It's voluntary. Nobody is asking anybody to do anything. If they don't want to do it, then they shouldn't sign up. Why people sign up with families, I'll never understand.
Probably the same reason police and firefighters sign up for a dangerous job. Patriotism and a hankering for a little excitement. Maybe you think it is crazy and stupid, but have a little respect for people that are willing to put their lives on the line for people like you, who don't even care about them.
You're probably one of those people who wouldn't try to pull a victim out of a burning car either, because you might risk your life, hmmmm? Better to watch the person burn and wait for the volunteer firefighters to solve the problem while you watch the show.
None of the "wars" that we are involved in are defensive, or even necessary. If enlistment drops by 90%, we'll still be able to DEFEND the country just fine.
I think the US said the same thing at the start of WWII.
People who say money can't buy happiness are either jealous and spiteful or the type that can't be satisfied with what they have and simply want what they can't have, creating a paradox of emotions.
If you are actually serious, the fact that you actually associate happiness with (bitchy, money-grubbing) supermodel wives and mistresses, lots of expensive (and fulfilling) toys, and the ability to fuck with other people's lives indicates that either you (1) obviously don't know enough rich people or (2) you could easily develop into an asshole whose potential to cause misery to yourself and others is only limited by your bank account.
Money is like an addictive medication. In the proper dose, it can really improve your life. But without substantial self-discipline, too much of it will consume you. And too little can result in a low quality of life.
If you just shrugged it off then only your coworkers would know you have a small dick. Now the whole world knows.
The thing is, your dick size is variable depending on the situation, so I don't really understand why he was even upset.
Personally, I would be worried about the TSA employee that got a hard on when walking through a full body scanner. Not the one whose dick shriveled up when he was getting scanned.
This report is more indicative of the quality of the people we have working for TSA, if anything. Yes, I did just say that.
Putting people in an environment that consists of a low mistake tolerance adds different pressures to the test.
ON land and something goes wrong, then you are likely to survive, and the people in the test know this.
Put it underwater, then they know if something goes wrong they are probably going to die.
No the GP is not shortsighted, he is right. This has been done before and on a grander scale.
I don't think that 62 feet of water between you and safety really qualifies as stress.
If you want to really test stress, you put people somewhere they won't get out of alive if something goes wrong... like in space or REALLY deep underwater.
And you don't do it for 14 days, you do it for months. We've got a space station in orbit. Shit, we have the moon in orbit too. Why are we fucking around with dinky experiments 14 meters underwater when we did this 30 years ago?!?!?!?!
Could anyone find the link to the Nature article or any other scientific literature on this material? I couldn't find it in the current issue of Nature.
I'm sorry, but I don't see Israelis being evicted and having their homes and land demolished to make way for Palestinian settlements.
I don't see Israelis being treated lower than animals with all the border checks, permits, and now military trials just for not having the "right papers"... which will of course take at least 6 months to "process", and in the mean time husbands / wives are separated from their spouses / siblings and barred entry to their own bloody homeland.
I don't see Israelis having their essential services cut off at a whim, so they have no electricity, water, sanitation etc.
You wonder WHY they hate you ? You can preach tolerance and understanding in your schools, you aren't the ones being ethnically cleansed.
I don't really think that you are sorry, but you have to remember that both sides have dirty hands.
It's funny you should bring up ethnic cleaning though. The Jews are a little touchy about this subject since people have been trying to exterminate them for about 2000 years.
But if you want to just stick to Israelis and recent history, you'll remember that their Arab neighbors have been trying to eradicate them in various ways since Israel was established in 1947. This, of course, culminated in the Six-Day War of 1967 when Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Tunisia, Morocco and Algeria all joined together to get their asses handed to them by the Jews.
The Israelis aren't stupid. They watch the news, they know that every Arab in the region wants to kill them and they're done fucking around. They even went and developed nukes just in case they have to take the rest of the Middle East down with them.
Is what is happening to the Palestinians fair? Definitely not. But the Palestinians are being hung out to dry by all of their Arab neighbors. The Arab states could easily absorb the population of Palestine (which they created with their wars against Israel), but instead, they've conspired to keep the Palestinians contained and supplied with shitty weapons so they can become martyrs and keep the anti-Jew sentiment alive.
At least the Jews are open about persecuting the Palestinians, instead of using them as political tools like the Arabs.
They got this on my hot water....and I can't opt out or over ride. They report only using it for about an hour at a time, and only 2 or 3 days a year for the last few years though. Yes, peak demand during summer afternoons.
Phil
Just out of curiosity, how does that work? You can't override a system that sits in your house?
What do you get out of this deal? Can you just not pay your bill during your peak expense season? Quid pro quo, you know?
They're cutting down rainforests just to meet demand for beef.
That's bullshit. Don't blame it all on meat eaters like we are some kind of horror. Humans are omnivores and are evolved to eat both meat and vegetables.
People are cutting down the rain forests to get fertile soil since they sucked all the nutrients out of their old soil with unsustainable practices from BOTH farming and raising cattle.
They do this because cutting down more rain forest is cheaper and easier than sustaining the land. Not because people are eating too many hamburgers.
Won't this just make people buy new cars less often?
Actually this will give congress the opportunity to have another "Cash for Clunkers" program, so that people can trade in their old gas guzzlers for newer, slightly more efficient, gas guzzlers while "stimulating" the economy at the same time.
I wonder how much carbon is involved in making a new hybrid car relative to operating an old POS that gets 12 mpg?
Some people, like me, program for a hobby. Some people even write poetry without the intent of having it published. It makes us weird compared to the Trolls and socialites out there. But it doesn't make us crazy.
I am guessing that the main difference between you and Grigory Perelman though, is that he is really good at his hobby. Like idiot-savant good. In fact, he can make a shitload of money instantaneously just by saying "Yes please."
And I don't necessarily mean that as an insult, because he can't do other important things like read/.
As our racist ex-president (Vicente Fox) put it: Mexicans do things that not even African-American (I believe he did say "Negros") want to do. So, if people in the USA do not want to work for whatever payment the market is offering, then let aliens do that work.
As an American, I have no problem with US money employing immigrants. But I have a real problem with illegal ones: I feel that they are unfairly exploited. They get crap pay, no health insurance, and no legal status in the US. The shitty living status that is pushed on them often brings down the areas they reside in too and thus spills over onto US residents. It's a human rights violation in the name of profit... and our government turns a blind eye to it due to lobbying from big business.
To me it is the same as shipping our electronic waste to China so that some Chinese kid can desolder the parts without ventilation or gloves and die of cancer in 20 years after he has a few defective children due to all the poison he ingested. We're passing problems that we can solve, but are too cheap to bother with off to less developed people and countries.
You miss the point of the Fermi Paradox entirely. Given that humans have only been in existence on earth for 200K Years, why is it that no aliens have colonised Earth *before* we got here? It would take only one expansionist alien culture to exist in the billions of years the galaxy has existed before us and the Earth and the entire galaxy would have been well and truely colonized already.
I mean some relatively straight-forward extrapolations of humans shows *us* colonizing the galaxy in a few million years.
Basically the Fermi paradox says, they are *no* other intelligent civilizations in the galaxy otherwise we would have had dramatic evidence on Earth.
Still I see no particular harm in continuing to look. If something were found it would be a monumental breakthrough.
Even more importantly, why does everyone think Fermi's paradox is well posed?
There's also a really simple explanation: The astronomical distances separating Earth from other stars require astronomical amounts of energy and/or astronomical amounts of time cross. Maybe accessing this amount of energy and time is just too improbable for any civilization. We could play some games with the Drake equation and "prove" this, but we'd be extrapolating into bullshit-land. Of course, that is where the current Drake equation parameters are anyway.
But even if this barrier could be crossed, consider advanced aliens that develop the means access such a large amount of energy and to travel such great distances. Let's say that life is so common that they are able to come across millions of other life forms. Chances are, those life forms will be much more primitive than they are. After you have "discovered" a few million primitive life forms are you really going to visit them all? Or would you rather use your time more efficiently, and ignore the life forms that are much less primitive that you and only visit the ones that are near or above your level of sophistication? When was the last time you talked to the ants in your backyard on the way to hang out with your girlfriend?
I am guessing that even advanced aliens don't have infinite time and energy at their tentacle tips. They're not going to waste their time with us. We can barely get to low earth orbit on a good day.
It seems to me that a government could not legally block the TLD unless porn was actually illegal in that country.
But your internet provider could choose not to serve that content, saying that it was a company that respected family values and that those sites had high potential for malware infections.
I'd rather some potential sex offender spend all his time looking at porn then go out and rape some poor woman.
Potential sex offenders will become sex offenders regardless of their access to porn.
The real question for me is "Does an ".xxx" provide the public with any value? The only value I can see is that it will make it easy for groups to censor adult material. So I am totally against approving the existence of ".xxx" sites. Let's keep it difficult for the wannabe fascists.
Obviously the gun should have been locked up and the parents are horribly horribly negligent. But I am also curious why the toddler shot herself with the gun. Was she just fumbling with it or are you supposed to shoot yourself in the game? Also, what was mom doing 3 feet from the child while this was occuring?
Finally, a loaded.380 S&W feels a lot different from a Wii controller. I am impressed a 3 year old could even pick it up.
It's customary to type the acronym in parentheses immediately after the phrase so that the reader doesn't have to sit there and reread the blurb a few times to try to decipher what CPR stands for.
Which is why I don't like push-button ignition. If my car ever goes into hyperdrive because of a stuck throttle, I take comfort in knowing I still have a kill switch, and I grew up driving tractors and cars without power steering or power-assist braking, so I can cope.
How can I trust that that push-button ignition will still shut off the car? I know it's conceivable that even a key-start ignition might turn all ignition control over to an ECM, but who's done that?
Is it not possible to change gears from "Drive" to "Neutral" in these cars? Because I would recommend that if your engine is spooling for hyperspace. Shutting of the car would be the third thing I would do, after I had regained control. But then again, I like power steering and brakes. The worst thing that will happen is that your engine will blow and then Toyota can give you a new car.
This is why I like my manual transmission: When the shit hits the fan, I just press as hard as I can on the clutch and brake while aiming at the softest object. As a bonus, if the clutch won't disengage, you can always use the shifter to rip the car out of gear.
Throwing something into the sun would require a truly staggering amount of energy. It will never be a practical means of waste disposal.
Correct me if I'm wrong (and I probably am) but don't you GAIN speed as you fall into the sun's gravity well?
Yes, but to get things to accelerate into the sun, you need to get them off the Earth. This requires accelerating them to the Earth's escape velocity, which is where the staggering amount of energy comes in.
It'd be like flying one bag of trash from New York to China on its own private charter jet.
I think this is a really bad business decision, regardless of one's beliefs.
Why would you eliminate the "porn" because you're worried about scaring off potential customers? Porn has been estimated to generate more than $10B/year! This makes sense since we, as a species, have evolved to fixate on sex all the time. Apple should be cashing in, not out if they are worried about maintaining customers. Even the puritanical types who publically denounce porn have been known to engage in a little private titillation... which the iPhone is perfect for.
I don't find the lewd apps offensive, but I do find the stupid ones like iFart moronic to the point that they offend me. I guess I would rather live with a bunch of horny people than a bunch of morons.
It would have been a lot more intelligent to just develop an adult app section that requires credit card age verification. I suspect this has more to do with Steve's personal preferences than anything else.
Any stop saying "If you want porn, you can just use Safari!" It's a silly argument. How would you feel if someone told you "If you want to check your mail, you can just use Safari." The same goes for the weather app, the calendar app, the maps app and any of the other apps you can buy in the app store.
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With that attitude I don't think you need to worry about having kids.
Actually, I bet he already has kids!
It's voluntary. Nobody is asking anybody to do anything. If they don't want to do it, then they shouldn't sign up. Why people sign up with families, I'll never understand.
Probably the same reason police and firefighters sign up for a dangerous job. Patriotism and a hankering for a little excitement. Maybe you think it is crazy and stupid, but have a little respect for people that are willing to put their lives on the line for people like you, who don't even care about them.
You're probably one of those people who wouldn't try to pull a victim out of a burning car either, because you might risk your life, hmmmm? Better to watch the person burn and wait for the volunteer firefighters to solve the problem while you watch the show.
None of the "wars" that we are involved in are defensive, or even necessary. If enlistment drops by 90%, we'll still be able to DEFEND the country just fine.
I think the US said the same thing at the start of WWII.
When I read the title, I thought this would be about keeping the camera flash on the iPhone! That would have been more interesting...
We've known about that for a long time and the oil companies -still- haven't made sure this can't happen?
You're joking right? It's not worth their time to work out how to deal with those issues if they have a "small chance" of causing a failure.
Here's the algorithm that all the oil companies use:
If(Oil profit - Drilling_Expense - Environmental_Disaster_Fees > 0) {Drill!}
God, I wish I had some mod points for you!
People who say money can't buy happiness are either jealous and spiteful or the type that can't be satisfied with what they have and simply want what they can't have, creating a paradox of emotions.
If you are actually serious, the fact that you actually associate happiness with (bitchy, money-grubbing) supermodel wives and mistresses, lots of expensive (and fulfilling) toys, and the ability to fuck with other people's lives indicates that either you (1) obviously don't know enough rich people or (2) you could easily develop into an asshole whose potential to cause misery to yourself and others is only limited by your bank account.
Money is like an addictive medication. In the proper dose, it can really improve your life. But without substantial self-discipline, too much of it will consume you. And too little can result in a low quality of life.
If you just shrugged it off then only your coworkers would know you have a small dick. Now the whole world knows.
The thing is, your dick size is variable depending on the situation, so I don't really understand why he was even upset.
Personally, I would be worried about the TSA employee that got a hard on when walking through a full body scanner. Not the one whose dick shriveled up when he was getting scanned.
This report is more indicative of the quality of the people we have working for TSA, if anything. Yes, I did just say that.
Putting people in an environment that consists of a low mistake tolerance adds different pressures to the test.
ON land and something goes wrong, then you are likely to survive, and the people in the test know this. Put it underwater, then they know if something goes wrong they are probably going to die.
No the GP is not shortsighted, he is right. This has been done before and on a grander scale.
I don't think that 62 feet of water between you and safety really qualifies as stress.
If you want to really test stress, you put people somewhere they won't get out of alive if something goes wrong... like in space or REALLY deep underwater.
And you don't do it for 14 days, you do it for months. We've got a space station in orbit. Shit, we have the moon in orbit too. Why are we fucking around with dinky experiments 14 meters underwater when we did this 30 years ago?!?!?!?!
Could anyone find the link to the Nature article or any other scientific literature on this material? I couldn't find it in the current issue of Nature.
I'm sorry, but I don't see Israelis being evicted and having their homes and land demolished to make way for Palestinian settlements.
I don't see Israelis being treated lower than animals with all the border checks, permits, and now military trials just for not having the "right papers" ... which will of course take at least 6 months to "process", and in the mean time husbands / wives are separated from their spouses / siblings and barred entry to their own bloody homeland.
I don't see Israelis having their essential services cut off at a whim, so they have no electricity, water, sanitation etc.
You wonder WHY they hate you ? You can preach tolerance and understanding in your schools, you aren't the ones being ethnically cleansed.
I don't really think that you are sorry, but you have to remember that both sides have dirty hands.
It's funny you should bring up ethnic cleaning though. The Jews are a little touchy about this subject since people have been trying to exterminate them for about 2000 years.
But if you want to just stick to Israelis and recent history, you'll remember that their Arab neighbors have been trying to eradicate them in various ways since Israel was established in 1947. This, of course, culminated in the Six-Day War of 1967 when Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Tunisia, Morocco and Algeria all joined together to get their asses handed to them by the Jews.
The Israelis aren't stupid. They watch the news, they know that every Arab in the region wants to kill them and they're done fucking around. They even went and developed nukes just in case they have to take the rest of the Middle East down with them.
Is what is happening to the Palestinians fair? Definitely not. But the Palestinians are being hung out to dry by all of their Arab neighbors. The Arab states could easily absorb the population of Palestine (which they created with their wars against Israel), but instead, they've conspired to keep the Palestinians contained and supplied with shitty weapons so they can become martyrs and keep the anti-Jew sentiment alive.
At least the Jews are open about persecuting the Palestinians, instead of using them as political tools like the Arabs.
And I'm not Jewish, by the way.
They got this on my hot water....and I can't opt out or over ride. They report only using it for about an hour at a time, and only 2 or 3 days a year for the last few years though. Yes, peak demand during summer afternoons.
Phil
Just out of curiosity, how does that work? You can't override a system that sits in your house?
What do you get out of this deal? Can you just not pay your bill during your peak expense season? Quid pro quo, you know?
They're cutting down rainforests just to meet demand for beef.
That's bullshit. Don't blame it all on meat eaters like we are some kind of horror. Humans are omnivores and are evolved to eat both meat and vegetables.
People are cutting down the rain forests to get fertile soil since they sucked all the nutrients out of their old soil with unsustainable practices from BOTH farming and raising cattle.
They do this because cutting down more rain forest is cheaper and easier than sustaining the land. Not because people are eating too many hamburgers.
Won't this just make people buy new cars less often?
Actually this will give congress the opportunity to have another "Cash for Clunkers" program, so that people can trade in their old gas guzzlers for newer, slightly more efficient, gas guzzlers while "stimulating" the economy at the same time.
I wonder how much carbon is involved in making a new hybrid car relative to operating an old POS that gets 12 mpg?
Some people, like me, program for a hobby. Some people even write poetry without the intent of having it published. It makes us weird compared to the Trolls and socialites out there. But it doesn't make us crazy.
I am guessing that the main difference between you and Grigory Perelman though, is that he is really good at his hobby. Like idiot-savant good. In fact, he can make a shitload of money instantaneously just by saying "Yes please."
And I don't necessarily mean that as an insult, because he can't do other important things like read /.
As our racist ex-president (Vicente Fox) put it: Mexicans do things that not even African-American (I believe he did say "Negros") want to do. So, if people in the USA do not want to work for whatever payment the market is offering, then let aliens do that work.
As an American, I have no problem with US money employing immigrants. But I have a real problem with illegal ones: I feel that they are unfairly exploited. They get crap pay, no health insurance, and no legal status in the US. The shitty living status that is pushed on them often brings down the areas they reside in too and thus spills over onto US residents. It's a human rights violation in the name of profit... and our government turns a blind eye to it due to lobbying from big business.
To me it is the same as shipping our electronic waste to China so that some Chinese kid can desolder the parts without ventilation or gloves and die of cancer in 20 years after he has a few defective children due to all the poison he ingested. We're passing problems that we can solve, but are too cheap to bother with off to less developed people and countries.
I mean this as a genuine question: why is the US so far behind Europe in this?
I have an answer for you in the form of another question: Is the US actually ahead of Europe in any aspect of life?
(And I am asking that as an American.)
You miss the point of the Fermi Paradox entirely. Given that humans have only been in existence on earth for 200K Years, why is it that no aliens have colonised Earth *before* we got here? It would take only one expansionist alien culture to exist in the billions of years the galaxy has existed before us and the Earth and the entire galaxy would have been well and truely colonized already.
I mean some relatively straight-forward extrapolations of humans shows *us* colonizing the galaxy in a few million years.
Basically the Fermi paradox says, they are *no* other intelligent civilizations in the galaxy otherwise we would have had dramatic evidence on Earth.
Still I see no particular harm in continuing to look. If something were found it would be a monumental breakthrough.
Even more importantly, why does everyone think Fermi's paradox is well posed?
There's also a really simple explanation: The astronomical distances separating Earth from other stars require astronomical amounts of energy and/or astronomical amounts of time cross. Maybe accessing this amount of energy and time is just too improbable for any civilization. We could play some games with the Drake equation and "prove" this, but we'd be extrapolating into bullshit-land. Of course, that is where the current Drake equation parameters are anyway.
But even if this barrier could be crossed, consider advanced aliens that develop the means access such a large amount of energy and to travel such great distances. Let's say that life is so common that they are able to come across millions of other life forms. Chances are, those life forms will be much more primitive than they are. After you have "discovered" a few million primitive life forms are you really going to visit them all? Or would you rather use your time more efficiently, and ignore the life forms that are much less primitive that you and only visit the ones that are near or above your level of sophistication? When was the last time you talked to the ants in your backyard on the way to hang out with your girlfriend?
I am guessing that even advanced aliens don't have infinite time and energy at their tentacle tips. They're not going to waste their time with us. We can barely get to low earth orbit on a good day.
It seems to me that a government could not legally block the TLD unless porn was actually illegal in that country.
But your internet provider could choose not to serve that content, saying that it was a company that respected family values and that those sites had high potential for malware infections.
I'd rather some potential sex offender spend all his time looking at porn then go out and rape some poor woman.
Potential sex offenders will become sex offenders regardless of their access to porn.
The real question for me is "Does an ".xxx" provide the public with any value? The only value I can see is that it will make it easy for groups to censor adult material. So I am totally against approving the existence of ".xxx" sites. Let's keep it difficult for the wannabe fascists.
Obviously the gun should have been locked up and the parents are horribly horribly negligent. But I am also curious why the toddler shot herself with the gun. Was she just fumbling with it or are you supposed to shoot yourself in the game? Also, what was mom doing 3 feet from the child while this was occuring?
Finally, a loaded .380 S&W feels a lot different from a Wii controller. I am impressed a 3 year old could even pick it up.
Uh, you realize that Jobs's 'quote' above wasn't real, right?
But it could have been. Admit it: If you read that he said that in a reputable news story, you wouldn't even bat an eyelash.
Would it feel like a really good orgasm?
You know what I am talking about: The kind that makes your toes twitch.
It's customary to type the acronym in parentheses immediately after the phrase so that the reader doesn't have to sit there and reread the blurb a few times to try to decipher what CPR stands for.
Which is why I don't like push-button ignition. If my car ever goes into hyperdrive because of a stuck throttle, I take comfort in knowing I still have a kill switch, and I grew up driving tractors and cars without power steering or power-assist braking, so I can cope. How can I trust that that push-button ignition will still shut off the car? I know it's conceivable that even a key-start ignition might turn all ignition control over to an ECM, but who's done that?
Is it not possible to change gears from "Drive" to "Neutral" in these cars? Because I would recommend that if your engine is spooling for hyperspace. Shutting of the car would be the third thing I would do, after I had regained control. But then again, I like power steering and brakes. The worst thing that will happen is that your engine will blow and then Toyota can give you a new car.
This is why I like my manual transmission: When the shit hits the fan, I just press as hard as I can on the clutch and brake while aiming at the softest object. As a bonus, if the clutch won't disengage, you can always use the shifter to rip the car out of gear.
Throwing something into the sun would require a truly staggering amount of energy. It will never be a practical means of waste disposal.
Correct me if I'm wrong (and I probably am) but don't you GAIN speed as you fall into the sun's gravity well?
Yes, but to get things to accelerate into the sun, you need to get them off the Earth. This requires accelerating them to the Earth's escape velocity, which is where the staggering amount of energy comes in.
It'd be like flying one bag of trash from New York to China on its own private charter jet.
I think this is a really bad business decision, regardless of one's beliefs.
Why would you eliminate the "porn" because you're worried about scaring off potential customers? Porn has been estimated to generate more than $10B/year! This makes sense since we, as a species, have evolved to fixate on sex all the time. Apple should be cashing in, not out if they are worried about maintaining customers. Even the puritanical types who publically denounce porn have been known to engage in a little private titillation... which the iPhone is perfect for.
I don't find the lewd apps offensive, but I do find the stupid ones like iFart moronic to the point that they offend me. I guess I would rather live with a bunch of horny people than a bunch of morons.
It would have been a lot more intelligent to just develop an adult app section that requires credit card age verification. I suspect this has more to do with Steve's personal preferences than anything else.
Any stop saying "If you want porn, you can just use Safari!" It's a silly argument. How would you feel if someone told you "If you want to check your mail, you can just use Safari." The same goes for the weather app, the calendar app, the maps app and any of the other apps you can buy in the app store.