It's not as weak as you'd think. Fixing things that aren't completely broken -- or broken at all -- often entails a cost, but a real monetary cost but also a social cost (just look at how well the metric system has caught on in the united states).
Or, more simply: the issues (if there even ARE any, which I'd say there are not) with time zones are far lesser than the issues that would be caused by abolishing time zones (let alone the issues that would be caused by not having time zones -- problems adjusting as well as problems simply using).
Car analogy: if my car doesn't start on the first turnover, maybe that's a problem, but probably it is not. tearing the engine apart to correct a small issue that may or may not exist, however, will cause problems. maybe the engine will run better, maybe it won't, but it really wasn't having any problems worth noting in the first place.. and even if there was a small problem, and even if I was able to fix it, I've still lost god knows how many hours tearing the thing apart and putting it back together again. the solution, then, is a far greater cost than just not doing anything, with no clear benefit at the end -- AND a chance that it'll just introduce a serious problem when none existed previously.
Here here. That's all we need to do. It's an archaic idea. There's no savings in heating or lighting to be realized in the modern era by daylight savings time.
The very notion that people should constantly change the hour which they rise in the morning is just.. horrific. I think there's been enough studies done showing a detrimental effect on health caused by unnatural forced shifting of the natural sleep/wake cycle that we could declare daylight savings to be a danger and risk to our health -- the loss of sleep when we shift clocks ahead results in a week of increased strokes, heart attacks, car accidents, and I'm sure if you actually looked into it, a decrease in both overall productivity of workers and in the quality of the work that is accomplished.
Horrible shit, compared to the bullshit reasons the daylight savings idea caught on and was implemented.
And how, exactly, would this even be an improvement?
You're aware that the number of people who let's say need to schedule meetings with someone on the other side of the planet already have a perfectly elegant solution, right? That they can just use UTC/GMT instead of their local time?
The only difficult part would be for Americans who would also need to remember if we're on daylight savings time or not before they convert it back to local time.. which you wouldn't even need to do, honestly.. and which, honestly, if we're going to do any time-related changes, would be the best solution. Just nix daylight savings, since it doesn't do anything but make people more tired for one week a year.
A ha! And there's the thing. Just looking at the numbers, New York state and your prefecture are comparable.. but the numbers don't tell the whole story. That population density for NY is based on the whole state. New York is a *large* state. New York is 1/3 the size of Japan.. with ~1/6 the population. And, as you said, they've got NYC.. which totally skews the numbers so far as population density for the state is concerned.
of course, it certainly could be better here, and Japan's really really good about that sort of thing (200Meg? Is that Mbit or MByte? Either way.. goddamn..) but honestly? It's not half as bad in the States as people make it out to be. Where I'm living, the town's got 7,000 people and the population density for this area is *low* -- for the whole county, it's only about 370people/sq.mi. If you exclude the county seat, and just are talking about my town and the surrounding area? It's closer to 100, or less. I've got a 2MByte/sec connection, have seen it over 4, rarely goes under 1.5. For about as much as you're paying.
I'd have to drive 2 hours to find a city with 800,000 people.
Asia isn't as completely covered with people as I make it out to be (I've.. done this before), but that's only because where I'm from is way more empty than anyone not from this sort of place would suspect. I could walk out my front door right now, walk for maybe 20 minutes, and punch a cow.
Cultural differences, really.. as much as Americans love getting up-in-arms defensive about America, they also love to exaggerate and dwell on everything negative about it. It gives people a bad impression. And of course we do have sections where you just can't get broadband yet, STILL.. but that's mostly flyover country (and boy do they not like being called that).
But hell, if you're living in an area where you can buy an acre of land for 1-2 grand... I can understand wanting to not be excluded but I think when moving that far away from civilization you maybe should expect to not maybe be on the cutting edge of things.... 200meg connection? damn..
that image has been around since.. well since 04. i've seen it before. the rumors that steve has / had AIDS predate that image. it's very likely just a shoop. his horrid appearance over the majority of the past decade has likely only been due to cancer, not AIDS -- and we know for sure he had the former. I don't know what the outlook is for someone with AIDS *and* cancer, but I have a feeling living for 7 more years past the prognosis would be pretty damn miraculous.
no joke, i'm pretty impressed. i couldn't even understand the poincare problem, let alone the solution, and it looks like these guys saw it and already had a problem sitting around waiting for Poincare to allow them to solve it. sometimes, humanity.. sometimes you're alright.
I.. ohh boy. I should know or at least understand basically what is going on here. It's all physics after all.
after careful consideration and research... I. ohh. man.
it's magic.
ok, ok, it's only half magic. I tried tackling it from the Poincare end first, but that.. that uh, no. Then I RTFA:D
It looks like this is just using Poincare magic to understand and map how polarized light travels through fiber optic cables, and more specifically how circularly polarized light behaves -- the end result being that we can differentiate and individualize the light waves in the cable to a greater degree than currently (I could be wrong but I believe right now the multiple channels per strand are simply different wavelengths of light).
Er, well, the end result being that if this can be made practical, we might just be able to use not only different wavelengths of light as different channels but also different polarizations of light.. which if it works, would be huge. It started with just light blinking on and off through the fiber, and then we went to a few wavelengths of light each independently carrying information, and this would let us use different wavelengths AND different polarizations of light at each wavelength to transmit data. Which is a Big Fucking Deal.
As to how... and how Poincare fits into the picture... er, well, there's your magic. I'm not bad with broad concepts but details make my brain bleed:|
Actually, looking at that with a bit broader perspective..
it sounds like teachers not only cannot use any social networking, but also cannot use non-school-provided email, cannot use slashdot, and cannot play any sort of online game that has any sort of chat or messaging function.
Kinda ridiculous. Just a tad. Teachers have enough shit to put up with that forces them to keep up appearances of an absolutely puritanical robotic life. Oh gosh, Timmy's dad saw you buying a case of beer at the store, YOU'RE IN FOR IT NOW! He'll go and complain to the school board about what a poor example you're setting for the children!.. yeah.
Actually, he was using Mbps, not MBps. I live in the suburbs. Nearest 'city' is the state capitol of roughly 50k people, and that's ~45 minutes away. My town's got about 7k people. The connection I'm on right now -- it's cable -- I can typically count on to deliver 2MBps downstream. I've seen it higher, but that's what I assume it will be -- that's roughly what my cable modem's capped at, that is. Not sure what my upstream speed is because frankly, I don't really give a damn and haven't ever had reason to test it. Not really an upstream type of guy. 2MBps is 16Mbps.
There's your math. It's very comparable. Thus, it ISN'T a problem in small town USA.:)
Now, flyover country is a different matter -- but flyover country USA is more analogous to the northernmost reaches of Sweden. I don't know what sort of internet connection the Laplanders get but I suspect it's not much better than what Corn Farmer Dave gets in Nebraska.
Of course I could be wrong. He could have a 10MBps connection, which would be ridiculously fast no matter what country you're in.
Same experience here. I've worked with / trained Chinese workers, I've had Chinese professors, I've known Chinese students. Good people. I can't say the same for most of the South Americans I've met, even -- that is, the Colombians and Brasilians I've met were, unfortunately, pretty good examples of how those countries wound up with the sorts of governments they have had and have currently.. but the Chinese folks just really.. I don't know. You're right. I can't reconcile the Chinese people I've met with the Chinese government.
Hell, I've worked with old Soviets who spoke well of Stalin, and even that after a time I could understand (even the comparison between Stalin and George Washington O_o). And then I train these Chinese workers, who are in the States, they're talking openly to all us Americans.. I don't understand how they could leave and go back home to make less per day than we were making per hour, to live in fenced corporate dormitories when we all jump in our cars and head home after our shift. But they did. I don't think any of them even thought about jumping ship and trying to stay here. I know I'd never agree but I at least think it's something I should be able to understand, but I can't.
Err, I frequently get 2MB/s, during the middle of the day, no problem. Cable, not DSL -- the DSL in this area was.... less than reliable.
The argument carries over, though -- it's infrastructure. Infrastructure is infrastructure, wired or wireless.. more or less.
In Europe, you've got these INCREDIBLY dense population centers that extend, well.. the whole damned continent, really. The only sparsely inhabited areas of Europe are in the far north, up near the Laplanders. That's roughly analogous to America's "fly-over country". Except it's less than half the size, and it's at the very edge of the continent. Here in the US, it's a majority of our land area, and it's between our population centers. Even our population centers aren't as densely populated as Europe's, nor do the high density areas extend as far and as contiguously as they do in Europe.
Er, oh, and I'm giving speeds in MBps, not Mbps, soooooo actually that 2 MBps would be 16 Mbps. It's not half as bad as people make it out to be.
'course, I'm fortunate. I'm 2 hours north of Baltimore/DC, 3 hours south of NYC, 2 hours west of Philly, 3 hours east of Pittsburg. There's decent infrastructure surrounding me, but I'm not in such a highly populated area that everything is oversaturated and I'm not so far away from the major population centers that there's nobody willing to lay down the Last Mile to get here.
Now, you get a place like Japan or Korea? You get the same number of people in a smaller area, and the same thing as is the case in Europe is the case there but to an even greater degree. To reach 99% of the people with a connection of X speed, you've gotta put down big fat pipes over.. what, a few dozen miles maybe? Here in the states if you did that, you'd cover *maybe* two large cities, and tough balls to people living several hours away. America is a big, big, big place. People from Europe and Asia tend to not realize how large and expansive this country is.
We're not Canada, with almost all our population in a thin ribbon stretching east to west. Or, for that matter, Australia, with their population only really living around the edges of the ocean. The population distribution of the United States actually is more close to that of sub-Saharan Africa. Yeah... yeah.
Of course, that's just one excuse. The upgrade cycle is another -- Europe had to rebuild their infrastructure following WW2. We didn't. Most of ours was done in the 50s/60s/70s.. its life cycle wasn't far enough along to justify tearing it all up, whereas Europe's infrastructure needed replacement sooner.
HA! Thank you. This is precisely the sort of thing I've tried to argue about in the past and was repeatedly shouted down and told that I'm just an ignorant American and don't know anything.
The awesome connectivity and speeds has more to do with population concentrations than anything else. America's a huge place, and not a very old place, so our population centers are, er, not very centered or contiguous. New York City is huge, Philly is huge, and the Baltimore/DC metro area is huge, but there's about 2 hours of driving through nothing to get between them (and baltimore/DC are about 30 minute to an hour apart, depending on traffic). Travel a half hour east from any of those places and you're either in affluent suburbs, or straight-up rural areas, with farms, and cows.
A glance at a population density map is really all anyone needs to figure that out, but some people just don't get it. The cool thing to do is to consider anything Europe or Asia to be better than anything America, and that the sole reason for it is simply American incompetence. So frustrating. Impossible to actually ever discuss or improve anything when you're dealing with people like that, completely divorced from reality.
'course your landlines are faster, but that's also tied in to land area and population density.. and also WW2 actually. Infrastructure upgrade cycles! 'course we missed out on our last one! Fucking US Gov't gave the telecoms god knows how much money to lay fiber, to build modern high speed backbones across the country. Good luck finding where that money ever went to, that was coming up on 20 years ago now iirc..
I don't know that it's fair to say it's murdering GFWL. GFWL was dead right out of the gates, and it's microsoft's fault.. and GFWL was really just a knockoff of Steam anyway. Microsoft had several years to look at Steam and copy it before launching GFWL, somehow they did not and instead they... well. They released GFWL. It's terrible. Their XBox service isn't bad, but for PC? Eeeewwwww
Honestly there really isn't any comparing the US and Chinese government. I make no excuses for the US gov't, but the US gov't is the obnoxious, occasionally destructive frat boy to the Chinese gov't's sociopathic homicidal con-man.
Worst part is that kind of government is a part of chinese culture, too. that's sort of how they've run the show for most of their history. it's fucking weird.
Simply pointing out that some of the data used as the basis for the AGW conclusions is not as reliable as was believed when those conclusions were formed was enough for you to paint me as "one of them", was enough for your hackles to stand on-end and for you to personally attack me.
I'm not saying the conclusions are wrong. I'm saying they may be less right than initially believed. That's how things FUCKING WORK, dude. Get off your high horse, you're every bit as devoted to not changing your views as any other fundamentalist whacko.
Based on what was known, the AGW conclusions were not incorrect. New things become known. Conclusions must be revisited and the impact that the newly-discovered data uncertainty has on those conclusions must be evaluated.
None of that necessarily means AGW conclusions are wrong, but it does mean that the assumptions that were made to establish historical data points were not as reliable as was believed at the time they were made. I do not recall hearing about anyone revisiting their AGW conclusions to determine what effect this new uncertainty may have on those conclusions -- because any suggestion that they need to do so is taken as an attack on the AGW conclusions. It is not. It's simply good fucking science.
If tomorrow we discover that assumptions that we made and believed to be true which were used in calculating the speed of light may not have been as true as we believed them to be at the time, that does not mean we have the speed of light *wrong* but it DOES mean that we need to re-determine if our calculations of the speed of light are still correct. To simply assume so and attack any suggestion otherwise is not science, it's blind faith. Lashing out just like any other religious fundamentalist. It's embarrassing, and frustrating to be painted as some sort of monstrous denier of reason when your goal is to not destroy but IMPROVE knowledge and understanding and to evolve conclusions and ideas as new evidence presents itself.
There's been, in the past few years, evidence coming out that both ice core samples and tree ring samples are not NEARLY as reliable as we thought they were when it comes to recording the climate of the past -- in the case of ice core samples, it was discovered that there's gas migration, and that they are not the perfect records of the atmosphere of the past that we believed they were. in the case of the tree rings, it was discovered that sheep grazing nearby had a larger impact on the formation of rings in a tree than did the climate.
It's pretty fucking depressing that these things get you labeled a denier and a luddite if you point them out. It's not that AGW research is bumpkis, but AGW researchers and supporters have a fanatical devotion to their opinions and will run you out of town for pointing out flaws in the data they used to reach their conclusions. Fucking.. ridiculous. There is no room in their minds for someone who simply wants to improve knowledge and understanding -- to them it's all very clear, you are either with them or against them, toe the line or you are an enemy.
Pretty depressing. Both sides do it, but the AGW crowd should really know better. I don't expect a dirt farmer to have a rigorous scientific mind, but I do expect research scientists to be mature enough to admit that if the data they base conclusions upon is found to be less reliable than previously believed that their conclusions may also be less reliable than previously believed; I expect them to rigorously deconstruct fucking EVERYTHING to try and find flaws with their conclusions before presenting them as unquestionable fact.
Madoff is a smart guy -- all the evidence you need is wrapped up in his Ponzi scheme.
I suspect you're spot-on about the early investors. I suspect that, if that IS in fact true, that Madoff most likely did that intentionally -- he's got them by the balls in two ways.
Firstly, bringing them in early and paying out to them? Bribery. Keep quiet about things, here's a ton of money. Secondly, blackmail. Oh, by the way, this is all totally illegal and you are now complicit. Enjoy your money, keep your mouth shut or we ALL go down in flames. Thirdly.. there is no thirdly, I think that probably covers it well enough actually.
Here's the thing: when you tell people not to change who they are to impress others, the presumption is that they're decent people in the first place.
An arrogant fatass who is barely literate and unable to form a single coherent thought into a full sentence, who only comments on boobies, and who doesn't show any interests other than in boobies and himself?
That dude needs to change, not to impress some lady but simply because he's a fucking awful person.
Patriot Act was passed through a majority Democrat Senate. Just sayin'. One single democrat senator voted against, one abstained. Seems pretty bilateral to me. Remember it was passed right in the wake of not just 9/11 but also the anthrax attacks.
I think you were mistaken in your belief. Both are just as equal, but it's been my experience that the democrats are simply much, much better at hiding their evils. The repubs just tend to wave the flag. They don't really put much effort into hiding what they're doing. I might not like what they're doing, but at least it's out in the open and obvious to everyone -- it's a lot easier to deal with and stop that sort of thing compared to something that's more cleverly cloaked behind good intentions.
Some of those lowest bidder sticks are actually damn well made, though, too. Mossberg's 500 series has gone up about 30 bucks in the last 20 years, and no one's going to fall in love with them but it's just about the perfect example of a highly functional working tool. also a personal fan of the Tikkas, for 500 bucks you get a super-light rifle that'll shoot under 1 MOA for as far as you can hold it that well (which for me turns out is at least 400 yards). They're build on some kind of crazy-ass light action, though, and I've found that they'll put ~3-5 shots right where you want them and then start getting hot and opening up... but if you're doing things right you'll never need to shoot that many times anyway. And the CZ 550s, boy howdy, got one of those in 375 H&H for under a grand. Even though it's the cheapest safari rifle you'll find, more or less, it's good old-school workmanship -- steel and wood and big and heavy as hell. I'm a big guy, I got big hands, it fills them. Damn thing'll fit 5 rounds inside the mag well, 1 in the chamber. Of 375. It's a monster. Balanced damn well for being so large. Haven't shot at range with it extensively, but threw out some ~2" @100yd using the irons on it. Metal/wood fit everywhere is tight and precise, wood's not showy but hell I don't like showy wood anyway. Makes me feel bad scratching it up. Rather not feel bad about using my guns.
None of this is relevant at all. I just found an excuse to talk about rifles I like.
But oh god were those Winchesters awful -- the last few years of production at their old plant up in New Haven. I really prefer buying American guns and cars (most other things I don't bother, but I *LIKE* those industries..), but those Winchesters were absolute garbage. I don't know what was going on up there, if it was the workers or the management trying to rush out production to hold them over til they got the new plant online, but it was really fucking depressing to pick up what should be an American icon and realizing that it's just a hard shake away from falling apart. More poorly made than a goddamned Nagant, and 8 times the price. Depressing. (then again, those Nagants are ugly as hell but with a little TLC they're not half bad shooters themselves.. crafty damn Rooskies always find a way to make the worst shit work well, I just don't even..)
yay! i love being proven right. i mean, it happens a lot, but, still. >:D
from my forums i'm gathering that they think this is actually great, because none of them liked Apple's method for scrolling through pictures anyway and were kinda miffed that Samsung stole it in the first place, haha.
I hadn't actually heard that Apple's multitouch patent was thrown out?? That sent a shiver down my spine. I'm off to investigate, but if it's the one I'm thinking of.. this is a big fucking deal said joe biden. I know they had one on the use of heuristics to accomplish multi-touch.. and that it was complete bullshit.. but I only remember grumbling loudly about it, but not the details.
it's pretty bad when i cant even remember why i'm pissed off at any particular example of patent law abuse... sigh.
I'm typically not a fan of European law, but what the hell is it with the Dutch that keeps them constantly popping up as the only sane Continentals? I suppose that's unfair to the more Nordic nations... but maybe that's the connection, haha. Only Viking nations have sane law..
Slashdot Mirror
It's not as weak as you'd think. Fixing things that aren't completely broken -- or broken at all -- often entails a cost, but a real monetary cost but also a social cost (just look at how well the metric system has caught on in the united states).
Or, more simply: the issues (if there even ARE any, which I'd say there are not) with time zones are far lesser than the issues that would be caused by abolishing time zones (let alone the issues that would be caused by not having time zones -- problems adjusting as well as problems simply using).
Car analogy: if my car doesn't start on the first turnover, maybe that's a problem, but probably it is not. tearing the engine apart to correct a small issue that may or may not exist, however, will cause problems. maybe the engine will run better, maybe it won't, but it really wasn't having any problems worth noting in the first place.. and even if there was a small problem, and even if I was able to fix it, I've still lost god knows how many hours tearing the thing apart and putting it back together again. the solution, then, is a far greater cost than just not doing anything, with no clear benefit at the end -- AND a chance that it'll just introduce a serious problem when none existed previously.
Thank you. Now there's a logical reason that this is a bullshit idea.
Abolish time zones, and you still need to know what the time zones are. Sure sounds like a simplified process to me!
Here here. That's all we need to do. It's an archaic idea. There's no savings in heating or lighting to be realized in the modern era by daylight savings time.
The very notion that people should constantly change the hour which they rise in the morning is just.. horrific. I think there's been enough studies done showing a detrimental effect on health caused by unnatural forced shifting of the natural sleep/wake cycle that we could declare daylight savings to be a danger and risk to our health -- the loss of sleep when we shift clocks ahead results in a week of increased strokes, heart attacks, car accidents, and I'm sure if you actually looked into it, a decrease in both overall productivity of workers and in the quality of the work that is accomplished.
Horrible shit, compared to the bullshit reasons the daylight savings idea caught on and was implemented.
And how, exactly, would this even be an improvement?
You're aware that the number of people who let's say need to schedule meetings with someone on the other side of the planet already have a perfectly elegant solution, right? That they can just use UTC/GMT instead of their local time?
The only difficult part would be for Americans who would also need to remember if we're on daylight savings time or not before they convert it back to local time.. which you wouldn't even need to do, honestly.. and which, honestly, if we're going to do any time-related changes, would be the best solution. Just nix daylight savings, since it doesn't do anything but make people more tired for one week a year.
A ha! And there's the thing.
Just looking at the numbers, New York state and your prefecture are comparable.. but the numbers don't tell the whole story. That population density for NY is based on the whole state. New York is a *large* state. New York is 1/3 the size of Japan.. with ~1/6 the population. And, as you said, they've got NYC.. which totally skews the numbers so far as population density for the state is concerned.
Most of NY state is.. well. Here, just take a look..
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:New_York_Population_Map.png
Most of the state has less than 100 people per square mile..
of course, it certainly could be better here, and Japan's really really good about that sort of thing (200Meg? Is that Mbit or MByte? Either way.. goddamn..) but honestly? It's not half as bad in the States as people make it out to be. Where I'm living, the town's got 7,000 people and the population density for this area is *low* -- for the whole county, it's only about 370people/sq.mi. If you exclude the county seat, and just are talking about my town and the surrounding area? It's closer to 100, or less. I've got a 2MByte/sec connection, have seen it over 4, rarely goes under 1.5. For about as much as you're paying.
I'd have to drive 2 hours to find a city with 800,000 people.
Asia isn't as completely covered with people as I make it out to be (I've.. done this before), but that's only because where I'm from is way more empty than anyone not from this sort of place would suspect. I could walk out my front door right now, walk for maybe 20 minutes, and punch a cow.
Cultural differences, really.. as much as Americans love getting up-in-arms defensive about America, they also love to exaggerate and dwell on everything negative about it. It gives people a bad impression. And of course we do have sections where you just can't get broadband yet, STILL.. but that's mostly flyover country (and boy do they not like being called that).
But hell, if you're living in an area where you can buy an acre of land for 1-2 grand... I can understand wanting to not be excluded but I think when moving that far away from civilization you maybe should expect to not maybe be on the cutting edge of things. ... 200meg connection? damn..
that image has been around since.. well since 04. i've seen it before.
the rumors that steve has / had AIDS predate that image.
it's very likely just a shoop. his horrid appearance over the majority of the past decade has likely only been due to cancer, not AIDS -- and we know for sure he had the former. I don't know what the outlook is for someone with AIDS *and* cancer, but I have a feeling living for 7 more years past the prognosis would be pretty damn miraculous.
no joke, i'm pretty impressed. i couldn't even understand the poincare problem, let alone the solution, and it looks like these guys saw it and already had a problem sitting around waiting for Poincare to allow them to solve it. sometimes, humanity.. sometimes you're alright.
I.. ohh boy. I should know or at least understand basically what is going on here. It's all physics after all.
after careful consideration and research... I. ohh. man.
it's magic.
ok, ok, it's only half magic. I tried tackling it from the Poincare end first, but that.. that uh, no. Then I RTFA :D
It looks like this is just using Poincare magic to understand and map how polarized light travels through fiber optic cables, and more specifically how circularly polarized light behaves -- the end result being that we can differentiate and individualize the light waves in the cable to a greater degree than currently (I could be wrong but I believe right now the multiple channels per strand are simply different wavelengths of light).
Er, well, the end result being that if this can be made practical, we might just be able to use not only different wavelengths of light as different channels but also different polarizations of light.. which if it works, would be huge. It started with just light blinking on and off through the fiber, and then we went to a few wavelengths of light each independently carrying information, and this would let us use different wavelengths AND different polarizations of light at each wavelength to transmit data. Which is a Big Fucking Deal.
As to how... and how Poincare fits into the picture... er, well, there's your magic. I'm not bad with broad concepts but details make my brain bleed :|
I am interested in your ideas and would like to subscribe to your newsletter.
Actually, looking at that with a bit broader perspective..
it sounds like teachers not only cannot use any social networking, but also cannot use non-school-provided email, cannot use slashdot, and cannot play any sort of online game that has any sort of chat or messaging function.
Kinda ridiculous. Just a tad. Teachers have enough shit to put up with that forces them to keep up appearances of an absolutely puritanical robotic life. Oh gosh, Timmy's dad saw you buying a case of beer at the store, YOU'RE IN FOR IT NOW! He'll go and complain to the school board about what a poor example you're setting for the children!.. yeah.
Depression! Fun for the whole fucking family!
haha, nice troll.
collectable video games.
give me a break.
good luck getting more than the price of a used game for any of that crap.
protip: rarity does not exist when digital distribution does exist
Actually, he was using Mbps, not MBps. I live in the suburbs. Nearest 'city' is the state capitol of roughly 50k people, and that's ~45 minutes away. My town's got about 7k people. The connection I'm on right now -- it's cable -- I can typically count on to deliver 2MBps downstream. I've seen it higher, but that's what I assume it will be -- that's roughly what my cable modem's capped at, that is. Not sure what my upstream speed is because frankly, I don't really give a damn and haven't ever had reason to test it. Not really an upstream type of guy.
2MBps is 16Mbps.
There's your math. It's very comparable. Thus, it ISN'T a problem in small town USA. :)
Now, flyover country is a different matter -- but flyover country USA is more analogous to the northernmost reaches of Sweden. I don't know what sort of internet connection the Laplanders get but I suspect it's not much better than what Corn Farmer Dave gets in Nebraska.
Of course I could be wrong. He could have a 10MBps connection, which would be ridiculously fast no matter what country you're in.
Same experience here. I've worked with / trained Chinese workers, I've had Chinese professors, I've known Chinese students. Good people. I can't say the same for most of the South Americans I've met, even -- that is, the Colombians and Brasilians I've met were, unfortunately, pretty good examples of how those countries wound up with the sorts of governments they have had and have currently.. but the Chinese folks just really.. I don't know. You're right. I can't reconcile the Chinese people I've met with the Chinese government.
Hell, I've worked with old Soviets who spoke well of Stalin, and even that after a time I could understand (even the comparison between Stalin and George Washington O_o). And then I train these Chinese workers, who are in the States, they're talking openly to all us Americans.. I don't understand how they could leave and go back home to make less per day than we were making per hour, to live in fenced corporate dormitories when we all jump in our cars and head home after our shift. But they did. I don't think any of them even thought about jumping ship and trying to stay here. I know I'd never agree but I at least think it's something I should be able to understand, but I can't.
I guess it really is just Chinatown, Jake.
2 hours from NYC to Philly, and then 2 more to DC! Wasn't entirely clear about that was I hehe
although, I do like this "ramming all the cars on I-95" idea of yours. Do you have a newsletter that I may subscribe to it?
Err, I frequently get 2MB/s, during the middle of the day, no problem. Cable, not DSL -- the DSL in this area was.... less than reliable.
The argument carries over, though -- it's infrastructure. Infrastructure is infrastructure, wired or wireless.. more or less.
In Europe, you've got these INCREDIBLY dense population centers that extend, well.. the whole damned continent, really. The only sparsely inhabited areas of Europe are in the far north, up near the Laplanders. That's roughly analogous to America's "fly-over country". Except it's less than half the size, and it's at the very edge of the continent. Here in the US, it's a majority of our land area, and it's between our population centers. Even our population centers aren't as densely populated as Europe's, nor do the high density areas extend as far and as contiguously as they do in Europe.
Er, oh, and I'm giving speeds in MBps, not Mbps, soooooo actually that 2 MBps would be 16 Mbps. It's not half as bad as people make it out to be.
'course, I'm fortunate. I'm 2 hours north of Baltimore/DC, 3 hours south of NYC, 2 hours west of Philly, 3 hours east of Pittsburg. There's decent infrastructure surrounding me, but I'm not in such a highly populated area that everything is oversaturated and I'm not so far away from the major population centers that there's nobody willing to lay down the Last Mile to get here.
Now, you get a place like Japan or Korea? You get the same number of people in a smaller area, and the same thing as is the case in Europe is the case there but to an even greater degree. To reach 99% of the people with a connection of X speed, you've gotta put down big fat pipes over.. what, a few dozen miles maybe? Here in the states if you did that, you'd cover *maybe* two large cities, and tough balls to people living several hours away. America is a big, big, big place. People from Europe and Asia tend to not realize how large and expansive this country is.
We're not Canada, with almost all our population in a thin ribbon stretching east to west. Or, for that matter, Australia, with their population only really living around the edges of the ocean. The population distribution of the United States actually is more close to that of sub-Saharan Africa. Yeah... yeah.
Of course, that's just one excuse. The upgrade cycle is another -- Europe had to rebuild their infrastructure following WW2. We didn't. Most of ours was done in the 50s/60s/70s.. its life cycle wasn't far enough along to justify tearing it all up, whereas Europe's infrastructure needed replacement sooner.
HA! Thank you.
This is precisely the sort of thing I've tried to argue about in the past and was repeatedly shouted down and told that I'm just an ignorant American and don't know anything.
The awesome connectivity and speeds has more to do with population concentrations than anything else. America's a huge place, and not a very old place, so our population centers are, er, not very centered or contiguous. New York City is huge, Philly is huge, and the Baltimore/DC metro area is huge, but there's about 2 hours of driving through nothing to get between them (and baltimore/DC are about 30 minute to an hour apart, depending on traffic). Travel a half hour east from any of those places and you're either in affluent suburbs, or straight-up rural areas, with farms, and cows.
A glance at a population density map is really all anyone needs to figure that out, but some people just don't get it. The cool thing to do is to consider anything Europe or Asia to be better than anything America, and that the sole reason for it is simply American incompetence. So frustrating. Impossible to actually ever discuss or improve anything when you're dealing with people like that, completely divorced from reality.
'course your landlines are faster, but that's also tied in to land area and population density.. and also WW2 actually. Infrastructure upgrade cycles! 'course we missed out on our last one! Fucking US Gov't gave the telecoms god knows how much money to lay fiber, to build modern high speed backbones across the country. Good luck finding where that money ever went to, that was coming up on 20 years ago now iirc..
I don't know that it's fair to say it's murdering GFWL. GFWL was dead right out of the gates, and it's microsoft's fault.. and GFWL was really just a knockoff of Steam anyway.
Microsoft had several years to look at Steam and copy it before launching GFWL, somehow they did not and instead they... well. They released GFWL. It's terrible. Their XBox service isn't bad, but for PC? Eeeewwwww
Honestly there really isn't any comparing the US and Chinese government.
I make no excuses for the US gov't, but the US gov't is the obnoxious, occasionally destructive frat boy to the Chinese gov't's sociopathic homicidal con-man.
Worst part is that kind of government is a part of chinese culture, too. that's sort of how they've run the show for most of their history. it's fucking weird.
Here's my citation.
It's your post.
Simply pointing out that some of the data used as the basis for the AGW conclusions is not as reliable as was believed when those conclusions were formed was enough for you to paint me as "one of them", was enough for your hackles to stand on-end and for you to personally attack me.
I'm not saying the conclusions are wrong. I'm saying they may be less right than initially believed. That's how things FUCKING WORK, dude. Get off your high horse, you're every bit as devoted to not changing your views as any other fundamentalist whacko.
Based on what was known, the AGW conclusions were not incorrect. New things become known. Conclusions must be revisited and the impact that the newly-discovered data uncertainty has on those conclusions must be evaluated.
Oh, and here you go, asshole.
http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2005E%26PSL.229..183I
http://www.pnas.org/content/97/4/1331.full
http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2001/2000GC000146.shtml
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/02/science/02obtree.html
None of that necessarily means AGW conclusions are wrong, but it does mean that the assumptions that were made to establish historical data points were not as reliable as was believed at the time they were made. I do not recall hearing about anyone revisiting their AGW conclusions to determine what effect this new uncertainty may have on those conclusions -- because any suggestion that they need to do so is taken as an attack on the AGW conclusions. It is not. It's simply good fucking science.
If tomorrow we discover that assumptions that we made and believed to be true which were used in calculating the speed of light may not have been as true as we believed them to be at the time, that does not mean we have the speed of light *wrong* but it DOES mean that we need to re-determine if our calculations of the speed of light are still correct. To simply assume so and attack any suggestion otherwise is not science, it's blind faith. Lashing out just like any other religious fundamentalist. It's embarrassing, and frustrating to be painted as some sort of monstrous denier of reason when your goal is to not destroy but IMPROVE knowledge and understanding and to evolve conclusions and ideas as new evidence presents itself.
There's been, in the past few years, evidence coming out that both ice core samples and tree ring samples are not NEARLY as reliable as we thought they were when it comes to recording the climate of the past -- in the case of ice core samples, it was discovered that there's gas migration, and that they are not the perfect records of the atmosphere of the past that we believed they were. in the case of the tree rings, it was discovered that sheep grazing nearby had a larger impact on the formation of rings in a tree than did the climate.
It's pretty fucking depressing that these things get you labeled a denier and a luddite if you point them out. It's not that AGW research is bumpkis, but AGW researchers and supporters have a fanatical devotion to their opinions and will run you out of town for pointing out flaws in the data they used to reach their conclusions. Fucking.. ridiculous. There is no room in their minds for someone who simply wants to improve knowledge and understanding -- to them it's all very clear, you are either with them or against them, toe the line or you are an enemy.
Pretty depressing. Both sides do it, but the AGW crowd should really know better. I don't expect a dirt farmer to have a rigorous scientific mind, but I do expect research scientists to be mature enough to admit that if the data they base conclusions upon is found to be less reliable than previously believed that their conclusions may also be less reliable than previously believed; I expect them to rigorously deconstruct fucking EVERYTHING to try and find flaws with their conclusions before presenting them as unquestionable fact.
Madoff is a smart guy -- all the evidence you need is wrapped up in his Ponzi scheme.
I suspect you're spot-on about the early investors. I suspect that, if that IS in fact true, that Madoff most likely did that intentionally -- he's got them by the balls in two ways.
Firstly, bringing them in early and paying out to them? Bribery. Keep quiet about things, here's a ton of money.
Secondly, blackmail. Oh, by the way, this is all totally illegal and you are now complicit. Enjoy your money, keep your mouth shut or we ALL go down in flames.
Thirdly.. there is no thirdly, I think that probably covers it well enough actually.
Here's the thing: when you tell people not to change who they are to impress others, the presumption is that they're decent people in the first place.
An arrogant fatass who is barely literate and unable to form a single coherent thought into a full sentence, who only comments on boobies, and who doesn't show any interests other than in boobies and himself?
That dude needs to change, not to impress some lady but simply because he's a fucking awful person.
Patriot Act was passed through a majority Democrat Senate. Just sayin'. One single democrat senator voted against, one abstained. Seems pretty bilateral to me. Remember it was passed right in the wake of not just 9/11 but also the anthrax attacks.
I think you were mistaken in your belief. Both are just as equal, but it's been my experience that the democrats are simply much, much better at hiding their evils. The repubs just tend to wave the flag. They don't really put much effort into hiding what they're doing. I might not like what they're doing, but at least it's out in the open and obvious to everyone -- it's a lot easier to deal with and stop that sort of thing compared to something that's more cleverly cloaked behind good intentions.
Some of those lowest bidder sticks are actually damn well made, though, too. Mossberg's 500 series has gone up about 30 bucks in the last 20 years, and no one's going to fall in love with them but it's just about the perfect example of a highly functional working tool.
also a personal fan of the Tikkas, for 500 bucks you get a super-light rifle that'll shoot under 1 MOA for as far as you can hold it that well (which for me turns out is at least 400 yards). They're build on some kind of crazy-ass light action, though, and I've found that they'll put ~3-5 shots right where you want them and then start getting hot and opening up... but if you're doing things right you'll never need to shoot that many times anyway.
And the CZ 550s, boy howdy, got one of those in 375 H&H for under a grand. Even though it's the cheapest safari rifle you'll find, more or less, it's good old-school workmanship -- steel and wood and big and heavy as hell. I'm a big guy, I got big hands, it fills them. Damn thing'll fit 5 rounds inside the mag well, 1 in the chamber. Of 375. It's a monster. Balanced damn well for being so large. Haven't shot at range with it extensively, but threw out some ~2" @100yd using the irons on it. Metal/wood fit everywhere is tight and precise, wood's not showy but hell I don't like showy wood anyway. Makes me feel bad scratching it up. Rather not feel bad about using my guns.
None of this is relevant at all. I just found an excuse to talk about rifles I like.
But oh god were those Winchesters awful -- the last few years of production at their old plant up in New Haven. I really prefer buying American guns and cars (most other things I don't bother, but I *LIKE* those industries..), but those Winchesters were absolute garbage. I don't know what was going on up there, if it was the workers or the management trying to rush out production to hold them over til they got the new plant online, but it was really fucking depressing to pick up what should be an American icon and realizing that it's just a hard shake away from falling apart. More poorly made than a goddamned Nagant, and 8 times the price. Depressing. (then again, those Nagants are ugly as hell but with a little TLC they're not half bad shooters themselves.. crafty damn Rooskies always find a way to make the worst shit work well, I just don't even..)
yay! i love being proven right. i mean, it happens a lot, but, still. >:D
from my forums i'm gathering that they think this is actually great, because none of them liked Apple's method for scrolling through pictures anyway and were kinda miffed that Samsung stole it in the first place, haha.
I hadn't actually heard that Apple's multitouch patent was thrown out?? That sent a shiver down my spine. I'm off to investigate, but if it's the one I'm thinking of.. this is a big fucking deal said joe biden. I know they had one on the use of heuristics to accomplish multi-touch.. and that it was complete bullshit.. but I only remember grumbling loudly about it, but not the details.
it's pretty bad when i cant even remember why i'm pissed off at any particular example of patent law abuse... sigh.
I'm typically not a fan of European law, but what the hell is it with the Dutch that keeps them constantly popping up as the only sane Continentals? I suppose that's unfair to the more Nordic nations... but maybe that's the connection, haha. Only Viking nations have sane law..