It won't fix it, it never does. The economy will recover eventually (at a much lower level) in spite of the Dem's bungling bailouts, not because of them. Soon now the mother of all bailouts will come when the Dems rescue California and then New York and then every other state (pretty Much all 50) that could use some of those federal dollars (your dollars and your children's dollars and their children's dollars and so on). You might say, "I don't care, I'm not rich so it won't effect me", but trying saying that again after you have been laid off and then again after six months when you are still unpemployed or undermployed. Its all internconected in our economy today and we will all be sharing an equal portion of much less in the years to come. The Japanese had a bad decade during the 1990s (and they never really recovered fully, even until today), it happened there and it could happen here too.
The Chinese did it and if anyone is centrally controlled and authoritarian then it is the Chinese. If they can organize groups of computer hackers in their armed forces and intelligence agencies then why can't we do the same?
If they invited Bruce Schneier to speak instead of a gaggle of Sci-Fi "movie plot" writers then they might actually learn a thing or two about homeland security AND it wouldn't be a complete waste of the taxpayer's money or the politician's time (the former being much more valuable than the later).
Except when they don't do that. It takes additional fuel to place a satellite into a higher parking orbit, fuel which could be used instead for a few more months of station keeping in the geostationary orbit. If a corporation is faced with a choice between a few more months of profitable operation OR being a good citizen then which do you think that they will choose?
I am convinced that these new scanners are nothing but another load of horseshit that some big contractor has sold the TSA. There was probably government pork and kick-backs galore, somebody got rich, and Americans (and our ailing airline industry) got screwed again.
Welcome to the new era of big government control and big government spending. This is why I chuckle every time I hear President Obama talk about how wonderful everything will be once the government starts picking the winners and losers in our economy and spending all of our income on "national priorities" like alternative fuels, high speed trains, loans to the politically favored, etc. If it is all run anything like the TSA (and there is no reason to expect that it will be managed any better) then most Americans are setting themselves up for a rude awakening 10 years down the road when, once again, socialism and massive government spending programs fail to deliver on their lofty promises of prosperity. People who think that government is the answer should take another look at the TSA; that should tell them all that they need to know about "government efficiency".
The completion of a BSCS in two years would be very difficult in the UC system here in California, no matter how smart one was, simply because courses required for the degree, which amount to ~250 units or so, are not all offered at the right times and in the order necessary to complete the degree in time. For example, some courses are only offered once or twice per year and others, particularly the upper division tracts, have pre-requisites which must be satisfied (although they might be waved for a particularly bright student who is obviously competent). It would also probably involve taking certain tracts simply because they were available within the time allowed rather than out of interest (there were multiple optional tracts in the upper division, but at least some combination of them had to be completed for the degree). For example, one might have to opt for the programming languages and compilers tract rather than the AI tract because one was available while the other would not be offered again within the next 6 months. Obviously it is possible at some schools, but probably not without special arrangements or exceptions.
I would like someone with large amounts of experience, who knows all the tricks of the trade, and who knows how the RIAA fights.
Ordinarily that would probably be true. However, in this particular case the large amount of legal decisions and materials gathered on blogs, such as Recording Industry vs The People, and the reams of semi-expert and amateur technical commentary make the job much easier and less obscure than it might otherwise be. Also, a large number of third parties, on both sides, are very interested in the outcome of these RIAA cases in general and RIAA vs Thomas case in particular. This means that the ac briefs, legal arguments, and expert testimony (well, the non-RIAA "expert" testimony anyway) are likely to be accurate and of high quality. Jammie Thomas has a much better chance with the notoriety and publicity than she would if the case was argued in obscurity as just another lawsuit.
And of course, AC was optional and the top MPG would only be obtained without it.
If one had to make a drive through Arizona in that bucket with the windows up to maximize fuel economy then the AC wouldn't really be optional would it?
But just because they disappeared, it does not mean the need for large cars disappeared.
They haven't entirely disappeared, I still see the occaisonal Buick Roadmaster or even the old 70s era land battleships now and again. Just think of how hip and stylish your family could be in their vintage Country Squire.
But I'm always afraid of well-intentioned things like this coming back to bite us in the butt.
The issue will come to a head, just as it did in the original debates over CAFE when it ends in a showdown between increased fuel economy OR the safety (or lack thereof) of little johnny in the family car.
What about F = MA? Doesn't anyone else remember that from high school physics? Any passenger vehicle can have crumple zones, airbags, a monocoque construction, reinforced passenger compartment, etc...so all other things being equal a less massive car, of the type that would enjoy better fuel economy, must be prepared to absorb MORE of the total energy in a collision with a more massive vehicle. This means that for an equal level of technology and equipment the more massive vehicle in the same class (i.e. not the SUV vs the sedan) will always have a safety advantage since it will have to absorb less energy in the impact with the less massive vehicle.
I'm not sure what a better system would look like, but sometimes I wish someone would invent it already.
The better system would be if everyone minded their own damn business and quit intruding themselves into the private affairs of their neighbors. People should be more careful when they consider using the power of the state to breach the privacy of individual citizens, lest that power be in turn used against them as well. The United States used to be a country were the private affairs of the citizens were respected, but unfortunately we have moved away from the wisdom of our founders in exchange for glue beads, snake oil, and false promises.
Unfortunately, the local staff would often order out for food, and have it delivered.
So you have a choice between stale crackers and ration bars stashed there by civil defense in 1959 OR you could order a pizza and have it delivered. Which one would you choose?
The notion that organized labor created and maintained the middle class and that without organized labor there would be no middle class is a common misconception that is often perpetuated by those who support organized labor. However, like most common knowledge it mostly isn't true or at least it isn't the primary cause. The middle class in the United States and Europe was not the result of organized labor so much as it was the result of rising productivity and standards of living that accompany increased production per capita. When considering standards of living it is not enough to look at just income, one must consider the whole of the society and the benefits of living in it. For example, even the poor in the United States and Europe are much better off than their counterparts in the third world. For additional edification might I suggest the following video? A bit dated perhaps (1980s) but still relevant to the issue of organized labor and its vaunted associations with "the middle class" (I remind you that many of the middle class are NOT union members in 2009 and not all of us are drowning in debt).
The rootkit fiasco was the final straw for me as well, although I was never a very big customer for sony, having purchased only a handful of their products and nothing recently. I am not sure exactly what it would take for sony to offer a fitting penance for their sins, but I think that it must start with a renunciation of DRM, respect for open standards, and more reasonable prices. They got used to charging premium prices when they had stronger franchises in the electronics business and they have been reluctant to dispense with this practice even as their competitors have caught up to and surpassed them in quality, features, and value. Their products are mostly not worth paying a "premium" price for anymore and sony has to show some humility and accept that by pricing their products accordingly and more in line with their competitors. Howard Stringer may be the right guy to turn sony around (the most recent quarter wasn't so great Howard), but he definitely has his work cut out for him. I haven't seen anything since he took over in 2005 that would change my mind about sony and frankly, I don't expect to.
If people in businesses like IT, finance, etc and can telecommute effectively that would also be a huge step
Telecommuting is being killed by MBAs and other ignorant management types who are able to judge effectiveness only by who shows up at 8:00 am and sits in their cubicle all day looking busy. The problem IMHO is that MBAs and other business majors are taught that just about everything in a modern business, and especially with the right technology, can be precisely measured and controlled. Unfortunately, the real world is rarely so precise and it takes the sort of creative thinking and problem solving skills that are rarely found in recent MBA graduates to appreciate that and act accordingly. Finally, when a telecommunications company, such as AT&T, kills their telecommuting programs what sort of signal does that send to the rest of the corporate world?
Color me ignorant, but what exactly does Adblock do that Noscript doesn't
It is possible that a website will serve ads off of their local server too in addition to the usual suspects (i.e. the well known ad servers). In such cases AdBlock employs regular expression like rules to further identify and eliminate advertising content. NoScript blocks entire scripts on a per domain basis whereas AdBlock can be adjusted to target just the ads. In the case of an ad server there is really no difference between blocking scripts from the whole domain or just blocking the ads, but this is not always the case with scripts from domains which are not primarily about serving ads.
Should they perhaps run in conjunction for best results?
Defense in depth is never a bad idea. For example, I also run Flashblock, in addition to NoScript, so that if I want to watch some flash content in a domain but not all of it then I can allow the script in NoScript and then select with a fine degree of granularity exactly which flash objects I want to allow. I like to customize my browsing experience and Firefox + Addons allows me to do that.
Depending upon where the gp lives he might not be uncomfortable with it at all. When I was last in San Francisco I saw a lot of "interesting" people walking around, so many in fact that none of the locals were pointing or staring but merely going about their own business as if nothing was out of the ordinary. So it seems that normal is a relative notion depending upon who you are and where and when you live.
Which contains only copies of your book, but which you pause to scan, for effect, before selecting at random an individual copy and exclaiming, "ah, here it is" and presenting it to your interlocutor along with an invoice.
99% of what we do on the web happens instantly (if you have a low latency connection) on all browsers if we stop the ads from loading.
Although I count myself among the AdBlock + NoScript users, a big part of the slow page loads with ads are the completely under-powered and over-subscribed servers employed by the Ad serving companies because they are too cheap to upgrade and pay for bandwidth. In effect, they are burning out the clutch trying to tow an 18-wheeler with a Honda civic and a make-shift trailer hookup. To all of the advertisers out there: stop being a bunch of cheapskates and get the bandwidth and server muscle that you need in order to meet the demands on your ad severs.
BTW: I have personally introduced dozens of my non-tech friends to AdBlock and they are completely stunned by the speedup that comes from dumping ads. It is like night and day and once their eyes are opened they will never be go back. AdBlock is the next killer app waiting in the wings; the advertisers should think about that when they waste our time with slow servers and annoying interstitial ads that go dancing around the screen and shouting about some product that 99.999% of people couldn't give two shits about. The more annoying and difficult they make ads, the more incentive people have to try and find a "solution" and any Google search concerning a "solution" to ads is bound to turn up AdBlock.
Slashdot Mirror
It won't fix it, it never does. The economy will recover eventually (at a much lower level) in spite of the Dem's bungling bailouts, not because of them. Soon now the mother of all bailouts will come when the Dems rescue California and then New York and then every other state (pretty Much all 50) that could use some of those federal dollars (your dollars and your children's dollars and their children's dollars and so on). You might say, "I don't care, I'm not rich so it won't effect me", but trying saying that again after you have been laid off and then again after six months when you are still unpemployed or undermployed. Its all internconected in our economy today and we will all be sharing an equal portion of much less in the years to come. The Japanese had a bad decade during the 1990s (and they never really recovered fully, even until today), it happened there and it could happen here too.
The Chinese did it and if anyone is centrally controlled and authoritarian then it is the Chinese. If they can organize groups of computer hackers in their armed forces and intelligence agencies then why can't we do the same?
If they invited Bruce Schneier to speak instead of a gaggle of Sci-Fi "movie plot" writers then they might actually learn a thing or two about homeland security AND it wouldn't be a complete waste of the taxpayer's money or the politician's time (the former being much more valuable than the later).
Your tax dollars at work.
If you think that's bad then hang on because before before the Dems are through there will be a whole lot more of your tax dollars "at work".
Except when they don't do that. It takes additional fuel to place a satellite into a higher parking orbit, fuel which could be used instead for a few more months of station keeping in the geostationary orbit. If a corporation is faced with a choice between a few more months of profitable operation OR being a good citizen then which do you think that they will choose?
Or as Richard Stallman says, "Don't buy from ATI, enemy of your freedom"...
I am convinced that these new scanners are nothing but another load of horseshit that some big contractor has sold the TSA. There was probably government pork and kick-backs galore, somebody got rich, and Americans (and our ailing airline industry) got screwed again.
Welcome to the new era of big government control and big government spending. This is why I chuckle every time I hear President Obama talk about how wonderful everything will be once the government starts picking the winners and losers in our economy and spending all of our income on "national priorities" like alternative fuels, high speed trains, loans to the politically favored, etc. If it is all run anything like the TSA (and there is no reason to expect that it will be managed any better) then most Americans are setting themselves up for a rude awakening 10 years down the road when, once again, socialism and massive government spending programs fail to deliver on their lofty promises of prosperity. People who think that government is the answer should take another look at the TSA; that should tell them all that they need to know about "government efficiency".
The completion of a BSCS in two years would be very difficult in the UC system here in California, no matter how smart one was, simply because courses required for the degree, which amount to ~250 units or so, are not all offered at the right times and in the order necessary to complete the degree in time. For example, some courses are only offered once or twice per year and others, particularly the upper division tracts, have pre-requisites which must be satisfied (although they might be waved for a particularly bright student who is obviously competent). It would also probably involve taking certain tracts simply because they were available within the time allowed rather than out of interest (there were multiple optional tracts in the upper division, but at least some combination of them had to be completed for the degree). For example, one might have to opt for the programming languages and compilers tract rather than the AI tract because one was available while the other would not be offered again within the next 6 months. Obviously it is possible at some schools, but probably not without special arrangements or exceptions.
I would like someone with large amounts of experience, who knows all the tricks of the trade, and who knows how the RIAA fights.
Ordinarily that would probably be true. However, in this particular case the large amount of legal decisions and materials gathered on blogs, such as Recording Industry vs The People, and the reams of semi-expert and amateur technical commentary make the job much easier and less obscure than it might otherwise be. Also, a large number of third parties, on both sides, are very interested in the outcome of these RIAA cases in general and RIAA vs Thomas case in particular. This means that the ac briefs, legal arguments, and expert testimony (well, the non-RIAA "expert" testimony anyway) are likely to be accurate and of high quality. Jammie Thomas has a much better chance with the notoriety and publicity than she would if the case was argued in obscurity as just another lawsuit.
I have to put the seat back further than normal or my head rubs on the ceiling
What about using a ball-peen hammer to dent the ceiling out enough so that your head doesn't rub?
And of course, AC was optional and the top MPG would only be obtained without it.
If one had to make a drive through Arizona in that bucket with the windows up to maximize fuel economy then the AC wouldn't really be optional would it?
But just because they disappeared, it does not mean the need for large cars disappeared.
They haven't entirely disappeared, I still see the occaisonal Buick Roadmaster or even the old 70s era land battleships now and again. Just think of how hip and stylish your family could be in their vintage Country Squire.
But I'm always afraid of well-intentioned things like this coming back to bite us in the butt.
The issue will come to a head, just as it did in the original debates over CAFE when it ends in a showdown between increased fuel economy OR the safety (or lack thereof) of little johnny in the family car.
What about F = MA? Doesn't anyone else remember that from high school physics? Any passenger vehicle can have crumple zones, airbags, a monocoque construction, reinforced passenger compartment, etc...so all other things being equal a less massive car, of the type that would enjoy better fuel economy, must be prepared to absorb MORE of the total energy in a collision with a more massive vehicle. This means that for an equal level of technology and equipment the more massive vehicle in the same class (i.e. not the SUV vs the sedan) will always have a safety advantage since it will have to absorb less energy in the impact with the less massive vehicle.
Just remember to drink the coke first!
Not a problem if you don't mind sticky floor mats.
I'm not sure what a better system would look like, but sometimes I wish someone would invent it already.
The better system would be if everyone minded their own damn business and quit intruding themselves into the private affairs of their neighbors. People should be more careful when they consider using the power of the state to breach the privacy of individual citizens, lest that power be in turn used against them as well. The United States used to be a country were the private affairs of the citizens were respected, but unfortunately we have moved away from the wisdom of our founders in exchange for glue beads, snake oil, and false promises.
Seriously, that is what I do. I use these ones from AOSafety.
Unfortunately, the local staff would often order out for food, and have it delivered.
So you have a choice between stale crackers and ration bars stashed there by civil defense in 1959 OR you could order a pizza and have it delivered. Which one would you choose?
A higher quality version is available on Google Video.
The notion that organized labor created and maintained the middle class and that without organized labor there would be no middle class is a common misconception that is often perpetuated by those who support organized labor. However, like most common knowledge it mostly isn't true or at least it isn't the primary cause. The middle class in the United States and Europe was not the result of organized labor so much as it was the result of rising productivity and standards of living that accompany increased production per capita. When considering standards of living it is not enough to look at just income, one must consider the whole of the society and the benefits of living in it. For example, even the poor in the United States and Europe are much better off than their counterparts in the third world. For additional edification might I suggest the following video? A bit dated perhaps (1980s) but still relevant to the issue of organized labor and its vaunted associations with "the middle class" (I remind you that many of the middle class are NOT union members in 2009 and not all of us are drowning in debt).
The rootkit fiasco was the final straw for me as well, although I was never a very big customer for sony, having purchased only a handful of their products and nothing recently. I am not sure exactly what it would take for sony to offer a fitting penance for their sins, but I think that it must start with a renunciation of DRM, respect for open standards, and more reasonable prices. They got used to charging premium prices when they had stronger franchises in the electronics business and they have been reluctant to dispense with this practice even as their competitors have caught up to and surpassed them in quality, features, and value. Their products are mostly not worth paying a "premium" price for anymore and sony has to show some humility and accept that by pricing their products accordingly and more in line with their competitors. Howard Stringer may be the right guy to turn sony around (the most recent quarter wasn't so great Howard), but he definitely has his work cut out for him. I haven't seen anything since he took over in 2005 that would change my mind about sony and frankly, I don't expect to.
If people in businesses like IT, finance, etc and can telecommute effectively that would also be a huge step
Telecommuting is being killed by MBAs and other ignorant management types who are able to judge effectiveness only by who shows up at 8:00 am and sits in their cubicle all day looking busy. The problem IMHO is that MBAs and other business majors are taught that just about everything in a modern business, and especially with the right technology, can be precisely measured and controlled. Unfortunately, the real world is rarely so precise and it takes the sort of creative thinking and problem solving skills that are rarely found in recent MBA graduates to appreciate that and act accordingly. Finally, when a telecommunications company, such as AT&T, kills their telecommuting programs what sort of signal does that send to the rest of the corporate world?
Color me ignorant, but what exactly does Adblock do that Noscript doesn't
It is possible that a website will serve ads off of their local server too in addition to the usual suspects (i.e. the well known ad servers). In such cases AdBlock employs regular expression like rules to further identify and eliminate advertising content. NoScript blocks entire scripts on a per domain basis whereas AdBlock can be adjusted to target just the ads. In the case of an ad server there is really no difference between blocking scripts from the whole domain or just blocking the ads, but this is not always the case with scripts from domains which are not primarily about serving ads.
Should they perhaps run in conjunction for best results?
Defense in depth is never a bad idea. For example, I also run Flashblock, in addition to NoScript, so that if I want to watch some flash content in a domain but not all of it then I can allow the script in NoScript and then select with a fine degree of granularity exactly which flash objects I want to allow. I like to customize my browsing experience and Firefox + Addons allows me to do that.
Depending upon where the gp lives he might not be uncomfortable with it at all. When I was last in San Francisco I saw a lot of "interesting" people walking around, so many in fact that none of the locals were pointing or staring but merely going about their own business as if nothing was out of the ordinary. So it seems that normal is a relative notion depending upon who you are and where and when you live.
and then smugly pulling the book from your shelf.
Which contains only copies of your book, but which you pause to scan, for effect, before selecting at random an individual copy and exclaiming, "ah, here it is" and presenting it to your interlocutor along with an invoice.
99% of what we do on the web happens instantly (if you have a low latency connection) on all browsers if we stop the ads from loading.
Although I count myself among the AdBlock + NoScript users, a big part of the slow page loads with ads are the completely under-powered and over-subscribed servers employed by the Ad serving companies because they are too cheap to upgrade and pay for bandwidth. In effect, they are burning out the clutch trying to tow an 18-wheeler with a Honda civic and a make-shift trailer hookup. To all of the advertisers out there: stop being a bunch of cheapskates and get the bandwidth and server muscle that you need in order to meet the demands on your ad severs.
BTW: I have personally introduced dozens of my non-tech friends to AdBlock and they are completely stunned by the speedup that comes from dumping ads. It is like night and day and once their eyes are opened they will never be go back. AdBlock is the next killer app waiting in the wings; the advertisers should think about that when they waste our time with slow servers and annoying interstitial ads that go dancing around the screen and shouting about some product that 99.999% of people couldn't give two shits about. The more annoying and difficult they make ads, the more incentive people have to try and find a "solution" and any Google search concerning a "solution" to ads is bound to turn up AdBlock.