I literally don't know the password to my phone. I know of it, and how to type it in, but even at gunpoint / threat of contempt, I couldn't tell you what it is.

It's in a book on his experiments...

http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/22514...

Page 4.
4
Fig 1. John B. Calhoun in rodent Universe 133

and page 18.

Calhounâ(TM)s rodent experiments (note that "universe 133" was actually a mouse experiment, but it is as ever with reference to rats that the work is recalled)

And I hate the lack of ability to edit combined with Slashdot's poor treatment of unicode quote marks!

I must be misremembering the universe #.

Here's a link.

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

and a quote...

Mouse experiments
John Calhoun with mice experiment.

In the early 1960s, the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) acquired property in a rural area outside Poolesville, Maryland. The facility that was built on this property housed several research projects, including those headed by Calhoun. It was here that his most famous experiment, the mouse universe, was created.[1] In July 1968 four pairs of mice were introduced into the Utopian universe. The universe was a 9-foot (2.7 m) square metal pen with 54-inch-high (1.4 m) sides. Each side had four groups of four vertical, wire mesh âoetunnelsâ. The âoetunnelsâ gave access to nesting boxes, food hoppers, and water dispensers. There was no shortage of food or water or nesting material. There were no predators. The only adversity was the limit on space.
John Calhoun meeting Pope Paul VI on 27 September 1973.

Initially the population grew rapidly, doubling every 55 days. The population reached 620 by day 315, after which the population growth dropped markedly. The last surviving birth was on day 600. This period between day 315 and day 600 saw a breakdown in social structure and in normal social behavior. Among the aberrations in behavior were the following: expulsion of young before weaning was complete, wounding of young, inability of dominant males to maintain the defense of their territory and females, aggressive behavior of females, passivity of non-dominant males with increased attacks on each other which were not defended against. After day 600, the social breakdown continued and the population declined toward extinction. During this period females ceased to reproduce. Their male counterparts withdrew completely, never engaging in courtship or fighting. They ate, drank, slept, and groomed themselves â" all solitary pursuits. Sleek, healthy coats and an absence of scars characterized these males. They were dubbed âoethe beautiful onesâ.

The conclusions drawn from this experiment were that when all available space is taken and all social roles filled, competition and the stresses experienced by the individuals will result in a total breakdown in complex social behaviors, ultimately resulting in the demise of the population.

Calhoun saw the fate of the population of mice as a metaphor for the potential fate of man. He characterized the social breakdown as a âoesecond deathâ, with reference to the âoesecond deathâ mentioned in the Biblical book of Revelation 2:11 [1] His study has been cited by writers such as Bill Perkins as a warning of the dangers of the living in an "increasingly crowded and impersonal

The portion of the population which breeds under given circumstances will come to dominate the population.

It might be expressed as a particular religion, simple horniness combined with resistance to using birth control, or myriad other ways.

But that part of the population will be a larger percentage over time and finally come to dominate the population.

There is an exception-- a universe 133 scenario. The population in those experiments collapsed and did not recover.

because as you and I have seen over the years, every time there's a court ruling it just means that you have to word the patent claims differently.

Good! Let 'em try to twist it into something still allowed but borderline, like business method patents - That knife cuts both ways, and for enduring a few more years of patent abuse, perhaps we can finally get those banned as well.

Come on, I still use Netscape.

One of my buddies is buying a Leaf.

The problem is this: once you test drive an electric car, you're done with shitty ICE forever. Nothing has better torque, better acceleration... and that's what the gold ol' 'murkin cahs are sold as, muscle.

Put them up against something electric, and these so-called "Muscle cars" are just saggy old curlbros trying to get big arms to draw attention away from their massive beer bellies.

Wouldn't you like to know, apk?

I suspect we've all encountered managers that don't grasp the difference between "managing" and "intimidation". But after your first job out of college, you will discover that you have better things to do with your life than burn the candle at both ends for a crappy job.

More importantly, the "death-march" style of project management doesn't produce good results. What you describe can't become the norm, simply because any company that uses it will find itself internally paralyzed, completely unable to adapt to a changing market. When individual projects stretch on for longer than the company's strategic plan, the threat of firings doesn't really mean much because none of you will still work there in five years.

Find a new job today and save your sanity.

How is blinding someone with a laser worse than killing or maiming them with a bullet?

This world holds a lot of horrors worse than death for our tribe of domesticated monkeys. Personally, I would rather die than go blind... But of course, given that we as a society regularly allow the infirm to live past birth, holding such a belief has become gauche to an extreme. Handbasket, please.

That said, this has nothing to do with issues of morality and mercy, and everything to do with military logistics. A dead enemy merely means one less fighter for the other side. A crippled one still means one less fighter, but also means risking still-tactically-useful men getting him out of combat, then wasting precious medical resources providing immediate treatment, and then (in most civilized countries) supporting him for the rest of his life.

This was true for me when the modem they gave to me failed to bootstrap. I was charged for the guy to come out, debug the problem, and then swap the modem because it was defective from the factory.

But my only other internet option is AT&T and that's it.

So basically a duonopoly in a city with millions of people.

We need the city to lay the lines and then allow the cable companies to compete for customers on those lines like we do for our electric lines.

Was that 99.99% test done on a fire arm that has been used much?

If you check out the pics in TFA, you'll see that not only didn't they test fire this the hundreds of thousands of times it would take to come up with that claim of accuracy - This "proof of concept" wouldn't ever work in a real gun.

Apparently, this genius 17YO knows so little about the functioning of an actual gun that he simply filled the receiver with electronics (because nothing important goes in all that empty space) and produced what amounts a gun-shaped fingerprint reader. Because, y'know, who needs all those silly little things like springs or hammers or firing pins or magazines to also fit inside a working gun?

Guns must not be simply reliable. They must be infallible. They must work instantly, every time. Otherwise, any gun is useless. See how fucking idiotic that sounds?

It doesn't sound idiotic at all. Yes, the real world means that you will have some measurable failures-to-fire. Also IN THE REAL WORLD, quality ammo in a well-maintained gun simply doesn't fail. You'll see less than one FTF in a thousand, and that one will only happen after a long day at the range with the gun completely fouled. And even then, a tap-rack-bang will usually clear it (as opposed to a dead battery, which would mean a dead you when you have two seconds before a home invader gets from the door to you).

So yes, guns MUST be as close to infallible as possible. We have to accept the constraints of the real world, but adding a functionally unnecessary point of failure amounts to nothing short of suicidal.

What I will say is I don't understand why folks are against the development of these sorts of things. As long as it's not government mandated as the only way to get a usable tool then let it compete in the market.

Why? Because at least one state HAS already mandated it - New Jersey passed that one in 2002, and only the lack of any viable commercial tech has blocked the enforcement of such mandates. And worse, Eric Holder (yes, that Eric Holder) publicly stated that he considers NJ's law a model for future NATIONAL policy.

I don't think even the most paranoid gun-nuts have a serious moral objection to safer guns. Until such tech exists as to allow "smart" guns to have four properties, however, I will cling to my dumb ol' guns to my last breath:
1) No batteries.
2) Lower false NEGATIVE rate ("99.99%" from TFA makes a great soundbite but means fuck-all without qualifiers) than a dumb gun's normal failure-to-fire rate (which with quality ammo and a well-maintained gun comes to pretty damned near zero).
3) No slower than existing draw-rack-point-click. I would even say, if fingerprint-based, the sensor MUST go on the trigger itself and detect a thin stripe of index fingertop.
4) No remote disabling, PERIOD. If the police can do it, so can home invaders.


/ OT: Why the hell doesn't bolding work on Beta? And Dice really wonders why we hate it?

But you have to compare it to what they would otehr wise be doing.

If you pay them $50 an hour but this sucks out of their water cooler time, then no loss.
If you pay them $50 an hour but this sucks out of "figuring out where the hell the command I always use went on the new ribbon system" then no loss.

Seriously, Ribbons cost me well over 10 hours of time figuring out how to do what I'd always done.