The DoE doesn't pass any laws; it enforces the ones passed by Congress. And as it's a cabinet-level department, Congress approves all cabinet appointees, so blame them on both fronts.
The Department of Education (or ED, not the "DOE") is run by the executive branch. You seem to have skipped that part for some reason. True, the laws and appointment are granted by Congress, however the day-to-day operation and many details of "how" the law is to be implemented do not reside with them.
Speaking with 10 years of experience in public K-12 schools, blame lies with the superintendent. Superintendents are the leaders of a district, and they can and often do set a strong tone of expectations that are carried out by administrators, including principals, which then trickle down to teachers and support staff. There's no doubt in my mind that the superintendent, tacitly if not directly, created this cheating culture in Atlanta. We can blame the law all we want for encouraging the genesis of such an environment, but that's like blaming cheese for mold growth. Yes, an optimal environment was created for this cheating scandal to take root and grow, but it was disgusting school leaders like Dr. Hall that caused it to happen.
I agree with the principle of this (pun intended), but I also think that laws can be implemented in ways that do not encourage cheating on this scale. It's not just the Atlanta school system trying to game the system and get more money and raises (presumably that is the end goal?). Look up Philadelphia, Clarksdale MS, and Louisiana - those were what I found just with a quick google search.
When a hydroelectric scheme goes right, it renders a large area of land uninhabitable.
When it goes wrong, it renders a different large area of land uninhabitable.
Still, when done right, better than a lot of other options.
Nuclear is better than a lot of other options (possibly all options), when done right. Unfortunately due to regulations, we aren't making reactors with less nasty waste. Unfortunately due to a small number of old reactor failures we aren't replacing them with new, safer ones.
Nuclear has the deck shuffled completely against it on all sides. I don't think it will survive - at least in the US and any other country that the US opposes.
Google can't push out updates to the handsets. The carriers by law mandated that only they can update and test the devices. You as a citizen and owner of the device cannot do this yourself either.
I'm not sure how this statement can be true. Apple is not a carrier and directly provides iOS updates and bugfixes to older handsets for several years. Their oldest supported device is the 4S which came out in 2011.
I am curious if you have a reference that shows that Google and their partners such as Samsung are legally prevented from doing the same. I can and do blame them for their disinterest in security patches.
If you're making a parallel with the wizard then maybe but one would normally abbreviate to 'Aus'
Exactly. "Land of Oz" is the slang reference that I first heard when I was visiting. At the time I was traveling with backpackers (including locals, not just foreigners), so maybe it was just a humorous joke and in less common use than I thought. I'm sure no official document would spell it that way.
> Differentiation is difficult in the smartphone market these days.
> all are nice upgrades but are only iterative
Please give us one huge upgrade - simple QWERTY. Last QWERTY phone is N900 from 2009. The next will be Jolla+TOHKBD in 2015 just thanks to a community funding effort (but still with weak hardware from 2013). Everybody in forums wants QWERTY but no single manufacturer makes one.
Huh? I can immediately name two examples of a modern QWERTY phone here or here.
I hate the way my friends' HDTVs make movies look like soap operas. I hated the last Hobbit which I saw in HFR/HD and the "look" completely ruined the film for me. The lighting used stood out like a sore thumb from the live action characters vs. the CG, the movement of the CG itself was horrible in many scenes.
And this film was no different. Ugh.
Your experience is due to the TV settings. Most TV's out of the box have the "soap opera effect" set to maximum and the sharpness set to maximum. Brightness adjusts the black level and contrast adjusts the white level. These are all set to make it look good in the bright store but are generally not desirable for home movie viewing to a discerning viewer. Perhaps your friend is open to adjusting his picture - however be aware that a lot of people believe they like the super sharp picture because they are used to it and might dislike the softer, more natural picture. Ask him to try it for a couple of weeks before making a decision to go back.
This is the first thing I did on my Panasonic plasma TV (after the burn-in) was to turn that shit off and calibrate the display. The picture is incredible.
>You can freely move through the 50 States with more ease than EU nationals can establish themselves in another EU State.
But what about all the other American countries? As a Brit I could move to France without asking permission. I don't think that's true for a US citizen to move to Mexico or Canada.
Mexico and Canada are not part of the United States. They do not have the same treaties with each other as do the the EU or the Commonwealth countries.
As a Brit can you freely move and work in those countries outside of the European Union that are still in Europe or the surrounding area? I don't know why you'd want to move to, say Serbia or Albania however can you do so without permission? What about Ukraine, which is usually considered part of Europe?
> Not so sure. Try to find another mp3 player with massive storage, an excellent user interface, and good to excellent build quality.
Any Android device.
My 500G Archos still refuses to die. It fits a particular niche that Apple will refuse to address and Android hasn't quite caught up yet with (but will eventually).
No, just no. Android OS has very little overlap to a dedicated music player that requires a few physical buttons to play, pause and skip along with basic displays. The markets are only related because modern phones can also store and play music. That doesn't mean a smart phone is best at playing music.
The car was part of the assets under seizure, so no he can't sell it. compared to what most people go through in such a criminal trial where the assets may be considered illicit gains he has actually been treated unbelievably well. He was able to keep his money to spend on his legal bills as well as a political campaign, gambling and even a ridiculous music venture and a monthly rent bill that was $80,000. seriously that is nearly a million a year he was spending on rent.
Only if you live in one of the states in which they have a physical presence. This refers to someone like me, who pays no sales tax to Newegg because they don't have a presence in my state.
Or if you live in a state like I do that has no sales tax. I don't want a new federal tax imposed on my purchases, which is one of the ideas floating around. Having the feds collect a tax and redistribute it is a tempting angle to avoid certain sticky issues of state tax collection across state lines. People who already are used to paying sales taxes might be ok with this, but what about states like mine that are quite opposed to a sales tax? Would my state have an exemption along with due recourse to fight the collection on merchants who might falsely collect it?
So how does that let a blind person vote unaided (the original reason electronic voting machines were "invented")? And how does that fix the large number of people that don't fill in the bubble completely or otherwise spoil or partially spoil their ballot? And what happens when someone stuffs the ballot box with extra votes?
How does a blind person see the touchscreen? How is this an improvement over a paper ballot with fixed braille next to each option?
Great, so how does that stop someone stuffing ballot boxes? Anonymous paper ballots are vulnerable to stuffing and loss.
Ballots must be anonymous to guarantee an uncompromised election. Preventions against stuffing the ballot box is a local check and balance. It's hard to lose a paper ballot once they are in the lock box.
Verified by VISA and similar programs for online shit that did everything we needed but there was one critical flaw - no one used it because they didn't have to. The only site I've ever used that actually implemented it was Newegg. And when I accidentally closed the Verified by VISA popup (I assumed it was a shitty 3rd party offer popup and closed it before it loaded), I discovered that failing the Verified by VISA challenge still let my transaction go through because the merchant never wants to miss out on the sale.
Verified by VISA didn't succeed because: 1) It looked like a scam site complete with redirection to a 3rd party asking for personal details like portion of social security number. Nowhere does it display security credentials. 2) Real phishing scams exist using the name and similar form layouts. 3) Yet Another Password. Hopefully not the same one used to log into the shopping site. 4) If you forget your password, all you need is the card information to reset it, plus a birthday. Not exactly a big secret. 5) It never worked for me because I disable third party cookies, run ABP, disable javascript, etc. I had to use IE the one time I tried to use it.
I am glad not everyone shares your viewpoint. This is an entire industry still in its infancy. Using a strategy like selling rich people seats so they can be the first ones up there is perfectly satisfactory to get the technology developed and bring costs down an open it up to a wider audience. It's not a zero sum game.
No offense, but "the goal" was achieved decades ago. These people died for the profit of shareholders, not some "goal" of space flight which has been going on for half a century.
The goal of commercial manned spaceflight was already achieved decades ago? Odd. I seem to have missed it.
Part of the US credit card fee of ~3% or so is to cover fraud. When your banks switched to EMV, did they reduce the fees at all to compensate or are they taking the reduced risk of fraud as profit?
There must be something wrong with me. Not once have I ever purchased something in a store and thought, "Gee, conducting that transaction was incredibly difficult. I wish someone would make an easier way to pay for this bag of groceries than this complex and difficult process of swiping a credit card."
In the name of progress:
In the beginning people counted out change in chickens and goats, or other favors. Then came currency, where change was counted out in pennies and dollars. Then came bank checks, which were convenient, but took time to write out. Then came credit companies with a mechanical swipe tool in carbon copy. Too slow: add convenient swipe and sign. Gosh, who uses checks, they take forever!? Finally comes touchless. Precious seconds are saved! No swipe, no sign, no finding a pen - just touch phone/device and authenticate with it.
This probably saves a few seconds, and potentially adds important network security. Hopefully your phone doesn't run out of power or criminals don't find a loophole through the extra third parties.
Personally, I still prefer cash wherever possible with credit card as secondary. Lots of small companies give a cash discount if you ask...
7) In the US, at least, a credit card company provides certain financial protections that banks do not. Generally it is far easier to recover funds stolen by theft if a credit card was used than a bank account debit. A credit card expenditure is not your money and federal law prohibits companies from passing on unauthorized transactions to you (there is a minimum that may vary depending on credit company no more than $50, I believe). Fully-paid credit accounts generally have zero fee/interest, as well.
Credit theft has happened to me a few times (one stolen and used at a gas station, another series of foreign transactions, incorrect charge at a restaurant, etc) and I paid $0 of the contested amount, without any reduction of my existing/liquid funds. If I had used a debit card, I don't even know the recovery process but it certainly wouldn't be free in the short term. Liquid money at a bank is spent until refunded, unable to be spent on other things in the interim.
In several ways
1)Debit cards don't build credit history. This makes it hard to get a car or house loan at good rates.
2)Credit cards have 0% interest if you pay at the end of the month every month.
3)Debit cards do not earn you interest. If you have an interest checking account (rare, and usually such a low rate that its a joke, sub 1% in most cases), you earn that money regardless of if you have or use a debit card.
4)In the US, many purchases such as hotel, rental car, and gas put a hold on your account for more money than the actual charge. This hold goes away once the car is returned/hotel is checked out/a few days (for gas), but in the meantime that's additional money you can't access.
5)Emergencies/hard times. Sometimes shit happens. You may lose your job and run low on cash. You may have a series of car and house repairs. Its always a good idea to have an additional emergency fun you can call on for short term cash.
6)Your bank may put a hold on your debit card for suspicious activities. In that case, your card is useless. Having a backup is always a good idea. There's been several times this has saved my ass when traveling.
Good for you. However, you won't be too happy when you get a new machine that doesn't come with anything other than 9. Or when your windows 7 drivers need an update to fix a bug or add a feature and the only available ones are for Windows 9. Or you want that snazzy new program and it's minimum requirements are Windows 9.
Like it or not, the world moves on. If standing still works for you then more power to you.
XP still works for me. There is no downside. Snazzy new features don't improve my efficiency at work.
I agree, when a computer breaks and we have to get Windows 7 because we are forced to, a painful upgrade period occurs because the software never seems to work on the new OS. There is no advantage except for the newer hardware computation power. Who cares about Windows 9?
What about industrial businesses? My company is just finally minimizing XP to only a handful of lab computers and ones necessary for legacy support such as our single remaining Windows 2k system. We are struggling to get one more system moved to Windows 7 (under the guise of a faster computer and therefore less time waiting on the computations) and the application just doesn't work on that OS yet. The vendor is working with us to find a solution, but it may take several months (if ever) because they licensed the software from someone else.
The computer is a tool to do RF measurements and calculations and prepare presentations. I just got my first VNA with no floppy drive and more than one USB port! That is a big event.
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The DoE doesn't pass any laws; it enforces the ones passed by Congress. And as it's a cabinet-level department, Congress approves all cabinet appointees, so blame them on both fronts.
The Department of Education (or ED, not the "DOE") is run by the executive branch. You seem to have skipped that part for some reason. True, the laws and appointment are granted by Congress, however the day-to-day operation and many details of "how" the law is to be implemented do not reside with them.
Speaking with 10 years of experience in public K-12 schools, blame lies with the superintendent. Superintendents are the leaders of a district, and they can and often do set a strong tone of expectations that are carried out by administrators, including principals, which then trickle down to teachers and support staff. There's no doubt in my mind that the superintendent, tacitly if not directly, created this cheating culture in Atlanta. We can blame the law all we want for encouraging the genesis of such an environment, but that's like blaming cheese for mold growth. Yes, an optimal environment was created for this cheating scandal to take root and grow, but it was disgusting school leaders like Dr. Hall that caused it to happen.
I agree with the principle of this (pun intended), but I also think that laws can be implemented in ways that do not encourage cheating on this scale. It's not just the Atlanta school system trying to game the system and get more money and raises (presumably that is the end goal?). Look up Philadelphia, Clarksdale MS, and Louisiana - those were what I found just with a quick google search.
When a hydroelectric scheme goes right, it renders a large area of land uninhabitable.
When it goes wrong, it renders a different large area of land uninhabitable.
Still, when done right, better than a lot of other options.
Nuclear is better than a lot of other options (possibly all options), when done right. Unfortunately due to regulations, we aren't making reactors with less nasty waste. Unfortunately due to a small number of old reactor failures we aren't replacing them with new, safer ones.
Nuclear has the deck shuffled completely against it on all sides. I don't think it will survive - at least in the US and any other country that the US opposes.
I like PaleMoon, however they do not support XP so I can't use it.
And no, we can't get the professional software we are using to work on Windows 7, nor can the vendor.
Rock and a hard place.
Google can't push out updates to the handsets. The carriers by law mandated that only they can update and test the devices. You as a citizen and owner of the device cannot do this yourself either.
I'm not sure how this statement can be true. Apple is not a carrier and directly provides iOS updates and bugfixes to older handsets for several years. Their oldest supported device is the 4S which came out in 2011.
I am curious if you have a reference that shows that Google and their partners such as Samsung are legally prevented from doing the same. I can and do blame them for their disinterest in security patches.
If you're making a parallel with the wizard then maybe but one would normally abbreviate to 'Aus'
Exactly. "Land of Oz" is the slang reference that I first heard when I was visiting. At the time I was traveling with backpackers (including locals, not just foreigners), so maybe it was just a humorous joke and in less common use than I thought. I'm sure no official document would spell it that way.
Thanks for the insight!
Trust me, no one here spells it with an Oh-Zed.
You've never heard it referred to as Oz?
I have heard those 2 letters used in conjunction as reference to Australia many, many times during my travels there.
Now the term "ozzies" is somewhat new that I haven't heard before. Could be a recent development.
> Differentiation is difficult in the smartphone market these days.
> all are nice upgrades but are only iterative
Please give us one huge upgrade - simple QWERTY. Last QWERTY phone is N900 from 2009. The next will be Jolla+TOHKBD in 2015 just thanks to a community funding effort (but still with weak hardware from 2013). Everybody in forums wants QWERTY but no single manufacturer makes one.
Huh? I can immediately name two examples of a modern QWERTY phone here or here.
I hate the way my friends' HDTVs make movies look like soap operas. I hated the last Hobbit which I saw in HFR/HD and the "look" completely ruined the film for me. The lighting used stood out like a sore thumb from the live action characters vs. the CG, the movement of the CG itself was horrible in many scenes.
And this film was no different. Ugh.
Your experience is due to the TV settings. Most TV's out of the box have the "soap opera effect" set to maximum and the sharpness set to maximum. Brightness adjusts the black level and contrast adjusts the white level. These are all set to make it look good in the bright store but are generally not desirable for home movie viewing to a discerning viewer. Perhaps your friend is open to adjusting his picture - however be aware that a lot of people believe they like the super sharp picture because they are used to it and might dislike the softer, more natural picture. Ask him to try it for a couple of weeks before making a decision to go back.
This is the first thing I did on my Panasonic plasma TV (after the burn-in) was to turn that shit off and calibrate the display. The picture is incredible.
>You can freely move through the 50 States with more ease than EU nationals can establish themselves in another EU State.
But what about all the other American countries?
As a Brit I could move to France without asking permission. I don't think that's true for a US citizen to move to Mexico or Canada.
Mexico and Canada are not part of the United States. They do not have the same treaties with each other as do the the EU or the Commonwealth countries.
As a Brit can you freely move and work in those countries outside of the European Union that are still in Europe or the surrounding area? I don't know why you'd want to move to, say Serbia or Albania however can you do so without permission? What about Ukraine, which is usually considered part of Europe?
> Not so sure. Try to find another mp3 player with massive storage, an excellent user interface, and good to excellent build quality.
Any Android device.
My 500G Archos still refuses to die. It fits a particular niche that Apple will refuse to address and Android hasn't quite caught up yet with (but will eventually).
No, just no. Android OS has very little overlap to a dedicated music player that requires a few physical buttons to play, pause and skip along with basic displays. The markets are only related because modern phones can also store and play music. That doesn't mean a smart phone is best at playing music.
The car was part of the assets under seizure, so no he can't sell it. compared to what most people go through in such a criminal trial where the assets may be considered illicit gains he has actually been treated unbelievably well. He was able to keep his money to spend on his legal bills as well as a political campaign, gambling and even a ridiculous music venture and a monthly rent bill that was $80,000. seriously that is nearly a million a year he was spending on rent.
I thought Kim Dotcom was broke and not even able to pay his lawyers? http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-30209067
Only if you live in one of the states in which they have a physical presence. This refers to someone like me, who pays no sales tax to Newegg because they don't have a presence in my state.
Or if you live in a state like I do that has no sales tax. I don't want a new federal tax imposed on my purchases, which is one of the ideas floating around. Having the feds collect a tax and redistribute it is a tempting angle to avoid certain sticky issues of state tax collection across state lines. People who already are used to paying sales taxes might be ok with this, but what about states like mine that are quite opposed to a sales tax? Would my state have an exemption along with due recourse to fight the collection on merchants who might falsely collect it?
Cost-Benefit.
Your stated advantage is loss of paper ballots.
Your stated negative is "to get electronic voting done securely and properly"
I think paper ballots win. More security staff is a much larger payout than developing a fully trusted and accountable complex computer system.
So how does that let a blind person vote unaided (the original reason electronic voting machines were "invented")? And how does that fix the large number of people that don't fill in the bubble completely or otherwise spoil or partially spoil their ballot? And what happens when someone stuffs the ballot box with extra votes?
How does a blind person see the touchscreen? How is this an improvement over a paper ballot with fixed braille next to each option?
Great, so how does that stop someone stuffing ballot boxes? Anonymous paper ballots are vulnerable to stuffing and loss.
Ballots must be anonymous to guarantee an uncompromised election. Preventions against stuffing the ballot box is a local check and balance. It's hard to lose a paper ballot once they are in the lock box.
Darn, right link, wrong text. Wish I could recall my post for a few seconds to make a quick edit.
It should be Verified by Visa and MasterCard SecureCode: or, How Not to Design Authentication
Verified by VISA and similar programs for online shit that did everything we needed but there was one critical flaw - no one used it because they didn't have to. The only site I've ever used that actually implemented it was Newegg. And when I accidentally closed the Verified by VISA popup (I assumed it was a shitty 3rd party offer popup and closed it before it loaded), I discovered that failing the Verified by VISA challenge still let my transaction go through because the merchant never wants to miss out on the sale.
Verified by VISA didn't succeed because:
1) It looked like a scam site complete with redirection to a 3rd party asking for personal details like portion of social security number. Nowhere does it display security credentials.
2) Real phishing scams exist using the name and similar form layouts.
3) Yet Another Password. Hopefully not the same one used to log into the shopping site.
4) If you forget your password, all you need is the card information to reset it, plus a birthday. Not exactly a big secret.
5) It never worked for me because I disable third party cookies, run ABP, disable javascript, etc. I had to use IE the one time I tried to use it.
Here is a paper that describes the flaws in Verified by Visa. Gross Domestic Product Implicit Price Deflator for State and Local Government Consumption Expenditures and Gross Investment
I am glad not everyone shares your viewpoint. This is an entire industry still in its infancy. Using a strategy like selling rich people seats so they can be the first ones up there is perfectly satisfactory to get the technology developed and bring costs down an open it up to a wider audience. It's not a zero sum game.
No offense, but "the goal" was achieved decades ago. These people died for the profit of shareholders, not some "goal" of space flight which has been going on for half a century.
The goal of commercial manned spaceflight was already achieved decades ago? Odd. I seem to have missed it.
CVS is giving up less than 2% of it's total sales by dropping tobacco while they are growing sales overall by 10+% a year.
It does not have a significant effect on their corporation.
Is that loss just the tobacco sales, or does it include the loss of all sales by smokers? There is a difference.
Part of the US credit card fee of ~3% or so is to cover fraud. When your banks switched to EMV, did they reduce the fees at all to compensate or are they taking the reduced risk of fraud as profit?
There must be something wrong with me. Not once have I ever purchased something in a store and thought, "Gee, conducting that transaction was incredibly difficult. I wish someone would make an easier way to pay for this bag of groceries than this complex and difficult process of swiping a credit card."
In the name of progress:
In the beginning people counted out change in chickens and goats, or other favors.
Then came currency, where change was counted out in pennies and dollars.
Then came bank checks, which were convenient, but took time to write out.
Then came credit companies with a mechanical swipe tool in carbon copy. Too slow: add convenient swipe and sign. Gosh, who uses checks, they take forever!?
Finally comes touchless. Precious seconds are saved! No swipe, no sign, no finding a pen - just touch phone/device and authenticate with it.
This probably saves a few seconds, and potentially adds important network security. Hopefully your phone doesn't run out of power or criminals don't find a loophole through the extra third parties.
Personally, I still prefer cash wherever possible with credit card as secondary. Lots of small companies give a cash discount if you ask...
7) In the US, at least, a credit card company provides certain financial protections that banks do not. Generally it is far easier to recover funds stolen by theft if a credit card was used than a bank account debit. A credit card expenditure is not your money and federal law prohibits companies from passing on unauthorized transactions to you (there is a minimum that may vary depending on credit company no more than $50, I believe). Fully-paid credit accounts generally have zero fee/interest, as well.
Credit theft has happened to me a few times (one stolen and used at a gas station, another series of foreign transactions, incorrect charge at a restaurant, etc) and I paid $0 of the contested amount, without any reduction of my existing/liquid funds. If I had used a debit card, I don't even know the recovery process but it certainly wouldn't be free in the short term. Liquid money at a bank is spent until refunded, unable to be spent on other things in the interim.
In several ways
1)Debit cards don't build credit history. This makes it hard to get a car or house loan at good rates.
2)Credit cards have 0% interest if you pay at the end of the month every month.
3)Debit cards do not earn you interest. If you have an interest checking account (rare, and usually such a low rate that its a joke, sub 1% in most cases), you earn that money regardless of if you have or use a debit card.
4)In the US, many purchases such as hotel, rental car, and gas put a hold on your account for more money than the actual charge. This hold goes away once the car is returned/hotel is checked out/a few days (for gas), but in the meantime that's additional money you can't access.
5)Emergencies/hard times. Sometimes shit happens. You may lose your job and run low on cash. You may have a series of car and house repairs. Its always a good idea to have an additional emergency fun you can call on for short term cash.
6)Your bank may put a hold on your debit card for suspicious activities. In that case, your card is useless. Having a backup is always a good idea. There's been several times this has saved my ass when traveling.
Good for you. However, you won't be too happy when you get a new machine that doesn't come with anything other than 9. Or when your windows 7 drivers need an update to fix a bug or add a feature and the only available ones are for Windows 9. Or you want that snazzy new program and it's minimum requirements are Windows 9.
Like it or not, the world moves on. If standing still works for you then more power to you.
XP still works for me. There is no downside. Snazzy new features don't improve my efficiency at work.
I agree, when a computer breaks and we have to get Windows 7 because we are forced to, a painful upgrade period occurs because the software never seems to work on the new OS. There is no advantage except for the newer hardware computation power. Who cares about Windows 9?
What about industrial businesses? My company is just finally minimizing XP to only a handful of lab computers and ones necessary for legacy support such as our single remaining Windows 2k system. We are struggling to get one more system moved to Windows 7 (under the guise of a faster computer and therefore less time waiting on the computations) and the application just doesn't work on that OS yet. The vendor is working with us to find a solution, but it may take several months (if ever) because they licensed the software from someone else.
The computer is a tool to do RF measurements and calculations and prepare presentations. I just got my first VNA with no floppy drive and more than one USB port! That is a big event.