I don't know which is worse: Thinking that using italics is a link, thinking that using italics or an HTML link qualifies one as a programmer, or thinking that it was a funny joke to make. Any one of these bodes ill for the submitter's career options.
How to tell the summary contains inaccuracies: It talks about "programming bare-metal on DOS" - if DOS is relevant to your programming, then you are not targeting the bare metal any more than you are when you write a Python script.
Slashdot editors not understanding the sections well enough to separate the concepts they represent from the words in a story is not a new phenomenon. There was at least one completely non-computer-related article in the Enlightenment section a few years ago, although I can't remember enough details to tell the full story. The point is just that these darn kids need to get off my lawn or, at the very least, learn the right way to play lawn darts while they're on it.
Yes, the census letter. And I didn't mean to imply that it was a new thing this time around, although my reference to the current administration of course has that effect. It's just another example of, as the subject line of this comment thread calls it, a "classic failure." And one would hope that we could do better for the environment than sending out 300 million warning letters that likely have no effect and sending out a $15 million bus tour (with an estimated carbon footprint of 225 metric tons, according to one report I saw earlier today). But the bus tour at least might reach people who wouldn't get the form in the mail, unlike the warning letter.:)
An increase in response rate would cut down on home visits, saving money. But the 2010 census budget is almost to 3 times what it was for the 2000 census (at about $15 billion), which tells me that a few home visits aren't more than a drop in the bucket compared to the $15 million bus tour.
Also, and more critically, there is a missing logical step between sending extra correspondence and an increased response rate. What about getting an extra letter telling them about the upcoming form makes people more likely to fill out a form sent to them by the Census Bureau than they otherwise would have been?
The people who are most unlikely to respond are illegal immigrants, estimated around 12 million in number. Sending them additional mail seems unlikely to help. Home visits are just as unlikely to result in an accurate count, since the same people are hard enough to find when you have a name, address, and search warrant.
I don't recall claiming that it was. I actually recall pointing out exactly the opposite. Good job, though. You almost succeeded in anonymously insulting a stranger on the internet, up until you actually posted your comment.
This is the same administration that sent us all mail to tell us that they will be sending us mail in the near future. Not exactly surprising when they reinvent another wheel, even if it's another agency this time.
Sadly, if people had the brain power to follow those rules based on a summary of them, this kid would probably still be alive. I also wish that children were taught how to respect a gun (loaded or otherwise) just as they are taught how to cross a street safely (look both ways, even on a one-way street!) and eventually how to drive. It's not like "gun safety" is a complicated topic that people can't learn. Then again, they also can't seem to figure out turn signals, red lights, yield signs, turning into the first available lane, driving while intoxicated, etc. I have so little faith in the species, but at the very least I think that people should be able to figure out not to leave guns within reach of their children. Unlike the drunk driver who mostly kills other people's kids, the careless gun owner has the incentive that the kids he kills are his own.
There is never an excuse for bad gun safety, regardless of having a child around. People who can't handle the stress of having a 3-year-old with enough grace to follow the same rules of gun safety that I follow despite living alone should either not have children or not have guns. It is entirely irrational to think that changing the Wii controller that this family owned to look less like a gun would have changed the outcome of leaving a loaded firearm unattended, especially with a toddler in the house. People who grasp at that particular straw are the exact same crowd who would elect Adolph Hitler and Nero's lovechild as president for life if he added "for the children" after all his promises to "kill the Jews" and "enslave the women." Again, there is never an excuse for bad gun safety practices. Never.
I agree that it's conjecture at best. As I've already posted a couple of times, if anyone had seen the kid pick up the gun and mutter "Wii" that person would almost certainly have intervened before the kid figured out how to apply enough force to the trigger to cause the gun to fire. This has nothing to do with a Wii and nothing to do with "gun nuts" as one of the ancestor comments claims. "Gun nut" is a term just like "hacker" - it refers to an enthusiast. The accurate, politically correct term for the parents here is "fucking retards." This death was caused 80% by violation of the absolute basic rules of gun safety (which I've also posted elsewhere and won't belabor the point by repeating here) and 20% by terrible parenting. Not one iota of fault rests with guns, gun nuts, video games, the Wii, the company that manufactured a realistic-looking gun controller for the Wii, or anyone else who didn't leave a loaded firearm within reach of a 3-year-old.
"Unloaded" guns kill people all the time. Unload the gun and keep it out of the reach of toddlers, even if you don't have toddlers living with you. And remember that "the reach of toddlers" is pretty pervasive, so if there is a non-zero probability that a toddler will be in your home, buy a gun safe. If you can't afford so much as a $200, portable, single-pistol safe to keep your guns in, then stop wasting money on guns until you can. (In this case, it sounds like the family had a Nintendo Wii, which costs more than the safe that would have prevented the kid from ever touching the gun, regardless of its having been loaded.)
I am among the strongest believers in the individual right to keep and bear arms, essentially without limitation. But I also think that our schools should be doing a better job at teaching civic responsibility than they are, if parents are really this stupid.
I posted this elsewhere, but it's more relevant here: The point about her mistaking the gun for a Wii controller is speculation. If anyone had witnessed her saying "Wii" and picking up the gun, you'd expect the witness to have intervened at some point before the trigger got pulled.
Also, don't focus too much on hand strength, chambering a round, etc. It's possible that the gun was left with a round in the chamber, so there was no need to rack the slide. Someone else has said that the particular model is double-action-only, although I didn't check that far into it. Assume it was. Toddlers have a strange, innate drive to push and pull on things incessantly and to use leverage in clever ways. Applying all the muscles and simian ingenuity in her body, it is definitely conceivable that a toddler could pull the trigger with sufficient force to raise the hammer and fire a round.
All of them incriminate the parents equally. There are a few common sense rules of gun safety which get violated far too often. Obeying them religiously is a good idea. For anyone unfamiliar, here are the utter basics:
Treat every gun as if it is loaded - especially if you are certain that it isn't ("unloaded" guns accidentally kill more people than the loaded kind)
When handed a gun, double-check that there is not a round in the chamber by visual inspection of the chamber - even if the person who handed it to you had just done that in your presence
Never leave a loaded gun sitting out unattended, even for 30 seconds and even if you live alone (it's far better to be in the right habit than the wrong one and forget yourself when you have company or children around)
Never point a gun's muzzle at anything you do not intend to shoot - for living beings, at least 45 degrees away, and this rule applies even after you've verified the gun is unloaded
I don't know how a 3-year-old girl was able to shoot herself. But there are many, many types of pistols on the market, some of which are not much heavier than a Wii controller even when they're loaded, particularly those chambered for.22 Long Rifle cartridges. The real point is that it doesn't matter what kind of gun it was or how a 3-year-old was able to mistake it for a Wii controller (which itself is mostly speculation since, had there been any witnesses to the kid's supposed mistaken thought process, you'd think they would have stopped her from playing with a loaded gun at some point before she shot herself). What does matter is that a child is dead because someone didn't follow the most basic rules of gun safety.
Not just that, but this is the opposite of busting a myth. Busting a myth is what you do when you prove that a myth is not real. If you prove that a myth is real, which is the apparent claim here, that is something else. Proving, confirming, or even validating the myth - but not busting it.
I vote that we no longer refer to this kind of thing as "declaring war," since that terminology has become cliche. I suggest the replacement of "calling intervention on." For instance, the headline here should be "European Parliament Calls Intervention on ACTA."
Just in case you, as a former race car driver, were unaware, it's not "ten-to-two" but "ten and two" that people are taught to hold the wheel. You may want to learn enough background to speak credibly before you try trolling again.
I'm just surprised that they aren't sending DMCA take-down notices to eBay to further interfere with the competitive market for tickets. Many companies do that to destroy the secondary market for their products, including DVDs (legal to sell under first-sale doctrine) and toys, based on my personal experience and second-hand accounts plus a lawsuit that a guy brought against Autodesk for doing it enough that his eBay account was suspended, even though he filed counter notices and had every auction reinstated by eBay.
I haven't read the entire thread. Are you claiming that the scalpers here are the enemy of capitalism or that the ticket sellers who, with monopoly powers, sell at a price below what the market will bear are the enemy of capitalism?
That's why I gave this the "jackass" tag. This guy is either (a) posting to get attention to his riches (hence his rhetorical question about just being a jackass) or (b) the proverbial fool who will soon be parted from his money. If you can afford a penthouse, you can afford a day off to do your own research about this issue, rather than asking Slashdot about it, which is roughly akin to going to a strip club to learn about anatomy - sure, you'll get a good view, but it will not be the full picture.
I've sometimes wondered, with wedding photos, why they're not considered a work for hire under copyright law, granting the copying in the party hiring the photographer. Is there some photographer exception to the work-for-hire rule, or do they just act like it?
I hope that people read the court's opinion. It's not all that dry and its basic background of fair use is not at all a bad explanation of what your comment is getting at.
Slashdot Mirror
I don't know which is worse: Thinking that using italics is a link, thinking that using italics or an HTML link qualifies one as a programmer, or thinking that it was a funny joke to make. Any one of these bodes ill for the submitter's career options.
How to tell the summary contains inaccuracies: It talks about "programming bare-metal on DOS" - if DOS is relevant to your programming, then you are not targeting the bare metal any more than you are when you write a Python script.
Oh great. Now I'm going to have to deal with Cyrano de Bergerac being on the no-fly list.
Slashdot editors not understanding the sections well enough to separate the concepts they represent from the words in a story is not a new phenomenon. There was at least one completely non-computer-related article in the Enlightenment section a few years ago, although I can't remember enough details to tell the full story. The point is just that these darn kids need to get off my lawn or, at the very least, learn the right way to play lawn darts while they're on it.
Yes, the census letter. And I didn't mean to imply that it was a new thing this time around, although my reference to the current administration of course has that effect. It's just another example of, as the subject line of this comment thread calls it, a "classic failure." And one would hope that we could do better for the environment than sending out 300 million warning letters that likely have no effect and sending out a $15 million bus tour (with an estimated carbon footprint of 225 metric tons, according to one report I saw earlier today). But the bus tour at least might reach people who wouldn't get the form in the mail, unlike the warning letter. :)
An increase in response rate would cut down on home visits, saving money. But the 2010 census budget is almost to 3 times what it was for the 2000 census (at about $15 billion), which tells me that a few home visits aren't more than a drop in the bucket compared to the $15 million bus tour.
Also, and more critically, there is a missing logical step between sending extra correspondence and an increased response rate. What about getting an extra letter telling them about the upcoming form makes people more likely to fill out a form sent to them by the Census Bureau than they otherwise would have been?
The people who are most unlikely to respond are illegal immigrants, estimated around 12 million in number. Sending them additional mail seems unlikely to help. Home visits are just as unlikely to result in an accurate count, since the same people are hard enough to find when you have a name, address, and search warrant.
I don't recall claiming that it was. I actually recall pointing out exactly the opposite. Good job, though. You almost succeeded in anonymously insulting a stranger on the internet, up until you actually posted your comment.
This is the same administration that sent us all mail to tell us that they will be sending us mail in the near future. Not exactly surprising when they reinvent another wheel, even if it's another agency this time.
I did, but I wanted to play it safe on this topic. :)
Sadly, if people had the brain power to follow those rules based on a summary of them, this kid would probably still be alive. I also wish that children were taught how to respect a gun (loaded or otherwise) just as they are taught how to cross a street safely (look both ways, even on a one-way street!) and eventually how to drive. It's not like "gun safety" is a complicated topic that people can't learn. Then again, they also can't seem to figure out turn signals, red lights, yield signs, turning into the first available lane, driving while intoxicated, etc. I have so little faith in the species, but at the very least I think that people should be able to figure out not to leave guns within reach of their children. Unlike the drunk driver who mostly kills other people's kids, the careless gun owner has the incentive that the kids he kills are his own.
There is never an excuse for bad gun safety, regardless of having a child around. People who can't handle the stress of having a 3-year-old with enough grace to follow the same rules of gun safety that I follow despite living alone should either not have children or not have guns. It is entirely irrational to think that changing the Wii controller that this family owned to look less like a gun would have changed the outcome of leaving a loaded firearm unattended, especially with a toddler in the house. People who grasp at that particular straw are the exact same crowd who would elect Adolph Hitler and Nero's lovechild as president for life if he added "for the children" after all his promises to "kill the Jews" and "enslave the women." Again, there is never an excuse for bad gun safety practices. Never.
I agree that it's conjecture at best. As I've already posted a couple of times, if anyone had seen the kid pick up the gun and mutter "Wii" that person would almost certainly have intervened before the kid figured out how to apply enough force to the trigger to cause the gun to fire. This has nothing to do with a Wii and nothing to do with "gun nuts" as one of the ancestor comments claims. "Gun nut" is a term just like "hacker" - it refers to an enthusiast. The accurate, politically correct term for the parents here is "fucking retards." This death was caused 80% by violation of the absolute basic rules of gun safety (which I've also posted elsewhere and won't belabor the point by repeating here) and 20% by terrible parenting. Not one iota of fault rests with guns, gun nuts, video games, the Wii, the company that manufactured a realistic-looking gun controller for the Wii, or anyone else who didn't leave a loaded firearm within reach of a 3-year-old.
"Unloaded" guns kill people all the time. Unload the gun and keep it out of the reach of toddlers, even if you don't have toddlers living with you. And remember that "the reach of toddlers" is pretty pervasive, so if there is a non-zero probability that a toddler will be in your home, buy a gun safe. If you can't afford so much as a $200, portable, single-pistol safe to keep your guns in, then stop wasting money on guns until you can. (In this case, it sounds like the family had a Nintendo Wii, which costs more than the safe that would have prevented the kid from ever touching the gun, regardless of its having been loaded.)
I am among the strongest believers in the individual right to keep and bear arms, essentially without limitation. But I also think that our schools should be doing a better job at teaching civic responsibility than they are, if parents are really this stupid.
I posted this elsewhere, but it's more relevant here: The point about her mistaking the gun for a Wii controller is speculation. If anyone had witnessed her saying "Wii" and picking up the gun, you'd expect the witness to have intervened at some point before the trigger got pulled.
Also, don't focus too much on hand strength, chambering a round, etc. It's possible that the gun was left with a round in the chamber, so there was no need to rack the slide. Someone else has said that the particular model is double-action-only, although I didn't check that far into it. Assume it was. Toddlers have a strange, innate drive to push and pull on things incessantly and to use leverage in clever ways. Applying all the muscles and simian ingenuity in her body, it is definitely conceivable that a toddler could pull the trigger with sufficient force to raise the hammer and fire a round.
All of them incriminate the parents equally. There are a few common sense rules of gun safety which get violated far too often. Obeying them religiously is a good idea. For anyone unfamiliar, here are the utter basics:
I don't know how a 3-year-old girl was able to shoot herself. But there are many, many types of pistols on the market, some of which are not much heavier than a Wii controller even when they're loaded, particularly those chambered for .22 Long Rifle cartridges. The real point is that it doesn't matter what kind of gun it was or how a 3-year-old was able to mistake it for a Wii controller (which itself is mostly speculation since, had there been any witnesses to the kid's supposed mistaken thought process, you'd think they would have stopped her from playing with a loaded gun at some point before she shot herself). What does matter is that a child is dead because someone didn't follow the most basic rules of gun safety.
Not just that, but this is the opposite of busting a myth. Busting a myth is what you do when you prove that a myth is not real. If you prove that a myth is real, which is the apparent claim here, that is something else. Proving, confirming, or even validating the myth - but not busting it.
I vote that we no longer refer to this kind of thing as "declaring war," since that terminology has become cliche. I suggest the replacement of "calling intervention on." For instance, the headline here should be "European Parliament Calls Intervention on ACTA."
What is the cost of the clean cover material in relation to the cost of these bags?
Just in case you, as a former race car driver, were unaware, it's not "ten-to-two" but "ten and two" that people are taught to hold the wheel. You may want to learn enough background to speak credibly before you try trolling again.
I'm just surprised that they aren't sending DMCA take-down notices to eBay to further interfere with the competitive market for tickets. Many companies do that to destroy the secondary market for their products, including DVDs (legal to sell under first-sale doctrine) and toys, based on my personal experience and second-hand accounts plus a lawsuit that a guy brought against Autodesk for doing it enough that his eBay account was suspended, even though he filed counter notices and had every auction reinstated by eBay.
I haven't read the entire thread. Are you claiming that the scalpers here are the enemy of capitalism or that the ticket sellers who, with monopoly powers, sell at a price below what the market will bear are the enemy of capitalism?
That's why I gave this the "jackass" tag. This guy is either (a) posting to get attention to his riches (hence his rhetorical question about just being a jackass) or (b) the proverbial fool who will soon be parted from his money. If you can afford a penthouse, you can afford a day off to do your own research about this issue, rather than asking Slashdot about it, which is roughly akin to going to a strip club to learn about anatomy - sure, you'll get a good view, but it will not be the full picture.
Gentlemen, can't we compromise? The signal power will reduce by the 2.5 power of the distance. Getting along isn't so difficult, after all!
I've sometimes wondered, with wedding photos, why they're not considered a work for hire under copyright law, granting the copying in the party hiring the photographer. Is there some photographer exception to the work-for-hire rule, or do they just act like it?
I hope that people read the court's opinion. It's not all that dry and its basic background of fair use is not at all a bad explanation of what your comment is getting at.