Criticality is a function of free neutrons: if there's not enough to sustain a reaction, it's subcritical; if it's break-even, it's critical, and if there are enough to grow the reaction it's supercritical. Contrary to the movies, a reactor that's critical is not a failure state (it's normal operation). Even "supercritical" isn't necessarily trouble (though if you stay supercritical for too long it will eventually be).
The real problems happens when you're "prompt critical". There are two kinds of neutrons that are interesting in a reaction: the ones that immediately cause new fission (prompt neutrons), and the ones that need to wait around a while (because of $PHYSICS, they're too energetic, and actually need to slow down) before they can start a reaction ("delayed neutrons" or such IIRC). "Prompt critical" means that there are enough prompt neutrons to cause the reaction to speed up. That's generally serious trouble, and is liable to melt your equipment before too long.
I don't like playing cultural imperialist, but something about current Asian cultures seems to me to be broken: this isn't exactly the first suicide of its sort, or even an uncommon phenomenon, just one of the more high-profile cases (since it's Apple, and a senior guy). Western culture isn't immune to these effects either (cf. high-profile financial advisors committing suicide in 2008-2009), but I understand that it's significantly more of an issue in Asia. I'd hazard that it's something in the common implementation of 'honor' and self-value that predisposes people towards a massive breakdown in the face of 'public disgrace'.
Not that Americans couldn't use a bit more of the right sort of Honor in their regimen, mind you.
Try taking ethics. If we followed your slippery slope logic we'd start killing people when they hit retirement age. After all, they'll never again go back to work and 'pay back' their value after they start collecting social security. Same for the mentally retarded, just drown them right?
You say that like we're supposed to think "oh no, that could never happen", but have you seen Denmark recently? They don't just go out and kill people explicitly, sure; you make it a social thing. Guilt them into it. Or, wait until they're sick and miserable and provide no meaningful outlets for palliative care. There's lots of ways you can do it. And the retarded?
When I phoned Amsterdam's Academic Medical Center, a spokeswoman told me that she approved of involuntary euthanasia for disabled infants: "It is the same in all the hospitals in the world; we are just more open about it." Most hospitals try heroically to save disabled children, but the contrary view seems to be widely held among the Dutch.
I do pair programming for a living. It's great for the senior guy to teach the junior guy what the heck is going on. That said, there needs to be a senior guy first.
Indeed. The states already make you get your car inspected on a fairly regular basis, and doubly so for California emissions standards. Why not just track mileage readings there? Why all the GPS shenanigans?
And what happens to the 'good kids' who are misidentified as 'bad kids' and stigmatized for life and ignored by the "good parts" of the system and put into a peer group which has won't recognize anything valuable about them save for delinquency?
Sure, we can do more to avoid "wast[ing] time or money" on the bad kids, but a system of pigeonholing them in the manner you describe is going to be fraught with trouble before politics / political correctness / all that mess start manipulating the system to further their own agendas.
Hey, it's a capitalistic society we live in, right? We should all be working 24/7/365+1/4, right? For the greater good?
Capitalism is the part where you have an incentive to invest in useful capital (factories, homes, tractors, computer networks, freight trains, "human capital" (things like the knowledge of how to program C++), really anything what-have-you) because you get to own it and, when it generates profits, keep the profits. When did "work 24/7/365.25" come into the picture? Oh, right, when idiot leftists and such decided to raise up some straw-men.
That's an advantage? It sounds like a disadvantage to me. It's electricity. We don't use electricity as an end in and of itself, we use it to achieve other valuable goals. If it takes more work to get it this way, that's inefficiency, ineffectiveness, and wasteful - and a drag on every other sector of the economy that uses electricity.
There's an old story about the Communists in China digging a dam, and an observer asks why they're using shovels instead of excavators. "To create more jobs", they say. "Oh, I thought you were building a dam. If it's jobs you want, take away their shovels and give them spoons."
The actual labels you'll see is "This unit not labelled for individual retail sale", meaning that it doesn't have the nutrition facts on the individual packets, and probably runs afoul of some regulatory agency (FDA) if you try to sell it by itself.
And what's so "unscrupulous" about splitting up a multi-pack? That's half of what retailers are there for: so you don't have to order things by the pallet.
Her $2.5 million settlement should give her an annual income of maybe $125,000 a year [...] That's a pretty good income. It's a lot more than many of her husband's ruined victims will have. But it will hardly support her past lifestyle. [...] The irony, of course, is that Mrs Madoff really needs right now a financial adviser she can trust to handle her money.
But it doesn't really matter, does it? These were the extremely wealthy who were conned.
Sure. The extremely wealthy. And, also, charities. What do you think of stealing $15 million from The Elie Wiesel Foundation for Humanity? Maybe $24 mill from New York University or $3 million from Bard College bothers you? I wonder what United Association Plumbers & Steamfitters Local 267 in Syracuse thinks about your blanket characterization which indicates that their loss (still under calculation) doesn't matter.
Greatest achievement since Columbus? Columbus and the Apollo programs were the exact opposites of each other. The Apollo engineers had a pretty accurate idea of what they were setting out to accomplish, while Columbus stumbled across the New World despite sheer ignorance and wrongheadedness and was really lucky not to die through sheer incompetence.
Also, despite the incompetence, subsequent colonization of the New World has resulted in something substantially useful (the US GDP alone is over $13 trillion!) Granted, sure, the Moon hasn't had long enough to catch up, but it's got a long way to go... and no, a few random spinoff NASA technologies aren't really worth talking about.
When the incentive to compile news is financial, we will only get news that is sensational and designed to be sticky. However, when that incentive is removed, we will be able to see a rapid advance in news gathering for its own sake.
I disagree with this specific sentiment. When the incentive to compile news is no longer financial, I think there will be two groups of news-gatherers who will make it big: news-gatherers who are paid by people who want to manipulate the news and public opinion (which will rekindle the financial incentive) and activist news-gatherers with an axe to grind who want to manipulate the news and public opinion. Both these groups have significant incentives to go out and gather news. Other groups have less of an incentive. Have you visited many community news gathering/reporting sites recently? Can you name two of them which stand out as cool, neutral reporters of what happens in the world? (A hint, here's one of them.) In general, though, I don't think it bodes well for the integrity of the news.
These seriously are challenges to unrestricted free speech, and they seriously exist.
For someone who self-identifies as being concerned with
"privacy, free expression and civil liberties" and
people being "banned in the UK for expressing (admittedly reprehsensible) opinions",
these challenges represent something that must be seriously taken into consideration
(especially the bits about hate crimes).
Perhaps you're confused because I'm simply pointing out the existence of these issues
while trying to refrain from passing additional forms of judgement
as to the ultimate desirability of these measures? Perhaps my laziness
in selection of my first set of links resulted in a set of sites which
you did not find worthy of being taken seriously? Here, have a slightly
less biased ("neutrality disputed" notwithstanding) Wikipedia article on
Canadian
Human Rights Commission free speech controversies. Does that help?
Be aware that Canada has some interesting challenges to freedom of speech with regards to the political process, including campaign finance limits (note the US has some too) and something about a media blackout of election coverage. There also exist certain "hate speech" provisions (for some criticism, do a quick Google search and/or see herehere and here, warning, these sites may contain bias independent of their stance on freedom of speech...
that's kind of the idea behind freedom of speech, though, so I hope you can cope).
Surely, if you were willing to consider the premise that "a good place to start is economic freedom", then you should still be able to glean
some information about economic freedom from people who think economic freedom is good (American conservatives). Or perhaps you're a little biased too?
Holland is apparently very big on euthanizing infants born prematurely or with any sort of birth defects (as well as old people). Much cheaper for the health care system than taking care of the infants.
Slashdot Mirror
Does understanding history really serve a purpose? I contend unto you that it does.
Criticality is a function of free neutrons: if there's not enough to sustain a reaction, it's subcritical; if it's break-even, it's critical, and if there are enough to grow the reaction it's supercritical. Contrary to the movies, a reactor that's critical is not a failure state (it's normal operation). Even "supercritical" isn't necessarily trouble (though if you stay supercritical for too long it will eventually be).
The real problems happens when you're "prompt critical". There are two kinds of neutrons that are interesting in a reaction: the ones that immediately cause new fission (prompt neutrons), and the ones that need to wait around a while (because of $PHYSICS, they're too energetic, and actually need to slow down) before they can start a reaction ("delayed neutrons" or such IIRC). "Prompt critical" means that there are enough prompt neutrons to cause the reaction to speed up. That's generally serious trouble, and is liable to melt your equipment before too long.
I don't like playing cultural imperialist, but something about current Asian cultures seems to me to be broken: this isn't exactly the first suicide of its sort, or even an uncommon phenomenon, just one of the more high-profile cases (since it's Apple, and a senior guy). Western culture isn't immune to these effects either (cf. high-profile financial advisors committing suicide in 2008-2009), but I understand that it's significantly more of an issue in Asia. I'd hazard that it's something in the common implementation of 'honor' and self-value that predisposes people towards a massive breakdown in the face of 'public disgrace'.
Not that Americans couldn't use a bit more of the right sort of Honor in their regimen, mind you.
You say that like we're supposed to think "oh no, that could never happen", but have you seen Denmark recently? They don't just go out and kill people explicitly, sure; you make it a social thing. Guilt them into it. Or, wait until they're sick and miserable and provide no meaningful outlets for palliative care. There's lots of ways you can do it. And the retarded?
--The Dutch Way of Death, The Wall Street Journal
I do pair programming for a living. It's great for the senior guy to teach the junior guy what the heck is going on. That said, there needs to be a senior guy first.
Emacs in screen -x. Or vim. But they'll freak out with modal editing, I promise. :P
Indeed. The states already make you get your car inspected on a fairly regular basis, and doubly so for California emissions standards. Why not just track mileage readings there? Why all the GPS shenanigans?
Sure, we can do more to avoid "wast[ing] time or money" on the bad kids, but a system of pigeonholing them in the manner you describe is going to be fraught with trouble before politics / political correctness / all that mess start manipulating the system to further their own agendas.
Capitalism is the part where you have an incentive to invest in useful capital (factories, homes, tractors, computer networks, freight trains, "human capital" (things like the knowledge of how to program C++), really anything what-have-you) because you get to own it and, when it generates profits, keep the profits. When did "work 24/7/365.25" come into the picture? Oh, right, when idiot leftists and such decided to raise up some straw-men.
... just "it will create more jobs" shouldn't be counted as one of them.
There's an old story about the Communists in China digging a dam, and an observer asks why they're using shovels instead of excavators. "To create more jobs", they say. "Oh, I thought you were building a dam. If it's jobs you want, take away their shovels and give them spoons."
And what's so "unscrupulous" about splitting up a multi-pack? That's half of what retailers are there for: so you don't have to order things by the pallet.
Sure. The extremely wealthy. And, also, charities. What do you think of stealing $15 million from The Elie Wiesel Foundation for Humanity? Maybe $24 mill from New York University or $3 million from Bard College bothers you? I wonder what United Association Plumbers & Steamfitters Local 267 in Syracuse thinks about your blanket characterization which indicates that their loss (still under calculation) doesn't matter.
(For reference, the victim list.)
Pfft. We didn't need Apollo for mini electronics. Just needed a big fat ICBM program.
(It slices! It dices! It cleans wine stains out of your carpet! And your dog! No quack!)
Hmm. In a pinch, audio cassettes can do double-duty as impromptu teething devices for your toddler, and still play music afterwards. Is that it?
Also, despite the incompetence, subsequent colonization of the New World has resulted in something substantially useful (the US GDP alone is over $13 trillion!) Granted, sure, the Moon hasn't had long enough to catch up, but it's got a long way to go... and no, a few random spinoff NASA technologies aren't really worth talking about.
I disagree with this specific sentiment. When the incentive to compile news is no longer financial, I think there will be two groups of news-gatherers who will make it big: news-gatherers who are paid by people who want to manipulate the news and public opinion (which will rekindle the financial incentive) and activist news-gatherers with an axe to grind who want to manipulate the news and public opinion. Both these groups have significant incentives to go out and gather news. Other groups have less of an incentive. Have you visited many community news gathering/reporting sites recently? Can you name two of them which stand out as cool, neutral reporters of what happens in the world? (A hint, here's one of them.) In general, though, I don't think it bodes well for the integrity of the news.
Maybe the $6 billion in revenue is how much the people selling the video game companies the POS-activation scheme intend to rake in.
Perhaps you're confused because I'm simply pointing out the existence of these issues while trying to refrain from passing additional forms of judgement as to the ultimate desirability of these measures? Perhaps my laziness in selection of my first set of links resulted in a set of sites which you did not find worthy of being taken seriously? Here, have a slightly less biased ("neutrality disputed" notwithstanding) Wikipedia article on Canadian Human Rights Commission free speech controversies. Does that help?
Be aware that Canada has some interesting challenges to freedom of speech with regards to the political process, including campaign finance limits (note the US has some too) and something about a media blackout of election coverage. There also exist certain "hate speech" provisions (for some criticism, do a quick Google search and/or see here here and here, warning, these sites may contain bias independent of their stance on freedom of speech... that's kind of the idea behind freedom of speech, though, so I hope you can cope).
Surely, if you were willing to consider the premise that "a good place to start is economic freedom", then you should still be able to glean some information about economic freedom from people who think economic freedom is good (American conservatives). Or perhaps you're a little biased too?
Congratulations; you've discovered Project Gutenberg.
Don't get old in Holland.