We got a spate of those and then several waves of the damn warranty people. I used to get a kick out of leading them on before telling them I own a Merkur and asking how much the coverage would be. That was the one and only thing that made them stop calling our call center lines; threatening to call the cops didn't bother them.
On-topic:
Marketing is the art of convincing people to do things without them realizing that you've convinced them. This art is often poorly practiced or intercepted by unintended people. For that and for many other reasons, advertising is generally reviled. Way to go Toyota's ad people for sinking to new and abysmal lows. What kind of idiot would think this would be ok?
To all of you commenting on cops or lack thereof, try it sometime and see how fast they respond to internet threats. A couple of minutes? To trace a bunch of emails that were intentionally hidden? Ridiculous. Even with credit card fraud it can take months for them to even take the first few steps. You can spoon-feed them IP traces, dns registration information, anything you want. They do nothing.
Answering that is a little like trying to explain how/why chicken soup is good for you. My arguments here are relatively weak due to a serious lack of proper research into the field.
Focus on a task, its relevant information, subtasks, and predictive anticipation (subject focus if you will, or practical multitasking) benefits from reduced or eliminated interruptions due to internal monologue ('did I lock my car this morning?').
Those that suffer from racing thoughts, night terrors, insomnia, panic attacks, PTSD, ADD/ADHD, and (to a degree) paranoid, psychotic, or schizophrenic delusions would certainly benefit from a little control over their own minds. (This statement is easily extended, straw-covered and torched, but you can see the general direction here. It is by no means an exhaustive list.)
In learning to gain the states you referred to (mental silence and total focus), the practitioner gains the ability to selectively discard thoughts and input with very little attention or processing required. Although the goal is traditionally total focus (with or without seed), the techniques can be used in much more complex circumstances such as multitasking. (try transcribing two separate simultaneous conversations or keeping track of several simultaneous football games)
As a complete aside, most methods involve first acknowledging and then dismissing sensory input. This process provides a deep familiarity with your own body and your senses. One side effect of this is the ability to notice things like colds or the flu before they gain a solid foothold on the body. A little common sense and a lot of vitamin C can flatten a cold before it has a chance to make you feel ill if you catch it early enough. Similar benefits apply to many physical endeavors where your internal perception can warn you of potential strains, RSI or the like long before damage actually occurs.
What is sad is that so many people wouldn't even understand what you just said. Self-discipline is rare in modern times, exceedingly so when there is no external motivation. Internal mental discipline is both useful and rewarding, but nobody else is going to care. Yet.
Regarding the article, this is a thin wedge opening a path to much more interesting work. In this case their method relies on subconscious visual processing. Extra-sensory doesn't necessarily mean some mysterious sixth sense, just that information is received through channels other than the conscious senses. For example, some people are very good at reading the emotions of others via subtle facial and body language. Many such people are unaware of how this information comes to them and label it empathy or emotional telepathy. Naturals perceive this input as sudden insight or intuition with little or no conscious awareness of the process. Regardless, it is a learnable skill. Ask any good poker player.
It is unfortunate that the most common abilities of this type require a certain minimum of relevant sensory input. Tests designed to screen out all sensory influences will of course invalidate any claims based on such abilities. I'm not saying they are not falsifiable, just that a little more understanding of the underlying processes is needed in order to design appropriate experiments.
The Linux kernel is fairly well documented, as are most other tools with which they might wish to interoperate. Microsoft is welcome and legally able to build 'Windows Linux' or 'Office for Linux' or somesuch on top of the kernel and/or other tools, provided they obey the particular license that applies.
Since Microsoft seems unwilling to release the source to their products (as required by said license), I doubt this would ever be an issue. If by some miracle they did decide to release source code for Windows and other products, some of their current antitrust and interoperability difficulties would go away.
Historically, third parties have been eager to code interfaces between Microsoft products (and data formats) and other products, even without financial compensation. The barrier is and always has been Microsoft itself and their use of undocumented API calls, undocumented API behavior modification based on input, and many other tricks which prevent smooth interoperation with competing vendors.
To put it simply, this is not a situation where the tables can be turned. Microsoft's conduct has to date been wildly different than this '*.nix' of which you speak. Who exactly is paying you to spout this nonsense?
Fortunately, some geeky miscreant (perhaps even one from our own ranks) will open-source their design for a bee-killing EMP. We will then identify the colony flight paths, lay our ambushes, and watch the 'electrical disturbance' repair bills mount until the whole project is scrapped. Even if that one vector is somehow blocked, there must be plenty of ways to disrupt this kind of device.
It would be nice if reviews could be reduced to a universal standard. For instance, take the number of possible responses and normalize it to 10, low being negative and high being positive. A site with four options would produce ratings of 2.5, 5.0, etc. Most people recognize that 8 or 9 out of 10 is pretty good, while 2 or 3 out of 10 really sucks (without needing it to be explained).
The US Navy states that the most recent CVN stands 20 stories above the waterline. A 10-story substructure is not out of the question. It is also said that CVN77 produces 400,000 gallons of distilled water DAILY. The onboard reactors (2) are rated for a total of 208 MW shaft output (104MW each).
Designing a new-generation carrier around 2-3 comparable reactors (or the proposed upgraded versions), a 25-100MW fuel facility, similar or somewhat improved crew facilities, and including the current next-gen features (stealth, sensor, and computer upgrades) would be expensive to the tune of 15-20 billion USD. Trying to upgrade the in-process Ford class would likely be 7-12 billion USD and would add as much as a decade to the timetable.
Designing a brand-new custom nuclear-powered refueling vessel wouldn't be quite so ridiculously expensive, but it would also be a single-purpose vessel which would require escorts comparable to a carrier in its own right (except for jet fuel supply, obviously). Current (planned) CVN's are around 8-9 billion each. This proposed ship would probably run around 3-4 billion plus the cost of the facility itself (based on completely random numbers I just made up).
Those fractions not suitable for jets would find use in some escort ships. Any excess could be sold (at a huge loss of course) to help offset the costs of waste disposal for the system. Another thought is that starting with pure CO2 and distilled water would end in products with no sulphur or other difficult pollutants, and could be cracked, blended, or simply burnt off.
It could be done. The question is at what point do the benefits outweigh the costs? Over a 50-year service life, how much would each mobile fuel plant save the Navy? How much is petroleum-derived jet fuel going to cost in 50 years (or over the next 2 decades even)? Is there some kind of global carbon regulation coming that would reward a system whose carbon footprint is almost entirely in the build phase? Would there be significant PR/diplomatic gains to be made with citizens and/or other countries? Would this technology enable some new capability or enhance current capabilities to the point that the cost would be less than alternate methods of achieving the same result?
Since the SSN is merely 'convenient' but completely without validation, whereas the driver's license or state ID number is validated by 2 or more factors (however poorly), is more difficult to fake, is backed by the state government, and includes both an image and the signature of the individual, why wouldn't you use the state ID as a unique identifier tied to an individual? You do know that you can get a license scanner that ties into the DMV database for validation as well, right? A driver's license is something anyone driving a car is legally required to carry. Anyone without a license will generally have a state ID in the same format for identification. Most places that still take checks require your DL number to be written onto the check specifically because it is a unique personal identifier that is more complicated to fake than most other forms of ID. A collision in license number is also much more likely to be noticed than a collision in SSN (rationale left as an excercise for the reader).
self-reply, sorry... to mcmonkey: I went back and re-read your post only to realize that my borked display covered up the second half of your comment. What I should have said would have included the mathematician's idea that engineering is focused on how, while math is focused on how, why, when, etc. In other words, the current method teaches one how to use rote formulas (as might be useful in engineering) without learning how to apply or modify those formulas when the situation changes (which would be a serious drawback to an actual engineering student). In fact, engineering courses are more likely to teach you how to do math, instead of just how to use the tools developed by others (when compared to high-school math).
By teaching how, rather than why. "Here is how to find some property of a right triangle" rather than "Here are the qualities of a right triangle. What can you find using that, and why?"
While that method is useful in learning how to apply some given formula, it is useless in learning how to derive a formula or understand which one to use and why. Modern US algebra students might be able to tell you the square footage of pen they can construct with a given length of fence. Very few would be able to reverse that rote equation and determine how much fence they need for a certain size of pen (or for a circular pen). If we were taught how to build that basic formula, we would recognize that it is the same problem with a different variable and be able to adjust the formula effortlessly and correctly.
Strangely enough, my '89 Merkur has a rear window cleaner fluid reservoir with a lightbulb and starburst shape on the cap. I like to ask mechanics if they can top off my blinker fluid... weeds out the humorless ones.
On-topic, these guys called into our call center ruthlessly and relentlessly. We have several regular and disaster-recovery lines (we're high-availability support for radio automation), and they would walk through them all. Over the past several months, we have taken THOUSANDS of these calls. Our SOP (after a month or two) was to push 1, get a human, then tell them that they were illegally utilizing a paid service and we would cheerfully sue them. That's assuming we would actually get to talk to a human, and also assuming the tech that took the call remembered what to say to them. We would get no calls on that specific external number for about two weeks. Anything else we would say or do would get no results at all; they would just keep calling. Our telco did nothing about it, but of course their hands are tied by federal regulations.
Rocket fuel is an NPC trade good (with trace amounts from missions), and is one of the more expensive components in advanced missiles.
I admit that's the only financially substantial counterexample I could come up with. So, it all traces back to insurance, asteroid miners, ice miners, moon-mining POS'es, and mission/rat loot. Add to that the GTC/PLEX system, and those are the sources of ISK in the game.
Sinks would be insurance payments, clones, market taxes, repairs (in station), production slots, lab slots, corporate offices, blueprint originals, and a few other assorted things.
It seems to me that the driving force behind prices is the lowly tritanium unit (and other minerals, of course). Being the 'supply' side of supply and demand, the single most significant factor in prices throughout the game is the output of miners. There have been times where collusion and profiteering were significant factors, and that can and does still happen on a local scale. New additions (via updates) lead to speculation and rapid price fluctuation. Within a few days, things settle down and we return to values appropriate to the current mineral output of the system.
In the years that I have been playing EVE, I have never seen a substantial difference in prices due to the implementation of or changes in the GTC/PLEX system. The sole exception would be the ISK cost of 30 days of game time, which has more than tripled. That does not rule out inflation, but if it is there it is being masked or mitigated by other market factors and in any case is not a significant factor in the current economy. Perhaps there is significant inflation with regard to the value of an ISK versus the value of a dollar (influenced by RMT outfits, which in turn drives up the cost of time codes), but the market is internally consistent.
How about the right to privacy on your own computer? How about the right to due process when some monkey investigator decides that your network printer is sharing files and threatens your ISP into giving out your name? How about casting off the pall of superstitious fear hovering around torrent programs and setting them free to do what they were meant to do? (and that is group transmitting of large files, not unlawfully copying music)? How about doing everything in our power to prevent yet another police state? How about finding a real, legal, logical method of identifying the people who are actually infringing copyright and prosecuting them in a way that doesn't alienate nearly the entire digital community? How about the monopolist companies who are throwing all these wild accusations of lost profits and rampant theft actually step up and prove one single statement? How about those same companies hold themselves to the same standard they expect of their consumers and submit to an invasive audit and review of their policies, both internal and external? How about you think about this for a minute or two before ranting off about something you apparently don't understand?
I admit that you certainly have a right to rant at will on slashdot as long as they let you keep your account. Just try to put a little thought into it instead of knee-jerk reactionism. You honestly have no idea what the pirate party stands for. Hint: the name is a slogan to gain attention, nothing more. Clearly in your case it worked.
Since the RIAA is starting to snowball into failure in the courts, they have been working to undermine the legislature into a position more favorable to them. Here is a site dedicated to fighting one aspect of this end-run, the radio performance tax. http://www.saveyourradio.org/
A small sensor has more dense pixels. It reaches thermal equilibrium more quickly and sees less noise due to temperature differences within the chip. The pixels are very small; electromagnetic interference within the chip itself becomes a noticeable factor in the total noise of the sensor. Lenses for these smaller chips must focus the image to a higher ratio, requiring higher-quality optics for the same quality image, or producing additional optical distortion with the same lens quality. From a production standpoint, smaller sensors means more sensors per wafer with a higher failure rate.
A large sensor may have internal thermal-equilibrium problems (if temps vary significantly), but is much less susceptible to internal EM interference. If each individual pixel is actually larger, some ambient noise (stray high-energy EM, etc.) can be smoothed out or reduced simply because the pixel is too large to be activated by it. Optics can be cheaper or better (at the same price) than the comparable small-sensor camera. From a production standpoint, large sensors means fewer sensors per wafer with a lower failure rate.
[bittervitriol]Burning iceburgs made of fail. (for this 'package' GP references) At least Wizards released the d20 rules for public use while they were simultaneously backstabbing, disemboweling and decapitating the system. But hey, in these 'trying economic times', I guess everyone needs to rush out and buy hundreds of dollars in books for a system that has almost nothing to do with D&D.[/bittervitriol]
My limited experience with Gentoo has been very smooth. Updating glibc and gcc took a while, but otherwise I've had no upgrade problems.
On topic, this is excellent. I don't trust PRNG dicerollers. Capturing the actual rolls of real, physical dice is a great idea. Now they just need to build 5 more, and that should cover nearly every game involving dice.
Never does it say that the people have no right to anonymity. How exactly can we have free speech, religion, assembly, etc. if we are not anonymous? Since the issue is not addressed in the Constitution, that right falls to the people. Since the people have never been very interested in defending that right, the states and the federal government have encroached upon it in typical stepwise, 'think of the children', well-meaning, but ultimately misguided increments.
This decision is logical, though it would have been better to use the term 'commentor' rather than 'blogger'. Capital crimes investigations take priority over a lot of borderline practices in order to discourage more capital crimes. Even a proper news source could have been court-ordered to disclose a statement to the police in cases of murder, arson, kidnapping, terrorism, etc.
Lesser crimes (such as slander) would have no standing compared to the protections afforded by shield laws. If an anonymous person slanders you or your business, you sue them. They are breaking the law, which typically breaks their right to anonymous speech (as it is not covered speech). This is a completely unrelated and already resolved concern with no bearing on the issue of anonymity in general or shield laws and blogs in particular.
The fact that it was out and available all over the world as soon as someone posted it is important. It means the content can't be stopped by torture, mail inspection, border patrols, or a well-planned plane crash. The medium made the message possible to an extent that we could never have imagined a decade ago. THAT is the reason this story is here on/.
That island of stability is still subject to tidal gravitational stress. The gravitational forces between the two black holes do not cancel out exactly. It is like an unstable lagrange point, where drifting off to either side even slightly will put you out of the 'stable' zone.
So, Bob and Joe are still pulling really hard on Tim. Right in the middle of Tim, the forces do cancel out. At Tim's head (or arms) and his feet, they do not. I'd imagine that most configurations with a stable point would be roughly equal in mass, so the tidal force would not be too significant unless they were small black holes and very close together.
As for atomic stability, if one black hole does not rip the atoms apart, then two certainly will not do so (barring odd configurations with spin and charge that are beyond my simple understanding).
Small-town theatres for the win, may they never go out of business. 2x adults: $5.50 each 1x child: $2.50 1x large popcorn: $4.00 3x med drinks: $2.00 each (and my theatre makes espresso) ?x random sugar junk: $5.00
Total: $28.50 for three people to watch a movie and pig out. It's cheaper for us than going to a sit-down restaurant for a decent meal. If we go on the cheap and get a med popcorn and 1 large drink to share, our total is under $20, which compares favorably to a fast-food meal. Yes, it could be half that if concessions were at a reasonable margin, but distributors bend over theatre owners on ticket sales so I don't mind so much.
We saw The Dark Night on opening night, too... they are really good about getting excellent movies in.
I live right above the middle of that aquifer. Wells for drinking and irrigation are strictly regulated. Farm irrigation wells are fitted with remote shutoff valves controlled by the public power and irrigation district. Soil runoff is an ongoing problem. Still, the average level is declining. The nearby lake is a surface extension of the aquifer, and the beach is almost a mile wide these days (compared to perhaps 1/4 mile when I moved here 3+ years ago).
As for orbital debris, why lasers? Why not use an electron or ion beam and take advantage of induced electrostatic forces within the debris field?
I work in a call center. Application-specific support (yeah, right). We're part of a fairly large company that is pretty paranoid about WAN access, vpns, use policy, etc. (Hamachi, for instance, is a termination-worthy program if found on your machine)
All of us have admin access on our local machines. We all have limited domain admin access, such that we can log in as ourselves to site servers, other people's assigned personal workstations, etc., and have local admin rights. We not only have the power to destroy our own machines, but we also have the power to cause real financial damage throughout the network.
On the other hand, our job is to minimize the damage caused by outages, users, and misinformation. We deal with everything from desktop headaches that we don't feel like foisting off on desktop support through application configuration through troubleshooting unusual third-party hardware and servers running windows and novell. People couldn't get into my position without being well above the average call-center rep, let alone the average user. The potential for liability is more than enough to keep us clean on the network, and simple expediency keeps us from doing anything really dumb on our own machines.
If you're talking about a group of users who use computers as a simple tool and have no interest in going beyond rote learning, this is a catastrophic security model. If your users know what they're doing to some extent, know who to go to for help, and are personally invested enough not to be intentionally dumb or criminal, then it works fine.
For a group just-migrated to Linux, just be reasonable. Allowing them to install programs to their home folder isn't that big a deal. Consider using a changelog. I, as one of your users, wants to install program Y. I go right ahead and do it, then note the program in my changelog. You come along on a random audit, see the new program, see it in the changelog, great. If it wasn't tracked, wipe it. If it comes back mysteriously, demote me so I can't install things without permission. If that is too permissive, then make request/approve the default, and upgrade responsible users.
In terms of corporate data or services, it should already be impossible for any user to wipe out a server's data no matter what OS they run. If that is not the case, look at your recovery plans before you start considering desktop lockdowns. Assuming the rest of the network is secure both within and without, the worst a user can do is bork their own desktop. Reimage the thing, recover their data from the \home server (if needed), and demote their access if necessary.
Sorry it's not very specific, but for something like this you should be more concerned about deciding on a methodology before working out the specific commands and settings.
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Theatres typically keep 10% of ticket income and 100% of concessions.
As an aside, Lucasfilms was trying to extort 20-50% of gross concessions in exchange for guaranteed copies of the more recent star wars trilogy.
Why would anyone want to bring a laptop to a movie anyway?
We got a spate of those and then several waves of the damn warranty people. I used to get a kick out of leading them on before telling them I own a Merkur and asking how much the coverage would be. That was the one and only thing that made them stop calling our call center lines; threatening to call the cops didn't bother them.
On-topic:
Marketing is the art of convincing people to do things without them realizing that you've convinced them. This art is often poorly practiced or intercepted by unintended people. For that and for many other reasons, advertising is generally reviled. Way to go Toyota's ad people for sinking to new and abysmal lows. What kind of idiot would think this would be ok?
To all of you commenting on cops or lack thereof, try it sometime and see how fast they respond to internet threats. A couple of minutes? To trace a bunch of emails that were intentionally hidden? Ridiculous. Even with credit card fraud it can take months for them to even take the first few steps. You can spoon-feed them IP traces, dns registration information, anything you want. They do nothing.
Answering that is a little like trying to explain how/why chicken soup is good for you. My arguments here are relatively weak due to a serious lack of proper research into the field.
Focus on a task, its relevant information, subtasks, and predictive anticipation (subject focus if you will, or practical multitasking) benefits from reduced or eliminated interruptions due to internal monologue ('did I lock my car this morning?').
Those that suffer from racing thoughts, night terrors, insomnia, panic attacks, PTSD, ADD/ADHD, and (to a degree) paranoid, psychotic, or schizophrenic delusions would certainly benefit from a little control over their own minds. (This statement is easily extended, straw-covered and torched, but you can see the general direction here. It is by no means an exhaustive list.)
In learning to gain the states you referred to (mental silence and total focus), the practitioner gains the ability to selectively discard thoughts and input with very little attention or processing required. Although the goal is traditionally total focus (with or without seed), the techniques can be used in much more complex circumstances such as multitasking. (try transcribing two separate simultaneous conversations or keeping track of several simultaneous football games)
As a complete aside, most methods involve first acknowledging and then dismissing sensory input. This process provides a deep familiarity with your own body and your senses. One side effect of this is the ability to notice things like colds or the flu before they gain a solid foothold on the body. A little common sense and a lot of vitamin C can flatten a cold before it has a chance to make you feel ill if you catch it early enough. Similar benefits apply to many physical endeavors where your internal perception can warn you of potential strains, RSI or the like long before damage actually occurs.
What is sad is that so many people wouldn't even understand what you just said. Self-discipline is rare in modern times, exceedingly so when there is no external motivation. Internal mental discipline is both useful and rewarding, but nobody else is going to care. Yet.
Regarding the article, this is a thin wedge opening a path to much more interesting work. In this case their method relies on subconscious visual processing. Extra-sensory doesn't necessarily mean some mysterious sixth sense, just that information is received through channels other than the conscious senses. For example, some people are very good at reading the emotions of others via subtle facial and body language. Many such people are unaware of how this information comes to them and label it empathy or emotional telepathy. Naturals perceive this input as sudden insight or intuition with little or no conscious awareness of the process. Regardless, it is a learnable skill. Ask any good poker player.
It is unfortunate that the most common abilities of this type require a certain minimum of relevant sensory input. Tests designed to screen out all sensory influences will of course invalidate any claims based on such abilities. I'm not saying they are not falsifiable, just that a little more understanding of the underlying processes is needed in order to design appropriate experiments.
The Linux kernel is fairly well documented, as are most other tools with which they might wish to interoperate. Microsoft is welcome and legally able to build 'Windows Linux' or 'Office for Linux' or somesuch on top of the kernel and/or other tools, provided they obey the particular license that applies.
Since Microsoft seems unwilling to release the source to their products (as required by said license), I doubt this would ever be an issue. If by some miracle they did decide to release source code for Windows and other products, some of their current antitrust and interoperability difficulties would go away.
Historically, third parties have been eager to code interfaces between Microsoft products (and data formats) and other products, even without financial compensation. The barrier is and always has been Microsoft itself and their use of undocumented API calls, undocumented API behavior modification based on input, and many other tricks which prevent smooth interoperation with competing vendors.
To put it simply, this is not a situation where the tables can be turned. Microsoft's conduct has to date been wildly different than this '*.nix' of which you speak. Who exactly is paying you to spout this nonsense?
Fortunately, some geeky miscreant (perhaps even one from our own ranks) will open-source their design for a bee-killing EMP. We will then identify the colony flight paths, lay our ambushes, and watch the 'electrical disturbance' repair bills mount until the whole project is scrapped. Even if that one vector is somehow blocked, there must be plenty of ways to disrupt this kind of device.
It would be nice if reviews could be reduced to a universal standard. For instance, take the number of possible responses and normalize it to 10, low being negative and high being positive. A site with four options would produce ratings of 2.5, 5.0, etc. Most people recognize that 8 or 9 out of 10 is pretty good, while 2 or 3 out of 10 really sucks (without needing it to be explained).
The US Navy states that the most recent CVN stands 20 stories above the waterline. A 10-story substructure is not out of the question. It is also said that CVN77 produces 400,000 gallons of distilled water DAILY. The onboard reactors (2) are rated for a total of 208 MW shaft output (104MW each).
Designing a new-generation carrier around 2-3 comparable reactors (or the proposed upgraded versions), a 25-100MW fuel facility, similar or somewhat improved crew facilities, and including the current next-gen features (stealth, sensor, and computer upgrades) would be expensive to the tune of 15-20 billion USD. Trying to upgrade the in-process Ford class would likely be 7-12 billion USD and would add as much as a decade to the timetable.
Designing a brand-new custom nuclear-powered refueling vessel wouldn't be quite so ridiculously expensive, but it would also be a single-purpose vessel which would require escorts comparable to a carrier in its own right (except for jet fuel supply, obviously). Current (planned) CVN's are around 8-9 billion each. This proposed ship would probably run around 3-4 billion plus the cost of the facility itself (based on completely random numbers I just made up).
Those fractions not suitable for jets would find use in some escort ships. Any excess could be sold (at a huge loss of course) to help offset the costs of waste disposal for the system. Another thought is that starting with pure CO2 and distilled water would end in products with no sulphur or other difficult pollutants, and could be cracked, blended, or simply burnt off.
It could be done. The question is at what point do the benefits outweigh the costs? Over a 50-year service life, how much would each mobile fuel plant save the Navy? How much is petroleum-derived jet fuel going to cost in 50 years (or over the next 2 decades even)? Is there some kind of global carbon regulation coming that would reward a system whose carbon footprint is almost entirely in the build phase? Would there be significant PR/diplomatic gains to be made with citizens and/or other countries? Would this technology enable some new capability or enhance current capabilities to the point that the cost would be less than alternate methods of achieving the same result?
All arguments intended for the U.S., obviously...
Since the SSN is merely 'convenient' but completely without validation, whereas the driver's license or state ID number is validated by 2 or more factors (however poorly), is more difficult to fake, is backed by the state government, and includes both an image and the signature of the individual, why wouldn't you use the state ID as a unique identifier tied to an individual? You do know that you can get a license scanner that ties into the DMV database for validation as well, right? A driver's license is something anyone driving a car is legally required to carry. Anyone without a license will generally have a state ID in the same format for identification. Most places that still take checks require your DL number to be written onto the check specifically because it is a unique personal identifier that is more complicated to fake than most other forms of ID. A collision in license number is also much more likely to be noticed than a collision in SSN (rationale left as an excercise for the reader).
self-reply, sorry...
to mcmonkey:
I went back and re-read your post only to realize that my borked display covered up the second half of your comment. What I should have said would have included the mathematician's idea that engineering is focused on how, while math is focused on how, why, when, etc. In other words, the current method teaches one how to use rote formulas (as might be useful in engineering) without learning how to apply or modify those formulas when the situation changes (which would be a serious drawback to an actual engineering student). In fact, engineering courses are more likely to teach you how to do math, instead of just how to use the tools developed by others (when compared to high-school math).
By teaching how, rather than why.
"Here is how to find some property of a right triangle" rather than "Here are the qualities of a right triangle. What can you find using that, and why?"
While that method is useful in learning how to apply some given formula, it is useless in learning how to derive a formula or understand which one to use and why. Modern US algebra students might be able to tell you the square footage of pen they can construct with a given length of fence. Very few would be able to reverse that rote equation and determine how much fence they need for a certain size of pen (or for a circular pen). If we were taught how to build that basic formula, we would recognize that it is the same problem with a different variable and be able to adjust the formula effortlessly and correctly.
^^ needs mod fix...
that's not a flame, merely a robust discussion.
Strangely enough, my '89 Merkur has a rear window cleaner fluid reservoir with a lightbulb and starburst shape on the cap. I like to ask mechanics if they can top off my blinker fluid... weeds out the humorless ones.
On-topic, these guys called into our call center ruthlessly and relentlessly. We have several regular and disaster-recovery lines (we're high-availability support for radio automation), and they would walk through them all. Over the past several months, we have taken THOUSANDS of these calls. Our SOP (after a month or two) was to push 1, get a human, then tell them that they were illegally utilizing a paid service and we would cheerfully sue them. That's assuming we would actually get to talk to a human, and also assuming the tech that took the call remembered what to say to them. We would get no calls on that specific external number for about two weeks. Anything else we would say or do would get no results at all; they would just keep calling. Our telco did nothing about it, but of course their hands are tied by federal regulations.
Rocket fuel. Blueprints. Most containers.
Rocket fuel is an NPC trade good (with trace amounts from missions), and is one of the more expensive components in advanced missiles.
I admit that's the only financially substantial counterexample I could come up with. So, it all traces back to insurance, asteroid miners, ice miners, moon-mining POS'es, and mission/rat loot. Add to that the GTC/PLEX system, and those are the sources of ISK in the game.
Sinks would be insurance payments, clones, market taxes, repairs (in station), production slots, lab slots, corporate offices, blueprint originals, and a few other assorted things.
It seems to me that the driving force behind prices is the lowly tritanium unit (and other minerals, of course). Being the 'supply' side of supply and demand, the single most significant factor in prices throughout the game is the output of miners. There have been times where collusion and profiteering were significant factors, and that can and does still happen on a local scale. New additions (via updates) lead to speculation and rapid price fluctuation. Within a few days, things settle down and we return to values appropriate to the current mineral output of the system.
In the years that I have been playing EVE, I have never seen a substantial difference in prices due to the implementation of or changes in the GTC/PLEX system. The sole exception would be the ISK cost of 30 days of game time, which has more than tripled. That does not rule out inflation, but if it is there it is being masked or mitigated by other market factors and in any case is not a significant factor in the current economy. Perhaps there is significant inflation with regard to the value of an ISK versus the value of a dollar (influenced by RMT outfits, which in turn drives up the cost of time codes), but the market is internally consistent.
How about the right to privacy on your own computer?
How about the right to due process when some monkey investigator decides that your network printer is sharing files and threatens your ISP into giving out your name?
How about casting off the pall of superstitious fear hovering around torrent programs and setting them free to do what they were meant to do? (and that is group transmitting of large files, not unlawfully copying music)?
How about doing everything in our power to prevent yet another police state?
How about finding a real, legal, logical method of identifying the people who are actually infringing copyright and prosecuting them in a way that doesn't alienate nearly the entire digital community?
How about the monopolist companies who are throwing all these wild accusations of lost profits and rampant theft actually step up and prove one single statement?
How about those same companies hold themselves to the same standard they expect of their consumers and submit to an invasive audit and review of their policies, both internal and external?
How about you think about this for a minute or two before ranting off about something you apparently don't understand?
I admit that you certainly have a right to rant at will on slashdot as long as they let you keep your account. Just try to put a little thought into it instead of knee-jerk reactionism. You honestly have no idea what the pirate party stands for. Hint: the name is a slogan to gain attention, nothing more. Clearly in your case it worked.
(this post is offtopic)
Since the RIAA is starting to snowball into failure in the courts, they have been working to undermine the legislature into a position more favorable to them. Here is a site dedicated to fighting one aspect of this end-run, the radio performance tax.
http://www.saveyourradio.org/
This is all for a given number of pixels.
A small sensor has more dense pixels. It reaches thermal equilibrium more quickly and sees less noise due to temperature differences within the chip. The pixels are very small; electromagnetic interference within the chip itself becomes a noticeable factor in the total noise of the sensor. Lenses for these smaller chips must focus the image to a higher ratio, requiring higher-quality optics for the same quality image, or producing additional optical distortion with the same lens quality. From a production standpoint, smaller sensors means more sensors per wafer with a higher failure rate.
A large sensor may have internal thermal-equilibrium problems (if temps vary significantly), but is much less susceptible to internal EM interference. If each individual pixel is actually larger, some ambient noise (stray high-energy EM, etc.) can be smoothed out or reduced simply because the pixel is too large to be activated by it. Optics can be cheaper or better (at the same price) than the comparable small-sensor camera. From a production standpoint, large sensors means fewer sensors per wafer with a lower failure rate.
[bittervitriol]Burning iceburgs made of fail. (for this 'package' GP references) At least Wizards released the d20 rules for public use while they were simultaneously backstabbing, disemboweling and decapitating the system. But hey, in these 'trying economic times', I guess everyone needs to rush out and buy hundreds of dollars in books for a system that has almost nothing to do with D&D.[/bittervitriol]
My limited experience with Gentoo has been very smooth. Updating glibc and gcc took a while, but otherwise I've had no upgrade problems.
On topic, this is excellent. I don't trust PRNG dicerollers. Capturing the actual rolls of real, physical dice is a great idea. Now they just need to build 5 more, and that should cover nearly every game involving dice.
Never does it say that the people have no right to anonymity. How exactly can we have free speech, religion, assembly, etc. if we are not anonymous? Since the issue is not addressed in the Constitution, that right falls to the people. Since the people have never been very interested in defending that right, the states and the federal government have encroached upon it in typical stepwise, 'think of the children', well-meaning, but ultimately misguided increments.
This decision is logical, though it would have been better to use the term 'commentor' rather than 'blogger'. Capital crimes investigations take priority over a lot of borderline practices in order to discourage more capital crimes. Even a proper news source could have been court-ordered to disclose a statement to the police in cases of murder, arson, kidnapping, terrorism, etc.
Lesser crimes (such as slander) would have no standing compared to the protections afforded by shield laws. If an anonymous person slanders you or your business, you sue them. They are breaking the law, which typically breaks their right to anonymous speech (as it is not covered speech). This is a completely unrelated and already resolved concern with no bearing on the issue of anonymity in general or shield laws and blogs in particular.
The fact that it was out and available all over the world as soon as someone posted it is important. It means the content can't be stopped by torture, mail inspection, border patrols, or a well-planned plane crash. The medium made the message possible to an extent that we could never have imagined a decade ago. THAT is the reason this story is here on /.
That island of stability is still subject to tidal gravitational stress. The gravitational forces between the two black holes do not cancel out exactly. It is like an unstable lagrange point, where drifting off to either side even slightly will put you out of the 'stable' zone.
So, Bob and Joe are still pulling really hard on Tim. Right in the middle of Tim, the forces do cancel out. At Tim's head (or arms) and his feet, they do not. I'd imagine that most configurations with a stable point would be roughly equal in mass, so the tidal force would not be too significant unless they were small black holes and very close together.
As for atomic stability, if one black hole does not rip the atoms apart, then two certainly will not do so (barring odd configurations with spin and charge that are beyond my simple understanding).
Small-town theatres for the win, may they never go out of business.
2x adults: $5.50 each
1x child: $2.50
1x large popcorn: $4.00
3x med drinks: $2.00 each (and my theatre makes espresso)
?x random sugar junk: $5.00
Total: $28.50 for three people to watch a movie and pig out. It's cheaper for us than going to a sit-down restaurant for a decent meal. If we go on the cheap and get a med popcorn and 1 large drink to share, our total is under $20, which compares favorably to a fast-food meal. Yes, it could be half that if concessions were at a reasonable margin, but distributors bend over theatre owners on ticket sales so I don't mind so much.
We saw The Dark Night on opening night, too... they are really good about getting excellent movies in.
What are these levels you speak of?
For those of us playing a real game, let us link to the eve api and score per million SP.
I live right above the middle of that aquifer. Wells for drinking and irrigation are strictly regulated. Farm irrigation wells are fitted with remote shutoff valves controlled by the public power and irrigation district. Soil runoff is an ongoing problem. Still, the average level is declining. The nearby lake is a surface extension of the aquifer, and the beach is almost a mile wide these days (compared to perhaps 1/4 mile when I moved here 3+ years ago).
As for orbital debris, why lasers? Why not use an electron or ion beam and take advantage of induced electrostatic forces within the debris field?
I work in a call center. Application-specific support (yeah, right). We're part of a fairly large company that is pretty paranoid about WAN access, vpns, use policy, etc. (Hamachi, for instance, is a termination-worthy program if found on your machine)
All of us have admin access on our local machines. We all have limited domain admin access, such that we can log in as ourselves to site servers, other people's assigned personal workstations, etc., and have local admin rights. We not only have the power to destroy our own machines, but we also have the power to cause real financial damage throughout the network.
On the other hand, our job is to minimize the damage caused by outages, users, and misinformation. We deal with everything from desktop headaches that we don't feel like foisting off on desktop support through application configuration through troubleshooting unusual third-party hardware and servers running windows and novell. People couldn't get into my position without being well above the average call-center rep, let alone the average user. The potential for liability is more than enough to keep us clean on the network, and simple expediency keeps us from doing anything really dumb on our own machines.
If you're talking about a group of users who use computers as a simple tool and have no interest in going beyond rote learning, this is a catastrophic security model. If your users know what they're doing to some extent, know who to go to for help, and are personally invested enough not to be intentionally dumb or criminal, then it works fine.
For a group just-migrated to Linux, just be reasonable. Allowing them to install programs to their home folder isn't that big a deal. Consider using a changelog. I, as one of your users, wants to install program Y. I go right ahead and do it, then note the program in my changelog. You come along on a random audit, see the new program, see it in the changelog, great. If it wasn't tracked, wipe it. If it comes back mysteriously, demote me so I can't install things without permission. If that is too permissive, then make request/approve the default, and upgrade responsible users.
In terms of corporate data or services, it should already be impossible for any user to wipe out a server's data no matter what OS they run. If that is not the case, look at your recovery plans before you start considering desktop lockdowns. Assuming the rest of the network is secure both within and without, the worst a user can do is bork their own desktop. Reimage the thing, recover their data from the \home server (if needed), and demote their access if necessary.
Sorry it's not very specific, but for something like this you should be more concerned about deciding on a methodology before working out the specific commands and settings.