Spoken like someone who has never taken micro or macro economics.
I can only imagine you get this idea from watching the news -- where political pundits have little grasp on what economics actually IS.
Economics on the micro scale is actually just common sense. We're talking simple supply and demand curves. There's no ideology involved. If people want X and we restrict the supply of X, the price of X will go up as there is now a shortage. Shortages are a real thing that are well understood. Typically prices go up on things that are in demand and have a shortage -- take the iPhone for example. Surpluses are also well understood -- especially for perishables. Just take a look at any clearance sale as a great example of prices being slashed to get rid of inventory. Where economics is fuzzy is the "how much" area. As in -- how much will the price of X go up? There can be a million variables, and it would be a damned near impossible math problem to solve for them all, so one can do models and get decent predictions -- but, much like the weather, any forecast can be off if there's unforeseen influences.
On the macro scale, economics is also well understood -- BUT, people have different ideologies about what's "best." If we have a recession, we can increase the money supply by lowering interest rates which will generally spur more spending and help us climb out of the recession faster... BUT, b/c we increased the money supply, the value of the dollar is now lower and inflation is higher... and the dollar is weaker vs foreign currency so that hurts the price of imports.... etc. etc. in a chain reaction of things.
Any economy is a hugely complex system -- the USA's Economy being among the most complex in the world. You can spin a lot of things as "good" or "bad", but really most meddling with the free market is both good and bad. You can trade shortening a recession for worsening inflation. Often things that are good in the short term are bad for the long term. Often things that are good for the individual are terrible for the economy as a whole. (Saving money and being thrifty is great... everyone saving money and not spending much leads to a recession, though!)
As for the crap that's tossed around on the news like "trickle down economics" and "voodoo economics" -- uh... I got news. Those are not economic theories taught in business schools. That's made up BS that rich people tell themselves is true, but real economists don't subscribe to that baloney.
Real economists are like particle physicists -- they can tell you what's likely to happen based on historical data and what's known to be possible, but what will really happen is a matter of statistics, not absolutes. Also, anyone who thinks they understand economics hasn't had several semesters of MBA level macro-economics. If you aren't confused BEFORE you take that, you will definitely be confused after. lol. (actually, it's not all that confusing, it's just so counter-intuitive until you realize how the dominoes fall in such a massive system... and then the feedback loops that develop in the near short term, short term, long term, and extreme long term.)
Don't forget the FCC doesn't set the rules for the rest of the world's Wi-Fi. Many of the designs are sold overseas and the OS is what locks out improper use of the radio by region. Take 802.11G channels for instance -- USA allows channels 1 - 11. Most of the rest of the world allows channels 1-13. The USA technically allows channels 12 and 13 on low-power devices, but all Wi-Fi routers in the US restrict those just to be sure they don't overlap Channel 14 -- b/c interfering with CH 14 is strictly forbidden. Some countries like Japan even allow channel 14 for 802.11B only.
802.11 N and AC are much more complicated. Different regions and countries allowed different parts of the spectrum -- which vary widely.
You're not going to get a global manufacturer to bake in all those different settings and effectively lock their hardware to a region. They're going to mass produce the hardware, then load a region-specific firmware "just in time" as they're ordered by region. For your solution to work, there would have to be a separate firmware control just for the radio that could be loaded separately from the OS -- one that was write once, read only after (or at least required certificates for future updates from the manufacturer only). Why would a manufacturer add that complexity and cost?
Come to think of it, you'd likely need 2 firmware chips and 2 processors... A main processor for the OS, a firmware for the OS... and then a firmware and radio-CPU just to access and control the radio and send I/O to the main CPU. Otherwise, your OS firmware can route around any other firmware and access the radio directly and select out-of-FCC-rule bands and power levels.
Your solution is not simple. It's like adding a BIOS chip and software to a simple system-on-a-chip board. That's never going to happen when they're pinching pennies to get the cheapest board for the router. Seriously... look at what happened to the linksys routers -- every new model had a smaller board and was dumber than the one prior (even reduced the RAM over time, too).
The entire purpose was to dodge Freedom of Information Act requests and to prevent her communications from entering into the National Archives. A nice side-effect was that her political enemies would have a tougher time snooping on her.
She believed she could skirt the law (as so many in DC do). Regardless of what happens with her over the issue, it looks like there will be severe penalties for future Secretaries of State that attempt this.
You couldn't GET 32 MB of RAM even on a high end system back in 1995. I know. I purchased a top of the line Pentium 100 Mhz system with 8 MB of RAM that summer for several thousand dollars -- was starting school at USC's College of Engineering in the fall. My computer came with Win 3.11, and I anxiously awaited the Win95 CD's release.
I purchased an additional 4 MB of RAM a year later for several hundred dollars, and with a total of 12 MB, that baby flew... no more grinding on the swap file. I also had an ISDN line in my apartment and access to some of the newest computer equipment on campus while working for the engineering college. NOONE had 32 MB of RAM. Not even newest NT domain servers, and most definitely not our computer labs -- even the ones running AutoCAD.
The 99% are not in control. They simply get to choose between the options left after the 1% has chosen which candidates the 99% get to pick from. You cannot possibly believe that the 20 or so candidates for president are the best out of a pool of millions of Americans that could do the job. How did we get THESE candidates? Money. Only rich people or those backed by rich people can afford to run a presidential campaign. Recently, Rick Perry ran out of cash and his people are working for free while his SuperPAC takes over the advertising. I doubt he'll be in the race much longer as his funding has dried up.
When you have a 2 party system where both candidates are bought by special interests and 1%'ers, your choices are between a rock and a hard place. The Party is indeed what matters most -- because the funding for those candidates came from party supporters who have agendas to push for that party. I would vote for a chicken with a D on it before I'd vote for most Republicans in the race (Maybe Bush as the exception.. he seems more sane on immigration, gay rights, and healthcare than the rest).
If we had a sane voting system where a vote for one candidate was not the same as a vote against all other candidates, we might be able to support a multi-party system -- or even multiple candidates for the same party all the way up to the general election. Say, a Likert scale -- each candidate gets a vote from 1 to 10, we average out all the votes and the one that gets the highest score wins. 3rd parties wouldn't steal votes... and we'd have more room for moderates.
The point of the Clinton server was to shield the Clintons from Freedom of Information Act requests. It was intentionally set up to prevent both the government and the people from ever prying into their communications. Her office had a duty to secure and store those communications for posterity for the National Archives, and she rebuffed it.
This was not an accident, nor something set up on a whim to make life more convenient. It was deliberate -- and her office was warned multiple times that it was not acceptable before and during its use. Hillary's own office sent out e-mails to her staff advising them not to use their own private e-mail WHILE she was using her own private e-mail against the advice of the State Dept.'s own security experts.
She's only now sending the server to the feds -- since it's verified she crossed a line with top secret info on it that's been sent unencrypted over the internet to others. I would not be surprised if that server has been scrubbed top to bottom with any incriminating evidence purged and over-written with excuses galore over why data is missing or not retained (and unrecoverable).
Still, slap her with a fine and send her on her way -- and make it an impeachable offense for future Secretaries of State to ever do this again. Worse case scenario, they charge her with intentionally divulging top secret info and give her a suspended sentence.
Most people who use mass transit use it because it is the most efficient way to get from A to B, not because they can't afford their own vehicle, nor because it's the cheapest option.
Case in point: I stayed in Atlanta for a 4 day weekend at a convention downtown. I drove to my hotel, then used the hotel's free airport shuttle to the airport to take the subway/train system MARTA to downtown Atlanta and back daily (sometimes 3 or 4 round-trips in a day). It cost me all of $10... and it was the fastest way to get from my cheap hotel to downtown as there was also a ballgame and another convention as well and the roads were bumper to bumper. I rode the train several times a day - got my money's worth and met interesting convention-goers on the train. I took a taxi back to the hotel one night when I stayed out later than the trains ran.
IF I had driven my car downtown to a lot, it would have taken two to three times as long - not to mention finding parking in busy downtown even with parking garages (I know - had a buddy that did that the next year we went), plus the cost of gas and parking for the day (for each day) would have been prohibitive. (We settled on staying at a guest hotel downtown the third year... no driving or trains. yay!)
People in cities with mass transit often prefer it over having a vehicle... and they hate the tourists who bring their cars and don't know how to drive or where to park.
But, back to your point -- you're incorrect. The efficiencies don't take hold when the vast majority of a system is automated -- they take place when only a small fraction is in place. There is a tipping point. If one single car stops to turn left into a parking garage, it can back up an entire left lane of traffic for a mile or more in a decent sized city. That's just one car. For each car that pauses to let someone out rather than turning and seeking parking, you get vast returns in traffic efficiency.
If you must make the public vs private argument, then I'd say you're just arguing quality -- if people care enough, they'll get 2 tiered taxis. One for Uber and another for Super-Uber for those that want to ensure their car is squeaky clean. Most mass transit seats are plastic and easily washable. Cars could easily be outfitted with uncomfortable, but sanitary plastic seating and a bottle of alcohol spray for the germaphobes.
Another aspect is that people junk up their cars with their own crap -- but, it's often stuff they want to keep, so they wouldn't be leaving that in Ubers... they'd just leave trash if they're litter-bugs. I bet Uber could record video and charge extra for damage or littering and put a stop to that (assuming it's paid by credit card).
They key issues for ownership of vehicles are - utility, time, personalization, and storage. People like to keep their baby carriers in the vehicle... sometimes their drinks or other groceries, napkins, kleenex, lotion, sunglasses, etc. Sometimes people store presents in trunks to hide from family members.... various other things.
The personal car isn't going away, but it could become an auto-driving personal car. Still, many families may only need 1 personal family car and use an Uber automated taxi for travelling to work, school, and most other short trips.
Business casual at a call center where I worked meant polo shirt, khakis, and dress shoes (I chose Doc Martins as they're like dressy tennis shoes). Polo shirts and khakis are just one slight nudge away from the full monkey suit I had to wear working for banks. Do you really want to spend half of your life wearing uncomfortable clothing? Most of your waking life, actually.
Seriously, I worked in government offices and universities where I wore jeans and t-shirts every day. Professors even taught classes in Hawaiian shirts and shorts with flip flops. People were happy and productive. They didn't look like slobs, either.
Millions of students go to college every day in jeans and t-shirts. Heck, some go to class in their pajamas. They still work hard, make the grade, and many even discover new things - just like an R&D division. Grad students that publish important new discoveries are seldom seen wearing anything but jeans, t-shirts,and maybe a lab coat and goggles if needed. It's beyond stupid to expect R&D to perform better with a monkey suit or business casual than if they were allowed to wear whatever made them feel comfortable and relaxed so that they could focus on creative solutions and new experiments.
Psychology -- the theory being that putting on work clothes puts you into a different frame of mind which is conducive towards work.
Frankly, I think it's BS, but that's the real answer. The HR droids believe (and lots of psychological experiments show) that when people put on certain clothes - especially uniforms - they tend to change their behaviors and thought processes. People who wear their pajamas all day tend to be calmer and lazier. Those who wear suits and ties tend to be more active. Women especially change their emotional states and attitudes in response to what they're wearing.
The reason I call BS is because regardless of whatever lab experiments show, no one knows how specific individuals will respond to such changes - especially in a place where the work is a CREATIVE work. I would think creative minds should be allowed to wear whatever clothing makes them most comfortable so that their minds are free to relax and imagine creative solutions.
Having worked at a business casual call center with casual day Fridays (and even casual weeks at times), I can say that the jeans actually improved the workplace. We were on phones all day talking to irate customers. Anything that helped us relax was helpful to everyone.
I hate business attire. I'd wear t-shirts, jean shorts, and sandals every day of my life if I could... heck, maybe gym shorts if they didn't look horrendous.
Companies that don't have customer-facing personal contact should drop the BS. Clothing rules should reflect workplace safety and avoid offensive content -- and maybe also reduce distractions for other workers.... but, I say some distractions at work are healthy.
Depends on what you mean by "faster." If you mean clock frequency, then perhaps. Also perhaps if you mean an individual core of a CPU vs a core of a GPU.
In this sense, it's the time to perform massively parallel instructions. GPUs are generally hundreds of times faster than CPUs for such calculations. Part of this is because a CPU can have a few cores, but a GPU generally has thousands of floating point units. The other part is that CPUs are general purpose central processors while GPUs are very specialized to optimize them for specific kinds of tasks.
Think of it like a CPU is 4 guys with Swiss Army Knives while a GPU is a team of 1,600 guys each with a battery powered, professional screwdriver. Guess which one's faster at screwing 1,600 wood screws into 400 posts for a building. Now guess which is faster at cutting a traced outline on a single piece of paper.
Obamacare did originate in the House as HR 3590. (HR meaning House of Representatives.) It was a "shell bill" that was gutted and stuffed with Obamacare to get around the rule. It's not a novel approach either, and the courts took no issue with it.
HR 3590 passed the House first as required, went to the Senate which altered it into Obamacare and then congress "resolved the differences" between the House and Senate versions passed before sending it to the president.
The rational behind starting tax bills in the HR is that it's "closer to the electorate" - or was before Senators were elected by popular vote. Now, the differences between the two as far as being held to the will of the people is lessened.
1400 years is indeed a long time, but if there is a civilization broadcasting, who knows what we might be able to learn from those broadcasts?!?
ET could be beaming out their PBS documentaries with the answers to nearly all our questions for them.
Even if there's no advanced life there, we now have a great target for sending a probe to detect life -- the fact that the humans that send the probe won't live to get the reply isn't important. Someone, someday will know if we send a probe now and it is successful in its mission.
My guess (and I admit, it's pure speculation) is that only a select few who created the OS have access to such sources -- that and perhaps NK sponsored hackers. Everyone else is restricted to the national intranet. Well, everyone else that is lucky enough to even see, much less use a computer in NK. The country has enough trouble providing food, much less electronics for its citizens.
You make a fair point. However, if the only difference is whether a TAXI diver is actively scouting for service or waiting for a service to assign a job, then it's a really grey area. After all, Uber does its best to advertise itself. Wouldn't an Uber driver parked at an airport waiting for the App to signal the fare be the same as a TAXI driver waiting for a pedestrian to signal for a fare? Why would TAXIs need to advertise their service if the app can advertise for them? - especially if UBER buys advertising or even a sign at the Airport to entice pedestrians to use the app to hail a cab?
I've almost always called cabs from phones -- why would calling a cab using an app on my phone be any different?
Not sure where you got the definition that taxis are not also personal vehicles. Where I live in South Carolina, there is a limited number of taxi licenses by law -- and those licenses are owned by only a few families. The vehicles are most certainly owned by the drivers and are random makes and models with a simple TAXI light on the top. They also use those cars as their personal vehicles around town. I know because I've ridden in many of them and I've spoken with the drivers.
If I use a phone to call, text, or use an app in order to have someone provide me with personal transportation to another location for a fee, I'm calling a taxi. I have expectations of being picked up in a reasonable amount of time and to get to my destination in a reasonable amount of time for a reasonable fee.
Uber drivers ARE Taxi drivers. They aren't casual drivers picking up hitchhikers and asking for voluntary, optional donations.
The only question is whether or not those Taxi drivers are independent contractors or employees of Uber. Either way, they likely need Taxi licenses. It's reasonable that if their income derives from Uber and Uber has significant expectations about their hours, appearance, work, and/or performance; they could indeed be considered employees of Uber - or at least contractors working as agents on behalf of Uber (like temp workers at a call center for a bank).
It follows that if the drivers are employees of Uber, then Uber is operating a taxi service. Uber's only chance is to say that those independent contractors and users are simply using their software service as a communication/scheduling app. I sincerely doubt that explanation is going to work.
The irony is that BeOS was designed specifically to take advantage of modern computer hardware of the day and cared nothing for binary compatibility with other OSes, and today Haiku is clinging to an ancient compiler and a dead x86 architecture... in the name of compatibility with BeOS apps, no less. BeOS itself moved from Hobbit to PowerPC to Intel x86 with little care for compatibility.
What made BeOS exciting 20 years ago was it promised to give users better multimedia support and responsiveness. Other OSes have caught up with the innovations and surpassed them. (Multithreading, multiprocessing, multitasking, journaling file systems, etc.) Some users liked the GUI and lauded it as a clean and a great interface. I hated the yellow tabs. Still, that's just personal preference -- Mac OS X has a clean and polished interface that suits that purpose today. In fact, the death knell of BeOS was when Apple declined to purchase BeOS and bought NeXTSTEP instead... because it was superior and led to today's OS X.
Point being that BeOS offered new, cutting edge features and better functionality on the same hardware than other OSes at the time. It seems that Haiku is the last of the BeOS clones and it's not progressing at a rate that will ever offer users significant benefits over modern OSes today.
What does Haiku have to offer? I mean - when it's finally released in a few decades or centuries at this rate and our ancestors get to enjoy it on their x86 or even AMD64 emulators?
There's a nice bit of fluff at : https://www.haiku-os.org/about , but that doesn't really answer the question. The key strength compared to Linux seems to be that a single team is developing and integrating everything with a common goal. Why couldn't that same team (or one as dedicated) simply fork a Linux distribution and all software it uses to customize and integrate towards the same common goal?
Seems a waste to re-invent the wheel creating new drivers and struggling to build on the Haiku platform for backwards compatibility without any clear, solid, user-recognizable benefit.
I get that it's interesting as a project and great practice for coders, and I truly wish Haiku well in its continued development... I just don't see the point if the development will never release outside of Beta with support for modern hardware. If Linux still struggles to get decent drivers, I can't imagine Haiku ever getting proper support.
Haiku seems like another stagnant AmigaOS, Syllable Desktop, or other relic. ReactOS at least has some benefit to Linux and potentially former Windows users by furthering WINE development even if it never makes it out of alpha (going on 17 years now btw.)
I'm looking forward to seeing how well it works on a Core 2 Duo laptop. Thanks to some updates to VLC, I'm actually able to play 1080p movies on the old laptop connected to the TV. It taxes the system - mostly b/c of an old GPU, though. It's ever on the threshold of being taken to the recycling center should it fail to perform its duties.
If Win10 is slower, then the machine is done for -- unless I give it new life with Linux Mint or Cubuntu.
I already recycled a Pentium IV machine because it couldn't handle 720p. It's a sad day when I can't find a use for a perfectly working (more or less) machine.
The war on drugs never worked. What makes you think government can stop people from getting their hands on even more addictive things like fat and sugar?!?!?
Sure, ban the sale of the Big Mac and 44oz soda... People will just buy two 22oz sodas and two cheeseburgers instead. Portion control doesn't work when one can just double a regular order.
If you ban sodas and burgers entirely, well... I'll be outside grilling burgers from fresh ground beef and making my own sodas from seltzer water, sugar, and flavoring and selling them to the highest bidders;)
Good luck calling the cops on me when they'll likely be my best customers, too. haha!
If you thought bootleg alcohol was easy to find during prohibition... just wait for bootleg candy bars, sodas, and red meat. Oh, and fries... man. Potatoes are easy to grow, and peanut oil is cheap. Salt is basically free. You'll never stop the fries!
I sympathize, but there is no cure for damaged kidneys. The damage can't be repaired and must be replaced. Until we can find a way to regenerate organs or create better artificial ones, your best shot is a kidney donor -- and I urge you to find a way to ask for a donor. A friend of mine donated his kidney to a young guy he didn't even know well -- a friend's daughter's husband, I think. He figured he was in his late 40s and could do fine with just one kidney while it would make a world of difference to the younger man and his family.
Of course, even a new kidney would come with issues - anti-rejection meds and their side-effects. Thankfully, we have been making progress in using donor organ scaffolding with recipient stem cells. I know we've had success with rodent hearts in labs and other organs, but I don't know if they can use the same techniques with kidneys or even on humans. Scientists are working on bio-engineered kidneys, too https://pharm.ucsf.edu/kidney . There's hope. I think within your lifetime, we'll be printing organs using stem cells from bio-printers.
Beyond restoring your system with new kidneys, I guess the question becomes - what damaged your kidneys to begin with? Is that well understood, and can that be prevented in the future for yourself or others?
I think you're conflating "tailoring treatments based on known DNA markers,antigens, and drugs" with "identifying new markers from tumor cell biopsies and creating new treatments based on those markers." We can do both, but tailoring is the faster of the two. Your statement is a gross oversimplification and overstatement of what current technology can do for cancer treatment (to say nothing of what's available to the general public vs what we can do in a lab or a test tube).
You make it sound as if a new genetic marker can be discovered and constructed from a single sample of a tumor vs a healthy cell from one individual. That's extremely unlikely. Also, the time scale involved from finding a new genetic marker to developing a treatment for that patient with the new genetic marker would likely be decades. The FDA requires about 8 to 10 years of testing before it approves a new treatment. That's after the years of lab work required to develop new drugs and prove their efficacy enough to even bother getting FDA approval.... and that's after years of research proving you've found an actual new genetic marker and many more years finding a viable target to attack the cancer produced by the new marker.
Scientists would not do a biopsy of a single patient and "construct a genetic marker" for their tumor. They might take biopsies of hundreds or thousands of patients with a particular type of cancer to find some correlation between them and find one or more significant markers when compared against the general population who do not have that type of cancer.
A doctor MIGHT subject the biopsy to various KNOWN treatments for the type of cancer and see which works best in the lab before prescribing one or more of those treatments. This is not something regularly done - it's expensive to grow tissue in labs and difficult to control for various factors outside of the body. It's also unwise as it would take time to get results, and even then, what works in vitro does not necessarily work in vivo. Usually, when a biopsy is done, it's simply to look at the cells under a microscope to determine if the mass is malignant or benign, though it may be sent off for testing for antigens, known DNA markers, etc.
Most doctors simply do bloodwork and urine tests to look for antigens and do quick DNA tests to look for specific KNOWN mutations to help them tailor a treatment, but there is no wizard sampling a tumor and producing a magic potion to cure it. Doctors immediately prescribe one of many known treatments based on what information they have because waiting for a better solution is often worse. No one wants to let a tumor grow for weeks or months (much less years or decades) while waiting for a tailored solution. Unfortunately, not everyone responds well to the initial treatment and those patients are often switched to another treatment.
No one is going to do full DNA sequencing on your tumor and a healthy cell to determine the difference -- that would take weeks at best just to find the mutations (and it may find nothing as your "healthy" DNA may have natural mutations -known or unknown- that predispose you to some cancers), then more time to discern which are known mutations and then figure out which - if any - of the rest are benign mutations or cancerous... then months to engineer one or more treatments followed by years or decades of testing before they let a human subject take that new treatment. By that time, you'd have possibly died of cancer... or even old age.
We can look at blood, urine, and a biopsy and see what known antigens and DNA markers are present to help tailor a therapy for an individual's cancer. "Tailoring" is really a strong word for it, as often it's just one of many tools to help a doctor select the proper medication. A type of cancer might only have a handful of drugs to prescribe to begin with, and this information may or may not help an oncologist pick the best one(s).
We can also grow and treat tumors in vitro with various treatments to help discern which might work best, but that's rarely done and isn't always helpful.
Creating and administering NEW treatments to cancer patients based off of their tumor biopsies is not even close to being within the realm of possibility for the near future.
I've also enjoyed Mint, but it's had its issues. I had it on a laptop years ago and it would randomly freeze. I had Mint 17.1 for months, but had to update the kernel to support Zram for snappier response times and use other tweaks to update Mint to work properly.
Cinnamon would often completely freeze after playing a video with VLC. SMplayer would play vids on top of the menus and other windows. All sorts of issues -- none of which happened under Ubuntu with Gnome or KDE on the same machine, though it did have newer versions of VLC and possibly drivers, codecs, etc.
Last month, I switched to Cubuntu -- It's basically Ubuntu with Cinnamon, but much more polished than a straight install of Cinnamon over Ubuntu. It also disables some of Ubuntu's crapware and makes spyware like zeitgeist easy to remove without issues.
(tried to uninstall zeitgeist from a fresh Gnome-Ubuntu install with Cinnamon installed and it wanted to uninstall Cinnamon with it!)
Mint has awesome features beyond Cinnamon - like the ability to change the colors of individual folders... but, it's grounded in older software and repositories making it difficult to upgrade to the latest versions of VLC, etc. Cubuntu comes with the 3.9 Kernel and works with Ubuntu Vivid repositories, so it was the right choice for me.
He who controls the franchise controls its universe!
So, yeah... generally the new owners get to retcon whatever they choose as they produce new canon content.
It's not without precedent. Heck, even the Catholics decided to retcon their religion on multiple occasions by declaring previously canon books as heretical.
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Spoken like someone who has never taken micro or macro economics.
I can only imagine you get this idea from watching the news -- where political pundits have little grasp on what economics actually IS.
Economics on the micro scale is actually just common sense. We're talking simple supply and demand curves. There's no ideology involved. If people want X and we restrict the supply of X, the price of X will go up as there is now a shortage. Shortages are a real thing that are well understood. Typically prices go up on things that are in demand and have a shortage -- take the iPhone for example. Surpluses are also well understood -- especially for perishables. Just take a look at any clearance sale as a great example of prices being slashed to get rid of inventory. Where economics is fuzzy is the "how much" area. As in -- how much will the price of X go up? There can be a million variables, and it would be a damned near impossible math problem to solve for them all, so one can do models and get decent predictions -- but, much like the weather, any forecast can be off if there's unforeseen influences.
On the macro scale, economics is also well understood -- BUT, people have different ideologies about what's "best." If we have a recession, we can increase the money supply by lowering interest rates which will generally spur more spending and help us climb out of the recession faster... BUT, b/c we increased the money supply, the value of the dollar is now lower and inflation is higher... and the dollar is weaker vs foreign currency so that hurts the price of imports.... etc. etc. in a chain reaction of things.
Any economy is a hugely complex system -- the USA's Economy being among the most complex in the world. You can spin a lot of things as "good" or "bad", but really most meddling with the free market is both good and bad. You can trade shortening a recession for worsening inflation. Often things that are good in the short term are bad for the long term. Often things that are good for the individual are terrible for the economy as a whole. (Saving money and being thrifty is great... everyone saving money and not spending much leads to a recession, though!)
As for the crap that's tossed around on the news like "trickle down economics" and "voodoo economics" -- uh... I got news. Those are not economic theories taught in business schools. That's made up BS that rich people tell themselves is true, but real economists don't subscribe to that baloney.
Real economists are like particle physicists -- they can tell you what's likely to happen based on historical data and what's known to be possible, but what will really happen is a matter of statistics, not absolutes. Also, anyone who thinks they understand economics hasn't had several semesters of MBA level macro-economics. If you aren't confused BEFORE you take that, you will definitely be confused after. lol. (actually, it's not all that confusing, it's just so counter-intuitive until you realize how the dominoes fall in such a massive system... and then the feedback loops that develop in the near short term, short term, long term, and extreme long term.)
Don't forget the FCC doesn't set the rules for the rest of the world's Wi-Fi. Many of the designs are sold overseas and the OS is what locks out improper use of the radio by region. Take 802.11G channels for instance -- USA allows channels 1 - 11. Most of the rest of the world allows channels 1-13. The USA technically allows channels 12 and 13 on low-power devices, but all Wi-Fi routers in the US restrict those just to be sure they don't overlap Channel 14 -- b/c interfering with CH 14 is strictly forbidden. Some countries like Japan even allow channel 14 for 802.11B only.
802.11 N and AC are much more complicated. Different regions and countries allowed different parts of the spectrum -- which vary widely.
You're not going to get a global manufacturer to bake in all those different settings and effectively lock their hardware to a region. They're going to mass produce the hardware, then load a region-specific firmware "just in time" as they're ordered by region. For your solution to work, there would have to be a separate firmware control just for the radio that could be loaded separately from the OS -- one that was write once, read only after (or at least required certificates for future updates from the manufacturer only). Why would a manufacturer add that complexity and cost?
Come to think of it, you'd likely need 2 firmware chips and 2 processors... A main processor for the OS, a firmware for the OS... and then a firmware and radio-CPU just to access and control the radio and send I/O to the main CPU. Otherwise, your OS firmware can route around any other firmware and access the radio directly and select out-of-FCC-rule bands and power levels.
Your solution is not simple. It's like adding a BIOS chip and software to a simple system-on-a-chip board. That's never going to happen when they're pinching pennies to get the cheapest board for the router. Seriously... look at what happened to the linksys routers -- every new model had a smaller board and was dumber than the one prior (even reduced the RAM over time, too).
Ding ding ding. We have a winner!
The entire purpose was to dodge Freedom of Information Act requests and to prevent her communications from entering into the National Archives. A nice side-effect was that her political enemies would have a tougher time snooping on her.
She believed she could skirt the law (as so many in DC do). Regardless of what happens with her over the issue, it looks like there will be severe penalties for future Secretaries of State that attempt this.
You couldn't GET 32 MB of RAM even on a high end system back in 1995. I know. I purchased a top of the line Pentium 100 Mhz system with 8 MB of RAM that summer for several thousand dollars -- was starting school at USC's College of Engineering in the fall. My computer came with Win 3.11, and I anxiously awaited the Win95 CD's release.
I purchased an additional 4 MB of RAM a year later for several hundred dollars, and with a total of 12 MB, that baby flew... no more grinding on the swap file. I also had an ISDN line in my apartment and access to some of the newest computer equipment on campus while working for the engineering college. NOONE had 32 MB of RAM. Not even newest NT domain servers, and most definitely not our computer labs -- even the ones running AutoCAD.
The 99% are not in control. They simply get to choose between the options left after the 1% has chosen which candidates the 99% get to pick from. You cannot possibly believe that the 20 or so candidates for president are the best out of a pool of millions of Americans that could do the job. How did we get THESE candidates? Money. Only rich people or those backed by rich people can afford to run a presidential campaign. Recently, Rick Perry ran out of cash and his people are working for free while his SuperPAC takes over the advertising. I doubt he'll be in the race much longer as his funding has dried up.
When you have a 2 party system where both candidates are bought by special interests and 1%'ers, your choices are between a rock and a hard place. The Party is indeed what matters most -- because the funding for those candidates came from party supporters who have agendas to push for that party. I would vote for a chicken with a D on it before I'd vote for most Republicans in the race (Maybe Bush as the exception.. he seems more sane on immigration, gay rights, and healthcare than the rest).
If we had a sane voting system where a vote for one candidate was not the same as a vote against all other candidates, we might be able to support a multi-party system -- or even multiple candidates for the same party all the way up to the general election. Say, a Likert scale -- each candidate gets a vote from 1 to 10, we average out all the votes and the one that gets the highest score wins. 3rd parties wouldn't steal votes... and we'd have more room for moderates.
The point of the Clinton server was to shield the Clintons from Freedom of Information Act requests. It was intentionally set up to prevent both the government and the people from ever prying into their communications. Her office had a duty to secure and store those communications for posterity for the National Archives, and she rebuffed it.
This was not an accident, nor something set up on a whim to make life more convenient. It was deliberate -- and her office was warned multiple times that it was not acceptable before and during its use. Hillary's own office sent out e-mails to her staff advising them not to use their own private e-mail WHILE she was using her own private e-mail against the advice of the State Dept.'s own security experts.
She's only now sending the server to the feds -- since it's verified she crossed a line with top secret info on it that's been sent unencrypted over the internet to others. I would not be surprised if that server has been scrubbed top to bottom with any incriminating evidence purged and over-written with excuses galore over why data is missing or not retained (and unrecoverable).
Still, slap her with a fine and send her on her way -- and make it an impeachable offense for future Secretaries of State to ever do this again. Worse case scenario, they charge her with intentionally divulging top secret info and give her a suspended sentence.
Most people who use mass transit use it because it is the most efficient way to get from A to B, not because they can't afford their own vehicle, nor because it's the cheapest option.
Case in point: I stayed in Atlanta for a 4 day weekend at a convention downtown. I drove to my hotel, then used the hotel's free airport shuttle to the airport to take the subway/train system MARTA to downtown Atlanta and back daily (sometimes 3 or 4 round-trips in a day). It cost me all of $10... and it was the fastest way to get from my cheap hotel to downtown as there was also a ballgame and another convention as well and the roads were bumper to bumper. I rode the train several times a day - got my money's worth and met interesting convention-goers on the train. I took a taxi back to the hotel one night when I stayed out later than the trains ran.
IF I had driven my car downtown to a lot, it would have taken two to three times as long - not to mention finding parking in busy downtown even with parking garages (I know - had a buddy that did that the next year we went), plus the cost of gas and parking for the day (for each day) would have been prohibitive. (We settled on staying at a guest hotel downtown the third year... no driving or trains. yay!)
People in cities with mass transit often prefer it over having a vehicle... and they hate the tourists who bring their cars and don't know how to drive or where to park.
But, back to your point -- you're incorrect. The efficiencies don't take hold when the vast majority of a system is automated -- they take place when only a small fraction is in place. There is a tipping point. If one single car stops to turn left into a parking garage, it can back up an entire left lane of traffic for a mile or more in a decent sized city. That's just one car. For each car that pauses to let someone out rather than turning and seeking parking, you get vast returns in traffic efficiency.
If you must make the public vs private argument, then I'd say you're just arguing quality -- if people care enough, they'll get 2 tiered taxis. One for Uber and another for Super-Uber for those that want to ensure their car is squeaky clean. Most mass transit seats are plastic and easily washable. Cars could easily be outfitted with uncomfortable, but sanitary plastic seating and a bottle of alcohol spray for the germaphobes.
Another aspect is that people junk up their cars with their own crap -- but, it's often stuff they want to keep, so they wouldn't be leaving that in Ubers... they'd just leave trash if they're litter-bugs. I bet Uber could record video and charge extra for damage or littering and put a stop to that (assuming it's paid by credit card).
They key issues for ownership of vehicles are - utility, time, personalization, and storage. People like to keep their baby carriers in the vehicle... sometimes their drinks or other groceries, napkins, kleenex, lotion, sunglasses, etc. Sometimes people store presents in trunks to hide from family members.... various other things.
The personal car isn't going away, but it could become an auto-driving personal car. Still, many families may only need 1 personal family car and use an Uber automated taxi for travelling to work, school, and most other short trips.
For want of Mod points. LOL!
Business casual at a call center where I worked meant polo shirt, khakis, and dress shoes (I chose Doc Martins as they're like dressy tennis shoes). Polo shirts and khakis are just one slight nudge away from the full monkey suit I had to wear working for banks. Do you really want to spend half of your life wearing uncomfortable clothing? Most of your waking life, actually.
Seriously, I worked in government offices and universities where I wore jeans and t-shirts every day. Professors even taught classes in Hawaiian shirts and shorts with flip flops. People were happy and productive. They didn't look like slobs, either.
Millions of students go to college every day in jeans and t-shirts. Heck, some go to class in their pajamas. They still work hard, make the grade, and many even discover new things - just like an R&D division. Grad students that publish important new discoveries are seldom seen wearing anything but jeans, t-shirts,and maybe a lab coat and goggles if needed. It's beyond stupid to expect R&D to perform better with a monkey suit or business casual than if they were allowed to wear whatever made them feel comfortable and relaxed so that they could focus on creative solutions and new experiments.
Psychology -- the theory being that putting on work clothes puts you into a different frame of mind which is conducive towards work.
Frankly, I think it's BS, but that's the real answer. The HR droids believe (and lots of psychological experiments show) that when people put on certain clothes - especially uniforms - they tend to change their behaviors and thought processes. People who wear their pajamas all day tend to be calmer and lazier. Those who wear suits and ties tend to be more active. Women especially change their emotional states and attitudes in response to what they're wearing.
The reason I call BS is because regardless of whatever lab experiments show, no one knows how specific individuals will respond to such changes - especially in a place where the work is a CREATIVE work. I would think creative minds should be allowed to wear whatever clothing makes them most comfortable so that their minds are free to relax and imagine creative solutions.
Having worked at a business casual call center with casual day Fridays (and even casual weeks at times), I can say that the jeans actually improved the workplace. We were on phones all day talking to irate customers. Anything that helped us relax was helpful to everyone.
I hate business attire. I'd wear t-shirts, jean shorts, and sandals every day of my life if I could... heck, maybe gym shorts if they didn't look horrendous.
Companies that don't have customer-facing personal contact should drop the BS. Clothing rules should reflect workplace safety and avoid offensive content -- and maybe also reduce distractions for other workers.... but, I say some distractions at work are healthy.
Depends on what you mean by "faster." If you mean clock frequency, then perhaps. Also perhaps if you mean an individual core of a CPU vs a core of a GPU.
In this sense, it's the time to perform massively parallel instructions. GPUs are generally hundreds of times faster than CPUs for such calculations. Part of this is because a CPU can have a few cores, but a GPU generally has thousands of floating point units. The other part is that CPUs are general purpose central processors while GPUs are very specialized to optimize them for specific kinds of tasks.
Think of it like a CPU is 4 guys with Swiss Army Knives while a GPU is a team of 1,600 guys each with a battery powered, professional screwdriver. Guess which one's faster at screwing 1,600 wood screws into 400 posts for a building. Now guess which is faster at cutting a traced outline on a single piece of paper.
http://www.nvidia.com/object/w...
Obamacare did originate in the House as HR 3590. (HR meaning House of Representatives.) It was a "shell bill" that was gutted and stuffed with Obamacare to get around the rule. It's not a novel approach either, and the courts took no issue with it.
HR 3590 passed the House first as required, went to the Senate which altered it into Obamacare and then congress "resolved the differences" between the House and Senate versions passed before sending it to the president.
https://www.congress.gov/bill/...
The rational behind starting tax bills in the HR is that it's "closer to the electorate" - or was before Senators were elected by popular vote. Now, the differences between the two as far as being held to the will of the people is lessened.
1400 years is indeed a long time, but if there is a civilization broadcasting, who knows what we might be able to learn from those broadcasts?!?
ET could be beaming out their PBS documentaries with the answers to nearly all our questions for them.
Even if there's no advanced life there, we now have a great target for sending a probe to detect life -- the fact that the humans that send the probe won't live to get the reply isn't important. Someone, someday will know if we send a probe now and it is successful in its mission.
My guess (and I admit, it's pure speculation) is that only a select few who created the OS have access to such sources -- that and perhaps NK sponsored hackers. Everyone else is restricted to the national intranet. Well, everyone else that is lucky enough to even see, much less use a computer in NK. The country has enough trouble providing food, much less electronics for its citizens.
You make a fair point. However, if the only difference is whether a TAXI diver is actively scouting for service or waiting for a service to assign a job, then it's a really grey area. After all, Uber does its best to advertise itself. Wouldn't an Uber driver parked at an airport waiting for the App to signal the fare be the same as a TAXI driver waiting for a pedestrian to signal for a fare? Why would TAXIs need to advertise their service if the app can advertise for them? - especially if UBER buys advertising or even a sign at the Airport to entice pedestrians to use the app to hail a cab?
I've almost always called cabs from phones -- why would calling a cab using an app on my phone be any different?
Not sure where you got the definition that taxis are not also personal vehicles. Where I live in South Carolina, there is a limited number of taxi licenses by law -- and those licenses are owned by only a few families. The vehicles are most certainly owned by the drivers and are random makes and models with a simple TAXI light on the top. They also use those cars as their personal vehicles around town. I know because I've ridden in many of them and I've spoken with the drivers.
I don't think the distinction is meaningless.
If I use a phone to call, text, or use an app in order to have someone provide me with personal transportation to another location for a fee, I'm calling a taxi. I have expectations of being picked up in a reasonable amount of time and to get to my destination in a reasonable amount of time for a reasonable fee.
Uber drivers ARE Taxi drivers. They aren't casual drivers picking up hitchhikers and asking for voluntary, optional donations.
The only question is whether or not those Taxi drivers are independent contractors or employees of Uber. Either way, they likely need Taxi licenses. It's reasonable that if their income derives from Uber and Uber has significant expectations about their hours, appearance, work, and/or performance; they could indeed be considered employees of Uber - or at least contractors working as agents on behalf of Uber (like temp workers at a call center for a bank).
It follows that if the drivers are employees of Uber, then Uber is operating a taxi service. Uber's only chance is to say that those independent contractors and users are simply using their software service as a communication/scheduling app. I sincerely doubt that explanation is going to work.
The irony is that BeOS was designed specifically to take advantage of modern computer hardware of the day and cared nothing for binary compatibility with other OSes, and today Haiku is clinging to an ancient compiler and a dead x86 architecture... in the name of compatibility with BeOS apps, no less. BeOS itself moved from Hobbit to PowerPC to Intel x86 with little care for compatibility.
What made BeOS exciting 20 years ago was it promised to give users better multimedia support and responsiveness. Other OSes have caught up with the innovations and surpassed them. (Multithreading, multiprocessing, multitasking, journaling file systems, etc.) Some users liked the GUI and lauded it as a clean and a great interface. I hated the yellow tabs. Still, that's just personal preference -- Mac OS X has a clean and polished interface that suits that purpose today. In fact, the death knell of BeOS was when Apple declined to purchase BeOS and bought NeXTSTEP instead... because it was superior and led to today's OS X.
Point being that BeOS offered new, cutting edge features and better functionality on the same hardware than other OSes at the time. It seems that Haiku is the last of the BeOS clones and it's not progressing at a rate that will ever offer users significant benefits over modern OSes today.
What does Haiku have to offer? I mean - when it's finally released in a few decades or centuries at this rate and our ancestors get to enjoy it on their x86 or even AMD64 emulators?
There's a nice bit of fluff at : https://www.haiku-os.org/about , but that doesn't really answer the question. The key strength compared to Linux seems to be that a single team is developing and integrating everything with a common goal. Why couldn't that same team (or one as dedicated) simply fork a Linux distribution and all software it uses to customize and integrate towards the same common goal?
Seems a waste to re-invent the wheel creating new drivers and struggling to build on the Haiku platform for backwards compatibility without any clear, solid, user-recognizable benefit.
I get that it's interesting as a project and great practice for coders, and I truly wish Haiku well in its continued development... I just don't see the point if the development will never release outside of Beta with support for modern hardware. If Linux still struggles to get decent drivers, I can't imagine Haiku ever getting proper support.
Haiku seems like another stagnant AmigaOS, Syllable Desktop, or other relic. ReactOS at least has some benefit to Linux and potentially former Windows users by furthering WINE development even if it never makes it out of alpha (going on 17 years now btw.)
I'm looking forward to seeing how well it works on a Core 2 Duo laptop. Thanks to some updates to VLC, I'm actually able to play 1080p movies on the old laptop connected to the TV. It taxes the system - mostly b/c of an old GPU, though. It's ever on the threshold of being taken to the recycling center should it fail to perform its duties.
If Win10 is slower, then the machine is done for -- unless I give it new life with Linux Mint or Cubuntu.
I already recycled a Pentium IV machine because it couldn't handle 720p. It's a sad day when I can't find a use for a perfectly working (more or less) machine.
The war on drugs never worked. What makes you think government can stop people from getting their hands on even more addictive things like fat and sugar?!?!?
Sure, ban the sale of the Big Mac and 44oz soda... People will just buy two 22oz sodas and two cheeseburgers instead. Portion control doesn't work when one can just double a regular order.
If you ban sodas and burgers entirely, well... I'll be outside grilling burgers from fresh ground beef and making my own sodas from seltzer water, sugar, and flavoring and selling them to the highest bidders ;)
Good luck calling the cops on me when they'll likely be my best customers, too. haha!
If you thought bootleg alcohol was easy to find during prohibition... just wait for bootleg candy bars, sodas, and red meat. Oh, and fries... man. Potatoes are easy to grow, and peanut oil is cheap. Salt is basically free. You'll never stop the fries!
What, like this movie?
The Returned: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt20...
Zombies that are completely normal people unless they don't take their retroviral injections!!!
Zombie babysitters are just fine until they forget their meds and eat the baby! ;)
I sympathize, but there is no cure for damaged kidneys. The damage can't be repaired and must be replaced. Until we can find a way to regenerate organs or create better artificial ones, your best shot is a kidney donor -- and I urge you to find a way to ask for a donor. A friend of mine donated his kidney to a young guy he didn't even know well -- a friend's daughter's husband, I think. He figured he was in his late 40s and could do fine with just one kidney while it would make a world of difference to the younger man and his family.
Of course, even a new kidney would come with issues - anti-rejection meds and their side-effects. Thankfully, we have been making progress in using donor organ scaffolding with recipient stem cells. I know we've had success with rodent hearts in labs and other organs, but I don't know if they can use the same techniques with kidneys or even on humans. Scientists are working on bio-engineered kidneys, too https://pharm.ucsf.edu/kidney . There's hope. I think within your lifetime, we'll be printing organs using stem cells from bio-printers.
Beyond restoring your system with new kidneys, I guess the question becomes - what damaged your kidneys to begin with? Is that well understood, and can that be prevented in the future for yourself or others?
I think you're conflating "tailoring treatments based on known DNA markers,antigens, and drugs" with "identifying new markers from tumor cell biopsies and creating new treatments based on those markers." We can do both, but tailoring is the faster of the two. Your statement is a gross oversimplification and overstatement of what current technology can do for cancer treatment (to say nothing of what's available to the general public vs what we can do in a lab or a test tube).
You make it sound as if a new genetic marker can be discovered and constructed from a single sample of a tumor vs a healthy cell from one individual. That's extremely unlikely. Also, the time scale involved from finding a new genetic marker to developing a treatment for that patient with the new genetic marker would likely be decades. The FDA requires about 8 to 10 years of testing before it approves a new treatment. That's after the years of lab work required to develop new drugs and prove their efficacy enough to even bother getting FDA approval.... and that's after years of research proving you've found an actual new genetic marker and many more years finding a viable target to attack the cancer produced by the new marker.
Scientists would not do a biopsy of a single patient and "construct a genetic marker" for their tumor. They might take biopsies of hundreds or thousands of patients with a particular type of cancer to find some correlation between them and find one or more significant markers when compared against the general population who do not have that type of cancer.
A doctor MIGHT subject the biopsy to various KNOWN treatments for the type of cancer and see which works best in the lab before prescribing one or more of those treatments. This is not something regularly done - it's expensive to grow tissue in labs and difficult to control for various factors outside of the body. It's also unwise as it would take time to get results, and even then, what works in vitro does not necessarily work in vivo. Usually, when a biopsy is done, it's simply to look at the cells under a microscope to determine if the mass is malignant or benign, though it may be sent off for testing for antigens, known DNA markers, etc.
Most doctors simply do bloodwork and urine tests to look for antigens and do quick DNA tests to look for specific KNOWN mutations to help them tailor a treatment, but there is no wizard sampling a tumor and producing a magic potion to cure it. Doctors immediately prescribe one of many known treatments based on what information they have because waiting for a better solution is often worse. No one wants to let a tumor grow for weeks or months (much less years or decades) while waiting for a tailored solution. Unfortunately, not everyone responds well to the initial treatment and those patients are often switched to another treatment.
No one is going to do full DNA sequencing on your tumor and a healthy cell to determine the difference -- that would take weeks at best just to find the mutations (and it may find nothing as your "healthy" DNA may have natural mutations -known or unknown- that predispose you to some cancers), then more time to discern which are known mutations and then figure out which - if any - of the rest are benign mutations or cancerous... then months to engineer one or more treatments followed by years or decades of testing before they let a human subject take that new treatment. By that time, you'd have possibly died of cancer... or even old age.
We can look at blood, urine, and a biopsy and see what known antigens and DNA markers are present to help tailor a therapy for an individual's cancer. "Tailoring" is really a strong word for it, as often it's just one of many tools to help a doctor select the proper medication. A type of cancer might only have a handful of drugs to prescribe to begin with, and this information may or may not help an oncologist pick the best one(s).
We can also grow and treat tumors in vitro with various treatments to help discern which might work best, but that's rarely done and isn't always helpful.
Creating and administering NEW treatments to cancer patients based off of their tumor biopsies is not even close to being within the realm of possibility for the near future.
I've also enjoyed Mint, but it's had its issues. I had it on a laptop years ago and it would randomly freeze. I had Mint 17.1 for months, but had to update the kernel to support Zram for snappier response times and use other tweaks to update Mint to work properly.
Cinnamon would often completely freeze after playing a video with VLC. SMplayer would play vids on top of the menus and other windows. All sorts of issues -- none of which happened under Ubuntu with Gnome or KDE on the same machine, though it did have newer versions of VLC and possibly drivers, codecs, etc.
Last month, I switched to Cubuntu -- It's basically Ubuntu with Cinnamon, but much more polished than a straight install of Cinnamon over Ubuntu. It also disables some of Ubuntu's crapware and makes spyware like zeitgeist easy to remove without issues.
(tried to uninstall zeitgeist from a fresh Gnome-Ubuntu install with Cinnamon installed and it wanted to uninstall Cinnamon with it!)
Mint has awesome features beyond Cinnamon - like the ability to change the colors of individual folders... but, it's grounded in older software and repositories making it difficult to upgrade to the latest versions of VLC, etc. Cubuntu comes with the 3.9 Kernel and works with Ubuntu Vivid repositories, so it was the right choice for me.
He who controls the franchise controls its universe!
So, yeah... generally the new owners get to retcon whatever they choose as they produce new canon content.
It's not without precedent. Heck, even the Catholics decided to retcon their religion on multiple occasions by declaring previously canon books as heretical.