right on national television, the student stated that several members of the football team had been threatening to beat up the gun carrying student, and that the gun a carrying student had said he would shoot anyone that tried.
So what do we have here? We have a student's recounting of events (which may or may not be true - it was an interview, not sworn testimony) and absolutely no reference what-so-ever to administrators protecting the bully. In fact, you don't know that no punishment was given to the football team, and you also don't know that the story the kid gave on tv was actually verified in any way. Just because a student says the football team is bullying them, doesn't mean that the football team gets automatically expelled.
My problem with your post is that you imply that school administrators are protecting the bullies. You have not provided anything to substantiate this claim.
I know I'm going to get flagged as a troll or flamebait
By posting that, you knew you would be modded up, and not down.
this sort of legislative thinking is the natural product of electing liberals into office
Do you know how few liberals there are? I mean real liberals, not the moderates that are called liberals as a slur. A true liberal, Paul Wellstone for instance, truly believe that as a society, we can be better, and that we should strive for that. A true liberal is not the democrats currently elected (who are first and foremost politicians, not liberal).
True political conservatives (as opposed to moral conservatives or economic conservatives) believe that a good, basic set of principles as described in something like our Constitution should be all that we need to protect our freedoms and property. Any great body of laws beyond that is actually more likely to diminsh freedom and risk personal property than secure them. Unfortunately, the allure of the "just one more law will fix everything" siren is, for most people, irresistable.
You're right. We should stop trying to improve our nation. Why even try to lower crime, ensure children can get an education, or attempt to reduce poverty.
Basic sets of principles are great, when people follow them. We shouldn't need laws that state that murder is illegal, that you aren't to assault others, etc. Sad truth is that there are people out there who do these things. I was actually thinking about this this morning. Drunk driving. People should be allowed to drink, and they should be responsible for their actions, right? Unfortunately, it isn't that person who pays the price for driving drunk. All too often it's a victim in another vehicle, or crossing the street who pays the full price.
Of course those are those scenarios we see in popular media in which the child is bullied by a popular person who the school authorities are in league with.
If that is true then there is an underlying problem with society that we can't fix with my method or your method but rather actually passing laws that correct schools by firing school officials who do not correct bullying rather than this stupid cyber laws that are impossible to enforce against students.
Show me one example. Honestly, I'd like to see one story in "popular media" in which a the bully is protected by the school administration.
School officials and teachers hate bullies. Schools exist to educate. The effect of a bully is to prevent that education by intimidating classmates.
Yes, but they (being non-technical users) will download them from the approved (more to the point, the included) repositories instead of randomly from a website.
I think the download managers might help. But I don't think it'll stop people from downloading apps. Let's face it. I've told my father in law multiple times not to download and install crap, yet he still does, and his machine gets bogged down. Once Linux or OSX is used more, the software will be written for it. And there will be places to download the apps, and I think people still will.
The idea should be to get away from this "install something from random website" culture. I think non-technical users would be very happy to be given a list of "approved" software that they knew was free from spy/malware.
And the way you've phrased it here, I think will make the biggest difference. But why couldn't this be done for Windows? Set up a site with legitimate downloadable software, and have everything approved before being posted to it.
And my experience may be different from the typical user, but everytime I've played around with Linux, I've always had to download something from a non-official website (drivers, etc.), or have had to add repositories to the list. Which, if this was common, would mean that people would get used to downloading items or adding non-official repositories and we'd be back to square one.
So linux gives you a location of spyware-free software, but it's nothing that's unique to the OS, just it's implementation.
But since much spyware is "installed" by the user, when they install a program they want to install, would this change with a different OS? If people move to Linux, OSX, etc. they are still going to download and install programs. And if those programs have spyware bundled in with them, how will that change the malware situation?
You don't have to tell me about it, my wife is a kindergarten teacher and has taught in the poorest districts and some extremely affluent areas as well. I have not met one teacher who did it for the money. My wife and I have similar educations (both master's degrees), both the same amount of experience, yet I earn more than twice what she does, and my earning potential is much, much, higher than hers.
My concern is not that teachers won't do it, it's that the people who have the skills and abilities to teach computers, won't turn to teaching. Basically, that people in my situation won't do it. I am an engineer, I'm more than qualified to teach any math or science in school, but there is no way I will do it. I won't take the pay cut, and I don't want to deal with the kids, and particularily their parents. I am not a teacher. It's just not in me. Those who are teachers, and do it because it's all they ever would want to do, don't tend to (I'm generalizing here, and I could be completely wrong, so please correct me if I am, but this is the case from what I've seen) have the background in computers that would be necessary to teach them.
The trick that adults give up on, is that children have a capacity to learn that can be untameable compared to adults. Add to the fact that they have all the time in the world to be a student (not like they have jobs or other responsibilities) and it's easy to see how they could pick up technology.
You focus on the student side of the equation, which I agree, has room for the information. But not on the teaching side. There is infrastructure required (classrooms, equipment, support), teachers required (salaries, benefits, substitutes), etc.
But figure this out, you can do things like English and most sciences, with a computer. Typing up an essay, running numbers through a spreadsheet to get standard deviation, etc. Most uni students I know, have to have crash courses in computers because their professors expect them to use things like Fortran, maple, magma, etc.
Maybe my education was different. But we did utilize computers early on. I remember as early as first grade (1986) going to the computer lab to create a project on the computer (which to a six year old was an amazing and magic machine). This continued throughout my education. My high school actually did offer quite a few computer/technology courses, but they suffered by not having appropriate teachers. One course (something like writing for the world wide web or something - introductory web design) I "taught" because the teacher early on realized that I had more experience than he did in the subject.
I also wonder about the university students. I'm an engineer, which meant that I used a hell of a lot of Maple and Matlab during school. Crash courses weren't offered. If you are in a curriculum that relies so heavily on technology, you should have a basic understanding of technology (whether it's from high school courses, learning on your own, etc.). I don't think we need crash courses at a university level.
But once you hit highschool, things like statistics are largely just a manual labour job and not actually a comprehension job. like I know how the standard deviation works, but if you ask me to figure it out for a set of 30 numbers, I'm likely to typo a calculation or two.
My wife teaches reading. And to me (being the engineer), I didn't understand exactly what she was teaching. I figured, they learn the letters, the sounds, the words, the meanings. Simple. Turns out, there is a lot more to it than what I could think of. Same thing with math. It's amazing the number of people who can't get a rough idea of a valid answer. Your example of calculating the standard deviation by hand. Yeah, it's manual labor, you'd probably never do it in the real world. But, it does teach something. It is (according to a junior high math teacher) useful for teaching students how to estimate whether their answers are correct. In other words, ensuring they aren't off by an order of magnitude, and that the answer makes sense.
It isn't like computers are going to "go away" nor become any less entrenched in our society. So why not make it a part (but not the whole part) of the student experience?
You are absolutely correct. Computer skills are becoming more and more valuable all of the time. But a lot more students nowadays have access to computers without a specific computer course. Just about everybody has a home computer (obviously, this is going to vary due to socio-economic demographics). Most libraries have computers for anybody to use (and at least mine offers courses on how to use them). It's a different situation than it was when we grew up.
So why is making it a mandatory part of the high school [or better yet elementary] curriculum such a bad idea? Of course, I'd love to see such curriculum not focus solely on Windows, maybe through in OS X and a Linux distro for good measure.
I would love to see computers taught more in schools, but there are a couple of problems with doing it right now (which isn't to say in 5 years these problems will still exist).
First of all, schools need to teach reading, writing, arithmetic, science, etc. You get the idea. Now you want to add an additional required subject to this. Keep in mind that everything that is being required to be taught, is being required to be tested. So, you mandate that schools spend an hour every week teaching computers. Where does that hour come from? Math? Science? And what happens when the students aren't doing as well on the standardized tests in the subject you've replaced? That's right, the teachers and schools get blamed, never mind the fact that a change was forced upon them.
Second, and in my opinion, the real problem. Who will teach these courses? Most people who are knowledgable enough to teach these courses, don't teach. They can make much more money working elsewhere, and not have to deal with kids. Retraining teachers to teach computers could work, especially for basic tasks, but for more advanced subjects, they will not be adequate.
Third, exactly what do you teach? Not to install stupid programs? That's the biggest problem right there. It isn't that Windows is inherently insecure, most people use a firewall router, run anti-virus, etc. to protect there systems. The problem is that these people are infecting their systems through actions that they have taken.
I think it's important to teach computers, and not windows, but again, it's going to take somebody who knows what they are doing. And these people generally don't want to teach high school students when they could be making two to three times as much working elsewhere. To teach OSX, you now need additional hardware or you could use all Mac hardware (wouldn't Apple just love that) and install linux and Windows. So if you want to teach OSX, you've now tied the hands of the district and they can not look for competing vendors, they now must purchase hardware from Apple.
Convenience for the customer (could) mean more customers.
I don't carry cash. I charge everything. It keeps my purchases easy to categorize in Quicken, and if there is a problem, I have the security of being able to do a chargeback (retailer won't follow their return policy, etc.). If a store doesn't accept credit cards, I don't shop there. Period.
But like you said, the merchant has a choice whether or not to accept credit cards. If the costs are too high, then they shouldn't accept them.
As a former retailer, I very well know the frustrations of a chargeback that comes out of no-were. As a consumer, I've found that it's quite easy to deny a charge for very little reason.
It's also quite easy to shoplift from a lot of stores, to back into somebody's car and just drive off, etc. Just because something is easy, doesn't mean that people take advantage of it.
Every chargeback I have made has been completely legitimate. One of the reasons I pay for everything on a credit card is that security it provides me. Once a merchant didn't want to obey their return policy, so I left the store and disputed the charge, got my money back. Another time, a service provider decided he deserved more of a tip than I gave them (he even called me after the chargeback and tried to argue that he deserved the additional money), again, I got my money back. I don't bother arguing with customer service anymore. If they don't follow their own return policy, I'll say thank you, walk out, and dispute the charge.
Sure, if the system is being abused, then I feel bad for the merchant. I don't personally know the percentage of instances where a chargeback is not warranted, but given to the consumer, but if as a merchant it costs you too much, don't accept credit cards.
It's a cost of doing business and a problem that they have to consider. Just like a retail business has to determine if the cost of a storefront and physical presence is worth the cost. If they don't like the risk, don't accept credit cards or don't set up shop.
If you don't like the system, don't accept the credit cards. Nobody is requiring you to. If you get chargebacks, that's part of the cost of doing business and you have to determine whether or not that is acceptable.
Or just let the market forces work it out. When it becomes reasonably compelling to replace incandescent with fluorescent, people will do it. Until that point, why screw with it with legislation? It's not like fluorescent or incandescent is a decision that will decide the fate of the planet.
That can be true when you are paying the actual cost for your decision. At least in the U.S. though, most items that are bad for the environment don't factor that cost into the purchasing price. Gasoline is one example where we are only paying for the product, and not it's environmental effects.
Are you denying that (a) the light looks different (whether ugly or not is subjective) (b) they take a significant time to reach their full brightness?
The light does look different, which is why I replaced most of my light bulbs with CFL, but not all.
But in terms of the significant time to reach full brightness. That's something I haven't noticed. I'm not saying it's not true, but when we switched over, I never noticed it.
Apparently you haven't read the original article. Since it wasn't an article, merely a sensationalist blurb to try to get you to buy the paper and read the article. There were no facts, no details. It's sensationalism, and that's all.
If you bother to follow the link to the article, it is a short summary, followed by mentioning that if you'd like to read the article (as in, you know, the news, and hopefully some details), to go get the paper.
Creating a front-page Slashdot story out of this is just plain stupid.
Find an actual article with some facts, or don't post the story. Sure, it's common on slashdot to think that the police are out to get you, but there is no reason to believe that the summary is in any way an accurate portrayal of the situation.
I agree that our lead is diminishing. But part of that is due to the fact that countries that couldn't compete, now can. You have more supply of technical talent, and that increase is coming from outside the U.S., therefore the supply of technical talent, percentage wise in the U.S. is decreasing.
I think one of the most interesting things that I have seen coming from outsourcing, is just how good US R&D is. Think about it. The only successful outsourcing is for either low-skilled jobs (customer service, rote programming, etc.) or, in a few instances, good R&D centers that complement, rather than compete with, U.S. based R&D. There are some very good R&D areas outside of the U.S., but they are few and far between. These countries are just beginning to learn how to harness technology and as such will take some time to learn how to become leaders in the fields.
But, at the same time, the U.S. can't just sit still. We need to get better, and I think that more people with broadband can help that, I don't believe that low broadband penetration means we are not the world's technological leader.
China is still in the infancy of technological revolution, but advancing rapidly. It will take some time though for them to move from a manufacturing center, to a design center. Just because you throw more people at a problem, doesn't mean it will get solved better.
they do most of their manufacturing and an increasing amount of their research overseas
Technological lead has nothing to do with manufacturing. And of course overseas research is increasing, you can't go lower than 0 which a lot of countries had not too long ago.
As much as the whining on slashdot would have you believe otherwise, the U.S. is a technological leader and a country that millions around the world want to come to. We have some of the best universities in the world. Have you ever noticed the number of foreign student's that come to the U.S. to study?
Technological lead, from a business perspective, means having the talent pool and the infrastructure to support research. This means having the universities (which we have), employees (which we have), high speed access (which we have, any business, pretty much in any location, can get a T1, etc.), reliable communications (there isn't a communications system in the world as reliable as the U.S. PSTN). What do we lack? People on farms and living hours outside of cities can't get broadband and can't access Youtube and Bittorrent? That doesn't prevent us from being the technological leader.
most of the news places that google links to are just repeaters for reuters and ap stories anyway
So then why doesn't google subscribe to these same services for the content, rather than piggyback on somebody elses subscription? They certainly have the money to do it.
If a defendant pleads guilty and is sentenced, they can't appeal that. What they can do is plead not guilty, and argue that the confession should not be used against them. They can appeal a verdict, not a plea.
Appeals are for appealing the verdict in a case. Not for appealing a confession. The argument that a confession was coerced will happen before sentencing, not after. In your scenario, the accused could plead not guilty, then argue that the confession was coerced at trial. But if they plead guilty, they aren't allowed to appeal that.
Because if they had wished to challenge the evidence, they would have had to take the case to court. Instead they came to a mutually agreed upon settlement. Once you settle, you agree to the terms. Period. A criminal who confesses to a crime, doesn't get to go back to court 6 months later and say "well, I was under a lot of stress, the evidence against me at the time looked good, but now I don't think it's as solid, can I please have a second chance? Pretty please?"
If the accused had doubt in the evidence, trial is where you attack it in our judicial system.
Slashdot Mirror
right on national television, the student stated that several members of the football team had been threatening to beat up the gun carrying student, and that the gun a carrying student had said he would shoot anyone that tried.
So what do we have here? We have a student's recounting of events (which may or may not be true - it was an interview, not sworn testimony) and absolutely no reference what-so-ever to administrators protecting the bully. In fact, you don't know that no punishment was given to the football team, and you also don't know that the story the kid gave on tv was actually verified in any way. Just because a student says the football team is bullying them, doesn't mean that the football team gets automatically expelled.
My problem with your post is that you imply that school administrators are protecting the bullies. You have not provided anything to substantiate this claim.
-dave
I know I'm going to get flagged as a troll or flamebait
By posting that, you knew you would be modded up, and not down.
this sort of legislative thinking is the natural product of electing liberals into office
Do you know how few liberals there are? I mean real liberals, not the moderates that are called liberals as a slur. A true liberal, Paul Wellstone for instance, truly believe that as a society, we can be better, and that we should strive for that. A true liberal is not the democrats currently elected (who are first and foremost politicians, not liberal).
True political conservatives (as opposed to moral conservatives or economic conservatives) believe that a good, basic set of principles as described in something like our Constitution should be all that we need to protect our freedoms and property. Any great body of laws beyond that is actually more likely to diminsh freedom and risk personal property than secure them. Unfortunately, the allure of the "just one more law will fix everything" siren is, for most people, irresistable.
You're right. We should stop trying to improve our nation. Why even try to lower crime, ensure children can get an education, or attempt to reduce poverty.
Basic sets of principles are great, when people follow them. We shouldn't need laws that state that murder is illegal, that you aren't to assault others, etc. Sad truth is that there are people out there who do these things. I was actually thinking about this this morning. Drunk driving. People should be allowed to drink, and they should be responsible for their actions, right? Unfortunately, it isn't that person who pays the price for driving drunk. All too often it's a victim in another vehicle, or crossing the street who pays the full price.
-dave
Of course those are those scenarios we see in popular media in which the child is bullied by a popular person who the school authorities are in league with.
If that is true then there is an underlying problem with society that we can't fix with my method or your method but rather actually passing laws that correct schools by firing school officials who do not correct bullying rather than this stupid cyber laws that are impossible to enforce against students.
Show me one example. Honestly, I'd like to see one story in "popular media" in which a the bully is protected by the school administration.
School officials and teachers hate bullies. Schools exist to educate. The effect of a bully is to prevent that education by intimidating classmates.
-dave
Yes, but they (being non-technical users) will download them from the approved (more to the point, the included) repositories instead of randomly from a website.
I think the download managers might help. But I don't think it'll stop people from downloading apps. Let's face it. I've told my father in law multiple times not to download and install crap, yet he still does, and his machine gets bogged down. Once Linux or OSX is used more, the software will be written for it. And there will be places to download the apps, and I think people still will.
The idea should be to get away from this "install something from random website" culture. I think non-technical users would be very happy to be given a list of "approved" software that they knew was free from spy/malware.
And the way you've phrased it here, I think will make the biggest difference. But why couldn't this be done for Windows? Set up a site with legitimate downloadable software, and have everything approved before being posted to it.
And my experience may be different from the typical user, but everytime I've played around with Linux, I've always had to download something from a non-official website (drivers, etc.), or have had to add repositories to the list. Which, if this was common, would mean that people would get used to downloading items or adding non-official repositories and we'd be back to square one.
So linux gives you a location of spyware-free software, but it's nothing that's unique to the OS, just it's implementation.
-dave
Its not difficult, most geeks could do it.
And how many of these geeks would do it? That's my point. The people who have these skills generally don't teach.
-dave
But since much spyware is "installed" by the user, when they install a program they want to install, would this change with a different OS? If people move to Linux, OSX, etc. they are still going to download and install programs. And if those programs have spyware bundled in with them, how will that change the malware situation?
Remote exploits are MS fault. Malware is not.
-dave
You don't have to tell me about it, my wife is a kindergarten teacher and has taught in the poorest districts and some extremely affluent areas as well. I have not met one teacher who did it for the money. My wife and I have similar educations (both master's degrees), both the same amount of experience, yet I earn more than twice what she does, and my earning potential is much, much, higher than hers.
My concern is not that teachers won't do it, it's that the people who have the skills and abilities to teach computers, won't turn to teaching. Basically, that people in my situation won't do it. I am an engineer, I'm more than qualified to teach any math or science in school, but there is no way I will do it. I won't take the pay cut, and I don't want to deal with the kids, and particularily their parents. I am not a teacher. It's just not in me. Those who are teachers, and do it because it's all they ever would want to do, don't tend to (I'm generalizing here, and I could be completely wrong, so please correct me if I am, but this is the case from what I've seen) have the background in computers that would be necessary to teach them.
-dave
The trick that adults give up on, is that children have a capacity to learn that can be untameable compared to adults. Add to the fact that they have all the time in the world to be a student (not like they have jobs or other responsibilities) and it's easy to see how they could pick up technology.
You focus on the student side of the equation, which I agree, has room for the information. But not on the teaching side. There is infrastructure required (classrooms, equipment, support), teachers required (salaries, benefits, substitutes), etc.
But figure this out, you can do things like English and most sciences, with a computer. Typing up an essay, running numbers through a spreadsheet to get standard deviation, etc. Most uni students I know, have to have crash courses in computers because their professors expect them to use things like Fortran, maple, magma, etc.
Maybe my education was different. But we did utilize computers early on. I remember as early as first grade (1986) going to the computer lab to create a project on the computer (which to a six year old was an amazing and magic machine). This continued throughout my education. My high school actually did offer quite a few computer/technology courses, but they suffered by not having appropriate teachers. One course (something like writing for the world wide web or something - introductory web design) I "taught" because the teacher early on realized that I had more experience than he did in the subject.
I also wonder about the university students. I'm an engineer, which meant that I used a hell of a lot of Maple and Matlab during school. Crash courses weren't offered. If you are in a curriculum that relies so heavily on technology, you should have a basic understanding of technology (whether it's from high school courses, learning on your own, etc.). I don't think we need crash courses at a university level.
But once you hit highschool, things like statistics are largely just a manual labour job and not actually a comprehension job. like I know how the standard deviation works, but if you ask me to figure it out for a set of 30 numbers, I'm likely to typo a calculation or two.
My wife teaches reading. And to me (being the engineer), I didn't understand exactly what she was teaching. I figured, they learn the letters, the sounds, the words, the meanings. Simple. Turns out, there is a lot more to it than what I could think of. Same thing with math. It's amazing the number of people who can't get a rough idea of a valid answer. Your example of calculating the standard deviation by hand. Yeah, it's manual labor, you'd probably never do it in the real world. But, it does teach something. It is (according to a junior high math teacher) useful for teaching students how to estimate whether their answers are correct. In other words, ensuring they aren't off by an order of magnitude, and that the answer makes sense.
It isn't like computers are going to "go away" nor become any less entrenched in our society. So why not make it a part (but not the whole part) of the student experience?
You are absolutely correct. Computer skills are becoming more and more valuable all of the time. But a lot more students nowadays have access to computers without a specific computer course. Just about everybody has a home computer (obviously, this is going to vary due to socio-economic demographics). Most libraries have computers for anybody to use (and at least mine offers courses on how to use them). It's a different situation than it was when we grew up.
-dave
So why is making it a mandatory part of the high school [or better yet elementary] curriculum such a bad idea? Of course, I'd love to see such curriculum not focus solely on Windows, maybe through in OS X and a Linux distro for good measure.
I would love to see computers taught more in schools, but there are a couple of problems with doing it right now (which isn't to say in 5 years these problems will still exist).
First of all, schools need to teach reading, writing, arithmetic, science, etc. You get the idea. Now you want to add an additional required subject to this. Keep in mind that everything that is being required to be taught, is being required to be tested. So, you mandate that schools spend an hour every week teaching computers. Where does that hour come from? Math? Science? And what happens when the students aren't doing as well on the standardized tests in the subject you've replaced? That's right, the teachers and schools get blamed, never mind the fact that a change was forced upon them.
Second, and in my opinion, the real problem. Who will teach these courses? Most people who are knowledgable enough to teach these courses, don't teach. They can make much more money working elsewhere, and not have to deal with kids. Retraining teachers to teach computers could work, especially for basic tasks, but for more advanced subjects, they will not be adequate.
Third, exactly what do you teach? Not to install stupid programs? That's the biggest problem right there. It isn't that Windows is inherently insecure, most people use a firewall router, run anti-virus, etc. to protect there systems. The problem is that these people are infecting their systems through actions that they have taken.
I think it's important to teach computers, and not windows, but again, it's going to take somebody who knows what they are doing. And these people generally don't want to teach high school students when they could be making two to three times as much working elsewhere. To teach OSX, you now need additional hardware or you could use all Mac hardware (wouldn't Apple just love that) and install linux and Windows. So if you want to teach OSX, you've now tied the hands of the district and they can not look for competing vendors, they now must purchase hardware from Apple.
-dave
Convenience for the customer (could) mean more customers.
I don't carry cash. I charge everything. It keeps my purchases easy to categorize in Quicken, and if there is a problem, I have the security of being able to do a chargeback (retailer won't follow their return policy, etc.). If a store doesn't accept credit cards, I don't shop there. Period.
But like you said, the merchant has a choice whether or not to accept credit cards. If the costs are too high, then they shouldn't accept them.
-dave
As a former retailer, I very well know the frustrations of a chargeback that comes out of no-were. As a consumer, I've found that it's quite easy to deny a charge for very little reason.
It's also quite easy to shoplift from a lot of stores, to back into somebody's car and just drive off, etc. Just because something is easy, doesn't mean that people take advantage of it.
Every chargeback I have made has been completely legitimate. One of the reasons I pay for everything on a credit card is that security it provides me. Once a merchant didn't want to obey their return policy, so I left the store and disputed the charge, got my money back. Another time, a service provider decided he deserved more of a tip than I gave them (he even called me after the chargeback and tried to argue that he deserved the additional money), again, I got my money back. I don't bother arguing with customer service anymore. If they don't follow their own return policy, I'll say thank you, walk out, and dispute the charge.
Sure, if the system is being abused, then I feel bad for the merchant. I don't personally know the percentage of instances where a chargeback is not warranted, but given to the consumer, but if as a merchant it costs you too much, don't accept credit cards.
-dave
It's a cost of doing business and a problem that they have to consider. Just like a retail business has to determine if the cost of a storefront and physical presence is worth the cost. If they don't like the risk, don't accept credit cards or don't set up shop.
-dave
If you don't like the system, don't accept the credit cards. Nobody is requiring you to. If you get chargebacks, that's part of the cost of doing business and you have to determine whether or not that is acceptable.
-dave
Or just let the market forces work it out. When it becomes reasonably compelling to replace incandescent with fluorescent, people will do it. Until that point, why screw with it with legislation? It's not like fluorescent or incandescent is a decision that will decide the fate of the planet.
That can be true when you are paying the actual cost for your decision. At least in the U.S. though, most items that are bad for the environment don't factor that cost into the purchasing price. Gasoline is one example where we are only paying for the product, and not it's environmental effects.
-dave
Are you denying that (a) the light looks different (whether ugly or not is subjective) (b) they take a significant time to reach their full brightness?
The light does look different, which is why I replaced most of my light bulbs with CFL, but not all.
But in terms of the significant time to reach full brightness. That's something I haven't noticed. I'm not saying it's not true, but when we switched over, I never noticed it.
-dave
For proof, see original article.
Apparently you haven't read the original article. Since it wasn't an article, merely a sensationalist blurb to try to get you to buy the paper and read the article. There were no facts, no details. It's sensationalism, and that's all.
-dave
If you bother to follow the link to the article, it is a short summary, followed by mentioning that if you'd like to read the article (as in, you know, the news, and hopefully some details), to go get the paper.
Creating a front-page Slashdot story out of this is just plain stupid.
Find an actual article with some facts, or don't post the story. Sure, it's common on slashdot to think that the police are out to get you, but there is no reason to believe that the summary is in any way an accurate portrayal of the situation.
-dave
I agree that our lead is diminishing. But part of that is due to the fact that countries that couldn't compete, now can. You have more supply of technical talent, and that increase is coming from outside the U.S., therefore the supply of technical talent, percentage wise in the U.S. is decreasing.
I think one of the most interesting things that I have seen coming from outsourcing, is just how good US R&D is. Think about it. The only successful outsourcing is for either low-skilled jobs (customer service, rote programming, etc.) or, in a few instances, good R&D centers that complement, rather than compete with, U.S. based R&D. There are some very good R&D areas outside of the U.S., but they are few and far between. These countries are just beginning to learn how to harness technology and as such will take some time to learn how to become leaders in the fields.
But, at the same time, the U.S. can't just sit still. We need to get better, and I think that more people with broadband can help that, I don't believe that low broadband penetration means we are not the world's technological leader.
China is still in the infancy of technological revolution, but advancing rapidly. It will take some time though for them to move from a manufacturing center, to a design center. Just because you throw more people at a problem, doesn't mean it will get solved better.
-dave
http://earth.esa.int/applications/dm/archdm/disman /db/synthesis_reports/SRCanada.html: Look at figure 3.
a ndsociety/population/population2001/density2001 gives some general information.
and http://www.canadainfolink.ca/chartten.htm
or http://www.britannica.com/eb/art-71476
http://atlas.nrcan.gc.ca/site/english/maps/people
-dave
Unfortunately broadband is becoming a 'need' much like cable television.
Maybe I misunderstood you, but I wouldn't consider broadband or cable tv as needed.
-dave
they do most of their manufacturing and an increasing amount of their research overseas
Technological lead has nothing to do with manufacturing. And of course overseas research is increasing, you can't go lower than 0 which a lot of countries had not too long ago.
As much as the whining on slashdot would have you believe otherwise, the U.S. is a technological leader and a country that millions around the world want to come to. We have some of the best universities in the world. Have you ever noticed the number of foreign student's that come to the U.S. to study?
Technological lead, from a business perspective, means having the talent pool and the infrastructure to support research. This means having the universities (which we have), employees (which we have), high speed access (which we have, any business, pretty much in any location, can get a T1, etc.), reliable communications (there isn't a communications system in the world as reliable as the U.S. PSTN). What do we lack? People on farms and living hours outside of cities can't get broadband and can't access Youtube and Bittorrent? That doesn't prevent us from being the technological leader.
-dave
most of the news places that google links to are just repeaters for reuters and ap stories anyway
So then why doesn't google subscribe to these same services for the content, rather than piggyback on somebody elses subscription? They certainly have the money to do it.
-dave
If a defendant pleads guilty and is sentenced, they can't appeal that. What they can do is plead not guilty, and argue that the confession should not be used against them. They can appeal a verdict, not a plea.
-dave
Appeals are for appealing the verdict in a case. Not for appealing a confession. The argument that a confession was coerced will happen before sentencing, not after. In your scenario, the accused could plead not guilty, then argue that the confession was coerced at trial. But if they plead guilty, they aren't allowed to appeal that.
-dave
Because if they had wished to challenge the evidence, they would have had to take the case to court. Instead they came to a mutually agreed upon settlement. Once you settle, you agree to the terms. Period. A criminal who confesses to a crime, doesn't get to go back to court 6 months later and say "well, I was under a lot of stress, the evidence against me at the time looked good, but now I don't think it's as solid, can I please have a second chance? Pretty please?"
If the accused had doubt in the evidence, trial is where you attack it in our judicial system.
-dave