You're right on both counts: junk mail does provide jobs, and it does subsidize regular mail. The thing is, this is pretty close to a "broken glass" fallacy.
No. The "broken glass fallacy" tries to prove that breaking the window was a good thing for the economy. What I'm saying is that the junk mail you get through the post office isn't completely bad and, in fact, pays its way unlike spam.
The VA doesn't use email, it uses snail because it can't assume that everybody has it. (Many of its older patients don't, you know.) And, if I'm running low on Metformin, I'd rather not have to depend on a once or twice a week delivery to keep my diabetes under control. Would you like to bet your health, if not your life on something like that? I know I, at least, wouldn't and probably most people would agree with me. As far as direct deposit goes, not everybody I get checks from has that.
Yes, in a perfect world, what you wrote would be right, but alas, the world I live in is highly imperfect.
Spammers pay the same flat rate as you do, then abuse it worse than anybody downloaded "pirated" mp3s. Because of the cost to IPSs of moving all that spam around, everybody's flat rate is higher than it would be if there were no spam. When you consider that many spammers send millions of spam out per month, you'll see that the cost per message is practically zero.
Around here, Southern California, the supermarket ads come in the mail on Tuesday, as they go from Wednesday to Tuesday. Different areas, different ad cycles.
I don't know about you, but I, at least, would not find one First Class delivery a week acceptable! I get checks, appointment notices and medicines from the VA through the mail and would prefer to continue to receive them in a fairly prompt and timely manner, TYVM.
AIUI, junk mail helps keep First Class rates down because that's the way the bulk mail rate was designed. It's less than First Class, but more than it costs to process, leaving some extra to help defray other expenses. The way it works is, bulk mail must be pre-sorted by zip code in order to qualify. This cuts down on the amount of work considerably, so that even at a reduced rate, bulk mail costs the Postal Service less to deliver than they charge. Also, of course, much of it is sent locally, which lowers expenses even more.
I'm not sure who you intended to reply to, but it certainly wasn't me! I made no suggestions of any sort in my post, just pointing out that junk snail-mail helps subsidize regular mail as compared to the economic drag of spam.
Do you really think that the amount of money they're paying to get that unasked-for (lack of) content into your mailbox really does anybody any good?
Yes. Sometimes there are things in the junk mail that are useful, such as ads from supermarkets. Also, people are paid money to create those ads, print them, address them and mail them. Not only that, the USPO is paid at bulk mail rates for carrying them. If it weren't for junk mail, first class mail would cost considerably more than it does. Junk mail subsidizes regular mail and helps keep costs down. The big problem with spam is that it doesn't cost the spammer anything to send, the costs are spread out among everybody receiving it and ISP fees would be lower if there weren't spam. It's not that it's junk that makes it so bad, it's the expense to the recipient.
Oh, I'm so glad I'm not the only slashdotter who noticed that! However, it's probably no more odd than the name of the party that ruled Mexico for so many decades: the Party of Institutionalized Revolution. I always wondered how it could be both institutionalized and revolutionary, but AFAICT, nobody South of the Border found anything strange about it.
No, but thank you for playing. He played a Martian in Zombies of the Stratosphere, in 1952. Having seen it, I can assure you Commando Cody had nothing to do with it. The Sky Marshall of the Universe was busy at that time fighting The Leader, who wanted (what else?) to conquer the Earth.
The reason Gloria was such a flop is because by the time they made it they'd forgotten what it was that made the character so good. Instead of a feisty young woman standing up for her rights, we saw a spineless wimp going "poor little me" over and over.
An appeals court only rules on questions of law and leaves questions of fact to the jury because the jury heard the testimony and can judge for themselves how credible the witnesses were. The trial judge, however, is given more latitude because he (or she) heard everything the jury did.
If you mean that you're not going to start any projects that rely on planned but not yet implemented improvements, yes. That, at least, is prudent. Of course, it's always prudent to wait until a new idea is implemented before designing code that requires it,
This industry drops old technologies and reinvents new and shiny all the time for no good reason, while avoiding the real, difficult problems.
It also hangs on to things that work long after some people think they're dead, such as COBAL and FORTRAN. If the ReiserFS is as good as some people think, somebody will take it on.
courts are generally unwilling to go into jury motivation.
It's not that appeals courts are unwilling to examine the jury's motives, it's that they can't. An appeal can only be based on questions of law or court procedure; the jury is the final arbiter on questions of fact. One of the reasons is that the appeals judges don't see the witnesses, don't hear the testimony, they only have written transcripts. They can't judge their credibility in the same way as the jury can. That's why juries can get away with nullification, and that's why courts hate it so much that the defense is forbidden to mention the possibility to the jury.
Of course, and that's just as true here, South of the Border. However, that's the same for direct evidence as well, and that's my point.
Defense lawyers like to compare circumstantial evidence to a chain; break one link and it falls apart. I once read a book where the prosecutor likened it to a cable: if one strand breaks, there are lots of others. The only real problem, as I (IANAL) see it is that because it's indirect, you need more of it to eliminate reasonable doubt.
Even if it's never extended, what we have will still work, just as well as it does today. (Just as well; no worse, no better.) It's not going to stop working, nor are programs designed to work with it.
Only Reiser knew all of the code in there and there certainly cannot be as many good programmers as he was.
The code is Open Source, so other programmers can learn it, given time. Also, it doesn't take a genius to support it, now that the hard part (writing it in the first place) is done. Also, just because he's not here to maintain it doesn't mean it will stop working; it just won't advance until somebody else can take over.
In the meantime, I am not sure I would start any long term projects that rely on his file system brilliance...
Why? Will it softly and suddenly vanish away, and never be met with again if he's convicted? Will it stop working if he isn't acquitted? Will support for it be removed from all distros the moment he's sentenced?
From what I can tell, the prosecution has absolutely not proven Hans' guilt beyond the shadow of a doubt.
So what? They don't have to. The standard is not "beyond the shadow of a doubt," it's "beyond a reasonable doubt and to a moral certainty." Unless he confesses or there's an eyewitness that can testify to seeing him do it there will always be "a shadow of a doubt." However, unless that doubt is reasonable, they must convict. And, as far as the circumstantial evidence being flimsy, I've been on a jury (in a civil case as it happens) where much of the evidence was circumstantial. Part of the judges instructions were that we must give that evidence exactly as much credence as we would direct evidence. No more, no less.
Your idea isn't exactly new. Decades ago, on All in the Family, Archie Bunker suggested arming all the passengers so that hijackers (the big problem in those days) would know they were outnumbered.
You have no idea how good it feels to see that I'm not the only one who suspects that Dark Matter and Dark Energy are just ad hoc inventions to make an old theory explain new facts. Personally, I think that when we understand what's happening, we'll find no need for either.
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No. The "broken glass fallacy" tries to prove that breaking the window was a good thing for the economy. What I'm saying is that the junk mail you get through the post office isn't completely bad and, in fact, pays its way unlike spam.
Yes, in a perfect world, what you wrote would be right, but alas, the world I live in is highly imperfect.
Spammers pay the same flat rate as you do, then abuse it worse than anybody downloaded "pirated" mp3s. Because of the cost to IPSs of moving all that spam around, everybody's flat rate is higher than it would be if there were no spam. When you consider that many spammers send millions of spam out per month, you'll see that the cost per message is practically zero.
Around here, Southern California, the supermarket ads come in the mail on Tuesday, as they go from Wednesday to Tuesday. Different areas, different ad cycles.
AIUI, junk mail helps keep First Class rates down because that's the way the bulk mail rate was designed. It's less than First Class, but more than it costs to process, leaving some extra to help defray other expenses. The way it works is, bulk mail must be pre-sorted by zip code in order to qualify. This cuts down on the amount of work considerably, so that even at a reduced rate, bulk mail costs the Postal Service less to deliver than they charge. Also, of course, much of it is sent locally, which lowers expenses even more.
I'm not sure who you intended to reply to, but it certainly wasn't me! I made no suggestions of any sort in my post, just pointing out that junk snail-mail helps subsidize regular mail as compared to the economic drag of spam.
Yes. Sometimes there are things in the junk mail that are useful, such as ads from supermarkets. Also, people are paid money to create those ads, print them, address them and mail them. Not only that, the USPO is paid at bulk mail rates for carrying them. If it weren't for junk mail, first class mail would cost considerably more than it does. Junk mail subsidizes regular mail and helps keep costs down. The big problem with spam is that it doesn't cost the spammer anything to send, the costs are spread out among everybody receiving it and ISP fees would be lower if there weren't spam. It's not that it's junk that makes it so bad, it's the expense to the recipient.
Oh, I'm so glad I'm not the only slashdotter who noticed that! However, it's probably no more odd than the name of the party that ruled Mexico for so many decades: the Party of Institutionalized Revolution. I always wondered how it could be both institutionalized and revolutionary, but AFAICT, nobody South of the Border found anything strange about it.
I can remember them saying the same thing back in the '60s.
No, but thank you for playing. He played a Martian in Zombies of the Stratosphere, in 1952. Having seen it, I can assure you Commando Cody had nothing to do with it. The Sky Marshall of the Universe was busy at that time fighting The Leader, who wanted (what else?) to conquer the Earth.
The reason Gloria was such a flop is because by the time they made it they'd forgotten what it was that made the character so good. Instead of a feisty young woman standing up for her rights, we saw a spineless wimp going "poor little me" over and over.
An appeals court only rules on questions of law and leaves questions of fact to the jury because the jury heard the testimony and can judge for themselves how credible the witnesses were. The trial judge, however, is given more latitude because he (or she) heard everything the jury did.
If you mean that you're not going to start any projects that rely on planned but not yet implemented improvements, yes. That, at least, is prudent. Of course, it's always prudent to wait until a new idea is implemented before designing code that requires it,
It also hangs on to things that work long after some people think they're dead, such as COBAL and FORTRAN. If the ReiserFS is as good as some people think, somebody will take it on.
I'm very well aware of that, TYVM. However, the statutory judge's instructions for circumstantial evidence are the same for criminal and civil cases.
It's not that appeals courts are unwilling to examine the jury's motives, it's that they can't. An appeal can only be based on questions of law or court procedure; the jury is the final arbiter on questions of fact. One of the reasons is that the appeals judges don't see the witnesses, don't hear the testimony, they only have written transcripts. They can't judge their credibility in the same way as the jury can. That's why juries can get away with nullification, and that's why courts hate it so much that the defense is forbidden to mention the possibility to the jury.
Defense lawyers like to compare circumstantial evidence to a chain; break one link and it falls apart. I once read a book where the prosecutor likened it to a cable: if one strand breaks, there are lots of others. The only real problem, as I (IANAL) see it is that because it's indirect, you need more of it to eliminate reasonable doubt.
Even if it's never extended, what we have will still work, just as well as it does today. (Just as well; no worse, no better.) It's not going to stop working, nor are programs designed to work with it.
The code is Open Source, so other programmers can learn it, given time. Also, it doesn't take a genius to support it, now that the hard part (writing it in the first place) is done. Also, just because he's not here to maintain it doesn't mean it will stop working; it just won't advance until somebody else can take over.
Why? Will it softly and suddenly vanish away, and never be met with again if he's convicted? Will it stop working if he isn't acquitted? Will support for it be removed from all distros the moment he's sentenced?
So what? They don't have to. The standard is not "beyond the shadow of a doubt," it's "beyond a reasonable doubt and to a moral certainty." Unless he confesses or there's an eyewitness that can testify to seeing him do it there will always be "a shadow of a doubt." However, unless that doubt is reasonable, they must convict. And, as far as the circumstantial evidence being flimsy, I've been on a jury (in a civil case as it happens) where much of the evidence was circumstantial. Part of the judges instructions were that we must give that evidence exactly as much credence as we would direct evidence. No more, no less.
You must have a well-trained set of users. Most people just buy a new computer when that happens.
Your idea isn't exactly new. Decades ago, on All in the Family, Archie Bunker suggested arming all the passengers so that hijackers (the big problem in those days) would know they were outnumbered.
You can get through now. However, at the top is a note that the site had been slashdotted and moved to a new box.
You have no idea how good it feels to see that I'm not the only one who suspects that Dark Matter and Dark Energy are just ad hoc inventions to make an old theory explain new facts. Personally, I think that when we understand what's happening, we'll find no need for either.