"If you can't put what you want into your own body then you don't live in a free society and you're kidding yourself if you think you do. "
If narcotics were legal, usage rates would probably drop 90% overnight - back down to 1880s (or earlier) levels.
The reason narcotics are so pervasive (apart from Ronald Regan orchestrating the greatest cocaine smuggling outfit in history(*) whilst simultaneously pushing "the war on drugs"(**)) is that there are massive profit levels to be had and every time the legal system ups the risk, the profit to be had increases further - in other words the prime motivator is money.
(**) This dichotomy is what drove the rapid expansion of the USA's prison system in the 1980s and it's not really a coincidence that poor and black people are disproportionately affected - almost all the cocaine Regan's group brought into the USA was turned into crack and sold in poor areas.
If there wasn't money to be made, narco-gangs wouldn't exist, people wouldn't be selling crack to schoolkids and most importantly of all, there wouldn't be an incentive for people to tempt others into an addiction cycle (bear in mind that fewer than 5% of those who use heroin regularly ever get hooked with slightly higher stats for cocaine) in order to make money out of them.
If people aren't pulled into an addiction cycle for something that's hideously expensive, they won't end up restoring to crime in order to make money to buy their fix.
Silk Road exists because of the War on Drugs. There's a war alright - and the narcogangs have won it already. They prefer the status quo as it's more profitable.
Switzerland has shown the way and Colorado has shown it can work in the USA.
As for Ulbricht: Being caught redhanded chatting as "Dread Pirate Roberts" is a slamdunk. I'm surprised they didn't have a camera looking over his shoulder before he was apprehended.
"most investors would be perfectly happy with a company that made absolutely no products and provided no services as long as it was making an adequate return."
Such companies exist. They're called Ponzi schemes.
I have had employees that others resented because they didn't seem to do much, but when they did finally move, the results were impressive - and often not particularly visible to fellow employees for some time afterwards.
"Companies exist to produce profits, not to provide employment"
Companies which focus on the short term figures at the expense of long term ones end up going under.
HP is in the final stages of paying that price. At some point it's going to end up as a brand name of an up-and-coming conglomerate and that will be the end of them.
"The only reason Uber is popular is due to an irrational and unfounded hate of taxis. "
In some areas, XYZ taxi company has a legislated monopoly or there is an artificial shortage of taxi licenses (eg: NYC) and as such drivers can be bloody awful/surly, etc. This is a particular issue in the USA
This means that in some cases the dislike of taxis is well-founded. I've been in plenty of cabs where the driver has driven "the long way around" or got lost or quite simply didn't know where to go.
"If, for example, a buyer attempted a return on a "no return" item claiming it wasn't what was ordered - and the ebay dispute process concluded that it was as ordered,"
Then that should be counted as negative feedback and applied _by ebay_
DSL services use a series of narrow bandwidth carriers across the spectrum. VDSL2 ranges from 100kHz 33MHz down the wire. G.fast adds more high frequencies.
The reality is that higher frequencies are more susceptable to crosstalk, have higher attentuation and are extremely touchy about bridge taps, bad joints, etc.
Whilst it's entirely _possible_ to run G.Fast on existing copper the question is whether it's _practical_ and the smart money is on it being a failure in service.
Then again, having announced it, BT may well sit on it for over a decade, as they did with VDSL services. "Available" means it's in one or 2 locations and "available in an area" is different from "actually being sold to endusers" in that area.
The "big 6" will shag you about. If you move to AAISP or Zen or phone.coop (there are a lot more), they have a vested interested in keeping you happy and will keep tickets open until openbletch fix it.
BT street distribution cabinets "only" support VDSL. There is a copper pair back to the exchange for voice and ADSL.
Unlike most of the USA, the UK does not operate street concentrators for voice/data. There's no technical reason for this. It's all down to "traditional" operation methods.
Nor can residential lines get a "dry" data-only pair (no dialtone).
The result is that even VDSL users have several thousand feet of copper back to the "exchange" (actually a concentrator in 99% of installations) - for no good technical reason. It's all about maintaining control of the infrastructure and holding back competition.
G.Fast only works at high speed for 100 metres or less.
It's highly likely that it will be around 50 metres once crosstalk and other interference is taken into account (VDSL2 operational distances are shown to be suffering badly as more VDSL is rolled out, especially along the rotting distribution infrastructure that BT operates (there has been insufficient infrastructure reinvestment to maintain services since the mid 1980s)
The only way to provide this kind of coverage to more than the 5-10% of dwellings within that distance of the existing street distribution cabinets will be to run fibre down the road and put cabinets every 1-200 metres.
It would be cheaper and easier to roll fibre to houses and provide GPON.
BT is doing things this way because it can charge 100+% of the equipment cost upfront to endusers/ISPs and continue to charge audacious fees for fibre-to-the-premises (the number of FTTP installations is virtually zero because of the extreme installation charges - which are predicated on the basis of a street dig for every metre instead of taking into account that there are ducts in place for 99% of the run)
If it starts a mass FTTP rollout then it would have to treat further installations as an infrastructure renewal and eat the upfront costs.
There is supposedly a "chinese wall" inside BT between "Openreach" the lines company and everything else, but the reality is that head office can see over/control both sides and whilst Openreach is required to provide equal access to all comers it's proven trivial to game the system unless the lines monopoly is completely divided off from the incumbent telco.
It's extremely telling that New Zealand looked closely at the UK setup before requiring that the lines unit of Telecom New Zealand be completely cleaved from the mothership (TNZ had emulated the BT model, but it was still clearly anticompetitive and NZ had suffered ~25 years of severe monopoly abuse) and turned into a separate company with its own corporate structure and shares. The result has been a transformation of access, as the lines company now actively seeks LLU customers as well as selling duct space to all comers now that it's free of rules aimed at preventing "competition" from getting access to infrastructure without jumping through extensive hoops https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
(Bear in mind that in both the BT and NZ cases the telcos were state owned and virtually all in-ground infrastructure was paid for in the days when taxpayers footed the bill)
The policies of Bomber Harris were shown to make enemy soldiers even more determined when they found out about them - and the primary reason for carpet bombing was to take out manufacturing facilities in an era where "precise" bombing was "within a mile or so", against an enemy using more-or-less traditional warfare.
"You don't win friends by exploding them"
That's something that the USA needs to learn in spades. The best terrorist recruiting tool around is a bomb/missile which has taken out 3rd party bystanders. 'Winning hearts and minds' is supposed to be a tactic to bring people onto _your_ side, not send them over to the 'enemy'.
Any "nuclear waste facility" which makes it a one way trip is technically flawed. Today's nuclear waste is tomorrow's LFTR fuel.
Most low level waste is about as radioactive as a radium watch buried in a barrel of sand and about as dangerous (granite is more radioactive). We really do err on the side of complete and utter paranoia when it comes to "noo-cle-ar" stuff.
Most high level waste should be being reused. If it was we could reduce "waste" levels around 99%
"No Android device I'm aware of uses flash for swap"
Then you're not paying attention. There are a number of mods to allow exactly this kind of operation, particularly on older hardware with "only" 1Gb ram.
MicroSD cards are cheap, so burning them out isn't a big deal.
"Cyanogen with a large swapfile that's tweaked to abstain from killing off idle tasks will nuke a brand new class-10 microSD card in about 3-8 months of normal daily use."
Slashdot Mirror
"If you can't put what you want into your own body then you don't live in a free society and you're kidding yourself if you think you do. "
If narcotics were legal, usage rates would probably drop 90% overnight - back down to 1880s (or earlier) levels.
The reason narcotics are so pervasive (apart from Ronald Regan orchestrating the greatest cocaine smuggling outfit in history(*) whilst simultaneously pushing "the war on drugs"(**)) is that there are massive profit levels to be had and every time the legal system ups the risk, the profit to be had increases further - in other words the prime motivator is money.
(*) http://listverse.com/2015/01/1... - the #2 entry - and was part of the way the contra deals were funded.
(**) This dichotomy is what drove the rapid expansion of the USA's prison system in the 1980s and it's not really a coincidence that poor and black people are disproportionately affected - almost all the cocaine Regan's group brought into the USA was turned into crack and sold in poor areas.
If there wasn't money to be made, narco-gangs wouldn't exist, people wouldn't be selling crack to schoolkids and most importantly of all, there wouldn't be an incentive for people to tempt others into an addiction cycle (bear in mind that fewer than 5% of those who use heroin regularly ever get hooked with slightly higher stats for cocaine) in order to make money out of them.
If people aren't pulled into an addiction cycle for something that's hideously expensive, they won't end up restoring to crime in order to make money to buy their fix.
Silk Road exists because of the War on Drugs. There's a war alright - and the narcogangs have won it already. They prefer the status quo as it's more profitable.
Switzerland has shown the way and Colorado has shown it can work in the USA.
As for Ulbricht: Being caught redhanded chatting as "Dread Pirate Roberts" is a slamdunk. I'm surprised they didn't have a camera looking over his shoulder before he was apprehended.
"most investors would be perfectly happy with a company that made absolutely no products and provided no services as long as it was making an adequate return."
Such companies exist. They're called Ponzi schemes.
"They are cutting their under-performers."
Underperformers is a relative term.
I have had employees that others resented because they didn't seem to do much, but when they did finally move, the results were impressive - and often not particularly visible to fellow employees for some time afterwards.
"Companies exist to produce profits, not to provide employment"
Companies which focus on the short term figures at the expense of long term ones end up going under.
HP is in the final stages of paying that price. At some point it's going to end up as a brand name of an up-and-coming conglomerate and that will be the end of them.
"The only reason Uber is popular is due to an irrational and unfounded hate of taxis. "
In some areas, XYZ taxi company has a legislated monopoly or there is an artificial shortage of taxi licenses (eg: NYC) and as such drivers can be bloody awful/surly, etc. This is a particular issue in the USA
This means that in some cases the dislike of taxis is well-founded. I've been in plenty of cabs where the driver has driven "the long way around" or got lost or quite simply didn't know where to go.
"-power fluctuation."
Redundant power supplies.
"-memory problems"
ECC ram, etc - but that's outside the scope of the disk array design anyway
"-Software problems."
Outside the scope of the design
" -driver/interfaceproblems."
Ditto
They need to be taken into consideration for an end-to-end solution, but the approach in the study was strictly to the array level.
If you design in appropriate redundancy then loss of any component is a routine replacement issue, not an emergency.
Radio frequencies, sent down the wire.
Just like tv signals sent down coax, except in this case the feeder is loosely twisted pair with variable transmission characteristics and losses.
Uranium - even u235 - is not particularly radioactive - hence the very long half life.
You could sleep ON an unshielded 1kg bunch of uranium and show no ill effects.
OTOH Doing that with Pu238 wouldn't be a good idea.
"But all these companies hoarding cash seem to have no outlet to try anything with their money."
It's surprising the shareholders aren't agitating for dividends - they can't be paid out until the company repatriates the cash and pays tax first.
"If Uber wants to be a professional company then it needs to act professionally."
Uber drivers in most cases are supposed to be ride sharing, not professional drivers.
If they were your point would stand. In countries like the UK where Uber drivers are required to be "private hire" drivers your point does stand.
That doesn't mean I disagree with you, but until Uber requires its drivers to be professionals you're going to run into this problem.
"If, for example, a buyer attempted a return on a "no return" item claiming it wasn't what was ordered - and the ebay dispute process concluded that it was as ordered,"
Then that should be counted as negative feedback and applied _by ebay_
I would have expected that ATF have been monitoring gun-related stuff (such as who attends shows) forever.
If you think this has just been happening since Obama was elected I suspect you're 60 years too late.
In the UK, Uber is a private hire car service (aka "minicabs")
Drivers need private hire licenses and to get those they must pass criminal checks.
Same applies in a bunch of other countries.
The "really tall ladder" still only gets you so far. Once you're at LEO, you're still only halfway to anywhere
"The point is if you sleep a few nights besides an unshielded 1kg bunch of Uranium, you likely die from it."
You're far more likely to die from old age.
DSL services use a series of narrow bandwidth carriers across the spectrum. VDSL2 ranges from 100kHz 33MHz down the wire. G.fast adds more high frequencies.
The reality is that higher frequencies are more susceptable to crosstalk, have higher attentuation and are extremely touchy about bridge taps, bad joints, etc.
Whilst it's entirely _possible_ to run G.Fast on existing copper the question is whether it's _practical_ and the smart money is on it being a failure in service.
Then again, having announced it, BT may well sit on it for over a decade, as they did with VDSL services. "Available" means it's in one or 2 locations and "available in an area" is different from "actually being sold to endusers" in that area.
Change ISP. Seriously.
The "big 6" will shag you about. If you move to AAISP or Zen or phone.coop (there are a lot more), they have a vested interested in keeping you happy and will keep tickets open until openbletch fix it.
BT street distribution cabinets "only" support VDSL. There is a copper pair back to the exchange for voice and ADSL.
Unlike most of the USA, the UK does not operate street concentrators for voice/data. There's no technical reason for this. It's all down to "traditional" operation methods.
Nor can residential lines get a "dry" data-only pair (no dialtone).
The result is that even VDSL users have several thousand feet of copper back to the "exchange" (actually a concentrator in 99% of installations) - for no good technical reason. It's all about maintaining control of the infrastructure and holding back competition.
G.Fast only works at high speed for 100 metres or less.
It's highly likely that it will be around 50 metres once crosstalk and other interference is taken into account (VDSL2 operational distances are shown to be suffering badly as more VDSL is rolled out, especially along the rotting distribution infrastructure that BT operates (there has been insufficient infrastructure reinvestment to maintain services since the mid 1980s)
The only way to provide this kind of coverage to more than the 5-10% of dwellings within that distance of the existing street distribution cabinets will be to run fibre down the road and put cabinets every 1-200 metres.
It would be cheaper and easier to roll fibre to houses and provide GPON.
BT is doing things this way because it can charge 100+% of the equipment cost upfront to endusers/ISPs and continue to charge audacious fees for fibre-to-the-premises (the number of FTTP installations is virtually zero because of the extreme installation charges - which are predicated on the basis of a street dig for every metre instead of taking into account that there are ducts in place for 99% of the run)
If it starts a mass FTTP rollout then it would have to treat further installations as an infrastructure renewal and eat the upfront costs.
There is supposedly a "chinese wall" inside BT between "Openreach" the lines company and everything else, but the reality is that head office can see over/control both sides and whilst Openreach is required to provide equal access to all comers it's proven trivial to game the system unless the lines monopoly is completely divided off from the incumbent telco.
It's extremely telling that New Zealand looked closely at the UK setup before requiring that the lines unit of Telecom New Zealand be completely cleaved from the mothership (TNZ had emulated the BT model, but it was still clearly anticompetitive and NZ had suffered ~25 years of severe monopoly abuse) and turned into a separate company with its own corporate structure and shares. The result has been a transformation of access, as the lines company now actively seeks LLU customers as well as selling duct space to all comers now that it's free of rules aimed at preventing "competition" from getting access to infrastructure without jumping through extensive hoops https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
(Bear in mind that in both the BT and NZ cases the telcos were state owned and virtually all in-ground infrastructure was paid for in the days when taxpayers footed the bill)
"if they decided to do mass bombings like WWII."
The policies of Bomber Harris were shown to make enemy soldiers even more determined when they found out about them - and the primary reason for carpet bombing was to take out manufacturing facilities in an era where "precise" bombing was "within a mile or so", against an enemy using more-or-less traditional warfare.
"You don't win friends by exploding them"
That's something that the USA needs to learn in spades. The best terrorist recruiting tool around is a bomb/missile which has taken out 3rd party bystanders. 'Winning hearts and minds' is supposed to be a tactic to bring people onto _your_ side, not send them over to the 'enemy'.
Seeing as they came from the same producers as Joe90 and Thunderbirds, I kept looking for the strings.
Joe90 had better acting too.
Any "nuclear waste facility" which makes it a one way trip is technically flawed. Today's nuclear waste is tomorrow's LFTR fuel.
Most low level waste is about as radioactive as a radium watch buried in a barrel of sand and about as dangerous (granite is more radioactive). We really do err on the side of complete and utter paranoia when it comes to "noo-cle-ar" stuff.
Most high level waste should be being reused. If it was we could reduce "waste" levels around 99%
"No Android device I'm aware of uses flash for swap"
Then you're not paying attention. There are a number of mods to allow exactly this kind of operation, particularly on older hardware with "only" 1Gb ram.
MicroSD cards are cheap, so burning them out isn't a big deal.
"Cyanogen with a large swapfile that's tweaked to abstain from killing off idle tasks will nuke a brand new class-10 microSD card in about 3-8 months of normal daily use."
At $7-10 for such a beastie, does it matter?
Given Intel's level of investment into Linux, if they wanted to break into the android market they'd use a GPU that can be supported.