The fact that todays senior citizens have received more than they paid into it (although factors of hundreds and thousands seems quite high) should not be the issue. They paid into the system to support senior citizens of their time, who were living within the economic requirements of the same time. As economic requirements of living are raised due to inflation, so must incomes be raised. Therefore, it doesn't matter how much they put in, they are getting the benefit of incomes of the present times.
One major factor that affects Social Security is the number of recipients versus the number of people putting money into the system, which has decreased since modern medicine has enabled more people to live to older ages. As this number decreases, things get worse for Social Security.
Another factor is the increase of the gap between the rich and the poor. Those making over $80,000 don't pay the full percentage into the system. As the gap increases, less money flows into the system per person (average Social Security income is lowered).
A mitigating factor would be to raise the $80,000 limit along with inflation. The current limit means that it is effectively cheaper to pay into the system (on an overall basis) now than when the $80,000 limit was instituted. You could even remove the limit altogether, which would go a long way.
However, your point is still taken that we now have a lower recipient to payer ratio than ever before.
There seems to be 2 camps. One camp feels that everyone should be responsible for themselves. If they don't properly save for retirement, then that is their problem. The other camp says that we should have a system that everyone participates in.
The problem I see is that if everyone is on their own, we are going to have hoards of seniors who do not have enough money to live off of. Then we are really going to have a crisis.
You could just go all the way and make a remote controlled blimp. I should think it would require less power and more of the power could go into steering and propulsion. Plus, they have some available already that you could hack.
OT: What software are you talking about? I think I missed the story, but it piques my curiosity.
I think the draw is similar to the draw of Diablo.
The Sims characters are always a work in progress, just like the main character in Diablo. With Diablo, I was able to play of hours looking for magical and unique items. When I got them, it was like a drug. I had to see what they were because they might have be awesome. I was always looking for new things, and even though I rarely found them, I found them enough that I continued to play. My wife is the same way with the Sims. She was constantly trying/finding/buying new things, some cooler than others, but there were enough cool things to keep her going.
Let me get this straight, they developed this tech with my tax dollars, and are licensing said tech to a company(probably some ex-employee) to make a profit off me, for R&D I paid for in the first place. Yeah, that makes sense. They should release the tech and let the best implementer win.
You have a good point. Everyone is so busy talking about the heat that this very important fact has been mostly ignored. To me, this is the really important story.
A check of the Sandia partnership web site shows that they generally offer non-exclusive license contracts with royalties, so we do get some return on our tax money and the technology is still available to other companies. There are exclusive licenses available, but they are generally limited in scope and term.
If anyone wants to find more information about this license in particular, they can contact partnerships@sandia.gov, or call (505) 284-2001 (according to the web site).
There's nothing preventing you from adding new network cards. You could easily add a.11g wireless card if you wish. I'm sure you can also disable the.11b built-in functionality, as well. This is simply taking what they think will be commonly used and integrating it into a smaller footprint.
Stop dropping the phone on the ground and surprise, the phone will work. I had a salesman try to pitch the same deal to me (T-Mobile Rep and ex-AT&T rep), and he eventually told me that most of the returns had to do with people dropping them and the SIM card would become loose. That caused the phone to fritz out.
Bull. I own a T68. I have yet to drop it at all. It has crashed, had garbled text, and behaved erratically at least twice a week since I got it. Dropping it is not the problem. Look at the SIM card! It held in so tight that you have to bend it to get it out. The SIM card, should it become loose during use, would not cause a problem with the phone. This is because the phone caches the SIM card information! Why do you think you have commands to "update from SIM" and "write to SIM"? Why do you think the phone takes so long to boot and you can't access your phone book in the first 30 seconds after it boots and finds your provider network?
The interface is pretty, but unfortunately the CPU and graphics chip are underpowered - the result is a strange laggy feeling where because the phone takes a fraction of a second to respond, it often leaves the user unsure as to if the button was pressed correctly... so the user ends up pressing the button again, and then fills the screen with redundant characters.
What FUD. What did you expect for a tiny phone with a 2" 256 color screen? You're not going to get the same snappy response as your video card in your computer. I'm happy with it. Sure, it lags, but I'm more happy with the fact that it has some kickin' battery life.
Do you mean to tell me that you think the screen requires so much horsepower that you can't have a responsive UI? It's not FUD. It's true. The phone lags a lot more than it should. It's probably a bad design. Why can't you push any buttons until the informational pop-ups go away? You should at least be able to push the END key to make it go away. Keypresses should be stored and handled ASAP. It's bad.
On the plus side, the phone does seem to do pretty well with reception. It's not perfect, but is so much better than any phone with Cingular when I had them.
Unfortunately, the drawbacks are very numerous. Why do I have 10 static images that I can't delete and replace and only 1 image that I can? The ads show it being used to send pictures. Why would I only want to hold one picture? I know why. Because AT&T wants you to use their online WAP sites, which you have to pay for. Why do I want to pay for excruciatingly slow access to pictures??
Um.. the direct tivo unit records directly from the stream. There is no analog conversion involved until you watch it. Its mpeg stream to disk direct. Its also dual tuner and avaliable now
The Tivo input is not MPEG, so that means that the Satellite decoder must decode the MPEG and produce an analog signal for the TV (since it doesn't know the Tivo is there), which the Tivo must convert to MPEG.
MPEG at Dish, Analog into Tivo, MPEG to disk. The MPEG compression is better at the satellite, so I'd rather have an integrated unit.
Re:They ain't engineers...
on
Beer In Space
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· Score: 1
Under acceleration, a force exists 180 degrees to the direction of acceleration
Acceleration is simply a change in velocity. Velocity has both a direction and a speed component, so acceleration is a change in either direction or speed.
How can you have tension in a string without force? And if you have force holding the yo yo to the centre of its axis, then you have an equal and opposite force pushing it outwards, away from the centre of its axis.
You have inertia, not a centrifugal force. The yo yo wants to keep going straight, but the string has to pull it to change the direction of the yo yo.
They reckon an 802.11 card flattened a Palm in 2.5 minutes, but Bluetooth gave only a slight dent in normal life
Now that's interesting. They reckon?? How about some facts? I'm not so sure I trust them reckoning about something that is pretty much competition.
Here is a Palm that is an 802.11 device. It runs for 9 to 10 hours with a bar code scanner and a web client running. The battery is 3.7V and 1400 mAH. A normal Palm has two 1150 mAH batteries in it, so the battery is not much bigger. I'm thinking that without the bar code scanner, it would last a lot longer.
I've always felt that when you give people all the information, they often can be trusted much more.
When I was in college, I was involved with a school program that was being threatened with being shut down because incoming students would complain that they were pressured into drinking. However, there were 400 students involved in the program and there was no way we could police them all. The students in charge of the program appealed to the other students, explained the problem and explained the consequences and we had almost no problems. A couple of years later, it had become a "rule", and it's now a problem again. My point is that when we explained the situation, they wanted to help and were able to.
As far as the UPS person flirting with a receptionist, if you receptionist has some sort of way of getting help or discreetly calling someone into the room, the flirting will not be a problem. I would think any judge would look at that and realize the company had done all it could. But then, IANAL.
Another company, called High Speed Network Solutions, has a wavelet compression product out. They have a demo page that shows video and images of the technology at http://www.hsns.com/technology.htm
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One major factor that affects Social Security is the number of recipients versus the number of people putting money into the system, which has decreased since modern medicine has enabled more people to live to older ages. As this number decreases, things get worse for Social Security.
Another factor is the increase of the gap between the rich and the poor. Those making over $80,000 don't pay the full percentage into the system. As the gap increases, less money flows into the system per person (average Social Security income is lowered).
A mitigating factor would be to raise the $80,000 limit along with inflation. The current limit means that it is effectively cheaper to pay into the system (on an overall basis) now than when the $80,000 limit was instituted. You could even remove the limit altogether, which would go a long way.
However, your point is still taken that we now have a lower recipient to payer ratio than ever before.
There seems to be 2 camps. One camp feels that everyone should be responsible for themselves. If they don't properly save for retirement, then that is their problem. The other camp says that we should have a system that everyone participates in.
The problem I see is that if everyone is on their own, we are going to have hoards of seniors who do not have enough money to live off of. Then we are really going to have a crisis.
You could just go all the way and make a remote controlled blimp. I should think it would require less power and more of the power could go into steering and propulsion. Plus, they have some available already that you could hack.
OT: What software are you talking about? I think I missed the story, but it piques my curiosity.
I think the draw is similar to the draw of Diablo.
The Sims characters are always a work in progress, just like the main character in Diablo. With Diablo, I was able to play of hours looking for magical and unique items. When I got them, it was like a drug. I had to see what they were because they might have be awesome. I was always looking for new things, and even though I rarely found them, I found them enough that I continued to play. My wife is the same way with the Sims. She was constantly trying/finding/buying new things, some cooler than others, but there were enough cool things to keep her going.
I see The Sims as Diablo, but without the horror.
It is free if you fill out a survey. Otherwise it's $50 to see the exhibits.
SOCOM has it as well. And I know it works because my TV menu shows it as progressive scan.
Not necessarily. I have an LCD screen that you can see well from all sides. My laptop has such problems, though.
A check of the Sandia partnership web site shows that they generally offer non-exclusive license contracts with royalties, so we do get some return on our tax money and the technology is still available to other companies. There are exclusive licenses available, but they are generally limited in scope and term.
If anyone wants to find more information about this license in particular, they can contact partnerships@sandia.gov, or call (505) 284-2001 (according to the web site).
There's nothing preventing you from adding new network cards. You could easily add a .11g wireless card if you wish. I'm sure you can also disable the .11b built-in functionality, as well. This is simply taking what they think will be commonly used and integrating it into a smaller footprint.
Do you mean to tell me that you think the screen requires so much horsepower that you can't have a responsive UI? It's not FUD. It's true. The phone lags a lot more than it should. It's probably a bad design. Why can't you push any buttons until the informational pop-ups go away? You should at least be able to push the END key to make it go away. Keypresses should be stored and handled ASAP. It's bad.
On the plus side, the phone does seem to do pretty well with reception. It's not perfect, but is so much better than any phone with Cingular when I had them.
Unfortunately, the drawbacks are very numerous. Why do I have 10 static images that I can't delete and replace and only 1 image that I can? The ads show it being used to send pictures. Why would I only want to hold one picture? I know why. Because AT&T wants you to use their online WAP sites, which you have to pay for. Why do I want to pay for excruciatingly slow access to pictures??
MPEG at Dish, Analog into Tivo, MPEG to disk. The MPEG compression is better at the satellite, so I'd rather have an integrated unit.
Under acceleration, a force exists 180 degrees to the direction of acceleration
Acceleration is simply a change in velocity. Velocity has both a direction and a speed component, so acceleration is a change in either direction or speed.
How can you have tension in a string without force? And if you have force holding the yo yo to the centre of its axis, then you have an equal and opposite force pushing it outwards, away from the centre of its axis.
You have inertia, not a centrifugal force. The yo yo wants to keep going straight, but the string has to pull it to change the direction of the yo yo.
They reckon an 802.11 card flattened a Palm in 2.5 minutes, but Bluetooth gave only a slight dent in normal life
Now that's interesting. They reckon?? How about some facts? I'm not so sure I trust them reckoning about something that is pretty much competition.
Here is a Palm that is an 802.11 device. It runs for 9 to 10 hours with a bar code scanner and a web client running. The battery is 3.7V and 1400 mAH. A normal Palm has two 1150 mAH batteries in it, so the battery is not much bigger. I'm thinking that without the bar code scanner, it would last a lot longer.
Definitely not 2.5 minutes.
I've always felt that when you give people all the information, they often can be trusted much more.
When I was in college, I was involved with a school program that was being threatened with being shut down because incoming students would complain that they were pressured into drinking. However, there were 400 students involved in the program and there was no way we could police them all. The students in charge of the program appealed to the other students, explained the problem and explained the consequences and we had almost no problems. A couple of years later, it had become a "rule", and it's now a problem again. My point is that when we explained the situation, they wanted to help and were able to.
As far as the UPS person flirting with a receptionist, if you receptionist has some sort of way of getting help or discreetly calling someone into the room, the flirting will not be a problem. I would think any judge would look at that and realize the company had done all it could. But then, IANAL.
Another company, called High Speed Network Solutions, has a wavelet compression product out. They have a demo page that shows video and images of the technology at http://www.hsns.com/technology.htm