The problem with trying to determine if it is a discount for opt-in, or a surcharge for opt-out, is that the actual "normal" price changes anyway on its own. Your scenario is too simple because it assumes 20 cents per apple is the fixed unchanging normal price - when in reality you don't *know* what the normal price is. You only know what price the stores are charging on average. You have no idea why the price is what it is. It's just whatever the store thought the market would bear.
If more people opt-in and get the "discount" than opt-out, then you can bet that this "discount" rate will become the "normal" rate in the vendor's state of mind. The "normal" price will be whatever the majority are paying.
Therefore, given that the majority tend to opt-in to discount programs, that means that ALL discount programs eventually trend toward becoming the normal price, with the opt-outers getting a surcharge.
It's exactly like what happened when Microsoft gave the "discount" for PC compatable computer sellers agreeing to ship MS-DOS on all machines. The end result was the "Microsoft Tax". People who wanted something else on their PC compatables ended up having to pay for Microsoft anyway, either through a mandatory copy of their OS, or though a vendor that had to charge more in order to cover the cost of others who chose it.
The 20 questions I was referring to weren't referenda. There are actually multiple positions being voted for on a single day. Pick a choice for National President, and pick a choice for National Senator, and pick a choice for National House of Representatives, and Pick a choice for local Sherrif, for local treasurer, for City Mayor, for state Senator, and State representative, etc. And at the end there are usually a few referrenda as well, but not many.
That's what makes a manual tally really, really ugly.
Here are two things you said:
1 - that ratio is pretty much one to one
2 - to get time on hubble requires a pretty rigourous review of merit.
You seem to be implying that (2) logically leads to (1). I don't see that. The way I see it, (2) only guarantees a minimum level of merit, not that all uses are exactly the same level of merit.
I think it's a very good thing that children have to think about these questions.
Sure. But will they? I doubt it.
In general I doubt the trustablity of Wikkipedia because of the fact that it will trend toward common consensus - and consensus is often false. (See my "uses no chemicals" example above.)
Not really. If the page maintatiner is not qualified, then that doesn't shoot down my stance that Wikkipedia is not to be trusted - it actually strengthens it even further.
Teaching "nothing is wrong with foo" isn't teaching because it doesn't alter the default in any way. "Nothing is wrong with foo" is always the default stance for any foo. "teaching" it is no different than "teaching" that "Nothing is known about foo".
Unless you want to teach the kids that there's nothing wrong...
Stop right there. That phrase does not semantically parse. The grammar is correct, but the meaning isn't mappable into my head. You can't teach a lack of a thing.
Bad example. They already knew the earth was round in 1004. The ancient greeks had even measured the curvature of the sea's surface and used that to extrapolate a measure of how big around the earth was. They were only off by a few hundred kilometers.
Now hold on a second - merely knowing that there exists other life (or at least that it existed in the past) would make a huge difference! Not necessarily in terms of us being able to talk to them or go there, but majorly in terms of philosophy or religion.
I don't see people here blaming the soviets and their atheist philosophy for the deaths of millions during the cold war.
I do. I see it a lot.
If you get "-1 evengelical atheist" then I get to have "-1 fundamentalist nutcase" - just for use in that sort of situation.
Well, actually I never use the moderation points, so it's largely irrelevant - I think it's more honest to state your dissatisfaction by responding to a false claim than by censoring it.
Moderation isn't supposed to be about agreement or disagreement with the truth or falsehood of the post's content, yet people keep using it that way. When I metamoderate (which I do do) I always mod that sort of thing down, even when I agree with the moderator that the post contained falsehoods.
Actually I think the most important fact that points to the (relative) uniqueness of the Sol system is that it is a failed binary system. Yes, that is the case. Saturn and Jupiter are a failed star.
Uhhmm - so the existance of large gas giants like that makes the Solar system a failed binary star system, and this is unique to Sol...so totally unlike all the other star systems....where the only discovered planets we know about so far have been huge gas giants....waitaminute.
In other news, the existence of ants and other insects has been shown to be a unique phenomenon that only exists in my yard, becuase while I can see several of them here at my feet, when I look across at the neighbor's yards, all I can see are the larger animals like dogs and cats - the insects are nowhere to be found over there. In fact, the only insects I seem to notice are the ones within a few meters of me.
The problem he's referring to is that by law, no matter where you are in the world, a US Citizen cannot "pre-vote" in an election before the election day. All votes have to be done on that day. Therefore to be valid, a soldier's absentee ballot must wait until election day to be sent in the mail. This was one of the things that delayed the Florida result in 2004 - it was close enough that the absentee ballots could swing it either way, and that meant waiting for them to arrive by bulk mail from all over the world.
But officially speaking, the actual count isn't closed until absentee ballots are in (via snail-mail). The slowness of the Florida result wasn't unique. It was the way the system works *all* the time, every time. It's just that decades of TV news coverage have made us forget that the result we are hearing on the news is actually just a statistical guess and isn't the real official count.
People, including the experts, are condemning electronic voting as a whole simply because the first generation of these machines have big problems
Yes, and the fear we (I am including myself in the group of condemners here, not the group of experts) have is that this "first generation" will likely become the "only generation" because those making the decisions of what system to use appear to be really ignorant of the inherent problems, or they know and don't care.
My fear is that there won't ever BE a second generation of these machines. Once the corrupt machines are used, the power of the voter to push for change is removed from the system, and nobody can push for a better system.
How many different 'questions' are there on a typical Canadian ballot like that? In the US there are typically about 20 or so, only ONE of which is for the presidency. Not being a Canadian, and therefore never having seen a Canadian ballot, I have no idea if this is more or less than you guys have up there - but it is one reason that a manual count ends up being a lot of effort.
But learning about the law is not the same as "indoctrination".
That statement is true. However, lying to kids about the law IS indoctrination, and I have every reason to believe, based on their past statements where they have shown a willingness to lie about the law in public statements to the press, that this is precisely what the RIAA would do with this class program.
Now if the schools formed their OWN lesson plans that taught about *actual* copyright law, that would be a good thing.
In the case of Wikipedia, it's a good idea to disallow it as a trustable source. A Wikipedia entry is only as trustable as the most recent person who edited it. And there are people out there who sabotage information on Wikipedia, replacing it with lies suited to their own agenda. Granted, those sorts of things do get fixed by others who maintain the page and go check it after it's updated, but they only check it after a window of time has passed - a window in which you might be looking at the page.
Wikipedia is a useful source for casual browsing, but it is not a trustable one because any crackpot can edit it and his edites appear *immediately* before anyone else even looks at them for review.
Plus there can be the "common knowlege" versus "accurate knowlege" problem, in fields where most people are mistaken about something. (And if you don't think that's a problem, consider the effectiveness of "Organic food" slogans like "grown without using chemicals"... Really... without chemicals....Wow that's impressive - so none of the matter in your topsoil was formed into molecules at all?)
I don't see how anyone could be against legal education in schools.
Do you see how people could be against misleading and inaccurate legal education in schools? That is precisely what will happen if we let the RIAA design the course material, which is precisely what they are doing.
The proper response when RIAA people start pushing schools to do this is for the schools to push back by saying, "You want us to educate people on copyright law? Sure thing - but *WE* are designing the course material then, not you. And well teach it to them accurately, including it's history, and why it was created, and including how you keep pushing copyright terms longer and longer... now, are you sure you want kids educated about this sort of thing...."
No - weren't you paying attention? He said he was going to tell the truth. Unless they are on their own indie label, artists and creators get piddly amounts from CD sales. They make their money performing live on tour. And if they *are* on their own indie label, then most likely they're out there *using* the sharing system to market their stuff since they have to go around the normal raidioplay methods.
Slashdot Mirror
The problem with trying to determine if it is a discount for opt-in, or a surcharge for opt-out, is that the actual "normal" price changes anyway on its own. Your scenario is too simple because it assumes 20 cents per apple is the fixed unchanging normal price - when in reality you don't *know* what the normal price is. You only know what price the stores are charging on average. You have no idea why the price is what it is. It's just whatever the store thought the market would bear.
If more people opt-in and get the "discount" than opt-out, then you can bet that this "discount" rate will become the "normal" rate in the vendor's state of mind. The "normal" price will be whatever the majority are paying.
Therefore, given that the majority tend to opt-in to discount programs, that means that ALL discount programs eventually trend toward becoming the normal price, with the opt-outers getting a surcharge.
It's exactly like what happened when Microsoft gave the "discount" for PC compatable computer sellers agreeing to ship MS-DOS on all machines. The end result was the "Microsoft Tax". People who wanted something else on their PC compatables ended up having to pay for Microsoft anyway, either through a mandatory copy of their OS, or though a vendor that had to charge more in order to cover the cost of others who chose it.
The 20 questions I was referring to weren't referenda. There are actually multiple positions being voted for on a single day. Pick a choice for National President, and pick a choice for National Senator, and pick a choice for National House of Representatives, and Pick a choice for local Sherrif, for local treasurer, for City Mayor, for state Senator, and State representative, etc. And at the end there are usually a few referrenda as well, but not many.
That's what makes a manual tally really, really ugly.
Your conclusion that I was ignorant of this is false.
I hate it when people argue about alternate realities that exist only in their heads.
Can you afford to have someone near enough to each heart monitor to hear when it has an irregular heartbeart?
The post you are responding to EXPLICITLY said, in boldface even:
"except to report a central monitoring station."
This renders your entire reply moot.
Here are two things you said:
1 - that ratio is pretty much one to one
2 - to get time on hubble requires a pretty rigourous review of merit.
You seem to be implying that (2) logically leads to (1). I don't see that. The way I see it, (2) only guarantees a minimum level of merit, not that all uses are exactly the same level of merit.
I think it's a very good thing that children have to think about these questions.
Sure. But will they? I doubt it.
In general I doubt the trustablity of Wikkipedia because of the fact that it will trend toward common consensus - and consensus is often false. (See my "uses no chemicals" example above.)
And you are a trustable source because....
Not really. If the page maintatiner is not qualified, then that doesn't shoot down my stance that Wikkipedia is not to be trusted - it actually strengthens it even further.
Teaching "nothing is wrong with foo" isn't teaching because it doesn't alter the default in any way. "Nothing is wrong with foo" is always the default stance for any foo. "teaching" it is no different than "teaching" that "Nothing is known about foo".
In the alternate universe where US companies only push an agenda within the US and in no other countries, your comment might have had merit.
Secondly, STIS is used in about 30% of Hubble scheduling. So this means that 70% of science can still be done
Only if there is a one-to-one correspondence between "time spent" and "science done". That seems highly unlikely.
Unless you want to teach the kids that there's nothing wrong...
Stop right there. That phrase does not semantically parse. The grammar is correct, but the meaning isn't mappable into my head. You can't teach a lack of a thing.
Bad example. They already knew the earth was round in 1004.
The ancient greeks had even measured the curvature of the sea's surface and used that to extrapolate a measure of how big around the earth was. They were only off by a few hundred kilometers.
Now hold on a second - merely knowing that there exists other life (or at least that it existed in the past) would make a huge difference! Not necessarily in terms of us being able to talk to them or go there, but majorly in terms of philosophy or religion.
I don't see people here blaming the soviets and their atheist philosophy for the deaths of millions during the cold war.
I do. I see it a lot.
If you get "-1 evengelical atheist" then I get to have "-1 fundamentalist nutcase" - just for use in that sort of situation.
Well, actually I never use the moderation points, so it's largely irrelevant - I think it's more honest to state your dissatisfaction by responding to a false claim than by censoring it.
Moderation isn't supposed to be about agreement or disagreement with the truth or falsehood of the post's content, yet people keep using it that way. When I metamoderate (which I do do) I always mod that sort of thing down, even when I agree with the moderator that the post contained falsehoods.
Actually I think the most important fact that points to the (relative) uniqueness of the Sol system is that it is a failed binary system. Yes, that is the case. Saturn and Jupiter are a failed star.
Uhhmm - so the existance of large gas giants like that makes the Solar system a failed binary star system, and this is unique to Sol...so totally unlike all the other star systems....where the only discovered planets we know about so far have been huge gas giants....waitaminute.
In other news, the existence of ants and other insects has been shown to be a unique phenomenon that only exists in my yard, becuase while I can see several of them here at my feet, when I look across at the neighbor's yards, all I can see are the larger animals like dogs and cats - the insects are nowhere to be found over there. In fact, the only insects I seem to notice are the ones within a few meters of me.
The problem he's referring to is that by law, no matter where you are in the world, a US Citizen cannot "pre-vote" in an election before the election day. All votes have to be done on that day. Therefore to be valid, a soldier's absentee ballot must wait until election day to be sent in the mail. This was one of the things that delayed the Florida result in 2004 - it was close enough that the absentee ballots could swing it either way, and that meant waiting for them to arrive by bulk mail from all over the world.
But officially speaking, the actual count isn't closed until absentee ballots are in (via snail-mail). The slowness of the Florida result wasn't unique. It was the way the system works *all* the time, every time. It's just that decades of TV news coverage have made us forget that the result we are hearing on the news is actually just a statistical guess and isn't the real official count.
People, including the experts, are condemning electronic voting as a whole simply because the first generation of these machines have big problems
Yes, and the fear we (I am including myself in the group of condemners here, not the group of experts) have is that this "first generation" will likely become the "only generation" because those making the decisions of what system to use appear to be really ignorant of the inherent problems, or they know and don't care.
My fear is that there won't ever BE a second generation of these machines. Once the corrupt machines are used, the power of the voter to push for change is removed from the system, and nobody can push for a better system.
How many different 'questions' are there on a typical Canadian ballot like that? In the US there are typically about 20 or so, only ONE of which is for the presidency. Not being a Canadian, and therefore never having seen a Canadian ballot, I have no idea if this is more or less than you guys have up there - but it is one reason that a manual count ends up being a lot of effort.
But learning about the law is not the same as "indoctrination".
That statement is true. However, lying to kids about the law IS indoctrination, and I have every reason to believe, based on their past statements where they have shown a willingness to lie about the law in public statements to the press, that this is precisely what the RIAA would do with this class program.
Now if the schools formed their OWN lesson plans that taught about *actual* copyright law, that would be a good thing.
In the case of Wikipedia, it's a good idea to disallow it as a trustable source. A Wikipedia entry is only as trustable as the most recent person who edited it. And there are people out there who sabotage information on Wikipedia, replacing it with lies suited to their own agenda. Granted, those sorts of things do get fixed by others who maintain the page and go check it after it's updated, but they only check it after a window of time has passed - a window in which you might be looking at the page.
Wikipedia is a useful source for casual browsing, but it is not a trustable one because any crackpot can edit it and his edites appear *immediately* before anyone else even looks at them for review.
Plus there can be the "common knowlege" versus "accurate knowlege" problem, in fields where most people are mistaken about something. (And if you don't think that's a problem, consider the effectiveness of "Organic food" slogans like "grown without using chemicals"...
Really... without chemicals....Wow that's impressive - so none of the matter in your topsoil was formed into molecules at all?)
I don't see how anyone could be against legal education in schools.
Do you see how people could be against misleading and inaccurate legal education in schools? That is precisely what will happen if we let the RIAA design the course material, which is precisely what they are doing.
The proper response when RIAA people start pushing schools to do this is for the schools to push back by saying, "You want us to educate people on copyright law? Sure thing - but *WE* are designing the course material then, not you. And well teach it to them accurately, including it's history, and why it was created, and including how you keep pushing copyright terms longer and longer... now, are you sure you want kids educated about this sort of thing...."
Brian: No, no, no - You must all think for yourselves!
Crowd (together): We must all think for ourselves.
(and later)
Brian: Fuck off!
Crowd (together): How shall we fuck off, oh Lord?
That has to be my favorite scene in all the monty python movies.
No - weren't you paying attention? He said he was going to tell the truth. Unless they are on their own indie label, artists and creators get piddly amounts from CD sales. They make their money performing live on tour. And if they *are* on their own indie label, then most likely they're out there *using* the sharing system to market their stuff since they have to go around the normal raidioplay methods.