Laying off that many staff in a fit of pique would create a perfect opportunity for a competitor to set up a company that does pretty much the same thing with the same employees.
Depends on the NCO's the staff had to sign-- if the NCO allows it, then yes, the opportunity is indeed perfect.
I assume its related to speeding tickets and other moving violations, but can someone explain the system? How wide-spread is its use?
Most states have one; it's a way of tracking how close you are to deserving to have your license suspended for a while. Thus, while a single speeding conviction isn't going to cost you your license, a frequent habit of speeding convictions can-- as can a mix of violations. Point values for various offense and thresholds for suspension/revocation vary slightly from state to state, as they are set by individual state legislatures. Googling for "Driver license points" (also "Drivers License Points") and adding your state name should turn up some local specifics.
They are also used by insurance companies to help calculate insurance rates. Specifics on that are less readily availble, but more points mean you pay more money.
The Articles of Confederation set forth a government that loosely tied together each state.
Have you read them? While the powers expressly granted for holding those ties are weaker in some respects (EG, limiting the Confederal military power to the appointing of generals only), it was a more explicitly inviolable tie than the Constitution. There were even invocations of the Articles in the popular press preceding the civil war as argument against claims to a right of Secession:
And that the Articles thereof shall be inviolably observed by the States we respectively represent, and that the Union shall be perpetual.
I would hope that the screensaver would be designed such that after one file not found error, it would no longer try to retrieve that file.
I'd suggest a doubling delay time; start with a delay of 60 seconds -- a normal browser timeout-- after the fifth failure trying to load an image. If the picture doesn't load the next time, a two minute delay. Try again, four minutes. Probably cap it at 1024 minutes-- a little under a day, just because. In any case, such a delay would prevent a temporary/.ing from being only temporary, or prevent a 419er from making the problem go away by turning off his site for a day. On the other hand, it reduces load on a mistargetted site ~1000 fold, provided they don't have a similarly named image file.
Of course, it's only a question of time before some 419 site maker begin using the same tricks as p0rn sites do to prevent picture leeching (not work safe) from working, and hand back a 1x1 white bitmap to any off-site picture request. At which point, the Lad Vampire will need to check the next pocket.
so cocaine, which is kinda cheap to produce-
has it's prices artificially propped up by the black market?
Judging by the effects in the Prohibition Era on alcohol prices, and the price differences between crack vs. powder cocaine, yes. Were cocaine legal, it would be noticably cheaper-- leaving out taxation effects after legalization.
Of course, the legalization debate hinges on more than just prices.
I wish I could remember the paper I read a month ago about how the system could be saved by raising taxes by a relatively low amount (i thought is was something arund 0.7%) now, but I cannot seem to find it:(.
A modest increase in SocSec taxes, a gradual increase in the retirement age, or a slight decrease in benefits would all be solutions. I favor a combination of the first two... and, as I noted, beginning to reduce the national debt.
Is the conclusion of the analysis flawed?
I'm not an expert to judge. Moreover, while I class myself more libertarian than liberal, I would still pack an umbrella if the Bush White House said that the weather would be sunny today. They appear to routinely allow their political (or religious???) doctrine to blind them, and have few qualms about only presenting the evidence that supports their position. While I have not reviewed their analysis, I do not believe the present administration is honest enough to present a credible report.
Accountants may be crooked, but they at least have to make the numbers add up somehow. Politicians don't even have to manage that. The congressional budget office is bipartisan, and ususally gives its reports as a spread of possibilities. Their predictions have proven accurate in the past, in that things are rarely worse than their pessimistic guess, and rarely better than their optimistic guess. I would consider it obvious that the first crisis point (beginning to tap the trust fund revenues) will be brought forward by the Bush proposal; I would trust that the time forecast by the budget office would not be off by much.
The shuttle program will end will it not? At that point then why not send up the last or next to last shuttle mission to rescue or service the HST?
The shuttle program will end after (A) a replacement is agreed on and [near-]built, (B) after enough blow up that the remainder would only be used in stupid desperation, or (C) they're all too damaged to fly. Possibility (A) is the only one which lets us predict the end schedule, and is currently estimated circa 2010. The Hubble needs maintenance before that to keep operating.
The shuttle is also reported as effectively booked solid for essential ISS-related work until then-- assuming they get it returned to flight. And in the cold-blooded calculations, having space station infrastructure to facilitate future work is a better investment than any one deployed scientific instrument-- provided the US is able to maintain space travel capabilities in the current political and fiscal outlook.
From the article:
Today's password authentication schemes are little more than security placebos. They perversely inspire abuse, misuse, and criminal mischief by deliberately making users the weakest link in the security chain.
The user will always be in the security chain. Ergo, no security chain can be made stronger than the user; ergo, having the user be the weakest link is a good thing.
The key question is what aspect of the user is the weakness predicated on-- their memory? Their gullibility? The uniqueness, identifiability, and irreproducability of biometric data?
If lives can be and are lost for a good cause in Afghanistan, Iraq, in fighting domestic crime, and in firefighting, I say, we are overly protective of the space crews.
It's not so much the lives, as the replacement costs for the lost shuttles. Even with the training and skill requirements for Astronauts, and despite the risks, they are eager and not hard to find. Spacecraft are less easy to replace.
If you want the facts available you should look here.
Indeed:
The Social Security actuaries project that in 2018, Social Security's trust fund will hold $5.3 trillion in assets, in the form of U.S. Treasury bonds.
... Treasury bonds are the world's most secure investment. They are the instruments that investors large and small, at home and abroad, turn to for safety, secure in the knowledge that the United States has never in its history defaulted on its bonds.
Of course, the problem with that is that little SEC mandated qualifier: "Past Performance Does Not Guarantee Future Results". In 2018, the US Treasury will have to start shifting debt from Social Security, which will begin calling in its notes, to either taxes (personal or corporate), or to bonds sold to non-government suckers, explicitly making a larger part of the national debt publicly traded... which, if we do not have the national deficit under control BEFORE that point, will have major negative domestic economic impacts-- and may risk in the US having to defer or default on some debts.
All we would need to is stick one of those in a RealDoll, and we'd finally lose all use for the female race.
I'd predict males would lose usefulness first.
I believe you misunderstand the referent of the original posters use of the pronoun "we." Given context, it should be obvious that the original poster meant "people who read SlashDot".
...and RTG output this diminishes over time. The info in the Wikipedia article is consistent from what I remember from my nuke classes.
I wouldn't want to leave 60000-75000 chunks of plutonium in orbit, even with the re-entry withstanding encapsulation design and the bomb-unsuitable isotope. It would be less of an issue if you want to base it on the moon, though-- but harder to get them all there safely.
We can generate 60-megawatts i[n] space. It would just involve putting a nuclear reactor in space.
It could be done with solar power. Of course, full spectrum vacuum solar in earth orbit is about 1.3 kW/m^2; so, for 60000 kW, you need a minimum of 45000 m^2 of solar collection area. Since conversion efficiency tends to be about 30% at best, 135000 m^2 is more realistic-- ballpark a dozen football fields worth.
Using that area for reflectors to concentrate down to smaller power cell areas might reduce cost. On the other hand, the expense of lifting the mass to orbit without a beanstalk is still hardly economical. On the gripping hand, it's cheaper, lighter, and safer than putting a 60MW reactor topside.
Case sensitive +1 shift on 1337 translation of Engrish text, punctuation/spacing excluded.
0) Cypertext: "B22 z1vs cb64 S c4m107 3 vt!!!"
1) Intermediate 1337: "A11 y0ur ba53 R b3l0ng 2 us!!!" --NB, "A11" not "All" as previous translators have given.
2) Engrish Plaintext: "All your base are belong to us!!!"
Half. I think it may well be intended to be an allusion by Lucas; I don't think it's intended to be taken as an overly profound one. Ask me again after the movie comes out, when evidence will exist as to whether it's more than a literary Rorschach blot.
Why is 'grievous' capitalized in your quote?
Emphasis, nothing more. Slashdot is full of folk who need a big brick. =)
It's a quite common word.
Moderately common in the Bard's work, yes-- poetic forms like iambic pentameter tend to lend frequency to the use of certain words. However, while you are easily able to cite half a dozen uses, none are anywhere nigh as famous-- only "If lost, why then a grievous labour won" even approaches. Hamlet's "To be, or not to be", the bloody Scot's "Sleep" soliloquy, and "The quality of mercy" from The Merchant of Venice are the only ones that spring to mind of comparable stature. Of course, I'm not an English major, nor hardly as scholar of the Bard.
It's also worth noting that the Shakespeare play 'Julius Caesar' isn't 'the story of the fall of the republic and rise of the empire' at all.
You are correct, it's would be closer to say that the Fall of the Republic and Rise of the Empire is the setting and context, rather than substance, of the play. The substance is more of the nature of fate, ambition, and the conflicts between public and private morality. All of this also parallels on the one hand, and on the other I wasn't trying for an English paper.
I'd wouldn't want to try holding it up for a doctoral defense without a documented confession from GL, but I bet I could get a fun English paper out of it after all were I in that business-- and had I read Anthony and Cleopatra as well in the last decade. As a light allusion, this reference seems about the right literary height I'd expect from Lucas.
Lucas' literary allusion here seems to have all of the subtlety of a high-speed halfbrick to the cranium
I must haved ducked...
Perhaps not. "Some fellows need to be hit with a brick. Some fellows you need to hit with a big brick." Martya Koudekelda in Lois McMaster Bujold's "Memory".
English geeks are the worst kind of geeks.
"All I know is what I read in science fiction." It might count for less in that I remember the speech mainly from Sparky's bathtub scene in John Varley's "The Golden Globe." Now that book was an example of ripping off Shakespeare with class!
Slashdot Mirror
Depends on the NCO's the staff had to sign-- if the NCO allows it, then yes, the opportunity is indeed perfect.
Most states have one; it's a way of tracking how close you are to deserving to have your license suspended for a while. Thus, while a single speeding conviction isn't going to cost you your license, a frequent habit of speeding convictions can-- as can a mix of violations. Point values for various offense and thresholds for suspension/revocation vary slightly from state to state, as they are set by individual state legislatures. Googling for "Driver license points" (also "Drivers License Points") and adding your state name should turn up some local specifics.
They are also used by insurance companies to help calculate insurance rates. Specifics on that are less readily availble, but more points mean you pay more money.
Have you read them? While the powers expressly granted for holding those ties are weaker in some respects (EG, limiting the Confederal military power to the appointing of generals only), it was a more explicitly inviolable tie than the Constitution. There were even invocations of the Articles in the popular press preceding the civil war as argument against claims to a right of Secession:
And that the Articles thereof shall be inviolably observed by the States we respectively represent, and that the Union shall be perpetual.
Au contraire, by all independent reports he does have such a prevailing ideology: his ego.
I'd suggest a doubling delay time; start with a delay of 60 seconds -- a normal browser timeout-- after the fifth failure trying to load an image. If the picture doesn't load the next time, a two minute delay. Try again, four minutes. Probably cap it at 1024 minutes-- a little under a day, just because. In any case, such a delay would prevent a temporary /.ing from being only temporary, or prevent a 419er from making the problem go away by turning off his site for a day. On the other hand, it reduces load on a mistargetted site ~1000 fold, provided they don't have a similarly named image file.
Of course, it's only a question of time before some 419 site maker begin using the same tricks as p0rn sites do to prevent picture leeching (not work safe) from working, and hand back a 1x1 white bitmap to any off-site picture request. At which point, the Lad Vampire will need to check the next pocket.
Judging by the effects in the Prohibition Era on alcohol prices, and the price differences between crack vs. powder cocaine, yes. Were cocaine legal, it would be noticably cheaper-- leaving out taxation effects after legalization.
Of course, the legalization debate hinges on more than just prices.
America's Puritan heritage.
A modest increase in SocSec taxes, a gradual increase in the retirement age, or a slight decrease in benefits would all be solutions. I favor a combination of the first two... and, as I noted, beginning to reduce the national debt.
Is the conclusion of the analysis flawed?
I'm not an expert to judge. Moreover, while I class myself more libertarian than liberal, I would still pack an umbrella if the Bush White House said that the weather would be sunny today. They appear to routinely allow their political (or religious???) doctrine to blind them, and have few qualms about only presenting the evidence that supports their position. While I have not reviewed their analysis, I do not believe the present administration is honest enough to present a credible report.
Accountants may be crooked, but they at least have to make the numbers add up somehow. Politicians don't even have to manage that. The congressional budget office is bipartisan, and ususally gives its reports as a spread of possibilities. Their predictions have proven accurate in the past, in that things are rarely worse than their pessimistic guess, and rarely better than their optimistic guess. I would consider it obvious that the first crisis point (beginning to tap the trust fund revenues) will be brought forward by the Bush proposal; I would trust that the time forecast by the budget office would not be off by much.
The shuttle program will end after (A) a replacement is agreed on and [near-]built, (B) after enough blow up that the remainder would only be used in stupid desperation, or (C) they're all too damaged to fly. Possibility (A) is the only one which lets us predict the end schedule, and is currently estimated circa 2010. The Hubble needs maintenance before that to keep operating.
The shuttle is also reported as effectively booked solid for essential ISS-related work until then-- assuming they get it returned to flight. And in the cold-blooded calculations, having space station infrastructure to facilitate future work is a better investment than any one deployed scientific instrument-- provided the US is able to maintain space travel capabilities in the current political and fiscal outlook.
The user will always be in the security chain. Ergo, no security chain can be made stronger than the user; ergo, having the user be the weakest link is a good thing. The key question is what aspect of the user is the weakness predicated on-- their memory? Their gullibility? The uniqueness, identifiability, and irreproducability of biometric data?
It's not so much the lives, as the replacement costs for the lost shuttles. Even with the training and skill requirements for Astronauts, and despite the risks, they are eager and not hard to find. Spacecraft are less easy to replace.
Indeed:
The Social Security actuaries project that in 2018, Social Security's trust fund will hold $5.3 trillion in assets, in the form of U.S. Treasury bonds.
...
Treasury bonds are the world's most secure investment. They are the instruments that investors large and small, at home and abroad, turn to for safety, secure in the knowledge that the United States has never in its history defaulted on its bonds.
Of course, the problem with that is that little SEC mandated qualifier: "Past Performance Does Not Guarantee Future Results". In 2018, the US Treasury will have to start shifting debt from Social Security, which will begin calling in its notes, to either taxes (personal or corporate), or to bonds sold to non-government suckers, explicitly making a larger part of the national debt publicly traded... which, if we do not have the national deficit under control BEFORE that point, will have major negative domestic economic impacts-- and may risk in the US having to defer or default on some debts.
That's a better idea. Putting "BrainFuck" on your resume will doubtless highly speed up its evaluation by most potential employers.
I believe you misunderstand the referent of the original posters use of the pronoun "we." Given context, it should be obvious that the original poster meant "people who read SlashDot".
No. No matter what you do with it, INTERCAL looks really, really, bad.
True, but there are an entire family of bastards not included. And besides, bastardy can't really be an bar to inclusion-- BASIC is on the chart. =)
I wouldn't want to leave 60000-75000 chunks of plutonium in orbit, even with the re-entry withstanding encapsulation design and the bomb-unsuitable isotope. It would be less of an issue if you want to base it on the moon, though-- but harder to get them all there safely.
It could be done with solar power. Of course, full spectrum vacuum solar in earth orbit is about 1.3 kW/m^2; so, for 60000 kW, you need a minimum of 45000 m^2 of solar collection area. Since conversion efficiency tends to be about 30% at best, 135000 m^2 is more realistic-- ballpark a dozen football fields worth.
Using that area for reflectors to concentrate down to smaller power cell areas might reduce cost. On the other hand, the expense of lifting the mass to orbit without a beanstalk is still hardly economical. On the gripping hand, it's cheaper, lighter, and safer than putting a 60MW reactor topside.
...increases risk of carpal tunnel. Looks like a job for....
Case sensitive +1 shift on 1337 translation of Engrish text, punctuation/spacing excluded.
0) Cypertext: "B22 z1vs cb64 S c4m107 3 vt!!!"
1) Intermediate 1337: "A11 y0ur ba53 R b3l0ng 2 us!!!" --NB, "A11" not "All" as previous translators have given.
2) Engrish Plaintext: "All your base are belong to us!!!"
55 47 55 2e 20 55 4e 41 51 2e
Half. I think it may well be intended to be an allusion by Lucas; I don't think it's intended to be taken as an overly profound one. Ask me again after the movie comes out, when evidence will exist as to whether it's more than a literary Rorschach blot.
Why is 'grievous' capitalized in your quote?
Emphasis, nothing more. Slashdot is full of folk who need a big brick. =)
It's a quite common word.
Moderately common in the Bard's work, yes-- poetic forms like iambic pentameter tend to lend frequency to the use of certain words. However, while you are easily able to cite half a dozen uses, none are anywhere nigh as famous-- only "If lost, why then a grievous labour won" even approaches. Hamlet's "To be, or not to be", the bloody Scot's "Sleep" soliloquy, and "The quality of mercy" from The Merchant of Venice are the only ones that spring to mind of comparable stature. Of course, I'm not an English major, nor hardly as scholar of the Bard.
It's also worth noting that the Shakespeare play 'Julius Caesar' isn't 'the story of the fall of the republic and rise of the empire' at all.
You are correct, it's would be closer to say that the Fall of the Republic and Rise of the Empire is the setting and context, rather than substance, of the play. The substance is more of the nature of fate, ambition, and the conflicts between public and private morality. All of this also parallels on the one hand, and on the other I wasn't trying for an English paper.
I'd wouldn't want to try holding it up for a doctoral defense without a documented confession from GL, but I bet I could get a fun English paper out of it after all were I in that business-- and had I read Anthony and Cleopatra as well in the last decade. As a light allusion, this reference seems about the right literary height I'd expect from Lucas.
Perhaps not. "Some fellows need to be hit with a brick. Some fellows you need to hit with a big brick." Martya Koudekelda in Lois McMaster Bujold's "Memory".
English geeks are the worst kind of geeks.
"All I know is what I read in science fiction." It might count for less in that I remember the speech mainly from Sparky's bathtub scene in John Varley's "The Golden Globe." Now that book was an example of ripping off Shakespeare with class!