Alas, it's not quite general, as my Thinkpad is lacking the feature (the digital outputs are all labeled with "HDMI" in alsa).
Now you made me investigate.:) My laptop doesn't list any IEC958 devices either, but it does have a SPDIF control in alsamixer so I thought that it would work anyway—on my media center PC that switch was all that was needed to enable digital audio to my receiver, even without using the special "spdif" or "iec958" ALSA device. Much to my surprise, however, on the laptop it had no effect. From digging into the low-level details with/proc/asound/card0/codec* and the hdajackretask utility from the alsa-tools-gui package, it seems the chip (a VIA VT1802) does support SPDIF, but the SPDIF-capable digital output pin is not connected to the headphone jack (or anywhere else). Apparently the motherboard designers ran out of space for the trivial amount of off-chip wiring necessary to make SPDIF functional.
Incidentally, S/PDIF isn't doing too great these days, which is a shame. One of my old laptops from 2005 had optical audio output, and it was awesome especially given the poor quality of its analog output. Since then, this feature has been missing from most laptops, and even with desktop mobos you have to be careful.
Current systems can generally output S/PDIF digital audio through the line-out port; it's a standard feature, though somewhat hidden. You just need to connect an RCA adapter (use the right/red channel) and enable the S/PDIF output switch in the sound card settings. Audio quality is the same as Toslink (optical S/PDIF), though the signal may attenuate over very long coax links. There are devices like this one available which convert from coax to Toslink.
It seems since HDMI came out, you shouldn't need any other way of getting raw digital audio, which seems especially silly with something like 5.1 or better...
Unfortunately, S/PDIF doesn't support multichannel PCM; to get more than two channels the audio has to be compressed (e.g. AC3). If you want uncompressed multichannel digital audio (e.g. Dolby TrueHD) the only option is an HDMI connection, and the relevant standards say this is only allowed in combination with HDCP. It is at least possible to live-transcode multichannel PCM to AC3 to get surround sound without the DRM, albeit at some cost in quality, CPU time, and latency.
Netflix says UHD video is 7 GB/hr, or 10.5 GB for a typical 1.5 hr movie
You can certainly compress UHD video (or just about any resolution) down to 20 Mbps or less, but quality will suffer as a result. What is the point of ultra-high-resolution video with visible compression artifacts? Streaming at Blu-ray-equivalent video quality would require around 40 Mbps. This also happens to be in line with the Youtube UHD video upload guidelines.
Specific content providers may, of course, offer varying levels of control over video quality, at their discretion. At the moment there is no uniform system in place to give the user control over bandwidth consumption across all sites and applications. Netflix cuts some corners to save bandwidth, but not everyone else does the same.
In the end, even 10 GB for 1.5 hours of entertainment isn't much better than 24 GB when a typical mobile plan includes less than half that amount for the entire month. The biggest single-line plan Verizon currently offers (32 GB for ~$155/mo. + taxes and fees) would cover three films, more or less, in overcompressed quasi-UHD. Three movies in a month is hardly extravagant—and there is no requirement that you actually watch the video on your smartphone. Streaming in UHD to a smart TV or set-top box is not unreasonable, and in some places mobile providers are the only real options for Internet access.
For example, it can store and process data as 0, 1, 2, or 3, known as Ternary number system.
The Ternary, or Base-3, number system uses digits 0, 1, and 2 or (for Balanced Ternary) -1, 0, and +1. The Base-4 system with digits 0, 1, 2, and 3 is properly referred to as the Quaternary number system.
Higher bandwidth does not mean you use more data to stream a movie
Actually, in most cases it does. The provider automatically selects the video quality based on the available bandwidth, so more bandwidth available equals more bandwidth—and data—used for the same duration of video. Up to a point, anyway: 4K or UHD video, the current "gold standards", require 35-45 Mbps; this is also the approximate maximum bitrate supported by Blu-ray discs. At that rate you'd need to download a GB every 3.5 minutes, or over 24 GB for a typical 1.5 hour movie. I suspect the peak mobile bandwidth available in most places is considerably less than 40 Mbps, though results may vary in major metropolitan areas.
If they can't legally reveal the source of the information amd they can't *legally* lie about the source, than they can't really use the information for criminal prosecution without breaking the law.
They'll still use it, after coming up with an alternate explanation for how the information was obtained. They won't even have to lie, exactly—once they use the secret interception to identify their target, they'll go back and perform a public and apparently above-board investigation based on those results (perhaps laundered via an "anonymous tip" from a "concerned citizen"); the results from that investigation are the ones they supply to the court. Of course, the public investigation never would have been started if it weren't for the data they secretly intercepted, and the defendant, whether guilty or innocent, will face an uphill battle combatting the mass of circumstantial evidence compiled long before the public investigation even started. This is no different from "parallel construction" as currently practiced in the U.S., with all the attendant problems. If you set out to find people who look guilty, you will turn up more than a few who are actually innocent—and if the fact that the case was founded on a dragnet search is kept secret, that circumstantial evidence will be granted far too much weight. As far as the victim can prove it's just a case of really bad luck, when in fact the system is secretly selecting for those least able to defend themselves, which leads to a high false-positive rate.
Not to mention Windows actually makes it really hard to name a file starting with a space, as it will helpfully remove the space if you try.
It doesn't try all that hard, since this works fine: notepad "\\?\c:\temp\ space.txt". Once the file is created you can open it and edit it normally, or delete it from Explorer. If you really want to see Windows get confused, try creating a file like "\\?\c:\temp\nul.txt". You'll be able to open the file through Explorer (as an alias for NUL), but not save to it. Explorer won't even be able to delete the file because it thinks its opening/deleting the special NUL device, despite the path and.txt suffix. (Naturally, you can delete it using "del \\?\c:\temp\nul.txt" from a command prompt.)
I see that by the plain words of the law they "may not disclose... any content of an intercepted communication", I don't see any authorization to disclose the content and lie about the source.
You stopped too soon. Read the rest of the text. The key phrases are "discloses, in circumstances from which its origin in interception-related conduct may be inferred... or tends to suggest that any interception-related conduct has or may have occurred or may be going to occur". As long as they disguise the origin enough to protect their secret spying program they can use the intercepted content however they want. The point of this clause isn't to protect the public from misuse of the intercepted communications, it's to keep the interception program itself out of the public eye.
In America, the stoplights have "hoods" on them to prevent them from being seen from any angle other than head on.
Is that what those hoods are for? I always thought they were to make the lights more visible by keeping them out of direct sunlight. Most of them certainly aren't very effective at hiding the color of the lights facing the other direction, whether because the angle is wrong to block the entire light or due to more subtle reflections, often on the inside of the hood itself.
In any case, hiding information about the status of the intersection is counter-productive to ensuring safe and orderly traffic patterns. The more accurate and up-to-date situational data drivers have the better. Rather than directional masks, they should be adding count-down displays visible to all drivers (not just those in late-model Audis) so that everyone has an accurate forecast of when the light will change.
Here's my homework, teacher: Article 1, section 8: Congress may lay and collect taxes for the "common defense" or "general welfare" of the United States.
This does not equate to a power to spend tax money on (or regulate) anything "for the 'common defense' or 'general welfare'". If Congress's enumerated powers included getting involved in education, this clause would grant them the power to raise money toward that end. It does not grant that power by itself. If it did, the remainder of the section (and the entire concept of enumerated powers) would be rendered meaningless, which was obviously not the authors' or signers' intent.
Don't worry, this is a very common mistake. Your reading comprehension will improve with practice. In the meantime, perhaps you would care to read what Thomas Jefferson and JamesMadison had to say on the subject.
Financially, Congress has the power to tax, borrow, pay debt and provide for the common defense and the general welfare.
You skipped some critical words and punctuation:
The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States;...
Notice the comma after "Excises"—these are two separate lists, not a single broad power. The power described here is simply "To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises". That's it: to collect money, not to spend it. The purpose of that power is described by the next phrase, "to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States". That is merely clarifying language, tacked on to explain why the money is being collected and not intended to grant any additional powers. In other words, the nature of this power is merely to fund the enumerated powers given by the remainder of the section. If this sentence alone were intended to authorize absolutely anything which might be argued to "provide for the common Defense and general Welfare" then the remainder of the section would be superfluous. That (false) interpretation does away with the entire concept of enumerated powers. The authors and signers obviously did not intend for the enumeration of powers granted to Congress to be superfluous, or Section 8 would have ended immediately after the words "general Welfare".
Don't just take my word for it, though. Consider instead the writings of Thomas Jefferson and JamesMadison on the subject.
When the time comes to start specializing in something (i.e. choosing a major in college), they will have a good idea of what subjects they enjoy and have an aptitude for. That's where they'll pick up the math and analytical skills and other foundational stuff.
Math and analytical skills are foundational skills for far more than just computer programming, and ought to be taught long before the student enters college. It is undeniably true that not every student needs to be trained as a large-system software developer, but everyone should learn at least the most basic fundamentals of computer design, both practical and theoretical, and more importantly the problem-solving skills such as abstract thinking, divide-and-conquer, proofs, etc. which are necessary to understand how complex systems function, including—but not limited to—software. Introductory computer coding is one context in which these skills can be taught, so long as it is recognized as a means to an end and not the end itself.
You can't have it both ways, either we have a forgetful society... or you let things be remembered forever and applied to your "reputation".
The so-called "right to be forgotten" has exactly zero relevance here. For one, it never prevented anyone from assembling a database of social interactions with "scores" based on individual behavior. It only prohibited the details of that behavior from being searchable by the general public. This new system China is implementing does not need to be public or searchable to be effective and would be fully compatible with the nonsensical "right to be forgotten" laws instituted in the EU. Moreover, the ability to search historical records for once-public information about an individual's past does not in any way imply the degree of official monitoring and collection of private data about individuals that China's plan calls for, much less mandate that this information be used to control access to goods and services in service to the rulers' political and social agenda.
When a person with extensive debt and a history of missing payments is denied a loan based on their credit score, that is simply common sense. If more information allows that risk to be assessed more precisely, so much the better—so long as the information is made available voluntarily, and deliberately hiding relevant data to obtain credit which would not have been extended had the lender known about the risk is tantamount to fraud (i.e. theft). On the other hand, when an otherwise responsible, low-risk individual is denied a loan merely because an intrusive government deems them "potentially subversive" or "not a team player" we have a serious problem, especially when the government exercises significant direct influence over the economy.
TL;DR: The problem is not the absence of "forgetfulness" or the existence of a "reputation score", it's the influence of the government over the economy and the application of political force guided by that information. Without that information the government's meddling would be perhaps a bit less efficient, but no less wrong.
I haven't seen a software project of any complexity come in this close.
Even your average "Hello, World" app running on a modern PC is probably more complex, if you count all the software involved in getting from a few lines of trite source code to pixels on a screen: compilers, program loaders, standard libraries, system calls, filesystems, pseudo-terminals, terminal emulators, IPC, rendering libraries, graphics drivers, window managers, memory management, scheduling, etc. We've just become very good at automating the management of all that complexity behind the scenes, to the point that it's routinely taken for granted and treated almost like magic. Physical designs are trivial by comparison—but the complexity they do have is much harder to manage compared to digital constructs.
The electoral college was specifically designed so the person who won the popular vote could still lose the election.
When the electoral college was designed there was no popular vote for the presidency. The electors were expected to meet, debate, and ultimately select the president and vice president as free agents representing the interests of their respective states—very much as if Congress directly appointed the president and vice president. The role falls to the EC rather than Congress itself mainly to ensure that the electors are all recent appointments, whereas a member of Congress may have been elected up to four years prior. The idea that an elector would be expected to vote for predetermined presidential and vice presidential candidates based on the outcome of a state-wide or nation-wide election (with or without the binding agreements and legal penalties for noncompliance employed by some states) is a comparatively recent invention.
For myself, I don't really care whether the president is selected by the EC or a popular vote. There are pros and cons to both systems. What I would like to see, however, is the option for any candidate to be disqualified through a 20-40% minority veto. Anyone who manages to alienate enough of the voters and/or electors to warrant such a veto should not become President. I do not think it unreasonable to expect that the President should at least be deemed marginally acceptable by 60-80% of the citizens he or she will rule over for the next four years. This business of choosing between two bad candidates (and a few minority candidates who certainly won't win, and are apparently on the ballot only to split the vote) is utter nonsense. The lesser evil is no way to select the representative for an entire nation.
Huh? Without the scalper, that someone could have bought the ticket directly from the supplier, at a lower price.
Only given an abundant supply of tickets. More likely, someone else might have bought the tickets who wasn't quite as interested in the show, but decided to go anyway simply because the tickets were cheap. Scalpers prevent this "priority inversion" by buying up underpriced tickets and reselling them at market price, thus ensuring that those with the greatest effective demand for the tickets are able to attend. The only problem with this scenario is one of the venue's own making—by underpricing their tickets they ensure that the difference is payed to the scalpers, when it could have gone to support the venue and the performers instead.
There are arguments both ways, of course; efficient allocation of resources is not always the highest priority for those putting on the show. For example, performers might wish to keep ticket prices low so that their less wealthy fans have a chance to attend, thus raising less money through ticket sales and rationing the tickets by lottery (or by willingness to show up early and stand in line for hours... thus punishing fans with less free time) rather than ability and willingness to pay. I have no problem with that goal, but rather than an unjust and intrusive legal prohibition on "scalping" I'd rather see venues tie tickets to specific attendees if they want to control resale. They have every right to only accept tickets with a matching photo ID. It makes no sense to sell generic tickets anyone can use while attempting to limit third-party transactions involving those tickets.
The only real solution is the same as for every other tragedy of the commons.
You mean privatize the commons? That's a good idea, except in this case it would be redundant. There is no commons. Every part of the Internet infrastructure is already privately owned. People just don't see it as worthwhile to set strict rules on how their respective portions of the infrastructure are used, which suggests that such rules would not be economical to implement or enforce, i.e. implementing them would be a net loss for society.
I don't think it's misleading at all. Practically speaking, we don't know how to freeze entire human bodies—or even individual human organs—without destroying them. We can't even freeze an entire rabbit body without destroying it. We're getting closer, but we're not there yet.
Now if you had a brain the size of a rabbit's, and you didn't mind preserving only the brain and trusting future medical technology to enable brain-transplant into a new body, then you might stand a chance. Otherwise, if your body is to be frozen using current technology, you're depending on future medical innovations to repair the massive cellular damage which will result from the uneven freezing process.
The part you quoted is the theory behind cryonics, and that's all well and good as far as it goes. However, we're not there yet. We don't have the means to distribute the cryoprotectant solution evenly enough throughout the body, or to lower the body's temperature quickly and evenly enough, to preserve all the internal organs in situ. The closest we've come to that is the preservation of individual organs outside the body, as stated later in the article:
And just in February of 2016, there was a cryonics breakthrough when for the first time, scientists vitrified a rabbit's brain and showed that once rewarmed, it was in near-perfect condition, "with the cell membranes, synapses, and intracellular structures intact... [It was] the first time a cryopreservation was provably able to protect everything associated with learning and memory."
According to the article, we've also managed to successfully freeze, thaw, and re-implant a functioning rabbit kidney. This process has not been successfully demonstrated with human organs, which are significantly larger than rabbit organs and consequently more difficult to freeze without damage, much less a whole intact human body.
Thing I'm wondering is - why don't they freeze her while she's still alive? Even if they find a cure for cancer, that will likely not be something that resurrects the dead.
The current state-of-the-art freezing processes would kill her anyway, so the end result is the same. We don't have the ability to freeze the body without fatally damaging the cells. Anyone with the technology to reverse the massive cellular damage from the cryo would most likely be able to deal with the rest without any trouble. From a legal point of view, freezing someone while still alive would be much more problematic—it would probably be classified as a form of assisted suicide, given our current inability to reverse the process. No one wants to take on that kind of liability for a infinitesimally better chance of successful revival in the distant future.
And the ruling is absurd... if one of the parents wanted to make handbags out of her skin, the judge would of ruled against them.
The decision was rightly the teen's, not the parents'. It's her body, after all. Provided the teen can come up with a way to pay for the procedure, that is—and in this case the mother was willing to serve as sponsor. No one else has any legitimate say in the matter.
At least with Twitter it can be argued that it is a platform for speech and as such the law should reflect Twitters impact on political discourse and outcomes on elections. Just like a town-square you cannot be kicked out for racist speech and yes it doesn't mean you have to listen it.... AT&T was determined critical and cannot limit its service on political ideology so there is legal precedent.
First, that was an awful legal precedent which ought to be overturned, not expanded—a taking of private property for public use without compensation on a massive scale. Second, the situations are nowhere near the same. In the AT&T case they at least had the weak argument that ownership of the physical last-mile infrastructure gave AT&T a form of natural monopoly on communications; Twitter has no such monopoly on online discussion. If the government is that concerned about potential bias on Twitter they are free to host their own functionally-equivalent, politically-neutral site.
The town square is public property, and thus likewise not equivalent. As the square is not private property, your presence there infringes on no one's rights. In contrast, no one has the right to use Twitter's private servers and network services without their permission.
If you sell limited-edition prints of a painting, and people buy it because having one out of only a hundred has value to them, then someone making counterfeits is decreasing the value even if they don't directly take from the original creator.
Yeah, that's competition for you. One has a right to the property itself, not the market value of the property. So long as this hypothetical competitor doesn't claim that the copies are either originals or authorized reproductions, no fraud has been committed. "Decreasing the value" is not a crime by itself.
Calling this "wire fraud" is ridiculous. EA might have a case for regular fraud, in the sense that they were tricked into issuing the tokens (though that is partly their fault for blindly trusting whatever the client software tells them). It's hard to imagine any damages being associated with that "fraud" unless EA is in the business of selling these tokens for real-world money, which would make them rather hypocritical since that behavior is prohibited to others in their ToS. The buyers have a better claim, since they are out real money for the unearned and likely-to-be-cancelled tokens, but since they were buying from "black market dealers" in the first place they don't have much room to complain.
You would probably agree that things like "dumping" -- flooding the market with below-market-price items in order to harm domestic industry -- are not good, even though technically dumping just gives people really cheap things.
The main victims of "dumping" are those who practice it. If you naively try to compete with dumping on price then you'll lose for sure, but if you're smart you'll just wait it out while focusing on R&D, expanding into different areas, or even just "hibernating" to minimize operating expenses—eventually they'll run out of funds, leaving you perfectly poised to reenter the market in an even stronger position than before. Meanwhile, everyone gets cheap goods at the dumpers' expense.
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Alas, it's not quite general, as my Thinkpad is lacking the feature (the digital outputs are all labeled with "HDMI" in alsa).
Now you made me investigate. :) My laptop doesn't list any IEC958 devices either, but it does have a SPDIF control in alsamixer so I thought that it would work anyway—on my media center PC that switch was all that was needed to enable digital audio to my receiver, even without using the special "spdif" or "iec958" ALSA device. Much to my surprise, however, on the laptop it had no effect. From digging into the low-level details with /proc/asound/card0/codec* and the hdajackretask utility from the alsa-tools-gui package, it seems the chip (a VIA VT1802) does support SPDIF, but the SPDIF-capable digital output pin is not connected to the headphone jack (or anywhere else). Apparently the motherboard designers ran out of space for the trivial amount of off-chip wiring necessary to make SPDIF functional.
Incidentally, S/PDIF isn't doing too great these days, which is a shame. One of my old laptops from 2005 had optical audio output, and it was awesome especially given the poor quality of its analog output. Since then, this feature has been missing from most laptops, and even with desktop mobos you have to be careful.
Current systems can generally output S/PDIF digital audio through the line-out port; it's a standard feature, though somewhat hidden. You just need to connect an RCA adapter (use the right/red channel) and enable the S/PDIF output switch in the sound card settings. Audio quality is the same as Toslink (optical S/PDIF), though the signal may attenuate over very long coax links. There are devices like this one available which convert from coax to Toslink.
It seems since HDMI came out, you shouldn't need any other way of getting raw digital audio, which seems especially silly with something like 5.1 or better...
Unfortunately, S/PDIF doesn't support multichannel PCM; to get more than two channels the audio has to be compressed (e.g. AC3). If you want uncompressed multichannel digital audio (e.g. Dolby TrueHD) the only option is an HDMI connection, and the relevant standards say this is only allowed in combination with HDCP. It is at least possible to live-transcode multichannel PCM to AC3 to get surround sound without the DRM, albeit at some cost in quality, CPU time, and latency.
Netflix says UHD video is 7 GB/hr, or 10.5 GB for a typical 1.5 hr movie
You can certainly compress UHD video (or just about any resolution) down to 20 Mbps or less, but quality will suffer as a result. What is the point of ultra-high-resolution video with visible compression artifacts? Streaming at Blu-ray-equivalent video quality would require around 40 Mbps. This also happens to be in line with the Youtube UHD video upload guidelines.
Specific content providers may, of course, offer varying levels of control over video quality, at their discretion. At the moment there is no uniform system in place to give the user control over bandwidth consumption across all sites and applications. Netflix cuts some corners to save bandwidth, but not everyone else does the same.
In the end, even 10 GB for 1.5 hours of entertainment isn't much better than 24 GB when a typical mobile plan includes less than half that amount for the entire month. The biggest single-line plan Verizon currently offers (32 GB for ~$155/mo. + taxes and fees) would cover three films, more or less, in overcompressed quasi-UHD. Three movies in a month is hardly extravagant—and there is no requirement that you actually watch the video on your smartphone. Streaming in UHD to a smart TV or set-top box is not unreasonable, and in some places mobile providers are the only real options for Internet access.
For example, it can store and process data as 0, 1, 2, or 3, known as Ternary number system.
The Ternary, or Base-3, number system uses digits 0, 1, and 2 or (for Balanced Ternary) -1, 0, and +1. The Base-4 system with digits 0, 1, 2, and 3 is properly referred to as the Quaternary number system.
Higher bandwidth does not mean you use more data to stream a movie
Actually, in most cases it does. The provider automatically selects the video quality based on the available bandwidth, so more bandwidth available equals more bandwidth—and data—used for the same duration of video. Up to a point, anyway: 4K or UHD video, the current "gold standards", require 35-45 Mbps; this is also the approximate maximum bitrate supported by Blu-ray discs. At that rate you'd need to download a GB every 3.5 minutes, or over 24 GB for a typical 1.5 hour movie. I suspect the peak mobile bandwidth available in most places is considerably less than 40 Mbps, though results may vary in major metropolitan areas.
If they can't legally reveal the source of the information amd they can't *legally* lie about the source, than they can't really use the information for criminal prosecution without breaking the law.
They'll still use it, after coming up with an alternate explanation for how the information was obtained. They won't even have to lie, exactly—once they use the secret interception to identify their target, they'll go back and perform a public and apparently above-board investigation based on those results (perhaps laundered via an "anonymous tip" from a "concerned citizen"); the results from that investigation are the ones they supply to the court. Of course, the public investigation never would have been started if it weren't for the data they secretly intercepted, and the defendant, whether guilty or innocent, will face an uphill battle combatting the mass of circumstantial evidence compiled long before the public investigation even started. This is no different from "parallel construction" as currently practiced in the U.S., with all the attendant problems. If you set out to find people who look guilty, you will turn up more than a few who are actually innocent—and if the fact that the case was founded on a dragnet search is kept secret, that circumstantial evidence will be granted far too much weight. As far as the victim can prove it's just a case of really bad luck, when in fact the system is secretly selecting for those least able to defend themselves, which leads to a high false-positive rate.
Not to mention Windows actually makes it really hard to name a file starting with a space, as it will helpfully remove the space if you try.
It doesn't try all that hard, since this works fine: notepad "\\?\c:\temp\ space.txt". Once the file is created you can open it and edit it normally, or delete it from Explorer. If you really want to see Windows get confused, try creating a file like "\\?\c:\temp\nul.txt". You'll be able to open the file through Explorer (as an alias for NUL), but not save to it. Explorer won't even be able to delete the file because it thinks its opening/deleting the special NUL device, despite the path and .txt suffix. (Naturally, you can delete it using "del \\?\c:\temp\nul.txt" from a command prompt.)
I see that by the plain words of the law they "may not disclose ... any content of an intercepted communication", I don't see any authorization to disclose the content and lie about the source.
You stopped too soon. Read the rest of the text. The key phrases are "discloses, in circumstances from which its origin in interception-related conduct may be inferred ... or tends to suggest that any interception-related conduct has or may have occurred or may be going to occur". As long as they disguise the origin enough to protect their secret spying program they can use the intercepted content however they want. The point of this clause isn't to protect the public from misuse of the intercepted communications, it's to keep the interception program itself out of the public eye.
In America, the stoplights have "hoods" on them to prevent them from being seen from any angle other than head on.
Is that what those hoods are for? I always thought they were to make the lights more visible by keeping them out of direct sunlight. Most of them certainly aren't very effective at hiding the color of the lights facing the other direction, whether because the angle is wrong to block the entire light or due to more subtle reflections, often on the inside of the hood itself.
In any case, hiding information about the status of the intersection is counter-productive to ensuring safe and orderly traffic patterns. The more accurate and up-to-date situational data drivers have the better. Rather than directional masks, they should be adding count-down displays visible to all drivers (not just those in late-model Audis) so that everyone has an accurate forecast of when the light will change.
Here's my homework, teacher: Article 1, section 8: Congress may lay and collect taxes for the "common defense" or "general welfare" of the United States.
This does not equate to a power to spend tax money on (or regulate) anything "for the 'common defense' or 'general welfare'". If Congress's enumerated powers included getting involved in education, this clause would grant them the power to raise money toward that end. It does not grant that power by itself. If it did, the remainder of the section (and the entire concept of enumerated powers) would be rendered meaningless, which was obviously not the authors' or signers' intent.
Don't worry, this is a very common mistake. Your reading comprehension will improve with practice. In the meantime, perhaps you would care to read what Thomas Jefferson and James Madison had to say on the subject.
Financially, Congress has the power to tax, borrow, pay debt and provide for the common defense and the general welfare.
You skipped some critical words and punctuation:
The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States; ...
Notice the comma after "Excises"—these are two separate lists, not a single broad power. The power described here is simply "To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises". That's it: to collect money, not to spend it. The purpose of that power is described by the next phrase, "to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States". That is merely clarifying language, tacked on to explain why the money is being collected and not intended to grant any additional powers. In other words, the nature of this power is merely to fund the enumerated powers given by the remainder of the section. If this sentence alone were intended to authorize absolutely anything which might be argued to "provide for the common Defense and general Welfare" then the remainder of the section would be superfluous. That (false) interpretation does away with the entire concept of enumerated powers. The authors and signers obviously did not intend for the enumeration of powers granted to Congress to be superfluous, or Section 8 would have ended immediately after the words "general Welfare".
Don't just take my word for it, though. Consider instead the writings of Thomas Jefferson and James Madison on the subject.
When the time comes to start specializing in something (i.e. choosing a major in college), they will have a good idea of what subjects they enjoy and have an aptitude for. That's where they'll pick up the math and analytical skills and other foundational stuff.
Math and analytical skills are foundational skills for far more than just computer programming, and ought to be taught long before the student enters college. It is undeniably true that not every student needs to be trained as a large-system software developer, but everyone should learn at least the most basic fundamentals of computer design, both practical and theoretical, and more importantly the problem-solving skills such as abstract thinking, divide-and-conquer, proofs, etc. which are necessary to understand how complex systems function, including—but not limited to—software. Introductory computer coding is one context in which these skills can be taught, so long as it is recognized as a means to an end and not the end itself.
You can't have it both ways, either we have a forgetful society ... or you let things be remembered forever and applied to your "reputation".
The so-called "right to be forgotten" has exactly zero relevance here. For one, it never prevented anyone from assembling a database of social interactions with "scores" based on individual behavior. It only prohibited the details of that behavior from being searchable by the general public. This new system China is implementing does not need to be public or searchable to be effective and would be fully compatible with the nonsensical "right to be forgotten" laws instituted in the EU. Moreover, the ability to search historical records for once-public information about an individual's past does not in any way imply the degree of official monitoring and collection of private data about individuals that China's plan calls for, much less mandate that this information be used to control access to goods and services in service to the rulers' political and social agenda.
When a person with extensive debt and a history of missing payments is denied a loan based on their credit score, that is simply common sense. If more information allows that risk to be assessed more precisely, so much the better—so long as the information is made available voluntarily, and deliberately hiding relevant data to obtain credit which would not have been extended had the lender known about the risk is tantamount to fraud (i.e. theft). On the other hand, when an otherwise responsible, low-risk individual is denied a loan merely because an intrusive government deems them "potentially subversive" or "not a team player" we have a serious problem, especially when the government exercises significant direct influence over the economy.
TL;DR: The problem is not the absence of "forgetfulness" or the existence of a "reputation score", it's the influence of the government over the economy and the application of political force guided by that information. Without that information the government's meddling would be perhaps a bit less efficient, but no less wrong.
I haven't seen a software project of any complexity come in this close.
Even your average "Hello, World" app running on a modern PC is probably more complex, if you count all the software involved in getting from a few lines of trite source code to pixels on a screen: compilers, program loaders, standard libraries, system calls, filesystems, pseudo-terminals, terminal emulators, IPC, rendering libraries, graphics drivers, window managers, memory management, scheduling, etc. We've just become very good at automating the management of all that complexity behind the scenes, to the point that it's routinely taken for granted and treated almost like magic. Physical designs are trivial by comparison—but the complexity they do have is much harder to manage compared to digital constructs.
The electoral college was specifically designed so the person who won the popular vote could still lose the election.
When the electoral college was designed there was no popular vote for the presidency. The electors were expected to meet, debate, and ultimately select the president and vice president as free agents representing the interests of their respective states—very much as if Congress directly appointed the president and vice president. The role falls to the EC rather than Congress itself mainly to ensure that the electors are all recent appointments, whereas a member of Congress may have been elected up to four years prior. The idea that an elector would be expected to vote for predetermined presidential and vice presidential candidates based on the outcome of a state-wide or nation-wide election (with or without the binding agreements and legal penalties for noncompliance employed by some states) is a comparatively recent invention.
For myself, I don't really care whether the president is selected by the EC or a popular vote. There are pros and cons to both systems. What I would like to see, however, is the option for any candidate to be disqualified through a 20-40% minority veto. Anyone who manages to alienate enough of the voters and/or electors to warrant such a veto should not become President. I do not think it unreasonable to expect that the President should at least be deemed marginally acceptable by 60-80% of the citizens he or she will rule over for the next four years. This business of choosing between two bad candidates (and a few minority candidates who certainly won't win, and are apparently on the ballot only to split the vote) is utter nonsense. The lesser evil is no way to select the representative for an entire nation.
Huh? Without the scalper, that someone could have bought the ticket directly from the supplier, at a lower price.
Only given an abundant supply of tickets. More likely, someone else might have bought the tickets who wasn't quite as interested in the show, but decided to go anyway simply because the tickets were cheap. Scalpers prevent this "priority inversion" by buying up underpriced tickets and reselling them at market price, thus ensuring that those with the greatest effective demand for the tickets are able to attend. The only problem with this scenario is one of the venue's own making—by underpricing their tickets they ensure that the difference is payed to the scalpers, when it could have gone to support the venue and the performers instead.
There are arguments both ways, of course; efficient allocation of resources is not always the highest priority for those putting on the show. For example, performers might wish to keep ticket prices low so that their less wealthy fans have a chance to attend, thus raising less money through ticket sales and rationing the tickets by lottery (or by willingness to show up early and stand in line for hours... thus punishing fans with less free time) rather than ability and willingness to pay. I have no problem with that goal, but rather than an unjust and intrusive legal prohibition on "scalping" I'd rather see venues tie tickets to specific attendees if they want to control resale. They have every right to only accept tickets with a matching photo ID. It makes no sense to sell generic tickets anyone can use while attempting to limit third-party transactions involving those tickets.
The only real solution is the same as for every other tragedy of the commons.
You mean privatize the commons? That's a good idea, except in this case it would be redundant. There is no commons. Every part of the Internet infrastructure is already privately owned. People just don't see it as worthwhile to set strict rules on how their respective portions of the infrastructure are used, which suggests that such rules would not be economical to implement or enforce, i.e. implementing them would be a net loss for society.
I don't think it's misleading at all. Practically speaking, we don't know how to freeze entire human bodies—or even individual human organs—without destroying them. We can't even freeze an entire rabbit body without destroying it. We're getting closer, but we're not there yet.
Now if you had a brain the size of a rabbit's, and you didn't mind preserving only the brain and trusting future medical technology to enable brain-transplant into a new body, then you might stand a chance. Otherwise, if your body is to be frozen using current technology, you're depending on future medical innovations to repair the massive cellular damage which will result from the uneven freezing process.
The part you quoted is the theory behind cryonics, and that's all well and good as far as it goes. However, we're not there yet. We don't have the means to distribute the cryoprotectant solution evenly enough throughout the body, or to lower the body's temperature quickly and evenly enough, to preserve all the internal organs in situ. The closest we've come to that is the preservation of individual organs outside the body, as stated later in the article:
And just in February of 2016, there was a cryonics breakthrough when for the first time, scientists vitrified a rabbit's brain and showed that once rewarmed, it was in near-perfect condition, "with the cell membranes, synapses, and intracellular structures intact ... [It was] the first time a cryopreservation was provably able to protect everything associated with learning and memory."
According to the article, we've also managed to successfully freeze, thaw, and re-implant a functioning rabbit kidney. This process has not been successfully demonstrated with human organs, which are significantly larger than rabbit organs and consequently more difficult to freeze without damage, much less a whole intact human body.
Thing I'm wondering is - why don't they freeze her while she's still alive? Even if they find a cure for cancer, that will likely not be something that resurrects the dead.
The current state-of-the-art freezing processes would kill her anyway, so the end result is the same. We don't have the ability to freeze the body without fatally damaging the cells. Anyone with the technology to reverse the massive cellular damage from the cryo would most likely be able to deal with the rest without any trouble. From a legal point of view, freezing someone while still alive would be much more problematic—it would probably be classified as a form of assisted suicide, given our current inability to reverse the process. No one wants to take on that kind of liability for a infinitesimally better chance of successful revival in the distant future.
And the ruling is absurd... if one of the parents wanted to make handbags out of her skin, the judge would of ruled against them.
The decision was rightly the teen's, not the parents'. It's her body, after all. Provided the teen can come up with a way to pay for the procedure, that is—and in this case the mother was willing to serve as sponsor. No one else has any legitimate say in the matter.
Only people using their own data connections would be safe...
Or those using a VPN.
At least with Twitter it can be argued that it is a platform for speech and as such the law should reflect Twitters impact on political discourse and outcomes on elections. Just like a town-square you cannot be kicked out for racist speech and yes it doesn't mean you have to listen it.... AT&T was determined critical and cannot limit its service on political ideology so there is legal precedent.
First, that was an awful legal precedent which ought to be overturned, not expanded—a taking of private property for public use without compensation on a massive scale. Second, the situations are nowhere near the same. In the AT&T case they at least had the weak argument that ownership of the physical last-mile infrastructure gave AT&T a form of natural monopoly on communications; Twitter has no such monopoly on online discussion. If the government is that concerned about potential bias on Twitter they are free to host their own functionally-equivalent, politically-neutral site.
The town square is public property, and thus likewise not equivalent. As the square is not private property, your presence there infringes on no one's rights. In contrast, no one has the right to use Twitter's private servers and network services without their permission.
If you sell limited-edition prints of a painting, and people buy it because having one out of only a hundred has value to them, then someone making counterfeits is decreasing the value even if they don't directly take from the original creator.
Yeah, that's competition for you. One has a right to the property itself, not the market value of the property. So long as this hypothetical competitor doesn't claim that the copies are either originals or authorized reproductions, no fraud has been committed. "Decreasing the value" is not a crime by itself.
Calling this "wire fraud" is ridiculous. EA might have a case for regular fraud, in the sense that they were tricked into issuing the tokens (though that is partly their fault for blindly trusting whatever the client software tells them). It's hard to imagine any damages being associated with that "fraud" unless EA is in the business of selling these tokens for real-world money, which would make them rather hypocritical since that behavior is prohibited to others in their ToS. The buyers have a better claim, since they are out real money for the unearned and likely-to-be-cancelled tokens, but since they were buying from "black market dealers" in the first place they don't have much room to complain.
You would probably agree that things like "dumping" -- flooding the market with below-market-price items in order to harm domestic industry -- are not good, even though technically dumping just gives people really cheap things.
The main victims of "dumping" are those who practice it. If you naively try to compete with dumping on price then you'll lose for sure, but if you're smart you'll just wait it out while focusing on R&D, expanding into different areas, or even just "hibernating" to minimize operating expenses—eventually they'll run out of funds, leaving you perfectly poised to reenter the market in an even stronger position than before. Meanwhile, everyone gets cheap goods at the dumpers' expense.