If a machine kills someone (and we don't even know why) 1% of the time, but a human doing the same job would mess up and kill 3% of people (but we'd understand why)... I'll take ignorance.
A couple problems with this argument:
(1) Is the 1% part of the 3% that would likely have been killed by the human, or is the 1% a novel subset? If you yourself were part of that 1% that is now more likely to be killed, you might care about this choice.
(2) Unpredictable failures often mean that you can't ever get good stats like you have there until you actually deploy a system. Which means you're basically taking a leap of faith that the system will only kill 1% and not 5% or 20% when put into practice.
This is one of my concerns with self-driving cars. A lot of the miles they've been tested on so far have been on known roads with good (or reasonably good) conditions. Aside from situations where the "driver" actively disengages the AI because of a specific situation, we know that Google's fleet (for example) is driven a lot of miles manually. The Google safety reports only contain information on when the system is deliberately disengaged, but we don't get reports on when drivers decide just to drive the car manually for whatever reason instead (maybe it's a bad weather day, maybe they'll be driving through an area with new construction or some other random hazard the system hasn't been tested on yet, etc.).
Roads can have lots of random unpredictable hazards that are rare but which humans have to respond to, from altered routes for construction to inadequate signage around construction zones, police directing traffic, traffic lights malfunctioning, pedestrians doing unexpected things, children or animals running into the road, debris on the road, combinations of weather phenomena with any or all of the above, etc., etc.
As humans, we just handle all these "edge cases" in stride when driving, even if every one of them has a very low statistical probability of happening. But how will an AI algorithm perform in every permutation of these issues?
I have no doubt that current self-driving algorithms will ALREADY be safer than most human drivers on a clear, well-marked, well-mapped highway with no unexpected hazards. I have no doubt that current self-driving algorithms are probably already better suited to driving in heavy traffic and would be more safe than humans in not tailgating or cutting others off, choosing better optimal speeds, etc.
So, it's likely that we'd be able to reduce a lot of COMMON causes of accidents by adopting self-driving cars even today. The question is how they'll handle the edge cases, and how common those edge cases might even be. Without understanding the way the AI makes its decisions, it might be seriously underequipped to handle even many obvious scenarios -- but this might not become apparent until full-scale testing, perhaps resulting in significant danger.
For years now, I've been worried about the "nightmare scenario" of an AI car doing something that might even objectively seen as reasonable (and perhaps not even reasonably preventable by a human driver) but which resulted in several deaths of kids or something. At that point, all the stats about 3% vs. 1% or whatever will stop mattering; it will just be the "evil robot car that killed kids" in every news headline, which could set back self-driving car progress by a decade.
Now imagine the same scenario where the AI's decision doesn't even seem to make objective sense, because we can't understand the logic of the algorithm in that case! That would be a true PR disaster for AI in general.
While you may be willing to take the morbid actuarial calculations at face value, I think there's a real danger to public perception and potential regulation (and its impact on progress) if we can't explain the risks adequately.
Today's well designed neural networks and other machine learning systems can certainly be fully understood and debugged.
What ARE you talking about? Sure, the underlying neural network architecture can be understood and perhaps even debugged (depending on what exactly you mean by "debugged"). But AI learning systems frequently go through many, many generations of creating their own adaptive solutions to problems, which often only exist as huge collections of numbers that are basically empirically derived weightings from the interactions with the dataset.
How can you "debug" THAT? Sure, you can generally extract some patterns and sort of reverse-engineer the features it has extracted from the data. But it's not like traditional debugging where you get one misclassified thing and you just change one number in the function and all works better. The interaction of all of those numbers is generally not transparent, which is the entire reason for using adaptive algorithms like neural nets in the first place, i.e., to create a functional layer that can process data without programming in all of the explicit nuances in the first place.
And the size of these datasets along with the parameters created through adaptation grow exponentially from year-to-year as hardware and software advances make it easier to handle more. It's only getting harder to isolate the specific interior workings of such things, no matter how "well designed" the underlying architecture may be.
Because it usually works out just fine, and it's so incredibly fast compared to driving. Days turn into just a few hours.
Sure, if you're talking long distances. And it really depends on your particular situation: Do you have a direct flight, or do you have connections? Do you live close to a major airport, or do you need to drive 90 minutes to get to one (and is it in the "right" direction)? How efficient are the security lines, etc. at your airport? How much time do you need to allow for traffic?
And what about your destination? How far is that from the airport? Do you need to pay for transportation while there? Having to take pay for parking at an airport, and then pay for rental cars, shuttles, taxis, etc. can really eat into the potential savings from hotels you mention. (Not to mention the convenience factor of just bringing stuff you might need in your car.)
If it's a matter of jumping on a direct commuter shuttle flight that's convenient for you, sure, it may even be good for relatively short-distance travel. But for other people who might be looking at a connection or two, maybe a few hours driving to/from airport on either side (and you need to allow an extra couple hours because of unreliable traffic and/or security lines), suddenly that "fast" flight isn't actually so fast compared to driving. I used to take a somewhat regular trip between destinations that were maybe 15 hours apart by driving, and if you threw in a connection and a delayed flight, I sometimes barely made it to my destination faster than if I had just driven the entire way.
Again, not saying flying isn't convenient for very long distances, but even for medium distances, the convenience factor can be overrated depending on your individual circumstances.
But when you look down on jetsetters, you're being an insensitive snob. [...] and now from this story we see that it's unreliable and a carrier might not keep its word.
I'm really confused here. From your tone, it sounds like you're identifying as a "jetsetter," but then you say "NOW we see" only from the present story that overbooking is a serious thing?
I fly more than I would like, but I'd never consider myself a "jetsetter," and yet I've seen overbooking scenarios on a regular basis ALL THE TIME. The fact that airlines do this all the time isn't news at all, is it? So how is it at all significant that we're seeing it in TFA? Your contract with the airlines never guarantees you a seat. I thought anyone who flew more than once per year likely knew that, given how often airlines offer compensation to bump people. The summary only gives stats on involuntary bumping -- but I've seen voluntary bumping on a regular basis, and the system only tends to work because enough people are willing to put up with some flexibility in their travel for some cash/vouchers.
I don't quite understand your argument. What precisely is preventing a criminal from planting a cell phone on a flight and doing what you claim now? It's not like flight crews are doing sophisticated "cell signal sweeps" to make sure there are no active phones on-board now.
So how precisely does outlawing legal cell phone use prohibit the scenario you're worried about? (Once again, we have someone who seems to be imagining a world full of terrorists at every corner. Hint -- if that were true, lots of crap would be blowing up, not just planes.)
In the UK credit cards are generally free. Sure there are a few offered for a fee, in return for something you probably don't want
Just to be clear, in the US credit cards are generally "free" (i.e., with no annual fee) too, though airline cards tend to be one major exception. Airline cards almost always have an annual fee. Other cards with fees in the US generally serve two markets: (1) people with VERY poor or no credit, and (2) wealthier people who want cards with very specific "luxury" perks. Some cards also offer higher rates of cash back or whatever perks for an annual fee -- though often these higher rates tend to be capped in such a way that they're only worth it in certain circumstances.
So, to answer the GP's question -- at least in the U.S., it's often quite easy to find card options with no fees, unless your credit is really screwed up for some reason. (And yes, if you're older and don't yet have a credit card, and if you don't have another record of steady payments on a loan or something, that counts as having "screwed up credit" because the vast majority of people establish credit histories by the time they are in their mid-20s or so.)
Everyone pays into the system. The guy with the best rewards comes out ahead; the guy with cash comes out behind; and the guy closest to the average-fee rewards card essentially gets a wash.
Well, you're of course assuming a case where a card user NEVER carries a balance and pays off immediately every month. It's always important to remember that more than 1/3 of American households carry credit card debt from month-to-month. (After the recession, it was closer to 45%.) And of those households who have credit card debt, the average debt is over $15,000. At the average interest rate for credit cards, that translates to over $2500 just IN INTEREST every year.
So, for a lot of people, the guy with the reward card is never going to make enough money in rewards even to pay off the amount of interest he'll get charged. Even if you only carry a balance "during emergencies" for a few months here and there, the interest and fees can really add up.
So yeah, if you have the discipline basically to NEVER carry a balance on your cards, then your description is true. For a significant percentage of Americans, they'd likely be better off not dealing with the temptation of credit cards at all.
In places where you're talking to the owner, or at least a very empowered (and smart) manager or employee, you might be able to get them to knock 3-5% off for a cash payment, but it's rare.
It's also important to note that handling cash is not free. Let me say that again: handling cash is NOT free.
Somehow, I think all the pro-cash anti-card people think that every business magically ends up with just the right set of bills every day to pay its employees and start the next with a full cash register set to give change, etc.
In the real world, most businesses have to deal with banks a lot to process cash: they need to stock enough cash for change for customers, they need to transport cash back and forth from the bank (which might have security implications, perhaps even armored transport or security services for large-volume businesses), they might need to pay for extra security (electronic systems, safes, even actual guards on-site), etc., etc.
So, while a business may pay a 2-3% processing fee for card purchases, handling cash frequently costs ~1% of their transactions too (sometimes significantly more if additional security is required). Cards are still usually pricier, particularly for small transactions and for smaller businesses, but if you go in expecting a major discount for paying in cash, it might not actually be worth their while.
All-in-all, if you're getting a couple percent back from all (or most) purchases from your card, everything probably roughly balances out for customers who use cards -- with you pocketing a tiny percentage, and the credit card company getting the other percentage point or whatever that would likely be lost in the cost of handling cash. The main place where "cash only" businesses actually carries a BIG difference for an owner is where there's tax cheating going on.
(Actually, I'd imagine right now that a lot of small businesses hate having to deal with both -- it would probably be a lot easier to only offer one or the other, but right now they still have the costs associated with both, unless they want to alienate customers.)
What usually happens is what happened in my case, nothing much.
Just to be clear on what the guidelines are, they're here. According to your description, since you actually arrived before you were supposed to, the airline technically didn't have to pay compensation at all.
As you can read in the guidelines, for involuntary bumping they aren't technically required to give you a big check UNLESS you won't arrive on-time (or within one hour of your scheduled arrival). Nor do they have to place you on the next available seat even if in a higher class or whatever -- though they face additionally harsh financial penalties if they get you to your destination even a couple hours late, so it's often worth their expense to bump you to a higher class and get you there as close to on-time as possible.
We're wired to be hunter-gatherers; small and generally fairly mobile groups where leaders were far closer to those that they lead.
While I'm sure you're right about some of this, I think perhaps an even bigger effect is reinforcement through social norms. What are the "myths" of our modern societies? When we tell stories of "heroes," what are they like?
And from fairy tales and fables through our modern blockbuster movies, we tend to emphasize the powerful, charismatic leader who takes risks, instead of the quiet, stable dude who actually gets stuff done day-to-day without seeking the limelight.
Sure, we get the occasional "inspirational" story of the humble, quiet dude who finally gets recognition after laboring in obscurity for decades. But most of the "humble" types we see in fiction only become main characters when they start to act in unusual ways that bring attention, perhaps even becoming literal "superheroes" in much recent fiction. The standard superhero trope of the quiet guy who evolves special powers to save humanity is perhaps the ultimate beta-male fantasy: you skip all the social factors, physical prowess, etc. that get you attention and power and instead just are granted the power directly.
Part of this is the nature of drama, too. Do we really want to read a book or see a movie about a guy who labored steadily in his office for 40 years and contributed to the company through all his quiet deeds? Or do we want to hear the guy make speeches, and have high-profile successes (and failures), and have "drama" as he works his way up?
Even our news is shaped this way. It's a major factor in Trump's success. He clearly managed to get "free publicity" from news organizations most days during his election. Whether you liked him or hated him, he knew how to draw people's attention (both good and bad).
Humble people just don't tend to draw that sort of attention -- not in our fiction, not in the news, etc. The closest we get is the occasional story about the value of "introverts" or whatever, but it's not enough. Until our dominant culture celebrates the humble folks in stories, in our news, etc. and acknowledges their superior results on a regular basis, there's no way they'll be valued as much.
Gorsuch falls in this general range, a bit higher than Kagan, but lower than Sotomayor. Notably, polls for Alito and Roberts had significantly lower approval numbers (though also higher "don't know" numbers).
Also, ~50% of Americans approved of Garland's nomination for what it's worth, and depending on which poll you believe, somewhere between about 50 and 65% of Americans thought he deserved a hearing.
So, I'd say there's little evidence to support your assertion that Obama's appointees "do not represent the America people" when polls about the nominees suggest more people approved than disapproved of all of them.
Yet the Republicans passed the majority of nominees without any problem. You should at least consider the possibility that the few (it was more than one) being held up were of particular concern. Instead of changing nominees, as Schumer demanded the Republicans do, they changed the rules and packed courts with additional judges.
According to the Congressional Research Service, there were 68 presidential nominees for various positions filibustered between 1949 (basically when the Senate began allowing filibusters on nominations) and 2008. The Republicans had filibustered 79 of President Obama's nominees between 2008 and 2013 when Reid used the nuclear option.
In other words, in a little over 4 years, the Republicans filibustered more presidential nominees than had been filibustered in the preceding 60 years.
That doesn't sound like selecting just a few people "of particular concern" to me.
By the way, I strongly disapproved of the nuclear option back then, as I still do now. There are Rules of the Senate, and this is using a ridiculous parliamentary loophole with no Constitutional foundation to override previous Rules of the Senate (which normally require a 2/3 majority to amend).
Frankly, I'd first prefer to see the federal judiciary self-destruct to the point that it actively went to war against Congress itself because of staffing issues... as with the Civil Rights Act (which eventually passed after 60+ days of filibustering) eventually someone will give. Eventually there would be some compromise. No longer. Now it's party line forevermore. Just wait -- in a few decades that Senate will be voting to take away Constitutional rights by party vote.
Hi, I gave my child my credit card info and was surprised when they bought stuff online. I shouldn't be responsible!
Not what happened. What actually occurred here: back in the days a few years back before a lot of parents were experienced with tablets and even knew what an "in-app purchase" was, Amazon shipped out tablets and linked them to Amazon user accounts (which had credit card info attached).
Parents who had never made an in-app purchase and this couldn't even foresee the need to avoid them or warn kids against them suddenly found themselves with $300 bills for virtual "smurfberries" or whatever due to the unknowing actions of a 4-year-old playing a game that was advertised as FREE on Amazon's appstore.
In other words, this was a toy unlike any other parents had encountered, which would suddenly start charging parents more money without asking them. And, as noted in the summary, even after Amazon became aware of the problem, it didn't offer a setting to turn those purchases off for years... So even if a parent had the good sense to password protect app purchases themselves, the kids could still go make IN-app purchases with no notice.
That's pretty much the definition of non transparency in user settings, where the default should ALWAYS be "don't charge me money unless I confirm, and at least give me an option that requires me to confirm and authenticate EVERY time if I want."
Well, the Distrowatch stats DO tend be indicative of which distros people are paying some attention to... You're right that they shouldn't be taken as user numbers (and I didn't say they were). My point was about what distros are getting attention, and Linux Mint gets a lot of attention. (BTW, do you have better stats? Individual Ubuntu derivatives don't generally identify themselves in browser agent data or whatever, so it's difficult to estimate userbase.)
As for the rest of your comment, YMMV. But I think we can reasonabky say Mint didn't get so much attention because it was a harder to use and clunkier alternative to the already established Ubuntu for MOST Mint users.
Ubuntu users who were Unity skeptics didn't flock to GUbuntu, they flocked to Mint.
THIS. Mint was already on the upswing before Ubuntu switched to Unity several years ago, probably because it already seemed more polished and "just worked" upon install, whereas Ubuntu at that time still tended to require post-install tweaking even to get basic stuff like basic multimedia codecs. And (according to Distrowatch) Mint surpassed Ubuntu in pagehits starting in 2011.
Around that time, Mint dumped GNOME and began focusing on Cinnamon and MATE, both of which seem to have gained widespread acceptance.
Ubuntu potentially has a real chance here to move back into the spotlight if it made the right decision for default desktop, but I'm not sure GNOME 3 is it either. Linux Mint suffered a bit of backlash last year when it announced it wouldn't ship with multimedia codecs packaged in the ISO by default (even though it's still just a matter of a checkbox during the installation dialogs, assuming one has internet access), removing one of the significant convenience reasons people flocked to Mint in the first place. Anyhow, it would be a perfect time for Ubuntu to assert it's "not so different from Mint" anymore and increase popularity again after the Unity backlash.
But GNOME 3 is probably not the best way to do that.
[Full disclosure: Mostly these days I tend to use XFCE in Linux, because I like something a bit lighter. So I have nothing personally invested in this debate.]
Comparative studies of Plato's Metaphysics with Aristotle's or examinations of Hobbes versus Locke (while enjoyable to some) will not help in CS.
Depends. Philosophy majors in general tend to be trained in more rigorous argumentation and logic, regardless of their interest or specialization... which is why they do better (on average) than almost all majors on various graduate school exams that focus on reasoning.
In fact, arguably it's harder to deal with such rigorous argumentation when debating Plato vs. Aristotle or Hobbes vs. Locke, because you need the additional skills of read complex historical texts critically and then abstracting the arguments and reasoning before constructing your argument about them. Symbolic logic is easy. Constructing logical arguments by abstracting meaning from complex texts is a lot harder. (That's not to say there aren't slackers among philosophy students too, but on average, they're pretty strong at abstract reasoning skills, whatever the specific form they need to express those in.)
Since an MBA is by far the most common masters degree, its not surprising that it leads in debt.
Uh... did you even bother to look at ANYTHING in that report? Because the stats listed say nothing of the sort. (Note that GP is also VERY confused too and misinterprets the data.)
The report says:
MBAs constitute 11% of graduate degrees awarded, compared to 18% Master of Science and 16% Master of Education, so they are NOT "by far the most common master's degree." (I suppose they might be the "most common" if you break down M.S. and M.Ed. into individual disciplines, while not subdividing M.B.A. by focus, but the report doesn't use such subcategories, and neither did GP.)
Typical total debt of MBAs is $42,000, which is actually the LOWEST of all the master's degree categories in the report (lower than M.S., M.A., M.Ed., and "other master's degrees," which all have average debt above $50,000).
So no, the report explicitly contradicts your claims in the summary in the first few pages (see the handy chart on p. 6).
I keep hearing this but does anybody actually have data to back it up?
The report you cite is focused on graduate degrees and debt, but let's also look at actual enrollment in humanities programs. For example, see this study. A few relevant facts mentioned there:
-- The number of bachelor's degrees in "core" humanities disciplines was at the lowest level in 2014 since 2003, constituting only 6.1% of degrees awarded.
-- The core humanities had their highpoint in 1967, constituting 17.2% of all bachelor's degrees awarded. That's back when most people got degrees in actual fields of study, rather than generic "business majors." (The shift from humanities to "business" degrees largely occurred in the 1970s and 1980s.)
-- ALL humanities degrees in 2014 were less than 10% of all bachelor's degrees, compared to 34.6% for all sciences, and 18.5% for business/management degrees.
So, the percentage of humanities degrees has basically been in decline for the past 50 years (though there was a slight rise in the early 2000s, followed by a more recent decline again). Humanities majors (particularly for bachelor's degrees) don't seem to carry that much more debt than for other fields, so I'm not sure what evidence there is to support GP's assertion that "totally worthless degrees" (which seem to be humanities for GP) are a significant contributor current problems.
Oh, and then we have the question of whether these actually ARE "totally worthless degrees." Once again, let's look at data from actual studies:
-- In 2013, the unemployment rate for Americans with a bachelor's degree in the humanities was 5.4%.
-- Across bachelor's in all disciplines, unemployment was 4.6%.
-- Unemployment for those with only a high school diploma, meanwhile, was 9%.
Oh, the next question will be -- "But surely they don't earn anything to pay off their debt!?" Once again...
-- Median salary for bachelor's degrees in humanities in 2013 was $50,000
-- Median salary was $57,000 for all bachelor's degree holders
-- High school diploma holders, median salary of $35,000
Bottom line -- humanities degree graduates may have a slightly harder time finding a job than your average bachelor's degree holder, and they may earn a bit less, but calling such degrees "totally worthless" is simply not supported by the evidence. They certainly are significantly better than having no degree at all in most cases.
And the annotations (by law) do not carry the force of law (as that *would* make them uncopyrightable, as the linked decision points out). In short: the summary is not only clickbait, it's actually wrong. GA law is 100% completely free and available to all with no copyright restrictions.
In Georgia specifically, the situation is complicated and different from other states. (Even Wikipedia has a summary.)
Basically, in most states (and for federal law), the "annotations" are compiled references to relevant court cases, other laws, parts of the legislative record related to the law, etc. In almost all cases these are compiled by private businesses and copyrighted, sold to attorneys as a helpful tool. They have no official standing.
Georgia is different. The state of Georgia publishes an official set of annotations for its laws which apparently are maintained by the state (not a private business, as with most other annotated codes). Because of this official publication by the state government, Georgia case law frequently makes reference to the OFFICIAL annotations directly (since they are basically codified directly by the state), whereas in other states and for the federal government, you wouldn't reference the annotations directly (since they aren't official) -- you'd use the annotations to find references that you'd reference instead.
Georgia is a special case here, and it could legitimately be argued that keeping the official codified annotations private is basically keeping a STATE CODIFIED DOCUMENT from the public, which is obviously helpful for people who want to research the law, represent themselves in court, etc. In other states, the annotations are clearly owned by private businesses who compile them. In Georgia, they are an essential part of the official codified law as distributed directly from the state government.
So all those posts claiming this is "fake news" aren't quite right. It's true that you can get the text of Georgia statutes for free. But the state of Georgia here is also providing an official text that accompanies the code, but only for a fee. One could argue that, as an official state resource, it should be made accessible to the public too, like I always hear numerous Slashdot commenters bitching endlessly about how any scientific research with even a tiny percentage of government funding should have its results published freely and accessible for free.
Where are all those Slashdot commenters here yelling about access to government-sponsored documents here?? Instead, we just seem to have a number of modded up comments claiming TFA is "fake news." Sure, there's an argument that the state should be able to copyright its publications, so it's not clear that they should necessarily make it available for free. But the situation in Georgia with the state law is different from most states, making TFA's description *not* a clear-cut case (for or against).
It's reasonably safe, I think, compared to putting them in my pocket in an easily-lost USB stick or on a frequently-stolen laptop.
Now you have me curious -- just how often is this laptop stolen? How many owners has it had? Why would you want to store anything on such a thing?
Or is it your laptop, and it's stolen again and again, but you keep recovering it? If so, do you work in some sort of sensitive information industry where somebody keeps deliberately taking your laptop and then making it easy for you to find it again (after they've presumably taken any new data on it, I guess?)?
I'm really intrigued by this "frequently-stolen laptop" -- sounds like a fascinating story.
we still dutifully strip off our shoes and throw out our bottled water in homage to the all mighty security theatre.
Not me! Paid the $85USD fee, and for the next 5 years leave my shoes on, laptop in bag, and pass through xray only security in 5min. (ps, no fully body scanning)
Do you work for the TSA or something? Because the fact that Americans have to pay $85 to be afforded basic 4th-amendment rights (and common decency in their privacy) should be something you LAMENT, not lord over the plebs who haven't paid up to get basic freedom back.
Risk assessment. Grinding a global economy to a halt also implicitly puts lives a risk. The low-hanging fruit in reducing the risk is banning from 8 countries; a number that could very well increase.
Meh. It could be "risk assessment," but in this case it's more likely to be a combination of security theatre (always a factor with "terrorism") and CYA. If an actual terrorist event happened using a method like this -- no matter how unlikely -- and it came out that the governments KNEW something like this had recently been discovered, all sorts of inquiries would ensue.
Politicians don't want that. So, they slap some limited ban together that showed that they "did something" even if it's worthless (and thus are at least partially covered even if an attack happened), and they get a kick of "security theatre" that keeps the masses scared, cowed, and convinced of evil dudes for a while longer.
Of all the things that are mostt valuable thing to any Newbie the most important one is extensive community support.
Not true. The MOST valuable thing to a "newbie" is a distro that "just works." What you want the most is something that will work without customization or tweaking first and foremost -- after that, the SECOND most important thing is good community support.
Many of the distros you mention (SUSE, Red Hat, etc.) tried pursuing the ease of use and "just works" philosophy starting a couple decades ago, but Ubuntu really pushed that forward significantly, and Linux Mint went further still. Personally, after about a decade of periodic distro-hopping, Mint was truly the first distro I ever found that "just worked" to the point that I could recommend it to friends who hadn't used Linux before. I think Ubuntu has tried to catch up in recent years, too. I'm sure others will have different opinions -- but my point isn't to endorse Mint per se as much as to say that "just works" is probably the most important criterion for a newbie.
And here's the thing about community support -- it really depends on precisely what you need support on. If you need support for a particular software package, it often doesn't matter much which distro you use or which community you search for support under. A lot of basic mechanical stuff for someone used to GUI OSes is going to be under their desktop environment choice more than their particular distro -- if you prefer MATE or KDE or Xfce or whatever, you can often find answers from various communities which support those environments under different distros. For example, I frequently use Mint on desktops these days just for ease of configuration, but I use Xfce because I personally don't see the point in wasting system resources on a heavier desktop environment. But on the occasions I need support for the GUI aspects of what I'm doing, I don't tend to find much help on Linux Mint forums, because few users seem to use Xfce -- but there are plenty of Xfce users out there in other places. And when a "newbie" needs command-line help or whatever, a lot of commands are going to be common among everybody who uses a standard shell like Bash and standard Linux libraries/applications.
Obviously, it's nice to have a very specific support community for your specific distro, but there are lots of elements for users that are common across distros. Part of the learning curve for a newbie is probably figuring out the very few things they'd actually need to ask about in their specific distro forum vs. things they could get answers from in lots of places (and thus likely more quickly once they know what to search for).
Well, if you can't keep track of your spending, I suppose that'd be a reason to want to have others do it for you. I don't have that problem, personally, so it's difficult for me to emphasize with your use case.
While I share your concerns about tracking, let's not pretend that there isn't a convenience factor to financial tracking software for those who are willing to give up some potential privacy.
It's not just for people who can't keep a budget. Electronic transactions that can easily be imported and auto-classified into categories can be really helpful for seeing where your money goes in detail. Sure, there are "old school" methods of budgeting (like the "envelope" model where you create envelopes of cash for each budgetary category each month or pay period or whatever and spend cash out of them), but financial software makes this all a heck of a lot easier.
I was skeptical of all of this too, until a close friend (who actually is quite financially savvy and has no problem keeping within his budgets) told me what happened when he started using Mint and discovered how much money he was actually paying Starbucks every year. He was really shocked, but if you're just using cash, it's not an easy question to answer unless you're really keeping detailed records in a relatively laborious fashion.
As for needing to show where you were... who do you need to show this to? The very fact that you think you need to show it to someone is worrisome, and speaks more to the problem than any solution.
Again, although I share your privacy concerns, I also completely understand why someone would find this convenient for all sorts of things -- extra documentation of reimburseable business expenses, proving things if you got audited by the IRS, etc.
Because the government thinks it's perfectly okay to directly violate the constitution that authorizes its existence, that's why.
While I am horrified by the government surveillance, in this particular instance, I think your paranoia may be misdirected. Personally, I'm a lot more concerned presently about what companies may be aggregating my purchasing data and in what ways than I am about the government monitoring my financial records.
By the way, I realized my final paragraph just restated a point you made too. Sorry -- should have re-read your post again before submitting, but my point stands. Mostly, I think even very low scores on RT can be less useful for certain genres which tend to have high "B movie" or cult status, though there are other outliers; reading reviews can help give a sense of whether the criticism is directed at the genre as a whole vs. the specific film.
There is something wrong with a movie that is less than 50%. Maybe you will like it, but there is a flaw in there somewhere that caused most people that review movies to not like it.
I agree with the last statement that there is something that caused most people that review movies to not like it.
But movie reviewers don't always accurately reflect the tastes of the public. There are lots of times I've seen significant mismatches on review aggregator sites between critics' reviews vs. reviews by average viewers. Granted, it's pretty rare to see a HUGE disparity (say, more than 30%), but it's quite common to see stuff where only 40% of reviewers liked it, but it has a 65% audience approval or whatever.
But, why on earth would I bother going to see it, when there are movies with 70, 80, 90% ratings to go see?
I guess I agree to the extent that I'm only going to actually pay to GO SEE a movie with really high potential. Given the expense and inconvenience, I'm going to a theater for a guaranteed winner these days. For the rest, I'll wait and watch at home (maybe).
That said, there are a number of prominent "critically acclaimed" films that I've really disliked. And I've had plenty of surprises where I've found films with less than 50% scores that have turned out to be a favorite. I may not take a chance in a theater on one, but I might for home viewing.
And certain genres often tend to produce low ratings. If you're into stereotypical action, horror, slasher, even dumb rom-coms, expect a lot of your genre to get less than 50% approval, because critics as a whole like something a little less full of standard tropes. But some people like those genres. (Note that I'm not one of them -- I'm not into ANY of those genres, but I realize that there's a HUGE market for many of them.)
Basically, to me again it comes down to the fact that critics are not necessarily representative of the public at large. If you understand the ways they are sometimes not representative, you can more accurately use their reviews. But just because 50% of critics don't like something doesn't mean there can't be a huge market for it... a fact that has been proven again and again.
And really, if you want to use reviews, you need to actually read reviews. Rotten Tomatoes and other aggregators just assign scores to reviews, but often what matters is NOT just whether the review is overly "positive" vs. "negative." Some things that are a turn-off for you might be a positive for me and vice-versa, and actually reading the review may help you understand why critics don't like it. A Rotten Tomatoes score is just a very crude and unnuanced metric.
Slashdot Mirror
If a machine kills someone (and we don't even know why) 1% of the time, but a human doing the same job would mess up and kill 3% of people (but we'd understand why)... I'll take ignorance.
A couple problems with this argument:
(1) Is the 1% part of the 3% that would likely have been killed by the human, or is the 1% a novel subset? If you yourself were part of that 1% that is now more likely to be killed, you might care about this choice.
(2) Unpredictable failures often mean that you can't ever get good stats like you have there until you actually deploy a system. Which means you're basically taking a leap of faith that the system will only kill 1% and not 5% or 20% when put into practice.
This is one of my concerns with self-driving cars. A lot of the miles they've been tested on so far have been on known roads with good (or reasonably good) conditions. Aside from situations where the "driver" actively disengages the AI because of a specific situation, we know that Google's fleet (for example) is driven a lot of miles manually. The Google safety reports only contain information on when the system is deliberately disengaged, but we don't get reports on when drivers decide just to drive the car manually for whatever reason instead (maybe it's a bad weather day, maybe they'll be driving through an area with new construction or some other random hazard the system hasn't been tested on yet, etc.).
Roads can have lots of random unpredictable hazards that are rare but which humans have to respond to, from altered routes for construction to inadequate signage around construction zones, police directing traffic, traffic lights malfunctioning, pedestrians doing unexpected things, children or animals running into the road, debris on the road, combinations of weather phenomena with any or all of the above, etc., etc.
As humans, we just handle all these "edge cases" in stride when driving, even if every one of them has a very low statistical probability of happening. But how will an AI algorithm perform in every permutation of these issues?
I have no doubt that current self-driving algorithms will ALREADY be safer than most human drivers on a clear, well-marked, well-mapped highway with no unexpected hazards. I have no doubt that current self-driving algorithms are probably already better suited to driving in heavy traffic and would be more safe than humans in not tailgating or cutting others off, choosing better optimal speeds, etc.
So, it's likely that we'd be able to reduce a lot of COMMON causes of accidents by adopting self-driving cars even today. The question is how they'll handle the edge cases, and how common those edge cases might even be. Without understanding the way the AI makes its decisions, it might be seriously underequipped to handle even many obvious scenarios -- but this might not become apparent until full-scale testing, perhaps resulting in significant danger.
For years now, I've been worried about the "nightmare scenario" of an AI car doing something that might even objectively seen as reasonable (and perhaps not even reasonably preventable by a human driver) but which resulted in several deaths of kids or something. At that point, all the stats about 3% vs. 1% or whatever will stop mattering; it will just be the "evil robot car that killed kids" in every news headline, which could set back self-driving car progress by a decade.
Now imagine the same scenario where the AI's decision doesn't even seem to make objective sense, because we can't understand the logic of the algorithm in that case! That would be a true PR disaster for AI in general.
While you may be willing to take the morbid actuarial calculations at face value, I think there's a real danger to public perception and potential regulation (and its impact on progress) if we can't explain the risks adequately.
Today's well designed neural networks and other machine learning systems can certainly be fully understood and debugged.
What ARE you talking about? Sure, the underlying neural network architecture can be understood and perhaps even debugged (depending on what exactly you mean by "debugged"). But AI learning systems frequently go through many, many generations of creating their own adaptive solutions to problems, which often only exist as huge collections of numbers that are basically empirically derived weightings from the interactions with the dataset.
How can you "debug" THAT? Sure, you can generally extract some patterns and sort of reverse-engineer the features it has extracted from the data. But it's not like traditional debugging where you get one misclassified thing and you just change one number in the function and all works better. The interaction of all of those numbers is generally not transparent, which is the entire reason for using adaptive algorithms like neural nets in the first place, i.e., to create a functional layer that can process data without programming in all of the explicit nuances in the first place.
And the size of these datasets along with the parameters created through adaptation grow exponentially from year-to-year as hardware and software advances make it easier to handle more. It's only getting harder to isolate the specific interior workings of such things, no matter how "well designed" the underlying architecture may be.
Because it usually works out just fine, and it's so incredibly fast compared to driving. Days turn into just a few hours.
Sure, if you're talking long distances. And it really depends on your particular situation: Do you have a direct flight, or do you have connections? Do you live close to a major airport, or do you need to drive 90 minutes to get to one (and is it in the "right" direction)? How efficient are the security lines, etc. at your airport? How much time do you need to allow for traffic?
And what about your destination? How far is that from the airport? Do you need to pay for transportation while there? Having to take pay for parking at an airport, and then pay for rental cars, shuttles, taxis, etc. can really eat into the potential savings from hotels you mention. (Not to mention the convenience factor of just bringing stuff you might need in your car.)
If it's a matter of jumping on a direct commuter shuttle flight that's convenient for you, sure, it may even be good for relatively short-distance travel. But for other people who might be looking at a connection or two, maybe a few hours driving to/from airport on either side (and you need to allow an extra couple hours because of unreliable traffic and/or security lines), suddenly that "fast" flight isn't actually so fast compared to driving. I used to take a somewhat regular trip between destinations that were maybe 15 hours apart by driving, and if you threw in a connection and a delayed flight, I sometimes barely made it to my destination faster than if I had just driven the entire way.
Again, not saying flying isn't convenient for very long distances, but even for medium distances, the convenience factor can be overrated depending on your individual circumstances.
But when you look down on jetsetters, you're being an insensitive snob. [...] and now from this story we see that it's unreliable and a carrier might not keep its word.
I'm really confused here. From your tone, it sounds like you're identifying as a "jetsetter," but then you say "NOW we see" only from the present story that overbooking is a serious thing?
I fly more than I would like, but I'd never consider myself a "jetsetter," and yet I've seen overbooking scenarios on a regular basis ALL THE TIME. The fact that airlines do this all the time isn't news at all, is it? So how is it at all significant that we're seeing it in TFA? Your contract with the airlines never guarantees you a seat. I thought anyone who flew more than once per year likely knew that, given how often airlines offer compensation to bump people. The summary only gives stats on involuntary bumping -- but I've seen voluntary bumping on a regular basis, and the system only tends to work because enough people are willing to put up with some flexibility in their travel for some cash/vouchers.
I don't quite understand your argument. What precisely is preventing a criminal from planting a cell phone on a flight and doing what you claim now? It's not like flight crews are doing sophisticated "cell signal sweeps" to make sure there are no active phones on-board now.
So how precisely does outlawing legal cell phone use prohibit the scenario you're worried about? (Once again, we have someone who seems to be imagining a world full of terrorists at every corner. Hint -- if that were true, lots of crap would be blowing up, not just planes.)
In the UK credit cards are generally free. Sure there are a few offered for a fee, in return for something you probably don't want
Just to be clear, in the US credit cards are generally "free" (i.e., with no annual fee) too, though airline cards tend to be one major exception. Airline cards almost always have an annual fee. Other cards with fees in the US generally serve two markets: (1) people with VERY poor or no credit, and (2) wealthier people who want cards with very specific "luxury" perks. Some cards also offer higher rates of cash back or whatever perks for an annual fee -- though often these higher rates tend to be capped in such a way that they're only worth it in certain circumstances.
So, to answer the GP's question -- at least in the U.S., it's often quite easy to find card options with no fees, unless your credit is really screwed up for some reason. (And yes, if you're older and don't yet have a credit card, and if you don't have another record of steady payments on a loan or something, that counts as having "screwed up credit" because the vast majority of people establish credit histories by the time they are in their mid-20s or so.)
Everyone pays into the system. The guy with the best rewards comes out ahead; the guy with cash comes out behind; and the guy closest to the average-fee rewards card essentially gets a wash.
Well, you're of course assuming a case where a card user NEVER carries a balance and pays off immediately every month. It's always important to remember that more than 1/3 of American households carry credit card debt from month-to-month. (After the recession, it was closer to 45%.) And of those households who have credit card debt, the average debt is over $15,000. At the average interest rate for credit cards, that translates to over $2500 just IN INTEREST every year.
So, for a lot of people, the guy with the reward card is never going to make enough money in rewards even to pay off the amount of interest he'll get charged. Even if you only carry a balance "during emergencies" for a few months here and there, the interest and fees can really add up.
So yeah, if you have the discipline basically to NEVER carry a balance on your cards, then your description is true. For a significant percentage of Americans, they'd likely be better off not dealing with the temptation of credit cards at all.
In places where you're talking to the owner, or at least a very empowered (and smart) manager or employee, you might be able to get them to knock 3-5% off for a cash payment, but it's rare.
It's also important to note that handling cash is not free. Let me say that again: handling cash is NOT free.
Somehow, I think all the pro-cash anti-card people think that every business magically ends up with just the right set of bills every day to pay its employees and start the next with a full cash register set to give change, etc.
In the real world, most businesses have to deal with banks a lot to process cash: they need to stock enough cash for change for customers, they need to transport cash back and forth from the bank (which might have security implications, perhaps even armored transport or security services for large-volume businesses), they might need to pay for extra security (electronic systems, safes, even actual guards on-site), etc., etc.
So, while a business may pay a 2-3% processing fee for card purchases, handling cash frequently costs ~1% of their transactions too (sometimes significantly more if additional security is required). Cards are still usually pricier, particularly for small transactions and for smaller businesses, but if you go in expecting a major discount for paying in cash, it might not actually be worth their while.
All-in-all, if you're getting a couple percent back from all (or most) purchases from your card, everything probably roughly balances out for customers who use cards -- with you pocketing a tiny percentage, and the credit card company getting the other percentage point or whatever that would likely be lost in the cost of handling cash. The main place where "cash only" businesses actually carries a BIG difference for an owner is where there's tax cheating going on.
(Actually, I'd imagine right now that a lot of small businesses hate having to deal with both -- it would probably be a lot easier to only offer one or the other, but right now they still have the costs associated with both, unless they want to alienate customers.)
What usually happens is what happened in my case, nothing much.
Just to be clear on what the guidelines are, they're here. According to your description, since you actually arrived before you were supposed to, the airline technically didn't have to pay compensation at all.
As you can read in the guidelines, for involuntary bumping they aren't technically required to give you a big check UNLESS you won't arrive on-time (or within one hour of your scheduled arrival). Nor do they have to place you on the next available seat even if in a higher class or whatever -- though they face additionally harsh financial penalties if they get you to your destination even a couple hours late, so it's often worth their expense to bump you to a higher class and get you there as close to on-time as possible.
We're wired to be hunter-gatherers; small and generally fairly mobile groups where leaders were far closer to those that they lead.
While I'm sure you're right about some of this, I think perhaps an even bigger effect is reinforcement through social norms. What are the "myths" of our modern societies? When we tell stories of "heroes," what are they like?
And from fairy tales and fables through our modern blockbuster movies, we tend to emphasize the powerful, charismatic leader who takes risks, instead of the quiet, stable dude who actually gets stuff done day-to-day without seeking the limelight.
Sure, we get the occasional "inspirational" story of the humble, quiet dude who finally gets recognition after laboring in obscurity for decades. But most of the "humble" types we see in fiction only become main characters when they start to act in unusual ways that bring attention, perhaps even becoming literal "superheroes" in much recent fiction. The standard superhero trope of the quiet guy who evolves special powers to save humanity is perhaps the ultimate beta-male fantasy: you skip all the social factors, physical prowess, etc. that get you attention and power and instead just are granted the power directly.
Part of this is the nature of drama, too. Do we really want to read a book or see a movie about a guy who labored steadily in his office for 40 years and contributed to the company through all his quiet deeds? Or do we want to hear the guy make speeches, and have high-profile successes (and failures), and have "drama" as he works his way up?
Even our news is shaped this way. It's a major factor in Trump's success. He clearly managed to get "free publicity" from news organizations most days during his election. Whether you liked him or hated him, he knew how to draw people's attention (both good and bad).
Humble people just don't tend to draw that sort of attention -- not in our fiction, not in the news, etc. The closest we get is the occasional story about the value of "introverts" or whatever, but it's not enough. Until our dominant culture celebrates the humble folks in stories, in our news, etc. and acknowledges their superior results on a regular basis, there's no way they'll be valued as much.
Obama and his appointees simply do not represent the American people.
[Citation needed.] Let's look up some stats, shall we?
-- Polls of Sotomayor nomination: 54-55% approve, 25-26% disapprove, 20% don't know/no opinion.
-- Polls of Kagan nomination: 46-48% approve, 30-34% disapprove, 20-22% don't know/no opinion
Gorsuch falls in this general range, a bit higher than Kagan, but lower than Sotomayor. Notably, polls for Alito and Roberts had significantly lower approval numbers (though also higher "don't know" numbers).
Also, ~50% of Americans approved of Garland's nomination for what it's worth, and depending on which poll you believe, somewhere between about 50 and 65% of Americans thought he deserved a hearing.
So, I'd say there's little evidence to support your assertion that Obama's appointees "do not represent the America people" when polls about the nominees suggest more people approved than disapproved of all of them.
Yet the Republicans passed the majority of nominees without any problem. You should at least consider the possibility that the few (it was more than one) being held up were of particular concern. Instead of changing nominees, as Schumer demanded the Republicans do, they changed the rules and packed courts with additional judges.
According to the Congressional Research Service, there were 68 presidential nominees for various positions filibustered between 1949 (basically when the Senate began allowing filibusters on nominations) and 2008. The Republicans had filibustered 79 of President Obama's nominees between 2008 and 2013 when Reid used the nuclear option.
In other words, in a little over 4 years, the Republicans filibustered more presidential nominees than had been filibustered in the preceding 60 years. That doesn't sound like selecting just a few people "of particular concern" to me.
By the way, I strongly disapproved of the nuclear option back then, as I still do now. There are Rules of the Senate, and this is using a ridiculous parliamentary loophole with no Constitutional foundation to override previous Rules of the Senate (which normally require a 2/3 majority to amend).
Frankly, I'd first prefer to see the federal judiciary self-destruct to the point that it actively went to war against Congress itself because of staffing issues... as with the Civil Rights Act (which eventually passed after 60+ days of filibustering) eventually someone will give. Eventually there would be some compromise. No longer. Now it's party line forevermore. Just wait -- in a few decades that Senate will be voting to take away Constitutional rights by party vote.
Hi, I gave my child my credit card info and was surprised when they bought stuff online. I shouldn't be responsible!
Not what happened. What actually occurred here: back in the days a few years back before a lot of parents were experienced with tablets and even knew what an "in-app purchase" was, Amazon shipped out tablets and linked them to Amazon user accounts (which had credit card info attached).
Parents who had never made an in-app purchase and this couldn't even foresee the need to avoid them or warn kids against them suddenly found themselves with $300 bills for virtual "smurfberries" or whatever due to the unknowing actions of a 4-year-old playing a game that was advertised as FREE on Amazon's appstore.
In other words, this was a toy unlike any other parents had encountered, which would suddenly start charging parents more money without asking them. And, as noted in the summary, even after Amazon became aware of the problem, it didn't offer a setting to turn those purchases off for years... So even if a parent had the good sense to password protect app purchases themselves, the kids could still go make IN-app purchases with no notice.
That's pretty much the definition of non transparency in user settings, where the default should ALWAYS be "don't charge me money unless I confirm, and at least give me an option that requires me to confirm and authenticate EVERY time if I want."
Well, the Distrowatch stats DO tend be indicative of which distros people are paying some attention to... You're right that they shouldn't be taken as user numbers (and I didn't say they were). My point was about what distros are getting attention, and Linux Mint gets a lot of attention. (BTW, do you have better stats? Individual Ubuntu derivatives don't generally identify themselves in browser agent data or whatever, so it's difficult to estimate userbase.) As for the rest of your comment, YMMV. But I think we can reasonabky say Mint didn't get so much attention because it was a harder to use and clunkier alternative to the already established Ubuntu for MOST Mint users.
Ubuntu users who were Unity skeptics didn't flock to GUbuntu, they flocked to Mint.
THIS. Mint was already on the upswing before Ubuntu switched to Unity several years ago, probably because it already seemed more polished and "just worked" upon install, whereas Ubuntu at that time still tended to require post-install tweaking even to get basic stuff like basic multimedia codecs. And (according to Distrowatch) Mint surpassed Ubuntu in pagehits starting in 2011.
Around that time, Mint dumped GNOME and began focusing on Cinnamon and MATE, both of which seem to have gained widespread acceptance.
Ubuntu potentially has a real chance here to move back into the spotlight if it made the right decision for default desktop, but I'm not sure GNOME 3 is it either. Linux Mint suffered a bit of backlash last year when it announced it wouldn't ship with multimedia codecs packaged in the ISO by default (even though it's still just a matter of a checkbox during the installation dialogs, assuming one has internet access), removing one of the significant convenience reasons people flocked to Mint in the first place. Anyhow, it would be a perfect time for Ubuntu to assert it's "not so different from Mint" anymore and increase popularity again after the Unity backlash.
But GNOME 3 is probably not the best way to do that.
[Full disclosure: Mostly these days I tend to use XFCE in Linux, because I like something a bit lighter. So I have nothing personally invested in this debate.]
Comparative studies of Plato's Metaphysics with Aristotle's or examinations of Hobbes versus Locke (while enjoyable to some) will not help in CS.
Depends. Philosophy majors in general tend to be trained in more rigorous argumentation and logic, regardless of their interest or specialization... which is why they do better (on average) than almost all majors on various graduate school exams that focus on reasoning.
In fact, arguably it's harder to deal with such rigorous argumentation when debating Plato vs. Aristotle or Hobbes vs. Locke, because you need the additional skills of read complex historical texts critically and then abstracting the arguments and reasoning before constructing your argument about them. Symbolic logic is easy. Constructing logical arguments by abstracting meaning from complex texts is a lot harder. (That's not to say there aren't slackers among philosophy students too, but on average, they're pretty strong at abstract reasoning skills, whatever the specific form they need to express those in.)
Since an MBA is by far the most common masters degree, its not surprising that it leads in debt.
Uh... did you even bother to look at ANYTHING in that report? Because the stats listed say nothing of the sort. (Note that GP is also VERY confused too and misinterprets the data.)
The report says: MBAs constitute 11% of graduate degrees awarded, compared to 18% Master of Science and 16% Master of Education, so they are NOT "by far the most common master's degree." (I suppose they might be the "most common" if you break down M.S. and M.Ed. into individual disciplines, while not subdividing M.B.A. by focus, but the report doesn't use such subcategories, and neither did GP.)
Typical total debt of MBAs is $42,000, which is actually the LOWEST of all the master's degree categories in the report (lower than M.S., M.A., M.Ed., and "other master's degrees," which all have average debt above $50,000).
So no, the report explicitly contradicts your claims in the summary in the first few pages (see the handy chart on p. 6).
I keep hearing this but does anybody actually have data to back it up?
The report you cite is focused on graduate degrees and debt, but let's also look at actual enrollment in humanities programs. For example, see this study. A few relevant facts mentioned there:
-- The number of bachelor's degrees in "core" humanities disciplines was at the lowest level in 2014 since 2003, constituting only 6.1% of degrees awarded.
-- The core humanities had their highpoint in 1967, constituting 17.2% of all bachelor's degrees awarded. That's back when most people got degrees in actual fields of study, rather than generic "business majors." (The shift from humanities to "business" degrees largely occurred in the 1970s and 1980s.)
-- ALL humanities degrees in 2014 were less than 10% of all bachelor's degrees, compared to 34.6% for all sciences, and 18.5% for business/management degrees.
So, the percentage of humanities degrees has basically been in decline for the past 50 years (though there was a slight rise in the early 2000s, followed by a more recent decline again). Humanities majors (particularly for bachelor's degrees) don't seem to carry that much more debt than for other fields, so I'm not sure what evidence there is to support GP's assertion that "totally worthless degrees" (which seem to be humanities for GP) are a significant contributor current problems.
Oh, and then we have the question of whether these actually ARE "totally worthless degrees." Once again, let's look at data from actual studies:
-- In 2013, the unemployment rate for Americans with a bachelor's degree in the humanities was 5.4%.
-- Across bachelor's in all disciplines, unemployment was 4.6%.
-- Unemployment for those with only a high school diploma, meanwhile, was 9%.
Oh, the next question will be -- "But surely they don't earn anything to pay off their debt!?" Once again...
-- Median salary for bachelor's degrees in humanities in 2013 was $50,000
-- Median salary was $57,000 for all bachelor's degree holders
-- High school diploma holders, median salary of $35,000
Bottom line -- humanities degree graduates may have a slightly harder time finding a job than your average bachelor's degree holder, and they may earn a bit less, but calling such degrees "totally worthless" is simply not supported by the evidence. They certainly are significantly better than having no degree at all in most cases.
And the annotations (by law) do not carry the force of law (as that *would* make them uncopyrightable, as the linked decision points out). In short: the summary is not only clickbait, it's actually wrong. GA law is 100% completely free and available to all with no copyright restrictions.
In Georgia specifically, the situation is complicated and different from other states. (Even Wikipedia has a summary.)
Basically, in most states (and for federal law), the "annotations" are compiled references to relevant court cases, other laws, parts of the legislative record related to the law, etc. In almost all cases these are compiled by private businesses and copyrighted, sold to attorneys as a helpful tool. They have no official standing.
Georgia is different. The state of Georgia publishes an official set of annotations for its laws which apparently are maintained by the state (not a private business, as with most other annotated codes). Because of this official publication by the state government, Georgia case law frequently makes reference to the OFFICIAL annotations directly (since they are basically codified directly by the state), whereas in other states and for the federal government, you wouldn't reference the annotations directly (since they aren't official) -- you'd use the annotations to find references that you'd reference instead.
Georgia is a special case here, and it could legitimately be argued that keeping the official codified annotations private is basically keeping a STATE CODIFIED DOCUMENT from the public, which is obviously helpful for people who want to research the law, represent themselves in court, etc. In other states, the annotations are clearly owned by private businesses who compile them. In Georgia, they are an essential part of the official codified law as distributed directly from the state government.
So all those posts claiming this is "fake news" aren't quite right. It's true that you can get the text of Georgia statutes for free. But the state of Georgia here is also providing an official text that accompanies the code, but only for a fee. One could argue that, as an official state resource, it should be made accessible to the public too, like I always hear numerous Slashdot commenters bitching endlessly about how any scientific research with even a tiny percentage of government funding should have its results published freely and accessible for free.
Where are all those Slashdot commenters here yelling about access to government-sponsored documents here?? Instead, we just seem to have a number of modded up comments claiming TFA is "fake news." Sure, there's an argument that the state should be able to copyright its publications, so it's not clear that they should necessarily make it available for free. But the situation in Georgia with the state law is different from most states, making TFA's description *not* a clear-cut case (for or against).
It's reasonably safe, I think, compared to putting them in my pocket in an easily-lost USB stick or on a frequently-stolen laptop.
Now you have me curious -- just how often is this laptop stolen? How many owners has it had? Why would you want to store anything on such a thing?
Or is it your laptop, and it's stolen again and again, but you keep recovering it? If so, do you work in some sort of sensitive information industry where somebody keeps deliberately taking your laptop and then making it easy for you to find it again (after they've presumably taken any new data on it, I guess?)?
I'm really intrigued by this "frequently-stolen laptop" -- sounds like a fascinating story.
we still dutifully strip off our shoes and throw out our bottled water in homage to the all mighty security theatre.
Not me! Paid the $85USD fee, and for the next 5 years leave my shoes on, laptop in bag, and pass through xray only security in 5min. (ps, no fully body scanning)
Do you work for the TSA or something? Because the fact that Americans have to pay $85 to be afforded basic 4th-amendment rights (and common decency in their privacy) should be something you LAMENT, not lord over the plebs who haven't paid up to get basic freedom back.
Risk assessment. Grinding a global economy to a halt also implicitly puts lives a risk. The low-hanging fruit in reducing the risk is banning from 8 countries; a number that could very well increase.
Meh. It could be "risk assessment," but in this case it's more likely to be a combination of security theatre (always a factor with "terrorism") and CYA. If an actual terrorist event happened using a method like this -- no matter how unlikely -- and it came out that the governments KNEW something like this had recently been discovered, all sorts of inquiries would ensue.
Politicians don't want that. So, they slap some limited ban together that showed that they "did something" even if it's worthless (and thus are at least partially covered even if an attack happened), and they get a kick of "security theatre" that keeps the masses scared, cowed, and convinced of evil dudes for a while longer.
Of all the things that are mostt valuable thing to any Newbie the most important one is extensive community support.
Not true. The MOST valuable thing to a "newbie" is a distro that "just works." What you want the most is something that will work without customization or tweaking first and foremost -- after that, the SECOND most important thing is good community support.
Many of the distros you mention (SUSE, Red Hat, etc.) tried pursuing the ease of use and "just works" philosophy starting a couple decades ago, but Ubuntu really pushed that forward significantly, and Linux Mint went further still. Personally, after about a decade of periodic distro-hopping, Mint was truly the first distro I ever found that "just worked" to the point that I could recommend it to friends who hadn't used Linux before. I think Ubuntu has tried to catch up in recent years, too. I'm sure others will have different opinions -- but my point isn't to endorse Mint per se as much as to say that "just works" is probably the most important criterion for a newbie.
And here's the thing about community support -- it really depends on precisely what you need support on. If you need support for a particular software package, it often doesn't matter much which distro you use or which community you search for support under. A lot of basic mechanical stuff for someone used to GUI OSes is going to be under their desktop environment choice more than their particular distro -- if you prefer MATE or KDE or Xfce or whatever, you can often find answers from various communities which support those environments under different distros. For example, I frequently use Mint on desktops these days just for ease of configuration, but I use Xfce because I personally don't see the point in wasting system resources on a heavier desktop environment. But on the occasions I need support for the GUI aspects of what I'm doing, I don't tend to find much help on Linux Mint forums, because few users seem to use Xfce -- but there are plenty of Xfce users out there in other places. And when a "newbie" needs command-line help or whatever, a lot of commands are going to be common among everybody who uses a standard shell like Bash and standard Linux libraries/applications.
Obviously, it's nice to have a very specific support community for your specific distro, but there are lots of elements for users that are common across distros. Part of the learning curve for a newbie is probably figuring out the very few things they'd actually need to ask about in their specific distro forum vs. things they could get answers from in lots of places (and thus likely more quickly once they know what to search for).
Well, if you can't keep track of your spending, I suppose that'd be a reason to want to have others do it for you. I don't have that problem, personally, so it's difficult for me to emphasize with your use case.
While I share your concerns about tracking, let's not pretend that there isn't a convenience factor to financial tracking software for those who are willing to give up some potential privacy.
It's not just for people who can't keep a budget. Electronic transactions that can easily be imported and auto-classified into categories can be really helpful for seeing where your money goes in detail. Sure, there are "old school" methods of budgeting (like the "envelope" model where you create envelopes of cash for each budgetary category each month or pay period or whatever and spend cash out of them), but financial software makes this all a heck of a lot easier.
I was skeptical of all of this too, until a close friend (who actually is quite financially savvy and has no problem keeping within his budgets) told me what happened when he started using Mint and discovered how much money he was actually paying Starbucks every year. He was really shocked, but if you're just using cash, it's not an easy question to answer unless you're really keeping detailed records in a relatively laborious fashion.
As for needing to show where you were... who do you need to show this to? The very fact that you think you need to show it to someone is worrisome, and speaks more to the problem than any solution.
Again, although I share your privacy concerns, I also completely understand why someone would find this convenient for all sorts of things -- extra documentation of reimburseable business expenses, proving things if you got audited by the IRS, etc.
Because the government thinks it's perfectly okay to directly violate the constitution that authorizes its existence, that's why.
While I am horrified by the government surveillance, in this particular instance, I think your paranoia may be misdirected. Personally, I'm a lot more concerned presently about what companies may be aggregating my purchasing data and in what ways than I am about the government monitoring my financial records.
By the way, I realized my final paragraph just restated a point you made too. Sorry -- should have re-read your post again before submitting, but my point stands. Mostly, I think even very low scores on RT can be less useful for certain genres which tend to have high "B movie" or cult status, though there are other outliers; reading reviews can help give a sense of whether the criticism is directed at the genre as a whole vs. the specific film.
There is something wrong with a movie that is less than 50%. Maybe you will like it, but there is a flaw in there somewhere that caused most people that review movies to not like it.
I agree with the last statement that there is something that caused most people that review movies to not like it.
But movie reviewers don't always accurately reflect the tastes of the public. There are lots of times I've seen significant mismatches on review aggregator sites between critics' reviews vs. reviews by average viewers. Granted, it's pretty rare to see a HUGE disparity (say, more than 30%), but it's quite common to see stuff where only 40% of reviewers liked it, but it has a 65% audience approval or whatever.
But, why on earth would I bother going to see it, when there are movies with 70, 80, 90% ratings to go see?
I guess I agree to the extent that I'm only going to actually pay to GO SEE a movie with really high potential. Given the expense and inconvenience, I'm going to a theater for a guaranteed winner these days. For the rest, I'll wait and watch at home (maybe).
That said, there are a number of prominent "critically acclaimed" films that I've really disliked. And I've had plenty of surprises where I've found films with less than 50% scores that have turned out to be a favorite. I may not take a chance in a theater on one, but I might for home viewing.
And certain genres often tend to produce low ratings. If you're into stereotypical action, horror, slasher, even dumb rom-coms, expect a lot of your genre to get less than 50% approval, because critics as a whole like something a little less full of standard tropes. But some people like those genres. (Note that I'm not one of them -- I'm not into ANY of those genres, but I realize that there's a HUGE market for many of them.)
Basically, to me again it comes down to the fact that critics are not necessarily representative of the public at large. If you understand the ways they are sometimes not representative, you can more accurately use their reviews. But just because 50% of critics don't like something doesn't mean there can't be a huge market for it... a fact that has been proven again and again.
And really, if you want to use reviews, you need to actually read reviews. Rotten Tomatoes and other aggregators just assign scores to reviews, but often what matters is NOT just whether the review is overly "positive" vs. "negative." Some things that are a turn-off for you might be a positive for me and vice-versa, and actually reading the review may help you understand why critics don't like it. A Rotten Tomatoes score is just a very crude and unnuanced metric.