flynn23 wrote:
These don't seem too practical to me.

Oh yeah... they're totally form over function. I still want one.

Besides, studies have shown that younger cities such as Atlanta, aren't well built to accommodate mass transit. They were designed for the car, which is why they promote the car. Even Washington DC is not very mass transit friendly thanks to the loop.

I don't disagree. In fact, I agree wholeheartedly. That's why I'm angry. City planners have continued making conscious choices to defeat mass transit and favor the car. That's the whole fucking problem.

I can't believe anyone on earth would prefer this nightmare of 10 and 12 lane superhighways, these swathes of hot, smelly, unsightly pavement, endless delays and annoyance and, most of all, lack of freedom. People claim to favor the car because it promotes freedom, but I see quite the opposite. I find it harder to go out socially, because having to find a place to park, and deal with my car, and curb my drinking is a massive disincentive to even try to go out and have fun. It's depressing as hell. And living in town doesn't help either because you can hardly walk anywhere. This is a city -- like others, as you say -- which completely destroys the concept of the town as a community in favor of this network of awful roads. I think it's a travesty.

Obviously being a single 20-something puts me in a different mindset from others, but what the fuck do i care about them... they've forsaken the city and moved to the burbs, lobbied to separate themselves in order to deny the city their tax revenue, and still pressure the city to expand roads so that THEY can have an easier time polluting the air and making life worse for those of us who'd really like to have a real urban lifestyle. It's not bad enough they've got to turn the landscape in every direction into a calamity of ugly subdivisions without trees, endless chain restaurants and grand edifices of Wal Mart. They've gotta ruin it for me inside the perimiter too.

I'm bitter at the entire lifestyle and it sickens me that people behave in this way. -k]

RE: 어른들을 위한 장난감 가게

However, the density of the city somehow makes this seem easier to imagine than in, say, Atlanta, where if you're walking around with an umbrella you're usually walking to or from a car.

Stupid, stupid Atlanta. I'm so tired of driving everywhere.

I want one of these awesome umbrellas, and a place to use it. Atlanta, as you say, is NOT such a place.

Anyway, the company calls it a "Light Saber" umbrella, but Tom's correct, I think it's better if i think of it in terms of the Blade Runner umbrella, to the right. More information, and pix of a restored original, here.

어른들을 위한 장난감 가게

As if the folks at Top Gear didn't already have the best job in the world, they recently went and completely outdid themselves, building their own Space Shuttle out of a Reliant Robin, roughly the British equivalent of a Pinto or a Gremlin (minus a wheel). As you can see, it all came together quite nicely, complete with an external fuel tank, solid rocket boosters, and a spot-on paint job

Wow. I love Top Gear.

Top Gear builds, launches Space Shuttle car - Engadget

Presumably Decius is concerned primarily with the definition apparently now covering computer security analysis as follows (excisions mine, for clarity) :

'Private detective business' means ... the business of obtaining or furnishing, or accepting employment to obtain or to furnish, information, including ... digital or electronic information, with reference to:
...
(C) The location, disposition, or recovery of lost or stolen property;
(D) The cause or responsibility for ... losses, ... damage, ...

I have to admit it seems rather absurd to require that the nerds going through your server logs be licenced PI's. That being said, given the potential for such data to be used as evidence, it wouldn't hurt for them to be trained in the relevant laws thereof.

I'm not certain I see categorically how removing a virus would fall into these provisions however, and I'd like to hear what I've missed.
Perhaps insofar as it would require you as an IT professional to "furnish information" that the "losses" resulting from downed computers was due to such-and-such virus in the course of your removal of it?

Anyway, I think there's two different aspects to consider here. The first is your normal IT functions, such as virus and spyware removal, the configuring and monitoring of firewalls, etc., and the second is more advanced computer security such as responding to system compromises, "forensic" data analysis, systems fraud monitoring, etc. The former, I'd think, should be pretty much completely exempt from any sort of regulation.

The latter, on the other hand, as I've said, has implications for evidence and the potential recovery of losses or the proscecution of a criminal investigation. Given that, I actually don't oppose the notion that such workers should be verifiably conversant in the legalistic aspects of their work. As a matter of fact, I'm kind of surprised that those kinds of activities aren't already considered as being the exclusive jurisdiction of "the Law". Allowing company employees to process information that exposes the perpetrator of an alleged criminal act seems rather like allowing the fox (or, perhaps, merely the fox's close friend) to guard the henhouse.

Don't confuse my statements with endorsing this law, mind you. I absolutely don't think the law as it stands addresses what I'm talking about. Neither kind of work is quite the same as existing licenced PI or PS activities where you have trained personnel, frequently armed, handling physical security or so forth.

-k]

hb504_LC_29_2714_a_2.html

What's Special About This Number?
0 is the additive identity.
1 is the multiplicative identity.
2 is the only even prime.
3 is the number of spatial dimensions we live in.
4 is the smallest number of colors sufficient to color all planar maps.
5 is the number of Platonic solids.
6 is the smallest perfect number.
7 is the smallest number of faces of a regular polygon that is not constructible by straightedge and compass.
8 is the largest cube in the Fibonacci sequence.
9 is the maximum number of cubes that are needed to sum to any positive integer.
10 is the base of our number system.

a math prof made this cool site talking about special quality about thousands of numbers...good mental masterbation for all the number theory junkies out there (you know who you are)...

[ Wow. definitely one of the nerdiest things i've ever seen. -k]

What's Special About This Number?

At the Sedgebrook retirement community in Lincolnshire, where the average age is 77, something unexpected has been transpiring since Christmas. The residents, most of whom have never picked up a video game controller in their life, suddenly can't put the things down.

"I've never been into video games," said 72-year-old Flora Dierbach last week as her husband took a twirl with the Nintendo Wii's bowling game. "But this is addictive."

Nice!

Wii bowling knocks over retirement home | Chicago Tribune

A Bartow County couple will go before a magistrate judge today to see if they will be arrested for allegedly stalking a Kennesaw police officer by installing cameras to track neighborhood speeders.

Lee and Teresa Sipple spent $1,200 mounting three video cameras and a radar speed unit outside their home, which is at the bottom of a hill. They have said they did so in hopes of convincing neighbors to slow down to create a safe environment for their son.

The Sipples allegedly caught Kennesaw police officer Richard Perrone speeding up to 17 mph over the speed limit. Perrone alerted Bartow authorities, who in turn visited the Sipples' home to tell them Perrone intended to press charges against them for stalking.

Ah, was he speeding in response to a call? It doesn't sound like stalking to me, exactly, but it's an interesting case...

-k

Magistrate judge to decide if couple will be prosecuted for 'stalking' officer

With radiating waves, a skull and crossbones and a running person, a new ionizing radiation warning symbol is being introduced to supplement the traditional international symbol for radiation, the three cornered trefoil.

The new symbol is being launched today by the IAEA and the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) to help reduce needless deaths and serious injuries from accidental exposure to large radioactive sources. It will serve as a supplementary warning to the trefoil, which has no intuitive meaning and little recognition beyond those educated in its significance.

Meh. I don't like it. I guess they tested it pretty well, but even so... doesn't appeal to me.

Also, I don't like "three cornered trefoil." As opposed to a trefoil with 5 or 8 or 26 lobes? Thank you to the Department of Redundancy Department.

New Symbol Launched to Warn Public About Radiation Dangers

I was aware that boardgames were coming to Live Arcade - Carcassonne and others - but I wasn't aware they were pulling in the company that made Rise of Nations to manage The Settlers of Catan. To be perfectly honest, I was expecting to choke down a half-assed port of their Windows version. I was wrong in absolute terms.

I mention it because (as I have said in the past) gamers - by which I mean gamers of the electronic variety - would find a lot to like in these games, because they are simply well-built systems which accept time as an input and produce fun. They have a delicious logic and a competitive thrill that strategy gamers especially might find irresistible. Microsoft needs games of this type badly, because as a strategy platform their hardware simply doesn't exist. These games need a presence on the other hardware though, and fast - the Wii especially, whose novel sensing and pointing apparatus might be used to retain the appealing physical elements a digital interpretation might lack. Dice rolling, tile placement, that kind of thing.

I'm aware that admitting a deep desire to roll virtual dice makes me one of the biggest dorks ever and perhaps even a kind of dork sovereign.

Hear hear! I want to play Carcassonne on my (hopefully soon to exist) Wii!

Penny Arcade! - The Onyx Obelisk

A man who was fired by IBM for visiting an adult chat room at work is suing the company for $5 million, claiming he is an Internet addict who deserves treatment and sympathy rather than dismissal.

James Pacenza, 58, of Montgomery, says he visits chat rooms to treat traumatic stress incurred in 1969 when he saw his best friend killed during an Army patrol in Vietnam.

In papers filed in federal court in White Plains, Pacenza said the stress caused him to become "a sex addict, and with the development of the Internet, an Internet addict." He claimed protection under the American with Disabilities Act.

... Wait a second here. Because he saw his buddies get killed over 28 years ago he needs to get some some dirty talking during the work day?

Ok, seriously, this is the bullshit.

[Agreed. This reads like some kind of fucking fiction story. And it plays into the notion that people will make every behavior they have into some kind of victim syndrome if they can.

This is outrageous and, while I'm certainly sympathetic to the bullshit this guy went through in 'nam, I'm not in anyway sympathetic to his claim that the results require him to surf adult chat rooms and port, much less while at work.

For christ's sake, some things really are up to oneself. -k]

Man sues IBM over firing, says he's an Internet addict