The actual notation used in math questions and textbooks is a blank space (e.g., an underlined blank space).
Underscore is perfectly good ASCII, and renders perfectly well.
In most questions, I agree, they use underlines or a box. But not according to TFA in this case: "“Students who have learned to memorize symbols and who have a limited understanding of the equal sign will tend to solve problems such as 4+3+2=( )+2 by adding the numbers on the left, and placing it in the parentheses, then add those terms and create another equal sign with the new answer,” he explains. “So the work would look like 4+3+2=(9)+2=11." [emphasis mine]
If you're going to misuse parenthesis to mean "insert answer here", don't be surprised if you confuse students who have been taught it indicates operational or logical precedence into making a mistake.
I agree that the "calculator mentality" is a problem. But I'm not convinced that this the answer to this formula as it was claimed to have been written in the article is proof of that.
I have to admit, I've seen the __, and the square, but I've never, ever seen anything as utterly asinine as using parenthesis to mean "insert answer here". Parenthesis have a perfectly good, and very clear, meaning in mathematics and logic. And it's not "insert answer here".
Maybe I'm taking the symbols too literally. But, wait a consarned second, isn't that what basic applied math is* all about? Expressing stuff really clearly and without ambiguity?
(* Yes, I'm USAian. "math is" is considered correct here. Replace it with your local version of correctness as needed, please.)
I'd have to say the chilluns were answering the question as clearly as it was asked, and their technical misuse of the "=" was aided and abetted by a bunch of people who are a lot older and supposed to be a lot smarter than them making an even more severe mistake in symbol misuse.
I'm sure the aforementioned "calculator mindset" where "equals" now seems to mean "the value of what happens on the left gets dumped on the right" is a contributing factor. But, damn it, this wasn't a useful test for that problem.
while people from Massachusetts aren't Massachusettan but Massachusettsan?
No, they are Massholes.
But then again, I'm from Maine and therefore a "Mainer", or "Maineiac" if you're a Masshole. "Maineian" just sounds silly.
From now on, I'll try to remember not to call you Dutch. Is "Hollandaise" better?:D
Note to any of our fine southern neighbors that I may have offended: You're still more than welcome to come up and buy some lobstah. Ayuh. We're all still Sox fans, right?:)
This may explain why a lot of convenience stores now have partnerships with fast food places. Stop for fuel, get "supper", pick up your paper, etc. I wonder if there is a market for combining trips even further.
I wonder how much fuel would be saved by simply asking McDonald's to sell newspapers at the drive-through, though that does lead to an interesting discussion of the overlap between people who eat McDonalds on a regular basis and the people who read the newspaper on a regular basis. But I'm sure there are a good number of people who pick up their morning coffee at McD's then have to make a separate stop somewhere else to get the paper.
Some of us still do, at least over the back wheels where there's little weight left any more because we bought a lightweight efficient car. Nothing says "this is gonna suck" like the back end sliding out on you.
Of course, many of us put it onboard only when snow is actually forecast, to save the loss of efficiency when there's no purpose served by it.;)
We probably don't. Any round number like that is suspicious to start with.
However, your observation does lead to a good point. Extra vehicle weight, and other factors, do affect fuel mileage.
Every pound you add to your vehicle (whether it be lard or steel) reduces your fuel mileage by some small percentage (especially in city driving). Every item you add to your vehicle that interferes with the smooth flow of air around your vehicle also has the same effect, including roof racks, etc (especially in highway driving). Fast starts and heavy acceleration also have a significant effect, as does driving very fast (these two often add to maintenance costs, as well, and apply to both city AND highway).
These "little things" have a way of adding up to a measurable amount of money at the end of the year.
To keep the math easy, take a 20MPG pickup with $2/gallon fuel. That's ten cents a mile for fuel. If you drive 10,000 miles a year, fuel for that vehicle will cost you $1,000.
For every 10% (2MPG) increase or decrease, you are looking at an approximate additional expense or savings of $100 per year. So adding those cargo racks to the back of the truck just cost you the cost of the racks, plus $50-100 a year as an ongoing expense in lost fuel. If you don't need them, take them off. Or spend a few bucks on the ones that fold down out of the way.
Carrying around 200 pounds of bricks in your trunk for a month when it never snowed at all just cost you $5, which you could have saved by removing them until snow was forecast. Putting your studded snow tires on two months before it started snowing cost you $10 and made you put a couple thousand miles of wear on a set of studded snows that are a lot more expensive per mile than regular tires.
Racing off the line to beat the other guy in the shinier car to the merge cost you a between a dime and a half a dollar.
You saved $100 on a set of tires, but are annoyed because they are a tad noisier than you had hoped for. Guess what? That noise probably means the tires have higher rolling resistance, and over the 30,000 mile lifetime of those tires you'll end up spending $200 more in fuel to run them. Run them underinflated for a while and they'll wear out faster and cost you even more fuel.
Each of these things cost you money. Money you could use to buy other things if you wanted to.
Whether you choose to spend it on them is, of course, your decision. But it's a good idea to think about them.
Think about that the next time you are first in line at a red light, the lane merges ahead, and you've got some dude in a fancy car who wants to play. Do you want to be first? Glue a quarter on the dashboard near the redline indicator to remind you that it costs money. Spend it if you want, but be aware you are spending it.
I agree, within some limits, none of which are met at the moment.
There's no need for the government to impose net neutrality, as long as there is true competition. This means that the barriers to entry need to be reasonable, which means that any government sponsorship or support of infrastructure (such as obtaining rights-of-way to get power and roads up to the cell towers, etc) needs to be offered on an equal basis and/or not at all. Or anyone who has already built a tower with government help needs to offer space on that tower, and at reasonable rental rates.
Sprint is not an option around here because the same local government officials who approved all the AT&T and Verizon 3G upgrades two years ago are now balking at "yet more towers in town", and AT&T and Verizon aren't under any obligation to share their towers. That "selective enforcement" ensures that we have a duopoly in our area, AT&T or Verizon. That's it. This is not a free market in any sense of the term.
This means that anyone wanting to start up a new cell company needs to be able to access public airwave frequencies to do so, at prices competitive to those the current cell companies pay (oh, wait, we held a "whoever can pay the most gets it all" auction that included gigantic blocks of frequency ranges, ensuring that the Big Boys snarfed it all up). They need to be able to put in their wireline backbones under the same conditions that their wireline competitors already enjoy thanks to their government sponsorship and support (a lot of what makes caps so bad on wireless service is simply that backboning that connection to the Internet takes a lot of effort and expense, because the local regulated wireline monopolies don't have to offer up reasonably-priced lines, so the cell companies end up signalling a lot of the data tower-to-tower).
This means that anyone wanting to start up a new cell company needs to have access to whatever technology is available as the standard, without having to introduce their own standard for communications, so customers have the technical opportunity to switch. Any patent limitations to that cannot be imposed to eliminate smaller competitors, and licenses to those patents must be available to all at an affordable price.
I'm OK with "Early Termination Fees" and long contracts, because with any of the providers you can also freely choose to buy an unlocked phone (though some US-specific frequencies like Verizon's are harder to get handsets for). But you can always choose a company that offers an unlocked phone as a feature of their service. You'll pay more for it, but that's as it should be - the ETF means you are "leasing" your handset, not "buying" it. It'd be nice to have some shorter terms offered for less-expensive phones, but if we ever get enough competition that will come as a natural result.
Summary: We need regulation on the current wireless providers, arguably more than they have today, because the barriers the huge carriers have set up against new entries are already difficult, and if you remove the regulations we already have they would be basically insurmountable.
An oligopoly (a small group of large players) is really not that much more desirable in a "free market" (where consumers have freedom to choose) than a monopoly (a single large player), but is the natural result of allowing a "free market" (where corporations are unencumbered by regulation) to thrive.
Ironically, the US law that started this was, IIRC, designed to protect people from police abuses. Making arrests and charges part of public record makes it very hard for police departments to arrest people secretly and hold them without due process.
Unfortunately, we have a tendency as Americans to equate "arrest" with "guilt".
Ignoring the obvious fact that you appear to have confused peas and beans (peas will germinate quite nicely while still moist and tasty, you dry them out to preserve the seed for the winter), the fact that the plant was in his lung probably means he somehow inhaled it. Maybe his kid got ahold of one when he was planting his garden, put it in a slingshot, and shot it at him just as he shouted at the kid to stop stealing dried peas. Kid hits him in the mouth just as he inhales - hey presto - viable seed in a moisture-rich environment.
FB is a commercial enterprise. why on hell is a police force (governemnt agency) HELPING PROMITE THE PROFITS of a stupid commercial (and crass) website?
Because the police have been doing the same exact thing for newspapers (another commercial enterprise) for many, many years now, and Facebook demanded equal treatment?
If it's libel, then pretty much anyone who has ever been arrested or accused of a crime where the accusation requires a visit by the police has a case. Pretty much every police department across the country reports their activities to the local papers, and has done for a long time.
Note: I've redacted the names and ages below, but they are right there in the reports.
What do you think [name and age redacted] of Saugus, Mass., who was arrested on Route 1 by Officer Kurt Fegan on a charge of operating under the influence might think of this? His name is a matter of public record for something he's accused of having done.
How about [name and age redacted], of Litchfield Road, Freeport, Maine. He was arrested by Officer Thomas Gabbard on Main Street on a warrant from Sanford Police Department on a charge of sexual abuse and abuse of a minor. Gee, ya think he might be having an interesting chat with his soon-to-be ex-boss right about now? What if it was his ex-wife wanting to get even over an argument? Not saying it was or wasn't, I don't know him, or the case. But it could have been. Or he could be an asshole who deserves some lovin' from Bubba. I'll only ever find that out if he's found guilty, because innocent/acquittal/dismissal cases rarely make the paper, and there's no "judicial blotter" because that doesn't sell inches of ad space in the paper.
Not saying it's right, only that it's not new. The Police Blotter existed in the paper since I was a wee 'un, and unless you are delivering said paper you can get off my lawn now.
I'm just surprised that they can list you before you're actually convicted.
The sad part is that this has been happening for years, and a precedent has already been set. This district is doing online what has been done offline for as long as I can remember, and I'm not exactly a spring chicken.
Get thee to the newsstand, and obtain the thy local fish-wrapping. Seek therein a section called "Police Blotter" or similar, usually somewhere in the vicinity of the "Letters to the Editor" and the editorials. Ye shall find a list of names, ages, cities of residence, often specific streets within that city, sometimes even full addresses, and what they were cited for. All citations from speeding on up are usually listed, including search warrant executions and subpoenas served.
Anonymized example from my local fish-wrapping: "8/10/2010 7:30PM. John Q. Public, of 32 Spring Street in Anytown, Arrested on report of domestic disturbance and inappropriate sexual contact with a minor"
The only thing missing in the newspaper is the mug shot, and those are usually printed along with a larger story on high-profile arrests and citations.
I'm not saying that posting these to Facebook is right. It certainly isn't. But the police aren't doing anything new here.
But their competitors will be doing the same thing.
So in two years, you'll be comparing an iPad2 with a "whatever Android has today"2. Both will have doubled the memory, doubled the CPU speed, halved the battery life, added screen resolution and more cameras, and the Apple will still be the clear winner in sheer sexiness but the Android will be half the price.
Then it's just a matter of whether you {need,really-really-want} the additional features and polish that the iPad2 offers.
The iPhone has a bunch of competitors in the touchscreen phone market.
My wife wanted a new cell phone a couple of months ago. I found an unlocked Nokia 5800 that has many of the features that the iPhone has. 5mpix camera, GPS, WiFi, touchscreen, etc.
It had a few features the iPhone lacked (no need to buy a data plan, upgradeable memory, GPS guidance with voice free for life, replaceable battery, ability to run background 3rd party applications, ability to "sideload" applications without Nokia's approval, mini-USB port with "mass media" support so there's no need to load any special apps to load music or movies onto it, and of course it was unlocked which was nice).
It certainly lacked some features that the iPhone has. The OS is a little clunkier, it has a resistive touchscreen (which my wife and I actually prefer, most people don't seem to like it, though, so I'll call that one a disadvantage for the sake of discussion), it's thicker and not as sexy, it requires a special charger which is a separate cable from the USB port (what?), battery life is just OK (we'll call that one a tie). A lot of iPhone-specific development is going on in the app space.
However, we dropped $250 on her phone, and we didn't need to pay a termination fee or anything to change phones, and we didn't get forced into a data plan (she's OK with only having data access while at home). We took the SIM out of her old phone, plunked it into the new one, and we're done. Once her contract is up next summer, we can go month-to-month. I can buy a data-only SIM from another company and throw it in the secondary SIM slot if she wanted an a la carte data plan, and the phone fully supports GSM-style 3G, but there's really no need.
Even if she had chosen the iPhone last year when she got her new phone, the data plan alone would have set us back more than $250 over two years.
So, yes, there is a market where something that's "close enough" to an iWhatever is truly "close enough" if the price is sufficiently lower.
This means a lot if you have set your profile to be non-searchable and set your name and/or profile picture to be "visible to friends only".
POTS analogy: This is like going to the effort of getting an "unlisted number", where you aren't supposed to be listed in the phone book and your address is not supposed to be divulged to anyone, then finding out that anyone who happens upon your number and dials it gets a recording that includes your name and address.
Having said that, everything you enter in Facebook should be considered viewable by everyone on the planet. Facebook doesn't exactly have a long and reliable history of protecting the identity of the people who use it. They'd sell you for a nickel. They'd probably send someone to strangle your cat if they thought your angst-ridden posts would generate a few thousand more page views. It's not exactly like this should come as a surprise to anyone, especially those of us who actually use it.
So, as someone mentioned above - this is a very, very serious bug to Facebook. This information should NEVER be given out to anyone... who isn't paying for it.
The war on drugs is a great way to get us to cough up tax dollars for high-tech toys and gizmos, ensuring that contractors have enough money to keep those campaign contributions and hookers coming. It's second only to terrorism in the "give me more power so I can protect you" game.
If we ever won the war on drugs and/or terrorism, it would be necessary to invent something else.
I'm sorry, I don't like the fact that we are there either, I wish we had never gotten into either, and I agree on your assessment of Iraq, but...
The US had (and still, to my knowledge, HAS) UN approval and support to occupy Afghanistan. Our prime suspect in a major terrorist act, one Osama Bin Laden, was strongly suspected to be in Afghanistan and the then-current government, the Taliban, was refusing the US entry to go find him and arrest him. The US, supported at the time by most of Europe, Australia, Britain, and a generous mittenful of others (many of whom also pledged troops in support of the mission, and some of whom still have troops there) entered Afghanistan to find Bin Laden. The force then met resistance from the Taliban and (under UN authorization) removed the government.
What went horribly wrong was twofold (and I'm sure my oversimplification is glossing over a lot of detail, too bad):
- Bin Laden then (almost certainly) fled over the border to neighboring Pakistan, possibly even before we invaded, and there was too much resistance to allowing the UN force to cross the border. There still is, and there's a strong suspicion he's still there. The invasion of Afghanistan might never have had a chance of accomplishing its stated goal due partly to the delays in getting UN approval and making it all legal. Making it legitimate probably made it ineffective. There's irony in there somewhere.
- Once the chase was done, there was little reason to stay in Afghanistan except to clean up the mess, and there's little political capital to be gained from cleaning up - successful invasions get votes, holding maneuvers get called "Vietnam III" and "Korea II" and get your ass thrown out of office. Unless, of course, you can have a successful invasion to cover it up.
Oh, yeah. Iraq.
- A false connection was drawn between OBL and Iraq, seemingly because George W Bush wanted to be able to resolve a problem (Saddam Hussein's long-running game of cat and mouse with the UN) that neither his daddy nor Clinton was able to resolve, and almost certainly because Afghanistan needed to stop being mentioned on the headlines. "MISSION ACCOMPLISHED", as they say.
- That invasion dropped visibility of Afghanistan in the eyes of the American public so we could forget we had a Vietnam going on. It also had the unfortunate side effect of reducing available resources to handle Afghanistan, and in many ways the job there was largely ignored and the country was allowed to degenerate further until we needed lots more resources on the ground to fix it all up.
The focus is on Afghanistan at the moment, since Barak Obama obviously wants to focus on the invasion that at least once had legitimate UN support and would rather not have people talking about Iraq.
I had posited in another post that maybe there were actually Klingons on board that Bird of Prey, and they simply left the ship when the cameras weren't looking.
It may have simply taken them this much time to fit into Earth society sufficiently, get over there, and organize all of this.
There are a few explanations that still fit canonical, if you want to take canonical all that seriously.
Just for shits and giggles, there's also the new canonical that does not preclude someone going back in time and changing the past there. The timeline split when Jimmy lost Daddy. But, as you say, Trek is rife with timeline band-aids.
We know almost nothing about the new timeline - only one movie has been made using it, and there's no specific mention in that movie that the Klingons weren't on Earth in 2010.
I'm sure with a little scribbling, they could add something about either some Klingons sneaking off the ship in the 80s, or an attempt at invasion by some rogue splinter group that failed when an obscure Earth parasite or virus turned the invading group into peaceniks who wanted to put on an opera for their new friends on Earth. They put on a few operas, then died in obscurity.
Point to something the new Abrams canonical that refutes this.
Hell, point to something in the Roddenberry canonical that refutes this. Neither canonical is a complete historical timeline, so they don't cover every second of every day that's not actually shown, and Kirk could easily have not recognized Klingons in their "first" encounter because their appearance changed between TOS and NG.
"Canon" is the refuge of the unimaginative. I have hundreds of Trek pulp paperbacks, and many of them have come up with brilliant ways to "band-aid" around canon busts. In many cases, it's the most entertaining part of the book.
Slashdot Mirror
The actual notation used in math questions and textbooks is a blank space (e.g., an underlined blank space).
Underscore is perfectly good ASCII, and renders perfectly well.
In most questions, I agree, they use underlines or a box. But not according to TFA in this case: "“Students who have learned to memorize symbols and who have a limited understanding of the equal sign will tend to solve problems such as 4+3+2=( )+2 by adding the numbers on the left, and placing it in the parentheses, then add those terms and create another equal sign with the new answer,” he explains. “So the work would look like 4+3+2=(9)+2=11." [emphasis mine]
If you're going to misuse parenthesis to mean "insert answer here", don't be surprised if you confuse students who have been taught it indicates operational or logical precedence into making a mistake.
I agree that the "calculator mentality" is a problem. But I'm not convinced that this the answer to this formula as it was claimed to have been written in the article is proof of that.
I have to admit, I've seen the __, and the square, but I've never, ever seen anything as utterly asinine as using parenthesis to mean "insert answer here". Parenthesis have a perfectly good, and very clear, meaning in mathematics and logic. And it's not "insert answer here".
Maybe I'm taking the symbols too literally. But, wait a consarned second, isn't that what basic applied math is* all about? Expressing stuff really clearly and without ambiguity?
(* Yes, I'm USAian. "math is" is considered correct here. Replace it with your local version of correctness as needed, please.)
I'd have to say the chilluns were answering the question as clearly as it was asked, and their technical misuse of the "=" was aided and abetted by a bunch of people who are a lot older and supposed to be a lot smarter than them making an even more severe mistake in symbol misuse.
I'm sure the aforementioned "calculator mindset" where "equals" now seems to mean "the value of what happens on the left gets dumped on the right" is a contributing factor. But, damn it, this wasn't a useful test for that problem.
Kids: Unknown.
Textbook author: FAIL.
while people from Massachusetts aren't Massachusettan but Massachusettsan?
No, they are Massholes.
But then again, I'm from Maine and therefore a "Mainer", or "Maineiac" if you're a Masshole. "Maineian" just sounds silly.
From now on, I'll try to remember not to call you Dutch. Is "Hollandaise" better? :D
Note to any of our fine southern neighbors that I may have offended: You're still more than welcome to come up and buy some lobstah. Ayuh. We're all still Sox fans, right? :)
If ya needs it, ya needs it. I've owned my share of pick-em-up trucks, and they do handle a little better with a couple hundred pounds out back.
Hey, give him some credit, he did a better job than the Golf Ball at Disney, and his post doesn't cost $75 a day to read.
That's subtitles, and the subject of a different discussion. Stay on topic! ;)
Intriguing.
This may explain why a lot of convenience stores now have partnerships with fast food places. Stop for fuel, get "supper", pick up your paper, etc. I wonder if there is a market for combining trips even further.
I wonder how much fuel would be saved by simply asking McDonald's to sell newspapers at the drive-through, though that does lead to an interesting discussion of the overlap between people who eat McDonalds on a regular basis and the people who read the newspaper on a regular basis. But I'm sure there are a good number of people who pick up their morning coffee at McD's then have to make a separate stop somewhere else to get the paper.
But all of which, when combined have more of an effect then when you do only one of them.
Some of us still do, at least over the back wheels where there's little weight left any more because we bought a lightweight efficient car. Nothing says "this is gonna suck" like the back end sliding out on you.
Of course, many of us put it onboard only when snow is actually forecast, to save the loss of efficiency when there's no purpose served by it. ;)
We probably don't. Any round number like that is suspicious to start with.
However, your observation does lead to a good point. Extra vehicle weight, and other factors, do affect fuel mileage.
Every pound you add to your vehicle (whether it be lard or steel) reduces your fuel mileage by some small percentage (especially in city driving). Every item you add to your vehicle that interferes with the smooth flow of air around your vehicle also has the same effect, including roof racks, etc (especially in highway driving). Fast starts and heavy acceleration also have a significant effect, as does driving very fast (these two often add to maintenance costs, as well, and apply to both city AND highway).
These "little things" have a way of adding up to a measurable amount of money at the end of the year.
To keep the math easy, take a 20MPG pickup with $2/gallon fuel. That's ten cents a mile for fuel. If you drive 10,000 miles a year, fuel for that vehicle will cost you $1,000.
For every 10% (2MPG) increase or decrease, you are looking at an approximate additional expense or savings of $100 per year. So adding those cargo racks to the back of the truck just cost you the cost of the racks, plus $50-100 a year as an ongoing expense in lost fuel. If you don't need them, take them off. Or spend a few bucks on the ones that fold down out of the way.
Carrying around 200 pounds of bricks in your trunk for a month when it never snowed at all just cost you $5, which you could have saved by removing them until snow was forecast. Putting your studded snow tires on two months before it started snowing cost you $10 and made you put a couple thousand miles of wear on a set of studded snows that are a lot more expensive per mile than regular tires.
Racing off the line to beat the other guy in the shinier car to the merge cost you a between a dime and a half a dollar.
You saved $100 on a set of tires, but are annoyed because they are a tad noisier than you had hoped for. Guess what? That noise probably means the tires have higher rolling resistance, and over the 30,000 mile lifetime of those tires you'll end up spending $200 more in fuel to run them. Run them underinflated for a while and they'll wear out faster and cost you even more fuel.
Each of these things cost you money. Money you could use to buy other things if you wanted to.
Whether you choose to spend it on them is, of course, your decision. But it's a good idea to think about them.
Think about that the next time you are first in line at a red light, the lane merges ahead, and you've got some dude in a fancy car who wants to play. Do you want to be first? Glue a quarter on the dashboard near the redline indicator to remind you that it costs money. Spend it if you want, but be aware you are spending it.
I agree, within some limits, none of which are met at the moment.
There's no need for the government to impose net neutrality, as long as there is true competition. This means that the barriers to entry need to be reasonable, which means that any government sponsorship or support of infrastructure (such as obtaining rights-of-way to get power and roads up to the cell towers, etc) needs to be offered on an equal basis and/or not at all. Or anyone who has already built a tower with government help needs to offer space on that tower, and at reasonable rental rates.
Sprint is not an option around here because the same local government officials who approved all the AT&T and Verizon 3G upgrades two years ago are now balking at "yet more towers in town", and AT&T and Verizon aren't under any obligation to share their towers. That "selective enforcement" ensures that we have a duopoly in our area, AT&T or Verizon. That's it. This is not a free market in any sense of the term.
This means that anyone wanting to start up a new cell company needs to be able to access public airwave frequencies to do so, at prices competitive to those the current cell companies pay (oh, wait, we held a "whoever can pay the most gets it all" auction that included gigantic blocks of frequency ranges, ensuring that the Big Boys snarfed it all up). They need to be able to put in their wireline backbones under the same conditions that their wireline competitors already enjoy thanks to their government sponsorship and support (a lot of what makes caps so bad on wireless service is simply that backboning that connection to the Internet takes a lot of effort and expense, because the local regulated wireline monopolies don't have to offer up reasonably-priced lines, so the cell companies end up signalling a lot of the data tower-to-tower).
This means that anyone wanting to start up a new cell company needs to have access to whatever technology is available as the standard, without having to introduce their own standard for communications, so customers have the technical opportunity to switch. Any patent limitations to that cannot be imposed to eliminate smaller competitors, and licenses to those patents must be available to all at an affordable price.
I'm OK with "Early Termination Fees" and long contracts, because with any of the providers you can also freely choose to buy an unlocked phone (though some US-specific frequencies like Verizon's are harder to get handsets for). But you can always choose a company that offers an unlocked phone as a feature of their service. You'll pay more for it, but that's as it should be - the ETF means you are "leasing" your handset, not "buying" it. It'd be nice to have some shorter terms offered for less-expensive phones, but if we ever get enough competition that will come as a natural result.
Summary: We need regulation on the current wireless providers, arguably more than they have today, because the barriers the huge carriers have set up against new entries are already difficult, and if you remove the regulations we already have they would be basically insurmountable.
An oligopoly (a small group of large players) is really not that much more desirable in a "free market" (where consumers have freedom to choose) than a monopoly (a single large player), but is the natural result of allowing a "free market" (where corporations are unencumbered by regulation) to thrive.
Ironically, the US law that started this was, IIRC, designed to protect people from police abuses. Making arrests and charges part of public record makes it very hard for police departments to arrest people secretly and hold them without due process.
Unfortunately, we have a tendency as Americans to equate "arrest" with "guilt".
Ignoring the obvious fact that you appear to have confused peas and beans (peas will germinate quite nicely while still moist and tasty, you dry them out to preserve the seed for the winter), the fact that the plant was in his lung probably means he somehow inhaled it. Maybe his kid got ahold of one when he was planting his garden, put it in a slingshot, and shot it at him just as he shouted at the kid to stop stealing dried peas. Kid hits him in the mouth just as he inhales - hey presto - viable seed in a moisture-rich environment.
You'd assume incorrectly, unfortunately.
Just ask any one of these possibly fine, upstanding citizens: http://www.theforecaster.net/section/term/144
Check every newspaper in the country for lists of others.
FB is a commercial enterprise. why on hell is a police force (governemnt agency) HELPING PROMITE THE PROFITS of a stupid commercial (and crass) website?
Because the police have been doing the same exact thing for newspapers (another commercial enterprise) for many, many years now, and Facebook demanded equal treatment?
Dunno. Good point.
Hey, want to ask any one of these people if "listed in the online version of the newspaper" constitutes libel?
http://www.theforecaster.net/section/term/144
If it's libel, then pretty much anyone who has ever been arrested or accused of a crime where the accusation requires a visit by the police has a case. Pretty much every police department across the country reports their activities to the local papers, and has done for a long time.
Note: I've redacted the names and ages below, but they are right there in the reports.
What do you think [name and age redacted] of Saugus, Mass., who was arrested on Route 1 by Officer Kurt Fegan on a charge of operating under the influence might think of this? His name is a matter of public record for something he's accused of having done.
How about [name and age redacted], of Litchfield Road, Freeport, Maine. He was arrested by Officer Thomas Gabbard on Main Street on a warrant from Sanford Police Department on a charge of sexual abuse and abuse of a minor. Gee, ya think he might be having an interesting chat with his soon-to-be ex-boss right about now? What if it was his ex-wife wanting to get even over an argument? Not saying it was or wasn't, I don't know him, or the case. But it could have been. Or he could be an asshole who deserves some lovin' from Bubba. I'll only ever find that out if he's found guilty, because innocent/acquittal/dismissal cases rarely make the paper, and there's no "judicial blotter" because that doesn't sell inches of ad space in the paper.
Not saying it's right, only that it's not new. The Police Blotter existed in the paper since I was a wee 'un, and unless you are delivering said paper you can get off my lawn now.
I'm just surprised that they can list you before you're actually convicted.
The sad part is that this has been happening for years, and a precedent has already been set. This district is doing online what has been done offline for as long as I can remember, and I'm not exactly a spring chicken.
Get thee to the newsstand, and obtain the thy local fish-wrapping. Seek therein a section called "Police Blotter" or similar, usually somewhere in the vicinity of the "Letters to the Editor" and the editorials. Ye shall find a list of names, ages, cities of residence, often specific streets within that city, sometimes even full addresses, and what they were cited for. All citations from speeding on up are usually listed, including search warrant executions and subpoenas served.
Anonymized example from my local fish-wrapping: "8/10/2010 7:30PM. John Q. Public, of 32 Spring Street in Anytown, Arrested on report of domestic disturbance and inappropriate sexual contact with a minor"
The only thing missing in the newspaper is the mug shot, and those are usually printed along with a larger story on high-profile arrests and citations.
I'm not saying that posting these to Facebook is right. It certainly isn't. But the police aren't doing anything new here.
But their competitors will be doing the same thing.
So in two years, you'll be comparing an iPad2 with a "whatever Android has today"2. Both will have doubled the memory, doubled the CPU speed, halved the battery life, added screen resolution and more cameras, and the Apple will still be the clear winner in sheer sexiness but the Android will be half the price.
Then it's just a matter of whether you {need,really-really-want} the additional features and polish that the iPad2 offers.
The iPhone has a bunch of competitors in the touchscreen phone market.
My wife wanted a new cell phone a couple of months ago. I found an unlocked Nokia 5800 that has many of the features that the iPhone has. 5mpix camera, GPS, WiFi, touchscreen, etc.
It had a few features the iPhone lacked (no need to buy a data plan, upgradeable memory, GPS guidance with voice free for life, replaceable battery, ability to run background 3rd party applications, ability to "sideload" applications without Nokia's approval, mini-USB port with "mass media" support so there's no need to load any special apps to load music or movies onto it, and of course it was unlocked which was nice).
It certainly lacked some features that the iPhone has. The OS is a little clunkier, it has a resistive touchscreen (which my wife and I actually prefer, most people don't seem to like it, though, so I'll call that one a disadvantage for the sake of discussion), it's thicker and not as sexy, it requires a special charger which is a separate cable from the USB port (what?), battery life is just OK (we'll call that one a tie). A lot of iPhone-specific development is going on in the app space.
However, we dropped $250 on her phone, and we didn't need to pay a termination fee or anything to change phones, and we didn't get forced into a data plan (she's OK with only having data access while at home). We took the SIM out of her old phone, plunked it into the new one, and we're done. Once her contract is up next summer, we can go month-to-month. I can buy a data-only SIM from another company and throw it in the secondary SIM slot if she wanted an a la carte data plan, and the phone fully supports GSM-style 3G, but there's really no need.
Even if she had chosen the iPhone last year when she got her new phone, the data plan alone would have set us back more than $250 over two years.
So, yes, there is a market where something that's "close enough" to an iWhatever is truly "close enough" if the price is sufficiently lower.
ROFLMAO. And I suppose Sales begins with determining what customers actually want too.
No, generally not.
That's only true for the ultimately successful ones that want repeat business and to build a good reputation with their customers.
That explains the phrase "hey, this isn't rocket science, people!".
What NASA does is very, very hard. And they are almost invariably the first ones to try it.
But did you use a distributed computing project to post?
This means a lot if you have set your profile to be non-searchable and set your name and/or profile picture to be "visible to friends only".
POTS analogy: This is like going to the effort of getting an "unlisted number", where you aren't supposed to be listed in the phone book and your address is not supposed to be divulged to anyone, then finding out that anyone who happens upon your number and dials it gets a recording that includes your name and address.
Having said that, everything you enter in Facebook should be considered viewable by everyone on the planet. Facebook doesn't exactly have a long and reliable history of protecting the identity of the people who use it. They'd sell you for a nickel. They'd probably send someone to strangle your cat if they thought your angst-ridden posts would generate a few thousand more page views. It's not exactly like this should come as a surprise to anyone, especially those of us who actually use it.
So, as someone mentioned above - this is a very, very serious bug to Facebook. This information should NEVER be given out to anyone... who isn't paying for it.
Now why would they want to do that?
The war on drugs is a great way to get us to cough up tax dollars for high-tech toys and gizmos, ensuring that contractors have enough money to keep those campaign contributions and hookers coming. It's second only to terrorism in the "give me more power so I can protect you" game.
If we ever won the war on drugs and/or terrorism, it would be necessary to invent something else.
I'm sorry, I don't like the fact that we are there either, I wish we had never gotten into either, and I agree on your assessment of Iraq, but...
The US had (and still, to my knowledge, HAS) UN approval and support to occupy Afghanistan. Our prime suspect in a major terrorist act, one Osama Bin Laden, was strongly suspected to be in Afghanistan and the then-current government, the Taliban, was refusing the US entry to go find him and arrest him. The US, supported at the time by most of Europe, Australia, Britain, and a generous mittenful of others (many of whom also pledged troops in support of the mission, and some of whom still have troops there) entered Afghanistan to find Bin Laden. The force then met resistance from the Taliban and (under UN authorization) removed the government.
What went horribly wrong was twofold (and I'm sure my oversimplification is glossing over a lot of detail, too bad):
- Bin Laden then (almost certainly) fled over the border to neighboring Pakistan, possibly even before we invaded, and there was too much resistance to allowing the UN force to cross the border. There still is, and there's a strong suspicion he's still there. The invasion of Afghanistan might never have had a chance of accomplishing its stated goal due partly to the delays in getting UN approval and making it all legal. Making it legitimate probably made it ineffective. There's irony in there somewhere.
- Once the chase was done, there was little reason to stay in Afghanistan except to clean up the mess, and there's little political capital to be gained from cleaning up - successful invasions get votes, holding maneuvers get called "Vietnam III" and "Korea II" and get your ass thrown out of office. Unless, of course, you can have a successful invasion to cover it up.
Oh, yeah. Iraq.
- A false connection was drawn between OBL and Iraq, seemingly because George W Bush wanted to be able to resolve a problem (Saddam Hussein's long-running game of cat and mouse with the UN) that neither his daddy nor Clinton was able to resolve, and almost certainly because Afghanistan needed to stop being mentioned on the headlines. "MISSION ACCOMPLISHED", as they say.
- That invasion dropped visibility of Afghanistan in the eyes of the American public so we could forget we had a Vietnam going on. It also had the unfortunate side effect of reducing available resources to handle Afghanistan, and in many ways the job there was largely ignored and the country was allowed to degenerate further until we needed lots more resources on the ground to fix it all up.
The focus is on Afghanistan at the moment, since Barak Obama obviously wants to focus on the invasion that at least once had legitimate UN support and would rather not have people talking about Iraq.
I had posited in another post that maybe there were actually Klingons on board that Bird of Prey, and they simply left the ship when the cameras weren't looking.
It may have simply taken them this much time to fit into Earth society sufficiently, get over there, and organize all of this.
There are a few explanations that still fit canonical, if you want to take canonical all that seriously.
Just for shits and giggles, there's also the new canonical that does not preclude someone going back in time and changing the past there. The timeline split when Jimmy lost Daddy. But, as you say, Trek is rife with timeline band-aids.
We know almost nothing about the new timeline - only one movie has been made using it, and there's no specific mention in that movie that the Klingons weren't on Earth in 2010.
I'm sure with a little scribbling, they could add something about either some Klingons sneaking off the ship in the 80s, or an attempt at invasion by some rogue splinter group that failed when an obscure Earth parasite or virus turned the invading group into peaceniks who wanted to put on an opera for their new friends on Earth. They put on a few operas, then died in obscurity.
Point to something the new Abrams canonical that refutes this.
Hell, point to something in the Roddenberry canonical that refutes this. Neither canonical is a complete historical timeline, so they don't cover every second of every day that's not actually shown, and Kirk could easily have not recognized Klingons in their "first" encounter because their appearance changed between TOS and NG.
"Canon" is the refuge of the unimaginative. I have hundreds of Trek pulp paperbacks, and many of them have come up with brilliant ways to "band-aid" around canon busts. In many cases, it's the most entertaining part of the book.