In everyday speech "skank" is a less specific accusation than "being a prostitute", more like "slut". It's just an accusation of promiscuity, not criminality.
Yeah, phrased weirdly, but I assume it means something like, "he incriminated himself even after being advised of his Miranda right to remain silent". It might mean something stronger, though, like police actively asked him if he was waiving his right not to incriminate himself, and he confirmed that he was--- police sometimes do this so that the recorded interview is absolutely clear that the suspect knew what his rights are and was consciously waiving them, rather than speaking accidentally or because he was tricked into incriminating himself.
I think at this point their main interest is in the other stuff--- they've gotten bored with just running a torrent site, and are more interested in engaging in some variety of performance art.
it's that Facebook represents itself as secure and private to its users and then leaves the barn door open for developers, betraying that trust
In particular, Facebook doesn't make much effort to encourage better privacy practices. They could, for example, have multiple access levels for apps. A "quiz" app doesn't actually need any access to information; all it needs is the ability to post a quiz results to your wall. That's what people expect it to do. But there's no way to tell if this is what it does or not.
If Facebook had multiple app access levels, there'd be a chance that people would actually notice nefarious things happening more easily. If you clicked on a quiz app, expecting it to ask you for the right to post to your wall, and instead you get a popup asking for the right to access all your information, you might know something is fishy, because it's asking for permissions it clearly doesn't need. But with the current system, you have to either not use the app at all, or give it access to everything and trust it not to misuse it. By making "apps get access to everything" the expected option, Facebook encourages this culture of laxity.
That only really works if parking is a nearly unlimited commodity. Unmetered parking when parking is scarce just leads to people circling forever, like New York City.
I mean, sure, no payment is always the most convenient option, because you don't have to deal with payment. You could avoid the hassle of tokens or payment cards on a subway if subway rides were free, too.
I'm willing to believe that. But it's only worth voting the Democrats out of office on that issue if there's reason to believe that it would happen if the Republicans were in power. But the Republicans controlled both branches of government, with sizable majorities, for six years, and it didn't happen. Instead, we got a ridiculous government-funded prescription drugs entitlement in Medicare Part D---the exact opposite of any attempt at cost reduction.
To argue against the current party in power on an issue in a way that's convincing, you need to find an issue on which there is some viable alternative party that has a better position on that issue.
I was going to point out a spelling error in multiple posts in this thread, but instead I'm going to choose to consider it spelled correctly, and read the entire thread as if it were talking about a female hero.
No, but on the other hand it also doesn't count subsidies that corporations receive directly or indirectly, whether farm subsidies to Archer Daniels Midland, indirect benefits to renewable-energy companies from consumer rebates, or bailouts and loan guarantees for troubled corporations. If you added all those in, many companies pay a negative tax.
Obama's proposed health care "reform" is a dusted-off draft of a Nazi health-care plan
Obama is a Marxist-Leninist
I haven't quite worked out how to explain the fact that most of his redistribution so far has been from the poor to the rich (especially lots and lots of bankers), but I'm pretty sure that's somehow Marxist too.
Only true in highly competitive markets where profit is assumed fixed, because it's been driven down to the lowest level at which suppliers will still remain in the market. In most actual markets, that's not the case, so the cost may be passed on to one of two places: to the consumer as part of the product price; or to the corporation in the form of lower profits (ultimately meaning lower shareholder dividends).
Sex is, Gender does. Second, Slashdot of all places should know that the two are correlations, not causations.
I think it would be hard to argue that there isn't at least some causal effect between sex and gender. Surely it's not merely a coincidental correlation that, in animals having the XY sex-determination system (incl. all mammals), the vast majority of individuals with XX configuration turn out to have primary and secondary sexual characteristics grouped as "female" and play "female" gender roles; and the same with XY and "male"?
Indeed, some more organized and large countries (China being the most effective current example) have programs to try to find people with particular genetic variants to recruit into sports. Want to dope people with testosterone but it's illegal? Find someone with abnormally high levels of testosterone naturally! Thinking of competing in a sport where HGH would help? Find a guy who naturally produces really high levels. Etc.
I guess I don't find that process that interesting. Is there really anything better or more fair about a guy who produces abnormally high levels of HGH, vs. someone else injecting HGH? Why is one more interesting to watch than the other? It seems the only possible answer is attaching some sort of mysticism to the fact that one was "natural".
Hmm, interesting. In that case, the commenters arguing that testing for XX vs. XY would settle the problem in this case would seem to be wrong, and instead the right test would be for hormone levels.
I'm just focusing on corporate taxes because of the silliness of the thinking that corporations pay any tax whatsoever. Their taxes and compliance costs are built into the price of goods that we buy and that they export to other countries.
That's not quite true--- it'd only be the case in perfectly competitive markets where profits approach the minimum level needed to entice suppliers to remain in the market (the sort of idealized Adam Smith market where the invisible hand perfectly matches supply and demand and drives down profit margins). In markets as they actually exist, where the money to pay a tax on profits ultimately comes from depends on the market. In less competitive markets, prices are already set at the highest level the consumer will bear, which may be considerably above the cost of production--- so a tax on profits will simply reduce the profit margin, but not raise prices (because if prices could've been raised, they would've already been raised). Most real-world markets are somewhere in between, where a tax on profits will come partly out of profits and partly in the form of increased costs.
While that's true, the separation of male/female sporting competitions throws a wrench in the works, because it's already based entirely on the assumption that to be "fair", we ought to first do some genetic segregation. So then you open up the whole can of worms about whether a particular person is "unfairly" on the wrong side of the fence.
Most people have an okay time with "male" and "female" as unproblematic concepts, because for the majority of people all the things that might go into the concepts correlate at least reasonably well. Most females are genetically XX, and have both primary and secondary sexual characteristics typical of females. Most males are XY, and have primary/secondary characteristics typical of males.
If those things aren't all correlated nicely, though, it makes clear that there isn't really a solid definition that covers all aspects of what we mean. A genetic test for XX vs. XY? (And then what do you do about XXY?) Just an issue of primary sexual traits? (Do secondary sexual traits matter?) A combination of all the above? (And then what do you do if they don't all match up?)
At some point the distinctions become somewhat arbitrary, and to me at least not all that interesting: there isn't actually any magical "right" answer to the question. Perhaps to get an answer that makes sense in this context we might first answer: what is the purpose of having separate male/female sporting competitions, and which definition of sex or gender would contribute towards that purpose best?
That would be the sensible solution, I agree. But I suspect it in no way would benefit the corporations who whine about corporate tax: they want it to have a high headline rate (so they can whine) but lots of hidden deductions (so they don't have to pay it). In particular, if you were to pick any exception as a place to start eliminating loopholes, you'd immediately run into an army of lobbyists who care very much about that particular exception. They're all there for a reason, after all, and usually the reason is that someone with deep pockets really wanted that loophole.
I'm pretty sure if we actually "prohibit[ed] these business from operating in the states" that they'd go bankrupt pretty quickly: IBM would not last a month if it were prohibited from selling products or services in the United States.
You might want to look at the effective corporate tax rate, since no actual corporations pay 39% with our loophole-riddled tax code of exceptions, credits, and deductions. The actual rate they pay is about 22%, the 2nd-lowest in the developed world (after Ireland).
Well, there's no real official way into the market. If they just started violating copyright, it's possible someone might file a class-action lawsuit against them, and possible they might be able to negotiate some sort of settlement similar to the one Google got. But it's not at all clear that that would be the outcome. Google's basically found a very clever way of using the class-action mechanism's preclusion to violate the copyright of people who haven't agreed, because class-action lawsuits are opt-out rather than opt-in.
The complaint, though, is that Google alone will have access to in-copyright but unknown-author books, as part of the terms of the settlement. It's a weird sort of legal loophole in that nobody normally would have access, but if Google successfully settles a class-action lawsuit, then the class representatives can give Google permission on behalf of the class members. The only way for anyone else to get similar permission would be to either contact these unknown authors individually, or find a way to get a class-action lawsuit filed against them that would enable them to negotiate a similar settlement.
Replying to my own post, it looks like BlueTrack specifically disclaims working on glass. However, a different mouse already claimed to work on glass two years ago.
I suppose what I most want is a bit of an overview of what current mouse tech we have and what they're good for.
This is pretty much the selling point for Microsoft's BlueTrack (video at Amazon) as well. Theirs appears to be based on a blue LED and some optics picking up / processing the scattering, rather than dual lasers, but since they're more or less aimed at the same problem and claim similar success, I'd be curious how they compare.
(Replying to myself with a bit of historical trivia I remembered.)
At the risk of a tangent, the ancient Greeks actually had a specific derogatory word for people who brought frivolous suits for the purpose of extorting settlements or intimidating their targets: that's what the word sycophant originally meant (it now means something else, more like "yes-man" or "toady"). And there was a considerable debate at the time over how widespread the problem was, and what sorts of legal reform, sanctions, or prosecution of egregious offenders could do something about it.
Slashdot Mirror
In everyday speech "skank" is a less specific accusation than "being a prostitute", more like "slut". It's just an accusation of promiscuity, not criminality.
Yeah, phrased weirdly, but I assume it means something like, "he incriminated himself even after being advised of his Miranda right to remain silent". It might mean something stronger, though, like police actively asked him if he was waiving his right not to incriminate himself, and he confirmed that he was--- police sometimes do this so that the recorded interview is absolutely clear that the suspect knew what his rights are and was consciously waiving them, rather than speaking accidentally or because he was tricked into incriminating himself.
I think at this point their main interest is in the other stuff--- they've gotten bored with just running a torrent site, and are more interested in engaging in some variety of performance art.
That's interesting. This really reminds me of that Johnny Cash song "One Piece At A Time", though.
it's that Facebook represents itself as secure and private to its users and then leaves the barn door open for developers, betraying that trust
In particular, Facebook doesn't make much effort to encourage better privacy practices. They could, for example, have multiple access levels for apps. A "quiz" app doesn't actually need any access to information; all it needs is the ability to post a quiz results to your wall. That's what people expect it to do. But there's no way to tell if this is what it does or not.
If Facebook had multiple app access levels, there'd be a chance that people would actually notice nefarious things happening more easily. If you clicked on a quiz app, expecting it to ask you for the right to post to your wall, and instead you get a popup asking for the right to access all your information, you might know something is fishy, because it's asking for permissions it clearly doesn't need. But with the current system, you have to either not use the app at all, or give it access to everything and trust it not to misuse it. By making "apps get access to everything" the expected option, Facebook encourages this culture of laxity.
That only really works if parking is a nearly unlimited commodity. Unmetered parking when parking is scarce just leads to people circling forever, like New York City.
I mean, sure, no payment is always the most convenient option, because you don't have to deal with payment. You could avoid the hassle of tokens or payment cards on a subway if subway rides were free, too.
I'm willing to believe that. But it's only worth voting the Democrats out of office on that issue if there's reason to believe that it would happen if the Republicans were in power. But the Republicans controlled both branches of government, with sizable majorities, for six years, and it didn't happen. Instead, we got a ridiculous government-funded prescription drugs entitlement in Medicare Part D---the exact opposite of any attempt at cost reduction.
To argue against the current party in power on an issue in a way that's convincing, you need to find an issue on which there is some viable alternative party that has a better position on that issue.
I was going to point out a spelling error in multiple posts in this thread, but instead I'm going to choose to consider it spelled correctly, and read the entire thread as if it were talking about a female hero.
No, but on the other hand it also doesn't count subsidies that corporations receive directly or indirectly, whether farm subsidies to Archer Daniels Midland, indirect benefits to renewable-energy companies from consumer rebates, or bailouts and loan guarantees for troubled corporations. If you added all those in, many companies pay a negative tax.
The fact is that Obama is a redistributionist
Man, I love coming to Slashdot for facts!
Other important facts:
I haven't quite worked out how to explain the fact that most of his redistribution so far has been from the poor to the rich (especially lots and lots of bankers), but I'm pretty sure that's somehow Marxist too.
Only true in highly competitive markets where profit is assumed fixed, because it's been driven down to the lowest level at which suppliers will still remain in the market. In most actual markets, that's not the case, so the cost may be passed on to one of two places: to the consumer as part of the product price; or to the corporation in the form of lower profits (ultimately meaning lower shareholder dividends).
I agree with most of that, but in:
I think it would be hard to argue that there isn't at least some causal effect between sex and gender. Surely it's not merely a coincidental correlation that, in animals having the XY sex-determination system (incl. all mammals), the vast majority of individuals with XX configuration turn out to have primary and secondary sexual characteristics grouped as "female" and play "female" gender roles; and the same with XY and "male"?
Indeed, some more organized and large countries (China being the most effective current example) have programs to try to find people with particular genetic variants to recruit into sports. Want to dope people with testosterone but it's illegal? Find someone with abnormally high levels of testosterone naturally! Thinking of competing in a sport where HGH would help? Find a guy who naturally produces really high levels. Etc.
I guess I don't find that process that interesting. Is there really anything better or more fair about a guy who produces abnormally high levels of HGH, vs. someone else injecting HGH? Why is one more interesting to watch than the other? It seems the only possible answer is attaching some sort of mysticism to the fact that one was "natural".
Hmm, interesting. In that case, the commenters arguing that testing for XX vs. XY would settle the problem in this case would seem to be wrong, and instead the right test would be for hormone levels.
That's not quite true--- it'd only be the case in perfectly competitive markets where profits approach the minimum level needed to entice suppliers to remain in the market (the sort of idealized Adam Smith market where the invisible hand perfectly matches supply and demand and drives down profit margins). In markets as they actually exist, where the money to pay a tax on profits ultimately comes from depends on the market. In less competitive markets, prices are already set at the highest level the consumer will bear, which may be considerably above the cost of production--- so a tax on profits will simply reduce the profit margin, but not raise prices (because if prices could've been raised, they would've already been raised). Most real-world markets are somewhere in between, where a tax on profits will come partly out of profits and partly in the form of increased costs.
While that's true, the separation of male/female sporting competitions throws a wrench in the works, because it's already based entirely on the assumption that to be "fair", we ought to first do some genetic segregation. So then you open up the whole can of worms about whether a particular person is "unfairly" on the wrong side of the fence.
Most people have an okay time with "male" and "female" as unproblematic concepts, because for the majority of people all the things that might go into the concepts correlate at least reasonably well. Most females are genetically XX, and have both primary and secondary sexual characteristics typical of females. Most males are XY, and have primary/secondary characteristics typical of males.
If those things aren't all correlated nicely, though, it makes clear that there isn't really a solid definition that covers all aspects of what we mean. A genetic test for XX vs. XY? (And then what do you do about XXY?) Just an issue of primary sexual traits? (Do secondary sexual traits matter?) A combination of all the above? (And then what do you do if they don't all match up?)
At some point the distinctions become somewhat arbitrary, and to me at least not all that interesting: there isn't actually any magical "right" answer to the question. Perhaps to get an answer that makes sense in this context we might first answer: what is the purpose of having separate male/female sporting competitions, and which definition of sex or gender would contribute towards that purpose best?
That would be the sensible solution, I agree. But I suspect it in no way would benefit the corporations who whine about corporate tax: they want it to have a high headline rate (so they can whine) but lots of hidden deductions (so they don't have to pay it). In particular, if you were to pick any exception as a place to start eliminating loopholes, you'd immediately run into an army of lobbyists who care very much about that particular exception. They're all there for a reason, after all, and usually the reason is that someone with deep pockets really wanted that loophole.
I'm pretty sure if we actually "prohibit[ed] these business from operating in the states" that they'd go bankrupt pretty quickly: IBM would not last a month if it were prohibited from selling products or services in the United States.
You might want to look at the effective corporate tax rate, since no actual corporations pay 39% with our loophole-riddled tax code of exceptions, credits, and deductions. The actual rate they pay is about 22%, the 2nd-lowest in the developed world (after Ireland).
Well, there's no real official way into the market. If they just started violating copyright, it's possible someone might file a class-action lawsuit against them, and possible they might be able to negotiate some sort of settlement similar to the one Google got. But it's not at all clear that that would be the outcome. Google's basically found a very clever way of using the class-action mechanism's preclusion to violate the copyright of people who haven't agreed, because class-action lawsuits are opt-out rather than opt-in.
The complaint, though, is that Google alone will have access to in-copyright but unknown-author books, as part of the terms of the settlement. It's a weird sort of legal loophole in that nobody normally would have access, but if Google successfully settles a class-action lawsuit, then the class representatives can give Google permission on behalf of the class members. The only way for anyone else to get similar permission would be to either contact these unknown authors individually, or find a way to get a class-action lawsuit filed against them that would enable them to negotiate a similar settlement.
Replying to my own post, it looks like BlueTrack specifically disclaims working on glass. However, a different mouse already claimed to work on glass two years ago.
I suppose what I most want is a bit of an overview of what current mouse tech we have and what they're good for.
This is pretty much the selling point for Microsoft's BlueTrack (video at Amazon) as well. Theirs appears to be based on a blue LED and some optics picking up / processing the scattering, rather than dual lasers, but since they're more or less aimed at the same problem and claim similar success, I'd be curious how they compare.
(Replying to myself with a bit of historical trivia I remembered.)
At the risk of a tangent, the ancient Greeks actually had a specific derogatory word for people who brought frivolous suits for the purpose of extorting settlements or intimidating their targets: that's what the word sycophant originally meant (it now means something else, more like "yes-man" or "toady"). And there was a considerable debate at the time over how widespread the problem was, and what sorts of legal reform, sanctions, or prosecution of egregious offenders could do something about it.