Calmly, calmly. On Slashdot, negative moderation simply means "-1, Disagree, unable to articulate my position." Simply browse at -1 and you'll see all the interesting posts.
I don't understand purists. It's easier to get to their perceived utopia by making some temporary compromises on the way, to help build the infrastructure and gain acceptance rather than demand perfection all at once.
The objective is simple: To support companies that embrace the optimum, instead of supporting companies that embrace a compromise. In this way, the optimum solution is made more common, the compromise, less so.
In the Smith V. Doe case, the court found that the public address listing of convicted sex offenders was primarily for public safety rather than punishment (incorrectly IMO).
I find it quite instructive to read the dissents (Ginsberg, Stevens) in this case. I think it is perfectly clear that this decision is an error of huge magnitude, based upon faulty reasoning, and direct evidence of judicial incompetence (not to mention explicit violation of their oaths.)
The published facts of the Evesham situation make it difficult to argue the same, as some of the victims have not yet been convicted
Conviction is irrelevant; that's the upshot of the case. It is irrelevant because the listing is determined not to be punitive.
there is no question of public safety based on the type of crimes alleged
I'm not sure you can argue that drunk driving has no impact on public safety, at least, not with a straight face. Likewise any perceived or actual odds of recidivism.
Arrests are, generally speaking, public events. Whether they should be or not is an interesting argument; but certainly listing arrests is common. For instance, my local paper has a "police blotter" section that lists every arrest made since the last issue of the paper.
"This arms the public with information and puts a face with a name"
Yes, well, is that arguable? I don't think it is. Is it right to do it? I don't think it is, but I will bet you anything that the courts support it, especially if it goes to the top and SCOTUS gets its collectively bewildered hands on it.
I learned "fuckarosis" from reading Steven King. It's perfectly cromulent, you know. No need to embiggen the issue.
Young folk generally say "drama." Same thing. I prefer fuckarosis because it embodies the deep disdain I feel for the apparent inherent value drama has for the current population. As evidenced by "reality" shows, the popularity of the idiots on Fox, etc.
Simple: They had a marvelous tree of web sites, arranged so you could browse them by interest. I used it constantly. Then they stopped updating that, and finally abandoned it, and became useless. Eventually they used cash to buy things that were useful, like flickr, and so technically now have some merit again, but it is certainly not the usefulness they originally had. Which, I might add, search engines like Google really don't replace at all. Google's listings often do a terrible job of putting the actual relevant content first; Yahoo's tree typically had sites right where they needed to be.
But... WTF is Yahoo today? An aggregator of low-resolution pop culture? A venture capitalist? What? Why would I go there? I just did go there, and looking at the sidebar, can choose horoscopes, OMG!, dating... I see some cheesy sound-bite versions of news stories... there's a list of "trending" (which is pop culture nonsense)... really, I have no idea why I would spend more than ten seconds there after seeing the home page.
I'm just surprised that they can list you before you're actually convicted.
Why? The American public has allowed all manner of listings without any conviction, police or judicial action.
Just offhand: No-fly lists; No-buy lists; Gun owner lists; "offender" lists; land owner lists; boat owner lists; etc.
Unfortunately, the average citizen fails to anticipate what one seemingly harmless or seemingly desirable invasion of privacy means in terms of enabling behavior when an obviously harmful one comes around.
The local government is bound by the same constitution as everyone else
No. You don't understand what the constitution is: It is the enabling document for the federal government; it has some effect upon states, particularly in the bill of rights (amendments 1-10), and where states are mentioned explicitly (e.g. ex post facto laws), but it doesn't really go into great depth. In fact, it explicitly hands off a lot of legal territory to the states.
From there, states have (or can have) their own constitution, which describes how that state handles various issues -- which may not be very similar at all to another state. The only catch here is that the states are required to recognize the laws of the other states when issues cross borders.
Local government is then bound by the state rules, which may vary, and only the federal rules that over-ride.
Generally speaking, though, the constitution (the one we usually talk about) is a federal document.
As part of the "save the children" panic, the supreme court has already decided that such listings "aren't punishment", which is why they say they can be applied retroactively, after conviction. Without the (ridiculous, sophist) determination that such listings do no harm in and of themselves, the ex post facto prohibitions would come into play (as they actually should, of course.)
Consequently, I doubt that any listing of arrest subjects will be determined to be damaging or harmful, or that they require a conviction.
Shaming - permanent and otherwise - is part of America's new commitment to retribution over rehabilitation, and its support for the creation of a permanent rock-bottom lower class. The public is all for it; they love the drama and the fuckarosis that it all engenders, and it is a very rare citizen indeed that has any concept of how and why these things are wrong.
Just because the soulless, misogynistic, thug-wannabe rap outnumbers it by orders of magnitude doesn't mean the good rap music doesn't exist.
No, you've got me wrong. I'm not objecting to the rhymes; I'm objecting to the complete lack of musical merit of a "music" style that is based upon speech (not song.) I find the terminology "rap music" to be an oxymoron. This is what makes it subject to mockery.
The content of the lyrics would have to be addressed individually if one were to try to find merit in them; the mode, however, is fairly uniform and I'm quite comfortable dissing it.
Music, in my view, requires one to play an instrument, or sing (thus turning one's voice into an instrument.) Talking, screaming, spitting... these things are not musical. Speaking in rhythm is rhyming. It is, at best, a form of poetry.
Spouting rhyme, with or without musical accompaniment, doesn't qualify as music. It is what it is, and you may well enjoy it for whatever reason spoken rhyme trips your trigger, but it still isn't musical. In order to make that leap, they'll have to learn to sing.
Geez man, you sound like my mother.
Your mother is clearly a woman of considerable musical insight.
Eh? Base price is the price without extras, at least everywhere I've ever bought a car. You might have to special order one like that off a lot, but when they're being built custom, not so much. I've owned a couple of base model cars - nothing to it as long as you're not interested in a racing stripe or a factory radio, etc.
Except you lose a lot of efficiency when you take into account the loss from having to charge a battery.
Four answers: (1), garage. If the car is warm when charged, this helps a lot. (2) Ultracaps or some other pollution free intermediary that isn't heat sensitive. (3) as you note, plug-in heaters, and yes, I already have to use them anyway - one for the oil pan, and one under the battery. Batteries hate the cold. (4) Variable insulation / cooling systems for the batteries. They get warm when used, so with heat management, they can remain warm (or cool, in summer.)
I hear this a lot but I'm not convinced it's true.
That's fine. I am.
father-in-law... who now has a Mac and is having to take it to the Apple Geniuses constantly because he's somehow managed to fuck it up. At least the tech support is no longer my problem
So... you're not convinced that Windows is a tech support problem... but in the same post, you express relief that the Windows tech support problems are no longer yours. Seems to me like you need to go get a bandage there, as you've gone and cleanly shot off your own foot.
I went to apple to look at trailers. Now there is a script that checks user-agent of the movie player. Hence I have to work around and download the trailers to get it to work.
Let's start with a very simple fact: Bandwidth costs money. Now, ask yourself: Why does Apple provide trailers? Is it so you can watch them and money comes to Apple from the movie studios? Or is it so Apple can make money by selling the viewer the movie on iTunes, or stream it to them? Now ask yourself, how does Apple make money if you're a Linux user? And finally, considering that they don't make money from Linux users, why exactly do you think they should make it easy for a Linux user to view these trailers? Thanks.
Came across more as dismissal; but ok, if you say so.
Second: Yes, today it's fantasy. 5 years from now? Maybe not. But as you said, under 50k. The base price of the model S (which won't start shipping until 2012) is still above your own price line by a few thousand.
The Tesla web site says base price is 49k (though they are including a tax credit, which seems fair to me. As long as I end up putting out less than 50k, then that was effectively the price.) Where did you get your number?
The half-assed solution that cost me 30k 6 months ago is worth more than the whole-assed solution years down the road that will cost me double that.
Hmmm. Well, my experience with technology - especially electrical tech - is that the price drops very quickly as volume scales up. So I'm thinking that the solution down the road will be significantly better, and less expensive, than prices and feature sets as presented to us today.
Trouble with the all-electrics is that, based on where you live, they may RAISE the amount of carbon released due to the fuel sources used to create electricity.
Ok, three things. First, the AGW hypothesis is not convincing to me. The models are painfully bad, the whole hockey stick thing is actually a counter-indicator, and as there is no precursor event of any kind to analyze, the (very loose, operating in unknown regimes) models are all there is to go on. And the historical record contradicts them roundly (that is, when carbon rises in the historical record, temperature falls - go look *closely* at the "hockey stick.") In the face of this, we have a definite historical record of significant and common climate change without the benefit of man's input. So I'm quite skeptical, and I don't have any inclination to use a "carbon" argument to make any of my decisions.
Secondly, presuming AGW is 100% right, the benefit of an all-electric fleet is that instead of having to change a zillion vehicles over (which is what we face right now no matter what - all these gas and diesel fueled vehicles emit carbon like pigs, so if you're worried about carbon, you should definitely be worrying about them), you only have to change/add power plants, of which there are only a few, comparatively speaking. Replacing one coal or oil power plant with a nuke (or any of several other several options) makes a big difference in emissions (of all kinds, not just carbon.)
Finally, electric vehicles will in most cases allow for direct charging at night, using existing generation capacity that is currently largely idle. This makes much more efficient use of whatever systems we have online at any one time. It is even possible to efficiently time-shift the charge - the charging station can take the energy at night, and then parcel it out when needed. There are a number of different options for this, from pumped storage at the high-energy end, to ultracaps and batteries at the low-energy end.
So, the EEstor is a non-starter?
Well, let's just observe they've missed every significant deadline they ever talked about by factors of years. It is very hard to give them any credence at all at this point, although I would love to. They've simply worn me down with claims they've failed to back up.
I've heard a lot of naysaying about the space and hassle of swapping batteries but would it be anymore space-consuming and impractical than a busy car wash?
Speaking as an engineer, I see absolutely no reason a standard, cartridge based battery swapping system would pose any technical or practical problems at all, time or convenience or anything else, if it was designed with any reasonable amount of care. It should be possible to change such a cartridge in a lot less time than it takes to currently fill a fuel tank.
What the real problem is, I think, is the manufacturers... getting them to agree on a cartridge standard - physical size, capacity range, mechanical and electrical interface - the mind boggles.
What makes you think that a 50k car of normal size that can do 80mph uphill and can reach 300 miles at highway speeds is a fantasy? Do you know anything about electric power systems? Ever look at the Tesla web site?
It's cold here in NE Montana too, we see -40f pretty much every winter. The thing about burning anything at the power plant, even petroleum, is that it is actually far more efficient than burning anything in the car. And of course, once the car is electric, the grid itself can change to anything - nuclear, solar, hydro, whatever - in any combination - and the car is oblivious. So you get a double benefit: First, you gain efficiency, and you also get flexibility at the plant level.
Yeah, I'm watching them and hoping, but as so many similar things have failed to materialize at the initially published prices, I'm not very confident. Might be a few years yet. And I can wait. My gas fueled vehicles are in good shape. Thanks for the rational response, btw.
...by simply getting rid of the negative moderations and starting at zero.
The vast majority of -1 votes here are no more than "disagree" or "failed to comprehend" votes. I've seen it over and over again; someone takes the time to write a decent post, and some wag comes in and hits it -1, which is never corrected, and the post is lost to most readers.
Up-voting would raise any post that *any* moderator felt had merit, because no "+1 agree/interesting/useful" vote could ever be countered. And THAT in turn means that finally, taking the time to moderate is worthwhile - because your work can't be undone, and posts that have merit would rise despite the fact that the content might be disagreeable and/or controversial.
And if anyone ever up-voted a true troll... GNAA, frost piss, etc., that's when the site moderators could step in and flag that account "no mod points."
Slashdot moderation could actually work if it was strictly upwards trending. As it is, it's laughable - you have to browse at -1 to see the most interesting posts, those that carry views that are not mainstream. And the first thing that does is expose you to GNAA, etc.
It's really too bad. Slashdot could be so much better than it is.
As for Digg... I really don't care. It's like the E Entertainment channel of the Internet over there. Full of content signifying nothing.
I'm not in the least interested in buying a hybrid. I want an all-electric car. I want a normal-size car that can do 80 mph uphill, and has at least 300 miles of range at typical highway speeds. Get the price under 50g, and I'll buy it. With any luck it'd become a family heirloom. The only dealings I want with petroleum are for lubrication and manufacture of the plastic parts.
I'd love to buy a Tesla, but it's just too small, and let's face it, a wee bit on the expensive side.
Too bad EEStor turned out to be a bust... ultracapacitors could solve this whole battery mess pretty easily if they just had adequate energy capacities. Everyone else is in the "discovery" phase, which usually translates to "impractical." Not that manipulating a (very) high voltage energy source for use in low voltage, high current motors is all that easy anyway. That whole (E = CVV/2) thing is a cast-iron bitch on a number of fronts.
But what you're missing is that I really don't care. I own the most popular hardware out there, with a thriving ecosystem of apps, music and video I can play... including mp3s, which means basically everything... why, exactly, should I care what your sony player does, or doesn't, or how "interoperable" my player is with whatever media you chose? I mean, from my POV, you simply picked the wrong horse. You should do more research.:)
Slashdot Mirror
Calmly, calmly. On Slashdot, negative moderation simply means "-1, Disagree, unable to articulate my position." Simply browse at -1 and you'll see all the interesting posts.
The objective is simple: To support companies that embrace the optimum, instead of supporting companies that embrace a compromise. In this way, the optimum solution is made more common, the compromise, less so.
I find it quite instructive to read the dissents (Ginsberg, Stevens) in this case. I think it is perfectly clear that this decision is an error of huge magnitude, based upon faulty reasoning, and direct evidence of judicial incompetence (not to mention explicit violation of their oaths.)
Conviction is irrelevant; that's the upshot of the case. It is irrelevant because the listing is determined not to be punitive.
I'm not sure you can argue that drunk driving has no impact on public safety, at least, not with a straight face. Likewise any perceived or actual odds of recidivism.
Arrests are, generally speaking, public events. Whether they should be or not is an interesting argument; but certainly listing arrests is common. For instance, my local paper has a "police blotter" section that lists every arrest made since the last issue of the paper.
Yes, well, is that arguable? I don't think it is. Is it right to do it? I don't think it is, but I will bet you anything that the courts support it, especially if it goes to the top and SCOTUS gets its collectively bewildered hands on it.
I learned "fuckarosis" from reading Steven King. It's perfectly cromulent, you know. No need to embiggen the issue.
Young folk generally say "drama." Same thing. I prefer fuckarosis because it embodies the deep disdain I feel for the apparent inherent value drama has for the current population. As evidenced by "reality" shows, the popularity of the idiots on Fox, etc.
Simple: They had a marvelous tree of web sites, arranged so you could browse them by interest. I used it constantly. Then they stopped updating that, and finally abandoned it, and became useless. Eventually they used cash to buy things that were useful, like flickr, and so technically now have some merit again, but it is certainly not the usefulness they originally had. Which, I might add, search engines like Google really don't replace at all. Google's listings often do a terrible job of putting the actual relevant content first; Yahoo's tree typically had sites right where they needed to be.
But... WTF is Yahoo today? An aggregator of low-resolution pop culture? A venture capitalist? What? Why would I go there? I just did go there, and looking at the sidebar, can choose horoscopes, OMG!, dating... I see some cheesy sound-bite versions of news stories... there's a list of "trending" (which is pop culture nonsense)... really, I have no idea why I would spend more than ten seconds there after seeing the home page.
Why? The American public has allowed all manner of listings without any conviction, police or judicial action.
Just offhand: No-fly lists; No-buy lists; Gun owner lists; "offender" lists; land owner lists; boat owner lists; etc.
Unfortunately, the average citizen fails to anticipate what one seemingly harmless or seemingly desirable invasion of privacy means in terms of enabling behavior when an obviously harmful one comes around.
No. You don't understand what the constitution is: It is the enabling document for the federal government; it has some effect upon states, particularly in the bill of rights (amendments 1-10), and where states are mentioned explicitly (e.g. ex post facto laws), but it doesn't really go into great depth. In fact, it explicitly hands off a lot of legal territory to the states.
From there, states have (or can have) their own constitution, which describes how that state handles various issues -- which may not be very similar at all to another state. The only catch here is that the states are required to recognize the laws of the other states when issues cross borders.
Local government is then bound by the state rules, which may vary, and only the federal rules that over-ride.
Generally speaking, though, the constitution (the one we usually talk about) is a federal document.
As part of the "save the children" panic, the supreme court has already decided that such listings "aren't punishment", which is why they say they can be applied retroactively, after conviction. Without the (ridiculous, sophist) determination that such listings do no harm in and of themselves, the ex post facto prohibitions would come into play (as they actually should, of course.)
Consequently, I doubt that any listing of arrest subjects will be determined to be damaging or harmful, or that they require a conviction.
Shaming - permanent and otherwise - is part of America's new commitment to retribution over rehabilitation, and its support for the creation of a permanent rock-bottom lower class. The public is all for it; they love the drama and the fuckarosis that it all engenders, and it is a very rare citizen indeed that has any concept of how and why these things are wrong.
Pleased to meet your reflectivity/hue. :)
That's what negative moderation is on slashdot: "-1, Disagree."
it really doesn't matter to me, I browse at -1 so I can see the posts that aren't politically correct. Although sometimes it is amusing. :)
No, you've got me wrong. I'm not objecting to the rhymes; I'm objecting to the complete lack of musical merit of a "music" style that is based upon speech (not song.) I find the terminology "rap music" to be an oxymoron. This is what makes it subject to mockery.
The content of the lyrics would have to be addressed individually if one were to try to find merit in them; the mode, however, is fairly uniform and I'm quite comfortable dissing it.
Music, in my view, requires one to play an instrument, or sing (thus turning one's voice into an instrument.) Talking, screaming, spitting... these things are not musical. Speaking in rhythm is rhyming. It is, at best, a form of poetry.
Spouting rhyme, with or without musical accompaniment, doesn't qualify as music. It is what it is, and you may well enjoy it for whatever reason spoken rhyme trips your trigger, but it still isn't musical. In order to make that leap, they'll have to learn to sing.
Your mother is clearly a woman of considerable musical insight.
Well... unless it's rap, of course. Though calling rap "music" is probably going way, way too far anyway.
Nope. I generally do pretty well here in NE Montana.
This shot, and this one, are aurora photos from the CME event last week.
Eh? Base price is the price without extras, at least everywhere I've ever bought a car. You might have to special order one like that off a lot, but when they're being built custom, not so much. I've owned a couple of base model cars - nothing to it as long as you're not interested in a racing stripe or a factory radio, etc.
Four answers: (1), garage. If the car is warm when charged, this helps a lot. (2) Ultracaps or some other pollution free intermediary that isn't heat sensitive. (3) as you note, plug-in heaters, and yes, I already have to use them anyway - one for the oil pan, and one under the battery. Batteries hate the cold. (4) Variable insulation / cooling systems for the batteries. They get warm when used, so with heat management, they can remain warm (or cool, in summer.)
That's fine. I am.
So... you're not convinced that Windows is a tech support problem... but in the same post, you express relief that the Windows tech support problems are no longer yours. Seems to me like you need to go get a bandage there, as you've gone and cleanly shot off your own foot.
Let's start with a very simple fact: Bandwidth costs money. Now, ask yourself: Why does Apple provide trailers? Is it so you can watch them and money comes to Apple from the movie studios? Or is it so Apple can make money by selling the viewer the movie on iTunes, or stream it to them? Now ask yourself, how does Apple make money if you're a Linux user? And finally, considering that they don't make money from Linux users, why exactly do you think they should make it easy for a Linux user to view these trailers? Thanks.
Came across more as dismissal; but ok, if you say so.
The Tesla web site says base price is 49k (though they are including a tax credit, which seems fair to me. As long as I end up putting out less than 50k, then that was effectively the price.) Where did you get your number?
Hmmm. Well, my experience with technology - especially electrical tech - is that the price drops very quickly as volume scales up. So I'm thinking that the solution down the road will be significantly better, and less expensive, than prices and feature sets as presented to us today.
Ok, three things. First, the AGW hypothesis is not convincing to me. The models are painfully bad, the whole hockey stick thing is actually a counter-indicator, and as there is no precursor event of any kind to analyze, the (very loose, operating in unknown regimes) models are all there is to go on. And the historical record contradicts them roundly (that is, when carbon rises in the historical record, temperature falls - go look *closely* at the "hockey stick.") In the face of this, we have a definite historical record of significant and common climate change without the benefit of man's input. So I'm quite skeptical, and I don't have any inclination to use a "carbon" argument to make any of my decisions.
Secondly, presuming AGW is 100% right, the benefit of an all-electric fleet is that instead of having to change a zillion vehicles over (which is what we face right now no matter what - all these gas and diesel fueled vehicles emit carbon like pigs, so if you're worried about carbon, you should definitely be worrying about them), you only have to change/add power plants, of which there are only a few, comparatively speaking. Replacing one coal or oil power plant with a nuke (or any of several other several options) makes a big difference in emissions (of all kinds, not just carbon.)
Finally, electric vehicles will in most cases allow for direct charging at night, using existing generation capacity that is currently largely idle. This makes much more efficient use of whatever systems we have online at any one time. It is even possible to efficiently time-shift the charge - the charging station can take the energy at night, and then parcel it out when needed. There are a number of different options for this, from pumped storage at the high-energy end, to ultracaps and batteries at the low-energy end.
Well, let's just observe they've missed every significant deadline they ever talked about by factors of years. It is very hard to give them any credence at all at this point, although I would love to. They've simply worn me down with claims they've failed to back up.
Speaking as an engineer, I see absolutely no reason a standard, cartridge based battery swapping system would pose any technical or practical problems at all, time or convenience or anything else, if it was designed with any reasonable amount of care. It should be possible to change such a cartridge in a lot less time than it takes to currently fill a fuel tank.
What the real problem is, I think, is the manufacturers... getting them to agree on a cartridge standard - physical size, capacity range, mechanical and electrical interface - the mind boggles.
What makes you think that a 50k car of normal size that can do 80mph uphill and can reach 300 miles at highway speeds is a fantasy? Do you know anything about electric power systems? Ever look at the Tesla web site?
It's cold here in NE Montana too, we see -40f pretty much every winter. The thing about burning anything at the power plant, even petroleum, is that it is actually far more efficient than burning anything in the car. And of course, once the car is electric, the grid itself can change to anything - nuclear, solar, hydro, whatever - in any combination - and the car is oblivious. So you get a double benefit: First, you gain efficiency, and you also get flexibility at the plant level.
Yeah, I'm watching them and hoping, but as so many similar things have failed to materialize at the initially published prices, I'm not very confident. Might be a few years yet. And I can wait. My gas fueled vehicles are in good shape. Thanks for the rational response, btw.
The vast majority of -1 votes here are no more than "disagree" or "failed to comprehend" votes. I've seen it over and over again; someone takes the time to write a decent post, and some wag comes in and hits it -1, which is never corrected, and the post is lost to most readers.
Up-voting would raise any post that *any* moderator felt had merit, because no "+1 agree/interesting/useful" vote could ever be countered. And THAT in turn means that finally, taking the time to moderate is worthwhile - because your work can't be undone, and posts that have merit would rise despite the fact that the content might be disagreeable and/or controversial.
And if anyone ever up-voted a true troll... GNAA, frost piss, etc., that's when the site moderators could step in and flag that account "no mod points."
Slashdot moderation could actually work if it was strictly upwards trending. As it is, it's laughable - you have to browse at -1 to see the most interesting posts, those that carry views that are not mainstream. And the first thing that does is expose you to GNAA, etc.
It's really too bad. Slashdot could be so much better than it is.
As for Digg... I really don't care. It's like the E Entertainment channel of the Internet over there. Full of content signifying nothing.
I'm not in the least interested in buying a hybrid. I want an all-electric car. I want a normal-size car that can do 80 mph uphill, and has at least 300 miles of range at typical highway speeds. Get the price under 50g, and I'll buy it. With any luck it'd become a family heirloom. The only dealings I want with petroleum are for lubrication and manufacture of the plastic parts.
I'd love to buy a Tesla, but it's just too small, and let's face it, a wee bit on the expensive side.
Too bad EEStor turned out to be a bust... ultracapacitors could solve this whole battery mess pretty easily if they just had adequate energy capacities. Everyone else is in the "discovery" phase, which usually translates to "impractical." Not that manipulating a (very) high voltage energy source for use in low voltage, high current motors is all that easy anyway. That whole (E = CVV/2) thing is a cast-iron bitch on a number of fronts.
Oh, well.
But what you're missing is that I really don't care. I own the most popular hardware out there, with a thriving ecosystem of apps, music and video I can play... including mp3s, which means basically everything... why, exactly, should I care what your sony player does, or doesn't, or how "interoperable" my player is with whatever media you chose? I mean, from my POV, you simply picked the wrong horse. You should do more research. :)