People can choose to do good things or do bad things.
But, if you could do something so that people were not able to make the bad choice at all, would you do it?
In the extreme case, a guy with a gun is robbing a bank and has hostages. Now, he can choose to shoot the hostages, or he can choose not to shoot the hostages. If you had the opportunity to shoot the robber dead so he can't choose to shoot the hostages, would you?
People can choose to drink and drive or not drink or not drive. If there was an inexpensive, perfect piece of technology that was convenient and stopped some people from driving drunk and never stopped sober people from driving, would you require people to install it in their cars?
Yes, people have choice. But some people will choose to do bad things. Saying that the murderer is responsible for killing the victim doesn't stop people from killing victims.
He doesn't even consider non-material, photon-based probing methods, which would increase the rate of exploration by a factor of 10.
Doesn't matter. Light only travels so fast, and we've only been here, what, 10,000 years? Nobody further than 10,000 light years away could have possibly found us yet. And a 10,000 light year sphere is well less than 4% of the galaxy.
This whole study is kind of dumb, because it doesn't matter that you can explore 4% of the galaxy in 4 billion years when we've only been here for 10,000 years. Even if they did come to earth, it's almost certain that when they were here, they found either nothing or some bacteria and kept going.
You can only search for your kid's name, email or username if they are actually using their real name, or an email or username you know. What this does is let you search for ANYONE LOGGING ON FROM YOUR COMPUTER. See the difference? Now parents can tell if their children are posting fake profiles.
MySpace shouldn't have allowed their users to modify the pages so heavily. They shouldn't have allowed people to have music that plays when you visit the page. They shouldn't have made a system that can't talk to other stuff (like del.icio.us tags or RSS readers). They shouldn't have made it so freaking hard to use. (It takes three times as many clicks to do on something on MySpace than what it should take.)
If myspace were to prevent people from exhibiting their stupidity, how would I know who the stupid people are?
Not possible. The only way to double the talent pool is to double the population. Otherwise the only thing you can do is move the talent pool around, from something else to engineering.
And if you move people who are better suited to something else to engineering instead, you're actually SHRINKING the talent pool.
To develop great products, to find the innovations that make things better, we need all the help we can get. Writing off 51% of humanity means that 51% of those possible innovations may never happen.
This would be a good example of emotional thinking. I see that you read "Women being underrepresented in engineering is not a problem", and you responded with "Writing off 51% of the population is not acceptable!"
Unfortunately, this does not make any logical sense. Your response appears to be based on a rather poor assumption - what if developing great products, and finding innovations that make things better, also involve professions OTHER than Engineering?
Clearly this is the case. Let's take the converse of your statement. What if EVERYONE was an engineer? How well do you think the world would function then? Not very well, I'd imagine.
Engineers should be people who choose to be engineers. If women choose to be something other than an engineer, it's quite possible that maybe, just MAYBE, they're BETTER AT SOMETHING OTHER THAN ENGINEERING?
Maybe to develop great products, to find the innovations that make things better, you shouldn't write off the 99% of the population that arn't engineers.
The fact of the matter is, there are many professions, and all of them are important. We should allocate people to the professions they are best suited for, regardless of gender. And again, if women WANT to do something OTHER than be an engineer, what is wrong with that? Just because YOU wanted to be an engineer doesn't mean every other woman should want to.
I'd like to take 200 newborns, and divide them into two groups of 100, 50 of each gender in each group.
One group is only allowed to play with dolls and easybake ovens, the other group is only allowed to play with legos.
As a society, we TEND to encourage our female children to play at SOCIAL situations ("Let's have Tea!") and we TEND to encourage our male children to play at building things. This happens when we are really young, when our brains apparently have a much easier time at learning to do things (like languages).
Maybe the problem is that if you don't give a one-to-three year old a chance to play with things like legos and teach their brains to think in three dimensions when the brain is young that they never will be very good at it. And maybe we just happen to provide that education to boys more often than we do to girls.
Why does it matter? What is the business reason for developing more female engineers?
Do computers designed by women run quicker?
Does software written by women take up less memory?
Do processors designed by women emit less heat?
Certainly we shouldn't do something that inhibits a particular gender's ability to participate in the profession of their choice. But an engineer is an engineer - why should we care what their gender is?
Maybe there are not so many self-taught female engineers because women mature socially earlier and thus don't spend as much time talking to their monitors. Maybe women tend to be emotional thinkers and engineering doesn't jive well with emotional thinking. Maybe there's just a shortage of women who are nerds.
You know why they pay $69? BECAUSE THAT'S WHAT IT COSTS!
It is a mistake to warp economics so that all customers pay the same price even though some customers cost far more to serve than others. If the telco company has to run and service two miles of cable to provide service to you but only has to run and service 100 feet of cable to provide service to me, you should pay more than I do.
There are at least two kinds of requests for a credit report. There are requests initiated by you to get credit - like when you apply for a loan. These requests actually count in your credit score (make lots of requests for credit and your credit score goes down.) Then there are promotional/screening requests, which can be made by anyone. These don't include all of the information that would be there if you requested a report yourself, but anybody can ask for these and get them (after paying a fee to the agencies, of course.) It's these kinds of requests that are the basis for all of those "prescreened" credit offers you get in the mail.
A) Ridiculous bandwith requirements for the common person
Define ridiculous. You can get a 3 mbit/s connection in most areas for about the same cost as an extended cable television hookup. Paying for that connection and Netflix is probably comparable to paying for HBO/Cinemax/Showtime for most people, and you get access to a lot more movies than just those networks are showing, and you get that access whenever you want.
So while many people may not have 3 mbit/s connections NOW, it certainly doesn't appear that the cost of getting one is out of line with what people already pay for video content delivery by other means.
Can't put it on your TV easily (again)
Now that many TVs come with SVideo and DVI connectors, running your laptop/computer to your TV isn't that difficult. I've used my laptop as a DVD player on several occasions with no problem (for video; for sound beyond stereo you'd want a desktop with a decent sound card).
YouTube doesn't work well here just because there's very little content on it that is DVD quality.
Which highlights one disadvantage of the Netflix thing that you missed: No HD content. Right now the only way to get HD content is over your cable box or HD DVD/BlueRay. And if it takes 3 mbit/s for DVD quality, HD quality downloads are out of reach for everyone.
He told us in the last 5 years of him being there he has not once come across a machine where child porn was put on the machine by a popup, or spyware. He Said this does not happen, as it would be easily traced back to the company that advertised it.
But popups and spyware are a good indication that the computer wasn't secure, and the computer not being secure is an indication that OTHER things may have been placed on there without the users knowledge.
IF the money is donated to the person whose house burnt down, and you collect it for them, it's not income for you, and you don't pay taxes on it. You can even collect it, deposit in your checking account, and then write a check to that person, still not taxable.
Additionally, if the money donated by one person to this person is less than the annual federal gift exemption ($12,000 I think), it's also not taxed. And even if it's over, as long as the donor doesn't exceed their $1 million total exemption, STILL not taxable.
The fund in question was set up (possibly improperly) with an explicit, legitimate purpose that all donors can be expected to know about. That means that it is not phishing.
No it doesn't. All it means is that the person who created the account CLAIMS it's not a phishing scam. Someone who was running a phishing scam would say EXACTLY THE SAME THING that these people are saying. They would CLAIM that they were running a charity donation drive for a soldier's family, they would CLAIM that they were going to send the money to them, and then when Paypal put the money in their bank account, they would wire it to Russia.
The way you do this RIGHT is you set up a separate, legal, non-profit entity, and in the ARTICLES OF INCORPORATION state that the purpose of the organization is to benefit John Smith's family, and that funds may only be distributed for that purpose, and then you open an account in that organization's name, not in your personal name. Then when you advertise that you're a charity, sign up for a charity paypal account, and people pay you through paypal and paypal says you're a charity, you can actually get your money right away.
Paypal is doing the right thing here. There is simply no other way that paypal can offer a donate to charity function without this policy. Does it suck for this partciular 'charity'? Yes. Is it ENTIRELY their fault? Absolutely.
asked the DMV who owns a blue Audi A4 1995-model, and they ran the query against the whole DB
The DMV a department of the state, so the state is searching their own records for information that you provided to them. And in most states, DMV records are considered public information - virtually anybody can file some paperwork to find out what cars you may own.
Credit card companies are private enterprises and your credit card charges are private information.
But, that's why the state needs a warrant to search credit card records but does not need a warrant to search DMV records.
Have you ever tried to persuade a friend who's obviously drunk not to drive? They just get more and more determined. Often it takes physical force if you want to stop them.
Feed them a few more shots until they pass out. No physical force necessary.
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People can choose to do good things or do bad things.
But, if you could do something so that people were not able to make the bad choice at all, would you do it?
In the extreme case, a guy with a gun is robbing a bank and has hostages. Now, he can choose to shoot the hostages, or he can choose not to shoot the hostages. If you had the opportunity to shoot the robber dead so he can't choose to shoot the hostages, would you?
People can choose to drink and drive or not drink or not drive. If there was an inexpensive, perfect piece of technology that was convenient and stopped some people from driving drunk and never stopped sober people from driving, would you require people to install it in their cars?
Yes, people have choice. But some people will choose to do bad things. Saying that the murderer is responsible for killing the victim doesn't stop people from killing victims.
Some choices people shouldn't be allowed to make.
No, but I drive a car that gets 34mpg and walk places that are closer than 2 miles.
As an added bonus, my mortgage is much lower now that there's nothing within 2 miles of me.
He doesn't even consider non-material, photon-based probing methods, which would increase the rate of exploration by a factor of 10.
Doesn't matter. Light only travels so fast, and we've only been here, what, 10,000 years? Nobody further than 10,000 light years away could have possibly found us yet. And a 10,000 light year sphere is well less than 4% of the galaxy.
This whole study is kind of dumb, because it doesn't matter that you can explore 4% of the galaxy in 4 billion years when we've only been here for 10,000 years. Even if they did come to earth, it's almost certain that when they were here, they found either nothing or some bacteria and kept going.
You can only search for your kid's name, email or username if they are actually using their real name, or an email or username you know. What this does is let you search for ANYONE LOGGING ON FROM YOUR COMPUTER. See the difference? Now parents can tell if their children are posting fake profiles.
Use the rail gun to launch a big, heavy projectile into orbit.
Attach projectile to giant bungee cord.
Attach giant bungee cord to object you want in orbit.
Give object giant scissors.
Expanding on this, you could tie one object with several rubber bands to several projectiles.
Steve Jobs is a woman?
MySpace shouldn't have allowed their users to modify the pages so heavily. They shouldn't have allowed people to have music that plays when you visit the page. They shouldn't have made a system that can't talk to other stuff (like del.icio.us tags or RSS readers). They shouldn't have made it so freaking hard to use. (It takes three times as many clicks to do on something on MySpace than what it should take.)
If myspace were to prevent people from exhibiting their stupidity, how would I know who the stupid people are?
Why do women need special treatment?
Because they're not as smart, duh.
But at least at my school, Computer Science was in the Engineering college.
The potential doubling of your talent pool.
Not possible. The only way to double the talent pool is to double the population. Otherwise the only thing you can do is move the talent pool around, from something else to engineering.
And if you move people who are better suited to something else to engineering instead, you're actually SHRINKING the talent pool.
To develop great products, to find the innovations that make things better, we need all the help we can get. Writing off 51% of humanity means that 51% of those possible innovations may never happen.
This would be a good example of emotional thinking. I see that you read "Women being underrepresented in engineering is not a problem", and you responded with "Writing off 51% of the population is not acceptable!"
Unfortunately, this does not make any logical sense. Your response appears to be based on a rather poor assumption - what if developing great products, and finding innovations that make things better, also involve professions OTHER than Engineering?
Clearly this is the case. Let's take the converse of your statement. What if EVERYONE was an engineer? How well do you think the world would function then? Not very well, I'd imagine.
Engineers should be people who choose to be engineers. If women choose to be something other than an engineer, it's quite possible that maybe, just MAYBE, they're BETTER AT SOMETHING OTHER THAN ENGINEERING?
Maybe to develop great products, to find the innovations that make things better, you shouldn't write off the 99% of the population that arn't engineers.
The fact of the matter is, there are many professions, and all of them are important. We should allocate people to the professions they are best suited for, regardless of gender. And again, if women WANT to do something OTHER than be an engineer, what is wrong with that? Just because YOU wanted to be an engineer doesn't mean every other woman should want to.
I think some of it may be cultural.
I'd like to take 200 newborns, and divide them into two groups of 100, 50 of each gender in each group.
One group is only allowed to play with dolls and easybake ovens, the other group is only allowed to play with legos.
As a society, we TEND to encourage our female children to play at SOCIAL situations ("Let's have Tea!") and we TEND to encourage our male children to play at building things. This happens when we are really young, when our brains apparently have a much easier time at learning to do things (like languages).
Maybe the problem is that if you don't give a one-to-three year old a chance to play with things like legos and teach their brains to think in three dimensions when the brain is young that they never will be very good at it. And maybe we just happen to provide that education to boys more often than we do to girls.
Why does it matter? What is the business reason for developing more female engineers?
Do computers designed by women run quicker?
Does software written by women take up less memory?
Do processors designed by women emit less heat?
Certainly we shouldn't do something that inhibits a particular gender's ability to participate in the profession of their choice. But an engineer is an engineer - why should we care what their gender is?
Maybe there are not so many self-taught female engineers because women mature socially earlier and thus don't spend as much time talking to their monitors. Maybe women tend to be emotional thinkers and engineering doesn't jive well with emotional thinking. Maybe there's just a shortage of women who are nerds.
And maybe there's nothing wrong with that.
You know why they pay $69? BECAUSE THAT'S WHAT IT COSTS!
It is a mistake to warp economics so that all customers pay the same price even though some customers cost far more to serve than others. If the telco company has to run and service two miles of cable to provide service to you but only has to run and service 100 feet of cable to provide service to me, you should pay more than I do.
There are at least two kinds of requests for a credit report. There are requests initiated by you to get credit - like when you apply for a loan. These requests actually count in your credit score (make lots of requests for credit and your credit score goes down.) Then there are promotional/screening requests, which can be made by anyone. These don't include all of the information that would be there if you requested a report yourself, but anybody can ask for these and get them (after paying a fee to the agencies, of course.) It's these kinds of requests that are the basis for all of those "prescreened" credit offers you get in the mail.
And when the CD came out, one could have imagined people saying "If you're in the record player manufacturing business..."
DOH!
And when automobiles were invented, one could have imagined people saying "If you're in the horse carriage business..."
DOH!
And when PCs were invented, one could have imagined people saying "If you're in the typewriter business..."
DOH
A) Ridiculous bandwith requirements for the common person
Define ridiculous. You can get a 3 mbit/s connection in most areas for about the same cost as an extended cable television hookup. Paying for that connection and Netflix is probably comparable to paying for HBO/Cinemax/Showtime for most people, and you get access to a lot more movies than just those networks are showing, and you get that access whenever you want.
So while many people may not have 3 mbit/s connections NOW, it certainly doesn't appear that the cost of getting one is out of line with what people already pay for video content delivery by other means.
Can't put it on your TV easily (again)
Now that many TVs come with SVideo and DVI connectors, running your laptop/computer to your TV isn't that difficult. I've used my laptop as a DVD player on several occasions with no problem (for video; for sound beyond stereo you'd want a desktop with a decent sound card).
YouTube doesn't work well here just because there's very little content on it that is DVD quality.
Which highlights one disadvantage of the Netflix thing that you missed: No HD content. Right now the only way to get HD content is over your cable box or HD DVD/BlueRay. And if it takes 3 mbit/s for DVD quality, HD quality downloads are out of reach for everyone.
He told us in the last 5 years of him being there he has not once come across a machine where child porn was put on the machine by a popup, or spyware. He Said this does not happen, as it would be easily traced back to the company that advertised it.
But popups and spyware are a good indication that the computer wasn't secure, and the computer not being secure is an indication that OTHER things may have been placed on there without the users knowledge.
You can buy HD-DVDs with cash.
I should caveat that that the recipient will owe income tax if they spend it on something they can't claim a deduction for.
IF the money is donated to the person whose house burnt down, and you collect it for them, it's not income for you, and you don't pay taxes on it. You can even collect it, deposit in your checking account, and then write a check to that person, still not taxable.
Additionally, if the money donated by one person to this person is less than the annual federal gift exemption ($12,000 I think), it's also not taxed. And even if it's over, as long as the donor doesn't exceed their $1 million total exemption, STILL not taxable.
So, no, no taxes.
The fund in question was set up (possibly improperly) with an explicit, legitimate purpose that all donors can be expected to know about. That means that it is not phishing.
No it doesn't. All it means is that the person who created the account CLAIMS it's not a phishing scam. Someone who was running a phishing scam would say EXACTLY THE SAME THING that these people are saying. They would CLAIM that they were running a charity donation drive for a soldier's family, they would CLAIM that they were going to send the money to them, and then when Paypal put the money in their bank account, they would wire it to Russia.
The way you do this RIGHT is you set up a separate, legal, non-profit entity, and in the ARTICLES OF INCORPORATION state that the purpose of the organization is to benefit John Smith's family, and that funds may only be distributed for that purpose, and then you open an account in that organization's name, not in your personal name. Then when you advertise that you're a charity, sign up for a charity paypal account, and people pay you through paypal and paypal says you're a charity, you can actually get your money right away.
Paypal is doing the right thing here. There is simply no other way that paypal can offer a donate to charity function without this policy. Does it suck for this partciular 'charity'? Yes. Is it ENTIRELY their fault? Absolutely.
asked the DMV who owns a blue Audi A4 1995-model, and they ran the query against the whole DB
The DMV a department of the state, so the state is searching their own records for information that you provided to them. And in most states, DMV records are considered public information - virtually anybody can file some paperwork to find out what cars you may own.
Credit card companies are private enterprises and your credit card charges are private information.
But, that's why the state needs a warrant to search credit card records but does not need a warrant to search DMV records.
Unless eBay was being used to launder them...
It's not worth as much after it's been washed.
Have you ever tried to persuade a friend who's obviously drunk not to drive? They just get more and more determined. Often it takes physical force if you want to stop them.
Feed them a few more shots until they pass out. No physical force necessary.