That the middle class pays the vast majority of Social Security and Medicare taxes... a fact that is conveniently left out by the rich (and their minions). Rich people complaining about the crushing burden of taxes... cry me a river.
... I guess anecdotes (from another state) will have to do. Realistically, the answer here is almost certain to be that a bunch of these people lost enough money that they weren't millionaires anymore. We could just do the same tax raise at the federal level - it's not like all that many people are really going to move to Monaco to avoid paying what's really not that much extra money.
... we should also ban the terroristic device known as the "telephone" (because they can use it to coordinate their actions), the evil "postal service" (because they can send money through it), and the especially horrific "smoke signals" (highly secure because only people within range can see, dontcha know).
Sure, these techniques can help bad guys communicate. That doesn't mean they should be banned.
Steganography has the fatal flaw that the method has to remain secret. One basic rule of encryption is to assume the method is discernible and
the security must be all in some secret key.
Secrecy isn't a bug, it's a feature. For the target audience, if you get caught sending out encrypted messages, you immediately become a suspect. Which, in turn, can lead to a pleasant stay in the local version of Guantanamo until you decide to cough up the key. The object of the game is to prevent the authorities from knowing you've even sent a message. That's the whole point of steganography - if there was no need to hide the fact that a message existed, you wouldn't need steganography at all.
All land is not created equal - it's not like you can raise sugarcane in Iowa. It requires a fairly warm climate, if I understand correctly.
Switchgrass is another story... but I don't think we have the chemical engineering in place to turn cellulose into ethanol at a price that makes it economically feasible as a fuel source.
You can go look this stuff up in Wikipedia, but: the US burns something like 8 billion barrels of oil/year. We have proven reserves of something like 20 billion barrels. There are likely to be other sources of oil within US territory, but it probably won't be economically feasible to extract them until prices go up significantly from where they are now. So even if you didn't care about the other bad effects of drilling for more oil at home, doing so won't save us for long.
And this doesn't even take into account the externalities - the unpriced bad effects of oil consumption. The climactic effects of burning oil are well known and I don't need to repeat them. And there are also the effects of other sorts of environmental damage. There's a reason why states like Florida and California have banned drilling off their coasts - because the unsightly oil rigs and occasional spills cost the tourism, fishing, and other industries money. This not just a problem that you can wave away by complaining about the damn tree-huggers - these are real monetary damages... cf. Exxon Valdez for an extreme example (in which, oh by the way, Exxon skated away paying a tiny amount of damages, and left local businesses holding the bag).
Ethanol probably is a scam. That doesn't change the fact that extracting and burning even more oil is a totally stupid answer to our energy problems.
Actually, the U.S. military has switched to burning JP-8, which is somewhere between diesel fuel and kerosene in everything that rolls or flies
Not so, at least for shipborne aircraft. JP-8 is still too flammable for use aboard ship, so all your F-18's, etc, are fueled with JP-5, which is much more like straight diesel.
This is "informative"? Looks more like a repetition of the same old platitudes to me. Yes, it's very popular among the right-wing set to gibber on about how "government programs never end", but that belief has the unfortunate disadvantage of not being true. In my particular area of expertise (defense contracting), there are lots of programs that get killed - full stop. Look up the A-12 Avenger, for an older example.
In the non-defense world, one frequently brought up example is the Rural Electrification Administration - people like to ask whether we still need such an organization. In fact, the REA ceased to exist as such years ago, evolving into the Rural Utilities Service... which provides assistance in setting up and maintaining electric, water, and sewer co-ops in rural areas. Which we still need because, you know, the much-lauded free market refuses to provide such services in rural areas.
Yes, it's true that some programs do outlive their usefulness. It's much more common, though, that as needs change through the years, government programs evolve to keep meeting them. That's not quite the same thing as "failed programs never get cancelled", though.
I think the thinking is that there's more going on than just loss of sleep in FFI. In other words, the lack of sleep and death are correlated, but not necessarily causally connected. It's tough to make a determination because the syndrome is so rare.
... was the point of the article going over your head. The key phrase (from your own post) "hobbyist operating system". The point of TFA was that Linux isn't ready for the masses, not that it isn't ready for geeks. Sure, it "flies in the hands of a master". The point is that very few people are masters, and very few have the time or inclination to become masters.
Its not supposed to work straight out the box, because you are supposed to find the way to use with in symbiosis
Right. Which is why it's not ready for the desktop (at least for ordinary mortals).
Not to mention the fact that we're talking about almost absurdly tiny quantities of drugs here. When you get down to discussing picograms/m3, you're talking really tiny amounts. I'd be really interested in knowing the size of the error bars on these measurements.
Disclaimer: I'm a defense contractor. Some points in response:
Either way, you're either totally ignorant, or completely full of shit. According to the GAO, approximately 25% of "defense" spending is unaccounted for. This is probably by design to allow for the operational budget of the CIA, which is unconstitutionally hidden from the eyes of the public.
First of all, I'm not sure how you're defining "defense" spending, but it's worth noting that the CIA is not part of the DOD, and they have their own budget. GAO is almost certainly talking about the DOD budget here. There are obviously black programs within DOD, but they're nothing close to 25% of the budget.
The real issue here is DFAS (the Defense Financial and Accounting Service). These are the folks who are responsible for (among other things) paying the defense department's bills. And they get graded on how fast they do it, not on how accurate they are. As a result, they frequently end up paying invoices out of the wrong accounting lines... which, in the end, means that you can't figure out where your money went.
I see this with my (DOD) customers all the time. We do work, properly charge it against the right accounting lines, and submit our bill. Months down the line, the customer comes back and says things like: "Why didn't you expend all the funding on the XXX project?". I look over the records, and find that we've expended, billed, and been paid for XXX already. My only response is that they'll have to ask DFAS what happened, because all I know is that we got paid for it.
The rest of your post discusses problems in Iraq. But most of this has to do with extreme, borderline criminal negligence on the part of the gov't people who should have been overseeing funds distribution there. Almost every aspect of the disaster that was the occupation of Iraq, was, well, a disaster, so it's no surprise the financial aspects of this were screwed up too.
Yes, there are DOD contractors who are crooked. But the vast majority of problems with the inability to account for government funding is that the DOD accounting service is just not very good.
I work for a defense contractor, and in every contract where I've been a part of the bidding process, yes, cost is a factor... but it's explicitly the least important factor. It comes in behind past performance, demonstrated ability to do the work, etc. I'm not sure how the government selected contractors in the past, but these days, cost is only part of the answer, and not necessarily the biggest part.
does it need to be connected to the internet, 'NO', then don't connect it.
This is the question I'm really interested in... are the machines in question (particularly those actually involved in ATC) connected to the internet? If the machines can be hit from the internet, this is a giant problem. But if you have to start with physical access to the network because it's physically isolated from the larger internet, that's not nearly as bad. You still have to worry about an "inside job", but that's a lot less likely than an attack from outside.
TFA didn't make it clear whether the auditors hit the machines from the internet, or started with access to the actual network in question.
While most free (libre) software is, in fact, given away... some people do sell it (and provide the source code). Presumably those folks would still be exposed to potential liability.
... we should actually do the research to find out whether they're true, and not just reject these hypotheses out of hand because we'd prefer not to believe them.
I've already bought the damn iPhone and I'm locked into a two-year contract. So now my choices are to just live with a policy that is quite simply insanely stupid, or cough up a bunch of cash to get out of the contract... which is doubly bad, because in a lot of ways the iPhone is a great device. It's just frustrating because it could be nearly perfect if Apple wasn't being so ham-handed about their management of it.
Newspaper app: allows a user to see an image of a topless woman. Status: denied.
Mobile Safari: allows a user to see as much hard-core porn as he/she wants. Status: open for all users, baby!
NIN app: allows a user to hear disturbing lyrics from one of the band's albums. Status: denied.
Mobile Safari: allows access to Nazi hate sites, al Qaeda recruiting sites, any other hateful site you can think of, and oh, by the way - the same song lyrics that appear in the NIN application. Status: all systems go!
If there's a clearer example of how fucked up Apple's App Store approval policies are, I can't think of what it could be.
Not sure about the contraceptive aspects, but it's widely sold as an insect repellent/insecticide/insect growth regulator at organic gardening supply places. I've also heard it has some anti-fungal properties. Can't attest to that one personally, but it does work pretty well to keep Japanese beetles off your roses.
I've also heard that in India they mix bits of neem seed with grain to keep pests out of it... seems like it's probably not toxic to people.
The original post included a long list of features, and then stated that no phone even came close to that. The next post indicated that the iPhone does, in fact, come close to that. And then you go off on a rant about the definition of the word "all".
I might as well claim that my Motorola V980 does all of those, except full keyboard and touchscreen, high resolution camera, bluetooth, GPS, Flash, OGG, and USB port.
No, you might as well not claim that, because it would be silly. In real life, not every set of desired features can be found in any given device. However, some come closer than others, and it's useful to know that. Most people don't find that so difficult to understand.
Seriously, yes - I'd like my iPhone to double for a laptop in a pinch. It's not like it's out of the question - the device has sufficient specs to do light PC work, and it already has the e-mail, web browsing, etc, built in. If we could get Steve to grant us the ability to use a keyboard, get copy and paste, and allow an "office" package into the App Store, you'd have a system that could do enough to let me leave the laptop behind, at least for short trips.
I agree with most of what you're saying. A couple of points, though:
copy/paste and a bunch of other features mysteriously left out of the previous two major software revisions are due to appear in v. 3 of the software package, sometime this summer.
"OGG is a no-brainer"? I have to disagree - the vast majority of people (I mean the general smartphone using population, not the Slashdot crowd) couldn't care less about OGG.
Even with the new updates, though, the iPhone still has some significant weaknesses in my view - the proprietary "dock" port instead of USB, the inability to attach useful peripherals (geez, would it hurt so much to give us an external keyboard?), the lack of video recording and other camera features, etc, etc.
I'm an iPhone user and relatively satisfied, but things could be considerably better.
Slashdot Mirror
It may be good for increasing the reflectivity of road surfaces, but production of cement emits a LOT of greenhouse gases.
That the middle class pays the vast majority of Social Security and Medicare taxes... a fact that is conveniently left out by the rich (and their minions). Rich people complaining about the crushing burden of taxes... cry me a river.
... I guess anecdotes (from another state) will have to do. Realistically, the answer here is almost certain to be that a bunch of these people lost enough money that they weren't millionaires anymore. We could just do the same tax raise at the federal level - it's not like all that many people are really going to move to Monaco to avoid paying what's really not that much extra money.
... we should also ban the terroristic device known as the "telephone" (because they can use it to coordinate their actions), the evil "postal service" (because they can send money through it), and the especially horrific "smoke signals" (highly secure because only people within range can see, dontcha know).
Sure, these techniques can help bad guys communicate. That doesn't mean they should be banned.
Secrecy isn't a bug, it's a feature. For the target audience, if you get caught sending out encrypted messages, you immediately become a suspect. Which, in turn, can lead to a pleasant stay in the local version of Guantanamo until you decide to cough up the key. The object of the game is to prevent the authorities from knowing you've even sent a message. That's the whole point of steganography - if there was no need to hide the fact that a message existed, you wouldn't need steganography at all.
All land is not created equal - it's not like you can raise sugarcane in Iowa. It requires a fairly warm climate, if I understand correctly.
Switchgrass is another story... but I don't think we have the chemical engineering in place to turn cellulose into ethanol at a price that makes it economically feasible as a fuel source.
You can go look this stuff up in Wikipedia, but: the US burns something like 8 billion barrels of oil/year. We have proven reserves of something like 20 billion barrels. There are likely to be other sources of oil within US territory, but it probably won't be economically feasible to extract them until prices go up significantly from where they are now. So even if you didn't care about the other bad effects of drilling for more oil at home, doing so won't save us for long.
And this doesn't even take into account the externalities - the unpriced bad effects of oil consumption. The climactic effects of burning oil are well known and I don't need to repeat them. And there are also the effects of other sorts of environmental damage. There's a reason why states like Florida and California have banned drilling off their coasts - because the unsightly oil rigs and occasional spills cost the tourism, fishing, and other industries money. This not just a problem that you can wave away by complaining about the damn tree-huggers - these are real monetary damages... cf. Exxon Valdez for an extreme example (in which, oh by the way, Exxon skated away paying a tiny amount of damages, and left local businesses holding the bag).
Ethanol probably is a scam. That doesn't change the fact that extracting and burning even more oil is a totally stupid answer to our energy problems.
Not so, at least for shipborne aircraft. JP-8 is still too flammable for use aboard ship, so all your F-18's, etc, are fueled with JP-5, which is much more like straight diesel.
This is "informative"? Looks more like a repetition of the same old platitudes to me. Yes, it's very popular among the right-wing set to gibber on about how "government programs never end", but that belief has the unfortunate disadvantage of not being true. In my particular area of expertise (defense contracting), there are lots of programs that get killed - full stop. Look up the A-12 Avenger, for an older example.
In the non-defense world, one frequently brought up example is the Rural Electrification Administration - people like to ask whether we still need such an organization. In fact, the REA ceased to exist as such years ago, evolving into the Rural Utilities Service... which provides assistance in setting up and maintaining electric, water, and sewer co-ops in rural areas. Which we still need because, you know, the much-lauded free market refuses to provide such services in rural areas.
Yes, it's true that some programs do outlive their usefulness. It's much more common, though, that as needs change through the years, government programs evolve to keep meeting them. That's not quite the same thing as "failed programs never get cancelled", though.
As opposed to the sweet, sweet smell of regular diesel exhaust. Give me a break.
I think the thinking is that there's more going on than just loss of sleep in FFI. In other words, the lack of sleep and death are correlated, but not necessarily causally connected. It's tough to make a determination because the syndrome is so rare.
... was the point of the article going over your head. The key phrase (from your own post) "hobbyist operating system". The point of TFA was that Linux isn't ready for the masses, not that it isn't ready for geeks. Sure, it "flies in the hands of a master". The point is that very few people are masters, and very few have the time or inclination to become masters.
Right. Which is why it's not ready for the desktop (at least for ordinary mortals).
Not to mention the fact that we're talking about almost absurdly tiny quantities of drugs here. When you get down to discussing picograms/m3, you're talking really tiny amounts. I'd be really interested in knowing the size of the error bars on these measurements.
That's right. And neither GPS nor LORAN has the capability to measure heading (only a compass can do that), so I'm calling BS on this story.
Disclaimer: I'm a defense contractor. Some points in response:
First of all, I'm not sure how you're defining "defense" spending, but it's worth noting that the CIA is not part of the DOD, and they have their own budget. GAO is almost certainly talking about the DOD budget here. There are obviously black programs within DOD, but they're nothing close to 25% of the budget.
The real issue here is DFAS (the Defense Financial and Accounting Service). These are the folks who are responsible for (among other things) paying the defense department's bills. And they get graded on how fast they do it, not on how accurate they are. As a result, they frequently end up paying invoices out of the wrong accounting lines... which, in the end, means that you can't figure out where your money went.
I see this with my (DOD) customers all the time. We do work, properly charge it against the right accounting lines, and submit our bill. Months down the line, the customer comes back and says things like: "Why didn't you expend all the funding on the XXX project?". I look over the records, and find that we've expended, billed, and been paid for XXX already. My only response is that they'll have to ask DFAS what happened, because all I know is that we got paid for it.
The rest of your post discusses problems in Iraq. But most of this has to do with extreme, borderline criminal negligence on the part of the gov't people who should have been overseeing funds distribution there. Almost every aspect of the disaster that was the occupation of Iraq, was, well, a disaster, so it's no surprise the financial aspects of this were screwed up too.
Yes, there are DOD contractors who are crooked. But the vast majority of problems with the inability to account for government funding is that the DOD accounting service is just not very good.
I work for a defense contractor, and in every contract where I've been a part of the bidding process, yes, cost is a factor... but it's explicitly the least important factor. It comes in behind past performance, demonstrated ability to do the work, etc. I'm not sure how the government selected contractors in the past, but these days, cost is only part of the answer, and not necessarily the biggest part.
This is the question I'm really interested in... are the machines in question (particularly those actually involved in ATC) connected to the internet? If the machines can be hit from the internet, this is a giant problem. But if you have to start with physical access to the network because it's physically isolated from the larger internet, that's not nearly as bad. You still have to worry about an "inside job", but that's a lot less likely than an attack from outside. TFA didn't make it clear whether the auditors hit the machines from the internet, or started with access to the actual network in question.
While most free (libre) software is, in fact, given away... some people do sell it (and provide the source code). Presumably those folks would still be exposed to potential liability.
... we should actually do the research to find out whether they're true, and not just reject these hypotheses out of hand because we'd prefer not to believe them.
I've already bought the damn iPhone and I'm locked into a two-year contract. So now my choices are to just live with a policy that is quite simply insanely stupid, or cough up a bunch of cash to get out of the contract... which is doubly bad, because in a lot of ways the iPhone is a great device. It's just frustrating because it could be nearly perfect if Apple wasn't being so ham-handed about their management of it.
Newspaper app: allows a user to see an image of a topless woman. Status: denied.
Mobile Safari: allows a user to see as much hard-core porn as he/she wants. Status: open for all users, baby!
NIN app: allows a user to hear disturbing lyrics from one of the band's albums. Status: denied.
Mobile Safari: allows access to Nazi hate sites, al Qaeda recruiting sites, any other hateful site you can think of, and oh, by the way - the same song lyrics that appear in the NIN application. Status: all systems go!
If there's a clearer example of how fucked up Apple's App Store approval policies are, I can't think of what it could be.
Not sure about the contraceptive aspects, but it's widely sold as an insect repellent/insecticide/insect growth regulator at organic gardening supply places. I've also heard it has some anti-fungal properties. Can't attest to that one personally, but it does work pretty well to keep Japanese beetles off your roses.
I've also heard that in India they mix bits of neem seed with grain to keep pests out of it... seems like it's probably not toxic to people.
The original post included a long list of features, and then stated that no phone even came close to that. The next post indicated that the iPhone does, in fact, come close to that. And then you go off on a rant about the definition of the word "all".
No, you might as well not claim that, because it would be silly. In real life, not every set of desired features can be found in any given device. However, some come closer than others, and it's useful to know that. Most people don't find that so difficult to understand.
Seriously, yes - I'd like my iPhone to double for a laptop in a pinch. It's not like it's out of the question - the device has sufficient specs to do light PC work, and it already has the e-mail, web browsing, etc, built in. If we could get Steve to grant us the ability to use a keyboard, get copy and paste, and allow an "office" package into the App Store, you'd have a system that could do enough to let me leave the laptop behind, at least for short trips.
I agree with most of what you're saying. A couple of points, though:
I'm an iPhone user and relatively satisfied, but things could be considerably better.