So your assumption is: the more money we earn, the more of it the government should spend?
When the Federal government switches to taxing a fixed amount of my income instead of a percentage, then you'll have a point. But as long as they keep taxing a percentage, the Federal Budget is going to be proportional to GDP; and thus any comparisons of expenditure need to be made relative to GDP, not some fixed amount from 1945 when the population was less than half what it is now, the standard of living was lower, and the U.S. was pursuing isolationist policies instead of pushing globalization and world trade.
This attitude that churches should not have to play by the same rules as everyone else drives me up the wall.
Can we get rid of their tax exemption while we're at it? Or does this 52" TV have some demonstrable charitable purpose?
So you want to get rid of separation of church and state and have government treat religious organizations like any business organization, free to lobby and affect public policy directly instead of only through campaign contributions and their members' votes on election day?
For most all of my 'internet life'...starting back about '93-'94 or so, I pretty much always used pseudonyms, and rarely if ever gave out personal information.
I think most people back then did pretty much the same. It just seems common sense doesn't it? When did people start really acting stupid AND not only documenting it and publishing it for eternity? Do people not have the common sense to know that actions can follow you over time?
Back when I joined the Internet ('87), access was controlled by school, government, and company sysadmins, most of whom mandated strict guidelines regarding your online ID. So your username or email address was typically your real name. People wouldn't respect you if you didn't use your real name, figuring you were trying to hide something. It wasn't considered a big deal because there was no Google Groups (Usenet archive) nor a Wayback Machine. Stuff you put on the 'net (Usenet really) was fleeting and transitory.
This started to change when people started putting personal servers on the 'net, and completely died when AOL (where you get to pick your own email name) joined Usenet in 1994. After that, your online name was pretty much anything you wanted it to be.
But it's kind of a moot point. As you didn't specify the country you are in, I'm going to have to assume the US. Here's a post explaining why downloading copyrighted material IS a criminal offense in the US:
So the RIAA has to prove their case to the satisfaction of a unanimous vote by 12 jurors, instead of just a preponderance of the evidence?
Or are they trying to have their cake and eat it too, by using civil standards of innocence/guilt, but imposing criminal penalties?
Engineers -- and I'm speaking as someone who is doing an engineering job, surrounded by engineers, and from a family of engineers -- tend to favor experience more than empathy. They tend to think that if they're convinced something is right, it's for good reason, and once they're convinced, it takes some work to change their minds. More particularly, if they're convinced, they're unlikely to use someone else's experience as a guideline: they're less likely to put themselves in someone else's shoes to regard a problem from that standpoint.
That one's easy. Engineers for the most part know the difference between anecdotal incidents and statistical data. So if they've read a statistical study that says one thing, of course they're going to discount Uncle Bob's anecdote which contradicts the study. Now, if Uncle Bob says that he's experienced it hundreds of times with his customers, and 40% of the time..., then I'm going to listen to him.
My own definition of Engineer Syndrome is encapsulated in the phrase, that I actually heard from one of my dad's coworkers once, "If you would've thought about this problem as much as I have, you'd agree with me." The level of premise and and patronization enclosed in that one sentence is staggering, but when it comes right down to it, I think many people drawn to engineering feel that way at some point or another. The consequence of this is that if someone else *doesn't* agree, the person suffering from ES thinks the other person is either stupid or stubbornly wrong, and either way, is a fool whose opinion is not to be regarded.
I think I know where that attitude comes from - it's from the conceit and disrespect heaped upon engineers by the general public. If doctors say that smoking causes cancer, people say "well, doc knows best." If the lawyer says that you have to obey the subpoena, people listen for fear of getting in trouble with the law. But when engineers say extended exposure to heat below melting point can soften steel enough to cause a structural failure, they're met with disbelief and either told they're wrong or dismissed by half the world which would rather believe in crackpot theories that wouldn't pass the scrutiny of anyone with one semester of materials science training. I wouldn't presume to tell a musician how to prepare for a performance, or an actor how to ply his trade, but somehow when it comes to analyzing engineering problems, they seem to think their opinion is as valid as mine.
So the mindset you encountered isn't something innate to engineers, it's something they develop. Too many arguments with people who literally have no clue trying to convince you to dismiss the fundamentals of your profession because they don't seem to acknowledge that, hey, you know a little bit more about this stuff than they do. After you experience enough of it, you really do start to believe that most people are idiots. And once you reach that point, you not only start to treat them in a patronizing manner, you start to assume (often incorrectly) they're similarly idiotic in topics where you have no expertise. I can see this happening to scientists too, with the politicization of global warming and evolution.
Another contributor is that the approach most engineers take when faced with an unknown is to first try to find out as much as they can about it, then decide what to do about it. This doesn't seem to be the way most other people operate. I still can't understand how friends of mine can hear about something for the first time on the news, and immediately have an opinion on it. It's difficult to respect opinions formed in such an information vacuum (and the people who form those opinions).
Especially with the advent of lightweight digital cameras (no more wasted film or being limited to 24/36 shots). Just google for kite aerial photography. It's got a Wikipedia entry and even a jargon wiki.
The last person I heard of in the same situation as you was arrested, jailed, and spent $14,000 defending himself. If you're at all uncertain about the legitimacy of a check, make sure you explain it to the bank before you ask them to verify it or cash it.
Add the 7 or more free HD-DVD movies that'll work forever even if HD-DVD dies...
Until your player stops working in a few years, as all electronics eventually do. And then you won't be able to get a replacement HD-DVD player.
It's digital. As soon as the DRM is cracked, you'll be able to rip the video data off the disc, then re-encode it to whatever format you want. The folks with DAT players just converted their music to MP3 or FLAC on hard drives.
It's all in how you phrase it. You can say Asians prefer grind games, or you can say Westerners prefer games which hand everything to them on a platter. Or if you want to be nice about it, you can say Asians prefer games where hard work (and time) is rewarded, while Westerners prefer games where entertaining solutions are rewarded.
Mainly the one that Jews are in control of the U.S. government? Pollard is caught spying on U.S. surveillance capability for Israel and gets sentenced to life in prison. Someone sells U.S. nuclear secrets to Pakistan, and the U.S. government does its best to cover it up?
Why are we hearing about this from the CIA, of all places? I thought counter-intelligence was the purview of the FBI, and signals intelligence the role of the NSA.
The FBI has jurisdiction over intelligence matters inside the U.S. and occasionally involving U.S. citizens and property abroad. The CIA has jurisdiction over intelligence matters outside the U.S. So investigating induced power outages in foreign cities would be a CIA task.
Oh, no, they won't install them in any commercial location, only private homes. Making people uncomfortable in their own homes, no problem; Interfering with Holy Commerce, now, they just don't play games there. Won't happen.
Edison already runs severalprograms constraining business electricity use at peak times, including shutting off air conditioners. In exchange for lower rates, you can allow Edison to shut off your AC (or power altogether). This proposal would merely allow them to extend the program to residential homes. I expect it will be very popular too, considering most people aren't even in their homes during typical peak energy usage (usually early afternoon).
Next time I suggest you do a little research before automatically assuming a pro-business conspiracy theory. These shutoffs are already installed in commercial locations, private homes are just next in line.
I think it would be better to teach these children how to use LaTeX. It offers the openness of OO.o, but allows for the preparation of much more professional documentation.
My boss at a former job pointed this out to me. LaTeX follows a programmer's paradigm. First you write the source, then you have to compile and link it to produce what you really want. This is fine for programmers and people who don't mind learning the ins and outs of how computers work. But it's needlessly complicated for someone who simply wants to write a paper.
WYSIWYG word processors follow a simpler paradigm which is followed by scripting languages and (gag) BASIC. You directly work with and modify the final product, no intermediate compiling or linking step. You have less control over exactly how each individual element gets placed or produced, but it's much simpler and for 99% of writing tasks it is more than enough.
Each has their place, but for most tasks and for most people the latter method is preferable. If we really want LaTeX use to spread, we need to write GUI tools which allow the user to produce a document in a WYSIWYG fashion, but which produces LaTeX code behind the scenes. Like how Dreamweaver works for creating web pages. Remember, the #1 rule in user friendliness is that the user shouldn't have to learn how the computer works, the computer should be taught how people work.
Actually, I think this is a better argument against immunity for the telecos for warrantless wiretapping. If the telecos are willing to shut down wiretapping for an unpaid bill, they should've been willing to stop warrantless wiretapping until a court could rule on its legality. Apparently National Security is a legitimate argument to them only if they're being paid.
You both missed a very key point: they're not paying these domains.
The simply reserve them using a registrar's 5 day grace period & if nobody buys the domain from Network Solution for 5 days, they simply release the reserve. I.e., it's available again to the general public.
Seems to me we need a distributed project to go through all possible combinations of dictionary words at the NSI site, starting with the shortest first. When such a high percentage of "available" domains end up being squatted by NSI that other registrars (and their customers) start complaining that they can't register anything, that'll be the best way to pressure NSI to quit this.
Moreover, I'm wondering if this will result in a fish-eye lens (or reverse fish-eye lens) effect even in games.
That would be a non-factor for 3D games. It's trivial to code your viewport for rectilinear vs. fisheye output. The game's authors just need to add a switch to let you choose which output you want.
From an angle-of-view standpoint, a curved screen is more efficient at filling your field of vision. A flat screen can never fill more than 180 degrees of your vision. As the viewing angle approaches 90 degrees from straight ahead, the amount of additional screen real estate needed to eek out an extra degree of FOV approaches infinity. With a curved screen, you just add another degree in the curvature. The only problem is making sure you sit in the center, at the focus point of the screen's curvature. If you sit there, you can even "fake" an illusory flat screen's output, thus eliminating the straight line problem (unless you move your head away from the focus).
Before cheap scanners and color inkjet printers, most wedding photographers would shoot the wedding for free or at-cost. They would charge up the wazoo for the prints and reprints. When scanners and color printers became cheap, people just started scanning the prints (or sometimes the proofs) and running off all the copies they wanted. In response, wedding photographers have mostly moved to a model where they charge all the money for shooting the wedding, then give the prints away for free or at-cost.
I suspect musicians will go the same route. Songs will be given away as free advertising, and they'll make their money by booking performances and concerts (and selling memorabilia at such). For all practical purposes that's the way most of the RIAA-contracted musicians work anyway right now, since the studios keep 95% to over 100% (the band owes them money) of all the proceeds from song sales.
If the government claims "lots of other people are doing it" as justification for anything it does, I want the same defense the next time a cop pulls me over for speeding, or when the IRS questions some of my more creative tax deductions. Otherwise, we're setting up a two track system: one for people who work the government levers, and the other for the people who pay for the levers to be there.
There's an important difference. "Lots of other people are doing it" is not justification for doing something you're not supposed to do. Wikipedia is supposed to be edited by anybody and everybody. That's its founding principle.
This is an example of situation where principle has to override personal feelings. Open Source advocates may not like the fact that companies are using their software for profit in commercial applications, but they're mature about it and accept it as an unavoidable consequence of upholding the principle of open software. Right-to-life activists may not like doctors who perform abortions but they (mostly) uphold the principle of right to life, and do not advocate killing them. Likewise, you may not like the fact that certain groups you don't like (military, corporations) are editing Wikipedia, but it was set up on the principle that anybody could edit it. Once you start making up rules that certain groups (which you don't happen to like) are not allowed to edit entries about themselves, you've destroyed Wikipedia as it currently exists, and given up principle in exchange for personal convenience. At that point, your reasoning is no different than the tinpot dictator who shuts down a media outlet because he doesn't like it.
Is there another reason to charge as much for the online version as for the print version when, admittedly, their costs are less for the online customers.
If I were an "about to commit" customer, and I have thought about becoming one recently, this would put me off, I would like a good share of the savings passed on to me.
The print version gets you dead trees issues which last as long as the dead trees last. But only the issues put out since you subscribed.
The online version gets you access to their database of past reviews. I consider it a heckuva lot more valuable than the print version (both in the amount of information, and the time it saves me not having to look it up individual issues in the library like I did in high school). You're making the mistake of assuming market prices should be production costs plus a flat fixed percentage, no other factors involved. Economics doesn't work that way. Market price is a combination of how badly the producer wants to sell it, and how much the customer wants to buy it. Sure their production costs for the online version may be lower, but I perceive the value of the online version to be (much) higher. So the economics of it supports a (relative to production costs) higher price.
It doesn't just slow the moon (causing it to fly further away). It also slows down the earth's rotation until it matches the moon's orbital period! Do we really want to tap a power source which will ultimately result in a day being 709 hours long, if not longer as the moon flies further away? Hmm, I suppose if we don't update our labor laws mandating 8-hour workdays it might not be so bad...
"I think 2008 is the year when we will finally start to see in-flight Internet access become available..."
Note to everyone, declaring this "the year of implementation x of tech y" automatically sets that tech back indefinitely.
But it's already been available. I used it on a transatlantic Lufthansa flight in 2006 just before Boeing shut it down. Tunneled into my company's LAN via VPN and printed some stuff onto an office printer from the middle of the Atlantic at 36,000 feet, just so I could say I've done it.;) The real drawback I saw was that not every seat has power ports, and laptop battery life is typically much shorter than a trans-oceanic flight duration.
Slashdot Mirror
This started to change when people started putting personal servers on the 'net, and completely died when AOL (where you get to pick your own email name) joined Usenet in 1994. After that, your online name was pretty much anything you wanted it to be.
Or are they trying to have their cake and eat it too, by using civil standards of innocence/guilt, but imposing criminal penalties?
So the mindset you encountered isn't something innate to engineers, it's something they develop. Too many arguments with people who literally have no clue trying to convince you to dismiss the fundamentals of your profession because they don't seem to acknowledge that, hey, you know a little bit more about this stuff than they do. After you experience enough of it, you really do start to believe that most people are idiots. And once you reach that point, you not only start to treat them in a patronizing manner, you start to assume (often incorrectly) they're similarly idiotic in topics where you have no expertise. I can see this happening to scientists too, with the politicization of global warming and evolution.
Another contributor is that the approach most engineers take when faced with an unknown is to first try to find out as much as they can about it, then decide what to do about it. This doesn't seem to be the way most other people operate. I still can't understand how friends of mine can hear about something for the first time on the news, and immediately have an opinion on it. It's difficult to respect opinions formed in such an information vacuum (and the people who form those opinions).
Especially with the advent of lightweight digital cameras (no more wasted film or being limited to 24/36 shots). Just google for kite aerial photography. It's got a Wikipedia entry and even a jargon wiki.
The last person I heard of in the same situation as you was arrested, jailed, and spent $14,000 defending himself. If you're at all uncertain about the legitimacy of a check, make sure you explain it to the bank before you ask them to verify it or cash it.
Just draw up some calibration specs and pass a law requiring that any geiger counters sold in NY have to meet those specs. No need to ban the things.
It's all in how you phrase it. You can say Asians prefer grind games, or you can say Westerners prefer games which hand everything to them on a platter. Or if you want to be nice about it, you can say Asians prefer games where hard work (and time) is rewarded, while Westerners prefer games where entertaining solutions are rewarded.
Mainly the one that Jews are in control of the U.S. government? Pollard is caught spying on U.S. surveillance capability for Israel and gets sentenced to life in prison. Someone sells U.S. nuclear secrets to Pakistan, and the U.S. government does its best to cover it up?
Next time I suggest you do a little research before automatically assuming a pro-business conspiracy theory. These shutoffs are already installed in commercial locations, private homes are just next in line.
WYSIWYG word processors follow a simpler paradigm which is followed by scripting languages and (gag) BASIC. You directly work with and modify the final product, no intermediate compiling or linking step. You have less control over exactly how each individual element gets placed or produced, but it's much simpler and for 99% of writing tasks it is more than enough.
Each has their place, but for most tasks and for most people the latter method is preferable. If we really want LaTeX use to spread, we need to write GUI tools which allow the user to produce a document in a WYSIWYG fashion, but which produces LaTeX code behind the scenes. Like how Dreamweaver works for creating web pages. Remember, the #1 rule in user friendliness is that the user shouldn't have to learn how the computer works, the computer should be taught how people work.
Disclaimer: I wrote my thesis in LaTeX.
Actually, I think this is a better argument against immunity for the telecos for warrantless wiretapping. If the telecos are willing to shut down wiretapping for an unpaid bill, they should've been willing to stop warrantless wiretapping until a court could rule on its legality. Apparently National Security is a legitimate argument to them only if they're being paid.
int counter;
time_t prev_time;
class sucker;
for (counter = 0; counter < sucker.population(); counter++) {
if ( (time()-prev_time) > 60 ) {
prev_time = time();
sucker.born();
sprintf ("People are stupid.");
}
}
From an angle-of-view standpoint, a curved screen is more efficient at filling your field of vision. A flat screen can never fill more than 180 degrees of your vision. As the viewing angle approaches 90 degrees from straight ahead, the amount of additional screen real estate needed to eek out an extra degree of FOV approaches infinity. With a curved screen, you just add another degree in the curvature. The only problem is making sure you sit in the center, at the focus point of the screen's curvature. If you sit there, you can even "fake" an illusory flat screen's output, thus eliminating the straight line problem (unless you move your head away from the focus).
I suspect musicians will go the same route. Songs will be given away as free advertising, and they'll make their money by booking performances and concerts (and selling memorabilia at such). For all practical purposes that's the way most of the RIAA-contracted musicians work anyway right now, since the studios keep 95% to over 100% (the band owes them money) of all the proceeds from song sales.
1e. Mention how much you and your co-workers could donate as campaign contributions next year. Half ;)
This is an example of situation where principle has to override personal feelings. Open Source advocates may not like the fact that companies are using their software for profit in commercial applications, but they're mature about it and accept it as an unavoidable consequence of upholding the principle of open software. Right-to-life activists may not like doctors who perform abortions but they (mostly) uphold the principle of right to life, and do not advocate killing them. Likewise, you may not like the fact that certain groups you don't like (military, corporations) are editing Wikipedia, but it was set up on the principle that anybody could edit it. Once you start making up rules that certain groups (which you don't happen to like) are not allowed to edit entries about themselves, you've destroyed Wikipedia as it currently exists, and given up principle in exchange for personal convenience. At that point, your reasoning is no different than the tinpot dictator who shuts down a media outlet because he doesn't like it.
The online version gets you access to their database of past reviews. I consider it a heckuva lot more valuable than the print version (both in the amount of information, and the time it saves me not having to look it up individual issues in the library like I did in high school). You're making the mistake of assuming market prices should be production costs plus a flat fixed percentage, no other factors involved. Economics doesn't work that way. Market price is a combination of how badly the producer wants to sell it, and how much the customer wants to buy it. Sure their production costs for the online version may be lower, but I perceive the value of the online version to be (much) higher. So the economics of it supports a (relative to production costs) higher price.
It doesn't just slow the moon (causing it to fly further away). It also slows down the earth's rotation until it matches the moon's orbital period! Do we really want to tap a power source which will ultimately result in a day being 709 hours long, if not longer as the moon flies further away? Hmm, I suppose if we don't update our labor laws mandating 8-hour workdays it might not be so bad...