I read the article - all zero words of it - so perhaps the multimedia component of it addressed this concern, but I find it hard to imagine how:
If I can verify that my vote was counted, and can prove how I voted if there was a fraud to force a recount/etc, how does the system make it impossible for me to prove to my boss/spouse/friends/church/etc how I voted?
The problem with receipts is that if you can prove how you voted, then you can punish people for not voting the right way. All an abusive husband has to do is tell her wife to show up with a receipt showing the correct votes or they'll be beaten. You can make the receipt private, but an abusive husband/wife/parent/boss/etc will just tell people to turn them over or they'll be punished.
The effects of this kind of thing can be very subtle. People will change their voting patterns even if they think they MIGHT be asked to show that receipt. Maybe everybody in their union or church or whatever voluntarily posts their receipts as a show of solidarity, and who wants to then be the one person who doesn't join in?
If a voting system is well-designed it should not be possible for anybody to prove how they voted. Other controls should be used to ensure all votes are counted.
Yeah, point me to a reliably-updated version of it for the amd64 platform on linux and maybe I'll run it. For now I'm sticking to gnash, and that doesn't support flash v10. HTML5 is of course preferred...
Your argument basically amounts that if you do without you'll have more money than if you spend it. Well, clearly that is correct.
However, my point was that if you for whatever reason want to live in your own home, then mortgages are not a bad way to accomplish that.
Sure, if you can live with your parents until you're 30, or whatever, and not spend all that cash on other things, then you'll have more money.
In fact, if you live on ramen in your parent's basement until they die, you'll probably be a millionaire. If you maintain a similar lifestyle until your die, then whoever you leave your money to with be even better off.
If, however, you feel that money is earned for the purpose of being spent, then what matters is getting the most for your money. Perhaps living at a house at the age of 25 is worth enough that somebody would be willing to forego being able to afford a plane at the age of 55.
That's wonderful. Can you perhaps post an audio clip of this amazing manifestation of math and science in spoken voice?
My point is that math and science don't SAY anything. They are techniques, not sentient beings.
At best you can argue is that a bunch of people think that there is a really good model for the climate where things turn out badly under current conditions but turn out fine if we stop emitting CO2. That is an argument, but it isn't a personification of math and science. It also doesn't make this the truth, guarantee that the outcome will happen if the suggested action is taken, or ensure that there isn't a better solution that doesn't involve living in the stone age...
No dispute there. However, if they can get paid more than you for their entire life doing their job wrong, it is hard to argue that math is all that important to their employment. Their success is based on the ability of their corporation to ensure that new companies that are competently managed are barred from competing effectively via legal measures.:)
I'd probably draw a distinction between evaluating a formula (x=a+b/c, provide a,b,c, find x), and solving an equation (a=bx+c, give me a general expression for x). Spreadsheets are almost always used for the former and rarely used for the latter. Sure, Excel has a "goal-seeker" function that will use some kind of iterative solver to do the equivalent of solving equations (numerous ways of doing this - all fallible and they don't deal with multiple roots).
The meter and the second are both defined in terms of physical standards.
The second is the duration of 9 192 631 770 periods of the radiation corresponding to the transition between the two hyperfine levels of the ground state of the cesium 133 atom.
The meter is the length of the path travelled by light in vacuum during a time interval of 1/299 792 458 of a second.
How is this different from defining it by an artifact locked up beyond your reach?
It isn't beyond all reach - I just can't access it personally. Sure, that isn't ideal, but it still works, with an acceptable level of error
We have the technology to make such precise measurements on all of those fronts
The problem is that experts don't agree with that statement - at least they didn't a few years ago when I last read up on the problem.
Here is an illustrative example (numbers are illustrative and not exact figures). I propose that a kg is the mass of a piece of metal made a century ago. Based on measurements made over time I have a pretty high level of confidence that it is accurate to about 0.1%, and that its accuracy will decrease over time. You propose that a kg is the mass of a 1000 cm^3 of pure H2O at its triple point (composed of 1H and 16O). That mass of course will never change over time (unless there is something going on with the laws of physics that we don't understand). However, suppose that your measurement technique has a 1% error rate. Your standard is in principle better, but in practice the lump of metal is more accurate.
Now, over time that lump of metal will only get worse as it degrades, and over time the accuracy of your technique will only get better. Maybe at some point in time they're close enough that just the convenience and elegance factor justifies switching. However, my understanding is that right now the accuracy difference is high enough that it doesn't make sense to switch yet. Perhaps this news suggests that this is changing.
From what I've read the problem is that the people who made that lump of metal did such a good job that it is just REALLY hard to surpass it, even if on first principles the lump doesn't make sense.
And you're going to be crippled when you get your ideal job as a middle manager of a business and you can't do algebra to calculate how many widgets you need to buy and sell each month.
I dunno - I don't see too many middle managers at my workplace using algebra at all. At the most they use spreadsheets to evaluate math - never having to solve for a variable.
Don't get me wrong - I use it all the time, and I appreciate having that tool in my toolbox. But, I minored in math and majored in the physical sciences and I'm not really the target of the article.
COULD the average person use algebra? Sure! Will they ever use it? No. So, what exactly is the point of spending lots of tax dollars trying to teach it to them?
I don't think the author of the article is suggesting that we get rid of math education. His point is that we shouldn't cram it down people's throats, or try to spend a fortune trying to get people who don't like math to learn it.
Whoosh! No matter what the term of your loan is, if you pay it off at the coupon rate, you're shooting yourself in the foot.
I disagree with that. If you hold cash or non-productive assets when you have loans, then you're shooting yourself in the foot.
If all you can afford to pay is the coupon rate, then trying to pay more is reckless.
If you can trivially afford to pay the coupon rate, then chances are that your coupon rate isn't high enough. You're paying a higher interest rate to have a loan duration that is longer than you need it to be.
Of course, you shouldn't make your mortgage payments 60% of your income, because then if anything goes wrong you're sunk. However, if you have all kinds of extra cash to put into accelerated payments, then you probably took out the wrong loan.
Also, people are a darned sight better off if they save their money until they have enough and then simply buy the house, cutting the lenders out entirely.
That depends a great deal on inflation rates and home values in the area. If home values are generally rising (often the case in developing areas on the periphery of developed areas), then paying rent for 20 years while you save up to pay cash for a home (assuming that you can ever save enough) could cost you more than the interest on a loan. Of course, if home values are going down then renting is great.
Now, once you have a loan you should of course try to pay it off quickly.
Since you threw out numbers, here are a few:
Suppose I borrow $200k at 6.5% interest with a 30-year term. I can pay it off at the coupon rate of $1264/month. Now, suppose I have extra cash, and pay $1742/month - now I'll pay it off in 15 years and save myself $142k. That sounds good, right?
Wrong. I could have instead taken a 15 year loan at maybe 6% interest instead. If I paid that at the coupon of $1688 I would pay $9700 less. If I went ahead and paid it at $1742/month I'd pay an additional $6k less.
The problem is that you're taking out a loan that is longer than you need. If you don't need 30 years to pay off a loan, then you can save a boatload with a shorter loan and a lower rate.
If you can pay it off in only a few years, you can of course make a very safe killing with an ARM (the adjustable rate would only barely kick in, and if it has a gradual ramp-up feature like most ARMs then even if Carter is back in office you'd still be paying a low rate the whole time you're making payments).
The bottom line is that you have to look at the big picture, and what you have, and what you need. Loans are not always a bad thing.
Uh, I have a minor in math. Care to demonstrate mathematically who I should vote for to fix the world's global warming ails?
Sure, you need to know math to do research in the physical sciences. However, math and science don't "say" anything about the world. They are techniques used to study the world, but unless you've done the primary research yourself the talking is done by SCIENTISTS and MATHEMATICIANS, not science and math. The former are not a perfect embodiment of the latter, and they're as subject to bias/fallibility/etc as anybody.
You don't need to know a lot of math to be a political leader, or to vote for the right political leader. In fact, of all the people who voted for the "right" political leader in the last presidential election, I'm guessing that most of them weren't all that good at math. I have no idea who you think the "right" one is, but I'm guessing that few of the people voting for him were mathematicians unless you wrote-in one of your professors...
Likewise, you know how many people get a mortgage and then pay only the suggested payment? Most of them.
Then most people are smart - at least for most mortgages.
If you could really afford to pay off your 30-year loan in 15 years, then you almost always would have been better-off getting a 15-year loan. Since you're paying a premium on the loan (in the form of interest rates) to assume the long-term risk of rates changing, you shouldn't take out a longer-duration loan than you can afford. A 6% 15-year loan is a LOT cheaper than a 6.5% 30-year loan that you pay off in 15 years.
Now, if you can't get a better deal on the interest then of course it is in your interest to extend the duration (with no pre-payment penalty) and then make higher payments as you have opportunity - this gives you more financial flexibility over the long term.
I agree that those who are good at math will have advantages financially over those who are not. However, my wife took enough math in high school to in theory cover all these kinds of basic financial topics, but this would not be nearly as intuitive to her as it is to you and I. So, in that sense, it isn't doing her any good to have to have spent her time on it.
The key point here is that as a high school student, you're not going to know where you're going to end up, or what opportunities will be opened/missed by having/not-having certain skills.
Chances are that if you hate algebra and struggle to pass it, then a life in engineering or the physical sciences isn't going to be your cup of tea.
So, why make somebody try to prepare for a handful of careers that they are unlikely to pursue, and if they do pursue them most likely they'll never be able to outcompete somebody mediocre to above-average in a country that pays 1/3rd the US wage?
If you want to be successful, you need to find a career that you can excel at - not one where you can barely get a job, because with current trends you won't get a job.
I do believe that violating this basic policy is grounds for termination just about everywhere - at least everywhere I've ever worked.
Situations like this are rarely black-and-white. In any case, I wasn't advising anybody to take action like this without the full sanction of their corporate counsel - which means there would be no risk of termination. This is a company decision and not a personal one.
If the CEO asked the chief counsel about something like this, no doubt the advice they would get is that this is a legal gray area. The company could probably argue fair-use. So, this might be legal or it might not be. The company could be exposed to the publicity and general expense of a suit, but most likely MS isn't going to want to do that. If there was a suit, it is hard to see how anybody could argue damages - MS hasn't been deprived of any direct revenue since IE6 was paid for and Win7 was paid for. I'm guessing the overall advice of a corporate lawyer is to avoid the hassle if you can, but don't put the company at risk of a botched ERP upgrade just to rush in IE9 or whatever.
If your software vendor wants to make it illegal for you to move forward in a functional fashion...
Fortunately vendors cannot make things legal or illegal - the government does that. Software vendors merely grant licenses to copy their software. As with any contract, just because somebody wants to enforce or interpret it in a particular way doesn't mean that a court will let them do so. The law is what the courts say it is. And we're not talking about dumping toxins in rivers or civil rights abuses - we're talking about a software licensing dispute over software that was bought-and-paid-for.
The issue is manufacturing processes with unanticipated problems, and production workers who find ways to overcome the problems without realizing that they're endangering themselves.
No, the issue is that companies put profits above safety.
If workers remove their gloves, they should be fired. If an inspector finds a worker not wearing gloves, the company should be fined big-time. The employer is in charge of the workplace, and so they are responsible for what happens, period.
If you set your policy any other way, then this is what happens: Official rules go up on the walls - all workers shall wear gloves. Oh, but every week the two slowest workers are fired. Workers find out that gloves slow them down, so they stop wearing them. The company looks the other way, since they don't actually care if workers give themselves cancer, but they do care about making more widgets. If inspectors come in, the company points to the rules and say that they're providing gloves.
In such a working environment, workers who are safety-conscious get out-competed. The solution is to level the playing field with regard to safety. If employees are caught not wearing gloves by an inspector, then it is automatically a finding against the company and they get fined so much money that any savings from cutting corners is minuscule in comparison. The company realizes this, and so they do spot checks and any employees caught not wearing gloves get treated worse than those caught sleeping on the job. Now, safety becomes encouraged by management, and workers don't have to compromise their health to keep their job.
The problem with a definition based on water is that it is very hard to use in practice, with high accuracy.
Where do you get the water from? Before you answer, keep in mind that the density of water varies based on its purity, both chemically, and isotopically. The latter is VERY hard to control.
Oh, and measuring a cubic dm of water isn't all that easy either. Sure, you can just build a cubic box and all that, but the problem is that constructing such a box and measuring its dimensions with high precision is difficult.
I think the current trend in density-based definitions is using silicon, as we can make that with very high purity (due to the semiconductor industry), and being solid you dispense with the need for a container/etc. Still, measuring its dimensions/etc is still hard. I'm not sure how they deal with the isotope situation - maybe silicon is found in nature with a higher level of uniformity/etc.
Keep in mind that scientists care about definitions with very large numbers of significant figures. The current artifacts are VERY accurate despite their shortcomings, so for the new definition to be accepted it has to be at least comparable in accuracy. Definitions that are simply more elegant on paper aren't as useful in the real world...
Yup - the last I read on this the problem was that the artifact was still considered more accurate. Of course, the artifact will only get less accurate over time (very slowly), and the silicon method will only get better.
If the standards bodies hadn't done such a good job creating the artifact and its copies in the first place, it wouldn't be quite so hard to displace them. It turns out that the artifact isn't actually all that bad a standard. If it ever got lost we could switch to the silicon method at any time, though obviously the longer we wait the closer we can get them synchronized.
These are all big corporations who buy tons of windows licenses.
MS isn't going to sue them because they are running a bunch of IE6-apps on copies of IE6 that they paid for via XP licenses, on copies of Windows 7 that they pay licenses for, supported by Active Directory and Exchange servers that they pay licenses for and client licenses for, etc. Oh, and the reason they're doing it is because MS stopped taking their money for XP extended support contracts and instead they're paying for Windows 7 extended support contracts.
MS would be suicidal to file legal action against companies like this. They're EXACTLY who keeps them in business. No, they're going to do everything they can to make the migration path as smooth as they can. The IT guys at these companies can pick up the phone and have engineers at their beck and call any time they want - they are MS's bread and butter and they know it.
Sure, MS would prefer to leave IE6 behind, and no doubt they'll do what they can to get people to move on. However, the worst they'll actually do is remove official support - they won't be suing their customers.
I dunno - war is a nasty business no matter what you do. It basically is the ultimate contest of wills - who is willing to sacrifice more and how willing they are to do it. In the end might makes right is how EVERY war has always been fought.
Sure, I don't have to like it, but if you're stuck fighting a war your only options might be to fight in a way you'd rather not, or lose. So, then the question is what is one the line if you lose, and what values are you willing to give up to protect it?
Most value systems don't do well when put to this kind of test.
I think it depends on the nature of the occupying force and their objectives and the nature of their government.
The US didn't really win the Revolutionary War so much as it forced the British to stop fighting it. The British clearly could have kept fighting, and they won almost all of their battles. The problem was that they really didn't have any reason to right - the English populace had no desire to brutally suppress a bunch of Western colonists and the body bags were beginning to pile up. They probably could have fought indefinitely, but what would have been the point?
On the other hand, I don't know how many body bags it would take before, say, the Chinese gave up.
Still, controlling any nation the size of the US against a hostile populace is virtually impossible without essentially the support of the entire world.
Ultimately wars on this scale are about a battle of wills. If the occupier can hold out long enough (perhaps measured in generations) then people will settle in and be assimilated. If the populace can keep the occupier in fierce warfare for a long time, they'll probably withdraw.
However, in the real world I can't really think of any scenarios where somebody would actually want to invade and hold territory in the US. I could see maybe an invasion of Hawaii or Alaska or something over some kind of REALLY serious trade dispute. I could even see a nutcase launching a bunch of nukes. However, how would you motivate any population to continue to sustain the millions of casulties that would result from something of the scale of WWII but supported across an ocean? there were doubts that the US could have pulled off a full invasion of Japan if terms of surrender were offered.
If the US launched an all-out strategic attack on an opponent, they would also launch tactical attacks on opponent military forces. It isn't like the ships at sea would stop fighting just because there is nobody left at home to fight for...
I think that this the logic behind tactical nuclear weapons. Plus, they give an army more options, and commanders always like having options.
They are what they make do with while they work out how to charge tolls for road use, a utility surcharge, and a tax on all deliveries into the development.
Yup. Biochemistry doesn't change that much in two years - at least not the sort of stuff that you'd print in any kind of a general text.
Maybe if your textbook were titled "Current Trends in Genetic Regulation by Zinc Finger Proteins in Nervous Tissue" or something like that then it might warrant biannual supplements, but we call those textbooks review articles and your library already keeps a copy of those for copying.
I can't really think of any book that requires revision at this kind of frequency. Maybe a legal reference (new case law all the time), or other kinds of current reference material (auto service manuals, etc).
States should contract work-for-hire textbooks and freely distribute them (maybe with some kind of copyright pool - contribute books at a fair rate and reprint whatever you want).
Sure, but legally the human is responsible for being the failsafe, so when something goes wrong the human can be blamed. The only liability scenario for the autopilot designers is if the unit fails to release control, and no doubt they put more effort into ensuring that this aspect of the system works better than even the control aspects.
My basic point was that the way courts assign liability has a big impact on how people behave and innovate. This can sometimes result in perverse incentives.
Just look at the Good Samaritan Laws. Absent those, many people would look the other way when people are dying on the street, since you would face punishment for saving somebody's life but breaking a rib, but not for just letting them die.
And, just as with the Good Samaritan Laws the issue of cars without drivers could be solved via reforms. However, it is very difficult to make these kinds of changes, and until then the perverse incentive will remain.
In any case, did you think that when I posted that I wasn't aware of auto-pilots? I'm actually a bit of a flight simulation buff, and I do like to read accident reports from time to time. I don't recall ever reading one where the autopilot was blamed for an accident, and that is because the autopilot is not relied on to pilot the aircraft (where by pilot I mean all aspects of being the pilot-in-command and not merely momentarily directing the control surfaces).
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I read the article - all zero words of it - so perhaps the multimedia component of it addressed this concern, but I find it hard to imagine how:
If I can verify that my vote was counted, and can prove how I voted if there was a fraud to force a recount/etc, how does the system make it impossible for me to prove to my boss/spouse/friends/church/etc how I voted?
The problem with receipts is that if you can prove how you voted, then you can punish people for not voting the right way. All an abusive husband has to do is tell her wife to show up with a receipt showing the correct votes or they'll be beaten. You can make the receipt private, but an abusive husband/wife/parent/boss/etc will just tell people to turn them over or they'll be punished.
The effects of this kind of thing can be very subtle. People will change their voting patterns even if they think they MIGHT be asked to show that receipt. Maybe everybody in their union or church or whatever voluntarily posts their receipts as a show of solidarity, and who wants to then be the one person who doesn't join in?
If a voting system is well-designed it should not be possible for anybody to prove how they voted. Other controls should be used to ensure all votes are counted.
Yeah, point me to a reliably-updated version of it for the amd64 platform on linux and maybe I'll run it. For now I'm sticking to gnash, and that doesn't support flash v10. HTML5 is of course preferred...
Your argument basically amounts that if you do without you'll have more money than if you spend it. Well, clearly that is correct.
However, my point was that if you for whatever reason want to live in your own home, then mortgages are not a bad way to accomplish that.
Sure, if you can live with your parents until you're 30, or whatever, and not spend all that cash on other things, then you'll have more money.
In fact, if you live on ramen in your parent's basement until they die, you'll probably be a millionaire. If you maintain a similar lifestyle until your die, then whoever you leave your money to with be even better off.
If, however, you feel that money is earned for the purpose of being spent, then what matters is getting the most for your money. Perhaps living at a house at the age of 25 is worth enough that somebody would be willing to forego being able to afford a plane at the age of 55.
Well, math and science are telling us
That's wonderful. Can you perhaps post an audio clip of this amazing manifestation of math and science in spoken voice?
My point is that math and science don't SAY anything. They are techniques, not sentient beings.
At best you can argue is that a bunch of people think that there is a really good model for the climate where things turn out badly under current conditions but turn out fine if we stop emitting CO2. That is an argument, but it isn't a personification of math and science. It also doesn't make this the truth, guarantee that the outcome will happen if the suggested action is taken, or ensure that there isn't a better solution that doesn't involve living in the stone age...
No dispute there. However, if they can get paid more than you for their entire life doing their job wrong, it is hard to argue that math is all that important to their employment. Their success is based on the ability of their corporation to ensure that new companies that are competently managed are barred from competing effectively via legal measures. :)
I'd probably draw a distinction between evaluating a formula (x=a+b/c, provide a,b,c, find x), and solving an equation (a=bx+c, give me a general expression for x). Spreadsheets are almost always used for the former and rarely used for the latter. Sure, Excel has a "goal-seeker" function that will use some kind of iterative solver to do the equivalent of solving equations (numerous ways of doing this - all fallible and they don't deal with multiple roots).
The meter and the second are both defined in terms of physical standards.
The second is the duration of 9 192 631 770 periods of the radiation corresponding to the transition between the two hyperfine levels of the ground state of the cesium 133 atom.
The meter is the length of the path travelled by light in vacuum during a time interval of 1/299 792 458 of a second.
How is this different from defining it by an artifact locked up beyond your reach?
It isn't beyond all reach - I just can't access it personally. Sure, that isn't ideal, but it still works, with an acceptable level of error
We have the technology to make such precise measurements on all of those fronts
The problem is that experts don't agree with that statement - at least they didn't a few years ago when I last read up on the problem.
Here is an illustrative example (numbers are illustrative and not exact figures). I propose that a kg is the mass of a piece of metal made a century ago. Based on measurements made over time I have a pretty high level of confidence that it is accurate to about 0.1%, and that its accuracy will decrease over time. You propose that a kg is the mass of a 1000 cm^3 of pure H2O at its triple point (composed of 1H and 16O). That mass of course will never change over time (unless there is something going on with the laws of physics that we don't understand). However, suppose that your measurement technique has a 1% error rate. Your standard is in principle better, but in practice the lump of metal is more accurate.
Now, over time that lump of metal will only get worse as it degrades, and over time the accuracy of your technique will only get better. Maybe at some point in time they're close enough that just the convenience and elegance factor justifies switching. However, my understanding is that right now the accuracy difference is high enough that it doesn't make sense to switch yet. Perhaps this news suggests that this is changing.
From what I've read the problem is that the people who made that lump of metal did such a good job that it is just REALLY hard to surpass it, even if on first principles the lump doesn't make sense.
And you're going to be crippled when you get your ideal job as a middle manager of a business and you can't do algebra to calculate how many widgets you need to buy and sell each month.
I dunno - I don't see too many middle managers at my workplace using algebra at all. At the most they use spreadsheets to evaluate math - never having to solve for a variable.
Don't get me wrong - I use it all the time, and I appreciate having that tool in my toolbox. But, I minored in math and majored in the physical sciences and I'm not really the target of the article.
COULD the average person use algebra? Sure! Will they ever use it? No. So, what exactly is the point of spending lots of tax dollars trying to teach it to them?
I don't think the author of the article is suggesting that we get rid of math education. His point is that we shouldn't cram it down people's throats, or try to spend a fortune trying to get people who don't like math to learn it.
Whoosh! No matter what the term of your loan is, if you pay it off at the coupon rate, you're shooting yourself in the foot.
I disagree with that. If you hold cash or non-productive assets when you have loans, then you're shooting yourself in the foot.
If all you can afford to pay is the coupon rate, then trying to pay more is reckless.
If you can trivially afford to pay the coupon rate, then chances are that your coupon rate isn't high enough. You're paying a higher interest rate to have a loan duration that is longer than you need it to be.
Of course, you shouldn't make your mortgage payments 60% of your income, because then if anything goes wrong you're sunk. However, if you have all kinds of extra cash to put into accelerated payments, then you probably took out the wrong loan.
Also, people are a darned sight better off if they save their money until they have enough and then simply buy the house, cutting the lenders out entirely.
That depends a great deal on inflation rates and home values in the area. If home values are generally rising (often the case in developing areas on the periphery of developed areas), then paying rent for 20 years while you save up to pay cash for a home (assuming that you can ever save enough) could cost you more than the interest on a loan. Of course, if home values are going down then renting is great.
Now, once you have a loan you should of course try to pay it off quickly.
Since you threw out numbers, here are a few:
Suppose I borrow $200k at 6.5% interest with a 30-year term. I can pay it off at the coupon rate of $1264/month. Now, suppose I have extra cash, and pay $1742/month - now I'll pay it off in 15 years and save myself $142k. That sounds good, right?
Wrong. I could have instead taken a 15 year loan at maybe 6% interest instead. If I paid that at the coupon of $1688 I would pay $9700 less. If I went ahead and paid it at $1742/month I'd pay an additional $6k less.
The problem is that you're taking out a loan that is longer than you need. If you don't need 30 years to pay off a loan, then you can save a boatload with a shorter loan and a lower rate.
If you can pay it off in only a few years, you can of course make a very safe killing with an ARM (the adjustable rate would only barely kick in, and if it has a gradual ramp-up feature like most ARMs then even if Carter is back in office you'd still be paying a low rate the whole time you're making payments).
The bottom line is that you have to look at the big picture, and what you have, and what you need. Loans are not always a bad thing.
Uh, I have a minor in math. Care to demonstrate mathematically who I should vote for to fix the world's global warming ails?
Sure, you need to know math to do research in the physical sciences. However, math and science don't "say" anything about the world. They are techniques used to study the world, but unless you've done the primary research yourself the talking is done by SCIENTISTS and MATHEMATICIANS, not science and math. The former are not a perfect embodiment of the latter, and they're as subject to bias/fallibility/etc as anybody.
You don't need to know a lot of math to be a political leader, or to vote for the right political leader. In fact, of all the people who voted for the "right" political leader in the last presidential election, I'm guessing that most of them weren't all that good at math. I have no idea who you think the "right" one is, but I'm guessing that few of the people voting for him were mathematicians unless you wrote-in one of your professors...
Likewise, you know how many people get a mortgage and then pay only the suggested payment? Most of them.
Then most people are smart - at least for most mortgages.
If you could really afford to pay off your 30-year loan in 15 years, then you almost always would have been better-off getting a 15-year loan. Since you're paying a premium on the loan (in the form of interest rates) to assume the long-term risk of rates changing, you shouldn't take out a longer-duration loan than you can afford. A 6% 15-year loan is a LOT cheaper than a 6.5% 30-year loan that you pay off in 15 years.
Now, if you can't get a better deal on the interest then of course it is in your interest to extend the duration (with no pre-payment penalty) and then make higher payments as you have opportunity - this gives you more financial flexibility over the long term.
I agree that those who are good at math will have advantages financially over those who are not. However, my wife took enough math in high school to in theory cover all these kinds of basic financial topics, but this would not be nearly as intuitive to her as it is to you and I. So, in that sense, it isn't doing her any good to have to have spent her time on it.
The key point here is that as a high school student, you're not going to know where you're going to end up, or what opportunities will be opened/missed by having/not-having certain skills.
Chances are that if you hate algebra and struggle to pass it, then a life in engineering or the physical sciences isn't going to be your cup of tea.
So, why make somebody try to prepare for a handful of careers that they are unlikely to pursue, and if they do pursue them most likely they'll never be able to outcompete somebody mediocre to above-average in a country that pays 1/3rd the US wage?
If you want to be successful, you need to find a career that you can excel at - not one where you can barely get a job, because with current trends you won't get a job.
I do believe that violating this basic policy is grounds for termination just about everywhere - at least everywhere I've ever worked.
Situations like this are rarely black-and-white. In any case, I wasn't advising anybody to take action like this without the full sanction of their corporate counsel - which means there would be no risk of termination. This is a company decision and not a personal one.
If the CEO asked the chief counsel about something like this, no doubt the advice they would get is that this is a legal gray area. The company could probably argue fair-use. So, this might be legal or it might not be. The company could be exposed to the publicity and general expense of a suit, but most likely MS isn't going to want to do that. If there was a suit, it is hard to see how anybody could argue damages - MS hasn't been deprived of any direct revenue since IE6 was paid for and Win7 was paid for. I'm guessing the overall advice of a corporate lawyer is to avoid the hassle if you can, but don't put the company at risk of a botched ERP upgrade just to rush in IE9 or whatever.
If your software vendor wants to make it illegal for you to move forward in a functional fashion...
Fortunately vendors cannot make things legal or illegal - the government does that. Software vendors merely grant licenses to copy their software. As with any contract, just because somebody wants to enforce or interpret it in a particular way doesn't mean that a court will let them do so. The law is what the courts say it is. And we're not talking about dumping toxins in rivers or civil rights abuses - we're talking about a software licensing dispute over software that was bought-and-paid-for.
The issue is manufacturing processes with unanticipated problems, and production workers who find ways to overcome the problems without realizing that they're endangering themselves.
No, the issue is that companies put profits above safety.
If workers remove their gloves, they should be fired. If an inspector finds a worker not wearing gloves, the company should be fined big-time. The employer is in charge of the workplace, and so they are responsible for what happens, period.
If you set your policy any other way, then this is what happens: Official rules go up on the walls - all workers shall wear gloves. Oh, but every week the two slowest workers are fired. Workers find out that gloves slow them down, so they stop wearing them. The company looks the other way, since they don't actually care if workers give themselves cancer, but they do care about making more widgets. If inspectors come in, the company points to the rules and say that they're providing gloves.
In such a working environment, workers who are safety-conscious get out-competed. The solution is to level the playing field with regard to safety. If employees are caught not wearing gloves by an inspector, then it is automatically a finding against the company and they get fined so much money that any savings from cutting corners is minuscule in comparison. The company realizes this, and so they do spot checks and any employees caught not wearing gloves get treated worse than those caught sleeping on the job. Now, safety becomes encouraged by management, and workers don't have to compromise their health to keep their job.
The problem with a definition based on water is that it is very hard to use in practice, with high accuracy.
Where do you get the water from? Before you answer, keep in mind that the density of water varies based on its purity, both chemically, and isotopically. The latter is VERY hard to control.
Oh, and measuring a cubic dm of water isn't all that easy either. Sure, you can just build a cubic box and all that, but the problem is that constructing such a box and measuring its dimensions with high precision is difficult.
I think the current trend in density-based definitions is using silicon, as we can make that with very high purity (due to the semiconductor industry), and being solid you dispense with the need for a container/etc. Still, measuring its dimensions/etc is still hard. I'm not sure how they deal with the isotope situation - maybe silicon is found in nature with a higher level of uniformity/etc.
Keep in mind that scientists care about definitions with very large numbers of significant figures. The current artifacts are VERY accurate despite their shortcomings, so for the new definition to be accepted it has to be at least comparable in accuracy. Definitions that are simply more elegant on paper aren't as useful in the real world...
Yup - the last I read on this the problem was that the artifact was still considered more accurate. Of course, the artifact will only get less accurate over time (very slowly), and the silicon method will only get better.
If the standards bodies hadn't done such a good job creating the artifact and its copies in the first place, it wouldn't be quite so hard to displace them. It turns out that the artifact isn't actually all that bad a standard. If it ever got lost we could switch to the silicon method at any time, though obviously the longer we wait the closer we can get them synchronized.
These are all big corporations who buy tons of windows licenses.
MS isn't going to sue them because they are running a bunch of IE6-apps on copies of IE6 that they paid for via XP licenses, on copies of Windows 7 that they pay licenses for, supported by Active Directory and Exchange servers that they pay licenses for and client licenses for, etc. Oh, and the reason they're doing it is because MS stopped taking their money for XP extended support contracts and instead they're paying for Windows 7 extended support contracts.
MS would be suicidal to file legal action against companies like this. They're EXACTLY who keeps them in business. No, they're going to do everything they can to make the migration path as smooth as they can. The IT guys at these companies can pick up the phone and have engineers at their beck and call any time they want - they are MS's bread and butter and they know it.
Sure, MS would prefer to leave IE6 behind, and no doubt they'll do what they can to get people to move on. However, the worst they'll actually do is remove official support - they won't be suing their customers.
I dunno - war is a nasty business no matter what you do. It basically is the ultimate contest of wills - who is willing to sacrifice more and how willing they are to do it. In the end might makes right is how EVERY war has always been fought.
Sure, I don't have to like it, but if you're stuck fighting a war your only options might be to fight in a way you'd rather not, or lose. So, then the question is what is one the line if you lose, and what values are you willing to give up to protect it?
Most value systems don't do well when put to this kind of test.
I think it depends on the nature of the occupying force and their objectives and the nature of their government.
The US didn't really win the Revolutionary War so much as it forced the British to stop fighting it. The British clearly could have kept fighting, and they won almost all of their battles. The problem was that they really didn't have any reason to right - the English populace had no desire to brutally suppress a bunch of Western colonists and the body bags were beginning to pile up. They probably could have fought indefinitely, but what would have been the point?
On the other hand, I don't know how many body bags it would take before, say, the Chinese gave up.
Still, controlling any nation the size of the US against a hostile populace is virtually impossible without essentially the support of the entire world.
Ultimately wars on this scale are about a battle of wills. If the occupier can hold out long enough (perhaps measured in generations) then people will settle in and be assimilated. If the populace can keep the occupier in fierce warfare for a long time, they'll probably withdraw.
However, in the real world I can't really think of any scenarios where somebody would actually want to invade and hold territory in the US. I could see maybe an invasion of Hawaii or Alaska or something over some kind of REALLY serious trade dispute. I could even see a nutcase launching a bunch of nukes. However, how would you motivate any population to continue to sustain the millions of casulties that would result from something of the scale of WWII but supported across an ocean? there were doubts that the US could have pulled off a full invasion of Japan if terms of surrender were offered.
If the US launched an all-out strategic attack on an opponent, they would also launch tactical attacks on opponent military forces. It isn't like the ships at sea would stop fighting just because there is nobody left at home to fight for...
I think that this the logic behind tactical nuclear weapons. Plus, they give an army more options, and commanders always like having options.
They are what they make do with while they work out how to charge tolls for road use, a utility surcharge, and a tax on all deliveries into the development.
Yup, where I am at soda in a bottle is tax-free, and soda in a cup is 6%, but a few miles down the road that soda in a cup is 7%.
Everybody and their uncle in the US has the right to levy taxes. I'm surprised homeowner associations aren't doing it. :)
Yup. Biochemistry doesn't change that much in two years - at least not the sort of stuff that you'd print in any kind of a general text.
Maybe if your textbook were titled "Current Trends in Genetic Regulation by Zinc Finger Proteins in Nervous Tissue" or something like that then it might warrant biannual supplements, but we call those textbooks review articles and your library already keeps a copy of those for copying.
I can't really think of any book that requires revision at this kind of frequency. Maybe a legal reference (new case law all the time), or other kinds of current reference material (auto service manuals, etc).
States should contract work-for-hire textbooks and freely distribute them (maybe with some kind of copyright pool - contribute books at a fair rate and reprint whatever you want).
Sure, but legally the human is responsible for being the failsafe, so when something goes wrong the human can be blamed. The only liability scenario for the autopilot designers is if the unit fails to release control, and no doubt they put more effort into ensuring that this aspect of the system works better than even the control aspects.
My basic point was that the way courts assign liability has a big impact on how people behave and innovate. This can sometimes result in perverse incentives.
Just look at the Good Samaritan Laws. Absent those, many people would look the other way when people are dying on the street, since you would face punishment for saving somebody's life but breaking a rib, but not for just letting them die.
And, just as with the Good Samaritan Laws the issue of cars without drivers could be solved via reforms. However, it is very difficult to make these kinds of changes, and until then the perverse incentive will remain.
In any case, did you think that when I posted that I wasn't aware of auto-pilots? I'm actually a bit of a flight simulation buff, and I do like to read accident reports from time to time. I don't recall ever reading one where the autopilot was blamed for an accident, and that is because the autopilot is not relied on to pilot the aircraft (where by pilot I mean all aspects of being the pilot-in-command and not merely momentarily directing the control surfaces).