"Tardigrades First Animals to Survive the Vacuum of Space" "'Water Bears" First Animals to Withstand Exposure to Naked Space" "First Animal to Survive the Vacuum of Space"
Come on, Timothy -- Naked tardigrades? I trust you can do better than that...
The headline should really read "Tardigrades First Animals to Survive Exposure to Vacuum of Space". I mean, we've sent astronauts into orbit, and let them walk around, but usually not naked.
Um, as far as I can understand, privacy policies are there for legal reasons, written in legalese to give them a quasi-legal basis for defending their policies.
Unless you're a lawyer or have a lawyer present each and every time you agree to a privacy policy (assuming you even agree to it, most are just implied to "work"), then it's basically just embedded, textual bullshit to somehow protect the company from lawsuits.
I seriously doubt that a privacy policy would stand up very well in court, unless the judge is completely in the dark on matters of technology, in which case it's simply a matter of presenting the test case as a physical contract and seeing how it would stand up, or limiting the amount of power a privacy policy holds on a public website.
As long as it's cheaper or on par with the cost of driving, not counting food, hotels, etc, then there is a market. And where there's a market, there is a demand.
Duh, because those projects aren't ambitious enough to draw criticism from the public at large. Everyone gets stuck in traffic, so the solution is more roads!
Right?
I feel like we should start with something simple to understand and easily approachable -- a trans-continental express railway from, say, New York to LA, non-stop.
Make the trains freight-bearing, but for the sole purpose of carrying passenger's cars and vehicles, charging for weight and size. Might be something like fifty bucks, but still immensely cheaper than renting one.
Imagine driving up to a branch of this backbone, paying a fee, boarding the train, and riding it across the country, essentially "driving" crosscountry in less than a day, keeping full access to your vehicle while maintaining the advantage, if reduced due to weight, of speedy rail travel.
We have an open source project here and you're complaining about being locked in on Google?
Whatever happened to simply branching a project?
Google is interested in the big picture, trends of searches and the like. I doubt they have very much interest in the day-to-day operations of single users, and open sourcing this is a very comforting act.
FUD is FUD, regardless at who it's directed. Google is a company based on information, true -- but to seriously think it's going to make any money off of snooping around your hard drive, when it already has a lock on the lucritive search market...
Everything I know about taxes and city management, I learned from Sim City.
For instance, once a city reaches a certain population, with enough private sector businesses, industrial and commercial, you can safely drop taxes. The burden on everyone is lessened because, despite the increased cost of running such a large city, you can still collect more than enough money between the large population and business base while continuously reducing the rate overall.
This calls for an example.
Let's say I have a city of one person -- we'll call him Jimbo. Since he's the only person in town, making about $100 a month, and it costs $50 to run the place, I'll tax him 50% of his earned income to make sure services are running just fine. Another person, Mary, moves into town, making $100 a month as well. If there was no change in infrastructure cost, I could safely cut the tax rate in half, to 25% per person, and still run my town just fine.
Now, here's the real magic in this -- even if city cost goes up with Mary's move into town, the cost of running the town doesn't necessarily double. Infrastructure that Jimbo was paying for is already in place, and the people who are being paid by Jimbo's tax don't necessarily get a fat bonus because of the new girl. Even if the cost of running things went up to $75, that would still only imply a tax of $37.50 per person, a strong reduction.
Sure, there are feasible limits to this -- anything whose cost remains fixed and goes up linearly per person won't impact the rate increase, and it also assumes that Jimbo and Mary are both making exactly the same amount of money and that neither of them is impoverished.
If Mary moved into town and only made $50 a month, while services jumped to $75, then Mary would be in the shortfall, taking home $25, while Jimbo leaves with $50. If the cost of living is $30, Mary is screwed, basically.
The three directions that can be taken: Tax Jimbo more for being rich, cut service costs and salaries, or just let Mary try to struggle by on her paltry wage.
If Jimbo is taxed 65% while Mary is taxed 20%, she takes home around $40 and he recieves $45, halving both their wages equally. However, since Jimbo is earning twice as much as Mary, yet only keeping about five dollars more, he'd become unhappy with this equation -- he could either move, earn less money, earn more money to compensate, or go to prison for not paying his taxes.
Now, if he quits his job and gets one paying $50, like Mary, the city suddenly finds itself running on 75% of wages earned, or a tax increase to 37.5 such as before. Jimbo's plan backfires, however, as he is suddenly taking home only about $13.34 a week, as is Mary. Suddenly the citizens are broke and will probably leave.
If he moves and the cost of services drops to $50 again, Mary is suddenly paying all of her earned income into taxes. Unless this is a complete social state and all of her needs are covered by the $50, then she will be forced to move, facing starvation.
Finally, if Jimbo suddenly gets a new job paying $150, the tax rate should drop for him, seeing as 65% of $150 is $97.50, way more than is needed from him. They need $65 from him, with Mary footing the bill on the last $10. He would now have an effective tax rate of a bit over 43%, both rewarding him for earning more while maintaining the amount needed to run the city.
The lesson learned here -- once the base cost is established and taxes reduced so that the poor may recieve a modest wage, the system can afford to award lower taxes to the wealthy, relative to the middle class. This system has one flaw, though -- either you're rich or you're poor. The Middle Class is forced to either earn more money or become Lower class, damaging the state. Maintaining an equal tax for Middle Class and Upper class might alleviate this, but simply taxing Jimbo a lot more than Mary is just going to drive him to greener pastures, hurting your economy more in the long run.
After careful review and consideration, we are pleased to inform you that I have decided to stop paying my Federal and State tax, effective August 27, 2008.
This decision was driven by your direct and candid feedback and our continued commitment to you as our valued collection agency.
"WTF should forming a company give anybody a moral or ethical get-out-of-jail free card?"
I'm not saying it does. I'm saying the enforcement of those morals and ethics needs to rely more on the government than the company, because historically speaking, there are very few examples of companies willing to forestall profits for the sake of ethics and morality.
Every single government on Earth is convinced that, in one way or another, it can stop crime.
Need I remind this government that there has never been a completely crime-free country in the history of the world?
That's not to say you can't reduce the level of crime, but only at the expense of individual freedoms. This also depends on what you consider a crime -- locking people up for murder might work, but throwing someone in jail because they stared at a CC camera for too long...not so much.
I understand where the government is coming from here. This would be an invaluable tool in busting those who are suspected drug lords, crime lords, time lords, whatever. But the key here, and consistently, is "suspected".
Siemens sure isn't going to take a moral high ground here -- they're a business, and businesses should not be expected to have to make moral choices. They aren't people, despite how they're treated tax-wise in the US. They should be able to do what they can within the limits of the law, but be kept in check by the law. This isn't cynicism, this is realism. Simply assuming a company is going to do good is far more dangerous than making sure it does good.
Therefore, it's up to individual governments and those representing the people to take the high ground here. This sort of technology is going to rapidly advance to the point where every person on the planet can be observed from a couple of jerk's computers in an enclosed office, and the free ride of being completely "lost" is slowly vanishing. It comes down, then, to the power of the state and the beliefs of those representatives of the people to curtail and selectively use this technology for the embetterment of all people.
What that ultimately means is still completely up for grabs.
"Coke Cola introduced a new, delicious Lime-twisted beverage today, creating a Holocaust of flavor formerly unknown to this world until today. The lines of people at convenience stores remind one of cattle awaiting an unknown fate, only these cattle were people, and the fate a tasty, carbonated beverage."
I ride a motorcycle, wear the proper gear, and as long as my bike is maintained well and the road ahead of me clear, I really have little to fear outside of some driver blind-siding me in a car, regardless of size.
Just make a couple of parallel motorcycle-only expressways, offering both the freedom from slamming into a fool who violated your right of way in a Hummer, and the drop in congestion that makes riding one's bike more appealing. More people on bikes, better fuel economy, everybody wins.
PS: I just filled up on about seven bucks -- a lot for a motorcycle, but paltry compared to large vehicles. That'll get me about a hundred miles, btw.
"It has been just so in all of my inventions. The first step is an intuition, and comes with a burst, then difficulties arise--this thing gives out and [it is] then that 'Bugs'--as such little faults and difficulties are called--show themselves and months of intense watching, study and labor are requisite before commercial success or failure is certainly reached."
Slashdot Mirror
It all makes sense now...bear with me...
Linus Torvalds gets bitten by a penguin...
Creates an operating system and adopting said penguin as a logo...
Insures that said operating system is openly available to anyone who wants it...
The ability to create a free server from one's house increases...
The number of living penguins as a result of melting polar ice decreases...
We could always leave this one up to government regulation...
*distant screams of terror*
"I swear, it was just an analogy that got out of hand..."
I think Beowulf clusters might be uncalled for here.
"Timothy took this headline from the major news outlets. They're the ones to blame for this poorly constructed headline."
Not true, check the comments -- the original headline excluded the word "Naked", which Timothy added after posting (Set to -1, check near the bottom).
Suggested list of headlines that do not suck:
"Tardigrades First Animals to Survive the Vacuum of Space"
"'Water Bears" First Animals to Withstand Exposure to Naked Space"
"First Animal to Survive the Vacuum of Space"
Come on, Timothy -- Naked tardigrades? I trust you can do better than that...
The headline should really read "Tardigrades First Animals to Survive Exposure to Vacuum of Space". I mean, we've sent astronauts into orbit, and let them walk around, but usually not naked.
How do they taste?
Um, as far as I can understand, privacy policies are there for legal reasons, written in legalese to give them a quasi-legal basis for defending their policies.
Unless you're a lawyer or have a lawyer present each and every time you agree to a privacy policy (assuming you even agree to it, most are just implied to "work"), then it's basically just embedded, textual bullshit to somehow protect the company from lawsuits.
I seriously doubt that a privacy policy would stand up very well in court, unless the judge is completely in the dark on matters of technology, in which case it's simply a matter of presenting the test case as a physical contract and seeing how it would stand up, or limiting the amount of power a privacy policy holds on a public website.
Disclaimer: IANAL
As long as it's cheaper or on par with the cost of driving, not counting food, hotels, etc, then there is a market. And where there's a market, there is a demand.
No.
"Robots Master the Conga Line"
Duh, because those projects aren't ambitious enough to draw criticism from the public at large. Everyone gets stuck in traffic, so the solution is more roads!
Right?
I feel like we should start with something simple to understand and easily approachable -- a trans-continental express railway from, say, New York to LA, non-stop.
Make the trains freight-bearing, but for the sole purpose of carrying passenger's cars and vehicles, charging for weight and size. Might be something like fifty bucks, but still immensely cheaper than renting one.
Imagine driving up to a branch of this backbone, paying a fee, boarding the train, and riding it across the country, essentially "driving" crosscountry in less than a day, keeping full access to your vehicle while maintaining the advantage, if reduced due to weight, of speedy rail travel.
But it is but an idea.
We have an open source project here and you're complaining about being locked in on Google?
Whatever happened to simply branching a project?
Google is interested in the big picture, trends of searches and the like. I doubt they have very much interest in the day-to-day operations of single users, and open sourcing this is a very comforting act.
FUD is FUD, regardless at who it's directed. Google is a company based on information, true -- but to seriously think it's going to make any money off of snooping around your hard drive, when it already has a lock on the lucritive search market...
I honestly don't understand your concerns.
Who'd a thunk that the Borg would have such humble beginnings?
I have to say, it does explain their relative ease of Assimilation...
Everything I know about taxes and city management, I learned from Sim City.
For instance, once a city reaches a certain population, with enough private sector businesses, industrial and commercial, you can safely drop taxes. The burden on everyone is lessened because, despite the increased cost of running such a large city, you can still collect more than enough money between the large population and business base while continuously reducing the rate overall.
This calls for an example.
Let's say I have a city of one person -- we'll call him Jimbo. Since he's the only person in town, making about $100 a month, and it costs $50 to run the place, I'll tax him 50% of his earned income to make sure services are running just fine. Another person, Mary, moves into town, making $100 a month as well. If there was no change in infrastructure cost, I could safely cut the tax rate in half, to 25% per person, and still run my town just fine.
Now, here's the real magic in this -- even if city cost goes up with Mary's move into town, the cost of running the town doesn't necessarily double. Infrastructure that Jimbo was paying for is already in place, and the people who are being paid by Jimbo's tax don't necessarily get a fat bonus because of the new girl. Even if the cost of running things went up to $75, that would still only imply a tax of $37.50 per person, a strong reduction.
Sure, there are feasible limits to this -- anything whose cost remains fixed and goes up linearly per person won't impact the rate increase, and it also assumes that Jimbo and Mary are both making exactly the same amount of money and that neither of them is impoverished.
If Mary moved into town and only made $50 a month, while services jumped to $75, then Mary would be in the shortfall, taking home $25, while Jimbo leaves with $50. If the cost of living is $30, Mary is screwed, basically.
The three directions that can be taken: Tax Jimbo more for being rich, cut service costs and salaries, or just let Mary try to struggle by on her paltry wage.
If Jimbo is taxed 65% while Mary is taxed 20%, she takes home around $40 and he recieves $45, halving both their wages equally. However, since Jimbo is earning twice as much as Mary, yet only keeping about five dollars more, he'd become unhappy with this equation -- he could either move, earn less money, earn more money to compensate, or go to prison for not paying his taxes.
Now, if he quits his job and gets one paying $50, like Mary, the city suddenly finds itself running on 75% of wages earned, or a tax increase to 37.5 such as before. Jimbo's plan backfires, however, as he is suddenly taking home only about $13.34 a week, as is Mary. Suddenly the citizens are broke and will probably leave.
If he moves and the cost of services drops to $50 again, Mary is suddenly paying all of her earned income into taxes. Unless this is a complete social state and all of her needs are covered by the $50, then she will be forced to move, facing starvation.
Finally, if Jimbo suddenly gets a new job paying $150, the tax rate should drop for him, seeing as 65% of $150 is $97.50, way more than is needed from him. They need $65 from him, with Mary footing the bill on the last $10. He would now have an effective tax rate of a bit over 43%, both rewarding him for earning more while maintaining the amount needed to run the city.
The lesson learned here -- once the base cost is established and taxes reduced so that the poor may recieve a modest wage, the system can afford to award lower taxes to the wealthy, relative to the middle class. This system has one flaw, though -- either you're rich or you're poor. The Middle Class is forced to either earn more money or become Lower class, damaging the state. Maintaining an equal tax for Middle Class and Upper class might alleviate this, but simply taxing Jimbo a lot more than Mary is just going to drive him to greener pastures, hurting your economy more in the long run.
After careful review and consideration, we are pleased to inform you that I have decided to stop paying my Federal and State tax, effective August 27, 2008.
This decision was driven by your direct and candid feedback and our continued commitment to you as our valued collection agency.
"WTF should forming a company give anybody a moral or ethical get-out-of-jail free card?"
I'm not saying it does. I'm saying the enforcement of those morals and ethics needs to rely more on the government than the company, because historically speaking, there are very few examples of companies willing to forestall profits for the sake of ethics and morality.
Every single government on Earth is convinced that, in one way or another, it can stop crime.
Need I remind this government that there has never been a completely crime-free country in the history of the world?
That's not to say you can't reduce the level of crime, but only at the expense of individual freedoms. This also depends on what you consider a crime -- locking people up for murder might work, but throwing someone in jail because they stared at a CC camera for too long...not so much.
I understand where the government is coming from here. This would be an invaluable tool in busting those who are suspected drug lords, crime lords, time lords, whatever. But the key here, and consistently, is "suspected".
Siemens sure isn't going to take a moral high ground here -- they're a business, and businesses should not be expected to have to make moral choices. They aren't people, despite how they're treated tax-wise in the US. They should be able to do what they can within the limits of the law, but be kept in check by the law. This isn't cynicism, this is realism. Simply assuming a company is going to do good is far more dangerous than making sure it does good.
Therefore, it's up to individual governments and those representing the people to take the high ground here. This sort of technology is going to rapidly advance to the point where every person on the planet can be observed from a couple of jerk's computers in an enclosed office, and the free ride of being completely "lost" is slowly vanishing. It comes down, then, to the power of the state and the beliefs of those representatives of the people to curtail and selectively use this technology for the embetterment of all people.
What that ultimately means is still completely up for grabs.
My fevered imagination and one too many cups of coffee. Nothing more.
Loyalty in work in gone.
You'll never be happy as long as someone who doesn't understand what you're doing is telling you what to do.
To be happy in this new economy, quit your job...and open a bed and breakfast.
"Coke Cola introduced a new, delicious Lime-twisted beverage today, creating a Holocaust of flavor formerly unknown to this world until today. The lines of people at convenience stores remind one of cattle awaiting an unknown fate, only these cattle were people, and the fate a tasty, carbonated beverage."
It Just Works.(TM)
I ride a motorcycle, wear the proper gear, and as long as my bike is maintained well and the road ahead of me clear, I really have little to fear outside of some driver blind-siding me in a car, regardless of size.
Just make a couple of parallel motorcycle-only expressways, offering both the freedom from slamming into a fool who violated your right of way in a Hummer, and the drop in congestion that makes riding one's bike more appealing. More people on bikes, better fuel economy, everybody wins.
PS: I just filled up on about seven bucks -- a lot for a motorcycle, but paltry compared to large vehicles. That'll get me about a hundred miles, btw.
"It has been just so in all of my inventions. The first step is an intuition, and comes with a burst, then difficulties arise--this thing gives out and [it is] then that 'Bugs'--as such little faults and difficulties are called--show themselves and months of intense watching, study and labor are requisite before commercial success or failure is certainly reached."
-- Edison