Copyright law used to be a good deal for the public because it restricted publishers for the benefit of authors without restricting ordinary people in any practical way (because printing books was difficult).
So copyright was fine when it kept corporations from appropriating an author's work, but it's illegitimate now that it prevents individuals from doing exactly the same thing?
Twisted indeed.
'Perpetual copyright' is a bad thing. Erosion of fair use is a bad thing. Complaining that because technology for the first time allows individuals to engage in massive copyright infringement it should no longer be illegal...hm.
Some of these systems seem so easy to implement too- I mean how hard can it be to put a sensor in front of the car and sense if you are approaching an object at a speed that you will soon not be able to avoid a collision?
It's really hard, actually. At highway speed, you're covering about 30 meters (100 feet) per second. To stop, you're looking at probably three times that distance or more.
Do you want your car to activate its emergency braking system every time it approaches a hill? Will it understand that a guardrail a hundred feet in front of you is okay because you fully intend to follow a curve?
An alarm to notify drivers that they're going to lane change into the side of the car in their blind spot could be managed, but avoiding objects on the road ahead is a fiendishly difficult problem.
Incidentally, if you're following closely enough that hard braking by the car in front will cause a collision before you can respond, then you're following too closely. Back off and/or slow down.
I cant heel-toe downshift my Golf and it bothers me. The gas pedal is too far away from the brake. Hell this this a *FEATURE* people. Sure most people never need to learn how to heel-toe downshift, so I guess its a good thing that they cant hit both pedals at the same time.
For people wondering what heel-toe downshifting is, here's a brief synopsis.
In a 'basic' downshift, one presses the clutch with the left foot. This disengages the engine from the wheels, and the engine drops back down to (or near) idle speed. The driver is also braking with the right foot. The driver shifts to a lower gear, and releases the clutch. The wheels are turning at one speed, and the engine is idling at a lower speed--the car will buck when the two are forced to match speeds. This little lurch is hard on the engine and drivetrain, and can cause a loss of traction.
The 'heel-toe' downshift starts the same way: left foot on clutch, right foot on brake. The driver downshifts. However, before releasing the clutch, the driver taps the gas while still keeping his foot on the brake. This brings the engine RPMs up a bit. Ideally, the engine and the wheels will be turning at the same speed when the clutch is released. The result is a nice smooth re-engagement of the drive system: no lurch, no loss of traction, no wear and tear.
The 'heel-toe' moniker comes from the idea that the driver's heel is on the brake with his toe on the throttle. In actual practice, most people use different parts of the foot--whatever is most comfortable. Obviously, if the brake and throttle pedals are too far apart, this maneouvre becomes impossible--hence the parent poster's criticism of the Golf.
Gee whiz, this wouldn't be the same MPAA that's sued grandmothers and minors, is it?
Grandmothers and minors who were hosting files that genuinely infringed copyrights, yes.
I absolutely agree with embarrassing the MPAA/RIAA et al. when they send illegitimate takedown notices and threaten lawsuits based on gross errors. I think there should be real consequences for them when they state under penalty of perjury that to the best of their knowledge a flat text file is a movie. I believe that perpetual copyright extension is an insidious problem. I am very concerned about the erosion of fair use by recent legislation.
On the other hand, I don't think that there is any reason not to pursue willful infringers of copyright just because they happen to be young or old. Being a senior citizen doesn't (or shouldn't) absolve one of one's legal responsibilies. Saying that the recording industry is evil because they sue cute youngsters may make for good press, but it doesn't substantively advance the copyright debate.
Meanwhile, Chicago was celebrating yesterday because for the first time since 1999 a whole day went by without anybody in the city getting shot.
Perhaps a public education program of sorts is in order, but unless there is some evidence that the wardrivers are actually using the unsecured access points to do harm--commit fraud, utter threats, steal identities, trash systems--this really doesn't seem to be something that needs to be a police priority.
Hang on! You are saying the fault lies with the people who left their doors unlocked rather than the rapists? You need to reassess your world view mate.
Nope.
I think he's saying that people who turn up their stereo shouldn't complain when someone outside listens.
Or perhaps that a couple who have sex in the living room with the blinds wide open shouldn't be surprised if someone walking past on the sidewalk sees them.
Tax records, medical records, personal property records, lawsuits, judgments, military records, etc. may all soon be posted online in this way.
Property (real property) records are already public domain--as they should be. There's no good reason for the government not to tell you who owns what land. Whether you find out at the county tax assessor's office or on the Internet is irrelevant.
Aside from property tax information, I don't foresee other tax information being released to the public. Knowing the assessed value of other properties gives a landowner the opportunity to evaluate the reasonableness of his own assessment. Realistically, concealing the value of a property is nearly impossible anyway--it's right out in the open. With respect to income tax and other tax info, there is no reason to release that information. If for no other reason, the IRS won't do it because they would fear more people would lie on their taxes.
Lawsuits and judgements--unless sealed by a judge's order--are also properly public domain. We're supposed to have an open court system, remember? Secret trials are generally a bad thing.
Medical records of individuals have always been protected, private information. I don't foresee this information being opened online any time soon, nor can I come up with any reason why anyone would think it a good idea. Aggregated medical data (epidemiological information) is in many cases already published. Local and federal organizations (the CDC, for instance) regularly supply public health information. You have to know how many cases of West Nile disease there are in town before you know whether spraying for mosquito larvae is a good use of resources. Making this sort of aggregated information publically available serves the public good, and should do no harm.
Where military and immigration records are discussed in the article, the information is described as "historic". Presumably, the people involved are long dead, and the only individuals interested will be family or genealogists.
They will probably vote for whoever their friends are voting for.
What if they happen to respect the opinions of their friends? "My friend Jim keeps up with the news. Reads the paper, watches the debates. He's a pretty sharp guy; does a good job. Seems a smart fellow when we go out for a beer after work, too. He's voting for party X. I think I will, too." Why is it silly to choose a candidate based on the opinion of someone you know personally, like, and trust--but respectable to decide based on the warped opinion of a newspaper columnist you've never met and probably has an axe to grind?
Not all of us have the time or inclination to deeply research politics; some people may find it reasonable to rely on those who do. We already have a representative democracy. Partly this is for historical reasons--direct democracy wasn't even technically feasible until recently in a large, geographically diverse population. Partly, though, electing someone to handle political issues full time in principle allows them to make better-informed decisions on your behalf.
If you vote the same way as your friend does, you're taking this one step further. I think my friend is a reasonable and trustworthy guy. I believe he will vote for candidates who espouse similarly reasonable principles. Voting the way he does is a way to increase the weight of the opinion of someone I trust. My opinion is still represented, just a little less directly.
They might randomly pick somebody off the ballot.
That's okay. If it's really random, those will cancel out anyway. No harm done.
The job of the military is to break shit and kill people - "the aftermath" is someone else's domain, reserved for "after" the fighting is all over.
Well, close. The job of the military is to break the correct shit and kill the right people. Sometimes their responsibility extends to ensuring that some shit stays intact, and that certain people remain alive.
Anyhoo, the military should be (and probably is) concerned about space debris, because they've got stuff in orbit too. Even if we assume that their entire mandate is to break shit and kill people, they will be able to do so less effectively if space junk keeps wiping out their reconnassance satellites, GPS navigation, or new space-based weapons. Putting lots of crud into space will inconvenience them in the next battle--for which they surely will be planning.
Numerous states have horrible ballot access laws, mine in particular (Oklahoma).
Perhaps--but this leads me to conclude that the fault is not in the ballot but in the ballot access laws.
In Canada, virtually any person eligible to vote may also run for a seat in the federal Parliament. They must submit nomination papers that have been signed by at least one hundred people in the riding (a riding is an electoral district; they have populations of fifty to a hundred thousand, mostly) and a deposit of $1000. (The deposit is returned to the candidate when they file their election expense reports and other paperwork on time following the election.)
Canada currently has four major parties holding significant blocks of seats in Parliament--the preceding Parliament had five parties, but one was absorbed in a merger. I think I had seven or so different parties to choose from when I last voted, including the Marijuana Party.
Isn't this the logical outcome of a slow and steady inflation? Since the total number of circulating dollars is ever increasing and outpacing anything of value, if it isn't ahead of a commidity, it soon will be. And if it's ahead, it's not coming back!
Nope. The outcome of inflation is a decrease in the purchasing power of each dollar. It is about the perceived value of the currency. (In the case of fiat currencies, anyway.) Additional banknotes can be printed without causing inflation as long as the perceived value of the economy and government behind them increases at the same rate.
Printing more dollars does not in and of itself make a currency worth more in total. That sort of thing does cause inflation. Very roughly, there are six hundred billion dollars in circulation now and gold costs three hundred dollars an ounce. If the U.S. Mint printed another six hundred billion dollars' worth of notes on Monday, the price of gold wouldn't stay at $300 per ounce. There would be instant inflation, and gold would rise to $600 per ounce. Think of it as being like the market capitalization of a company. You can issue a million shares at a dollar apiece, or a hundred thousand shares for ten dollars apiece. If you sell additional stock, it dilutes the value of what's already out there.
The problem is that the perceived value of the notes in circulation approaches the value of all the gold ever mined anywhere in the world, and exceeds the value of all the available silver. Unless the perceived value of the currency is lowered drastically (which would be economic and political suicide), it's not possible to fully back the U.S. dollar. It used to be possible to have fully-backed national currencies because the economies involved were a lot smaller. Some smaller countries could choose to have fully-backed currencies now, but the list is getting shorter. Don't blame inflation--blame a healthy economy.
And, yes there may be some deflation or devalueing of our dollar, but there are ways to manage that as well. There has already been talk about devaluing our currency or removing coins from circulation.
Deflation and devaluation have opposite effects. Deflation increases the purchasing power of each dollar. It tends to have nasty economic consequences because people will hoard cash (it will be worth more tomorrow) instead of spending it. Incidentally, what techniques do you recommend to deal with the economic dislocations of deflation?
Pulling coins (or banknotes) from circulation won't devalue the dollar. It will increase its value. People will still want cash, and want to use it. Since there will be fewer dollars out there, the value of each dollar left in circulation will rise.
I'm not sure how you would suggest 'devaluing' the dollar without screwing people over. Most methods involve heavy inflation through issuing lots of extra notes, or some other form of gross economic stupidity.
This is first-year macroeconomics, people. Incidentally, what are the benefits to a fully-backed currency that ties one's exchange rates to a commodity? Backing the dollar with gold just abdicates all responsibility for management of the currency, and puts it squarely on the source of gold--in no small part South Africa. Dandy.
Actually, our current specification for President is quite immigrant friendly.
Well, aside from barring immigrants, yes.
My experience with immigrants who seek out involvement in politics is that they generally aren't beholden to some foreign country. They're interested in contributing something here. I don't know--might have something to do with living in Toronto. A shade less than 60% of the city's population are first-generation immigrants, and another 20% are second-generation. (I'm part of the 21% who fall into the 'other' category.) Barring new immigrants from some political offices would seem silly, since they're more than half the voters around here.
Several of our Prime Ministers were born overseas. The most recent foreign-born PM was John Turner, who served in 1984. Our Governor General is the most powerful person in Canada, Commander-in-Chief of our armed forces, able to dissolve Parliament and call elections, empowered to refuse to sign any bill into law. The post is largely ceremonial now, but still legally essential--and it's filled by a woman born in Hong Kong. She came to Canada as a refugee during WWII.
Killing babies, though... man. That's a moral issue, not a religious one. Even the most vocal proponent of "choice," which is just a euphamism for "death,"
I'm pretty sure that most of them aren't really in favour of "death" in general; I think that "choice" is genuinely what they're interested in. Death is an inconvenient side effect.
So, what is a "baby", and is abortion killing them?
It sounds like a flip question, but it's a deeply complicated one. In in vitro fertilization (IVF), eggs are fertilized outside of the body, and some of the embryos thus created are implanted into the would-be mother's uterus. Often, IVF clinics will fertilize more eggs than they implant on the first round. These excess embryos are often discarded if a pregnancy is successful. Is it murder to throw out these fertilized eggs? Is it murder at the two-cell stage? Four cells? Eight? Is it murder, or not, if the embryos are never implanted?
Is the ethical balance satisfied because where a couple could have had no children before, they now have one--despite the dead embryos they left behind? Often more than one embryo is implanted in IVF to improve the odds of success. Knowing that most of those implanted embryos will not survive, is it ethical for a doctor to carry out the IVF procedure? Are "babies" being created wholesale, and then killed through a medical procedure that is highly risky, from their standpoint? Net production of children seems a risky doctrine--would abortion be acceptable as long as the woman promised to let another embryo develop later?
Incidentally, this also leads into the side issue of embryonic stem cells--is it appropriate to use those excess embryos as a source of research cell lines? Is that better or worse than discarding them entirely?
So, what is a "baby"? It's easy to agree to the statement "Killing babies is wrong." I'll even grant that that is a moral and not an outright religious position to take, though I'm sure that there are other posters here who would be less generous. Deciding that a "baby" exists at the moment sperm fertilizes ovum (or, indeed, at any specific stage of development thereafter) is very much a religious (or, to use a less loaded term, philosophical) issue.
For anyone interested in the development of an embryo/fetus/baby, there's an excellent site here. To my knowledge, there are no known surviving births younger than 22 weeks (a bit more than five months, and seventeen weeks shorter than a normal-term pregnancy.) At 24 weeks, the survival rate is 50%; that climbs to 96% at 28 weeks.
Sure, bad things can happen to my cable company, but I'll still have my phone service. Someone blows up the phone company, I still can watch TV.
On the other hand, some people are now abandoning their landline telephones entirely in favour of VOIP, and they're getting their cable television, internet access, and phone service through the same single pipe.
In this case, if something goes wrong with their service, I expect that they'll probably get a faster response from Andrew (who lives upstairs) than they would from their local cable company (who will be glad to send out a technician to diagnose your problem sometime between the hours of one and six pm, Monday to Friday, at least two business days from now, as long as you stayed on hold for forty-five minutes to make the request...).
If the guy moves, they just sign up for cable, phone, and internet from the other local providers. Andrew just provides a bit of competition in the local market. If Andrew's place burns down--well, I can suck it up. He just lost his house, but I'm going whine because I can't watch Survivor: Toledo? I'll just get together with Andrew and buy him a pint at the local pub--he'll need it.
I have always thought there would be a market for it - at least would taste different to all the other bottle waters.
Gee, I've never gotten around to trying it. I'll have to pour myself a beaker this afternoon.:)
On the other hand, have you seen what it does when you put it in a container that's covered with scale? (Calcium carbonate reside, mostly, from hard water.) It's a very good solvent for those minerals--just sucks them right off the glass. It's a great way to remove scale from a coffeepot. Heavy encrustations may require more than one dose. Its other benefit for cleaning cookware is that you know it's nontoxic.
I don't have data to back this, but I'd be a little concerned about consuming large quantities of this stuff on a regular basis--I wonder if it might demineralize the teeth. As far as I can tell, nobody has any data either way, which suggests that it probably is pretty harmless.
But hey, lets take this even further, let's also demand everyone wear helmets everywhere they go...walking, biking, driving a car...
Well, there's something to that. While biking (or riding a motorcycle) a helmet is a pretty damn good idea. Nature figured out a long time ago that protecting our big, soft, squishy brains was a good idea--that's why we've got such thick skulls. Unfortunately, natural selection hasn't caught up to our ability to travel at high speeds or be hit by other vehicles--so a bit of extra armour is an excellent precaution.
The but-I'm-a-safe-rider whine doesn't cut any ice here.. Do you trust all the other idiots on the road? In the Tour de France, all the riders are now required to wear helmets. There, you're surrounded by the most competent cyclists in the world, no cars, and the racers probably all have excellent reflexes--but helmets are still considered a good idea.
It does make sense to wear a helmet when you're at an elevated risk of blunt trauma to the head. Why not? We require the use of seat belts as an acceptable small cost to greatly reduce the risk of serious injury. Most places require proper child seats for the very young when travelling in cars. Helmets should rightly fall into the same category.
I don't want to hear about freedom, either. Let's talk about responsibility--the ugly flip side of that coin. You have every right to decide for yourself to risk becoming a vegetable. Perhaps. Unfortunately, the rest of us have little choice in deciding whether or not to care for you. Your spouse will have to push your wheelchair around and spoon pablum into your mouth. Your brother or your sister will have to be around to wipe away the drool. Your employer is going to have to train your replacement. Your kids will spend their college money on your home care. No dependents, family, or friends? The government will probably cough up a little bit for your care...but that will still come out of my pocket, through my taxes. I don't feel like funding your stupidity, thank you very much.
On the bright side, you might just end up in a coma for the rest of your days. At least your young and otherwise healthy body will be an excellent source of donor organs.
Another alternative is, of course, to post it on Slashdot. But the question that lingers, is how in the hell did a little unknown magazine end up signing up 36 million people?
Well, it's easy. It just takes a little higher-level math. Let's say that your average free Hotmail account (until very recently) topped out at 2 MB. So each of these 100 GB accounts is actually like 50000 Hotmail accounts. 36 million 'people', then, actually represents only 720 unique people.
See? And I know this is a legitimate mathematical technique, because the RIAA uses it.
As for the story with the CS - I guess I don't see the point of that. If the purpose of the training is to operate without CS, then why blame the soldiers for doing the exercise as they were asked to? Ok, in real-life you don't know whether the other side would use CS, but then in real-life you wouldn't be told it was an exercise without CS. So is that really important?
Hmmm...perhaps. But it real life you might also get some bad intelligence. "No, General Custer, there aren't any Indians at Little Bighorn." "No, Admiral Ackbar, the new deathstar isn't yet operational."
Even if it wasn't technically fair, it's probably a good lesson. Even the Boy Scouts know it: be prepared. Combat is never exactly what you expect.
Sounds like you're stuck in 1999. That's very much a dotcom sensibility. Use funds from other departments/projects to feed the loss leader until it magically generates revenue.
I don't know--I thought the problem with most of the dotcoms was that they didn't have other departments/projects to feed the loss leader. They just bled venture capital and prayed that their options vested before they had to fold the company.
When Google uses funds from other departments to feed speculative projects with high visibility--it's marketing. As the parent notes, letting people try the beta versions of News and GMail builds visibility, public goodwill, and lets them test out new potentially saleable products.
As long as Google continues to be profitable, I expect that they will always have several projects running that may lack immediate obvious commercial application--just because they want to be associated with things that are 'cool' or at least 'neat'. It's very subtle, elegant, brilliantly targeted marketing.
I could point out 10 fold as many companies that didn't last 6 months under the leadership of 20-somethings. And this would support my claim: the vast majority of 20-somethings don't have it. There are some, and they probably gravitate towards technology. But I still think that they're rare, and you're more likely to find that kind of leadership in 40- and 50-somethings.
Well sure; we're talking about the tech bubble, after all.
But that doesn't prove that leadership qualities are more or less common in twenty-somethings versus fifty-somethings. For example, I don't see statistics (or even anecdotes!) describing the number of startups during the bubble by older individuals versus the number of failures. Their failure rate may be just as high.
Then again, maybe few got a shot at it--in the same way that people assume twenty-somethings can't lead, venture capitalists assumed fifty-somethings couldn't keep up with the 'new' technology.
Perhaps older people tend to have more commitments--family, and so forth--and aren't willing to take the risk on a startup that's not a sure thing. The ones that are good leaders probably already have a solid job and a good paycheque. The twenty-somethings may well know that their online pet food business likely won't pan out, but they also know they're still young and can recover from a failure. The cost/benefit or risk/reward analysis makes riskier business ventures more palatable for the young.
Perhaps there are the same proportion of competent leaders in each age group--it's just that the young ones haven't all sorted out whether they can do it or not. The fifty-something leaders all tried and succeeded. The other fifty-somethings tried leadership--not necessarily of companies, but in smaller endeavours--have have foudnd their efforts best spent elsewhere...possibly working for the fifty-somethings who can lead. The twenty-somethings haven't had the extra thirty years of winnowing and selection to determine which are the corporate leaders.
In other words--you're right that the vast majority of twenty-somethings don't have have it. On the other hand--the vast majority of fifty-somethings don't have it either; they've just had time to accept that.
I started with an okay salary, a little less than you mentioned, but still good. Since then all my company's yearly salary increases have been around 3%. Three percent barely makes a difference.
Welcome back to the real world.
The grandparent mentioned a salary greater than eighty thousand dollars per year. You're only making, what, sixty thousand--right out of college? And you're receiving raises that keep up with inflation.
Believe me--getting that job "before the bubble burst" is that amazing, you just have to compare your expectations with grads that came after you, not those before.
Slashdot Mirror
So copyright was fine when it kept corporations from appropriating an author's work, but it's illegitimate now that it prevents individuals from doing exactly the same thing?
Twisted indeed.
'Perpetual copyright' is a bad thing. Erosion of fair use is a bad thing. Complaining that because technology for the first time allows individuals to engage in massive copyright infringement it should no longer be illegal...hm.
It's really hard, actually. At highway speed, you're covering about 30 meters (100 feet) per second. To stop, you're looking at probably three times that distance or more.
Do you want your car to activate its emergency braking system every time it approaches a hill? Will it understand that a guardrail a hundred feet in front of you is okay because you fully intend to follow a curve?
An alarm to notify drivers that they're going to lane change into the side of the car in their blind spot could be managed, but avoiding objects on the road ahead is a fiendishly difficult problem.
Incidentally, if you're following closely enough that hard braking by the car in front will cause a collision before you can respond, then you're following too closely. Back off and/or slow down.
For people wondering what heel-toe downshifting is, here's a brief synopsis.
In a 'basic' downshift, one presses the clutch with the left foot. This disengages the engine from the wheels, and the engine drops back down to (or near) idle speed. The driver is also braking with the right foot. The driver shifts to a lower gear, and releases the clutch. The wheels are turning at one speed, and the engine is idling at a lower speed--the car will buck when the two are forced to match speeds. This little lurch is hard on the engine and drivetrain, and can cause a loss of traction.
The 'heel-toe' downshift starts the same way: left foot on clutch, right foot on brake. The driver downshifts. However, before releasing the clutch, the driver taps the gas while still keeping his foot on the brake. This brings the engine RPMs up a bit. Ideally, the engine and the wheels will be turning at the same speed when the clutch is released. The result is a nice smooth re-engagement of the drive system: no lurch, no loss of traction, no wear and tear.
The 'heel-toe' moniker comes from the idea that the driver's heel is on the brake with his toe on the throttle. In actual practice, most people use different parts of the foot--whatever is most comfortable. Obviously, if the brake and throttle pedals are too far apart, this maneouvre becomes impossible--hence the parent poster's criticism of the Golf.
Grandmothers and minors who were hosting files that genuinely infringed copyrights, yes.
I absolutely agree with embarrassing the MPAA/RIAA et al. when they send illegitimate takedown notices and threaten lawsuits based on gross errors. I think there should be real consequences for them when they state under penalty of perjury that to the best of their knowledge a flat text file is a movie. I believe that perpetual copyright extension is an insidious problem. I am very concerned about the erosion of fair use by recent legislation.
On the other hand, I don't think that there is any reason not to pursue willful infringers of copyright just because they happen to be young or old. Being a senior citizen doesn't (or shouldn't) absolve one of one's legal responsibilies. Saying that the recording industry is evil because they sue cute youngsters may make for good press, but it doesn't substantively advance the copyright debate.
Meanwhile, Chicago was celebrating yesterday because for the first time since 1999 a whole day went by without anybody in the city getting shot.
Perhaps a public education program of sorts is in order, but unless there is some evidence that the wardrivers are actually using the unsecured access points to do harm--commit fraud, utter threats, steal identities, trash systems--this really doesn't seem to be something that needs to be a police priority.
Nope.
I think he's saying that people who turn up their stereo shouldn't complain when someone outside listens.
Or perhaps that a couple who have sex in the living room with the blinds wide open shouldn't be surprised if someone walking past on the sidewalk sees them.
Property (real property) records are already public domain--as they should be. There's no good reason for the government not to tell you who owns what land. Whether you find out at the county tax assessor's office or on the Internet is irrelevant.
Aside from property tax information, I don't foresee other tax information being released to the public. Knowing the assessed value of other properties gives a landowner the opportunity to evaluate the reasonableness of his own assessment. Realistically, concealing the value of a property is nearly impossible anyway--it's right out in the open. With respect to income tax and other tax info, there is no reason to release that information. If for no other reason, the IRS won't do it because they would fear more people would lie on their taxes.
Lawsuits and judgements--unless sealed by a judge's order--are also properly public domain. We're supposed to have an open court system, remember? Secret trials are generally a bad thing.
Medical records of individuals have always been protected, private information. I don't foresee this information being opened online any time soon, nor can I come up with any reason why anyone would think it a good idea. Aggregated medical data (epidemiological information) is in many cases already published. Local and federal organizations (the CDC, for instance) regularly supply public health information. You have to know how many cases of West Nile disease there are in town before you know whether spraying for mosquito larvae is a good use of resources. Making this sort of aggregated information publically available serves the public good, and should do no harm.
Where military and immigration records are discussed in the article, the information is described as "historic". Presumably, the people involved are long dead, and the only individuals interested will be family or genealogists.
What if they happen to respect the opinions of their friends? "My friend Jim keeps up with the news. Reads the paper, watches the debates. He's a pretty sharp guy; does a good job. Seems a smart fellow when we go out for a beer after work, too. He's voting for party X. I think I will, too." Why is it silly to choose a candidate based on the opinion of someone you know personally, like, and trust--but respectable to decide based on the warped opinion of a newspaper columnist you've never met and probably has an axe to grind?
Not all of us have the time or inclination to deeply research politics; some people may find it reasonable to rely on those who do. We already have a representative democracy. Partly this is for historical reasons--direct democracy wasn't even technically feasible until recently in a large, geographically diverse population. Partly, though, electing someone to handle political issues full time in principle allows them to make better-informed decisions on your behalf.
If you vote the same way as your friend does, you're taking this one step further. I think my friend is a reasonable and trustworthy guy. I believe he will vote for candidates who espouse similarly reasonable principles. Voting the way he does is a way to increase the weight of the opinion of someone I trust. My opinion is still represented, just a little less directly.
They might randomly pick somebody off the ballot.
That's okay. If it's really random, those will cancel out anyway. No harm done.
Did anyone else wonder why he didn't decide to pull over and turn off the car after, say, the second time?
For the North Americans in our audience, paracetamol is the same thing as acetaminophen (the active ingredient in over-the-counter Tylenol.)
Now a riddle from my flatmate, who is studying pharmacology:
Cheers.Well, close. The job of the military is to break the correct shit and kill the right people. Sometimes their responsibility extends to ensuring that some shit stays intact, and that certain people remain alive.
Anyhoo, the military should be (and probably is) concerned about space debris, because they've got stuff in orbit too. Even if we assume that their entire mandate is to break shit and kill people, they will be able to do so less effectively if space junk keeps wiping out their reconnassance satellites, GPS navigation, or new space-based weapons. Putting lots of crud into space will inconvenience them in the next battle--for which they surely will be planning.
Perhaps--but this leads me to conclude that the fault is not in the ballot but in the ballot access laws.
In Canada, virtually any person eligible to vote may also run for a seat in the federal Parliament. They must submit nomination papers that have been signed by at least one hundred people in the riding (a riding is an electoral district; they have populations of fifty to a hundred thousand, mostly) and a deposit of $1000. (The deposit is returned to the candidate when they file their election expense reports and other paperwork on time following the election.)
Canada currently has four major parties holding significant blocks of seats in Parliament--the preceding Parliament had five parties, but one was absorbed in a merger. I think I had seven or so different parties to choose from when I last voted, including the Marijuana Party.
Sorry dude--nobody on Slashdot is old enough to remember Cheers anymore.
Nope. The outcome of inflation is a decrease in the purchasing power of each dollar. It is about the perceived value of the currency. (In the case of fiat currencies, anyway.) Additional banknotes can be printed without causing inflation as long as the perceived value of the economy and government behind them increases at the same rate.
Printing more dollars does not in and of itself make a currency worth more in total. That sort of thing does cause inflation. Very roughly, there are six hundred billion dollars in circulation now and gold costs three hundred dollars an ounce. If the U.S. Mint printed another six hundred billion dollars' worth of notes on Monday, the price of gold wouldn't stay at $300 per ounce. There would be instant inflation, and gold would rise to $600 per ounce. Think of it as being like the market capitalization of a company. You can issue a million shares at a dollar apiece, or a hundred thousand shares for ten dollars apiece. If you sell additional stock, it dilutes the value of what's already out there.
The problem is that the perceived value of the notes in circulation approaches the value of all the gold ever mined anywhere in the world, and exceeds the value of all the available silver. Unless the perceived value of the currency is lowered drastically (which would be economic and political suicide), it's not possible to fully back the U.S. dollar. It used to be possible to have fully-backed national currencies because the economies involved were a lot smaller. Some smaller countries could choose to have fully-backed currencies now, but the list is getting shorter. Don't blame inflation--blame a healthy economy.
And, yes there may be some deflation or devalueing of our dollar, but there are ways to manage that as well. There has already been talk about devaluing our currency or removing coins from circulation.
Deflation and devaluation have opposite effects. Deflation increases the purchasing power of each dollar. It tends to have nasty economic consequences because people will hoard cash (it will be worth more tomorrow) instead of spending it. Incidentally, what techniques do you recommend to deal with the economic dislocations of deflation?
Pulling coins (or banknotes) from circulation won't devalue the dollar. It will increase its value. People will still want cash, and want to use it. Since there will be fewer dollars out there, the value of each dollar left in circulation will rise.
I'm not sure how you would suggest 'devaluing' the dollar without screwing people over. Most methods involve heavy inflation through issuing lots of extra notes, or some other form of gross economic stupidity.
This is first-year macroeconomics, people. Incidentally, what are the benefits to a fully-backed currency that ties one's exchange rates to a commodity? Backing the dollar with gold just abdicates all responsibility for management of the currency, and puts it squarely on the source of gold--in no small part South Africa. Dandy.
Well, aside from barring immigrants, yes.
My experience with immigrants who seek out involvement in politics is that they generally aren't beholden to some foreign country. They're interested in contributing something here. I don't know--might have something to do with living in Toronto. A shade less than 60% of the city's population are first-generation immigrants, and another 20% are second-generation. (I'm part of the 21% who fall into the 'other' category.) Barring new immigrants from some political offices would seem silly, since they're more than half the voters around here.
Several of our Prime Ministers were born overseas. The most recent foreign-born PM was John Turner, who served in 1984. Our Governor General is the most powerful person in Canada, Commander-in-Chief of our armed forces, able to dissolve Parliament and call elections, empowered to refuse to sign any bill into law. The post is largely ceremonial now, but still legally essential--and it's filled by a woman born in Hong Kong. She came to Canada as a refugee during WWII.
I'm pretty sure that most of them aren't really in favour of "death" in general; I think that "choice" is genuinely what they're interested in. Death is an inconvenient side effect.
So, what is a "baby", and is abortion killing them?
It sounds like a flip question, but it's a deeply complicated one. In in vitro fertilization (IVF), eggs are fertilized outside of the body, and some of the embryos thus created are implanted into the would-be mother's uterus. Often, IVF clinics will fertilize more eggs than they implant on the first round. These excess embryos are often discarded if a pregnancy is successful. Is it murder to throw out these fertilized eggs? Is it murder at the two-cell stage? Four cells? Eight? Is it murder, or not, if the embryos are never implanted?
Is the ethical balance satisfied because where a couple could have had no children before, they now have one--despite the dead embryos they left behind? Often more than one embryo is implanted in IVF to improve the odds of success. Knowing that most of those implanted embryos will not survive, is it ethical for a doctor to carry out the IVF procedure? Are "babies" being created wholesale, and then killed through a medical procedure that is highly risky, from their standpoint? Net production of children seems a risky doctrine--would abortion be acceptable as long as the woman promised to let another embryo develop later?
Incidentally, this also leads into the side issue of embryonic stem cells--is it appropriate to use those excess embryos as a source of research cell lines? Is that better or worse than discarding them entirely?
So, what is a "baby"? It's easy to agree to the statement "Killing babies is wrong." I'll even grant that that is a moral and not an outright religious position to take, though I'm sure that there are other posters here who would be less generous. Deciding that a "baby" exists at the moment sperm fertilizes ovum (or, indeed, at any specific stage of development thereafter) is very much a religious (or, to use a less loaded term, philosophical) issue.
For anyone interested in the development of an embryo/fetus/baby, there's an excellent site here. To my knowledge, there are no known surviving births younger than 22 weeks (a bit more than five months, and seventeen weeks shorter than a normal-term pregnancy.) At 24 weeks, the survival rate is 50%; that climbs to 96% at 28 weeks.
On the other hand, some people are now abandoning their landline telephones entirely in favour of VOIP, and they're getting their cable television, internet access, and phone service through the same single pipe.
In this case, if something goes wrong with their service, I expect that they'll probably get a faster response from Andrew (who lives upstairs) than they would from their local cable company (who will be glad to send out a technician to diagnose your problem sometime between the hours of one and six pm, Monday to Friday, at least two business days from now, as long as you stayed on hold for forty-five minutes to make the request...).
If the guy moves, they just sign up for cable, phone, and internet from the other local providers. Andrew just provides a bit of competition in the local market. If Andrew's place burns down--well, I can suck it up. He just lost his house, but I'm going whine because I can't watch Survivor: Toledo? I'll just get together with Andrew and buy him a pint at the local pub--he'll need it.
Gee, I've never gotten around to trying it. I'll have to pour myself a beaker this afternoon. :)
On the other hand, have you seen what it does when you put it in a container that's covered with scale? (Calcium carbonate reside, mostly, from hard water.) It's a very good solvent for those minerals--just sucks them right off the glass. It's a great way to remove scale from a coffeepot. Heavy encrustations may require more than one dose. Its other benefit for cleaning cookware is that you know it's nontoxic.
I don't have data to back this, but I'd be a little concerned about consuming large quantities of this stuff on a regular basis--I wonder if it might demineralize the teeth. As far as I can tell, nobody has any data either way, which suggests that it probably is pretty harmless.
Well, there's something to that. While biking (or riding a motorcycle) a helmet is a pretty damn good idea. Nature figured out a long time ago that protecting our big, soft, squishy brains was a good idea--that's why we've got such thick skulls. Unfortunately, natural selection hasn't caught up to our ability to travel at high speeds or be hit by other vehicles--so a bit of extra armour is an excellent precaution.
The but-I'm-a-safe-rider whine doesn't cut any ice here.. Do you trust all the other idiots on the road? In the Tour de France, all the riders are now required to wear helmets. There, you're surrounded by the most competent cyclists in the world, no cars, and the racers probably all have excellent reflexes--but helmets are still considered a good idea.
It does make sense to wear a helmet when you're at an elevated risk of blunt trauma to the head. Why not? We require the use of seat belts as an acceptable small cost to greatly reduce the risk of serious injury. Most places require proper child seats for the very young when travelling in cars. Helmets should rightly fall into the same category.
I don't want to hear about freedom, either. Let's talk about responsibility--the ugly flip side of that coin. You have every right to decide for yourself to risk becoming a vegetable. Perhaps. Unfortunately, the rest of us have little choice in deciding whether or not to care for you. Your spouse will have to push your wheelchair around and spoon pablum into your mouth. Your brother or your sister will have to be around to wipe away the drool. Your employer is going to have to train your replacement. Your kids will spend their college money on your home care. No dependents, family, or friends? The government will probably cough up a little bit for your care...but that will still come out of my pocket, through my taxes. I don't feel like funding your stupidity, thank you very much.
On the bright side, you might just end up in a coma for the rest of your days. At least your young and otherwise healthy body will be an excellent source of donor organs.
Well, it's easy. It just takes a little higher-level math. Let's say that your average free Hotmail account (until very recently) topped out at 2 MB. So each of these 100 GB accounts is actually like 50000 Hotmail accounts. 36 million 'people', then, actually represents only 720 unique people.
See? And I know this is a legitimate mathematical technique, because the RIAA uses it.
Sure. They're better suited to the cramped spaces aboard a submarine.
Hmmm...perhaps. But it real life you might also get some bad intelligence. "No, General Custer, there aren't any Indians at Little Bighorn." "No, Admiral Ackbar, the new deathstar isn't yet operational."
Even if it wasn't technically fair, it's probably a good lesson. Even the Boy Scouts know it: be prepared. Combat is never exactly what you expect.
I don't know--I thought the problem with most of the dotcoms was that they didn't have other departments/projects to feed the loss leader. They just bled venture capital and prayed that their options vested before they had to fold the company.
When Google uses funds from other departments to feed speculative projects with high visibility--it's marketing. As the parent notes, letting people try the beta versions of News and GMail builds visibility, public goodwill, and lets them test out new potentially saleable products.
As long as Google continues to be profitable, I expect that they will always have several projects running that may lack immediate obvious commercial application--just because they want to be associated with things that are 'cool' or at least 'neat'. It's very subtle, elegant, brilliantly targeted marketing.
Well sure; we're talking about the tech bubble, after all.
But that doesn't prove that leadership qualities are more or less common in twenty-somethings versus fifty-somethings. For example, I don't see statistics (or even anecdotes!) describing the number of startups during the bubble by older individuals versus the number of failures. Their failure rate may be just as high.
Then again, maybe few got a shot at it--in the same way that people assume twenty-somethings can't lead, venture capitalists assumed fifty-somethings couldn't keep up with the 'new' technology.
Perhaps older people tend to have more commitments--family, and so forth--and aren't willing to take the risk on a startup that's not a sure thing. The ones that are good leaders probably already have a solid job and a good paycheque. The twenty-somethings may well know that their online pet food business likely won't pan out, but they also know they're still young and can recover from a failure. The cost/benefit or risk/reward analysis makes riskier business ventures more palatable for the young.
Perhaps there are the same proportion of competent leaders in each age group--it's just that the young ones haven't all sorted out whether they can do it or not. The fifty-something leaders all tried and succeeded. The other fifty-somethings tried leadership--not necessarily of companies, but in smaller endeavours--have have foudnd their efforts best spent elsewhere...possibly working for the fifty-somethings who can lead. The twenty-somethings haven't had the extra thirty years of winnowing and selection to determine which are the corporate leaders.
In other words--you're right that the vast majority of twenty-somethings don't have have it. On the other hand--the vast majority of fifty-somethings don't have it either; they've just had time to accept that.
Welcome back to the real world.
The grandparent mentioned a salary greater than eighty thousand dollars per year. You're only making, what, sixty thousand--right out of college? And you're receiving raises that keep up with inflation.
Believe me--getting that job "before the bubble burst" is that amazing, you just have to compare your expectations with grads that came after you, not those before.