If that is your total household income on a permanent basis (not a temporary setback related to a layoff or the like), perhaps you need to reexamine your job, or possibly the volume of children you're responsible for. On a 40 hr/week, 2000 hr/job, that's a take home of $6/hr, below the current minimum wage, and only a reasonable income for children still high school and college. That said, low income individuals do get subsidies for insurance, or in the worst case of poverty, exemptions from the mandate. So it's still not an ideal situation (I would have preferred single payer myself) but it still helps a lot of people who aren't in quite so insane a situation.
I really, really hope you're wrong. Forced to choose between a smartphone and nothing at all, I'd likely go with nothing. Which would be professionally problematic, since I code for a living.
Do you mean it will become an integral part of the chip? Or that it will be basically unused by standard compilers and only see use in hand-optimized libraries that are used through APIs? Or both?
So if only a quarter of the planet is left powerless for weeks or months during the winter, this would somehow be less severe than a single city getting flooded?
My Comcast box didn't lose my recordings or schedules, but seemed to exist as a fiendishly clever incentive to upgrade to the package with more HD channels, or force you to watch the commercials (not sure which). Due to poor scheduling priorities, input from the remote or the front buttons didn't have precedence over other tasks (like recording and playback). Which meant that if you started fast forwarding a show (which apparently put more strain on the CPU for decoding), it frequently wouldn't respond to further commands, at least, not without a great deal of lag.
In one particularly egregious case, I started fast forwarding during the opening credits (which I knew were followed by a commercial), and when I pressed play as the show picked up again, it didn't respond until it had fast forwarded 55 minutes into the future, meaning I'd just skipped the whole show. Adding to the confusion, the degree of the problem varied by channel.
The HD channels almost never had an issue (odd, since you'd think the decoding would use more resources, not less), the low numbered SD channels had the issue less, and the lag was less severe. But the high numbered SD channels that (IMO) had the worst picture quality (more compression artifacts than the low numbered ones) would hit this problem once or twice a show, and have severe problems (skipping ten minutes or more before responding) every half dozen shows or so.
I've since dropped cable entirely. My PC is hooked up to a TV tuner card so I can record OTA programming, which works really well since NYC switched to digital OTA. And as a side benefit, I'm not spending nearly as much time glued to the tube (or at least, that time is now used for video games, which are more satisfying).
Given that all that happened is that the domains were deactivated, and the owners are perfectly free to contest the decision after the fact, I'd say that with sufficient evidence a temporary deactivation is perfectly reasonable. We're not throwing them in prison, cutting off their bank accounts, etc., and while the court hearing was secret at the time, it was an extremely brief state of affairs with good reasons behind it.
You're not really dealing with his main point. Drug dealers aren't very smart. Why else would they engage in a crime with lots of competition, disproportionate penalties and a client base that is invariably unbalanced?
Technically, it's inaccurate on Earth as well. Trace amounts of plutonium are found in concentrated uranium ore, particularly those deposits that have acted as a natural nuclear fission reactor, the most famous being the Oklo reactor.
I realize you were going for a joke, but what does China have to do with this? The article gives no indication of competing claims to discovery by Chinese researchers. A Japanese researcher synthesized it at later date in a different way, but again, there doesn't seem to be any dispute over naming rights.
RTFA: They are opposing a *delay* in replacing the existing bridge (four lanes, two each way, none HOV, liable to be destroyed in the next major earthquake) with a new bridge (six lanes, two of which are HOV, with earthquake resistant construction). Note that the new bridge is primarily useful to carpoolers and buses, not to people commuting by themselves (and it's HOV-3, which is a decent bar, HOV-2 is way too lenient). It may not be perfect, but it does encourage carpooling and mass transit, both of which are environmentally friendly. The perfect is the enemy of the good; it's taken over a decade to even get agreement on this bridge, and if they scrapped the existing plans to "try and make it even better" it would never get built (at least, not until "the big one" destroys the existing bridge).
Actually, they're not directly opposing mass transit. They're opposing efforts to delay the expansion of the existing (car only) bridge because the expansion has been needed (light rail or no) for a long time (a decade or so), and now that they've finally got an agreement worked out, they don't want to go back to the drawing board.
I don't know the details of the current bridge plans, but when I worked out there, it was patently obvious the bridge needed expansion. The highway leading up to it on the eastern side (the MS side) was three lanes each way, one of which was an HOV-3 lane. Problem was, when you hit the bridge, it narrowed to two lanes, eliminating the HOV lane. Which meant all the HOV travelers had to merge back in, and the merging itself created massive traffic jams. The HOV lane was only really useful at the edges of rush hour; in the middle of rush hour it would back up almost as badly as the non-HOV lanes (and keep in mind, buses were using it to, so mass transit wasn't a workaround). If they could just expand the bridge by one lane each way, and make the extra lane HOV-3, carpooling would make a lot more sense, as would riding the bus, and even people in the non-HOV lanes would benefit a bit (since the last second merging wouldn't exacerbate otherwise minor traffic jams).
To be fair, there is little evidence for vitamins and minerals either (or, more specifically, no evidence that supplements would help anyone with a moderately balanced diet). Specific deficiencies are known to increase the risk of certain problems, but there is little evidence that you actually need 100% of the USDA allowance for most, or that taking more than the USDA allowance decreases the risk even further. The largest controlled study I'm aware of (News report) found no benefits in any of the 10 categories studied, including "the rate of breast or colon cancer, heart attack, stroke, blood clots or mortality." Studies show benefits from fruit and vegetable intake (which contain vitamins and minerals), but not from supplements.
Of course, testing with a placebo is also beneficial for minimizing the possibility of labeling your product with negative side-effects. The placebo effect works both ways; minor side-effects like "dry mouth", "itching", etc. are often reported just because they took a pill. If you don't test with a control group on placebos, you might show greater efficacy, but you'll also show more side-effects.
That's because Britain's libel laws are generally weighted in favor of the plaintiff. In Britain, the plaintiff need not demonstrate that the statements are false; the statements are presumed false and the defendant must prove them true. The plaintiff need not demonstrate direct harm either. The U.S. (and much of the rest of the Western world) has much more stringent rules; in the U.S., the plaintiff must prove the statements false and demonstrate harm. If they are a "public figure", they also need to prove it was not only false, but that it was malicious and exhibited a reckless disregard for the truth. The "public figure" category that has been expanded over time by court decisions; originally it referred to politicians, but now it refers to celebrities, athletes, and basically anyone else with a sufficiently visible public profile.
Basically, the problem isn't that Britain is pro-pseudoscience, it's that it's anti-free-speech and pro-tort.
Well, if the condition is serious enough to require any treatment, couldn't you give them a drug that treats only some of the symptoms and allow for a more global placebo effect? Standard NSAIDs (e.g. acetaminophen, ibuprofen, etc.) are often used like this. They provide some control of inflammation and pain, and if pitched correctly (possibly by giving a prescription for it) can provide the same placebo effect benefits. The number of conditions where a placebo is indicated, but no other drug would provide *any* relief is low to non-existent.
Similarly, any given anti-depressant is usually only effective on a medical basis for a minority of the population, but I'd be willing to put money down that the number of people who improve for any given anti-depressant is always at least a few percentage points higher than the number who experience a neurochemical change triggered directly by the drug. Neither the patient not the psychiatrist may know it, but that patient is improving solely due to a placebo effect. Of course, it works the opposite way too. Someone skeptical of anti-depressants can erase small benefits due to pessimistic outlook.
I wouldn't argue for a specific age for majority at all, but rather a series of rights and responsibilities awarded in tandem. For example, full impulse control doesn't really develop until around age 25; ergo, no gun ownership until that age, but at the same time, crimes of impulse or passion are punished more leniently. Judgment and moral reasoning (knowing right from wrong in a way distinct from mere operant conditioning for specific actions) develops by around age 15, ergo, any crimes committed before that age are treated extremely leniently, with psychological treatment, not imprisonment (though some isolation at school would be required if the child posed an ongoing danger to other children). At the same time, if you're capable of reasoned thought (when not under pressure, as in an impulse control situation), you're capable of voting at least as well as the average adult, so voting rights would be given to coincide with the stricter enforcement of the law.
Re:Free speech is an inalienable *human* right
on
Suspension of Disbelief
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· Score: 2, Insightful
I'd argue that there are some human rights that should not be extended to children due to their undeveloped sense of moral reasoning, judgment and impulse control. That said, I don't see any potential harm from children being given full free speech rights; if they're immature babblers they get ignored, no harm done, and if they're cogent, forceful speakers, people can choose to listen. Much like with adults actually.
Please don't encourage that. That will just mean they charge the same (high) price to everyone. I know some adults would love the idea of less kids in "their" movies, but I'm not so bitter that I'd begrudge families with young children the ability to see movies without burning a hole in their wallet.
Just for the record, that's not true in a strict sense. The rigidity of school assignments varies from county to county and city to city. It's not a federal system at all. In many counties, switching schools is trivial; you can't demand they provide you a bus, but as long as your parents can get you there, switching is allowed (limits exist to prevent overcrowded schools, but as long as the school isn't already at capacity, you're fine). In New York City, it's codified; you apply to high schools within the city like most people apply to college. They've even removed the "right" to attend your local school (though in practice most schools don't have a problem, it's only the really high demand schools that have to reject neighborhood kids), so your placement is based on the strength of your record and your application.
Point is, your complaints could be addressed by action at the local level; if you want more freedom to choose your school, you don't need to lobby Congress, just your local school board (and your voice counts more, because you constitute a measurable percentage of their vote).
The point isn't to save HD space, it's to reduce paging activity. HD space is infinite, but HD read/write capacity isn't, so if you honestly don't trust the paging algorithm, you want to keep it small so it doesn't overdo it.
Vista and later OSes emphasize the I/O priority concept much more heavily than XP and earlier. File system indexing and defragmentation are done with ultra low priority; if *anything* else wants to read or write, they back off. Similarly, any service that starts as "Automatic (Delayed Start)" is opting in for low priority I/O. Unless their metrics say something about the slowdown of the active user processes, the fact that the file system indexer is backlogged is irrelevant.
Starter edition is an intentionally crippled OS used to lower their prices in developing countries without undercutting sales of the full OS to those that can afford it. You may disagree with it on personal principle, but it's a sound marketing strategy.
For laptops, Windows' strategy still makes some sense. As I noted above, if memory is pre-paged, then a hibernation can occur nigh instantaneously. If it isn't, you've got to wait for X / Y seconds, where X is the amount of RAM in use, and Y is the write speed of your hard drive (typically slow in a laptop). If you've got 4 GB of mostly used RAM, and the hard disk only writes at 40 MB/s, that means hibernating takes over a minute and half. It raises the risk of head crashes substantially (since most people just close the lid and go, and every jostle during this write is another chance for disaster), and can interfere with waking it up again if you change your mind.
One other minor note: Windows's use of pre-emptive paging makes for a much faster hybrid sleep and/or hibernation. If your page file is larger than main memory, and you're not paging excessively, most of your memory is probably already paged out. Thus, the hibernate file only needs to have the unique data written to it; on a laptop with 4 GB of mostly used RAM and a relatively slow hard disk, it could take two minutes to hibernate the machine (hope your battery lasts). Every bit of memory paged out preemptively means less time to hibernate. My home machine is set up for hybrid sleep, and has 4 GB of RAM. Time from issuing the sleep command to hibernation is about 3-5 seconds, and that only works because of the page file.
You might try establishing a small, fixed size page file. At least in older versions of the OS (not sure about Vista and later), the crankiness over the lack of a page file could be solved by creating a simple fixed size 2 MB page file. Of course, given that there are large parts of the OS that are loaded into RAM, run once and never touched again, making it slightly larger would free up some active RAM for other processes and cache, so a 50-100 MB page file would not be unreasonable.
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If that is your total household income on a permanent basis (not a temporary setback related to a layoff or the like), perhaps you need to reexamine your job, or possibly the volume of children you're responsible for. On a 40 hr/week, 2000 hr/job, that's a take home of $6/hr, below the current minimum wage, and only a reasonable income for children still high school and college. That said, low income individuals do get subsidies for insurance, or in the worst case of poverty, exemptions from the mandate. So it's still not an ideal situation (I would have preferred single payer myself) but it still helps a lot of people who aren't in quite so insane a situation.
I really, really hope you're wrong. Forced to choose between a smartphone and nothing at all, I'd likely go with nothing. Which would be professionally problematic, since I code for a living.
Do you mean it will become an integral part of the chip? Or that it will be basically unused by standard compilers and only see use in hand-optimized libraries that are used through APIs? Or both?
So if only a quarter of the planet is left powerless for weeks or months during the winter, this would somehow be less severe than a single city getting flooded?
My Comcast box didn't lose my recordings or schedules, but seemed to exist as a fiendishly clever incentive to upgrade to the package with more HD channels, or force you to watch the commercials (not sure which). Due to poor scheduling priorities, input from the remote or the front buttons didn't have precedence over other tasks (like recording and playback). Which meant that if you started fast forwarding a show (which apparently put more strain on the CPU for decoding), it frequently wouldn't respond to further commands, at least, not without a great deal of lag.
In one particularly egregious case, I started fast forwarding during the opening credits (which I knew were followed by a commercial), and when I pressed play as the show picked up again, it didn't respond until it had fast forwarded 55 minutes into the future, meaning I'd just skipped the whole show. Adding to the confusion, the degree of the problem varied by channel.
The HD channels almost never had an issue (odd, since you'd think the decoding would use more resources, not less), the low numbered SD channels had the issue less, and the lag was less severe. But the high numbered SD channels that (IMO) had the worst picture quality (more compression artifacts than the low numbered ones) would hit this problem once or twice a show, and have severe problems (skipping ten minutes or more before responding) every half dozen shows or so.
I've since dropped cable entirely. My PC is hooked up to a TV tuner card so I can record OTA programming, which works really well since NYC switched to digital OTA. And as a side benefit, I'm not spending nearly as much time glued to the tube (or at least, that time is now used for video games, which are more satisfying).
Given that all that happened is that the domains were deactivated, and the owners are perfectly free to contest the decision after the fact, I'd say that with sufficient evidence a temporary deactivation is perfectly reasonable. We're not throwing them in prison, cutting off their bank accounts, etc., and while the court hearing was secret at the time, it was an extremely brief state of affairs with good reasons behind it.
You're not really dealing with his main point. Drug dealers aren't very smart. Why else would they engage in a crime with lots of competition, disproportionate penalties and a client base that is invariably unbalanced?
Technically, it's inaccurate on Earth as well. Trace amounts of plutonium are found in concentrated uranium ore, particularly those deposits that have acted as a natural nuclear fission reactor, the most famous being the Oklo reactor.
I realize you were going for a joke, but what does China have to do with this? The article gives no indication of competing claims to discovery by Chinese researchers. A Japanese researcher synthesized it at later date in a different way, but again, there doesn't seem to be any dispute over naming rights.
RTFA: They are opposing a *delay* in replacing the existing bridge (four lanes, two each way, none HOV, liable to be destroyed in the next major earthquake) with a new bridge (six lanes, two of which are HOV, with earthquake resistant construction). Note that the new bridge is primarily useful to carpoolers and buses, not to people commuting by themselves (and it's HOV-3, which is a decent bar, HOV-2 is way too lenient). It may not be perfect, but it does encourage carpooling and mass transit, both of which are environmentally friendly. The perfect is the enemy of the good; it's taken over a decade to even get agreement on this bridge, and if they scrapped the existing plans to "try and make it even better" it would never get built (at least, not until "the big one" destroys the existing bridge).
Actually, they're not directly opposing mass transit. They're opposing efforts to delay the expansion of the existing (car only) bridge because the expansion has been needed (light rail or no) for a long time (a decade or so), and now that they've finally got an agreement worked out, they don't want to go back to the drawing board.
I don't know the details of the current bridge plans, but when I worked out there, it was patently obvious the bridge needed expansion. The highway leading up to it on the eastern side (the MS side) was three lanes each way, one of which was an HOV-3 lane. Problem was, when you hit the bridge, it narrowed to two lanes, eliminating the HOV lane. Which meant all the HOV travelers had to merge back in, and the merging itself created massive traffic jams. The HOV lane was only really useful at the edges of rush hour; in the middle of rush hour it would back up almost as badly as the non-HOV lanes (and keep in mind, buses were using it to, so mass transit wasn't a workaround). If they could just expand the bridge by one lane each way, and make the extra lane HOV-3, carpooling would make a lot more sense, as would riding the bus, and even people in the non-HOV lanes would benefit a bit (since the last second merging wouldn't exacerbate otherwise minor traffic jams).
To be fair, there is little evidence for vitamins and minerals either (or, more specifically, no evidence that supplements would help anyone with a moderately balanced diet). Specific deficiencies are known to increase the risk of certain problems, but there is little evidence that you actually need 100% of the USDA allowance for most, or that taking more than the USDA allowance decreases the risk even further. The largest controlled study I'm aware of (News report) found no benefits in any of the 10 categories studied, including "the rate of breast or colon cancer, heart attack, stroke, blood clots or mortality." Studies show benefits from fruit and vegetable intake (which contain vitamins and minerals), but not from supplements.
Of course, testing with a placebo is also beneficial for minimizing the possibility of labeling your product with negative side-effects. The placebo effect works both ways; minor side-effects like "dry mouth", "itching", etc. are often reported just because they took a pill. If you don't test with a control group on placebos, you might show greater efficacy, but you'll also show more side-effects.
That's because Britain's libel laws are generally weighted in favor of the plaintiff. In Britain, the plaintiff need not demonstrate that the statements are false; the statements are presumed false and the defendant must prove them true. The plaintiff need not demonstrate direct harm either. The U.S. (and much of the rest of the Western world) has much more stringent rules; in the U.S., the plaintiff must prove the statements false and demonstrate harm. If they are a "public figure", they also need to prove it was not only false, but that it was malicious and exhibited a reckless disregard for the truth. The "public figure" category that has been expanded over time by court decisions; originally it referred to politicians, but now it refers to celebrities, athletes, and basically anyone else with a sufficiently visible public profile.
Basically, the problem isn't that Britain is pro-pseudoscience, it's that it's anti-free-speech and pro-tort.
Well, if the condition is serious enough to require any treatment, couldn't you give them a drug that treats only some of the symptoms and allow for a more global placebo effect? Standard NSAIDs (e.g. acetaminophen, ibuprofen, etc.) are often used like this. They provide some control of inflammation and pain, and if pitched correctly (possibly by giving a prescription for it) can provide the same placebo effect benefits. The number of conditions where a placebo is indicated, but no other drug would provide *any* relief is low to non-existent.
Similarly, any given anti-depressant is usually only effective on a medical basis for a minority of the population, but I'd be willing to put money down that the number of people who improve for any given anti-depressant is always at least a few percentage points higher than the number who experience a neurochemical change triggered directly by the drug. Neither the patient not the psychiatrist may know it, but that patient is improving solely due to a placebo effect. Of course, it works the opposite way too. Someone skeptical of anti-depressants can erase small benefits due to pessimistic outlook.
I wouldn't argue for a specific age for majority at all, but rather a series of rights and responsibilities awarded in tandem. For example, full impulse control doesn't really develop until around age 25; ergo, no gun ownership until that age, but at the same time, crimes of impulse or passion are punished more leniently. Judgment and moral reasoning (knowing right from wrong in a way distinct from mere operant conditioning for specific actions) develops by around age 15, ergo, any crimes committed before that age are treated extremely leniently, with psychological treatment, not imprisonment (though some isolation at school would be required if the child posed an ongoing danger to other children). At the same time, if you're capable of reasoned thought (when not under pressure, as in an impulse control situation), you're capable of voting at least as well as the average adult, so voting rights would be given to coincide with the stricter enforcement of the law.
I'd argue that there are some human rights that should not be extended to children due to their undeveloped sense of moral reasoning, judgment and impulse control. That said, I don't see any potential harm from children being given full free speech rights; if they're immature babblers they get ignored, no harm done, and if they're cogent, forceful speakers, people can choose to listen. Much like with adults actually.
Please don't encourage that. That will just mean they charge the same (high) price to everyone. I know some adults would love the idea of less kids in "their" movies, but I'm not so bitter that I'd begrudge families with young children the ability to see movies without burning a hole in their wallet.
Just for the record, that's not true in a strict sense. The rigidity of school assignments varies from county to county and city to city. It's not a federal system at all. In many counties, switching schools is trivial; you can't demand they provide you a bus, but as long as your parents can get you there, switching is allowed (limits exist to prevent overcrowded schools, but as long as the school isn't already at capacity, you're fine). In New York City, it's codified; you apply to high schools within the city like most people apply to college. They've even removed the "right" to attend your local school (though in practice most schools don't have a problem, it's only the really high demand schools that have to reject neighborhood kids), so your placement is based on the strength of your record and your application.
Point is, your complaints could be addressed by action at the local level; if you want more freedom to choose your school, you don't need to lobby Congress, just your local school board (and your voice counts more, because you constitute a measurable percentage of their vote).
The point isn't to save HD space, it's to reduce paging activity. HD space is infinite, but HD read/write capacity isn't, so if you honestly don't trust the paging algorithm, you want to keep it small so it doesn't overdo it.
Vista and later OSes emphasize the I/O priority concept much more heavily than XP and earlier. File system indexing and defragmentation are done with ultra low priority; if *anything* else wants to read or write, they back off. Similarly, any service that starts as "Automatic (Delayed Start)" is opting in for low priority I/O. Unless their metrics say something about the slowdown of the active user processes, the fact that the file system indexer is backlogged is irrelevant.
Starter edition is an intentionally crippled OS used to lower their prices in developing countries without undercutting sales of the full OS to those that can afford it. You may disagree with it on personal principle, but it's a sound marketing strategy.
For laptops, Windows' strategy still makes some sense. As I noted above, if memory is pre-paged, then a hibernation can occur nigh instantaneously. If it isn't, you've got to wait for X / Y seconds, where X is the amount of RAM in use, and Y is the write speed of your hard drive (typically slow in a laptop). If you've got 4 GB of mostly used RAM, and the hard disk only writes at 40 MB/s, that means hibernating takes over a minute and half. It raises the risk of head crashes substantially (since most people just close the lid and go, and every jostle during this write is another chance for disaster), and can interfere with waking it up again if you change your mind.
One other minor note: Windows's use of pre-emptive paging makes for a much faster hybrid sleep and/or hibernation. If your page file is larger than main memory, and you're not paging excessively, most of your memory is probably already paged out. Thus, the hibernate file only needs to have the unique data written to it; on a laptop with 4 GB of mostly used RAM and a relatively slow hard disk, it could take two minutes to hibernate the machine (hope your battery lasts). Every bit of memory paged out preemptively means less time to hibernate. My home machine is set up for hybrid sleep, and has 4 GB of RAM. Time from issuing the sleep command to hibernation is about 3-5 seconds, and that only works because of the page file.
You might try establishing a small, fixed size page file. At least in older versions of the OS (not sure about Vista and later), the crankiness over the lack of a page file could be solved by creating a simple fixed size 2 MB page file. Of course, given that there are large parts of the OS that are loaded into RAM, run once and never touched again, making it slightly larger would free up some active RAM for other processes and cache, so a 50-100 MB page file would not be unreasonable.