ALISO VIEJO, Calif. (AP) -- City officials were so concerned about the potentially dangerous properties of dihydrogen monoxide that they considered banning foam cups after they learned the chemical was used in their production.
Then they learned, to their chagrin, that dihydrogen monoxide -- H2O for short -- is the scientific term for water.
"It's embarrassing," said City Manager David J. Norman. "We had a paralegal who did bad research."
I don't fault folks for not knowing what dihydrogen monoxide is, but for charging ahead, guns blazing, completely unburdened by the thought process. Sounds like presidential material to me.
An interesting graph on the site shows date of word origin by decade.
...for small values of 'interesting'. To say we have X words from the 40s, and Y words from the 50s isn't very useful. (In addition to being very little information spread out to cover a lot of ink.)
However, this is the beginning of something that will be interesting in a couple decades. I'd like to see how these numbers change over time.
Right now we have a peak of new Sci Fi words from the 40s and 50s (about 50 years ago). The slope is shallow coming up to the present, but the drop off is steep to the 20s and earlier.
Does this mean it takes about 40-50 years for new words to work their way into a more main stream usage, but then they fall out of fashion quickly? If so, the shape of the graph would change little over time, just the years along the X-axis would advance.
On the other hand, this could mean peaks in new words correspond to peaks in scientific innovation or other social factors. What we see happening to language in the 40s and 50s could correspond to the heightened anxiety of WWII and the cold war. Or it could follow the historic changes to our fundamental understanding of the universe occurring during the first couple decades of the century.
Of course, none of that can be determined from this one snap shot. Nothing to see here folks...yet.
This is isn't new. Growing up in the NYC-area we always heard tales of NY state officials recording NY license plate numbers in NJ malls to subpoena credit card records.
But I think the interesting case in the context of/. is cigarette sales, because states are specifically going after internet sales and not other cases such as residents driving to a neighboring state with lower taxes. In one case, Massachusetts is not only going after the resident or requesting customer details from the merchant, but they've gone so far as to go to shipping companies.
Of course UPS rolled over like a crack whore. The USPS is at least putting up a front of standing up for customers' privacy.
Didnt they try that in Superman 3?
on
Gates on Spam
·
· Score: 1
get an email, get a penny, send an email, send a penny
PETER
I don't think, I don't think I'm explaining this very well. Um, this
Seven Eleven, right? If you take a penny from the tray -
JOANNA
From the crippled children?!
PETER
No, that's the tray. I'm talking about the tray. The penny's for
everybody.
JOANNA
Oh, for everybody. Ok.
PETER
Yeah, well, those are whole pennies.
JOANNA
Yeah.
PETER
Right. I'm just talking about fractions of a penny here, but we do it
from a much bigger tray. A couple of million times. So what's wrong
with that?
My point is there are competing interests. Or rather parties who often are working together, but occasionally have a divergence in purpose.
There's the goal of sustaining an enjoyable gaming environment--having a fun game. There's the goal of 'realism,' or keeping events logical and consistent to promote roll-playing. And in the case of commercial MMO games, there's the goal to keep enough people paying a monthly subscription to keep the game going.
In regard to death, generally we want some sort of penalty. It adds to the excitement--you are putting something on the line when you decide to charge the level 47 schmoo or whatever. It adds the strategy of the game--you take some consideration before taking a risky action. And it adds to the reward for good play--you rescue the princess without dying, and so are better off than me, who died 9 times completing that quest.
However, the penalty in most cases should not be too harsh. A realistic death is generally considered to be too harsh. In most worlds used in roll playing, someone seriously injured out in the wildness not only isn't coming back, but the corpse will never be found.
Diablo (without getting into the argument whether Diablo is MMO or RPG) has a good system for handling character deaths. For most players, the player wakes up or is cloned or resurrected in town naked. If you want any of your stuff, you either have to go get it (and potentially face whatever killed you) or have a friend retrieve it for you. In a parallel world for more advanced players, death is final. Your character doesn't come back and your stuff is gone.
In regards to griefing and player-killing, there are similar competing interests. New players generally don't want to walk into anarchy, but rules that are too strict or penalties that are too harsh tend to cause resentment even in players who don't break the rules.
I support player-killing. Not that I do it, but keeping that option open promotes realism and rightly adds an element of danger. Whether it's old Camelot or Middle Earth, our heroes aren't just going to take a nap in the middle of the forest without consideration of keeping someone on watch, nor will they automatically trust and party with anyone who happens by.
Some MUDs had a system where usually death meant dropping into town nekkid and doing the corpse retrieval dash, while characters flagged as player-killers suffered permanent death. Add in loop-hole where you don't get a PK flag for killing a player-killer, and soon little bands of player-killer-killers gather and the system, to a certain extent, polices itself.
You need to keep an eye on your fellow adventurers, but there is enough incentive for player-killing to not be common or widespread, and players might complain a little less feeling they have some power in enforcing law and order.
But hay, this stuff is never going to be close to realistic. Sure, plenty of people want to pretend to be Frodo or Aragorn. How many people want to be foot soldier #4756 who gets killed in the first wave of the first battle or tower guard #87 who stands next to a gate for 14 years before getting the plague?
1. Get contracts with local stables for cleaning services. 2. Sell the 'proceeds' from the stables as fertilizer 3. Profit! 4. When busted for not paying tax on the fertilizer, point out taxes were paid on sale of the hay the horses ate and exclaim, "We're getting taxed at both ends!"
If you don't want your players engaging in anti-social behavior, prevent those players from being a part of society.
The issue there is the ultimate goal is not to provide a safe, fun gaming environment, but rather to make money for the parent company. No one (or very very few people) is going to pay $15 a month to sit in jail (unless someone comes out with a MMO version of OZ (hmmm...that's not such a bad idea...)) so companies try to balance being strict enough so the griefers don't run off all the newbies, but no so strict as to drive off all the griefers.
So a legal system cannot following the real world courts and jails too closely.
Couple that with a character death system that "respawns" permanently dead characters as offspring (children, clones, whatever) that inherit the possessions of their parent-figure, and you've got a way to pass on the material goods from character instance to character instance.
Early adopters are critical to a new product's success.
Ah, good ole days. That once was true. Television, and later color television, spread this way. Early adopters on both sides--folks taking a chance on some new gadget and folks taking a chance on providing content for that new gadget--set the path to a brave new world.
And for many years it worked. Color tv spread; AM stereo radio didn't. Market forces worked, and it was good.
Those days are gone. In the USA HDTV is law. Broadcasters have to broadcast it; manufacturers have to make it.
The market chose CD over DAT and DVD over DivX, but in this case there is no competing technology. If you don't want an HDTV, eventually your only option will be no TV at all.
BTW, if you're planning on buying in the USA a TV 36-inches or larger, and don't want to be forced to pay a few hundred dollars for HDTV hardware you don't need, butter buy before July 1.
The USA goverment could put a new tax to virgin CD's.
There already is a kick-back going to music publishers on blank audio-only CDs. This does not and should not happen for all blank CDs because not every CD is used for music.
The USA government should STFU in this case. Even with audio-only CDs, that audio can be music can be of my own creation, a recording of a college lecture, a freely-traded public performance, or any of a hundred other things that don't (or shouldn't) require payment to the music industry.
And how does the government determine to whom these payments go? I'm sure Sony, TimeWarner, et al get their cut, but what about a small independent that isn't a member of the RIAA? They deserve to benefit from their property as much as the big boys.
If I buy a blank CD, record some original sounds of my own creation, and copyright my creation, should I then get a piece of that tax?
What's next? Blank paper could be used to transcribe the lyrics to a song owned by an RIAA member, or copy IP from a book, or folder into a patented airplane. (If you can patent a method of swinging in the playground, I'm sure there's some ingenious paper airplane design in there somewhere.)
So should the USA government put a new tax on all blank paper? How would the proceeds from such a tax be distributed to copyright holders? How would you include all the possible parties owning IP that could end up on that piece of paper?
The reason bread usually lands butter side down has to do with how it falls off a counter.
Scientific American actually crunched the numbers on this issue a couple years ago for a piece on Murphy's Law. Turns out the universe is out to get you.
Considering the case of a slice of bread slipping off the counter top, it will begin to rotate at that point the center of gravity is off of the counter. Presuming a fall from rest and you're not spiking your bread, the rate of fall and rotation are determined by gravity.
Your main variable is this case is the height of the counter top. Although it turns out this height is constrained to a narrow range of comfort determined by human physiology.
Now take this argument to the general case of an arbitrary bipedal on an arbitrary planet. The most probable height of humanoid-type life is a function of gravity on the home world. Planets with weaker gravity make it easier to grow taller people; conversely planets with stronger gravity will tend to produce shorter people.
The taller beings have higher counter tops, but the weaker gravity will cause their bread to rotate slower than our earth-bound bread. Turns out their counter tops will also be at a height destined to produce butter-down drops.
Same for the munchkins on the planet with stronger than earth gravity. Their bread will rotate fast enough to make it around to butter-side-down when falling from their munchkin-height counter tops.
So yes, the fundamental laws governing the universe are designed to ruin your breakfast. Look on the bright side, it's not just you--the universe is out to get everyone.
And surely this is an even bigger night for Jackson, who's been working on these films for 5+ years of his life and has yet to receive any industry accolades, than it is for the 'Leafs,' who get a title shot pretty much year.
Yeah...pretty much every year, except when the Devils decide to play. Though you did say 'shot,' and not 'realistic shot.'
I don't think the Devils are gonna have much of a run in the next month--not the kind of run they usually end on to indicate a good post-season. So are your Leafs up to taking care of those stinkers from Ottowa?
Anyway, to get back on topic, I think the two--Academy Awards and Stanley Cup--are more alike than different.
It's gonna happen every year. Even if there aren't any outstanding performances or every team sucks, someone's going to get a trophy at the end. And although the award is given for a particular year, there's usually many, many years of work that went into getting to that point, and usually many, many more people behind the scenes that made it possible for a few to skate around onstage holding up a naked gold man.
At Carnegie Mellon University they project a movie on a big ass 20 foot tall screen out on Flag Staff hill. They don't seem to be having any problems.
Yes, but do not have any problems because permission for public performance was provided previously?
We could observe schools and amateur groups around the world put on public performances of copyrighted works all the time without issue, but in most instances performance rights have been obtained from the copyright owner.
Only in Atlanta would an idea like, "Shoot it a bunch of times and see if it goes away" would such a solution be born.
When is shrub's next visit to Georgia?
Re:Today only, free access courtesy of Slashdot
on
Orwellian Tech Support
·
· Score: -1, Flamebait
In a Heller-esque world, you're only damned so far as you follow the written rules -- if you trump those and follow the ACTUAL rules, you can succeed quite well. Loni is a Milo Minderbinder.
How does a comment like that NOT get modded up? It's insightful, informative, and interesting.
Oh...it follows the rules. What he should have said is, if those lusers would stop using M$ and instead got linux help from HOW-TOs, companies would stop shipping jobs over-seas. And BSD is dead.
That's why we should all say just say "no" to the FCC to do it, and rally our local government to say "yes."
Because those local governments did such a great job negotiating with cable companies the first time around--giving away government-mandated monopolies with ever-increasing prices and we got...what did we get again?
One of the arguments for free trade and the internationalization of companies and the work force is the raising of living standards around the world--the rising tide lifts all ships.
The argument against is that companies in the USA out-source and move off-shore to save money--increasing profits by paying less in wages and widening the gap between rich and poor.
From the USA it's pretty clear that whatever the intent, the result is the later. Ford doesn't build in China so Chinese workers can earn enough to buy Fords; Ford builds in China to make more profit on cars it sells in North America and Europe. (To be fair, the American worker complains about jobs moving over seas, then goes to WalMart and insists on $10 shirts and fresh tomatoes year round.)
So how do things look on the other side? Is the Indian standard of living raised by this influx of foreign work, or do companies pay just enough to be competitive to the existing standard and keep the benefits of free trade at the top?
Slashdot Mirror
Is this yet another example of technologically illiterate politicians eagerly passing bills without bothering to find out what the law is going to do?
H2O mixup creates scare
I don't fault folks for not knowing what dihydrogen monoxide is, but for charging ahead, guns blazing, completely unburdened by the thought process. Sounds like presidential material to me.
However, this is the beginning of something that will be interesting in a couple decades. I'd like to see how these numbers change over time.
Right now we have a peak of new Sci Fi words from the 40s and 50s (about 50 years ago). The slope is shallow coming up to the present, but the drop off is steep to the 20s and earlier.
Does this mean it takes about 40-50 years for new words to work their way into a more main stream usage, but then they fall out of fashion quickly? If so, the shape of the graph would change little over time, just the years along the X-axis would advance.
On the other hand, this could mean peaks in new words correspond to peaks in scientific innovation or other social factors. What we see happening to language in the 40s and 50s could correspond to the heightened anxiety of WWII and the cold war. Or it could follow the historic changes to our fundamental understanding of the universe occurring during the first couple decades of the century.
Of course, none of that can be determined from this one snap shot. Nothing to see here folks...yet.
Sounds like the makings of a /. poll
[x] Bro
[ ] Manssierre
[ ] Male support undergarment
[ ] I'm flat-chested, you insensitive clod
That would be a bro
But I think the interesting case in the context of /. is cigarette sales, because states are specifically going after internet sales and not other cases such as residents driving to a neighboring state with lower taxes. In one case, Massachusetts is not only going after the resident or requesting customer details from the merchant, but they've gone so far as to go to shipping companies.
Of course UPS rolled over like a crack whore. The USPS is at least putting up a front of standing up for customers' privacy.
PETER
I don't think, I don't think I'm explaining this very well. Um, this Seven Eleven, right? If you take a penny from the tray -
JOANNA
From the crippled children?!
PETER
No, that's the tray. I'm talking about the tray. The penny's for everybody.
JOANNA
Oh, for everybody. Ok.
PETER
Yeah, well, those are whole pennies.
JOANNA
Yeah.
PETER
Right. I'm just talking about fractions of a penny here, but we do it from a much bigger tray. A couple of million times. So what's wrong with that?
My point is there are competing interests. Or rather parties who often are working together, but occasionally have a divergence in purpose.
There's the goal of sustaining an enjoyable gaming environment--having a fun game. There's the goal of 'realism,' or keeping events logical and consistent to promote roll-playing. And in the case of commercial MMO games, there's the goal to keep enough people paying a monthly subscription to keep the game going.
In regard to death, generally we want some sort of penalty. It adds to the excitement--you are putting something on the line when you decide to charge the level 47 schmoo or whatever. It adds the strategy of the game--you take some consideration before taking a risky action. And it adds to the reward for good play--you rescue the princess without dying, and so are better off than me, who died 9 times completing that quest.
However, the penalty in most cases should not be too harsh. A realistic death is generally considered to be too harsh. In most worlds used in roll playing, someone seriously injured out in the wildness not only isn't coming back, but the corpse will never be found.
Diablo (without getting into the argument whether Diablo is MMO or RPG) has a good system for handling character deaths. For most players, the player wakes up or is cloned or resurrected in town naked. If you want any of your stuff, you either have to go get it (and potentially face whatever killed you) or have a friend retrieve it for you. In a parallel world for more advanced players, death is final. Your character doesn't come back and your stuff is gone.
In regards to griefing and player-killing, there are similar competing interests. New players generally don't want to walk into anarchy, but rules that are too strict or penalties that are too harsh tend to cause resentment even in players who don't break the rules.
I support player-killing. Not that I do it, but keeping that option open promotes realism and rightly adds an element of danger. Whether it's old Camelot or Middle Earth, our heroes aren't just going to take a nap in the middle of the forest without consideration of keeping someone on watch, nor will they automatically trust and party with anyone who happens by.
Some MUDs had a system where usually death meant dropping into town nekkid and doing the corpse retrieval dash, while characters flagged as player-killers suffered permanent death. Add in loop-hole where you don't get a PK flag for killing a player-killer, and soon little bands of player-killer-killers gather and the system, to a certain extent, polices itself.
You need to keep an eye on your fellow adventurers, but there is enough incentive for player-killing to not be common or widespread, and players might complain a little less feeling they have some power in enforcing law and order.
But hay, this stuff is never going to be close to realistic. Sure, plenty of people want to pretend to be Frodo or Aragorn. How many people want to be foot soldier #4756 who gets killed in the first wave of the first battle or tower guard #87 who stands next to a gate for 14 years before getting the plague?
Sure, didn't the monorail put Brockway, Audbinville, and North Haverbrooke on the map?
Wow. I think that's the most insightful comment ever made on /.
1. Get contracts with local stables for cleaning services.
2. Sell the 'proceeds' from the stables as fertilizer
3. Profit!
4. When busted for not paying tax on the fertilizer, point out taxes were paid on sale of the hay the horses ate and exclaim, "We're getting taxed at both ends!"
My first thought was eBay. But I was thinking, fish older sister's panties out of dirty laundry...eBay...Profit!
The issue there is the ultimate goal is not to provide a safe, fun gaming environment, but rather to make money for the parent company. No one (or very very few people) is going to pay $15 a month to sit in jail (unless someone comes out with a MMO version of OZ (hmmm...that's not such a bad idea...)) so companies try to balance being strict enough so the griefers don't run off all the newbies, but no so strict as to drive off all the griefers.
So a legal system cannot following the real world courts and jails too closely.
Couple that with a character death system that "respawns" permanently dead characters as offspring (children, clones, whatever) that inherit the possessions of their parent-figure, and you've got a way to pass on the material goods from character instance to character instance.
That is a great idea.
Forget the up skirt stuff...if this technology had been around long ago, we'd know for sure who shot first.
Ah, good ole days. That once was true. Television, and later color television, spread this way. Early adopters on both sides--folks taking a chance on some new gadget and folks taking a chance on providing content for that new gadget--set the path to a brave new world.
And for many years it worked. Color tv spread; AM stereo radio didn't. Market forces worked, and it was good.
Those days are gone. In the USA HDTV is law. Broadcasters have to broadcast it; manufacturers have to make it.
The market chose CD over DAT and DVD over DivX, but in this case there is no competing technology. If you don't want an HDTV, eventually your only option will be no TV at all.
BTW, if you're planning on buying in the USA a TV 36-inches or larger, and don't want to be forced to pay a few hundred dollars for HDTV hardware you don't need, butter buy before July 1.
There already is a kick-back going to music publishers on blank audio-only CDs. This does not and should not happen for all blank CDs because not every CD is used for music.
The USA government should STFU in this case. Even with audio-only CDs, that audio can be music can be of my own creation, a recording of a college lecture, a freely-traded public performance, or any of a hundred other things that don't (or shouldn't) require payment to the music industry.
And how does the government determine to whom these payments go? I'm sure Sony, TimeWarner, et al get their cut, but what about a small independent that isn't a member of the RIAA? They deserve to benefit from their property as much as the big boys.
If I buy a blank CD, record some original sounds of my own creation, and copyright my creation, should I then get a piece of that tax?
What's next? Blank paper could be used to transcribe the lyrics to a song owned by an RIAA member, or copy IP from a book, or folder into a patented airplane. (If you can patent a method of swinging in the playground, I'm sure there's some ingenious paper airplane design in there somewhere.)
So should the USA government put a new tax on all blank paper? How would the proceeds from such a tax be distributed to copyright holders? How would you include all the possible parties owning IP that could end up on that piece of paper?
Scientific American actually crunched the numbers on this issue a couple years ago for a piece on Murphy's Law. Turns out the universe is out to get you.
Considering the case of a slice of bread slipping off the counter top, it will begin to rotate at that point the center of gravity is off of the counter. Presuming a fall from rest and you're not spiking your bread, the rate of fall and rotation are determined by gravity.
Your main variable is this case is the height of the counter top. Although it turns out this height is constrained to a narrow range of comfort determined by human physiology.
Now take this argument to the general case of an arbitrary bipedal on an arbitrary planet. The most probable height of humanoid-type life is a function of gravity on the home world. Planets with weaker gravity make it easier to grow taller people; conversely planets with stronger gravity will tend to produce shorter people.
The taller beings have higher counter tops, but the weaker gravity will cause their bread to rotate slower than our earth-bound bread. Turns out their counter tops will also be at a height destined to produce butter-down drops.
Same for the munchkins on the planet with stronger than earth gravity. Their bread will rotate fast enough to make it around to butter-side-down when falling from their munchkin-height counter tops.
So yes, the fundamental laws governing the universe are designed to ruin your breakfast. Look on the bright side, it's not just you--the universe is out to get everyone.
Yeah...pretty much every year, except when the Devils decide to play. Though you did say 'shot,' and not 'realistic shot.'
I don't think the Devils are gonna have much of a run in the next month--not the kind of run they usually end on to indicate a good post-season. So are your Leafs up to taking care of those stinkers from Ottowa?
Anyway, to get back on topic, I think the two--Academy Awards and Stanley Cup--are more alike than different.
It's gonna happen every year. Even if there aren't any outstanding performances or every team sucks, someone's going to get a trophy at the end. And although the award is given for a particular year, there's usually many, many years of work that went into getting to that point, and usually many, many more people behind the scenes that made it possible for a few to skate around onstage holding up a naked gold man.
Just a heads up, the giant Pez container just has many packs of normal Pez inside, not the giant Pez candies we crave.
Yes, but do not have any problems because permission for public performance was provided previously?
We could observe schools and amateur groups around the world put on public performances of copyrighted works all the time without issue, but in most instances performance rights have been obtained from the copyright owner.
When is shrub's next visit to Georgia?
How does a comment like that NOT get modded up? It's insightful, informative, and interesting.
Oh...it follows the rules. What he should have said is, if those lusers would stop using M$ and instead got linux help from HOW-TOs, companies would stop shipping jobs over-seas. And BSD is dead.
Best. Minesweeper. Ever.
Because those local governments did such a great job negotiating with cable companies the first time around--giving away government-mandated monopolies with ever-increasing prices and we got...what did we get again?
Oh yeah, we got the shaft.
Yeah, but did you buy any stock at the time?
One of the arguments for free trade and the internationalization of companies and the work force is the raising of living standards around the world--the rising tide lifts all ships.
The argument against is that companies in the USA out-source and move off-shore to save money--increasing profits by paying less in wages and widening the gap between rich and poor.
From the USA it's pretty clear that whatever the intent, the result is the later. Ford doesn't build in China so Chinese workers can earn enough to buy Fords; Ford builds in China to make more profit on cars it sells in North America and Europe. (To be fair, the American worker complains about jobs moving over seas, then goes to WalMart and insists on $10 shirts and fresh tomatoes year round.)
So how do things look on the other side? Is the Indian standard of living raised by this influx of foreign work, or do companies pay just enough to be competitive to the existing standard and keep the benefits of free trade at the top?