People that don't swear (usually for religious reasons) instead use interesting euphemisms: darn, drat, flip, gosh, sheesh, and so on. My favorite is "Oh my heck." I think they're a bunch of "gosh darn" hypocrites... because the offense is still intended, even if the words are slightly modified so they're not "dirty" anymore.
The point of the "naughty words" isn't the words themselves, but the offense it implies.
Except for children. They don't know what they're saying. A 2 year old doesn't have a clue what sex is, even if they've opened their dad's porn collection. At that age, they're just imitating their parents or the media, and don't realize how offensive the terms are to others.
I don't think this desire to imitate goes away with age. Through middle school and high school, teens experiment with swearing as a way to fit in with others. Even adults will swear more when around people that swear, and cut back when around those that don't, without even thinking about it.
Assuming your math holds, that makes this an incredible investment. Where else can you put your money that will break even in 2 years, especially in this economy?
No wonder the rich dump so much money into politics. It's probably the best investment they've ever made, collectively.
You're completely correct and yet still miss the point.
It makes no sense to give Ballmer and Bezos, as individuals, a tax break. However, there are many small businesses that are run and taxed as personal income, and giving these business owners a break is the same thing as giving a break to the business itself. The extra money will most likely go directly into improving the business and therefore to capital investments (stimulus) and employees (jobs). While the owner's income will be reported as quite high, their true income really isn't all that much.
Of course, you can debate how effective this sort of tax break would be (How many business are there like this? What sort of income level do they run at? Will the money really go into the business?), but people need to realize that there really is a legitimate reason for lowering taxes on the higher income brackets.
It's very unfortunate that the same category also includes the wealthy individuals who don't pay for a business from personal cash. These people really don't deserve a tax break.
In my view, this is just a sign that the tax system is messed up to begin with. Is there any way we can separate the two situations? Make the tax break dependent on situation? Make it a credit if it goes to capital investment or jobs? Beats me.
The economy is one big machine, and everything is interconnected. Push money in one end, and it'll come out somewhere else. You can give it to the rich and hope they hire people or buy stuff. You can give it to the poor and hope that the rich don't zap it up.
The problem is that the rich end up using money to get richer. And stimulus is never enough to really help the poor -- as soon as the stimulus money dries up, they're back to where they were. Maybe by then the economy has improved enough that they have jobs, but this last recession was rather long and jobs are slow to reappear. And the poor don't tend to spend the money where stimulus would be useful (consumer spending), but to necessities (housing is a big one, especially this cycle I would think) and the stimulus benefit dies quickly.
Of course, economists seem to be reconsidering how effective government stimulus really is. It's kind of like climate change: how do you state definitively what causes what, especially once politics takes over.
And as bad as politics is to the climate change debate... it's that much worse when it comes to the economy. The formula (no matter the party) is to give money to your constituents (those that give you votes and campaign donations), then call this stimulus. If the economy improves, claim the success as your own. If it doesn't, just say that you kept it from getting any worse and that the other party kept you from stimulating it enough. If your party isn't in power, claim that the majority party put the stimulus in all the wrong places and actually made things worse, not better.
The TV ads in my state have made all these arguments in the last few months.
Personally, I'm starting to take the viewpoint that the government's job in a recession is to float the people most affected by it (those that lose their jobs), instead of dumping money anywhere and everywhere they think will get them the most votes in the next election cycle. This might be in the form of unemployment benefits or as temporary government jobs. Do you realize how many people a $787 billion stimulus bill could employ? Of course, that brings its own problems that I don't want to deal with.
At 4.5 letters per word, a text can hold about 29 non-abbreviated words. You'd have to speak at 464 words per minute to do that in 3.75 seconds. The world record is 595 wpm. Normal reading comprehension is in the range of 200-300 wpm.
However, let's look at this from a different perspective.
A non-abbreviated text message is about 4.8 bytes per word (Bpw?). At, say, 200 wpm speaking, this codec comes out to about 84 Bpw.
Honestly, a 17x difference to go to audio is remarkable. Text is probably the most concise ways of communicating.
This makes me think of LabVIEW, and it would be perfect for a tablet. For those that don't know, it's essentially a block-diagram programming language (you connect wires on the screen instead of typing code) that lets you create a UI to control physical devices. Putting that GUI on a tablet would be the next logical step.
Up until recently, there would be no chance of this being approved by Apple (it boils down to a code interpreter) and probably needs to work as a USB host. Looking around, it seems that the workaround is to use "LabVIEW Web Services" which boils down to what you described.
So, while the iPad only allows a remote view of the interface, this looks like a place where the more liberal policies of the Android market can make a leap forward.
Come to think of it, a visual programming language might be the way to go on a touch device. Typing is a chore, but moving widgets around on a screen is much better than with a mouse. This is coming from a guy who hates working with LabVIEW.
I wouldn't know. I'd like to think coastlines, cloud formations, and more would be just as interesting.
Right now I can only look out a tiny window, which is not placed at a convenient viewing location (too low and between the seats), and even then most of my view is obscured by the wing. And that's if I get a window seat.
So, I don't know if I buy that "there is not a whole lot to see." Because I've never been able to look.
It changes who you go after. Instead of trying to nail individual consumers, you can go after those that create the circumvention devices. I would imagine litigation should be much easier as infringement is much easier to prove.
Or, if you're so inclined, you go after both.
Should a circumvention device be created using this information, we and others would avail ourselves, as appropriate, of those remedies.
A common misconception is that the bank owns the house, not me. The reality is that I own the house but owe a lot of money as the house as collateral.
A similar concept goes for the government. I own the house, but under their governance. Should I violate laws or should society decide my land looks better as a highway, the government can take possession of the land from me. But in the meantime, I own my land and house.
That's why an open-book test needs to have strict time limits, short enough that the student can only use it as a reference, not as a last minute learning guide. Short enough that looking up the answer to every question will cause the student to fail. Sometimes the test's problems can be designed to have a similar effect, but not always.
Either way, you would think any student that is taking college level classes should have a good grasp of the language they are being taught in, only needing the dictionary sparingly. Otherwise how do they learn during class without being glued to the dictionary.
Considering the TAs I had, this isn't all that true. Their English was so bad that a good percentage of the class gave up on the lectures. Those that stayed would rely on each other for translations. Not a fun experience.
It seems that, rather than learning the language better, they just find other ways to learn instead. Of course, this is Engineering rather than the Liberal Arts, so a student can actually make it work.
This seriously depends on the subject matter. My thermodynamics class was very calculator dependent simply because the relevant values came out of a table, where several digits of precision were required to show that you did the calculation correctly.
Or how about a class that studies iterative solution techniques? Yes, you can come up with a problem that doesn't necessarily need a calculator, but I doubt it will truly assess the students as a test should.
That said... maybe the solution in these cases is different. Could it be that a test is the wrong format for the class? I mean, if you really need a computer to do the calculations, maybe a final project would be a better way to assess the students.
What are the chances that something would be flying around the solar system for nearly 4.5 billion years then hit this wee planet which was Created only 5854 years earlier?
Easy: 50%. Either it'll happen or it won't. Pretty good odds, I'd say.
Slashdot Mirror
Mods: toss a few Insightful points on this post.
People that don't swear (usually for religious reasons) instead use interesting euphemisms: darn, drat, flip, gosh, sheesh, and so on. My favorite is "Oh my heck." I think they're a bunch of "gosh darn" hypocrites ... because the offense is still intended, even if the words are slightly modified so they're not "dirty" anymore.
The point of the "naughty words" isn't the words themselves, but the offense it implies.
Except for children. They don't know what they're saying. A 2 year old doesn't have a clue what sex is, even if they've opened their dad's porn collection. At that age, they're just imitating their parents or the media, and don't realize how offensive the terms are to others.
I don't think this desire to imitate goes away with age. Through middle school and high school, teens experiment with swearing as a way to fit in with others. Even adults will swear more when around people that swear, and cut back when around those that don't, without even thinking about it.
Assuming your math holds, that makes this an incredible investment. Where else can you put your money that will break even in 2 years, especially in this economy?
No wonder the rich dump so much money into politics. It's probably the best investment they've ever made, collectively.
You're completely correct and yet still miss the point.
It makes no sense to give Ballmer and Bezos, as individuals, a tax break. However, there are many small businesses that are run and taxed as personal income, and giving these business owners a break is the same thing as giving a break to the business itself. The extra money will most likely go directly into improving the business and therefore to capital investments (stimulus) and employees (jobs). While the owner's income will be reported as quite high, their true income really isn't all that much.
Of course, you can debate how effective this sort of tax break would be (How many business are there like this? What sort of income level do they run at? Will the money really go into the business?), but people need to realize that there really is a legitimate reason for lowering taxes on the higher income brackets.
It's very unfortunate that the same category also includes the wealthy individuals who don't pay for a business from personal cash. These people really don't deserve a tax break.
In my view, this is just a sign that the tax system is messed up to begin with. Is there any way we can separate the two situations? Make the tax break dependent on situation? Make it a credit if it goes to capital investment or jobs? Beats me.
These CEOs will get benefit either way. But a direct tax break is so much faster and effective.
Besides, the GP was about how effective stimulus is, not on how much money a specific CEO will make.
^^^^This^^^^
The economy is one big machine, and everything is interconnected. Push money in one end, and it'll come out somewhere else. You can give it to the rich and hope they hire people or buy stuff. You can give it to the poor and hope that the rich don't zap it up.
The problem is that the rich end up using money to get richer. And stimulus is never enough to really help the poor -- as soon as the stimulus money dries up, they're back to where they were. Maybe by then the economy has improved enough that they have jobs, but this last recession was rather long and jobs are slow to reappear. And the poor don't tend to spend the money where stimulus would be useful (consumer spending), but to necessities (housing is a big one, especially this cycle I would think) and the stimulus benefit dies quickly.
Of course, economists seem to be reconsidering how effective government stimulus really is. It's kind of like climate change: how do you state definitively what causes what, especially once politics takes over.
And as bad as politics is to the climate change debate ... it's that much worse when it comes to the economy. The formula (no matter the party) is to give money to your constituents (those that give you votes and campaign donations), then call this stimulus. If the economy improves, claim the success as your own. If it doesn't, just say that you kept it from getting any worse and that the other party kept you from stimulating it enough. If your party isn't in power, claim that the majority party put the stimulus in all the wrong places and actually made things worse, not better.
The TV ads in my state have made all these arguments in the last few months.
Personally, I'm starting to take the viewpoint that the government's job in a recession is to float the people most affected by it (those that lose their jobs), instead of dumping money anywhere and everywhere they think will get them the most votes in the next election cycle. This might be in the form of unemployment benefits or as temporary government jobs. Do you realize how many people a $787 billion stimulus bill could employ? Of course, that brings its own problems that I don't want to deal with.
At 4.5 letters per word, a text can hold about 29 non-abbreviated words. You'd have to speak at 464 words per minute to do that in 3.75 seconds. The world record is 595 wpm. Normal reading comprehension is in the range of 200-300 wpm.
However, let's look at this from a different perspective.
A non-abbreviated text message is about 4.8 bytes per word (Bpw?). At, say, 200 wpm speaking, this codec comes out to about 84 Bpw.
Honestly, a 17x difference to go to audio is remarkable. Text is probably the most concise ways of communicating.
This makes me think of LabVIEW, and it would be perfect for a tablet. For those that don't know, it's essentially a block-diagram programming language (you connect wires on the screen instead of typing code) that lets you create a UI to control physical devices. Putting that GUI on a tablet would be the next logical step.
Up until recently, there would be no chance of this being approved by Apple (it boils down to a code interpreter) and probably needs to work as a USB host. Looking around, it seems that the workaround is to use "LabVIEW Web Services" which boils down to what you described.
So, while the iPad only allows a remote view of the interface, this looks like a place where the more liberal policies of the Android market can make a leap forward.
Come to think of it, a visual programming language might be the way to go on a touch device. Typing is a chore, but moving widgets around on a screen is much better than with a mouse. This is coming from a guy who hates working with LabVIEW.
I wouldn't know. I'd like to think coastlines, cloud formations, and more would be just as interesting.
Right now I can only look out a tiny window, which is not placed at a convenient viewing location (too low and between the seats), and even then most of my view is obscured by the wing. And that's if I get a window seat.
So, I don't know if I buy that "there is not a whole lot to see." Because I've never been able to look.
Nah. Just use gzip on the tar balls.
It changes who you go after. Instead of trying to nail individual consumers, you can go after those that create the circumvention devices. I would imagine litigation should be much easier as infringement is much easier to prove.
Or, if you're so inclined, you go after both.
Should a circumvention device be created using this information, we and others would avail ourselves, as appropriate, of those remedies.
Some well meaning people might think that giving them a square plugin (I assume they mean butt plug) will keep their mind off it for a while
A square peg into a round hole? Ouch!
Which is exactly the same problem lefties encounter when writing with pen and paper. Most southpaws I know hold pens differently because of this.
A common misconception is that the bank owns the house, not me. The reality is that I own the house but owe a lot of money as the house as collateral.
A similar concept goes for the government. I own the house, but under their governance. Should I violate laws or should society decide my land looks better as a highway, the government can take possession of the land from me. But in the meantime, I own my land and house.
That's why an open-book test needs to have strict time limits, short enough that the student can only use it as a reference, not as a last minute learning guide. Short enough that looking up the answer to every question will cause the student to fail. Sometimes the test's problems can be designed to have a similar effect, but not always.
Either way, you would think any student that is taking college level classes should have a good grasp of the language they are being taught in, only needing the dictionary sparingly. Otherwise how do they learn during class without being glued to the dictionary.
Considering the TAs I had, this isn't all that true. Their English was so bad that a good percentage of the class gave up on the lectures. Those that stayed would rely on each other for translations. Not a fun experience.
It seems that, rather than learning the language better, they just find other ways to learn instead. Of course, this is Engineering rather than the Liberal Arts, so a student can actually make it work.
This seriously depends on the subject matter. My thermodynamics class was very calculator dependent simply because the relevant values came out of a table, where several digits of precision were required to show that you did the calculation correctly.
Or how about a class that studies iterative solution techniques? Yes, you can come up with a problem that doesn't necessarily need a calculator, but I doubt it will truly assess the students as a test should.
That said ... maybe the solution in these cases is different. Could it be that a test is the wrong format for the class? I mean, if you really need a computer to do the calculations, maybe a final project would be a better way to assess the students.
Also, a lot of people buy the console because of the pack-in games. I suspect that's especially true with the NSES and Wii.
I care if he watches porn if he then votes for internet pornography filters. I can't stand hypocrites.
Note that I don't know if this is the case, but it wouldn't surprise me at all.
Or when P = 0.
It worked so well it sent the news back into the past! That's incredible!
http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/thu-april-30-2009/large-hadron-collider
"I'm not sure that's how probability works, Walter."
What are the chances that something would be flying around
the solar system for nearly 4.5 billion years then hit this wee planet which
was Created only 5854 years earlier?
Easy: 50%. Either it'll happen or it won't. Pretty good odds, I'd say.
Soon, a whole new industry springs up around just knowing the rules, and the whole process grinds to an inefficient halt.
If only our law system ended up that way. Instead it's an inefficient mess that refuses to halt.
Maybe this link is a bit better?
My understanding: Steve Jobs pulled the name from the same place he pulls everything else.
For most people, the sun don't shine there ... but it must be a quite magical place for Jobs.