... While I don't like it, I can see the potential revenues to be drawn in through such a tax.
Please make a distinction between "rational" and "good".
"Rational" is when someone does something for a reason; in this case, we can "see" the reason as "getting more revenue".
"Good" speaks more to the overall intelligence of the decision. The value of the decision in the future, or taking the whole situation into account.
In this case, the decision is "rational", but not "good". It ignores the underlying problems of runaway government spending, oppressive regulation, and economic viability.
Cities are failing not because of unreasonable pensions, but because of corruption in times past, unreasonable growth beyond what was needed, and mismanagement. Detroit's problems arose because population fell by 1/2 over the last 20 years, and government didn't shrink to compensate. People left Detroit in droves because it was simply a bad place to be.
This was so obvious it was a cultural meme: Note this clip from "A Fist Full of Yen" (released in 1977!).
When your city is so badly run, when the environment is so awful that businesses and people start leaving in droves, you might want to take a hard look at your management. What's the popular meme for Massachusetts? Is it "efficiently run, strong infrastructure, personal freedom, and business friendly"?
... While I don't like it, I can see the potential revenues to be drawn in through such a tax.
Pointing out the rationality of the decision lends it a measure of respectability. It defuses popular sentiment against the decision, saying essentially "don't complain, it's reasonable".
You should still complain. It may be "reasonable", but it's not in any way "smart", or even "good".
Move to New Hampshire - it's got a different meme.
Jevon's paradox is valid, but only under specific economic assumptions.
It's only true so long as there is more demand for the resource, and it's only a problem when the resource has a cost attached. Essentially, it's true in a "scarcity" economy, but not true under "post scarcity".
We've achieved "post scarcity" for several resources already; for example, phone calls and computer time.
Phone calls used to be expensive and billed by the minute, but nowadays it's virtually free. Similarly, computer time used to be metered and charged - in college, the CPU time for each program run was deducted from your account. Nowadays people can have as much un-metered computer time as they want.
CPU time and phone service aren't literally free, but the cost is so small as to be negligible.
Despite this, we do not see infinite consumption. People have a certain level of need for a resource, and when that need is met they stop consuming more. Coupled with a declining population, there is no reason to expect infinite consumption.
Your company may be using more resources than it needs... but so what? Computer resources are remarkably cheap - so cheap, in fact, that it may be more effective to ignore the problem. Optimize the biggest expenses first: if that turns out to be IT resources, then take a closer look. Otherwise, just ignore it.
(For another example of post-scarcity, consider the Chinese "dollar stores" that have cropped up. The cost of goods is so small that the time and expense of price tags makes a big difference. This is almost post-scarcity of tangible goods.)
Intel engineer here. We get the same shit. Everyone thinks we fill the chips with back doors when we don't.
Aircraft instrument software designer here.
I once took some time to consider what it would take to hack the software I was writing. IOW, if I wanted to put a backdoor or vulnerability that could knock a plane out of the sky, how would I do it?
I did some research into underhanded C and such like, and tried to come up with a way that I could do it. (And came up empty - unlikely with so many eyes looking in-depth at the final product.)
Question for you: Have you ever done that? Have you looked at your dev process and thought in detail how you might do it?
"Siri, I'm bleeding really bad, can you call me an ambulance?"
"From now on, I'll call you 'An Ambulance'. OK?"
(This was apparently changed in one of the updates.)
This may be speech recognition, but it isn't any sort of content recognition. It's just pattern matching, and only those patterns which the coders have anticipated.
I looked over the article and abstract, and note that they compared criminal psychopaths with non-criminal non-psychopaths.
The study seems to equate psychopathy with criminality; ie - they didn't compare non-criminal psychopaths with non-criminal normals, nor did they compare criminal-psychopaths with criminal-normal.
I strongly believe that psychopathy by itself is not a problem; only the immorality, and then only when the immorality leads to actions that hurt others. Psychopaths could learn and practice ethics through upbringing and/or training and would have few issues with society. Studies show that many corporate leaders score high on "psychopathic" behaviour.
There's a little-known aspect of people called mob mentality which causes people en-masse to act completely differently from their typically rational, self-interested way. People in mobs have been known to charge cannons and guns with no concern for their own well-being. This could be the empathy/mirror neurons acting to bring crowds of people together as a single organism.
A psychopath would be immune from this effect - they would be able to step back, assess the situation, and question the actions of the crowd. Possibly even stop the crowd or redirect it. A psychopath would be the one, lone voice in the lynch mob who shouts "why are we doing this? This is not who we are!" and possibly redirect the actions of the crowd.
Psychopaths may be important in society simply to keep our mirror neurons in check and make sure that society acts rationally (note: rational != ethical).
For reference, consider this guy. Admittedly brave as hell, but I wonder where he would score on the "psychopathic tendencies" spectrum.
What about all the stuff his foundation does about malaria, tuberculosis, and HIV? Or the stuff he's doing for sanitation and disaster relief? [Etc...]
Let's have a sober look at Bill Gates.
1) He amassed an enormous fortune by breaking the law.
Microsoft forced computer sellers to include Windows with all their products, even if the customer didn't want it or wasn't going to use it. They also made it impossible to "return" the prepackaged OS. They leveraged their popularity to suppress other competing products such as linux.
I can remember when running a service pack for Windows deleted Pegasys mail from my system and replaced it with Microsoft's product. Microsoft did this for a lot of installed products: they illegally leveraged their position as OS vendor to suppress competing products in other areas, notably browsers such as Netscape.
Many times, Microsoft would to look into "purchasing" a company, examine all their source code under NDA, say "no thanks", and 6 months later come out with their own competing product. This was done so often it became a meme in business. Several lawsuits were filed, which Microsoft quashed by using their money to leverage the legal system (ie - businesses went broke trying to fight Microsoft).
2) He lived off of his fortune in all voluptuousness for many years, siphoning whatever he needed to support his lifestyle off of his enormous wealth.
3) At the sunset of his life when he's essentially done everything he wanted, he sets aside a portion to allow his daughter to live comfortably, sets aside a portion for him (and his wife) to live comfortably, then uses the part that he doesn't need for charitable purposes.
We measure people by the strength of their belief. We can't label Bill Gates a truly charitable person because what he gives to charity costs him nothing.
A lot of people in the US live in the so-called Goiter Belt, which is a band of the northernmost state (or two) of the US. Roughly speaking, the other states were once a vast inland ocean swamp, so the soil become infused with Iodine form the ocean. This gets into the water supply, with the result that Northern residents have far less Iodine in their diet than southern states.
Another source of Iodine used to be bread - Iodine was used as a dough conditioner in bread, so a little bit got into the food chain that way. Some of the effect we're seeing might also be due to the rise of manufactured bread in the US.
More recently, however, bread makers have started using Bromine instead of Iodine. Bromine binds to Iodine receptors so not only are we no longer getting Iodine from bread, we're less able to process the Iodine we do get.
There's also the question of how much Iodine we need to be healthy. There's good evidence for the minimum amount to prevent disease, but that may (and for those of you in the medical community, note that I'm saying "may") be lower than the optimum amount.
Note that doctors will tell you that 150ug is the maximum Iodine you should ever take (more would be toxic!) and yet occasionally use Iodine to enhance contrast in radiological studies, which puts as much as 20 mg in the blood stream. The RDA value is 100x less than used by doctors in some studies studies to treat disease.
There's also disagreement as to what the minimum daily intake should be.
We really should be studying these things. Unfortunately, a supplement that anyone could buy which will clear a patient's symptoms is incompatible with an expensive FDA-tested drug that requires office visits to administer. The medical community won't make money on supplements, so they aren't studied very well. There's enormous economic pressure against research into health (as opposed to research into disease).
Lots of people on this site are stating, quite authoritatively but without citation, that vitamins are good/bad for you.
Here's a quick test to tell which side is right.
Go to a good supplements store and pick up some vitamin D. It's got to be a good store, a high-end store that values reputation over profit. GNC is good, as are many others, while your supermarket is not-so-good.
In the dead of winter, take a handful of vitamin D - anywhere over 10,000 IU or so, and see if you get better. It's nigh impossible to overdose on vitamin D, but use common sense (many people take 50,000 IU vitamin D with no problem).
See if you feel better. Use this to determine whether the people posting here without citation are correct or talking through their hat.
My post fails to answer the original question, so here's an actual answer.
Call up the advertizing departments of the major online magazines which have a subscription model, such as the New York Times and Wall Street Journal. Tell them who you are and what you want to do, and ask if someone could discuss their situation with you and give some recommendations.
Surprisingly, many people are willing to spend time helping others, giving advice, and outlining their experiences with a problem. Talking to someone with first-hand knowledge is the most valuable information you can get.
If you do this, please write up your conclusions somewhere and submit it as a followup article. Many Slashdot readers aspire to have online businesses, and would be interested in your results.
From what I've read, I strongly suspect that the online magazines aren't making enough money from online subscriptions to warrant the hassles of the infrastructure. NYT, for example, had to implement their own subscription interface... is your small shop willing to bear that expense? It will take manpower, money, and time away from adding value to your product, and I suspect that the return on your subscription won't be worth the tradeoff.
You'll be putting a lot of effort into the subscription mechanism, while at the same time reducing your readership. It's better to ditch subscription altogether, put your efforts into adding value, and get money from advertizing.
Magazines can charge subscription fees to the extent that there is value in the content. Magazines can sell advertizing to the extent that people see the content. There is a spectrum here, a slider (if you will) that you can set anywhere between two extremes.
You're currently betwixt those two extremes. If you move to a model exclusively one way or the other, then the answer is obvious.
A printed magazine is inconvenient to duplicate, so can survive on subscription fees for content. An online magazine costs nothing to duplicate, so subscription fees for content is unworkable.
Drop subscription fees altogether and get all revenue from advertizing. Your reader base will skyrocket, making the publication a better value for advertizing.
Baen Books posts their older books for free on the net. Surprisingly, this increased hard-copy sales and opened their publications to a much wider audience. Eric Flint's explanation is a good read.
(And many of the free online Baen books are a good read as well.)
Note that I'm expounding the virtues of Baen Books to this website read by hundreds of thousands each day. Your magazine could do worse than be one of the handful of well-respected companies whose product is based on customer value.
And for reference, count the myriad websites that give value to the user and survive on advertizing alone. XKCD and Hackaday for example. Not websites that rely on users that add value, but websites that actually have value that the user wants. Randall Munroe lets others cite and copy his work virtually everywhere so long as it's not for money.
Transition to an open online model and throw it out to the world. Become a respected product of value.
Oddly, I *did* dismantle the family refrigerator when I was 12.
The parents were away, and the thing stopped working. This was an older units with a separate compressor and motor - a big belted wheel that turned a pulley on the side of the compressor.
I took off the front panel. pulled out the frame containing the motor and compressor, and discovered the relay wasn't working. I unplugged it, cleaned/sandpapered the contacts, and put it all back before the parents got home (and told them what happened).
I also did the clock thing. I modified a mantel clock to a) not ring the hour, and b) start ringing at 2:00 AM and not stop. I hid it under my sister's bed on her wedding night.
I strongly believe special traits can be developed, including spacial ability. If you believe Geoff Calvin, there's no such thing as talent or innate ability. Everyone who is identified as an expert in their field (Mozart, Tiger Woods, Jerry Rice &c) had put in enormous amounts of practice before becoming expert. For instance, Mozart was composing at age 4, but didn't write anything particularly good until his twenties (IIRC - may have gotten the ages wrong).
Feynman, for example, believed that geniuses are common, but due to lack of education, lack of encouragement, poor education, or lack of leisure time they have no chance to blossom. (Meaning: genius-level people are too busy with a job and family to really sit down and create things.)
The literature and current studies indicate that, barring physical deformity, anyone can become an expert in just about anything. They only have to practice long enough and hard enough.
I can point to another advantage of the striped suit.
As a recreational diver, one occasionally drops a piece of equipment in the water. Bold, striped colors would make it much easier to find something (a fin, say) laying on the bottom.
And to respond to a previous poster, they covered pots of chum (chopped fish) in the proposed experimental suit to see how sharks would react. The video clearly shows sharks attacking a square-dotted suit while veering away from the striped suit.
Seems like an innovation discovered by research and experimental method. I have no problem with them having a patent on this.
In that movie, a set of four 2-digit transporter coordinates has enough resolution to distinguish a location on a planet in another solar system from a moon of Jupiter.
(Also, using a transporter the size of a duffel bag (including power source), you can transport someone from Earth to Kronos. Never mind that the planet is light years away, Earth and Kronos are spinning on their axis, both planets are going around their respective suns, both systems are traveling through space in different directions, and you're doing this from a seated position in a damaged ship whirling out of control. Also, the transport is instantaneous - it goes at warp speed without a ship!)
(Oh, and let's hide the ship underwater, even though the indigenous population wouldn't be able to see us if we stayed in orbit.)
Dropbox doesn't have encryption built-in, and this seems like a truly obvious feature. It's always been a mystery to me why they haven't implemented it. Their info page reads: "Dropbox employees are prohibited from viewing the content of files you store in your account".
This has been especially curious since the last year or two, when everyone's been complaining about how your data isn't safe in the cloud. Even the launch of Mega hasn't prodded them to add security in order to stay competitive.
Anyone know why they don't have an option to secure your data using encryption? Why we have to trust their employees not to peek at our stuff?
(Yes, I know there are 3rd party apps that add this.)
Which is why airplanes still have multiple, independently-developed systems installed despite all of the prior checks and controls.
It's not a practical solution for rockets though.
You are correct, and IMO this is the right way to do things.
Note that 747's have two altimeters running the same software. It was pointed out in development that if one of them had a problem, the other one would likely exhibit the same problem at the same time.
This is a subject close to my heart, and which deserves a lot of thought and discussion. We're putting lots of software into medical and aircraft these days. Software in cars does not get the same level of scrutiny or regulatory process, and with the advent of self-driving cars perhaps they should.
I'd be interested in people's opinions on this. Where should we draw the line on regulatory process? Aircraft and medical are obvious, but how about cars, smart [power] meters, phone COs, or industrial controllers? Should the West Texas fertilizer plant have had regulatory oversight on their control systems, for instance?
Having a program crash the user's PC is relatively benign and can be handled as a customer service issue. Nowadays we're putting software in many more places which affects public safety.
All functions range-checked their arguments on entry, calculations range-checked their results before performing further calculations, precondition logic was tested to ensure the preconditions held, periodic testing checked as many "things that should never happen" as we could think of.
We never ignored a possibility because it was absurd, so long as there was a way to test it it was tested. The difficulty is coming up with a comprehensive list of things to check... very hard to do in practice.
Getting everything correct is hard... really hard. For most projects you have elaborate "fail gracefully" modes which rely on external agents to notice the problem and take action. A doctor or pilot can take appropriate action, but it's hard to do with rockets.
For comparison, I wrote the software for the altimeter that goes into some 747 aircraft. Total of about 21,000 lines of C, about 40% comments so figure 12,000 lines of code. The testers (and I) worked really hard to find all bugs in the system, knowing that a mistake could knock a plane out of the sky. There were elaborate internal checks both in software and process, and Boeing did their own testing on top of ours. Everything passed, all requirements were met, things looked good.
The device had 1 bug, found after installation. A software typo which wasn't caught by QA even though it had a specific testing requirement. No one was negligent, it just slipped by despite best efforts.
Multiply this by all the devices in an aircraft, and add in the other engineering disciplines like electronics and mechanical. It's really hard to get everything right all at once, and on the first try.
Of all the stupid, hare-brained ideas we've seen, this one has to be the stupidest so far.
We're close to exponential runaway on government spending (borrowing more, and more often). The economy is barely moving despite drenching it in money, jobs are part-time with no benefits, we jail more people than China, the government plainly tramples over all our civil rights, oil is running out, tax law is a joke, IP law is a joke, immigration law is a joke, H1B visas are a joke...
...so of course let's put a park on the moon!
I'm half inclined to start a new political movement: the "Boot" party.
Let's give these people "the boot" - vote the incumbents out! Keep turnover high until we get good people who can accomplish something worthwhile.
Slashdot Mirror
And have you paid your property taxes yet?
Yes, and gladly.
New Hampshire is always ranked one of the lowest states in overall tax burden: frequently the lowest, usually in the bottom three.
Massachusetts is always one of the highest, always in the top 10. (Citation)
So yes, I pay my property taxes, and they are unbearably high.
Are you saying that paying more overall is good, if it lowers property taxes?
What exactly is your point?
... While I don't like it, I can see the potential revenues to be drawn in through such a tax.
Please make a distinction between "rational" and "good".
"Rational" is when someone does something for a reason; in this case, we can "see" the reason as "getting more revenue".
"Good" speaks more to the overall intelligence of the decision. The value of the decision in the future, or taking the whole situation into account.
In this case, the decision is "rational", but not "good". It ignores the underlying problems of runaway government spending, oppressive regulation, and economic viability.
Cities are failing not because of unreasonable pensions, but because of corruption in times past, unreasonable growth beyond what was needed, and mismanagement. Detroit's problems arose because population fell by 1/2 over the last 20 years, and government didn't shrink to compensate. People left Detroit in droves because it was simply a bad place to be.
This was so obvious it was a cultural meme: Note this clip from "A Fist Full of Yen" (released in 1977!).
When your city is so badly run, when the environment is so awful that businesses and people start leaving in droves, you might want to take a hard look at your management. What's the popular meme for Massachusetts? Is it "efficiently run, strong infrastructure, personal freedom, and business friendly"?
... While I don't like it, I can see the potential revenues to be drawn in through such a tax.
Pointing out the rationality of the decision lends it a measure of respectability. It defuses popular sentiment against the decision, saying essentially "don't complain, it's reasonable".
You should still complain. It may be "reasonable", but it's not in any way "smart", or even "good".
Move to New Hampshire - it's got a different meme.
Jevon's paradox is valid, but only under specific economic assumptions.
It's only true so long as there is more demand for the resource, and it's only a problem when the resource has a cost attached. Essentially, it's true in a "scarcity" economy, but not true under "post scarcity".
We've achieved "post scarcity" for several resources already; for example, phone calls and computer time.
Phone calls used to be expensive and billed by the minute, but nowadays it's virtually free. Similarly, computer time used to be metered and charged - in college, the CPU time for each program run was deducted from your account. Nowadays people can have as much un-metered computer time as they want.
CPU time and phone service aren't literally free, but the cost is so small as to be negligible.
Despite this, we do not see infinite consumption. People have a certain level of need for a resource, and when that need is met they stop consuming more. Coupled with a declining population, there is no reason to expect infinite consumption.
Your company may be using more resources than it needs... but so what? Computer resources are remarkably cheap - so cheap, in fact, that it may be more effective to ignore the problem. Optimize the biggest expenses first: if that turns out to be IT resources, then take a closer look. Otherwise, just ignore it.
(For another example of post-scarcity, consider the Chinese "dollar stores" that have cropped up. The cost of goods is so small that the time and expense of price tags makes a big difference. This is almost post-scarcity of tangible goods.)
Store it on a server at your business that you control.
Run open-source software which gives you DropBox functionality, such as BitTorrent Sync.
The only way to be sure is to host it on a server you control, using software that can be inspected.
In hot water for all that monitoring of my veeblefetzers, potrzebies and axolotls.
It's a great day for antidisestablishmentarianism and neoanarchalsocialrepublicanists.
Okay, I was aware of "axolotl", but veeblefetzers and potrzebies surprised me. Wikipedia pages and all!
You can even ask google to convert "1 potrzebie" to metric.
+1 internets to you, sir!
(This is going into my WTF? that's real? list, alongside "Legends of Nascar" commemorative plates.)
Intel engineer here. We get the same shit. Everyone thinks we fill the chips with back doors when we don't.
Aircraft instrument software designer here.
I once took some time to consider what it would take to hack the software I was writing. IOW, if I wanted to put a backdoor or vulnerability that could knock a plane out of the sky, how would I do it?
I did some research into underhanded C and such like, and tried to come up with a way that I could do it. (And came up empty - unlikely with so many eyes looking in-depth at the final product.)
Question for you: Have you ever done that? Have you looked at your dev process and thought in detail how you might do it?
And here's my favorite.
"Siri, I'm bleeding really bad, can you call me an ambulance?"
"From now on, I'll call you 'An Ambulance'. OK?"
(This was apparently changed in one of the updates.)
This may be speech recognition, but it isn't any sort of content recognition. It's just pattern matching, and only those patterns which the coders have anticipated.
I looked over the article and abstract, and note that they compared criminal psychopaths with non-criminal non-psychopaths.
The study seems to equate psychopathy with criminality; ie - they didn't compare non-criminal psychopaths with non-criminal normals, nor did they compare criminal-psychopaths with criminal-normal.
I strongly believe that psychopathy by itself is not a problem; only the immorality, and then only when the immorality leads to actions that hurt others. Psychopaths could learn and practice ethics through upbringing and/or training and would have few issues with society. Studies show that many corporate leaders score high on "psychopathic" behaviour.
There's a little-known aspect of people called mob mentality which causes people en-masse to act completely differently from their typically rational, self-interested way. People in mobs have been known to charge cannons and guns with no concern for their own well-being. This could be the empathy/mirror neurons acting to bring crowds of people together as a single organism.
A psychopath would be immune from this effect - they would be able to step back, assess the situation, and question the actions of the crowd. Possibly even stop the crowd or redirect it. A psychopath would be the one, lone voice in the lynch mob who shouts "why are we doing this? This is not who we are!" and possibly redirect the actions of the crowd.
Psychopaths may be important in society simply to keep our mirror neurons in check and make sure that society acts rationally (note: rational != ethical).
For reference, consider this guy. Admittedly brave as hell, but I wonder where he would score on the "psychopathic tendencies" spectrum.
What about all the stuff his foundation does about malaria, tuberculosis, and HIV? Or the stuff he's doing for sanitation and disaster relief? [Etc...]
Let's have a sober look at Bill Gates.
1) He amassed an enormous fortune by breaking the law.
Microsoft forced computer sellers to include Windows with all their products, even if the customer didn't want it or wasn't going to use it. They also made it impossible to "return" the prepackaged OS. They leveraged their popularity to suppress other competing products such as linux.
I can remember when running a service pack for Windows deleted Pegasys mail from my system and replaced it with Microsoft's product. Microsoft did this for a lot of installed products: they illegally leveraged their position as OS vendor to suppress competing products in other areas, notably browsers such as Netscape.
Many times, Microsoft would to look into "purchasing" a company, examine all their source code under NDA, say "no thanks", and 6 months later come out with their own competing product. This was done so often it became a meme in business. Several lawsuits were filed, which Microsoft quashed by using their money to leverage the legal system (ie - businesses went broke trying to fight Microsoft).
2) He lived off of his fortune in all voluptuousness for many years, siphoning whatever he needed to support his lifestyle off of his enormous wealth.
3) At the sunset of his life when he's essentially done everything he wanted, he sets aside a portion to allow his daughter to live comfortably, sets aside a portion for him (and his wife) to live comfortably, then uses the part that he doesn't need for charitable purposes.
We measure people by the strength of their belief. We can't label Bill Gates a truly charitable person because what he gives to charity costs him nothing.
This is not true charity, it's reputation repair.
A lot of people in the US live in the so-called Goiter Belt, which is a band of the northernmost state (or two) of the US. Roughly speaking, the other states were once a vast inland ocean swamp, so the soil become infused with Iodine form the ocean. This gets into the water supply, with the result that Northern residents have far less Iodine in their diet than southern states.
Another source of Iodine used to be bread - Iodine was used as a dough conditioner in bread, so a little bit got into the food chain that way. Some of the effect we're seeing might also be due to the rise of manufactured bread in the US.
More recently, however, bread makers have started using Bromine instead of Iodine. Bromine binds to Iodine receptors so not only are we no longer getting Iodine from bread, we're less able to process the Iodine we do get.
There's also the question of how much Iodine we need to be healthy. There's good evidence for the minimum amount to prevent disease, but that may (and for those of you in the medical community, note that I'm saying "may") be lower than the optimum amount.
Note that doctors will tell you that 150ug is the maximum Iodine you should ever take (more would be toxic!) and yet occasionally use Iodine to enhance contrast in radiological studies, which puts as much as 20 mg in the blood stream. The RDA value is 100x less than used by doctors in some studies studies to treat disease.
There's also disagreement as to what the minimum daily intake should be.
We really should be studying these things. Unfortunately, a supplement that anyone could buy which will clear a patient's symptoms is incompatible with an expensive FDA-tested drug that requires office visits to administer. The medical community won't make money on supplements, so they aren't studied very well. There's enormous economic pressure against research into health (as opposed to research into disease).
Vitamin D is made through the action of sunlight on cholesterol in the blood.
Here's a question for the medical folks: is "high cholesterol" the body's response to low levels of vitamin D?
IOW, if the body is low on vitamin D, does it raise the level of cholesterol in the blood in an attempt to scavenge more sunlight?
This should be testable - determine whether taking vitamin D has any effect on people with high cholesterol.
Lots of people on this site are stating, quite authoritatively but without citation, that vitamins are good/bad for you.
Here's a quick test to tell which side is right.
Go to a good supplements store and pick up some vitamin D. It's got to be a good store, a high-end store that values reputation over profit. GNC is good, as are many others, while your supermarket is not-so-good.
In the dead of winter, take a handful of vitamin D - anywhere over 10,000 IU or so, and see if you get better. It's nigh impossible to overdose on vitamin D, but use common sense (many people take 50,000 IU vitamin D with no problem).
See if you feel better. Use this to determine whether the people posting here without citation are correct or talking through their hat.
My post fails to answer the original question, so here's an actual answer.
Call up the advertizing departments of the major online magazines which have a subscription model, such as the New York Times and Wall Street Journal. Tell them who you are and what you want to do, and ask if someone could discuss their situation with you and give some recommendations.
Surprisingly, many people are willing to spend time helping others, giving advice, and outlining their experiences with a problem. Talking to someone with first-hand knowledge is the most valuable information you can get.
If you do this, please write up your conclusions somewhere and submit it as a followup article. Many Slashdot readers aspire to have online businesses, and would be interested in your results.
From what I've read, I strongly suspect that the online magazines aren't making enough money from online subscriptions to warrant the hassles of the infrastructure. NYT, for example, had to implement their own subscription interface... is your small shop willing to bear that expense? It will take manpower, money, and time away from adding value to your product, and I suspect that the return on your subscription won't be worth the tradeoff.
You'll be putting a lot of effort into the subscription mechanism, while at the same time reducing your readership. It's better to ditch subscription altogether, put your efforts into adding value, and get money from advertizing.
Magazines can charge subscription fees to the extent that there is value in the content. Magazines can sell advertizing to the extent that people see the content. There is a spectrum here, a slider (if you will) that you can set anywhere between two extremes.
You're currently betwixt those two extremes. If you move to a model exclusively one way or the other, then the answer is obvious.
A printed magazine is inconvenient to duplicate, so can survive on subscription fees for content. An online magazine costs nothing to duplicate, so subscription fees for content is unworkable.
Drop subscription fees altogether and get all revenue from advertizing. Your reader base will skyrocket, making the publication a better value for advertizing.
Baen Books posts their older books for free on the net. Surprisingly, this increased hard-copy sales and opened their publications to a much wider audience. Eric Flint's explanation is a good read.
(And many of the free online Baen books are a good read as well.)
Note that I'm expounding the virtues of Baen Books to this website read by hundreds of thousands each day. Your magazine could do worse than be one of the handful of well-respected companies whose product is based on customer value.
And for reference, count the myriad websites that give value to the user and survive on advertizing alone. XKCD and Hackaday for example. Not websites that rely on users that add value, but websites that actually have value that the user wants. Randall Munroe lets others cite and copy his work virtually everywhere so long as it's not for money.
Transition to an open online model and throw it out to the world. Become a respected product of value.
Oddly, I *did* dismantle the family refrigerator when I was 12.
The parents were away, and the thing stopped working. This was an older units with a separate compressor and motor - a big belted wheel that turned a pulley on the side of the compressor.
I took off the front panel. pulled out the frame containing the motor and compressor, and discovered the relay wasn't working. I unplugged it, cleaned/sandpapered the contacts, and put it all back before the parents got home (and told them what happened).
I also did the clock thing. I modified a mantel clock to a) not ring the hour, and b) start ringing at 2:00 AM and not stop. I hid it under my sister's bed on her wedding night.
I strongly believe special traits can be developed, including spacial ability. If you believe Geoff Calvin, there's no such thing as talent or innate ability. Everyone who is identified as an expert in their field (Mozart, Tiger Woods, Jerry Rice &c) had put in enormous amounts of practice before becoming expert. For instance, Mozart was composing at age 4, but didn't write anything particularly good until his twenties (IIRC - may have gotten the ages wrong).
Feynman, for example, believed that geniuses are common, but due to lack of education, lack of encouragement, poor education, or lack of leisure time they have no chance to blossom. (Meaning: genius-level people are too busy with a job and family to really sit down and create things.)
The literature and current studies indicate that, barring physical deformity, anyone can become an expert in just about anything. They only have to practice long enough and hard enough.
I can point to another advantage of the striped suit.
As a recreational diver, one occasionally drops a piece of equipment in the water. Bold, striped colors would make it much easier to find something (a fin, say) laying on the bottom.
And to respond to a previous poster, they covered pots of chum (chopped fish) in the proposed experimental suit to see how sharks would react. The video clearly shows sharks attacking a square-dotted suit while veering away from the striped suit.
Seems like an innovation discovered by research and experimental method. I have no problem with them having a patent on this.
Star Trek Into Darkness did it better.
In that movie, a set of four 2-digit transporter coordinates has enough resolution to distinguish a location on a planet in another solar system from a moon of Jupiter.
(Also, using a transporter the size of a duffel bag (including power source), you can transport someone from Earth to Kronos. Never mind that the planet is light years away, Earth and Kronos are spinning on their axis, both planets are going around their respective suns, both systems are traveling through space in different directions, and you're doing this from a seated position in a damaged ship whirling out of control. Also, the transport is instantaneous - it goes at warp speed without a ship!)
(Oh, and let's hide the ship underwater, even though the indigenous population wouldn't be able to see us if we stayed in orbit.)
Doctor Octopus
Doctor Doom
Doctor Evil
Doctor No
Doctor Horrible
It's interesting how many evil geniuses have an advanced degree.
I'm getting a bit tired of news like this...
Slashdot is the hangout for exceptionally smart people, a lot of whom think that this situation presents a grave danger.
Granted, you don't have to agree with a lot of exceptionally smart people, but to ask them to stop worrying over something they think is important?
And note that you, yourself can avoid reading this type of news simply by not clicking on the article.
So you're saying that we should stop discussing this, for your personal convenience?
I am at a loss for [printable] words.
If you want proper security right now, use SpiderOak. More flexible than DropBox as well.
I'll check into that, but honestly: it would seem that MEGA has a stronger use case and better provenance - they have more incentive to get it right.
Dropbox doesn't have encryption built-in, and this seems like a truly obvious feature. It's always been a mystery to me why they haven't implemented it. Their info page reads: "Dropbox employees are prohibited from viewing the content of files you store in your account".
This has been especially curious since the last year or two, when everyone's been complaining about how your data isn't safe in the cloud. Even the launch of Mega hasn't prodded them to add security in order to stay competitive.
Anyone know why they don't have an option to secure your data using encryption? Why we have to trust their employees not to peek at our stuff?
(Yes, I know there are 3rd party apps that add this.)
Which is why airplanes still have multiple, independently-developed systems installed despite all of the prior checks and controls.
It's not a practical solution for rockets though.
You are correct, and IMO this is the right way to do things.
Note that 747's have two altimeters running the same software. It was pointed out in development that if one of them had a problem, the other one would likely exhibit the same problem at the same time.
This is a subject close to my heart, and which deserves a lot of thought and discussion. We're putting lots of software into medical and aircraft these days. Software in cars does not get the same level of scrutiny or regulatory process, and with the advent of self-driving cars perhaps they should.
I'd be interested in people's opinions on this. Where should we draw the line on regulatory process? Aircraft and medical are obvious, but how about cars, smart [power] meters, phone COs, or industrial controllers? Should the West Texas fertilizer plant have had regulatory oversight on their control systems, for instance?
Having a program crash the user's PC is relatively benign and can be handled as a customer service issue. Nowadays we're putting software in many more places which affects public safety.
The short answer is "yes".
All functions range-checked their arguments on entry, calculations range-checked their results before performing further calculations, precondition logic was tested to ensure the preconditions held, periodic testing checked as many "things that should never happen" as we could think of.
We never ignored a possibility because it was absurd, so long as there was a way to test it it was tested. The difficulty is coming up with a comprehensive list of things to check... very hard to do in practice.
The US once sent a probe all the way to mars, only to have it fail because the ground computer was in imperial units while the orbiter was in SI units.
Getting everything correct is hard... really hard. For most projects you have elaborate "fail gracefully" modes which rely on external agents to notice the problem and take action. A doctor or pilot can take appropriate action, but it's hard to do with rockets.
For comparison, I wrote the software for the altimeter that goes into some 747 aircraft. Total of about 21,000 lines of C, about 40% comments so figure 12,000 lines of code. The testers (and I) worked really hard to find all bugs in the system, knowing that a mistake could knock a plane out of the sky. There were elaborate internal checks both in software and process, and Boeing did their own testing on top of ours. Everything passed, all requirements were met, things looked good.
The device had 1 bug, found after installation. A software typo which wasn't caught by QA even though it had a specific testing requirement. No one was negligent, it just slipped by despite best efforts.
Multiply this by all the devices in an aircraft, and add in the other engineering disciplines like electronics and mechanical. It's really hard to get everything right all at once, and on the first try.
Of all the stupid, hare-brained ideas we've seen, this one has to be the stupidest so far.
We're close to exponential runaway on government spending (borrowing more, and more often). The economy is barely moving despite drenching it in money, jobs are part-time with no benefits, we jail more people than China, the government plainly tramples over all our civil rights, oil is running out, tax law is a joke, IP law is a joke, immigration law is a joke, H1B visas are a joke...
I'm half inclined to start a new political movement: the "Boot" party.
Let's give these people "the boot" - vote the incumbents out! Keep turnover high until we get good people who can accomplish something worthwhile.