I read an article about the overuse of the term paedophile and the damage it is doing legally and to our culture (i.e. labeling the older adolescent in similar age consenting relations a paedophile and putting them on sex crimes lists for life). That article claimed pederast is more appropriate and I thought I looked it up in the dictionary and agreed at the time. Unfortunately I was unable to locate the article with a quick search. Anyway I agree you are right, ephebophilia is the appropriate term.
Paedophile is an overused and frequently incorrectly used term in the USA (and probably the world). Doing so cheapens the seriousness of the allegations when it is used correctly. The first part of that age range (12) depending on the young person, the violator *might* still be a paedophile, but in that mid to later age range, the appropriate term for the violator is pederast.
Knoppmyth is rock solid until a stick of memory dies, and in the process screws up the hard drive data so bad fsck can't recover it. Don't get me wrong, I LOVE MythTV. It's just not for the faint of heart or short of time. Anyone know of a guide to walk me through recovering Linux when it has fatal hard drive booting errors?
I think while not worded well, his reasoning is sound.
You could argue the reason some people get cancer is the intentional will of companies that pollute to have fewer expenses, or more people die in car accidents due to the intentional will of car companies to produce a cheaper product with fewer safety features.
I don't think it is relevant to separate the intentional from the inadvertent risks in an activity when deciding where to spend your safety and prevention money. The largest determinants by far should be what are the overall risks of being killed or seriously injured in an activity, and how effective is money spent in alleviating that risk.
By those measures, terrorism security spending is virtually worthless. There are some basic and cheap things we can do to make ourselves safer from terrorism, but we have overcompensated by several orders of magnitude. It is time now to refocus more of that wasted money on cancer research, public transportation, environmental cleanup, smoking prevention, auto and road safety. If we were to do these things, we could save many millions more lives than spending ridiculous sums on terrorism prevention.
SOX auditors might take issue with a company's failure to enforce contractually obligated security measures. Otherwise Haynes would need to have sufficient accounting reserves to handle probable losses of lawsuits from the card companies and consumers. Without those reserves, it would be a material misrepresentation of the company's financial reports.
Here is an EPA fact sheet hosted by GE, and I have seen it on other sites, but havent't been able to locate it on epa.gov
http://www.gelighting.com/na/home_lighting/ask_us/ downloads/MercuryInCFLs.pdf
Coal has mercury period. Some more than others, but I have never seen a reference that to make this comparison work, it has to be high-mercury coal.
Is there any quality research to implicate more mercury in Chinese CFLs? Everything I have read says mercury content in all florescent lights have decreased dramatically over the past decades.
I challenge your implication that this is a rumor. It is in fact verified, the only debate are the preconditions to the conclusion. You can argue about sources of electricity. But unless you are off grid, I would argue the mercury comparison holds.
Our electricity grid is interconnected. The largest fraction of electricity comes from coal, especially peak demand electricity. Until we significantly reduce coal usage or upgrade a majority of plants to high-efficiency scrubbers, using CFLs almost certainly reduces mercury contamination in the US as a whole.
Modern CFLs contain such a miniscule amount of mercury, it's a red-herring to bring it up as a reason to not use them. CFLs contain less mercury than would be emitted into the atmosphere by burning the extra coal to power an incandescent instead.
Hold on now, I've been using cellphones for 15 years. Until wireless phones are cheaper and more reliable than landlines, and handsets don't require an owners manual, there is room for improvement. And several companies need a lot more customer service training and customer friendly policies.
But your characterization is unfair. Hardware has become cheaper, smaller and more reliable, dropped calls have drastically reduced, calling areas have expanded dramatically, sound quality has increased, data services now actually exist, nationwide roaming is an anachronism since its free and indistinguishable from the home network, service plans have added tons of minutes and free calling under many conditions while substantially reducing price. And aside from the decline in customer service I got when Houston Cellular became Cingular, and then AT&T was bought by Cingular, I am much happier with the service I get from T*Mobile now than all 3 of my previous companies.
Its ok to cite specific problems, but to make your sweeping allegations is off the mark.
There is really no short-term method governments can control "price gouging" outside of price caps (which is fixing an upper limit on price). Long-term the real issue is caused by the target industry's regulations which create artificial entry barriers.
People use the term "price gouging" anytime they percieve the price of a good is too high. This is a fallicy. The definition of price gouging is http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=price+gou ging pricing above the market when no alternative retailer is available. There are plenty of alternative wholesalers and retailers in the global and domestic oil and gas market. The only real reason for lack of alternative retailers would be when government regulation impedes market entry.
I would argue what people percieve as "price gouging" is actually beneficial to a majority of consumers. Lets take the gas situation in Louisana immediately after Katrina as an example. The demand for gas increased substantially due to evacuation and rebuilding efforts. In a free market, this would quickly drive the price of gas well above its production costs. Louisana has "price gouging" laws, so retailers were not able to price gas at market levels. The first few consumers bought all the "cheaper" gas they could carry away and everyone else got nothing. None of the retailers were interested to hang around in the bad conditions and try to acquire and sell more gas. They knew they wouldn't earn substantial profits doing so. They got out of town, to come back and sell gas when conditions were better and it was more easily available.
If those retailers had been able to price gas at market levels, the first few consumers would have purchased only the gas they needed and not all they could get away with. The next group of consumers would have been able to acquire some much needed gas also at more expensive prices, instead of getting none. When the gas in storage was gone, those retailers would have looked at their pile of cash and said, "My goodness I like this. I am going to stick around in the miserable conditions and do whatever it takes to get more gas in here to sell." Now the 3rd group of consumers that got no gas with "price gouging" laws would be able to purchase some newly delivered and even more expensive gas. I think most consumers that got no gas would have been willing to pay a lot more for a little bit of gas.
"These prices are high because of risk, not insufficient supply." Risk is priced into the supply curve that shows how much producers are willing to supply at each price point. If risk increases, it pulls the supply curve in. Producers are willing to supply less at any price, moving the quantity demanded lower and price higher back into market equilibrium. It is inherent to the market economy and most feel it is much better than a government managed economy. Think of how much dispute and consternation is put into political process in this country; now imagine if the same thing happened with every economic production and sales decision.
"China, our enemy." You might want to rethink this. We might not agree with China's political decisions right now, but the only reason the US is not taking a harder stance with China is they are our best friend and savior economically. They produce commodity goods for us much more efficiently than we can, allowing us to buy more than we otherwise could and keep our standard of living higher. They are the largest holder of our currency, keeping its value stable enough to remain the world standard currency. They also finance our obscene deficits both public and private, allowing us to keep our economy and the world economy out of recession.
It would not benefit people to force artists to relinquish copyright on their works as your quote seems to imply I was thinking. That would be more of a Marxist political metaphor. Paid downloads where the artist contracts non-exclusively and directly with the service would be one of many choices of alternate distribution channels. Self-publishing and selling CDs at internet or independent stores would be another.
Artists might trust their customers to support them without DRM, believing that removing the evil middle-men would encourage customers to do so. Or possibly a more competitive market would encourage the development of a customer friendly DRM solution that does not impede the fair use doctrine. Right now the RIAA and MPAA is trying to move DRM into a distribution control mechanisim and not a copyright protection scheme. There is a big difference.
There are bunches of other revenue generating channels I could think of if artists were free to pursue them outside of their label's contracts. And I am sure there are an infinite number that other people would think of and develop in an open market free of RIAA/MPAA/mega-label legal, political and financial control. These organizations support the scant minority of artists, not the majority of them.
Newsflash - A talented artist has about the same chance ending up on MTV Cribs as a talented athlete has getting to play professional sports.
Most likely those artists will never find the oligopolistic music industry financially rewarding even if they are signed by a major label. The contracts are quite artist unfriendly until you get into the platinum sales level.
Now if the megadistributors' (Sony, Universal, et als) and RIAA's cartel is depreciated and the industry is democratized, it would me more likely a talented artist could make a decent upper-middle-class living using alternative distribution channels.
The last I heard approximately 2000 parts kits had been sold. Best guess is around 200 cars actually running MegaSquirt. Some have spun their own boards from scratch. In addition the MegaSquirt hardware is being used with custom firmware for other purposes.
For example:
MegaSpark runs ignition
I won't post website to avoid slashdotting it, just in case people are still regularly reading this topic, but its in the MegaSquirt Yahoo group.
Someone is using it as a greenhouse temperature, humidity and soil moisture monitor and controller.
And another guy is thinking about making it a Beer brewing controller.
Can you explain why you imply that batch fire is a substantitive downgrade from sequential? I think you will find that there are very few areas where sequential outshines batch with the exception of emissions. And if you care about emissions, you would be driving a Honda Insight and not contemplating blowing more stink into the atmosphere with a 300hp Civic tuned with a +$1400 APEXi FC and Commander.
That APEXi might be sexy in the same way a $4000 Mac is sexy sitting on a Silicon Valley VC's desk, but can they get anything worthwhile done with it, no.
As you pointed out, a power user can mod MegaSquirt to operate VTEC because all of the documentation is public domain. There are currently 4 companion projects to control ignition: MegaJoltION, MegaJoltLight, MegaJoltSuperLight and MegaSpark. There is a guy that almost has completed getting MegaSquirt to control boost and turbo timing. And BZZZ... MegaSquirt is already being used to control secondary boost injectors, its called DualTable MegaSquirt. Pretty nice toolbox for a $120 unit.
Actually the MS has an 8x8 fueling table that it does linear interpretation between points greatly increasing its effective resolution. No one has yet proven this was insufficient. Too bad that the APEXi is not well documented enough to determine if it does linterp between its 20x20 or 400 fueling points. God bless the poor sap that has to fill that table in.
Oh yea I forgot, even APEXi recommends having a professional tuner with a dyno tune their unit. So God bless the poor owner of an APEXi that is about to go on welfare paying their tuner. It is very telling where the APEXi website says you can use the Commander to adjust 5x5 groups of bins at once. So now with this little "tool," they have just reduced their effective fuel table to 4x4. Maybe such a big table isn't necessary if you can adjust a section that large together?
My toaster has the capability to warm PizzaHut leftovers without heating up the whole damn house in the Summer and costing me an arm and leg in electricity. Smiles, Colin.
>has all the disadvatages of carbs and TBI like >crappy emissions, fuel economy, and idle quality
Having been involved in the MegaSquirt project for quite a while, I have to disagree with this.
Electronic TBI and batch port may have been developed in the 80's, but their performance is favorable to sequential port for 21st century engine modders.
First TBI is known for being able to achieve quite impressive fuel economy that is only being surpassed with OBD-II. And OBD-II is still somewhat out of grasp for real DIYers.
Idle quality is pretty much a toss up between TBI, batch port and sequential port if all 3 are tuned carefully and are running the same type of idle control... ie none or bipolar stepper pintle or PWM air bleed.
Emissions is the only area that sequential has a definite edge. Unfortunately even this is not quite attainable for the DIYer because even more important than the injector timing are other factors such as spray pattern, injector aiming, fuel pressure, etc... Subtle differences can have huge emissions effects that can only be detected and resolved by highly instrumented labs.
Slashdot Mirror
I read an article about the overuse of the term paedophile and the damage it is doing legally and to our culture (i.e. labeling the older adolescent in similar age consenting relations a paedophile and putting them on sex crimes lists for life). That article claimed pederast is more appropriate and I thought I looked it up in the dictionary and agreed at the time. Unfortunately I was unable to locate the article with a quick search. Anyway I agree you are right, ephebophilia is the appropriate term.
Paedophile is an overused and frequently incorrectly used term in the USA (and probably the world). Doing so cheapens the seriousness of the allegations when it is used correctly. The first part of that age range (12) depending on the young person, the violator *might* still be a paedophile, but in that mid to later age range, the appropriate term for the violator is pederast.
You mean Bushie's fictional war on terror that is a figment of his sociopathic metal state? Or how his cronies keep perpetuating his mental illness?
The fallacy of the War on Terror - http://www.commondreams.org/views03/1212-13.htm
It already is one of the greenest cities in the US. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_issues_in_New_York_City That doesn't mean more couldn't be done though.
Yeah, and half the time, that doesn't solve it in Windows either.
Knoppmyth is rock solid until a stick of memory dies, and in the process screws up the hard drive data so bad fsck can't recover it. Don't get me wrong, I LOVE MythTV. It's just not for the faint of heart or short of time. Anyone know of a guide to walk me through recovering Linux when it has fatal hard drive booting errors?
I think while not worded well, his reasoning is sound.
You could argue the reason some people get cancer is the intentional will of companies that pollute to have fewer expenses, or more people die in car accidents due to the intentional will of car companies to produce a cheaper product with fewer safety features.
I don't think it is relevant to separate the intentional from the inadvertent risks in an activity when deciding where to spend your safety and prevention money. The largest determinants by far should be what are the overall risks of being killed or seriously injured in an activity, and how effective is money spent in alleviating that risk.
By those measures, terrorism security spending is virtually worthless. There are some basic and cheap things we can do to make ourselves safer from terrorism, but we have overcompensated by several orders of magnitude. It is time now to refocus more of that wasted money on cancer research, public transportation, environmental cleanup, smoking prevention, auto and road safety. If we were to do these things, we could save many millions more lives than spending ridiculous sums on terrorism prevention.
SOX auditors might take issue with a company's failure to enforce contractually obligated security measures. Otherwise Haynes would need to have sufficient accounting reserves to handle probable losses of lawsuits from the card companies and consumers. Without those reserves, it would be a material misrepresentation of the company's financial reports.
Here is an EPA fact sheet hosted by GE, and I have seen it on other sites, but havent't been able to locate it on epa.gov http://www.gelighting.com/na/home_lighting/ask_us/ downloads/MercuryInCFLs.pdf
Coal has mercury period. Some more than others, but I have never seen a reference that to make this comparison work, it has to be high-mercury coal.
Is there any quality research to implicate more mercury in Chinese CFLs? Everything I have read says mercury content in all florescent lights have decreased dramatically over the past decades.
I challenge your implication that this is a rumor. It is in fact verified, the only debate are the preconditions to the conclusion. You can argue about sources of electricity. But unless you are off grid, I would argue the mercury comparison holds.
Our electricity grid is interconnected. The largest fraction of electricity comes from coal, especially peak demand electricity. Until we significantly reduce coal usage or upgrade a majority of plants to high-efficiency scrubbers, using CFLs almost certainly reduces mercury contamination in the US as a whole.
Modern CFLs contain such a miniscule amount of mercury, it's a red-herring to bring it up as a reason to not use them. CFLs contain less mercury than would be emitted into the atmosphere by burning the extra coal to power an incandescent instead.
Ummm, probably not. Read Wikipedia entry under Conspiracy Theories
r #Conspiracy_theories
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Port_Chicago_disaste
Hold on now, I've been using cellphones for 15 years. Until wireless phones are cheaper and more reliable than landlines, and handsets don't require an owners manual, there is room for improvement. And several companies need a lot more customer service training and customer friendly policies.
But your characterization is unfair. Hardware has become cheaper, smaller and more reliable, dropped calls have drastically reduced, calling areas have expanded dramatically, sound quality has increased, data services now actually exist, nationwide roaming is an anachronism since its free and indistinguishable from the home network, service plans have added tons of minutes and free calling under many conditions while substantially reducing price. And aside from the decline in customer service I got when Houston Cellular became Cingular, and then AT&T was bought by Cingular, I am much happier with the service I get from T*Mobile now than all 3 of my previous companies.
Its ok to cite specific problems, but to make your sweeping allegations is off the mark.
There is really no short-term method governments can control "price gouging" outside of price caps (which is fixing an upper limit on price). Long-term the real issue is caused by the target industry's regulations which create artificial entry barriers.
u ging pricing above the market when no alternative retailer is available. There are plenty of alternative wholesalers and retailers in the global and domestic oil and gas market. The only real reason for lack of alternative retailers would be when government regulation impedes market entry.
People use the term "price gouging" anytime they percieve the price of a good is too high. This is a fallicy. The definition of price gouging is http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=price+go
I would argue what people percieve as "price gouging" is actually beneficial to a majority of consumers. Lets take the gas situation in Louisana immediately after Katrina as an example. The demand for gas increased substantially due to evacuation and rebuilding efforts. In a free market, this would quickly drive the price of gas well above its production costs. Louisana has "price gouging" laws, so retailers were not able to price gas at market levels. The first few consumers bought all the "cheaper" gas they could carry away and everyone else got nothing. None of the retailers were interested to hang around in the bad conditions and try to acquire and sell more gas. They knew they wouldn't earn substantial profits doing so. They got out of town, to come back and sell gas when conditions were better and it was more easily available.
If those retailers had been able to price gas at market levels, the first few consumers would have purchased only the gas they needed and not all they could get away with. The next group of consumers would have been able to acquire some much needed gas also at more expensive prices, instead of getting none. When the gas in storage was gone, those retailers would have looked at their pile of cash and said, "My goodness I like this. I am going to stick around in the miserable conditions and do whatever it takes to get more gas in here to sell." Now the 3rd group of consumers that got no gas with "price gouging" laws would be able to purchase some newly delivered and even more expensive gas. I think most consumers that got no gas would have been willing to pay a lot more for a little bit of gas.
"These prices are high because of risk, not insufficient supply."
Risk is priced into the supply curve that shows how much producers are willing to supply at each price point. If risk increases, it pulls the supply curve in. Producers are willing to supply less at any price, moving the quantity demanded lower and price higher back into market equilibrium. It is inherent to the market economy and most feel it is much better than a government managed economy. Think of how much dispute and consternation is put into political process in this country; now imagine if the same thing happened with every economic production and sales decision.
"China, our enemy."
You might want to rethink this. We might not agree with China's political decisions right now, but the only reason the US is not taking a harder stance with China is they are our best friend and savior economically. They produce commodity goods for us much more efficiently than we can, allowing us to buy more than we otherwise could and keep our standard of living higher. They are the largest holder of our currency, keeping its value stable enough to remain the world standard currency. They also finance our obscene deficits both public and private, allowing us to keep our economy and the world economy out of recession.
Maybe a political metaphor wasn't the most clear, but its not offbase either
i c
http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=democrat
3: representing or appealing to or adapted for the benefit of the people at large
It would not benefit people to force artists to relinquish copyright on their works as your quote seems to imply I was thinking. That would be more of a Marxist political metaphor. Paid downloads where the artist contracts non-exclusively and directly with the service would be one of many choices of alternate distribution channels. Self-publishing and selling CDs at internet or independent stores would be another.
Artists might trust their customers to support them without DRM, believing that removing the evil middle-men would encourage customers to do so. Or possibly a more competitive market would encourage the development of a customer friendly DRM solution that does not impede the fair use doctrine. Right now the RIAA and MPAA is trying to move DRM into a distribution control mechanisim and not a copyright protection scheme. There is a big difference.
There are bunches of other revenue generating channels I could think of if artists were free to pursue them outside of their label's contracts. And I am sure there are an infinite number that other people would think of and develop in an open market free of RIAA/MPAA/mega-label legal, political and financial control. These organizations support the scant minority of artists, not the majority of them.
Newsflash - A talented artist has about the same chance ending up on MTV Cribs as a talented athlete has getting to play professional sports.
Most likely those artists will never find the oligopolistic music industry financially rewarding even if they are signed by a major label. The contracts are quite artist unfriendly until you get into the platinum sales level.
Now if the megadistributors' (Sony, Universal, et als) and RIAA's cartel is depreciated and the industry is democratized, it would me more likely a talented artist could make a decent upper-middle-class living using alternative distribution channels.
There are 5 known running Mazda rotaries, probably more because not everyone reports their successes.
More info here:
MegaSquirt Success Stories
The last I heard approximately 2000 parts kits had been sold. Best guess is around 200 cars actually running MegaSquirt. Some have spun their own boards from scratch. In addition the MegaSquirt hardware is being used with custom firmware for other purposes.
For example:
MegaSpark runs ignition
I won't post website to avoid slashdotting it, just in case people are still regularly reading this topic, but its in the MegaSquirt Yahoo group.
Someone is using it as a greenhouse temperature, humidity and soil moisture monitor and controller.
And another guy is thinking about making it a Beer brewing controller.
Laters, Colin.
Can you explain why you imply that batch fire is a substantitive downgrade from sequential? I think you will find that there are very few areas where sequential outshines batch with the exception of emissions. And if you care about emissions, you would be driving a Honda Insight and not contemplating blowing more stink into the atmosphere with a 300hp Civic tuned with a +$1400 APEXi FC and Commander.
That APEXi might be sexy in the same way a $4000 Mac is sexy sitting on a Silicon Valley VC's desk, but can they get anything worthwhile done with it, no.
As you pointed out, a power user can mod MegaSquirt to operate VTEC because all of the documentation is public domain. There are currently 4 companion projects to control ignition: MegaJoltION, MegaJoltLight, MegaJoltSuperLight and MegaSpark. There is a guy that almost has completed getting MegaSquirt to control boost and turbo timing. And BZZZ... MegaSquirt is already being used to control secondary boost injectors, its called DualTable MegaSquirt. Pretty nice toolbox for a $120 unit.
Actually the MS has an 8x8 fueling table that it does linear interpretation between points greatly increasing its effective resolution. No one has yet proven this was insufficient. Too bad that the APEXi is not well documented enough to determine if it does linterp between its 20x20 or 400 fueling points. God bless the poor sap that has to fill that table in.
Oh yea I forgot, even APEXi recommends having a professional tuner with a dyno tune their unit. So God bless the poor owner of an APEXi that is about to go on welfare paying their tuner. It is very telling where the APEXi website says you can use the Commander to adjust 5x5 groups of bins at once. So now with this little "tool," they have just reduced their effective fuel table to 4x4. Maybe such a big table isn't necessary if you can adjust a section that large together?
My toaster has the capability to warm PizzaHut leftovers without heating up the whole damn house in the Summer and costing me an arm and leg in electricity. Smiles, Colin.
The firmware is written in assembler, a la Steve Gibson'esque
Gibson Research
>has all the disadvatages of carbs and TBI like >crappy emissions, fuel economy, and idle quality Having been involved in the MegaSquirt project for quite a while, I have to disagree with this. Electronic TBI and batch port may have been developed in the 80's, but their performance is favorable to sequential port for 21st century engine modders. First TBI is known for being able to achieve quite impressive fuel economy that is only being surpassed with OBD-II. And OBD-II is still somewhat out of grasp for real DIYers. Idle quality is pretty much a toss up between TBI, batch port and sequential port if all 3 are tuned carefully and are running the same type of idle control... ie none or bipolar stepper pintle or PWM air bleed. Emissions is the only area that sequential has a definite edge. Unfortunately even this is not quite attainable for the DIYer because even more important than the injector timing are other factors such as spray pattern, injector aiming, fuel pressure, etc... Subtle differences can have huge emissions effects that can only be detected and resolved by highly instrumented labs.