If the problem is not with the test then unless the problem is fixed you are going to run out of people in "other courses" in just a few years.
Some of the people who took the test this year will say "Wow, my school sucked. I didn't know a lot of that stuff. I'm going to study for next semester/year/whatever." Some number of those people will retake the test and hopefully pass. It's unlikely that nobody in Liberia is smart enough and motivated enough to eventually pass the test.
The objective is to further the education of the next generation. If they have to "dumb down" the university to achieve that,
That sounds more like the objective of primary school, not university. (And look how wonderfully "dumbing down" is working here in the US in primary school, versus the more selective and rigorous university system which has a number of world-class institutions.)
If someone isn't able to get a degree in statistics comparable to the degrees in statistics throughout the world, then what is the point in giving them the "dumbed down" degree? They can't use it to get a job doing statistics, nor for grad school, and you've just made your university a meaningless joke.
The thing is, the test you're positing probably is unfair if 30+ of your good kids who care about their grades and have motivated, involved parents are complaining that it's unfair and impossible to pass even with an open book.
In an education system where your grade matters so much for getting into the right college, having a hard-ass teacher who likes to fail most of his students is horribly unfair. Around the country millions of kids not as smart as one of these complaining students are going to get A's in physics or math or English or whatever, whereas he gets a C- in a class with the same label and ostensibly the same content but a different set of tests.
As I mentioned, with anything short of what we would consider 'millionaire' class wealth, they could not buy or fix up the dwellings, nor could they move to a 'nice' neighborhood.
That doesn't address my objection since you already brought in the fairly rich black doctors and lawyers who were caught up in the same situation. There were 'millionare' class people in these situations, and even if they weren't outright millionaires it's actually not that hard to form a small group of like-minded people to increase your financial reach. I almost moved into a housing co-op many years ago based on that principle.
For some ideas about the roots of this social insanity, I suggest reading "Making Whiteness: The Culture of Segregation in the South, 1890-1940" (Grace Elizabeth Hale). The book is a bit controversial, but I felt the primary idea made sense. When the South lost the Civil War, this violated the heroic culture of honor that permeated the South's psyche. So in order to preserve some semblance of self-respect, a demon had to be found, which was the Negro (and what was really the beginnings of the Northern corporate state).
It's a bit silly to suggest that blacks in the South *began* to be demonized post Civil War. Other than that it sounds like an interesting theory.
And I don't mean to be rude, but while you are sharing interesting tidbits, I really feel that you've ignored my point which is based more on capitalism than racial politics.
I'm a slum lord. I know there are black doctors and lawyers scattered throughout the city. I know if I increase my rent and drive out the poor black residents, I can attract the richer, more educated, more reliable doctors and lawyers. They'd love a place to live that isn't a slum and will pay more for it. They'd rather live in a nice neighborhood and pay more rent than, say, live in a poor neighborhood and have a slightly fancier car.
Why don't I do that? Why doesn't my slum gentrify? There's certainly more money in it for me. Now maybe some slumlords are just racist to the point that it overrules their business sense, but it's impossible that all or even most of them are like that since the ones with better business sense will grow more dominant over time.
It's similar to arguments about women's pay equality... the numbers thrown about are just too implausible. Some people genuinely believe that women get like 60 cents on the dollar FOR EQUIVALENT WORK. You see how that's completely impossible right? Because otherwise you and I could go into business tomorrow founding Women's Google, which is completely equivalent to Google except that our employee costs will be 40% lower. Shoot, not just employee costs, we'll found Women's Computer Hardware and get all of our IT infrastructure for 40% off too. Etc. It's nonsense.
Also, we are speaking in the 50's and 60's when black neighborhoods had their own economies and social stratifications.
There's the thing.. once you have your own economy, it doesn't make sense to make your economic outlet a nice shiny depreciating car, right? There were black businesses to invest in for instance.
I'm not claiming none of this stuff happened, I'm saying it wasn't the well off blacks who said "Eh screw it, I'll just get a new car" when faced with obstacles. It doesn't make sense. I think it's the same people who do it today.. people with very poor financial skills who just want to show off and get some immediate gratification when they come into a relatively small amount of money. Also people for whom public perception is more important than building actual wealth.
Who fixes an apartment they don't own? Especially exterior / common areas?
People who don't want to live in slums, but are forced by powers beyond their control to do so. As an example, a few years ago I watched a great documentary about Jews living in China during WWII. They were packed into a ghetto that they didn't own. But you know.. they made it as nice as they could with their limited resources. There's no reason NOT to do that if you're stuck in the situation.
They're slums because the landlords don't maintain them.
"I'd rather live in filth than pick up a broom or fix a window that I benefit from but don't own!"
Living in a nice place costs money. Whether you give the money to the landlord or spend the money yourself actually doesn't make a difference.. think about it.
If the idea is that you pay the same cheap monthly bills as a slum, but the landlord magically makes it a really nice area, well that's just not gonna happen whether you're the owner or the renter.
Gentrification is usually because the new money that moves in to the hood *owns* the property and spiffs it up.
Yeah but we're talking about blacks with lots of money who are captive to the neighborhood.
Say you're a well off black family in the 50s. Your slum lord just condemned your building. You have a choice. Move to Neighborhood A with rent of $750/month, where the tenants can afford $750/month, they're more educated, there's low crime, people take care of their apartments and the common areas, etc. Or move to Neighborhood B with a rent of $500, where the poor folk go, there's high crime, kids don't bother going to school, etc -- a black ghetto.
Which one would you choose? I mean to me obviously the choice is A. You're paying more rent, and you can't build equity, but you have a much better life.
Under what circumstances would you be like "Ehh, screw it, I'll live in the cheap place and buy a blingy car!!"
I mean that just doesn't make sense. It doesn't fit with what I know of well off people, including blacks.
As much as I despise ALL CAPS posting, I don't think it has anything to do with creditworthiness.
What if it does?
You (and lenders in the article) are making financial decisions based on non-financial characteristics.
I can think of plenty of non-financial characteristics that could (not always, but in specific circumstances) have huge impact on financial decisions -- age, health, family status, religion, race, gender, education, ancestry, criminal record.
Some of those are illegal to consider, but of course that doesn't mean they don't have an impact.
For example, I don't like dog owners that don't pick up after their dogs. If I see an application by such person, and they are foolish enough for this to show from reading loan application, I too wouldn't lend them money. Still, this won't have anything to do with their ability to repay the loan.
What if it does?
You're underestimating what could be surmised about a person's credit worthiness if more data were available.
It would pay us back with clean electricity and not having snow and ice on the freeways that have to be plowed during the winter.
That's not paying us back. I'm talking about actual cash. Otherwise you might as well say the government should just buy everyone ice cream and cars, because it "pays us back" with.. ice cream and cars.
Better than paying us paid back by looting our retirement accounts I suppose.
??
Yeah, paying us back cash with interest is definitely better than looting our retirement accounts, which would not be paying us back. Obviously you're not trying to say that because it makes no sense, but I don't know what you really meant.
Of course it's unethical to cash out knowing you're going to stop paying your mortgage. It's breaking the social trust. If enough people did it, bankruptcy and foreclosure law would have to change to deal with the new reality. In the meantime, the people who do it on purpose (vs people who *need* protection due to bad luck or matters beyond their control) are screwing the rest of us.
Do you really believe that? Let's think about this. If there were black people rich enough to buy big expensive cars... living in a run-down slum apartment... why was it a slum? If these blacks were making lots of money there should have been a gentrification effect just like what's happening today with white people moving into poor areas of some cities and actually pricing out the established "slum" residents.
I mean no offense but your story sounds like a romanticization of what might have really happened.
The person I almost bought a house from 2 years ago had a brand new Mercedes in the driveway and a mortgage in "pre-foreclosure." A few months later the bank foreclosed.
I don't think it's stupid, but very unethical. This person cashed out as much as they could and then said "Not my problem!"
I've recently gotten into doing some basic maintenance on my car. I changed the spark plugs at 120k miles, and was amazed that it only took about 15 minutes and I paid about 1/3 the shop price, including the special magnetic hex socket thing I bought on Amazon. Taking it into a shop would have taken at least an hour or two if I didn't leave my car for the entire day.
I also changed my engine air filter and cabin air filter. Much cheaper than what Jiffy Lube wanted to charge and it took minutes, though it doesn't take any extra time to change your filters while getting an oil change at a car shop.
So there are some tasks that are much cheaper and/or faster to do yourself. It also gives you some satisfaction that you know how to do something.
I haven't changed my own oil yet because it seems very messy, but since I started using synthetic due to high mileage, and shops charge stupidly high surcharges for synthetic, I want to try it at least once.
Aside from practical reasons, there are social reasons for some things. You'll look like an idiot if you ever get in a situation where you "should" know something basic and don't. Specifically I'm thinking of handling flat tires and dead batteries. They tend to happen in inconvenient locations and times. Your girlfriend will think less of you if you miss a dinner party or whatever because you had a flat tire and sat there waiting for an hour for AAA to show up and change it for you, rather than changing it yourself in 10 minutes and having the dirty hands to prove your manliness.
Once you start streaming a lot and don't have the option of channel hopping, you DO start browsing for new shows. The major con for me is stream browsing is a lot slower. There's no concept of "channel up" and watching a random new show in 0.3 seconds. It's a lot more like reading the channel guide and occasionally jumping to a particular show.
Granted with channel hopping you are exposed to more actual airtime of new shows. For some genres, you get a better idea of whether you'll like a show by watching 5 seconds of it than by looking at the cover art and reading a summary.
Heh Netflix should put together a channel hopping simulation stream that shows 5 second highlights of hundreds of shows, and if you like the show you press a button to jump to the actual stream of that show.
Sometimes I miss channel hopping, like I miss commercials... when I go to my parents' house and actually use the tv for a while, it's highly entertaining for about 15 minutes. Then I'm done. I realize there's "nothing on" and I'm already seeing repeats of the amusing commercials and I get out my phone for entertainment.
For me personally, though channel hopping is sort of entertaining and stream browsing gives you a lot of exposure to new shows, I've always found most of the tv shows I like through word of mouth.
We shoveled 800 billion dollars to the greedy banksters in just three months in 2008. A steady 10 billion dollar a year to put roof over highways is probably a better idea.
I doubt the roofsters would pay us back with interest though.
Perhaps they could build the stations so that cars that don't need to stop go through at full speed, and cars that are stopping get shunted off to a slower path.
But really, this is an alternative to trains which also stop at stations unnecessarily. Personally I don't think people would be bothered by this unless they're using hyperloop for a daily commute. Otherwise it's kind of nice to stop for a few minutes in some strange place you've never been and get a glimpse of the people hanging out at the station.
Right, but how restricted? I think you're just setting up a false equivalence. It would be like saying "Women's rights are restricted in Muslim countries, sure, but they're also restricted in America because civilian women who were found guilty of certain felonies don't even have the right to vote. See? They're both restricted!"
Many countries restrict sale of alcohol to people under a certain age, or a certain set of times and days of week, or certain locations.
Not many countries restrict alcohol to the point where the vast majority of the population can't access it. At that point it can be considered banned, not restricted. Just like how sales of fully automatic assault rifles are banned in the US. "But wait! The military buys fully automatic assault rifles in the US, so they're not banned, they're just restricted!" Nope that's not how the word "banned" works.
We need ppl to be well so that they can fight, work, etc.
That's a bullshit justification that would work for any government action regardless of how intrusive it is. We need people to have kids, so now the government gets to regulate having children? We need people to have jobs, so the government can take over any industry?
I'm not saying Obamacare is even close to that scale, but that the heart of your argument is completely fallacious.
Incidentally, that is also why top generals in the military back taking actions on AGW.
How about this? Top generals should stfu about stuff they know nothing about. At the least, you shouldn't take a general's word for anything, even IN their field of expertise and let alone OUT of it. Top military brass as often as not have an eye towards politics, so stuff they say isn't necessarily "the unvarnished military truth" but a load of BS designed for the next stage in their career.
That's why we got the utter garbage spouted by General Petraeus about the Koran burning in Florida, pleading with the pastor guy not to do it. What a slap in the face to the oath that he took to defend the Constitution.
By GP's argument, for the CPU to decrypt the message so quickly, it must be using a shortcut. In your example, the shortcut is that the CPU knows the secret key.
Do you honestly think that someone watching the CPU decrypt the message can't access the message themselves? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DeCSS
The Qatari ban on alcohol sales is seen as a step to be followed by other Arab countries in the Gulf.
Saudi Arabia, the birthplace of Islam, has an outright ban on the sale and consumption of alcohol.
In Bahrain, the government forced the closure of bars and clubs in the country’s three-star hotels in 2009.
Oman has also confined the sale of alcohol to certain hotels and restaurants.
Dubai also last year banned standalone bars and restaurants from displaying alcohol behind their bars.
Sounds like in most of the Gulf states alcohol is banned except for some small areas where it's simply restricted.
What exactly did you mean by "No, no I don't" ? That you simply didn't know that, or that you don't think "booze is banned" is accurate? How would you describe the situation for 99% of the land area of the Gulf states?
If someone decides to do only the profitable tours, everyone will hurt as a result.
Nope, not everyone. The people who use taxis on the profitable tours will benefit due to lower costs by the taxis that don't waste their time serving low-profit routes.
The people who want a taxi for some random point A to point B trip, when they're probably the only person requesting that route in a given month, will suffer. And they should. They should pay extra.
But these ride sharing programs can bring in so much more competition that even those people will find a ride at a reasonable price.
And I wouldn't assume "cost of gas plus profit" -- if you're driving somewhere like the beach, you may use the same service and bring along one or two people, who both pay half the gas, and you pay nothing (but also make nothing). Everybody wins in that scenario. It's not like you have to quit your day job to use this.
Because the driver had not reported this use to their insurance company, and there wasn't any one checking they had, because they are not a registered taxi driver.
So instead of spending money on enforcing the ban on non-registered taxis, why not spend the same money on enforcing the ban on improperly insured pseudo-taxis?
It seems like you're bringing up non-problems that only look like problems because they don't fit the existing taxi system. But there's nothing golden about the existing taxi system.
Just because you can phrase it that way by being vague doesn't make it equivalent. What prisoners? What were they guilty of? How frequently does it happen?
Many Muslims have already realized this and accepted it
"Many" as in millions perhaps, but that's a small percentage of Muslims.
When we're talking about the general Muslim population, the people you may know in the US don't count for anything. It's the large populations in Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, Egypt, Tunisia, Indonesia, etc. that count. There is widespread support for sharia law throughout the Muslim world.
Because when you think about it, where Islam is right now, Christianity was at the same age. Imagine 14th century Christianity existing right now. It would look pretty bad too.
That argument makes no sense at all. The age of the religion doesn't matter, it's the state of the world that matters. 14th century Christianity was backwards because in the 14th century we didn't have modern science and medicine, electricity, widespread literacy, the Internet, access to the entire world's products and cultures, and instant access to historical information.
Guess what? Muslims have all those things. The literacy rate in Iran is over 98%. Pakistan has over 118 million cell phones.
To top it off there are newer religions that are better, like Sikhism (a monotheistic warrior religion founded in the 15th century as a reaction to the military strength of Islam... that's why they carry swords all the time). Do you think Sikhism is umm 800 years or so behind EVEN ISLAM in terms of modernity? Nope!
Really, if you have a good reason why younger monotheistic religions should be more backwards, despite examples to the contrary, please share it.
Slashdot Mirror
If you think that a test can gauge "stupidity", you're stupid.
So basically you've invented a test that can gauge one type of stupidity, but you think people who think your test is accurate are stupid.
Do you think your own test is accurate??
If the problem is not with the test then unless the problem is fixed you are going to run out of people in "other courses" in just a few years.
Some of the people who took the test this year will say "Wow, my school sucked. I didn't know a lot of that stuff. I'm going to study for next semester/year/whatever." Some number of those people will retake the test and hopefully pass. It's unlikely that nobody in Liberia is smart enough and motivated enough to eventually pass the test.
The objective is to further the education of the next generation. If they have to "dumb down" the university to achieve that,
That sounds more like the objective of primary school, not university. (And look how wonderfully "dumbing down" is working here in the US in primary school, versus the more selective and rigorous university system which has a number of world-class institutions.)
If someone isn't able to get a degree in statistics comparable to the degrees in statistics throughout the world, then what is the point in giving them the "dumbed down" degree? They can't use it to get a job doing statistics, nor for grad school, and you've just made your university a meaningless joke.
The thing is, the test you're positing probably is unfair if 30+ of your good kids who care about their grades and have motivated, involved parents are complaining that it's unfair and impossible to pass even with an open book.
In an education system where your grade matters so much for getting into the right college, having a hard-ass teacher who likes to fail most of his students is horribly unfair. Around the country millions of kids not as smart as one of these complaining students are going to get A's in physics or math or English or whatever, whereas he gets a C- in a class with the same label and ostensibly the same content but a different set of tests.
As I mentioned, with anything short of what we would consider 'millionaire' class wealth, they could not buy or fix up the dwellings, nor could they move to a 'nice' neighborhood.
That doesn't address my objection since you already brought in the fairly rich black doctors and lawyers who were caught up in the same situation. There were 'millionare' class people in these situations, and even if they weren't outright millionaires it's actually not that hard to form a small group of like-minded people to increase your financial reach. I almost moved into a housing co-op many years ago based on that principle.
For some ideas about the roots of this social insanity, I suggest reading "Making Whiteness: The Culture of Segregation in the South, 1890-1940" (Grace Elizabeth Hale). The book is a bit controversial, but I felt the primary idea made sense. When the South lost the Civil War, this violated the heroic culture of honor that permeated the South's psyche. So in order to preserve some semblance of self-respect, a demon had to be found, which was the Negro (and what was really the beginnings of the Northern corporate state).
It's a bit silly to suggest that blacks in the South *began* to be demonized post Civil War. Other than that it sounds like an interesting theory.
And I don't mean to be rude, but while you are sharing interesting tidbits, I really feel that you've ignored my point which is based more on capitalism than racial politics.
I'm a slum lord. I know there are black doctors and lawyers scattered throughout the city. I know if I increase my rent and drive out the poor black residents, I can attract the richer, more educated, more reliable doctors and lawyers. They'd love a place to live that isn't a slum and will pay more for it. They'd rather live in a nice neighborhood and pay more rent than, say, live in a poor neighborhood and have a slightly fancier car.
Why don't I do that? Why doesn't my slum gentrify? There's certainly more money in it for me. Now maybe some slumlords are just racist to the point that it overrules their business sense, but it's impossible that all or even most of them are like that since the ones with better business sense will grow more dominant over time.
It's similar to arguments about women's pay equality... the numbers thrown about are just too implausible. Some people genuinely believe that women get like 60 cents on the dollar FOR EQUIVALENT WORK. You see how that's completely impossible right? Because otherwise you and I could go into business tomorrow founding Women's Google, which is completely equivalent to Google except that our employee costs will be 40% lower. Shoot, not just employee costs, we'll found Women's Computer Hardware and get all of our IT infrastructure for 40% off too. Etc. It's nonsense.
Also, we are speaking in the 50's and 60's when black neighborhoods had their own economies and social stratifications.
There's the thing.. once you have your own economy, it doesn't make sense to make your economic outlet a nice shiny depreciating car, right? There were black businesses to invest in for instance.
I'm not claiming none of this stuff happened, I'm saying it wasn't the well off blacks who said "Eh screw it, I'll just get a new car" when faced with obstacles. It doesn't make sense. I think it's the same people who do it today.. people with very poor financial skills who just want to show off and get some immediate gratification when they come into a relatively small amount of money. Also people for whom public perception is more important than building actual wealth.
Who fixes an apartment they don't own? Especially exterior / common areas?
People who don't want to live in slums, but are forced by powers beyond their control to do so. As an example, a few years ago I watched a great documentary about Jews living in China during WWII. They were packed into a ghetto that they didn't own. But you know.. they made it as nice as they could with their limited resources. There's no reason NOT to do that if you're stuck in the situation.
They're slums because the landlords don't maintain them.
"I'd rather live in filth than pick up a broom or fix a window that I benefit from but don't own!"
Living in a nice place costs money. Whether you give the money to the landlord or spend the money yourself actually doesn't make a difference.. think about it.
If the idea is that you pay the same cheap monthly bills as a slum, but the landlord magically makes it a really nice area, well that's just not gonna happen whether you're the owner or the renter.
Gentrification is usually because the new money that moves in to the hood *owns* the property and spiffs it up.
Yeah but we're talking about blacks with lots of money who are captive to the neighborhood.
Say you're a well off black family in the 50s. Your slum lord just condemned your building. You have a choice. Move to Neighborhood A with rent of $750/month, where the tenants can afford $750/month, they're more educated, there's low crime, people take care of their apartments and the common areas, etc. Or move to Neighborhood B with a rent of $500, where the poor folk go, there's high crime, kids don't bother going to school, etc -- a black ghetto.
Which one would you choose? I mean to me obviously the choice is A. You're paying more rent, and you can't build equity, but you have a much better life.
Under what circumstances would you be like "Ehh, screw it, I'll live in the cheap place and buy a blingy car!!"
I mean that just doesn't make sense. It doesn't fit with what I know of well off people, including blacks.
As much as I despise ALL CAPS posting, I don't think it has anything to do with creditworthiness.
What if it does?
You (and lenders in the article) are making financial decisions based on non-financial characteristics.
I can think of plenty of non-financial characteristics that could (not always, but in specific circumstances) have huge impact on financial decisions -- age, health, family status, religion, race, gender, education, ancestry, criminal record.
Some of those are illegal to consider, but of course that doesn't mean they don't have an impact.
For example, I don't like dog owners that don't pick up after their dogs. If I see an application by such person, and they are foolish enough for this to show from reading loan application, I too wouldn't lend them money. Still, this won't have anything to do with their ability to repay the loan.
What if it does?
You're underestimating what could be surmised about a person's credit worthiness if more data were available.
It would pay us back with clean electricity and not having snow and ice on the freeways that have to be plowed during the winter.
That's not paying us back. I'm talking about actual cash. Otherwise you might as well say the government should just buy everyone ice cream and cars, because it "pays us back" with.. ice cream and cars.
Better than paying us paid back by looting our retirement accounts I suppose.
??
Yeah, paying us back cash with interest is definitely better than looting our retirement accounts, which would not be paying us back. Obviously you're not trying to say that because it makes no sense, but I don't know what you really meant.
Of course it's unethical to cash out knowing you're going to stop paying your mortgage. It's breaking the social trust. If enough people did it, bankruptcy and foreclosure law would have to change to deal with the new reality. In the meantime, the people who do it on purpose (vs people who *need* protection due to bad luck or matters beyond their control) are screwing the rest of us.
Do you really believe that? Let's think about this. If there were black people rich enough to buy big expensive cars... living in a run-down slum apartment... why was it a slum? If these blacks were making lots of money there should have been a gentrification effect just like what's happening today with white people moving into poor areas of some cities and actually pricing out the established "slum" residents.
I mean no offense but your story sounds like a romanticization of what might have really happened.
The person I almost bought a house from 2 years ago had a brand new Mercedes in the driveway and a mortgage in "pre-foreclosure." A few months later the bank foreclosed.
I don't think it's stupid, but very unethical. This person cashed out as much as they could and then said "Not my problem!"
I've recently gotten into doing some basic maintenance on my car. I changed the spark plugs at 120k miles, and was amazed that it only took about 15 minutes and I paid about 1/3 the shop price, including the special magnetic hex socket thing I bought on Amazon. Taking it into a shop would have taken at least an hour or two if I didn't leave my car for the entire day.
I also changed my engine air filter and cabin air filter. Much cheaper than what Jiffy Lube wanted to charge and it took minutes, though it doesn't take any extra time to change your filters while getting an oil change at a car shop.
So there are some tasks that are much cheaper and/or faster to do yourself. It also gives you some satisfaction that you know how to do something.
I haven't changed my own oil yet because it seems very messy, but since I started using synthetic due to high mileage, and shops charge stupidly high surcharges for synthetic, I want to try it at least once.
Aside from practical reasons, there are social reasons for some things. You'll look like an idiot if you ever get in a situation where you "should" know something basic and don't. Specifically I'm thinking of handling flat tires and dead batteries. They tend to happen in inconvenient locations and times. Your girlfriend will think less of you if you miss a dinner party or whatever because you had a flat tire and sat there waiting for an hour for AAA to show up and change it for you, rather than changing it yourself in 10 minutes and having the dirty hands to prove your manliness.
Once you start streaming a lot and don't have the option of channel hopping, you DO start browsing for new shows. The major con for me is stream browsing is a lot slower. There's no concept of "channel up" and watching a random new show in 0.3 seconds. It's a lot more like reading the channel guide and occasionally jumping to a particular show.
Granted with channel hopping you are exposed to more actual airtime of new shows. For some genres, you get a better idea of whether you'll like a show by watching 5 seconds of it than by looking at the cover art and reading a summary.
Heh Netflix should put together a channel hopping simulation stream that shows 5 second highlights of hundreds of shows, and if you like the show you press a button to jump to the actual stream of that show.
Sometimes I miss channel hopping, like I miss commercials... when I go to my parents' house and actually use the tv for a while, it's highly entertaining for about 15 minutes. Then I'm done. I realize there's "nothing on" and I'm already seeing repeats of the amusing commercials and I get out my phone for entertainment.
For me personally, though channel hopping is sort of entertaining and stream browsing gives you a lot of exposure to new shows, I've always found most of the tv shows I like through word of mouth.
We shoveled 800 billion dollars to the greedy banksters in just three months in 2008. A steady 10 billion dollar a year to put roof over highways is probably a better idea.
I doubt the roofsters would pay us back with interest though.
Perhaps they could build the stations so that cars that don't need to stop go through at full speed, and cars that are stopping get shunted off to a slower path.
But really, this is an alternative to trains which also stop at stations unnecessarily. Personally I don't think people would be bothered by this unless they're using hyperloop for a daily commute. Otherwise it's kind of nice to stop for a few minutes in some strange place you've never been and get a glimpse of the people hanging out at the station.
Right, but how restricted? I think you're just setting up a false equivalence. It would be like saying "Women's rights are restricted in Muslim countries, sure, but they're also restricted in America because civilian women who were found guilty of certain felonies don't even have the right to vote. See? They're both restricted!"
Many countries restrict sale of alcohol to people under a certain age, or a certain set of times and days of week, or certain locations.
Not many countries restrict alcohol to the point where the vast majority of the population can't access it. At that point it can be considered banned, not restricted. Just like how sales of fully automatic assault rifles are banned in the US. "But wait! The military buys fully automatic assault rifles in the US, so they're not banned, they're just restricted!" Nope that's not how the word "banned" works.
We need ppl to be well so that they can fight, work, etc.
That's a bullshit justification that would work for any government action regardless of how intrusive it is. We need people to have kids, so now the government gets to regulate having children? We need people to have jobs, so the government can take over any industry?
I'm not saying Obamacare is even close to that scale, but that the heart of your argument is completely fallacious.
Incidentally, that is also why top generals in the military back taking actions on AGW.
How about this? Top generals should stfu about stuff they know nothing about. At the least, you shouldn't take a general's word for anything, even IN their field of expertise and let alone OUT of it. Top military brass as often as not have an eye towards politics, so stuff they say isn't necessarily "the unvarnished military truth" but a load of BS designed for the next stage in their career.
That's why we got the utter garbage spouted by General Petraeus about the Koran burning in Florida, pleading with the pastor guy not to do it. What a slap in the face to the oath that he took to defend the Constitution.
By GP's argument, for the CPU to decrypt the message so quickly, it must be using a shortcut. In your example, the shortcut is that the CPU knows the secret key.
Do you honestly think that someone watching the CPU decrypt the message can't access the message themselves? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DeCSS
No, what you're describing is looking at a finished product and inferring the process of how it was created. That's very difficult.
What GP is referring to is watching someone follow the recipe (without seeing the recipe itself), and then inferring the recipe. Much easier.
http://www.onislam.net/english/news/middle-east/455391-qatar-bans-alcohol-signals-gulf-clampdown.html
The Qatari ban on alcohol sales is seen as a step to be followed by other Arab countries in the Gulf.
Saudi Arabia, the birthplace of Islam, has an outright ban on the sale and consumption of alcohol.
In Bahrain, the government forced the closure of bars and clubs in the country’s three-star hotels in 2009.
Oman has also confined the sale of alcohol to certain hotels and restaurants.
Dubai also last year banned standalone bars and restaurants from displaying alcohol behind their bars.
Sounds like in most of the Gulf states alcohol is banned except for some small areas where it's simply restricted.
What exactly did you mean by "No, no I don't" ? That you simply didn't know that, or that you don't think "booze is banned" is accurate? How would you describe the situation for 99% of the land area of the Gulf states?
If someone decides to do only the profitable tours, everyone will hurt as a result.
Nope, not everyone. The people who use taxis on the profitable tours will benefit due to lower costs by the taxis that don't waste their time serving low-profit routes.
The people who want a taxi for some random point A to point B trip, when they're probably the only person requesting that route in a given month, will suffer. And they should. They should pay extra.
But these ride sharing programs can bring in so much more competition that even those people will find a ride at a reasonable price.
And I wouldn't assume "cost of gas plus profit" -- if you're driving somewhere like the beach, you may use the same service and bring along one or two people, who both pay half the gas, and you pay nothing (but also make nothing). Everybody wins in that scenario. It's not like you have to quit your day job to use this.
Because the driver had not reported this use to their insurance company, and there wasn't any one checking they had, because they are not a registered taxi driver.
So instead of spending money on enforcing the ban on non-registered taxis, why not spend the same money on enforcing the ban on improperly insured pseudo-taxis?
It seems like you're bringing up non-problems that only look like problems because they don't fit the existing taxi system. But there's nothing golden about the existing taxi system.
Just because you can phrase it that way by being vague doesn't make it equivalent. What prisoners? What were they guilty of? How frequently does it happen?
Many Muslims have already realized this and accepted it
"Many" as in millions perhaps, but that's a small percentage of Muslims.
When we're talking about the general Muslim population, the people you may know in the US don't count for anything. It's the large populations in Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, Egypt, Tunisia, Indonesia, etc. that count. There is widespread support for sharia law throughout the Muslim world.
Because when you think about it, where Islam is right now, Christianity was at the same age. Imagine 14th century Christianity existing right now. It would look pretty bad too.
That argument makes no sense at all. The age of the religion doesn't matter, it's the state of the world that matters. 14th century Christianity was backwards because in the 14th century we didn't have modern science and medicine, electricity, widespread literacy, the Internet, access to the entire world's products and cultures, and instant access to historical information.
Guess what? Muslims have all those things. The literacy rate in Iran is over 98%. Pakistan has over 118 million cell phones.
To top it off there are newer religions that are better, like Sikhism (a monotheistic warrior religion founded in the 15th century as a reaction to the military strength of Islam... that's why they carry swords all the time). Do you think Sikhism is umm 800 years or so behind EVEN ISLAM in terms of modernity? Nope!
Really, if you have a good reason why younger monotheistic religions should be more backwards, despite examples to the contrary, please share it.
MS doesn't break out revenue for Xbox and Xbox Live so I'm wondering where you got that number from?
Xbox is part of the Entertainment and Devices Division which also includes Windows Phone and Skype.
Skype cost a huge amount of money.
Windows Phone cost a huge amount of money (Microsoft continues to pay Nokia just to use Windows Phone).