Interesting, google search results is full of claims that chlorine kills, but most of those claims link directly to water filter sales. The most reliable of my finds says that rats and mice are immune to chlorine. Someone ought run those tests on humans! Anyways, thanks for debunking that myth.
2. Revival in religion. Yea I know this is Slashdot and a lot of the readers here are Atheists or against religion in one form or an other, but there has been a resurgence in religious people. Which teaches at least to stop people from doing unorganized violence.
There is absolutely no negative correlation between % of people being religious and crime, despite how much the latter wish to believe it to be true.
If there is a dependency, it is the other way around. Examples:
1. Middle ages. (yes, the actual pirates were very religious)
3. Thirty Years' War, 9/11 and countless other instances of genocide instigated by religion leaders
4. All bloody mafia members that I heard of were/are very religious. (It helps to believe in immortal soul during street shootouts)
5. When 70 virgins await you, dying for jihad is easy.
6. I have 0 belief in the deity (as you guessed by now), but so far have had no urge to take it to the street and start breaking heads.
But you can keep believing, don't let the facts get in your way.
Very intriguing. This still does not prove they can use magnetic field, though. Quite the opposite: if the culture/habit requires an aboriginal to constantly keep track of direction, he can simply keep track of all turns he made when entering the said windowless room. Normally, I always know my orientation inside a building relative to the streets outside. Of course, the rectangular shape of structures makes this skill pretty mundane. On the other hand, if any humans could sense magnetic field, aboriginals would probably be be among them.
Maximum is what they currently advertise: they achieved it once. in a lab. was probably a speed-o-meter glitch. How is maximum useful beyond scamming customers is beyond me.
Minimum is what used for labeling package weights at a grocery store. It works.
Average is kinda useful too. However, if the "average" is everywhere but in my neighborhood, where I consistently get 6..30 Kbps (my actual number from AT&T two years ago)? What exactly does the Average mean for me and my expensive two year contract? Exactly nothing!
Would you buy a car that works "on average"? Hell, no! you expect this here car that you paid 20 grand for to 0-60 in 5 seconds, not 20 and not 365!
Same principle applies as when reporting net weight on packages. The actual weight varies from package to package. Fortunately, regulators have a tool to combat this "chaos": STATISTICS 101! I was told that the actual rule for reporting package weight is "no more than 20% of the product can fall below the claimed weight". Easy, right? But the magic does not stop here: the agency (competitor/prosecutor/overzealous customer) makes N 100's of samples, which might or might not come out short of the claimed weight by more than the 20%, as allowed by regulators. At this point they compute the std. deviation of their test, to deduce the probability of your claimed speed (weight/MPG/etc.) holding water. Good luck defending your claimed speed if the probability of it being true is less than 5% (1% / 0.01% -- you can always take more samples) .
2) Be real poor. This will usually qualify you for Medicaid--which sucks, but is also better than nothing.
Medicare is much better compared to insurances that the middle class has, as provided by their employers. Permanently unemployed have better healthcare than over half of working Americans, all funded by taxes collected from the latter.
Example: a typical employer-provided insurance covers a hospital visit up to some $X amount, while medicare will pay ALL OF IT. I think the reasoning is that the "permanently unemployed" cannot cover the rest from own pocket.
Looks like the taxpayers are taking the hit, while those responsible stay out of trouble. This warrants a criminal prosecution, not a monetary compensation. "The FBI did investigate and chose to not press any charges" -- FBI should not decide if the party is guilty, that's what the courts are for -- and looks like the court reached the opposite conclusion.
You cannot avoid a necessary evil. The only other way out is the iphone approach -- disabling multitasking! Unfortunately, as the smartphones become more powerful and evolve into full-featured computers, they acquire the need for better management.
One can make top more graphical, intuitive and user-friendly. I would advise against automating it: in the end it is the user who should decide what is important for him and what needs to be sacrificed for better performance.
I never needed top on my android because if I find any non-essential tasks running in the background, they get terminated or uninstalled. This almost makes my argument void, if not for the upcoming car analogy:
A user fills his car with suitcases. Let's assume that he wants to install more suitcases than his car can fit. He is aware of relative sizes and importance of his luggage, and makes a decision to loose some chunkier, less important ones. Both cars and suitcases existed for 100s of years, yet humans still need to make this decision. Since we cannot optimize it out of the physical world, why do you think the tools to manage computer tasks can be eliminated?
In the book called Freakonomics, the claim that getting tough on crime was the reason for dropped crime rates is investigated in detail and dismissed.The logic behind it is like this: NYC went all out to get tough on crime, really ahead and beyond the rest of the country, which resulted in dropped crime rates over the years. The problem was: it dropped uniformly across the country, meaning draconian policies had nothing to do with it.
The author blames the crime rate drop on Roe v Wade case, which happened 20 years before the crime decline.
You can attribute the crime decline to a number of different factors, but I would say that as the times change so does the society. "Tough on crime" is just a gimmick, effect of which, if any, becomes insignificant in the sea of other factors that changed during the same decades.
What do you do when your neighbor seeks to expand and you just happened to dump all your military budget on a giant mirror in Neptune's orbit?
When I read about Kaiser Wilhelm's plans to invade US during WWI, the sensation was similar to reading War of the Worlds by H. G. Wells -- hair-raising terror.
While losing military budget after WW2 propelled both Germany and Japan to become economic superpowers, I wold prefer to hold on to it just a tad longer.
They went into such pains to hide even a shadow, and yet Soviets obtained blueprints of american supersonic jet, and that is only the one I know of. Talk about management with misguided objectives.
Most science/math etc college books in Russia cost $3-$4. Those who want to learn are always welcome. The funny aspect of this is that they are actually much better quality than any american books I had to use to get both my undergraduate and graduate degrees. Problem: American books are bloated. I assume this is so because publishers feel that to charge $150 for a 2nd semester physics book, it needs to have at least 1000 pages. I cannot even read this crap, at best I just page through them before finals. This is a waste of trees, money, and does not help Americans to compete when Russian, Indian and Chinese come to take their engineering/science jobs.
I would justify charging an insane amount of money for some highly specialized book with very narrow readership, but basic physics/calculus/economics has not changed in the last 200 years. Why are students forced to pay exorbitant amounts of money for information that should be free?
Netflix refused to support Linux due to "Silverlight DRM issues". That, however, did not stop Roku from implementing Netflix client on a their linux-based system, and suddenly Android is not a problem as well. It seems to me that Silverlight is a lame excuse, and the real reason is that Netflix founder is on board at Microsoft.
I heard that Apple builds in an "unlicensed charger protector", which blocks you from using third party chargers (except those manufactured by Apple partners, naturally). Chargers are a big business for mobile manufacturers: incompatibility allows them to charge $30+ for something that would normally cost $5, not to mention having to buy a new set of chargers every time you change your device.
Overuse of antibiotics leads to less effective antibiotics. So the effectiveness is a common resource which is not yours alone to squander.
Anything else though should be fair game.
Except doctors prescribe them right and left, almost before asking "what's bothering you". The problem: they can get sued for not giving a treatment, even if benefits/need for antibiotics is questionable.
I would be more concerned with how a robotic car will decide to avoid either the on coming vehicle or the pedestrian, assuming it cannot stop in time.
I am positive that a properly designed computer will analyze situation and devise an avoidance maneuver much faster than a human driver. There is, however, something all computers will lack -- intuition. When I see an idiot driving I slow down and let him pass. A good autopilot will need an Idiot Detector (TM).
People attack what they fear. People fear what they don't understand. The idiot is something they understand completely.
Same happened when the first steam and kerosene powered cars were first introduced. There was a strong movement to ban them, fud about accidents they cause, etc.
On the other hand, a computer-driven car will be equipped with cameras and a black box. In the even of an accident it will be trivial to see who to assign the blame to.
Slashdot Mirror
That and to protect the children.
You mean, like this?
Interesting, google search results is full of claims that chlorine kills, but most of those claims link directly to water filter sales. The most reliable of my finds says that rats and mice are immune to chlorine. Someone ought run those tests on humans! Anyways, thanks for debunking that myth.
http://ask.slashdot.org/story/08/07/22/0452225/How-To-Encourage-a-Young-Teen-To-Learn-Programming
http://ask.slashdot.org/story/10/07/30/2150208/How-Should-a-Non-Techie-Learn-Programming
Someone should keep track of them. Maybe stash them in some "Learn to Program" folder on Slashdot?
2. Revival in religion. Yea I know this is Slashdot and a lot of the readers here are Atheists or against religion in one form or an other, but there has been a resurgence in religious people. Which teaches at least to stop people from doing unorganized violence.
There is absolutely no negative correlation between % of people being religious and crime, despite how much the latter wish to believe it to be true. If there is a dependency, it is the other way around. Examples:
But you can keep believing, don't let the facts get in your way.
Very intriguing. This still does not prove they can use magnetic field, though. Quite the opposite: if the culture/habit requires an aboriginal to constantly keep track of direction, he can simply keep track of all turns he made when entering the said windowless room. Normally, I always know my orientation inside a building relative to the streets outside. Of course, the rectangular shape of structures makes this skill pretty mundane. On the other hand, if any humans could sense magnetic field, aboriginals would probably be be among them.
Maximum is what they currently advertise: they achieved it once. in a lab. was probably a speed-o-meter glitch. How is maximum useful beyond scamming customers is beyond me.
Minimum is what used for labeling package weights at a grocery store. It works.
Average is kinda useful too. However, if the "average" is everywhere but in my neighborhood, where I consistently get 6..30 Kbps (my actual number from AT&T two years ago)? What exactly does the Average mean for me and my expensive two year contract? Exactly nothing!
Would you buy a car that works "on average"? Hell, no! you expect this here car that you paid 20 grand for to 0-60 in 5 seconds, not 20 and not 365!
Same principle applies as when reporting net weight on packages. The actual weight varies from package to package. Fortunately, regulators have a tool to combat this "chaos": STATISTICS 101! I was told that the actual rule for reporting package weight is "no more than 20% of the product can fall below the claimed weight". Easy, right? But the magic does not stop here: the agency (competitor/prosecutor/overzealous customer) makes N 100's of samples, which might or might not come out short of the claimed weight by more than the 20%, as allowed by regulators. At this point they compute the std. deviation of their test, to deduce the probability of your claimed speed (weight/MPG/etc.) holding water. Good luck defending your claimed speed if the probability of it being true is less than 5% (1% / 0.01% -- you can always take more samples) .
Those examples are peanuts compared to the music industry ripping off the musicians they set off to "protect".
Inventor: I would like to patent the ability to touch things.
Agency: That's too obvious. We cannot grant a patent on that... unless you know the magic word...
Inventor: ....on computer!
Agency: Ok, then.
2) Be real poor. This will usually qualify you for Medicaid--which sucks, but is also better than nothing.
Medicare is much better compared to insurances that the middle class has, as provided by their employers. Permanently unemployed have better healthcare than over half of working Americans, all funded by taxes collected from the latter.
Example: a typical employer-provided insurance covers a hospital visit up to some $X amount, while medicare will pay ALL OF IT. I think the reasoning is that the "permanently unemployed" cannot cover the rest from own pocket.
Looks like the taxpayers are taking the hit, while those responsible stay out of trouble. This warrants a criminal prosecution, not a monetary compensation. "The FBI did investigate and chose to not press any charges" -- FBI should not decide if the party is guilty, that's what the courts are for -- and looks like the court reached the opposite conclusion.
You cannot avoid a necessary evil. The only other way out is the iphone approach -- disabling multitasking! Unfortunately, as the smartphones become more powerful and evolve into full-featured computers, they acquire the need for better management.
One can make top more graphical, intuitive and user-friendly. I would advise against automating it: in the end it is the user who should decide what is important for him and what needs to be sacrificed for better performance.
I never needed top on my android because if I find any non-essential tasks running in the background, they get terminated or uninstalled. This almost makes my argument void, if not for the upcoming car analogy:
A user fills his car with suitcases. Let's assume that he wants to install more suitcases than his car can fit. He is aware of relative sizes and importance of his luggage, and makes a decision to loose some chunkier, less important ones. Both cars and suitcases existed for 100s of years, yet humans still need to make this decision. Since we cannot optimize it out of the physical world, why do you think the tools to manage computer tasks can be eliminated?
In the book called Freakonomics, the claim that getting tough on crime was the reason for dropped crime rates is investigated in detail and dismissed.The logic behind it is like this: NYC went all out to get tough on crime, really ahead and beyond the rest of the country, which resulted in dropped crime rates over the years. The problem was: it dropped uniformly across the country, meaning draconian policies had nothing to do with it.
The author blames the crime rate drop on Roe v Wade case, which happened 20 years before the crime decline.
You can attribute the crime decline to a number of different factors, but I would say that as the times change so does the society. "Tough on crime" is just a gimmick, effect of which, if any, becomes insignificant in the sea of other factors that changed during the same decades.
What do you do when your neighbor seeks to expand and you just happened to dump all your military budget on a giant mirror in Neptune's orbit?
When I read about Kaiser Wilhelm's plans to invade US during WWI, the sensation was similar to reading War of the Worlds by H. G. Wells -- hair-raising terror.
While losing military budget after WW2 propelled both Germany and Japan to become economic superpowers, I wold prefer to hold on to it just a tad longer.
They went into such pains to hide even a shadow, and yet Soviets obtained blueprints of american supersonic jet, and that is only the one I know of. Talk about management with misguided objectives.
You cannot compare $30 from 70s to $86 today. Not the way you are doing it, at least.
What cost $30 in 1970 would cost $166.54 in 2010.
I would justify charging an insane amount of money for some highly specialized book with very narrow readership, but basic physics/calculus/economics has not changed in the last 200 years. Why are students forced to pay exorbitant amounts of money for information that should be free?
Netflix refused to support Linux due to "Silverlight DRM issues". That, however, did not stop Roku from implementing Netflix client on a their linux-based system, and suddenly Android is not a problem as well. It seems to me that Silverlight is a lame excuse, and the real reason is that Netflix founder is on board at Microsoft.
I heard that Apple builds in an "unlicensed charger protector", which blocks you from using third party chargers (except those manufactured by Apple partners, naturally). Chargers are a big business for mobile manufacturers: incompatibility allows them to charge $30+ for something that would normally cost $5, not to mention having to buy a new set of chargers every time you change your device.
Overuse of antibiotics leads to less effective antibiotics. So the effectiveness is a common resource which is not yours alone to squander.
Anything else though should be fair game.
Except doctors prescribe them right and left, almost before asking "what's bothering you". The problem: they can get sued for not giving a treatment, even if benefits/need for antibiotics is questionable.
I would be more concerned with how a robotic car will decide to avoid either the on coming vehicle or the pedestrian, assuming it cannot stop in time.
I am positive that a properly designed computer will analyze situation and devise an avoidance maneuver much faster than a human driver. There is, however, something all computers will lack -- intuition. When I see an idiot driving I slow down and let him pass. A good autopilot will need an Idiot Detector (TM).
People attack what they fear. People fear what they don't understand. The idiot is something they understand completely.
Same happened when the first steam and kerosene powered cars were first introduced. There was a strong movement to ban them, fud about accidents they cause, etc.
On the other hand, a computer-driven car will be equipped with cameras and a black box. In the even of an accident it will be trivial to see who to assign the blame to.
Except Skype works on both Android and iOS, providing "a large, widely adopted VOIP platform on mobile phones." For now, that is...
No need to wait: Google Voice does it now, and works pretty well too.