a) When lancet says 5-600,000 that they mean 500,000 to 600,000, when in fact it means 5.0 - 600,000. (ok a little tongue in cheek, but the lancet study was quite flawed, and significantly overestimated the number of deaths compared to every other study conducted.)
b) That coalition troops are the ones killing the civilians. This is important. While there are certainly collateral deaths due to american troops engaging resistance or perceived resistance, the majority cause of the deaths has been terrorists.
Further, if a guerrilla fires an rpg from the middle of a crowd and the return fire kills or maims members of the crowd, how can you reasonably attribute the casualties to anyone other than the guerrilla? He's the one that escalated the engagement up to "total warfare" rules.
NASA does incredible things with their budget (and one really, really big, worthless thing). But what justifies supporting NASA with tax dollars, which are collected under the threat of jail time? The strategic purpose of NASA (to demonstrate the lifting capacity and precision targeting ability of US ballistic missiles) is long complete. To the point that they're not even using surplus military launch vehicles any more. The more interesting knowledge gathering phase is well underway, but if people aren't interested enough to donate, then why should we claim their money anyway?
A typical scam: They're wired money and asked to send out a lesser amount via Western Union. Only later do they learn that wire transfers can be reversed, whereas Western Union money transfers are irrevocable.
And they're taking advantage of the victim's greed. His desire to participate in the scam. I mean, they typically do this under the pretense of laundering money, so the victims aren't exactly blameless in many of these scams.
The question is, should we then protect the victims? People who were so willing to take advantage of others, only to be taken advantage of, themselves?
While that's certainly true, you can't calibrate your thermometer to absolute zero.
Ideally you'd use two triple-points, but the problem there is that the thermometer itself is not exactly linear over the whole range, so you need to define two points that are close enough together that your thermometer is linear over that range, and covers the range you're interested in measuring.
If you were using boiling water as a calibration point, you'd boil it in a pressure vessel in Denver, set to 1013 millibar.
C G G 1 2 NO WIN C G G 1 2 YES LOSE C G G 1 3 NO WIN C G G 1 3 YES LOSE C G G 2 3 NO LOSE C G G 2 3 YES WIN C G G 3 2 NO LOSE C G G 3 2 YES WIN You're missing four possibilities in each block. The ones where Monty picks the car and you lose instantly.
Behind the doors there's a coin, a rock, and a rock. If you get the coin, you win the car.
You pick door number one, (a 1/3 chance of winning). You're betting that the coin will be behind door number one.
Monty then asks if you want switch your bet from coin to rock, so that if there's a rock behind door number one, you win the car.
do you switch? -- On the second bet in the problem, it doesn't actually matter that Monty opens a door. You're not betting on which door the car is behind. You're betting on whether or not the car is behind this door.
Well here's the problem: If the study Chen is referring to has some probability which later experiments agree with, then the later experiments are also suspect, because when the criticized study is renormalized to correctly reflect proper statistics, it won't agree with those experiments any more.
The question that remains is: How could those experiments get the same results as the flawed experiment without being flawed themselves in the same way?
They need to have an answer for that. Not just, "they were different." Because the numbers at first look suggest that they were only superficially different according to Chen.
Blockbuster is proposing to provide a similar service to Netflix, only at two to four times the marginal cost* AND an up-front fee?
*It's one movie per dollar of your plan, right? or is it unlimited now?
I mean, I see the advantage of a set-top box, but that marginal cost is going to make a lot of people think twice, non? I guess it worked for Tivo, though...
If you're working with floats, it doesn't matter that you can't represent the value exactly, because you're not even trying to. Binary floats are the most efficient use of bit-space for representing them.
If you're working with integers, it's still more efficient in bit-space to use binary integers. Just make sure that the base unit is sufficiently smaller than the the numbers you're working with that you catch the rounding properly. Same as with floats, really.
The natural unit for financial transactions (in the US) is not "dollars" but cents. or maybe even fractions of cents. But not too deep, since you can't actually exchange less than a cent (or smallest unit in whatever currency you're working in)
There is more than enough space in 64-bit integers for any business or government using US currency. Quite a few businesses could get away with 32-bit integers. Further, inflation is slower than Moore's law, so there will always be integers much bigger than budgets.
If you're having trouble working with decimal numbers, then I submit that you haven't placed your decimal point properly. Decimal floats are a wasteful misunderstanding of what you're working with.
It's just that I haven't met an avalanche driver who wasn't a woman (and a terrible driver). Actually, I haven't actually met them per se, except to be nearly run over in parking lots on two separate occasions, in states separated by over 1,000 miles. So I'm kinda thankful for having avoided the meeting.
They miss the point of scale in every OS that I've seen so far. Which is why I can't run my monitor at the highest resolution it offers:
It doesn't have that much area (18" viewable) so it either has really freakin' tiny text (standard font sizes) or it's a crap shoot as to whether or not dialog boxes and web sites will display properly. I get a lot of text-on-top-of-other-text at high resolution.
Which is sad because I like really sharp text and graphics that only a very high resolution can provide.
Although it does make sense that we would evolve pigments which would be most efficient for the color of which the most light arrives, to maximize the available information.
Dude, it's just sub-pixel rendering. In the Windows world they call it "ClearType" or something like that. And it only works for LCDs, because their color pixels are spatially separated.
They are obsolete because the writing is on the wall. There will come a time when no new movies will be printed on DVD. The medium which replaces it has been here for years.
At this time, it does not make sense to buy any NEW material on DVD, since it will not be long (2, 3 years, tops) before Blu-Ray versions of the very same films are available for the same price those films are going for right now. Coincidentally, in 2-3 years, there will be at least one blu-ray player that is as cheap as a moderate DVD player is today, and there will be very few high quality DVD players still being sold.
Now, I'm not convinced blu-ray is a big enough leap to actually buy, at this time or ever -- I think solid state drives (i.e. cartridges) of appropriate capacities are on the horizon. With the HD data-rate fixed, the reliability and durability of IC memory will become too compelling to ignore as the price drops -- I am convinced that it's not really worth it to spend any more money on DVD other than rentals and the occasional title that is frequently watched. Like.. kids' movie frequent. There's simply no compelling reason to establish or grow a DVD library at this time.
Provide for the general welfare This is in the preamble. It's the purpose of the authorities granted. It is not, itself, a granted authority. People, including SCOTUS justices, make the same mistake wrt. the second amendment, as well. It seems even Hamilton did not understand the document, or the so-called "elastic" clause, which if it means what you say he said it means, effectively renders the whole rest of the document irrelevant.
Regular commerce I assume you mean regulate commerce. And the authority is limited to regulating interstate commerce.
Raise an army (and a navy) Congress is given the authority to raise either of those, but only authority to maintain a navy has been spelled out. Presumably it was intended that the army disband when we were not at war (which makes amendment 2 all the more important). Frankly, I'm surprised the peaceniks don't bring this one up more often.
Negotiate treaties ( and apply these treaties as law of the land.) There's a sneaky loophole if ever I saw one. Necessary of course, if we are to have any negotiating power with other sovereign states when we need to negotiation with them, but the potential for abuse is enormous.
Levy an income tax Some would argue that the constitution does not grant this authority because the amendment was technically never passed. Having seen the arguments, I think they're technically correct. A strict interpretation of the wording all around leads one to the conclusion that a couple states did not actually pass the amendment, putting the ratification count below the minimum. I'm not sure if they haven't rectified that error, and if not why they wouldn't get on that right away.
With regards to universal health care, Massachussets already has it, for your information. And they're having no trouble from medical tourists. They are having some pains from internal sources however, and it remains to be seen how/if they'll be able to resolve them. Still, I'd rather MA carry out the experiment and figure it out than have the federal government carry out the experiment. Worst case scenario in the MA case is that we have to bail out MA, and get some valuable insight into the program (i.e. what works, what doesn't work). And should Delaware or Wisconsin do something different, and gather more insight, all the better.
I'm sure lawyers can find reasons in the constitution for all kinds of federal powers, whether through poor reading comprehension or deliberate obfuscation. We shouldn't take for granted that "Learned Men" are infallibly wise concerning a document of such importance.
Interesting points all, but what part of the constitution (or what other document we should be considering) grants the Federal government the authority to do much of anything besides defense?
Note that I'm not suggesting that government, in general, is or should be restricted from engaging in social programs. I'm just wondering why it should be done at the federal level (and why it even can be done there without a constitutional convention), where it's exceptionally easy for bad programs to become entrenched. If done at the state level, they can be dealt with piecemeal, with different strategies for mitigating any negative effects, in an evolutionary manner.
And administrative overhead isn't the only or necessarily the best measure of a program's value. If it were, than everyone would be loaded, no-fee annuities (like. say.. CDs) as their principle investment vehicle.
The fact is, Republicans have been saying lower taxes and increase spending. Not exactly sound, is it?
Not enough information in those two sentences to make that statement.
You can argue about the shape of the Laffer curve, or our position on it in any given circumstance, but the fact of the matter is that government revenues depend on economic activity which is, in part, a function of government taxation. A function in which government revenues are quite clearly zero in the case of 0% taxation, and only slightly less obviously zero in the case of 100% taxation.
The interesting feature about the curve is that there is some level of taxation at which government revenues are greatest. A sweet spot. Taxation above that amount reduces economic activity AND government revenues. It's bad for everybody. Taxation below that amount also reduces government revenues but encourages economic growth.
It is of critical importance which side of the curve we are on. I would argue that if there are two points at which the government can obtain the same revenue (and below the maximum, there are always at least two such points), that it is immoral to tax at the greater rate, because of the economically stifling effect. I would not argue that the government should operate at the sweet spot (in fact this is folly, since in emergencies, you have nowhere to go to get additional revenue). Only that operating past the sweet spot is immoral.
I would also argue that government spending is the real tax (a tax on time and effort), but that is another argument, for another day.
I think it was Goldwater who said, "If you lower taxes and the government revenues go up, you haven't lowered taxes enough."
Slashdot Mirror
You make the mistake of assuming that
a) When lancet says 5-600,000 that they mean 500,000 to 600,000, when in fact it means 5.0 - 600,000. (ok a little tongue in cheek, but the lancet study was quite flawed, and significantly overestimated the number of deaths compared to every other study conducted.)
b) That coalition troops are the ones killing the civilians. This is important. While there are certainly collateral deaths due to american troops engaging resistance or perceived resistance, the majority cause of the deaths has been terrorists.
Further, if a guerrilla fires an rpg from the middle of a crowd and the return fire kills or maims members of the crowd, how can you reasonably attribute the casualties to anyone other than the guerrilla? He's the one that escalated the engagement up to "total warfare" rules.
NASA does incredible things with their budget (and one really, really big, worthless thing). But what justifies supporting NASA with tax dollars, which are collected under the threat of jail time? The strategic purpose of NASA (to demonstrate the lifting capacity and precision targeting ability of US ballistic missiles) is long complete. To the point that they're not even using surplus military launch vehicles any more. The more interesting knowledge gathering phase is well underway, but if people aren't interested enough to donate, then why should we claim their money anyway?
Ahh, but if the public isn't interested in NASA, then why should the public be forced (at gunpoint no less)* to pay for it?
*yes, I know this is melodramatic. But the fact is that tax authority comes either from the consent of the taxed or the threat of violence.
And they're taking advantage of the victim's greed. His desire to participate in the scam. I mean, they typically do this under the pretense of laundering money, so the victims aren't exactly blameless in many of these scams.
The question is, should we then protect the victims? People who were so willing to take advantage of others, only to be taken advantage of, themselves?
Much as the inch is no longer a separate unit (it's defined as exactly 2.54 cm), C is not a separate unit from K.
While that's certainly true, you can't calibrate your thermometer to absolute zero.
Ideally you'd use two triple-points, but the problem there is that the thermometer itself is not exactly linear over the whole range, so you need to define two points that are close enough together that your thermometer is linear over that range, and covers the range you're interested in measuring.
If you were using boiling water as a calibration point, you'd boil it in a pressure vessel in Denver, set to 1013 millibar.
No, we'd still be in Europe, scrounging for scraps and yearning for wide open spaces.
Someone should put up a sign at that intersection: "Highest Grossing Camera in the City! Thank You, Greenvile/Mockingbird Speeders!
I don't know Mr. 741N, you sound a little biased.
You got some evidence that vinyl is growing?
It doesn't even meet the first qualification for being a planet.
C G G 1 2 NO WIN
C G G 1 2 YES LOSE
C G G 1 3 NO WIN
C G G 1 3 YES LOSE
C G G 2 3 NO LOSE
C G G 2 3 YES WIN
C G G 3 2 NO LOSE
C G G 3 2 YES WIN
You're missing four possibilities in each block. The ones where Monty picks the car and you lose instantly.
Ok think about it this way,
Behind the doors there's a coin, a rock, and a rock. If you get the coin, you win the car.
You pick door number one, (a 1/3 chance of winning). You're betting that the coin will be behind door number one.
Monty then asks if you want switch your bet from coin to rock, so that if there's a rock behind door number one, you win the car.
do you switch?
--
On the second bet in the problem, it doesn't actually matter that Monty opens a door. You're not betting on which door the car is behind. You're betting on whether or not the car is behind this door.
Well here's the problem: If the study Chen is referring to has some probability which later experiments agree with, then the later experiments are also suspect, because when the criticized study is renormalized to correctly reflect proper statistics, it won't agree with those experiments any more.
The question that remains is: How could those experiments get the same results as the flawed experiment without being flawed themselves in the same way?
They need to have an answer for that. Not just, "they were different." Because the numbers at first look suggest that they were only superficially different according to Chen.
Blockbuster is proposing to provide a similar service to Netflix, only at two to four times the marginal cost* AND an up-front fee?
*It's one movie per dollar of your plan, right? or is it unlimited now?
I mean, I see the advantage of a set-top box, but that marginal cost is going to make a lot of people think twice, non? I guess it worked for Tivo, though...
Decimal math is stupid and wasteful.
If you're working with floats, it doesn't matter that you can't represent the value exactly, because you're not even trying to. Binary floats are the most efficient use of bit-space for representing them.
If you're working with integers, it's still more efficient in bit-space to use binary integers. Just make sure that the base unit is sufficiently smaller than the the numbers you're working with that you catch the rounding properly. Same as with floats, really.
The natural unit for financial transactions (in the US) is not "dollars" but cents. or maybe even fractions of cents. But not too deep, since you can't actually exchange less than a cent (or smallest unit in whatever currency you're working in)
There is more than enough space in 64-bit integers for any business or government using US currency. Quite a few businesses could get away with 32-bit integers. Further, inflation is slower than Moore's law, so there will always be integers much bigger than budgets.
If you're having trouble working with decimal numbers, then I submit that you haven't placed your decimal point properly. Decimal floats are a wasteful misunderstanding of what you're working with.
It's just that I haven't met an avalanche driver who wasn't a woman (and a terrible driver). Actually, I haven't actually met them per se, except to be nearly run over in parking lots on two separate occasions, in states separated by over 1,000 miles. So I'm kinda thankful for having avoided the meeting.
What made you pick that instead of a real pickup?
They miss the point of scale in every OS that I've seen so far. Which is why I can't run my monitor at the highest resolution it offers:
It doesn't have that much area (18" viewable) so it either has really freakin' tiny text (standard font sizes) or it's a crap shoot as to whether or not dialog boxes and web sites will display properly. I get a lot of text-on-top-of-other-text at high resolution.
Which is sad because I like really sharp text and graphics that only a very high resolution can provide.
Although it does make sense that we would evolve pigments which would be most efficient for the color of which the most light arrives, to maximize the available information.
Dude, it's just sub-pixel rendering. In the Windows world they call it "ClearType" or something like that. And it only works for LCDs, because their color pixels are spatially separated.
A woman? On Slashdot? Unheard of!
They are obsolete because the writing is on the wall. There will come a time when no new movies will be printed on DVD. The medium which replaces it has been here for years.
At this time, it does not make sense to buy any NEW material on DVD, since it will not be long (2, 3 years, tops) before Blu-Ray versions of the very same films are available for the same price those films are going for right now. Coincidentally, in 2-3 years, there will be at least one blu-ray player that is as cheap as a moderate DVD player is today, and there will be very few high quality DVD players still being sold.
Now, I'm not convinced blu-ray is a big enough leap to actually buy, at this time or ever -- I think solid state drives (i.e. cartridges) of appropriate capacities are on the horizon. With the HD data-rate fixed, the reliability and durability of IC memory will become too compelling to ignore as the price drops -- I am convinced that it's not really worth it to spend any more money on DVD other than rentals and the occasional title that is frequently watched. Like.. kids' movie frequent. There's simply no compelling reason to establish or grow a DVD library at this time.
Provide for the general welfare
This is in the preamble. It's the purpose of the authorities granted. It is not, itself, a granted authority. People, including SCOTUS justices, make the same mistake wrt. the second amendment, as well. It seems even Hamilton did not understand the document, or the so-called "elastic" clause, which if it means what you say he said it means, effectively renders the whole rest of the document irrelevant.
Regular commerce
I assume you mean regulate commerce. And the authority is limited to regulating interstate commerce.
Raise an army (and a navy)
Congress is given the authority to raise either of those, but only authority to maintain a navy has been spelled out. Presumably it was intended that the army disband when we were not at war (which makes amendment 2 all the more important). Frankly, I'm surprised the peaceniks don't bring this one up more often.
Negotiate treaties ( and apply these treaties as law of the land.)
There's a sneaky loophole if ever I saw one. Necessary of course, if we are to have any negotiating power with other sovereign states when we need to negotiation with them, but the potential for abuse is enormous.
Levy an income tax
Some would argue that the constitution does not grant this authority because the amendment was technically never passed. Having seen the arguments, I think they're technically correct. A strict interpretation of the wording all around leads one to the conclusion that a couple states did not actually pass the amendment, putting the ratification count below the minimum. I'm not sure if they haven't rectified that error, and if not why they wouldn't get on that right away.
With regards to universal health care, Massachussets already has it, for your information. And they're having no trouble from medical tourists. They are having some pains from internal sources however, and it remains to be seen how/if they'll be able to resolve them. Still, I'd rather MA carry out the experiment and figure it out than have the federal government carry out the experiment. Worst case scenario in the MA case is that we have to bail out MA, and get some valuable insight into the program (i.e. what works, what doesn't work). And should Delaware or Wisconsin do something different, and gather more insight, all the better.
I'm sure lawyers can find reasons in the constitution for all kinds of federal powers, whether through poor reading comprehension or deliberate obfuscation. We shouldn't take for granted that "Learned Men" are infallibly wise concerning a document of such importance.
Interesting points all, but what part of the constitution (or what other document we should be considering) grants the Federal government the authority to do much of anything besides defense?
Note that I'm not suggesting that government, in general, is or should be restricted from engaging in social programs. I'm just wondering why it should be done at the federal level (and why it even can be done there without a constitutional convention), where it's exceptionally easy for bad programs to become entrenched. If done at the state level, they can be dealt with piecemeal, with different strategies for mitigating any negative effects, in an evolutionary manner.
And administrative overhead isn't the only or necessarily the best measure of a program's value. If it were, than everyone would be loaded, no-fee annuities (like. say.. CDs) as their principle investment vehicle.
Not enough information in those two sentences to make that statement.
You can argue about the shape of the Laffer curve, or our position on it in any given circumstance, but the fact of the matter is that government revenues depend on economic activity which is, in part, a function of government taxation. A function in which government revenues are quite clearly zero in the case of 0% taxation, and only slightly less obviously zero in the case of 100% taxation.
The interesting feature about the curve is that there is some level of taxation at which government revenues are greatest. A sweet spot. Taxation above that amount reduces economic activity AND government revenues. It's bad for everybody. Taxation below that amount also reduces government revenues but encourages economic growth.
It is of critical importance which side of the curve we are on. I would argue that if there are two points at which the government can obtain the same revenue (and below the maximum, there are always at least two such points), that it is immoral to tax at the greater rate, because of the economically stifling effect. I would not argue that the government should operate at the sweet spot (in fact this is folly, since in emergencies, you have nowhere to go to get additional revenue). Only that operating past the sweet spot is immoral.
I would also argue that government spending is the real tax (a tax on time and effort), but that is another argument, for another day.
I think it was Goldwater who said, "If you lower taxes and the government revenues go up, you haven't lowered taxes enough."