The reasoning is simple. If you are working for a for-profit company and you are unpaid, you are meant to receive the following as compensation:
1) experience 2) something of educational value in your field (you usually get college credit based on this assumption)
The company is legally bound to not use you as a replacement for paid labor (goes back to a Supreme Court decision from 1947).
However, all too often all three fail to materialize. You don't get any worthwhile experience since you spend your time doing menial jobs, don't learn anything (unless applying lard to some rails is 'educational'--saw a 'mythern' doing that once on MythBusters), and the company would have had to pay someone else to do what you're doing. (for all I know the mythern was paid, but I bet she wasn't)
Obviously, this doesn't always happen and I know several people from college who got great internships that immediately led to good jobs after college. The problem is all the lousy internships which put interns in very bad spots. If they complain about it, they're afraid they will have trouble getting jobs in the future. If they don't complain, they have very few protections since they aren't considered employees (so they don't get any normal protections other employees get, such as sexual discrimination protections, etc). They also don't gain the experience or education that would truly help them get jobs.
You're exactly correct. A huge reason why Americans aren't seeing much better gas mileage now versus 30 years ago isn't due to a lack of progress in engine technology. It's due to ever-increasing horsepower. If our parents and grandparents could get by with less engine displacement but even heavier cars why can't we?
I don't even know if there's a correlation between 'supertaskers' and super geniuses.
Back in high school I took a class that accepted only 28 students from the entire class of 450 (an advanced class for math and science). However, I don't recall anyone being especially good at driving and one was certainly absolutely awful, crashing 3 cars due to being distracted by conversations (in his case he would always want to face the person he was talking to--not a good thing if you're a passenger talking to him while he's driving). He was also one of the academically best students in the entire class.
However, there certainly does seem to be a group of supertaskers that can easily handle talking on the phone while driving. I think the key is prioritizing. Some people focus too much on the conversation while driving at the cost of not paying enough attention to what's going on around them. Others will focus less on the conversation as needed while driving.
On the other hand I don't see how anyone can drive and text safely since there is no way to text without at least briefly taking your eyes off the road, unless you can touch-type using your thumb I guess.
I have no great love for the GOP, but if they keep their promise to return to conservatism, they are still the lesser evil from the Tea Party point-of-view.
After all, it's not the GOP that's trying to shove ACTA down our throats and the Mandatory Hospitalization Suppository up our ass.
You are correct that it doesn't bring a utopia. However, one could argue nuclear weapons bring peace too due to MAD, or at least help with global stability and usually nuclear weapons are about as far from a utopian vision as one can imagine.
I think having strong trade ties certainly serves as a good deterrent to war even if it doesn't always succeed in preventing wars. As probably anyone posting here knows the trade between China and the US is so immense that neither country could cut economic ties without causing great harm to their own economy and currency. That was not the case between Germany and France in 1941, a time when trade was much lower as a fraction of their economies than it is today.
A closer analogy probably would be the American Civil War when the trade between the north and south was a substantial fraction of their economies and the sudden drop in trade caused economic harm to both (although particularly the south). However, in that case the south viewed the alternative (no slaves) as an economic disaster too which mitigated that concern.
It depends on how anal you want to be. If you take a high-level approach as Jefferson did then it is a reasonable statement (when he said "and it may be observed that the nations which refuse monopolies of invention, are as fruitful as England in new and useful devices.").
If you compare nations that have weak patent protection (say China or Russia) vs ones that do (most everyone else that is a major world player) the difference in the level of invention is quite large.
Who invented jets? The British. Who invented the airplane? The Americans. Who invented almost every initial contraption related to making electricity available to the public? Americans. Trains (and tons of types of steam engines)? British, French and Americans. Most of the major agriculture inventions in the early 20th and 19th century were also invented in America and England (tractors, the cotton gin, etc).
I could go on.
Then look at major Russian inventions. Did Kalashnikov profit from his invention? Nope. Have Russians made any other guns that have caught traction worldwide? No.
Obviously to 'prove' that having patent protection leads towards more development would be difficult. But to argue that it is ineffective is burying your head in the sand.
Also, the question isn't really the number of useless or little-known inventions, but ones that had an impact. Part of the reason patents exist isn't to stop the spread ideas, but make it easier to spread. First, the information in the patent is public and easily accessible to other inventors. Once the patent expires (presuming it's even granted in the first place) any information in the patent is free to use. In addition, it is meant to encourage the adoption of the invention by making it easier for the inventor to get the capital needed to produce it on a large scale (which I guarantee does help in the real world--try talking to a venture capitalist sometime if you have doubts).
OK, that makes sense. Then the question is whether the royalties Nokia demanded were reasonable. I can't see any way of determining this from where I sit, it all seems to be information closely held by both Apple and Nokia.
Not exactly. The most succinct sentence from that quote probably is, "Society may give an exclusive right to the profits arising from them, as an encouragement to men to pursue ideas which may produce utility, but this may or may not be done, according to the will and convenience of the society, without claim or complaint from anybody."
He obviously is a decenter but acknowledges the reason why an exclusive license to an idea would be granted. In the course of time his last sentence certainly didn't hold true. From the time he wrote that passage until well after WWII the great majority of inventions in the world took place in countries that had a patent system similar to ours. We certainly weren't the only country to copy England in this regard.
However, a line does need to be drawn--he points out that it is unreasonable to expect a patent to be inheritable. Of course, this only holds true to flesh-and-blood people--corporations inherit patents all the time simply by buying other corporations, but at least there's still a time restriction on the patent.
He also lists the downside to having a monopoly to the idea, further reason why the monopoly shouldn't be permanent.
And believe me, the ability to patent an idea is extremely encouraging to inventors--often one of the primary assets of a small startup corporation is its intellectual property and is something venture capitalists are strongly interested in.
You certainly aren't trolling but are you correct? I don't know whether Nokia is required to offer Apple reasonable license rates for GSM technology. I thought the whole point of patents is to allow inventors to have a time-limited monopoly to their idea. But as far as I know the only restriction to their invention is the time they are given exclusive rights to it--ie, there is no requirement that they sell rights to their invention to whoever wants to use it.
I'm certainly not a patent attorney so I don't know if you are correct or not.
No, I don't think so. Take North Korea for example. They have access to no media, no internet, nothing but what the government says. Unless you mean that no media means no public communication at all, not even from the government (which would only happen when there is no government, say in Somalia).
I can't conceive of a single way in which the North Koreans are better off without any media than the Chinese citizens with their filtered media.
Actually, you have it backwards. The programs that were cut would have taken virtually all of NASA's budget, making other exploration programs like this nearly impossible to fund.
I haven't looked at these formats in depth, but it sure sounds like this guy is clueless.
No it doesn't. How many binary formats are you personally involved with? I work in an entirely different line of binary formats but all of his criticisms seemed absolutely valid. It is quite common for CRC values to be optional or at least variable length depending on the medium the data will be used in.
I work with GPS data with many different formats (each manufacturer tends to have their own format) as well as several industry standard formats for data interchange. In formats that are designed for files there's usually no CRC but provisions for forward or backward scanning, although I have never seen a provision for random access in GPS data (because it almost never makes sense to do so in a time-critical environment--the data is processed either forwards or backwards and even if only processing part of a file the time it takes to seek to the starting point is miniscule compared to the time it takes to process the data).
In data streams there's usually either a simple checksum or a variable length CRC. There are also many formats where there is simply a one- or two-bit version field using the reasoning of the article's author. It is a complete waste of bandwidth to use a version field any larger because any future version can be completely different. If the developer ends up wanting to have 256 versions of the protocol they can still use a larger version field when there is a need for it (a situation I've never seen or even come close to). Until then, one bit is all that is required. In that case the later format would use a variable length integer for the version in order to maintain backwards compatibility (so there is a potential cost in future formats vs having a fixed version length field, which is why some formats use 2 or 3 bits--depending on how likely the author believes many future versions may developed).
If I were to design a 'universal' protocol I would certainly make CRCs optional since they are only needed when there is nothing else providing data integrity. If it's a file then the file system itself provides this protection.
No, from what I read in the article the author is very informed and knows what he is talking about.
In Numerical Recipes for C they list several benchmarks for determining how good one random number generator is compared to another (based on various statistics measures) so it certainly is possible for one method to be more random than another. Read chapter 7 of that book for all the details you could possibly want on this subject (with references to even more information).
One way of generating a good random number in Linux is using/dev/random (which uses a hardware-based random signal as its source, I don't recall the details). However, it isn't fast enough for most applications, outputting only a few bytes per second of random information, although it can serve as a useful seed for other random number generators. Just run 'cat/dev/random > random_bytes.bin' to see its output.
I'm curious what rate random information can be generated using the method in the article. I'm presuming it's fast enough that an application could rely solely on this data without having to use it as a seed for a pseudo-random number generator. The question is how long does it take for the hardware to get to the state where its next value is unpredictable--in the case of/dev/random it's relatively long.
I can only guess that he simply isn't attracted to her (perhaps she looks unattractive to him?). But justifying it by admitting you're not attracted to her even though you'd behave the same way does seem odd to me.
The obvious answer would be the UN. However, equally obvious is that they cannot/would not as they currently stand.
So long as the US is willing to carry the load in maintaining global stability in difficult areas I'm sure our allies will allow us to do so at minimal costs to themselves. Unless we back off, forcing the UN to carry more of the load, there will be little incentive for them to do more (unless more terrorist attacks occur in their backyard of course).
We still would give a lot of aid via the UN, both financially and militarily, but it would probably cost much less than how much we're paying today.
Another issue is the very expensive projects we have. Why do we need such an expensive air force at this point in time? There's an obvious need for helicopters, but why stealth ships, stealth fighters and stealth bombers? Are we worried about the Taliban shooting down normal bombers?
I think the US military budget could be significantly reduced while still maintaining our current bases around the world by simply canceling some of the most expensive projects (although we would still pay far more for our military than any other country).
I don't follow your logic on point one. Senators are already essentially elected directly by the people since each state has already passed legislation that determines the winner of a senate race by who gets the biggest majority/plurality of the state's election.
However, on point two it looks like you're correct. Since the Supreme Court made this ruling, the only way to overturn the ruling in the near term is to do so via an amendment.
But if you think this health care bill has been difficult to pass, it probably would be nothing compared to how difficult it would be to pass an amendment that would bar corporations from donating to political campaigns or using their money for political advertisements.
I think the more difficult part is the education side. It seems that if you get a degree but don't get a steady girlfriend while in college or immediately afterward it's extremely difficult to find a girl with a degree that isn't already married.
I can't remember the last time I met a girl my age (30) that had a 4 year degree that was single (and I live in Boulder, CO, hardly a place where it should be hard to find single women with a degree). Well, technically I met one but she had a drinking problem (consuming a half dozen Everclear jello shots plus a lot of other drinks didn't even phase her...).
However you feel about kids in America, in Japan the pressure is much higher. Of course, it's not a coincidence that they have one of the highest suicide rates in the world.
There's enormous pressure on kids to study hard and get into a good college. Almost every child in Japan has to take an enormously important exam at the end of high school that essentially determines their fate (from their point of view) by determining which college they get into, from the most prestigious (Tokyo University) to not getting in one at all, at which point they can either become 'ronin' (literal interpretation is 'wandering samuri'--they work part time jobs and study to try to take the test again later) or simply give up on college but are permanently regulated to lower paying, unskilled jobs likely for the rest of their lives.
There's also great social pressure to conform to societal norms, with only an exception for when they are in college. Before and especially afterward they cannot stand out too much in any way (at least that's what I've seen and what friends that have lived in Japan have told me).
And God help you if you become unemployed--that's where many of the suicides come from. In many ways they are still a very traditional society and there's probably few people in Japan that have more pressure (and guilt) on them than unemployed, married men.
I don't believe they have the rates of overall mental illness in children that we do, but I don't know that for a fact.
Re:Movies at only 24/25 FPS are horrible
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Framerates Matter
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Yes, I noticed it. I think it's more obvious when you're closer to the screen.
It was most obvious to me during fast motion, with objects near the screen (such as when he was flying on that creature for the first time).
I also wish they'd increase the frame rate substantially at movie theaters, especially for movies that have a lot of fast motion (like action movies).
The strange thing is I'm not a FPS snob with games. While I can see the difference between high and low frame rates, so long as the frame rate is OK (say always above 20 fps and usually above 30 fps) I have no complaints.
I don't know, I never had any training and can build computers--and it used to be somewhat harder in a way because RAM used to be a PITA to install in the old days. You also don't have to deal with master/slave settings on hard drives and usually don't even need to worry too much about which SATA port you plug the drive into (especially on low-end motherboards that don't offer RAID).
Now you can go to a website like Newegg, pick a CPU for a new computer and then you'll be presented a list of combos you can buy to go with the CPU (ranging from complete systems to various combinations of RAM, motherboard, power supply, etc). You're essentially given a parts list simply by picking any component of a new computer to start with. If you aren't too concerned with the details of your new computer and aren't too knowledgeable about computer components this can be very helpful.
I know building a computer is intimidating for some people but when I compare the complexity of building a computer to other things I know how to do it seems pretty simple. Even when I compare it to changing the oil in my car it still seems pretty similar in complexity.
Changing oil:
1) Find out what kind of oil you need (depending on the season/climate you live at and the kind of car you drive), what quantity you need and what kind of oil filter to get (can determine which oil filter at the store of course) 2) Find out where the bolt in the oil pan is that you will remove to drain the oil. 3) If it's very cold outside, run the car for a minute or two so that the oil will drain without too much viscosity. If the car has been running for more than a few minutes, especially on a warmer day, let the engine cool down for a while so that you aren't burned when the oil drain plug is removed. 4) Put a oil drain pan underneath the oil plug and carefully loosen the bolt. 5) After the oil has been completely drained, remove the old oil filter. (can definitely be easier said than done on some cars where the oil filter is difficult to reach) 6) Rub some new oil around the gasket of the new filter and install, being careful to not screw on the new filter too tightly. 7) Clean the drain plug washer and rub some new oil on it, then reinstall the drain plug, being careful to not tighten the bolt too much. 8) Add the correct amount of oil to the car. 9) Turn the car on for a minute, then check the oil level, adding more oil as necessary.
I could write the instructions for building a computer, but it would probably be about the same number of steps and would certainly be easier to do from a mechanical point of view.
I submit that it's far better to be boring, than to be actively annoying.
Better in what way? There are hours of time during shuttle missions when there may be 5-10 minutes of talking over the course of each hour. The viewer can't really see what's going on because they can't see the instrument panels but can only watch things from afar from stationary cameras placed in the mission control center and on the shuttle.
I didn't say they needed to duplicate MythBusters, but they definitely need editing in a big way. Personally, I don't have the time to watch an entire 3 to 4 hour spacewalk but would be interested in watching a summary of the spacewalk along with a narration of what they were doing at each step.
MythBusters is probably the highest rated show on Discovery of all time and is certainly getting more kids involved in science (and has won praise from various educational groups). The goal wouldn't be solely to show exactly what a real scientist would do in the lab with unedited video because that would be extremely boring to most people, much less kids--it's simply to get them excited and outline some basic concepts in a way that's fun yet still educational (something MythBusters has gotten much better at over the years).
When I go see a movie that is billed as 'entertainment', I am not there to be preached to about particular message.
Why not? I can understand not always wanting to see a movie with a message, but I don't see why you would never want to see such a movie. Some of the greatest movies ever made had strong messages, such as Citizen Kane, Lawrence of Arabia (vaguely similar to Avatar come to think of it), It's a Wonderful Life, etc. They can also express a strong message through satire, such as in Dr. Strangelove.
I usually don't go to movies just to turn my brain off, which would be my complaint about Avatar, certainly not because it was trying to convey a message.
Slashdot Mirror
Also, don't forget the best mnemonic of them all, very useful in trig:
some old hippie caught another hippie tripping over acid
(sine equals opposite over hypotenuse, cosine equals adjacent over hypotenuse, tangent equals opposite over adjacent)
The reasoning is simple. If you are working for a for-profit company and you are unpaid, you are meant to receive the following as compensation:
1) experience
2) something of educational value in your field (you usually get college credit based on this assumption)
The company is legally bound to not use you as a replacement for paid labor (goes back to a Supreme Court decision from 1947).
However, all too often all three fail to materialize. You don't get any worthwhile experience since you spend your time doing menial jobs, don't learn anything (unless applying lard to some rails is 'educational'--saw a 'mythern' doing that once on MythBusters), and the company would have had to pay someone else to do what you're doing. (for all I know the mythern was paid, but I bet she wasn't)
Obviously, this doesn't always happen and I know several people from college who got great internships that immediately led to good jobs after college. The problem is all the lousy internships which put interns in very bad spots. If they complain about it, they're afraid they will have trouble getting jobs in the future. If they don't complain, they have very few protections since they aren't considered employees (so they don't get any normal protections other employees get, such as sexual discrimination protections, etc). They also don't gain the experience or education that would truly help them get jobs.
You're exactly correct. A huge reason why Americans aren't seeing much better gas mileage now versus 30 years ago isn't due to a lack of progress in engine technology. It's due to ever-increasing horsepower. If our parents and grandparents could get by with less engine displacement but even heavier cars why can't we?
I don't even know if there's a correlation between 'supertaskers' and super geniuses.
Back in high school I took a class that accepted only 28 students from the entire class of 450 (an advanced class for math and science). However, I don't recall anyone being especially good at driving and one was certainly absolutely awful, crashing 3 cars due to being distracted by conversations (in his case he would always want to face the person he was talking to--not a good thing if you're a passenger talking to him while he's driving). He was also one of the academically best students in the entire class.
However, there certainly does seem to be a group of supertaskers that can easily handle talking on the phone while driving. I think the key is prioritizing. Some people focus too much on the conversation while driving at the cost of not paying enough attention to what's going on around them. Others will focus less on the conversation as needed while driving.
On the other hand I don't see how anyone can drive and text safely since there is no way to text without at least briefly taking your eyes off the road, unless you can touch-type using your thumb I guess.
I have no great love for the GOP, but if they keep their promise to return to conservatism, they are still the lesser evil from the Tea Party point-of-view.
After all, it's not the GOP that's trying to shove ACTA down our throats and the Mandatory Hospitalization Suppository up our ass.
Yeah, they only wanted to do that in the 90s (example: http://www.salon.com/news/politics/war_room/2010/03/26/hatch). Now that it's 2010 it's armageddon to do it apparently.
Google hasn't stopped filtering in China, only threatened to stop filtering.
It should be trivial, but not for us since that isn't exactly public information.
You are correct that it doesn't bring a utopia. However, one could argue nuclear weapons bring peace too due to MAD, or at least help with global stability and usually nuclear weapons are about as far from a utopian vision as one can imagine.
I think having strong trade ties certainly serves as a good deterrent to war even if it doesn't always succeed in preventing wars. As probably anyone posting here knows the trade between China and the US is so immense that neither country could cut economic ties without causing great harm to their own economy and currency. That was not the case between Germany and France in 1941, a time when trade was much lower as a fraction of their economies than it is today.
A closer analogy probably would be the American Civil War when the trade between the north and south was a substantial fraction of their economies and the sudden drop in trade caused economic harm to both (although particularly the south). However, in that case the south viewed the alternative (no slaves) as an economic disaster too which mitigated that concern.
It depends on how anal you want to be. If you take a high-level approach as Jefferson did then it is a reasonable statement (when he said "and it may be observed that the nations which refuse monopolies of invention, are as fruitful as England in new and useful devices.").
If you compare nations that have weak patent protection (say China or Russia) vs ones that do (most everyone else that is a major world player) the difference in the level of invention is quite large.
Who invented jets? The British. Who invented the airplane? The Americans. Who invented almost every initial contraption related to making electricity available to the public? Americans. Trains (and tons of types of steam engines)? British, French and Americans. Most of the major agriculture inventions in the early 20th and 19th century were also invented in America and England (tractors, the cotton gin, etc).
I could go on.
Then look at major Russian inventions. Did Kalashnikov profit from his invention? Nope. Have Russians made any other guns that have caught traction worldwide? No.
Obviously to 'prove' that having patent protection leads towards more development would be difficult. But to argue that it is ineffective is burying your head in the sand.
Also, the question isn't really the number of useless or little-known inventions, but ones that had an impact. Part of the reason patents exist isn't to stop the spread ideas, but make it easier to spread. First, the information in the patent is public and easily accessible to other inventors. Once the patent expires (presuming it's even granted in the first place) any information in the patent is free to use. In addition, it is meant to encourage the adoption of the invention by making it easier for the inventor to get the capital needed to produce it on a large scale (which I guarantee does help in the real world--try talking to a venture capitalist sometime if you have doubts).
OK, that makes sense. Then the question is whether the royalties Nokia demanded were reasonable. I can't see any way of determining this from where I sit, it all seems to be information closely held by both Apple and Nokia.
Not exactly. The most succinct sentence from that quote probably is, "Society may give an exclusive right to the profits arising from them, as an encouragement to men to pursue ideas which may produce utility, but this may or may not be done, according to the will and convenience of the society, without claim or complaint from anybody."
He obviously is a decenter but acknowledges the reason why an exclusive license to an idea would be granted. In the course of time his last sentence certainly didn't hold true. From the time he wrote that passage until well after WWII the great majority of inventions in the world took place in countries that had a patent system similar to ours. We certainly weren't the only country to copy England in this regard.
However, a line does need to be drawn--he points out that it is unreasonable to expect a patent to be inheritable. Of course, this only holds true to flesh-and-blood people--corporations inherit patents all the time simply by buying other corporations, but at least there's still a time restriction on the patent.
He also lists the downside to having a monopoly to the idea, further reason why the monopoly shouldn't be permanent.
And believe me, the ability to patent an idea is extremely encouraging to inventors--often one of the primary assets of a small startup corporation is its intellectual property and is something venture capitalists are strongly interested in.
You certainly aren't trolling but are you correct? I don't know whether Nokia is required to offer Apple reasonable license rates for GSM technology. I thought the whole point of patents is to allow inventors to have a time-limited monopoly to their idea. But as far as I know the only restriction to their invention is the time they are given exclusive rights to it--ie, there is no requirement that they sell rights to their invention to whoever wants to use it.
I'm certainly not a patent attorney so I don't know if you are correct or not.
No, I don't think so. Take North Korea for example. They have access to no media, no internet, nothing but what the government says. Unless you mean that no media means no public communication at all, not even from the government (which would only happen when there is no government, say in Somalia).
I can't conceive of a single way in which the North Koreans are better off without any media than the Chinese citizens with their filtered media.
Actually, you have it backwards. The programs that were cut would have taken virtually all of NASA's budget, making other exploration programs like this nearly impossible to fund.
I haven't looked at these formats in depth, but it sure sounds like this guy is clueless.
No it doesn't. How many binary formats are you personally involved with? I work in an entirely different line of binary formats but all of his criticisms seemed absolutely valid. It is quite common for CRC values to be optional or at least variable length depending on the medium the data will be used in.
I work with GPS data with many different formats (each manufacturer tends to have their own format) as well as several industry standard formats for data interchange. In formats that are designed for files there's usually no CRC but provisions for forward or backward scanning, although I have never seen a provision for random access in GPS data (because it almost never makes sense to do so in a time-critical environment--the data is processed either forwards or backwards and even if only processing part of a file the time it takes to seek to the starting point is miniscule compared to the time it takes to process the data).
In data streams there's usually either a simple checksum or a variable length CRC. There are also many formats where there is simply a one- or two-bit version field using the reasoning of the article's author. It is a complete waste of bandwidth to use a version field any larger because any future version can be completely different. If the developer ends up wanting to have 256 versions of the protocol they can still use a larger version field when there is a need for it (a situation I've never seen or even come close to). Until then, one bit is all that is required. In that case the later format would use a variable length integer for the version in order to maintain backwards compatibility (so there is a potential cost in future formats vs having a fixed version length field, which is why some formats use 2 or 3 bits--depending on how likely the author believes many future versions may developed).
If I were to design a 'universal' protocol I would certainly make CRCs optional since they are only needed when there is nothing else providing data integrity. If it's a file then the file system itself provides this protection.
No, from what I read in the article the author is very informed and knows what he is talking about.
In Numerical Recipes for C they list several benchmarks for determining how good one random number generator is compared to another (based on various statistics measures) so it certainly is possible for one method to be more random than another. Read chapter 7 of that book for all the details you could possibly want on this subject (with references to even more information).
One way of generating a good random number in Linux is using /dev/random (which uses a hardware-based random signal as its source, I don't recall the details). However, it isn't fast enough for most applications, outputting only a few bytes per second of random information, although it can serve as a useful seed for other random number generators. Just run 'cat /dev/random > random_bytes.bin' to see its output.
I'm curious what rate random information can be generated using the method in the article. I'm presuming it's fast enough that an application could rely solely on this data without having to use it as a seed for a pseudo-random number generator. The question is how long does it take for the hardware to get to the state where its next value is unpredictable--in the case of /dev/random it's relatively long.
I can only guess that he simply isn't attracted to her (perhaps she looks unattractive to him?). But justifying it by admitting you're not attracted to her even though you'd behave the same way does seem odd to me.
The obvious answer would be the UN. However, equally obvious is that they cannot/would not as they currently stand.
So long as the US is willing to carry the load in maintaining global stability in difficult areas I'm sure our allies will allow us to do so at minimal costs to themselves. Unless we back off, forcing the UN to carry more of the load, there will be little incentive for them to do more (unless more terrorist attacks occur in their backyard of course).
We still would give a lot of aid via the UN, both financially and militarily, but it would probably cost much less than how much we're paying today.
Another issue is the very expensive projects we have. Why do we need such an expensive air force at this point in time? There's an obvious need for helicopters, but why stealth ships, stealth fighters and stealth bombers? Are we worried about the Taliban shooting down normal bombers?
I think the US military budget could be significantly reduced while still maintaining our current bases around the world by simply canceling some of the most expensive projects (although we would still pay far more for our military than any other country).
I don't follow your logic on point one. Senators are already essentially elected directly by the people since each state has already passed legislation that determines the winner of a senate race by who gets the biggest majority/plurality of the state's election.
However, on point two it looks like you're correct. Since the Supreme Court made this ruling, the only way to overturn the ruling in the near term is to do so via an amendment.
But if you think this health care bill has been difficult to pass, it probably would be nothing compared to how difficult it would be to pass an amendment that would bar corporations from donating to political campaigns or using their money for political advertisements.
I think the more difficult part is the education side. It seems that if you get a degree but don't get a steady girlfriend while in college or immediately afterward it's extremely difficult to find a girl with a degree that isn't already married.
I can't remember the last time I met a girl my age (30) that had a 4 year degree that was single (and I live in Boulder, CO, hardly a place where it should be hard to find single women with a degree). Well, technically I met one but she had a drinking problem (consuming a half dozen Everclear jello shots plus a lot of other drinks didn't even phase her...).
However you feel about kids in America, in Japan the pressure is much higher. Of course, it's not a coincidence that they have one of the highest suicide rates in the world.
There's enormous pressure on kids to study hard and get into a good college. Almost every child in Japan has to take an enormously important exam at the end of high school that essentially determines their fate (from their point of view) by determining which college they get into, from the most prestigious (Tokyo University) to not getting in one at all, at which point they can either become 'ronin' (literal interpretation is 'wandering samuri'--they work part time jobs and study to try to take the test again later) or simply give up on college but are permanently regulated to lower paying, unskilled jobs likely for the rest of their lives.
There's also great social pressure to conform to societal norms, with only an exception for when they are in college. Before and especially afterward they cannot stand out too much in any way (at least that's what I've seen and what friends that have lived in Japan have told me).
And God help you if you become unemployed--that's where many of the suicides come from. In many ways they are still a very traditional society and there's probably few people in Japan that have more pressure (and guilt) on them than unemployed, married men.
I don't believe they have the rates of overall mental illness in children that we do, but I don't know that for a fact.
Yes, I noticed it. I think it's more obvious when you're closer to the screen.
It was most obvious to me during fast motion, with objects near the screen (such as when he was flying on that creature for the first time).
I also wish they'd increase the frame rate substantially at movie theaters, especially for movies that have a lot of fast motion (like action movies).
The strange thing is I'm not a FPS snob with games. While I can see the difference between high and low frame rates, so long as the frame rate is OK (say always above 20 fps and usually above 30 fps) I have no complaints.
I don't know, I never had any training and can build computers--and it used to be somewhat harder in a way because RAM used to be a PITA to install in the old days. You also don't have to deal with master/slave settings on hard drives and usually don't even need to worry too much about which SATA port you plug the drive into (especially on low-end motherboards that don't offer RAID).
Now you can go to a website like Newegg, pick a CPU for a new computer and then you'll be presented a list of combos you can buy to go with the CPU (ranging from complete systems to various combinations of RAM, motherboard, power supply, etc). You're essentially given a parts list simply by picking any component of a new computer to start with. If you aren't too concerned with the details of your new computer and aren't too knowledgeable about computer components this can be very helpful.
I know building a computer is intimidating for some people but when I compare the complexity of building a computer to other things I know how to do it seems pretty simple. Even when I compare it to changing the oil in my car it still seems pretty similar in complexity.
Changing oil:
1) Find out what kind of oil you need (depending on the season/climate you live at and the kind of car you drive), what quantity you need and what kind of oil filter to get (can determine which oil filter at the store of course)
2) Find out where the bolt in the oil pan is that you will remove to drain the oil.
3) If it's very cold outside, run the car for a minute or two so that the oil will drain without too much viscosity. If the car has been running for more than a few minutes, especially on a warmer day, let the engine cool down for a while so that you aren't burned when the oil drain plug is removed.
4) Put a oil drain pan underneath the oil plug and carefully loosen the bolt.
5) After the oil has been completely drained, remove the old oil filter. (can definitely be easier said than done on some cars where the oil filter is difficult to reach)
6) Rub some new oil around the gasket of the new filter and install, being careful to not screw on the new filter too tightly.
7) Clean the drain plug washer and rub some new oil on it, then reinstall the drain plug, being careful to not tighten the bolt too much.
8) Add the correct amount of oil to the car.
9) Turn the car on for a minute, then check the oil level, adding more oil as necessary.
I could write the instructions for building a computer, but it would probably be about the same number of steps and would certainly be easier to do from a mechanical point of view.
I submit that it's far better to be boring, than to be actively annoying.
Better in what way? There are hours of time during shuttle missions when there may be 5-10 minutes of talking over the course of each hour. The viewer can't really see what's going on because they can't see the instrument panels but can only watch things from afar from stationary cameras placed in the mission control center and on the shuttle.
I didn't say they needed to duplicate MythBusters, but they definitely need editing in a big way. Personally, I don't have the time to watch an entire 3 to 4 hour spacewalk but would be interested in watching a summary of the spacewalk along with a narration of what they were doing at each step.
MythBusters is probably the highest rated show on Discovery of all time and is certainly getting more kids involved in science (and has won praise from various educational groups). The goal wouldn't be solely to show exactly what a real scientist would do in the lab with unedited video because that would be extremely boring to most people, much less kids--it's simply to get them excited and outline some basic concepts in a way that's fun yet still educational (something MythBusters has gotten much better at over the years).
When I go see a movie that is billed as 'entertainment', I am not there to be preached to about particular message.
Why not? I can understand not always wanting to see a movie with a message, but I don't see why you would never want to see such a movie. Some of the greatest movies ever made had strong messages, such as Citizen Kane, Lawrence of Arabia (vaguely similar to Avatar come to think of it), It's a Wonderful Life, etc. They can also express a strong message through satire, such as in Dr. Strangelove.
I usually don't go to movies just to turn my brain off, which would be my complaint about Avatar, certainly not because it was trying to convey a message.