I guess the hope is that with government backing in the name of ending dependence on foreign oil, the cost of legal costs will drop drastically. The single biggest cost to these things is the lawyers to fight the bullshit hippie pro-bono lawyers that file injunction after injunction. Its just like what the telecoms do when they can win on principles... they bankrupt the opponent with legal processes. Its hard to believe these people were educated enough to make it through law school considering the amount of made-up, uneducated, bullshit that spews out of their mouths. Maybe now that half their tree-hugging buddies working at the white house actually promoting this crap, they might back off. Maybe a few well placed IRS audits of those legal firms doing the pro-bono, bankrupt-the-other-guy, tactics would be a great shoe-on-the-other-foot approach that would have them spending money in their own audit defense (remember a lawyer that represents himself has a fool for a client, so this time it actually costs them something).
I believe the answer to #1 is claimed to be approximately 1000 but AFAIK its really just a cat. The problem with radiation exposure is that ANY future problems and cancers is not able to separate liability... it _could_ be from that exposure, it could be that your a piece of chain-smoking crap that smokes 6 packs a day that caused your cancer. After spending 6yrs running a naval nuclear plant (1yr was a refueling overhaul so my total accumulative exposure is 10x the nominal amount most get) should I come down with a thyroid problem or something else later... it will always be an unknown if I would have developed the condition naturally or if exposure triggered the problem. Its not just a man-made power plant that can be culpable for the issue either. I get mrem of exposure from dental exams, chest/back xray, etc.
Living 1yr in Denver, due to altitude, is approximately 500mrem per year. That's the same targeted exposure goal for us working in the plant. Those of you living in Denver.. WATCH OUT! lol
a lesson in half-lives... this isn't directed directly at you but its the 8th time I've seen mention about lifespans and how long something sticks around.
half-life means that the amount of radioactivity of an isotope has decayed away to 50% of what it was before. So if you take something like Cobalt 60 with a half-life of 5.27 years, then in 5.27 years your radioactivity is cut by half of the previous level. It is generally accepted as the rule of thumb that after 5 half-lives radioactivity has decayed to essentially nothing. For cobalt 60 this means that in 30 years it will have decayed away into nickel.
I do appreciate the dr strangelove reference though:)
the irony is amazing.. I was a nuclear engineer in the navy for 6 years and we were not able to have port visits in japan because we were nuclear powered. Its interesting to learn that they know own most of westinghouse, whom as you pointed out, is a big player in nulear power. The W of the D2W cores of the 150MW plants I operated stood for westinghouse. It's understandable why they where 'shell shocked' about nuclear power, but the irony is still not lost. It's my understanding that as a whole they're still pretty anti-nuclear.
agreed, most people dont understand that chernobyl was a breeder reactor built on a positive reactivity coefficient. The rods themselves controlled rector power instead of using a thermal moderator like water. It also did not use the designed requirement of being able to be shut down with the most critical rod stuck at the top.
its not specifically 'waste'. Its unspent uranium where the yield is too low to sustain criticality. Just like biofuel and solar cells were not efficent enough at one time to be viable; reprocessing the spent fuel to make new disperision clusters in order to re-cycle the unspent uranium is a possibility. Its just that not enough research has been spent doing so.
Im sure ballistics is part of the settings. If its smart enough to calculate range, it probably knows altitude based on atmo pressure. Theres probably some setting for cartrige 5.56x45, 7.62x51,.308,.223. That would just leave grain variants, wind, and rifling twists. Still though, thats a lot fewer calculations to deal with than before. My problem is at 500yds even 12" is hard to see, need more practice:)
if its for the purpose of home defense then its the equivalent of suffering a severe asthma attack but having your inhaler disassembled and locked in a medicine cabinet. You might not have the extra 3-5 min to arm your weapon. Its not any safer than locking your weapons in a quick access vault. If they really want to get to it they will sneak your watch when you take it off to shower or whenever. Safety is a multilayer process including education. As far as home intruders, its already been mentioned that 2 persons wrestling for the weapon would leave it within range or working even if the assailant prevails in obtaining it.
I hope its not all about 'think of the children' because there are much more realistic solutions out there. Honestly who is making sure the damn liquor cabinet and medicine cabinet are equally protected. More children are killed by abuses of these locations than firearms.
children playing with their guns is easily solved with quick access gun vaults; either keypad, biometric, or that finger button hybrid. If they are smart enough to circumvent that then they are smart enough to borrow your watch when you are sleeping, showering, working on the car and dont want to ruin it, etc.
what if, instead, the gun isn't just listening but also the transmitter making the watch is a passive RFID tag? you could still steal the data much the same way passport rfid collection works, but the likelihood of knowing which tag to use within the short time you disarmed someone and tried to use their weapon against them is unlikely. I don't see much civillian or military use for this. When I need a weapon to fire it needs to be as simple and straight forward as possible. One of my home defense pistols is a.357 revolver simply because there is so little that can possibly go wrong with them.
I do see this being marketed to police who have the highest risk of having their service weapon taken and used on them. I'm not so sure about the whole watch/pin-code concept though. Most people are right handed and wear their watches on their left hand. 20cm is not an overly large distance and while 2-handed shooting is more accurate, there could be cases where the officer has to shoot 1-handed. If they used a passive RFID, maybe fingerless gloves or, if possible, sub-dermal implant would make more sense.
I bet these designers got their idea from the 1995 Judge Dredd movie where the gun was bound to the owners DNA
there was a law that criminalized not assisting a violent crime? I've not heard of that. In the seinfeld case they were put in jail for a year for not rushing to the assistance. How can any law allow you to be put into harms way during an armed robbery? Though MA is a crazy place.
yes the whole thing is deplorable, but putting someone in jail for it is a pretty slippery slope. A very similar argument happened just after WWI in the newly formed soviet russia. In a communistic society everyone has to pull their weight and do their fair share. There were a lot of slackers not pulling their weight but still receiving the contributions from those that were. Then they started putting those same people in jail for being deadbeats of society. History now tells the story of that time with a completely different view. Things got way out of control, lots of people died, the gulags (not sure how its spelled) are a part of brutal world history event. As a libertarian I fear any law that takes away freedom because most laws never pose the hacker-test (ie how can i break this or exploit this before putting it into production). They pass a law that sounds great, only to find out it created some situation where the wrong people suffer while those that should suffer do not (example: adding taxes and fees to companies like insurances or utilities etc, we all know that all this does is raise end-user costs, so its you and I that really suffer)
63-2 in the house, with that overwhelming support I have little doubt of it having the same response in the senate. The only thing standing in the way of this becoming law will be court review if deemed unconstitutional.
As a bonus, we could clone rare (or maybe even extinct) species, and eat them too!
considering the items I have read about that were considered delicacy in Japan, I wouldn't be surprised if this did not happen in the next 50 years. Sounds like good fodder for an alternate society of a sci fi novel.
wait, your saying that posting sexually related topics on a blog from a classroom computer qualifies as reasonable and appropriate to the school environment? what country do you live in where this is OK? Let the local news run a story about a teacher posting sex related topics on public sites while at *home*; and see how long before half the parents start calling for his termination
This particular county has instructed teachers to NOT maintain a facebook accounts and HAS fired teachers for maintaining such accounts even from their home computers. Something as simple as a picture of several friends at a club holding a beer smiling for a camera has resulted in termination based on several different contracts the teachers sign. Because the way 8 different contracts the teachers sign at the beginning of every school year, there is no legal recourse if you feel you were wrongfully terminated.
I am 100% certain that what this teacher did is clearly outlined by any AUP he signed or any other employment contract. To somehow suggest he isn't in violation of any number of contracts he signs as a teacher is beyond insane. My wife yells (figuratively) at me every time I accidentally send email to her work address instead of her personal address even when the topic is somewhat related to school. I once sent a link to a news article about a speech Obama gave regarding education and the school moderators deleted it out of her inbox and gave her a verbal warning.
my point is that its not just some single school system but many must adopt these policies and others that showed up as requirements for taking funds from grants like 'reading first' 'no child left behind' 'title one' etc. This goes back to my original point that the teacher that used a school computer to post his posts has no grounds to sue the school system or the blog in question for any violation of privacy as I am sure he has already signed everything away in an AUP just like this one. As far as enforcement, thats a case by case basis; but when they _do_ choose to give you a 'quit or be fired' ultimatum, these AUP's have the teeth to back them up legally.
it doesnt work that way. Theres dozens of employees waiting to take your place if you get fired for not complying with the use policy. The position is a salary based position so the 'free' work you refer to is more task driven. If you get your assigned responsibilities done in 8hrs great, if it takes you 15 to complete the same amount of work then it takes you 15. Dont take my word for it, phrases like:
"...are to be used solely for the purpose of supporting the educational mission of the school system and conducting the business of the school system."
and
"may not access or download material from the Internet except for legitimate educational reasons"
seems to be pretty clear to me. Here is a link to an acceptable use policy for my wife's current district. She has worked in several districts in a couple of states and they all made her sign something nearly verbatim to this.
excerpted from http://www.fcboe.org/joomla153/files/technology_services/staff_aup.pdf :
All computers, software, network connections, Internet connections, and e-mail systems provided to the staff of the Fayette County Board of Education are the property of the Board of Education and are to be used solely for the purpose of supporting the educational mission of the school system and conducting the business of the school system. The Board of Education and any employee with supervisory capacity may monitor, intercept, record or retrieve any e-mail or Internet communication from any computer or program furnished by the Board of Education. All staff members are specifically informed that they have no right to expect that their communications are private or confidential.
...continuing...
1.8. Employees may not access or download material from the Internet except for legitimate educational reasons and shall comply with all copyright laws applicable to material downloaded. The accessing or downloading of any material on the Internet, including but not limited to pornographic or sexually explicit material, for personal reasons is strictly prohibited.
this was not a case of him posting from home and someone cleverly discovering who he was. Thats an obvious intrusion. This was a case of a school computer used to post on the site and the IP was traced back to the public school system. No nickname matching was needed. I am also led to believe that the poster was repeatedly behaving in a way to cause the website to investigate the source of the user. One inappropriate post is not going to get an admin to start playing detective/ tattle tale. Using a school computer for anything other than responding to parents email messages or going to approved websites for instructional use is a breach of his contract with the school. If you show a movie in your class you better be prepared to explain exactly how it ties into core content.
School systems do not allow for any personal use. They also have morality clauses built into their contract. The poster was wise to post anonymously but when his IP came up as a public school domain he was caught. Its no different from visiting facebook or any other site. Considering the fact that the guy was discussing sex related topics (pussy) at school is just as bad as reading penthouse letters while in the classroom.
My wife is a teacher and as such she has to keep her facebook page private. Should any picture show up on the internet (even one taken by someone else and posted on someone elses website) suggesting that she was holding a beer/drink at a party, it is a fire-able offense. There have been many teachers fired over facebook content. The risk is what happens when a student finds and discovers the content. There was a teacher fired last year for being hysterical after a car accident in a Gym parking lot. She was crying uncontrollably and several parents called and complained to the principal the following day calling her crazy and not fit to teach their children.
IF you read the casting credits of that episode you will see that one person's name is
werenot fromky
aka we're not from kentucky
I live in Louisville, so yes, the whole shelbyville, simpsonville, springfield thing is quite a parallel to hints in the show (though we aren't on the ocean).
so as a slashdotter you are telling me that practice is not essential to improvement? Are you seriously telling me that you write code as well now as the day you first learned each function? To this day I look at code I wrote 2 years before and think to myself 'what the hell was I thinking'. Repetition is always helpful in retention and practice is always useful in improving technique. After spending years on technical forums and blogs, coupled with years of reading technical documents; I can attest that my writing skills have improved markedly. No 30 minute lecture is going to produce a good writer. Lecturing alone will never produce quality work.
Do you remember transmetta? They have a VLIW architecture chip to make things like tablets etc. They hired Linus T. to create the only software unique to the chip. Code morphing software. It morphed x86 code to run the instructions into the VLIW chip, and vice versus. Instant compatibility with x86 software.
Slashdot Mirror
I guess the hope is that with government backing in the name of ending dependence on foreign oil, the cost of legal costs will drop drastically. The single biggest cost to these things is the lawyers to fight the bullshit hippie pro-bono lawyers that file injunction after injunction. Its just like what the telecoms do when they can win on principles... they bankrupt the opponent with legal processes. Its hard to believe these people were educated enough to make it through law school considering the amount of made-up, uneducated, bullshit that spews out of their mouths. Maybe now that half their tree-hugging buddies working at the white house actually promoting this crap, they might back off. Maybe a few well placed IRS audits of those legal firms doing the pro-bono, bankrupt-the-other-guy, tactics would be a great shoe-on-the-other-foot approach that would have them spending money in their own audit defense (remember a lawyer that represents himself has a fool for a client, so this time it actually costs them something).
I believe the answer to #1 is claimed to be approximately 1000 but AFAIK its really just a cat. The problem with radiation exposure is that ANY future problems and cancers is not able to separate liability... it _could_ be from that exposure, it could be that your a piece of chain-smoking crap that smokes 6 packs a day that caused your cancer. After spending 6yrs running a naval nuclear plant (1yr was a refueling overhaul so my total accumulative exposure is 10x the nominal amount most get) should I come down with a thyroid problem or something else later... it will always be an unknown if I would have developed the condition naturally or if exposure triggered the problem. Its not just a man-made power plant that can be culpable for the issue either. I get mrem of exposure from dental exams, chest/back xray, etc.
Living 1yr in Denver, due to altitude, is approximately 500mrem per year. That's the same targeted exposure goal for us working in the plant. Those of you living in Denver.. WATCH OUT! lol
a lesson in half-lives... this isn't directed directly at you but its the 8th time I've seen mention about lifespans and how long something sticks around. half-life means that the amount of radioactivity of an isotope has decayed away to 50% of what it was before. So if you take something like Cobalt 60 with a half-life of 5.27 years, then in 5.27 years your radioactivity is cut by half of the previous level. It is generally accepted as the rule of thumb that after 5 half-lives radioactivity has decayed to essentially nothing. For cobalt 60 this means that in 30 years it will have decayed away into nickel. I do appreciate the dr strangelove reference though :)
the irony is amazing.. I was a nuclear engineer in the navy for 6 years and we were not able to have port visits in japan because we were nuclear powered. Its interesting to learn that they know own most of westinghouse, whom as you pointed out, is a big player in nulear power. The W of the D2W cores of the 150MW plants I operated stood for westinghouse. It's understandable why they where 'shell shocked' about nuclear power, but the irony is still not lost. It's my understanding that as a whole they're still pretty anti-nuclear.
agreed, most people dont understand that chernobyl was a breeder reactor built on a positive reactivity coefficient. The rods themselves controlled rector power instead of using a thermal moderator like water. It also did not use the designed requirement of being able to be shut down with the most critical rod stuck at the top.
its not specifically 'waste'. Its unspent uranium where the yield is too low to sustain criticality. Just like biofuel and solar cells were not efficent enough at one time to be viable; reprocessing the spent fuel to make new disperision clusters in order to re-cycle the unspent uranium is a possibility. Its just that not enough research has been spent doing so.
Im sure ballistics is part of the settings. If its smart enough to calculate range, it probably knows altitude based on atmo pressure. Theres probably some setting for cartrige 5.56x45, 7.62x51, .308, .223. That would just leave grain variants, wind, and rifling twists. Still though, thats a lot fewer calculations to deal with than before. My problem is at 500yds even 12" is hard to see, need more practice :)
if its for the purpose of home defense then its the equivalent of suffering a severe asthma attack but having your inhaler disassembled and locked in a medicine cabinet. You might not have the extra 3-5 min to arm your weapon. Its not any safer than locking your weapons in a quick access vault. If they really want to get to it they will sneak your watch when you take it off to shower or whenever. Safety is a multilayer process including education. As far as home intruders, its already been mentioned that 2 persons wrestling for the weapon would leave it within range or working even if the assailant prevails in obtaining it.
I hope its not all about 'think of the children' because there are much more realistic solutions out there. Honestly who is making sure the damn liquor cabinet and medicine cabinet are equally protected. More children are killed by abuses of these locations than firearms.
children playing with their guns is easily solved with quick access gun vaults; either keypad, biometric, or that finger button hybrid. If they are smart enough to circumvent that then they are smart enough to borrow your watch when you are sleeping, showering, working on the car and dont want to ruin it, etc.
what if, instead, the gun isn't just listening but also the transmitter making the watch is a passive RFID tag? you could still steal the data much the same way passport rfid collection works, but the likelihood of knowing which tag to use within the short time you disarmed someone and tried to use their weapon against them is unlikely. I don't see much civillian or military use for this. When I need a weapon to fire it needs to be as simple and straight forward as possible. One of my home defense pistols is a .357 revolver simply because there is so little that can possibly go wrong with them.
I do see this being marketed to police who have the highest risk of having their service weapon taken and used on them. I'm not so sure about the whole watch/pin-code concept though. Most people are right handed and wear their watches on their left hand. 20cm is not an overly large distance and while 2-handed shooting is more accurate, there could be cases where the officer has to shoot 1-handed. If they used a passive RFID, maybe fingerless gloves or, if possible, sub-dermal implant would make more sense. I bet these designers got their idea from the 1995 Judge Dredd movie where the gun was bound to the owners DNA
there was a law that criminalized not assisting a violent crime? I've not heard of that. In the seinfeld case they were put in jail for a year for not rushing to the assistance. How can any law allow you to be put into harms way during an armed robbery? Though MA is a crazy place.
yes the whole thing is deplorable, but putting someone in jail for it is a pretty slippery slope. A very similar argument happened just after WWI in the newly formed soviet russia. In a communistic society everyone has to pull their weight and do their fair share. There were a lot of slackers not pulling their weight but still receiving the contributions from those that were. Then they started putting those same people in jail for being deadbeats of society. History now tells the story of that time with a completely different view. Things got way out of control, lots of people died, the gulags (not sure how its spelled) are a part of brutal world history event. As a libertarian I fear any law that takes away freedom because most laws never pose the hacker-test (ie how can i break this or exploit this before putting it into production). They pass a law that sounds great, only to find out it created some situation where the wrong people suffer while those that should suffer do not (example: adding taxes and fees to companies like insurances or utilities etc, we all know that all this does is raise end-user costs, so its you and I that really suffer)
63-2 in the house, with that overwhelming support I have little doubt of it having the same response in the senate. The only thing standing in the way of this becoming law will be court review if deemed unconstitutional.
http://scitoys.com/ lots of great activities and kits here
As a bonus, we could clone rare (or maybe even extinct) species, and eat them too!
considering the items I have read about that were considered delicacy in Japan, I wouldn't be surprised if this did not happen in the next 50 years. Sounds like good fodder for an alternate society of a sci fi novel.
wait, your saying that posting sexually related topics on a blog from a classroom computer qualifies as reasonable and appropriate to the school environment? what country do you live in where this is OK? Let the local news run a story about a teacher posting sex related topics on public sites while at *home*; and see how long before half the parents start calling for his termination
This particular county has instructed teachers to NOT maintain a facebook accounts and HAS fired teachers for maintaining such accounts even from their home computers. Something as simple as a picture of several friends at a club holding a beer smiling for a camera has resulted in termination based on several different contracts the teachers sign. Because the way 8 different contracts the teachers sign at the beginning of every school year, there is no legal recourse if you feel you were wrongfully terminated.
I am 100% certain that what this teacher did is clearly outlined by any AUP he signed or any other employment contract. To somehow suggest he isn't in violation of any number of contracts he signs as a teacher is beyond insane. My wife yells (figuratively) at me every time I accidentally send email to her work address instead of her personal address even when the topic is somewhat related to school. I once sent a link to a news article about a speech Obama gave regarding education and the school moderators deleted it out of her inbox and gave her a verbal warning.
my point is that its not just some single school system but many must adopt these policies and others that showed up as requirements for taking funds from grants like 'reading first' 'no child left behind' 'title one' etc. This goes back to my original point that the teacher that used a school computer to post his posts has no grounds to sue the school system or the blog in question for any violation of privacy as I am sure he has already signed everything away in an AUP just like this one. As far as enforcement, thats a case by case basis; but when they _do_ choose to give you a 'quit or be fired' ultimatum, these AUP's have the teeth to back them up legally.
it doesnt work that way. Theres dozens of employees waiting to take your place if you get fired for not complying with the use policy. The position is a salary based position so the 'free' work you refer to is more task driven. If you get your assigned responsibilities done in 8hrs great, if it takes you 15 to complete the same amount of work then it takes you 15. Dont take my word for it, phrases like:
"...are to be used solely for the purpose of supporting the educational mission of the school system and conducting the business of the school system."
and
"may not access or download material from the Internet except for legitimate educational reasons"
seems to be pretty clear to me. Here is a link to an acceptable use policy for my wife's current district. She has worked in several districts in a couple of states and they all made her sign something nearly verbatim to this.
http://www.fcboe.org/joomla153/files/technology_services/staff_aup.pdf
excerpted from http://www.fcboe.org/joomla153/files/technology_services/staff_aup.pdf :
...continuing...
All computers, software, network connections, Internet connections, and e-mail systems provided to the staff of the Fayette County Board of Education are the property of the Board of Education and are to be used solely for the purpose of supporting the educational mission of the school system and conducting the business of the school system. The Board of Education and any employee with supervisory capacity may monitor, intercept, record or retrieve any e-mail or Internet communication from any computer or program furnished by the Board of Education. All staff members are specifically informed that they have no right to expect that their communications are private or confidential.
1.8. Employees may not access or download material from the Internet except for legitimate educational reasons and shall comply with all copyright laws applicable to material downloaded. The accessing or downloading of any material on the Internet, including but not limited to pornographic or sexually explicit material, for personal reasons is strictly prohibited.
this was not a case of him posting from home and someone cleverly discovering who he was. Thats an obvious intrusion. This was a case of a school computer used to post on the site and the IP was traced back to the public school system. No nickname matching was needed. I am also led to believe that the poster was repeatedly behaving in a way to cause the website to investigate the source of the user. One inappropriate post is not going to get an admin to start playing detective/ tattle tale. Using a school computer for anything other than responding to parents email messages or going to approved websites for instructional use is a breach of his contract with the school. If you show a movie in your class you better be prepared to explain exactly how it ties into core content.
School systems do not allow for any personal use. They also have morality clauses built into their contract. The poster was wise to post anonymously but when his IP came up as a public school domain he was caught. Its no different from visiting facebook or any other site. Considering the fact that the guy was discussing sex related topics (pussy) at school is just as bad as reading penthouse letters while in the classroom. My wife is a teacher and as such she has to keep her facebook page private. Should any picture show up on the internet (even one taken by someone else and posted on someone elses website) suggesting that she was holding a beer/drink at a party, it is a fire-able offense. There have been many teachers fired over facebook content. The risk is what happens when a student finds and discovers the content. There was a teacher fired last year for being hysterical after a car accident in a Gym parking lot. She was crying uncontrollably and several parents called and complained to the principal the following day calling her crazy and not fit to teach their children.
There hasn't been one Phillip K Dick book that I have not totally enjoyed.
IF you read the casting credits of that episode you will see that one person's name is werenot fromky aka we're not from kentucky I live in Louisville, so yes, the whole shelbyville, simpsonville, springfield thing is quite a parallel to hints in the show (though we aren't on the ocean).
so as a slashdotter you are telling me that practice is not essential to improvement? Are you seriously telling me that you write code as well now as the day you first learned each function? To this day I look at code I wrote 2 years before and think to myself 'what the hell was I thinking'. Repetition is always helpful in retention and practice is always useful in improving technique. After spending years on technical forums and blogs, coupled with years of reading technical documents; I can attest that my writing skills have improved markedly. No 30 minute lecture is going to produce a good writer. Lecturing alone will never produce quality work.
Do you remember transmetta? They have a VLIW architecture chip to make things like tablets etc. They hired Linus T. to create the only software unique to the chip. Code morphing software. It morphed x86 code to run the instructions into the VLIW chip, and vice versus. Instant compatibility with x86 software.