Now NASA is learning how to do publicity. And in the long run that may be the most important thing because good publicity means more funding. Great. More marketing and less engineering. Do you really want NASA to turn into Microsoft?
Sounds like your friends have unchecked addictive personalities. Making all of the WoW servers implode won't change that - they'd just latch on to something else: booze, gambling, eating, etc. WoW is only one of many, many pushers and your friends are like kids in a candy store full of them. Blaming the pusher-du-jour is not the way to help someone like that.
They never showed the bodies. That's the beauty of Sci-Fi, dead isn't necessarily dead. Remember when Spock died? He was in the next movie. I think it's more accurate to say he was the next movie.
Geller does not claim to be a magician, he claims to actually posses mental powers. Well, he's got the mental part right, at least. Maybe we should introduce him to Jack Thompson and watch them implode?
A dead anvil is one with an internal fracture. They're not really any good for doing work with anymore. Sounds like a good name for a heavy metal band, actually. Dead Anvils. I like the ring of it!
Furthermore, if we're trying to reduce paper consumption, I can think of many far better places to start than making voting inaccurate.
I'll add another furthermore to that: Cost should be no object when trying to ensure that an electoral system is fair and representative of the wishes of the electorate.
Maybe if someone on the campus had a gun they would have popped a cap in him and lives would have been saved. Someone else being around with a handgun is no guarantee that they would have done anything to stop this. There's a big difference between going target shooting once in a while and willfully aiming a gun at a fellow human being and shooting with the intent to hurt or kill. Being the owner of a gun does not mean that one is up to it. That's why police officers and soldiers are massively conditioned during their training periods.
For more on the subject, I refer you to Dave Grossman's excellent "On Killing: The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society"
"I know several people who talk wear blue tooth headsets around with them everywhere.
They will start talking to someone who calls them without a word to you.
I think they could do with a brain implant."
I think they could do with learning some goddamn manners, personally. It's no different than if they started having a conversation with a random passerby while you're talking to them. It's rude and dismissive.
"The existence of Jesus is a fact since at least 5 people (His students) wrote about Him , which also did the Jewish historian Josephus."
I just want to point out that the number of people who have written on the subject of a person is no garantee that the person has actually existed. Zeus, Krishna, Thor, Xipe Totec and Santa Claus have also had a lot of people write about them. It's all about how realiable the sources actually are.
"Yes. They all have a picture on them as well as eye color, height, weight and so on. And if they had more, like, say a finger print, so what?"
You're probably referring to the biometric information available on a Canadian driver's license. However, driver's licenses aren't mandatory. I'm a Canadian living in a big city, and I've never had a need for one. I can't think of any piece of ID I own, save my passport, that contains biometric information. Even my federal employee pass has little more than a picture on it.
I don't see the point of gun registration either, because it's so easy to pick up a weapon in circumstances where you wouldn't have to register it.
What a cowardly leader can do, though, is set up Free Speech zones that are nowhere near where he's going to be, so that it's easier to control potential aggressors while at the same time making it look like there's fewer dissenting opinions. Security and a nice friendly photo op-ready appearance. What good is Free Speech if your leaders make it plain that they don't even intend to pretend to listen to you?
"It's the same way with the supposedly free-speech advocates: many of them are against unnecessary wars, in favor of free speech, think homosexuals should get the same rights as the rest of us, etc., but then they want to remove everyone's right to protect themselves from crime, and also from tyrannical government."
What's funny is that it looks like the gun lobby is very friendly to those people who are busy rendering more and more of your constitutional rights meaningless. What use is a gun when the police can SWAT team your ass on a flimsy excuse and disappear you to Gitmo?
Sure, sure. I know the situation isn't that dire. However, I keep hearing about using guns to protect yourself from abusive governments, but I'm not seeing a whole lot of action backing that hot air.
"The business is very competitive, and there are lots of incentives to switch carriers. If you're not renegotiating with your cellular and broadband carriers when the contract comes close to ending, you're unwise."
You'd think that in such a climate, they'd work harder to attract new clients and retain old ones instead of scaring / hosing existing clients into staying with them to the bitter end. This is customer retension through bullying, not through good service. Welcome to the free market, where you're free to chose whose bitch you get to be.
"Because of places like Ottawa. The OC Transpo system, while very nice, is still lacking quite a bit. They barely run it out to some of the suburbs, like Stittsville, and they don't even bother giving anywhere west of that anything other than a rural express route. I know this is anecdotal, but there are plenty of places where public transit isn't viable."
Aren't there plans to implement suburb trains that run into Ottawa, like they have in Toronto and Montréal? The Ottawa train station is right smack on the Transitway, which makes getting around town from there trivial.
Same thing with Meteorological Service of Canada ( http://www.msc-smc.ec.gc.ca/ ). Fortran is all over the place, here. Most of our programs that handle meteorological or air quality data are written in some species of Fortran.
It seems that if an all powerful God did exist, and that God made some sort of statement or directive, that rule would be pretty hard to break.
Damned (heh) near impossible to break, actually--if this God was omnipotent.
It seems that we could just look around us and see what rules are not being broken--those would be the word of God.
And if we could see the rule is being broken, well, then it must NOT be the word of God. If you want to get philosophical about it, that would destroy the whole point of free will, the freedom to make your own choices for good or ill. If the only things that are forbidden are impossible to achieve, then we're all going to Heaven anyway and screw this God guy.
Or, if you want to get practical about it, there's very little point in forbidding people from doing something which is patently impossible to do. Even our absurd and overgrown legal system realizes this. When's the last time you saw a law that describes fines for going faster than the speed of light, or assigns mandatory prison terms for creating matter or energy out of nothing?
"When fat loads like Rush Limbaugh and hysterics like Sean Hannity have long been forgotten, when harpies like Ann Coulter and the ugly bigotry of Michael "Weiner" Savage are long behind us, history will remember the Presidency of George W. Bush as a danger to America and a near-disaster."...or as the great saviour of the American people. History is written by the winners, after all.
Slashdot Mirror
Sounds like your friends have unchecked addictive personalities. Making all of the WoW servers implode won't change that - they'd just latch on to something else: booze, gambling, eating, etc. WoW is only one of many, many pushers and your friends are like kids in a candy store full of them. Blaming the pusher-du-jour is not the way to help someone like that.
I'll add another furthermore to that: Cost should be no object when trying to ensure that an electoral system is fair and representative of the wishes of the electorate.
For more on the subject, I refer you to Dave Grossman's excellent "On Killing: The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society"
Judging by the snores of the people around me when I saw the Clooney version in the theatre, it put people to sleep.
-OL
"I know several people who talk wear blue tooth headsets around with them everywhere. They will start talking to someone who calls them without a word to you. I think they could do with a brain implant."
I think they could do with learning some goddamn manners, personally. It's no different than if they started having a conversation with a random passerby while you're talking to them. It's rude and dismissive.
-HT
"The existence of Jesus is a fact since at least 5 people (His students) wrote about Him , which also did the Jewish historian Josephus."
I just want to point out that the number of people who have written on the subject of a person is no garantee that the person has actually existed. Zeus, Krishna, Thor, Xipe Totec and Santa Claus have also had a lot of people write about them. It's all about how realiable the sources actually are.
-HT
"Yes. They all have a picture on them as well as eye color, height, weight and so on. And if they had more, like, say a finger print, so what?"
You're probably referring to the biometric information available on a Canadian driver's license. However, driver's licenses aren't mandatory. I'm a Canadian living in a big city, and I've never had a need for one. I can't think of any piece of ID I own, save my passport, that contains biometric information. Even my federal employee pass has little more than a picture on it.
I don't see the point of gun registration either, because it's so easy to pick up a weapon in circumstances where you wouldn't have to register it.
What a cowardly leader can do, though, is set up Free Speech zones that are nowhere near where he's going to be, so that it's easier to control potential aggressors while at the same time making it look like there's fewer dissenting opinions. Security and a nice friendly photo op-ready appearance. What good is Free Speech if your leaders make it plain that they don't even intend to pretend to listen to you?
-HT
"It's the same way with the supposedly free-speech advocates: many of them are against unnecessary wars, in favor of free speech, think homosexuals should get the same rights as the rest of us, etc., but then they want to remove everyone's right to protect themselves from crime, and also from tyrannical government."
What's funny is that it looks like the gun lobby is very friendly to those people who are busy rendering more and more of your constitutional rights meaningless. What use is a gun when the police can SWAT team your ass on a flimsy excuse and disappear you to Gitmo?
Sure, sure. I know the situation isn't that dire. However, I keep hearing about using guns to protect yourself from abusive governments, but I'm not seeing a whole lot of action backing that hot air.
-HT
Canada started a war?
-HT
"The business is very competitive, and there are lots of incentives to switch carriers. If you're not renegotiating with your cellular and broadband carriers when the contract comes close to ending, you're unwise."
You'd think that in such a climate, they'd work harder to attract new clients and retain old ones instead of scaring / hosing existing clients into staying with them to the bitter end. This is customer retension through bullying, not through good service. Welcome to the free market, where you're free to chose whose bitch you get to be.
-OL
"Because of places like Ottawa. The OC Transpo system, while very nice, is still lacking quite a bit. They barely run it out to some of the suburbs, like Stittsville, and they don't even bother giving anywhere west of that anything other than a rural express route. I know this is anecdotal, but there are plenty of places where public transit isn't viable."
Aren't there plans to implement suburb trains that run into Ottawa, like they have in Toronto and Montréal? The Ottawa train station is right smack on the Transitway, which makes getting around town from there trivial.
-HT
"Speaking of bad weather, I think these guys - http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/ who are the authority on weather prediction in the UK. Use Fortran for weather forecasting and climate prediction http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/research/nwp/numerical /fortran90/index.html and they don't seem to be tiring of it."
Same thing with Meteorological Service of Canada ( http://www.msc-smc.ec.gc.ca/ ). Fortran is all over the place, here. Most of our programs that handle meteorological or air quality data are written in some species of Fortran.
-HT
We didn't know until they let Rick Mercer drive around in it a few weeks ago. -HT
Or, if you want to get practical about it, there's very little point in forbidding people from doing something which is patently impossible to do. Even our absurd and overgrown legal system realizes this. When's the last time you saw a law that describes fines for going faster than the speed of light, or assigns mandatory prison terms for creating matter or energy out of nothing?
-HT
"When fat loads like Rush Limbaugh and hysterics like Sean Hannity have long been forgotten, when harpies like Ann Coulter and the ugly bigotry of Michael "Weiner" Savage are long behind us, history will remember the Presidency of George W. Bush as a danger to America and a near-disaster." ...or as the great saviour of the American people. History is written by the winners, after all.
-OL
Niiiiice!
And me without mode points...
-OL
"- reckless driving: thought crime, ticket them only if they have an accident"
And what if they *cause* one and go on merrily driving, unscathed?
-OL