See, thing is... If you get your ass beat, you can take the entire damn department to court and you stand one hell of a good chance of winning. It's harder to get a court of law to do something about your broken camera than a broken bone.
Also, King wasn't killed by the cops, unless you're some kind of whack-job conspiracy theorist. Oh, and tell your "Most people who resist end up with a bullet in their heads" to the millions of protesters a year who end up, guess where? In a jail cell, not in a morgue. In this age where shooting even an armed criminal who is firing on you in the middle of a shootout gets you several months off-duty as you get investigated the hell out of, I very much doubt any cop wants to pull the trigger for any reason other than self-defense. So, please, take your all-cops-are-evil, stupid sociopathic, triggerhappy control freaks nonesense and stick it somewhere unpleasant. All of the cops I know personally are good men who just want to make a positive difference.
Besides, like I said: If you are videotaping the police unjustly doing something and they try to come over and take your proof, what the hell are you gonna do? Try to keep the evidence you were just giong out of your way to obtain, or surrender it peaceably in a manner that will almost certainly not accomplish anything. At least if you get your ass beat excessively, somebody at the department is gonna get put on review.
Anyone who is taping police injustice isn't gonna want to just give up their evidence. I was just providing the (realistic) viewpoint that most cops don't want to do anything they could get in trouble for and they can get in a lot more trouble for smacking around some random civilian than for taking said civilian's tape out of his video camera.
Just a snippet of advice: Stand up for yourself if some officer of the "Law" is harassing you. Do it in a respectful manner and respectfully tell them that they cannot legally arrest you for whatever it is they are trying to arrest you for illegally. If you need to, resist arrest. They pretty much can't shoot you, they mostly won't taser you, and, if there are witnesses around, certainly won't beat your ass for refusing to allow them to clap you in irons and drag you off to some dungeon.
That said, resist, a lot, but unless they attack you with a weapon, don't respond with one. That's a good way to get killed really quickly.
The (corrupt members of the department of) police arrest people for anything/nothing because they know noone is giong to resist, because that can accrue a charge of resisting arrest. Show some spine and stand up for the real Law and for your own rights and this sort of "they won't fight back" mentality will go away. What's a night in jail for standing up for your Rights? Martin Luther King, Jr. and Henry David Thoreau seemed to think that was a fine trade.
I love how everyone knocks the new trilogy because it's soooo cool to do so.
Go watch the old stuff again with a critical eye instead of a nostalgic one. The dialogue? Terrible. It was just as contrived and "ooh, so space-age" neologismed as the newer dialogue. In fact, I think that's part of its charm! Would Star Wars be Star Wars without "scruffy lookin' nerf-herder" or "Oota-goota, Solo?" or "Aren't you a little short for a stormtrooper?" Come on, guys, quit bashing just because it's the "in" thing to do.
What editor selected this? Why on earth... what were you smoking this morning? Did your cat jump on your keyboard and accept this submission on accident?
What a load of opinionated, unsubstantiated bullshit.
This is not about our rights on the internet, this is about the rights of some high school students (citizens of a country that is 65% overweight or obese) to not eat sugar- and fat-laden junk food.
If the story you are telling can be told without any of the sci-fi trappings (e.g. if you're writing a mystery story with lasers) then it's arguably not really sci-fi.
But all stories can be told without any of the sci-fi trappings. Every story that has ever been told has been told over and over again in various genres. That's why in writing courses in college, they tell you not to write genre fiction because it's just an obfuscation of the actual story and often leads to too much focus on things like other races and technologies and not enough focus on storytelling. These professors recognise that you can tell every story in any genre. The trappings are certainly interesting and can have effects on the story, but the broad sweep of the story is the same, that essence is still there. It's like how The Oddessy and O, Brother Where Art Thou? are the same story. That one's a bit of a violently direct and unsubtle example, but then, the best examples always are. I agree that throwing lasers at a random story does not a sci-fi novel make (the technology should at least to some extent have a role in the plot unique to its capabilities or else stimulate the imagination to some degree), but every sci-fi story, at it's most elemental level, is just a story.
All the stories have been told before; their various presentations appeal to different audiences and allow different people to relate to them.
The people that they need to have review/check these products are the people who should be designing them: Bio-medical and Mechanical Engineers with Psychology degrees in an Ergonomics specialization. The psychological field of ergonomics exists specifically to help people adapt machines, tools, furniture, and processes to the human body and mind as opposed to the more traditional method of warping the human body/mind to the machine (like how professioal French Horn players end up with a dent in their leg from where the horn rests).
Please, hire the correct people for the job/industry.
As long as I have plausible deniability before the Powers That Be that I was not the sole utiliser of my connection, I'm golden from a legal perspective.
Also, just from a human networking perspective, I should get at least one call per three people using my network, since most people don't know more than two other people who would need wireless access in the same small area on a regular basis. Think about it this way: A guy discovers my AP, gets the key from me. When his friend comes over with his laptop, he shares the key and gets online. He then leaves, not to return for quite a while. How often will this random neighbor have friends over who have laptops? I figure I'm pretty much safe (enough). I'm not violently paranoid. It's like the saying goes, "Locks exist to keep honest men honest." I don't need perfect, uncrackable security, just security that's good enough to foil 99.9% of users that'll be in my vicinity. I'm willing to bet that that one guy in many thousands who just so happens to be a laptop-equipped Windows hacker is not going to be chilling near my WAP and if he is, well, I guess I'm pwned. Sucks for me. I'll restore my whole system from disks and my back-up drive and reset the passwords and Keys on my router.
For me, setting up any more secure system would be like buying volcano insurance in Kentucky: likely to only cost me money up front and not ever pay any dividends.
Uhm, yes, and they screwed those up very, very badly as well, demonstrating utter ineptitude even when the member countries were moderately to veery concerned with the outcome. The US military ended up hauling their asses out of the fire in that giant set of fiascoes.
When I saw the headline, I seriously thought it meant that Apple was going to face up to all of the whining people have been doing about the numerous bugs in the MacBook, not just the noise issue.
Call me when Jobs faces down a horde of angry, whining customers disgruntled by sluggish Apple response times.
The wireless AP that I have set up right now is WPA encrypted, but the SSID is "AskForTheKey@5555555555" where all those fives is my cell number (area code included). Since most people have cells (especially the college student group, which is the primary residency of the area I'm living in right now), it's a simple matter to text or call me to obtain access and this way I know when people are on my connection. This means that I'll have proof of at least having given another person direct access to my connection in the case that illegal things are traced to it. Plus, it lets me know who's using it, which I think is nifty!
(also, my key is 16 characters from three sets [caps, lowercase, numbers], because a lock is only as good as the key)
The main idea of my post was that it's not "Stupid Americans buying SUVs OMG" that are causing gasoline prices to rise and, in fact, a lot of SUVs get almost as good a gas milage as modern cars and WAY BETTER gas milage than old shitty cars. If you really wanted to make some progress in increasing fuel economy (and reducing pollution), quit bitching and go buy your poor neighbor who's still driving that old Ford Pinto a new car.
The main contributing factors to oil/gas price increase: Mideast Instability, shitty supply lines, terrorists, FUD, Big Oil companies trying to make as much money as they can squeeze out of people, and diminishing supply causing fear of shortages. Fix those problems, because I can garauntee you fixing them will be orders of magnitude easier than trying to keep Americans from purchasing whatever the hell they want.
The UN might be a step up from dirt, but that's about it. The UN is an incompetant, bickering, in-fighting group of idiots who can't even stop one or two minor genocides in tiny little backwards-ass African nations, even though it's supposedly made up of the greatest countries on the planet. Their "Peacekeeping" forces are an absolute joke and anyone in an armed service or who's lived anywhere they've been stationed knows it. Barely organized rebels scorned them completely in recent conflicts in Rwanda. Of course, I'd scorn them to; what sort of moronically braindead organization sends a small group of random people into a country torn by war with naught but pistols and vests and bright-ass helmets and the hope that people will respect them because they're the UN?
In short: screw the blue-hats. They'll never get anything done right. Sorry you're dissatisfied with the current American gov't. (or at least think it's cool to badmouth them), but recall that as one of the youngest countries in the world, America is also one of the richest, biggest, and influential. We didn't get that way by sucking.
You do know that the most fuel-inefficient vehicles that exist are not SUVs, but European-made cars, right? The Bugatti Veyron, the Aston-Martin Vanguish V12, the BMW M8... They drink only Premium fuel and get on the order of 8 mpg-city.
A pickup or an SUV gets vastly better milage; all but the most massive modern models get greater than double that.
So quit blaming all your SUV-driving fellow Americans and blame Jay Leno and rich Europeans.
Or, y'know, blame the gas companies, or the instability in the middle east, or the lack of public transportation, or your lack of friends with whom you could carpool...
Or you could learn the various units of the entire world like Americans have to. Who really doesn't know that 1 gallon is approximately equal to 4 liters? Really, come on, now. That two-liter bottle of Coke that's basically the same size as that half-gallon of milk? Ya don't say...
Oh, and note: Slashdot regularly makes public the fact that it is a US-centric website and likes it that way. Quit being lazy and look it up, google it, or just plain learn something new.
Slashdot Mirror
See, thing is... If you get your ass beat, you can take the entire damn department to court and you stand one hell of a good chance of winning. It's harder to get a court of law to do something about your broken camera than a broken bone.
Also, King wasn't killed by the cops, unless you're some kind of whack-job conspiracy theorist. Oh, and tell your "Most people who resist end up with a bullet in their heads" to the millions of protesters a year who end up, guess where? In a jail cell, not in a morgue. In this age where shooting even an armed criminal who is firing on you in the middle of a shootout gets you several months off-duty as you get investigated the hell out of, I very much doubt any cop wants to pull the trigger for any reason other than self-defense. So, please, take your all-cops-are-evil, stupid sociopathic, triggerhappy control freaks nonesense and stick it somewhere unpleasant. All of the cops I know personally are good men who just want to make a positive difference.
Besides, like I said: If you are videotaping the police unjustly doing something and they try to come over and take your proof, what the hell are you gonna do? Try to keep the evidence you were just giong out of your way to obtain, or surrender it peaceably in a manner that will almost certainly not accomplish anything. At least if you get your ass beat excessively, somebody at the department is gonna get put on review.
Anyone who is taping police injustice isn't gonna want to just give up their evidence. I was just providing the (realistic) viewpoint that most cops don't want to do anything they could get in trouble for and they can get in a lot more trouble for smacking around some random civilian than for taking said civilian's tape out of his video camera.
Just a snippet of advice: Stand up for yourself if some officer of the "Law" is harassing you. Do it in a respectful manner and respectfully tell them that they cannot legally arrest you for whatever it is they are trying to arrest you for illegally. If you need to, resist arrest. They pretty much can't shoot you, they mostly won't taser you, and, if there are witnesses around, certainly won't beat your ass for refusing to allow them to clap you in irons and drag you off to some dungeon.
That said, resist, a lot, but unless they attack you with a weapon, don't respond with one. That's a good way to get killed really quickly.
The (corrupt members of the department of) police arrest people for anything/nothing because they know noone is giong to resist, because that can accrue a charge of resisting arrest. Show some spine and stand up for the real Law and for your own rights and this sort of "they won't fight back" mentality will go away. What's a night in jail for standing up for your Rights? Martin Luther King, Jr. and Henry David Thoreau seemed to think that was a fine trade.
I love how everyone knocks the new trilogy because it's soooo cool to do so.
Go watch the old stuff again with a critical eye instead of a nostalgic one. The dialogue? Terrible. It was just as contrived and "ooh, so space-age" neologismed as the newer dialogue. In fact, I think that's part of its charm! Would Star Wars be Star Wars without "scruffy lookin' nerf-herder" or "Oota-goota, Solo?" or "Aren't you a little short for a stormtrooper?" Come on, guys, quit bashing just because it's the "in" thing to do.
God, what a bunch of conformists.
What editor selected this? Why on earth... what were you smoking this morning? Did your cat jump on your keyboard and accept this submission on accident?
What a load of opinionated, unsubstantiated bullshit.
This is not about our rights on the internet, this is about the rights of some high school students (citizens of a country that is 65% overweight or obese) to not eat sugar- and fat-laden junk food.
Really, why can't we have an Other News section?
What's your name? I'm writing you in on the next Presidential ballot.
If the story you are telling can be told without any of the sci-fi trappings (e.g. if you're writing a mystery story with lasers) then it's arguably not really sci-fi.
But all stories can be told without any of the sci-fi trappings. Every story that has ever been told has been told over and over again in various genres. That's why in writing courses in college, they tell you not to write genre fiction because it's just an obfuscation of the actual story and often leads to too much focus on things like other races and technologies and not enough focus on storytelling. These professors recognise that you can tell every story in any genre. The trappings are certainly interesting and can have effects on the story, but the broad sweep of the story is the same, that essence is still there. It's like how The Oddessy and O, Brother Where Art Thou? are the same story. That one's a bit of a violently direct and unsubtle example, but then, the best examples always are. I agree that throwing lasers at a random story does not a sci-fi novel make (the technology should at least to some extent have a role in the plot unique to its capabilities or else stimulate the imagination to some degree), but every sci-fi story, at it's most elemental level, is just a story.
All the stories have been told before; their various presentations appeal to different audiences and allow different people to relate to them.
The people that they need to have review/check these products are the people who should be designing them: Bio-medical and Mechanical Engineers with Psychology degrees in an Ergonomics specialization. The psychological field of ergonomics exists specifically to help people adapt machines, tools, furniture, and processes to the human body and mind as opposed to the more traditional method of warping the human body/mind to the machine (like how professioal French Horn players end up with a dent in their leg from where the horn rests).
Please, hire the correct people for the job/industry.
You mean Cheney is after me?! This is trerible news! The red ibix is flying the nest over the sandy hill! Comrade, the grass is purple in the stewpot!
Some Dell Lattitudes (D610+).
Dirty fer'ner you may be, but you just made a hell of a lot more sense than basically every American politician and most American citizens I've met.
As long as I have plausible deniability before the Powers That Be that I was not the sole utiliser of my connection, I'm golden from a legal perspective.
Also, just from a human networking perspective, I should get at least one call per three people using my network, since most people don't know more than two other people who would need wireless access in the same small area on a regular basis. Think about it this way: A guy discovers my AP, gets the key from me. When his friend comes over with his laptop, he shares the key and gets online. He then leaves, not to return for quite a while. How often will this random neighbor have friends over who have laptops? I figure I'm pretty much safe (enough). I'm not violently paranoid. It's like the saying goes, "Locks exist to keep honest men honest." I don't need perfect, uncrackable security, just security that's good enough to foil 99.9% of users that'll be in my vicinity. I'm willing to bet that that one guy in many thousands who just so happens to be a laptop-equipped Windows hacker is not going to be chilling near my WAP and if he is, well, I guess I'm pwned. Sucks for me. I'll restore my whole system from disks and my back-up drive and reset the passwords and Keys on my router.
For me, setting up any more secure system would be like buying volcano insurance in Kentucky: likely to only cost me money up front and not ever pay any dividends.
Uhm, yes, and they screwed those up very, very badly as well, demonstrating utter ineptitude even when the member countries were moderately to veery concerned with the outcome. The US military ended up hauling their asses out of the fire in that giant set of fiascoes.
When I saw the headline, I seriously thought it meant that Apple was going to face up to all of the whining people have been doing about the numerous bugs in the MacBook, not just the noise issue.
Call me when Jobs faces down a horde of angry, whining customers disgruntled by sluggish Apple response times.
The wireless AP that I have set up right now is WPA encrypted, but the SSID is "AskForTheKey@5555555555" where all those fives is my cell number (area code included). Since most people have cells (especially the college student group, which is the primary residency of the area I'm living in right now), it's a simple matter to text or call me to obtain access and this way I know when people are on my connection. This means that I'll have proof of at least having given another person direct access to my connection in the case that illegal things are traced to it. Plus, it lets me know who's using it, which I think is nifty!
(also, my key is 16 characters from three sets [caps, lowercase, numbers], because a lock is only as good as the key)
I direct your attention to Bosnia, Yugoslavia, Kosovo, et. al.
The main idea of my post was that it's not "Stupid Americans buying SUVs OMG" that are causing gasoline prices to rise and, in fact, a lot of SUVs get almost as good a gas milage as modern cars and WAY BETTER gas milage than old shitty cars. If you really wanted to make some progress in increasing fuel economy (and reducing pollution), quit bitching and go buy your poor neighbor who's still driving that old Ford Pinto a new car.
The main contributing factors to oil/gas price increase: Mideast Instability, shitty supply lines, terrorists, FUD, Big Oil companies trying to make as much money as they can squeeze out of people, and diminishing supply causing fear of shortages. Fix those problems, because I can garauntee you fixing them will be orders of magnitude easier than trying to keep Americans from purchasing whatever the hell they want.
The UN might be a step up from dirt, but that's about it. The UN is an incompetant, bickering, in-fighting group of idiots who can't even stop one or two minor genocides in tiny little backwards-ass African nations, even though it's supposedly made up of the greatest countries on the planet. Their "Peacekeeping" forces are an absolute joke and anyone in an armed service or who's lived anywhere they've been stationed knows it. Barely organized rebels scorned them completely in recent conflicts in Rwanda. Of course, I'd scorn them to; what sort of moronically braindead organization sends a small group of random people into a country torn by war with naught but pistols and vests and bright-ass helmets and the hope that people will respect them because they're the UN?
In short: screw the blue-hats. They'll never get anything done right. Sorry you're dissatisfied with the current American gov't. (or at least think it's cool to badmouth them), but recall that as one of the youngest countries in the world, America is also one of the richest, biggest, and influential. We didn't get that way by sucking.
Should we not be free to leave a browser window with 15+ tabs open for weeks at a time? Who says we shouldn't? Why not?
Tabs and long-lived windows for everyone!
You do know that the most fuel-inefficient vehicles that exist are not SUVs, but European-made cars, right? The Bugatti Veyron, the Aston-Martin Vanguish V12, the BMW M8... They drink only Premium fuel and get on the order of 8 mpg-city.
A pickup or an SUV gets vastly better milage; all but the most massive modern models get greater than double that.
Example: '05 Chevrolet Suburban 4x4 (huge freakin' SUV): 15/19 mpg (city/hwy)
'05 Aston-Martin Vanguish: 11/17 mpg
So quit blaming all your SUV-driving fellow Americans and blame Jay Leno and rich Europeans.
Or, y'know, blame the gas companies, or the instability in the middle east, or the lack of public transportation, or your lack of friends with whom you could carpool...
Or you could learn the various units of the entire world like Americans have to. Who really doesn't know that 1 gallon is approximately equal to 4 liters? Really, come on, now. That two-liter bottle of Coke that's basically the same size as that half-gallon of milk? Ya don't say...
Oh, and note: Slashdot regularly makes public the fact that it is a US-centric website and likes it that way. Quit being lazy and look it up, google it, or just plain learn something new.