h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-bristol-28442036
"Snowboarder Jenny Jones asks for the public's help after her laptop was stolen from her car in London with all her Winter Olympic photographs on it."

I've every sympathy for Jenny Jones, having been the victim of theft myself on more than occasion, but do people a) really leave something as precious as a laptop in a car, presumably in such a way that it could be seen, and b) not back up their valuable data? Seriously?

A friend showed some pictures on his phone yesterday. He had 2000-plus photos on there. A phone is very easy to nick, as is a laptop or a tablet. It's a piece of cake to either back up your photos to another computer or to the web, so why wouldn't you, especially if those photos have sentimental value?

Which reminds me - I haven't backed up my pictures folder for at least a week

Jesus Saves!

And so should you, back up your data.



I have an external drive I load all my images on when I process them. I also have cloud back ups of images taken from my mobile devices.


Right now, I'm more upset that I seem to have lost some negatives from my trip to London in '85. I was going to scan them and took them back and forth to work and home and must have dropped the ones I had selected for scanning at some point. I thought I had just misplaced them, but after all the renovations this last year, I have given up on ever finding them.

If only everyone was as smart as you and I, the BBC would have had room on the website for another story about someone apologising for something

I'm more than a little dischuffed that I still haven't been able to get my RAID box working again, or rather to get it recognised by the bloody operating system

I set it up when I was using Windows 7 Home, and it worked just fine until one of the drives failed. I put a fresh drive in and the RAID rebuilt itself, as it should, but then the system wouldn't recognise it. After a little research I found out that Windows 7 Home doesn't support dynamic discs, which is what RAID is (it says here), which makes me wonder why I was able to set it up and use it for a year or so, but Windows 7 Professional does. So I went out and spent $100 I couldn't really afford on an upgrade, and guess what. It still doesn't recognise dynamic discs.

I'm getting conflicting advice now from various geek forums about this and from Microsoft, but it's pissing me off because an ordinary external drive can fail any time, taking your data with it, but if a drive in a RAID box fails you haven't lost your data.

Plus, the box, currently a doorstep, effectively, because the OS can't use it, cost me more than a grand. It's got to earn its keep. Hell, even the RAID maintenance utility that came with the driver disc can see the controller and tell me that the rebuild was successful

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-30338231
Chimpanzee 'has no human rights'

They had to pay lawyers to figure that out? Seriously? Good grief. I should have studied law. It's a gravy train with biscuit wheels these days with everybody suing at the drop of a titfer and silly lawsuits such as this.

I don't think this one is as silly as it first appears. And I don't think that article... articulates what the plaintiffs were trying to establish very well. They were not trying to give the chimpanzee the same rights as a human. They were trying to establish that for some sentient animals, normal animal rights laws are insufficient.

I think this is an issue that will have to be addressed at some point. In the search for intelligent life, I don't think we'll find alien intelligence anytime soon, but I do wonder if we might have to rethink how we classify some of the creatures that live on this planet now. The more we learn about some other creatures cognitive abilities and emotional lives, we'll have to consider the ethics of treating them as we do now. We're seeing good evidence that some creatures like dolphins, great apes, elephants, and even octopuses are much more intelligent and emotionally developed than we used to believe.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nM9GLhuPDXA

http://www.bbc.com/news/education-32531820
Google 'should be allowed in examinations'

Seriously?

Firstly, other search engines are available, although having tried to wean myself off Google and use those others, it has to be said that they're not as good. Google, unfortunately, is very, very useful.

Secondly, if I'd been able to use a search engine - or even a pocket calculator - during my O and A levels, I'm sure my life would have been very different.

I can understand, in some circumstances, allowing open book tests and the use of calculators in some math tests. It really comes down to what is being tested. Obviously, you should not be allowed a calculator when you're being tested on your multiplication tables, but to use a calculator to check your sums when being tested in orbital mechanics, that's fine. I don't care for all encompassing rules that ban certain tools in all situations. Obviously, there are reasons to have flexible rest requirements.

But GOOGLE!?

Seriously, if you allow the use of Google, what knowledge base are you testing of the students?

OK... I could possibly see allowing the use of Google for maybe a debate test, where it's used to gather salient factual points for an argument, where the student is being graded on their logic and debate skills, not on the actual points they're using.


Yeah, I think that's about the only type of situation where I would allow something like Google in a test. Where you're being graded on an ability to organize facts and knowledge, not on the knowledge itself.



Maybe this article was written by a computer.

Maybe we've reached Teh Singularity.

Well suppose a heavily censored Google could be permitted..perhaps even one written in latin, or some other obscure language..


Wonder how many will be wearing a apple watch, suppose soon all watches will need to be removed during exams just in case, throat mikes and miniature ear phones could be useful...someone out side can do the googleling then

http://www.twcnews.com/tx/austin/news/2015/09/9/waco-police-find-loaded-gun-in-woman-s-vagina-during-search.html

I don't know quite what to say about that. Other than perhaps 'Ow'.

Well at least they waited to get her to the police station. When I saw that abbreviated URL, I thought it might be this horrific story.

http://www.houstonpress.com/news/warrantless-roadside-body-cavity-searches-are-pretty-much-unconstitutional-7663955

"squat-and-cough search"
What a charming description

I wonder I could do that would encourage a cop to violate my constitutional rights and get a cool million

..... get a cool million ...Notwithstanding the vicarious sexual stimulation brought about by such a procedure...get the whole thing on tape you'd make much more on Utube....

"In the halls of Congress, the question of why this might be was greeted with puzzlement and some theories"
http://www.npr.org/sections/itsallpolitics/2015/09/24/442946219/the-pope-will-address-a-congress-thats-much-more-christian-than-america

Seriously? I'd have thought it's bleedin' obvious - it's virtually impossible to get elected in the US without professing some kind of Christianity. You don't have to be Sherlock Holmes to figure that out.

This is a great example of the tyranny of the majority. That 73% dictates over the other 27%. I know too many people that seriously consider this a "Christian" nation; not just a predominately Christian nation, but a fundamentally Christian nation. They believe, regardless of evidence, that the nation's founders were Christian.

"Most" and "All" get confused. Because most of their friends are Christian, they assume all their friends are Christian. Since most of the nation's founders were nominally Christian, they believe that all of them were. And they're just not interested in anything that suggests otherwise.

professing some kind of Christianity....yeah got in one Gosho
//////////profess
prəˈfɛs/Submit
verb
gerund or present participle: professing
1.
claim, often falsely, that one has (a quality or feeling).
"he had professed his love for her only to walk away"
synonyms: declare, announce, proclaim, assert, state, affirm, avow, maintain, protest, aver, vow; More
2.
affirm one's faith in or allegiance to (a religion or set of beliefs).
\\\\\\\
In many cases its 1 not to as many do not seem to practise what they preach...otherwise there would be better health care, fewer gaps between the poor and the rich ect ect ect

There's a lunar eclipse tonight - a good one by all accounts because the moon will be closer to the earth than is usually the case. And it's a Harvest Moon too which sounds very romantic (and which is also partly the reason for my current name change ).

Now, the moon is a big thing and very bright and not exactly hard to locate. It's not like it's a single star, a comet, or even a constellation, which people often need some help in finding. The eclipse tonight begins a little before moonrise here in Austin, although it doesn't become total for a while afterwards so we will get a good view of the red moon.

I have limited visibility from my balcony because of the tree that overhangs it and other buildings in the complex so I decided to find out where in the sky the moon rises tonight. Could I find a single web page with a simple sky map for tonight (or the eclipse)? Could I find a single web page (even the ones giving all kinds of high-falutin' information about the eclipse) that said "Look to the ... as the moon rises"? Could I heck as like (I eventually worked it out for myself that I need to look to the south-east, so I should get a decent view of it).

Seriously?

Both the moon and sun generally rise in the East and set in the West.


I once determined from my own daily observations that the moon orbits the Earth in an Easterly direction by noting its position at the same time each day.

Of course it does. I feel such a fool for not remembering that

I should probably drink all my beer, just in case it really is the end times. True, I'll meet Almighty Bob with a hangover, but what waste otherwise

Visibility not so good right now - there's some wispy cloud surrounding the moon, but there's still another hour or so before totality.