You are correct that it was doomed from the beginning, as any court observer would see.
The Constitution is very clear on the matter, so much that even non-lawyers can understand it:
"In all Cases affecting Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, and those in which a State shall be Party, the supreme Court shall have original Jurisdiction. In all the other Cases before mentioned, the supreme Court shall have appellate Jurisdiction"
There are only two kinds of cases that can start at the supreme court: those affecting ambassadors and other specific people, and those cases brought by a state.
Everything else must be an appeal of a lower court that has been brought to the supreme court.
Since they were bringing it up as an original complaint, but it doesn't affect one of those people or have a state as a party, there is no constitutional way the SCOTUS could accept the case. The original case must be heard at a lower level, then the supreme court could hear the appeal.
Any plans to get out of the country before the collapse? Or are you one of the majority of the people who are stuck watching the nation collapse around them?
No, it has been in a death spiral for a while now.
The country is spending money like crazy while keeping their money printing presses running around the clock. Read the line in the article, "Venezuela's central bank said the country's money supply grew 70% in the past year." The currency is collapsing due to stupidity and power-grabs in government.
Many countries have seen this sort of thing happen, and it is not pretty. Wheelbarrows of money to buy bread, only accepting payment in foreign currency, and financial collapse are common with this scenario that is playing right now.
Zimbabwe did this about a decade ago as the currency collapsed. Collectors picked up the trillion dollar notes that were printed at the end of the collapse and worth practically nothing. I hope it doesn't happen but part of me thinks it would be fun to collect a billion bolivar note from the country if/when the collapse happens.
Why were those vegetables chosen instead of others? Why not radishes, etc?
Probably because all of those vegetables can be grown in a similar climate as each other, all of them have very similar growing techniques where the plant can be placed in a wire cage or mesh that supports vertical growth.
Each of those plants have broad leaves, can be cultivated to thrive in lower water, and can be cultivated to require a relatively small footprint.
When you are going to grow a bunch of water-loving plants in the desert, you are going to want tall self-shading structures. If you look at their greenhouses in the article you can see that vertical space is available but horizontal space is a premium.
I happen to live in a desert and have grown three of those four plants for decades. They grow well together.
Yes, mental health is covered by the government-run health system.
On one hand, as a country Sweden has solved a great many social woes by implementing broad social care and welfare programs.
On the other hand, they have the highest tax rate in the world in order to sustain all the social services. National taxes alone account for nearly 50% of an individual's income, with regional and local taxes potentially adding another 30%.
In recent years the social services have rapidly been switching to private for-profit models and the costs have started to skyrocket. So there is that side to consider.
Like most of us on/., we have a group of brilliant individuals. Occasionally we come up with some excellent but immoral or illegal ideas that would very easily separate people from their money. These are different from our typical ideas that manage to separate people from their money, as we are all paid well for the work we do.
Sometimes we will flesh these immoral or illegal business plans out a little bit, realize just what is involved in the process, and then sigh, "I could be rich if I didn't have any ethics."
Many people make the news every day. Most often these include major scams and crimes or immoral behavior.
Yes, there is work to be had and money to be found in those activities, and you can make global news from them. If you don't have any ethics.
In the article the police agencies from several nations are mentioned, asking the group to stop their work and let the police do it all.
They should be partnering with the group, giving them guidance at how to report the crimes of attempted sex crimes to the right agencies and getting iron-clad evidence to the courts. The group could work wonders in avoiding child sexual exploitation globally, or at least making predators think twice.
Instead the cops are telling them, "Let us do our job, go away." They are throwing away a gem just because they didn't do it all themselves.
They probably cut the mirror and polished the glass, and then the edge chipped.
A chip in the glass could be a fatal injury for a spy satellite as the article suggests was the intended use. Such telescopes use active optics to improve image quality; they apply pressure over the glass to bend it slightly. A chip could have micro-cracks and other damage that would easily spread across the surface. Without the actuators deforming the glass the image won't be as clear, but it would be good enough for a hobby telescope.
Once the glass chipped they likely just stopped the process, so the new owner would need to add the mirror surface on his own.
You are right in that most contracts are bilateral; that is, everybody agrees with them up front.
Reward contracts ("lost my object, return for reward") are called unilateral contracts, the person making the statement agrees with it. Other people are not bound to the terms, but if they complete the terms they can collect on the contract.
Courts around the globe routinely find that these unilateral contracts are binding, usually when someone posts that they will pay a large reward for safe return of an object, then fails to pay the reward on delivery, and the finder takes the person to court to get the reward. If you post that you have a large reward for the safe return of your pet, you better be able to pay -- the unilateral reward contract is legally binding.
The kernel's bug database shows almost 2500 open bugs right now.
All projects slowly accumulate those hard-to-fix bugs, or the "maybe later" bugs, or the "not interesting right now", bugs. Periodically every project needs to have that cruft cleaned up.
Spending two months fixing those bugs might be a minor annoyance to some of the kernel maintainers but would be a godsend to people who have been waiting a very long time for low priority and low interest kernel bug fixes.
Agreed, since the original comment specifies "a site I own" then colo is really the only one that meets that requirement.
If he were to relax the requirements a bit, there are many good cloud backup services out there that probably meet everything except the ownership requirement.
Most cloud backup companies will be happy to dump a copy to disk and send the package through overnight shipping, or 2nd day, or whatever shipment method you are willing to pay for. You will need to pay for the disk and the shipping and a small fee, but it is much faster than trying to recover via download.
You would need to do the same thing with a colo backup, the only real difference is you are trusting a third party to do all the work. It generally works better that way because they specialize in backup and you are just a single client, so they can do it much cheaper than you could with colo.
Contact your potential online backup company. Ask about the costs to get a copy of the backed-up data shipped to you. The good companies do that kind of recovery disk shipments all the time.
I hate replying to my own post but since I cannot update it...
Those billions of dollars in the 1960s, remember that was 1960s dollars and not 2013 dollars. The amount in the fund was huge.
I have read that if those funds were not raided and pulled into the general fund, but instead had been invested under the same plan in place in the early years of 1960, the fund would have reached quadrillions of dollars today. Instead of a quadrillion-dollar social security fund, we have an empty account that currently has an IOU totaling 2.6 trillion dollars.
Most don' t think of it as paying back a debt to the fund, instead most see it as a mandatory payment that is crippling the budget.
I still don't know if that money was better invested in the wars and space race. Somehow it seems that politicians would never have let the fund live; sooner or later the pot would reach critical mass and some politician or another would raid it like Johnson did. At least he generally tried to help people, with medicaid and medicare and healthcare reforms, much like today. Perhaps it is best that it went to those too rather than surviving a few decades and funding today's problems. Probably better that it funded the space race than funding the NSA.
Grant me the legal authority to print money anytime I want and make everyone else pay the true cost of it (inflation) and I, too, could pay for anything money can buy. In the Apollo days they at least tried to pretend that debt is important and that there's something deeply wrong with running a government in a way that would bankrupt any business or household.
Hold your horses, partner.
A history lesson is in order. (Then get off my lawn.)
The 1960s had a lot of debt.
There was the Vietnam war and it wasn't cheap. There were some questionable political deals in Cuba that included a rather scary nuclear showdown that led directly into the cold war. Also there was the whole space race that you mentioned.
The US was in debt and facing a deficit. Not as big as today's deficit and debt, but it felt bad at the time.
President Johnson was looking over where the money was sitting, and he noticed a huge pile of cash sitting in an off-budget area. It was called the Social Security Trust Fund. It had billions of dollars just sitting there being invested, not being spent.
The good president looked over the budget, noticed that he could make himself look better (and presumably look better on the world stage) if the US didn't appear to be in debt. So President Johnson decided to move the Social Security Trust Fund into the general budget. There was a bit of a complaint at the time, "you cannot spend that money, it is for retirement". Not a problem they assured us, there would be plenty of money available in 2010 when baby boomers start to retire. We might not even be on a cash society in the future, let's spend it all today! The President made a proposal to Congress, and then all of them started rolling up the Social Security funds into cigars and enjoyed a smoke.
The Apollo program and several other major programs were funded by TODAY'S social security problem. Much of the reason we have so much debt is because the social security fund was robbed to pay for the war and the space race. Government took out a loan from the people and only recently started feeling the pain of paying the loan back. Baby boomers who don't suffer from society's generally short term memory can clearly recall that the focus was divided on the war, the protests, and the space race, and how those few people who noticed the money was missing were quickly written off as being anti-war or pro-war (whichever was a better distraction) and somehow the messenger was blamed and the message quickly forgotten.
Much like groups like WikiLeaks today; we all remember the name but the hundreds of soldiers who were documented committing clear acts of murder somehow escaped the court martial. Back then if you mentioned the social security funds you were branded a hippie or communist and you didn't believe in America. (Anything to make you look like an unpatriotic troublemaker rather than someone who wanted to see where the money went.) Then Johnson lost to Nixon and another scandal followed, most people forgot about Johnson's scandal taking the money and moved on to Nixon's spying scandal that evicted him from office, which is NOTHING compared to today's spying scandal that people don't care about.
Jumping on the first flimsy excuse to dismiss the argument is never going to convince anyone who didn't already agree with you. I for one was hoping you would explain why Obama's plan was similar (or maybe, effectively identical) to Romney's. The calmer, more rational person at least provided something to read that I can critically analyze regardless of who's name is on it.
Not sure about BMO's response, but I'll give mine.
When I compare Romney's plans and Obama's plans, I'd say most of the theory is the same. The intention and the general guidelines have a huge overlap, just a small amount of difference. I'll go over the differences I saw between them down below. When I talk calmly and rationally with people about the actual details (not the hyperbole) of the law, they also tend to agree with almost everything. My frustration is that when people start saying "I hate Obamacare", when pressed for what SPECIFICALLY they don't like, they tend to not have answers.
Really, look at the major points. With a little calm and careful debate we can see why these are mostly good ideas, and even if you don't agree with a specific point we can likely debate it to the point where you can at least understand why it is good at a societal level if not an individual level.
*Drug patents expire quicker, only 12 years until generics in many cases
*Guaranteed medical insurance coverage for minors and young adults starting on their own
*Additional guarantees for the elderly, terminally ill, and chronically ill who currently struggle to receive health care under the earlier policy
*Additional accountability for medical facilities with high re-admittance or other significant documented problems
*Minimum standards of insurance policies to avoid the near-worthless insurance some companies were providing
*Requirements that plans include a wide range of options, including non-profit plans and plans that deny abortions, to help people with both religious concerns and with profit-motive concerns.
*Caps on the profit margins of insurance and also certain other medical companies (20% or 15% depending on factors)
*Insurers cannot discriminate based on on gender or pre-existing conditions
*Chronic conditions must be covered under insurance; (it is wrong to punish people just because they had a bad roll on life's dice, it is bad enough they need to live with the chronic condition, be it anything from a mental illness to cancer or Alzheimer's or whatever. Someday you may get your own bad roll of the dice.)
*Congress and government workers must shift to insurance plans on the exchanges rather than the high-end plan they were enjoying
*Restaurant chains required to post calorie counts (When this came into effect hundreds of restaurants modified their recipes.)
*An individual mandate coupled with guaranteed issuance requirements and subsidies for those who make up to 4x the poverty line. (Both Romney's plan and Obama's plan included this, most experts agree is a good thing, it is similar in nature to requirements in most other nations, in the short term it has a cost but in the long term everyone benefits. It is a rather surprising talking point that it comes up so much in the news.)
The devil is in the details of course, but when arguing any specific point it is easy to get consensus that we should do SOMETHING even if there is some disagreement of the specifics.
The biggest difference between the two is that Romney's plan was building a framework for others to implement rather than the federal government doing everything and forcing it on others. Romney's plan had an individual mandate for catastrophic coverage only, not for general insurance. Romney's plan had a cost that was initially nearly budget-neutral (estimated at $100M which is fairly small relative to the size of a budget) with a long term reduction in cost, compared to the federal plan that has a roughly $500B init
Well, it's more complicated than that. But his perspective seems to be one applying a humanistic vision in conjunction with empiricism. The fact that it's an unusual approach to charity is what's really baffling.
Baffling indeed.
Yes, having the people educated is one thing that needs to happen. But it is one of many components.
In order to give them Internet access they must also have power and communications systems. They must be literate or all the words are meaningless.
If the people are dying of malnutrition then yes, additional education about farming techniques and food safety can help. If people are dying from sanitation problems then yes, additional education can help. But it is just a single thing on the long list of things that need to happen to transform a society.
Sure they can give the rural slash-and-burn farmers an Internet-enabled computer with satellite modems and solar power chargers. It is nice to teach a farming community that for generations has practice slash-and-burn techniques that they should read about alternatives, but that by itself will not solve anything. Give them computers and Internet access and all you will have is a community who still practices the same techniques, with the change that they now can watch cat videos and play Angry Birds. The technology by itself won't transform them.
It takes a lot of pieces working together. It is true that giving computers to children can help benefit the community as shown through "Hole in the Wall" and other experiments but that little bit of education is only one facet, there are hundreds of other facets that need to be addressed. Providing a little bit of education is useful, but does not help much against problems of rampant disease, abuse, family planning, nor does it provide the tools and technology needed to implement what is taught. Teaching the community "this is what refrigeration can do for you" doesn't help if they cannot get electricity. Teaching the community "these are health issues that chlorinated water can treat" doesn't help when the village is struggling just to get enough muddy water so everyone can subsist.
There is much work to do. If one group wants to help by adding educational tools, that is certainly one useful thing. But Gates is right that there is a very broad spectrum of changes needed to bring regions out of poverty, and Internet access alone is not enough.
There are all kinds of fun things you can do if you want to hang out on your porch.
One old couple in our neighborhood has a portable fire pit, every year they have marshmallows and chocolate and various types of crackers and cookies, and everybody can make s'mores. Some kids just grab a few marshmallows and a bit of chocolate, other people stand around and chat while warming their hands and treats.
Another home in our neighborhood often puts together a little spooky maze in their rather large garage, with cardboard cutouts and black lights and such. They have sometimes recruited a few teens to make it into a spook alley.
Something fun is a bit of basic chemistry. Fill a spray bottle with some methanol with Borox dissolved in it, squirt it over a lighter, you get a bright green flame. (Be careful since the methanol is poisonous if swallowed, but a small amount of vapor while outside is not really harmful. Don't let any of the liquid get on kids or candy, or anything that burns.) Making a bright green fireball is satisfying, and I've already got the ingredients to do this one again tomorrow night.
Obviously it can fail, but it's a soft fail. The engine won't run, or more likely won't run well. Sudden acceleration or unstoppable engine though? Forget it. With the throttle plate closed there's no way you can get any more than the power produced at idle, no matter what the ECU does.
That is exactly the thing that makes this jury verdict so suspicious.
The driver was 76 years old at the time. This crash was subject to an NTSB investigation, and investigators found no evidence that it was a software fault or a hardware fault. The crash recorder says the driver pushed the accelerator and was not pushing the brakes, and then the car was hit.
And most interestingly from TFA is the last line. Ten of the 12 jury members said they wanted to punish Toyota.
If he was pushing on the brakes he could have probably overcome most of the force of a sudden accidental acceleration. If he had more time there were other options like shifting to neutral, but he was approaching an intersection.
When I look at it, an older driver and vehicle recording systems saying the accelerator was pressed and the brakes were not, investigators finding no evidence to support the claim of a software failure, and then the jury stating they want to punish Toyota, I don't see this as a good verdict.
Why? Don't they have their own subscription to The Guardian?
One interesting thing about threats is that you absolutely must be able to follow through and the threats most be seen as a positive action. Cameron has just put his head in a noose. (Well, more than usual)
When The Guardian publishes again --- which it absolutely will --- he can choose to do nothing and further relinquish control, further harming himself politically. Or he can take it to the courts like he threatened, spending a fortune trying to get an unpopular order which will also harm him politically. If he succeeds at getting the order all it will do is make the UK government and the crown look even more the fools. He is playing a game that has no winning moves.
By all means, I hope he continues to make threats like this. If he doesn't follow through he will be seen as weak, and if he does follow through he will become even more unpopular. Boris Johnson is already twice as popular in the polls, Cameron is already less popular than his party (which is also rapidly sinking) and idiotic statements like this will just cause the ship to sink faster.
Mr Cameron, every time you open your mouth you make it easier for those who will oppose your party in 2015. Please carry on.
Wow. That is an eye-opening list, the things it can modify is rather nasty. Just these alone scream that it should be blacklisted from any corporate environment:
* VPN settings
* LDAP directory service settings
* Credentials and keys
The absolute last thing I want on a phone with corporate network access is to have those permissions.
Are you sure? The harder they fail at fixing the current mess, the harder it'll be for them to get hired afterwards. Nothing disillusions the supporters of a broken system like its colossal, unmitigated, blatant failure.
In total agreement.
Both sides are constantly blaming the other for the deadlock in Congress. They haven't passed a budget since April 2009. That is one of the things the Constitution requires them to do, and they haven't done their job in almost five years.
Actually, a budget was passed in the middle of FY2011, and again in FY2012 and FY2013 There were no budgets in FY2009 and FY2010 - years that coincide with Democrat control of Congress.
The budget year starts October 1st each eyar. The 2011 appropriations (they never did fully complete the budget) were put together in 7 emergency spending resolutions followed by a semi-budget that was passed six months late. The 2012 budget was similarly a bunch of emergency resolutions, the first was 18 days late lasting until December 16, then December 23rd, etc... The 2013 budget was yet another "continuing resolution", and another, and a December 31st debacle where they didn't compromise on the funding until 2:00 AM on January 1st, and passed the final resolution on March 20th, just five months late.
Sorry, but passing the annual budget six months into the fiscal year is NOT doing their job, and isn't really "passing a budget". Both of the parties are responsible for this garbage.
A perverse part of me hopes the government will implode badly enough that they all get replaced.
Are you sure? The harder they fail at fixing the current mess, the harder it'll be for them to get hired afterwards. Nothing disillusions the supporters of a broken system like its colossal, unmitigated, blatant failure.
In total agreement.
Both sides are constantly blaming the other for the deadlock in Congress. They haven't passed a budget since April 2009. That is one of the things the Constitution requires them to do, and they haven't done their job in almost five years.
Both sides blame the other. And both sides are right. It is like the expression "No individual raindrop believes it caused the flood."
Just like the raindrops, it isn't an individual drip that caused it, it is ALL of them together. Even the ones that are trying to make it better, they still bear some responsibility for the problems. Because ALL of them are responsible, ALL of them should be fired. Many people say "Not my congresspeople, they represent my views!" No. All of them contributed to the mess, ALL of them should go.
I don't want to see things fail. I would much prefer to be watching a colossal success and the establishment of policies that the entire world holds up as monuments to human achievement. Instead we are watching doomsday debt clocks, there are discussions about global economic collapse, and millions of people wonder about losing their livelihood. I don't like watching things fail, but if they do fail, I hope it fails in such a way that people will again seize control of government, rather than letting government seize them. The best failures are the ones that lead to change and future success.
We had a similar situation with a family member and cancer. He lived for a year, and we estimate the actual medical costs involved approached the millions of dollars. That isn't our only story. One of my nephews was born almost 3 months prematurely and had major developmental problems; he is now in his mid 20's living a fairly normal life in spite of seizures and a few other physical side effects. My brother described how is lifetime medical costs paid by insurance is well over fifty million dollars over my nephew's life.
I don't know how much of that money is due to companies raising their rates to the maximum that insurance will pay out, or how much of it is due to the actual expenses of the products and services. And I don't really care.
The US is among the last first-world countries in the world where quality of health care is dependent on your own personal wealth, or the roulette-wheel of your employer. It is a shame.
Looking over history, much of how insurance benefits have developed were good. The US was one of the first to help people pay for medical costs, but back then it was through company-provided medical care rather than insurance as medical care was harder to come by. Smaller companies paid into the big companies for medical services, and that evolved into medical insurance systems. At the time it was a very good thing, because while people could afford routine care they often couldn't afford advanced care. Advance a few decades and most modern nations have advanced it a step further, moving from individual profit-driven businesses running healthcare over to a tax-based service. Their costs are generally much lower and the services are generally equal or superior. Not always, but generally.
The insurance programs in place now are certainly much better than not having anything in place, no disputing that. But there are better options that allow universal health care.
Yes, night is longer than the 6 hours mentioned in the story summary. But the story summary is a bit misleading.
That is six hours running at full capacity and also running entirely from the salt tanks. Neither of those conditions are likely to be true overnight.
Solar plants continue operating at reduced power during cloud cover and at night time. Even at times of reduced sunlight or at night there is still energy available. It does not need to run entirely from the salt tanks.
Secondly, nighttime is not peak usage hours.
The Solana salt tanks are about 740 cubic meters so they could probably store around 16TJ of energy. (For physics impaired, 1 joule per second == 1 watt.) That is a lot of power. Since it will mostly be relying on that stored energy at night and not running at full capacity, that stored energy could reasonably last through the night and on through a good portion of the following day.
It was "as much as $600 million dollars in assets changed hands in the milliseconds before most other traders in Chicago could learn of the Fed's September surprise"
Sure that is a lot of money, but smaller than the "billions" promised in the Slashdot story.
I suppose you can measure anything on the "billions of dollars" scale. I make a small fraction of billions of dollars every day.
The hacking group claims they are creative. They should prove it --- the next creative work should be a creative new name.
Any businessperson knows you must have your own creative and unique names and marks. You cannot ride the coattails of another organization's name without the risk of a lawsuit. A quick search of TESS shows the word "Scout" by itself has multiple trademarks on it. Since this is the name of a youth group and the BSA and GSA have trademarks on "Scout" in youth groups, there is a clear trademark case to be made, and fought about in the courts.
But it gets more complicated than that.
Both the Boy Scouts of America and Girl Scouts of America have a charter from the United States congress. Their charters give them additional power beyond traditional copyright law. Specifically, they include "exclusive right to use emblems, badges, descriptive or designating marks, and words or phrases" for their organizations which extends beyond traditional
So first off, all organizations MUST sue when they discover other people using their marks. It is not an option. Trademark holders are required either to defend the mark in the courts or risk losing the mark. So the BSA really doesn't have much of a choice in the matter. The marks they use are also boosted by the congressional charter, so any fight brought by the "Hacker Scouts" will face both the traditional trademark battle (which is difficult) and a congressional charter (which is also difficult).
The group did something any business lawyer would have warned them about --- avoid using any names that are already trademarked. They chose to pick a word that is already trademarked, and are now facing the inevitable consequences of it.
Slashdot Mirror
You are correct that it was doomed from the beginning, as any court observer would see.
The Constitution is very clear on the matter, so much that even non-lawyers can understand it:
"In all Cases affecting Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, and those in which a State shall be Party, the supreme Court shall have original Jurisdiction. In all the other Cases before mentioned, the supreme Court shall have appellate Jurisdiction"
There are only two kinds of cases that can start at the supreme court: those affecting ambassadors and other specific people, and those cases brought by a state. Everything else must be an appeal of a lower court that has been brought to the supreme court.
Since they were bringing it up as an original complaint, but it doesn't affect one of those people or have a state as a party, there is no constitutional way the SCOTUS could accept the case. The original case must be heard at a lower level, then the supreme court could hear the appeal.
Yes. Source: I live in Venezuela.
That must seriously suck.
Any plans to get out of the country before the collapse? Or are you one of the majority of the people who are stuck watching the nation collapse around them?
No, it has been in a death spiral for a while now.
The country is spending money like crazy while keeping their money printing presses running around the clock. Read the line in the article, "Venezuela's central bank said the country's money supply grew 70% in the past year." The currency is collapsing due to stupidity and power-grabs in government.
Many countries have seen this sort of thing happen, and it is not pretty. Wheelbarrows of money to buy bread, only accepting payment in foreign currency, and financial collapse are common with this scenario that is playing right now.
Zimbabwe did this about a decade ago as the currency collapsed. Collectors picked up the trillion dollar notes that were printed at the end of the collapse and worth practically nothing. I hope it doesn't happen but part of me thinks it would be fun to collect a billion bolivar note from the country if/when the collapse happens.
Why were those vegetables chosen instead of others? Why not radishes, etc?
Probably because all of those vegetables can be grown in a similar climate as each other, all of them have very similar growing techniques where the plant can be placed in a wire cage or mesh that supports vertical growth.
Each of those plants have broad leaves, can be cultivated to thrive in lower water, and can be cultivated to require a relatively small footprint.
When you are going to grow a bunch of water-loving plants in the desert, you are going to want tall self-shading structures. If you look at their greenhouses in the article you can see that vertical space is available but horizontal space is a premium.
I happen to live in a desert and have grown three of those four plants for decades. They grow well together.
Yes, mental health is covered by the government-run health system.
On one hand, as a country Sweden has solved a great many social woes by implementing broad social care and welfare programs.
On the other hand, they have the highest tax rate in the world in order to sustain all the social services. National taxes alone account for nearly 50% of an individual's income, with regional and local taxes potentially adding another 30%.
In recent years the social services have rapidly been switching to private for-profit models and the costs have started to skyrocket. So there is that side to consider.
Sometimes we will flesh these immoral or illegal business plans out a little bit, realize just what is involved in the process, and then sigh, "I could be rich if I didn't have any ethics."
Many people make the news every day. Most often these include major scams and crimes or immoral behavior.
Yes, there is work to be had and money to be found in those activities, and you can make global news from them. If you don't have any ethics.
In the article the police agencies from several nations are mentioned, asking the group to stop their work and let the police do it all.
They should be partnering with the group, giving them guidance at how to report the crimes of attempted sex crimes to the right agencies and getting iron-clad evidence to the courts. The group could work wonders in avoiding child sexual exploitation globally, or at least making predators think twice.
Instead the cops are telling them, "Let us do our job, go away." They are throwing away a gem just because they didn't do it all themselves.
I read it the same way.
They probably cut the mirror and polished the glass, and then the edge chipped.
A chip in the glass could be a fatal injury for a spy satellite as the article suggests was the intended use. Such telescopes use active optics to improve image quality; they apply pressure over the glass to bend it slightly. A chip could have micro-cracks and other damage that would easily spread across the surface. Without the actuators deforming the glass the image won't be as clear, but it would be good enough for a hobby telescope.
Once the glass chipped they likely just stopped the process, so the new owner would need to add the mirror surface on his own.
Nope, still a contract.
You are right in that most contracts are bilateral; that is, everybody agrees with them up front.
Reward contracts ("lost my object, return for reward") are called unilateral contracts, the person making the statement agrees with it. Other people are not bound to the terms, but if they complete the terms they can collect on the contract.
Courts around the globe routinely find that these unilateral contracts are binding, usually when someone posts that they will pay a large reward for safe return of an object, then fails to pay the reward on delivery, and the finder takes the person to court to get the reward. If you post that you have a large reward for the safe return of your pet, you better be able to pay -- the unilateral reward contract is legally binding.
The kernel's bug database shows almost 2500 open bugs right now.
All projects slowly accumulate those hard-to-fix bugs, or the "maybe later" bugs, or the "not interesting right now", bugs. Periodically every project needs to have that cruft cleaned up.
Spending two months fixing those bugs might be a minor annoyance to some of the kernel maintainers but would be a godsend to people who have been waiting a very long time for low priority and low interest kernel bug fixes.
Agreed, since the original comment specifies "a site I own" then colo is really the only one that meets that requirement.
If he were to relax the requirements a bit, there are many good cloud backup services out there that probably meet everything except the ownership requirement.
Most cloud backup companies will be happy to dump a copy to disk and send the package through overnight shipping, or 2nd day, or whatever shipment method you are willing to pay for. You will need to pay for the disk and the shipping and a small fee, but it is much faster than trying to recover via download.
You would need to do the same thing with a colo backup, the only real difference is you are trusting a third party to do all the work. It generally works better that way because they specialize in backup and you are just a single client, so they can do it much cheaper than you could with colo.
Contact your potential online backup company. Ask about the costs to get a copy of the backed-up data shipped to you. The good companies do that kind of recovery disk shipments all the time.
I hate replying to my own post but since I cannot update it...
Those billions of dollars in the 1960s, remember that was 1960s dollars and not 2013 dollars. The amount in the fund was huge.
I have read that if those funds were not raided and pulled into the general fund, but instead had been invested under the same plan in place in the early years of 1960, the fund would have reached quadrillions of dollars today. Instead of a quadrillion-dollar social security fund, we have an empty account that currently has an IOU totaling 2.6 trillion dollars.
Most don' t think of it as paying back a debt to the fund, instead most see it as a mandatory payment that is crippling the budget.
I still don't know if that money was better invested in the wars and space race. Somehow it seems that politicians would never have let the fund live; sooner or later the pot would reach critical mass and some politician or another would raid it like Johnson did. At least he generally tried to help people, with medicaid and medicare and healthcare reforms, much like today. Perhaps it is best that it went to those too rather than surviving a few decades and funding today's problems. Probably better that it funded the space race than funding the NSA.
Grant me the legal authority to print money anytime I want and make everyone else pay the true cost of it (inflation) and I, too, could pay for anything money can buy. In the Apollo days they at least tried to pretend that debt is important and that there's something deeply wrong with running a government in a way that would bankrupt any business or household.
Hold your horses, partner.
A history lesson is in order. (Then get off my lawn.)
The 1960s had a lot of debt.
There was the Vietnam war and it wasn't cheap. There were some questionable political deals in Cuba that included a rather scary nuclear showdown that led directly into the cold war. Also there was the whole space race that you mentioned.
The US was in debt and facing a deficit. Not as big as today's deficit and debt, but it felt bad at the time.
President Johnson was looking over where the money was sitting, and he noticed a huge pile of cash sitting in an off-budget area. It was called the Social Security Trust Fund. It had billions of dollars just sitting there being invested, not being spent.
The good president looked over the budget, noticed that he could make himself look better (and presumably look better on the world stage) if the US didn't appear to be in debt. So President Johnson decided to move the Social Security Trust Fund into the general budget. There was a bit of a complaint at the time, "you cannot spend that money, it is for retirement". Not a problem they assured us, there would be plenty of money available in 2010 when baby boomers start to retire. We might not even be on a cash society in the future, let's spend it all today! The President made a proposal to Congress, and then all of them started rolling up the Social Security funds into cigars and enjoyed a smoke.
The Apollo program and several other major programs were funded by TODAY'S social security problem. Much of the reason we have so much debt is because the social security fund was robbed to pay for the war and the space race. Government took out a loan from the people and only recently started feeling the pain of paying the loan back. Baby boomers who don't suffer from society's generally short term memory can clearly recall that the focus was divided on the war, the protests, and the space race, and how those few people who noticed the money was missing were quickly written off as being anti-war or pro-war (whichever was a better distraction) and somehow the messenger was blamed and the message quickly forgotten.
Much like groups like WikiLeaks today; we all remember the name but the hundreds of soldiers who were documented committing clear acts of murder somehow escaped the court martial. Back then if you mentioned the social security funds you were branded a hippie or communist and you didn't believe in America. (Anything to make you look like an unpatriotic troublemaker rather than someone who wanted to see where the money went.) Then Johnson lost to Nixon and another scandal followed, most people forgot about Johnson's scandal taking the money and moved on to Nixon's spying scandal that evicted him from office, which is NOTHING compared to today's spying scandal that people don't care about.
Enough rambling, get off my lawn.
Jumping on the first flimsy excuse to dismiss the argument is never going to convince anyone who didn't already agree with you. I for one was hoping you would explain why Obama's plan was similar (or maybe, effectively identical) to Romney's. The calmer, more rational person at least provided something to read that I can critically analyze regardless of who's name is on it.
Not sure about BMO's response, but I'll give mine.
When I compare Romney's plans and Obama's plans, I'd say most of the theory is the same. The intention and the general guidelines have a huge overlap, just a small amount of difference. I'll go over the differences I saw between them down below. When I talk calmly and rationally with people about the actual details (not the hyperbole) of the law, they also tend to agree with almost everything. My frustration is that when people start saying "I hate Obamacare", when pressed for what SPECIFICALLY they don't like, they tend to not have answers.
Really, look at the major points. With a little calm and careful debate we can see why these are mostly good ideas, and even if you don't agree with a specific point we can likely debate it to the point where you can at least understand why it is good at a societal level if not an individual level.
The devil is in the details of course, but when arguing any specific point it is easy to get consensus that we should do SOMETHING even if there is some disagreement of the specifics.
The biggest difference between the two is that Romney's plan was building a framework for others to implement rather than the federal government doing everything and forcing it on others. Romney's plan had an individual mandate for catastrophic coverage only, not for general insurance. Romney's plan had a cost that was initially nearly budget-neutral (estimated at $100M which is fairly small relative to the size of a budget) with a long term reduction in cost, compared to the federal plan that has a roughly $500B init
Well, it's more complicated than that. But his perspective seems to be one applying a humanistic vision in conjunction with empiricism. The fact that it's an unusual approach to charity is what's really baffling.
Baffling indeed.
Yes, having the people educated is one thing that needs to happen. But it is one of many components.
In order to give them Internet access they must also have power and communications systems. They must be literate or all the words are meaningless.
If the people are dying of malnutrition then yes, additional education about farming techniques and food safety can help. If people are dying from sanitation problems then yes, additional education can help. But it is just a single thing on the long list of things that need to happen to transform a society.
Sure they can give the rural slash-and-burn farmers an Internet-enabled computer with satellite modems and solar power chargers. It is nice to teach a farming community that for generations has practice slash-and-burn techniques that they should read about alternatives, but that by itself will not solve anything. Give them computers and Internet access and all you will have is a community who still practices the same techniques, with the change that they now can watch cat videos and play Angry Birds. The technology by itself won't transform them.
It takes a lot of pieces working together. It is true that giving computers to children can help benefit the community as shown through "Hole in the Wall" and other experiments but that little bit of education is only one facet, there are hundreds of other facets that need to be addressed. Providing a little bit of education is useful, but does not help much against problems of rampant disease, abuse, family planning, nor does it provide the tools and technology needed to implement what is taught. Teaching the community "this is what refrigeration can do for you" doesn't help if they cannot get electricity. Teaching the community "these are health issues that chlorinated water can treat" doesn't help when the village is struggling just to get enough muddy water so everyone can subsist.
There is much work to do. If one group wants to help by adding educational tools, that is certainly one useful thing. But Gates is right that there is a very broad spectrum of changes needed to bring regions out of poverty, and Internet access alone is not enough.
One old couple in our neighborhood has a portable fire pit, every year they have marshmallows and chocolate and various types of crackers and cookies, and everybody can make s'mores. Some kids just grab a few marshmallows and a bit of chocolate, other people stand around and chat while warming their hands and treats.
Another home in our neighborhood often puts together a little spooky maze in their rather large garage, with cardboard cutouts and black lights and such. They have sometimes recruited a few teens to make it into a spook alley.
Something fun is a bit of basic chemistry. Fill a spray bottle with some methanol with Borox dissolved in it, squirt it over a lighter, you get a bright green flame. (Be careful since the methanol is poisonous if swallowed, but a small amount of vapor while outside is not really harmful. Don't let any of the liquid get on kids or candy, or anything that burns.) Making a bright green fireball is satisfying, and I've already got the ingredients to do this one again tomorrow night.
Obviously it can fail, but it's a soft fail. The engine won't run, or more likely won't run well. Sudden acceleration or unstoppable engine though? Forget it. With the throttle plate closed there's no way you can get any more than the power produced at idle, no matter what the ECU does.
That is exactly the thing that makes this jury verdict so suspicious.
The driver was 76 years old at the time. This crash was subject to an NTSB investigation, and investigators found no evidence that it was a software fault or a hardware fault. The crash recorder says the driver pushed the accelerator and was not pushing the brakes, and then the car was hit.
And most interestingly from TFA is the last line. Ten of the 12 jury members said they wanted to punish Toyota.
If he was pushing on the brakes he could have probably overcome most of the force of a sudden accidental acceleration. If he had more time there were other options like shifting to neutral, but he was approaching an intersection.
When I look at it, an older driver and vehicle recording systems saying the accelerator was pressed and the brakes were not, investigators finding no evidence to support the claim of a software failure, and then the jury stating they want to punish Toyota, I don't see this as a good verdict.
Why? Don't they have their own subscription to The Guardian?
One interesting thing about threats is that you absolutely must be able to follow through and the threats most be seen as a positive action. Cameron has just put his head in a noose. (Well, more than usual)
When The Guardian publishes again --- which it absolutely will --- he can choose to do nothing and further relinquish control, further harming himself politically. Or he can take it to the courts like he threatened, spending a fortune trying to get an unpopular order which will also harm him politically. If he succeeds at getting the order all it will do is make the UK government and the crown look even more the fools. He is playing a game that has no winning moves.
By all means, I hope he continues to make threats like this. If he doesn't follow through he will be seen as weak, and if he does follow through he will become even more unpopular. Boris Johnson is already twice as popular in the polls, Cameron is already less popular than his party (which is also rapidly sinking) and idiotic statements like this will just cause the ship to sink faster.
Mr Cameron, every time you open your mouth you make it easier for those who will oppose your party in 2015. Please carry on.
The absolute last thing I want on a phone with corporate network access is to have those permissions.
Are you sure? The harder they fail at fixing the current mess, the harder it'll be for them to get hired afterwards. Nothing disillusions the supporters of a broken system like its colossal, unmitigated, blatant failure.
In total agreement.
Both sides are constantly blaming the other for the deadlock in Congress. They haven't passed a budget since April 2009. That is one of the things the Constitution requires them to do, and they haven't done their job in almost five years.
Actually, a budget was passed in the middle of FY2011, and again in FY2012 and FY2013 There were no budgets in FY2009 and FY2010 - years that coincide with Democrat control of Congress.
The budget year starts October 1st each eyar. The 2011 appropriations (they never did fully complete the budget) were put together in 7 emergency spending resolutions followed by a semi-budget that was passed six months late. The 2012 budget was similarly a bunch of emergency resolutions, the first was 18 days late lasting until December 16, then December 23rd, etc... The 2013 budget was yet another "continuing resolution", and another, and a December 31st debacle where they didn't compromise on the funding until 2:00 AM on January 1st, and passed the final resolution on March 20th, just five months late.
Sorry, but passing the annual budget six months into the fiscal year is NOT doing their job, and isn't really "passing a budget". Both of the parties are responsible for this garbage.
A perverse part of me hopes the government will implode badly enough that they all get replaced.
Are you sure? The harder they fail at fixing the current mess, the harder it'll be for them to get hired afterwards. Nothing disillusions the supporters of a broken system like its colossal, unmitigated, blatant failure.
In total agreement.
Both sides are constantly blaming the other for the deadlock in Congress. They haven't passed a budget since April 2009. That is one of the things the Constitution requires them to do, and they haven't done their job in almost five years.
Both sides blame the other. And both sides are right. It is like the expression "No individual raindrop believes it caused the flood."
Just like the raindrops, it isn't an individual drip that caused it, it is ALL of them together. Even the ones that are trying to make it better, they still bear some responsibility for the problems. Because ALL of them are responsible, ALL of them should be fired. Many people say "Not my congresspeople, they represent my views!" No. All of them contributed to the mess, ALL of them should go.
I don't want to see things fail. I would much prefer to be watching a colossal success and the establishment of policies that the entire world holds up as monuments to human achievement. Instead we are watching doomsday debt clocks, there are discussions about global economic collapse, and millions of people wonder about losing their livelihood. I don't like watching things fail, but if they do fail, I hope it fails in such a way that people will again seize control of government, rather than letting government seize them. The best failures are the ones that lead to change and future success.
We had a similar situation with a family member and cancer. He lived for a year, and we estimate the actual medical costs involved approached the millions of dollars. That isn't our only story. One of my nephews was born almost 3 months prematurely and had major developmental problems; he is now in his mid 20's living a fairly normal life in spite of seizures and a few other physical side effects. My brother described how is lifetime medical costs paid by insurance is well over fifty million dollars over my nephew's life.
I don't know how much of that money is due to companies raising their rates to the maximum that insurance will pay out, or how much of it is due to the actual expenses of the products and services. And I don't really care.
The US is among the last first-world countries in the world where quality of health care is dependent on your own personal wealth, or the roulette-wheel of your employer. It is a shame.
Looking over history, much of how insurance benefits have developed were good. The US was one of the first to help people pay for medical costs, but back then it was through company-provided medical care rather than insurance as medical care was harder to come by. Smaller companies paid into the big companies for medical services, and that evolved into medical insurance systems. At the time it was a very good thing, because while people could afford routine care they often couldn't afford advanced care. Advance a few decades and most modern nations have advanced it a step further, moving from individual profit-driven businesses running healthcare over to a tax-based service. Their costs are generally much lower and the services are generally equal or superior. Not always, but generally.
The insurance programs in place now are certainly much better than not having anything in place, no disputing that. But there are better options that allow universal health care.
Yes, night is longer than the 6 hours mentioned in the story summary. But the story summary is a bit misleading.
That is six hours running at full capacity and also running entirely from the salt tanks. Neither of those conditions are likely to be true overnight.
Solar plants continue operating at reduced power during cloud cover and at night time. Even at times of reduced sunlight or at night there is still energy available. It does not need to run entirely from the salt tanks.
Secondly, nighttime is not peak usage hours.
The Solana salt tanks are about 740 cubic meters so they could probably store around 16TJ of energy. (For physics impaired, 1 joule per second == 1 watt.) That is a lot of power. Since it will mostly be relying on that stored energy at night and not running at full capacity, that stored energy could reasonably last through the night and on through a good portion of the following day.
It was "as much as $600 million dollars in assets changed hands in the milliseconds before most other traders in Chicago could learn of the Fed's September surprise"
Sure that is a lot of money, but smaller than the "billions" promised in the Slashdot story.
I suppose you can measure anything on the "billions of dollars" scale. I make a small fraction of billions of dollars every day.
The hacking group claims they are creative. They should prove it --- the next creative work should be a creative new name.
Any businessperson knows you must have your own creative and unique names and marks. You cannot ride the coattails of another organization's name without the risk of a lawsuit. A quick search of TESS shows the word "Scout" by itself has multiple trademarks on it. Since this is the name of a youth group and the BSA and GSA have trademarks on "Scout" in youth groups, there is a clear trademark case to be made, and fought about in the courts.
But it gets more complicated than that.
Both the Boy Scouts of America and Girl Scouts of America have a charter from the United States congress. Their charters give them additional power beyond traditional copyright law. Specifically, they include "exclusive right to use emblems, badges, descriptive or designating marks, and words or phrases" for their organizations which extends beyond traditional
So first off, all organizations MUST sue when they discover other people using their marks. It is not an option. Trademark holders are required either to defend the mark in the courts or risk losing the mark. So the BSA really doesn't have much of a choice in the matter. The marks they use are also boosted by the congressional charter, so any fight brought by the "Hacker Scouts" will face both the traditional trademark battle (which is difficult) and a congressional charter (which is also difficult).
The group did something any business lawyer would have warned them about --- avoid using any names that are already trademarked. They chose to pick a word that is already trademarked, and are now facing the inevitable consequences of it.