Comment Re:Tasers are more lethal, not less lethal (Score 1) 253
If police can't subdue people with their bare hands and training, then they shouldn't be police.
Right.... If Batman can do it, why not Officer Murphy?
Comment Re:Simply put you don't shoot wounded and unarmed (Score 1) 1671
I went back and watched this section repeatedly. I grant that it may have been hard to tell whether the guy was holding an RPG or a camera, but I think the "sneaking behavior" is in the eye of the beholder. I saw nothing sneaky, not at 480p anyway.
Comment Re: You know what 's better than a tumbleweed? (Score 1) 105
A guy walking around on the Martian surface.
Consider yourself nominated. Don't forget your lunch.
Comment Re:Yea right... (Score 1) 105
Were you watching? The idea is that these tumbleweeds are CHEAP -- no wheels, no motors, hardly any steering. If one of them gets stuck in a hole, no problem. It studies what it finds in the hole while the rest continue to roll around.
Comment Translation (Score 1) 578
I think what this guy really wants to do is get a lot of Slashdotters to post speculative, mostly-useless, and silly replies.
He did pretty well.
Comment Re:In other words, (Score 1) 577
Unfortunately, my linux box also crashes (or at least hangs) periodically. I have a sneaking suspicion it's related to the nvidia driver.
I think your Linux box is not typical. The first Linux box I built was made from junk, literally pulled off the scrap heap, and it NEVER crashed or slowed down except for hardware failures. And I barely knew what I was doing when I built it. Every Linux box I've ever built has been the same way -- not necessarily perfect, but stable as hell.
Sorry about yours....
Comment you'd have to be pretty stupid.... (Score 1) 134
I told my boss (not a techie by a long shot) about this. Her response was similar to MightyMartian's, only it started with "How could anyone be that stupid?"
So yeah, we all get tired and get the stupid sometimes, but when even a suit can see it, you have to admit that falling for something like this is pretty darn stupid.
Comment Fold in a history-of-science lesson (Score 1) 377
Have them repeat Galileo's observations -- the elements of them have been suggested already, but I would put them in the historical framework. It would contribute to learning in other subjects and possibly give your students a better grounding in the basics of the scientific method and worldview.
Italy Floats Official Permission Requirement for Web Video Uploads 131
An anonymous reader writes with some bad news from Italy, noting that new rules proposed there would "require people who upload videos onto the Internet to obtain authorization from the Communications Ministry similar to that required by television broadcasters, drastically reducing freedom to communicate over the Web." Understandably, some say such controls represent a conflict of interest for Silvio Berlusconi, "who exercises political control over the state broadcaster RAI in his role as prime minister and is also the owner of Italy's largest private broadcaster, Mediaset."
Comment Re:China is not a Left Wing or Communist State. (Score 1) 204
I suppose the same can be said of conservative Muslims (e.g., the governments of Saudi Arabia and Iran) and fundamentalist Christians in the USA: they hate porn because they revere women. And yet the status of women in those societies -- in all strata -- is generally lower, their freedoms more curtailed, than in societies where porn is tolerated, e.g. Denmark, Sweden, Germany.
I don't deny that much porn demeans women. But in the real world, crusades against porn and oppression of women more often than not coexist, and are even run by the same people.
