Without knowing it they have created their google+ account but in reality have no interest in the service.
I have a google+ profile pretty much solely because they made it mandatory. Matter of fact, I have 2 profiles, neither of them ever 'used' to make so much as a post.
I want to know if my food contains dihydrogen monoxide! It kills tens of thousands a year through overdose!;)
More seriously, this is why the FDA, quite properly in my mind, doesn't want to require labeling of GMO foods that have passed all the safety checking.
Heck, the anti-GMO crowd is fighting against potatoes that have been modified to produce less of a potential carcinogen.
I agree, it's a symbolic measure, and not a good one at that. All any politician has to say is that 'the symbolic gesture was worthless, I was voting on the whole bill, and it was the best way to get the XL pipeline moving'. Just as they do any other bill.
I think it was in the 1980s that the business world stopped being a place where you could join a company and expect it to look after you in return for your loyalty. I don't know why the author thinks the tech industry is so special that it would be immune from this.
Sometimes it's good to get a specific picture of a subsection, even if it's just to confirm that the specific subsection is following the greater pattern as well.
So, 2/3rds — not 99% — were deemed not worth intercepting. 270 of the remaining 300 were intercepted. If the thirty rockets, that did get through managed to kill 3 Israelis between them, it is fair to extrapolate, that — without the system in place — the 30 would've been killed.
Not to support the AC's figure, but Hamas rockets tend to be erratic, there's always some uncertainty as to their impact point. Especially when you're deciding whether to intercept well before impact.
So, logically speaking, some portion of the 1/3rd they decide to engage would also land in a spot that wouldn't cause damage they care enough about to justify the expense of interception, but because the impact uncertainly zone contains stuff they DO care about, they intercept anyways.
So you could have a situation where they let it go when the uncertainty zone's center is 1 mile from anything they care about, but intercept when it's within.5 miles, even though there's still a 90% chance it won't hit anything they care about.
That being said, I agree that more would be killed without the system in place, making it effective. Cost effective might be a different matter.
explain to me why a shotgun loaded with bird shot would not drop such a drone?
A thin sheet of aluminum would be all that's needed to armor it against bird shot. Of course, it depends on the bird shot - Consider Cheney's lawyer friend. Shot intended for a pheasant or quail doesn't penetrate even human skin very far. Shot intended for turkeys would work better.
Armoring against rifle fire is orders of magnitude harder, but so isn't hitting a flying object with said rifle, thus the use of computer aiming with radar assistance combined with high speed automatic weapons.
If you're trying to protect an area populated by civilians, a laser defense might be better.
all the missile has to do is home on the jammers signal instead.
The next step is that you detach the jammer - put the transmission equipment other than the antenna into a hardened shelter, and attach multiple (cheapish) antennas by long cables.
Sure, you lose an antenna and some cable per attack, but antennas are cheaper than guided missiles unless you're doing something horribly wrong.
Update: Actually went back and read the GP. I take back most of my post - a swarm of tiny drones with miniscule charges aren't going to do much. If you want to destroy a building, bite the bullet, build a big(ish) missile and hit the target with that.
Not that a tiny swarm couldn't be useful - it's a standard axiom that properly distributed charges can do more damage than a single large one. The problem with tiny drones is the 'proper' part.
A couple dozen explosions on the lower levels of a building, even just 1kg per explosion, and you're at least going to be evacuating the building as you assess it's continued structural worthiness. They would also make for excellent anti-personnel systems.
The problem is plastic explosives are difficult to focus. Try blowing up a building using at drones. You need to blow one up for every window. And most doors will require several drones with explosives to get through.
... I think you need to step back and reconsider this post.
First, plastic explosives are easy to focus. I've watched EOD guys do it by hand.
If you're using 'kamikaze drones', I feel the need to point out that we already have them under a different name. They're called 'Missiles'. Blowing up a building would only require multiple missiles if you're using undersized ones for some reason - trying to limit the damage to neighboring buildings, the building itself is huge and armored, etc...
200kg of explosives delivered by a missile is generally enough to collapse any non-hardened building. Or at least make it non-usable, which is kinda the point.
Since there are also systems that will shoot down the incoming round, the return fire is probably in the air before the first round even hits the ground (if it makes it that far).
The larger mortars have such a long flight time that you can normally have 2-3 shells in the air before the first even hits. So you're both right.
For that matter, with artillery there are techniques where you deliberately fire the first shells on indirect paths, then get more direct(faster) as you fire, timing your shots so that they all hit within seconds of each other - even if it took you minutes to fire everything. 'Time on Target' for multiple batteries in different locations all hitting at the same time and MRSI(Multiple Rounds Simultaneous Impact) if you're deploying multiple shells from the same gun. The latter is more common today than previously - you almost need computer control and programming to swing the gun fast enough to do it.
He mentioned seeing it in many companies, Adobe was only one example. Churn all over the place.
Then they have to enter into collusion deals with other companies to keep the employees that they do want, since such a culture breeds NO company loyalty, encouraging an employee to jump ship the moment they see a better prospect.
Lawyers have cases on file where people pled guilty to avoid a much longer sentence, and were exonerated afterwards.
To give a sort of example for this: Let's say that I'm completely innocent, but I'm accused of some horrible crime. I'm looking at 40 years in prison. The prosecution offers me a deal of 'only' 1 year in prison even as I figure that while I'm likely to prove my innocence in court, there's a 5% chance I'll be found guilty anyways. Oh, and it'll cost approximately a year's income simply to fight it.
I'm actually statistically avoiding more prison time taking the deal. Personally, I'd fight all the way(felony=no guns, raising the effective penalty for me), but for the average person?
IMO any property seized without merit is a crime in and of itself. It shouldn't just stop at banning the practice, but permitting anybody whose property was seized to go back and reclaim it unless the police department or government office in question can get a jury to say that the person who lost their property was guilty of an actual crime DIRECTLY RELATED to it.
Indeed. Our constitution says that property can't be taken 'without due process'. This should mean a criminal trial. Not 'Well, we think drugs were sold in this house so we're confiscating it', or 'Your hotel doesn't do enough to discourage drug dealing and use within it because you only called 15 out of 20 times we've caught use inside of it, so we're confiscating it'. Etc...
I really hope that if they ever think to do something like this they'll consider my personality and reconsider - because I WILL make it cost them money. I will go to court to get back the money even if lawyer's fees will cost more(I'll add it to the lawsuit). I'll take them to small claims court. Etc...
That's the "sticking point". I can't do much more than writing my representatives about it, and tossing what money I can to those that promise to change it.
I'm glad you were modded up, because 'civil asset forfeiture' has been a sticking point of mine for quite some time, and you basically said my piece in it.
A number of states limited it using state rules, only to have police departments continue to do it under the federal rules.
The abuses I've read about...
For example: Grandma owns her house. One of her many grandsons, fleeing the police with drugs on him, temporarily escapes into her house until she gets home and promptly turns him over to police. Despite this for some unknown reason the cops decide to seize her house because 'it was used to store drugs'. The only known time there were drugs in there was when the grandson was running! Took the governor telling them to back off.
Refrigerator: You actually have a range of acceptable temperatures. Generally speaking 15 minutes is only going to make a degree or so difference in a quality unit. Furnace: Again, your furnace should actually be off more than it's on, even at -35C, and 15 minutes to an hour shouldn't make much difference. You don't mention your water heater, which I don't know if it's electric or gas, powered by your furnace or not. But many are electric, and it's not something that needs to be kept at the exact same temperature at all times.
As for pipes freezing and food spoiling - You have a range. Assuming your pipes are insulated like they should be so that they don't freeze immediately, (what if your furnace fails? Can you keep your pipes from freezing long enough to get a repair guy out there?), you actually have a range between comfort and 'pipes freezing'. It's simple enough: 2 stage thermostats. Many people with heat pump systems already have them, in order to control between using the heat pump and the 'emergency' direct resistive heat strips.
Same concept - When power is cheap, your fridge runs to put itself on the cold side of the acceptable temperature range, your house on the warm side(in the winter), cool side(summer), so on and so forth. It's also easy enough with smart appliances for them to keep track of your demands and regular trends in power cost in order to best optimize drawing power when it's cheapest. It's just as easy at that point to set a 'critical' level where, expensive power or not, it'll use it if it needs to in order to prevent pipes freezing and food spoiling.
My grandparents were on such a system for years. The agreement with the power company was that interruptions could only be for so long and in exchange they got a break on their bill.
If your house can't last through the typical spike, it probably needs more insulation or repairs.
We all need to realize that Mitt Romney is an old politician. He's not a computer guy. 'Binders' of candidates I can easily see. Again, not something to get uptight over.
I do get a bit irked with Van Vlack though - 20% goal for women? That low? In addition, it implies that women can't even make 20% without being chosen simply for the fact that she's a woman. More women are going to and graduating college today than men, and it's by a substantial fraction 43.6% male vs 56.4% female in public universities alone. Private universities the average is closer to 40-60. Her third statement amounts to a repeat of the first, implying that you can't simply have a policy of hiring the best employees - you have to hire looking to diversify. Does diversification even improve outcomes if you're a business? Please note that diversity of talent and experience is still a positive factor, hiring somebody with experience different than what's already in the group is generally beneficial. I'm talking about hiring somebody for a position substantially because the color of their skin is under-represented in your workcenter.
If women are still under-represented in some fields despite being the majority of college students, I think we need to look closer at social traditions and policies, because I think they might be the bigger factor at this point. Not much point at looking to hire women in a certain field if they're not even entering it due to 'reasons'.
Questioning my assumptions about the leadership skills of women, I can't really say. I don't really think I have any.
No kidding. The only thing I can think of is that the interconnects and processing power of the mainframe allows more heuristics to be run on people's purchasing patterns. Odd pattern = fraud possibility.
Thing is, right now they often consider the individual's purchasing patterns. What about if a whole lot of people start buying from one company? Different pattern to be spotted, can still be fraud.
You are both making the mistake of trying to find the used car equivalent to the new car you bought.
Nope. My main requirement was 'Truck, capable of towing X', along with a few other requirements/desires. I looked at both new and used models, not to mention the paper for 'for sale by owner' vehicles. New happened to not only fit my desires list better, but they offered a better price as well.
A new car is just about 100% of the time a bad financial decision
Indeed, very dogmatic. Me, I broke out the spreadsheets. $10k@5% = $500/year. $10k@8% = $300 more, and my loan was for more than $10k. Penny wise, pound foolish. I already said that the NEW truck worked out to be cheaper than a used one. My situation may not be the same as most, but it was my situation. Probably because most people who buy trucks like mine don't willingly give them up within a decade.
Cars should last over 250K miles.
That requires doing the proper maintenance, including during their formative(new) period. Guess what people who ditch their cars after 2-3 years often don't do? My Tacoma is coming up on it's 80k maintenance period, and it's still chugging along great. I know it's gotten every oil change with quality oil, that the fluids have been checked, etc...
If you don't have enough cash on hand for a cheap used car your emergency fund is non-existent and you are screwing up your personal finances badly before you even make the mistake of buying a new car and hanging a car payment millstone around your neck.
Cheap used car isn't a reliable used car. All things being equal, my next vehicle WILL be purchased with cash. The disposal value of a cheap used car is less than the purchase&outfitting cost on it if you're not going to keep it. It worked out cheaper to just get the loan.
Which makes GM's claims about the Bolt very suspicious.
Not really if you figure that GM's planning to use the Bolt like it did the EV1: In order to meet CAFE requirements. If not rolled back, that could mean subsidizing each Bolt to the tune of several thousand dollars because you need to sell 1 Bolt for every 20 Yukons or some such.
Bought my Tacoma new in '08, still driving it today, intend to drive it for at least another 3 years, probably longer.
When I went car shopping, the extra interest I would have paid on a newer used truck(which wouldn't have had the exact feature set I wanted, and I looked), would have ended up costing me more money. The raw price difference was only about $1k, as you mention I wouldn't have the warranty length left, wouldn't know the entire driving history of my vehicle, etc... The extra 3% because used car loans are higher interest rate than new would quickly swamp the price savings unless I paid cash(which I couldn't at the time).
Slashdot Mirror
Without knowing it they have created their google+ account but in reality have no interest in the service.
I have a google+ profile pretty much solely because they made it mandatory. Matter of fact, I have 2 profiles, neither of them ever 'used' to make so much as a post.
Tell that to Indiana. They tried to legislate that pi was 3.2
I want to know if my food contains dihydrogen monoxide! It kills tens of thousands a year through overdose! ;)
More seriously, this is why the FDA, quite properly in my mind, doesn't want to require labeling of GMO foods that have passed all the safety checking.
Heck, the anti-GMO crowd is fighting against potatoes that have been modified to produce less of a potential carcinogen.
I agree, it's a symbolic measure, and not a good one at that. All any politician has to say is that 'the symbolic gesture was worthless, I was voting on the whole bill, and it was the best way to get the XL pipeline moving'. Just as they do any other bill.
I think it was in the 1980s that the business world stopped being a place where you could join a company and expect it to look after you in return for your loyalty. I don't know why the author thinks the tech industry is so special that it would be immune from this.
Sometimes it's good to get a specific picture of a subsection, even if it's just to confirm that the specific subsection is following the greater pattern as well.
soon it'll be "go to this location, launch bomb to hit that location",
Actually, in this case 'soon' would be '10 years ago'. 30+ if you include 'suicidally launch yourself at the target and detonate' for cruise missiles.
They can already be programmed to taxi, take off, fly a patrol route, return, land, and taxi back to their parking spot.
Right now the biggest thing preventing the automatic launching of bombs is the desire to keep humans in the equation.
What is a drone to the Army? Something bigger?
Everything from smaller than a hand grenade, all the way up to ones bigger than a Cessna.
The small ones are intended to be used tactically in the field, the large ones are more for collecting strategic data.
So, 2/3rds — not 99% — were deemed not worth intercepting. 270 of the remaining 300 were intercepted. If the thirty rockets, that did get through managed to kill 3 Israelis between them, it is fair to extrapolate, that — without the system in place — the 30 would've been killed.
Not to support the AC's figure, but Hamas rockets tend to be erratic, there's always some uncertainty as to their impact point. Especially when you're deciding whether to intercept well before impact.
So, logically speaking, some portion of the 1/3rd they decide to engage would also land in a spot that wouldn't cause damage they care enough about to justify the expense of interception, but because the impact uncertainly zone contains stuff they DO care about, they intercept anyways.
So you could have a situation where they let it go when the uncertainty zone's center is 1 mile from anything they care about, but intercept when it's within .5 miles, even though there's still a 90% chance it won't hit anything they care about.
That being said, I agree that more would be killed without the system in place, making it effective. Cost effective might be a different matter.
explain to me why a shotgun loaded with bird shot would not drop such a drone?
A thin sheet of aluminum would be all that's needed to armor it against bird shot. Of course, it depends on the bird shot - Consider Cheney's lawyer friend. Shot intended for a pheasant or quail doesn't penetrate even human skin very far. Shot intended for turkeys would work better.
Armoring against rifle fire is orders of magnitude harder, but so isn't hitting a flying object with said rifle, thus the use of computer aiming with radar assistance combined with high speed automatic weapons.
If you're trying to protect an area populated by civilians, a laser defense might be better.
all the missile has to do is home on the jammers signal instead.
The next step is that you detach the jammer - put the transmission equipment other than the antenna into a hardened shelter, and attach multiple (cheapish) antennas by long cables.
Sure, you lose an antenna and some cable per attack, but antennas are cheaper than guided missiles unless you're doing something horribly wrong.
Update: Actually went back and read the GP. I take back most of my post - a swarm of tiny drones with miniscule charges aren't going to do much. If you want to destroy a building, bite the bullet, build a big(ish) missile and hit the target with that.
Not that a tiny swarm couldn't be useful - it's a standard axiom that properly distributed charges can do more damage than a single large one. The problem with tiny drones is the 'proper' part.
A couple dozen explosions on the lower levels of a building, even just 1kg per explosion, and you're at least going to be evacuating the building as you assess it's continued structural worthiness. They would also make for excellent anti-personnel systems.
The problem is plastic explosives are difficult to focus. Try blowing up a building using at drones. You need to blow one up for every window. And most doors will require several drones with explosives to get through.
... I think you need to step back and reconsider this post.
First, plastic explosives are easy to focus. I've watched EOD guys do it by hand.
If you're using 'kamikaze drones', I feel the need to point out that we already have them under a different name. They're called 'Missiles'. Blowing up a building would only require multiple missiles if you're using undersized ones for some reason - trying to limit the damage to neighboring buildings, the building itself is huge and armored, etc...
200kg of explosives delivered by a missile is generally enough to collapse any non-hardened building. Or at least make it non-usable, which is kinda the point.
Since there are also systems that will shoot down the incoming round, the return fire is probably in the air before the first round even hits the ground (if it makes it that far).
The larger mortars have such a long flight time that you can normally have 2-3 shells in the air before the first even hits. So you're both right.
For that matter, with artillery there are techniques where you deliberately fire the first shells on indirect paths, then get more direct(faster) as you fire, timing your shots so that they all hit within seconds of each other - even if it took you minutes to fire everything. 'Time on Target' for multiple batteries in different locations all hitting at the same time and MRSI(Multiple Rounds Simultaneous Impact) if you're deploying multiple shells from the same gun. The latter is more common today than previously - you almost need computer control and programming to swing the gun fast enough to do it.
He mentioned seeing it in many companies, Adobe was only one example. Churn all over the place.
Then they have to enter into collusion deals with other companies to keep the employees that they do want, since such a culture breeds NO company loyalty, encouraging an employee to jump ship the moment they see a better prospect.
Lawyers have cases on file where people pled guilty to avoid a much longer sentence, and were exonerated afterwards.
To give a sort of example for this: Let's say that I'm completely innocent, but I'm accused of some horrible crime. I'm looking at 40 years in prison. The prosecution offers me a deal of 'only' 1 year in prison even as I figure that while I'm likely to prove my innocence in court, there's a 5% chance I'll be found guilty anyways. Oh, and it'll cost approximately a year's income simply to fight it.
I'm actually statistically avoiding more prison time taking the deal. Personally, I'd fight all the way(felony=no guns, raising the effective penalty for me), but for the average person?
IMO any property seized without merit is a crime in and of itself. It shouldn't just stop at banning the practice, but permitting anybody whose property was seized to go back and reclaim it unless the police department or government office in question can get a jury to say that the person who lost their property was guilty of an actual crime DIRECTLY RELATED to it.
Indeed. Our constitution says that property can't be taken 'without due process'. This should mean a criminal trial. Not 'Well, we think drugs were sold in this house so we're confiscating it', or 'Your hotel doesn't do enough to discourage drug dealing and use within it because you only called 15 out of 20 times we've caught use inside of it, so we're confiscating it'. Etc...
I really hope that if they ever think to do something like this they'll consider my personality and reconsider - because I WILL make it cost them money. I will go to court to get back the money even if lawyer's fees will cost more(I'll add it to the lawsuit). I'll take them to small claims court. Etc...
That's why I said 'much more', because one can always do more, but I have a lot of irons in the fire.
I've posted on this stuff when the subject varies in the correct direction(other directions will trigger different topics).
That's the "sticking point". I can't do much more than writing my representatives about it, and tossing what money I can to those that promise to change it.
I'm glad you were modded up, because 'civil asset forfeiture' has been a sticking point of mine for quite some time, and you basically said my piece in it.
A number of states limited it using state rules, only to have police departments continue to do it under the federal rules.
The abuses I've read about...
For example: Grandma owns her house. One of her many grandsons, fleeing the police with drugs on him, temporarily escapes into her house until she gets home and promptly turns him over to police. Despite this for some unknown reason the cops decide to seize her house because 'it was used to store drugs'. The only known time there were drugs in there was when the grandson was running! Took the governor telling them to back off.
Refrigerator: You actually have a range of acceptable temperatures. Generally speaking 15 minutes is only going to make a degree or so difference in a quality unit.
Furnace: Again, your furnace should actually be off more than it's on, even at -35C, and 15 minutes to an hour shouldn't make much difference.
You don't mention your water heater, which I don't know if it's electric or gas, powered by your furnace or not. But many are electric, and it's not something that needs to be kept at the exact same temperature at all times.
As for pipes freezing and food spoiling - You have a range. Assuming your pipes are insulated like they should be so that they don't freeze immediately, (what if your furnace fails? Can you keep your pipes from freezing long enough to get a repair guy out there?), you actually have a range between comfort and 'pipes freezing'. It's simple enough: 2 stage thermostats. Many people with heat pump systems already have them, in order to control between using the heat pump and the 'emergency' direct resistive heat strips.
Same concept - When power is cheap, your fridge runs to put itself on the cold side of the acceptable temperature range, your house on the warm side(in the winter), cool side(summer), so on and so forth. It's also easy enough with smart appliances for them to keep track of your demands and regular trends in power cost in order to best optimize drawing power when it's cheapest. It's just as easy at that point to set a 'critical' level where, expensive power or not, it'll use it if it needs to in order to prevent pipes freezing and food spoiling.
My grandparents were on such a system for years. The agreement with the power company was that interruptions could only be for so long and in exchange they got a break on their bill.
If your house can't last through the typical spike, it probably needs more insulation or repairs.
We all need to realize that Mitt Romney is an old politician. He's not a computer guy. 'Binders' of candidates I can easily see. Again, not something to get uptight over.
I do get a bit irked with Van Vlack though - 20% goal for women? That low? In addition, it implies that women can't even make 20% without being chosen simply for the fact that she's a woman. More women are going to and graduating college today than men, and it's by a substantial fraction 43.6% male vs 56.4% female in public universities alone. Private universities the average is closer to 40-60. Her third statement amounts to a repeat of the first, implying that you can't simply have a policy of hiring the best employees - you have to hire looking to diversify. Does diversification even improve outcomes if you're a business? Please note that diversity of talent and experience is still a positive factor, hiring somebody with experience different than what's already in the group is generally beneficial. I'm talking about hiring somebody for a position substantially because the color of their skin is under-represented in your workcenter.
If women are still under-represented in some fields despite being the majority of college students, I think we need to look closer at social traditions and policies, because I think they might be the bigger factor at this point. Not much point at looking to hire women in a certain field if they're not even entering it due to 'reasons'.
Questioning my assumptions about the leadership skills of women, I can't really say. I don't really think I have any.
No kidding. The only thing I can think of is that the interconnects and processing power of the mainframe allows more heuristics to be run on people's purchasing patterns. Odd pattern = fraud possibility.
Thing is, right now they often consider the individual's purchasing patterns. What about if a whole lot of people start buying from one company? Different pattern to be spotted, can still be fraud.
I agree with everything you say.
He's also making a lot of assumptions:
You are both making the mistake of trying to find the used car equivalent to the new car you bought.
Nope. My main requirement was 'Truck, capable of towing X', along with a few other requirements/desires. I looked at both new and used models, not to mention the paper for 'for sale by owner' vehicles. New happened to not only fit my desires list better, but they offered a better price as well.
A new car is just about 100% of the time a bad financial decision
Indeed, very dogmatic. Me, I broke out the spreadsheets. $10k@5% = $500/year. $10k@8% = $300 more, and my loan was for more than $10k.
Penny wise, pound foolish. I already said that the NEW truck worked out to be cheaper than a used one. My situation may not be the same as most, but it was my situation. Probably because most people who buy trucks like mine don't willingly give them up within a decade.
Cars should last over 250K miles.
That requires doing the proper maintenance, including during their formative(new) period. Guess what people who ditch their cars after 2-3 years often don't do? My Tacoma is coming up on it's 80k maintenance period, and it's still chugging along great. I know it's gotten every oil change with quality oil, that the fluids have been checked, etc...
If you don't have enough cash on hand for a cheap used car your emergency fund is non-existent and you are screwing up your personal finances badly before you even make the mistake of buying a new car and hanging a car payment millstone around your neck.
Cheap used car isn't a reliable used car. All things being equal, my next vehicle WILL be purchased with cash.
The disposal value of a cheap used car is less than the purchase&outfitting cost on it if you're not going to keep it. It worked out cheaper to just get the loan.
Which makes GM's claims about the Bolt very suspicious.
Not really if you figure that GM's planning to use the Bolt like it did the EV1: In order to meet CAFE requirements. If not rolled back, that could mean subsidizing each Bolt to the tune of several thousand dollars because you need to sell 1 Bolt for every 20 Yukons or some such.
Bought my Tacoma new in '08, still driving it today, intend to drive it for at least another 3 years, probably longer.
When I went car shopping, the extra interest I would have paid on a newer used truck(which wouldn't have had the exact feature set I wanted, and I looked), would have ended up costing me more money. The raw price difference was only about $1k, as you mention I wouldn't have the warranty length left, wouldn't know the entire driving history of my vehicle, etc... The extra 3% because used car loans are higher interest rate than new would quickly swamp the price savings unless I paid cash(which I couldn't at the time).