"Doctor, you mentioned the ratio of ten women to each man. Now, wouldn't that necessitate the abandonment of the so-called monogamous sexual relationship, I mean, as far as men were concerned?"
"Regrettably, yes. But it is, you know, a sacrifice required for the future of the human race. I hasten to add that since each man will be required to do prodigious...service along these lines, the women will have to be selected for their sexual characteristics which will have to be of a highly stimulating nature."
"I must confess, you have an astonishingly good idea there, Doctor."
Came to the comments for this. Was not disappointed.
It does read like an advertisement, but it is one that, as a parent, I want to read.
Oh, I agree...I should have put some more positive spin on that assessment. I have nothing against vehicle owners installing GPS in said vehicles being used by others. It's paid the bills for me in the past.
Hell, I even let them Big Brother on my car. Progressive Insurance customer here: I gladly signed up for Snapshot when it was available (and drove like a little old lady) for 45 days. Saved a permanent 14% on my annual premium without permanent monitoring.
Is this news because it's LoJack, a household name dating back to my childhood, rather than Wireless Matrix/GPS Insight/Trimble/the 47 other players in this space?
Why is this news? Is it just the consumer commoditization of what businesses have been doing for years? Vehicles + GPS + Web Interface = Big Brother? Whoopee.
I've been supporting deployments of vehicle GPS, geofences, and automatic alerts for years. Maybe that why this article is so underwhelming.
This! Thisthisthisthisthis. Oh man, you just made a friend in me. I was recently told by an industrial engineer here where I work that it was "more important to be a team player and get the general concepts of the integration working before we worry about the details". This is the guy who also has a Master's of Business Administration, but is unable to correctly spell "MBA". Of course, this strategic-level million-dollar project is 14 months late and has had over 22,000 defects logged.
While I violently disagreed with your earlier post about the dangers of the chlorine in table salt, this post redeems you. Well said, well written, and accurate. +1
Thank God you all beat me to it. I logged in for the first time in two years just to deliver the cluestick on the basic chemical differences between gaseous Cl(2) and aqueous Cl- ions, as well as ethyl/methylmercury.
I wish I had mod points.
At first I was relieved that this was a bacteria infecting silicon. Now I'm concerned: When will Avast release an Antibacterial beta? I'm still running Windows, folks! I know I'm vulnerable to this!!!
OK, I have to know: Is the misuse and misspelling of "intents and purposes" in your sigfile ironically intentional, or did you just crack a linguistics joke while unwittingly butchering the English language?
Parent was correct: same delta-v for differing masses. However, since delta-v is nothing more sophisticated than good ol' acceleration (Force x Mass), you do need more force for a greater mass to reach a given delta-v.
My question was along the lines of inducing acceleration in very low mass particles using the principles seen in a Crookes radiometer. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crookes_radiometer Possible?
For the sake of discussion, let's assume this report showed a problem orders of magnitude worse, and we were on the verge of Kessler syndrome conditions. What technologies exist today to combat the problem? (Yes, I know, no government today would unilaterally scrub space without a quid pro quo...)
If there are 19,000 trackable chunks of debris, how many untrackable (and just as deadly) small particles are there? I know that particle densities are minute. If we launched an array of satellites with Aerogel paneling, is it reasonable to expect a significant improvement in "air" quality up there?
What about that heat-ray device recently pulled our of Afghanistan? Can we launch one of those to spray microwaves tangentially to the Earth's surface? Would the heat applied to a paint-chip sized debris particle be enough to change the orbit? It doesn't take too much delta-v to alter the eccentricity of a paint fleck enough to burn up in orbit, does it?
The City of Scottsdale employs aggressive, effective process servers. I dodged the ticket for 3 months, then got served at 8 pm on Martin Luther King Day. I never expected a server to be working after hours on a federal holiday.
I live in Phoenix, AZ where speed cameras were recently deactivated after two years of controversy. The same vendor, Redflex, was snapping pictures if you were driving 11+ mph over the limit.
However, Tempe and Scottsdale still have red-light cameras. I have no issue with red-light cameras, so long as common sense is used when reviewing tickets. TFA:
Although most were still violations of state law, they were considered very close calls or were due to such reasons as vehicles stopping a short distance over the stop bar that did not pose a traffic hazard, vehicles moving out of the way of an emergency vehicle, plates that were unidentifiable and weather related issues.
Speeders going 11-over when the rest of traffic drives 8-over aren't a public safety risk; red-light runners coming perpendicular to broadside traffic and kids in crosswalks are.
Sounds like a sudden outbreak of common sense. Ticket those red-light runners. I paid my ticket for getting there after the yellow; fair and square.
Not that it matters, but if you're going to rebut someone with a snopes link, at least state that it's true. Snopes debunks so many urban legends that the folks who can't be bothered to even RTFA will think you just debunked the whole cocaine-laced money thing.
I seem to remember a recent article describing the smell of space (http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/station/crew/exp6/spacechronicles4.html). The senses are completely bombarded with input which our brain ignores, for example the feel of your tongue on your teeth right now, or the weight of your shirt. Remove the background input, and the brain will interpret what is left and reported.
If space can have a smell, it can most certainly have a taste. It just might not be raspberry-flavored in our neck of the Milky Way.
You, sir, may be trolling for some epic battle of 'teh flames' but your points are valid. Star Wars had the makings of an epic tale, if only G-Lucas could have contrived a coherent delivery. In its current form, it's been nothing more than the wet dream of a DND Magic Missile D20...with blasters and midichlori-something-or-others in the end.
God I wish I had mod points...I read that part of the article and I knew somewhere, subconsiously, I had heard that broken English somewhere before. Thank you for the translation from Rooskie.
Fortuantely for the parent, there is no -1, Wrong moderation option.
The cable companies do not encrypt the digital stream unless the channel is on a pay tier, or the content provider mandates it. My employer had been carrying ESPN HD, Discovery HD, History HD, and a few other national channels in the clear for almost a year. Contract renegotiations have come up, and those channels now must be encrypted for us to retain the rights to carry them. As a result, the cable co looks like the bad guy when we must tell our subs that they now must lease a converter box or CableCard to decrypt the channels we previously could send in the clear.
In regards to being forced into using the company's cable box, the FCC has mandated this to be illegal. Simply go down to your local electronics store and pickup a CableCard enabled converter...which according to the FCC, should be available nationwide. Oh wait...no manufacturer has started making them in the last 3 years. Go FCC! There's always TiVo, I suppose...
The last bit in your post made me think...so prepare for a little ramble... Is today's society really any different than in the past? Corporate sponsorship of such things as stadiums is relatively new, but every time I read an old newspaper (I'm talking Wild West to Great Depression) I am fascinated by the blatant advertising for snake oil remedies and get-rich-quick gold rush schemes. It was right out there on the front page, too. Are we really any different today in America than the rowdy Chinese and Indian markets of yesterday? Perhaps the only difference is that these ads come faceless, in print or in video, rather than a hard-up vendor pushing his wares on the market corner.
To that end, why are there so many ads? Well, ads simply *work*. If they didn't, there would be no marketing departments and no billboards, no jingles on the radio, no Super Bowl extravaganza commericials.
I also think ad dollars (and the inevitable ads they pay for) save the average American a lot of money each year. How, you might say? Ad sales finance ventures that may otherwise be unprofitable or unsustainable. When Google became more than just the new kid on the block, and needed to finance a "real" business, they turned to ad sales for revenue. Broadcast TV is free to the public only because advertisers pay for airtime. I cannot imagine a scenario where ABC/NBC/CBS could stay in business broadcasting for free, without the life support of ad sales. Is this a bad thing? I don't think so. Even if 13 minutes of every half hour program is advertising, I get to watch an episode of [your favorite show] for free, courtesy of Tide or Tampax or Ford or whichever ad was on while I was digging in the fridge for some mustard on my sandwich. Unfortunately, those broadcasters (and most cable networks) are now addicted to this revenue and try to find more new places to sell ad space, like in-show interstitials.
Does some advertising go to far? Certainly. There's no need for annoying interstitials during a show, especially when it covers up an important part of the action. Do ad dollars shape the world we see today? Of course. Some of our most American retreats are named for advertising. Wrigley Field for example...possibly the first stadium named for an advertiser. It's a historic name now, but we're all weary of Pac Bell/SBC/AT&T Wireless/Minute Maid Park and the Nokia Sugar Bowl. (That said, I would have hated to see Candlestick Park in San Francisco fade away into the shadows over something simple like the naming rights...my all time favorite ballpark, and I'm not even from California)
Ads can be annoying and overdone, but they are a product of a free capitalistic society. Considering the available societal alternatives (China, Myanmar, and Cuba come to mind), I'll take a few ads and nearly constant product placement. Besides, I didn't buy a Tivo for nothing!
I agree with you that heroic stands need to be made in the face of abuses of constitutional rights; in fact, I wholeheartedly agree with the entire first paragraph. However, even though this will get modded down into oblivion, your final sentence ruins the entire spirit of the post, turning it from an insightful, inspriational comment into a partisan insult. (Disclaimer: I am not affiliated or registered with any major party, though I did vote for Bush in 2000) Abuses of personal privacy by the FBI/CIA are nothing new, and cannot be blamed on either the national Republican party or those Congress-critters who voted for the Patriot Act while the rubble of the WTC was still being cleared from the ashes.
I agree that major sections of the Patriot Act brush up against the grayest of gray areas in the realm of constitutional law, and that they should be revisited and even repealed. Given time, any reactionary measure should be reviewed and revised. Emotions and political actions do not observe Newton's laws of motion. If anything, each action is met with an underwhelming lack of reaction (Katrina and the Gulf Coast) or an overzealous attempt to keep anything bad from happening again, ever, at any cost (America: Sept. 12, 2001-present). There is precious little middle ground when an appropriate response is ever made.
See the Patriot Act for what it was in historical terms: a reactionary measure passed and supported by representatives of a hurting, angry nation. Considering the national mood at the time, it was the "right" thing to do: Americans were more than happy to give up essential liberties for Bush's promise of temporary security. His approval ratings set new historical record highs in the weeks immediately following the 9/11 attacks and the start of the Afghan war.
These metrics cannot be blamed on the whole of the Republican party or on the Congress seated in 2001-2002. Instead blame the current administration for continuing to act as though we are attacked on our soil on a daily basis, more than 6 years after those attacks. The Dubya Bush administration is like a paranoid meth addict, convinced that there is someone right there hiding who might "endangerfy our American way of life". While legitimate threats exist both inside and outside our borders, a bombing, the destruction of a major landmark or building, even a massive attack that cripples or destroys a city will not change our way of life. America will go on; hopefully, continuing to uphold and honor our constitutional rights.
Perhaps the saddest part of 9/11 is that the attacks themselves did not change America's way of life. America's panicky reaction and an adminstration that used this panic to grant itself unsupervised and unconstitutional executive powers changed our American way of life. Such results can not be blamed on the current Republican national party, nor on Al Qaeda, nor on the Reps or the Dems who supported the original Patriot Act. Full responsibility should rest squarely on the man in the White House. George W. Bush has preyed on the fears of the population in every speech and policy for years, reaping the benefits of governing a nation of sheeple. He has made his legacy from this, and it will not be remembered fondly in years to come.
Slashdot Mirror
"Doctor, you mentioned the ratio of ten women to each man. Now, wouldn't that necessitate the abandonment of the so-called monogamous sexual relationship, I mean, as far as men were concerned?"
"Regrettably, yes. But it is, you know, a sacrifice required for the future of the human race. I hasten to add that since each man will be required to do prodigious...service along these lines, the women will have to be selected for their sexual characteristics which will have to be of a highly stimulating nature."
"I must confess, you have an astonishingly good idea there, Doctor."
Came to the comments for this. Was not disappointed.
It does read like an advertisement, but it is one that, as a parent, I want to read.
Oh, I agree...I should have put some more positive spin on that assessment. I have nothing against vehicle owners installing GPS in said vehicles being used by others. It's paid the bills for me in the past.
Hell, I even let them Big Brother on my car. Progressive Insurance customer here: I gladly signed up for Snapshot when it was available (and drove like a little old lady) for 45 days. Saved a permanent 14% on my annual premium without permanent monitoring.
Is this news because it's LoJack, a household name dating back to my childhood, rather than Wireless Matrix/GPS Insight/Trimble/the 47 other players in this space?
Why is this news? Is it just the consumer commoditization of what businesses have been doing for years? Vehicles + GPS + Web Interface = Big Brother? Whoopee.
I've been supporting deployments of vehicle GPS, geofences, and automatic alerts for years. Maybe that why this article is so underwhelming.
Also, it reads like an advertisement.
This! Thisthisthisthisthis. Oh man, you just made a friend in me. I was recently told by an industrial engineer here where I work that it was "more important to be a team player and get the general concepts of the integration working before we worry about the details". This is the guy who also has a Master's of Business Administration, but is unable to correctly spell "MBA". Of course, this strategic-level million-dollar project is 14 months late and has had over 22,000 defects logged.
I wonder why.
While I violently disagreed with your earlier post about the dangers of the chlorine in table salt, this post redeems you. Well said, well written, and accurate. +1
Thank God you all beat me to it. I logged in for the first time in two years just to deliver the cluestick on the basic chemical differences between gaseous Cl(2) and aqueous Cl- ions, as well as ethyl/methylmercury. I wish I had mod points.
At first I was relieved that this was a bacteria infecting silicon. Now I'm concerned: When will Avast release an Antibacterial beta? I'm still running Windows, folks! I know I'm vulnerable to this!!!
OK, I have to know: Is the misuse and misspelling of "intents and purposes" in your sigfile ironically intentional, or did you just crack a linguistics joke while unwittingly butchering the English language?
You must be new here. http://tech.slashdot.org/story/10/07/19/1917237/China-Shoots-Down-Another-Satellite
Of course - golf balls do change shape, just not while freely rolling. In my case, it's about 100 times every round of 18. Case in point: http://www.golf-simulators.com/images/BallCompression.jpg
Parent was correct: same delta-v for differing masses. However, since delta-v is nothing more sophisticated than good ol' acceleration (Force x Mass), you do need more force for a greater mass to reach a given delta-v.
My question was along the lines of inducing acceleration in very low mass particles using the principles seen in a Crookes radiometer. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crookes_radiometer Possible?
For the sake of discussion, let's assume this report showed a problem orders of magnitude worse, and we were on the verge of Kessler syndrome conditions. What technologies exist today to combat the problem? (Yes, I know, no government today would unilaterally scrub space without a quid pro quo...)
If there are 19,000 trackable chunks of debris, how many untrackable (and just as deadly) small particles are there? I know that particle densities are minute. If we launched an array of satellites with Aerogel paneling, is it reasonable to expect a significant improvement in "air" quality up there?
What about that heat-ray device recently pulled our of Afghanistan? Can we launch one of those to spray microwaves tangentially to the Earth's surface? Would the heat applied to a paint-chip sized debris particle be enough to change the orbit? It doesn't take too much delta-v to alter the eccentricity of a paint fleck enough to burn up in orbit, does it?
(Less coffee, more sleep next time, methinks)
it is so tightly wound and then encased with little to no wiggle room that this alteration of shape would not take place.
The City of Scottsdale employs aggressive, effective process servers. I dodged the ticket for 3 months, then got served at 8 pm on Martin Luther King Day. I never expected a server to be working after hours on a federal holiday.
I live in Phoenix, AZ where speed cameras were recently deactivated after two years of controversy. The same vendor, Redflex, was snapping pictures if you were driving 11+ mph over the limit.
However, Tempe and Scottsdale still have red-light cameras. I have no issue with red-light cameras, so long as common sense is used when reviewing tickets. TFA:
Although most were still violations of state law, they were considered very close calls or were due to such reasons as vehicles stopping a short distance over the stop bar that did not pose a traffic hazard, vehicles moving out of the way of an emergency vehicle, plates that were unidentifiable and weather related issues.
Speeders going 11-over when the rest of traffic drives 8-over aren't a public safety risk; red-light runners coming perpendicular to broadside traffic and kids in crosswalks are.
Sounds like a sudden outbreak of common sense. Ticket those red-light runners. I paid my ticket for getting there after the yellow; fair and square.
Not that it matters, but if you're going to rebut someone with a snopes link, at least state that it's true. Snopes debunks so many urban legends that the folks who can't be bothered to even RTFA will think you just debunked the whole cocaine-laced money thing.
**SNIFF** Man, George Washington smells good.
What sort of competition is there in your city for sewage services? Is it expensive to change providers?
My point exactly, but your delivery was all the more poetic than mine.
I seem to remember a recent article describing the smell of space (http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/station/crew/exp6/spacechronicles4.html). The senses are completely bombarded with input which our brain ignores, for example the feel of your tongue on your teeth right now, or the weight of your shirt. Remove the background input, and the brain will interpret what is left and reported.
If space can have a smell, it can most certainly have a taste. It just might not be raspberry-flavored in our neck of the Milky Way.
You, sir, may be trolling for some epic battle of 'teh flames' but your points are valid. Star Wars had the makings of an epic tale, if only G-Lucas could have contrived a coherent delivery. In its current form, it's been nothing more than the wet dream of a DND Magic Missile D20...with blasters and midichlori-something-or-others in the end.
+1 Awesome.
God I wish I had mod points...I read that part of the article and I knew somewhere, subconsiously, I had heard that broken English somewhere before. Thank you for the translation from Rooskie.
Fortuantely for the parent, there is no -1, Wrong moderation option.
The cable companies do not encrypt the digital stream unless the channel is on a pay tier, or the content provider mandates it. My employer had been carrying ESPN HD, Discovery HD, History HD, and a few other national channels in the clear for almost a year. Contract renegotiations have come up, and those channels now must be encrypted for us to retain the rights to carry them. As a result, the cable co looks like the bad guy when we must tell our subs that they now must lease a converter box or CableCard to decrypt the channels we previously could send in the clear.
In regards to being forced into using the company's cable box, the FCC has mandated this to be illegal. Simply go down to your local electronics store and pickup a CableCard enabled converter...which according to the FCC, should be available nationwide. Oh wait...no manufacturer has started making them in the last 3 years. Go FCC! There's always TiVo, I suppose...
You need to review your history. Johnson was acquitted by one vote. Read the article to which you linked.
Or: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impeachment_of_Andrew_Johnson Again, the Wikipedia entry has more info.
The last bit in your post made me think...so prepare for a little ramble... Is today's society really any different than in the past? Corporate sponsorship of such things as stadiums is relatively new, but every time I read an old newspaper (I'm talking Wild West to Great Depression) I am fascinated by the blatant advertising for snake oil remedies and get-rich-quick gold rush schemes. It was right out there on the front page, too. Are we really any different today in America than the rowdy Chinese and Indian markets of yesterday? Perhaps the only difference is that these ads come faceless, in print or in video, rather than a hard-up vendor pushing his wares on the market corner.
To that end, why are there so many ads? Well, ads simply *work*. If they didn't, there would be no marketing departments and no billboards, no jingles on the radio, no Super Bowl extravaganza commericials.
I also think ad dollars (and the inevitable ads they pay for) save the average American a lot of money each year. How, you might say? Ad sales finance ventures that may otherwise be unprofitable or unsustainable. When Google became more than just the new kid on the block, and needed to finance a "real" business, they turned to ad sales for revenue. Broadcast TV is free to the public only because advertisers pay for airtime. I cannot imagine a scenario where ABC/NBC/CBS could stay in business broadcasting for free, without the life support of ad sales. Is this a bad thing? I don't think so. Even if 13 minutes of every half hour program is advertising, I get to watch an episode of [your favorite show] for free, courtesy of Tide or Tampax or Ford or whichever ad was on while I was digging in the fridge for some mustard on my sandwich. Unfortunately, those broadcasters (and most cable networks) are now addicted to this revenue and try to find more new places to sell ad space, like in-show interstitials.
Does some advertising go to far? Certainly. There's no need for annoying interstitials during a show, especially when it covers up an important part of the action. Do ad dollars shape the world we see today? Of course. Some of our most American retreats are named for advertising. Wrigley Field for example...possibly the first stadium named for an advertiser. It's a historic name now, but we're all weary of Pac Bell/SBC/AT&T Wireless/Minute Maid Park and the Nokia Sugar Bowl. (That said, I would have hated to see Candlestick Park in San Francisco fade away into the shadows over something simple like the naming rights...my all time favorite ballpark, and I'm not even from California)
Ads can be annoying and overdone, but they are a product of a free capitalistic society. Considering the available societal alternatives (China, Myanmar, and Cuba come to mind), I'll take a few ads and nearly constant product placement. Besides, I didn't buy a Tivo for nothing!
I agree with you that heroic stands need to be made in the face of abuses of constitutional rights; in fact, I wholeheartedly agree with the entire first paragraph. However, even though this will get modded down into oblivion, your final sentence ruins the entire spirit of the post, turning it from an insightful, inspriational comment into a partisan insult. (Disclaimer: I am not affiliated or registered with any major party, though I did vote for Bush in 2000) Abuses of personal privacy by the FBI/CIA are nothing new, and cannot be blamed on either the national Republican party or those Congress-critters who voted for the Patriot Act while the rubble of the WTC was still being cleared from the ashes.
I agree that major sections of the Patriot Act brush up against the grayest of gray areas in the realm of constitutional law, and that they should be revisited and even repealed. Given time, any reactionary measure should be reviewed and revised. Emotions and political actions do not observe Newton's laws of motion. If anything, each action is met with an underwhelming lack of reaction (Katrina and the Gulf Coast) or an overzealous attempt to keep anything bad from happening again, ever, at any cost (America: Sept. 12, 2001-present). There is precious little middle ground when an appropriate response is ever made.
See the Patriot Act for what it was in historical terms: a reactionary measure passed and supported by representatives of a hurting, angry nation. Considering the national mood at the time, it was the "right" thing to do: Americans were more than happy to give up essential liberties for Bush's promise of temporary security. His approval ratings set new historical record highs in the weeks immediately following the 9/11 attacks and the start of the Afghan war.
These metrics cannot be blamed on the whole of the Republican party or on the Congress seated in 2001-2002. Instead blame the current administration for continuing to act as though we are attacked on our soil on a daily basis, more than 6 years after those attacks. The Dubya Bush administration is like a paranoid meth addict, convinced that there is someone right there hiding who might "endangerfy our American way of life". While legitimate threats exist both inside and outside our borders, a bombing, the destruction of a major landmark or building, even a massive attack that cripples or destroys a city will not change our way of life. America will go on; hopefully, continuing to uphold and honor our constitutional rights.
Perhaps the saddest part of 9/11 is that the attacks themselves did not change America's way of life. America's panicky reaction and an adminstration that used this panic to grant itself unsupervised and unconstitutional executive powers changed our American way of life. Such results can not be blamed on the current Republican national party, nor on Al Qaeda, nor on the Reps or the Dems who supported the original Patriot Act. Full responsibility should rest squarely on the man in the White House. George W. Bush has preyed on the fears of the population in every speech and policy for years, reaping the benefits of governing a nation of sheeple. He has made his legacy from this, and it will not be remembered fondly in years to come.