2) Guided test drive, let people use Vista, but be shown a few things.
What like someone telling you what to click? Oh man, I'm sure THAT'S going to go just as well as every other time I've tried to direct someone at a computer:
"Ok now click on the Start menu. That's how we 'start' things, heh. Now go to Programs. Programs. It's at the top"
*User leaves the Start menu and clicks on 'My Computer'*
"No, at the top of the Start Menu, go back and click on it. No it's in the same place it was a second ago. The green button... Yes! Now Programs... Yes! Then Microsoft Office... and Word.. Good! And.. Oh, don't register it just click cancel. No I don't know what the normal template is either, but I guess it's corrupted. Yes just use defaults. Click OK... 'OK'... To the left...."
Vaccines are preventative treatment and a HUGE profit line when made mandatory.
Yes! It's a 'profit' to society! It's a 'profit' to individuals! Preventing disease is a GOOD THING!
Tell me...do you think they would make more money giving everyone the MMR vaccine or just curing those that catch it. I realize that there are benefits like preventing the spread by vaccination, but the dollar value is MUCH higher in vaccinations.
Wikipedia lists the possible complications to mumps as the following:
Known complications of mumps include:
Infection of other organ systems
Sterility in men (this is quite rare, and mostly occurs in older men)
Mild forms of meningitis (rare, 40% of cases occur without parotid swelling)
Encephalitis (very rare, rarely fatal)
Profound (91 dB or more) but rare sensorineural hearing loss, uni- or bilateral
Pancreatitis manifesting as abdominal pain and vomiting
Oophoritis (inflammation of ovaries) but fertility is rarely affected.
Though rare, spontaneous abortion can occur if infection happens in the first trimester of pregnancy.
So tell me: who benefits the most by avoiding these problems - the drug company or the person who will never get mumps? True you may never have the complications but why take the chance? To deny a dollar to the drug companies? I hope that's a sufficient moral victory for you to tolerate the cost of that decision. This isn't a case of 'I'd rather not have mumps' in the same way 'I'd rather not eat asparagus', it's 'I'd rather not be sterile' or 'I'd rather not have a spontaneous abortion' or even just 'I'd rather not go through the pain and suffering of disease if I don't have to'.
Which do you think is worth more money, AIDS treatment or a cure for AIDS? Then go look at who is really dumping money and research into AIDS treatment vs AIDS cures. Look who is making leaps and bounds in research involving things like stem cells to combat AIDS vs those who are suing third world countries for violating their intellectual property rights by making generic AIDS treatment so that the poor can afford it.
Wait, now the drug companies just want to treat diseases ineffectively for the rest of our lives? But the vaccine will prevent me from ever getting it at all and the drug companies made that. Why would they do that when they could 'dump all of their money' into making an ineffective treatment for mumps and keep us ALL on the drug for the rest of our lives? Your arguments don't hold up very well.
I believe I saw an addon program that lets your computer act as a DLNA server (uPNP streaming media server) that the Popcorn Hour will find. The program allows the streaming of Netflix movies with a proper account, etc. It might also have done Hulu. I agree that those are becoming very important, but remember the Popcorn Hour is Linux-based, so people will be hacking it completely.
As a side note does anyone know if this thing is legit? I know it's biased but the place that makes them seems to be a mainland chinese company and they have the reputation of sometimes copying designs, adding a few features and selling them. While it's a great box I wouldn't be surprised to hear it's a WDTV core with some software additions (AFAIK, both use the same processor and decoding hardware, but lots of boxes do nowadays so it's kind of a wash).
This is what I don't understand. How is it better to believe in a lie that you know isn't true?
[I'm fairly convinced that all religious people know, in their deepest, darkest, secret place that most will never admit, they know that the God and the bible is a bunch of nonsense. But the idea frightens them to their core.]
I think your idea of religion is.. misguided. No sane person continues to 'believe' or even professes to believe in something they were certain is a lie - at least not for very long. Even most atheists I know are content to say that the existence of God can't be proved (and they place their value in things other than 'faith' so they don't practice religion) and most religious people I know aren't attempting to 'prove' the existence of God (proofs are out of fashion, and in any case people of religious persuasion place value on 'faith' so it works out for them that it can't be proved). There's enough room for comfortable uncertainty and that's sufficient for most people - atheist and religious alike. Saying that religious people 'know' that God is a 'lie' casts us all in a very unflattering light and is moreover untrue.
And speaking as a Christian I must say that there are times I doubt and yes it scares the beJesus out of me! (bad pun, sorry) I hope no one would lie about that No one who is human could keep from having doubt creep into his or her mind from time to time and most sensible religions I know accept it and sometimes even celebrate it. A good crisis of faith allows us to find deeper answers and return to God with a renewed appreciation of our religion. Or not, whichever.
In any case it's laughably easy to turn your arguments against you. The arguments are almost trite at this point: 1) Atheists don't disbelieve in God, they just hate Him (Her, It, Them), 2) They KNOW God exists and He (Her, It, They, Shim?) is angry at them for denying it, 3) They're terrified of going to Hell, which is where they're destined for (damn disbelievers!)
Of course, I don't presume to tell you what's in your heart, so please don't presume to tell me what's in mine.
BS. Seriously. We buy new cars anyway, so why NOT more efficient ones? Besides, if everyone drove dramatically more efficient vehicles it ALSO mean reducing (or eliminating) our trade deficit in oil. How does THAT trash the economy?
Cripes... people really annoy me sometimes. Do you really think YOUR CAR is the problem? YES - you can buy a fuel efficient car. YES - if everyone did that it would help. Would it help enough? Probably not.
Let's think about this: say people drive 60 miles a day average, there are 200 million drivers and the average MPG is 15MPG. That means every day 800 million gallons of gas are used. Now *POOF* it's magically 30MPG. Usage is at 400 million gallons per day. *POOF* Magic again and we're at 60MPG, and we're using 200 million.
How much of an improvement is that? That's not even an order of magnitude. I'd have to poof a couple more times to get that. And that figures that people don't drive more, no more net people drive, etc. Buy as efficient of a car as you want - the improvements in actual fuel consumption tail off after a bit (and I'm not even saying ANY of these magical gains are remotely realistic in any quick timeframe).
You know where the REAL energy is used? Aircraft? Nope. Your house? Getting closer. Factories? Heavy industry? Construction? Yes! That's where it is! Your personal energy consumption is peanuts compared to the energy that goes into the manufactured goods, materials, mining of raw materials, etc that supports your lifestyle. If you want to get rid of carbon emissions get rid of them at the major source - heavy industry.
But how? As I showed with the above example increasing efficiency tails off after a bit. I'm all for it but let's face it: No matter how much you optimize your power usage if you're still drawing power from a carbon emitting source (coal plant). And as far as we know the CO2 linearly affects our environment. We'll be killing ourselves to double our efficiency while still only linearly cutting our CO2 emissions.
Bottom line: we need a carbon-free source of cheap energy. Then we don't need to worry about how much power we use because it will cost nothing and won't hurt the environment.
Oh my God you are so full of crap. No one is saying that building schools won't employ people. What is being said is, "what happens to those jobs when the schools built?" These are not permanent jobs.
Also, building schools is not what Republicans object to. It's the millions to birth control programs. How does giving out condoms provide jobs?
I agree totally. The only hope for the short-term jobs is that they may keep people from starving and that by keeping people in the economy it will help to prevent a further slip and provide a bridge until the economy 'really' comes back. I'm no economist so I don't know how much of this is hope and how much of this is theory. As for the condoms... I don't have a good answer. The focus of the bill is the economy, and while providing condoms/birth control is good in the long term (less excess population, less disease) I fail to see how spending this money now will produce a return in the economy in the short term. Now I'm free to disagree with you:)
How is money to Amtrak going to produce jobs?
Part of this effort has been characterized as an investment in infrastructure (of which Amtrak and rail in general is a part). In fact I argue it's a very decent part of our infrastructure that replaces more expensive options (planes for short trips for instance), and that cost-savings is one of the benefits of infrastructure improvements. Save a little bit of money everywhere.
Bush, Obama, Democrat, Republican - it doesn't matter. Everyone, EVERYONE has been predicating their politics on the supposition that home ownership should be made to be within reach of every adult person in the US. It was and still is a central and rather unspoken part of the political landscape (the bailout offers tax credits for buying a home).
Simply put: it is not desirable for everyone to shoulder several hundred thousand dollars worth of debt over the course of tens of years in their life. It minimizes your ability to deal with economic shocks, it minimizes your ability to move to get better jobs, it ties you to the income you do have, it sometimes forces families to move to two incomes just to live! One at a time these are not wholly undesirable issues, but together they hamper your ability to exist and remain financially solvent.
Home ownership should be shouldered by those who can legitimately handle the financial responsibility and the government should not make it easier for irresponsible people to accrue debt. Not everyone deserves a house of their own, American Dream be damned.
This is not fuzzy logic. In fuzzy logic 'fuzzy' applies to the 'logic' of the decision-making process (ie, not binary TRUE or FALSE, but 'fuzzy' - somewhere in between). This and this are fuzzy logic.
Basically he uses probability, fuzzy logic uses certainty. It's a hard distinction unless you really like math but if you want to argue it's worth arguing.
Are the rich and succesful by and large hard workers and productive members of society? Sure. Absolutely. But are they 100,000 times more useful to an organization? Are they 100,000 times more productive than a replacement? No. Our entire pay structure has gotten bent out of shape.
If you invest $1000 in the stock market today, you'll have about $117,000 in 50 years. That assumes an average 11% annual return (which is a good assumption). If you invest in a CD with an interest rate of 5%/yr (optimistic) then you'll get $11,000.
I was astounded when I first did the math. That's an order of magnitude difference between a 'safe' investment and a 'risky' one (quotes because, well, nowadays everything seems risky...) I'm still looking for errors in assumptions or algebra. It means that if was thrifty enough and not risk-averse, I could put away enough money for my child to retire before he turns 10. If I played it safe my son might still be working when he was 70. How is this possible? It's the same reason that 'rich' people ARE worth 100,000 times as much as Joe Schmo.
What does 'rich' mean/signify? 'Rich' people have lots of money, but they usually get that money through hard work, thrift, cleverness and taking risk (coupled with a bit of luck). You don't become a CEO for showing up at work every day. You don't even become a CEO for doing your job well and getting your scheduled raises and promotions. You become a CEO by doing all of that AND being driven and taking risks.
Taking risks isn't for everyone and the world needs these people. In essence, we pay them to take risks so we don't have to. Sometimes they fail and have to start over (Do you know how many times Donald Trump has been broke?) and sometimes they win big. And when they win big, they're usually smart enough not to bow out of the game, but to reinvest and go for something bigger. They're driven risk-takers. We need them to invest in risky ventures that might bring fantastic returns or might flop fantastically. We need people who love risk to lead our businesses, because safe doesn't make money!.
'Rich' people know this, and they don't want to end up being Joe the Plumber. Joe will be fine. Plumbers make some decent money and he'll probably retire with a few million stashed away (if he was smart) and get a boat. He never took any major chances in his life (he's a plumber! That's not risky at all! Don't people often say 'We'll always need someone to fix the toilets?')
but he worked hard and saved his money. Meanwhile, Bill Gates worked hard, was shrewd, and took lots of chances. And (to a great extent, not totally) thanks to Bill we have computers and software that make us many times as productive as we would have been otherwise and he's filthy stinking rich because of it.
Despite the abuses and errors in the system I think that the people at the top are being paid fairly because they're not just 'running the company', they're taking all of the risk as well. If something goes badly, typically your CEO gets fired. Rank and file employees are largely exempt from that kind of risk. And until you're willing to accept the risk that come inherently with the promise of wealth (by starting a business, investing your life savings in something, etc) then it is left to people who can handle taking risks. And when they succeed, we all benefit.
Bottom line: there is at least an order of magnitude difference in payoff between risky ventures and non-risky ventures. 'Rich' people take the risks and get the rewards. Live with it.
He provided a specific answer and you provided a general one. Neither are particularly wrong except that you attempted to correct him with a more general answer.
LEDs are current-controlled devices. They have a relatively constant 'on' voltage (since we're doing links to one-up each other, please see page 7 in the following datasheet: One-up) which means that power dissipated in them is a function of current going through them. Light is power, so the only way you're going to get more light out of it is to put more power into it, which requires... more current.
PWM is one possible dimming method, but you have to use a resistor to limit the current. The LED/resistor combination acts as a low-pass filter, which means that the LED only 'sees' the DC level of the AC waveform you're feeding it. This, therefore, has the same effect as varying the voltage across the resistor/LED pair.
A better (more power-efficient) dimming method is to vary the current through the LED directly with a variable current source. With this method you don't have any extra power dissipated in the resistor. Although the current source may be a switched-mode device, it does NOT utilize PWM to vary the current.
As I said, both of your answers were correct, but since you tried to correct him with a less-desirable answer I'm force to give all the points to Griffindor. Thanks for playing!
Don't know how it works at the there companies mentioned in the header, but it's been my experience that layoffs at many companies are based on seniority, not job performance. The jumior people tend to get the axe.
Well, perhaps in the past, but if you've looked at the age makeup of large companies lately you'll find that the 30-45 year age bracket is nearly empty and most of the people are clustered around 25 and 55 years old. Within 10 years lots of companies will see fully half of their company ready to retire. In a climate like this you can't afford to fire the younger people because all your old people will be gone soon (and you can't fire the old people because they're running everything!).
Police Capt. George Seranko was quoted as saying that the first photograph was âoea self portrait taken of a juvenile female taking pictures of her body, nude."
The school district issued a statement Tuesday saying that the investigation turned up âoeno evidence of inappropriate activity on school grounds ⦠other than the violation of the electronic devices policy.â The statement also said that school officials didnâ(TM)t learn of the
charges against the students until Monday.
(Emphasis mine)
To be (somewhat) lenient on the school, it is my impression from the article that school officials didn't go in guns blazing demanding that the perverts be burned. Consider it from their point of view: child pornography is illegal and they found child pornography on a student's person (the legality, morality, acceptability of the search being ignored ATM). Even if they could identify it as a student at the school that tells them nothing, and it would be wrong for them to assume no crime was committed. The only thing they can be sure of at that point is that the girl took a picture of herself nude with her phone and didn't delete it. If someone else had stolen her phone then they could have sent the pictures to the boy they found, the internet, whoever. They can make no assumptions about the circumstances in which he obtained the pictures and for the protection of the girl (who may at this point be a victim) they MUST inform the police so they can investigate. This is to protect the girl in the pictures because the letter and intent of child pornography laws is to protect the child in question. It would have been irresponsible on the part of the school to assume that everything was innocent and not report it to the police. I wouldn't put too much blame on the school.
Now the police... Well, suffice it to say that their stance at the moment is rather absurd and ignore the intent (and possibly the letter) of child pornography laws. But I'll let others handle that point better than I.
Unfortunately, most people look at it as "but, everyone else has a.....". Some people were worried about a reduction in their resale value, because if they sell their home, now there's a "nonstandard" system there. Who would want a house with an almost free heating/cooling system?
Unless it's maintenance free or you can commit to providing me all the materials, tools, design documents, notes, know-how and contacts and find someone who will fix it for the same cost as a regular A/C unit when it breaks then yes, it is a matter of 'everyone else has a...' except that the sentence is finished with 'everyone else has an easy to maintain unit that 50 people in the phone book can fix for me.'
Oh, and I hope no one drains your lake, or your entire subdivision doesn't get the same idea about using the lake as a heat sink. Thermal pollution is still pollution.
What's obscene about it? If he has the means and wishes to spend *his* money on power for whatever he wants, that's *his* business, isn't it?
Not according to his own arguments in the global warming debate. Grid-based power generation creates greenhouse gases. PERIOD, there's no getting around it. The problem is that the 'cost' (eventual rise in ocean levels, people's deaths in the future, etc) of producing those gases is not included in the price paid by the consumer - only the cost of generation+transmission+taxes+profit, not the cost of an increase in malaria, or the cost of an island being lost to the sea forever, etc.
Of course, he attempts to offset his carbon usage by using 'green' sources which do cost more. However, I'd be surprised if the green energy sources constituted all of his power usage. I can only reach the conclusion that Al Gore is creating greenhouse gases and not shouldering the true cost associated with it.
Furthermore, he has no reason to use all of that energy. Yes, he may be rich and he may be able to 'afford' all of that electricity, but his arguments have been that we as a world cannot afford the true costs of unlimited energy usage. We are essentially subsidizing the cost of energy with the destruction of the environment in his opinion. If you accept these premises then the result is to reduce your energy usage IN TOTAL to reduce the number of greenhouse gases.
Just because you can shoulder your electric bill every month doesn't help the environment because the true costs of energy generation aren't represented in that bill! Al Gore believes this but doesn't live it. He is a hypocrite.
Of course not - it's just to show that the level of service we come to expect is unreasonably expensive and unwieldy away from where you live. And unless you have a pretty good tracking antenna you will always lose sync in rough weather (another part of my job is to create tracking algorithms for satellite receivers, we make them for the military and they're not cheap).
I work a 9/80 and have for 1.5 years. My reactions:
Pros:
On the short weeks you can get away with only charging 36 hours of vacation if you want to take the week off.
I have not been so lucky - almost every vacation I've taken has worked out to not occur on an off-week.
The off friday is convenient for getting errands done (dry cleaning) or appointments (dentist) that normally can't be done outside of business hours.
This is true UNLESS you work in an area where lots of people work a 9/80 - places will be packed on the off Friday (good luck getting doctors appointments as everyone had the same 'good idea' you did...)
For certain holidays you end up with really short weeks or really long weekends
YMMV, my company has a 9/80 and that has occurred, but they've also scheduled us to work on a Saturday to offset the holidays.
Every other thursday feels like friday.
Yeah, this is truly awesome
Cons:
The extra hour for M-Th takes some getting used to; you may find you have zero time left over to do anything on 9 hour days.
This is key: Be prepared to choose between working out and eating well and sleeping past 6AM. Chances are you will only be able to do two of those at best (it helps not to be single).
The long weeks feel really long.
If you need a random day off, you'll end up charging 9 hours instead of 8.
Also a big problem. For some reason, of the three weddings my wife and I went to last year, no one saw fit to schedule them on a weekend with an off Friday. That didn't work well for my vacation balance.
9/80 is best when paired with a flex time schedule so that you can move around hours when you need to.
Massive agree, I'd even say that the 9/80 schedule isn't very useful without this.
My general impression of the 9/80 for 1.5 years is that it's good but the main detriment is that your weekdays aren't very long and you can't fit a lot into them. Sometimes it can be awkward with scheduling to have Thursday be your 'Friday' one week and Friday the next, but it's generally good.
This is my job. Let me help. What you're looking for is BGAN - Broadband Global Area Network. It uses Inmarsat satellites to provide ~500Kbps broadband anywhere in the world. Assuming you have at least a 12VDC/10A power source (think car cigarette lighter) and a computer with some form of ethernet (wired OR wireless!) you're set.
Check out this link here: Airtime pricing and this link:
Equipment Rental. That's not the exact unit I've worked with (I have a Hughes 9250 tracking BGAN antenna sitting right to my left at the moment) but it should do ya.
Let me break the cost down for you approximately:
$550/month equipment rental * 4 months = $2200
Shipping of the unit to your location: $60 + return shipping $60 = $120
Airtime: MINIMUM of $500, probably more
Total:$2820 for four months of basic internet anywhere in the world.
In conclusion: what you want is not cheap at all. I suggest you man up and keep a journal - you know, paper?
but maybe if we're lucky, your employer would (finally) be fined for treating you inhumanely and lowering your overall health.
If you actually believe that will happen can I have some of what you are smoking?
Optimism. Our government at times actually has moments of clarity of thought and real human concern. Or perhaps Democrats would see it as another way to screw business:)
1) What evidence do we have that it will actually make health care more affordable? When has Government ever been able to do anything cheaply or efficiently?
2) Will Government in health care be used as yet another excuse to expand the nanny state? Will alcohol be taxed higher because it's bad for me? McDonalds? Doritos? Will all of this enforced by my employer similar to the way the so-called War on Drugs is enforced? Stop smoking or lose your job? Lose weight or lose your job?
While I do share your concern regarding taxation of vices (I enjoy smoking occasionally and drinking often) you have to realize first off that this is already happening: businesses are realizing they can cut costs by 'encouraging' their employees to be healthy. This encouragement isn't really though - it's more of a discouragement of bad habits (ie, you pay a health 'fine' if you smoke). If it's not already happened, it will soon.
But apart from vices and genetics what do you suppose the main underlying cause of health problems? My guess is stress. If you want to keep people healthy keep them relaxed. Stress is not the sole cause of sickness but it is a major driver.
So while your company is conspiring to charge you extra for your lifestyle choices, they're more than willing to contribute to many more health problems through overtime, deadlines, mismanagement, etc. And what do they do to combat it? Put up an on-campus gym so you can work out and save time? Offer on-campus child-care so you don't have to worry about your children? Serve free healthy meals at the cafeteria? Reduce your work hours to take care of your family and personal life? Offer flex time so you can get a decent amount of sleep when your body is tired? Give you unlimited sick days with no reprisals?
Unless you work for Google, no. When things go bad companies are more than willing to turn the screw on their employees, subject them to stress (and all the bad habits that come about as a result) and deny them the ability to cope and lead a healthy life. Then they turn around and charge you more because you have to go to the doctor more often, you started smoking again to deal and you don't have any time for the gym. And you lose your job for taking too many personal days trying to save your marriage.
If the government gets into health care then yes, you may be fined for smoking, but maybe if we're lucky, your employer would (finally) be fined for treating you inhumanely and lowering your overall health.
While I can appreciate having a common connector for common purposes, I can't get behind having a common connector for divergent purposes. CAT5 is great - easy to connect, mostly secure, good bandwidth and power characteristics. But if you only have a bunch of CAT5 connection ports on your computer or any other device, something will be broken and quickly - especially if these cables are carrying any kind of power. You'll have to get everyone together to ensure (at a minimum) that everyone agrees certain pins should be power and certain pins should be (for every device) otherwise you'll very quickly have +5V shorted to ground. It would be a nightmare.
If you want to talk about standard and effective connectors, why, circular MILSPEC connectors are the best! Think of it, we'll have just ONE BIG CONNECTOR the size of a dinner plate with 1000 pins on your computer, and there's only one cable that hooks up to it that octopuses out into 50 others! It's the perfect solution!
(Yes I'm joking, but they are good connectors!)
http://angryee.blogspot.com/
No it's not warranted to worry about a 5 cent component being destroy, but I *DO* worry about people putting them BACK IN THE PILE WITH THE WORKING COMPONENTS after they're destroyed. The component is worthless but the time I spend trying to figure out why my circuit isn't working when half the components I pulled out of the bin are busted IS.
I fail to see how this is a problem. Everyone decries the lack of attention span and impatience in the 'younger generation' but so what? My speech coach always said when making a speech you have to make your point quickly and succinctly or people will stop listening. This wasn't tragic - it was appropriate. Everyone's time is money and no one has the right to any more of it than they can justify. No one has the right to demand you listen to their useless words until they deign to get around to the point. This has been the case FOREVER, not just recently.
With respect to finding information Google has spoiled us by DOING THINGS RIGHT. There is no reason nowadays that information should be hard to find - it signals laziness or stubbornness on the part of the person with access to the information.
Look at realty. Your realtor does a lot of good things, but what he or she SHOULDN'T do is search databases endlessly for a house, trying minutely different queries and guessing what certain phrases mean and calling people to get the 'real' information. If the people selling a house want to put it in a database but then 'tweak' the listing so a professional has to read it to make any sense of it and fool people into thinking the house is better than it is, that's wrong. Plain and simple.
The amount of information we deal with on a daily basis is quickly balooning out of human scope. We NEED computers to do the work for us and the technology is here. It is laziness to not implement these features with the TOOLS ALREADY AT HAND.
Bottom line: Nowadays if information isn't indexed, searchable and quickly at hand then it's not right to fault the people whose time is wasted for being 'impatient' and 'demanding'. The technology is here: use it.
Slashdot Mirror
2) Guided test drive, let people use Vista, but be shown a few things.
What like someone telling you what to click? Oh man, I'm sure THAT'S going to go just as well as every other time I've tried to direct someone at a computer:
"Ok now click on the Start menu. That's how we 'start' things, heh. Now go to Programs. Programs. It's at the top"
*User leaves the Start menu and clicks on 'My Computer'*
"No, at the top of the Start Menu, go back and click on it. No it's in the same place it was a second ago. The green button... Yes! Now Programs... Yes! Then Microsoft Office... and Word.. Good! And.. Oh, don't register it just click cancel. No I don't know what the normal template is either, but I guess it's corrupted. Yes just use defaults. Click OK... 'OK'... To the left...."
Vaccines are preventative treatment and a HUGE profit line when made mandatory.
Yes! It's a 'profit' to society! It's a 'profit' to individuals! Preventing disease is a GOOD THING!
Tell me...do you think they would make more money giving everyone the MMR vaccine or just curing those that catch it. I realize that there are benefits like preventing the spread by vaccination, but the dollar value is MUCH higher in vaccinations.
Wikipedia lists the possible complications to mumps as the following:
Known complications of mumps include:
So tell me: who benefits the most by avoiding these problems - the drug company or the person who will never get mumps? True you may never have the complications but why take the chance? To deny a dollar to the drug companies? I hope that's a sufficient moral victory for you to tolerate the cost of that decision. This isn't a case of 'I'd rather not have mumps' in the same way 'I'd rather not eat asparagus', it's 'I'd rather not be sterile' or 'I'd rather not have a spontaneous abortion' or even just 'I'd rather not go through the pain and suffering of disease if I don't have to'.
Which do you think is worth more money, AIDS treatment or a cure for AIDS? Then go look at who is really dumping money and research into AIDS treatment vs AIDS cures. Look who is making leaps and bounds in research involving things like stem cells to combat AIDS vs those who are suing third world countries for violating their intellectual property rights by making generic AIDS treatment so that the poor can afford it.
Wait, now the drug companies just want to treat diseases ineffectively for the rest of our lives? But the vaccine will prevent me from ever getting it at all and the drug companies made that. Why would they do that when they could 'dump all of their money' into making an ineffective treatment for mumps and keep us ALL on the drug for the rest of our lives? Your arguments don't hold up very well.
Lower power consumption is the killer app of this decade.
I believe I saw an addon program that lets your computer act as a DLNA server (uPNP streaming media server) that the Popcorn Hour will find. The program allows the streaming of Netflix movies with a proper account, etc. It might also have done Hulu. I agree that those are becoming very important, but remember the Popcorn Hour is Linux-based, so people will be hacking it completely.
As a side note does anyone know if this thing is legit? I know it's biased but the place that makes them seems to be a mainland chinese company and they have the reputation of sometimes copying designs, adding a few features and selling them. While it's a great box I wouldn't be surprised to hear it's a WDTV core with some software additions (AFAIK, both use the same processor and decoding hardware, but lots of boxes do nowadays so it's kind of a wash).
This is what I don't understand. How is it better to believe in a lie that you know isn't true?
[I'm fairly convinced that all religious people know, in their deepest, darkest, secret place that most will never admit, they know that the God and the bible is a bunch of nonsense. But the idea frightens them to their core.]
I think your idea of religion is.. misguided. No sane person continues to 'believe' or even professes to believe in something they were certain is a lie - at least not for very long. Even most atheists I know are content to say that the existence of God can't be proved (and they place their value in things other than 'faith' so they don't practice religion) and most religious people I know aren't attempting to 'prove' the existence of God (proofs are out of fashion, and in any case people of religious persuasion place value on 'faith' so it works out for them that it can't be proved). There's enough room for comfortable uncertainty and that's sufficient for most people - atheist and religious alike. Saying that religious people 'know' that God is a 'lie' casts us all in a very unflattering light and is moreover untrue.
And speaking as a Christian I must say that there are times I doubt and yes it scares the beJesus out of me! (bad pun, sorry) I hope no one would lie about that No one who is human could keep from having doubt creep into his or her mind from time to time and most sensible religions I know accept it and sometimes even celebrate it. A good crisis of faith allows us to find deeper answers and return to God with a renewed appreciation of our religion. Or not, whichever.
In any case it's laughably easy to turn your arguments against you. The arguments are almost trite at this point: 1) Atheists don't disbelieve in God, they just hate Him (Her, It, Them), 2) They KNOW God exists and He (Her, It, They, Shim?) is angry at them for denying it, 3) They're terrified of going to Hell, which is where they're destined for (damn disbelievers!)
Of course, I don't presume to tell you what's in your heart, so please don't presume to tell me what's in mine.
"Trashed econmomy."
BS. Seriously. We buy new cars anyway, so why NOT more efficient ones? Besides, if everyone drove dramatically more efficient vehicles it ALSO mean reducing (or eliminating) our trade deficit in oil. How does THAT trash the economy?
Cripes... people really annoy me sometimes. Do you really think YOUR CAR is the problem? YES - you can buy a fuel efficient car. YES - if everyone did that it would help. Would it help enough? Probably not.
Let's think about this: say people drive 60 miles a day average, there are 200 million drivers and the average MPG is 15MPG. That means every day 800 million gallons of gas are used. Now *POOF* it's magically 30MPG. Usage is at 400 million gallons per day. *POOF* Magic again and we're at 60MPG, and we're using 200 million.
How much of an improvement is that? That's not even an order of magnitude. I'd have to poof a couple more times to get that. And that figures that people don't drive more, no more net people drive, etc. Buy as efficient of a car as you want - the improvements in actual fuel consumption tail off after a bit (and I'm not even saying ANY of these magical gains are remotely realistic in any quick timeframe).
You know where the REAL energy is used? Aircraft? Nope. Your house? Getting closer. Factories? Heavy industry? Construction? Yes! That's where it is! Your personal energy consumption is peanuts compared to the energy that goes into the manufactured goods, materials, mining of raw materials, etc that supports your lifestyle. If you want to get rid of carbon emissions get rid of them at the major source - heavy industry.
But how? As I showed with the above example increasing efficiency tails off after a bit. I'm all for it but let's face it: No matter how much you optimize your power usage if you're still drawing power from a carbon emitting source (coal plant). And as far as we know the CO2 linearly affects our environment. We'll be killing ourselves to double our efficiency while still only linearly cutting our CO2 emissions.
Bottom line: we need a carbon-free source of cheap energy. Then we don't need to worry about how much power we use because it will cost nothing and won't hurt the environment.
Yes I mean nuclear. It's the only choice.
Oh my God you are so full of crap. No one is saying that building schools won't employ people. What is being said is, "what happens to those jobs when the schools built?" These are not permanent jobs.
Also, building schools is not what Republicans object to. It's the millions to birth control programs. How does giving out condoms provide jobs?
I agree totally. The only hope for the short-term jobs is that they may keep people from starving and that by keeping people in the economy it will help to prevent a further slip and provide a bridge until the economy 'really' comes back. I'm no economist so I don't know how much of this is hope and how much of this is theory. As for the condoms... I don't have a good answer. The focus of the bill is the economy, and while providing condoms/birth control is good in the long term (less excess population, less disease) I fail to see how spending this money now will produce a return in the economy in the short term. Now I'm free to disagree with you :)
How is money to Amtrak going to produce jobs?
Part of this effort has been characterized as an investment in infrastructure (of which Amtrak and rail in general is a part). In fact I argue it's a very decent part of our infrastructure that replaces more expensive options (planes for short trips for instance), and that cost-savings is one of the benefits of infrastructure improvements. Save a little bit of money everywhere.
Bush, Obama, Democrat, Republican - it doesn't matter. Everyone, EVERYONE has been predicating their politics on the supposition that home ownership should be made to be within reach of every adult person in the US. It was and still is a central and rather unspoken part of the political landscape (the bailout offers tax credits for buying a home).
Simply put: it is not desirable for everyone to shoulder several hundred thousand dollars worth of debt over the course of tens of years in their life. It minimizes your ability to deal with economic shocks, it minimizes your ability to move to get better jobs, it ties you to the income you do have, it sometimes forces families to move to two incomes just to live! One at a time these are not wholly undesirable issues, but together they hamper your ability to exist and remain financially solvent.
Home ownership should be shouldered by those who can legitimately handle the financial responsibility and the government should not make it easier for irresponsible people to accrue debt. Not everyone deserves a house of their own, American Dream be damned.
This is not fuzzy logic. In fuzzy logic 'fuzzy' applies to the 'logic' of the decision-making process (ie, not binary TRUE or FALSE, but 'fuzzy' - somewhere in between). This and this are fuzzy logic.
Basically he uses probability, fuzzy logic uses certainty. It's a hard distinction unless you really like math but if you want to argue it's worth arguing.
Are the rich and succesful by and large hard workers and productive members of society? Sure. Absolutely. But are they 100,000 times more useful to an organization? Are they 100,000 times more productive than a replacement? No. Our entire pay structure has gotten bent out of shape.
If you invest $1000 in the stock market today, you'll have about $117,000 in 50 years. That assumes an average 11% annual return (which is a good assumption). If you invest in a CD with an interest rate of 5%/yr (optimistic) then you'll get $11,000.
I was astounded when I first did the math. That's an order of magnitude difference between a 'safe' investment and a 'risky' one (quotes because, well, nowadays everything seems risky...) I'm still looking for errors in assumptions or algebra. It means that if was thrifty enough and not risk-averse, I could put away enough money for my child to retire before he turns 10. If I played it safe my son might still be working when he was 70. How is this possible? It's the same reason that 'rich' people ARE worth 100,000 times as much as Joe Schmo.
What does 'rich' mean/signify? 'Rich' people have lots of money, but they usually get that money through hard work, thrift, cleverness and taking risk (coupled with a bit of luck). You don't become a CEO for showing up at work every day. You don't even become a CEO for doing your job well and getting your scheduled raises and promotions. You become a CEO by doing all of that AND being driven and taking risks.
Taking risks isn't for everyone and the world needs these people. In essence, we pay them to take risks so we don't have to. Sometimes they fail and have to start over (Do you know how many times Donald Trump has been broke?) and sometimes they win big. And when they win big, they're usually smart enough not to bow out of the game, but to reinvest and go for something bigger. They're driven risk-takers. We need them to invest in risky ventures that might bring fantastic returns or might flop fantastically. We need people who love risk to lead our businesses, because safe doesn't make money!.
'Rich' people know this, and they don't want to end up being Joe the Plumber. Joe will be fine. Plumbers make some decent money and he'll probably retire with a few million stashed away (if he was smart) and get a boat. He never took any major chances in his life (he's a plumber! That's not risky at all! Don't people often say 'We'll always need someone to fix the toilets?') but he worked hard and saved his money. Meanwhile, Bill Gates worked hard, was shrewd, and took lots of chances. And (to a great extent, not totally) thanks to Bill we have computers and software that make us many times as productive as we would have been otherwise and he's filthy stinking rich because of it.
Despite the abuses and errors in the system I think that the people at the top are being paid fairly because they're not just 'running the company', they're taking all of the risk as well. If something goes badly, typically your CEO gets fired. Rank and file employees are largely exempt from that kind of risk. And until you're willing to accept the risk that come inherently with the promise of wealth (by starting a business, investing your life savings in something, etc) then it is left to people who can handle taking risks. And when they succeed, we all benefit.
Bottom line: there is at least an order of magnitude difference in payoff between risky ventures and non-risky ventures. 'Rich' people take the risks and get the rewards. Live with it.
He provided a specific answer and you provided a general one. Neither are particularly wrong except that you attempted to correct him with a more general answer.
LEDs are current-controlled devices. They have a relatively constant 'on' voltage (since we're doing links to one-up each other, please see page 7 in the following datasheet: One-up) which means that power dissipated in them is a function of current going through them. Light is power, so the only way you're going to get more light out of it is to put more power into it, which requires... more current.
PWM is one possible dimming method, but you have to use a resistor to limit the current. The LED/resistor combination acts as a low-pass filter, which means that the LED only 'sees' the DC level of the AC waveform you're feeding it. This, therefore, has the same effect as varying the voltage across the resistor/LED pair.
A better (more power-efficient) dimming method is to vary the current through the LED directly with a variable current source. With this method you don't have any extra power dissipated in the resistor. Although the current source may be a switched-mode device, it does NOT utilize PWM to vary the current.
As I said, both of your answers were correct, but since you tried to correct him with a less-desirable answer I'm force to give all the points to Griffindor. Thanks for playing!
Don't know how it works at the there companies mentioned in the header, but it's been my experience that layoffs at many companies are based on seniority, not job performance. The jumior people tend to get the axe.
Well, perhaps in the past, but if you've looked at the age makeup of large companies lately you'll find that the 30-45 year age bracket is nearly empty and most of the people are clustered around 25 and 55 years old. Within 10 years lots of companies will see fully half of their company ready to retire. In a climate like this you can't afford to fire the younger people because all your old people will be gone soon (and you can't fire the old people because they're running everything!).
So eye patches are back in fashion? Yarrr, that's good news for me matey!
Police Capt. George Seranko was quoted as saying that the first photograph was âoea self portrait taken of a juvenile female taking pictures of her body, nude." The school district issued a statement Tuesday saying that the investigation turned up âoeno evidence of inappropriate activity on school grounds ⦠other than the violation of the electronic devices policy.â The statement also said that school officials didnâ(TM)t learn of the charges against the students until Monday.
(Emphasis mine)
To be (somewhat) lenient on the school, it is my impression from the article that school officials didn't go in guns blazing demanding that the perverts be burned. Consider it from their point of view: child pornography is illegal and they found child pornography on a student's person (the legality, morality, acceptability of the search being ignored ATM). Even if they could identify it as a student at the school that tells them nothing, and it would be wrong for them to assume no crime was committed. The only thing they can be sure of at that point is that the girl took a picture of herself nude with her phone and didn't delete it. If someone else had stolen her phone then they could have sent the pictures to the boy they found, the internet, whoever. They can make no assumptions about the circumstances in which he obtained the pictures and for the protection of the girl (who may at this point be a victim) they MUST inform the police so they can investigate. This is to protect the girl in the pictures because the letter and intent of child pornography laws is to protect the child in question. It would have been irresponsible on the part of the school to assume that everything was innocent and not report it to the police. I wouldn't put too much blame on the school.
Now the police... Well, suffice it to say that their stance at the moment is rather absurd and ignore the intent (and possibly the letter) of child pornography laws. But I'll let others handle that point better than I.
Unfortunately, most people look at it as "but, everyone else has a .....". Some people were worried about a reduction in their resale value, because if they sell their home, now there's a "nonstandard" system there. Who would want a house with an almost free heating/cooling system?
Unless it's maintenance free or you can commit to providing me all the materials, tools, design documents, notes, know-how and contacts and find someone who will fix it for the same cost as a regular A/C unit when it breaks then yes, it is a matter of 'everyone else has a...' except that the sentence is finished with 'everyone else has an easy to maintain unit that 50 people in the phone book can fix for me.'
Oh, and I hope no one drains your lake, or your entire subdivision doesn't get the same idea about using the lake as a heat sink. Thermal pollution is still pollution.
Burma Shave?
What's obscene about it? If he has the means and wishes to spend *his* money on power for whatever he wants, that's *his* business, isn't it?
Not according to his own arguments in the global warming debate. Grid-based power generation creates greenhouse gases. PERIOD, there's no getting around it. The problem is that the 'cost' (eventual rise in ocean levels, people's deaths in the future, etc) of producing those gases is not included in the price paid by the consumer - only the cost of generation+transmission+taxes+profit, not the cost of an increase in malaria, or the cost of an island being lost to the sea forever, etc.
Of course, he attempts to offset his carbon usage by using 'green' sources which do cost more. However, I'd be surprised if the green energy sources constituted all of his power usage. I can only reach the conclusion that Al Gore is creating greenhouse gases and not shouldering the true cost associated with it.
Furthermore, he has no reason to use all of that energy. Yes, he may be rich and he may be able to 'afford' all of that electricity, but his arguments have been that we as a world cannot afford the true costs of unlimited energy usage. We are essentially subsidizing the cost of energy with the destruction of the environment in his opinion. If you accept these premises then the result is to reduce your energy usage IN TOTAL to reduce the number of greenhouse gases.
Just because you can shoulder your electric bill every month doesn't help the environment because the true costs of energy generation aren't represented in that bill! Al Gore believes this but doesn't live it. He is a hypocrite.
Of course not - it's just to show that the level of service we come to expect is unreasonably expensive and unwieldy away from where you live. And unless you have a pretty good tracking antenna you will always lose sync in rough weather (another part of my job is to create tracking algorithms for satellite receivers, we make them for the military and they're not cheap).
Pros:
I have not been so lucky - almost every vacation I've taken has worked out to not occur on an off-week.
The off friday is convenient for getting errands done (dry cleaning) or appointments (dentist) that normally can't be done outside of business hours.
This is true UNLESS you work in an area where lots of people work a 9/80 - places will be packed on the off Friday (good luck getting doctors appointments as everyone had the same 'good idea' you did...)
For certain holidays you end up with really short weeks or really long weekends
YMMV, my company has a 9/80 and that has occurred, but they've also scheduled us to work on a Saturday to offset the holidays.
Every other thursday feels like friday.
Yeah, this is truly awesome
Cons:
This is key: Be prepared to choose between working out and eating well and sleeping past 6AM. Chances are you will only be able to do two of those at best (it helps not to be single).
The long weeks feel really long.
If you need a random day off, you'll end up charging 9 hours instead of 8.
Also a big problem. For some reason, of the three weddings my wife and I went to last year, no one saw fit to schedule them on a weekend with an off Friday. That didn't work well for my vacation balance.
9/80 is best when paired with a flex time schedule so that you can move around hours when you need to.
Massive agree, I'd even say that the 9/80 schedule isn't very useful without this.
My general impression of the 9/80 for 1.5 years is that it's good but the main detriment is that your weekdays aren't very long and you can't fit a lot into them. Sometimes it can be awkward with scheduling to have Thursday be your 'Friday' one week and Friday the next, but it's generally good.
Check out this link here: Airtime pricing and this link: Equipment Rental. That's not the exact unit I've worked with (I have a Hughes 9250 tracking BGAN antenna sitting right to my left at the moment) but it should do ya.
Let me break the cost down for you approximately:
Total:$2820 for four months of basic internet anywhere in the world.
In conclusion: what you want is not cheap at all. I suggest you man up and keep a journal - you know, paper?
but maybe if we're lucky, your employer would (finally) be fined for treating you inhumanely and lowering your overall health.
If you actually believe that will happen can I have some of what you are smoking?
Optimism. Our government at times actually has moments of clarity of thought and real human concern. Or perhaps Democrats would see it as another way to screw business :)
1) What evidence do we have that it will actually make health care more affordable? When has Government ever been able to do anything cheaply or efficiently? 2) Will Government in health care be used as yet another excuse to expand the nanny state? Will alcohol be taxed higher because it's bad for me? McDonalds? Doritos? Will all of this enforced by my employer similar to the way the so-called War on Drugs is enforced? Stop smoking or lose your job? Lose weight or lose your job?
While I do share your concern regarding taxation of vices (I enjoy smoking occasionally and drinking often) you have to realize first off that this is already happening: businesses are realizing they can cut costs by 'encouraging' their employees to be healthy. This encouragement isn't really though - it's more of a discouragement of bad habits (ie, you pay a health 'fine' if you smoke). If it's not already happened, it will soon.
But apart from vices and genetics what do you suppose the main underlying cause of health problems? My guess is stress. If you want to keep people healthy keep them relaxed. Stress is not the sole cause of sickness but it is a major driver.
So while your company is conspiring to charge you extra for your lifestyle choices, they're more than willing to contribute to many more health problems through overtime, deadlines, mismanagement, etc. And what do they do to combat it? Put up an on-campus gym so you can work out and save time? Offer on-campus child-care so you don't have to worry about your children? Serve free healthy meals at the cafeteria? Reduce your work hours to take care of your family and personal life? Offer flex time so you can get a decent amount of sleep when your body is tired? Give you unlimited sick days with no reprisals?
Unless you work for Google, no. When things go bad companies are more than willing to turn the screw on their employees, subject them to stress (and all the bad habits that come about as a result) and deny them the ability to cope and lead a healthy life. Then they turn around and charge you more because you have to go to the doctor more often, you started smoking again to deal and you don't have any time for the gym. And you lose your job for taking too many personal days trying to save your marriage.
If the government gets into health care then yes, you may be fined for smoking, but maybe if we're lucky, your employer would (finally) be fined for treating you inhumanely and lowering your overall health.
While I can appreciate having a common connector for common purposes, I can't get behind having a common connector for divergent purposes. CAT5 is great - easy to connect, mostly secure, good bandwidth and power characteristics. But if you only have a bunch of CAT5 connection ports on your computer or any other device, something will be broken and quickly - especially if these cables are carrying any kind of power. You'll have to get everyone together to ensure (at a minimum) that everyone agrees certain pins should be power and certain pins should be (for every device) otherwise you'll very quickly have +5V shorted to ground. It would be a nightmare. If you want to talk about standard and effective connectors, why, circular MILSPEC connectors are the best! Think of it, we'll have just ONE BIG CONNECTOR the size of a dinner plate with 1000 pins on your computer, and there's only one cable that hooks up to it that octopuses out into 50 others! It's the perfect solution! (Yes I'm joking, but they are good connectors!) http://angryee.blogspot.com/
No it's not warranted to worry about a 5 cent component being destroy, but I *DO* worry about people putting them BACK IN THE PILE WITH THE WORKING COMPONENTS after they're destroyed. The component is worthless but the time I spend trying to figure out why my circuit isn't working when half the components I pulled out of the bin are busted IS.
I fail to see how this is a problem. Everyone decries the lack of attention span and impatience in the 'younger generation' but so what? My speech coach always said when making a speech you have to make your point quickly and succinctly or people will stop listening. This wasn't tragic - it was appropriate. Everyone's time is money and no one has the right to any more of it than they can justify. No one has the right to demand you listen to their useless words until they deign to get around to the point. This has been the case FOREVER, not just recently. With respect to finding information Google has spoiled us by DOING THINGS RIGHT. There is no reason nowadays that information should be hard to find - it signals laziness or stubbornness on the part of the person with access to the information. Look at realty. Your realtor does a lot of good things, but what he or she SHOULDN'T do is search databases endlessly for a house, trying minutely different queries and guessing what certain phrases mean and calling people to get the 'real' information. If the people selling a house want to put it in a database but then 'tweak' the listing so a professional has to read it to make any sense of it and fool people into thinking the house is better than it is, that's wrong. Plain and simple. The amount of information we deal with on a daily basis is quickly balooning out of human scope. We NEED computers to do the work for us and the technology is here. It is laziness to not implement these features with the TOOLS ALREADY AT HAND. Bottom line: Nowadays if information isn't indexed, searchable and quickly at hand then it's not right to fault the people whose time is wasted for being 'impatient' and 'demanding'. The technology is here: use it.