And what about his right to express how upset/angry/disturbed about her he is?
Didn't read the article, did you? After posting said blog, he then went on to create aliases and to use those aliases to anonymously e-mail the woman's employer, her family, and her friends with links to the blog. That goes beyond simply expressing his feelings about the relationship and how it ended, by a very wide margin.
Only in the US would there be *any* question whether his creating a blog for the specific purpose of harassing and embarrassing an ex who got a restraining order against him was legal.... Your country has a *really* fucked up idea of what free speech means, and how it integrates into a productive society....
To be blunt: you can say what you want as long as, to the best of your knowledge it's true, and it doesn't interfere with the rights of others, such as the right not to be threatened or harassed. In any other country in the first world, she wouldn't have even needed a restraining order for what he did to have been illegal.
My state has a law against using a cell phone while driving unless you use a hands-free device. This doesn't stop anybody. Every day on my 15-mile commute, I see dozens of people holding phones up to their ears.
That will change with time. While there will always be one idiot out there who refuses to use other tools, the main reason the majority of folks don't use hands free in their car is because they don't want to spend the money to buy a hands free set. As more older cars get retired and replaced with newer cars, however, that problem will disappear: it's almost impossible to get anything approaching a "luxury" car today that doesn't have bluetooth hands free built into the car, usually with steering-wheel controls and voice dialling. And even avoiding the "luxury" class of cars, most car models available on the market today have bluetooth available as an option. We're only a few years away from the "option" becoming "standard", just like how air conditioning, power steering, and power windows have become "standard" on most cars (it already is standard on just about any car costing more than $20,000). It will take time, but 10 years from now, most cars on the road will have bluetooth hands free. And as for the phones? When was the last time you saw a new cell phone that *didn't* have bluetooth built in?
As for an outright ban? Bad idea. It would discourage car manufacturers from including BT hands free in the cars, and the BT hands free *does* increase safety relative to driving without hands free. People proposing a flat ban on all kinds of cell phone use while driving are the ones who are reality impaired: they're oblivious to the fact that as with speed limits, seatbelt rules, rules governing listening to your stereo too loud, and just about any other "safety" rule that they pass, some folks are still going to ignore it and do what they want. They shouldn't be passing outright bans on this kind of behaviour, they should be passing rules to mitigate the negative impact. (kind of like how with drinking/driving, most jurisdictions have an acceptable maximum limit of blood alcohol content, rather than having zero tolerance at all)
Unfortunately, it's not really possible to say categorically what feminism is about, without considering the different generations of feminism.... consider:
First gen: suffragettes. These were the women (and men) fighting to have women recognized as people under the law, and having all of the rights/privileges as men (land ownership, the vote, etc.) Second gen: bra burners. These were the women (and men) fighting to have equal opportunities in the work place. To escape the oppression imposed by the status quo which said "women don't go into sciences", or which said that it was perfectly acceptable to pay a woman half as much to do the same job, because she would have a husband who could support her. Third gen: femi-nazis. The old boys' club (status quo) fought back against the Second Gen feminists in the 70's and early 80's, which gave rise to the Third Gen feminists. These are the women who are convinced that if you have a Y chromosome you're defective by definition. Men suck, and women rule. And I described it as "if you have a Y chromosome" on purpose, because these women are usually the ones who refuse to accept transsexuals as their identified gender. These are also the ones who started spelling it "womyn" so that it doesn't have the word "man" in it, and the ones who think that a man who holds a door for a woman is a misogynist, rather than just being polite. Fourth gen: current/modern feminism. This is all about saying that yes, women are capable of doing everything that men are (socially, not biologically for obvious reasons), yes men, can do everything that women can. But she doesn't *have* to if she doesn't want to. The current generation is all about having the choice to do whatever you want in life.
Those would be the major generations of feminism in the 20th century. As always, there's crossover, and no clear definition of when they begin/end. I'm sure we all know somebody who fits into the third gen today, and I'm sure we all know somebody who was more fourth gen in their thinking even in the 60's.
And yes, I am female. I am also a feminist. I think that there's an awful lot of people at Slashdot who are feminists even if they don't realize it, or attach the name to it. And in case it wasn't obvious, I consider myself in the fourth generation of feminism, in that I am hugely appreciative of the work that those before me have done, and I feel that it's extremely important to keep that fight up, but I also believe it's extremely important to recognize that it's about having the choice, and that if another woman chooses to leave the workforce, become a housewife, and raise a family, that is her choice to make, and she is not part of the problem, she's exercising exactly the right that I fight for, also my mother and my grandmother before me. And if a guy holds a door for me, I thank him. And if it's a double door, I'll hold the next one for him.:)
Not in Bridge, no... you can pass during the bidding, if you don't think you'll be able to win 6 tricks. If all 4 players pass, then you re-deal... the idea with most forms of Bridge is to bid as little as possible, and then win as many tricks as possible. There is a version of Contract Bridge where you get penalized for winning more tricks than you bid, in the same way you'd get penalized for winning fewer than you bid, but yeah.:)
Tell that to the Conservatives. They're using robodiallers on their political campaigns, even though the rules say quite clearly that the rules for robodiallers apply regardless of whether the person on whose behalf the calls are being made is exempt from DNC rules, and that robodiallers may not be used without express consent, which is defined as an explicit oral or written contract permitting this kind of communication.
I am going to bookmark that one for the next political campaign in the area, and use it to file a grievance with the CRTC.
No... you'd turn the cards in and ask for a re-deal. Or if you were unscrupulous, you'd bid 1 club, and increase as necessary until you win the bidding. Your score in Bridge isn't for winning all 13 tricks, it's for winning more tricks than you bid. You bid 7, you are saying that you'll win all 13 tricks. But if you bid 1, you're saying you'll win 7 tricks, and then the extra 6 are just going to increase your score that much more. You'd bid "no trump" if you're holding all the face cards.:)
What's the true relevance of transistor count? If I see two processors with identical performance and power efficiency but radically different transistor counts do I have any real world incentive to select one over the other? I mean, presumably the one with fewer transistors in roughly the same die space might overclock better, might have a longer MTBF, etc., but beyond that should I care?
If you can find one processor with 2 billion transistors, and another with 1.2 billion, and they both draw exactly the same power requirements, performance, instruction set, and have the same heat envelope, then either somebody in marketing is lying, or somebody is doing something horribly wrong. On the one hand, it should not take 2 billion transistors to do something that can be done with 2/3 of that, but on the other hand, if you have 1/3 fewer transistors, you should experience an according decrease in heat leakage.
That being said, numbers like transistor count matter to enthusiasts. These are the same people who used to spend $1000 to buy the 3.8GHz P4 chip instead of the $300 3.4GHz chip. For some folks on the market, bigger == better, and there's no point in trying to explain to them that they can accomplish the same job with a less powerful chip. Some people build/buy/upgrade computers so that they can brag about being more powerful than their buddies, and when you couple that mentality with a disposable income, well, you know the rest.
For somebody like me, it's not likely to make a big difference. But I'm typing this on a laptop that's powered by a Celeron U3600 ULV chip... a dual core 1.2GHz processor that's designed for low power consumption, not high performance. It's been a long time since I have built/bought a high performance system, and I'm unlikely to get back into that game for a while: I gave up on computer gaming years ago. The one thing in this announcement that may give me pause next time I build a system is that a revision from 2 billion to 1.2 billion transistors probably means some kind of manufacturing problem that they thought they could overcome, but are now not thinking they can. Even if that's not the case, AMD is going to have egg on their face a while over this one.
No, but the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce, who issued my Visa card, is. If there's an issue with that card, I deal with the CIBC, not with Visa directly.
When a retailer accidentally put a credit card purchase through twice and hence double billed my account it actually would have taken 11 weeks for them to refund the money if the bank had done it. In the end I managed to get the retailer to refund the transaction more quickly but the bank take ages to refund fraudulent transactions.
That depends on the bank, and your relationship with them. Most banks do suck, but when I contested a fraudulent charge on my Visa card a few years ago (a cell company I'd stopped doing business with 2 years prior decided to put through a $200 charge on my card for no apparent reason), I got the money back on my card within 20 minutes of picking up the phone to call them and contest it. It was with the caveat that if their investigation showed the charge was legitimate they'd charge back the money and apply an administrative charge, but I did get the money back right away.
Some of us do still have cardholder agreements that put that kind of responsibility on the bank.
That being said, the kind of "Robin Hood" attacks that are being discussed here are still naive, at best. They aren't going to hurt the banks. They will hurt the cardholders, and they will hurt the merchants, but the banks are just going to apply any costs incurred as a result of this crap to their customers. I find it difficult to believe anybody could really be stupid enough to think that this would actually *hurt* the banks, or that it's in any way similar to what Robin Hood did in the legends. Maybe, by their logic, the rich that they're stealing from are actually the customers of the banks, and not the banks themselves?
Substitute the word "function" for "functionality" in the GP's post, and you'll understand the point he was trying to make. While the ellipsis he made is entirely grammatical and allowed in English, it does open the door for pedantry, especially when considering the context, and the second meaning to the word "function" specifically dealing with programming.
It's not a question of whether it'll boot for me, it's a question of how easy it is to troubleshoot. Most issues can be fixed with a remote connection, and in fact, I've never needed physical access to my computers in colocation to troubleshoot a problem before (though one of 'em has a dying CMOS battery and I'll need to make an appointment to replace it in the near future: its clock loses a few seconds every day and I have ntpd updating every 60 minutes to keep it in synch), but try troubleshooting a POST hang or failure to detect the network card issue without a physical display. When you're given a certain amount of space for your colocation, which is ample space to include a video card (either a full tower form factor, or a blade in a rack -- most blades I've seen have a VGA out built into the motherboard), and when you pay an hourly rate for physical access to your system, it's a no-brainer to include a video card so that you can connect the monitor/keyboard in the data center and see right there whether it's going to be a 5 minute fix or whether you need to take your computer back and return at a later date.:)
Actually, a server is one of the few places I actually want an integrated graphics chip, because it means I don't have to take up a PCI slot and associated energy and I/O load with a low-end graphics card just to provide a console, not to mention the space considerations and form factor requirements to be able to put in a PCI card. While I like that it's not built into the CPU (freeing up those transistors for, you know, CPU things), I'd still be buying a motherboard that has built in cheap graphics.
If you're in a situation where network and disk bandwidth is the limiting factor, then why wouldn't you put in a ULV celeron chip? My laptop has a 1.2GHz dual core with 2MB of cache, and a TDP of 18W, and while that is 3W higher than the processor in TFA, that's also including the graphics card, which this one isn't. And failing that, try putting in an Atom... I have built Atom-powered fileservers before, and they run very well: even with an Atom, the limiting factor is disk I/O, not CPU power for a fileserver.
Taxes need to be set at a level that puts them in line with spending. Basically... don't spend money you don't have.
Unfortunately, however, it's not as simple as cut spending to match current tax levels, or raise taxes to match current spending levels. The US is in the middle of a deep recession that will probably turn into a double dip recession, and is currently experiencing the highest level of unemployment that it's experienced since the great depression. Some analysts are actually thinking that this recession will be worse, in the end, than the great depression was, and that by some measures, it's already been worse than the great depression: the stock markets have already lost *way* more money than was lost in 1929, both as a percentage of total value, and in terms of dollar value lost.
What this means for that basic rule, regarding taxation versus spending levels is that they need to find an adequate balance between the two. Raise the taxes too high on the wealthy, and they'll move their wealth offshore and that will hurt the economy. Cut spending too much, and it'll cripple the economy's growth at a time when you can ill afford that, and turn "may be worse than the great depression" into "will be worse than the great depression". Recall that it was big government spending projects like Hoover Dam that ultimately created the jobs and got the US economy going again at the end of the great depression... those very same type of spending projects that the Republicans are insisting get cut in lieu of tax increases on the rich.
Nobody is saying that spending cuts are out of the question. The US is spending way too much on some things, money that it doesn't have, and that it doesn't need to spend. Look at defense spending as a proportion of GDP, for example, and you guys'll realize that you're spending *way* more on your military than any other country in the world. Other countries have no problem defending their borders against invasion with significantly smaller budgets, and they do this by playing the international diplomacy game: they belong to mutual defense treaty organizations like NATO, and they talk to foreign countries that they have disputes with to work things out without resorting to war. And that's just one area where the US is spending *way* more money than it needs to in the modern world.
But the reality is that even if you cut every dime of discretional spending from your budget, you'd still be running a deficit. Doing so would throw the economy into a tailspin that would probably end in civil war, and it completely ignores the reality that it simply isn't possible to balance the US budget without increasing taxes somewhere. The Democrats seem to understand this, and are willing to compromise to make up the shortfall with a combination of spending cuts and tax increases, but the Republicans, specifically the "no tax increases under any circumstances" Tea Party people, are refusing to compromise. This is exactly the same problem that you had a couple of months ago, with the down-to-the-wire law to increase the borrowing limit. The problem is, you can't keep increasing the borrowing limit, because sooner or later investors are going to realize that they won't be getting paid back, and you won't be able to borrow any money any more. Then, it'll be game over, and the economy will go into that tailspin anyway.
Taxes should increase as appropriate... but taxes should also increase as appropriate. It's that second point that seems to be lost on some people.
Dangerous to pedestrians? Come on. I don't have a hybrid, and I don't worry about not hearing them, because I actually listened when I was taught to look both ways before crossing!
That's easier to do when you're not visually impaired or blind. When your usable visual range is about 3 feet beyond which everything is a blur, you can get around in your daily life without a helper animal, but if you can't hear a car coming and can't see it more than 3 feet away.... this is why crosswalks have audible signals in cities. Stick to the crosswalk, right? What if you live in the suburbs and there aren't any crosswalks?
Smart people ( a set in which you are not included ) use bells on their bicycles, whether for the purpose of warning pedestrians or warning bears.
Stupid people use them too, largely because in this country, it's a $145 fine for not having a bell on your bicycle if the police catch you. It's a lot to pay for want of a $3 bell and a few minutes' work installing it, and anybody who didn't flunk grade 6 math shouldn't have too hard a time figuring out that buying the bell is better economy....
What makes you think they'd pay you for the privilege? They'll just follow the current trend in the fashion industry, and treat you like a billboard, and charge you extra for the privilege of advertising for them....
You could get a Kobo Vox http://www.kobobooks.com/kobovox_tech... It's suggested retail price is $200, and it isn't an e-book reader running a limited/locked down Android, it's an Android tablet that comes with the Kobo app pre-installed. You get full un-fettered Android, including everything you'd expect from a more expensive Android-based tablet: the Android market, GMail, web browser, etc.. It's only a 7" display, and it's got an 800MHz processor, so that may be a bit anemic, but what do you expect from something that's being sold as an ebook reader? It's got the same processor and memory as a mid-range Android phone, and it should be fine for most use.
I won't be buying one because I don't feel like I need a tablet, and I'm quite happy with my Kobo Touch ebook reader, but if I was in the market for a tablet/ebook reader, this one would be top of my list. No GPS in it, but otherwise it has everything you'd expect an Android tablet to have.
So, as a result of reading all this stuff, I picked up my Iron supplements, which I take for iron deficient anemia, and sure enough on the label it says: "These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease." Yes, my iron supplements can't even advertise that they treat, cure, or prevent iron deficiency. The very substance required to cure the deficiency cannot be sold with the claim that it can CURE that deficiency. Why? Same as above, it is an herbal/mineral supplement, and as such is not a "drug" and so it cannot be advertised to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease.
Presumably you've been diagnosed with anemia by an actual medical professional, and that medical professional suggested taking these supplements as a treatment, no? My doctor suggested I take 400 IU per day of vitamin D, because like most women in this country, my levels are lower than the medical profession thinks they should be, and the bottle of vitamins has a very similar warning on it.
That statement on the bottle isn't about what you think it is, it's about them trying to cover their backsides from liability when somebody decides that they're anemic without actually seeing a doctor, and starts taking the supplements to cure it. There's a pretty long list of medical conditions that can cause the same symptoms as anemia, and only one of them is actually caused by iron deficiency: anemia itself. If people self-diagnose and then start taking iron supplements to fix it, the US is the only country in the world where they could sue the maker of the iron supplements if it turns out they actually had a thyroid problem and the iron supplements didn't do anything. By putting that warning on the label, they protect themselves from liability.
There's a couple of brands in NA that aren't that bad, for mayo... but the one that other people think really makes me weird is that I dip 'em in tartar sauce when I have fish & chips....
It's not that it's impossible to dismantle such anti-theft systems but that the anti-theft systems provide enough incentive for the thieves to move on and steal the low hanging fruit. Given two identical cars parked next to each other, where one has a club and the other doesn't, which one will the thief steal?
Depends on the car... which one's in better condition, and is more likely to have more saleable parts? A good car thief is going to have all the tools he needs to remove the steering wheel, club and all, within a minute or two, and the club itself won't actually serve as much of a discouragement.
If you want to prevent somebody from stealing your car, get a car that's harder to steal. Subaru, for example, has a very good reputation for not getting stolen, because even back in the 1980's, they were designing the locks in the doors to be hard to jimmy... try to take out an AA membership when you have a Subaru, and they'll tell you that it doesn't cover locking your keys in the car, because they can't guarantee they'll be able to break into your car to get the keys out.
And failing that, more recent cars have transponders in the keys which are tied to immobilizers. My current car is damned near unstealable, because it has such a transponder that is tied to an engine electrics immobilizer, a fuel line cutoff, and a brake lock. If you want to steal my car, you're going to need a flatbed. In response to the originally asked question, I know it's going to be student transportation, but these kinds of immobilizers do exist for scooters as well... have you considered shopping around for a scooter that has this kind of immobilizer? It won't stop somebody from just walking off with it if they're strong enough, but I think this is really a solution in search of a problem....
When I was looking into what was the best option for me earlier this year, I wasn't able to find a VOIP codec that used less than half a meg per minute. Things may have changed, but I'd be surprised. Ultimately, it made more sense for me to get a 150 anytime minutes with 5pm eve/weekend and unlimited domestic LD plan for $25/mo than to pay for the data.:)
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And what about his right to express how upset/angry/disturbed about her he is?
Didn't read the article, did you? After posting said blog, he then went on to create aliases and to use those aliases to anonymously e-mail the woman's employer, her family, and her friends with links to the blog. That goes beyond simply expressing his feelings about the relationship and how it ended, by a very wide margin.
At that point, however, he could still face prosecution for libel if he couldn't prove what he'd said was true.
Only in the US would there be *any* question whether his creating a blog for the specific purpose of harassing and embarrassing an ex who got a restraining order against him was legal.... Your country has a *really* fucked up idea of what free speech means, and how it integrates into a productive society....
To be blunt: you can say what you want as long as, to the best of your knowledge it's true, and it doesn't interfere with the rights of others, such as the right not to be threatened or harassed. In any other country in the first world, she wouldn't have even needed a restraining order for what he did to have been illegal.
My state has a law against using a cell phone while driving unless you use a hands-free device. This doesn't stop anybody. Every day on my 15-mile commute, I see dozens of people holding phones up to their ears.
That will change with time. While there will always be one idiot out there who refuses to use other tools, the main reason the majority of folks don't use hands free in their car is because they don't want to spend the money to buy a hands free set. As more older cars get retired and replaced with newer cars, however, that problem will disappear: it's almost impossible to get anything approaching a "luxury" car today that doesn't have bluetooth hands free built into the car, usually with steering-wheel controls and voice dialling. And even avoiding the "luxury" class of cars, most car models available on the market today have bluetooth available as an option. We're only a few years away from the "option" becoming "standard", just like how air conditioning, power steering, and power windows have become "standard" on most cars (it already is standard on just about any car costing more than $20,000). It will take time, but 10 years from now, most cars on the road will have bluetooth hands free. And as for the phones? When was the last time you saw a new cell phone that *didn't* have bluetooth built in?
As for an outright ban? Bad idea. It would discourage car manufacturers from including BT hands free in the cars, and the BT hands free *does* increase safety relative to driving without hands free. People proposing a flat ban on all kinds of cell phone use while driving are the ones who are reality impaired: they're oblivious to the fact that as with speed limits, seatbelt rules, rules governing listening to your stereo too loud, and just about any other "safety" rule that they pass, some folks are still going to ignore it and do what they want. They shouldn't be passing outright bans on this kind of behaviour, they should be passing rules to mitigate the negative impact. (kind of like how with drinking/driving, most jurisdictions have an acceptable maximum limit of blood alcohol content, rather than having zero tolerance at all)
Unfortunately, it's not really possible to say categorically what feminism is about, without considering the different generations of feminism.... consider:
First gen: suffragettes. These were the women (and men) fighting to have women recognized as people under the law, and having all of the rights/privileges as men (land ownership, the vote, etc.)
Second gen: bra burners. These were the women (and men) fighting to have equal opportunities in the work place. To escape the oppression imposed by the status quo which said "women don't go into sciences", or which said that it was perfectly acceptable to pay a woman half as much to do the same job, because she would have a husband who could support her.
Third gen: femi-nazis. The old boys' club (status quo) fought back against the Second Gen feminists in the 70's and early 80's, which gave rise to the Third Gen feminists. These are the women who are convinced that if you have a Y chromosome you're defective by definition. Men suck, and women rule. And I described it as "if you have a Y chromosome" on purpose, because these women are usually the ones who refuse to accept transsexuals as their identified gender. These are also the ones who started spelling it "womyn" so that it doesn't have the word "man" in it, and the ones who think that a man who holds a door for a woman is a misogynist, rather than just being polite.
Fourth gen: current/modern feminism. This is all about saying that yes, women are capable of doing everything that men are (socially, not biologically for obvious reasons), yes men, can do everything that women can. But she doesn't *have* to if she doesn't want to. The current generation is all about having the choice to do whatever you want in life.
Those would be the major generations of feminism in the 20th century. As always, there's crossover, and no clear definition of when they begin/end. I'm sure we all know somebody who fits into the third gen today, and I'm sure we all know somebody who was more fourth gen in their thinking even in the 60's.
And yes, I am female. I am also a feminist. I think that there's an awful lot of people at Slashdot who are feminists even if they don't realize it, or attach the name to it. And in case it wasn't obvious, I consider myself in the fourth generation of feminism, in that I am hugely appreciative of the work that those before me have done, and I feel that it's extremely important to keep that fight up, but I also believe it's extremely important to recognize that it's about having the choice, and that if another woman chooses to leave the workforce, become a housewife, and raise a family, that is her choice to make, and she is not part of the problem, she's exercising exactly the right that I fight for, also my mother and my grandmother before me. And if a guy holds a door for me, I thank him. And if it's a double door, I'll hold the next one for him. :)
The frightening thing is... every now and then, the Onion gets it right.
Not in Bridge, no... you can pass during the bidding, if you don't think you'll be able to win 6 tricks. If all 4 players pass, then you re-deal... the idea with most forms of Bridge is to bid as little as possible, and then win as many tricks as possible. There is a version of Contract Bridge where you get penalized for winning more tricks than you bid, in the same way you'd get penalized for winning fewer than you bid, but yeah. :)
Tell that to the Conservatives. They're using robodiallers on their political campaigns, even though the rules say quite clearly that the rules for robodiallers apply regardless of whether the person on whose behalf the calls are being made is exempt from DNC rules, and that robodiallers may not be used without express consent, which is defined as an explicit oral or written contract permitting this kind of communication.
I am going to bookmark that one for the next political campaign in the area, and use it to file a grievance with the CRTC.
No... you'd turn the cards in and ask for a re-deal. Or if you were unscrupulous, you'd bid 1 club, and increase as necessary until you win the bidding. Your score in Bridge isn't for winning all 13 tricks, it's for winning more tricks than you bid. You bid 7, you are saying that you'll win all 13 tricks. But if you bid 1, you're saying you'll win 7 tricks, and then the extra 6 are just going to increase your score that much more. You'd bid "no trump" if you're holding all the face cards. :)
What's the true relevance of transistor count? If I see two processors with identical performance and power efficiency but radically different transistor counts do I have any real world incentive to select one over the other? I mean, presumably the one with fewer transistors in roughly the same die space might overclock better, might have a longer MTBF, etc., but beyond that should I care?
If you can find one processor with 2 billion transistors, and another with 1.2 billion, and they both draw exactly the same power requirements, performance, instruction set, and have the same heat envelope, then either somebody in marketing is lying, or somebody is doing something horribly wrong. On the one hand, it should not take 2 billion transistors to do something that can be done with 2/3 of that, but on the other hand, if you have 1/3 fewer transistors, you should experience an according decrease in heat leakage.
That being said, numbers like transistor count matter to enthusiasts. These are the same people who used to spend $1000 to buy the 3.8GHz P4 chip instead of the $300 3.4GHz chip. For some folks on the market, bigger == better, and there's no point in trying to explain to them that they can accomplish the same job with a less powerful chip. Some people build/buy/upgrade computers so that they can brag about being more powerful than their buddies, and when you couple that mentality with a disposable income, well, you know the rest.
For somebody like me, it's not likely to make a big difference. But I'm typing this on a laptop that's powered by a Celeron U3600 ULV chip... a dual core 1.2GHz processor that's designed for low power consumption, not high performance. It's been a long time since I have built/bought a high performance system, and I'm unlikely to get back into that game for a while: I gave up on computer gaming years ago. The one thing in this announcement that may give me pause next time I build a system is that a revision from 2 billion to 1.2 billion transistors probably means some kind of manufacturing problem that they thought they could overcome, but are now not thinking they can. Even if that's not the case, AMD is going to have egg on their face a while over this one.
No, but the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce, who issued my Visa card, is. If there's an issue with that card, I deal with the CIBC, not with Visa directly.
When a retailer accidentally put a credit card purchase through twice and hence double billed my account it actually would have taken 11 weeks for them to refund the money if the bank had done it. In the end I managed to get the retailer to refund the transaction more quickly but the bank take ages to refund fraudulent transactions.
That depends on the bank, and your relationship with them. Most banks do suck, but when I contested a fraudulent charge on my Visa card a few years ago (a cell company I'd stopped doing business with 2 years prior decided to put through a $200 charge on my card for no apparent reason), I got the money back on my card within 20 minutes of picking up the phone to call them and contest it. It was with the caveat that if their investigation showed the charge was legitimate they'd charge back the money and apply an administrative charge, but I did get the money back right away.
Some of us do still have cardholder agreements that put that kind of responsibility on the bank.
That being said, the kind of "Robin Hood" attacks that are being discussed here are still naive, at best. They aren't going to hurt the banks. They will hurt the cardholders, and they will hurt the merchants, but the banks are just going to apply any costs incurred as a result of this crap to their customers. I find it difficult to believe anybody could really be stupid enough to think that this would actually *hurt* the banks, or that it's in any way similar to what Robin Hood did in the legends. Maybe, by their logic, the rich that they're stealing from are actually the customers of the banks, and not the banks themselves?
Substitute the word "function" for "functionality" in the GP's post, and you'll understand the point he was trying to make. While the ellipsis he made is entirely grammatical and allowed in English, it does open the door for pedantry, especially when considering the context, and the second meaning to the word "function" specifically dealing with programming.
It's not a question of whether it'll boot for me, it's a question of how easy it is to troubleshoot. Most issues can be fixed with a remote connection, and in fact, I've never needed physical access to my computers in colocation to troubleshoot a problem before (though one of 'em has a dying CMOS battery and I'll need to make an appointment to replace it in the near future: its clock loses a few seconds every day and I have ntpd updating every 60 minutes to keep it in synch), but try troubleshooting a POST hang or failure to detect the network card issue without a physical display. When you're given a certain amount of space for your colocation, which is ample space to include a video card (either a full tower form factor, or a blade in a rack -- most blades I've seen have a VGA out built into the motherboard), and when you pay an hourly rate for physical access to your system, it's a no-brainer to include a video card so that you can connect the monitor/keyboard in the data center and see right there whether it's going to be a 5 minute fix or whether you need to take your computer back and return at a later date. :)
Actually, a server is one of the few places I actually want an integrated graphics chip, because it means I don't have to take up a PCI slot and associated energy and I/O load with a low-end graphics card just to provide a console, not to mention the space considerations and form factor requirements to be able to put in a PCI card. While I like that it's not built into the CPU (freeing up those transistors for, you know, CPU things), I'd still be buying a motherboard that has built in cheap graphics.
If you're in a situation where network and disk bandwidth is the limiting factor, then why wouldn't you put in a ULV celeron chip? My laptop has a 1.2GHz dual core with 2MB of cache, and a TDP of 18W, and while that is 3W higher than the processor in TFA, that's also including the graphics card, which this one isn't. And failing that, try putting in an Atom... I have built Atom-powered fileservers before, and they run very well: even with an Atom, the limiting factor is disk I/O, not CPU power for a fileserver.
Taxes should increase as appropriate... but taxes should also increase as appropriate. It's that second point that seems to be lost on some people.
Ugh. too early. That should read Taxes should decrease as appropriate... but taxes should also increase as appropriate.
Should taxes not decrease?
Taxes need to be set at a level that puts them in line with spending. Basically... don't spend money you don't have.
Unfortunately, however, it's not as simple as cut spending to match current tax levels, or raise taxes to match current spending levels. The US is in the middle of a deep recession that will probably turn into a double dip recession, and is currently experiencing the highest level of unemployment that it's experienced since the great depression. Some analysts are actually thinking that this recession will be worse, in the end, than the great depression was, and that by some measures, it's already been worse than the great depression: the stock markets have already lost *way* more money than was lost in 1929, both as a percentage of total value, and in terms of dollar value lost.
What this means for that basic rule, regarding taxation versus spending levels is that they need to find an adequate balance between the two. Raise the taxes too high on the wealthy, and they'll move their wealth offshore and that will hurt the economy. Cut spending too much, and it'll cripple the economy's growth at a time when you can ill afford that, and turn "may be worse than the great depression" into "will be worse than the great depression". Recall that it was big government spending projects like Hoover Dam that ultimately created the jobs and got the US economy going again at the end of the great depression... those very same type of spending projects that the Republicans are insisting get cut in lieu of tax increases on the rich.
Nobody is saying that spending cuts are out of the question. The US is spending way too much on some things, money that it doesn't have, and that it doesn't need to spend. Look at defense spending as a proportion of GDP, for example, and you guys'll realize that you're spending *way* more on your military than any other country in the world. Other countries have no problem defending their borders against invasion with significantly smaller budgets, and they do this by playing the international diplomacy game: they belong to mutual defense treaty organizations like NATO, and they talk to foreign countries that they have disputes with to work things out without resorting to war. And that's just one area where the US is spending *way* more money than it needs to in the modern world.
But the reality is that even if you cut every dime of discretional spending from your budget, you'd still be running a deficit. Doing so would throw the economy into a tailspin that would probably end in civil war, and it completely ignores the reality that it simply isn't possible to balance the US budget without increasing taxes somewhere. The Democrats seem to understand this, and are willing to compromise to make up the shortfall with a combination of spending cuts and tax increases, but the Republicans, specifically the "no tax increases under any circumstances" Tea Party people, are refusing to compromise. This is exactly the same problem that you had a couple of months ago, with the down-to-the-wire law to increase the borrowing limit. The problem is, you can't keep increasing the borrowing limit, because sooner or later investors are going to realize that they won't be getting paid back, and you won't be able to borrow any money any more. Then, it'll be game over, and the economy will go into that tailspin anyway.
Taxes should increase as appropriate... but taxes should also increase as appropriate. It's that second point that seems to be lost on some people.
Dangerous to pedestrians? Come on. I don't have a hybrid, and I don't worry about not hearing them, because I actually listened when I was taught to look both ways before crossing!
That's easier to do when you're not visually impaired or blind. When your usable visual range is about 3 feet beyond which everything is a blur, you can get around in your daily life without a helper animal, but if you can't hear a car coming and can't see it more than 3 feet away.... this is why crosswalks have audible signals in cities. Stick to the crosswalk, right? What if you live in the suburbs and there aren't any crosswalks?
Smart people ( a set in which you are not included ) use bells on their bicycles,
whether for the purpose of warning pedestrians or warning bears.
Stupid people use them too, largely because in this country, it's a $145 fine for not having a bell on your bicycle if the police catch you. It's a lot to pay for want of a $3 bell and a few minutes' work installing it, and anybody who didn't flunk grade 6 math shouldn't have too hard a time figuring out that buying the bell is better economy....
What makes you think they'd pay you for the privilege? They'll just follow the current trend in the fashion industry, and treat you like a billboard, and charge you extra for the privilege of advertising for them....
You could get a Kobo Vox http://www.kobobooks.com/kobovox_tech ... It's suggested retail price is $200, and it isn't an e-book reader running a limited/locked down Android, it's an Android tablet that comes with the Kobo app pre-installed. You get full un-fettered Android, including everything you'd expect from a more expensive Android-based tablet: the Android market, GMail, web browser, etc.. It's only a 7" display, and it's got an 800MHz processor, so that may be a bit anemic, but what do you expect from something that's being sold as an ebook reader? It's got the same processor and memory as a mid-range Android phone, and it should be fine for most use.
I won't be buying one because I don't feel like I need a tablet, and I'm quite happy with my Kobo Touch ebook reader, but if I was in the market for a tablet/ebook reader, this one would be top of my list. No GPS in it, but otherwise it has everything you'd expect an Android tablet to have.
So, as a result of reading all this stuff, I picked up my Iron supplements, which I take for iron deficient anemia, and sure enough on the label it says: "These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease." Yes, my iron supplements can't even advertise that they treat, cure, or prevent iron deficiency. The very substance required to cure the deficiency cannot be sold with the claim that it can CURE that deficiency. Why? Same as above, it is an herbal/mineral supplement, and as such is not a "drug" and so it cannot be advertised to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease.
Presumably you've been diagnosed with anemia by an actual medical professional, and that medical professional suggested taking these supplements as a treatment, no? My doctor suggested I take 400 IU per day of vitamin D, because like most women in this country, my levels are lower than the medical profession thinks they should be, and the bottle of vitamins has a very similar warning on it.
That statement on the bottle isn't about what you think it is, it's about them trying to cover their backsides from liability when somebody decides that they're anemic without actually seeing a doctor, and starts taking the supplements to cure it. There's a pretty long list of medical conditions that can cause the same symptoms as anemia, and only one of them is actually caused by iron deficiency: anemia itself. If people self-diagnose and then start taking iron supplements to fix it, the US is the only country in the world where they could sue the maker of the iron supplements if it turns out they actually had a thyroid problem and the iron supplements didn't do anything. By putting that warning on the label, they protect themselves from liability.
There's a couple of brands in NA that aren't that bad, for mayo... but the one that other people think really makes me weird is that I dip 'em in tartar sauce when I have fish & chips....
It's not that it's impossible to dismantle such anti-theft systems but that the anti-theft systems provide enough incentive for the thieves to move on and steal the low hanging fruit. Given two identical cars parked next to each other, where one has a club and the other doesn't, which one will the thief steal?
Depends on the car... which one's in better condition, and is more likely to have more saleable parts? A good car thief is going to have all the tools he needs to remove the steering wheel, club and all, within a minute or two, and the club itself won't actually serve as much of a discouragement.
If you want to prevent somebody from stealing your car, get a car that's harder to steal. Subaru, for example, has a very good reputation for not getting stolen, because even back in the 1980's, they were designing the locks in the doors to be hard to jimmy... try to take out an AA membership when you have a Subaru, and they'll tell you that it doesn't cover locking your keys in the car, because they can't guarantee they'll be able to break into your car to get the keys out.
And failing that, more recent cars have transponders in the keys which are tied to immobilizers. My current car is damned near unstealable, because it has such a transponder that is tied to an engine electrics immobilizer, a fuel line cutoff, and a brake lock. If you want to steal my car, you're going to need a flatbed. In response to the originally asked question, I know it's going to be student transportation, but these kinds of immobilizers do exist for scooters as well... have you considered shopping around for a scooter that has this kind of immobilizer? It won't stop somebody from just walking off with it if they're strong enough, but I think this is really a solution in search of a problem....
When I was looking into what was the best option for me earlier this year, I wasn't able to find a VOIP codec that used less than half a meg per minute. Things may have changed, but I'd be surprised. Ultimately, it made more sense for me to get a 150 anytime minutes with 5pm eve/weekend and unlimited domestic LD plan for $25/mo than to pay for the data. :)