Any of those three sources I listed can be grown on land that is poorly suited to growing traditional food crops.
The fact that they can be grown on poor soil doesn't mean that they will. If it will grow well in poor soil, it will probably grow even better on good soil, and if that is where the profit is, that's what the farmers will do. -- JimFive
My point is that Biology is not unalterably set against Society. My attempt at wit clearly failed so let's try a slightly more serious approach.
The real issue is that our society does not adequately support health and child care for parents that attempt to maintain a middle class lifestyle. 50 years ago a middle class lifestyle was attainable with 1 full time worker, now it takes 2 people working at least full time. If we want parents, especially mothers, to be successful in the workplace we have to put in place systems that support this. Workplace child care, universal health care, flexible hours, telecommuting, realistic expectations (50+ hour work weeks are bad for everyone and should not be considered standard in any field), and a fundamental recognition that we work to live, not live to work, are all necessary to create an environment where the person is allowed to work to their full potential without shortchanging the rest of their life.
The best solution to this would be for medical science to figure out how to drastically lengthen human lifespans...
The longer the lifespan, the longer the person will be expected to work to support themselves, this isn't remotely close to solving any of the problems that we face as a society.
-- JimFive
The big problem is biology: we humans don't live long enough, and women in particular are screwed because they can't have children past their 30s. (Well, they can, but the risk of having a Downs Syndrome or otherwise defective child go up exponentially. It's hard enough raising a normal child; a special-needs child requires people with no real jobs.) If people could spend their first 50 or 75 years being single, getting married, building careers and saving money, and then have children after their retirement, then we wouldn't have these problems.
The big problem is society. If people could spend the years from 20 - 45 having and raising children and then spend the next 20 years having a career then we wouldn't have these problems.
It seems foolish to blame biology when it's our own fault for building a society that ignores biology.
Society is (should be) a lot more flexible than biology. -- JimFive
The McCain plan was an obvious, painless, and timely way to improve health care for Americans.
The McCain plan created incentives for employers to stop offering healthcare (removing the employer tax credit). So, my employer is going to stop offering health insurance, give me a raise equivalent to my portion(~20%) of the premium, and pocket the difference. I then am supposed to go out and buy health insurance. My take home would go up enough to cover maybe 30% of health insurance at group rates(My 20% of the premium + the raise equivalent - Withholding), but I can't get group rates because there's no group anymore. So, my family's insurance bill would be around $10,000 a year, I get a tax break on 1/2 of that and my raise covers 20% of the rest leaving me down about $4000 a year. This is supposed to be good for me? -- JimFive
the rates charged to individuals were *much* higher than the rates they charged large insurance plans.
Not exactly. They "Charge" the same rate, but the insurance company doesn't pay what is "Charged" the insurance company pays what is "Allowed" by the fee schedule. The bigger the insurance company the lower that "Allowed" amount is down to the floor set my Medicaid (No one can pay less than Medicaid for service). If your provider is "participating" with the insurance company that generally means that they have agreed not to charge the excess back to the patient so the patient pays their part of the "Allowed" amount(Co-pay, or deductible, or 20% or whatever). If the provider is NOT participating they have the option of charging the patient for the entire disallowed amount.
When the provider finds out your paying cash, he gives you a break on the "Charged" amount but you are still paying at least as much, and probably more, than the insurance company would have ended up paying. -- JimFive
Actually, for a DVD/CD, there is no licensing of the content. You buy a copy of that movie/album and what you can do with it is solely determined by law. I see the FBI/Interpol warnings before movies, but I've never seen a shrinkwrap license in a DVD/Music CD case.
Sure you aren't buying THE movie, but you are buying a COPY of the movie, and you can do whatever you want with that copy within the confines of copyright law and the DMCA. This points up the real problem with the DMCA, it allows the producer to prevent (otherwise) legitimate use of owned content. -- JimFive
Why do you think that torrents are going to help in this situation? Torrents take advantage of the fact that most people have a much lower upload rate than download so you can speed up your download by using multiple sources. If the bottleneck is that you have slow, lossy downloads then making multiple connections is not going to speed up the transfer. -- JimFive
I agree, it has to cost less than $50 and come with a subscription package. (Maybe $50 with a 6 month subscription.) Ideally you would be able to pay less if you accepted certain types of ads. Maybe a 5% discount for accepting the classfied section or a 10% discount to get the display ads. Perhaps a premium ad-free subscription. But, no matter what, it can't contain big honking ads in the middle of the articles. No one would accept that in a printed paper and we shouldn't accept it on a screen. A small, discreet ad area at the top and bottom or along an edge of the screen would be an acceptable default. -- JimFive
I think we disagree on just one point. She gave them the wrong numbers to call her parents
Why are they asking her for a phone number? You're telling me that the school doesn't have emergency contact information for all of their students?
guess she's not there against her will if she'll trespass to be there.
Or, she's afraid to tell her mom that she got suspended. Which indicates to me that informing the parent (directly, don't send home a note) might be effective. -- JimFive
You don't know who you're getting the files from, so neither does Joe Schmo from the RIAA.
Sure he does. He has an IP address log that can be used for discovery. That IP address goes to the neighboring node that is owned by his "friend" (friend1). And from there to another friend(friend2) all the way to the end (friendN). It can be shown that (friend1) possessed and distributed copyrighted material. Friend1's defense is, I'm in a darknet and don't know what material is passed through my computer. So what, you distributed it. You are not going to get away with any sort of ISP type defense because your computer's SOLE purpose in the network is to hide the traffic. ISP's work to route traffic from one segment to the next. You are routing traffic from your ISP back to your ISP.
At least one of three things happens:
1. Friend1 is fined for copyright infringement.
2. Friend1 gives up his "friends" in exchange for not being fined.
3. ISP Logs trace it back one hop at a time. (If I get 400 packets from 127.0.0.2 and after each one send a packet to 127.0.0.3 there is a reasonable assumption that I am forwarding packets even if the packets are encrypted.)
--
JimFive
First off, I don't disagree with you, but at the same time, I don't think that having the on site cop handle the matter is that far off base either.
The only thing that is really off base to me is charging her with a crime (assuming they actually go through with pressing charges, etc.) Certainly, having the cop remove her from the classroom is legitimate.
You can either give it up or we'll call your parents and keep you in the office until they come to get you. We'll return your phone to you at the end of the day.
Eat me
The girl can say "eat me" all she wants. Keep her in an office with the cop or counselor (My shool used the counselor's office for this sort of thing). Call the parent's contact numbers until you get someone and tell them they have to pick her up. It's okay if the parents get annoyed, that is sort of the point.
The fact is, some parents won't or can't discipline their kids.
Yes and no. Some parents don't discipline their kids to the standards that most of society expects. This might be inability or it might be a difference in standards. The point of calling the parents to pick her up is to make it the parent's problem. If your child is unruly you are going to be inconvenienced. If the child continues to be unruly then the parents are going to become more and more inconvenienced.
It seems to me that this sort of situation is totally predictable and that the school should have procedures to deal with it that don't involve an arrest record and criminal proceedings. If this had been parents calling the cops to deal with their unruly child there would have been a pretty good chance of losing custody, but that isn't something the school cares about. -- JimFive
So if I lie to my teacher, or otherwise violate school policy, I can be searched and arrested? (cite some legal basis here please, I can find none and would find it most disturbing)
How is this different from saying "If I smuggle an 8oz can of Coke through a TSA security check point, and there are witnesses, and I lie and am a complete prick about it, I can get in trouble?" Why should she get away with texting when my tiny swiss army knife had to go in the bin? I'm pretty sure if I tried to hide it in my butt crack and played games with the TSA officers, I would've had a worse day than she did. If you're voluntarily in a public place that has rules, you have to follow them. It sucks but that's the way it is.
How it's different, short version: Violating the school's policy is not breaking the law.
She was not voluntarily in a public place. She was neither there voluntarily, nor is a school a public place.
The big gripe I have about these sorts of stories is that the school administration reacts stupidly. The school is being trusted to act as parents (possibly bad, but that's the way it is). You don't call the cops on your kids because they're being belligerant. Suspension, ok. Expulsion, maybe. Call the parents, certainly. The way this should have been handled is: First Offense: "We know you have been using your cell phone and disrupting class. You can either give it up or we'll call your parents and keep you in the office until they come to get you. We'll return your phone to you at the end of the day.
Second Offense: We're calling your parents and keeping you here until they come to get you.
Third Offense: Same thing with 1-3 days in house detention/suspension. Possibly confiscate phone every morning, return every afternoon (Or keep it until the end of the term if legal).
--
JimFive
The first 3 digits of your 7 digit phone number are called the Exchange. The exchange, literally (for land lines), identifies the switching office that your phone is wired to. So the exchange identifies the region served by the switching office. Since each exchange can only have something less than 9999 phone numbers it is pretty easy to see that people know you live by the hospital because your exchange is the same as the hospital's exchange. This is easiest in areas with large buildings with lots of phones like a hospital or office building, because the building (e.g.) takes up a big percentage of those 9999 phone numbers.
For a cell phone the exchange indicates the carrier and the geographic area where the cell phone was initially activated (Or transfered to if you change area codes). Since cell phone numbers are transferable (in the U.S.) you can't get a lot of information from the number.
-- JimFive
It may be naive, but it's also more realistic than thinking someone is actively watching where you go in hopes you slip up somewhere.
This is where I see the naivete (or it may just be disingenuousness). The concern isn't someone actively watching in case you slip up. The concern is that once obscure and ephemeral information is now being captured and stored. Of the top of my head I see two (general) potential abuse scenarios.
1. Someone with access decides they want to bring you down. They review all of your history that they can get their hands on until they find something to nail you with. This is the "Give me six lines from the hand of the most honest man..." problem.
2. You are in the wrong place at the wrong time and "they" need to bust somebody. You were there, they can prove it, they have the logs. The long term abuse potential of this one is that courts decide that "you were there" becomes probably cause in some situations.
The other issue is that law enforcement can now subpoena the records of e.g. Google to find out where you've been and there is no way for you to find out if this has happened.
Now, I'm not overly paranoid about these issues, but the potential for abuse is certainly there.
-- JimFive
However, there is no definition of life that fire cannot meet, which the mule can. In other words, any non-contrived definition of life that includes the mule must also include fire.
In addition to growth and respiration etc.; for something to be alive it must be an individual entity that is separable from its fuel source. The reason the fire argument seems to work is that we don't recognize that the normal definitions of life are about individuals, but when we ask "Is X alive?" we are speaking of individual entities.
A mule, a plant, a tape worm, moss, a fungus, can all be lifted away from their current source of fuel and put down somewhere else and continue to respire and grow. Fire cannot, the only way to carry fire is to carry it's fuel. -- JimFive
o Issue at least one executive order to strike down one of the myriad unconstitutional laws violating the bill of rights
Imho he can't do that, he can veto before signing but once it becomes law of the land only either the Supreme Court or Congress can do anything about it.
He can't "strike down" the law, but he can order the Executive Departments to not enforce the law and to argue against the law if a case makes it to the Federal Appeals Court system. -- JimFive
"harm its ability to recruit and retain employees"? How the bloody hell does someone being unable to marry someone else prevent you from employing them?
Assuming that California's law is similar to Michigan's the answer is: By making it impossible to provide same-sex partner insurance benefits. -- JimFive
Teaching specific apps in schools is a poor idea, since by the time these kids venture into the workplace the apps they used in school will be horrendously obsolete and no longer used... I used wordperfect (for dos) in school,
While that used to be true, I don't think it is any more. MS Word didn't change much from Word 6.0 up through Word 2003 (I haven't used 2007, but I understand the interface is quite a bit different). So learning MS Word in high school in 1994 would have held you in good stead for at least 13 years. -- JimFive
Wouldn't it be straightforward to adjust the impact factor to only include references to a different journal. That is, a reference to an article that you published doesn't count. -- JimFive
Put Linux in foreground on side of screen. PC/Mac in back on other side. Linux working through his in basket. PC/Mac meaningless chat. When Linux's inbox is empty he looks over at PC/Mac and says something like "I'm done, are you guys ready for lunch" PC/Mac look embarrased and go back to their desks with full in-baskets.
The ad needs to reference the original Mac ads where the people are personification of the OS not the Microsoft ads where the people represent the users.
--
JimFive
You talk about companies trying to influence the vote like its a terrible thing. Shouldnt both sides be allowed to state their positions?
The company is not a "side" in a union vote. The sides of the vote are the pro-union workers and the anti-union workers. A union is a formal association of workers and the employer really should have no input into the process at all.
The statement "[one] of the most dirty and unsanitary-looking food-service places I have seen," is very clearly an opinion by the author and he or she is making a personal judgment of the place in comparison to other food-service stores.
Unless the poster happens to be the owner of the Doughnut Shop down the street, or someone with a grievance against the DD owner who has never been in the shop. You can't know that without knowing who the poster actually is. If the poster has never been in the shop then the statement is a lie, and potentially defamatory, even though it is couched as opinion.
Slashdot Mirror
The fact that they can be grown on poor soil doesn't mean that they will. If it will grow well in poor soil, it will probably grow even better on good soil, and if that is where the profit is, that's what the farmers will do.
--
JimFive
The real issue is that our society does not adequately support health and child care for parents that attempt to maintain a middle class lifestyle. 50 years ago a middle class lifestyle was attainable with 1 full time worker, now it takes 2 people working at least full time. If we want parents, especially mothers, to be successful in the workplace we have to put in place systems that support this. Workplace child care, universal health care, flexible hours, telecommuting, realistic expectations (50+ hour work weeks are bad for everyone and should not be considered standard in any field), and a fundamental recognition that we work to live, not live to work, are all necessary to create an environment where the person is allowed to work to their full potential without shortchanging the rest of their life.
The longer the lifespan, the longer the person will be expected to work to support themselves, this isn't remotely close to solving any of the problems that we face as a society.
--
JimFive
The big problem is society. If people could spend the years from 20 - 45 having and raising children and then spend the next 20 years having a career then we wouldn't have these problems.
It seems foolish to blame biology when it's our own fault for building a society that ignores biology.
Society is (should be) a lot more flexible than biology.
--
JimFive
The McCain plan created incentives for employers to stop offering healthcare (removing the employer tax credit). So, my employer is going to stop offering health insurance, give me a raise equivalent to my portion(~20%) of the premium, and pocket the difference. I then am supposed to go out and buy health insurance. My take home would go up enough to cover maybe 30% of health insurance at group rates(My 20% of the premium + the raise equivalent - Withholding), but I can't get group rates because there's no group anymore. So, my family's insurance bill would be around $10,000 a year, I get a tax break on 1/2 of that and my raise covers 20% of the rest leaving me down about $4000 a year. This is supposed to be good for me?
--
JimFive
Not exactly. They "Charge" the same rate, but the insurance company doesn't pay what is "Charged" the insurance company pays what is "Allowed" by the fee schedule. The bigger the insurance company the lower that "Allowed" amount is down to the floor set my Medicaid (No one can pay less than Medicaid for service). If your provider is "participating" with the insurance company that generally means that they have agreed not to charge the excess back to the patient so the patient pays their part of the "Allowed" amount(Co-pay, or deductible, or 20% or whatever). If the provider is NOT participating they have the option of charging the patient for the entire disallowed amount.
When the provider finds out your paying cash, he gives you a break on the "Charged" amount but you are still paying at least as much, and probably more, than the insurance company would have ended up paying.
--
JimFive
Actually, for a DVD/CD, there is no licensing of the content. You buy a copy of that movie/album and what you can do with it is solely determined by law. I see the FBI/Interpol warnings before movies, but I've never seen a shrinkwrap license in a DVD/Music CD case.
Sure you aren't buying THE movie, but you are buying a COPY of the movie, and you can do whatever you want with that copy within the confines of copyright law and the DMCA. This points up the real problem with the DMCA, it allows the producer to prevent (otherwise) legitimate use of owned content.
--
JimFive
Why do you think that torrents are going to help in this situation? Torrents take advantage of the fact that most people have a much lower upload rate than download so you can speed up your download by using multiple sources. If the bottleneck is that you have slow, lossy downloads then making multiple connections is not going to speed up the transfer.
--
JimFive
I agree, it has to cost less than $50 and come with a subscription package. (Maybe $50 with a 6 month subscription.) Ideally you would be able to pay less if you accepted certain types of ads. Maybe a 5% discount for accepting the classfied section or a 10% discount to get the display ads. Perhaps a premium ad-free subscription. But, no matter what, it can't contain big honking ads in the middle of the articles. No one would accept that in a printed paper and we shouldn't accept it on a screen. A small, discreet ad area at the top and bottom or along an edge of the screen would be an acceptable default.
--
JimFive
Short answer: Promotion Path.
--
JimFive
Why are they asking her for a phone number? You're telling me that the school doesn't have emergency contact information for all of their students?
Or, she's afraid to tell her mom that she got suspended. Which indicates to me that informing the parent (directly, don't send home a note) might be effective.
--
JimFive
Sure he does. He has an IP address log that can be used for discovery. That IP address goes to the neighboring node that is owned by his "friend" (friend1). And from there to another friend(friend2) all the way to the end (friendN). It can be shown that (friend1) possessed and distributed copyrighted material. Friend1's defense is, I'm in a darknet and don't know what material is passed through my computer. So what, you distributed it. You are not going to get away with any sort of ISP type defense because your computer's SOLE purpose in the network is to hide the traffic. ISP's work to route traffic from one segment to the next. You are routing traffic from your ISP back to your ISP.
At least one of three things happens:
1. Friend1 is fined for copyright infringement.
2. Friend1 gives up his "friends" in exchange for not being fined.
3. ISP Logs trace it back one hop at a time. (If I get 400 packets from 127.0.0.2 and after each one send a packet to 127.0.0.3 there is a reasonable assumption that I am forwarding packets even if the packets are encrypted.)
--
JimFive
The only thing that is really off base to me is charging her with a crime (assuming they actually go through with pressing charges, etc.) Certainly, having the cop remove her from the classroom is legitimate.
The girl can say "eat me" all she wants. Keep her in an office with the cop or counselor (My shool used the counselor's office for this sort of thing). Call the parent's contact numbers until you get someone and tell them they have to pick her up. It's okay if the parents get annoyed, that is sort of the point.
Yes and no. Some parents don't discipline their kids to the standards that most of society expects. This might be inability or it might be a difference in standards. The point of calling the parents to pick her up is to make it the parent's problem. If your child is unruly you are going to be inconvenienced. If the child continues to be unruly then the parents are going to become more and more inconvenienced.
It seems to me that this sort of situation is totally predictable and that the school should have procedures to deal with it that don't involve an arrest record and criminal proceedings. If this had been parents calling the cops to deal with their unruly child there would have been a pretty good chance of losing custody, but that isn't something the school cares about.
--
JimFive
How it's different, short version: Violating the school's policy is not breaking the law.
She was not voluntarily in a public place. She was neither there voluntarily, nor is a school a public place.
The big gripe I have about these sorts of stories is that the school administration reacts stupidly. The school is being trusted to act as parents (possibly bad, but that's the way it is). You don't call the cops on your kids because they're being belligerant. Suspension, ok. Expulsion, maybe. Call the parents, certainly. The way this should have been handled is:
First Offense: "We know you have been using your cell phone and disrupting class. You can either give it up or we'll call your parents and keep you in the office until they come to get you. We'll return your phone to you at the end of the day.
Second Offense: We're calling your parents and keeping you here until they come to get you.
Third Offense: Same thing with 1-3 days in house detention/suspension. Possibly confiscate phone every morning, return every afternoon (Or keep it until the end of the term if legal).
--
JimFive
Assuming you really don't know.
The first 3 digits of your 7 digit phone number are called the Exchange. The exchange, literally (for land lines), identifies the switching office that your phone is wired to. So the exchange identifies the region served by the switching office. Since each exchange can only have something less than 9999 phone numbers it is pretty easy to see that people know you live by the hospital because your exchange is the same as the hospital's exchange. This is easiest in areas with large buildings with lots of phones like a hospital or office building, because the building (e.g.) takes up a big percentage of those 9999 phone numbers.
For a cell phone the exchange indicates the carrier and the geographic area where the cell phone was initially activated (Or transfered to if you change area codes). Since cell phone numbers are transferable (in the U.S.) you can't get a lot of information from the number.
--
JimFive
This is where I see the naivete (or it may just be disingenuousness). The concern isn't someone actively watching in case you slip up. The concern is that once obscure and ephemeral information is now being captured and stored. Of the top of my head I see two (general) potential abuse scenarios.
1. Someone with access decides they want to bring you down. They review all of your history that they can get their hands on until they find something to nail you with. This is the "Give me six lines from the hand of the most honest man..." problem.
2. You are in the wrong place at the wrong time and "they" need to bust somebody. You were there, they can prove it, they have the logs. The long term abuse potential of this one is that courts decide that "you were there" becomes probably cause in some situations.
The other issue is that law enforcement can now subpoena the records of e.g. Google to find out where you've been and there is no way for you to find out if this has happened.
Now, I'm not overly paranoid about these issues, but the potential for abuse is certainly there.
--
JimFive
In addition to growth and respiration etc.; for something to be alive it must be an individual entity that is separable from its fuel source. The reason the fire argument seems to work is that we don't recognize that the normal definitions of life are about individuals, but when we ask "Is X alive?" we are speaking of individual entities.
A mule, a plant, a tape worm, moss, a fungus, can all be lifted away from their current source of fuel and put down somewhere else and continue to respire and grow. Fire cannot, the only way to carry fire is to carry it's fuel.
--
JimFive
Oblig xkcd
--
JimFive
He can't "strike down" the law, but he can order the Executive Departments to not enforce the law and to argue against the law if a case makes it to the Federal Appeals Court system.
--
JimFive
Assuming that California's law is similar to Michigan's the answer is: By making it impossible to provide same-sex partner insurance benefits.
--
JimFive
While that used to be true, I don't think it is any more. MS Word didn't change much from Word 6.0 up through Word 2003 (I haven't used 2007, but I understand the interface is quite a bit different). So learning MS Word in high school in 1994 would have held you in good stead for at least 13 years.
--
JimFive
Wouldn't it be straightforward to adjust the impact factor to only include references to a different journal. That is, a reference to an article that you published doesn't count.
--
JimFive
I had a similar idea:
Put Linux in foreground on side of screen. PC/Mac in back on other side. Linux working through his in basket. PC/Mac meaningless chat. When Linux's inbox is empty he looks over at PC/Mac and says something like "I'm done, are you guys ready for lunch" PC/Mac look embarrased and go back to their desks with full in-baskets.
The ad needs to reference the original Mac ads where the people are personification of the OS not the Microsoft ads where the people represent the users.
--
JimFive
I'm pretty sure you're talking about Passenger Pigeons.
You talk about companies trying to influence the vote like its a terrible thing. Shouldnt both sides be allowed to state their positions?
The company is not a "side" in a union vote. The sides of the vote are the pro-union workers and the anti-union workers. A union is a formal association of workers and the employer really should have no input into the process at all.
--
JimFive
Unless the poster happens to be the owner of the Doughnut Shop down the street, or someone with a grievance against the DD owner who has never been in the shop. You can't know that without knowing who the poster actually is. If the poster has never been in the shop then the statement is a lie, and potentially defamatory, even though it is couched as opinion.
--
JimFive