I remember a post on USENET after 9/11. Some spammer made a post declaring that by seeking to keep spammers blocked that we were the "real terrorists". Seriously, smoke hadn't even died down yet. USENET basically died due to spammers. That same mindset is alive and well in advertisers today. Anything that threatens their revenue is the greatest evil that they can imagine in the world. It is very difficult to make a moral distinction between spammers and modern online advertisers.
It doesn't really seem that small overall. 64MB RAM with 16MB flash is not tiny in the home router world where OpenWRT, DD-WRT, and the like are popular. It's tiny in physical size only.
One big difference is I think the outright lying and dishonesty involved with H1-B. Companies have to declare that they could not find any domestic workers with the necessary skills. The concept is good in theory, there are plenty of highly skilled people in foreign countries that we can make good use of. Doctors, scientists, top end engineers, etc. However H1-B is far too often used to get cheaper labor for basic skills (IT grunts, call centers, and entry level tech jobs).
Whereas with undocumented workers they are often doing jobs where it is difficult to get local workers. It's illegal anyway and the government is not colluding, despite campaign allegations otherwise. They're not necessarily replacing blue collar workers or union jobs, they're doing jobs below minimum wage.
I'm on 12Mbps. It's so much faster than what I have that it's great. I can stream HD TV without dropping resolution down, and that's basically the most heavy use most home users will need. I could spend more money and bump it up more, but I don't need more. Sure there are people who want to stream multiple shows at once but I don't know if that's typical usage (of course everyone thinks they're exactly average).
We can teach science and at the end of the day when the kids go home the parents are allowed to say "forget all that evil science you learned in school today." It all works out. This is how it has worked since the day we created public schools and decided that all children of all backgrounds deserve an education. It's exactly how it worked in the 1950's that people look back on with rose colored glasses. Kids were taught evolution in the schools in the 50s and the parents did their best to teach the kids to forget it all again.
Part of the reason poor children go to poor schools is white flight. We used to have desegregation, and it actually worked. But whites didn't like it. Thus was born the voucher system. It may not be how it is viewed today but the original idea was to avoid sending your lily white kids to the same school as that other kind. Vouchers were absolutely not about creating equality amongst educational opportunities, but to make private schools affordable to the middle class (those who could not easily afford to move out of the school districts). Today vouchers are a tacit admission that we have intentionally failed the public schools and now that they're doomed there's no reason not to let the our kids go somewhere else and let those left behind wither away. People can't even see this anymore, I see parents going into severe debt to pay for private schools or to afford a house in a rich public school district, and they look at me like I'm crazy if I suggest that by abandoning the schools that they have become a part of the problem.
And how to pay for it? The costs to build new private schools can not be covered by a voucher. We have to use existing schools due to the economics, there's no money to pay for new ones. But everyone also seems to be working as hard as they can to ensure that public schools fail. Every dollar going to a voucher is one dollar subtracted from a public school.
If you build a private school next door to a public school (assuming the money is somehow found) and a voucher covers 100% of the cost, including the cost of transportation, then what happens to the public school? Leave it there to decay into nothing (no taxes to tear it down, remember)? What happens to the students, the ones that everyone insists are incorrigible criminals-in-training, do they go to the same private school as the rich kids? Will the private schools for poor black kids have exactly the same quality of teachers and facilities as for the private schools for rich white kids? What happens in Oklahoma if you've got a private Young-Earth-Creationist school that does not teach any science and starts graduating a bunch of students that don't have the necessary education to enter college or get a job, all paid for by your tax dollars?
And to be fair, or at least pretending to be fair, that voucher also must cover the cost of transportation so that the poor kid can use that voucher anywhere in the state (in case there are no good schools in the entire county, which is not unheard of). That voucher may also have to pay for room and board, as not all children live close enough to a school (and yes, there are public schools which have room and board).
We need to present a flat earth versus round earth discussion in our schools rather then present only one of these theories as true. We especially resent the attitude that those with contrarian views are nut jobs. It hurts when my children come home from school and tell me that their teachers called me an anti-science dingbat, I don't want to see my kids brainwashed by the government. What's so hard in presenting the weaknesses in a round earth theory (and remember it's only a theory) or in discussing the controversy?
This is basically where "intelligent design" fell apart. This was originally a way to present creationism with religion stripped out of it. However all the proponents of intelligent design were very strongly and firmly in the camp of exactly one narrow viewpoint from one branch of one religion. Which is why it also felt the need to promote young Earth viewpoints. So the religious parts kept sticking to the intelligent design idea. Sort of like stoned pothead trying to promote hemp while also saying "it's not about marijuana!"
I think the problem these people have (the religious right trying to legislate education) is not that they aren't teaching their kids religion at home and church, but that they've latched onto a belief that there is a conspiracy to brainwash their kids when they're in public schools. They are very wary of people trying to sneak in evolution in the guise of science (hah!), or that a trusted teacher who says "believe me, this is the truth" will have too much influence, etc. So part of this is their attempt to push back against the forces teaching their kids to be liberal.
They are especially concerned I think with kids who aren't theirs, they don't want a hyper-liberal next generation that believes in evolution. They're not stupid, they see that their view is getting diminished especially now that gay marriage is legal and it's mostly due to a younger generation with different views. They can see the demographics changing, and so this is also their attempt to push back against the demographic change.
I don't believe any of that, but I do think this is what they believe.
Twenty four states have laws requiring electors to vote according to who they pledged for (if you pledge for the wrong person you won't get appointed as an elector). If you change you mind between being appointed and the actual vote you will most likely either get in trouble or have your vote discounted. Most electors come from political parties so they're already very strongly committed to their winning candidates in the first place. So yes, half the states do give electors an obligation to vote per the popular vote, and the rest are appointing people with a vested interest in sticking with their party.
Overall the number of unfaithful presidential electors over the course of US history is pretty small. A complete list is on Wikipedia and is somewhat interesting to read the history on it.
In forty eight states the popular vote decides who the electors will vote for as "winner takes all". The other two states use a mix of popular vote in each congressional district and statewide popular vote to determine the electors. So the winner is not necessarily the country wide popular vote, but the popular vote absolutely matters when choosing electors. Saying "my vote doesn't matter" is naive and stupid. Doubly stupid because all the ballots have more than a single presidential choice on them, there are almost always statewide, regional, and local votes to be decided as well.
The kooky base doens't get to decide what a "Real" republican is. However they started using that word more often and managed to get it to stick. In the past when RINO was a newer term it referred to elected politicians who voted contrary to how the political leadership dictated, if they did it too often, then over time it started meaning anyone who compromised too much, then later it meant any moderate. So ya, the fringe elements ended up controlling that term and the traditional Republican style which was more moderate ended up on the losing end.
Politics has never been about embracing reality, so any sort of name calling that sticks is effective. Also in America with a de-facto two party system it means that every few years the two political parties change their stances and outlooks. Sometimes they fight to grab the center, sometimes they migrate away from the center, though generally you don't see both parties striving to be on the frings at the same time because there's always that tempting center where all the votes are.
There are hints of such things as contempt for liberals who aren't the right sort of liberals. In the UK you can be a working class "sell out", the Labour Party is often accused of that for not being more strongly opposed to immigration. Though the effect in that case tends to have the angry people leave the political process altogether. Whereas with Republicans they were smarter and stuck with the system and changed it from within. Though ironic that is mostly the new Tea Party types who accuse the traditional Republicans of being RINO instead of the other way around. With politics it's all about perception.
Stupid is a universal. What happens is when stupidity clumps together into like minded groups, it forms this phenomena called "politics". As this accretes and gains form it creates a more formalized stupidity structures called "political parties". This is evolution, which is why political parties are not the result of intelligent design.
However note that they don't do this within a country. Netflix has same content and prices for California versus Alabama, Texas versus Alaska, even though those regions have different abilities to pay. And yet gasoline sells for different prices in different regions. DVD sales however tend to be pretty much the same price across the country, barring differences because a local store can change prices. That's because it's a pain to adjust prices regionally when you're a centralized company, and partially it's too easy to just cross a border or mail the product to a different state (legally).
It does make a little sense to do this nationally with actual goods since you generally must have a national distribution anyway, there are stricter border controls, and it's a lot harder and more expensive to transport goods across international borders. You can even morally buy the DVD in country A and mail it to country B, though it may be illegal in some countries. It makes a lot less sense with digital only items, as the internet doesn't respect borders. That's why the media industry spends so much time and effort attempting to enforce regional differences for digital items as if they were physical items. DVD regional encoding was stupid and trivially broken, essentially ineffective. So they upped the ante with bluray/hddvd, with a really ridiculous DRM system (update your players firmware every time you enter a new disc). Now with streaming it's even sillier, as they're really never going to be able to clamp down on ways to proxy your location (and even if Netflix were only $1/month in Nepal, the lag if you were to route through there would be horrible).
Then what about Canada vs US? Demographics are very similar. This is not third world prices versus first world prices, so why the angst from media companies about streaming from the wrong side of that border? If you can pick up broadcast TV from the other side of the border then why not allow streaming?
I've got a coworker using vi who seems to take it as a challenge to watch me over my shoulder and point out "vi could do the same thing in fewer keystrokes". He doesn't care that Emacs can probably do it too it's only that I haven't memorized everything, and even though I use vi all the time I haven't memorized all of its keystrokes.
It's a pointless exercise to go down that route, because most of the reason for sticking with an editor is based on muscle memory anyway.
The problem isn't the piracy, or the VPN, or cable vs streaming. The problem ultimately is the moronic idea of time/location based restrictions, which for some reason seems to be a major focus of the content owners. There would be a drastic cut in movie piracy if the DVD/blu-ray/whatevers were all released at the same time all over the world. No one would need VPN workarounds if Netflix were allowed by the content owners to show the same stuff in all locations.
Because Netflix is 1/10th of the cost of cable or less? If you get 10 subscriptions then you're back to overpaying for content again. The thing is, Netflix has 95% of what most people want to watch, so the added value of each additional subscription is greatly diminished. For example, to me another $8/month for watching exactly one TV show is overpriced. If I wouldn't add crappy services like HBO or Showtime for that much money when I had satellite, why would I do the same thing after cutting the cord?
That's why I can see a value with bundling. Because if you had to pay for each episode you watched then people will start counting the pennies. Maybe they'll skip that episode, or ask a friend if it's worth the fifty cents. Any new series will be avoided because they're big unknowns. As in, "hmm, iZombie sounds vaguely interesting, let me watch that..." followed by "omygod, give me my money back now!" Whereas a flat highly affordable subscription fee that comes with a huge warehouse of choices has plenty of value.
As another example, some of the best movies I've seen are not things that I would have ever rented from Blockbuster back in the day, but only saw because they were on TV anyway for no extra cost, and some of the worst movies I ever saw were things I rented for $5. Ala-carte has some advantage but don't forget the disadvantages as well. To me, ala-carte means getting an entire channel, like BBC America, and not just one show.
There is a reasonable alternative, don't watch/listen to the content. That can actually do a lot to convince the content creators. Many of them are entirely convinced that they have a captive market who "must" get the content somehow and if they can't pirate it that they'll be forced to pay. It's not like this stuff is food which is necessary for survival. We can turn off the TV for a year and actually end up being better off for it.
I think the CBS service is hilarious. Watching Big Bang Theory on the computer and it says "Watch 4 episodes for free, or subscribe to All Access and get 7 episodes for free!" Woo, three extra episodes! I laugh imagining that there's some executive over at CBS who honestly thinks that is a good deal.
The problem I think is that the climate change skeptics don't think that way. They have supreme confidence that it's all a hoax, that the data is falsified, that it's a plot to undermine the economy, etc. So they make the bet with bravado, expecting the mainstream scientists to back down or look foolish. Anyone starting with an attitude of "oh ya, put your money where your mouth is" won't be the sort of person who's going to be inspecting the data very closely, analyzing the odds, choosing the best measurement methods, etc.
I guarantee you though after the snowstorm this weekend there will be a lot of pig headed people claiming that this is proof that global warming is a hoax. That's why people don't say "global warming" anymore because it causes Bubba to say "dem smarty pants scientists sure is stupid, eh?"
Because Emacs right now has support for older X Windows widgets (default GNU version, not counting branches and things). GTK widgets are more modern and flexible. So why not? It has no effect on the command line version any more than the Lucid widgets affect the command line version.
Slashdot Mirror
I remember a post on USENET after 9/11. Some spammer made a post declaring that by seeking to keep spammers blocked that we were the "real terrorists". Seriously, smoke hadn't even died down yet. USENET basically died due to spammers. That same mindset is alive and well in advertisers today. Anything that threatens their revenue is the greatest evil that they can imagine in the world. It is very difficult to make a moral distinction between spammers and modern online advertisers.
It doesn't really seem that small overall. 64MB RAM with 16MB flash is not tiny in the home router world where OpenWRT, DD-WRT, and the like are popular. It's tiny in physical size only.
One big difference is I think the outright lying and dishonesty involved with H1-B. Companies have to declare that they could not find any domestic workers with the necessary skills. The concept is good in theory, there are plenty of highly skilled people in foreign countries that we can make good use of. Doctors, scientists, top end engineers, etc. However H1-B is far too often used to get cheaper labor for basic skills (IT grunts, call centers, and entry level tech jobs).
Whereas with undocumented workers they are often doing jobs where it is difficult to get local workers. It's illegal anyway and the government is not colluding, despite campaign allegations otherwise. They're not necessarily replacing blue collar workers or union jobs, they're doing jobs below minimum wage.
I'm on 12Mbps. It's so much faster than what I have that it's great. I can stream HD TV without dropping resolution down, and that's basically the most heavy use most home users will need. I could spend more money and bump it up more, but I don't need more. Sure there are people who want to stream multiple shows at once but I don't know if that's typical usage (of course everyone thinks they're exactly average).
Weirdest. Episode. Ever.
We can teach science and at the end of the day when the kids go home the parents are allowed to say "forget all that evil science you learned in school today." It all works out. This is how it has worked since the day we created public schools and decided that all children of all backgrounds deserve an education. It's exactly how it worked in the 1950's that people look back on with rose colored glasses. Kids were taught evolution in the schools in the 50s and the parents did their best to teach the kids to forget it all again.
Part of the reason poor children go to poor schools is white flight. We used to have desegregation, and it actually worked. But whites didn't like it. Thus was born the voucher system. It may not be how it is viewed today but the original idea was to avoid sending your lily white kids to the same school as that other kind. Vouchers were absolutely not about creating equality amongst educational opportunities, but to make private schools affordable to the middle class (those who could not easily afford to move out of the school districts). Today vouchers are a tacit admission that we have intentionally failed the public schools and now that they're doomed there's no reason not to let the our kids go somewhere else and let those left behind wither away. People can't even see this anymore, I see parents going into severe debt to pay for private schools or to afford a house in a rich public school district, and they look at me like I'm crazy if I suggest that by abandoning the schools that they have become a part of the problem.
And how to pay for it? The costs to build new private schools can not be covered by a voucher. We have to use existing schools due to the economics, there's no money to pay for new ones. But everyone also seems to be working as hard as they can to ensure that public schools fail. Every dollar going to a voucher is one dollar subtracted from a public school.
If you build a private school next door to a public school (assuming the money is somehow found) and a voucher covers 100% of the cost, including the cost of transportation, then what happens to the public school? Leave it there to decay into nothing (no taxes to tear it down, remember)? What happens to the students, the ones that everyone insists are incorrigible criminals-in-training, do they go to the same private school as the rich kids? Will the private schools for poor black kids have exactly the same quality of teachers and facilities as for the private schools for rich white kids? What happens in Oklahoma if you've got a private Young-Earth-Creationist school that does not teach any science and starts graduating a bunch of students that don't have the necessary education to enter college or get a job, all paid for by your tax dollars?
And to be fair, or at least pretending to be fair, that voucher also must cover the cost of transportation so that the poor kid can use that voucher anywhere in the state (in case there are no good schools in the entire county, which is not unheard of). That voucher may also have to pay for room and board, as not all children live close enough to a school (and yes, there are public schools which have room and board).
We need to present a flat earth versus round earth discussion in our schools rather then present only one of these theories as true. We especially resent the attitude that those with contrarian views are nut jobs. It hurts when my children come home from school and tell me that their teachers called me an anti-science dingbat, I don't want to see my kids brainwashed by the government. What's so hard in presenting the weaknesses in a round earth theory (and remember it's only a theory) or in discussing the controversy?
This is basically where "intelligent design" fell apart. This was originally a way to present creationism with religion stripped out of it. However all the proponents of intelligent design were very strongly and firmly in the camp of exactly one narrow viewpoint from one branch of one religion. Which is why it also felt the need to promote young Earth viewpoints. So the religious parts kept sticking to the intelligent design idea. Sort of like stoned pothead trying to promote hemp while also saying "it's not about marijuana!"
I think the problem these people have (the religious right trying to legislate education) is not that they aren't teaching their kids religion at home and church, but that they've latched onto a belief that there is a conspiracy to brainwash their kids when they're in public schools. They are very wary of people trying to sneak in evolution in the guise of science (hah!), or that a trusted teacher who says "believe me, this is the truth" will have too much influence, etc. So part of this is their attempt to push back against the forces teaching their kids to be liberal.
They are especially concerned I think with kids who aren't theirs, they don't want a hyper-liberal next generation that believes in evolution. They're not stupid, they see that their view is getting diminished especially now that gay marriage is legal and it's mostly due to a younger generation with different views. They can see the demographics changing, and so this is also their attempt to push back against the demographic change.
I don't believe any of that, but I do think this is what they believe.
Well, I'm greedy. I would be self centered too but I was bad at geometry.
Twenty four states have laws requiring electors to vote according to who they pledged for (if you pledge for the wrong person you won't get appointed as an elector). If you change you mind between being appointed and the actual vote you will most likely either get in trouble or have your vote discounted. Most electors come from political parties so they're already very strongly committed to their winning candidates in the first place. So yes, half the states do give electors an obligation to vote per the popular vote, and the rest are appointing people with a vested interest in sticking with their party.
Overall the number of unfaithful presidential electors over the course of US history is pretty small. A complete list is on Wikipedia and is somewhat interesting to read the history on it.
In forty eight states the popular vote decides who the electors will vote for as "winner takes all". The other two states use a mix of popular vote in each congressional district and statewide popular vote to determine the electors. So the winner is not necessarily the country wide popular vote, but the popular vote absolutely matters when choosing electors. Saying "my vote doesn't matter" is naive and stupid. Doubly stupid because all the ballots have more than a single presidential choice on them, there are almost always statewide, regional, and local votes to be decided as well.
The kooky base doens't get to decide what a "Real" republican is. However they started using that word more often and managed to get it to stick. In the past when RINO was a newer term it referred to elected politicians who voted contrary to how the political leadership dictated, if they did it too often, then over time it started meaning anyone who compromised too much, then later it meant any moderate. So ya, the fringe elements ended up controlling that term and the traditional Republican style which was more moderate ended up on the losing end.
Politics has never been about embracing reality, so any sort of name calling that sticks is effective. Also in America with a de-facto two party system it means that every few years the two political parties change their stances and outlooks. Sometimes they fight to grab the center, sometimes they migrate away from the center, though generally you don't see both parties striving to be on the frings at the same time because there's always that tempting center where all the votes are.
There are hints of such things as contempt for liberals who aren't the right sort of liberals. In the UK you can be a working class "sell out", the Labour Party is often accused of that for not being more strongly opposed to immigration. Though the effect in that case tends to have the angry people leave the political process altogether. Whereas with Republicans they were smarter and stuck with the system and changed it from within. Though ironic that is mostly the new Tea Party types who accuse the traditional Republicans of being RINO instead of the other way around. With politics it's all about perception.
Stupid is a universal. What happens is when stupidity clumps together into like minded groups, it forms this phenomena called "politics". As this accretes and gains form it creates a more formalized stupidity structures called "political parties". This is evolution, which is why political parties are not the result of intelligent design.
However note that they don't do this within a country. Netflix has same content and prices for California versus Alabama, Texas versus Alaska, even though those regions have different abilities to pay. And yet gasoline sells for different prices in different regions. DVD sales however tend to be pretty much the same price across the country, barring differences because a local store can change prices. That's because it's a pain to adjust prices regionally when you're a centralized company, and partially it's too easy to just cross a border or mail the product to a different state (legally).
It does make a little sense to do this nationally with actual goods since you generally must have a national distribution anyway, there are stricter border controls, and it's a lot harder and more expensive to transport goods across international borders. You can even morally buy the DVD in country A and mail it to country B, though it may be illegal in some countries. It makes a lot less sense with digital only items, as the internet doesn't respect borders. That's why the media industry spends so much time and effort attempting to enforce regional differences for digital items as if they were physical items. DVD regional encoding was stupid and trivially broken, essentially ineffective. So they upped the ante with bluray/hddvd, with a really ridiculous DRM system (update your players firmware every time you enter a new disc). Now with streaming it's even sillier, as they're really never going to be able to clamp down on ways to proxy your location (and even if Netflix were only $1/month in Nepal, the lag if you were to route through there would be horrible).
Then what about Canada vs US? Demographics are very similar. This is not third world prices versus first world prices, so why the angst from media companies about streaming from the wrong side of that border? If you can pick up broadcast TV from the other side of the border then why not allow streaming?
I've got a coworker using vi who seems to take it as a challenge to watch me over my shoulder and point out "vi could do the same thing in fewer keystrokes". He doesn't care that Emacs can probably do it too it's only that I haven't memorized everything, and even though I use vi all the time I haven't memorized all of its keystrokes.
It's a pointless exercise to go down that route, because most of the reason for sticking with an editor is based on muscle memory anyway.
The problem isn't the piracy, or the VPN, or cable vs streaming. The problem ultimately is the moronic idea of time/location based restrictions, which for some reason seems to be a major focus of the content owners. There would be a drastic cut in movie piracy if the DVD/blu-ray/whatevers were all released at the same time all over the world. No one would need VPN workarounds if Netflix were allowed by the content owners to show the same stuff in all locations.
Because Netflix is 1/10th of the cost of cable or less? If you get 10 subscriptions then you're back to overpaying for content again. The thing is, Netflix has 95% of what most people want to watch, so the added value of each additional subscription is greatly diminished. For example, to me another $8/month for watching exactly one TV show is overpriced. If I wouldn't add crappy services like HBO or Showtime for that much money when I had satellite, why would I do the same thing after cutting the cord?
That's why I can see a value with bundling. Because if you had to pay for each episode you watched then people will start counting the pennies. Maybe they'll skip that episode, or ask a friend if it's worth the fifty cents. Any new series will be avoided because they're big unknowns. As in, "hmm, iZombie sounds vaguely interesting, let me watch that..." followed by "omygod, give me my money back now!" Whereas a flat highly affordable subscription fee that comes with a huge warehouse of choices has plenty of value.
As another example, some of the best movies I've seen are not things that I would have ever rented from Blockbuster back in the day, but only saw because they were on TV anyway for no extra cost, and some of the worst movies I ever saw were things I rented for $5. Ala-carte has some advantage but don't forget the disadvantages as well. To me, ala-carte means getting an entire channel, like BBC America, and not just one show.
There is a reasonable alternative, don't watch/listen to the content. That can actually do a lot to convince the content creators. Many of them are entirely convinced that they have a captive market who "must" get the content somehow and if they can't pirate it that they'll be forced to pay. It's not like this stuff is food which is necessary for survival. We can turn off the TV for a year and actually end up being better off for it.
I think the CBS service is hilarious. Watching Big Bang Theory on the computer and it says "Watch 4 episodes for free, or subscribe to All Access and get 7 episodes for free!" Woo, three extra episodes! I laugh imagining that there's some executive over at CBS who honestly thinks that is a good deal.
Or "Do not shoot the robot."
The problem I think is that the climate change skeptics don't think that way. They have supreme confidence that it's all a hoax, that the data is falsified, that it's a plot to undermine the economy, etc. So they make the bet with bravado, expecting the mainstream scientists to back down or look foolish. Anyone starting with an attitude of "oh ya, put your money where your mouth is" won't be the sort of person who's going to be inspecting the data very closely, analyzing the odds, choosing the best measurement methods, etc.
I guarantee you though after the snowstorm this weekend there will be a lot of pig headed people claiming that this is proof that global warming is a hoax. That's why people don't say "global warming" anymore because it causes Bubba to say "dem smarty pants scientists sure is stupid, eh?"
Because Emacs right now has support for older X Windows widgets (default GNU version, not counting branches and things). GTK widgets are more modern and flexible. So why not? It has no effect on the command line version any more than the Lucid widgets affect the command line version.