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Those who post here in defense of SetTV, on the grounds that depriving major content creation companies of revenue by charging their subscribers for pirated content is somehow a righteous act, are clearly unable to grasp the distinction between ethical and unethical behavior.

Leaving legality entirely aside for the moment, just how is encouraging the business model of charging subscription fees for content stolen from OTHER subscription services (who did, in fact, pay the companies that invested their own money to make that content to begin with) in any way a laudable act? Given the fact that investing in the production of a movie or "TV" series is an inherently risky proposition to begin with, how is taking the product of that gamble, without recompense to its producer, purely for the direct financial profit of the owners of SetTV even marginally defensible on ethical grounds?

It's not.

Even if you posit that taking the end product of other people's investment for your own, personal, not-for-profit use is somehow an ethically-defensible act, doing so as part of a conspiracy to financially profit from what (for want of a more useful descriptor) let's call "piracy as a subscription service" is not. Instead, it's an example of pure greed, not, in any way, a nominally-illegal act of civil disobedience.

It's certainly true that the Big IP cabals have deliberately subverted the original, constitutional purpose of copyright law in the USA, in pursuit of their own, purely-selfish profit. (As for the obscenely-extended copyright terms in the European Union - which, in turn, via the mechanism of international treaties, have significantly extended those in the U.S. - there never was any pretense of their being for the benefit of "creators." From their inception, they have existed purely to serve the interests of corporate IP holders.) As an author, despite the fact that I theoretically benefit from those extended terms, I entirely agree that their over-extension is contrary to the public good, and urgently needs to be corrected. But endorsing organized, for-profit piracy schemes is hardly a legitimate strategy to accomplish that end.

So, in this specific case - and reluctantly so - I'm on Big IP's side here ...

(Posting as AC only so as not to undo prior upmods in this thread.)

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Before you bash Amazon (also realize Amazon is rapidly staffing its warehouses with mobile work forces of RV dwelling retires that need the job to make ends meet) https://www.amazon.com/gp/prod... consider that a lot of pilots early in their career would have wages low enough to qualify for food stamps. They often make less than the flight attendants on their flights who also make low wages.

Quite a few branches on the flowchart end with "Refer to a doctor", so no one is expecting the nurse to handle everything.

But for some problems, the nurse is more often correct than the doctor. Nurses are more likely to make a diagnosis that is mundane and ordinary, while a doctor is biased toward looking for an esoteric ailment that he learned about in medical school. As they say "When you hear hoofbeats, think of horses not zebras."

In the Checklist Manifesto, the author (a medical doctor) describes how the most experienced and senior doctors were found to have the highest rates of minsdiagnosises because, although they required their staffs to use checklists, they often skipped them themselves and just trusted their expertise and instincts.

I thought they used 18650s -- just a BUNCH of them with a lot of battery monitoring hardware.

If that's right, would they hold their overall charge capacity longer because people (I assume) keep them topped off and not routinely run them down to 0%? (Who wants an unexpected walk?) Or is it the battery monitoring stuff being "nice" to the battery as long as possible?

Or do they have "special selected electrons" in their power stations? (Only the roundest ones for our customers, so they slide around easier. One, two.

the average person commits three felonies a day....

There is a book about this.

Wearing headphones, and a rubber lubed with Dr. Pepper and Stubbs BBQ sauce must be something new.

You need to read more closely.

It is Dr. Pepper flavoured Stubbs BBQ sauce....not Dr. Pepper AND Stubbs BBQ sauce.

https://www.amazon.com/Stubbs-...

Yes. May I suggest you read this book on the subject?

https://www.amazon.com/Illusions-Adventures-Reluctant-Richard-Bach/dp/0440204887?tag=gc0a18-20/

Don't use a drill; use a torque driver. A power drill with a torque limiter is basically a weak impact wrench.

https://www.amazon.com/SONY-S-...

Better tell Amazon they've got some really old stock.

Someone better because that is an insane ripoff on multiple levels, or just something old used crap someone is selling on Amazon.

Yep, common issue. Get you one of these: https://www.amazon.com/gp/prod...

If it gets loose, will it eat the bottles on the shelves? Will it also eat the fleece jackets made from recycled PET bottles?

I read that book a long time ago:

Mutant 59: The Plastic-Eaters

"Fad Surfing in the Boardroom" ( https://www.amazon.com/Fad-Sur... ) is a great book that covers many examples of this. The best part of the book is that it talks about these fads, how the original idea started, how they *should* be implemented, and how they're actually implemented poorly.

https://www.amazon.com/SONY-S-...

Better tell Amazon they've got some really old stock.

I have a wife and kids. We use a lot of batteries. I am not saying I found the best way to do this, but this system works extremely well for us. Advice and opinions interspersed below:

1. If you must buy disposable batteries, read Consumer Reports reviews and buy a top-rated off-brand. Some of the top-rated batteries are a fraction of the price of the two leading brands, Duracell and Energizer. In one review the Ikea batteries were the best deal by a mile.

2. Never use disposable lead-acid batteries unless you have to. One of the few cases now is when I give away stuff which takes batteries. Explaining battery charging to my elderly mother-in-law and getting her to do that would be impossible. Smoke/fire detectors are another case. Also, my UPS from my computer.

3. Buy a battery tester. It is maddening to have a bunch of old or party-used batteries around and not know which are good and which bad. Great battery testers are cheap.

4. Keep in mind that disposable lead-acid batteries suck. They can leak and destroy valuable equipment. They contain lead, a toxic element proven to lower IQ in children even in small quantities. The leaked acid can burn skin, it is especially a hazard to children who do no know to be wary. If you throw them out, the lead in the landfills will be a serious problem for a very long time in the future. Recycling lead-acid batteries is usually a nuisance.

5. For AA, AAA, C, D get NiMH rechargeables. Do not buy in the store, order online, where you can get quality batteries for cheap. Get enough that you can you can have batteries in every device and simultaneously charged/charging backups. NiMH hold a charge for a year+.

6. Get a top-rated smart charger which holds multiple battery types.

7. Consider getting devices purpose-built for Lithium cells. The 18650 cells will charge in the same charger, linked above, as used for NiMH cells. Make sure to get a quality Lithium battery, the cheap no-name ones are junk. The 18650 LED flashlights are fantastic. Avoid Lithium 14500 batteries, they are an accident waiting to happen since they are 3.7 volts but the size of a 1.5 volt AA battery.

8. One key to making the system work is to keep all the battery stuff, spare batteries, testers, watch batteries etc together in one place. I use a rubbermaid plastic box. Rubber bands and ziploc bags group and isolate loose batteries and along with the box compartmentalize leaks. Keep the charger plugged in in one place. Organization is essential, because if you are digging through draws, shelves and cabinets looking for batteries or the meter wondering where you left it then you are wasting time and driving yourself mad.

I have a wife and kids. We use a lot of batteries. I am not saying I found the best way to do this, but this system works extremely well for us. Advice and opinions interspersed below:

1. If you must buy disposable batteries, read Consumer Reports reviews and buy a top-rated off-brand. Some of the top-rated batteries are a fraction of the price of the two leading brands, Duracell and Energizer. In one review the Ikea batteries were the best deal by a mile.

2. Never use disposable lead-acid batteries unless you have to. One of the few cases now is when I give away stuff which takes batteries. Explaining battery charging to my elderly mother-in-law and getting her to do that would be impossible. Smoke/fire detectors are another case. Also, my UPS from my computer.

3. Buy a battery tester. It is maddening to have a bunch of old or party-used batteries around and not know which are good and which bad. Great battery testers are cheap.

4. Keep in mind that disposable lead-acid batteries suck. They can leak and destroy valuable equipment. They contain lead, a toxic element proven to lower IQ in children even in small quantities. The leaked acid can burn skin, it is especially a hazard to children who do no know to be wary. If you throw them out, the lead in the landfills will be a serious problem for a very long time in the future. Recycling lead-acid batteries is usually a nuisance.

5. For AA, AAA, C, D get NiMH rechargeables. Do not buy in the store, order online, where you can get quality batteries for cheap. Get enough that you can you can have batteries in every device and simultaneously charged/charging backups. NiMH hold a charge for a year+.

6. Get a top-rated smart charger which holds multiple battery types.

7. Consider getting devices purpose-built for Lithium cells. The 18650 cells will charge in the same charger, linked above, as used for NiMH cells. Make sure to get a quality Lithium battery, the cheap no-name ones are junk. The 18650 LED flashlights are fantastic. Avoid Lithium 14500 batteries, they are an accident waiting to happen since they are 3.7 volts but the size of a 1.5 volt AA battery.

8. One key to making the system work is to keep all the battery stuff, spare batteries, testers, watch batteries etc together in one place. I use a rubbermaid plastic box. Rubber bands and ziploc bags group and isolate loose batteries and along with the box compartmentalize leaks. Keep the charger plugged in in one place. Organization is essential, because if you are digging through draws, shelves and cabinets looking for batteries or the meter wondering where you left it then you are wasting time and driving yourself mad.

I have a wife and kids. We use a lot of batteries. I am not saying I found the best way to do this, but this system works extremely well for us. Advice and opinions interspersed below:

1. If you must buy disposable batteries, read Consumer Reports reviews and buy a top-rated off-brand. Some of the top-rated batteries are a fraction of the price of the two leading brands, Duracell and Energizer. In one review the Ikea batteries were the best deal by a mile.

2. Never use disposable lead-acid batteries unless you have to. One of the few cases now is when I give away stuff which takes batteries. Explaining battery charging to my elderly mother-in-law and getting her to do that would be impossible. Smoke/fire detectors are another case. Also, my UPS from my computer.

3. Buy a battery tester. It is maddening to have a bunch of old or party-used batteries around and not know which are good and which bad. Great battery testers are cheap.

4. Keep in mind that disposable lead-acid batteries suck. They can leak and destroy valuable equipment. They contain lead, a toxic element proven to lower IQ in children even in small quantities. The leaked acid can burn skin, it is especially a hazard to children who do no know to be wary. If you throw them out, the lead in the landfills will be a serious problem for a very long time in the future. Recycling lead-acid batteries is usually a nuisance.

5. For AA, AAA, C, D get NiMH rechargeables. Do not buy in the store, order online, where you can get quality batteries for cheap. Get enough that you can you can have batteries in every device and simultaneously charged/charging backups. NiMH hold a charge for a year+.

6. Get a top-rated smart charger which holds multiple battery types.

7. Consider getting devices purpose-built for Lithium cells. The 18650 cells will charge in the same charger, linked above, as used for NiMH cells. Make sure to get a quality Lithium battery, the cheap no-name ones are junk. The 18650 LED flashlights are fantastic. Avoid Lithium 14500 batteries, they are an accident waiting to happen since they are 3.7 volts but the size of a 1.5 volt AA battery.

8. One key to making the system work is to keep all the battery stuff, spare batteries, testers, watch batteries etc together in one place. I use a rubbermaid plastic box. Rubber bands and ziploc bags group and isolate loose batteries and along with the box compartmentalize leaks. Keep the charger plugged in in one place. Organization is essential, because if you are digging through draws, shelves and cabinets looking for batteries or the meter wondering where you left it then you are wasting time and driving yourself mad.

"Mutant 59: The Plastic Eaters". I thought it was by Michael Crichton, but apparently not.

The book is by Kit Pedler and Gerry Davis from 1972. I've read it and it's pretty good (for its time, anyway) -- things do *not* go well in the world, remember that electrical wiring is insulated with plastic. I usually reference this whenever something like this comes up, but you beat me to it.

You typed "It's weird, the Communists are all about equality... so they set up dictatorships." but there's nothing weird about it really. It's perfectly predicatble and, in fact, made necessary by the basic design of Marxism.

Read F.A. Hayek's "Road to Sefdom" for a very lucid explanation.

The basic idea, though Hayek takes it on more thoroughly, is that Marxism requires an unjust act - taking stuff from people who earned it and giving it to people who did not. It turns out that decent civilized people do not like to do the dirty work required to make this happen, so any society that embraces Marxism must select and empower immoral thugs to do the actual redistribution and enforcement. The problem with this is that such thugs never want to do other people's dirty work and then go away leaving behind some sort of utopia - they use the power they are granted [to do a little evil in the name of Marxism] into a play for maximum power [to do all the evil they personally want to do] and they never let go of that power [duh! they were chosen for their evil properties]. It never works any other way because of human nature, and that is why apologists for Marxism are always having to claim "the wrong people tried it" or "they did it the wrong way" or "actual Marxism was never really tried" when confronted by the many examples of Marxist failure and the hundreds of millions of dead bodies left behind by all the attempts at Marxist utopia.

They also think that you need frequency response above 20kHz to make the music sound "alive" (whatever that means).

...

Assuming your equipment can replay them (a lot fo tweeters can, if the needle and amplifiers are up to the task) and your soundfield is set up correctly (ultrasound tends to beam-form), you do perceive the beat pattern caused by interference between frequencies in the ultrasound range (up to around 40KHz), even though you can't hear the frequencies themselves.

And the clarification that followed:

Of course, higher frequencies mean thinner ridges on the record so, even if your equipment can reproduce them, a given record will only contain them for the first few playthroughs.

And further:

it's something digital can do better, anyway -- just not CDs.

Since you clearly didn't read my whole post... and, since I'm posting again anyway, a bit more info:

The phenomenon I'm referring to most often manifests itself as something that is felt, rather than heard, like a chill down your spine or a physical reaction like the hairs on your arm standing up. A decent quality amplifier and a pair of high quality studio monitor headphones, plus a well-mixed 88.1KHz (or 96KHz) or higher digital recording are all you need to experience this for yourself and, yes, it's very real. You can A/B test for it (against 44.1KHz) with a near 100% identification rate among people who have reactions -- mind you, that doesn't include everybody, but it does include a majority of the population. For those who don't react to the interference patterns between ultrasound frequencies, who can easily be identified because they also don't react to the interference patterns between audible frequencies, a CD is more than adequate. For everyone else, at least doubling the sample rate would actually be noticeable when proper equipment was being used.

For reference, a lot of the better-sounding bass boost systems use the same phenomenon, but with audible frequencies, to create beat patterns representing the low bass most smaller speakers simply can't produce. The technique is also used by a lot of smaller bluetooth speakers to give the illusion of a 2" driver putting out powerful sub-bass, and it works quite well. Test it yourself, pick up an H2O Mini speaker, give it a listen with some bass-heavy material, then pop it open and disconnect one of the drivers and listen again. Reconnect the driver and see that it wasn't the act of opening it, but the act of reducing its output to monaural (although it's a mono speaker, the binaural beat effect it utilizes is a stereo effect and requires two or more drivers to work) that killed its bass response. In other words, yes, this is a real thing, it's used in a whole lot of audio products, and you can experiment for yourself to prove it.

Unless you're one of the small minority of the population who can't process binaural beats, in which case I feel sorry for you that you are missing out on a lot of the joy and wonder of high quality recordings, as well as liver performances, because your brain simply cannot process the information required to fully experience them.

Don't worry! This tech will be used by the globalists in the US government to conquer all the countries in the world. Imagine a game of Risk, and you get the idea. After the whole map has only one country's armies on it, there will be no further war. Ever. Pax Eternal.

Then the US will kneel before the UN or successor supranational organization and surrender its sovereignty, to become a province of a global government. This isn't some crazy conspiracy theory, it's the conclusion reached by elites that the post-Westphalian world needs to go. For more information, read Tragedy & Hope: A History of the World in Our Time by Carroll Quigley Bill Clinton had him as a professor, and called him the most important influence on his life. You can read it free online here. The more high-tech war equipment we have, the more wars we can start, and the sooner we can achieve world conquest.

Amazon Echo = $85

The Echo's not even $85. You can get an Echo Dot for about $50.00, and it has a lovely audio jack (remember those? That's what Apple so bravely took off the iPhone) which you can plug into your stereo or theater system and get audio quality way, way beyond what the homepod can give you, plus you get Amazon's way-way-better voice interface.

Working in the domain of highly non-linear dynamics, I call bullshit on you. Read the f*ck some introductory books on dynamic systems or just shut up ignorant bastard.

A quick follow-up, it took me all of 30 seconds to find this 7.1 channel decoder on Amazon. Basically any HDMI audio decoder will output at least 5.1 analog, which you can feed into your discreet amplifiers or a mixer (which then feeds into your discreet amplifiers).

The reason 99% of what's out there is integrated is because 99% of people prefer convenience over sound quality.

Uhh...did you not just endorse a call for civil war in America? Jesus Christ. You need to unite with us against Putin, not do his goddamned work for him!

In his remarkable book The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion, scholar Jonathan Haidt recalls a telling experiment. He and his colleagues Brian Nosek and Jesse Graham sought to discover how well conservative and what Haidt terms 'liberal' (ie: progressive) students understood one another by having them answer moral questions as they thought their political opponents would answer them. "The results were clear and consistent," remarks Haidt. "In all analyses, conservatives were more accurate than liberals." Asked to think the way a liberal thinks, conservatives answered moral questions just as the liberal would answer them, but liberal students were unable to do the reverse. Rather, they seemed to put moral ideas into the mouths of conservatives that they don't hold. To put it bluntly, Haidt and his colleagues found that progressives don't understand conservatives the way conservatives understand progressives. This he calls the 'conservative advantage,' and it goes a long way in explaining the different ways each side deals with opinions unlike their own. People get angry at what they don't understand, and an all-progressive education ensures that they don't understand.

Johnathan Haidt's research has so far uncovered six evolved psychological mechanisms of social perception, subconscious intuitive understanding, and conscious reasoning. He calls them moral foundations. He ALSO finds that moral foundations are the essential building blocks of human society. In his 2008 TED Talk "The Moral Roots of Liberals and Conservatives" he explains that human society is possible through the use of "all the tools in the toolbox." It's no coincidence that evolution pre-wired them into our brains.

Haidt finds that conservatives use all of them but liberals use about half of them, and of that half mostly just one. There's no conservative moral foundation that is not also a liberal one, but half of the conservative foundations are external to, and inaccessible by, liberal cognition.

When half of the evolved psychological mechanisms of social perception and understanding are essentially unavailable to one's subconscious intuitions and conscious reasoning one is left with no cognitive alternative for understanding people who think differently but to conclude that they're afflicted with some sort of mental dysfunction.

A conversation about social issues between a liberal and a conservative is like a conversation about rainbows between a color blind person and a fully sighted one in which the color blind liberal "knows" that the sighted conservative is an extremist nut case because he sees moral colors that "everybody knows" are just not there, and conservative think liberals are misinformed because they DON'T see moral colors that everybody knows ARE there.

R. R. Reno concluded his review of The Righteous Mind in the magazine First Things as follows:

"Thus the profound problem we face. Liberalism is blind in one eye, yet it insists on the superiority of its vision and its supreme right to rule. It cannot see half the things a governing philosophy must see, and claims that those who see both halves are thereby unqualified to govern."

it's Facebook, a private company. And I suspect the filters of one of the largest and most sophisticated data mining apparatuses out there would be a damn sight better than what you've previously experienced.

If you want a good idea of why hate speech is a bad thing go read Bruce Sterling's Distraction. Or just consider that old quote about a meddlesome priest. The right words delivered to the right nut job can do scary things. I don't blame Facebook for not wanting to be a party to that.

Gravis Zero enthused:

Solar and battery are going to power most every home in the future and might even have power left over to charge your flying car because it's going to be extremely cost effective.

FTFY ...

(Posting as AC only so as not to undo prior upmods in this thread.)

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rally2xs pointed out:

"Of course with electric cars, no more "road trip" vacations or driving the kids off to college because it can only go 100 to 200 miles on a charge and then it takes 8 hours to recharge."

Maybe not:

https://www.engadget.com/2018/...

The problem with that story is that we've heard about a godzillion such "potential breakthroughs" over the past 10 or so years - but not one working, commercially-available product based on them has come to market. And I'm pretty sure that, if one was anywhere near ready for real-world application testing there'd be a continuous drumbeat of breathless stories from all the usual sources heralding its imminent arrival.

All I hear at the moment is crickets ...

(Posting as AC only so as not to undo prior upmods in this thread.)

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alexru sneered:

What are you talking about? They sold recycled junk. That place was cool as a museum, but not much.

-1 Disagree.

I well recall buying a complete Atari ST 520 there for around $100 back in the early 1990's, exclusively for the purpose of playing Sundog: Frozen Legacy and the original Dungeon Master. (Won the former, got stuck on the starvation levels of the latter.)

If you knew what you were looking for, it was a gold mine.

(Oh, and just kidding about the -1, btw. I never downmod posts simply because I disagree with them.)

Posting as AC only so as not to undo prior upmods in this thread.

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As a biologist working in the field of modeling, I have no idea what is the point that you are trying to make.

You presume of what scientists accept and you presume that something should be axiomatic. You are wrong on both point. Scientists don't presume something to be granted (axiomatic). From observations, a mathematical model is build. Nothing is granted: new observations not predicted by the model = a new model. There are no such thing as axioms (A concept from mathematics, the language of science, not a science itself) in science. Scientists working in the field are imho far better aware about modelisation than a random poster on /. Do you really think that they are not aware about dynamics systems behaviors?

A lot of system are quite stable (or cycle) and are quite resistant to large variation in parameters. Others systems lead to chaotic behavior. But life tends to like stable conditions (temperature, hydrometry, pressure, nutriments, pH, ...). In fact, stability is a precondition for life. Even the most basic life needs a relatively stable environment, basic biochemistry: wrong pH => denaturation of DNA (and others things), wrong temperature => enzymes are inefficient, not enough water => failure of many reactions, ...

If you observe the environments at a timescale of millions of years, yes, there are major changes. But everything is really slow, in small steps. Look at a smaller timescale a century (without human intervention - harder and harder to find), nearly nothing changed. The environment are by now changing at a very exceptional rate. A rate, at which, the natural selection does not have enough time to act for many species leading to an exceptional rate of extinction.

For the lake here, most probably, the necessary conditions of the actual stable point (more precisely the limit cycle, seasons, etc.) have been exceeded. Best scenario, new stable condition + millions of years, life adapt. Worst scenario => chaos, every dies (life hates chaos - most of the time).

"My prediction is that in less than 10**1 years . . . the physics equations will need to be dramatically modified again."

I'm currently reading Three Roads To Quantum Gravity, by Lee Smolin.

I don't have a deep understanding, but I get the impression from reading the book that what you said is correct. Human understanding of the universe is developing rapidly.

That book was written in 2002 based on work done years before so it's already 15 yrs out of date by your reasoning

"My prediction is that in less than 10**1 years . . . the physics equations will need to be dramatically modified again."

I'm currently reading Three Roads To Quantum Gravity, by Lee Smolin.

I don't have a deep understanding, but I get the impression from reading the book that what you said is correct. Human understanding of the universe is developing rapidly.

Get off your fucking high horse already and stop being a cultural snob. No one died and made you king.

Logicomix: An epic search for truth is 352 pages.

Watchman is 448 pages

No one gives a fuck how long a graphic novel is -- only if they were entertained.

Let me guess, you were probably one of those snobs who thought "talkies" (talking movies) were ruining movies via a focus on dialogue would subvert the unique aesthetic virtues of soundless cinema.

You condemn yourself with your ignorance.

Get off your fucking high horse already and stop being a cultural snob. No one died and made you king.

Logicomix: An epic search for truth is 352 pages.

Watchman is 448 pages

No one gives a fuck how long a graphic novel is -- only if they were entertained.

Let me guess, you were probably one of those snobs who thought "talkies" (talking movies) were ruining movies via a focus on dialogue would subvert the unique aesthetic virtues of soundless cinema.

You condemn yourself with your ignorance.

That's understandable, I forgot how difficult it is to understand this otherwise extremely simple tax system. It took me about 3 months to really get my mind around what it actually was, and that was just basically.

The best thing to do is to read the book, "The Fair Tax Book: Saying Goodbye to the Income Tax and the IRS." Don't know whether it is available at libraries or not, but is extremely cheap otherwise, $4.95 used at Amazon right now.

https://www.amazon.com/Fair-Ta...

Basically, the FairTax completely replaces all income taxes, including personal, corporate, capital gains, payroll, gift, self employment, inheritance, alternative minimum, and maybe 1 or 2 others I may be forgetting, there's lots of them. The FairTax, as described in House Bill HR25 and Senate bill S18, replaces all these income taxes with a simpler tax on new goods and services sold at retail. Tuition is exempt because it is treated as an investment. It takes a while to realize what is and what is not taxed - medical services received and paid for by your insurance is not taxed because that is not "retail", but a business-to-business transaction between the medical people and the insurance company. Your premiums to the insurance company are what is taxed. Things that are bought to conduct business are not taxed - the airlines' aircraft are not taxed because when being sold to the airlines, they are not sold at retail, but in a business-to-business transaction. If that airliner is ever sold to private parties, then that is a "conversion" from business to private use, and that sale is taxed at the market value of the airliner at the time of sale. One of the most significant features of the FairTax is the "prebate" that send, each month, a check from the federal government to each legal resident of the USA that is just large enough to pay the FairTax on spending up to the poverty level. The amount of the check is keyed to the size of the family - a single person would get 23% (the FairTax's inclusive rate of taxation) of the poverty level spending as defined by the government for a single person (around $12K right now, or $1K / month so the check would be $230 / month for a single person) and increases for marrieds, marrieds with X dependents, and so forth. I think the poverty level for a family of 4 is somewhere around $24K right now, so their monthly check would be $460.

There are many subtlities of the FairTax that take a while to realize. One is that, since businesses no longer pay corporate taxes, their costs to manufacture things in the USA goes down fairly dramatically. The FairTax book relates that 22% of the price of domestically manufactured goods is composed of income taxes at all levels, including increased costs of labor due to the individual's expense of personal income taxes and the "employee's share" of the payroll taxes. And a bit more obviously, the "employer's share" of the payroll taxes goes away too, so that frees up money for the business to use to lower prices or raise wages or raise dividends on their stocks. Fortunately, recipients of those benefits are US as consumers, US as employees, and US as stockholders.

Significantly, foreign manufacturers who manufacture goods outside the USA receive no such benefit when the income taxes go away, since they aren't paying US income taxes. So, while the prices of US goods are expected to fall by 10% - 20%, foreign manufactured goods will not fall in price at all, giving an advantage to US manufacturing. It is a great incentive for foreign companies to manufacture in the USA, which should skyrocket the number of jobs available and probably create a labor shortage which would create an upwardly spiraling wage rate.

There are websites for the FairTax, but the book is a basic read that explains things better for someone starting out learning the FairTax. One of the better websotes is:

https://fairtax.org/

There is much information there. Hope this helps.

Chas blathered:

So, now we're going to start SJW bullshit over a scientific discipline that sci-fi writers have spun horror stories out of?

It's worth noting that Isaac Asimov would definitely have identified himself as a social justice warrior, if that had been a thing when he was alive - or have you not read the Foundation series ... ?

(Posting as AC only so as not to undo prior upmods in this thread.)

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Another atrocious /. summary.

Sure, people who are victims of CenturyLink (and I say "victims" here in recognition of the company's hilarious claim that it has no actual customers) know that it's a consumer communications services company ...

... excuse me, I obviously meant to say "a holding company for consumer communications services subsidiaries" ...

... but non-victims can't be assumed to know that off the top of their heads.

Nonetheless, TFS doesn't bother to include that information - because the submitter didn't bother to add that paragraph to his/her Ars Technica copy/paste submission - and /. "editor" BeauHD obviously didn't consider it necessary, either.

Who, what, when, where, why, and how. No news story is complete without them.

ALL of them ...

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AlanBDee verballyt shrugged:

I voted Democratic, it got worse. I voted Republican, it got worse.

And hooray for cynicism.

This kind of simplistic, facile, spurious logic is extremely popular with a certain type of slashdotter. (I'll leave determining what that type is as an exercise for the reader.)

It's also complete hogswallop.

How you, as an individual, voted does not in any way determine the policy direction of the country - or the city, the county, the service district, or the state. What determines those things is a combination of how the majority voted, overlapping terms in the U.S. Senate, and public attention to and activism about both broad public policy issues and specific legislative initiatives.

Which is to say, "It's complicated."

Essentially, if YOU vote for Democrats, but the majority of voters (and, again, the meaning of the word "majority" here varies, depending on the office in question, because some races are district-based, while others are state-wide, and so on) voted Republican, then the candidates for whom you, personally, voted didn't win, and will play no part in choosing those policies and laws. Likewise, if your choice for a given office was elected, but other, nominally co-equal, branches of government ended up being controlled by a different party, the candidate you voted for will not have as much power to effect change as he/she would if the majority of the other branch's officeholders were allies, rather than his/her political opponents. And, again, because of overlapping terms in the Senate, only a third of that body's seats are in play in any given election cycle, so your preferred party may make significant gains in any given election without radically altering the balance of power for that legislative session.

The system was deliberately designed to resist change, in order to minimize abrupt, rash shifts in public policy. It's not a bug, it's a feature.

Yes, the undue influence of lobbyists wielding wads of cash to donate to candidates' election funds has a major corrupting influence on how that system actually works. But Republicans and Democrats are not at all alike in fundamental political philosophy. It's disingenuous of you to pretend that they are - particularly now, when those critical differences are increasing exponentially, thanks to the control the Tea Party now exercises over the Republican primaries, which has forced the GOP to turn sharply to the right over the past 8 years.

And that means who you vote for matters more now, not less. Pretending otherwise is simply bullshit ...

(Posting as AC only so as not to undo prior upmods in this thread.)

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Check out my novel ...

You dont have children, do you.

Now consider a whole school DISTRICT full of them, with devices they dont own, and probably dont particularly like (because, school...) Any device aimed at schools and NOT specifically designed to be both repairable and robust as hell is a conceptual failure.

This is in fact at least half the reason chromebooks are so successful in schools.. There are a wide range of chromebooks designed to 'take the knocks' (and of course plenty that are crap, but those dont tend to last in market).

And these Ipads are NOT designed to not be broken by children. Not even close.

Here is what you are demanding - A kid can kill just about anything - but this fits your demand. The Panasonic tough book: https://www.amazon.com/Panason...

And better be prepared to pay a lot more in school taxes, because thes bad boys will set you back $3,740.03.

... when they develop a working neural lace prototype.

(Posting as AC only so as not to undo prior upmods in this thread.)

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Check out my novel

I'll be damned... They're still using Power! Interesting link.

I thought Freescale/NXP were pushing designers toward the Kinetis series. I proposed using K60 and K64 parts for my company's new industrial DAQ project based on the long-term product life that comes with being used in the high-volume automotive world.

I'm an electrical engineer, and maybe a "doofus" but... The concepts of PLC and RISC are apples and oranges, completely orthogonal. RISC vs CISC was basically settled by the research that led to Hennesy and Patterson in "Computer Architecture: A Quantitative Approach" https://www.amazon.com/Compute... while PLC is pretty much a "language" used to express industrial data acquisition and control, but at a fairly high level and with what I consider to be limited resolution.

a good primer on manipulation is The Rape of the Mind: The Psychology of Thought Control, Menticide, and Brainwashing by Swedish Psychologist Joost Meerloo

link. It's the "Keep My Songs" button in the 3rd paragraph.

Re: "There is a lot of talk about scientists and very little talk about physical theory. As far as I can tell, EU is some conspiracy theory about scientists as opposed to a science theory. Maybe it would be more attractive and approachable if they drop the antisocial, whiny cruft and stuck to business."

It's probably unfair to judge an entire cosmology through Internet comments. Since a lot of the efforts here are focused upon correcting misconceptions, these efforts may come off to some as "whiny". For a more thoughtful introduction, you might consider, instead, reading The Electric Sky by Don Scott, which goes into great length about how we can explain astronomical observations with ordinary laboratory plasma physics observations.

If you'd prefer to avoid purchasing their book, then consider their technical introduction, The Essential Guide -- which is actually geared towards those with an EE background. It is quite technical.

Alternatively, if you come from the world of plasma physics, you'd want to also supplement these works with the second edition of Physics of the Plasma Universe And in that case, there are also a couple of papers you should read here and here, which both review critiques of MHD in good detail.

Personally, I also recommend focusing upon the historical arguments, whose importance are greatly under-appreciated ... e.g., the mistaken assumption of empty space, the story of Kristian Birkeland, the history of the Birkeland current concept, the electron theory as a worldview, the story of Halton Arp, the Big Bang's big redshift assumption, and this discussion of the debate over uniformitarianism vs catastrophism, for starters.

For those that just want a very basic and quick introduction, then watch these two Youtube videos.

There is really no shortage of high-quality resources, pitched at all of the various levels. If you aren't seeing them, then that definitely says more about your own efforts to find these resources than anything else.

Re: "There is a lot of talk about scientists and very little talk about physical theory. As far as I can tell, EU is some conspiracy theory about scientists as opposed to a science theory. Maybe it would be more attractive and approachable if they drop the antisocial, whiny cruft and stuck to business."

It's probably unfair to judge an entire cosmology through Internet comments. Since a lot of the efforts here are focused upon correcting misconceptions, these efforts may come off to some as "whiny". For a more thoughtful introduction, you might consider, instead, reading The Electric Sky by Don Scott, which goes into great length about how we can explain astronomical observations with ordinary laboratory plasma physics observations.

If you'd prefer to avoid purchasing their book, then consider their technical introduction, The Essential Guide -- which is actually geared towards those with an EE background. It is quite technical.

Alternatively, if you come from the world of plasma physics, you'd want to also supplement these works with the second edition of Physics of the Plasma Universe And in that case, there are also a couple of papers you should read here and here, which both review critiques of MHD in good detail.

Personally, I also recommend focusing upon the historical arguments, whose importance are greatly under-appreciated ... e.g., the mistaken assumption of empty space, the story of Kristian Birkeland, the history of the Birkeland current concept, the electron theory as a worldview, the story of Halton Arp, the Big Bang's big redshift assumption, and this discussion of the debate over uniformitarianism vs catastrophism, for starters.

For those that just want a very basic and quick introduction, then watch these two Youtube videos.

There is really no shortage of high-quality resources, pitched at all of the various levels. If you aren't seeing them, then that definitely says more about your own efforts to find these resources than anything else.

This was true at some point, but Trump and his supporters have taken over the party. One interesting book on this is Trumpocracy.

Don't be such a puritan. Next thing you're going to tell me is that when you search for detergent you don't want to see this either. Prude!

They best not try to bury the great Chuck Tingle, author of such books as, Space Raptor Butt Invasion, which is book one of the Space Raptor Butt Trilogy. His earlier work, such as Pounded In The Butt By My Own Butt are already classics. However, his newer work, such as the speculative Slammed In The Butthole By My Concept Of Linear Time is not quite as good as his earlier work.

https://www.amazon.com/Space-R...

https://www.amazon.com/Slammed...

They best not try to bury the great Chuck Tingle, author of such books as, Space Raptor Butt Invasion, which is book one of the Space Raptor Butt Trilogy. His earlier work, such as Pounded In The Butt By My Own Butt are already classics. However, his newer work, such as the speculative Slammed In The Butthole By My Concept Of Linear Time is not quite as good as his earlier work.

https://www.amazon.com/Space-R...

https://www.amazon.com/Slammed...

I dont know all of them but almost every youtube video i see with affiliate links in the description has the disclaimer "hey, check out my affiliates" and quite a few of them have a part in the video that says "this video is sponsored by brand x"

Also most affiliate programs do not pay the poster based on the click but only after a user has bought something. for example check out the terms from amazon's affiliate program:

https://affiliate-program.amaz...

Now lets actually look at the study, they looked at over 500,000 videos and only found affiliate links on about 0.67% of them. thats less than 1%, I dont really think that this is as much a problem as they are making it out to be. 90% sounds like a big number but 90% failure to disclose of less than 1% of the videos isnt that big a deal at all.

You misspelt Raspberry Pi.

Why waste engineering time to add a SoC when there are dozens of dirt-cheap alternatives?