Medals needing no combat or even real sacrifice: Good Conduct Medal - Don't get article 15'd for 3 years? You're awarded it. - You can look it up. Achievement medal - Do something great, or a series of good tasks. Normally for the lower enlisted/officer grades Accommodation medal - Supposed to be for even greater things than the achievement, in practice is simply more for senior NCOs and midrank officers.
The purple heart at least acknowledges your sacrifice; you managed to make it into a combat zone and close enough that you experienced enemy action. Some states use it to grant extra benefits. For example, in my area you'd get a deduction on your property taxes.
But an SSD can actually be slower for sequential writes.
Let's see, let's list the various items that can affect a 'progress bar' in a sort of worst case scenario -
Optical media drive speed(and position) Hard drive speed - reading and writing. Remember, SSDs write slower than they read, often to the point that a high-speed HD can be faster writing than a cheap SSD; Oh, and is the user flogging the drive otherwise? What about antivirus mucking with the works? CPU - perhaps it's compiling/generating data programically - depending on the task, speed will vary depending on CPU make/model, frequency, and number of cores. Internet access speed - authentication, downloading files and updates. Do you have a T3, or are you on a satellite or even worse, dial-up? Options selected during install/load process Driver/support package installs - Does the program need the.Net or VB framework? Optimizations - I've seen some programs that run a system check to determine optimal display settings.
The bottlenecks a user who's out in the boonies using a satellite for internet access but has a brand new $5k computer(let's say he got most of his money's worth) is going to be completely different than the guy sitting in a data center trying to load it on his 5 year old computer that was $400 brand new.
My personal preference, I think, is the 2 stage progress bar - top is 'on task X of Y'. If Y has to increase because an earlier step happened to determine that more needs to be done; oh well, but that should be fairly rare - try to determine everything that needs to be done before you start work.
Bottom bar is progress on the task. Of course, even that could be complicated if you're multi-threading the install - rather than waiting until you've downloaded 100% of everything before you install(or download-install-download-install), work on the completed downloads even as you download more. I think most users would prefer getting the install done faster than they would knowing how fast it's completing more accurately.
In such a case you might have 3 bars - overall completion; download progress; individual install progress. If download doesn't move quickly enough to keep up with individual install - change the individual install bar to 'awaiting download' while it's paused.
Oops - I'm so used to seeing 'patent troll' that I fixed this case of COPYRIGHT trolling. Please substitute 'copyright' for 'patent' in the parent post.
Well, I think that we've identified a more serious issue than 'mere' patent trolling - identity theft is a rather serious crime.
Though I like the idea that if it's found that they lied about the identity of their CEO, they lose standing in their other court cases - making them fraudulent as well, compounding the issue.
In the end, I'd say it's 'Scum is Scum'. If they're not too worried about one aspect of the law, they're unlikely to worry about others, to the point that when one aspect fails, it all tumbles down like a house of cards.
Personally, I'd say 'hard labor until he's worked off all the court expenses'. That's regardless of the aspect they pick - people might find porn icky, I don't really care.
Just had an additional thought - Wouldn't that screw up an already formatted drive though? Like when I'm trying to transplant an old hard drive as a computer's new main drive?
I think that depends on the level of the work. Is it at the level of a spark plug swap, or more like replacing the water pump?
In this case the companies release the BIOS updates, and instructions to them, to the public, and include making said updates a condition of customer support. IE they seem to believe that they're easy enough for customers to do themselves.
But consider, at my work a standard desktop is under $400. We buy them by the thousand, so we get decent machines at cheap prices.
Let's just consider the flash chip. At $400/machine, you'd need a failure rate in excess of.25% to make putting that component in a socket be worth it. That's before figuring that if it takes $100 in labor to diagnose and repair, if it happens in year 4-5 it might not be worth it at all.
While I've flashed stuff at both home and work; I have to say I've done it far more often at home. At work stability is king, we don't really change components in the desktops, so no compatibility issues to crop up, thus no need to flash.
I think the most 'robust' anti-brick motherboard I've ever seen had two bios chips - and a hardware switch selecting which one was active. The active one was rendered read-only, you could only flash the inactive one.
To update the machine you'd flash the inactive, power down the system, flip the switch, power back on and hope it worked*. If it worked, generally you just trucked on on 'B' instead of 'A', in case there was something hidden borked that you didn't find for a while. If the update was borked you simply powered down again and flipped the switch back.
I don't mean to be a knob but I think the fault doesn't particularly lie with the vendor.
I view it differently. The vender advised the work. If I called up Toyota and asked advice about something for my 10 year old truck*, while it might be out of warranty if their advice resulted in major damage I think they should be liable for something.
Your advice seems to be along the lines of 'buy hundreds of thousands of dollars of equipment every year to replace equipment that is still functional solely to keep the warranty up'.
That's not good for the company's wallet, the environment, etc...
Personally, I've proposed stuff along the following idea: 1. Unpublished works, IE works not deliberately released to the public, have indefinite copyright. 2. The clock starts when you publish - IE try to make money off the work. 3. My personal thought is 10-20 years for copyright by default. 4. All published works need to be registered to receive copyright protection. 5. Part of receiving copyright is storing an unencrypted, highest quality copy with the Library of Congress*, This is free, other than the cost of the media(maybe). 6. The LoC will also maintain your contact information so people can contact you to obtain license to use it. If you can't be contacted, they may escrow standard license fees with the LoC and use it anyways. 'Due Faith attempt' would have to be defined further. 6. Copyright would be renewable for a 'modest' fee - basically, renewals pay for all the archiving efforts of the LoC. I'd use a sliding scale - submission is free, 1st renewal pays for the costs of maintaining secure storage for that period; 2nd+ renewals help pay for the free initial storage. The money goes towards making sure all the archived materials remain accessible, including transferring the digital data to new mediums as prudent/required. If Disney wants to subsidize pretty much everybody else keeping copyright on Steamboat Mickey and the rest of their archive active, it's their choice. 7. Maintenance of media that has fallen out of copyright at the LoC is paid for through a combination of user fees(subscription/retrieval/etc...), congressional funding, and even (tax deductible) donations.
*I figure that the rules for this would end up being a book - acceptable formats, media, transfer requirements, etc...
History does not warant a government-only solution. Indeed, it strongly suggests against it.
Of course, the AC didn't suggest a government-only solution. My take on it though is that you DO need a mix of research, especially for medical stuff.
In the USA, with the patent system, we work on sort of a prize system - be the first to give me X and I'll pay you Y. When X isn't guaranteed, and there are others attempting to provide it, the risk is such that you have to increase Y make it worth to pursue developing X. On the upside - the people who DO choose to develop X will be highly motivated.
This works for the USA. I'd like to see Europe leverage some of it's healthcare cost savings and attempt a different policy - "We'll pay you Y to attempt to develop X". Now Y can be small and you can pursue developments that might not make sense under the prize system - alternative uses for generic drugs, for example.
Of course, this amounts to competition in development funding methods as well as development. Not a bad idea, I think.
Depending on how it works, you might still get the junk mail, as it mentions only that they're stopping delivery of first class. Junk mail is sent Heck, at most it'll just be delivered on Monday.
To expand on his point a bit - soldiers don't typically work 7 days a week. Sailors often do; but then there's not much else to do. In addition, there's all sorts of non-critical tasks - maintenance, paperwork, training, etc... That can be put off for 3 hours every so often without any real effect.
Keeping the alert positions manned - bridge, engineering, power, and such while deferring maintenance and such(minimal manning), you can probably let 90% of the ship watch the superbowl, and pipe at least the sound to the rest of the crew. And they'll STILL see anybody/thing coming with plenty of time to sound general quarters and get everybody back in position.
I don't know about the UK, but in the USA on average, there's a far higher density of McDonalds and other commercial establishments offering 'free'* internet than there are libraries. Such that I'd estimate that I'd have to travel half the distance on average to get internet at a restaurant than I would to get it at a library. Depending, the ability to eat at the store and/or talk loudly can also be an advantage.
I'd prefer some sort of project encouraging community level cooperative/customer owned internet access. I've had far better service with coop phone companies than I've had with commercial cable or telephone.
*Well, technically you have to buy something most of the time.
True, it probably does prevent some red light running. Thing is, let's ask why running red lights is illegal, better yet, ask why do we have red lights at all?
It boils down to traffic control - cars attempting to cross from different directions at the same time is dangerous. Stop signs are too slow after certain traffic levels, etc... So we have red lights, and because some people don't pay attention, care, or whatever, we have to make running red lights illegal.
But the core purpose of red lights and the laws involving them is safety. It's why people agreed to the cameras in the first place. Studies have shown that people are more likely to be in an accident with them; while rear end collisions aren't as bad, on average, as t-bones, there's more of them. The reports I've seen also say that while side impacts are reduced, death and injury isn't.
Combine that with negligible revenue, and the cameras don't make sufficient sense for the amount they piss people off.
Many of the studies contain irritating circular references back to a handful of cases where suspect yellow timing was supposedly employed to increase revenue. While reprehensible if true, none of that would discredit red light cameras in general, but people generally dislike the cameras and are all-too-happy to suspend critical thinking.
In my readings, the general conclusion was that red light cameras at properly set up intersections don't make enough money to justify their existence; especially after people figure out they're there.
If the intersection isn't properly set up, the easiest example being a too short yellow, there can be mild safety benefits to the cameras - but fixing the problem is a much better solution.
Basically, if you're making money from your red light camera system, you're not doing it right.
Red light cameras cause more rear end crashes at differences in speed going the same way, but help reduce sideways collisions at full speed of one of the moving vehicles.
Roughly speaking, from my reading of the material, 'on average', red light cameras reduce side impact collisions maybe 25%, but rear end accidents go up about 20%, and they're more common to begin with. Overall, the reduction in accidents is like 1%, and reduction in death, injury, and injury severity is negligible. Reducing injury/death from the 'more dangerous' t-bone collisions is the whole reason to justify the cameras despite more rear-end collisions, right?
My figuring is that the worst accidents come from people who are drunk driving, high, or racing(fleeing cops). These aren't the types to worry/know about red light cameras, so the worst accidents still happen.
As for documenting accidents - it's nowhere near as expensive to simply stick a set of cameras on an intersection, and works as well for hit&runs and accident recording.
The conclusion I've seen pretty much everywhere is that it'd be cheaper for everyone if they set the yellows properly, adjusted the speed limit, and/or made improvements to problematic intersections.
Then you were driving incompetently. You shouldn't tail-gate. You should always leave enough room for you to stop if the guy in front does something strange like stamp on the brakes or swerve or something. Yes, they might be a lot to blame but you're still supposed to take care of yourself by anticipating the (immediate) future road conditions and driving so that you remain safe. Didn't you ever get taught that as part of showing you're fit to drive on the public highway?
He was talking more generally; Are you saying that the various traffic design groups should plan for everybody being a perfect driver, or should they plan for the people on the road to be humans - often stupid, disobeying, slow, fast, etc...?
You shouldn't need to put barriers in a lot of locations if everybody is always a good attentive driver and you only needed them in case of freak mechanical failure. But they're up in a lot of locations because people aren't, so it saves lives to have them there.
Personally, I'm really looking forward to the practical self-driving car.
A 386 running red lights? What sort of modern utopia are you figuring are in those boxes?
I've always figured that most of them are run via a series of relays and mechanical timers, much like the older appliances like washing machines, back when they'd last a couple decades, easy.
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Medals needing no combat or even real sacrifice:
Good Conduct Medal - Don't get article 15'd for 3 years? You're awarded it. - You can look it up.
Achievement medal - Do something great, or a series of good tasks. Normally for the lower enlisted/officer grades
Accommodation medal - Supposed to be for even greater things than the achievement, in practice is simply more for senior NCOs and midrank officers.
The purple heart at least acknowledges your sacrifice; you managed to make it into a combat zone and close enough that you experienced enemy action. Some states use it to grant extra benefits. For example, in my area you'd get a deduction on your property taxes.
But an SSD can actually be slower for sequential writes.
Let's see, let's list the various items that can affect a 'progress bar' in a sort of worst case scenario -
Optical media drive speed(and position) .Net or VB framework?
Hard drive speed - reading and writing. Remember, SSDs write slower than they read, often to the point that a high-speed HD can be faster writing than a cheap SSD; Oh, and is the user flogging the drive otherwise? What about antivirus mucking with the works?
CPU - perhaps it's compiling/generating data programically - depending on the task, speed will vary depending on CPU make/model, frequency, and number of cores.
Internet access speed - authentication, downloading files and updates. Do you have a T3, or are you on a satellite or even worse, dial-up?
Options selected during install/load process
Driver/support package installs - Does the program need the
Optimizations - I've seen some programs that run a system check to determine optimal display settings.
The bottlenecks a user who's out in the boonies using a satellite for internet access but has a brand new $5k computer(let's say he got most of his money's worth) is going to be completely different than the guy sitting in a data center trying to load it on his 5 year old computer that was $400 brand new.
My personal preference, I think, is the 2 stage progress bar - top is 'on task X of Y'. If Y has to increase because an earlier step happened to determine that more needs to be done; oh well, but that should be fairly rare - try to determine everything that needs to be done before you start work.
Bottom bar is progress on the task. Of course, even that could be complicated if you're multi-threading the install - rather than waiting until you've downloaded 100% of everything before you install(or download-install-download-install), work on the completed downloads even as you download more. I think most users would prefer getting the install done faster than they would knowing how fast it's completing more accurately.
In such a case you might have 3 bars - overall completion; download progress; individual install progress. If download doesn't move quickly enough to keep up with individual install - change the individual install bar to 'awaiting download' while it's paused.
Actually it is worse than that (for John Steel and Brett Gibbs).
Thus the "House of cards" comment. I'm also not a lawyer, yet could see potential crimes by the dozen. They've done screwed up good.
Not reading the report yet, the options seem to be intellectual dishonesty from some of the most respected sources of science
Unfortunately, I've seen enough scandals involving 'respected sources' that I don't believe it outside the realm of possibility.
Oops - I'm so used to seeing 'patent troll' that I fixed this case of COPYRIGHT trolling. Please substitute 'copyright' for 'patent' in the parent post.
Well, I think that we've identified a more serious issue than 'mere' patent trolling - identity theft is a rather serious crime.
Though I like the idea that if it's found that they lied about the identity of their CEO, they lose standing in their other court cases - making them fraudulent as well, compounding the issue.
In the end, I'd say it's 'Scum is Scum'. If they're not too worried about one aspect of the law, they're unlikely to worry about others, to the point that when one aspect fails, it all tumbles down like a house of cards.
Personally, I'd say 'hard labor until he's worked off all the court expenses'. That's regardless of the aspect they pick - people might find porn icky, I don't really care.
Just had an additional thought - Wouldn't that screw up an already formatted drive though? Like when I'm trying to transplant an old hard drive as a computer's new main drive?
I'd never heard of HPA before... Interesting. It's been a while since I played with gigabyte boards though.
I think that depends on the level of the work. Is it at the level of a spark plug swap, or more like replacing the water pump?
In this case the companies release the BIOS updates, and instructions to them, to the public, and include making said updates a condition of customer support. IE they seem to believe that they're easy enough for customers to do themselves.
For your server grade stuff, sure.
But consider, at my work a standard desktop is under $400. We buy them by the thousand, so we get decent machines at cheap prices.
Let's just consider the flash chip. At $400/machine, you'd need a failure rate in excess of .25% to make putting that component in a socket be worth it. That's before figuring that if it takes $100 in labor to diagnose and repair, if it happens in year 4-5 it might not be worth it at all.
While I've flashed stuff at both home and work; I have to say I've done it far more often at home. At work stability is king, we don't really change components in the desktops, so no compatibility issues to crop up, thus no need to flash.
I think the most 'robust' anti-brick motherboard I've ever seen had two bios chips - and a hardware switch selecting which one was active. The active one was rendered read-only, you could only flash the inactive one.
To update the machine you'd flash the inactive, power down the system, flip the switch, power back on and hope it worked*. If it worked, generally you just trucked on on 'B' instead of 'A', in case there was something hidden borked that you didn't find for a while. If the update was borked you simply powered down again and flipped the switch back.
*Like with any bios update...
I don't mean to be a knob but I think the fault doesn't particularly lie with the vendor.
I view it differently. The vender advised the work. If I called up Toyota and asked advice about something for my 10 year old truck*, while it might be out of warranty if their advice resulted in major damage I think they should be liable for something.
Your advice seems to be along the lines of 'buy hundreds of thousands of dollars of equipment every year to replace equipment that is still functional solely to keep the warranty up'.
That's not good for the company's wallet, the environment, etc...
*Not that old yet, but still
What part of 'solution' implies that it's only research?
Research doesn't really do anything unless you implement it.
Personally, I've proposed stuff along the following idea:
1. Unpublished works, IE works not deliberately released to the public, have indefinite copyright.
2. The clock starts when you publish - IE try to make money off the work.
3. My personal thought is 10-20 years for copyright by default.
4. All published works need to be registered to receive copyright protection.
5. Part of receiving copyright is storing an unencrypted, highest quality copy with the Library of Congress*, This is free, other than the cost of the media(maybe).
6. The LoC will also maintain your contact information so people can contact you to obtain license to use it. If you can't be contacted, they may escrow standard license fees with the LoC and use it anyways. 'Due Faith attempt' would have to be defined further.
6. Copyright would be renewable for a 'modest' fee - basically, renewals pay for all the archiving efforts of the LoC. I'd use a sliding scale - submission is free, 1st renewal pays for the costs of maintaining secure storage for that period; 2nd+ renewals help pay for the free initial storage. The money goes towards making sure all the archived materials remain accessible, including transferring the digital data to new mediums as prudent/required. If Disney wants to subsidize pretty much everybody else keeping copyright on Steamboat Mickey and the rest of their archive active, it's their choice.
7. Maintenance of media that has fallen out of copyright at the LoC is paid for through a combination of user fees(subscription/retrieval/etc...), congressional funding, and even (tax deductible) donations.
*I figure that the rules for this would end up being a book - acceptable formats, media, transfer requirements, etc...
History does not warant a government-only solution. Indeed, it strongly suggests against it.
Of course, the AC didn't suggest a government-only solution. My take on it though is that you DO need a mix of research, especially for medical stuff.
In the USA, with the patent system, we work on sort of a prize system - be the first to give me X and I'll pay you Y. When X isn't guaranteed, and there are others attempting to provide it, the risk is such that you have to increase Y make it worth to pursue developing X. On the upside - the people who DO choose to develop X will be highly motivated.
This works for the USA. I'd like to see Europe leverage some of it's healthcare cost savings and attempt a different policy - "We'll pay you Y to attempt to develop X". Now Y can be small and you can pursue developments that might not make sense under the prize system - alternative uses for generic drugs, for example.
Of course, this amounts to competition in development funding methods as well as development. Not a bad idea, I think.
Depending on how it works, you might still get the junk mail, as it mentions only that they're stopping delivery of first class. Junk mail is sent Heck, at most it'll just be delivered on Monday.
To expand on his point a bit - soldiers don't typically work 7 days a week. Sailors often do; but then there's not much else to do. In addition, there's all sorts of non-critical tasks - maintenance, paperwork, training, etc... That can be put off for 3 hours every so often without any real effect.
Keeping the alert positions manned - bridge, engineering, power, and such while deferring maintenance and such(minimal manning), you can probably let 90% of the ship watch the superbowl, and pipe at least the sound to the rest of the crew. And they'll STILL see anybody/thing coming with plenty of time to sound general quarters and get everybody back in position.
I don't know about the UK, but in the USA on average, there's a far higher density of McDonalds and other commercial establishments offering 'free'* internet than there are libraries. Such that I'd estimate that I'd have to travel half the distance on average to get internet at a restaurant than I would to get it at a library. Depending, the ability to eat at the store and/or talk loudly can also be an advantage.
I'd prefer some sort of project encouraging community level cooperative/customer owned internet access. I've had far better service with coop phone companies than I've had with commercial cable or telephone.
*Well, technically you have to buy something most of the time.
True, it probably does prevent some red light running. Thing is, let's ask why running red lights is illegal, better yet, ask why do we have red lights at all?
It boils down to traffic control - cars attempting to cross from different directions at the same time is dangerous. Stop signs are too slow after certain traffic levels, etc... So we have red lights, and because some people don't pay attention, care, or whatever, we have to make running red lights illegal.
But the core purpose of red lights and the laws involving them is safety. It's why people agreed to the cameras in the first place. Studies have shown that people are more likely to be in an accident with them; while rear end collisions aren't as bad, on average, as t-bones, there's more of them. The reports I've seen also say that while side impacts are reduced, death and injury isn't.
Combine that with negligible revenue, and the cameras don't make sufficient sense for the amount they piss people off.
Many of the studies contain irritating circular references back to a handful of cases where suspect yellow timing was supposedly employed to increase revenue. While reprehensible if true, none of that would discredit red light cameras in general, but people generally dislike the cameras and are all-too-happy to suspend critical thinking.
In my readings, the general conclusion was that red light cameras at properly set up intersections don't make enough money to justify their existence; especially after people figure out they're there.
If the intersection isn't properly set up, the easiest example being a too short yellow, there can be mild safety benefits to the cameras - but fixing the problem is a much better solution.
Basically, if you're making money from your red light camera system, you're not doing it right.
so yellows get shortened to catch more people running reds
Which then attracts outrage and lawsuits when it's noticed; often neutralizing what money is available after the camera company takes it's cut.
Dude, if you're having to do all that to use a handsfree set you need a new one.
I can stick mine in my ear while turning it on, and after the beep I can talk regularly. Don't even need to touch my phone.
Red light cameras cause more rear end crashes at differences in speed going the same way, but help reduce sideways collisions at full speed of one of the moving vehicles.
Studies differ.
Roughly speaking, from my reading of the material, 'on average', red light cameras reduce side impact collisions maybe 25%, but rear end accidents go up about 20%, and they're more common to begin with. Overall, the reduction in accidents is like 1%, and reduction in death, injury, and injury severity is negligible. Reducing injury/death from the 'more dangerous' t-bone collisions is the whole reason to justify the cameras despite more rear-end collisions, right?
My figuring is that the worst accidents come from people who are drunk driving, high, or racing(fleeing cops). These aren't the types to worry/know about red light cameras, so the worst accidents still happen.
As for documenting accidents - it's nowhere near as expensive to simply stick a set of cameras on an intersection, and works as well for hit&runs and accident recording.
The conclusion I've seen pretty much everywhere is that it'd be cheaper for everyone if they set the yellows properly, adjusted the speed limit, and/or made improvements to problematic intersections.
Then you were driving incompetently. You shouldn't tail-gate. You should always leave enough room for you to stop if the guy in front does something strange like stamp on the brakes or swerve or something. Yes, they might be a lot to blame but you're still supposed to take care of yourself by anticipating the (immediate) future road conditions and driving so that you remain safe. Didn't you ever get taught that as part of showing you're fit to drive on the public highway?
He was talking more generally; Are you saying that the various traffic design groups should plan for everybody being a perfect driver, or should they plan for the people on the road to be humans - often stupid, disobeying, slow, fast, etc...?
You shouldn't need to put barriers in a lot of locations if everybody is always a good attentive driver and you only needed them in case of freak mechanical failure. But they're up in a lot of locations because people aren't, so it saves lives to have them there.
Personally, I'm really looking forward to the practical self-driving car.
A 386 running red lights? What sort of modern utopia are you figuring are in those boxes?
I've always figured that most of them are run via a series of relays and mechanical timers, much like the older appliances like washing machines, back when they'd last a couple decades, easy.