I've been saying that Bitcoin is nothing but a big pyramid scheme for years now.
Maybe if you say it enough, it will come true, or maybe we will modify the meaning of Pyramid Scheme to match whatever your definition is instead of the already established one.
Somehow, Amazon and other major retailers are able to sell items nationwide without saying "This doodad will cost $25 plus $1.25 server maintenance fee plus $3.27 web app programming fee plus $2 executive hot tub installation fee...." Why can't the phone companies?
There are several reasons. One reason is that by putting in these line items for things such as 911 fee and FCC fee, they make it appear as though they are not the ones charging you the fee and they should not be blamed for it. A second reason is that by putting these out there as line items they can lie about their prices and appear to be cheaper than the competition.
An intermediate species is one that fills the gap between one species and another one that it supposedly evolved from but is clearly so removed that there must have been one or more species in between.
I see it as Faith being the enemy of science, because if you have faith (as opposed to evidence) in even a scientific hypothesis, you will not allow yourself to challenge that hypothesis.
The "missing intermediate species" boils down to moving the goalpost. Creationists, such as yourself say "Find a link between these two thing you claim are related." An intermediate species is found and they say "Find one one between that one and this then!".
Has an intermediate species ever been found? I know there are plenty of unsubstantiated "may have beens" and plenty of related species, but I can't think of a case where we had a missing link that was subsequently found.
OK, missing species. Because things get eaten by other things, get buried deep by land slides, volcanoes, asteroids, etc, or because this planet is so fucking big, and the animal density is so small, we can't dig it fast enough to find more.
For me, the mathematics are just too improbable. For example, we have Tyrannosaurus, which undoubtedly evolved from something else, although from what I am not able to find in my research. Allosaurus is apparently a disproven theory. But whatever it evolved from, it seems that we ought to have some fossil examples. I mean what are the odds that we would have more than 30 examples of Tyrannosaurus fossils, while having zero examples of anything leading up to a Tyrannosaurus? Is this the evolution in spurts approach where the change from some other species to Tyrannosaurus happened so fast that fossils were unlikely, but then the species Tyrannosaurus happened to be incredibly stable and so we found lots of examples from one side of the Earth to the other.
I agree with you. There can not be any "settled" in science. Scientific advancement is kind of the natural equivalent to approximating the area under a curve. The approximations get closer and closer, but without knowing the true formula, you can never be "correct". That's not to say that the approximations are not good enough to make an airplane fly, or a rocket go to past the edge of the solar system, but the answer is still not "correct".
He was flying near (not overflying) a medical centre helipad on the request of said medical centre in order to make a promotional video for said medical centre.
That doesn't matter. The FAA controls airspace, not the medical center. There still needs to be permission from the FAA. You can't give an electrician permission to rework your electricity without pulling a permit just because it is on your property and you said it was ok.
If the guy was taking an advertising video, I'm assuming he at least mentioned it to the operations department at the medical center, who would have verified that no activity was planned at the heliport while the video was being shot.
And the operations department, being competent in every way would have told him that although they have no plans for flights at that time, he really needed to talk to the FAA for approval.
The FAA alleged that since Pirker was using the aircraft for profit, he ran afoul of regulations requiring commercial operators of "Unmanned Aircraft Systems" -- sometimes called UAS or drones -- to obtain FAA authorization.
But a judge on Thursday agreed with Pirker that the FAA overreached by applying regulations for aircraft to model aircraft, and said no FAA rule prohibited Pirker's radio-controlled flight.
The judge was wrong. The FAA controls airspace. This vehicle operated in the airspace as a commercial operator. However, had he obtained permission from the FAA, which is certainly possible to do, he would STILL have been in violation of dozens of other regulations for street level flying, endangering persons on the ground and overflying a helipad (which he probably could also have gotten a waiver for, had he applied). Basically, the operating for profit was just the most notable of a long list of things this guy did wrong.
I think the best solution would be the creation of distinct classes of drones in order to seperate out the small relatively harmless things (like this guy's foam glider)
The glider itself may be harmless, but when put in the hands of an idiot like this, it becomes a lethal weapon. The video is full of full of things which a responsible hobbyist would never do. I am a private pilot and I have flown RC airplanes and this guy is a menace to both hobbies. He draws unnecessary attention to the hobby and causes people to view it as dangerous because of his stunt. The freedom to fly is already on shaky footing as it is, and people who buzz houses, fly at illegal attitudes in populated areas and so forth, further threaten our freedom to fly.
if someone is flying over my house low
enough to "buzz" me at my house, then are in my "air space" aka "personal space". There
should probably be some minimum distance that every property owner is allowed to claim as
their own personal airspace.
There is, and since no one is going to pay any attention to your concerns, the FAA is there to back you up.
No mod points, but would bump it up for the astute observation of if evasive manuevers were an AC or not and the point on regulatory creep.
The FAA would be involved if the evasive maneuvers had to be performed by an aircraft, or if the object they were evading was an aircraft, which it was.
That's true. Darwin was a Christian. There are some people who say Darwin repented on his deathbed, but they are merely repeating lies told to them out of ignorance. Darwin was a Christian all along. His observations in no way undermined or conflicted with his faith. If he knew now what we know about DNA, I have no doubt it would have strengthened his scientific knowledge AND his faith.
Contrary to popular (if you can call slashdot popular) opinion, in my experience, kids who go to religious schools tend to know more, not less about evolution than kids that go to public schools. The kids are given both viewpoints, and also contrary to popular opinion, kids are able to form their own opinions. They end up performing better on tests for a variety of reasons, including family support, likely being more affluent, and other factors, but also, they perform because they are given more information and must come to their own conclusions. More information is better. Unless it was completely one sided, the fact that multiple ideas are shared is a good thing.
Undoubtedly there are some extreme fundamentalist schools that are the outlier, but most religious schools teach about the same subjects as a public school (in fact, they are required to do so), plus teach other topics that would not be taught in public school, and this only serves to broaden the minds of the students. The results are clearly seen in standardized test scores.
the only working, proven method to study reality is science.
Ahh, a true beggar of the question. Starting with the assumption that only a scientifically provable method is valid, it is no doubt true that the only proven method to study reality is science.
The goal of the SAT used to be to predict performance in college. Now it is used to predict how much effort one is willing to put into it to game the system. When I took the SAT, it was not something you studied for or took multiple times. You took it once, it showed how much you had learned, and you moved on. Now, there are college prep courses that focus on learning how to do better at the SAT. if you have lots of money and time, you can buy your way to a better grade. It has nothing to do with what you have learned in high school or how you will perform at university. Well, maybe it does show that you might be willing to throw gobs of cash at tutors and whatnot while at university. So maybe it is a positive predictor. After all, Universities are not about teaching, they are about making money. If you happen to learn something along the way, so much the better.
Well, since the economy is so based on money, perhaps what needs to be done is monetize license plates. For a small registration fee with the state, my license plate becomes licensed (hyuk, hyuk), and anyone wanting to use it's image for commercial gain must pay me. If I haven't paid my car payment, then the small license fee should be nothing compared to the value they will collect from repoing the car. But if they use my plate and I am paid up, they have to pay me.
I think that is most of what this is about. People are running around monetizing information that belongs to us and we have not given permission to be used.
With the low low interest rates you would be a fool not to refinance your house and take out a home equity loan to purchase said aspirin.
And with the even lower interest from the Fed, the bank would be a fool to loan you money to refinance your house, rather than just invest their zero percent interest borrowed money back into T-bills.
When was the last time you played an epic RPG or sprawling adventure game?
Last year I played two of them. Skyrim and Final Fantasy 13-2. I was in fact a little disappointed in the length of FF 13-2, but it was still far more than 10 hours, and I could have spent many more hours leveling up to max and getting 100% on all the side quests. Right now I am playing civilization 5 and I probably have 200 hours into ONE of the several dozens of campaigns.
Freemium and microtransaction are a different business model that has shown itself to be successful.
This is just an extension of the retail system and it is brought about by the desires of the consumer. We have $50 products out there that might last for 10 or 15 years, but instead, the consumer opts for the $40 one that they have to buy a new one every year due to failures.
Then they should increase the highway taxes for heavy trucks by 96., 960 or 9600, not sure of the ratio but it should reflect the actual damages vs a regular car or truck.
If they did that, you wouldn't be able to afford to buy goods anymore. Or we would go to hauling things in pickup trucks and just making 100 trips instead of one semi load, increasing carbon emissions and cost and decreasing efficiency.
Slashdot Mirror
I've been saying that Bitcoin is nothing but a big pyramid scheme for years now.
Maybe if you say it enough, it will come true, or maybe we will modify the meaning of Pyramid Scheme to match whatever your definition is instead of the already established one.
Somehow, Amazon and other major retailers are able to sell items nationwide without saying "This doodad will cost $25 plus $1.25 server maintenance fee plus $3.27 web app programming fee plus $2 executive hot tub installation fee...." Why can't the phone companies?
There are several reasons. One reason is that by putting in these line items for things such as 911 fee and FCC fee, they make it appear as though they are not the ones charging you the fee and they should not be blamed for it. A second reason is that by putting these out there as line items they can lie about their prices and appear to be cheaper than the competition.
An intermediate species is one that fills the gap between one species and another one that it supposedly evolved from but is clearly so removed that there must have been one or more species in between.
I see it as Faith being the enemy of science, because if you have faith (as opposed to evidence) in even a scientific hypothesis, you will not allow yourself to challenge that hypothesis.
The "missing intermediate species" boils down to moving the goalpost. Creationists, such as yourself say "Find a link between these two thing you claim are related." An intermediate species is found and they say "Find one one between that one and this then!".
Has an intermediate species ever been found? I know there are plenty of unsubstantiated "may have beens" and plenty of related species, but I can't think of a case where we had a missing link that was subsequently found.
OK, missing species. Because things get eaten by other things, get buried deep by land slides, volcanoes, asteroids, etc, or because this planet is so fucking big, and the animal density is so small, we can't dig it fast enough to find more.
For me, the mathematics are just too improbable. For example, we have Tyrannosaurus, which undoubtedly evolved from something else, although from what I am not able to find in my research. Allosaurus is apparently a disproven theory. But whatever it evolved from, it seems that we ought to have some fossil examples. I mean what are the odds that we would have more than 30 examples of Tyrannosaurus fossils, while having zero examples of anything leading up to a Tyrannosaurus? Is this the evolution in spurts approach where the change from some other species to Tyrannosaurus happened so fast that fossils were unlikely, but then the species Tyrannosaurus happened to be incredibly stable and so we found lots of examples from one side of the Earth to the other.
I agree with you. There can not be any "settled" in science. Scientific advancement is kind of the natural equivalent to approximating the area under a curve. The approximations get closer and closer, but without knowing the true formula, you can never be "correct". That's not to say that the approximations are not good enough to make an airplane fly, or a rocket go to past the edge of the solar system, but the answer is still not "correct".
Science is Faith's eternal enemy!
Science is not Faith's eternal enemy. Faith is Science's eternal enemy.
He was flying near (not overflying) a medical centre helipad on the request of said medical centre in order to make a promotional video for said medical centre.
That doesn't matter. The FAA controls airspace, not the medical center. There still needs to be permission from the FAA. You can't give an electrician permission to rework your electricity without pulling a permit just because it is on your property and you said it was ok.
If the guy was taking an advertising video, I'm assuming he at least mentioned it to the operations department at the medical center, who would have verified that no activity was planned at the heliport while the video was being shot.
And the operations department, being competent in every way would have told him that although they have no plans for flights at that time, he really needed to talk to the FAA for approval.
The FAA alleged that since Pirker was using the aircraft for profit, he ran afoul of regulations requiring commercial operators of "Unmanned Aircraft Systems" -- sometimes called UAS or drones -- to obtain FAA authorization. But a judge on Thursday agreed with Pirker that the FAA overreached by applying regulations for aircraft to model aircraft, and said no FAA rule prohibited Pirker's radio-controlled flight.
The judge was wrong. The FAA controls airspace. This vehicle operated in the airspace as a commercial operator. However, had he obtained permission from the FAA, which is certainly possible to do, he would STILL have been in violation of dozens of other regulations for street level flying, endangering persons on the ground and overflying a helipad (which he probably could also have gotten a waiver for, had he applied). Basically, the operating for profit was just the most notable of a long list of things this guy did wrong.
I think the best solution would be the creation of distinct classes of drones in order to seperate out the small relatively harmless things (like this guy's foam glider)
The glider itself may be harmless, but when put in the hands of an idiot like this, it becomes a lethal weapon. The video is full of full of things which a responsible hobbyist would never do. I am a private pilot and I have flown RC airplanes and this guy is a menace to both hobbies. He draws unnecessary attention to the hobby and causes people to view it as dangerous because of his stunt. The freedom to fly is already on shaky footing as it is, and people who buzz houses, fly at illegal attitudes in populated areas and so forth, further threaten our freedom to fly.
if someone is flying over my house low enough to "buzz" me at my house, then are in my "air space" aka "personal space". There should probably be some minimum distance that every property owner is allowed to claim as their own personal airspace.
There is, and since no one is going to pay any attention to your concerns, the FAA is there to back you up.
No mod points, but would bump it up for the astute observation of if evasive manuevers were an AC or not and the point on regulatory creep.
The FAA would be involved if the evasive maneuvers had to be performed by an aircraft, or if the object they were evading was an aircraft, which it was.
There's also no such thing as Darwinism.
That's true. Darwin was a Christian. There are some people who say Darwin repented on his deathbed, but they are merely repeating lies told to them out of ignorance. Darwin was a Christian all along. His observations in no way undermined or conflicted with his faith. If he knew now what we know about DNA, I have no doubt it would have strengthened his scientific knowledge AND his faith.
Contrary to popular (if you can call slashdot popular) opinion, in my experience, kids who go to religious schools tend to know more, not less about evolution than kids that go to public schools. The kids are given both viewpoints, and also contrary to popular opinion, kids are able to form their own opinions. They end up performing better on tests for a variety of reasons, including family support, likely being more affluent, and other factors, but also, they perform because they are given more information and must come to their own conclusions. More information is better. Unless it was completely one sided, the fact that multiple ideas are shared is a good thing.
Undoubtedly there are some extreme fundamentalist schools that are the outlier, but most religious schools teach about the same subjects as a public school (in fact, they are required to do so), plus teach other topics that would not be taught in public school, and this only serves to broaden the minds of the students. The results are clearly seen in standardized test scores.
the only working, proven method to study reality is science.
Ahh, a true beggar of the question. Starting with the assumption that only a scientifically provable method is valid, it is no doubt true that the only proven method to study reality is science.
The goal of the SAT used to be to predict performance in college. Now it is used to predict how much effort one is willing to put into it to game the system. When I took the SAT, it was not something you studied for or took multiple times. You took it once, it showed how much you had learned, and you moved on. Now, there are college prep courses that focus on learning how to do better at the SAT. if you have lots of money and time, you can buy your way to a better grade. It has nothing to do with what you have learned in high school or how you will perform at university. Well, maybe it does show that you might be willing to throw gobs of cash at tutors and whatnot while at university. So maybe it is a positive predictor. After all, Universities are not about teaching, they are about making money. If you happen to learn something along the way, so much the better.
Well, since the economy is so based on money, perhaps what needs to be done is monetize license plates. For a small registration fee with the state, my license plate becomes licensed (hyuk, hyuk), and anyone wanting to use it's image for commercial gain must pay me. If I haven't paid my car payment, then the small license fee should be nothing compared to the value they will collect from repoing the car. But if they use my plate and I am paid up, they have to pay me.
I think that is most of what this is about. People are running around monetizing information that belongs to us and we have not given permission to be used.
With the low low interest rates you would be a fool not to refinance your house and take out a home equity loan to purchase said aspirin.
And with the even lower interest from the Fed, the bank would be a fool to loan you money to refinance your house, rather than just invest their zero percent interest borrowed money back into T-bills.
When was the last time you played an epic RPG or sprawling adventure game?
Last year I played two of them. Skyrim and Final Fantasy 13-2. I was in fact a little disappointed in the length of FF 13-2, but it was still far more than 10 hours, and I could have spent many more hours leveling up to max and getting 100% on all the side quests. Right now I am playing civilization 5 and I probably have 200 hours into ONE of the several dozens of campaigns.
Freemium and microtransaction are a different business model that has shown itself to be successful.
This is just an extension of the retail system and it is brought about by the desires of the consumer. We have $50 products out there that might last for 10 or 15 years, but instead, the consumer opts for the $40 one that they have to buy a new one every year due to failures.
Ask them to find North America.
Give them some credit. North America is hard to find. All tucked away down there.
Only half of the people surveyed were professional website developers.
Then they should increase the highway taxes for heavy trucks by 96., 960 or 9600, not sure of the ratio but it should reflect the actual damages vs a regular car or truck.
If they did that, you wouldn't be able to afford to buy goods anymore. Or we would go to hauling things in pickup trucks and just making 100 trips instead of one semi load, increasing carbon emissions and cost and decreasing efficiency.