Protection from hypothetical damage allows for doing actual damage.
This pretty much sums up much of the US law enforcement and justice industry. You can justify doing concrete harm if you say you are trying to prevent potential harm. War on Drugs, War on Terrorism, now War on Immorality.
Isn't associating with a known criminal a quasi-valid reason for being arrested? Not necessarily convicted, but arrested.
Ah, but doesn't arresting someone imply contact with them? And doesn't contact imply association? And association is a (quasi-valid) reason for being arrested? So who arrests the arresters?
Guilt by association is wrong for drug dealers and wrong for torrent clients. There are plenty of valid reasons to have contact with "unsavory" persons. Even Dubya's favorite messiah ran into just this problem, as I recall.
Are you white? If so, go to the ghetto and drive around for a while. There's actually a pretty good chance that you will be stopped by the police, and asked if it's all right to search your car. Refusal of the search is often held up as suspicious enough to demand a search. This goes doubly so for areas frequented by prostitutes.
I never noticed that phenomenon. I am white, and I used to drive to the 'hood all the time to visit my girlfriend there. The main drag there was prostitute central. But I didn't get pulled over. She's moved to another neighborhood now -- you just don't realize how much you miss the gunfire till it's gone.
OTOH, when non-white people visit my peaceful suburb, a police stop (with backup called) is de rigeur. Maybe the cops consider that justifiable punishment for wanting to shop at the supermarket with non-jacked-up prices.
He knows what average means, and he knows that Steve was specifically referring to the arithmetic mean, because 20 billion songs/ 90 million ipods is the ~22 songs/ipod in question.
He's just saying that using this figure is misleading. Like talking about average fuel economy by dividing all the car miles ever by total gasoline production for the last 110 years. Sure it's the average, but it doesn't really tell you anything about current mileage. Most of those cars are scrap by now, just like many of the ipods sold in the last few years.
But the real world doesn't work that way, unless you live in Mensa-Fascist-Fantasy-World and fantasize the state killing those that don't behave with Klingon-like rationality.
Damn those Klingons and their rationality! It's always "Logic dictates this" and "Humans are irrational and impulsive" with them. Smug jerks.
Could something like this happen if your electrical outlet had hot and neutral reversed?
I have seen old appliances and lamps with exposed parts of the chassis connected to neutral -- that could zap you if hot and neutral were reversed. I don't think that something wired like that would get past 3rd party safety approval anywhere.
You will see sweet FA - unless it happens to be a nice 50Hz sustained electrostatic discharge.
Exactly. That's why it's not static charge, as the post as the root of this thread suggested/asked. The shocked Dell guy measured 65VAC, a poster asked if this was possibly static. I said No, not if he's measuring it with the multimeter on AC. Since he did measure something with his AC voltmeter, static doesn't account for it. I think we're agreeing, but I may not have been clear enough in my reply to the original post.
But this guy says he measured his voltage with the multimeter on AC. Static electricity is the buildup of charge on something capacitive (like you and me) and would be measured as DC. That is, if you could measure it at all, since we make pretty bad capacitors and any ordinary multimeter would quickly drain the charge away.
No, it is only half the supply and demand model. The demand adjusts to the price, the supply does not. The supply and demand model describes an equilibrium price that would happen in a perfect market.
It's still the macro supply and demand model. The supply curve represents the amount/quantity of product that producers are willing to sell a given price. This supply curve is just a weird shape. Producers in this example are unwilling to sell any product below a given price, so there's a jump down to zero in quantity at that price. So it is varying with price. You can still plot it vs. the demand curve and find the equilibrium (assuming they intersect and any CDs are sold).
I do not, however, believe space exploration is within the constitutionally defined limits of what the federal government should be doing.
NASA is a huge, wasteful organization that should be dismantled. If there is value in space exploration, let that be done by the private sector, who has a fiduciary incentive to not waste money.
NASA should not be eliminated.
The federal government is charged with the responsibility to "Promote the General Welfare". If, therefore, there is value in space exploration, then one could argue that this promotes the general welfare.
Launching commercial satelites is something that could be done by the private sector. There is money in it. Purer research is not as appealing to the private sector. This research is what NASA should be focused on.
Some folks might say that research is only worth doing if it leads directly to a profitable discoverty, and that therefore private research is all that we need. I do not agree with this point of view. Scientific research for its own sake is a worthwhile endeavor and is in the long term interest of the public.
I personally hate Scientology but they are a religion and must be respected as one. If they can convince chumps to give them money, there's nothing I can do to stop that.
I was going to say something of my own here, then I thought of this Menckenism:
"We must respect the other fellow's religion, but only in the sense and to the extent that we respect his theory that his wife is beautiful and his children smart." -- H. L. Mencken
Truly scandalous. They take $$$ from the citizens of each state and then hold them hostage to get it back. What they can't accomplish through legislation, they force through coercion.
As de Tocqueville said:
"The American Republic will endure until the day Congress discovers that it can bribe the public with the public's money"
Slashdot Mirror
This pretty much sums up much of the US law enforcement and justice industry. You can justify doing concrete harm if you say you are trying to prevent potential harm. War on Drugs, War on Terrorism, now War on Immorality.
Is this a troll, or are you hoping that if you rant against mistrust of the government for long enough your shift key will start working again?
I read that one implication of this is that the real tinfoil-hatters will have to think of a new way to be crazy.
Refusing to obey a law is one means of trying to change it.
"What if they gave a war and no one came?"
Golf: yes
Softball: yes
Bowling: yes
Hockey: no
Jacks: yes
Ah, but doesn't arresting someone imply contact with them? And doesn't contact imply association? And association is a (quasi-valid) reason for being arrested? So who arrests the arresters?
Guilt by association is wrong for drug dealers and wrong for torrent clients. There are plenty of valid reasons to have contact with "unsavory" persons. Even Dubya's favorite messiah ran into just this problem, as I recall.
Oh, crap. A fried of mine is a pharmacist.
I never noticed that phenomenon. I am white, and I used to drive to the 'hood all the time to visit my girlfriend there. The main drag there was prostitute central. But I didn't get pulled over. She's moved to another neighborhood now -- you just don't realize how much you miss the gunfire till it's gone.
OTOH, when non-white people visit my peaceful suburb, a police stop (with backup called) is de rigeur. Maybe the cops consider that justifiable punishment for wanting to shop at the supermarket with non-jacked-up prices.
He knows what average means, and he knows that Steve was specifically referring to the arithmetic mean, because 20 billion songs/ 90 million ipods is the ~22 songs/ipod in question.
He's just saying that using this figure is misleading. Like talking about average fuel economy by dividing all the car miles ever by total gasoline production for the last 110 years. Sure it's the average, but it doesn't really tell you anything about current mileage. Most of those cars are scrap by now, just like many of the ipods sold in the last few years.
Damn those Klingons and their rationality! It's always "Logic dictates this" and "Humans are irrational and impulsive" with them. Smug jerks.
I have seen old appliances and lamps with exposed parts of the chassis connected to neutral -- that could zap you if hot and neutral were reversed. I don't think that something wired like that would get past 3rd party safety approval anywhere.
Exactly. That's why it's not static charge, as the post as the root of this thread suggested/asked. The shocked Dell guy measured 65VAC, a poster asked if this was possibly static. I said No, not if he's measuring it with the multimeter on AC. Since he did measure something with his AC voltmeter, static doesn't account for it. I think we're agreeing, but I may not have been clear enough in my reply to the original post.
As you wish. Now measure this with your multimeter set to AC. What do you see? Bollocks indeed.
Please read and mod up the parent -- provides useful explanation/answer to question.
Bingo. Most of those backlights are little fluorescent tubes and run off AC generated internally.
But this guy says he measured his voltage with the multimeter on AC. Static electricity is the buildup of charge on something capacitive (like you and me) and would be measured as DC. That is, if you could measure it at all, since we make pretty bad capacitors and any ordinary multimeter would quickly drain the charge away.
It's still the macro supply and demand model. The supply curve represents the amount/quantity of product that producers are willing to sell a given price. This supply curve is just a weird shape. Producers in this example are unwilling to sell any product below a given price, so there's a jump down to zero in quantity at that price. So it is varying with price. You can still plot it vs. the demand curve and find the equilibrium (assuming they intersect and any CDs are sold).
At least you eluded the Illinois Nazis.
Anyone could miss Canada, all tucked away down there.
So they're not afraid of seaweed jelly?
NASA should not be eliminated.
The federal government is charged with the responsibility to "Promote the General Welfare". If, therefore, there is value in space exploration, then one could argue that this promotes the general welfare.
Launching commercial satelites is something that could be done by the private sector. There is money in it. Purer research is not as appealing to the private sector. This research is what NASA should be focused on.
Some folks might say that research is only worth doing if it leads directly to a profitable discoverty, and that therefore private research is all that we need. I do not agree with this point of view. Scientific research for its own sake is a worthwhile endeavor and is in the long term interest of the public.
Netrek. It's multiplayer, it's online, it's been around forever. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Netrek
How about this: http://www.mocatholic.org/StemCell-Cloning/SCHCDex .htm ?
Or this newspaper story: http://www.kansascity.com/mld/kansascitystar/news/ politics/15869428.htm ?
I was going to say something of my own here, then I thought of this Menckenism:
"We must respect the other fellow's religion, but only in the sense and to the extent that we respect his theory that his wife is beautiful and his children smart." -- H. L. Mencken
As de Tocqueville said:
"The American Republic will endure until the day Congress discovers that it can bribe the public with the public's money"