The older 650m, 750m, and M370X were all mid-tier laptop GPUs when released, and passed on to low-tier within a year even though Apple kept selling them for 2-3 years. Benchmarks for the 455 aren't in yet, but it's expected to come in around the 950m or 960m. Which leaves the MBP dedicated GPUs a distant runner up against laptops equipped with a 970m or 980m. It'll fall even further behind the newer 1060m-1080m when they're released, and Apple doesn't update the MBP GPU for 2-3 years as per the pattern.
The problem stems from Apple's insistence on using a unibody aluminum chassis without any vent holes. That traps hot air inside (the superior heat-conducting properties of metal make no difference when there's an insulating layer of air between the hot components and the chassis). That makes the MBP designs extremely heat-constrained. They're already using special Intel quad core CPUs with a 25W TDP instead of the regular 45W TDP. And the GPU is limited to about a 35W TDP while other laptops use GPUs with up to a 120W TDP.
Calling it "fake news" implies there's only two types of news - real and fake. This binary distinction doesn't leave any room for error, which seems to me to be the real cause of their problems and hesitance.
Instead, maybe they should have a tiered rating system:
Verified fake. Delete it. Send warning to poster, who can appeal if they have references indicating it's not fake.
Probably fake. Leave it, but prominently flag it so the reader knows to be skeptical. Research further to determine if it should be moved to verified fake.
Status unknown. Flag it as unknown, and being researched.
Probably real. Leave it, flag it as passing initial muster. Research further.
Verified real. Flag it as such, with a timestamp for the verification and name(s) of verifier(s). In case later evidence turns up indicating it was an error, or that there was manipulation going on. Kinda like we know we can just skip reading some slashdot stories by certain submitters.
Outside of people's FB pages, we should be free to browse the pools of all stories in each category, even the deleted verified fake ones, so we can satisfy ourselves that there's no systematic bias going on by people with verification power.
Had a similar thing happen in the 1990s when someone on a mailing list I managed (on my own server) tried to send a photo as an uncompressed bitmap to everyone. It was only about 4 MB, but back in those days the server's entire HDD was only 500 MB. Copies of the photo in the send queue and in the mailboxes of recipients who had local accounts filled up the HDD and crashed the server. I spent an hour picking up the pieces and finally cleared up enough space to get the OS to function again. Only for sendmail to immediately fill the space with new copies of the photo. I got a crash course on the inner workings of sendmail that day as I had to figure out how to delete the photo from the sending mail queue.
It *almost* happened again the next day, when someone hit reply-all to the same email saying "Why are you sending me this huge picture file?" and included the original 4 MB bitmap as a quote. Fortunately I'd learned my lesson and had set up sendmail to automatically strip out any attachment over a certain size.
That's why it's called a lame duck President. There's little point adopting the known policies of the current President when you can be pretty sure the policies of the incoming President will be different.
And it's not the Congress' job to implement the President's policies. It's the President's job to convince them to implement his policies. Obama hasn't really been able to do that since about 2010, which is why he resorted to executive orders. In that respect the TPP would've faced an uphill battle even if Clinton had won - Democrats tend to be the pro-Hollywood/copyright party. Although the inclusion of big pharma may have swung a lot of Republican senators in favor.
My sister similarly has major health issues and relies on a number of provisions of Obamacare in order to stay alive. Losing insurance for her would be a death sentence. Several provisions of Obamacare are helping to keep her alive and a productive member of society:
[...]
and she's on a teacher's salary that doesn't pay a lot. Without insurance her medication jumps to $5000/month.
At the risk of sounding unsympathetic, if she's on a teacher's salary that doesn't pay a lot, and her medication cost of $5000/mo exceeds her salary, then no she isn't a productive member of society. All Obamacare does is transfer her costs to society overall. Her medicine costs are still being paid, just not by her, meaning she's a net drain on a society not a productive member.
This doesn't mean your sister deserves to die. We as a society have decided that certain disabilities shouldn't matter (Americans with Disabilities Act), and the people afflicted with them should be allowed to live and function in society even if their net contribution (after costs to accommodate their disability) is negative. Government-sponsored health care works the same way.
But regardless of how much people want to believe every human life is priceless and don't want this to be about money, you have to draw the line at a certain dollar amount. How much is society willing to pay to keep an ill person alive? $5000/mo? $10,000/mo? A million dollars a month? There's a fundamental balance here that has to be met - conservation of productivity. The total amount of productivity generated (basically people's earnings) has to equal the total amount of productivity consumed (cost of everything people use and consume). A society cannot survive on a system where it takes 2 people working to produce enough to keep 1 person alive. You can go into the negative in rare cases - if only the occasional sick or disabled person costs society more than they give back, that's ok. Society can pay the cost of the net drain in those rare cases while still remaining balanced overall, in order to preserve its philosophical belief in the sanctity of life. But you trying to bring up your sister as a typical case violates this balance. If we need to preserve Obamacare because lots of people who are net drains on society need it to survive, then no that's not an argument for preserving Obamacare. That's an argument for overhauling it or getting rid of it before it bankrupts society.
While Kennedy Space Center offers the best view of launches (launchpads surrounded by lots of flat land), if you're in California it can be worth it to drive to Vandenberg to view a launch of one of the larger rockets. It's only about 2.5 hours from Los Angeles, 4 hours from San Francisco. The launch pads are on an Air Force base surrounded by hills so you probably won't be able to see the initial liftoff.* But there are several locations which will allow you to see the rocket after it's gained a bit of altitude.
Check the launch schedule to find one you'd like to see. Double-check the week and day before, as launches are frequently postponed. I used my cell phone's data to tap into a live video webstream of the launch on my phone, and output the countdown over my car's speakers for everyone to hear (which also gave us a good indication when to look for the rocket appearing over the hills). Be aware that most of the rockets are liquid fueled, so leave almost no smoke trail (liquid O2 + liquid H2 = H2O or water vapor). If you can catch one which uses solid rocket boosters, those will leave a heavy smoke trail. And these things are fast - it'll be out of sight within a couple minutes, so don't go hoping to keep the kids entertained for a few hours.
* The exception is the SLC-3E pad which is visible from Surf Beach and Ocean Ave, but last time I went for a launch from SLC-3E they had closed off the beach and Ocean Ave. Launches from SLC-6 are also visible from Surf Beach almost immediately after liftoff, though the greater distance makes it less enjoyable. Launches are towards the south and they close off the parks, beaches, and ocean to the south the day of the launch, so don't bother trying those locations.
Asia has other problems to deal with. In terms of GDP per capita, only the city-states of Singapore and Hong Kong have reached western-levels of productivity ($40-$50k/yr) primarily because their stats are not dragged down by low-income rural residents. Japan sits at about 3/4 (low- to mid-$30k/yr). South Korea and Taiwain about half (low- to high-$20k/yr).
My own theory is that this is due to (1) corruption in government and business, and (2) inefficiency due to traditional Confucian ideals which impairs the concept of individual choice and freedom leading to individuals making purchasing decisions which they think is better for their family, rather than what they know is better for themselves. China is actually worse than Taiwan and South Korea in those respects, so I expect to see its GDP per capita leveling off at about 1/3rd to 1/4th western levels of GDP per capita (it's currently at $8k/yr - about 1/5th to 1/6th). China's economy will be huge because of its large population, but not because it's efficient and productive. That means it'll pretty much be a follower, not a leader.
Let's assume Tesla is modestly successful and ends up with 1% of car market share. That's 430,000 of Germany's 43 million cars. 2% of 430,000 = 8600 Teslas out there being driven on autopilot with the driver reading a newspaper or watching a movie or napping because s/he is not among the 98% who realize they need to be watching the road and ready to take control of the car when using the feature.
If anything, this supports the German government's argument that Tesla should stop using the term "autopilot".
Basically, pulsars "transmit" all the time. Coordinating signals from Earth are only transmitted as needed, so there's a delay due to the speed of light.
The more interesting aspect of this is that pulsars are effectively an interstellar GPS. If we ever become a space-faring race, they're going to be crucial for interstellar navigation. The beam a pulsar emits from its poles is highly directional, so sweeps out the surface of a cone in space as the pulsar spins. As you travel through space, your "home" pulsars will fade out of view while new ones become visible. In that way, you can use the signal from 3 known pulsars to fix your location to a certain section of space (intersection of three cones). The more pulsars you can see, the more accurately you can refine your location.
And now Kaspersky labs, the guys that couldn't even bother to make an affordable deal, or offer a free version, who crippled their online scan and live cd's over the years, the guys that are charging a premium subscription for a home user costing way more than the OS license itself, are what?
You can pretty consistently get the retail version of Kaspersky for free after rebate every year. You just have to bide your time and keep an eye out for the deals. A couple years back they had a no-limit rebate though, so some people bought a bunch of them and just break open a new box every year and put in a new license key to renew.
If you earn enough money, the time it takes to monitor these deals isn't worth the $30-$50 you'll save, so you just end up paying the annual subscription. That's what they're counting on - you buy it for free, but end up paying the renewal every year.. But you can go to a deals site and set up an alert which emails you every time there's a Kaspersky deal, and it won't cost you any time (aside from reading the alert emails). Ain't technology grand.
From an engineering perspective, this is the difference between an over-damped, critically damped, and under-damped system. The system starts with an offset (past racism). Once that offset is eliminated, it will move back to a neutral state (no racism). The speed at which it does so varies on the dampening.
The over-damped system corresponds to lingering racism. The system is moving towards a neutral state, but is slowed down by residual racism that still continues (racists teaching their kids to be racist).
The critically damped system corresponds to no racism. The system is moving towards a neutral state with no impediment of residual racism, and is only slowed down by inherent time constants in the system (in this case, the time for racist bigots to grow old and die).
The underdamped system corresponds to affirmative action. You can move the system to a neutral state more quickly than it naturally would by actively favoring races which were discriminated against in the past. The danger however is that you're going to overshoot and pass the neutral state (as has happened in education - girls now outperform boys and earn the majority of college degrees). In an active control system, you can change the dampening as you approach the neutral state to minimize or even eliminate the overshoot. But I have yet to see any affirmative action legislation which attempts this - defines conditions when the affirmative action should end.
Since this was up-voted, I guess I should at least inform my Democratic colleagues who are interested in fixing gerrymandering. Redistricting happens after each census, and the census happens once a decade in years ending in 0. (This is also when reapportionment happens - changes in number of House members each state gets). So the next census will be in 2020, and the first election with new districts would be 2022. If you've got an idea, a ballot initiative, whatever for fixing gerrymandering, the time to work on it is between now and 2019. You want it to be on the 2020 election ballot at latest so people can vote for it, and if it's approved the changes would go into effect before the districts are redrawn for the 2022 election.
This needs to be done on the State level. The Constitution outlines how many House members each state should get, but leaves the details up to the states. As a state matter, by default it ends up being decided by the state legislature (majority vote) and signed by the governor. Unfortunately that's the fox designing the henhouse, which is where the entire problem of gerrymandering comes from. The most popular way to fix it seems to be the people passing a ballot initiative which takes the job away from the legislators and assigns it to a redistricting commission. So if your state doesn't have one of those yet, get to work now. Find like-minded people, research these commissions in other states, draft text of a ballot measure. Then work on collecting signatures (yes you'll be one of those people standing outside the supermarket asking people to support your cause) to qualify it on the ballot for the 2018 or 2020 election. (If you've never done a ballot initiative before, typically you need about twice the number of signatures your state requires because a lot of them are going to be thrown out as fake or duplicate.) Then work your butt off getting the message out and informing the public what your ballot initiative is about, what the problem is, and how this fixes it, so they'll vote for it during the election.
The gif was made to show libration (the slight rocking of the moon's face side to side). But it also shows the variance in the moon's apparent size during the near and far parts of its orbit around the Earth (perigee and apogee respectively). When full moon coincides with the nearest point in its orbit (as in the animation), it's called a supermoon.
Oh and the congressional districts are gerrymandered by the Republicans. This is also a form of rigging.
I used to care about this back in the 1980s. Only back then it was the Democrats who gerrymandered the districts in their favor to control the House for 40 years. I admit a slight political bias (I tend to vote conservative). But it was mostly the principle of the thing - gerrymandering is bad regardless of your political beliefs since it manipulates that essential link between voter and representative.
In the 1990 election in California, a fix for this came up as a ballot initiative. It simply required a 2/3 majority vote of the legislature for redrawn districts to be approved, thus preventing a 50%+1 majority from leveraging their slim advantage into a bigger one in future elections. I helped spread the word about it, the problem it tried to solve, why it was good for everyone. I was delighted that once I explained the problem and how this fixed it, even diehard liberals grudgingly agreed it was the right thing to do and said they would vote for it. Early polls showed it passing.
That's when two groups I had up til then respected (if not always agreed with) stepped in. A bunch of environmental groups led by the Sierra Club and the National Organization for Women realized Prop 118, regardless of how fair it was, would reduce the number of legislators sympathetic to their cause in both the State and Federal government. They flooded TV and radio with ads telling people it was bad and to vote against it, without even explaining what it was or how it was bad. It ended up losing by a 2:1 margin.
The Republicans took the time to figure out how to undo the Democrat gerrymandering. First they worked on winning the governorships so they could veto the gerrymandered redistricting. That usually kicked the matter into the courts, who usually took it upon themselves to redraw the districts (since the had to be redrawn to reflect population shifts, and the legislature/governor were deadlocked). Which allowed more Republicans (or rather, the correct number of Republicans) to win office as state legislators. Which gave them more control over future redistricting. Which combined with the governorship allowed them to eventually gerrymander things in their favor.
I suppose I should still be concerned about this on principle. But the whole thing scarred my young, optimistic self and my belief that people are inherently good and fair, and will make the right decision if they're properly informed. I tried to help fix gerrymandering for all people, only to see my hard work shot down by unrpincipled groups who were only interested in their own benefit regardless of how unfair it was. Screw them. The shoe's on the other foot now. They made their bed. They can lie in it. If another ballot initiative comes up which makes gerrymandering harder, yeah I'll vote for it. But I'm not going to put additional effort into helping people out of a gerrymandered hole they put themselves into.
Actually Android is Linux - it uses the Linux kernel. But yeah, I really don't understand the EU on this. Google already releases the source code for Android If anyone has a problem with Android being "closed" or restrictive, they just need to grab the source and compile their own version. Or install a version someone else has already compiled. If that's too difficult or not to their liking, then the EU should just hire someone to make an EU version. Google has already done 99% of the work, the EU just has to do the last 1% to create their own Google-free version. Just like Amazon has done with Fire OS.
Google places no restrictions on Android - it is free (as in beer) open source. The only restriction they place is on the Google App suite (gmail, maps, calendar, etc). If you want the suite, then the Google Play store must be on the device. Unlike a competitor whose name is a fruit, you can have other stores if you want (I have both Play and the Amazon app store). If you installed Cyanogenmod, then the Google apps suite is the gapps file you downloaded and installed afterwards. It's not a necessary step if you want to use another app store, or just use Android with directly downloaded apps.
Short of decoupling that app suite from the Play store (which would destroy Google's revenue model, since their apps are otherwise free), there's not much else Google can do to make Android any more open and free than it already is. This is kinda like if Microsoft gave Windows away for free and released its source code as open source so anyone could make their own version (which could run all Windows programs). And they also gave away the Office suite for free with the only stipulation being that you had to also install the Microsoft Store if you wanted the Office suite. You can still get your software from other stores if you want, and there are competing office suites you can use instead of Office. Then the EU filed an anti-trust suit against Microsoft because 80% of people opted to use the Office suite.
The problem stems from the mass media unilaterally deciding to drop the term "illegal immigrant" for the PC term "undocumented immigrant". That created confusion among viewers (particularly those with short attention spans) who then leapt to the conclusion that everything Trump was saying about illegal immigrants, he actually meant about all immigrants. I admit I'm rather cynical when it comes to PC stuff (what next, bank robbery being called an unauthorized withdrawl?), but I suspect this was actually the intent of the change in terms - to muddle the illegal immigrant issue by confusing the distinction between immigrants in the country legally vs illegally.
But he also said that that was broken and shouldn't be happening, and that one of his strengths was that he was best positioned to fix it because he knew exactly how it was broken as an insider participant.
There is something to this. A long time ago domain names started being sold for about $5/yr instead of ~$100/yr. Shortly after, around the mid-90s when NCSA Mosaic (the first web browser) came out, I was playing with it and browsing the few websites which existed. A labmate asked if I wanted to see a movie. We tried calling the theater to find out what was playing (that was what you did in those days - the theater set up a line with a recording of the movies and playtimes), but kept getting a busy signal. Then it occurred to me that this was Boston and the nearby businesses were pretty up to date with the latest technology. Maybe the theater had a website with playtimes. So I did a bit of searching (Yahoo was more or less a topically-sorted bulletin board back then) but couldn't find any movie theater sites.
Frustrated, I remarked to my friend that someone should just buy the domain movies.com, collect theater locations and movie playtimes, and put them on a single site to make this easy for everyone. Then it occurred to me - *I* could do that. The thought played in my head for about 10 seconds, before I decided that, no, it wouldn't be proper for me to do it. Someone in the movie or movie theater business should be the one to do that. That was their business, their turf, and I had no right to encroach on it and take a potential web-based ease of access (not to mention money-making) opportunity away from them. My domain was ocean sciences and robotics.
Fast forward a decade. I found out that a friend I hadn't seen since we were kids also had stumbled upon the same idea around the same time. He's a good guy, well principled, but was more unscrupulous than I when it came to business. He didn't have any qualms about grabbing any available domain name to be put to use as an indexing site (i.e. landing page) where he got click-through ad revenue. He'd collected something like a hundred thousand common word and common phrase domains, and built it into a multi-million dollar business.
Around the same time, there was growing frustration about domain name squatting. Some big corporations were upset that someone had grabbed a.com domain matching their trademarked company name, and were refusing to release it unless they were paid large amounts of money. Likewise, some small people had legitimately registered and been using a domain, only to have some big corporation try to bully them into giving it up. ICANN was going to hold meetings and discussions about how best to resolve these domain name disputes. I had my noble opinion of course, but I was a nobody in the domain name business. I was not invited. My friend, unscrupulous though he was, was a big player - he was invited.
The point is really driven home if you've ever tried to do business in Asia. The corruption there is so rampant (or at least was a decade ago) that you simply can't do business legitimately. If you try to stick to your principles, you'll just go out of business. You have to pay the bribes if you want to get anywhere. I ran into a similar thing while helping a friend in Chicago deal with some legal trouble about a building he owned. Turns out a lot of the government officials and inspectors there expect bribes. Don't pay them, and they will sink you with delays, violations, and fines. That's what had gotten my friend in trouble - he refused to pay bribes out of principle. (I resolved it by having him hire a law firm to "deal with" the "paperwork", and they paid the requisite bribes.)
This is not to say Trump will be some savior who will fix this corruption. I'm skeptical he is, but I'm not going to dismiss his claim out of hand. I'm willing to wait and see what happens. I'm just saying that it's true that sometimes you have to get your hands dirty playing the game in order to know how it's played and what needs fixing.
If, for example, Trump follows through with his promise to deport all illegal residents, the fourteen year old sister of a friend of mine will lose her mother. She doesn't have Mexican citizenship, and her mother doesn't have U.S. citizenship.
I didn't (and don't) support Trump. But presumably she's in this position because her parents entered the U.S. illegally and she was born in the U.S., thus granting her U.S. citizenship by birth? The remedy in her case is:
For her parents to fill out the paperwork to give her Mexican citizenship. Children born of a Mexican parent while outside of Mexico automatically qualify for Mexican citizenship.
Or if the friend of yours is an older sibling and over 21, for her to fill out a I-130 Petition for Alien Relative visa for the mother, which is the first step to getting a Green Card and eventual citizenship.
These things have a procedure you're supposed to follow before you're supposed to enter the country. Just because she finds herself screwed because she (or her parents) tried to cheat and violated that procedure doesn't entitle her to a sympathy waiver when others are all required to follow the same legal procedure. It's disingenuous to try to blame the system or Trump for being cruel to her situation, when her situation is entirely her parents' creation.
Nearly my entire extended family was granted green cards and eventually U.S. citizenship via the latter process. Took a few years, but this is one of the more accessible means of obtaining a green card. She's fortunate that she even has U.S. citizenship. The U.S. is one of the few countries which grants citizenship just because you happen to be born on U.S. soil. Yes her mother will have to leave the U.S. while she waits for the visa application to be processed. No that is not the fault of the U.S., since she wasn't supposed to be in the country in the first place. Immigration is a stickler about this - even U.S. citizens who get married and apply for their spouse to get citizenship are required to have the spouse first leave the country and wait until the spouse visa application is approved.
I don't have a problem with illegal immigrants as people. One of the hardest workers I've ever met turned out to be in the country illegally. But it makes little sense to have more lenient rules for obtaining citizenship for people who entered the country illegally, than for people trying to enter the country legally and following the proper procedure. That would destroy any motivation to even try to follow the legal procedure.
Because you're incorrectly comparing to a universe where your populous state and South Dakota elect a President based on popular vote.
The proper comparison is a universe where the USA is comprised of only the populous states, and the smaller states like Maine, South Dakota, etc. never joined the USA because they didn't like that its Presidential election system was dominated by populous states. At some point 200+ years ago, the folks who founded our country decided that getting those smaller states to join the Union was more important than electing the President based on popular vote. The Electoral College is a consequence of that decision. You can argue that perhaps it's outdated and needs to be replaced. But arguing that it's wrong is paramount to arguing that the USA shouldn't exist in its present form.
Why do we level the playing field between rural and urban, but not along any other axes?
Because that was the concession given to smaller and rural states in order to get them to join the original Union. Without that keystone in the voting process, the United States of America wouldn't exist.
You can argue it isn't relevant today, 240 years later. But removing that aspect from the Constitution would entail getting all the smaller and rural states (well, a bit less than 3/4 of them) to agree to give up the leverage the electoral college gives them over the more populous states. Good luck with that. Forcing the change upon them without a Constitutional amendment would be akin to a bait and switch - get someone to agree to one set of terms to enter a contract, then unilaterally change those terms after they've signed on. If you're willing to do that, then there's really no point to even having a Constitution, is there?
The key difference is that the population centers of the country are dictated by where people decide to live. Candidates cannot change that.
Which states are swing states is determined by the candidates' political positions, which the candidates can change. Trump won by selecting a message which turned reliably Democratic rust belt states into swing states.
Linux in its heart is a Server OS. Its desktop/workstation features are almost a hack onto the systems to make useful.
Linux is currently the most successful end-user OS. Android is based on the Linux kernel, and currently has over 1.8 billion users, vs 1.4 billion for Windows. Pretty good for a server OS which had to have featurees "hacked" onto it to make it useful to end users.
IMHO Linux on the desktop is a dead end because too many of the developers working on it are focusing on what they want, rather than what the users want. Ubuntu had a chance, but then went off track forcing features users didn't necessarily want down their throats because the people in charge of it wanted to. Android is what you get when someone sticks a GUI onto Linux focused entirely on user-friendliness (perhaps too friendly, hiding many of the options power users might want to access).
Note that being a server OS is not a bad thing. The desktop OS made sense back in the DOS days when there was only one program running at a time (no multitasking), and computers weren't networked. But now that multitasking and networking are taken for granted, it makes sense to restrict running programs to only have certain privileges - like a server OS does. A big part of the reason Vista flopped was because that was when Microsoft transitioned Windows programs from desktop mode (running with superuser privileges) to server mode (running with user privileges). That change broke a lot of older Windows programs, which Vista got blamed for since the programs ran just fine (as superuser) in XP.
Slashdot Mirror
The older 650m, 750m, and M370X were all mid-tier laptop GPUs when released, and passed on to low-tier within a year even though Apple kept selling them for 2-3 years. Benchmarks for the 455 aren't in yet, but it's expected to come in around the 950m or 960m. Which leaves the MBP dedicated GPUs a distant runner up against laptops equipped with a 970m or 980m. It'll fall even further behind the newer 1060m-1080m when they're released, and Apple doesn't update the MBP GPU for 2-3 years as per the pattern.
The problem stems from Apple's insistence on using a unibody aluminum chassis without any vent holes. That traps hot air inside (the superior heat-conducting properties of metal make no difference when there's an insulating layer of air between the hot components and the chassis). That makes the MBP designs extremely heat-constrained. They're already using special Intel quad core CPUs with a 25W TDP instead of the regular 45W TDP. And the GPU is limited to about a 35W TDP while other laptops use GPUs with up to a 120W TDP.
Instead, maybe they should have a tiered rating system:
Outside of people's FB pages, we should be free to browse the pools of all stories in each category, even the deleted verified fake ones, so we can satisfy ourselves that there's no systematic bias going on by people with verification power.
Had a similar thing happen in the 1990s when someone on a mailing list I managed (on my own server) tried to send a photo as an uncompressed bitmap to everyone. It was only about 4 MB, but back in those days the server's entire HDD was only 500 MB. Copies of the photo in the send queue and in the mailboxes of recipients who had local accounts filled up the HDD and crashed the server. I spent an hour picking up the pieces and finally cleared up enough space to get the OS to function again. Only for sendmail to immediately fill the space with new copies of the photo. I got a crash course on the inner workings of sendmail that day as I had to figure out how to delete the photo from the sending mail queue.
It *almost* happened again the next day, when someone hit reply-all to the same email saying "Why are you sending me this huge picture file?" and included the original 4 MB bitmap as a quote. Fortunately I'd learned my lesson and had set up sendmail to automatically strip out any attachment over a certain size.
Reply-all is email attempting to behave like a web forum (like slashdot!). If you want a group conversation, use a forum, not email.
That's why it's called a lame duck President. There's little point adopting the known policies of the current President when you can be pretty sure the policies of the incoming President will be different.
And it's not the Congress' job to implement the President's policies. It's the President's job to convince them to implement his policies. Obama hasn't really been able to do that since about 2010, which is why he resorted to executive orders. In that respect the TPP would've faced an uphill battle even if Clinton had won - Democrats tend to be the pro-Hollywood/copyright party. Although the inclusion of big pharma may have swung a lot of Republican senators in favor.
At the risk of sounding unsympathetic, if she's on a teacher's salary that doesn't pay a lot, and her medication cost of $5000/mo exceeds her salary, then no she isn't a productive member of society. All Obamacare does is transfer her costs to society overall. Her medicine costs are still being paid, just not by her, meaning she's a net drain on a society not a productive member.
This doesn't mean your sister deserves to die. We as a society have decided that certain disabilities shouldn't matter (Americans with Disabilities Act), and the people afflicted with them should be allowed to live and function in society even if their net contribution (after costs to accommodate their disability) is negative. Government-sponsored health care works the same way.
But regardless of how much people want to believe every human life is priceless and don't want this to be about money, you have to draw the line at a certain dollar amount. How much is society willing to pay to keep an ill person alive? $5000/mo? $10,000/mo? A million dollars a month? There's a fundamental balance here that has to be met - conservation of productivity. The total amount of productivity generated (basically people's earnings) has to equal the total amount of productivity consumed (cost of everything people use and consume). A society cannot survive on a system where it takes 2 people working to produce enough to keep 1 person alive. You can go into the negative in rare cases - if only the occasional sick or disabled person costs society more than they give back, that's ok. Society can pay the cost of the net drain in those rare cases while still remaining balanced overall, in order to preserve its philosophical belief in the sanctity of life. But you trying to bring up your sister as a typical case violates this balance. If we need to preserve Obamacare because lots of people who are net drains on society need it to survive, then no that's not an argument for preserving Obamacare. That's an argument for overhauling it or getting rid of it before it bankrupts society.
While Kennedy Space Center offers the best view of launches (launchpads surrounded by lots of flat land), if you're in California it can be worth it to drive to Vandenberg to view a launch of one of the larger rockets. It's only about 2.5 hours from Los Angeles, 4 hours from San Francisco. The launch pads are on an Air Force base surrounded by hills so you probably won't be able to see the initial liftoff.* But there are several locations which will allow you to see the rocket after it's gained a bit of altitude.
Check the launch schedule to find one you'd like to see. Double-check the week and day before, as launches are frequently postponed. I used my cell phone's data to tap into a live video webstream of the launch on my phone, and output the countdown over my car's speakers for everyone to hear (which also gave us a good indication when to look for the rocket appearing over the hills). Be aware that most of the rockets are liquid fueled, so leave almost no smoke trail (liquid O2 + liquid H2 = H2O or water vapor). If you can catch one which uses solid rocket boosters, those will leave a heavy smoke trail. And these things are fast - it'll be out of sight within a couple minutes, so don't go hoping to keep the kids entertained for a few hours.
* The exception is the SLC-3E pad which is visible from Surf Beach and Ocean Ave, but last time I went for a launch from SLC-3E they had closed off the beach and Ocean Ave. Launches from SLC-6 are also visible from Surf Beach almost immediately after liftoff, though the greater distance makes it less enjoyable. Launches are towards the south and they close off the parks, beaches, and ocean to the south the day of the launch, so don't bother trying those locations.
Asia has other problems to deal with. In terms of GDP per capita, only the city-states of Singapore and Hong Kong have reached western-levels of productivity ($40-$50k/yr) primarily because their stats are not dragged down by low-income rural residents. Japan sits at about 3/4 (low- to mid-$30k/yr). South Korea and Taiwain about half (low- to high-$20k/yr).
My own theory is that this is due to (1) corruption in government and business, and (2) inefficiency due to traditional Confucian ideals which impairs the concept of individual choice and freedom leading to individuals making purchasing decisions which they think is better for their family, rather than what they know is better for themselves. China is actually worse than Taiwan and South Korea in those respects, so I expect to see its GDP per capita leveling off at about 1/3rd to 1/4th western levels of GDP per capita (it's currently at $8k/yr - about 1/5th to 1/6th). China's economy will be huge because of its large population, but not because it's efficient and productive. That means it'll pretty much be a follower, not a leader.
Let's assume Tesla is modestly successful and ends up with 1% of car market share. That's 430,000 of Germany's 43 million cars. 2% of 430,000 = 8600 Teslas out there being driven on autopilot with the driver reading a newspaper or watching a movie or napping because s/he is not among the 98% who realize they need to be watching the road and ready to take control of the car when using the feature.
If anything, this supports the German government's argument that Tesla should stop using the term "autopilot".
Basically, pulsars "transmit" all the time. Coordinating signals from Earth are only transmitted as needed, so there's a delay due to the speed of light.
The more interesting aspect of this is that pulsars are effectively an interstellar GPS. If we ever become a space-faring race, they're going to be crucial for interstellar navigation. The beam a pulsar emits from its poles is highly directional, so sweeps out the surface of a cone in space as the pulsar spins. As you travel through space, your "home" pulsars will fade out of view while new ones become visible. In that way, you can use the signal from 3 known pulsars to fix your location to a certain section of space (intersection of three cones). The more pulsars you can see, the more accurately you can refine your location.
You can pretty consistently get the retail version of Kaspersky for free after rebate every year. You just have to bide your time and keep an eye out for the deals. A couple years back they had a no-limit rebate though, so some people bought a bunch of them and just break open a new box every year and put in a new license key to renew.
If you earn enough money, the time it takes to monitor these deals isn't worth the $30-$50 you'll save, so you just end up paying the annual subscription. That's what they're counting on - you buy it for free, but end up paying the renewal every year.. But you can go to a deals site and set up an alert which emails you every time there's a Kaspersky deal, and it won't cost you any time (aside from reading the alert emails). Ain't technology grand.
Since this was up-voted, I guess I should at least inform my Democratic colleagues who are interested in fixing gerrymandering. Redistricting happens after each census, and the census happens once a decade in years ending in 0. (This is also when reapportionment happens - changes in number of House members each state gets). So the next census will be in 2020, and the first election with new districts would be 2022. If you've got an idea, a ballot initiative, whatever for fixing gerrymandering, the time to work on it is between now and 2019. You want it to be on the 2020 election ballot at latest so people can vote for it, and if it's approved the changes would go into effect before the districts are redrawn for the 2022 election.
This needs to be done on the State level. The Constitution outlines how many House members each state should get, but leaves the details up to the states. As a state matter, by default it ends up being decided by the state legislature (majority vote) and signed by the governor. Unfortunately that's the fox designing the henhouse, which is where the entire problem of gerrymandering comes from. The most popular way to fix it seems to be the people passing a ballot initiative which takes the job away from the legislators and assigns it to a redistricting commission. So if your state doesn't have one of those yet, get to work now. Find like-minded people, research these commissions in other states, draft text of a ballot measure. Then work on collecting signatures (yes you'll be one of those people standing outside the supermarket asking people to support your cause) to qualify it on the ballot for the 2018 or 2020 election. (If you've never done a ballot initiative before, typically you need about twice the number of signatures your state requires because a lot of them are going to be thrown out as fake or duplicate.) Then work your butt off getting the message out and informing the public what your ballot initiative is about, what the problem is, and how this fixes it, so they'll vote for it during the election.
The gif was made to show libration (the slight rocking of the moon's face side to side). But it also shows the variance in the moon's apparent size during the near and far parts of its orbit around the Earth (perigee and apogee respectively). When full moon coincides with the nearest point in its orbit (as in the animation), it's called a supermoon.
I used to care about this back in the 1980s. Only back then it was the Democrats who gerrymandered the districts in their favor to control the House for 40 years. I admit a slight political bias (I tend to vote conservative). But it was mostly the principle of the thing - gerrymandering is bad regardless of your political beliefs since it manipulates that essential link between voter and representative.
In the 1990 election in California, a fix for this came up as a ballot initiative. It simply required a 2/3 majority vote of the legislature for redrawn districts to be approved, thus preventing a 50%+1 majority from leveraging their slim advantage into a bigger one in future elections. I helped spread the word about it, the problem it tried to solve, why it was good for everyone. I was delighted that once I explained the problem and how this fixed it, even diehard liberals grudgingly agreed it was the right thing to do and said they would vote for it. Early polls showed it passing.
That's when two groups I had up til then respected (if not always agreed with) stepped in. A bunch of environmental groups led by the Sierra Club and the National Organization for Women realized Prop 118, regardless of how fair it was, would reduce the number of legislators sympathetic to their cause in both the State and Federal government. They flooded TV and radio with ads telling people it was bad and to vote against it, without even explaining what it was or how it was bad. It ended up losing by a 2:1 margin.
The Republicans took the time to figure out how to undo the Democrat gerrymandering. First they worked on winning the governorships so they could veto the gerrymandered redistricting. That usually kicked the matter into the courts, who usually took it upon themselves to redraw the districts (since the had to be redrawn to reflect population shifts, and the legislature/governor were deadlocked). Which allowed more Republicans (or rather, the correct number of Republicans) to win office as state legislators. Which gave them more control over future redistricting. Which combined with the governorship allowed them to eventually gerrymander things in their favor.
I suppose I should still be concerned about this on principle. But the whole thing scarred my young, optimistic self and my belief that people are inherently good and fair, and will make the right decision if they're properly informed. I tried to help fix gerrymandering for all people, only to see my hard work shot down by unrpincipled groups who were only interested in their own benefit regardless of how unfair it was. Screw them. The shoe's on the other foot now. They made their bed. They can lie in it. If another ballot initiative comes up which makes gerrymandering harder, yeah I'll vote for it. But I'm not going to put additional effort into helping people out of a gerrymandered hole they put themselves into.
Actually Android is Linux - it uses the Linux kernel. But yeah, I really don't understand the EU on this. Google already releases the source code for Android If anyone has a problem with Android being "closed" or restrictive, they just need to grab the source and compile their own version. Or install a version someone else has already compiled. If that's too difficult or not to their liking, then the EU should just hire someone to make an EU version. Google has already done 99% of the work, the EU just has to do the last 1% to create their own Google-free version. Just like Amazon has done with Fire OS.
Google places no restrictions on Android - it is free (as in beer) open source. The only restriction they place is on the Google App suite (gmail, maps, calendar, etc). If you want the suite, then the Google Play store must be on the device. Unlike a competitor whose name is a fruit, you can have other stores if you want (I have both Play and the Amazon app store). If you installed Cyanogenmod, then the Google apps suite is the gapps file you downloaded and installed afterwards. It's not a necessary step if you want to use another app store, or just use Android with directly downloaded apps.
Short of decoupling that app suite from the Play store (which would destroy Google's revenue model, since their apps are otherwise free), there's not much else Google can do to make Android any more open and free than it already is. This is kinda like if Microsoft gave Windows away for free and released its source code as open source so anyone could make their own version (which could run all Windows programs). And they also gave away the Office suite for free with the only stipulation being that you had to also install the Microsoft Store if you wanted the Office suite. You can still get your software from other stores if you want, and there are competing office suites you can use instead of Office. Then the EU filed an anti-trust suit against Microsoft because 80% of people opted to use the Office suite.
Might want to double-check what actually occurred according to reviews of the video, rather than accept some reporter's interpretation of it.
The problem stems from the mass media unilaterally deciding to drop the term "illegal immigrant" for the PC term "undocumented immigrant". That created confusion among viewers (particularly those with short attention spans) who then leapt to the conclusion that everything Trump was saying about illegal immigrants, he actually meant about all immigrants. I admit I'm rather cynical when it comes to PC stuff (what next, bank robbery being called an unauthorized withdrawl?), but I suspect this was actually the intent of the change in terms - to muddle the illegal immigrant issue by confusing the distinction between immigrants in the country legally vs illegally.
There is something to this. A long time ago domain names started being sold for about $5/yr instead of ~$100/yr. Shortly after, around the mid-90s when NCSA Mosaic (the first web browser) came out, I was playing with it and browsing the few websites which existed. A labmate asked if I wanted to see a movie. We tried calling the theater to find out what was playing (that was what you did in those days - the theater set up a line with a recording of the movies and playtimes), but kept getting a busy signal. Then it occurred to me that this was Boston and the nearby businesses were pretty up to date with the latest technology. Maybe the theater had a website with playtimes. So I did a bit of searching (Yahoo was more or less a topically-sorted bulletin board back then) but couldn't find any movie theater sites.
.com domain matching their trademarked company name, and were refusing to release it unless they were paid large amounts of money. Likewise, some small people had legitimately registered and been using a domain, only to have some big corporation try to bully them into giving it up. ICANN was going to hold meetings and discussions about how best to resolve these domain name disputes. I had my noble opinion of course, but I was a nobody in the domain name business. I was not invited. My friend, unscrupulous though he was, was a big player - he was invited.
Frustrated, I remarked to my friend that someone should just buy the domain movies.com, collect theater locations and movie playtimes, and put them on a single site to make this easy for everyone. Then it occurred to me - *I* could do that. The thought played in my head for about 10 seconds, before I decided that, no, it wouldn't be proper for me to do it. Someone in the movie or movie theater business should be the one to do that. That was their business, their turf, and I had no right to encroach on it and take a potential web-based ease of access (not to mention money-making) opportunity away from them. My domain was ocean sciences and robotics.
Fast forward a decade. I found out that a friend I hadn't seen since we were kids also had stumbled upon the same idea around the same time. He's a good guy, well principled, but was more unscrupulous than I when it came to business. He didn't have any qualms about grabbing any available domain name to be put to use as an indexing site (i.e. landing page) where he got click-through ad revenue. He'd collected something like a hundred thousand common word and common phrase domains, and built it into a multi-million dollar business.
Around the same time, there was growing frustration about domain name squatting. Some big corporations were upset that someone had grabbed a
The point is really driven home if you've ever tried to do business in Asia. The corruption there is so rampant (or at least was a decade ago) that you simply can't do business legitimately. If you try to stick to your principles, you'll just go out of business. You have to pay the bribes if you want to get anywhere. I ran into a similar thing while helping a friend in Chicago deal with some legal trouble about a building he owned. Turns out a lot of the government officials and inspectors there expect bribes. Don't pay them, and they will sink you with delays, violations, and fines. That's what had gotten my friend in trouble - he refused to pay bribes out of principle. (I resolved it by having him hire a law firm to "deal with" the "paperwork", and they paid the requisite bribes.)
This is not to say Trump will be some savior who will fix this corruption. I'm skeptical he is, but I'm not going to dismiss his claim out of hand. I'm willing to wait and see what happens. I'm just saying that it's true that sometimes you have to get your hands dirty playing the game in order to know how it's played and what needs fixing.
I didn't (and don't) support Trump. But presumably she's in this position because her parents entered the U.S. illegally and she was born in the U.S., thus granting her U.S. citizenship by birth? The remedy in her case is:
These things have a procedure you're supposed to follow before you're supposed to enter the country. Just because she finds herself screwed because she (or her parents) tried to cheat and violated that procedure doesn't entitle her to a sympathy waiver when others are all required to follow the same legal procedure. It's disingenuous to try to blame the system or Trump for being cruel to her situation, when her situation is entirely her parents' creation.
Nearly my entire extended family was granted green cards and eventually U.S. citizenship via the latter process. Took a few years, but this is one of the more accessible means of obtaining a green card. She's fortunate that she even has U.S. citizenship. The U.S. is one of the few countries which grants citizenship just because you happen to be born on U.S. soil. Yes her mother will have to leave the U.S. while she waits for the visa application to be processed. No that is not the fault of the U.S., since she wasn't supposed to be in the country in the first place. Immigration is a stickler about this - even U.S. citizens who get married and apply for their spouse to get citizenship are required to have the spouse first leave the country and wait until the spouse visa application is approved.
I don't have a problem with illegal immigrants as people. One of the hardest workers I've ever met turned out to be in the country illegally. But it makes little sense to have more lenient rules for obtaining citizenship for people who entered the country illegally, than for people trying to enter the country legally and following the proper procedure. That would destroy any motivation to even try to follow the legal procedure.
Because you're incorrectly comparing to a universe where your populous state and South Dakota elect a President based on popular vote.
The proper comparison is a universe where the USA is comprised of only the populous states, and the smaller states like Maine, South Dakota, etc. never joined the USA because they didn't like that its Presidential election system was dominated by populous states. At some point 200+ years ago, the folks who founded our country decided that getting those smaller states to join the Union was more important than electing the President based on popular vote. The Electoral College is a consequence of that decision. You can argue that perhaps it's outdated and needs to be replaced. But arguing that it's wrong is paramount to arguing that the USA shouldn't exist in its present form.
Because that was the concession given to smaller and rural states in order to get them to join the original Union. Without that keystone in the voting process, the United States of America wouldn't exist.
You can argue it isn't relevant today, 240 years later. But removing that aspect from the Constitution would entail getting all the smaller and rural states (well, a bit less than 3/4 of them) to agree to give up the leverage the electoral college gives them over the more populous states. Good luck with that. Forcing the change upon them without a Constitutional amendment would be akin to a bait and switch - get someone to agree to one set of terms to enter a contract, then unilaterally change those terms after they've signed on. If you're willing to do that, then there's really no point to even having a Constitution, is there?
The key difference is that the population centers of the country are dictated by where people decide to live. Candidates cannot change that.
Which states are swing states is determined by the candidates' political positions, which the candidates can change. Trump won by selecting a message which turned reliably Democratic rust belt states into swing states.
Linux is currently the most successful end-user OS. Android is based on the Linux kernel, and currently has over 1.8 billion users, vs 1.4 billion for Windows. Pretty good for a server OS which had to have featurees "hacked" onto it to make it useful to end users.
IMHO Linux on the desktop is a dead end because too many of the developers working on it are focusing on what they want, rather than what the users want. Ubuntu had a chance, but then went off track forcing features users didn't necessarily want down their throats because the people in charge of it wanted to. Android is what you get when someone sticks a GUI onto Linux focused entirely on user-friendliness (perhaps too friendly, hiding many of the options power users might want to access).
Note that being a server OS is not a bad thing. The desktop OS made sense back in the DOS days when there was only one program running at a time (no multitasking), and computers weren't networked. But now that multitasking and networking are taken for granted, it makes sense to restrict running programs to only have certain privileges - like a server OS does. A big part of the reason Vista flopped was because that was when Microsoft transitioned Windows programs from desktop mode (running with superuser privileges) to server mode (running with user privileges). That change broke a lot of older Windows programs, which Vista got blamed for since the programs ran just fine (as superuser) in XP.