"Substantial interest" is irrelevant when Federal law says it's illegal, the new Administration has people who hate it (particularly the guy about to be confirmed as AG), and there's zero evidence that Congress is going to change the law.
Oh bullshit. Federal laws and enforcement always trump (no pun intended) state or local laws. States can pass whatever crazy laws they want, but when the Federal government and its laws overrule them, they're unenforceable. The only reason the states have been getting away with this stuff is because of weak Federal enforcement in the past decade. An AG and DEA run by anti-pot crusaders can change all that in a heartbeat. The states could try to tie it up in court by suing the Federal government over this idiotic Prohibition law, but that's not guaranteed to get far; after all, it's been illegal (and Schedule 1) for decades now, with no signs of this changing despite all the state actions. Of course, this can also turn into an ugly fight between the States and the fed, with state/local governments refusing to cooperate with the DEA, but that can only go so far too; the federal government can activate the National Guard if it really needs to if it seems like the states are in open rebellion.
If that's indeed the case, there's other ways to deliver nicotine into the bloodstream than to burn it and force everyone around you to smell it. Chewing tobacco has been around for centuries. There's even nicotine "patches" which avoid most of the health problems associated with other delivery methods.
I agree that lots of people, including his dumb supporters, smoke pot these days. But that doesn't mean that Sessions is going to care about that. Making money (and lots of it) off MJ is irrelevant to him; immigration (both legal and illegal) makes a lot of money too, but Sessions is an anti-immigration crusader too. Money isn't the factor here as it is with traditional pro-business Republicans.
Oh yeah, the other huge thing that was missing is session save/restore. Like noone ever logs out? Or reboots? The kde developers seem to think that this isn't a useful feature and don't plan to implement it
WTF?? This is a pretty critical feature for me. What is wrong with these people? If I wanted a Gnome3 clone, I'd just use Gnome3.
You're missing something with sitting: 1) people can't stand up all day long (that also leads to health problems), and 2) people need to sit down to do many jobs which are necessary for society. The only problem with sitting is when people do it too much, and never get any other exercise. Well, no shit sherlock. Otherwise, there's plenty of people who spend a decent amount of time sitting, and are living longer than people ever did in history.
By contrast, what argument do you have in support of smoking? What benefit does it provide? There is none. It's entirely unnecessary and bad. There is simply no good reason to do it at all.
As for diet, there's plenty we can be doing there too, but a lot is like sitting: too much of some foods is bad for you, but in certain amounts isn't a problem (or possibly even healthy, as some contend with red wine). But we already do have government action to make foods a little healthier, such as the trans fat ban. Trans fat is undeniably bad; there's simply no good reason to use it at all, and it causes real health problems, so banning it was the right move. Food doesn't need it for taste, it was only used so food companies could save money and increase profits.
They don't have to. They can simply pass that cost on to the subscriber with a hefty surcharge for AppleTV. Currently (according to TFS) Roku users get a $2.50 discount. They could easily support AppleTV by giving them a $20/month surcharge. AppleTV users will be happy to pay that, esp. since they're soooooo worried about being seen as "low-income".
The problem with these proclamations is: where are you going to go?
Yeah, Firefox has been making some questionable decisions lately, but what's the alternative? I don't think PaleMoon is significantly different. There's always Chrome, but that's loaded with Google spyware. And there's the fully open-source Chromium, but (like Chrome) it's terrible at memory management and opens all the tabs in all windows at once, stupidly, whereas Firefox (when you restore a session) waits until you view a tab before it actually loads it. Why Chrom* are too stupid to do this after all this time, I have no idea, but it's a deal-breaker for me as I have lots of tabs open.
The US doesn't need laws like that, at least not nationwide. Instead, it should be done state-by-state, and people who come from pro-smoking states should be forced to pay higher taxes when they move to non-smoking states, to compensate for the higher burden on the public health system they'll present.
If Nevada is too dumb to enact some decent anti-smoking laws like everyone else, then its citizens should pay the price.
The problem with your argument here is that, in reality, "the rich" don't smoke remotely as much as the poor. The rich seem to be too smart for that. I'm sure there's a few exceptions here and there, but there's a reason you don't see cigarettes and chewing tobacco sold in fancy boutique shops on Rodeo Drive and other such places.
I hate being around people who have smoked (I think they grow insensitive to the smell and don't realize how it permeates everything they own).
This isn't true. It's true for current smokers, but it's not true, in my experience, for people who are former smokers. (You said, "people who have smoked", which implies former smokers.) Instead, IME, the former smokers are frequently the most ardently anti-smoking people you'll ever meet, and seem especially sensitive to the smell of cigarette smoke, and complain about it the most.
The world is moving at the moment to allow Marijuana to be legalized
No, it's not. The US was, but now that Trump is elected and Sessions is about to be appointed AG, that's going to come to a quick halt as the Federal government starts throwing pot smokers in prison for decades for simple possession. Jeff Sessions is a huge anti-marijuana crusader. Luckily I'm not a user of that, but I know people who are, and who are also big Trump fans, and it's really funny (and sad at the same time) to see them justify their fandom of Trump/Sessions (and specifically Sessions) and try to handwave away Sessions' anti-pot position, all because they hate Hispanics and Muslims so much.
Any good EE should be able to easily wire a house, even if they've never done such work. However, they might not do it to code unless you give them the actual code to read beforehand, or some condensed version of it.
The code is, in general, a good idea to follow (though it probably doesn't get updated as fast as it should). It has evolved to prevent house fires and other problems. Just because a EE can figure out the basic theory behind house wiring pretty quickly given their educational background doesn't mean they'll figure out, on-the-fly, why certain practices are bad and can result in a fire later.
But honestly, it's pretty easy these days just looking at the parts they sell at Home Depot.
You're forgetting about Ting. If you don't use your phone that much, it's quite cheap. And customer service is excellent. I am, however, looking at switching to Republic Wireless because of the unlimited calls and texts, as my usage of these has gone way up lately due to a new girlfriend. But Ting is still a great option IMO and I recommend checking it out.
But your general point is great: why does anyone bother with the traditional carriers any more? There's many dozens of MVNOs out there, for all the main services (AT&T, Sprint, Verizon, T-Mo), and it seems to be easy to find a much better deal with one of them. The only thing they don't seem to be good for is if you use a LOT of data, or you really really need to be able to go to a physical store and have someone show you how to use your phone or fix something on it.
I never said the solution wasn't known. There's plenty of feasible ideas of how to handle such a threat. The problem is that none of them are actually possible with our current technical capability. If we knew of a predicted impact tomorrow (that was 90 days away), there's absolutely no way we could make even one Saturn V missile. We'd have a hard time getting one of our existing rockets ready in that time, let alone something we've totally forgotten how to build, or something similar in payload capability. And for "a number", there's just no way. We don't have all that stuff built and ready. It would take quite some time to get a bunch of big-ass rockets built. Then there's the problem with the payloads. Could we even make payloads which would deflect the asteroid? Could we repurpose some existing ICBM warheads for this? Somehow I doubt it's that easy.
For a truly effective asteroid deflection system, we need a system that's actually designed for the purpose, tested by simulation, built, and then run through some actual field testing to make sure the warheads (whatever they are, whether they're nuclear bombs or some kind of thrusters that attach to the asteroid) actually work in space. We don't have any of that. Even if we could throw together something in time from spare parts, it's a crapshoot if it'd actually work and not fail at some stage.
The problem you seem to have is that you're assuming people are going to breathe them. I specifically said in my post that I was assuming the use of fireplaces in rural areas.
Particulates are bad on roads because they're breathed in by people in other vehicles, and by pedestrians, as particulate emissions settle to the ground relatively quickly. This is a big problem with diesel buses because they're used in urban areas around pedestrians, and why they should be banned. Fireplaces aren't used on roads, so their emissions are only bad around their immediate area, which is either a residential area, or around the fireplace user's home itself. The former only applies in municipalities usually, and the latter is their own problem.
There's little way to make a reasonable estimate, just based on the size alone. You also need to know the delta-V (the actual velocity it'll impact the Earth), the angle of entry into the atmosphere, and the composition of the asteroid. It could burn up (as many already do, we don't even see many), or it could wipe out a city's downtown area.
If we get hit by a really big one, a year's advance notice won't be enough time to make a significant difference, given that we don't have any actual systems designed and built to do anything about it. We'd just be able to track it on its way in and have parties for a year before our annihilation. Serves us right, too. We've had plenty of warning about these things.
I think it's an experiment by the aliens to determine if we're smart enough to survive or not. A test, if you will.
If we were smart, now that we have the tech to see these NEO asteroids and maybe do something about them, we'd be a little alarmed after seeing so many coming so close, plus one actually hitting us (the Russian impact a few years ago in Chelyabinsk (sp?)), and would be investing real resources into not only looking for these things, but also building systems to counter these threats, such as remote-control interceptors which slowly redirect them into safer orbits.
We're not doing almost any of this. So we're failing the test. So the next step is that we're going to be hit with a planet-killer. Maybe the aliens will be intentionally sending it our way, or maybe it's been there all along and the aliens have been nudging these small ones towards us to give us a little "assist", hoping that we'd wake up and pay attention to a serious threat to our common survival. So the aliens will probably be disappointed but decide that intervention and rescuing such an obviously short-sighted race is contrary to the interests of their galactic society, so we can look forward to the same fate the dinosaurs suffered.
I think this is an excellent move for Oracle, and I enthusiastically applaud them. I think the company will experience significant revenue increases with this pricing change, and that's always a good thing. In fact, I encourage them to raise prices even more.
For all the naysayers, as I always say when someone complains about Windows, "if you don't like it, don't use it".
and if your job does not force you to use the Windows OS, you are not locked in to Microsoft, no matter what else makes you think you are.
I disagree with this one I use computers at work running Windows, but I, personally, am not "locked into Microsoft". I just use it while I'm at work. Outside of work, I can do whatever I want, and even while at work, if there's some kind of big problem with Windows (ransomware, etc.), it's not *my* problem, it's my employer's problem. I don't work in IT, so all I have to do is complain to IT. If it prevents me from getting my work done, again, no problem, I can just blame IT and MS (provided it's obvious that my computer really has failed in such a way). If my employer wants to keep getting abused, that's their choice, and it'll cost them eventually. I'm not locked in; I can always look for another job.
But if it's your computer or your business, you're right. The more you support companies that abuse you, the more you will be abused.
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"Substantial interest" is irrelevant when Federal law says it's illegal, the new Administration has people who hate it (particularly the guy about to be confirmed as AG), and there's zero evidence that Congress is going to change the law.
Oh bullshit. Federal laws and enforcement always trump (no pun intended) state or local laws. States can pass whatever crazy laws they want, but when the Federal government and its laws overrule them, they're unenforceable. The only reason the states have been getting away with this stuff is because of weak Federal enforcement in the past decade. An AG and DEA run by anti-pot crusaders can change all that in a heartbeat. The states could try to tie it up in court by suing the Federal government over this idiotic Prohibition law, but that's not guaranteed to get far; after all, it's been illegal (and Schedule 1) for decades now, with no signs of this changing despite all the state actions. Of course, this can also turn into an ugly fight between the States and the fed, with state/local governments refusing to cooperate with the DEA, but that can only go so far too; the federal government can activate the National Guard if it really needs to if it seems like the states are in open rebellion.
If that's indeed the case, there's other ways to deliver nicotine into the bloodstream than to burn it and force everyone around you to smell it. Chewing tobacco has been around for centuries. There's even nicotine "patches" which avoid most of the health problems associated with other delivery methods.
I agree that lots of people, including his dumb supporters, smoke pot these days. But that doesn't mean that Sessions is going to care about that. Making money (and lots of it) off MJ is irrelevant to him; immigration (both legal and illegal) makes a lot of money too, but Sessions is an anti-immigration crusader too. Money isn't the factor here as it is with traditional pro-business Republicans.
Oh yeah, the other huge thing that was missing is session save/restore. Like noone ever logs out? Or reboots? The kde developers seem to think that this isn't a useful feature and don't plan to implement it
WTF?? This is a pretty critical feature for me. What is wrong with these people? If I wanted a Gnome3 clone, I'd just use Gnome3.
You're missing something with sitting: 1) people can't stand up all day long (that also leads to health problems), and 2) people need to sit down to do many jobs which are necessary for society. The only problem with sitting is when people do it too much, and never get any other exercise. Well, no shit sherlock. Otherwise, there's plenty of people who spend a decent amount of time sitting, and are living longer than people ever did in history.
By contrast, what argument do you have in support of smoking? What benefit does it provide? There is none. It's entirely unnecessary and bad. There is simply no good reason to do it at all.
As for diet, there's plenty we can be doing there too, but a lot is like sitting: too much of some foods is bad for you, but in certain amounts isn't a problem (or possibly even healthy, as some contend with red wine). But we already do have government action to make foods a little healthier, such as the trans fat ban. Trans fat is undeniably bad; there's simply no good reason to use it at all, and it causes real health problems, so banning it was the right move. Food doesn't need it for taste, it was only used so food companies could save money and increase profits.
They don't have to. They can simply pass that cost on to the subscriber with a hefty surcharge for AppleTV. Currently (according to TFS) Roku users get a $2.50 discount. They could easily support AppleTV by giving them a $20/month surcharge. AppleTV users will be happy to pay that, esp. since they're soooooo worried about being seen as "low-income".
Damn Slashdot and no ability to edit posts....
Anyway, same goes for KDE. What's the alternative? Gnome and its forks are all even worse in my view, and things like Xcfe are too minimalist.
The problem with these proclamations is: where are you going to go?
Yeah, Firefox has been making some questionable decisions lately, but what's the alternative? I don't think PaleMoon is significantly different. There's always Chrome, but that's loaded with Google spyware. And there's the fully open-source Chromium, but (like Chrome) it's terrible at memory management and opens all the tabs in all windows at once, stupidly, whereas Firefox (when you restore a session) waits until you view a tab before it actually loads it. Why Chrom* are too stupid to do this after all this time, I have no idea, but it's a deal-breaker for me as I have lots of tabs open.
The US doesn't need laws like that, at least not nationwide. Instead, it should be done state-by-state, and people who come from pro-smoking states should be forced to pay higher taxes when they move to non-smoking states, to compensate for the higher burden on the public health system they'll present.
If Nevada is too dumb to enact some decent anti-smoking laws like everyone else, then its citizens should pay the price.
The problem with your argument here is that, in reality, "the rich" don't smoke remotely as much as the poor. The rich seem to be too smart for that. I'm sure there's a few exceptions here and there, but there's a reason you don't see cigarettes and chewing tobacco sold in fancy boutique shops on Rodeo Drive and other such places.
Do you have some sort of evidence that smoking does *not* cause massive long-term health problems like emphysema and lung cancer?
If not, then yes, he *does* know what's best for people.
I hate being around people who have smoked (I think they grow insensitive to the smell and don't realize how it permeates everything they own).
This isn't true. It's true for current smokers, but it's not true, in my experience, for people who are former smokers. (You said, "people who have smoked", which implies former smokers.) Instead, IME, the former smokers are frequently the most ardently anti-smoking people you'll ever meet, and seem especially sensitive to the smell of cigarette smoke, and complain about it the most.
The world is moving at the moment to allow Marijuana to be legalized
No, it's not. The US was, but now that Trump is elected and Sessions is about to be appointed AG, that's going to come to a quick halt as the Federal government starts throwing pot smokers in prison for decades for simple possession. Jeff Sessions is a huge anti-marijuana crusader. Luckily I'm not a user of that, but I know people who are, and who are also big Trump fans, and it's really funny (and sad at the same time) to see them justify their fandom of Trump/Sessions (and specifically Sessions) and try to handwave away Sessions' anti-pot position, all because they hate Hispanics and Muslims so much.
I think I'd go into medicine.
Florida? Yeah, I left there because of the heat, humidity, and hurricanes.
Don't forget alligators and FloridaMan.
Any good EE should be able to easily wire a house, even if they've never done such work. However, they might not do it to code unless you give them the actual code to read beforehand, or some condensed version of it.
The code is, in general, a good idea to follow (though it probably doesn't get updated as fast as it should). It has evolved to prevent house fires and other problems. Just because a EE can figure out the basic theory behind house wiring pretty quickly given their educational background doesn't mean they'll figure out, on-the-fly, why certain practices are bad and can result in a fire later.
But honestly, it's pretty easy these days just looking at the parts they sell at Home Depot.
You're forgetting about Ting. If you don't use your phone that much, it's quite cheap. And customer service is excellent. I am, however, looking at switching to Republic Wireless because of the unlimited calls and texts, as my usage of these has gone way up lately due to a new girlfriend. But Ting is still a great option IMO and I recommend checking it out.
But your general point is great: why does anyone bother with the traditional carriers any more? There's many dozens of MVNOs out there, for all the main services (AT&T, Sprint, Verizon, T-Mo), and it seems to be easy to find a much better deal with one of them. The only thing they don't seem to be good for is if you use a LOT of data, or you really really need to be able to go to a physical store and have someone show you how to use your phone or fix something on it.
I never said the solution wasn't known. There's plenty of feasible ideas of how to handle such a threat. The problem is that none of them are actually possible with our current technical capability. If we knew of a predicted impact tomorrow (that was 90 days away), there's absolutely no way we could make even one Saturn V missile. We'd have a hard time getting one of our existing rockets ready in that time, let alone something we've totally forgotten how to build, or something similar in payload capability. And for "a number", there's just no way. We don't have all that stuff built and ready. It would take quite some time to get a bunch of big-ass rockets built. Then there's the problem with the payloads. Could we even make payloads which would deflect the asteroid? Could we repurpose some existing ICBM warheads for this? Somehow I doubt it's that easy.
For a truly effective asteroid deflection system, we need a system that's actually designed for the purpose, tested by simulation, built, and then run through some actual field testing to make sure the warheads (whatever they are, whether they're nuclear bombs or some kind of thrusters that attach to the asteroid) actually work in space. We don't have any of that. Even if we could throw together something in time from spare parts, it's a crapshoot if it'd actually work and not fail at some stage.
The problem you seem to have is that you're assuming people are going to breathe them. I specifically said in my post that I was assuming the use of fireplaces in rural areas.
Particulates are bad on roads because they're breathed in by people in other vehicles, and by pedestrians, as particulate emissions settle to the ground relatively quickly. This is a big problem with diesel buses because they're used in urban areas around pedestrians, and why they should be banned. Fireplaces aren't used on roads, so their emissions are only bad around their immediate area, which is either a residential area, or around the fireplace user's home itself. The former only applies in municipalities usually, and the latter is their own problem.
There's little way to make a reasonable estimate, just based on the size alone. You also need to know the delta-V (the actual velocity it'll impact the Earth), the angle of entry into the atmosphere, and the composition of the asteroid. It could burn up (as many already do, we don't even see many), or it could wipe out a city's downtown area.
If we get hit by a really big one, a year's advance notice won't be enough time to make a significant difference, given that we don't have any actual systems designed and built to do anything about it. We'd just be able to track it on its way in and have parties for a year before our annihilation. Serves us right, too. We've had plenty of warning about these things.
The problem with that is there's some fantastic museums there.
I think it's an experiment by the aliens to determine if we're smart enough to survive or not. A test, if you will.
If we were smart, now that we have the tech to see these NEO asteroids and maybe do something about them, we'd be a little alarmed after seeing so many coming so close, plus one actually hitting us (the Russian impact a few years ago in Chelyabinsk (sp?)), and would be investing real resources into not only looking for these things, but also building systems to counter these threats, such as remote-control interceptors which slowly redirect them into safer orbits.
We're not doing almost any of this. So we're failing the test. So the next step is that we're going to be hit with a planet-killer. Maybe the aliens will be intentionally sending it our way, or maybe it's been there all along and the aliens have been nudging these small ones towards us to give us a little "assist", hoping that we'd wake up and pay attention to a serious threat to our common survival. So the aliens will probably be disappointed but decide that intervention and rescuing such an obviously short-sighted race is contrary to the interests of their galactic society, so we can look forward to the same fate the dinosaurs suffered.
I think this is an excellent move for Oracle, and I enthusiastically applaud them. I think the company will experience significant revenue increases with this pricing change, and that's always a good thing. In fact, I encourage them to raise prices even more.
For all the naysayers, as I always say when someone complains about Windows, "if you don't like it, don't use it".
and if your job does not force you to use the Windows OS, you are not locked in to Microsoft, no matter what else makes you think you are.
I disagree with this one I use computers at work running Windows, but I, personally, am not "locked into Microsoft". I just use it while I'm at work. Outside of work, I can do whatever I want, and even while at work, if there's some kind of big problem with Windows (ransomware, etc.), it's not *my* problem, it's my employer's problem. I don't work in IT, so all I have to do is complain to IT. If it prevents me from getting my work done, again, no problem, I can just blame IT and MS (provided it's obvious that my computer really has failed in such a way). If my employer wants to keep getting abused, that's their choice, and it'll cost them eventually. I'm not locked in; I can always look for another job.
But if it's your computer or your business, you're right. The more you support companies that abuse you, the more you will be abused.