You might want to take some remedial history classes. In the U.S., the framers of the Constitution were aware of what would (not "could" -- "would") happen if there were no limits on the government, so they wisely included the Bill of Rights to protect us from tyranny. There is a reason for that: historically, any government that was not "tie[d]...down with...regulations" eventually ended up abusing the very people they were supposed to serve. Always.
...who fail to show proper respect for the authority that police have over you...
Proper respect is one thing. What you are describing is something else, entirely.
When a police officer tells you to do something, you do it. It is that simple.
Holy crap. Are you for real, or are you just trolling? I am an honest, hard-working, law-abiding citizen, but there is no way on God's green earth that I will ever just do something simply because someone else tells me to. I will respect authority, but when authority conflicts with either 1) what my conscience dictates or 2) what the law requires of me, authority loses. Period. "It is that simple."
Police officers will protect you, if you stop getting in their way.
No, they won't. Case in point: I had a friend who managed a storage facility. Unfortunately, it turned out that a couple of his clients were gang members who owed back rent. They came to claim their property, and he told them "Not until you pay the back rent you owe." They then threatened to return with some of their friends and take their property back, and threatened to shoot my friend if he tried to stop them. My friend called the local P.D., who told him they couldn't help him unless the gang members actually made good on their threat. My friend then asked if they could at least patrol the area a little more heavily than usual, and again, the P.D. declined. You see, there was a sled dog event downtown, and they local police officers were busy directing traffic for the event.* The P.D. are not there to protect you. They are there to arrest the suspects after a crime has been committed.
Really, unless the exploring humans luck into somewhere they can take off their helmets and gloves and physically interact with the environment, they might as well be here watching it on TV.
Gotta disagree with you there. Given the choice of walking on the moon in helmet and gloves or watching a robot crawl across the moon on T.V., I'd much rather be in the helmet and gloves actually on the moon. Even HD and 5.1 surround sound can't capture all the experience of actually being there.
Yeah, I missed that until after I clicked "submit". OTOH, I kind of suspect that anyone 1) on a CLI who 2) managed to even type that particular sequence of characters would have a pretty good idea of what it was going to do.
In all seriousness, however, what version of Linux would that *not* apply to? If you have root access, by definition, you have the ability to hose your system. Personally, I have found Knoppix to be a great Linux distro that does not require you to install it to use it. The Ubuntu LiveCD is pretty good, also. Then, of course, there is DSL and several others (although I have never personally used DSL).
And does it need to be a one-size-fits-all solution? I have a desktop at work from which I cannot access USB thumb drives because the mobo chipset is flawed. I also have a personal laptop that has a failed CD-ROM drive, but that has working USB ports. If you choose either of those media, I have a computer that it won't work with. However, if you provide Linux on a USB stick for those who can use USB sticks and Linux on a CD for those who can use a LiveCD, you'll have *something* that works for everyone. For the one guy at the university who can only boot from a floppy...well, he will just have to buy a new computer:)
OK, TFS is saying this is an introductory comp sci class, so maybe I'm giving the students too much credit. There is value in learning to walk before you can learn to run, but...
I personally would probably give extra-credit to such students. Researching the problem, finding an "open source" solution to the problem and writing modular code that can reuse already existing code is a big plus in The Real World (tm). One of the best pieces of professional advice I ever received was from a senior sys admin when I was but a wee green jr. sys admin: "Laziness is a virtue for a sys admin. Don't reinvent the wheel, and build things to be robust so you can do fun, new things rather than spend all of your time maintaining the things you have already built."
[:rolleyes:] There is enough information in my profile that someone who really wants to know who I am or how to contact me can do so. When you post as A.C., the only way you can do that is subpoena/. for its web server log files, then subpoena the sender's ISP for authentication records.
Kick a man when he's down, why don't you? Seriously, is there no compassion on the Internet? And as if that wasn't bad enough, you posted as A.C., too. Whether Naatach is correct to compare infertility to terminal illness or not, he at least has the cojones to state his point of view without hiding behind the A.C. moniker, which, in my book, earns him more respect than you. </rant>
Please understand that "The Church" is a bit of a misnomer. Even within Christianity, there is a lot of variance in belief. I am a part-time youth pastor, so I have more than just a passing association with "The Church". However, I do not believe that either infertility or cancer is "the will of God" (and I really don't intend to spark a theological debate here about what is and what isn't God's will). While I do believe in faith playing a huge factor in our health, I also believe that medical science is one of many tools God has given us to combat disease (including infertility). Unfortunately, "The Church" is composed of people, and people often are...umm..."misguided", shall we say, even when they have the best intentions at heart.
In any case, since you said, "As a parent..." I assume your struggles with infertility have resulted in success? (and no, I'm not expecting you to answer; that's a personal question) If so, then congratulations, and may your family be blessed. If not, then I pray your desire to raise a family be answered.
It happens. Look up "epigenetics." Time Magazine had an article on the subject in January ("Why your DNA is not your destiny", or something like that), and there was a Discovery Channel program on the subject I saw a year or two ago. IIRC from the DC program, there is a breed of hamster or guinea pig or something that has a disorder that causes certain individuals to not metabolize food correctly. These individuals are always hungry, always eating and consequently much larger than average. Genetically identical twins do not always display the same trait, however. What researchers found is that DNA alone does not determine your characteristics. Without the presence of certain chemical receptors in the body, your DNA sequences can't be activated -- the DNA mode code for specific proteins to be produced, but if your body doesn't have the right chemical factories to build those proteins, they *won't* be produced (that's the really dumbed-down executive summary because IANA molecular biologist and it's been a while since I saw the program).
Okay, people are neither hamsters nor guinea pigs, but similar things happen in homo sapiens, too. Again, IIRC from the DC program mentioned above, researches found a genetic sequence that is always present in autism. However, not everyone who has the DNA sequence has autism. However, everyone that they tested who has the DNA sequence and a certain sequence of chemical receptors for that DNA sequence does, and no one they tested who has the DNA sequence for autism but a different chemical receptor sequence displayed symptoms of autism. Interesting stuff...
And the AC above is obviously a first-year programmer.
Yep. If my rusty C skills are still good enough, then in the A.C.'s code above, behavioralproblems will always be true. Assignment operations in C always return true, don't they?
I don't know that it would be bad, but I doubt that it would be terribly effective. Last time I saw CSPAN, it looked like most of our Congress Critters were already well past their prime child-bearing years.
Of course, there's potential for abuse through its misapplication to other areas.
And once Joe Q. Public gets a taste of how well this works in people who have already entered the justice system, I'll wager he'll be clamoring to have it applied in those other areas, too.
I took on a part-time job as a youth pastor specifically so I could do the things you are talking about. There is one kid in my youth group that I make a special point of hanging out with simply because every one else tends to write him off. He acts like he has borderline ADD, so most adults simply don't want to mess with him. He is high-energy and far more difficult to corral than most other kids. In other words, he requires lots of work for very little (initial) ROI.
However, as I have begun to encourage him and show him attention, it's amazing how he responds to it. He is the one kid in the youth group I can count on to ask questions and actually think about the things we talk about. If he can learn a little discipline and self-control, there will be no stopping this kid. Unfortunately, most people would never have figured that out about him because they aren't willing to nurture, teach and provide opportunities to him because he is a little more difficult than your average twelve year old.
I don't think we have any idea how much things we think and speak over ourselves and over our children affect what we become. I was recently on a mission trip to Guatemala, and the Guatemalans I was working with retold a story that had recently been in the news there. Their news had interviewed two people who had grown up in the same area. One was a national hero, an outstanding basketball player. The other was in jail for murder. When the reporters asked the basketball player how he got so good at basketball, he said he started playing basketball as a child, and really wasn't that good. But his dad kept telling him, "You are an amazing basketball player!" Every game, every practice, whether he did well or not, his dad told him what an awesome basketball player he was. After a while, he started thinking of himself as a really good basketball player, and once he started to believe it, he started to act like it. The murderer, on the other hand, was always told he was a loser, that he was no good, that he would end up in prison. Eventually, he began to believe that he really was no good at anything, and ended up a small time criminal. He discovered he was really good at one thing -- killing people -- and so, he began a contract killer. Now he was in jail, on death row. Both men had a similar childhood, but they had one thing very, very different: one child had a dad who believed in him, but the other had a dad who told him he was a loser.
If you treat children like they are punks, losers and washouts, don't be surprised when that is all they become.
Two responses to you: first, you sound like my wife, who has the attitude, "If it's not my fault, it's not my problem." With all due respect to you and to my wife, that's pure B.S. As poopdeville (correctly, IMHO) stated, a collision can have far worse repercussions than a fine. In aviation, the Federal Aviation Administration recognized that sometimes it is necessary to deviate from the law in the interests of safety, and therefore wrote FAR 91.3:
In an in-flight emergency requiring immediate action, the pilot in command may deviate from any rule of this part to the extent required to meet that emergency.
I drive a motorcycle, so I suspect my braking distance is significantly better than a typical suburban assault^Wutility vehicle. I also have about 1/20th the mass of a typical SUV, and about 1/100th the crumple zone of a typical SUV. If I have any doubts about whether or not traffic behind me can stop, I will go through the intersection. In all honesty, I will admit that I haven't had to do that yet on my motorcycle...but I have been rear-ended (twice) in a car, so that thought process is there in the back of my head when I'm on my bike. As soon as I start braking at an intersection, I'm watching traffic behind me. Give me a choice between a fine for violating the law and life in a wheelchair or death because, even though I got in a wreck, it wasn't my fault and I obeyed the law, I'll take the fine, thanks.
Second, did you even read my statement above? If you are driving an average car at 50 mph when the light turns yellow, and you are less than about 100 feet from the intersection, you will be physically unable to stop the car before entering the intersection. That is the whole point behind yellow lights. Cars don't stop the moment you touch the brake; they have inertia, and therefore, it takes some time for them to come to a stop. Furthermore, it takes something like half a second (that's about 37 feet at 50mph) for the average driver to detect that the light has changed, to decide what that means, and to even begin braking. In other words, there is no way on God's green earth that anyone with even half a brain can seriously expect that, as soon as the light turns yellow, all traffic will stop at the intersection. It simply isn't physically possible.
Yellow: Stop unless you're already crossing the line when it goes yellow.
[Citation needed]
A quick sanity check would show why your statement can't possibly be true as written: Suppose you are doing 50 mph down a business district. You are six inches (or six feet or even 60 feet) shy of the intersection as the light turns yellow. Do you stop or proceed through the intersection? According to what you stated above, proceeding through the intersection would be illegal. However, at 50 mph, the vehicle takes approximately 100 feet to stop (per this site). If you try to stop, you will probably run the light anyway and you'll probably get rear ended if there is any traffic behind you. Even the most hard-core states will have a disclaimer in the yellow light law that essentially says "stop if you can, proceed if you must."
Being in the intersection when your light turns red is illegal in all of them.
No, it's not. Several people above have listed states where, as long as the light is not red when you enter the intersection, it is legal to continue through the intersection, even if the light turns red before you clear the intersection. This is also the case in Alaska, where I live. It is illegal to enter an intersection when your light is red in all 50 states, but not necessarily to be in the intersection on a red light.
Slashdot Mirror
...such people don't necessarily exist in every precinct.
"Power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely."
...who fail to show proper respect for the authority that police have over you...
Proper respect is one thing. What you are describing is something else, entirely.
When a police officer tells you to do something, you do it. It is that simple.
Holy crap. Are you for real, or are you just trolling? I am an honest, hard-working, law-abiding citizen, but there is no way on God's green earth that I will ever just do something simply because someone else tells me to. I will respect authority, but when authority conflicts with either 1) what my conscience dictates or 2) what the law requires of me, authority loses. Period. "It is that simple."
Police officers will protect you, if you stop getting in their way.
No, they won't. Case in point: I had a friend who managed a storage facility. Unfortunately, it turned out that a couple of his clients were gang members who owed back rent. They came to claim their property, and he told them "Not until you pay the back rent you owe." They then threatened to return with some of their friends and take their property back, and threatened to shoot my friend if he tried to stop them. My friend called the local P.D., who told him they couldn't help him unless the gang members actually made good on their threat. My friend then asked if they could at least patrol the area a little more heavily than usual, and again, the P.D. declined. You see, there was a sled dog event downtown, and they local police officers were busy directing traffic for the event.* The P.D. are not there to protect you. They are there to arrest the suspects after a crime has been committed.
*02/1999, IIRC, Anchorage, Alaska
"No kill I"?
YES!!! And it's another Suzuki (albeit a *lot* faster than mine).
Really, unless the exploring humans luck into somewhere they can take off their helmets and gloves and physically interact with the environment, they might as well be here watching it on TV.
Gotta disagree with you there. Given the choice of walking on the moon in helmet and gloves or watching a robot crawl across the moon on T.V., I'd much rather be in the helmet and gloves actually on the moon. Even HD and 5.1 surround sound can't capture all the experience of actually being there.
Yeah, I missed that until after I clicked "submit". OTOH, I kind of suspect that anyone
1) on a CLI who
2) managed to even type that particular sequence of characters would have a pretty good idea of what it was going to do.
...with such little market share.
Insightful? Seriously? That's blatant flamebait.
What's /dev/sda1comes?
:)
I kid, I kid.
In all seriousness, however, what version of Linux would that *not* apply to? If you have root access, by definition, you have the ability to hose your system. Personally, I have found Knoppix to be a great Linux distro that does not require you to install it to use it. The Ubuntu LiveCD is pretty good, also. Then, of course, there is DSL and several others (although I have never personally used DSL).
And does it need to be a one-size-fits-all solution? I have a desktop at work from which I cannot access USB thumb drives because the mobo chipset is flawed. I also have a personal laptop that has a failed CD-ROM drive, but that has working USB ports. If you choose either of those media, I have a computer that it won't work with. However, if you provide Linux on a USB stick for those who can use USB sticks and Linux on a CD for those who can use a LiveCD, you'll have *something* that works for everyone. For the one guy at the university who can only boot from a floppy...well, he will just have to buy a new computer
Agreed, which was the point of "TFS is saying this is an introductory comp sci class, so maybe I'm giving the students too much credit."
OK, TFS is saying this is an introductory comp sci class, so maybe I'm giving the students too much credit. There is value in learning to walk before you can learn to run, but...
I personally would probably give extra-credit to such students. Researching the problem, finding an "open source" solution to the problem and writing modular code that can reuse already existing code is a big plus in The Real World (tm). One of the best pieces of professional advice I ever received was from a senior sys admin when I was but a wee green jr. sys admin: "Laziness is a virtue for a sys admin. Don't reinvent the wheel, and build things to be robust so you can do fun, new things rather than spend all of your time maintaining the things you have already built."
[:rolleyes:] There is enough information in my profile that someone who really wants to know who I am or how to contact me can do so. When you post as A.C., the only way you can do that is subpoena /. for its web server log files, then subpoena the sender's ISP for authentication records.
That's a pretty significant difference, IMHO.
In the end, we resolved our infertility by adopting.
Aww, crap. Missed that, sorry.
Kick a man when he's down, why don't you? Seriously, is there no compassion on the Internet? And as if that wasn't bad enough, you posted as A.C., too. Whether Naatach is correct to compare infertility to terminal illness or not, he at least has the cojones to state his point of view without hiding behind the A.C. moniker, which, in my book, earns him more respect than you. </rant>
Please understand that "The Church" is a bit of a misnomer. Even within Christianity, there is a lot of variance in belief. I am a part-time youth pastor, so I have more than just a passing association with "The Church". However, I do not believe that either infertility or cancer is "the will of God" (and I really don't intend to spark a theological debate here about what is and what isn't God's will). While I do believe in faith playing a huge factor in our health, I also believe that medical science is one of many tools God has given us to combat disease (including infertility). Unfortunately, "The Church" is composed of people, and people often are...umm..."misguided", shall we say, even when they have the best intentions at heart.
In any case, since you said, "As a parent..." I assume your struggles with infertility have resulted in success? (and no, I'm not expecting you to answer; that's a personal question) If so, then congratulations, and may your family be blessed. If not, then I pray your desire to raise a family be answered.
It happens. Look up "epigenetics." Time Magazine had an article on the subject in January ("Why your DNA is not your destiny", or something like that), and there was a Discovery Channel program on the subject I saw a year or two ago. IIRC from the DC program, there is a breed of hamster or guinea pig or something that has a disorder that causes certain individuals to not metabolize food correctly. These individuals are always hungry, always eating and consequently much larger than average. Genetically identical twins do not always display the same trait, however. What researchers found is that DNA alone does not determine your characteristics. Without the presence of certain chemical receptors in the body, your DNA sequences can't be activated -- the DNA mode code for specific proteins to be produced, but if your body doesn't have the right chemical factories to build those proteins, they *won't* be produced (that's the really dumbed-down executive summary because IANA molecular biologist and it's been a while since I saw the program).
Okay, people are neither hamsters nor guinea pigs, but similar things happen in homo sapiens, too. Again, IIRC from the DC program mentioned above, researches found a genetic sequence that is always present in autism. However, not everyone who has the DNA sequence has autism. However, everyone that they tested who has the DNA sequence and a certain sequence of chemical receptors for that DNA sequence does, and no one they tested who has the DNA sequence for autism but a different chemical receptor sequence displayed symptoms of autism. Interesting stuff...
And the AC above is obviously a first-year programmer.
Yep. If my rusty C skills are still good enough, then in the A.C.'s code above, behavioralproblems will always be true. Assignment operations in C always return true, don't they?
I don't know that it would be bad, but I doubt that it would be terribly effective. Last time I saw CSPAN, it looked like most of our Congress Critters were already well past their prime child-bearing years.
Of course, there's potential for abuse through its misapplication to other areas.
And once Joe Q. Public gets a taste of how well this works in people who have already entered the justice system, I'll wager he'll be clamoring to have it applied in those other areas, too.
I took on a part-time job as a youth pastor specifically so I could do the things you are talking about. There is one kid in my youth group that I make a special point of hanging out with simply because every one else tends to write him off. He acts like he has borderline ADD, so most adults simply don't want to mess with him. He is high-energy and far more difficult to corral than most other kids. In other words, he requires lots of work for very little (initial) ROI.
However, as I have begun to encourage him and show him attention, it's amazing how he responds to it. He is the one kid in the youth group I can count on to ask questions and actually think about the things we talk about. If he can learn a little discipline and self-control, there will be no stopping this kid. Unfortunately, most people would never have figured that out about him because they aren't willing to nurture, teach and provide opportunities to him because he is a little more difficult than your average twelve year old.
Beat me to it.
I don't think we have any idea how much things we think and speak over ourselves and over our children affect what we become. I was recently on a mission trip to Guatemala, and the Guatemalans I was working with retold a story that had recently been in the news there. Their news had interviewed two people who had grown up in the same area. One was a national hero, an outstanding basketball player. The other was in jail for murder. When the reporters asked the basketball player how he got so good at basketball, he said he started playing basketball as a child, and really wasn't that good. But his dad kept telling him, "You are an amazing basketball player!" Every game, every practice, whether he did well or not, his dad told him what an awesome basketball player he was. After a while, he started thinking of himself as a really good basketball player, and once he started to believe it, he started to act like it. The murderer, on the other hand, was always told he was a loser, that he was no good, that he would end up in prison. Eventually, he began to believe that he really was no good at anything, and ended up a small time criminal. He discovered he was really good at one thing -- killing people -- and so, he began a contract killer. Now he was in jail, on death row. Both men had a similar childhood, but they had one thing very, very different: one child had a dad who believed in him, but the other had a dad who told him he was a loser.
If you treat children like they are punks, losers and washouts, don't be surprised when that is all they become.
I think I used to work with you....
You only get rear-ended if the guy behind you is following too close or not paying attention.
That may not be a big deal in your Chevy Suburban (or whatever you drive), but it is a big deal on my Suzuki V-Strom.
I drive a motorcycle, so I suspect my braking distance is significantly better than a typical suburban assault^Wutility vehicle. I also have about 1/20th the mass of a typical SUV, and about 1/100th the crumple zone of a typical SUV. If I have any doubts about whether or not traffic behind me can stop, I will go through the intersection. In all honesty, I will admit that I haven't had to do that yet on my motorcycle...but I have been rear-ended (twice) in a car, so that thought process is there in the back of my head when I'm on my bike. As soon as I start braking at an intersection, I'm watching traffic behind me. Give me a choice between a fine for violating the law and life in a wheelchair or death because, even though I got in a wreck, it wasn't my fault and I obeyed the law, I'll take the fine, thanks.
Second, did you even read my statement above? If you are driving an average car at 50 mph when the light turns yellow, and you are less than about 100 feet from the intersection, you will be physically unable to stop the car before entering the intersection. That is the whole point behind yellow lights. Cars don't stop the moment you touch the brake; they have inertia, and therefore, it takes some time for them to come to a stop. Furthermore, it takes something like half a second (that's about 37 feet at 50mph) for the average driver to detect that the light has changed, to decide what that means, and to even begin braking. In other words, there is no way on God's green earth that anyone with even half a brain can seriously expect that, as soon as the light turns yellow, all traffic will stop at the intersection. It simply isn't physically possible.
Yellow: Stop unless you're already crossing the line when it goes yellow.
[Citation needed]
A quick sanity check would show why your statement can't possibly be true as written: Suppose you are doing 50 mph down a business district. You are six inches (or six feet or even 60 feet) shy of the intersection as the light turns yellow. Do you stop or proceed through the intersection? According to what you stated above, proceeding through the intersection would be illegal. However, at 50 mph, the vehicle takes approximately 100 feet to stop (per this site). If you try to stop, you will probably run the light anyway and you'll probably get rear ended if there is any traffic behind you. Even the most hard-core states will have a disclaimer in the yellow light law that essentially says "stop if you can, proceed if you must."
Being in the intersection when your light turns red is illegal in all of them.
No, it's not. Several people above have listed states where, as long as the light is not red when you enter the intersection, it is legal to continue through the intersection, even if the light turns red before you clear the intersection. This is also the case in Alaska, where I live. It is illegal to enter an intersection when your light is red in all 50 states, but not necessarily to be in the intersection on a red light.