No, it's about an overly complicated solution to a problem that can be solved with much simpler means.
If the students are required to carry their school-issued ID, that school-issued ID can serve as their payment card, and if there's a concern with fraud in the sense of a different student using the card, then add a PIN pad to the card reader. Mind you, at least in the elementary schools the lunch ladies know who's on free and reduced lunch, who has special diets, etc, so it would be harder for fraud by kids.
Or, cross-link the ID card system's picture database to the POS in the cafeteria, so that when the card is swiped, the picture comes up on-screen, and the lunch lady can see if the student paying is the student on the ID.
And as for elementary schools, at least around here the kids come as a class, and many times the lunch lady simply points to the kid's face on the touchscreen as the whole class is on-screen at one time, so the kid doesn't even need ID.
This fingerprint system seems like an overly complicated, overly invasive means to cover a couple bucks or equivalent-pounds worth of food every day.
Human populations also seem to somehow stabilize when constrained with resources (sometimes in ugly ways, but it does happen).
I don't think that's true in the slightest. Poor, resource-starved populations have the most children. Populations with opportunity and means have the fewest children.
If you want a specific case that can be looked at, look at the population of Gaza from the formal founding of Israel through today. The population absolutely exploded in number between then and now, and that's arguably one of the hardest places to live in the world.
The impact theory that led Barringer to buy the crater assumed that the impactor would be the same size as the crater, and buried below the basin. He expected to make a fortune off of iron mining.
The other theories were related to vulcanism, as that part of the Colorado Plateau has lots of volcanic features within an hours' drive. I know because I just went on a geology field trip organized through a buddy of mine from the geology department at our University. It was rather amusing, watching the tour guides at the crater visitor's center asking him questions.
When it's free, and there's no penalty for failing to participate, and it makes the news as a fad, then this is the expected result, not some outlier.
If anything they should be happy that a few hundred-thousand of the eight million actually completed it; assuming they're around 5% completion that's pretty good for something that there was no obligation to participate in, that required a fairly large amount of time committed that might not have been considered in advance, etc.
It's like an extreme version of the affluenza-type kid that's had everything handed to him going off to college because it's automatic; he does poorly and skips a lot because he has no stake in what happens. His parents pay for everything and he has none of his own cost on the line.
Barringer Crater was a pre-existing landform that wasn't even confirmed to be of extraterrestrial origin until Shoemaker's 1960-ish PhD thesis. Granted, there was suspicion that it was from a meteorite impact, but the theories up until Shoemaker's were all incorrect.
Barringer's claim was granted because it was land, not becuase it was extraterrestrial. Barringer owned the land and got mineral rights to it, and while he may have expected a large iron core, the office granting those rights did it because of it being land.
Sounds like what needs to happen is a recognition that when an entity mines in space, it can claim that its value-add in extracting those resources gives a claim to those extracted resources and only those extracted resources, with the possible exception of an active, ongoing extraction operation having the right to exclusive use of the mine and only the mine while the operation is active. Once the operation is inactive then it's fair-game for others to start using it too.
I don't see a lot of threat in the Chinese or any other power colonizing space and managing to keep hold of their colonies. Space exploration is in the same place as "New World" exploration was at the first voyage of Columbus, in the sense that as as species we don't really have the developed means to take territory and hold it, and I expect that it'll go through a revolutionary-era as well, when those that have actually done the colonizing or the progeny thereof decides that they don't really need the mother-country anymore. That period might be harder if the colonies don't find ways to be self-sufficient, but given the sheer cost in sending supplies, any colony would have to be self-sufficient to be financially practical. Like the United States was in the 1770s, space colonies will be too far away from the motherland to be easily held if those colonies want to break away, as it'll be too expensive garrison them and simply won't be worth the effort.
So does that mean we'll hear some Ellington and Goodman and Miller, and that they'll know absolutely everything there is to know about their musical theory?
Unterminated quotations are by-definition terminated at the end of the paragraph. At least they are regularly and consistently in all of the novels that I read.
Wait. You read slashdot and have been here long enough to have a six-digit user-id, but you're not nerdy enough to recognize a device versus an operating system?
And the carriers are desperate to increase fuel economy too, as it's eating them alive. They're equipping their trucks with small generators to power the sleeper compartment without running the main engine, and many truckstops are now equipped with umbilicles that don't require the trucks to idle or generate their own power at all; some just supply HVAC and have a couple of power outlets; others interface directly with the cabs' systems.
Unfortunately, the things that are best for efficiency are also more dangerous. Multiple trailers, more weight, more volume, more cargo in a single trip. The Aussies have it down fairly well with their road trains, but there's so little traffic on the roads they run those on that it's not nearly as dangerous there as it would be here.
We would do well to improve our rail system, and to use tractor trailers for regional and local delivery, last-mile as it were. Rail is a lot more efficient than tractor trailers are.
No, it's a lot easier to control those people and corporations that are within your jurisdiction than it is those that are in the jurisdictions of other countries. Very few ships are registered in the United States, or even in many first-world countries. Unless international treaties are changed to modify maritime law, or unless the US wants to ban gross-polluting ships from its waters and ports, then there's probably not much that's going to happen.
It'd be easier to continue to develop technology to the point that it's not economically practical to operate gross-polluters because of fuel and maintenance costs, rather than to try to force a change.
The soviets have had reactors go critical and melt through the hull. The original nuclear-powered Icebreaker Lenin had this happen at one point. Grigori Medvedev wrote about it in The Truth About Chernobyl. He was very high in the Soviet nuclear programme before he defected to the UK.
If all nuclear vessels were operated to the standards of the US Navy then that'd be one thing, but merchant shipping is lucky to not have a hull covered in rust and bilge pumps running constantly to keep the ship from foundering.
Oh I'm aware. My chair at work is asset-tagged, and items don't get asset-tagged unless they cost more than $500. Same with my desk, though I think it came in at about $530.
I have a lot more surface area with that $530 desk than I'd get with a $2000 height-adjustable desk though. It'd probably cost a hell of a lot more than $2000 for a desk as big as mine to be height adjustable.
Having had a coworker come down with Deep Vein Thrombosis, it is, but until someone successfully sues an employer as a workmans' comp issue I don't think we'll see employers take it seriously.
There were two of them at a furniture store near me. One was well over $1000, the other was well over $2000.
I don't think that most employers are going to spend that kind of money for just a desk. Remember, the inventor of the cubicle originally intended for the furniture to be dynamically changable like that, but cost constraints got it turned into the barely-modular, difficult-to-change setup that we have today.
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No, it's about an overly complicated solution to a problem that can be solved with much simpler means.
If the students are required to carry their school-issued ID, that school-issued ID can serve as their payment card, and if there's a concern with fraud in the sense of a different student using the card, then add a PIN pad to the card reader. Mind you, at least in the elementary schools the lunch ladies know who's on free and reduced lunch, who has special diets, etc, so it would be harder for fraud by kids.
Or, cross-link the ID card system's picture database to the POS in the cafeteria, so that when the card is swiped, the picture comes up on-screen, and the lunch lady can see if the student paying is the student on the ID.
And as for elementary schools, at least around here the kids come as a class, and many times the lunch lady simply points to the kid's face on the touchscreen as the whole class is on-screen at one time, so the kid doesn't even need ID.
This fingerprint system seems like an overly complicated, overly invasive means to cover a couple bucks or equivalent-pounds worth of food every day.
I don't think that's true in the slightest. Poor, resource-starved populations have the most children. Populations with opportunity and means have the fewest children.
If you want a specific case that can be looked at, look at the population of Gaza from the formal founding of Israel through today. The population absolutely exploded in number between then and now, and that's arguably one of the hardest places to live in the world.
The impact theory that led Barringer to buy the crater assumed that the impactor would be the same size as the crater, and buried below the basin. He expected to make a fortune off of iron mining.
The other theories were related to vulcanism, as that part of the Colorado Plateau has lots of volcanic features within an hours' drive. I know because I just went on a geology field trip organized through a buddy of mine from the geology department at our University. It was rather amusing, watching the tour guides at the crater visitor's center asking him questions.
When it's free, and there's no penalty for failing to participate, and it makes the news as a fad, then this is the expected result, not some outlier.
If anything they should be happy that a few hundred-thousand of the eight million actually completed it; assuming they're around 5% completion that's pretty good for something that there was no obligation to participate in, that required a fairly large amount of time committed that might not have been considered in advance, etc.
It's like an extreme version of the affluenza-type kid that's had everything handed to him going off to college because it's automatic; he does poorly and skips a lot because he has no stake in what happens. His parents pay for everything and he has none of his own cost on the line.
Barringer Crater was a pre-existing landform that wasn't even confirmed to be of extraterrestrial origin until Shoemaker's 1960-ish PhD thesis. Granted, there was suspicion that it was from a meteorite impact, but the theories up until Shoemaker's were all incorrect.
Barringer's claim was granted because it was land, not becuase it was extraterrestrial. Barringer owned the land and got mineral rights to it, and while he may have expected a large iron core, the office granting those rights did it because of it being land.
I really don't want to see the moon explode from overmining and inadequate safety precautions though.
Sounds like what needs to happen is a recognition that when an entity mines in space, it can claim that its value-add in extracting those resources gives a claim to those extracted resources and only those extracted resources, with the possible exception of an active, ongoing extraction operation having the right to exclusive use of the mine and only the mine while the operation is active. Once the operation is inactive then it's fair-game for others to start using it too.
I don't see a lot of threat in the Chinese or any other power colonizing space and managing to keep hold of their colonies. Space exploration is in the same place as "New World" exploration was at the first voyage of Columbus, in the sense that as as species we don't really have the developed means to take territory and hold it, and I expect that it'll go through a revolutionary-era as well, when those that have actually done the colonizing or the progeny thereof decides that they don't really need the mother-country anymore. That period might be harder if the colonies don't find ways to be self-sufficient, but given the sheer cost in sending supplies, any colony would have to be self-sufficient to be financially practical. Like the United States was in the 1770s, space colonies will be too far away from the motherland to be easily held if those colonies want to break away, as it'll be too expensive garrison them and simply won't be worth the effort.
Mind... Blown...
So does that mean we'll hear some Ellington and Goodman and Miller, and that they'll know absolutely everything there is to know about their musical theory?
What can I say? I'm in a snarky mood this morning and my caffeine hasn't kicked-in yet.
Unterminated quotations are by-definition terminated at the end of the paragraph. At least they are regularly and consistently in all of the novels that I read.
Oh, for a moment there I thought you'd use the wrong homophone for prophet...
Wait. You read slashdot and have been here long enough to have a six-digit user-id, but you're not nerdy enough to recognize a device versus an operating system?
And the carriers are desperate to increase fuel economy too, as it's eating them alive. They're equipping their trucks with small generators to power the sleeper compartment without running the main engine, and many truckstops are now equipped with umbilicles that don't require the trucks to idle or generate their own power at all; some just supply HVAC and have a couple of power outlets; others interface directly with the cabs' systems.
Unfortunately, the things that are best for efficiency are also more dangerous. Multiple trailers, more weight, more volume, more cargo in a single trip. The Aussies have it down fairly well with their road trains, but there's so little traffic on the roads they run those on that it's not nearly as dangerous there as it would be here.
We would do well to improve our rail system, and to use tractor trailers for regional and local delivery, last-mile as it were. Rail is a lot more efficient than tractor trailers are.
No, it's a lot easier to control those people and corporations that are within your jurisdiction than it is those that are in the jurisdictions of other countries. Very few ships are registered in the United States, or even in many first-world countries. Unless international treaties are changed to modify maritime law, or unless the US wants to ban gross-polluting ships from its waters and ports, then there's probably not much that's going to happen.
It'd be easier to continue to develop technology to the point that it's not economically practical to operate gross-polluters because of fuel and maintenance costs, rather than to try to force a change.
The soviets have had reactors go critical and melt through the hull. The original nuclear-powered Icebreaker Lenin had this happen at one point. Grigori Medvedev wrote about it in The Truth About Chernobyl. He was very high in the Soviet nuclear programme before he defected to the UK.
If all nuclear vessels were operated to the standards of the US Navy then that'd be one thing, but merchant shipping is lucky to not have a hull covered in rust and bilge pumps running constantly to keep the ship from foundering.
Oh I'm aware. My chair at work is asset-tagged, and items don't get asset-tagged unless they cost more than $500. Same with my desk, though I think it came in at about $530.
I have a lot more surface area with that $530 desk than I'd get with a $2000 height-adjustable desk though. It'd probably cost a hell of a lot more than $2000 for a desk as big as mine to be height adjustable.
Donno. Was that the little hole next to the camera?
There's no room for a camera, that large sliding glass patio door takes up all of the space!
Having had a coworker come down with Deep Vein Thrombosis, it is, but until someone successfully sues an employer as a workmans' comp issue I don't think we'll see employers take it seriously.
Have you priced those kinds of desks?
There were two of them at a furniture store near me. One was well over $1000, the other was well over $2000.
I don't think that most employers are going to spend that kind of money for just a desk. Remember, the inventor of the cubicle originally intended for the furniture to be dynamically changable like that, but cost constraints got it turned into the barely-modular, difficult-to-change setup that we have today.
Stop gossiping.
Won't work. I put tape over the camera.
I don't think that you need it. Your English is quite good, if your written example is any indication.
...have to VPN in to the work network to deal with switches or to check the status of an outage, I'm automatically assumed to be a pirate?
Seems like the BBC is looking to piss off every IT department in the UK.