I read about it in a BBC article. They said that they caught one person who was a trucker. Probably the trucker was not just a curious kid. It still begs the question... Why? What purpose does it serve?
To that question, I answer NO! At least to schools that receive ANY public money. If it is an ENTIRELY private schools, OK. Most charter schools (at least in my state) receive a voucher from the parents which, in my opinion, is the same as getting state money.
On another front, which I find extremely troubling, is universities accepting Koch Foundation funds. The money coming from this foundation comes with BIG strings attached. The university has to agree to allow the Koch Foundation to veto any professor tenure for any reason. There goes your academic independence. If the foundation wants to entirely fund and buy that university, I find that to be acceptable. Right now, public funding of universities is declining so more and more universities are tempted to accept that money and the strings that come with it.
Are you crazy or did you only listen to a superficial sampling of classical music. Granted, a lot of classical music is only instrumental but there are a lot a vocal pieces as well. There is all the operas, the 9'th symphony by Beethoven, Handles Messiah and these examples are just for starters. To say classical music is mostly instrumental is ludicrous.
The German air raid that almost destroyed Coventry was an example of this, The Brits knew it was coming but they also knew that the Germans were beginning to get suspicious. As a result, the British government felt that they had to let this air raid occur even though they knew many people would be killed.
But, then they would just pack up their bags and abandon that toehold. Only corporations with significant USA holdings would stay. If the patent extortion lasted long enough and was onerous enough, they too would leave.
Let's apply this to the entire concept of bundling! For starters, how about your cable TV bill? ( I know, I know! Most Slashdot readers have dropped cable TV!) By some estimates, about 30% to 40% of your cable bill goes to paying for ESPN. If you have cable TV, then you must have ESPN even if you don't want it. ( At least in my area you do not have a choice not to have it.) I have even done a channel block for ESPN on my TV set. I never see it and don't want it but still have to pay for it. I call it the ESPN tax. I'm sure that there are many more examples of this!
Isn't it ironic that Zuckerberg doesn't like it when the privacy of FaceBooks IPO is violated when his business model is to gather as much private information about the users of FaceBook as possible. There is an old saying that seems to apply here...
"What's good for the goose should be good for the gander!"
The Post Office is losing money, do we really want to do this? I have a radical proposal. How about the Post Office printing just one stamp for each denomination. Once a stamp design is decided, NEVER change it. This printing up new stamps to satisfy stamp collectors is lunacy. If the stamp collectors want new stamps to collect why don't they hire a printing company to issue stamps just for their personal hobby. Yes, they will tell you that their hobby adds to the revenue of the Post Office. Does the money brought in actually pay for the cost of designing new stamps? You have to pay for artists to design the stamp and then have to retool the printing press to produce the stamp and then distribute and possibly advertise the new stamp.
There is some more interesting trivia about the "Star of Bethlehem" mythology.
1. The "Star of Bethlehem" was supposed to be in the east. We all know that the stars appear to move from the east to west through the night. Stars appearing in the north appear to circle around the north star. and really can't be describes as appearing in the east. How can it be that any star, except Polaris, can appear to be fixed in the sky?
2. According to legend, the magi were wise men that came from the orient, and followed the "Star of Bethlehem". If the magi came from a location that was somewhere east of Bethlehem, and they were following a star that appeared in the east, they would be going in a westward direction. How did they get to Bethlehem? They would have to circle the globe to do that!
Just some riddles to think about. The story of the "Star of Bethlehem" is not an important belief of Christianity. However for fundies, it is in the Bible so they have to believe that it is exactly the way it happened. They have some explaining to do. There are more inconsistencies in that story, if you just think about it a bit.
You can do the same thing with slave labor, but essentially their workers are almost slaves. The only difference is that the owner of slaves has to take care of his investment (the health, room and board of his slaves). What we have here is actually worse than slave labor because when the worker can't (or won't) do the work, they just discard him like a child discards a broken toy. You see, the corporations don't have to worry about their workers, they just fire him and replace him with someone else. They cry that their workers no longer have any loyalty to the company like they used to 50 years ago. They of course don't have loyalty to their workers. A DECENT company would not make such demands on its workers!
Perhaps Diebold should take the same approach to vote-tabulating machines.
I don't know about that. My way of thinking would be to isolate the machines from the Internet as much as possible. There are many ways in as it is. Allowing Internet access gives hackers another way into the system. As far as the speed issue? What is the hurry, there is a huge amount of time between election and the winner taking office,
Sure! We intend to use the parking spot for only a minute or two but then reality sets in. The line at the cashier is long, or we get sidetracked by something and forget we are using a handicapped spot. A few minutes becomes much longer than we intended. Also, how is the cop going to know if this was actually the case. Imagine a cop writing a ticket. The offender was using the parking spot for more than a few minutes. Do you expect a cop to wait and waste his time to see if it was actually a few minutes. What would happen if the offender was there for a long time and the cop sees him just as he is pulling out of the spot? The offender avoids a ticket just by telling the officer that he was there for only a minute? The only enforceable way is to have an absolute ban on the non-disabled from using a handicapped spot.
I had a stroke which left me with balance problems, My rehabilitation doctor wanted me to get a handicapped parking permit but I refused the offer but I can legitimately get a handicapped parking permit anytime I want onet. For me, it is a matter of pride that I can still get around without needing that consideration. It really irks me when I see people that are not disabled use the handicapped parking.
"I would suggest that fundamentalists are those that represent the core ideals behind the religion, the most significant probably being belief in the absolute authenticity of their scriptures, and ongoing endeavoring to practice its values."
I think the goal of living out your religious convictions ts acceptable, What concerns me is the tendency of fundies of all religious persuasions to use the legal system of their country to enforce their views about how to live. The Cristian fundamentalists in the USA and elsewhere are always trying to enact laws against gay marriage, abortion etc. The Jewish fundies try to enact laws in Israel prohibiting activities that they call "work" on the Sabbath, try to get certain dress codes for women etc. We all know about the excesses of the Taliban (the Islamic fundies). Hinduism also has problems with fundies. The common theme here is "FUNDIES are bad for the world!" If they would leave the rest of the world live in peace, we would be better off.
"The whole thing is solved by a simple set of campaign finance rules. Publicly-funded campaigns. "
I fully agree with your solution but big money is fighting this. Arizona has a law that says that a politician can get his campaign publicly funded if he voluntary agrees to limits on his outside fund raising. It also stipulates that if his opponent spends a ton of money, his public funding will increase to match the spending by his opponent. Big money doesn't like this and are suing (maybe the case his over, I don't know) because they say the law dilutes their ability to influence elections. If anybody out there knows anything more about this, I would appreciate it.
So much for publicly financed campaigns if this tactic prevails. If it does, the only recourse is a constitutional amendment that says that
1. Corporations are not people, 2. publicly financed campaigns are OK. 3. Political contributions can not be anonymous.
Senator Bernie Sanders (Independent) has introduced into congress an amendment stating item 1. It is going to need a lot of public support because big money is fighting this as well. The proposed amendment really is just a start on fixing a broken system. Please contact your congress critters telling them to support this proposed amendment.
Spell checkers do not fix all of the problems. My brother, who is a poor speller, asked me to proof read his resume. He had run a spell checker and "fixed" all of the spelling errors. It was lucky for him that he did because there were some glaring errors. Instead of "I attended XXX community college" he accepted the spell checkers suggestion of "I attended XXX community collage". Until spell checkers start looking at the context of the misspelled word, they will not give good suggestions. Too often, spell checkers are used as a crutch that will often fail when needed.
The saying goes that "If you work hard you will get ahead in the world". That statement was mostly untrue foe a long time. Yes, there were notable exceptions to that (Ben Franklin, Andrew Carnegie etc.) but for most people, this just was not true. Actually, luck played a big part in those successes.
Recently, the ruling class (the 1%) has forgot the last part of that saying, they want it to be "Work hard and maybe you will be lucky to hold on to your job". They got to their exulted positions just like the nobility of history did, they were lucky to be born to a rich and powerful family. Hard work seldom is the key to their success, they inherited it. All I am calling for is to put the full saying back into effect. If those at the top don't work hard and try to rest on the accomplishments of their elders, they should slip into poverty If a poor person does work hard, he should be able to take their place at the top of the heap..
You have no control of what others post. Maybe the stuff that others post about you is unflattering but doesn't rise to the level of libel (where you could sue the cretin). If deep data mining is allowed, this unflattering data might be found and put into your credit history. You might not even be aware it is out there. Had an engagement or marriage that didn't work out? Maybe your ex or dumped spouse to be is mad enough to put true but unflattering stuff online.
Here is the problem as I see it. Lets say that you are credit worthy and would qualify for a loan if only your financial history was considered. Now if the credit agencies could use the data about your friends the following is plausible.
1 Lets say you list Joe blow as one of your friends. 2. Joe Blow has a very poor credit rating. In fact he has a bankruptcy on his record. 3. Joe Blow is looking for friends to loan him money (there is a chance he might not pay it back). 3 Your loan application is refused because they think that you might give money to Joe Blow and he will not repay you.
Do we really want to have our financial history dependent on people we call friends? Also the concept of a friend has been changing. Someone you list as a "friend" on FB might not be a good friend that you know on the outside world (face to face). In some respects, FB has cheapened the term "friend". We actually need a different term for someone that you occasionally meet online.
If what I have heard is correct, the drug smugglers often kill the low level after their work is done. ( Low level as in diggers This gives the term a whole new meaning. ) They do this because the workers know the location of the tunnel and "dead men tell no tales". The architect probably didn't have to be killed if he just designed the tunnel and didn't know where it was. At any rate, if they plan to kill the workers later for security reasons, they can promise very high salaries knowing that they won't have to pay up. Another tactic I heard they use is slave labor. Again, wages are not a consideration.
Apple and Microsoft got the idea of the GUI from the PARC at Xerox. You make it sound as if Apple invented the idea. They didn't invent it, Xerox did but Xerox never patented the idea. Apple just was the first to put it on the mass market.
"Experienced users want it the way they got used to."
Exactly! Instead of ramming a new GUI down our throats why don't the designers do something radical. When upgrading to a newer version offer the option to continue using the older ("classic") version of a GUI. Newbies will be happy because of all the new eye candy and experienced users can continue using a computer in the way they are used to. Later on, if the new way of doing things isn't just the latest fad and really is better the older users will surely migrate to a new GUI. It's the test of time.
Slashdot Mirror
I read about it in a BBC article. They said that they caught one person who was a trucker. Probably the trucker was not just a curious kid. It still begs the question... Why? What purpose does it serve?
"Should billionaires rule our schools?"
To that question, I answer NO! At least to schools that receive ANY public money. If it is an ENTIRELY private schools, OK. Most charter schools (at least in my state) receive a voucher from the parents which, in my opinion, is the same as getting state money.
On another front, which I find extremely troubling, is universities accepting Koch Foundation funds. The money coming from this foundation comes with BIG strings attached. The university has to agree to allow the Koch Foundation to veto any professor tenure for any reason. There goes your academic independence. If the foundation wants to entirely fund and buy that university, I find that to be acceptable. Right now, public funding of universities is declining so more and more universities are tempted to accept that money and the strings that come with it.
"it's that there are frequently no words"
Are you crazy or did you only listen to a superficial sampling of classical music. Granted, a lot of classical music is only instrumental but there are a lot a vocal pieces as well. There is all the operas, the 9'th symphony by Beethoven, Handles Messiah and these examples are just for starters. To say classical music is mostly instrumental is ludicrous.
The German air raid that almost destroyed Coventry was an example of this, The Brits knew it was coming but they also knew that the Germans were beginning to get suspicious. As a result, the British government felt that they had to let this air raid occur even though they knew many people would be killed.
Doesn't Ron Paul represent parts of East Texas? If not, he's not too far away from there. They have some strange ideas in those parts of Texas.
But, then they would just pack up their bags and abandon that toehold. Only corporations with significant USA holdings would stay. If the patent extortion lasted long enough and was onerous enough, they too would leave.
Let's apply this to the entire concept of bundling! For starters, how about your cable TV bill? ( I know, I know! Most Slashdot readers have dropped cable TV!) By some estimates, about 30% to 40% of your cable bill goes to paying for ESPN. If you have cable TV, then you must have ESPN even if you don't want it. ( At least in my area you do not have a choice not to have it.) I have even done a channel block for ESPN on my TV set. I never see it and don't want it but still have to pay for it. I call it the ESPN tax. I'm sure that there are many more examples of this!
Isn't it ironic that Zuckerberg doesn't like it when the privacy of FaceBooks IPO is violated when his business model is to gather as much private information about the users of FaceBook as possible. There is an old saying that seems to apply here...
"What's good for the goose should be good for the gander!"
The Post Office is losing money, do we really want to do this? I have a radical proposal. How about the Post Office printing just one stamp for each denomination. Once a stamp design is decided, NEVER change it. This printing up new stamps to satisfy stamp collectors is lunacy. If the stamp collectors want new stamps to collect why don't they hire a printing company to issue stamps just for their personal hobby. Yes, they will tell you that their hobby adds to the revenue of the Post Office. Does the money brought in actually pay for the cost of designing new stamps? You have to pay for artists to design the stamp and then have to retool the printing press to produce the stamp and then distribute and possibly advertise the new stamp.
The same is true for coin collectors.
There is some more interesting trivia about the "Star of Bethlehem" mythology.
1. The "Star of Bethlehem" was supposed to be in the east. We all know that the stars appear to move from the east to west through the night. Stars appearing in the north appear to circle around the north star. and really can't be describes as appearing in the east. How can it be that any star, except Polaris, can appear to be fixed in the sky?
2. According to legend, the magi were wise men that came from the orient, and followed the "Star of Bethlehem". If the magi came from a location that was somewhere east of Bethlehem, and they were following a star that appeared in the east, they would be going in a westward direction. How did they get to Bethlehem? They would have to circle the globe to do that!
Just some riddles to think about. The story of the "Star of Bethlehem" is not an important belief of Christianity. However for fundies, it is in the Bible so they have to believe that it is exactly the way it happened. They have some explaining to do. There are more inconsistencies in that story, if you just think about it a bit.
You can do the same thing with slave labor, but essentially their workers are almost slaves. The only difference is that the owner of slaves has to take care of his investment (the health, room and board of his slaves). What we have here is actually worse than slave labor because when the worker can't (or won't) do the work, they just discard him like a child discards a broken toy. You see, the corporations don't have to worry about their workers, they just fire him and replace him with someone else. They cry that their workers no longer have any loyalty to the company like they used to 50 years ago. They of course don't have loyalty to their workers. A DECENT company would not make such demands on its workers!
Perhaps Diebold should take the same approach to vote-tabulating machines.
I don't know about that. My way of thinking would be to isolate the machines from the Internet as much as possible. There are many ways in as it is. Allowing Internet access gives hackers another way into the system. As far as the speed issue? What is the hurry, there is a huge amount of time between election and the winner taking office,
I couldn't have phrased it better.
Sure! We intend to use the parking spot for only a minute or two but then reality sets in. The line at the cashier is long, or we get sidetracked by something and forget we are using a handicapped spot. A few minutes becomes much longer than we intended. Also, how is the cop going to know if this was actually the case. Imagine a cop writing a ticket. The offender was using the parking spot for more than a few minutes. Do you expect a cop to wait and waste his time to see if it was actually a few minutes. What would happen if the offender was there for a long time and the cop sees him just as he is pulling out of the spot? The offender avoids a ticket just by telling the officer that he was there for only a minute? The only enforceable way is to have an absolute ban on the non-disabled from using a handicapped spot.
I had a stroke which left me with balance problems, My rehabilitation doctor wanted me to get a handicapped parking permit but I refused the offer but I can legitimately get a handicapped parking permit anytime I want onet. For me, it is a matter of pride that I can still get around without needing that consideration. It really irks me when I see people that are not disabled use the handicapped parking.
"I would suggest that fundamentalists are those that represent the core ideals behind the religion, the most significant probably being belief in the absolute authenticity of their scriptures, and ongoing endeavoring to practice its values."
I think the goal of living out your religious convictions ts acceptable, What concerns me is the tendency of fundies of all religious persuasions to use the legal system of their country to enforce their views about how to live. The Cristian fundamentalists in the USA and elsewhere are always trying to enact laws against gay marriage, abortion etc. The Jewish fundies try to enact laws in Israel prohibiting activities that they call "work" on the Sabbath, try to get certain dress codes for women etc. We all know about the excesses of the Taliban (the Islamic fundies). Hinduism also has problems with fundies. The common theme here is "FUNDIES are bad for the world!" If they would leave the rest of the world live in peace, we would be better off.
"The whole thing is solved by a simple set of campaign finance rules. Publicly-funded campaigns. "
I fully agree with your solution but big money is fighting this. Arizona has a law that says that a politician can get his campaign publicly funded if he voluntary agrees to limits on his outside fund raising. It also stipulates that if his opponent spends a ton of money, his public funding will increase to match the spending by his opponent. Big money doesn't like this and are suing (maybe the case his over, I don't know) because they say the law dilutes their ability to influence elections. If anybody out there knows anything more about this, I would appreciate it.
So much for publicly financed campaigns if this tactic prevails. If it does, the only recourse is a constitutional amendment that says that
1. Corporations are not people,
2. publicly financed campaigns are OK.
3. Political contributions can not be anonymous.
Senator Bernie Sanders (Independent) has introduced into congress an amendment stating item 1. It is going to need a lot of public support because big money is fighting this as well. The proposed amendment really is just a start on fixing a broken system. Please contact your congress critters telling them to support this proposed amendment.
Spell checkers do not fix all of the problems. My brother, who is a poor speller, asked me to proof read his resume. He had run a spell checker and "fixed" all of the spelling errors. It was lucky for him that he did because there were some glaring errors. Instead of "I attended XXX community college" he accepted the spell checkers suggestion of "I attended XXX community collage". Until spell checkers start looking at the context of the misspelled word, they will not give good suggestions. Too often, spell checkers are used as a crutch that will often fail when needed.
The saying goes that "If you work hard you will get ahead in the world". That statement was mostly untrue foe a long time. Yes, there were notable exceptions to that (Ben Franklin, Andrew Carnegie etc.) but for most people, this just was not true. Actually, luck played a big part in those successes.
Recently, the ruling class (the 1%) has forgot the last part of that saying, they want it to be "Work hard and maybe you will be lucky to hold on to your job". They got to their exulted positions just like the nobility of history did, they were lucky to be born to a rich and powerful family. Hard work seldom is the key to their success, they inherited it. All I am calling for is to put the full saying back into effect. If those at the top don't work hard and try to rest on the accomplishments of their elders, they should slip into poverty If a poor person does work hard, he should be able to take their place at the top of the heap..
You have no control of what others post. Maybe the stuff that others post about you is unflattering but doesn't rise to the level of libel (where you could sue the cretin). If deep data mining is allowed, this unflattering data might be found and put into your credit history. You might not even be aware it is out there. Had an engagement or marriage that didn't work out? Maybe your ex or dumped spouse to be is mad enough to put true but unflattering stuff online.
Here is the problem as I see it. Lets say that you are credit worthy and would qualify for a loan if only your financial history was considered. Now if the credit agencies could use the data about your friends the following is plausible.
1 Lets say you list Joe blow as one of your friends.
2. Joe Blow has a very poor credit rating. In fact he has a bankruptcy on his record.
3. Joe Blow is looking for friends to loan him money (there is a chance he might not pay it back).
3 Your loan application is refused because they think that you might give money to Joe Blow and he will not repay you.
Do we really want to have our financial history dependent on people we call friends? Also the concept of a friend has been changing. Someone you list as a "friend" on FB might not be a good friend that you know on the outside world (face to face). In some respects, FB has cheapened the term "friend". We actually need a different term for someone that you occasionally meet online.
If what I have heard is correct, the drug smugglers often kill the low level after their work is done. ( Low level as in diggers This gives the term a whole new meaning. ) They do this because the workers know the location of the tunnel and "dead men tell no tales". The architect probably didn't have to be killed if he just designed the tunnel and didn't know where it was. At any rate, if they plan to kill the workers later for security reasons, they can promise very high salaries knowing that they won't have to pay up. Another tactic I heard they use is slave labor. Again, wages are not a consideration.
Get your facts straight...
Apple and Microsoft got the idea of the GUI from the PARC at Xerox. You make it sound as if Apple invented the idea. They didn't invent it, Xerox did but Xerox never patented the idea. Apple just was the first to put it on the mass market.
"Experienced users want it the way they got used to."
Exactly! Instead of ramming a new GUI down our throats why don't the designers do something radical. When upgrading to a newer version offer the option to continue using the older ("classic") version of a GUI. Newbies will be happy because of all the new eye candy and experienced users can continue using a computer in the way they are used to. Later on, if the new way of doing things isn't just the latest fad and really is better the older users will surely migrate to a new GUI. It's the test of time.
With their (MS) history of every other version flavor of Windows having problems, I'll wait for the successor to Win 8. Consider the history...
Win 95 - Win 98
Win NT - Win 2000
Win Me - Win XP
Win Vista - Win 7
Granted, the second one of each pair had problems but not nearly as much problems as the first. Is there a pattern here?