The $775 is a criminal matter, a fine for negligent driving. The "compensation for two innocent victims" should be a civil matter. Unfortunately, the US legal system uses the deep pockets principle to go after anyone even remotely connected with the case provided they have money. The first rule of tort law is not "only sue the people most responsible", it is effectively "only sue the people that have money". Responsibility is up to the court to determine.
I feel sorry for the bicyclists, but hitting a bicycle must be one of the few accidents that is seen as a criminal matter. It should be purely a civil matter. The driver's negligence caused the accident, the driver should be sued, and the driver should be paying this couple half his income for the rest of his life. While the "deep pockets" legal theory holds that someone even 1% responsible can be sued for 100% of the damages, clearly the judge felt that someone sending a text isn't even 1% responsible, because the driver did not need to respond to the text in any way while he was still driving. I can't speak for the details in this case, but in virtually every accident, there are things that all parties could have done to avoid the accident (e.g. staying at home that day). So in most accidents, all parties are partially to blame. In this case, labeling the bicyclists as victims and the automobile driver as the perpetrator is unfair -- just because the vehicle you're driving does a lot less damage does not absolve you of any responsibility for the accident.
People need to go to the stars, not to discover other life forms, but rather to give a greater chance for the survival of the species. There is always a small but finite probably that our planet or even our entire solar system could be destroyed by currently unknown phenomena... provided, of course, that we don't destroy ourselves first. Not putting all your eggs in a single basket is expensive and difficult, but it does increase the chances that at least some of the eggs will survive a catastrophe. And trust me, the history of the universe is filled with catastrophic events spaced widely in time.
Any first-generation starship will inevitably arrive at it's destination hundreds of year later only to discover that people that left later but with a faster drive are already there, waiting for them! (Can anybody name the science fiction stories where exactly this happened?)
I would further argue that any market that companies like Exxon-Mobile are participating in are by no stretch of the imagination a "free market". Adam Smith's "Invisible Hand" was based on the model of an agricultural economy, in which each of the buyers and sellers are infinitesimally small compared to the total size of the market. As soon as there are companies that are "too big to fail", you no longer have a free market. Additionally, if the government is allowed to interfere in a market, e.g. via the tax code, then competing by paying off politicians becomes more effective then competing based on value, and the system becomes inherently corrupt. I'd love to see a system of free market capitalism wherein all people are ultimately held responsible for the downstream effects of their actions. But that's not what we currently have.
By the way... how do I get into that 50% that is receiving government assistance? Does my daughter attending public school count as government assistance?
You fucking SOCIALIST!;-)
There is a theory that people work harder at something if they have to pay for it, but in general I believe subsidizing education results in the greatest common good. If you don't think so, look at the African countries that have no publicly funded education at all... the people in those countries are fairly screwed, and there is little social mobility. Providing a free college education based on merit is one of the most effective means of increasing social mobility.In the US the most effective social program has been the GI Bill, which has helped more poor become comfortably middle class than any other program.
Originally, all transactions were based are barter, before human beings discovered that the use of money was a much more efficient means of matching up supply and demand. With barter, you need to match up with somebody else whose needs and supply are the reciprocal of your own. With money, your supply and demand get translated by "the market" into monetary values, and you can exchange goods with people halfway across the world. Explain to me again how barter is a superior system...
This doesn't necessarily mean that being easy going increases your health... it might just mean that easy going people are less likely to piss off homicidal maniacs!
Unless there is a way of storing the energy generated, the capacity of solar plants cannot be included in the calculation of capacity to meet peak demand. In other words, even if the solar at peak could meet all your needs, you still can't retire any of the old plants, because the solar capacity is useless when the sun isn't shining.
And by the way, hydrogen is not an energy source, it is an energy storage media... meaning it could very well be used to store solar energy.
As a programmer, all I can say is: if I had to write this function from scratch, it would take me less than 2 minutes total and it would look EXACTLY the same.
But, if they aren't big enough to undergo fusion, then how do we see them? (In other words, wouldn't the number of "stars that are too small" be rather undercounted?)
The current problem with wind and solar generated electricity is that they don't reduce the number of traditional power plants needed to meet peak demand needs (if your peak demand occurs at night with no wind). So you do need some energy storage mechanism to make wind and solar useful. The question then becomes, what is the most efficient energy storage medium? I agree that hydrogen sucks in terms of energy density, but I don't know enough to say what the most cost-effect energy storage method is... it may be something as simple as just pumping water uphill. Energy storage for portable devices (e.g. cars) is a separate problem which is currently being addressed poorly by batteries. But there is a chicken-and-egg problem associated with vehicle fuel sources: nobody will develop the necessary fuel distribution network until there is sufficient demand for the fuel, and nobody will by devices that use the fuel until there is a workable fuel distribution network in place. In other words, but hydrogen and methane suck as vehicle fuels simply because a million gas stations aren't going to suddenly start selling hydrogen or methane.
"The best hope for all of us is to reverse population growth."
You know, good folks like those people at Al Qaeda are working on that already, but the US government seems to be doing everything they can think of to stop them!
Just bear in mind that hydrogen is not an energy source, it is an energy storage medium. It doesn't replace fossil fuels, it replaces batteries (or perhaps ethanol).
30 years ago, I was stopped by police for jogging at night... on multiple occasions. I've been stopped for not signalling a left turn when I was in the left-turn only lane and the cop was immediately to my right, meaning there was no way he could see my left turn signal. Apparently people have a very unrealistic view of "probable cause", in practice, cops can stop you and question you at any time, just because they feel like it. Compared to "stop and frisk" policies which invariably get applied only to minorities, pulling somebody over because they set off a radiation detector actually sounds pretty reasonable!
I, uh, still don't want to view CERTAIN websites on a window that is viewable by my neighbors. To protect my, uh, privacy. And, of course, to keep neighbors from wondering exactly which appendage I've been using for "tapping my window"!
Right... and Chinese "bootleggers" are clearly just paying "homage" to well known designer labels!
What Jobs said is clearly bullshit. What he actually DID was all about the Benjamins, no "homage" intended.
Slashdot Mirror
The $775 is a criminal matter, a fine for negligent driving. The "compensation for two innocent victims" should be a civil matter. Unfortunately, the US legal system uses the deep pockets principle to go after anyone even remotely connected with the case provided they have money. The first rule of tort law is not "only sue the people most responsible", it is effectively "only sue the people that have money". Responsibility is up to the court to determine.
You are free to extract punishment in civil court, yes. Anything else would be a crime under our legal system.
I feel sorry for the bicyclists, but hitting a bicycle must be one of the few accidents that is seen as a criminal matter. It should be purely a civil matter. The driver's negligence caused the accident, the driver should be sued, and the driver should be paying this couple half his income for the rest of his life. While the "deep pockets" legal theory holds that someone even 1% responsible can be sued for 100% of the damages, clearly the judge felt that someone sending a text isn't even 1% responsible, because the driver did not need to respond to the text in any way while he was still driving. I can't speak for the details in this case, but in virtually every accident, there are things that all parties could have done to avoid the accident (e.g. staying at home that day). So in most accidents, all parties are partially to blame. In this case, labeling the bicyclists as victims and the automobile driver as the perpetrator is unfair -- just because the vehicle you're driving does a lot less damage does not absolve you of any responsibility for the accident.
People need to go to the stars, not to discover other life forms, but rather to give a greater chance for the survival of the species. There is always a small but finite probably that our planet or even our entire solar system could be destroyed by currently unknown phenomena... provided, of course, that we don't destroy ourselves first. Not putting all your eggs in a single basket is expensive and difficult, but it does increase the chances that at least some of the eggs will survive a catastrophe. And trust me, the history of the universe is filled with catastrophic events spaced widely in time.
Any first-generation starship will inevitably arrive at it's destination hundreds of year later only to discover that people that left later but with a faster drive are already there, waiting for them! (Can anybody name the science fiction stories where exactly this happened?)
What's with all this work on an "artificial womb"??? Shouldn't an "artificial vagina" be much more important? (Especially to slashdot readers!)
I would further argue that any market that companies like Exxon-Mobile are participating in are by no stretch of the imagination a "free market". Adam Smith's "Invisible Hand" was based on the model of an agricultural economy, in which each of the buyers and sellers are infinitesimally small compared to the total size of the market. As soon as there are companies that are "too big to fail", you no longer have a free market. Additionally, if the government is allowed to interfere in a market, e.g. via the tax code, then competing by paying off politicians becomes more effective then competing based on value, and the system becomes inherently corrupt. I'd love to see a system of free market capitalism wherein all people are ultimately held responsible for the downstream effects of their actions. But that's not what we currently have.
By the way... how do I get into that 50% that is receiving government assistance? Does my daughter attending public school count as government assistance?
You fucking SOCIALIST! ;-)
There is a theory that people work harder at something if they have to pay for it, but in general I believe subsidizing education results in the greatest common good. If you don't think so, look at the African countries that have no publicly funded education at all... the people in those countries are fairly screwed, and there is little social mobility. Providing a free college education based on merit is one of the most effective means of increasing social mobility.In the US the most effective social program has been the GI Bill, which has helped more poor become comfortably middle class than any other program.
Originally, all transactions were based are barter, before human beings discovered that the use of money was a much more efficient means of matching up supply and demand. With barter, you need to match up with somebody else whose needs and supply are the reciprocal of your own. With money, your supply and demand get translated by "the market" into monetary values, and you can exchange goods with people halfway across the world. Explain to me again how barter is a superior system...
Or at least bring your own ample supply of anal lube...
This doesn't necessarily mean that being easy going increases your health... it might just mean that easy going people are less likely to piss off homicidal maniacs!
Unless there is a way of storing the energy generated, the capacity of solar plants cannot be included in the calculation of capacity to meet peak demand. In other words, even if the solar at peak could meet all your needs, you still can't retire any of the old plants, because the solar capacity is useless when the sun isn't shining.
And by the way, hydrogen is not an energy source, it is an energy storage media... meaning it could very well be used to store solar energy.
As a programmer, all I can say is: if I had to write this function from scratch, it would take me less than 2 minutes total and it would look EXACTLY the same.
But, if they aren't big enough to undergo fusion, then how do we see them? (In other words, wouldn't the number of "stars that are too small" be rather undercounted?)
The current problem with wind and solar generated electricity is that they don't reduce the number of traditional power plants needed to meet peak demand needs (if your peak demand occurs at night with no wind). So you do need some energy storage mechanism to make wind and solar useful. The question then becomes, what is the most efficient energy storage medium? I agree that hydrogen sucks in terms of energy density, but I don't know enough to say what the most cost-effect energy storage method is... it may be something as simple as just pumping water uphill. Energy storage for portable devices (e.g. cars) is a separate problem which is currently being addressed poorly by batteries. But there is a chicken-and-egg problem associated with vehicle fuel sources: nobody will develop the necessary fuel distribution network until there is sufficient demand for the fuel, and nobody will by devices that use the fuel until there is a workable fuel distribution network in place. In other words, but hydrogen and methane suck as vehicle fuels simply because a million gas stations aren't going to suddenly start selling hydrogen or methane.
But, look at all the waste products produced by use of hydrogen fuel -- where are you going to dispose of all the H20???
Once again, hydrogen is NOT an energy SOURCE, it is an energy storage medium!
"The best hope for all of us is to reverse population growth."
You know, good folks like those people at Al Qaeda are working on that already, but the US government seems to be doing everything they can think of to stop them!
Just bear in mind that hydrogen is not an energy source, it is an energy storage medium. It doesn't replace fossil fuels, it replaces batteries (or perhaps ethanol).
30 years ago, I was stopped by police for jogging at night... on multiple occasions. I've been stopped for not signalling a left turn when I was in the left-turn only lane and the cop was immediately to my right, meaning there was no way he could see my left turn signal. Apparently people have a very unrealistic view of "probable cause", in practice, cops can stop you and question you at any time, just because they feel like it. Compared to "stop and frisk" policies which invariably get applied only to minorities, pulling somebody over because they set off a radiation detector actually sounds pretty reasonable!
How many pictures of minor children in various states of undress to they need to upload before they get shut down by onerous child pornography laws?
Finally, slashdot chimes in on SOPA...
I, uh, still don't want to view CERTAIN websites on a window that is viewable by my neighbors. To protect my, uh, privacy. And, of course, to keep neighbors from wondering exactly which appendage I've been using for "tapping my window"!
And Microsoft didn't steal anything from Apple, either! "What comes around goes around..."
Right... and Chinese "bootleggers" are clearly just paying "homage" to well known designer labels!
What Jobs said is clearly bullshit. What he actually DID was all about the Benjamins, no "homage" intended.