"I would love to see a genuinely inspired person run a campagin going door to door, speaking passionatly about what they believe in (and not something scripted by consultants). I would like to see this guy/gal reject lobbyists and do it the old fashioned, grass roots way."
The state representative for my district does this. When he first ran he stood outside our house and talked for a good hour or so - not imposing himself but because we talked back. He answered questions truthfully, even when it was obvious we believed opposite of him.
I later saw him talking to neighbors up the street for the same amount of time who I know are politically opposite of him (and us). Interestingly enough, some of those later had his signs out in thier yard because they felt he actually cared and would at least do as he felt best for the state. Seeing that I agreed with well over 90% of his political beliefes I was a VERY happy camper pushing the button for him on election day.
I would like to see it happen in a federal race but the area of coverage is probably too large for a true door-to-door this guy did.
This is something that has always irritated me. When people begin to discuss a "global market" inevitably these issues arise. If done correctly it can be a major benefit for everyone involved, if done badly it hurts all involved.
For some reason I have yet to see it done correctly (well, I know the reason - short term monetary gains - in the long run this hurts everyone involved). In each instance that another countries laws are cited, or they are "merged (so to speak), they take the *most* restrictive parts of each and implement that.
This isn't an "American vs Australian" issue (well, this particular battle is, but not the war). More than several of the laws passed in the US are done so because "some random country" does it. Even the DMCA was mostly an amalgam of the most restrictive parts of what other countries do. Once it was passed here other countries cite us. Eventually someone else will pass another DMCA amalgam (maybe the US, maybe not - others have done so just as regularly in the past) and we all "have" to follow along.
It is like a feedback loop. Country A passes the same thing as country B - but just a bit stricter. country B adds those in - but just a bit more. Repeat cycle along with blame the other country. Never mind that neither one *has* to pass a shitty law because someone else did. As long as they can passably blame someone else and get thier money they do not care.
I really wish a major country would stand up and say "screw you". I figure it will take a major economic or sociatal event to wake people up. As long as it doesn't impact them much few will care.
I understand that you are presenting facts, not necessarily promoting this type of system (though you may very well promote it also, I just do not know).
But there are some other issues involved too. Any car they make needs to be fairly useful in the country they choose to sell it in. For most of the US the following is not an issue. Unfortunatly it is where I live.
Basically hills. I live in east Tennessee and that is all we have - in fact it is hilly enough that the interns that worked were I used to work would comment that my "small hill over there" would warrent a name and everyone know where it is where they lived.
The Geo only gets good gas mileage here if you you do, at least, one of two things: severely limit where you drive to shallow inclines, severely limit the wieght of the passengers.
Literally, three "average" or "slightly above average" Americans (though, yes I know that isn't skinny - but that is not germane to this discussion as they must sell to the average person in their market) and there are many hills that you have to be in first gear and it is really straining. Woe be to you if you actually purchased an automatic. My uncle, with two passengers, had to turn his AC off to get out of his driveway with three passengers (and that was with a manual transmission).
I know several people who drive one too and from work when they are by thierselfs and have a larger car for everything else.
Though, of course, if you live in flat land this is not an issue. It is why you also see many large cars in this area of the country (along with a good bit of country thrown in). Just when I hear "We need to be forced to drive small cars" "We need to be forced to ride a bike everywhere or walk" I would like to see these people live here for a while that way (especially in our heat and humidity on the bike/walk thing). Though, of course your post didn't say this so it isn't directed at you - just a rant in general.
This is a response to both the replies I have gotten so far.
I mostly agree - with tech support they are not hard to take apart. As long as you know which screw to remove and where to pull/push they are easy.
Now, pop one open without thier tech support. It doesn't work the way one would expect. It requires a good deal of looking at how all the parts fit together. It's not impossible, nor really that hard. but for someone that has never touched hardware it is a VERY daunting task most likely not undertaken. I'm willing to push and pull where I know it can take it.
Contrast this to IBM's server class machines. Almost nothing requires a screw and everything is labeled within the case on how to remove it (or, at least this is the case with the ones we bought). The only Dell server rack we own is the same way.
Where I used to work we got new undergrad students yearly. You could easily guage how easy hardware was to maintain. With the consumer grade stuff they really needed someone to walk them through it. With our server grade stuff you could leave all but the most hardware inept student alone and they figured it out.
This has lead me to believe, for quite some time, that Dell does not want average consumers to dork with thier hardware. And again, I can't say as I blame them. I probably should have been more clear (as, well, I wasn't at all clear I guess) that under circumstances that they want you to, they are willing to have a user dork with thier hardware. Otherwise off limits.
And at least one case where a customer obviously knew nothing about computers (my uncle) they didn't proscribe touching the case. Whereas when I called they did. I suspect, but can not prove, that you level of competance is guaged in the initial call. Though that very well could have been a fluke.
No, it's not so trivial. Nukes have some bad flaws - they emit radiation and take a good deal of other baggage. Said radiation is easy to trace. Drugs are not. Then you have the detonation devices which are cumbersom. some things are easier to smuggle than others.
The suitcase thing is exagerated, even a 44 gallon drum or 'fridge is a bit small. The material needed to create an uncontrolled nuclear reaction is fairly large, or if small, very detectable by several means.
Now, a "dirty bomb" is another story. But that is not a nuclear detonation.
Nukes aren't out of the question, but as far as worries about a terrorist obtaining and killing a large group of people with a nuclear bomb there are more likely scenarios.
Though, of course, this assumes people remain vigilent against *all* forms. If you drop your guard against one type then it is more than just technical reasons that are important.
More than a few boxes I have tried to service have been so convoluted to take apart that the only explaination is that they do not want people servicing thier own box or adding hardware.
One of the reasons that, if I am to advise on any canned hardware package, I always recommend more on the server class. Most places assume that server stuff will be user serviced, though that is becomming less common also. If you are going to go the expensive route, might as well go all the way.
I also understand companies such as Dell wanting to keep customers out of thier boxes. I would hate to see thier costs associated with thier tech support dealing with people opening up thier boxes. But then again they shouldn't offer that service if they can not deliver or afford it.
I always build my own systems at home, if for no other reason that ease of service in opening up the case and adding/repairing hardware. At work I look for boxes that I can specify very specific equipment or get hardware I know I can easily work on.
"If there's no way of knowing, then isn't it impossible to say exactly whether it was a good or bad decision?"
You are taking a common saying that means "A whole lot" literally. In fact there are ways to estimate the number of casualties as we did many amphibious assaults. For instance this document from the cia discusses such a thing.
The invasion of Okinawa had, at a low count, 122,000 deaths (including Japanese and American). Japan's main island was much more hardened and expected to fight harder over.
From a small search (so it may be off, there were several numbers thrown around so I took the largest) there were estimated 210,000 deaths from the bombs over 5 years.
Well over a million were estimated for just the first few islands around mainland Japan.
There is also the argument that we could starve them from a blockade. Maybe - but it is questionable wich is worse, starving millions or nuking thousands.
There is the argument that Japan was going to surrender anyway. Maybe. Even after the bombs the Emporer had a tough time convincing many in the military to surrender. It would depend on which faction won.
If it was justified more depends on your political views. No, I don't mean conservative or liberal, I mean what you place value on and which way you feel things would go.
"The hardest part, by far, is obtaining enough fissile material. Luckily for terrorists and not so lucky for there targets, the cold war left behing lots of fissile material, some of which has gone missing according to the news."
Another hard part is sneaking it in. It's not something that you put in a 2 litre bottle and drive around with.
A more likely terrorist weapon (the most likely is still conventional stuff though) are some chemical weapons. When a chemical requires.01ml/kg of body wieght, kills in minutes, is pretty much undetectable, and can be spread by a garden bug sprayer that is a scary thought.
One of the main problems with these is that they require a certain level of sophistication to transport and detonate - usually those people are the leaders and have no intention of putting themselfs in that much harms way. Chemical weapons are generally easier to deal with. Though if any ever gets used in a populated area the destruction would be VERY bad.
Easily fixable: did the patent holder have prior knowledge of it going on.
At least where I live (Tennessee) many of our land laws are this way.
For instance, if someone is building on your land and you do not know it then they have to move thier property or purchase it. If you watch them build and not tell them there is little you can do.
Courts generally depend on two things - first is testimony and second is "what is reasonable.
Say, one job I worked on. Our local utilities board was building a fairly large water tank (over a million gallons) on top of a hill. We were hired to survey the property thier thank was to be built on (thier title attournies determine who the property belongs to, not us). So we mark the line and they build the tank. The tank was visable to several houses, in fact this person often came over to talk to the foreman of the project. Once it was built he informed them that thier tank was built on his property and they owed a few hundred thousand dollars or tear it down. Turns out that the two pieces of property had an overlap and no person had a clear possesion of title (the farm was broken into tracks at the same time (so no person took title first), where there was only 1000 feet across they sold 1500 feet of property, thus an overlap). It went to court and the guy lost. He claimed he "didn't know" but he had to, he showed us his property corners that had been in since he bought it (in the 50's) and hadn't been surveyed since, and he visited the site weekly.
Obviously these people knew of RFIDS. They waited until it was being accpeted. This does not seem correct, in fact it seems highly dishonest.
You need a statute of limitations from the time of discovery. Many other fields and laws have such a thing and they work fairly well.
You may also want to ask exactly what is meant by "kidney/joint problems".
I was doing some research on Sarin gas a while ago and found out that "Got sick" and "Had issues" due to the tokyo subway attack translated to "bed ridden" and "constant pain and inability to breath requiring full time oxygen".
I too would trade vision for minor kidney and joint problems. Total failure of joints and near total failure of kidneys? Many people live really good lives that are blind, few do that are incapable of moving and need constant medical attention.
Unfortunatly I do not know what is meant by that, it could be mild and it could be major. I, for one, would research that before I made that strong a statement. But then I have my vision, crappy as it may be it can be corrected to pretty good (worn glasses since early teenage years).
"Make an affordable alternative, and people will buy."
Better yet, have every person in the US (and other industrialised countries that have the space) drive SUV's. The faster we use up our oil the faster we will be forced to go to alternative fuels. You can make lower polluting SUV's that still use a lot of gas.
While that may actually sound counterintuitive, think about it for a moment. As long as oil is readily available and cheap there is going to be little push to go to something else. There is no incentive to spend billions to develope a true alternative fuel as there is no reason to buy one (well, other than pollution but history has shown most do not care until money is involved). Plus it is more environmentally sound to give it all in one quick go instead of dragging it out (especially given that our need raises slower than our increased ability to remove oil from the ground leading to an extended amount of time to spew pollution). Less pollution in the long run.
I guarentee you that if our oil supplies dwindel to the point of oil becoming near unaffordable that alternative fuels will be made quickly.
"At least they are doing *something*, which is a lot better than sitting at home in front of your computer complaining about minor hypocricies in the grand scheme of things of which they are are trying to acheive."
So sayeth many of the pro-Iraq war people also. At least they are trying to remove despotic dictators from the world. So what if Haliburton profits, millions are freed now, since we can deal with some hypocracy (in fact, as you claim, one can not get away from it) that shouldn't matter, right?.
I believe the two are actually intertwined. There can be more than a single reason as to why people will not attack.
Banks are simply an electronic number (mostly). So for someone to invade the swiss they need to both be able to beat them *and* assure that thier currency and records remain the same.
Each one is the cause of them being able to be passive (the effect).
Why is it there? It was historically (not because of arms but because of the afore mentioned "big mountain fortress"). The Templar Knights learned the really hard lesson that simple military power isn't enough.
Since neither can occur the swis are able to maintain thier "impartiality" and be passive. They could not withstand a combined effort of several countries or even a few of the great powers singly, but those powers would loose MUCH more than they would ever gain.
Had Hitler *really* wanted to invade the swiss he probably could but why? Britain was waiting and invading the swiss would have lost him much money. Once europe was all in his power the swiss could be blockaded and eventually fall, they would be very hard to actually invade but cut off from europe they could not survive. Once captured, since he controlled the rest of the countries then thier wealth was not as important since controlling both the creditors and debtors made it much less of an issue.
In short the loss in life would have been great (and it was dearly needed for Britain and Russia) and a great loss of money for him at that time. Wait a while and it would have made sense and have happened. As is he lost before that occured.
There is a real possibility of a targeted draft - has been for years.
As the military continues to become more high-tech it takes a greater and greater level of techinical skills to operate, especially at command centers. At some point it is going to become difficult to recuit those people (simply put, if 15% of the population has - or is capable of - the technical skills and the military needs 50% of it's troop to have them they must come from someplace).
I do not think it is in the next few years. But since sometime in the 90's (can't really specify a single point in time) it has been a possibility. Any large theater we may have to get invovled in may require this.
Though this has little to do with the current Iraq war and more to do with the shift the military has been taking.
But yes, as to what the vast majority of people refer to the "upcoming draft", it is what a few democrats have discussed as a talking point and a protest against the war. Others have picked up on it and it has changed to "Bush wants a draft". The military still turns down a certain percentage of the volunteers it recieves as they consider themselfs over staffed - especially in the realm of grunts as they need educated technical skills (and grunts are what armchair or retired generals are moaning about not having enough of). There will be no general draft until that is no longer true.
The swiss also have the great threat of "All your money belong to us".
Few large nations are going to invade switzerland. Even should they want to then most of the rest of the world would retaliate. So you do not really have to be better at apllying violence than them. The only time it might is in another world war.
Small nations that may wish to do so need the swiss to keep thier money safe.
Add in the idea that if they are invaded that everyone will fire a shot and go home and you have the best case for someone that can be a pacifist.
"Would I sell my Game Boy Advance SP for it? Oh hell no. But I do enjoy the odd game on my cell phone from time to time. Why? For the simple reason that my phone goes with me everywhere. My Game Boy... well it sits around my apartment. Maybe I think to grab it if I know I'm gonna be waiting somewhere."
I think you have unintentionally struck on why these will never work. I had never really thought in this line, but when you carry your gameboy how many games do you carry? I know I carry a few usually. As you say: it is a "special" known occasion and I carry a small case or it or a few games in a pocket. Lets face it, while the games may have been state of the art a while back by todays standards they are short fluff games (and yes, I'm old enough to remeber pong, the NES was the first system I purchased on my own at 12 years old. While I think they excelled at gameplay they were not very long, and yes, I have quite a few on the gameboy that I enjoy greatly).
So, for this to really be popular it needs to have several games, of your choosing, to be able to be transported with it. For a every single day carry item chances are you will not carry multiple games.
Take thier commercials for instance: they show two gamers meeting at a cleaners. What are the chances the two gamers meet, both have n-guages, and have the same game? pretty slim even in dense population areas and most of the country is not that. If you could carry 5-10 games the chances go WAY up and the bluetooth connectivity becomes MUCH more desirable.
I agree with much of the sentiment out there. It could be great but it isn't. I will also state that I think this type of device is quite a few years out. We need to find the best mix of gameplay/graphics/number of games to be succesful. I personally feel that a few more years of flash ram developement and we will be there. once we can hold 5-10 n64 games on a CF card this is feasable and will make a good amount of money.
"The younger generation has realized this, so they figure they might as well have some fun while watching the "news". Hence, programs like "The Daily Show."
Further than that, I prefer shows that keep thier biases out in the open. Places like CNN try to pretend to be unbiased but are VERY biased. Instead of not telling the truth they filter which facts get out, so while it may all be facts it paints a VERY liberal light (go check out opensecrets.org sometime to see who each news outlet gives money to, abc, cbs, nbc, cnn, and other give over 70% of thier money to the democrates, some even in the 90%).
The daily show makes it clear that things are comedy. Fox news seems to be pretty unabashed about thier bias (and thier parent company gives mostly to republicans). Thus you can filter what is said.
Well, I was a land surveyor for about ten years in east Tennessee. In my last job I had people say that then I explained the following:
During the summer I had one heat stroke, cut myself fairly badly a few times with a machete, sweated so much you only urinated once a day in a painful dark yellow stream (yes really, ask anyone who works in high heat). During the winter your glasses froze up and you could not see, toes and hands were numb at the end of the day, you alternated between sweat from exertion and then it freezing on your body.
None of this could slow you down too much, the job had to get done. If it did slow you down too much (past what it is given you should) you worked voertime for no pay. If the job wasn't finished and you were about to pass out from exhaustion you worked overtime (with pay at least). In most outside jobs if it rains you can not work and do not get payed.
The only thing it really won at (unless you were a part chief) was stress. All this for about 10 dollars an hour.
So, yep, I considered it whining. Like most of the people that this is expressed to they do not seem to believe it. I encourage you to try one of these jobs. Lets face it, if you hate your current working conditions *that* much you ought to try soemthing else. "Office Space" withstanding, construction work is terrible. There are the occasional outfit that are lazy (say, state road workers around here, though amusing enough they also wine constantly about having to work too hard - yea buddy, if private industry is so grand why don't you work for one) but they are not the norm.
Usually people do not like working outside, they hate working indoors more or are uneducated and can't get a white collar job.
Well, I was payed to work on these projects udner my stint working for the US govt.
PVM was created in 1989 - so we have had quite a bit of time to look up an know that the federal govt funds at least one open source project. It's not like PVM is an unknown project that four people on this planet use.
"Is the time it takes me to do the performance optimization worth it in time or money."
To a certain extent. I've seen that excuse for some pretty bad/slow code out there.
Writing effecient and somewhat optimised code is like writing readable extensable code: if you design and write with that in mind you usually get 90% of it done for very very little (if any) extra work. Bolt it on later and you usually get a mess that doesn't actually do what you intented.
A good programmer should always keep both clean code and fast code in mind while writing software.
"The basic problem here is that, in 2000, the public was shocked, SHOCKED, to learn that if you ask a person to "choose one", there is about a three percent chance that he or she will attempt to make an invalid choice, such as two candidates (overvote), or 1/10 of a candidate (unintentional "undervote")."
Can't say I was particularly shocked at this - sorta expected it. If I think about my (and most likely our) field of expertiese look at e-mail worms/viruses. Wow, how can someone be so stupid to open said attachemnt. Given that the overwhelmingly do, how can we expect them to vote correctly. Then take into consideration 9as the parent notes) mechanical failures and what do you expect?
And no, I do not intend this as "funny". Just think about the level of stupidity that has someone opening a "I love you" attachment (or even "I'm a virus" which people where I worked opened) and ask how you would design a fool-proof voting mechanism for them. Especially given that there is a certain amount of error from even competant people that you can not avoid.
And I will agree with the parent that this doesn't exclude Diebold from being incompetant.
"Blocking Opera users was not our first choice of action on this issue; however, we feel we have been left with no other options as Opera and/or Google have refused to provide any other mechanism to prevent Opera from displaying ads that are based on the content of our sites."
Look - Opera is doing something legal with our public information. We do not like it so we told them to stop, they didn't. Of the different choices we had we want you to believe that we *really* wanted to let you on here, but well, most people will believe any crap we say so we have no choice in the matter.
"Web Publishers like our selves provide content. Companies like Opera deliver that content. Each has to find a way to make a living. There are many publishers and there are many content delivery companies. As a company Opera is saying if they are to deliver a publisher's content, they are going to charge the publisher a "fee". That "fee" is that in exchange for delivering the content, Opera gets to place an ad in their toolbar that is content sensitive. If a publisher does not agree to these terms, their only option is to block Opera and prevent Opera users from accessing their content."
Ahh, this is like another type of "Theft". You charge us a fee, in that we don't owe you anything. In fact we don't even make less money than before. But, hey, if we said "Screw you!!" no one would like us. Thus we now have no choice but to block you because opera is charging us a fee to display our webpage.
"If Opera is going to "charge" web publishers a "fee" (by means of getting to use the content of the webpage to display targeted ads), then Opera has an obligation to their users to provide web publishers with a FOOLPROOF method of opting out of Opera's content targeted ads if publishers do not want their copyrighted materials used in such a fashion."
Ok, now that we have established that Opera is charging us money we do not want to pay them. Since we are being assesed money anyway, Opera now has an obligation to not force us to pay them. Why you ask? Because we can cause monkeys to fly out of our ass!!! No really, it is an obligation because we say so.
"if you have any questions or concerns about this issue, please contact Opera Software. Don't bother sending us a message objecting to our anti-Opera policy or to report a false positive the message will simply be ignored."
Don't call us - we don't really give a fuck. Opera has small user base so SCREW YOU GUYS!!! Opera sucks and you really should be running mocrosoft anyway since they do not charge us money to display our website and give you the freedom to innovate and choice in the market place. Plus we figure that if what microsoft says there is true, so can Opera charging us money leaving us no choice but to block you be true!
But, as with many logical fallacies it is not automatically wrong either.
Take for example "The Slippery Slope". That argument *proves* nothing. It is not something alagous to "If a=b and b=c then a=c". It also isn't necessarily wrong, it is not alagous to "if a=b and b=c then a!=c".
It may be true, it may not, its another data point. To continue with the slippery slope argument, we know that tactic has been used in the past and it is effective so it is something to think about when people do a lot of things - but it is not a strong reason to do, or not do something. As a theory it fits what can and does happen in reality - it just doesn't have to be that way.
If there is a god then the "god of the gaps" may be totally on the mark - much as the slipepry slope can be exactly what is planned and end up what really happens.
I do not think the person you were responding to meant it as an be all end all proof of god. He meant much as I described here - a data point and what he believes to be happening. It fills in gaps that we have and works as a system, of course no god and we just don't know does the same thing (and heck, there is a god, he doesn't care, end we just don't know yet works also). As far as proof goes there is none for any of the methods, nor do I think anyone intended them as proof.
In order for it to be a logical fallacy it needs to be moved into the realm of "Here is proof". As is, it is someone saying "I've thought this may be happeneing". An easy way to show what I mean is the Argument from Ignorance fallacy. Say the following is said: "Since you cannot prove that ghosts do not exist, they must exist" is a fallacy, "Since you cannot prove that ghosts do not exist, they might exist" is not.
I know this is slashdot and all, but had you actually read the product description before replying:
Now the bad news... There is no way I can take this to the post office. Believe me it is big. Collection by transit van or trailer is essential. I can provide sufficient packing material for its journey but collection will have to be made soon as possible on completion of the auction. The reason for this is we are moving abroad and can?t take it with us. I believe it is possible for a courier company to collect the ship but this arrangement will have to be made by the buyer..
so his "free shipping" in the slot by ebay means you owe him nothing for shipping, not that he is going to pay it.
Well, the person did say they were selling it because they couldn't take it with them when they moved. Maybe they either are not moving (heh, maybe they are in the tech industry and that dream job turned out to be less than expected) or found a way to take it with them. The person has a high enough feedback rating I would give the benefit of doubt if I were into such things. After all, he did say shipping was up to the purchaser so I doubt he knew a way to transport ti to wherever he was going.
I know that had I made it and under the circumstances described I would kill the auction if I had found a way to transport it at a reasonable cost.
Slashdot Mirror
Briquette's? A true geek would realise that the chunk charcoal overlord is vastly superior in flavor, heat, cleanup, and ability to lead the masses.
"I would love to see a genuinely inspired person run a campagin going door to door, speaking passionatly about what they believe in (and not something scripted by consultants). I would like to see this guy/gal reject lobbyists and do it the old fashioned, grass roots way."
The state representative for my district does this. When he first ran he stood outside our house and talked for a good hour or so - not imposing himself but because we talked back. He answered questions truthfully, even when it was obvious we believed opposite of him.
I later saw him talking to neighbors up the street for the same amount of time who I know are politically opposite of him (and us). Interestingly enough, some of those later had his signs out in thier yard because they felt he actually cared and would at least do as he felt best for the state. Seeing that I agreed with well over 90% of his political beliefes I was a VERY happy camper pushing the button for him on election day.
I would like to see it happen in a federal race but the area of coverage is probably too large for a true door-to-door this guy did.
This is something that has always irritated me. When people begin to discuss a "global market" inevitably these issues arise. If done correctly it can be a major benefit for everyone involved, if done badly it hurts all involved.
For some reason I have yet to see it done correctly (well, I know the reason - short term monetary gains - in the long run this hurts everyone involved). In each instance that another countries laws are cited, or they are "merged (so to speak), they take the *most* restrictive parts of each and implement that.
This isn't an "American vs Australian" issue (well, this particular battle is, but not the war). More than several of the laws passed in the US are done so because "some random country" does it. Even the DMCA was mostly an amalgam of the most restrictive parts of what other countries do. Once it was passed here other countries cite us. Eventually someone else will pass another DMCA amalgam (maybe the US, maybe not - others have done so just as regularly in the past) and we all "have" to follow along.
It is like a feedback loop. Country A passes the same thing as country B - but just a bit stricter. country B adds those in - but just a bit more. Repeat cycle along with blame the other country. Never mind that neither one *has* to pass a shitty law because someone else did. As long as they can passably blame someone else and get thier money they do not care.
I really wish a major country would stand up and say "screw you". I figure it will take a major economic or sociatal event to wake people up. As long as it doesn't impact them much few will care.
I understand that you are presenting facts, not necessarily promoting this type of system (though you may very well promote it also, I just do not know).
But there are some other issues involved too. Any car they make needs to be fairly useful in the country they choose to sell it in. For most of the US the following is not an issue. Unfortunatly it is where I live.
Basically hills. I live in east Tennessee and that is all we have - in fact it is hilly enough that the interns that worked were I used to work would comment that my "small hill over there" would warrent a name and everyone know where it is where they lived.
The Geo only gets good gas mileage here if you you do, at least, one of two things: severely limit where you drive to shallow inclines, severely limit the wieght of the passengers.
Literally, three "average" or "slightly above average" Americans (though, yes I know that isn't skinny - but that is not germane to this discussion as they must sell to the average person in their market) and there are many hills that you have to be in first gear and it is really straining. Woe be to you if you actually purchased an automatic. My uncle, with two passengers, had to turn his AC off to get out of his driveway with three passengers (and that was with a manual transmission).
I know several people who drive one too and from work when they are by thierselfs and have a larger car for everything else.
Though, of course, if you live in flat land this is not an issue. It is why you also see many large cars in this area of the country (along with a good bit of country thrown in). Just when I hear "We need to be forced to drive small cars" "We need to be forced to ride a bike everywhere or walk" I would like to see these people live here for a while that way (especially in our heat and humidity on the bike/walk thing). Though, of course your post didn't say this so it isn't directed at you - just a rant in general.
This is a response to both the replies I have gotten so far.
I mostly agree - with tech support they are not hard to take apart. As long as you know which screw to remove and where to pull/push they are easy.
Now, pop one open without thier tech support. It doesn't work the way one would expect. It requires a good deal of looking at how all the parts fit together. It's not impossible, nor really that hard. but for someone that has never touched hardware it is a VERY daunting task most likely not undertaken. I'm willing to push and pull where I know it can take it.
Contrast this to IBM's server class machines. Almost nothing requires a screw and everything is labeled within the case on how to remove it (or, at least this is the case with the ones we bought). The only Dell server rack we own is the same way.
Where I used to work we got new undergrad students yearly. You could easily guage how easy hardware was to maintain. With the consumer grade stuff they really needed someone to walk them through it. With our server grade stuff you could leave all but the most hardware inept student alone and they figured it out.
This has lead me to believe, for quite some time, that Dell does not want average consumers to dork with thier hardware. And again, I can't say as I blame them. I probably should have been more clear (as, well, I wasn't at all clear I guess) that under circumstances that they want you to, they are willing to have a user dork with thier hardware. Otherwise off limits.
And at least one case where a customer obviously knew nothing about computers (my uncle) they didn't proscribe touching the case. Whereas when I called they did. I suspect, but can not prove, that you level of competance is guaged in the initial call. Though that very well could have been a fluke.
No, it's not so trivial. Nukes have some bad flaws - they emit radiation and take a good deal of other baggage. Said radiation is easy to trace. Drugs are not. Then you have the detonation devices which are cumbersom. some things are easier to smuggle than others.
The suitcase thing is exagerated, even a 44 gallon drum or 'fridge is a bit small. The material needed to create an uncontrolled nuclear reaction is fairly large, or if small, very detectable by several means.
Now, a "dirty bomb" is another story. But that is not a nuclear detonation.
Nukes aren't out of the question, but as far as worries about a terrorist obtaining and killing a large group of people with a nuclear bomb there are more likely scenarios.
Though, of course, this assumes people remain vigilent against *all* forms. If you drop your guard against one type then it is more than just technical reasons that are important.
I've been surprised it has not happened already.
More than a few boxes I have tried to service have been so convoluted to take apart that the only explaination is that they do not want people servicing thier own box or adding hardware.
One of the reasons that, if I am to advise on any canned hardware package, I always recommend more on the server class. Most places assume that server stuff will be user serviced, though that is becomming less common also. If you are going to go the expensive route, might as well go all the way.
I also understand companies such as Dell wanting to keep customers out of thier boxes. I would hate to see thier costs associated with thier tech support dealing with people opening up thier boxes. But then again they shouldn't offer that service if they can not deliver or afford it.
I always build my own systems at home, if for no other reason that ease of service in opening up the case and adding/repairing hardware. At work I look for boxes that I can specify very specific equipment or get hardware I know I can easily work on.
"If there's no way of knowing, then isn't it impossible to say exactly whether it was a good or bad decision?"
.01ml/kg of body wieght, kills in minutes, is pretty much undetectable, and can be spread by a garden bug sprayer that is a scary thought.
You are taking a common saying that means "A whole lot" literally. In fact there are ways to estimate the number of casualties as we did many amphibious assaults. For instance this document from the cia discusses such a thing.
The invasion of Okinawa had, at a low count, 122,000 deaths (including Japanese and American). Japan's main island was much more hardened and expected to fight harder over.
From a small search (so it may be off, there were several numbers thrown around so I took the largest) there were estimated 210,000 deaths from the bombs over 5 years.
Well over a million were estimated for just the first few islands around mainland Japan.
There is also the argument that we could starve them from a blockade. Maybe - but it is questionable wich is worse, starving millions or nuking thousands.
There is the argument that Japan was going to surrender anyway. Maybe. Even after the bombs the Emporer had a tough time convincing many in the military to surrender. It would depend on which faction won.
If it was justified more depends on your political views. No, I don't mean conservative or liberal, I mean what you place value on and which way you feel things would go.
"The hardest part, by far, is obtaining enough fissile material. Luckily for terrorists and not so lucky for there targets, the cold war left behing lots of fissile material, some of which has gone missing according to the news."
Another hard part is sneaking it in. It's not something that you put in a 2 litre bottle and drive around with.
A more likely terrorist weapon (the most likely is still conventional stuff though) are some chemical weapons. When a chemical requires
One of the main problems with these is that they require a certain level of sophistication to transport and detonate - usually those people are the leaders and have no intention of putting themselfs in that much harms way. Chemical weapons are generally easier to deal with. Though if any ever gets used in a populated area the destruction would be VERY bad.
Easily fixable: did the patent holder have prior knowledge of it going on.
At least where I live (Tennessee) many of our land laws are this way.
For instance, if someone is building on your land and you do not know it then they have to move thier property or purchase it. If you watch them build and not tell them there is little you can do.
Courts generally depend on two things - first is testimony and second is "what is reasonable.
Say, one job I worked on. Our local utilities board was building a fairly large water tank (over a million gallons) on top of a hill. We were hired to survey the property thier thank was to be built on (thier title attournies determine who the property belongs to, not us). So we mark the line and they build the tank. The tank was visable to several houses, in fact this person often came over to talk to the foreman of the project. Once it was built he informed them that thier tank was built on his property and they owed a few hundred thousand dollars or tear it down. Turns out that the two pieces of property had an overlap and no person had a clear possesion of title (the farm was broken into tracks at the same time (so no person took title first), where there was only 1000 feet across they sold 1500 feet of property, thus an overlap). It went to court and the guy lost. He claimed he "didn't know" but he had to, he showed us his property corners that had been in since he bought it (in the 50's) and hadn't been surveyed since, and he visited the site weekly.
Obviously these people knew of RFIDS. They waited until it was being accpeted. This does not seem correct, in fact it seems highly dishonest.
You need a statute of limitations from the time of discovery. Many other fields and laws have such a thing and they work fairly well.
You may also want to ask exactly what is meant by "kidney/joint problems".
I was doing some research on Sarin gas a while ago and found out that "Got sick" and "Had issues" due to the tokyo subway attack translated to "bed ridden" and "constant pain and inability to breath requiring full time oxygen".
I too would trade vision for minor kidney and joint problems. Total failure of joints and near total failure of kidneys? Many people live really good lives that are blind, few do that are incapable of moving and need constant medical attention.
Unfortunatly I do not know what is meant by that, it could be mild and it could be major. I, for one, would research that before I made that strong a statement. But then I have my vision, crappy as it may be it can be corrected to pretty good (worn glasses since early teenage years).
"Make an affordable alternative, and people will buy."
Better yet, have every person in the US (and other industrialised countries that have the space) drive SUV's. The faster we use up our oil the faster we will be forced to go to alternative fuels. You can make lower polluting SUV's that still use a lot of gas.
While that may actually sound counterintuitive, think about it for a moment. As long as oil is readily available and cheap there is going to be little push to go to something else. There is no incentive to spend billions to develope a true alternative fuel as there is no reason to buy one (well, other than pollution but history has shown most do not care until money is involved). Plus it is more environmentally sound to give it all in one quick go instead of dragging it out (especially given that our need raises slower than our increased ability to remove oil from the ground leading to an extended amount of time to spew pollution). Less pollution in the long run.
I guarentee you that if our oil supplies dwindel to the point of oil becoming near unaffordable that alternative fuels will be made quickly.
"At least they are doing *something*, which is a lot better than sitting at home in front of your computer complaining about minor hypocricies in the grand scheme of things of which they are are trying to acheive."
So sayeth many of the pro-Iraq war people also. At least they are trying to remove despotic dictators from the world. So what if Haliburton profits, millions are freed now, since we can deal with some hypocracy (in fact, as you claim, one can not get away from it) that shouldn't matter, right?.
I believe the two are actually intertwined. There can be more than a single reason as to why people will not attack.
Banks are simply an electronic number (mostly). So for someone to invade the swiss they need to both be able to beat them *and* assure that thier currency and records remain the same.
Each one is the cause of them being able to be passive (the effect).
Why is it there? It was historically (not because of arms but because of the afore mentioned "big mountain fortress"). The Templar Knights learned the really hard lesson that simple military power isn't enough.
Since neither can occur the swis are able to maintain thier "impartiality" and be passive. They could not withstand a combined effort of several countries or even a few of the great powers singly, but those powers would loose MUCH more than they would ever gain.
Had Hitler *really* wanted to invade the swiss he probably could but why? Britain was waiting and invading the swiss would have lost him much money. Once europe was all in his power the swiss could be blockaded and eventually fall, they would be very hard to actually invade but cut off from europe they could not survive. Once captured, since he controlled the rest of the countries then thier wealth was not as important since controlling both the creditors and debtors made it much less of an issue.
In short the loss in life would have been great (and it was dearly needed for Britain and Russia) and a great loss of money for him at that time. Wait a while and it would have made sense and have happened. As is he lost before that occured.
There is a real possibility of a targeted draft - has been for years.
As the military continues to become more high-tech it takes a greater and greater level of techinical skills to operate, especially at command centers. At some point it is going to become difficult to recuit those people (simply put, if 15% of the population has - or is capable of - the technical skills and the military needs 50% of it's troop to have them they must come from someplace).
I do not think it is in the next few years. But since sometime in the 90's (can't really specify a single point in time) it has been a possibility. Any large theater we may have to get invovled in may require this.
Though this has little to do with the current Iraq war and more to do with the shift the military has been taking.
But yes, as to what the vast majority of people refer to the "upcoming draft", it is what a few democrats have discussed as a talking point and a protest against the war. Others have picked up on it and it has changed to "Bush wants a draft". The military still turns down a certain percentage of the volunteers it recieves as they consider themselfs over staffed - especially in the realm of grunts as they need educated technical skills (and grunts are what armchair or retired generals are moaning about not having enough of). There will be no general draft until that is no longer true.
The swiss also have the great threat of "All your money belong to us".
Few large nations are going to invade switzerland. Even should they want to then most of the rest of the world would retaliate. So you do not really have to be better at apllying violence than them. The only time it might is in another world war.
Small nations that may wish to do so need the swiss to keep thier money safe.
Add in the idea that if they are invaded that everyone will fire a shot and go home and you have the best case for someone that can be a pacifist.
"Would I sell my Game Boy Advance SP for it? Oh hell no. But I do enjoy the odd game on my cell phone from time to time. Why? For the simple reason that my phone goes with me everywhere. My Game Boy... well it sits around my apartment. Maybe I think to grab it if I know I'm gonna be waiting somewhere."
I think you have unintentionally struck on why these will never work. I had never really thought in this line, but when you carry your gameboy how many games do you carry? I know I carry a few usually. As you say: it is a "special" known occasion and I carry a small case or it or a few games in a pocket. Lets face it, while the games may have been state of the art a while back by todays standards they are short fluff games (and yes, I'm old enough to remeber pong, the NES was the first system I purchased on my own at 12 years old. While I think they excelled at gameplay they were not very long, and yes, I have quite a few on the gameboy that I enjoy greatly).
So, for this to really be popular it needs to have several games, of your choosing, to be able to be transported with it. For a every single day carry item chances are you will not carry multiple games.
Take thier commercials for instance: they show two gamers meeting at a cleaners. What are the chances the two gamers meet, both have n-guages, and have the same game? pretty slim even in dense population areas and most of the country is not that. If you could carry 5-10 games the chances go WAY up and the bluetooth connectivity becomes MUCH more desirable.
I agree with much of the sentiment out there. It could be great but it isn't. I will also state that I think this type of device is quite a few years out. We need to find the best mix of gameplay/graphics/number of games to be succesful. I personally feel that a few more years of flash ram developement and we will be there. once we can hold 5-10 n64 games on a CF card this is feasable and will make a good amount of money.
"The younger generation has realized this, so they figure they might as well have some fun while watching the "news". Hence, programs like "The Daily Show."
Further than that, I prefer shows that keep thier biases out in the open. Places like CNN try to pretend to be unbiased but are VERY biased. Instead of not telling the truth they filter which facts get out, so while it may all be facts it paints a VERY liberal light (go check out opensecrets.org sometime to see who each news outlet gives money to, abc, cbs, nbc, cnn, and other give over 70% of thier money to the democrates, some even in the 90%).
The daily show makes it clear that things are comedy. Fox news seems to be pretty unabashed about thier bias (and thier parent company gives mostly to republicans). Thus you can filter what is said.
Well, I was a land surveyor for about ten years in east Tennessee. In my last job I had people say that then I explained the following:
During the summer I had one heat stroke, cut myself fairly badly a few times with a machete, sweated so much you only urinated once a day in a painful dark yellow stream (yes really, ask anyone who works in high heat). During the winter your glasses froze up and you could not see, toes and hands were numb at the end of the day, you alternated between sweat from exertion and then it freezing on your body.
None of this could slow you down too much, the job had to get done. If it did slow you down too much (past what it is given you should) you worked voertime for no pay. If the job wasn't finished and you were about to pass out from exhaustion you worked overtime (with pay at least). In most outside jobs if it rains you can not work and do not get payed.
The only thing it really won at (unless you were a part chief) was stress. All this for about 10 dollars an hour.
So, yep, I considered it whining. Like most of the people that this is expressed to they do not seem to believe it. I encourage you to try one of these jobs. Lets face it, if you hate your current working conditions *that* much you ought to try soemthing else. "Office Space" withstanding, construction work is terrible. There are the occasional outfit that are lazy (say, state road workers around here, though amusing enough they also wine constantly about having to work too hard - yea buddy, if private industry is so grand why don't you work for one) but they are not the norm.
Usually people do not like working outside, they hate working indoors more or are uneducated and can't get a white collar job.
Well, I was payed to work on these projects udner my stint working for the US govt.
PVM was created in 1989 - so we have had quite a bit of time to look up an know that the federal govt funds at least one open source project. It's not like PVM is an unknown project that four people on this planet use.
"Is the time it takes me to do the performance optimization worth it in time or money."
To a certain extent. I've seen that excuse for some pretty bad/slow code out there.
Writing effecient and somewhat optimised code is like writing readable extensable code: if you design and write with that in mind you usually get 90% of it done for very very little (if any) extra work. Bolt it on later and you usually get a mess that doesn't actually do what you intented.
A good programmer should always keep both clean code and fast code in mind while writing software.
"The basic problem here is that, in 2000, the public was shocked, SHOCKED, to learn that if you ask a person to "choose one", there is about a three percent chance that he or she will attempt to make an invalid choice, such as two candidates (overvote), or 1/10 of a candidate (unintentional "undervote")."
Can't say I was particularly shocked at this - sorta expected it. If I think about my (and most likely our) field of expertiese look at e-mail worms/viruses. Wow, how can someone be so stupid to open said attachemnt. Given that the overwhelmingly do, how can we expect them to vote correctly. Then take into consideration 9as the parent notes) mechanical failures and what do you expect?
And no, I do not intend this as "funny". Just think about the level of stupidity that has someone opening a "I love you" attachment (or even "I'm a virus" which people where I worked opened) and ask how you would design a fool-proof voting mechanism for them. Especially given that there is a certain amount of error from even competant people that you can not avoid.
And I will agree with the parent that this doesn't exclude Diebold from being incompetant.
If anyone is actually interested in seeing the whole thing it is here, but be forewarned - since they seem to think copyright means they have ultimate legal control over which browser is used to access it you may be breaking thier made up law by viewing it.
The rest of thier stuff is interesting also:
"Blocking Opera users was not our first choice of action on this issue; however, we feel we have been left with no other options as Opera and/or Google have refused to provide any other mechanism to prevent Opera from displaying ads that are based on the content of our sites."
Look - Opera is doing something legal with our public information. We do not like it so we told them to stop, they didn't. Of the different choices we had we want you to believe that we *really* wanted to let you on here, but well, most people will believe any crap we say so we have no choice in the matter.
"Web Publishers like our selves provide content. Companies like Opera deliver that content. Each has to find a way to make a living. There are many publishers and there are many content delivery companies. As a company Opera is saying if they are to deliver a publisher's content, they are going to charge the publisher a "fee". That "fee" is that in exchange for delivering the content, Opera gets to place an ad in their toolbar that is content sensitive. If a publisher does not agree to these terms, their only option is to block Opera and prevent Opera users from accessing their content."
Ahh, this is like another type of "Theft". You charge us a fee, in that we don't owe you anything. In fact we don't even make less money than before. But, hey, if we said "Screw you!!" no one would like us. Thus we now have no choice but to block you because opera is charging us a fee to display our webpage.
"If Opera is going to "charge" web publishers a "fee" (by means of getting to use the content of the webpage to display targeted ads), then Opera has an obligation to their users to provide web publishers with a FOOLPROOF method of opting out of Opera's content targeted ads if publishers do not want their copyrighted materials used in such a fashion."
Ok, now that we have established that Opera is charging us money we do not want to pay them. Since we are being assesed money anyway, Opera now has an obligation to not force us to pay them. Why you ask? Because we can cause monkeys to fly out of our ass!!! No really, it is an obligation because we say so.
"if you have any questions or concerns about this issue, please contact Opera Software. Don't bother sending us a message objecting to our anti-Opera policy or to report a false positive the message will simply be ignored."
Don't call us - we don't really give a fuck. Opera has small user base so SCREW YOU GUYS!!! Opera sucks and you really should be running mocrosoft anyway since they do not charge us money to display our website and give you the freedom to innovate and choice in the market place. Plus we figure that if what microsoft says there is true, so can Opera charging us money leaving us no choice but to block you be true!
But, as with many logical fallacies it is not automatically wrong either.
Take for example "The Slippery Slope". That argument *proves* nothing. It is not something alagous to "If a=b and b=c then a=c". It also isn't necessarily wrong, it is not alagous to "if a=b and b=c then a!=c".
It may be true, it may not, its another data point. To continue with the slippery slope argument, we know that tactic has been used in the past and it is effective so it is something to think about when people do a lot of things - but it is not a strong reason to do, or not do something. As a theory it fits what can and does happen in reality - it just doesn't have to be that way.
If there is a god then the "god of the gaps" may be totally on the mark - much as the slipepry slope can be exactly what is planned and end up what really happens.
I do not think the person you were responding to meant it as an be all end all proof of god. He meant much as I described here - a data point and what he believes to be happening. It fills in gaps that we have and works as a system, of course no god and we just don't know does the same thing (and heck, there is a god, he doesn't care, end we just don't know yet works also). As far as proof goes there is none for any of the methods, nor do I think anyone intended them as proof.
In order for it to be a logical fallacy it needs to be moved into the realm of "Here is proof". As is, it is someone saying "I've thought this may be happeneing". An easy way to show what I mean is the Argument from Ignorance fallacy. Say the following is said: "Since you cannot prove that ghosts do not exist, they must exist" is a fallacy, "Since you cannot prove that ghosts do not exist, they might exist" is not.
I know this is slashdot and all, but had you actually read the product description before replying:
Now the bad news... There is no way I can take this to the post office. Believe me it is big. Collection by transit van or trailer is essential. I can provide sufficient packing material for its journey but collection will have to be made soon as possible on completion of the auction. The reason for this is we are moving abroad and can?t take it with us. I believe it is possible for a courier company to collect the ship but this arrangement will have to be made by the buyer..
so his "free shipping" in the slot by ebay means you owe him nothing for shipping, not that he is going to pay it.
Well, the person did say they were selling it because they couldn't take it with them when they moved. Maybe they either are not moving (heh, maybe they are in the tech industry and that dream job turned out to be less than expected) or found a way to take it with them. The person has a high enough feedback rating I would give the benefit of doubt if I were into such things. After all, he did say shipping was up to the purchaser so I doubt he knew a way to transport ti to wherever he was going.
I know that had I made it and under the circumstances described I would kill the auction if I had found a way to transport it at a reasonable cost.