Read a theory that Stalin's abhorrent actions were because he was once a Tsarist spy. He figured to stay at te top of the hierarchy he had to set in place actions to get rid of a whole swathe of people who might possibly have known the truth. Once it was up and running there was no stopping it. What's frightening is how plausible it is.
Maybe it is FUD, but I'm just a humble user sitting on a sofa, who this month has changed search engines [my new one quacks] in my firefox browser; feels odd, but the results jut have less noise. I'm happily sold on Google through and through otherwise (wish calendar would have more public apps) and can't beat the cost of docs. Just fed up with the SNR lowering so much.
Everytime I visit our local library all the terminal's are full; there's a lot of awareness of the service and people use it. Looking at the users, there's a feeling of a transitory population, so it's maybe many simply won't be in a house/flat long enough to sign up for a fixed-line contract. Also the library closes at 5 pm most nights. They offer a free wi-fi service too which is underused - my broadband went unusably flaky for a week and I saw one other person connected in that time.
There's a lot of people here that seem to see Lamebook as FB normality. Came across FB when some students said they'd posted field trip pictures on there ("Where?"). Was shocked by the amount and openness of info the undergrads had supplied - as well as open profiles, they had mobile phone numbers, even their room number in a residential halls. My favourite was the serious tutee, who enquired of me just how she could take extra courses, had a profile picture of her puffing on a bong.
But that was 2006, as by 2008 it was thankfully long-gone. The bong-hitting student had nothing but her name visible, no-one had an open-profile, everything was locked-down. People read the "employers check your FB profile" news, they friended their relations, they saw the "FB Killer" stories. Whilst there will always been stupid people, the vast majority understand on-line privacy worries and, at least in my circle, you're absolutely right, it's nothing more than a 'social network'. The only real task is to make sure children understand this - man, I'd hate to be growing up now with cyber-bullying- you're not even 'safe' at home.
Gambler's fallacy is tricky for the general public to understand; connected to the usually short hydrological records, the 1 in x years approach is perhaps counterproductive and a percentage would certainly be better. Saying that, I was also wrong on the number of 1:40 year floods in 2009 as there were four rather than three. The area's been populated with no great changes in land use since mid C19th [trees gone by then] so the river records were pretty adequate. Four rare flood events in 9 months is... exceptional. As central eastern Australia was being soaked, New Zealand, more specifically South Island, underwent a glorious dry autumn. My weak understanding of circulation systems of the Tasman Sea says the two were connected, rather than this being a pan-Pacific event; am very happy to be corrected.
This case is interesting as whilst it's almost certainly not linked to climate change per se, it is an example of what could happen if climate patterns shift. The problem, as outlined in the previous post, is that weather on the week-to-monthly time scale has immense natural variation. Currently climate modellers resolve synoptic patterns in very general terms and any results, however convincing, are probably just chaotic. It's a challenge that's being risen to, but as many meta-studies have shown, the science/technology isn't good enough yet to pin down any changes in circulation to climate change below the continent scale.
Spent Feb 2009 travelling from Sydney to Brisbane. Over a four day period 458 mm fell and cut off the local town (Bellingen). The hydrologists assured the local populace this was no more than a 1:40 year event. It happened twice more over the next three months. Things are, perhaps, changing.
But this is the enigma of weather's relationship with climate, they are the same and very different. Climate change will certainly mean expanded, more acidic seas and glacier melt on short term (decadal) timescales, but it will be on a centennial time-scales that we'll see weather patterns change which are definitely linked to our warmer world.
For those dopey slashdotters like me who assumed most astroturfing is the PR dept of a major firm coming back from their Friday lunch, follow the link in the summary. Took a random path through handpickedmedia's website and then read the twitter posts of PerfHappyMum. Seems just like every other life coach (what the hell are THEY?); children asleep two hours early! soon followed by Just leaving the preview screening of "tangled", most refreshing cartoon since Shreck, loved it
"She" is in the parenting "channel" of handpicked's website but on Twitter there is no indication it's paid for. Assume that a significant amount of the conversation is with other handpickedmedia's 'channels'? If they can investigate the volume going up in the adverts (what did happen to that Ofcom report? Anyone know?) then this is an organisation of cynicism that has shocked me.
Realise this doesn't help your fair argument, but for the first time I'm finding the signal/noise ratio starting to appreciably lower on Google search. Only this morning I was looking for an extension on firefox that reports spam in the search results (Chrome has one but am on linux) . Maybe the opinions are only anecdotal evidence, but it chimes with my experience of the last month or so.
You make me feel nothing but pity. Having to repeatedly ask a question like that shows how ill-educated and unimportant you must be. As all these exquisite descriptions tell you, the Emperor has magnificent clothes.
Why do you have to keep asking what they precisely look like?
Sorry, thought you'd read the link in the original post which made me rather exasperated to see the link to GA. I understand the role of GA in the wider US (pun intended) but was amazed how little coverage this work got on its release last year- read the headline and heard it on "All things considered", but then it disappeared. Hundreds of millions of people paying for services used by hundreds of thousands [mainly wealthy] people, for whatever reason, is unfair (by 3 magnitudes!).
All the replies diligently point out the utility of GA, how it saves lives and business, how it is essential for many remote parts of the US. It's pointless trying to respond to a lot of these common sense aspects, and they are diversions from the funding argument. Some salient points from the article in the OP.
The Airport Improvement Program is funded mostly by the nation's airline passengers, who pay a 7.5% sales tax on each ticket and a $3.60 fee for each flight. The money goes into an FAA fund that pays for airport projects and the air-traffic-control system. A business traveler who flies once a week could pay $2,000 a year in such taxes. Private pilots pay taxes on airplane fuel that cost about $2.87 for a one-hour flight in the average piston-engine plane. Meanwhile, local subsidies help private airplane owners avoid costs that commercial airports routinely charge airlines, such as landing fees and passenger taxes. Only 2% to 3% of general-aviation airports charge planes to land.
And that's the rub about arguing it here. Most of the replies seem to be from pilots or people who use GA and are very happy with the status quo- and why wouldn't they be? "Any member of the public is free to [rent an aircraft and] use these airports" says the above post- that's plutocracy for you!
So it's a bit like building a 'limousine only' carriageway to help avoid congestion? The landing fees at these small airports should therefore be the same as the larger airports or this stance sounds like blackmail- "If you don't build us, a tiny minority, separate facilities then we'll clog up the majority".
Perhaps the fees at under-utilised airports should be higher due to the exclusivity afforded by this arrangement? No, they're massively subsidised [see article], sometimes practically free.
Yes... but I won't patronise you with a wiki link to plutocracy. The point of the article is these airports are for private flights but:
an obscure federal program that raises billions of dollars a year through taxes on every airplane ticket sold in the United States. The taxes can add up to 15% to the cost of a flight
Private aircraft are far more useful to their owners when there's a network of handy airports. Perfectly understandable, but why do scheduled airline passengers pay for them? If all Interstate highways had tolls that were paying for private race-tracks...
They are safe from predators, arfe given plenty of food and are kept clean and free from disease. There's just that one little problem......
...that the majority of people on this planet stopped being truly hunter-gatherers and became civilized about 4 000 years ago? Civilized means living together, and unless you want the slums of Calcutta, you need need to pay for the shit to be removed.
In my part of the world, everyone spending a % of income on a universal healthcare system is part of the sanitation system. Under your system my neighbours down the hill have to put up with a stream of my excrement flowing past them. We can't all live on top of the hill.
I saw it live, and have not watched any programmes on the Patriot since the night I saw it in Feb 1991. I am not being confused by others. I remember the date (see above) and I remember the missile almost instantly heading off course and into a complex of buildings.
Scuds were rubbish, absolutely rubbish. Their accuracy is at the level of a V2 'terror weapon'. Whilst it was possible after their hundreds of miles of flight that they hit the barracks, good old Ockham says to me "fast moving high explosives heading into building from Patriot 1/4 mile away" sits firmly on the more probable side of his razor.
One understands why the US would say it was a Scud, one also understands why we had so little live feed from Gulf War 2.
Feb 25th is my birthday, I was watching the television here in the UK before going out with friends. I remember well the footage of 'incoming' as they were broadcast live on the BBC. I've always been curious about this tale though. What I saw was not a Scud coming down (pretty unlikely) but a number of Patriots launching and one of them suddenly veering off-course and smashing into the adjoining part of the base. It was in the air for approximately 1/2 a second before it turned left (on my screen) and walloped into the middle-distance, behind some low-level buildings I took for barracks.
Nothing to corroborate this apart from my memory, but was surprised to find out later about the 'Scud'.
Maybe the better read have listened to the words of Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius:
"Live a good life. If there are gods and they are just, then they will not care how devout you have been, but will welcome you based on the virtues you have lived by. If there are gods, but unjust, then you should not want to worship them. If there are no gods, then you will be gone, but will have lived a noble life that will live on in the memories of your loved ones."
Christ, I know it's futile to complain about the summaries, but "Internet search company Google Inc"! Glad I wasn't confused by all the other Googles out there. Any article that feels it has to explain who Google are doesn't really improve the SNR here. Huge chunks of the 7 billion people on this planet won't know what Google do, but they're unlikely to be getting their news online.
Thanks for that, if nothing else it will be another straw for the camel's back. The TSA show the same sociological ingroup/outgroup ideas that are the basis for the very worst sort of human behaviour. Travellers, not terrorists, have literally become the enemy for these people.
Sorry to agree with the GP. I was bought up in the UK on bottle-conditioned Guinness, courtesy of a grand-mother who had 1/2 a bottle a day (c/o "Guinness is good for you"). It is a complex, wonderful drink. In 1986 a Dutch friend wanted to try Guinness for the first time so gave him taste of the bottled stuff and he pulled a face. The same bar sold the new 'lager-friendly' draught version and it was pronounced it 'lovely' by my lager-drinking friend. The bottle-conditioned real stout was pulled from mainstream distribution a few years later and ceased completely [in Ireland] in 1993.
Now all draught Guinness is brewed in Dublin, there's no hiding; it's uniform and never exciting, tasty or interesting. It was slowly, carefully and very deliberately changed to this state in the name of economics. It was a decent stout and probably was better in Ireland than elsewhere; it was worth its name. Guinness now is fizzy pap, a slightly more flavoured lager, sold freezing-cold so you don't notice how poor it tastes. It has been bastardized in name of lowest-common-denominator tastebuds. Try any real porter, stout or, Christ, even mild to see what it used to be like.
Criticizing Guinness is seen by some as an attack on the Irish, it's pretty much the national drink (minus Beamish and Murphys). But no matter what Diageo say (Arthur's Day for fucks sake), Guinness != Ireland.
Agreed.
A friend was employed in 1989 to cope with the expected demand when the past and present individual records that British Armed Forces held on their employees was opened up for scrutiny. They had a huge budget, masses of IT, dozens working in the dept. for the day of "Big Bang". They went live at 0900 on a Monday morning and by the Friday afternoon had a total of two enquiries from former soldiers.
Slashdot Mirror
Read a theory that Stalin's abhorrent actions were because he was once a Tsarist spy. He figured to stay at te top of the hierarchy he had to set in place actions to get rid of a whole swathe of people who might possibly have known the truth. Once it was up and running there was no stopping it. What's frightening is how plausible it is.
Maybe it is FUD, but I'm just a humble user sitting on a sofa, who this month has changed search engines [my new one quacks] in my firefox browser; feels odd, but the results jut have less noise. I'm happily sold on Google through and through otherwise (wish calendar would have more public apps) and can't beat the cost of docs. Just fed up with the SNR lowering so much.
Everytime I visit our local library all the terminal's are full; there's a lot of awareness of the service and people use it. Looking at the users, there's a feeling of a transitory population, so it's maybe many simply won't be in a house/flat long enough to sign up for a fixed-line contract. Also the library closes at 5 pm most nights. They offer a free wi-fi service too which is underused - my broadband went unusably flaky for a week and I saw one other person connected in that time.
There's a lot of people here that seem to see Lamebook as FB normality. Came across FB when some students said they'd posted field trip pictures on there ("Where?"). Was shocked by the amount and openness of info the undergrads had supplied - as well as open profiles, they had mobile phone numbers, even their room number in a residential halls. My favourite was the serious tutee, who enquired of me just how she could take extra courses, had a profile picture of her puffing on a bong.
But that was 2006, as by 2008 it was thankfully long-gone. The bong-hitting student had nothing but her name visible, no-one had an open-profile, everything was locked-down. People read the "employers check your FB profile" news, they friended their relations, they saw the "FB Killer" stories. Whilst there will always been stupid people, the vast majority understand on-line privacy worries and, at least in my circle, you're absolutely right, it's nothing more than a 'social network'. The only real task is to make sure children understand this - man, I'd hate to be growing up now with cyber-bullying- you're not even 'safe' at home.
Gambler's fallacy is tricky for the general public to understand; connected to the usually short hydrological records, the 1 in x years approach is perhaps counterproductive and a percentage would certainly be better. Saying that, I was also wrong on the number of 1:40 year floods in 2009 as there were four rather than three. The area's been populated with no great changes in land use since mid C19th [trees gone by then] so the river records were pretty adequate. Four rare flood events in 9 months is... exceptional. As central eastern Australia was being soaked, New Zealand, more specifically South Island, underwent a glorious dry autumn. My weak understanding of circulation systems of the Tasman Sea says the two were connected, rather than this being a pan-Pacific event; am very happy to be corrected.
This case is interesting as whilst it's almost certainly not linked to climate change per se, it is an example of what could happen if climate patterns shift. The problem, as outlined in the previous post, is that weather on the week-to-monthly time scale has immense natural variation. Currently climate modellers resolve synoptic patterns in very general terms and any results, however convincing, are probably just chaotic. It's a challenge that's being risen to, but as many meta-studies have shown, the science/technology isn't good enough yet to pin down any changes in circulation to climate change below the continent scale.
Spent Feb 2009 travelling from Sydney to Brisbane. Over a four day period 458 mm fell and cut off the local town (Bellingen). The hydrologists assured the local populace this was no more than a 1:40 year event. It happened twice more over the next three months. Things are, perhaps, changing.
But this is the enigma of weather's relationship with climate, they are the same and very different. Climate change will certainly mean expanded, more acidic seas and glacier melt on short term (decadal) timescales, but it will be on a centennial time-scales that we'll see weather patterns change which are definitely linked to our warmer world.
For those dopey slashdotters like me who assumed most astroturfing is the PR dept of a major firm coming back from their Friday lunch, follow the link in the summary. Took a random path through handpickedmedia's website and then read the twitter posts of PerfHappyMum. Seems just like every other life coach (what the hell are THEY?);
children asleep two hours early!
soon followed by
Just leaving the preview screening of "tangled", most refreshing cartoon since Shreck, loved it
"She" is in the parenting "channel" of handpicked's website but on Twitter there is no indication it's paid for. Assume that a significant amount of the conversation is with other handpickedmedia's 'channels'? If they can investigate the volume going up in the adverts (what did happen to that Ofcom report? Anyone know?) then this is an organisation of cynicism that has shocked me.
Realise this doesn't help your fair argument, but for the first time I'm finding the signal/noise ratio starting to appreciably lower on Google search. Only this morning I was looking for an extension on firefox that reports spam in the search results (Chrome has one but am on linux) . Maybe the opinions are only anecdotal evidence, but it chimes with my experience of the last month or so.
Dam.
You make me feel nothing but pity. Having to repeatedly ask a question like that shows how ill-educated and unimportant you must be. As all these exquisite descriptions tell you, the Emperor has magnificent clothes.
Why do you have to keep asking what they precisely look like?
Sorry, thought you'd read the link in the original post which made me rather exasperated to see the link to GA. I understand the role of GA in the wider US (pun intended) but was amazed how little coverage this work got on its release last year- read the headline and heard it on "All things considered", but then it disappeared. Hundreds of millions of people paying for services used by hundreds of thousands [mainly wealthy] people, for whatever reason, is unfair (by 3 magnitudes!).
The Airport Improvement Program is funded mostly by the nation's airline passengers, who pay a 7.5% sales tax on each ticket and a $3.60 fee for each flight. The money goes into an FAA fund that pays for airport projects and the air-traffic-control system. A business traveler who flies once a week could pay $2,000 a year in such taxes. Private pilots pay taxes on airplane fuel that cost about $2.87 for a one-hour flight in the average piston-engine plane. Meanwhile, local subsidies help private airplane owners avoid costs that commercial airports routinely charge airlines, such as landing fees and passenger taxes. Only 2% to 3% of general-aviation airports charge planes to land.
And that's the rub about arguing it here. Most of the replies seem to be from pilots or people who use GA and are very happy with the status quo- and why wouldn't they be? "Any member of the public is free to [rent an aircraft and] use these airports" says the above post- that's plutocracy for you!
Perhaps the fees at under-utilised airports should be higher due to the exclusivity afforded by this arrangement? No, they're massively subsidised [see article], sometimes practically free.
an obscure federal program that raises billions of dollars a year through taxes on every airplane ticket sold in the United States. The taxes can add up to 15% to the cost of a flight
Private aircraft are far more useful to their owners when there's a network of handy airports. Perfectly understandable, but why do scheduled airline passengers pay for them? If all Interstate highways had tolls that were paying for private race-tracks...
Federal funding at its finest
2001- Rudi Giulani. Obviously.
In my part of the world, everyone spending a % of income on a universal healthcare system is part of the sanitation system. Under your system my neighbours down the hill have to put up with a stream of my excrement flowing past them. We can't all live on top of the hill.
I saw it live, and have not watched any programmes on the Patriot since the night I saw it in Feb 1991. I am not being confused by others. I remember the date (see above) and I remember the missile almost instantly heading off course and into a complex of buildings.
Scuds were rubbish, absolutely rubbish. Their accuracy is at the level of a V2 'terror weapon'. Whilst it was possible after their hundreds of miles of flight that they hit the barracks, good old Ockham says to me "fast moving high explosives heading into building from Patriot 1/4 mile away" sits firmly on the more probable side of his razor.
One understands why the US would say it was a Scud, one also understands why we had so little live feed from Gulf War 2.
Feb 25th is my birthday, I was watching the television here in the UK before going out with friends. I remember well the footage of 'incoming' as they were broadcast live on the BBC. I've always been curious about this tale though. What I saw was not a Scud coming down (pretty unlikely) but a number of Patriots launching and one of them suddenly veering off-course and smashing into the adjoining part of the base. It was in the air for approximately 1/2 a second before it turned left (on my screen) and walloped into the middle-distance, behind some low-level buildings I took for barracks.
Nothing to corroborate this apart from my memory, but was surprised to find out later about the 'Scud'.
"Live a good life. If there are gods and they are just, then they will not care how devout you have been, but will welcome you based on the virtues you have lived by. If there are gods, but unjust, then you should not want to worship them. If there are no gods, then you will be gone, but will have lived a noble life that will live on in the memories of your loved ones."
Christ, I know it's futile to complain about the summaries, but "Internet search company Google Inc"! Glad I wasn't confused by all the other Googles out there. Any article that feels it has to explain who Google are doesn't really improve the SNR here. Huge chunks of the 7 billion people on this planet won't know what Google do, but they're unlikely to be getting their news online.
Ties for first place with "Shatner on the Moonbase videoscreen" for funniest sight-gag ever.
RIP Leslie.
Thanks for that, if nothing else it will be another straw for the camel's back. The TSA show the same sociological ingroup/outgroup ideas that are the basis for the very worst sort of human behaviour. Travellers, not terrorists, have literally become the enemy for these people.
Sorry to agree with the GP. I was bought up in the UK on bottle-conditioned Guinness, courtesy of a grand-mother who had 1/2 a bottle a day (c/o "Guinness is good for you"). It is a complex, wonderful drink. In 1986 a Dutch friend wanted to try Guinness for the first time so gave him taste of the bottled stuff and he pulled a face. The same bar sold the new 'lager-friendly' draught version and it was pronounced it 'lovely' by my lager-drinking friend. The bottle-conditioned real stout was pulled from mainstream distribution a few years later and ceased completely [in Ireland] in 1993.
Now all draught Guinness is brewed in Dublin, there's no hiding; it's uniform and never exciting, tasty or interesting. It was slowly, carefully and very deliberately changed to this state in the name of economics. It was a decent stout and probably was better in Ireland than elsewhere; it was worth its name. Guinness now is fizzy pap, a slightly more flavoured lager, sold freezing-cold so you don't notice how poor it tastes. It has been bastardized in name of lowest-common-denominator tastebuds. Try any real porter, stout or, Christ, even mild to see what it used to be like.
Criticizing Guinness is seen by some as an attack on the Irish, it's pretty much the national drink (minus Beamish and Murphys). But no matter what Diageo say (Arthur's Day for fucks sake), Guinness != Ireland.
Agreed. A friend was employed in 1989 to cope with the expected demand when the past and present individual records that British Armed Forces held on their employees was opened up for scrutiny. They had a huge budget, masses of IT, dozens working in the dept. for the day of "Big Bang". They went live at 0900 on a Monday morning and by the Friday afternoon had a total of two enquiries from former soldiers.