Re:The first 15 posts on this are things you cant
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What You Can't Say
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"For the reasons above, the racial 'minorites' of the US (such a stupid term that is, it does much to perpetuate racial tension all by its little lonesome - minorities, that is, not US =P)"
"Minority" is a stupid term?!?! WTF, it's an accurate term. It's so far from being predjudicial that it's mathematical! You're talking about certain racial groups in the US. You quote the word "minorities", which ought to mean you're calling attention to the fact that while this is what these groups are called, but not what they really are. But they really are in the minority. As in, the majority of people are in one racial group, and you're talking about the other ones.
Re:The first 15 posts on this are things you cant
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What You Can't Say
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"look at what the English did to Native Americans and later Africans, look at what the Spanish did to the Aztecs"
Look at what various Native Americans did to each other and what various Africans did (and are still doing) to each other. And when it comes to having commited atrocities, the Aztecs are hard to beat! You say my ancestors did terrible things? I say yup, almost certainly; pretty much everyones did. But let's assume for a moment that my great-great-grandfathers (all of them) spent their lives oppressing/torturing/enslaving your great-great-grandfathers who (along with every other ancestor of yours going back forever) were the sweetest most innocent people you could imagine. So what? How is that at all relevant to you and me? I am not my great-great-grandfather; I am not responsible for his actions, nor for those of any group he was part of. If I did something to you, you have cause for complaint. If some group you assign me membership in did something to some group you assign yourself membersip in, that's not my problem.
Re:The first 15 posts on this are things you cant
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What You Can't Say
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· Score: 1
"I know that blacks enslaved blacks. Africans enslaved other Africans, but not nearly in the same way Americans enslaved Africans"
The African slaves brought to America were originally enslaved by other Africans, so I'd have say they were enslaved in pretty much exactly the same way.
"I wouldn't put much stock in those moral beliefs."
You'd rather put stock in the moral beleifs of those who also practiced slavery, but never changed their minds? Nice plan.
Well, I agree with you that those negative societal features are correlated (I' even say caused by) extremely skewed wealth distribution. But I'd further argue that the lack of a healthy tax rate has something to do with that distribution. Taxes tend to spread wealth downward, as the rich pay more, but the benefits are (relatively) uniform. And taxes prevent wealth from being permanent; even once you've got it, you've got to do something to keep it (even if it's just "invest wisely"; an important societal function).
Maybe you could try rebutting my post instead of dismissing it as an idiotic religious rant.
OK
Christianity is based on the assumption of written facts and not faith alone.
You are assuming an idea is true. How exactly are you on firmer footing just because that idea is "This book is true"?
I acknowledged that Buddhism is an example of one that is not.
This statement is typical of people who firmly beleive one religion arguing that it is on firmer footing than some other. They generally don't bother to know much of anything about the other religion. Anyway, you are wrong; Buddhism has plenty of written material. This should get you started.
Well, density is relative. If neighbors windows must be considered before beginning a game of baseball, I declare it dense.
The areas I'm talking about is where basically all the land is covered by houses, their yards, and roads. It's less dense in people per area than apartment buildings, sure, and that's perhaps what people find attractive about it.
I'd save "low-density" for places which are mostly something non-residential (woods, farmland, etc.) with widely seperated residences. These can be nice places to live. You still have to drive everywhere, but you're not in a traffic jam the whole way, so the other advantages make it worth it.
What most might call "high-density" (e.g. New York), I'd call "super-ultra-mega-high-density". This can also be a nice place to live.
The areas I'm talking about should maybe be called "medium density", but it seems pretty high to me. But "medium density" comes in a few flavors. The one that I don't get the appeal of is "fairly big houses, on fairly small lots, and nothing else as far as the eye can see". This seems like the worst of both worlds to me. Another flavor of medium density is places like where I live now: fairly big houses, on fairly small lots, some small-to-medium office buildings, some shopping, a bit of light industry, and plenty of parks and other open spaces all jumbled together. Basically the way most small-to-medium towns are that have grown organically over a long period, as opposed to most "towns" that have been entirely built from nothing in the last few decades.
Everybody lives somewhere, works somewhere, shops somewhere, plays somewhere. Why segregate all thos activities into widely seperated areas accessible only by miles and miles of gridlocked highway.
As you can tell, I have no strong feelings on this...
The same was said aboud WordPerfect and Word back in 1994. It was predicted that secretaries where to used to wordperfect interface and key bindings and that they would never switch...
Ouch, bad memories. I was working help-desk in 1995 for a group of secretaries who were being forced to make exactly that switch. And that's exactly what was said, and it was true. They never did switch. We of the help desk, rather than get called every time they wanted to italicize something (no, really), set the preferences then available in Word that made all the keyboard shortcuts and some other things as much like WordPerfect as possible. Several years later, most of them still couldn't do anything that couldn't be done the WordPerfect way. The presence of those "act just like WordPerfect" options was the only reason productivity did not just entirely cease.
I suppose in most environments there's the implicit "to keep your job, learn the new software", but these were civil servants...
If you pay anyone $150k/year that you consider "easily replaceable", I'm not sure I'm willing to rely too heavily on your business sense.
While we're at it, if he's learning a new spreadsheet because you're paying him, he's not doing it on his own time; He's doing it because you're paying him, and he's not doing something else for you he could be otherwise. So, which costs more: the continued software licenses, or paying your employee to learn a new spreadsheet. That's your cost-benefit analysis. Take whatever rate you value that persons time at, estimate how much time it will take to learn the new system (at the presumably high level of competence he has with the old system) and balance that against the cost of the licenses. Seems to me it's going to take an awfully expensive license to justify not giving your 150k guy whatever system he already knows and loves.
This is why in most busineses I've dealt with (outside the mega-corp world) the procedure is: Hire the $150k/year guy, then ask him what he needs.
Three cheers for Remote Desktop. Any lousy box with internet access instantly becomes my rather nice (expensive) box at work, with all it's expensive software, fast access to files on the office LAN, no sycronization issues, etc.
I don't need to buy squat software wise for my home box because 90% of the time it's just a monitor (I did get a nice monitor).
"Think of them as keyboard shortcuts for the mouse"
But why do you want keyboard shortcuts for the mouse? That's the question that always comes to my mind when people say how much they like gestures. I could see it if you only have one hand. But for me, my left hand is just sitting there on the keyboard the whole time. I don't see the advantage of being able to say, copy, by wiggling the mouse in a particular pattern when I already can hit ctrl-c without concious thought. I guess some people like mouse gestures, but I don't get it besides the "cool because it's different" factor. So I'll have to vote "fad" until I hear any reason gestures with the mouse (which I may or may not have a hand on) are better than gestures with the left side of the keyboard.
Hey, is there a way to do that auto-magically? Everyone seems to use that italics style, but I don't see how to do it save typing in HTML, which I find a pain because I invariably screww it up slightly and then forget to hit "Preview".
"I'm not above average and I should be treated like everyone else. That being said, I'm still fully capable of driving properly while using my cell phone"
Statistical evidence indicates that the average person is not fully capable of driving properly while using a cell phone. But I'm sure the average person would, like you, assert that they are, much as the vast majority of people say they are above average drivers.
"They can make any crazy ass law about driving"
Going with the assumtion that alien invaders have not yet secretly taken over, WE can indeed make any crazy-ass law, or even any sane law, about driving.
"I dare anyone to live in Atlanta and say that they don't NEED to drive"
I'll take your word for it. I used to live in DC, and I certainly NEEDED to drive, even though driving near DC basically sucks. Then I realized I didn't NEED to live in DC. You need to drive because most American communities are designed on the assumption that everyone does drive, and will drive whenever they go anywhere. Hence suburban sprawl: Vast tracts of dense residential space with nowhere to work, shop or play for miles around. So people move there and then complain about the traffic. OK, I'll quit since I'm deep into rant mode now...
Truly beautiful. The Preview button would have told you you forgot to escape the tags, but that's typical. You also missed the rare chance to have Preview tell you you were wrong. You may now say "Doh!".
FWIW, your point is basically valid, but you're talking about <strong>, not <em>
Except it wasn't very difficult to assess at the time. Lots of people had assessed it and come up with more accurate numbers than the ones Columbus used.
I-90 always went to Boston. The upgrade is that it goes through to the airport. Perfect for people who are headed elsewhere. Most of the project (I-93 included) is about getting through Boston from North to South or vice versa. But really, most Intersate highways are mostly used by traffic that has one end (if not both) of it's trip in the state in question. Massachusetts helped pay for intersates all over the place. No one asked if an interstate in Florida was of any benefit to people in Mass.
No, the rest of the country did not pay for most of it. They paid for a tiny fraction of it.
See, way back at the begininng, this projects cost was woefully underestimated (~2.5 billion). The federal government (i.e. the rest of the country) committed to pay for a good chunk of that. The argument at the time was that this made sense because it was Massachustts share of the interstate highway money they had missed out on back when they were helping to pay for all of your highways (having largely already built their own at their own cost). Now you might say this argument was BS, and it was really just because the Speaker of the House was from Mass. And we could argue about it and conclude that it was probably some of each, or not conclude anything and just keep arguing. But this was 20 years ago, so it's probaly time to get over it.
Since then, (for reasons we could have all sorts of diverse arguments about) the actual cost of the project has turned out to be many many times that inital lousy estimate. (~15 billion)
So I suspect it's this much higher number you're really upset about having to pay. And if you live in Mass, perhaps you should be. If not, relax, because you didn't. The Feds(i.e. You) are still paying for what they commited to 20 years ago: A portion of the initial cost estimate, which is now a miniscule fraction of the projects actual cost.
"There are some things that benefit the rest of this nation, like major interstates, and I have no beef with that concept"
Right. And people from Massachusetts paid for their share of those without getting their share of those, so their senators and congressmen argued succesfully that they should get to use their share for the big dig (being largely an upgrade to interstate highways).
"What I DO have a beef with is the enormous cost of the Dig with apparently no accountability."
Since the cost overruns were borne by Massachusetts, not the federal government, your beef is noted, but not very relevant.
What, did you think Congreass passed a bill saying "We'll pay for the Big Dig. Please try to keep the costs on target, but we'll give you whatever you need." No, they passed a bill saying, "We'll give you X dollars toward this project." X wasn't the full (poorly estimated) amount to begin with, but when the costs went way over those estimates, Massachusetts ponied up the rest, as of course they should have.
This was a LOCAL project which received a fixed amount of FEDERAL dollars.
So if you live in Mass (particularly not near Boston) feel free to complain all you want about the cost expansion, otherwise do us a favor next time: Have a clue what you're talking about, and/or mind your own business, ok?
False. Almost 15 Billion for the entire project, of which the Ted Williams Tunnel (which I presume you're talking about since it's the most obvious tunnel involved) is only one part. Actually, that tunnel is possibly the most straight forward (i.e. cheapest per distance) part of the project.
It is another part of the project, the Fort Point Channel crossing that has a good claim to being the most expensive peice of roadway (per distance) in the world. It's one of the quick little tunnels on the way to the long one where you didn't know for sure if you were in a real tunnel. It was really expensive because, while going under a little water it had to simultaneously dodge a subway tunnel, and about half the major water/gas/electric/sewer/whatever lines coming into the city, without interupting any of them in the process.
Anyhow, the project is a lot more than a tunnel. It's a whole bunch of tunnels, a bridge, a bunch of highway, a gaggle of overpasses and interchanges, and what I'd consider the "main" part: the new depressed roadway for the central artery itself. See, you've got a fantastically congested elevated highway passing over a bunch of highly congested surface streets right through the midst of downtown in one of the oldest cities in the country (i.e. new things have been built and rebuilt on and under this ground about 5 bajillion times). And you want build a replacement highway underneath all this, without interupting traffic on either of the two levels above you, or messing up any of the other stuff already underground there. Good luck doing it cheap.
"A woeful example of a make-work program gone wrong...."
The cost and time overruns were indeed stupefying (though I'd put at least half of each down to over optomistic estimation, as opposed to waste/corruption/unforseen complexities). But by calling it a "make-work" project, you make one thing abundantly clear: you never drove Bostons central artery on a regular basis. The big dig was sorely needed. It was truly visonary of it's originators that they realized the only solution was to completely redesign how traffic should move through that corridor. My only complaint with the design is that they didn't include a rail link between North and South Station. (Which of course would have added some additional huge amount to the tab). Anyhow, make-work it was not; Boston was stangling under the inability of traffic to move through that corridor. At thanksgiving time, I drove from the south to the airport in the middle of the day without slowing to under 30mph, much less spending an hour trying to go the last few miles. An unheard of feat in my previous 20 years of living near or visiting Boston.
"Which (slightly OT) reminds me: has anyone here used an XML compression tool"
I've looked at a few, but frankly, haven't seen the point. Several generic compression types (e.g. zip) are based on finding sequences in the data (e.g. "<SomeTagName") that are repeated, and hence they do very well with XML. I had some really big XML doc that whatever zip compression lib I was using for other stuff, with default options got down to ~15%, while some XML-specific compressor, after a bit of configuration bought me another 1 or 2%. Didn't seem worth it. Naturally, YMMV.
Anyway, I love XML. When I need to have my code send data to someone, I can say "It's in XML, here's a sample", and our format discussion is (almost) over. If it's really a lot of data, I'd rather say, "It's XML, zip compressed." than explain whatever less widely adopted XML specific compressor I'm using.
As far as XML for Data Storage as opposed to interchange: There's a variety of arguments for or against XML for storage, but the big pro for me is this: For the interchange side, I've written code to send XML to somewhere or receive XML from somewhere. Now I can do something different for storage, or I can just define "somewhere" to be a file.
You do not need to wonder where the money goes. Federal, State, and local budgets are available to the public. People whining "Taxes are too high" bore or annoy me. Ask absolutely anyone "Would you like to pay more or less?" and you'll get the same answer. It is not particularly interesting to hear that you too would like to pay less. A more interesting question is "What do you get for your tax money that you don't think is worth it?" I'm sure you have some answers to that one. I'd guess I'll disagree with some of those answers, but at least I don't already know what they are.
Of course, your answer might be the same as the Bush administrations: "I want the government to expand like crazy and spend even more money, but lower taxes anyway."
Uh, no. The Iraq rebuilding money recently approved by Congress is a grant, not a loan. Iraq will not have to pay it back. So it is my money (About $400 per taxpayer, and that's just this go-round)
"I learned that Santos Dumont did the 1st self powered flight, like an airplane."
You were misinformed. I'm going to go out on a limb and guess you "learned" this somewhere in Brazil.
"The most that those Wright fellows did was to create the paraglide."
Uh, no. Their plane was in no sense a paraglider. It was, however, an airplane, in every sense that Santos Dumonts airplane 3 years later was.
"And that notion that the 1st manned flying device is Santos Dumont or Wright brothers is purely dependant on where you live."
The "notion" that the 1st manned flying device was flown by Santos Dumont certainly seems dependant on living in Brazil. The fact the Wright brothers acheived heavier than air powered flight before Santos Dumont is well established, and unaffected by whatever notions you may have.
"Anyway, I'd say both deserve the honor of being parents of the airplane. And it may include that Newzealandese fellow too."
That I would agree with. Except that people from New Zealand are generally called "Kiwis". I've no idea why.
Slashdot Mirror
"For the reasons above, the racial 'minorites' of the US (such a stupid term that is, it does much to perpetuate racial tension all by its little lonesome - minorities, that is, not US =P)"
"Minority" is a stupid term?!?! WTF, it's an accurate term. It's so far from being predjudicial that it's mathematical! You're talking about certain racial groups in the US. You quote the word "minorities", which ought to mean you're calling attention to the fact that while this is what these groups are called, but not what they really are. But they really are in the minority. As in, the majority of people are in one racial group, and you're talking about the other ones.
"look at what the English did to Native Americans and later Africans, look at what the Spanish did to the Aztecs"
Look at what various Native Americans did to each other and what various Africans did (and are still doing) to each other. And when it comes to having commited atrocities, the Aztecs are hard to beat!
You say my ancestors did terrible things? I say yup, almost certainly; pretty much everyones did.
But let's assume for a moment that my great-great-grandfathers (all of them) spent their lives oppressing/torturing/enslaving your great-great-grandfathers who (along with every other ancestor of yours going back forever) were the sweetest most innocent people you could imagine. So what? How is that at all relevant to you and me? I am not my great-great-grandfather; I am not responsible for his actions, nor for those of any group he was part of. If I did something to you, you have cause for complaint. If some group you assign me membership in did something to some group you assign yourself membersip in, that's not my problem.
"I know that blacks enslaved blacks. Africans enslaved other Africans, but not nearly in the same way Americans enslaved Africans"
The African slaves brought to America were originally enslaved by other Africans, so I'd have say they were enslaved in pretty much exactly the same way.
"I wouldn't put much stock in those moral beliefs."
You'd rather put stock in the moral beleifs of those who also practiced slavery, but never changed their minds? Nice plan.
Well, I agree with you that those negative societal features are correlated (I' even say caused by) extremely skewed wealth distribution. But I'd further argue that the lack of a healthy tax rate has something to do with that distribution. Taxes tend to spread wealth downward, as the rich pay more, but the benefits are (relatively) uniform. And taxes prevent wealth from being permanent; even once you've got it, you've got to do something to keep it (even if it's just "invest wisely"; an important societal function).
Anti-semitism, hate speach...
Didn't RTFA did you?
Maybe you could try rebutting my post instead of dismissing it as an idiotic religious rant.
OK
Christianity is based on the assumption of written facts and not faith alone.
You are assuming an idea is true. How exactly are you on firmer footing just because that idea is "This book is true"?
I acknowledged that Buddhism is an example of one that is not.
This statement is typical of people who firmly beleive one religion arguing that it is on firmer footing than some other. They generally don't bother to know much of anything about the other religion. Anyway, you are wrong; Buddhism has plenty of written material. This should get you started.
Well, density is relative. If neighbors windows must be considered before beginning a game of baseball, I declare it dense.
The areas I'm talking about is where basically all the land is covered by houses, their yards, and roads. It's less dense in people per area than apartment buildings, sure, and that's perhaps what people find attractive about it.
I'd save "low-density" for places which are mostly something non-residential (woods, farmland, etc.) with widely seperated residences. These can be nice places to live. You still have to drive everywhere, but you're not in a traffic jam the whole way, so the other advantages make it worth it.
What most might call "high-density" (e.g. New York), I'd call "super-ultra-mega-high-density". This can also be a nice place to live.
The areas I'm talking about should maybe be called "medium density", but it seems pretty high to me. But "medium density" comes in a few flavors. The one that I don't get the appeal of is "fairly big houses, on fairly small lots, and nothing else as far as the eye can see". This seems like the worst of both worlds to me. Another flavor of medium density is places like where I live now: fairly big houses, on fairly small lots, some small-to-medium office buildings, some shopping, a bit of light industry, and plenty of parks and other open spaces all jumbled together. Basically the way most small-to-medium towns are that have grown organically over a long period, as opposed to most "towns" that have been entirely built from nothing in the last few decades.
Everybody lives somewhere, works somewhere, shops somewhere, plays somewhere. Why segregate all thos activities into widely seperated areas accessible only by miles and miles of gridlocked highway.
As you can tell, I have no strong feelings on this...
The same was said aboud WordPerfect and Word back in 1994. It was predicted that secretaries where to used to wordperfect interface and key bindings and that they would never switch...
Ouch, bad memories. I was working help-desk in 1995 for a group of secretaries who were being forced to make exactly that switch. And that's exactly what was said, and it was true. They never did switch. We of the help desk, rather than get called every time they wanted to italicize something (no, really), set the preferences then available in Word that made all the keyboard shortcuts and some other things as much like WordPerfect as possible. Several years later, most of them still couldn't do anything that couldn't be done the WordPerfect way. The presence of those "act just like WordPerfect" options was the only reason productivity did not just entirely cease.
I suppose in most environments there's the implicit "to keep your job, learn the new software", but these were civil servants...
If you pay anyone $150k/year that you consider "easily replaceable", I'm not sure I'm willing to rely too heavily on your business sense.
While we're at it, if he's learning a new spreadsheet because you're paying him, he's not doing it on his own time; He's doing it because you're paying him, and he's not doing something else for you he could be otherwise. So, which costs more: the continued software licenses, or paying your employee to learn a new spreadsheet. That's your cost-benefit analysis. Take whatever rate you value that persons time at, estimate how much time it will take to learn the new system (at the presumably high level of competence he has with the old system) and balance that against the cost of the licenses. Seems to me it's going to take an awfully expensive license to justify not giving your 150k guy whatever system he already knows and loves.
This is why in most busineses I've dealt with (outside the mega-corp world) the procedure is: Hire the $150k/year guy, then ask him what he needs.
Three cheers for Remote Desktop. Any lousy box with internet access instantly becomes my rather nice (expensive) box at work, with all it's expensive software, fast access to files on the office LAN, no sycronization issues, etc.
I don't need to buy squat software wise for my home box because 90% of the time it's just a monitor (I did get a nice monitor).
"Think of them as keyboard shortcuts for the mouse"
But why do you want keyboard shortcuts for the mouse? That's the question that always comes to my mind when people say how much they like gestures. I could see it if you only have one hand. But for me, my left hand is just sitting there on the keyboard the whole time. I don't see the advantage of being able to say, copy, by wiggling the mouse in a particular pattern when I already can hit ctrl-c without concious thought. I guess some people like mouse gestures, but I don't get it besides the "cool because it's different" factor. So I'll have to vote "fad" until I hear any reason gestures with the mouse (which I may or may not have a hand on) are better than gestures with the left side of the keyboard.
Thanks.
Hey, is there a way to do that auto-magically? Everyone seems to use that italics style, but I don't see how to do it save typing in HTML, which I find a pain because I invariably screww it up slightly and then forget to hit "Preview".
"I'm not above average and I should be treated like everyone else. That being said, I'm still fully capable of driving properly while using my cell phone"
Statistical evidence indicates that the average person is not fully capable of driving properly while using a cell phone. But I'm sure the average person would, like you, assert that they are, much as the vast majority of people say they are above average drivers.
"They can make any crazy ass law about driving"
Going with the assumtion that alien invaders have not yet secretly taken over, WE can indeed make any crazy-ass law, or even any sane law, about driving.
"I dare anyone to live in Atlanta and say that they don't NEED to drive"
I'll take your word for it. I used to live in DC, and I certainly NEEDED to drive, even though driving near DC basically sucks. Then I realized I didn't NEED to live in DC. You need to drive because most American communities are designed on the assumption that everyone does drive, and will drive whenever they go anywhere. Hence suburban sprawl: Vast tracts of dense residential space with nowhere to work, shop or play for miles around. So people move there and then complain about the traffic. OK, I'll quit since I'm deep into rant mode now...
"In practice, and are identical "
Truly beautiful. The Preview button would have told you you forgot to escape the tags, but that's typical. You also missed the rare chance to have Preview tell you you were wrong. You may now say "Doh!".
FWIW, your point is basically valid, but you're talking about <strong>, not <em>
Except it wasn't very difficult to assess at the time. Lots of people had assessed it and come up with more accurate numbers than the ones Columbus used.
I-90 always went to Boston. The upgrade is that it goes through to the airport. Perfect for people who are headed elsewhere. Most of the project (I-93 included) is about getting through Boston from North to South or vice versa. But really, most Intersate highways are mostly used by traffic that has one end (if not both) of it's trip in the state in question. Massachusetts helped pay for intersates all over the place. No one asked if an interstate in Florida was of any benefit to people in Mass.
No, the rest of the country did not pay for most of it. They paid for a tiny fraction of it.
See, way back at the begininng, this projects cost was woefully underestimated (~2.5 billion). The federal government (i.e. the rest of the country) committed to pay for a good chunk of that. The argument at the time was that this made sense because it was Massachustts share of the interstate highway money they had missed out on back when they were helping to pay for all of your highways (having largely already built their own at their own cost). Now you might say this argument was BS, and it was really just because the Speaker of the House was from Mass. And we could argue about it and conclude that it was probably some of each, or not conclude anything and just keep arguing. But this was 20 years ago, so it's probaly time to get over it.
Since then, (for reasons we could have all sorts of diverse arguments about) the actual cost of the project has turned out to be many many times that inital lousy estimate. (~15 billion)
So I suspect it's this much higher number you're really upset about having to pay. And if you live in Mass, perhaps you should be. If not, relax, because you didn't. The Feds(i.e. You) are still paying for what they commited to 20 years ago: A portion of the initial cost estimate, which is now a miniscule fraction of the projects actual cost.
"There are some things that benefit the rest of this nation, like major interstates, and I have no beef with that concept"
Right. And people from Massachusetts paid for their share of those without getting their share of those, so their senators and congressmen argued succesfully that they should get to use their share for the big dig (being largely an upgrade to interstate highways).
"What I DO have a beef with is the enormous cost of the Dig with apparently no accountability."
Since the cost overruns were borne by Massachusetts, not the federal government, your beef is noted, but not very relevant.
What, did you think Congreass passed a bill saying "We'll pay for the Big Dig. Please try to keep the costs on target, but we'll give you whatever you need." No, they passed a bill saying, "We'll give you X dollars toward this project." X wasn't the full (poorly estimated) amount to begin with, but when the costs went way over those estimates, Massachusetts ponied up the rest, as of course they should have.
This was a LOCAL project which received a fixed amount of FEDERAL dollars.
So if you live in Mass (particularly not near Boston) feel free to complain all you want about the cost expansion, otherwise do us a favor next time: Have a clue what you're talking about, and/or mind your own business, ok?
"15 Billion for a tunnel."
False. Almost 15 Billion for the entire project, of which the Ted Williams Tunnel (which I presume you're talking about since it's the most obvious tunnel involved) is only one part. Actually, that tunnel is possibly the most straight forward (i.e. cheapest per distance) part of the project.
It is another part of the project, the Fort Point Channel crossing that has a good claim to being the most expensive peice of roadway (per distance) in the world. It's one of the quick little tunnels on the way to the long one where you didn't know for sure if you were in a real tunnel. It was really expensive because, while going under a little water it had to simultaneously dodge a subway tunnel, and about half the major water/gas/electric/sewer/whatever lines coming into the city, without interupting any of them in the process.
Anyhow, the project is a lot more than a tunnel. It's a whole bunch of tunnels, a bridge, a bunch of highway, a gaggle of overpasses and interchanges, and what I'd consider the "main" part: the new depressed roadway for the central artery itself. See, you've got a fantastically congested elevated highway passing over a bunch of highly congested surface streets right through the midst of downtown in one of the oldest cities in the country (i.e. new things have been built and rebuilt on and under this ground about 5 bajillion times). And you want build a replacement highway underneath all this, without interupting traffic on either of the two levels above you, or messing up any of the other stuff already underground there. Good luck doing it cheap.
"A woeful example of a make-work program gone wrong...."
The cost and time overruns were indeed stupefying (though I'd put at least half of each down to over optomistic estimation, as opposed to waste/corruption/unforseen complexities). But by calling it a "make-work" project, you make one thing abundantly clear: you never drove Bostons central artery on a regular basis. The big dig was sorely needed. It was truly visonary of it's originators that they realized the only solution was to completely redesign how traffic should move through that corridor. My only complaint with the design is that they didn't include a rail link between North and South Station. (Which of course would have added some additional huge amount to the tab). Anyhow, make-work it was not; Boston was stangling under the inability of traffic to move through that corridor. At thanksgiving time, I drove from the south to the airport in the middle of the day without slowing to under 30mph, much less spending an hour trying to go the last few miles. An unheard of feat in my previous 20 years of living near or visiting Boston.
"Which (slightly OT) reminds me: has anyone here used an XML compression tool"
I've looked at a few, but frankly, haven't seen the point. Several generic compression types (e.g. zip) are based on finding sequences in the data (e.g. "<SomeTagName") that are repeated, and hence they do very well with XML. I had some really big XML doc that whatever zip compression lib I was using for other stuff, with default options got down to ~15%, while some XML-specific compressor, after a bit of configuration bought me another 1 or 2%. Didn't seem worth it. Naturally, YMMV.
Anyway, I love XML. When I need to have my code send data to someone, I can say "It's in XML, here's a sample", and our format discussion is (almost) over. If it's really a lot of data, I'd rather say, "It's XML, zip compressed." than explain whatever less widely adopted XML specific compressor I'm using.
As far as XML for Data Storage as opposed to interchange: There's a variety of arguments for or against XML for storage, but the big pro for me is this: For the interchange side, I've written code to send XML to somewhere or receive XML from somewhere. Now I can do something different for storage, or I can just define "somewhere" to be a file.
"make one wonder where all the money goes"
You do not need to wonder where the money goes. Federal, State, and local budgets are available to the public. People whining "Taxes are too high" bore or annoy me. Ask absolutely anyone "Would you like to pay more or less?" and you'll get the same answer. It is not particularly interesting to hear that you too would like to pay less. A more interesting question is "What do you get for your tax money that you don't think is worth it?" I'm sure you have some answers to that one. I'd guess I'll disagree with some of those answers, but at least I don't already know what they are.
Of course, your answer might be the same as the Bush administrations: "I want the government to expand like crazy and spend even more money, but lower taxes anyway."
Uh, no. The Iraq rebuilding money recently approved by Congress is a grant, not a loan. Iraq will not have to pay it back. So it is my money (About $400 per taxpayer, and that's just this go-round)
95% of the Iraqis want us there while things get stabalized
That would be really encouraging, if you hadn't made it up.
If you bothered finding an actual poll you'd know 56% of Iraquis asked how much confidence they have in US forces said "None at all".
I think I shall assume the rest of your understanding of the situation in Iraq is equally valid.
"I learned that Santos Dumont did the 1st self powered flight, like an airplane."
You were misinformed. I'm going to go out on a limb and guess you "learned" this somewhere in Brazil.
"The most that those Wright fellows did was to create the paraglide."
Uh, no. Their plane was in no sense a paraglider. It was, however, an airplane, in every sense that Santos Dumonts airplane 3 years later was.
"And that notion that the 1st manned flying device is Santos Dumont or Wright brothers is purely dependant on where you live."
The "notion" that the 1st manned flying device was flown by Santos Dumont certainly seems dependant on living in Brazil. The fact the Wright brothers acheived heavier than air powered flight before Santos Dumont is well established, and unaffected by whatever notions you may have.
"Anyway, I'd say both deserve the honor of being parents of the airplane. And it may include that Newzealandese fellow too."
That I would agree with. Except that people from New Zealand are generally called "Kiwis". I've no idea why.