Comment Re:When disarming someone . . . (Score 1) 457
Don't most muggers take peoples watches anyway?
Comment Re:Wait hold on mugger... (Score 1) 457
Yeah, when someone takes my gun away to use it against me, they'll have to use it as a blunt force weapon, because it'll be empty.
Comment Re:How would that work (Score 2, Insightful) 550
You're obligated to comply with a lawful order from a police officer. Failing to do so is unlawful. So if the cop says,"tell them to leave [because you've created a dangerous situation by being here]" you'd better comply, or you'll get sent down. Just because they told him to do it with twitter makes no difference.
Wow, what country do you live in? Mine has a constitution with due process protection, freedom of speech, and other useful constraints on government to prevent them from just ordering me to do things like that.
Amazon Patents Changing Authors' Words 323
theodp writes "To exist or not to exist: that is the query. That's what the famous Hamlet soliloquy might look like if subjected to Amazon's newly-patented System and Method for Marking Content, which calls for 'programmatically substituting synonyms into distributed text content,' including 'books, short stories, product reviews, book or movie reviews, news articles, editorial articles, technical papers, scholastic papers, and so on' in an effort to uniquely identify customers who redistribute material. In its description of the 'invention,' Amazon also touts the use of 'alternative misspellings for selected words' as a way to provide 'evidence of copyright infringement in a legal action.' After all, anti-piracy measures should trump kids' ability to spell correctly, shouldn't they?"
The Art of The Farewell Email
703
With so many people losing their jobs, the farewell email, letting colleagues and contacts know where you are moving and how you can be reached, has become common. Writing a really good one, whether it be funny, sad or just plain mad is an art form. Chris Kula, a receptionist at a New York engineering firm, wrote: "For nearly as long as I've worked here, I've hoped that I might one day leave this company. And now that this dream has become a reality, please know that I could not have reached this goal without your unending lack of support." In May, lawyer Shinyung Oh was let go from the San Francisco branch of the Paul Hastings law firm six days after losing a baby. "If this response seems particularly emotional," she wrote to the partners, "perhaps an associate's emotional vulnerability after a recent miscarriage is a factor you should consider the next time you fire or lay someone off. It shows startlingly poor judgment and management skills — and cowardice — on your parts." Let's hear the best and worst goodbye emails you've seen.
Submission + - Small Asteroid Making 400,000 Mile Pass by Earth
AtariKee writes: Universe Today is reporting that a small 10m asteroid, discovered earlier this month and named 2009 BD, is passing within 400,000 miles of Earth. Although the asteroid poses no threat to the planet, the site reports that the asteroid is still very interesting, as it may be a rare co-orbital asteroid (as in, shares the same orbit as Earth).
Comment Just the opposite here (East TN and North GA) (Score 1) 474
My father and I were just commenting over the Thanksgiving holiday that there are more acorns around his house and mine than in recent years.. a LOT more. Our squirrel population is exploding. We've been raking them up and throwing them in sealed garbage cans.
Maybe they should come to my house and collect them for the sparse areas?
Comment Re:Third world (Score 4, Insightful) 374
Of course they aren't, that isn't the point. The point is, they have a significant naval presence in the Pacific, and are more than enough reason to conduct sonar training exercises there.
Comment Re:Third world (Score 4, Insightful) 374
China has plenty of subs, and I promise you they don't give a crap about whales.
Submission + - True space age tech in our daily lives (nasa.gov)
theguru writes: Being an election year where several candidates have discussed cutting NASA's budget, I'm often asked what the space age has done for us. NASA has created a fun little site (warning: Flash), showing common items around the house with origins and connections to NASA research.
Feed Wired: Fertility Clinics Gouging Patients With Costly Technique (wired.com)
Submission + - Visual Effects Society Releases Top 50 List
theguru writes: The Visual Effects Society has released it's list of the 50 most influential visual effects films of all time. Star Wars tops the list along with other effects blockbusters from the recent past, but there are some surprising classics on there that some readers may have overlooked. PDF link here. Let the debates about what they left off begin...
Submission + - Sunglasses changing color in a second
Roland Piquepaille writes: "Wouldn't it be nice to wear sunglasses that change colors according to the weather or to your new skiing suit? According to the American Chemical Society (ACS), scientists at the University of Washington have developed a new lens material that makes this possible. Their 'smart' sunglasses can change color on demand almost instantly. The key to this improved eyewear technology is an electrochromic polymer that has the ability to change levels of darkness and color in the presence of an electric current. By pushing a button on the frame, your glasses will become red, green, blue or virtually any color. Still, you might have to wait a couple of years before buying such sunglasses. Read more for additional references and pictures showing how these lenses work."
Submission + - A possible explanation of Saturn's Hexagon
__aahgmr7717 writes: A possible solution to the mystery of the hexagonal pattern found in Saturn's north pole
was presented previously in:
Science News week of June 3, 2006; Vol. 169, No. 22 , p. 348
As waters part, polygons appear
Peter Weiss
Imagine a hurricane with an eye in the shape of a propeller amid the swirling clouds. Physicists have observed something almost as strange in whirlpools that they made by swirling liquids in a novel way. Within the whirlpools, they've seen three-blade-propeller shapes as well as regular polygons, including squares and hexagons.
(picture of pentagonal shape)
CURRENT EVENT. A whirlpool, viewed from above, takes a pentagonal shape just above the spinning platter that's causing the water to swirl.
T. Jansson, et al./Physical Review Letters
The behavior of liquids in rotating containers has long fascinated physicists. For instance, in a famous late-1600s study, Isaac Newton pondered why the surface of water in a rotating bucket becomes concave.
In the new experiments, Tomas Bohr and his colleagues at the Technical University of Denmark in Lyngby observed liquids in a cylindrical, Plexiglas container that doesn't actually turn. Instead, a plate attached to a motor-driven shaft spins at up to 7 revolutions per second inside the container, while the vessel itself remains still.
As expected, in experiments with water or with viscous ethylene glycol, the spinning platter swirled the liquid above it to create whirlpools. But the throats of those whirlpools tapered to surprising shapes at the platter's surface, the team reports in the May 5 Physical Review Letters.
In the water experiments, those shapes transformed as speed increased, changing from circular to elliptical to propeller-shaped to square to pentagonal and finally to hexagonal. Ethylene glycol whirlpools formed shapes with no more than three sides.
Curiously, the polygons themselves rotated, although more slowly than their parent whirlpools.
Rotating fluids play important roles in systems ranging from industrial equipment, such as pumps, to atmospheric disturbances, such as tornadoes and hurricanes. Although the newfound shapes remain unexplained, Bohr says that their discovery may eventually lead scientists to a deeper understanding of fluids' rotational behaviors.
Submission + - Yahoo! Unlimited mail storage
osmansantos writes: "Apparently Yahoo! will provide unlimited mail storage starting in May, the webmail wars open a new chapter and I look forward to know how Google and Microsoft will respond to this. Is necessary unlimited storage in a webmail or the 2.8 GB of Gmail will be enough for most people? What do you think?"
