That's like saying a war is merely a disagreement between a couple of countries.
Completely disagree. Sports is a game. War is an atrocity. Never seriously compare the two.
If you think sports is anything more than a form of recreation then you seriously are missing the entire point of sports. A sport is just a bunch of made up rules everyone agrees to adhere to and then we play to figure out who is the best at it. Some sports have become popular enough that people are willing to pay to watch them as a form of entertainment, like watching a movie or play. People compete hard and take it seriously but at the end of the day it is still nothing more than a game. Just entertainment.
It's not the activity in and of itself. It's the "jock culture" built around it.
"Jock culture"? I think you are projecting insecurities and have watched way too many movies. I've been a Division 1 college athlete in wrestling. I have been in the sport for over 30 years both as an athlete and coach. I'm also an engineer and most of my hobbies and friends are very much on the geeky side. (If you need evidence I've been hanging out here on slashdot for about 15 years - if that's not geeky I don't know what is...) I spent much of my high school and college spare time doing stuff like playing Magic:The Gathering or learning to program or working in a physics lab. "Jock culture"? If you think that is a thing then you don't know too many actual athletes. Very few of them fit neatly into the box you are so eager to put them in.
Oh and when you're trying to watch something intellectually stimulating and it gets pre-empted, again, by a football game
That's your complaint? Seriously? What "intellectually stimulating" show did you miss on ESPN or NBC when a football game ran long? Do tell because it's been a LONG time since I saw anything "intellectually stimulating" on any network that carried sports programming. My TV has about 200 channels and last I checked, most of them don't carry sports programming.
you remember high school where the football players got away with anything while the rules were applied to everyone else
I don't know where you went to high school but I've actually been an athlete and certainly got no special treatment. If anything it was harder because we were fully expected to make up all the coursework we missed when competing. I attended one of the top engineering schools in the country as a college student-athlete and our coaches made damn sure we were on top of our studies. Break a school rule? Means you don't get to play most places. Just because a few corrupt colleges break the rules in football and basketball doesn't mean most of the world works like that. Athletes have WAY more rules to follow and have to be far more disciplined with their time than most students.
the team always had nice shiny new expensive equipment while the music, art, and computer teachers had to make do with dusty falling-apart crap,
Those teams get that shiny new equipment because they do a lot of fund raising for it. Very few schools cover the cost of that gear these days. If you want fancy new computers for the school what's stopping you from doing a car wash or asking local businesses to sponsor it or any of the other fund raising activities that the sports teams do? Or maybe you just want to complain without bothering to find out about all the work that goes into making that stuff happen.
Why? Sports are merely a game. A diversion played for entertainment. If it isn't your cup of tea that's fine but why should you give a shit one way or the other about it? In practical terms if you don't care about sports it won't affect you one tiny little bit. Find something productive to dislike like war or disease or political corruption. Sports is without question a net benefit to society so it makes little sense to hate sports even if you don't enjoy them personally.
It's all paying ridiculous amounts of money to millionaire "athletes" to watch them play a game.
Why is that any worse that paying to watch a movie or a TV show or a stage play? People pay to watch this because they find it entertaining and get what they consider a good value for money. And for the majority of the human population, sports ARE entertaining. If you don't like them fine but that doesn't make it ridiculous. A top level athlete is a beautiful thing to watch just like watching a ballet dancer or a talented musician. Plus in sports there is the drama of competition which is tremendous fun. There is economic value in providing entertainment so what is wrong with charging people who are willing to pay to watch sports?
Furthermore what's with the condescending quotations around the word athletes? If you play sports then you are an athlete. That is what the word means. You're an athlete if you play sports even if you aren't very good at it and don't get paid a penny which described 99.9999% of the population of people involved in sports.
I have nothing against playing games -- I have a thing against paying people to watch them do it.
Again why? Why do you give a shit? I understand if it isn't your thing. I don't find watching interpretive dance to be particularly fulfilling myself but that doesn't mean it's a bad thing that others find it entertaining. If you want to spend your money doing something else, no one will care. But stop looking down your nose at people who find pleasure in watching sports.
You've got to be kidding me. Nearly every instructor I've ever had offers different stories about the FAA.
So because a bunch of flight instructors don't like dealing with the FAA the organization isn't effective at ensuring airline safety? You can tell stories about stupid things that happen in ANY organization and the FAA is no different. Yeah, not everything the FAA does is perfect - news at 11. Of course the aviation industry has achieved a ridiculously impressive safety record and the FAA has been a huge part of that. Coincidence? Not remotely. Just because an organization does some silly stuff doesn't negate their actual accomplishments.
Hasn't anyone noticed the steady decline [airfactsjournal.com] in the number [haywardairportnoise.org] of licensed pilots over the last decade?
For general aviation sure. It's expensive, time consuming, and causes your insurance rates to go through the roof if you are a general aviation pilot. Owning and maintaining a plane is not a cheap hobby.
If you are a pro the pay for a newbie pilot is ridiculously low and that has nothing at all to do with the FAA. That's simply due to the fact that there is an excess supply of pilot so wages get pushed down. I have a cousin who became a airline pilot. Spent a ton of money getting trained and was making all of about $30K/year in salary to drive the bus in the sky. Gee, wonder why people wouldn't want to become a pilot if the wages are shit and the hours are long.
However, if you piss off the wrong FAA guy and he decides to ride you like a pony, you will go broke and enter bankruptcy trying to comply with the specific and individual demands he makes in the name of safety regarding your plane, or you will stop participating in aviation altogether.
So don't piss him off.
When they raise the standards for safety so high that pilots and airlines go broke as super expensive FAA certified mechanics throw away perfectly good parts from their planes, the FAA is clearly failing again.
Just because a part is functional and not yet broken does not mean it is inappropriate to take it out of service. I'm sure you can find examples of something silly done by some FAA employee but the fact remains that without them the safety record of the aviation industry would not be anywhere close to what it is today.
Oh and the airlines industry right now is reporting record profits. Airlines going broke? Only the badly run ones. They've finally figured out that having excess capacity is economically stupid and they've started charging ticket and other fees that are high enough to actually generate a profit. What a concept...
Well as an example, the new thorium reactors don't even need cooling as the reaction is cut off immediately when there's a failure.
Thorium reactors don't need cooling? I think you don't understand the physics involved. Some newer reactor designs have passive cooling systems which are (theoretically) safer but they still need and have cooling systems. Fission generates heat which is used to drive turbines. If you have heat you must have a cooling system. It takes a substantial amount of time for a fission reactor to cool even once the reaction is shut down and you have to have some form of cooling system in place to do that.
Nuclear (specifically fission) power generation is cheap. All the safety systems, regulatory oversight, large construction projects, waste management/disposal, licensing, project management, environmental impact, financing and maintenance of nuclear power are tremendously expensive. And you cannot separate the power generation from the rest of those items.
The FAA is one of a very few government agencies that takes its job seriously and focuses on quality.
They're better than that. Surgeons in operating rooms are cribbing from the FAA for techniques and procedures to improve patient safety. The safety record of the airline industry is quite remarkable and the FAA deserves a huge amount of the credit for that achievement. I've worked as a quality engineer and whatever their other flaws might be, the FAA groks quality and safety as well as any organization I've ever seen.
I'd trust them to take IT systems security seriously and delegate the work to competent engineers.
As would I. The only thing I really worry about with the FAA is in keeping Congress from meddling with them too much. They are in my opinion one of the best run agencies in our government. That's not to say they don't have their flaws but on the big picture stuff, especially safety, they do a pretty good job overall even when they don't have all the resources they might.
Almost can't believe I'm saying this, but it would seem they have good workers.
Why should it shock you? We have many people in our government who are remarkably competent. I'd be happy to introduce you to some that I know personally. The FAA does not only have good workers but they have a safety first framework and have built a culture and procedures to support that. They also have the advantage of not being a political football for Congress to fight over. A good worker can be put into a system that doesn't work and chances are they will fail. Safety and reliability are NOT about competent people working hard. Those are important things but they will not get the job done unless you also have an organizational framework that supports them properly. The FAA has oversight over the entire process from certifying the airplanes before they even get built, to overseeing the ongoing maintenance and supply, to being able to force private companies to be grounded if they don't do what they are supposed to do when they are supposed to do it. They are able to get into all the corners of the industry that affect safety and they largely do a good job of ensuring that things are done properly like a regulator is suppose to.
In what universe? I've been to Vietnam. If you think the US won you have no idea what actually happened there. There is no point at which you can claim the US "won" that war by any reasonable definition of the term. The US rarely lost battles in Vietnam but ultimately accomplished none of their objectives and the moment the US pulled out, South Vietnam fell.
The North Vietnamese were powerless, and the US left.
Really? Then explain why the Vietnam war ended with the fall of Saigon. The US did the largest air evacuation in history. That is not what you do when you have won a war. "North Vietnamese were powerless"? Don't make me laugh.
Is it good to cut off access to the modern equivalent of the public square just because we don't like what is being said?
Let's not pretend that anything this ISIL group does is in any way an attempt at a discussion. These are psychopaths who even other terrorist groups have cut ties with because they think they have gone too far. These are people who would subjugate and kill you in a brutal and public manner without a hint of remorse. This isn't a public square debate. This is a war. Never confuse the one with the other. This isn't two civilized groups agreeing to disagree. ISIS has engaged in genocidal activities. And you seriously think that is a situation where we should just sit back and respect their rights?
Is it a victory to beat them by cutting off their ability to speak?
Very possibly. While I don't pretend to understand everything about them, literally everything I've heard from this group leads me to believe these are people who promote extreme violence and use the islamic faith to justify their psychosis.
How is this different from cutting off Mega's cashflow via PayPal and the credit cards?
People are combining two different acts when going solar, a) getting off of fossil fuels, and b) generating their own power that the big energy companies don't control. Energy companies are not necessarily against a), but b) is anathema to them, and therefore they are doing everything they can to block the adoption of solar.
Power companies buy power from other power companies all the time. It's positively routine for them. What they aren't used to doing is buying it from a large number of small generators. They are just used to buying it from other similarly sized power companies. It has nothing to do with control and everything to do with cost to service those vendors. It costs more to deal with multiple vendors than it does one. It also costs more to buy from a small generator that is no where near minimum efficient scale.
I would be happy if legislation was passed that outlawed individual ownership of personal solar installations, and mandated big utilities to install, operate, and maintain them instead. I would continue sending a check each month as I have been for my power like before, and my bill might even go up 10-30%.
I think if I want to buy a personal solar installation I should have every right to do so and both you and the power company can piss off if you don't like it. Furthermore there already are private sector companies doing basically what you are proposing. They install the solar array on your house and rent it to you and they sell the power to you and any excess to the power company. You get a modest discount and they make some money in the process. Wouldn't be surprising to see power companies get into the business as well at some point if the business model proves viable.
I honestly would be all for it, let the utilities continue to control me, we've got to address climate change NOW.
Ahh, I get it. You (mistakenly) think that the power companies would be on board with this despite the fact that it would not be economically sane for them to do it. I agree that climate change is a real and present danger but your argument is both politically a non-starter and economically impossible to justify.
ACA is doing the exact opposite, it is tying health insurance even more closely with employment.
Bullshit. You can buy health insurance now regardless of job status and without worrying about pre-existing conditions. If your income is low then you can get subsidies. You also do not lose your health insurance if you lose your job so long as you can find some way to pay the premiums. NONE of that was true prior to the ACA.
And, no one lost health insurance because they lost a job before ACA.
That could not be more incorrect. Prior to 2014 if you lost your job you were IMMEDIATELY bounced out of your company health plan in almost all cases. You could get COBRA for a short time afterwards in some cases but only for a short time.
Well, I am not aware of anyone whose insurance is only going up 3-5% per year and am not aware of anyone for whom their insurance didn't got up by at least 30% when Obamacare happened.
Then you haven't looked. I run a small company and we closed our company sponsored plan in 2014 because it was double the price of the plans available through the exchanges. Price increases in 2015 were low single digit percentages for most of our employees including myself. I'm intimately aware of the prices both before and after 2014 and on the average.
Personally I got coverage that was better than our company plan for roughly the same amount of money out of pocket plus I now have an HSA on top of that. Some folks in our company are paying much less per month. A few are paying more, mostly those who are very close to retirement age and smoke.
Furthermore because we dropped the company sponsored plan we save about $250 per month per employee so we were able to hire more people.
Help me out here, because I really don't understand how it works....but how are you supposed to pay for private health insurance if you lose employment?
Might be tough but the important bit is that you have the OPTION to maintain your coverage which you didn't have before. The point you missed is that it used to be that if you lost your job you IMMEDIATELY lost your health insurance and you had ZERO alternative options except for maybe COBRA which is only a stop gap and an expensive one at that. Borrow the money, dip into savings or get another job but you can take your insurance with you. Even if you can't pay for it you can still sign up again at a later date when you can afford it regardless of your job situation. Got a pre-existing condition? Prior to 2014 you were screwed because no company would insure that condition for any amount of money. Prior to 2014, anyone who was self employed had very few options and they were almost universally shitty with huge deductibles.
My family of 5 coverage was $160 per month, $35 copay, no deductible. Here comes Osamabinladencare, one adult person is now $1200 per month for almost the same coverage
Oh bullshit. Either you had a ludicrously good deal or you are lying and I'm pretty sure you are lying. $160/month to cover a family of 5? I run a company an have been looking at health plans for years and have NEVER seen a plan like that. There isn't an insurance company out there that could make a dime underwriting coverage for a family that size at that rate.
Right, that's why a lot of middle class families are now paying more for worse insurance than they were before Obamacare...
Prices have been going up by huge (often double digit) percentages every year for a long time and that started LONG before the ACA was passed. I run a company so I have seen it first hand for years. Those cost increases cannot be endlessly absorbed by employers. If costs go up faster than the population then sooner or later some people are going to end up with either more expensive coverage or worse coverage or both. To pretend that we can have both rising costs but not have people pay more is to be in denial of economic reality.
The whole point of insurance is to spread the risk and the cost. The health care system in the US had to change and any change you make is going to benefit some and cost others. To deny some people access to health insurance to keep rates lower for others is immoral and wrong. To tie one's ability to get health coverage to having a job is even more immoral and wrong. Your employment should have nothing to do with your access to health insurance.
Nice revisionist history there.
I didn't state anything that isn't a fact. Prior to 2014 it was literally impossible for millions of people to get insurance for reasonable rates unless they had access to a group plan through an employer. If you had a pre-existing condition you were screwed.
Speaking for myself and my staff, we dropped our health plan at our company and sent everyone to the exchanges. Everyone in our company found coverage that was roughly comparable to what they had before for similar or less money or in a few cases they picked high deductible plans. In rough numbers our health plan before 2014 cost about $600/person/month and the company picked up half of that amount. Post 2014, most people are paying between $150-250/month out of pocket and the company doesn't pay a dime. This has allowed us to hire extra staff and buy some equipment we couldn't previously justify. Speaking for myself I went from a HMO to a PPO with an HSA which is better coverage for the same money. Best of all, if I were to change jobs or the company were to fold, every one of those people would still have health coverage.
Stephen Hawking needs to stick to cosmology...he doesn't know *shit* about computing and human behavior.
And what are your credentials that make you such an expert on the topic of human behavior? If you're so smart about the topic what are you doing posting here?
just like all traits of human behavior, evolutionary biologists (esp. psych) drastically oversimplify the most complex behavior we observe in the known universe
Complex behavior can arise from very simple rules. That's something I'm quite sure Hawking understands far better than you or me.
the **real problem** is listening to people like Hawking
Really? Someone arguing for peace? How horrible that we should listen to someone saying we should be less aggressive. [/sarcasm]
The executive branch needs to learn they implement the law congress passes not the one they wish congress passes.
If Congress isn't specific in their statutes then it is to the discretion of the administration how they handle the regulations. Very few laws are passed with enough specificity that the executive branch doesn't have considerable discretion in the interpretation of the statutes.
If Obama and lefties suddenly are not allowed to continue to make up the rules as they go along maybe the other half of America will realize this law for the ill considered, abusive over reach of authority and corporate give away that it is.
You're accusing the left of corporate giveaways? Methinks you have the left and right mixed up. Abusive overreach of authority? I direct your attention to the actions of the previous administration, particularly post 9/11.
Marketplace insurance is just a private plan with an extra layer of government collusion.
It's a private plan with regulations to keep the price reasonable because it wouldn't be otherwise. Now your ability to get health insurance is not tied to your continued employment. No one should lose health insurance just because they lost a job. Criticize the details all you want but that part of the ACA is unequivocally a Good Thing.
Crony-capitalism at its finest.
Since these insurance companies wouldn't insure millions of people at a reasonable price until the government forced the issue it eludes me how this is "crony capitalism". It's not as if the insurance companies were lobbying in favor of insuring poor people.
I do some Google work. I've got just a high-school diploma and a teensy bit of college under my belt.
That is not evidence that they don't consider your educational background in the hiring decision. It might not be a requirement but it sure as hell doesn't hurt to have a degree from a good school.
If there's no such thing as "computer error", then why do we have all this error-correcting stuff in our memory etc.?
Because the computer was designed in such a way as to require it. While there are a few problems due to noise in communications channels and unstable storage, these are known physics problems with known solutions. Because we know about the problems any errors are for all practical purposes human mistakes. If you know a problem can occur and don't bother to design around it then that is a human error.
You can already buy a regular, not-smart TV everywhere. It's called a computer monitor.
Really? I can buy a 60" computer monitor that can change channels, has 4 inputs and sound and comes with a remote for less than $700? Please tell me where I can find this fantastic buy...
Oh that's right, not available for reasonable prices anywhere...
They're not saying "computer error," but what are the other explanations?
There is no such thing as a computer error. Either it was user error or the computer was programmed improperly or the computer's hardware was designed/built improperly. ALL of those are human errors. Computers do exactly what they are told to do. Nothing more, nothing less. If the instructions are faulty then the computer will execute those faulty instructions faithfully.
Nope. Google does not care about the useless "where you went to school" nonsense.
I don't believe that for a second. It might not be of primary concern but I have zero doubt that if you went to MIT or Carnegie Mellon and graduated with an IT related degree, it WILL factor into the hiring decision at Google.
They want to know you have skills and abilities.
Of course they do. That's precisely why they care whether or not you graduated from a known good training program. It is evidence that you are likely to have the sort of skills they are looking for. They'll test you further but it is a piece of evidence.
Show up with a brilliant invention under your arm and they will gladly take an ITT Tech graduate.
Perhaps but since that doesn't happen very often where you went to school WILL get looked at.
Gotta say... If you NEED a windows machine... my windows VirtualBox VM runs better/faster than most windows laptops.
That cannot be true almost by definition. Running a virtual machine of any description carries overhead which you will not incur running directly on the hardware. I do run Windows machines in VMs and it works great but I'm not going to pretend it is faster than running it directly on the hardware.
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That's like saying a war is merely a disagreement between a couple of countries.
Completely disagree. Sports is a game. War is an atrocity. Never seriously compare the two.
If you think sports is anything more than a form of recreation then you seriously are missing the entire point of sports. A sport is just a bunch of made up rules everyone agrees to adhere to and then we play to figure out who is the best at it. Some sports have become popular enough that people are willing to pay to watch them as a form of entertainment, like watching a movie or play. People compete hard and take it seriously but at the end of the day it is still nothing more than a game. Just entertainment.
It's not the activity in and of itself. It's the "jock culture" built around it.
"Jock culture"? I think you are projecting insecurities and have watched way too many movies. I've been a Division 1 college athlete in wrestling. I have been in the sport for over 30 years both as an athlete and coach. I'm also an engineer and most of my hobbies and friends are very much on the geeky side. (If you need evidence I've been hanging out here on slashdot for about 15 years - if that's not geeky I don't know what is...) I spent much of my high school and college spare time doing stuff like playing Magic:The Gathering or learning to program or working in a physics lab. "Jock culture"? If you think that is a thing then you don't know too many actual athletes. Very few of them fit neatly into the box you are so eager to put them in.
Oh and when you're trying to watch something intellectually stimulating and it gets pre-empted, again, by a football game
That's your complaint? Seriously? What "intellectually stimulating" show did you miss on ESPN or NBC when a football game ran long? Do tell because it's been a LONG time since I saw anything "intellectually stimulating" on any network that carried sports programming. My TV has about 200 channels and last I checked, most of them don't carry sports programming.
you remember high school where the football players got away with anything while the rules were applied to everyone else
I don't know where you went to high school but I've actually been an athlete and certainly got no special treatment. If anything it was harder because we were fully expected to make up all the coursework we missed when competing. I attended one of the top engineering schools in the country as a college student-athlete and our coaches made damn sure we were on top of our studies. Break a school rule? Means you don't get to play most places. Just because a few corrupt colleges break the rules in football and basketball doesn't mean most of the world works like that. Athletes have WAY more rules to follow and have to be far more disciplined with their time than most students.
the team always had nice shiny new expensive equipment while the music, art, and computer teachers had to make do with dusty falling-apart crap,
Those teams get that shiny new equipment because they do a lot of fund raising for it. Very few schools cover the cost of that gear these days. If you want fancy new computers for the school what's stopping you from doing a car wash or asking local businesses to sponsor it or any of the other fund raising activities that the sports teams do? Or maybe you just want to complain without bothering to find out about all the work that goes into making that stuff happen.
I despise sports.
Why? Sports are merely a game. A diversion played for entertainment. If it isn't your cup of tea that's fine but why should you give a shit one way or the other about it? In practical terms if you don't care about sports it won't affect you one tiny little bit. Find something productive to dislike like war or disease or political corruption. Sports is without question a net benefit to society so it makes little sense to hate sports even if you don't enjoy them personally.
It's all paying ridiculous amounts of money to millionaire "athletes" to watch them play a game.
Why is that any worse that paying to watch a movie or a TV show or a stage play? People pay to watch this because they find it entertaining and get what they consider a good value for money. And for the majority of the human population, sports ARE entertaining. If you don't like them fine but that doesn't make it ridiculous. A top level athlete is a beautiful thing to watch just like watching a ballet dancer or a talented musician. Plus in sports there is the drama of competition which is tremendous fun. There is economic value in providing entertainment so what is wrong with charging people who are willing to pay to watch sports?
Furthermore what's with the condescending quotations around the word athletes? If you play sports then you are an athlete. That is what the word means. You're an athlete if you play sports even if you aren't very good at it and don't get paid a penny which described 99.9999% of the population of people involved in sports.
I have nothing against playing games -- I have a thing against paying people to watch them do it.
Again why? Why do you give a shit? I understand if it isn't your thing. I don't find watching interpretive dance to be particularly fulfilling myself but that doesn't mean it's a bad thing that others find it entertaining. If you want to spend your money doing something else, no one will care. But stop looking down your nose at people who find pleasure in watching sports.
You've got to be kidding me. Nearly every instructor I've ever had offers different stories about the FAA.
So because a bunch of flight instructors don't like dealing with the FAA the organization isn't effective at ensuring airline safety? You can tell stories about stupid things that happen in ANY organization and the FAA is no different. Yeah, not everything the FAA does is perfect - news at 11. Of course the aviation industry has achieved a ridiculously impressive safety record and the FAA has been a huge part of that. Coincidence? Not remotely. Just because an organization does some silly stuff doesn't negate their actual accomplishments.
Hasn't anyone noticed the steady decline [airfactsjournal.com] in the number [haywardairportnoise.org] of licensed pilots over the last decade?
For general aviation sure. It's expensive, time consuming, and causes your insurance rates to go through the roof if you are a general aviation pilot. Owning and maintaining a plane is not a cheap hobby.
If you are a pro the pay for a newbie pilot is ridiculously low and that has nothing at all to do with the FAA. That's simply due to the fact that there is an excess supply of pilot so wages get pushed down. I have a cousin who became a airline pilot. Spent a ton of money getting trained and was making all of about $30K/year in salary to drive the bus in the sky. Gee, wonder why people wouldn't want to become a pilot if the wages are shit and the hours are long.
However, if you piss off the wrong FAA guy and he decides to ride you like a pony, you will go broke and enter bankruptcy trying to comply with the specific and individual demands he makes in the name of safety regarding your plane, or you will stop participating in aviation altogether.
So don't piss him off.
When they raise the standards for safety so high that pilots and airlines go broke as super expensive FAA certified mechanics throw away perfectly good parts from their planes, the FAA is clearly failing again.
Just because a part is functional and not yet broken does not mean it is inappropriate to take it out of service. I'm sure you can find examples of something silly done by some FAA employee but the fact remains that without them the safety record of the aviation industry would not be anywhere close to what it is today.
Oh and the airlines industry right now is reporting record profits. Airlines going broke? Only the badly run ones. They've finally figured out that having excess capacity is economically stupid and they've started charging ticket and other fees that are high enough to actually generate a profit. What a concept...
Well as an example, the new thorium reactors don't even need cooling as the reaction is cut off immediately when there's a failure.
Thorium reactors don't need cooling? I think you don't understand the physics involved. Some newer reactor designs have passive cooling systems which are (theoretically) safer but they still need and have cooling systems. Fission generates heat which is used to drive turbines. If you have heat you must have a cooling system. It takes a substantial amount of time for a fission reactor to cool even once the reaction is shut down and you have to have some form of cooling system in place to do that.
Nuclear is cheap.
Nuclear (specifically fission) power generation is cheap. All the safety systems, regulatory oversight, large construction projects, waste management/disposal, licensing, project management, environmental impact, financing and maintenance of nuclear power are tremendously expensive. And you cannot separate the power generation from the rest of those items.
The FAA is one of a very few government agencies that takes its job seriously and focuses on quality.
They're better than that. Surgeons in operating rooms are cribbing from the FAA for techniques and procedures to improve patient safety. The safety record of the airline industry is quite remarkable and the FAA deserves a huge amount of the credit for that achievement. I've worked as a quality engineer and whatever their other flaws might be, the FAA groks quality and safety as well as any organization I've ever seen.
I'd trust them to take IT systems security seriously and delegate the work to competent engineers.
As would I. The only thing I really worry about with the FAA is in keeping Congress from meddling with them too much. They are in my opinion one of the best run agencies in our government. That's not to say they don't have their flaws but on the big picture stuff, especially safety, they do a pretty good job overall even when they don't have all the resources they might.
Almost can't believe I'm saying this, but it would seem they have good workers.
Why should it shock you? We have many people in our government who are remarkably competent. I'd be happy to introduce you to some that I know personally. The FAA does not only have good workers but they have a safety first framework and have built a culture and procedures to support that. They also have the advantage of not being a political football for Congress to fight over. A good worker can be put into a system that doesn't work and chances are they will fail. Safety and reliability are NOT about competent people working hard. Those are important things but they will not get the job done unless you also have an organizational framework that supports them properly. The FAA has oversight over the entire process from certifying the airplanes before they even get built, to overseeing the ongoing maintenance and supply, to being able to force private companies to be grounded if they don't do what they are supposed to do when they are supposed to do it. They are able to get into all the corners of the industry that affect safety and they largely do a good job of ensuring that things are done properly like a regulator is suppose to.
The United States _won_ the war in Vietnam.
In what universe? I've been to Vietnam. If you think the US won you have no idea what actually happened there. There is no point at which you can claim the US "won" that war by any reasonable definition of the term. The US rarely lost battles in Vietnam but ultimately accomplished none of their objectives and the moment the US pulled out, South Vietnam fell.
The North Vietnamese were powerless, and the US left.
Really? Then explain why the Vietnam war ended with the fall of Saigon. The US did the largest air evacuation in history. That is not what you do when you have won a war. "North Vietnamese were powerless"? Don't make me laugh.
Is it good to cut off access to the modern equivalent of the public square just because we don't like what is being said?
Let's not pretend that anything this ISIL group does is in any way an attempt at a discussion. These are psychopaths who even other terrorist groups have cut ties with because they think they have gone too far. These are people who would subjugate and kill you in a brutal and public manner without a hint of remorse. This isn't a public square debate. This is a war. Never confuse the one with the other. This isn't two civilized groups agreeing to disagree. ISIS has engaged in genocidal activities. And you seriously think that is a situation where we should just sit back and respect their rights?
Is it a victory to beat them by cutting off their ability to speak?
Very possibly. While I don't pretend to understand everything about them, literally everything I've heard from this group leads me to believe these are people who promote extreme violence and use the islamic faith to justify their psychosis.
How is this different from cutting off Mega's cashflow via PayPal and the credit cards?
How many people has Mega executed?
People are combining two different acts when going solar, a) getting off of fossil fuels, and b) generating their own power that the big energy companies don't control. Energy companies are not necessarily against a), but b) is anathema to them, and therefore they are doing everything they can to block the adoption of solar.
Power companies buy power from other power companies all the time. It's positively routine for them. What they aren't used to doing is buying it from a large number of small generators. They are just used to buying it from other similarly sized power companies. It has nothing to do with control and everything to do with cost to service those vendors. It costs more to deal with multiple vendors than it does one. It also costs more to buy from a small generator that is no where near minimum efficient scale.
I would be happy if legislation was passed that outlawed individual ownership of personal solar installations, and mandated big utilities to install, operate, and maintain them instead. I would continue sending a check each month as I have been for my power like before, and my bill might even go up 10-30%.
I think if I want to buy a personal solar installation I should have every right to do so and both you and the power company can piss off if you don't like it. Furthermore there already are private sector companies doing basically what you are proposing. They install the solar array on your house and rent it to you and they sell the power to you and any excess to the power company. You get a modest discount and they make some money in the process. Wouldn't be surprising to see power companies get into the business as well at some point if the business model proves viable.
I honestly would be all for it, let the utilities continue to control me, we've got to address climate change NOW.
Ahh, I get it. You (mistakenly) think that the power companies would be on board with this despite the fact that it would not be economically sane for them to do it. I agree that climate change is a real and present danger but your argument is both politically a non-starter and economically impossible to justify.
Will it all have been for nothing?
I would think that was self evident...
I'm curious what the opportunity cost of this form of entertainment(?) is. I suppose it is a way to pass the time...
ACA is doing the exact opposite, it is tying health insurance even more closely with employment.
Bullshit. You can buy health insurance now regardless of job status and without worrying about pre-existing conditions. If your income is low then you can get subsidies. You also do not lose your health insurance if you lose your job so long as you can find some way to pay the premiums. NONE of that was true prior to the ACA.
And, no one lost health insurance because they lost a job before ACA.
That could not be more incorrect. Prior to 2014 if you lost your job you were IMMEDIATELY bounced out of your company health plan in almost all cases. You could get COBRA for a short time afterwards in some cases but only for a short time.
Well, I am not aware of anyone whose insurance is only going up 3-5% per year and am not aware of anyone for whom their insurance didn't got up by at least 30% when Obamacare happened.
Then you haven't looked. I run a small company and we closed our company sponsored plan in 2014 because it was double the price of the plans available through the exchanges. Price increases in 2015 were low single digit percentages for most of our employees including myself. I'm intimately aware of the prices both before and after 2014 and on the average.
Personally I got coverage that was better than our company plan for roughly the same amount of money out of pocket plus I now have an HSA on top of that. Some folks in our company are paying much less per month. A few are paying more, mostly those who are very close to retirement age and smoke.
Furthermore because we dropped the company sponsored plan we save about $250 per month per employee so we were able to hire more people.
Help me out here, because I really don't understand how it works....but how are you supposed to pay for private health insurance if you lose employment?
Might be tough but the important bit is that you have the OPTION to maintain your coverage which you didn't have before. The point you missed is that it used to be that if you lost your job you IMMEDIATELY lost your health insurance and you had ZERO alternative options except for maybe COBRA which is only a stop gap and an expensive one at that. Borrow the money, dip into savings or get another job but you can take your insurance with you. Even if you can't pay for it you can still sign up again at a later date when you can afford it regardless of your job situation. Got a pre-existing condition? Prior to 2014 you were screwed because no company would insure that condition for any amount of money. Prior to 2014, anyone who was self employed had very few options and they were almost universally shitty with huge deductibles.
My family of 5 coverage was $160 per month, $35 copay, no deductible. Here comes Osamabinladencare, one adult person is now $1200 per month for almost the same coverage
Oh bullshit. Either you had a ludicrously good deal or you are lying and I'm pretty sure you are lying. $160/month to cover a family of 5? I run a company an have been looking at health plans for years and have NEVER seen a plan like that. There isn't an insurance company out there that could make a dime underwriting coverage for a family that size at that rate.
Right, that's why a lot of middle class families are now paying more for worse insurance than they were before Obamacare...
Prices have been going up by huge (often double digit) percentages every year for a long time and that started LONG before the ACA was passed. I run a company so I have seen it first hand for years. Those cost increases cannot be endlessly absorbed by employers. If costs go up faster than the population then sooner or later some people are going to end up with either more expensive coverage or worse coverage or both. To pretend that we can have both rising costs but not have people pay more is to be in denial of economic reality.
The whole point of insurance is to spread the risk and the cost. The health care system in the US had to change and any change you make is going to benefit some and cost others. To deny some people access to health insurance to keep rates lower for others is immoral and wrong. To tie one's ability to get health coverage to having a job is even more immoral and wrong. Your employment should have nothing to do with your access to health insurance.
Nice revisionist history there.
I didn't state anything that isn't a fact. Prior to 2014 it was literally impossible for millions of people to get insurance for reasonable rates unless they had access to a group plan through an employer. If you had a pre-existing condition you were screwed.
Speaking for myself and my staff, we dropped our health plan at our company and sent everyone to the exchanges. Everyone in our company found coverage that was roughly comparable to what they had before for similar or less money or in a few cases they picked high deductible plans. In rough numbers our health plan before 2014 cost about $600/person/month and the company picked up half of that amount. Post 2014, most people are paying between $150-250/month out of pocket and the company doesn't pay a dime. This has allowed us to hire extra staff and buy some equipment we couldn't previously justify. Speaking for myself I went from a HMO to a PPO with an HSA which is better coverage for the same money. Best of all, if I were to change jobs or the company were to fold, every one of those people would still have health coverage.
Stephen Hawking needs to stick to cosmology...he doesn't know *shit* about computing and human behavior.
And what are your credentials that make you such an expert on the topic of human behavior? If you're so smart about the topic what are you doing posting here?
just like all traits of human behavior, evolutionary biologists (esp. psych) drastically oversimplify the most complex behavior we observe in the known universe
Complex behavior can arise from very simple rules. That's something I'm quite sure Hawking understands far better than you or me.
the **real problem** is listening to people like Hawking
Really? Someone arguing for peace? How horrible that we should listen to someone saying we should be less aggressive. [/sarcasm]
The executive branch needs to learn they implement the law congress passes not the one they wish congress passes.
If Congress isn't specific in their statutes then it is to the discretion of the administration how they handle the regulations. Very few laws are passed with enough specificity that the executive branch doesn't have considerable discretion in the interpretation of the statutes.
If Obama and lefties suddenly are not allowed to continue to make up the rules as they go along maybe the other half of America will realize this law for the ill considered, abusive over reach of authority and corporate give away that it is.
You're accusing the left of corporate giveaways? Methinks you have the left and right mixed up. Abusive overreach of authority? I direct your attention to the actions of the previous administration, particularly post 9/11.
Marketplace insurance is just a private plan with an extra layer of government collusion.
It's a private plan with regulations to keep the price reasonable because it wouldn't be otherwise. Now your ability to get health insurance is not tied to your continued employment. No one should lose health insurance just because they lost a job. Criticize the details all you want but that part of the ACA is unequivocally a Good Thing.
Crony-capitalism at its finest.
Since these insurance companies wouldn't insure millions of people at a reasonable price until the government forced the issue it eludes me how this is "crony capitalism". It's not as if the insurance companies were lobbying in favor of insuring poor people.
I do some Google work. I've got just a high-school diploma and a teensy bit of college under my belt.
That is not evidence that they don't consider your educational background in the hiring decision. It might not be a requirement but it sure as hell doesn't hurt to have a degree from a good school.
If there's no such thing as "computer error", then why do we have all this error-correcting stuff in our memory etc.?
Because the computer was designed in such a way as to require it. While there are a few problems due to noise in communications channels and unstable storage, these are known physics problems with known solutions. Because we know about the problems any errors are for all practical purposes human mistakes. If you know a problem can occur and don't bother to design around it then that is a human error.
You can already buy a regular, not-smart TV everywhere. It's called a computer monitor.
Really? I can buy a 60" computer monitor that can change channels, has 4 inputs and sound and comes with a remote for less than $700? Please tell me where I can find this fantastic buy...
Oh that's right, not available for reasonable prices anywhere...
They're not saying "computer error," but what are the other explanations?
There is no such thing as a computer error. Either it was user error or the computer was programmed improperly or the computer's hardware was designed/built improperly. ALL of those are human errors. Computers do exactly what they are told to do. Nothing more, nothing less. If the instructions are faulty then the computer will execute those faulty instructions faithfully.
Nope. Google does not care about the useless "where you went to school" nonsense.
I don't believe that for a second. It might not be of primary concern but I have zero doubt that if you went to MIT or Carnegie Mellon and graduated with an IT related degree, it WILL factor into the hiring decision at Google.
They want to know you have skills and abilities.
Of course they do. That's precisely why they care whether or not you graduated from a known good training program. It is evidence that you are likely to have the sort of skills they are looking for. They'll test you further but it is a piece of evidence.
Show up with a brilliant invention under your arm and they will gladly take an ITT Tech graduate.
Perhaps but since that doesn't happen very often where you went to school WILL get looked at.
Gotta say... If you NEED a windows machine... my windows VirtualBox VM runs better/faster than most windows laptops.
That cannot be true almost by definition. Running a virtual machine of any description carries overhead which you will not incur running directly on the hardware. I do run Windows machines in VMs and it works great but I'm not going to pretend it is faster than running it directly on the hardware.