I'm pretty sure construction using CMUs (which are just "bricks" by another name from the perspective of a brick layer), with rebar in cavities and concrete fill around the rebar, is allowed in the Bay Area in many applications. If not, there must be a lot of blind building inspectors around.
Wait for the 2019 model with a longer reach or move the truck?
In the short/mid term, on large jobs where this is likely to be most economical, access is likely to be less of a problem (although some jobs like building freeway sound walls on existing freeways might be a problem as they generally avoid shutting down the right lane/shoulder of the freeway during the brick laying process and the access for a truck is often limited by terrain). This machine will be expensive to run -- in part because of its capital cost, in part due to maintenance. It will also require fairly highly educated and trained (i.e., expensive) workers to manage it. Moving from small job to small job would entail quite a bit of expensive down time for man and machine.
The video seems to show all the walls being built concurrently (i.e., all walls get one more course of brick before any get the next course), but I can't think of a technical reason that's a requirement so the truck may be able to sit on a location that later will have a wall built on it (depending on the load bearing capabilities of the slab shown).
However, being in an earthquake prone area, I think I'll might wait until they come out with a version that puts mortar between the bricks and some rebar/concrete inside the cavities:)
IMHO, a couple Tsp is a bit much for the standard drink size. Although, most of my testing has been on popular (read, "well marketed and available almost everywhere") moderately priced Islays like Lagavulin or some of the smokier Highlands so my testing is not very broad based.
However, I expect to continue to experiment aggressively until I figure out just the right amount of water to add -- it could take decades to perfect this, but I'm willing to make that sacrifice to help humanity.
The Earth has plenty of humans on it. Indeed, perhaps too many and a reduction in population (rather then a continuing increase in population as we are experiencing) would be best in the long term. Of course, the only way to have a reduction in population is either via some "pruning" process (probably politically infeasible) or people just having less kids. Yes, in the short term it causes some economic imbalances, but in the long term it's probably a good thing.
Few people propose that society move to a situation where the birthrate is 0 (well, perhaps the Shakers do, but that's not working out so well for them).
How come fermented herring cans don't start popping in the first couple weeks after packing? (I think fermented herring is just a joke to play on tourists -- the price is that many locals have to pretend to like it and not toss their cookies at the smell, but I suppose that's a small price to pay for such hilarity).
Seriously...
How is it worse for handicapped people than a regular retail store (esp. if they have the ability to "ring a bell" sort of like at some supermarket meat department to get a human if needed). Actually, having everything picked out for you and stored in a "handicapped accessible" locker consistent with your handicap would seem to be a give advantage over traipsing through the aisles of a traditional store picking up the individual items.
The system would presumably know the size of each item and pick a locker that is sufficiently large and if none were available would presumably tell you that your order couldn't be picked up. Presumably there would also be a "not picked up" timeout that would result in the items being returned to the warehouse from the locker in order to free up lockers.
The 'adult picture id required' would probably require a human but it might be handled via remote video link and, perhaps, require additional validation the first time you use the service. That's also a small percentage of the good sold (well, maybe not the alcohol example -- at least when I as in college).
So what if that checkout clerk is "only" a clerk in a menial job.
Your words, not mine. Rather revealing.
There are about 7.5 billion humans on Earth. Even if I had a strong desire to interact with every one of them, I would have at best about 80 years to do so. Assuming (VERY optimistically) I could spend 16 hours a day interacting with people (sleeping, eating, etc taking the remainder of the day), I could only spend less than 4.5 seconds interacting one-on-one with each person. That's not going to result in very meaningful relationships, so obviously one needs to prioritize their time and give up on the "interact with everyone" if one wants to develop meaningful relationships.
The cashier would, almost certainly, rather be spending time with their friends and families than interacting with customers at their "day job". Similarly, I would rather be spending time with my friends and family than engaging in commercial banter (usually scripted and probably tested by "secret shoppers" in some cases). Everyone wins if I spend 90 seconds checking myself out vs. 120 seconds of my time and 60 seconds of the cashier's time doing so.
I'm really glad that when I want to call a friend overseas (or even a friend a mile away) that I can just dial their number (well, pick their name from my contact list) rather than engaging in banter with "Jim, the operator" at my local exchange while he plugs in cords and, perhaps talks to the "Marge, the upstream operator". Yes, I do have less interaction with people I don't know, but I now have more time to engage in meaningful discussion with my friend.
When I have more time to do so, it increases the probability that I will cross paths with the cashier outside of a commercial context and we might become friends while sharing some common interest (although it's more likely that I will cross paths and end up becoming friends or engaging in an activity which we both share a passion for with some other cashier (or, someone who has what you call a "menial job")).
I consider it an upside, but I read comments by people on other sites who would consider it a downside. Some of them claim to actually use a human cashier manned checkstand instead of self-serve checkstand even when doing so takes them more time. One reason given is they LIKE the human interaction with a relative stranger. I don't get this -- I choose to meet my human interaction needs with people I select, not ones the manager of the local supermarket chooses. I wonder if, deep inside their empty lives, they like interacting with someone who has to be nice to them because they are paid to be -- perhaps they value both getting a dose of "polite" human interaction and also like being in control of someone else. But, perhaps that's just the cynic in me talking.
Valid questions and thanks for your reasoned response...
I used to have many add-ons installed. When upgrading to 64-bit FF (51) some months ago, I pruned the list down to those that I really use a lot (I started with none and then put them back as I missed them). I've not done a deep search for a 57+ compatible version for all of them -- I, frankly, gave up after trying to find replacements for perhaps three. I regularly use(d):
Adblock Plus Copy Plain Text 2 DownThemAll! Map This - unfortunately not compatible w/multiprocess:( Print Edit Restart Tab Mix Plus Private Tab
Restart is not really that important to me now that I don't have to do regular prophylactic restarts w/FF 64-bit.
Unfortunately, I had to (after an annoyingly long binary search process to identify the culprits) disable Private Tab after installing FF 55 because if Private Tab and Tab Mix Plus are both enabled, and a popup is opened, no popups can be closed AND the FF main window can't be closed w/o a 'kill' command. The lack of just Private Tab functionality is driving me nuts, but not as much as living without Tab Mix Plus was:(
I use FF because it is/was useful to me, not because I have a strong religious desire to do so. Most of the missing functionality I find frustrating when I go to Chrome or IE because of occasional browser compatibility problems is provided by these extensions (I've not researched to see if Chrome, via extensions or via non-obvious built in features, offers similar capabilities).
I am/was a developer, but on systems/server side and have never been very interested in learning/using client frameworks (and assuredly nobody would ever want to use my UIs -- even I hate them when I've occasionally been forced to develop them to get a project completed when other orgs flaked out on it) so I'm probably not going to become a FF dev or extension author and the world will probably be a better place as a result:(
I do understand the need for change and that incompatibilities may result (I've seen both sides of that coin with at least one system that I helped develop over 30 years ago and has been shackled with compatibility constraints but that without those constraints it would have probably lost, rather than gained, enterprise customers over the decades). However FF is just a tool to me rather like a microwave oven. If my microwave oven were to break and I could buy a brand new one with the same interface as the current one (which is remarkably good) I might buy that instead of investing in the research of the 100 other options out there to pick a better one. However, if a "similarly interfaced" oven is not readily and obviously available, I would be quite likely to do the research and would, in all likelihood, end up with different brand etc.
And, yes, I do suspect at least some of my memory issues were (are?) related to the add-ons. It was frustrating though trying to figure out which ones might be responsible -- perhaps that will get easier in the future (although, it really doesn't matter much to me with the current state as it's only slightly annoying rather than monitor slapping frustrating). I tend to view FF and all my favorite add-ons as one "product" -- each is of little use without the other so I tend to lump them together.
As FF 57 approaches, I will certainly look into it and play with it in a VM to see if I can get workable solution but I'm somewhat skeptical given that all of the extensions I've come to rely on are, just three months ahead of FF 57, still tagged as 'Legacy'. Hopefully my skepticism is misplaced.
(And, I won't engage in a Rust debate as I've not yet gotten around to playing with the language.)
Since FF 57 will be the death of Firefox in about three months due to the disabling of all "legacy" extensions (which is 100% of the extensions I use - some very useful ones that haven't been updated in quite some time and that I can't find WebExtensions equivalents for), Mozilla needs to get done whatever they expect to be adopted before then -- and defaulting to 64-bit seems to fall in this category. (FF 55 already broke two of my favorite extensions -- I can run either one of them without the other, but not both at the same time because attempts to close new windows/popups or even FF itself are completely ignored so I may go back to 54).
Some users will, without realizing it, upgrade to 57 and discover that the primary reason they use FF has vaporized and then move on to Chrome. Some, like myself, will probably stick around on 54...56 for a while but will begin to switch to alternatives because they want security related browser updates.
It's amazing to me that if one goes to the FF addon's page and types in some search terms like "video" or "mouse" or "screen" or "download" or "tab" and sorts by 'most users', perhaps 10% of the extensions are tagged as compatible with 57+. I wonder who Mozilla expects to use FF after November -- do they have some big marketing initiative planned to attract a bunch of new users -- perhaps there is an untapped market of extra-terrestrials that are just discovering the World Wide Web I'm not aware of?
(Although, I must admit, upgrading to 64bit FF was a good thing for me -- instead of having to restart FF once or twice a day, now I can just restart it once or twice a week -- when it gets to about 13 GB of virtual memory, it gets pretty slow even though I've got lots of free memory on my 32GB desktop).
FF - R.I.P. - I'll miss you, it was fun back when FF was fresh and innovative but, sorry, now it's an old toothless 97 year old hag which is about to break both hips in a dementia and alcohol induced suicide attempt jumping off a third floor balcony at the retirement home. It will be deadly, but it will be an unnecessarily painful and slow death. Come on, why not just announce that 56 is the last full release and that a few dedicated volunteers are going to try to issue patch releases on 56 for the most serious of security issues for a while?
It is alarming if, in fact, it is particularly difficult for such organizations to find a registrar that will accept them so they can gain access to the new public square. As long as it's easy (which, I would agree, it likely still is) there is not a problem.
However, by a (quasi)government organization offering an open viewpoint neutral gate (at least as regards to DNS) to the public square, it would insure that one day we don't discover that the entire square is surrounded by gates which a few private companies control and who say: "Sure, you can speak freely in the international public square -- IF you can get in and, sorry, our gate is closed to you and all the owners of the other gates have also closed their gates to you".
The Federalist papers were published under a pseudonym - to this day there is still some debate on who wrote some of them.
Somehow I doubt that those that wrote them, who were among the most influential Founding Fathers (Hamilton, Madison, and Jay), believed that non-anonymous speech was the only speech that should be protected.
Despicable speech is just as protected as popular speech. These idiots are potentially subject to civil defamation damages if they are claiming the victim is a whore (and appear to mean it literally, not figuratively) and some injured party can prove she was NOT a whore and that these nut jobs knew that (or, perhaps, reasonably should have known that(?)).
In the town square, there is no restriction that speech must be "discourse" as some AC defines it on/. in order for it to be protected speech. There can only be viewpoint neutral rules (such as no loudspeakers after 10PM or before 8AM or decibel limits or requirement for organizers providing sanitation facilities). Even some viewpoint neutral rules such as "no fires" have been found by some courts NOT to justify exclusion of expressive speech involving fire (such as burning an American flag).
Remember, the First Amendment is needed to protect unpopular speech -- rarely is popular speech suppressed.
Google and GoDaddy are certainly within their legal rights to refuse service to almost anyone (except because they are a member of a protected class). They could, for example (within their TOS), have shut down any websites promoting Bernie Sanders because their CEO preferred Hillary Clinton.
However, the effective migration of the function of the public town square to a privately controlled space controlled by the likes of GoDaddy and Google is alarming. Hence, my suggestion that the USPS could institute an alternative forum (at least in part) that IS protected by the First Amendment because the USPS is controlled by Congress and is effectively an arm of the US Government.
And those doing the beatings would be subject to prosecution and imprisonment in addition to civil suits and, possibly, death by the person being beaten defending themselves successfully and legally.
Perhaps it's time for the USPS to implement a domain registration service that will insure viewpoint neutral service and foster open communication? We need a true public forum available to all and we seem to be losing this.
In the old days, one could go to the town square, get on their soap box, and speak their mind and be jeered, cheered, or both or even just ignored by those passing by.
Unfortunately, now access to the "town square" requires finding a domain registrar who won't impose their political views on their patrons -- much as if a gas station refused to sell gasoline to someone because the patron was going to use the gasoline to drive to a protest for an unpopular presidential candidate.
You can't even legitimately play make believe about this, unless you actually consumed no government services whatsoever.
Since many services that would be private in another system are publicly subsidized/controlled in the US, it's virtually impossible to avoid "consuming" government "services" -- even if you don't want to or think you benefit from them. So, that's a ridiculous argument.
For example, the Federal Government makes it illegal to prescribe many drugs that are not FDA approved. So, the manufacturers have no choice but to get FDA approval -- and the government in some cases delays or refuses to grant such approval making it impossible for private enterprise to provide the medication to me. So, yes, if you want to take some medication that may save your life but it hasn't yet entered trials (or you don't qualify for the trial) so you can't get access to it and that results in your premature death, you have "consumed" a government service (the FDA's service of denying you access to a what may turn out to be a lifesaving medication) even though you didn't want to.
Taxes are just another name for payment of services consumed, in aggregate.
Again, ridiculous. A more correct formulation would be "Taxes are just another name for providing services to someone, somewhere in the world -- including those that cause you personal harm or that exist merely to enrich a vendor".
You can't even get a group together at a restaurant without encountering this problem. [...]
Again, ridiculous. You seem to fail to grasp the difference between voluntarily participating in and/or paying for an activity and being compelled by force to do so. The restaurant is free to charge a separate "service fee" per person to cover the table space (and, in some sense, some do by imposing a minimum charge for table service) or they are free to fold that into the price of various food items -- if you don't like the way one restaurant does it, you are free to patronize another restaurant that does it another way more to your liking.
Of course there are sunk costs and marginal costs to nearly everything -- your argument seems to dissolve down to that justifying the government taking over control of all activities.
This is not to say that all taxes are inappropriate. For example, there are a few powers that are specifically reserved to the Federal Government by the United States Constitution -- such as making treaties with foreign countries. Therefore, Federal taxes that support negotiating those treaties are likely appropriate as it's an activity only the Federal Government can engage in and that activity has to be paid for somehow.
The FDA approval of drugs however is something that the Federal Government does not need to provide. This is much like how the private UL (previously known as Underwriters Laboratories) sets standards for certain equipment but I am free to make and sell non UL approved devices and consumers are free to buy, or not buy, my product based on the reduced cost (no cost for approval) or the lack of "comfort" (no approval) they have feel due to the lack of approval. A private organization (perhaps many -- for example some offering insurance on the products they approve, some not) can set up standards for the testing and manufacturing of medications. Some manufacturers may choose not to pay for certification for all or some of their product line and you, as a consumer, are free to only buy products approved by an organization you trust. The only government involvement would be in the usual civil judicial process involving trademarks and the like which would prevent organizations from using the epine Labs Approved trademark without approval just as the UL trademarks are enforced.
It is, however, his land that people want access to in order to gain convenient access to the beach. There is no question that the public owns the beaches in California up to the high tide line (IIRC) and has the right to use them (ironically, except when the government says you can't -- goose, meet gander) - but you can always reach a beach via a boat, swimming, hang gliding, helicopter etc. or by climbing/traversing across neighboring beaches to get there.
The right thing to do would have been for the government, with public dollars, to buy the land to provide access -- just as they have to BUY the land to build new public roads across private property to provide more convenient access between two public areas (often, nearby roads and highways). Beach access paths are virtually indistinguishable from any other form of public road or trail. If the government and the landowners can't negotiate a deal, imminent domain can then be used and the landowner should receive compensation for the land and/or any significant reduction in value of the remainder of his adjacent land due to the new use. It's fine for the government to take land for legitimate public use -- the landowners should however be compensated as required by the Takings Clause of the Fifth Amendment.
The government should not be able to create an "easement" on private property for public use by passing a law or regulation, or via judicial action without just compensation.
In this particular case, I have little sympathy for Khosla though. When he purchased the property the risk of the courts deciding that the thing he was purchasing wasn't really his was clear and I'm sure he paid a lower price due to this risk. The owner of the property at the time the relevant laws were enacted was the individual who ultimately deserved compensation from the government.
Although I'd place the $100K border a bit higher (perhaps because I'm most familiar with one of the highest cost of living areas in the nation), I've noticed similar tendencies.
I suspect many wealthy people feel guilty about being wealthy. They then overcompensate -- including by thinking that taxes should be higher so the "little people" can be helped. The wealthy, of course, don't need the money for anything useful -- it's mostly a way of "keeping score" among others in their circle and if everyone in the circle have to pay higher taxes it doesn't change the game appreciably. Of course, they still look to put loopholes in tax law that help them, so if they are better at this than others in their circle, they get higher scores in "the game".
The poor... Well, they are poor and like most humans will take anything thing they can get for free as long as they don't get put in prison for doing so. Therefore, they are often all for higher taxes and more public services and programs for them to avail themselves of.
On the other hand, those in the middle upper class are most impacted by taxes (esp. income and property taxes) because they really do give up something relatively useful to them on a daily basis in order to pay those taxes. Not being able to afford to add a second bathroom to your household of four people because taxes took the money you would have spent on the new bathroom is quite different from taxation resulting in you having to use a lower grade of custom quarried Italian marble from a specific quarry in your sixth guest bathroom in one of your four large vacation homes.
Arnold was too "middle of the road" to have become the Republican nominee (even ignoring place of birth issues and the little deal with the maid).
The last Republican Presidential candidate to win the popular vote in California was in 1984 (Reagan vs. Mondale) -- and the electoral college vote was a landslide (525 to 13). This is an example of my point -- if a Republican presidential candidate is going to win California, they won't need California's EC votes because they would have won in a landslide in the rest of the country.
A similar story in 1980 - Reagan beat Carter by 489 to 49 electoral votes. Again, Reagan didn't need California's votes as he already had it all tied up with a bow on it.
Similar story in 1972 - Nixon beat McGovern by 520 to 17 electoral votes. Again, Nixon didn't need California's votes as he already had it all tied up with a bow on it.
Finally, in 1968 we find a case where a Republican won the Presidential election and it wasn't a landslide - but even than, Nixon beat Humphrey by 301 to 191 electoral votes so Nixon didn't need any of California's 40 electoral votes to secure the election.
Similar story in 1956, 1952, 1928, 1924, 1920, 1908, 1904, 1900...
So, no Republican President since before 1900 (at least) has needed California's electoral votes to win the office.
Says someone who doesn't seem to understand that Switzerland with a population of 8.4 million people is only slightly larger than the most populous city in the United States (New York) and and would only rank eleventh in population in the United States if it were a state. Switzerland's total area is 0.4% that of the United States and 41 states in the United States are larger in area than Switzerland.
Cities, counties, and states have their own elections in the United States to deal with local issues -- some by direct voting on specific ballot measures that cover entire states (such as California which has five times the population of Switzerland and over ten times the area of Switzerland).
Comparing Switzerland to the United States and expecting that the same things will work in these vastly different environments would be like proposing that Google should use Microsoft Access as the backend to their search engines. What works for a tiny society does not necessarily work for a highly diverse population in the most powerful nation in the world.
There are few validated reports of voter fraud in the United States -- certainly no where near enough to suggest that national politics are swayed by it. There is nothing inherently wrong with voting machines if done correctly and they have been used successfully for decades in the United States. In fact, done correctly, they can provide far better fraud detection/prevention than paper ballots which can get lost, destroyed, or altered as there's only ONE copy of each ballot and no checksums or other validation techniques (that's not to say that the United States shouldn't improve their voting machines -- there's lots that could be done that is not being done).
I really wouldn't have wanted Johnson to be President (he's only slightly more competent than Trump), but there was no chance of him winning and I use my vote to signal to both the Republicans and Democrats where they need to shift to get my vote (i.e., towards individual liberty and freedom in all dimensions -- including economic and social). Voting for the (R) or (D) just makes the respective party think you are a reliable (R) or (D) voter and there's no need to change anything.
Of course, I'm in California so it really doesn't matter who I vote for for President -- California will not, in the current environment, ever vote for, and cast all their EC votes for, anything but a Democrat for President. If you vote Democrat, it won't change that. If you vote Republican, it won't change that. If, in some bizarre case, the Democratic candidate was so unappealing (much worse than Hillary) that California actually voted for the Republican candidate, there would have been such a national landslide for the Republican candidate they would win the EC with or without California.
I suspect that the google executives that understand technology (so, likely not VP of HR and the "Chief Diversity Officer") know deep in their hearts that these gender diversity programs are mostly nonsense and unfair to star performers of both genders -- if nothing else, if there is a problem, it's way too late to address the issue in the google workplace as there just are not enough women getting Computer Science degrees to have the "ideal" ratio of male:female developers that mirrors the population as a whole.
This may explain their tin ear on this one -- when you're playing a role for show, you have no internal moral compass to guide you so it's really hard to know what is worthy of firing someone over and what is not.
Anyway, if I was looking at joining a company, the fact that they have honest and analytical employees like James Damore who are willing to point out that the Emperor Has No Clothes would make me more likely to join.
Very few people have actually bought a M3 yet. The deposits are fully refundable and a few negative reports on the M3's reliability, function, or value could cause a rash of cancellations. I wish Tesla the best of luck, but at this point their venture is quite speculative - esp. given that Musk seems to be intent on dividing his attention as many ways as possible across unrelated fields.
Slashdot Mirror
Are you trying to start a flame war between proponents of /dev/zero and /dev/null? What's next, vi vs. emacs?
I'm pretty sure construction using CMUs (which are just "bricks" by another name from the perspective of a brick layer), with rebar in cavities and concrete fill around the rebar, is allowed in the Bay Area in many applications. If not, there must be a lot of blind building inspectors around.
Wait for the 2019 model with a longer reach or move the truck?
In the short/mid term, on large jobs where this is likely to be most economical, access is likely to be less of a problem (although some jobs like building freeway sound walls on existing freeways might be a problem as they generally avoid shutting down the right lane/shoulder of the freeway during the brick laying process and the access for a truck is often limited by terrain). This machine will be expensive to run -- in part because of its capital cost, in part due to maintenance. It will also require fairly highly educated and trained (i.e., expensive) workers to manage it. Moving from small job to small job would entail quite a bit of expensive down time for man and machine.
The video seems to show all the walls being built concurrently (i.e., all walls get one more course of brick before any get the next course), but I can't think of a technical reason that's a requirement so the truck may be able to sit on a location that later will have a wall built on it (depending on the load bearing capabilities of the slab shown).
However, being in an earthquake prone area, I think I'll might wait until they come out with a version that puts mortar between the bricks and some rebar/concrete inside the cavities :)
IMHO, a couple Tsp is a bit much for the standard drink size. Although, most of my testing has been on popular (read, "well marketed and available almost everywhere") moderately priced Islays like Lagavulin or some of the smokier Highlands so my testing is not very broad based.
However, I expect to continue to experiment aggressively until I figure out just the right amount of water to add -- it could take decades to perfect this, but I'm willing to make that sacrifice to help humanity.
The Earth has plenty of humans on it. Indeed, perhaps too many and a reduction in population (rather then a continuing increase in population as we are experiencing) would be best in the long term. Of course, the only way to have a reduction in population is either via some "pruning" process (probably politically infeasible) or people just having less kids. Yes, in the short term it causes some economic imbalances, but in the long term it's probably a good thing.
Few people propose that society move to a situation where the birthrate is 0 (well, perhaps the Shakers do, but that's not working out so well for them).
How come fermented herring cans don't start popping in the first couple weeks after packing? (I think fermented herring is just a joke to play on tourists -- the price is that many locals have to pretend to like it and not toss their cookies at the smell, but I suppose that's a small price to pay for such hilarity).
Seriously...
How is it worse for handicapped people than a regular retail store (esp. if they have the ability to "ring a bell" sort of like at some supermarket meat department to get a human if needed). Actually, having everything picked out for you and stored in a "handicapped accessible" locker consistent with your handicap would seem to be a give advantage over traipsing through the aisles of a traditional store picking up the individual items.
The system would presumably know the size of each item and pick a locker that is sufficiently large and if none were available would presumably tell you that your order couldn't be picked up. Presumably there would also be a "not picked up" timeout that would result in the items being returned to the warehouse from the locker in order to free up lockers.
The 'adult picture id required' would probably require a human but it might be handled via remote video link and, perhaps, require additional validation the first time you use the service. That's also a small percentage of the good sold (well, maybe not the alcohol example -- at least when I as in college).
I've not tried Palemoon but thanks for reminding me of it as I look for alternatives to FF.
Your words, not mine. Rather revealing.
There are about 7.5 billion humans on Earth. Even if I had a strong desire to interact with every one of them, I would have at best about 80 years to do so. Assuming (VERY optimistically) I could spend 16 hours a day interacting with people (sleeping, eating, etc taking the remainder of the day), I could only spend less than 4.5 seconds interacting one-on-one with each person. That's not going to result in very meaningful relationships, so obviously one needs to prioritize their time and give up on the "interact with everyone" if one wants to develop meaningful relationships.
The cashier would, almost certainly, rather be spending time with their friends and families than interacting with customers at their "day job". Similarly, I would rather be spending time with my friends and family than engaging in commercial banter (usually scripted and probably tested by "secret shoppers" in some cases). Everyone wins if I spend 90 seconds checking myself out vs. 120 seconds of my time and 60 seconds of the cashier's time doing so.
I'm really glad that when I want to call a friend overseas (or even a friend a mile away) that I can just dial their number (well, pick their name from my contact list) rather than engaging in banter with "Jim, the operator" at my local exchange while he plugs in cords and, perhaps talks to the "Marge, the upstream operator". Yes, I do have less interaction with people I don't know, but I now have more time to engage in meaningful discussion with my friend.
When I have more time to do so, it increases the probability that I will cross paths with the cashier outside of a commercial context and we might become friends while sharing some common interest (although it's more likely that I will cross paths and end up becoming friends or engaging in an activity which we both share a passion for with some other cashier (or, someone who has what you call a "menial job")).
You will also notice I listed it as an upside!
I consider it an upside, but I read comments by people on other sites who would consider it a downside. Some of them claim to actually use a human cashier manned checkstand instead of self-serve checkstand even when doing so takes them more time. One reason given is they LIKE the human interaction with a relative stranger. I don't get this -- I choose to meet my human interaction needs with people I select, not ones the manager of the local supermarket chooses. I wonder if, deep inside their empty lives, they like interacting with someone who has to be nice to them because they are paid to be -- perhaps they value both getting a dose of "polite" human interaction and also like being in control of someone else. But, perhaps that's just the cynic in me talking.
So, a convenience store?
However, perhaps it should be cheaper to run (so, therefore, prices should be lower???).
Some upsides:
Some downsides::
Valid questions and thanks for your reasoned response...
I used to have many add-ons installed. When upgrading to 64-bit FF (51) some months ago, I pruned the list down to those that I really use a lot (I started with none and then put them back as I missed them). I've not done a deep search for a 57+ compatible version for all of them -- I, frankly, gave up after trying to find replacements for perhaps three. I regularly use(d):
Adblock Plus :(
Copy Plain Text 2
DownThemAll!
Map This - unfortunately not compatible w/multiprocess
Print Edit
Restart
Tab Mix Plus
Private Tab
Restart is not really that important to me now that I don't have to do regular prophylactic restarts w/FF 64-bit.
Unfortunately, I had to (after an annoyingly long binary search process to identify the culprits) disable Private Tab after installing FF 55 because if Private Tab and Tab Mix Plus are both enabled, and a popup is opened, no popups can be closed AND the FF main window can't be closed w/o a 'kill' command. The lack of just Private Tab functionality is driving me nuts, but not as much as living without Tab Mix Plus was :(
I use FF because it is/was useful to me, not because I have a strong religious desire to do so. Most of the missing functionality I find frustrating when I go to Chrome or IE because of occasional browser compatibility problems is provided by these extensions (I've not researched to see if Chrome, via extensions or via non-obvious built in features, offers similar capabilities).
I am/was a developer, but on systems/server side and have never been very interested in learning/using client frameworks (and assuredly nobody would ever want to use my UIs -- even I hate them when I've occasionally been forced to develop them to get a project completed when other orgs flaked out on it) so I'm probably not going to become a FF dev or extension author and the world will probably be a better place as a result :(
I do understand the need for change and that incompatibilities may result (I've seen both sides of that coin with at least one system that I helped develop over 30 years ago and has been shackled with compatibility constraints but that without those constraints it would have probably lost, rather than gained, enterprise customers over the decades). However FF is just a tool to me rather like a microwave oven. If my microwave oven were to break and I could buy a brand new one with the same interface as the current one (which is remarkably good) I might buy that instead of investing in the research of the 100 other options out there to pick a better one. However, if a "similarly interfaced" oven is not readily and obviously available, I would be quite likely to do the research and would, in all likelihood, end up with different brand etc.
And, yes, I do suspect at least some of my memory issues were (are?) related to the add-ons. It was frustrating though trying to figure out which ones might be responsible -- perhaps that will get easier in the future (although, it really doesn't matter much to me with the current state as it's only slightly annoying rather than monitor slapping frustrating). I tend to view FF and all my favorite add-ons as one "product" -- each is of little use without the other so I tend to lump them together.
As FF 57 approaches, I will certainly look into it and play with it in a VM to see if I can get workable solution but I'm somewhat skeptical given that all of the extensions I've come to rely on are, just three months ahead of FF 57, still tagged as 'Legacy'. Hopefully my skepticism is misplaced.
(And, I won't engage in a Rust debate as I've not yet gotten around to playing with the language.)
Since FF 57 will be the death of Firefox in about three months due to the disabling of all "legacy" extensions (which is 100% of the extensions I use - some very useful ones that haven't been updated in quite some time and that I can't find WebExtensions equivalents for), Mozilla needs to get done whatever they expect to be adopted before then -- and defaulting to 64-bit seems to fall in this category. (FF 55 already broke two of my favorite extensions -- I can run either one of them without the other, but not both at the same time because attempts to close new windows/popups or even FF itself are completely ignored so I may go back to 54).
Some users will, without realizing it, upgrade to 57 and discover that the primary reason they use FF has vaporized and then move on to Chrome. Some, like myself, will probably stick around on 54...56 for a while but will begin to switch to alternatives because they want security related browser updates.
It's amazing to me that if one goes to the FF addon's page and types in some search terms like "video" or "mouse" or "screen" or "download" or "tab" and sorts by 'most users', perhaps 10% of the extensions are tagged as compatible with 57+. I wonder who Mozilla expects to use FF after November -- do they have some big marketing initiative planned to attract a bunch of new users -- perhaps there is an untapped market of extra-terrestrials that are just discovering the World Wide Web I'm not aware of?
(Although, I must admit, upgrading to 64bit FF was a good thing for me -- instead of having to restart FF once or twice a day, now I can just restart it once or twice a week -- when it gets to about 13 GB of virtual memory, it gets pretty slow even though I've got lots of free memory on my 32GB desktop).
FF - R.I.P. - I'll miss you, it was fun back when FF was fresh and innovative but, sorry, now it's an old toothless 97 year old hag which is about to break both hips in a dementia and alcohol induced suicide attempt jumping off a third floor balcony at the retirement home. It will be deadly, but it will be an unnecessarily painful and slow death. Come on, why not just announce that 56 is the last full release and that a few dedicated volunteers are going to try to issue patch releases on 56 for the most serious of security issues for a while?
It is alarming if, in fact, it is particularly difficult for such organizations to find a registrar that will accept them so they can gain access to the new public square. As long as it's easy (which, I would agree, it likely still is) there is not a problem.
However, by a (quasi)government organization offering an open viewpoint neutral gate (at least as regards to DNS) to the public square, it would insure that one day we don't discover that the entire square is surrounded by gates which a few private companies control and who say: "Sure, you can speak freely in the international public square -- IF you can get in and, sorry, our gate is closed to you and all the owners of the other gates have also closed their gates to you".
The Federalist papers were published under a pseudonym - to this day there is still some debate on who wrote some of them.
Somehow I doubt that those that wrote them, who were among the most influential Founding Fathers (Hamilton, Madison, and Jay), believed that non-anonymous speech was the only speech that should be protected.
Despicable speech is just as protected as popular speech. These idiots are potentially subject to civil defamation damages if they are claiming the victim is a whore (and appear to mean it literally, not figuratively) and some injured party can prove she was NOT a whore and that these nut jobs knew that (or, perhaps, reasonably should have known that(?)).
In the town square, there is no restriction that speech must be "discourse" as some AC defines it on /. in order for it to be protected speech. There can only be viewpoint neutral rules (such as no loudspeakers after 10PM or before 8AM or decibel limits or requirement for organizers providing sanitation facilities). Even some viewpoint neutral rules such as "no fires" have been found by some courts NOT to justify exclusion of expressive speech involving fire (such as burning an American flag).
Remember, the First Amendment is needed to protect unpopular speech -- rarely is popular speech suppressed.
Google and GoDaddy are certainly within their legal rights to refuse service to almost anyone (except because they are a member of a protected class). They could, for example (within their TOS), have shut down any websites promoting Bernie Sanders because their CEO preferred Hillary Clinton.
However, the effective migration of the function of the public town square to a privately controlled space controlled by the likes of GoDaddy and Google is alarming. Hence, my suggestion that the USPS could institute an alternative forum (at least in part) that IS protected by the First Amendment because the USPS is controlled by Congress and is effectively an arm of the US Government.
And those doing the beatings would be subject to prosecution and imprisonment in addition to civil suits and, possibly, death by the person being beaten defending themselves successfully and legally.
Perhaps it's time for the USPS to implement a domain registration service that will insure viewpoint neutral service and foster open communication? We need a true public forum available to all and we seem to be losing this.
In the old days, one could go to the town square, get on their soap box, and speak their mind and be jeered, cheered, or both or even just ignored by those passing by.
Unfortunately, now access to the "town square" requires finding a domain registrar who won't impose their political views on their patrons -- much as if a gas station refused to sell gasoline to someone because the patron was going to use the gasoline to drive to a protest for an unpopular presidential candidate.
Since many services that would be private in another system are publicly subsidized/controlled in the US, it's virtually impossible to avoid "consuming" government "services" -- even if you don't want to or think you benefit from them. So, that's a ridiculous argument.
For example, the Federal Government makes it illegal to prescribe many drugs that are not FDA approved. So, the manufacturers have no choice but to get FDA approval -- and the government in some cases delays or refuses to grant such approval making it impossible for private enterprise to provide the medication to me. So, yes, if you want to take some medication that may save your life but it hasn't yet entered trials (or you don't qualify for the trial) so you can't get access to it and that results in your premature death, you have "consumed" a government service (the FDA's service of denying you access to a what may turn out to be a lifesaving medication) even though you didn't want to.
Again, ridiculous. A more correct formulation would be "Taxes are just another name for providing services to someone, somewhere in the world -- including those that cause you personal harm or that exist merely to enrich a vendor".
Again, ridiculous. You seem to fail to grasp the difference between voluntarily participating in and/or paying for an activity and being compelled by force to do so. The restaurant is free to charge a separate "service fee" per person to cover the table space (and, in some sense, some do by imposing a minimum charge for table service) or they are free to fold that into the price of various food items -- if you don't like the way one restaurant does it, you are free to patronize another restaurant that does it another way more to your liking.
Of course there are sunk costs and marginal costs to nearly everything -- your argument seems to dissolve down to that justifying the government taking over control of all activities.
This is not to say that all taxes are inappropriate. For example, there are a few powers that are specifically reserved to the Federal Government by the United States Constitution -- such as making treaties with foreign countries. Therefore, Federal taxes that support negotiating those treaties are likely appropriate as it's an activity only the Federal Government can engage in and that activity has to be paid for somehow.
The FDA approval of drugs however is something that the Federal Government does not need to provide. This is much like how the private UL (previously known as Underwriters Laboratories) sets standards for certain equipment but I am free to make and sell non UL approved devices and consumers are free to buy, or not buy, my product based on the reduced cost (no cost for approval) or the lack of "comfort" (no approval) they have feel due to the lack of approval. A private organization (perhaps many -- for example some offering insurance on the products they approve, some not) can set up standards for the testing and manufacturing of medications. Some manufacturers may choose not to pay for certification for all or some of their product line and you, as a consumer, are free to only buy products approved by an organization you trust. The only government involvement would be in the usual civil judicial process involving trademarks and the like which would prevent organizations from using the epine Labs Approved trademark without approval just as the UL trademarks are enforced.
It is, however, his land that people want access to in order to gain convenient access to the beach. There is no question that the public owns the beaches in California up to the high tide line (IIRC) and has the right to use them (ironically, except when the government says you can't -- goose, meet gander) - but you can always reach a beach via a boat, swimming, hang gliding, helicopter etc. or by climbing/traversing across neighboring beaches to get there.
The right thing to do would have been for the government, with public dollars, to buy the land to provide access -- just as they have to BUY the land to build new public roads across private property to provide more convenient access between two public areas (often, nearby roads and highways). Beach access paths are virtually indistinguishable from any other form of public road or trail. If the government and the landowners can't negotiate a deal, imminent domain can then be used and the landowner should receive compensation for the land and/or any significant reduction in value of the remainder of his adjacent land due to the new use. It's fine for the government to take land for legitimate public use -- the landowners should however be compensated as required by the Takings Clause of the Fifth Amendment.
The government should not be able to create an "easement" on private property for public use by passing a law or regulation, or via judicial action without just compensation.
In this particular case, I have little sympathy for Khosla though. When he purchased the property the risk of the courts deciding that the thing he was purchasing wasn't really his was clear and I'm sure he paid a lower price due to this risk. The owner of the property at the time the relevant laws were enacted was the individual who ultimately deserved compensation from the government.
Although I'd place the $100K border a bit higher (perhaps because I'm most familiar with one of the highest cost of living areas in the nation), I've noticed similar tendencies.
I suspect many wealthy people feel guilty about being wealthy. They then overcompensate -- including by thinking that taxes should be higher so the "little people" can be helped. The wealthy, of course, don't need the money for anything useful -- it's mostly a way of "keeping score" among others in their circle and if everyone in the circle have to pay higher taxes it doesn't change the game appreciably. Of course, they still look to put loopholes in tax law that help them, so if they are better at this than others in their circle, they get higher scores in "the game".
The poor... Well, they are poor and like most humans will take anything thing they can get for free as long as they don't get put in prison for doing so. Therefore, they are often all for higher taxes and more public services and programs for them to avail themselves of.
On the other hand, those in the middle upper class are most impacted by taxes (esp. income and property taxes) because they really do give up something relatively useful to them on a daily basis in order to pay those taxes. Not being able to afford to add a second bathroom to your household of four people because taxes took the money you would have spent on the new bathroom is quite different from taxation resulting in you having to use a lower grade of custom quarried Italian marble from a specific quarry in your sixth guest bathroom in one of your four large vacation homes.
Arnold was too "middle of the road" to have become the Republican nominee (even ignoring place of birth issues and the little deal with the maid).
The last Republican Presidential candidate to win the popular vote in California was in 1984 (Reagan vs. Mondale) -- and the electoral college vote was a landslide (525 to 13). This is an example of my point -- if a Republican presidential candidate is going to win California, they won't need California's EC votes because they would have won in a landslide in the rest of the country.
A similar story in 1980 - Reagan beat Carter by 489 to 49 electoral votes. Again, Reagan didn't need California's votes as he already had it all tied up with a bow on it.
Similar story in 1972 - Nixon beat McGovern by 520 to 17 electoral votes. Again, Nixon didn't need California's votes as he already had it all tied up with a bow on it.
Finally, in 1968 we find a case where a Republican won the Presidential election and it wasn't a landslide - but even than, Nixon beat Humphrey by 301 to 191 electoral votes so Nixon didn't need any of California's 40 electoral votes to secure the election.
Similar story in 1956, 1952, 1928, 1924, 1920, 1908, 1904, 1900...
So, no Republican President since before 1900 (at least) has needed California's electoral votes to win the office.
Says someone who doesn't seem to understand that Switzerland with a population of 8.4 million people is only slightly larger than the most populous city in the United States (New York) and and would only rank eleventh in population in the United States if it were a state. Switzerland's total area is 0.4% that of the United States and 41 states in the United States are larger in area than Switzerland.
Cities, counties, and states have their own elections in the United States to deal with local issues -- some by direct voting on specific ballot measures that cover entire states (such as California which has five times the population of Switzerland and over ten times the area of Switzerland).
Comparing Switzerland to the United States and expecting that the same things will work in these vastly different environments would be like proposing that Google should use Microsoft Access as the backend to their search engines. What works for a tiny society does not necessarily work for a highly diverse population in the most powerful nation in the world.
There are few validated reports of voter fraud in the United States -- certainly no where near enough to suggest that national politics are swayed by it. There is nothing inherently wrong with voting machines if done correctly and they have been used successfully for decades in the United States. In fact, done correctly, they can provide far better fraud detection/prevention than paper ballots which can get lost, destroyed, or altered as there's only ONE copy of each ballot and no checksums or other validation techniques (that's not to say that the United States shouldn't improve their voting machines -- there's lots that could be done that is not being done).
Same here.
I really wouldn't have wanted Johnson to be President (he's only slightly more competent than Trump), but there was no chance of him winning and I use my vote to signal to both the Republicans and Democrats where they need to shift to get my vote (i.e., towards individual liberty and freedom in all dimensions -- including economic and social). Voting for the (R) or (D) just makes the respective party think you are a reliable (R) or (D) voter and there's no need to change anything.
Of course, I'm in California so it really doesn't matter who I vote for for President -- California will not, in the current environment, ever vote for, and cast all their EC votes for, anything but a Democrat for President. If you vote Democrat, it won't change that. If you vote Republican, it won't change that. If, in some bizarre case, the Democratic candidate was so unappealing (much worse than Hillary) that California actually voted for the Republican candidate, there would have been such a national landslide for the Republican candidate they would win the EC with or without California.
I suspect that the google executives that understand technology (so, likely not VP of HR and the "Chief Diversity Officer") know deep in their hearts that these gender diversity programs are mostly nonsense and unfair to star performers of both genders -- if nothing else, if there is a problem, it's way too late to address the issue in the google workplace as there just are not enough women getting Computer Science degrees to have the "ideal" ratio of male:female developers that mirrors the population as a whole.
This may explain their tin ear on this one -- when you're playing a role for show, you have no internal moral compass to guide you so it's really hard to know what is worthy of firing someone over and what is not.
Anyway, if I was looking at joining a company, the fact that they have honest and analytical employees like James Damore who are willing to point out that the Emperor Has No Clothes would make me more likely to join.
Very few people have actually bought a M3 yet. The deposits are fully refundable and a few negative reports on the M3's reliability, function, or value could cause a rash of cancellations. I wish Tesla the best of luck, but at this point their venture is quite speculative - esp. given that Musk seems to be intent on dividing his attention as many ways as possible across unrelated fields.