Unfortunately, I often find myself in the minority on points like this. But here's where I typically come out:

Everyone has a responsibility to report wrong-doing, when they see it. Even if this is not a legal responsibility, it is a moral one. Certainly, one can take this too far, and become a nitpicker. It's not one's responsibility to be a nitpicker. But it is one's responsibility to set a reasonable line in the sand, and when one sees that line crossed, then act accordingly.

I get the sense you wouldn't be asking the question if you thought this fell into the category of nitpicking. The fact you feel the need to ask the question in the first place probably provides the answer right there. I believe you have a moral responsibility to not just look the other way. And this might involve risk to you. But where would we be as a society if people were afraid to take such risks in order to fix wrongs?

Interplanetary Internet

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I...

Previously, there had been a dearth of evidence of very young (i.e. newborn) Mosasaurs in both open ocean and coastal deposits. That made people think perhaps they used land nests far up rivers, such that newborns would be found in riverbed/riverbank deposits instead of ocean deposits. And that we simply haven't found the right river fossil bed locations for them, yet.

This new study shows that some skeletons that had originally been thought to be birds, were in fact young Mosasaurs. This reverses the whole thought process, as they now have evidence of very young individuals being found out in the open ocean. Young enough individuals, and far enough out in the deep ocean, that the most likely explanation is that they were born there.

I'm not posting to discredit your opinion, only to voice a contrary one.

This was one of the worst movies I've ever seen. Terrible plot. Terrible dialogue. Terrible fx. Terrible acting. Incomprehensible ending. No one should ever see this movie, as long as there is a blank screen they could be staring at instead.

Do you explore a 4 meter boulder? Or do you just examine it?

In fact, cashing out is never where the money goes. If you own a stock, and you sell it to me for $100, then nothing changes. No value created or destroyed. There's still $100 out there, and there's still the stock out there. Where value is destroyed is when no one is willing to pay $100 for the stock anymore, which can happen for a variety of reasons. But the $10 that gets lost when the $100 stock goes down to $90 doesn't actually go anywhere. It just disappears from the ledger.

Haven't read every comment, so maybe this has been covered. It just seems like few of the comments on here are really differentiating between what kinds of humor are OK in the workplace setting versus what might be OK in a non-workplace setting.

I don't think the existence of this "project" reflects on tech-workers and tech jobs at all, as long as people are only accessing it and laughing about it on their own time. At work, though, there's really no place for this kind of humor, even if the jokes embedded may be pretty funny (although somehow I doubt most are).

Why is this not acceptable at work? Because some people are offended by such jokes, even if others are not. And work isn't someplace one should have to put up with being offended just because one happens to have different sensibilities than their co-workers. It's just a question of respecting that fellow employees may feel differently about something.

But if someone wants to tell dick jokes on their own time... there's no reason anyone else should be taking the position that it reflects on their occupation as whole.

And, furthermore, I even have a hard time connecting this to occupation even if people are accessing the site and talking about it at work. This would hardly be the first occupation where people told off-color jokes at work. I don't condone it. And I would hope/expect that someone at a leadership level puts a stop to it. But the existence of such jokes in the workplace, unfortunately, does not put tech occupations in a different category than most other occupations.

The money mostly just disappeared. Question for you if you don't believe me: If the stock market declines in value tomorrow, where did all the money go?

Depending on what you don't like about one of the companies, though, it may still make sense to switch to a sister company.

For instance, I hate renting from Enterprise. They have a very cloying, hands-on approach to customer service that I find fake, saccharine and overall annoying, but that other people seem to like. No, I don't need you to walk out to the car with me and show me how the windshield wipers work. So I prefer renting from National, which is basically the completely opposite customer service approach. You go to the aisle for the type car you rented and pick out whichever car you want. The only time you have to talk to an employee is the guy that checks you out at the parking lot exit. There's no conflict, in my mind, created by the fact they are the same company in the background.

On the other hand, if I were to feel defrauded by National or Enterprise, then I would make an effort to not rent from the sibling company.

Most people won't even realize there's a camera there. It's fairly innocuous and most people don't read articles like the one linked. I doubt they are counting on that effect for reducing damage.

They do have a vague idea what they might use it for. They were pretty clear about that. They also said that they haven't done anything to implement their vague idea, except having the hardware in the device.

Of course it gives them wiggle room to make plans later. That's kind of their whole point.

When they do change their plans, though, they'll tell us what the new plan is, and we can decide whether or not we like it. If we don't like it, then we stop renting from Hertz. There are a half-dozen other national rental companies to choose from.

It just seems silly to get worked up today about some potential thing Hertz may or may not decide to do later. It doesn't make sense to punish them for what we imagine they might do in the future.

In other news, water turns out to be wet.

According to stuff I've read before, dust particles are mostly a problem inside the system, on mirrors and on targets. This is because dust hit by a laser tends to accelerate away from the beam source, as the side of the particle that is illuminated by the laser vaporizes first. So dust on the near side of a lens, on a mirror or on a target would get blown into the object's surface, causing pitting. But dust on the far surface of a lens would get blown off of the lens. Inside the system, this would be a problem because that dust would get blown into the next element in line. But on that last lens/window where the beam exists, I think mostly the external surface dust merely gets accelerated off of the surface. I'm sure they make an effort to keep that surface clean, but I'm not sure it's as crucial an issue as your post makes it out to be.

There's something wrong with their numbers.

There's no way that only 30% of Americans are high school graduates who are not obese and don't have criminal records. It's just not possible.

The U.S. high school graduation rate is 80%. About 30% of the population have been arrested. Many of those will be found innocent, charges never pressed, or convicted of very minor charges, such that 8.5% of the population ends up with felony convictions. Does obesity account for all the rest?

The stats they are using are ages 17-24. Is it possible they are skewed by the fact that many 17 and 18-year-olds simply haven't finished high school yet (even if they are on track to do so)?