Yeah, I used to work tech support for what was then the largest Mac products reseller in the US, and that's the kind of metric they used (just calls per hour, not even resolved issues).
There was one tech so bad that people would just hang up and call back. When asked about my long call times, I showed them a dozen calls from the logs where they talked to 'Hank' for 5 minutes, got back in the queue, and then talked to me for 20-50 minutes (the source phone # was in the logs with destinations and timestamps). I never left a customer with an unresolved problem, but that's not what was being measured.
They did understand that the real waste of money was the guy who had 'great' call times, but they also had no way to measure our actual performance, so they used the reports they did have as proxies.
I can see a future without those damned ugly poles and wires in the alley behind my house, with a beautiful solar paneled roof and an even more beautiful lack of an electric bill
Does more sunlight energy hit your roof than you consume?
and no matter what arbitrary laws or draconian regulations you force companies to abide by,
We're going to mandate that they both delete data instantly to protect privacy and that they implement mandatory data retention periods so that data can be subpoenaed in the event of a crime.
When a bothersome neighbor refuses to stop being a nuisance, what happens next?
Shunning, trade embargoes, social ostracism - many options beyond violence by neighbors or governments. If the neighbor has a job, that may be at risk too if the employer knows about his behavior.
Most people prefer to live harmoniously with their neighbors at least because they derive value from their society.
with the intent of having Russia and China get their hands on it and then underestimate our capabilities. It's possible, that is, that this is actually an intelligence coup of the highest order.
I've had government types tell me that the spy plane that China captured back in 2001 was just this sort of operation. So, it's possible but I haven't seen anything to indicate that US drones are remarkable in any way - China and Russia could (and probably have?) made their own.
I suppose multiple systems failures and poorly coded software is more likely.
Well, yeah, the Geneva Convention doesn't apply to citizens, only enemy troops.
Seriously, though - the US is smashing protests with riot police and trying to do away with habeus corpus, the UK is turning blinding weapons on its citizens, the rest of Europe has a lit fuse in its fiscal powder keg - maybe "business as usual" has run its course.
Strictly speaking, an American is any resident of either North or South America. So while you are technically correct, it makes more sense in this context to specify exactly which American country the original poster./pedant
Perhaps you're not from this hemisphere and may be unaware of the actual usage. 'American' has different meanings depending on its usage. As a geographic term, it may apply to any of the two continents of North or South America. When describing a plant as an 'American orchid', e.g. then its meaning will be clear.
When used as a designation of nationality, 'American' always means 'Citizen of the United States of America'. This usage is clear. As a group population adjective 'North American' and 'South American' are also used. 'North and South Americans' is even occasionally used. 'American' by itself is never used to refer to 'North and South Americans'. There aren't any indigenous people to this hemisphere, so a usage there isn't required.
Some words have context-sensitive meanings and usage, but ignorance of usage doesn't alter meaning.
If you know a way of incarcerating criminals and allowing them to move freely at the same time, I'm all ears
Australia.
The bigger problem is that criminals don't want to self-assign themselves to prison-like conditions, and we're out of land. See Bob Murphy's work on private law for how this might all work out half a millennium from now (assuming a very slow rate of acceptance by the population).
A majority with less than 40% of the popular vote?
That's usually called a 'plurality'. Don't forget to count your voting rate either - here in the US sometimes the voting rate isn't even 60%, leaving about 30% of adults to tell the other 70% what to do.
Canadians call Native Americans 'first nations' people. I have never heard this term used in the US, but plenty in Canada.
Don't worry about it - it's untrue and a fad. Those 'first nations' displaced previous ones that were here (sometimes violently) and they may be the third or fourth wave.
'Dominant North American tribes of the first half of the second millennium AD' I guess is too much to get out, but better to call them Floozbats than something inaccurate (and that goes for Indians, Native Americans, and whatnot too).
I think you mean there's only one solution, because if you keep assuming exponential population growth even inventing fusion tomorrow would only buy us a few decades.
No, workable fusion tomorrow would lead to a reduction in population within two centuries. Wealth and education always* lead to reduced rates of reproduction.
The actual bump on the ATLAS graph was about 126 GeV, and the local sigma was 3.6 which is pretty good
This model of everything predicted a Higgs at 125.992, which is pretty close (with the current error bars). Could be coincidence, of course, but their idea of a well-defined set of rules that predicts each particle's mass correctly is tantalizing.
Do that and you just gutted much of the business of the cartels, put many of the street gangs and lowlife dealers out of business, and would prevent it from being cut with dangerous chemicals.
Why would that make a difference? The 'War On Drugs' (it's logically a 'war on citizens [who use drugs]', but going with the flow...) isn't about keeping Americans safe from chemicals they wish to ingest (however foolishly).
There are several direct beneficiaries: the prison industry, the law enforcement industry and its suppliers, military personnel and its suppliers, black-ops budgets. Then there are long-term geopolitical benefits, like using it as a tool to change domestic policy (i.e. 'Fast and Furious'), destabilizing regimes that 'need' replacing/annexing, slashing and burning civil liberties / constitutional protections on rights ("think of the children"), etc.
Popular opinion is already a majority in favor of cannabis legalization (including hemp, which is a very useful crop) but heck if that makes any difference when lobbyists for the above corporate interests are buying their legislators and regulators. As long as that remains true, don't expect much improvement (sad to say).
What about subsection (e)? Wouldn't that argue against that interpretation?
I had a lawyer who specializes in civil rights tell me no, it has big holes in it. Also, Diane Feinstein's filed an amendment to counter it - perhaps for reason (it was soundly defeated and that's all the amendment did).
When I retire, my plan is to buy some woodland (if there's any still left) and put up notices "trespassers will be served tea and cookies". The total lack of discussion on the idea of Common Land, the total lack of awareness in many places that such a thing could, or ever has, existed -- these things horrify me. Private property has a place and a time, and that's good, but it shouldn't be the ONLY place and time you're ever allowed to have, whether it be land, ideas, whatever.
There's no need to wait. Start setting aside $20 a week now and send it to a society (e.g. that will use private property mechanisms to accomplish just what you're looking to see.
Y'know, like using copyright to establish world-domination of Free Software.
It is, yes. But what you have here is just about the opposite of that - a steaming pile of regulation and taxation that drove a large percentage of the hard drive manufacturing industry to one geographic area (a friendly regime).
All the US plants weren't closed because US workers were cheap and the business environment was conducive to low-friction business.
silly humans. we can't plan for shit, as a species.
True that. And yet the central planners spend all their days believing that they can because they're smarter than everybody else.
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah, I used to work tech support for what was then the largest Mac products reseller in the US, and that's the kind of metric they used (just calls per hour, not even resolved issues).
There was one tech so bad that people would just hang up and call back. When asked about my long call times, I showed them a dozen calls from the logs where they talked to 'Hank' for 5 minutes, got back in the queue, and then talked to me for 20-50 minutes (the source phone # was in the logs with destinations and timestamps). I never left a customer with an unresolved problem, but that's not what was being measured.
They did understand that the real waste of money was the guy who had 'great' call times, but they also had no way to measure our actual performance, so they used the reports they did have as proxies.
Aren't all of those except the Miley Cyrus bit streamed from the network? Why pirate what's already free?
Portable devices?
I can see a future without those damned ugly poles and wires in the alley behind my house, with a beautiful solar paneled roof and an even more beautiful lack of an electric bill
Does more sunlight energy hit your roof than you consume?
paying a manufacture for physical and functionally consumable goods is precisely not at all like a bail out.
It is if the goods are unneeded and are only being used to prop up the profits of the corporation.
It's like your mother buying 500 copies of that book you self-printed so you can pay your rent.
and no matter what arbitrary laws or draconian regulations you force companies to abide by,
We're going to mandate that they both delete data instantly to protect privacy and that they implement mandatory data retention periods so that data can be subpoenaed in the event of a crime.
When a bothersome neighbor refuses to stop being a nuisance, what happens next?
Shunning, trade embargoes, social ostracism - many options beyond violence by neighbors or governments. If the neighbor has a job, that may be at risk too if the employer knows about his behavior.
Most people prefer to live harmoniously with their neighbors at least because they derive value from their society.
If they were legal, then you would have no way to deal with a neighbor that runs one near your house.
People have known how to deal with bothersome neighbors for millennia before government regulators showed up.
with the intent of having Russia and China get their hands on it and then underestimate our capabilities. It's possible, that is, that this is actually an intelligence coup of the highest order.
I've had government types tell me that the spy plane that China captured back in 2001 was just this sort of operation. So, it's possible but I haven't seen anything to indicate that US drones are remarkable in any way - China and Russia could (and probably have?) made their own.
I suppose multiple systems failures and poorly coded software is more likely.
If you can't please people: blind them.
Well, yeah, the Geneva Convention doesn't apply to citizens, only enemy troops.
Seriously, though - the US is smashing protests with riot police and trying to do away with habeus corpus, the UK is turning blinding weapons on its citizens, the rest of Europe has a lit fuse in its fiscal powder keg - maybe "business as usual" has run its course.
Just like with Google, most of Facebook's value comes from the data they own. They would be insane to sell that data to others.
They're more likely to sell a metric, ala credit scores. Credit agencies don't dump their raw data on their clients.
Strictly speaking, an American is any resident of either North or South America. So while you are technically correct, it makes more sense in this context to specify exactly which American country the original poster. /pedant
Perhaps you're not from this hemisphere and may be unaware of the actual usage. 'American' has different meanings depending on its usage. As a geographic term, it may apply to any of the two continents of North or South America. When describing a plant as an 'American orchid', e.g. then its meaning will be clear.
When used as a designation of nationality, 'American' always means 'Citizen of the United States of America'. This usage is clear. As a group population adjective 'North American' and 'South American' are also used. 'North and South Americans' is even occasionally used. 'American' by itself is never used to refer to 'North and South Americans'. There aren't any indigenous people to this hemisphere, so a usage there isn't required.
Some words have context-sensitive meanings and usage, but ignorance of usage doesn't alter meaning.
If you know a way of incarcerating criminals and allowing them to move freely at the same time, I'm all ears
Australia.
The bigger problem is that criminals don't want to self-assign themselves to prison-like conditions, and we're out of land. See Bob Murphy's work on private law for how this might all work out half a millennium from now (assuming a very slow rate of acceptance by the population).
Because it's toxic to humans, which is what I am.
Not at any concentrations you're likely to see on Earth. You wouldn't notice a 25x increase in CO2 ppm.
A majority with less than 40% of the popular vote?
That's usually called a 'plurality'. Don't forget to count your voting rate either - here in the US sometimes the voting rate isn't even 60%, leaving about 30% of adults to tell the other 70% what to do.
And they wonder why there's so much animosity.
Canadians call Native Americans 'first nations' people. I have never heard this term used in the US, but plenty in Canada.
Don't worry about it - it's untrue and a fad. Those 'first nations' displaced previous ones that were here (sometimes violently) and they may be the third or fourth wave.
'Dominant North American tribes of the first half of the second millennium AD' I guess is too much to get out, but better to call them Floozbats than something inaccurate (and that goes for Indians, Native Americans, and whatnot too).
I think you mean there's only one solution, because if you keep assuming exponential population growth even inventing fusion tomorrow would only buy us a few decades.
No, workable fusion tomorrow would lead to a reduction in population within two centuries. Wealth and education always* lead to reduced rates of reproduction.
* averaged over large sample sizes
The actual bump on the ATLAS graph was about 126 GeV, and the local sigma was 3.6 which is pretty good
This model of everything predicted a Higgs at 125.992, which is pretty close (with the current error bars). Could be coincidence, of course, but their idea of a well-defined set of rules that predicts each particle's mass correctly is tantalizing.
Do that and you just gutted much of the business of the cartels, put many of the street gangs and lowlife dealers out of business, and would prevent it from being cut with dangerous chemicals.
Why would that make a difference? The 'War On Drugs' (it's logically a 'war on citizens [who use drugs]', but going with the flow...) isn't about keeping Americans safe from chemicals they wish to ingest (however foolishly).
There are several direct beneficiaries: the prison industry, the law enforcement industry and its suppliers, military personnel and its suppliers, black-ops budgets. Then there are long-term geopolitical benefits, like using it as a tool to change domestic policy (i.e. 'Fast and Furious'), destabilizing regimes that 'need' replacing/annexing, slashing and burning civil liberties / constitutional protections on rights ("think of the children"), etc.
Popular opinion is already a majority in favor of cannabis legalization (including hemp, which is a very useful crop) but heck if that makes any difference when lobbyists for the above corporate interests are buying their legislators and regulators. As long as that remains true, don't expect much improvement (sad to say).
What about subsection (e)? Wouldn't that argue against that interpretation?
I had a lawyer who specializes in civil rights tell me no, it has big holes in it. Also, Diane Feinstein's filed an amendment to counter it - perhaps for reason (it was soundly defeated and that's all the amendment did).
When I retire, my plan is to buy some woodland (if there's any still left) and put up notices "trespassers will be served tea and cookies". The total lack of discussion on the idea of Common Land, the total lack of awareness in many places that such a thing could, or ever has, existed -- these things horrify me. Private property has a place and a time, and that's good, but it shouldn't be the ONLY place and time you're ever allowed to have, whether it be land, ideas, whatever.
There's no need to wait. Start setting aside $20 a week now and send it to a society (e.g. that will use private property mechanisms to accomplish just what you're looking to see.
Y'know, like using copyright to establish world-domination of Free Software.
Good thing we elected Obama to stop this shit.
Note to future voters: look at actions, not words.
isn't a totally free market GREAT??
It is, yes. But what you have here is just about the opposite of that - a steaming pile of regulation and taxation that drove a large percentage of the hard drive manufacturing industry to one geographic area (a friendly regime).
All the US plants weren't closed because US workers were cheap and the business environment was conducive to low-friction business.
silly humans. we can't plan for shit, as a species.
True that. And yet the central planners spend all their days believing that they can because they're smarter than everybody else.
they'll finally have soldiers that are willing to shoot on their own population when the shit really hits the fan.
History shows that your requirement for a brainwashing drug is wishful thinking.
Hopefully, by empathy tests, they don't mean torture one rat and see how the others react.
It's OK - they tortured the politicians and watched how the rats reacted.
The fact that there is still this level of confusion means there needs to be more research.
They identified the MAP bacteria a few years back, but are still discovering SNP's that contribute to the inability to fight it off.
Killing MAP takes a cocktail of antibiotic drugs still. Nasty buggers.