Why not just use a more traditional numbering convention and then you don't have to worry about it. Only introduce major architectural changes in major releases and only break compatibility then. Do a major release approximately once a year.
But then Firefox won't be competitive with Opera 11.5, MSIE 9.0, and Safari 5.0, and needs to stay well ahead of Chrome 3.4. After all version numbers are everything!;)
Oh for fucks sake. Quit feeling persecuted. To be an American president you at least have to pay lip service to Jesus.
It's infuriating to be always be associated with whiny self righteous Christians constantly bitching about how much everyone discriminates against them and how hard it is to be a christian.
Get some damn perspective.
No kidding; Christian Americans don't know persecution. Want to know what persecution is? Go proselytize publicly in the streets in northern Nigeria, in any of the Arab states, or in China. Then, come back here (possibly missing a limb if radical Muslims don't decide to actually stone you) and then tell us how bad persecution is here in the States. I have friends who immigrated from those regions, and they have told me what real persecution is like.
If you preach here and "offend" someone, they might complain, or if they've forgotten the first amendment, might try to sue you. In northern Nigreria at certain times of the year, you might be running for your life - literally. And yet, some Christian Americans complain of persecution here? Talk about lack of perspective. . .
Not that I disagree with most of your Oracle == evil rant, but they do have an Express Edition [oracle.com] you can use for dev/QA work for free.
No, you can't. You really can't. You can develop on it sure but you can't really adequately rely on it for quality assurance purposes, other than compatibility.
Why, you ask?
How do you conduct a proper performance/stress test on that free edition?
Most of Java is licensed under the GPL to begin with - that's actually better than public domain in some ways, because this could be used to turn around and bite Oracle in the ass, since they are distributing GPL-licenses software, and the terms require it to not be hindered by patents else it can't be redistributed. So they could not only get hit by estoppel since they are in fact inviting people to infringe their patents, but those sued could conceivably turn around and countersue Oracle for immense damages that go beyond actual fiscal losses.
Are you serious? Are you somehow implying that Oracle isn't in the right?
$6.1 billion in damages? Who the hell are they trying to fool? What did they lose out on: a sizable market share of free?
Oracle suffered no damages whatsoever; most of Java is licensed under the GPL (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Java_%28programming_language%29) so even though Google has reimplemented a lot of the functions and basically created a Java clone, Oracle has suffered no damage because it is software they GIVE AWAY FOR FREE.
Now, before you jump on me and correct me by saying it's a patent issue, I understand the distinction. However they gave away the software under the GPL and the GPL stipulates that the software can only be distributed without being encumbered by patents, so either Oracle is right and thus is in violation of it's (Sun's) own terms for Java, and Java needs to stop being redistributed (not an entirely bad idea) or Oracle is in the wrong, and Google has done no wrong by reimplementing the Java language. In any event. Oracle is full of shit; they have suffered no damages whatsoever.
I know Oracle hates free and their RDBMS licensing fees are completely ridiculous (licensed per core x RAM - they don't care if it's a server or if you need a seat for a development or QA lab workstation they license it based on what a given CPU "could" theoretically handle) but they fucked up; if they hate free software they should not have purchased Sun in the first place. Sun's processors were "open source," their office suite was, they opened up most of Java, and the OSes they offered (Linux, and SunOS/Solaris was eventually opened as well), and so on.
I wish they would just stop it with this "zero day" buzzword already. Just say "vulnerability" or even "security hole." That way, articles will be less amateurish-sounding, as if they hired a script kiddie to write the copy.
CD: encoded at 16 bits, so you have 65,536 possible volume levels, so you are losing some sound there plus as with all electronics you encounter signal losses every step along the analog path. You use S/PDIF? Guess what? That signal eventually is converted to analog - so you are eliminating only one analog stage of the process. The receiver's on-board D/A converter still has to feed its output through the preamp and on into the power amplifier, introducing degradation of the original recording (in other words, not lossless)
DAT: similar to CD, except the sampling rate could be as low as 32KHz, in such cases frequency response is limited to 16Khz on the high end. I don't know how your hearing is, but I can still hear up to 18KHz - maybe not as well as I used to but I can still hear it, because I didn't blast my ears with headphones/ear buds at high volume and was very picky about which concerts I attended.
Vinyl: has EQ applied to overcome "rumble" from the driving mechanism, which introduces distortion, they wear out and become noisier with each play, with crackles, pops, hiss and all that become more and more noticeable because the noise floor is raised, reducing the S/N ratio. Therefore, vinyl is not lossless. Channel separation is inferior to CD and DAT. Vinyl sounds incredible on a good turntable with a new stylus and a brand-new record, but that record will not remain new; it will wear and pick up dust no matter how anal you are about cleaning it, degrading the sound.
Tape (all forms of analog tape, be it reel-to-reel, compact cassette, VHS, 8-track): high frequency response is typically more limited than other formats, and you need to deal with tape hiss which gets worse every time you play the tape. You need to worry about head alignment (just a little bit off, the mids become muddy, the highs become very distorted and/or one head will pick up information from multiple tracks), crosstalk (sometimes tape picks up audio from neighboring regions of tape on the reel), limited channel separation in comparison to digital formats (although Reel-To-Reel and HiFi VHS are quite remarkable), the tape heads pick up oxides and plasticizers (requiring very regular cleaning), which coat the heads and make them less sensitive to the magnetic media, the heads become magnetized over time and can damage the tape (requiring periodic degaussing), and the transport mechanism - can you say wow and flutter? Also, the high frequencies tend to become saturated very easily (listen to Queen's The Prophet Song for an example of this during the mixing process) and the S/N ratio can be horrible, especially on the higher end of the audio spectrum so you need to encode the recording using Dolby, Dolby B, Dolby C, Dolby S, DBX, or similar need to be utilized (or DNR on playback, which makes for a muddy sounding experience), and to deal with tape saturation, the tape can be encoded with HX Pro bias. Lossless? No.
The recording process itself introduces losses; is real life stereo, quadrophonic, or even 7.1 surround? No; it is a collection of point-sources in three-dimensional space where each individual instrument, each individual vocalist, and their position relative to the environment colors the sound in a manner that can never be recorded nor emulated by any audio gear.
What does that leave? Live performances? Oops, microphones, amplifier stages and even passive components such as interconnects and speaker wire and speakers and such result in losses.
That leaves live acoustic performances, I guess.;)
Don't get caught up in the audiophile rat race anyhow; eventually you become so concerned with the perfect listening experience you decide on your third set of speakers which don't have a full sound throughout midrange, or are oh-so-slightly boomy in the midbass region, or the tweeters aren't quite crisp enough unless you are exactly in the sweet spot, or the bass isn't punchy enough you start building your
Other browsers don't come to a complete halt to the point where you can't even close a tab or the application itself. As I said, even if Flash is the root cause, Firefox is the problem because Firefox can't handle it gracefully and just kill the plugin.
When are they going to do something about CPU utilization? Firefox very regularly pins the CPU (well one core of a processor anyhow, showing it's not multithreaded well) at 100%, sometimes after just a few minutes, to the point where I can't File -> Exit, forcing the use of either task manager (on Windows) or kill -9 (on Linux). I've even blown away my profile, followed the usual tips, and yet it still happens. Now I can understand blaming a poorly-coded extension, or a corrupt profile, but why does it consistently occur on both Linux and Windows (I haven't used Firefox consistently on OS X)? I can even understand blaming the Flash plugin, but if that were the case, why are Opera, Chrome, IE, Safari, and other browsers completely unaffected by this issue?
Firefox has been problematic since the 2.x days, and only just now they're acknowledging this. Better late than never, I suppose.
And, of course, there is the simpler solution which applies only in the fictional Star Wars Universe - the light saber itself is not actually a laser/light/plasma blade but made up of the force (in a physical, more concentrated form of the midoclorians) as manipulated by its wielder, thereby requiring the ability to manipulate the force to use it (consistent with Star Wars AFAIK). Stronger users of the force could therefore have longer blades if desired, and the focusing gem is just a focal point for the wielder. In other words, the light saber is just a smaller, more useful version of the lightning emitted by powerful Jedi/Sithe that can be used with less skill in the force by those that have been properly trained. Sadly, this does nothing for science in the real world.
And yet, Han Solo, an athiest analog in the Star Wars universe who refused to believe in the force, was able to use a light saber to cut open a tauntaun.
What happened to just enjoying a fantasy story at face value and not geeking out over the petty little details?
(I'm so ashamed I remember not only little details of the plot but creature names as well!)
In my opinion Joseph Rakofsky is an incompetent attorney who should not only see these suits dismissed with prejudice, but should be disbarred, and also countersued by every target of these frivolous suits for harassment, fraud, and anything else which might apply. I would also like to state that it is my opinion that Joseph Rakofsky is a douchebag. I would even go so far as to say that I suspect he is mentally retarded, except that would be offensive to the mentally challenged.
I also know that punishment for DUIs are pretty lax, so if they want to stop them, make it tougher.
If they want to stop DUI, they need to respond to reports. I've called in plates to report DUIs - one time late at night someone was meandering all over the highway (two lane highway) and kept drifting over and scraping the guardrail, then back into their lane, back into the guardrail, back and forth. Of course I called it in, and followed the guy for a while and called a couple times to update location. Did the police ever respond? No. Another time a bunch of kids (obviously minors) were drinking in back of my old office; when I told them to scram they just looked at me and kept drinking so I told them I will call the police. Well did they walk away? No - they got into a car and pulled out. I was on the phone with the local police department and reported minors drinking and driving - and the police department is just 200 yards from our old office. I pulled out after them and kept updating position but they never sent anyone out. WTF?
And yet, I've been pulled over while driving my Corvette and passing in a passing zone. Not because I was speeding, not because I failed to yield, or failed to signal, or lost control of my vehicle, or passing in a no passing zone, or reckless driving, or anything like that. What was the officer's reason? "I don't think passing zones should be legal." and he proceeded to tell me that if I were in a Ford Escort I wouldn't have made it (I passed uphill and there was traffic approaching a couple hundred yards ahead but sufficient space to pass both lawfully and safely). I reminded him I wasn't driving an Escort. He said "Well, in my Crown Vic, you wouldn't have made it." I remarked "Well, this isn't a Clown Vic, is it. . . " He didn't like that too much but needless to say there was no citation issued. He either just wanted to be a douche, or just wanted to check out a ZR1 up close. He pretty much shut up when I invited him to the police station to have a talk with his supervisor.
As a result, I don't bother reporting drunks nor anyone otherwise driving unsafely any more, because the police just don't care. I am guessing that a DUI doesn't bring in sufficient revenue like a speeding ticket does, nor the power trip. If someone is driving shitty, I just slow down or speed up to get away from them.
there used to be a custom on the road: when you saw a speed trap, you blinked your lights to the oncoming traffic to warn them. this, in many states, can you get cited;(
Question: where speeding is (in most cases) not criminal, and the purported goal of speed traps is for safety, not revenue collection, drivers flashing their headlamps achieves the oft-stated goal: getting drivers to slow down. Why should they care if people slow down a couple thousand feet before the speed trap? You would think that if the real purpose of speed traps is to increase safety (study after study after study have consistently demonstrated that speeding in and of itself is not dangerous) then they would encourage ANY means to get drivers to slow down. Calling it obstruction of justice is idiotic because it shows that all they care about is revenue.
People on the road today are idiots - especially here in Massachusetts (there is a reason the word Masshole exists): yield signs mean "cut the other person off," stop signs mean "proceed without stopping or slowing and without checking for traffic," red lights mean "Punch it! You have a three-second grace period" and someone turning on their turn indicators (blinkers in New England nomenclature) is an indication that you are to speed up and not let the person change lanes so that they can't get to their exit. Also, we have our highways backwards: often the leftmost lane is the "drive 55mph in the 60mph|65mph zone and read a book", the middle lane is the one that you never travel in but the one where you cut off everyone who thinks it's the travel lane, and the right lane is the passing lane - and if the right lane is taken, then the breakdown lane becomes the passing lane.
On top of that people have no sense of custom: I've had one batshit insane bitch cuss me out - she signaled to change lanes in front of me, so I quickly flashed my highs twice; this historically means "go ahead you're clear." She didn't change lanes but slowed down. Whatever. So a little further she puts her turn indicator on again so again I flashed my highs and WAVED signaling "go ahead." She didn't change lanes. Well the road narrowed so she pulled behind me, and then coming up to a traffic light she pulls up next to me and starts cussing me out. I told her that I was signaling for her to go ahead and change lanes, and even slowed down to give her more room, and she didn't take it. She continued to cuss me out. I just called her a moron and continued on my way when the light turned green. There are customs on the road - flashing your lights to signal to someone (truckers ESPECIALLY follow this - or used to) to go ahead and pull in front of you; the flashing indicates "you're clear" and when you move over, you signal "thanks" by flashing rear fogs or brake lights (many truck drivers do that to this day, but many do not any more) once you're in your lane. Flashing your highs at oncoming traffic in daylight means "speed trap ahead" - and flashing when you are behind someone in the passing lane (in MA, the slow-down-to-5-10mph-under-the-limit-and-read-a-book-or-eat-your-sub-or-watch-a-DVD-lane) means "please move over I'd like to pass."
When I travel outside of New England, it's refreshing to see that many people recognize and follow rights of way, light signal customs, and all of that.
Anyway, back to the topic: if people signaling gets people to travel "more safely" (ignoring studies on "speeding" - I'm talking about the propaganda about why there are artificially low speed limits and the according speed traps) then why should police departments complain about people slowing down? It just proves that it's about revenue and power, not safety at all.
You have the pro-nuclear group that wants all existing plants kept running and new ones build.
No, the pro-nuclear group does not all want existing plants kept running.
Old designs should be replaced by latest-generation designs. Plants which were originally scheduled to be decommissioned by now should be decommissioned, and be replaced with newer designs - and shore-situated (or other wave or flood prone regions) installations should have proper failsafe designs to survive even total submersion - and for god's sake, if you store backup to the backup generators off-site make damn sure the voltage and phase match that of the backup generators, and make sure you keep adequate fuel for the cooling generators.
Even better, why not make reactors misfeasance and malfeasance-proof? Pebble bed reactors should be further developed and mini reactors further developed as well for safe operation by municipalities or even small towns (villages?) in rural areas (see http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/big-idea/08/mini-nukes but it's absent of any technical details). With any of those reactor designs you can have a failure, and while the generator may be damaged, the reactor integrity itself will not even in the worst case. In theory anyhow. In tests even forced overstressing resulted in the fuel not being damaged. The mini- and micro-reactor designs are actually intended to be installed, buried, and forgotten about until they need refueling (or just replacement since mass production would make them cheap enough) 30-40 years later.
I could forsee small neighborhoods or even a single wealthy McMansion owner utilizing Hyperion's units in green home designs, if only people would get over the irrational "ZOMG NO NUCULEAR!" mantra.
It's the irrational fear which is keeping ancient, unsafe (well, less safe) reactor designs in operation because more safe reactors aren't allowed to be built, so the anti-nuke nuts are ironically defeating their own purpose by promoting an unsafe situation.
In the comic books and the daily strip (more so in the daily strip, I'll grant you) Parker does go emo quite a bit. Moaning about Uncle Ben, worrying about Aunt May, on and on, over and over. Spidey has always been emo, before emo even existed.
None of the movies that are in the hands of Sony/Columbia/Etc. are going to get the treatment they deserve.
Maybe so. I really enjoyed Spiderman and Spiderman 2 though; I think Tobey Maguire was cast perfectly as Peter Parker. I mean, Peter Parker is a nerdy person but happened to have a decent physique. Tobey Maguire had a bit of a nerdy look, and with working out he had a nice physique, between his nerdy-yet-fit appearance and the mild persona he always seems to have, he was the perfect Spider Man.
I don't like the idea of the upcoming reboot; I would rather they pretend Spiderman 3 was never made. The problem with Spiderman 3 wasn't the casting; it was in the writing. They had far too much going on for even a two hour and twenty minute movie for the story to feel anything but rushed, the plot full of holes, and character development and suspense all too shallow. It seems with the recasting they are punishing the wrong people; it's exactly like shooting the messenger because they didn't like what the author wrote. I'd rather see them continue with Maguire, Dunst, and Franco continuing their roles, with only one major villain. It would be fine if there were subplots going on, such as Franco's multiple personality disorder phasing in and out so that Goblin and Spidey have a couple of minor altercations, but Osborne and Parker still struggle to maintain their relationship. It would be more fitting to the schizm Osborne had which ultimately leads him to becoming a super villain with an axe to grind, and would be better character development of which the franchise is far more deserving.
Let us regard Spiderman 3 as the new Highlander II.;)
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Time for an outdated meme to become real:
http://www.ding.net/bonsaikitten/bkmethod.html
It doesn't walk, fly, swim, crawl or slither.
But then Firefox won't be competitive with Opera 11.5, MSIE 9.0, and Safari 5.0, and needs to stay well ahead of Chrome 3.4. After all version numbers are everything! ;)
No kidding; Christian Americans don't know persecution.
Want to know what persecution is? Go proselytize publicly in the streets in northern Nigeria, in any of the Arab states, or in China. Then, come back here (possibly missing a limb if radical Muslims don't decide to actually stone you) and then tell us how bad persecution is here in the States. I have friends who immigrated from those regions, and they have told me what real persecution is like.
If you preach here and "offend" someone, they might complain, or if they've forgotten the first amendment, might try to sue you. In northern Nigreria at certain times of the year, you might be running for your life - literally. And yet, some Christian Americans complain of persecution here? Talk about lack of perspective. . .
No, you can't. You really can't. You can develop on it sure but you can't really adequately rely on it for quality assurance purposes, other than compatibility.
Why, you ask?
How do you conduct a proper performance/stress test on that free edition?
Most of Java is licensed under the GPL to begin with - that's actually better than public domain in some ways, because this could be used to turn around and bite Oracle in the ass, since they are distributing GPL-licenses software, and the terms require it to not be hindered by patents else it can't be redistributed. So they could not only get hit by estoppel since they are in fact inviting people to infringe their patents, but those sued could conceivably turn around and countersue Oracle for immense damages that go beyond actual fiscal losses.
Are you serious? Are you somehow implying that Oracle isn't in the right?
$6.1 billion in damages? Who the hell are they trying to fool? What did they lose out on: a sizable market share of free?
Oracle suffered no damages whatsoever; most of Java is licensed under the GPL (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Java_%28programming_language%29) so even though Google has reimplemented a lot of the functions and basically created a Java clone, Oracle has suffered no damage because it is software they GIVE AWAY FOR FREE.
Now, before you jump on me and correct me by saying it's a patent issue, I understand the distinction. However they gave away the software under the GPL and the GPL stipulates that the software can only be distributed without being encumbered by patents, so either Oracle is right and thus is in violation of it's (Sun's) own terms for Java, and Java needs to stop being redistributed (not an entirely bad idea) or Oracle is in the wrong, and Google has done no wrong by reimplementing the Java language. In any event. Oracle is full of shit; they have suffered no damages whatsoever.
I know Oracle hates free and their RDBMS licensing fees are completely ridiculous (licensed per core x RAM - they don't care if it's a server or if you need a seat for a development or QA lab workstation they license it based on what a given CPU "could" theoretically handle) but they fucked up; if they hate free software they should not have purchased Sun in the first place. Sun's processors were "open source," their office suite was, they opened up most of Java, and the OSes they offered (Linux, and SunOS/Solaris was eventually opened as well), and so on.
Uterus != ovaries, so no.
I wish they would just stop it with this "zero day" buzzword already. Just say "vulnerability" or even "security hole." That way, articles will be less amateurish-sounding, as if they hired a script kiddie to write the copy.
Musicbrainz Picard to the rescue in that case!
So they listen only to live music?
Let's review formats:
CD: encoded at 16 bits, so you have 65,536 possible volume levels, so you are losing some sound there plus as with all electronics you encounter signal losses every step along the analog path. You use S/PDIF? Guess what? That signal eventually is converted to analog - so you are eliminating only one analog stage of the process. The receiver's on-board D/A converter still has to feed its output through the preamp and on into the power amplifier, introducing degradation of the original recording (in other words, not lossless)
DAT: similar to CD, except the sampling rate could be as low as 32KHz, in such cases frequency response is limited to 16Khz on the high end. I don't know how your hearing is, but I can still hear up to 18KHz - maybe not as well as I used to but I can still hear it, because I didn't blast my ears with headphones/ear buds at high volume and was very picky about which concerts I attended.
Vinyl: has EQ applied to overcome "rumble" from the driving mechanism, which introduces distortion, they wear out and become noisier with each play, with crackles, pops, hiss and all that become more and more noticeable because the noise floor is raised, reducing the S/N ratio. Therefore, vinyl is not lossless. Channel separation is inferior to CD and DAT. Vinyl sounds incredible on a good turntable with a new stylus and a brand-new record, but that record will not remain new; it will wear and pick up dust no matter how anal you are about cleaning it, degrading the sound.
Tape (all forms of analog tape, be it reel-to-reel, compact cassette, VHS, 8-track): high frequency response is typically more limited than other formats, and you need to deal with tape hiss which gets worse every time you play the tape. You need to worry about head alignment (just a little bit off, the mids become muddy, the highs become very distorted and/or one head will pick up information from multiple tracks), crosstalk (sometimes tape picks up audio from neighboring regions of tape on the reel), limited channel separation in comparison to digital formats (although Reel-To-Reel and HiFi VHS are quite remarkable), the tape heads pick up oxides and plasticizers (requiring very regular cleaning), which coat the heads and make them less sensitive to the magnetic media, the heads become magnetized over time and can damage the tape (requiring periodic degaussing), and the transport mechanism - can you say wow and flutter? Also, the high frequencies tend to become saturated very easily (listen to Queen's The Prophet Song for an example of this during the mixing process) and the S/N ratio can be horrible, especially on the higher end of the audio spectrum so you need to encode the recording using Dolby, Dolby B, Dolby C, Dolby S, DBX, or similar need to be utilized (or DNR on playback, which makes for a muddy sounding experience), and to deal with tape saturation, the tape can be encoded with HX Pro bias. Lossless? No.
The recording process itself introduces losses; is real life stereo, quadrophonic, or even 7.1 surround? No; it is a collection of point-sources in three-dimensional space where each individual instrument, each individual vocalist, and their position relative to the environment colors the sound in a manner that can never be recorded nor emulated by any audio gear.
What does that leave? Live performances? Oops, microphones, amplifier stages and even passive components such as interconnects and speaker wire and speakers and such result in losses.
That leaves live acoustic performances, I guess. ;)
Don't get caught up in the audiophile rat race anyhow; eventually you become so concerned with the perfect listening experience you decide on your third set of speakers which don't have a full sound throughout midrange, or are oh-so-slightly boomy in the midbass region, or the tweeters aren't quite crisp enough unless you are exactly in the sweet spot, or the bass isn't punchy enough you start building your
It often ends up being a pyrrhic victory though.
I think Netflix hired both of them to completely screw up their UI.
Well, at least you know what you like and aren't ashamed to admit it! :-p
Other browsers don't come to a complete halt to the point where you can't even close a tab or the application itself. As I said, even if Flash is the root cause, Firefox is the problem because Firefox can't handle it gracefully and just kill the plugin.
When are they going to do something about CPU utilization? Firefox very regularly pins the CPU (well one core of a processor anyhow, showing it's not multithreaded well) at 100%, sometimes after just a few minutes, to the point where I can't File -> Exit, forcing the use of either task manager (on Windows) or kill -9 (on Linux). I've even blown away my profile, followed the usual tips, and yet it still happens. Now I can understand blaming a poorly-coded extension, or a corrupt profile, but why does it consistently occur on both Linux and Windows (I haven't used Firefox consistently on OS X)? I can even understand blaming the Flash plugin, but if that were the case, why are Opera, Chrome, IE, Safari, and other browsers completely unaffected by this issue?
Firefox has been problematic since the 2.x days, and only just now they're acknowledging this. Better late than never, I suppose.
'Verizon won't roll them out to kiosks until it performs better on the market. . .'
. . . and it won't perform better on the market until agents have it in their hands to offer customers. Catch-22 anyone?
And yet, Han Solo, an athiest analog in the Star Wars universe who refused to believe in the force, was able to use a light saber to cut open a tauntaun.
What happened to just enjoying a fantasy story at face value and not geeking out over the petty little details?
(I'm so ashamed I remember not only little details of the plot but creature names as well!)
In my opinion Joseph Rakofsky is an incompetent attorney who should not only see these suits dismissed with prejudice, but should be disbarred, and also countersued by every target of these frivolous suits for harassment, fraud, and anything else which might apply. I would also like to state that it is my opinion that Joseph Rakofsky is a douchebag. I would even go so far as to say that I suspect he is mentally retarded, except that would be offensive to the mentally challenged.
If they want to stop DUI, they need to respond to reports. I've called in plates to report DUIs - one time late at night someone was meandering all over the highway (two lane highway) and kept drifting over and scraping the guardrail, then back into their lane, back into the guardrail, back and forth. Of course I called it in, and followed the guy for a while and called a couple times to update location. Did the police ever respond? No. Another time a bunch of kids (obviously minors) were drinking in back of my old office; when I told them to scram they just looked at me and kept drinking so I told them I will call the police. Well did they walk away? No - they got into a car and pulled out. I was on the phone with the local police department and reported minors drinking and driving - and the police department is just 200 yards from our old office. I pulled out after them and kept updating position but they never sent anyone out. WTF?
And yet, I've been pulled over while driving my Corvette and passing in a passing zone. Not because I was speeding, not because I failed to yield, or failed to signal, or lost control of my vehicle, or passing in a no passing zone, or reckless driving, or anything like that. What was the officer's reason? "I don't think passing zones should be legal." and he proceeded to tell me that if I were in a Ford Escort I wouldn't have made it (I passed uphill and there was traffic approaching a couple hundred yards ahead but sufficient space to pass both lawfully and safely). I reminded him I wasn't driving an Escort. He said "Well, in my Crown Vic, you wouldn't have made it." I remarked "Well, this isn't a Clown Vic, is it. . . " He didn't like that too much but needless to say there was no citation issued. He either just wanted to be a douche, or just wanted to check out a ZR1 up close. He pretty much shut up when I invited him to the police station to have a talk with his supervisor.
As a result, I don't bother reporting drunks nor anyone otherwise driving unsafely any more, because the police just don't care. I am guessing that a DUI doesn't bring in sufficient revenue like a speeding ticket does, nor the power trip. If someone is driving shitty, I just slow down or speed up to get away from them.
Question: where speeding is (in most cases) not criminal, and the purported goal of speed traps is for safety, not revenue collection, drivers flashing their headlamps achieves the oft-stated goal: getting drivers to slow down. Why should they care if people slow down a couple thousand feet before the speed trap? You would think that if the real purpose of speed traps is to increase safety (study after study after study have consistently demonstrated that speeding in and of itself is not dangerous) then they would encourage ANY means to get drivers to slow down. Calling it obstruction of justice is idiotic because it shows that all they care about is revenue.
People on the road today are idiots - especially here in Massachusetts (there is a reason the word Masshole exists): yield signs mean "cut the other person off," stop signs mean "proceed without stopping or slowing and without checking for traffic," red lights mean "Punch it! You have a three-second grace period" and someone turning on their turn indicators (blinkers in New England nomenclature) is an indication that you are to speed up and not let the person change lanes so that they can't get to their exit. Also, we have our highways backwards: often the leftmost lane is the "drive 55mph in the 60mph|65mph zone and read a book", the middle lane is the one that you never travel in but the one where you cut off everyone who thinks it's the travel lane, and the right lane is the passing lane - and if the right lane is taken, then the breakdown lane becomes the passing lane.
On top of that people have no sense of custom: I've had one batshit insane bitch cuss me out - she signaled to change lanes in front of me, so I quickly flashed my highs twice; this historically means "go ahead you're clear." She didn't change lanes but slowed down. Whatever. So a little further she puts her turn indicator on again so again I flashed my highs and WAVED signaling "go ahead." She didn't change lanes. Well the road narrowed so she pulled behind me, and then coming up to a traffic light she pulls up next to me and starts cussing me out. I told her that I was signaling for her to go ahead and change lanes, and even slowed down to give her more room, and she didn't take it. She continued to cuss me out. I just called her a moron and continued on my way when the light turned green. There are customs on the road - flashing your lights to signal to someone (truckers ESPECIALLY follow this - or used to) to go ahead and pull in front of you; the flashing indicates "you're clear" and when you move over, you signal "thanks" by flashing rear fogs or brake lights (many truck drivers do that to this day, but many do not any more) once you're in your lane. Flashing your highs at oncoming traffic in daylight means "speed trap ahead" - and flashing when you are behind someone in the passing lane (in MA, the slow-down-to-5-10mph-under-the-limit-and-read-a-book-or-eat-your-sub-or-watch-a-DVD-lane) means "please move over I'd like to pass."
When I travel outside of New England, it's refreshing to see that many people recognize and follow rights of way, light signal customs, and all of that.
Anyway, back to the topic: if people signaling gets people to travel "more safely" (ignoring studies on "speeding" - I'm talking about the propaganda about why there are artificially low speed limits and the according speed traps) then why should police departments complain about people slowing down? It just proves that it's about revenue and power, not safety at all.
No, the pro-nuclear group does not all want existing plants kept running.
Old designs should be replaced by latest-generation designs. Plants which were originally scheduled to be decommissioned by now should be decommissioned, and be replaced with newer designs - and shore-situated (or other wave or flood prone regions) installations should have proper failsafe designs to survive even total submersion - and for god's sake, if you store backup to the backup generators off-site make damn sure the voltage and phase match that of the backup generators, and make sure you keep adequate fuel for the cooling generators.
Even better, why not make reactors misfeasance and malfeasance-proof? Pebble bed reactors should be further developed and mini reactors further developed as well for safe operation by municipalities or even small towns (villages?) in rural areas (see http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/big-idea/08/mini-nukes but it's absent of any technical details). With any of those reactor designs you can have a failure, and while the generator may be damaged, the reactor integrity itself will not even in the worst case. In theory anyhow. In tests even forced overstressing resulted in the fuel not being damaged. The mini- and micro-reactor designs are actually intended to be installed, buried, and forgotten about until they need refueling (or just replacement since mass production would make them cheap enough) 30-40 years later.
Mini- and micro-nuke articles:
http://www.nextenergynews.com/news1/next-energy-news-toshiba-micro-nuclear-12.17b.html
http://www.nextenergynews.com/news1/next-energy-news5.28.08c.html
I could forsee small neighborhoods or even a single wealthy McMansion owner utilizing Hyperion's units in green home designs, if only people would get over the irrational "ZOMG NO NUCULEAR!" mantra.
It's the irrational fear which is keeping ancient, unsafe (well, less safe) reactor designs in operation because more safe reactors aren't allowed to be built, so the anti-nuke nuts are ironically defeating their own purpose by promoting an unsafe situation.
It looks like a great 3D TV, until they gain enough popularity and Sony decides to remove the multiplayer feature.
In the comic books and the daily strip (more so in the daily strip, I'll grant you) Parker does go emo quite a bit. Moaning about Uncle Ben, worrying about Aunt May, on and on, over and over. Spidey has always been emo, before emo even existed.
Maybe so. I really enjoyed Spiderman and Spiderman 2 though; I think Tobey Maguire was cast perfectly as Peter Parker. I mean, Peter Parker is a nerdy person but happened to have a decent physique. Tobey Maguire had a bit of a nerdy look, and with working out he had a nice physique, between his nerdy-yet-fit appearance and the mild persona he always seems to have, he was the perfect Spider Man.
I don't like the idea of the upcoming reboot; I would rather they pretend Spiderman 3 was never made. The problem with Spiderman 3 wasn't the casting; it was in the writing. They had far too much going on for even a two hour and twenty minute movie for the story to feel anything but rushed, the plot full of holes, and character development and suspense all too shallow. It seems with the recasting they are punishing the wrong people; it's exactly like shooting the messenger because they didn't like what the author wrote. I'd rather see them continue with Maguire, Dunst, and Franco continuing their roles, with only one major villain. It would be fine if there were subplots going on, such as Franco's multiple personality disorder phasing in and out so that Goblin and Spidey have a couple of minor altercations, but Osborne and Parker still struggle to maintain their relationship. It would be more fitting to the schizm Osborne had which ultimately leads him to becoming a super villain with an axe to grind, and would be better character development of which the franchise is far more deserving.
Let us regard Spiderman 3 as the new Highlander II. ;)
The Mac won't fit in the car without creasing the leather, of course.