Besides, you can always just say CE as "Christian era" to annoy someone anyway.:)
And, IMHO, it makes at least as much sense as 'common era', since the numbering of the era is intrinsically tied to Christianity, and wrapping it in the name "common" doesn't really change that (and hey, are you trying to be some sort of Western imperialist declaring your era numbering to be the one "common" system and implying other alternative calendars are uncommon? Well, not that they aren't, but...:D)
"For the price of one of John Howard's crappy nuclear reactors, Max might be able to solve a few problems."
That's not saying much! Good lord, how much does a nuclear reactor cost these days? Tens, hundreds of millions of dollars? Billions? Wow, we're not really asking very much now, are we? *cough cough hack hack*
Ayn Rand's novels, like her philosophies, are better at the beginning then they are at the end. The world needs a good little bit of anti-collectivism and acknowledgment of the individual, great and mediocre, and allow him to pursue his own goals. Her scathing attacks on the hyper-communal future society in Anthem and the like do make sense, even if the society portrayed is a caricature; still, I think many youngsters more intelligent than sociable could appreciate, sympathize, and identify with the protagonists.
But ultimately, though Rand should be lauded for such things as assigning individual worth to individuals and not merely to society, or a dogged insistence on personal freedom of action, she fails to take her notions anywhere particularly grand or glorious. The novels start getting dull and repetitive, and one might arrive at the end of a work, and wonder, "what was the point of all that?" The philosophy seems to cover a few basic ideas like this and then... well... spins in some sort of busy-loop repeating the same sort of concepts. Perhaps some future philosopher will take this bright little engine, brush off the dust and the dirt and the icky stuff, polish it up, and actually really go somewhere with it. It will be a good day for the world if that happens.
Try telling any green environmental lefty that Ethanol is a bad thing and show them why, and they turn their nose saying, "But, but, but, but its GREEN!"
Expect 2007 to be a big year for the government giving bundles of money to people who pretend to be environmentally friendly. But it's hardly a new idea; accusations that the Left focuses too much on good intentions, feel-good measures, and such while ignoring consequences have characterized most decent critiques of the Left for quite some time now, and gives rise to some of the claims that the left experiences a "disconnect from reality". For instance, complaints from some Libertarians...
Schumer (D-N.Y.) recently declared that the new Democratic Congress will mandate that a quarter of new vehicles sold in the use flexible fuel technology by 2010. Said Schumer: "These are things that will help the middle class and those who aspire to be in the middle class," Schumer said. Because nothing helps the "aspiring middle class" more than tacking on a few hundred (or thousand) bucks to the price of their Ford minivan.
The Democratic party has a lot of people (especially young people) with a lot of people who really want to make positive changes in the world; this sort of passion, while commendable, is primarily emotional in nature, not rational, and routinely risks falling into traps where catchy slogans take precedence over well-reasoned arguments, and being diverted by either those merely looking to profit or gain power from it.
But don't worry, the Republican party has plenty of blame for idiotic ethanol subsidies and the like. It's part of their general scheme of buying off the Midwestern states. Blah, anyway; six years in power, and what did they do with it? Built a political machine. Nice going, yo. Thanks for nothing...
Now, how was that bit at the end supposed to go like... ah. *ahemahemahemahemahem* I'M PROBABLY GOING TO GET MODDED DOWN FOR THIS...
I really can't tell whether this guy is serious, or if he's secretly an 3v17 capitalist pretending to be an incomprehensible environmentalist so as to discredit his political opponents' positions.
Nobody needs a coin that's worth 7 seconds of time at the federal minimum wage. Just use the nickel as the new "smallest coin" and don't mess around with "rebasing" nonsense that's just going to confuse people. That makes no sense.
Actually, my dad was the one publishing a study demonstrating that rounding all cash transactions to the nearest nickel would result in just-about-0 net change for everyone involved. Google around for whaples penny.:)
Right now, I'd be somewhat skeptical of it, but it does seem like a reasonable sort of "future investment". And if there's any place that should be making it and could benefit, NYC is that place (with a huge city and tons of people with media-happy cell phones floating around). I don't think there will be any immediate returns, but...
One of the things I guess is problematic is that you can't exactly call 911 and send them a video clip at the same time with today's phones - most seem to have them mutually exclusive.
Anyway. I wonder what the cell phone company will charge you for sending a video clip to the 911 service.:P
Well, it's not EXACTLY the same, but if you get a Wacom graphics tablet, they include a mouse that only works on the tablet... it doesn't have a power supply at all, though, batteries or otherwise, and neither does the pen...
I disagree. In fact, I'll say that Google's use of "labels" is somewhat unlike the traditional "Web 2.0" buzzwordish use of tags. Why? Normal tags, you type in, or maybe (in the case of del.icio.us) type them in and add some from your 'tag cloud' that's floating around on the bottom of your screen. Gmail is different. With Gmail, you create the label beforehand, and select it from a drop-down menu. It encourages a much more selective sort of "labelling", whereas with tags, you can feel more free to go wild and crazy and tag things a zillion different ways if you really want to.
Tags make sense with the "tag cloud" metaphor. Google's labels don't.
RFID means that they send out a radio pulse with an RFID reader, and they get something back. If the pattern of dots can somehow elicit the proper response on the proper frequency, then it's RFID, whether or not it's in a neat little grain-of-rice-sized microchip of some sort.
I'm not sure whether this can conform to the same specifications as what we normally consider RFID, but it's probably something they can read with radio waves, not an optical scan. Radio wave scanning can detect patterns and stuff too, you know.
Indeed. The grandparent is making the mistake of treating the economy as a black box, where GDP a number that describes the whole thing, and thinking "we just need to keep this number up and everything is right as rain". But that's not the case - forcing airlines to install these lasers takes money from a) people who want to travel / ship things by air and the airlines themselves - exactly how much from each to be determined by the relative elasticities of supply and demand - or b) taxpayers (perhaps), and this money goes to c) the people who make lasers (and laser parts). It means we, as a country, are buying less of things that we find intrinsically useful themselves (air travel or shipping, for instance) and more lasers.
If that means that we just spent $10 billion on laser system manufacturing, that means $10 billion wasn't spent elsewhere for vacations, shipping, or just about anything else that people like and find useful.
Funny you should mention risk. Well, as we all know (or we all should know, before making snide comments about the topic:) people have a scientifically documented tendency to greatly overestimate risks that are perceived as out of their control compared to risks that are in their control. This is why people are more afraid of flying or of terrorist attacks than they are of driving to work. This is why some people will clamor for something mildly ridiculous like an anti-missile laser to be put on all airplanes, but may or may not buckle up in their cars.
My school, before the Great Firewalling of its network a few years ago, had its printers open to the whole Internet. Apparently someone hacked into one and used it as an FTP server for warez and porn. And it still worked as a printer.:)
Of course, this also means that I can't stick up a website for the world from my laptop anymore, either. =/ Ah well.
Here's one very real reason: So the male engineers don't get discouraged by the remarkable lack of females around the place and leave the company, or even the industry. (Or, perhaps, never even join.)
If someone is putting out "podcasts with music" or "satellite radio", and letting people "steal" your music, they either are a) breaking the law and providing this content illegally - in which case, go sue 'em or something, b) have the copyright or a license to use it - in which case, you should have used a more restrictive agreement.
This is the fallacy of Misleading Vividness. You are using the example of Zimbabwe's disastrous and ill-considered land redistribution scheme to cast an ill light on the concept of any form of redistribution.
Actually, I was using it to cast ill light on a comment which said, and I BLOCKQUOTE,
If you were to take half the money of the richest 10% of Americans and spread it out among the poorest 40%, you'd probably take one of the biggest steps in history towards eliminating poverty.
The wealthiest 10% of Zimbabweans may have not been as wealthy as the wealthiest 10% of Americans, but I think that drawing some sort of parallel in this situation is far from unreasonable.
Also, it's not like the metric system solves any of the truly DIFFICULT unit problems. Length and weight are easy. Tell me, what's the metric unit for time? Well? So we're stuck with the bloody hour, 24 of which make a day, divisible into 60 minutes of 60 hours, with all those lovely leap years and leap seconds thrown into the mix.
You forgot time zones. Good lord, time zones. And Daylight Savings Time. Don't tell me you missed THAT little gem on Slashdot recently.
If you were to take half the money of the richest 10% of Americans and spread it out among the poorest 40%, you'd probably take one of the biggest steps in history towards eliminating poverty.
There once was a country called Zimbabwe. It was a decent country, physically, with plenty of natural resources (mineral and agricultural). It had a cool pair of rivers named the Limpopo and Zambezi. They had some very rich white people with lots of land (<1% of people owned 70% of the land) who had moved in during the colonial era, and some very very poor black Africans. One day, when the black African majority had gained power, they decided, "This is unfair. We will redistribute the wealth in this country." And so they distributed the wealth (mostly the land), taking from the rich and giving to the poor. And when they started, the rich white people saw what was happening, and they left, and the land was redistributed.
Zimbabwe is now infamous for having what is possibly the world's most messed-up economy. Their inflation rate was 1204.6% a year as of last August. Poverty is everywhere and only getting worse. And, of course, no one in their right mind is going to invest anything in the country. As Wikipedia puts it:
The scale of the drop in farm output has produced widespread claims by aid agencies of starvation and famine. However Mugabe's expulsion of the international media has prevented full analysis of the scale of the famine and the resultant deaths. What is not in dispute is that a country once so rich in agricultural produce that it was dubbed the "bread basket" of Southern Africa, is now struggling to feed its own population. A staggering 45 percent of the population is considered malnourished. Foreign tourism has also plummeted, costing tens of millions of dollars a year in lost revenue.
For reference, the CIA World Factbook places their Gini index at 56.8, as of 2003.
There once was a country called Zimbabwe. It was a decent country, physically, with plenty of natural resources (mineral and agricultural). It had a cool pair of rivers named the Limpopo and Zambezi. They had some very rich white people with lots of land (Zimbabwe is now infamous for having the world's most messed-up economy. The inflation rate was 1204.6% a year as of last August. Poverty is everywhere, and only getting worse. And, of course, no one in their right mind is going to invest anything in the country. As Wikipedia puts it:
The scale of the drop in farm output has produced widespread claims by aid agencies of starvation and famine. However Mugabe's expulsion of the international media has prevented full analysis of the scale of the famine and the resultant deaths. What is not in dispute is that a country once so rich in agricultural produce that it was dubbed the "bread basket" of Southern Africa, is now struggling to feed its own population. A staggering 45 percent of the population is considered malnourished.
For reference, the CIA World Factbook places their Gini index at 56.8, as of 2003. But I think there are bigger problems to talk about than a stupid number.
While you're fretting about increasing income inequality, don't forget that one of the forces driving this inequality is that old friend of ours, immigration (illegal or otherwise). When a dirt-poor Mexican immigrant walks into the country with naught but a few pesos and the shirt on his back, that increases the Gini coefficient in the United States. (But you know what? It really decreases it worldwide, since the guy will be making a lot more here than he did in Mexico- which is why he came, after all.)
Economics has lots of numbers, measurements, indexes, and statistics. The Gini coefficient is one of them. But we as a society don't need to be a slave to a number. We need to ensure that there is a robust and equitable system that allows everyone, rich or poor (or middle class) the opportunity to build and continually improve their lives. If we have that, the Gini coefficient is irrelevant.
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And here I was hoping for the Utah teapot! Simulate me a steaming pot of boiling water, and then show me what happens when I take the lid off....
And, IMHO, it makes at least as much sense as 'common era', since the numbering of the era is intrinsically tied to Christianity, and wrapping it in the name "common" doesn't really change that (and hey, are you trying to be some sort of Western imperialist declaring your era numbering to be the one "common" system and implying other alternative calendars are uncommon? Well, not that they aren't, but... :D)
But ultimately, though Rand should be lauded for such things as assigning individual worth to individuals and not merely to society, or a dogged insistence on personal freedom of action, she fails to take her notions anywhere particularly grand or glorious. The novels start getting dull and repetitive, and one might arrive at the end of a work, and wonder, "what was the point of all that?" The philosophy seems to cover a few basic ideas like this and then... well... spins in some sort of busy-loop repeating the same sort of concepts. Perhaps some future philosopher will take this bright little engine, brush off the dust and the dirt and the icky stuff, polish it up, and actually really go somewhere with it. It will be a good day for the world if that happens.
But don't worry, the Republican party has plenty of blame for idiotic ethanol subsidies and the like. It's part of their general scheme of buying off the Midwestern states. Blah, anyway; six years in power, and what did they do with it? Built a political machine. Nice going, yo. Thanks for nothing...
Now, how was that bit at the end supposed to go like... ah. *ahemahemahemahemahem* I'M PROBABLY GOING TO GET MODDED DOWN FOR THIS ...
I really can't tell whether this guy is serious, or if he's secretly an 3v17 capitalist pretending to be an incomprehensible environmentalist so as to discredit his political opponents' positions.
Coincidentally, at the present federal minumum wage ($5.15/hr), your seven cents of time is worth approximately 1.0014 pennies!
Actually, my dad was the one publishing a study demonstrating that rounding all cash transactions to the nearest nickel would result in just-about-0 net change for everyone involved. Google around for whaples penny. :)
Like they say: you don't attack the cryptography. You attack how it's used.
Whatever we you are talking about, I do not wish to be a member of it. Thank you.
Anyway. I wonder what the cell phone company will charge you for sending a video clip to the 911 service. :P
Well, it's not EXACTLY the same, but if you get a Wacom graphics tablet, they include a mouse that only works on the tablet... it doesn't have a power supply at all, though, batteries or otherwise, and neither does the pen...
Tags make sense with the "tag cloud" metaphor. Google's labels don't.
I'm not sure whether this can conform to the same specifications as what we normally consider RFID, but it's probably something they can read with radio waves, not an optical scan. Radio wave scanning can detect patterns and stuff too, you know.
If that means that we just spent $10 billion on laser system manufacturing, that means $10 billion wasn't spent elsewhere for vacations, shipping, or just about anything else that people like and find useful.
Funny you should mention risk. Well, as we all know (or we all should know, before making snide comments about the topic :) people have a scientifically documented tendency to greatly overestimate risks that are perceived as out of their control compared to risks that are in their control. This is why people are more afraid of flying or of terrorist attacks than they are of driving to work. This is why some people will clamor for something mildly ridiculous like an anti-missile laser to be put on all airplanes, but may or may not buckle up in their cars.
Of course, this also means that I can't stick up a website for the world from my laptop anymore, either. =/ Ah well.
Here's one very real reason: So the male engineers don't get discouraged by the remarkable lack of females around the place and leave the company, or even the industry. (Or, perhaps, never even join.)
If it's not your music, why do you care?
The wealthiest 10% of Zimbabweans may have not been as wealthy as the wealthiest 10% of Americans, but I think that drawing some sort of parallel in this situation is far from unreasonable.
Ack. Ignore this post - a rogue < ate up half the content. And I should have replied to the grandparent anyway. Here you go: http://ask.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=216488&cid =17576292 -- how about that? better? :P
Zimbabwe is now infamous for having what is possibly the world's most messed-up economy. Their inflation rate was 1204.6% a year as of last August. Poverty is everywhere and only getting worse. And, of course, no one in their right mind is going to invest anything in the country. As Wikipedia puts it:
For reference, the CIA World Factbook places their Gini index at 56.8, as of 2003.
For reference, the CIA World Factbook places their Gini index at 56.8, as of 2003. But I think there are bigger problems to talk about than a stupid number.
Economics has lots of numbers, measurements, indexes, and statistics. The Gini coefficient is one of them. But we as a society don't need to be a slave to a number. We need to ensure that there is a robust and equitable system that allows everyone, rich or poor (or middle class) the opportunity to build and continually improve their lives. If we have that, the Gini coefficient is irrelevant.