Well said! Don't trade a fairly transparent (excluding security/military) government for a closed and inaccessible corporation. Not to mention the profit motive!
Here in Northern California too. They are used on the tiniest if lawns and even on urban sidewalks, when there is so little dirt and debris it would be far more effective to use a push broom. And a lot of time I just see the 'gardeners' blowing dust and dirt into the street, which of course will blow back eventually. Job security I guess.
Still, it's only Western squeamishness that creates a market for "fake meat" like this.
I don't think squeamishness is the sole reason for having fake meat. I don't mind eating bugs (I've had fried grubs, cricket tacos, and other insects) but fake meat still has a role to play. I try to be vegetarian as much as possible, but because I used to eat a lot of meat, I end up missing meat dishes that I used to love.
Fake meat allows those who give up meat (for any reason, but for me it is due to the negative ecological impacts of meat eating) to continue to enjoy certain foods that are similar to what we used to enjoy.
Not only is it less green, but it seems most people don't think about the fact that these machines inject hot water through cheap disposable plastic cups.
Lots of coffee machines have plastic parts that the hot water passes through, leaching endocrine-disrupting phthalates as it heats the plastic, right into your coffee cup.
I'll stick with my metal water kettle and glass French press.
Yes, I would. I would consider it an IQ test. Nobody has a legal or ethical responsibility to adjust their behavior in order to maximize their taxes.
Not unethical maybe, but immoral. Taxes are necessary for the healthy functioning of our society. It is a shared burden, and it is selfish to willingly look for loopholes to avoid paying your share. Especially if you had benefited from the very services that your are trying to avoid paying for with a direct tax like this.
More of the usual evils: greed, selfishness, and entitlement...
I can't be the only one who thinks that the headlights on certain luxury cars are already annoyingly bright to other drivers. Now we get to be blinded by lasers, great...
It'd be preferable if they just rebuilt the same UI but with newer, faster code and fixed the issues that exist.
Same Classic look & feel and features, but with some optimizations and improvements.
The Beta site is so soulless; Slashdot Classic has Web 1.0 Charm that can't be replaced.
Software developers (especially at Google and Apple) do not make "at, or less, than minimum wage"; this is absolutely absurd. According to sfgate.com the average salary in San Francisco right is $110,950 for application developers and slightly higher for systems developers.
According to the same link, food service workers make and average of $22,180 a year in San Francisco. That's a very wide income gap, indeed.
So engineers at some companies work long hours, so what? Most engineers (myself included) love the work they do, and it's a far cry from working multiple jobs with little or no benefits to barely be able to feed your family and be unable to afford a nice place to live.
Not only will you win an Irony award from me, but you'll get arrested for obstructing traffic too -- and rightfully so. Time and place. First two things you learn in activism. Time. Place. Learn it.
The time and place for activism: somewhere with a lot of impact and that probably means it should be extremely disruptive to a lot people. Sure it's a pain in the ass to have your commute screwed up by striking transit employees or something like this bus protest. But that's a cost of democracy, and we're all better off if people are free to protest and to be disruptive. Without disruption, protests are too easily ignored and the power of the masses is too easily constrained. To hell with "free speech zones" and protest permits. I agree that protestors shouldn't overdo it, or they'll lose the support of the masses. Unfortunately in the US, they rarely get any support at all. People cling to their sense of entitlement and have no willingness to stomach some inconvenience for the sake of the greater good.
I agree wholeheartedly. This program was a joke as a piece of journalism. It was just an extended advertisement for the NSA, with no counterpoints to anything that they presented. 60 Minutes has noticeably gone downhill.
Me? I think I have more right not to be in physical pain for hours then they do to recline their seat.
It's not like it reclines enough to make a real difference to them anyway. And they hardly ever do it to "sleep".
In my experience, if I don't recline the seat about half way, I get serious back pain over the course of the flight. This is because the part of the seat with the headrest that angles forward is usually at the top of my back, which forces me to sit angled forward with my back at an awkward angle.
So a very tall person's knees may hurt, but also consider some people may get back pain without reclining the seat.
Any time I hear about underground CO2 sequestration, I think about the Lake Nyos Incident: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Nyos
Pumping mass amounts of CO2 underground would be a disaster waiting to happen.
I love the idea of bitcoin. In principle an anonymous, decentralized currency would be a very cool thing to have.
But its implementation is flawed in a way that will prevent it from being a useful currency. Here's a couple good articles that explains a few reasons why (there are many such articles out there by various economists):
4. We need term limits for all members of congress. Members of congress are supposed to be private citizens that leave the private sector in order to serve the public, and once their service is over they return to the private sector. Congress should have a 4-term limit across both the House and Senate. You can serve 4 terms as a Representative, but then you are not eligible to be a Senator. You can serve 2 terms in each. Whatever the combination, once you serve 4 terms in congress you are done. The notion of a career politician needs to be eliminated. Politicians are there to serve the public, not themselves.
I agree with most of your points a great deal; that was a very concise summary of the greatest problems facing democracy in the US. The 4th point though, I don't agree with. If your other points were implemented and restricted the income sources of our elected officials while they are in office, I don't think they would need term limits.
Imagine if politicians could not keep any income that exceeds their government salary while in office, with some additional restrictions to prevent revolving-door type abuses. Then I would be OK with career politicians, because they would clearly be in the game for public service and not personal gain.
The energy industry need not be self sustaining. It can be run by the government as a public service and paid for entirely with taxes. No more govt sponsored energy monopolies.
In other countries the education is largely paid by the public sector (government) and the government sets limits on how much more Universities are allowed to charge.
This is exactly the direction we need to move in. That would be comparable to how medicare controls costs, while non-medicare patients get screwed by hospitals charging whatever they want. The gov't should dictate what Universities are allowed to charge in tuition to _all_ students, and also require that a certain percentage of the student body be from lower income brackets (and these disadvantaged student could pay even less).
Additionally, the government should limit how much employees of non-profit universities are allowed to be paid. It is very common to have university administrators making millions of dollars a year at so-called "non profit" universities. Sorry, you shouldn't be able to run a non-profit (tax-exempt) institution and also make yourself filthy rich.
Parse their words. They are denying a very pointed question that wasn't asked. They are all saying, "We don't allow the government direct access to our servers"
This isn't the denial you think it is.
THIS. Notice that all their responses are very similar. They may have even asked the government "the press is asking about PRISM, how should we respond to this?"
"Direct access to our servers" could mean a lot of things, for example, they could be copying user data directly to NSA servers, and their statement would still be true.
As we see from the resounding success of social policy in Europe, where every country has coffers full of tax revenues and a vibrant, healthy workforce to support the millions upon millions of pensions.
Assuming you were being sarcastic: compared to what, the US? Yes we certainly have a "vibrant, healthy workforce" (such great healthcare, such great labor rights)! And isn't it great that our government doesn't have any funding concerns right now like those darned Europeans...
I was skeptical about that statement as well. After re-reading it a few times I think they were trying to say that the license fee is 5-10% of the retail price of the gun they wish to license. Whether that fee is assessed per game published or per copy of the game sold wasn't clear...
Slashdot Mirror
Well said! Don't trade a fairly transparent (excluding security/military) government for a closed and inaccessible corporation. Not to mention the profit motive!
Here in Northern California too. They are used on the tiniest if lawns and even on urban sidewalks, when there is so little dirt and debris it would be far more effective to use a push broom. And a lot of time I just see the 'gardeners' blowing dust and dirt into the street, which of course will blow back eventually. Job security I guess.
Star trek won for Best Makeup. Nothing about the directing, screenplay, and not Best Picture. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt07...
Once in a rare while there's an AC post that I really wish I could mod up :)
Still, it's only Western squeamishness that creates a market for "fake meat" like this.
I don't think squeamishness is the sole reason for having fake meat. I don't mind eating bugs (I've had fried grubs, cricket tacos, and other insects) but fake meat still has a role to play. I try to be vegetarian as much as possible, but because I used to eat a lot of meat, I end up missing meat dishes that I used to love.
Fake meat allows those who give up meat (for any reason, but for me it is due to the negative ecological impacts of meat eating) to continue to enjoy certain foods that are similar to what we used to enjoy.
+1 for Mother Jones, there aren't nearly as many organizations doing deep investigative reporting as there used to be.
...it is expected to use a different coolant salt exactly to avoid producing the dreaded tritium.
What's wrong with a little tritium? We'll just have to produce more betalights.
Not only is it less green, but it seems most people don't think about the fact that these machines inject hot water through cheap disposable plastic cups. Lots of coffee machines have plastic parts that the hot water passes through, leaching endocrine-disrupting phthalates as it heats the plastic, right into your coffee cup. I'll stick with my metal water kettle and glass French press.
Yes, I would. I would consider it an IQ test. Nobody has a legal or ethical responsibility to adjust their behavior in order to maximize their taxes.
Not unethical maybe, but immoral. Taxes are necessary for the healthy functioning of our society. It is a shared burden, and it is selfish to willingly look for loopholes to avoid paying your share. Especially if you had benefited from the very services that your are trying to avoid paying for with a direct tax like this.
More of the usual evils: greed, selfishness, and entitlement...
I can't be the only one who thinks that the headlights on certain luxury cars are already annoyingly bright to other drivers. Now we get to be blinded by lasers, great...
Oh and beta sucks.
It'd be preferable if they just rebuilt the same UI but with newer, faster code and fixed the issues that exist.
Same Classic look & feel and features, but with some optimizations and improvements. The Beta site is so soulless; Slashdot Classic has Web 1.0 Charm that can't be replaced.
Software developers (especially at Google and Apple) do not make "at, or less, than minimum wage"; this is absolutely absurd. According to sfgate.com the average salary in San Francisco right is $110,950 for application developers and slightly higher for systems developers.
According to the same link, food service workers make and average of $22,180 a year in San Francisco. That's a very wide income gap, indeed.
So engineers at some companies work long hours, so what? Most engineers (myself included) love the work they do, and it's a far cry from working multiple jobs with little or no benefits to barely be able to feed your family and be unable to afford a nice place to live.
Not only will you win an Irony award from me, but you'll get arrested for obstructing traffic too -- and rightfully so. Time and place. First two things you learn in activism. Time. Place. Learn it.
The time and place for activism: somewhere with a lot of impact and that probably means it should be extremely disruptive to a lot people. Sure it's a pain in the ass to have your commute screwed up by striking transit employees or something like this bus protest. But that's a cost of democracy, and we're all better off if people are free to protest and to be disruptive. Without disruption, protests are too easily ignored and the power of the masses is too easily constrained. To hell with "free speech zones" and protest permits. I agree that protestors shouldn't overdo it, or they'll lose the support of the masses. Unfortunately in the US, they rarely get any support at all. People cling to their sense of entitlement and have no willingness to stomach some inconvenience for the sake of the greater good.
I agree wholeheartedly. This program was a joke as a piece of journalism. It was just an extended advertisement for the NSA, with no counterpoints to anything that they presented. 60 Minutes has noticeably gone downhill.
Me? I think I have more right not to be in physical pain for hours then they do to recline their seat.
It's not like it reclines enough to make a real difference to them anyway. And they hardly ever do it to "sleep".
In my experience, if I don't recline the seat about half way, I get serious back pain over the course of the flight. This is because the part of the seat with the headrest that angles forward is usually at the top of my back, which forces me to sit angled forward with my back at an awkward angle. So a very tall person's knees may hurt, but also consider some people may get back pain without reclining the seat.
We'll I'd mod you up if I could. I'm going to have to read up on this process (and stop spreading FUD)...
Any time I hear about underground CO2 sequestration, I think about the Lake Nyos Incident: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Nyos Pumping mass amounts of CO2 underground would be a disaster waiting to happen.
But its implementation is flawed in a way that will prevent it from being a useful currency. Here's a couple good articles that explains a few reasons why (there are many such articles out there by various economists):
http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/04/bitcoin-is-no-longer-a-currency/274859/
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/04/12/adam-smith-hates-bitcoin/?_r=0
I'm ready for a another attempt with the same goals as Bitcoin.
4. We need term limits for all members of congress. Members of congress are supposed to be private citizens that leave the private sector in order to serve the public, and once their service is over they return to the private sector. Congress should have a 4-term limit across both the House and Senate. You can serve 4 terms as a Representative, but then you are not eligible to be a Senator. You can serve 2 terms in each. Whatever the combination, once you serve 4 terms in congress you are done. The notion of a career politician needs to be eliminated. Politicians are there to serve the public, not themselves.
I agree with most of your points a great deal; that was a very concise summary of the greatest problems facing democracy in the US. The 4th point though, I don't agree with. If your other points were implemented and restricted the income sources of our elected officials while they are in office, I don't think they would need term limits.
Imagine if politicians could not keep any income that exceeds their government salary while in office, with some additional restrictions to prevent revolving-door type abuses. Then I would be OK with career politicians, because they would clearly be in the game for public service and not personal gain.
The energy industry need not be self sustaining. It can be run by the government as a public service and paid for entirely with taxes. No more govt sponsored energy monopolies.
In other countries the education is largely paid by the public sector (government) and the government sets limits on how much more Universities are allowed to charge.
This is exactly the direction we need to move in. That would be comparable to how medicare controls costs, while non-medicare patients get screwed by hospitals charging whatever they want. The gov't should dictate what Universities are allowed to charge in tuition to _all_ students, and also require that a certain percentage of the student body be from lower income brackets (and these disadvantaged student could pay even less).
Additionally, the government should limit how much employees of non-profit universities are allowed to be paid. It is very common to have university administrators making millions of dollars a year at so-called "non profit" universities. Sorry, you shouldn't be able to run a non-profit (tax-exempt) institution and also make yourself filthy rich.
THIS. Notice that all their responses are very similar. They may have even asked the government "the press is asking about PRISM, how should we respond to this?"
"Direct access to our servers" could mean a lot of things, for example, they could be copying user data directly to NSA servers, and their statement would still be true.
As we see from the resounding success of social policy in Europe, where every country has coffers full of tax revenues and a vibrant, healthy workforce to support the millions upon millions of pensions.
Assuming you were being sarcastic: compared to what, the US? Yes we certainly have a "vibrant, healthy workforce" (such great healthcare, such great labor rights)! And isn't it great that our government doesn't have any funding concerns right now like those darned Europeans...
On second thought... can't be per copy sold, for an expensive gun that's more than the 10% of gross we originally found incredulous.
I was skeptical about that statement as well. After re-reading it a few times I think they were trying to say that the license fee is 5-10% of the retail price of the gun they wish to license. Whether that fee is assessed per game published or per copy of the game sold wasn't clear...
You must of missed all the news for the past month. "Guns" are the new "terrorism".
Except unlike terrorism, guns actually kill a whole lot of people in the US every year; the threat of gun violence is clearly not just FUD.