Look, I'm all for NASA swapping budget sizes with the Pentagon, and I gladly pay NASA's share of my taxes. But I don't know how any field outside of astronomy benefits at all from discovering planets lightyears away (excepting the remote possibilities of colonization and discovering intelligence or life there).
That corrupt gasbag New Gingrich screwed it all up for NASA by pandering to Florida Republicans with lies about how he'd establish a permanent Lunar base (by the end of his "second term" - what a jerk). Yet another good programme that's good for the country, and so popular with voters, grabbed by a lying megalomaniac who'd never do it once elected.
Newt collapsed in the Florida election that week, and gave a Moon base a bad name. It's easy now in DC to mock NASA expansions, and Newt helped make that happen.
Is there cheap and low power tech for maintaining an RFID "display", the info on which can be changed programatically, and read from many meters across a building? Bonus points for the low power consumption coming from "digital ink" that consumes power only when changing the state of the display, and none while maintaining it.
No, I just mean the Novell Evolution packaged with Ubuntu.
It might be available on Mint, but I don't like it anymore. Its many bugs haven't been fixed in years, it's slow and missing more modern features, its many components are always being upgraded with no visible benefit, it crashes X, etc. So I was hoping Mint had something better.
I have read (many parts of) Smith's _Wealth of Nations_. Smith's capitalist arguments are apologias: arguments for capitalism, "moral justifications" as you say. Capitalism was already rolling by the time Smith systematically explained it. He stated some goals for it. But like practically all economists, Smith was in no position to state a goal for any macroeconomics. All he could do is portray an economic system, and state goals he might hope others would achieve.
Smith was a philosopher, and in a day when economics and philosophy weren't compartmentalized as they generally are today. So he made statements about human nature, and society behavior, that weren't governed by the economics itself. So it's really a gloss of capitalism.
In actual practice, after centuries of having Smith's writings on the shelf, capitalism is dedicated to collecting property, and to the means of collecting more (including political power that sometimes conflicts with direct economics). Monopoly is the holy grail of every capitalist. Smith's descriptions stated somewhat different goals. But reality has proved him wrong in many ways.
So while capitalism's godfather stated goals like those invoked in the comment to which I replied, they've been empty words for centuries. The benefits to people other than the richest capitalists are minor features compared to the abuses capitalism features. Smith's stated goals are far more effective when invoked by capitalists' PR flacks than practiced by actual capitalists. Yet the economics of the property collection are very much as Smith said they should be.
The stated goal of capitalism is to gain more valuable property. Any other goal is either a means to that end, or an end for which capitalism is merely the means, or just not capitalism - or some combination.
In fact the goal of most capitalists is to ignore quality while driving profits up for purchasing more property. Stated or otherwise. Capitalists don't want competition; they want monopoly. It's only when other capitalists must compete with them that there is competition.
'Why Apple has not simply purchased Audience is unclear. An acquisition would prevent Audience's other major customer, Samsung, from using the technology to compete with Apple,' says Gwennap
Maybe Samsung has contracts with Audience that prevent dropping Samsung while Samsung phones depend on Audience. Or maybe Samsung has some other methods of protecting itself from being screwed that way. They seem obviously necessary to mitigate the risk of depending on a small company like Audience. One might as well wonder why Samsung hasn't screwed Apple this same way, with the same speculative answers.
The whole approach is completely anticompetitive, and neither Samsung nor Apple are likely to be vulnerable to such an obvious risk. Gwennap is superficial for asking without looking into the likely answers. And pretty scummy for looking to such anticompetitive practices for advantages.
While the benefits of vote by mail are pretty clear, I don't like the downsides. Lost anonymity is one. Putting the collection and counting entirely in the hands of the government, unseen by the public or campaigns, is another. Usually it doesn't matter, and the advantages totally win. But when it does matter, it's the most important factor of all.
We could start by just collecting ballots every day in November, not just the first Tuesday. Or we could move it to the first weekend if a month is too long to keep walkup ballots secret (though we do it with non-anonymous voting by mail).
We could make "Election Day" a mandatory Federal holiday, even if we keep it on Tuesday. Or we could make any voting receipt exchangeable for a holiday, either in November, or maybe within 6-12 months with 30 days advance notice and approval.
This will help people with access disadvantages by making shorter lines at the polls, and making more physically accessible poll locations available during a longer window to arrange to attend there.
Except the triggering event need not be at the scale of the energy increased. It's not the additional energy from the trigger, it's what mechanical configuration that energy acts upon. You're saying that no straw can break a camel's back, because the camel is so much bigger than the straw. I'm not so sure.
I dunno - the natural system might be prone to releasing the energy more gradually, over a longer time series of quakes. "Popping" a quake outside its own rhythm might bypass natural mitigating mechanisms.
But I don't know. That's why I'm looking for scientific evidence.
I would like to believe there's at least a scientific model, based on measured data, that indicates it's safe. Not just oil/gas corps assuring us it's OK.
Is there any scientific study showing how much these seismic impulses, from air guns or from other giant synthetic "pings", increase the rate and/or intensity of earthquakes? There's some data from fracking and other injection wells, but those also introduce (possibly lubricating) newly active materials. How about just an energetic impulse? Or are we just blindly pulling the dragon's tail?
Really? The computer software I write and debug has access to the OS source code behind the API. Because APIs are never completely/properly documented, they have bugs, the behavior changes after initial release, etc. That's why I write SW for Linux. That's why it was valuable for Android to be open source.
Maybe this move means only the CDMA code isn't open source. So designing and debugging code that calls CDMA OS code is now in a proprietary environment. That might be only part of the scene that's closed, but it's important.
Both Sprint and Verizon use CDMA, and account for many millions of Android phone users. Does Google's move mean no more upgrades to their existing phones? And no new phones for them?
Maybe 3G and 4G aren't "CDMA" as Google defines them. Or maybe this move is a temporary restructuring. Or maybe it's Google forcing some concession from Verizon and Sprint, either in CDMA licensing or something else. Because I can't see the wisdom of Google just cutting off the majority of its US smartphone users.
Except that the CPB actually is doing that [thehill.com]. But why distract you Republicans with the actual facts in reality, when you can just say whatever suits the babbleflow from your talkradio puppeteers?
Wow, the Republican puppets have a lot of mod points today.
In the first six months of its existence, the CFPB fielded 13,210 complaints from consumers via its phone line and online submission forms, as well as referrals from other regulators, the report said. Of those complaints, 9,307 were tied to credit cards, with another 2,326 pertaining to mortgages.
On credit cards, billing disputes were the most common complaint, totaling 13.7 percent of responses for that financial product. Under the mortgages category, 38.2 percent of complaints deal with a situation where someone is unable to make their mortgage payment.
[...]
So far, a little over half of the complaints received have been settled between the company and the consumer "with relief." Another 30.6 percent have been settled without a mutually agreed upon remedy, while companies are still reviewing another 11.9 percent.
Except that the CPB actually is doing that. But why distract you Republicans with the actual facts in reality, when you can just say whatever suits the babbleflow from your talkradio puppeteers?
Except that the CPB actually is doing that. But why distract you Republicans with the actual facts in reality, when you can just say whatever suits the babbleflow from your talkradio puppeteers?
Except that members of each parties routinely defy their party's published platform. Democrats do it out of diversity, since Democrats often don't even vote with the majority of their party's congressional delegation. Republicans do it all together, much more unified in saying one thing and then doing the opposite.
Not being able to stand Democrats doesn't mean supporting the Republicans. In fact, standing against restricting the rights of everbody on the planet would mean standing at least as hard against the Republicans.
Everyone knows Republicans act far more as a unit, voting with their party, than Democrats ever do. Democrats are much more a case of "rotten apples" than Republicans are - Republicans are a rotten apple tree.
You call yourself "libertarian", but you're just like every other Republican who denies your loyalty to the Republican Party - while standing behind it 100%. It's irrational, no matter what mask you put on it.
Congressional Republicans were all for SOPA/PIPA until the big backlash starting last December. Quite a lot of that backlash was organized by progressive groups, though certainly not all of it. It's true that Congressional Democrats suck on copyright and mostly they ignored even the backlash. But out among the people, I saw a lot more opposition from people aligned with no party and from progressives than I saw from any Tea Party organization.
There was however a substantial Tea Party opposition, too. I quibble with the framing of this story as "Tea Party vs Democrats", because it looked like a lot more Democratic party members (voters, not politicians) than Tea Party "associates" (or whatever they are). Tea Partiers are generally quick to anger at any government action at all, so riling them up against law that uses any government power is no great feat or news. Progressives are more selective about government exercises.
But it's just a quibble. Really the story here is the great common ground Tea Partiers have with progressives. Almost any progressive position that opposes a government action is compatible with the Tea Party agenda. The notable exceptions are putting people in jail, invading/bombing other countries, and outlawing abortions - but there isn't even complete Tea Party consensus on those issues.
Americans are partisan only when organized into factions by parties; outside the tribalism there's far more consensus on every issue than we ever see among our elected "representatives". When we organize into political action according to an issue, not according to loyalty to some group, we agree far more than we disagree. Getting Congress to back away from copyright tyranny is a good example of our common ground. I hope we can use it to not only roll back copyright tyranny, especially its latest escalations. I hope we can use the lesson to see that we stand united mostly, and our differences can be disputed in debate rather than the war we've been in too long.
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Look, I'm all for NASA swapping budget sizes with the Pentagon, and I gladly pay NASA's share of my taxes. But I don't know how any field outside of astronomy benefits at all from discovering planets lightyears away (excepting the remote possibilities of colonization and discovering intelligence or life there).
That corrupt gasbag New Gingrich screwed it all up for NASA by pandering to Florida Republicans with lies about how he'd establish a permanent Lunar base (by the end of his "second term" - what a jerk). Yet another good programme that's good for the country, and so popular with voters, grabbed by a lying megalomaniac who'd never do it once elected.
Newt collapsed in the Florida election that week, and gave a Moon base a bad name. It's easy now in DC to mock NASA expansions, and Newt helped make that happen.
Is there cheap and low power tech for maintaining an RFID "display", the info on which can be changed programatically, and read from many meters across a building? Bonus points for the low power consumption coming from "digital ink" that consumes power only when changing the state of the display, and none while maintaining it.
No, I just mean the Novell Evolution packaged with Ubuntu.
It might be available on Mint, but I don't like it anymore. Its many bugs haven't been fixed in years, it's slow and missing more modern features, its many components are always being upgraded with no visible benefit, it crashes X, etc. So I was hoping Mint had something better.
I have read (many parts of) Smith's _Wealth of Nations_. Smith's capitalist arguments are apologias: arguments for capitalism, "moral justifications" as you say. Capitalism was already rolling by the time Smith systematically explained it. He stated some goals for it. But like practically all economists, Smith was in no position to state a goal for any macroeconomics. All he could do is portray an economic system, and state goals he might hope others would achieve.
Smith was a philosopher, and in a day when economics and philosophy weren't compartmentalized as they generally are today. So he made statements about human nature, and society behavior, that weren't governed by the economics itself. So it's really a gloss of capitalism.
In actual practice, after centuries of having Smith's writings on the shelf, capitalism is dedicated to collecting property, and to the means of collecting more (including political power that sometimes conflicts with direct economics). Monopoly is the holy grail of every capitalist. Smith's descriptions stated somewhat different goals. But reality has proved him wrong in many ways.
So while capitalism's godfather stated goals like those invoked in the comment to which I replied, they've been empty words for centuries. The benefits to people other than the richest capitalists are minor features compared to the abuses capitalism features. Smith's stated goals are far more effective when invoked by capitalists' PR flacks than practiced by actual capitalists. Yet the economics of the property collection are very much as Smith said they should be.
What's the email/calendar/contacts(/memos) app on Mint? Is it better than Ubunutu Evolution?
What do you lose in Xubuntu (by switching from GNOME Ubuntu)?
I like Ubuntu because it's frequently updated, and seems to be where the "zeitgeist" of Linux development is living these days.
But I don't like Unity. How do I get Ubuntu with the original Desktop?
And while I'm at it, how about a (local storage) replacement for Evolution, since the zeitgeist evidently abandoned it years ago?
Who stated that goal? Some capitalist's PR flack?
The stated goal of capitalism is to gain more valuable property. Any other goal is either a means to that end, or an end for which capitalism is merely the means, or just not capitalism - or some combination.
In fact the goal of most capitalists is to ignore quality while driving profits up for purchasing more property. Stated or otherwise. Capitalists don't want competition; they want monopoly. It's only when other capitalists must compete with them that there is competition.
Maybe Samsung has contracts with Audience that prevent dropping Samsung while Samsung phones depend on Audience. Or maybe Samsung has some other methods of protecting itself from being screwed that way. They seem obviously necessary to mitigate the risk of depending on a small company like Audience. One might as well wonder why Samsung hasn't screwed Apple this same way, with the same speculative answers.
The whole approach is completely anticompetitive, and neither Samsung nor Apple are likely to be vulnerable to such an obvious risk. Gwennap is superficial for asking without looking into the likely answers. And pretty scummy for looking to such anticompetitive practices for advantages.
While the benefits of vote by mail are pretty clear, I don't like the downsides. Lost anonymity is one. Putting the collection and counting entirely in the hands of the government, unseen by the public or campaigns, is another. Usually it doesn't matter, and the advantages totally win. But when it does matter, it's the most important factor of all.
We could start by just collecting ballots every day in November, not just the first Tuesday. Or we could move it to the first weekend if a month is too long to keep walkup ballots secret (though we do it with non-anonymous voting by mail).
We could make "Election Day" a mandatory Federal holiday, even if we keep it on Tuesday. Or we could make any voting receipt exchangeable for a holiday, either in November, or maybe within 6-12 months with 30 days advance notice and approval.
This will help people with access disadvantages by making shorter lines at the polls, and making more physically accessible poll locations available during a longer window to arrange to attend there.
Except the triggering event need not be at the scale of the energy increased. It's not the additional energy from the trigger, it's what mechanical configuration that energy acts upon. You're saying that no straw can break a camel's back, because the camel is so much bigger than the straw. I'm not so sure.
I dunno - the natural system might be prone to releasing the energy more gradually, over a longer time series of quakes. "Popping" a quake outside its own rhythm might bypass natural mitigating mechanisms.
But I don't know. That's why I'm looking for scientific evidence.
I would like to believe there's at least a scientific model, based on measured data, that indicates it's safe. Not just oil/gas corps assuring us it's OK.
Where's your scientific evidence to show that's the "scale"? Or aren't you just making it up?
Is there any scientific study showing how much these seismic impulses, from air guns or from other giant synthetic "pings", increase the rate and/or intensity of earthquakes? There's some data from fracking and other injection wells, but those also introduce (possibly lubricating) newly active materials. How about just an energetic impulse? Or are we just blindly pulling the dragon's tail?
Really? The computer software I write and debug has access to the OS source code behind the API. Because APIs are never completely/properly documented, they have bugs, the behavior changes after initial release, etc. That's why I write SW for Linux. That's why it was valuable for Android to be open source.
Maybe this move means only the CDMA code isn't open source. So designing and debugging code that calls CDMA OS code is now in a proprietary environment. That might be only part of the scene that's closed, but it's important.
Both Sprint and Verizon use CDMA, and account for many millions of Android phone users. Does Google's move mean no more upgrades to their existing phones? And no new phones for them?
Maybe 3G and 4G aren't "CDMA" as Google defines them. Or maybe this move is a temporary restructuring. Or maybe it's Google forcing some concession from Verizon and Sprint, either in CDMA licensing or something else. Because I can't see the wisdom of Google just cutting off the majority of its US smartphone users.
Indeed. But Republican puppets can't do anything about the CFB actually doing its job protecting consumers:
I see a lot more people than just the ones I know. Especially in this Internet Age. Don't you?
Except that the CPB actually is doing that. But why distract you Republicans with the actual facts in reality, when you can just say whatever suits the babbleflow from your talkradio puppeteers?
Except that the CPB actually is doing that. But why distract you Republicans with the actual facts in reality, when you can just say whatever suits the babbleflow from your talkradio puppeteers?
Except that members of each parties routinely defy their party's published platform. Democrats do it out of diversity, since Democrats often don't even vote with the majority of their party's congressional delegation. Republicans do it all together, much more unified in saying one thing and then doing the opposite.
Not being able to stand Democrats doesn't mean supporting the Republicans. In fact, standing against restricting the rights of everbody on the planet would mean standing at least as hard against the Republicans.
Everyone knows Republicans act far more as a unit, voting with their party, than Democrats ever do. Democrats are much more a case of "rotten apples" than Republicans are - Republicans are a rotten apple tree.
You call yourself "libertarian", but you're just like every other Republican who denies your loyalty to the Republican Party - while standing behind it 100%. It's irrational, no matter what mask you put on it.
Congressional Republicans were all for SOPA/PIPA until the big backlash starting last December. Quite a lot of that backlash was organized by progressive groups, though certainly not all of it. It's true that Congressional Democrats suck on copyright and mostly they ignored even the backlash. But out among the people, I saw a lot more opposition from people aligned with no party and from progressives than I saw from any Tea Party organization.
There was however a substantial Tea Party opposition, too. I quibble with the framing of this story as "Tea Party vs Democrats", because it looked like a lot more Democratic party members (voters, not politicians) than Tea Party "associates" (or whatever they are). Tea Partiers are generally quick to anger at any government action at all, so riling them up against law that uses any government power is no great feat or news. Progressives are more selective about government exercises.
But it's just a quibble. Really the story here is the great common ground Tea Partiers have with progressives. Almost any progressive position that opposes a government action is compatible with the Tea Party agenda. The notable exceptions are putting people in jail, invading/bombing other countries, and outlawing abortions - but there isn't even complete Tea Party consensus on those issues.
Americans are partisan only when organized into factions by parties; outside the tribalism there's far more consensus on every issue than we ever see among our elected "representatives". When we organize into political action according to an issue, not according to loyalty to some group, we agree far more than we disagree. Getting Congress to back away from copyright tyranny is a good example of our common ground. I hope we can use it to not only roll back copyright tyranny, especially its latest escalations. I hope we can use the lesson to see that we stand united mostly, and our differences can be disputed in debate rather than the war we've been in too long.