If video game or animated characters are needed to get some people out to vote, doesn't this indicate that these people SHOULD NOT vote?
I'm all for democracy and for maximizing voters ability to gain information from governments so that they are informed voters. But if it requires cartoons and animated characters encouragement to get someone out to vote, that to me implies this person doesn't have the desire or knowledge to vote.
Trash collection isn't free. Generally the homeowner get's billed for trash and sewage. A company I worked for had the problem with other companies dumping trash in their dumpster. Thus they were billed for more trash. Not stealing garbage, but definitely adding a cost.
Similarly, bandwidth does cost money. It isn't quite the same as a lightbulb. A lightbulb doesn't emit more photons because more people are there to see the photons. But AKFA was consuming an resource and adding to the libraries cost.
That there is a difference between a front porch and an empty lot still doesn't give anyone the right to tresspass and take it over.
What about an empty house or apartment. Just because the owner hasn't found a tenent who is willing to rent it from him, the homeless don't have a "right" to occupy the place.
The article states they picked a nocturnal Syrian Hamster because he likes to run in the wheel. He starts running in the dark, the light goes on and the nocturnal hamster thinks it's daylight so goes to sleep. Light goes out, rodent thinks it's time to wake up and starts running the wheel...
Whouldn't you wind up with a neurotic hamster after awhile? It reminds me of the old Steven Wright joke, "I named my dog, 'Stay'. Come here, Stay! Stay, come here..."
First, he took options instead of pay. Isn't that a warning sign? Nobody forced him to take options. He got greedy.
Secondly, he was senior management and had the people skills of a caveman. Do we want to feel sorry for bad managers who get fired? Taking sympathy to a whole new and undeserving level.
In Microsoft's defense, they at least created new products (Word, Excel, Access) that did not exist and add features and improvements.
The analogy would be closer to new "command line" word (rebundled VI), charging you for it, even tough both you and they could get the source free from sourceforge.
Yeah, I'll bite on the flamebait too.
Are you suggesting that it's okay to NOT pay for someone elses works or works? I'm sure that authors and musicians would like to get paid for their work.
I'm sure that this is an attack on the RIAA. But I point out that downloading music in the USA is perfectly legal. Nothing illegal about iTunes and the artist is getting paid.
I most certainly would like to live in a country that has a Supreme Court strike down the unconstitutional laws enacted by the legislature. The courts may not always be perfect and sometimes take way too long to act. Remember, they have to wait until a case comes before them.
I'm sure a lot of women appreciate Roe vs Wade or a lot of minorities, Brown vs the Board of Education. How about Miranda?
Our Courts may sometimes be slow, may sometimes take the expeditous resolution or sometime weasel out on narrow grounds to avoid making wholesale changes to laws.
But I sleep a lot better knowing that the ACLU is out there battling, that the Supreme court has ruled against Presidents and governments.
It may be imperfect and more influenced by money than we would like, but I sleep better knowing that courts, legislatures and government at all levels can be held accountable and wrongs can be made right, even if it takes far too much time.
So once the parrots have the accents down right, they can be put to work on a helpdesk. Of course, then the offshore parrots will work for cheaper seed and they'll be outsourced.
Oracle's licence model was (and as far as I know still is) based on number of users, number or CPUs, speed of machine, etc.
So putting oracle onto even a workgroup sized SUN box (E450, V880) can run several hundred thousand a year.
Given the size of Stanford, the requirements for redundancy, many users requiring different database access, I would imagine that the licences alone between 1-5 million a year. That's 10-50 million over the last decade.
There are support costs, need for table locking, performance issues for a large database. Who get's called when the database doesn't come up at 3 AM after it crashes and the system won't roll back?
So 60 million doesn't sound out of line. The customer needs a database that can reliably handle billions of dollars a year, tens of thousands of payroll changes a year as students and faculty change, take on jobs, contracts, etc. Being a university and getting public money (Grants, contracts, etc.) their probably are requirements to maintain financial accountability. And of course, there are privacy laws to limit access.
I would submit that nuclear reactors have less impact on the environment.
What is interesting about coal is that there is cleaner coal deposits in the USA that aren't being used. Federal polution laws mandated removing a percentage of certain particulates from the exhaust. Some western coal has so little of these pollutants, that it is impossible to remove the mandated percentage. Thus, coal with more sulfer is used which ultimately causes more pollution.
Nuclear power can be made safe. The wastes from reactors can be handled safely and disposed of. The question is can the required safety and automated shutdown be designed and built at an economical cost?
Chernobyl was a disaster caused by poor training and a management system that didn't understand what it was doing. Most nuclear plants are much safer, and safety systems work, and have improved since 1986.
We tend to forget that all human activity has associated risks. We humans worry about airplane crashes because they hill a hundred people at once, but overlook automobile accidents. People forget that a fire at your local tire dealership or hardware store (pvc piping) can cause major a major evacuation. When was the last time someone protested a natural gas pipeline, but our civilization depends upon such mundane items. Has anyone noticed the Liquified Natural Gas tanks outside Boston? If someone crashed an airplane there, I suspect a rather massive disaster.
I'm not suggesting we build nuclear power plants in downtown NYC or San Francisco. It may not be possible to build a reactor safe enough to every economically generate power. At the same time, nuclear power isn't the end of the world either.
The actual news article is brief and did not mention any academic fraud, so I am forced to assume that the degree is being recinded due to his actions since being awarded the degree. Do degrees "expire"? This is seperate from Medical degrees, at least in the US, as one can have a Medical Degree and still not be able to practice medicine due to medical licence requirements. Having a medical licence revokes does not remove the degree.
This recall of advanced degrees leads to some interesting ideas. Will PhDs be revoked in other fields?
What if someone has a degree in English. Then it's finally proved or disproved that William Shakespeare didn't write his plays. Do we fire a lot of English professors?
Economics seems to be another field open to political modes and fads. Does a change in political parties and their ideas on what's best for the economy suddenly invalidate lots of peoples advanced work? Then 4 years later, when the voters have enough and switch back, a package with a letter, "Sorry, here's your degree back."
Of course, no situation is without some silver lining. Think about lawyers. Loose a case, loose the law degree. Except for public defenders, lawyers would have to charge a lot per hour to justify the risks to their career. Sounds like SCO's legal team there.
Farside had a strip where some cows all stood on their hind legs unless a car drove by.
Apply lightning here, and smart cows stand upright on their hind legs, reducing the voltage potential. Then the lightning is more likely to kill off the stupid, quadruped cows.
Evolution in action!
>>I think this is a good time to remind everyone that Bush's dad used to be head of the CIA.
Director of CIA George Tenet,who just resigned,was put in under Bill Clinton.
The CIA conspired to get George W into office. Then forged all those WMD reports so he would race off to Iraq and make a fool of himself and thus be not elected.
A-HA. The League of Women Voters are pulling the strings of the CIA. We knew it!
Some counties in California use a cardboard ballot which is marked with a pen with special ink so it can be easily scanned. Pretty much the same idea as Canada.
It still doesn't solve the extraneous marks on the paper problem. Voter darkly marked one box, but different mark in the other. Did the pen slip? Did the voter change their vote. Should we state ANY extraneous mark makes the vote invalid. Better hope ink from other ballots dries fast or a lot of ballots get tossed.
We're back to vote counters trying to determine intent of the voter. It's not always corruption that leads to problems in counting votes. Sometimes it's because the process is vague, run by those pesky bipedal apes who have personal biases and opinions.
3.5 years after the last election, Without laying blame on any party or group, I'll bet there still isn't any one clearcut standard how to count votes that isn't open to serious interpretation.
Actually, just printing out a slip doesn't solve ALL the problems.
Preliminary vote, vote for wrong guy, print out paper and check.
Change vote, print slip, check. Correct. Submit.
Leave all the initial and final slips in pile. When people go back and audit, counts all differ.
So to fix this, you set up paper trail to match together the various paper receipts. So much for anonymous voting. Also, how do you handle if the paper and electronic votes don't match because someone forgets to turn in the paper vote?
I believe every problem can be solved, but some include changes to the actual voting process, including how votes are certified which in turn requires changes to election laws.
As a follow up to election law changes is the fact that there doesn't seem to be any penalty for Diebold to not do a good job. California mandates that the voting machines be certified, but there doesn't seem to be any sactions, penalties or consequences to Diebold making changes to software.
If the customers (the various local, state and Federal governments) accept shoddy products and don't obey their own mandates, why should Diebold?
I doubt it is even Government corruption that is at fault. There was a knee jerk reaction to require electronic voting but no idea how to impliment it or provide for failures in e-voting or even provide authority to enforce the voting laws.
Like passing laws to make everyone above average.
As pointed out, global warming may be natural and human activity little or nothing to do with overall global temperatures. Or humans may be the straw that breaks the camel's back. The point is we don't know. A lot of global warming debate seems to be based on computer models that have problems. I seem to remember the 1970s had many books and news articles about the new ice age right around the corner. So it might be wise to continue various climate research until we have a better understanding about weather and human impact on global climate before we make major and costly changes to our civilization and technologies that may in fact do nothing.
This is about as scientifically useful as "What do colors sound like?" or assigning sounds to coefficient of friction. But won't you get as much science from maryjuana?
False color imaging helps people see details since our brains are wired for visual input. But mapping to arbitrary audio would be like mapping the alphabet to a musical scale then playing a book on the piano. I'm not sure you would get anything useful out of it.
And people will just love to buy new cell phones to replace their existing $200-300 phones will be happy to do this.
Every car radio, clockradio, CB needs to replaced.
Can't wait to here the new argument over "Digital Divide" between the rich and poor when this happens.
Slashdot Mirror
If video game or animated characters are needed to get some people out to vote, doesn't this indicate that these people SHOULD NOT vote?
I'm all for democracy and for maximizing voters ability to gain information from governments so that they are informed voters. But if it requires cartoons and animated characters encouragement to get someone out to vote, that to me implies this person doesn't have the desire or knowledge to vote.
And how does that differ from Jako's place?
Trash collection isn't free. Generally the homeowner get's billed for trash and sewage. A company I worked for had the problem with other companies dumping trash in their dumpster. Thus they were billed for more trash. Not stealing garbage, but definitely adding a cost.
Similarly, bandwidth does cost money. It isn't quite the same as a lightbulb. A lightbulb doesn't emit more photons because more people are there to see the photons. But AKFA was consuming an resource and adding to the libraries cost.
The question asked ins't, "Where is NANTUCKET?" The question is "Where does Keith Shaw in one of his columns reference AKMA's random thoughts?"
I couldn't find any Keith Shaw original posting.
That there is a difference between a front porch and an empty lot still doesn't give anyone the right to tresspass and take it over. What about an empty house or apartment. Just because the owner hasn't found a tenent who is willing to rent it from him, the homeless don't have a "right" to occupy the place.
The article states they picked a nocturnal Syrian Hamster because he likes to run in the wheel. He starts running in the dark, the light goes on and the nocturnal hamster thinks it's daylight so goes to sleep. Light goes out, rodent thinks it's time to wake up and starts running the wheel...
Whouldn't you wind up with a neurotic hamster after awhile? It reminds me of the old Steven Wright joke, "I named my dog, 'Stay'. Come here, Stay! Stay, come here..."
Dustin Hoffman is Swedish?
If anyone could be brought back!
First, he took options instead of pay. Isn't that a warning sign? Nobody forced him to take options. He got greedy.
Secondly, he was senior management and had the people skills of a caveman. Do we want to feel sorry for bad managers who get fired? Taking sympathy to a whole new and undeserving level.
In Microsoft's defense, they at least created new products (Word, Excel, Access) that did not exist and add features and improvements.
The analogy would be closer to new "command line" word (rebundled VI), charging you for it, even tough both you and they could get the source free from sourceforge.
Thank God the Brits are using meters. If they had been using feet and inches, who knows, they might have lost the Beagle 2 Mars probe.
Yeah, I'll bite on the flamebait too. Are you suggesting that it's okay to NOT pay for someone elses works or works? I'm sure that authors and musicians would like to get paid for their work. I'm sure that this is an attack on the RIAA. But I point out that downloading music in the USA is perfectly legal. Nothing illegal about iTunes and the artist is getting paid. I most certainly would like to live in a country that has a Supreme Court strike down the unconstitutional laws enacted by the legislature. The courts may not always be perfect and sometimes take way too long to act. Remember, they have to wait until a case comes before them. I'm sure a lot of women appreciate Roe vs Wade or a lot of minorities, Brown vs the Board of Education. How about Miranda? Our Courts may sometimes be slow, may sometimes take the expeditous resolution or sometime weasel out on narrow grounds to avoid making wholesale changes to laws. But I sleep a lot better knowing that the ACLU is out there battling, that the Supreme court has ruled against Presidents and governments. It may be imperfect and more influenced by money than we would like, but I sleep better knowing that courts, legislatures and government at all levels can be held accountable and wrongs can be made right, even if it takes far too much time.
So once the parrots have the accents down right, they can be put to work on a helpdesk. Of course, then the offshore parrots will work for cheaper seed and they'll be outsourced.
Oracle's licence model was (and as far as I know still is) based on number of users, number or CPUs, speed of machine, etc.
So putting oracle onto even a workgroup sized SUN box (E450, V880) can run several hundred thousand a year.
Given the size of Stanford, the requirements for redundancy, many users requiring different database access, I would imagine that the licences alone between 1-5 million a year. That's 10-50 million over the last decade.
There are support costs, need for table locking, performance issues for a large database. Who get's called when the database doesn't come up at 3 AM after it crashes and the system won't roll back?
So 60 million doesn't sound out of line. The customer needs a database that can reliably handle billions of dollars a year, tens of thousands of payroll changes a year as students and faculty change, take on jobs, contracts, etc. Being a university and getting public money (Grants, contracts, etc.) their probably are requirements to maintain financial accountability. And of course, there are privacy laws to limit access.
The 10 year rollout seems quite excessive though.
Intel inside, can't divide.
I would submit that nuclear reactors have less impact on the environment. What is interesting about coal is that there is cleaner coal deposits in the USA that aren't being used. Federal polution laws mandated removing a percentage of certain particulates from the exhaust. Some western coal has so little of these pollutants, that it is impossible to remove the mandated percentage. Thus, coal with more sulfer is used which ultimately causes more pollution. Nuclear power can be made safe. The wastes from reactors can be handled safely and disposed of. The question is can the required safety and automated shutdown be designed and built at an economical cost? Chernobyl was a disaster caused by poor training and a management system that didn't understand what it was doing. Most nuclear plants are much safer, and safety systems work, and have improved since 1986. We tend to forget that all human activity has associated risks. We humans worry about airplane crashes because they hill a hundred people at once, but overlook automobile accidents. People forget that a fire at your local tire dealership or hardware store (pvc piping) can cause major a major evacuation. When was the last time someone protested a natural gas pipeline, but our civilization depends upon such mundane items. Has anyone noticed the Liquified Natural Gas tanks outside Boston? If someone crashed an airplane there, I suspect a rather massive disaster. I'm not suggesting we build nuclear power plants in downtown NYC or San Francisco. It may not be possible to build a reactor safe enough to every economically generate power. At the same time, nuclear power isn't the end of the world either.
The actual news article is brief and did not mention any academic fraud, so I am forced to assume that the degree is being recinded due to his actions since being awarded the degree. Do degrees "expire"? This is seperate from Medical degrees, at least in the US, as one can have a Medical Degree and still not be able to practice medicine due to medical licence requirements. Having a medical licence revokes does not remove the degree. This recall of advanced degrees leads to some interesting ideas. Will PhDs be revoked in other fields? What if someone has a degree in English. Then it's finally proved or disproved that William Shakespeare didn't write his plays. Do we fire a lot of English professors? Economics seems to be another field open to political modes and fads. Does a change in political parties and their ideas on what's best for the economy suddenly invalidate lots of peoples advanced work? Then 4 years later, when the voters have enough and switch back, a package with a letter, "Sorry, here's your degree back." Of course, no situation is without some silver lining. Think about lawyers. Loose a case, loose the law degree. Except for public defenders, lawyers would have to charge a lot per hour to justify the risks to their career. Sounds like SCO's legal team there.
Farside had a strip where some cows all stood on their hind legs unless a car drove by. Apply lightning here, and smart cows stand upright on their hind legs, reducing the voltage potential. Then the lightning is more likely to kill off the stupid, quadruped cows. Evolution in action!
And then slashdot could apply for a patent.
>>I think this is a good time to remind everyone that Bush's dad used to be head of the CIA. Director of CIA George Tenet,who just resigned,was put in under Bill Clinton. The CIA conspired to get George W into office. Then forged all those WMD reports so he would race off to Iraq and make a fool of himself and thus be not elected. A-HA. The League of Women Voters are pulling the strings of the CIA. We knew it!
Some counties in California use a cardboard ballot which is marked with a pen with special ink so it can be easily scanned. Pretty much the same idea as Canada. It still doesn't solve the extraneous marks on the paper problem. Voter darkly marked one box, but different mark in the other. Did the pen slip? Did the voter change their vote. Should we state ANY extraneous mark makes the vote invalid. Better hope ink from other ballots dries fast or a lot of ballots get tossed. We're back to vote counters trying to determine intent of the voter. It's not always corruption that leads to problems in counting votes. Sometimes it's because the process is vague, run by those pesky bipedal apes who have personal biases and opinions. 3.5 years after the last election, Without laying blame on any party or group, I'll bet there still isn't any one clearcut standard how to count votes that isn't open to serious interpretation.
Actually, just printing out a slip doesn't solve ALL the problems. Preliminary vote, vote for wrong guy, print out paper and check. Change vote, print slip, check. Correct. Submit. Leave all the initial and final slips in pile. When people go back and audit, counts all differ. So to fix this, you set up paper trail to match together the various paper receipts. So much for anonymous voting. Also, how do you handle if the paper and electronic votes don't match because someone forgets to turn in the paper vote? I believe every problem can be solved, but some include changes to the actual voting process, including how votes are certified which in turn requires changes to election laws. As a follow up to election law changes is the fact that there doesn't seem to be any penalty for Diebold to not do a good job. California mandates that the voting machines be certified, but there doesn't seem to be any sactions, penalties or consequences to Diebold making changes to software. If the customers (the various local, state and Federal governments) accept shoddy products and don't obey their own mandates, why should Diebold? I doubt it is even Government corruption that is at fault. There was a knee jerk reaction to require electronic voting but no idea how to impliment it or provide for failures in e-voting or even provide authority to enforce the voting laws. Like passing laws to make everyone above average.
As pointed out, global warming may be natural and human activity little or nothing to do with overall global temperatures. Or humans may be the straw that breaks the camel's back. The point is we don't know. A lot of global warming debate seems to be based on computer models that have problems. I seem to remember the 1970s had many books and news articles about the new ice age right around the corner. So it might be wise to continue various climate research until we have a better understanding about weather and human impact on global climate before we make major and costly changes to our civilization and technologies that may in fact do nothing.
This is about as scientifically useful as "What do colors sound like?" or assigning sounds to coefficient of friction. But won't you get as much science from maryjuana? False color imaging helps people see details since our brains are wired for visual input. But mapping to arbitrary audio would be like mapping the alphabet to a musical scale then playing a book on the piano. I'm not sure you would get anything useful out of it.
And people will just love to buy new cell phones to replace their existing $200-300 phones will be happy to do this. Every car radio, clockradio, CB needs to replaced. Can't wait to here the new argument over "Digital Divide" between the rich and poor when this happens.