Reality check: don't be so quick to dismiss the Chinese naval threat. They are working very hard to upgrade their navy, particularly focusing on quiet diesel submarines. The goal is to keep American carriers from interfering with an attack on Taiwan. These subs to pose a serious threat; Australian diesels have scored several hits on American attack subs and carriers during war games.
I'm all in favor of more jail time for rapists. The real problem here is the over-criminalization of the regulatory structure of the government. The federal criminal code just keeps getting bigger each year as our esteemed representatives keep adding criminal sanctions as another tool for regulating our lives. This is precisely the kind of behavior, that if it needs to be regulated, should be handled with a fine only; it should not be treated as a felony.
It wasn't mentioned by the article poster, but there is another important part of this law. The Act makes it clear that using technology to edit your own copies of media is legal; so the companies selling services to edit your VHS tapes and codes for your DVD player to self-edit movies are in the clear now.
Hollywood didn't get everything they wanted with this bill, thank goodness.
Let's see; the old, rich, male, white insurance executives all get together and (sexist jerks that they are) decide to discriminate against those women by charging them *cheaper* rates. Nice.
Listen, if the insurance companies had evidence that people who've had braces were significantly more likely to be involved in accidents than those with naturally straight teeth, you'd see checkboxes on insurance application forms about any dental work you may have done.
Heh. Playing Madden NFL 2002 on my Gamecube. One button for passing the ball. Press it quickly, lob pass. Press it long, and you get a hard, fast pass. One button, two different behaviors dependent upon the length of the press. As far as I know, this feature was around before the 2002 version of the game. Surely, this predates the patent, and the Gamecube would seem to fit the definition of a limited resource computing device as well as a PDA does (which was the target of the patent).
... plus the additions for medicare and social security, which come out to ~7% of my gross income when combined....
Just a note; this is not quite true. The actual tax rate for social security and medicare is around 15%. Your employer pays half of it for you, so it doesn't look as high as it really is.
Self-employed people are responsible for the whole 15%.
A little more transparency in the tax structure would be a good thing.
Fixed point saving can also make games *really* frustrating. It's frustating to work through a long stretch of game-play, often which is fairly routine and easy, then come to a tough boss section that kills you. It may take several attempts to learn the best strategy to kill the boss, or complete the task, but having to play through the same redundant stretch just to reach the boss, over and over, has killed the fun of playing some games.
I don't think that the temperature of the flame is the sole reason why a hydrogen flame is not very visible. The flame temperature of hydrogen isn't that far away from the temperatures of natural gas or gasoline (2045, 1875, 2200 respectively). Likewise, burning ethyl alcohol has a much lower temperature flame while remaining nearly invisible.
Bzzzt. It meets every definition of a tax. You and I are being taxed to finance expenditures for provide supplemental income to older people who are no longer in the workforce. It's certainly not a pension plan. The benefit is not tied to the revenue - for years (pretty much since the beginning of the program) the government has been collecting more social security revenues than it has been spending in benefits. The excess money has been directed into the general fund, used to pay for any and all other government expenses. The pension plan idea (Al Gore's lockbox, anyone?) is pretty much a fiction.
We already do have a regressive flat tax - social security. It's a flat tax (12.4% of income) for the first $87,000. Any income above $87,000 is not taxed.
Any flat tax that has a chance of being implemented would have some large check-off or deduction for the first X% of income.
We already have one form of a flat tax - FICA (social security and medicare). FICA is a flat 15% of your income, up to a set limit (around 85K, I think), after which you only are taxed for the medicare portion, about 3%. So there's a nifty flat tax that *is* regressive, because it only applies to the first X dollars of your income.
Speaking of inequality, one of the largest problems with the current taxation system (as I see it) is that for the past few decades the percentage of people paying little or nothing keeps increasing. We're turning into a society where a large proportion of the voters bear no direct responsibility for the cost of the programs being voted on. That can't be a good situation.
I'm sure that number refers to the cost of 'collections' (think collection agency).
It's the cost for the IRS to identify and collect tax owed that hasn't been paid. It's clearly not the overhead on general revenue - that would work out to the IRS having a budget nearly half of the total government.
what's wrong with having an OS for more technical UNIXy people?
Absolutely nothing. But, that doesn't mean that the interface shouldn't be intuitive and discoverable. When an experienced 'UNIXy' person like ESR runs into the problems he talked about trying to set up a printer, then something seriously needs to be fixed.
I think you're mistaken. These machines have an enclosed printer that prints a total at the end of the day. The voter is not given a paper receipt. Diebold is in fact complaining that many legislatures are starting to amend laws calling for electronic voting to mandate a certifiable paper audit trail.
Good question. Just last month, after a meeting between the Secretary of State and the NATE Secretary General, Powell announced that troop levels in Western Europe are being reduced. Some troops will be coming home, while at the same time their working on agreements for forward basing rights to get the forces closer to potential crisis spots. http://usinfo.state.gov/xarchives/display. html?p=w ashfile-english&y=2004&m=January&x=200401291849331 CJsamohT0.8910791&t=usinfo/wf-latest.html
I'm just trying to point out that the contribution made by the US shouldn't be measured by looking at the number of dollars allocated to foreign aid. For years, the US shouldered a proportionately larger burden of the defense needs of Western Europe. I'm not complaining or bashing; it was necessary and worth doing. I do agree with you though that there isn't much need for many of the US bases in Western Europe anymore; I'm in favor of redistributing these forces.
However, even with the end of the cold war, Europe needs to do more to pull its own weight. For example, it was unable, or unwilling, to do much of anything about the problem in Kosovo without US participation.
As far as the current levels of defense spending: the percentage of the federal budget spent on defense as been falling ever since the late eighties. Before the conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq, it was the smallest portion of the budget it had been since the Depression. Spending has risen lately, and you can track the turning point to the fall of 2001. The US is at war. Haven't you noticed?
There's another point - if we are going to start comparing expenditures on foreign aid, does the money spent on trying to build free societies in Afghanistan and Iraq count?
As a percentage of it's GDP, the US gives less in foreign aid than most other developed countries.
Don't forget to count the money the US spends on its military that is used to defend other nations (South Korea, Japan, Taiwan, NATO, etc.) The amount of money spent providing defense for Western Europe during the cold war (and beyond - e.g. Kosovo) more than covers this difference.
Maybe not, but that image has such a well-known meaning that to use it in this context seems a little dumb, if all they are trying to do is represent two individuals connecting, or sharing data.
You realize that pretty much everything you referenced (including the stuff in the google search you provided) falls within the time scale used in the book?
The library at Alexandria, the rise of the Inca and Maya empires, the Arabic contributions to math and the sciences all happened after 800 BC.
From the reviewer's comments, it sounds like the author deliberately tried to include as many non-western references as possible; the result still showed how strongly Western civilization has influenced the sciences and the arts.
This seems to fall into the class of 'inventions' that shouldn't be granted a patent because of their obviousness. This sounds like a specific implementation of an idea that has been done in other products in other ways for years. Sounds pretty intuitive.
Slashdot Mirror
Reality check: don't be so quick to dismiss the Chinese naval threat. They are working very hard to upgrade their navy, particularly focusing on quiet diesel submarines. The goal is to keep American carriers from interfering with an attack on Taiwan. These subs to pose a serious threat; Australian diesels have scored several hits on American attack subs and carriers during war games.
Harry Reid. He's Mormon and he's got some clout in Congress (Senate Minority Leader). (This doesn't scare the hell out of me, to be honest.)
I'm all in favor of more jail time for rapists. The real problem here is the over-criminalization of the regulatory structure of the government. The federal criminal code just keeps getting bigger each year as our esteemed representatives keep adding criminal sanctions as another tool for regulating our lives. This is precisely the kind of behavior, that if it needs to be regulated, should be handled with a fine only; it should not be treated as a felony.
It wasn't mentioned by the article poster, but there is another important part of this law. The Act makes it clear that using technology to edit your own copies of media is legal; so the companies selling services to edit your VHS tapes and codes for your DVD player to self-edit movies are in the clear now.
Hollywood didn't get everything they wanted with this bill, thank goodness.
I think it's sexism.
Really?
Let's see; the old, rich, male, white insurance executives all get together and (sexist jerks that they are) decide to discriminate against those women by charging them *cheaper* rates. Nice.
Listen, if the insurance companies had evidence that people who've had braces were significantly more likely to be involved in accidents than those with naturally straight teeth, you'd see checkboxes on insurance application forms about any dental work you may have done.
Heh. Playing Madden NFL 2002 on my Gamecube. One button for passing the ball. Press it quickly, lob pass. Press it long, and you get a hard, fast pass. One button, two different behaviors dependent upon the length of the press.
As far as I know, this feature was around before the 2002 version of the game.
Surely, this predates the patent, and the Gamecube would seem to fit the definition of a limited resource computing device as well as a PDA does (which was the target of the patent).
Just a note; this is not quite true. The actual tax rate for social security and medicare is around 15%. Your employer pays half of it for you, so it doesn't look as high as it really is. Self-employed people are responsible for the whole 15%.
A little more transparency in the tax structure would be a good thing.
A free chiro adjustment, eh? The way chiro works, you'll need to keep coming back to 'fix' the computer so that you can get another 'adjustment'.
Twice a week.
Fixed point saving can also make games *really* frustrating. It's frustating to work through a long stretch of game-play, often which is fairly routine and easy, then come to a tough boss section that kills you. It may take several attempts to learn the best strategy to kill the boss, or complete the task, but having to play through the same redundant stretch just to reach the boss, over and over, has killed the fun of playing some games.
I don't think that the temperature of the flame is the sole reason why a hydrogen flame is not very visible. The flame temperature of hydrogen isn't that far away from the temperatures of natural gas or gasoline (2045, 1875, 2200 respectively). Likewise, burning ethyl alcohol has a much lower temperature flame while remaining nearly invisible.
Sex can be had for free?
Bzzzt. It meets every definition of a tax. You and I are being taxed to finance expenditures for provide supplemental income to older people who are no longer in the workforce. It's certainly not a pension plan. The benefit is not tied to the revenue - for years (pretty much since the beginning of the program) the government has been collecting more social security revenues than it has been spending in benefits. The excess money has been directed into the general fund, used to pay for any and all other government expenses. The pension plan idea (Al Gore's lockbox, anyone?) is pretty much a fiction.
We already do have a regressive flat tax - social security. It's a flat tax (12.4% of income) for the first $87,000. Any income above $87,000 is not taxed.
Any flat tax that has a chance of being implemented would have some large check-off or deduction for the first X% of income.
We already have one form of a flat tax - FICA (social security and medicare). FICA is a flat 15% of your income, up to a set limit (around 85K, I think), after which you only are taxed for the medicare portion, about 3%. So there's a nifty flat tax that *is* regressive, because it only applies to the first X dollars of your income.
Speaking of inequality, one of the largest problems with the current taxation system (as I see it) is that for the past few decades the percentage of people paying little or nothing keeps increasing. We're turning into a society where a large proportion of the voters bear no direct responsibility for the cost of the programs being voted on. That can't be a good situation.
I'm sure that number refers to the cost of 'collections' (think collection agency).
It's the cost for the IRS to identify and collect tax owed that hasn't been paid. It's clearly not the overhead on general revenue - that would work out to the IRS having a budget nearly half of the total government.
This isn't a new war, just picking up from the lapse of prosecution during the Clinton administration.
Absolutely nothing. But, that doesn't mean that the interface shouldn't be intuitive and discoverable. When an experienced 'UNIXy' person like ESR runs into the problems he talked about trying to set up a printer, then something seriously needs to be fixed.
I think you're mistaken. These machines have an enclosed printer that prints a total at the end of the day. The voter is not given a paper receipt. Diebold is in fact complaining that many legislatures are starting to amend laws calling for electronic voting to mandate a certifiable paper audit trail.
Good question. Just last month, after a meeting between the Secretary of State and the NATE Secretary General, Powell announced that troop levels in Western Europe are being reduced. Some troops will be coming home, while at the same time their working on agreements for forward basing rights to get the forces closer to potential crisis spots.. html?p=w ashfile-english&y=2004&m=January&x=200401291849331 CJsamohT0.8910791&t=usinfo/wf-latest.html
http://usinfo.state.gov/xarchives/display
I'm just trying to point out that the contribution made by the US shouldn't be measured by looking at the number of dollars allocated to foreign aid.
For years, the US shouldered a proportionately larger burden of the defense needs of Western Europe. I'm not complaining or bashing; it was necessary and worth doing. I do agree with you though that there isn't much need for many of the US bases in Western Europe anymore; I'm in favor of redistributing these forces.
However, even with the end of the cold war, Europe needs to do more to pull its own weight. For example, it was unable, or unwilling, to do much of anything about the problem in Kosovo without US participation.
As far as the current levels of defense spending: the percentage of the federal budget spent on defense as been falling ever since the late eighties. Before the conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq, it was the smallest portion of the budget it had been since the Depression. Spending has risen lately, and you can track the turning point to the fall of 2001. The US is at war. Haven't you noticed?
There's another point - if we are going to start comparing expenditures on foreign aid, does the money spent on trying to build free societies in Afghanistan and Iraq count?
As a percentage of it's GDP, the US gives less in foreign aid than most other developed countries.
Don't forget to count the money the US spends on its military that is used to defend other nations (South Korea, Japan, Taiwan, NATO, etc.) The amount of money spent providing defense for Western Europe during the cold war (and beyond - e.g. Kosovo) more than covers this difference.
Maybe not, but that image has such a well-known meaning that to use it in this context seems a little dumb, if all they are trying to do is represent two individuals connecting, or sharing data.
You realize that pretty much everything you referenced (including the stuff in the google search you provided) falls within the time scale used in the book?
The library at Alexandria, the rise of the Inca and Maya empires, the Arabic contributions to math and the sciences all happened after 800 BC.
From the reviewer's comments, it sounds like the author deliberately tried to include as many non-western references as possible; the result still showed how strongly Western civilization has influenced the sciences and the arts.
This seems to fall into the class of 'inventions' that shouldn't be granted a patent because of their obviousness. This sounds like a specific implementation of an idea that has been done in other products in other ways for years. Sounds pretty intuitive.
Maybe because they figure the additional cost is enough to discourage purchase of the system.