I never understood the reasoning behind the time based password change. No one expects people to get a new key every six months for their home lock. No one expects someone to get a new ATM card every 6 months.
Physical tokens like keys don't require such frequent replacement because (in general) they are difficult to compromise without alerting the holder. Someone has to actually steal your key and take it to the hardware store without you noticing. Passwords, on the other hand, can be shoulder surfed, socially engineered, stolen with malware, stored in plain text in the database, shared with someone else, etc., and the user may have no clue his password is compromised.
Also, if someone steals your key and robs your house, and there was no sign of forced entry, you probably would change the locks. But someone with your password could log in as you without you noticing for... well, maybe forever, depending on the system.
I agree it can be overdone, but it is a good security practice and there is some logic behind it.
I'll second that and also put in my own vote for Flip Cup. It's a drinking game; I'm sure everyone has their own way of playing, but the rules are not terribly important. The reason I vote for Flip Cup is because it finally got my wife to start drinking beer. "AT LAST! Now we can share everything!"
I don't think this is what's meant by a "riddle." Your example is a test of specific knowledge, which may be highly relevant to the position. For instance, I would expect anyone applying for a sysadmin job to, in 15 minutes or less, be able to write a short shell script that moves some files, changing their names in the process. Everyday tasks aren't the kind of abstract riddles being discussed here.
Riddle solving evens the playing field for those that are skilled but may not have the resume to reflect their skill level.
It sounds like you're referring to people without experience. Otherwise, I don't see how you can be skilled and not have the resume to reflect it. I also don't see how riddles make a difference one way or the other. There will always be entry level applicants; why force the riddle on the majority of applicants who are bringing at least some experience to the job?
I think most that dont like the idea arent comfortable with the idea that someone with a lesser resume might actually be better in real world situations.
Well, duh. I don't see how it's a good hiring practice to hire someone with no experience who can solve a riddle in 10 minutes, instead of the guy with 10 years experience who just doesn't "get" the riddle. Perhaps the first guy is really smart and will pay off in the long term, but maybe the second guy has the skills the company needs right now. Shouldn't hiring tests be based on something the company actually does, rather than an abstract test?
You make a good point, but there's a big difference between solving riddles on the spot and solving programming or sysadmin problems. Most people, especially those with some experience, are a lot better at solving concrete real-world problems than some contrived abstract example. Why, for instance, is the light-bulb riddle (usually attributed to Microsoft) a better test of programming skill? Why not ask someone to pseudo-design an enterprise application given some generic requirements?
"Brain dead?" Come on. A felony conviction is often an automatic disqualifier, full stop. Lesser convictions might be too depending on the position and company. It's nice to feel sorry for people who made a bad decision once and want a second chance, but when you have 10 other similarly qualified applicants in the queue who have no criminal convictions, the criminal's application is going to be the first one tossed in the circular file.
Just to point out a hole here... 50k copies of a newsletter is 50k copies, whether you push them out with SMTP, or whether they're pulled out by the customer clicking on a Web link that's in a notification message you send. The first method merely makes it easier to control outgoing traffic on your side, but you could do the same by throttling the notification list to avoid sending all 50k notifications at once to avoid the/. effect. If you don't have the bandwidth, you're going to have problems no matter what. You can argue that SMTP guarantees that no one can take down your link, but I can argue that SMTP ensures that plenty of people will get your newsletter hours or days late, which may be unacceptable.
To me, DJB's IM2000 doesn't sound all that different than a message queue system like JMS (publisher-subscriber). It also sounds similar to RSS. Either way, it puts the responsibility of delivery squarely on the sender rather than the recipient. At some point, a "message" gets too big, and you're better off sending the recipient a simple notification of something new rather than the entire thing.
Thank you, indeed it has already been pointed out. And I'm glad to know that the limited liability was not what I thought it was, although now I'm going to have to find out exactly what it is that is "limited" in a "limited liability partnership" since I've seen lots of them recently. Maybe, "My partner did that, you cannot sue me"?
I'm also curious about the elimination of the limit to liability of investors. Regardless of endangering the business model called "stock exchange", what if investors had to actually be careful about what they were buying into? That doesn't sound like such a bad idea.
Well, I'd first argue that they already have to be careful, since if they're not they can still lose whatever they invested. Also, requiring investors to assume liability simply discourages investment. Who'd want that kind of risk for the relatively small returns of the overall stock market? The only industry that comes to mind is nuclear power, where power plant operators in the US are required to assume unlimited liability in case of an accident. That may be sound policy, but it obviously scares investors.
Want to really put the screws to "corporate executive" crime? Then eliminate the government granted limited liability that a "corporation" represents. Allow thereby the officers of a company to be directly liable for their decisions, their accounting practices, their performance.
The "limited liability" you speak of applies to shareholders, not officers. The distinction is an important one, as they are not always the same people. If I buy 100 shares of Microsoft, my liability is limited to my investment. A plaintiff cannot sue me as a shareholder. I do not think the stock market would do too well if any shareholder of any company could be sued due to actions taken by the company.
Corporate officers do not have "limited" liability in this sense. They have been prosecuted, with varying degrees of success, for crimes committed on behalf of their employer. They can be sued, although most large companies provide legal representation and indemnification to their officers for actions taken in the corporate name. As an example, if a company fails to remit payroll taxes withheld for employees, the IRS can go after the corporate officers personally to attempt to collect the taxes. The IRS cannot, however, go after shareholders.
While on the subject, if it's not too terribly off-topic, what do people use to bill based on network usage (MRTG, RRD). Both claim that you should NOT bill off of that information, but I have yet to find any other open source solution.
Both are correct: you should not bill off plain RRD-based formats, as old data is removed over time, meaning your "95th percentile" isn't valid anymore. The main reasons this is acceptable in most cases are: 1) most people just want pretty graphs and don't need to do usage based billing; 2) the RRD file will remain a constant size forever and won't fill up the disk.
For real billing, I use RTG (http://rtg.sourceforge.net/) which stores all samples in MySQL. It should be safe to run it side by side with MRTG or Cacti or whatever. It still has the same averaging functionality for graphing, but it never removes old samples from the database so you can run complete usage reports. The downside is that the data will grow without bound, so you'll need to keep an eye on the DB (although mine's only growing about 4 MB/month).
Precisely. It's one thing to slack when your direct boss is around. He knows you personally, he knows if you're capable or not, and even if he catches you slacking when you shouldn't be, he'll probably let you off with a reminder to get back to work (assuming he doesn't catch you all the time).
It's quite another to slack so obviously when the CEO (or mayor) is around, with press & photogs in tow. It shows that you aren't even smart enough to *pretend* to work when the situation calls for it. I mean, how hard is it to remember the "boss key?"
More importantly, playing games shows that you don't care if you make the CEO look bad because his employees aren't working. That's WAY worse than just idling. Hell, even sleeping at your desk probably wouldn't be as bad as playing games; at least you could come up with an excuse for sleeping, like "I had a late night running the latest polling numbers."
sheesh.. mod -1 arrogant. Really, how is this any different from saying "Well, I'm all done with school, time to go watch some ballet/go windsurfing/play chess?" Are those learning activities or mere entertainment? Insulting people for wanting to enjoy their downtime in their own way is the height of arrogance.
Anyway, most people spend plenty of time "learning." They learn how to get a job, how to do the job once they get it, how to handle additional tasks at the job, etc. They learn how to enjoy their leisure time more, perhaps by practicing a sport. Maybe they just read or watch TV and learn about the world. Maybe, unlike you, they aren't INTERESTED in computers, or cars, or whatever. Maybe they view them as simple utilitarian tools, or maybe they have better things to do with their time. I know plenty about cars and engines, but I'd much rather pay the shop $15 to change the oil in my car than deal with it myself.
The cancerous people you refer to might even be like me, and be sick and freaking tired of being forced to learn every stupid computer trick just to be able to surf the Internet safely, or to learn every fad computer language just to get a decent paying job. It has nothing to do with an unwillingness to learn and everything to do with gross inefficiency. At some point, one needs to stop learning and start doing in order to get anything done.
My question is -- why do all these innovations come from governments? Are there regulations or requirements that prevent private investment into the new inventions?
I'm not an expert by any means, but I'd summarize the reasons as:
1) Launches should take place somewhat near the equator, and not over populated areas, limiting the number of launch sites. Maybe not a huge concern since the use of already established launch sites could be negotiated.
2) Private space programs need to be organized in countries with free market systems that encourage investment and risk taking, again limiting the number of suitable places to run this sort of thing.
3) In the US, space travel falls under the purview of the FAA, meaning any space tourism is going to be at least as regulated as airline travel. I want to see space too, but if I have to take off my freaking shoes to go through security, I may say screw it and use a telescope.
4) No one can quantify (or at least, no one has yet) the expected ROI for something like this. Any number of companies (Microsoft, Dell, etc.) could drop $1 billion cash into space travel without much pain, start a space tourism business and probably make it work, at least on some level. The problem is that the shareholders aren't going to be to happy about it without knowing what they can expect to make in the long run.
Zillionaires like Branson can afford to do this kind of thing now but there aren't many people like that in the world. However, I don't think it will be too long before major private investment efforts are made. Someone came up with the $7b for Iridium; I'm sure someone else can find that kind of money for private space travel.
Dear Slashdot Editors:
I realize that readers don't have to read the articles before getting hysterical. But would it be too much to ask for the EDITORS to do a little critical thinking?
Love and kisses.
I used to be a frat boy (Tau Epsilon Phi) so I speak from experience. The "Greek System" was initially formed at most schools as a brotherhood organization, comparable (I guess) to the Freemasons or Shriners. In the modern era at US colleges, fraternities seem to exist mainly for the purpose of enabling underage drinking. Europeans are apparently amazed by the whole thing, but they forget that the drinking age is 21 in most of the US, and that is pretty well enforced in most places. I went to Europe when I was 17 and had no problem buying beer. Japan has beer vending machines on the streets. In America, it is not always trivial to buy alcohol if you're not of legal age (yes, you can get a fake ID, but that's not really "trivial"). For many college students, the easiest way to get a beer on Friday night is to hit up a frat party. Naturally, it's a good place to meet college girls as well...
interesting. To be honest, I've never tried to change chips at a different casino from where I bought them. The situation just never presented itself (I'm pretty good about cashing out every time) and I figured they were serious about the sign that said "we don't take other casino chips." But I guess cash is cash and surely there are "arrangements" between the big names to exchange each other's chips.
You are also quite right about the roulette and poker chips. They don't even let me leave the table with the roulette chips:)
Hoppers don't count chips. They count real and casino coins and sort them by size, weight, and/or electrical characteristics. It's been possible to sort chips optically (by color) for a long time, and it's probably much faster than with RF. Every RFID reader I've seen has a certain minimum amount of time required to analyze the device, and taking even 1 second per chip in a hopper is waaaay too long.
Moreover, the usage pattern of chips that I've seen avoids automatic sorting, and as in many jobs that handle money, manual counts are the rule rather than the exception.
At the table, the dealer keeps the chips sorted in a little tray. When there's no dealer, the tray is locked up with a little piece of paper showing the chip count. Every time I've seen it, this chip count is done by hand, signed by the dealer and countersigned by the pit boss. When you take your chips to the cashier's cage, they count and sort them by hand, give you your cash, and then place the chips into sorted trays, ready to be taken back to a table. There aren't really any areas where massive automated counting of clay chips is required. Casino coins are a different story, but those are different sizes and can be counted like regular coins.
These new chips probably won't use RFID to identify themselves, although that's certainly possible. It's much more about learning what the customer does with the chips, and how they move through the casino.
I live in Las Vegas. It is perfectly legal in Nevada to take chips with you outside the casino. Chips are not legal tender and are not, to my knowledge, accepted by any reputable businesses in town, although some places near certain big name casinos might take them instead of cash (but I doubt it). Usually they aren't even accepted at stores, gift shops or bars inside the casino/hotel. They are strictly for gaming.
With no or very few exceptions (I'm not aware of any), one casino won't accept another's chips, so the only place you can exchange chips for cash is at the cashier's cage in the casino where you actually bought the chips. Besides the obvious concern of fake chips, casinos must remain independent of each other. Allowing chip exchanges between casinos would have the net effect of commingling funds, which is a big no-no.
RFID chips are a data mining tool, not a security device. People come to Vegas to have a good time, not get frisked at every exit for a stray $5 chip. The casinos will never check people for chips on the way out; customers wouldn't stand for it. Chips are free casino advertising right in your pocket, and it's not like people won't bring them back eventually.
A heavier vehicle will no doubt put more wear on the road than a lighter one. Considering the difference in gas mileage in a Prius and a Chevy Avalanche (ok, that's what I drive), the Avalanche driver will be paying quite a bit more in gas taxes (not unfairly).
But I don't think the big problem is road wear caused by less efficient passenger vehicles, even in the aggregate. The roads are built to last a certain number of years under a HEAVY flow of traffic, and after 5-10 years they get resurfaced regardless of what condition they're in. In any case, my truck still weighs only about 5300 pounds empty, and those dump trucks and 18-wheelers that plow the roads every day almost certainly cause more wear and tear than my little truck.
The bigger problem, at least in SoCal, is the sheer number of vehicles on the freeways. When you look at it this way, it actually makes more sense for the state to tax by the mile, as that would (in theory) fulfill the public policy goal of reducing the total number of miles driven, and maybe getting people to carpool and use more public transit. Fuel taxes only encourage people to use more efficient vehicles; they don't encourage people to make fewer trips.
Personally, I think they could do this a lot more easily and with less intrusion on privacy by just making all the freeways toll roads, with different rates based on the time of day. But that's another argument for another day.
You Righties see America as something to which you owe loyalty
Guilty as charged. I am a proud American and I am loyal to my country. Is the point of your contrast to say that the Left feels no such loyalty to America?
However, we Lefties see America as the property of its citizens
Preposterous. You see the citizens as the property of America, and by extension, citizens' property as America's property. That's why you and your Leftie friends keep taking ever increasing amounts of my property for use by the rest of America.
We on the Left see humans as something above animals, and to a great extent we reject animal tradition, and seek a new organization, one that minimizes hierarchy
Yep. Make everyone equal, in law and in fact, no matter what it takes. Keep down anyone who tries to peek their head up, lest they spoil the enforced equality.
just so we're clear: I am speculating about these events. I don't have any more information than anyone else here.
if you stood outside the entrance, took photos of the people going in and published them, would that be the same thing? if its a public place whats the problem?
Photos in a public setting are one thing; there is no reasonable expectation of privacy. And publishing a list of names and photos is probably okay, as long as all the people are public or semi-public figures. But publishing home addresses, phone numbers, etc., strikes me as going beyond the bounds of legitimate disclosure of public information.
A previous poster used the example of publishing the names & addresses of doctors who perform abortions. I have no doubt that the press would be up in arms about such a list. It is difficult to see how the public interest is served by such information, and it is rather easy to argue for the possibilities of intimidation from such a list.
rant:
Free speech is not, and has never been, an absolute right. With great power comes great responsibility. You can't shout "fire" in a crowded theater. You can't publish libelous information. You can't print newspaper articles calling for the head of the president on a pike, or for violent overthrow of your local government. (Actually, you CAN do all these things, but you will be held responsible for the consequences of your actions, and you will not be allowed to hide behind the 1st Amendment.) The distribution of lists such as these, with detailed personal information, serves no legitimate purpose and can easily lead to criminal activity. Not to put too fine a point on it, but these are precisely the kind of tactics of intimidation and fear that the Nazis relied on to stay in power.
has there been intimidation? or is this just fear because its the republicans in power?
Given the size of the list of delegates, the number of people who participated in protests, the number of people who hit indymedia's sites, the lack of any logging information on indymedia, the unlikelihood of cooperation on the part of indymedia.. I would say it's not only possible, but quite probable that someone, somewhere, made a threat against one of the delegates.
Probably just dumb kids getting stoned and playing "let's make a fake death threat" on the voicemail of the GOP mayor of Podunk, Kansas. But it's a threat nonetheless and must be investigated. I would even go so far as to speculate that the seizure is not prior restraint, but might actually be the collection of evidence to be used in a trial.
The umich.edu links belong to Fred Niell, who I went to high school with (I'm '94, he's '95). I can attest to the success of his cyclotron, which was initially completed when he was a sophomore (!) and then improved when he was a junior. At least 1 version, maybe both, I can't remember, won a well-deserved national science award.
It was truly embarassing to be forced to enter a science project against his in our high school science fair. I offered to write a research paper instead, but our physics teacher was having none of it. My project was a Radio Shack breadboard with a couple of IC's that managed to record and playback about 10 seconds of sound onto the chip. Clever, I thought, but against a freaking cyclotron? I felt like the Bad News Bears against the Yankees.
The Apollo projects cost hundreds of millions (in 1994 $, over $1 billion PER MISSION).
Granted, we've made significant accomplishments in space travel since then, and the cost per shuttle mission is surely less (I seem to recall around $10 million per, but I can't find any numbers). But still... only $88 million to get to the moon? Where exactly are they going to save money?
Of course, India is a very populous nation. Perhaps they're losing money on every mission, but they're going to make it up on volume.
Thanks for clouding the issue with a completely unrelated case. Internet traffic will NEVER be viewed as originating and terminating completely in a single state. "The Internet", as we know it, is an interstate communications medium. It relies on a multitude of networks, most of which transit multiple states. It therefore CAN be regulated by the federal government, through the FCC. If you are suggesting the FCC is somehow unconstitutional... well, have fun with that.
Perhaps you're suggesting that the FCC doesn't have the right to regulate private, in-state networks. You might be right, but no one in their right mind would consider such private networks to be "the Internet." You might also say that states can regulate the intrastate portion of Internet traffic, as they do with intrastate phone calls. However, if ANY portion of the traffic is interstate, it can be regulated by the FCC.
I have a pretty good feeling that you will contact at least 1 DNS/Web/email/whatever server that is outside your state every time you use the Internet. And even if you don't, I have no doubt that any "Internet" provider will make sure it is located in multiple states, so that it can be regulated under federal law rather than have to deal with a patchwork of state regulations.
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I never understood the reasoning behind the time based password change. No one expects people to get a new key every six months for their home lock. No one expects someone to get a new ATM card every 6 months.
Physical tokens like keys don't require such frequent replacement because (in general) they are difficult to compromise without alerting the holder. Someone has to actually steal your key and take it to the hardware store without you noticing. Passwords, on the other hand, can be shoulder surfed, socially engineered, stolen with malware, stored in plain text in the database, shared with someone else, etc., and the user may have no clue his password is compromised. Also, if someone steals your key and robs your house, and there was no sign of forced entry, you probably would change the locks. But someone with your password could log in as you without you noticing for... well, maybe forever, depending on the system. I agree it can be overdone, but it is a good security practice and there is some logic behind it.
I'll second that and also put in my own vote for Flip Cup. It's a drinking game; I'm sure everyone has their own way of playing, but the rules are not terribly important. The reason I vote for Flip Cup is because it finally got my wife to start drinking beer. "AT LAST! Now we can share everything!"
VHS is dead because it's actually pretty easy to transfer your Tivo shows off the hard drive. All you need is a VCR, and...
Oh, wait.
I don't think this is what's meant by a "riddle." Your example is a test of specific knowledge, which may be highly relevant to the position. For instance, I would expect anyone applying for a sysadmin job to, in 15 minutes or less, be able to write a short shell script that moves some files, changing their names in the process. Everyday tasks aren't the kind of abstract riddles being discussed here.
You make a good point, but there's a big difference between solving riddles on the spot and solving programming or sysadmin problems. Most people, especially those with some experience, are a lot better at solving concrete real-world problems than some contrived abstract example. Why, for instance, is the light-bulb riddle (usually attributed to Microsoft) a better test of programming skill? Why not ask someone to pseudo-design an enterprise application given some generic requirements?
"Brain dead?" Come on. A felony conviction is often an automatic disqualifier, full stop. Lesser convictions might be too depending on the position and company. It's nice to feel sorry for people who made a bad decision once and want a second chance, but when you have 10 other similarly qualified applicants in the queue who have no criminal convictions, the criminal's application is going to be the first one tossed in the circular file.
To me, DJB's IM2000 doesn't sound all that different than a message queue system like JMS (publisher-subscriber). It also sounds similar to RSS. Either way, it puts the responsibility of delivery squarely on the sender rather than the recipient. At some point, a "message" gets too big, and you're better off sending the recipient a simple notification of something new rather than the entire thing.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Partnership should answer your questions.
I'm also curious about the elimination of the limit to liability of investors. Regardless of endangering the business model called "stock exchange", what if investors had to actually be careful about what they were buying into? That doesn't sound like such a bad idea.
Well, I'd first argue that they already have to be careful, since if they're not they can still lose whatever they invested. Also, requiring investors to assume liability simply discourages investment. Who'd want that kind of risk for the relatively small returns of the overall stock market? The only industry that comes to mind is nuclear power, where power plant operators in the US are required to assume unlimited liability in case of an accident. That may be sound policy, but it obviously scares investors.
The "limited liability" you speak of applies to shareholders, not officers. The distinction is an important one, as they are not always the same people. If I buy 100 shares of Microsoft, my liability is limited to my investment. A plaintiff cannot sue me as a shareholder. I do not think the stock market would do too well if any shareholder of any company could be sued due to actions taken by the company.
Corporate officers do not have "limited" liability in this sense. They have been prosecuted, with varying degrees of success, for crimes committed on behalf of their employer. They can be sued, although most large companies provide legal representation and indemnification to their officers for actions taken in the corporate name. As an example, if a company fails to remit payroll taxes withheld for employees, the IRS can go after the corporate officers personally to attempt to collect the taxes. The IRS cannot, however, go after shareholders.
Both are correct: you should not bill off plain RRD-based formats, as old data is removed over time, meaning your "95th percentile" isn't valid anymore. The main reasons this is acceptable in most cases are: 1) most people just want pretty graphs and don't need to do usage based billing; 2) the RRD file will remain a constant size forever and won't fill up the disk.
For real billing, I use RTG (http://rtg.sourceforge.net/) which stores all samples in MySQL. It should be safe to run it side by side with MRTG or Cacti or whatever. It still has the same averaging functionality for graphing, but it never removes old samples from the database so you can run complete usage reports. The downside is that the data will grow without bound, so you'll need to keep an eye on the DB (although mine's only growing about 4 MB/month).
Precisely. It's one thing to slack when your direct boss is around. He knows you personally, he knows if you're capable or not, and even if he catches you slacking when you shouldn't be, he'll probably let you off with a reminder to get back to work (assuming he doesn't catch you all the time).
It's quite another to slack so obviously when the CEO (or mayor) is around, with press & photogs in tow. It shows that you aren't even smart enough to *pretend* to work when the situation calls for it. I mean, how hard is it to remember the "boss key?"
More importantly, playing games shows that you don't care if you make the CEO look bad because his employees aren't working. That's WAY worse than just idling. Hell, even sleeping at your desk probably wouldn't be as bad as playing games; at least you could come up with an excuse for sleeping, like "I had a late night running the latest polling numbers."
sheesh.. mod -1 arrogant. Really, how is this any different from saying "Well, I'm all done with school, time to go watch some ballet/go windsurfing/play chess?" Are those learning activities or mere entertainment? Insulting people for wanting to enjoy their downtime in their own way is the height of arrogance.
Anyway, most people spend plenty of time "learning." They learn how to get a job, how to do the job once they get it, how to handle additional tasks at the job, etc. They learn how to enjoy their leisure time more, perhaps by practicing a sport. Maybe they just read or watch TV and learn about the world. Maybe, unlike you, they aren't INTERESTED in computers, or cars, or whatever. Maybe they view them as simple utilitarian tools, or maybe they have better things to do with their time. I know plenty about cars and engines, but I'd much rather pay the shop $15 to change the oil in my car than deal with it myself.
The cancerous people you refer to might even be like me, and be sick and freaking tired of being forced to learn every stupid computer trick just to be able to surf the Internet safely, or to learn every fad computer language just to get a decent paying job. It has nothing to do with an unwillingness to learn and everything to do with gross inefficiency. At some point, one needs to stop learning and start doing in order to get anything done.
I'm not an expert by any means, but I'd summarize the reasons as:
1) Launches should take place somewhat near the equator, and not over populated areas, limiting the number of launch sites. Maybe not a huge concern since the use of already established launch sites could be negotiated.
2) Private space programs need to be organized in countries with free market systems that encourage investment and risk taking, again limiting the number of suitable places to run this sort of thing.
3) In the US, space travel falls under the purview of the FAA, meaning any space tourism is going to be at least as regulated as airline travel. I want to see space too, but if I have to take off my freaking shoes to go through security, I may say screw it and use a telescope.
4) No one can quantify (or at least, no one has yet) the expected ROI for something like this. Any number of companies (Microsoft, Dell, etc.) could drop $1 billion cash into space travel without much pain, start a space tourism business and probably make it work, at least on some level. The problem is that the shareholders aren't going to be to happy about it without knowing what they can expect to make in the long run.
Zillionaires like Branson can afford to do this kind of thing now but there aren't many people like that in the world. However, I don't think it will be too long before major private investment efforts are made. Someone came up with the $7b for Iridium; I'm sure someone else can find that kind of money for private space travel.
Dear Slashdot Editors: I realize that readers don't have to read the articles before getting hysterical. But would it be too much to ask for the EDITORS to do a little critical thinking? Love and kisses.
I used to be a frat boy (Tau Epsilon Phi) so I speak from experience. The "Greek System" was initially formed at most schools as a brotherhood organization, comparable (I guess) to the Freemasons or Shriners. In the modern era at US colleges, fraternities seem to exist mainly for the purpose of enabling underage drinking. Europeans are apparently amazed by the whole thing, but they forget that the drinking age is 21 in most of the US, and that is pretty well enforced in most places. I went to Europe when I was 17 and had no problem buying beer. Japan has beer vending machines on the streets. In America, it is not always trivial to buy alcohol if you're not of legal age (yes, you can get a fake ID, but that's not really "trivial"). For many college students, the easiest way to get a beer on Friday night is to hit up a frat party. Naturally, it's a good place to meet college girls as well...
interesting. To be honest, I've never tried to change chips at a different casino from where I bought them. The situation just never presented itself (I'm pretty good about cashing out every time) and I figured they were serious about the sign that said "we don't take other casino chips." But I guess cash is cash and surely there are "arrangements" between the big names to exchange each other's chips.
:)
You are also quite right about the roulette and poker chips. They don't even let me leave the table with the roulette chips
Hoppers don't count chips. They count real and casino coins and sort them by size, weight, and/or electrical characteristics. It's been possible to sort chips optically (by color) for a long time, and it's probably much faster than with RF. Every RFID reader I've seen has a certain minimum amount of time required to analyze the device, and taking even 1 second per chip in a hopper is waaaay too long.
Moreover, the usage pattern of chips that I've seen avoids automatic sorting, and as in many jobs that handle money, manual counts are the rule rather than the exception.
At the table, the dealer keeps the chips sorted in a little tray. When there's no dealer, the tray is locked up with a little piece of paper showing the chip count. Every time I've seen it, this chip count is done by hand, signed by the dealer and countersigned by the pit boss. When you take your chips to the cashier's cage, they count and sort them by hand, give you your cash, and then place the chips into sorted trays, ready to be taken back to a table. There aren't really any areas where massive automated counting of clay chips is required. Casino coins are a different story, but those are different sizes and can be counted like regular coins.
These new chips probably won't use RFID to identify themselves, although that's certainly possible. It's much more about learning what the customer does with the chips, and how they move through the casino.
I live in Las Vegas. It is perfectly legal in Nevada to take chips with you outside the casino. Chips are not legal tender and are not, to my knowledge, accepted by any reputable businesses in town, although some places near certain big name casinos might take them instead of cash (but I doubt it). Usually they aren't even accepted at stores, gift shops or bars inside the casino/hotel. They are strictly for gaming.
With no or very few exceptions (I'm not aware of any), one casino won't accept another's chips, so the only place you can exchange chips for cash is at the cashier's cage in the casino where you actually bought the chips. Besides the obvious concern of fake chips, casinos must remain independent of each other. Allowing chip exchanges between casinos would have the net effect of commingling funds, which is a big no-no.
RFID chips are a data mining tool, not a security device. People come to Vegas to have a good time, not get frisked at every exit for a stray $5 chip. The casinos will never check people for chips on the way out; customers wouldn't stand for it. Chips are free casino advertising right in your pocket, and it's not like people won't bring them back eventually.
But I don't think the big problem is road wear caused by less efficient passenger vehicles, even in the aggregate. The roads are built to last a certain number of years under a HEAVY flow of traffic, and after 5-10 years they get resurfaced regardless of what condition they're in. In any case, my truck still weighs only about 5300 pounds empty, and those dump trucks and 18-wheelers that plow the roads every day almost certainly cause more wear and tear than my little truck.
The bigger problem, at least in SoCal, is the sheer number of vehicles on the freeways. When you look at it this way, it actually makes more sense for the state to tax by the mile, as that would (in theory) fulfill the public policy goal of reducing the total number of miles driven, and maybe getting people to carpool and use more public transit. Fuel taxes only encourage people to use more efficient vehicles; they don't encourage people to make fewer trips.
Personally, I think they could do this a lot more easily and with less intrusion on privacy by just making all the freeways toll roads, with different rates based on the time of day. But that's another argument for another day.
Guilty as charged. I am a proud American and I am loyal to my country. Is the point of your contrast to say that the Left feels no such loyalty to America?
However, we Lefties see America as the property of its citizens
Preposterous. You see the citizens as the property of America, and by extension, citizens' property as America's property. That's why you and your Leftie friends keep taking ever increasing amounts of my property for use by the rest of America.
We on the Left see humans as something above animals, and to a great extent we reject animal tradition, and seek a new organization, one that minimizes hierarchy
Yep. Make everyone equal, in law and in fact, no matter what it takes. Keep down anyone who tries to peek their head up, lest they spoil the enforced equality.
if you stood outside the entrance, took photos of the people going in and published them, would that be the same thing? if its a public place whats the problem?
Photos in a public setting are one thing; there is no reasonable expectation of privacy. And publishing a list of names and photos is probably okay, as long as all the people are public or semi-public figures. But publishing home addresses, phone numbers, etc., strikes me as going beyond the bounds of legitimate disclosure of public information.
A previous poster used the example of publishing the names & addresses of doctors who perform abortions. I have no doubt that the press would be up in arms about such a list. It is difficult to see how the public interest is served by such information, and it is rather easy to argue for the possibilities of intimidation from such a list.
rant:
Free speech is not, and has never been, an absolute right. With great power comes great responsibility. You can't shout "fire" in a crowded theater. You can't publish libelous information. You can't print newspaper articles calling for the head of the president on a pike, or for violent overthrow of your local government. (Actually, you CAN do all these things, but you will be held responsible for the consequences of your actions, and you will not be allowed to hide behind the 1st Amendment.) The distribution of lists such as these, with detailed personal information, serves no legitimate purpose and can easily lead to criminal activity. Not to put too fine a point on it, but these are precisely the kind of tactics of intimidation and fear that the Nazis relied on to stay in power.
has there been intimidation? or is this just fear because its the republicans in power?
Given the size of the list of delegates, the number of people who participated in protests, the number of people who hit indymedia's sites, the lack of any logging information on indymedia, the unlikelihood of cooperation on the part of indymedia.. I would say it's not only possible, but quite probable that someone, somewhere, made a threat against one of the delegates.
Probably just dumb kids getting stoned and playing "let's make a fake death threat" on the voicemail of the GOP mayor of Podunk, Kansas. But it's a threat nonetheless and must be investigated. I would even go so far as to speculate that the seizure is not prior restraint, but might actually be the collection of evidence to be used in a trial.
The umich.edu links belong to Fred Niell, who I went to high school with (I'm '94, he's '95). I can attest to the success of his cyclotron, which was initially completed when he was a sophomore (!) and then improved when he was a junior. At least 1 version, maybe both, I can't remember, won a well-deserved national science award.
It was truly embarassing to be forced to enter a science project against his in our high school science fair. I offered to write a research paper instead, but our physics teacher was having none of it. My project was a Radio Shack breadboard with a couple of IC's that managed to record and playback about 10 seconds of sound onto the chip. Clever, I thought, but against a freaking cyclotron? I felt like the Bad News Bears against the Yankees.
Granted, we've made significant accomplishments in space travel since then, and the cost per shuttle mission is surely less (I seem to recall around $10 million per, but I can't find any numbers). But still... only $88 million to get to the moon? Where exactly are they going to save money?
Of course, India is a very populous nation. Perhaps they're losing money on every mission, but they're going to make it up on volume.
Perhaps you're suggesting that the FCC doesn't have the right to regulate private, in-state networks. You might be right, but no one in their right mind would consider such private networks to be "the Internet." You might also say that states can regulate the intrastate portion of Internet traffic, as they do with intrastate phone calls. However, if ANY portion of the traffic is interstate, it can be regulated by the FCC.
I have a pretty good feeling that you will contact at least 1 DNS/Web/email/whatever server that is outside your state every time you use the Internet. And even if you don't, I have no doubt that any "Internet" provider will make sure it is located in multiple states, so that it can be regulated under federal law rather than have to deal with a patchwork of state regulations.