Maybe it's because someone doesn't have the right to demand that a company not hire a replacement when they don't show up for work? Maybe, if you are easily replaceable, collective bargaining is your only method of getting the wage or benefits you want. But you do not magically gain the right of stopping someone else from working. You don't get the right to blockade the property of another.
Right after this strike, a customer lost their phone line. No dial tone. Just a tad suspicious. Especially when they called the repair line, and they were told "Don't you know we're on strike? Unless there is a 911 emergency, too bad."
After two weeks, this business customer called me about setting up their new internet connection not reliant on the phone line. They already had the equipment. Not as good of a system for them, but I set it up. After some other issues cropped up with not having a tradition POTS line to work with, I contacted Verizon Repair. I was repeatedly disconnected. Finally, I called a residential sales line, and got a real live person. I explained the 2 week outage and the horrible customer service my customer received (Remember, it's the customer's existence that gives that idiot a job). She seemed genuinely sorry that the customer had this extended outage, and explained that while she was in residential service, she was trying to get a hold of someone down the hall in business services. While we waited, and talked, I told her that I had never had someone at a call center offer that kind of service. She expressed disappointment that the people who were making such a fuss were giving the rest of the employees who were still on the job a bad name.
I was shocked by her openness, and based on some other comments, her obvious intelligence and education. I told her that she should not be working in a call center, she should be an entrepreneur with a more direct relationship with customers. In this way, she would be more directly and greatly rewarded for her excellent customer service and focus.
She then told me that in fact, she was filling in. Her normal position with the company was in fact in a more executive capacity (I won't mention what, but it wasn't in the call center arena at all, and was instead in more mid-level non-tech functions).
It all made sense. She is likely a well-compensated, happy employee with some ambition. She strives to improve herself and her worth to her employer, and got rewarded for it. Indeed, she is likely perfectly able to be that kind of entrepreneur who goes on to make peoples' lives better by providing customers with things they want or need, and people with more jobs.
It is the foundation of the most powerful economy in the world. Instead of trying to get someone to pay you more than your position is worth, you make yourself worth paying more by increasing your value.
Of course, it's all a dirty trick by racists! Because everyone knows that Republicans are all racists! (they also hate old people and want to put them out on the street)
That's one way to try to win an ideological argument. Throw around terms like bigot, racist, anti-semite, sexist, etc.
Do you think that every single ACORN member should have had to respond poorly? Should he have had to publish the video showing people who *didn't* do anything wrong? After all, those "professional" news organizations don't show Tea Party advocates who appear normal. In fact, they point out the craziest of the bunch, and paint the rest with the same broad brush.
They also don't contact the subjects of personal attacks if it happens to be GW Bush before claiming his National Guard service was tainted (found to be based on forgeries).
There are bad people in the world. People who lack the desire to adhere to moral standards. Many of these call out others for their sins, bigotry, or what have you to cover for their own sins (lots of famous preachers on this one) or racism. These accusers of racism often hide behind social programs that purport to help the oppressed race, but which actually demean that group. Great examples include affirmative action, which states that minorities can't make it without direct assistance from the Government, and endless welfare, which prevents people from working or maintaining a normal family if they want to have the help they may temporarily need.
Meanwhile, successful black people who challenge these notions are torn down, labeled as servants of "the Man", and their exhortations towards community self-improvement are dismissed.
You seriously ask that question? How is one farmer supposed to survive trying to compete against farmers who get subsidized by the government? How can he sell his product in a free market fashion at a price high enough to support the running of the farm when no one else needs to get that price. There are myriad other issues involved, none of which you seem to be aware of. Nor would you care if you were. The existence of these troubling facts threatens your flimsy ideology.
Except that does not actually bear out. People like Ted Turner are the recipients of Farm Subsidies. But it was nice of you to prove my point about the attitudes of wealthy liberals towards people who have lower incomes.
Farm subsidies have been opposed by fiscal conservatives since their inception. They have been supported and expanded by leftists, often against the wishes of the farmers they purported to help.
Yeah, because poor people are poor as a result of rich people stealing from them. Yeah, this works with uneducated people, and people who for whatever reason are just born with fewer mental capabilities. But, as you said, not only do some blame others for their poverty or other problems in their lives, they also have that same outlook in politics. Somebody else is responsible for the morons that get sent to Washington.
In reality, of course, those people who feel that they are primarily responsible for their outcomes tend to do things to improve their own lives. They also tend to be more conservative, and try to spread the message of their success to others. As a result, they are often vilified as some servant of the white/rich man, as if they were a paid spokesperson. Instead of looking at the success and learning from it, the feeling of victimhood and jealousy and anger intensifies.
This does indeed work for some socialists, especially if they have some public speaking skills. They are able to harness that emotional response, tie it in with the rest of their platform, and get some votes. Between those, and the wealthy individuals who have a subconscious sense of superiority ("they can't help themselves, we should do it for them!") while maintaining a conscious sense of guilt (albeit a small one, as they want to give someone else's money away), they manage to win elections in mostly urban areas. One needs only look at the messy candidates that rise out of New York and Chicago. Especially in State-level politics.
Luckily, there are enough people still living in rural America who really have to put their nose to the grindstone to become successful. They can't rely on a city job to make a lot of money by the time they are 35. It usually takes more time, and they learn while they earn. They learn how hard it is to start and run a business, to meet payroll obligations, work shifts when employees are sick, deal with various state and federal regulatory agencies. Some consider themselves to be Democrats (mostly due to family history). They will vote for Obama. Start talking in a direct way about how the rich are screwing the poor, and they will vote for the other guy. They may stay "Democrat", but future "D" candidates will be more coy about their class warfare politics.
"You do realise that if you're not possessed of the patience to learn how to use a computer by trial-and-error yourself, you can go to things called "computer courses" don't you? Billions of people around the world seem very happy using PCs, I would suggest a tiny percentage of them are PC nerds and an even tinier percentage have purchased iPads. And I suspect most of them still use PCs."
People shouldn't have to take a training course to learn how to use a PC. They don't typically need one to learn to use a Mac. The PC users? Very few are actually happy. That's one of the reasons Apple has gotten so much traction. They have gotten that traction despite the efforts of people like you, who when approached for advice have steered people from Apple for years.
You supposedly have not needed to buy an Apple product for 30 years. That says to me that you either used Amiga, an Atari, or stuck with DOS for about 8 years after Apple introduced the Mac. If the latter, then I have also been informed that you are a slow learner. You like to take the hard way in order to show yourself better and more capable than others. Thus the Gentoo sig. Thus the self-ascribed inability to absorb why a business needs customers. Thus the observed inability to see what will make a typical user most happy, while fulfilling their needs. If you are an engineer, I would venture you are employed with some state's Department of Transportation.
The last thing you should be doing is giving anyone advice on which computer product to buy. They shouldn't need to be dependent on you, despite how good it makes you feel. In fact, it looks like you could use some computer buying advice yourself.
What would you say if I told you I've invented a low cost, low maintenance household device that could easily last for a decade or more?
Say hello to Frank's heart!
I've harnessed Frank's heart. I was cleaning the snakes out of the pantry yesterday when suddenly it hit me... Nothing works harder than the human heart, especially when it's clogged with cholesterol. Now, Frank's heart was a mess, and it's getting worse all the time.
The rest was easy. Frank eats, I surgically attach a generator to his heart, and voila! The Cholester-Do-All! At some point, this will kill Frank, but I think it's worth it.
What would you say if I told you I've invented a low cost, low maintenance household device that could easily last for a decade or more?
Say hello to Frank's heart!
I've harnessed Frank's heart. I was cleaning the snakes out of the pantry yesterday when suddenly it hit me... Nothing works harder than the human heart, especially when it's clogged with cholesterol. Now, Frank's heart was a mess, and it's getting worse all the time.
The rest was easy. Frank eats, I surgically attach a generator to his heart, and voila! The Cholester-Do-All! At some point, this will kill Frank, but I think it's worth it.
Screw up a recipe scale? Are you serious? Having cooked for a very long time, I am at a loss to think of a recipe that requires any serious multiplication. Baking is another art altogether, but you can't just multiply with baking anyway, and having watched my wife bake many delicious breads, pies, pastries and cakes over the years, I can attest to the lack of difficulty she has with US Customary standards. If you are having trouble with it, it's not the system being used. It's you.
As for your assumptions about "rounding errors", since when does a measurement need to be significantly rounded? It is what it is. That's why we have feet, inches, and mils. You can't get a more accurate measurement of where the Stratosphere begins and ends with the metric system, and it all depends on where you are standing, in any case. If you want to covert 31 miles into feet, you multiply it by 5,280. Oh look, it's a nice round number already! 163,680 feet. If and when I need the exact measurement of such a thing, which I don't, there's always these things called calculators.
You are inventing problems where none exist. U.S. customary units were used throughout the Apollo missions, and that managed to land us on the Moon.
The political strife has nothing to do with a nation-based us vs. them attitude on the part of the U.S. We don't ask the world to switch to U.S. customary in their respective countries. There is no benefit to us if we switch to metric. If there was, it would have happened on its own.
Except that there is no long term cost to measuring in U.S. Customary units. We have a vociferous minority in this country who have an obsession with making everyone else change the way they do things to satisfy some international concern which is no legitimate concern of an international community. The sick part is that people from other nations, on the whole, do not care which measurements we use. Wanna-be engineers and self-described "geeks" ("we're taking it back!") feel the need to express their frustration at lack of procreation ("Hey, I'm just ZPG, that's all") by telling everyone how we are doing it all wrong.
Yes, there will always be people who lament the lack of transition here. One day, their incredible input of energy into such a change may result in a conversion in the U.S.. I dread that result, since it will only lead to a huge money sink and wasting of natural resources to re-label everything. There will be no tangible benefit to the populace or the world. The only ones who will cheer are those who have been taught a bias in their particular field and those who want the change for some notion of a political victory against the big, bad USA.
That's funny. I don't recall posting about economics. I was referring to the gentle way the CUban dictatorship oppresses the populace. But, of course, you had to try to come up with something that could be blamed on the U.S. and it's evil capitalist overlords. They only seek to subjugate and enslave the proletariat into a lifetime of un/under-compensated service, right?
Wow. I didn't see it before, but you have opened my eyes. With all of this "awesome" happening in Cuba, I fully expect that soon people will be clamoring to get in and live under this impressive system. That's really cool that they don't open fire on protesters. Does that include anti-Castro protesters? When is the next anti-Castro protest scheduled? Maybe I will try and find a video feed.
And elections, too? What percentage of the vote has Fidel/Raul gotten, historically? Or is it completely representative?
I honestly think you are trying way too hard. My wife is an excellent baker. We have no scale. Well, we have the scale for seeing how many pounds the food has added to my own weight, but anyways...
She uses cups, tablespoons and teaspoons, fractions of a teaspoon, as well as U.S. Standard pints and quarts. We have some British recipes that use "gills", which we convert, along with the required imperial conversions. I'd have to ask when I see her, but I am most positive that things get adjusted based on other environmental factors. All I know is that the product is consistently excellent, and I know what the taste and texture will be unless the thermostat in the oven breaks (again), in which case everything suffers from the burning wrath of GE.
*Product may include: Cakes, Pies. Pastries both Savory and Sweet, Cookies, and Breads, including Popovers/Yorkshire Pudding, muffins, Cheesecake, Meringue, and myriad other delights.
I just tried it. The warning doesn't bother me. Just a cover-your-butt type of thing since you can get to naughty sites with it. I was disappointed, though, to see it was far less cool that regular Opera. Also, visually unappealing. Went to Slashdot, front page items were off the edge, had to move back and forth because it doesn't seem to allow pinch/zoom? Hopefully they will polish it up a bit.
Apple will actually gain a huge amount of new customers, including me. I think Google has done some great things with Android, compared with what existed before. But when I set up an Android phone for a customer, it is far more painful than when I set up an iPhone, which is no work at all.
I feel most of the fault lies with the hardware vendors. The hardware is mostly crap compared with iPhone, but worse, the available Android versions and the methods of upgrading? Ridiculous! App installation isn't too bad, but depending on the app, finding where the app went can be frustrating.
Most people don't want to have to deal with all of that crap. The only reason I haven't switched my phone is that I have a business with multiple people/phones and I never had time to get the whole thing worked out. Prior to this announcement, I was waiting for a lull to switch to AT&T. Now I don't have to, and yes, it's gonna be all iPhones.
Now, I will agree that they are not close to perfect, and sync options suck if you are using Thunderbird/Seamonkey (which I would like to have). But the experience is so much nicer and more relaxing on an iPhone that it doesn't matter (and most people don't use Thunderbird).
Well, I can guarantee you that Schmidt knows about spelling. In fact, I would wager he knows substantially more than you.
Unfortunately, his statement shows an incredible ignorance of both current reality or historical reality, or a willingness to put his knowledge aside for the sake of furthering his agenda. Not surprising that he is in politics. Perhaps your own agenda is somewhat revealed by your mention of the health care bill. It makes obvious your support of the President's political agenda, and thus calls into question your ability to examine this proposal without a rosy tint surrounding it all.
davidwr (791652) had some very nice insights. You responded with insults. Proud day for you and your family.
Actually, from that article I get the impression that he is a former cop who rose to a management position. I seriously doubt he has any in-depth knowledge about this topic, since he has expressed typical managerial ignorance regarding the actual risks of such a system becoming part of a database. Also, the "I don't have to get credentials if I don't want them" horse crap.
You will have to get credentials if you want to actually *do* anything. It's like saying you don't *have* to get a driver's license when you live in a rural area. Yeah, it's technically possible, but not feasible for most. People like Schmidt are there to give the impression of legitimacy. Until you take a look behind the facade of their resume and realize that they have never actually *done* anything in the field they purport to be experts in.
Bruce Schneier designed Twofish. What has this guy *done*?
There are other factors that go into a deficit. One is spending more than you take in. If you increase spending more than you increase receipts, the deficit will become larger.
Also, recession can reduce receipts. In current dollar values, from 2000 to 2008, receipts increased by 25 percent. That's after GWB "inherited" a "tech bubble burst" and an attack on US soil right after taking office.
During that same period, spending increased by 66%. Now, I know these concepts are difficult, so let me break it down. If you spend so much more money every year that you overtake an increase of 25% over 8 years (which is what our "leaders" were doing), you will have a bigger deficit when it's all said and done.
With this current recession, receipts are down to what they were in 2005. But instead of cutting spending, we are spending more. 50% more. Not exactly smart ones, these people.
"As a *Republican who does not believe that cutting confiscatory taxes actually raises tax revenue from those same taxes despite all evidence to the contrary*" - fixed that for ya.
From the Hillary v. Obama debate, Charlie Gibson actually asks a tough question:
GIBSON: And in each instance, when the rate dropped, revenues from the tax increased; the government took in more money. And in the 1980s, when the tax was increased to 28 percent, the revenues went down.
So why raise it at all, especially given the fact that 100 million people in this country own stock and would be affected?
OBAMA: Well, Charlie, what I've said is that I would look at raising the capital gains tax for purposes of fairness.
I recommend reading the entire exchange so that proper context may be established. Too bad that the context shows that Obama is just another Class Warfare type.
Certainly some flash apps are worse than others. However, these are not out of the ordinary apps.
As an example, something that doesn't even have constant animation, Mafia Wars, causes trouble for my customers. I check these systems up and down for malware, I set all the performance options for their systems. Still crawls. Now that's a major flash developer. Is it just that they aren't hiring competent developers? Or are they working with a tool that does not allow for optimizations for what appears to be a turn based type of game (meaning, nothing really happens unless you click something).
Speaking of HD, I can play extremely high quality video on this system without stuttering, h264 or the like. But even 720p on youtube will drag this puppy to a halt. Also, if there were issues regarding optimization on my system, why would I not experience these issues with far more complex 3D games?
At some point, reason must trump some insane hatred of Apple, flash critics, etc, and reveal that Flash is a very inefficient beast. BTW, Firefox never crashes on me anymore, now that they separated the plugins. Flash crashes quite often. As much as I don't like seeing a separate plugin-container process on systems, it has improved reliability of the browser.
Kind of a strange post. USB was around well before the iMac. I remember seeing them on some Magitronic desktops in 96. Too bad nothing used them. The adoption only occurred after Apple forced the issue with the Bondi Blue iMac, which sold over a million units very quickly. All of a sudden, USB devices started popping up left and right, many trying to imitate the color scheme.
Firewire has not gained more traction because it is more expensive to implement. But it *is* faster, has always had better connectors, and a fresh install of Windows XP will easily recognize a 1394 (Firewire) port without any assistance. A drive attached will just work, and it will work faster and better than a USB drive.
On a side note, the FW800 connector is also nicer than the eSATA connector...
As for Apple wanting to kill off USB, I would have been in favor of it had they managed it. Especially early on, USB keyboards would not always operate if the computer was having an issue. For example, forcing a restart with Ctrl-Cmd-Power did not work, whereas it did with ADB. On PCs as recent as the Dell Dimension E series, a USB keyboard other than the Dell standard will not work until drivers are installed. When one comes in the shop, it is a ridiculous exercise to do so, since without a HID device to log in install the sucker (sometimes it even wants to take you through the found new hardware wizard), you are stuck.
USB is a crappy standard, and I am sorry to say that Apple is 99 percent responsible for it's widespread adoption.
Windows XP here. Latest flash plugin with Chrome, Firefox, IE or Safari, all latest stable versions available (well, I just changed to chrome 7 beta for kicks). Flash sites can easily cause 100% CPU for me. Nevermind massive memory usage. Luckily, I have 3GB of memory, but really, a couple of flash sites like playlist and things are spiking. If one of my kids goes on an online flash game, CPU maxes out at times. Flash is a pig, and no amount of Adobe's campaigning will change that. Maybe if they spent less energy whining about *only* 1.1% of the web enabled devices, or whatever the story's claim is, and more time optimizing their bloat, we wouldn't be hearing the debate.
If I can play a 3D game at high res full screen without issue, but flash makes the computer beg for mercy, there is a problem.
Slashdot Mirror
Maybe it's because someone doesn't have the right to demand that a company not hire a replacement when they don't show up for work? Maybe, if you are easily replaceable, collective bargaining is your only method of getting the wage or benefits you want. But you do not magically gain the right of stopping someone else from working. You don't get the right to blockade the property of another.
Right after this strike, a customer lost their phone line. No dial tone. Just a tad suspicious. Especially when they called the repair line, and they were told "Don't you know we're on strike? Unless there is a 911 emergency, too bad."
After two weeks, this business customer called me about setting up their new internet connection not reliant on the phone line. They already had the equipment. Not as good of a system for them, but I set it up. After some other issues cropped up with not having a tradition POTS line to work with, I contacted Verizon Repair. I was repeatedly disconnected. Finally, I called a residential sales line, and got a real live person. I explained the 2 week outage and the horrible customer service my customer received (Remember, it's the customer's existence that gives that idiot a job). She seemed genuinely sorry that the customer had this extended outage, and explained that while she was in residential service, she was trying to get a hold of someone down the hall in business services. While we waited, and talked, I told her that I had never had someone at a call center offer that kind of service. She expressed disappointment that the people who were making such a fuss were giving the rest of the employees who were still on the job a bad name.
I was shocked by her openness, and based on some other comments, her obvious intelligence and education. I told her that she should not be working in a call center, she should be an entrepreneur with a more direct relationship with customers. In this way, she would be more directly and greatly rewarded for her excellent customer service and focus.
She then told me that in fact, she was filling in. Her normal position with the company was in fact in a more executive capacity (I won't mention what, but it wasn't in the call center arena at all, and was instead in more mid-level non-tech functions).
It all made sense. She is likely a well-compensated, happy employee with some ambition. She strives to improve herself and her worth to her employer, and got rewarded for it. Indeed, she is likely perfectly able to be that kind of entrepreneur who goes on to make peoples' lives better by providing customers with things they want or need, and people with more jobs.
It is the foundation of the most powerful economy in the world. Instead of trying to get someone to pay you more than your position is worth, you make yourself worth paying more by increasing your value.
Of course, it's all a dirty trick by racists! Because everyone knows that Republicans are all racists! (they also hate old people and want to put them out on the street)
That's one way to try to win an ideological argument. Throw around terms like bigot, racist, anti-semite, sexist, etc.
Do you think that every single ACORN member should have had to respond poorly? Should he have had to publish the video showing people who *didn't* do anything wrong? After all, those "professional" news organizations don't show Tea Party advocates who appear normal. In fact, they point out the craziest of the bunch, and paint the rest with the same broad brush.
They also don't contact the subjects of personal attacks if it happens to be GW Bush before claiming his National Guard service was tainted (found to be based on forgeries).
There are bad people in the world. People who lack the desire to adhere to moral standards. Many of these call out others for their sins, bigotry, or what have you to cover for their own sins (lots of famous preachers on this one) or racism. These accusers of racism often hide behind social programs that purport to help the oppressed race, but which actually demean that group. Great examples include affirmative action, which states that minorities can't make it without direct assistance from the Government, and endless welfare, which prevents people from working or maintaining a normal family if they want to have the help they may temporarily need.
Meanwhile, successful black people who challenge these notions are torn down, labeled as servants of "the Man", and their exhortations towards community self-improvement are dismissed.
You seriously ask that question? How is one farmer supposed to survive trying to compete against farmers who get subsidized by the government? How can he sell his product in a free market fashion at a price high enough to support the running of the farm when no one else needs to get that price. There are myriad other issues involved, none of which you seem to be aware of. Nor would you care if you were. The existence of these troubling facts threatens your flimsy ideology.
Except that does not actually bear out. People like Ted Turner are the recipients of Farm Subsidies. But it was nice of you to prove my point about the attitudes of wealthy liberals towards people who have lower incomes.
http://www.heritage.org/Research/Reports/2002/04/Farm-Subsidies-for-the-Rich-amp-Famous-Shattered-Records-in-2001
Farm subsidies have been opposed by fiscal conservatives since their inception. They have been supported and expanded by leftists, often against the wishes of the farmers they purported to help.
Yeah, because poor people are poor as a result of rich people stealing from them. Yeah, this works with uneducated people, and people who for whatever reason are just born with fewer mental capabilities. But, as you said, not only do some blame others for their poverty or other problems in their lives, they also have that same outlook in politics. Somebody else is responsible for the morons that get sent to Washington.
In reality, of course, those people who feel that they are primarily responsible for their outcomes tend to do things to improve their own lives. They also tend to be more conservative, and try to spread the message of their success to others. As a result, they are often vilified as some servant of the white/rich man, as if they were a paid spokesperson. Instead of looking at the success and learning from it, the feeling of victimhood and jealousy and anger intensifies.
This does indeed work for some socialists, especially if they have some public speaking skills. They are able to harness that emotional response, tie it in with the rest of their platform, and get some votes. Between those, and the wealthy individuals who have a subconscious sense of superiority ("they can't help themselves, we should do it for them!") while maintaining a conscious sense of guilt (albeit a small one, as they want to give someone else's money away), they manage to win elections in mostly urban areas. One needs only look at the messy candidates that rise out of New York and Chicago. Especially in State-level politics.
Luckily, there are enough people still living in rural America who really have to put their nose to the grindstone to become successful. They can't rely on a city job to make a lot of money by the time they are 35. It usually takes more time, and they learn while they earn. They learn how hard it is to start and run a business, to meet payroll obligations, work shifts when employees are sick, deal with various state and federal regulatory agencies. Some consider themselves to be Democrats (mostly due to family history). They will vote for Obama. Start talking in a direct way about how the rich are screwing the poor, and they will vote for the other guy. They may stay "Democrat", but future "D" candidates will be more coy about their class warfare politics.
You've proven his point:
"You do realise that if you're not possessed of the patience to learn how to use a computer by trial-and-error yourself, you can go to things called "computer courses" don't you? Billions of people around the world seem very happy using PCs, I would suggest a tiny percentage of them are PC nerds and an even tinier percentage have purchased iPads. And I suspect most of them still use PCs."
People shouldn't have to take a training course to learn how to use a PC. They don't typically need one to learn to use a Mac. The PC users? Very few are actually happy. That's one of the reasons Apple has gotten so much traction. They have gotten that traction despite the efforts of people like you, who when approached for advice have steered people from Apple for years.
You supposedly have not needed to buy an Apple product for 30 years. That says to me that you either used Amiga, an Atari, or stuck with DOS for about 8 years after Apple introduced the Mac. If the latter, then I have also been informed that you are a slow learner. You like to take the hard way in order to show yourself better and more capable than others. Thus the Gentoo sig. Thus the self-ascribed inability to absorb why a business needs customers. Thus the observed inability to see what will make a typical user most happy, while fulfilling their needs. If you are an engineer, I would venture you are employed with some state's Department of Transportation.
The last thing you should be doing is giving anyone advice on which computer product to buy. They shouldn't need to be dependent on you, despite how good it makes you feel. In fact, it looks like you could use some computer buying advice yourself.
What would you say if I told you I've invented a low cost, low maintenance household device that could easily last for a decade or more?
Say hello to Frank's heart!
I've harnessed Frank's heart. I was cleaning the snakes out of the pantry yesterday when suddenly it hit me... Nothing works harder than the human heart, especially when it's clogged with cholesterol. Now, Frank's heart was a mess, and it's getting worse all the time.
The rest was easy. Frank eats, I surgically attach a generator to his heart, and voila! The Cholester-Do-All! At some point, this will kill Frank, but I think it's worth it.
(courtesy of Dr. Forrester)
What would you say if I told you I've invented a low cost, low maintenance household device that could easily last for a decade or more?
Say hello to Frank's heart!
I've harnessed Frank's heart. I was cleaning the snakes out of the pantry yesterday when suddenly it hit me... Nothing works harder than the human heart, especially when it's clogged with cholesterol. Now, Frank's heart was a mess, and it's getting worse all the time.
The rest was easy. Frank eats, I surgically attach a generator to his heart, and voila! The Cholester-Do-All! At some point, this will kill Frank, but I think it's worth it.
(courtesy of Dr. Forrester)
It's a much more enlightened comment than the rest of the ad hominem that fills the comments sections when this topic comes up.
Screw up a recipe scale? Are you serious? Having cooked for a very long time, I am at a loss to think of a recipe that requires any serious multiplication. Baking is another art altogether, but you can't just multiply with baking anyway, and having watched my wife bake many delicious breads, pies, pastries and cakes over the years, I can attest to the lack of difficulty she has with US Customary standards. If you are having trouble with it, it's not the system being used. It's you.
As for your assumptions about "rounding errors", since when does a measurement need to be significantly rounded? It is what it is. That's why we have feet, inches, and mils. You can't get a more accurate measurement of where the Stratosphere begins and ends with the metric system, and it all depends on where you are standing, in any case. If you want to covert 31 miles into feet, you multiply it by 5,280. Oh look, it's a nice round number already! 163,680 feet. If and when I need the exact measurement of such a thing, which I don't, there's always these things called calculators.
You are inventing problems where none exist. U.S. customary units were used throughout the Apollo missions, and that managed to land us on the Moon.
The political strife has nothing to do with a nation-based us vs. them attitude on the part of the U.S. We don't ask the world to switch to U.S. customary in their respective countries. There is no benefit to us if we switch to metric. If there was, it would have happened on its own.
Except that there is no long term cost to measuring in U.S. Customary units. We have a vociferous minority in this country who have an obsession with making everyone else change the way they do things to satisfy some international concern which is no legitimate concern of an international community. The sick part is that people from other nations, on the whole, do not care which measurements we use. Wanna-be engineers and self-described "geeks" ("we're taking it back!") feel the need to express their frustration at lack of procreation ("Hey, I'm just ZPG, that's all") by telling everyone how we are doing it all wrong.
Yes, there will always be people who lament the lack of transition here. One day, their incredible input of energy into such a change may result in a conversion in the U.S.. I dread that result, since it will only lead to a huge money sink and wasting of natural resources to re-label everything. There will be no tangible benefit to the populace or the world. The only ones who will cheer are those who have been taught a bias in their particular field and those who want the change for some notion of a political victory against the big, bad USA.
That's funny. I don't recall posting about economics. I was referring to the gentle way the CUban dictatorship oppresses the populace. But, of course, you had to try to come up with something that could be blamed on the U.S. and it's evil capitalist overlords. They only seek to subjugate and enslave the proletariat into a lifetime of un/under-compensated service, right?
Wow. I didn't see it before, but you have opened my eyes. With all of this "awesome" happening in Cuba, I fully expect that soon people will be clamoring to get in and live under this impressive system. That's really cool that they don't open fire on protesters. Does that include anti-Castro protesters? When is the next anti-Castro protest scheduled? Maybe I will try and find a video feed.
And elections, too? What percentage of the vote has Fidel/Raul gotten, historically? Or is it completely representative?
I honestly think you are trying way too hard. My wife is an excellent baker. We have no scale. Well, we have the scale for seeing how many pounds the food has added to my own weight, but anyways...
She uses cups, tablespoons and teaspoons, fractions of a teaspoon, as well as U.S. Standard pints and quarts. We have some British recipes that use "gills", which we convert, along with the required imperial conversions. I'd have to ask when I see her, but I am most positive that things get adjusted based on other environmental factors. All I know is that the product is consistently excellent, and I know what the taste and texture will be unless the thermostat in the oven breaks (again), in which case everything suffers from the burning wrath of GE.
*Product may include: Cakes, Pies. Pastries both Savory and Sweet, Cookies, and Breads, including Popovers/Yorkshire Pudding, muffins, Cheesecake, Meringue, and myriad other delights.
I just tried it. The warning doesn't bother me. Just a cover-your-butt type of thing since you can get to naughty sites with it. I was disappointed, though, to see it was far less cool that regular Opera. Also, visually unappealing. Went to Slashdot, front page items were off the edge, had to move back and forth because it doesn't seem to allow pinch/zoom? Hopefully they will polish it up a bit.
Apple will actually gain a huge amount of new customers, including me. I think Google has done some great things with Android, compared with what existed before. But when I set up an Android phone for a customer, it is far more painful than when I set up an iPhone, which is no work at all.
I feel most of the fault lies with the hardware vendors. The hardware is mostly crap compared with iPhone, but worse, the available Android versions and the methods of upgrading? Ridiculous! App installation isn't too bad, but depending on the app, finding where the app went can be frustrating.
Most people don't want to have to deal with all of that crap. The only reason I haven't switched my phone is that I have a business with multiple people/phones and I never had time to get the whole thing worked out. Prior to this announcement, I was waiting for a lull to switch to AT&T. Now I don't have to, and yes, it's gonna be all iPhones.
Now, I will agree that they are not close to perfect, and sync options suck if you are using Thunderbird/Seamonkey (which I would like to have). But the experience is so much nicer and more relaxing on an iPhone that it doesn't matter (and most people don't use Thunderbird).
Well, I can guarantee you that Schmidt knows about spelling. In fact, I would wager he knows substantially more than you.
Unfortunately, his statement shows an incredible ignorance of both current reality or historical reality, or a willingness to put his knowledge aside for the sake of furthering his agenda. Not surprising that he is in politics. Perhaps your own agenda is somewhat revealed by your mention of the health care bill. It makes obvious your support of the President's political agenda, and thus calls into question your ability to examine this proposal without a rosy tint surrounding it all.
davidwr (791652) had some very nice insights. You responded with insults. Proud day for you and your family.
Actually, from that article I get the impression that he is a former cop who rose to a management position. I seriously doubt he has any in-depth knowledge about this topic, since he has expressed typical managerial ignorance regarding the actual risks of such a system becoming part of a database. Also, the "I don't have to get credentials if I don't want them" horse crap.
You will have to get credentials if you want to actually *do* anything. It's like saying you don't *have* to get a driver's license when you live in a rural area. Yeah, it's technically possible, but not feasible for most. People like Schmidt are there to give the impression of legitimacy. Until you take a look behind the facade of their resume and realize that they have never actually *done* anything in the field they purport to be experts in.
Bruce Schneier designed Twofish. What has this guy *done*?
Makes some good, salient points.
There are other factors that go into a deficit. One is spending more than you take in. If you increase spending more than you increase receipts, the deficit will become larger.
Also, recession can reduce receipts. In current dollar values, from 2000 to 2008, receipts increased by 25 percent. That's after GWB "inherited" a "tech bubble burst" and an attack on US soil right after taking office.
During that same period, spending increased by 66%. Now, I know these concepts are difficult, so let me break it down. If you spend so much more money every year that you overtake an increase of 25% over 8 years (which is what our "leaders" were doing), you will have a bigger deficit when it's all said and done.
With this current recession, receipts are down to what they were in 2005. But instead of cutting spending, we are spending more. 50% more. Not exactly smart ones, these people.
"As a *Republican who does not believe that cutting confiscatory taxes actually raises tax revenue from those same taxes despite all evidence to the contrary*" - fixed that for ya.
From the Hillary v. Obama debate, Charlie Gibson actually asks a tough question:
GIBSON: And in each instance, when the rate dropped, revenues from the tax increased; the government took in more money. And in the 1980s, when the tax was increased to 28 percent, the revenues went down.
So why raise it at all, especially given the fact that 100 million people in this country own stock and would be affected?
OBAMA: Well, Charlie, what I've said is that I would look at raising the capital gains tax for purposes of fairness.
Transcript taken from http://www.taxfoundation.org/blog/show/23137.html
which was the first link after searching google for gibson obama "purposes of fairness"
I recommend reading the entire exchange so that proper context may be established. Too bad that the context shows that Obama is just another Class Warfare type.
Certainly some flash apps are worse than others. However, these are not out of the ordinary apps.
As an example, something that doesn't even have constant animation, Mafia Wars, causes trouble for my customers. I check these systems up and down for malware, I set all the performance options for their systems. Still crawls. Now that's a major flash developer. Is it just that they aren't hiring competent developers? Or are they working with a tool that does not allow for optimizations for what appears to be a turn based type of game (meaning, nothing really happens unless you click something).
Speaking of HD, I can play extremely high quality video on this system without stuttering, h264 or the like. But even 720p on youtube will drag this puppy to a halt. Also, if there were issues regarding optimization on my system, why would I not experience these issues with far more complex 3D games?
At some point, reason must trump some insane hatred of Apple, flash critics, etc, and reveal that Flash is a very inefficient beast. BTW, Firefox never crashes on me anymore, now that they separated the plugins. Flash crashes quite often. As much as I don't like seeing a separate plugin-container process on systems, it has improved reliability of the browser.
Kind of a strange post. USB was around well before the iMac. I remember seeing them on some Magitronic desktops in 96. Too bad nothing used them. The adoption only occurred after Apple forced the issue with the Bondi Blue iMac, which sold over a million units very quickly. All of a sudden, USB devices started popping up left and right, many trying to imitate the color scheme.
Firewire has not gained more traction because it is more expensive to implement. But it *is* faster, has always had better connectors, and a fresh install of Windows XP will easily recognize a 1394 (Firewire) port without any assistance. A drive attached will just work, and it will work faster and better than a USB drive.
On a side note, the FW800 connector is also nicer than the eSATA connector...
As for Apple wanting to kill off USB, I would have been in favor of it had they managed it. Especially early on, USB keyboards would not always operate if the computer was having an issue. For example, forcing a restart with Ctrl-Cmd-Power did not work, whereas it did with ADB. On PCs as recent as the Dell Dimension E series, a USB keyboard other than the Dell standard will not work until drivers are installed. When one comes in the shop, it is a ridiculous exercise to do so, since without a HID device to log in install the sucker (sometimes it even wants to take you through the found new hardware wizard), you are stuck.
USB is a crappy standard, and I am sorry to say that Apple is 99 percent responsible for it's widespread adoption.
Windows XP here. Latest flash plugin with Chrome, Firefox, IE or Safari, all latest stable versions available (well, I just changed to chrome 7 beta for kicks). Flash sites can easily cause 100% CPU for me. Nevermind massive memory usage. Luckily, I have 3GB of memory, but really, a couple of flash sites like playlist and things are spiking. If one of my kids goes on an online flash game, CPU maxes out at times. Flash is a pig, and no amount of Adobe's campaigning will change that. Maybe if they spent less energy whining about *only* 1.1% of the web enabled devices, or whatever the story's claim is, and more time optimizing their bloat, we wouldn't be hearing the debate.
If I can play a 3D game at high res full screen without issue, but flash makes the computer beg for mercy, there is a problem.
Here I take the trouble to point out the hypocrisy of the parent, and *I* get marked as a troll, and he gets marked insightful for his insult.
Stay classy.