You need to encourage people to use the roads at different times, carpool, work from home, etc.
Not entirely correct. You need to encourage employers to allow their workers to use the roads at different times. My employer doesn't, never has, and never will... flex-time is not an option. Neither is telecommuting, and there are a lot of companies that are like that. Consequently, congestion pricing is simply a selective tax placed upon me, and those like me, and unless you want to pass laws that mandate that employers give their employees more flexibility, this is just going to cost us a lot of money. Personally I'm against it.
Frankly, where I live it's entirely unnecessary, since my State's tollway authority ended up with almost a billion dollar surplus. They just rake in the dough on the toll roads. They've taken in such an incredible amount of money that the state legislature was eyeballing it, saying that if the tollway people can find a use for it, we sure can. So of course a bunch of new "improvement" projects started the next year to burn off that extra cash.
Yes, there's a lot more to being a common carrier than legal immunity. There are also the regulatory burden and quality of service standards under which a common carrier must operate. That's why the big boys decided that they'd get matters adjusted so that, as data services, they wouldn't have to deal with that expensive, consumer-oriented nonsense. They figured it was a fair deal in exchange for not having immunity to lawsuits arising from the use of their equipment.
IMHO any self respecting programmer needs to at least KNOW how to operate close to the metal, if only so it makes them a better coder at the higher levels.
Well, a lot depends upon your eventual focus. Me, I started out in life on a Rockwell PPS-4 4-bit micro, eventually graduating to an 8080 and then the 6502, 6800, 6809... didn't get much closer to the metal than that. I agree with you that, as a general principle, knowing the low-level stuff can make you a better programmer. With C/C++, I'd say that knowing assembler (several assemblers) is a definite plus, really a prerequisite, especially if you do embedded systems work with limited resources.
However, given the level of abstraction in more sophisticated programming languages (Java and.Net in particular), knowing how to use pointers and memalloc probably doesn't buy you all that much. You'll never use them directly, and you're so far from the underlying constructs you're better off just learning the best practices for the language of your choice. Otherwise, you're just guessing at what's going on under the hood.
he's right... but the thing is, the Federal Government isn't doing this to provide us with more security, they're doing it to provide themselves with more power, power over us. Consequently, they don't much care about our privacy, and there's no reasoning with them on that score.
So far as America is concerned, any socialized medical system is fatally flawed from the get-go if it doesn't address issues of fraud and waste. The problem is not that there isn't enough money to go around: it's that a substantial percentage of those funds are not being spent on health care! They're being diverted, by a vast interlocking system of profiteering, fraud, and outright theft. Fix that before you talk about socializing anything, or you're just creating a trillion-dollar financial cesspit that will make Medicare seem a paragon of efficient management. Thing is, the system is too big, too entrenched, to ever be fixed.
Let's face it: our health care providers, hospitals, medical suppliers, pharmaceutical corporations and insurance companies cannot be trusted to handle that amount of responsibility wisely. They've thoroughly botched it so far, Medicare is an ongoing disaster, and simply allowing the Feds to extend their hegemony by completely taking over the medical system is not going to improve matters. Quite the opposite, in fact, and frankly I don't want those people dictating how and where I receive health care. On my father's behalf I had to fight Medicare and Social Security just to get the minimum he was due after decades of paying into those morally and financially bankrupt systems, and he eventually died because of them. Bureaucrats are not the people you want making medical decisions for you, believe me.
We honestly don't need more of the same crap. And I'm sick and tired of people pointing out how well socialized medicine works for other countries, like Canada or Germany. That's fine for them, I'm happy they found something that works. Their cultures support that kind of system. However, it doesn't work here because the corruption is thoroughly institutionalized, and you can't legislate ethics.
First off, the U.S. doesn't need proof that Pakistan has nukes. The Saudi's... I don't know. Can't see us invading Saudi Arabia at this point: can't really afford it even if we wanted to.
The biggest threat to the whole world is probably China, not the United States... you're so far off base about U.S. military capability it's not even funny. You do realize that we've reduced our military strength substantially since the Cold War, and that the Iraq conflict is straining us considerably? Furthermore, Bush is the lowest-rated President in U.S. history: there are very few supporters of the War in Iraq over here (or the War on Drugs, or any other War for that matter.) I know it's popular to call the U.S. "the greatest threat" but that's really just not true. We're not even an economic/industrial threat, anymore... China has taken over that role. If you're smart, stop focusing on us and start looking around you.
There are far more dangerous threats out there than the United States will ever be.
The assertation is not that the FBI stole the secrets. The story alledges that the FBI covered up evidence that "high ranking US government officials" did the deed.
So in other words, the FBI stole the secrets... just unofficially.
How could you get an honest opinion out of someone in office if they know their future is on the line.
Because people that aren't honest wouldn't bother trying for the office if they know that they're jobs are on the line if they lie, cheat, or steal. It's part and parcel of the job. I think you're looking at this the wrong way: how can we expect honesty from our bureaucrats when their jobs aren't on the line? The disease of unaccountability has infected our government at all levels: the only way to fix that is to hold them accountable for what they say and do. Not that I expect that to happen anytime soon, but simply allowing them to hide their malfeasance under the cloak of "executive privilege" and expecting them to do the right thing "just because" is, I'm afraid, a naive approach
less emissions means more of the fuel is being used for propulsion instead of being expelled.
Not necessarily, and in fact, probably not. Mandating lower emissions is not the same thing as mandating greater efficiency. Take the catalytic converter that all cars sold in the U.S. must have. While it does reduce certain emissions, it also lowers engine efficiency by increasing back-pressure (which means the engine uses more fuel.) So you can't say that a greener engine is automatically more efficient.
On the other hand, if the Feds really wanted to lower emissions, they would put stricter mileage requirements on auto vendors.
Besides which, every little bit helps. Do you know the amount of energy that could be saved if everybody unplugged those electronic devices that "sleep" when they're not being used?
A substantial amount, no doubt. The problem is that many devices (such as my TV set) need to be live in order to keep their configuration memories alive. Unplug them, and you have to reset the clock, rescan your channels, etc. A supercap would be all that's needed, in many cases, to allow a device to avoid having a standby mode, but many don't have it. This will probably be a case where the Feds have to mandate that all consumer electronics can survive "x" hours of disconnection from the A.C. line.
If they can spend a week in gym discussing STDs (at least my high school did)
When I was in high-school (this was about thirty years ago) we got one period in biology class to discuss sexually-transmitted diseases (well, venereal disease as it was known back then.) We also saw a 16 mm film on the subject, mostly composed of various body parts (giant penises, swollen vulvas) that had huge syphilitic sores on them. Some people in the class were physically ill from it.
Didn't seem to help much, though, and a few of the girls in that class got pregnant not long after.
We never got any First-AID training either, I might add, although they were very careful to teach us how to drive a car. Frankly, I wish they'd offered some training in how to care for someone who was seriously injured. The paramedics don't always make it in time.
It's not the information they want to protect (I mean, any scientific results, etc.) but more the flawed and possibly corrupt decision-making processes that went into their rejection of California's proposed regulation.
I find that powering on a system is an excellent time to catch things that are starting to fail.
Well, if your equipment is so unreliable that you feel the need to test it every single day, I suppose so. If that's important to you, autoboot them on a fixed schedule (weekly, say). At least then they'll be warmed up, all the hard drive and fan bearings will be at operating temperature, and you won't incur much extra wear and tear from your need to continually test them.
Furthermore, I've also found that drives that are only run a few hours a day outlast drives that are run 24/7 anyway.
After thirty years in this business I've found the exact opposite.
Oh, come on. Five years back when Vista was just a gleam in Bill Gates' eye Microsoft was promising all sorts of fantastic things, things that the Mac eventually came out with (or already had at the time) while Vista has been an ongoing mess of promised features being removed. Like I said elsewhere, I don't own a Mac and don't much care for Apple or it's reality-bending leader, but Vista is a lame-duck product considering how long Microsoft had to work on it. I say that as a software engineer who has to learn and work with Microsoft products (hey, it's a living.)
Nobody's saying that all such things should be performed in public, but the record of their dealings damn well should be. Period! If their actions are not justifiable, then we need and have every right to know that, so we can get rid of these assholes and put in people that are more trustworthy. The issue here is that an important matter of public record, one that affects many millions of people, is being hidden from us using a flimsy excuse and a misuse of "executive privilege." If that doesn't at least smell like malfeasance in office to you, you must have a problem with your olfactory organs.
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You need to encourage people to use the roads at different times, carpool, work from home, etc.
... flex-time is not an option. Neither is telecommuting, and there are a lot of companies that are like that. Consequently, congestion pricing is simply a selective tax placed upon me, and those like me, and unless you want to pass laws that mandate that employers give their employees more flexibility, this is just going to cost us a lot of money. Personally I'm against it.
Not entirely correct. You need to encourage employers to allow their workers to use the roads at different times. My employer doesn't, never has, and never will
Frankly, where I live it's entirely unnecessary, since my State's tollway authority ended up with almost a billion dollar surplus. They just rake in the dough on the toll roads. They've taken in such an incredible amount of money that the state legislature was eyeballing it, saying that if the tollway people can find a use for it, we sure can. So of course a bunch of new "improvement" projects started the next year to burn off that extra cash.
It didn't take long, believe me.
Yes, there's a lot more to being a common carrier than legal immunity. There are also the regulatory burden and quality of service standards under which a common carrier must operate. That's why the big boys decided that they'd get matters adjusted so that, as data services, they wouldn't have to deal with that expensive, consumer-oriented nonsense. They figured it was a fair deal in exchange for not having immunity to lawsuits arising from the use of their equipment.
By selectively filtering content they are no longer a common carrier
So far as data services are concerned, ISPs are not common carriers and never have been.
IMHO any self respecting programmer needs to at least KNOW how to operate close to the metal, if only so it makes them a better coder at the higher levels.
... didn't get much closer to the metal than that. I agree with you that, as a general principle, knowing the low-level stuff can make you a better programmer. With C/C++, I'd say that knowing assembler (several assemblers) is a definite plus, really a prerequisite, especially if you do embedded systems work with limited resources.
.Net in particular), knowing how to use pointers and memalloc probably doesn't buy you all that much. You'll never use them directly, and you're so far from the underlying constructs you're better off just learning the best practices for the language of your choice. Otherwise, you're just guessing at what's going on under the hood.
Well, a lot depends upon your eventual focus. Me, I started out in life on a Rockwell PPS-4 4-bit micro, eventually graduating to an 8080 and then the 6502, 6800, 6809
However, given the level of abstraction in more sophisticated programming languages (Java and
Yeah, but you wrote the "N" word ... Instant -1 Troll.
Sure ... now we wait and see if you get that +5 Insightful.
I was just being facetious, actually.
he's right ... but the thing is, the Federal Government isn't doing this to provide us with more security, they're doing it to provide themselves with more power, power over us. Consequently, they don't much care about our privacy, and there's no reasoning with them on that score.
So far as America is concerned, any socialized medical system is fatally flawed from the get-go if it doesn't address issues of fraud and waste. The problem is not that there isn't enough money to go around: it's that a substantial percentage of those funds are not being spent on health care! They're being diverted, by a vast interlocking system of profiteering, fraud, and outright theft. Fix that before you talk about socializing anything, or you're just creating a trillion-dollar financial cesspit that will make Medicare seem a paragon of efficient management. Thing is, the system is too big, too entrenched, to ever be fixed.
Let's face it: our health care providers, hospitals, medical suppliers, pharmaceutical corporations and insurance companies cannot be trusted to handle that amount of responsibility wisely. They've thoroughly botched it so far, Medicare is an ongoing disaster, and simply allowing the Feds to extend their hegemony by completely taking over the medical system is not going to improve matters. Quite the opposite, in fact, and frankly I don't want those people dictating how and where I receive health care. On my father's behalf I had to fight Medicare and Social Security just to get the minimum he was due after decades of paying into those morally and financially bankrupt systems, and he eventually died because of them. Bureaucrats are not the people you want making medical decisions for you, believe me.
We honestly don't need more of the same crap. And I'm sick and tired of people pointing out how well socialized medicine works for other countries, like Canada or Germany. That's fine for them, I'm happy they found something that works. Their cultures support that kind of system. However, it doesn't work here because the corruption is thoroughly institutionalized, and you can't legislate ethics.
They seem to feel that they are in some manner entitled to get the conservative Democratic vote
... Democrats and entitlements do sorta go hand in hand.
Well
First off, the U.S. doesn't need proof that Pakistan has nukes. The Saudi's ... I don't know. Can't see us invading Saudi Arabia at this point: can't really afford it even if we wanted to.
... you're so far off base about U.S. military capability it's not even funny. You do realize that we've reduced our military strength substantially since the Cold War, and that the Iraq conflict is straining us considerably? Furthermore, Bush is the lowest-rated President in U.S. history: there are very few supporters of the War in Iraq over here (or the War on Drugs, or any other War for that matter.) I know it's popular to call the U.S. "the greatest threat" but that's really just not true. We're not even an economic/industrial threat, anymore ... China has taken over that role. If you're smart, stop focusing on us and start looking around you.
The biggest threat to the whole world is probably China, not the United States
There are far more dangerous threats out there than the United States will ever be.
The assertation is not that the FBI stole the secrets. The story alledges that the FBI covered up evidence that "high ranking US government officials" did the deed.
... just unofficially.
So in other words, the FBI stole the secrets
They've cried wolf a few too many times.
How could you get an honest opinion out of someone in office if they know their future is on the line.
Because people that aren't honest wouldn't bother trying for the office if they know that they're jobs are on the line if they lie, cheat, or steal. It's part and parcel of the job. I think you're looking at this the wrong way: how can we expect honesty from our bureaucrats when their jobs aren't on the line? The disease of unaccountability has infected our government at all levels: the only way to fix that is to hold them accountable for what they say and do. Not that I expect that to happen anytime soon, but simply allowing them to hide their malfeasance under the cloak of "executive privilege" and expecting them to do the right thing "just because" is, I'm afraid, a naive approach
less emissions means more of the fuel is being used for propulsion instead of being expelled.
Not necessarily, and in fact, probably not. Mandating lower emissions is not the same thing as mandating greater efficiency. Take the catalytic converter that all cars sold in the U.S. must have. While it does reduce certain emissions, it also lowers engine efficiency by increasing back-pressure (which means the engine uses more fuel.) So you can't say that a greener engine is automatically more efficient.
On the other hand, if the Feds really wanted to lower emissions, they would put stricter mileage requirements on auto vendors.
Besides which, every little bit helps. Do you know the amount of energy that could be saved if everybody unplugged those electronic devices that "sleep" when they're not being used?
A substantial amount, no doubt. The problem is that many devices (such as my TV set) need to be live in order to keep their configuration memories alive. Unplug them, and you have to reset the clock, rescan your channels, etc. A supercap would be all that's needed, in many cases, to allow a device to avoid having a standby mode, but many don't have it. This will probably be a case where the Feds have to mandate that all consumer electronics can survive "x" hours of disconnection from the A.C. line.
but now IT has loaded so much crap on it ("desktop agents" [ie apps that spy on me], antivirus, patches, etc)
Autoruns is your friend.
If they can spend a week in gym discussing STDs (at least my high school did)
When I was in high-school (this was about thirty years ago) we got one period in biology class to discuss sexually-transmitted diseases (well, venereal disease as it was known back then.) We also saw a 16 mm film on the subject, mostly composed of various body parts (giant penises, swollen vulvas) that had huge syphilitic sores on them. Some people in the class were physically ill from it.
Didn't seem to help much, though, and a few of the girls in that class got pregnant not long after.
We never got any First-AID training either, I might add, although they were very careful to teach us how to drive a car. Frankly, I wish they'd offered some training in how to care for someone who was seriously injured. The paramedics don't always make it in time.
These guys seem to think they are the government ... or at least, in their own minds, they feel they should be.
Really ... it's enough to make you want to throw up.
It's not the information they want to protect (I mean, any scientific results, etc.) but more the flawed and possibly corrupt decision-making processes that went into their rejection of California's proposed regulation.
I find that powering on a system is an excellent time to catch things that are starting to fail.
Well, if your equipment is so unreliable that you feel the need to test it every single day, I suppose so. If that's important to you, autoboot them on a fixed schedule (weekly, say). At least then they'll be warmed up, all the hard drive and fan bearings will be at operating temperature, and you won't incur much extra wear and tear from your need to continually test them.
Furthermore, I've also found that drives that are only run a few hours a day outlast drives that are run 24/7 anyway.
After thirty years in this business I've found the exact opposite.
Oh, come on. Five years back when Vista was just a gleam in Bill Gates' eye Microsoft was promising all sorts of fantastic things, things that the Mac eventually came out with (or already had at the time) while Vista has been an ongoing mess of promised features being removed. Like I said elsewhere, I don't own a Mac and don't much care for Apple or it's reality-bending leader, but Vista is a lame-duck product considering how long Microsoft had to work on it. I say that as a software engineer who has to learn and work with Microsoft products (hey, it's a living.)
You apparently don't understand the point.
Nobody's saying that all such things should be performed in public, but the record of their dealings damn well should be. Period! If their actions are not justifiable, then we need and have every right to know that, so we can get rid of these assholes and put in people that are more trustworthy. The issue here is that an important matter of public record, one that affects many millions of people, is being hidden from us using a flimsy excuse and a misuse of "executive privilege." If that doesn't at least smell like malfeasance in office to you, you must have a problem with your olfactory organs.