Abbreviated: If you owe the bank $100, the bank owns you. If you owe the bank $1,000,000, you own the bank. (I believe this was coined in the 1800's, so adjust for inflation please)
Variation: Take a garden tractor battery with you to the range, and get it spinning BEFORE shooting. My understanding is that the effect is worth the effort.
"Within the Event Horizon, of course, everything's pitch dark."
I always thought it depended on where you looked. If we suspend physics and assume that one could take measurements inside the event horizon, wouldn't those detectors "see" a whole shitload of photons coming in from the outside?
"That's all well and good in theory, but how the hell does it help me? "
It doesn't affect your choice of cable provider, but it DOES affect your choices for content. Cable companies must form agreements with networks and other content providers to carry the content. If one cable company becomes dominant nationwide, THEY get to decide what you can watch.
Right now, if I have some new channel, I need to go to the cable company and convince them to carry it. With a number of different companies as markets, I have a better chance of getting my content aired in at least some markets. If it is good, and gets traction, people in other markets will ask their cable company why they don't carry it. But if there are only 1 or 2 dominant providers nationwide, I only have 1 or 2 chances, so the odds are much longer.
Also, being dominant gives a cable company a huge say over the content in their existing networks. Lets say the Dems get in power and both branches of Congress and the Executive are controlled by Democrats. And lets say Comcast is allowed to gain, say, 50% of the market. A few words are whispered in a few ears, and *poof* - where the hell did Fox News go? Comcast will say it's a business decision, because Fox News, despite the the impression one gets from rantings around here, really doesn't have good Nielson ratings. So Comcast may lose a few subscribers to Dish Network. And what's Murdoch going to do - pull the rest of his channels? Blow away 1/2 his corporate advertising revenue? No, he'll swallow hard because Comcast now has him by the balls. And I know everyone here hates Fox, but do we really want to accept a situation where a news outlet can get silenced by corporations? We go spasmodic when someone says "Boo!" to a blogger!
There have already been rumblings of these disputes - Disney wanted to sell a package with a whole bunch of 3rd rate channels with ABC and Disney Channel. The cable company didn't want to be forced to take filler channels. Disney won that one, but would they win against a dominant nationwide cable company?
Another one is the dispute between Peter Angelos, owner of the Baltimore Orioles, and Comcast. Comcast sports network was broadcasting Orioles games. In exchange for "allowing" the Expos to move to Washington DC (No, I don't get it either), Angelos was granted a part of the new team's TV revenue, implemented by forming ANOTHER network. Comcast cried foul (haha) and refused to carry the new network. The local governments FREAKED, and threatened Comcast with revoking their licens if they didn't carry the games. I know Angelos is a scumbag, and MLB is full of other scumbags, but I'd rather have them being able to put pressure on my cable company, and not vice versa.
Quibble from a gun nut: that phrase is an oxymoron. Every weapon the media calls an "assault rifle" uses a small caliber or mid powered cartridge - mainly.223 Remington for AR-15 type or 7.62x39 for AK/SKS style. That was the whole point behind the development of military assault rifles - smaller cartriges with less range to be used in closer quarters. The firearm is lighter, easier to control, and a soldier can carrier a higher ammo load.
"High Power" is.308 or 30-06 class - these are large rifles, that kick HARD, and are harder to control. Rifles of this class are termed "main battle rifles": M1 Garand, M14, Fn-Fal, H&K G3. I'm not sure ANY of these types of firearms have been used in any of the mass killings that the media so love.
Then there is the whole semi- vs. full auto thing, but that's for another flameworthy Slashdot day.
Possibly - the level of ignorance in the College of Arts and Sciences could be astounding at times.
What irritates me about the whole ID thing is that ID started out as a *philosophical* concept that got hijacked by creationists. One can believe in God, and the original concepts of intelligent design, and be a scientific rationalist at the same time. But trying to teach Intelligent Design AS science is ridiculous - the circles on the Venn diagram don't intersect.
The whole point of ID is to try to come to an understanding of things that Science cannot, right now, explain. Where do the cosmological constants come from? What was there before the Big Bang. If science answers these questions, then great - there will always be new questions, even more inpenetrable. But these are topics for a Philosophy or Comparitive Religions class, neither of which are going to show up in the US primary or secondary educational system anytime soon.
Really? I always thought "legacy" was something kept around after being mostly supplanted because there was some external reason. Since FIOS is at elast a decade away from getting the market penetration that cable has, aren't you a little premature in that designation?
"Most of them would benefit from a good solid course in basic logic (to overturn the fallacies they base their 'theories' on)"
I used to be a grader at Lehigh for the Informal Logic course - trust me, there are some folks you CAN'T teach logic to.
And if there's anyone out there who took the course between about '87 & '90: I'm the one who graded your homework "0 plus" on a scale from 0 to 2 - you may have handed it in, but there was no resemblance in any of your answers to anything remotely resembling logic. And you weren't the only one who got that grade.
After they see the "kiddie pics" folder, you get segregated. Now sit on your ass for a couple hours while they call a higher level agent to OPEN the folder.
"Thousands of JPGs within? Check."
Sit through another couple of hours of interrogation, trying to get you to reveal what's in the folder. Then they call a computer forensics "expert" to analyze the files.
"All JPGs are hello.jpg? Checkmate"
They spend another few hours trying to determine if the Goatse Guy is under 16. Then they call in a higher level computer forensics "expert" to analyze the files for steganography.
By that time, you may as well BE the Goatse Guy - you are about as fucked as you are ever going to get.
"So if C is like a manual car, Java is an automatic."
The problem is, to extend the analogy, is that most never get PAST the automatic to learn stick.
My wife made it to her mid 20's never having driven a stickshift car. When I made her learn to drive a manual, the protests were shrill, until I pointed out that, regardless of the car she drove, *I* was going to continue driving a stickshift. That meant if her car broke down she was a pedestrian, but if mine broke down, I could drive hers without batting an eyelash.
I see the problem with CS not so much as not offering courses that students are likely to need, but telling students they are perfectly fine NOT having those skills. Here's your degree, you're set, thanks for the tuition, buh-bye.
"How is it that an FCC chairman that wants a MORE OPEN standard constitutes a downside?"
Because Kevin Martin has been painted as an industry flack, brown nosing to Big Business and the Bush Regime. The fact that he opposes cable company domination would add depth to a heretofor 2 dimensional character, and that is completely unnaceptable. We need our public figures simple and easy to ridicule, so that we don't need to engage our long atrophied skills at critical thinking.
"These types of things show that America is becoming more and more like Europe."
I don't follow. The Diversity Program is supposed to be a way to encourage immigrants from nations that have a low immigration rate. So immigrants from the bigger sorces - mexico, etc. m - are not affected. Yes, eliminating it may eliminate 50K visas - that's less than 5% of the total. And I don't think the bill eliminates the visas, just the lottery.
Reread my post - where exactly did I say that powder and crack cocaine are the same? I said that neither was more *dangerous* than the other. Apparently, crack is NOT "instantly addicting" or so much more damaging, at least on large scale, and those were the reasons that the Feds gave when they increased the sentencing minimums on crack well above powder. The hidden reasoning was the paternalistic urge to "protect" theose poor black folks who just don't know any better. So when you say "The two are WORLDS apart, both in effect, and in the type of people who tend to use them. Cocaine is a middle/upperclass party drug. Crack is more of a poor-man's street drug.", you are agreeing with a racist policy hidden in paternalism.
And I said nothing about the addictive nature of either drug - I only pointed out that research has shown that they are of equivalent danger. Cocaine users don't develop physical dependency like heroin or alcohol users - that's been long established. So, everyone who does coke doesn't get addicted. Big deal - everyone who drinks doesn't become an alcoholic. But that doesn't mean that alcoholics and cocaine addicts don't exist, or that their lives aren't substantially impacted by their addiction.
So you do coke, and you have fun, and you aren't addicted. BFD. So why do you have such a big chip on your shoulder?
I think they are afraid of the following scenario:
1) OLPC board discusses sales prospects in new countries. 2) Intel rep to OLPC calls home. 3) Intel parachutes into the prospects, hijacking the groundwork done bu the OLPC team to sell the Classmate instead. 4) Profit.
"Today, very few people can come to the US, even those that love America for what it represents (or at least used to)."
Are you aware that the US takes in the most immigrants in the world? Every year, the US take in over 1 million legal immigrants, far surpassing every other nation on the planet. And most of those become eligible to become citizens, unlike in the rest of the world where there aer 2-3 *generations* of foreigners living there who will never become citizens - Turks in Germany, for example.
You are thinking of illegal immigration, which the US has a big problem with. The fact that there are so many people who are willing to break the law to get into the US is indicative of how attractive the US still is to those of lower economic prospects. They, and the legal immigrants, still love America for what it represents: economic opportunity, citizenship for their children, and a loosening of the class strictures that bound them in their home country.
As for "where the US is going", it's generally agreed that we need to INCREASE legal immigration - the sticking point is over what to do about those here illegally now.
But I believe the "science" on that is changing (I put science in quotes because calling them quacks would undermine my argument). You are using the term addiction in the older sense, denoting physical dependency. The mental health profession may have hijacked the term, but that doesn't mean they are 2 separate phenomenon with overlapping effects. I think of it as a Venn diagram with 3 circles that overlap a lot: gambling, sex, and gaming wholly in the addiction circle; caffeine in the physical dependence circle, perhaps prescription antidepresants in the psychological dependence circle, cocaine in the overlap between addiction and psychological, alcoholism and heroin in the middle of all three.
Think of it another way - Bipolar disorder used to be called manic depression, and plain old depression was believed to be the same thing, just with a subdued manic phase. Now we know that they really have little to do with each other, but the NAME still has a great deal of mental pull.
Slashdot Mirror
Abbreviated:
If you owe the bank $100, the bank owns you.
If you owe the bank $1,000,000, you own the bank.
(I believe this was coined in the 1800's, so adjust for inflation please)
Variation: Take a garden tractor battery with you to the range, and get it spinning BEFORE shooting. My understanding is that the effect is worth the effort.
"Within the Event Horizon, of course, everything's pitch dark."
I always thought it depended on where you looked. If we suspend physics and assume that one could take measurements inside the event horizon, wouldn't those detectors "see" a whole shitload of photons coming in from the outside?
Puhlease - assuming that all ho's are African American is racist. There is a whole RAINBOW of ho's out there, in every race, shape, and size.
"That's all well and good in theory, but how the hell does it help me? "
It doesn't affect your choice of cable provider, but it DOES affect your choices for content. Cable companies must form agreements with networks and other content providers to carry the content. If one cable company becomes dominant nationwide, THEY get to decide what you can watch.
Right now, if I have some new channel, I need to go to the cable company and convince them to carry it. With a number of different companies as markets, I have a better chance of getting my content aired in at least some markets. If it is good, and gets traction, people in other markets will ask their cable company why they don't carry it. But if there are only 1 or 2 dominant providers nationwide, I only have 1 or 2 chances, so the odds are much longer.
Also, being dominant gives a cable company a huge say over the content in their existing networks. Lets say the Dems get in power and both branches of Congress and the Executive are controlled by Democrats. And lets say Comcast is allowed to gain, say, 50% of the market. A few words are whispered in a few ears, and *poof* - where the hell did Fox News go? Comcast will say it's a business decision, because Fox News, despite the the impression one gets from rantings around here, really doesn't have good Nielson ratings. So Comcast may lose a few subscribers to Dish Network. And what's Murdoch going to do - pull the rest of his channels? Blow away 1/2 his corporate advertising revenue? No, he'll swallow hard because Comcast now has him by the balls. And I know everyone here hates Fox, but do we really want to accept a situation where a news outlet can get silenced by corporations? We go spasmodic when someone says "Boo!" to a blogger!
There have already been rumblings of these disputes - Disney wanted to sell a package with a whole bunch of 3rd rate channels with ABC and Disney Channel. The cable company didn't want to be forced to take filler channels. Disney won that one, but would they win against a dominant nationwide cable company?
Another one is the dispute between Peter Angelos, owner of the Baltimore Orioles, and Comcast. Comcast sports network was broadcasting Orioles games. In exchange for "allowing" the Expos to move to Washington DC (No, I don't get it either), Angelos was granted a part of the new team's TV revenue, implemented by forming ANOTHER network. Comcast cried foul (haha) and refused to carry the new network. The local governments FREAKED, and threatened Comcast with revoking their licens if they didn't carry the games. I know Angelos is a scumbag, and MLB is full of other scumbags, but I'd rather have them being able to put pressure on my cable company, and not vice versa.
"the fact remains that under gold-based currency money does not lose value"
Really? So inflation didn't exist AT ALL under the gold standard?
Riiiiight.
"What is the intrinsic value of gold?"
The value is based on the the belief of the millions of idiots that spout the line about "intrinsic value of gold" - it's effectively self sustaining.
"high-powered assault rifle "
.223 Remington for AR-15 type or 7.62x39 for AK/SKS style. That was the whole point behind the development of military assault rifles - smaller cartriges with less range to be used in closer quarters. The firearm is lighter, easier to control, and a soldier can carrier a higher ammo load.
.308 or 30-06 class - these are large rifles, that kick HARD, and are harder to control. Rifles of this class are termed "main battle rifles": M1 Garand, M14, Fn-Fal, H&K G3. I'm not sure ANY of these types of firearms have been used in any of the mass killings that the media so love.
Quibble from a gun nut: that phrase is an oxymoron. Every weapon the media calls an "assault rifle" uses a small caliber or mid powered cartridge - mainly
"High Power" is
Then there is the whole semi- vs. full auto thing, but that's for another flameworthy Slashdot day.
Possibly - the level of ignorance in the College of Arts and Sciences could be astounding at times.
What irritates me about the whole ID thing is that ID started out as a *philosophical* concept that got hijacked by creationists. One can believe in God, and the original concepts of intelligent design, and be a scientific rationalist at the same time. But trying to teach Intelligent Design AS science is ridiculous - the circles on the Venn diagram don't intersect.
The whole point of ID is to try to come to an understanding of things that Science cannot, right now, explain. Where do the cosmological constants come from? What was there before the Big Bang. If science answers these questions, then great - there will always be new questions, even more inpenetrable. But these are topics for a Philosophy or Comparitive Religions class, neither of which are going to show up in the US primary or secondary educational system anytime soon.
"the package will cost $1050/month (for the first 3 months)--plus taxes and regulatory fees. It's Comcastic!"
Is that before or after Hammer Time?
"Coax cable plants are legacy."
Really? I always thought "legacy" was something kept around after being mostly supplanted because there was some external reason. Since FIOS is at elast a decade away from getting the market penetration that cable has, aren't you a little premature in that designation?
You should check out this stuff: http://www.dhmo.org/
It's EVERYWHERE!
Thanks for making the point for the posters above criticising the inevitable conspiracy theories - you are a perfect example.
Also, did you know that piracy is the definitive cause of global warming?
"Most of them would benefit from a good solid course in basic logic (to overturn the fallacies they base their 'theories' on)"
I used to be a grader at Lehigh for the Informal Logic course - trust me, there are some folks you CAN'T teach logic to.
And if there's anyone out there who took the course between about '87 & '90: I'm the one who graded your homework "0 plus" on a scale from 0 to 2 - you may have handed it in, but there was no resemblance in any of your answers to anything remotely resembling logic. And you weren't the only one who got that grade.
"fear mongering anti-vacationists."
Yeah, we have a bunch of those here at work. I'm still taking my alloted time off.
My reaction was "This is not the Slashdot you are looking for."
"Folder on desktop named "Kiddie pics?" Check.
After they see the "kiddie pics" folder, you get segregated. Now sit on your ass for a couple hours while they call a higher level agent to OPEN the folder.
"Thousands of JPGs within? Check."
Sit through another couple of hours of interrogation, trying to get you to reveal what's in the folder. Then they call a computer forensics "expert" to analyze the files.
"All JPGs are hello.jpg? Checkmate"
They spend another few hours trying to determine if the Goatse Guy is under 16. Then they call in a higher level computer forensics "expert" to analyze the files for steganography.
By that time, you may as well BE the Goatse Guy - you are about as fucked as you are ever going to get.
"So if C is like a manual car, Java is an automatic."
The problem is, to extend the analogy, is that most never get PAST the automatic to learn stick.
My wife made it to her mid 20's never having driven a stickshift car. When I made her learn to drive a manual, the protests were shrill, until I pointed out that, regardless of the car she drove, *I* was going to continue driving a stickshift. That meant if her car broke down she was a pedestrian, but if mine broke down, I could drive hers without batting an eyelash.
I see the problem with CS not so much as not offering courses that students are likely to need, but telling students they are perfectly fine NOT having those skills. Here's your degree, you're set, thanks for the tuition, buh-bye.
"Oh, and don't even ask what's worse - Britney Spears in mp3 or Britney Spears in wig... That's just rude."
I'm not sure, but Britney Spears is a psych ward is just AWESOME! Especially now that Dr. Phil is on the case...
"How is it that an FCC chairman that wants a MORE OPEN standard constitutes a downside?"
Because Kevin Martin has been painted as an industry flack, brown nosing to Big Business and the Bush Regime. The fact that he opposes cable company domination would add depth to a heretofor 2 dimensional character, and that is completely unnaceptable. We need our public figures simple and easy to ridicule, so that we don't need to engage our long atrophied skills at critical thinking.
"These types of things show that America is becoming more and more like Europe."
I don't follow. The Diversity Program is supposed to be a way to encourage immigrants from nations that have a low immigration rate. So immigrants from the bigger sorces - mexico, etc. m - are not affected. Yes, eliminating it may eliminate 50K visas - that's less than 5% of the total. And I don't think the bill eliminates the visas, just the lottery.
Reread my post - where exactly did I say that powder and crack cocaine are the same? I said that neither was more *dangerous* than the other. Apparently, crack is NOT "instantly addicting" or so much more damaging, at least on large scale, and those were the reasons that the Feds gave when they increased the sentencing minimums on crack well above powder. The hidden reasoning was the paternalistic urge to "protect" theose poor black folks who just don't know any better. So when you say "The two are WORLDS apart, both in effect, and in the type of people who tend to use them. Cocaine is a middle/upperclass party drug. Crack is more of a poor-man's street drug.", you are agreeing with a racist policy hidden in paternalism.
And I said nothing about the addictive nature of either drug - I only pointed out that research has shown that they are of equivalent danger. Cocaine users don't develop physical dependency like heroin or alcohol users - that's been long established. So, everyone who does coke doesn't get addicted. Big deal - everyone who drinks doesn't become an alcoholic. But that doesn't mean that alcoholics and cocaine addicts don't exist, or that their lives aren't substantially impacted by their addiction.
So you do coke, and you have fun, and you aren't addicted. BFD. So why do you have such a big chip on your shoulder?
I think they are afraid of the following scenario:
1) OLPC board discusses sales prospects in new countries.
2) Intel rep to OLPC calls home.
3) Intel parachutes into the prospects, hijacking the groundwork done bu the OLPC team to sell the Classmate instead.
4) Profit.
Farfetched? I don't think so.
"Today, very few people can come to the US, even those that love America for what it represents (or at least used to)."
Are you aware that the US takes in the most immigrants in the world? Every year, the US take in over 1 million legal immigrants, far surpassing every other nation on the planet. And most of those become eligible to become citizens, unlike in the rest of the world where there aer 2-3 *generations* of foreigners living there who will never become citizens - Turks in Germany, for example.
You are thinking of illegal immigration, which the US has a big problem with. The fact that there are so many people who are willing to break the law to get into the US is indicative of how attractive the US still is to those of lower economic prospects. They, and the legal immigrants, still love America for what it represents: economic opportunity, citizenship for their children, and a loosening of the class strictures that bound them in their home country.
As for "where the US is going", it's generally agreed that we need to INCREASE legal immigration - the sticking point is over what to do about those here illegally now.
But I believe the "science" on that is changing (I put science in quotes because calling them quacks would undermine my argument). You are using the term addiction in the older sense, denoting physical dependency. The mental health profession may have hijacked the term, but that doesn't mean they are 2 separate phenomenon with overlapping effects. I think of it as a Venn diagram with 3 circles that overlap a lot: gambling, sex, and gaming wholly in the addiction circle; caffeine in the physical dependence circle, perhaps prescription antidepresants in the psychological dependence circle, cocaine in the overlap between addiction and psychological, alcoholism and heroin in the middle of all three.
Think of it another way - Bipolar disorder used to be called manic depression, and plain old depression was believed to be the same thing, just with a subdued manic phase. Now we know that they really have little to do with each other, but the NAME still has a great deal of mental pull.