The highways of our great country are paid for communally. We all pay a little in taxes and we all get the right to drive on them. But some vehicles must pay extra. There are weigh stations on our highways to make sure that those drivers who cause extra damage to the roads pay their fair share to help keep the roads in pristine condition. Since they weigh more, they must pay extra fees.
Sounds like a great model for Internet and fixed charge for a given amount of bandwidth, no matter what it is used for, will certainly be allowed by network neutrality regulations. Now imagine that the road was privately owned and declared that trucks transporting Pepsi can disregard the speed limits and pay less than those transporting Coke. Or that only heterosexual drivers are allowed to use the highway. Wouldn't you want some regulation then?
Cry about "unlimited bandwidth plans" and the like all you want. It's completely irrelevant to the topic at hand. The issue is whether people whose usage habits affect others should have their activities curtailed to create a more balanced environment for everyone.
Sure, however "people" you are talking about are usually websites that return large amount of data to the browser. Since users have little control or understanding of how much data will be transferred when they type a URL, it would make more sense to "curtail" the server side.
Anything that I do during my personal, unpaid time and without claiming to represent the company is private as far as my employer is concerned. If I am software engineer, it should be as illegal for my boss to fire me based on a sex video s/he found on Internet as it would be to make me have sex with him/her as a condition of my employment.
Besides, where is the guarantee of authenticity? My friends could post any crap they want about me without my knowledge or permission, or someone may just happen to have the same name or similar appearance. Add the widespread use of Photoshop and we have an environment where anyone's job is in jeopardy just because any other random person happens not to like them, lacks discretion or feels like pulling a practical joke. Are you saying not regulating this at all is the best solution for public interest?
The bottom line is that you are being screwed. It's a mistake to interpret constitution as only giving us protection against federal government. Any entity with significant power over individuals must be prevented from restricting freedom of speech or any other basic rights that we consider important. ISPs must not be allowed to discriminate against any legal but unpopular content, or against use of particular protocols like BitTorrent. Companies must not be allowed to fire people based on private Facebook posts.
It's not a legitimate educational institution if using idle resources for scientific research gets people fired. It's a common practice to enable some kind of screen saver. By using SETI@Home or Folding@Home students can at least get interested in what is going on and learn more. The principal of that school should resign in disgrace.
If it means that certain undesirable behaviour is accepted because it is "part of his personality" then yes, the toddler is getting harmed in a way.
As compared to constantly punishing a toddler for something which is a natural part of his/her personality? Amount of sleep we get, appetite, energy levels, curiosity and attention span are pretty much hardwired. At least someone who reads astrology or similar systems has an acceptance of a human being not being simply a computer that can run any software equally well.
Toddlers are not harmed by mother's belief in astrology. A 2 year old is perfectly capable to defend his/her own personality and also tell parents what their personalities should be like. They are harmed by junk food, lack of exercise and lack of proper supervision in the presence of dangerous objects. You are accusing two people of stupidity and yet your own skills in the same area (parenting) are lacking in much more fundamental way.
In the same way, people are less harmed by blood type personality beliefs than by dying on the operating table because of lack of donors. By making coming in, donating and in the progress finding your blood type and supposed personality, the blood bank is creating some excitement for something people generally avoid. More power to the - a Scorpio must be in charge of the program!
Secondly, if the main objection is the legal difficulty of docking an armed ship, this poses a unique market opportunity for floating armouries outside popular ports in international waters, providing rental of quality weapons or mercenary crews to cargo ships.
Why do I get a feeling that this business opportunity will be predominantly filled by good citizens of Somalia?
Read TFA. The typewriter has not been maintained besides blowing out dust and it's still in the working condition. None of the problems you described are irreversible with proper cleaning. See another reply that I got.
A 45 year old typewriter looks good on display and most probably still types perfectly well. A 45 year old Dell will be a pile of plastic dust with an exploded lithium battery.
The dynamic types really don't slow it down that much, and it depends on your implementation. Google's V8 does well enough to run an NES Emulator at comfortable speeds.
You do realize that NES is 25 year old technology designed to be dirt cheap rather than fast even at it's time? When I want real-time video augmentation in my app, I think I will take static typing and threads rather than being slowed down "not that much".
Some sort of interpreted language was needed for the web, to run untrusted code in a secure way. C couldn't be used for that.
Well, that sure hasn't worked out as planned. There is more malware written in Javascript than in any other language in existence. The only connection between language and security is performance of things like bounds checking, and Javascript is not exactly known for performance. C can easily be interpreted or compiled to verifiable code and still be faster than JS for CPU-intensive inner loops written without complicated pointer use. JVM is specially designed to allow more load-time verification rather than runtime checks, however this leads to long startup times and it is still not as efficient as hardware memory protection implemented by modern CPUs.
Perhaps it's a great language, but it reduced modern Core i7 computers to performance of a 486, negating 15 years of computing revolution. Inability to perform CPU-intensive computations due to these dynamic types of yours, lack of threading or any other explicit or implicit parallelism support, no library facilities to modern 2D/3D graphics libraries. Javascript is a nice experimental language like so many others but it shouldn't be running 90% of mission-critical applications.
Palo Alto medical foundation implemented online system to allow any doctor or patient to access patient's records and exchange e-mails. If you see a specialist and then go to a primary care physician for annual exam, he/she immediately sees what happened to you and what tests need to be done. Many routine matters like prescription renewals or questions about OTC drugs can be handled without revisiting the clinic. How is that not saving money or even health/lives?
If I'm asked to be on call, I have to mold my "not on the clock" time to whatever my boss requires. I can't go out of state. I can't go to an amusement park with my kids. I can't go to a movie. Well, not unless I don't mind up and leaving to go home and sign on the laptop.
Or you can just do whatever you want and let the employer decide for themselves on the value or your skills vs off-hours reliability. Just because your boss wants something doesn't mean you will get fired if he/she doesn't get it 100%.
The problem is that, when you're "on call", your time is not your own. You're expected to be ready and able to drop everything at a moments notice and go to work, immediately.
Very few employees will fire or seriously penalize you for an occasional delayed response. Grumbling from your manager doesn't count - you shouldn't allow your personal life to be destroyed just because someone thinks it's convenient. Just go ahead and set the phone to silent during sex/movies/meals/etc and check it afterwards. Chances are, nobody will call in that short time. If they do, just say "sorry, I just noticed this call now". If you answer in 90% of cases, there shouldn't be any problem. If you are always unavailable during off hours, you need to look for jobs accordingly.
Just like there is a mandatory 8 week workday or paid overtime, there should be mandatory limits and penalties to regulate on-call time. Any single person shouldn't be on call for the whole week, every weekend of each month, every major holiday and so on. Even firefighters and soldiers will eventually be worn out by stress and lack of committed family time and make harmful decisions when the actual emergency happens.
Lawful combatants under Geneva convention must be held until the end of hostilities in non-punitive confinement and then released. War criminals like G.W.Bush who violated Geneva convention, must be tried by international military tribunal not controlled by any single country Persons who can not be considered lawful combatants or war criminals must be tried under laws of the country in which the crimes are committed and afforded the same rights and responsibilities as a citizen of that country Soldiers of a given country may be tried in a special military tribunal that safeguards state secrets while still attempting to grant rights to vigorous defense.
International laws as well as those specified by US constitution and legal code do not allow second class citizens not afforded any human rights whatsoever. Generally speaking, combatants receive more protection than common thugs. There is no justification for torture or mock trials.
So, just because there is one are on which two administrations agree and you don't, does it mean that there are no meaningful differences between G.W.Bush and Obama at all?
If you are under an impression that parenting does NOT include encouraging children to contact police if they feel threatened and are for whatever reason unable or unwilling immediately reach parents, I would suggest putting your "firehed" to good use and then coming back and telling us how you feel after putting your theories to practice.
It is not clear from the article that the button will work EXACTLY like 911 and compete with emergency response resources. On the other hand, police departments have non-emergency numbers that people are encouraged to call with any potential concerns which do not constitute immediate danger.
A reasonable functionality of this button would be to replace an existing screen with a splash screen that allows a child to interact with the responder while the later gets a remote desktop to the original session (presumably either with child's permission or if conversation seems to indicate a crime taking place). 99% of use would be a child scared by something which is not actually illegal or dangerous and the responder simply explaining what happened and closing the problematic content.
As for asking parents, they may not be physically nearby at the moment or little Jonny may not be comfortable with showing mommy an IM window with discussion of his penis. What exactly is wrong with providing an additional option that may be less embarrassing and available at all times?
Laws/card processor contracts prevent merchants from adding a surcharge if you pay with credit card
There are no such laws, besides ones that require accepting local currency as legal tender. Contracts are another story.
Anytime you're making a large purchase, bring this up with the cashier, asking for a manager if necessary. If their card processing fee is X%, ask to have an (X-1)% discount for using cash.
If it is really a large purchase, both of you should feel safer with a credit card transaction. You know, them not having to worry about the guy behind you in line knowing that they now have $2K in the register. You being able to dispute the charge if the item is not as advertised.
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The highways of our great country are paid for communally. We all pay a little in taxes and we all get the right to drive on them. But some vehicles must pay extra. There are weigh stations on our highways to make sure that those drivers who cause extra damage to the roads pay their fair share to help keep the roads in pristine condition. Since they weigh more, they must pay extra fees.
Sounds like a great model for Internet and fixed charge for a given amount of bandwidth, no matter what it is used for, will certainly be allowed by network neutrality regulations. Now imagine that the road was privately owned and declared that trucks transporting Pepsi can disregard the speed limits and pay less than those transporting Coke. Or that only heterosexual drivers are allowed to use the highway. Wouldn't you want some regulation then?
Cry about "unlimited bandwidth plans" and the like all you want. It's completely irrelevant to the topic at hand. The issue is whether people whose usage habits affect others should have their activities curtailed to create a more balanced environment for everyone.
Sure, however "people" you are talking about are usually websites that return large amount of data to the browser. Since users have little control or understanding of how much data will be transferred when they type a URL, it would make more sense to "curtail" the server side.
Anything that I do during my personal, unpaid time and without claiming to represent the company is private as far as my employer is concerned. If I am software engineer, it should be as illegal for my boss to fire me based on a sex video s/he found on Internet as it would be to make me have sex with him/her as a condition of my employment.
Besides, where is the guarantee of authenticity? My friends could post any crap they want about me without my knowledge or permission, or someone may just happen to have the same name or similar appearance. Add the widespread use of Photoshop and we have an environment where anyone's job is in jeopardy just because any other random person happens not to like them, lacks discretion or feels like pulling a practical joke. Are you saying not regulating this at all is the best solution for public interest?
The bottom line is that you are being screwed. It's a mistake to interpret constitution as only giving us protection against federal government. Any entity with significant power over individuals must be prevented from restricting freedom of speech or any other basic rights that we consider important. ISPs must not be allowed to discriminate against any legal but unpopular content, or against use of particular protocols like BitTorrent. Companies must not be allowed to fire people based on private Facebook posts.
It's not a legitimate educational institution if using idle resources for scientific research gets people fired. It's a common practice to enable some kind of screen saver. By using SETI@Home or Folding@Home students can at least get interested in what is going on and learn more. The principal of that school should resign in disgrace.
If it means that certain undesirable behaviour is accepted because it is "part of his personality" then yes, the toddler is getting harmed in a way.
As compared to constantly punishing a toddler for something which is a natural part of his/her personality? Amount of sleep we get, appetite, energy levels, curiosity and attention span are pretty much hardwired. At least someone who reads astrology or similar systems has an acceptance of a human being not being simply a computer that can run any software equally well.
Toddlers are not harmed by mother's belief in astrology. A 2 year old is perfectly capable to defend his/her own personality and also tell parents what their personalities should be like. They are harmed by junk food, lack of exercise and lack of proper supervision in the presence of dangerous objects. You are accusing two people of stupidity and yet your own skills in the same area (parenting) are lacking in much more fundamental way.
In the same way, people are less harmed by blood type personality beliefs than by dying on the operating table because of lack of donors. By making coming in, donating and in the progress finding your blood type and supposed personality, the blood bank is creating some excitement for something people generally avoid. More power to the - a Scorpio must be in charge of the program!
Secondly, if the main objection is the legal difficulty of docking an armed ship, this poses a unique market opportunity for floating armouries outside popular ports in international waters, providing rental of quality weapons or mercenary crews to cargo ships.
Why do I get a feeling that this business opportunity will be predominantly filled by good citizens of Somalia?
Besides the pirates would probably not have bought the goods anyway, but may in future after they had a chance to sample them.
Read TFA. The typewriter has not been maintained besides blowing out dust and it's still in the working condition. None of the problems you described are irreversible with proper cleaning. See another reply that I got.
A 45 year old typewriter looks good on display and most probably still types perfectly well. A 45 year old Dell will be a pile of plastic dust with an exploded lithium battery.
Ok, explain to us why you think this is NOT harmless. It's not like they are saying that HIV doesn't cause AIDS and telling infected people to donate.
The dynamic types really don't slow it down that much, and it depends on your implementation. Google's V8 does well enough to run an NES Emulator at comfortable speeds.
You do realize that NES is 25 year old technology designed to be dirt cheap rather than fast even at it's time? When I want real-time video augmentation in my app, I think I will take static typing and threads rather than being slowed down "not that much".
Some sort of interpreted language was needed for the web, to run untrusted code in a secure way. C couldn't be used for that.
Well, that sure hasn't worked out as planned. There is more malware written in Javascript than in any other language in existence. The only connection between language and security is performance of things like bounds checking, and Javascript is not exactly known for performance. C can easily be interpreted or compiled to verifiable code and still be faster than JS for CPU-intensive inner loops written without complicated pointer use. JVM is specially designed to allow more load-time verification rather than runtime checks, however this leads to long startup times and it is still not as efficient as hardware memory protection implemented by modern CPUs.
Perhaps it's a great language, but it reduced modern Core i7 computers to performance of a 486, negating 15 years of computing revolution. Inability to perform CPU-intensive computations due to these dynamic types of yours, lack of threading or any other explicit or implicit parallelism support, no library facilities to modern 2D/3D graphics libraries. Javascript is a nice experimental language like so many others but it shouldn't be running 90% of mission-critical applications.
Palo Alto medical foundation implemented online system to allow any doctor or patient to access patient's records and exchange e-mails. If you see a specialist and then go to a primary care physician for annual exam, he/she immediately sees what happened to you and what tests need to be done. Many routine matters like prescription renewals or questions about OTC drugs can be handled without revisiting the clinic. How is that not saving money or even health/lives?
If I'm asked to be on call, I have to mold my "not on the clock" time to whatever my boss requires. I can't go out of state. I can't go to an amusement park with my kids. I can't go to a movie. Well, not unless I don't mind up and leaving to go home and sign on the laptop.
Or you can just do whatever you want and let the employer decide for themselves on the value or your skills vs off-hours reliability. Just because your boss wants something doesn't mean you will get fired if he/she doesn't get it 100%.
The problem is that, when you're "on call", your time is not your own. You're expected to be ready and able to drop everything at a moments notice and go to work, immediately.
Very few employees will fire or seriously penalize you for an occasional delayed response. Grumbling from your manager doesn't count - you shouldn't allow your personal life to be destroyed just because someone thinks it's convenient. Just go ahead and set the phone to silent during sex/movies/meals/etc and check it afterwards. Chances are, nobody will call in that short time. If they do, just say "sorry, I just noticed this call now". If you answer in 90% of cases, there shouldn't be any problem. If you are always unavailable during off hours, you need to look for jobs accordingly.
Just like there is a mandatory 8 week workday or paid overtime, there should be mandatory limits and penalties to regulate on-call time. Any single person shouldn't be on call for the whole week, every weekend of each month, every major holiday and so on. Even firefighters and soldiers will eventually be worn out by stress and lack of committed family time and make harmful decisions when the actual emergency happens.
Lawful combatants under Geneva convention must be held until the end of hostilities in non-punitive confinement and then released.
War criminals like G.W.Bush who violated Geneva convention, must be tried by international military tribunal not controlled by any single country
Persons who can not be considered lawful combatants or war criminals must be tried under laws of the country in which the crimes are committed and afforded the same rights and responsibilities as a citizen of that country
Soldiers of a given country may be tried in a special military tribunal that safeguards state secrets while still attempting to grant rights to vigorous defense.
International laws as well as those specified by US constitution and legal code do not allow second class citizens not afforded any human rights whatsoever. Generally speaking, combatants receive more protection than common thugs. There is no justification for torture or mock trials.
So, just because there is one are on which two administrations agree and you don't, does it mean that there are no meaningful differences between G.W.Bush and Obama at all?
I went the private school route after that, and only once did I have to choke someone who was fucking with me.
Bad choice, choking will only make the hardon stronger. Go for the eyes next time.
Dude, if you are a kid getting bullied at school and you are scared that something bad is about to happen to you, do you:
a) wait for your parents to come to pick you up and then talk to them
b) call 911?
If you are under an impression that parenting does NOT include encouraging children to contact police if they feel threatened and are for whatever reason unable or unwilling immediately reach parents, I would suggest putting your "firehed" to good use and then coming back and telling us how you feel after putting your theories to practice.
It is not clear from the article that the button will work EXACTLY like 911 and compete with emergency response resources. On the other hand, police departments have non-emergency numbers that people are encouraged to call with any potential concerns which do not constitute immediate danger.
A reasonable functionality of this button would be to replace an existing screen with a splash screen that allows a child to interact with the responder while the later gets a remote desktop to the original session (presumably either with child's permission or if conversation seems to indicate a crime taking place). 99% of use would be a child scared by something which is not actually illegal or dangerous and the responder simply explaining what happened and closing the problematic content.
As for asking parents, they may not be physically nearby at the moment or little Jonny may not be comfortable with showing mommy an IM window with discussion of his penis. What exactly is wrong with providing an additional option that may be less embarrassing and available at all times?
Laws/card processor contracts prevent merchants from adding a surcharge if you pay with credit card
There are no such laws, besides ones that require accepting local currency as legal tender. Contracts are another story.
Anytime you're making a large purchase, bring this up with the cashier, asking for a manager if necessary. If their card processing fee is X%, ask to have an (X-1)% discount for using cash.
If it is really a large purchase, both of you should feel safer with a credit card transaction. You know, them not having to worry about the guy behind you in line knowing that they now have $2K in the register. You being able to dispute the charge if the item is not as advertised.