$700 is not all that much for someone making or paying Western wages
I must be making Eastern wages then, because $700 has long since crossed into the if not major certainly not minor purchase category for me. When you exceed 1% gross annual income (And $70k isn't a small salary) that IS a significant purchase.
You say it as if there is something wrong with that. Sorry, you owe your success and productivity to the society that allowed you to come into existence and be successful and productive, and you are going to pay back into that society and to future generations and to the less fortunate. Ideally everyone would do this willingly, but, well there are too many people like you for that to work.
That's an awful lot of ownership that society is claiming. Are you suggesting that a person born in the United States would not be as productive if they lived in Canada? Or by simple fact of existing, they owe the fruits of their labor to some 'other'?
Or, you know, such things could just be uniform across the whole country since it's less asinine that way.
Do you think so? It's a hell of a lot easier to address state laws than national laws. And if you don't like either it is a hell of a lot easier to move between states than it is to leave the entire country.
Regardless of your position on the subject. How is it any less asinine for me to have to convince a good portion of the State of California that their 'best way' isn't so great for someone living in Vermont?
If the United States consisted of uniform weather/political/social/ethnic/ideological views, then having one set of laws that applied uniformly across the entire expanse might actually work. However, as you well know, you won't find many small towns that are uniform in belief and need, let alone the entire damned country.
For example, I decided that because of Marylands laws, I didn't want to live there. So I didn't take a job there and I live in a bordering state. What would be my recourse if I didn't care for one of Maryland's laws and it was applied across the whole country?
Most others aren't, because it is not obvious what advantage supersonic cruise missiles have over ballistic ones.
Don't you mean what advantage supersonic cruise missiles have over subsonic cruise missles? Or did you mean what advantage supersonic cruise missiles have over short to medium range ballistic missiles?
Were you just comparing the advantages between speeds, or between guidance/control systems? While not quite apples and oranges, it certainly seems like you are comparing apples and pears at least.
Just in case you, or someone you know turns out to be the first, everyone should read this
It's not exactly rigorous, but it gets the main points across.
I read it, and it is a load of garbage. It covers a VERY slim potential scenario in which aliens stumble across 'you' and probably not even Earth. If they knew about Earth, a few hours of observation would pretty much answer any number of the questions that the author of that pamplet was guessing the aliens would want to ask.
The whole thing reads like some nerds fantasy of getting to initiate first contact AND toss out a whole bunch of his political views at the same time. (Honestly, does he really think that you are going to go from discussing triangles to the nuances of the human belief systems in the span of a few days?). Imagine if you were dropped off with a tribe in south america. Even human-human conversation would be damned hard and take several years to accomplish if you really worked at it. If he thinks that the communication gap is as large as he describes it, you aren't going to go from triangles and binary to even 'Hello' anytime soon. (Figure out how to describe Hello to an octopus if you want a similar challenge)
There are two ways in which First Contact is going to happen: They find us, or we find them. If we find them, there is no telling what technological gap is going to occur (We could be ET to them for all we know.) And if they find us... well
You don't see sane people accidentally starting discussions with beavers, ants or bees because they confused them for sapience. There is a 'slight' gap between instinctual organized behavior and launching rockets into space.
No updates, no new games. If you're not playing new games, why not buy a cheap DVD player? And watch new consoles come with the new firmware. Remember the old days of PSP hacking, when people would analyze the boxes to find a sign of what firmware they came with?
It almost seems like you are cheerleading their efforts to break someone's setup. The constant updates that these companies are throwing at us now are getting ridiculous. I don't like the idea of not owning the equipment in my home.
If this were any other consumer products, where 'unauthorized' repairs resulted in more than simply voiding your warranty, you would have consumer protection groups raising hell.
"Looks like you fitted your lawnmower with an aftermarket air filter. Don't worry, we fixed that for you and glued up the holes that you drilled to fit it. We also welded a piece of metal so it sticks out into the area where you had the old filter, just so you don't try it again."
Or if when you took your Toyota in for the recall, they ripped out your upgraded head unit and replaced your performance shocks with stock equipment.
The problem is that there is a context for it to happen in where it works best, and that's a marriage bed
Oh I don't know about that, the best damned sex I had was premarital, and in the woods to boot. (And in the stream in the woods, and in the tent, and also under the stars). It seemed to work pretty damned well in fact.
I'm sure walking up to an enemy combatant on a battlefield and saying "You have the right to remain silent" works really well. Cops can kill people who
You do realize that Sony has been moving _away_ from proprietary formats for the last couple years? Honestly, Sony bashing on/. has become almost as much of an art as Apple and MS bashing.
So when they introduced the new PSP which requires you to utilize a singular SONY site as a gateway to acquire your games, that wasn't a move to push for more proprietary control?
Please, think of those of us with impaired color vision, alright? Use red for frivolous bullshit. Save blue for something that really needs attention.
Thank You!
I'm freaking tired of seeing red/green used as indicators since that's also the most common form of color blindness. And it's not common as in 1 out of 1000, but common as in 7-10% of the population. Blue/yellow is an excellent choice for really highlighting what you want (maybe even pink) as it is much more rare for someone to not be able to distinguish those colors.
My favorite... are displays which like to use a light green and light grey to indicate if something is on or off. Yeah, good freaking choice there.
Blue is a very important color to use if you really want to get someone's attention.
If people had bothered to RTFA (I know, I'm expecting too much), you'd see that it says:
Add in the sign-recognition system GM's Opel division has developed and the head-up display can tell you when you're exceeding the speed limit
So the highlighting of speed limit signs looks like it's intended to be used to highlight signs when they display a speed limit that is lower than your current speed. Sounds pretty useful for all those little "speed-trap" towns that litter state routes.
It would be useless for me. Actually worse than useless as it would likely log that information and my insurance company would gladly use it to dump me if I was in anything more serious than a fender bender.
On 395/495 I don't care what the speed limit is. I go with the traffic, usually 20 mph:( On the side roads, there are so many god damned stop signs and lights (where there should be circles, or just 2 way stops instead of 4 way stops) you don't often get up to 30 mph before you are braking for the next one. I actually saw a traffic Circle with STOP SIGNS yesterday. Nearly crashed as I facepalmed.
And lets face it, on the interstates the general speed is > the speed limit, so they would always be red.
Well considering that the term 'black' isn't considered to be really offensive, that a spanish speaking person would call an African-American 'black' should be no surprise.
Wouldn't it be weird if he was speaking spanish and said 'los blancos'?
I'm really concerned about this as well. I've had some serious issues and need for dealing with floodlights, garage lights, etc. In working around my house, they prove invaluable (especially up North when decreased daylight becomes a problem). I just can't see CFLs replacing flood lights, and I'd really hate it if replacing one became insanely costly.
I'd take that over literally tons guaranteed to enter the environment thanks to coal plants.
If we switched over every single bulb in the entire country, how many coal plants would that eliminate? (Don't forget the new feeling that it is ok to leave the lights on longer since they consume much less power)
Rather than mandate what lighting a home uses, mandate that they need to be upgraded for heating efficiency. And NO GRANDFATHERING IN OLD HOUSES
This post was paid for by the Electricians and Home Builder's lobby.
Nice plan there, nothing like several thousand dollars worth of labor and equipment that would have be be put into 90% of homes. What would you do with the old equipment? Trash it? You know you waste more energy in not using tools and components to the end of their life than by replacing them by more efficient models in most cases.
In case of large animals it may take very long to replace the lost body part. Maybe adaptation is simply faster, and more energy efficient. Same probably for grievous wounds. Or maybe it's just not worth it at all, and the time it took to replace or get over such injury resulted in death of both. But the suppressed gene code was easier to write? Damn lazy programmers...
Lose a limb, and you can still survive. Starve to death because you were putting a LOT of energy into making a new limb...
The people who are being targeted have done a little bit more than leave the country. They've left the country and joined up with enemies of the country who are actively engaged in the process of trying it do it harm.
And this has been proven in a court of law? Or is based on the hunch of some intelligence analyst who is contracted through a corporation to provide support to the DoD?
1 Log into a computer 2 pull up an email program 3 authenticate with the server 4 download a copy from the server 5 read the email.
I can certainly see how adding one extra step
4.5 Open the email (decrypt or de-envelope)
Is the BIG step that you think is necessary to imply an expectation of privacy. So, why is it that 4 distinct steps is not sufficient to be considered no expectation of privacy, but 1 extra step is?
And what if the encryption is ROT13? is that sufficient? Or if someone is good enough to have memorized it and can read such a message rote do you no longer have any expectation of privacy?
The simple fact of the matter, is that the concept of an expectation of privacy is based upon the concept of what a person may observe with their own senses and not going out of their way to acquire that information. It is EXACTLY why it is NOT legal to use IR cameras to spy into buildings even though all that juicy IR information is beaming right out of the homes.
You can not read an email without technical assistance. That's all the envelope that is necessary.
With x-ray glasses you could see the message in a snail mail envelope too. How is tearing apart a paper envelope not trivial using your definition of trivial?
Trying to read a post card in a modern mail system would be pretty damned non-trivial as well. I'd hate to try and pick out one letter from one of those machines without getting my arms ripped off or shutting down the mail system for an entire region.
Email is like sending a message on a postcard. How much expectation of privacy did you have doing that? The onus is up to the sender to protect the message instead of whining about any number of people who can and will inspect the email or the back of the postcard as it goes through the system.
Capability to perform an act does not imply that the act must be performed.
Should someone get away with murder because they stood outside of my house and said "I'm going to kill you if you step outside." Obviously I had no expectation not to be murdered.
So, apparently as long ago as 1990 Microsoft, for one, was fully aware that "private" email wasn't necessarily private.
That had nothing to do with the privacy, as a letter delivered to your house by accident or error (Maybe they typed 7312 instead of 7321). That the address was typed incorrectly and therefore sent to the wrong address has no bearing on the 'expectation of privacy' of the correspondance.
I've received people's medical records in the mail by accident (Same last name). They certainly had an expectation of privacy even though there was an error in naming the recipient (email address domain)
Slashdot Mirror
$700 is not all that much for someone making or paying Western wages
I must be making Eastern wages then, because $700 has long since crossed into the if not major certainly not minor purchase category for me. When you exceed 1% gross annual income (And $70k isn't a small salary) that IS a significant purchase.
You say it as if there is something wrong with that. Sorry, you owe your success and productivity to the society that allowed you to come into existence and be successful and productive, and you are going to pay back into that society and to future generations and to the less fortunate. Ideally everyone would do this willingly, but, well there are too many people like you for that to work.
That's an awful lot of ownership that society is claiming. Are you suggesting that a person born in the United States would not be as productive if they lived in Canada? Or by simple fact of existing, they owe the fruits of their labor to some 'other'?
Or, you know, such things could just be uniform across the whole country since it's less asinine that way.
Do you think so? It's a hell of a lot easier to address state laws than national laws. And if you don't like either it is a hell of a lot easier to move between states than it is to leave the entire country.
Regardless of your position on the subject. How is it any less asinine for me to have to convince a good portion of the State of California that their 'best way' isn't so great for someone living in Vermont?
If the United States consisted of uniform weather/political/social/ethnic/ideological views, then having one set of laws that applied uniformly across the entire expanse might actually work. However, as you well know, you won't find many small towns that are uniform in belief and need, let alone the entire damned country.
For example, I decided that because of Marylands laws, I didn't want to live there. So I didn't take a job there and I live in a bordering state. What would be my recourse if I didn't care for one of Maryland's laws and it was applied across the whole country?
Also the compulsory weapons in Switzerland are battle rifles, those aren't exactly ideal for concealed carrying or even crime on the streets.
Then why make such a big deal about them here in the States?
Most others aren't, because it is not obvious what advantage supersonic cruise missiles have over ballistic ones.
Don't you mean what advantage supersonic cruise missiles have over subsonic cruise missles? Or did you mean what advantage supersonic cruise missiles have over short to medium range ballistic missiles?
Were you just comparing the advantages between speeds, or between guidance/control systems? While not quite apples and oranges, it certainly seems like you are comparing apples and pears at least.
Just in case you, or someone you know turns out to be the first, everyone should read this
It's not exactly rigorous, but it gets the main points across.
I read it, and it is a load of garbage. It covers a VERY slim potential scenario in which aliens stumble across 'you' and probably not even Earth. If they knew about Earth, a few hours of observation would pretty much answer any number of the questions that the author of that pamplet was guessing the aliens would want to ask.
The whole thing reads like some nerds fantasy of getting to initiate first contact AND toss out a whole bunch of his political views at the same time. (Honestly, does he really think that you are going to go from discussing triangles to the nuances of the human belief systems in the span of a few days?). Imagine if you were dropped off with a tribe in south america. Even human-human conversation would be damned hard and take several years to accomplish if you really worked at it. If he thinks that the communication gap is as large as he describes it, you aren't going to go from triangles and binary to even 'Hello' anytime soon. (Figure out how to describe Hello to an octopus if you want a similar challenge)
There are two ways in which First Contact is going to happen: They find us, or we find them. If we find them, there is no telling what technological gap is going to occur (We could be ET to them for all we know.) And if they find us... well
You don't see sane people accidentally starting discussions with beavers, ants or bees because they confused them for sapience. There is a 'slight' gap between instinctual organized behavior and launching rockets into space.
No updates, no new games. If you're not playing new games, why not buy a cheap DVD player? And watch new consoles come with the new firmware. Remember the old days of PSP hacking, when people would analyze the boxes to find a sign of what firmware they came with?
It almost seems like you are cheerleading their efforts to break someone's setup. The constant updates that these companies are throwing at us now are getting ridiculous. I don't like the idea of not owning the equipment in my home.
If this were any other consumer products, where 'unauthorized' repairs resulted in more than simply voiding your warranty, you would have consumer protection groups raising hell.
"Looks like you fitted your lawnmower with an aftermarket air filter. Don't worry, we fixed that for you and glued up the holes that you drilled to fit it. We also welded a piece of metal so it sticks out into the area where you had the old filter, just so you don't try it again."
Or if when you took your Toyota in for the recall, they ripped out your upgraded head unit and replaced your performance shocks with stock equipment.
The problem is that there is a context for it to happen in where it works best, and that's a marriage bed
Oh I don't know about that, the best damned sex I had was premarital, and in the woods to boot. (And in the stream in the woods, and in the tent, and also under the stars). It seemed to work pretty damned well in fact.
I'm sure walking up to an enemy combatant on a battlefield and saying "You have the right to remain silent" works really well. Cops can kill people who
The drones apparantly got him too!
You do realize that Sony has been moving _away_ from proprietary formats for the last couple years? Honestly, Sony bashing on /. has become almost as much of an art as Apple and MS bashing.
So when they introduced the new PSP which requires you to utilize a singular SONY site as a gateway to acquire your games, that wasn't a move to push for more proprietary control?
Please, think of those of us with impaired color vision, alright? Use red for frivolous bullshit. Save blue for something that really needs attention.
Thank You!
I'm freaking tired of seeing red/green used as indicators since that's also the most common form of color blindness. And it's not common as in 1 out of 1000, but common as in 7-10% of the population. Blue/yellow is an excellent choice for really highlighting what you want (maybe even pink) as it is much more rare for someone to not be able to distinguish those colors.
My favorite... are displays which like to use a light green and light grey to indicate if something is on or off. Yeah, good freaking choice there.
Blue is a very important color to use if you really want to get someone's attention.
If people had bothered to RTFA (I know, I'm expecting too much), you'd see that it says:
Add in the sign-recognition system GM's Opel division has developed and the head-up display can tell you when you're exceeding the speed limit
So the highlighting of speed limit signs looks like it's intended to be used to highlight signs when they display a speed limit that is lower than your current speed. Sounds pretty useful for all those little "speed-trap" towns that litter state routes.
It would be useless for me. Actually worse than useless as it would likely log that information and my insurance company would gladly use it to dump me if I was in anything more serious than a fender bender.
On 395/495 I don't care what the speed limit is. I go with the traffic, usually 20 mph :(
On the side roads, there are so many god damned stop signs and lights (where there should be circles, or just 2 way stops instead of 4 way stops) you don't often get up to 30 mph before you are braking for the next one. I actually saw a traffic Circle with STOP SIGNS yesterday. Nearly crashed as I facepalmed.
And lets face it, on the interstates the general speed is > the speed limit, so they would always be red.
African-American (I believe he did say "Negros")
Well considering that the term 'black' isn't considered to be really offensive, that a spanish speaking person would call an African-American 'black' should be no surprise.
Wouldn't it be weird if he was speaking spanish and said 'los blancos'?
Thanks for that. You explained it in a much better manner than I would have.
I'm really concerned about this as well. I've had some serious issues and need for dealing with floodlights, garage lights, etc. In working around my house, they prove invaluable (especially up North when decreased daylight becomes a problem). I just can't see CFLs replacing flood lights, and I'd really hate it if replacing one became insanely costly.
I'd take that over literally tons guaranteed to enter the environment thanks to coal plants.
If we switched over every single bulb in the entire country, how many coal plants would that eliminate? (Don't forget the new feeling that it is ok to leave the lights on longer since they consume much less power)
Rather than mandate what lighting a home uses, mandate that they need to be upgraded for heating efficiency. And NO GRANDFATHERING IN OLD HOUSES
This post was paid for by the Electricians and Home Builder's lobby.
Nice plan there, nothing like several thousand dollars worth of labor and equipment that would have be be put into 90% of homes. What would you do with the old equipment? Trash it? You know you waste more energy in not using tools and components to the end of their life than by replacing them by more efficient models in most cases.
Nature does things for a reason
Actually, no it doesn't.
In case of large animals it may take very long to replace the lost body part. Maybe adaptation is simply faster, and more energy efficient. Same probably for grievous wounds. Or maybe it's just not worth it at all, and the time it took to replace or get over such injury resulted in death of both. But the suppressed gene code was easier to write? Damn lazy programmers...
Lose a limb, and you can still survive. Starve to death because you were putting a LOT of energy into making a new limb...
The people who are being targeted have done a little bit more than leave the country. They've left the country and joined up with enemies of the country who are actively engaged in the process of trying it do it harm.
And this has been proven in a court of law? Or is based on the hunch of some intelligence analyst who is contracted through a corporation to provide support to the DoD?
There is no expectation of privacy in email
There may be NO privacy in email, but that doesn't mean there is no expectation of privacy.
Want privacy? Encrypt the actual message itself.
So in order to view an email you must:
1 Log into a computer
2 pull up an email program
3 authenticate with the server
4 download a copy from the server
5 read the email.
I can certainly see how adding one extra step
4.5 Open the email (decrypt or de-envelope)
Is the BIG step that you think is necessary to imply an expectation of privacy. So, why is it that 4 distinct steps is not sufficient to be considered no expectation of privacy, but 1 extra step is?
And what if the encryption is ROT13? is that sufficient? Or if someone is good enough to have memorized it and can read such a message rote do you no longer have any expectation of privacy?
The simple fact of the matter, is that the concept of an expectation of privacy is based upon the concept of what a person may observe with their own senses and not going out of their way to acquire that information. It is EXACTLY why it is NOT legal to use IR cameras to spy into buildings even though all that juicy IR information is beaming right out of the homes.
You can not read an email without technical assistance. That's all the envelope that is necessary.
With x-ray glasses you could see the message in a snail mail envelope too. How is tearing apart a paper envelope not trivial using your definition of trivial?
Trying to read a post card in a modern mail system would be pretty damned non-trivial as well. I'd hate to try and pick out one letter from one of those machines without getting my arms ripped off or shutting down the mail system for an entire region.
Email is like sending a message on a postcard. How much expectation of privacy did you have doing that? The onus is up to the sender to protect the message instead of whining about any number of people who can and will inspect the email or the back of the postcard as it goes through the system.
Capability to perform an act does not imply that the act must be performed.
Should someone get away with murder because they stood outside of my house and said "I'm going to kill you if you step outside." Obviously I had no expectation not to be murdered.
So, apparently as long ago as 1990 Microsoft, for one, was fully aware that "private" email wasn't necessarily private.
That had nothing to do with the privacy, as a letter delivered to your house by accident or error (Maybe they typed 7312 instead of 7321). That the address was typed incorrectly and therefore sent to the wrong address has no bearing on the 'expectation of privacy' of the correspondance.
I've received people's medical records in the mail by accident (Same last name). They certainly had an expectation of privacy even though there was an error in naming the recipient (email address domain)