Senator Obama's speech was given during the buildup of the housing bubble. It was a period where the Republicans controlled both houses of Congress and the Presidency. They used this power to start two never-ending land wars in asia (off the books no less), create an unfunded Medicare program, and cut taxes on the wealthiest individuals.
The economic situation in 2006 was significantly different than it is now. The demands on the government to assist the unemployed are far greater and the tax revenue generated is far smaller.
Further, President Obama is not demanding to be allowed to spend more money willy-nilly. He's asking to be allowed to borrow enough to spend the money Congress already authorized him to spend.
How about: "The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned"
I haven't noticed Slashdot becoming more liberal, unless by "ever more liberal" you mean "there are still some liberals". It seems about the same mix as it did ten years ago.
my question to you is: by what constitutional authority does the treasury department have the right to pay for certain things authorized by Congress and not others?
Every post here says some variation of "Quit whining. This is your fault for trusting Apple not to change the rules."
Which is not the point (or rather you are making the author's point for him). Apple's business practices are (and always have been) aggressively biased against third-parties. It's remarkably consistent and it's their Achilles heel.
The stark lesson is: do not develop for Apple platforms. No matter how shiny or revolutionary the hardware, and no matter how brilliant your idea, Apple will rip you off.
Problem #1. the appearance of being successful is highly correlated with success. That is, if people around you think you are or are going to be successful, you probably will be successful. If the people around you don't think you'll be successful, you probably wont be successful. (As with all axioms having to do with humans, there are obviously many exceptions)
The IQ test itself may be influencing the outcomes of the people taking the test.
Problem #2. People take the test to confirm what they already know. That is the IQ test may be self-selecting. People who are already on the path to success take the test to confirm that they are geniuses. And other people, who are not doing so well (or have obvious mental deficiencies) take the test to confirm that they have a reason for struggling.
The IQ test may only test for whether you (or your parents) are full of yourself.
learning to use them in itself is not so fun at all.
I find in most games, learning the mechanics of the game adds to the enjoyment of the game. It's like reading a good novel.
Which is why I shy away from "sport" games. Once you get past the thin gloss of the production values of a game like Starcraft 2, you're left with a mechanical Quest for Mastery. Instead of a novel, you're reading a technical manual.
Cause the large portion of students are untrustable cheating bastards?
"Cheating" is a concept that only makes sense in the context of "testing". In the real world, cheating would be called "collaboration".
We have a system of education designed around preparing people for solitary, boring, mindless work.
If you're good at working by yourself on predictable problems you will do really good at high school (and pretty well at college) in the US. If you thrive when interacting with other people and coordinating amongst a variety of skills to solve difficult problems, that ability will rarely be academically useful until you get out of the education system and into the real world.
Hopefully by that point you haven't allowed the deficiencies of public education to undermine your confidence and convince you that there's something wrong with you.
actually I thought the GPs point was valid and well made. it's this:
You know how much of a pain in the ass it is to sit next to the guy at the magic show who spends all his time telling everyone around him how its all fake and I bet I know how it works?
CNN/Fox/et. al. have access to many qualified, tv-friendly experts who could put the Fukushima accident in perspective, but they choose not to. Why? Because their audience is not interested in reporting, they are interested in "news". They want the "magic" and "horror" of real live disasters. They are not interested in seeing the "magic" or "horror" revealed as neither magic nor particularly that horrifying.
Not everyone who fears/hates nuclear power falls into this category. Not even everyone who watches cable news channels. But it does seem an interesting insight into why the cable news channels prefer talking heads who hype the disaster over experts who would offer a more even-handed and sedate assessment of the situation.
"fires" plural... my understanding is that there were a bunch of refinery fires after the tsunami. The big one lasted for a week. But there wasn't much english news coverage of that at all so I may be wrong.
when we wear something on our body it subtly shifts our weight distribution. and I'd imagine that having a phone on your hip also changes your posture to make accessing that phone easier and faster.
it doesn't seem like that's accounted for at all in the study.
the control group didn't use phones at all. so there's no control for whether it's the phone's radiation or the physical presence of the phone that causes the (very slight) degradation.
Aleynikov was getting paid $400K/year and had just been hired away by another company at 3 times that salary. Nowhere near the upper echelons of wealth, but certainly not someone who could be described as "without money".
He doesn't deserve 8 years. I can't imagine Goldman really wanted this to go to trial. I wonder if his legal counsel was particularly incompetent or if he was just thickheaded enough to insist on a trial for a crime he admitted to.
wow! stupid, a moron and an idiot! It's the insult trifecta! I would have been happy with just one insulting noun, three is just an embarrassment of riches.
I would submit to you that, your logical proof notwithstanding, the term "illegal alien" was chosen explicitly to deprive these people of their humanity. It's easy to demagogue and discriminate against "aliens", you don't have to worry that someone might point out how racist and hypocritical you are.
I salute you for not posting anonymously. So we can have a signature line face-off!
Since we rely on humans as judges, lawyers, witnesses, and juries, we have to accept that our justice system, no matter how well designed, is flawed. Innocent people get convicted, guilty people go free. But you cannot free a dead man. QED.
once again proving that the perfect (or the better) is the enemy of the good. First, you're using the article's unsourced ~15million cars stat, but let's just assume it is accurate.
If CAFE or a gas tax resulted in an emissions reduction of just 6% from registered vehicles in just the US that would offset the CO2 created to power all the cell towers in the entire world. The entire world. That is not an insignificant change.
Obviously a 6% reduction in emissions for coal power plants would be more significant. So you are right. But I don't think people who are concerned about CO2 emissions want to just stop at a gas tax. They're usually also proponents of tighter EPA regulations, cap and trade, and similar top-down programs to reduce emissions across the board.
If you really care about women so much then you respect their choices instead of trying to tell them that they'd see things your way if only you made it delightful enough for them to do so.
Your argument assumes (for unclear reasons) that wikipedia has some way of compelling unwilling women. With that premise in mind, your oddball analysis makes a kind of sense. But you can't possibly think that Wikipedia has some power over people to force them to contribute, can you?
Wikipedia isn't saying "our site is too hard for women" they are saying "women do not choose to use our site and we need to change what we do because we want women to use our site more".
Wikipedia's leaders have decided that having more women contributors is a good thing. They are talking about taking steps to make the contribution process more attractive to women. Should their efforts pan out, more women will contribute and Wikipedia will have more contributors.
.37th-ing the notion that if a man did this to a woman, the article would have a completely different tone ("Creepy Stalker Ex Abuses Internets, Police Taking Note"). That aside
the story in the post is stupid, boring, and as others have pointed out, does not involve "Google-Fu". if a girl does it to a guy, it's boring. if a guy does it to a girl, it's boring.
but I honestly don't understand this "Men are the victims of PC-ness" meme. It's not true. It was never true. It refuses to die.
Yes, because posting pictures of your fully-clothed ex with captions on them is sexual assault. And 3 other people thought this was insightful? Um... what?
This idea that women as a group don't want to contribute to Wikipedia is an interesting one. Certainly that could explain the incredibly small representation of a group that makes up more than half of the world. And, if this is the case, then it strikes me as a particularly difficult problem for a relatively small enterprise like Wikipedia to resolve. However, there are alternative possibilities that you don't seem to be considering.
For example, what if the problem is that Wikipedia's procedures/culture/approach do not appeal to women? Then that means that Wikipedia is missing out on a very large group of potential contributors (contributors being the lifeblood of Wikipedia). In that case, relatively straightforward changes might make a vast difference in women's participation.
As an example. Say I run a clothing store. I stock and sell only the finest clothing for men's bodies in designs and colors that I know appeal to men. While a number of women do come into my store, it appears that the vast majority of my customers are men. A consultant suggests that if I want to expand my customer base, I should also sell clothes for women in designs and colors that appeal to them. Wouldn't it be utterly ludicrous if I objected that it's condescending to try to convince women to shop in my store by changing it to better appeal to them?
Yet that's the argument you are making. Now it's possible that, unlike clothing, wikipedia cannot be made more appealing for women. That doesn't really jive with my life experience or history or really anything we know about the nature of gender, but anything's possible.
Slashdot Mirror
Senator Obama's speech was given during the buildup of the housing bubble. It was a period where the Republicans controlled both houses of Congress and the Presidency. They used this power to start two never-ending land wars in asia (off the books no less), create an unfunded Medicare program, and cut taxes on the wealthiest individuals.
The economic situation in 2006 was significantly different than it is now. The demands on the government to assist the unemployed are far greater and the tax revenue generated is far smaller.
Further, President Obama is not demanding to be allowed to spend more money willy-nilly. He's asking to be allowed to borrow enough to spend the money Congress already authorized him to spend.
How about: "The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned"
I guess that's kinda long for a sign.
I haven't noticed Slashdot becoming more liberal, unless by "ever more liberal" you mean "there are still some liberals". It seems about the same mix as it did ten years ago.
my question to you is: by what constitutional authority does the treasury department have the right to pay for certain things authorized by Congress and not others?
That's just dumb.
seriously, light beer commercials are the most brain-dead things I have ever seen. How else are you going to sell that crap?
Every post here says some variation of "Quit whining. This is your fault for trusting Apple not to change the rules."
Which is not the point (or rather you are making the author's point for him). Apple's business practices are (and always have been) aggressively biased against third-parties. It's remarkably consistent and it's their Achilles heel.
The stark lesson is: do not develop for Apple platforms. No matter how shiny or revolutionary the hardware, and no matter how brilliant your idea, Apple will rip you off.
IQ is a measurement.
Problem #1. the appearance of being successful is highly correlated with success. That is, if people around you think you are or are going to be successful, you probably will be successful. If the people around you don't think you'll be successful, you probably wont be successful. (As with all axioms having to do with humans, there are obviously many exceptions)
The IQ test itself may be influencing the outcomes of the people taking the test.
Problem #2. People take the test to confirm what they already know. That is the IQ test may be self-selecting. People who are already on the path to success take the test to confirm that they are geniuses. And other people, who are not doing so well (or have obvious mental deficiencies) take the test to confirm that they have a reason for struggling.
The IQ test may only test for whether you (or your parents) are full of yourself.
learning to use them in itself is not so fun at all.
I find in most games, learning the mechanics of the game adds to the enjoyment of the game. It's like reading a good novel.
Which is why I shy away from "sport" games. Once you get past the thin gloss of the production values of a game like Starcraft 2, you're left with a mechanical Quest for Mastery. Instead of a novel, you're reading a technical manual.
Cause the large portion of students are untrustable cheating bastards?
"Cheating" is a concept that only makes sense in the context of "testing". In the real world, cheating would be called "collaboration".
We have a system of education designed around preparing people for solitary, boring, mindless work.
If you're good at working by yourself on predictable problems you will do really good at high school (and pretty well at college) in the US. If you thrive when interacting with other people and coordinating amongst a variety of skills to solve difficult problems, that ability will rarely be academically useful until you get out of the education system and into the real world.
Hopefully by that point you haven't allowed the deficiencies of public education to undermine your confidence and convince you that there's something wrong with you.
that is so bad I was forced to comment
actually I thought the GPs point was valid and well made. it's this:
CNN/Fox/et. al. have access to many qualified, tv-friendly experts who could put the Fukushima accident in perspective, but they choose not to. Why? Because their audience is not interested in reporting, they are interested in "news". They want the "magic" and "horror" of real live disasters. They are not interested in seeing the "magic" or "horror" revealed as neither magic nor particularly that horrifying.
Not everyone who fears/hates nuclear power falls into this category. Not even everyone who watches cable news channels. But it does seem an interesting insight into why the cable news channels prefer talking heads who hype the disaster over experts who would offer a more even-handed and sedate assessment of the situation.
"fires" plural... my understanding is that there were a bunch of refinery fires after the tsunami. The big one lasted for a week. But there wasn't much english news coverage of that at all so I may be wrong.
when we wear something on our body it subtly shifts our weight distribution. and I'd imagine that having a phone on your hip also changes your posture to make accessing that phone easier and faster.
it doesn't seem like that's accounted for at all in the study.
the control group didn't use phones at all. so there's no control for whether it's the phone's radiation or the physical presence of the phone that causes the (very slight) degradation.
Aleynikov was getting paid $400K/year and had just been hired away by another company at 3 times that salary. Nowhere near the upper echelons of wealth, but certainly not someone who could be described as "without money".
He doesn't deserve 8 years. I can't imagine Goldman really wanted this to go to trial. I wonder if his legal counsel was particularly incompetent or if he was just thickheaded enough to insist on a trial for a crime he admitted to.
maybe it's the cheesecake talking, but this is the funniest post I have seen on Slashdot in quite a while
+1 Sad Truth
wow! stupid, a moron and an idiot! It's the insult trifecta! I would have been happy with just one insulting noun, three is just an embarrassment of riches.
I would submit to you that, your logical proof notwithstanding, the term "illegal alien" was chosen explicitly to deprive these people of their humanity. It's easy to demagogue and discriminate against "aliens", you don't have to worry that someone might point out how racist and hypocritical you are.
I salute you for not posting anonymously. So we can have a signature line face-off!
http://www.innocenceproject.org/
Since we rely on humans as judges, lawyers, witnesses, and juries, we have to accept that our justice system, no matter how well designed, is flawed. Innocent people get convicted, guilty people go free. But you cannot free a dead man. QED.
once again proving that the perfect (or the better) is the enemy of the good. First, you're using the article's unsourced ~15million cars stat, but let's just assume it is accurate.
If CAFE or a gas tax resulted in an emissions reduction of just 6% from registered vehicles in just the US that would offset the CO2 created to power all the cell towers in the entire world. The entire world. That is not an insignificant change.
Obviously a 6% reduction in emissions for coal power plants would be more significant. So you are right. But I don't think people who are concerned about CO2 emissions want to just stop at a gas tax. They're usually also proponents of tighter EPA regulations, cap and trade, and similar top-down programs to reduce emissions across the board.
Your argument assumes (for unclear reasons) that wikipedia has some way of compelling unwilling women. With that premise in mind, your oddball analysis makes a kind of sense. But you can't possibly think that Wikipedia has some power over people to force them to contribute, can you?
Wikipedia isn't saying "our site is too hard for women" they are saying "women do not choose to use our site and we need to change what we do because we want women to use our site more".
Wikipedia's leaders have decided that having more women contributors is a good thing. They are talking about taking steps to make the contribution process more attractive to women. Should their efforts pan out, more women will contribute and Wikipedia will have more contributors.
ok. I agree that it's not news, but "femalian"?
how would being out lawyer fees and getting laughed out of court make him feel better?
the story in the post is stupid, boring, and as others have pointed out, does not involve "Google-Fu". if a girl does it to a guy, it's boring. if a guy does it to a girl, it's boring.
but I honestly don't understand this "Men are the victims of PC-ness" meme. It's not true. It was never true. It refuses to die.
Yes, because posting pictures of your fully-clothed ex with captions on them is sexual assault. And 3 other people thought this was insightful? Um... what?
This idea that women as a group don't want to contribute to Wikipedia is an interesting one. Certainly that could explain the incredibly small representation of a group that makes up more than half of the world. And, if this is the case, then it strikes me as a particularly difficult problem for a relatively small enterprise like Wikipedia to resolve. However, there are alternative possibilities that you don't seem to be considering.
For example, what if the problem is that Wikipedia's procedures/culture/approach do not appeal to women? Then that means that Wikipedia is missing out on a very large group of potential contributors (contributors being the lifeblood of Wikipedia). In that case, relatively straightforward changes might make a vast difference in women's participation.
As an example. Say I run a clothing store. I stock and sell only the finest clothing for men's bodies in designs and colors that I know appeal to men. While a number of women do come into my store, it appears that the vast majority of my customers are men. A consultant suggests that if I want to expand my customer base, I should also sell clothes for women in designs and colors that appeal to them. Wouldn't it be utterly ludicrous if I objected that it's condescending to try to convince women to shop in my store by changing it to better appeal to them?
Yet that's the argument you are making. Now it's possible that, unlike clothing, wikipedia cannot be made more appealing for women. That doesn't really jive with my life experience or history or really anything we know about the nature of gender, but anything's possible.