Well that's all well and good, except that the Constitution does not allow for any exceptions
I don't think they consider them "exceptions", but rather "natural limits". Rights are not absolute and all-encompassing. The basic philosophical rule for a right is that you may exercise your rights up to, but not beyond, the point where said exercise infringes upon the rights of another. The "shouting fire" limitation is a clear illustration of this. I believe the traditional saying in this regard is "your right to swing your fist ends at the tip of my nose". None of these are exceptions-- they have simply been determined to lie outside the scope of the associated right. Likewise, both Libel and Slander have been determined by the courts (and by society, historically) to be significant infringements upon the rights of another to not by covered by the right to speak freely.
In your eagerness to pander to standard slashdot biases, you have completely missed the point that the last sentence was intended to be humorous, which is amply demonstrated by the fact that the very first paragraph of the article said that chaos in the mathematical sense does not mean unpredictability. Sheesh.
Yeah, it's pretty pedantic to point out that the joke at the end of the article is factually in error. I think a better criticism of the joke is that it's lame. It's the kind of stupid joke that local newscasters come up with.
"...authorities expect the overturned maple syrup truck to be cleared from the highway by noon. Bill?"
"Thanks Susan. Sounds like a lot of people will be 'stuck' in traffic. haha"
So is there such a thing as random at all? If we perceive something to be random, could not just as easily be ordered in a way we don't recognise?
Random is easy to define. According to my googling, 17 is The Most Random Number (despite a few spurious claims that it is 37, or 14).
Seriously though, your point is correct. "Random" simply means that no predictable order is discernable. The definition, therfore, is entirely dependent on your method of discernment. If you analyze closely enough the events leading to the generation of so-called random numbers, you should be able to predict the output and thereby render it not random. This is, of course, a very victorian-era/Newtonian Mechanics way of viewing the world. It all seems to really fall apart at the quantum level, where the act of observing initial conditions changes the results.
Really, there's no economic benefit to a rail line that connects two points that are closer by sea.
If that's the case, why'd they bother with the Chunnel? There's many more factors to consider; cargo trains can deliver smaller shipments much more rapidly than cargo ships. Cargo ships require deep ports, whereas trains yards can be built where ever there's enough open space. There's a rapid turnaround rate for trains as opposed to cargo ships, which take much longer to load and unload. Cargo ships are much more cost effective only because they can haul so much more cargo with much fewer personnel involved.
My point was tailored specifically to the notion of a tunnel under the Bering Strait. When the rail line is thousands of miles longer than the sea route and has to go through arctic wastelands, it's not a better solution. When the difference between rail and sea routes is low enough, the efficiency of keeping the cargo on rails wins. They obviously don't ship cargo from Tampa, Florida to Galveston, Texas solely by ship even though rail or highway routes are longer. At that scale, there's no economy.
Really, there's no economic benefit to a rail line that connects two points that are closer by sea.
Remind me again what this boring machine was used for in the first place...
Profitability of the "chunnel" aside (still waiting on that, no?), crossing the channel by sea isn't significanly shorter than by rail, so the advantage in distance is lost in the inefficiency of moving cargo onto ships from rail cars at the home port and back on to rail cars at the destination. The idea of linking Alaska and Russia by tunnel is something else entirely. A tunnel under the Bering strait would add thousands of miles to the trip between (say) Shanghai and Vancouver, much of it through inhospitable arctic areas. The extra distance means that a container ship is still more efficient despite requiring loading and unloading, and would take less time despite being slower than a train.
That might work for supermarket packers. It wouldn't work for me, as a programmer. If I'm halfway through a series of CVS commits and the boss tells me to clear off home, it's going to break the overnight build.
True, but most programmers don't get hired hourly/no overtime. Smart managers hire them salary/exempt, because you can really crack the whip over 'em then.
I think it was Greatshead or something who invented it. It's called his "Shield", and was a revolutionary method for digging deep-level tunnels.
Yeah, I remember reading about that guy. They used his methods to tunnel under the Thames in London, I think. His method was a little different, though. The Greathead method used a big iron cylinder open at one end, with an airtight door at the other. The open end would be forced into the soft ground with hydraulic rams, and the airtight door kept the whole tunnel from being flooded if the mud-wall inside collapsed and let water through. Not a safe job, digging inside a Greathead cylinder...
the train does not have to go east; It can also head south to china, japan, taiwain
Every time I try to take a train to Japan or Taiwan, I drown in the Sea of Japan or the Formosa Strait. Japan and Taiwan are islands.
Really, there's no economic benefit to a rail line that connects two points that are closer by sea. Oceans require no maintenance. Rails do. THe only place rail lines make sense are where the trip by sea is prohibitively long. Railroads across Russia, for example, are much faster more efficient than sending cargo ships out of Estonia, through the med, the Suez canal, across the indian ocean, and up to Vladivostok. On the flip side, nobody takes a train from Spain to Morocco, for example. Really, you'd be surprised how many trains it takes to move the cargo carried by a single container ship. Sea transport is very cheap.
Frequently, they instruct employees that overtime is not available, people go over anyway, and the company has to pay up, whether or not they need/can afford the extra hours. That's the law.
The proper solution for this is diligent managerial supervision. The problem is, these "time shaver" middle managers aren't catching this unauthorized overtime until it's too late. If it's that important, they should be out on the floor at 7 hours, 59 minutes telling the employee "you're done-- clock out". If they can't "manage" the job, perhaps they should be stock clerks.
Every season, the writers say "Forget it; we can't write anything else; it's all used up" but then they dump more money on them and they say "fine, one more season". They've been doing this since 1997. Also, they do get new writers. They just don't get new ones all at once. They come and go one at a time. New writers aren't really the answer anyway. It's a matter of coming up with compelling storylines that don't replicate what they've already done. They've already got all the "low hanging fruit" story-wise-- hell, they picked that the first 5 years-- and every season gets harder.
Re:Must we always take the company line?Re:A thoug
on
Simpsons Actors on Strike
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
This back-of-the-napkin estimate doesn't include the gravitas that "The Simpsons" gives the network to slot the rest of it's Sunday lineup.
This calculation is also absurdly low because they show each episode more than just once. You can't just count the commercials run during the first airing of an episode. There are re-runs and endless syndication. They're making a hell of a lot more than $77M a year off the show.
If you want something or someone to blame for this, blame your government. By not keeping prices down, it's caused this to happen.
By what rationale is it the government's job to keep prices down? And how do you suggest it do it? Wage and price controls, like Nixon did in the 70's?
Have you any plans to move to Detroit any time soon. Do you want this level of devistation to become common in your community.
He meant "Detroit" as in "the corporate leadership of the big 3 american automakers" rather than the city-- just like when people say "Washington" as a shorthand for "the federal government". Nobody would argue that Detroit the city has gotten any better.
What does a RIAA spy program have to do with quartering soldiers at your house when the country isn't at war?
Well, government-mandated software that kills your computer isn't quite the same as a soldier, but the 3rd doesn't get nearly as much attention as the other amendments so I thought I'd give it a little public attention.
Argh... Now I remember why I didn't continue to work for there. Here's an example of the maturity level at Software Toolworks in 1989. The sign for "VERN'S Orb O Rama" says at the bottom "eat here and get gas". Actually, it's hard to blame Software Toolworks; that was about the maturity level of computer games in general in 1989...
My worst devel job was converting game artwork for Beyond The Black Hole when Software Toolworks decided they wanted to port it from PC to Commodore 64. It was a gimmicky 3D breakout type game with a varied assortment of objects in the center. This pic shows the level where it's pool balls. Another one is bells and whistles (ha ha), while another was ducks(?). The guy who did the artwork for the PC had a 16x16 square grid and an 8 color palette with which to draw his objects. For the Commodore 64 version, I had to replicate all his little drawings in an 8x16 grid where each pixel is double-wide (8 double width pixels == 16 singles), and my palette consisted of four colors, one of which was "transparent"! The inital plan was to have me design these hideous little pictoglyphs on graph paper, calculate the two byte value of each 16 bit line, then enter those 32 bytes into a hex editor. I did the first screen of pics that way (it was the bells and whistles, I believe) and decided my life was too important for that and wrote my own drawing program. I did the best job I could translating, but it looked pretty bad (as did most C64 ports of PC games). My name showed up in the C64 version, much to my embarassment, but thankfully no trace of the C64 version's existence can be found any more.
PS if anyone can find the C64 version, I'd sure like a copy. I've long since lost my copy.
The way you were talking it made it sound as if the author was intentionally trying to mislead the reader. You might not have intended it that way, but that's how it came across.
When I saw the line...
"Careless errors like this make one wonder what else in the author's train of thought is similarly researched."
...it sounded more like he was calling the author's work slipshod and/or clueless, rather than intentionally misleading. (shrug)
'Fraid your friend's not very original. The original quote is from Oscar Wilde: "a cynic is a man who knows the cost of everything and the value of nothing"
I don't think the guy was claiming originality. Wilde's quote, applied to accountants, has been passed around in business for quite some time.
Heh. Slow day at work. I wanted to see how far that one would go. This one went pretty far and even ended on the classic childish "I win I win! I can't hear you! lalalalalala! (fingers in ears)" note. I promise not to feed any more.
P.S.
The next time someone argues infringment is theft, just throw Supreme Court rulings at them. Dowling v. United States, 473 U.S. 207 (1985) is an excellent example:
"the rights of a copyright holder are `different' from the rights of owners of other kinds of property" etc....
I will definitely make a note of that. For some reason I feel compelled to educate people here on/. about the difference between copyright infringement and property crime. I don't know why I bother-- it's like beating your head against a wall. No matter how often you point out the reality, some goofball comes along and says, in response to a story, "quit trying to justify stealing. downloading MP3s is theft!"
I've noticed, however, that the latest favorite troll is the "GPL variation", wherein they claim that it is morally inconsistent to infringe on music copyrights while supporting the idea of GPL software. Still trying to craft a simple, easily understood couterargument to that one...
Nah, that's just numbers about the current game. "Stats" are things like "earned run average", batting averages for (season/lifetime/since became sober), number of team wins under artificial light at home stadium vs. wins on away games when the pitcher forgot his lucky rabbit's foot, etc. You see, baseball has fairly long stretches where you are waiting for something to happen, so fans have to have something to keep them occupied. That's where stats come in.
How did law enforcement find out about the huge electric bill? Is my electric bill a matter of public record now? I always thought it was a private matter between me and the power company. If I was her I'd sue the electric company for illegally disclosing my information.
Regulation by Public Utilities Commissions of various states put power companies under the thumb of government. They have to share the info. As it happens, unless otherwise specified by contract, either party in a financial transaction is free to tell third parties about the specifics of said transaction without the permission of the other party. She doesn't "own" her meter reading, so she can't sue.
Slashdot Mirror
I don't think they consider them "exceptions", but rather "natural limits". Rights are not absolute and all-encompassing. The basic philosophical rule for a right is that you may exercise your rights up to, but not beyond, the point where said exercise infringes upon the rights of another. The "shouting fire" limitation is a clear illustration of this. I believe the traditional saying in this regard is "your right to swing your fist ends at the tip of my nose". None of these are exceptions-- they have simply been determined to lie outside the scope of the associated right. Likewise, both Libel and Slander have been determined by the courts (and by society, historically) to be significant infringements upon the rights of another to not by covered by the right to speak freely.
Yeah, it's pretty pedantic to point out that the joke at the end of the article is factually in error. I think a better criticism of the joke is that it's lame. It's the kind of stupid joke that local newscasters come up with.
"...authorities expect the overturned maple syrup truck to be cleared from the highway by noon. Bill?"
"Thanks Susan. Sounds like a lot of people will be 'stuck' in traffic. haha"
Random is easy to define. According to my googling, 17 is The Most Random Number (despite a few spurious claims that it is 37, or 14).
Seriously though, your point is correct. "Random" simply means that no predictable order is discernable. The definition, therfore, is entirely dependent on your method of discernment. If you analyze closely enough the events leading to the generation of so-called random numbers, you should be able to predict the output and thereby render it not random. This is, of course, a very victorian-era/Newtonian Mechanics way of viewing the world. It all seems to really fall apart at the quantum level, where the act of observing initial conditions changes the results.
If that's the case, why'd they bother with the Chunnel? There's many more factors to consider; cargo trains can deliver smaller shipments much more rapidly than cargo ships. Cargo ships require deep ports, whereas trains yards can be built where ever there's enough open space. There's a rapid turnaround rate for trains as opposed to cargo ships, which take much longer to load and unload. Cargo ships are much more cost effective only because they can haul so much more cargo with much fewer personnel involved.
My point was tailored specifically to the notion of a tunnel under the Bering Strait. When the rail line is thousands of miles longer than the sea route and has to go through arctic wastelands, it's not a better solution. When the difference between rail and sea routes is low enough, the efficiency of keeping the cargo on rails wins. They obviously don't ship cargo from Tampa, Florida to Galveston, Texas solely by ship even though rail or highway routes are longer. At that scale, there's no economy.
Remind me again what this boring machine was used for in the first place...
Profitability of the "chunnel" aside (still waiting on that, no?), crossing the channel by sea isn't significanly shorter than by rail, so the advantage in distance is lost in the inefficiency of moving cargo onto ships from rail cars at the home port and back on to rail cars at the destination. The idea of linking Alaska and Russia by tunnel is something else entirely. A tunnel under the Bering strait would add thousands of miles to the trip between (say) Shanghai and Vancouver, much of it through inhospitable arctic areas. The extra distance means that a container ship is still more efficient despite requiring loading and unloading, and would take less time despite being slower than a train.
True, but most programmers don't get hired hourly/no overtime. Smart managers hire them salary/exempt, because you can really crack the whip over 'em then.
Yeah, I remember reading about that guy. They used his methods to tunnel under the Thames in London, I think. His method was a little different, though. The Greathead method used a big iron cylinder open at one end, with an airtight door at the other. The open end would be forced into the soft ground with hydraulic rams, and the airtight door kept the whole tunnel from being flooded if the mud-wall inside collapsed and let water through. Not a safe job, digging inside a Greathead cylinder...
Every time I try to take a train to Japan or Taiwan, I drown in the Sea of Japan or the Formosa Strait. Japan and Taiwan are islands.
Really, there's no economic benefit to a rail line that connects two points that are closer by sea. Oceans require no maintenance. Rails do. THe only place rail lines make sense are where the trip by sea is prohibitively long. Railroads across Russia, for example, are much faster more efficient than sending cargo ships out of Estonia, through the med, the Suez canal, across the indian ocean, and up to Vladivostok. On the flip side, nobody takes a train from Spain to Morocco, for example. Really, you'd be surprised how many trains it takes to move the cargo carried by a single container ship. Sea transport is very cheap.
The proper solution for this is diligent managerial supervision. The problem is, these "time shaver" middle managers aren't catching this unauthorized overtime until it's too late. If it's that important, they should be out on the floor at 7 hours, 59 minutes telling the employee "you're done-- clock out". If they can't "manage" the job, perhaps they should be stock clerks.
Nvidia Macrovision DVD-TV rules forced on consumers
Cuts out other TV encoders
By INQUIRER staff: Thursday 20 March 2003, 10:19
In other news, Reagan beats Carter, Soviets back down over Cuban missle issue, and WR Hearst says the USS Maine was sunk my a Spanish mine.
Every season, the writers say "Forget it; we can't write anything else; it's all used up" but then they dump more money on them and they say "fine, one more season". They've been doing this since 1997. Also, they do get new writers. They just don't get new ones all at once. They come and go one at a time. New writers aren't really the answer anyway. It's a matter of coming up with compelling storylines that don't replicate what they've already done. They've already got all the "low hanging fruit" story-wise-- hell, they picked that the first 5 years-- and every season gets harder.
This calculation is also absurdly low because they show each episode more than just once. You can't just count the commercials run during the first airing of an episode. There are re-runs and endless syndication. They're making a hell of a lot more than $77M a year off the show.
By what rationale is it the government's job to keep prices down? And how do you suggest it do it? Wage and price controls, like Nixon did in the 70's?
He meant "Detroit" as in "the corporate leadership of the big 3 american automakers" rather than the city-- just like when people say "Washington" as a shorthand for "the federal government". Nobody would argue that Detroit the city has gotten any better.
Well, government-mandated software that kills your computer isn't quite the same as a soldier, but the 3rd doesn't get nearly as much attention as the other amendments so I thought I'd give it a little public attention.
This game is going to haunt me forever.
No! First an RIAA spy program on my computer in clear violation of the 3rd Amendment, and now MY MOTHER? Sick, sick world...
OK, I couldn't say that without laughing either
Argh... Now I remember why I didn't continue to work for there. Here's an example of the maturity level at Software Toolworks in 1989. The sign for "VERN'S Orb O Rama" says at the bottom "eat here and get gas". Actually, it's hard to blame Software Toolworks; that was about the maturity level of computer games in general in 1989...
PS if anyone can find the C64 version, I'd sure like a copy. I've long since lost my copy.
When I saw the line...
I don't think the guy was claiming originality. Wilde's quote, applied to accountants, has been passed around in business for quite some time.
Heh. Slow day at work. I wanted to see how far that one would go. This one went pretty far and even ended on the classic childish "I win I win! I can't hear you! lalalalalala! (fingers in ears)" note. I promise not to feed any more.
P.S.
The next time someone argues infringment is theft, just throw Supreme Court rulings at them. Dowling v. United States, 473 U.S. 207 (1985) is an excellent example:
"the rights of a copyright holder are `different' from the rights of owners of other kinds of property" etc....
I will definitely make a note of that. For some reason I feel compelled to educate people here on /. about the difference between copyright infringement and property crime. I don't know why I bother-- it's like beating your head against a wall. No matter how often you point out the reality, some goofball comes along and says, in response to a story, "quit trying to justify stealing. downloading MP3s is theft!"
I've noticed, however, that the latest favorite troll is the "GPL variation", wherein they claim that it is morally inconsistent to infringe on music copyrights while supporting the idea of GPL software. Still trying to craft a simple, easily understood couterargument to that one...
Scoreboard?
Nah, that's just numbers about the current game. "Stats" are things like "earned run average", batting averages for (season/lifetime/since became sober), number of team wins under artificial light at home stadium vs. wins on away games when the pitcher forgot his lucky rabbit's foot, etc. You see, baseball has fairly long stretches where you are waiting for something to happen, so fans have to have something to keep them occupied. That's where stats come in.
Regulation by Public Utilities Commissions of various states put power companies under the thumb of government. They have to share the info. As it happens, unless otherwise specified by contract, either party in a financial transaction is free to tell third parties about the specifics of said transaction without the permission of the other party. She doesn't "own" her meter reading, so she can't sue.