Yeah, I know this whole thing is wildly off-topic, but I'm bored, so whatever;)
The congress is a fucking kindergarten full of uneducated, dishonest and selfish man-babies who feel entitled to have everything their way
I'll agree with dishonest and selfish, but it takes some brainpower to keep a job like that when you're not actually doing your job. I'm no bigger fan of the current congress than you seem to be, but if you had a job where you could gather crowds of (literally) thousands of cheering people, be paid well (both legit and through bribes), and wield that much power, wouldn't you want to keep it? We have a system which rewards dishonesty and selfishness, and lo and behold, a bunch of dishonest, selfish people end up at the top.
There's nothing so special about the particular people we have in congress now; if we threw them all out, (barring any structural reform) we would just end up with 535 interchangeable scumbags. If you create a job which attracts scumbags, don't be surprised when the only people in the job are scumbags. Just look at Wall Street.
How much more do you want to pay for, well, everything?
Well, I for one would rather pay more for gas, but the same amount for everything else. How would I do this? By eliminating all of the massive subsidies for gas. According to this 1998 report, if you combine the annual tax breaks ($9.1 to $17.8 billion), program subsidies excluding spending on roads ($1.9 to $2.6 billion), and protection of oil-rich nations and the national reserve ($60 to $102 billion), we (as in taxpayers) are subsidizing the oil industry to the tune of $71 to $122.4 billion per year (and this was in 1998). This is not including the amount spent annually on roads ($36 to $112 billion); negative environmental, health, and social externalities ($231 to $942 billion); and other costs, such as travel delays due to road congestion, subsidized parking, and damages due to accidents (totaling $191 to $474 billion). Overall, including the less direct subsidies (environmental, insurance costs, etc), the total local, state and federal subsidies to the oil industry is $558.7 billion to $1.69 trillion per year in 1998 dollars, which is $746 billion $2.26 trillion in 2010 dollars.
According to the report, were these external costs of gasoline internalized into the cost per gallon at the pump, the price would be $5.60 to $15.14 per gallon (in 1998 dollars). Given that the cost of gas in 1998 stayed pretty much exactly at $1 per gallon ($1.34 in 2010 dollars), that's a 5- to 15-fold increase in prices. Although it is not directly comparable, a 5- to 15-fold increase in prices today (from a current price of $2.786 per gallon, according to the DOE) would result in $13.93 to $41.79 per gallon.
The thing about subsidies is, we are already paying this much per gallon, just in the form of taxes rather than at the pump. If we were to eliminate subsidies to gas and lower taxes by the amount saved (which would be difficult in practice), an average consumer would spend the same amount of money for the same set of products, just with more money spent on gas and less on taxes. This would also remove the market distortions that a lower apparent gas price causes.
So we are paying about an order of magnitude too little for gasoline, and part of that cost is in failing to correctly account for the risk of something like the gulf spill happening. Where is the money to mitigate this disaster going to come from? I would bet money that the full cost of cleaning up the spill is not going to get factored into the pump price of gasoline, meaning that the money to clean it up is coming out of our tax dollars, further hiding the real cost of oil.
Actually, Goldman could have used some historians. You know, that whole "market bubble" thing likes to repeat itself every few decades?
Goldman's doing just fine with whatever balance of historians they have. You assume that just because the market bubble was bad for essentially everyone else in the world, that it was bad for Goldman. They're having some of their most profitable quarters ever in the past few years. A bubble is only bad for you if
You don't see the bubble coming or work to create it.
You have no regard for your fellow man.
Goldman Sachs clearly passes both of those tests, so they essentially only stood to benefit from the collapse. They could just short the world and make a fortune off of the suffering of others. Since they clearly don't care about that (as is required to work in finance these days), it would be pretty hard to sell them on changing their clearly winning (for them) strategy.
Pseudo-code: 'If Email Address If (String.RegExMatch("^([a-zA-Z0-9_\-\.]+)@((\[[0-9]{1,3}\.[0-9]{1,3}\.[0-9]{1,3}\.)|(([a-zA-Z0-9\-]+\.)+))([a-zA-Z]{2,4}|[0-9]{1,3})(\]?)$")) [...]
Well, it WOULD be more human-readable if you didn't IMPROPERLY escape "-" and "." within your character classes! </nerd-rage>;)
This may actually be a VB (or whatever library you are using), but generally (at least PCRE and Emacs), "." inside of a character class statement (square brackets) doesn't need to be escaped, and likewise for "-" if it the last character in the character range.
So your first capture group could be:
([a-zA-Z0-9_.-]+)
since "." doesn't have a special meaning inside the character range, and same for the "-", but only because the engine can know that you didn't mean something like "A-Z", since it is the last character.
Also, take a look at BQP (bounded error quantum polynomial time). It is suspected (the same way as P != NP is suspected) that BQP includes all of P, some of NP (but not NP-complete), and some of PSPACE.
Either we got trolled hard, or I'm nominating this guy for the "most likely to become a serial killer" award. I can see the headlines now: "Crazed fundamentalist stabs 12 Frat boys while yelling 'cleanse the defilers of the angels!'"
Even scarier: there are more people like this out there, and they vote.
I've been voting for 8 years now in the USA. I've never voted for a democrat or a republican for any office above state-congress level representation. After my poly sci class my senior year of high school I just couldn't bring myself to support either of the candidates fueled by so much, 'special interest money,' (read rich man's bribes). [...]
The only reason I bring this up is that, if you ask me, it's looked like a sham from the beginning. Then again I am very young, and perhaps there were some decades before my time where politicians and the electoral system didn't suck nearly as badly as they do today.
I don't disagree with you, I just want to say that the most depressing part about this whole thing is that there is a good chance (in my nearly totally uninformed opinion) that modern-day America is probably one of the least corrupt and most accountable and transparent governments ever in the entirety of human history (most likely excluding some of the highly effective northern and western European countries).
Contrary to what many demagogues preach, there really was no golden era of simple, beautiful, and honest government, certainly not during the lifetimes of any currently living people. It seems like the sad fact of the matter is that human governments suck, a lot, and that the only difference between governments today and those in the past is that the average citizen is marginally more aware of just how much they suck, or at least can say so without being publicly executed.
There was an interesting article I read (it might have been by Clay Shirky) talking about the past, present, and future of newspapers and the press as a societal force in general, and it suggested that the only reason news organizations arose in the first place was to hold the government accountable to the extremely small set of titans of industry who had enough money and influence to be of any interest to the members of the government (I believe it was talking about the British Parliment). For the vast majority of people, there was almost nothing that the government could do that would have any meaningful impact on their lives, so there really wasn't the need or demand for them to be informed about what was going on outside of their immediate surroundings.
This is a long-winded way of saying "governments have always been controlled by a tiny group of powerful elites, the only difference is that more people are able to see that nowadays than in the past." This doesn't mean that trying to change things is pointless, but that it is incredibly naive to think that one election is going to change this situation.
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah, I know this whole thing is wildly off-topic, but I'm bored, so whatever ;)
The congress is a fucking kindergarten full of uneducated, dishonest and selfish man-babies who feel entitled to have everything their way
I'll agree with dishonest and selfish, but it takes some brainpower to keep a job like that when you're not actually doing your job. I'm no bigger fan of the current congress than you seem to be, but if you had a job where you could gather crowds of (literally) thousands of cheering people, be paid well (both legit and through bribes), and wield that much power, wouldn't you want to keep it? We have a system which rewards dishonesty and selfishness, and lo and behold, a bunch of dishonest, selfish people end up at the top.
There's nothing so special about the particular people we have in congress now; if we threw them all out, (barring any structural reform) we would just end up with 535 interchangeable scumbags. If you create a job which attracts scumbags, don't be surprised when the only people in the job are scumbags. Just look at Wall Street.
No, they invented drugs for flies. If you really want to smell light, head down to your local acid dealer.
Well, that's one way to combat the obesity pandemic...
How much more do you want to pay for, well, everything?
Well, I for one would rather pay more for gas, but the same amount for everything else. How would I do this? By eliminating all of the massive subsidies for gas. According to this 1998 report, if you combine the annual tax breaks ($9.1 to $17.8 billion), program subsidies excluding spending on roads ($1.9 to $2.6 billion), and protection of oil-rich nations and the national reserve ($60 to $102 billion), we (as in taxpayers) are subsidizing the oil industry to the tune of $71 to $122.4 billion per year (and this was in 1998). This is not including the amount spent annually on roads ($36 to $112 billion); negative environmental, health, and social externalities ($231 to $942 billion); and other costs, such as travel delays due to road congestion, subsidized parking, and damages due to accidents (totaling $191 to $474 billion). Overall, including the less direct subsidies (environmental, insurance costs, etc), the total local, state and federal subsidies to the oil industry is $558.7 billion to $1.69 trillion per year in 1998 dollars, which is $746 billion $2.26 trillion in 2010 dollars.
According to the report, were these external costs of gasoline internalized into the cost per gallon at the pump, the price would be $5.60 to $15.14 per gallon (in 1998 dollars). Given that the cost of gas in 1998 stayed pretty much exactly at $1 per gallon ($1.34 in 2010 dollars), that's a 5- to 15-fold increase in prices. Although it is not directly comparable, a 5- to 15-fold increase in prices today (from a current price of $2.786 per gallon, according to the DOE) would result in $13.93 to $41.79 per gallon.
The thing about subsidies is, we are already paying this much per gallon, just in the form of taxes rather than at the pump. If we were to eliminate subsidies to gas and lower taxes by the amount saved (which would be difficult in practice), an average consumer would spend the same amount of money for the same set of products, just with more money spent on gas and less on taxes. This would also remove the market distortions that a lower apparent gas price causes.
So we are paying about an order of magnitude too little for gasoline, and part of that cost is in failing to correctly account for the risk of something like the gulf spill happening. Where is the money to mitigate this disaster going to come from? I would bet money that the full cost of cleaning up the spill is not going to get factored into the pump price of gasoline, meaning that the money to clean it up is coming out of our tax dollars, further hiding the real cost of oil.
Actually, Goldman could have used some historians. You know, that whole "market bubble" thing likes to repeat itself every few decades?
Goldman's doing just fine with whatever balance of historians they have. You assume that just because the market bubble was bad for essentially everyone else in the world, that it was bad for Goldman. They're having some of their most profitable quarters ever in the past few years. A bubble is only bad for you if
Goldman Sachs clearly passes both of those tests, so they essentially only stood to benefit from the collapse. They could just short the world and make a fortune off of the suffering of others. Since they clearly don't care about that (as is required to work in finance these days), it would be pretty hard to sell them on changing their clearly winning (for them) strategy.
No, it's on dogs. See, he posted from Fidonet! Dogs carry around TCPIP packets.
Damn kids and your blatant disregards for standards. Embrace, extend, extinguish, roll over, and you expect a treat EVERY TIME!
Pseudo-code:
'If Email Address
If (String.RegExMatch("^([a-zA-Z0-9_\-\.]+)@((\[[0-9]{1,3}\.[0-9]{1,3}\.[0-9]{1,3}\.)|(([a-zA-Z0-9\-]+\.)+))([a-zA-Z]{2,4}|[0-9]{1,3})(\]?)$"))
[...]
Well, it WOULD be more human-readable if you didn't IMPROPERLY escape "-" and "." within your character classes! </nerd-rage> ;)
This may actually be a VB (or whatever library you are using), but generally (at least PCRE and Emacs), "." inside of a character class statement (square brackets) doesn't need to be escaped, and likewise for "-" if it the last character in the character range.
So your first capture group could be:
([a-zA-Z0-9_.-]+)
since "." doesn't have a special meaning inside the character range, and same for the "-", but only because the engine can know that you didn't mean something like "A-Z", since it is the last character.
And that is your random regex lesson of the day ;)
Also, take a look at BQP (bounded error quantum polynomial time). It is suspected (the same way as P != NP is suspected) that BQP includes all of P, some of NP (but not NP-complete), and some of PSPACE.
Either we got trolled hard, or I'm nominating this guy for the "most likely to become a serial killer" award. I can see the headlines now: "Crazed fundamentalist stabs 12 Frat boys while yelling 'cleanse the defilers of the angels!'"
Even scarier: there are more people like this out there, and they vote.
I've been voting for 8 years now in the USA. I've never voted for a democrat or a republican for any office above state-congress level representation. After my poly sci class my senior year of high school I just couldn't bring myself to support either of the candidates fueled by so much, 'special interest money,' (read rich man's bribes). [...]
The only reason I bring this up is that, if you ask me, it's looked like a sham from the beginning. Then again I am very young, and perhaps there were some decades before my time where politicians and the electoral system didn't suck nearly as badly as they do today.
I don't disagree with you, I just want to say that the most depressing part about this whole thing is that there is a good chance (in my nearly totally uninformed opinion) that modern-day America is probably one of the least corrupt and most accountable and transparent governments ever in the entirety of human history (most likely excluding some of the highly effective northern and western European countries).
Contrary to what many demagogues preach, there really was no golden era of simple, beautiful, and honest government, certainly not during the lifetimes of any currently living people. It seems like the sad fact of the matter is that human governments suck, a lot, and that the only difference between governments today and those in the past is that the average citizen is marginally more aware of just how much they suck, or at least can say so without being publicly executed.
There was an interesting article I read (it might have been by Clay Shirky) talking about the past, present, and future of newspapers and the press as a societal force in general, and it suggested that the only reason news organizations arose in the first place was to hold the government accountable to the extremely small set of titans of industry who had enough money and influence to be of any interest to the members of the government (I believe it was talking about the British Parliment). For the vast majority of people, there was almost nothing that the government could do that would have any meaningful impact on their lives, so there really wasn't the need or demand for them to be informed about what was going on outside of their immediate surroundings.
This is a long-winded way of saying "governments have always been controlled by a tiny group of powerful elites, the only difference is that more people are able to see that nowadays than in the past." This doesn't mean that trying to change things is pointless, but that it is incredibly naive to think that one election is going to change this situation.