Launching stuff into space isn't a "hacking problem", it is a physics problem.
The amount of energy that has to be imparted on 1lb of "stuff" to put it 400 miles up and traveling at 17,500 mph cannot be ignored.
It takes a huge volume and weight of fuel to make that happen. Chemical reactions are the problem, they just don't make enough energy per pound to make space travel all that useful.
One of the interesting things I've noticed is when I raise the subject with friends, the ones who are opposed almost always grew up east of the Mississippi, and are terrified that large-scale fraud will occur. There's a PhD dissertation for a sociologist or political scientist in there somewhere.
And what makes you think they are wrong?
You honestly trust the voting system as it stands? Really?
There's not enough developers to hire, so you have to resort to shady practises to hire them. My company hasn't had a single good legal candidate for our Java backend position apply in over two years, so we got creative.
Yes, but most of the tests in the US are a joke...
I never drove on the highway for my test, and maybe once during practice, when I was 15 years old.
The test was 15 min of showing I could start, stop, park, and drive at 35mph on a city street and that I knew what a stop sign was, a traffic light, and to stop for cops if they pulled you over.
As I recall, the whole thing took less than an hour including written test and driving test.
I'm now 40 years old and have never been tested since. That is absurd.
AEB technology is already showing benefits in the real world. Several studies, including a recent report from IIHS, show that AEB technology can reduce insurance injury claims by as much as 35 percent.
Could this technology hurt one person, somewhere, ever? Yes. But it will help far more than it hurts.
It is similar to airbags. Airbags have sometimes been a problem and actually hurt people by going off at the wrong time, but in total, they have saved FAR more lives than they have taken.
You fear the edge case while ignoring the majority of times when this would save someone from a crash. That is emotional reasoning, not sound logic based on facts.
There are valid criticisms to unnecessary complexity and change.
Perhaps, but in this case, not really...
AEB is good, not having it is bad, the numbers don't lie...
As a result, I prefer to have more control over a simpler device.
Sure, but that is an emotional feeling, not based on the facts. The fact is, cars with AEB have fewer crashes than those without AEB.
What you prefer, and what makes you safer, aren't always the same thing. And since you drive on the same roads as me, I'm thrilled this agreement has been made, it reduces the chance of being rearended by... someone like you.:)
Alleged drug dealers and mob bosses, but not convicted drug dealers and mob bosses. The rule of law is what separates a civil society from despotism.
^ This... it is perfectly reasonable to say that PayPal, Visa, etc. can't process payments for convicted criminals who were involved in illegal actives using such payment services...
But it is NOT reasonable to say they can't process payments for "alleged criminals" who haven't been convicted.
I'm sorry, did a court just make a completely reasonable ruling that makes total sense and is fair to all involved?
Gosh, what has this world come to?
If I call up my employee and say, "hey, I need you to go to XYZ customer's office and do ABC", then clearly from that point until they get back to where they were (home), they are "on the clock".
I honestly can't imagine doing it any other way, maybe I'm weird?
No, there is resistance to them because people are afraid of change, afraid of things they don't understand, and comfortable in their self-delusions.
I will admit that is true of me from time to time, so I'm not special or exempt from that.
But the facts are plain, such features do save lives, do reduce crashes, and are better for people's safety. That really can't be disputed, many studies have been done, several have been posted in this thread.
I've discovered this really useful web site called "The Google", it lets you type in a search term like "studies of the effectiveness of automatic braking systems", and it will show you what you're looking for. It's really cool!
What is shocking is that this is a tech site, and it is full of Luddites!
Why do you people keep trying to compare America only to developed nations? Have you looked at how America compares in education to other developed nations? It's at the bottom there too. Or what about childhood poverty and nutrition? Bottom. Overall standard of living? Bottom.
All sadly true...
But we have the coolest military around with 11 aircraft carriers, so we are great at the "drop bombs on other countries" game.
Part of that is because the standards to obtain a drivers licence in the US is a joke. Go to Germany and see how much time, money, and effort is required, then come here and show up with a pulse and get a licence. (more or less)
Wouldn't you rather run an OS that respects you, instead of exploiting you as described in the article?
No, I'd rather run an OS that runs my programs.
Today, that is Windows.
Rest assured, I get it, it would be nice if we had a real choice in desktop OS options. We really don't. But installing and putting up with the troubles of Linux won't change that.
As far as the minimum wage rise, I checked some sources and it looks like it would be good for the lower classes. Most of them are in jobs that would be worth the new minimum wage to their employer, so the income increase would greatly outweigh the job loss. (It's a tradeoff, and it looks to me like $15 is a better tradeoff than what we've got now). We don't want a situation in which somebody with a job isn't making enough to get off various welfare programs.
I have 2 problems with the min wage.
1. It says that the government can tell you what you must accept to do work, or you can't work at all.
2. It takes every job not worth X dollars and leaves it undone.
Example: I want my house painted. I estimate that it will take an average person 40 hours to paint my house. I'm willing to pay $400 in labor cost to have it painted. I find Bob, a guy who has some painting experience, but currently isn't working. "Hey Bob, would you like to come paint my house, I'll pay you $10/hr, 40 hours of work, to pain it". "Great" Bob says, I'll be right over.
This is a good thing, I have a painted house and Bob has a job for a week.
Now the Government comes along and says $15/hr is the new min wage. Bob no longer can sell his services for the price he chooses, the government has said $15/hr or nothing. But I don't want to pay $600 to paint my house. My choice now is to pay $600 legally, pay $400 under the table if Bob agrees, or not paint at all and Bob can stay on unemployment.
Why does the government get to tell Bob that he isn't allowed to price his labor as he sees fit?
---
My example before about McDonalds also wasn't very far off, they are working in test kitchens right now to figure out ways to run a location with fewer people. The job just isn't worth more money. Raising the min wage simply means more people will be unemployed. It doesn't actually increase the value of their work. It also raises prices, but that does take time so many people don't see the connection.
The other problem with min wage is it implies that it is an acceptable wage to pay. $7.25 an hour is indeed quite low. Perhaps I need to hire a 18 year old kid for 5 hours to move some boxes in my garage. Am I not allowed to hire them for $5/hr? For a kid in school, that strikes me as reasonable. Perhaps I need to hire a 28 year old to mow my lawn, now $5/hr sounds absurd.
Let the market set the wages, don't "endorse" a wage. Already most businesses pay over min wage because so few people will even work for it anymore. My local Starbucks starts people at $9/hr for part time work, for example, and full time gets more... These are still 18-20 year old kids, so the wages have been moving with the market.
Ordering it to $15/hr just puts pressure on Starbucks to install a robot in each location and reduce staff count by 1 or 2 people per shift.
As far as taxes go, I'd like most people who earn significantly more than I do to pay at least the same share of their income to the Feds as I do. It's not even close. I work for a living, and that's the most heavily taxed form of income in the US (it gets less taxed if you make significantly more than I do).
How dare you make a reasonable and non-attacking reply, this is the Interwebs darn it!:)
Actually, I agree with you... Capital gains and other fancy investment taxes shouldn't be lower than taxes on labor, so no issues there. Frankly, I think income tax in general is evil, it implies the state owns part of your labor, which it shouldn't. I do think you should tax consumption, but that is another can of worms (exceptions for basic food, clothing, etc.).
But since we're not likely to get rid of income taxes, I'll make this simple:
Personal Income Taxes: 20% income tax on all income earned, regardless of source (investments, labor, etc.) $20K per adult exemption, married or unmarried, doesn't matter. $5K per child exemption. A family of 4 would get $20K + $20K + $5K + $5K or $50K in income tax free, 20% paid on everything after that up to infinity. FICA taxes gone, those programs funded from general funds. No deductions for anything, not medical, not charity, not home, nothing.
Corporate Income Taxes: 5% of gross income from all sales in the USA, regardless of profit. Why? Because it is FAR, FAR too easy to hide profits. It isn't even just big companies doing this, little companies do it, small businesses do it when they lease the owner's personal car through the business and write it off their taxes. Example, Apple, Inc. did just over $30 billion in sales in the US last quarter, so for $30 billion in sales, they owe $1.5 billion in taxes.
Import Tax: 10% of the purchase price of all imported goods from anywhere. No exceptions. If you don't make it here, you can import it and pay 10% import tax. This is to compensate for the loss of jobs of offshoring. You can't tell companies to not offshore, but you can make it more expensive. I'm aware other nations might do the same to us in reverse, but frankly much of what we make, only we make. The cheap stuff already isn't made here, the good stuff, is still worth buying for 10% more.
Sales Tax: All state sales taxes are void. National sales tax of 10%, 7% goes to the state in which it was collected (to be further divided up as the state sees fit with the local city/county governments), 3% goes to the federal government. Same tax rate nationally. All products are now required to be advertised with sales tax included (which really makes it GST, but whatever).
Estate Tax: Gone, you should not tax money twice. That money was taxed when it was earned, you shouldn't tax it again just because someone dies. Besides, the really rich don't pay this anyway, using trusts and non-profits to shield it.
---
I have no doubt that you could find something wrong with the above... but whatever the faults, I have a hard time imagining it would be worse than what we have now. It would reduce the burden on everyone from CPAs to the IRS to small business owners to families just trying to figure out taxes every year.
If you make it much more complex, it turns into a 28,000 page tax code that no one understands.
Or in practice, does an end user have little to worry about when visiting sites that aren't bright-line infringers?
^ This... You can always come up with a fringe example, but lets be honest, it is people going to The Pirate Bay and downloading "The Hurt Locker" or "The Avengers" that have to worry.
I was primarily referring to Canonical Ltd., which maintains the Ubuntu operating system.
Later on you refer to binary incompatibility for proprietary applications among different distributions of X11/Linux. This is something that Valve has been trying to solve with Steam Runtime.
Keep in mind that Valve is also a private, for profit company. If they ever get a decent share of the OS market going, they'll end up in the same place MS is. Gabe isn't some angel on wings come to save us all, he is a person, like all other people, running a business.
My example with Skype is meant to show the problems with trying to offer something besides Windows. It isn't as simple as saying, "Install Linux", when even basic programs like Skype require a half dozen different versions, and maybe none of them run on Linux Mint (a version often suggested for new Linux users).
What happens if Intuit were to offer TurboTax in a Linux version? How do they support that? What versions and what binaries do they have to provide? What a mess.
It isn't just a matter of having Linux get above 2% desktop marketshare. It could be 10% tomorrow, but if that share is split among 10 different versions of Linux, you're going to be hard pressed to have more than 1 or 2 of them supported. Then everyone starts running the "supported one" and you end up with only a single choice again.
Slashdot Mirror
Launching stuff into space isn't a "hacking problem", it is a physics problem.
The amount of energy that has to be imparted on 1lb of "stuff" to put it 400 miles up and traveling at 17,500 mph cannot be ignored.
It takes a huge volume and weight of fuel to make that happen. Chemical reactions are the problem, they just don't make enough energy per pound to make space travel all that useful.
We won't have a real advance in rocket motors until we get over our collective fear of "OMG the nuclears!".
Chemical reactions do not provide nearly enough power to weight thrust to move in space at reasonable speeds.
One of the interesting things I've noticed is when I raise the subject with friends, the ones who are opposed almost always grew up east of the Mississippi, and are terrified that large-scale fraud will occur. There's a PhD dissertation for a sociologist or political scientist in there somewhere.
And what makes you think they are wrong?
You honestly trust the voting system as it stands? Really?
For people who have money, the US Healthcare system is one of the best in the world.
For people without money, it sucks.
Did Hell freeze over?
No, it didn't... Most Republicans are not the morons that many people think they are...
Just like most Democrats aren't the evil coming of the Commies that many people think they are...
Most people are moderate and reasonable people, only the really loud screamers on the extreme are the problem.
There's not enough developers to hire, so you have to resort to shady practises to hire them. My company hasn't had a single good legal candidate for our Java backend position apply in over two years, so we got creative.
Then you're not offering enough money...
Yes, but most of the tests in the US are a joke...
I never drove on the highway for my test, and maybe once during practice, when I was 15 years old.
The test was 15 min of showing I could start, stop, park, and drive at 35mph on a city street and that I knew what a stop sign was, a traffic light, and to stop for cops if they pulled you over.
As I recall, the whole thing took less than an hour including written test and driving test.
I'm now 40 years old and have never been tested since. That is absurd.
You fear complexity... but as I said, the numbers don't lie...
http://www.nhtsa.gov/About+NHT...
AEB technology is already showing benefits in the real world. Several studies, including a recent report from IIHS, show that AEB technology can reduce insurance injury claims by as much as 35 percent.
Could this technology hurt one person, somewhere, ever? Yes. But it will help far more than it hurts.
It is similar to airbags. Airbags have sometimes been a problem and actually hurt people by going off at the wrong time, but in total, they have saved FAR more lives than they have taken.
You fear the edge case while ignoring the majority of times when this would save someone from a crash. That is emotional reasoning, not sound logic based on facts.
There are valid criticisms to unnecessary complexity and change.
Perhaps, but in this case, not really...
AEB is good, not having it is bad, the numbers don't lie...
As a result, I prefer to have more control over a simpler device.
Sure, but that is an emotional feeling, not based on the facts. The fact is, cars with AEB have fewer crashes than those without AEB.
What you prefer, and what makes you safer, aren't always the same thing. And since you drive on the same roads as me, I'm thrilled this agreement has been made, it reduces the chance of being rearended by... someone like you. :)
Alleged drug dealers and mob bosses, but not convicted drug dealers and mob bosses. The rule of law is what separates a civil society from despotism.
^ This... it is perfectly reasonable to say that PayPal, Visa, etc. can't process payments for convicted criminals who were involved in illegal actives using such payment services...
But it is NOT reasonable to say they can't process payments for "alleged criminals" who haven't been convicted.
I'm sorry, did a court just make a completely reasonable ruling that makes total sense and is fair to all involved?
Gosh, what has this world come to?
If I call up my employee and say, "hey, I need you to go to XYZ customer's office and do ABC", then clearly from that point until they get back to where they were (home), they are "on the clock".
I honestly can't imagine doing it any other way, maybe I'm weird?
It is worse than that...
If he wasn't a spy before, maybe he'll become one now... If I were the Chinese, I'd be talking to him now...
If you treat your citizens like this, don't be shocked when they don't love their government in return.
No, there is resistance to them because people are afraid of change, afraid of things they don't understand, and comfortable in their self-delusions.
I will admit that is true of me from time to time, so I'm not special or exempt from that.
But the facts are plain, such features do save lives, do reduce crashes, and are better for people's safety. That really can't be disputed, many studies have been done, several have been posted in this thread.
I've discovered this really useful web site called "The Google", it lets you type in a search term like "studies of the effectiveness of automatic braking systems", and it will show you what you're looking for. It's really cool!
What is shocking is that this is a tech site, and it is full of Luddites!
When compared to SUVs that didnâ(TM)t have collision avoidance technology, Volvoâ(TM)s XC60 SUVs (equipped with City Safety) had:
33 percent fewer bodily injury claims
15 percent fewer property damage claims
20 percent fewer collision claims
And for Volvoâ(TM)s S60 midsize sedans, City Safety resulted in claims reductions of:
18 percent for bodily injury
16 percent for property damage
9 percent for collision
Why do you people keep trying to compare America only to developed nations? Have you looked at how America compares in education to other developed nations? It's at the bottom there too. Or what about childhood poverty and nutrition? Bottom. Overall standard of living? Bottom.
All sadly true...
But we have the coolest military around with 11 aircraft carriers, so we are great at the "drop bombs on other countries" game.
*said tongue in cheek of course*
Part of that is because the standards to obtain a drivers licence in the US is a joke. Go to Germany and see how much time, money, and effort is required, then come here and show up with a pulse and get a licence. (more or less)
And that is the problem... you can do what you want, right up until you put me in danger...
You're driving on public roads, accept that safety is required...
ok, and? I understand all that...but shouldnt it be MY choice?
No, not really... because those things also make the rest of us safer...
If you're driving on private land, you don't need any of it. But if you're driving on public roads with the rest of us, then yes, you need it all.
Wouldn't you rather run an OS that respects you, instead of exploiting you as described in the article?
No, I'd rather run an OS that runs my programs.
Today, that is Windows.
Rest assured, I get it, it would be nice if we had a real choice in desktop OS options. We really don't. But installing and putting up with the troubles of Linux won't change that.
What is the difference between the company spending money to decorate the office with art and plants, vs. people?
General welfare like social security, universal healthcare and universal education.
Did those concepts even exist when the US Constitution was written?
Did any government in the world provide social security, universal healthcare and universal education to all citizens at that time?
As far as the minimum wage rise, I checked some sources and it looks like it would be good for the lower classes. Most of them are in jobs that would be worth the new minimum wage to their employer, so the income increase would greatly outweigh the job loss. (It's a tradeoff, and it looks to me like $15 is a better tradeoff than what we've got now). We don't want a situation in which somebody with a job isn't making enough to get off various welfare programs.
I have 2 problems with the min wage.
1. It says that the government can tell you what you must accept to do work, or you can't work at all.
2. It takes every job not worth X dollars and leaves it undone.
Example: I want my house painted. I estimate that it will take an average person 40 hours to paint my house. I'm willing to pay $400 in labor cost to have it painted. I find Bob, a guy who has some painting experience, but currently isn't working. "Hey Bob, would you like to come paint my house, I'll pay you $10/hr, 40 hours of work, to pain it". "Great" Bob says, I'll be right over.
This is a good thing, I have a painted house and Bob has a job for a week.
Now the Government comes along and says $15/hr is the new min wage. Bob no longer can sell his services for the price he chooses, the government has said $15/hr or nothing. But I don't want to pay $600 to paint my house. My choice now is to pay $600 legally, pay $400 under the table if Bob agrees, or not paint at all and Bob can stay on unemployment.
Why does the government get to tell Bob that he isn't allowed to price his labor as he sees fit?
---
My example before about McDonalds also wasn't very far off, they are working in test kitchens right now to figure out ways to run a location with fewer people. The job just isn't worth more money. Raising the min wage simply means more people will be unemployed. It doesn't actually increase the value of their work. It also raises prices, but that does take time so many people don't see the connection.
The other problem with min wage is it implies that it is an acceptable wage to pay. $7.25 an hour is indeed quite low. Perhaps I need to hire a 18 year old kid for 5 hours to move some boxes in my garage. Am I not allowed to hire them for $5/hr? For a kid in school, that strikes me as reasonable. Perhaps I need to hire a 28 year old to mow my lawn, now $5/hr sounds absurd.
Let the market set the wages, don't "endorse" a wage. Already most businesses pay over min wage because so few people will even work for it anymore. My local Starbucks starts people at $9/hr for part time work, for example, and full time gets more... These are still 18-20 year old kids, so the wages have been moving with the market.
Ordering it to $15/hr just puts pressure on Starbucks to install a robot in each location and reduce staff count by 1 or 2 people per shift.
As far as taxes go, I'd like most people who earn significantly more than I do to pay at least the same share of their income to the Feds as I do. It's not even close. I work for a living, and that's the most heavily taxed form of income in the US (it gets less taxed if you make significantly more than I do).
How dare you make a reasonable and non-attacking reply, this is the Interwebs darn it! :)
Actually, I agree with you... Capital gains and other fancy investment taxes shouldn't be lower than taxes on labor, so no issues there. Frankly, I think income tax in general is evil, it implies the state owns part of your labor, which it shouldn't. I do think you should tax consumption, but that is another can of worms (exceptions for basic food, clothing, etc.).
But since we're not likely to get rid of income taxes, I'll make this simple:
Personal Income Taxes:
20% income tax on all income earned, regardless of source (investments, labor, etc.)
$20K per adult exemption, married or unmarried, doesn't matter. $5K per child exemption.
A family of 4 would get $20K + $20K + $5K + $5K or $50K in income tax free, 20% paid on everything after that up to infinity.
FICA taxes gone, those programs funded from general funds.
No deductions for anything, not medical, not charity, not home, nothing.
Corporate Income Taxes:
5% of gross income from all sales in the USA, regardless of profit. Why? Because it is FAR, FAR too easy to hide profits. It isn't even just big companies doing this, little companies do it, small businesses do it when they lease the owner's personal car through the business and write it off their taxes.
Example, Apple, Inc. did just over $30 billion in sales in the US last quarter, so for $30 billion in sales, they owe $1.5 billion in taxes.
Import Tax:
10% of the purchase price of all imported goods from anywhere. No exceptions. If you don't make it here, you can import it and pay 10% import tax. This is to compensate for the loss of jobs of offshoring. You can't tell companies to not offshore, but you can make it more expensive. I'm aware other nations might do the same to us in reverse, but frankly much of what we make, only we make. The cheap stuff already isn't made here, the good stuff, is still worth buying for 10% more.
Sales Tax:
All state sales taxes are void. National sales tax of 10%, 7% goes to the state in which it was collected (to be further divided up as the state sees fit with the local city/county governments), 3% goes to the federal government. Same tax rate nationally. All products are now required to be advertised with sales tax included (which really makes it GST, but whatever).
Estate Tax:
Gone, you should not tax money twice. That money was taxed when it was earned, you shouldn't tax it again just because someone dies. Besides, the really rich don't pay this anyway, using trusts and non-profits to shield it.
---
I have no doubt that you could find something wrong with the above... but whatever the faults, I have a hard time imagining it would be worse than what we have now. It would reduce the burden on everyone from CPAs to the IRS to small business owners to families just trying to figure out taxes every year.
If you make it much more complex, it turns into a 28,000 page tax code that no one understands.
Or in practice, does an end user have little to worry about when visiting sites that aren't bright-line infringers?
^ This... You can always come up with a fringe example, but lets be honest, it is people going to The Pirate Bay and downloading "The Hurt Locker" or "The Avengers" that have to worry.
I was primarily referring to Canonical Ltd., which maintains the Ubuntu operating system.
Later on you refer to binary incompatibility for proprietary applications among different distributions of X11/Linux. This is something that Valve has been trying to solve with Steam Runtime.
Keep in mind that Valve is also a private, for profit company. If they ever get a decent share of the OS market going, they'll end up in the same place MS is. Gabe isn't some angel on wings come to save us all, he is a person, like all other people, running a business.
My example with Skype is meant to show the problems with trying to offer something besides Windows. It isn't as simple as saying, "Install Linux", when even basic programs like Skype require a half dozen different versions, and maybe none of them run on Linux Mint (a version often suggested for new Linux users).
What happens if Intuit were to offer TurboTax in a Linux version? How do they support that? What versions and what binaries do they have to provide? What a mess.
It isn't just a matter of having Linux get above 2% desktop marketshare. It could be 10% tomorrow, but if that share is split among 10 different versions of Linux, you're going to be hard pressed to have more than 1 or 2 of them supported. Then everyone starts running the "supported one" and you end up with only a single choice again.