While poverty certainly exists in the US, odds are you're not in that group, and nobody you know is in that group either. If so, you're in a very small minority.
Really? Quite a few of the people on slashdot are below the poverty line. As a matter of fact, until I started my own business, I was well below it. (20 hour weeks at $8/hr + odd jobs) Almost everyone I know who is under the age of 35 and not still living off of their parents is still below it.
Don't mistake poverty for homelessness, just because you're poor doesn't mean you're starving (most of the time). Living with roommates/family who are willing to share (almost a commune) is the best way to handle it.
A large part of the problem seems to stem from the fact that the older generations aren't retiring. My family doctor is 76, I've got coworkers who are 80+, and even my grandparents are still actively working the the real estate industry. The fact that people are still able to work at these ages is wonderful, but it does cause a noticeable shortage of opportunities for people my age. Several of my friends are stuck at entry level jobs despite years of experience and degrees, and for inexperienced workers this leaves nothing but crappy, minimum wage jobs.
Also, because of current unemployment rate, if you want a raise, there are 5 more wage slaves right outside who want your job. (or at least to interview for it so they can keep their welfare checks coming)
This isn't some small town either, rent prices more than tripled after hurricane katrina, and many lower cost places chased out all of their current tenants (refusing maintenance, cutting off utilities for days at a time for "repairs", refusing to sign new leases, and a few other nasty tricks) so that they could sign new leases at the new, inflated, rates.
It's reached the point where most of the people I know have 3 or more roommates, and still have serious trouble making rent each month.
Not more general, but more understandable. You can be plenty specific, but use english, not latin, french (my local area is still under napoleonic law) or other forms of obscure language.
When language changes, the laws should be updated and reviewed, not left in place... That would also prevent situations where obscure laws are still on the books, but never enforced. Like these
As for the honesty/integrity issue, I belive the above posters where referring to the judges/jury's having integrity, not expecting everyone to magically be honest.
Frankly, I'd rather have a jury made of of cops than a jury of blathering idiots, as long as the cops weren't from the same jurisdiction that was charging me.
At least that way, I'd have a group of people with the brains/nuts to tell a lawyer to quit blowing smoke.
The system that you describe...trial by a jury of your peers, clear rules, people expected to keep their word. It sounds nice, but are you sure that we don't have it already?
Absolutely CERTAIN. ....However, just because I'm sure doesn't mean I'm right.
Allow my to explain my perspective, and lets see if anyone can show me my errors or assumptions.
Your first condition, "trial by a jury of your peers" depends largely on your definition of "peer".
According to Legal definition
"A peer is a person's equal. The U.S. Constitution guarantees criminal defendants a "jury of one's peers," which means an impartial group of citizens from the judicial district (e.g. county) in which the defendant lives."
Let's break this down further.
"A peer is a person's equal": I am a college educated male, between the ages of 25-35. I am fairly well versed in current events, active in the local community, and own my own business.
I think that it's safe to say that my equal would be best defined by these same demographics. If it was possible, I would prefer to be judged by people with an equivalent intelligence level as well, but lets not get picky.
"an impartial group of citizens from the judicial district (e.g. county) in which the defendant lives": I live in the state capital of Louisiana (southern usa). According to Wikipedia "As of the census of 2000" "The per capita income for the city was $18,512. About 18.0% of families and 24.0% of the population were below the poverty line"
Since 2000, these numbers have worsened, the current poverty rate is above 25% according to the 2007 census. link
Also, better than 20% of our local population never finished high school. Census data
Additionally, I have been called for jury duty, as have many of my friends and associates. As a rule, the people who are educated, intelligent, and successful are removed from the jury pool in the first or second round. I understand that this is anecdotal evidence, but it's fairly common to wind up with a jury of the lowest common denominator. Intelligent, educated people are hard to convince, and hard to manipulate, which makes a lawyers job harder. Unfortunately out legal system doesn't weigh issues on thier own merits, but on the ability of the lawyers to argue instead.
So, what do you think the chances are of my having a jury of my equals?
Your second condition, "clear rules" is easier to define.
Clear rules would mean that the average American could read and understand exactly what was expected of them, the punishments involved, and how the legal system operated, in enough detail as to be able to successfully sue or defend themselves in court.
Or to make things even simpler, simply define the rules in such a way that the average American can at least understand what is going on in court, and participate in their own defense.
According to many different research groups, the US has a deplorable literacy rate. I'm not going to write a full analysis here, but there is a fairly good one Here To summarize, 50% of our population reads at less than a 7th grade level.
So, what in the world makes people think that the average American can read, parse, and cross reference 1000's of obscure words, hundreds of referenced precedents, and actually understand it?
As for your last requirement, "people expected to keep their word" this is subjective, and the parent was referring to people with "integrity" not just honesty. Unfortu
I'm not going to touch judge judy (ick, get it away), but I am going to go after your comments on estoppel.
Estoppel is actually an excellent example of why the layman is completely at the mercy of the lawyer.
Imagine for a moment that you have a girlfriend, who turns up pregnant. At the time, you have been dating exclusively for a year, and she breaks up with you for some reason around 8 months into the pregnancy.
After the child is born she demands child support, which you agree to in court. (This includes a paternity judgment in most jurisdictions I know of)
Three months later you find out that she was having sex with your roommate the entire time you were dating, and the child looks remarkably like the said roomate. Heck, lets assume that you and the mother are both blond haired, blue eyed Caucasians, and that the roommate is a dark Italian. The baby was born rather fair, but has darkened remarkably.
Now, Most men would at this point be rather upset at having to pay child support for someone else's son, However, by the rules of estoppel, you cannot challenge the child support case on the grounds of mistaken paternity, due to the previous ruling against you.
Most laymen do not know this, as estoppel is not in any way common knowledge. However, it is likely that if she notified her lawyer that you might not be the father, he would advise her not to mention that fact to anyone until after the judgment, as estoppel is basic knowledge for a lawyer.
Except the the whole "jury of your peers" is supposed to handle these edge cases.
If you can't convince 12 peers that it was self defense, then it probably wasn't. Involuntary manslaughter (not directly related to negligence on the part of the "murderer") is usually pretty obvious.
If you jump out in front of my car, then it's not my fault.
If I ran off of the road and hit you, then it probably is my fault.
If you were drunk and killed someone, then you were drunk and killed someone, period.
Most people I know agree with this last example until someone they know is the drunk, then they usually change their minds and say "it was just a mistake".
That's why a jury is supposed to be made up of impartial strangers.
The main issue we have now is that the peers chosen are usually babbling idiots with no idea how this is supposed to work. Most juries seem to just take whatever crap is spoon fed to them by whichever lawyer is the better showman. (at least where I live, ymmv. But I doubt it.)
When you do have an intelligent person pulled for jury duty, the lawyers cull them from the pool very quickly.
For example, doping everyone up to the eyeballs with anti-schitzophrenia meds will probably reduce the suicide rate, but at a terrible cost: Mental dullening, health implications and so on.
Except that Lithium is one of the most prescribed anti-schitzophrenia meds on the market today, and can cause all sorts of nasty mind dulling effects.
I recently had a roomate who had been on lithium since her teenage years, everyone though she was kinda stupid.
Her doctor screwed up and failed to give her a prescription renewal right his office closed for Christmas holiday. This, along with a few other events, ended with her being off of the lithium for 3 weeks. Turns out she's got an iq around 135, and a biting sense of humor to match.
If they start adding lithium to my water, I'm switching to distilled.
No, The justice system is a deterrent. Trying to catch every single crime is a waste of resources, plain and simple.
The whole point of punishments is, and has always been, to convince the average criminal that whatever reward they may receive from the crime is not worth the risk.
example, joe criminal robs the bank, kills a teller and his hung for it in a rather public trial.
Joe sixpack sees the hanging, and decides that perhaps $10,000 in small bills isn't worth it.
Seems fairly obvious to me.
He notified them of a "required" update to the software, but worked for a company that needs full approval to roll said updates onto production systems.
If the manager says no, the updates don't get applied. Fairly common practice in some sectors (small financial comes to mind).
Emergency patches get looked at, and someone has to make a judgment call on which is more likely. Will the patch have a better chance of breaking something than the virus. Can we stop the virus at the firewall level, etc.
When the person makes the wrong call, someone gets blamed.
Often it's the engineer who originally brought up the issue who get hung out to dry.
Often a middle manager will state that the engineer/network admin/etc failed to explain how large the threat was.
Having records on hand that show that you clearly stated, in advance, exactly what the consequences were is just basic cya.
I'll help where I can, Heck I might just get started on this myself if no one else does it.
I'll use it if it gets written, and I think an open architecture for other addons to use would be great. (curse.com has something similar, but I don't like the memory usage or the intrusive download)
If there was an open source, Preferably cross platform (win, mac and linux), bittorrent based addon updater package that didn't run constantly in the background, I would use it gladly.
Honestly, I'm thinking something similar to the updater I wrote for guild wars a while back, just a wrapper script that you run, it updates game, then runs the game when it's finished.
As for the wow-addon updater, Big updates (more than 500kb or so) should get downloaded slowly in the background, and queued for install on next run. Mine also has an override button, so if i'm in a hurry to get in game I can skip the update completely.
Combine the updater with a good management tool, and a synaptic-like interface for adding new addons and I think we've got a winner.
Somewhat Offtopic: Zorba, I recently switched off of questhelper because of the serious slowdown when it loaded the dataset. You fix that, and i'll be right back and so will my pocketbook.
Except that the internet is INTERNATIONAL! Your local laws don't mean a damned thing to me, and my local laws mean the same to you.
It's illegal for me to link to any photos of Tiananmen Square from china, and in china providing an iso of windows xp with a key is perfectly acceptable.
Legality is a purely local construct once you get past the big 3. (rape, theft of physical goods, and murder) And almost everything is going to be illegal somewhere, and legal somewhere else.
So, how do you decide what to enforce, or where to enforce it. The only option is for each nation to have something like the great firewall of china, and even that isn't extremely effective.
Also, removing the links won't prevent piracy. It might slow down joe sixpack a bit when he wants to download that new song he heard on the radio, but storage has become so cheap that sneakernet can tranfer a terabyte of data by accident.
"Hey, i just heard this really neat song on the radio today." Oh, i have the mp3 for that already, let me grab my laptop, and i'll give it to you." "What else do you have?"
Your argument seems flawed to me. The wallpaper in my bathroom is designed to prevent condensation from the shower, the paint on my house serves to protect the exterior wood, and my nicer clothes are useful in that they help make a good first impression on new people.
Wobbly windows on the other hand are purely eye candy. If they make you happy, great, but for many of us they are just a waste of resources that could be used better on other things. (And before you comment, yes, I do actually max out my system fairly regularly with actual work.)
Most of the iphone owners I know have had the phone replaced by our local apple store at least once. One person at least 3 times.
If this "study" isn't including those numbers, that would explain at least part of the bias.
Have you considered that he's pretending to be nuts? It might just be an act to give an insanity plea a better shot during appeals for whatever he was arrested for.
Yeah, but you can go to the dealership and take the Ferrari for a test drive.
If they don't have a demo available, I'm not paying unless word of mouth makes it seem worth it.
I have pirated games to try them, and if they are good, I buy them. Usually multiple copies for myself and my friends. (We have weekly lan parties, and I supply the extra systems for new people)
I'm not about to buy 4 copies of a game, and have my friends buy copies, just to discover that the multiplayer sucks horribly.
As a matter of fact, I purchased a game just a few weeks ago that played great up until we hit 3 players on the network, then the game bogged down and lagged itself to death. Fortunately, I had only purchased the one copy, and no-cd cracked it on the other systems for testing.
Software retailers don't take games back. I'm not gambling $100+ on something that I can easily test out first.
On newsgoups and mailing lists, top posting is bad. In email however, either all clients need a way to jump to the most recent message, or the message needs to be at the top.
I hate having to scroll through 6 pages of an email at work just to read the boss's "ok, do it."
The exact same thing happened at Louisiana State University in sept of last year.
That time it was the fasfa records for the entire school.
I'm actually starting to get a little bit suspicious that there is a pattern forming.
I started to try and compile a listing of backups, laptops, Usb keys and hard drives stolen from universities, but the listing quickly grew beyond what I would like to post on slashdot.
Instead, i'll just post a site that has most of them listed already. Just do a search for the word UNIVERSITY.
Why shouldn't the owners of a toll road choose how much to charge people driving on it? As you said.
Toll roads charge the people Who are driving on them
How does that translate to "lets charge the store owner"?
Ok, lets drop the analogies.
The way things are now, I pay cox, cox pays level3, level3 pays Verizon.
If I want a faster Connection I pay cox more, Or, If I want an even faster link than cox can provide, I can move up to a larger isp.
You do the same thing, only you pay your isp.
Everyone pays for their own connection, and the money filters up, so everyone gets paid.
This is tiered pricing.
I pay for my piddling connection that gets saturated with 3 people playing a game, and the googles of the world pay more money every month than either of us will ever see.
If I attempt to connect to you, My packets go from cox, to level3, and then to verizon, then back through your tier2 provider, and your isp, finally arriving at your site.
What verizon wants to do is drop network neutrality. This would allow all of the intermediate isps to add a 2 millisecond (or more) delay to all packets to or from your site unless you pay them directly for "priority service".
In other words, they are going to Slow down all of your traffic to create an artificial market. This won't stop with one level. The isps will offer multiple "Provider tiers". Top tier has no lag and costs $100/month, Middle range is 2ms of lag (people won't pay if the delays aren't noticeable), and the bottom tier will be lagged out of existence.
So lets do some math.
Right now I have 10 hops one-way with 50ms of lag just to get to google.
2ms delay, through 10 isps, 2 ways. Thats an extra 40ms of lag on top of standard network delays.
So that's a total of 90ms, or a full 10th of a second to the biggest search engine on the planet.
Can you imagine how much lag will be added to little no-name companies like myself?
This is frighteningly similar to a protection racket.
"Youse listen here, either you pay up, or your customers are gonna start finding it hard to come visit. You unerstand?"
As a customer, If I have the choice between a site that seems snappy and responsive, and one thats noticeably slower every time I click on a link, Eventually I'm going to go with the faster site.
Allow me to continue with your storefront analogy.
You pay rent on your storefront, and I have to ride the bus to get there. We both pay depending on what we want.
You want more people in your store at a time, you pay more rent.
I want to be able to get there faster, I hire a taxi instead.
Where the problem lies is that now the bus/taxi companies want to charge you, the store owner, for the bus/taxi to stop at your shop.
If you don't pay, your customers will have to walk the last 1/2 mile, despite the fact that your shop is on the main road, and all traffic goes right past you.
In fact, it's not a far stretch to imagine the taxi driver suggesting alternate destinations.
Me: Take me to the local grocery store.
Driver: You're going shopping? Why don't I drop you at Walmart, It's 20 minutes faster.
Me: No it isn't, walmart is in the next town.
Driver: Yeah, But we have a contract with them, we drive everyone there first.
Why not simply build a nuclear powerplant closer to the consumers?
1) NIMBY - everybody wants it but yet nobody wants it. NIMBY? HAHA. My back yard is a freaking Exxon oil refinery. If someone could come through and pave the oil plants in south Louisiana and replace them, all of them, with nuclear plants, I would call him a hero...
Take a look for yourselves, I live just below the giant grey patch on the river.
I live next to a beautiful lake, in a quiet part of the downtown area. I have a great view, other than the giant plant covering 100% of the horizon.
On wednesdays, I get woken up by the emergency alert tests (think air raid sirens).
About twice a month, the wind blows south, filling the air with the most wonderful rotten-egg stench. (sulfur)
In 2 years I've never seen stars from my home. The lights of the plant turn the night sky a nasty red color for most of baton rouge, and 45 miles away in new roads, la the red glow from the plant covers a quarter of the sky.
I would gladly trade for a nuclear plant and an electric car. When can I sign up?
I would like to point out that all of these links are using dollar amounts as a measurement tool, without accounting for changes in price.
I can make more money selling 90 widgets at $6 than selling 100 widgets at $5.
A quick google search for ("movie ticket sales" record high) comes up with about 600 items, most of which reference the same quote.
"Moviegoers around the world pushed global box office revenues to a record $26.7 billion in 2007,
but rising ticket prices and a weakening dollar accounted for much of the increase,
the Motion Picture Association of America said Wednesday." If even the mpaa has been forced to admit that the majority of the sales increase has been due to price increases, the odds are "Most" in this case means almost all.
Can someone explain why this hasn't already been implemented? Seems like there would have to be a good reason, otherwise this would just make more sense, right?
Oblivion, but about 30 times it's size with more dungeon variation, more quest lines, and more "sand box".
a huge sandbox without skill balancing, grinds, and all the crap
Yes, yes, a thousand times yes...
Add in lan-based multiplayer, and I would pay for this game. I would pay for updates to this game. I would pay monthly for this game to have new content added constantly. Hell, If I knew anything about programming in 3d, I would try to write it myself.
I just wish someone at a gaming studio would just realize that a lot of people just don't want to beat on other players. Yes, pvp can be fun, but I want a story, a quest and a bad guy that I can grow to despise. For me, there's no emotional link in pvp, it's just an adrenaline fueled game of wack-a-mole.
I'm tired of falling in love with a mmorpg just to have it turn into a player vs player game after a year. Give me game that's based on solo/co-op play, and I would be happy. If there has to be a pvp mode, separate it from the solo/co-op far enough that skill balancing doesn't affect the rest of the game. Look at first person shooters, often the game is separate from the pvp to the point that they look nothing alike, but changing the settings in multiplayer never affects solo/co-op play.
This one isn't actually a myth. I've seen cdrom drives do this first hand. In these drives the disks weren't shattering because of the speed, the drive motors had worked a screw loose, and the drive was slamming the edge against the interior of the drive.
Rather impressive to watch actually. One drive actually blew the door off the front of the case it was in.
Slashdot Mirror
While poverty certainly exists in the US, odds are you're not in that group, and nobody you know is in that group either. If so, you're in a very small minority.
Really? Quite a few of the people on slashdot are below the poverty line. As a matter of fact, until I started my own business, I was well below it. (20 hour weeks at $8/hr + odd jobs) Almost everyone I know who is under the age of 35 and not still living off of their parents is still below it.
Don't mistake poverty for homelessness, just because you're poor doesn't mean you're starving (most of the time). Living with roommates/family who are willing to share (almost a commune) is the best way to handle it.
A large part of the problem seems to stem from the fact that the older generations aren't retiring. My family doctor is 76, I've got coworkers who are 80+, and even my grandparents are still actively working the the real estate industry. The fact that people are still able to work at these ages is wonderful, but it does cause a noticeable shortage of opportunities for people my age. Several of my friends are stuck at entry level jobs despite years of experience and degrees, and for inexperienced workers this leaves nothing but crappy, minimum wage jobs.
Also, because of current unemployment rate, if you want a raise, there are 5 more wage slaves right outside who want your job. (or at least to interview for it so they can keep their welfare checks coming)
This isn't some small town either, rent prices more than tripled after hurricane katrina, and many lower cost places chased out all of their current tenants (refusing maintenance, cutting off utilities for days at a time for "repairs", refusing to sign new leases, and a few other nasty tricks) so that they could sign new leases at the new, inflated, rates.
It's reached the point where most of the people I know have 3 or more roommates, and still have serious trouble making rent each month.
Fema!? Hahaha, wait. You were joking right?
here
here
and
here
Draw your own conclusions, but IMNSHO those idiots are close to the last people who should be managing more of our/my money...
Not more general, but more understandable. You can be plenty specific, but use english, not latin, french (my local area is still under napoleonic law) or other forms of obscure language.
When language changes, the laws should be updated and reviewed, not left in place... That would also prevent situations where obscure laws are still on the books, but never enforced. Like these
As for the honesty/integrity issue, I belive the above posters where referring to the judges/jury's having integrity, not expecting everyone to magically be honest.
Frankly, I'd rather have a jury made of of cops than a jury of blathering idiots, as long as the cops weren't from the same jurisdiction that was charging me.
At least that way, I'd have a group of people with the brains/nuts to tell a lawyer to quit blowing smoke.
The system that you describe...trial by a jury of your peers, clear rules, people expected to keep their word. It sounds nice, but are you sure that we don't have it already?
Absolutely CERTAIN.
....However, just because I'm sure doesn't mean I'm right.
Allow my to explain my perspective, and lets see if anyone can show me my errors or assumptions.
Your first condition, "trial by a jury of your peers" depends largely on your definition of "peer".
According to Legal definition
"A peer is a person's equal. The U.S. Constitution guarantees criminal defendants a "jury of one's peers," which means an impartial group of citizens from the judicial district (e.g. county) in which the defendant lives."
Let's break this down further.
"A peer is a person's equal": I am a college educated male, between the ages of 25-35. I am fairly well versed in current events, active in the local community, and own my own business.
I think that it's safe to say that my equal would be best defined by these same demographics.
If it was possible, I would prefer to be judged by people with an equivalent intelligence level as well, but lets not get picky.
"an impartial group of citizens from the judicial district (e.g. county) in which the defendant lives": I live in the state capital of Louisiana (southern usa). According to Wikipedia "As of the census of 2000" "The per capita income for the city was $18,512. About 18.0% of families and 24.0% of the population were below the poverty line"
Since 2000, these numbers have worsened, the current poverty rate is above 25% according to the 2007 census. link
Also, better than 20% of our local population never finished high school. Census data
Additionally, I have been called for jury duty, as have many of my friends and associates. As a rule, the people who are educated, intelligent, and successful are removed from the jury pool in the first or second round. I understand that this is anecdotal evidence, but it's fairly common to wind up with a jury of the lowest common denominator. Intelligent, educated people are hard to convince, and hard to manipulate, which makes a lawyers job harder. Unfortunately out legal system doesn't weigh issues on thier own merits, but on the ability of the lawyers to argue instead.
So, what do you think the chances are of my having a jury of my equals?
Your second condition, "clear rules" is easier to define.
Clear rules would mean that the average American could read and understand exactly what was expected of them, the punishments involved, and how the legal system operated, in enough detail as to be able to successfully sue or defend themselves in court.
Or to make things even simpler, simply define the rules in such a way that the average American can at least understand what is going on in court, and participate in their own defense.
According to many different research groups, the US has a deplorable literacy rate. I'm not going to write a full analysis here, but there is a fairly good one Here
To summarize, 50% of our population reads at less than a 7th grade level.
So, what in the world makes people think that the average American can read, parse, and cross reference 1000's of obscure words, hundreds of referenced precedents, and actually understand it?
As for your last requirement, "people expected to keep their word" this is subjective, and the parent was referring to people with "integrity" not just honesty.
Unfortu
I'm not going to touch judge judy (ick, get it away), but I am going to go after your comments on estoppel.
Estoppel is actually an excellent example of why the layman is completely at the mercy of the lawyer.
Imagine for a moment that you have a girlfriend, who turns up pregnant. At the time, you have been dating exclusively for a year, and she breaks up with you for some reason around 8 months into the pregnancy.
After the child is born she demands child support, which you agree to in court. (This includes a paternity judgment in most jurisdictions I know of)
Three months later you find out that she was having sex with your roommate the entire time you were dating, and the child looks remarkably like the said roomate.
Heck, lets assume that you and the mother are both blond haired, blue eyed Caucasians, and that the roommate is a dark Italian. The baby was born rather fair, but has darkened remarkably.
Now, Most men would at this point be rather upset at having to pay child support for someone else's son, However, by the rules of estoppel, you cannot challenge the child support case on the grounds of mistaken paternity, due to the previous ruling against you.
Most laymen do not know this, as estoppel is not in any way common knowledge.
However, it is likely that if she notified her lawyer that you might not be the father, he would advise her not to mention that fact to anyone until after the judgment, as estoppel is basic knowledge for a lawyer.
Except the the whole "jury of your peers" is supposed to handle these edge cases.
If you can't convince 12 peers that it was self defense, then it probably wasn't.
Involuntary manslaughter (not directly related to negligence on the part of the "murderer") is usually pretty obvious.
If you jump out in front of my car, then it's not my fault.
If I ran off of the road and hit you, then it probably is my fault.
If you were drunk and killed someone, then you were drunk and killed someone, period.
Most people I know agree with this last example until someone they know is the drunk, then they usually change their minds and say "it was just a mistake".
That's why a jury is supposed to be made up of impartial strangers.
The main issue we have now is that the peers chosen are usually babbling idiots with no idea how this is supposed to work.
Most juries seem to just take whatever crap is spoon fed to them by whichever lawyer is the better showman. (at least where I live, ymmv. But I doubt it.)
When you do have an intelligent person pulled for jury duty, the lawyers cull them from the pool very quickly.
Why is that?
For example, doping everyone up to the eyeballs with anti-schitzophrenia meds will probably reduce the suicide rate, but at a terrible cost: Mental dullening, health implications and so on.
Except that Lithium is one of the most prescribed anti-schitzophrenia meds on the market today, and can cause all sorts of nasty mind dulling effects.
I recently had a roomate who had been on lithium since her teenage years, everyone though she was kinda stupid.
Her doctor screwed up and failed to give her a prescription renewal right his office closed for Christmas holiday. This, along with a few other events, ended with her being off of the lithium for 3 weeks. Turns out she's got an iq around 135, and a biting sense of humor to match.
If they start adding lithium to my water, I'm switching to distilled.
No, The justice system is a deterrent.
Trying to catch every single crime is a waste of resources, plain and simple.
The whole point of punishments is, and has always been, to convince the average criminal that whatever reward they may receive from the crime is not worth the risk.
example, joe criminal robs the bank, kills a teller and his hung for it in a rather public trial.
Joe sixpack sees the hanging, and decides that perhaps $10,000 in small bills isn't worth it.
That's the idea anyway.
Seems fairly obvious to me. He notified them of a "required" update to the software, but worked for a company that needs full approval to roll said updates onto production systems. If the manager says no, the updates don't get applied. Fairly common practice in some sectors (small financial comes to mind).
Emergency patches get looked at, and someone has to make a judgment call on which is more likely. Will the patch have a better chance of breaking something than the virus. Can we stop the virus at the firewall level, etc.
When the person makes the wrong call, someone gets blamed.
Often it's the engineer who originally brought up the issue who get hung out to dry.
Often a middle manager will state that the engineer/network admin/etc failed to explain how large the threat was.
Having records on hand that show that you clearly stated, in advance, exactly what the consequences were is just basic cya.
I'll help where I can, Heck I might just get started on this myself if no one else does it.
I'll use it if it gets written, and I think an open architecture for other addons to use would be great. (curse.com has something similar, but I don't like the memory usage or the intrusive download)
If there was an open source, Preferably cross platform (win, mac and linux), bittorrent based addon updater package that didn't run constantly in the background, I would use it gladly.
Honestly, I'm thinking something similar to the updater I wrote for guild wars a while back, just a wrapper script that you run, it updates game, then runs the game when it's finished.
As for the wow-addon updater, Big updates (more than 500kb or so) should get downloaded slowly in the background, and queued for install on next run. Mine also has an override button, so if i'm in a hurry to get in game I can skip the update completely.
Combine the updater with a good management tool, and a synaptic-like interface for adding new addons and I think we've got a winner.
Somewhat Offtopic: Zorba, I recently switched off of questhelper because of the serious slowdown when it loaded the dataset. You fix that, and i'll be right back and so will my pocketbook.
Except that the internet is INTERNATIONAL!
Your local laws don't mean a damned thing to me, and my local laws mean the same to you.
It's illegal for me to link to any photos of Tiananmen Square from china, and in china providing an iso of windows xp with a key is perfectly acceptable.
Legality is a purely local construct once you get past the big 3. (rape, theft of physical goods, and murder) And almost everything is going to be illegal somewhere, and legal somewhere else.
So, how do you decide what to enforce, or where to enforce it. The only option is for each nation to have something like the great firewall of china, and even that isn't extremely effective.
Also, removing the links won't prevent piracy. It might slow down joe sixpack a bit when he wants to download that new song he heard on the radio, but storage has become so cheap that sneakernet can tranfer a terabyte of data by accident.
"Hey, i just heard this really neat song on the radio today."
Oh, i have the mp3 for that already, let me grab my laptop, and i'll give it to you."
"What else do you have?"
Your argument seems flawed to me.
The wallpaper in my bathroom is designed to prevent condensation from the shower, the paint on my house serves to protect the exterior wood, and my nicer clothes are useful in that they help make a good first impression on new people.
Wobbly windows on the other hand are purely eye candy. If they make you happy, great, but for many of us they are just a waste of resources that could be used better on other things.
(And before you comment, yes, I do actually max out my system fairly regularly with actual work.)
Most of the iphone owners I know have had the phone replaced by our local apple store at least once. One person at least 3 times. If this "study" isn't including those numbers, that would explain at least part of the bias.
Have you considered that he's pretending to be nuts? It might just be an act to give an insanity plea a better shot during appeals for whatever he was arrested for.
Yeah, but you can go to the dealership and take the Ferrari for a test drive. If they don't have a demo available, I'm not paying unless word of mouth makes it seem worth it.
I have pirated games to try them, and if they are good, I buy them. Usually multiple copies for myself and my friends. (We have weekly lan parties, and I supply the extra systems for new people)
I'm not about to buy 4 copies of a game, and have my friends buy copies, just to discover that the multiplayer sucks horribly.
As a matter of fact, I purchased a game just a few weeks ago that played great up until we hit 3 players on the network, then the game bogged down and lagged itself to death. Fortunately, I had only purchased the one copy, and no-cd cracked it on the other systems for testing.
Software retailers don't take games back. I'm not gambling $100+ on something that I can easily test out first.
On newsgoups and mailing lists, top posting is bad. In email however, either all clients need a way to jump to the most recent message, or the message needs to be at the top.
I hate having to scroll through 6 pages of an email at work just to read the boss's "ok, do it."
The exact same thing happened at Louisiana State University in sept of last year.
That time it was the fasfa records for the entire school.
I'm actually starting to get a little bit suspicious that there is a pattern forming.
I started to try and compile a listing of backups, laptops, Usb keys and hard drives stolen from universities, but the listing quickly grew beyond what I would like to post on slashdot.
Instead, i'll just post a site that has most of them listed already. Just do a search for the word UNIVERSITY.
http://attrition.org/dataloss/
How does that translate to "lets charge the store owner"?
Ok, lets drop the analogies.
The way things are now, I pay cox, cox pays level3, level3 pays Verizon.
If I want a faster Connection I pay cox more, Or, If I want an even faster link than cox can provide, I can move up to a larger isp.
You do the same thing, only you pay your isp.
Everyone pays for their own connection, and the money filters up, so everyone gets paid.
This is tiered pricing.
I pay for my piddling connection that gets saturated with 3 people playing a game, and the googles of the world pay more money every month than either of us will ever see.
If I attempt to connect to you, My packets go from cox, to level3, and then to verizon, then back through your tier2 provider, and your isp, finally arriving at your site.
What verizon wants to do is drop network neutrality. This would allow all of the intermediate isps to add a 2 millisecond (or more) delay to all packets to or from your site unless you pay them directly for "priority service".
In other words, they are going to Slow down all of your traffic to create an artificial market.
This won't stop with one level. The isps will offer multiple "Provider tiers". Top tier has no lag and costs $100/month, Middle range is 2ms of lag (people won't pay if the delays aren't noticeable), and the bottom tier will be lagged out of existence.
So lets do some math.
Right now I have 10 hops one-way with 50ms of lag just to get to google. 2ms delay, through 10 isps, 2 ways. Thats an extra 40ms of lag on top of standard network delays.
So that's a total of 90ms, or a full 10th of a second to the biggest search engine on the planet.
Can you imagine how much lag will be added to little no-name companies like myself?
This is frighteningly similar to a protection racket.
"Youse listen here, either you pay up, or your customers are gonna start finding it hard to come visit. You unerstand?"
As a customer, If I have the choice between a site that seems snappy and responsive, and one thats noticeably slower every time I click on a link, Eventually I'm going to go with the faster site.
Allow me to continue with your storefront analogy.
You pay rent on your storefront, and I have to ride the bus to get there. We both pay depending on what we want.
You want more people in your store at a time, you pay more rent.
I want to be able to get there faster, I hire a taxi instead.
Where the problem lies is that now the bus/taxi companies want to charge you, the store owner, for the bus/taxi to stop at your shop.
If you don't pay, your customers will have to walk the last 1/2 mile, despite the fact that your shop is on the main road, and all traffic goes right past you.
In fact, it's not a far stretch to imagine the taxi driver suggesting alternate destinations.
Me: Take me to the local grocery store.
Driver: You're going shopping? Why don't I drop you at Walmart, It's 20 minutes faster.
Me: No it isn't, walmart is in the next town.
Driver: Yeah, But we have a contract with them, we drive everyone there first.
This isn't capitalism anymore, it's extortion.
1) NIMBY - everybody wants it but yet nobody wants it.
NIMBY? HAHA. My back yard is a freaking Exxon oil refinery. If someone could come through and pave the oil plants in south Louisiana and replace them, all of them, with nuclear plants, I would call him a hero...
Take a look for yourselves, I live just below the giant grey patch on the river.
View Larger Map
I live next to a beautiful lake, in a quiet part of the downtown area. I have a great view, other than the giant plant covering 100% of the horizon.
On wednesdays, I get woken up by the emergency alert tests (think air raid sirens).
About twice a month, the wind blows south, filling the air with the most wonderful rotten-egg stench. (sulfur)
In 2 years I've never seen stars from my home. The lights of the plant turn the night sky a nasty red color for most of baton rouge, and 45 miles away in new roads, la the red glow from the plant covers a quarter of the sky.
I would gladly trade for a nuclear plant and an electric car. When can I sign up?
I can make more money selling 90 widgets at $6 than selling 100 widgets at $5.
A quick google search for ("movie ticket sales" record high) comes up with about 600 items, most of which reference the same quote.
"Moviegoers around the world pushed global box office revenues to a record $26.7 billion in 2007,
- but rising ticket prices and a weakening dollar accounted for much of the increase,
the Motion Picture Association of America said Wednesday." If even the mpaa has been forced to admit that the majority of the sales increase has been due to price increases, the odds are "Most" in this case means almost all.Another quote from the same article http://movies.yahoo.com/mv/news/ap/20080305/120477504000.html
Revenues in the United States and Canada increased 5.4 percent to a record $9.6 billion, with
- admissions unchanged at 1.4 billion tickets sold,
and ticket prices 5 percent higher at an average $6.88.Can someone explain why this hasn't already been implemented?
Seems like there would have to be a good reason, otherwise this would just make more sense, right?
a huge sandbox without skill balancing, grinds, and all the crap
Yes, yes, a thousand times yes...
Add in lan-based multiplayer, and I would pay for this game. I would pay for updates to this game. I would pay monthly for this game to have new content added constantly. Hell, If I knew anything about programming in 3d, I would try to write it myself.
I just wish someone at a gaming studio would just realize that a lot of people just don't want to beat on other players. Yes, pvp can be fun, but I want a story, a quest and a bad guy that I can grow to despise. For me, there's no emotional link in pvp, it's just an adrenaline fueled game of wack-a-mole.
I'm tired of falling in love with a mmorpg just to have it turn into a player vs player game after a year. Give me game that's based on solo/co-op play, and I would be happy. If there has to be a pvp mode, separate it from the solo/co-op far enough that skill balancing doesn't affect the rest of the game. Look at first person shooters, often the game is separate from the pvp to the point that they look nothing alike, but changing the settings in multiplayer never affects solo/co-op play.
This one isn't actually a myth. I've seen cdrom drives do this first hand. In these drives the disks weren't shattering because of the speed, the drive motors had worked a screw loose, and the drive was slamming the edge against the interior of the drive.
Rather impressive to watch actually. One drive actually blew the door off the front of the case it was in.