I used one in college for about 3 months. I actually used a label maker to replace the keycaps on my keyboard. I was OK with it, but ultimately gave up because the context-switching between my home keyboard and the one in computer labs, etc, just wasn't allowing me to get used to the layout.
They're just doing what any good prosecutor does -- throwing everything they can at the wall to see what sticks.
I know this is standard practice, but this act is heinous in itself, in my opinion. I think it is the cause of a lot of problems in our justice system because it essentially relies on this context:
We want you to be in trouble, but we can't find a law to use on you
This is exactly the opposite of how our system of laws is supposed to work... i.e.
You violated the law, so, regrettably, I'm forced to prosecute you.
Yes, murder should be defined as "maybe doing something that might indirectly lead to an unstable person doing something to hurt themselves".
That's super rational.
Slandering someone is a civil crime. Harassing someone is usually a misdemeanor, as it should be. it is illegal, but doesn't result in lifetime behind bars.
The techniques used at the time produced glass with a slight taper in thickness.
to save typing, i'll quote wikipedia:
The observation that old windows are often thicker at the bottom than at the top is often offered as supporting evidence for the view that glass flows over a matter of centuries. It is then assumed that the glass was once uniform, but has flowed to its new shape, which is a property of liquid. The likely source of this unfounded belief is that when panes of glass were commonly made by glassblowers, the technique used was to spin molten glass so as to create a round, mostly flat and even plate (the Crown glass process, described above). This plate was then cut to fit a window. The pieces were not, however, absolutely flat; the edges of the disk would be thicker because of centripetal force relaxation. When actually installed in a window frame, the glass would be placed thicker side down for the sake of stability and visual sparkle.[24] Occasionally such glass has been found thinner side down or on either side of the window's edge, as would be caused by carelessness at the time of installation.
Mass production of glass window panes in the early twentieth century caused a similar effect. In glass factories, molten glass was poured onto a large cooling table and allowed to spread. The resulting glass is thicker at the location of the pour, located at the center of the large sheet. These sheets were cut into smaller window panes with nonuniform thickness. Modern glass intended for windows is produced as float glass and is very uniform in thickness.
uhm "burning hydrogen" means "combining oxygen with hydrogen to produce water". It has a byproduct of energy output.
So........... you break water apart.... then you combine its parts to make water.... and somehow there's MORE energy than when you started?
The concept of hydrogen fuel cells or hydrogen fuel in general works on the principal that perhaps everyone has a large solar cell at home that is busy all day long splitting the water for you.
Then you just plug the hydrogen into the car and go.
But pouring water in the gas tank does not make energy..... not without energy input to create hydrogen and oxygen and that energy is actually LARGER than the output of "burning" the hydrogen, so it can't come from inside the system.
There is no nuclear reactions here. It merely requires overcoming the covalent bonds, which are held together using the strong electromagnetic force.
Putting them back together leaves you exactly where you started.... so without destroying some part of the atoms involved, where does the energy come from?
Remember, nuclear fission splits an atom into two SMALLER atoms the sum mass of which is slightly smaller than the original mass. There is no way to "put them back together" without requiring an absurd input of energy AND additional mass.
it's not fair to say that all High School Diplomas are Junk.
Personally, I was in the International Baccalaureate program in a US high school and it was an amazing curriculum. The US Advanced Placement is similar (thought not as hard).
Actually, our school was the first in IB history to obtain 100% passing grade 3 years in a row. They had a special audit to be sure we were not cheating because it had never been done before. The year later, an official came from Geneva to observe the testing and the school scored 98% passing (just one fail) so they dropped the inquiry.
That's better than any international school, Asian school, European school, etc and it was US-based public high school.
Of course, this was a special group of hand-picked teachers and very eager students, but it does nullify the argument that all US high schools are crap.
Just that their standards tend to be low enough to pass and graduate even the weakest of students.
The median for Maine (and the US) is around $35k per year for ALL families.
But if you isolate those with a Bachelors Degree, the average goes up to $49k for people aged 24-35 (less than 10 years experience).
Occupations which require a bachelors degree AND an additional advanced certification (like teachers require) further increase this median to $55k for this level of work.
Occupations which require stringent background checks further increase median salary by 2-5% in most fields (like teachers).
Now we're looking at a $58k per year median for someone with a few years experience, which is substantially higher than a teacher, and in fact, even a teacher with a PhD.
Do you know what the median income for someone with a PhD is? It's somewhere around $85k. But not teachers. They max around $70k even after 14 years of experience.
Which comparison are we making here? Everyone? or well educated "everyone"?
Because teachers HAVE to be well educated. It's in the job requirements.
But if I were making a joke about the "cup holder" that comes out of the "hard drive", then it would be funny.
And would lose all its funny if someone decided to point out that it's not a "hard drive" but in fact has some other arcane name, which really doesn't matter in the context of the joke.:-)
There's something cool called the "time value of money". There's also a unique property to the PC industry, which is a trend toward exponential improvement.
If you save $1000 today, it's actually worth a lot more compounded over 5 years from now. Not to mention the value in more frequent hardware replacements in an industry where exponential improvement is the norm.
Given accepted rates of return on things like index funds (10%), you could spend $1000 every 2 years, instead of $2000 every 5 years... You would have two brand new machines during that time on the same budget and have a bunch left over at the end. The only thing you miss out on is the first two years of having a 50% superior machine, if we arbitrarily call your $2000 Mac (we'll go wild) "50% better" than the $1000 PC when it was brand new.
The neat thing is that if you spend $1000 every two years rather than $2100 every five years, those last three years, you would have a far superior machine.... so... for more than half of the 5 year life cycle, you would have vastly superior machine... of course it does involve delayed gratification.
OK, lets do the numbers. I can hear your ears turning red.... or perhaps your eyes are glazing over. I don't care. Keep reading.:-)
Even assuming Macbooks hold their value better (lets use some numbers and assume the PC depreciates at exactly 40% per year and the mac at exactly 30% per year), your 2nd $1000 PC purchase would cost you $640 after the trade in of your 2 year old PC (which was then worth $360). Your initial $1000 savings is now also worth $1331, which you can spend on that PC. So you have a brand new computer in the second year and $691 in the bank. Two years later, you replace it again, getting a trade in and paying $640 for a machine 8 times (exponential for 4 years) faster than your original box. Again, your initial savings on the purchase means that you don't have to put down any money. Your $691 could now be valued at $836, so even after you THIRD purchase (8 times faster than the original), you still have $196 in the bank. Upon reaching the 5th year, you evaluate your position.
Your $2000 Macbook is worth about $340 since it's 5 years old (30% per year).
Your $1000 PC is actually your third one you got with the same money. It's currently worth $600 (40% per year). You also have $215 in the bank from the leftovers after the trade-ins and compounded interest.
Lets say your $2000 Mac was.. we'll go wild and say it's 50% "better" than the $1000 PC when it was brand new. Today, you have a 1 year old PC that's valued at about $600 and is generally about 6 times faster (presumably "better" in most ways) than your 5 year old Mac. You didn't spend any additional money during the entire process but you got a new PC every 2 years.
Now, this argument is TOTALLY IRRELEVANT for someone who considers "money is no object", since they will simply buy the best AND replace it yearly. But for someone on an obviously restricted budget, it's simply silly to argue that you're saving money. In fact, it's a lie.
If you want to argue that the PC is so infuriatingly poor that you simply can't use it during those first two years.... there is nothing I can say and you are entitled to that opinion.
But you wanted to make some sort of kooky economic argument.....
epic fail.:-)
Of course, this all falls apart if you're the type who will spend your spare cash on lotto tickets rather than putting it in an interest bearing account as I've assumed above....
This is unequivocally one of the most profound posts ever made on Slashdot about the state of the government in the UK and other wester states around the world.
Now that I've said that... ehm.....papers please.:-)
He calls himself "technically, a 'teapot agnostic'".
It comes from the parable of the teapot in orbit. Someone might believe there is a teapot in orbit around Mars. There is no way to disprove him, however it's highly unlikely that he is right.
In other words... an agnostic doesn't necessarily believe it's absolutely false... but how likely is it? VERY unlikely.
According to Webster's dictionary, it can mean "possible OR likely". In every definition I found, I did not see "possible AND likely". There is an enormous difference between those two. In common language, "possible" generally = "not impossible", sorta by definition.
To further clarify the common usage of the word plausible for you, if you dispute my reading, you may reference the "common usage guide" in the Webster's Unabridged Dictionary which states:
Usage: Plausible denotes that which seems reasonable, yet leaves distrust in the judgment.
For your benefit, I'll neglect your dastardly use of a triple negative which actually parses to the opposite of what you mean.
Oh, I'm sorry. Are my "most basic reading comprehension skills" showing?:-)
I'm very sad if that's the morality the society chooses.
Because in MY morality, that's wrong.
"It's better to let 100 guilty men go free than imprison a single innocent man." -some smart famous guy
If you're religious, that quote is actually based on Genesis 18:20 where God basically says that allowing a city full of guilty men to be spared simply to spare the life of one righteous one is the correct path.
I'm not religious, but from a purely human rights perspective, I agree with this.:)
"The state must declare the child to be the most precious treasure of the people. As long as the government is perceived as working for the benefit of the children, the people will happily endure almost any curtailment of liberty and almost any deprivation." -Adolph Hitler
The number of laws on the books has doubled every 5 years since 1976. Previously it doubled every 40 years.
That's when the "tough on crime" conservative politics took hold of the media.
It's also around when global satellite communication began to bring "OH MY GOD ITS HORRIBLE" into your living room every single night.
That brought about the conservative revolution, the rise of mega churches, etc.
On the other hand, before 1976, child porn was totally legal and could be found in adult book stores and the age of consent in most jurisdiction was 12.
Ironically, the incidence of sexual performance problems and emotional adjustment problems (often correlated with sex abuse) has jumped dramatically since then.
I'm not saying child porn is good, nor is sexual abuse. But perhaps a RABID anti-sex campaign is also damaging. Perhaps even MORE damaging, eh?
Wow imagine that.
And now to Godwin this topic:
"The state must declare the child to be the most precious treasure of the people. As long as the government is perceived as working for the benefit of the children, the people will happily endure almost any curtailment of liberty and almost any deprivation." - Adolph Hitler
Slashdot Mirror
I used one in college for about 3 months. I actually used a label maker to replace the keycaps on my keyboard. I was OK with it, but ultimately gave up because the context-switching between my home keyboard and the one in computer labs, etc, just wasn't allowing me to get used to the layout.
Oh, well.... Fun experiment.
I know this is standard practice, but this act is heinous in itself, in my opinion. I think it is the cause of a lot of problems in our justice system because it essentially relies on this context:
We want you to be in trouble, but we can't find a law to use on you
This is exactly the opposite of how our system of laws is supposed to work... i.e.
You violated the law, so, regrettably, I'm forced to prosecute you.
Notice the big difference there?
Yes, murder should be defined as "maybe doing something that might indirectly lead to an unstable person doing something to hurt themselves".
That's super rational.
Slandering someone is a civil crime. Harassing someone is usually a misdemeanor, as it should be. it is illegal, but doesn't result in lifetime behind bars.
Where is the problem with this law?
Help me out here...
Or... they're really good friends who recognize his need to move on and are happy to be a part of a novel way of doing it.
But slashdotters are too cynical to believe in real compassion. :-)
The techniques used at the time produced glass with a slight taper in thickness.
to save typing, i'll quote wikipedia:
+9, Insightful :-)
uhm "burning hydrogen" means "combining oxygen with hydrogen to produce water". It has a byproduct of energy output.
So........... you break water apart.... then you combine its parts to make water.... and somehow there's MORE energy than when you started?
The concept of hydrogen fuel cells or hydrogen fuel in general works on the principal that perhaps everyone has a large solar cell at home that is busy all day long splitting the water for you.
Then you just plug the hydrogen into the car and go.
But pouring water in the gas tank does not make energy..... not without energy input to create hydrogen and oxygen and that energy is actually LARGER than the output of "burning" the hydrogen, so it can't come from inside the system.
There is a HUGE error in your statement.
A fission nuclear reaction splits an ATOM.
Hydrogen/Oxygen electrolysis splits a MOLECULE.
There is no nuclear reactions here. It merely requires overcoming the covalent bonds, which are held together using the strong electromagnetic force.
Putting them back together leaves you exactly where you started.... so without destroying some part of the atoms involved, where does the energy come from?
Remember, nuclear fission splits an atom into two SMALLER atoms the sum mass of which is slightly smaller than the original mass. There is no way to "put them back together" without requiring an absurd input of energy AND additional mass.
it's not fair to say that all High School Diplomas are Junk.
Personally, I was in the International Baccalaureate program in a US high school and it was an amazing curriculum. The US Advanced Placement is similar (thought not as hard).
Actually, our school was the first in IB history to obtain 100% passing grade 3 years in a row. They had a special audit to be sure we were not cheating because it had never been done before. The year later, an official came from Geneva to observe the testing and the school scored 98% passing (just one fail) so they dropped the inquiry.
That's better than any international school, Asian school, European school, etc and it was US-based public high school.
Of course, this was a special group of hand-picked teachers and very eager students, but it does nullify the argument that all US high schools are crap.
Just that their standards tend to be low enough to pass and graduate even the weakest of students.
I think you missed something.
The median for Maine (and the US) is around $35k per year for ALL families.
But if you isolate those with a Bachelors Degree, the average goes up to $49k for people aged 24-35 (less than 10 years experience).
Occupations which require a bachelors degree AND an additional advanced certification (like teachers require) further increase this median to $55k for this level of work.
Occupations which require stringent background checks further increase median salary by 2-5% in most fields (like teachers).
Now we're looking at a $58k per year median for someone with a few years experience, which is substantially higher than a teacher, and in fact, even a teacher with a PhD.
Do you know what the median income for someone with a PhD is? It's somewhere around $85k. But not teachers. They max around $70k even after 14 years of experience.
Which comparison are we making here? Everyone? or well educated "everyone"?
Because teachers HAVE to be well educated. It's in the job requirements.
can't we make it with a college diploma?
:-)
My cactus has a HS diploma and he's not so good at risk analysis and logic.
Let alone science & engineering and math and things.
Actually, I think my lizard is about to get a GED too. So lets shoot higher, shall we?
But if I were making a joke about the "cup holder" that comes out of the "hard drive", then it would be funny.
:-)
And would lose all its funny if someone decided to point out that it's not a "hard drive" but in fact has some other arcane name, which really doesn't matter in the context of the joke.
Yeah, but that's the problem... They TOOK that right (to have rights of its own) about 100 years ago, by force.
Nobody seems to realize it, but it happened.
sigh.
sigh.
"maybe I'm just used to it"
Yes, you are.
That's the goal. Sadly.
Your argument may seem convenient and pat, but
:-)
:-)
There's something cool called the "time value of money". There's also a unique property to the PC industry, which is a trend toward exponential improvement.
If you save $1000 today, it's actually worth a lot more compounded over 5 years from now. Not to mention the value in more frequent hardware replacements in an industry where exponential improvement is the norm.
Given accepted rates of return on things like index funds (10%), you could spend $1000 every 2 years, instead of $2000 every 5 years... You would have two brand new machines during that time on the same budget and have a bunch left over at the end. The only thing you miss out on is the first two years of having a 50% superior machine, if we arbitrarily call your $2000 Mac (we'll go wild) "50% better" than the $1000 PC when it was brand new.
The neat thing is that if you spend $1000 every two years rather than $2100 every five years, those last three years, you would have a far superior machine.... so... for more than half of the 5 year life cycle, you would have vastly superior machine... of course it does involve delayed gratification.
OK, lets do the numbers. I can hear your ears turning red.... or perhaps your eyes are glazing over. I don't care. Keep reading.
Even assuming Macbooks hold their value better (lets use some numbers and assume the PC depreciates at exactly 40% per year and the mac at exactly 30% per year), your 2nd $1000 PC purchase would cost you $640 after the trade in of your 2 year old PC (which was then worth $360). Your initial $1000 savings is now also worth $1331, which you can spend on that PC. So you have a brand new computer in the second year and $691 in the bank. Two years later, you replace it again, getting a trade in and paying $640 for a machine 8 times (exponential for 4 years) faster than your original box. Again, your initial savings on the purchase means that you don't have to put down any money. Your $691 could now be valued at $836, so even after you THIRD purchase (8 times faster than the original), you still have $196 in the bank. Upon reaching the 5th year, you evaluate your position.
Your $2000 Macbook is worth about $340 since it's 5 years old (30% per year).
Your $1000 PC is actually your third one you got with the same money. It's currently worth $600 (40% per year). You also have $215 in the bank from the leftovers after the trade-ins and compounded interest.
Lets say your $2000 Mac was.. we'll go wild and say it's 50% "better" than the $1000 PC when it was brand new. Today, you have a 1 year old PC that's valued at about $600 and is generally about 6 times faster (presumably "better" in most ways) than your 5 year old Mac. You didn't spend any additional money during the entire process but you got a new PC every 2 years.
Now, this argument is TOTALLY IRRELEVANT for someone who considers "money is no object", since they will simply buy the best AND replace it yearly. But for someone on an obviously restricted budget, it's simply silly to argue that you're saving money. In fact, it's a lie.
If you want to argue that the PC is so infuriatingly poor that you simply can't use it during those first two years.... there is nothing I can say and you are entitled to that opinion.
But you wanted to make some sort of kooky economic argument.....
epic fail.
Of course, this all falls apart if you're the type who will spend your spare cash on lotto tickets rather than putting it in an interest bearing account as I've assumed above....
Which is also entirely possible.
Hey, anything is possible!
o.0
(_)
This is unequivocally one of the most profound posts ever made on Slashdot about the state of the government in the UK and other wester states around the world.
..papers please. :-)
Now that I've said that... ehm...
Most "prominent" athiests point this out.
Richard Dawkins sticks with the term "athiest" and then defines it by the phrase he uses, which is "teapot agnostic".
That comes from the parable which asks "is there a teapot in orbit around Mars?"
The likelihood is extremely small, but it can't absolutely be disproved by any known means.
So, most athiests agree with you on that.
I believed Richard Dawkins has addressed this.
:-)
He calls himself "technically, a 'teapot agnostic'".
It comes from the parable of the teapot in orbit. Someone might believe there is a teapot in orbit around Mars. There is no way to disprove him, however it's highly unlikely that he is right.
In other words... an agnostic doesn't necessarily believe it's absolutely false... but how likely is it? VERY unlikely.
Teapot agnostic it is...
To further clarify the common usage of the word plausible for you, if you dispute my reading, you may reference the "common usage guide" in the Webster's Unabridged Dictionary which states:
For your benefit, I'll neglect your dastardly use of a triple negative which actually parses to the opposite of what you mean.
Oh, I'm sorry. Are my "most basic reading comprehension skills" showing?
Hey, guess what.
We just discovered that humans tend toward violence and oppression.
Wow.
Maybe someone should write about this.
Then we can study it.... maybe we could call it....
history.
And then we might learn from it.
But that would be too much work.
sigh.
It's kind of sad that the US' prison population outnumbers China or India, both of which have 4-6x the population size.
It's also sad we have a higher imprisonment rate by percentage than even those with Muslim Sharia law.
Yikes.
As a former Montrealer and a soon-to-be Ottawan, I just have to ask -- what the hell sort of monstrous snow creature spawned you?!? ;)
ROFMLOL!!!!ZOMG IT HURTS!!!!!!!
CANT
STOP
LAUGHING
GAH!!!!!!!!
Society creates morality... to some extent, yes.
:)
I'm very sad if that's the morality the society chooses.
Because in MY morality, that's wrong.
"It's better to let 100 guilty men go free than imprison a single innocent man." -some smart famous guy
If you're religious, that quote is actually based on Genesis 18:20 where God basically says that allowing a city full of guilty men to be spared simply to spare the life of one righteous one is the correct path.
I'm not religious, but from a purely human rights perspective, I agree with this.
"The state must declare the child to be the most precious treasure of the people. As long as the government is perceived as working for the benefit of the children, the people will happily endure almost any curtailment of liberty and almost any deprivation." -Adolph Hitler
</godwin>
1976 to be precise.
The number of laws on the books has doubled every 5 years since 1976. Previously it doubled every 40 years.
That's when the "tough on crime" conservative politics took hold of the media.
It's also around when global satellite communication began to bring "OH MY GOD ITS HORRIBLE" into your living room every single night.
That brought about the conservative revolution, the rise of mega churches, etc.
On the other hand, before 1976, child porn was totally legal and could be found in adult book stores and the age of consent in most jurisdiction was 12.
Ironically, the incidence of sexual performance problems and emotional adjustment problems (often correlated with sex abuse) has jumped dramatically since then.
I'm not saying child porn is good, nor is sexual abuse. But perhaps a RABID anti-sex campaign is also damaging. Perhaps even MORE damaging, eh?
Wow imagine that.
And now to Godwin this topic:
"The state must declare the child to be the most precious treasure of the people. As long as the government is perceived as working for the benefit of the children, the people will happily endure almost any curtailment of liberty and almost any deprivation." - Adolph Hitler