Adding a constant to both sides doesn't change anything
Sure it does. Make it $500,000 instead of $500. Now the price of the total system makes the price differential between processors A and B effectively meaningless, which makes sense - in a system that expensive, you wouldn't quibble about a few extra bucks for some extra performance.
Going the other way, if the rest of the system costs you $5 instead of $500, now the value of the cheaper processor is clear, and the difference in cost ($100) to acquire the more expensive processor would be 49% of the total cost ($205).
They are against it because they are terrified that... [snip]
Well, to be fair, they are against any practices that are forbidden in their "rule book", one of which is "butt sex" as you so described so vividly. I doubt that terror or desire are a big part of it, more like revulsion.
Though you're certainly right that they are out to de-legitimize porn, and that mindset is what leads them to oppose sensible ideas like the ".xxx" domain (and red-light districts, and decriminalized prostitution).
Re:Watch a little more closely ...
on
Deep in the Core
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· Score: 1
Somebody better tell this Kepler person that Congress makes the laws. Clearly this is scientific activism at its worst!
We should go back to having the Sun go around the Earth, like the Founders intended.
My apologies - I should not have suggested that you would be unwilling to confront gang members.
I don't doubt that pride is an important part of reviving a community. But do you really mean to say that it can "happen without money coming in"? Perhaps you meant to say "without money from the government". There has to be some source of income, whether it comes from wages, local businesses, government grants, tax breaks, or whatever.
I don't want to put words in your mouth, but you seem to be suggesting that once people take pride in where they live, they can clean it up, run out the criminal element and put up an "Open House" sign, whereupon jobs and businesses flock to the area. I don't buy it. The barriers to success are overwhelming. Pick up the litter and the next day it's back. Paint over the graffiti - same thing. Push out the gangs (if you can), the winos, prostitutes and crackheads. They will all be back. Because the neighborhood sucks, whether the inhabitants are proud of it or not, and the conditions that made it suck still exist. No jobs. Bad schools. A poor economy (often due to factors completely outside the control of the community).
Perhaps government intervention is not always the answer. Certainly there are communities that have disappeared off the face of the map when they could no longer be supported by the regional economy, which suggests that in some cases there are no forces either internal or external that can help. And there is no doubt that where government steps in, waste and corruption inevitably follow.
But there are other cases where the government can help by improving schools, repairing infrastructure, or providing tax incentives and low-interest loans. Take a look at Hollywood - twenty years ago it was crime-ridden, filthy and overrun by drug dealers and prostitutes. Now it is a tourist mecca, even after hours. How was this accomplished? Government redevelopment grants and cheap financing. Private enterprise was coaxed back and invested heavily in the area, and is being repaid handsomely.
Re:The show will need local humor appeal
on
Homer Becomes Omar
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· Score: 1
the events described above are real
Sort of. Read Cat Stevens' explanation of how his statement was distorted by the media.
So which is it? Are they true, or are they your opinion?
Perhaps I should have said "I believe those statements to be true". In any case, my point was to say that they were valid, tenable positions that had been inappropriately ridiculed due to poor use of English.
It's up to a community to fix its own schools. Schools are mostly run at a local level with local board members elected from the local population.
None of which is pertinent to my point, which was that their are obvious inequities between schooling in rich and poor communities. But I'll take the bait. No, I do not agree that it is "up to" a community to fix its own schools, any more than it is "up to" them to fix their subway systems, airports, harbors, levees, electrical transmission lines, water treatment plants, or any other service that currently receives federal and state funding because they are recognized to be important on a national level. Education is a national problem - even George W. Bush agrees with that proposition.
Also, you've already stated that the '"minority" neighborhoods' are crime ridden, so how do you convince businesses to move there?
You'd be better off finding a way to convince people in these areas to take pride in themselves and their communities and take a stand against the people who are dragging the whole community down. Then you'll have a lot less fixing to do.
That's a nice thought, but can you honestly say you'd be out there on the corner in the middle of the night facing down some armed gang members?
I know of empty lots in South-Central L.A. where businesses burned down in the 1992 riots and to this day have not been rebuilt. Private enterprise is useless in this case - as you say, fear of crime keeps them out, and there's no money to be had where people don't have money to spend. I don't have the answers, but I know it will take a lot more than "pride".
Fleming himself rather excellently portrayed a sociopathic spy in "From Russia With Love". Red Grant, the Irishman turned S.M.E.R.S.H. assassin is a perfect example of this type. The book goes into better detail than the movie, but Robert Shaw's interpretation is still very good.
success of African Americans from families where there was considerable parental involvement
I agree that the family unit is vital for success. During slavery children were often separated from their parents, and not allowed to learn to read or write. The destruction of the family in the African-American community started many years ago.
While our laws have been changed to make racial discrimination illegal, our attitudes toward racial minorities continue. Sadly, whites see non-whites as inferior, even if only on an unconscious level. This has nothing to do with being white - every race sees others in a negative way. We have to accept that fact to be able to transcend it, and this is where many "Caucasian-Americans" don't get it IMHO.
Racism is pernicious and widespread, and will probably be with us until we have miscegenated enough that we all are the same color.
We should teach people about success rather than to live as victims of 'the man.'
Yes we should, but we should also teach people to look critically at their own attitudes to others.
I didn't get your joke at first. When at last I did I jumped out of my bath yelling "Eureka!" and ran naked through the streets until the cops picked me up.
In the United States, blacks and hispanics have less good home life, less good schools, less good treatment by the government, less wealth, less college education.
Perhaps this needs a little polishing:
less good home life: Are more likely to come from single parent families and live in crime ridden neighborhoods.
less good schools: Are more likely to attend underperforming and underfunded schools.
less good treatment by the government: Are more likely to be harassed and ill-treated by the judicial system.
less wealth: Are more likely to be poor.
less college education: Are less likely to receive a college education.
All of which are true statements IMO.
Your statement that "a large portion of grants and scholarships are racially biased" is very dubious indeed, as is your interpretation of how affirmative action is used in university admissions. It's true that you could be passed over in favor of a qualified black or hispanic candidate, but you could also be passed over by legacy (who would almost certainly be white), and I don't hear you complaining about that.
I'm not a big fan of affirmative action. It makes more sense to fix the poor elementary and secondary schools, and bring more jobs to "minority" neighborhoods than to try and fix the problem at the university level.
Oh great, so now the phones will have names like "SVANSBO" and "BJURSTA", and you will have to assemble them yourself with those wierd little wrenches.
It's a cold, lonely world out there. Pretty soon it'll be back, begging for a safe and cozy environment. Freedom ain't all it's cracked up to be, especially if you're just an abstraction.
Don't think of that server as a prison. It's more like a womb.
None of these are valid reasons to oppose recounts, IMHO. I couldn't care less whether my government looks "well-ordered" or illegitimate. I want the winner to win, and the loser to lose.
Recounts are more accurate than the original count. I know this is hard to accept, especially if you happen to be a resident of the State of Washington, which went through a nightmare in the Governor's contest. But a recount is far more deliberate and transparent than the "election night" count, when election officials are pushing ballots through the process to get results in time for the 11 o'clock news.
...it's easier to rig a re-count.. Maybe you are thinking of a "machine recount", where the original ballots are merely pushed through the counting machines again. A hand recount, which is what losing candidates ask for (when the law allows it) cannot be rigged as you suggest. Observers are allowed to be present at all times, and may challenge each ballot as it is counted.
Most people just want it to be over with once the election is done. So? Most people don't even vote in the first place. Why should we care about the desires of the impatient, the uninterested and the apathetic?
If you want a argument against recounts, the best one is that they reveal the ugly truth of elections: that each one is riddled with irregularity and inaccuracy, and only when results are close do we bother to look under the hood and see how bad things are.
While I'm not apologizing for the poor state of vote counting processes, part of the reason banks are good at what they do is that they do all the time, day in and day out. Elections happen once or twice a year. That's a long design-implement-revise iteration cycle. It's more like launching a missile than making a bank transaction - you have one chance to get it right, and if it blows up it makes big news. You never hear about ATM's making mistakes (although they do on rare occasions - it happened to me once). Another difference is that there is a natural check against mistakes, in that the account holder verifies his bank balance against his checkbook. There is no similar relationship between a voter and his vote - once it is in the ballot box, he cannot check his "account" to see if the vote registered properly.
Having worked in elections for many years, I'm convinced that most voting errors are committed by voters who are not able or not willing to follow the instructions. The voting system can only go so far to prevent a voter from making an error when he is determined to do so. This is not to say that the systems are perfect - there is much room for improvement.
And as for privatizing the system, this is largely true already. All DRE systems, machine readable ballot counting hardware and the vast majority of central tabulating software is produced by private companies. I personally know of one company that does contract election work for cities and counties, that is, they take over the entire vote counting operation. They do a fine job, but no better or worse than their government counterparts.
Three major voting methods exist in the U.S: DRE, optical scan and punch card. Both optical scan and punch card produce a paper record of each ballot cast. While individual voters cannot review their ballots after voting, candidates can challenge the results and ask for a recount.
The only way to invalidate paper ballots is by tampering with them to create overvotes or "spoiled" ballots. This can't be done on a large scale without being detected by simply comparing the numbers of invalid ballots to those cast in other elections. So while the paper trail is not "verifiable" by the voter, it still goes a long way towards preventing fraud, and is far preferable to DRE systems.
Slashdot Mirror
Sure it does. Make it $500,000 instead of $500. Now the price of the total system makes the price differential between processors A and B effectively meaningless, which makes sense - in a system that expensive, you wouldn't quibble about a few extra bucks for some extra performance.
Going the other way, if the rest of the system costs you $5 instead of $500, now the value of the cheaper processor is clear, and the difference in cost ($100) to acquire the more expensive processor would be 49% of the total cost ($205).
Well, to be fair, they are against any practices that are forbidden in their "rule book", one of which is "butt sex" as you so described so vividly. I doubt that terror or desire are a big part of it, more like revulsion.
Though you're certainly right that they are out to de-legitimize porn, and that mindset is what leads them to oppose sensible ideas like the ".xxx" domain (and red-light districts, and decriminalized prostitution).
We should go back to having the Sun go around the Earth, like the Founders intended.
I don't doubt that pride is an important part of reviving a community. But do you really mean to say that it can "happen without money coming in"? Perhaps you meant to say "without money from the government". There has to be some source of income, whether it comes from wages, local businesses, government grants, tax breaks, or whatever.
I don't want to put words in your mouth, but you seem to be suggesting that once people take pride in where they live, they can clean it up, run out the criminal element and put up an "Open House" sign, whereupon jobs and businesses flock to the area. I don't buy it. The barriers to success are overwhelming. Pick up the litter and the next day it's back. Paint over the graffiti - same thing. Push out the gangs (if you can), the winos, prostitutes and crackheads. They will all be back. Because the neighborhood sucks, whether the inhabitants are proud of it or not, and the conditions that made it suck still exist. No jobs. Bad schools. A poor economy (often due to factors completely outside the control of the community).
Perhaps government intervention is not always the answer. Certainly there are communities that have disappeared off the face of the map when they could no longer be supported by the regional economy, which suggests that in some cases there are no forces either internal or external that can help. And there is no doubt that where government steps in, waste and corruption inevitably follow.
But there are other cases where the government can help by improving schools, repairing infrastructure, or providing tax incentives and low-interest loans. Take a look at Hollywood - twenty years ago it was crime-ridden, filthy and overrun by drug dealers and prostitutes. Now it is a tourist mecca, even after hours. How was this accomplished? Government redevelopment grants and cheap financing. Private enterprise was coaxed back and invested heavily in the area, and is being repaid handsomely.
Sort of. Read Cat Stevens' explanation of how his statement was distorted by the media.
It's called the Hyperion Energy Recovery System. Here is a nice diagram of the sewage treatment process at the plant.
Perhaps I should have said "I believe those statements to be true". In any case, my point was to say that they were valid, tenable positions that had been inappropriately ridiculed due to poor use of English.
It's up to a community to fix its own schools. Schools are mostly run at a local level with local board members elected from the local population.
None of which is pertinent to my point, which was that their are obvious inequities between schooling in rich and poor communities. But I'll take the bait. No, I do not agree that it is "up to" a community to fix its own schools, any more than it is "up to" them to fix their subway systems, airports, harbors, levees, electrical transmission lines, water treatment plants, or any other service that currently receives federal and state funding because they are recognized to be important on a national level. Education is a national problem - even George W. Bush agrees with that proposition.
Also, you've already stated that the '"minority" neighborhoods' are crime ridden, so how do you convince businesses to move there?
You'd be better off finding a way to convince people in these areas to take pride in themselves and their communities and take a stand against the people who are dragging the whole community down. Then you'll have a lot less fixing to do.
That's a nice thought, but can you honestly say you'd be out there on the corner in the middle of the night facing down some armed gang members?
I know of empty lots in South-Central L.A. where businesses burned down in the 1992 riots and to this day have not been rebuilt. Private enterprise is useless in this case - as you say, fear of crime keeps them out, and there's no money to be had where people don't have money to spend. I don't have the answers, but I know it will take a lot more than "pride".
This is just more evidence in support of my policy of keeping a constant supply of ethanol near to hand!
You know, reading that post it seems as if you took a shot of tequila after writing each item. :)
Fleming himself rather excellently portrayed a sociopathic spy in "From Russia With Love". Red Grant, the Irishman turned S.M.E.R.S.H. assassin is a perfect example of this type. The book goes into better detail than the movie, but Robert Shaw's interpretation is still very good.
Let's hope this stuff can be recycled once the batteries run down.
I agree that the family unit is vital for success. During slavery children were often separated from their parents, and not allowed to learn to read or write. The destruction of the family in the African-American community started many years ago.
While our laws have been changed to make racial discrimination illegal, our attitudes toward racial minorities continue. Sadly, whites see non-whites as inferior, even if only on an unconscious level. This has nothing to do with being white - every race sees others in a negative way. We have to accept that fact to be able to transcend it, and this is where many "Caucasian-Americans" don't get it IMHO.
Racism is pernicious and widespread, and will probably be with us until we have miscegenated enough that we all are the same color.
We should teach people about success rather than to live as victims of 'the man.'
Yes we should, but we should also teach people to look critically at their own attitudes to others.
Thanks a LOT buddy.
Perhaps this needs a little polishing:
less good home life: Are more likely to come from single parent families and live in crime ridden neighborhoods.
less good schools: Are more likely to attend underperforming and underfunded schools.
less good treatment by the government: Are more likely to be harassed and ill-treated by the judicial system.
less wealth: Are more likely to be poor.
less college education: Are less likely to receive a college education.
All of which are true statements IMO.
Your statement that "a large portion of grants and scholarships are racially biased" is very dubious indeed, as is your interpretation of how affirmative action is used in university admissions. It's true that you could be passed over in favor of a qualified black or hispanic candidate, but you could also be passed over by legacy (who would almost certainly be white), and I don't hear you complaining about that.
I'm not a big fan of affirmative action. It makes more sense to fix the poor elementary and secondary schools, and bring more jobs to "minority" neighborhoods than to try and fix the problem at the university level.
Read "The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy".
Oh great, so now the phones will have names like "SVANSBO" and "BJURSTA", and you will have to assemble them yourself with those wierd little wrenches.
Well, Google has my vote!
I think a Google-Kodos ticket would be unbeatable.
Wow - when you do garbage collection, you don't fool around!
Don't think of that server as a prison. It's more like a womb.
Haven't run into that one yet, but it's comforting to know there's a backup, even if we have to call Magrathea to get access...
Recounts are more accurate than the original count. I know this is hard to accept, especially if you happen to be a resident of the State of Washington, which went through a nightmare in the Governor's contest. But a recount is far more deliberate and transparent than the "election night" count, when election officials are pushing ballots through the process to get results in time for the 11 o'clock news.
Most people just want it to be over with once the election is done. So? Most people don't even vote in the first place. Why should we care about the desires of the impatient, the uninterested and the apathetic?
If you want a argument against recounts, the best one is that they reveal the ugly truth of elections: that each one is riddled with irregularity and inaccuracy, and only when results are close do we bother to look under the hood and see how bad things are.
Having worked in elections for many years, I'm convinced that most voting errors are committed by voters who are not able or not willing to follow the instructions. The voting system can only go so far to prevent a voter from making an error when he is determined to do so. This is not to say that the systems are perfect - there is much room for improvement.
And as for privatizing the system, this is largely true already. All DRE systems, machine readable ballot counting hardware and the vast majority of central tabulating software is produced by private companies. I personally know of one company that does contract election work for cities and counties, that is, they take over the entire vote counting operation. They do a fine job, but no better or worse than their government counterparts.
The only way to invalidate paper ballots is by tampering with them to create overvotes or "spoiled" ballots. This can't be done on a large scale without being detected by simply comparing the numbers of invalid ballots to those cast in other elections. So while the paper trail is not "verifiable" by the voter, it still goes a long way towards preventing fraud, and is far preferable to DRE systems.
Oh no, Officer. You're not going to get me like that.