "recent" population explosion. Jared Diamond's "Collapse" is well worth reading.
So you'd go so far as to say that it is un-American to use such a word?
No, I wouldn't. America is geography so the concept of "un-American" applying to a person's behaviour is incoherent. I suppose my 'u' in behaviour gives away that I am "un-American".:-)
I wasn't singling you out for using the term; my hackles raise every time I encounter it and yours happened to be the post in front of me when I decided to speak out.
As for the choice? Gov'ts are ephemeral and can only form from principles (for good or ill), so I would think that basing one's decision on principles would be more productive.
A) This stuff should never have been secret, and anyone who would hide it is un-American
or
B) These secrets are property of the government, and anyone who would divulge them is un-American
The term "un-American" should only be used ironically or to recall the dark times of Joe McCarthy. There's not really any such thing as "American" in this sense. If there is, then it is antithetical to the notion of freedom. The fact that it sees such wide spread use is disturbing to me. This is not the vocabulary of a free country.
and enjoy universal health care for about $100 per month for a family of 4, unless you can show economic hardship, and then it's free.
This drivel is modded "informative"?
Seriously? I don't know who's a more deluded, the OP, or the people who modded him.
Let's see - at $25/person/month , that's $25*12* 33'000'000 (population of Canada) = $9.9 billion US ~ $10 billion US
He's obviously not talking about the total costs to society, so put your straw man away (and take something for your blood pressure... if you can afford it).
One of the main things which excites me about this dungeon finder is that it'll make finding groups for lower lvl instances much easier 'cause you'll be drawing from a large pool.
Terrorism was as much a threat in 1950 in 1960 in 1970 as it is today yet in those times we walked right up to the plane without hassle.
WTF?! What in the 50's, 60's, or 70's compared to 9/11?
There were many hijackings in that period. "Take this plane to Cuba" ring any bells? It's a cliche for a reason. The only thing new with 9/11 was the hijacker's use of the plane as a weapon. And, now that we're aware of this tactic, it very likely won't happen again.
You see, at the dawn of human civilization humans started asking questions: the first (incredibly bad) way of answering them was religion. Some people were not satisfied with the way religion answers them, so they went into the direction of philosophy. Some people went into the direction of science to try to answer questions.
Someone needs a history of philosophy course, methinks. Pay close attention to the part about the empiricists who laid the foundations for science.
Religion and philosophy are flawed ways of finding things out.
I found the implication that science is not flawed to be pretty funny.
The metropolis of London has no numbered streets, no grid system and numerous name conflicts - the number of 'High Streets' is - if I remember correctly - in excess of 50 and we Brits manage fine.
"Manage fine"? When the tube got bombed in 2005, the bookstores quickly ran out of A-Z books (detailed city map books) 'cause commuters couldn't find their way home without them. In a rational sort of city, the natives don't walk around with maps.
>> A Canadian firm has launched a device that can track the gaze of multiple people from up to 10 metres away. >Such devices already exist. They're called tits.
This reminds me of an old joke:
9 out of 10 men say that the first thing they notice about a woman is her eyes.
9 out of 10 women say that the first thing they notice about men is that they're all a bunch of liars.
Have you ever heard of a law being revoked or reversed?
Oh sure I have. And you have too. There were once a bunch of laws dictating that 'coloreds' (I'll use the American spelling in this case) couldn't do a fair number of things that 'whites' could. Those laws have been struck down. Lately, the trend has been to replace fair use, privacy protections, and what-not with less-free laws. But there's no reason to believe that this trend can't be reversed. In the case of civil liberties, it only took decades of violence and civil unrest to win those freedoms. Hopefully, the copyright fight will be easier.
Income inequality is a fact of life in a capitalistic society, and should be embraced, not scowled upon. The biggest problem facing the U.S. isn't the wage gap, but the surge of regulations that prevent the poor from becoming rich
But you just said that income inequality is 'a fact of life in a capitalistic society' (ie: capitalism is what is preventing the poor from becoming rich). I agree with that position but I don't care to embrace it.
The sad part is that Apple used to be a lot better at keeping secrets.
What do you mean "used to be"? In this one instance (the iphone), they had to release it 6 months prior to launch due to the fact that they have to file with the FCC and then the details would squirt out all over the place.
From TFA:
In the end, Apple decided to reveal the iPhone several months ahead of its official June launch because it could not keep the secret any more. Apple has to file with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) for the permits needed to operate the iPhone, and once those public filings are made, Apple has no control over the release of that information. So, Jobs said, he made the decision to have Apple tell the world about its new phone, rather than the FCC.
Slashdot Mirror
What do you do about the microphone?
Jerry-rigged is a racist term first used in ww1 or ww2 by british soldiers. It started in ww1 as jerry-built.
This struck me as odd, seeing as the Brits seem to venerate German engineering, so I went digging. All the sites I read said that it pre-dates WW1 and has nothing to do with Germans.
Do you have a reference which says otherwise?
1. Teachers have to ensure that their class marks have a certain average and median before they submit them. There can't be too many failures either.
2. Teachers know not to give a grade of 49 if the pass is 50 since the student will argue to get that missing point. If you want to be safer, just don't give out anything in the forties.
3. If a test gives letter grades, that equates to a particular number. A = 85, A- = 83, and so on. In that case, no one gets an 84, ever.
Nothing travels faster than the speed of light with the possible exception of bad news, which obeys its own special laws. The Hingefreel people of Arkintoofle Minor did try to build spaceships that were powered by bad news but they didn't work particularly well and were so extremely unwelcome whenever they arrived anywhere that there wasn't really any point in being there.
Giampaolo Giuliani is not a seismologist. He is a retired lab technician who used an unapproved radon gas test as the foundation for his predictions.
Cheap energy and exploitation of the new world's crops (esp corn) seem largely responsible for the "recent" population explosion. Jared Diamond's "Collapse" is well worth reading.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collapse:_How_Societies_Choose_to_Fail_or_Succeed
Sharing implies that you split something rather than duplicate it!
Thank you for sharing your thoughts on the matter.
So you'd go so far as to say that it is un-American to use such a word?
No, I wouldn't. America is geography so the concept of "un-American" applying to a person's behaviour is incoherent. I suppose my 'u' in behaviour gives away that I am "un-American". :-)
I wasn't singling you out for using the term; my hackles raise every time I encounter it and yours happened to be the post in front of me when I decided to speak out.
As for the choice? Gov'ts are ephemeral and can only form from principles (for good or ill), so I would think that basing one's decision on principles would be more productive.
The term "un-American" should only be used ironically or to recall the dark times of Joe McCarthy. There's not really any such thing as "American" in this sense. If there is, then it is antithetical to the notion of freedom. The fact that it sees such wide spread use is disturbing to me. This is not the vocabulary of a free country.
Oliver Wendell Holmes: "I like paying taxes. With them I buy civilization."
A 3TB USB2 drive is like sticking a slim straw into a McDonald's milkshake.
and enjoy universal health care for about $100 per month for a family of 4, unless you can show economic hardship, and then it's free.
This drivel is modded "informative"? Seriously? I don't know who's a more deluded, the OP, or the people who modded him. Let's see - at $25/person/month , that's $25*12* 33'000'000 (population of Canada) = $9.9 billion US ~ $10 billion US
He's obviously not talking about the total costs to society, so put your straw man away (and take something for your blood pressure... if you can afford it).
It needs only 160 milliseconds to latch on to the body shape of a new user stepping in front of it.
I think I dated Natal once.
One of the main things which excites me about this dungeon finder is that it'll make finding groups for lower lvl instances much easier 'cause you'll be drawing from a large pool.
Terrorism was as much a threat in 1950 in 1960 in 1970 as it is today yet in those times we walked right up to the plane without hassle.
WTF?! What in the 50's, 60's, or 70's compared to 9/11?
There were many hijackings in that period. "Take this plane to Cuba" ring any bells? It's a cliche for a reason. The only thing new with 9/11 was the hijacker's use of the plane as a weapon. And, now that we're aware of this tactic, it very likely won't happen again.
Someone needs a history of philosophy course, methinks. Pay close attention to the part about the empiricists who laid the foundations for science.
Religion and philosophy are flawed ways of finding things out.
I found the implication that science is not flawed to be pretty funny.
Anyway, this'll do for a start.
Sincerely,
An atheistic, science-lovin', religion-despisin', former phil guy.
That would be the "gripping" hand.
"Manage fine"? When the tube got bombed in 2005, the bookstores quickly ran out of A-Z books (detailed city map books) 'cause commuters couldn't find their way home without them.
In a rational sort of city, the natives don't walk around with maps.
This reminds me of an old joke:
9 out of 10 men say that the first thing they notice about a woman is her eyes.
9 out of 10 women say that the first thing they notice about men is that they're all a bunch of liars.
Oh sure I have. And you have too. There were once a bunch of laws dictating that 'coloreds' (I'll use the American spelling in this case) couldn't do a fair number of things that 'whites' could. Those laws have been struck down. Lately, the trend has been to replace fair use, privacy protections, and what-not with less-free laws. But there's no reason to believe that this trend can't be reversed. In the case of civil liberties, it only took decades of violence and civil unrest to win those freedoms. Hopefully, the copyright fight will be easier.
But you just said that income inequality is 'a fact of life in a capitalistic society' (ie: capitalism is what is preventing the poor from becoming rich). I agree with that position but I don't care to embrace it.
What do you mean "used to be"? In this one instance (the iphone), they had to release it 6 months prior to launch due to the fact that they have to file with the FCC and then the details would squirt out all over the place.
From TFA:
Well, there was that one other time when he flew off the handle and killed a fig tree...
Even with 'strict safe search' on, images.google.com still serves up many pictures of the tank-man... unlike the Chinese version.
I thought it was because Reiser is expected to become non-free.