"In the US at least the middle class is the hardest hit by taxes, increasing prices, increased transport costs - everything. Those on low wages get generous benefits while the middle class get taxed. The conservatives give the truly wealthy tax breaks that others cannot take advantage of. If this will help people move out of the middle class to either of the opposite ends its doing them a favor. I'm sick of explaining to the kids that I cannot afford a PS4 for their Christmas because travel costs to work are going up and tax allowances being reduced, at the same time that kids of a single mother who works in Wal-Mart part time can easily afford it - and then tell us how a charity is giving them a vacation in the Bahamas in the summer. I'll be lucky if we can afford a week in Atlantic City."
This strikes me just like the cops back in college that would pull over TAXIS leaving bars in order to ticket the kids leaving the bar with public intoxication. Technically doing their job. Definitely adding incentive to the wrong behavior. It was "safer" to leave certain bars in your own car rather than in a cab... I kid you not. This type of enforcement is making it "safer" for the texters to do it while driving... harder for this asshat to catch them.
The incentive is certainly going to encourage the greater of the two evils... and it could get someone hurt/killed. All the while this clown get's his name in the paper though for writing a bunch of tickets to non-violent scofflaws... adding incentive to stopping minor offenders rather than actual criminals.
Oh I get where you were going with that line of reasoning. Official inflation numbers are BS for a myriad of reasons and your 40x is likely more accurate. I was simply adding the GP's citation for him as I ran across the same number on wikipedia.
from wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minimum_wage_in_the_United_States)
The minimum wage was re-established in the United States in 1938 (pursuant to the Fair Labor Standards Act), once again at $0.25 per hour ($4.10 in 2012 dollars[63]).
That's my issue with the whole thing. What I really want is selective autopilot. I'd love to have the option of putting my car in autopilot on the interstate and just taking a nap or playing with my kids int he back. We do lots of 500 mile 1-way trips back to grandma's house... it would be great to just fill up the family truckster the night before and head off at midnight, everybody sleeping along the way.
It'd kind of be like hibernation during interstellar travel... except mundane and boring:)
What a crock of sh*t! I grew up around lead, lead pipes in the house, lead paint, lead-acid batteries, etc. I haven't tried to kill anyone, and last I knew, I had a very high IQ (well, at least in HS, many, many years ago anyway), so this study is BS! We need lead in every day life. We need lead in solder, batteries, electronics, weights, etc. Lead is a very important metal, we can not do without it.
I am so sick of these environmentalist freaks, so sick.
So sick you wish to do them violent harm perhaps?:)
You might want to ask the Kurds, how that non-terrorism worked for them.
Agreed in principal. But when the gov't defines terrorism... anything they do will not fit that definition. I'd wager that massacre was "officially" a gov't sanctioned rezoning initiative.
Is any of Apple's current product capable of wireless charging? Did they develop any of the technology, as in doing the research?
Nah. The new Lumia and Nexus 4 can do wireless charging. Those happen to be Microsoft and Google's flagship phones. Apple's phones don't do it yet, so they want to sue this competitive disadvantage out of existence. I guess they are unable to compete otherwise...
If you own AAPL... it may be time to start selling it off and taking your gains.
They can buy it from those of us with water. Detroit, Cleveland, Milwaukee and Chicago will become the richest places in America after winning the war with Canada over the Great Lakes:)
Current industrial farming practices use 10 calories of energy (mostly from petrochemicals) to produce 1 calorie of food.
Contemporary farming techniques are heavily dependent on petrochemicals to produce fertilizer.
Contemporary farming techniques deplete topsoil faster than it will naturally replenish.
That said, there're a lot of dandelions and wild garlic in most yards (and more acreage in lawns in the U.S. than any single crop).
When you figure out how to feed people oil we'll be 10x as efficient! Only mildly sarcastic there. Just how many "calories" of solar energy are used to grow that 1 calorie of food?
(From wikipedia) The approximate average value cited,[4] 1.361 kW/m, is equivalent to 1.952 calories per minute per square centimeter, or 1.952 langleys (Ly)—or, in SI units— about 81.672 kJ/m per minute.
So for any plant that produces 1 calorie of nutritional value, every square centimeter of leaf area "wastes" the VAST majority of 1.952 calories a minute!
Bottom line, conversion losses exist. Solar energy is no more useful to our bodies as direct nourishment than crude oil. Energy is lost converting either oil (as fertilizer) or sunlight into a potato... but without that potato you'll starve.
Today the statists have us burning our food, while simultaneously driving pig farmers and egg producers out of business with animal `welfare' regulation and high feed cost.
Naturally, when the crash comes it will be the fault of `corporations.'
I wouldn't say it's the statists burning our food, or at least in my limited experience it wasn't the case. I grew up in a rural Indiana town and outside of a single factory, the largest portion of its economy is corn. When I was in HS in the 90's there were a couple years when the farmers had absolutely huge yields... so much so in fact the price of corn went through the floor. Having family members that own large farms, it literally cost them more to drag the corn to the grain elevator for sale in gas/time/pay for farmhands than it was worth. End result? Pile it up and hope the price increases. When the price didn't increase and it started to rot, burn it and take the loss.
At first I was a bit disgusted. After all, we were just talking about starving kids in Africa and Susanne Sommers makes a great pitch! But then I realized that in order to get that corn to the folks that need it, someone has to pay the farmer or HIS FAMILY will be the ones starving. (Maybe not literally starving, but they'd certainly lose the farm.)
Makes the ethanol mandates and their timing make more sense now that I think about it. A politician (or group there of) would be very likely to make the mistake "Corn is too cheap! Let's artificially create demand by using it in gasoline!"... without taking into account the fact that not all harvests are nearly as good.
Devout Mormons are instructed to store away a year's worth of food and necessities.
Here in Salt Lake City, Utah, there are numerous stores that cater to this.
I wonder what NASA could learn from them.
Some stores sell a complete [Freeze Dried] year's worth of food prepackaged, and variety is a big selling point. (And they have various options at various at various prices depending on the variety and quantity you want. (Or buy one of their grain grinders and some grain to mix it up a bit.)
So, NASA could just mail order three one-year packages per person, and be done with it.
So Mitt Romney will get us to Mars first? Color me confused:)
Personally, I can't stand ANY multiplayer games. Not sure exactly why, I guess I prefer to compete against fixed challenges and at my own pace. I am probably in the minority, but I certainly can't be alone.
Nope. Here's, let me prove it. Skyrim, Oblivion, Morrowind.
I know this may be borderline blaphemy... but I've always wanted a limited multiplayer component to those games. I generally play with a couple guys, mostly to drink beer and BS about life and our wives/kids and what not over the mic (in private chat of course wouldn't want to offend the tweens!) I guess it's mostly like a pokernight, but since we are now geographically dispersed it's conducted over an Xbox controller and microphone rather than a table and stack of cards.
Not interested in the MMORPG nonsense, too many people running around that we'd rather not interact with. We actually had high hopes for Two Worlds, but it was such a buggy POS that it was literally impossible to play. Think Oblivion done by interns.
But if someone could jump in and play as your follower I think it would really add to the game. Preferably 2-3 followers actually, so one of us wouldn't be left hanging:) The drop-in drop-out system could probably work something like Diablo 3 or Borderlands.
That said, for the love of Mara please don't let MP ruin it! No auction houses or anything of that nature!
It might actually be nice to have an election won on the back of how bright your geeks are, rather than just how much money you have.
I would impose the condition that you are only allowed to use geeks that support your politics though. Rather than permitting outsourcing, I want to see this work being done by card-carrying members of your political party.
Problem is, more money buys better, brighter geeks.
The problem generally isn't the communities of more than 1000, it's all the dispersed "neighborhoods" in the rural parts. Back in my hometown there's multiple rural parts that probably have around 500 or so people living in them, but they're all on between 5-20 acres... with tracts of farmland thrown in for good measure. The houses will generally cluster in groups of 5 or 6 along a stretch of road, each one on multiple acres and these clusters will be a mile or two apart form each other. Thus far it hasn't been feasible (read profitable) to run cable lines out there between these dispersed clusters of houses and this is only a few miles (about 3-5) out of town where broadband is available. It's not like they are in the middle of nowhere, but they aren't organized into communities either.
If I still lived there I would want a house out there. It's a really good life, quiet, peaceful plenty of room for the kids and dogs to play. But in reality I would have to buy a house in town because of lack of broadband. My brother that still lives back home is currently in the same situation... and he's buying in town.
I want to take one of these setups to an organic orchard and program it to shriek in agony when someone picks the fruit. That should give those vegetarian hippies something to think about!
Remember, all American's can have an impact on that decision.
But may I ask - as a European - how you could do that ?....
In theory, more local congress-critters are more receptive to their constituents wants/needs than are the national politicians. For example, in my hometown they build the cores for ship/sub nuclear reactors (or is it nuculur... lol). As you can imagine, it's a very pro-defense spending area and our local politicians do their best to make sure more subs/destroyers/carriers get built.
To make this expensive nasa stuff fly, us US-ians will need enough of the politicians to feel like their constituents have something to gain in the near/medium term from more investment in space exploration. Sadly, outside of the Cape and Houtson... it's a bit of a hard sell. Sure everyone benefits in the long run, but short term? Really just those precious few congressional districts see any appreciable gain.
What about the moon landing? Well everyone seemingly benefited because we beat those evil commie soviets and showed them who's boss. So I guess here in 'Merica we need one of two things: money to be made and/or a villain to defeat.
I do personally feel that knowing how one is doing relative to their peers is important. Why? Because in life you want to do BETTER than your peers! Everything that matters in life is based on competition. (OK, not everything... everything that isn't the subject of a Beatles song or 50.) Competition is the basis for earning scholarships, jobs, promotions etc. You've got to be better than the next guy to get ahead, it's just a (somewhat sad) fact of life.
Knowing that you are "setting the curve" is a good feeling. It lets you know that you're doing a good job, and that you're doing it better than everyone else. In the later grades, it lets you know you're likely to get into better schools than the average Joe. In college running at the head of your class is a pretty good indication of how likely you are to get the best job upon graduation (or any at all).
If you're not one of those kids setting the curve, don't kid yourself into thinking you'll end up better off than those who do. You won't get the scholarship, job or promotion... they will. (Statistically controlling for character defects and nepotism of course.)
Letting our kids pretend they aren't in FIERCE competition with everyone around them isn't doing them any favors. Sure it may extend childhood a bit which is nice, but life will bitchslap them later on.
I'll be raising my daughter and son that's on the way to know that Johnny So-and-so did better than them on the test because they worked harder. That they lost the game because the other team practiced harder. That if they want to win next time they need to work harder. If they don't want to put in the effort they can't expect the rewards. It actually makes me quite sad, because it would be easier and more fun to just smile and say they're special and unique and blah blah blah... but that won't prepare them for life.
... Perhaps if I purchased a completely unsubsidized phone I could get it without a data plan...
No you couldn't. They're detecting what device it is and switching it to a smartphone plan if it detects a smartphone on the other end. At least this was the case when I looked into buying a cheapie android off of newegg without a plan.
Slashdot Mirror
Translated for us 'Mericans
"In the US at least the middle class is the hardest hit by taxes, increasing prices, increased transport costs - everything. Those on low wages get generous benefits while the middle class get taxed. The conservatives give the truly wealthy tax breaks that others cannot take advantage of. If this will help people move out of the middle class to either of the opposite ends its doing them a favor. I'm sick of explaining to the kids that I cannot afford a PS4 for their Christmas because travel costs to work are going up and tax allowances being reduced, at the same time that kids of a single mother who works in Wal-Mart part time can easily afford it - and then tell us how a charity is giving them a vacation in the Bahamas in the summer. I'll be lucky if we can afford a week in Atlantic City."
That and it's a jobs bill. Hard to consolidate your data centers out of country if that's illegal. Need in-country monkeys to run those boxes!
A cop doing their job.
...
This strikes me just like the cops back in college that would pull over TAXIS leaving bars in order to ticket the kids leaving the bar with public intoxication. Technically doing their job. Definitely adding incentive to the wrong behavior. It was "safer" to leave certain bars in your own car rather than in a cab ... I kid you not. This type of enforcement is making it "safer" for the texters to do it while driving ... harder for this asshat to catch them.
... and it could get someone hurt/killed. All the while this clown get's his name in the paper though for writing a bunch of tickets to non-violent scofflaws ... adding incentive to stopping minor offenders rather than actual criminals.
The incentive is certainly going to encourage the greater of the two evils
Beats the hell out of burying a bunch of landmines if you ask me. Lots easier to just go pickup the kill bots after you're done with the area.
Oh I get where you were going with that line of reasoning. Official inflation numbers are BS for a myriad of reasons and your 40x is likely more accurate. I was simply adding the GP's citation for him as I ran across the same number on wikipedia.
Citation needed.
from wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minimum_wage_in_the_United_States)
The minimum wage was re-established in the United States in 1938 (pursuant to the Fair Labor Standards Act), once again at $0.25 per hour ($4.10 in 2012 dollars[63]).
That's my issue with the whole thing. What I really want is selective autopilot. I'd love to have the option of putting my car in autopilot on the interstate and just taking a nap or playing with my kids int he back. We do lots of 500 mile 1-way trips back to grandma's house ... it would be great to just fill up the family truckster the night before and head off at midnight, everybody sleeping along the way.
It'd kind of be like hibernation during interstellar travel ... except mundane and boring :)
What a crock of sh*t! I grew up around lead, lead pipes in the house, lead paint, lead-acid batteries, etc. I haven't tried to kill anyone, and last I knew, I had a very high IQ (well, at least in HS, many, many years ago anyway), so this study is BS! We need lead in every day life. We need lead in solder, batteries, electronics, weights, etc. Lead is a very important metal, we can not do without it.
I am so sick of these environmentalist freaks, so sick.
So sick you wish to do them violent harm perhaps? :)
You might want to ask the Kurds, how that non-terrorism worked for them.
Agreed in principal. But when the gov't defines terrorism ... anything they do will not fit that definition. I'd wager that massacre was "officially" a gov't sanctioned rezoning initiative.
Is any of Apple's current product capable of wireless charging? Did they develop any of the technology, as in doing the research?
Nah. The new Lumia and Nexus 4 can do wireless charging. Those happen to be Microsoft and Google's flagship phones. Apple's phones don't do it yet, so they want to sue this competitive disadvantage out of existence. I guess they are unable to compete otherwise ...
... it may be time to start selling it off and taking your gains.
If you own AAPL
They can buy it from those of us with water. Detroit, Cleveland, Milwaukee and Chicago will become the richest places in America after winning the war with Canada over the Great Lakes :)
I mean, they are removing OIL and adding WATER. The WATER is lubricating the rocks and causing them to move ... more than the OIL was?
/sarcasm
I think I'll run out and replace the oil in my Jeep with some good old H2O!! 20 mpg here I come!!!
Current industrial farming practices use 10 calories of energy (mostly from petrochemicals) to produce 1 calorie of food.
Contemporary farming techniques are heavily dependent on petrochemicals to produce fertilizer.
Contemporary farming techniques deplete topsoil faster than it will naturally replenish.
That said, there're a lot of dandelions and wild garlic in most yards (and more acreage in lawns in the U.S. than any single crop).
When you figure out how to feed people oil we'll be 10x as efficient! Only mildly sarcastic there. Just how many "calories" of solar energy are used to grow that 1 calorie of food?
... but without that potato you'll starve.
(From wikipedia) The approximate average value cited,[4] 1.361 kW/m, is equivalent to 1.952 calories per minute per square centimeter, or 1.952 langleys (Ly)—or, in SI units— about 81.672 kJ/m per minute.
So for any plant that produces 1 calorie of nutritional value, every square centimeter of leaf area "wastes" the VAST majority of 1.952 calories a minute!
Bottom line, conversion losses exist. Solar energy is no more useful to our bodies as direct nourishment than crude oil. Energy is lost converting either oil (as fertilizer) or sunlight into a potato
deliberate political policy
Today the statists have us burning our food, while simultaneously driving pig farmers and egg producers out of business with animal `welfare' regulation and high feed cost.
Naturally, when the crash comes it will be the fault of `corporations.'
I wouldn't say it's the statists burning our food, or at least in my limited experience it wasn't the case. I grew up in a rural Indiana town and outside of a single factory, the largest portion of its economy is corn. When I was in HS in the 90's there were a couple years when the farmers had absolutely huge yields ... so much so in fact the price of corn went through the floor. Having family members that own large farms, it literally cost them more to drag the corn to the grain elevator for sale in gas/time/pay for farmhands than it was worth. End result? Pile it up and hope the price increases. When the price didn't increase and it started to rot, burn it and take the loss.
... without taking into account the fact that not all harvests are nearly as good.
At first I was a bit disgusted. After all, we were just talking about starving kids in Africa and Susanne Sommers makes a great pitch! But then I realized that in order to get that corn to the folks that need it, someone has to pay the farmer or HIS FAMILY will be the ones starving. (Maybe not literally starving, but they'd certainly lose the farm.)
Makes the ethanol mandates and their timing make more sense now that I think about it. A politician (or group there of) would be very likely to make the mistake "Corn is too cheap! Let's artificially create demand by using it in gasoline!"
The only difference is that when I was doing it, we were doing it for the "country". Now it is for Foxconn.
There is a difference?
Since Foxconn is not a Chinese company (it is Taiwanese), I would say that yes, there is a difference.
To be fair, many (most?) Chinese see Taiwan as a part of China (if the news is to be believed).
Devout Mormons are instructed to store away a year's worth of food and necessities. Here in Salt Lake City, Utah, there are numerous stores that cater to this. I wonder what NASA could learn from them. Some stores sell a complete [Freeze Dried] year's worth of food prepackaged, and variety is a big selling point. (And they have various options at various at various prices depending on the variety and quantity you want. (Or buy one of their grain grinders and some grain to mix it up a bit.)
So, NASA could just mail order three one-year packages per person, and be done with it.
So Mitt Romney will get us to Mars first? Color me confused :)
Personally, I can't stand ANY multiplayer games. Not sure exactly why, I guess I prefer to compete against fixed challenges and at my own pace. I am probably in the minority, but I certainly can't be alone.
Nope. Here's, let me prove it. Skyrim, Oblivion, Morrowind.
I know this may be borderline blaphemy ... but I've always wanted a limited multiplayer component to those games. I generally play with a couple guys, mostly to drink beer and BS about life and our wives/kids and what not over the mic (in private chat of course wouldn't want to offend the tweens!) I guess it's mostly like a pokernight, but since we are now geographically dispersed it's conducted over an Xbox controller and microphone rather than a table and stack of cards.
:) The drop-in drop-out system could probably work something like Diablo 3 or Borderlands.
Not interested in the MMORPG nonsense, too many people running around that we'd rather not interact with. We actually had high hopes for Two Worlds, but it was such a buggy POS that it was literally impossible to play. Think Oblivion done by interns.
But if someone could jump in and play as your follower I think it would really add to the game. Preferably 2-3 followers actually, so one of us wouldn't be left hanging
That said, for the love of Mara please don't let MP ruin it! No auction houses or anything of that nature!
Have you seen a pug? That guy was a genius :)
It might actually be nice to have an election won on the back of how bright your geeks are, rather than just how much money you have.
I would impose the condition that you are only allowed to use geeks that support your politics though. Rather than permitting outsourcing, I want to see this work being done by card-carrying members of your political party.
Problem is, more money buys better, brighter geeks.
His superpower is the ability to make you shit your pants with the brown note.
Yeah, yeah, I know... Mythbusters, bla bla bla...
Only if he sings "Chocolate Rain" ...
*ducks
The problem generally isn't the communities of more than 1000, it's all the dispersed "neighborhoods" in the rural parts. Back in my hometown there's multiple rural parts that probably have around 500 or so people living in them, but they're all on between 5-20 acres ... with tracts of farmland thrown in for good measure. The houses will generally cluster in groups of 5 or 6 along a stretch of road, each one on multiple acres and these clusters will be a mile or two apart form each other. Thus far it hasn't been feasible (read profitable) to run cable lines out there between these dispersed clusters of houses and this is only a few miles (about 3-5) out of town where broadband is available. It's not like they are in the middle of nowhere, but they aren't organized into communities either.
... and he's buying in town.
If I still lived there I would want a house out there. It's a really good life, quiet, peaceful plenty of room for the kids and dogs to play. But in reality I would have to buy a house in town because of lack of broadband. My brother that still lives back home is currently in the same situation
I want to take one of these setups to an organic orchard and program it to shriek in agony when someone picks the fruit. That should give those vegetarian hippies something to think about!
Remember, all American's can have an impact on that decision. But may I ask - as a European - how you could do that ? ....
In theory, more local congress-critters are more receptive to their constituents wants/needs than are the national politicians. For example, in my hometown they build the cores for ship/sub nuclear reactors (or is it nuculur ... lol). As you can imagine, it's a very pro-defense spending area and our local politicians do their best to make sure more subs/destroyers/carriers get built.
... it's a bit of a hard sell. Sure everyone benefits in the long run, but short term? Really just those precious few congressional districts see any appreciable gain.
To make this expensive nasa stuff fly, us US-ians will need enough of the politicians to feel like their constituents have something to gain in the near/medium term from more investment in space exploration. Sadly, outside of the Cape and Houtson
What about the moon landing? Well everyone seemingly benefited because we beat those evil commie soviets and showed them who's boss. So I guess here in 'Merica we need one of two things: money to be made and/or a villain to defeat.
I do personally feel that knowing how one is doing relative to their peers is important. Why? Because in life you want to do BETTER than your peers! Everything that matters in life is based on competition. (OK, not everything ... everything that isn't the subject of a Beatles song or 50.) Competition is the basis for earning scholarships, jobs, promotions etc. You've got to be better than the next guy to get ahead, it's just a (somewhat sad) fact of life.
... they will. (Statistically controlling for character defects and nepotism of course.)
... but that won't prepare them for life.
Knowing that you are "setting the curve" is a good feeling. It lets you know that you're doing a good job, and that you're doing it better than everyone else. In the later grades, it lets you know you're likely to get into better schools than the average Joe. In college running at the head of your class is a pretty good indication of how likely you are to get the best job upon graduation (or any at all).
If you're not one of those kids setting the curve, don't kid yourself into thinking you'll end up better off than those who do. You won't get the scholarship, job or promotion
Letting our kids pretend they aren't in FIERCE competition with everyone around them isn't doing them any favors. Sure it may extend childhood a bit which is nice, but life will bitchslap them later on.
I'll be raising my daughter and son that's on the way to know that Johnny So-and-so did better than them on the test because they worked harder. That they lost the game because the other team practiced harder. That if they want to win next time they need to work harder. If they don't want to put in the effort they can't expect the rewards. It actually makes me quite sad, because it would be easier and more fun to just smile and say they're special and unique and blah blah blah
... Perhaps if I purchased a completely unsubsidized phone I could get it without a data plan...
No you couldn't. They're detecting what device it is and switching it to a smartphone plan if it detects a smartphone on the other end. At least this was the case when I looked into buying a cheapie android off of newegg without a plan.