He's also quite the racist, but let's not let that get in the way. -- "A little knowledge is a dangerous thing. Drink deeply or not at all." This is pure dedication to the art of irony. See how Tofystedeth's comment lends weight and credence to the cautionary advice given in the sig?
Tofystedeth's literary tour de force should be lauded for it's brevity, acerbic wit, and applicability to the current discourse. +5 insightful!
Unless this is a sincere sentiment and the sig is a mistake. Then +5 funny for having the strongest unintentional troll-fu EVAR!!!1!one!
Either way, well done! Kudos to you, sir or ma'am!
How would it be an environmental disaster? The main byproduct of the enzymatic reaction is water.
Is it an environmental disaster when 300M people take a shower everyday? Wash dishes? Do laundry? Flush a toilet? What about when a city with a hybrid or combined waste-water/rain-water sewage system gets hit by a storm? You have minor problems here and there, but rarely anything I'd care to qualify as an environmental disaster.
You could focus on the non-water byproducts, but how would that be any different from the detergents, chemicals, and biological waste that already gets dumped into sewer systems all over the world every minute of every day? Half-time at major sporting events is a bigger concern, and that worry proved to be nothing more than an urban legend.
Drinking the unspent fuel would be... interesting.
Having the reaction occur in your digestive tract would probably make the resulting waste evacuation an uncomfortable experience. That's not a part of the body where I'd care to feel something similar to licking a 9-volt battery - or worse, a shock from a static discharge.
If the enzyme could be absorbed into the bloodstream, that might make things even more interesting. Pity the phlebotomist who's tasked with getting a blood sample. S/he'll stick a conductive metal needle into a vein filled with electron rich blood. Fun times for all involved.:P If you can manage to avoid medical intrusions, you'd still end up with a similar experience to the one mentioned above. Dead blood cells are ultimately disposed of in the digestive tract.
Judging from TFA, I don't think charge times will be a huge issue. Just empty the battery's resevoir, refill it with fresh sugary goodnes and enzymes, then drive away. The spent fuel is biodegradeable so you can dump it in the sewer. Refueling would probably end up being infrastructurally similar to current oil-based fuel distribution in order to ensure reliable deliverey and the proper sugar/enzyme mix.
Even if the enzyme reaction takes a little time to get going and build up a proper charge, having multiple batteries running in an asynchronous parallel setup instead of serially should keep people moving. When battery A dies, the car switches to battery B and the "low fuel" light comes on. If you refuel battery A before battery B dies, you never have to worry about waiting for the chemical reaction to ramp up. And that doesn't even account for the possibility of "jump-start" catalysts that could accelerate the chemical reaction through the ramp-up phase before returning to it's normal electron producing rate.
However, nothing significant was mentioned in TFA about energy density, so that's still a concern.
First, we're not talking about mandatory school prayer.
Last time I checked, invoking the divine during a verbal recitation was a defining element of prayer. Without a divine reference, you're just talking.
Second, saying the Pledge of Allegiance in school is OPTIONAL and has been for some time (since 1942, if I remember correctly).
The point here is that these three judges apparently believe it should be unconstitutional to say the words "under God" because it means that those that object either have to participate or "protest" (by maintaining silence).
This is evidence of an incongrouos fallacy that permeates this society. So many Christians in America think that non-Christians are also non-patriots that it's almost taken for granted as fact. I am a patriot. I love my country. I served my country in the armed forces. I contribute to charities for veterans. I vote. I write my Congressional Representatives... often. However, I refuse to recite the Pledge of Allegiance. I very much want to participate, but I object to the inclusion of "under God". I don't believe in a deity of any sort and will not participate in a divine invocation that is insincere. Saying words that I do not believe about any divine or spiritual entity is disrespectful of the faith or faiths involved. I won't invoke the name of Jesus out of respect for Christians. I won't invoke the name of Allah out of respect for Muslims. The same applies to YHWH, Vishnu, Odin, or any other god. I want my beliefs respected, so why would I profane another's? My choice to do the American thing by tolerating and respecting your beliefs prevents me from reciting a patriotic oath. Your god has denied me part of my American legacy.
I still prefer organism analogies to road (specifically superhighway) references...
I think a better analogy might be weather.
"Clean up continues from hurricane Code Red, and lastnight's Slashdot Effect casued TrailerPark.com to go down.
Our forecast for today: Partly laggy with a small chance of packet loss, but we won't see any garbage accumulation.
The extended forecast shows a good chance of ping storms and mail floods this week as spring break ends and the kids head back to school, but by the end of the week things should clear up and Sun will shine (with it's latest oferring to the Net)."
possible values:
5 - absolutely
4 - Ok, sure.
3 - Gimme!
2 - Do it now!
1 - Yes (default)
0 - No, but please sign me up for every other spam list on the planet.
I think it's more a matter of quality social interaction being more important for geeks, as opposed to social interaction in general being less important.
An anonymous poet wrote:
True friends are like diamonds,
They're precious, but rare.
False friends are like autumn leaves,
They're found everywhere.
I think it takes a certain degree of intelligence to understand the difference between a true friend and a false friend (an acquaintance). People in technical careers are generally (not always) more intelligent than the average Joe.
I don't think we're anti-social, just selective; and not even in a snobbish, elitist way. My (few) friends aren't intellectual giants, philosophers, and Nobel laureates. They're a mix of people whose company I enjoy and on whom I can rely.
How many people do you know who label passing acquaintances as friends? Odds are in favor of many, but how many of them have more than half a brain in their heads? How many are geeks? I'll wager it's a significantly smaller amount.
Sadly, experience has shown that it does take a genius to figure out who your friends are. After you figure out how to tell the difference, you're simply less inclined to freely associate with mere acquiantances when you could be spending your time more constructively with your true friends.
Not really. It's basically as binary as traditional computing
Yes, but this could open the door to the possibility of trinary computing. If circuit technology becomes "spintronically" advanced, then instead of the normal two state system (on and off) there would be three states: off, on(up), and on(down). Of course, off would still be a single state, because there is no spoon... I mean, spin... without the electron.:)
Re:Back to the simple economic model...
on
More On Tragedy
·
· Score: 1
It is not that difficult to understand that EVERY religious group has its extremists that are horribly degrading to everyone related to them.
Too true. If the roles the G7 and the Arab nations were reversed, bin Laden, Qaddahfi, and Hussein would be in mainstream politics; and Pat Buchanan, Orel Roberts, and Louis Farrakahn would be leading rogue nations or terrorist organizations. The distinction is not one of religion, creed, or even culture; but of majority extremism vs. minority extremism.
They could've gotten a rating of 3 or 4 years old if they had programmed Hal to respond to EVERYTHING with "Why?"
"How are you today, Hal?" "Why?"
"Because I'm interested in your well-being." "Why?"
"Because I care about you." "Why?"
*sigh* Because your gonna make me tons of cash when development is complete!" "Why?"
BECAUSE I SAID SO! Now go to your... uh... source code!
Actually, my son is 19 months old and he can speak about as well as Hal. I had some concerns, so I recently had him checked out by a developmental therapist. She told me that he's right on target and doing fine.
Like Hal, my son has a vocab somewhere around 50 words, but he understands more than 200. He can make simple sentences like "more juice", "car go vroom" or "want to go outside?" He can even put together a more complex sentence "Go outside and go bye-bye in the car?", but that's about the peak of his ability right now.
Of course, with the American education system being what it is, Hal will probably pass my son up in 10 years. That is, unless I can give him a private education or full time tutors. God bless America!:-(
That cancellation step is just shorthand for dividing both sides of the equation by a shared element to eliminate that element from the equation. This works because any element divided by itself equals one, unless the element in question is zero. Of course, dividing by zero is undefined and would break the equation.
...but the element you're cancelling is x - y. Um...doesn't x = y? Wouldn't a quick substitution of x for y give us y - y? Doesn't that equal 0?
Don't think that just because you're running a Linux distribution that you're safe from worms.
I would really like to see this sentiment taken to heart by admins of any OS. All holy wars aside, no system is 100% secure unless it's disconnected from the internet, WAN/LANs, modems, or any other communications device... including drives that can use shared disks.
Whatever happened to the paranoia that drove the development of tighter security in Linux? Do all the alpha-geeks, gurus, and wizards truly feel this safe when they know that other alpha-geeks, gurus, and wizards with the same knowledge have turned to the dark side of the force?
I know MS bashing is a blast, and it furthers the cause of the Jihad, but at what cost? Every single person who tangled with Lion, Ramen, or even the Internet Worm of '88; then proceeded to denigrate MS here today makes the community look exponentially more idiotic.
We should be discussing ways to resolve and prevent this, and similar instances of, malware. I haven't seen one suggestion to contact admins of infected machines. It's simple enough to do. Look up the owner of the offending IP and send an email or make a phone call. The way MS bundles all of their products, if an inexperienced user (not admin) has installed WinNT 4 server by themselves, they may very well have IIS installed and not even know it. A phone call to their admin could get the problem fixed, which is a damn sight better than whining about how Truly Evil ol' Bill really is.
If you assume he accelerates and deccelerates uniformly (poor approximation), you get 0-105 miles per hour in 3 seconds.
I fail to see how this is a problem when you're talking about a fantasy game. A little suspension of disbelief is in order.
The ability of a monk to run at incredible speeds is supernatural. It doesn't need to conform to the standards imposed by physics. Very few characters would offer even a slight challenge to real-life top-performing athletes, like Carl Lewis for example. Those who can outdo "realistic" generally have ability scores that exceed natural limits either because of magic, or just because it's a heroic fantasy game. They aren't realistic themselves so of course they'll be able to perform amazing feats and accomplish impossible tasks.
If you can't let go of strict reality and embrace the fantasy for the duration of the game, I'd love to watch the debate (argument?) you have with your DM the first time an NPC mage lobs a fireball at you. Better yet, how about Time Stop or Reverse Gravity?:-P
Not only that, the government is made up of the people--and it's not true that 90% of the people are lawyers.
*snip* Unfortunately, 90% of Americans can't be bothered to give a damn about anything in law or government.
By this argument, the government isn't really "made up of the people". It's made up of the 10% who give a crap.
Unfortunately the people who care enough to get involved are the people who have something significant to lose or gain. Many would say that American's rights and freedoms are significant in this respect, but this is not supported by the actions and involvement of the American people as applied to politics. What does appear to be significant are money and power. If you look at the political and legal history of this country; career politicians are mostly lawyers and businessmen...the money and power hungry. This is supported, in no small measure, by continuing trends in political conflict. When these conflicts involve the "10%", the issues are consistently about money or power. When the conflict manages to involve the "90%" it's almost always because of a flagrant, repercussive, and wide-ranging abuse of political power.
If an abuse of power doesn't manage to achieve a "critical mass" of public awareness, involvement, and concern (i.e. Roe v. Wade); then it will remain the purview of only the "10%"(i.e. intellectual property law). They will continue to occasionally tackle minor issues to throw the rest of the People a bone, and use the major issues to give us the Bone.
The only recourse of the American People is organized, aggressive political activism on a large-scale to enable public involvement. This needs to be done for any and all issues that we the People wish to address.
Sadly, this requires effort. "We the People" are notoriously lazy and unwilling to devote this effort to the process of governing ourselves. "We" are content to leave the entirety of our nation to the 10%, as long as we can bitch and moan when it gets too constricting.
Absolutely! Katz did it for "Tales from the Hellmouth", so SlashCrash should be a sure thing. I'm not bad-mouthing Jon...it's just that Hellmouth was a little lighter on the "News for Nerds" scale. SlashCrash could carry a bit more weight and still have all the crunchy bits.
If this actually gets off the ground, how about a call for papers in AskSlashdot? Those responses could be the basis for the new site, much as Katz's Hellmouth articles were leveraged into a new site.
BTW - does anyone know if the Hellmouth page is still up or did it die by attrition?
Slashdot Mirror
Just nod if you can hear me...
Is there anyone at home?
This game seems to be entirely relevant. Especially since posting this unlocks the "April Foll" achievement. :P
http://armorgames.com/play/2893/achievement-unlocked
--
"A little knowledge is a dangerous thing. Drink deeply or not at all." This is pure dedication to the art of irony. See how Tofystedeth's comment lends weight and credence to the cautionary advice given in the sig?
Tofystedeth's literary tour de force should be lauded for it's brevity, acerbic wit, and applicability to the current discourse. +5 insightful!
Unless this is a sincere sentiment and the sig is a mistake. Then +5 funny for having the strongest unintentional troll-fu EVAR!!!1!one!
Either way, well done! Kudos to you, sir or ma'am!
Yeah, but what's another word for "thesaurus"?
How would it be an environmental disaster? The main byproduct of the enzymatic reaction is water.
Is it an environmental disaster when 300M people take a shower everyday? Wash dishes? Do laundry? Flush a toilet? What about when a city with a hybrid or combined waste-water/rain-water sewage system gets hit by a storm? You have minor problems here and there, but rarely anything I'd care to qualify as an environmental disaster.
You could focus on the non-water byproducts, but how would that be any different from the detergents, chemicals, and biological waste that already gets dumped into sewer systems all over the world every minute of every day? Half-time at major sporting events is a bigger concern, and that worry proved to be nothing more than an urban legend.
Drinking the unspent fuel would be... interesting.
:P If you can manage to avoid medical intrusions, you'd still end up with a similar experience to the one mentioned above. Dead blood cells are ultimately disposed of in the digestive tract.
Having the reaction occur in your digestive tract would probably make the resulting waste evacuation an uncomfortable experience. That's not a part of the body where I'd care to feel something similar to licking a 9-volt battery - or worse, a shock from a static discharge.
If the enzyme could be absorbed into the bloodstream, that might make things even more interesting. Pity the phlebotomist who's tasked with getting a blood sample. S/he'll stick a conductive metal needle into a vein filled with electron rich blood. Fun times for all involved.
Judging from TFA, I don't think charge times will be a huge issue. Just empty the battery's resevoir, refill it with fresh sugary goodnes and enzymes, then drive away. The spent fuel is biodegradeable so you can dump it in the sewer. Refueling would probably end up being infrastructurally similar to current oil-based fuel distribution in order to ensure reliable deliverey and the proper sugar/enzyme mix.
Even if the enzyme reaction takes a little time to get going and build up a proper charge, having multiple batteries running in an asynchronous parallel setup instead of serially should keep people moving. When battery A dies, the car switches to battery B and the "low fuel" light comes on. If you refuel battery A before battery B dies, you never have to worry about waiting for the chemical reaction to ramp up. And that doesn't even account for the possibility of "jump-start" catalysts that could accelerate the chemical reaction through the ramp-up phase before returning to it's normal electron producing rate.
However, nothing significant was mentioned in TFA about energy density, so that's still a concern.
Write this as a novel! You could call it 2084. Just think of the market penetration you'd get! ...uh...wait a sec. Marketing bad, never mind.
First, we're not talking about mandatory school prayer.
Last time I checked, invoking the divine during a verbal recitation was a defining element of prayer. Without a divine reference, you're just talking.
Second, saying the Pledge of Allegiance in school is OPTIONAL and has been for some time (since 1942, if I remember correctly).
The point here is that these three judges apparently believe it should be unconstitutional to say the words "under God" because it means that those that object either have to participate or "protest" (by maintaining silence).
This is evidence of an incongrouos fallacy that permeates this society. So many Christians in America think that non-Christians are also non-patriots that it's almost taken for granted as fact.
I am a patriot. I love my country. I served my country in the armed forces. I contribute to charities for veterans. I vote. I write my Congressional Representatives... often. However, I refuse to recite the Pledge of Allegiance.
I very much want to participate, but I object to the inclusion of "under God". I don't believe in a deity of any sort and will not participate in a divine invocation that is insincere. Saying words that I do not believe about any divine or spiritual entity is disrespectful of the faith or faiths involved. I won't invoke the name of Jesus out of respect for Christians. I won't invoke the name of Allah out of respect for Muslims. The same applies to YHWH, Vishnu, Odin, or any other god. I want my beliefs respected, so why would I profane another's? My choice to do the American thing by tolerating and respecting your beliefs prevents me from reciting a patriotic oath. Your god has denied me part of my American legacy.
I still prefer organism analogies to road (specifically superhighway) references...
I think a better analogy might be weather.
"Clean up continues from hurricane Code Red, and lastnight's Slashdot Effect casued TrailerPark.com to go down.
Our forecast for today: Partly laggy with a small chance of packet loss, but we won't see any garbage accumulation.
The extended forecast shows a good chance of ping storms and mail floods this week as spring break ends and the kids head back to school, but by the end of the week things should clear up and Sun will shine (with it's latest oferring to the Net)."
The registry settings would look something like this:
HKLM/Software/Microsoft/Windows/Current Version/TrustE/OnlyTrustEAllowed
possible values:
5 - absolutely
4 - Ok, sure.
3 - Gimme!
2 - Do it now!
1 - Yes (default)
0 - No, but please sign me up for every other spam list on the planet.
I think it's more a matter of quality social interaction being more important for geeks, as opposed to social interaction in general being less important.
An anonymous poet wrote:
True friends are like diamonds,
They're precious, but rare.
False friends are like autumn leaves,
They're found everywhere.
I think it takes a certain degree of intelligence to understand the difference between a true friend and a false friend (an acquaintance). People in technical careers are generally (not always) more intelligent than the average Joe.
I don't think we're anti-social, just selective; and not even in a snobbish, elitist way. My (few) friends aren't intellectual giants, philosophers, and Nobel laureates. They're a mix of people whose company I enjoy and on whom I can rely.
How many people do you know who label passing acquaintances as friends? Odds are in favor of many, but how many of them have more than half a brain in their heads? How many are geeks? I'll wager it's a significantly smaller amount.
Sadly, experience has shown that it does take a genius to figure out who your friends are. After you figure out how to tell the difference, you're simply less inclined to freely associate with mere acquiantances when you could be spending your time more constructively with your true friends.
Not really. It's basically as binary as traditional computing
Yes, but this could open the door to the possibility of trinary computing. If circuit technology becomes "spintronically" advanced, then instead of the normal two state system (on and off) there would be three states: off, on(up), and on(down). Of course, off would still be a single state, because there is no spoon... I mean, spin... without the electron. :)
It is not that difficult to understand that EVERY religious group has its extremists that are horribly degrading to everyone related to them.
Too true. If the roles the G7 and the Arab nations were reversed, bin Laden, Qaddahfi, and Hussein would be in mainstream politics; and Pat Buchanan, Orel Roberts, and Louis Farrakahn would be leading rogue nations or terrorist organizations. The distinction is not one of religion, creed, or even culture; but of majority extremism vs. minority extremism.
They could've gotten a rating of 3 or 4 years old if they had programmed Hal to respond to EVERYTHING with "Why?"
"How are you today, Hal?"
"Why?"
"Because I'm interested in your well-being."
"Why?"
"Because I care about you."
"Why?"
*sigh* Because your gonna make me tons of cash when development is complete!"
"Why?"
BECAUSE I SAID SO! Now go to your... uh... source code!
Actually, my son is 19 months old and he can speak about as well as Hal. I had some concerns, so I recently had him checked out by a developmental therapist. She told me that he's right on target and doing fine.
Like Hal, my son has a vocab somewhere around 50 words, but he understands more than 200. He can make simple sentences like "more juice", "car go vroom" or "want to go outside?" He can even put together a more complex sentence "Go outside and go bye-bye in the car?", but that's about the peak of his ability right now.
Of course, with the American education system being what it is, Hal will probably pass my son up in 10 years. That is, unless I can give him a private education or full time tutors. God bless America! :-(
my hopes to hear the Buggles do an update and re-release called "Internet Killed the Video Star."
x + y = y cancel
That cancellation step is just shorthand for dividing both sides of the equation by a shared element to eliminate that element from the equation. This works because any element divided by itself equals one, unless the element in question is zero. Of course, dividing by zero is undefined and would break the equation.
...but the element you're cancelling is x - y. Um...doesn't x = y? Wouldn't a quick substitution of x for y give us y - y? Doesn't that equal 0?
Oops. Did I break it? ;-)
Clue: threatening someone with deadly force and cracking their webserver are not even remotely of the same magnitude.
Yes, but criminal trespass (a crime to which an American citzen can respond with deadly force) and cracking a webserver are of the same magnitude.
Hey, that calls for an "Open Beating" project!
Would that be a sub-component of the "Open Sores" project?Don't think that just because you're running a Linux distribution that you're safe from worms.
I would really like to see this sentiment taken to heart by admins of any OS. All holy wars aside, no system is 100% secure unless it's disconnected from the internet, WAN/LANs, modems, or any other communications device... including drives that can use shared disks.
Whatever happened to the paranoia that drove the development of tighter security in Linux? Do all the alpha-geeks, gurus, and wizards truly feel this safe when they know that other alpha-geeks, gurus, and wizards with the same knowledge have turned to the dark side of the force?
I know MS bashing is a blast, and it furthers the cause of the Jihad, but at what cost? Every single person who tangled with Lion, Ramen, or even the Internet Worm of '88; then proceeded to denigrate MS here today makes the community look exponentially more idiotic.
We should be discussing ways to resolve and prevent this, and similar instances of, malware. I haven't seen one suggestion to contact admins of infected machines. It's simple enough to do. Look up the owner of the offending IP and send an email or make a phone call. The way MS bundles all of their products, if an inexperienced user (not admin) has installed WinNT 4 server by themselves, they may very well have IIS installed and not even know it. A phone call to their admin could get the problem fixed, which is a damn sight better than whining about how Truly Evil ol' Bill really is.
If you assume he accelerates and deccelerates uniformly (poor approximation), you get 0-105 miles per hour in 3 seconds.
:-P
I fail to see how this is a problem when you're talking about a fantasy game. A little suspension of disbelief is in order.
The ability of a monk to run at incredible speeds is supernatural. It doesn't need to conform to the standards imposed by physics. Very few characters would offer even a slight challenge to real-life top-performing athletes, like Carl Lewis for example. Those who can outdo "realistic" generally have ability scores that exceed natural limits either because of magic, or just because it's a heroic fantasy game. They aren't realistic themselves so of course they'll be able to perform amazing feats and accomplish impossible tasks.
If you can't let go of strict reality and embrace the fantasy for the duration of the game, I'd love to watch the debate (argument?) you have with your DM the first time an NPC mage lobs a fireball at you. Better yet, how about Time Stop or Reverse Gravity?
Not only that, the government is made up of the people--and it's not true that 90% of the people are lawyers.
*snip*
Unfortunately, 90% of Americans can't be bothered to give a damn about anything in law or government.
By this argument, the government isn't really "made up of the people". It's made up of the 10% who give a crap.
Unfortunately the people who care enough to get involved are the people who have something significant to lose or gain. Many would say that American's rights and freedoms are significant in this respect, but this is not supported by the actions and involvement of the American people as applied to politics. What does appear to be significant are money and power. If you look at the political and legal history of this country; career politicians are mostly lawyers and businessmen...the money and power hungry. This is supported, in no small measure, by continuing trends in political conflict. When these conflicts involve the "10%", the issues are consistently about money or power. When the conflict manages to involve the "90%" it's almost always because of a flagrant, repercussive, and wide-ranging abuse of political power.
If an abuse of power doesn't manage to achieve a "critical mass" of public awareness, involvement, and concern (i.e. Roe v. Wade); then it will remain the purview of only the "10%"(i.e. intellectual property law). They will continue to occasionally tackle minor issues to throw the rest of the People a bone, and use the major issues to give us the Bone.
The only recourse of the American People is organized, aggressive political activism on a large-scale to enable public involvement. This needs to be done for any and all issues that we the People wish to address.
Sadly, this requires effort. "We the People" are notoriously lazy and unwilling to devote this effort to the process of governing ourselves. "We" are content to leave the entirety of our nation to the 10%, as long as we can bitch and moan when it gets too constricting.
My bad. Here's the fixed link.
Absolutely! Katz did it for "Tales from the Hellmouth", so SlashCrash should be a sure thing. I'm not bad-mouthing Jon...it's just that Hellmouth was a little lighter on the "News for Nerds" scale. SlashCrash could carry a bit more weight and still have all the crunchy bits.
If this actually gets off the ground, how about a call for papers in AskSlashdot? Those responses could be the basis for the new site, much as Katz's Hellmouth articles were leveraged into a new site.
BTW - does anyone know if the Hellmouth page is still up or did it die by attrition?