Oil is a commodity, meaning it's the same price everywhere. So long as demand remains high, it will command a high price, no matter who is the buyer and the seller.
The US doesn't get much oil from Saudi Arabia to begin with; when it commands the same price everywhere, the only fundamental difference is the cost of shipping, and Saudi Arabia is all but literally on the other side of the world. What is important to the US is the amount of influence Saudi Arabia has over the global supply, and the influence that has over the price of oil the US imports from Canada, Mexico and Venezuela.
If (more realistically) Europe doesn't buy Saudi oil, they can always sell to India or China. But if only India and China are buying, then demand is down, the price of oil must go down with it, and the Middle East can return to the Iron Age barbarism that it wants so badly.
The real problem with false positives isn't that they are "inconvenient" but that they breed complacency. If 99% of the alerts you get are false, what are the odds you'll actually give enough due diligence to catch the remaining 1%?
"The Federal Highway Administration said the new sign standards improve safety because they allow drivers to identify words more quickly, allowing them to swiftly bring their eyes back to the road."
I was responding to the parent bemoaning the decline of science education in the US in general, and the link the parent provided made no mention of the difficulty in selling chemistry sets to children as a potential cause.
But, hey, government bad, beer good, rah rah, whatever.
And killers are the only ones who plea-bargain to a reduced sentence?
If the parent wants to compare apples to apples, he's going to have to go by murder convictions, and not just hearsay that was never presented to a jury.
"How many McVeighs have there been? What's their death toll in the past 20 years or so, compared to international threats?"
If body count were the sole deciding factor, the Pentagon's budget would pale compared to NTSB and Health and Human Services.
"Everyone loves to point at McVeigh as the counterexample, but the fact is there's only one of him that ever actually got to the point of doing something."
"Patriots trying to protect the Constitution from "domestic enemies""
And if their fertilizer bomb happens to kill all the kids in a daycare center that happens to be in a federal courthouse, well, I guess the ends justify the means.
"They tried to make the telephone company put back the non-dial phones IN THE SENATE ITSELF."
You're living in the Brave New World after Nineteen Eighty-Four. Before then, Ma Bell owned all the telephones, period, from the curb, to the wiring in your home, to the receiver itself. If Ma Bell said you're getting a rotary phone, you're getting a rotary phone, and nothing short of an act of Congress is going to stop it.
If Ma Bell says that you now have to start learning seemingly random strings of numbers to call people you know, you'd best start learning. Sure, Ma Bell has just unloaded some of their work on to you, but it's not like they'll be lowering your phone bill because of it or anything.
If Ma Bell says you have to pay for a call per minute per receiver off the hook, all you can do is make sure you only have one receiver in the home to keep costs down.
Trimline phones? Extra. Touch-tone? Extra. It doesn't matter if they're cheaper for Ma Bell to manufacture, support and maintain, you're paying extra.
To put this into perspective, this is like the Senate telling mobile phone companies that they're not going to pay a quarter for text messages that cost the phone companies less than a penny to handle, and getting that sweetheart deal, because they're the fucking Senate.
If you've never seen a steam table that involved pounds of water under psi pressures holding btu energies at Fahrenheit temperatures, then I hope for your sake that you'll be job-hunting exclusively outside the US.
"You should put bullets in your gun when for when it becomes clear that intimidation won't work."
So you're claiming a meaningful number of people who carry handguns don't have them loaded? I'd wager there are more people who do so with a round chambered than entirely unloaded.
"So if you carry a gun and don't conceal it, you're obsessed with murdering people?"
You do it because you want others to know that you can kill them, period. There may be differences over why you want them to know that, but the base statement, to anybody that can see you, is "I can kill you."
"Are you sure they're not just obsessed with their own demise that they have a compulsive need to intimidate people?"
If you're talking about open- versus concealed-carry, yes.
"Many people carry guns because they're insecure"
Most of those conceal their weapons.
"or enjoy them for their recreational value."
Many of those don't even carry their weapon on their person.
"Few because they are obsessed murders."
There is no other reason to openly carry a weapon in public than to demonstrate your ability to kill others.
"Who the hell uses Fahrenheit for anything remotely connected to science?"
First and foremost, you write for your audience. If your intended audience typically uses degrees Fahrenheit, you use degrees Fahrenheit. That, or you triple the size of your article, with the bulk of it devoted to phrases like "triple point of water" that will make your audience's eyes glaze over.
Second, you're not going to do very well in a thermodynamics course in the United States (let alone get meaningful work afterward) if you can't handle degrees Rankine as well as kelvins. Much like writing for your audience, you work with the tools you have at hand, rather than insisting that someone rip out a perfectly good boiler simply because it wasn't built to SI specifications.
Finally, they already said "absolute zero," so you already have a perfectly valid thermodynamic temperature measurement. So long as they're using a US unit alongside it rather than instead of it, why do you care?
Remember that, when it comes to browsers, especially Microsoft's, it's less about competing products and more about competing standards. Having to craft a website that works in IE separately from one that works in everything else isn't good for anybody but Microsoft.
The problem with BluRay specifically is that it eliminates most of the advantages of physical media. What's the point of having a physical disc if you still need to have internet access to play it? It's pretty much the same as PC games: why bother with the disc when you have to deal with the same DRM either way?
Slashdot Mirror
I care a bit more about unpatched OS exploits than unpatched game exploits.
If QC actually happened, would there be so many patches to begin with?
Oil is a commodity, meaning it's the same price everywhere. So long as demand remains high, it will command a high price, no matter who is the buyer and the seller.
The US doesn't get much oil from Saudi Arabia to begin with; when it commands the same price everywhere, the only fundamental difference is the cost of shipping, and Saudi Arabia is all but literally on the other side of the world. What is important to the US is the amount of influence Saudi Arabia has over the global supply, and the influence that has over the price of oil the US imports from Canada, Mexico and Venezuela.
If (more realistically) Europe doesn't buy Saudi oil, they can always sell to India or China. But if only India and China are buying, then demand is down, the price of oil must go down with it, and the Middle East can return to the Iron Age barbarism that it wants so badly.
classic computer systems such as the ColecoVision
This word, "computer," I do not think it means what you think it means...
/former Adam owner
when next you top off your gas tank.
Most people calling a shrink just need someone to listen to them:
Most anecdotes have no basis in fact.
When was the last time you so much as looked out a window when you heard a car alarm?
The real problem with false positives isn't that they are "inconvenient" but that they breed complacency. If 99% of the alerts you get are false, what are the odds you'll actually give enough due diligence to catch the remaining 1%?
FTFA:
"The Federal Highway Administration said the new sign standards improve safety because they allow drivers to identify words more quickly, allowing them to swiftly bring their eyes back to the road."
Yeah, pointless government waste.
I was responding to the parent bemoaning the decline of science education in the US in general, and the link the parent provided made no mention of the difficulty in selling chemistry sets to children as a potential cause.
But, hey, government bad, beer good, rah rah, whatever.
I think it has less to do with consumer product safety concerns and more to do with using Genesis as a science textbook.
If nothing else, keeping it illegal keeps accidents caused by it from being declared "no fault."
And killers are the only ones who plea-bargain to a reduced sentence?
If the parent wants to compare apples to apples, he's going to have to go by murder convictions, and not just hearsay that was never presented to a jury.
"How many McVeighs have there been? What's their death toll in the past 20 years or so, compared to international threats?"
If body count were the sole deciding factor, the Pentagon's budget would pale compared to NTSB and Health and Human Services.
"Everyone loves to point at McVeigh as the counterexample, but the fact is there's only one of him that ever actually got to the point of doing something."
He's just more widely known.
"Truth is, the administration lets their ideology dictate their response to this."
And the Bush administration didn't add the Animal Liberation Front to Homeland Security's list of domestic terrorist organizations?
"Because of their worldview they consider the most dangerous people in the world to be those with right wing political views,"
And nobody's ever murdered abortionists.
"(actually, his views were more nuanced than this, but that is never something people are interested in)"
And bin Laden's aren't?
"Guess we should ignore the threats actually making the bodies."
We are: accidental firearm discharges in the United States have killed far more than Al Qaeda could ever dream of.
"Disagree with the government, you end up in jail/raided/etc."
People who agree with the government tend not to use car bombs.
Is everybody who disagrees with the government a potential terrorist? No. Do all potential terrorists disagree with the government? Yes.
Criticism of the methodology and implementation will be far more effective than criticism of the intended targets.
"Patriots trying to protect the Constitution from "domestic enemies""
And if their fertilizer bomb happens to kill all the kids in a daycare center that happens to be in a federal courthouse, well, I guess the ends justify the means.
Motivations don't make a terrorist, tactics do.
"worried about potential "domestic terrorists", i.e., people whose political ideology varies most widely with their own"
Like Tim McVeigh.
Any personal disagreement you have with current policy doesn't make far right gun nuts any less dangerous.
"There are murderers that serve a shorter sentence!"
Name one person who was found guilty of murder in the US who got a shorter sentence.
"They tried to make the telephone company put back the non-dial phones IN THE SENATE ITSELF."
You're living in the Brave New World after Nineteen Eighty-Four. Before then, Ma Bell owned all the telephones, period, from the curb, to the wiring in your home, to the receiver itself. If Ma Bell said you're getting a rotary phone, you're getting a rotary phone, and nothing short of an act of Congress is going to stop it.
If Ma Bell says that you now have to start learning seemingly random strings of numbers to call people you know, you'd best start learning. Sure, Ma Bell has just unloaded some of their work on to you, but it's not like they'll be lowering your phone bill because of it or anything.
If Ma Bell says you have to pay for a call per minute per receiver off the hook, all you can do is make sure you only have one receiver in the home to keep costs down.
Trimline phones? Extra. Touch-tone? Extra. It doesn't matter if they're cheaper for Ma Bell to manufacture, support and maintain, you're paying extra.
To put this into perspective, this is like the Senate telling mobile phone companies that they're not going to pay a quarter for text messages that cost the phone companies less than a penny to handle, and getting that sweetheart deal, because they're the fucking Senate.
If you've never seen a steam table that involved pounds of water under psi pressures holding btu energies at Fahrenheit temperatures, then I hope for your sake that you'll be job-hunting exclusively outside the US.
"You should put bullets in your gun when for when it becomes clear that intimidation won't work."
So you're claiming a meaningful number of people who carry handguns don't have them loaded? I'd wager there are more people who do so with a round chambered than entirely unloaded.
"So if you carry a gun and don't conceal it, you're obsessed with murdering people?"
You do it because you want others to know that you can kill them, period. There may be differences over why you want them to know that, but the base statement, to anybody that can see you, is "I can kill you."
"Are you sure they're not just obsessed with their own demise that they have a compulsive need to intimidate people?"
If you're talking about open- versus concealed-carry, yes.
"Many people carry guns because they're insecure"
Most of those conceal their weapons.
"or enjoy them for their recreational value."
Many of those don't even carry their weapon on their person.
"Few because they are obsessed murders."
There is no other reason to openly carry a weapon in public than to demonstrate your ability to kill others.
"Who the hell uses Fahrenheit for anything remotely connected to science?"
First and foremost, you write for your audience. If your intended audience typically uses degrees Fahrenheit, you use degrees Fahrenheit. That, or you triple the size of your article, with the bulk of it devoted to phrases like "triple point of water" that will make your audience's eyes glaze over.
Second, you're not going to do very well in a thermodynamics course in the United States (let alone get meaningful work afterward) if you can't handle degrees Rankine as well as kelvins. Much like writing for your audience, you work with the tools you have at hand, rather than insisting that someone rip out a perfectly good boiler simply because it wasn't built to SI specifications.
Finally, they already said "absolute zero," so you already have a perfectly valid thermodynamic temperature measurement. So long as they're using a US unit alongside it rather than instead of it, why do you care?
"What about human readable units for once? maybe 1 Kelvin or -272C would be OK"
From the actual blurb:
But I guess you needed to get your pro-metric post out ASAP so you could get modded up.
Besides, "kelvin" as a unit isn't capitalized, degrees Celsius (assuming you weren't talking coulombs) aren't SI, and neither number is absolute zero.
"Say it with me, competition is GOOD."
Remember that, when it comes to browsers, especially Microsoft's, it's less about competing products and more about competing standards. Having to craft a website that works in IE separately from one that works in everything else isn't good for anybody but Microsoft.
The problem with BluRay specifically is that it eliminates most of the advantages of physical media. What's the point of having a physical disc if you still need to have internet access to play it? It's pretty much the same as PC games: why bother with the disc when you have to deal with the same DRM either way?