There are those who claim it is impossible to be objective, even in science. There are many subtle ways that bias, such as confirmation bias, creeps in. The number of science findings that canâ(TM)t be replicated is disturbingly high. Personally, Iâ(TM)m not as gloomy. I think we can approximate objectivity, and after enough repetitions we can approach true objectivity. However, science is often not easy, and the path to valid results is longer and more resource consuming that we want to believe.
Regarding the school board situation, I would need to know more before making a judgement. It seems unlikely that they would take away the ability to elect a school board without providing some reason for doing it. Were there misdeeds by the previous schoolboards or in their elections?
I moved to AAC in Maryland in 1996; the school board appointments were already in effect when I arrived. I do not recall hearing any reason for it other than the one I already mentioned hearing on a radio show. I was happy to see that it has finally been fixed, but the battle was long and hard. The "governor will appoint them and you get to vote to confirm them" solution was claimed at the time to be "an elected school board" even though it was obviously not on par with other counties. I can't speak more to the history of it, unfortunately, but I don't recall any reasons for the discrepancy such as past malfeasance being given.
Maryland uses paper-ye olde scantron- voting in 2016 and again here in 2018. That was said in your own link that you claimed it was "problematic today". No problem, we finished giving it the boot two years ago.
I'm glad to hear about the switch. I moved to Maryland in 1996, when the paper ballots were in use (in Anne Arundel County, anyway). I found the system easy to use and thought it met needs well. I was aghast at the switch to the paperless system, although I don't remember exactly when it occurred. It was still in use for the last election that I voted in in Maryland (probably in 2014). I thought that the Washington Post article said the paperless was still in place in some locations; I'm gad to be wrong.
Not unusual nor unprecedented at all. In fact, if you go here [ga.gov](hey everybody, I'm doxxing Georgia!) you can download Georgia voter absentee files in State, County, and Municipal elections dating back to 2013.
I just went to the link and downloaded absentee ballot information from a Georgia state-wide election in 2016 that included names, addresses, ballot status, and more. This may not be a good practice, but it is apparently a standard practice.
You cannot trust paperless voting systems. You cannot simply take blind faith in Kemp's election result that Kemp certifies that Kemp won.
Because as long as he holds power, the voting machines will remain unauditable without a paper trail.
Interesting premise about paperless voting systems... I wonder why the Democrats that control the Maryland legislature forced counties to switch to paperless voting systems? The county I lived in had a very nice paper ballot system with electronic tabulation when I moved there in 1996. It was a "gold standard" for easy counting yet manually verifiable after the fact. It was replaced by a paperless system mandated by the Democrat-controlled legislature; this system continues to be problematic today https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/maryland-cant-protect-its-elections/2018/07/20/ee64beb0-89ce-11e8-a345-a1bf7847b375_story.html?utm_term=.10e6235436cc.
I agree that the paperless voting systems can't be trusted. If Georgia's is seen as being used to keep Kemp in power, who is Maryland's keeping in power?
I understand that "they all do it!!!1!one!" is a popular sentiment with a lot of people, but why is it that whenever you hear of a politician or public administrator disenfranchising or otherwise outright fucking voters over it's virtually always a republican?
Perhaps you don't live in a Democrat-run state like Maryland? I used to live in Anne Arundel County (AAC), outside of Annapolis [the third wealthiest county in Maryland, so not an impoverished hell hole or anything]. Unfortunately, unlike proper-minded counties like Montgomery County [the wealthiest county in Maryland], AAC had the temerity to be about 50/50 Democrat/Republican, which stuck in the craw of the folks who run Maryland. So AAC had to be split in half; the west half had to vote with Prince George's County (heavily Democrat), while the east half got to vote with counties on the "Eastern Shore" (all the way across the Chesapeake Bay, again favoring Democrats). That way the Republican taint in AAC could be contained. Another example was the AAC school board - many other counties in Maryland could elect their school boards, but the AAC school board was appointed by the governor (until this November, when AAC was finally able to elect their first set of school board members). A number of years ago I was listening to a radio talk show where the question of why AAC didn't have an elected school board was raised - the reason given was that "they would make the wrong choices." A few years back the problem was "solved" by allowing AAC voters to vote to confirm or reject the board members appointed by the governor - this was promoted as giving AAC voters an elected school board even though most other counties had fully elected boards (not appointed then confirmed/rejected at the next election). I'm glad to see that broken "solution" has finally been replaced with something on par with other counties.
The disenfranchisement taking place was so blatant it was hard to understand how it could possibly have been legal. I would be surprised to find a place in the US where the more powerful party didn't tilt the game in their favor whenever possible.
It's funny, Apple could (perhaps) be really cleaning up right now because of things like Microsoft's Windows 10 strategy and execution... but because Apple has chosen to go their own high $$$ route with hardware, Microsoft's issues don't translate into mass switching to Apple.
I tend to prefer Apple hardware and O/S (I'm typing this on a 2013 iMac, and I have a 2015 MacBook Pro 15 inch), but it was tough finding my last MacBook Pro at a price that I was wiling to pay (ended up buying used through the Internet). Apple's switch to SSDs seemed to be a license to bump prices through the roof. Their phones seem to be going the same way. I couldn't make a case for a Mac for my daughter who just started college; she ended up with a Dell 15 inch business class laptop running Windows 10. It will be interesting to see where things are in a couple of years.
Good point - I left out a discussion about total cost of ownership because the post was already rambling on too long. So a little more geezin' -
Back in the day (let's say 70s through 80s) you had to "rent" each of the voice-only phones you had in your home from the phone company - they were not provided as part of the base service price (so many homes only had one phone, while others had "illegal" self-installed wiring and "black market" [stolen/liberated] phones). This rental went on forever - you never came to own the device, and if you didn't turn it back in when you terminated your service, you were hit with a charge of $100s of dollars for the unreturned equipment. You also paid extra if you wanted "touch tone" dialing instead of rotary dial service, and even more for an "unlisted" (anonymous) or "unpublished" (not listed in the directory, but not anonymous) number. So I may have understated the cost of original voice services from "the phone company."
The phone that costs $1000 today isn't just a voice communications terminal: it is a multi-processing computer that provides interactive voice/video terminal services, streaming media endpoint services, information access, personal digital assistant services, and more. I left out the cost of today's data services to support the $1000 smart phone out of the comparison, as none of that was available "back in the day" from the phone company. When Internet connectivity first emerged as something you could access through a phone line, one would pay $1,000s for the computer and $100s for the modem just to get started, in addition to the $15-$35/month (best recollection, not fact-checked) for the ISP. And today you don't *have* to spend anywhere near that $1000 smartphone price to get a decent device; I just picked up a 1-year old iPhone SE 64GB for $230 off of Swappa - I expect to use it for at least four or five years like the iPhone 5 I just decommissioned.
A basic voice-only cell phone today costs about the same as a wired voice-only phone did when they were first available for purchase (rough order of magnitude), so I don't think I missed too much in the voice-only cost comparison by leaving out the cost of the terminal device. For wired phone services, you can buy a 4-terminal wireless phone system today for about the same cost (again, ROM). As an aside, I think it is interesting that as costs have decreased to that "less than 6% of what they were back in the day" level, many people have vastly increased their use of services rather than bank the 94% savings. In my household alone we have one land-line plus three mobile phones supporting 4 people (at a cost that is still less than what a single phone cost me in the late '80s). We would be spending much much less if we had the equivalent service: a single voice-only phone that just sits on the counter to make/receive calls.
To provide further detail regarding the cost of telephone calls made in the United States:
In general (historically), the person who initiates a call (caller) pays for the cost of the call. The person who receives the call (callee) does not pay for the call. This payment relationship can be reversed if the caller requests (through an operator) a "collect call", which must be "accepted" by the callee. The fee structure for calls had (in the 1970s through 2000s) three tiers: local (handled out of the local exchange, with the cost being the cheapest, often included in the base service rate but sometimes billed on a "per call" basis (rather than per minute), toll (handled within a region, with cost sort of dependent on distance on a per-minute basis), and long distance (at a fairly high cost on a per-minute basis).
With the breakup of the massive monopoly called American Telephone and Telegraph (AT&T), which owned almost all telephone exchanges, inter-exchange circuits, and long distance circuits, long distance costs plunged due to competition between long distance carriers.
With the advent of mobile phones, a new cost component for a call was created - the "airtime" used during the call. The airtime is billed to the mobile phone owner; a caller is billed for airtime if they use a mobile phone, a callee is billed for airtime if they use a mobile phone. To the best of my knowledge, a callee is only billed for airtime if the call is "answered" by the callee (not just signaled, and not if the call goes to voicemail).
Mobile phone usage exploded in popularity in the 2000s. Incentives to gain customers ultimately resulted in many mobile phone users having nationwide calling plans whereby they could call anyplace in the continental United States [2600 miles east to west, 1500 miles north to south] at no cost other than the airtime, which in many cases is now "unlimited" at a base service cost below what it used to cost to have just the base local calling capability (in non-inflation adjusted dollars to boot). [An an example, in the late 1980s I lived in Tennessee, paying about $35/month for phone service to my house. My long distance bill was about $100/month, as I called my (divorced) parents in New England (about 846 "crow flies" miles ) once/week. I now have mobile phone service through a Sprint MVNO (Tello) that costs $15/month (including taxes) for unlimited nationwide calling. Since $135 in 1990 US$ is worth $260 in 2018 US$, getting the same capability for only $15 (less than 6% of the 1990 cost) today is incredible.
Land-line subscribers in urban and suburban areas are now generally offered nationwide calling plans at base service rates comparable to mobile phone service. Rural areas may be more expensive (I do not have any experience in those area).
So... in the United States, not only does the recipient NOT pay for a call, the caller in many (most?) cases isn't paying for the call on an individual basis, but as part of a nationwide calling plan with unlimited calling, and at a very attractive rate assuming the caller has chosen their phone service provider carefully.
Incidentally, from the United States, I find the UK practice of charging people a license fee for having a radio frequency receiver (television/radio) unbelievable to the point of insanity.
Respectfully, no, the definition isn't arbitrary. The thing that is being noted is the fact that the sun is at its zenith. The fact that it became called "noon" is just a label. No one could have noted "the point when the sun is 1 hour (pm) or 3 hours (pm) past its zenith until the concept of hours existed, and even in that definition the reference is still being made to the sun at its zenith.
So instead of "noon" the zenith could be called "batzamyon" (the arbitrary label). We could have then developed a 20 hour day, with hour 10 being at batzamyon. And then businesses could have started opening at 6 2/3 (with 5/6 of an hour for lunch at 10 (batzamyon)) and closing at 14 1/6. Even with all that, we would eventually have yahoos would would come along and say "Hey, I would like it to be light longer after I get off work at 14 1/6. So let's arbitrarily shift the time that we observe batzamyon 1 hour earlier with respect to the actual batzamyon (but let's only do it for part of the year - the part when it gets naturally lighter after work anyway, because its not getting lighter fast enough for us).
So the division of time around the period of the revolution of the earth is arbitrary (hours/minutes/seconds), and what we call the time when the sun is at its zenith is arbitrary, but the fact that we can easily observe the point at which the sun as at its maximum height in the sky for a given day is not arbitrary.
The clock and what defines "noon" is a made up construct that we then used to define a LOT of things.
I respectfully disagree. The original determination of the meridian (noon) is a simple astronomical observation - when the sun is at its zenith. It is not a made up construct so much as the observation of a fact. Given that humans are basically diurnal, noting the middle of the daylight hours is useful; at that point in the day half of the time of light is over, half remains.
The constructs came later - the creation of the hours measuring the time before and after the meridian, the establishment of the hours of "business," and finally the establishment of "DST" that forces everyone to change their previously established schedule with respect to the astronomical noon.
there will always be a group of people that refuse to participate and they blow up the whole change for everyone else
In other words, the function of DST is for some people (unknown percentage) to force other people (unknown percentage) to do something they don't want to do (change their active schedule with respect to astronomical noon) for a portion of the year. The questions are whether this is a minority forcing their views on the majority, or vice versa, and whether either should be able to force anyone in the first place.
For the record, I'm in favor of 1-hour wide timezones, with "noon" in a given timezone being the average center of the daylight hours (the time shifts around slightly throughout the year) for the center of the timezone. Let people establish the schedules that they like around that fundamental clock, and don't jack people around "en masse" by jerking the clock forward and backward.
Humans with their big brains out-compete all other macro-scale life. Intelligence isn't what is at work here, genetics is. Intelligence is the possible answer - if humans can use their intelligence to decide to keep their numbers in check, then we can share the planet with other macro-scale animal lifeforms. If we can't decide to harness our intelligence towards that end, we will dominate, eventually becoming a mono-culture. Whether or not that is a good thing depends on your point of view. What happens after is anybody's guess.
We could all do our part by having fewer kids; no one has to be killed off to reduce the population. Will we make that choice?
Rural areas already have high-speed data by means of wifi which is already installed and being used (and they are putting in 5g right now), the problem is the phone companies putting restrictions on the speeds in relation to the data the customer uses, for a two week period I saw my phone company (AT&T) removes ALL restrictions on high speed data due to a recent hurricane. The speed was at the rate of a renewed account, yes a few times it wavered a little but not much. This showed me they can give unlimited high speed data to everybody and this will make the problem go away as far as rural areas having access to high speed broadband.
I don't doubt your experience with the incident in which AT&T removed restrictions on high-speed cellular data service, but you have some of the aspects of the technology wrong. The technology for which the short-hand description is "Wi-Fi" (short for Wireless Fidelity) is the IEEE 802.11 series of standards related to wireless Local Area Networks (LANs) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wi-Fi. This tech is limited to a very small geographical area and is not suitable for providing rural data service.
Wi-Fi is not what cellular telephone companies are selling for mobile phone/data service, with the familiar evolutions of 2G, 3G, 4G, and now 5G as very loosely defined labels for tiers of communication speeds. However, like Wi-Fi, cellular data service has real limits, including geographical coverage. Radio services used to transmit data typically divide a given licensed frequency range into a number of channels, each channel having a limited capacity. If multiple customers are being served, those channels are shared among those customers using a combination of time division and frequency division (i.e., not everyone gets to send/receive at exactly the same time on a single channel). If you are familiar with how multi-processing works on computers to let multiple users/processes share a processing resource, this is a conceptually similar way of sharing the communications resource. As long as each user's service is bounded, the resource sharing works. If too many users offer too much load, however, service for some or all will be degraded, typically using some kind of prioritization mechanism to sort out who gets hurt more and who gets hurt less. This is not unlimited capacity. Cellular data services support larger numbers of users by shrinking the cell size, which permits frequency bands/channels to be re-used in a large geographical area. However, each cell needs a transmitter site and a healthy amount of wiring to interconnect it to other cell sites and the fixed phone/data network, so as the number of sites goes up, so does the wiring and other expenses. Servicing fixed wireless users can be done much more cost effectively (using tech other than cellular mobile data service).
So, wireless technologies (of which cellular data service is just one) can be used to solve "last mile" problems because they can provide service to multiple endpoints from one distribution point, but there are limitations. The amount of wiring necessary in a "wireless" cellular phone system is nothing short of amazing. Cellular service emphasizes relatively small cell sizes, because channel capacity is limited and mobile users are a primary use case. In short, although you may have have a good experience in the incident that you cite, I don't believe that there is sufficient capacity already present in existing cellular data service deployments to service all rural users by just "turning off the artificial limits" on those existing services. The other issue with using cellular data services to solve this problem is that there are still large parts of the US where there is no cellular service; these places tend to be the rural areas. So... wireless as part of a solution to servicing large rural areas - yes; simply flipping a switch on existing cellular data services to solve the problem - no.
please don't think that people who would prefer not having DST don't exist or don't understand what the consequences would be
Here is visualization that shows the effects of solar variation throughout the year as well as the step-change created by DST https://www.timeanddate.com/sun/@7174408 (the link shows time/light for the city of Seattle - you can change it to your locale). Note that in March, when sunrise is at a comfortable 6:30 am, DST happens and pushes sunrise back to 7:30 am. In October, the switch back from DST doesn't happen until sunrise has been delayed until almost 8 am.
I have never met ANYONE that doesn't want that extra sunlight in the afternoon.
I would vastly prefer that noon in my timezone was roughly balanced on average observed solar noon in the middle of the timezone so that sunlight would stay roughly balanced on either side of noon (except for the seasonal variation between mean solar time and observed solar time). I hate fighting my body's circadian rhythm to arise in the dark due to early onset/late departure DST. We haven't met, so that doesn't invalidate your argument, but please don't think that people who would prefer not having DST don't exist or don't understand what the consequences would be.
We need a national $15 wage and it needs to adjust for inflation (and "real" inflation, e.g. the price of the sorts of things a minimum wage worker buys, no fair including BMWs in that, no matter what talk radio tells you $15/hr doesn't buy you a BMW).
What is your perspective on the differences in buying power of that $15/hour wage in different locations? A $15/hour wage in San Francisco is very different than a $15/hour wage in Peoria. What would be the effect of that difference?
Either way. Why would you expect the effect of a minimum wage increase to always do the same thing, regardless of the size of the increase or other circumstances in the economy? I'd expect depending on the size and circumstance that the effects would vary.
I suspect that many people want an easy answer, and they want it to fit their pre-conceived notions of how things should work. If changes to the minimum wage have a single, predictable effect upon the economy, then we have a way to manage at least some aspects of the economy (and a clear blame target when things don't go as desired). Complicated mechanisms with conflated context, cause, and effect relationships are messy, hard to understand, and don't lend themselves to simple policy decisions.
Don't U.S. states with large illegal immigrant populations have a vested interest in keeping those large illegal immigrant populations? Political power in the US House of Representatives is apportioned by total population, not just by citizen population. Only citizens can vote in elections, however. The effective power of a citizen's vote in a community with many people who can't vote is greater than one in a community comprised mostly of voting citizens. Isn't this is why the "citizenship" question on the 2020 census is such a big deal? Illegal immigrants are unlikely to respond to a census where they would either have to state that they were not a citizen, or face the prospect of being caught lying on a federal form. If illegal immigrants don't respond to the census, they will be undercounted. Undercounting illegal immigrants could result in a shift of the apportioned representatives away from those states with high illegal immigrant populations.
If the fraction of illegal immigrants to total population is low, the effects of this are minimal. But if the fraction of illegal immigrants become significant, the effect becomes significant.
This is one of those "devil in the detail" stories.
Yes, and the article rather vacuously conflated a number of issues. The federal government is using a lot of AWS services as their IT infrastructure under the FedRAMP program https://www.fedramp.gov/, BUT - The data isn't just handed over to Amazon staff; the underlying IT infrastructure is provided by Amazon, and cared for by Amazon staff, but the responsibility for the data rests with the government workers (employees and contractors). To the best of my knowledge, Amazon doesn't get their fingers into all of the data and can't link the data from multiple agencies together. The driving force here is cost reduction through the economy of scale from the cloud service, and in some cases, a perceived transfer of some aspects of security risk.
The fact that Amazon may also be providing some application-layer information processing technologies is distinctly separate, at least for now. Anyone with concerns about mashups should keep their eye on the Federal Register, however.
A service that requires an Apple device is only free as long as your device remains supported.
I agree with your statement, but the costs seem to be low in this situation. Apple's costs for dedicated media devices are lower than general purpose computer systems. The original AppleTV shipped in March 2007; Apple dropped services to it in 2015. I have a gen2 AppleTV I bought in 2010; it cost around $80 (I bought a refurb model; I think the new models were $100 at the time). It is a multi-media streaming terminal that can access a variety of Internet-based content sources. It works and still has service (It works with Apple's movie "store" although I don't typically use it that way); due to technological limitations it can't install "new apps" the way the 4th/5th generation can. I actively use it on my living room TV, primarily for Hulu and AirPlay. I have a gen5 AppleTV that I acquired fairly recently using credit card points; I think the market price was around $160. I expect it to last quite a while.
I sympathize with the plight of those who got into older Mac hardware for software development yet need the latest O/S for software support, but the media terminal market as a whole, and Apple's slice of it in particular, is both less expensive ($100 to $200) and tends to have longer legs (upwards of 12 years it would seem).
In case anyone cares, I have other similar devices (so not just Apple crap): A Sony Blu-Ray player that acts as a media terminal that I bought for $100 in 2010; it still works although I don't use it for anything but physical media playback at this point. A Panasonic plasma TV from 2013 that has an embedded streaming media terminal that is still functional; I used it for Amazon Prime TV until I recently acquired a 5th gen AppleTV (which finally had Prime TV support). An Amazon FireTV Stick ($40?) that I use beside my older (3gen) AppleTV in the living room for Amazon Prime TV.
Out of ideas about phones, Apple decides to become a TV network. Hey, doesn't this conflict with the strategy of selling phones for ever higher prices so there are fewer buyers?
Apple wins some, loses some. The Newton PDA wasn't so successful; the iPod Touch/iPhone as a PDA (among other things) has been a wild hit. Their personal computer business waxed and waned until they hit it big with the iMac and they became the personal computer of choice for "creative professionals." Their cooperative multi-tasking operating system was niche, their first attempt at pre-emptive multitasking (Copeland) was a disaster, but OS X has done quite well, putting a very usable and attractive graphic overlay on top of a Unix O/S. iPod music players started slow, but became a must-have device for many people. When Apple first talked about becoming a mobile telephone handset provider, the entrenched vendors snickered their derision - now they are a major market force. When Apple set their sights on selling music over the Internet, they became a significant player in the changeover from physical media for music (CDs) to soft-music sales. iTunes Radio? meh. No one is breaking down the doors for that. AppleTV? A decent, low-cost streaming media terminal that integrates well with other parts of the Apple eco-system, but works well stand-alone too. Can they leverage it into becoming a big A/V content provider?
I'm not going to root for them, and I'm certainly not going to go out and invest in them over this opportunity, but I wouldn't bet against them being successful, either.
It's interesting that you want to drop cable, just to watch the same channels in a different way.
Strange.
I don't think it is so strange.
The delivery of A/V content by a provider who has to install a physical media system (traditional cable) results in most communities selecting, at the community level, a single provider for that community. Everyone in the community is locked into that choice. Market forces are largely inoperative, and heavy regulation is needed (with accompanying corruption) to mediate pricing for content between the consumers and the provider. Battles over the content (puritans don't want to see the Playboy channel in their community, for example) erupt, where local gatekeepers of "community standards" want to enforce their morality on everyone. Moreover, because the physical delivery system is based on a broadcast technology, the number of simultaneous channels that can be offered is limited. When enough bandwidth is available, providers offer the same programming on multiple channels, time-phased in an attempt to match the broadcast to the consumers needs. Elaborate recording and playback systems are developed in order to overcome the technological limitations of the broadcast system and allow consumers to view content on a schedule that works for them.
Contrast that with a physical media system installed by a single provider, regulated as a utility telecommunications service, where the only pricing is for the base service itself, much like water, sewer, and telephone services are regulated. Then, layered on top of that physical media system is a communications protocol that provides access to a wide variety of content from a wide variety of content providers. Market forces act broadly, with a vastly reduced opportunity for heavy regulation (except of the base telecommunications service) and accompanying corruption. There is significantly increased opportunity for content providers to be innovative in content, content development, and delivery. As a side benefit, the opportunity for morality gatekeeping at the local level is significantly reduced. The medium supports unicast, multicast, and broadcast content delivery. There is no need to develop elaborate consumer-owned content recording and playback systems because the delivery system supports true on-demand content access and delivery.
That is why I don't think it is so strange to want to drop "cable" and watch the same channels in a (vastly) different way.
If I were to look for faults in Internet-based content delivery over traditional broadcast media (terrestrial free air and wave-guided [i.e., "cable"]), I would take a long look at the elimination of societal synchronization. Communities are glued together, in part, by what the communities do together. Broadcast radio and TV act to keep communities synchronized, even over large geographical distances. The advent of content access/delivery over the Internet has eliminated that synchronization, except where the content is live or almost live (i.e., sports events and Saturday Night Live). Is society becoming more fragmented, compartmentalized, and partisan partially because of the loss of synchronization that broadcast technologies provided as a side-effect?
Personally, I think it will be a disaster. The government has its own entrenched IT risk management practices, not the least of which is their security certification and accreditation process, which will be completely opaque to the outsiders. The failure to successfully navigate security C&A is a significant potential point of failure for government projects, and using outsiders won't change that unless they are brought up to speed in the process before starting development.
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There are those who claim it is impossible to be objective, even in science. There are many subtle ways that bias, such as confirmation bias, creeps in. The number of science findings that canâ(TM)t be replicated is disturbingly high. Personally, Iâ(TM)m not as gloomy. I think we can approximate objectivity, and after enough repetitions we can approach true objectivity. However, science is often not easy, and the path to valid results is longer and more resource consuming that we want to believe.
Well said.
Regarding the school board situation, I would need to know more before making a judgement. It seems unlikely that they would take away the ability to elect a school board without providing some reason for doing it. Were there misdeeds by the previous schoolboards or in their elections?
I moved to AAC in Maryland in 1996; the school board appointments were already in effect when I arrived. I do not recall hearing any reason for it other than the one I already mentioned hearing on a radio show. I was happy to see that it has finally been fixed, but the battle was long and hard. The "governor will appoint them and you get to vote to confirm them" solution was claimed at the time to be "an elected school board" even though it was obviously not on par with other counties. I can't speak more to the history of it, unfortunately, but I don't recall any reasons for the discrepancy such as past malfeasance being given.
Maryland uses paper-ye olde scantron- voting in 2016 and again here in 2018. That was said in your own link that you claimed it was "problematic today". No problem, we finished giving it the boot two years ago.
I'm glad to hear about the switch. I moved to Maryland in 1996, when the paper ballots were in use (in Anne Arundel County, anyway). I found the system easy to use and thought it met needs well. I was aghast at the switch to the paperless system, although I don't remember exactly when it occurred. It was still in use for the last election that I voted in in Maryland (probably in 2014). I thought that the Washington Post article said the paperless was still in place in some locations; I'm gad to be wrong.
Not unusual nor unprecedented at all. In fact, if you go here [ga.gov](hey everybody, I'm doxxing Georgia!) you can download Georgia voter absentee files in State, County, and Municipal elections dating back to 2013.
I just went to the link and downloaded absentee ballot information from a Georgia state-wide election in 2016 that included names, addresses, ballot status, and more. This may not be a good practice, but it is apparently a standard practice.
You cannot trust paperless voting systems. You cannot simply take blind faith in Kemp's election result that Kemp certifies that Kemp won. Because as long as he holds power, the voting machines will remain unauditable without a paper trail.
Interesting premise about paperless voting systems... I wonder why the Democrats that control the Maryland legislature forced counties to switch to paperless voting systems? The county I lived in had a very nice paper ballot system with electronic tabulation when I moved there in 1996. It was a "gold standard" for easy counting yet manually verifiable after the fact. It was replaced by a paperless system mandated by the Democrat-controlled legislature; this system continues to be problematic today https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/maryland-cant-protect-its-elections/2018/07/20/ee64beb0-89ce-11e8-a345-a1bf7847b375_story.html?utm_term=.10e6235436cc.
I agree that the paperless voting systems can't be trusted. If Georgia's is seen as being used to keep Kemp in power, who is Maryland's keeping in power?
I understand that "they all do it!!!1!one!" is a popular sentiment with a lot of people, but why is it that whenever you hear of a politician or public administrator disenfranchising or otherwise outright fucking voters over it's virtually always a republican?
Perhaps you don't live in a Democrat-run state like Maryland? I used to live in Anne Arundel County (AAC), outside of Annapolis [the third wealthiest county in Maryland, so not an impoverished hell hole or anything]. Unfortunately, unlike proper-minded counties like Montgomery County [the wealthiest county in Maryland], AAC had the temerity to be about 50/50 Democrat/Republican, which stuck in the craw of the folks who run Maryland. So AAC had to be split in half; the west half had to vote with Prince George's County (heavily Democrat), while the east half got to vote with counties on the "Eastern Shore" (all the way across the Chesapeake Bay, again favoring Democrats). That way the Republican taint in AAC could be contained. Another example was the AAC school board - many other counties in Maryland could elect their school boards, but the AAC school board was appointed by the governor (until this November, when AAC was finally able to elect their first set of school board members). A number of years ago I was listening to a radio talk show where the question of why AAC didn't have an elected school board was raised - the reason given was that "they would make the wrong choices." A few years back the problem was "solved" by allowing AAC voters to vote to confirm or reject the board members appointed by the governor - this was promoted as giving AAC voters an elected school board even though most other counties had fully elected boards (not appointed then confirmed/rejected at the next election). I'm glad to see that broken "solution" has finally been replaced with something on par with other counties.
The disenfranchisement taking place was so blatant it was hard to understand how it could possibly have been legal. I would be surprised to find a place in the US where the more powerful party didn't tilt the game in their favor whenever possible.
It's funny, Apple could (perhaps) be really cleaning up right now because of things like Microsoft's Windows 10 strategy and execution... but because Apple has chosen to go their own high $$$ route with hardware, Microsoft's issues don't translate into mass switching to Apple.
I tend to prefer Apple hardware and O/S (I'm typing this on a 2013 iMac, and I have a 2015 MacBook Pro 15 inch), but it was tough finding my last MacBook Pro at a price that I was wiling to pay (ended up buying used through the Internet). Apple's switch to SSDs seemed to be a license to bump prices through the roof. Their phones seem to be going the same way. I couldn't make a case for a Mac for my daughter who just started college; she ended up with a Dell 15 inch business class laptop running Windows 10. It will be interesting to see where things are in a couple of years.
Good point - I left out a discussion about total cost of ownership because the post was already rambling on too long. So a little more geezin' -
Back in the day (let's say 70s through 80s) you had to "rent" each of the voice-only phones you had in your home from the phone company - they were not provided as part of the base service price (so many homes only had one phone, while others had "illegal" self-installed wiring and "black market" [stolen/liberated] phones). This rental went on forever - you never came to own the device, and if you didn't turn it back in when you terminated your service, you were hit with a charge of $100s of dollars for the unreturned equipment. You also paid extra if you wanted "touch tone" dialing instead of rotary dial service, and even more for an "unlisted" (anonymous) or "unpublished" (not listed in the directory, but not anonymous) number. So I may have understated the cost of original voice services from "the phone company."
The phone that costs $1000 today isn't just a voice communications terminal: it is a multi-processing computer that provides interactive voice/video terminal services, streaming media endpoint services, information access, personal digital assistant services, and more. I left out the cost of today's data services to support the $1000 smart phone out of the comparison, as none of that was available "back in the day" from the phone company. When Internet connectivity first emerged as something you could access through a phone line, one would pay $1,000s for the computer and $100s for the modem just to get started, in addition to the $15-$35/month (best recollection, not fact-checked) for the ISP. And today you don't *have* to spend anywhere near that $1000 smartphone price to get a decent device; I just picked up a 1-year old iPhone SE 64GB for $230 off of Swappa - I expect to use it for at least four or five years like the iPhone 5 I just decommissioned.
A basic voice-only cell phone today costs about the same as a wired voice-only phone did when they were first available for purchase (rough order of magnitude), so I don't think I missed too much in the voice-only cost comparison by leaving out the cost of the terminal device. For wired phone services, you can buy a 4-terminal wireless phone system today for about the same cost (again, ROM). As an aside, I think it is interesting that as costs have decreased to that "less than 6% of what they were back in the day" level, many people have vastly increased their use of services rather than bank the 94% savings. In my household alone we have one land-line plus three mobile phones supporting 4 people (at a cost that is still less than what a single phone cost me in the late '80s). We would be spending much much less if we had the equivalent service: a single voice-only phone that just sits on the counter to make/receive calls.
To provide further detail regarding the cost of telephone calls made in the United States:
In general (historically), the person who initiates a call (caller) pays for the cost of the call. The person who receives the call (callee) does not pay for the call. This payment relationship can be reversed if the caller requests (through an operator) a "collect call", which must be "accepted" by the callee. The fee structure for calls had (in the 1970s through 2000s) three tiers: local (handled out of the local exchange, with the cost being the cheapest, often included in the base service rate but sometimes billed on a "per call" basis (rather than per minute), toll (handled within a region, with cost sort of dependent on distance on a per-minute basis), and long distance (at a fairly high cost on a per-minute basis).
With the breakup of the massive monopoly called American Telephone and Telegraph (AT&T), which owned almost all telephone exchanges, inter-exchange circuits, and long distance circuits, long distance costs plunged due to competition between long distance carriers.
With the advent of mobile phones, a new cost component for a call was created - the "airtime" used during the call. The airtime is billed to the mobile phone owner; a caller is billed for airtime if they use a mobile phone, a callee is billed for airtime if they use a mobile phone. To the best of my knowledge, a callee is only billed for airtime if the call is "answered" by the callee (not just signaled, and not if the call goes to voicemail).
Mobile phone usage exploded in popularity in the 2000s. Incentives to gain customers ultimately resulted in many mobile phone users having nationwide calling plans whereby they could call anyplace in the continental United States [2600 miles east to west, 1500 miles north to south] at no cost other than the airtime, which in many cases is now "unlimited" at a base service cost below what it used to cost to have just the base local calling capability (in non-inflation adjusted dollars to boot). [An an example, in the late 1980s I lived in Tennessee, paying about $35/month for phone service to my house. My long distance bill was about $100/month, as I called my (divorced) parents in New England (about 846 "crow flies" miles ) once/week. I now have mobile phone service through a Sprint MVNO (Tello) that costs $15/month (including taxes) for unlimited nationwide calling. Since $135 in 1990 US$ is worth $260 in 2018 US$, getting the same capability for only $15 (less than 6% of the 1990 cost) today is incredible.
Land-line subscribers in urban and suburban areas are now generally offered nationwide calling plans at base service rates comparable to mobile phone service. Rural areas may be more expensive (I do not have any experience in those area).
So... in the United States, not only does the recipient NOT pay for a call, the caller in many (most?) cases isn't paying for the call on an individual basis, but as part of a nationwide calling plan with unlimited calling, and at a very attractive rate assuming the caller has chosen their phone service provider carefully.
Incidentally, from the United States, I find the UK practice of charging people a license fee for having a radio frequency receiver (television/radio) unbelievable to the point of insanity.
That is an arbitrary definition of noon.
Respectfully, no, the definition isn't arbitrary. The thing that is being noted is the fact that the sun is at its zenith. The fact that it became called "noon" is just a label. No one could have noted "the point when the sun is 1 hour (pm) or 3 hours (pm) past its zenith until the concept of hours existed, and even in that definition the reference is still being made to the sun at its zenith.
So instead of "noon" the zenith could be called "batzamyon" (the arbitrary label). We could have then developed a 20 hour day, with hour 10 being at batzamyon. And then businesses could have started opening at 6 2/3 (with 5/6 of an hour for lunch at 10 (batzamyon)) and closing at 14 1/6. Even with all that, we would eventually have yahoos would would come along and say "Hey, I would like it to be light longer after I get off work at 14 1/6. So let's arbitrarily shift the time that we observe batzamyon 1 hour earlier with respect to the actual batzamyon (but let's only do it for part of the year - the part when it gets naturally lighter after work anyway, because its not getting lighter fast enough for us).
So the division of time around the period of the revolution of the earth is arbitrary (hours/minutes/seconds), and what we call the time when the sun is at its zenith is arbitrary, but the fact that we can easily observe the point at which the sun as at its maximum height in the sky for a given day is not arbitrary.
The clock and what defines "noon" is a made up construct that we then used to define a LOT of things.
I respectfully disagree. The original determination of the meridian (noon) is a simple astronomical observation - when the sun is at its zenith. It is not a made up construct so much as the observation of a fact. Given that humans are basically diurnal, noting the middle of the daylight hours is useful; at that point in the day half of the time of light is over, half remains.
The constructs came later - the creation of the hours measuring the time before and after the meridian, the establishment of the hours of "business," and finally the establishment of "DST" that forces everyone to change their previously established schedule with respect to the astronomical noon.
there will always be a group of people that refuse to participate and they blow up the whole change for everyone else
In other words, the function of DST is for some people (unknown percentage) to force other people (unknown percentage) to do something they don't want to do (change their active schedule with respect to astronomical noon) for a portion of the year. The questions are whether this is a minority forcing their views on the majority, or vice versa, and whether either should be able to force anyone in the first place.
For the record, I'm in favor of 1-hour wide timezones, with "noon" in a given timezone being the average center of the daylight hours (the time shifts around slightly throughout the year) for the center of the timezone. Let people establish the schedules that they like around that fundamental clock, and don't jack people around "en masse" by jerking the clock forward and backward.
This is a good example of damning with faint praise. After reading the article, one would have to wonder what the hell Apple is doing.
Humans with their big brains out-compete all other macro-scale life. Intelligence isn't what is at work here, genetics is. Intelligence is the possible answer - if humans can use their intelligence to decide to keep their numbers in check, then we can share the planet with other macro-scale animal lifeforms. If we can't decide to harness our intelligence towards that end, we will dominate, eventually becoming a mono-culture. Whether or not that is a good thing depends on your point of view. What happens after is anybody's guess.
We could all do our part by having fewer kids; no one has to be killed off to reduce the population. Will we make that choice?
Rural areas already have high-speed data by means of wifi which is already installed and being used (and they are putting in 5g right now), the problem is the phone companies putting restrictions on the speeds in relation to the data the customer uses, for a two week period I saw my phone company (AT&T) removes ALL restrictions on high speed data due to a recent hurricane. The speed was at the rate of a renewed account, yes a few times it wavered a little but not much. This showed me they can give unlimited high speed data to everybody and this will make the problem go away as far as rural areas having access to high speed broadband.
I don't doubt your experience with the incident in which AT&T removed restrictions on high-speed cellular data service, but you have some of the aspects of the technology wrong. The technology for which the short-hand description is "Wi-Fi" (short for Wireless Fidelity) is the IEEE 802.11 series of standards related to wireless Local Area Networks (LANs) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wi-Fi. This tech is limited to a very small geographical area and is not suitable for providing rural data service.
Wi-Fi is not what cellular telephone companies are selling for mobile phone/data service, with the familiar evolutions of 2G, 3G, 4G, and now 5G as very loosely defined labels for tiers of communication speeds. However, like Wi-Fi, cellular data service has real limits, including geographical coverage. Radio services used to transmit data typically divide a given licensed frequency range into a number of channels, each channel having a limited capacity. If multiple customers are being served, those channels are shared among those customers using a combination of time division and frequency division (i.e., not everyone gets to send/receive at exactly the same time on a single channel). If you are familiar with how multi-processing works on computers to let multiple users/processes share a processing resource, this is a conceptually similar way of sharing the communications resource. As long as each user's service is bounded, the resource sharing works. If too many users offer too much load, however, service for some or all will be degraded, typically using some kind of prioritization mechanism to sort out who gets hurt more and who gets hurt less. This is not unlimited capacity. Cellular data services support larger numbers of users by shrinking the cell size, which permits frequency bands/channels to be re-used in a large geographical area. However, each cell needs a transmitter site and a healthy amount of wiring to interconnect it to other cell sites and the fixed phone/data network, so as the number of sites goes up, so does the wiring and other expenses. Servicing fixed wireless users can be done much more cost effectively (using tech other than cellular mobile data service).
So, wireless technologies (of which cellular data service is just one) can be used to solve "last mile" problems because they can provide service to multiple endpoints from one distribution point, but there are limitations. The amount of wiring necessary in a "wireless" cellular phone system is nothing short of amazing. Cellular service emphasizes relatively small cell sizes, because channel capacity is limited and mobile users are a primary use case. In short, although you may have have a good experience in the incident that you cite, I don't believe that there is sufficient capacity already present in existing cellular data service deployments to service all rural users by just "turning off the artificial limits" on those existing services. The other issue with using cellular data services to solve this problem is that there are still large parts of the US where there is no cellular service; these places tend to be the rural areas. So... wireless as part of a solution to servicing large rural areas - yes; simply flipping a switch on existing cellular data services to solve the problem - no.
please don't think that people who would prefer not having DST don't exist or don't understand what the consequences would be
Here is visualization that shows the effects of solar variation throughout the year as well as the step-change created by DST https://www.timeanddate.com/sun/@7174408 (the link shows time/light for the city of Seattle - you can change it to your locale). Note that in March, when sunrise is at a comfortable 6:30 am, DST happens and pushes sunrise back to 7:30 am. In October, the switch back from DST doesn't happen until sunrise has been delayed until almost 8 am.
I have never met ANYONE that doesn't want that extra sunlight in the afternoon.
I would vastly prefer that noon in my timezone was roughly balanced on average observed solar noon in the middle of the timezone so that sunlight would stay roughly balanced on either side of noon (except for the seasonal variation between mean solar time and observed solar time). I hate fighting my body's circadian rhythm to arise in the dark due to early onset/late departure DST. We haven't met, so that doesn't invalidate your argument, but please don't think that people who would prefer not having DST don't exist or don't understand what the consequences would be.
We need a national $15 wage and it needs to adjust for inflation (and "real" inflation, e.g. the price of the sorts of things a minimum wage worker buys, no fair including BMWs in that, no matter what talk radio tells you $15/hr doesn't buy you a BMW).
What is your perspective on the differences in buying power of that $15/hour wage in different locations? A $15/hour wage in San Francisco is very different than a $15/hour wage in Peoria. What would be the effect of that difference?
Either way. Why would you expect the effect of a minimum wage increase to always do the same thing, regardless of the size of the increase or other circumstances in the economy? I'd expect depending on the size and circumstance that the effects would vary.
I suspect that many people want an easy answer, and they want it to fit their pre-conceived notions of how things should work. If changes to the minimum wage have a single, predictable effect upon the economy, then we have a way to manage at least some aspects of the economy (and a clear blame target when things don't go as desired). Complicated mechanisms with conflated context, cause, and effect relationships are messy, hard to understand, and don't lend themselves to simple policy decisions.
Don't U.S. states with large illegal immigrant populations have a vested interest in keeping those large illegal immigrant populations? Political power in the US House of Representatives is apportioned by total population, not just by citizen population. Only citizens can vote in elections, however. The effective power of a citizen's vote in a community with many people who can't vote is greater than one in a community comprised mostly of voting citizens. Isn't this is why the "citizenship" question on the 2020 census is such a big deal? Illegal immigrants are unlikely to respond to a census where they would either have to state that they were not a citizen, or face the prospect of being caught lying on a federal form. If illegal immigrants don't respond to the census, they will be undercounted. Undercounting illegal immigrants could result in a shift of the apportioned representatives away from those states with high illegal immigrant populations.
If the fraction of illegal immigrants to total population is low, the effects of this are minimal. But if the fraction of illegal immigrants become significant, the effect becomes significant.
This is one of those "devil in the detail" stories.
Yes, and the article rather vacuously conflated a number of issues. The federal government is using a lot of AWS services as their IT infrastructure under the FedRAMP program https://www.fedramp.gov/, BUT - The data isn't just handed over to Amazon staff; the underlying IT infrastructure is provided by Amazon, and cared for by Amazon staff, but the responsibility for the data rests with the government workers (employees and contractors). To the best of my knowledge, Amazon doesn't get their fingers into all of the data and can't link the data from multiple agencies together. The driving force here is cost reduction through the economy of scale from the cloud service, and in some cases, a perceived transfer of some aspects of security risk.
The fact that Amazon may also be providing some application-layer information processing technologies is distinctly separate, at least for now. Anyone with concerns about mashups should keep their eye on the Federal Register, however.
A service that requires an Apple device is only free as long as your device remains supported.
I agree with your statement, but the costs seem to be low in this situation. Apple's costs for dedicated media devices are lower than general purpose computer systems. The original AppleTV shipped in March 2007; Apple dropped services to it in 2015. I have a gen2 AppleTV I bought in 2010; it cost around $80 (I bought a refurb model; I think the new models were $100 at the time). It is a multi-media streaming terminal that can access a variety of Internet-based content sources. It works and still has service (It works with Apple's movie "store" although I don't typically use it that way); due to technological limitations it can't install "new apps" the way the 4th/5th generation can. I actively use it on my living room TV, primarily for Hulu and AirPlay. I have a gen5 AppleTV that I acquired fairly recently using credit card points; I think the market price was around $160. I expect it to last quite a while.
I sympathize with the plight of those who got into older Mac hardware for software development yet need the latest O/S for software support, but the media terminal market as a whole, and Apple's slice of it in particular, is both less expensive ($100 to $200) and tends to have longer legs (upwards of 12 years it would seem).
In case anyone cares, I have other similar devices (so not just Apple crap): A Sony Blu-Ray player that acts as a media terminal that I bought for $100 in 2010; it still works although I don't use it for anything but physical media playback at this point. A Panasonic plasma TV from 2013 that has an embedded streaming media terminal that is still functional; I used it for Amazon Prime TV until I recently acquired a 5th gen AppleTV (which finally had Prime TV support). An Amazon FireTV Stick ($40?) that I use beside my older (3gen) AppleTV in the living room for Amazon Prime TV.
Out of ideas about phones, Apple decides to become a TV network. Hey, doesn't this conflict with the strategy of selling phones for ever higher prices so there are fewer buyers?
Apple wins some, loses some. The Newton PDA wasn't so successful; the iPod Touch/iPhone as a PDA (among other things) has been a wild hit. Their personal computer business waxed and waned until they hit it big with the iMac and they became the personal computer of choice for "creative professionals." Their cooperative multi-tasking operating system was niche, their first attempt at pre-emptive multitasking (Copeland) was a disaster, but OS X has done quite well, putting a very usable and attractive graphic overlay on top of a Unix O/S. iPod music players started slow, but became a must-have device for many people. When Apple first talked about becoming a mobile telephone handset provider, the entrenched vendors snickered their derision - now they are a major market force. When Apple set their sights on selling music over the Internet, they became a significant player in the changeover from physical media for music (CDs) to soft-music sales. iTunes Radio? meh. No one is breaking down the doors for that. AppleTV? A decent, low-cost streaming media terminal that integrates well with other parts of the Apple eco-system, but works well stand-alone too. Can they leverage it into becoming a big A/V content provider?
I'm not going to root for them, and I'm certainly not going to go out and invest in them over this opportunity, but I wouldn't bet against them being successful, either.
It's interesting that you want to drop cable, just to watch the same channels in a different way. Strange.
I don't think it is so strange.
The delivery of A/V content by a provider who has to install a physical media system (traditional cable) results in most communities selecting, at the community level, a single provider for that community. Everyone in the community is locked into that choice. Market forces are largely inoperative, and heavy regulation is needed (with accompanying corruption) to mediate pricing for content between the consumers and the provider. Battles over the content (puritans don't want to see the Playboy channel in their community, for example) erupt, where local gatekeepers of "community standards" want to enforce their morality on everyone. Moreover, because the physical delivery system is based on a broadcast technology, the number of simultaneous channels that can be offered is limited. When enough bandwidth is available, providers offer the same programming on multiple channels, time-phased in an attempt to match the broadcast to the consumers needs. Elaborate recording and playback systems are developed in order to overcome the technological limitations of the broadcast system and allow consumers to view content on a schedule that works for them.
Contrast that with a physical media system installed by a single provider, regulated as a utility telecommunications service, where the only pricing is for the base service itself, much like water, sewer, and telephone services are regulated. Then, layered on top of that physical media system is a communications protocol that provides access to a wide variety of content from a wide variety of content providers. Market forces act broadly, with a vastly reduced opportunity for heavy regulation (except of the base telecommunications service) and accompanying corruption. There is significantly increased opportunity for content providers to be innovative in content, content development, and delivery. As a side benefit, the opportunity for morality gatekeeping at the local level is significantly reduced. The medium supports unicast, multicast, and broadcast content delivery. There is no need to develop elaborate consumer-owned content recording and playback systems because the delivery system supports true on-demand content access and delivery.
That is why I don't think it is so strange to want to drop "cable" and watch the same channels in a (vastly) different way.
If I were to look for faults in Internet-based content delivery over traditional broadcast media (terrestrial free air and wave-guided [i.e., "cable"]), I would take a long look at the elimination of societal synchronization. Communities are glued together, in part, by what the communities do together. Broadcast radio and TV act to keep communities synchronized, even over large geographical distances. The advent of content access/delivery over the Internet has eliminated that synchronization, except where the content is live or almost live (i.e., sports events and Saturday Night Live). Is society becoming more fragmented, compartmentalized, and partisan partially because of the loss of synchronization that broadcast technologies provided as a side-effect?
Personally, I think it will be a disaster. The government has its own entrenched IT risk management practices, not the least of which is their security certification and accreditation process, which will be completely opaque to the outsiders. The failure to successfully navigate security C&A is a significant potential point of failure for government projects, and using outsiders won't change that unless they are brought up to speed in the process before starting development.