That dishonorable jerks exist across the entire political spectrum. Regardless of your political affiliation, restrict the "fights dirty" label to individuals. Do not generalize the distasteful actions of a few to the entirety of your political opposition simply because it makes things more convenient for you.
Voting for the person/party that represents my views the best is never pointless. If you suggest that voting 3rd party is pointless because they'll never win, is much like saying developing Linux Kernal in 2001 when Linus released version was pointless because it couldn't compete with Windows or Mac.
I've been thinking about this and Arrow's theorem. Maybe we're going about it backwards. Instead of designing voting systems to choose who we want most, maybe we should be choosing who is most wanted.
Keep all election ballots as they are now. But instead of voting for one of many candidates, you get to vote yes/no for each candidate. The candidate with the most yes votes wins. No more "wasted" votes on 3rd party candidates. And you can limit each party to just one candidate to break the two-party duopoly.
If enough people took modest steps like that, the need for coal and oil power plants could be dramatically reduced, and yes, big business is very much against that, because they're in the business of selling you electricity, and the less you buy from them, the less money they make.
I think that's a cynical and overly simplistic examination of power companies' motivations. When I lived in SoCal, Southern California Edison was probably the best resource for information on improving energy efficiency. Their web site had all sorts of useful info like typical energy usage patterns, breakdowns of which appliances used the most energy, comparisons of energy consumption before and after an improvement (like adding insulation), etc. Not the pie-in-the-sky "this and that is good" stuff you read on the environmental web sites, but real numbers and stats that you could use to calculate what was best for your home/business. When they noticed a large spike in my company's energy usage, they (of their own volition) sent a rep over to discuss it and steps we could take to improve our efficiency and reduce our bill. He brought along our past three years of electricity use history so we could analyze it together.
I suspect what's really going on is that power companies make the most money when energy use is consistent. If usage fluctuates wildly, then they have to build enough capacity to handle the peaks (typically 1pm-3pm), but most of that expensive equipment will sit idle the rest of the time. So they do everything they can to moderate peak usage, even if it means reducing overall usage by making their customers more energy efficient.
That's sort of like saying Indians don't really deserve India because it was the (imperialist) British who first brought up the idea of an India.
I'm going to reply to just this one post since it and the others seem to be trying to argue against something I never said.
I never said I don't think the Palestinians don't deserve a homeland - I have no problems with a Palestinian state. I was simply pointing out the obviously wrong assertion in the OP that the Palestinians were effectively nationless "as a result" of Israel. Their condition existed long before modern Israel ever arrived on the scene, so it's illogical to assert that their condition is a "result" of Israel.
And right now that reality is that Israel has been occupying Palestinian territory for the better part of half a century, all the while feigning surprise at the rise of militancy against them.
And technically speaking, the Palestinians were occupying territory which belonged to Israelis up until 1900 years ago. And technically the Israelis took it from others occupying it before. History is filled with peoples who are conquered and their lands taken away. There probably isn't a square inch of land on this planet that doesn't have dozens of historical claims on it.
We can either do what people did in the past - kill each over land. Or we can try to be more civilized and try to resolve our differences diplomatically. The mandate to create Israel (and Palestine) was passed by the UN. Any objections to it should be made in that venue, not through militancy. If you're unhappy with the UN decisions and are unable to convince it otherwise, you just have to learn to live with it, or alter the way the venue operates. That's why Bush was deservedly criticized when he decided to invade Iraq without UN support.
Ideally we'd all learn to live with each other regardless of ethnicity or nationality. But it seems our prejudices and stereotypes still prevent that. We can either allow the promotion and propagation of those stereotypes (like blaming people here and now for "causing" things that were already true long before they were born). Or we can promote peaceful coexistence through negotiated diplomacy.
They also supported Isreal against Palistinians who've become the Middle-Eastern gypsies as a result.
Dude, you need to read a bit of history beyond the past 60 years. The Palestinian people were Middle-Eastern gypsies loooong before modern Israel ever got there. They've been a stateless socio-ethnic group for nearly a thousand years. It was the (imperialist) British who first brought up the idea of a Palestine in the 1920s. The other Arab states simply didn't give a damn, at least not until Israel got plopped in their midst and suddenly the Palestinians became a good reason for opposing Israel.
The Kurds (in Turkey/Syria/Iraq/Iran) are in a similar position with a greater population and an even longer ethnic history, only they're not anywhere near Israel. The other Arab states aren't exactly falling over each other trying to create a Kurdistan.
I ask why the federal government needs to provide such information. Why can't Joe Blow find this information out on his own
Because the government is the people. Joe Blow did find this information - he paid the government to do it. "The government" doesn't pay for anything, the people do. Unless there's a compelling national security reason to keep it secret, the data belongs to the people and should be made available to them. You can argue the FCC shouldn't have compiled this data. But once they do compile it, it rightfully belongs to the people.
Especially if you send money to random people who ask for it without checking who they are first.
That works fine if you're paying your dozen monthly personal bills sent to your home. It's totally different if you're running a business. If you're lucky, you only have 50 monthly bills. More likely you have 100-200. Many vendors are used sporadically so their bills will be unfamiliar. And the person paying the bills wasn't involved in purchasing from the vendor so even the vendor name may be unfamiliar.
It's the reason large companies use purchase order systems. But for many small/medium businesses the extra overhead of purchase orders isn't worth it, and so they become vulnerable to this type of scam.
As far as mag-lev - why? Building a proven TGV type of track, would allow other trains to use it as well, also aiding in cost-benefit. Plan on multiple side junctions to allow the TGV type train to pass the slower trains, thus permitting dual use for freight, etc. I can't imagine the mag-lev train to be that much more efficient, since fuel cost , at those speeds, is all about fighting wind resistance, and not rolling resistance.
Why are companies investing in optical and quantum computing when current semiconductor technology outperforms them and is cheaper? To lay the groundwork for future technologies. If we don't do it know, we'll just have to do it some time in the future. At some point the investment needs to be made trying out this stuff in production, otherwise you'll be stuck using the old technology forever.
This is the reason so many hi-tech advances come from the military - they're not afraid to throw money at new and risky projects when cheaper proven alternatives already exist. (Actually I have a theory about mag-lev and budgets for railgun development, but that's another topic...;)
I don't think teachers are being paid enough and they are certainly not valued enough by the community. Once upon a time, the best and brightest minds went into the teaching profession; it had respect and was highly valued. Now, it's whoever wants to become one, winner by default. The best and brightest need to be attracted back. Why would somebody who has the ability to earn more than four times the national average wage go into a job that earns less than the average wage?
Not only do teachers not get paid enough to attract and retain the good ones, but teachers unions and the fear of lawsuits make firing the awful ones nearly impossible.
Another consequences of the "not paid enough" line of reasoning is that if we did raise teacher pay, we'd have to fire most of the current teachers and hire new ones. The teachers unions get in trouble with this double-edged sword since ultimately their goal is to increase pay for the current crop of teachers, the ones the pay increases are supposed to filter out by attracting more capable teachers.
Just apply some common sense. If the early termination fees are to recoup the subsidized phone cost, then:
the fee cannot exceed the cost of the phone,
if the phone is returned in a resalable state, its fair trade-in value can be applied against the fee,
the fee is prorated based on how much time is left in your contract (if you're halfway through a 2-year contract, you've paid half the subsidy cost so the termination fee should be halved),
if I bring my own phone, there is no subsidy and hence no early termination fee.
Business contracts are supposed to have consideration to be legally binding; that means that both sides have to get something out of the deal. An early termination fee that does not meet the above criteria would seem to be lacking in consideration.
I don't see the issue in that a few innocent people may get caught, I see the issue in that we are all criminals;D
(And I think it's to late for them to fix it, all crimes of copyright infrigement should just be statute-barrred.)
Just to complete the thought: When a law makes the majority of the population criminal (or infringers), it's time to rethink the law.
In China they have laws which everyone has to break to conduct business. The government uses these laws to arrest / imprison / execute whomever they feel like for whatever reason they feel like - if everyone is guilty of breaking the law, "innocent until proven guilty" becomes a moot point. Local officials use them to extort bribes from the populace. There's enormous potential for abuse of such laws.
Is there any point at which you'll put down the Kool-Aid and admit you've allowed yourself to be lied to?
FYI, I voted against Bush in both elections, was opposed to the war before it began, and figured out the "evidence" for WMDs was fabricated about a month into the search for them. Because I point out the irrationality of attributing these particular budget cuts to Bush does not mean I support him in any way. Being a responsible voter means recognizing when the Kool-Aid is being passed out by either side of the political aisle.
How is Bush realistically going to increase research funds when he is driving us to bankruptcy with his unjustified "war"? Interesting, isn't it? He can make as much noise as he wants about "increasing funding", when he knows full well that it will never happen.
Bush requested funds for both the war and increased physics research. Congress approved the funds for the war, but not the research. Congress could just as easily have cut funding for the war while approving the research. They chose which to do, not Bush.
Why is this so difficult for people to understand? Presidents propose a budget, and have the option to veto the final budget that lands on their desk. Everything else in the budget process is up to the Congress. They can even choose to completely ignore the President's proposal if they wish. Sure the President can lobby them, but so can you and I.
Foreign policy is determined by the Administrative branch, so Bush gets full blame for getting us into this war. But budgetary matters are the responsibility of the Legslative branch. Congress controls the purse strings, they get the blame for funding the war, and not funding whatever they decided to cut to fund the war.
That comment was not a troll. To a Christian, if the knowledge gained at facilities such as Fermilab is not in the Bible, it is unnecessary. If the knowledge is in the Bible, it is redundant. Either way, basic research funding is a very low priority.
That comment was a troll. So is yours. A troll takes a group he disagrees with or does not understand, and ascribes the worst motivation he can think of for their actions. This is often done without checking facts, or blithely ignoring them and making things up to arrive at the desired conclusion.
That's what you and the OP are both doing. Fact is, Bush has been trying to increase funding for physics research. It was (the Democrat-controlled) Congress which cut Fermilab's budget.
Wake me when someone acts against real estate agents who are supposed to be representing the buyers stop getting commissions paid by the sellers. This is an obvious and massive conflict of interest.
Real estate agents exist to match buyers and sellers. Technically, you both hire one -- and it's only a potential conflict of interest if your actual agent shows you a house she also acts as the seller's agent for.
And for this service of spending a few minutes on a computer matching their client's specifications with what's in the database, they're supposed to be given 3% of the house's selling price? And on the seller's side, 3% for keying the house's data and a few pictures into the database? Match.com does pretty much the same thing for a much more important transaction for less than $30/mo.
Realtors either should be liable for doing a lot more, or they need to be paid a lot less.
There's a similar mystery right here in the U.S. The Carolina bays are elliptical depressions scattered throughout the southern Eastern U.S. seaboard. They're mostly filled with water so form small lakes, ponds, or wetlands. But they're all approximately the same shape and orientation (but not size). A variety of theories have been posed as to their origin, including a glancing comet strike (shallow angle impacts produce elliptical craters, not round). They're not as well-known as the Tunguska event, but they're a lot more accessible if you wanted to visit a mysterious possible impact site.
The fact he's [Chuck Fish is] an ex-exec from a business that is a prime player in some of the most suppressive, anti-progress, anti-freedom and anti-privacy organisations, organisations which consistently try to criminalise vast swathes of people and totally miss the point on technological issues.... Well that puts him on my blacklist.
Here's the first hit I got on his name from Google. Honestly, his testimony sounds a lot like what most of us here on Slashdot have been saying about Patent reform (with a few corporate digs thrown in, which is understandable considering who pays him). Can we actually take some time to read up on people and what they think, rather than rely on guilt by association?
"Chuck Fish, an attorney for the McCain campaign and former Time Warner executive"
"Daniel Weitzner, an MIT computer scientist"
Who are you going to place more faith in there?
George Bush Sr. had John Sununu, an MIT Ph.D. engineering grad, as his chief of staff. I was hopeful at first, but he turned out to be a disaster.
I no longer look at people's credentials to make snap judgments about their character or quality of advice, even Nobel laureates. I look at their history, writings, and public record. But if you are swayed by that kind of stuff, IAAMG (I am an MIT grad).
Re:Doesn't even have to be live life...
on
The Phoenix Has Landed
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· Score: 2, Interesting
So, you have a 1/1616 chance of finding a skeleton.
For probabilities with very large n (120 billion in this case), what I'm going to say doesn't make much difference. But for the sake of correctness, you're assuming no two skeletons are buried in the same place. The proper way to do it is to calculate the chance that none of those skeletons are in the spot you're inspecting. If you inspect one square meter, the chances of that are [1 - ( 1/1.4894x10^14 ) ] ^ 120 billion. Subtract from 1 to get the chances of finding a skeleton, which according to Google's calculator is about 1/1251.5. (You had a math error going from sq km to sq m.)
"In televison, the people are the PRODUCTS being delivered to the advertisers; the real customers."
lol, there is a difference between a broadcasters POV in effort to obtain advertising dollars and the consumers POV in whether or not they actually watch the advertisements.
Actually, both POVs are right. The fundamental tenet of capitalism is that certain transactions are not zero-sum games, they are profitable for both sides (or in this case, all three sides). For the advertisers, the product recognition from the ads is worth the price and uncertainty over how many people watch it. For the viewer, the entertainment of watching some ads is worth the price of sitting through some boring ads. And of course the broadcaster attempts to maximize money by showing lots of ads, but not so many that its viewers will switch the channel.
You may be able to install DD-WRT on your router. It (along with other alternate firmwares) provides much better traffic shaping capabilities (called QoS for quality of service) than the default firmware. It lets you assign traffic to bulk (lowest), standard, express, premium, and exempt; based on port, MAC address, netmask (destination IP), or traffic type. Off the top of my head I believe the priorities refer to guaranteed 10%, 25%, 50%, 90%, and 100% of packets will get through.
First step would be to find out what type of P2P he's using and (if it's not recognized by DD-WRT) what ports. Drop those down to bulk priority. Raise special activities like https web browsing to express (on the assumption that connecting to an https server means you're doing something important like accessing your bank). Stuff that's time-critical like VoIP and gaming should get premium priority. This took care of 90% of the problems I had.
The remaining 10% proved extremely tricky. Newer bittorrent clients default to encryption on, and it was getting by the QoS. I tried tweaking all sorts of settings to mitigate this without success. What eventually worked was a setting anything on ports higher than 1024 to bulk priority, then specifying certain ports as having higher priority. This is the QoS equivalent of switching from allow all and blocking things you don't want, to deny all and allowing things you do want. That seems to have solved the bittorrent problem.
The only problems that remain have to do with http and ftp transfers of large files. If someone sticks a 40 MB file on a web site, the router can't tell it apart from regular http traffic, so you can't drop its priority without also affecting regular web browsing. In one case a user was running a program to download an entire web site - that was killing the network since to the router it looked just like a lot of web browsing. Same with ftp - if you drop ftp's priority so the 100 MB transfers are bulk, the small ftp files like certain software updates are also bulk.
Again, you're trying to turn this into a binary black/white good/evil issue when it's not. The fate of the one person cannot be evaluated by itself. It has to be measured in relation to what's at stake for everyone else.
That sort of utilitarian ethic is absolutely terrifying. You can justify anything at all against a small number of people by weighing it against a relatively small good for a large number. That way evil does lie.
No, the way to evil is to decide things based solely on the merits of only one side of a debate. I'm all for evaluating the welfare of a minority against the greater good of the majority in order to arrive at a decision. I'm even for saying some things should never be done to an individual no matter how much it could benefit society as a whole (e.g. torture of terrorists). What I'm against is making a decision solely on the basis of the minority or individual, with no consideration given to the greater whole. That's a purely emotional argument lacking in rationality. In economics, it's called opportunity costs - you can't make rational decisions without considering them.
After United 232 crashed resulting in the death of a lap child (an infant or young child without a ticketed seat, and thus sitting in a parent's lap), one of the flight attendants lobbied to require all children and infants to have paid seats aboard airliners. I don't deny the emotional appeal of her story, nor do I wish to diminish the death that lead to it. If you listen to just her side of the issue, then by all means it sounds like the practice of lap children aboard airplanes should be abolished. However, this fails to take into consideration that the reason the FAA allowed lap children is because the death rate for children aboard airliners is far less than for children in cars. The FAA was afraid that if they required parents to purchase airline tickets for their children, more parents would opt to drive instead of fly, resulting in more children dying.
You have to carefully consider all sides before arriving at a decision. The best of intentions can have consequences you may not anticipate, or even be contrary to your goals.
Unless you're the guy who's recently been introduced to the concept of a combination Toilet / Food Bowl, thanks to Google's actions. Something tells me that the finer points of the benefits of a censored Google versus a censored Government-run search engine are lost on him.
Again, you're trying to turn this into a binary black/white good/evil issue when it's not. The fate of the one person cannot be evaluated by itself. It has to be measured in relation to what's at stake for everyone else. If we were to apply your reasoning to global warming, the fact that an individual would suffer hardship if forced to enact carbon emissions controls (in his car, electricity usage, etc) would be cause enough to abandon all carbon emissions restrictions.
Yes it sucks for the one guy, but it's the reason to dislike China's government and to try to change it. Not to reiterate, but do you believe we can better foster that change by isolating it from our activities, or by maintaining direct ties to its citizens and providing them with easy access to information? If you believe the former, then stop hiding behind this one guy's fate. Just come out and say: "We should not compromise any of our principles when dealing with China, even if that means breaking off all relations with them." Honestly I don't know which course of action is better. Recent history seems to support the latter, although it may not even be that one is better than the other in all cases. But don't try to manipulate the argument with an emotional appeal using one man's fate when the fate of billions is at stake.
Slashdot Mirror
That dishonorable jerks exist across the entire political spectrum. Regardless of your political affiliation, restrict the "fights dirty" label to individuals. Do not generalize the distasteful actions of a few to the entirety of your political opposition simply because it makes things more convenient for you.
Keep all election ballots as they are now. But instead of voting for one of many candidates, you get to vote yes/no for each candidate. The candidate with the most yes votes wins. No more "wasted" votes on 3rd party candidates. And you can limit each party to just one candidate to break the two-party duopoly.
I suspect what's really going on is that power companies make the most money when energy use is consistent. If usage fluctuates wildly, then they have to build enough capacity to handle the peaks (typically 1pm-3pm), but most of that expensive equipment will sit idle the rest of the time. So they do everything they can to moderate peak usage, even if it means reducing overall usage by making their customers more energy efficient.
I never said I don't think the Palestinians don't deserve a homeland - I have no problems with a Palestinian state. I was simply pointing out the obviously wrong assertion in the OP that the Palestinians were effectively nationless "as a result" of Israel. Their condition existed long before modern Israel ever arrived on the scene, so it's illogical to assert that their condition is a "result" of Israel.
And technically speaking, the Palestinians were occupying territory which belonged to Israelis up until 1900 years ago. And technically the Israelis took it from others occupying it before. History is filled with peoples who are conquered and their lands taken away. There probably isn't a square inch of land on this planet that doesn't have dozens of historical claims on it.We can either do what people did in the past - kill each over land. Or we can try to be more civilized and try to resolve our differences diplomatically. The mandate to create Israel (and Palestine) was passed by the UN. Any objections to it should be made in that venue, not through militancy. If you're unhappy with the UN decisions and are unable to convince it otherwise, you just have to learn to live with it, or alter the way the venue operates. That's why Bush was deservedly criticized when he decided to invade Iraq without UN support.
Ideally we'd all learn to live with each other regardless of ethnicity or nationality. But it seems our prejudices and stereotypes still prevent that. We can either allow the promotion and propagation of those stereotypes (like blaming people here and now for "causing" things that were already true long before they were born). Or we can promote peaceful coexistence through negotiated diplomacy.
The Kurds (in Turkey/Syria/Iraq/Iran) are in a similar position with a greater population and an even longer ethnic history, only they're not anywhere near Israel. The other Arab states aren't exactly falling over each other trying to create a Kurdistan.
It's the reason large companies use purchase order systems. But for many small/medium businesses the extra overhead of purchase orders isn't worth it, and so they become vulnerable to this type of scam.
This is the reason so many hi-tech advances come from the military - they're not afraid to throw money at new and risky projects when cheaper proven alternatives already exist. (Actually I have a theory about mag-lev and budgets for railgun development, but that's another topic... ;)
- the fee cannot exceed the cost of the phone,
- if the phone is returned in a resalable state, its fair trade-in value can be applied against the fee,
- the fee is prorated based on how much time is left in your contract (if you're halfway through a 2-year contract, you've paid half the subsidy cost so the termination fee should be halved),
- if I bring my own phone, there is no subsidy and hence no early termination fee.
Business contracts are supposed to have consideration to be legally binding; that means that both sides have to get something out of the deal. An early termination fee that does not meet the above criteria would seem to be lacking in consideration.In China they have laws which everyone has to break to conduct business. The government uses these laws to arrest / imprison / execute whomever they feel like for whatever reason they feel like - if everyone is guilty of breaking the law, "innocent until proven guilty" becomes a moot point. Local officials use them to extort bribes from the populace. There's enormous potential for abuse of such laws.
Why is this so difficult for people to understand? Presidents propose a budget, and have the option to veto the final budget that lands on their desk. Everything else in the budget process is up to the Congress. They can even choose to completely ignore the President's proposal if they wish. Sure the President can lobby them, but so can you and I.
Foreign policy is determined by the Administrative branch, so Bush gets full blame for getting us into this war. But budgetary matters are the responsibility of the Legslative branch. Congress controls the purse strings, they get the blame for funding the war, and not funding whatever they decided to cut to fund the war.
That's what you and the OP are both doing. Fact is, Bush has been trying to increase funding for physics research. It was (the Democrat-controlled) Congress which cut Fermilab's budget.
Realtors either should be liable for doing a lot more, or they need to be paid a lot less.
There's a similar mystery right here in the U.S. The Carolina bays are elliptical depressions scattered throughout the southern Eastern U.S. seaboard. They're mostly filled with water so form small lakes, ponds, or wetlands. But they're all approximately the same shape and orientation (but not size). A variety of theories have been posed as to their origin, including a glancing comet strike (shallow angle impacts produce elliptical craters, not round). They're not as well-known as the Tunguska event, but they're a lot more accessible if you wanted to visit a mysterious possible impact site.
I no longer look at people's credentials to make snap judgments about their character or quality of advice, even Nobel laureates. I look at their history, writings, and public record. But if you are swayed by that kind of stuff, IAAMG (I am an MIT grad).
First step would be to find out what type of P2P he's using and (if it's not recognized by DD-WRT) what ports. Drop those down to bulk priority. Raise special activities like https web browsing to express (on the assumption that connecting to an https server means you're doing something important like accessing your bank). Stuff that's time-critical like VoIP and gaming should get premium priority. This took care of 90% of the problems I had.
The remaining 10% proved extremely tricky. Newer bittorrent clients default to encryption on, and it was getting by the QoS. I tried tweaking all sorts of settings to mitigate this without success. What eventually worked was a setting anything on ports higher than 1024 to bulk priority, then specifying certain ports as having higher priority. This is the QoS equivalent of switching from allow all and blocking things you don't want, to deny all and allowing things you do want. That seems to have solved the bittorrent problem.
The only problems that remain have to do with http and ftp transfers of large files. If someone sticks a 40 MB file on a web site, the router can't tell it apart from regular http traffic, so you can't drop its priority without also affecting regular web browsing. In one case a user was running a program to download an entire web site - that was killing the network since to the router it looked just like a lot of web browsing. Same with ftp - if you drop ftp's priority so the 100 MB transfers are bulk, the small ftp files like certain software updates are also bulk.
What's a hoe?
After United 232 crashed resulting in the death of a lap child (an infant or young child without a ticketed seat, and thus sitting in a parent's lap), one of the flight attendants lobbied to require all children and infants to have paid seats aboard airliners. I don't deny the emotional appeal of her story, nor do I wish to diminish the death that lead to it. If you listen to just her side of the issue, then by all means it sounds like the practice of lap children aboard airplanes should be abolished. However, this fails to take into consideration that the reason the FAA allowed lap children is because the death rate for children aboard airliners is far less than for children in cars. The FAA was afraid that if they required parents to purchase airline tickets for their children, more parents would opt to drive instead of fly, resulting in more children dying.
You have to carefully consider all sides before arriving at a decision. The best of intentions can have consequences you may not anticipate, or even be contrary to your goals.
Yes it sucks for the one guy, but it's the reason to dislike China's government and to try to change it. Not to reiterate, but do you believe we can better foster that change by isolating it from our activities, or by maintaining direct ties to its citizens and providing them with easy access to information? If you believe the former, then stop hiding behind this one guy's fate. Just come out and say: "We should not compromise any of our principles when dealing with China, even if that means breaking off all relations with them." Honestly I don't know which course of action is better. Recent history seems to support the latter, although it may not even be that one is better than the other in all cases. But don't try to manipulate the argument with an emotional appeal using one man's fate when the fate of billions is at stake.