Comment I'm not a violent person... (Score 3, Insightful) 170
... but my kneejerk reaction is to find the remaining SCO layers, some strong hemp rope and a stout oak tree.
Seriously though, nothing cries out for Tort reform like this nonsense.
... but my kneejerk reaction is to find the remaining SCO layers, some strong hemp rope and a stout oak tree.
Seriously though, nothing cries out for Tort reform like this nonsense.
I hear that Facebook has a sensitivity team that responded to that guy who wrote a blog post when the "Year In Review" displayed a lot of pictures of his daughter that died from cancer during the year. (Apparently, Facebook was terribly insensitive in doing that or something...*)
So, it's not terribly surprising that Facebook would address something like this. Especially since the internet hasn't really had the chance to process what it means to have so much digital information on someone online yet. For instance: I received a friend suggestion on Facebook for someone who died last year. We weren't close, but I was sad she passed.
What does that mean if you don't have someone assigned as a legacy, then? Can you report the page as someone who's passed? Do you need to provide proof? What if that system gets abused and locks up people's pages because trolls think it's funny that you have to prove you're still alive in order to access your page?
*No, I'm not mocking the guy for having lost his daughter; guaranteed someone will interpret this statement that way. I personally think it's weird that said blog post became a "thing" on the internet as someone with a downgraded version of the same situation (put our dog to sleep in December; her pics came up a lot in my YIR...which, I know is hardly the same as losing a child to cancer, but if I were to scale it down, I wouldn't have called Facebook "vaguely insensitive" for that. Still miss my dog, though), as if somehow Facebook has the AI to discern exactly enough context from posts to make a perfect and not emotionally damaging YIR for everyone.
They could actually do that if they gave us something other than "Like" to show support. - like condolences, sympathies, or some such that shows support for the person but doesn't comment upon the situation itself (or even implies that the situation is negative).
Truck speed limit is 70. Some cars/trucks still go 65. No major problems I'm aware of, and in these more sparsely populated states, I think a valid change.
Don't know about the cars, but most corporate owned semi-trucks are governed to between 65 to 68 depending on company (and I'm sure a couple have the governor set higher, but that's the usual range).
It will be interesting to see if this causes any software comparability issues with legacy applications.
Of course there will be - in any large pool of people of any calling there's going to be morons - the sort of morons that sniff the OS version string for things like "Windows 9" and then assume it's Windows 95 or 98 and refuse to work; instead of using the proper channels to query for the OS version number.
As a PHP programmer I can testify that morons can indeed program. I'm one of them.
Ultimately, if someone wants a promise to be paid in return for their work, there are a number of options available to them, starting with charging for it just like every other industry in the world that produces value.
Or they'll switch to angular.js and similar technologies to deliver the content. No js, no content. If adblock interferes, crash the page, log the ip and block the user.
Adblock will of course try to stop this. And the cat & mouse game will have begun.
Apples and Oranges freeloader.
Sharing music doesn't degrade the performance of the artist's servers, and how often you share it doesn't cost them anything directly (indirectly there's a perceived loss of profits, but since when did freeloaders pay for anything so it's a red herring). Besides, the real money for artists is in concerts, not records.
Stripping a site of its ads denies the site owner of the revenue of those ads while still costing him the bandwidth to send you the content. So there is a direct cost. Insignificant in terms of a single freeloader, but if everyone on the net used adblock, the net would collapse because there'd be no revenue to pay for the servers.
So yes, if you use adblock you're a freeloader, and worse, a thief.
Haven't seen ads since I installed adblock plus and no script. Cost me nothing.
Translation: I'm a worthless freeloader.
In any unmoderated discussion the loudest and most insistent voices win. This has been true since democracy started - "politic" meaning roughly in the original Greek "To shout down"
We see this in our current political system as well - wingnuts running the show in both parties because reasonable people won't speak up.
Time and again I've seen this on forums I've been on that have been unmoderated, such as the OkCupid forums. After awhile, only the rudest and the crudest remain there along with those willing to tolerate them.
I was experimenting with these things at the University of Kentucky back in 97 or so, and the professor at that time said a few feet. That accuracy has improved since then doesn't surprise me. It would surprise me to find a unit from '97 or so that was accurate to the inch, but I could believe it. I am not an expert in the technology though - just giving the general reason why ground stations are important.
GPS is normally only accurate to within a few yards, and when the system was opened up to civilian use in the late 90's the military put in a discrepancy to the civilian signals so that they'd be off by a few dozen yards.
Then someone hit upon the idea of checking GPS against a known good reading.
GPS base stations do this. They know where they are, exactly. They listen to the GPS satellites report of where the satellites think they are, then broadcast the margin of error out to nearby GPS receivers. As a result, the accuracy of the readings can be gotten exact down to a few feet.
So successful was this that the military eventually discarded the idea of putting in an intentional margin of error for civilian signals.
Factorials were someone's attempt to make math LOOK exciting.