The average is (rounded up) 13. However, the odds of you making average are better are only 1 in 5. 4 out of 5 times, if you're given one of those random numbers, you're going to be getting a "lower than average" number.
You just explained why the average figure is meaningless...
He used the median instead of the average, so what is your argument?
It seems that even though you are perfectly capable of understanding that the average is a meaningless figure and that median should be used, you are still focused on the average.
At no point did you even make an attempt to show that those at or above the median (the 50%) are having a hard time. They aren't having a hard time, but you pretend and argue as if they are. Thats dishonesty on your part. Dishonesty is never backed by reason that passes scrutiny, for if your argument was a reasoned one that passed scrutiny then you wouldnt need to be dishonest.
I'm guessing jealousy. Jealousy is the unreasoned motive for your dishonesty.
but then thats because i drive old junk... no loan, low maintenance, cheap insurance.
In my experience, the cost of maintaining a car doesnt really change over time. Doesnt matter if the car is new or old. Older cars have more frequent problems, but they are often much cheaper to resolve (good luck finding a 2010 Honda at the local salvage yard to pull parts off of.)
You are right about loans and the then necessary comprehensive insurance. The best vehicle buying advice ever is to actually buy a car, not finance one.
Businesses dont go out of their way to increase their costs with no tangible benefit. There is either a tangible benefit (Quid pro quo) or it was the best of a group of bad options (not doing it will cost us more.)
I don't see what the NSA/FISA has to offer in return, so its probably being done due to a threat, and at that point you have to wonder what other companies are also doing for the same reason.
So instead of pretending that the overloading of ships is a new thing, you are theorizing that its a new thing that companies in financial trouble take bigger risks?
Arguably the worlds most well-renowned insurance company, Lloyd's of London, was formally created by the shipping industry in 1774. To quote wikipedia:
The market began in Lloyd's Coffee House, opened by Edward Lloyd around 1689 in Tower Street, London. This establishment was a popular place for sailors, merchants, and ship owners, and Lloyd catered to them with reliable shipping news. The shipping industry community frequented the place to discuss deals among themselves, including insurance.
In a 5-star system, such as NewEgg uses, I compare the number of 4 stars to the number of 3, 2, and 1 stars. I discount the 5-star ratings entirely, but I do not ignore the 1-star which is often along the lines of "it was dead on arrival" which is a signal that indicates (to me) that in that case they are re-shipping returned products without testing them.
This was almost certainly the case the one and only time I was unhappy with a NewEgg purchase. I was trying to get one of the small 75GB 15000 RPM Raptor drives before the days of SSD's. It arrived with one of the platters apparently completely fubar (low level format went for over 24 hours and still wasnt done), did an RMA and got a call from them the day they received the drive back and they "confirmed" that the drive was broken but that they did not have any other Raptors that they could replace it with.. instant refund. The last one they have is coincidentally broken? Nah, I don't buy it.
I still use NewEgg because they even refunded my RMA shipping costs. Using a second customer to verify that an item really doesnt work is just something they do.
The *rational* thing to do is make sure your ships are safe so that you don't waste a quarter billion dollars.
It is almost certainly the case that the insurance companies already factor in the risk of overloading, because they've been insuring these ships and their cargo for a long time. I don't see anyone suggesting that overloading (or incorrectly loading) ships is something new. The insurance companies are armed with actual numbers that go back literally centuries to the East India Company and so forth.
The ship sank. Its not an indicator of a failure of free market, nor is it an indicator that the insurance company isnt assessing the risks correctly. Its just an indicator that that particular ship at that particular time experienced a structural failure leading to its sinking.
In all likelihood, the amount of oversight, construction rules, and so forth on the shipping industry is already very near optimal from a cost/benefit viewpoint.
Megapixels aren't as important as the optics.. aka lenses..
I've seen some of the raw pictures that these high mega-pixel cameraphones take.. blurry shit at the pixel level, making them no better than a much lower resolution camera with better glass.
That's true, we need more educators like, oh... say.... one of the top 5 physicists of the last century.
While Feynman may have been one of the top 5 physicists of the last century, the other 4 weret/arent good educators. You arent actually making a point here.
Do you think he understood partial differential equations, functions in a complex space, matrix math, group theory? Sure he did. If he wrote some of that on a blackboard in a 60 minute talk, would the audience struggle to keep up?
If you think that writing equations on blackboards is equal to education, then you've already gotten screwed over by a disastrous education system that only did that for you.
They should not be entitled to phone and internet service.
if you really think that these things should be entitlements, then have the government take over the entire telecom industry. Dont be half-assed about it.
I think that its still true today that in rural areas when someone sees someone driving a nice car they think to themselves that he is doing good for himself, whereas in urban areas when someone sees someone driving a nice car its increasingly hard to distinguish their reaction from bitter jealousy.
Rural people have a different mindset, where they do not think that they are so trivially entitled to things.
Entitlements promote inefficiency and when you keep promoting inefficiency, you end up being inefficient.
I for one think that they should, and I'm not certain that it ever made sense to subsidize telephone service in this manner.
I do believe that if you move out to a very rural area that you should face the consequences of the loss of economies of scale. We shouldn't be subsidizing your phone service any more than we should be subsidizing your broadband service, cable television service, or even medical/fire service.
Subsidizing inefficiency at the very least promotes inefficiency, which isnt something that a society should be doing. One has to wonder how much cheaper providing phone service might be if the rural areas had to find an economic solution in order to make it happen. No point developing more inexpensive technologies when the lack of inexpensive technologies means that the government continues to hand you thousands of dollars per year per resident.. far more than you could ever get in service fees.
That also presumes that reusable rockets are always in every case reusable. Seems to me that the number of reusable shuttles whittled down over time..
Re:Just shows what we already knew
on
How DRM Won
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· Score: 1
For as long as they remain available via streaming. It is not uncommon for titles to drop out of the streaming catalog.
Irrelevant.
That is another drawback of DRM. You are guaranteed to be able to watch your rented media today. There is no guarantee about next year or month or week, or even tomorrow.
See, you think netflix is like an iTunes/amazon, just as I predicted.
You do not seem to understand that you are paying for a service. You think that you are buying content rights.
How about the cost of building a ship that can escape not just one, but *two* gravity wells.
Launching a ship with enough fuel to get there is already expensive as fuck... but to also carry the fuel needed to also launch the ship from there back to here..
I'm thinking tens of billions of dollars easy... probably more in the range of hundreds of billions..
Re:Just shows what we already knew
on
How DRM Won
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· Score: 3, Insightful
DRM on streaming services does not get in the way of the paying customer.
For example, I subscribe to netflix. It uses DRM. I can still watch the movies in their collection, repeatedly.
The thing is that I do not pretend to own any of the movies. I am paying for the service, not particular movies. I also subscribe to Pandora. I am paying for the service, not particular songs.
In neither case does either party pretend to transfer ownership of any specific content.
Seems like a lot of slashdotters dont seem to understand streaming services, equating them with iTunes purchases and other stuff that are not streaming services.
I would gladly pay $50/month for a service that had everything on demand, and I wouldn't give a flying fuck about DRM that prevents me from copying the content, because I am paying for the service specifically so that I do not need a copy of the content.
Slashdot Mirror
The average is (rounded up) 13. However, the odds of you making average are better are only 1 in 5. 4 out of 5 times, if you're given one of those random numbers, you're going to be getting a "lower than average" number.
You just explained why the average figure is meaningless...
He used the median instead of the average, so what is your argument?
It seems that even though you are perfectly capable of understanding that the average is a meaningless figure and that median should be used, you are still focused on the average.
At no point did you even make an attempt to show that those at or above the median (the 50%) are having a hard time. They aren't having a hard time, but you pretend and argue as if they are. Thats dishonesty on your part. Dishonesty is never backed by reason that passes scrutiny, for if your argument was a reasoned one that passed scrutiny then you wouldnt need to be dishonest.
I'm guessing jealousy. Jealousy is the unreasoned motive for your dishonesty.
Does this point to corruption, or is it simply a matter of poor information flow?
Yes.
but then thats because i drive old junk... no loan, low maintenance, cheap insurance.
In my experience, the cost of maintaining a car doesnt really change over time. Doesnt matter if the car is new or old. Older cars have more frequent problems, but they are often much cheaper to resolve (good luck finding a 2010 Honda at the local salvage yard to pull parts off of.)
You are right about loans and the then necessary comprehensive insurance. The best vehicle buying advice ever is to actually buy a car, not finance one.
Businesses dont go out of their way to increase their costs with no tangible benefit. There is either a tangible benefit (Quid pro quo) or it was the best of a group of bad options (not doing it will cost us more.)
I don't see what the NSA/FISA has to offer in return, so its probably being done due to a threat, and at that point you have to wonder what other companies are also doing for the same reason.
So instead of pretending that the overloading of ships is a new thing, you are theorizing that its a new thing that companies in financial trouble take bigger risks?
Arguably the worlds most well-renowned insurance company, Lloyd's of London, was formally created by the shipping industry in 1774. To quote wikipedia:
The market began in Lloyd's Coffee House, opened by Edward Lloyd around 1689 in Tower Street, London. This establishment was a popular place for sailors, merchants, and ship owners, and Lloyd catered to them with reliable shipping news. The shipping industry community frequented the place to discuss deals among themselves, including insurance.
Yeah, 'cept in the sub-prime case the government was heavily involved in "insuring" mortgages.
The authority to tax/borrow in order to cover the cost when the "insured" event happens is neither insurance, nor a free market.
I've never purchased a physical good from Amazon.. I have "rented" a few movies from them, tho.
I've been a long time customer of NewEgg tho...
In a 5-star system, such as NewEgg uses, I compare the number of 4 stars to the number of 3, 2, and 1 stars. I discount the 5-star ratings entirely, but I do not ignore the 1-star which is often along the lines of "it was dead on arrival" which is a signal that indicates (to me) that in that case they are re-shipping returned products without testing them.
This was almost certainly the case the one and only time I was unhappy with a NewEgg purchase. I was trying to get one of the small 75GB 15000 RPM Raptor drives before the days of SSD's. It arrived with one of the platters apparently completely fubar (low level format went for over 24 hours and still wasnt done), did an RMA and got a call from them the day they received the drive back and they "confirmed" that the drive was broken but that they did not have any other Raptors that they could replace it with.. instant refund. The last one they have is coincidentally broken? Nah, I don't buy it.
I still use NewEgg because they even refunded my RMA shipping costs. Using a second customer to verify that an item really doesnt work is just something they do.
The *rational* thing to do is make sure your ships are safe so that you don't waste a quarter billion dollars.
It is almost certainly the case that the insurance companies already factor in the risk of overloading, because they've been insuring these ships and their cargo for a long time. I don't see anyone suggesting that overloading (or incorrectly loading) ships is something new. The insurance companies are armed with actual numbers that go back literally centuries to the East India Company and so forth.
The ship sank. Its not an indicator of a failure of free market, nor is it an indicator that the insurance company isnt assessing the risks correctly. Its just an indicator that that particular ship at that particular time experienced a structural failure leading to its sinking.
In all likelihood, the amount of oversight, construction rules, and so forth on the shipping industry is already very near optimal from a cost/benefit viewpoint.
Megapixels aren't as important as the optics.. aka lenses..
I've seen some of the raw pictures that these high mega-pixel cameraphones take.. blurry shit at the pixel level, making them no better than a much lower resolution camera with better glass.
With that logic every penny we all spend is taken from our employers?
To answer your question... with that logic, no.
Perhaps you don't understand that logic?
The fact of the matter is that you, in collusion with your employer, create wealth.
Spending is not wealth creation. Adding value is wealth creation.
Yes, because "we" demand zero-defect terrorism policies.
The people are demanding that. The politicians are claiming that the people are demanding that. The distinction isnt subtle.
That's true, we need more educators like, oh... say.... one of the top 5 physicists of the last century.
While Feynman may have been one of the top 5 physicists of the last century, the other 4 weret/arent good educators. You arent actually making a point here.
Do you think he understood partial differential equations, functions in a complex space, matrix math, group theory? Sure he did. If he wrote some of that on a blackboard in a 60 minute talk, would the audience struggle to keep up?
No, they wouldn't have struggled to keep up. The genius of Feynman was that he used things like blackboards productively.
If you think that writing equations on blackboards is equal to education, then you've already gotten screwed over by a disastrous education system that only did that for you.
Whats needed is good educators, like Richard Feynman was. What passes for "good educator" these days is pathetic.
They should not be entitled to phone and internet service.
if you really think that these things should be entitlements, then have the government take over the entire telecom industry. Dont be half-assed about it.
I think that its still true today that in rural areas when someone sees someone driving a nice car they think to themselves that he is doing good for himself, whereas in urban areas when someone sees someone driving a nice car its increasingly hard to distinguish their reaction from bitter jealousy.
Rural people have a different mindset, where they do not think that they are so trivially entitled to things.
Entitlements promote inefficiency and when you keep promoting inefficiency, you end up being inefficient.
I for one think that they should, and I'm not certain that it ever made sense to subsidize telephone service in this manner.
I do believe that if you move out to a very rural area that you should face the consequences of the loss of economies of scale. We shouldn't be subsidizing your phone service any more than we should be subsidizing your broadband service, cable television service, or even medical/fire service.
Subsidizing inefficiency at the very least promotes inefficiency, which isnt something that a society should be doing. One has to wonder how much cheaper providing phone service might be if the rural areas had to find an economic solution in order to make it happen. No point developing more inexpensive technologies when the lack of inexpensive technologies means that the government continues to hand you thousands of dollars per year per resident.. far more than you could ever get in service fees.
Urban sales taxes arent subsidizing anything in rural areas...
If you have a problem with your local taxes, thats a local matter that has nothing to do with non-local people.
That also presumes that reusable rockets are always in every case reusable. Seems to me that the number of reusable shuttles whittled down over time..
For as long as they remain available via streaming. It is not uncommon for titles to drop out of the streaming catalog.
Irrelevant.
That is another drawback of DRM. You are guaranteed to be able to watch your rented media today. There is no guarantee about next year or month or week, or even tomorrow.
See, you think netflix is like an iTunes/amazon, just as I predicted.
You do not seem to understand that you are paying for a service. You think that you are buying content rights.
Yet another person that reponded to his cited numbers (you know, a citation included) with uncited numbers and hand waving...
JavaScript is "flaky" and "inconsistent"?
What on earth are you talking about?
I think that hes talking about JavaScript being flaky and inconsistent.
How about the cost of building a ship that can escape not just one, but *two* gravity wells.
Launching a ship with enough fuel to get there is already expensive as fuck... but to also carry the fuel needed to also launch the ship from there back to here..
I'm thinking tens of billions of dollars easy... probably more in the range of hundreds of billions..
DRM on streaming services does not get in the way of the paying customer.
For example, I subscribe to netflix. It uses DRM. I can still watch the movies in their collection, repeatedly.
The thing is that I do not pretend to own any of the movies. I am paying for the service, not particular movies. I also subscribe to Pandora. I am paying for the service, not particular songs.
In neither case does either party pretend to transfer ownership of any specific content.
Seems like a lot of slashdotters dont seem to understand streaming services, equating them with iTunes purchases and other stuff that are not streaming services.
I would gladly pay $50/month for a service that had everything on demand, and I wouldn't give a flying fuck about DRM that prevents me from copying the content, because I am paying for the service specifically so that I do not need a copy of the content.