I can remember paying $300 for 4 MB of RAM once. I needed to upgrade for 4 MB to 8 MB so my slackware 3.0 would run better. Then Windows 95 came out later that year with bigger RAM requirements for your basic Wintel box. RAM prices fell through the floor. Sure, computer parts prices are always going down, but the drop in RAM prices was especially steep (I can remember for obvious reasons;-) and this was pretty much driven by increase demand.
I will give that a try. BTW, the Verizon guy at the VZW store said that my 3 Mbs product was the highest speed they offered at my location, even though I had previously gotten mail offers to increase to 7 Mbs. And again, I am only 2 blocks from the CO.
I was in a VZW store and was surprised about a broken cell phone when a salesman came up to talk to me about home internet (surprised since I know VZW is only half owned by Verizon). He actually wanted to know if I was interested in FIOS, but I told him I knew it wasn't offered in my neighborhood.
I then proceeded to tell them the tale about my Verizon DSL service. I am only two blocks from the CO (short copper loop), and have had it for several years (the nerd that I am, before that I had ISDN as it was fastest available at that time). Speed was great. I got letters in the mail asking if I wanted to bump my service up to 7 Mbs from the 3 I had subscribed to, but I didn't bite since I never seemed to be waiting on anything unless I was DL'ing a new Ubuntu distro or something (I don't watch much video or TV).
Recently, even listening to 128 kbs internet radio streams started pausing to buffer. Sometimes I get 1 Mbs in verizon's speed test. I spent an hour with an Indian fellow on the phone for tech support and he said he at the end he would have to escalate it and nothing ever happened.
After telling this tale of woe to the guy in the VZW store, I was floored when he then proceeded to try to sell me on either a mobile hotspot (!!! sure, I'll never need more than a gig or two a month, right....) or, get this, to sign up with a cable company.
Friggin' unbelievable. Meanwhile, still stuck with a ~1 Mbs DSL connection that used to be very very fast. Something fishy is going on here.
Yes, that's my point. We actually have a car that can control the old i-things through the car stereo (a Hyundai Sonata). However, with a slashdot ID of 15368, I need to use the linux-based Android devices you insensitive clod!
But seriously, I believe the new i-things don't work with the car controls since the lightning connector doesn't support the telnet/ssh access that the old connector allowed, even with an adaptor. And furthermore, I think even if you had such a car and an old i-thing, most people still just prefer to point and click the i-thing.
There is no question that texting while driving is about as stupid a thing you could possible imagine doing (I'd compare it to going out and randomly firing a gun outside - probably won't kill anyone but you could easily)
But what has me scratching my head is the wording, which says:
- - What are the laws on cell phone use, texting or sending email while you operate a vehicle in NYS?
Under New York State law you cannot use a hand-held mobile telephone or send a text or an email while you drive. If you use a hand-held mobile telephone while you drive, except to call 911 or to contact medical, fire or police personnel about an emergency, or use a device to text or send email, you can receive a traffic ticket and pay a maximum fine of $100 and mandatory surcharges and fees of up to $85.
In 2013, several changes are being made to the penalties for these violations as described below.
Increased Driver Violation Points
For offenses committed between October 5, 2011 and May 31, 2013, this violation carries driver violation points.
For offenses committed on or after June 1, 2013, this violation carries five driver violation points.
- -
By my reading, this says you can't even use your cell phone to play music through bluetooth or use google maps navigation. Or does "use a hand-held mobile telephone" mean "make a phone call". I suppose it may depend on the mood of the cop who pulls you over?
Yeah, I was reading this in the dead-trees paper over breakfast this morning and as soon as I got to the part about GPS being a part of the internet I stopped, figuring this guy obviously had no clue what he was talking about.
No, I didn't RTFA, but the summary says that judge said that unpaid internships are *OK*. You can have them. They aren't getting outlawed. But the work has to be educational; the interns have to get real experience out of it.
The only are required to pay wages if the interns are doing things like fetching coffee and nothing more.
I'd say this is pretty strong evidence he does. This should be both unconstitutional and illegal by all publicly known laws. If it's legal by secret laws that's pretty much the definition of ruling by fiat.
People are missing the point here. This is in fact legal under the Patriot Act. Unlike Bush's surveillance, this administration actually went through the FISA courts as required by the Patriot Act. It is the passage, and then subsequent renewal of the Patriot Act that is the problem. This is done by congress.
If the administration didn't use the powers available under the Patriot Act then they would get screwed if and when there was another terrorist attack. Look at all the shit they got about the Boston bombing, that the FBI and everyone should have done even more surveillance and investigation of the Tsarnaevs
Look, I'm not defending this information gathering. It really shouldn't happen. But the solution is to repeal or amend the Patriot Act, not complain that it is being used.
It is pretty open. The codes are available online, but they are hard to print from there (not that you would want to print all that - cheaper to buy). For example: http://publicecodes.cyberregs.com/st/index.htm
As for "very high change costs" for not doing it right, in most places (note, I am from US), you have to get your plans approved first, and inspected during construction which should minimize that. Some people complain about that (big government, etc. etc.), but I think it is a good thing. With approved plans and inspections, you shouldn't have much to change later.
To get your plans approved, you just have to make sure it follows the prescriptive requirements of the codes. If you want to do something other than is prescribed in the codes, then you need a PE or architect to stamp it. But for most stuff, you can design just by the codes and thus you don't have to pay the professional, and you still get a good building. Yes, there's a lots of reading to be done in the codes, but if you are going to be spending tens of thousands of dollars or more to build a house, it isn't really a lot of reading in perspective.
The times does do their own investigation. That's what the public editor does. The public editors have limited time positions so they have less incentive to suck up, and instead be as impartial as practical. For example, the public editor was critical of the Times for following through with bringing on the guy from BBC as the new CEO after the Saville tragedy.
Some people like to work. My step-grandpa is over 90 years old and he till does yard work in yard with covered in trees, takes care of chickens, and plants a garden. Up until a few years ago, he had a lot that he farmed corn on with his tractor.
In other words, he is retired.
I think you just proved the other guy's point. Retirement doesn't mean sitting on your ass watching TV.
While yes, technically this is about printing (minting) new money, it is not just a "we'll print more money and pay our bills with that" approach. That would just lead to inflation
Rather, everyone already knows that the federal budget is running a deficit. Some people freak out about it, others say we can handle it by getting spending down and revenue up. Doesn't matter. (note, we've been running deficits for most of the last 100 years; the total debt only grows moderately if at all - until the great recession - because we constantly are paying it off as well. Servicing the debt had been about 14% of federal outlays as recently as the the 90s to pay off Reagan's deficits, but is now about 7% of federal outlays)
What does matter is that sometime within the next month, the credit limit that congress imposed on itself will be hit and if it is not raised then US defaults on its debt, and its credit rating drops like the last time the republicans pulled this trick.
Depositing the big coin only says that OK, we are not at the limit, we are now one-coin's-worth below it. Nothing changes after said deposit just as nothing changes when congress eventually passes an increase in the debt ceiling.
The government still has the same spending obligations and the same revenue to (not quite) pay for it. All depositing the coin would do would to forgo the stupid debt limit debates that do nothing but cause political squabbles.
Payroll taxes were cut from 6% to 4%, back in '09 I think. They're due to expire next year. The Bush tax cuts were extended but they've been in place since before Obama took office.
Among other things, the mix of tax cuts includes a refundable credit of up to $400 per individual and $800 for married couples; a temporary increase of the earned income tax credit for disadvantaged families; and an extension of a program that allows businesses to recover the costs of capital expenditures faster than usual.
Our company had open enrollment for our medical benefits this month. For the first time in awhile, the costs went up SIGNIFICANTLY.
Irrelevant if it's lowered in one area and raised in another (and, so far, I don't see any examples of my taxes being any lower whatsoever in the last few years).
Well guess what. We had our open enrollment a few weeks ago too. Guess how much mine went up? 4%. And if you include the employer paid portion, overall it's up 6%. That's about on par with previous years. So if Obamacare is responsible for these SIGNIFICANT increases, how come I'm not seeing them? I'll give you the answer. It's one of 2 things. Either your employer/insurer is using Obamacare as a convenient excuse to take a piss on you and jack up rates, or your previous "coverage" was piss poor and now you've actually got to pay a little more to get coverage that actually covers stuff. The former is not the fault of Obamacare. The latter is, but I have a hard time seeing that as a bad thing.
Where I work (a very large national engineering firm), they made it clear that the only part of the increase in rates this year attributable to Obamacare was for some increased women's preventive services (yes, including contraception). There really aren't that many other aspects of Obamacare that impinge on employer-provided health insurance (requiring coverage for dependents up to 26 y.o. is another - that went into effect last year). That was how Obamacare was designed - it had minimal impact on people who are already getting their insurance through their employers. In fact, not going for a single payer system is why it is so unpopular among liberals.
Now there may be more next year but blaming an increase this year on Obamacare is nonsense. Premiums went up where I work, but that was almost entirely attributable to increase use of medical services over the last year, requiring an increase in premiums.
And as for the GP's claim of no lower taxes over the last few years, it must be great making over $250K a year. (Federal) taxes for everyone else when down.
Actually, he said only his magenta cartridge was empty - his black cartridge had ink, but the HP printer refused to print because there was one empty cartridge. Note, the PDF was B/W.
That doesn't rain on his parade at all. He would be the first to point out that anyone can take data points and make forecasts from them. He mentions other projection outfits in his posts quite frequently in fact.
Silver's methodology (if there is one) is that he has a rather complicated weighting and averaging system that combines stats from a whole history of polls, and how it works is not entirely transparent.
The UN has no interest in monitoring the US elections. The Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) has indicated their intention to but the OSCE is not affiliated with the UN.
I think the UN has been brought into that because they are seen as the boogeyman among certain groups of people.
Not saying they shouldn't stay 100 feet from the poling places like everyone else, but just trying to clear up that confusion.
Slashdot Mirror
Are you one of the naive idiots that believes calling someone a "naive idiot" helps bring them around to your point of view?
I can remember paying $300 for 4 MB of RAM once. I needed to upgrade for 4 MB to 8 MB so my slackware 3.0 would run better. Then Windows 95 came out later that year with bigger RAM requirements for your basic Wintel box. RAM prices fell through the floor. Sure, computer parts prices are always going down, but the drop in RAM prices was especially steep (I can remember for obvious reasons ;-) and this was pretty much driven by increase demand.
Further discussion:
http://msgboard.snopes.com/message/ultimatebb.php?/ubb/get_topic/f/36/t/000797.html
I will give that a try. BTW, the Verizon guy at the VZW store said that my 3 Mbs product was the highest speed they offered at my location, even though I had previously gotten mail offers to increase to 7 Mbs. And again, I am only 2 blocks from the CO.
This.
I was in a VZW store and was surprised about a broken cell phone when a salesman came up to talk to me about home internet (surprised since I know VZW is only half owned by Verizon). He actually wanted to know if I was interested in FIOS, but I told him I knew it wasn't offered in my neighborhood.
I then proceeded to tell them the tale about my Verizon DSL service. I am only two blocks from the CO (short copper loop), and have had it for several years (the nerd that I am, before that I had ISDN as it was fastest available at that time). Speed was great. I got letters in the mail asking if I wanted to bump my service up to 7 Mbs from the 3 I had subscribed to, but I didn't bite since I never seemed to be waiting on anything unless I was DL'ing a new Ubuntu distro or something (I don't watch much video or TV).
Recently, even listening to 128 kbs internet radio streams started pausing to buffer. Sometimes I get 1 Mbs in verizon's speed test. I spent an hour with an Indian fellow on the phone for tech support and he said he at the end he would have to escalate it and nothing ever happened.
After telling this tale of woe to the guy in the VZW store, I was floored when he then proceeded to try to sell me on either a mobile hotspot (!!! sure, I'll never need more than a gig or two a month, right....) or, get this, to sign up with a cable company.
Friggin' unbelievable. Meanwhile, still stuck with a ~1 Mbs DSL connection that used to be very very fast. Something fishy is going on here.
you have to be using it in your hands
Yes, that's my point. We actually have a car that can control the old i-things through the car stereo (a Hyundai Sonata). However, with a slashdot ID of 15368, I need to use the linux-based Android devices you insensitive clod!
But seriously, I believe the new i-things don't work with the car controls since the lightning connector doesn't support the telnet/ssh access that the old connector allowed, even with an adaptor. And furthermore, I think even if you had such a car and an old i-thing, most people still just prefer to point and click the i-thing.
To that end I am glad to hear about NY's increased penalties for texting while driving.
But what has me scratching my head is the wording, which says:
- -
What are the laws on cell phone use, texting or sending email while you operate a vehicle in NYS?
Under New York State law you cannot use a hand-held mobile telephone or send a text or an email while you drive. If you use a hand-held mobile telephone while you drive, except to call 911 or to contact medical, fire or police personnel about an emergency, or use a device to text or send email, you can receive a traffic ticket and pay a maximum fine of $100 and mandatory surcharges and fees of up to $85.
In 2013, several changes are being made to the penalties for these violations as described below.
Increased Driver Violation Points
- -
By my reading, this says you can't even use your cell phone to play music through bluetooth or use google maps navigation. Or does "use a hand-held mobile telephone" mean "make a phone call". I suppose it may depend on the mood of the cop who pulls you over?
What do you think?
Yeah, I was reading this in the dead-trees paper over breakfast this morning and as soon as I got to the part about GPS being a part of the internet I stopped, figuring this guy obviously had no clue what he was talking about.
Or are you saying that IT staff / firemen / doctors should never go to movies?
Yes. My wife is a doctor and she doesn't go to the movies when she is on call for exactly this reason!
Yes, this is exactly the point.
No, I didn't RTFA, but the summary says that judge said that unpaid internships are *OK*. You can have them. They aren't getting outlawed. But the work has to be educational; the interns have to get real experience out of it.
The only are required to pay wages if the interns are doing things like fetching coffee and nothing more.
Mod this guy up!
I'd say this is pretty strong evidence he does. This should be both unconstitutional and illegal by all publicly known laws. If it's legal by secret laws that's pretty much the definition of ruling by fiat.
People are missing the point here. This is in fact legal under the Patriot Act. Unlike Bush's surveillance, this administration actually went through the FISA courts as required by the Patriot Act. It is the passage, and then subsequent renewal of the Patriot Act that is the problem. This is done by congress.
If the administration didn't use the powers available under the Patriot Act then they would get screwed if and when there was another terrorist attack. Look at all the shit they got about the Boston bombing, that the FBI and everyone should have done even more surveillance and investigation of the Tsarnaevs
Look, I'm not defending this information gathering. It really shouldn't happen. But the solution is to repeal or amend the Patriot Act, not complain that it is being used.
You don't need it stamped if the plans are 100% in accordance with prescriptive code.
It is pretty open. The codes are available online, but they are hard to print from there (not that you would want to print all that - cheaper to buy). For example: http://publicecodes.cyberregs.com/st/index.htm
;-) Very high signal to noise, and many very knowledgeable people. If a nerd is someone who "spends inordinate amounts of time on unpopular, obscure, or non-mainstream activities, which are generally highly technical", then that site is pretty much the news for nerds for self-builders.
As for "very high change costs" for not doing it right, in most places (note, I am from US), you have to get your plans approved first, and inspected during construction which should minimize that. Some people complain about that (big government, etc. etc.), but I think it is a good thing. With approved plans and inspections, you shouldn't have much to change later.
To get your plans approved, you just have to make sure it follows the prescriptive requirements of the codes. If you want to do something other than is prescribed in the codes, then you need a PE or architect to stamp it. But for most stuff, you can design just by the codes and thus you don't have to pay the professional, and you still get a good building. Yes, there's a lots of reading to be done in the codes, but if you are going to be spending tens of thousands of dollars or more to build a house, it isn't really a lot of reading in perspective.
If you want to build your own house, I suggest hanging out and reading many of the posts over at the Country Plans Small Home Design/Build Forum. I spend as much time there as on slashdot
To work if you can. Otherwise just ride a bike. Once you start, you will get so hooked that it will become your priority. Trust me on this one.
The times does do their own investigation. That's what the public editor does. The public editors have limited time positions so they have less incentive to suck up, and instead be as impartial as practical. For example, the public editor was critical of the Times for following through with bringing on the guy from BBC as the new CEO after the Saville tragedy.
Here's her *first* article on this issue:
http://publiceditor.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/02/14/conflicting-assertions-over-an-electric-car-test-drive/
She says it won't be the last.
Some people like to work. My step-grandpa is over 90 years old and he till does yard work in yard with covered in trees, takes care of chickens, and plants a garden. Up until a few years ago, he had a lot that he farmed corn on with his tractor.
In other words, he is retired.
I think you just proved the other guy's point. Retirement doesn't mean sitting on your ass watching TV.
While yes, technically this is about printing (minting) new money, it is not just a "we'll print more money and pay our bills with that" approach. That would just lead to inflation
Rather, everyone already knows that the federal budget is running a deficit. Some people freak out about it, others say we can handle it by getting spending down and revenue up. Doesn't matter. (note, we've been running deficits for most of the last 100 years; the total debt only grows moderately if at all - until the great recession - because we constantly are paying it off as well. Servicing the debt had been about 14% of federal outlays as recently as the the 90s to pay off Reagan's deficits, but is now about 7% of federal outlays)
What does matter is that sometime within the next month, the credit limit that congress imposed on itself will be hit and if it is not raised then US defaults on its debt, and its credit rating drops like the last time the republicans pulled this trick.
Depositing the big coin only says that OK, we are not at the limit, we are now one-coin's-worth below it. Nothing changes after said deposit just as nothing changes when congress eventually passes an increase in the debt ceiling. The government still has the same spending obligations and the same revenue to (not quite) pay for it. All depositing the coin would do would to forgo the stupid debt limit debates that do nothing but cause political squabbles.
Payroll taxes were cut from 6% to 4%, back in '09 I think. They're due to expire next year. The Bush tax cuts were extended but they've been in place since before Obama took office.
About 30% of Obama's stimulus bill was tax cuts.. From the linked page:
Among other things, the mix of tax cuts includes a refundable credit of up to $400 per individual and $800 for married couples; a temporary increase of the earned income tax credit for disadvantaged families; and an extension of a program that allows businesses to recover the costs of capital expenditures faster than usual.
Our company had open enrollment for our medical benefits this month. For the first time in awhile, the costs went up SIGNIFICANTLY.
Irrelevant if it's lowered in one area and raised in another (and, so far, I don't see any examples of my taxes being any lower whatsoever in the last few years).
Well guess what. We had our open enrollment a few weeks ago too. Guess how much mine went up? 4%. And if you include the employer paid portion, overall it's up 6%. That's about on par with previous years. So if Obamacare is responsible for these SIGNIFICANT increases, how come I'm not seeing them? I'll give you the answer. It's one of 2 things. Either your employer/insurer is using Obamacare as a convenient excuse to take a piss on you and jack up rates, or your previous "coverage" was piss poor and now you've actually got to pay a little more to get coverage that actually covers stuff. The former is not the fault of Obamacare. The latter is, but I have a hard time seeing that as a bad thing.
Where I work (a very large national engineering firm), they made it clear that the only part of the increase in rates this year attributable to Obamacare was for some increased women's preventive services (yes, including contraception). There really aren't that many other aspects of Obamacare that impinge on employer-provided health insurance (requiring coverage for dependents up to 26 y.o. is another - that went into effect last year). That was how Obamacare was designed - it had minimal impact on people who are already getting their insurance through their employers. In fact, not going for a single payer system is why it is so unpopular among liberals.
Now there may be more next year but blaming an increase this year on Obamacare is nonsense. Premiums went up where I work, but that was almost entirely attributable to increase use of medical services over the last year, requiring an increase in premiums.
And as for the GP's claim of no lower taxes over the last few years, it must be great making over $250K a year. (Federal) taxes for everyone else when down.
What, this story has been up for a whole day so far and nobody has yet imagined a Beowolf cluster of these?
What's Slashdot coming to these days?
Political canvassing can not be restricted under anti-solicitation rules.
Random google search reference: http://www.virginianewmajority.org/index.php/voter-resources/canvasser-rights
Actually, he said only his magenta cartridge was empty - his black cartridge had ink, but the HP printer refused to print because there was one empty cartridge. Note, the PDF was B/W.
That doesn't rain on his parade at all. He would be the first to point out that anyone can take data points and make forecasts from them. He mentions other projection outfits in his posts quite frequently in fact.
Silver's methodology (if there is one) is that he has a rather complicated weighting and averaging system that combines stats from a whole history of polls, and how it works is not entirely transparent.
True, not totally transparent enough for our open source fans, but he does describe his methodology in a fair amount of detail including how he calculates the "house effect" of various pollsters.
If the U.N. wants to monitor Texas elections
The UN has no interest in monitoring the US elections. The Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) has indicated their intention to but the OSCE is not affiliated with the UN.
I think the UN has been brought into that because they are seen as the boogeyman among certain groups of people.
Not saying they shouldn't stay 100 feet from the poling places like everyone else, but just trying to clear up that confusion.