Any country could work with those two space programs and complete a space walk on their own.
I take it, then, that you're against competition in other realms as well? I mean, hey, anybody can work with Microsoft or Apple and make hardware or software. Heck, anyone can work with RIAA to make music too.
To clarify (and agree), the fireworks depicted during the opening ceremony did in fact go off as shown. The actual footage everyone saw, unless they were in Beijing, was a computer-rendered simulation of the same fireworks. The reason they were animated for broadcast is that the shot shown of the fireworks would have been at best difficult and dangerous, and at worst impossible, to do for real and live. I don't really see the big deal for this; it's basically some special effects showing an angle that couldn't otherwise be shown. It's like all the news networks doing a story about West Bumfuck, Iowa, and using Google Earth to do a fairly nifty zoom-in-from-orbit effect because that obviously can't be done for real. But nobody screams at CNN for that. Of course, that being said, I don't exactly give China the benefit of the doubt for things they have a real motive to lie about, like space missions.
On the contrary, I imagine he'll hire someone to represent him (though Ray will not doubt assist himself). Someone above made mention of a legal saying (probably just here in the States) that "the lawyer who represents himself has a fool for a client." I don't know Ray at all and can't possibly say whether he'd ask for, or accept, donations to his defense, but it's certainly a thought. Any/.ers have ideas on other creative and effective ways of showing support?
Mr. Beckerman is, as most of us know, one of the most respected members of the Slashdot community. He's posted many, many stories and innumerable comments, all with great insight and actual legal information from a real lawyer (yes, HIAL). Over quite a long time, he's become one of us, and he probably has the highest karma in the history of Slashdot. He's done a great deal to help us all, and now it's time to return the favor. There are a lot of comments here about how dumb a move this is on the RIAA's part, and how they'll finally get embarrassed by NewYorkCountryLawyer himself. I happen to agree.
However, Ray is only one man, and the RIAA has the means, and probably the will, to throw so many of their lawyers and arcane procedural motions at him to make his personal life a living hell. So it's time now that we thank him and make it clear that were behind him. As for how, that's up to you. Maybe send encouraging emails. If he comments here, reply with your support. Spread the word about the RIAA trying to sue a legal critic into silence. Please, everyone who's been enlightened, informed, and amused by Ray's comments here, do your part in return.
So, some researchers used Facebook as a singularly inefficient method of DDoSing someone. Anyone who wants a site taken down will use a botnet or something more reliable (and high-volume) than counting on Facebook users to add the latest greatest app of the day. Am I missing something, or is this really not nearly serious enough even to make/.?
The point, as I understand the FIG, is this: younger kids are more mentally willing to attempt dangerous tricks, but are less physically able to successfully perform them without running a high risk of severe injury. Paradoxically, the more physically resilient they get as they reach maturity, the less mentally willing they are to put themselves at risk. The FIG is---or rightly believes itself to be---charged not only with the promotion of gymnastics, but also with taking reasonable measures to protect the well-being and lives of the gymnasts they work with. Thus, at the very highest level of their sport, they (and not the IOC) put in an age minimum to prevent 12-year-old girls and boys from trying a quadruple flip and breaking their backs or necks. The type of injuries gymnasts risk is unusually severe among Olympic sports, and I think that it is reasonable that the sport's overseer has acted to mitigate this somewhat.
Also, there's a significant "fearlessness" factor involved: Younger kids are less likely to think in terms of danger and self-injury than older ones, so kids under 16 are much more likely to attempt borderline-insane tricks. And, being smaller and lighter, they're more likely to be able to do them.
Actually, I posted this Tuesday night; I don't know why this article is stuffed away over here. Maybe it was timestamped 24 hours too early for some reason?
If you swung an axe at a door and made a small chip, which would be more insane: Thinking that the next or subsequent blow would put the blade entirely through the door, or thinking that you could swing the axe at the door all day and do nothing but make small cuts? The first time, you swing an axe at a solid door. The second time, you swing an axe at a weakened door. The situations are different; thus you're doing two different things that just have some things in common. For a "memoryless" case: if you saw a button on the wall and pushed it and got a hard shock, you probably would expect the same thing to happen again the next time you pushed it. That's entirely sane.
Most of your examples are situations where no result can be expected, only hoped for. If probability significantly defines the outcome of some action, I suspect that that action isn't really in the spirit of the definition.
The problem is, the RIAA can get sued and convicted into oblivion, but all the RIAA is is a shell corp for the big record companies. The record companies themselves won't have to answer for this, and if RIAA is legally forced under, the record companies will just make another shell corp to cover their asses. This will only truly matter when someone sues the record companies themselves.
Incidently, I never saw why point releases for OS X were so special either - at least in terms of news.
Yeah, but the point releases of which you speak aren't really as minor as the incrementing would have you believe; rather, they're only labelled as point releases so that Apple can take advantage of the "OS X" = "OS 10" branding they can do. From a standpoint of features/upgrades/fixes, the "point releases" are probably somewhere between a Windows SP and a new Windows OS release. So I can see why they're so discussed.
My school just migrated over to Google Apps, or rather is in the process of migrating. I understand that network outages, though rare, can result in email downtime, or worse, emails lost forever. This is especially bad at my school, where by policy, official communication from the university to students and vice versa is done via email and email only (this may not be at all unique; I really don't know). However, I can see one great side effect of this, and it is that, if all goes according to plan, I will be able to keep my university email address plus storage (on Google servers, true) indefinitely after I graduate. This would be a big help, as I use my university email as my main address, and it would be a big pain to have to change to another address in a year or so.
Are the states actually facing the prospect of being sued here, or just being subpoenaed for information? My understanding is that states cannot be sued without their own consent; surely they wouldn't consent to this.[1] Can anyone else clarify this?
[1]Cue the "...and don't call me Shirley" comments!
I go to a university in Cleveland. Needless to say, we get a good amount of snow in wintertime, being on a lake as we are. Well, our business (oh, I'm sorry, management) school has a Gehry building (pictures here, look at the floor plans to get an idea of how confusing the building is) uglying up our campus, too. Problem is, the roof is so curved and twisted that once snow starts to fall, it collects on the roof until huge chunks of snow and ice fall around 15 feet off it all at once, onto a heavily-traveled sidewalk. The problem was so bad that the university used to just close that sidewalk for the winter once the first flake hit the ground.
Now, starting for this winter, they've installed concrete planters along the building, probably (but not admittedly) to give the snow a place to land that isn't on students' heads, while still keeping the sidewalk open. Rumor is that my school wanted Gehry to pony up money to help pay for the planters, but he refused. I mean, seriously, would a competent architect fail to realize that snow falls in Cleveland? Doubtful, but Gehry did.
Forgive me for sounding dumb, but what's wrong with Finder as is? I'm not defending, trolling, or saying it's perfect, I'm just curious. I can't think of anything I'd like to see different in it (but I'll admit my experience is limited and I'm not as much of a power user as many here are). I often see comments like "Finder is broken" with no explanation, so what's broken about it?
Great...now how will anyone be able to use this ruling if they don't know they've been searched in the first place? You need legal standing to sue, and that means being able to prove you've been searched, which act will be either 1) impossible or 2) illegal under the same Act.
2. Democrats are controlling Congress, which does control funds to repair Interstate bridges.
Yes, but they haven't been around for terribly long. Any road funding bills they've passed (if any) cannot have been implemented in full yet, unless you think the mechanisms in place to do road construction are efficient, in which case I have a bridge to sell you. The GOP's had almost uninterrupted control of the Congress since 1995 (right?); any spending bills which could have fixed that bridge and others were passed over on their watch.
1. The President doesn't control funds to repair Interstate bridges.
True. Technically. But if you think back to 2001-2006, the GOP-controlled Congress had its collective mouth firmly around Bush's...yeah. That Congress didn't exactly show great initiative, they just did was Bush told them to. Believe me, if he'd thought to ask for road funding, it would've been done.
3. Neither party has changed anything much, when it comes to funds to repair Interstate bridges.
Indeed. Keep in mind, however, when you think about how much the Democratic Congress has accomplished in terms of legislation sent to Bush's desk, that the GOP contingent in the Senate are in a habit of threatening to filibuster any major bill Democrats try to pass, effectively killing it (you only need 40 to filibuster, and a threat is just as successful as the real thing, since Dems calling the GOP's bluff would just be seen as wasting precious time). As for whether that applies specifically to road funding, I don't know, but it very well may.
Yikes. How many things are wrong with this...
About 2.5.
I wonder how many times this kind of thing happened in the 20-ish years before the Space Shuttle started monitoring its underside like this. Surely this can't be the first time (ignoring Columbia) falling foam has taken a chunk out of the shuttle's heat shielding. IMHO, this is a nearly inevitable side effect of the idiotic design of the shuttle, putting the astronauts next to the fuel and not above it. These kinds of tests and precautions can only be good, but if NASA had stuck with what worked up to that point (astronauts on top of the assembly) instead of changing things up, the tests and worries wouldn't be necessary, and lives would have been saved in 2003, and possibly 1986. Here's hoping this turns out to be inconsequentially small, or at least easily repairable.
If your BMI was in the 11 ballpark, you're either lucky to be alive, or using non-canonical units. The standard unit for BMI is kg/m^2. For a nice concrete example, I'm a hair over 6 feet tall and weigh around 180 pounds. If I just did my math right, that makes my BMI a touch under 25 (24.6, I think). 30 isn't far away, and 25 is considered overweight. That tells me that BMI isn't terribly accurate, at least in my case, as I don't consider myself overweight (or near it). Anyway, no, 30 kg/m^2 is big, but not obscene.
(Non-USians, I used US units to relate to this post's parent's author. If (s)he weren't from the US, (s)he wouldn't have used non-standard units.)
I commend you on your pedantry, but how exactly is one supposed to keep one's Social Security Number so useless that its theft is meaningless? Like it or not, SSNs are inextricably tied to identity and government services by all sorts of government practices and laws, and there is no way around that currently.
I'm one of the people whose SSNs were stolen; the vast majority (mine included) of the numbers belonged to people who had not cashed their state tax refund check before some date (29 May comes to mind). Ohio sprung for a year's worth of ID theft protection for everyone involved, not that it probably cost them much, seeing as how the company's name was all over the website set up and letters sent for this purpose. Of course, my SSN will still be stolen a year from now, and it would seem that the best identity theft protection would be not letting identities get stolen in the first place.
(I was about to ask who in their right mind would let an intern walk out of a building with almost a million cleartext SSNs under his protection, but whoever allowed this obviously wasn't in their right mind.)
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Any country could work with those two space programs and complete a space walk on their own.
I take it, then, that you're against competition in other realms as well? I mean, hey, anybody can work with Microsoft or Apple and make hardware or software. Heck, anyone can work with RIAA to make music too.
To clarify (and agree), the fireworks depicted during the opening ceremony did in fact go off as shown. The actual footage everyone saw, unless they were in Beijing, was a computer-rendered simulation of the same fireworks. The reason they were animated for broadcast is that the shot shown of the fireworks would have been at best difficult and dangerous, and at worst impossible, to do for real and live. I don't really see the big deal for this; it's basically some special effects showing an angle that couldn't otherwise be shown. It's like all the news networks doing a story about West Bumfuck, Iowa, and using Google Earth to do a fairly nifty zoom-in-from-orbit effect because that obviously can't be done for real. But nobody screams at CNN for that. Of course, that being said, I don't exactly give China the benefit of the doubt for things they have a real motive to lie about, like space missions.
On the contrary, I imagine he'll hire someone to represent him (though Ray will not doubt assist himself). Someone above made mention of a legal saying (probably just here in the States) that "the lawyer who represents himself has a fool for a client." I don't know Ray at all and can't possibly say whether he'd ask for, or accept, donations to his defense, but it's certainly a thought. Any /.ers have ideas on other creative and effective ways of showing support?
All,
Mr. Beckerman is, as most of us know, one of the most respected members of the Slashdot community. He's posted many, many stories and innumerable comments, all with great insight and actual legal information from a real lawyer (yes, HIAL). Over quite a long time, he's become one of us, and he probably has the highest karma in the history of Slashdot. He's done a great deal to help us all, and now it's time to return the favor. There are a lot of comments here about how dumb a move this is on the RIAA's part, and how they'll finally get embarrassed by NewYorkCountryLawyer himself. I happen to agree.
However, Ray is only one man, and the RIAA has the means, and probably the will, to throw so many of their lawyers and arcane procedural motions at him to make his personal life a living hell. So it's time now that we thank him and make it clear that were behind him. As for how, that's up to you. Maybe send encouraging emails. If he comments here, reply with your support. Spread the word about the RIAA trying to sue a legal critic into silence. Please, everyone who's been enlightened, informed, and amused by Ray's comments here, do your part in return.
what raging idiot at Microsoft green lighted this ad campaign?
DEVELOPERS! DEVELOPERS! DEVELOPERS! DEVELOPERS!
So, some researchers used Facebook as a singularly inefficient method of DDoSing someone. Anyone who wants a site taken down will use a botnet or something more reliable (and high-volume) than counting on Facebook users to add the latest greatest app of the day. Am I missing something, or is this really not nearly serious enough even to make /.?
The point, as I understand the FIG, is this: younger kids are more mentally willing to attempt dangerous tricks, but are less physically able to successfully perform them without running a high risk of severe injury. Paradoxically, the more physically resilient they get as they reach maturity, the less mentally willing they are to put themselves at risk. The FIG is---or rightly believes itself to be---charged not only with the promotion of gymnastics, but also with taking reasonable measures to protect the well-being and lives of the gymnasts they work with. Thus, at the very highest level of their sport, they (and not the IOC) put in an age minimum to prevent 12-year-old girls and boys from trying a quadruple flip and breaking their backs or necks. The type of injuries gymnasts risk is unusually severe among Olympic sports, and I think that it is reasonable that the sport's overseer has acted to mitigate this somewhat.
Also, there's a significant "fearlessness" factor involved: Younger kids are less likely to think in terms of danger and self-injury than older ones, so kids under 16 are much more likely to attempt borderline-insane tricks. And, being smaller and lighter, they're more likely to be able to do them.
Actually, I posted this Tuesday night; I don't know why this article is stuffed away over here. Maybe it was timestamped 24 hours too early for some reason?
Eh, I wouldn't fret about it.
Most of your examples are situations where no result can be expected, only hoped for. If probability significantly defines the outcome of some action, I suspect that that action isn't really in the spirit of the definition.
The problem is, the RIAA can get sued and convicted into oblivion, but all the RIAA is is a shell corp for the big record companies. The record companies themselves won't have to answer for this, and if RIAA is legally forced under, the record companies will just make another shell corp to cover their asses. This will only truly matter when someone sues the record companies themselves.
Incidently, I never saw why point releases for OS X were so special either - at least in terms of news.
Yeah, but the point releases of which you speak aren't really as minor as the incrementing would have you believe; rather, they're only labelled as point releases so that Apple can take advantage of the "OS X" = "OS 10" branding they can do. From a standpoint of features/upgrades/fixes, the "point releases" are probably somewhere between a Windows SP and a new Windows OS release. So I can see why they're so discussed.
My school just migrated over to Google Apps, or rather is in the process of migrating. I understand that network outages, though rare, can result in email downtime, or worse, emails lost forever. This is especially bad at my school, where by policy, official communication from the university to students and vice versa is done via email and email only (this may not be at all unique; I really don't know). However, I can see one great side effect of this, and it is that, if all goes according to plan, I will be able to keep my university email address plus storage (on Google servers, true) indefinitely after I graduate. This would be a big help, as I use my university email as my main address, and it would be a big pain to have to change to another address in a year or so.
Are the states actually facing the prospect of being sued here, or just being subpoenaed for information? My understanding is that states cannot be sued without their own consent; surely they wouldn't consent to this.[1] Can anyone else clarify this? [1]Cue the "...and don't call me Shirley" comments!
I go to a university in Cleveland. Needless to say, we get a good amount of snow in wintertime, being on a lake as we are. Well, our business (oh, I'm sorry, management) school has a Gehry building (pictures here, look at the floor plans to get an idea of how confusing the building is) uglying up our campus, too. Problem is, the roof is so curved and twisted that once snow starts to fall, it collects on the roof until huge chunks of snow and ice fall around 15 feet off it all at once, onto a heavily-traveled sidewalk. The problem was so bad that the university used to just close that sidewalk for the winter once the first flake hit the ground.
Now, starting for this winter, they've installed concrete planters along the building, probably (but not admittedly) to give the snow a place to land that isn't on students' heads, while still keeping the sidewalk open. Rumor is that my school wanted Gehry to pony up money to help pay for the planters, but he refused. I mean, seriously, would a competent architect fail to realize that snow falls in Cleveland? Doubtful, but Gehry did.
Finder is fixed (we hope)
Forgive me for sounding dumb, but what's wrong with Finder as is? I'm not defending, trolling, or saying it's perfect, I'm just curious. I can't think of anything I'd like to see different in it (but I'll admit my experience is limited and I'm not as much of a power user as many here are). I often see comments like "Finder is broken" with no explanation, so what's broken about it?
Funny, that's not what I called it back in the day.
Great...now how will anyone be able to use this ruling if they don't know they've been searched in the first place? You need legal standing to sue, and that means being able to prove you've been searched, which act will be either 1) impossible or 2) illegal under the same Act.
2. Democrats are controlling Congress, which does control funds to repair Interstate bridges.
...
Yes, but they haven't been around for terribly long. Any road funding bills they've passed (if any) cannot have been implemented in full yet, unless you think the mechanisms in place to do road construction are efficient, in which case I have a bridge to sell you. The GOP's had almost uninterrupted control of the Congress since 1995 (right?); any spending bills which could have fixed that bridge and others were passed over on their watch.
1. The President doesn't control funds to repair Interstate bridges.
True. Technically. But if you think back to 2001-2006, the GOP-controlled Congress had its collective mouth firmly around Bush's...yeah. That Congress didn't exactly show great initiative, they just did was Bush told them to. Believe me, if he'd thought to ask for road funding, it would've been done.
3. Neither party has changed anything much, when it comes to funds to repair Interstate bridges.
Indeed. Keep in mind, however, when you think about how much the Democratic Congress has accomplished in terms of legislation sent to Bush's desk, that the GOP contingent in the Senate are in a habit of threatening to filibuster any major bill Democrats try to pass, effectively killing it (you only need 40 to filibuster, and a threat is just as successful as the real thing, since Dems calling the GOP's bluff would just be seen as wasting precious time). As for whether that applies specifically to road funding, I don't know, but it very well may.
Yikes. How many things are wrong with this
About 2.5.
I wonder how many times this kind of thing happened in the 20-ish years before the Space Shuttle started monitoring its underside like this. Surely this can't be the first time (ignoring Columbia) falling foam has taken a chunk out of the shuttle's heat shielding. IMHO, this is a nearly inevitable side effect of the idiotic design of the shuttle, putting the astronauts next to the fuel and not above it. These kinds of tests and precautions can only be good, but if NASA had stuck with what worked up to that point (astronauts on top of the assembly) instead of changing things up, the tests and worries wouldn't be necessary, and lives would have been saved in 2003, and possibly 1986. Here's hoping this turns out to be inconsequentially small, or at least easily repairable.
If your BMI was in the 11 ballpark, you're either lucky to be alive, or using non-canonical units. The standard unit for BMI is kg/m^2. For a nice concrete example, I'm a hair over 6 feet tall and weigh around 180 pounds. If I just did my math right, that makes my BMI a touch under 25 (24.6, I think). 30 isn't far away, and 25 is considered overweight. That tells me that BMI isn't terribly accurate, at least in my case, as I don't consider myself overweight (or near it). Anyway, no, 30 kg/m^2 is big, but not obscene. (Non-USians, I used US units to relate to this post's parent's author. If (s)he weren't from the US, (s)he wouldn't have used non-standard units.)
I commend you on your pedantry, but how exactly is one supposed to keep one's Social Security Number so useless that its theft is meaningless? Like it or not, SSNs are inextricably tied to identity and government services by all sorts of government practices and laws, and there is no way around that currently.
(I was about to ask who in their right mind would let an intern walk out of a building with almost a million cleartext SSNs under his protection, but whoever allowed this obviously wasn't in their right mind.)