The plumber in your company doesn't want you pouring paint down the drain, OR emptying your 1,000 gallon aquarium into the office sink that happens to run to pipes shared with other offices.
He has multiple offices, departments, and fixtures to support, and has multiple best practices and laws to follow.
Yes, he's jerk for not allowing you to fill a 1500 gallon personal jacuzzi from the water feed shared by the rest of the office sinks, he's a recalcitrant asshole for not allowing you to install your own triple flush toilet in the bathroom, and he's real stickler about you connecting a high pressure pump to the cold water outlet because of the risk cold water being pumped into the hot water line and forcing cold water back to the boiler or hot water heater.
It's almost as if people who have to support large resource pools used by diverse areas are reluctant or opposed to individuals doing things that incur huge financial or labor costs and/or interfere with everyone else's use of those resources.
When private companies get tax breaks, people call them subsidies. Well, the USPS gets massive subsidies compared to any other company-no local taxes, no vehicle taxes, they also don't pay parking tickets or tolls, etc.
If a Congressman proposed to directly and completely exempt a company or industry from all taxes and fees, it would be called a subsidy (and would generate considerable outrage). Whether or not it's appropriate to subsidize the USPS is a separate matter, but they are being subsidized.
I'm sure I could, IF I was provided a monopoly on all 1st class mail and able to charge the same rate for pieces, regardless of distance, thereby allowing all my in-town deliveries to subsidize my long distance deliveries.
I need exemptions from all local taxes for my distribution facilities and shop fronts. For example, I need all of the following waived:property taxes, business licensing fees, business profit taxes. I need all my vehicles to be exempt from taxes and fees as well-no vehicle registration or sales taxes, no parking tickets can be issued to my vehicles, nor do I pay gasoline taxes or toll road fees, etc. I also need to be able use eminent domain where I feel necessary.
They'll find ways to sell that food if they want money for the various things they want that they can't grow themselves. I'd be curious to know what percentage of rural residents are actually farmers or grow/raise/produce ANYTHING that is sold to urban/suburban dwellers.
If things change and we all stop spending money to subsidize rural residents, they'll have to build the cost of living into their products. This will allow people to choose whether or not they wish to pay for rural grown food, etc. There's no reason why someone who doesn't eat meat and grows many of their own vegetables has to pay for a farmer to live 50 miles from anywhere.
I believe that socializing these kinds of things is bad-it hides their true costs, and by extension, hides or encourages inefficiencies. It also denies people the ability to truly choose to buy locally as possible, etc. I have the exact same problem with any subsidizing of roads in the name of keeping trucked goods cheap-it too plays favorites, hides inefficiencies, and deprives people of the ability to truly choose to buy only locally produced goods.
BACK to the USPS:
It's easy for USPS to do things somewhat cheap-they have a monopoly on 1st class mail, so your letter across town subsidizes another person's letter across the country. The USPS does not pay property taxes, business license fees, business profit taxes, parking tickets, motor vehicle registration fees/taxes, gasoline taxes, etc.
Let UPS or Fedex avoid nearly all taxes and fees while also allowing them a monopoly on certain classes of mail and let's see how things change. In exchange for allowing them to avoid fees and allowing a monopoly on certain classes of mail, I'd bet anything they would have no problem fulfilling a mandate to deliver anywhere.
I went from XP to Vista and was very disappointed. When my Vista installed died of filesystem corruption, I went to Windows 7 thinking "what the hell, probably just as bad and can't really be worse?"
Upon second boot, I thought something was wrong when I saw the ESET splash screen come so soon after logging in. I was genuinely surprised and impressed to have my desktop available for use so soon. It was a little sluggish, but far more usable then Vista or XP ever were as soon it was presented to me. Hibernation appeared to work faster in both directions with the system being usable sooner after logging in upon resume.
My aging P4 3.2, 2GB, Geforce 7300GT (AGP) system boots to a login screen faster with Windows 7 then Vista. XP would boot pretty quickly and get me to a login prompt faster then 7 does. BUT, after the prompt XP was very sluggish and required almost as much time to be usable as it did to boot. The (illustrative only) example I'll give is XP booting to login in about 60 seconds, getting to desktop 10 seconds later and becoming usably responsive about 30 seconds after that. Total time to be usable is about 100 seconds. Windows 7 may take 75 seconds minute to get to the login screen, 2-5 seconds to the desktop,is more usable then XP as soon as the desktop is up and takes another 10-15 before feeling almost lag-free. Total time to usability is 77-95 seconds.
Windows 7 also seems to completes the post-desktop startup faster then either of the others. I watch the disk light and Process Explorer for CPU and process I/O to gauge this. I know which processes startup after login and noticed that everything was loaded and I/O settled some 20-40 seconds sooner than Vista or XP with identical software and startup apps installed under those OSes.
I later played around with changing some services from automatic to delayed just to shave time off the login->desktop and post-startup desktop lag. These were services that I knew didn't need to load right away (think MS Live, Adobe, Google updater, Cisco VPN, etc.) This did work for me and gave me a nice bump in response right after login.
It's not Microsoft's fault that nearly every app vendor now feels the need to install a startup app and/or a service. Nor is it entirely their fault that OEMs feel the need to load a dozen apps that all want to run at startup.
No car I'm aware of has truly redundant o2 sensors. The sensor(s) in the exhaust manifold (front o2 sensors) are for fuel trim. A failure or insane data in one or both causes the PCM to failover to preset maps and it begins basing injector duty cycle on the value in the maps that correspond to MAF/MAP, throttle angle, engine speed, etc. A failure in both sensors (assuming two banks) doesn't render the car undriveable.
It depends on vehicle manufacturer how a PCM handles a reasonbly responding sensor in one bank and a failed/insane sensor in the other. It may start using the values from the good bank to control how it fuels the failed bank OR simply go to the maps for both banks.
The rear o2 sensors ie., behind the catalytic converters, are used to determine if the catalytic converter is functioning properly. Failure or insane values from those sensors will trigger a check engine light and may (sometimes) cause the computer to go into a limp home mode. This is ostensibly to prevent some kind of engine damage, but my guess it's really a deterrent to basic tampering-gutting/removing of the catalytic converter, or to push the owner to repair a damaged/clogged converter. Their position behind the catalytic converter renders them pretty useless in deciding fuel trim.
Sounds like a good justification to downsize the government. That, or appoint leaders to those departments who actually have what it takes to make sure their staff respects the constitution.
Obama is a wimp who can't seem to manage his own cabinet, especially his Attorney General.
It's his job to make sure this stuff doesn't happen, OR make sure that the people who WORK FOR HIM make sure it doesn't happen.
That's not much of an argument for government backed student loans.
If you're right and his education was paid for by his parents, why would it follow that he should support the government backing student loans for people's education today?
What's the rational behind capping one type of use, but not others? If it's network congestion, why does it matter how the network is being congested?
If I manage to download 11GB on my phone is that somehow less stressful on the network then if I downloaded 11GB on my laptop tethered/hotspot(ed) to my phone?
Considering opting out of my contract because of this. That, or maybe push for a discount.
Settings->Wireless and Network->Wifi Settings-"Menu" Button->Advanced->Proxy Settings->Wireless and Network->Wifi Settings-"Menu" Button->Advanced->Port
Didn't see any options for username/password though.
It all goes to a good cause- underprivileged kids, outdated hospital systems, and people who live literally in the middle of nowhere.
Well, 2 out of 3. I don't think there should be subsidies for people who choose to live far away from everything.
You choose to live far away, you get the benefits of being far away-(generally) cleaner air, less noise and traffic, lower crime, more space, more freedom to customize land/home/etc. BUT, you have to pay more to have power, phone, cable, gas, etc. run to you. Freight costs for local merchants/gas stations as well as postage/delivery for personal mail/packages is higher.
That's the way it goes. I see no reason why those of who choose to live in urban and suburban areas should have to subsidize those who choose to live farther away.
Yes. Virtually any entity can hire armed guards in the US.
In 40 or so states, a person can carry a firearm by meeting an objective set of criteria. In the other 8, there are some more subjective criteria used by the issuing authority. Hawaii and Illinois are the two that don't issue. Hawaii has a law, but the issuing authorities don't issue to anyone, and Illinois doesn't have a law allowing issuing permits.
I love that all quarters, including those provided to visiting military members of allied, neutral, or outright hostile governments have computer terminals in their quarters that are apparently fully linked with the rest of the ship and not a DMZ/guest network of some kind. I was happy that they called their main computer a main computer or "computer core" and not mainframe. Granted it's just different jargon, but nice not to hear every server of any size/function/role referred to as a "mainframe"
They did try to say that their ships' consoles used access controls. In the episode where the kid emulates Data after being rescued from the ship and he claims he destroyed it by hitting it with his arm, Troi explains that there are safeguards that prevent someone from accessing a console without authorization.
Of course every single episode of TNG before and after, not to mention DS9 and Voyager showed no such thing. Random aliens can just sit down at your Conn and pilot your ship-Romulan in TNG Timescape; Jem Hadaar in that crap DS9 episode where they bring Odo to his people for fixing, all the episode of Voyager where the Kazon steal or board or loot the ship, etc.
The fact that they don't have any kind of circuit breakers in their consoles to stop the power feedback that cause them to explode into what look like rocks every time the ship gets fired on with shields up. I always thought shields were supposed to spread the energy around to keep the ship from being damaged.
Someone forgot Alien:Resurrection where Winona Ryder's character denied she could access the mainframe by remote because she burned her modem like all the other robots.
In that case, they should just use something in 127.0.0.0/8
I would love for someone to download some denial-of-service tool and run it against 127.54.213.14 just because they saw it in a movie. I smile at the idea of someone explaining to their buddy that they ran that DOS tool and all that happened is their PC got slow.
With few exceptions, anytime a news article or politicians mentions drunk driving and throws out a really high number like 20,000 per year, they're actually referring to "alcohol related" deaths.
The NHTSA defines "alcohol related" to mean any crash where a driver or nonoccupant had a positive BAC. It's true that all drunk driving crashes are also alcohol related crashes, but all alcohol related crashes are not drunk driving.
For example, all of the below are alcohol related, but only a fool would call them drunk driving: -.00 driver runs a red light and hits a.01 pedestrian -.01 driver hits a.00 jaywalking pedestrian -.00 driver is screwing around in his car at 2:00am on a Saturday night and runs off the road. (certain types of crashes are assumed to be alcohol related without any kind of measurement done.) -.00 driver runs red light and plows into car full of teens with driver who is.01 (those teens will now be part of the quoted "under 21 killed in an alcohol related crash" statistic.
The group RIDL made some interesting reports from the raw FARS data. Quite a few crashes labeled alcohol related when the driver was tested and was.00 or only the passenger had alcohol in their blood, etc.
.07 is still under the legal limit, much the same way a person who turned 18 at midnight can now star in a porno movie despite being marginally close to illegal.
If the state wishes to hold the citizenry to a specific threshold, then the citizens have a right to expect to be left alone provided they're under the threshold.
This isn't that different than speed limits. The speed limit is 55 and I can drive at 55 and expect to be left alone despite 55 being exactly one mph away from 56 and thus illegal.
Yes, it's probably a good idea and common sense for a.07 person to find another way home. But, barring hard evidence of intoxication, that.07 alone shouldn't allow prosecution.
This panic over misinformation could be useful when discussing encryption and the clipper chip proposals of the mid 90s and the newer escrow law proposals.
If the government were to mandate a back door, there would effectively be a master key that could be leaked, requiring a complete digital "changing of the locks" every time the key were suspected of being compromised.
Slashdot Mirror
The plumber in your company doesn't want you pouring paint down the drain, OR emptying your 1,000 gallon aquarium into the office sink that happens to run to pipes shared with other offices.
He has multiple offices, departments, and fixtures to support, and has multiple best practices and laws to follow.
Yes, he's jerk for not allowing you to fill a 1500 gallon personal jacuzzi from the water feed shared by the rest of the office sinks, he's a recalcitrant asshole for not allowing you to install your own triple flush toilet in the bathroom, and he's real stickler about you connecting a high pressure pump to the cold water outlet because of the risk cold water being pumped into the hot water line and forcing cold water back to the boiler or hot water heater.
It's almost as if people who have to support large resource pools used by diverse areas are reluctant or opposed to individuals doing things that incur huge financial or labor costs and/or interfere with everyone else's use of those resources.
When I first saw this article, I wondered if they were making PCMCIA/Cardbus or ExpressCard form factor computers that could go into expansion slots.
I have to admit that the possibility of plugging a cardbus computer into my 9 year old laptop would be sweet (and completely unnecessary).
Moving to the present, the expresscard computer could act as a nice coprocessor or ASIC.
Wow. Don't tell them that GTA IV lets you kill pigeons. In fact, killing the "flying rats" is necessary for 100% game completion.
When private companies get tax breaks, people call them subsidies. Well, the USPS gets massive subsidies compared to any other company-no local taxes, no vehicle taxes, they also don't pay parking tickets or tolls, etc.
If a Congressman proposed to directly and completely exempt a company or industry from all taxes and fees, it would be called a subsidy (and would generate considerable outrage). Whether or not it's appropriate to subsidize the USPS is a separate matter, but they are being subsidized.
The USPS had better have a mandate to deliver mail to all addresses since they also have a monopoly on 1st class mail.
I'm sure I could, IF I was provided a monopoly on all 1st class mail and able to charge the same rate for pieces, regardless of distance, thereby allowing all my in-town deliveries to subsidize my long distance deliveries.
I need exemptions from all local taxes for my distribution facilities and shop fronts. For example, I need all of the following waived:property taxes, business licensing fees, business profit taxes. I need all my vehicles to be exempt from taxes and fees as well-no vehicle registration or sales taxes, no parking tickets can be issued to my vehicles, nor do I pay gasoline taxes or toll road fees, etc. I also need to be able use eminent domain where I feel necessary.
They'll find ways to sell that food if they want money for the various things they want that they can't grow themselves. I'd be curious to know what percentage of rural residents are actually farmers or grow/raise/produce ANYTHING that is sold to urban/suburban dwellers.
If things change and we all stop spending money to subsidize rural residents, they'll have to build the cost of living into their products. This will allow people to choose whether or not they wish to pay for rural grown food, etc. There's no reason why someone who doesn't eat meat and grows many of their own vegetables has to pay for a farmer to live 50 miles from anywhere.
I believe that socializing these kinds of things is bad-it hides their true costs, and by extension, hides or encourages inefficiencies. It also denies people the ability to truly choose to buy locally as possible, etc. I have the exact same problem with any subsidizing of roads in the name of keeping trucked goods cheap-it too plays favorites, hides inefficiencies, and deprives people of the ability to truly choose to buy only locally produced goods.
BACK to the USPS:
It's easy for USPS to do things somewhat cheap-they have a monopoly on 1st class mail, so your letter across town subsidizes another person's letter across the country. The USPS does not pay property taxes, business license fees, business profit taxes, parking tickets, motor vehicle registration fees/taxes, gasoline taxes, etc.
Let UPS or Fedex avoid nearly all taxes and fees while also allowing them a monopoly on certain classes of mail and let's see how things change. In exchange for allowing them to avoid fees and allowing a monopoly on certain classes of mail, I'd bet anything they would have no problem fulfilling a mandate to deliver anywhere.
what about https://www.slashdot.org?
Oh wait...
True and the people at the Kinko's will throw you out after a while.
Like David Cross, I can wait 5 or 6 hours until I'm in the cab on the way to my hotel...
I went from XP to Vista and was very disappointed. When my Vista installed died of filesystem corruption, I went to Windows 7 thinking "what the hell, probably just as bad and can't really be worse?"
Upon second boot, I thought something was wrong when I saw the ESET splash screen come so soon after logging in. I was genuinely surprised and impressed to have my desktop available for use so soon. It was a little sluggish, but far more usable then Vista or XP ever were as soon it was presented to me. Hibernation appeared to work faster in both directions with the system being usable sooner after logging in upon resume.
My aging P4 3.2, 2GB, Geforce 7300GT (AGP) system boots to a login screen faster with Windows 7 then Vista. XP would boot pretty quickly and get me to a login prompt faster then 7 does. BUT, after the prompt XP was very sluggish and required almost as much time to be usable as it did to boot. The (illustrative only) example I'll give is XP booting to login in about 60 seconds, getting to desktop 10 seconds later and becoming usably responsive about 30 seconds after that. Total time to be usable is about 100 seconds. Windows 7 may take 75 seconds minute to get to the login screen, 2-5 seconds to the desktop,is more usable then XP as soon as the desktop is up and takes another 10-15 before feeling almost lag-free. Total time to usability is 77-95 seconds.
Windows 7 also seems to completes the post-desktop startup faster then either of the others. I watch the disk light and Process Explorer for CPU and process I/O to gauge this. I know which processes startup after login and noticed that everything was loaded and I/O settled some 20-40 seconds sooner than Vista or XP with identical software and startup apps installed under those OSes.
I later played around with changing some services from automatic to delayed just to shave time off the login->desktop and post-startup desktop lag. These were services that I knew didn't need to load right away (think MS Live, Adobe, Google updater, Cisco VPN, etc.) This did work for me and gave me a nice bump in response right after login.
It's not Microsoft's fault that nearly every app vendor now feels the need to install a startup app and/or a service. Nor is it entirely their fault that OEMs feel the need to load a dozen apps that all want to run at startup.
No car I'm aware of has truly redundant o2 sensors.
The sensor(s) in the exhaust manifold (front o2 sensors) are for fuel trim. A failure or insane data in one or both causes the PCM to failover to preset maps and it begins basing injector duty cycle on the value in the maps that correspond to MAF/MAP, throttle angle, engine speed, etc. A failure in both sensors (assuming two banks) doesn't render the car undriveable.
It depends on vehicle manufacturer how a PCM handles a reasonbly responding sensor in one bank and a failed/insane sensor in the other. It may start using the values from the good bank to control how it fuels the failed bank OR simply go to the maps for both banks.
The rear o2 sensors ie., behind the catalytic converters, are used to determine if the catalytic converter is functioning properly. Failure or insane values from those sensors will trigger a check engine light and may (sometimes) cause the computer to go into a limp home mode. This is ostensibly to prevent some kind of engine damage, but my guess it's really a deterrent to basic tampering-gutting/removing of the catalytic converter, or to push the owner to repair a damaged/clogged converter.
Their position behind the catalytic converter renders them pretty useless in deciding fuel trim.
Surely, this is OK. They had nothing to hide and their conversation was taking place in a public place*, so all's fair.
Definition of "public place" tortured to extend to publically owned buildings as well as places where the public might be allowed.
Sounds like a good justification to downsize the government. That, or appoint leaders to those departments who actually have what it takes to make sure their staff respects the constitution.
Obama is a wimp who can't seem to manage his own cabinet, especially his Attorney General.
It's his job to make sure this stuff doesn't happen, OR make sure that the people who WORK FOR HIM make sure it doesn't happen.
That's not much of an argument for government backed student loans.
If you're right and his education was paid for by his parents, why would it follow that he should support the government backing student loans for people's education today?
What's the rational behind capping one type of use, but not others? If it's network congestion, why does it matter how the network is being congested?
If I manage to download 11GB on my phone is that somehow less stressful on the network then if I downloaded 11GB on my laptop tethered/hotspot(ed) to my phone?
Considering opting out of my contract because of this. That, or maybe push for a discount.
My Epic 4g can.
Settings->Wireless and Network->Wifi Settings-"Menu" Button->Advanced->Proxy
Settings->Wireless and Network->Wifi Settings-"Menu" Button->Advanced->Port
Didn't see any options for username/password though.
It all goes to a good cause- underprivileged kids, outdated hospital systems, and people who live literally in the middle of nowhere.
Well, 2 out of 3. I don't think there should be subsidies for people who choose to live far away from everything.
You choose to live far away, you get the benefits of being far away-(generally) cleaner air, less noise and traffic, lower crime, more space, more freedom to customize land/home/etc. BUT, you have to pay more to have power, phone, cable, gas, etc. run to you. Freight costs for local merchants/gas stations as well as postage/delivery for personal mail/packages is higher.
That's the way it goes. I see no reason why those of who choose to live in urban and suburban areas should have to subsidize those who choose to live farther away.
Yes. Virtually any entity can hire armed guards in the US.
In 40 or so states, a person can carry a firearm by meeting an objective set of criteria. In the other 8, there are some more subjective criteria used by the issuing authority. Hawaii and Illinois are the two that don't issue. Hawaii has a law, but the issuing authorities don't issue to anyone, and Illinois doesn't have a law allowing issuing permits.
It does serve to balance out those who take the police at their word with no thought that the story has any embellishments.
Holy crap their systems were open.
I love that all quarters, including those provided to visiting military members of allied, neutral, or outright hostile governments have computer terminals in their quarters that are apparently fully linked with the rest of the ship and not a DMZ/guest network of some kind. I was happy that they called their main computer a main computer or "computer core" and not mainframe. Granted it's just different jargon, but nice not to hear every server of any size/function/role referred to as a "mainframe"
They did try to say that their ships' consoles used access controls. In the episode where the kid emulates Data after being rescued from the ship and he claims he destroyed it by hitting it with his arm, Troi explains that there are safeguards that prevent someone from accessing a console without authorization.
Of course every single episode of TNG before and after, not to mention DS9 and Voyager showed no such thing. Random aliens can just sit down at your Conn and pilot your ship-Romulan in TNG Timescape; Jem Hadaar in that crap DS9 episode where they bring Odo to his people for fixing, all the episode of Voyager where the Kazon steal or board or loot the ship, etc.
The fact that they don't have any kind of circuit breakers in their consoles to stop the power feedback that cause them to explode into what look like rocks every time the ship gets fired on with shields up. I always thought shields were supposed to spread the energy around to keep the ship from being damaged.
Someone forgot Alien:Resurrection where Winona Ryder's character denied she could access the mainframe by remote because she burned her modem like all the other robots.
In that case, they should just use something in 127.0.0.0/8
I would love for someone to download some denial-of-service tool and run it against 127.54.213.14 just because they saw it in a movie. I smile at the idea of someone explaining to their buddy that they ran that DOS tool and all that happened is their PC got slow.
They sure are.
With few exceptions, anytime a news article or politicians mentions drunk driving and throws out a really high number like 20,000 per year, they're actually referring to "alcohol related" deaths.
The NHTSA defines "alcohol related" to mean any crash where a driver or nonoccupant had a positive BAC. It's true that all drunk driving crashes are also alcohol related crashes, but all alcohol related crashes are not drunk driving.
For example, all of the below are alcohol related, but only a fool would call them drunk driving: .01 pedestrian .00 jaywalking pedestrian .01 (those teens will now be part of the quoted "under 21 killed in an alcohol related crash" statistic.
-.00 driver runs a red light and hits a
-.01 driver hits a
-.00 driver is screwing around in his car at 2:00am on a Saturday night and runs off the road. (certain types of crashes are assumed to be alcohol related without any kind of measurement done.)
-.00 driver runs red light and plows into car full of teens with driver who is
The group RIDL made some interesting reports from the raw FARS data. Quite a few crashes labeled alcohol related when the driver was tested and was .00 or only the passenger had alcohol in their blood, etc.
.07 is still under the legal limit, much the same way a person who turned 18 at midnight can now star in a porno movie despite being marginally close to illegal.
If the state wishes to hold the citizenry to a specific threshold, then the citizens have a right to expect to be left alone provided they're under the threshold.
This isn't that different than speed limits. The speed limit is 55 and I can drive at 55 and expect to be left alone despite 55 being exactly one mph away from 56 and thus illegal.
Yes, it's probably a good idea and common sense for a .07 person to find another way home. But, barring hard evidence of intoxication, that .07 alone shouldn't allow prosecution.
This panic over misinformation could be useful when discussing encryption and the clipper chip proposals of the mid 90s and the newer escrow law proposals.
If the government were to mandate a back door, there would effectively be a master key that could be leaked, requiring a complete digital "changing of the locks" every time the key were suspected of being compromised.