and McCain isn't? I believe the stat was 43 lobbyists or former lobbyists are McCain advisers. That's a hell of a lot.
No politician is free of them, but when you specifically say you're "cleaning up Washington" and kicking "special interests," then run around with a team full of lobbyists you have some serious honesty issues.
Looking at the policy, where is he going to come up with the money for all the tax breaks?
With a roughly $400 billion deficit in the budget, how is reducing personal taxes, reducing corporate taxes, tax breaks on vehicles, and tax breaks on corporate R&D ever going to make for a moderately balanced budget? All this while saber rattling and having your VP talk about butting heads with Russia.
The things I'm most concerned about are net neutrality and the IP issues. To most techies, he's on the wrong side of that fight.
It seems like such poor business practices to include these draconian anti-piracy schemes. They are broke within hours and at most a few days (some even before initial release). As a result, any DRM at all is as good as a super-duper DRM in that they're all useless. All they do is get the most loyal customers, who will buy the game, pissed off. So EA is getting a large amount of negative press and requiring extra people to handle additional installations and other customer service issues. I was thinking of getting Spore, until I heard you only get 3 installs. No way I'm going to mess with that.
They don't seem to understand that a large portion of those who pirate the game, will never buy it anyway. If a person doesn't feel like the game is worth $50 to them they won't buy it. It is not a lost sale. They may download it for free and try it, but no DRM will change that into a sale.
Music industry has been really bad about it. Piss off all your customers, then complain they don't buy your stuff.
Probably is there is often really is no other option most of the time. You have one company with a monopoly on cable internet and another with a monopoly on DSL. AND they both have the worst customer service imaginable. Who do you go with?
I certainly see your point, but I've had terrible luck with ISPs and Cable operators. They have horrendous tech support and contractors (technicians) around here.
For every problem I've had, and I've had quite a few, it's taken an average of 3 trips to get it fixed. Bad wiring, broken cable boxes, more bad wiring, a voice mail "Hello this is X install guy, I'm outside your house and no one answered so I'm leaving" while someone was sitting on the couch by the door and he never answers his phone, never showing up and then the company saying they have no record of the guy being scheduled to come (they called to confirm the day before though).
Over the course of a year, I probably spent a minimum of 18 hours on the phone with DSL tech support before canceling. I know it was not my PC as the DSL modem reset every 15 seconds...no matter "It appears as though your DSL connection is working fine. Thank you and have a nice day." The only reason it lasted that long was that the other cable company in the area already blew 3 strikes on their install job (not showing up twice, being total idiot the other time and not getting anything done) and I was in no hurry to try them again. Thank goodess work pays for a wireless access card now.
So I can certainly see why someone would be uninclined to see the technician leave...although it sounds like she went too far.
Geesh, that's insane for a browser even with a couple pages open concurrently. It is just poor coding if the program is released with that sort of bloated resource appetite. It doesn't matter that the hardware gets better, if all the programs get that much worse it's all for nothing. What does a web browser need to do that eats up that sort of RAM/CPU power?
I'd agree with you nasor, the "facts" that the conspiracy theorists consistently go back to are insanely easy to discredit. Things like the lack of a Road Runner/Wiley Coyote cutout on the Pentagon, not enough fuel to melt the steel structure, etc.
It's not just science, there are numerous technical fields that are intimately connected to a huge portion of the political spin. Things that people need some knowledge to work out.
Economic "theories" are thrown around all the time, while there are quite a few that are complete bullshit. Budgets especially are normally mentioned as being great... cut taxes, spend more, go to war, AND reduce the deficit? Even this relatively minor point is lost on a huge portion of the population.
The second point is really key. You need to have strong science focused people, with good communication skills, "teaching" science. Whether it's on the local news or in a classroom, having people who really don't understand the science just do more damage than good. There needs to be professional rewards for those people who are good at science/engineering to go into those fields. Currently, there is none.
As an engineer, I can easily make $60k a year out of undergrad. If I taught, I could maybe pull $45k...and I'd need to get a masters for it. That is why science teaching, in general, is not of a high quality. The good professionals realize that they are at a serious financial disadvantage to go into teaching.
There are good science teachers out there, who really love their job, but more needs to be done to persuade good science people to go into teaching.
----
On a second point, news outlets need to get over their "requirement" for balanced reporting. For most science topics, there is a clear scientific case for one side.
Ethanol is bad economic/energy policy...why is/was it championed as a savior for so long?
Intelligent design...there is zero debate on its lack of merits in scientific circles. The media keeps bringing them up as legitimate options/theories.
Drilling for oil to remedy near-term gas prices...zero chance of it doing anything. It's at least 10 years to actually get a drop from an offshore well as there are zero ships available to do the work.
For all of them, the media presents the point of the corporations set to benefit as being the "definitive authority."
The issue is that health coverage needs are not necessarily the fault of the person. For many illnesses/medical conditions, they are genetic or from a true accident. Are they at fault? Isn't that part of the reason you have insurance? Should you punish them for it with higher premiums?
For accidents, there is at least some correlation between personal behavior and risk. It's not a perfect analogy.
Data-mining the health records just allows for the companies to "stick it" to the people who are in the most need for insurance.
The big issue then becomes that the sickest people do not have insurance...guess who picks up the tab then?...and it's not the insurance companies...
It is, but the issue is it is done to "protect against terrorism." Any half way intelligent "terrorist" (and therefore dangerous) is aware of the simple ways to get around it. It's the same issue with the limits on the amount of things you can get through as carry on. It really accomplishes nothing but hassle people, since it's so trivial to thwart. It does almost nothing to improve safety, and does everything to slow down travel, hurt tourism, and cost taxpayers and airlines.
Worst part is despite the searches and seizures, they accomplish very little. You inconvenience and step all over the rights of average, law-abiding citizens to give the impression of safety.
Security has nothing to do with it. They just want to control who has access to the ceremony.
"Knowing" who is there really has little to do with whether a place is secure, especially when there is no checks on who has access other than being "in the know" or "in the cool crowd."
Which is the major flaw in any of these "studies." They all gloss over it and throw out insanely inflated numbers. Just like the MAFIAAs did a while back where they computed the loss from piracy was greater than the GDP of France.
What is always lost in these arguments is the reason copyright exists. It is to provide a limited amount of time of exclusive use of a work as a means of reimbursing the artist, and it is balanced against the rights of others to make derivative works and promote creativity.
.
The music companies seem to think it is purely an exclusive license for all of eternity.
.
And as the article points out, after 50 years there really is very little value in most works. Record/CD/mp3 sales of songs that old are very slow, and the money in it for the artists is minimal. It's all for the profit of the record labels.
.
"Oh my god, CD sales suck! How can we extend our failing business model to squeeze more money from our crap?" -RIAA stooge
For an computer/electrical engineer, the best choices IMO are Japanese, Chinese, Korean, or German.
Basically, anything computer related comes from Asia so you'll be (potentially) interfacing with them often. German is good just b/c of the general level of research coming from there (most European languages are similar in usefulness though, but from a supply chain everything comes from Asia).
If we have learned anything from the copyright cops, it's that you never own anything. Despite paying for it, and everyone other than the "MAFIAA" treating it like it was a "sale", they can (or at least try) to do anything they want with it and impose insane restrictions on it.
Even in the DC area, one of the most prosperous areas in the nation, there are only two broadband suppliers: Verizon for DSL and Comcast for cable. If you're lucky, Verizon will offer FIOS as well. Either way, they both have pathetic customer service and don't care.
It is an effective monopoly since the competition is so poor.
Origin is more powerful, but I always found it harder to use for simple things which is what a large chunk of work is. Divide column A by column B and the like. For real number crunching, and FFTs, Origin is hands down better.
Origin does make much nicer graphs than Excel every could dream of though.
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The private organizations that fund research are not competing with government funded research. It's not like only one is able to fund research.
and McCain isn't? I believe the stat was 43 lobbyists or former lobbyists are McCain advisers. That's a hell of a lot.
No politician is free of them, but when you specifically say you're "cleaning up Washington" and kicking "special interests," then run around with a team full of lobbyists you have some serious honesty issues.
Looking at the policy, where is he going to come up with the money for all the tax breaks?
With a roughly $400 billion deficit in the budget, how is reducing personal taxes, reducing corporate taxes, tax breaks on vehicles, and tax breaks on corporate R&D ever going to make for a moderately balanced budget? All this while saber rattling and having your VP talk about butting heads with Russia.
The things I'm most concerned about are net neutrality and the IP issues. To most techies, he's on the wrong side of that fight.
It seems like such poor business practices to include these draconian anti-piracy schemes. They are broke within hours and at most a few days (some even before initial release). As a result, any DRM at all is as good as a super-duper DRM in that they're all useless. All they do is get the most loyal customers, who will buy the game, pissed off. So EA is getting a large amount of negative press and requiring extra people to handle additional installations and other customer service issues. I was thinking of getting Spore, until I heard you only get 3 installs. No way I'm going to mess with that.
They don't seem to understand that a large portion of those who pirate the game, will never buy it anyway. If a person doesn't feel like the game is worth $50 to them they won't buy it. It is not a lost sale. They may download it for free and try it, but no DRM will change that into a sale.
Music industry has been really bad about it. Piss off all your customers, then complain they don't buy your stuff.
Probably is there is often really is no other option most of the time. You have one company with a monopoly on cable internet and another with a monopoly on DSL. AND they both have the worst customer service imaginable. Who do you go with?
I certainly see your point, but I've had terrible luck with ISPs and Cable operators. They have horrendous tech support and contractors (technicians) around here.
For every problem I've had, and I've had quite a few, it's taken an average of 3 trips to get it fixed. Bad wiring, broken cable boxes, more bad wiring, a voice mail "Hello this is X install guy, I'm outside your house and no one answered so I'm leaving" while someone was sitting on the couch by the door and he never answers his phone, never showing up and then the company saying they have no record of the guy being scheduled to come (they called to confirm the day before though).
Over the course of a year, I probably spent a minimum of 18 hours on the phone with DSL tech support before canceling. I know it was not my PC as the DSL modem reset every 15 seconds...no matter "It appears as though your DSL connection is working fine. Thank you and have a nice day." The only reason it lasted that long was that the other cable company in the area already blew 3 strikes on their install job (not showing up twice, being total idiot the other time and not getting anything done) and I was in no hurry to try them again. Thank goodess work pays for a wireless access card now.
So I can certainly see why someone would be uninclined to see the technician leave...although it sounds like she went too far.
Geesh, that's insane for a browser even with a couple pages open concurrently. It is just poor coding if the program is released with that sort of bloated resource appetite. It doesn't matter that the hardware gets better, if all the programs get that much worse it's all for nothing. What does a web browser need to do that eats up that sort of RAM/CPU power?
I hope it is just b/c of the beta version.
I'd agree with you nasor, the "facts" that the conspiracy theorists consistently go back to are insanely easy to discredit. Things like the lack of a Road Runner/Wiley Coyote cutout on the Pentagon, not enough fuel to melt the steel structure, etc.
It's not just science, there are numerous technical fields that are intimately connected to a huge portion of the political spin. Things that people need some knowledge to work out.
Economic "theories" are thrown around all the time, while there are quite a few that are complete bullshit. Budgets especially are normally mentioned as being great... cut taxes, spend more, go to war, AND reduce the deficit? Even this relatively minor point is lost on a huge portion of the population.
The second point is really key. You need to have strong science focused people, with good communication skills, "teaching" science. Whether it's on the local news or in a classroom, having people who really don't understand the science just do more damage than good. There needs to be professional rewards for those people who are good at science/engineering to go into those fields. Currently, there is none.
As an engineer, I can easily make $60k a year out of undergrad. If I taught, I could maybe pull $45k...and I'd need to get a masters for it. That is why science teaching, in general, is not of a high quality. The good professionals realize that they are at a serious financial disadvantage to go into teaching.
There are good science teachers out there, who really love their job, but more needs to be done to persuade good science people to go into teaching.
----
On a second point, news outlets need to get over their "requirement" for balanced reporting. For most science topics, there is a clear scientific case for one side.
Ethanol is bad economic/energy policy...why is/was it championed as a savior for so long?
Intelligent design...there is zero debate on its lack of merits in scientific circles. The media keeps bringing them up as legitimate options/theories.
Drilling for oil to remedy near-term gas prices...zero chance of it doing anything. It's at least 10 years to actually get a drop from an offshore well as there are zero ships available to do the work.
For all of them, the media presents the point of the corporations set to benefit as being the "definitive authority."
yeah, no surprise at all. The average American believes everything on TV and has no idea of even the most basic scientific principles.
The issue is that health coverage needs are not necessarily the fault of the person. For many illnesses/medical conditions, they are genetic or from a true accident. Are they at fault? Isn't that part of the reason you have insurance? Should you punish them for it with higher premiums?
For accidents, there is at least some correlation between personal behavior and risk. It's not a perfect analogy.
Data-mining the health records just allows for the companies to "stick it" to the people who are in the most need for insurance.
The big issue then becomes that the sickest people do not have insurance...guess who picks up the tab then? ...and it's not the insurance companies...
It is, but the issue is it is done to "protect against terrorism." Any half way intelligent "terrorist" (and therefore dangerous) is aware of the simple ways to get around it. It's the same issue with the limits on the amount of things you can get through as carry on. It really accomplishes nothing but hassle people, since it's so trivial to thwart. It does almost nothing to improve safety, and does everything to slow down travel, hurt tourism, and cost taxpayers and airlines.
Does this also apply to generic cell phones as they are able to store digital data?
Worst part is despite the searches and seizures, they accomplish very little. You inconvenience and step all over the rights of average, law-abiding citizens to give the impression of safety.
Yeah, I love that the comments that people found out early that the movie was crap and didn't go see it.
Only because it is blatantly illegal to do so, and they were taken to court on the issue.
Security has nothing to do with it. They just want to control who has access to the ceremony. "Knowing" who is there really has little to do with whether a place is secure, especially when there is no checks on who has access other than being "in the know" or "in the cool crowd."
Which is the major flaw in any of these "studies." They all gloss over it and throw out insanely inflated numbers. Just like the MAFIAAs did a while back where they computed the loss from piracy was greater than the GDP of France.
What is always lost in these arguments is the reason copyright exists. It is to provide a limited amount of time of exclusive use of a work as a means of reimbursing the artist, and it is balanced against the rights of others to make derivative works and promote creativity. . The music companies seem to think it is purely an exclusive license for all of eternity. . And as the article points out, after 50 years there really is very little value in most works. Record/CD/mp3 sales of songs that old are very slow, and the money in it for the artists is minimal. It's all for the profit of the record labels. . "Oh my god, CD sales suck! How can we extend our failing business model to squeeze more money from our crap?" -RIAA stooge
For an computer/electrical engineer, the best choices IMO are Japanese, Chinese, Korean, or German. Basically, anything computer related comes from Asia so you'll be (potentially) interfacing with them often. German is good just b/c of the general level of research coming from there (most European languages are similar in usefulness though, but from a supply chain everything comes from Asia).
If we have learned anything from the copyright cops, it's that you never own anything. Despite paying for it, and everyone other than the "MAFIAA" treating it like it was a "sale", they can (or at least try) to do anything they want with it and impose insane restrictions on it.
Yeah, the caps are very small. I know I've blown through 40 GB in about 24-48 hours before during times of heavy torrent downloading.
Not really.
Even in the DC area, one of the most prosperous areas in the nation, there are only two broadband suppliers: Verizon for DSL and Comcast for cable. If you're lucky, Verizon will offer FIOS as well. Either way, they both have pathetic customer service and don't care.
It is an effective monopoly since the competition is so poor.
Origin does make much nicer graphs than Excel every could dream of though.