Read climate audit. Read about the divergence problem. Read about unreproducible graphs. Read about bizarre weightings. Read about manipulated data from now "lost" raw data. Read about white noise input yielding "increasing temperatures" as output.
Are you an expert in climatology? Most people aren't, which is why I care more about the peer-reviewed science journals, than the harpy screeching of "armchair experts".
I often wonder whether people who appear to know "oh so much" about the flaws in climatology, put as much effort into discovering the faults in other fields of science.
I strongly suspect not. Because if they did, they would see that climatology is one of the most rigorous of the scientific fields. It has to be, because it is under incredible and unprecedented scrutiny.
But go ahead, tell me how much there is "to attack in this science", as if you had the faintest clue about the practical nature of scientific research.
It seems there's a concerted campaign by certain political groups - especially USA political groups - to push the meme that this is a "scandal". But there is no scandal because the stolen emails don't invalidate the science.
They can't attack the science, so they attack the scientists. The science has been peer reviewed, independently verified, and the predictions made by CRU have already come to pass. The science is robust. So all they can do is attack the scientists.
This is a smear campaign, conducted by political screechers with a clearly visible agenda.
Yes, it is most definitely insecure. This change in Fedora 12 allows an unprivileged user to:
Start and stop network services
Install setuid binaries
Remove and install files owned by root
Modify system configurations
Change user and group databases
On any normal system, the unprivileged users can do some of these things only through a *very* small subset of programs (e.g. passwd) that have been heavily vetted, and even then they still have an occasional exploit.
Now Fedora is saying "hey, all 15000 of our programs can do all of these things, and any unprivileged user can install any of the 15000 programs". Fedora has increased the number of potential exploits by several orders of magnitude.
... Red Hat is now hiring idiot developers who don't know the first thing about UNIX.
The Linux admins at one of the sites I regularly work were in a furor over this change to Fedora. Within the space of a minute they had concocted a half dozen ways this "feature" could be exploited. This wasn't even taking into account the management and maintenance nightmare of machines where users could install software; they were simply considering the security implications. One of the admins was so furious that he suggested in all seriousness that the site drops Red Hat Enterprise Linux immediately and use SUSE Enterprise. His justification being that if Red Hat can allow this kind of stupidity into their community build, imagine what sort of crap is filtering through into Enterprise Linux. He no longer has any confidence that Red Hat has the faintest clue what constitutes a secure system. I didn't think he was overreacting; this is the dumbest thing I've seen any Linux distribution do, ever.
That the Fedora developers are trying to defend this stupidity is just the icing on the cake. Red Hat should sack every last one of them for incompetence.
So, when they get caught eventually (Hulu does have records of IP addresses), they can get charged with credit fraud, ID theft, etc, on top of the Intellectual Property offense?
These days identity theft and credit fraud are minor crimes compared to copyright infringement.</tongue-in-cheek>
But all Hulu has to do is insert a user ID into the stream. Something subtle, and distributed, so it can't be (easily) removed. When a pirated copy is found, they find the ID, and cancel that person's subscription, permanently.
And all the pirate has to do is use a stolen credit card and a fake name.
Is there actually a method of doing anything unscrupulous with a BASIC interpreter running inside a C64 emulator running on an iPhone?
Not likely unscrupulous, but an interpreter on the iPhone would allow developers to sell iPhone software without going through the App Store. Apple has decided - for better or worse - that they must review and approve all applications on the iPhone. Therefore no interpreters.
For that matter, any energy savings is also questionable, once you account for the energy used in production, not to mention disposal.
You are absolutely wrong. My CFL cost me $18 each approximately 7 years ago. I have easily recovered this in electricity bills already. Because the $18 covered the entire cost of the CFL - including the energy required to produce and deliver them - there has been an energy saving.
Quick sums: 100W globe, 2 hours per day, 300 days per year, 14c/kWh = $8.40 per year. 25W CFL, 2 hours per day, 300 days per year, 14c/kWh = $2.10 per year. The ROI is less than 3 years. And 2 hours per day is *very* conservative. And I have generously excluded the cost of incandescent globes.
Not quite right. The pilots were showing off with a nose-high attitude at very slow speed. Only made possible because of the very fancy computerized systems that constantly adjusted throttle and pitch to prevent sink. They hadn't surveyed the airport beforehand (they were running late) and were unaware that the green patch at the end of the runway was a forest. They were also flying far too low; only 30 foot when 100 foot was the legal minimum.
They realized the mistake too late and tried to apply go around power, but engines take a long time to spool up, and they were in a very low energy configuration (slow speed, nose high) so they were unable to climb. The rear of the plane touched the trees which slowed them down even more, causing them to sink into the forest.
Three people did die but they weren't dignitaries; they were two children and an adult trying to save them.
It certainly wasn't because the computer "refused to let the pilots power up". It was incompetence and recklessness by the pilots, combined with very stupid aviation laws in France that permitted passengers during air show demonstrations.
They've invested a crazy amount of money in technologies customer's don't care for (3G, all the different ways to get the Web on phones), so now they have to charge a lot for the two things people actually use (SMS and ringtones).
Uhh, I recently bought a new phone and changed carriers purely to get 3G. I have technically illiterate friends who have similarly jumped carriers to get 3G. They just know that Foxtel, Football and Cricket are only available on 3G. I know that 3G is a fundamentally better technology than GSM and offers higher bitrates. Customer's certainly do care about 3G - the technically literate and illiterate alike.
Huh? Xerox invented pretty much all of modern computing: bit mapped displays, windows, icons, mice, pointers, (= WIMP), WYSIWYG, networking, object oriented software.
Pure nonsense. Doug Engelbart's team at SRI invented most of the things you just listed, several years before Xerox PARC even started. From Wikipedia:
He is best known for inventing the computer mouse (in a joint effort with Bill English); as a pioneer of human-computer interaction whose team developed hypertext, networked computers, and precursors to GUIs
At SRI International, Engelbart was the primary force behind the design and development of the On-Line System, or NLS. He and his team at the Augmentation Research Center (the lab he founded) developed computer-interface elements such as bit-mapped screens, groupware, hypertext and precursors to the graphical user interface. He conceived and developed many of his user interface ideas back in the mid-1960s, long before the personal computer revolution, at a time when most individuals were kept away from computers, and could only use computers through intermediaries (see batch processing), and when software tended to be written for vertical applications in proprietary systems.
In 1967, Engelbart applied for, and in 1970 he received a patent for the wooden shell with two metal wheels (computer mouse U.S. Patent 3,541,541 ), describing it in the patent application as an "X-Y position indicator for a display system". Engelbart later revealed that it was nicknamed the "mouse" because the tail came out the end. His group also called the on-screen cursor a "bug," but this term was not widely adopted."
In fact, many of the researchers hired by PARC used to work with Engelbart at SRI. They took the ideas with them when they changed jobs.
(1) Nuclear power is non-renewable. The biggest problem with oil isn't really the pollution - enough people seem to think global warming is a myth - but the fact that it's a finite resource. The US peak of oil production in the 70s led to shortages. The global peak of oil production is due pretty soon if the OPEC countries haven't been lying about their reserves, and has already passed if they have been lying. Uranium is also a finite resource and will have its own peak production followed by shortages. Other fissionable material is possible (eg, thorium) but they are also finite resources. Trading one non-renewable (oil) for another non-renewable (uranium) isn't a long-term solution.
(2) There are close links between the technology in nuclear power plants and the technology required to make nuclear weapons. Nuclear power plants aren't "allowed" to be owned by "evil" countries such as Iran and North Korea because it scares the bajeezus out of the rich white men in the US and UK. The last US administration was slightly more forward-thinking and even helped North Korea establish nuclear power plants that were not weapons capable. Look how that played out, with the opposing party at the time calling the administration traitorous, and the current administration working to dismantle those power plants in North Korea. Nuclear power is only an option for the rich and powerful countries that don't answer to anybody else. Nuclear power isn't a global solution.
(3) Waste management. It doesn't matter how much something costs if it's filthy. You could save $300 a year by not washing your clothes, not taking showers, and never vacuuming the floor. But would you do that? It isn't sensible to pollute your environment. It certainly isn't justified by the cost-savings. Similarly for nuclear power, you're talking about a fairly miniscule cost saving over solar - 12c compared to 40c sounds like a huge difference but energy costs are a tiny fraction of your yearly budget, so it's not that big a deal - but the waste produced by nuclear power is significantly worse than that produced by solar. Wind power is "clean" within 3 years, solar within 5 years, nuclear within 10,000 years. Reducing waste is desirable despite the cost.
(4) Incidents at nuclear power plants are catastrophic. The explosion at Chernobyl was more catastrophic than some people realise; if rain hadn't washed down the radioactive cloud - and storm clouds were apparently seeded by the USSR military to induce rain - then huge areas of land would now have unsafe levels of radioactivity. Newer power plant designs such as pebble-beds are supposedly safer. They said Chernobyl was safe too, and they lied. The Chinese are forging ahead with 6 new pebble-bed reactors because they realise they don't have much choice - they need power fast and nuclear power is the only known solution - but I'm entirely skeptical of the safety claims. Too many vested interests for the truth to come out, and nobody here has the credentials to properly evaluate the safety of pebble-bed.
(5) Cost. The figures bandied about by the nuclear industry are almost certainly bogus. Nobody knows how much it really costs to safely store radioactive waste for 10s of 1000s of years. One of the scares after the collapse of the USSR was all of the radioactive waste that went missing from storage. It was thought that the waste might be used by terrorists to create dirty bombs. That was after less than 50 years of storage; only 9,950 to go! So what was the actual cost of storing that waste? It's far more than the initial outlay of the chain-wire fence and some steel barrels.
(6) Centralisation. Nuclear power puts all the production in a few small locations. The transmission losses alone are staggering. There is also the potential of critical damage from terrorists, war, or natural catastrophe. Distributed energy production is more resilient. If every rooftop in t
Didn't he also say that he was going to be the CEO President and run the government like a business? That's why I voted for him in 2000. I didn't vote for him in 2004, because I realized that the business he meant was Enron.....
It's always a mistake to think you can run government like a business. It's a double mistake to vote for a politician who claims they can; they're either lying (most politicians) or stupid (take your pick).
Three out of ten businesses go bankrupt within the first year. When a government goes bankrupt it destroys an entire country. Immediately you see there is a difference; you can't run a government like a business and simply hope you're not in that bottom 30%. Governments need to be far more risk adverse.
Governments work with much larger time frames. They need to think in terms of decades. Businesses barely think in terms of years. I think one of the problems with the current administration is that they do only think in terms of years. That works fine in business where you can always bail before the stock tanks - the new investors take the loss instead of you - but it's disastrous for a government.
The US government handles significantly more money than any single US business. This means there are more opportunities for corruption so there is a corresponding stronger need for oversight and accountability. This is one of the reasons why government works so slowly; the public service structure has been designed to obstruct and detect and resolve corruption.
Governments have significantly more power than businesses. Businesses only have to follow the law; governments can create them. Governments can declare war. Government can imprison people. Government enforces the judiciary. These responsibilities make government both more powerful but also more difficult to manage. A businessman is not trained for that sort of responsibility.
And I can't end without taking an easy swipe at the current administration. GWB is a terrible businessman and perhaps the worst choice for "CEO of the USA". He managed to financially cripple three oil companies before finally making money on the Texas Rangers; and IMO his profit from the Texas Rangers had nothing to do with his skills as a businessman. Despite having a huge family wealth and an MBA from Harvard, he was worse than mediocre. His track record has spoken for itself. I'm not surprised you wanted the government to be run like a business - it's a common desire amongst free market advocates - but I'm very surprised you chose GWB as the champion for your ideology.
I thought the radical Environmentalist wanted 5.5 - 6.0 billion people removed from the face of the earth.
I thought the radical Republicans wanted to invade the Middle East, kill all their leaders and convert them to Christianity.
The lesson here is that you should ignore the radicals because they're batshit crazy. Demonizing an entire movement because of its radical fringe is a tactic used by attention seeking morons who aim to create controversy through division and polarization.
I think that apple could make a much better set-top box, with TV Tuner, big hard drive (at least 300 GB) and a remote, and an application like MythTV or SageTV.
If they released all that in the first version, then who would buy the second version?
Apple always releases a crippled version first. After all the early adopters have bought one, Apple releases a slightly enhanced version. This nets the customers who were hanging out for those extra features. And most of the early adopters buy the enhanced version as well. Keep repeating until the market is saturated.
Releasing the ultimate version first is bad business. Always keep something in reserve.
Series #9 is retailing at $33 [amazon.com] so that would suggest that $1.50 is a reasonable cost to own an episode.
That might be a reasonable price for a high-resolution high-bitrate version of the episode on DVD media, with attractive packaging, and no additional costs for downloading.
It is a completely unreasonable price for a low-resolution low-bitrate version of the episode on NO media, with NO packaging, and additional costs for downloading.
I follow several "currently airing" series. Battlestar Galactica, Stargate, SG Atlantis, Rome, The Simpsons, South Park to name a few. I'd be happy to pay, for example, $2/episode for subscriptions for these if I could get them to start downloading from a trusted source as soon as they're available.
$2 an episode is too much. Let's imagine I watch 12 series with an average of 24 episodes per series per year. That's $576 per year on top of the Internet bandwidth costs which are still quite significant in Australia (about $600 per year). I could get cable TV (or more commonly in Australia, satellite TV) for half that and get all those shows and several dozen more.
Realistically I'd be wanting to pay 10-20c per episode. And I'd want them DRM free so I could make backup copies for watching later. Anything more expensive than that is not even remotely tempting. I would like to know where the "$2/episode" meme came from because I don't think any thought was put into it.
Since the socially mobile tend to follow the ways of the dominant power, Islam has become increasingly a religion of the poor and ill educated. (I know this is a simplification, but it is a useful simplification.)
Since the socially ignorant tend to follow the ways of the USA, Christianity has become increasingly a religion of the fat and stupid. (I know this is a simplification, but it is a useful simplification.)
In order to convict the people in this case the state of Georgia would have to prove they were causing the officer emotional distress and "establish a pattern" of behavior. From what is shown the office got caught once, and that does not constitute a pattern, therefore there is no harassment and no stalking. (There are also several other problems if you apply the facts to the law such as the emotional distress--is the officer suffering from depression because he got caught speeding? And you have the defense of legitimate purpose; the couple could easily argue there is a legitimate purpose).
This is just a case of the police force trying to intimidate someone who caught an officer doing something maybe they should not have been doing
No, this is just a case of you not reading the fucking article.
The couple had been repeatedly emailing the officer directly regarding the incident. He had asked them to stop. The police officer was definitely being stalked.
The speeding issue is separate but he can't be prosecuted for that because the couple are not licensed radar gun operators so their "capture" is worthless.
The couple did not handle this situation correctly. You can hire a licensed radar gun operator; small towns do it all the time during the tourist season. That would have been legally binding.
Noted peace activist turned Mulsim, Cat "Peace Train" Stevens, affirms that Rushdie should be killed.
That's an absolutely vile misrepresentation of what Cat Stevens (Yusuf Islam) actually said. Here is what Yusuf had to say regarding the artificial controversy generated by the British tabloids.
"I never called for the death of Salman Rushdie; nor backed the Fatwa issued by the Ayatollah Khomeini - and still don't. The book itself destroyed the harmony between peoples and created an unnecessary international crisis.
When asked about my opinion regarding blasphemy, I could not tell a lie and confirmed that - like both the Torah and the Gospel - the Qur'an considers it, without repentance, as a capital offense. The Bible is full of similar harsh laws if you're looking for them[30]. However, the application of such Biblical and Qur'anic injunctions is not to be outside of due process of law, in a place or land where such law is accepted and applied by the society as a whole..." -- Yusuf Islam
Yusuf is and always has been a kind and gentle person. His tireless work in helping children and the victims of war is an inspiration. He is a role model for how people should act towards each other. And it disgusts me that foul-minded bigots such as yourself would repeat those tabloid lies about him in an attempt to discredit an entire religion.
It needs to take a break from bashing Christianity and recognize where the real danger lies
Slashdot Mirror
Are you an expert in climatology? Most people aren't, which is why I care more about the peer-reviewed science journals, than the harpy screeching of "armchair experts".
I often wonder whether people who appear to know "oh so much" about the flaws in climatology, put as much effort into discovering the faults in other fields of science.
I strongly suspect not. Because if they did, they would see that climatology is one of the most rigorous of the scientific fields. It has to be, because it is under incredible and unprecedented scrutiny.
But go ahead, tell me how much there is "to attack in this science", as if you had the faintest clue about the practical nature of scientific research.
It seems there's a concerted campaign by certain political groups - especially USA political groups - to push the meme that this is a "scandal". But there is no scandal because the stolen emails don't invalidate the science.
They can't attack the science, so they attack the scientists. The science has been peer reviewed, independently verified, and the predictions made by CRU have already come to pass. The science is robust. So all they can do is attack the scientists.
This is a smear campaign, conducted by political screechers with a clearly visible agenda.
Yes, it is most definitely insecure. This change in Fedora 12 allows an unprivileged user to:
On any normal system, the unprivileged users can do some of these things only through a *very* small subset of programs (e.g. passwd) that have been heavily vetted, and even then they still have an occasional exploit.
Now Fedora is saying "hey, all 15000 of our programs can do all of these things, and any unprivileged user can install any of the 15000 programs". Fedora has increased the number of potential exploits by several orders of magnitude.
That's insecure.
... Red Hat is now hiring idiot developers who don't know the first thing about UNIX.
The Linux admins at one of the sites I regularly work were in a furor over this change to Fedora. Within the space of a minute they had concocted a half dozen ways this "feature" could be exploited. This wasn't even taking into account the management and maintenance nightmare of machines where users could install software; they were simply considering the security implications. One of the admins was so furious that he suggested in all seriousness that the site drops Red Hat Enterprise Linux immediately and use SUSE Enterprise. His justification being that if Red Hat can allow this kind of stupidity into their community build, imagine what sort of crap is filtering through into Enterprise Linux. He no longer has any confidence that Red Hat has the faintest clue what constitutes a secure system. I didn't think he was overreacting; this is the dumbest thing I've seen any Linux distribution do, ever.
That the Fedora developers are trying to defend this stupidity is just the icing on the cake. Red Hat should sack every last one of them for incompetence.
So, when they get caught eventually (Hulu does have records of IP addresses), they can get charged with credit fraud, ID theft, etc, on top of the Intellectual Property offense?
These days identity theft and credit fraud are minor crimes compared to copyright infringement.</tongue-in-cheek>
But all Hulu has to do is insert a user ID into the stream. Something subtle, and distributed, so it can't be (easily) removed. When a pirated copy is found, they find the ID, and cancel that person's subscription, permanently.
And all the pirate has to do is use a stolen credit card and a fake name.
Not likely unscrupulous, but an interpreter on the iPhone would allow developers to sell iPhone software without going through the App Store. Apple has decided - for better or worse - that they must review and approve all applications on the iPhone. Therefore no interpreters.
Except IBM has frequently used the law to bludgeon innocent competitors, and Groklaw is most definitely pro-IBM.
You are absolutely wrong. My CFL cost me $18 each approximately 7 years ago. I have easily recovered this in electricity bills already. Because the $18 covered the entire cost of the CFL - including the energy required to produce and deliver them - there has been an energy saving.
Quick sums: 100W globe, 2 hours per day, 300 days per year, 14c/kWh = $8.40 per year. 25W CFL, 2 hours per day, 300 days per year, 14c/kWh = $2.10 per year. The ROI is less than 3 years. And 2 hours per day is *very* conservative. And I have generously excluded the cost of incandescent globes.
Not quite right. The pilots were showing off with a nose-high attitude at very slow speed. Only made possible because of the very fancy computerized systems that constantly adjusted throttle and pitch to prevent sink. They hadn't surveyed the airport beforehand (they were running late) and were unaware that the green patch at the end of the runway was a forest. They were also flying far too low; only 30 foot when 100 foot was the legal minimum.
They realized the mistake too late and tried to apply go around power, but engines take a long time to spool up, and they were in a very low energy configuration (slow speed, nose high) so they were unable to climb. The rear of the plane touched the trees which slowed them down even more, causing them to sink into the forest.
Three people did die but they weren't dignitaries; they were two children and an adult trying to save them.
It certainly wasn't because the computer "refused to let the pilots power up". It was incompetence and recklessness by the pilots, combined with very stupid aviation laws in France that permitted passengers during air show demonstrations.
DELETE FROM sun WHERE name="Monty"
Is it a leap year?
But "The Paulettes" is so much catchier.
"Your votes... are wasted on me.
Your votes... are wasted on me."
Although Ron Paul in a polka dot dress would be disturbing.
Uhh, I recently bought a new phone and changed carriers purely to get 3G. I have technically illiterate friends who have similarly jumped carriers to get 3G. They just know that Foxtel, Football and Cricket are only available on 3G. I know that 3G is a fundamentally better technology than GSM and offers higher bitrates. Customer's certainly do care about 3G - the technically literate and illiterate alike.
Pure nonsense. Doug Engelbart's team at SRI invented most of the things you just listed, several years before Xerox PARC even started. From Wikipedia:
In fact, many of the researchers hired by PARC used to work with Engelbart at SRI. They took the ideas with them when they changed jobs.
No, it's not.
(1) Nuclear power is non-renewable. The biggest problem with oil isn't really the pollution - enough people seem to think global warming is a myth - but the fact that it's a finite resource. The US peak of oil production in the 70s led to shortages. The global peak of oil production is due pretty soon if the OPEC countries haven't been lying about their reserves, and has already passed if they have been lying. Uranium is also a finite resource and will have its own peak production followed by shortages. Other fissionable material is possible (eg, thorium) but they are also finite resources. Trading one non-renewable (oil) for another non-renewable (uranium) isn't a long-term solution.
(2) There are close links between the technology in nuclear power plants and the technology required to make nuclear weapons. Nuclear power plants aren't "allowed" to be owned by "evil" countries such as Iran and North Korea because it scares the bajeezus out of the rich white men in the US and UK. The last US administration was slightly more forward-thinking and even helped North Korea establish nuclear power plants that were not weapons capable. Look how that played out, with the opposing party at the time calling the administration traitorous, and the current administration working to dismantle those power plants in North Korea. Nuclear power is only an option for the rich and powerful countries that don't answer to anybody else. Nuclear power isn't a global solution.
(3) Waste management. It doesn't matter how much something costs if it's filthy. You could save $300 a year by not washing your clothes, not taking showers, and never vacuuming the floor. But would you do that? It isn't sensible to pollute your environment. It certainly isn't justified by the cost-savings. Similarly for nuclear power, you're talking about a fairly miniscule cost saving over solar - 12c compared to 40c sounds like a huge difference but energy costs are a tiny fraction of your yearly budget, so it's not that big a deal - but the waste produced by nuclear power is significantly worse than that produced by solar. Wind power is "clean" within 3 years, solar within 5 years, nuclear within 10,000 years. Reducing waste is desirable despite the cost.
(4) Incidents at nuclear power plants are catastrophic. The explosion at Chernobyl was more catastrophic than some people realise; if rain hadn't washed down the radioactive cloud - and storm clouds were apparently seeded by the USSR military to induce rain - then huge areas of land would now have unsafe levels of radioactivity. Newer power plant designs such as pebble-beds are supposedly safer. They said Chernobyl was safe too, and they lied. The Chinese are forging ahead with 6 new pebble-bed reactors because they realise they don't have much choice - they need power fast and nuclear power is the only known solution - but I'm entirely skeptical of the safety claims. Too many vested interests for the truth to come out, and nobody here has the credentials to properly evaluate the safety of pebble-bed.
(5) Cost. The figures bandied about by the nuclear industry are almost certainly bogus. Nobody knows how much it really costs to safely store radioactive waste for 10s of 1000s of years. One of the scares after the collapse of the USSR was all of the radioactive waste that went missing from storage. It was thought that the waste might be used by terrorists to create dirty bombs. That was after less than 50 years of storage; only 9,950 to go! So what was the actual cost of storing that waste? It's far more than the initial outlay of the chain-wire fence and some steel barrels.
(6) Centralisation. Nuclear power puts all the production in a few small locations. The transmission losses alone are staggering. There is also the potential of critical damage from terrorists, war, or natural catastrophe. Distributed energy production is more resilient. If every rooftop in t
It's always a mistake to think you can run government like a business. It's a double mistake to vote for a politician who claims they can; they're either lying (most politicians) or stupid (take your pick).
Three out of ten businesses go bankrupt within the first year. When a government goes bankrupt it destroys an entire country. Immediately you see there is a difference; you can't run a government like a business and simply hope you're not in that bottom 30%. Governments need to be far more risk adverse.
Governments work with much larger time frames. They need to think in terms of decades. Businesses barely think in terms of years. I think one of the problems with the current administration is that they do only think in terms of years. That works fine in business where you can always bail before the stock tanks - the new investors take the loss instead of you - but it's disastrous for a government.
The US government handles significantly more money than any single US business. This means there are more opportunities for corruption so there is a corresponding stronger need for oversight and accountability. This is one of the reasons why government works so slowly; the public service structure has been designed to obstruct and detect and resolve corruption.
Governments have significantly more power than businesses. Businesses only have to follow the law; governments can create them. Governments can declare war. Government can imprison people. Government enforces the judiciary. These responsibilities make government both more powerful but also more difficult to manage. A businessman is not trained for that sort of responsibility.
And I can't end without taking an easy swipe at the current administration. GWB is a terrible businessman and perhaps the worst choice for "CEO of the USA". He managed to financially cripple three oil companies before finally making money on the Texas Rangers; and IMO his profit from the Texas Rangers had nothing to do with his skills as a businessman. Despite having a huge family wealth and an MBA from Harvard, he was worse than mediocre. His track record has spoken for itself. I'm not surprised you wanted the government to be run like a business - it's a common desire amongst free market advocates - but I'm very surprised you chose GWB as the champion for your ideology.
I thought the radical Republicans wanted to invade the Middle East, kill all their leaders and convert them to Christianity.
The lesson here is that you should ignore the radicals because they're batshit crazy. Demonizing an entire movement because of its radical fringe is a tactic used by attention seeking morons who aim to create controversy through division and polarization.
If they released all that in the first version, then who would buy the second version?
Apple always releases a crippled version first. After all the early adopters have bought one, Apple releases a slightly enhanced version. This nets the customers who were hanging out for those extra features. And most of the early adopters buy the enhanced version as well. Keep repeating until the market is saturated.
Releasing the ultimate version first is bad business. Always keep something in reserve.
That might be a reasonable price for a high-resolution high-bitrate version of the episode on DVD media, with attractive packaging, and no additional costs for downloading.
It is a completely unreasonable price for a low-resolution low-bitrate version of the episode on NO media, with NO packaging, and additional costs for downloading.
$2 an episode is too much. Let's imagine I watch 12 series with an average of 24 episodes per series per year. That's $576 per year on top of the Internet bandwidth costs which are still quite significant in Australia (about $600 per year). I could get cable TV (or more commonly in Australia, satellite TV) for half that and get all those shows and several dozen more.
Realistically I'd be wanting to pay 10-20c per episode. And I'd want them DRM free so I could make backup copies for watching later. Anything more expensive than that is not even remotely tempting. I would like to know where the "$2/episode" meme came from because I don't think any thought was put into it.
Since the socially ignorant tend to follow the ways of the USA, Christianity has become increasingly a religion of the fat and stupid. (I know this is a simplification, but it is a useful simplification.)
Jackass.
No, this is just a case of you not reading the fucking article.
The couple had been repeatedly emailing the officer directly regarding the incident. He had asked them to stop. The police officer was definitely being stalked.
The speeding issue is separate but he can't be prosecuted for that because the couple are not licensed radar gun operators so their "capture" is worthless.
The couple did not handle this situation correctly. You can hire a licensed radar gun operator; small towns do it all the time during the tourist season. That would have been legally binding.
You're fucking kidding, right?
Have you never heard of Bill Donohue?
Or Pat Robertson?
How about Fred Phelps?
All religions have their fair share of intolerant fundamentalists.
That's an absolutely vile misrepresentation of what Cat Stevens (Yusuf Islam) actually said. Here is what Yusuf had to say regarding the artificial controversy generated by the British tabloids.
Yusuf is and always has been a kind and gentle person. His tireless work in helping children and the victims of war is an inspiration. He is a role model for how people should act towards each other. And it disgusts me that foul-minded bigots such as yourself would repeat those tabloid lies about him in an attempt to discredit an entire religion.
The real danger comes from ignorant bigots.