Pictures show the aircraft sat on the ground with the tail missing and the forward roof burnt out but it certainly did NOT cartwheel...
I happened to check news just as this story was breaking. The word "cartwheel" came from the first eyewitness report. The next two eyewitnesses said it "spun". So I'm guessing that the guy who said "cartwheel" doesn't really know what the word means, and that instead it spun on its belly.
Eyewitness reports are typically very unreliable, people interpret what they see; rather than just say what they saw. As a result, what they think they saw and what actually happened are often two very different things. I have seen people swear they saw or heard X even when vidoetape and computer event logs clearly show X did not happen.
What sort of similar surveillance programs are in place at UPS, Fedex and other U.S. couriers?
I don't know, but given UPS and FedEx use a computerized tracking system to run their ops I bet they have a lot more information than the USPS. The question is how long do they retain the data and who has access to it?
Putin is a pragmatist. He no doubt has some very good reasons for wanting him to shut up. If they harbour him, then everyone's ire will be turned on the Russians. Russia wants to be seen as a big, serious player, not as a rogue state.
And Snowden himself doesn't seem to have the brains to not shit in his own nest.
More to the point: Putin is a former intelligence officer. While he certainly is open to obtaining information that would help Russia; he is probably has little respect for people who commit espionage against their country and little trust that they will stay loyal to Russia if he grants asylum. He's a pro, and will do whatever is best for Putin and Russia. At this point, he probably thinks the downside isn't worth it. No matter what our personal opinions are of Snowden's actions; we can probably agree he is really screwed.
For example, it's far better than a PC for reading documentation, you can actual take notes on it, it makes a great white board or overlay for writing on presentations, and it's a lot easier to do a quick web search on one as well. Rather than view it as a PC replacement, view it as a different tool that complements it.
Are you serious here? Are you actually that delusional? The only better aspect it has is being able to move more freely. Other than that I would much rather look at docs on my much much larger screen that doesn't dim and shut off every few seconds. By the time you are done navigating an ipad to the search screen and typing in your query (let's hope it's a short one) I've already found my answer on a computer. Definitely not faster for web searches.
I can have my iPad turn on, unlocked and search done by the time most PCs are still booting up, let alone have recognized a 4g modem and logged into their account. Same for documentation, and it is a lot easier to hold than a laptop. If screen dimming bothers you then set a higher timeout; I personally find trying to read on a monitor tiring because you can't position it in a natural reading position. Oh, you meant doing the forgoing on your always on desktop? Try using that on an airplane or commute.
And as for taking notes / white board blah blah- I can do all that on a computer much more efficiently than a tablet. I can actually type or use the mouse to draw. Which is far better than finger painting on a tablet.
You are not "thinking differently" you are conveniently forgetting what a real computer is capable of. Sure, go ahead and tack on a bluetooth keyboard and try to regain some lost capability but in the end it is still not as capable.
Try doing that when you are in front of a group and walking around. Or, unless you are a touch typist taking readable notes while still looking at what is being presented.
"you need a real computer with a terminal to do real work..." or when the mouse first came out and people said "you need a keyboard and shortcut keys to do real work..."
A PC has all of those things...
It didn't when it was at a similar stage in its life cycle as a tablet is today. High speed printing? Duplexing?cut and have binding ready? The mainframe did all that while the PC was stuck with a dot matrix printer that produce crappy output compared to the mainframe's printer or a dedicated word processor. As a result, the same comments you made about tablets were made about PCs.
My point, which you seemed to miss, is that a tablet is a different beast than PC. A tablet has a different set of strengths and weakness that make it an excellent tool for many uses. If you insist on PC centric viewpoint you'll miss what it can do, which is why using a tablet requires a different frame of reference and thinking.
iPads are toys. They will continue to be toys for the forseeable future. While there are some worthwhile apps that allow you to be productive in a very limited scope, if you really want to get work done on a computer, it's at a PC, in front of a keyboard and mouse. It's not a limitation that can be resolved, as it's an inherent limitation of the input mechanism. You can't do anything but pre-programmed tasks on a tablet. Now toys are great. Everyone needs some time for rest and relaxation, but do we really want all these children learning about "computers" using something that is really nothing more than a plaything? Do we really want all these children growing up to write applications that are for little more than play?
You see it as a toy only because your frame of reference is a PC. Your viewpoint is no different than the one espoused when the PC came along and people proclaimed "you need a real computer with a terminal to do real work..." or when the mouse first came out and people said "you need a keyboard and shortcut keys to do real work..." Sure, a PC is better at some things, but an iPad is quite capable of doing real work as well; you just need to think different. For example, it's far better than a PC for reading documentation, you can actual take notes on it, it makes a great white board or overlay for writing on presentations, and it's a lot easier to do a quick web search on one as well. Rather than view it as a PC replacement, view it as a different tool that complements it.
As for limitations of the input method, the touch screen and a bluetooth keyboard mimic a PC quite well; even the virtual keyboard is pretty good. Since the school is not using it to teach computers but to replace textbooks it is more than up to the task.
but he wasn't conveying a threat. He was using hyperbole to point out that he wasn't like those who do actually use violence.
Yeah, that is what it looks like based on the article. OTOH, the argument that some make that somehow being arrested for making the threat, even in jest, violates his free speech rights is incorrect. The authorities may have overreacted but that is a separate issue.
Actually, freedom of speech ABSOLUTELY does mean freedom from government consequences. We narrow it in a few cases (lying/fraud, reporting false threats, etc.) because those are demonstrably harmful.
No, it doesn't. It means the government can't exercise prior restraint to prevent you from speaking. There are a lot of things you can say taht will get you in trouble afterwards; and that is not limiting your freedom of speech.
He wasn't actually making a direct threat at any place or thing...just shooting off his mouth.
Sad that you can be arrested for just a general saying of something.
Freedom of speech does not mean freedom from consequences. Just because you convey a threat via speech does not absolve you from any responsibility for it or grant you immunity from punishment. To paraphrase another right, you have the right to remain silent but were too stupid to do so. Granted, he may have been joking but he still made a threat.
But blocking one single website when the information is available in many, many places is not reasonable.
Perhaps the better route is this:
All computers that have classified information should not have any non/de-classified information on them. Any classified machine that has any non-classified information shall deem to have been breached and an inquiry started as improper access was achieved.
That's what happens, but it costs time and money; for the person(s) doing the investigation and for the employee who is without a computer until it is done. The Army simply wants to limit the chances it will waste time chasing done innocuous breaches since they have to investigate all breeches. Whether or not it is effective is a completely different story.
Seems to me, it is entirely to easy to get classified information on a declassified computer with no malice or crime. The Army's current method tries to lock every door, the latter locks the door with the secrets. Yes, you can do both.
As its always been, the person with access is the least secure part of the classified material custody chain.
of the data than the collection. I know, if you don't collect you don't have the problem but then again I like the idea that if my car is stolen I have a better chance of getting it back; or if break-ins occur in my neighborhood the police may be able to identify some suspects. Oh yeah, and think of the children. Once you start getting the data on plates and their geo location; it becomes relatively trivial to cross reference that with commercial databases and tag / license data to develop a more complete picture of someone's habits. That is potentially valuable information to private companies; how soon is it before the government decides to make the database pay for itself by selling the data? saving the taxpayer's money and all that.
Of course, the first time a politician's habit of visiting certain "shoppes" or the address of some young lovely who is not their partner gets into the news, with pictures, we may see more interest in privacy; just as video rental records became important when they were used against a supreme court nominee.
Marriage gives you certain benefits - taxes, insurance rates, access rights, etc - that no other 'grouping' does.
You're never going to get government out of all of the things that marriage gives benefits to.
Rights are given by the government. If marriage gives you extra rights, then the government says what those are.
Actually, the government has chose the term "marriage" to defend the legal obligations and benefits assigned to two people who enter into a marriage contract. The government could simply drop the term marriage and allow anyone over the defined age of majority enter into such a contract, and only allow one contractual bond at a time. Churches could still perform marriages following their church's laws and requirements. That would return the concept of marriage to religion and leave all the civil benefits to the government; which could be done on a non-discriminatory basis.
Oh I read, it I just read what you meant backwards.
No worries. Sorry for the somewhat snarky reply.
Phone service of course was a regulated monopoly. It is very hard to compare since technology has improved so there is no way to do apples to apples. But let's take that:
Basic service was provided at a loss. AT&T was very concerned in advancing the USA's objective of universal telephone access. The best analogy might be broadband. For the last decade the FCC been imposing a huge tax to get universal availability to most Americans and that has been successful and expensive. But there is still a fairly large number of people who reject the service because even the local cable costs are too high in rural areas. Alternatively would be the cell phone system which makes no attempt at universality.
Warranties were absolutely comprehensive. Every piece of equipment was warranted against everything, forever.
Interior wiring was a phone company expense. When you consider that many of the homes AT&T had to deal with were designed for kerosine not electrical lights that is not a small difference in service.
AT&T made 5.25% on their gross. A reasonable profit. Today's companies try and make whatever they can and most telcos are way more profitable though accounting rules have changed so this is a bit distorted.
AT&T was heavily involved on community support. They funded sports teams, cultural events, charities.... While corporate giving still exists not on remotely the same scale.
AT&T did a lot of fundamental research for the United States and helped to advance the sciences in many areas.
Again it is hard to compare here but yeah I think you can make a fairly good case that one heavily regulated provider worked pretty darn well for America's phone system.
While I agree a regulated monopoly can do many good things, and such as fund universal service, support communities, etc.; the GP took issue with my claim that regulation benefits the regulated by reducing competition and claimed it results in better service. ATT was known for many things but improving servcie was generally not one of them. You got what they offered and lived with it.
I don't remember exactly how ATT's return was calculated, but in capital intensive industries that are regulated monopolies it is often on capitalized costs - i.e. they get a fixed return on their capital invested, so it behooves them to maximize that. ATT, for a long time, owned everything related to phone service - from the phone at one end through the wires to the phone at the other. There was no warranty, the equipment was theirs and earning a return year over year since it was a capital cost. Repairs? Replacement of items were capital expenses as well. Gotta earn that fixed return and to grow total dollars you grow capitalized costs and get them into the rate base. As for service, while the basic phone service was very good you couldn't add any of your own equipment and paid extra, per month, if you wanted new technology (that they owned) such as touchtone dialing.
Call costs were very high, and ATT made it difficult for dial around providers such as MCI to serve customers because it threatened their lucrative long distance services. When MCI started you first dialed a multi digit (8?) code and then the number you wanted to call.
Universal service was forced on them in exchange for a monopoly; and while a good idea it didn't exactly result in them rushing to provide anything beyond the minimum required service to rural areas. If Congress hadn't forced them to do so they'd been happy to stay where the easy money was and not worry about providing services to rural areas; much as electrical companies had to be subsidized to provide power to rural areas.
Highly regulated monopolies generally tend not to improve service unless something forces them. Airlines were somewhat different because while they were regulated and prices
1) Large seats with lots of foot room
2) Stewardess were highly paid and high quality it was a glamour job.
3) Regular food service on air planes
4) Almost unlimited amounts of luggage allowed
5) Security check throughs which took a few minutes
6) Porters who would take your luggage curb side all the way through
7) Generous compensation if the plane was late causing you to miss a transfer
etc...
You really want to claim that the lack of competition didn't result in higher quality?
if you had bothered to read what I had written you would have noticed I called out the regulated airline industry as one possible exception. Would you argue that lack of competition resulted in better cable service or phone service?
What they didn't realize, and their training did not emphasize was the expansion of the high pressure steam to atmospheric would cool it to nearly exactly what the gauge read. In the heat of battle they did not remember some fundamental fluid dynamics nor read a PVT graph.
In an emergency, do you really want to have to go through a PVT graph to figure out the vapor-liquid ratio and that you are losing mass?
Yes. Currently, that would be the shift engineer's role, although in fairness I don't think the position existed pre-TMI. Proper teamwork requires each control room member to diagnose what is happening and provide the appropriate input to the team.
To me, considering what is at stake, that seems like an unnecessary burden and risk plant designers put on plant operators to avoid using relatively cheap water-level sensor such as a simple tube with a bunch of float-switches in it.
Except the open relief would result in a swell in the pressurizer, causing the level to appear to increase from expansion when in fact the system is losing coolant. Float switches would be very inaccurate in such a situation. In addition, building a standpipe with float switches that can withstand reactor pressures and read accurately would be tough.
If the people at Davis-Besse had missed PT drifting out of the expected range, would they still have taken the correct action once all the alarms started going off in bulk? Maybe, maybe not; it would likely depend a lot on what distraction(s) caused them to miss it in the first place.
First of all, having a bunch of alarms going off, while annoying, is not that big of a distraction for trained operators. The problem was they were not properly trained to diagnosis a stuck open relief and the industry did not have a way to share lessons learned from problems at one plant with the rest of the plants. A properly trained crew, working as a team, can respond quite well to emergencies.
In most industrial incidents, multiple circumstances usually have to line up just right for it to happen. Better training, instrumentation, etc. will decrease the likelihood of that happening but will never eliminate it.
True. Which was actually the point of my response to the GP. While the design of the relief valve indication was faulty, proper training would have mitigated the consequences.
I get your point but even that can be reversed... Limiting competition helps to maintain margins which often helps to raise quality.
Perhaps, but generally it results in higher prices and margins with little incentive to raise quality or provide better service. The only example I can think of is the pre-deregulation US airline industry where the CAB set prices as well as who could fly what route and the only are airlines could compete was on service.
Many other industries are regulated to insure that work meets certain quality standards. Further they often have professional associations with real teeth.
While that is to a certain extent true; the real value of regulation is limiting competition by requiring licensure and often educational requirements to get and maintain a license.
This will also probably also be good for FreeBSD in terms of its codebase as well. I expect Sony will probably be feeding back some patches.
I doubt Sony would have much interest in patching the BSD code base, beyond that needed to get it running and keep it running on the PS4. FreeBSD provides a good base to build their PS4 OS; it would seem likely they would simply keep all modifications and development in-house and not bother to upgrade to a public release later than the one they are using. They may release patches, but I doubt it would be because they want to stay on the latest release of FreeBSD.
Three Mile Island's core issue was a flawed control/indicator pair for a discharge valve where the indicator tracked the control switch's state rather than the valve's actual state which caused the reactor to bleed dry without staff knowing it was happening. This got further complicated by lack of first-degree measurement of water level in the reactor core. How such a fundamental and trivial design flaw ever made it in an actual reactor design is beyond me. Without this vital bit of information, plant engineers had no way to know exactly what was going wrong when nearly every alarm, many of which contradictory, started going off at once.
While you are correct that a faulty pressurizer discharge valve indicator was a fundamental cause of the problem; operator training played a key role as well. With the valve indicating it was closed (it should valve stem, not actual valve, position) and the downstream temperature indicator showing temperatures much cooler than the pressurizer's; operators concluded the valve was closed. What they didn't realize, and their training did not emphasize was the expansion of the high pressure steam to atmospheric would cool it to nearly exactly what the gauge read. In the heat of battle they did not remember some fundamental fluid dynamics nor read a PVT graph. When all the alarms goes of it is difficult it is important that training has prepared them properly, and the TMI operators weren't. Oddly enough, had they not touched any of the emergency equipment and simply watched it would have been a non-event.
Further complicating the problem was the nuclear operators had no good way to exchange lessons learned from events. Had they, they could have learned from the earlier Davis- Besse event which was essentially similar but the operators responded properly and avoided melting the core.
Did you actually read TFA? He went to Saipan for the express purpose of making a deal...it wasn't like he went on a vacation, landed on US soil and was immediately arrested, they caught him on US soil engaging in the crime.
Moral of this comment: RTFA.(Though I guess the summary is partially incorrect in that regard, it wasn't "entirely from China" if he traveled to Saipan to sell stuff)
500 copyrighted works to more than 300 buyers in the U.S. and overseas
The retail value of the products was more than $100 million, the government said.
In other words... on average ~$200,000 per product, and ~$333 thousand per buyer
This makes sense, when you are talking about companies like Agilent that sell overpriced products, that retail for probably approximately $500,000
That's why the "pirated $100 million in software" is neither impressive, nor indicating a particularly outrageous pirate.
The outrage, should be the pricing of Enterprise software, not the" inflated retail price " as some sort of metric of the pirate's activity.
Obviously, the buyers weren't willing to pay the price the maker wanted to sell the software at. Therefore, those sales by definition were not worth the retail price.
In simple economic terms... the high price places their product out of demand.
By definition, they're worth what the buyer was willing to pay the pirate for the procureent.
If you're selling a $500,000 software product; going after pirates is not a winning business strategy -- it's figuring out, why the heck you can't pitch your product to legal buyers, and make your desired revenue there. Either the pricing is all wrong, or your marketing or product targetting is all wrong.
Not really. While i you are correct about pricing a d demand your conclusions aren't. The software vendors chose to forgo more sales in favor of higher prices; probably figuring the margins were better since there would be fewer users to support and the higher price justified the required level of support. That's their choice and does not mean someone else has the right to pirate and sell at a lower price point. The buyers were simply not target customers despite their desire to have the software.
There are already ships far larger than Panamax in operation and docking at ports, they just have to take a different route if they want to get from the Pacific to the Atlantic (or vice-versa.)
What's the largest today? 180,000 tons? IIRC, they do Europe - Asia runs; where ports can accommodate them. Not sure how many do say Europe - New Orleans They're talking almost 50% bigger ships - which would have an impact on port operations. I'm not saying they won't, but such ships will need a rethink of how operations are done in order to handle them and unload them fast enough to make the size worthwhile. I wonder if a transit through Nic. would be quicker than via the Suez. Be interesting to see, at least.
Slashdot Mirror
Pictures show the aircraft sat on the ground with the tail missing and the forward roof burnt out but it certainly did NOT cartwheel...
I happened to check news just as this story was breaking. The word "cartwheel" came from the first eyewitness report. The next two eyewitnesses said it "spun". So I'm guessing that the guy who said "cartwheel" doesn't really know what the word means, and that instead it spun on its belly.
Eyewitness reports are typically very unreliable, people interpret what they see; rather than just say what they saw. As a result, what they think they saw and what actually happened are often two very different things. I have seen people swear they saw or heard X even when vidoetape and computer event logs clearly show X did not happen.
once someone figures out how to hack into the ad server all kinds of chaos and hilarity can ensue, Ja?
What sort of similar surveillance programs are in place at UPS, Fedex and other U.S. couriers?
I don't know, but given UPS and FedEx use a computerized tracking system to run their ops I bet they have a lot more information than the USPS. The question is how long do they retain the data and who has access to it?
Putin is a pragmatist. He no doubt has some very good reasons for wanting him to shut up. If they harbour him, then everyone's ire will be turned on the Russians. Russia wants to be seen as a big, serious player, not as a rogue state.
And Snowden himself doesn't seem to have the brains to not shit in his own nest.
More to the point: Putin is a former intelligence officer. While he certainly is open to obtaining information that would help Russia; he is probably has little respect for people who commit espionage against their country and little trust that they will stay loyal to Russia if he grants asylum. He's a pro, and will do whatever is best for Putin and Russia. At this point, he probably thinks the downside isn't worth it. No matter what our personal opinions are of Snowden's actions; we can probably agree he is really screwed.
For example, it's far better than a PC for reading documentation, you can actual take notes on it, it makes a great white board or overlay for writing on presentations, and it's a lot easier to do a quick web search on one as well. Rather than view it as a PC replacement, view it as a different tool that complements it.
Are you serious here? Are you actually that delusional? The only better aspect it has is being able to move more freely. Other than that I would much rather look at docs on my much much larger screen that doesn't dim and shut off every few seconds. By the time you are done navigating an ipad to the search screen and typing in your query (let's hope it's a short one) I've already found my answer on a computer. Definitely not faster for web searches.
I can have my iPad turn on, unlocked and search done by the time most PCs are still booting up, let alone have recognized a 4g modem and logged into their account. Same for documentation, and it is a lot easier to hold than a laptop. If screen dimming bothers you then set a higher timeout; I personally find trying to read on a monitor tiring because you can't position it in a natural reading position. Oh, you meant doing the forgoing on your always on desktop? Try using that on an airplane or commute.
And as for taking notes / white board blah blah- I can do all that on a computer much more efficiently than a tablet. I can actually type or use the mouse to draw. Which is far better than finger painting on a tablet.
You are not "thinking differently" you are conveniently forgetting what a real computer is capable of. Sure, go ahead and tack on a bluetooth keyboard and try to regain some lost capability but in the end it is still not as capable.
Try doing that when you are in front of a group and walking around. Or, unless you are a touch typist taking readable notes while still looking at what is being presented.
"you need a real computer with a terminal to do real work..." or when the mouse first came out and people said "you need a keyboard and shortcut keys to do real work..."
A PC has all of those things...
It didn't when it was at a similar stage in its life cycle as a tablet is today. High speed printing? Duplexing?cut and have binding ready? The mainframe did all that while the PC was stuck with a dot matrix printer that produce crappy output compared to the mainframe's printer or a dedicated word processor. As a result, the same comments you made about tablets were made about PCs.
My point, which you seemed to miss, is that a tablet is a different beast than PC. A tablet has a different set of strengths and weakness that make it an excellent tool for many uses. If you insist on PC centric viewpoint you'll miss what it can do, which is why using a tablet requires a different frame of reference and thinking.
Your handle suits you
Thank you. Yours suits you as well.
iPads are toys. They will continue to be toys for the forseeable future. While there are some worthwhile apps that allow you to be productive in a very limited scope, if you really want to get work done on a computer, it's at a PC, in front of a keyboard and mouse. It's not a limitation that can be resolved, as it's an inherent limitation of the input mechanism. You can't do anything but pre-programmed tasks on a tablet. Now toys are great. Everyone needs some time for rest and relaxation, but do we really want all these children learning about "computers" using something that is really nothing more than a plaything? Do we really want all these children growing up to write applications that are for little more than play?
You see it as a toy only because your frame of reference is a PC. Your viewpoint is no different than the one espoused when the PC came along and people proclaimed "you need a real computer with a terminal to do real work..." or when the mouse first came out and people said "you need a keyboard and shortcut keys to do real work..." Sure, a PC is better at some things, but an iPad is quite capable of doing real work as well; you just need to think different. For example, it's far better than a PC for reading documentation, you can actual take notes on it, it makes a great white board or overlay for writing on presentations, and it's a lot easier to do a quick web search on one as well. Rather than view it as a PC replacement, view it as a different tool that complements it.
As for limitations of the input method, the touch screen and a bluetooth keyboard mimic a PC quite well; even the virtual keyboard is pretty good. Since the school is not using it to teach computers but to replace textbooks it is more than up to the task.
but he wasn't conveying a threat. He was using hyperbole to point out that he wasn't like those who do actually use violence.
Yeah, that is what it looks like based on the article. OTOH, the argument that some make that somehow being arrested for making the threat, even in jest, violates his free speech rights is incorrect. The authorities may have overreacted but that is a separate issue.
Actually, freedom of speech ABSOLUTELY does mean freedom from government consequences. We narrow it in a few cases (lying/fraud, reporting false threats, etc.) because those are demonstrably harmful.
No, it doesn't. It means the government can't exercise prior restraint to prevent you from speaking. There are a lot of things you can say taht will get you in trouble afterwards; and that is not limiting your freedom of speech.
...freedom of speech.
He wasn't actually making a direct threat at any place or thing...just shooting off his mouth.
Sad that you can be arrested for just a general saying of something.
Freedom of speech does not mean freedom from consequences. Just because you convey a threat via speech does not absolve you from any responsibility for it or grant you immunity from punishment. To paraphrase another right, you have the right to remain silent but were too stupid to do so. Granted, he may have been joking but he still made a threat.
But blocking one single website when the information is available in many, many places is not reasonable.
Perhaps the better route is this:
All computers that have classified information should not have any non/de-classified information on them. Any classified machine that has any non-classified information shall deem to have been breached and an inquiry started as improper access was achieved.
That's what happens, but it costs time and money; for the person(s) doing the investigation and for the employee who is without a computer until it is done. The Army simply wants to limit the chances it will waste time chasing done innocuous breaches since they have to investigate all breeches. Whether or not it is effective is a completely different story.
Seems to me, it is entirely to easy to get classified information on a declassified computer with no malice or crime. The Army's current method tries to lock every door, the latter locks the door with the secrets. Yes, you can do both.
As its always been, the person with access is the least secure part of the classified material custody chain.
of the data than the collection. I know, if you don't collect you don't have the problem but then again I like the idea that if my car is stolen I have a better chance of getting it back; or if break-ins occur in my neighborhood the police may be able to identify some suspects. Oh yeah, and think of the children. Once you start getting the data on plates and their geo location; it becomes relatively trivial to cross reference that with commercial databases and tag / license data to develop a more complete picture of someone's habits. That is potentially valuable information to private companies; how soon is it before the government decides to make the database pay for itself by selling the data? saving the taxpayer's money and all that.
Of course, the first time a politician's habit of visiting certain "shoppes" or the address of some young lovely who is not their partner gets into the news, with pictures, we may see more interest in privacy; just as video rental records became important when they were used against a supreme court nominee.
Marriage gives you certain benefits - taxes, insurance rates, access rights, etc - that no other 'grouping' does.
You're never going to get government out of all of the things that marriage gives benefits to.
Rights are given by the government. If marriage gives you extra rights, then the government says what those are.
Actually, the government has chose the term "marriage" to defend the legal obligations and benefits assigned to two people who enter into a marriage contract. The government could simply drop the term marriage and allow anyone over the defined age of majority enter into such a contract, and only allow one contractual bond at a time. Churches could still perform marriages following their church's laws and requirements. That would return the concept of marriage to religion and leave all the civil benefits to the government; which could be done on a non-discriminatory basis.
Oh I read, it I just read what you meant backwards.
No worries. Sorry for the somewhat snarky reply.
Phone service of course was a regulated monopoly. It is very hard to compare since technology has improved so there is no way to do apples to apples. But let's take that:
Basic service was provided at a loss. AT&T was very concerned in advancing the USA's objective of universal telephone access. The best analogy might be broadband. For the last decade the FCC been imposing a huge tax to get universal availability to most Americans and that has been successful and expensive. But there is still a fairly large number of people who reject the service because even the local cable costs are too high in rural areas. Alternatively would be the cell phone system which makes no attempt at universality.
Warranties were absolutely comprehensive. Every piece of equipment was warranted against everything, forever.
Interior wiring was a phone company expense. When you consider that many of the homes AT&T had to deal with were designed for kerosine not electrical lights that is not a small difference in service.
AT&T made 5.25% on their gross. A reasonable profit. Today's companies try and make whatever they can and most telcos are way more profitable though accounting rules have changed so this is a bit distorted.
AT&T was heavily involved on community support. They funded sports teams, cultural events, charities.... While corporate giving still exists not on remotely the same scale.
AT&T did a lot of fundamental research for the United States and helped to advance the sciences in many areas.
Again it is hard to compare here but yeah I think you can make a fairly good case that one heavily regulated provider worked pretty darn well for America's phone system.
While I agree a regulated monopoly can do many good things, and such as fund universal service, support communities, etc.; the GP took issue with my claim that regulation benefits the regulated by reducing competition and claimed it results in better service. ATT was known for many things but improving servcie was generally not one of them. You got what they offered and lived with it.
I don't remember exactly how ATT's return was calculated, but in capital intensive industries that are regulated monopolies it is often on capitalized costs - i.e. they get a fixed return on their capital invested, so it behooves them to maximize that. ATT, for a long time, owned everything related to phone service - from the phone at one end through the wires to the phone at the other. There was no warranty, the equipment was theirs and earning a return year over year since it was a capital cost. Repairs? Replacement of items were capital expenses as well. Gotta earn that fixed return and to grow total dollars you grow capitalized costs and get them into the rate base. As for service, while the basic phone service was very good you couldn't add any of your own equipment and paid extra, per month, if you wanted new technology (that they owned) such as touchtone dialing.
Call costs were very high, and ATT made it difficult for dial around providers such as MCI to serve customers because it threatened their lucrative long distance services. When MCI started you first dialed a multi digit (8?) code and then the number you wanted to call.
Universal service was forced on them in exchange for a monopoly; and while a good idea it didn't exactly result in them rushing to provide anything beyond the minimum required service to rural areas. If Congress hadn't forced them to do so they'd been happy to stay where the easy money was and not worry about providing services to rural areas; much as electrical companies had to be subsidized to provide power to rural areas.
Highly regulated monopolies generally tend not to improve service unless something forces them. Airlines were somewhat different because while they were regulated and prices
Take a look at the experience from the 1970s.
1) Large seats with lots of foot room 2) Stewardess were highly paid and high quality it was a glamour job. 3) Regular food service on air planes 4) Almost unlimited amounts of luggage allowed 5) Security check throughs which took a few minutes 6) Porters who would take your luggage curb side all the way through 7) Generous compensation if the plane was late causing you to miss a transfer
etc...
You really want to claim that the lack of competition didn't result in higher quality?
if you had bothered to read what I had written you would have noticed I called out the regulated airline industry as one possible exception. Would you argue that lack of competition resulted in better cable service or phone service?
What they didn't realize, and their training did not emphasize was the expansion of the high pressure steam to atmospheric would cool it to nearly exactly what the gauge read. In the heat of battle they did not remember some fundamental fluid dynamics nor read a PVT graph.
In an emergency, do you really want to have to go through a PVT graph to figure out the vapor-liquid ratio and that you are losing mass?
Yes. Currently, that would be the shift engineer's role, although in fairness I don't think the position existed pre-TMI. Proper teamwork requires each control room member to diagnose what is happening and provide the appropriate input to the team.
To me, considering what is at stake, that seems like an unnecessary burden and risk plant designers put on plant operators to avoid using relatively cheap water-level sensor such as a simple tube with a bunch of float-switches in it.
Except the open relief would result in a swell in the pressurizer, causing the level to appear to increase from expansion when in fact the system is losing coolant. Float switches would be very inaccurate in such a situation. In addition, building a standpipe with float switches that can withstand reactor pressures and read accurately would be tough.
If the people at Davis-Besse had missed PT drifting out of the expected range, would they still have taken the correct action once all the alarms started going off in bulk? Maybe, maybe not; it would likely depend a lot on what distraction(s) caused them to miss it in the first place.
First of all, having a bunch of alarms going off, while annoying, is not that big of a distraction for trained operators. The problem was they were not properly trained to diagnosis a stuck open relief and the industry did not have a way to share lessons learned from problems at one plant with the rest of the plants. A properly trained crew, working as a team, can respond quite well to emergencies.
In most industrial incidents, multiple circumstances usually have to line up just right for it to happen. Better training, instrumentation, etc. will decrease the likelihood of that happening but will never eliminate it.
True. Which was actually the point of my response to the GP. While the design of the relief valve indication was faulty, proper training would have mitigated the consequences.
I get your point but even that can be reversed... Limiting competition helps to maintain margins which often helps to raise quality.
Perhaps, but generally it results in higher prices and margins with little incentive to raise quality or provide better service. The only example I can think of is the pre-deregulation US airline industry where the CAB set prices as well as who could fly what route and the only are airlines could compete was on service.
Many other industries are regulated to insure that work meets certain quality standards. Further they often have professional associations with real teeth.
While that is to a certain extent true; the real value of regulation is limiting competition by requiring licensure and often educational requirements to get and maintain a license.
This will also probably also be good for FreeBSD in terms of its codebase as well. I expect Sony will probably be feeding back some patches.
I doubt Sony would have much interest in patching the BSD code base, beyond that needed to get it running and keep it running on the PS4. FreeBSD provides a good base to build their PS4 OS; it would seem likely they would simply keep all modifications and development in-house and not bother to upgrade to a public release later than the one they are using. They may release patches, but I doubt it would be because they want to stay on the latest release of FreeBSD.
Three Mile Island's core issue was a flawed control/indicator pair for a discharge valve where the indicator tracked the control switch's state rather than the valve's actual state which caused the reactor to bleed dry without staff knowing it was happening. This got further complicated by lack of first-degree measurement of water level in the reactor core. How such a fundamental and trivial design flaw ever made it in an actual reactor design is beyond me. Without this vital bit of information, plant engineers had no way to know exactly what was going wrong when nearly every alarm, many of which contradictory, started going off at once.
While you are correct that a faulty pressurizer discharge valve indicator was a fundamental cause of the problem; operator training played a key role as well. With the valve indicating it was closed (it should valve stem, not actual valve, position) and the downstream temperature indicator showing temperatures much cooler than the pressurizer's; operators concluded the valve was closed. What they didn't realize, and their training did not emphasize was the expansion of the high pressure steam to atmospheric would cool it to nearly exactly what the gauge read. In the heat of battle they did not remember some fundamental fluid dynamics nor read a PVT graph. When all the alarms goes of it is difficult it is important that training has prepared them properly, and the TMI operators weren't. Oddly enough, had they not touched any of the emergency equipment and simply watched it would have been a non-event.
Further complicating the problem was the nuclear operators had no good way to exchange lessons learned from events. Had they, they could have learned from the earlier Davis- Besse event which was essentially similar but the operators responded properly and avoided melting the core.
I remember your site. Too bad Apple killed HyperCard. On the GS, in color, it was quite the tool and ahead of its time.
How will they lose their luggage?
Drop the pod marked luggage while over the ocean?
Did you actually read TFA? He went to Saipan for the express purpose of making a deal...it wasn't like he went on a vacation, landed on US soil and was immediately arrested, they caught him on US soil engaging in the crime. Moral of this comment: RTFA.(Though I guess the summary is partially incorrect in that regard, it wasn't "entirely from China" if he traveled to Saipan to sell stuff)
The real moral: You can't fix stupid
500 copyrighted works to more than 300 buyers in the U.S. and overseas
The retail value of the products was more than $100 million, the government said.
In other words... on average ~$200,000 per product, and ~$333 thousand per buyer
This makes sense, when you are talking about companies like Agilent that sell overpriced products, that retail for probably approximately $500,000
That's why the "pirated $100 million in software" is neither impressive, nor indicating a particularly outrageous pirate.
The outrage, should be the pricing of Enterprise software, not the" inflated retail price " as some sort of metric of the pirate's activity.
Obviously, the buyers weren't willing to pay the price the maker wanted to sell the software at. Therefore, those sales by definition were not worth the retail price.
In simple economic terms... the high price places their product out of demand.
By definition, they're worth what the buyer was willing to pay the pirate for the procureent.
If you're selling a $500,000 software product; going after pirates is not a winning business strategy -- it's figuring out, why the heck you can't pitch your product to legal buyers, and make your desired revenue there. Either the pricing is all wrong, or your marketing or product targetting is all wrong.
Not really. While i you are correct about pricing a d demand your conclusions aren't. The software vendors chose to forgo more sales in favor of higher prices; probably figuring the margins were better since there would be fewer users to support and the higher price justified the required level of support. That's their choice and does not mean someone else has the right to pirate and sell at a lower price point. The buyers were simply not target customers despite their desire to have the software.
There are already ships far larger than Panamax in operation and docking at ports, they just have to take a different route if they want to get from the Pacific to the Atlantic (or vice-versa.)
What's the largest today? 180,000 tons? IIRC, they do Europe - Asia runs; where ports can accommodate them. Not sure how many do say Europe - New Orleans They're talking almost 50% bigger ships - which would have an impact on port operations. I'm not saying they won't, but such ships will need a rethink of how operations are done in order to handle them and unload them fast enough to make the size worthwhile. I wonder if a transit through Nic. would be quicker than via the Suez. Be interesting to see, at least.