That's exactly what happened on flight 93, and those phone calls are a big part of the reason why that plane crashed in a field in Pennsylvania instead of wherever the terrorists intended to crash it (speculation is they were heading for the US Capitol).
All companies are theoretically like that, since stock prices are based on the net present value of future dividends. CEOs only started being short sighted when stock options encouraged them to fool the market into overvaluing the shares in the short run, at the expense of the long run value of the company -- but the long run didn't matter since the options would be cashed in long before then. So companies would do things like cut back too far on R&D -- hurting the company in the long run, but boosting short term profits and, because traders were assuming the increased profitability was permanent, boosting the stock price as well. Basically it was a way for CEOs to use their options to scam the shareholders.
No, it's not, although the difference is subtle. The original comment is referring to the fact that different government agencies had information and leads, prior to 9/11, about the attacks. It was known that there were people with no flight experience paying thousands of dollars to learn to fly commercial jets, and that these people weren't interested in learning how to take off or land. This aroused some suspicions but it wasn't followed up. There was the 20th hijacker who didn't participate in the attacks because he was in jail. But these (and other) leads were never followed up on. This doesn't mean "the government/George Bush knew about 9/11 and stood down". It means "the federal government is really big and the different agencies don't talk to each other." This is the analogy that the original commenter is trying to make: better discussion of security vulnerabilities would make it easier to fight those vulnerabilities. The original commenter ever said the US government carried out 9/11 or knew ahead of time that it would happen.
with the prevalence of myspace, many kids are threatening each other and bullying each other over the internet (i still dont see how cyber-bullying is possible, since you can always just "not go to that site", but whatever...). they get caught up in the "he said, she said" game, and say some very awful things. teachers are all advised not to have myspace pages or facebook pages, for if they post pictures of them at the beach, at the bar, or even at home, children can and will spin them so that the teacher somehow comes across in a bad light. and the kids are so resourceful that they dont even take into account what a teacher says about themselves. one of my wife's coworkers had a friend sign her "wall" or whatever in myspace, and the comment left made a reference to a stripper or stripping (something along the lines of "you looked like a stipper that night"), and the kids in her class saw the comment and started telling people around the school that one of the teachers was a stripper. of course, this made it all the way to the parents, and they began calling the school. the kids spun something that someone else said, not even what the teacher said. The social networking sites provide tools to deal with this. You just have to know how to use them. For the pictures at the beach or bar or whatever, the teachers need to be aware of how the picture might be used and just be real conservative about what they post. For the "wall" comments, Myspace has a setting where these comments don't appear on your page until you approve them. So if someone tries to post something you don't want on your page, you just reject the comment and no one ever sees it.
Teachers can have a myspace/facebook page with no problems, it just requires some common sense and basic knowledge of the site's settings. If you just throw something up without thinking, you're asking for problems.
I wonder what percent of ad clicks are either (a) misclicks or (b) stuff like punch the monkey or "do you like George Bush" or "Take the gay quiz and find out if you're gay" and other things that people click on for reasons having nothing to do with actually wanting to buy anything.
It works the other way around too -- people may not click on that Budweiser/Coke/Southwest Airlines ad, but it increases brand awareness so next time they're booking a flight or ordering at a restaurant or whatever they think of those brands.
Mod parent up. I've always figured this was the reason why ebay has a rule against excessive shipping charges -- it stops someone from selling superbowl tickets for 1 cent plus $5000 shipping to get around the final value fees.
As a buyer, all I care about is the total amount of money I have to pay to get the item. I couldn't care less how much of that total is considered "shipping". Ebay even lets you sort listings by total cost including shipping, so this doesn't even have to mess up the search results.
As a seller, I try to make the shipping charge as close as possible to actual cost, and if I underestimate shipping costs this is not a problem at all. I assume (perhaps naively) that the total of winning bid + shipping will be the same no matter what shipping charge I put up. Buyers seem to dislike high shipping charges, even though it theoretically shouldn't matter, so why not give the customer what they want?
Playing a video game, where they're actually interacting, thinking, solving puzzles, whatever, is far better than just sitting there passively staring at the screen. And if you get them a Wii, there's even an element of exercise to it.
What you're saying about football betting happens because, due to gambling laws, it's an inefficient market. If betting on football were as easy and free of juice as stock trading, wealthy investors could easily bet all the home underdogs and the market prices would be more correct. Because this isn't the case (having to physically travel to Nevada, 10% juice, online books existing in a legal gray area, etc.), the mistakes made by "squares" are able to affect the betting lines.
It makes a lot more sense if you think of it in terms of total number of trips and not total number of countries. Many major U.S. cities are located along the border (San Diego, Detroit, and Buffalo to name a few). Also, ever been on a cruise? It takes 2-3 hours to get everyone off one of those big cruise ships because of the need to get 2000 people through customs at once. This sounds like it could speed that process up.
It probably works like Amway. The vast majority of distributors never make enough money to pay for the starter kit/inventory/out of town seminars/etc and eventually quit. But, there's an endless supply of new suckers ready to try and be the next Amway millionaire, so Amway itself never dies.
So tax the private first class deliverers to pay for the USPS to deliver stuff to Alaska for 41 cents. You'll at least be introducing competition in the urban market and making that more efficient, even if the rural deliveries still have to be done by the government.
I'm not so sure about California to Alaska. San Francisco to Anchorage is 2000 miles as the crow flies and probably more like 2500 by train, so it's almost as far away as the East Coast. Alaska is sparsely populated (more people live in Toledo, Ohio than in Anchorage), so there might not be enough demand to justify building the infrastructure. Also, by flying you avoid two border crossings and you don't need a passport.
So I agree this would be great for traveling within the continental US, but flying will still be the fastest/easiest way to get to Alaska or Hawaii.
If you think these guys are trying to protect children or whatever, you're missing the point. The point of attacking Facebook and other such sites is to be seen on TV and the newspaper appearing to be concerned about "the children". This is because there are people that will vote for them based on this. Even if a politician is smart enough to know they're not accomplishing anything, they'll still do this because they want the appearance of "doing something." They're indifferent as to whether or not any substantive change actually occurs on Facebook -- in fact, they probably don't really want the problem to go away because if it did they wouldn't be able to trot the same issue out next election cycle.
1. You have access to a car anytime you want/need it, without the hassle and expense of owning a car. Could save a lot of money if you live close enough to work to walk or bike and only occasionally need a car.
2. Unlike trains, the "stations" could be at every corner, since all that would be needed is a few square feet and a card reader. Also, unlike trains, a station at every corner doesn't mean you have to stop at every corner all the way to your destination.
3. No unexpected huge repair bills -- maintenance and repairs are just part of the fee.
4. More space in your garage, since you don't have to own a car.
5. Parking is easy to find -- just go to a kiosk.
6. You don't have to pay for parking. Imagine driving one of these to the airport.
7. Drive into town, go out drinking, cab it back home without having to go back to retrieve your car the next day.
8. Any given car is in use a higher percentage of the time, so if everyone (or a large fraction of everyone) did this, we wouldn't have to devote nearly as much land to parking lots.
9. Need exercise? Walk to the grocery store, buy a cart full of groceries, drive back home. This also reduces gas usage/environmental impact by 50% compared to driving both ways.
10. Drive to work on a rainy morning. When the weather clears in the afternoon, walk back home.
11. If you get a flat tire, just call maintenance, then grab another car and keep going.
First, the IRS (federal government) doesn't collect sales tax, they collect income tax. If you spend $100 on concert tickets then sell them on ebay for $250, you're supposed to pay income tax on $150. If you only get $95 for the tickets, the IRS doesn't care (you made no income). Sales tax is only collected by cities and states, and they're the ones that would go after you if you don't pay. In California, you're supposed to declare your internet purchases on your state income tax forms, but no one does.
Also, in the USA stores don't pay sales tax when they buy things. So if Walmart buys a TV from their supplier for $60, no tax is paid. When they sell it to a customer for $79.99, the customer pays $87.99 (assuming 10% tax) and Walmart gives the $8 to the state and local governments. If someone shoplifts the TV or a clumsy employee drops it, no sales tax is owed. This can cause confusion at places like Costco -- if I buy a case of coke to drink at home, they collect sales tax. But, if I buy the same case of coke to sell at a convenience store, Costco collects no tax.
As for used cars, they collect the full sales tax. This is clearly double dipping on the part of the government since they already collected sales tax when the car was sold new. Every time the car changes hands, the government gets to collect sales tax again.
This isn't automatically stupid. I'm almost 30, and I use my real name on myspace. Old friends that I haven't seen in years have found me through myspace.
Of course, when I put stuff up on my profile, I do so knowing anyone (present/potential future employers, family members, potential dates, ANYONE) can find it.
If you wouldn't feel comfortable telling your mother about what you did last weekend, keep it off myspace. If you don't want the whole office to know what you did last weekend, keep it off myspace. If you don't want the police, IRS, etc. to know what you did last weekend, keep it off myspace. Or use a pseudonym, but this doesn't work if you share the pseudonym with anyone you know IRL (for reasons already mentioned).
And we have soo many Mexicans in this country already whats a few more? It'd be a lot cheaper to build our border fence at Panama then it is across the whole border with Mexico. There's a few countries between Mexico and Panama we'd have to annex first before that plan would work.
That shouldn't be a problem in a well designed system. Send the signals from a military satellite, and put the control room either somewhere classified, or in a location that's known but well secured (i.e. a military base).
"Vandalism" is not the opposite of "cold hard fact". Vandalism is basically any edit that deliberately makes Wikipedia worse (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:AntiVandalBot/FA Q). Your example is clearly vandalism. Replacing the article about Slashdot with a multiplication table would also be vandalism, even if the table is correct.
Slashdot Mirror
That's exactly what happened on flight 93, and those phone calls are a big part of the reason why that plane crashed in a field in Pennsylvania instead of wherever the terrorists intended to crash it (speculation is they were heading for the US Capitol).
All companies are theoretically like that, since stock prices are based on the net present value of future dividends. CEOs only started being short sighted when stock options encouraged them to fool the market into overvaluing the shares in the short run, at the expense of the long run value of the company -- but the long run didn't matter since the options would be cashed in long before then. So companies would do things like cut back too far on R&D -- hurting the company in the long run, but boosting short term profits and, because traders were assuming the increased profitability was permanent, boosting the stock price as well. Basically it was a way for CEOs to use their options to scam the shareholders.
No, it's not, although the difference is subtle. The original comment is referring to the fact that different government agencies had information and leads, prior to 9/11, about the attacks. It was known that there were people with no flight experience paying thousands of dollars to learn to fly commercial jets, and that these people weren't interested in learning how to take off or land. This aroused some suspicions but it wasn't followed up. There was the 20th hijacker who didn't participate in the attacks because he was in jail. But these (and other) leads were never followed up on. This doesn't mean "the government/George Bush knew about 9/11 and stood down". It means "the federal government is really big and the different agencies don't talk to each other." This is the analogy that the original commenter is trying to make: better discussion of security vulnerabilities would make it easier to fight those vulnerabilities. The original commenter ever said the US government carried out 9/11 or knew ahead of time that it would happen.
Teachers can have a myspace/facebook page with no problems, it just requires some common sense and basic knowledge of the site's settings. If you just throw something up without thinking, you're asking for problems.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Editcountitis
I wonder what percent of ad clicks are either (a) misclicks or (b) stuff like punch the monkey or "do you like George Bush" or "Take the gay quiz and find out if you're gay" and other things that people click on for reasons having nothing to do with actually wanting to buy anything.
It works the other way around too -- people may not click on that Budweiser/Coke/Southwest Airlines ad, but it increases brand awareness so next time they're booking a flight or ordering at a restaurant or whatever they think of those brands.
Mod parent up. I've always figured this was the reason why ebay has a rule against excessive shipping charges -- it stops someone from selling superbowl tickets for 1 cent plus $5000 shipping to get around the final value fees.
As a buyer, all I care about is the total amount of money I have to pay to get the item. I couldn't care less how much of that total is considered "shipping". Ebay even lets you sort listings by total cost including shipping, so this doesn't even have to mess up the search results.
As a seller, I try to make the shipping charge as close as possible to actual cost, and if I underestimate shipping costs this is not a problem at all. I assume (perhaps naively) that the total of winning bid + shipping will be the same no matter what shipping charge I put up. Buyers seem to dislike high shipping charges, even though it theoretically shouldn't matter, so why not give the customer what they want?
Playing a video game, where they're actually interacting, thinking, solving puzzles, whatever, is far better than just sitting there passively staring at the screen. And if you get them a Wii, there's even an element of exercise to it.
What you're saying about football betting happens because, due to gambling laws, it's an inefficient market. If betting on football were as easy and free of juice as stock trading, wealthy investors could easily bet all the home underdogs and the market prices would be more correct. Because this isn't the case (having to physically travel to Nevada, 10% juice, online books existing in a legal gray area, etc.), the mistakes made by "squares" are able to affect the betting lines.
What music monopoly?
It makes a lot more sense if you think of it in terms of total number of trips and not total number of countries. Many major U.S. cities are located along the border (San Diego, Detroit, and Buffalo to name a few). Also, ever been on a cruise? It takes 2-3 hours to get everyone off one of those big cruise ships because of the need to get 2000 people through customs at once. This sounds like it could speed that process up.
It probably works like Amway. The vast majority of distributors never make enough money to pay for the starter kit/inventory/out of town seminars/etc and eventually quit. But, there's an endless supply of new suckers ready to try and be the next Amway millionaire, so Amway itself never dies.
So tax the private first class deliverers to pay for the USPS to deliver stuff to Alaska for 41 cents. You'll at least be introducing competition in the urban market and making that more efficient, even if the rural deliveries still have to be done by the government.
Don't give them any ideas. An airplane seat is big enough (sort of) to use a laptop.
I'm not so sure about California to Alaska. San Francisco to Anchorage is 2000 miles as the crow flies and probably more like 2500 by train, so it's almost as far away as the East Coast. Alaska is sparsely populated (more people live in Toledo, Ohio than in Anchorage), so there might not be enough demand to justify building the infrastructure. Also, by flying you avoid two border crossings and you don't need a passport.
So I agree this would be great for traveling within the continental US, but flying will still be the fastest/easiest way to get to Alaska or Hawaii.
If you think these guys are trying to protect children or whatever, you're missing the point. The point of attacking Facebook and other such sites is to be seen on TV and the newspaper appearing to be concerned about "the children". This is because there are people that will vote for them based on this. Even if a politician is smart enough to know they're not accomplishing anything, they'll still do this because they want the appearance of "doing something." They're indifferent as to whether or not any substantive change actually occurs on Facebook -- in fact, they probably don't really want the problem to go away because if it did they wouldn't be able to trot the same issue out next election cycle.
1. You have access to a car anytime you want/need it, without the hassle and expense of owning a car. Could save a lot of money if you live close enough to work to walk or bike and only occasionally need a car.
2. Unlike trains, the "stations" could be at every corner, since all that would be needed is a few square feet and a card reader. Also, unlike trains, a station at every corner doesn't mean you have to stop at every corner all the way to your destination.
3. No unexpected huge repair bills -- maintenance and repairs are just part of the fee.
4. More space in your garage, since you don't have to own a car.
5. Parking is easy to find -- just go to a kiosk.
6. You don't have to pay for parking. Imagine driving one of these to the airport.
7. Drive into town, go out drinking, cab it back home without having to go back to retrieve your car the next day.
8. Any given car is in use a higher percentage of the time, so if everyone (or a large fraction of everyone) did this, we wouldn't have to devote nearly as much land to parking lots.
9. Need exercise? Walk to the grocery store, buy a cart full of groceries, drive back home. This also reduces gas usage/environmental impact by 50% compared to driving both ways.
10. Drive to work on a rainy morning. When the weather clears in the afternoon, walk back home.
11. If you get a flat tire, just call maintenance, then grab another car and keep going.
Al Qaeda operates on the same principle as Powerball -- people tend to overestimate probabilities that are very small but nonzero.
UK taxes must be very different from USA taxes.
First, the IRS (federal government) doesn't collect sales tax, they collect income tax. If you spend $100 on concert tickets then sell them on ebay for $250, you're supposed to pay income tax on $150. If you only get $95 for the tickets, the IRS doesn't care (you made no income). Sales tax is only collected by cities and states, and they're the ones that would go after you if you don't pay. In California, you're supposed to declare your internet purchases on your state income tax forms, but no one does.
Also, in the USA stores don't pay sales tax when they buy things. So if Walmart buys a TV from their supplier for $60, no tax is paid. When they sell it to a customer for $79.99, the customer pays $87.99 (assuming 10% tax) and Walmart gives the $8 to the state and local governments. If someone shoplifts the TV or a clumsy employee drops it, no sales tax is owed. This can cause confusion at places like Costco -- if I buy a case of coke to drink at home, they collect sales tax. But, if I buy the same case of coke to sell at a convenience store, Costco collects no tax.
As for used cars, they collect the full sales tax. This is clearly double dipping on the part of the government since they already collected sales tax when the car was sold new. Every time the car changes hands, the government gets to collect sales tax again.
Another example of the broken window(s) fallacy
This isn't automatically stupid. I'm almost 30, and I use my real name on myspace. Old friends that I haven't seen in years have found me through myspace.
Of course, when I put stuff up on my profile, I do so knowing anyone (present/potential future employers, family members, potential dates, ANYONE) can find it.
If you wouldn't feel comfortable telling your mother about what you did last weekend, keep it off myspace. If you don't want the whole office to know what you did last weekend, keep it off myspace. If you don't want the police, IRS, etc. to know what you did last weekend, keep it off myspace. Or use a pseudonym, but this doesn't work if you share the pseudonym with anyone you know IRL (for reasons already mentioned).
Have you ever actually ridden in a Prius? They're surprisingly roomy.
That shouldn't be a problem in a well designed system. Send the signals from a military satellite, and put the control room either somewhere classified, or in a location that's known but well secured (i.e. a military base).
"Vandalism" is not the opposite of "cold hard fact". Vandalism is basically any edit that deliberately makes Wikipedia worse (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:AntiVandalBot/FA Q). Your example is clearly vandalism. Replacing the article about Slashdot with a multiplication table would also be vandalism, even if the table is correct.