Which goes back to what services are needed, by whom, and who needs to pay for them.
Cali is just one example of mismanaged money, and where attitudes like "we can't cut service x" or "we can't raise tax y to pay for x" end up at exactly that endpoint of spending more than you have.
Interstate roads, communications networks, power networks, and all the other services are 'relatively new' as well.
Society costs a lot more to maintain than it did when the US was founded, and the outmoded attitude that it's stealing from the people is exactly the sort of situation that leads to massive debts and entire states bordering on bankrupt (ie, California).
You take away a lot more free will when society can't pay the police, firefighters, ambulances, keep healthy air to breathe and water to drink.
Taxes are not just to fund government, but to fund society, which is a bit broader in concept.
When everyone drives cars throwing out pollution that pollution goes into the air, a COMMON, which is not owned by a single person, and no single person has responsibility to clean this damage or prevent it.
Thus a tax on petrol as it pertains to the amount of pollution should have the money directed to fixing these issues, with clean energy investments, cleaner car techs, maybe even tax CUTS for cars that use less or don't use petrol.
Taxes are not just to fund government, but to shuffle money around in ways that benefit society as a whole, the government just decides where this needs to happen. In the case of petrol where a common is damaged, this is vital.
Drugs are a different case, where the damage is typically personal, so 'vice taxes' on drugs and such should be based on societal burden alone. How much does health treatment for smokers cost the state per year? How many sales of tobacco are there? Pick a tax rate that will cover the societal cost for the expected consumption rate.
Many of these things should be zero-sum games, taxes on tobacco to offset the costs of tobacco, taxes on petrol to offset the costs of petrol. This was all people have free choice to do as they will, and each person only pays for the vices they personally indulge in.
Funding the government is (and should only be) done through income and/or (general) sales taxes.
It's great to see that others out there appreciate the benefit that recognition of these issues has brought us.
I have personally experienced a lot of these things through my childhood as well, and it's a bit frustrating when others say these issues aren't real, etc.
As I am on the spectrum (aspergers), and also ADHD, I've consistently had issues maintaining jobs and personal organisation. A little help from others and some medication (prozac for anxiety problems, ritalin for focus) has made such a massive difference in my quality of life it's incredible.
Looking back at my family tree, I too see the issues sprinkled throughout, and with modern help those people would have lived happier, more productive lives.
Even now, aspergers is likely underdiagnosed (especially in women, because we're less likely to fit the aspie stereotypes) and ADHD is generally misunderstood. ADHD doesn't always mean trouble makers; for many it just means it's too hard to stay focused, too easy to be distracted, or too difficult to be motivated to do things you *really* need to do. If these things can be fixed with relatively minor medical intervention, then why wouldn't you?
Often I wouldn't even say ADHD and ASD issues are specifically negative, they have positives too (though severe autism is hard to deal with). The biggest issues tend to be around dealing with NT (neuro-typical) people.
I hope that in the future understanding of these differences increases and people stop with this "we didn't have that xx years ago" stuff. I'm glad these things are recognised now. Most people impacted by them are.
It you want to be so essentialist, then you can easily argue that wanting to do dangerous things and risk-seeking behaviour are part of a (typically considered) male biological drive. Alternatively, we can take the more realistic stance that there are biological factors in all desires, but that some, like child rearing and family building are not entirely biological and have strong social factors as well.
By not carrying a child, a mother misses out on what most women regard as an unrivalled life experience. Wanting to have that experience is no different than wanting to visit Paris or Rome.
I can (and likely will) adopt to have a family. But I will be sad to miss out on the experience most mothers have. You place little value on the experience, and you're welcome to, but it's a little ridiculous to say it's about getting on top of instincts or not.
Not to mention the rather dubious insinuation that instincts should be overcome to begin with. Some instincts are bad, some are good. Broad generalisations are stupid.
The desire to carry your own children and actually doing it are different things.
No one claimed it had anything to do with lust urges or fucking each other, that's a whole different thing.
It's a long term desire, not an irresponsible desire. As someone that also cannot carry her own children, I too would jump at any chance to be able to do so, even if the risks were high to myself.
It's not about overcoming instinct or urges. I certainly could say no, and if they risks were *really* high, I would say no. But different desires carry different weights. I would not endure any risk to do many things (ie, unprotected sex) but things of much higher personal value or desire I would endure some fairly high risks (ie, being able to carry my own children).
Some people take high risks for many (non instinctual or biological) desires, like people that want to break world records, or perform dangerous stunts, or engage in dangerous sports or activities. It's incorrect to assume it's a matter of overcoming a base instinct or desire. It's more like a life dream or goal. One you know you cannot acheive, but would endure high risk to have the chance to acheive it.
Then you have to figure in the lifetime of the machine, as I've seen very few consoles last more than 3 years whereas I have PCs pushing the decade mark with the only change being a HDD replacement.
I have a NES, SNES, N64, DC, PS1, PS2, PS3, Wii. None of them have ever failed.
All of them (except PS3) are over three years old.
There are also USB key loggers, USB storage device viruses, etc.
There are privacy implications from USB, that arose simply because USB became ubiqutious.
It would be silly to reject USB for these reasons though, because such technologies should be evaluated based on actual risk of abuse, and how ubiquitous such abuse could become.
With USB, such abuse is minor, generally directly targetted, and identifiable.
With a billboard using photos, the abuse could be very easily ubiquitous, and transparent. There's a huge difference in circumstance, but the USB case does show very clearly that functional usage creep is real, and does happen, so you should think about that function creep before you accept new technology that could become ubiquitous.
If this were the case, people could grab a new movie, slap a CC license on the front of it, then give it to someone else to host on the web, or a torrent.
It's not, it's just not allowed in unrestricted displays.
So basically, you can only put X rated content in an adult store, where it cannot be seen from a public area, (such as through windows, doors, etc) there must be 18+ warnings on the entrances, and they cannot allow minors entry to the store.
This is not banned. The nearest to banned is RC, Refused Classification.
Errr, they DO. It's called the service/account fee, or base rate, etc...
I've never seen a utility that didn't charge $x + $y. Some services, like electricity actually do $x + $y + $z
$x: Some static value dependent on cost to maintain infrastructure providing your service. $y: Variable value dependent on (peak) usage. $z: Variable value dependent on off-peak usage.
The thing is, most residential accounts have the same $x value because they have a standard service with a standard bandwidth - or the equivalent for that service. I assure you, a stadium with a high capacity power connection is paying more for the wire connected than your home is.
This is perfectly acceptable, as a utility cannot charge JUST for usage, or it wouldn't be fair to average users of the network over-paying for light users.
If I connect a phone line, and then never make a single call the utility still has to pay for installation AND maintenance. So they charge an installation fee, and a base 'connection' fee.
Not only is this fair, I would suggest that an open market ultimately pushes to this model as it provides the best customer flexability. As a customer, I can choose to buy a big pipe with huge limit, and pay accordingly, or grandma CAN get a $10-15 AUD connection with a small pipe and limit.
Not sure about where you are, but here in Australia almost all ISP's fall into this exact same pattern, with a connection fee (or a lock-in contract to waive the connection fee), a minimum monthly fee, and an included usage cap whereafter you either get throttled, or pay per-byte any further.
Significant figures are used whenever a measured value is involved, such as the 25.0 (three significant figures) in your example.
The article has infinite precision so significant figures are inappropriate.
You cannot have 136.001 people. Ever. There were 136 people, exactly 136, which is to say: 136.00... The requirement is for 2/3 majority. That means 0.666...
Both of these have infinite significant figures, and both can be trivially used in this calculation without needing approximations.
Required vote: 206 * 2 = 412 412 / 3
Actual vote: 136 Expressed with common factor 136 * 3 = 408 408 / 3
What's not clear here? The actual vote is lower, no approximations needed, no arguments about significant figures, and no pretending you know anything about significant figures when you can't identify the appropriate situations for their use.
I'm in the same boat. I loved SC, bot won't touch WoW.
I want SC2, and a big part of enjoying that is LAN games. When my friends come over for a game we make a local game.
We currently do this for WC3, regularly.
How can they say that not many use LAN games? The whole point of LAN games is it doesn't need to hit the net, thus they don't know how many LAN games are being played.
It's a poor excuse for a DRM substitute. I've got legit copies of SC, WC2, and WC3; but if the only way to get LAN game support in SC2 is pirate, I know that most people I know will have to go that path. People that DID buy the previous games.
I agree, Blizzard are getting overconfident, and this is a serious mistake.
Lets be fair; it's just as tyrannical to abolish religions as it is to require one.
However, many nations prosper where the guiding principles (or national culture) are predominately secular.
Listening to a figurehead like the pope is absurd; but to say the only other option is anti-religious tyranny is just silly.
Good people will do good things without needing their god(s) to tell them to do so. Bad people will do bad things in spite of their god(s) telling them too.
How about we just acknowledge that while the current pope is a moron, most (non-fundamentalist) christians are decent people, just like most atheists.
Slashdot Mirror
There's a common ground we can both agree on. :)
Which goes back to what services are needed, by whom, and who needs to pay for them.
Cali is just one example of mismanaged money, and where attitudes like "we can't cut service x" or "we can't raise tax y to pay for x" end up at exactly that endpoint of spending more than you have.
I'd like you to point out where in my initial post I said I was talking solely about federal taxes.
Many roads are federal (or state) funded, many environmental controls are state or federal, health costs are not local either.
Society isn't free at any level, local, state, or federal.
Interstate roads, communications networks, power networks, and all the other services are 'relatively new' as well.
Society costs a lot more to maintain than it did when the US was founded, and the outmoded attitude that it's stealing from the people is exactly the sort of situation that leads to massive debts and entire states bordering on bankrupt (ie, California).
You take away a lot more free will when society can't pay the police, firefighters, ambulances, keep healthy air to breathe and water to drink.
Taxes are not just to fund government, but to fund society, which is a bit broader in concept.
When everyone drives cars throwing out pollution that pollution goes into the air, a COMMON, which is not owned by a single person, and no single person has responsibility to clean this damage or prevent it.
Thus a tax on petrol as it pertains to the amount of pollution should have the money directed to fixing these issues, with clean energy investments, cleaner car techs, maybe even tax CUTS for cars that use less or don't use petrol.
Taxes are not just to fund government, but to shuffle money around in ways that benefit society as a whole, the government just decides where this needs to happen.
In the case of petrol where a common is damaged, this is vital.
Drugs are a different case, where the damage is typically personal, so 'vice taxes' on drugs and such should be based on societal burden alone.
How much does health treatment for smokers cost the state per year? How many sales of tobacco are there? Pick a tax rate that will cover the societal cost for the expected consumption rate.
Many of these things should be zero-sum games, taxes on tobacco to offset the costs of tobacco, taxes on petrol to offset the costs of petrol. This was all people have free choice to do as they will, and each person only pays for the vices they personally indulge in.
Funding the government is (and should only be) done through income and/or (general) sales taxes.
It's great to see that others out there appreciate the benefit that recognition of these issues has brought us.
I have personally experienced a lot of these things through my childhood as well, and it's a bit frustrating when others say these issues aren't real, etc.
As I am on the spectrum (aspergers), and also ADHD, I've consistently had issues maintaining jobs and personal organisation. A little help from others and some medication (prozac for anxiety problems, ritalin for focus) has made such a massive difference in my quality of life it's incredible.
Looking back at my family tree, I too see the issues sprinkled throughout, and with modern help those people would have lived happier, more productive lives.
Even now, aspergers is likely underdiagnosed (especially in women, because we're less likely to fit the aspie stereotypes) and ADHD is generally misunderstood.
ADHD doesn't always mean trouble makers; for many it just means it's too hard to stay focused, too easy to be distracted, or too difficult to be motivated to do things you *really* need to do.
If these things can be fixed with relatively minor medical intervention, then why wouldn't you?
Often I wouldn't even say ADHD and ASD issues are specifically negative, they have positives too (though severe autism is hard to deal with). The biggest issues tend to be around dealing with NT (neuro-typical) people.
I hope that in the future understanding of these differences increases and people stop with this "we didn't have that xx years ago" stuff. I'm glad these things are recognised now. Most people impacted by them are.
That's a pretty amazing misrepresentation of it.
It you want to be so essentialist, then you can easily argue that wanting to do dangerous things and risk-seeking behaviour are part of a (typically considered) male biological drive.
Alternatively, we can take the more realistic stance that there are biological factors in all desires, but that some, like child rearing and family building are not entirely biological and have strong social factors as well.
By not carrying a child, a mother misses out on what most women regard as an unrivalled life experience.
Wanting to have that experience is no different than wanting to visit Paris or Rome.
I can (and likely will) adopt to have a family.
But I will be sad to miss out on the experience most mothers have.
You place little value on the experience, and you're welcome to, but it's a little ridiculous to say it's about getting on top of instincts or not.
Not to mention the rather dubious insinuation that instincts should be overcome to begin with.
Some instincts are bad, some are good. Broad generalisations are stupid.
The desire to carry your own children and actually doing it are different things.
No one claimed it had anything to do with lust urges or fucking each other, that's a whole different thing.
It's a long term desire, not an irresponsible desire.
As someone that also cannot carry her own children, I too would jump at any chance to be able to do so, even if the risks were high to myself.
It's not about overcoming instinct or urges. I certainly could say no, and if they risks were *really* high, I would say no.
But different desires carry different weights. I would not endure any risk to do many things (ie, unprotected sex) but things of much higher personal value or desire I would endure some fairly high risks (ie, being able to carry my own children).
Some people take high risks for many (non instinctual or biological) desires, like people that want to break world records, or perform dangerous stunts, or engage in dangerous sports or activities.
It's incorrect to assume it's a matter of overcoming a base instinct or desire. It's more like a life dream or goal.
One you know you cannot acheive, but would endure high risk to have the chance to acheive it.
Site identity is the only way to know you're not being MitM'ed.
If someone uses a man-in-the-middle attack, your encryption is useless.
Identity is required to make encryption useful.
Apparently you've never heard of outliers.
Your anecdote doesn't disprove basically everyone else that it holds true for.
You are one unlucky person!
On average, consoles seem to have a pretty good lifespan (Xboxes excepted).
I have a NES, SNES, N64, DC, PS1, PS2, PS3, Wii.
None of them have ever failed.
All of them (except PS3) are over three years old.
Check your facts.
Not true any more.
In Victoria police can now search you for weapons, any time, without reason or suspicion.
It's an absurd law and needs to be revoked.
Pretty sure that's exactly what the gp poster said...
Yes, that's exactly it.
Just the opposite in my experience.
So many people were angered by Labor's preference deal that let Fielding into the senate that they have voted Green since.
This anger was likely also a contributing factor in why Labor made a preference deal with the Greens this election.
There are also USB key loggers, USB storage device viruses, etc.
There are privacy implications from USB, that arose simply because USB became ubiqutious.
It would be silly to reject USB for these reasons though, because such technologies should be evaluated based on actual risk of abuse, and how ubiquitous such abuse could become.
With USB, such abuse is minor, generally directly targetted, and identifiable.
With a billboard using photos, the abuse could be very easily ubiquitous, and transparent.
There's a huge difference in circumstance, but the USB case does show very clearly that functional usage creep is real, and does happen, so you should think about that function creep before you accept new technology that could become ubiquitous.
If this were the case, people could grab a new movie, slap a CC license on the front of it, then give it to someone else to host on the web, or a torrent.
But the movie said it was CC and okay to share!
Sorry, doesn't work that way. :(
Since when was X rated content banned?
It's not, it's just not allowed in unrestricted displays.
So basically, you can only put X rated content in an adult store, where it cannot be seen from a public area, (such as through windows, doors, etc) there must be 18+ warnings on the entrances, and they cannot allow minors entry to the store.
This is not banned.
The nearest to banned is RC, Refused Classification.
Errr, they DO.
It's called the service/account fee, or base rate, etc...
I've never seen a utility that didn't charge $x + $y. Some services, like electricity actually do $x + $y + $z
$x: Some static value dependent on cost to maintain infrastructure providing your service.
$y: Variable value dependent on (peak) usage.
$z: Variable value dependent on off-peak usage.
The thing is, most residential accounts have the same $x value because they have a standard service with a standard bandwidth - or the equivalent for that service.
I assure you, a stadium with a high capacity power connection is paying more for the wire connected than your home is.
This is perfectly acceptable, as a utility cannot charge JUST for usage, or it wouldn't be fair to average users of the network over-paying for light users.
If I connect a phone line, and then never make a single call the utility still has to pay for installation AND maintenance. So they charge an installation fee, and a base 'connection' fee.
Not only is this fair, I would suggest that an open market ultimately pushes to this model as it provides the best customer flexability. As a customer, I can choose to buy a big pipe with huge limit, and pay accordingly, or grandma CAN get a $10-15 AUD connection with a small pipe and limit.
Not sure about where you are, but here in Australia almost all ISP's fall into this exact same pattern, with a connection fee (or a lock-in contract to waive the connection fee), a minimum monthly fee, and an included usage cap whereafter you either get throttled, or pay per-byte any further.
This is fair.
You use more, you buy more.
Your example has no relevance.
Significant figures are used whenever a measured value is involved, such as the 25.0 (three significant figures) in your example.
The article has infinite precision so significant figures are inappropriate.
You cannot have 136.001 people. Ever.
There were 136 people, exactly 136, which is to say: 136.00...
The requirement is for 2/3 majority. That means 0.666...
Both of these have infinite significant figures, and both can be trivially used in this calculation without needing approximations.
Required vote:
206 * 2 = 412
412 / 3
Actual vote: 136
Expressed with common factor
136 * 3 = 408
408 / 3
What's not clear here?
The actual vote is lower, no approximations needed, no arguments about significant figures, and no pretending you know anything about significant figures when you can't identify the appropriate situations for their use.
I don't think you can see the words any better!
The GP was talking about buying on Steam, not on Xbox.
I'm in the same boat. I loved SC, bot won't touch WoW.
I want SC2, and a big part of enjoying that is LAN games. When my friends come over for a game we make a local game.
We currently do this for WC3, regularly.
How can they say that not many use LAN games? The whole point of LAN games is it doesn't need to hit the net, thus they don't know how many LAN games are being played.
It's a poor excuse for a DRM substitute.
I've got legit copies of SC, WC2, and WC3; but if the only way to get LAN game support in SC2 is pirate, I know that most people I know will have to go that path.
People that DID buy the previous games.
I agree, Blizzard are getting overconfident, and this is a serious mistake.
Yeah, just like they require 16 hour days from you now?
Oh wait... They don't?
Lets be fair; it's just as tyrannical to abolish religions as it is to require one.
However, many nations prosper where the guiding principles (or national culture) are predominately secular.
Listening to a figurehead like the pope is absurd; but to say the only other option is anti-religious tyranny is just silly.
Good people will do good things without needing their god(s) to tell them to do so.
Bad people will do bad things in spite of their god(s) telling them too.
How about we just acknowledge that while the current pope is a moron, most (non-fundamentalist) christians are decent people, just like most atheists.
(I'm neither a christian or an atheist)