1. Take a day off work (I'm a consultant, so I've already lost more than the ticket right there). But for the sake of argument, let's say it's my normally-stay-at-home wife.
2. Park near the courthouse. The courthouse parking lot costs $40 per day. So you are already out $40, even if you win. And if you lose, now you are out $40 more. The ticket is probably only $100 or so, so that's already half. Add in the gas money (about 3 gallons) and that's another $10, so $50 no matter what. (And don't think you're going to park on the streets. Because the courthouse is located in a part of town where your car will be in some chop shop before you get out of court.)
3. The judge doesn't really listen to your feeble arguments anyway. He's just feigning interest for a minute or so before saying, "Guilty." I mean, after all, this is his salary we're talking about...
But if I blocked all the credit card offers, how would my wife and I continue to float thousands of dollars at 0% for years and never pay a dime for the privilege???
As a happy Register.com customer, you can sign up for auto-renew and they will automatically renew it when the time comes (as long as you maintain an up-to-date credit card on your account). Even then, I had them call me on the day of telling me that my card wouldn't go through.
I used to work at a place where we had a Workflow system that passed around a "pre-XML" XML structure (our application was finished before the XML specification). The original engine was written in VB6 including the XML-like parser COM object, which was also in VB6. Performance was pretty bad.
In order to get away from the increasingly-nasty VB6 code base, we did a complete rewrite in Delphi. We did extensive testing to ensure that the new engine, while 5X faster, still did everything correctly.
Some time later (after the XML spec was finalized), I wanted to rewrite the XML parser using MSXML for speed. The boss wouldn't allow it, because it might break backward compatibility. I told him I could do both but he didn't believe me. Fortunately, he was laid off and the new boss said, "Hey, as long as you're sure it'll work." I rewrote the parser, which could easily identify the old version of the XML (because it had multiple roots). It wrapped it in a standardized tag (which became the standard on the new version) and went on it's merry way. I even translated all the XML access methods into their MSXML equivalents. In fact we made every piece of the engine forward and backward compatible with every other piece of the engine. You could mix and match at will. We even changed the SQL layout, but made an updatable View which looked like (and was named the same as) the old table.
After extensive testing of every record that had ever gone through our system, we implemented the new version with a 10X-20X speed improvement. And now, the entire codebase was rewritten from the ground up in Delphi and this allowed us to make a multi-threaded version which was again, 5X faster. And all these speed improvements were very welcome, as the number of records going through the system kept going up and up.
You can rewrite from the ground up and also keep backward compatibility, but it requires you to do some testing work to be sure. But honestly, it wasn't nearly as hard as the managers thought it would be.
Not to brag, but I have very acute taste buds. So much so, that when I was in high school, I would put M&Ms in my mouth with my eyes closed and be able to tell which color it was with nearly 100% accuracy.
The reason I could do this is that the dyes actually taste different.
Dark Brown - Lots of red dye
Tan - Anyone could taste these
Orange - Red dye and yellow dye
Yellow - Yellow dye only
Green - Blue dye and yellow dye
Now that they have added pure red and pure blue (not to mention make-your-own-color), I can no longer perform this amazing feat. Still, the point is that most animals have a more advanced sense of smell and taste than humans and it is quite possible that they simply prefer the smell or taste of one dye over another. Or maybe they hate one color because it smells or tastes bad to them.
I used to work at a company that had very tight security and tested it in every way imaginable, including using social engineering.
Ironically, they had everything locked down so tightly that everyone had to move data from Development to Production using USB drives, because no machine could talk to both networks. Developers had "phony" copies of databases locally on their laptops, because of how difficult it was to connect at different locations (and they expected people to work on the plane as well).
All this led to many instances where data was lost on USB and laptops and the company had embarrassing issues. And still they gloated about how "great" their security was...
"We found methane gas..." => "Molecular basis for life..."?
Political double-speak is the cause of the polarization problem in communicating science, not the solution.
How about just sticking with "We can detect methane gas on an extra-solar planet"? Isn't that cool enough by itself? Nobody on either side of the debate has problems with repeatable observations. But instead, every discovery is used as a club to beat the Big Bang or Evolution over the head of creationists, whether it has anything to do with it or not (note that the writeup concedes that there is zero chance of life despite the polarizing statement). This is why people are polarized and as long as it continues people will continue to be polarized.
The repeated statements about creationist ignorance fall on deaf ears as well (except to aid polarization), since I would doubt that anyone making them has spent more than 2 minutes at a site like Answers in Genesis to see what very good science that questions the commonly-accepted notions actually exists. Ignoring people with something important (to them) to say increases polarization.
Wishing desperately for life on other worlds isn't science. It's a dogmatic world-view. It can't be science because as of yet we don't have a single shred of evidence that such a situation exists.
There are plenty of repeatable Creation experiments that include predictability. To assume there are none is pure ignorance of what Creation Science has to offer, the kind of ignorance that will be perpetuated by keeping it out of the classroom.
Prior to the Voyager launches, scientists attempted to predict the magnetic fields of each planet. Put simply, the Non-Creationists' theory is that the magnetic field is generated by metallic mass spinning at a certain velocity. The Creationists' theory is that everything was created from aligned water molecules ~6000 years ago and then decayed in a straight line from there.
Mercury
Non-Creationist: 0
Creationist: 7.5 x 1022 J/T
Actual: (4.8 ± 0.3) x 1019 J/T
Non-Creationist quote:... the very existence of the field is puzzling. If Mercury can maintain a steady dipole field, the earth, which rotates 59 times as fast and has a core twice as large, should be able to sustain more complicated fields.
Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn were known prior to the predictions.
Uranus
Non-Creationist: smaller field, or none at all
Creationist: 2.05 x 1025 J/T
Actual: 3.0 x 1024 J/T
Neptune
Both did equally well, but there was a surprise problem for the Non-Creationists. The Magnetic axis is at a 60 degree offset to the rotation axis, meaning that their predicted value would need to be reduced by 2/3.
Non-Creationist quote: Two odd magnetic fields is one too many.
The Creationist was within an order of magnitude on every planet in the Solar System. The Non-Creationists and their dynamo theory were wrong on more than 50% of the planets.
Non-Creationist quote: you would have thought we would have given up guessing about planetary magnetic fields after being wrong at nearly every planet in the solar system. . ..
Has the dynamo theory been falsified, even though it has an accuracy of less than 50%? No. It has been updated with wild additions involving multiple asteroid collisions and other even more fantastic theorized objects.
Has the Creationist theory replaced it, even though it predicted everything with 100% accuracy (within an order of magnitude)? No. It is rejected outright because it came from a Creationist, the same as what we are talking about in this article.
Although I only provided a single example (and there are thousands), I hope that this shows several points:
There are Creationists doing actual repeatable, predictable, falsifiable experiments according to the scientific method. These should be looked at because they are pure science. The source should be irrelevant if the experiment is sound and repeatable. The safety to do this is what is being proposed in the article.
Non-creationist theories are often not "falsifiable", even when they are wrong. The theory is simply updated with asteroid collisions or dark matter or the Oort cloud or various other "faith" objects that come out of devotion to a theory rather than observation. These violate the principle of the simplest explanation usually being the correct one.
Before making ignorant statements about what Creation Science offers (or doesn't offer), why not spend an hour or two familiarizing yourself with it: Answers in Genesis Q&A. Since this information has always been censored from you, you rightly assume that all evidence points unquestionably toward evolution, billions of years, etc., because there is "no evidence" to the contrary. Of course there is "no evidence", because your science books won't publish it. Why not read through it and make up your mind based on facts instead
Let's see. The CSS encryption on DVDs expired in about 30 days. The AACS encryption on HD-DVDs expired in about 6 months... FairUse4QT or WMA anyone?
Trust me. Copyright law far outlives encryption.
Not to nitpick, but in the movies the Sith ARE almost extinct. There's like, what, 20 in the whole galaxy? There's been peace (i.e. no Sith), for what, 1000 years?
Sith are not a lineage, like Jews or Romans. They can be corrupted anytime from the Jedi around them.
There will always be that person that thinks it will turn out differently for them...
A killer app for Linux would have to be available on Linux or work best on Linux, appeal to everyone, and have a strong enough appeal to make it worth while to learn a new system.
If Microsoft keeps going the way they are, the Killer App will be "DRM-free".
Slashdot Mirror
"Awry" is a way of life on Linux. It's a hobby.
When fiddling with it ceases to be a hobby, it will be ready for the desktop.
Ubuntu is getting close, and one of it's 8 releases before the next version of Windows will get there.
Contesting a ticket...
1. Take a day off work (I'm a consultant, so I've already lost more than the ticket right there). But for the sake of argument, let's say it's my normally-stay-at-home wife.
2. Park near the courthouse. The courthouse parking lot costs $40 per day. So you are already out $40, even if you win. And if you lose, now you are out $40 more. The ticket is probably only $100 or so, so that's already half. Add in the gas money (about 3 gallons) and that's another $10, so $50 no matter what. (And don't think you're going to park on the streets. Because the courthouse is located in a part of town where your car will be in some chop shop before you get out of court.)
3. The judge doesn't really listen to your feeble arguments anyway. He's just feigning interest for a minute or so before saying, "Guilty." I mean, after all, this is his salary we're talking about...
But if I blocked all the credit card offers, how would my wife and I continue to float thousands of dollars at 0% for years and never pay a dime for the privilege???
As a happy Register.com customer, you can sign up for auto-renew and they will automatically renew it when the time comes (as long as you maintain an up-to-date credit card on your account). Even then, I had them call me on the day of telling me that my card wouldn't go through.
I used to work at a place where we had a Workflow system that passed around a "pre-XML" XML structure (our application was finished before the XML specification). The original engine was written in VB6 including the XML-like parser COM object, which was also in VB6. Performance was pretty bad.
In order to get away from the increasingly-nasty VB6 code base, we did a complete rewrite in Delphi. We did extensive testing to ensure that the new engine, while 5X faster, still did everything correctly.
Some time later (after the XML spec was finalized), I wanted to rewrite the XML parser using MSXML for speed. The boss wouldn't allow it, because it might break backward compatibility. I told him I could do both but he didn't believe me. Fortunately, he was laid off and the new boss said, "Hey, as long as you're sure it'll work." I rewrote the parser, which could easily identify the old version of the XML (because it had multiple roots). It wrapped it in a standardized tag (which became the standard on the new version) and went on it's merry way. I even translated all the XML access methods into their MSXML equivalents. In fact we made every piece of the engine forward and backward compatible with every other piece of the engine. You could mix and match at will. We even changed the SQL layout, but made an updatable View which looked like (and was named the same as) the old table.
After extensive testing of every record that had ever gone through our system, we implemented the new version with a 10X-20X speed improvement. And now, the entire codebase was rewritten from the ground up in Delphi and this allowed us to make a multi-threaded version which was again, 5X faster. And all these speed improvements were very welcome, as the number of records going through the system kept going up and up.
You can rewrite from the ground up and also keep backward compatibility, but it requires you to do some testing work to be sure. But honestly, it wasn't nearly as hard as the managers thought it would be.
There is another problem.
Not to brag, but I have very acute taste buds. So much so, that when I was in high school, I would put M&Ms in my mouth with my eyes closed and be able to tell which color it was with nearly 100% accuracy.
The reason I could do this is that the dyes actually taste different.
Now that they have added pure red and pure blue (not to mention make-your-own-color), I can no longer perform this amazing feat. Still, the point is that most animals have a more advanced sense of smell and taste than humans and it is quite possible that they simply prefer the smell or taste of one dye over another. Or maybe they hate one color because it smells or tastes bad to them.
Or you could just hold down Shift...
Oops, Switchfoot nearly got sued by Sony for mentioning that...
But the liquid plastic cartridges are $250 each...
And, it seems he still has his job.
You still spend $1 on blank DVDs?
I used to work at a company that had very tight security and tested it in every way imaginable, including using social engineering.
Ironically, they had everything locked down so tightly that everyone had to move data from Development to Production using USB drives, because no machine could talk to both networks. Developers had "phony" copies of databases locally on their laptops, because of how difficult it was to connect at different locations (and they expected people to work on the plane as well).
All this led to many instances where data was lost on USB and laptops and the company had embarrassing issues. And still they gloated about how "great" their security was...
But when the manufacturer sold it to Apple, they probably didn't lie to them about what it was.
If they did, then Apple should turn around and sue them.
That's OK, if a scientist gets a black hole in his chest and roams the city sucking up everything, Booster Gold will save us...
"We found methane gas..." => "Molecular basis for life..."?
Political double-speak is the cause of the polarization problem in communicating science, not the solution.
How about just sticking with "We can detect methane gas on an extra-solar planet"? Isn't that cool enough by itself? Nobody on either side of the debate has problems with repeatable observations. But instead, every discovery is used as a club to beat the Big Bang or Evolution over the head of creationists, whether it has anything to do with it or not (note that the writeup concedes that there is zero chance of life despite the polarizing statement). This is why people are polarized and as long as it continues people will continue to be polarized.
The repeated statements about creationist ignorance fall on deaf ears as well (except to aid polarization), since I would doubt that anyone making them has spent more than 2 minutes at a site like Answers in Genesis to see what very good science that questions the commonly-accepted notions actually exists. Ignoring people with something important (to them) to say increases polarization.
Wishing desperately for life on other worlds isn't science. It's a dogmatic world-view. It can't be science because as of yet we don't have a single shred of evidence that such a situation exists.
You've been to that restaurant too?
Yeah, about 10% slower code, about 90% fewer bugs...
There are plenty of repeatable Creation experiments that include predictability. To assume there are none is pure ignorance of what Creation Science has to offer, the kind of ignorance that will be perpetuated by keeping it out of the classroom.
Prior to the Voyager launches, scientists attempted to predict the magnetic fields of each planet. Put simply, the Non-Creationists' theory is that the magnetic field is generated by metallic mass spinning at a certain velocity. The Creationists' theory is that everything was created from aligned water molecules ~6000 years ago and then decayed in a straight line from there.
Link to Original 1984 article Link to Less Technical Follow-Up
Mercury ... the very existence of the field is puzzling. If Mercury can maintain a steady dipole field, the earth, which rotates 59 times as fast and has a core twice as large, should be able to sustain more complicated fields.
Non-Creationist: 0
Creationist: 7.5 x 1022 J/T
Actual: (4.8 ± 0.3) x 1019 J/T
Non-Creationist quote:
Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn were known prior to the predictions.
Uranus
Non-Creationist: smaller field, or none at all
Creationist: 2.05 x 1025 J/T
Actual: 3.0 x 1024 J/T
Neptune
Both did equally well, but there was a surprise problem for the Non-Creationists. The Magnetic axis is at a 60 degree offset to the rotation axis, meaning that their predicted value would need to be reduced by 2/3.
Non-Creationist quote: Two odd magnetic fields is one too many.
The Creationist was within an order of magnitude on every planet in the Solar System. The Non-Creationists and their dynamo theory were wrong on more than 50% of the planets. .
Non-Creationist quote: you would have thought we would have given up guessing about planetary magnetic fields after being wrong at nearly every planet in the solar system. . .
Has the dynamo theory been falsified, even though it has an accuracy of less than 50%? No. It has been updated with wild additions involving multiple asteroid collisions and other even more fantastic theorized objects.
Has the Creationist theory replaced it, even though it predicted everything with 100% accuracy (within an order of magnitude)? No. It is rejected outright because it came from a Creationist, the same as what we are talking about in this article.
Although I only provided a single example (and there are thousands), I hope that this shows several points:
Before making ignorant statements about what Creation Science offers (or doesn't offer), why not spend an hour or two familiarizing yourself with it: Answers in Genesis Q&A. Since this information has always been censored from you, you rightly assume that all evidence points unquestionably toward evolution, billions of years, etc., because there is "no evidence" to the contrary. Of course there is "no evidence", because your science books won't publish it. Why not read through it and make up your mind based on facts instead
"Why is he a challenge? If he broke the law, he broke the law, blind or not.
The justice system should be blind, so who cares if he broke the law."
You've haven't dealt with juries much, have you?
Let's see. The CSS encryption on DVDs expired in about 30 days. The AACS encryption on HD-DVDs expired in about 6 months... FairUse4QT or WMA anyone? Trust me. Copyright law far outlives encryption.
You just described every detail about me. Unbelievable.
Oh, wait...
This is one of the most insightful posts I have ever read. Too bad I don't have mod points.
It took 7 years to get Vista out the door. If they slowed down any more, they would be stopped!
Not to nitpick, but in the movies the Sith ARE almost extinct. There's like, what, 20 in the whole galaxy? There's been peace (i.e. no Sith), for what, 1000 years?
Sith are not a lineage, like Jews or Romans. They can be corrupted anytime from the Jedi around them.
There will always be that person that thinks it will turn out differently for them...
If Microsoft keeps going the way they are, the Killer App will be "DRM-free".