Like I said, they know how many licenses they sold, and how many seats those licenses represent. They're just assuming (almost certainly incorrectly) that every seat represents an active user. Not exactly breaking news, this is how all "number of users of software X" numbers are calculated.
Eh, if that's what they're doing, who cares? They know how many licenses they've sold, and they know how many seats those licenses cover. They can't possibly know how many of those seats are actively used, so of course the only useful data they can share is the first set and ignore the second.
Saying they have "millions of users" isn't particularly meaningful, but at least in this case it's not really deceptive, either.
Anyway, I don't hate the US, so don't see this as a diatribe.. I just think there are things going wrong there, and education-related costs are a big part of that.
Don't worry, I won't ever accuse someone of hating the US just for pointing out parts that are breaking (as long as the criticism is constructive, as yours is). That would be pretty hypocritical of me, since I do it a lot myself.
The fact of the matter is, though, the US is broke. We have unfunded liabilities that are over 700% of our GDP, and those are likely to continue growing at their historical pace of doubling every few years. If the Federal government were to add yet another entitlement program to the budget (like they're trying to do with healthcare), our entire empire would fall apart. Granted, that's unavoidable at this point, but there's a difference between falling off your roof and falling out of a plane. We're currently doing the former, adding more debt on what we already owe would push us to the latter.
Ultimately, that makes all of this discussion rather academic. It might be a good idea for the government to provide free college education to all of the citizens who qualify (top 25% of high school graduates, maybe). But without the money to pay for it, this is all just wool gathering. We just can't afford it.
If your proposition were true, that universal tertiary education leads to greater wealth, then we would see some evidence of that in the world.
I did some quick Googling to check on these stats, and here's what I found: those countries that offer free or heavily subsidized tertiary education do, in general, tend to have higher GDP per capita than the United States. This would appear to bolster your argument. However, these same countries have debt-to-GDP ratios that are just staggering: nearly all of them have debt-to-GDP ratios of greater than 200% with Ireland having the highest at almost 1000% (Monaco tops the list of debt at over 1800%, but I couldn't find confirmation that they provide any kind of tertiary support, and since they have only one private university I thought it unlikely).
So on the one hand you're correct, there's a correlation between government sponsorship of education and individual wealth (at least as measured by GDP). However, this must be balanced by the obscene debt these countries are laboring under. And while it's highly unlikely that just the university educations are causing this debt, it's part and parcel of an approach to social welfare that is simply unmanageable in the long term. Because of that, I'm still not convinced that the US would be better off emulating these nations.
There's a bunch of countries out there where if you get admitted into a university, the government picks up the tuition bill, period. Those countries ain't richer than the USA.
Yes, and there's probably a good reason for that: they spend too much of the public dime on "free" education for everybody.
And kids keep getting approved for loans because of government backing of those loans. Take away all of the student loan programs that are out there to "help" kids afford college, and maybe college would become affordable.
Just the fact that you were modded Flamebait proves your central thesis: that standing up to bullies (or supporting those who do) gets you labeled a bully.
Not everything goes to court, sometimes people talk to each and resolve their differences.
That's only true when it's a civil matter. When it's a criminal matter, an overzealous DA can now make a name for himself through "stopping online bullying". I fail to see how this will help make things better.
Here's what killing "every man, woman, and child in your enemy's country" nets you: eternal war, with one person left standing.
Except that there are numerous examples from history of total war being waged, and peace and friendship following after (the American Civil War and WWII are two big ones). Of course, this requires that you follow the period of total war with total peace: you pay to rebuild the infrastructure of your former foe and support them economically, to the greatest extent possible, until they can stand on their own feet again. It also helps if you can replace their military with your own, even if only to a limited extent.
I absolutely agree with you on what was is, politics by other means. I also absolutely agree that without a clear political goal, and sticking to that goal, war is pointless and will drag on forever.
Even if it's true that the Japanese only fought against other countries' militaries and avoided civilian deaths (it's not), it's irrelevant. When you go to war, you go to war completely. Which means you kill every man, woman, and child in your enemy's country.
Don't want to do that? Don't go to war.
Besides, we killed more Japanese civilians with conventional weapons in any one air raid than we did with Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined. It wasn't the number of deaths that got the Emperor to take notice, it was the fact that we did it with just one bomb each time. The alternative was to invade the Japanese home islands, which, by conservative estimates, would've meant hundreds of thousands of dead Americans and millions of dead Japanese. Truman made the right call in dropping the bombs.
Storing all of your data and the lion's share of your processing on a remote machine, with only the bare minimum stored and run locally? Sounds a lot more like the past to me.
I've always mentally read it as "triple dub". That doesn't take so long to say, and most people understand what I mean by it when I use it in conversation.
This looks like it's designed for kids. What do you think is more likely, that a kid can handle swapping out flash cards, or that they can navigate a series of menus to apply diffs?
The Federation, at least in TNG and later, is not a socialist utopia, it's a militaristic police state where the Navy runs all research and development, polices not just international but also interstate borders (why are there are so many Starfleet ships within the Federation itself? don't they have a coast guard equivalent?), runs the only university worth mentioning, has total control over dozens, if not hundreds, of colonies, and essentially tells the President and Parliament what to do. I don't think that counts as anyone's idea of utopia.
From Wikipedia [wikipedia.org]: "a computer the size of the entire Earth, operating at the Bremermann's limit could perform approximately 10^75 mathematical computations per second.
Yes, and all of those calculations would end up along the lines of "6*9=42".
No big deal? No big deal??? Where the hell else am I supposed to go to look at pictures of hot Swedish women hitting the nightclub scene (in a way that's at least a little SFW) if I can't get to http://www.thelocal.se/?
Would her updates appearing on his web page get her arrested for 'contacting' him?
Probably. If there's a restraining order, you shouldn't be friends.
What about if he were subscribed to a mailing list or newsgroup that she posted in?
I don't know, what if you were members of the same church, or worked at the same office? Oh, wait, in those cases the person with the order against them can't go near those locations (at least not when the other person is present). So yeah, you can't stay on the same mailing list, either.
What about if she had one of those Facebook apps that likes to spam send him a message saying something like, "I know a secret about you! Click here to learn it!"?
Again, they can't stay friends if there's a restraining order. No contact means no contact.
Slashdot Mirror
Like I said, they know how many licenses they sold, and how many seats those licenses represent. They're just assuming (almost certainly incorrectly) that every seat represents an active user. Not exactly breaking news, this is how all "number of users of software X" numbers are calculated.
Eh, if that's what they're doing, who cares? They know how many licenses they've sold, and they know how many seats those licenses cover. They can't possibly know how many of those seats are actively used, so of course the only useful data they can share is the first set and ignore the second.
Saying they have "millions of users" isn't particularly meaningful, but at least in this case it's not really deceptive, either.
Anyway, I don't hate the US, so don't see this as a diatribe.. I just think there are things going wrong there, and education-related costs are a big part of that.
Don't worry, I won't ever accuse someone of hating the US just for pointing out parts that are breaking (as long as the criticism is constructive, as yours is). That would be pretty hypocritical of me, since I do it a lot myself.
The fact of the matter is, though, the US is broke. We have unfunded liabilities that are over 700% of our GDP, and those are likely to continue growing at their historical pace of doubling every few years. If the Federal government were to add yet another entitlement program to the budget (like they're trying to do with healthcare), our entire empire would fall apart. Granted, that's unavoidable at this point, but there's a difference between falling off your roof and falling out of a plane. We're currently doing the former, adding more debt on what we already owe would push us to the latter.
Ultimately, that makes all of this discussion rather academic. It might be a good idea for the government to provide free college education to all of the citizens who qualify (top 25% of high school graduates, maybe). But without the money to pay for it, this is all just wool gathering. We just can't afford it.
If your proposition were true, that universal tertiary education leads to greater wealth, then we would see some evidence of that in the world.
I did some quick Googling to check on these stats, and here's what I found: those countries that offer free or heavily subsidized tertiary education do, in general, tend to have higher GDP per capita than the United States. This would appear to bolster your argument. However, these same countries have debt-to-GDP ratios that are just staggering: nearly all of them have debt-to-GDP ratios of greater than 200% with Ireland having the highest at almost 1000% (Monaco tops the list of debt at over 1800%, but I couldn't find confirmation that they provide any kind of tertiary support, and since they have only one private university I thought it unlikely).
So on the one hand you're correct, there's a correlation between government sponsorship of education and individual wealth (at least as measured by GDP). However, this must be balanced by the obscene debt these countries are laboring under. And while it's highly unlikely that just the university educations are causing this debt, it's part and parcel of an approach to social welfare that is simply unmanageable in the long term. Because of that, I'm still not convinced that the US would be better off emulating these nations.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nominal)_per_capita
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_external_debt
There's a bunch of countries out there where if you get admitted into a university, the government picks up the tuition bill, period. Those countries ain't richer than the USA.
Yes, and there's probably a good reason for that: they spend too much of the public dime on "free" education for everybody.
And kids keep getting approved for loans because of government backing of those loans. Take away all of the student loan programs that are out there to "help" kids afford college, and maybe college would become affordable.
A coward dies a thousand times. A brave man dies only once.
Just the fact that you were modded Flamebait proves your central thesis: that standing up to bullies (or supporting those who do) gets you labeled a bully.
The south of the U.S. has a higher proportion of ignorant people than other areas.
I'm going to go out on a limb and assume you don't live in the southern US. Which makes this post top contender for Ironic Statement of the Year.
Not everything goes to court, sometimes people talk to each and resolve their differences.
That's only true when it's a civil matter. When it's a criminal matter, an overzealous DA can now make a name for himself through "stopping online bullying". I fail to see how this will help make things better.
Here's what killing "every man, woman, and child in your enemy's country" nets you: eternal war, with one person left standing.
Except that there are numerous examples from history of total war being waged, and peace and friendship following after (the American Civil War and WWII are two big ones). Of course, this requires that you follow the period of total war with total peace: you pay to rebuild the infrastructure of your former foe and support them economically, to the greatest extent possible, until they can stand on their own feet again. It also helps if you can replace their military with your own, even if only to a limited extent.
I absolutely agree with you on what was is, politics by other means. I also absolutely agree that without a clear political goal, and sticking to that goal, war is pointless and will drag on forever.
Even if it's true that the Japanese only fought against other countries' militaries and avoided civilian deaths (it's not), it's irrelevant. When you go to war, you go to war completely. Which means you kill every man, woman, and child in your enemy's country.
Don't want to do that? Don't go to war.
Besides, we killed more Japanese civilians with conventional weapons in any one air raid than we did with Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined. It wasn't the number of deaths that got the Emperor to take notice, it was the fact that we did it with just one bomb each time. The alternative was to invade the Japanese home islands, which, by conservative estimates, would've meant hundreds of thousands of dead Americans and millions of dead Japanese. Truman made the right call in dropping the bombs.
Storing all of your data and the lion's share of your processing on a remote machine, with only the bare minimum stored and run locally? Sounds a lot more like the past to me.
I've always mentally read it as "triple dub". That doesn't take so long to say, and most people understand what I mean by it when I use it in conversation.
Too bad you can't go directly to the secure site and bookmark it.
This looks like it's designed for kids. What do you think is more likely, that a kid can handle swapping out flash cards, or that they can navigate a series of menus to apply diffs?
KISS.
Right, like someone excited about the pocket Wiki would ever be invited to a dinner party.
Have you been to equatorial New Guinea? I have. The natives there spoke better English than most Americans I meet in day-to-day life.
The Federation, at least in TNG and later, is not a socialist utopia, it's a militaristic police state where the Navy runs all research and development, polices not just international but also interstate borders (why are there are so many Starfleet ships within the Federation itself? don't they have a coast guard equivalent?), runs the only university worth mentioning, has total control over dozens, if not hundreds, of colonies, and essentially tells the President and Parliament what to do. I don't think that counts as anyone's idea of utopia.
From Wikipedia [wikipedia.org]: "a computer the size of the entire Earth, operating at the Bremermann's limit could perform approximately 10^75 mathematical computations per second.
Yes, and all of those calculations would end up along the lines of "6*9=42".
No big deal? No big deal??? Where the hell else am I supposed to go to look at pictures of hot Swedish women hitting the nightclub scene (in a way that's at least a little SFW) if I can't get to http://www.thelocal.se/?
Of course, no one would be the least bit surprised, either.
Would her updates appearing on his web page get her arrested for 'contacting' him?
Probably. If there's a restraining order, you shouldn't be friends.
What about if he were subscribed to a mailing list or newsgroup that she posted in?
I don't know, what if you were members of the same church, or worked at the same office? Oh, wait, in those cases the person with the order against them can't go near those locations (at least not when the other person is present). So yeah, you can't stay on the same mailing list, either.
What about if she had one of those Facebook apps that likes to spam send him a message saying something like, "I know a secret about you! Click here to learn it!"?
Again, they can't stay friends if there's a restraining order. No contact means no contact.
Using a text-driven UI is not coding.
I'm 25, but my first coding experience was 22 years ago.
Playing with the Speak and Spell doesn't qualify as "coding".