Funny you should put it like that. Now that actual pictures of the "digital clock" are available, that is first time I have seen a clock built into a metal suitcase that, golly gee, somewhat resembles a bomb.
Ya'll are being absurd. That kid new what he was doing, I did stupid shit like that when I his age...worse in fact, these days I would have made national headlines if I had been caught. So I know what I am talking about here.
He may be be a smart boy, but you put that briefcase in any Hollywood movie or video game and they would call it a bomb. If he was really building a clock it would at least somewhat really resemble a clock.
Bear in mind, I am a strong opponent of the rising police state and slow creep of tyranny that I hope is becoming obvious to even the more ignorant sections of the populace. But this...come on guys, call a spade a spade.
Pssst: You do not live in a Hollywood movie or video game.
Here in the real world, he biggest recent terrorist incident in the US, the Boston Marathon bombing, used a backpack. But nobody is suggesting that kids be arrested for bringing backpacks to school.
And yes, the kid knew what he was doing: bringing in one of his hobby projects to show his teachers. Which is exactly what we want students to do. The problem is that the teachers didn't know what they were doing.
I was skeptical until i saw the picture. If there was no other context it looks pretty suspicious. If you left this thing unattended at bus stop you bet there would be a bomb squad on it.
But now that we are all familiar with pencil box clocks, one could easily mimic this design for a real bomb. A block of c4 would work nicely as the transformer core.
It does not "look pretty suspicious". You suspect it. Suspicion is a process that happens inside your head, and is not intrinsic to the object.
We can agree that the device would look unfamiliar to many. But that people treat unfamiliar things as scary is up to them.
As I mentioned elsewhere, the biggest recent bombing in the US left a backpack behind. Others have used briefcases, trucks, and even a Christmas present:
So if you are serious about security, then you should call the bomb squad for ordinary objects left behind at bus stops.
Of course, nobody getting the vapors about this incident is serious about security. If they were, they would not have carried Ahmed's device around the school building. If they thought it was a bomb, they would have stopped touching the device, evacuated the area, and called the bomb squad.
The actual problem here is not Ahmed's clock. It is teachers and administrators who think their irrational fears are far more important that kids' educations.
I mean, you're right that if you left it unattended at a bus stop the bomb squad would show up. But the same is true of a cardboard box or a backpack. Nearly anything looks suspicious if you leave it sitting around. That's not a reasonable criteria for "resembles a bomb," especially when it wasn't left sitting around.
Do you have any good references for your statement about laser surveillance? Generally speaking, although the us government is a wallowing pile of inefficiency, it generally tends to be true that our military technology is a fair bit ahead of where it is thought to be. I didn't even know satellite laser surveillance was a thing, so I am genuinely curious here.
You know the satellite laser thing can't be true. Even in the absence of atmospheric distortion a good satellite resolution is measured in centimeters. And that's for still pictures.
Exactly what I would have said. Most of my friends and family are teachers and the stupidity of ideas like "no child left behind"..."teach to the lowest common denominator"...are the kind of complaints I have been hearing about for quite some time.
Stop with the Orwellian political correctness and teach kids the level they are capable of. End of story.
Other than the occasional technical book, I refuse to buy e-books when reading for pleasure.
After spending all day in front of a screen, the last thing I want is another screen in my face when trying to relax with a good book at the end of the day.
Have you used a (non-backlit) Kindle or other e-ink display for any length of time? It's difficult for people who haven't tried it to believe, but it feels nothing like staring at a screen. I spend all day in front of a screen as well, but reading my Kindle at the end of the day is no harder on my eyes than looking at a dead-tree book.
It really is completely different. It's like looking at an Etch-A-Sketch, which in the end, is not much different than looking at paper with ink or graphite particles in it.
E-Readers are one of those technologies that I'm completely unconflicted and wholly supportive of. E-books should be priced better though, to account for the inability to lend them out to people.
There is a huge selection of public domain ebooks (although admittedly less than there ought to be, with the ridiculous copyright extensions). Project Gutenberg has a lot of fairly decent quality .mobi and .epub versions out these days.
You can also get a decent amount of stuff from various Amazon programs, like Kindle Unlimited. The selection isn't always perfect, but it's not terrible either.
And of course, there are always slightly less legitimate venues for obtaining free ebooks. Your morality may vary, but I'm not sure I see a problem with torrenting an ebook if I already own the paper copy. (Thankfully, some publishers are starting to be reasonable about this, like Manning, and providing a free download if you've got the purchase code from the paper book. Others are not so great - I've tried to buy the ebook versions of some of my Apress books, and the questions that they ask to verify that you own the book, i.e. what page is figure 7-3 on?, cannot be answered correctly using the page numbers from the print edition...). There's also not the same level of organization by book publishers as the MPAA and RIAA.
> There is a huge selection of public domain ebooks (although admittedly less than there ought to be, with the ridiculous copyright extensions). Project Gutenberg has a lot of fairly decent quality .mobi and .epub versions out these days.
Poor formatting, usually, though even commercial ebooks are often bad at that (another reason I don't like them) and at least the proofreading isn't as bad as the commercial ones. Tolerable in some cases—I've read a few.
But if it's a work originally written in a language you don't read, the best translations (easiest to read, most accurate, best balance of the two, take your pick) are usually still covered by copyright. The quality difference between those and what's available from PG is often large.
Yeah, I just had corrective eye surgery and the Kindle is just as easy on my eyes as a book. Easier, even because I can enlarge the text when my eyes get tired.
I understand where you are coming from, really, I do. My eyes are strained too and I recently got a Kindle (purposely without the backlight) and it is amazing. I'd recommend to give it a try - but I can't really speak for the backlit versions.
Seconded. My (non-backlit) Kindle really doesn't feel like I'm reading from a screen. It's a totally different experience from reading on my phone or laptop.
I have the paperwhite, and the backlight is really easy on the eyes, I actually prefer the backlight somewhere between 8-12 (the max setting is 20), as opposed to using the lowest setting, because it makes the page seem whiter, instead of like it is emitting light.
I did recently crack a small section of my kindle's screen when I dropped something heavy on it, and now the backlight bleeds through the small hole with the intensity of a thousand suns.... But before then, it was very comfortable, and I'll probably buy a replacement.
It's worth making the distinction between frontlit and backlit ereaders too. I have a frontlit Nook and other than the lights being a bit bluer than I'd like, it's much more comfortable to read on than my tablet at the lowest brightness.
Also re: worms, I've been fishing most of my life and other than some swampy places like Louisiana or some mucky looking rivers/lakes, worms have never been a problem?
Could be biased, I do most of my fishing in the Colorado rockies and have not had problems with worms there.
Another way to read this is, "Never, ever have a free price point."
> When the Georgia Aquarium broke ground in 2005, UPS made a generous donation: at no cost, they offered their logistics and shipping services for whatever the facility needed.
Fair enough. I like it. So how did the aquarium reply:
>"we’d like to transport ... four whale sharks in Taipei and two beluga whales in Mexico to Atlanta".
There is no way UPS would have been shipping those whales at any reasonable (even discount) price point.
A charitable donation is not a "free price point", and I doubt a company like UPS didn't anticipate the possibility that the open-ended donation might be somewhat expensive.
UPS knew what they were getting into. You don't pledge transportation services to the world's largest aquarium without expecting to ship some fish.
The publicity was probably worth the cost. If I had to ship a terracotta army, I'd much rather go with a company that is known to have successfully shipped a couple of sharks and whales.
I don't understand this mentality. Costs are always tax-deductible, it's not as if this is some added perk. Same with donations, "ooh, donations are tax-deductible!" Yeah, so is an advertising campaign, you're not doing me a favor here.
> If you've already decided you're going to be charitable you can be much more generous because of the deduction.
Can you explain that a bit? If I'm going to spend $1000 on ads, I can write them off as an expense, and save $X off taxes. If I decide to spend it on charity, will I save more than $X on taxes?
Charity gets you goodwill and free distribution of your message.
Advertising just annoys people -- to the extent that they will install software designed to block it.
Note that a) UPS didn't have to pay a additional dime for this article, or hundreds of others (google "UPS shipping beluga") and b) most of us are reading it voluntarily.
Which do you think is the better deal? Between this article and an intrusive popup ad jumping in your face, which do you think makes people think more positively toward UPS?
Without the deduction for charitable contributions, that wouldn't be an option.
To my knowledge, this is not true in the US at least. Folks would just donate whatever they owe in taxes to their church or favorite charity if it directly reduced owed taxes.
If I donate $1k, it reduces my taxable income by $1k, saving me ~$300ish.
No, charitable donations are deductions, which mean they are deducted from income. What is deducted directly from tax liability is credits, but charitable donations don't give 1:1 credits.
Oh, really? Does that mean that, if you owe $1000 in tax, you can give it to a charity of your choice, rather than the government? That sounds like a pretty big advantage.
In canada, anyway, you have a limit as to how much you can donate and you receive tax credits in return. It's not 1:1 though, so it's not as if I can just donate my taxes to a charity rather than the government.
I didn't know this, and wish I could delete or edit my comment. It's quite clear that this was done in exchange for publicity for UPS, which genuinely seems like a fair trade to me.
Ya'll are being absurd. That kid new what he was doing, I did stupid shit like that when I his age...worse in fact, these days I would have made national headlines if I had been caught. So I know what I am talking about here.
He may be be a smart boy, but you put that briefcase in any Hollywood movie or video game and they would call it a bomb. If he was really building a clock it would at least somewhat really resemble a clock.
Bear in mind, I am a strong opponent of the rising police state and slow creep of tyranny that I hope is becoming obvious to even the more ignorant sections of the populace. But this...come on guys, call a spade a spade.