I'm with you to a point. But there's a lot of "parallel" evolution and discovery going on. Two different groups of mammals became bats for instance, and there are numerous examples of nature creating similar creatures to "fill a niche". It was likely any untapped energy source of sufficient quantity and quality will inevitably produce an organism that uses that product. It's almost like predicting the weather by just charting blocks of heat -- a high pressure area of heat will move air masses, you only need to know the temperature differences and the locations of the heat.
So animals and plants move from high concentrations of energy first, to low concentrations with fewer competitors. High birth rate means less energy spent rearing children and eventually means (in most cases) less intelligent creatures, while the inverse is also true (not to be confused with social pressure).
The Radio was developed by more than two different inventors at nearly the same time.
I could imagine that two cave men, Og and Zog were sitting on a log, when they saw lightning hit a tree, and Og says; "That bright thing may be useful". Time traveler accidentally lands on Og before he discovers useful bright stuff, and Zog is on the log alone when he sees lightning hit a tree; "That could be used to cook food and concentrate the energy for easier digestion... dang, I'm talking to myself again."
By the way, I'm keeping this algorithm -- not for the wisdom, but because it's so much more efficient than a bunch of CASE statements. Wow, vectored decision trees -- seems so much more civilized.
I'm not afraid if a tiny difference in "COST" in solar vs. nuclear. What is COST if it's used to subsidize an American company and American workers vs. a company that most of it's money goes to a few, and it imports Russian Uranium?
It's kind of like "efficiency" -- an efficient economy means that you will get more work done for the same or less money. Unless I'm the hedge fund manager or CEO, it's really not going to be a benefit to me to constantly chase efficiency.
We want energy efficiency, but we will soon be looking for "make work" projects as the fast food and service industries get automated.
I'd rather be hiring people to install solar panels and build a grid into the road (to collect and distribute power).
The "Black Out" is more likely with an ancient grid during peak demand. Put people to work creating a better distributed grid (more jobs = less efficiency!!!) and the peak demand will be when the sun is up -- wow, good think I got solar.
Blackouts at night? Sure, but stuff happens. We can build solutions or we can keep paying the same rich people for the same problems and never solve new ones and give money to different people.
Add in the cost of a few security guards for the mothballed plant for 2,000 years.
Until someone privately insures a nuclear power plant and it's all done on the company dime rather than hidden cost overruns I'll believe the "cheaper than solar" statements.
I'm still waiting for the "no profit convalescence" years of the plants to be foisted on citizens -- just like the oil company doesn't pay for the military, and foreign aid money goes directly to military contractors in most cases. Cost shifting is the nature of big business.
That's why I like solar; 90% to Al Gore but no hidden fees!
I'm glad everyone pointed this out because it's the first concern that came to mind.
This makes me happy because; 1) Great minds think alike. 2) Google will instantly realize the error of their ways with weird characters and change this policy. 3) I'm not alone. This could very well be my posse. 4) Slashdot has it handled, the world is safer. 5) I don't have enough things I'm happy about on a regular basis to make a top ten list -- and I've learned to be OK with that.
I think if there were smart people -- let's call them PhDs, Professors and Teachers until we've got something more developed -- and they might think really hard about the types of concepts a student needs to learn. They'd string pre-packaged "modules" together. We could call that a "course" -- like a buffet of unlimited food, but we didn't mix the fish with the pop tarts because, "barf" am I right? Anyway, as a clueless person, let's call that a "Student" -- I would not necessarily know that I will do better with a nice lemon and caper sauce on my pasta coupled with the Sea Bass, but I will get a better meal because I trusted the Chef (that we are calling a teacher, just to be confusing).
>> all kidding aside; I think the module idea has merit to "hone" specific topics so they can be standalone. But those modules can be assembled into regular classes by educators. The only FLAW is the quality of the educators. And too much difference between courses means schools don't accept credit hours from other schools.
The other problem I see is if someone just "likes" one thing about optics, but not about the module on "glass materials". They end up memorizing in an ad hoc fashion and get into situations where they can't solve a problem because they know "A" and "C" but not "B". Once they are professional, it makes perfect sense to go back and "pick up B", but that's a person who knows what they don't know.
Other than a few Socialist countries -- what country thrives on truth? A Half truth is often Patriotism when a full fledged Lie would prove better.
Sure, you can say "results in violence" because the French did away with some crooked royals once, but there was quite a long run of "lying our asses off". You think the cult to stack rocks in Egypt was anything but a "keep people busy" program?
Political Correctness can be annoying -- but it used to be called "Polite" -- only now it extends to people outside of the Privileged class. The main problem I have with Political Correctness is to try and bend over backwards to create euphemisms. Retarded kids get called challenged, and then special and then alternative or whatever because as soon as everyone knows "Exceptional" stands for "Retarded" it's a slur.
But it doesn't seem to be THAT huge of an issue. It's just a problem for people who would rather talk like Archie Bunker and someone in HR is spoiling their fun. You know what drives Political Correctness? Lawsuits. Not so much angry feminists burning bras.
Dude, stop quoting from the History that Never Happened.
Outside of a few bad science fiction movies, or perhaps in enclaves where someone snuck in a listening device to a group of angry divorced women -- I've never heard of this populist movement of "getting rid of men." There's no plan, there's no conspiracy, there's no secret lair with volcano mountain hiding the space ship. It's not a factor and to be threatened by this is to start wearing double anti-unicorn underwear. Sure it works -- because there are no Unicorns.
Also on that list is Liberal Terrorism in America. One off-duty security guard got accidentally killed when not targeted by the Weather Underground. What are we at, 250000 to one for proportionality?
The T-Rex would go extinct after only 50 years if all it had to eat was lions.
Unless of course someone raised a lot of lions to keep feeding T-Rex's. Or maybe T-Rex might think it was really cute how a kitty was chewing on it's bunions -- that tickles.
I'm sick of people saying that any fee or tax is "Paid by consumers" -- as if we consumers wouldn't be ruined if all taxes were on sales and wages and NONE on profits. Stop parroting this corporate drivel -- it's stupid, and it's damaging.
Taxes come out of profits. If all companies pay them they are the cost of business. Yes they make a company slightly less competitive with exports but we don't export goods that much anymore and we have business being bought from countries that have "onerous" government taxes -- so this is more nonsense.
OK, that off my chest -- I think that T-Mobile and Sprint pooling money and sharing bandwidth is a good thing. It's the only way they can compete with larger cellular companies right now AND the consumer benefits because they've paid more taxes with a higher bid and gotten rid of a few more closed networks. In fact, if all the cell companies just shared the same bandwidth -- we'd be fine.
What about we just tax them 30% of all gross fees on the cell bands and be done with it? More money comes in, and the fee doesn't stop startups.
We don't do this because selling off the public goods to monopolies is the way of business today. And then they take those extra profits and buy yachts or politicians so they can inform people of how consumers end up paying more for a corporate tax and will magically be better off if one guy gets an extra billion each year.
"too easy to ignore" -- well I'm sure there is also a lot of "ballot stuffing" from astroturf groups and opinion shapers -- but I figure that the FCC wants to quietly pass a ruling and then cash in when they work as million dollar "consultants" for the industry they just gave a big fat kiss.
There are likely another 650,000 who WOULD send FCC a comment but they've learned long time ago that the Corporatocracy doesn't care about public comments.
This is just a pretense of the dog and pony show, and the only metric they care about is; "How far can we push before the Pitchforks and Torches" metric.
Do you twitch uncontrollably when someone mentions JitB?
You know you can click the "This commercial applies to me" button in order to use aversion therapy to remove any desire to buy a specific product, don't you? It's not commercials -- it's a FEATURE. If you want to lose weight, just choose the fast food category. If you want to stop sending money to starving people, choose one of the charities. The Army Recruiting aversion therapy may yet end war mongering in this country...
Some people like cereal that tastes like bran, because they NEED to taste the punishment it requires to be healthy and nut just eat a salad or a pine cone.
If I can't see a Progressive commercial 20 times in one Hulu show, I don't feel like I've earned the movie. I might as well turn off the computer and take a walk.
What's the big deal? I mean, there are people who LIKE having a search bar to make Windows 8 Tiles functional and Hulu Plus is for people who would like to pay for Netflix but they miss commercials.
There are also people who like toll booths. Stop being a Toll Booth, Win 8, Hulu Plus hater!
Oh, and I want Xbox One to bring back the restrictions on selling old games and being always online, because I'm a patriot!
Country borders "don't mean anything" except to us peons. Money, information, ownership -- everything important that relates to wealth and power is transparent to borders.
We may not like the pervasive spying or invasion of privacy, but let's not pretend that borders are anything but an impediment to human beings of a certain income level.
On the other hand, we have corporations playing the same "tricks" with finance. They show little profits in countries with taxes and shockingly, pay extra for some service or other and reap loads of profits in Dublin Ireland or some other tax haven.
If someone has an email in the USA and it ends up on an offshore server, I think it's no different than a dollar that ends up in an offshore account; it's province is in the USA regardless of digital shenanigans.
Now the DEBATABLE point is if the USA government security state should have the right to any and all data - and I'd say such a position does NOT serve the greater good.
But let's separate this nonsense of moving a digit offshore from what actually affects our lives. Our robber barons are living offshore and hiding their ill gotten gains -- and that means nothing to the people that they effect.
While there may be a lot of minorities over represented in the Penal system -- you get on the wrong end of the law and you are suddenly one of the minorities. If you go the route of contesting your guilt, you face higher penalties fines and punishment than if you just cop a plea. Being innocent is painful and expensive. How many people just say; "You are right, I'm a bad boy" because it was bankrupting them? Only people with means can afford to be innocent. It's easy to believe the system is fair as long as you never get on the wrong end of it. The accusation becomes the reputation which rationalizes the punishment.
I can't imagine if the Feds wanted to make an example with me, and their credibility were on the line. "Tipping the scales" because they want to make an arrest easy and 'get the bad guy' -- I can imagine that happens more often than not. There's a lot of financial and career pressure on enforcement -- and I'm sure to get cyber criminals and whistleblowers, regardless of merit, is even greater.
As someone said; it's probably got little to do with investigation, and more coercing people to give up associates who MIGHT be guilty, and then leaning on them until they get somewhere. Like the drug war, that friendly recreational drug dealer that supplied your party gets squeezed and their life ruined to get SOMEONE. I suspect intimidation and thuggery is more useful than detective work.
So, suffice to say, if your parents aren't totally politically connected and rich -- you aren't the precious white boy if you are a nerd in the cross hairs of the Fed or NSA. You are at least going to be collateral damage because Uncle Sam isn't spending a few billion on this agency not to have results. Again, just like the inquisition finding a witch -- it doesn't matter if you've actually consorted with Satan.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm with you to a point. But there's a lot of "parallel" evolution and discovery going on. Two different groups of mammals became bats for instance, and there are numerous examples of nature creating similar creatures to "fill a niche". It was likely any untapped energy source of sufficient quantity and quality will inevitably produce an organism that uses that product. It's almost like predicting the weather by just charting blocks of heat -- a high pressure area of heat will move air masses, you only need to know the temperature differences and the locations of the heat.
So animals and plants move from high concentrations of energy first, to low concentrations with fewer competitors.
High birth rate means less energy spent rearing children and eventually means (in most cases) less intelligent creatures, while the inverse is also true (not to be confused with social pressure).
The Radio was developed by more than two different inventors at nearly the same time.
I could imagine that two cave men, Og and Zog were sitting on a log, when they saw lightning hit a tree, and Og says; "That bright thing may be useful". Time traveler accidentally lands on Og before he discovers useful bright stuff, and Zog is on the log alone when he sees lightning hit a tree; "That could be used to cook food and concentrate the energy for easier digestion... dang, I'm talking to myself again."
By the way, I'm keeping this algorithm -- not for the wisdom, but because it's so much more efficient than a bunch of CASE statements. Wow, vectored decision trees -- seems so much more civilized.
It would run faster if written in Swift. ;-P
SCOTUS + ((Mobs + Pitchforks + Torches) / Angry) = Sudden Concern for Public
I'm not afraid if a tiny difference in "COST" in solar vs. nuclear. What is COST if it's used to subsidize an American company and American workers vs. a company that most of it's money goes to a few, and it imports Russian Uranium?
It's kind of like "efficiency" -- an efficient economy means that you will get more work done for the same or less money. Unless I'm the hedge fund manager or CEO, it's really not going to be a benefit to me to constantly chase efficiency.
We want energy efficiency, but we will soon be looking for "make work" projects as the fast food and service industries get automated.
I'd rather be hiring people to install solar panels and build a grid into the road (to collect and distribute power).
The "Black Out" is more likely with an ancient grid during peak demand. Put people to work creating a better distributed grid (more jobs = less efficiency!!!) and the peak demand will be when the sun is up -- wow, good think I got solar.
Blackouts at night? Sure, but stuff happens. We can build solutions or we can keep paying the same rich people for the same problems and never solve new ones and give money to different people.
Add in the cost of a few security guards for the mothballed plant for 2,000 years.
Until someone privately insures a nuclear power plant and it's all done on the company dime rather than hidden cost overruns I'll believe the "cheaper than solar" statements.
I'm still waiting for the "no profit convalescence" years of the plants to be foisted on citizens -- just like the oil company doesn't pay for the military, and foreign aid money goes directly to military contractors in most cases. Cost shifting is the nature of big business.
That's why I like solar; 90% to Al Gore but no hidden fees!
I'm glad everyone pointed this out because it's the first concern that came to mind.
This makes me happy because;
1) Great minds think alike.
2) Google will instantly realize the error of their ways with weird characters and change this policy.
3) I'm not alone. This could very well be my posse.
4) Slashdot has it handled, the world is safer.
5) I don't have enough things I'm happy about on a regular basis to make a top ten list -- and I've learned to be OK with that.
I think if there were smart people -- let's call them PhDs, Professors and Teachers until we've got something more developed -- and they might think really hard about the types of concepts a student needs to learn. They'd string pre-packaged "modules" together. We could call that a "course" -- like a buffet of unlimited food, but we didn't mix the fish with the pop tarts because, "barf" am I right? Anyway, as a clueless person, let's call that a "Student" -- I would not necessarily know that I will do better with a nice lemon and caper sauce on my pasta coupled with the Sea Bass, but I will get a better meal because I trusted the Chef (that we are calling a teacher, just to be confusing).
>> all kidding aside; I think the module idea has merit to "hone" specific topics so they can be standalone. But those modules can be assembled into regular classes by educators. The only FLAW is the quality of the educators. And too much difference between courses means schools don't accept credit hours from other schools.
The other problem I see is if someone just "likes" one thing about optics, but not about the module on "glass materials". They end up memorizing in an ad hoc fashion and get into situations where they can't solve a problem because they know "A" and "C" but not "B". Once they are professional, it makes perfect sense to go back and "pick up B", but that's a person who knows what they don't know.
So true, They never include; "Pay for security guard in mothballed nuclear plant for 2000 years" in the cost projections on Nuclear.
Other than a few Socialist countries -- what country thrives on truth? A Half truth is often Patriotism when a full fledged Lie would prove better.
Sure, you can say "results in violence" because the French did away with some crooked royals once, but there was quite a long run of "lying our asses off". You think the cult to stack rocks in Egypt was anything but a "keep people busy" program?
Political Correctness can be annoying -- but it used to be called "Polite" -- only now it extends to people outside of the Privileged class. The main problem I have with Political Correctness is to try and bend over backwards to create euphemisms. Retarded kids get called challenged, and then special and then alternative or whatever because as soon as everyone knows "Exceptional" stands for "Retarded" it's a slur.
But it doesn't seem to be THAT huge of an issue. It's just a problem for people who would rather talk like Archie Bunker and someone in HR is spoiling their fun. You know what drives Political Correctness? Lawsuits. Not so much angry feminists burning bras.
Dude, stop quoting from the History that Never Happened.
Outside of a few bad science fiction movies, or perhaps in enclaves where someone snuck in a listening device to a group of angry divorced women -- I've never heard of this populist movement of "getting rid of men." There's no plan, there's no conspiracy, there's no secret lair with volcano mountain hiding the space ship. It's not a factor and to be threatened by this is to start wearing double anti-unicorn underwear. Sure it works -- because there are no Unicorns.
Also on that list is Liberal Terrorism in America. One off-duty security guard got accidentally killed when not targeted by the Weather Underground. What are we at, 250000 to one for proportionality?
The T-Rex would go extinct after only 50 years if all it had to eat was lions.
Unless of course someone raised a lot of lions to keep feeding T-Rex's. Or maybe T-Rex might think it was really cute how a kitty was chewing on it's bunions -- that tickles.
I'm sick of people saying that any fee or tax is "Paid by consumers" -- as if we consumers wouldn't be ruined if all taxes were on sales and wages and NONE on profits. Stop parroting this corporate drivel -- it's stupid, and it's damaging.
Taxes come out of profits. If all companies pay them they are the cost of business. Yes they make a company slightly less competitive with exports but we don't export goods that much anymore and we have business being bought from countries that have "onerous" government taxes -- so this is more nonsense.
OK, that off my chest -- I think that T-Mobile and Sprint pooling money and sharing bandwidth is a good thing. It's the only way they can compete with larger cellular companies right now AND the consumer benefits because they've paid more taxes with a higher bid and gotten rid of a few more closed networks. In fact, if all the cell companies just shared the same bandwidth -- we'd be fine.
What about we just tax them 30% of all gross fees on the cell bands and be done with it? More money comes in, and the fee doesn't stop startups.
We don't do this because selling off the public goods to monopolies is the way of business today. And then they take those extra profits and buy yachts or politicians so they can inform people of how consumers end up paying more for a corporate tax and will magically be better off if one guy gets an extra billion each year.
Of course it's useful, let me introduce you to my "Phase changing candle!"
In it's liquid/gas state, it burns. When it cools, it becomes a nonvolatile decoration.
"too easy to ignore" -- well I'm sure there is also a lot of "ballot stuffing" from astroturf groups and opinion shapers -- but I figure that the FCC wants to quietly pass a ruling and then cash in when they work as million dollar "consultants" for the industry they just gave a big fat kiss.
There are likely another 650,000 who WOULD send FCC a comment but they've learned long time ago that the Corporatocracy doesn't care about public comments.
This is just a pretense of the dog and pony show, and the only metric they care about is; "How far can we push before the Pitchforks and Torches" metric.
Do you twitch uncontrollably when someone mentions JitB?
You know you can click the "This commercial applies to me" button in order to use aversion therapy to remove any desire to buy a specific product, don't you? It's not commercials -- it's a FEATURE. If you want to lose weight, just choose the fast food category. If you want to stop sending money to starving people, choose one of the charities. The Army Recruiting aversion therapy may yet end war mongering in this country...
Because naming 3 would be difficult without saying; "South Park is XClusive!"
Some people like cereal that tastes like bran, because they NEED to taste the punishment it requires to be healthy and nut just eat a salad or a pine cone.
If I can't see a Progressive commercial 20 times in one Hulu show, I don't feel like I've earned the movie. I might as well turn off the computer and take a walk.
What's the big deal? I mean, there are people who LIKE having a search bar to make Windows 8 Tiles functional and Hulu Plus is for people who would like to pay for Netflix but they miss commercials.
There are also people who like toll booths. Stop being a Toll Booth, Win 8, Hulu Plus hater!
Oh, and I want Xbox One to bring back the restrictions on selling old games and being always online, because I'm a patriot!
Country borders "don't mean anything" except to us peons. Money, information, ownership -- everything important that relates to wealth and power is transparent to borders.
We may not like the pervasive spying or invasion of privacy, but let's not pretend that borders are anything but an impediment to human beings of a certain income level.
On the other hand, we have corporations playing the same "tricks" with finance. They show little profits in countries with taxes and shockingly, pay extra for some service or other and reap loads of profits in Dublin Ireland or some other tax haven.
If someone has an email in the USA and it ends up on an offshore server, I think it's no different than a dollar that ends up in an offshore account; it's province is in the USA regardless of digital shenanigans.
Now the DEBATABLE point is if the USA government security state should have the right to any and all data - and I'd say such a position does NOT serve the greater good.
But let's separate this nonsense of moving a digit offshore from what actually affects our lives. Our robber barons are living offshore and hiding their ill gotten gains -- and that means nothing to the people that they effect.
While there may be a lot of minorities over represented in the Penal system -- you get on the wrong end of the law and you are suddenly one of the minorities. If you go the route of contesting your guilt, you face higher penalties fines and punishment than if you just cop a plea. Being innocent is painful and expensive. How many people just say; "You are right, I'm a bad boy" because it was bankrupting them? Only people with means can afford to be innocent. It's easy to believe the system is fair as long as you never get on the wrong end of it. The accusation becomes the reputation which rationalizes the punishment.
I can't imagine if the Feds wanted to make an example with me, and their credibility were on the line. "Tipping the scales" because they want to make an arrest easy and 'get the bad guy' -- I can imagine that happens more often than not. There's a lot of financial and career pressure on enforcement -- and I'm sure to get cyber criminals and whistleblowers, regardless of merit, is even greater.
As someone said; it's probably got little to do with investigation, and more coercing people to give up associates who MIGHT be guilty, and then leaning on them until they get somewhere. Like the drug war, that friendly recreational drug dealer that supplied your party gets squeezed and their life ruined to get SOMEONE. I suspect intimidation and thuggery is more useful than detective work.
So, suffice to say, if your parents aren't totally politically connected and rich -- you aren't the precious white boy if you are a nerd in the cross hairs of the Fed or NSA. You are at least going to be collateral damage because Uncle Sam isn't spending a few billion on this agency not to have results. Again, just like the inquisition finding a witch -- it doesn't matter if you've actually consorted with Satan.
I'd like to mod this comment up even though that might make me seem like a terrorist.
Some of the best people I know seem to be on that list these days. Sounds like the Founding Fathers would fit in the same category.
I'd say all we need to do to find the Metal stars is to look for those that have their fusion output turned up to 11.