This was exactly my reasoning. I realized that I'm close a computer or have a laptop nearby almost all the time, so why bother paying extra for a smartphone, peer pressure be damned?
I'd agree with you about repeat offenders, but making the first offense a felony is not going to help. First, drunk people are not exactly known for making the best judgment. Second, how many immature 20 year olds (probably demographic most likely to have the first DUI) will be branded felons for life for making a mistake? Third, driving drunk without causing other offense makes no harm, and while it is irresponsible and should be punished, it doesn't compare with other felony crimes. Fourth, I'm fairly sure I've driven tired enough to the point of being highly impaired on more than one occasion. It's about as irresponsible as drunk driving, yet there is no punishment. The gap between no punishment and felony for pretty much the same kind of behavior is simply too big. Fifth (and this is more about stigma rather than laws), I'm yet to see a convincing argument why society considers that people aren't accountable for having drunk sex (can't give consent), but are accountable for drunk driving.
You can find counter-arguments to each of these points fairly easily, but taken together they build a strong case.
Maybe US has more DUIs because virtually everyone drives here, and starts driving way earlier than in other countries? Maybe other countries have better public transportation for the drunks to get home after parties?
also increase the stigma of DUI
This is probably the first time I've heard that DUI is not stigmatized enough.
Good universities hire dedicated lecturers to teach these core classes with high number of students, whose primary responsibility is teaching and not research. Because of that, these classes tend to be very well-organized.
For truly well rounded self educated people, they should be a breeze.
Even if you're not "truly well rounded" or are afraid to fail the test, here is what you should do (I passed some CLEP tests this way):
0. Make sure CLEP tests are accepted (some engineering programs/colleges don't accept certain tests).
1. Find related college course at a decent university that has lecture notes online.
2. Buy the book that this course follows, read it and read the notes. Often course notes will hint at which parts of the book are most important.
3. Pass the test, submit a form to get credit for an equivalent class.
power users will be able to tweak it to a great extent
Right, so I installed a bunch of extensions to make Firefox look and behave like version 2.0... and still haven't upgraded to 5.0 because I'm afraid these extensions will break. "Power users" or "geeks" may be able to tweak their browser, but it doesn't mean we want to (especially as we get older and have more work / less time). It looks like there is at least one new extension that I need to install with every major release of Firefox to bring old 2.0 appearance back. It's not just corporations that want some stability with their software.
What qualifications are required to get into the military? I don't think they are comparable to either PE or M.D. (and thus may not induce cheating), yet military personnel in some cases may have more potential of killing "wrong" people.
I have a similar deal with AT&T DSL. Home phone / DSL package was actually $5-10 cheaper than DSL alone (~$45). In fact it makes sense, as the landline was a negative value for me - way too many marketing/donation soliciting/incorrect calls.
This bundling practice is annoying as Internet connection pretty much makes all other services redundant.
I agree that the whole concept of a speed limit is stupid, because actual safe maximum speed is highly context-dependent. There are so many factors that even enumerating them is pointless. Speed limits only may somewhat make sense in certain areas in the city (school zone, residential zone, shopping area).
Show me a highway where the majority of the traffic drives at or under the speed limit on a nice day. Similarly, I lost control and totaled my last car when I was going 25 mph under the limit on an interstate. While driving through a residential neighborhood or a shopping area, safe speed at night is actually higher than during the day - exact opposite of a highway. Everything depends on the context.
People will drive at the speed they deem comfortable and safe. Speed limits exist only to make everyone guilty like the parent said and to generate revenue.
I'm doing mine in CS, and the papers I enjoy reading the most are those that discuss alternatives / tradeoffs / unsuccessful directions that the authors attempted with their design. Sure, in order to be published your work has to show some improvement of the state of the art, but it is often more educational to read how people came up with a successful system rather than the result itself. I actually heard some professors claim that you should only write about what you did right because the reader would not be interested in the thought process or intermediate experiments you went through, and I find this claim completely false.
GRE may be somewhat challenging because you may not have enough time to solve all the problems. When you're 25 and you are presented with a bunch of problems that you last saw in 8th grade, it takes some time to put your brain into "thinking as an 8th grader" mode.
The good news is that most decent places don't care much about GRE, and only use it as the lowest threshold to weed out obviously hopeless applicants.
For instance, suppose you're a brick-and-mortar store with a merchant account to take credit cards. But you think that Mastercard and Visa charge way too much in fees. Either you use them anyway, or you do cash-only, and go out of business because so many people these days don't use cash.
I wonder why businesses do not offer discounts for cash payments like diesel gas stations / truck stops do. If Visa/MC take x% of each transaction as a fee, retailer could just make x% discount to customers who pay with cash. I mostly use CCs because of cashback rewards, but if cash discount were greater than my current cashback rate, I would gladly stop using credit cards.
I also don't bother hiding my real identity online; anyone with enough time on their hands and nothing better to do could correlate my accounts across different sites. It's much easier to assume that everything that you post online can be linked to you (similar to an assumption that everything you post on facebook is public). Just don't post anything that you don't want your boss to know, and you'll be fine. Maybe there will be fewer trolls on the Internet this way. Now, of course it is important to be able to post anonymously once in a while, but it shouldn't be a habit.
I think we should stop trying to create One FS To Rule Them All, and instead aim for more specialized file systems. I don't care about performance in my/storage, and similarly I don't care about metadata in my/usr.
Required liability insurance should not work as punishment. I can understand why insurance companies may want to increase the premium, but outright denying coverage should not be allowed.
This is similar to the issue of sex offender registration. If a guy has paid from his crimes (fine, driving ban, jail, whatever), then he should not have to suffer any more.
At which point students start questioning what they are paying their tuition for. I myself learned pretty much everything from reading online guides/howtos and manpages, and I do believe that this is the most effective way to go. It seems to me that the answer is that a Linux course does not belong to a university-level CS curriculum. Students will have to learn it anyway, usually by the time they take an OS course (typically because of programming projects involving libpthread). A good idea would be to have a TA install Linux and/or teach some basic command-line tools in a recitation, but wasting more time on it is not necessary.
I *like* cameras that incorporates metadata. This protects me from lawsuits and proves that the picture is mine and can be used however I want and as often I want.
Sure, someone who wants to claim ownership of a picture would never be able to insert desired metadata in the file.
People misuse printers to print out pedophilia... counterfeiting... threatening letters...
You forgot terrorists. They also use printers.
Yes, there are legitimate uses for all these traitorware features in software/hardware. The point is that these features should be opt in and disabled by default, so that people who truly want them can enable them.
As you note a la carte pricing will end up being more expensive. ISPs will charge $50/month for the first GB and $1/GB after that. Everyone pays at least as much as before, but anything more than minimal use is financially painful. At that point "broadband" becomes useless and everyone might as well switch to a $10 unlimited dial-up plan.
Yes, I forgot to mention that this scheme will only work when ISPs are unable to set such unreasonable pricing (either through free (perfect) market, or through heavy regulation / government control). Of course, this raises a question whether Internet access is a luxury or a basic need that needs to be provided to all citizens.
You are correct. In fact, charging per sent/received byte of data could fix a number of economical and technical problems in the network.
First, there is this problem of flat rates. For some reason, people seem to like them (is it because they are predictable?), but I don't see any logic behind this. Everyone hates prepaying parking some extra minutes to be safe, leaving earlier, and regretting wasted money. I don't see why this should be different with Internet plans. People who use the Internet to check emails and surf text web would not have to pay for the minimum plan (at least $40/mo). Of course, that would mean less profit for ISPs, which is why per-byte pricing is not popular.
Second, this will solve technical problem of flow fairness. The whole reason why "download accelerators" and (partially) p2p programs exist is because TCP fairness is inherently broken, as you can increase your speed on a congested link simply by opening more connections. Charging per byte would tie all flows to an economic entity, ensuring perfect fairness (you pay more -> you get bigger share of a congested link).
Third, pricing can be dynamic ("congestion pricing"). We can borrow ideas from power companies that charge (typically industrial/commercial) users less per KWh in off-peak hours when the network is underutilized, and similarly charge more during peak hours. While this works the best between end user and their ISP, it could be extended to relationships between ISPs.
Fourth, end users could have more control over prioritizing their traffic with respect to their own and other users' traffic. Suppose the network is congested, and I am willing to pay more to get my VoIP traffic delivered on time, but I don't care as much for p2p traffic (it can be delayed/rescheduled so I can save money).
In fact, this is something I'm working on as a mini-research project, so it would be interesting if it worked in reality.
Slashdot Mirror
This was exactly my reasoning. I realized that I'm close a computer or have a laptop nearby almost all the time, so why bother paying extra for a smartphone, peer pressure be damned?
I'd agree with you about repeat offenders, but making the first offense a felony is not going to help. First, drunk people are not exactly known for making the best judgment. Second, how many immature 20 year olds (probably demographic most likely to have the first DUI) will be branded felons for life for making a mistake? Third, driving drunk without causing other offense makes no harm, and while it is irresponsible and should be punished, it doesn't compare with other felony crimes. Fourth, I'm fairly sure I've driven tired enough to the point of being highly impaired on more than one occasion. It's about as irresponsible as drunk driving, yet there is no punishment. The gap between no punishment and felony for pretty much the same kind of behavior is simply too big. Fifth (and this is more about stigma rather than laws), I'm yet to see a convincing argument why society considers that people aren't accountable for having drunk sex (can't give consent), but are accountable for drunk driving.
You can find counter-arguments to each of these points fairly easily, but taken together they build a strong case.
Maybe US has more DUIs because virtually everyone drives here, and starts driving way earlier than in other countries? Maybe other countries have better public transportation for the drunks to get home after parties?
also increase the stigma of DUI
This is probably the first time I've heard that DUI is not stigmatized enough.
And what can Anonymous do? Deface/DDoS your website? While they did have some impact (leaks, protests), there is only so much you can do online.
Good universities hire dedicated lecturers to teach these core classes with high number of students, whose primary responsibility is teaching and not research. Because of that, these classes tend to be very well-organized.
looking for shortcuts
Also known as "being efficient." You shouldn't make blanket statements like that.
For truly well rounded self educated people, they should be a breeze.
Even if you're not "truly well rounded" or are afraid to fail the test, here is what you should do (I passed some CLEP tests this way):
0. Make sure CLEP tests are accepted (some engineering programs/colleges don't accept certain tests).
1. Find related college course at a decent university that has lecture notes online.
2. Buy the book that this course follows, read it and read the notes. Often course notes will hint at which parts of the book are most important.
3. Pass the test, submit a form to get credit for an equivalent class.
power users will be able to tweak it to a great extent
Right, so I installed a bunch of extensions to make Firefox look and behave like version 2.0... and still haven't upgraded to 5.0 because I'm afraid these extensions will break. "Power users" or "geeks" may be able to tweak their browser, but it doesn't mean we want to (especially as we get older and have more work / less time). It looks like there is at least one new extension that I need to install with every major release of Firefox to bring old 2.0 appearance back. It's not just corporations that want some stability with their software.
What qualifications are required to get into the military? I don't think they are comparable to either PE or M.D. (and thus may not induce cheating), yet military personnel in some cases may have more potential of killing "wrong" people.
The same can be asked about media piracy! You might as well just say it: you're all equating MP3 downloads to terrorism or treason.
I thought it was obvious to everyone that downloading mp3s is treason. After all, when you pirate mp3s, you're downloading communism.
This can be tricky (but still doable, of course) on a 32-bit OS because the counters wrap around 4 GB.
I have a similar deal with AT&T DSL. Home phone / DSL package was actually $5-10 cheaper than DSL alone (~$45). In fact it makes sense, as the landline was a negative value for me - way too many marketing/donation soliciting/incorrect calls.
This bundling practice is annoying as Internet connection pretty much makes all other services redundant.
But... but I thought nobody ever got fired for choosing IBM^H^H^H Amazon!
I agree that the whole concept of a speed limit is stupid, because actual safe maximum speed is highly context-dependent. There are so many factors that even enumerating them is pointless. Speed limits only may somewhat make sense in certain areas in the city (school zone, residential zone, shopping area).
Show me a highway where the majority of the traffic drives at or under the speed limit on a nice day. Similarly, I lost control and totaled my last car when I was going 25 mph under the limit on an interstate. While driving through a residential neighborhood or a shopping area, safe speed at night is actually higher than during the day - exact opposite of a highway. Everything depends on the context.
People will drive at the speed they deem comfortable and safe. Speed limits exist only to make everyone guilty like the parent said and to generate revenue.
I'm doing mine in CS, and the papers I enjoy reading the most are those that discuss alternatives / tradeoffs / unsuccessful directions that the authors attempted with their design. Sure, in order to be published your work has to show some improvement of the state of the art, but it is often more educational to read how people came up with a successful system rather than the result itself. I actually heard some professors claim that you should only write about what you did right because the reader would not be interested in the thought process or intermediate experiments you went through, and I find this claim completely false.
GRE may be somewhat challenging because you may not have enough time to solve all the problems. When you're 25 and you are presented with a bunch of problems that you last saw in 8th grade, it takes some time to put your brain into "thinking as an 8th grader" mode.
The good news is that most decent places don't care much about GRE, and only use it as the lowest threshold to weed out obviously hopeless applicants.
For instance, suppose you're a brick-and-mortar store with a merchant account to take credit cards. But you think that Mastercard and Visa charge way too much in fees. Either you use them anyway, or you do cash-only, and go out of business because so many people these days don't use cash.
I wonder why businesses do not offer discounts for cash payments like diesel gas stations / truck stops do. If Visa/MC take x% of each transaction as a fee, retailer could just make x% discount to customers who pay with cash. I mostly use CCs because of cashback rewards, but if cash discount were greater than my current cashback rate, I would gladly stop using credit cards.
I also don't bother hiding my real identity online; anyone with enough time on their hands and nothing better to do could correlate my accounts across different sites. It's much easier to assume that everything that you post online can be linked to you (similar to an assumption that everything you post on facebook is public). Just don't post anything that you don't want your boss to know, and you'll be fine. Maybe there will be fewer trolls on the Internet this way. Now, of course it is important to be able to post anonymously once in a while, but it shouldn't be a habit.
I think we should stop trying to create One FS To Rule Them All, and instead aim for more specialized file systems. I don't care about performance in my /storage, and similarly I don't care about metadata in my /usr.
Example tile URLs from my squid log:
http://lh6.ggpht.com/io8g_Aj_Hm1kxRup7bzw0e2AtUOpGaINg_hTKPLIABKsN81SNaTC_EQ54Uw=x7-y2-z7
http://lh3.ggpht.com/io8g_Aj_Hm1kxRup7bzw0e2AtUOpGaINg_hTKPLIABKsN81SNaTC_EQ54Uw=x17-y4-z6
http://lh6.ggpht.com/io8g_Aj_Hm1kxRup7bzw0e2AtUOpGaINg_hTKPLIABKsN81SNaTC_EQ54Uw=x10-y1-z5
http://lh3.ggpht.com/io8g_Aj_Hm1kxRup7bzw0e2AtUOpGaINg_hTKPLIABKsN81SNaTC_EQ54Uw=x6-y1-z5
I think it's pretty obvious what part of the URL you need to replace if you want to download all tiles for a particular resolution.
Required liability insurance should not work as punishment. I can understand why insurance companies may want to increase the premium, but outright denying coverage should not be allowed.
This is similar to the issue of sex offender registration. If a guy has paid from his crimes (fine, driving ban, jail, whatever), then he should not have to suffer any more.
At which point students start questioning what they are paying their tuition for. I myself learned pretty much everything from reading online guides/howtos and manpages, and I do believe that this is the most effective way to go. It seems to me that the answer is that a Linux course does not belong to a university-level CS curriculum. Students will have to learn it anyway, usually by the time they take an OS course (typically because of programming projects involving libpthread). A good idea would be to have a TA install Linux and/or teach some basic command-line tools in a recitation, but wasting more time on it is not necessary.
Basically, it's Lawful Good vs. Chaotic Good.
I *like* cameras that incorporates metadata. This protects me from lawsuits and proves that the picture is mine and can be used however I want and as often I want.
Sure, someone who wants to claim ownership of a picture would never be able to insert desired metadata in the file.
People misuse printers to print out pedophilia ... counterfeiting ... threatening letters ...
You forgot terrorists. They also use printers.
Yes, there are legitimate uses for all these traitorware features in software/hardware. The point is that these features should be opt in and disabled by default, so that people who truly want them can enable them.
As you note a la carte pricing will end up being more expensive. ISPs will charge $50/month for the first GB and $1/GB after that. Everyone pays at least as much as before, but anything more than minimal use is financially painful. At that point "broadband" becomes useless and everyone might as well switch to a $10 unlimited dial-up plan.
Yes, I forgot to mention that this scheme will only work when ISPs are unable to set such unreasonable pricing (either through free (perfect) market, or through heavy regulation / government control). Of course, this raises a question whether Internet access is a luxury or a basic need that needs to be provided to all citizens.
You are correct. In fact, charging per sent/received byte of data could fix a number of economical and technical problems in the network.
First, there is this problem of flat rates. For some reason, people seem to like them (is it because they are predictable?), but I don't see any logic behind this. Everyone hates prepaying parking some extra minutes to be safe, leaving earlier, and regretting wasted money. I don't see why this should be different with Internet plans. People who use the Internet to check emails and surf text web would not have to pay for the minimum plan (at least $40/mo). Of course, that would mean less profit for ISPs, which is why per-byte pricing is not popular.
Second, this will solve technical problem of flow fairness. The whole reason why "download accelerators" and (partially) p2p programs exist is because TCP fairness is inherently broken, as you can increase your speed on a congested link simply by opening more connections. Charging per byte would tie all flows to an economic entity, ensuring perfect fairness (you pay more -> you get bigger share of a congested link).
Third, pricing can be dynamic ("congestion pricing"). We can borrow ideas from power companies that charge (typically industrial/commercial) users less per KWh in off-peak hours when the network is underutilized, and similarly charge more during peak hours. While this works the best between end user and their ISP, it could be extended to relationships between ISPs.
Fourth, end users could have more control over prioritizing their traffic with respect to their own and other users' traffic. Suppose the network is congested, and I am willing to pay more to get my VoIP traffic delivered on time, but I don't care as much for p2p traffic (it can be delayed/rescheduled so I can save money).
In fact, this is something I'm working on as a mini-research project, so it would be interesting if it worked in reality.