Agreed. I've come to believe that the only role the state has (and I'd argue that as permanent social bonds DO contribute to civil society, the state DOES have an interest in promoting such behavior) is in codifying the inherent rights to such bonds, not defining them. In that sense, it's a little like standard boilerplate partnerships.
Ie: If I and at least one other sane adult want to form a 'corporation', we can. We sign the 'standard contract'. This certifies that: - at the termination of our relationship, goods are split equally (if a mutual termination) or 1/n^2 (where n=the number of contract members) for the terminator as their share if they are the sole party interested in breaking the contract. - any children born to a member of the contract will be supported by the members of the contract equally until they reach majority.
Of course the details are quibble-worthy, but the point is to STRENGTHEN the civil bond; leaving it open to 2+ adults (who gives a crap if someone wants a Robert Heinlein-esque creche situation?) of whatever gender. It's not marriage; if people want to go find a Priest, or a Pastor, or a High Mandrake of His Noodelyness on Earth to 'marry them' according to whatever rite they wish, go for it - the government (should) have no impact and nothing to say about such a rite; for legal purposes it's meaningless.
You're not clever, you're just a dick. Might want to take a dose of Ritalin before you read this reply.
That is, a dick so busy trying to pretend he knows what he's talking about, and so intent on being as offensive as possible (why such gratuitous assholery? Need to prove to mom that despite your basement apartment you are "independent"?) that he can't be bothered to read & comprehend before replying.
1) you're asserting that flying to MARS is easier than developing some sort of space manufacturing - or an actual long-term base - at L5? I think you pretty seriously underestimate the engineering issues regarding a flight to Mars.
2) you might want to read my comment again, Mr Reading Is Fundamental; I said "...The first voyage to the new world wasn't in a canoe (well, not on purpose anyway). We made that trip in large, long range vessels, compared to what we were used to sailing at the time..." a) the first purposeful trips to the new world were NOT in canoes. b) the first voyages to the new world (I know you're talking about the Columbus voyages, but you're wrong because you're an idiot) were probably Vikings, who used the massive, huge knorrs (50+ feet in length, capable of carrying 20+ tons of cargo) which were much deeper of draft than the shallow-draft vessels used along the European coast. Some of the heavier vessels were used in the crossing to Scotland, etc but clearly, even the vikings understood that they needed more substantial, bad-weather craft to cross the open ocean.
3) and finally, the point isn't to boost it "in pieces" from earth. That would be stupid. The point is to have raw materials brought to the manufacturing point from the nearer and MUCH shallower LUNAR gravity well, and to have the ship manufactured in situ; the only pieces that might have to be brought up from earth would be (probably) electronics or other fragile/specialty equipment (like the crew) that you couldn't make with the facilities at L5.
Seriously, if you perhaps weren't quite so quick to be an insulting ass, you might read things through a couple of times to make sure you "got it" first.
The CO2 that comes out of a coal-burning power plant already has a built in carbon offset since it originally came from CO2 that the plants that formed the coal it burns inhaled from the atmosphere.
I know this is the internets and being a dick is sort of 'operators license' but that was a rather harsh reply to a question that isn't a bad one.
It's reasonable to ask why we're working on interplanetary manned flights, when one might suggest that it's a better investment of effort (and we gain valuable knowledge about long-term zero-g effects, space construction, and a host of lessons useful to long-duration space trips) to build spacedocks, ie spacecraft construction facilities near Earth. Now, no, LEO is not a solution, but L5 would be.
The first voyage to the new world wasn't in a canoe (well, not on purpose anyway). We made that trip in large, long range vessels, compared to what we were used to sailing at the time.
We're PAST the canoe stage where you could push off from shore but needed to go right back. We've even sailed to and walked around on Iceland, to carry the analogy to its limits. But we won't usefully go further until we're building vessels that aren't an exercise in stuffing 3 dudes into a phone booth (ie Apollo) for days.
And (his fundamental point) is that it's STUPID to loft vessels of that size/scope/capability (or significant pieces thereof) out of our gravity well.
Personally, I see a natural intersection of emerging technologies in autonomous robotics, 3d printing, and (not quite there) mass-drivers pumping raw material from the Lunar surface to an assembly point at L5. Not sure why nobody seems to be talking about it.
My 5% was understating it. Your 9% was nearly spot-on. Your 25% was ridiculously overstated.
(from wiki) "The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimated in September 2011 that the sequester would have the following effects between 2013 and 2021: "Reductions ranging from 10.0 percent (in 2013) to 8.5 percent (in 2021) in the caps on new discretionary appropriations for defense programs, yielding total outlay savings of $454 billion." "Reductions ranging from 7.8 percent (in 2013) to 5.5 percent (in 2021) in the caps on new discretionary appropriations for nondefense programs, resulting in outlay savings of $294 billion." "Reductions ranging from 10.0 percent (in 2013) to 8.5 percent (in 2021) in mandatory budgetary resources for nonexempt defense programs, generating savings of about $0.1 billion." "Reductions of 2.0 percent each year in most Medicare spending because of the application of a special rule that applies to that program, producing savings of $123 billion, and reductions ranging from 7.8 percent (in 2013) to 5.5 percent (in 2021) in mandatory budgetary resources for other nonexempt nondefense programs and activities, yielding savings of $47 billion. Thus, savings in nondefense mandatory spending would total $170 billion.""
Personally I just see in EA a sort of banal, brainless corporate "squeeze it until it bleeds dry" greed.
Steam (ie Valve's greatest product) is a giant sucking parasite perched on the carotid of modern gaming. It is the worst thing to happen to gaming, ever, and consumers are too stupid to see it.
Steam offered a brave new world of content delivery, and it was great. Except for the worm in the apple: the fact that they are NOT just a delivery organ, they are a license-management organ. No resale. No gifting of products (once they've been played). No transfers of licenses in any circumstance.*
Further, the system is stupid: if I'm logged in to Steam because I want to edit a Civ5 scenario (a game I legally own) on one computer, and want to play a quick game of Magicka (another game I legally own) with friends on my laptop, I can't, because Steam doesn't allow simultaneous logins FOR ANY REASON. So essentially, my game library is now locked behind a vault wall, with an asshole running the show who will only "let" me play one title at a time. BRILLIANT!
*Truth in advertising, I'll explain my particular beef with them, and let you decide: I have 2 sons, who until recently were minors. To manage their exposure to the world of multiplayer games, whenever they got games that were Steam-required, we attached them to MY steam-account. Now they're 16, and there's no need for me to manage their access anymore, but Steam offers no provision for me to one-time-transfer) licenses (we don't give a crap about achievements, etc) to their own Steam accounts. So now when one son wants to play 'his' copy of TF2, the other one can't play Xcom.
I even tried to actually talk to someone in Steam, I've offered to do ANYTHING to prove that I'm their father, this is a one-time deal, anything; the response I got was a flat refusal to give me a contact name, and the assertion that "we're a flat organization, we don't have managers". Right, so Gabe Newell's right there, answering tech support calls I bet?
I disliked Steam, but every time I see a title on the shelves that says "Steam Required" I hate them that little bit more.
Really, how long are we going to swallow absolute FUD without question?
The sequester is $1.2 trillion....OVER TEN YEARS. So $120 bill a year (I've seen it reported as $85 bill for this year).
The idea - as promulgated by the spenders in Congress and White House - is that ANY cut in spending by the US gov't will radically and catastrophically affect (whatever service is important to the listener). This is a bald-faced lie.
This morning, a senior administration official claimed that sequestration would CANCEL all military service person training for the rest of the year (outside of actually-deployed servicepeople). Seriously? A 5% cut in budget cancels 75% of a training schedule?
One example: Obama/Tiger Golf Trip cost $989,207 to the Fed and $78,205 to local police...the average american household paid $1372 in income tax... So ~728 American households had to pay taxes for an entire year to fund the golf trip...
And yet we're crying that we can't cut anything from the US budget? Really? My understanding - I'm not an economist - is that if we simply STOPPED programmed-increases in spending for 6 years, the US budget would be balanced. That doesn't seem that painful, given that most American businesses (except Wall Street, I suppose) have suffered far worse over the past 5 years already.
On NPR this morning, they discussed the previous sequestration of 2% that happened in 1991. The bureaucrat they talked to discussed "how hard it was to implement this 2% cut in everything", using as an example a call he got from a Parks person, asking how they implement a 2% cut in service that scrapes bird shit off of channel buoys. His response was to "...only scrape 98% of the crap off". This, my friends, is what passes for both intelligent thought in government bureaucrats...either he (most likely) thought that was an ironic, humorous reply to what he felt was an unjust budget cutting (which it really wasn't) or he thought that was ACTUALLY a way to reduce his 'poop scraping' service costs by 2%.
As much as they try to make it so, it's pretty simple: expenditure cannot exceed income. Period, full stop. ANY OTHER SOLUTION IS GAME-PLAYING.
Oh, and for those with a party bias? I'll just remind everyone that this has been a problem for 50 years REGARDLESS of which party controlled Congress and the White House. It wouldn't be this bad, if both parties weren't generally colluding.
It already happens. It's quite clear in Planetside 2 who are the players loaded with top-of-the-line optimized gear, vs the shlubs slogging along in the Free 2 Play version, but honestly I don't mind as the game IS free to play. Fair trade in my mind, although it's sometimes a little frustrating to run up against someone who has decent skill AND all the $-bennies...they're simply unbeatable.
No, I'd say the first evidence of what you're talking about are sparkleponies in WoW...in vanilla, it would have been something they threw into a patch update, perhaps a drop from an endgame boss. But they decided to sell it, which meant two things: 1) suddenly TONS of people had it 2) they were almost universally mocked as a blatant example of people who have too much $$.
"...the cancer risk alone is probably a death sentence for the two passengers."
Last time I checked, simply being alive is a death sentence. The question is what you do with that life while you have the chance.
I'm 45, so nobody wants me for a mission like this; but my kids are grown and my wife wouldn't particularly miss me - I'd cheerfully trade the rest of my life for a chance to be on that mission.
The phone spends the majority of its time in my pocket, so it needs to meet a number of compromise goals: 1) fit in a reasonable pocket. I carry mine in a front pocket, and usually wear jeans or dockers, and am male, so it can be fairly large in x/y dimensions. 2) survive in a reasonable pocket: in my pocket, there's a significant risk of flexing as I sit, run, whatever. It's got to be thick enough (or durable enough) to resist damage from flexing. 3) utility: I like the biggest possible screen, without a lot of space wasted on frame/bezel. A big screen is easier for just about anything from movies to books to showing something to someone to using it as an in-car nav system.
I have a galaxy s3 with a 4.8" screen which is great and while I was quite concerned with its durability at first (it's pretty thin) i've been favorably impressed.
A fundamental aspect of greenhouse-gas-induced warming is a global-scale increase in absolute humidity1, 2. Under continued warming, this response has been shown to pose increasingly severe limitations on human activity in tropical and mid-latitudes during peak months of heat stress3. One heat-stress metric with broad occupational health applications4, 5, 6 is wet-bulb globe temperature. We combine wet-bulb globe temperatures from global climate historical reanalysis7 and Earth System Model (ESM2M) projections8, 9, 10 with industrial4 and military5 guidelines for an acclimated individualâ(TM)s occupational capacity to safely perform sustained labour under environmental heat stress (labour capacity)â"here defined as a global population-weighted metric temporally fixed at the 2010 distribution. We estimate that environmental heat stress has reduced labour capacity to 90% in peak months over the past few decades. ESM2M projects labour capacity reduction to 80% in peak months by 2050. Under the highest scenario considered (Representative Concentration Pathway 8.5), ESM2M projects labour capacity reduction to less than 40% by 2200 in peak months, with most tropical and mid-latitudes experiencing extreme climatological heat stress. Uncertainties and caveats associated with these projections include climate sensitivity, climate warming patterns, CO2 emissions, future population distributions, and technological and societal change.
My guess is that they used the 'labor guidelines' from the comfortably indolent Western societies to claim that 'based on standard X, people cannot work more than Y hours when the temp goes over Z'.
Really? Do we REALLY see that tropical societies are furloughing people, and stopping labor when the temp reaches over a certain level? Because in Iraq, equatorial African, South American, and SE South Asian states I've served in some pretty rough conditions, I don't see anybody giving the slightest shit that "it's bloody hot"*.
*except for the pasty fat Americans, Europeans, and increasingly, Chinese and Japanese....
Really this report has a lot of fancy graphs and tables, but the core of it is this root guess that people don't adapt which is complete folderol.
In short, more FUD from the Global Warming Industry.
"Cisco 'showed a wanton indifference to the interests of the public' "
On what planet does CISCO bear a responsibility to the 'interests of the public'?
Seriously?
CISCO's responsibility to its shareholders, pretty much* full stop.
*I'd argue it's in its longer-term self interest to pay attention to the interests of its employees, and probably its home-community. But to the 'public in general'? None whatsoever.
The responsibility lies entirely with the 'expert' or 'consultant' hired to run the project. And if that person was so stupid that they hired a vendor as a consultant (ie someone with a vested interest in the result), then perhaps *shock* someone might even get fired for incompetence?
Check my quoted links above, it should be in there but in case it's not: the reason the value change makes a difference is because it IS handled differently.
Basically, if fixing an error is to the importer's advantage, it's easier to fix. If fixing the error would help the government (increase duty paid, etc.), it's harder.
So essentially by declaring in USD, he was overdeclaring the value. This is trivial to fix, can be remedied by oral notification and re-filing of docs as 'clerical error'.
"The modern degree sends a message that you are a herd animal..." blah blah blah whatever.
You know what? It does. And in this case, the employer is ALSO a herd animal, and if you want to get hired, you need to convince them that YOU can be a good herd animal too.
Don't want to "kowtow to that corporate herd bullshit"? Fine, found your own company, I hope you're hugely successful. But you need to understand that sink or swim, you're on your own.
I'm sick and tired of purported iconoclasts saying they disregard social norms, but then beg for the protections/benefits that COME from being part of the herd. It's easy to be a brave individualist when you're living in mom's basement.
Um, last time I checked, our government was labeling a goodly chunk of its citizens (note: this is left AND right) as potential domestic terrorists LARGELY because they disagree with the administration.
Since the CAD is currently weaker than the dollar, having declared it in USD instead of CAD would be adverse to the government, which actually makes it easier. (It depends on the exchange rate at the date of export, but based on today.) (Rulings adverse to the importer entered after Dec 2004 actually HAVE to come from a formal protest.)
19CFR 173: Â 173.1 Authority to review for error. Port directors have broad responsibility and authority to review transactions to ensure that the rate and amount of duty assessed on imported merchandise is correct and that the transaction is otherwise in accordance with the law. This authority extends to errors in the construction of a law and to errors adverse to the Government as well as the importer. [T.D. 70-181, 35 FR 13429, Aug. 22, 1970, as amended by T.D. 79-221, 44 FR 46830, Aug. 9, 1979]
 173.2 Transactions which may be reviewed and corrected. The port director may review transactions for correctness, and take appropriate action under his general authority to correct errors, including those in appraisement where appropriate, at the time of: (a) Liquidation of an entry; (b) Voluntary reliquidation completed within 90 days after liquidation; (c) Voluntary correction of an exaction within 90 days after the exaction was made; (d) Reliquidation made pursuant to a valid protest covering the particular merchandise as to which a change is in order; or (e) Modification, pursuant to a valid protest, of a transaction or decision which is neither a liquidation or reliquidation.
 173.4a Correction of clerical error prior to liquidation. Pursuant to section 520(a)(4), Tariff Act of 1930, as amended (19 U.S.C. 1520(a)(4)), the port director may, prior to liquidation of an entry, take appropriate action to correct a clerical error that resulted in the deposit or payment of excess duties, fees, charges, or exactions. [T.D. 85-123, 50 FR 29957, July 23, 1985]
 162.23 Seizure under section 596(c), Tariff Act of 1930, as amended (19 U.S.C. 1595a(c)). (...) (d) Seizure under 19 U.S.C. 1592. If merchandise is imported, introduced or attempted to be introduced contrary to a provision of law governing its classification or value, and there is no issue of admissibility, such merchandise shall not be seized pursuant to 19 U.S.C. 1595a(c). Any seizure of such merchandise shall be in accordance with section 1592 (see  162.75 of this chapter).
As I understand the circumstances, on importation he performed what's called 'prior disclosure' - (Â 162.74 Prior disclosure.) identifying orally or in writing to the customs officer of the violation, before an actual investigation was begun. In this case the importer is supposed to tender any potential penalties/duties (in this case, none, since the import value was actually LOWER than declared).
And finally: Â 162.75 Seizures limited under section 592, Tariff Act of 1930, as amended. (a) When authorized. Merchandise may be seized for violation of section 592, Tariff Act of 1930, as amended (19 U.S.C. 1592) only if the port director has reasonable cause to believe that a person has violated the statute and that (1) The person is insolvent, (2) The person is beyond the jurisdiction of the United States, (3) Seizure otherwise is essential to protect the revenue, or (4) Seizure is essential to prevent the introduction of prohibited or restricted merchandise into the Customs territory of the United States. (b) No seizure if prior disclosure. Under no circumstances shall merchandise be seized under the authority of 19 U.S.C. 1592 if there has been a prior disclosure of the violatio
NOBODY expects crap out of/. Whitehouse.gov has billed the silly petition thing as a genuine way to effect change in government. Like so much else ("most transparent administration in history", "no lobbyists", "will not be driven by partisanship", etc.) it's just simple lies. Strangely, there are giant chunks of the demographic (and, apparently, the Nobel Committee) that seems to believe THIS politician - despite his Chicago origin, which should signal that he's the dirtiest of the dirty - is "somehow different".
So yeah, there's a wee bit of difference between expectations around/. forum and Whitehouse petition site. (Almost typed 'Whiteout' petition site...how Freudian...)
Slashdot Mirror
Agreed.
I've come to believe that the only role the state has (and I'd argue that as permanent social bonds DO contribute to civil society, the state DOES have an interest in promoting such behavior) is in codifying the inherent rights to such bonds, not defining them. In that sense, it's a little like standard boilerplate partnerships.
Ie: If I and at least one other sane adult want to form a 'corporation', we can. We sign the 'standard contract'. This certifies that:
- at the termination of our relationship, goods are split equally (if a mutual termination) or 1/n^2 (where n=the number of contract members) for the terminator as their share if they are the sole party interested in breaking the contract.
- any children born to a member of the contract will be supported by the members of the contract equally until they reach majority.
Of course the details are quibble-worthy, but the point is to STRENGTHEN the civil bond; leaving it open to 2+ adults (who gives a crap if someone wants a Robert Heinlein-esque creche situation?) of whatever gender. It's not marriage; if people want to go find a Priest, or a Pastor, or a High Mandrake of His Noodelyness on Earth to 'marry them' according to whatever rite they wish, go for it - the government (should) have no impact and nothing to say about such a rite; for legal purposes it's meaningless.
You're not clever, you're just a dick. Might want to take a dose of Ritalin before you read this reply.
That is, a dick so busy trying to pretend he knows what he's talking about, and so intent on being as offensive as possible (why such gratuitous assholery? Need to prove to mom that despite your basement apartment you are "independent"?) that he can't be bothered to read & comprehend before replying.
1) you're asserting that flying to MARS is easier than developing some sort of space manufacturing - or an actual long-term base - at L5? I think you pretty seriously underestimate the engineering issues regarding a flight to Mars.
2) you might want to read my comment again, Mr Reading Is Fundamental; I said "...The first voyage to the new world wasn't in a canoe (well, not on purpose anyway). We made that trip in large, long range vessels, compared to what we were used to sailing at the time..."
a) the first purposeful trips to the new world were NOT in canoes.
b) the first voyages to the new world (I know you're talking about the Columbus voyages, but you're wrong because you're an idiot) were probably Vikings, who used the massive, huge knorrs (50+ feet in length, capable of carrying 20+ tons of cargo) which were much deeper of draft than the shallow-draft vessels used along the European coast. Some of the heavier vessels were used in the crossing to Scotland, etc but clearly, even the vikings understood that they needed more substantial, bad-weather craft to cross the open ocean.
3) and finally, the point isn't to boost it "in pieces" from earth. That would be stupid. The point is to have raw materials brought to the manufacturing point from the nearer and MUCH shallower LUNAR gravity well, and to have the ship manufactured in situ; the only pieces that might have to be brought up from earth would be (probably) electronics or other fragile/specialty equipment (like the crew) that you couldn't make with the facilities at L5.
Seriously, if you perhaps weren't quite so quick to be an insulting ass, you might read things through a couple of times to make sure you "got it" first.
Obvious pedantry is obvious.
To suggest that you don't know what I meant by "first voyage to the new world" means you're either completely stupid or grossly disingenuous.
I'll credit you a brain, and the basic knowledge of current theories that Western Hemisphere indigenes crossed over by Alaskan landbridge.
The CO2 that comes out of a coal-burning power plant already has a built in carbon offset since it originally came from CO2 that the plants that formed the coal it burns inhaled from the atmosphere.
See how silly that circle is?
I know this is the internets and being a dick is sort of 'operators license' but that was a rather harsh reply to a question that isn't a bad one.
It's reasonable to ask why we're working on interplanetary manned flights, when one might suggest that it's a better investment of effort (and we gain valuable knowledge about long-term zero-g effects, space construction, and a host of lessons useful to long-duration space trips) to build spacedocks, ie spacecraft construction facilities near Earth.
Now, no, LEO is not a solution, but L5 would be.
The first voyage to the new world wasn't in a canoe (well, not on purpose anyway). We made that trip in large, long range vessels, compared to what we were used to sailing at the time.
We're PAST the canoe stage where you could push off from shore but needed to go right back. We've even sailed to and walked around on Iceland, to carry the analogy to its limits. But we won't usefully go further until we're building vessels that aren't an exercise in stuffing 3 dudes into a phone booth (ie Apollo) for days.
And (his fundamental point) is that it's STUPID to loft vessels of that size/scope/capability (or significant pieces thereof) out of our gravity well.
Personally, I see a natural intersection of emerging technologies in autonomous robotics, 3d printing, and (not quite there) mass-drivers pumping raw material from the Lunar surface to an assembly point at L5. Not sure why nobody seems to be talking about it.
http://science.time.com/2012/06/28/epas-co2-regulation-upheld-as-unambiguously-correct/
Correct me if I'm wrong but the EPA insists that CO2 is a regulated pollutant.
Emitters of such need to be regulated, and there needs to be calculations to determine their carbon-offset, no?
My 5% was understating it.
Your 9% was nearly spot-on.
Your 25% was ridiculously overstated.
(from wiki)
"The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimated in September 2011 that the sequester would have the following effects between 2013 and 2021:
"Reductions ranging from 10.0 percent (in 2013) to 8.5 percent (in 2021) in the caps on new discretionary appropriations for defense programs, yielding total outlay savings of $454 billion."
"Reductions ranging from 7.8 percent (in 2013) to 5.5 percent (in 2021) in the caps on new discretionary appropriations for nondefense programs, resulting in outlay savings of $294 billion."
"Reductions ranging from 10.0 percent (in 2013) to 8.5 percent (in 2021) in mandatory budgetary resources for nonexempt defense programs, generating savings of about $0.1 billion."
"Reductions of 2.0 percent each year in most Medicare spending because of the application of a special rule that applies to that program, producing savings of $123 billion, and reductions ranging from 7.8 percent (in 2013) to 5.5 percent (in 2021) in mandatory budgetary resources for other nonexempt nondefense programs and activities, yielding savings of $47 billion. Thus, savings in nondefense mandatory spending would total $170 billion.""
If we're talking about ME, well, I wouldn't be spending 50% more than I make in the first place and borrowing to cover the gap.
But essentially, your argument is "the US government is too stupid to ever cut spending" - really?
Personally I just see in EA a sort of banal, brainless corporate "squeeze it until it bleeds dry" greed.
Steam (ie Valve's greatest product) is a giant sucking parasite perched on the carotid of modern gaming. It is the worst thing to happen to gaming, ever, and consumers are too stupid to see it.
Steam offered a brave new world of content delivery, and it was great. Except for the worm in the apple: the fact that they are NOT just a delivery organ, they are a license-management organ. No resale. No gifting of products (once they've been played). No transfers of licenses in any circumstance.*
Further, the system is stupid: if I'm logged in to Steam because I want to edit a Civ5 scenario (a game I legally own) on one computer, and want to play a quick game of Magicka (another game I legally own) with friends on my laptop, I can't, because Steam doesn't allow simultaneous logins FOR ANY REASON. So essentially, my game library is now locked behind a vault wall, with an asshole running the show who will only "let" me play one title at a time. BRILLIANT!
*Truth in advertising, I'll explain my particular beef with them, and let you decide: I have 2 sons, who until recently were minors. To manage their exposure to the world of multiplayer games, whenever they got games that were Steam-required, we attached them to MY steam-account. Now they're 16, and there's no need for me to manage their access anymore, but Steam offers no provision for me to one-time-transfer) licenses (we don't give a crap about achievements, etc) to their own Steam accounts. So now when one son wants to play 'his' copy of TF2, the other one can't play Xcom.
I even tried to actually talk to someone in Steam, I've offered to do ANYTHING to prove that I'm their father, this is a one-time deal, anything; the response I got was a flat refusal to give me a contact name, and the assertion that "we're a flat organization, we don't have managers". Right, so Gabe Newell's right there, answering tech support calls I bet?
I disliked Steam, but every time I see a title on the shelves that says "Steam Required" I hate them that little bit more.
"Make no mistake, the US is aiming for global economic domination."
1) the US has been the only global superpower for 20 years.
2) the US has been the dominant economy in the world for 70 years.
You're suggesting that the guy who's ALREADY 10 laps ahead of everyone else is trying blow out his engine to pick up an even greater lead.
On a gut level, it seems pretty stupid/silly/pointless.
Not that our Congress isn't a pack of morons.
Really, how long are we going to swallow absolute FUD without question?
The sequester is $1.2 trillion....OVER TEN YEARS. So $120 bill a year (I've seen it reported as $85 bill for this year).
The idea - as promulgated by the spenders in Congress and White House - is that ANY cut in spending by the US gov't will radically and catastrophically affect (whatever service is important to the listener). This is a bald-faced lie.
This morning, a senior administration official claimed that sequestration would CANCEL all military service person training for the rest of the year (outside of actually-deployed servicepeople). Seriously? A 5% cut in budget cancels 75% of a training schedule?
One example: Obama/Tiger Golf Trip cost $989,207 to the Fed and $78,205 to local police...the average american household paid $1372 in income tax... So ~728 American households had to pay taxes for an entire year to fund the golf trip...
And yet we're crying that we can't cut anything from the US budget? Really?
My understanding - I'm not an economist - is that if we simply STOPPED programmed-increases in spending for 6 years, the US budget would be balanced. That doesn't seem that painful, given that most American businesses (except Wall Street, I suppose) have suffered far worse over the past 5 years already.
On NPR this morning, they discussed the previous sequestration of 2% that happened in 1991. The bureaucrat they talked to discussed "how hard it was to implement this 2% cut in everything", using as an example a call he got from a Parks person, asking how they implement a 2% cut in service that scrapes bird shit off of channel buoys. His response was to "...only scrape 98% of the crap off".
This, my friends, is what passes for both intelligent thought in government bureaucrats...either he (most likely) thought that was an ironic, humorous reply to what he felt was an unjust budget cutting (which it really wasn't) or he thought that was ACTUALLY a way to reduce his 'poop scraping' service costs by 2%.
As much as they try to make it so, it's pretty simple: expenditure cannot exceed income. Period, full stop. ANY OTHER SOLUTION IS GAME-PLAYING.
Oh, and for those with a party bias? I'll just remind everyone that this has been a problem for 50 years REGARDLESS of which party controlled Congress and the White House. It wouldn't be this bad, if both parties weren't generally colluding.
It already happens.
It's quite clear in Planetside 2 who are the players loaded with top-of-the-line optimized gear, vs the shlubs slogging along in the Free 2 Play version, but honestly I don't mind as the game IS free to play. Fair trade in my mind, although it's sometimes a little frustrating to run up against someone who has decent skill AND all the $-bennies...they're simply unbeatable.
No, I'd say the first evidence of what you're talking about are sparkleponies in WoW...in vanilla, it would have been something they threw into a patch update, perhaps a drop from an endgame boss. But they decided to sell it, which meant two things:
1) suddenly TONS of people had it
2) they were almost universally mocked as a blatant example of people who have too much $$.
"...the cancer risk alone is probably a death sentence for the two passengers."
Last time I checked, simply being alive is a death sentence.
The question is what you do with that life while you have the chance.
I'm 45, so nobody wants me for a mission like this; but my kids are grown and my wife wouldn't particularly miss me - I'd cheerfully trade the rest of my life for a chance to be on that mission.
The phone spends the majority of its time in my pocket, so it needs to meet a number of compromise goals:
1) fit in a reasonable pocket. I carry mine in a front pocket, and usually wear jeans or dockers, and am male, so it can be fairly large in x/y dimensions.
2) survive in a reasonable pocket: in my pocket, there's a significant risk of flexing as I sit, run, whatever. It's got to be thick enough (or durable enough) to resist damage from flexing.
3) utility: I like the biggest possible screen, without a lot of space wasted on frame/bezel. A big screen is easier for just about anything from movies to books to showing something to someone to using it as an in-car nav system.
I have a galaxy s3 with a 4.8" screen which is great and while I was quite concerned with its durability at first (it's pretty thin) i've been favorably impressed.
(Actual report conveniently behind a paywall)
My guess is that they used the 'labor guidelines' from the comfortably indolent Western societies to claim that 'based on standard X, people cannot work more than Y hours when the temp goes over Z'.
Really? Do we REALLY see that tropical societies are furloughing people, and stopping labor when the temp reaches over a certain level? Because in Iraq, equatorial African, South American, and SE South Asian states I've served in some pretty rough conditions, I don't see anybody giving the slightest shit that "it's bloody hot"*.
*except for the pasty fat Americans, Europeans, and increasingly, Chinese and Japanese....
Really this report has a lot of fancy graphs and tables, but the core of it is this root guess that people don't adapt which is complete folderol.
In short, more FUD from the Global Warming Industry.
"Politician admits obvious truth everyone knew already" ...really IS "news". /sigh /downfalloftherepublic
I mean, if your goal is a meticulous re-creation, why the 3" difference?
Did someone measure wrong and just shrug and say "whups, oh well, it's close"?
Crick may have been a brilliant microbiologist, but he certainly doesn't know shit about business.
Nobody's going to pay him $250,000 for a Nobel, when the last one was given away for nothing.
Silly, naive scientists.
"Cisco 'showed a wanton indifference to the interests of the public' "
On what planet does CISCO bear a responsibility to the 'interests of the public'?
Seriously?
CISCO's responsibility to its shareholders, pretty much* full stop.
*I'd argue it's in its longer-term self interest to pay attention to the interests of its employees, and probably its home-community. But to the 'public in general'? None whatsoever.
The responsibility lies entirely with the 'expert' or 'consultant' hired to run the project. And if that person was so stupid that they hired a vendor as a consultant (ie someone with a vested interest in the result), then perhaps *shock* someone might even get fired for incompetence?
Relevant part of my post above, highlighted:
" That officer was ENTIRELY in the wrong, if the circumstances are being reported accurately"
Check my quoted links above, it should be in there but in case it's not: the reason the value change makes a difference is because it IS handled differently.
Basically, if fixing an error is to the importer's advantage, it's easier to fix. If fixing the error would help the government (increase duty paid, etc.), it's harder.
So essentially by declaring in USD, he was overdeclaring the value. This is trivial to fix, can be remedied by oral notification and re-filing of docs as 'clerical error'.
"The modern degree sends a message that you are a herd animal..."
blah blah blah whatever.
You know what? It does. And in this case, the employer is ALSO a herd animal, and if you want to get hired, you need to convince them that YOU can be a good herd animal too.
Don't want to "kowtow to that corporate herd bullshit"? Fine, found your own company, I hope you're hugely successful. But you need to understand that sink or swim, you're on your own.
I'm sick and tired of purported iconoclasts saying they disregard social norms, but then beg for the protections/benefits that COME from being part of the herd. It's easy to be a brave individualist when you're living in mom's basement.
Um, last time I checked, our government was labeling a goodly chunk of its citizens (note: this is left AND right) as potential domestic terrorists LARGELY because they disagree with the administration.
Left: http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/1...ist-Org-by-FBI
Right: http://start.umd.edu/start/publicati...STerrorism.pdf
So, when the US gov't starts calling *everyone* terrorists, one has to start looking at the administration suspiciously, no?
Since the CAD is currently weaker than the dollar, having declared it in USD instead of CAD would be adverse to the government, which actually makes it easier. (It depends on the exchange rate at the date of export, but based on today.)
(Rulings adverse to the importer entered after Dec 2004 actually HAVE to come from a formal protest.)
http://www.ecfr.gov/cgi-bin/text-idx?c=ecfr&SID=e7f7df984a01d3c9478867fa0f872497&rgn=div5&view=text&node=19:2.0.1.1.19&idno=19
19CFR 173:
 173.1 Authority to review for error.
Port directors have broad responsibility and authority to review transactions to ensure that the rate and amount of duty assessed on imported merchandise is correct and that the transaction is otherwise in accordance with the law. This authority extends to errors in the construction of a law and to errors adverse to the Government as well as the importer.
[T.D. 70-181, 35 FR 13429, Aug. 22, 1970, as amended by T.D. 79-221, 44 FR 46830, Aug. 9, 1979]
 173.2 Transactions which may be reviewed and corrected.
The port director may review transactions for correctness, and take appropriate action under his general authority to correct errors, including those in appraisement where appropriate, at the time of:
(a) Liquidation of an entry;
(b) Voluntary reliquidation completed within 90 days after liquidation;
(c) Voluntary correction of an exaction within 90 days after the exaction was made;
(d) Reliquidation made pursuant to a valid protest covering the particular merchandise as to which a change is in order; or
(e) Modification, pursuant to a valid protest, of a transaction or decision which is neither a liquidation or reliquidation.
 173.4a Correction of clerical error prior to liquidation.
Pursuant to section 520(a)(4), Tariff Act of 1930, as amended (19 U.S.C. 1520(a)(4)), the port director may, prior to liquidation of an entry, take appropriate action to correct a clerical error that resulted in the deposit or payment of excess duties, fees, charges, or exactions.
[T.D. 85-123, 50 FR 29957, July 23, 1985]
 162.23 Seizure under section 596(c), Tariff Act of 1930, as amended (19 U.S.C. 1595a(c)).
(...)
(d) Seizure under 19 U.S.C. 1592. If merchandise is imported, introduced or attempted to be introduced contrary to a provision of law governing its classification or value, and there is no issue of admissibility, such merchandise shall not be seized pursuant to 19 U.S.C. 1595a(c). Any seizure of such merchandise shall be in accordance with section 1592 (see  162.75 of this chapter).
As I understand the circumstances, on importation he performed what's called 'prior disclosure' - (Â 162.74 Prior disclosure.) identifying orally or in writing to the customs officer of the violation, before an actual investigation was begun. In this case the importer is supposed to tender any potential penalties/duties (in this case, none, since the import value was actually LOWER than declared) .
And finally:
 162.75 Seizures limited under section 592, Tariff Act of 1930, as amended.
(a) When authorized. Merchandise may be seized for violation of section 592, Tariff Act of 1930, as amended (19 U.S.C. 1592) only if the port director has reasonable cause to believe that a person has violated the statute and that
(1) The person is insolvent,
(2) The person is beyond the jurisdiction of the United States,
(3) Seizure otherwise is essential to protect the revenue, or
(4) Seizure is essential to prevent the introduction of prohibited or restricted merchandise into the Customs territory of the United States.
(b) No seizure if prior disclosure. Under no circumstances shall merchandise be seized under the authority of 19 U.S.C. 1592 if there has been a prior disclosure of the violatio
There is, in fact, a HUGE difference.
NOBODY expects crap out of /.
Whitehouse.gov has billed the silly petition thing as a genuine way to effect change in government. Like so much else ("most transparent administration in history", "no lobbyists", "will not be driven by partisanship", etc.) it's just simple lies. Strangely, there are giant chunks of the demographic (and, apparently, the Nobel Committee) that seems to believe THIS politician - despite his Chicago origin, which should signal that he's the dirtiest of the dirty - is "somehow different".
So yeah, there's a wee bit of difference between expectations around /. forum and Whitehouse petition site. (Almost typed 'Whiteout' petition site...how Freudian...)