It's short-range (VHF radio based), but it effectively informs other AIS capable ships of GPS coordinates, direction, speed, rate of turn, status, name, weight, destination, etc.
I think it has something to do with stubborn FAA policies that are more interested in CYA than pushing the technological forefront.
Somehow the goofiness of vestigial things we have like tailbones and the appendix may lead one to believe that we're very unlikely to be "another race". Nobody has ever claimed (with any knowledge) that we descended directly from chimps, but merely that we likely have a common ancestor.
The simple fact that by sheer statistical analysis of decoded DNA, we're closest to chimps makes that a pretty logical starting point, don't you think?
We could start with snails and work backwards, but that seems a tad silly, eh?
It's worth pointing out that for other criminals during this same time-span, the re-arrest rate is greater than 60%
Which makes the whole "*some* types of sex offenders have an extremely high recidivism rate. They're very likely to commit repeat offenses," (direct quote)... seem very skewed.
I guess I should point out that you're right in saying that murderers apparently have a lower rate of recidivism than sex offenders.
But you neglected to point out that these two categories are ranked, respectively, #1 and #2 in LOWEST recidivism amongst all categories of crimes, violent or not.
Society has decided that owning a gun and driving a car are not rights, but are privileges that you generally (usually) must obtain a license to do.
While I don't agree with firearms restrictions (and I don't think that applies to every state), you would also remove a drivers license from someone who goes blind, or is diagnosed with severe narcolepsy, neither of which are crimes. You may also loose the privilege to drive if you get caught speeding or have multiple reckless driving tickets, etc
Driving, being something that you must earn through a test and maintain annually or at least every 10 years or so.
There are many other things like this, but "visiting Facebook" isn't one of them.
One of the big issues is that sex offender registries have been challenged in the past and were held enforceable under the premise that they are SOLELY FOR NOTIFICATION PURPOSES. The supreme court specifically said that they are not punitive in nature and therefore are allowed, but cannot be applied in a punitive way.
I really don't see how this will fly.
There are two classes of "convicts" that are still under the guise of the justice system. Those incarcerated and those on parole/probation.
The third category of "released, but registered" doesn't really exist and won't withstand a constitutional challenge. The Supreme Court narrowly allowed public registries, purely on the grounds that it was "informational".
Global warming is sometimes natural. The global climate and temperature has changed many times. Ironically, it's almost always in direct correlation with the atmospheric CO2 levels, whether those are caused by an abundance of algae or a loss of forestation or whatever happened naturally in the past. No reputable climatologist has ever denied this and although (if true), the possibility of open water to the north of Siberia is totally reasonable.
Given that the majority of CO2 is directly attributable to humans now and it has reached levels which are an order of magnitude higher than any period of geologically accessible history might indicate that humans are the cause this time around.
The simple fact that the climate changes naturally and periodically doesn't automatically make the concept of human intervention in climate change a moot point.
If you discuss this with any scientist who conducts modeling exercises on this topic, I imagine they will know (probably more intimately than you do) about the past climate and temperature fluctuations but will be happy to point out that there is a real potential that we will far surpass those fluctuations in the medium-term future without action on our part.
OK, so being curious about the origin of Vikings, I emailed an old friend of mine who is a historian focused on Byzantine era, etc. I assumed he might have some insight.
He was short on time but he told me that he had never seen evidence of any settlements on the artic ocean or Barents Sea that predated the 12th century and said he didn't think it was likely that they were sailing to China around the north, but that he's not an expert on Vikings.
He also directed me to the Wikipedia entry, which he assured me was about as accurate a summary as he's seen.
Early Russian Vikings, at least according to the commonly accepted history, did not land on the arctic or Barents Sea shores, but accessed Russia via the Eastern Baltic and even the Black Sea in the south. There are clearly two distinct origins in history, some having come up the Black Sea through modern Ukraine, up the Dneiper River to modern day Kiev and the Volga to Moscow (both run south) and the other from the many rivers feeding the Baltic, which reach nearly to Moscow.
I'm having a hard time with your claim, given that the combination of a COMPLETE lack of evidence, combined with an obvious agenda leads me down the road of suspecting it is all FUD.
I would wager that people downloading child porn are ALREADY USING PROXIES, because they don't want to be detected.
This makes the internet blocking TOTALLY 100% USELESS, except as a means to establish content filters which can be extended to other less illegal subjects (like CounterStrike).
It's so transparent as to be almost silly.
Then again....
Never attribute to malice what can be attributed to ignorance.
So, perhaps the politicians are just.... ignorant.
It depends on the programming being done. Many of hte programmers I've supported were the ASP.net developers. I can't tell you how many I've had to explain why they can't simply delete DLL files from their system32 folder and can't arbitrarily install ancient versions of SQL without patching them.
Of course, these are the same people leaving giant SQL injection vulnerabilities in all of their apps (and who have a complete lack of knowledge of encryption), leading to the complete compromise of the credit card database. But that's neither here nor there.
All I'm saying is that some organizations ONLY have these types of programmers.:-)
The United States currently has the lowest overall tax rates in the world, by a small margin.
However, the cost of living in the United States (even including taxes) is MUCH higher than most countries.
For example, health care quality in Canada is generally regarded as equal to a US based HMO. You can argue all you want about specialists and whatever... I'm talking about an HMO like Kaiser.
However, in Canada, the cost-per-person of providing that health care is barely half in Canada...
So they have 5% higher taxes to pay for it, but are able to avoid spending 8-10% of their income to provide health care for their family.
In addition to the lower overall costs for healthcare, they have the added benefit of universal coverage, which means that people like homeless children are also covered.
If anyone could point out, numerically, how a privatized health care system is better, I'm interested to hear. I don't particularly care for polemic or euphemism about slavery. Almost everyone in the world pays more taxes than you do and you DO NOT want to live in countries where you would not (Zimbabwe and Somalia come to mind).
Back when raising an army consisted of feeding and clothing a bunch of already-armed farmers, taxes could be lower, but 10% tax rates don't buy F22s, National Guard disaster relief Blackhawks and advanced CDC laboratories to isolate and analyze nationwide virus outbreaks.
If wartime causes booms, does that explain away 2003-2007? Neat.
Ticks both ways I think.
The simple fact is that tax cuts and increases have zero statistical correlation with GDP growth, either positive or negative. Even when normalizing other variables, this seems to be the case from every study I've ever seen.
The "peak value" for the laffer curve is probably (according to most estimates) between 50% and 80%.
When our top marginal rate (1979) was at 70%, there was a real argument for the laffer curve having an effect in the event of tax reductions (although, as I have stated, real GDP growth actually has a small NEGATIVE correlation with tax rates)...
However, today with top marginal rates below 40%, there is very little support that lowering that rate increases the national revenue.
And with the negative GDP correlation and very real problem of deficits, I don't see a good argument for reducing that marginal rate, except to personally benefit the highest earners.
Oh? Go look at the revenue figures, they disagree. Every time tax rates get cut revenue rises. Every time, The problem is that spending has gone up faster, thus deficits.
I'm sorry, where is this?
Taking a year-for-year statistical analysis, the changes to the top marginal income tax rate are actually negatively correlated with GDP growth by a small amount (a=-0.03). They are also positively correlated with unemployment increases (a=0.33). Median income is ALSO slightly negatively correlated with tax cuts (a=-0.08).
All three primary factors of economic health have a NEGATIVE correlation with tax cuts.
There are a few isolated incidents (like the growth after the 1981 tax cuts). However there are plenty of counter examples. For example, GDP growth AND median income growth comparable to the early 1980s kicks off directly after the 1993 tax INCREASES.
According to statistical regression, tax cuts do very little to spur growth of any kind and with economics and statisticians pointing out that the Laffer curve of peak revenue occurs around 50%-60%, there is little gain (except personal gain for top earners) in decreasing it below the current 35-38%, and in my opinion, there are substantial social gains to decreasing deficits through increasing revenue.
As it was stated clearly, these may not be ideal rates, but the claim of cutting already low tax rates somehow increases revenue just isn't true.
In order for it to be true, rates have to be high enough that people have substantially strong incentive to say "I'm not going to work up to my capability because my taxes are so high".
That just doesn't happen when the marginal rates are below 35%.
Most studies of hard economics relating to tax policy point out that we're substantially below the "optimal rate". Most estimations put that between 40% and 50%.
Papers that draw this conclusion, or at least have suggestions in this direction include:
However, most are also very clear in stating that optimizing revenue is NOT necessarily the best rate. It is important to weigh social needs and competitiveness with alternative locales, population happiness, etc.
Most of the world has adopted top marginal rates just below 50%. The US was in that category until the 1980s. Upon reducing that rate, the US began leading all industrialized countries in terms of deficit-to-GDP ratios. While most economists point out that this is likely a combined result of increased spending, rather than tax cuts)... however, tax cuts that occur below the 35% range have never really been shown to increase revenue... In fact, most models suggest the opposite.
If you can cite ANY papers that have specifically defined models that account for opportunity costs, economic elasticity and a cohesive mathematical model, please point them out as I'm not aware of anything in that camp isn't ideological punditry from the Cato Institute or the Heritage Foundation or other similar politically motivated organizations.
In national surveys in the US, MORE THAN 50% of people subscribe to the "If I'm not doing anything illegal, what do I have to hide?" theory.
Did you know that in a recent survey, only 22% of British people surveyed could properly name the 3 countries that makes up Great Britain.
On an unmarked map, almost 90% of Americans could not identify any of Iraq, Iran and Afghanistan. 51% could not find New York State. 68% could not find Japan and 20% could not actually find the Pacific Ocean.
Sure, the number of people who are actively opposed to database surveillance has risen from 5% to 20%, but that doesn't mean the "general public" deserves anything.
I do notice the western countries with the strongest privacy laws happen to also be the countries with the highest test scores amongst kids.
Places like Finland, Belgium, New Zealand, Switzerland, Canada.... They aren't known for government surveillance or overbearing police forces.
I don't know, is this ironic? Or a result of the "liberal agenda" in these places?:-)
sorry to turn that into a political rant, but... It's just too easy.
Slashdot Mirror
There is such a system for ocean-going shipping, known as AIS. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automatic_Identification_System
It's short-range (VHF radio based), but it effectively informs other AIS capable ships of GPS coordinates, direction, speed, rate of turn, status, name, weight, destination, etc.
I think it has something to do with stubborn FAA policies that are more interested in CYA than pushing the technological forefront.
Fair enough. Point being that it's relatively (not entirely) unique to primates and is a further link between humans and great apes.
This post made me LOL :-)
thanks!
srsly? :-o
Somehow the goofiness of vestigial things we have like tailbones and the appendix may lead one to believe that we're very unlikely to be "another race". Nobody has ever claimed (with any knowledge) that we descended directly from chimps, but merely that we likely have a common ancestor.
The simple fact that by sheer statistical analysis of decoded DNA, we're closest to chimps makes that a pretty logical starting point, don't you think?
We could start with snails and work backwards, but that seems a tad silly, eh?
It's worth pointing out that for other criminals during this same time-span, the re-arrest rate is greater than 60%
Which makes the whole "*some* types of sex offenders have an extremely high recidivism rate. They're very likely to commit repeat offenses," (direct quote)... seem very skewed.
I guess I should point out that you're right in saying that murderers apparently have a lower rate of recidivism than sex offenders.
But you neglected to point out that these two categories are ranked, respectively, #1 and #2 in LOWEST recidivism amongst all categories of crimes, violent or not.
Society has decided that owning a gun and driving a car are not rights, but are privileges that you generally (usually) must obtain a license to do.
While I don't agree with firearms restrictions (and I don't think that applies to every state), you would also remove a drivers license from someone who goes blind, or is diagnosed with severe narcolepsy, neither of which are crimes. You may also loose the privilege to drive if you get caught speeding or have multiple reckless driving tickets, etc
Driving, being something that you must earn through a test and maintain annually or at least every 10 years or so.
There are many other things like this, but "visiting Facebook" isn't one of them.
It also isn't applied retroactively to someone who committed a crime 30 years ago.
According to a DOJ study linked down below, the re-offense rate for sex offenders is the SECOND LOWEST (only second to murder).
Where did you get your information?
One of the big issues is that sex offender registries have been challenged in the past and were held enforceable under the premise that they are SOLELY FOR NOTIFICATION PURPOSES. The supreme court specifically said that they are not punitive in nature and therefore are allowed, but cannot be applied in a punitive way.
I really don't see how this will fly.
There are two classes of "convicts" that are still under the guise of the justice system. Those incarcerated and those on parole/probation.
The third category of "released, but registered" doesn't really exist and won't withstand a constitutional challenge. The Supreme Court narrowly allowed public registries, purely on the grounds that it was "informational".
Global warming is sometimes natural. The global climate and temperature has changed many times. Ironically, it's almost always in direct correlation with the atmospheric CO2 levels, whether those are caused by an abundance of algae or a loss of forestation or whatever happened naturally in the past. No reputable climatologist has ever denied this and although (if true), the possibility of open water to the north of Siberia is totally reasonable.
Given that the majority of CO2 is directly attributable to humans now and it has reached levels which are an order of magnitude higher than any period of geologically accessible history might indicate that humans are the cause this time around.
The simple fact that the climate changes naturally and periodically doesn't automatically make the concept of human intervention in climate change a moot point.
If you discuss this with any scientist who conducts modeling exercises on this topic, I imagine they will know (probably more intimately than you do) about the past climate and temperature fluctuations but will be happy to point out that there is a real potential that we will far surpass those fluctuations in the medium-term future without action on our part.
OK, so being curious about the origin of Vikings, I emailed an old friend of mine who is a historian
focused on Byzantine era, etc. I assumed he might have some insight.
He was short on time but he told me that he had never seen evidence of any settlements on the artic ocean or Barents Sea that predated the 12th century and said he didn't think it was likely that they were sailing to China around the north, but that he's not an expert on Vikings.
He also directed me to the Wikipedia entry, which he assured me was about as accurate a summary as he's seen.
Early Russian Vikings, at least according to the commonly accepted history, did not land on the arctic or Barents Sea shores, but accessed Russia via the Eastern Baltic and even the Black Sea in the south. There are clearly two distinct origins in history, some having come up the Black Sea through modern Ukraine, up the Dneiper River to modern day Kiev and the Volga to Moscow (both run south) and the other from the many rivers feeding the Baltic, which reach nearly to Moscow.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Kievan_Rus_en.jpg
I'm having a hard time with your claim, given that the combination of a COMPLETE lack of evidence, combined with an obvious agenda leads me down the road of suspecting it is all FUD.
2m sea level rise puts more than 60% of Florida under water (as a simple example).
I've just spent over an hour looking for ANY citation to prove this and I haven't found any.
Can you provide one? Otherwise, it sounds made up.
I would wager that people downloading child porn are ALREADY USING PROXIES, because they don't want to be detected.
This makes the internet blocking TOTALLY 100% USELESS, except as a means to establish content filters which can be extended to other less illegal subjects (like CounterStrike).
It's so transparent as to be almost silly.
Then again....
Never attribute to malice what can be attributed to ignorance.
So, perhaps the politicians are just.... ignorant.
More likely.
And then there's the "Visual ___ .net" programmers who don't know what an IP is, or how a firewall might work.
I've met plenty of them too. They're also the same ones who say "Slashdot? that's a silly name."
You are in a category of "good programmer"
It depends on the programming being done. Many of hte programmers I've supported were the ASP .net developers. I can't tell you how many I've had to explain why they can't simply delete DLL files from their system32 folder and can't arbitrarily install ancient versions of SQL without patching them.
Of course, these are the same people leaving giant SQL injection vulnerabilities in all of their apps (and who have a complete lack of knowledge of encryption), leading to the complete compromise of the credit card database. But that's neither here nor there.
All I'm saying is that some organizations ONLY have these types of programmers. :-)
The United States currently has the lowest overall tax rates in the world, by a small margin.
However, the cost of living in the United States (even including taxes) is MUCH higher than most countries.
For example, health care quality in Canada is generally regarded as equal to a US based HMO. You can argue all you want about specialists and whatever... I'm talking about an HMO like Kaiser.
However, in Canada, the cost-per-person of providing that health care is barely half in Canada...
So they have 5% higher taxes to pay for it, but are able to avoid spending 8-10% of their income to provide health care for their family.
In addition to the lower overall costs for healthcare, they have the added benefit of universal coverage, which means that people like homeless children are also covered.
If anyone could point out, numerically, how a privatized health care system is better, I'm interested to hear. I don't particularly care for polemic or euphemism about slavery. Almost everyone in the world pays more taxes than you do and you DO NOT want to live in countries where you would not (Zimbabwe and Somalia come to mind).
Back when raising an army consisted of feeding and clothing a bunch of already-armed farmers, taxes could be lower, but 10% tax rates don't buy F22s, National Guard disaster relief Blackhawks and advanced CDC laboratories to isolate and analyze nationwide virus outbreaks.
Not in the 1960s during our second boom.
If wartime causes booms, does that explain away 2003-2007? Neat.
Ticks both ways I think.
The simple fact is that tax cuts and increases have zero statistical correlation with GDP growth, either positive or negative. Even when normalizing other variables, this seems to be the case from every study I've ever seen.
*shrugs*
The "peak value" for the laffer curve is probably (according to most estimates) between 50% and 80%.
When our top marginal rate (1979) was at 70%, there was a real argument for the laffer curve having an effect in the event of tax reductions (although, as I have stated, real GDP growth actually has a small NEGATIVE correlation with tax rates)...
However, today with top marginal rates below 40%, there is very little support that lowering that rate increases the national revenue.
And with the negative GDP correlation and very real problem of deficits, I don't see a good argument for reducing that marginal rate, except to personally benefit the highest earners.
The real GDP is actually negatively correlated with tax rates by a small amount (-0.03).
This is a statistically insignificant number.
the real conclusion is that tax rates have NOTHING to do with real GDP growth.
The two periods of highest GDP growth in our nation's history took place when the top marginal tax rate was 91% and 70% respectively.
Oh? Go look at the revenue figures, they disagree. Every time tax rates get cut revenue rises. Every time, The problem is that spending has gone up faster, thus deficits.
I'm sorry, where is this?
Taking a year-for-year statistical analysis, the changes to the top marginal income tax rate are actually negatively correlated with GDP growth by a small amount (a=-0.03). They are also positively correlated with unemployment increases (a=0.33). Median income is ALSO slightly negatively correlated with tax cuts (a=-0.08).
All three primary factors of economic health have a NEGATIVE correlation with tax cuts.
There are a few isolated incidents (like the growth after the 1981 tax cuts). However there are plenty of counter examples. For example, GDP growth AND median income growth comparable to the early 1980s kicks off directly after the 1993 tax INCREASES.
According to statistical regression, tax cuts do very little to spur growth of any kind and with economics and statisticians pointing out that the Laffer curve of peak revenue occurs around 50%-60%, there is little gain (except personal gain for top earners) in decreasing it below the current 35-38%, and in my opinion, there are substantial social gains to decreasing deficits through increasing revenue.
I think your argument is mostly political bunk.
Prove me wrong without using isolated anecdotes.
Most estimations put that between 40% and 50%.
Sorry, That should read "between 40% and 80%".
As it was stated clearly, these may not be ideal rates, but the claim of cutting already low tax rates somehow increases revenue just isn't true.
In order for it to be true, rates have to be high enough that people have substantially strong incentive to say "I'm not going to work up to my capability because my taxes are so high".
That just doesn't happen when the marginal rates are below 35%.
What you said is clearly pointed out by most economists in studies on these topics...
BUT, the standard party line of reducing taxes is that "cut taxes to increase revenue".
It is frankly, based on nothing but hot air and/or lies and most serious economic studies have found little to no room for quibbles in that.
I think you probably couldn't name 3.
Most studies of hard economics relating to tax policy point out that we're substantially below the "optimal rate". Most estimations put that between 40% and 50%.
Papers that draw this conclusion, or at least have suggestions in this direction include:
Mirrlees, 1978
Seade, 1977
Tuomala, 1990
Sandmo, 1977
Wilson, 1993
Ballard and Fullerton, 1992
Dhalby, 1998
Stern, 1976
Piketty, 1997
Roberts, 2000
Atkinson, 1990
Kanbur, 1994
However, most are also very clear in stating that optimizing revenue is NOT necessarily the best rate. It is important to weigh social needs and competitiveness with alternative locales, population happiness, etc.
Most of the world has adopted top marginal rates just below 50%. The US was in that category until the 1980s. Upon reducing that rate, the US began leading all industrialized countries in terms of deficit-to-GDP ratios. While most economists point out that this is likely a combined result of increased spending, rather than tax cuts)... however, tax cuts that occur below the 35% range have never really been shown to increase revenue... In fact, most models suggest the opposite.
If you can cite ANY papers that have specifically defined models that account for opportunity costs, economic elasticity and a cohesive mathematical model, please point them out as I'm not aware of anything in that camp isn't ideological punditry from the Cato Institute or the Heritage Foundation or other similar politically motivated organizations.
Thanks!
I think the modern Battle of Mogidishu (the basis for the movie Blackhawk Down) was a good example.
16 US soldiers were killed in defense of a position.
They killed an estimated 1,000 somali and injured between 3,000 and 4,000 in the process.
There was some air support, a few tanks involved, but the total number of troops involved was only under 200, counting support personnel.
Oh pffft.
In national surveys in the US, MORE THAN 50% of people subscribe to the "If I'm not doing anything illegal, what do I have to hide?" theory.
Did you know that in a recent survey, only 22% of British people surveyed could properly name the 3 countries that makes up Great Britain.
On an unmarked map, almost 90% of Americans could not identify any of Iraq, Iran and Afghanistan. 51% could not find New York State. 68% could not find Japan and 20% could not actually find the Pacific Ocean.
Sure, the number of people who are actively opposed to database surveillance has risen from 5% to 20%, but that doesn't mean the "general public" deserves anything.
I do notice the western countries with the strongest privacy laws happen to also be the countries with the highest test scores amongst kids.
Places like Finland, Belgium, New Zealand, Switzerland, Canada.... They aren't known for government surveillance or overbearing police forces.
I don't know, is this ironic? Or a result of the "liberal agenda" in these places? :-)
sorry to turn that into a political rant, but... It's just too easy.