In the US, I guess it's whether you're more sickened by the corruption and incompetence of the Republicans or the cowardice and lack of direction of the Democrats.
The Democrats have plenty of corruption and incompetence, and the Republicans have their own area of significant cowardice and aimlessness.
I think we're at about the same point as the UK: the only real decisions voters can make is to decide which side seems less corrupt at the moment. And, frankly, that's like trying to decide whether coal is blacker than oil.
Yes, in a double-fault scenario (you sent email to a non-existent account [fault 1] at my domain when my primary MTA was down [fault 2]), you end up with sub-optimal behavior.
High-availability systems generally accept degraded performance in a double-fault situation. Really, email only needs to rise to the level of "high-availability" (as opposed to "fault-tolerant"), given users' current expectations. If you need anything better than that, users generally rely on "layer 8" (human) acknowledgment (largely because MTA failure is only one of myriad reasons a message may not make it all the way to the expected recipient's brain).
"In Texas, Wyatt said, one official told him that without federal funding, the Lone Star State might have to charge its citizens more than $100 for a license."
Which makes some sense -- the Texas state government is funded exclusively through sales taxes. Sure, there are property taxes, but they go to counties and school districts -- not the state. If Texas (or other states without income taxes) is forced to incur billions of dollars of Open ID-related costs, the only real way to fund it is to raise sales taxes (political suicide), implement a state income tax (literal suicide), or increase the cost of drivers licenses to reflect the increased cost of the Open ID program. Keep in mind that Texas has almost 8% of the nation's population, so almost $2 billion of the Open ID costs are likely to be incurred here. (Yes, I'm from Texas). That $2 billion has to come from somewhere, and we're already pretty tight on state budget down here. Any increases in the cost of processing drivers licenses... well, they'll have to be passed on. It's just a hard fact.
To look at it another way: the additional $23 billion this program is estimated to cost, divided by the 225 million adults in the US, comes to $102.22 per person. Where do you think this money is coming from?
Apparently, the only other option if this authoritarian legislation goes through is to charge $100 for a drivers' license (from TFA). I can only imagine that will impact more poor people more severely. I mean, let's face it: if you're flying instead of taking a bus or plane, you're lower-middle class at worst -- and national parks are nice, but they're hardly a necessity.
Now, living in America without being able to drive a car -- that's a hardship for a lot more people.
What's the big deal? I mean, the last time the president hunted someone down on a political vendetta regarding a leak, he ended up commuting the sentence before a single minute of jail time was served. Or are we cynical enough to think that he did that only because Scooter Libby is a Republican?
Only kind of. Price sensitivity to gas, if it existed at the current price levels, would exhibit in consumer demand for higher mileage vehicles. However, evidence surrounds us here in America that such sensitivity simply doesn't exist (or, if it does, it's not pervasive enough to affect the market).
When I look at new cars on the road, I still note that the majority of cars around here -- yes, even the new ones -- are, for some reason, nine passenger hulking SUVs puttering around with their 10 liter V8 engines, getting 9 miles per gallon with a single person riding around in the driver's seat.
Whenever anyone buys a new car, they have the complete and unfettered power to lower the price they pay for a mile's worth of gas, often to a third or a quarter of what they were paying before. People aren't. The GP is right: the price of gas is at or lower than what the market will support.
"Mexican Coke still uses sugar so I'm cool there..."
From TFA:
Norman Swan: So we don't need to get obsessed on fruit sugars, it's sugar itself, sucrose. Robert Lustig: Absolutely, it's sugar in general.
If, for some reason, you're actually paranoid about fructose and think sucrose is okay (despite evidence to the contrary), you'll find that most, if not all, organic ketchup is made with cane sugar.
I'm confused. Are you using "maroon" as a verb? Or did you mean the color maroon? I mean, really, the only part of speech that fits your usage at all is an old slang term applied to escaped slaves in the Americas, but I don't see how that applies to the topic at hand...
You raise a good point. The topic has been pretty well explored in sci-fi as well. Consider the ultimate regret of the character of Wang Mu from Card's Children of the Mind -- or, more appropriately, the tragedy of Matthew from Asimov's short story "Light Verse". Will the solution be worth what one gives up for it? If such a "cure" is available, who will be allowed to make that decision? It will be far too easy to argue that an autistic individual isn't in a position to decide such things for himself.
More directly: Einstein had a wide variety of social problems that were likely linked inextricably with his unusual mental acuity. If we had the technology to "cure" him, what would the world look like now?
Good catch! I'm in the US, and apparently he's distributed by someone else here. I apparently can get it from the Australian store, but AU$2.19 = US$1.86 (which is closer to $1.95 after the credit card companies take their pound of flesh), which is a bit much for a single track...
You're probably basing that on the fact that iTunes didn't ask you to upgrade any of your music, right? That doesn't necessarily mean it's not EMI.
I don't know why there hasn't been more noise about it, but iTunes is apparently making only a tiny fraction of the most popular EMI music available through iTunes plus. For example, Ferry Corsten is an EMI artist, and most of the stuff he's released has been through EMI. Go try to download a non-DRM version of anything he's released. It's just not there. Certain other EMI artists are having only selective parts of their catalog released through iTunes plus -- to cite a more mainstream band, the Pet Shop Boys have been on EMI since the mid-'80s. By my count, about 2/3rds of their tracks on iTunes are still listed only as the DRM-laden "iTunes minus" variety.
Yes, and I know some very, very nice people who happen to have gotten in over their heads in credit card debt. We're talking maybe $10,000 or so of debt here. They've gone through a credit counseling agency, and had the debt restructured with Visa so that they're on a special payment plan with a lower-than-prime interest rate. But they're still having a hard time making the payments, and it would be very nice if Visa could just forget about the debt.
Visa can afford it. Nobody seems to dispute this.
My friends will have difficulty paying the money back. The owed money may end up being written off anyway.
Nobody is forcing anyone to do anything. My friends have applied a lot of pressure but it's up to Visa, and Visa can benefit from this. They'll get some of the money back as a tax break, more as good PR, and this will mean more money for my friends to spend on consumer goods, which will stimulate the economy and benefit Visa in the long run. That, and the person who makes the decision will have a feeling of being a nice person.
Ultimately it will be better for everyone if Visa forgives the debt.
Really? I know three articles is a bit much to read, but if you'd made it to the third one, you'd see what Apple has to say on the matter: "Jobs spelled out existing browser shares of Microsoft Corp.'s Internet Explorer, Firefox, and Safari -- 78%, 15% and 2%, respectively -- before displaying another pie chart that showed Safari with about a quarter of the market, IE with the remainder."
Is Elgan trying to create some sort of fight that Apple isn't even trying to win, or am I mistaken?
You're mistaken. From the (third) article: "Jobs spelled out existing browser shares of Microsoft Corp.'s Internet Explorer, Firefox, and Safari -- 78%, 15% and 2%, respectively -- before displaying another pie chart that showed Safari with about a quarter of the market, IE with the remainder."
The real problem with doing a 6.0.8 to 10.4.9 comparison is that Microsoft is so far behind in releasing an Intel version of Office for Mac that the new computer would be under the most ludicrous kind of disadvantage possible: modern Macs are forced to run Word and Excel under PPC emulators, which imposes a staggering performance penalty.
Google the phrase "expectation of privacy". You can spend anywhere from a few minutes to several days reading through the results, and reach increasing levels of enlightenment as you do so.
Slashdot Mirror
Ermmm... It's spelled "OS X" and pronounced "oh ess ten". OS 1 - 9 did exist; they simply weren't designated with Roman numerals.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OS_X#Versions
I think we're at about the same point as the UK: the only real decisions voters can make is to decide which side seems less corrupt at the moment. And, frankly, that's like trying to decide whether coal is blacker than oil.
Bravo.
Half of me is saying "cool!"
The other half is looking very confused and asking "why?"
Yes, in a double-fault scenario (you sent email to a non-existent account [fault 1] at my domain when my primary MTA was down [fault 2]), you end up with sub-optimal behavior.
High-availability systems generally accept degraded performance in a double-fault situation. Really, email only needs to rise to the level of "high-availability" (as opposed to "fault-tolerant"), given users' current expectations. If you need anything better than that, users generally rely on "layer 8" (human) acknowledgment (largely because MTA failure is only one of myriad reasons a message may not make it all the way to the expected recipient's brain).
How about: "Email is so reliable these days because anyone running a server worth talking to has a backup MX service"?
"Why don't we use some of that money we got for selling Spanish corporation Cintra our roads?"
Umm.... what? The 121 contract was awarded to NTTA...
http://www.dot.state.tx.us/news/014-2007.htm
"In Texas, Wyatt said, one official told him that without federal funding, the Lone Star State might have to charge its citizens more than $100 for a license."
Which makes some sense -- the Texas state government is funded exclusively through sales taxes. Sure, there are property taxes, but they go to counties and school districts -- not the state. If Texas (or other states without income taxes) is forced to incur billions of dollars of Open ID-related costs, the only real way to fund it is to raise sales taxes (political suicide), implement a state income tax (literal suicide), or increase the cost of drivers licenses to reflect the increased cost of the Open ID program. Keep in mind that Texas has almost 8% of the nation's population, so almost $2 billion of the Open ID costs are likely to be incurred here. (Yes, I'm from Texas). That $2 billion has to come from somewhere, and we're already pretty tight on state budget down here. Any increases in the cost of processing drivers licenses... well, they'll have to be passed on. It's just a hard fact.
To look at it another way: the additional $23 billion this program is estimated to cost, divided by the 225 million adults in the US, comes to $102.22 per person. Where do you think this money is coming from?
Ha!
Yeah, brain-o on my part. I meant "instead of taking a bus or train."
Apparently, the only other option if this authoritarian legislation goes through is to charge $100 for a drivers' license (from TFA). I can only imagine that will impact more poor people more severely. I mean, let's face it: if you're flying instead of taking a bus or plane, you're lower-middle class at worst -- and national parks are nice, but they're hardly a necessity.
Now, living in America without being able to drive a car -- that's a hardship for a lot more people.
What's the big deal? I mean, the last time the president hunted someone down on a political vendetta regarding a leak, he ended up commuting the sentence before a single minute of jail time was served. Or are we cynical enough to think that he did that only because Scooter Libby is a Republican?
Oh, wait. Yeah, I guess we are.
Arbitrary code execution? But isn't that what every iPhone user has been clamoring for?
Only kind of. Price sensitivity to gas, if it existed at the current price levels, would exhibit in consumer demand for higher mileage vehicles. However, evidence surrounds us here in America that such sensitivity simply doesn't exist (or, if it does, it's not pervasive enough to affect the market).
When I look at new cars on the road, I still note that the majority of cars around here -- yes, even the new ones -- are, for some reason, nine passenger hulking SUVs puttering around with their 10 liter V8 engines, getting 9 miles per gallon with a single person riding around in the driver's seat.
Whenever anyone buys a new car, they have the complete and unfettered power to lower the price they pay for a mile's worth of gas, often to a third or a quarter of what they were paying before. People aren't. The GP is right: the price of gas is at or lower than what the market will support.
From TFA:
If, for some reason, you're actually paranoid about fructose and think sucrose is okay (despite evidence to the contrary), you'll find that most, if not all, organic ketchup is made with cane sugar.
I'm confused. Are you using "maroon" as a verb? Or did you mean the color maroon? I mean, really, the only part of speech that fits your usage at all is an old slang term applied to escaped slaves in the Americas, but I don't see how that applies to the topic at hand...
You raise a good point. The topic has been pretty well explored in sci-fi as well. Consider the ultimate regret of the character of Wang Mu from Card's Children of the Mind -- or, more appropriately, the tragedy of Matthew from Asimov's short story "Light Verse". Will the solution be worth what one gives up for it? If such a "cure" is available, who will be allowed to make that decision? It will be far too easy to argue that an autistic individual isn't in a position to decide such things for himself.
More directly: Einstein had a wide variety of social problems that were likely linked inextricably with his unusual mental acuity. If we had the technology to "cure" him, what would the world look like now?
Good catch! I'm in the US, and apparently he's distributed by someone else here. I apparently can get it from the Australian store, but AU$2.19 = US$1.86 (which is closer to $1.95 after the credit card companies take their pound of flesh), which is a bit much for a single track...
You're probably basing that on the fact that iTunes didn't ask you to upgrade any of your music, right? That doesn't necessarily mean it's not EMI.
I don't know why there hasn't been more noise about it, but iTunes is apparently making only a tiny fraction of the most popular EMI music available through iTunes plus. For example, Ferry Corsten is an EMI artist, and most of the stuff he's released has been through EMI. Go try to download a non-DRM version of anything he's released. It's just not there. Certain other EMI artists are having only selective parts of their catalog released through iTunes plus -- to cite a more mainstream band, the Pet Shop Boys have been on EMI since the mid-'80s. By my count, about 2/3rds of their tracks on iTunes are still listed only as the DRM-laden "iTunes minus" variety.
Yes, and I know some very, very nice people who happen to have gotten in over their heads in credit card debt. We're talking maybe $10,000 or so of debt here. They've gone through a credit counseling agency, and had the debt restructured with Visa so that they're on a special payment plan with a lower-than-prime interest rate. But they're still having a hard time making the payments, and it would be very nice if Visa could just forget about the debt.
Visa can afford it. Nobody seems to dispute this.
My friends will have difficulty paying the money back. The owed money may end up being written off anyway.
Nobody is forcing anyone to do anything. My friends have applied a lot of pressure but it's up to Visa, and Visa can benefit from this. They'll get some of the money back as a tax break, more as good PR, and this will mean more money for my friends to spend on consumer goods, which will stimulate the economy and benefit Visa in the long run. That, and the person who makes the decision will have a feeling of being a nice person.
Ultimately it will be better for everyone if Visa forgives the debt.
Really? I know three articles is a bit much to read, but if you'd made it to the third one, you'd see what Apple has to say on the matter: "Jobs spelled out existing browser shares of Microsoft Corp.'s Internet Explorer, Firefox, and Safari -- 78%, 15% and 2%, respectively -- before displaying another pie chart that showed Safari with about a quarter of the market, IE with the remainder."
You're mistaken. From the (third) article: "Jobs spelled out existing browser shares of Microsoft Corp.'s Internet Explorer, Firefox, and Safari -- 78%, 15% and 2%, respectively -- before displaying another pie chart that showed Safari with about a quarter of the market, IE with the remainder."
The real problem with doing a 6.0.8 to 10.4.9 comparison is that Microsoft is so far behind in releasing an Intel version of Office for Mac that the new computer would be under the most ludicrous kind of disadvantage possible: modern Macs are forced to run Word and Excel under PPC emulators, which imposes a staggering performance penalty.
They use AAC for the downloadable music. AAC is a lossy codec.
g
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Audio_Codin
(Scroll down to "iTunes and iPod", a little more than halfway down the page).
No. You can't.
o n
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lossy_data_compressi
Google the phrase "expectation of privacy". You can spend anywhere from a few minutes to several days reading through the results, and reach increasing levels of enlightenment as you do so.