The irony is that we're seeing the strengths of both markets.
Euro: centralized, big-government model, standardized, high cost, cutting edge (doesn't hurt that the infrastructure was pretty much erased contintent-wide in 1940-45)
US: distributed, free-market, emphasis on cost savings, "good enough" tech.
Basically, the Euros/Japanese have far better tech and general quality than the US, where goodenough is good enough, as long as it saves money. And, the key is that when it's cheap, it's paradigm-shifting, rather than it being a luxury that only impacts peripheral markets.
...let's keep in mind that the NSA exists for a reason, and that reason is important.
In the same sense that tinfoil-hatters are constantly alert to the possibilty that "they are watching us", the NSA exists because there are countries and organizations and individuals whose interests ARE inimical to the United States. It shouldn't have to be said this shortly after the Cold War, or even Sept 11, but the security agencies of the United States have a serious and IMPORTANT function.
Do they go overboard? Once in a while, no question they exceed their mandate, usually from an overzealous interpretation of their duties. Yes, it's important to find a careful compromise between secrecy and oversight REQUIRED by a free society.
However, I think occasionally/. tends to drift into Pollyanna-land where the only thing we have to fear is those 'debbils' in government that want to take our freedoms away. No. Let's keep our priorities straight and remember that while overzealous policemen certainly need to be disciplined and corrected, they are STILL the "good guys" as long as you are realistic and remember the really BAD alternatives out there.
But let's get back to first principles. Why does a government tax? To pay for community services.
If you go to a store and buy something, there are a number of services you use directly or indirectly to make that transaction. The streets, the police services that make it safe, the fire services that keep the place from burning down, the army to prevent it being sacked by Goths before you get there, etc.
Logically, - if the USERS are paying for their ISP and connection, and - the connection is (largely) privatized, then in a sense, the government needs to provide nearly NOTHING to an internet transaction.
If the consumer is having something mailed or shipped, he must pay for postage, but again, there is a USER fee covering specifically what taxes previously provided generally. Yes, of course you could go to the infinitesimal level of law enforcement needed to prevent someone messing with the internet lines, etc. But to be accurate, a transaction over the internet costs the government much less, and therefore there is less rationale for taxation in principle, no?
I just think it was unimaginitive/untrained agents. IANAL but as far as I'm concerned, the airline would have been entirely within it's rights as a business to say that nobody flies on their planes without ID.
Simple. Their planes, their rules. In this case, a set of rules that would have complied with the government's desires or "secret law", but their choice nonetheless.
Tell you what - you start your own airline, and you state that NO ID IS REQUIRED for travel, merely proof-of-ticket-purchase, and let the FREE MARKET decide. I'll still be flying on the old-fashioned airlines, but I'm sure you'll have planeloads of troublemakers, no-goodniks, and libertarian asshats to keep you in business.
The mainstream media has shown itself repeatedly just as biased with its own political agenda*; as Hugh Hewitt wrote in his recent book BLOG, he likens it very much to the Gutenberg revolution: you had a very CONTROLLED media business, where very tight-knit group of people with their own biases were controlling everything about the public discussion, for all intents and purposes. * note to/.ers: simply because you are so far off in left field that Lenin is merely a 'faint pink' to you, doesn't mean the Mainstream Media isn't generally LIBERAL. They may not look it to you, but then again, not much IS to the left of you.
To take your points in order: 1) half-assed: hm, Bush National Guard Papers anyone? They weren't even GOOD forgeries. How about repeated stories on some minority kid having a tough time.... that turns out to be entirely fiction? Yeah, W-A--A-A-Y better fact-checking there.
2) melodrama: have you ever actually WATCHED Dan Rather? If journalists in general aren't the biggest bunch of drama-queens after Hollywood, I'm not sure what is.
3) lack of accountability: and precisely who is the NYT accountable to when it publishes routine hatchet jobs and character assassinations? Or when they refuse to review conservative books (despite their being top of the best-seller list for weeks) on principle. How many MSM outlets said ANYTHING about Mr. Jordan (late of CNN) and his ridiculous comments, until AFTER he'd been cut loose? Nice reportage - w00t!
4) "the sole source of news" (eg excessive hubris) - this would be declaring yourself the sole source of 'real' news and that anyone else bringing forth news and commentary is just some untalented Pajamahedeen with an axe to grind? Sure, I see what you mean.
Hi Ms. Pot? This is Mr. Kettle of the NYT. Would love to call you black, please.
"NASA not distributing it the way it was done before" is NOT equivalent to "U.S. Withholding Satellite Data"
As CelesTrak says on their site, you can "...Register for a Space Track account today at http://www.space-track.org (only 4,000 users have done so to date) and use the application provided at http://celestrak.com/SpaceTrack/TLERetrieverHelp.a sp to automatically download and convert Space Track data into CelesTrak data sets to help you with the transition. This will ensure you get the very latest data in the formats you are currently accustomed to...." (emphasis added)
How is this "withholding" data, except in the "George-Bush-is-teh-debbil-therefore-the-governmen t-MUST be-fascist" fantasies of/.?
... when a program that is given away for FREE, is spread around and enjoyed further by a larger audience?
a) the broadcasters don't have to use their broadcast networks, saving more of the precious tv time for infomercials and reality-tv shows b) the producers get re-viewings without having to pay residuals to the actors c) the commercials are invariably edited out, but anyone who thinks we're actually sitting and watching that umpteenth commercial for feminine maxi pads instead of going to get a soda is either fooling themselves or a self-delusional advertising mogul.
Walter Cronkite says he's for it as long as it doesn't disturb the view from Martha's Vineyard. Please put it where it will only get in the way of poor people.
Yes, but the number 1 cause of hate is insecurity. Possibly true, but what value to make such a statement? Then one could just rephrase the PP instead of saying 'hatred is endemic' to saying 'insecurity is endemic to the human animal'.
One could also riposte by pointing out organisms that are secure never evolve, either. Not all evolution is improvement, of course. But it might be said that since the nature of organisms in a zero-sum world is to compete for resources, and the evolutionary advantage goes to the organism that NEVER says "hey, I like me" - it would seem logical that such a creature is quickly outcompeted.
What I find most interesting, and little discussed, is the desire for utopia that is so common with humans. Everyone sees peace and happiness as some sort of 'base state' to existance, when there exists a fairly credible likelihood that perhaps hatred, envy, jealousy, and violence are probably ACTUALLY the base state and the idealisms of only momentary suspensions between beats.
I think it's funny that the Far Left have no choice but to be utterly inconsistent on this issue.
We dealt with N Korea in *exactly* the way the left told us we SHOULD have dealt with Iraq: international consensus, no reversion to force, feeble sanctions, no saber rattling, diplomacy, and a wonderful 'ironclad' agreement with them during the Clinton years. = North Korea has a nuke. Success?
So the left either has to say if Bush was wrong in Iraq, then what is happening in Korea is acceptable. OR, if Bush was wrong in Korea, then he was implicitly right in Iraq.
Or, they can just be blatant hypocrites and uselessly criticize everything (par for the course). It's not a problem, we don't mind taking the presidency (and the congress, and the governorships, etc. etc. ) in 2008....again.
You draw a neat moral equivalency between the US and North Korea. You do realize you (and perhaps your family...relatives...friends) would be 'disappeared' for making the equivalent statement in North Korea? Yeah, George BUSH is teh debbil, right?
...but isn't the point the converting genetic information into a number in a database, and not the barcode? I mean, the barcode itself is of utterly no value except as a shorthand for transmitting numeric data.
They take a sample. They convert the genetic information to numbers. * they convert the numbers to a barcode * They send this data to the database * it's backconverted from barcode to numbers * The information is checked against what's in the database.
arent the "*" lines redundant?
I mean, the 'barcode' is simply a way to reduce (not eliminate) the human error factor in transmitting long numbers. They might as well say that they are "Identifying the world's species with RFID" if that's the method they use to transmit the data to and from the database.
Frankly, barcoding seems rather dumb, because a barcode is not inherently readable to a person - if Joe Biologist gets the data, he can't do anything with it unless he has electricity, a reader, probably a laptop, AND knowledge of what barcode standard they're using. That doesn't seem a very efficient replacement for a PENCIL.
It's never that simple. The past is always embedded in the present. I think it's true, but the key question is: do you DWELL on the past or get on with life? Do you blame the past for your failures today, instead of examining yourself seriously? SOMETIMES, there's just bad luck and you can either rail against anonymous fate or move forward. Maybe you can't get a flat in upper manhattan simply because you're simply insufficiently 'connected'? (I sincerely doubt that there are NO blacks in Upper Manhattan, or that Wesely Snipes, Denzel Washington, or Halle Berry would have trouble getting an apartment there...). As a Native American, do you sit in an unemployed stupor, angry about how your ancestors were exploited? Or do you take advantage of the MULTITUDE of (compensatory) programs established for your benefit - free college, anyone? I generally think that anger and bitterness has NEVER accomplished anything.
The author concludes that a supernova has to be within 10 parsecs (30 light years) or so to be dangerous to life on Earth. This is because the atmosphere shields us from most dangerous radiations. Astronauts in orbit may be in danger if a supernova is within 1000 parsecs or so.
No stars currently within 20 parsecs will go supernova within the next few million years.
There are some indirect effects, though, which are harder to evaluate: the possible effects on the Earth ozone layer is listed in the article above. Additionally, according to one calculation, the neutrino flux from a nearby supernova might heat up the Sun.
Best wishes,
Koji Mukai & Eric Christian for Ask a High-Energy Astronomer
Better than dropping cables, I think I saw 1st on/. ages ago: if you're still in the frame-and-studs phase, have the contractor install 2" PVC 'conduit' drops from upstairs and main floor empty outlet boxes to the basement. THEN you're not stuck with the cat5/6 you've put in forever, it's an easy matter to drop WHATEVER cable down the tubes (or rip it out). Yes, Cat5 seems like plenty, but so did 640k RAM at one time.
I don't think most of the 'doubters' of global warming deny that the climate is changing. I think the general point is that (we) doubt sincerely that it's EVIL HOOMANZ that are the cause.
I've looked at the source data, the corrections, the corrections to the corrections. I looked at National Geographic's reports, etc. and what I see is that the climate appears to be changing. Yes. But looking over the LONGEST spans, it doesn't seem to be changing beyond the historic maxima or minima. Not even CLOSE.
Even looking at the teeny tiny time that humans have been bright enough to record things, as I recall there were Viking settlements in Greenland in an area covered now with ICE, oranges used to grow in southern england, and fossilized plants were being found at the South Pole. I find it very, very hard to conceive that a few degrees shift is going to cause a catastrophic end to human society. Yes, some people will die. So? How much more important are humans than lemmings, from the earth's point of view?
Yes, coral reefs will die - but they seemed to survive previous warming periods, so obviously other regions will open up to them.
Yes, the huge agri heartland of the US will shift north...but weren't these SAME environmentalists compaining that we were exhausting/denuding/polluting our topsoil with intensive corporate farming of the american midwest? If the growing belt shifts north GREAT, we get 'fresh' land to exploit - w00t!
Sorry, but the enviro-left been screaming that the sky is falling (mainly because of dirty capitalist pigs) for the last FORTY YEARS. You're suprised that nobody takes you seriously?
Good, now maybe he can decide to stop being an a**hole and leave Cryptic alone.
Stan - how's Jack Kirby doing? You going to be sharing any of that moola with his estate? I'm sure you will because it's the "right" thing to do, right?
Social Security also delivers a considerable nonmonetary benefit: people who have contributed throughout their working lives know that, regardless of the ebb and flow of their careers and, indeed, of the stock market, a guaranteed pension awaits them....at the cost of picking their children's pockets. Nice. Can we agree that in the first place, SS is a giant shell game, robbing from those earning NOW to pay for those who earned THEN?
1) In 1950, the life expectancy at birth of a US male was 65.6 years. (Most paid workers in the US in the 30's - when SS was conceived - were men) (http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/hus/hus04trend.pdf#0 27) In 2002 the avg expectancy of the workforce is 77.3 yrs (74.5 just for men). I heard on NPR an economist making the point that SS was meant to cover the final few years of one's life for the small % that made it that far, and that, if you adjusted SS coverage to begin on (life expectancy - 3 years) or whatever it originally was, suddenly the "crisis" vanishes. Now, many many more people are living 10-20% longer, and we're suprised that SS doesn't make it? Um....duh?
2) Personally, I'm in favor of privatization. I'm in favor of ANYTHING that de-funds the US gov't, or at least gets the money OUT of the control of the self-interested gutless weasels known as Congress. Let it end with my generation: take SS deductions from my paycheck my whole life, and give me nothing*, so that my kids don't have to fund this boondoggle in turn. *truth in advertising, I don't expect to get anything anyway, I'm 37, so it's easy for me to say this.
Childless household has no toys. 1st child boy. 2nd child boy (13 months apart) House fills with "boy toys" - trucks, cars, legos, trains, balls, etc. Much beloved aunt gives both infant sons Raggedy Andy dolls, and a kitchen playset in an effort to be non-stereotyping. 22 mos later, 3rd child girl 18 months later, 4th child girl.
By the time the boys were 3 and 2, the dolls were being used almost exclusively as 'accident victims' and the kitchen playset was a fortified HQ for their lego vs. teddy bear battles.
Girl 1, who ostensibly grew up in a nearly 100% "boy toy" environment, is totally feminine. When girl child 1 came along, she would DIG through the piles of toys, tossing aside cars and trucks to find the teddy bears and dolls and cuddle them in toddler bliss.
Girl child 2 loved to draw, so she got lots of crayons/art stuff. One day at age 2-3 I saw her with her drawing board - she didn't see me. As I watched for a few moments, she had created a whole 'crayon family', with a daddy crayon, a mommy crayon, and lots of baby crayons, even crayon puppies and kittens. They talked to each other, went on trips, everything except, well, draw.
Same parents, same household, all in 4-6 years. These kids were not 'socialized' into their roles. They are deeply and distinctly different individuals and yet their preferences and behaviors are CLASSICALLY "feminine" and "masculine".
They also had the time to look at it. If books are rare, the best light you can get is candles, and you work during the day, most adults would have several hours of time per day (post-medieval era) in which looking at the stars is about as interesting as any alternatives.
No, I'd say it's asking : what's the point? I mean, to say "look, we've preserved this dance! w00t!" does what, exactly?
Cultural actions out of context are worth what, exactly? If nobody's learning the dance as part of their culture, and if the only preservation of it is some dusty electronic file stored on a dvd somewhere, it's lost its context. It's lost anything that gave it an inherent value. You've preserved the empty, now-meaningless gestures.
Take someone from an inuit culture, and have a human perform a dance learned from a pygmy tribe. What is he/she going to get out of it?
There may be some sort of trivia archaeo-ethnic-historical value in preserving this stuff (like knowing that 17th Century people switched their shoes from left to right every day), but I fear that people think that this might be a way to 'preserve' a culture that's disappearing under our homogenized pan-Terran media world. It's not. Like a dead language preserved only in a dictionary, a dance saved by memorized motion capture is like a verb without a noun: empty of meaning.
Illustrative of one of the critical weaknesses of our politically correct culture. Now it's no longer considered 'wrong' to have racist or sexist thoughts, it's wrong to even CONSIDER the matter for (apprently) fear that you might be led to think something that someone somewhere believes is racist or sexist.
Badthought, indeed.
It's obvious that there are physiological differences between men and women. It seems also obvious that there are psychological/emotional differences. It doesn't seem like a HUGE leap to believe that *perhaps* there might be cognitive differences, either. IMHO we recognize this every DAY: speaking in a broad generalization, *most* women I know are far better at managing a broad number of simultaneous tasks than I am. That doesn't make me feel like a second-class citizen, it just IS a fact of how I see the world.
Look, I violently disagree with anyone who'd tell a girl that "you can't go into math/science because girls don't do math", but for the mere discussion of the subject to be verboten (or to be immediately drowned out with a chorus of knee-jerk responses) is simply ignorant. Well-intentioned, perhaps - but ignorant nonetheless.
So far Airbus have sold 139 A380-800 aircraft, half of what it needs to break even. Um no.
The 139 aircraft on the order books now are pre-sells, which are HEAVILY discounted to get some orders on the book (aircraft orders need a critical mass of purchasers to make it seem like a 'standard' product and get more purchases down the line).
Kind of like a crack dealer, both Boeing and Airbus offer the first ones (nearly) free, at the cost of ramping up the price to follow-on purchases and later consumers.
Slashdot Mirror
The irony is that we're seeing the strengths of both markets.
Euro: centralized, big-government model, standardized, high cost, cutting edge (doesn't hurt that the infrastructure was pretty much erased contintent-wide in 1940-45)
US: distributed, free-market, emphasis on cost savings, "good enough" tech.
Basically, the Euros/Japanese have far better tech and general quality than the US, where goodenough is good enough, as long as it saves money. And, the key is that when it's cheap, it's paradigm-shifting, rather than it being a luxury that only impacts peripheral markets.
...let's keep in mind that the NSA exists for a reason, and that reason is important.
/. tends to drift into Pollyanna-land where the only thing we have to fear is those 'debbils' in government that want to take our freedoms away. No. Let's keep our priorities straight and remember that while overzealous policemen certainly need to be disciplined and corrected, they are STILL the "good guys" as long as you are realistic and remember the really BAD alternatives out there.
In the same sense that tinfoil-hatters are constantly alert to the possibilty that "they are watching us", the NSA exists because there are countries and organizations and individuals whose interests ARE inimical to the United States. It shouldn't have to be said this shortly after the Cold War, or even Sept 11, but the security agencies of the United States have a serious and IMPORTANT function.
Do they go overboard? Once in a while, no question they exceed their mandate, usually from an overzealous interpretation of their duties. Yes, it's important to find a careful compromise between secrecy and oversight REQUIRED by a free society.
However, I think occasionally
But let's get back to first principles.
Why does a government tax? To pay for community services.
If you go to a store and buy something, there are a number of services you use directly or indirectly to make that transaction. The streets, the police services that make it safe, the fire services that keep the place from burning down, the army to prevent it being sacked by Goths before you get there, etc.
Logically,
- if the USERS are paying for their ISP and connection, and
- the connection is (largely) privatized, then in a sense, the government needs to provide nearly NOTHING to an internet transaction.
If the consumer is having something mailed or shipped, he must pay for postage, but again, there is a USER fee covering specifically what taxes previously provided generally. Yes, of course you could go to the infinitesimal level of law enforcement needed to prevent someone messing with the internet lines, etc. But to be accurate, a transaction over the internet costs the government much less, and therefore there is less rationale for taxation in principle, no?
To update the /. standards books:
1 'hidef' movie = 0.001 Libraries of Congress
1 movie = 0.00001 Libraries of Congress
1 song = 0.0000001 Libraries of Congress
I just think it was unimaginitive/untrained agents. IANAL but as far as I'm concerned, the airline would have been entirely within it's rights as a business to say that nobody flies on their planes without ID.
Simple. Their planes, their rules. In this case, a set of rules that would have complied with the government's desires or "secret law", but their choice nonetheless.
Tell you what - you start your own airline, and you state that NO ID IS REQUIRED for travel, merely proof-of-ticket-purchase, and let the FREE MARKET decide. I'll still be flying on the old-fashioned airlines, but I'm sure you'll have planeloads of troublemakers, no-goodniks, and libertarian asshats to keep you in business.
But wait.
/.ers: simply because you are so far off in left field that Lenin is merely a 'faint pink' to you, doesn't mean the Mainstream Media isn't generally LIBERAL. They may not look it to you, but then again, not much IS to the left of you.
.... that turns out to be entirely fiction? Yeah, W-A--A-A-Y better fact-checking there.
The mainstream media has shown itself repeatedly just as biased with its own political agenda*; as Hugh Hewitt wrote in his recent book BLOG, he likens it very much to the Gutenberg revolution: you had a very CONTROLLED media business, where very tight-knit group of people with their own biases were controlling everything about the public discussion, for all intents and purposes.
* note to
To take your points in order:
1) half-assed: hm, Bush National Guard Papers anyone? They weren't even GOOD forgeries. How about repeated stories on some minority kid having a tough time
2) melodrama: have you ever actually WATCHED Dan Rather? If journalists in general aren't the biggest bunch of drama-queens after Hollywood, I'm not sure what is.
3) lack of accountability: and precisely who is the NYT accountable to when it publishes routine hatchet jobs and character assassinations? Or when they refuse to review conservative books (despite their being top of the best-seller list for weeks) on principle. How many MSM outlets said ANYTHING about Mr. Jordan (late of CNN) and his ridiculous comments, until AFTER he'd been cut loose? Nice reportage - w00t!
4) "the sole source of news" (eg excessive hubris) - this would be declaring yourself the sole source of 'real' news and that anyone else bringing forth news and commentary is just some untalented Pajamahedeen with an axe to grind? Sure, I see what you mean.
Hi Ms. Pot? This is Mr. Kettle of the NYT. Would love to call you black, please.
"NASA not distributing it the way it was done before" is NOT equivalent to "U.S. Withholding Satellite Data"
a sp to automatically download and convert Space Track data into CelesTrak data sets to help you with the transition. This will ensure you get the very latest data in the formats you are currently accustomed to...." (emphasis added)
n t-MUST be-fascist" fantasies of /.?
As CelesTrak says on their site, you can "...Register for a Space Track account today at http://www.space-track.org (only 4,000 users have done so to date) and use the application provided at http://celestrak.com/SpaceTrack/TLERetrieverHelp.
How is this "withholding" data, except in the "George-Bush-is-teh-debbil-therefore-the-governme
... when a program that is given away for FREE, is spread around and enjoyed further by a larger audience?
a) the broadcasters don't have to use their broadcast networks, saving more of the precious tv time for infomercials and reality-tv shows
b) the producers get re-viewings without having to pay residuals to the actors
c) the commercials are invariably edited out, but anyone who thinks we're actually sitting and watching that umpteenth commercial for feminine maxi pads instead of going to get a soda is either fooling themselves or a self-delusional advertising mogul.
Walter Cronkite says he's for it as long as it doesn't disturb the view from Martha's Vineyard. Please put it where it will only get in the way of poor people.
Yes, but the number 1 cause of hate is insecurity.
Possibly true, but what value to make such a statement? Then one could just rephrase the PP instead of saying 'hatred is endemic' to saying 'insecurity is endemic to the human animal'.
One could also riposte by pointing out organisms that are secure never evolve, either. Not all evolution is improvement, of course. But it might be said that since the nature of organisms in a zero-sum world is to compete for resources, and the evolutionary advantage goes to the organism that NEVER says "hey, I like me" - it would seem logical that such a creature is quickly outcompeted.
What I find most interesting, and little discussed, is the desire for utopia that is so common with humans. Everyone sees peace and happiness as some sort of 'base state' to existance, when there exists a fairly credible likelihood that perhaps hatred, envy, jealousy, and violence are probably ACTUALLY the base state and the idealisms of only momentary suspensions between beats.
I think it's funny that the Far Left have no choice but to be utterly inconsistent on this issue.
We dealt with N Korea in *exactly* the way the left told us we SHOULD have dealt with Iraq: international consensus, no reversion to force, feeble sanctions, no saber rattling, diplomacy, and a wonderful 'ironclad' agreement with them during the Clinton years. = North Korea has a nuke. Success?
So the left either has to say if Bush was wrong in Iraq, then what is happening in Korea is acceptable.
OR, if Bush was wrong in Korea, then he was implicitly right in Iraq.
Or, they can just be blatant hypocrites and uselessly criticize everything (par for the course). It's not a problem, we don't mind taking the presidency (and the congress, and the governorships, etc. etc. ) in 2008....again.
You draw a neat moral equivalency between the US and North Korea. You do realize you (and perhaps your family...relatives...friends) would be 'disappeared' for making the equivalent statement in North Korea?
Yeah, George BUSH is teh debbil, right?
...but isn't the point the converting genetic information into a number in a database, and not the barcode? I mean, the barcode itself is of utterly no value except as a shorthand for transmitting numeric data.
They take a sample.
They convert the genetic information to numbers.
* they convert the numbers to a barcode *
They send this data to the database
* it's backconverted from barcode to numbers *
The information is checked against what's in the database.
arent the "*" lines redundant?
I mean, the 'barcode' is simply a way to reduce (not eliminate) the human error factor in transmitting long numbers. They might as well say that they are "Identifying the world's species with RFID" if that's the method they use to transmit the data to and from the database.
Frankly, barcoding seems rather dumb, because a barcode is not inherently readable to a person - if Joe Biologist gets the data, he can't do anything with it unless he has electricity, a reader, probably a laptop, AND knowledge of what barcode standard they're using. That doesn't seem a very efficient replacement for a PENCIL.
It's never that simple. The past is always embedded in the present.
I think it's true, but the key question is: do you DWELL on the past or get on with life? Do you blame the past for your failures today, instead of examining yourself seriously? SOMETIMES, there's just bad luck and you can either rail against anonymous fate or move forward.
Maybe you can't get a flat in upper manhattan simply because you're simply insufficiently 'connected'? (I sincerely doubt that there are NO blacks in Upper Manhattan, or that Wesely Snipes, Denzel Washington, or Halle Berry would have trouble getting an apartment there...).
As a Native American, do you sit in an unemployed stupor, angry about how your ancestors were exploited? Or do you take advantage of the MULTITUDE of (compensatory) programs established for your benefit - free college, anyone?
I generally think that anger and bitterness has NEVER accomplished anything.
Better than dropping cables, I think I saw 1st on /. ages ago: if you're still in the frame-and-studs phase, have the contractor install 2" PVC 'conduit' drops from upstairs and main floor empty outlet boxes to the basement. THEN you're not stuck with the cat5/6 you've put in forever, it's an easy matter to drop WHATEVER cable down the tubes (or rip it out). Yes, Cat5 seems like plenty, but so did 640k RAM at one time.
It's like 12.95 a month subscription. I tried.
I thought slashdotters were intelligent.
I don't think most of the 'doubters' of global warming deny that the climate is changing. I think the general point is that (we) doubt sincerely that it's EVIL HOOMANZ that are the cause.
I've looked at the source data, the corrections, the corrections to the corrections. I looked at National Geographic's reports, etc. and what I see is that the climate appears to be changing. Yes. But looking over the LONGEST spans, it doesn't seem to be changing beyond the historic maxima or minima. Not even CLOSE.
Even looking at the teeny tiny time that humans have been bright enough to record things, as I recall there were Viking settlements in Greenland in an area covered now with ICE, oranges used to grow in southern england, and fossilized plants were being found at the South Pole. I find it very, very hard to conceive that a few degrees shift is going to cause a catastrophic end to human society. Yes, some people will die. So? How much more important are humans than lemmings, from the earth's point of view?
Yes, coral reefs will die - but they seemed to survive previous warming periods, so obviously other regions will open up to them.
Yes, the huge agri heartland of the US will shift north...but weren't these SAME environmentalists compaining that we were exhausting/denuding/polluting our topsoil with intensive corporate farming of the american midwest? If the growing belt shifts north GREAT, we get 'fresh' land to exploit - w00t!
Sorry, but the enviro-left been screaming that the sky is falling (mainly because of dirty capitalist pigs) for the last FORTY YEARS. You're suprised that nobody takes you seriously?
-signed Mom
Good, now maybe he can decide to stop being an a**hole and leave Cryptic alone.
Stan - how's Jack Kirby doing? You going to be sharing any of that moola with his estate? I'm sure you will because it's the "right" thing to do, right?
Two things.
...at the cost of picking their children's pockets. Nice.
0 27)
Social Security also delivers a considerable nonmonetary benefit: people who have contributed throughout their working lives know that, regardless of the ebb and flow of their careers and, indeed, of the stock market, a guaranteed pension awaits them.
Can we agree that in the first place, SS is a giant shell game, robbing from those earning NOW to pay for those who earned THEN?
1) In 1950, the life expectancy at birth of a US male was 65.6 years. (Most paid workers in the US in the 30's - when SS was conceived - were men) (http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/hus/hus04trend.pdf#
In 2002 the avg expectancy of the workforce is 77.3 yrs (74.5 just for men). I heard on NPR an economist making the point that SS was meant to cover the final few years of one's life for the small % that made it that far, and that, if you adjusted SS coverage to begin on (life expectancy - 3 years) or whatever it originally was, suddenly the "crisis" vanishes.
Now, many many more people are living 10-20% longer, and we're suprised that SS doesn't make it? Um....duh?
2) Personally, I'm in favor of privatization. I'm in favor of ANYTHING that de-funds the US gov't, or at least gets the money OUT of the control of the self-interested gutless weasels known as Congress. Let it end with my generation: take SS deductions from my paycheck my whole life, and give me nothing*, so that my kids don't have to fund this boondoggle in turn.
*truth in advertising, I don't expect to get anything anyway, I'm 37, so it's easy for me to say this.
OK here's one.
Childless household has no toys.
1st child boy.
2nd child boy (13 months apart)
House fills with "boy toys" - trucks, cars, legos, trains, balls, etc.
Much beloved aunt gives both infant sons Raggedy Andy dolls, and a kitchen playset in an effort to be non-stereotyping.
22 mos later, 3rd child girl
18 months later, 4th child girl.
By the time the boys were 3 and 2, the dolls were being used almost exclusively as 'accident victims' and the kitchen playset was a fortified HQ for their lego vs. teddy bear battles.
Girl 1, who ostensibly grew up in a nearly 100% "boy toy" environment, is totally feminine. When girl child 1 came along, she would DIG through the piles of toys, tossing aside cars and trucks to find the teddy bears and dolls and cuddle them in toddler bliss.
Girl child 2 loved to draw, so she got lots of crayons/art stuff. One day at age 2-3 I saw her with her drawing board - she didn't see me. As I watched for a few moments, she had created a whole 'crayon family', with a daddy crayon, a mommy crayon, and lots of baby crayons, even crayon puppies and kittens. They talked to each other, went on trips, everything except, well, draw.
Same parents, same household, all in 4-6 years. These kids were not 'socialized' into their roles. They are deeply and distinctly different individuals and yet their preferences and behaviors are CLASSICALLY "feminine" and "masculine".
They also had the time to look at it.
If books are rare, the best light you can get is candles, and you work during the day, most adults would have several hours of time per day (post-medieval era) in which looking at the stars is about as interesting as any alternatives.
No, I'd say it's asking : what's the point?
I mean, to say "look, we've preserved this dance! w00t!" does what, exactly?
Cultural actions out of context are worth what, exactly? If nobody's learning the dance as part of their culture, and if the only preservation of it is some dusty electronic file stored on a dvd somewhere, it's lost its context. It's lost anything that gave it an inherent value. You've preserved the empty, now-meaningless gestures.
Take someone from an inuit culture, and have a human perform a dance learned from a pygmy tribe. What is he/she going to get out of it?
There may be some sort of trivia archaeo-ethnic-historical value in preserving this stuff (like knowing that 17th Century people switched their shoes from left to right every day), but I fear that people think that this might be a way to 'preserve' a culture that's disappearing under our homogenized pan-Terran media world. It's not. Like a dead language preserved only in a dictionary, a dance saved by memorized motion capture is like a verb without a noun: empty of meaning.
Illustrative of one of the critical weaknesses of our politically correct culture. Now it's no longer considered 'wrong' to have racist or sexist thoughts, it's wrong to even CONSIDER the matter for (apprently) fear that you might be led to think something that someone somewhere believes is racist or sexist.
Badthought, indeed.
It's obvious that there are physiological differences between men and women. It seems also obvious that there are psychological/emotional differences. It doesn't seem like a HUGE leap to believe that *perhaps* there might be cognitive differences, either. IMHO we recognize this every DAY: speaking in a broad generalization, *most* women I know are far better at managing a broad number of simultaneous tasks than I am. That doesn't make me feel like a second-class citizen, it just IS a fact of how I see the world.
Look, I violently disagree with anyone who'd tell a girl that "you can't go into math/science because girls don't do math", but for the mere discussion of the subject to be verboten (or to be immediately drowned out with a chorus of knee-jerk responses) is simply ignorant. Well-intentioned, perhaps - but ignorant nonetheless.
So far Airbus have sold 139 A380-800 aircraft, half of what it needs to break even.
Um no.
The 139 aircraft on the order books now are pre-sells, which are HEAVILY discounted to get some orders on the book (aircraft orders need a critical mass of purchasers to make it seem like a 'standard' product and get more purchases down the line).
Kind of like a crack dealer, both Boeing and Airbus offer the first ones (nearly) free, at the cost of ramping up the price to follow-on purchases and later consumers.