The RIAA still thinks that they are owed money for every listen of 'their' songs. Out of the goodness of their hearts, however, they have graciously allowed us peons several listens per month without having to exchange cash for the privilege. I, for one, applaud this altruistic move!
This is exactly why a micropayment economy will never take off. Here's a scenario: as more and more of these micropayment services take off, people will become more and more comfortable with the idea of giving this information to anyone that will ask. Soon enough, two things will happen: 1) There will be rampant scamming with unscrupulous individuals setting up dubious sites just to scam card numbers. 2) With more micropayment sites, there will be more and more databases, server logs, and similar records which may contain such information. Although the majority of these will be fairly safe- many, many others will not. 3) People, not realizing that a $0.99 charge is actually $0.99 + time + aggravation, will attempt to monetize everything! 4) As a result of 3, It will be nearly impossible to use the web for anything more than just trivial tasks for those people who choose not to possess credit cards. This will sweep into the economy at large.
Q: Should devices such as CD burners be outlawed since they are an easy way of making illegal copies of others creative efforts?
Devices and technology are not the problem. It's when people use technology to break the law that we take issue.
Again and again, we have embraced the technological advances that have allowed millions upon millions of people around the world to enjoy the music we create. We want fans to enjoy their iPods, CD burners, and other devices, but we want them to do so responsibly, respectfully, and within the law.
Ah yes, I remember the factoids! If I recall correctly, those were the little questions with a very simple answer that could not be answered by an understanding of the material alone but could be correctly answered if you happened to read the correct paragraph just before the instructor called "books under your desks!"
The going resale rate is generally 50% of the new price; stores seem to sell used texts at about 75% of the original price, meaning that a $100 new book sells for $75 used. If you sell it back at the end of the semester, you get about $50, regardless of whether you bought it new or used. If you can buy used books and sell them, they only cost you about 2/3 of the asking price. Honestly, that's not too bad.
It ignores, of course, books that the college won't buy back, lab manuals (and other consumable texts), and required new editions.
Too many courses rush through subject matter so quickly (because of unrealistic curriculum requirements) that nobody has a chance to master any of the material; students (who later become TAs, professors, etc.) simply memorize simple material or tricks that they need to pass an exam and move on. This problem manifests itself later in instructors who have a hard time developing cogent questions which can illustrate a specific point. Answer keys are a crutch.
A few problems with that logic, i.e. why textbooks shouldn't have questions / answers:
1. The questions listed in non-mathematic textbooks are invariably answered by a passage from the text, meaning that the students who 'answer' those questions are simply regurgitating text. The general MO for answering such questions when I was in college was to read the question and scan the chapter for the sentence that read the same, save for being stated as a declarative as opposed to an interrogative. ("Why was 1776 important in US History?"... "1776 was important in US history because...")
2. If it was so damaging to have answers in the text, mathematical textbooks wouldn't include answers to the odd-numbered problems anyway.
3. As anyone who has taken a non-liberal arts course will tell you, the answers alone are worthless. Even when teachers' editions list the full solution, they invariably skip steps to save on printing costs.
4. By providing answers to subjective questions, textbooks have managed to stifle student debate.
5. Mathematical Answers in textbooks are frequently incorrect (based on experience, about 2% - 5% of the time).
6. Watching an instructor struggle through a problem is a great way for students to learn; they get to see mistakes in action and, through a critical eye, learn by correcting the instructor. With an answer guide, the instructor copies the (assumed correct) answer from his edition.
7. New questions force the purchase of new editions of textbooks. Even if the information hasn't changed, you can't do assigned work if your edition doesn't have the right questions.
8. Questions / Answers add a lot of paper to books, increasing weight and printing costs of textbooks.
Fruit juices are only a few vitamins away from being flat soda. Seriously- look at all of the sugar added to most of them! Even 100% natural juices- which don't have added sugar- are full of natural plant sugars. If you want fruit- eat whole fruit; at least that way you are getting the benefit of the fiber and more complete nutrients (especially since the most beneficial part of most fruits- the skin- is removed from juice). If you want beverages, stick with (in order) water, unsweetened tea, and coffee.
If you can't / dont want to get rid of the burgers (even I, >40lbs. less than a year ago, haven't given up fast food) do yourself a favor and spend some time on the web sites of the fast fod restaurants you frequent and familiarize yourself with the nutritional information for their menus. You'd be surprised how much fat and calories some choices have while others from that same place that seem very similar have far less fat and calories. It's all about informed decisions...
It's not that cardio is the worst form of workout- 'endurance cardio' is what you're going for. The general advice is to spend ~30min/day with an elevated heart rate (making a 30-minute run better than an hour-long walk). If you want to make progress with weight loss, then you need to keep your body in a state of stress. Start using the treadmill and, every time, push yourself a little more (more time, faster speed, fewer walking breaks). After a while, give yourself a few days to rest and lower your workout stress threshold so that you can avoid the plateau that endurance athletes want.
Besides- vigorous workouts will assist the fat burning mechanisms in your body because such workouts put your body into a position where it knows that it will need ready sources of energy. These sources of energy included metabolized fat! These effects last for between 12 and 36 hours after the workout, depending on the vigorousness and length of the typical workout.
It was originally the case that the SSN was to be used only for the that program:
History of SSN usage. When Social Security numbers were first issued in 1936, the federal government assured the public that use of the numbers would be limited to Social Security programs such as calculating retirement benefits. Today, however, the Social Security number (SSN) has become the de facto national identifier. (Read a history of the SSN at www.socialsecurity.gov/history/ssn/ssncards.html.)
I'm too young to remember when this was the case, but SS cards originally contained verbiage to the effect that "this card is not to be used for identification". Check with your parents or grandparents to see if any still have a "vintage" card. Of course that designation as since been removed and something that the government had originally assured us they wouldn't do is now standard operating procedure. Sound familiar, anyone?
I'm unemployed and about three months from running out of cash. I've got a degree in Engineering (2007) and have worked for three years as a web developer. I can cook fairly well, know how to brew beer, and have been a musician for 12+ years. As a fairly young, single person, I'm the model of an employable citizen. The truth is, however, that it's been four months and I'm still looking for a paycheck which can cover my rent, student loans, etc. Especially depending on the area, it's never just as easy as 'finding a job'. Sure I can get a paycheck, but how far is $10/hour going to go? Unemployment works out to about $9 an hour and that doesn't even cover my bills, let alone food, gas, rent. (but it helps).
The truth is that just about everyone in this country is closer to being in the same boat as the subject of this story- at least closer than you realize.
I wouldn't call a perl "one-liner" something that's to-the-point. On the contrary- perl programmers that I've met seem to think that using linebreaks and comments cause cancer...
I worked for a company which has a 30-second rule in programming: if a particular piece of functionality (method, function, etc.) took more than 30 seconds for another programmer to understand, then it had to be re-written. This contributes to readability, if not to the ego of the guy who wrote the code. Many programmers seem to be proud of their ability to obfuscate code (well, I can understand it. Can't you?). Perl seem to top this list, followed closely by c++.
While I would like to see every browser support every web standard, as they are written, I've yet to encounter a situation wherein a small change couldn't be made to make any sites I've coded work in FF 2&3, IE6+, Opera, and Safari. Having to code in substantial 'hacks', browser detection schemes, or similar workarounds tells me that the developer who thinks this is 'necessary' either doesn't have a good design for the page layout, is a pure standards idealist (the kind who thinks that standards are a moral crusade akin to civil rights), or, potentially, works in an environment with a 200+ page coding standards book.
I would love to see some of the newer features, like display:table-cell, work across the board but I'm not going to lose sleep or hair over it. Neither should you. 'Having' to spend extra time to develop cross-browser could very well translate into job stability anyway...
I'm one of those homebrewers- I actually just took inventory of the selection of the homemade beverages I've got in stock for a little bash next week (the verdict- 3 styles of beer, 2 flavors of soda). There's nothing illegal about brewing beer for non-commercial (i.e., personal) use- Jimmy Carter made sure of that. (sidebar: when's the last time you can recall a president doing the opposite of restricting personal freedom? but I digress...)
What is illegal is the distillation of beverage spirits. I can make the mash (un-distilled spirits) easily- so can you (add water, sugar, yeast, and time). As soon as I make any attempt to concentrate the alcohol in that mash, I've broken federal law.
While farm fuel might not be taxed (nor should it), I'll repeat the litany of things you must do in order to not be in violation of federal law if you want to make fuel for your father's farm:
Spirits may be produced for non-beverage purposes for fuel use only without payment of tax, but you also must file an application, receive TTB's approval, and follow requirements, such as construction, use, records and reports.
Why exactly does the government need all of this? If it was for safety, then all manner of other similarly dangerous activities should be so closely scrutinized (acetylene welding, for instance). No- it is because the government doesn't want us to know how fairly simple it is to be free of the fuel cartels.
You cannot produce spirits for beverage purposes without paying taxes and without prior approval of paperwork to operate a distilled spirits plant. [See 26 U.S.C. 5601 & 5602 for some of the criminal penalties.] There are numerous requirements that must be met that make it impractical to produce spirits for personal or beverage use. Some of these requirements are paying excise tax, filing an extensive application, filing a bond, providing adequate equipment to measure spirits, providing suitable tanks and pipelines, providing a separate building (other than a dwelling) and maintaining detailed records, and filing reports. All of these requirements are listed in 27 CFR Part 19.
Spirits may be produced for non-beverage purposes for fuel use only without payment of tax, but you also must file an application, receive TTB's approval, and follow requirements, such as construction, use, records and reports.
Fuel taxes are owed to the state, not to the federal government. Of course, the power to tax being the power to destroy (as it is) how many people actually go through the steps needed to apply for the necessary permits and pay the taxes to do this? What about the farmer making fuel for his farm equipment- equipment that will never see a public road?
It's time to stop taxing the American 'can do' spirit.
Try using javascript frameworks like jQuery or (my favorite) MooTools to get past much of the cross-browser mess that javascript authoring can entail.
As for getting HTML to work properly, I dare say that it's time to get past the paradigm of graphic artists creating mockups to be sliced and positioned by front-end folks. If the same person (or people, as teams) work on all facets of the front-end at the same time (i.e., layout and design) we would see fewer HTML hacks added just to pixel-match the mockup.
Ugly, pointless Flash is ugly, slow and just plain annoying.
Fixed that for you...
Just like the age-old flame wars about tables for layout, the problem with flash is that it provides a simple tool for developers to save time doing some tasks (like animating menus or slideshows). There many technologies and frameworks- MooTools is my favorite- which can easily replace much of the annoying flash we're all complaining about. Few would argue against youTube using flash- that's a good use of the technology. The problem, however, is when Flash is used for layout purposes like menus or for animations, splash pages, or to make content retrieval more difficult.
Whenever I see this sort of ridiculousness, it is usually the result of using some sort of framework to generate pages rather than generating them by hand. For some projects (i.e., a blog or CMS) it might be faster to use a framework. How many times, however, has the average web developer had to struggle against a framework to do something that would be simple by hand, or had to submit a project with pages that use flash to show one picture because that's all that the XML data said it should show?
Another reason that arguments against eating meat have gotten weaker is that the meat we eat resembles the animals from which it is taken less and less. The closest we get to seeing a meat animal in the west is a whole chicken or turkey in the roaster. Steak doesn't seem like an animal at all and hot dogs don't even seem like meat!
People will have a greater respect for the meat they eat if they can see the animals from which it is taken. As a result, people will begin to care about industrial ranching and poultry practices and about the suffering of animals for cheap food.
(no, I'm not a vegetarian; I've been known to roast whole pigs and just last night caught and filleted a half-dozen fish.)
Murder (as a bad thing) is not a human concept. If that was the case, no animal would ever be able to live in a group because, were killing one's mates to be acceptable, all pack animals would have died eons in one big feeding frenzy. At some level, humans are pack animals who acknowledge that living in a group is evolutionarily preferable to living independently. The human concept is the word 'murder'.
And fwiw, your consciousness doesn't 'die' or 'turn off' when you are asleep. Rather, your brain pays less attention to sensory inputs. If this wasn't the case, no sleeping person would be able to be roused by loud noises, cold, or any other stimulus.
There are many problems in Computer Science which are trivial for conscious entities but very difficult for binary computers. (i.e., image recognition, etc.) One school of thought is that these problems can be made easier for computation by making a computer work more like a living brain.
Slashdot Mirror
The RIAA still thinks that they are owed money for every listen of 'their' songs. Out of the goodness of their hearts, however, they have graciously allowed us peons several listens per month without having to exchange cash for the privilege. I, for one, applaud this altruistic move!
This is exactly why a micropayment economy will never take off. Here's a scenario: as more and more of these micropayment services take off, people will become more and more comfortable with the idea of giving this information to anyone that will ask. Soon enough, two things will happen: 1) There will be rampant scamming with unscrupulous individuals setting up dubious sites just to scam card numbers. 2) With more micropayment sites, there will be more and more databases, server logs, and similar records which may contain such information. Although the majority of these will be fairly safe- many, many others will not. 3) People, not realizing that a $0.99 charge is actually $0.99 + time + aggravation, will attempt to monetize everything! 4) As a result of 3, It will be nearly impossible to use the web for anything more than just trivial tasks for those people who choose not to possess credit cards. This will sweep into the economy at large.
Q: Should devices such as CD burners be outlawed since they are an easy way of making illegal copies of others creative efforts?
Devices and technology are not the problem. It's when people use technology to break the law that we take issue.
Again and again, we have embraced the technological advances that have allowed millions upon millions of people around the world to enjoy the music we create. We want fans to enjoy their iPods, CD burners, and other devices, but we want them to do so responsibly, respectfully, and within the law.
http://www.riaa.com/faq.php
I'm pretty sure that DCTF was sketch comedy...
Ah yes, I remember the factoids! If I recall correctly, those were the little questions with a very simple answer that could not be answered by an understanding of the material alone but could be correctly answered if you happened to read the correct paragraph just before the instructor called "books under your desks!"
The going resale rate is generally 50% of the new price; stores seem to sell used texts at about 75% of the original price, meaning that a $100 new book sells for $75 used. If you sell it back at the end of the semester, you get about $50, regardless of whether you bought it new or used. If you can buy used books and sell them, they only cost you about 2/3 of the asking price. Honestly, that's not too bad.
It ignores, of course, books that the college won't buy back, lab manuals (and other consumable texts), and required new editions.
you mean to tell me that you never sat at home, watching the Simpsons, and scanned an entire lab book to pdf because the bookstore was out of stock?
Too many courses rush through subject matter so quickly (because of unrealistic curriculum requirements) that nobody has a chance to master any of the material; students (who later become TAs, professors, etc.) simply memorize simple material or tricks that they need to pass an exam and move on. This problem manifests itself later in instructors who have a hard time developing cogent questions which can illustrate a specific point. Answer keys are a crutch.
A few problems with that logic, i.e. why textbooks shouldn't have questions / answers: ... "1776 was important in US history because...")
...and probably a lot more.
1. The questions listed in non-mathematic textbooks are invariably answered by a passage from the text, meaning that the students who 'answer' those questions are simply regurgitating text. The general MO for answering such questions when I was in college was to read the question and scan the chapter for the sentence that read the same, save for being stated as a declarative as opposed to an interrogative. ("Why was 1776 important in US History?"
2. If it was so damaging to have answers in the text, mathematical textbooks wouldn't include answers to the odd-numbered problems anyway.
3. As anyone who has taken a non-liberal arts course will tell you, the answers alone are worthless. Even when teachers' editions list the full solution, they invariably skip steps to save on printing costs.
4. By providing answers to subjective questions, textbooks have managed to stifle student debate.
5. Mathematical Answers in textbooks are frequently incorrect (based on experience, about 2% - 5% of the time).
6. Watching an instructor struggle through a problem is a great way for students to learn; they get to see mistakes in action and, through a critical eye, learn by correcting the instructor. With an answer guide, the instructor copies the (assumed correct) answer from his edition.
7. New questions force the purchase of new editions of textbooks. Even if the information hasn't changed, you can't do assigned work if your edition doesn't have the right questions.
8. Questions / Answers add a lot of paper to books, increasing weight and printing costs of textbooks.
Fruit juices are only a few vitamins away from being flat soda. Seriously- look at all of the sugar added to most of them! Even 100% natural juices- which don't have added sugar- are full of natural plant sugars. If you want fruit- eat whole fruit; at least that way you are getting the benefit of the fiber and more complete nutrients (especially since the most beneficial part of most fruits- the skin- is removed from juice). If you want beverages, stick with (in order) water, unsweetened tea, and coffee.
If you can't / dont want to get rid of the burgers (even I, >40lbs. less than a year ago, haven't given up fast food) do yourself a favor and spend some time on the web sites of the fast fod restaurants you frequent and familiarize yourself with the nutritional information for their menus. You'd be surprised how much fat and calories some choices have while others from that same place that seem very similar have far less fat and calories. It's all about informed decisions...
It's not that cardio is the worst form of workout- 'endurance cardio' is what you're going for. The general advice is to spend ~30min/day with an elevated heart rate (making a 30-minute run better than an hour-long walk). If you want to make progress with weight loss, then you need to keep your body in a state of stress. Start using the treadmill and, every time, push yourself a little more (more time, faster speed, fewer walking breaks). After a while, give yourself a few days to rest and lower your workout stress threshold so that you can avoid the plateau that endurance athletes want.
Besides- vigorous workouts will assist the fat burning mechanisms in your body because such workouts put your body into a position where it knows that it will need ready sources of energy. These sources of energy included metabolized fat! These effects last for between 12 and 36 hours after the workout, depending on the vigorousness and length of the typical workout.
On the front of your SSN card it says "Not For Identification", yet businesses have routinely done so for decades.
It's true that SS cards used to say that, but that hasn't been the case for decades...
http://www.privacyrights.org/fs/fs10-ssn.htm#2
I'm too young to remember when this was the case, but SS cards originally contained verbiage to the effect that "this card is not to be used for identification". Check with your parents or grandparents to see if any still have a "vintage" card. Of course that designation as since been removed and something that the government had originally assured us they wouldn't do is now standard operating procedure. Sound familiar, anyone?
I'm unemployed and about three months from running out of cash. I've got a degree in Engineering (2007) and have worked for three years as a web developer. I can cook fairly well, know how to brew beer, and have been a musician for 12+ years. As a fairly young, single person, I'm the model of an employable citizen. The truth is, however, that it's been four months and I'm still looking for a paycheck which can cover my rent, student loans, etc. Especially depending on the area, it's never just as easy as 'finding a job'. Sure I can get a paycheck, but how far is $10/hour going to go? Unemployment works out to about $9 an hour and that doesn't even cover my bills, let alone food, gas, rent. (but it helps).
The truth is that just about everyone in this country is closer to being in the same boat as the subject of this story- at least closer than you realize.
I wouldn't call a perl "one-liner" something that's to-the-point. On the contrary- perl programmers that I've met seem to think that using linebreaks and comments cause cancer...
I worked for a company which has a 30-second rule in programming: if a particular piece of functionality (method, function, etc.) took more than 30 seconds for another programmer to understand, then it had to be re-written. This contributes to readability, if not to the ego of the guy who wrote the code. Many programmers seem to be proud of their ability to obfuscate code (well, I can understand it. Can't you?). Perl seem to top this list, followed closely by c++.
While I would like to see every browser support every web standard, as they are written, I've yet to encounter a situation wherein a small change couldn't be made to make any sites I've coded work in FF 2&3, IE6+, Opera, and Safari. Having to code in substantial 'hacks', browser detection schemes, or similar workarounds tells me that the developer who thinks this is 'necessary' either doesn't have a good design for the page layout, is a pure standards idealist (the kind who thinks that standards are a moral crusade akin to civil rights), or, potentially, works in an environment with a 200+ page coding standards book.
I would love to see some of the newer features, like display:table-cell, work across the board but I'm not going to lose sleep or hair over it. Neither should you. 'Having' to spend extra time to develop cross-browser could very well translate into job stability anyway...
What is illegal is the distillation of beverage spirits. I can make the mash (un-distilled spirits) easily- so can you (add water, sugar, yeast, and time). As soon as I make any attempt to concentrate the alcohol in that mash, I've broken federal law.
While farm fuel might not be taxed (nor should it), I'll repeat the litany of things you must do in order to not be in violation of federal law if you want to make fuel for your father's farm:
Spirits may be produced for non-beverage purposes for fuel use only without payment of tax, but you also must file an application, receive TTB's approval, and follow requirements, such as construction, use, records and reports.
Why exactly does the government need all of this? If it was for safety, then all manner of other similarly dangerous activities should be so closely scrutinized (acetylene welding, for instance). No- it is because the government doesn't want us to know how fairly simple it is to be free of the fuel cartels.
General Alcohol FAQs
An excerpt:
You cannot produce spirits for beverage purposes without paying taxes and without prior approval of paperwork to operate a distilled spirits plant. [See 26 U.S.C. 5601 & 5602 for some of the criminal penalties.] There are numerous requirements that must be met that make it impractical to produce spirits for personal or beverage use. Some of these requirements are paying excise tax, filing an extensive application, filing a bond, providing adequate equipment to measure spirits, providing suitable tanks and pipelines, providing a separate building (other than a dwelling) and maintaining detailed records, and filing reports. All of these requirements are listed in 27 CFR Part 19.
Spirits may be produced for non-beverage purposes for fuel use only without payment of tax, but you also must file an application, receive TTB's approval, and follow requirements, such as construction, use, records and reports.
Fuel taxes are owed to the state, not to the federal government. Of course, the power to tax being the power to destroy (as it is) how many people actually go through the steps needed to apply for the necessary permits and pay the taxes to do this? What about the farmer making fuel for his farm equipment- equipment that will never see a public road?
It's time to stop taxing the American 'can do' spirit.
Try using javascript frameworks like jQuery or (my favorite) MooTools to get past much of the cross-browser mess that javascript authoring can entail. As for getting HTML to work properly, I dare say that it's time to get past the paradigm of graphic artists creating mockups to be sliced and positioned by front-end folks. If the same person (or people, as teams) work on all facets of the front-end at the same time (i.e., layout and design) we would see fewer HTML hacks added just to pixel-match the mockup.
Ugly, pointless Flash is ugly, slow and just plain annoying.
Fixed that for you...
Just like the age-old flame wars about tables for layout, the problem with flash is that it provides a simple tool for developers to save time doing some tasks (like animating menus or slideshows). There many technologies and frameworks- MooTools is my favorite- which can easily replace much of the annoying flash we're all complaining about. Few would argue against youTube using flash- that's a good use of the technology. The problem, however, is when Flash is used for layout purposes like menus or for animations, splash pages, or to make content retrieval more difficult.
Whenever I see this sort of ridiculousness, it is usually the result of using some sort of framework to generate pages rather than generating them by hand. For some projects (i.e., a blog or CMS) it might be faster to use a framework. How many times, however, has the average web developer had to struggle against a framework to do something that would be simple by hand, or had to submit a project with pages that use flash to show one picture because that's all that the XML data said it should show?
Except that he wasn't trying to dial 911- 911 was trying to dial him!
[cue Russian jokes]
Another reason that arguments against eating meat have gotten weaker is that the meat we eat resembles the animals from which it is taken less and less. The closest we get to seeing a meat animal in the west is a whole chicken or turkey in the roaster. Steak doesn't seem like an animal at all and hot dogs don't even seem like meat! People will have a greater respect for the meat they eat if they can see the animals from which it is taken. As a result, people will begin to care about industrial ranching and poultry practices and about the suffering of animals for cheap food.
(no, I'm not a vegetarian; I've been known to roast whole pigs and just last night caught and filleted a half-dozen fish.)
Murder (as a bad thing) is not a human concept. If that was the case, no animal would ever be able to live in a group because, were killing one's mates to be acceptable, all pack animals would have died eons in one big feeding frenzy. At some level, humans are pack animals who acknowledge that living in a group is evolutionarily preferable to living independently. The human concept is the word 'murder'.
And fwiw, your consciousness doesn't 'die' or 'turn off' when you are asleep. Rather, your brain pays less attention to sensory inputs. If this wasn't the case, no sleeping person would be able to be roused by loud noises, cold, or any other stimulus.
There are many problems in Computer Science which are trivial for conscious entities but very difficult for binary computers. (i.e., image recognition, etc.) One school of thought is that these problems can be made easier for computation by making a computer work more like a living brain.