Oh, and unrelated to my other post - Mark Zuckerberg is still an American citizen, so the location of his company has nothing to do with the income taxes he owes...
If he relocated offshore, he could renounce his citizenship. People have done that for tax reasons, as the United States is one of the only countries in the civilized world that taxes its citizens living abroad for foreign income.
A wealth tax? You mean like the 2% annual property tax I have to pay on the value of my home?
That property tax is generally used to pay for services that a homeowner uses, like sewers, garbage collection, police and fire protection, education for your children that live in the district, paving the roads that go to your home, etc. Homeowners cost the city money in providing all these services and that money is collected by means of a property tax. In contrast, wealth that is held in the form of stock in a company isn't costing society money, on the contrary, it is generating wealth by allowing the business to expand, hire more workers, etc. Such a tax makes no sense and generally drives wealth and investment outside the country.
Keep in mind, Mark Zuckerberg doesn't have to have Facebook headquartered in America. He could have moved the entire business offshore to a more tax friendly environment, and avoided even the $2 billion he will have to pay. But he didn't. He stayed in America and created American jobs. Do we really want to punish him for that?
Hmm, in an ideal world, a reported sigma value should include those types of considerations. (Basically, factoring in how many different hypothesis were tested.) It can be tricky, but you would expect such high-profile science to be top notch.
It is high profile science, but these "sigma" numbers are in informal way of reporting the size of the signal. In the final paper, they'll report masses and production rates with proper error bars, taking into account all statistical factors. The final published paper won't say "Hey, we have a six sigma signal!", it will say the mass of the Higgs is xxx ± yyy GeV/c^2, etc., and a mass histogram will also be shown, as well as information on the mass window searched, etc.
Apparently, the superbowl coin toss "experiment" has generated nearly as large a statistical anomaly...
Not really, because that was only "predicted" after it occurred. That's cheating. In other words, if you sift through millions of events discarding all the "likely" ones (such as coin tosses in other sports, or regular season NFL games, that didn't show any consistency), it is extremely likely you'll eventually find an "unlikely" one.
In contrast, the criteria for detecting the Higgs Boson were set ahead of time.
Not entirely, because there was no specific prediction for the mass. There were upper and lower mass limits on the Higgs set by theory, but not an actual prediction. So, if you scan a mass histogram looking for a bump and then find one, you can't simply ask how many sigma it is above the background and translate that to a 99.99... whatever percent probability. That's why they're hoping for a five or six sigma signal before they say anything conclusive, despite the fact that four sigma is well above 99% probability.
Javascript is not perfect but more importantly, it's not OOP.
Actually, Javascript is object oriented. It's just that, unlike most object oriented languages, it is prototype based rather than class based. Both are legitimate forms of object oriented programming, although class-based is more popular now.
If getting information about previous exams is cheating, it's cheating. The people designing a test get to define the parameters of what's cheating and what's not.
I'm sorry, but I disagree with you strongly there. The people administering the test do get to decide what is allowed and what isn't allowed in the examination room, during the test. That includes, as you point out, allowing or disallowing calculators, text books, or whatever else they wish to prohibit or allow. But that authority stops at the exam room door. What you do on your own time to prepare for the exam, or who you talk to and what you talk about after the exam is your own business. There are of course exceptions to this rule pertaining to especially egregious conduct, like breaking into a professor's office before an exam to steal a copy, which is clearly cheating, but nothing like that was going on here.
I've taught at both the university and high school level, and the rule of thumb that is generally followed is that once an exam is given to a group of students, and they leave the examination room at the end, that exam becomes public information, and if we assume otherwise, we give some future students an unfair advantage over others. I photocopy and hand out previous years exams (which I have created) to students, both as a study aid, and as way to level the playing field. I think these medical exams should be run the same way, in the interest of fairness.
A lot of that is due to the remoteness of much of Canada. In the cities it's not so bad, but step outside the city limits and the speed drops off in a hurry. Many places in rural Canada don't have high-speed yet, at least not without a a very expensive satellite connection.
I can second that. I have a friend who lives on a small farm just outside of the city (and I mean just outside), and he uses dialup. I'm not kidding. No cable. No DSL. His only "high speed" option would be satellite, which he can't really afford, and isn't that great anyway. The sad part is, his job is in IT. He also has three school age children. I'm not talking about remote here, either, I'm talking about a farm just outside city limits.
This is a tax that applies only to video games, not other forms of expression
Watch it get amended to include movies with a PG-13 or R rating and musical recordings with a Parental Advisory: Explicit Content rating, so that it's medium-neutral.
It's irrelevant whether or not it's "medium-neutral". What matters is whether or not it is content neutral. There is a difference.
and furthermore applies only to those games with a teen or mature rating
Alcoholic beverages are taxed more heavily than beverages not containing alcohol.
Beverages are not protected speech. Video games are.
Schools and libraries receiving federal funds are required to deploy censorware to block speech that is "harmful to minors" as defined by a 2000 act of Congress, and the Supreme Court upheld this.
Public schools are not, nor have ever been, areas that must be content neutral with regard to speech. You won't find Hustler magazines on the school library bookshelves either, but Hustler is considered protected speech.
Yes, it is. You can ask Richard M. Stallman if you don't believe me.
Umm, no it isn't. All the GPL forces you to do is to release source code if you plan to redistribute GPL code, including code that you modified. You aren't required to share anything, if you don't want to. In other words, you are free to download GPL code, modify it all you like, and use it all you like without sharing a thing. All you're required to do is to release the modified source code (with the GPL license) if you want to distribute your modified binary code. Ditto for GPL code you incorporate in a larger product: must share all source code if you want to distribute code. Not required to otherwise.
Does a state sales tax on books likewise violate the First Amendment as applied to the several states by the Fourteenth? If so, then how do so many states get away with requiring Barnes & Noble to collect and remit sales tax? If not, then what's the difference between what this state representative proposes and a sales tax?
The difference is, this would be a content-based tax on something that has been found to be protected speech. A uniform sales tax on all goods is not a violation of the First Amendment, but if books supporting one particular political party or putting forth one particular opinion were taxed at a different rate than books putting forward the opposite position, then the tax would almost certainly run afoul of the First Amendment. This is a tax that applies only to video games, not other forms of expression, and furthermore applies only to those games with a teen or mature rating, which is closely related to the content of those games.
Yes, they can. And no matter how much you try to prove you can't, they can still charge you for noncompliance to their orders. It's called contempt of court, and the judge can make you rot in a cell until you do comply. No jury, no bail, no nothing.
Ummm, contempt of court charges can be appealed. It happens all the time.
how about legit files of your own creation that you had complete ownership of and decided to put on a cloud service?
Still, I don't think you can sue the FBI for executing a warrant, unless they have gone beyond the scope of what was permitted in the warrant.
And as I understand, it isn't the FBI that is deleting the data, but rather a subcontractor whose bills have not been paid since Megaupload's assets have been frozen. I really don't see grounds for suing the FBI here.
I was just about to make the very same point myself. It's called Perfect Forward Secrecy. Use protocols in which the users do not have the ability to decrypt content after the session ends. Courts can't require you to do the impossible.
Nobody is asking that scientists stop refereeing for journals in general. They're asking that they stop refereeing for Elsevier journals. There is a difference.
How about a coffee shop's free Wifi using a spoofed MAC address while I'm sitting at the restaurant next door?
Just make sure the restaurant doesn't have any security cameras. And make doubly sure you don't walk past that coffee shop going to the restaurant as their security cameras might pick you up through the window. And don't park anywhere nearby. And make sure no security cameras catch you walking from the restaurant to your car, etc.
Providing an internet connection which a user then misuses does not make you a criminal. Otherwise ISPs could not function.
ISPs can provide the name an address of a subscriber to law enforcement given an IP address. The provider of an open access wireless connection generally cannot. Police don't like it when an investigative trail goes cold.
my understanding is that connections to and from entry and exit nodes are unencrypted . only connections between relays are encrypted.
Out of the exit node: not encrypted, but your IP address is hidden, which is what is important at that end. Traffic to the entry node IS encrypted, otherwise your ISP would be able to snoop your browsing habits!
Tor has to connect to so-called "dictionary servers" periodically to refresh its list of tor nodes to try to use. If you block those servers, tor breaks.
At least, that's how it worked when they finally figured out how to block it after 3 years. Maybe tor has improved since then.
We have to remember though what Tor was designed to do and what it was not designed to do. Tor was designed to protect the privacy of individuals who don't want their browsing habits revealed. It does this by preventing your IP address from being available to the web server you connect to, and additionally it encrypts traffic so intermediaries, such as your ISP can't snoop on your traffic. It was NOT designed as a means of bypassing firewalls that are actively try to block Tor. That was never its purpose.
You make some very good points. It is true that decent digital cameras are more expensive than film cameras of similar quality. And as I read further down your post and saw that you shoot in medium format, I think it's even more true. But keep in mind that medium format is typically used by professional photographers. Even in the days when film was supreme, most average people just used 35mm SLRs. And Canon makes some affordable DSLRs (such as the T3i) which are very good, and much better at shooting in low lighting conditions that digital cameras used to be. Not to mention the fact that they also shoot awesome video.
But for serious photographers that shoot in medium format, I agree, digital replacements are still quite expensive. And in the digital age, I'm afraid black and white is becoming a lost art.
Slashdot Mirror
Oh, and unrelated to my other post - Mark Zuckerberg is still an American citizen, so the location of his company has nothing to do with the income taxes he owes...
If he relocated offshore, he could renounce his citizenship. People have done that for tax reasons, as the United States is one of the only countries in the civilized world that taxes its citizens living abroad for foreign income.
A wealth tax? You mean like the 2% annual property tax I have to pay on the value of my home?
That property tax is generally used to pay for services that a homeowner uses, like sewers, garbage collection, police and fire protection, education for your children that live in the district, paving the roads that go to your home, etc. Homeowners cost the city money in providing all these services and that money is collected by means of a property tax. In contrast, wealth that is held in the form of stock in a company isn't costing society money, on the contrary, it is generating wealth by allowing the business to expand, hire more workers, etc. Such a tax makes no sense and generally drives wealth and investment outside the country.
Keep in mind, Mark Zuckerberg doesn't have to have Facebook headquartered in America. He could have moved the entire business offshore to a more tax friendly environment, and avoided even the $2 billion he will have to pay. But he didn't. He stayed in America and created American jobs. Do we really want to punish him for that?
Hmm, in an ideal world, a reported sigma value should include those types of considerations. (Basically, factoring in how many different hypothesis were tested.) It can be tricky, but you would expect such high-profile science to be top notch.
It is high profile science, but these "sigma" numbers are in informal way of reporting the size of the signal. In the final paper, they'll report masses and production rates with proper error bars, taking into account all statistical factors. The final published paper won't say "Hey, we have a six sigma signal!", it will say the mass of the Higgs is xxx ± yyy GeV/c^2, etc., and a mass histogram will also be shown, as well as information on the mass window searched, etc.
Not really, because that was only "predicted" after it occurred. That's cheating. In other words, if you sift through millions of events discarding all the "likely" ones (such as coin tosses in other sports, or regular season NFL games, that didn't show any consistency), it is extremely likely you'll eventually find an "unlikely" one.
In contrast, the criteria for detecting the Higgs Boson were set ahead of time.
Not entirely, because there was no specific prediction for the mass. There were upper and lower mass limits on the Higgs set by theory, but not an actual prediction. So, if you scan a mass histogram looking for a bump and then find one, you can't simply ask how many sigma it is above the background and translate that to a 99.99... whatever percent probability. That's why they're hoping for a five or six sigma signal before they say anything conclusive, despite the fact that four sigma is well above 99% probability.
Javascript is not perfect but more importantly, it's not OOP.
Actually, Javascript is object oriented. It's just that, unlike most object oriented languages, it is prototype based rather than class based. Both are legitimate forms of object oriented programming, although class-based is more popular now.
Is this anything like Skele-Gro? I understand it's very painful. "Regrowing bones is a nasty business," according to Madam Pomfrey.
Maybe that'll teach people to be more wary about random links they see.
And I suppose you hope lots of houses burn down too, so that people will clean the lint traps in their dryers more frequently.
If getting information about previous exams is cheating, it's cheating. The people designing a test get to define the parameters of what's cheating and what's not.
I'm sorry, but I disagree with you strongly there. The people administering the test do get to decide what is allowed and what isn't allowed in the examination room, during the test. That includes, as you point out, allowing or disallowing calculators, text books, or whatever else they wish to prohibit or allow. But that authority stops at the exam room door. What you do on your own time to prepare for the exam, or who you talk to and what you talk about after the exam is your own business. There are of course exceptions to this rule pertaining to especially egregious conduct, like breaking into a professor's office before an exam to steal a copy, which is clearly cheating, but nothing like that was going on here.
I've taught at both the university and high school level, and the rule of thumb that is generally followed is that once an exam is given to a group of students, and they leave the examination room at the end, that exam becomes public information, and if we assume otherwise, we give some future students an unfair advantage over others. I photocopy and hand out previous years exams (which I have created) to students, both as a study aid, and as way to level the playing field. I think these medical exams should be run the same way, in the interest of fairness.
A lot of that is due to the remoteness of much of Canada. In the cities it's not so bad, but step outside the city limits and the speed drops off in a hurry. Many places in rural Canada don't have high-speed yet, at least not without a a very expensive satellite connection.
I can second that. I have a friend who lives on a small farm just outside of the city (and I mean just outside), and he uses dialup. I'm not kidding. No cable. No DSL. His only "high speed" option would be satellite, which he can't really afford, and isn't that great anyway. The sad part is, his job is in IT. He also has three school age children. I'm not talking about remote here, either, I'm talking about a farm just outside city limits.
This is a tax that applies only to video games, not other forms of expression
Watch it get amended to include movies with a PG-13 or R rating and musical recordings with a Parental Advisory: Explicit Content rating, so that it's medium-neutral.
It's irrelevant whether or not it's "medium-neutral". What matters is whether or not it is content neutral. There is a difference.
and furthermore applies only to those games with a teen or mature rating
Alcoholic beverages are taxed more heavily than beverages not containing alcohol.
Beverages are not protected speech. Video games are.
Schools and libraries receiving federal funds are required to deploy censorware to block speech that is "harmful to minors" as defined by a 2000 act of Congress, and the Supreme Court upheld this.
Public schools are not, nor have ever been, areas that must be content neutral with regard to speech. You won't find Hustler magazines on the school library bookshelves either, but Hustler is considered protected speech.
"GPL isn't designed to force others to share"
Yes, it is. You can ask Richard M. Stallman if you don't believe me.
Umm, no it isn't. All the GPL forces you to do is to release source code if you plan to redistribute GPL code, including code that you modified. You aren't required to share anything, if you don't want to. In other words, you are free to download GPL code, modify it all you like, and use it all you like without sharing a thing. All you're required to do is to release the modified source code (with the GPL license) if you want to distribute your modified binary code. Ditto for GPL code you incorporate in a larger product: must share all source code if you want to distribute code. Not required to otherwise.
Does a state sales tax on books likewise violate the First Amendment as applied to the several states by the Fourteenth? If so, then how do so many states get away with requiring Barnes & Noble to collect and remit sales tax? If not, then what's the difference between what this state representative proposes and a sales tax?
The difference is, this would be a content-based tax on something that has been found to be protected speech. A uniform sales tax on all goods is not a violation of the First Amendment, but if books supporting one particular political party or putting forth one particular opinion were taxed at a different rate than books putting forward the opposite position, then the tax would almost certainly run afoul of the First Amendment. This is a tax that applies only to video games, not other forms of expression, and furthermore applies only to those games with a teen or mature rating, which is closely related to the content of those games.
Crashing planes into the Pentagon, a legitimate act of war.
Except for one fairly important point: we were not at war with Al Quaida at the time!
That's the second time today. How many final appeals are they going to reject?
I think this is just a dupe.
Yes, they can. And no matter how much you try to prove you can't, they can still charge you for noncompliance to their orders. It's called contempt of court, and the judge can make you rot in a cell until you do comply. No jury, no bail, no nothing.
Ummm, contempt of court charges can be appealed. It happens all the time.
how about legit files of your own creation that you had complete ownership of and decided to put on a cloud service?
Still, I don't think you can sue the FBI for executing a warrant, unless they have gone beyond the scope of what was permitted in the warrant.
And as I understand, it isn't the FBI that is deleting the data, but rather a subcontractor whose bills have not been paid since Megaupload's assets have been frozen. I really don't see grounds for suing the FBI here.
I was just about to make the very same point myself. It's called Perfect Forward Secrecy. Use protocols in which the users do not have the ability to decrypt content after the session ends. Courts can't require you to do the impossible.
Nobody is asking that scientists stop refereeing for journals in general. They're asking that they stop refereeing for Elsevier journals. There is a difference.
How about a coffee shop's free Wifi using a spoofed MAC address while I'm sitting at the restaurant next door?
Just make sure the restaurant doesn't have any security cameras. And make doubly sure you don't walk past that coffee shop going to the restaurant as their security cameras might pick you up through the window. And don't park anywhere nearby. And make sure no security cameras catch you walking from the restaurant to your car, etc.
Ummm. It was posted at 6:14 PM EST.
They probably use techniques like differential GPS to increase their accuracy.
Providing an internet connection which a user then misuses does not make you a criminal. Otherwise ISPs could not function.
ISPs can provide the name an address of a subscriber to law enforcement given an IP address. The provider of an open access wireless connection generally cannot. Police don't like it when an investigative trail goes cold.
my understanding is that connections to and from entry and exit nodes are unencrypted . only connections between relays are encrypted.
Out of the exit node: not encrypted, but your IP address is hidden, which is what is important at that end. Traffic to the entry node IS encrypted, otherwise your ISP would be able to snoop your browsing habits!
Tor has to connect to so-called "dictionary servers" periodically to refresh its list of tor nodes to try to use. If you block those servers, tor breaks.
At least, that's how it worked when they finally figured out how to block it after 3 years. Maybe tor has improved since then.
We have to remember though what Tor was designed to do and what it was not designed to do. Tor was designed to protect the privacy of individuals who don't want their browsing habits revealed. It does this by preventing your IP address from being available to the web server you connect to, and additionally it encrypts traffic so intermediaries, such as your ISP can't snoop on your traffic. It was NOT designed as a means of bypassing firewalls that are actively try to block Tor. That was never its purpose.
You make some very good points. It is true that decent digital cameras are more expensive than film cameras of similar quality. And as I read further down your post and saw that you shoot in medium format, I think it's even more true. But keep in mind that medium format is typically used by professional photographers. Even in the days when film was supreme, most average people just used 35mm SLRs. And Canon makes some affordable DSLRs (such as the T3i) which are very good, and much better at shooting in low lighting conditions that digital cameras used to be. Not to mention the fact that they also shoot awesome video.
But for serious photographers that shoot in medium format, I agree, digital replacements are still quite expensive. And in the digital age, I'm afraid black and white is becoming a lost art.