Ah, yet another person who reads the one article and believes they know everything about it. As much as you will hate hearing it, you are absolutely wrong. This was a case of forgetfulness. He had paid the fee on-time for years and years past, and slipped his mind this time. And that's not my assuming, that's my reading articles, listening to news bits, and quotes directly from those who handle fees and from Mr. Cranick.
And it's EXTREMELY different than life insurance. Life insurance is paying fees for benefit. This case is paying fees so you don't lose everything you own. It is a case when no policy like this will ever be right. There are plenty of better ways to go about this situation... They chose about the dumbest one possible.
The two ways to avert disaster in general are Prevent and Detect. Since in this case the prevention algorithm should NOT be overzealous, they should be focused on the "detect" side of things. Prevent that which is known to be wrong in every case, and detect anything that MIGHT be wrong, and notify someone for a quick review of the situation so they can decide if immediate action is needed. Prevent & Detect is a very basic concept... you'd think they'd have some form of it in place at the stock exchange. Granted, it still won't be perfect, but it could get a lot closer to it than what they've been doing.
I can eat nothing but chips and soda and still be okay too. It all depends on the time frame for which you are okay. You might be okay now, but taking acetaminophen consistently will undoubtedly shorten your lifespan. Of course a pharmacist will say it's okay, for two reasons. One is that handing out drugs is their job, and the second is that they were told by some professor or some "study" that it was ok (I use quotes because everyone knows how whacked pharmaceutical studies can be).
My wife has taken an average of 500mg of acetaminophen (1 dose of 2x Excedrin) daily for the past 12 years. That's far from 8 extra-strength Tylenol daily, but now she avoids it like the plague. It causes intense stomach pain and makes her liver swell noticeably every time she takes it now. The same is true of her brother, although he's probably closer to having taken it for 6 years, not 12. I avoid it unless I have an incapacitating headache. I've taken it maybe 10 times in my life, and I'd like to keep it that way. Besides, we've found that drinking cherry juice (tart cherries, and not that concentrate/artificial/flavored crap, get 100% natural juice) works just fine for most headaches.
What I got from this is that people DO like customized news, but they are too lazy to mess with settings or subscribe to rss feeds on their own. They want the system to decide, based on viewing history, what the user is interested in. Laziness at its finest.
Take any random citizen - let's just say me, for example. Since AT&T is a publicly traded corporation, I can, at will, by shares in the ownership of AT&T. Since I have partial ownership, I should be able to see whatever non-confidential information of theirs that I want (by confidential, I mean stuff like credit card numbers, anything under a client-lawyer protection, etc.). Since anybody at all can buy shares, I'd say it would be far easier to make the publicly-traded company's information publicly available. At MINIMUM, the shareholders should get it. They own the corporation, after all.
This is like classic mafia-style "oops insurance". They aren't speeding anything up. It's basically saying "pay us more or your traffic will be slowed down".
It's both funny and quite saddening when people own an iPhone, iPod touch, AND iPad... They basically bought the same expensive device 3 times with small variations. As soon as they release a new size of iPad (if they do) there will be some people with 4 of the same expensive device with small variations.
iPhone and iPod touch are basically the same device, with the difference of being on a cellular network (note my use of the word "basically". I do not mean "exactly"). The function of these can be easily combined into just the iPhone. I prefer Android myself, due to the whole openness thing (I can actually write my own app and put it on my own phone without having to get approved by some corporation), but I'll let this one slide.
iPad I think is more like an iFad. What can it do that my laptop can't? Touch. That's about it. I don't care for touch; I loathe smudgy screens and I'm perfectly accustomed to a touchpad or mouse. People like the instant-on; yeah, my laptop does that too: sleep mode. I don't even need to start listing the things a laptop can do that an iPad can't. So to summarize, I think the iPad is like buying one car to go to work in and a second car to go to the grocery store in; all of its functionality is duplicate to something you already have. I don't care if you use one; you're free to spend your money on whatever you please, but I'll save my $X00 and buy something that has a higher added-function-to-my-life to cost ratio.
The title is total fail.
The correct summary would be: "Scientists aren't sure, but they think they've detected a quark-gluon plasma. They aren't sure if this plasma even really exists, but it happens to be the same stuff that they think existed in the instants after the big bang"
Exercising your reactions and hand-eye coordination actually increases your reaction and hand-eye coordination!
Genius.
Ever notice how the people who believe videogames rot the brain are consistently watching tv... often far longer than the criticized gamer has been playing. And the critic is exercising nothing, not critical thinking skills (only some games do this, though), not reactions, not hand-eye coordination. I say if you're going to sit in front of the tv for hours at a time, it's better for you to be playing a videogame.
This is the same attitude that you're criticizing. I say "I believe this, but you can believe what you want", and all you can say is "you're illogical and wrong". This makes you no better than the Christians who lack logic and have no idea what they're talking about. They make the Christians who do know what they're talking about look bad, just like you make the "scientific origin" crowd look bad. I'm sure that some of them are genuinely seeking truth, but all you're doing is throwing unsupported blabber on the wall and hoping something sticks.
I'd love to get into a scientific debate about the topic but this is not the place, nor are you actually looking for answers. You've decided your answer already and are sticking to it, so a debate would be absolutely pointless. Let's just say you won, so there won't have to be any more useless posts, k?
Being a Christian myself (a relatively logical one, as well), here's my point of view.
He bought it, it's his book, so he's free to burn it. I personally would never burn a Bible, and I don't like even the idea of Bibles being burned, but as long as he's doing it to his own property, he's free to. To me, it's the words that matter, not the paper. As long as I have the words, he can burn as much paper as he's willing to buy. I can disagree with him, but that's all I can do. No more.
He's right in that "it's just a book.. get over it". However, I do hope he's not doing it with the purpose of taunting, because I would view that as malicious. If he wants to burn books because it makes him feel good, that's fine. It's doing it with the sole purpose of mocking others that creates an issue. I wouldn't do that to a Muslim's Koran, despite how much I disagree with them.
Quoth wikipedia (from the "Optical Tweezers" article:
Optical tweezers (originally called "single-beam gradient force trap") is a scientific instrument that uses a highly focused laser beam to provide an attractive or repulsive force (typically on the order of piconewtons), depending on the refractive index mismatch to physically hold and move microscopic dielectric objects. Optical tweezers have been particularly successful in studying a variety of biological systems in recent years.
--------
So does that mean this new method works on a different principle?
I don't think I've ever seen a tractor push anything; only pull. So if these beams really can provide a force in either direction, I vote we call them tugboat beams instead.
Concerned about future overpopulation then? According to this popular belief, humanity is just harming the environment. The less humans, the better. All you do is pollute and consume. You can't ethically get rid of anybody else, so there's really only one person you can get rid of.... so save the future! Think of the children!
And I think somebody mistook "-1 Overrated" for "-1 You're right but it's up to everybody else but me to fix it"
Personally, I think that the people who believe the population needs to be controlled should be the first to go. At the moment, there is no population problem. If it's crowded where you live, then move! There's plenty of space. Ever driven across Texas? Plenty of space there... nothing but space there....
So... what they're saying is that in order for net neutrality to work, we have to not have net neutrality?
And if you think about it, the pay-for-prioritization model doesn't help anybody except the ISP, by bringing them in more money. It hurts the customers who pay for prioritization because they are paying more for the same service they had before the prioritization model. It hurts the customers who don't pay for prioritization because their connection now sucks.
Another interesting way to think about it is, "Pay us more or your connection will be throttled down," which I'm pretty sure has to be some form of illegal.
What there needs to be is a clearly advertised minimum speed (and require it to be within a certain range of the maximum advertised speed, as well as not being throttled depending on its source/destination) and a clearly advertised maximum latency. If we can get those to be required somehow, it will at least be a step in the right direction. Tis a longshot, though.
The real problem is that prisons are more like hotels these days. Don't give them food better than I can buy in the cafeteria at work, and don't give them a cell bigger than the cubicle I spend most of my day in. Give them bare necessities. A mattress to lie down, water on tap, and a toilet. Feed them what is needed, but keep in mind that it should be punishment, not gourmet food. They should be kept in the cells far more than they actually are. Prisons should not be nice enough to the point that there exist people who are OK with spending their life there. It should be a miserable place.
Don't be so quick to assume that it's my only support that radiocarbon dating. It was just the first one that came to mind that would actually grab someone's attention. After all, my company isn't paying me to research radiocarbon dating right now =)
Plus, what happened to the good old days, when debating a topic actually meant debating a topic? ("One of your sources is old and I don't think he's right, therefore you're proven wrong" just doesn't seem to me to be good ol' debate material, despite how commonplace it is these days... on BOTH sides of the argument, unfortunately) Far too many people have little to contribute and too much to say, on BOTH sides.
Yes, I already know how the theories on radiocarbon dating go. That's all you linked to: theories. In the real world, it's very different, due to lack of a controlled environment. If you can isolate something with a known C-14 level in a lab for an unknown amount of years, I'd accept the C-14 date because it's controlled. Take the same sample, throw it somewhere random, uncontrolled, and wait several years, there's suddenly way too many variables for C-14 to be reliable. C-14 has never been shown to be reliable, ever!
And just note that I'm not trying to discuss anything except radiocarbon dating. If you feel the need to argue religion, then that's quite offtopic.
Actually the constancy of radioactive decay isn't the problem (at least for the relative few "religious fanatics" that have bothered to learn much science. I must admit, most don't have a clue what they're talking about), it's the assumption that absolutely nothing else has influenced the Carbon-14 levels, and that Carbon-14 levels have always been the same (which they actually haven't, but it could theoretically be extrapolated backwards to find the levels at any given date) that creates the problem. Either way, even scientists that eat, sleep, and drink the Millions-of-years-old-evolutionary worldview will agree that carbon dating is BS.
No matter how 'useful' it is, though, the radiocarbon method is still not capable of yeilding accurate and reliable results. There are gross discrepancies, the chronology is uneven and relative, and the accepted dates are acutally selected dates. This whole blessed thing is nothing but 13th century alchemy, and it all depends upon which funny paper you read.
--Robert E. Lee (not the general, but the evolutionist)
And there have been nothing suggesting otherwise since then.
I don't even care to argue who's right overall, anyone can believe whatever they want, just know that Carbon dating is BS.
Being Californian, I have to pay for part of it. California is one of the most ridiculous states in the nation, when it comes to financial decisions. And lawmaking. Basically all of politics.
Slashdot Mirror
Therefore we can conclude that if Slashdot were to be a Facebook page, it would have very few friends.
He didn't forget to pay. He chose not to pay.
Ah, yet another person who reads the one article and believes they know everything about it. As much as you will hate hearing it, you are absolutely wrong. This was a case of forgetfulness. He had paid the fee on-time for years and years past, and slipped his mind this time. And that's not my assuming, that's my reading articles, listening to news bits, and quotes directly from those who handle fees and from Mr. Cranick.
And it's EXTREMELY different than life insurance. Life insurance is paying fees for benefit. This case is paying fees so you don't lose everything you own. It is a case when no policy like this will ever be right. There are plenty of better ways to go about this situation... They chose about the dumbest one possible.
The two ways to avert disaster in general are Prevent and Detect. Since in this case the prevention algorithm should NOT be overzealous, they should be focused on the "detect" side of things. Prevent that which is known to be wrong in every case, and detect anything that MIGHT be wrong, and notify someone for a quick review of the situation so they can decide if immediate action is needed. Prevent & Detect is a very basic concept... you'd think they'd have some form of it in place at the stock exchange. Granted, it still won't be perfect, but it could get a lot closer to it than what they've been doing.
I can eat nothing but chips and soda and still be okay too. It all depends on the time frame for which you are okay. You might be okay now, but taking acetaminophen consistently will undoubtedly shorten your lifespan. Of course a pharmacist will say it's okay, for two reasons. One is that handing out drugs is their job, and the second is that they were told by some professor or some "study" that it was ok (I use quotes because everyone knows how whacked pharmaceutical studies can be).
My wife has taken an average of 500mg of acetaminophen (1 dose of 2x Excedrin) daily for the past 12 years. That's far from 8 extra-strength Tylenol daily, but now she avoids it like the plague. It causes intense stomach pain and makes her liver swell noticeably every time she takes it now. The same is true of her brother, although he's probably closer to having taken it for 6 years, not 12. I avoid it unless I have an incapacitating headache. I've taken it maybe 10 times in my life, and I'd like to keep it that way. Besides, we've found that drinking cherry juice (tart cherries, and not that concentrate/artificial/flavored crap, get 100% natural juice) works just fine for most headaches.
What I got from this is that people DO like customized news, but they are too lazy to mess with settings or subscribe to rss feeds on their own. They want the system to decide, based on viewing history, what the user is interested in. Laziness at its finest.
Take any random citizen - let's just say me, for example. Since AT&T is a publicly traded corporation, I can, at will, by shares in the ownership of AT&T. Since I have partial ownership, I should be able to see whatever non-confidential information of theirs that I want (by confidential, I mean stuff like credit card numbers, anything under a client-lawyer protection, etc.). Since anybody at all can buy shares, I'd say it would be far easier to make the publicly-traded company's information publicly available. At MINIMUM, the shareholders should get it. They own the corporation, after all.
This is like classic mafia-style "oops insurance". They aren't speeding anything up. It's basically saying "pay us more or your traffic will be slowed down".
It's both funny and quite saddening when people own an iPhone, iPod touch, AND iPad... They basically bought the same expensive device 3 times with small variations. As soon as they release a new size of iPad (if they do) there will be some people with 4 of the same expensive device with small variations.
iPhone and iPod touch are basically the same device, with the difference of being on a cellular network (note my use of the word "basically". I do not mean "exactly"). The function of these can be easily combined into just the iPhone. I prefer Android myself, due to the whole openness thing (I can actually write my own app and put it on my own phone without having to get approved by some corporation), but I'll let this one slide.
iPad I think is more like an iFad. What can it do that my laptop can't? Touch. That's about it. I don't care for touch; I loathe smudgy screens and I'm perfectly accustomed to a touchpad or mouse. People like the instant-on; yeah, my laptop does that too: sleep mode. I don't even need to start listing the things a laptop can do that an iPad can't. So to summarize, I think the iPad is like buying one car to go to work in and a second car to go to the grocery store in; all of its functionality is duplicate to something you already have. I don't care if you use one; you're free to spend your money on whatever you please, but I'll save my $X00 and buy something that has a higher added-function-to-my-life to cost ratio.
The title is total fail.
The correct summary would be: "Scientists aren't sure, but they think they've detected a quark-gluon plasma. They aren't sure if this plasma even really exists, but it happens to be the same stuff that they think existed in the instants after the big bang"
Exercising your reactions and hand-eye coordination actually increases your reaction and hand-eye coordination!
Genius.
Ever notice how the people who believe videogames rot the brain are consistently watching tv... often far longer than the criticized gamer has been playing. And the critic is exercising nothing, not critical thinking skills (only some games do this, though), not reactions, not hand-eye coordination. I say if you're going to sit in front of the tv for hours at a time, it's better for you to be playing a videogame.
Didn't occur to me to say it that way, but yes, now that you say it, that would hold true for me. Especially if it is ever forced upon somebody.
This is the same attitude that you're criticizing. I say "I believe this, but you can believe what you want", and all you can say is "you're illogical and wrong". This makes you no better than the Christians who lack logic and have no idea what they're talking about. They make the Christians who do know what they're talking about look bad, just like you make the "scientific origin" crowd look bad. I'm sure that some of them are genuinely seeking truth, but all you're doing is throwing unsupported blabber on the wall and hoping something sticks.
I'd love to get into a scientific debate about the topic but this is not the place, nor are you actually looking for answers. You've decided your answer already and are sticking to it, so a debate would be absolutely pointless. Let's just say you won, so there won't have to be any more useless posts, k?
Being a Christian myself (a relatively logical one, as well), here's my point of view.
He bought it, it's his book, so he's free to burn it. I personally would never burn a Bible, and I don't like even the idea of Bibles being burned, but as long as he's doing it to his own property, he's free to. To me, it's the words that matter, not the paper. As long as I have the words, he can burn as much paper as he's willing to buy. I can disagree with him, but that's all I can do. No more.
He's right in that "it's just a book.. get over it". However, I do hope he's not doing it with the purpose of taunting, because I would view that as malicious. If he wants to burn books because it makes him feel good, that's fine. It's doing it with the sole purpose of mocking others that creates an issue. I wouldn't do that to a Muslim's Koran, despite how much I disagree with them.
If it doesn't work as well and is more expensive, expect to see Apple adopt it.
Fixed that for ya
Hey, it's the same thing they did with the antenna...
Quoth wikipedia (from the "Optical Tweezers" article:
Optical tweezers (originally called "single-beam gradient force trap") is a scientific instrument that uses a highly focused laser beam to provide an attractive or repulsive force (typically on the order of piconewtons), depending on the refractive index mismatch to physically hold and move microscopic dielectric objects. Optical tweezers have been particularly successful in studying a variety of biological systems in recent years.
--------
So does that mean this new method works on a different principle?
I don't think I've ever seen a tractor push anything; only pull. So if these beams really can provide a force in either direction, I vote we call them tugboat beams instead.
Concerned about future overpopulation then? According to this popular belief, humanity is just harming the environment. The less humans, the better. All you do is pollute and consume. You can't ethically get rid of anybody else, so there's really only one person you can get rid of.... so save the future! Think of the children!
And I think somebody mistook "-1 Overrated" for "-1 You're right but it's up to everybody else but me to fix it"
Personally, I think that the people who believe the population needs to be controlled should be the first to go. At the moment, there is no population problem. If it's crowded where you live, then move! There's plenty of space. Ever driven across Texas? Plenty of space there... nothing but space there....
So... what they're saying is that in order for net neutrality to work, we have to not have net neutrality?
And if you think about it, the pay-for-prioritization model doesn't help anybody except the ISP, by bringing them in more money. It hurts the customers who pay for prioritization because they are paying more for the same service they had before the prioritization model. It hurts the customers who don't pay for prioritization because their connection now sucks.
Another interesting way to think about it is, "Pay us more or your connection will be throttled down," which I'm pretty sure has to be some form of illegal.
What there needs to be is a clearly advertised minimum speed (and require it to be within a certain range of the maximum advertised speed, as well as not being throttled depending on its source/destination) and a clearly advertised maximum latency. If we can get those to be required somehow, it will at least be a step in the right direction. Tis a longshot, though.
On the contrary. Xbox Live is for people who don't have a girlfriend/wife to lose -- I mean spend -- money on.
The real problem is that prisons are more like hotels these days. Don't give them food better than I can buy in the cafeteria at work, and don't give them a cell bigger than the cubicle I spend most of my day in. Give them bare necessities. A mattress to lie down, water on tap, and a toilet. Feed them what is needed, but keep in mind that it should be punishment, not gourmet food. They should be kept in the cells far more than they actually are. Prisons should not be nice enough to the point that there exist people who are OK with spending their life there. It should be a miserable place.
Don't be so quick to assume that it's my only support that radiocarbon dating. It was just the first one that came to mind that would actually grab someone's attention. After all, my company isn't paying me to research radiocarbon dating right now =)
Plus, what happened to the good old days, when debating a topic actually meant debating a topic? ("One of your sources is old and I don't think he's right, therefore you're proven wrong" just doesn't seem to me to be good ol' debate material, despite how commonplace it is these days... on BOTH sides of the argument, unfortunately) Far too many people have little to contribute and too much to say, on BOTH sides.
Yes, I already know how the theories on radiocarbon dating go. That's all you linked to: theories. In the real world, it's very different, due to lack of a controlled environment. If you can isolate something with a known C-14 level in a lab for an unknown amount of years, I'd accept the C-14 date because it's controlled. Take the same sample, throw it somewhere random, uncontrolled, and wait several years, there's suddenly way too many variables for C-14 to be reliable. C-14 has never been shown to be reliable, ever!
And just note that I'm not trying to discuss anything except radiocarbon dating. If you feel the need to argue religion, then that's quite offtopic.
Evolutionist
noun
1. a person who believes in or supports a theory of evolution, esp. in biology.
Biologist
noun
1. a specialist in biology.
They both have relations to biology, but are, by definition, not the same thing. Nothing stopping you from being both, but neither implies the other.
No matter how 'useful' it is, though, the radiocarbon method is still not capable of yeilding accurate and reliable results. There are gross discrepancies, the chronology is uneven and relative, and the accepted dates are acutally selected dates. This whole blessed thing is nothing but 13th century alchemy, and it all depends upon which funny paper you read.
--Robert E. Lee (not the general, but the evolutionist)
And there have been nothing suggesting otherwise since then.
I don't even care to argue who's right overall, anyone can believe whatever they want, just know that Carbon dating is BS.
Being Californian, I have to pay for part of it. California is one of the most ridiculous states in the nation, when it comes to financial decisions. And lawmaking. Basically all of politics.