I don't really get why so many people see this as a problem. They aren't collecting those data just for the hell of it. For all the problems people have with government spending and waste, I don't see how using statistical methods and sound research to make decisions with billions of dollars at stake is a bad thing.
Are governments just supposed to throw darts at a board when deciding where and when to invest resources now? In reality, they're damned if they do and damned if they don't. If they make an effort to gain solid information and make intelligent decisions, they're branded as Big Brother. If they just spend money randomly they're labeled incompetent and lazy bureaucrats. For the cost of 2-3 more days in Iraq I'd say making sure the census gets done right is a damned good investment.
I could buy that argument if it were possible to recruit, train, and manage 800,000+ people who have decent technical skills for a low paying, short term job. Keep in mind that that most non-response follow-up enumerators work for 2-3 months tops, make around $12/hour, are part-time, and have no particular interest in data integrity or security.
The decennial census absolutely needs to be a turn-key operation for the tens of thousands of local recruiters and trainers. When you have an organization that expands from 20,000 people to nearly a million for the span of a few months, you simply can't demand that they "Just hire smarter people!". People with good technical skills and no other job/commitment just don't exist in those numbers.
If judges and prosecutors are going to use people's MySpace, Facebook, and Google search results against them and claim, "Hey, it's a public record!" then they shouldn't be surprised or outraged by this. The whole trend of using publicly available online data to snoop on people is a two way street.
I fear that more likely this will help maintain the status quo in November.
Most voters in this country are in fact moralizing holier-than-thou types who would like nothing more than to tell you how you can and can't spend your own money, in addition to micromanaging every other aspect of your life. Congress is only too happy to do their bidding.
I believe there is some known problem with the design of power supplies where if you leave them plugged in, there is a certain amount of leakage. Standby isn't even the issue- most appliances use small amounts of power just by being plugged in.
I loved VG&CE. They had all kinds of stuff that you'd never see in a gaming magazine today. They even reviewed fanzines. The broad focus on all consoles and computers kept them from becoming a complete marketing tool for a particular system as so many rags are today. At one time you'd see reviews of SNES, PC, and C-64 games in the same issue. I loved reading this mag when I was like 11 years old and noticed how different it was from EGM, GamePro and other "little kid" oriented mags of the day. Before the web took off, VG&CE felt like a true community of gamers. You could just tell that the writers were honestly gamers and not trying to be anything else.
I think a large part of their success was the fact that they were owned by Larry Flynt/Hustler who just honestly know what their audience wants and how to deliver it with a minimum of BS.
They already knew Iraq had sarin and other ancient pre-1991 WMD's because the US gave Saddam these weapons. A certain photograph of Rumsfeld and Saddam shaking hands comes to mind. There was a concerted effort a couple of weeks ago by Republicans in Congress to promote these ancient and non-functional weapons as "OMG the WMD's! Take that liberals!!"
NASA already has an extremely well-tested and effective vehicle. The Space Shuttle is a weak and complex design that replaced a great and simple design.
For less than $500 million NASA could replace the Apollo program 1960's computers (on board and ground control) and develop a new hatch to allow the Apollo command module to connect to the Space Station. Beyond that, just mass produce Saturn 5's and Command/Lander modules.
This new competition is a Feel Good(TM) program that hands out money to the contractors, when NASA has already done the job.
Over the past 30 years they've gone from a monolithic corporate/government agency that owns your phone, line, and soul to a decentralized oligarchy that owns your phone, line, and soul... back to a umm... hrrmmm..
Your problem is lack of intensity. When you lift you have to go to failure each set and drop your weight about 20%, then go to failure again. Make sure to take in enough protein each day, you want about (body weight in lbs * 1.5) grams of protein each day. And don't forget to take a multivitamin each day to get essential nutrients. The key is to LIFT BIG, EAT BIG, and SLEEP BIG.
A lot of people want to be body builders, but they dont want to lift no heavy ass weight.
I remember beating Pitfall II on my Tandy CoCo 2, and thinking it was a glitch when I got back to the first screen, and as soon as I touched Quickclaw, Harry started jumping in place endlessly. I was pissed that I'd played that long and now there was a glitch and I had to restart. After this happened a few more times I realized that I'd actually beaten the game but there was just a really crappy ending. If it had just said "you win" in block letters or something as Harry jumped it would have been a lot better. To this day I'm not 100% sure that I actually beat the game. Maybe the other versions of Pitfall II had a better ending.
I'm tired of hearing from companies that "the data are only being analyzed in aggregate". It would be a one-line code change to also include a personal ID with the viewing patterns. The problem is that they built the system that would so effectively violate privacy in the first place.
Over all the years that PVR's will continue to exist, it is inevitible that some PVR company will be strapped for cash and decide to start selling individual profiles to marketers.
If you can avoid it, don't even consider working a low-wage job that has nothing to do with your major. It's incredibly shortsighted to sell your time to Walmart or someone for a zero-skill-building low-wage job. Take the loan and pay for college after your earning power has increased exponentially, instead of before.
Instead of wasting time waiting tables or stocking shelves, you could be studying or building useful skills that will lead to a CAREER, not just a job. Tons of people fall into the trap of sacrificing their time and energy for $8/hour now, rather than actually doing what they came to college to do, so they can get out and make $50 - $100/hour.
When I had SBC/Ameritech 1.5M/256k DSL my experience was that they didn't care what I was doing. I was a longtime customer and was still paying $60 every month when I could long ago have signed a 12 month contract at $30/month for the same service.
I ran servers, shared files constantly, and generally engaged in every activity that an ISP hates. I did my best to keep my 1.5M/256k saturated at all times, and never heard a word of complaint from them.
The reason? I was paying over $100/month for DSL, phone service, and tons of caller ID and telemarketer-blocking features. I'm sure that my upstream/downstream usage raised red flags, but someone realized that they were making over $50/month in 'pork' services such as caller ID, and my overpaying by not signing an annual contract. Without a contract, they also realized that I wouldn't hesitate to walk if they challenged me.
I could probably have gotten the same results by signing up for business class service at a higher price. If your ISP is giving you trouble about your bandwidth utilization, ask them if the problem would go away if you switched to (more expensive) business-class service or bought some extra services.
...and if you really want to read the book for free there is a *legal* way to do it. Just go to the local library and check it out
So the way to reduce software piracy is to make more software available at libraries. There would still be problems of people copying CD's and leaving software installed after they return the library copy, but is this any different than a person checking out a "Teach Yourself Java" book from the library and leaving the knowledge installed on their neurons after returning the book?
Since thousands of/.'ers and WSJ'ers have now read about this phone. I wouldn't be surprised if this "60 day campaign" is over before the first "tourists" ask someone to take their picture.
Would you support preventing Microsoft from using uncompetitive tactics to dominate the video game/set-top box/TV based internet market, even if it meant that a foreign company like Sony would take control of that industry?
Aside from obvious privacy concerns with user registration and Napster working together with record companies, the file base will shrink significantly. People are deluding themselves if they think paying $4.95 a month will let them keep using Napster as it is now.
Napster's main strength is its huge user and file base. Even if you're willing to pay $4.95 a month, I'd guess 90% of Napster users aren't. This means that finding anything obscure or non-mainstream will be a LOT harder, since 90% of the file sharers have left(and hopefully migrated to Gnutella!)
Without the huge user base and diversity of files they provide, searching for anything other than a radio-played single will be futile. This of course favors the major record companies and media conglomerates, which I doubt BMG would mind one bit... The question is how long before they institute a per-song charge? They already have some sort of automated credit card billing system to collect your $4.95 each month.
A more important question is, will anyone care, or will we all have left BMG/Napster in the dust and be sharing the love through gnutella, MX, opennap, or whatever?
The problem with rating systems like this is that the ESRB or MPAA is making the decisions, not the parents. The ESRB system is just an arbitrary age limit-it doesn't help parents make decisions. If parents depend on corporations to raise their kids, and the corporations depend on the ESRB, where it the accountability?
Under the current system the anonymous members of the ESRB are deciding what is appropriate for consumption. Why should parents trust the religious/political biases of this faceless group rather than evaluating the material for themselves?
Parents are far better judges than the ESRB, because they can take their child's unique level of maturity and experience into account. Rating systems are inherently bad because they encourage this type of corporate censorship. Just imagine where we would be if we (gasp) had to evaluate each piece of media based on merit, and make our own decisions, rather than trusting our "friends" at the ESRB to raise our kids.
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I don't really get why so many people see this as a problem. They aren't collecting those data just for the hell of it. For all the problems people have with government spending and waste, I don't see how using statistical methods and sound research to make decisions with billions of dollars at stake is a bad thing.
Are governments just supposed to throw darts at a board when deciding where and when to invest resources now? In reality, they're damned if they do and damned if they don't. If they make an effort to gain solid information and make intelligent decisions, they're branded as Big Brother. If they just spend money randomly they're labeled incompetent and lazy bureaucrats. For the cost of 2-3 more days in Iraq I'd say making sure the census gets done right is a damned good investment.
I could buy that argument if it were possible to recruit, train, and manage 800,000+ people who have decent technical skills for a low paying, short term job. Keep in mind that that most non-response follow-up enumerators work for 2-3 months tops, make around $12/hour, are part-time, and have no particular interest in data integrity or security.
The decennial census absolutely needs to be a turn-key operation for the tens of thousands of local recruiters and trainers. When you have an organization that expands from 20,000 people to nearly a million for the span of a few months, you simply can't demand that they "Just hire smarter people!". People with good technical skills and no other job/commitment just don't exist in those numbers.
If judges and prosecutors are going to use people's MySpace, Facebook, and Google search results against them and claim, "Hey, it's a public record!" then they shouldn't be surprised or outraged by this. The whole trend of using publicly available online data to snoop on people is a two way street.
I fear that more likely this will help maintain the status quo in November.
Most voters in this country are in fact moralizing holier-than-thou types who would like nothing more than to tell you how you can and can't spend your own money, in addition to micromanaging every other aspect of your life. Congress is only too happy to do their bidding.
I believe there is some known problem with the design of power supplies where if you leave them plugged in, there is a certain amount of leakage. Standby isn't even the issue- most appliances use small amounts of power just by being plugged in.
I loved VG&CE. They had all kinds of stuff that you'd never see in a gaming magazine today. They even reviewed fanzines. The broad focus on all consoles and computers kept them from becoming a complete marketing tool for a particular system as so many rags are today. At one time you'd see reviews of SNES, PC, and C-64 games in the same issue. I loved reading this mag when I was like 11 years old and noticed how different it was from EGM, GamePro and other "little kid" oriented mags of the day. Before the web took off, VG&CE felt like a true community of gamers. You could just tell that the writers were honestly gamers and not trying to be anything else.
I think a large part of their success was the fact that they were owned by Larry Flynt/Hustler who just honestly know what their audience wants and how to deliver it with a minimum of BS.
>What do you think about this latest in a long line of PSP ads of questionable taste?
I think it worked. We are discussing the PSP now and talking about an ad most people here wouldn't know about if it weren't so 'controversial'.
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They already knew Iraq had sarin and other ancient pre-1991 WMD's because the US gave Saddam these weapons. A certain photograph of Rumsfeld and Saddam shaking hands comes to mind. There was a concerted effort a couple of weeks ago by Republicans in Congress to promote these ancient and non-functional weapons as "OMG the WMD's! Take that liberals!!"
NASA already has an extremely well-tested and effective vehicle. The Space Shuttle is a weak and complex design that replaced a great and simple design.
For less than $500 million NASA could replace the Apollo program 1960's computers (on board and ground control) and develop a new hatch to allow the Apollo command module to connect to the Space Station. Beyond that, just mass produce Saturn 5's and Command/Lander modules.
This new competition is a Feel Good(TM) program that hands out money to the contractors, when NASA has already done the job.
Over the past 30 years they've gone from a monolithic corporate/government agency that owns your phone, line, and soul to a decentralized oligarchy that owns your phone, line, and soul... back to a umm... hrrmmm..
Your problem is lack of intensity. When you lift you have to go to failure each set and drop your weight about 20%, then go to failure again. Make sure to take in enough protein each day, you want about (body weight in lbs * 1.5) grams of protein each day. And don't forget to take a multivitamin each day to get essential nutrients. The key is to LIFT BIG, EAT BIG, and SLEEP BIG.
A lot of people want to be body builders, but they dont want to lift no heavy ass weight.
I remember beating Pitfall II on my Tandy CoCo 2, and thinking it was a glitch when I got back to the first screen, and as soon as I touched Quickclaw, Harry started jumping in place endlessly. I was pissed that I'd played that long and now there was a glitch and I had to restart. After this happened a few more times I realized that I'd actually beaten the game but there was just a really crappy ending. If it had just said "you win" in block letters or something as Harry jumped it would have been a lot better. To this day I'm not 100% sure that I actually beat the game. Maybe the other versions of Pitfall II had a better ending.
open source voting machines elect you!!
I'm tired of hearing from companies that "the data are only being analyzed in aggregate". It would be a one-line code change to also include a personal ID with the viewing patterns. The problem is that they built the system that would so effectively violate privacy in the first place.
Over all the years that PVR's will continue to exist, it is inevitible that some PVR company will be strapped for cash and decide to start selling individual profiles to marketers.
If you can avoid it, don't even consider working a low-wage job that has nothing to do with your major. It's incredibly shortsighted to sell your time to Walmart or someone for a zero-skill-building low-wage job. Take the loan and pay for college after your earning power has increased exponentially, instead of before.
Instead of wasting time waiting tables or stocking shelves, you could be studying or building useful skills that will lead to a CAREER, not just a job. Tons of people fall into the trap of sacrificing their time and energy for $8/hour now, rather than actually doing what they came to college to do, so they can get out and make $50 - $100/hour.
When I had SBC/Ameritech 1.5M/256k DSL my experience was that they didn't care what I was doing. I was a longtime customer and was still paying $60 every month when I could long ago have signed a 12 month contract at $30/month for the same service.
I ran servers, shared files constantly, and generally engaged in every activity that an ISP hates. I did my best to keep my 1.5M/256k saturated at all times, and never heard a word of complaint from them.
The reason? I was paying over $100/month for DSL, phone service, and tons of caller ID and telemarketer-blocking features. I'm sure that my upstream/downstream usage raised red flags, but someone realized that they were making over $50/month in 'pork' services such as caller ID, and my overpaying by not signing an annual contract. Without a contract, they also realized that I wouldn't hesitate to walk if they challenged me.
I could probably have gotten the same results by signing up for business class service at a higher price. If your ISP is giving you trouble about your bandwidth utilization, ask them if the problem would go away if you switched to (more expensive) business-class service or bought some extra services.
...and if you really want to read the book for free there is a *legal* way to do it. Just go to the local library and check it out
So the way to reduce software piracy is to make more software available at libraries. There would still be problems of people copying CD's and leaving software installed after they return the library copy, but is this any different than a person checking out a "Teach Yourself Java" book from the library and leaving the knowledge installed on their neurons after returning the book?
Since thousands of /.'ers and WSJ'ers have now read about this phone. I wouldn't be surprised if this "60 day campaign" is over before the first "tourists" ask someone to take their picture.
Would you support preventing Microsoft from using uncompetitive tactics to dominate the video game/set-top box/TV based internet market, even if it meant that a foreign company like Sony would take control of that industry?
Better yet, imagine a Beowulf cluster of auto-moderation schemes to -1 all those cluster-mentioning posts.
Aside from obvious privacy concerns with user registration and Napster working together with record companies, the file base will shrink significantly. People are deluding themselves if they think paying $4.95 a month will let them keep using Napster as it is now.
Napster's main strength is its huge user and file base. Even if you're willing to pay $4.95 a month, I'd guess 90% of Napster users aren't. This means that finding anything obscure or non-mainstream will be a LOT harder, since 90% of the file sharers have left(and hopefully migrated to Gnutella!)
Without the huge user base and diversity of files they provide, searching for anything other than a radio-played single will be futile. This of course favors the major record companies and media conglomerates, which I doubt BMG would mind one bit... The question is how long before they institute a per-song charge? They already have some sort of automated credit card billing system to collect your $4.95 each month.
A more important question is, will anyone care, or will we all have left BMG/Napster in the dust and be sharing the love through gnutella, MX, opennap, or whatever?
The problem with rating systems like this is that the ESRB or MPAA is making the decisions, not the parents. The ESRB system is just an arbitrary age limit-it doesn't help parents make decisions. If parents depend on corporations to raise their kids, and the corporations depend on the ESRB, where it the accountability? Under the current system the anonymous members of the ESRB are deciding what is appropriate for consumption. Why should parents trust the religious/political biases of this faceless group rather than evaluating the material for themselves? Parents are far better judges than the ESRB, because they can take their child's unique level of maturity and experience into account. Rating systems are inherently bad because they encourage this type of corporate censorship. Just imagine where we would be if we (gasp) had to evaluate each piece of media based on merit, and make our own decisions, rather than trusting our "friends" at the ESRB to raise our kids.