'...Meanwhile, average users are no longer tech savvy.'
Which is to say that they at one point were?
The average computer user in 1970 could probably figure out how to turn on WEP, were he/she transported to the present day. This is the same thing that happened with automobiles. In the early days, automobile owners had to be adept at mechanical repairs. If you read "The Grapes of Wrath" , at one point one of the characters is honing the valve seats on his truck in a campground. That was the 30's. By 1960 you'd be hard pressed to find a car owner that could do a valve job on his car. Computers have become a commodity item, just as cars did.
Well.. you could go to this url to check it out...
http://www.taxpayer.net/TCS/whitepapers/SUVtaxbrea k.htm
And I was slightly wrong.. it's 6,000 lbs, not 7,000 lbs. Line them Chevy TrailBlazers up too.
Interesting. It's not an actual subsidy, though-- it's a tax deduction resulting in lower revenue. Still a bullshit loophole, if you ask me.
*Look, fella, I get to wisecrack about nuclear power
to my own email list if I feel like it. I didn't post that thing on Slashdot,
and not everything that flies off my keyboard into cyberspace
is gonna be solemn, Asperger-style argumentation intended
intended to convince a bunch of Linux freaks.
What a dork. If he wishes to reserve the right to look like a fool, so be it.
* If you can't take a joke, take a hike! And if you can
take a joke, then read the friggin' list and get a clue
as to what's been going on there for the past six years,
before you send email to novelists and get
all teary-eyed about your disillusionment.
He does have a point, I must say. I just read a fairly large random sample of his 400+ "notes", and sure enough, pretty much everything he says illustrates what a fuckin' joke this clown is. His editorializing is always in the form of a snide remark with the occasional assertion of unsubstantiated "facts". He might as well just resort to calling everyone he disagrees with a "fucking NAZI". I mean, if you're going to be an impertinent jerk-off, why beat around the bush? Does he really think people are particularly interested in his "thoughts" when they consist mostly of wisecracks and non sequiturs? I like his fiction, but his blog is a load of crap.
I wanted to bring attention to your last paragraph there. Nuclear debate aside, if the world spent even a fraction of the money it spends on defense (US especially) on energy research, we'd probably have a number of very good renewable energy sources.
What makes you think it's just a matter of funding? You assume that this undiscovered "renewable energy source" even exists.
I mean, $200 BILLION wouldn't give us some good solar cells?
"While not cheap, it is a relatively paltry human cost, comparable to a major accident with conventional forms of power and industry."
Unless you, or someone you love is one of the 50 that died, or one of the 600 that came down with thyroid cancer.
Oh, stop it. He didn't say that nobody cared about the people that died. He just said that the cost in human life was less for Chernobyl that it has been for any number of NON-nuclear industrial accidents. You're injecting an issue that's irrelevant to the discussion in a feeble attempt to make the original poster sound heartless and evil, rather than addressing his actual point.
The political price-tag of energy. Witness Chernobyl and TMI.
Huh? Chernobyl was caused by idiots deactivating safety systems on a reactor that should have been decommissioned decades earlier. TMI was a partial meltdown, but it was fully contained.
And if they lied to John Wayne, they'll lie to you.
WTF is that supposed to mean?
Plutonium goes missing more often than they'll tell you.
If they don't tell us, how do YOU know about it? Lack of evidence is the surest sign that the conspiracy is WORKING, right?
Death-rates due to fossil fuel by-products are hidden behind insurance company premiums.
So, hidden deaths are OK? I don't follow your point here.
We shouldn't put up with any process that leaves undesirable by-products
Life is a process that leaves undesireable byproducts. That's why we have sewer systems and crematoriums. It's all a matter of degree.
Especially not ones that are dangerous for 250,000 years.
No nuclear waste takes 250K years to drop below background radiation level. Current waste drops to safe levels after 600 years, and a modern design breeder/recycling reactor produces waste that's safe after 100 years.
If the foregoing makes me a head-in-the-sand Boomer Anti-Nuclear Satanist, then at least I'm older, wiser and sadder than you young idiots. It's no wonder they send boys of your age to war, you're too stupid to accept that you'll die.
It also astounds me how anyone can call something that kills in proximity "clean".
When that "proximity" is surrounded by several feet of concrete and steel so it doesn't kill, it's pretty clean. Dangerous inside, maybe, but so what? You can't sit inside the furnace of an oil-fired power plant either.
If an individual pleaded guilty to a *felony* stealing/fraud/etc then they would most likely get a significant prison sentence.
It really depends on the felony. The general rule of thumb is that misdemeanors are crimes not punishable by imprisonment, and felonies are crimes that may result in imprisonment. Often the purpose of plea bargains is to reduce or even avoid the prison time. If it was a top executive of NEC rather than the corp itself pleading guilty, he wouldn't likely get any time in the pen. Prison is for people without money, for the most part.
That's missing the point. You don't need to beat the key out of them, if you can beat the information out of them. (Information wants to be free, remember?)
"We're here to liberate the information you're holding prisoner, you fiend!"
heh.
This is not true. I've discussed the mobility limitations of the old trilobite with the german support people of electrolux, and they very clearly stated that the trilobite can not replace a conventional vacuum cleaner,
Actually, my only point was that its price will likely position it as a vacuum replacement in the minds of potential buyers. When people find out it's not, aren't they likely to say "1000 euros for a carpet sweeper and I will still have to vacuum? forget it!"
Yes, McCarthy held several "executive sessions" (aka secret hearings) where the accusations were not made public in order to minimize public scrutiny. But, accusations (although secret) seem a little better than just a request.
I think the main problem with McCarthy and the HCUA was that it was public. The committee never had any power to impose punishment, but the fact that it was public caused all those who were questioned to be tarred with the "commie" brush-- putting them on an unwritten, unofficial "blacklist".
Does anybody know the exact amount they actually charged the schools?
That's not the relevant question. We need to know how much they overcharged the schools. If they paid out $40M for $30M worth of equipment, that's only $10M overcharged.
Of course, whether or not they needed that $30M worth of equipment is something else...
The question is, will someone go to jail for this? Or will the company just have to give the money back?
They plead guilty and are paying back double the amount in fines and restitution, just like any individual would. A record of a felony conviction isn't as much of a problem for a corporation as it is for a person, though. That's really the only difference.
NEC then sent a bill to the E-Rate administrators, a quasi-governmental agency for tens of millions of dollars more than the actual cost of the equipment.
If someone robs a bank overnight (no people harmed) and takes 10 million dollars the shit would hit the fan.
You're comparing apples and oranges. Inflated billing isn't "robbery". It's fraud. If someone sent an excessive bill to a bank, it'd be fraud as well and, if they plead guilty and paid double the amount in fines and restitution, they'd get away without jail time also. NEC didn't send people to break into schools to steal money. Feel free to argue "it's the moral equivalent of robbery" or that "fraud oughtta be punished like robbery" if you like, but law isn't about people's opinions. NEC is getting what any individual person would for the same crime.
This robot is funny, but it lacks a critical feature : the ability to use it... as a normal vaccum.
AFAIK there is no way to plug a pipe and a brush onto it in order to manually vacuum.
So this robot can vacuum the floor, but nothing else. You need a second vacuum for the rest.
You make a very important point. They've stuck themselves into an awkward position. The Trilobite is too expensive to market as an additional vacuum cleaner, but its feature set is too limited to actually be a vacuum replacement. The Roomba is aimed at an actual defined market niche: it's an inexpensive automated floor sweeper/vacuum intended for periodic use between regular vacuumings.
I think they meant the part where the trilobite can be programmed to work in specific hours and find it's way back to the charger, so you don't have to program it every time.
If that's the case, then they're illiterate. "Self-propelled" means something else entirely.
For 1800 bucks you could pay someone to do alot of cleaning for you!
Dang straight! I pay someone to clean my house once a month for $50 each time. I'd need to have a Triolobite for three years (plus find someone to clean my bathrooms and kitchen for free) just to break even. Nice toy, but I'm sticking with my Roomba.
(I believe the roomba doesn't actually suction anything -- it just pulls the stuff in from its brushes -- I could be wrong as I've never stuck my face up to it)
The Roomba does vacuum, albeit not as well as a REAL vacuum cleaner. It's about the equivalent of a DustBuster.
"...we would store ALL our music on a disc the size of a dime that we'd be able to carry around with us everywhere..."
What about the memory sticks or whatever you call them in modern digital cameras? 1cm*1cm*1mm. I think they even come in size as large as 1GB.
Are you talking about SmartMedia cards? They're 4.5cm x 3.7 cm; quite a bit larger than a dime. Or are you talking about those stupid little "Secure Digital" cards that nobody uses because they're too small?
Give it 5 or 10 years and they WILL hold all your music.
Not really the point, there. Even if one could put all of one's music on a Secure Digital card, why would you? Nobody's going to store their one and only copy of a song on a small, easily lost thumbnail-sized card. The prediction is a further failure in that it totally misses the whole internet thing. This futurist has people walking into stores to have a copy of an album put on their personal dime-sized music disc. It's as stupid a prediction as saying, in 1950, that everything from automobiles to barbecues will be "atomic powered" by 1980.
Yeah, but you're not the only person involved. What about the person you're writing to? I'm not signing up for gmail, and I don't really want google to read anything I send to a gmail user.
Anything you send to a person in prison can be read. Evrything you send to a person in the military can be read. Anything you send to a person working at a business or educational institution can be read. Google scanning Gmail for targeted advertising is NOTHING compared to what is already being done. You should have no expectation of privacy in unencrypted email. All the content you send is freely and legally readable by the operator of the server. It's been said a million times, but if you want email to be private, you must encrypt it.
Slashdot Mirror
Which is to say that they at one point were?
The average computer user in 1970 could probably figure out how to turn on WEP, were he/she transported to the present day. This is the same thing that happened with automobiles. In the early days, automobile owners had to be adept at mechanical repairs. If you read "The Grapes of Wrath" , at one point one of the characters is honing the valve seats on his truck in a campground. That was the 30's. By 1960 you'd be hard pressed to find a car owner that could do a valve job on his car. Computers have become a commodity item, just as cars did.
Interesting. It's not an actual subsidy, though-- it's a tax deduction resulting in lower revenue. Still a bullshit loophole, if you ask me.
What a dork. If he wishes to reserve the right to look like a fool, so be it.
* If you can't take a joke, take a hike! And if you can take a joke, then read the friggin' list and get a clue as to what's been going on there for the past six years, before you send email to novelists and get all teary-eyed about your disillusionment.
He does have a point, I must say. I just read a fairly large random sample of his 400+ "notes", and sure enough, pretty much everything he says illustrates what a fuckin' joke this clown is. His editorializing is always in the form of a snide remark with the occasional assertion of unsubstantiated "facts". He might as well just resort to calling everyone he disagrees with a "fucking NAZI". I mean, if you're going to be an impertinent jerk-off, why beat around the bush? Does he really think people are particularly interested in his "thoughts" when they consist mostly of wisecracks and non sequiturs? I like his fiction, but his blog is a load of crap.
What makes you think it's just a matter of funding? You assume that this undiscovered "renewable energy source" even exists.
I mean, $200 BILLION wouldn't give us some good solar cells?
Would it? What makes you think it would?
Unless you, or someone you love is one of the 50 that died, or one of the 600 that came down with thyroid cancer.
Oh, stop it. He didn't say that nobody cared about the people that died. He just said that the cost in human life was less for Chernobyl that it has been for any number of NON-nuclear industrial accidents. You're injecting an issue that's irrelevant to the discussion in a feeble attempt to make the original poster sound heartless and evil, rather than addressing his actual point.
Huh? Chernobyl was caused by idiots deactivating safety systems on a reactor that should have been decommissioned decades earlier. TMI was a partial meltdown, but it was fully contained.
And if they lied to John Wayne, they'll lie to you.
WTF is that supposed to mean?
Plutonium goes missing more often than they'll tell you.
If they don't tell us, how do YOU know about it? Lack of evidence is the surest sign that the conspiracy is WORKING, right?
Death-rates due to fossil fuel by-products are hidden behind insurance company premiums.
So, hidden deaths are OK? I don't follow your point here.
We shouldn't put up with any process that leaves undesirable by-products
Life is a process that leaves undesireable byproducts. That's why we have sewer systems and crematoriums. It's all a matter of degree.
Especially not ones that are dangerous for 250,000 years.
No nuclear waste takes 250K years to drop below background radiation level. Current waste drops to safe levels after 600 years, and a modern design breeder/recycling reactor produces waste that's safe after 100 years.
If the foregoing makes me a head-in-the-sand Boomer Anti-Nuclear Satanist, then at least I'm older, wiser and sadder than you young idiots. It's no wonder they send boys of your age to war, you're too stupid to accept that you'll die.
You're completely off your nut, man.
Why do you think that? Who says?
When that "proximity" is surrounded by several feet of concrete and steel so it doesn't kill, it's pretty clean. Dangerous inside, maybe, but so what? You can't sit inside the furnace of an oil-fired power plant either.
It really depends on the felony. The general rule of thumb is that misdemeanors are crimes not punishable by imprisonment, and felonies are crimes that may result in imprisonment. Often the purpose of plea bargains is to reduce or even avoid the prison time. If it was a top executive of NEC rather than the corp itself pleading guilty, he wouldn't likely get any time in the pen. Prison is for people without money, for the most part.
"We're here to liberate the information you're holding prisoner, you fiend!"
heh.
Actually, my only point was that its price will likely position it as a vacuum replacement in the minds of potential buyers. When people find out it's not, aren't they likely to say "1000 euros for a carpet sweeper and I will still have to vacuum? forget it!"
I think the main problem with McCarthy and the HCUA was that it was public. The committee never had any power to impose punishment, but the fact that it was public caused all those who were questioned to be tarred with the "commie" brush-- putting them on an unwritten, unofficial "blacklist".
That's not the relevant question. We need to know how much they overcharged the schools. If they paid out $40M for $30M worth of equipment, that's only $10M overcharged.
Of course, whether or not they needed that $30M worth of equipment is something else...
They plead guilty and are paying back double the amount in fines and restitution, just like any individual would. A record of a felony conviction isn't as much of a problem for a corporation as it is for a person, though. That's really the only difference.
If someone robs a bank overnight (no people harmed) and takes 10 million dollars the shit would hit the fan.
You're comparing apples and oranges. Inflated billing isn't "robbery". It's fraud. If someone sent an excessive bill to a bank, it'd be fraud as well and, if they plead guilty and paid double the amount in fines and restitution, they'd get away without jail time also. NEC didn't send people to break into schools to steal money. Feel free to argue "it's the moral equivalent of robbery" or that "fraud oughtta be punished like robbery" if you like, but law isn't about people's opinions. NEC is getting what any individual person would for the same crime.
Sigh, another pompous self-important, non0american know-it-all...
You make a very important point. They've stuck themselves into an awkward position. The Trilobite is too expensive to market as an additional vacuum cleaner, but its feature set is too limited to actually be a vacuum replacement. The Roomba is aimed at an actual defined market niche: it's an inexpensive automated floor sweeper/vacuum intended for periodic use between regular vacuumings.
If that's the case, then they're illiterate. "Self-propelled" means something else entirely.
Dang straight! I pay someone to clean my house once a month for $50 each time. I'd need to have a Triolobite for three years (plus find someone to clean my bathrooms and kitchen for free) just to break even. Nice toy, but I'm sticking with my Roomba.
The Roomba does vacuum, albeit not as well as a REAL vacuum cleaner. It's about the equivalent of a DustBuster.
OK, that joke went right over my head. As an electrician, I'm always looking for another teamster joke, but this one makes no sense.
How many teamsters does it take to screw in a lightbulb?
Four. You got a problem wit' dat?
No, but I'd choose either of them over the US Postal Service based on their use of technology. Ever tried to track a lost USPS package? Fergit it.
What about the memory sticks or whatever you call them in modern digital cameras? 1cm*1cm*1mm. I think they even come in size as large as 1GB.
Are you talking about SmartMedia cards? They're 4.5cm x 3.7 cm; quite a bit larger than a dime. Or are you talking about those stupid little "Secure Digital" cards that nobody uses because they're too small? Give it 5 or 10 years and they WILL hold all your music.
Not really the point, there. Even if one could put all of one's music on a Secure Digital card, why would you? Nobody's going to store their one and only copy of a song on a small, easily lost thumbnail-sized card. The prediction is a further failure in that it totally misses the whole internet thing. This futurist has people walking into stores to have a copy of an album put on their personal dime-sized music disc. It's as stupid a prediction as saying, in 1950, that everything from automobiles to barbecues will be "atomic powered" by 1980.
Anything you send to a person in prison can be read. Evrything you send to a person in the military can be read. Anything you send to a person working at a business or educational institution can be read. Google scanning Gmail for targeted advertising is NOTHING compared to what is already being done. You should have no expectation of privacy in unencrypted email. All the content you send is freely and legally readable by the operator of the server. It's been said a million times, but if you want email to be private, you must encrypt it.