Here then is the origin and rise of government; namely, a mode rendered necessary by the inability of moral virtue to govern the world; here too is the design and end of government, viz. Freedom and security.
Thus, you have a good point. Putting security before freedom in the form of a warrant-less wiretap is Anti-American.
Its more than doubled in 14 years and its been done by both Democrats and Republicans.
Please research the time value of money to understand that "doubling in 14 years" is barely significant because of a weapon against the rich bastards who run this country called "inflation".
The only *really* noteworthy point is that while government spending *is* keep pace with inflation, average salaries and the minimium wage are not which means that a poor schmuck who was earning $60k in 1996 and $90k in 2009 is *much* worse off in 2009 because of aforementioned inflation.
Your other insights this morning, however, have been very interesting to read and I subsequently added you as a friend.
I wish I could get a $200k bonus for blowing away a PetaByte of mainframe storage.
No, but you could probably get a $2M bonus for protecting that much private customer data from terrorists.
See what I did? I changed "blowing away" to "protect" and "mainframe storage" to "private customer data" and I added an extra "0" to the bonus amount. I added a mention of "terrorists" in there for good measure. That's how the MBAs think. It shows your way of thinking (which more closely matches a realistic world) is flawed compared to the bastards who are robbing us working class shmucks.
So far, and I think for the rest of the time humanity exists, capitalism is the best economic system we are capable of having.
This is the conservative view on every topic of import: the status quo is the best system possible.
Wonderful logic! Well put, sir.
I suggest Tim Kreider's essay [thepaincomics.com] on the subject:
as Montag's colleagues assure him in Farenheit 451, "Believe me, houses have always been fireproof. Firemen have always burned books."
It's funny you allude to literature. This medium has an uncanny ability to fictionalize the truth into an absurd dramatization that mirrors the truth that's inherent in the world. The realizations that these books which follow simple plots in seemingly unrealistic situations tell us a lot about ourselves is refreshing.
I suggest Tim Kreider's essay [thepaincomics.com] on the subject:
capitalist liberal democracy is the final culmination of all social progress, apparently unable to imagine a more perfect system
Again replying to your quote, I'd point you towards my own book entitled 2076 that offers an imaginative look at the future. It's currently a draft and the final version won't hit bookshelves until next year, but I imagine you'll like at least some of the ideas.
I deal with entry-level low-bandwidth Internet plus Basic Cable with HD/DVR from Comcast for $30/month. But that's because I'm signed up for two separate, promotional deals. And for a phone I just pay Verizon $40/month for Wireless service.
$70 is less than $120, so I'm not impressed by the prospects of this "Municipal Bundle".
I hear "cloud computing" discussed and wonder what it really means. It seems like it's just a notion of a server connected to many clients serving data to client applications (which isn't a new concept). However, my impression was that "cloud computing" was many clients connected to each other serving each other content.
Cloud computing services often provide common business applications online that are accessed from a web browser, while the software and data are stored on the servers.
Okay... cloud computing is "business application accessed from a web browser". Well, in the respect I think the deal might be a good step for cloud computing.
Clicked the link... the price for a TV/Internet/Phone Bundle was listed as $120/month. It seems to me that this isn't "competing on price", but then again I'm spendthift enough to pause before signing up for a monthly bill that costs that much.
a music sample that actually sounds pretty good with 48kbps *instead of* (for example) spoken word which makes a bigger difference
Sorry, but spoken word at 48kbps sounds bloody awful.
Thanks for reaffirming my assertion that spoken words sounds noticeably worse at lower bitrates. Sorry for misleading you with unclear sentence structure. I think we both agree that rock music is more likely than spoken word to sound fine at 48kbps. Have a good day!
Based on TFS, 33% answered that the 48kbps sounded better than 160kbps. I have a assume that some percentage of the people who said that the 160kbps were guessing and got lucky to pick the "right" answer.
Also, it may be because they are using a music sample that actually sounds pretty good with 48kbps instead of (for example) spoken word which makes a bigger difference when you compress the hell out of it.
There is no magic bullet... for many people lower bitrates are just as good as high-fidelity.
But they didn't have proper laws to charge Drew with behavior that arguably resulted in the death of a teenager. She was guilty of that bad behavior, but the got acquitted because the judge didn't want to establish "breaking a website's terms of service" as precedence for violating the law. For whatever reason, there were not any "harassment" charges to levy against Drew.
for you adults who like to poke and prod people online... better think twice
Thinking twice is generally good advise whenever the action that you are going to take can be perceived as "being a dick". While they can't make general rules against "being a dick", I think having enforceable laws like this is a good help.
I'm not sure "2 years in prison" is a good punishment for this. I think 2 weeks in prison for "petty internet harassment" that doesn't have any serious outcome would be more fitting for MOST cases. Regarding the Lori Drew case, however, 10 years would seem fair.
Correct. NJ gets 1914 MW from 4 Nuclear Power reactors, which is about 50% of the state's power. They get 30% from Natural gas and 15% from Coal, and 5% from alternative sources.
I've been an analyst. I've been a consultant. Does anyone realize how little it takes to be either of the two?
Quote of the week.
Must we write an article every time some moderately paid asshole has an opinion?
Articles about people's insignificant opinions were what the internet was designed to do.
Maybe somebody could design a site called slashdotfilter.org which links to the normal slashdot.org with these types of headline stories that don't contain "real news" scrubbed out.
Read enough to get soundbites? I haven't even seen "An Inconvenient Truth". It's on my list, right up there with "Zombieland" and the new Michael Moore movie about Wall Street raping America.
I have high hopes for all these documentaries to truthfully and accurately represent the content that they're describing.
Obama's sticking point throughout the health care debates and in regards to tax reform is that nobody making less than $250k per year will be worse off than before. With health care, he's published research showing that only 5% of the population would find any "public" care option to be relatively worthwhile. For the rest of the population, it'll be business as usual.
Presuming your opposition to reform is because you're in the magical "makes more than $250k per year" group.... FUCK YOU FOR YOUR COMPLAINING RICHNESS.
I agree. But then again, Al Gore essentially won the Nobel Peace Prize for making a Powerpoint presentation. If the committee is using the prize as a tool to make other world leaders take notice that America has really strong intentions to remove ourselves from all the international conflicts we're engaged in, then power to them.
Between the troubles faced in the US domestic economy, the conflicts in the Middle East and Asia, health care reform, and setting a good example for his daughters, Obama is a man to be respected for his accomplishments during the past year.
Rather, ads are used to build your reputation and increase familiarity.
I would agree to this, except for the fact that there are so many advertisers who use obnoxious flash ads that distract and dance on the screen. These monstrosities don't make any attempt to build reputation.
Also, the other day I saw an "Amazon" ad for a cordless drill (a product that I'm in the market for). They were advertising a sale for a product that I actually wanted and it came up either by luck or because they used cookies to figure me out. Either way... no click because they used an hidden/embedded flash link and so there is zero trust from me that the ad was actually going to take me to Amazon.
I think the whole industry is fucked, and while I admit it's wishful thinking to hope that advertising goes away... I know that they'll be around for a long, long time.
Because having retailers pay for ads that will never generate sales is the only way to make them realize that it's not worth it to advertise in the first place.
As an aside, I'm looking forward to the new US blog rules that go into effect in a month that state bloggers need to say if they are getting paid to promote a product.
It's called predictive news reporting. It's only possible if you're smart enough to figure out, from a market perspective, what millions of people would think is absolutely ridiculous but also a must-have item for their bathroom.
I'm the GGP. I think the GP is completely wrong to suggest the possibility that an organization would fail to capitalize on their fruitful investments by high-balling downstream businesses.
The fact that we are talking about a research organization that makes it's money from technology patents puts this discussion into a sort of bizarro world because this is the sort of thing that major medical companies would pay big bucks to get (and pay top salaries to the team of Ph.D candidates who came up with it).
But... like I said originally... if Yale develops a pattern of patent abuse that spans years/decades then government investigation would be appropriate. Failing that, let them go about their business of producing more and more Ph.D's.
And give Yale a break... they had a major setback recently because of an unfortunate association with a Mr. George W. Bush. I bet, if they could, they'd renounce that connection.
They're writers, not scientists, man! Their mission is to write words to attract internet links to their websites and bring in ad revenue. Performing simple division simplification wouldn't help that mission.
Slashdot Mirror
The point is that this stuff is wrong even if it does make people safer.
From Common Sense by Tom Paine:
Here then is the origin and rise of government; namely, a mode rendered necessary by the inability of moral virtue to govern the world; here too is the design and end of government, viz. Freedom and security.
Thus, you have a good point. Putting security before freedom in the form of a warrant-less wiretap is Anti-American.
Its more than doubled in 14 years and its been done by both Democrats and Republicans.
Please research the time value of money to understand that "doubling in 14 years" is barely significant because of a weapon against the rich bastards who run this country called "inflation".
The only *really* noteworthy point is that while government spending *is* keep pace with inflation, average salaries and the minimium wage are not which means that a poor schmuck who was earning $60k in 1996 and $90k in 2009 is *much* worse off in 2009 because of aforementioned inflation.
Your other insights this morning, however, have been very interesting to read and I subsequently added you as a friend.
I wish I could get a $200k bonus for blowing away a PetaByte of mainframe storage.
No, but you could probably get a $2M bonus for protecting that much private customer data from terrorists.
See what I did? I changed "blowing away" to "protect" and "mainframe storage" to "private customer data" and I added an extra "0" to the bonus amount. I added a mention of "terrorists" in there for good measure. That's how the MBAs think. It shows your way of thinking (which more closely matches a realistic world) is flawed compared to the bastards who are robbing us working class shmucks.
So far, and I think for the rest of the time humanity exists, capitalism is the best economic system we are capable of having.
This is the conservative view on every topic of import: the status quo is the best system possible.
Wonderful logic! Well put, sir.
I suggest Tim Kreider's essay [thepaincomics.com] on the subject:
as Montag's colleagues assure him in Farenheit 451, "Believe me, houses have always been fireproof. Firemen have always burned books."
It's funny you allude to literature. This medium has an uncanny ability to fictionalize the truth into an absurd dramatization that mirrors the truth that's inherent in the world. The realizations that these books which follow simple plots in seemingly unrealistic situations tell us a lot about ourselves is refreshing.
I suggest Tim Kreider's essay [thepaincomics.com] on the subject:
capitalist liberal democracy is the final culmination of all social progress, apparently unable to imagine a more perfect system
Again replying to your quote, I'd point you towards my own book entitled 2076 that offers an imaginative look at the future. It's currently a draft and the final version won't hit bookshelves until next year, but I imagine you'll like at least some of the ideas.
I deal with entry-level low-bandwidth Internet plus Basic Cable with HD/DVR from Comcast for $30/month. But that's because I'm signed up for two separate, promotional deals. And for a phone I just pay Verizon $40/month for Wireless service.
$70 is less than $120, so I'm not impressed by the prospects of this "Municipal Bundle".
Has cloud computing stepped up to prime time?
I hear "cloud computing" discussed and wonder what it really means. It seems like it's just a notion of a server connected to many clients serving data to client applications (which isn't a new concept). However, my impression was that "cloud computing" was many clients connected to each other serving each other content.
Let's see what Wikipedia has to say about it
Cloud computing services often provide common business applications online that are accessed from a web browser, while the software and data are stored on the servers.
Okay... cloud computing is "business application accessed from a web browser". Well, in the respect I think the deal might be a good step for cloud computing.
Clicked the link... the price for a TV/Internet/Phone Bundle was listed as $120/month. It seems to me that this isn't "competing on price", but then again I'm spendthift enough to pause before signing up for a monthly bill that costs that much.
1981: 640K ought to be enough for anybody.
2009: 10 Million servers ought to be enough for any company.
Screens are not very tall, but quite wide these days, on average.
Says the guy who puts line breaks into his post every 80 characters.
a music sample that actually sounds pretty good with 48kbps *instead of* (for example) spoken word which makes a bigger difference
Sorry, but spoken word at 48kbps sounds bloody awful.
Thanks for reaffirming my assertion that spoken words sounds noticeably worse at lower bitrates. Sorry for misleading you with unclear sentence structure. I think we both agree that rock music is more likely than spoken word to sound fine at 48kbps. Have a good day!
Based on TFS, 33% answered that the 48kbps sounded better than 160kbps. I have a assume that some percentage of the people who said that the 160kbps were guessing and got lucky to pick the "right" answer.
Also, it may be because they are using a music sample that actually sounds pretty good with 48kbps instead of (for example) spoken word which makes a bigger difference when you compress the hell out of it.
There is no magic bullet... for many people lower bitrates are just as good as high-fidelity.
But they didn't have proper laws to charge Drew with behavior that arguably resulted in the death of a teenager. She was guilty of that bad behavior, but the got acquitted because the judge didn't want to establish "breaking a website's terms of service" as precedence for violating the law. For whatever reason, there were not any "harassment" charges to levy against Drew.
FTFA
It seems the goal of the new law was to discourage using the name or persona of another person to create a Web page.
It seems like there is a movement to make it difficult to pretend to be somebody you're not on the internet. I *think* this is a good thing.
for you adults who like to poke and prod people online ... better think twice
Thinking twice is generally good advise whenever the action that you are going to take can be perceived as "being a dick". While they can't make general rules against "being a dick", I think having enforceable laws like this is a good help.
I'm not sure "2 years in prison" is a good punishment for this. I think 2 weeks in prison for "petty internet harassment" that doesn't have any serious outcome would be more fitting for MOST cases. Regarding the Lori Drew case, however, 10 years would seem fair.
Correct. NJ gets 1914 MW from 4 Nuclear Power reactors, which is about 50% of the state's power. They get 30% from Natural gas and 15% from Coal, and 5% from alternative sources.
Source: http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/nuclear/page/at_a_glance/states/statesnj.html
I've been an analyst. I've been a consultant. Does anyone realize how little it takes to be either of the two?
Quote of the week.
Must we write an article every time some moderately paid asshole has an opinion?
Articles about people's insignificant opinions were what the internet was designed to do.
Maybe somebody could design a site called slashdotfilter.org which links to the normal slashdot.org with these types of headline stories that don't contain "real news" scrubbed out.
spreadsheet jockey
CNN published a list of the best 50 jobs of 2009 today. I didn't see this one, though "analyst" did make the list. :)
Read enough to get soundbites? I haven't even seen "An Inconvenient Truth". It's on my list, right up there with "Zombieland" and the new Michael Moore movie about Wall Street raping America.
I have high hopes for all these documentaries to truthfully and accurately represent the content that they're describing.
I know I'm more annoyed at him than at W.
Obama's sticking point throughout the health care debates and in regards to tax reform is that nobody making less than $250k per year will be worse off than before. With health care, he's published research showing that only 5% of the population would find any "public" care option to be relatively worthwhile. For the rest of the population, it'll be business as usual.
Presuming your opposition to reform is because you're in the magical "makes more than $250k per year" group.... FUCK YOU FOR YOUR COMPLAINING RICHNESS.
I agree. But then again, Al Gore essentially won the Nobel Peace Prize for making a Powerpoint presentation. If the committee is using the prize as a tool to make other world leaders take notice that America has really strong intentions to remove ourselves from all the international conflicts we're engaged in, then power to them.
Between the troubles faced in the US domestic economy, the conflicts in the Middle East and Asia, health care reform, and setting a good example for his daughters, Obama is a man to be respected for his accomplishments during the past year.
Rather, ads are used to build your reputation and increase familiarity.
I would agree to this, except for the fact that there are so many advertisers who use obnoxious flash ads that distract and dance on the screen. These monstrosities don't make any attempt to build reputation.
Also, the other day I saw an "Amazon" ad for a cordless drill (a product that I'm in the market for). They were advertising a sale for a product that I actually wanted and it came up either by luck or because they used cookies to figure me out. Either way... no click because they used an hidden/embedded flash link and so there is zero trust from me that the ad was actually going to take me to Amazon.
I think the whole industry is fucked, and while I admit it's wishful thinking to hope that advertising goes away... I know that they'll be around for a long, long time.
Because having retailers pay for ads that will never generate sales is the only way to make them realize that it's not worth it to advertise in the first place.
As an aside, I'm looking forward to the new US blog rules that go into effect in a month that state bloggers need to say if they are getting paid to promote a product.
It's called predictive news reporting. It's only possible if you're smart enough to figure out, from a market perspective, what millions of people would think is absolutely ridiculous but also a must-have item for their bathroom.
I'm the GGP. I think the GP is completely wrong to suggest the possibility that an organization would fail to capitalize on their fruitful investments by high-balling downstream businesses.
The fact that we are talking about a research organization that makes it's money from technology patents puts this discussion into a sort of bizarro world because this is the sort of thing that major medical companies would pay big bucks to get (and pay top salaries to the team of Ph.D candidates who came up with it).
But... like I said originally... if Yale develops a pattern of patent abuse that spans years/decades then government investigation would be appropriate. Failing that, let them go about their business of producing more and more Ph.D's.
And give Yale a break... they had a major setback recently because of an unfortunate association with a Mr. George W. Bush. I bet, if they could, they'd renounce that connection.
They're writers, not scientists, man! Their mission is to write words to attract internet links to their websites and bring in ad revenue. Performing simple division simplification wouldn't help that mission.