The unintended consequence of this is the creation of as many as 12 million people who now THINK they know something about computer science. Those people may be likely to engage in policy-making or support policies created by other low-information people. It's no different than someone watching Dr. Oz suddenly declaring themselves to be experts on healthcare.
Not entirely the point. The general public for the most part doesn't care about rovers because they can't fantasize about being one. But, send humans and people want to be part of it.
You can't simply give these poor countries a bunch of money and expect them to spend it properly on healthcare or any other necessity for that matter. There will always be too many sticky fingers and blatantly corrupt functionaries involved. The right way to do this is for some external organization to come in, set up the hospital, and administer treatment with zero local government influence. Of course, the eventual result might be that a healthy populace will come to realize that their totalitarian government is really screwing them over.
Instead of spending tax dollars on hiring people and companies to do the same, the government is choosing to give the money away for nothing in return...except votes. Well played, entrenched politicians.
Partly correct. Yes, it's supposed to burn but whether it burns in a controlled manner or completely uncontrolled is another matter. Controlled burns and effective management of the forest which includes logging i.e. thinning the forest to attain optimum trees per acres works and everybody benefits. Closing off the forest to all human activity eventually results in disease and extreme fuel loads which when burned essentially sterilize the soil for generations which is what happened at Yarnell Hill.
What good is it going to do when the BLM decides to get territorial for 48 hours preventing local wildfire crews from containing the fire early which ultimately results in the death of 19 firefighters?
But at night I'd had these wonderful dreams Some kind of sensuous treat Not zucchini, fettucini or Bulgar wheat But a big warm bun and a huge hunk of meat!
Again, show me chapter and verse in the text of the ACA where it says this. I'm not taking anything for granted at this point give how Obama said bunchteen times that people could keep their plan if they liked it.
I haven't heard that anywhere though. Sure, they can't "deny" you coverage but that doesn't mean they can't charge you extra if you smoke or have a family history of cancer or something.
Interesting. Punched in my stats and selected Gold, which is what I have now. My current provider doesn't appear. That said, there are seven plans less expensive than what I have now. I guess the real question is: what are the requirements to get one of these? Do they require a physical and if so, do those results factor into the rates?
As a B.U. alum (twice), I never knew Asimov taught there. Lots of unremarkable names are on buildings but there's no Asimov library of science fiction. Kinda pisses me off.
They had 3 years to get this thing working. And yet they didn't solicit A) domestic companies and B) companies with a lot of experience in handling massive amounts of users and data. 330 million people are supposed to be required to use this site. Today, it was reported that it can only handle 1100 per day. At that rate, it will take over 800 years to sign everybody up. Even if you only consider the 4.2 million people who have just had their insurance taken away from them, that's going to be 10 years before they can all sign up. So that means in order for those 4.2 million to be able to sign up during "open enrollment" (WTF does that mean anyway?) over the next six months. The site needs to be able to handle over 23000 users a day. And the number of people getting screwed out of their existing plan, oh wait, I mean "upgraded", is going to be rising steadily if not exponentially over the next six months. CNN's stat from 2010 reported that 195 million people have private insurance. If the recent reports that 40-60% of those plans aren't going to qualify, roughly 100 million people are going to need a new one. Then there's the supposed 50 million people who don't have insurance now (why does that number keep fluctuating wildly), so we're looking at about 150 million people that need to use this site. That means this site needs to be able to handle over 800,000 users per day over the next six months. The back-of-the-envelope numbers are staggering.
Here's the root of the problem and would explain why Obama, Sebelius, and other bureaucrats are sticking to their guns. They believe that they are smarter than the software engineers charged with building this monstrosity. From my own experience, I once got into a pissing contest with a senior VP over something I had developed for the department. He had no background in software or computers. None. Even though the guy had a Mac on his desk, he didn't understand the concept of windows and insisted on using a single one to view his files opening hundreds of turn-down triangles. Hundreds. But I digress. The guy only understood image, flash, and how things looked. His precious weekly schedules had to look pretty rather than be functional to the point where the secretaries were spending an entire day putting together a weekly schedule in QuarkXPress. So I built a database system (with the assistance of one of the secretaries) to generate these schedules. But the database engine we had available to us, while it could use fancy fonts, didn't understand variable character widths. So printing schedules using dingbats was a nightmare. During a presentation, some flunky asked if we could make some changes. The secretary said "Well I don't know. We're jumping through a lot of hoops to make it do what you're seeing now. I don't know if it's possible." The VP said "It's possible" without even asking me. I nearly quit that day. As a matter of interest, a few of my coworkers and I had a daily reading from The Dilbert Principle.
Point is that Obama and his minions don't understand that you can't set arbitrary deadlines for technology when they know nothing about it. It's the same as ignorant politicians setting lofty fuel economy standards without talking to automotive engineers to find out if the goal is realistic or even possible. The politicians believe their own hype in that they think they are smarter than the engineers. At the very least. One can also make the case that unrealistic goals aren't set out of ignorance but by design to suit their ideology. E.g. Set a pollution standard bar so high that it either isn't possible or that it's so expensive that nobody will bother and voila, the source of that pollution is gone taking all the benefits (jobs, consumer savings, useful product) with it. To the politician, the ends justify the means because in their mind, the citizenry is too stupid to understand it.
The Dotcom crash happened mostly because there was a massive gold rush to throw money at any startup that said they were going to do cool things on the web. But there was way too much money being spent on Aeron chairs and expensive digs and nothing being spent on figuring out if the idea was good. This comes from having been to a lot of bankruptcy auctions. Hell, the CEO of one company spent investor dollars on a powered paraglider. Da fuq? I also wonder if Y2K was something of a catalyst. In the 90s, companies were spending gobs of money to prepare for Y2K. When that came and went without a hitch, all that money evaporating and may have caused investors to question their other high risk ventures.
The housing bubble was could be seen a mile away by anyone who wasn't living in a utopian stupor. You can't force banks to issue sub-prime mortgages knowing full well that most of those buyers couldn't keep up with the payments without the lenders passing the hot potato to the next sucker. BTW, CDOs and mortgage-backed securities had been around for 20+ years without a problem. Again, the gold rush of house flipping was eventually going to crash when the music stopped in the form of enough people saying "You want HOW MUCH for this P.O.S house?! Nope."
Honestly, I don't really see the same scope of bullsh*t in Silicon Valley. Social networking companies are at risk because they don't have a tangible product just as dotcom companies didn't in 2000. But the hardware companies aren't going away. Will other companies get injured as a few collapse? Sure, but that would be panic selling and hence a good buying opportunity.
Those of us who are lucky enough to live in Arizona (the Navajo nation notwithstanding), know the benefits of not having to deal with Daylight Savings. But we also know the downsides. People who live east of us are regularly calling at 7am before we open for business instead of 8am thus disturbing our sleep cycles.
The debate also has to encompass the cost of maintaining the transmission line infrastructure. Solar isn't this magic talisman that's going to furnish everyone's energy needs. Industrial energy needs are usually significantly higher than that of a house. What opponents of net-metering are worried about is the eventual death spiral where APS won't be able to afford to maintain the infrastructure. The question is: who sets the rates for energy purchase? Does the Corporation Commission decide what APS is going to pay homeowners or is it a true commodity? If it's the former, then the net outflow might exceed what they are able to charge non-generating customers plus the cost of maintaining the network.
Slashdot Mirror
The unintended consequence of this is the creation of as many as 12 million people who now THINK they know something about computer science. Those people may be likely to engage in policy-making or support policies created by other low-information people. It's no different than someone watching Dr. Oz suddenly declaring themselves to be experts on healthcare.
All...frozen...
IMHO, the ban needs to apply to Youtube and other streaming video services.
"THAT is a spacecraft, sir. We do not refer to it as a 'capsule.' Spacecraft." - Alan Shepard in "The Right Stuff"
And people wonder why I drive a 27-year old truck.
Not entirely the point. The general public for the most part doesn't care about rovers because they can't fantasize about being one. But, send humans and people want to be part of it.
You can't simply give these poor countries a bunch of money and expect them to spend it properly on healthcare or any other necessity for that matter. There will always be too many sticky fingers and blatantly corrupt functionaries involved. The right way to do this is for some external organization to come in, set up the hospital, and administer treatment with zero local government influence. Of course, the eventual result might be that a healthy populace will come to realize that their totalitarian government is really screwing them over.
The phones usually still work. Bell was right when he refused to use Edison's power systems.
Instead of spending tax dollars on hiring people and companies to do the same, the government is choosing to give the money away for nothing in return...except votes. Well played, entrenched politicians.
if (internet_story >= 0.9) bullsh_t = true;
Sadly, many of these activists don't do their homework and are living proof of the 90%-bullsh*t Rule of the Internet.
Otherwise I turn him into cat food.
Partly correct. Yes, it's supposed to burn but whether it burns in a controlled manner or completely uncontrolled is another matter. Controlled burns and effective management of the forest which includes logging i.e. thinning the forest to attain optimum trees per acres works and everybody benefits. Closing off the forest to all human activity eventually results in disease and extreme fuel loads which when burned essentially sterilize the soil for generations which is what happened at Yarnell Hill.
What good is it going to do when the BLM decides to get territorial for 48 hours preventing local wildfire crews from containing the fire early which ultimately results in the death of 19 firefighters?
But at night I'd had these wonderful dreams
Some kind of sensuous treat
Not zucchini, fettucini or Bulgar wheat
But a big warm bun and a huge hunk of meat!
Again, show me chapter and verse in the text of the ACA where it says this. I'm not taking anything for granted at this point give how Obama said bunchteen times that people could keep their plan if they liked it.
I haven't heard that anywhere though. Sure, they can't "deny" you coverage but that doesn't mean they can't charge you extra if you smoke or have a family history of cancer or something.
Interesting. Punched in my stats and selected Gold, which is what I have now. My current provider doesn't appear. That said, there are seven plans less expensive than what I have now. I guess the real question is: what are the requirements to get one of these? Do they require a physical and if so, do those results factor into the rates?
As a B.U. alum (twice), I never knew Asimov taught there. Lots of unremarkable names are on buildings but there's no Asimov library of science fiction. Kinda pisses me off.
They had 3 years to get this thing working. And yet they didn't solicit A) domestic companies and B) companies with a lot of experience in handling massive amounts of users and data. 330 million people are supposed to be required to use this site. Today, it was reported that it can only handle 1100 per day. At that rate, it will take over 800 years to sign everybody up. Even if you only consider the 4.2 million people who have just had their insurance taken away from them, that's going to be 10 years before they can all sign up. So that means in order for those 4.2 million to be able to sign up during "open enrollment" (WTF does that mean anyway?) over the next six months. The site needs to be able to handle over 23000 users a day. And the number of people getting screwed out of their existing plan, oh wait, I mean "upgraded", is going to be rising steadily if not exponentially over the next six months. CNN's stat from 2010 reported that 195 million people have private insurance. If the recent reports that 40-60% of those plans aren't going to qualify, roughly 100 million people are going to need a new one. Then there's the supposed 50 million people who don't have insurance now (why does that number keep fluctuating wildly), so we're looking at about 150 million people that need to use this site. That means this site needs to be able to handle over 800,000 users per day over the next six months. The back-of-the-envelope numbers are staggering.
Here's the root of the problem and would explain why Obama, Sebelius, and other bureaucrats are sticking to their guns. They believe that they are smarter than the software engineers charged with building this monstrosity. From my own experience, I once got into a pissing contest with a senior VP over something I had developed for the department. He had no background in software or computers. None. Even though the guy had a Mac on his desk, he didn't understand the concept of windows and insisted on using a single one to view his files opening hundreds of turn-down triangles. Hundreds. But I digress. The guy only understood image, flash, and how things looked. His precious weekly schedules had to look pretty rather than be functional to the point where the secretaries were spending an entire day putting together a weekly schedule in QuarkXPress. So I built a database system (with the assistance of one of the secretaries) to generate these schedules. But the database engine we had available to us, while it could use fancy fonts, didn't understand variable character widths. So printing schedules using dingbats was a nightmare. During a presentation, some flunky asked if we could make some changes. The secretary said "Well I don't know. We're jumping through a lot of hoops to make it do what you're seeing now. I don't know if it's possible." The VP said "It's possible" without even asking me. I nearly quit that day. As a matter of interest, a few of my coworkers and I had a daily reading from The Dilbert Principle.
Point is that Obama and his minions don't understand that you can't set arbitrary deadlines for technology when they know nothing about it. It's the same as ignorant politicians setting lofty fuel economy standards without talking to automotive engineers to find out if the goal is realistic or even possible. The politicians believe their own hype in that they think they are smarter than the engineers. At the very least. One can also make the case that unrealistic goals aren't set out of ignorance but by design to suit their ideology. E.g. Set a pollution standard bar so high that it either isn't possible or that it's so expensive that nobody will bother and voila, the source of that pollution is gone taking all the benefits (jobs, consumer savings, useful product) with it. To the politician, the ends justify the means because in their mind, the citizenry is too stupid to understand it.
I would so love to code in a middle finger detector. I'm picturing the scene from The Fifth Element. "SMOKE YOUUUU!!!" *blam* cargo net.
The Dotcom crash happened mostly because there was a massive gold rush to throw money at any startup that said they were going to do cool things on the web. But there was way too much money being spent on Aeron chairs and expensive digs and nothing being spent on figuring out if the idea was good. This comes from having been to a lot of bankruptcy auctions. Hell, the CEO of one company spent investor dollars on a powered paraglider. Da fuq? I also wonder if Y2K was something of a catalyst. In the 90s, companies were spending gobs of money to prepare for Y2K. When that came and went without a hitch, all that money evaporating and may have caused investors to question their other high risk ventures.
The housing bubble was could be seen a mile away by anyone who wasn't living in a utopian stupor. You can't force banks to issue sub-prime mortgages knowing full well that most of those buyers couldn't keep up with the payments without the lenders passing the hot potato to the next sucker. BTW, CDOs and mortgage-backed securities had been around for 20+ years without a problem. Again, the gold rush of house flipping was eventually going to crash when the music stopped in the form of enough people saying "You want HOW MUCH for this P.O.S house?! Nope."
Honestly, I don't really see the same scope of bullsh*t in Silicon Valley. Social networking companies are at risk because they don't have a tangible product just as dotcom companies didn't in 2000. But the hardware companies aren't going away. Will other companies get injured as a few collapse? Sure, but that would be panic selling and hence a good buying opportunity.
Those of us who are lucky enough to live in Arizona (the Navajo nation notwithstanding), know the benefits of not having to deal with Daylight Savings. But we also know the downsides. People who live east of us are regularly calling at 7am before we open for business instead of 8am thus disturbing our sleep cycles.
The debate also has to encompass the cost of maintaining the transmission line infrastructure. Solar isn't this magic talisman that's going to furnish everyone's energy needs. Industrial energy needs are usually significantly higher than that of a house. What opponents of net-metering are worried about is the eventual death spiral where APS won't be able to afford to maintain the infrastructure. The question is: who sets the rates for energy purchase? Does the Corporation Commission decide what APS is going to pay homeowners or is it a true commodity? If it's the former, then the net outflow might exceed what they are able to charge non-generating customers plus the cost of maintaining the network.