It is interesting that when talking about weight and the cost for flying, people only look at people who are wider than the norm as if height doesn't add any extra weight.
It's not interesting at all, really. Why do I care if they need more headroom than me? I don't. It doesn't affect me at all. But when I am pressed against the glass of the window because the guy in the middle seat is overflowing 6 inches into my seat? Hell yes I care. And yes I have literally, on a regional jet, had someone sitting next to me who was so large I was pushed into the wall. Did they pay extra for my space? Did I get a discount on my reduced seating capacity? No. They could weigh 500 pounds and it would not bother me at all* if they stayed in their assigned area.
*Obviously if their weight caused safety issues for the center of gravity for the aircraft, then I would have a problem with it.
Passengers are where the weight is a real concern. Fatbodies cost the airlines money way more than life preservers. Charge by the pound.
I am by no means a fatbody, but I am tall and therefore weigh more than a person with my same build and body type who is shorter than me. I don't much care how much the person next to me weighs (though the airline does). I'd rather those who take up more horizontal space pay more than those who take up more vertical space / weight. I will say that these narrower seats concern me greatly. My hips barely fit between the arm rests I encounter now. (Not referring to the seats specifically mentioned in the article, but the more seats per row on 777 mentioned in summary)
You might get quicker non-urgent and more hotel-style care privately in the UK, but you'll rarely if ever get better medical treatment. And why would you?
In almost all cases, your problem has been seen ten thousand times before, and a doctor is either competent to fix it or they are not;
I had to have surgery on my jaw and I spent a lot of time (and eventually money) to have the procedure done by a specific doctor. I called dozens and dozens of doctors and, while all of them were capable of performing the procedure I needed, most only did 1 or 2 per year. The doctor that I went to did 5+ per week. Since there are major blood vessels that pass through the jaw, the surgery is, on average, more dangerous than your average procedure. When it comes to things like that I'd rather pay extra to see a doctor that specializes in that particular procedure. Now I am not saying that in the UK system that doctor would likely be outside of the NHS, but it's worth having a doctor with a lot of practical experience in the treatment you need. Even though tens of thousands of those cases were seen every year, only a handful of doctors in the US treated them. In fact, my doctor had patients flying in from Asia, Europe, and South America specifically to have him perform the surgery.
I have no problem with corporations taking advantage of whatever the law allows them to do but there should be consequences. If the government is going to consider a corporation to be like a person with 1st amendment rights and money to be speech, well they are declaring their corporate personhood to not be a citizen, only a resident. Residents don't get to vote, only citizens. If you don't have a vote then you shouldn't have any right to contribute anything to the election process. If you want a voice in the government then pay taxes.
No you're close, but not quite there. If corporations are people too then I would like to see Apple pay social security, AMT, and be taxed at the same income tax rate as an individual. They can't have their cake and eat it too. If a corporation has personhood, then let the corp pay on the same tax schedule as me. AMT means they would not be able to use all the crazy deductions they use as a corp and should have to pay much higher taxes than they do now.
Genius! I don't know how you come up with these ideas. Did you know we can eliminate the risk of being in an automobile crash by never leaving home?
I have a friend that will tell you just how untrue that statement is. He was hit by a car while watching TV on his couch. Staying inside did nothing to help him!
there were a method to codify books as electromagnetic signals, and a transport network to deliver such signals to devices capable of displaying the decodified content. Imagine the added benefit of not having to fly around 1 or 2 kilos of material, with all the energy savings that would imply.
nahh, that's impossible
You're definitely underestimating the weight of all those 1's and 0's. Especially the 1's. Most people think the 0 would weight more because it is wider, but the 1 contains much more data and therefore has more mass. There will be millions of 1's and 0's for a single book, versus perhaps 300 pages for a printed copy. Obviously the printed copy weighs less and uses less resources.
Of course, you have to add in the billion and billions in decommissioning fees and nuclear waste storage and uranium mining and transportation and security and....
I was unaware of the fact that the Chinese government required insurance or decommissioning fees. I just assumed they'd blast it into oblivious:P
The preference is small, and one applies at a time. Meaning, some contracts have preference for women, other for minorities. Being both doesn't double your chances.
That is definitely not true. Small businesses that are owned by a woman minority have 7 years of special status where the USG will actually go out of its way to find contracts for the company. They build your business for you. I know someone who has serially done this. Starts a company with a female minority, builds it up during the 7 years and then sells it off.
I too have been sick of the fear mongering propaganda complex that has overtaken our society in the past several years.
However, there is an enormous gulf between McCarthyism and the terrorist threat. No commies blew up airplanes and buildings. No commies went on shooting sprees in malls. No commies set off car bombs in crowded markets. The pink menace wasn't really very menacing at all. It was a false accusation.
Terrorists are real. Terrorist individuals and organizations commit atrocities on a near daily basis and regularly and publicly vow to kill large segments of the population or entire nations. Terrorism, unlike communism in the U.S., is a real threat that must not be ignored. But, that doesn't excuse these governments from using it as the go-to excuse for justifying every infringement of rights and nefarious activity, from banning nail clippers to the brave new world.
It's true. Every time I walk down the street to the local McDonald's, I find myself dodging suicide bomber after suicide bomber. Thank goodness we have these politicians in Washington who are spying on my every action to help keep me safe from these no good terrorists.
We're beating the US on every health metric worth considering (Except, oddly, cancer survival rate), and at a substantially lower per-capita spending.
The cancer survival rate is probably higher in the US because typically you can get diagnosed with cancer on Monday and, if necessary be having surgery to remove it on Tuesday. I know someone who was diagnosed with a very severe and aggressive type of brain cancer. He was quite literally in surgery the very next day. I don't know how long his wait would have been with the NHS, perhaps it would have been severe enough that the NHS would have had the same turn around. But these emergency procedures are quite lucrative for all parties involved, so the US's system specializes in such emergency care.
Leave Oakland.
I don't care how attached I may feel to a location, the safety of my family is my number one priority.
The poverty level in some of the worst areas of East Oakland exceeds 35% - those people aren't going anywhere. Sorry, but in the real world problems like this don't have the simple solution you have put forward.
If you could afford to leave East Oakland, you very likely wouldn't be there in the first place. Accordingly, I don't see how crowd-funding private security would work. TFS mentions the Rockridge neighborhood in Oakland which enjoys the lowest crime rates (and lowest poverty rate) in all of Oakland. This project, while accomplishing very little to begin with, will not provide these services to the worst areas of Oakland -- where help of some kind is needed most.
It could, potentially, free up law enforcement resources to help with the worst parts of Oakland though. That still does not address the poverty issues, however.
You are correct that they have leeway to build a case. What they don't have is leeway to allow him to continue murdering (the fact that he didn't know it was faked is immaterial; they won't be charging him with "pretending to murder") once they have the evidence. Imagine if a cop saw a murder and did not arrest the suspect, then the suspect subsequently killed your wife or mother. Would you be saying: I totally understand. He was exercising his leeway!
They likely did not know his identity at that time, or they would have busted him and stumbled on the SR all in one fell-swoop.
You are either completely ignorant of how GAO works (which incidentally, covers more than just DoD), or you are blindly biased against defense spending.
I admit the working of the GAO is new to me. Why is it, then, that I have never seen/heard about NSF distributing large sums/grants on the last day of the fiscal year? There seems to be a rush to approve programs here - is it that a lot of programs have their allocation deadlines set to September 30th, or are the allocation deadlines open ended (theoretically), and the people start rushing in approving projects towards the end of the fiscal year (which might imply that the review isn't as good - there is a rush to get them out the door)?
For the military, it often depends on what organization is doing the spending. For instance, the general AF, Army, Navy, etc often wait to spend money until the end of the fiscal year. The purpose is to ensure that there is no budget shortfall. Planes, tanks, and ships all need fuel. Fuel cost can vary dramatically. Perhaps some goods spoiled, or were damaged or lost? They save as much money as possible and then prioritize their projects based on need and money available. They complete the process as though they were going to award all of the contracts, but only award that which meets their budget and priorities at the end of the fiscal year. I've seen other groups that tries to line everything up to go thru GAO on October 1st. These groups share a budget with other groups. They spend their money as soon as they get it because, if they don't, another group can petition to use their unspent funds.
Cannot just hand out grants to scientific research in the last few hours of the day. Nor the NIH.
Shit like this is what makes me angry at the priorities of the US. There is a very good reason that the NSF program directors can't hand out money to their buddies - proposals need to be submitted, evaluated, debated, etc. But were there multiple competitors for the money given to Pratt and Whitney? Did they have to read, deliberate, and have experts from various organizations debate the merits?
You are either completely ignorant of how GAO works (which incidentally, covers more than just DoD), or you are blindly biased against defense spending. Having worked in the defense industry, I can tell you that there was either a study done to prove that there was validity in doing a sole-source contract, or there was an Request For Proposals (RFP) issued by the DoD. Once the DoD approves a vendor, and picks a contract vehicle to fund the order on, the GAO then comes in and decides whether or not the contract should actually be issued, whether the process was fair, and whether the price is correct.
Part of my duties at this defense contractor was to help write technical approaches to these RFPs. It can be a long and grueling process. It often takes 6 months or more to even know whether or not you have a chance of winning the contract. Once you are awarded the contract, anyone who submitted a response can contest that award and cause it to be re-bid. This results in you often having to respond to a modified RFP, or otherwise updating your bid. I have personally seen a contract be re-bid three times before it even made it to the GAO, who took another 2 or 3 months to decide whether or not to actually honor the award.
In my experience, I would often submit my proposal at the beginning of the fiscal year (Oct - Dec is the first quarter for the USG), and not know whether or not we would actually be awarded by the GAO until September (the end of the 4th quarter for the USG). So do they spend a hell of a lot of money in September? Yes. And for a lot of reasons. But they don't just shovel out $5B of dollars any which way they can. So go on and rant about the way we spend money on Defense (I personally agree that we overspend in that area), but don't try and claim that the DoD has it any different than the NIH. The only difference is the size of the purse.
Here's a better question: why doesn't iOS 7 work with iOS 6 compatible apps?
That officially rules Apple out of being "the new Microsoft:" Microsoft has never been dumb enough to break existing apps on their OSes. If there's one thing Microsoft deserves credit for, it's the ridiculous extents they go through to make sure old apps keep working.
Apple is the exact opposite way: if you allow Mac OS X to upgrade your iOS development environment, you will entirely lose the ability to target anything except iOS 7. There is no way to go back, other than to find "pirated" sources of older versions of Xcode. (Xcode is free, so "pirated" isn't quite the right word here, but you know what I mean - sources that don't use the Apple app store.)
While I agree with what you are saying, it is possible to install older versions of XCode right from the Apple Developer portal. In fact, I have XCode 5 and 4.6.3 installed both on my machine right now. I am using both actively, as I need to fix bugs for my client who is stuck at 6.1, and also work on making the app usable for iOS 7.
I was 7 when I learned to program. We had one lesson a week taught by the school's headmaster on whatever he thought was interesting, and so he taught some programming in BASIC[1] on the BBC Model B. He also taught some geometry using Logo on the same machine. It was connected to a big TV (which, by modern standards, is a small TV), and he'd ask the class to describe the program and he'd type it. After school and at lunch and break times there were a few of these machines that we could use, and I learned a bit more. I asked my father to teach me a real language, and he taught me PL/M86 (which I still miss sometimes), and I then moved on to C[2].
When I got to university, I discovered how much of the theoretical side I was missing. The main problem with teaching programming at an early age is that it really needs to be accompanied by teaching logic and then game and graph theory. I've seen classes that do this well for under-10s, but they're very rare.
[1] The Dijkstra comment that teaching BASIC should be a criminal offence doesn't really apply to BBC BASIC, which had full support for structured programming, an integrated assembler, and direct access to memory-mapped hardware.
[2] Back then, you really needed makefiles because there was no equivalent to a modern compiler driver. Compilation, assembly, and linking were all separate, manual, steps.
I learned to read on the computer. We got an Apple-II when I was ~3 years old (I am dating myself now). My older siblings would use the BASIC interpreter built into the device to make it scroll "Jittles sucks" infinitely, things like that. By 5 I was doing the same thing back to them. It's amazing what a little sibling rivalry can do. I started checking out programming books from my elementary school library by the time I was 8. I don't even know whether an elementary school library has such books where I am now. I started working in industry at 16, with C and Perl being my first professionally used languages. Those were the good old days...
I've seen a military Coup d'état in person before. A relatively peaceful one, even when it switched back to the original leader after a week. It's not pretty - and its recommended we avoid it. However, I will say that I prefer that people lose their lives fighting for freedom and their rights than that we become a police state. Even if that means my own or those of loved ones.
And to add insult to injury, the latest version of gmail will not let you attach a document to an email without first uploading it to drive. I am sure it works fine if you use an imap mail client, but the web-client is no good.
Sure you can.
Attachments that are too large (either exceeding the Gmail size limit or that of well-known recipient domains that Gmail knows about) will prompt you to upload the attachment to drive rather than trying to attach it directly.
That's actually a pretty handy, user-friendly thing to do.
I was trying to attach a 25kb word document. I could do so from my business account but not from my personal account. It kept taking me to Drive. Maybe something buggy was going on, but it would not let me. You're not the first person to tell me this. Now I know they just recently updated my inbox - it appears differently on gmail for iOS and gmail for Android than my business account. Perhaps this has something to do with it?
Just sent myself a Word document. Attached it as normal. I'm using the free consumer version, not sure if that makes a difference.
Seriously? Did they upgrade you to the new inbox yet? For my business account it works as usual, but my personal account will not let me attach anything except from Drive. This was via Safari on OS X. I didn't try any other browsers or platforms.
Since when? I sent my friend some photos of our anniversary party just yesterday, and it worked fine.
Photos you can send. Not "Office" documents. And that was as of night before last, at the latest. Any none-image format has to be uploaded to drive first.
Can somebody here write a cgi script (soon to come in handy) to detect which IPs are from California and ask for confirmation that they are indeed at least 18 years old?
That's simple, but I'm against "one size fits all" CGI "scripts" (since they don't exist), and also my CGI is not scripted, it's compiled C code. It's quite an easy bit of logic: In addition to the age verification for 13 year olds, simply also ask their state of origin. If they check the box:
[_] I am a resident of California, or am connecting ultimately from California (regardless of proxy).
Then you simply add five years to the output age from your date checking.
That way, you can be sure they're old enough to use your services. What I've discovered about my website visitors is that those who are not my target demographic for games forums (18-35) are octogenarians with severe potty-mouths! Some said this method was suspect, so I allowed the users to enter the actual year of their birth instead of drop-down boxes. The results were Astounding! Those that are not 18-35 are now 80% likely to be Ancient Ones who've lived for over two thousand years! I'm not an ageist, so I don't discriminate against those timeless immortals by denying them access. XxHalo343xX celebrated her 2013th birthday the same day she signed up, far be it from me to spoil her special day.
Additionally, a far rarer but greatly more mind-blowing fact is that there are time travelers among us from as early as 2038! Now, I'm not racist or sexist and I see no reason to block the chrono-displaced due to a mere CGI program oversight, so we welcome these visitors as well. I'm sure the regulations for operating a time machine ensure far more responsibility than merely deciding to say stuff on the Internet... Despite our prying, they remain tight lipped about the future, revealing only that global warming will cause another ice age, and that the PRISM leaks were caused by one of their ilk: Snowden? It seems so obvious in retrospect! Where else would you live during an ice age? Besides, I'm of the opinion that rather than inconvenience the entire space-time continuum, parents could simply be actual parents and monitor their kids' time-traveling activities if they're concerned.
It light of my recent discoveries I plan to change the date-based age verifier with a single simple checkbox:
[_] I am at least 13 years old, Not an enemy of the (current) USA, am 18 years of age if hailing from present-day California, and want cookies.
Surely you don't need a "contest" to write code that verifies if a single boolean value is true?
if ( 0 > false && G_theCheckBox > -1 || true < 0 ) {/*...*/ }
Blam! You're welcome. Even handles both negative and positive values of 'true' and 'false'!
I typically put the largest age possible on those age pickers. If I'm not at least 80, I probably have no business looking at all the filthy things on the internet, and should get a job.
I'm often amazed by how buggy Google software is. They have more money than they know what to do with and yet they put out some of the buggiest software. Google Drive is a disaster. I love Google Earth and use it daily but it crashed about 3 times yesterday. Maybe they should invest some of that money in quality control.
And to add insult to injury, the latest version of gmail will not let you attach a document to an email without first uploading it to drive. I am sure it works fine if you use an imap mail client, but the web-client is no good.
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It is interesting that when talking about weight and the cost for flying, people only look at people who are wider than the norm as if height doesn't add any extra weight.
It's not interesting at all, really. Why do I care if they need more headroom than me? I don't. It doesn't affect me at all. But when I am pressed against the glass of the window because the guy in the middle seat is overflowing 6 inches into my seat? Hell yes I care. And yes I have literally, on a regional jet, had someone sitting next to me who was so large I was pushed into the wall. Did they pay extra for my space? Did I get a discount on my reduced seating capacity? No. They could weigh 500 pounds and it would not bother me at all* if they stayed in their assigned area.
*Obviously if their weight caused safety issues for the center of gravity for the aircraft, then I would have a problem with it.
Passengers are where the weight is a real concern. Fatbodies cost the airlines money way more than life preservers. Charge by the pound.
I am by no means a fatbody, but I am tall and therefore weigh more than a person with my same build and body type who is shorter than me. I don't much care how much the person next to me weighs (though the airline does). I'd rather those who take up more horizontal space pay more than those who take up more vertical space / weight. I will say that these narrower seats concern me greatly. My hips barely fit between the arm rests I encounter now. (Not referring to the seats specifically mentioned in the article, but the more seats per row on 777 mentioned in summary)
You might get quicker non-urgent and more hotel-style care privately in the UK, but you'll rarely if ever get better medical treatment. And why would you?
In almost all cases, your problem has been seen ten thousand times before, and a doctor is either competent to fix it or they are not;
I had to have surgery on my jaw and I spent a lot of time (and eventually money) to have the procedure done by a specific doctor. I called dozens and dozens of doctors and, while all of them were capable of performing the procedure I needed, most only did 1 or 2 per year. The doctor that I went to did 5+ per week. Since there are major blood vessels that pass through the jaw, the surgery is, on average, more dangerous than your average procedure. When it comes to things like that I'd rather pay extra to see a doctor that specializes in that particular procedure. Now I am not saying that in the UK system that doctor would likely be outside of the NHS, but it's worth having a doctor with a lot of practical experience in the treatment you need. Even though tens of thousands of those cases were seen every year, only a handful of doctors in the US treated them. In fact, my doctor had patients flying in from Asia, Europe, and South America specifically to have him perform the surgery.
I have no problem with corporations taking advantage of whatever the law allows them to do but there should be consequences. If the government is going to consider a corporation to be like a person with 1st amendment rights and money to be speech, well they are declaring their corporate personhood to not be a citizen, only a resident. Residents don't get to vote, only citizens. If you don't have a vote then you shouldn't have any right to contribute anything to the election process. If you want a voice in the government then pay taxes.
No you're close, but not quite there. If corporations are people too then I would like to see Apple pay social security, AMT, and be taxed at the same income tax rate as an individual. They can't have their cake and eat it too. If a corporation has personhood, then let the corp pay on the same tax schedule as me. AMT means they would not be able to use all the crazy deductions they use as a corp and should have to pay much higher taxes than they do now.
Genius! I don't know how you come up with these ideas. Did you know we can eliminate the risk of being in an automobile crash by never leaving home?
I have a friend that will tell you just how untrue that statement is. He was hit by a car while watching TV on his couch. Staying inside did nothing to help him!
there were a method to codify books as electromagnetic signals, and a transport network to deliver such signals to devices capable of displaying the decodified content. Imagine the added benefit of not having to fly around 1 or 2 kilos of material, with all the energy savings that would imply. nahh, that's impossible
You're definitely underestimating the weight of all those 1's and 0's. Especially the 1's. Most people think the 0 would weight more because it is wider, but the 1 contains much more data and therefore has more mass. There will be millions of 1's and 0's for a single book, versus perhaps 300 pages for a printed copy. Obviously the printed copy weighs less and uses less resources.
Of course, you have to add in the billion and billions in decommissioning fees and nuclear waste storage and uranium mining and transportation and security and....
I was unaware of the fact that the Chinese government required insurance or decommissioning fees. I just assumed they'd blast it into oblivious :P
The preference is small, and one applies at a time. Meaning, some contracts have preference for women, other for minorities. Being both doesn't double your chances.
That is definitely not true. Small businesses that are owned by a woman minority have 7 years of special status where the USG will actually go out of its way to find contracts for the company. They build your business for you. I know someone who has serially done this. Starts a company with a female minority, builds it up during the 7 years and then sells it off.
I too have been sick of the fear mongering propaganda complex that has overtaken our society in the past several years.
However, there is an enormous gulf between McCarthyism and the terrorist threat. No commies blew up airplanes and buildings. No commies went on shooting sprees in malls. No commies set off car bombs in crowded markets. The pink menace wasn't really very menacing at all. It was a false accusation.
Terrorists are real. Terrorist individuals and organizations commit atrocities on a near daily basis and regularly and publicly vow to kill large segments of the population or entire nations. Terrorism, unlike communism in the U.S., is a real threat that must not be ignored. But, that doesn't excuse these governments from using it as the go-to excuse for justifying every infringement of rights and nefarious activity, from banning nail clippers to the brave new world.
It's true. Every time I walk down the street to the local McDonald's, I find myself dodging suicide bomber after suicide bomber. Thank goodness we have these politicians in Washington who are spying on my every action to help keep me safe from these no good terrorists.
Why are you supporting your sister in her bad habits?
Ever lived with a teenager? You pick and choose your battles carefully.
Just out of curiosity (and its obviously none of my business) but are you raising your sister? Or are you just trying to be a good sibling?
We're beating the US on every health metric worth considering (Except, oddly, cancer survival rate), and at a substantially lower per-capita spending.
The cancer survival rate is probably higher in the US because typically you can get diagnosed with cancer on Monday and, if necessary be having surgery to remove it on Tuesday. I know someone who was diagnosed with a very severe and aggressive type of brain cancer. He was quite literally in surgery the very next day. I don't know how long his wait would have been with the NHS, perhaps it would have been severe enough that the NHS would have had the same turn around. But these emergency procedures are quite lucrative for all parties involved, so the US's system specializes in such emergency care.
The poverty level in some of the worst areas of East Oakland exceeds 35% - those people aren't going anywhere. Sorry, but in the real world problems like this don't have the simple solution you have put forward.
If you could afford to leave East Oakland, you very likely wouldn't be there in the first place. Accordingly, I don't see how crowd-funding private security would work. TFS mentions the Rockridge neighborhood in Oakland which enjoys the lowest crime rates (and lowest poverty rate) in all of Oakland. This project, while accomplishing very little to begin with, will not provide these services to the worst areas of Oakland -- where help of some kind is needed most.
It could, potentially, free up law enforcement resources to help with the worst parts of Oakland though. That still does not address the poverty issues, however.
"South Korea experienced jellyfish attacks along its southwest coast, where they (...) ate fish eggs and plankton,"
The bastards! What about Dolphins and sharks? Do they have a robot for those too?
No, but they did just sign a defense pact with the Japanese, who have sworn to protect the Koreans from hordes of whales!
You are correct that they have leeway to build a case. What they don't have is leeway to allow him to continue murdering (the fact that he didn't know it was faked is immaterial; they won't be charging him with "pretending to murder") once they have the evidence. Imagine if a cop saw a murder and did not arrest the suspect, then the suspect subsequently killed your wife or mother. Would you be saying: I totally understand. He was exercising his leeway!
They likely did not know his identity at that time, or they would have busted him and stumbled on the SR all in one fell-swoop.
You are either completely ignorant of how GAO works (which incidentally, covers more than just DoD), or you are blindly biased against defense spending.
I admit the working of the GAO is new to me. Why is it, then, that I have never seen/heard about NSF distributing large sums/grants on the last day of the fiscal year? There seems to be a rush to approve programs here - is it that a lot of programs have their allocation deadlines set to September 30th, or are the allocation deadlines open ended (theoretically), and the people start rushing in approving projects towards the end of the fiscal year (which might imply that the review isn't as good - there is a rush to get them out the door)?
For the military, it often depends on what organization is doing the spending. For instance, the general AF, Army, Navy, etc often wait to spend money until the end of the fiscal year. The purpose is to ensure that there is no budget shortfall. Planes, tanks, and ships all need fuel. Fuel cost can vary dramatically. Perhaps some goods spoiled, or were damaged or lost? They save as much money as possible and then prioritize their projects based on need and money available. They complete the process as though they were going to award all of the contracts, but only award that which meets their budget and priorities at the end of the fiscal year. I've seen other groups that tries to line everything up to go thru GAO on October 1st. These groups share a budget with other groups. They spend their money as soon as they get it because, if they don't, another group can petition to use their unspent funds.
Cannot just hand out grants to scientific research in the last few hours of the day. Nor the NIH.
Shit like this is what makes me angry at the priorities of the US. There is a very good reason that the NSF program directors can't hand out money to their buddies - proposals need to be submitted, evaluated, debated, etc. But were there multiple competitors for the money given to Pratt and Whitney? Did they have to read, deliberate, and have experts from various organizations debate the merits?
You are either completely ignorant of how GAO works (which incidentally, covers more than just DoD), or you are blindly biased against defense spending. Having worked in the defense industry, I can tell you that there was either a study done to prove that there was validity in doing a sole-source contract, or there was an Request For Proposals (RFP) issued by the DoD. Once the DoD approves a vendor, and picks a contract vehicle to fund the order on, the GAO then comes in and decides whether or not the contract should actually be issued, whether the process was fair, and whether the price is correct.
Part of my duties at this defense contractor was to help write technical approaches to these RFPs. It can be a long and grueling process. It often takes 6 months or more to even know whether or not you have a chance of winning the contract. Once you are awarded the contract, anyone who submitted a response can contest that award and cause it to be re-bid. This results in you often having to respond to a modified RFP, or otherwise updating your bid. I have personally seen a contract be re-bid three times before it even made it to the GAO, who took another 2 or 3 months to decide whether or not to actually honor the award.
In my experience, I would often submit my proposal at the beginning of the fiscal year (Oct - Dec is the first quarter for the USG), and not know whether or not we would actually be awarded by the GAO until September (the end of the 4th quarter for the USG). So do they spend a hell of a lot of money in September? Yes. And for a lot of reasons. But they don't just shovel out $5B of dollars any which way they can. So go on and rant about the way we spend money on Defense (I personally agree that we overspend in that area), but don't try and claim that the DoD has it any different than the NIH. The only difference is the size of the purse.
Here's a better question: why doesn't iOS 7 work with iOS 6 compatible apps?
That officially rules Apple out of being "the new Microsoft:" Microsoft has never been dumb enough to break existing apps on their OSes. If there's one thing Microsoft deserves credit for, it's the ridiculous extents they go through to make sure old apps keep working.
Apple is the exact opposite way: if you allow Mac OS X to upgrade your iOS development environment, you will entirely lose the ability to target anything except iOS 7. There is no way to go back, other than to find "pirated" sources of older versions of Xcode. (Xcode is free, so "pirated" isn't quite the right word here, but you know what I mean - sources that don't use the Apple app store.)
While I agree with what you are saying, it is possible to install older versions of XCode right from the Apple Developer portal. In fact, I have XCode 5 and 4.6.3 installed both on my machine right now. I am using both actively, as I need to fix bugs for my client who is stuck at 6.1, and also work on making the app usable for iOS 7.
I was 7 when I learned to program. We had one lesson a week taught by the school's headmaster on whatever he thought was interesting, and so he taught some programming in BASIC[1] on the BBC Model B. He also taught some geometry using Logo on the same machine. It was connected to a big TV (which, by modern standards, is a small TV), and he'd ask the class to describe the program and he'd type it. After school and at lunch and break times there were a few of these machines that we could use, and I learned a bit more. I asked my father to teach me a real language, and he taught me PL/M86 (which I still miss sometimes), and I then moved on to C[2].
When I got to university, I discovered how much of the theoretical side I was missing. The main problem with teaching programming at an early age is that it really needs to be accompanied by teaching logic and then game and graph theory. I've seen classes that do this well for under-10s, but they're very rare.
[1] The Dijkstra comment that teaching BASIC should be a criminal offence doesn't really apply to BBC BASIC, which had full support for structured programming, an integrated assembler, and direct access to memory-mapped hardware. [2] Back then, you really needed makefiles because there was no equivalent to a modern compiler driver. Compilation, assembly, and linking were all separate, manual, steps.
I learned to read on the computer. We got an Apple-II when I was ~3 years old (I am dating myself now). My older siblings would use the BASIC interpreter built into the device to make it scroll "Jittles sucks" infinitely, things like that. By 5 I was doing the same thing back to them. It's amazing what a little sibling rivalry can do. I started checking out programming books from my elementary school library by the time I was 8. I don't even know whether an elementary school library has such books where I am now. I started working in industry at 16, with C and Perl being my first professionally used languages. Those were the good old days...
I've never seen a civil war up close before.
I've seen a military Coup d'état in person before. A relatively peaceful one, even when it switched back to the original leader after a week. It's not pretty - and its recommended we avoid it. However, I will say that I prefer that people lose their lives fighting for freedom and their rights than that we become a police state. Even if that means my own or those of loved ones.
And to add insult to injury, the latest version of gmail will not let you attach a document to an email without first uploading it to drive. I am sure it works fine if you use an imap mail client, but the web-client is no good.
Sure you can.
Attachments that are too large (either exceeding the Gmail size limit or that of well-known recipient domains that Gmail knows about) will prompt you to upload the attachment to drive rather than trying to attach it directly.
That's actually a pretty handy, user-friendly thing to do.
I was trying to attach a 25kb word document. I could do so from my business account but not from my personal account. It kept taking me to Drive. Maybe something buggy was going on, but it would not let me. You're not the first person to tell me this. Now I know they just recently updated my inbox - it appears differently on gmail for iOS and gmail for Android than my business account. Perhaps this has something to do with it?
Just sent myself a Word document. Attached it as normal. I'm using the free consumer version, not sure if that makes a difference.
Seriously? Did they upgrade you to the new inbox yet? For my business account it works as usual, but my personal account will not let me attach anything except from Drive. This was via Safari on OS X. I didn't try any other browsers or platforms.
Since when? I sent my friend some photos of our anniversary party just yesterday, and it worked fine.
Photos you can send. Not "Office" documents. And that was as of night before last, at the latest. Any none-image format has to be uploaded to drive first.
Can somebody here write a cgi script (soon to come in handy) to detect which IPs are from California and ask for confirmation that they are indeed at least 18 years old?
That's simple, but I'm against "one size fits all" CGI "scripts" (since they don't exist), and also my CGI is not scripted, it's compiled C code. It's quite an easy bit of logic: In addition to the age verification for 13 year olds, simply also ask their state of origin. If they check the box: [_] I am a resident of California, or am connecting ultimately from California (regardless of proxy). Then you simply add five years to the output age from your date checking.
That way, you can be sure they're old enough to use your services. What I've discovered about my website visitors is that those who are not my target demographic for games forums (18-35) are octogenarians with severe potty-mouths! Some said this method was suspect, so I allowed the users to enter the actual year of their birth instead of drop-down boxes. The results were Astounding! Those that are not 18-35 are now 80% likely to be Ancient Ones who've lived for over two thousand years! I'm not an ageist, so I don't discriminate against those timeless immortals by denying them access. XxHalo343xX celebrated her 2013th birthday the same day she signed up, far be it from me to spoil her special day.
Additionally, a far rarer but greatly more mind-blowing fact is that there are time travelers among us from as early as 2038! Now, I'm not racist or sexist and I see no reason to block the chrono-displaced due to a mere CGI program oversight, so we welcome these visitors as well. I'm sure the regulations for operating a time machine ensure far more responsibility than merely deciding to say stuff on the Internet... Despite our prying, they remain tight lipped about the future, revealing only that global warming will cause another ice age, and that the PRISM leaks were caused by one of their ilk: Snowden? It seems so obvious in retrospect! Where else would you live during an ice age? Besides, I'm of the opinion that rather than inconvenience the entire space-time continuum, parents could simply be actual parents and monitor their kids' time-traveling activities if they're concerned.
It light of my recent discoveries I plan to change the date-based age verifier with a single simple checkbox: [_] I am at least 13 years old, Not an enemy of the (current) USA, am 18 years of age if hailing from present-day California, and want cookies.
Surely you don't need a "contest" to write code that verifies if a single boolean value is true?
if ( 0 > false && G_theCheckBox > -1 || true < 0 ) { /*...*/ }
Blam! You're welcome. Even handles both negative and positive values of 'true' and 'false'!
I typically put the largest age possible on those age pickers. If I'm not at least 80, I probably have no business looking at all the filthy things on the internet, and should get a job.
Whatever this is, it is not "online piracy".
No ships have been illegally seized, not a single cutlass has been brandished.
Maybe you didn't brandish a cutlass, but some of us do! I can't believe I am linking XKCD but I guess there is a first time for everything.
I'm often amazed by how buggy Google software is. They have more money than they know what to do with and yet they put out some of the buggiest software. Google Drive is a disaster. I love Google Earth and use it daily but it crashed about 3 times yesterday. Maybe they should invest some of that money in quality control.
And to add insult to injury, the latest version of gmail will not let you attach a document to an email without first uploading it to drive. I am sure it works fine if you use an imap mail client, but the web-client is no good.