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http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/24/technology/data-centers-in-rural-washington-state-gobble-power.html?_r=0

There was an interesting NY Times article on the cost per customer for Verizon to deploy their FiOS product. Essentially it was $4k per subscriber. That's an awfully long payback when you are only getting less than a few hundred bucks a month and you also need to have money to operate the network, provide sales and technical support, etc http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/19/technology/19fios.html Perhaps continued development in technologies like LTE will provide less expensive methods to get customers in the future

Not even MIT teaches LISP anymore

So what? That was just an example. Someone who can write a program but who does not know how to use a spreadsheet program is going to be OK, except in cases where their teachers fail them for not using Microsoft's software.

They do all need to write papers

I do not doubt that, but if you have the choice between preparing people for lightweight writing using Word or writing in general using LaTeX, why would you choose Word? Engineers, math majors, etc. need more than what Word gives them; humanities majors need less than what LaTeX gives them. If we are teaching people to use Word, we are not preparing them for technical disciplines or for research; if we teach people LaTeX or something similar, we are not failing to prepare them for non-technical disciplines.

know how to do Boolean searches in google

Which takes all of one day to teach.

insert footnotes in papers

\footnote{Here is a footnote}

Not hard to do, not hard to teach, not hard to learn.

Not play around in the CLI in latex

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LyX

https://www.gnu.org/software/auctex/

http://www.tug.org/mactex/

There are plenty of TeX or similar GUI front ends. Nobody needs to play around; I use AucTeX for almost everything I do.

Wake up

That is an ironic thing to hear from someone who says things like this:

All statistics today is done with Excel

Hm...

http://www.indeed.com/q-Statistics-Spss-jobs.html

http://www.indeed.com/q-SAS-jobs.html

http://www.indeed.com/q-R-Statistics-jobs.html

https://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/07/technology/business-computing/07program.html?pagewanted=all&_moc.semityn.www

In fact, I have several friends who work as statisticians, and not any one of them uses Excel or any spreadsheet package on a day to day basis.

If you do the calculation, the real thing including time value of money, you'd see that incandescents do in fact cost the least, at the moment, to own and operate, at least in the U.S.

I actually did the calculations, and CFLs are cheaper. Just an example: A € 7 CFL costs less than ten € 1 incandescents, and saves 80% of the electricity.

The "energy spent like hell" was at the factory -- that's why they cost more. They take more energy to make. That's all there's to it. Just because the energy is spent elsewhere doesn't mean it's not spent and you of course pay for it. Up front, no less. Energy = money, in the grand scheme of things.

They cost more because they are more complex than incandescent, which are extremely simple. They have electronics, and they have glass tubes covered with fluorescent material. They don't spend all that energy producing a lamp! That's crazy.

As for incandescents needing to be replaced "all the time": for me they last about half as long as CCFLs do. Due to their low purchase cost, it's not an issue. And I do keep good track of it.

This is clearly bullshit, unless you buy shit cheap CFLs.

So, your whole post is just a pile of unsubstantiated bullshit. But you'll probably get modded up by the "Ugh, it saves energy, so it must be commie pot-smoking muslim abortionist lesbian america-hating faggy latte-drinking liberal smelly hippie, kill the muthafucka!" crowd.

Those aren't Superchargers though. So it's going to take substantially longer than 30minutes to charge your EV.

Looking at this

http://www.greenretaildecisions.com/news/2011/12/01/walmart-to-install-ev-charging-stations-

All participating Walmart stores will have two Blink Pedestal chargers installed, except one store in Oregon that will install a Blink DC Fast Charger. The Walmart locations were selected based on the EV Micro-Climate process, which takes into account traffic patterns, regional attractions, transportation hubs, guidance from Walmart and input from regional partners.

http://www.blinknetwork.com/brochures/l2-pedestal-charger/page02.html

Input Voltage 208 VAC to 240 VAC +/- 10%

Input Phase Single

Frequency 50/60 Hz

Input Current 30 Amps (maximum); 12A, 16A, 24A available

So this is a 240V*30A = 7kW charger.

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/tesla-motors-launches-revolutionary-supercharger-032000226.html

The Supercharger is substantially more powerful than any charging technology to date, providing almost 100 kilowatts of power to the Model S, with the potential to go as high as 120 kilowatts in the future. This can replenish three hours of driving at 60 mph in about half an hour, which is the convenience inflection point for travelers at a highway rest stop. Most people who begin a road trip at 9:00 a.m. would normally stop by noon to have lunch, refresh and pick up a coffee or soda for the road, all of which takes about 30 minutes.

Now a 100kW charger can charge a car in 30 minutes or half an hour. So a 7kW charger can do it in 100/7*0.5 7 hours.

Fancy hanging around Walmart for 7 hours?

http://www.greenretaildecisions.com/news/2011/12/01/walmart-to-install-ev-charging-stations-

The EV Project is a public-private partnership, funded in part by the U.S. Department of Energy through a federal stimulus grant made possible by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA).

Sounds like the taxpayer ended up paying for infrastructure no one is going to use.

Actually the Blink Fast Charger would have been a better bet.

http://www.blinknetwork.com/brochures/dc-fast-charger/page02.html

60 kW Max (Setting Adjustable 30kW - 60 kW)

So you'd charge in 100/60*0.5=0.83 hours or 50 minutes. Then again I'm not sure I'd fancy hanging around Walmart for an hour while my car charges. And if people leave their cars charging while they get lunch, isn't that going to lead to queue?

I could see exchanging batteries working. But how do I know I'm not going to swap a brand new battery worth tens of thousands of dollars (Tesla won't even cite a replacement price) - for one which is worn out?

Exchanging 60kWh batteries is like swapping a $30K (based on âTesla ostensibly charges $10,000 for 20 kWh of capacity' from here) vehicle with a stranger and trusting them not to give you a knackered one.

Those aren't Superchargers though. So it's going to take substantially longer than 30minutes to charge your EV.

Looking at this

http://www.greenretaildecisions.com/news/2011/12/01/walmart-to-install-ev-charging-stations-

All participating Walmart stores will have two Blink Pedestal chargers installed, except one store in Oregon that will install a Blink DC Fast Charger. The Walmart locations were selected based on the EV Micro-Climate process, which takes into account traffic patterns, regional attractions, transportation hubs, guidance from Walmart and input from regional partners.

http://www.blinknetwork.com/brochures/l2-pedestal-charger/page02.html

Input Voltage 208 VAC to 240 VAC +/- 10%

Input Phase Single

Frequency 50/60 Hz

Input Current 30 Amps (maximum); 12A, 16A, 24A available

So this is a 240V*30A = 7kW charger.

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/tesla-motors-launches-revolutionary-supercharger-032000226.html

The Supercharger is substantially more powerful than any charging technology to date, providing almost 100 kilowatts of power to the Model S, with the potential to go as high as 120 kilowatts in the future. This can replenish three hours of driving at 60 mph in about half an hour, which is the convenience inflection point for travelers at a highway rest stop. Most people who begin a road trip at 9:00 a.m. would normally stop by noon to have lunch, refresh and pick up a coffee or soda for the road, all of which takes about 30 minutes.

Now a 100kW charger can charge a car in 30 minutes or half an hour. So a 7kW charger can do it in 100/7*0.5 7 hours.

Fancy hanging around Walmart for 7 hours?

http://www.greenretaildecisions.com/news/2011/12/01/walmart-to-install-ev-charging-stations-

The EV Project is a public-private partnership, funded in part by the U.S. Department of Energy through a federal stimulus grant made possible by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA).

Sounds like the taxpayer ended up paying for infrastructure no one is going to use.

Actually the Blink Fast Charger would have been a better bet.

http://www.blinknetwork.com/brochures/dc-fast-charger/page02.html

60 kW Max (Setting Adjustable 30kW - 60 kW)

So you'd charge in 100/60*0.5=0.83 hours or 50 minutes. Then again I'm not sure I'd fancy hanging around Walmart for an hour while my car charges. And if people leave their cars charging while they get lunch, isn't that going to lead to queue?

I could see exchanging batteries working. But how do I know I'm not going to swap a brand new battery worth tens of thousands of dollars (Tesla won't even cite a replacement price) - for one which is worn out?

Exchanging 60kWh batteries is like swapping a $30K (based on âTesla ostensibly charges $10,000 for 20 kWh of capacity' from here) vehicle with a stranger and trusting them not to give you a knackered one.

If you think this article isn't terrible, front page lul is the following: http://www.nytimes.com/imagepages/2012/09/23/us/jp-data-5.html Apparently Corning now makes diskless, powerless servers built on nothing but fiber. This article is a damn joke. The internet industry is one of the best on power consumptions. Why? Mainly because all companies are aware of the trouble that other industries have already endured and they are intelligent enough to plan around those issues.

However, because our rulers have long ago given up any pretense of actually giving a damn about what their subjects want, they've passed ObamaCare in the middle of the night, using unprecedented trickery and loopholes, despite 70% of the country being against it.

Oh, and meanwhile the UK government is quietly changing their healthcare system back into PRIVATE ownership, little by little, to avoid an uproar. I guess they got tired of hearing stories like these: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1253438/Mid-Staffordshire-NHS-hospital-routinely-neglected-patients.html?ITO=1490

But, even when the Socialist model, the inspiration for ObamaCare, is admitted to be a failure and steps are taken to return the healthcare system into private hands, nobody on this side of the pond gives a damn.

"In Britain, the government itself runs the hospitals and employs the doctors. We’ve all heard scare stories about how that works in practice; these stories are false. " - Paul Krugman, http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/17/opinion/17krugman.html?_r=0

Yeah, the blood-soaked sheets, the discarded needles, and the 3-day-old corpses in hallways are just... figments of someone's imagination, right, Dr. Krugman?

Well-meaning idiots, or cryptomarxists willing to ignore any human suffering for the advancement of an agenda? You decide.

This is one company that had 250 million invested in it of US tax dollars, which got handed to China on a silver platter.

I would love to be wrong about the disinterest in battery tech in the US, but money talks.

Just read about a guy in an Elmo costume yelling anti-Semitic rants being arrested in New York. Would he really have been arrested if he was yelling about his hatred for the NY Yankees?

According to the reportage, most probably.

Here's the blurb:

The man, Adam Sandler, 48, who in June was removed from Central Park in an ambulance after going on a rant, was arrested in front of the Toys “R” Us store in Times Square shortly after 3 p.m., the police said. He was charged with disorderly conduct and resisting arrest. Mr. Sandler was shouting and drawing a crowd that was blocking traffic, and he refused to leave, the police said.

Mr. Sandler pleaded guilty to disorderly conduct at his arraignment on Wednesday and was sentenced to two days of community service, the Manhattan district attorney’s office said.
-- source

Where's Krugman's Blog Post about this thing?

I would have at least expected a damning post about the evils of large corporations wasting money on the backs of the underpaid working man even if it was the New York Times!

If you Google for "anti-semitic elmo new york", you'll find that his first "arrest" was being taken for a mental evaluation, and the recent one was for disorderly conduct. You may also find that he is probably not the kind of guy you want walking around hugging kids, which he seems to do when he isn't going off on Jews: Beneath a Ranting Elmo’s Mask, a Man With a Disturbing Past

In the U.S., we put up with a lot. Life of Brian evoked lots of protests from Christians when it opened in theaters 30+ years ago, but it was still available to be seen in theaters even in the Bible Belt. The court allowed Nazis to parade in Skokie, IL, a city with a high population of Jews. (I am Jewish, but I support that court decision.)

From time to time, you'll see incidents in which someone suffers some kind of oppression for expressing unpopular views related to religion, but nearly always, if the oppressor is an agent of the government and the matter goes to court, freedom of speech prevails. I wouldn't have it any other way.

Yeah. This article struck me as particularly whiny. 30 Nuclear Power Plants! The horror.

It's almost like they want you to read a paper newspaper or something.

I question virtually ALL the claims in the story.
Its nonsense of the highest order, with no research to back it up. Do you see Google or Amazon publishing utilization rates of server farms?

Do you see Amazon or Google or any cloud provider having problems paying the power bill?
Did they not say that "Data Center providers are finding that they can't rack servers fast enough to provide for users' needs"?

If the power bill is paid, what is the problem?

Why isn't the harm done to the world's resources (and society in general) by publishing the New York Time evaluated?

Nancy Nielsen, a spokeswoman for The New York Times Company, said only the limited supply of recycled paper constrained the company from using more of it. She said 6.5 percent of the newsprint used by the company contained recycled fibers.

...

''The inventory of waste newspaper is at an all-time record high,'' said J. Rodney Edwards, a spokesman for the American Paper Institute, a trade organization. ''Mills and paper dealers have in their warehouses over one million tons of newspapers, which represents a third of a year's production. There comes a point when the warehouse space will be completely filled.''

you can grow button mushrooms on newspaper.
Stamets has a strain that produces fruit a week after innoculation.

Here is a link to the New York Times article in question.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/23/technology/data-centers-waste-vast-amounts-of-energy-belying-industry-image.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

The latest installment is describing how one particular Microsoft data center is relying on inefficient diesel generators substantially increasing air pollution in the area.

So no, I don't think the owners of large data centers are in a big hurry to address these issues. They have other priorities.

It would cost an extra $65. So they'd still have very healthy profit margins.

Captcha: Avarice

• The plant has 79,000 workers, makes parts for automotive electronics and "assembles various electronic devices" including the iPhone 5 (yeah, I know, so what... but you know that's what everyone wants to know out of morbid curiosity and how this might relate to them)
• As many as a thousand workers may have been involved, but the fight took place at the company's dormitories, not in the factory itself
• 10 people injured, no one killed

But when 46% of the U.S. population earnestly believes that humans were created in their present form within the last 10,000 years, you have to be open to what happens if that number goes to 56%, or 96%.

46%? I know that number. Aren't those the people Mitt Romney said don't pay any taxes? Just as Mitt's numbers were a gross mischaracterization of nearly half the country, I would tend to question the assertion that 46% of the population supports religious censorship. In the United States no one is more aware of the ties between "freedom of speech" and "freedom of religion" than the religious right. Their way of life couldn't exist without those. I've sat through sermons in numerous churches of different denominations that talk about how lucky we are to have this, and how fortunate we are that we don't live in states like China that practice censorship. Many of them ask their congregations to donate money to support missionaries to subvert censorship in other countries to spread religion. They don't want anyone censoring their beliefs, and censoring others who are anathema to your religious beliefs is an exercise in stones and glass houses of worship. Sure, there are a few short-sighted religious leaders out there who don't understand this or care, but the majority get it, and they would tell their congregations to apply the golden rule here.

Yeah. This article struck me as particularly whiny. 30 Nuclear Power Plants! The horror.

It's almost like they want you to read a paper newspaper or something.

I question virtually ALL the claims in the story.
Its nonsense of the highest order, with no research to back it up. Do you see Google or Amazon publishing utilization rates of server farms?

Do you see Amazon or Google or any cloud provider having problems paying the power bill?
Did they not say that "Data Center providers are finding that they can't rack servers fast enough to provide for users' needs"?

If the power bill is paid, what is the problem?

Why isn't the harm done to the world's resources (and society in general) by publishing the New York Time evaluated?

Nancy Nielsen, a spokeswoman for The New York Times Company, said only the limited supply of recycled paper constrained the company from using more of it. She said 6.5 percent of the newsprint used by the company contained recycled fibers.

...

''The inventory of waste newspaper is at an all-time record high,'' said J. Rodney Edwards, a spokesman for the American Paper Institute, a trade organization. ''Mills and paper dealers have in their warehouses over one million tons of newspapers, which represents a third of a year's production. There comes a point when the warehouse space will be completely filled.''

I have no idea how the URL got mangled when Timothy moved the anchor text to a different part of the article, but here's the correct link:

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/23/technology/data-centers-waste-vast-amounts-of-energy-belying-industry-image.html?hpw&pagewanted=all

The people saying this is justified to combat voter fraud seem especially ridiculous here on slashdot, which theoretically is a bastion of scientific skepticism and empiricism, when there is absolutely no evidence at all for it being anything more than a tiny fraction of a percent of votes. It's a scare tactic used by authoritarians to drum up support for antidemocratic measures such as this. It's extremely depressing to see a site like this use anecdotal "well I saw plenty of people spoofing votes, trust me" as somehow equal to actual evidence.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/12/washington/12fraud.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all
http://www.thestate.com/2012/02/23/2164540/state-election-commission-finds.html#.UF4CX1H5DZQ
http://www.postcrescent.com/article/20120524/APC010405/305240040/Recall-Roundup-Numbers-don-t-support-fraud-fears-story-video-?nclick_check=1
http://www.brennancenter.org/content/resource/policy_brief_on_the_truth_about_voter_fraud/
http://www.salon.com/2008/04/28/scotus_2/

How about gruel-born double-standards?
I've been wondering what all this hysteria about Big Bad Russia is about for some time now. Surely Russia is no Shambhala, but the US is a veritable litigation shit-hole slaughterhouse. We, here in the U.S. of A., imprison more people than any other nation. We have a privatized prison-industry and trade virtual crime-futures on the stock-exchange. Closer and closer we are coming to a re-introduction of prison labor, all while a repugnantly large portion of incarcerated citizens live in cages for victimless crimes.

My advice to anyone itching to don the Good-Guy Badge and storm the palace of bacchanalian litigation, is to look no further if you are a US citizen. In no way do I suggest that pointing fingers at corruption is error; but we really do have some house-cleaning of our own to do -- and to recklessly embrace hypocrisy may not be wise.

Thus, the most likely result of DNT is the erosion of nameless, faceless tracking companies like doubleclick and the rise of ad networks built around sales platforms like Amazon, search networks like Google, and maybe, *maybe* social networking sites like Facebook. This is almost inarguably a good thing...

Ummm in 2007 Google bought Doubleclick for $3 billion. Which still more or less supports your thesis, that advertising agencies and networks are becoming commerce sites, and vice versa. Though I would argue with the inarguable, and say the purposes and effectiveness of public relations and propaganda industries are not a "good thing."

What makes you "hate to say it", but then go on and do so?

It's a saying and means that you wish that what you're about to say wasn't true.

Moving to Windows Phone 8 will get them everything that Blackberry provides for the corporate-land and more. And it's looking increasingly like the #3 smartphone platform, with its share of loyal users at large.

It has 3.2% market share. However you spin it, that is not a lot of "loyal users".

Don't forget the two tornadoes in Queens and Brooklyn two weeks ago.

It's always funny when you tell proponents of the death penalty that it costs a huge amount more.

Because most people don't understand the costs, or how they're calculated incorrectly.
Take this one, from Washington State for example, which is pretty typical.
It calculates the average cost of housing the DP inmate at $43,352 per year, and a "non-DP" inmate at $35,897 per year.

My main problem with that calculation: The "non-DP" average cost includes all the low-level, non-violent, low-security inmates... which potential DP candidates are NOT. They would almost definitely get the same cell and the same guards as they do now... with the other LWOP inmates. So the cost of the LWOP should be the same: $43,352. Even if you want to say 20, 50 or 80% of them would be transferred to lower security facilities, the cost per year will be $35,897 + 20, 50, or 80% of the difference.

Second, the average cost of housing an inmate assumes a younger, healthier inmate. DP inmates rarely reach the golden years (55+) of their lives where health care costs increase the cost of housing an inmate substantially.
The CDCR (California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, sorry can't find a link for this one) estimate the cost of housing an inmate aged 55+ is double that of younger inmates. Age 80+ means triple the costs. I doubt the DP per year costs figures that in. I don't think the average per year non-DP cost figures it either.

Lastly, none of these figures count for inflation. Killing somebody in 14 years (or 20 for California) stops the inflation game early. If right now it costs $35k/year to house the former DP inmates, 20 years from now it will cost $80k/year. While a DP inmate would be dead then, a LWOP still has another 20 years of $80k/year to go (neverminding that by the end of the 2nd 20 year stint the per year cost is $190k/year)

Because Britannica has more content than the world's largest encyclopedia and you can be certain nobody is paying them, right?

They've stopped selling copies of Encyclopedia Britannica now so you are probably right, nobody is paying them!

It probably also helps them remain relevant that nobody has let a single one get any closer to something dangerous than they absolutely had to since the second world war... The concern is not so much that aircraft carriers are not powerful; but that they are so questionably survivable in the face of today's more sophisticated missiles that there may or may not be an aircraft carrier to come back to within the time it takes for the aircraft to go out and back.

Also, they haven't gone up against another navy of similar strength since the second world war. If that ever happens, a lot of theories about what works will bite the dust, just like how the battleship is now irrelevant.

They are better than battleships for beating up on hilariously outmatched little countries, since their range is longer; but that, along with saber rattling, is all they've been used for for quite some time.

Actually, they are also useful as a portable airport and support vessel. They can desalinate huge amounts of water, and have medical facilities. That's why the US sent a carrier to Indonesia after the tsunami. There's more to foreign relations than saber rattling.

Oh I agree completely but you see that's what's strange. It's like Apple is putting MSG or some other cocaine on their products and that every thing they do drives the economy. It's a bunch of bullshit and when you have a Nobel laureate saying the same thing then it really doesn't bode well for the intelligence of the general population or the press in general.

Maybe, in order to make news relevant to readers, they chose to compare to something most readers are familiar with? That's pretty much the point of analogies and comparisons.

Why do you think we ever talked about storage in terms of "Libraries of Congress" in the first place?

> Give me damn benchmarks or clock speed of
> current day standards, and not a commercial.

RTMFA! It has numbers. OF COURSE the summary has the appealing bits. Welcome to journalism. Welcome to the Internet. Welcome to the human species.

More info from a year ago: http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/05/09/the-ipad-in-your-hand-as-fast-as-a-supercomputer-of-yore/

Gee, that's real interesting. There sure are a lot of pretty pictures in those articles, and a lot of Democrats-did kind of verbage. You'd almost think someone created those articles on purpose!

To quote Tom Hanks, I bet that's a coinke-dinkie.

And then to look at the budget articles from the mid-2000's...why, there's almost nothing there!

I'm sure it's just another big coinke-dinke. No one ever manipulates Wikipedia! Why, it's the gold standard for truth and objectivity!

I guess I should ignore the New York times (that bastion of hard-core right-wingers)
http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/f/federal_budget_us/index.html

And Politifact, they're clearly clueless:
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2011/aug/05/buddy-roemer/obama-submitted-budgets/

The Hill is totally wrong.
http://thehill.com/homenews/senate/163347-senate-votes-unanimously-against-obama-budget

In fact, even that RWNJ hotbed, the Huffington Post, acknowledges it:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/05/16/house-gop-budget-plan-senate_n_1522393.html
"Democrats haven't passed a budget since 2009, opting against weeklong floor debates that would have exposed party members to dozens of politically difficult votes or put themselves on record in favor of tax hikes or huge deficits."

But hey, enjoy your wikipedia edits. Propagandist.

http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/05/09/the-ipad-in-your-hand-as-fast-as-a-supercomputer-of-yore/

Sorry to reply to myself, but this CDC report says that the main reason the US does poorly is that it has a larger proportion of preterm births.

Why does the US have more preterm births? This article mentions a few factors: a greater percentage of mothers may be teenagers or older than 35, mothers may have worse preventative health care, and/or mothers have higher risk factors like diabetes and obesity.

So anyway it seems like a complex situation; I'm sure there's plenty in here anyone can cherrypick to support their political views.

I was referring to the comments made to Obama by Steve Jobs,

If you refer to this Chart You'll see Apple is in last place, Google a close second in terms of their capital spending in the US.
That's pretty damn poor considering how much they make off of the American consumer. While I'm no socialist, it seems awfully strange that Apple continually looks at ways to avoid also paying taxes in this country as well

SO, they get an F- in terms of what I would consider being a good corporate citizen. I actually give Samsung higher marks because they, like the Japanese and Korean Auto makers realized that they need to do some of their manufacturing here otherwise who are they going to sell their product too? Apple just considers the US another Market, just like the Chinese.

What's also hilarious are the reports that the IPhone 5 will boost GDP by .5%, by what? destroying the old IPhone 4s? Please, what a ridiculous bunch of speculation and after all, it is a phone and if people are so damned wrapped up in waiting for the last drop of sweat off of Steve Jobs' balls, then we're all in serious shit.

No, not everyone should write code or perform brain surgery.

My exact point. Now, who is being obtuse again?

But that doesn't mean that most people are incapable of writing code or becoming skilled surgeons.

Really? Most people can become surgeons? Are you sure about that? 3 out of 8 people that take the GED flunk it. You're saying that all these people need to do is knuckle down and study, and you'd happily let them inside your head with a scalpel?

Sure you would.

The simple fact is that some people are more capable than others for a given set of tasks. There isn't any "getting over" it. We are all different from one another.

And some jobs simply are not for some people. No matter how much you work out or how many pushups a day you do, you will never be an NFL quarterback. No matter how many books on quantum mechanics you read, you will never come up with a brilliant paradigm changing theory. And to a lesser degree, most of humanity no matter how hard they try would never be able to write a working and useable computer program.

Sorry, but that's how it is. If anyone could do it the market would be full of skilled programmers making Taco Bell wages. But it isn't.

Except that it has happened for other major religions. Catholicism, for one: Religious War Ignites in France. "The Last Temptation of Christ" ignited people.

There is a big, big difference between "Mohammed is a goat-fucking paedophile" and "We should go murder some infidels".

A big difference to you because you're not a Muslim.

Uh what? If there's no difference to Muslims then they really are evil, a war really is inevitable, and they really must be destroyed, because they really will want to destroy us first.

I'm not saying that's how it is, I'm saying if they can't see the difference and they're willing to be violent over it then their faith truly is evil. I'm not saying any other faith ain't, either. Any faith which places you above nonbelievers, which is most of them, is evil.

Fundamentalists are nuts whether they are Muslim or Christian. We should not protect or coddle our fundamentalists. He (the film maker) should not be treated as anything other than a traitor. His actions hurt the troops, hurt the USA, he's a traitor peroid. Yes you have free speech but if your free speech is an act of treason while that speech need not be censored it's still a treasonous act not all that different from Al-Awlaki.

Why was Al-Awlaki killed? http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/09/world/middleeast/secret-us-memo-made-legal-case-to-kill-a-citizen.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all

Did he specifically threaten the USA?

According to U.S. officials, al-Aulaqi was promoted to the rank of "regional commander" within al-Qaeda in 2009.[28][29] He repeatedly called for jihad against the United States.[30][31] In April 2010, American President Obama authorized al-Aulaqi's targeted killing.[32][33][34] The targeted killing of an American citizen was an unprecedented Presidential order which al-Aulaqi's father and civil rights groups challenged in court.[35][32][34][36] Officials stated that the "imminent threat" international legal standard is used to add names to the C.I.A.'s list of targets.[33]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anwar_al-Aulaqi

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/16/opinion/sunday/kristof-the-foreign-relations-fumbler.html

"Mitt Romney spent the last week blowing up his foreign policy credentials to be president"

Is Mitt a twit or actually a candidate for the BotPrize? Would Mitt stand a Turing test?

I don't think people's survival should be related to whether or not other people feel like giving or not. It makes sense to fund these things by taxes proportional to income. If you benefit from a society, you have a duty to assist it. Obviously a person who is making $130k can afford that way more than someone making $30k (even though apparently are not convinced to give: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/22/magazine/22FOB-wwln-t.html?_r=1).

David Pogue: Google Glass and the Future of Technology

I just found out about an alternative hypothesis to the cause of autism: inflammation in the pregnant mother. Apparently an immune disorder in a mother will affect the unborn child.

https://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/26/opinion/sunday/immune-disorders-and-autism.html?_r=2&pagewanted=all

I didn't read any further on the topic, but the article does reference at least one researcher, so one could see what kind of study has been performed to support this idea.

Or, and this is just a thought, you could google the words you claim I'm using incorrectly and realize that I'm actually 100% correct, then subsequently go fuck yourself.

I googled it since you're too intellectually lazy to do so. "As a medical diagnosis, pedophilia, or paedophilia, is defined as a psychiatric disorder in persons who are 16 years of age or older typically characterized by a primary or exclusive sexual interest in prepubescent children."

Okay, so.. what's the average age of puberty in girls? http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/01/magazine/puberty-before-age-10-a-new-normal.html?pagewanted=all

In the late 1980s, Marcia Herman-Giddens, then a physician’s associate in the pediatric department of the Duke University Medical Center, started noticing that an awful lot of 8- and 9-year-olds in her clinic had sprouted pubic hair and breasts. The medical wisdom, at that time, based on a landmark 1960 study of institutionalized British children, was that puberty began, on average, for girls at age 11. But that was not what Herman-Giddens was seeing. So she started collecting data, eventually leading a study with the American Academy of Pediatrics that sampled 17,000 girls, finding that among white girls, the average age of breast budding was 9.96. Among black girls, it was 8.87.

Alrighty so what have we learned? Pedophiles have a primary or exclusive sexual interest in prepubescent children and female prepubescent children on average start puberty (not finish.. start) before age 10, though it was higher in the past.

So the question is was Poe a pedophile.
1. Did he have a primary or exclusive sexual interest in prepubescent children?
        a. Was he interested in prepubescent children? It's possible that a 13 year old girl hadn't even started puberty (delayed onset puberty), but not likely. In a quick google search I didn't see any sources one way or the other, just that she was 13.
        b. Was it primary or exclusive? No, his first relationship when he was 16 was to a 15 year old (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarah_Elmira_Royster). He also had a relationship with a Mary Devereaux. I didn't find her age but the implication was she was an adult.

We don't have to go any further, the argument that Poe was a pedophile has already failed. You failed. You failed hard. You should go cry about your failure.

The company hiring you will likely require you to meet several conditions, including incorporation, to protect themselves. Remember that guy who flew a plane into an IRS building in Texas a couple years back? His beef with the IRS was a section of tax code which will affect you if you get laid off or quit from your primary job.

Basically, the IRS makes it hard for a company to justify hiring a programmer as an independent consultant. If they hire you like that and the IRS determines that you're actually employed by them, they're liable for the employer's share of all your back taxes even if you've been diligently paying your self employment taxes. (Yes, your employer pays part of your FICA taxes. That's what the "self employment" tax is - when you're self-employed you get to pay both your share and the employer's share of the FICA taxes.) To avoid this possibility, most companies require contracting programmers to be employees of a hiring agency, or self incorporated with multiple sources of income. If you're not employed by someone else, or the consulting you do for them is your only job, the IRS could still find that you're an employee. And they get to pay half of your FICA back taxes.

Right now you're spared from all this because you have another job. But if you should be laid off or quit to concentrate on this contracting work, you will become subject to this section of tax code. HR and Accounting at the company you're working for will want nothing to do with you unless you (A) find another job, or (B) incorporate and have more than one simultaneous consulting gig, or (C) incorporate with another person to form your own 2+ person "hiring agency". (The NYT article is a bit ambiguous - staffing firms are only a problem if they're only acting as job hunter for you. If you're employed by them and they're paying your employment taxes, then it's not a problem.

The relevant terms for you to google if you want to research this more are irs section 1706 530.

"Islamic democracies" work quite nicely. Ask Turkey, Malaysia, Indonesia.

Doing a quick search reveals countless religious problems in Turkey. Even ignoring their historical problem with Kurds (who aren't much different than secular rebels), the Alawites fear for their safety and have been attacked: "As Syria War Roils, Unrest Among Sects Hits Turkey" http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/05/world/middleeast/turkish-alawites-fear-spillover-of-violence-from-syria.html?pagewanted=all

And there are countless small stories of religious persecution, things that would be classed as hate crimes in America, e.g. http://www.compassdirect.org/english/country/turkey/15153

Malaysia has a two-tier justice system, one for Muslims one for others, with a history of discrimination against non-Muslims: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/13/world/asia/13malay.html

Again, countless reports of smaller-scale incidents as well. I'm sure you remember when churches were attacked for using the word "allah", which Muslims wanted to keep associated with Islam only; it made international news. Yeah that was good old Malaysia. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-10961282

Look at this little gem from that article: "But some Muslim groups are suspicious of their motives, our correspondent says, saying the use of the word Allah is a ploy to encourage Muslims to convert to Christianity - something that is illegal in the country."

So apparently proselytizing is illegal in Malaysia. HMMMMMM I wonder if that also applies to Muslims encouraging Christians to convert? Nope didn't think so: http://www.prayway.com/unreached/countries/malaysia.html "Constitutional guarantees of religious freedom are under attack, as it is illegal to proselytize Muslims, while Muslims may convert whoever they like."

Indonesia... seriously... why would you even bring up Indonesia? Are you unaware of all the problems in Aceh? They've had tons of Islamic radicals, and in 2006 instituted sharia: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/01/world/asia/01iht-aceh.2356621.html?pagewanted=all

And predictably since then things have gotten worse with attacks on Christians: http://www.persecution.org/2012/06/20/hundreds-of-muslim-extremists-attack-christian-prayer-house-in-indonesia/

Do you honestly think they are working "quite nicely" in these Islamic strongholds? Your standards are too low.

"Islamic democracies" work quite nicely. Ask Turkey, Malaysia, Indonesia.

Doing a quick search reveals countless religious problems in Turkey. Even ignoring their historical problem with Kurds (who aren't much different than secular rebels), the Alawites fear for their safety and have been attacked: "As Syria War Roils, Unrest Among Sects Hits Turkey" http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/05/world/middleeast/turkish-alawites-fear-spillover-of-violence-from-syria.html?pagewanted=all

And there are countless small stories of religious persecution, things that would be classed as hate crimes in America, e.g. http://www.compassdirect.org/english/country/turkey/15153

Malaysia has a two-tier justice system, one for Muslims one for others, with a history of discrimination against non-Muslims: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/13/world/asia/13malay.html

Again, countless reports of smaller-scale incidents as well. I'm sure you remember when churches were attacked for using the word "allah", which Muslims wanted to keep associated with Islam only; it made international news. Yeah that was good old Malaysia. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-10961282

Look at this little gem from that article: "But some Muslim groups are suspicious of their motives, our correspondent says, saying the use of the word Allah is a ploy to encourage Muslims to convert to Christianity - something that is illegal in the country."

So apparently proselytizing is illegal in Malaysia. HMMMMMM I wonder if that also applies to Muslims encouraging Christians to convert? Nope didn't think so: http://www.prayway.com/unreached/countries/malaysia.html "Constitutional guarantees of religious freedom are under attack, as it is illegal to proselytize Muslims, while Muslims may convert whoever they like."

Indonesia... seriously... why would you even bring up Indonesia? Are you unaware of all the problems in Aceh? They've had tons of Islamic radicals, and in 2006 instituted sharia: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/01/world/asia/01iht-aceh.2356621.html?pagewanted=all

And predictably since then things have gotten worse with attacks on Christians: http://www.persecution.org/2012/06/20/hundreds-of-muslim-extremists-attack-christian-prayer-house-in-indonesia/

Do you honestly think they are working "quite nicely" in these Islamic strongholds? Your standards are too low.

"Islamic democracies" work quite nicely. Ask Turkey, Malaysia, Indonesia.

Doing a quick search reveals countless religious problems in Turkey. Even ignoring their historical problem with Kurds (who aren't much different than secular rebels), the Alawites fear for their safety and have been attacked: "As Syria War Roils, Unrest Among Sects Hits Turkey" http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/05/world/middleeast/turkish-alawites-fear-spillover-of-violence-from-syria.html?pagewanted=all

And there are countless small stories of religious persecution, things that would be classed as hate crimes in America, e.g. http://www.compassdirect.org/english/country/turkey/15153

Malaysia has a two-tier justice system, one for Muslims one for others, with a history of discrimination against non-Muslims: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/13/world/asia/13malay.html

Again, countless reports of smaller-scale incidents as well. I'm sure you remember when churches were attacked for using the word "allah", which Muslims wanted to keep associated with Islam only; it made international news. Yeah that was good old Malaysia. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-10961282

Look at this little gem from that article: "But some Muslim groups are suspicious of their motives, our correspondent says, saying the use of the word Allah is a ploy to encourage Muslims to convert to Christianity - something that is illegal in the country."

So apparently proselytizing is illegal in Malaysia. HMMMMMM I wonder if that also applies to Muslims encouraging Christians to convert? Nope didn't think so: http://www.prayway.com/unreached/countries/malaysia.html "Constitutional guarantees of religious freedom are under attack, as it is illegal to proselytize Muslims, while Muslims may convert whoever they like."

Indonesia... seriously... why would you even bring up Indonesia? Are you unaware of all the problems in Aceh? They've had tons of Islamic radicals, and in 2006 instituted sharia: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/01/world/asia/01iht-aceh.2356621.html?pagewanted=all

And predictably since then things have gotten worse with attacks on Christians: http://www.persecution.org/2012/06/20/hundreds-of-muslim-extremists-attack-christian-prayer-house-in-indonesia/

Do you honestly think they are working "quite nicely" in these Islamic strongholds? Your standards are too low.

You want to be careful with stress, though. Long-term stress -- even low level -- can be damaging even if you think you're okay.

muhula writes: The scary part of this chip and pin vulnerability is that banks have a history of blaming the consumer and not issuing refunds ... banks systematically suppress information about known vulnerabilities, with the result that fraud victims continue to be denied refunds Ross Anderson heads the Cambridge group that found this attack and the earlier man-in-the-middle attack (a gadget between card & reader that makes all PIN verifications succeed no matter what number you enter). He's been writing about bank vulnerabilities for years. A famous older paper: "Why cryptosystems fail" http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~rja14/Papers/wcf.html Problems with PIN numbers: http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/02/20/security-of-self-selected-pins-is-lacking/

Gotta love those "peace loving muslims" don't you?

Right, because American's never kill people for no good reason or even no reason at all.

I mean...really? You go apeshit crazy, right and kill people over a fucking film?!?!

The people who made The Last Temptation of Christ got death threats.

I mean hell...the guys they murdered weren't even involved in the film.....

And the American Muslims and Americans mistaken for Muslims killed in hate crimes had nothing to do with terrorism.

You're right, those Libyans are Batshit Crazy. But no more so than many Americans. They just had better access to bombs and guns.

China's simply catching up to the levels first world countries are at, and will most likely exceed them since they don't have the petty squabbles that Europe and the US have.

Yes, in China the party decides which squabbles are petty and which are not. (See inset photo on linked page of thousands of "protesters" in Chengdu carrying banners with slogans like "Even if China is covered with graves, we must kill all Japanese" after some Japanese activists erected a Japanese flag on an island Japan owns but China wants.)