In 1997 (looking in a 2000 NYT Almanac, which doesn't have more recent no.), they paid 12.3% of all federal income taxes, versus 48.0% for individuals (a large chunk of the remainder, 35.4%, consisted of employment taxes). 12.3% is definitely nontrivial.
And, FWIW, there are limits in honorarium size to a sitting politician, as well as to contributions to a campaign of a specific candidate, or in spending that is coordinated with a specific campaign.
True. There are plenty of products in the "health supplement" market which, since they're not marketed as drugs and don't come under FDA drug rules, have likely never been rigorously tested at all -- and they will sell. It helps that there are people to whom "natural / organic" automatically means "good for you", and are willing to pay money for anything unconventional...
Hell. At one point, bleeding people in order to rebalance the four humours was an extremely common treatment for many disorders. Not that it was that reliable, but it goes to show that products and services clearly don't always need to be effective to sell.
They could point out that research is expensive, that government doesn't fund it all, and that most individuals sure aren't rushing to plug up the gap. And if one expects research funding from companies, it's only fair that they get something for their investment.
Some intersections in the US are rigged so that cars running red lights are photographed, and their owners sent tickets through the mail. To my knowledge, such is considered legal. It's simpler than speeding detection, 'tho, since the problem is merely detecting whether the car is *in* the intersection at a given time and going the wrong direction rather than tracking many simultaneously moving cars and guesstimating their speeds.
What jurisdictional issues? The customer agreed to a contract, including the clause stipulating fees if he sped. He did; so he's obligated to pay, by prior mutual agreement.
Your "everday citizen" argument is an obvious non sequitor, since said citizen can't wave a contract signed by random speeders.
But individual workers generally don't have the resources to go to a foreign country, spend a significant amount of time researching a situation, collate the data while searching archives of relevant information regarding important players and so forth, and then produce a well-written, well-thought-out article to boot.
So what you're suggesting is about as impractical as, say, large-scale Marxism.
Re:Stupid newbie question about unions
on
Dial U for Union
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· Score: 1
IIRC --
The fields in the union use the *same space*; in other words, you should use only one field per instance at a time...
with 32-bit integers and 32-bit floats, foo.bell would occupy the exact same space as foo.bie. Which saves memory if you think you will need either of the two fields, but aren't sure which.
You're probably being subsidized, actually, in the sense that your tuition isn't even coming close to covering expenses related to your education.
Re:Star Trek similarities unsurprising.
on
Andromeda
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· Score: 1
Hrm. I always had the impression that the Vulcans had become pacifist and arrived at the conclusion that peaceful, cooperative societies are needed -- as well as self-sacrifice (Spock)?
The Nietszcheans appear to be drawn loosely from a casual reading of Nietszche's dogma, with their apparent rejection of "slave moralities" such as the concept of helping the weak (rather than taking advantage), the belief in ruthless competition at the individual level, and so forth. In the episodes I've seen, they seem to reject the idea of trust as impossible, which to a Vulcan would probably be seen as illogical since it would lead to the disintegration of most societies.
It's not the language that teaches elegance and beauty -- it's the professor and TAs. If bad coding practices lose points, and explanations are provided, the students will likely learn... whereas one can write horrible Java, or Perl, or Lisp, or C with ease if the course instructors do NOT value organization and comprehensibility.
It depends on your application. If performance is an issue, you may want a lower-level language like C or C++ that lets you explicitly tweak memory usage patterns. And C++, other than sheer perversions like multiple inheritance (which is something that I have rarely either used or seen -- because it rarely seems appropriate), really isn't much harder than C. Classes are glorified C structures with functions (methods) that are members and some other bits of sugar (the public/private et al foo isn't in C).
Java's interface handling (the 'class BLAH implements FOO, BAR, BAZ interfaces') is actually quite nifty, 'tho. It'd be uglier to do the same thing in Java.
FYI, the two programming languages I use most are C/C++ (treating them as one because they're that similar... and the C++ programs I write are usually imperative + some OO syntatic sugar rather than radically OO designs), and Perl (which is nice for rapid prototyping since it's interpreted, and support for native associative arrays and references is sweet -- it's trivial to do complicated hierarchical structures in Perl. Plus, a built-in regex parser is a pretty useful sometimes).
8) and 9) contradict each other, and that's the original poster's point -- that no one language will suffice for four years because none can possibly have all the traits that are arguably important to teach. For instance, could have cited purely functional programming and purely imperative programming as another major contradiction; both are worth learning, but no language has both restrictions.
As for low-level foo, it might be interesting to know when you really care about performance. For instance, cache miss latencies are expensive, and therefore knowing the cache design of the intended platform can be factor when accessing memory -- you don't want a loop stride that makes every subsequent iteration result in a cache miss. If you want to design, say, a main-memory database engine, things like this can be important.
Easy? Interesting. I'm far more at home in C/C++ due to their non-OO structure -- perhaps that comes from having a decent math background, where algorithms usually translate more easily into sequences of instructions rather than objects and methods.
The GC probably isn't *that* critical early on -- for a small project in, say, C/C++, memory leaks really shouldn't happen often after a bit of experience, at least when not trying funky tricks. Careful use of destructors, documentation indicating where memory is allocated and who's responsibility it is to deallocate it, and a careful design help -- and tools like Rational Software's Purify can be used to track down leaks that remain if needed. When TA-ing low-level courses, I saw far more conceptual errors than memory leaks, and the former's what I'd worry about more regardless of the language.
Pick an architecture -- there's no one assembly language. And keep in mind that what's good practice in one architecture, can be lousy in another depending on such features as number of registers and how many are accessible directly at any one point.
Re:If democratic and elected, not so sad after all
on
Harm From The Hague
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· Score: 1
World democracy probably wouldn't work unless you had the same values world-over -- try mixing, say, strict theocracies (Iran), with secular dictatorship by single-party state (PRC), with capitalist federalists (~US), constitutional monarchists (UK), and vaguely socialist republican states (France). Some nations, for instance, have historically and are currently quite willing to trade a fair bit of freedom for stability, while other states local individual freedom much more.
And finding compromises that'll make 'em all happier-than-pure-loathing probably isn't going to happen anytime soon.
To prevent crimes, subject to restrictions imposed by Federal, state, and local law.
There wouldn't be much crime by non-police if they simply arrested everybody they saw, beat people up for looking at 'em crosswise, searched random homes at will, used flamethower teams and other ordnance when raiding suspects' residences, and executed suspects on a whim without trial, would there? But they're not allowed to do that.
Not an arbitrary date, actually. It was the last day that the state could submit the slate of delegates without their possibly being subjected to challenge by Congress.
There was already a uniform standard -- Fla. law states "clear indication of the intent of the voter" (which would presumably exclude dimples, since there were voters who dimpled but then did NOT fully puncture because they changed their mind; but would include numerous unconventional votes such as drawing X's on at most one chad per office and not using anything else suggestive of voting), which should in theory NOT vary among the multiple counties using the same punch-ballot system, but did -- but the Fla. Supreme Court declined to execute their own law.
Power consumption. I'm not sure if they need a warrant for that, or who's the subject if there is one (you, or the power company?), but one thing DEA and friends can check for is power consumption, because all those heat lamps, et al, will use a disproportionate amount of electricity.
If he's walking up to your house without a warrant, you have every right to accuse him of trespassing and demand that he leave. He's also going to get a far less useful heat reading than he would with a decent thermal imaging camera.
And pictures don't normally reveal much about what's going on inside.
In that case, Scalia made the point that if the state (or local jurisdiction, if allowed by State law and when dealing with local officers) wanted to restrict arrest rights further, they could. For Federal law-enforcement officers, only Congress can set the limits (or, through delegation of powers, the appropriate Federal agencies). IOW, lawmakers and officers are to use their discretion, and it's possible to punish officers for frivolous arrest -- if lawmakers so choose.
SCOTUS had appelate jurisdiction, after all, given that it had already gone through the state courts. And there was a question of whether the FL Supreme Court was providing equal protection under Florida laws to the members of different counties.
Presumably never -- greed and stupidity are not that unusual. People will fall for pyramid schemes, get-jailed-quick foo, bank fraud, eternal-life devices and other quackery...
*shrug*
I forward an awful lot of my spam to either the USPS (for mail fraud), the SEC (securities fraud), and SPA (piracy). Hopefully every once in a while one of the spammers becomes a girlfriend to a sadistic 240# lifer and his buddies.
Business transactions, including advertising, can be regulated by the state in which they're conducted. For instance, it's perfectly legal for a state to demand that telemarketers register and abide by their own regulations...
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In 1997 (looking in a 2000 NYT Almanac, which doesn't have more recent no.), they paid 12.3% of all federal income taxes, versus 48.0% for individuals (a large chunk of the remainder, 35.4%, consisted of employment taxes). 12.3% is definitely nontrivial.
And, FWIW, there are limits in honorarium size to a sitting politician, as well as to contributions to a campaign of a specific candidate, or in spending that is coordinated with a specific campaign.
True. There are plenty of products in the "health supplement" market which, since they're not marketed as drugs and don't come under FDA drug rules, have likely never been rigorously tested at all -- and they will sell. It helps that there are people to whom "natural / organic" automatically means "good for you", and are willing to pay money for anything unconventional...
Hell. At one point, bleeding people in order to rebalance the four humours was an extremely common treatment for many disorders. Not that it was that reliable, but it goes to show that products and services clearly don't always need to be effective to sell.
They could point out that research is expensive, that government doesn't fund it all, and that most individuals sure aren't rushing to plug up the gap. And if one expects research funding from companies, it's only fair that they get something for their investment.
Some intersections in the US are rigged so that cars running red lights are photographed, and their owners sent tickets through the mail. To my knowledge, such is considered legal. It's simpler than speeding detection, 'tho, since the problem is merely detecting whether the car is *in* the intersection at a given time and going the wrong direction rather than tracking many simultaneously moving cars and guesstimating their speeds.
What jurisdictional issues? The customer agreed to a contract, including the clause stipulating fees if he sped. He did; so he's obligated to pay, by prior mutual agreement.
Your "everday citizen" argument is an obvious non sequitor, since said citizen can't wave a contract signed by random speeders.
One reason that they might do this is that speeders could be more expensive customers, in terms of a greater risk of accidents.
Nice troll.
But individual workers generally don't have the resources to go to a foreign country, spend a significant amount of time researching a situation, collate the data while searching archives of relevant information regarding important players and so forth, and then produce a well-written, well-thought-out article to boot.
So what you're suggesting is about as impractical as, say, large-scale Marxism.
IIRC --
The fields in the union use the *same space*; in other words, you should use only one field per instance at a time...
with 32-bit integers and 32-bit floats, foo.bell would occupy the exact same space as foo.bie. Which saves memory if you think you will need either of the two fields, but aren't sure which.
You're probably being subsidized, actually, in the sense that your tuition isn't even coming close to covering expenses related to your education.
Hrm. I always had the impression that the Vulcans had become pacifist and arrived at the conclusion that peaceful, cooperative societies are needed -- as well as self-sacrifice (Spock)?
The Nietszcheans appear to be drawn loosely from a casual reading of Nietszche's dogma, with their apparent rejection of "slave moralities" such as the concept of helping the weak (rather than taking advantage), the belief in ruthless competition at the individual level, and so forth. In the episodes I've seen, they seem to reject the idea of trust as impossible, which to a Vulcan would probably be seen as illogical since it would lead to the disintegration of most societies.
It's not the language that teaches elegance and beauty -- it's the professor and TAs. If bad coding practices lose points, and explanations are provided, the students will likely learn... whereas one can write horrible Java, or Perl, or Lisp, or C with ease if the course instructors do NOT value organization and comprehensibility.
It depends on your application. If performance is an issue, you may want a lower-level language like C or C++ that lets you explicitly tweak memory usage patterns. And C++, other than sheer perversions like multiple inheritance (which is something that I have rarely either used or seen -- because it rarely seems appropriate), really isn't much harder than C. Classes are glorified C structures with functions (methods) that are members and some other bits of sugar (the public/private et al foo isn't in C).
Java's interface handling (the 'class BLAH implements FOO, BAR, BAZ interfaces') is actually quite nifty, 'tho. It'd be uglier to do the same thing in Java.
FYI, the two programming languages I use most are C/C++ (treating them as one because they're that similar... and the C++ programs I write are usually imperative + some OO syntatic sugar rather than radically OO designs), and Perl (which is nice for rapid prototyping since it's interpreted, and support for native associative arrays and references is sweet -- it's trivial to do complicated hierarchical structures in Perl. Plus, a built-in regex parser is a pretty useful sometimes).
8) and 9) contradict each other, and that's the original poster's point -- that no one language will suffice for four years because none can possibly have all the traits that are arguably important to teach. For instance, could have cited purely functional programming and purely imperative programming as another major contradiction; both are worth learning, but no language has both restrictions.
As for low-level foo, it might be interesting to know when you really care about performance. For instance, cache miss latencies are expensive, and therefore knowing the cache design of the intended platform can be factor when accessing memory -- you don't want a loop stride that makes every subsequent iteration result in a cache miss. If you want to design, say, a main-memory database engine, things like this can be important.
*frown*
Easy? Interesting. I'm far more at home in C/C++ due to their non-OO structure -- perhaps that comes from having a decent math background, where algorithms usually translate more easily into sequences of instructions rather than objects and methods.
The GC probably isn't *that* critical early on -- for a small project in, say, C/C++, memory leaks really shouldn't happen often after a bit of experience, at least when not trying funky tricks. Careful use of destructors, documentation indicating where memory is allocated and who's responsibility it is to deallocate it, and a careful design help -- and tools like Rational Software's Purify can be used to track down leaks that remain if needed. When TA-ing low-level courses, I saw far more conceptual errors than memory leaks, and the former's what I'd worry about more regardless of the language.
Pick an architecture -- there's no one assembly language. And keep in mind that what's good practice in one architecture, can be lousy in another depending on such features as number of registers and how many are accessible directly at any one point.
World democracy probably wouldn't work unless you had the same values world-over -- try mixing, say, strict theocracies (Iran), with secular dictatorship by single-party state (PRC), with capitalist federalists (~US), constitutional monarchists (UK), and vaguely socialist republican states (France). Some nations, for instance, have historically and are currently quite willing to trade a fair bit of freedom for stability, while other states local individual freedom much more.
And finding compromises that'll make 'em all happier-than-pure-loathing probably isn't going to happen anytime soon.
To prevent crimes, subject to restrictions imposed by Federal, state, and local law.
There wouldn't be much crime by non-police if they simply arrested everybody they saw, beat people up for looking at 'em crosswise, searched random homes at will, used flamethower teams and other ordnance when raiding suspects' residences, and executed suspects on a whim without trial, would there? But they're not allowed to do that.
Not an arbitrary date, actually. It was the last day that the state could submit the slate of delegates without their possibly being subjected to challenge by Congress.
There was already a uniform standard -- Fla. law states "clear indication of the intent of the voter" (which would presumably exclude dimples, since there were voters who dimpled but then did NOT fully puncture because they changed their mind; but would include numerous unconventional votes such as drawing X's on at most one chad per office and not using anything else suggestive of voting), which should in theory NOT vary among the multiple counties using the same punch-ballot system, but did -- but the Fla. Supreme Court declined to execute their own law.
Power consumption. I'm not sure if they need a warrant for that, or who's the subject if there is one (you, or the power company?), but one thing DEA and friends can check for is power consumption, because all those heat lamps, et al, will use a disproportionate amount of electricity.
If he's walking up to your house without a warrant, you have every right to accuse him of trespassing and demand that he leave. He's also going to get a far less useful heat reading than he would with a decent thermal imaging camera.
And pictures don't normally reveal much about what's going on inside.
Like millimeter-wave/infrared technology?
In that case, Scalia made the point that if the state (or local jurisdiction, if allowed by State law and when dealing with local officers) wanted to restrict arrest rights further, they could. For Federal law-enforcement officers, only Congress can set the limits (or, through delegation of powers, the appropriate Federal agencies). IOW, lawmakers and officers are to use their discretion, and it's possible to punish officers for frivolous arrest -- if lawmakers so choose.
*shrug*
SCOTUS had appelate jurisdiction, after all, given that it had already gone through the state courts. And there was a question of whether the FL Supreme Court was providing equal protection under Florida laws to the members of different counties.
Presumably never -- greed and stupidity are not that unusual. People will fall for pyramid schemes, get-jailed-quick foo, bank fraud, eternal-life devices and other quackery...
*shrug*
I forward an awful lot of my spam to either the USPS (for mail fraud), the SEC (securities fraud), and SPA (piracy). Hopefully every once in a while one of the spammers becomes a girlfriend to a sadistic 240# lifer and his buddies.
Business transactions, including advertising, can be regulated by the state in which they're conducted. For instance, it's perfectly legal for a state to demand that telemarketers register and abide by their own regulations...