To the average American, NASA is just a huge portion of the budget (Billions! of dollars) spent to put some clown in orbit a couple of times a year. This is, in fact, exactly what they want based on their knowledge of what NASA does. All the technology gained by what NASA has learned over the decades by doing the hard and impossible things is entirely lost on Joe Sixpack. And, unfortunately, government / private interaction is not an efficient (in the economic sense) sense, so that the effects of cuts won't be felt where the average person lives for 20 years. It's our own damned fault for living in a country filled with morons.
I'm just as jazzed at the possibility of a nuclear-powered car, or solar or wind for that matter.
That's the "efficient" part of electrics - they run on whatever the current source of power generation is, which means that in 10 years (if every/. story from the last two decades can be believed), you may get to run your Bolt on nuclear fusion. The only differences from Doc's converted DeLorean is that (1) it won't be mounted to your car (2) it won't travel through time (except in the boring, linear, forward-only sense), and (3) it won't be nearly as cool looking.
So I can buy that 96kWh all-electric Mazda 5 off the shelf? Oh, no? Well, then it's not really the same thing is it. (And, damn, if I had to drive 40 mph on a highway to get that kind of mileage, I'd grow old and die before I got to my destination.)
"Just 23 of 228 athletics departments at NCAA Division I public schools generated enough money on their own to cover their expenses in 2012. Of that group, 16 also received some type of subsidy — and 10 of those 16 athletics departments received more subsidy money in 2012 than they did in 2011."
Sports provides valuable marketing (for the top schools), and that has value, but don't kid yourself that sports is generating net revenue.
You want full employment? Outlaw computers. There'll be so many jobs we won't have enough people to fill them and you'll have an H1B program for computing exemption allowances every year.
It's better to think of it as $32 Billion per year, since that's how the government functions, or a $7600 benefit for 2.7% of the population.
There are 29 million children in the US in families which have more than 2 children, or about 15 million 3rds/4ths/5ths, etc. Why don't we stop subsidizing them? Just the tax exemption on those large families would be $5000 of the $7600 needed to cover the cost. Heck stop subsidizing the second kid and you've covered the whole cost and have change to spare! Quit paying people to punch out babies altogether and, boom, there's $200 Billion a year (it's a $3000 refundable amount per child), you can put the extra $170B towards the debt so those kids won't pass on the burden to their kids.
That may be wrong, but not as far off as you think. Given a flat distribution of 0-70 year olds (to make the math easier), and 4 years of free college, with 1/2 the 12 graders going to college, it's closer to $2100 per person per year, which just under 1/4 of the in-state college tuition average of $9400/yr.
As for the mortgages, there are 13.6T in mortgages. Bailing out the banks was only a couple trillion (all told), but since 2000, we've spent approximately 8.3T on defense alone (not including DHS, CIA, NSA, etc), or 61% of the value of all the mortgages in the US. We could have still been #1 in global military spending for those years and, with the bank bailout funds, paid off close to 70% of all US mortgages.
Is that why it costs the government less than $10,000 per child for primary and secondary school, but private primary and secondary schools cost more than $20,000 per year?
If the "market" solved the problem, private elementary and high schools should cost LESS than public schools, not more than double.
Nothing is done for the convenience of the user. Why should the website be any different?
And, for the record, if you can't figure out the USPS website you're an idiot. All these idiosyncrasies have been around for as long as I can remember on their site, and yet we ship out stuff all the time with the system.
All of my 2-3 year old iOS devices can upgrade to iOS8. Before that (DD's iPod Touch from 3 Christmases ago, iPad from 4 years ago) - you're out of luck, and it will never, ever get upgraded.
Maybe Paul Graham should go and live (and capitalize) the part of the world with the 95% of the awesomest programmers and leave this (apparent) intellectual backwater he calls home. I mean, what's he doing slumming here if 15-20% of the great worldwide programmers are bouncing around China and another 15-20% are making magic in India. If he wants to leverage brainpower, he should go where the brains are.
Oh, and I hope he doesn't let the door hit him in the ass on the way out.
It was probably sarcastic, but from a cost standpoint the GP has a point. Fox gives their signal "for free" OTA and makes money on advertising. Seems like the distributors could reverse the table if they wanted to play hardball. What good is a phone is you are unable to speak?
These bubble generators aren't free, sweetie! These things cost money (capital) and, even if they have a payback in lower operating costs, the capital cost will be reflected in shipping rates and be added incrementally to shipped goods which are bought by poor people. It's a way to take pennies from the minimum wage worker and aggregate it into hundreds of millions of dollars for the rich.
FTFA, "these powerplants are some of the most fuel efficient units in the world"
"the 15 largest ships in the world emit as much nitrogen oxide and sulphur oxide as the world’s 760 million cars"
So it's not really the climate-affecting carbon emissions that make these vessels "polluters" but rather that they use a fuel which contains excess sulfur and inefficiently scrub nitrogen-based compounds from the emissions, things that autos don't contend with or do because of regulation. It turns out that instead of 50 million cars, the biggest ship in the world put as much carbon into the atmosphere as about 15000-18000 cars. (109k HP @ super high efficiency vs 100HP in your typical automobile, factored for 280days@24h/dy vs average car at 400h/yr)
"You would never consider taking random things you find on the floor or street and putting them in your mouth"
You clearly don't have kids. Kids don't know better and are curious. Now extend that to every person who doesn't manage computers for a living or as part of their hobby. Interestingly, that includes almost everyone born before 1960 and after about 1995. The younger generation understands computers as little as the elderly - we've simplified the UI to the to the point that they're magic boxes to both age groups.
My 12 yo though her computer was "kind of slow". Turns out, she was out of drive space - filled up the 100GB on the SSD and never even realized it.
That's really the critical part, isn't it? If you're using this for backup you should never need to decrypt it. The only time you need it is if you have a local failure. Then you have to make a choice: give up the data or take a chance that they are at the server siphoning off your data as you request it.
For 99.999999999% of data, I'm going to say that the US government doesn't give a fuck and the chance that they're monitoring your account when your local copy fails and you are getting your data is going to be pretty darned near zero *unless* you happen to be the target of an investigation. If you are, I would suggest that you pay the extra money for something like SpiderOak, where all the encrypt/decrypt is done locally. Though, to be honest, if you're going to be watched by the Feds, a USB drive and a good fire safe is probably a better solution for backing up your "sensitive" data.
I thought it was a pretty good write up, without any particular spin on the marketing side (except, of course, it was on the BB site with the logo). There's no shame in presenting data that could be useful to those of us who don't have the opportunity (or budget) to buy a stack of drives and run them full out for 3 months. Though I'm sure I'm not the only person who thought it sounds kind of crazy to be adding a pod every day just to keep up with the data demands.
Um, because it's clearly not working? The whole "towards collapse" is simply a face-saving measure.
We deal with worse governments (in terms of "communism" or totalitarianism) every day, and they're our (nominal) allies. The whole Cuba thing is just a 50 year long pout. Nobody cares anymore. There's not some super-villian running Cuba that will destroy the American Way of Life if we join the rest of the world in trading with them.
We are pushing Russia because we disagree with their tactics in the Ukraine. From this year, not from 50 years ago. Totally different condition.
Sadly, no. Nobody hires people they don't need. It's the fallacy of the idea that lower taxes create jobs. I say this as a business owner: If you don't need employees to do the work, you are not going to hire them. Full stop.
Earning more money after taxes means only that the federal government is effectively subsidizing the companies.
Slashdot Mirror
To the average American, NASA is just a huge portion of the budget (Billions! of dollars) spent to put some clown in orbit a couple of times a year. This is, in fact, exactly what they want based on their knowledge of what NASA does. All the technology gained by what NASA has learned over the decades by doing the hard and impossible things is entirely lost on Joe Sixpack. And, unfortunately, government / private interaction is not an efficient (in the economic sense) sense, so that the effects of cuts won't be felt where the average person lives for 20 years. It's our own damned fault for living in a country filled with morons.
I'm just as jazzed at the possibility of a nuclear-powered car, or solar or wind for that matter.
That's the "efficient" part of electrics - they run on whatever the current source of power generation is, which means that in 10 years (if every /. story from the last two decades can be believed), you may get to run your Bolt on nuclear fusion. The only differences from Doc's converted DeLorean is that (1) it won't be mounted to your car (2) it won't travel through time (except in the boring, linear, forward-only sense), and (3) it won't be nearly as cool looking.
So I can buy that 96kWh all-electric Mazda 5 off the shelf? Oh, no? Well, then it's not really the same thing is it. (And, damn, if I had to drive 40 mph on a highway to get that kind of mileage, I'd grow old and die before I got to my destination.)
You'd have to be nuts to try and wash an electric car.
...Molt?
Thank you, I'll be here all week. Don't forget to tip your servers.
No, not really. The vast majority of Division I schools lose money on athletics, none of the Division III schools cover their athletic expenses.
from http://www.usatoday.com/story/...
"Just 23 of 228 athletics departments at NCAA Division I public schools generated enough money on their own to cover their expenses in 2012. Of that group, 16 also received some type of subsidy — and 10 of those 16 athletics departments received more subsidy money in 2012 than they did in 2011."
Sports provides valuable marketing (for the top schools), and that has value, but don't kid yourself that sports is generating net revenue.
You want full employment? Outlaw computers. There'll be so many jobs we won't have enough people to fill them and you'll have an H1B program for computing exemption allowances every year.
Oops - the $5k actually covers the $3800 annual cost all by itself. (Though my "stop subsidizing baby making" comment stands. $200B is a lot of cash)
It's better to think of it as $32 Billion per year, since that's how the government functions, or a $7600 benefit for 2.7% of the population.
There are 29 million children in the US in families which have more than 2 children, or about 15 million 3rds/4ths/5ths, etc. Why don't we stop subsidizing them? Just the tax exemption on those large families would be $5000 of the $7600 needed to cover the cost. Heck stop subsidizing the second kid and you've covered the whole cost and have change to spare! Quit paying people to punch out babies altogether and, boom, there's $200 Billion a year (it's a $3000 refundable amount per child), you can put the extra $170B towards the debt so those kids won't pass on the burden to their kids.
Ted Knight's is the better quote here, " Well, the world needs ditch diggers, too."
That may be wrong, but not as far off as you think. Given a flat distribution of 0-70 year olds (to make the math easier), and 4 years of free college, with 1/2 the 12 graders going to college, it's closer to $2100 per person per year, which just under 1/4 of the in-state college tuition average of $9400/yr.
As for the mortgages, there are 13.6T in mortgages. Bailing out the banks was only a couple trillion (all told), but since 2000, we've spent approximately 8.3T on defense alone (not including DHS, CIA, NSA, etc), or 61% of the value of all the mortgages in the US. We could have still been #1 in global military spending for those years and, with the bank bailout funds, paid off close to 70% of all US mortgages.
Is that why it costs the government less than $10,000 per child for primary and secondary school, but private primary and secondary schools cost more than $20,000 per year?
If the "market" solved the problem, private elementary and high schools should cost LESS than public schools, not more than double.
Nothing is done for the convenience of the user. Why should the website be any different?
And, for the record, if you can't figure out the USPS website you're an idiot. All these idiosyncrasies have been around for as long as I can remember on their site, and yet we ship out stuff all the time with the system.
I feel like I've just been trolled by BH.
HP Workstation with a handle bolted to the top.
All of my 2-3 year old iOS devices can upgrade to iOS8. Before that (DD's iPod Touch from 3 Christmases ago, iPad from 4 years ago) - you're out of luck, and it will never, ever get upgraded.
Maybe Paul Graham should go and live (and capitalize) the part of the world with the 95% of the awesomest programmers and leave this (apparent) intellectual backwater he calls home. I mean, what's he doing slumming here if 15-20% of the great worldwide programmers are bouncing around China and another 15-20% are making magic in India. If he wants to leverage brainpower, he should go where the brains are.
Oh, and I hope he doesn't let the door hit him in the ass on the way out.
It was probably sarcastic, but from a cost standpoint the GP has a point. Fox gives their signal "for free" OTA and makes money on advertising. Seems like the distributors could reverse the table if they wanted to play hardball. What good is a phone is you are unable to speak?
These bubble generators aren't free, sweetie! These things cost money (capital) and, even if they have a payback in lower operating costs, the capital cost will be reflected in shipping rates and be added incrementally to shipped goods which are bought by poor people. It's a way to take pennies from the minimum wage worker and aggregate it into hundreds of millions of dollars for the rich.
FTFA,
"these powerplants are some of the most fuel efficient units in the world"
"the 15 largest ships in the world emit as much nitrogen oxide and sulphur oxide as the world’s 760 million cars"
So it's not really the climate-affecting carbon emissions that make these vessels "polluters" but rather that they use a fuel which contains excess sulfur and inefficiently scrub nitrogen-based compounds from the emissions, things that autos don't contend with or do because of regulation. It turns out that instead of 50 million cars, the biggest ship in the world put as much carbon into the atmosphere as about 15000-18000 cars. (109k HP @ super high efficiency vs 100HP in your typical automobile, factored for 280days@24h/dy vs average car at 400h/yr)
"You would never consider taking random things you find on the floor or street and putting them in your mouth"
You clearly don't have kids. Kids don't know better and are curious. Now extend that to every person who doesn't manage computers for a living or as part of their hobby. Interestingly, that includes almost everyone born before 1960 and after about 1995. The younger generation understands computers as little as the elderly - we've simplified the UI to the to the point that they're magic boxes to both age groups.
My 12 yo though her computer was "kind of slow". Turns out, she was out of drive space - filled up the 100GB on the SSD and never even realized it.
"while you're accessing your data"
That's really the critical part, isn't it? If you're using this for backup you should never need to decrypt it. The only time you need it is if you have a local failure. Then you have to make a choice: give up the data or take a chance that they are at the server siphoning off your data as you request it.
For 99.999999999% of data, I'm going to say that the US government doesn't give a fuck and the chance that they're monitoring your account when your local copy fails and you are getting your data is going to be pretty darned near zero *unless* you happen to be the target of an investigation. If you are, I would suggest that you pay the extra money for something like SpiderOak, where all the encrypt/decrypt is done locally. Though, to be honest, if you're going to be watched by the Feds, a USB drive and a good fire safe is probably a better solution for backing up your "sensitive" data.
I thought it was a pretty good write up, without any particular spin on the marketing side (except, of course, it was on the BB site with the logo). There's no shame in presenting data that could be useful to those of us who don't have the opportunity (or budget) to buy a stack of drives and run them full out for 3 months. Though I'm sure I'm not the only person who thought it sounds kind of crazy to be adding a pod every day just to keep up with the data demands.
Um, because it's clearly not working? The whole "towards collapse" is simply a face-saving measure.
We deal with worse governments (in terms of "communism" or totalitarianism) every day, and they're our (nominal) allies. The whole Cuba thing is just a 50 year long pout. Nobody cares anymore. There's not some super-villian running Cuba that will destroy the American Way of Life if we join the rest of the world in trading with them.
We are pushing Russia because we disagree with their tactics in the Ukraine. From this year, not from 50 years ago. Totally different condition.
So then we all get to subscribe to $10-30/yr private DNSs which aren't poisoned, I presume. It's not like I'm using my ISP for my DNS.
Sadly, no. Nobody hires people they don't need. It's the fallacy of the idea that lower taxes create jobs. I say this as a business owner: If you don't need employees to do the work, you are not going to hire them. Full stop.
Earning more money after taxes means only that the federal government is effectively subsidizing the companies.