Comment Re:Surrogates (Score 2) 34
This sounds like a rudimentary version of the robot avatars in the movie Surrogates.
...or in the novel Blue Remembered Earth.
This sounds like a rudimentary version of the robot avatars in the movie Surrogates.
...or in the novel Blue Remembered Earth.
Hope!
Continued Gitmo!
And coming soon: War: Iran! With israel as a special guest (not on the battlefield, you silly. But they'll be there when everybody is dead for the spoils and land)
I know. Would have been so much better if the budget could have been balanced by killing Big Bird, women's body parts became subject to the Christian equivalent of Sharia, defense spending could have been raised way above what the Pentagon wants or the country needs, and relations with the outside world could have been restored to their Bush-era levels.
Most things are worse when the government does it.
Such as road building? Defense? Health? Fire departments?
(Let the flame war begin)
I was a skeptic about e-readers for a while. I thought the Kindle was a bit overpriced when it first came out, I didn't understand why they weren't selling them at a loss to encourage more book sales. I also kinda liked the concept of the printed page and the traditional look and feel of it. But lately my curiosity got the better of me and I got the Kindle app for my phone and was blown away by the convenience of being able to download a book and start reading right away. Then I ended up getting a Nook.
Man, my view of books has changed overnight! I've been reading books at a rate of knots compared to before. It's just so damn convenient to carry this little thing around with an entire library stored in it, and it's way more robust than the printed page in terms of being resistant to dog ears and the like. (I wouldn't like to drop it, but still...) I've taken delight in taking the train to work even though it takes twice as long because it gives me an opportunity to indulge in novels. The convenience of being able to instantly download any book you feel like getting/buying makes the shipping of printed books look like pigeon post. My shelves full of books are now starting to look like my old CD collection: obsolete, wasteful and space-consuming. And the e-ink is very easy on the eye.
Now I'm a believer!
Exactly. No dictator has ever held on to power without some sort of support. Monarchs of old England could never govern without the support of the nobles around the country. Parliament evolved from the talking shops of the royal court, and sufferage gradually increased as time wore on. That's why I roll my eyes every time I hear Americans talking as if they're the only democracy in the world, or as if they invented the concept a century ago. Hell, the English civil war advanced the cause of democracy and put parliament on top centuries before the colonial revolt.
Private polls conducted by the campaign. "Click here to indicate that you voted for Obama." Nothing illegal about it.
... the data crunchers with the help of the spying on Americans and MSM entertainment control were able to figure out exactly how to manipulate many things to achieve the goal of what they were hired to do. To cause the voters to believe they actually voted the way it was said to have.
Fact is voter turnout was the lowest it has been at least as far back as prior to 1948 election perhaps further back.
Obama trailed at roughly under 1 million for most of the tally and then was approx 1.5 million behind Romney in popular vote when declared the winner.
So with less that 50% of eligible voters voting
This was not a sports event!
Given the political bias I have seen on slashdot.... I do expect this to be moderated troll.... But that not like our election voting.... is it?
So what are you saying? A non-voter should count as a Romney voter? Obama lost?
Take your beating like a man, you self-pitying twerp.
Yes, we Americans should get a much more logical political system, like the British. Maybe if we had a House of Lords and a royal family, we'd finally enter the 18th century.
The Queen has a very limited constitutional role that very seldom comes into play. If she did anything outrageous it'd be the end of the monarchy's popularity and the end of the monarchy (the Prime Minister can demand an abdication), so she has to follow the public mood.
The House of Lords can only delay legislation and send it back to the Commons, and its track record of providing corrective feedback and constructive improvements to bills is actually pretty good.
House of Commons Select Committees scrutinize every bit of legislation line-by-line before it can proceed. Is there a similar system in the US Capitol or is it true that most of the people voting on bills in the house don't actually read them?
Members of the British cabinet have to be elected to Parliament, not simply appointed. Nobody gets to be Prime Minister without years of fighting his (or her) way to the front benches, so whoever makes it to the front has a pretty good idea of how the system works by the time they get there.
Since the executive branch is taken from the legislative branch, a government with a decent sized mandate can actually get stuff done. And then of course there's Prime Minister's questions every Wednesday, where the PM gets a good solid grilling. Could you have imagined Dubya surviving for five minutes in a pit like that?
Since the head of state (the monarch) is a different person from the executive leader of the country (the Prime Minister) then people can honour the head of state and be as patriotic as they like while treating their political leaders with utter contempt and ousting them when they put a foot wrong. None of this "don't dare criticise the President in a time of war" nonsense. And if the government really does screw up badly enough then a vote of confidence in the Commons can force an election at any time, no staring at the clock waiting for a 4-year term to finish. And if you do happen to get a decent PM then he (or she) gets to stay in office for as long as the people are content for that government to remain, not be ousted at the end of an arbitrary term limit.
The parliamentary system isn't perfect (what system is?) but it sure as shit has a lot going for it. And since the UK had a female PM before a lot of people on
Carry on.
I'm re-posting from the older thread linked above about NY's plans to use payphones as WiFi hotspots:
On a related note, have you ever wondered what that Police Public Call Box thing is that The Doctor uses to travel through space and time? I used to wonder too. It wasn't until I went to Edinburgh that I saw them and other objects that looked like them. I remember jumping out of my seat and saying "There's a Tardis!"
Well apparently they had a phone accessible from the outside that the public could use to call the cops in an emergency. Cops would have access to the inside where they could go in and hang their hat, hold a prisoner while help came, and effectively use it as a mini police station. Some of them remain and have been re-purposed for other uses like coffee shops or news stands. There were a lot of designs and didn't seem to standardize like the classic red phone box did.
Cities like Manchester, Glasgow and Liverpool have updated the concept with "help points", little computerized kiosks that are under CCTV surveillance and have a direct line to the police. It'd be cool if they could introduce the modern functionality but contain it in the form of the old 1929 Mackenzie Trench design that was popularized by Doctor Who.
The moral of the story is that once infrastructure is taken out it's very hard to put back in. If you leave it in place, even when it stops being immediately useful, it can find a use later when some new trend (coffee shops) or new technology makes it useful again. When the old Police Boxes were going out of service, the WWW was a long way off and nobody could have foreseen their reincarnation as help points.
There's also the matter of heritage value. I remember when the K6 phone box was so ubiquitous in the UK that nobody would have considered them as a collector's item. In fact I remember, when the one beside our house had a rotary phone in it, that they were quite dingy inside and not well maintained. They were rusty and the glass was always dirty and smudged. The rectangular plastic and stainless steel ones that came later were a lot more pleasant to use, but they didn't have the same character. But the K6 still has its fans. If the inside were as comfortable as a modern design then I'm sure they could be adapted to a modern use as well.
The "both sides are as bad" argument is just another piece of false balance invented by the lazy USAian media. Sure there are a few nutjobs on the left who think that vaccines cause autism and the like, but denial of hard science is much more prevalent on the right. Fact.
citation needed.
Really.
Unless you're a YEC where 120 million years ago was actually 6000 years ago with some tricks to make it look older put there by Satan, your fix there is bollocks.
Climate Change: dramatically increasing the amount of "Whooooosh!" over the past 15 years.
Sorry, but with the amount of crazy denialism out there on the far right that it has become impossible to tell the parodies from the real thing nowadays. I even heard a good one on the radio this morning. Someone was at a Romney rally and started heckling the candidate. He held up a sign saying "end climate silence" and called for the candidates to address the issue in the wake of Sandy. The crowd started booing him, then started chanting "USA! USA! USA!" and he was led out by the secret service.
The GOP and the far right has lost all touch with reality. Frankly I think that if Romney doesn't get elected then the time will be ripe for a backlash against the Tea Party extremists and their religious fundamentalist allies. Mayor Bloomberg is in a prime position to spark a centrist realignment of the GOP, if he has the balls to take on the extremists head-to-head. Hell, if Bloomberg ran for President in 2016 (and doesn't tack to the right to win the nomination) then he'd get my vote, and I'm an Obama supporter. I'm sure there's plenty of other potential Bloomberg Republicans out there who have been turned off by the extremist element.
Umm, the old version of the theme tune was pretty mournful and depressing, but after a few seasons they changed it up a bit and it became much more exciting and 'majestic', plus adding a bit more space traffic to the visuals helped.
As for the OP, sounds like the guy needs to get laid.
As much as I can agree that undue stress can make someone overly reactive to situations, advocating sex to calm someone down smells a bit too much like "bread and circuses" in a modern sense. What does mass media advocate for recreation and to help people "unwind and forget their problems" but alcohol and entertainment flush with violence and sexual content? Programming on TV dumbs down and avoids critical thinking or introspection on the human condition, exactly what our poster is ranting about.
Don't do anything about societies problems that bother you. Just waste your time in carnal pleasure.
Carnal pleasure is a "waste of time"? Dude, you need to get laid!
High friction surface which requires constant work and they want to paint it in temperature sensitive markings which will get covered in sot and worn down in a heartbeat? Prolonging any and all road maintenance.
Why not just have a sign painted in the same material which does the same job, except you can actually see it a lot easier?
I do like the idea of glow in the dark roads for increased visibility, but not for reading the temperature.
Do you come from some country where there's no lane markings?
Wait - what happens to all the stripes on conventional highways when all those filthy, dirty tires run over them continuously? Oh, right, nothing.
I guess you haven't figured out that durability of the paint is the only issue - things on the road would tend to be ground away by friction rather than building up layers of grime on top. Also, rubber is remarkably good at removing grime. Like that thing on the end of your pencil, which generally does the opposite of depositing grime on your nice, clean paper.
But seriously, why am I doing your thinking for you?
He's probably thinking of the road markings they have in California which disappear in the wet after dark. I don't know what kind of cheap pain they use in CA but it doesn't seem to have the same sparkle effect that striping has in the UK where, combined with cats' eyes, roads are lit up like a Christmas tree as soon as you shine your lights on them.
"Little else matters than to write good code." -- Karl Lehenbauer
