In your personal life, this is a great lesson to learn/apply. I realized this back in college after coming out of a horrid high school bullying experience. I decided that there was a small circle of people whose opinion mattered to me. Outside that circle, people could call me whatever they wanted and I just didn't care.
However, when you're talking about politics, ALL voters are "that circle." A negative opinion can spread rapidly and cause a downturn in your campaign even if you don't care about why people are upset about it.
Do you think politicians really care about "looking like stupid dishonest manipulative SOBs"? They care about winning and only winning. Some might say campaign contributions from businesses/wealthy donors also, but these are honestly only a means to an end. If money somehow could be decoupled from politics, politicians wouldn't care about the donations, but would still only care about that which helps them win.
And exiting the realm of e-mail, there's thing about myself that I don't want the become common knowledge. As a victim of identity theft, I can personally attest to the fact that someone getting your name, address, date of birth, and social security number can wreck havoc with your life. Am I "ashamed" of any of that information? Of course not. However, that doesn't mean I want them to be public knowledge.
Then they simply either make up something you did (perhaps basing it on something that really happened so there's a grain of truth) or they take something that happened out of context so that it sounds much worse.
For example, suppose your list includes "drove drunk once when I was 19." A political hit squad could spread the word that you actually were arrested after you drove drunk, hit another car, and killed an 8 year old girl. Is it true? Of course not. But now you're spending time refuting this story instead of spreading your message and you're on the defensive. Or maybe they remove the "when I was 19" context. With some creative wording, they can make it seem like this happened very recently instead of years/decades ago (without outright claiming it was recent). Again, you'll be on the defensive and trying to provide context instead of spreading your ideas.
I'm not saying your idea isn't without merit, but don't underestimate the underhandedness of those in politics.
As a counter-point, I've been the target of a stalker online. She stalked an account where I used a pseudonym and didn't use my real name/address at all. Another person she stalked used his real name. She contacted his employer (a school) and told them he molested children. She contacted everyone on Facebook who shared his last name and lived in his general area to tell them this also. She even claimed to have contacted the police about him. Needless to say, this was all made up by her. (She claimed that god told her all this so you can guess how effective arguing with her is. After all, how can you argue against "god told me this directly"?) These allegations could easily have gotten him fired. He was lucky enough that he was able to warn his employer and his family/friends/police ignored her. Still, she was able to make his life miserable for years.
I'm thankful that this person DIDN'T know my real name, home address, employer, or any other information about me. Do I have anything to hide? No. However, people can do damage with false allegations if they have the right information about you. By the time you refute the allegations, the damage might already have been done.
We actually tried CBS's All Access service after getting a month free promotion. I've found the selection limited and there are a lot of ads. Every commercial break is about 1.5 minutes of ads. Contrast this with Hulu which has 20-30 seconds of ads in each break. It's amazing how quickly you lose your tolerance for long commercial breaks when you cut cable.
Furthermore any law that is so broad as to cover everything will have innumerable corner case, loopholes and problems.
Exactly this. If you only take current technology into account, you'll wind up with a strictly applied law with few loopholes (at least technology-related loopholes). However, this law will quickly become obsolete once technology marches on. On the flip side, trying to write your law for all possible future technologies will result in a law so broad that it can be used against anyone/anything regardless of whether that was it's initial intent.
For example, look at the penalties for violating copyright. $750 - $150,000 per instance. This was written when "violating copyright" primarily meant commercially burning pirate CDs to sell on street corners for $1 each. Running a commercial operation like this could be very profitable and thus was worthy of taking down with massive fines. (Otherwise, you risked telling commercial pirates "You made $1 million pirating last year. Here's a $500 fine. Now don't do it again.")
Technology changed, as it often does, and now you have normal people violating copyright by using free software that lets them download copies of music and movies from other people while sharing their own music and movies. We can debate whether or not this should be illegal, but even if we assume it should be, it doesn't warrant a $150,000 per file uploaded/downloaded fine. These people aren't the original targets of the law, but they are being included in it.
What needs to happen is that the law should be amended to take into account current technology and give appropriate penalties for non-commercial pirates. Of course, the law as written is just fine with the RIAA/MPAA and they will fight to make sure that any rewrite is more severe and clamps down on new technologies. So you have a law that is behind the times and organizations who might be going the way of buggy whip manufacturers using all of their considerable political clout to make sure transforming technologies are outlawed.
Thanks for the recommendation. I had looked at this app awhile back for my boys (12 and 8 years old). Given their love of playing games on their tablets, this could be a good tool to get them learning about programming while they are playing games.
There might be life on Ecelandus, and after this close pass, there might be life on the Cassini probe too. So when cassini reaches end of life, it will most likely be crashed in to something, probably Saturn, but does this risk transferring organisms from Ecelandus to Saturn?
Organisms might be transferred to Saturn, but given the conditions there they wouldn't be alive for long.
Horseradish does this also. Eat some freshly ground horseradish and it'll clear your sinuses right out. If you must get the bottled stuff, go for the white bottled horseradish. The purple stuff is mixed with beet juice and is weak. I could eat forkful after forkful of that stuff with no reaction. But one nice forkful of fresh horseradish and your sinuses clear RIGHT up!
One of my first introductions to card-based gaming was a game called Nuclear War. As you might guess, players lob nuclear warheads at each other trying to decimate each others' populations. One of the more inventive gaming rules was "Final Strike." A player whose last civilian died would be able to throw everything he still had in one last "I'm dying and will take everyone I can with me" maneuver at either a single player or at multiple players. If any of those players were then killed, they would launch their own Final Strike. It was quite common for games to end with everyone dead.
It was a fun game, but could also teach a valuable lesson about battling using nuclear weapons.
I think the main reason for getting something like this would be to use it as a tiny media center PC. You wouldn't need a screen because your TV becomes the screen.
Of course, whether you're want to use Windows 10 over all the other options is another discussion entirely.
Sadly, they're pushing even more Teach The Test in New York. The narrative now is that public school teachers are incompetent idiots who are failing our students. To prove this, there are high stakes tests are factored into annual teacher evaluations. In fact, half of their rating is determined by the tests. If the student doesn't improve on the second test by the amount that State Ed deems he/she should improve, then the teacher is judged to have failed and will be rated "ineffective." Even if the principal observes the classroom and sees that the teacher is doing a great job and the class is learning well, this doesn't override "the kids did poorly on the tests."
Teachers who get rated ineffective two years in a row can be fired in 90 days. If a teacher is rated ineffective three years in a row, then they MUST be fired within 30 days.
Needless to say, this has led to teachers focusing solely on the tests. After all, any time spent working on something other than the tests is time that might lead to the teacher being fired.
What's more, the tests are intentionally rigged against the teachers/students. The questions are confusing and the scoring can be skewed by the testing organization to lower student scores to better match how they thought the students would score. As John Oliver put it when he covered the standardized tests, it's like umpires in baseball being told "I know that was a home run, but this team has had too many home runs so just score it as a double instead."
The entire thing is sickening which is why my kids have opted out of the tests every year. The state doesn't like it when we do this, but we've been joined by more people every year. Last year, 200,000 students in NY opted out. The state has all but declared war on us. They've said that we're just pawns of the union and don't know what we're doing. (We were opting out before the teacher's union got involved.) They've callied parents a "special interest group." (And yet, apparently, charter schools whose businesses contribute to political campaigns AREN'T one.) They've insinuated that opting out is illegal despite saying in other venues that it's a parents right. Some have even said that Child Protective Services should be called on parents whose kids opt-out.
The end goal of all of this testing? To get rid of public schools and replace them with Charter Schools who pull public money, get to pick and choose students, send some of that money to politicians as campaign contributions, and make a profit off of our kids. NY's Governor Cuomo has come out and said he wants a "death penalty" (his exact words) for public schools and has put in place a receivership system to take the bottom performing schools and grant outside individuals full reign over the schools - including turning them into Charter Schools. Of course, there will always be bottom performing schools so it's just a matter of time before he gets his way and kills off public education. The Democrats are all lined up behind him (stabbing public education in the back while trying to excuse it by saying "it's with a heavy heart") and the Republicans are little better (not supporting Common Core, but in favor of more Charter Schools).
Except, to extend the metaphor, Goliath has a ton of endurance (legal funds) and David can't keep fighting indefinitely (has limited funds). So all Goliath needs to do is keep the fight (lawsuit) going until David collapses out of exhaustion (declares bankruptcy). Then Goliath wins, siezes everything David owned, and uses him as an example to scare future Davids into giving up (settling the lawsuit) quickly.
Step 1: Send a probe to the comet. Step 2: Collect alcohol & bring it back to Earth. Step 3: Bottle the alcohol. Step 4: Sell it to rich folks who like getting drunk. Step 5: Profit (for NASA).
We do this all the time also. Sometimes, the stores will even price match what's online so we get the online price but the immediacy of the physical store purchase.
We've run into this too. In our case, it was for a toy whose price difference was enough to be annoying to pay, but not so much that we wanted to stick around for an hour so we could buy it for less money. The store associate who explained why Walmart doesn't match Walmart.com admitted it was stupid and that she's done the "select pick up in store, wait an hour, pick it up" trick herself. Corporate had a policy against price matching themselves, though, so she'd get in trouble if she went against it.
It's like they're still so scared of the online business that they want to keep it at arm's length. Like it's some sort of infectious disease riddled person that they're forced to deal with. You can't get rid of them so you stay as far away from them as possible. If they properly integrated Walmart.com and Walmart's physical stores, they would only increase sales, not decrease them.
Well lately Amazon's prices have been coming in between 1.5 and 5 times the cost of what it would cost to go get the same product at the store, and that's before shipping.
I've found Amazon pretty price-competitive. Sometimes more for some items, sometimes less. When Amazon is less, some stores (like Target) will price match if you show them the Amazon listing on your phone.
I don't think that brick-and-mortar retailers like Walmart will really ever get how to do online commerce.
They don't even seem to comprehend that they can leverage their brick and mortar stores along with the online presence. Walmart and Walmart.com are two separate entities. One day, we were looking for a toy for our child and found it on Walmart.com for much less money. Somewhat reluctantly, we went into a local Walmart to buy the toy except that it was significantly more IN the store. So we brought it up to customer service to ask them to match the price on Walmart.com
We were told that they don't price match against their website. We could order it on Walmart.com with the "pick up in store" option, come back an hour later, and walk out of the store with that exact toy, but they couldn't directly sell us the toy for the price on the website. The sales associate understood our frustration, said she doesn't understand it either, and said she's done the "pick up in store" workaround herself, but orders from corporate were that you don't price match against the website in the store.
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It is more reasonable than normal TV, but still so much more than I'm used to with Netflix, Amazon, or even Hulu.
In your personal life, this is a great lesson to learn/apply. I realized this back in college after coming out of a horrid high school bullying experience. I decided that there was a small circle of people whose opinion mattered to me. Outside that circle, people could call me whatever they wanted and I just didn't care.
However, when you're talking about politics, ALL voters are "that circle." A negative opinion can spread rapidly and cause a downturn in your campaign even if you don't care about why people are upset about it.
Do you think politicians really care about "looking like stupid dishonest manipulative SOBs"? They care about winning and only winning. Some might say campaign contributions from businesses/wealthy donors also, but these are honestly only a means to an end. If money somehow could be decoupled from politics, politicians wouldn't care about the donations, but would still only care about that which helps them win.
And exiting the realm of e-mail, there's thing about myself that I don't want the become common knowledge. As a victim of identity theft, I can personally attest to the fact that someone getting your name, address, date of birth, and social security number can wreck havoc with your life. Am I "ashamed" of any of that information? Of course not. However, that doesn't mean I want them to be public knowledge.
Then they simply either make up something you did (perhaps basing it on something that really happened so there's a grain of truth) or they take something that happened out of context so that it sounds much worse.
For example, suppose your list includes "drove drunk once when I was 19." A political hit squad could spread the word that you actually were arrested after you drove drunk, hit another car, and killed an 8 year old girl. Is it true? Of course not. But now you're spending time refuting this story instead of spreading your message and you're on the defensive. Or maybe they remove the "when I was 19" context. With some creative wording, they can make it seem like this happened very recently instead of years/decades ago (without outright claiming it was recent). Again, you'll be on the defensive and trying to provide context instead of spreading your ideas.
I'm not saying your idea isn't without merit, but don't underestimate the underhandedness of those in politics.
As a counter-point, I've been the target of a stalker online. She stalked an account where I used a pseudonym and didn't use my real name/address at all. Another person she stalked used his real name. She contacted his employer (a school) and told them he molested children. She contacted everyone on Facebook who shared his last name and lived in his general area to tell them this also. She even claimed to have contacted the police about him. Needless to say, this was all made up by her. (She claimed that god told her all this so you can guess how effective arguing with her is. After all, how can you argue against "god told me this directly"?) These allegations could easily have gotten him fired. He was lucky enough that he was able to warn his employer and his family/friends/police ignored her. Still, she was able to make his life miserable for years.
I'm thankful that this person DIDN'T know my real name, home address, employer, or any other information about me. Do I have anything to hide? No. However, people can do damage with false allegations if they have the right information about you. By the time you refute the allegations, the damage might already have been done.
We actually tried CBS's All Access service after getting a month free promotion. I've found the selection limited and there are a lot of ads. Every commercial break is about 1.5 minutes of ads. Contrast this with Hulu which has 20-30 seconds of ads in each break. It's amazing how quickly you lose your tolerance for long commercial breaks when you cut cable.
Exactly this. If you only take current technology into account, you'll wind up with a strictly applied law with few loopholes (at least technology-related loopholes). However, this law will quickly become obsolete once technology marches on. On the flip side, trying to write your law for all possible future technologies will result in a law so broad that it can be used against anyone/anything regardless of whether that was it's initial intent.
For example, look at the penalties for violating copyright. $750 - $150,000 per instance. This was written when "violating copyright" primarily meant commercially burning pirate CDs to sell on street corners for $1 each. Running a commercial operation like this could be very profitable and thus was worthy of taking down with massive fines. (Otherwise, you risked telling commercial pirates "You made $1 million pirating last year. Here's a $500 fine. Now don't do it again.")
Technology changed, as it often does, and now you have normal people violating copyright by using free software that lets them download copies of music and movies from other people while sharing their own music and movies. We can debate whether or not this should be illegal, but even if we assume it should be, it doesn't warrant a $150,000 per file uploaded/downloaded fine. These people aren't the original targets of the law, but they are being included in it.
What needs to happen is that the law should be amended to take into account current technology and give appropriate penalties for non-commercial pirates. Of course, the law as written is just fine with the RIAA/MPAA and they will fight to make sure that any rewrite is more severe and clamps down on new technologies. So you have a law that is behind the times and organizations who might be going the way of buggy whip manufacturers using all of their considerable political clout to make sure transforming technologies are outlawed.
Rats. Now my search for "How the invention of the sextant influenced politics" is going to get me in trouble!
Corporations are people.
All people are created equal.
It's just that some people (e.g. corporations, the wealthy) are more equal than others.
Thanks for the recommendation. I had looked at this app awhile back for my boys (12 and 8 years old). Given their love of playing games on their tablets, this could be a good tool to get them learning about programming while they are playing games.
Organisms might be transferred to Saturn, but given the conditions there they wouldn't be alive for long.
I hear this is their third version.
The first could be used to calculate angles. It was a protractor beam.
The second was used to black out sensitive text from documents. It was a redactor beam.
Horseradish does this also. Eat some freshly ground horseradish and it'll clear your sinuses right out. If you must get the bottled stuff, go for the white bottled horseradish. The purple stuff is mixed with beet juice and is weak. I could eat forkful after forkful of that stuff with no reaction. But one nice forkful of fresh horseradish and your sinuses clear RIGHT up!
One of my first introductions to card-based gaming was a game called Nuclear War. As you might guess, players lob nuclear warheads at each other trying to decimate each others' populations. One of the more inventive gaming rules was "Final Strike." A player whose last civilian died would be able to throw everything he still had in one last "I'm dying and will take everyone I can with me" maneuver at either a single player or at multiple players. If any of those players were then killed, they would launch their own Final Strike. It was quite common for games to end with everyone dead.
It was a fun game, but could also teach a valuable lesson about battling using nuclear weapons.
I didn't say it was the best choice - just that there are applications where you don't need a screen with your PC.
I think the main reason for getting something like this would be to use it as a tiny media center PC. You wouldn't need a screen because your TV becomes the screen.
Of course, whether you're want to use Windows 10 over all the other options is another discussion entirely.
Sadly, they're pushing even more Teach The Test in New York. The narrative now is that public school teachers are incompetent idiots who are failing our students. To prove this, there are high stakes tests are factored into annual teacher evaluations. In fact, half of their rating is determined by the tests. If the student doesn't improve on the second test by the amount that State Ed deems he/she should improve, then the teacher is judged to have failed and will be rated "ineffective." Even if the principal observes the classroom and sees that the teacher is doing a great job and the class is learning well, this doesn't override "the kids did poorly on the tests."
Teachers who get rated ineffective two years in a row can be fired in 90 days. If a teacher is rated ineffective three years in a row, then they MUST be fired within 30 days.
Needless to say, this has led to teachers focusing solely on the tests. After all, any time spent working on something other than the tests is time that might lead to the teacher being fired.
What's more, the tests are intentionally rigged against the teachers/students. The questions are confusing and the scoring can be skewed by the testing organization to lower student scores to better match how they thought the students would score. As John Oliver put it when he covered the standardized tests, it's like umpires in baseball being told "I know that was a home run, but this team has had too many home runs so just score it as a double instead."
The entire thing is sickening which is why my kids have opted out of the tests every year. The state doesn't like it when we do this, but we've been joined by more people every year. Last year, 200,000 students in NY opted out. The state has all but declared war on us. They've said that we're just pawns of the union and don't know what we're doing. (We were opting out before the teacher's union got involved.) They've callied parents a "special interest group." (And yet, apparently, charter schools whose businesses contribute to political campaigns AREN'T one.) They've insinuated that opting out is illegal despite saying in other venues that it's a parents right. Some have even said that Child Protective Services should be called on parents whose kids opt-out.
The end goal of all of this testing? To get rid of public schools and replace them with Charter Schools who pull public money, get to pick and choose students, send some of that money to politicians as campaign contributions, and make a profit off of our kids. NY's Governor Cuomo has come out and said he wants a "death penalty" (his exact words) for public schools and has put in place a receivership system to take the bottom performing schools and grant outside individuals full reign over the schools - including turning them into Charter Schools. Of course, there will always be bottom performing schools so it's just a matter of time before he gets his way and kills off public education. The Democrats are all lined up behind him (stabbing public education in the back while trying to excuse it by saying "it's with a heavy heart") and the Republicans are little better (not supporting Common Core, but in favor of more Charter Schools).
Except, to extend the metaphor, Goliath has a ton of endurance (legal funds) and David can't keep fighting indefinitely (has limited funds). So all Goliath needs to do is keep the fight (lawsuit) going until David collapses out of exhaustion (declares bankruptcy). Then Goliath wins, siezes everything David owned, and uses him as an example to scare future Davids into giving up (settling the lawsuit) quickly.
Step 1: Send a probe to the comet.
Step 2: Collect alcohol & bring it back to Earth.
Step 3: Bottle the alcohol.
Step 4: Sell it to rich folks who like getting drunk.
Step 5: Profit (for NASA).
We do this all the time also. Sometimes, the stores will even price match what's online so we get the online price but the immediacy of the physical store purchase.
We've run into this too. In our case, it was for a toy whose price difference was enough to be annoying to pay, but not so much that we wanted to stick around for an hour so we could buy it for less money. The store associate who explained why Walmart doesn't match Walmart.com admitted it was stupid and that she's done the "select pick up in store, wait an hour, pick it up" trick herself. Corporate had a policy against price matching themselves, though, so she'd get in trouble if she went against it.
It's like they're still so scared of the online business that they want to keep it at arm's length. Like it's some sort of infectious disease riddled person that they're forced to deal with. You can't get rid of them so you stay as far away from them as possible. If they properly integrated Walmart.com and Walmart's physical stores, they would only increase sales, not decrease them.
I've found Amazon pretty price-competitive. Sometimes more for some items, sometimes less. When Amazon is less, some stores (like Target) will price match if you show them the Amazon listing on your phone.
They don't even seem to comprehend that they can leverage their brick and mortar stores along with the online presence. Walmart and Walmart.com are two separate entities. One day, we were looking for a toy for our child and found it on Walmart.com for much less money. Somewhat reluctantly, we went into a local Walmart to buy the toy except that it was significantly more IN the store. So we brought it up to customer service to ask them to match the price on Walmart.com
We were told that they don't price match against their website. We could order it on Walmart.com with the "pick up in store" option, come back an hour later, and walk out of the store with that exact toy, but they couldn't directly sell us the toy for the price on the website. The sales associate understood our frustration, said she doesn't understand it either, and said she's done the "pick up in store" workaround herself, but orders from corporate were that you don't price match against the website in the store.
I wanted to reply to your comment, but couldn't decide what words to use or whether to shoot for funny, insightful, or informative.