Your analogy with car insurance is flawed. This is how it should go: when you have a wreck and you're not assured, you pay the full cost. Similarly, when your house is burning and you haven't paid your fee, then you pay to full cost of putting out the fire, not the full cost of the house. The owner did offer to pay this cost. Besides, I wonder, what would they have done if there were somebody inside?
I expect that if someone was inside they would attempt a rescue. I don't think they'd necessarily try to save the house as an objective. It might happen as a side-effect.
Why would anyone ever pay the $75 if the FD would come anyway and put out the fire? If you assume that your house will never burn, you'd be crazy to pay the $75.
Paying this anyway is some type of bet that you might need them and the $75 is cheaper than excessive damage and the full cost of a dispatch.
I am amazed that this doesn't sound like insurance to you. It sounds awfully close to the insurance model to me.
it would be like buying auto insurance after you've had a wreck and expecting the insurance company to cover you for that wreck
No, it wouldn't be like that at all. It would be more like an ambulance ride, where you call them up when you need them and they give you a ride to the hospital, and charge you for it.
No, its really not very similar to a non-municipal ambulance service at all and a municipal ambulance service relies on prepayment of fees (often called taxes) by its constituency. (Hmmm. That sounds familiar. Kind of exactly like this.)
If it is a private ambulance service, then there is no prepay option available. If it is a private service, then there is generally more than one and you have the option to call whichever one you want at the time you need the service.
A private ambulance is just a service. You have no relationship with it before you use it and you pay nothing for its existence until after you use it.
Insurance is something you pay for in advance, not at the time it is used or post-usage. The prepay model of this FD is a heckuva lot closer to the insurance model (only in this case you are insuring performance not contents) than a normal service model.
From what I've read, this is a voluntary fee because they do not live within the city limits. The city has no obligation to also serve people who reside outside of it. When I was a kid, folks out in the country (outside of the city limits) could pay a fee to have their kids attend the city school system, instead of the county schools. This is pretty similar.
It looks like this homeowner specifically declined to pay the $75. If the city started letting people pay the fee after they needed it, it would be like buying auto insurance after you've had a wreck and expecting the insurance company to cover you for that wreck. In other words, after a while, the only $75 payments they'd collect would be for the houses that actually caught on fire.
The thought that putting a movie in HD or 3D improves the storyline or the acting amuses me.
I'm glad you amuse yourself, as I'm not aware of anybody having ever made that claim.
Many of the young (under 30) people I know tell me that they will not go see a movie if it isn't 3D and/or they won't watch shows on TV or Movies at home that are not HD. To be that rigid about it says to me that many of them clearly believe that HD and 3D improve the movie enough that it is not watchable without it.
Not surprising to me. I grew up watching a B/W TV and the picture quality was definitely lower. Today, I am still happy to watch those old episodes in B/W. Its definitely about content. The thought that putting a movie in HD or 3D improves the storyline or the acting amuses me.
All right, consider "Create planet busting laser" to be scratched off my ToDo list.
Now I've got to figure out what to do with that corner of my basement.
Seems like setting up a ramdisk and placing all of your cache/bookmarks/saved values files there would be the way to do this. You could use a script that created the ramdisk and copied the bookmarks, etc... to it before starting the browser. Then have it destroy all of that when the browser closed.
That would certainly be a handy utility to have, especially if it could be configured to make you anonymous (none of your identifying cookies, etc..) as an option.
We should adopt technological approaches that actually improve the quality of the educational process.
Technology for the sake of tech doesn't necessarily meet that goal. The cognition issues tied to improper use of presentation technologies like Powerpoint (or Apple Keynote or OpenOffice or etc...) raise serious questions about its use in the educational process.
Well, no study yet has proven that without extensive interpolation and tweaking of the data to fit the hypothesis. Its pretty easy to prove something with a study if you drop the inconvenient data points and that is a pretty consistent feature of every study on the IPCC pages. There is not one that did not drop a significant number of data points or do 'forcing' of the data.
Since natural emissions of CO2 and (far more importantly) CH4 dwarf man made CO2 it seems prudent to have definitive facts before we bet the farm on a single scheme or approach that might or more importantly might not mitigate the problem. Its interesting that all of the momentum behind 'solving' the problem lies in the direction of raising taxes and putting even more money in the hands of a few people. We don't see real impetus towards cleaner energy or to simply make what we have more efficient. What we see is a demand to simply cabon-tax things more.
I don't think there is much doubt that global warming is real. The Earth has experienced both global warming and global cooling many times in its past.
The real (and unanswered) question is whether or not the current global warming is anthropogenic. Since past global warmings were not, there's not a lot of reason to believe that this one is. CO2 levels have been higher in the past, atmospheric water vapor has been higher in the past, etc..
If the climate models that indicate anthropogenic causes were correct and rigorous, we could run them retrograde and accurately model the climate of the planet for the past few millennia. Then events like the Medieval Warm Period and the Maunder Minimum would show up. To my knowledge, no one has bothered to create such a model.
Every nuclear power plant in America (except the Navy's) is a multi-billion dollar, one-off design. The ridiculous way that we regulate and construct such things makes them incredibly expensive and means that we if we develop a problem in one, that knowledge gained from fixing it can't easily be applied to any other reactor.
We should settle on a design that is good enough and manufacture our nukes. Ideally, we could actually manufacture them and deliver them by rail. Then if an issue develops, the same fix would apply to all of them. A pebble-bed design, for example, would be very safe.
Not only that, we could make them automated and small enough that they could be based in or near the communities that they serve and eliminate the losses of long distance transmission.
Actually, most of the tech folks I know download the free ones. Most of the non-techie types I know prefer to buy them. They don't feel they are getting anything of value when it is free. (OSS is a foreign concept.)
Most non-tech folks are not sophisticated users. They can barely use Facebook, google and gmail. They are far more interested in a good (read that as easy, linear) experience. These people will pay for an easy way to access such sites without the hassle of a browser, the potential for malware and a really nice experience.
I guess for the same reason that people buy flashlight apps and tip calculator apps.
It gives them a better experience than using the calculator or just keeping the phone lit up.
Well, compared to the tiny estimated number of registrants and the even tinier number of paying subscribers (who don't actually also get the analog paper) actually capturing a very small percentage of the millions of iPhones and iPads out there:
1) wouldn't look like such a small number and 2) is a market with disposable income (or they wouldn't have spent the money on those devices and wireless plans.)
For a relatively small investment in development, they could get a nice return. They could even make the app work where if you didn't want to pay, you got ads (freemium) or you could pay and not get ads (premium.)
It seems to me like the Times would have been better off offering *premium* content to subscribers rather than closing off the entire site altogether."
I'm pretty sure that this is the model that the NYT abandoned 6 or 7 years ago as basically not worth the trouble. I guess they decided that advertising was worth more to them at the time. They've been talking about bringing back a paywall lately. I wonder how this result will impact that decision.
They might find more revenue with premium content only available thru subscriptions using dedicated, well designed iPhone/iPad apps.
Actually, I think its broken because the sheer amount of money needed to campaign successfully now pretty much insures that all candidates are fully 'bought and paid-for' by their investors^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hdonors.
We have no real say in who runs for office and almost no say in who gets elected any more.
Well, First, I think using the term 'security' in relation to a TSA checkpoint shows an incredible level of naivete. They exist for theatre and pacification of the ignorant masses (and of course to keep TSA personnel employed) but not in reality for security. Second, its a incredibly valid example of the Federal government's steady push to supercede the rights and responsibilities of the states, just like the Department of Education, FDA, etc... None of these has any basis in the Constitution. There's no reasonable basis for the Federal government to have any involvement in transportation that stays strictly within a state's border.
Slashdot Mirror
Gonna be hard for Google to 'do no evil' if they partner with SONY. There aren't a lot of tech companies with the evil track record that SONY has.
The county does, though. And they should have been collecting that $75.
Exactly! The county could mandate the payment of this fee.
Yet, nowhere in this story is anyone the villain except the City FD.
Your analogy with car insurance is flawed. This is how it should go: when you have a wreck and you're not assured, you pay the full cost. Similarly, when your house is burning and you haven't paid your fee, then you pay to full cost of putting out the fire, not the full cost of the house. The owner did offer to pay this cost. Besides, I wonder, what would they have done if there were somebody inside?
I expect that if someone was inside they would attempt a rescue. I don't think they'd necessarily try to save the house as an objective. It might happen as a side-effect.
Why would anyone ever pay the $75 if the FD would come anyway and put out the fire? If you assume that your house will never burn, you'd be crazy to pay the $75.
Paying this anyway is some type of bet that you might need them and the $75 is cheaper than excessive damage and the full cost of a dispatch.
I am amazed that this doesn't sound like insurance to you. It sounds awfully close to the insurance model to me.
No, it wouldn't be like that at all. It would be more like an ambulance ride, where you call them up when you need them and they give you a ride to the hospital, and charge you for it.
No, its really not very similar to a non-municipal ambulance service at all and a municipal ambulance service relies on prepayment of fees (often called taxes) by its constituency. (Hmmm. That sounds familiar. Kind of exactly like this.)
If it is a private ambulance service, then there is no prepay option available. If it is a private service, then there is generally more than one and you have the option to call whichever one you want at the time you need the service.
A private ambulance is just a service. You have no relationship with it before you use it and you pay nothing for its existence until after you use it.
Insurance is something you pay for in advance, not at the time it is used or post-usage. The prepay model of this FD is a heckuva lot closer to the insurance model (only in this case you are insuring performance not contents) than a normal service model.
The City of South Fulton doesn't have the authority to issue fines to people who don't live in their town.
Exactly.
I think the system they have set up seems like the most appropriate way to handle it.
The real problem is why this is a voluntary fee?
From what I've read, this is a voluntary fee because they do not live within the city limits. The city has no obligation to also serve people who reside outside of it. When I was a kid, folks out in the country (outside of the city limits) could pay a fee to have their kids attend the city school system, instead of the county schools. This is pretty similar.
It looks like this homeowner specifically declined to pay the $75. If the city started letting people pay the fee after they needed it, it would be like buying auto insurance after you've had a wreck and expecting the insurance company to cover you for that wreck. In other words, after a while, the only $75 payments they'd collect would be for the houses that actually caught on fire.
Based on most reports, its doesn't sound like Flash is watchable on Android.
It might be more accurate to just say "At least Android users have the choice to install Flash if they choose" and leave the playing content part off.
Now, now. We know what many guys do while watching porn.
I hope the lens on those 3D glasses are easily cleaned.
The thought that putting a movie in HD or 3D improves the storyline or the acting amuses me.
I'm glad you amuse yourself, as I'm not aware of anybody having ever made that claim.
Many of the young (under 30) people I know tell me that they will not go see a movie if it isn't 3D and/or they won't watch shows on TV or Movies at home that are not HD. To be that rigid about it says to me that many of them clearly believe that HD and 3D improve the movie enough that it is not watchable without it.
Not surprising to me. I grew up watching a B/W TV and the picture quality was definitely lower. Today, I am still happy to watch those old episodes in B/W. Its definitely about content. The thought that putting a movie in HD or 3D improves the storyline or the acting amuses me.
All right, consider "Create planet busting laser" to be scratched off my ToDo list. Now I've got to figure out what to do with that corner of my basement.
Seems like setting up a ramdisk and placing all of your cache/bookmarks/saved values files there would be the way to do this. You could use a script that created the ramdisk and copied the bookmarks, etc... to it before starting the browser. Then have it destroy all of that when the browser closed.
That would certainly be a handy utility to have, especially if it could be configured to make you anonymous (none of your identifying cookies, etc..) as an option.
We should adopt technological approaches that actually improve the quality of the educational process.
Technology for the sake of tech doesn't necessarily meet that goal. The cognition issues tied to improper use of presentation technologies like Powerpoint (or Apple Keynote or OpenOffice or etc...) raise serious questions about its use in the educational process.
Well, no study yet has proven that without extensive interpolation and tweaking of the data to fit the hypothesis. Its pretty easy to prove something with a study if you drop the inconvenient data points and that is a pretty consistent feature of every study on the IPCC pages. There is not one that did not drop a significant number of data points or do 'forcing' of the data.
Since natural emissions of CO2 and (far more importantly) CH4 dwarf man made CO2 it seems prudent to have definitive facts before we bet the farm on a single scheme or approach that might or more importantly might not mitigate the problem. Its interesting that all of the momentum behind 'solving' the problem lies in the direction of raising taxes and putting even more money in the hands of a few people. We don't see real impetus towards cleaner energy or to simply make what we have more efficient. What we see is a demand to simply cabon-tax things more.
Seems to me that there is one more important question that you didn't list.
3) Is warmer better or worse than cooler or unchanged?
I don't think there is much doubt that global warming is real. The Earth has experienced both global warming and global cooling many times in its past.
The real (and unanswered) question is whether or not the current global warming is anthropogenic. Since past global warmings were not, there's not a lot of reason to believe that this one is. CO2 levels have been higher in the past, atmospheric water vapor has been higher in the past, etc..
If the climate models that indicate anthropogenic causes were correct and rigorous, we could run them retrograde and accurately model the climate of the planet for the past few millennia. Then events like the Medieval Warm Period and the Maunder Minimum would show up. To my knowledge, no one has bothered to create such a model.
Every nuclear power plant in America (except the Navy's) is a multi-billion dollar, one-off design. The ridiculous way that we regulate and construct such things makes them incredibly expensive and means that we if we develop a problem in one, that knowledge gained from fixing it can't easily be applied to any other reactor.
We should settle on a design that is good enough and manufacture our nukes. Ideally, we could actually manufacture them and deliver them by rail. Then if an issue develops, the same fix would apply to all of them. A pebble-bed design, for example, would be very safe.
Not only that, we could make them automated and small enough that they could be based in or near the communities that they serve and eliminate the losses of long distance transmission.
Actually, most of the tech folks I know download the free ones. Most of the non-techie types I know prefer to buy them. They don't feel they are getting anything of value when it is free. (OSS is a foreign concept.)
Most non-tech folks are not sophisticated users. They can barely use Facebook, google and gmail. They are far more interested in a good (read that as easy, linear) experience. These people will pay for an easy way to access such sites without the hassle of a browser, the potential for malware and a really nice experience.
I guess for the same reason that people buy flashlight apps and tip calculator apps. It gives them a better experience than using the calculator or just keeping the phone lit up.
I still don't understand.
Tech savvy people with disposable income won't pay for it on the web but they will pay for it on the iThing?
No, not the tech savvy. The 90+% of iPhone/iPad owners that are not tech savvy.
Why limit yourself to such a small market?
Well, compared to the tiny estimated number of registrants and the even tinier number of paying subscribers (who don't actually also get the analog paper) actually capturing a very small percentage of the millions of iPhones and iPads out there:
1) wouldn't look like such a small number and
2) is a market with disposable income (or they wouldn't have spent the money on those devices and wireless plans.)
For a relatively small investment in development, they could get a nice return. They could even make the app work where if you didn't want to pay, you got ads (freemium) or you could pay and not get ads (premium.)
Then they'd win either way.
It seems to me like the Times would have been better off offering *premium* content to subscribers rather than closing off the entire site altogether."
I'm pretty sure that this is the model that the NYT abandoned 6 or 7 years ago as basically not worth the trouble. I guess they decided that advertising was worth more to them at the time. They've been talking about bringing back a paywall lately. I wonder how this result will impact that decision.
They might find more revenue with premium content only available thru subscriptions using dedicated, well designed iPhone/iPad apps.
As long as they were at it, it would have been nice if they could have bred them to really not like the taste of human blood too.
Actually, I think its broken because the sheer amount of money needed to campaign successfully now pretty much insures that all candidates are fully 'bought and paid-for' by their investors^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hdonors.
We have no real say in who runs for office and almost no say in who gets elected any more.
Well, First, I think using the term 'security' in relation to a TSA checkpoint shows an incredible level of naivete. They exist for theatre and pacification of the ignorant masses (and of course to keep TSA personnel employed) but not in reality for security. Second, its a incredibly valid example of the Federal government's steady push to supercede the rights and responsibilities of the states, just like the Department of Education, FDA, etc... None of these has any basis in the Constitution. There's no reasonable basis for the Federal government to have any involvement in transportation that stays strictly within a state's border.