The people who write GPL'd software could just release it into the public domain if they wanted too. Clearly they don't do that, so to say that the GPL would be unneeded is silly.
At Google's prices at $500 for 250GB for a year, you could buy 2 250GB drives, put them in a mirrored array, then buy 2 external drives for offsite backups, and still have money left in your pocket. I really don't see a widespread market for this.
Why bother downloading it if you aren't going to try it? Is this a common thing? I can only recall maybe a couple of things in my entire life I've downloaded and not checked out.
Maybe they are people who aren't going to switch, but still want Firefox around? I primarly use Opera, but Firefox makes a nice secondary browser for when something doesn't work right in Opera or I want to use something like Adblock or the Bugmenot extension. Also, there are the people who download Firefox just to test websites with and stuff like that, and don't use it otherwise.
What passes for health insurance right now is quite socialist, as it's not just insurance they sell, it's a total health care package. It doesn't cover just sudden unexpected large expenses, it includes things like checkups and reoccuring expenses like prescription drugs. It's effectively very similar to the way government provided health care works - where once you've paid your taxes, all the costs are "covered". Only health insurance is more expensive, full of "gotchas", and not run by the government.
Why, you want us to subsidize care for your heart attack? I think you should start having a glass of red wine after dinner to qualify for your $5 discount.
Why don't you get your doseage of anti-oxidants from fresh fruits and vegetables instead? All the benefits plus more, and none of the negatives from the alcohol itself.
Why should my money subsidize your smoking habit that will cause lung cancer, bladder cancer, myriads of other cancers and disease?
I suppose you're the model for low risk then? Why should I cover your liver problems because you choose to drink? Why should I cover your bad knees because you choose to jog? Why should I cover your cut finger because you slipped while enjoying your woodworking hobby? Why should I cover your hearing problems because you enjoy concerts? Why should I cover your carpal tunnel syndrome because you like using the computer? Why should I cover your STDs because you slept around? Why should I cover your heartburn because you like spicy foods?
Everyone makes lifestyle choices that can and do affect their health in some ways. All this is penalizing certain behaviors that have been deemed socially unacceptable, so they think they can get away with it.
The only thing that the insurance companies care about is how much you're going to cost them. As a matter of fact, they don't even care if you suddenly keel over dead cause that won't cost them anything. You can be fittest, most healthy person you can ever be, but if you end up costing them a bunch of money (say you get a brain tumor or something), they aren't going to like you.
The question is, do people who do have a high BMI due to body building cost the insurance companies more or less than those with low BMI? If you do cost them more, they aren't going to think twice about trying to charge you more.
You clearly don't get it. It doesn't work for retail, as with retail you exchange money for goods on the spot, and it's done. Fairly simple deal, easy to price shop, generally you know what you're getting in the deal. With health insurance, you exchange money for future goods and services. However, when it comes time for the insurance companies to pay for those future goods and services, there is little incentive for them to do so, because they've already got your money. So they try to weasle out of it anyway they can, and it causes problems.
Actually, base jumping is likely OK by health insurer's standards. Chances are, you come out OK, so you don't cost them anything extra. In the case that something goes wrong, you're probably dead, thus not costing them anything extra. What they don't like is risky behavior that stands a good chance of injuring you badly, say, aggressive driving.
Getting back to the article though, do these types really cost the insurance companies less, because that's all they care about. It seems that while the people who like to work out tend to be relatively healthy, they alse tend to pull tendons or inflame joints, or similar things that cost money to treat.
That's an interesting arguement, but wouldn't it be the opposite for states that work the other way? Take a state like New York, which leans heavily Democratic. The Democratic canidates aren't going to spend money to win votes in New York, because it's already a given that they're going to get all of them. The Republican canidates aren't going to spend money to win votes in New York either, because it's already a given that they're not going to get any of them. If New York split their votes instead, then both parties would be more interested in New York because there is the potential to squeeze a few more electorial votes out of there.
With respect to the Democrats, yes they really do need to pick a canidate that has wider support for the mainstream. They essentially have the same problem the Republicans have - the canidates get chosen by the diehards, and they don't reflect the moderate position very well. Plus, they really do need to hammer in the issues into people's heads, so when they think of Democrats, they think of universal health care, or something like that. It's not that the Democrats don't have positions, they just don't hammer it in like the Republicans do.
With Hilary, it really doesn't matter so much why people dislike her (or why they think they dislike her), it's just that it's out there. That makes her battle that much harder, especially since the Republicans will do their best to reinforce people's preconcieved notions about her. I don't see anything other than a very tough and ugly battle for her, should she get the nod. The other problem that she has is people in the middle really view her as more of the same, and are more ready for fresh ideas (Obama, Ron Paul). It doesn't help at all that she's literally another Clinton.
I still wouldn't be so quick to dismiss the Republicans. I thought that the Iraqi war was going to sink Bush in 2004, but he managed to still win (thinking back, it's not so much that he didn't have the support he needed, it's just that the people who don't like him really do not like him, and were pretty vocal). Of course, a lot has changed since then, and the war really hurt them in 2006. However, the Democrats have managed to hurt themselves pretty badly in the past few months too by not taking a stand against the Executive branch.
Even so, you're still right about the Republicans. Guliani and Romney are pretty unelectable. McCain has gotten himself stuck in a no-mans land, where his pandering to the Republican base lost what supporters he had left in the mainstream, while on the other hand the Republican base didn't buy it. Guliani and Romney may find themselves in that no-mans land too if they really screw up. That leaves Ron Paul the best canidate by default, though I don't see him getting the nomination. Right now, the Republicans are playing the "ignore him and he'll go away" game, which will probably work. Failing that, expect a few friendly fire shots from the smear machine (see McCain in 2000).
Because _most_ people only need the minimum. They just don't do enough on their machines to push it to need much more then that. And, realistically, 1GB for an Intel OSX machine is just that. Apple seems to configure everything for the "most people" segment, not the geek segment that wants to put 3-4gigabytes into the likes of a Mac Mini. Oh wait, you can't:(
Most people would get by just fine with a PC that literally costs a fraction of that $1800 iMac. The iMac is priced as a premium computer, and if I'm going to pay premium prices, I don't want cut-rate specs.
A lot of people might want to put together a DVD, put it on a shelf so that they can look at it again in 15 years or whatever. It would be rather silly to carry around your collection home movies on your iPod all the time.
Sir, I'm afraid your geek card has just been revoked. Please acquire a Model M or equivalent, and you will be allowed to apply for the geek club again.
Sorry, your geek card has also been revoked. You should know that there is no equilivent to the Model M.
On the other hand, we know the approximate density galaxies in the the universe by observing our local section of it. Assuming that the Universe is homogeneous and isotropic, it follows that the density of galaxies in the universe must be the same everywhere. If the universe is infinite, then there must be an infinite number of galaxies.
But even so, time after time we see the front page of Democratic newspapers extol the 'horror' of diligence, and shut down another means of tracking these people before they do harm. In my America they would have been shot on television, with Muslim captions as they died.
I suggest you move somewhere like North Korea, Iran, or Pakistan. You'll probably find it much more to your liking.
Without the electoral college, vast parts of America will be ignored by would-be politicians who would focus solely on the population centers where a majority of the population lives.
Is it really any worse than the current system, where vast parts of America are currently ignored by would-be politicians who focus solely on a handful of swing states?
I guess that works if you call anything that goes against what the current Republicans are for "far-left". Fact is, a lot of people here actually hold a lot of what I would call conservative values. Small government, low taxes, personal freedom, balanced budget, isolationist foriegn policy, right to bear arms, free market, anti-censorship, no nanny state, no substities, etc. A lot of these are actually libertarian values, and I would consider libertarians right leaning (it's just that they look leftish right now, as the current crop of people on the right are just plain whack). If you look at my list again, with the exception of low taxes and the 2nd admendent, you'll notice that the Republicans believe in little of that. There is a reason they're called the "neocons" you know.
The way I see it, each party has about 25-30% of the voters as a die-hard, won't budge at all base. While the Democrat side of this is rather hard to spot nowadays, the Republican side is easy to spot because it's all they have left (that's why I don't see Bush's popularity rating dropping much anymore - there will still be some defectors, but for the most part the ones that have remained with Bush for this long have demonstrated pretty well that they aren't going to budge no matter what). Of course, 25-30% of the votes don't win elections, so in order to win you have to sway over a good portion of the remaining 60-75% of the voters, who for the most part will go either way on a given election (minus the few % that go third party). Now, this group is a finicky bunch, and the way I have seen a lot of them vote is downright scary. Instead of making an informed decision, they just look to see which side they hate more, then go vote for the other side. The Republicans seem to understand this pretty well, but the Democrats not so much.
In my mind, this is why Bush got re-elected in 2004. People looked at John Kerry, decided they didn't like him, and voted for Bush instead. Some of this was legitimate gripes (like John Kerry is an ultra-rich, stuffy career policitian), but a whole lot of this was also due to a huge Republican smear campaign.
Now Hilary is interesting. She's got pretty good support amonst the Democrat base, but at best the response amonst the 60-75% is lukewarm at best. For the most part, they don't like her. I like to say that she represents everything that's wrong with the Democratic party. People view her as an old school tax and spend liberal, she supports (or atleast supported) the Iraqi war and the Patriot act. She's for things like censoring video games, and seems to have strong ties to corporate interests and big money. The little guys out there don't feel that Hilary will represent them. Bill Clinton's old scandals like Whitewater also leave a bad taste in people's mouths, and the fact that she's a carpet bagger who pretty much used New York in an attempt to leapfrog to the Whitehouse really turns people off of her. Like John Kerry, she just screams career politician, and people don't like that.
Now what I see happening is Hilary getting the nod, mostly because the Democratic base seems to like her, and being the die-hards, they're the ones who'll go vote in the primaries. If this happens though, she's going to face a huge uphill battle trying to carve out her portion of the 60-75% to win, as these people don't like her as much as they like Obama, or even someone like Edwards or Al Gore even. The Republicans know this, and I can see some of them practically salvating at the prospect of Hilary Clinton getting the nod. Like John Kerry, they think they can successfully take her down with another massive smear campaign, I would say that they have a pretty decent chance of suceeding at that.
Of course, as you say a lot of this does hinge on who the Republicans nominate - if their nod is terrible, it'll do a lot to swing people over to the Democrats. However, don't forget that they were successful in getting Bush back in again for a second term.
How about a cheap thermometer and a plastic bag? Put a plastic bag over the exhaust vent of the server, and see how long it takes to fill it. Next, measure the ambient temperature of the room, and the temperature of the exhaust coming from the server. Now you know a volume of air that the server heats a specific amount in a certain period of time. Apply your physics and you know how much power the server drew to do that.
Before you laugh too much, that's basically how the EPA figures out the mileage of cars (just replace heat with CO2).
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Over 60% of PCs never have the case opened during their operating life. Expandability is rarely necessary.
By your own numbers, 40% of computers are opened up. How is expandability not important again?
What?
Without copyright, the GPL wouldn't be necessary.
The people who write GPL'd software could just release it into the public domain if they wanted too. Clearly they don't do that, so to say that the GPL would be unneeded is silly.
At Google's prices at $500 for 250GB for a year, you could buy 2 250GB drives, put them in a mirrored array, then buy 2 external drives for offsite backups, and still have money left in your pocket. I really don't see a widespread market for this.
Why bother downloading it if you aren't going to try it? Is this a common thing? I can only recall maybe a couple of things in my entire life I've downloaded and not checked out.
Maybe they are people who aren't going to switch, but still want Firefox around? I primarly use Opera, but Firefox makes a nice secondary browser for when something doesn't work right in Opera or I want to use something like Adblock or the Bugmenot extension. Also, there are the people who download Firefox just to test websites with and stuff like that, and don't use it otherwise.
FUD is pretending that bit torrent is NOT used mostly for piracy. Take a look on piratebay or mininova.
I'm shocked, absolutely shocked, that a site called Piratebay would have mostly torrents for pirated materials. Maybe you should expand your horizons?
What passes for health insurance right now is quite socialist, as it's not just insurance they sell, it's a total health care package. It doesn't cover just sudden unexpected large expenses, it includes things like checkups and reoccuring expenses like prescription drugs. It's effectively very similar to the way government provided health care works - where once you've paid your taxes, all the costs are "covered". Only health insurance is more expensive, full of "gotchas", and not run by the government.
Why, you want us to subsidize care for your heart attack? I think you should start having a glass of red wine after dinner to qualify for your $5 discount.
Why don't you get your doseage of anti-oxidants from fresh fruits and vegetables instead? All the benefits plus more, and none of the negatives from the alcohol itself.
Why should my money subsidize your smoking habit that will cause lung cancer, bladder cancer, myriads of other cancers and disease?
I suppose you're the model for low risk then? Why should I cover your liver problems because you choose to drink? Why should I cover your bad knees because you choose to jog? Why should I cover your cut finger because you slipped while enjoying your woodworking hobby? Why should I cover your hearing problems because you enjoy concerts? Why should I cover your carpal tunnel syndrome because you like using the computer? Why should I cover your STDs because you slept around? Why should I cover your heartburn because you like spicy foods?
Everyone makes lifestyle choices that can and do affect their health in some ways. All this is penalizing certain behaviors that have been deemed socially unacceptable, so they think they can get away with it.
The only thing that the insurance companies care about is how much you're going to cost them. As a matter of fact, they don't even care if you suddenly keel over dead cause that won't cost them anything. You can be fittest, most healthy person you can ever be, but if you end up costing them a bunch of money (say you get a brain tumor or something), they aren't going to like you.
The question is, do people who do have a high BMI due to body building cost the insurance companies more or less than those with low BMI? If you do cost them more, they aren't going to think twice about trying to charge you more.
You clearly don't get it. It doesn't work for retail, as with retail you exchange money for goods on the spot, and it's done. Fairly simple deal, easy to price shop, generally you know what you're getting in the deal. With health insurance, you exchange money for future goods and services. However, when it comes time for the insurance companies to pay for those future goods and services, there is little incentive for them to do so, because they've already got your money. So they try to weasle out of it anyway they can, and it causes problems.
Actually, base jumping is likely OK by health insurer's standards. Chances are, you come out OK, so you don't cost them anything extra. In the case that something goes wrong, you're probably dead, thus not costing them anything extra. What they don't like is risky behavior that stands a good chance of injuring you badly, say, aggressive driving.
Getting back to the article though, do these types really cost the insurance companies less, because that's all they care about. It seems that while the people who like to work out tend to be relatively healthy, they alse tend to pull tendons or inflame joints, or similar things that cost money to treat.
That's an interesting arguement, but wouldn't it be the opposite for states that work the other way? Take a state like New York, which leans heavily Democratic. The Democratic canidates aren't going to spend money to win votes in New York, because it's already a given that they're going to get all of them. The Republican canidates aren't going to spend money to win votes in New York either, because it's already a given that they're not going to get any of them. If New York split their votes instead, then both parties would be more interested in New York because there is the potential to squeeze a few more electorial votes out of there.
With respect to the Democrats, yes they really do need to pick a canidate that has wider support for the mainstream. They essentially have the same problem the Republicans have - the canidates get chosen by the diehards, and they don't reflect the moderate position very well. Plus, they really do need to hammer in the issues into people's heads, so when they think of Democrats, they think of universal health care, or something like that. It's not that the Democrats don't have positions, they just don't hammer it in like the Republicans do.
With Hilary, it really doesn't matter so much why people dislike her (or why they think they dislike her), it's just that it's out there. That makes her battle that much harder, especially since the Republicans will do their best to reinforce people's preconcieved notions about her. I don't see anything other than a very tough and ugly battle for her, should she get the nod. The other problem that she has is people in the middle really view her as more of the same, and are more ready for fresh ideas (Obama, Ron Paul). It doesn't help at all that she's literally another Clinton.
I still wouldn't be so quick to dismiss the Republicans. I thought that the Iraqi war was going to sink Bush in 2004, but he managed to still win (thinking back, it's not so much that he didn't have the support he needed, it's just that the people who don't like him really do not like him, and were pretty vocal). Of course, a lot has changed since then, and the war really hurt them in 2006. However, the Democrats have managed to hurt themselves pretty badly in the past few months too by not taking a stand against the Executive branch.
Even so, you're still right about the Republicans. Guliani and Romney are pretty unelectable. McCain has gotten himself stuck in a no-mans land, where his pandering to the Republican base lost what supporters he had left in the mainstream, while on the other hand the Republican base didn't buy it. Guliani and Romney may find themselves in that no-mans land too if they really screw up. That leaves Ron Paul the best canidate by default, though I don't see him getting the nomination. Right now, the Republicans are playing the "ignore him and he'll go away" game, which will probably work. Failing that, expect a few friendly fire shots from the smear machine (see McCain in 2000).
Even Nintendo couldn't help but cloning the MacBook design with the DS and to a lesser extent the Wii.
You might want to check the dates on those. The DS predates the Macbook by atleast a year.
Because _most_ people only need the minimum. They just don't do enough on their machines to push it to need much more then that. And, realistically, 1GB for an Intel OSX machine is just that. Apple seems to configure everything for the "most people" segment, not the geek segment that wants to put 3-4gigabytes into the likes of a Mac Mini. Oh wait, you can't :(
Most people would get by just fine with a PC that literally costs a fraction of that $1800 iMac. The iMac is priced as a premium computer, and if I'm going to pay premium prices, I don't want cut-rate specs.
A lot of people might want to put together a DVD, put it on a shelf so that they can look at it again in 15 years or whatever. It would be rather silly to carry around your collection home movies on your iPod all the time.
They did update the Mini. As of today, the only 32-bit computer that Apple's selling is the iPhone.
*COUGH*AppleTV*COUGH*
Sir, I'm afraid your geek card has just been revoked. Please acquire a Model M or equivalent, and you will be allowed to apply for the geek club again.
Sorry, your geek card has also been revoked. You should know that there is no equilivent to the Model M.
On the other hand, we know the approximate density galaxies in the the universe by observing our local section of it. Assuming that the Universe is homogeneous and isotropic, it follows that the density of galaxies in the universe must be the same everywhere. If the universe is infinite, then there must be an infinite number of galaxies.
But even so, time after time we see the front page of Democratic newspapers extol the 'horror' of diligence, and shut down another means of tracking these people before they do harm. In my America they would have been shot on television, with Muslim captions as they died.
I suggest you move somewhere like North Korea, Iran, or Pakistan. You'll probably find it much more to your liking.
Without the electoral college, vast parts of America will be ignored by would-be politicians who would focus solely on the population centers where a majority of the population lives.
Is it really any worse than the current system, where vast parts of America are currently ignored by would-be politicians who focus solely on a handful of swing states?
I guess that works if you call anything that goes against what the current Republicans are for "far-left". Fact is, a lot of people here actually hold a lot of what I would call conservative values. Small government, low taxes, personal freedom, balanced budget, isolationist foriegn policy, right to bear arms, free market, anti-censorship, no nanny state, no substities, etc. A lot of these are actually libertarian values, and I would consider libertarians right leaning (it's just that they look leftish right now, as the current crop of people on the right are just plain whack). If you look at my list again, with the exception of low taxes and the 2nd admendent, you'll notice that the Republicans believe in little of that. There is a reason they're called the "neocons" you know.
The way I see it, each party has about 25-30% of the voters as a die-hard, won't budge at all base. While the Democrat side of this is rather hard to spot nowadays, the Republican side is easy to spot because it's all they have left (that's why I don't see Bush's popularity rating dropping much anymore - there will still be some defectors, but for the most part the ones that have remained with Bush for this long have demonstrated pretty well that they aren't going to budge no matter what). Of course, 25-30% of the votes don't win elections, so in order to win you have to sway over a good portion of the remaining 60-75% of the voters, who for the most part will go either way on a given election (minus the few % that go third party). Now, this group is a finicky bunch, and the way I have seen a lot of them vote is downright scary. Instead of making an informed decision, they just look to see which side they hate more, then go vote for the other side. The Republicans seem to understand this pretty well, but the Democrats not so much.
In my mind, this is why Bush got re-elected in 2004. People looked at John Kerry, decided they didn't like him, and voted for Bush instead. Some of this was legitimate gripes (like John Kerry is an ultra-rich, stuffy career policitian), but a whole lot of this was also due to a huge Republican smear campaign.
Now Hilary is interesting. She's got pretty good support amonst the Democrat base, but at best the response amonst the 60-75% is lukewarm at best. For the most part, they don't like her. I like to say that she represents everything that's wrong with the Democratic party. People view her as an old school tax and spend liberal, she supports (or atleast supported) the Iraqi war and the Patriot act. She's for things like censoring video games, and seems to have strong ties to corporate interests and big money. The little guys out there don't feel that Hilary will represent them. Bill Clinton's old scandals like Whitewater also leave a bad taste in people's mouths, and the fact that she's a carpet bagger who pretty much used New York in an attempt to leapfrog to the Whitehouse really turns people off of her. Like John Kerry, she just screams career politician, and people don't like that.
Now what I see happening is Hilary getting the nod, mostly because the Democratic base seems to like her, and being the die-hards, they're the ones who'll go vote in the primaries. If this happens though, she's going to face a huge uphill battle trying to carve out her portion of the 60-75% to win, as these people don't like her as much as they like Obama, or even someone like Edwards or Al Gore even. The Republicans know this, and I can see some of them practically salvating at the prospect of Hilary Clinton getting the nod. Like John Kerry, they think they can successfully take her down with another massive smear campaign, I would say that they have a pretty decent chance of suceeding at that.
Of course, as you say a lot of this does hinge on who the Republicans nominate - if their nod is terrible, it'll do a lot to swing people over to the Democrats. However, don't forget that they were successful in getting Bush back in again for a second term.
How about a cheap thermometer and a plastic bag? Put a plastic bag over the exhaust vent of the server, and see how long it takes to fill it. Next, measure the ambient temperature of the room, and the temperature of the exhaust coming from the server. Now you know a volume of air that the server heats a specific amount in a certain period of time. Apply your physics and you know how much power the server drew to do that.
Before you laugh too much, that's basically how the EPA figures out the mileage of cars (just replace heat with CO2).