Think what would happen if you were to walk up to a guy in the street and say onto him "You, sir, are a fucking asshole." Would you, realistically expect him to just acknowledge your right to call him such and go about his merry way down the same street?
Actually, pretty much, yeah. I might expect to get flipped off as he continues on his merry way, but that's equally protected speech.
What do you expect? That he tries to hit me? Because battery doesn't get constitutional protection.
Bonus points if you say this to a police officer of a major city, or uniformed military personnel.
I have further expectations from police officers and uniformed military personnel. Not only do they have to ignore my calling them fucking assholes, they don't get to flip me off in return. Because it would be unprofessional behavior. That might not be what actually happens, but they should be punished when they react in any other way.
In accordance to the First Amendment, the Gov't made no attempt to censor the song or prevent him for making it public by his chosen means. Be ready for the consequences after doing so.
There are consequences to speech. His friends may shun him, the media may react to the lyrics and condemn him. The government cannot take any action for pure speech. Other than possible investigation of a threat, but I wouldn't consider lyrics to a song to be a threat anymore than I consider the vast number of times the white house was attacked in a movie to be a case of the writer and director of said movie threatening the white house.
Oh, please. I have brown skin living in South Carolina, and have never encountered any racism.
That's nice for you. In other news, the US has a black President, and recently had a female Secretary of State, so obviously there's neither racism nor sexism anywhere in the country.
Truly, America is a land of wonders.
Pretty much, yes.
I'm not saying racism and sexism doesn't exist. But if it's possible for people of all races and genders to live their lives without discrimination, then we, as a society, don't have a racism problem. Not having a racism problem doesn't mean that you're never going to encounter discrimination every once in a while. It means those cases of discrimination are due to individual fuckwads. In the same way that there will always be morons who think killing people watching a marathon is a good idea, or shooting up an elementary school fool of kids is a good idea. Individual fuckwads will always exist, but as long as their actions isn't met with acceptance and encouragement from our society, it's not a problem with our society.
It sounds more like a kid being stupid rather than one experimenting.
When you're a kid, they're often one and the same.
I long for the days when chemistry sets contained chemicals that you could actually make explosives from, and kids would compete to see who could make the most powerful explosions. Those who didn't lose a limb are now successful in their science careers, because that's how they were motivated to go that route. We've decided to take all the fun out of science in order to try to make everyone safer, and then we're surprised that kids don't have any interest in going into the science fields.
Science experiments are supposed to be fun. If she's doing this on her own time, she's one of the good ones with enough interest in science to have a successful career in it. Somebody give her a college scholarship and limit her punishment to a suspension and some community service. If she's allowed to, she'll contribute far more than enough to our economy in the future to justify the cost of the minor damage she caused while being a stupid teenager.
Spoken, no doubt, by an anonymous coward from Dixie who just can't come to grips with the extent that racism still pervades The South. No, the idiots are the officials who are making this chickenshit case and ruining a young woman's life.
Oh, please. I have brown skin living in South Carolina, and have never encountered any racism. I had to take a trip to New Jersey to have that experience for the first time (although I will say even in New Jersey it's atypical, I go there often and never have any problems). The United States really doesn't have much a problem with racism when you compare it to someplace like Europe, where you can attend a soccer game and start hearing racist chants against non-white players from the crowd. Have you ever been to a sports game and seen this happen in the US?
This is more a case of the stupidity that takes over a population every time we see a terrorist attack. When 9/11 happened, airport security started freaking out over engineering students carrying circuit boards (because exposed wires must mean it's a bomb or something). Now we had the Boston bombing and a minor explosion as a result of an accident of curiosity which doesn't actually hurt anyone is going to cause an overreaction. Right now, in so short a time after Boston, a white student would have gotten the same treatment.
(at the time I thought "Zefram Cochrane" was a sufficiently exotic name that he could have been non-human)
I was going to point out how this doesn't make any sense, when I was suddenly reminded almost every alien in TOS looked exactly like a human. Including Klingons, which looked like bearded humans. It's been too long, I think it's time for me to rewatch those episodes.
we know from "Space Seed" that there were sublight sleeper ships before the invention of warp drive.
Like I said, it's been a while, but I could have sworn Spock said the DY-100 class of ships was meant for traveling within the Solar System, and that the cryogenic chambers were meant to keep humans alive for months, not centuries. I always figured Kahn used his superior intellect to modify the ship for his purposes when escaping Earth.
Annoying quibble: Kirk's line was "Zefram Cochrane? Of Alpha Centauri?" (The "of" might have a subtly different implication than "from".)
You are right, sir. I stand corrected. My memory is far more accurate for TNG episodes.
Wouldn't the obvious choice be Zephram? After all, he was from Alpha Centuri before he was from Montana.
He was always born on Earth, regardless of time-line. When TOS referred to him as "Zefram Cochrane from Alpha Centauri" they were referring to the location where he eventually settled. As the inventor of Warp Drive, there's no way any humans could have gotten to Alpha Centauri before Cochrane was born.
Let's focus our First Contact continuity complaints on the Borg Queen. What a horrible idea that was...
"...We found that the genes overall are evolving significantly slower than in every other fish and land vertebrate that we looked at.'"..
Which indicates that their environment has hardly changed in many million years...
It can also mean they're fairly robust and can survive in a large range of environments. I think that's more likely considering the other fish sharing the same environment has evolved faster.
That said, it's not like the ocean is dominated by coelecanth, so it doesn't mean they've reached optimality or anything. Just that they're good enough to continue reproducing and surviving.
Really? A dollar is only worth what you can buy with it. It can become nearly worthless overnight. It is only paper and your faith in it is all that gives it value.
A dollar is also legal tender. Whether people have faith in it or not, they're required by law to take it as repayment of my debts.
But I suppose it's OK when Ubuntu does it because you haven't paid for it?
Read it again. He's saying his time is worth money, which Microsoft is stealing from him. He's not saying the money he used to buy Windows is the stolen one.
Also, welcome back to slashdot after your 2 year vacation. One of the things you missed is that since Unity was released, Ubuntu is no longer a slashdot favorite. In fact, every Ubuntu article seems to come with massive amounts of people saying, "switch to Mint or Debian"
I have zero problem with Netflix using DRM. Why? It's a rental service. I have not purchased these videos. I do not own them.
I agree 100%. That said, I have a problem with DRM in the html5 spec. I think Netflix has found a perfect reason to continue using Silverlight, and I have no problems with that.
CFLs were sold to the public as straight replacements for incandescents... which work just fine in those (huge numbers of already installed) "upside-down" fixtures.
So do CFLs. GP was saying they don't meet the CFL rated lifetime under those conditions, CFLs will still last a hell of a lot longer than incandescent even when placed in a fixture that traps the heat around the base of the bulb.
I'm curious as to your sourcing. A quick browse through the last eleven years of FOIA reports shows the backlog at the end of every year under the Obama administration has been lower then the the lowest year under the Bush administration, unless they're lying on their reports. It might also be worth noting the highest backlog under Obama was his first year in office, where Bush's first year was his lowest, indicating the trend is the opposite of what you imply. If fewer requests are being answered, then it must mean fewer have been made, because a smaller number are going unanswered. I do remember Guantanamo, and I understand the difference between a giving an order and having it followed (not that it excuses Obama entirely) but that's not the same thing I was talking about, the order I referred to seems to have been obeyed, I'd venture to guess that's one of the reasons the backlog is so much smaller now. So without excusing his administration for their wrongdoings, it seems things have been more transparent under Obama.
Here's a source, although I'll admit it's old (the article is from 2010).
You seem to have more updated numbers, so can you clarify the context? If a request is outright denied, does that count as a 'response' and is cleared from the backlog? Because, if so, the backlog is just a measure of how fast the replies happen, not of the actual government transparency.
Useless as it is, atleast it's a response. This started when Bush was in office from what I understand. They never even bothered to respond.
I'm not a Bush fan, but the Obama administration has rejected about 50% more FOIA requests than the Bush administration. The article is from 2010, and I can't seem to find updated numbers. If you've got them, and the trend has reversed itself, then I'll stand corrected.
There's a trend lately with TV shows writers to build mystery and suspense episode after episode without any consideration to the resolution of those arcs. The most famous instance of this is with JJ Abrams' Lost, but we saw the same thing happen to Battlestar Galactica. That's when we're even lucky enough to get a finale, often shows in danger of being cancelled will elect to end the season in a cliffhanger in an attempt to get an increased audience and help their chances of getting renewed. In contrast, with Babylon 5 you've shown great respect for the fans by coming up with a full storyline, complete with several outs in case of unexpected problems, such as actors being unable to return for one reason or another. In addition, when you thought Babylon 5 was going to get cancelled on its fourth season, you filmed the series finale to ensure we would get the full story, as much as it was possible. I truly thank you for that.
My question to you is whether you believe the type of long-term thinking into developing a good and complete story directly harms your overall numbers. After all, if Lost angered most of its viewers with the season finale, by then it doesn't matter anymore: the important thing to the bottom-line is that they were watching while the series is on. Have DVD sales helped somewhat in that people are more likely to buy the series if it's fully developed, and do studios take that into consideration in addition to Nielsen ratings? Do you have a complete story planned out for Sense8 similar to how you developed Babylon 5 and if so does working with Netflix make this process easier or harder than working with a traditional studio?
Students who aren't engaging with the material, and may require early intervention
No student requires intervention. Engaging the material is his responsibility. If he doesn't engage the material and learn, your only responsibility is to fail him, not to hold his hand. This is pretty much true by the time you hit middle-school, much less college. I'll grant elementary school should require more hand-holding.
Levels of interest in the material (would different material suit the learners better?)
A good teacher will indeed know how to present the material in such a way that people respond to it, but that's independent of the student. You should have a passion for the material and be able to show what makes you passionate about it. If the students don't respond, then they have no interest in the material, you can't create that interest, and they can just fucking tough it out and learn anyway. I got plenty of A's in classes I didn't give a shit about.
Problems with the material (are there particular parts many learners highlight and/or comment on? Could indicate confusion, for example)
It's not your responsibility to find that out. It's the student's responsibility to ask you questions. If they're confused and don't ask questions, it's their problem. Stop treating college students like 5 year-olds.
In a free market there is no gov't telling banks how much money to have in reserves...
In a completely free market, the economy would collapse within a month.
Capitalism is GREAT. The free market is FANTASTIC. Both have severe failure modes and the pure capitalism you guys keep going after as an ideal is every bit as laughable as all the people who want to try out real communism who (correctly) point out that no country every implemented pure communist practices. What they don't realize is that the reason no country has implemented pure communist practices is that if you start out with a purely communist country, you naturally degrade to people taking advantage of the system and causing it to become corrupt. It doesn't work.
Similarly, a completely free market sounds great. Until you realize that certain markets have high barriers to entry, monopolies naturally arise that further erodes competition, and with the competition gone all the efficiency of capitalism is gone with it. Similarly the free market is a great way to arrive at the true value of things, except of course until you consider externalities that are not part of the market itself.
Now, if you want to argue which government regulations to implement, be my guest. There are plenty of them that are absolutely horrible and counterproductive to the growth of the economy. The FDIC is not one of them. It's not exactly hard to figure out what happens without government deposit insurance...just look at the massive number of bank runs during the great depression. You're right that your purchasing power may decrease if the government itself is insolvent, but if you're in a situation where there's a bank run, it means the economy is in trouble and your purchasing power is already on the way down. The question is whether you want the lack of confidence to result in the positive feedback loop involved (as people withdraw their money, the banks get into more trouble, which causes more people to withdraw their money). The FDIC causes people to not panic, limiting the overall damage.
If you have paranormal abilities, you can probably get the $1 million without revealing it to the world. If you reveal it to the world though, "they" will be coming after you.
The point of the prize is to ensure that the people who claim they are revealing themselves to the public as having paranormal abilities can prove their claim. If the supernatural exists, and you have abilities which you keep secret, Randi doesn't care about you. He cares about the frauds taking money from the gullible by pretending to be capable of healing them, or talking to their dead loved ones, or whatever else.
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, that's what this is all about.
Which is the real problem. Most people I've seen who say it's bad haven't even used it. In the future, it should become the de-facto Windows gaming iteration, as they cleaned up and refined the graphics systems.
I use it. I have to, as that's what we use at work. There is nothing about it that's any good. If you install Classic Shell, it's tolerable, except for when you click on a file that ends up opening a metro app and then you have to fix the association so it won't ever do it again.
This is tiresome. This is not fun. This is not funny. This is lame. Do you understand this yet, editors? Anyone listening, or are you editors skipping the rest of the day too?
I think it's funny. I think it's great. Take a day off to geek out once a year.
If you don't enjoy it...can't you just find something else to do today instead of lobbying to end a tradition some of us enjoy?
Then how do you explain all the times where there's an effect despite the test subjects being given no treatment? By definition the placebo effect is what we use to describe those instances where there is no treatment given, but the results are like that of a treated patient.
Diagnosing medical conditions relies on having the patient explain to you how he's feeling. That's not an accurate and objective form of measurement. The placebo effect is merely a way to account for the imperfect measuring tools.
Now, that's not to say the placebo effect doesn't have an use. If you're dealing with a hypochondriac, he's not lying to you about what he's feeling. He just has so much anxiety that it's causing real symptoms. So you give them a sugar pill, they think they're being treated, the anxiety goes away and so do the symptoms. Everybody wins. This is also helpful for real diseases where stressing out will interfere with the healing process (stress has real physiological consequences, such as raised blood pressure). If you can get somebody to feel better, it knocks that stress down a level, and has real positive consequences. But the placebo effect is not some magical thing that cures people of their ills.
How is this even newsworthy? 100 million years is less than 1% of 13.8 Billion years. Given how little of the Universe we have actually see so far the margin of error for any prediction like this has to be huge so a 0.7% change is meaningless.
The uncertainty is plus or minus 37 million years. Yep, science is that awesome.
Slashdot Mirror
Think what would happen if you were to walk up to a guy in the street and say onto him "You, sir, are a fucking asshole." Would you, realistically expect him to just acknowledge your right to call him such and go about his merry way down the same street?
Actually, pretty much, yeah. I might expect to get flipped off as he continues on his merry way, but that's equally protected speech.
What do you expect? That he tries to hit me? Because battery doesn't get constitutional protection.
Bonus points if you say this to a police officer of a major city, or uniformed military personnel.
I have further expectations from police officers and uniformed military personnel. Not only do they have to ignore my calling them fucking assholes, they don't get to flip me off in return. Because it would be unprofessional behavior. That might not be what actually happens, but they should be punished when they react in any other way.
In accordance to the First Amendment, the Gov't made no attempt to censor the song or prevent him for making it public by his chosen means. Be ready for the consequences after doing so.
There are consequences to speech. His friends may shun him, the media may react to the lyrics and condemn him. The government cannot take any action for pure speech. Other than possible investigation of a threat, but I wouldn't consider lyrics to a song to be a threat anymore than I consider the vast number of times the white house was attacked in a movie to be a case of the writer and director of said movie threatening the white house.
Oh, please. I have brown skin living in South Carolina, and have never encountered any racism.
That's nice for you. In other news, the US has a black President, and recently had a female Secretary of State, so obviously there's neither racism nor sexism anywhere in the country.
Truly, America is a land of wonders.
Pretty much, yes.
I'm not saying racism and sexism doesn't exist. But if it's possible for people of all races and genders to live their lives without discrimination, then we, as a society, don't have a racism problem. Not having a racism problem doesn't mean that you're never going to encounter discrimination every once in a while. It means those cases of discrimination are due to individual fuckwads. In the same way that there will always be morons who think killing people watching a marathon is a good idea, or shooting up an elementary school fool of kids is a good idea. Individual fuckwads will always exist, but as long as their actions isn't met with acceptance and encouragement from our society, it's not a problem with our society.
It sounds more like a kid being stupid rather than one experimenting.
When you're a kid, they're often one and the same.
I long for the days when chemistry sets contained chemicals that you could actually make explosives from, and kids would compete to see who could make the most powerful explosions. Those who didn't lose a limb are now successful in their science careers, because that's how they were motivated to go that route. We've decided to take all the fun out of science in order to try to make everyone safer, and then we're surprised that kids don't have any interest in going into the science fields.
Science experiments are supposed to be fun. If she's doing this on her own time, she's one of the good ones with enough interest in science to have a successful career in it. Somebody give her a college scholarship and limit her punishment to a suspension and some community service. If she's allowed to, she'll contribute far more than enough to our economy in the future to justify the cost of the minor damage she caused while being a stupid teenager.
You're an idiot.
Spoken, no doubt, by an anonymous coward from Dixie who just can't come to grips with the extent that racism still pervades The South. No, the idiots are the officials who are making this chickenshit case and ruining a young woman's life.
Oh, please. I have brown skin living in South Carolina, and have never encountered any racism. I had to take a trip to New Jersey to have that experience for the first time (although I will say even in New Jersey it's atypical, I go there often and never have any problems). The United States really doesn't have much a problem with racism when you compare it to someplace like Europe, where you can attend a soccer game and start hearing racist chants against non-white players from the crowd. Have you ever been to a sports game and seen this happen in the US?
This is more a case of the stupidity that takes over a population every time we see a terrorist attack. When 9/11 happened, airport security started freaking out over engineering students carrying circuit boards (because exposed wires must mean it's a bomb or something). Now we had the Boston bombing and a minor explosion as a result of an accident of curiosity which doesn't actually hurt anyone is going to cause an overreaction. Right now, in so short a time after Boston, a white student would have gotten the same treatment.
(at the time I thought "Zefram Cochrane" was a sufficiently exotic name that he could have been non-human)
I was going to point out how this doesn't make any sense, when I was suddenly reminded almost every alien in TOS looked exactly like a human. Including Klingons, which looked like bearded humans. It's been too long, I think it's time for me to rewatch those episodes.
we know from "Space Seed" that there were sublight sleeper ships before the invention of warp drive.
Like I said, it's been a while, but I could have sworn Spock said the DY-100 class of ships was meant for traveling within the Solar System, and that the cryogenic chambers were meant to keep humans alive for months, not centuries. I always figured Kahn used his superior intellect to modify the ship for his purposes when escaping Earth.
Annoying quibble: Kirk's line was "Zefram Cochrane? Of Alpha Centauri?" (The "of" might have a subtly different implication than "from".)
You are right, sir. I stand corrected. My memory is far more accurate for TNG episodes.
Wouldn't the obvious choice be Zephram? After all, he was from Alpha Centuri before he was from Montana.
He was always born on Earth, regardless of time-line. When TOS referred to him as "Zefram Cochrane from Alpha Centauri" they were referring to the location where he eventually settled. As the inventor of Warp Drive, there's no way any humans could have gotten to Alpha Centauri before Cochrane was born.
Let's focus our First Contact continuity complaints on the Borg Queen. What a horrible idea that was...
"...We found that the genes overall are evolving significantly slower than in every other fish and land vertebrate that we looked at.'"..
Which indicates that their environment has hardly changed in many million years...
It can also mean they're fairly robust and can survive in a large range of environments. I think that's more likely considering the other fish sharing the same environment has evolved faster.
That said, it's not like the ocean is dominated by coelecanth, so it doesn't mean they've reached optimality or anything. Just that they're good enough to continue reproducing and surviving.
Really? A dollar is only worth what you can buy with it. It can become nearly worthless overnight. It is only paper and your faith in it is all that gives it value.
A dollar is also legal tender. Whether people have faith in it or not, they're required by law to take it as repayment of my debts.
But I suppose it's OK when Ubuntu does it because you haven't paid for it?
Read it again. He's saying his time is worth money, which Microsoft is stealing from him. He's not saying the money he used to buy Windows is the stolen one.
Also, welcome back to slashdot after your 2 year vacation. One of the things you missed is that since Unity was released, Ubuntu is no longer a slashdot favorite. In fact, every Ubuntu article seems to come with massive amounts of people saying, "switch to Mint or Debian"
It took me 30s to adapt. The barrier to entry is extremely low. I'd never hire someone who had such a massive resistance to change and learning.
I'd never work for someone who would hand me a hammer when I need a screwdriver and tell me to adapt.
You're supposed to use the right tools for the job, not learn to use crappy tools.
I have zero problem with Netflix using DRM. Why? It's a rental service. I have not purchased these videos. I do not own them.
I agree 100%. That said, I have a problem with DRM in the html5 spec. I think Netflix has found a perfect reason to continue using Silverlight, and I have no problems with that.
CFLs were sold to the public as straight replacements for incandescents... which work just fine in those (huge numbers of already installed) "upside-down" fixtures.
So do CFLs. GP was saying they don't meet the CFL rated lifetime under those conditions, CFLs will still last a hell of a lot longer than incandescent even when placed in a fixture that traps the heat around the base of the bulb.
I'm curious as to your sourcing. A quick browse through the last eleven years of FOIA reports shows the backlog at the end of every year under the Obama administration has been lower then the the lowest year under the Bush administration, unless they're lying on their reports. It might also be worth noting the highest backlog under Obama was his first year in office, where Bush's first year was his lowest, indicating the trend is the opposite of what you imply. If fewer requests are being answered, then it must mean fewer have been made, because a smaller number are going unanswered. I do remember Guantanamo, and I understand the difference between a giving an order and having it followed (not that it excuses Obama entirely) but that's not the same thing I was talking about, the order I referred to seems to have been obeyed, I'd venture to guess that's one of the reasons the backlog is so much smaller now. So without excusing his administration for their wrongdoings, it seems things have been more transparent under Obama.
Here's a source, although I'll admit it's old (the article is from 2010).
You seem to have more updated numbers, so can you clarify the context? If a request is outright denied, does that count as a 'response' and is cleared from the backlog? Because, if so, the backlog is just a measure of how fast the replies happen, not of the actual government transparency.
How about they actually answered to FOIA request?
Useless as it is, atleast it's a response. This started when Bush was in office from what I understand. They never even bothered to respond.
I'm not a Bush fan, but the Obama administration has rejected about 50% more FOIA requests than the Bush administration. The article is from 2010, and I can't seem to find updated numbers. If you've got them, and the trend has reversed itself, then I'll stand corrected.
There's a trend lately with TV shows writers to build mystery and suspense episode after episode without any consideration to the resolution of those arcs. The most famous instance of this is with JJ Abrams' Lost, but we saw the same thing happen to Battlestar Galactica. That's when we're even lucky enough to get a finale, often shows in danger of being cancelled will elect to end the season in a cliffhanger in an attempt to get an increased audience and help their chances of getting renewed. In contrast, with Babylon 5 you've shown great respect for the fans by coming up with a full storyline, complete with several outs in case of unexpected problems, such as actors being unable to return for one reason or another. In addition, when you thought Babylon 5 was going to get cancelled on its fourth season, you filmed the series finale to ensure we would get the full story, as much as it was possible. I truly thank you for that.
My question to you is whether you believe the type of long-term thinking into developing a good and complete story directly harms your overall numbers. After all, if Lost angered most of its viewers with the season finale, by then it doesn't matter anymore: the important thing to the bottom-line is that they were watching while the series is on. Have DVD sales helped somewhat in that people are more likely to buy the series if it's fully developed, and do studios take that into consideration in addition to Nielsen ratings? Do you have a complete story planned out for Sense8 similar to how you developed Babylon 5 and if so does working with Netflix make this process easier or harder than working with a traditional studio?
Students who aren't engaging with the material, and may require early intervention
No student requires intervention. Engaging the material is his responsibility. If he doesn't engage the material and learn, your only responsibility is to fail him, not to hold his hand. This is pretty much true by the time you hit middle-school, much less college. I'll grant elementary school should require more hand-holding.
Levels of interest in the material (would different material suit the learners better?)
A good teacher will indeed know how to present the material in such a way that people respond to it, but that's independent of the student. You should have a passion for the material and be able to show what makes you passionate about it. If the students don't respond, then they have no interest in the material, you can't create that interest, and they can just fucking tough it out and learn anyway. I got plenty of A's in classes I didn't give a shit about.
Problems with the material (are there particular parts many learners highlight and/or comment on? Could indicate confusion, for example)
It's not your responsibility to find that out. It's the student's responsibility to ask you questions. If they're confused and don't ask questions, it's their problem. Stop treating college students like 5 year-olds.
video games on a camping trip?
that just seems so...unnecessary. so wrong.
After a long day of hiking / rafting with your friends, it's pretty fun to spend the evening drinking and gaming. I don't see the problem.
In a free market there is no gov't telling banks how much money to have in reserves...
In a completely free market, the economy would collapse within a month.
Capitalism is GREAT. The free market is FANTASTIC. Both have severe failure modes and the pure capitalism you guys keep going after as an ideal is every bit as laughable as all the people who want to try out real communism who (correctly) point out that no country every implemented pure communist practices. What they don't realize is that the reason no country has implemented pure communist practices is that if you start out with a purely communist country, you naturally degrade to people taking advantage of the system and causing it to become corrupt. It doesn't work.
Similarly, a completely free market sounds great. Until you realize that certain markets have high barriers to entry, monopolies naturally arise that further erodes competition, and with the competition gone all the efficiency of capitalism is gone with it. Similarly the free market is a great way to arrive at the true value of things, except of course until you consider externalities that are not part of the market itself.
Now, if you want to argue which government regulations to implement, be my guest. There are plenty of them that are absolutely horrible and counterproductive to the growth of the economy. The FDIC is not one of them. It's not exactly hard to figure out what happens without government deposit insurance...just look at the massive number of bank runs during the great depression. You're right that your purchasing power may decrease if the government itself is insolvent, but if you're in a situation where there's a bank run, it means the economy is in trouble and your purchasing power is already on the way down. The question is whether you want the lack of confidence to result in the positive feedback loop involved (as people withdraw their money, the banks get into more trouble, which causes more people to withdraw their money). The FDIC causes people to not panic, limiting the overall damage.
If you have paranormal abilities, you can probably get the $1 million without revealing it to the world. If you reveal it to the world though, "they" will be coming after you.
The point of the prize is to ensure that the people who claim they are revealing themselves to the public as having paranormal abilities can prove their claim. If the supernatural exists, and you have abilities which you keep secret, Randi doesn't care about you. He cares about the frauds taking money from the gullible by pretending to be capable of healing them, or talking to their dead loved ones, or whatever else.
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, that's what this is all about.
Which is the real problem. Most people I've seen who say it's bad haven't even used it. In the future, it should become the de-facto Windows gaming iteration, as they cleaned up and refined the graphics systems.
I use it. I have to, as that's what we use at work. There is nothing about it that's any good. If you install Classic Shell, it's tolerable, except for when you click on a file that ends up opening a metro app and then you have to fix the association so it won't ever do it again.
This is tiresome. This is not fun. This is not funny. This is lame. Do you understand this yet, editors? Anyone listening, or are you editors skipping the rest of the day too?
I think it's funny. I think it's great. Take a day off to geek out once a year.
If you don't enjoy it...can't you just find something else to do today instead of lobbying to end a tradition some of us enjoy?
Then how do you explain all the times where there's an effect despite the test subjects being given no treatment? By definition the placebo effect is what we use to describe those instances where there is no treatment given, but the results are like that of a treated patient.
Diagnosing medical conditions relies on having the patient explain to you how he's feeling. That's not an accurate and objective form of measurement. The placebo effect is merely a way to account for the imperfect measuring tools.
Now, that's not to say the placebo effect doesn't have an use. If you're dealing with a hypochondriac, he's not lying to you about what he's feeling. He just has so much anxiety that it's causing real symptoms. So you give them a sugar pill, they think they're being treated, the anxiety goes away and so do the symptoms. Everybody wins. This is also helpful for real diseases where stressing out will interfere with the healing process (stress has real physiological consequences, such as raised blood pressure). If you can get somebody to feel better, it knocks that stress down a level, and has real positive consequences. But the placebo effect is not some magical thing that cures people of their ills.
(tell me again: why would someone want to do any of the above in a terminal?)
Because if you're working at a terminal, leaving the command-line is always a pain in the ass?
3000+ people were killed by people using box cutters
Oh, there were no planes filled to the brim with jet fuel or high buildings used in that attack?
You gun nuts take logic and cast it off at the first possible point during an argument.
Good point. Let's ban airplanes, and limit building heights to ten floors.
How is this even newsworthy? 100 million years is less than 1% of 13.8 Billion years. Given how little of the Universe we have actually see so far the margin of error for any prediction like this has to be huge so a 0.7% change is meaningless.
The uncertainty is plus or minus 37 million years. Yep, science is that awesome.