Water usage had a flat fee where I grew up (B.C., Canada). I don't know if that's still the case, but it made sense since water was abundant.
I now live in New Mexico. It's a desert, so it makes sense to meter water here.
I think bandwidth is more like water in BC than NM, because once you build your infrastructure there's no supply issue.
Sorry, Paul already beat you to the punch by a couple thousand years. This is one of the core concepts of Christianity, if you're interested, read Matthew 5-7 (Sermon on the Mount) and Romans 3-8 or so, where Paul explains the relationship between the OT Law and the NT's grace. Actually almost all of Romans is about that, those chapters more so though.
As a quick summary though, in the OT, the Jews related to God through the Law. In the NT Jesus fulfills the law, so Christians are freed to relate to God through Jesus. (Hebrews 9,10 explain this more) 9 of the 10 OT commandments are repeated by Jesus in the NT (keep the Sabbath being the exception) which is why Christians seem to follow them. None of the verses you cited were from Exodus 20, where the 10 commandments are found. The OT Law was much more than the 10 commandments and included stuff like "don't wear mix fiber clothes", "don't eat pigs or shellfish", "move out if your house gets moldy," and the stuff you mentioned. None of that stuff is repeated in the NT and there is no instruction or need to follow those rules. The rules in the NT basically boil down to "Love God" and "Love your neighbour." (Luke 10:25-37)
For perspective, ENIAC was unveiled in 1946. According to the wiki it could do 385 multiplications / second, or 3 square roots a second. Your cell phone is in a different league.
Slashdot is News for Nerds, as you say. JRRT was an alpha nerd, focusing of languages. He was an expert in several historical languages and developed several of his own languages. One of the primary purposes of his writings is to give those invented languages a context. Tolkien gets a lot of respect around here because we, as nerds, appreciate his skill and talent.
As for the fantasy/nerd link, I think that's because nerds typically have active imaginations. Reality can be rather mundane but stories can stimulate our imagination. This isn't necessarily escapism, though that can be a component, it's more that there's an excess of mental energy. Fantasy/sci-fi stories provide a decent dump for that energy.
Holy books are different and in my experience, often misread. The story of Jesus feeding 5000+ people with a few loaves of bread and a couple fish isn't about Jesus feeding 5000+ people with a few loaves of bread and a couple fish. I'm not getting into that now though.
I like the math articles on here. Usually I'm reduced to a "eh??" (I've ~30 credits of college math but most of the interesting stuff is well beyond that) but when someone here takes a significant discovery and breaks it down so I can understand it... that's one of the things I most love about/.
When I last renewed my driver's license in New Mexico I could choose to get a 4 or 8 year one. I hate the process (lines) so I decided to get the 8 one. 7.5 years later (about 1/4th of my life) I've gone from a buzz cut to shoulder-length hair and started wearing glasses. The 1" square lowish resolution photo is fading. I've been looked at with some skepticism when I've used it as my photo ID, but no one has turned it down as invalid. Still, if I pass as the person in the picture, a good portion of Caucasian males could too.
With this license I've learned 2 things: 1) Don't get an 8 year license (though I don't think NM doesn't offer them anymore) 2.) Photo IDs are far from foolproof.
I was recently on jury duty and was surprised by how interesting I found it. Law is a complex structured system that I had little experience with, and although the case I was on was dull (6 year old traffic accident), the process was fascinating. Lots of rules + data analysis + novelty => meaningful output. Why wouldn't a geek find that intriguing?
In the UK there's a fuel tax which goes to the construction/upkeep of roads, unlike here in the US where significant parts of transportation costs are paid for from other taxes. So, the fuel itself isn't subsidized here, but road vehicle transportation costs are.
Slashdot: News for nerds. Stuff that matters.
Many international/foreign news organizations are covering the US primaries, so I don't see how the primaries would be less relevant on a US based site with global readership.
Besides, this is in the Politics section: "Politics for nerds. Your vote matters." If you don't want to see it, turn it off in your preferences.
Some churches use TVs to display seminar or sermon content (live feeds, DVDs, sermon illustrations, etc.) Another use is for displaying song lyrics (instead of hymnals) though I expect projectors are more common for that. There's two fairly normal examples, I'm sure there's others.
That was awesome:
Interviewer: We ask our (job) candidates questions, and this one is from Larry Schwimmer.... What is the most efficient way to sort a million 32 bit integers?
Obama: I think the bubble-sort would be the wrong way to go.
Anyone who honestly believes there is no contradiction between science... and religion (the demonization of critical thinking, the elevation of dogma and preservation of ignorance, and the use of iron-age superstition and irrationality to 'understand' the universe) is either ignorant, stupid, fucntionally schizophrenic (as I said in my first post) or all of the above.
While some religions and religious people fit your description of religion, it's far from the universal truth you seem desperate to believe. To make such sweeping claims you have be, to paraphrase you, ignorant of history and religion or stupidly ignoring it. For example, C.S. Lewis's book "Mere Christianity" is one of the more well known and best selling Christian books of the last century... based on that, it's valid to claim it's reasonably representative of Christian thought. Mere Christianity opens with a introduction to logic and critical thinking and explaining why these are vital to Christianity. Now, you can disagree with Lewis' premises or dispute his arguments, but you can't logically say he "demonizing critical thinking."
Reality is "the Seen." That's all reality is, and all it could possibly be. That's all human beings are - by definition - capable of knowing. There is no domain outside of reality. And this is the problem: religion doesn't just make senseless claims about imaginary things; it makes pernicious claims about reality that are patently false.
Reality may be "the Seen", but it may include more. Historically it's notoriously contentious to verify one way or the other, regardless of whether that "something more" includes "Allah", "YHWH", "FSM" or whatever. But your categorical claims that "reality could only be the Seen" or that that's all humans can know, and that the "religions' claims about reality are patently false" are gross violation of critical thinking. Perhaps the religions' claims are false, but to the extent they're unverifiable, they're hardly patently false; rather their congruence with reality is unknown, perhaps even unknowable. It should be obvious that making absolute claims about the truth values of unknowns is poor logic.
I don't see the problem with teaching the methods that are simpler first (Turk method multiplication, Java programming) and later going into more of what's going on. It's not like we have one memory module for "multiplication method" or "memory management" that irreversibly closes to all other methods once we learn some technique.
Disclaimer - I learned programming first with Pascal in high school and later C++ in college, but now mostly use Python. I learned the traditional long division/multiplication methods in school but use techniques similar to the ones shown in the above (GP) video for most mental math.
How would you get the verification digit? If it's printed out, then you have a record to show your boss. If it's an audio clip or displayed on a screen, most cell phones could record that pretty easily, and your boss could require that evidence. Though, I suppose it'd be easy enough to claim you didn't charge your phone or lost the paper or something, if you were so inclined.
William Poundstone had a article on NYTimes where he discusses a system where a voter gets a receipt for another person's vote that they could check online. You couldn't check your vote, but even if a relatively small group checked, it turn up any significant voter fraud. I was intrigued.
Isaiah 40:22:
"He sits enthroned above the circle of the earth... "
The "He" in the verse is God, some people take this to mean the Bible says the earth is round. What the verse means gets debated, but that it's saying the earth is round is a viably arguable perspective.
- How are we 'maxxed out' on hydro?? I guess I'm thinking in terms of Canada too.
Transporting electricity long distances isn't cheap, so more hydro in parts of Canada isn't an ideal solution. Also, much of the US is in a drought stage (which may be status-quo and we mis-interpreted good years as typical) so it's looking like we've over-maxxed out hydro. Also, hydro can have some pretty harmful sideeffects too.
- Why did she skip from hydro to fossil fuels and nuclear? What happened to wind, solar hot water heat, energy conservation - increased energy efficiency, etc? I know that in my Canadian home town... they are close to approving the largest wind project in Canada for my county- the first one in the county. Proof that we are far from 'maxxed out' on wind for example.
Similar to hydro, wind power has a significant problem of being geographically sensitive, as you have to use in a high wind area. It also has consistency issues (as does solar) and isn't cheap initially, particularly in land area cost. Obviously most of Canada has an advantage here compared to more densely populated areas.
- If the sudden popularity of compact fluorescent lightbulbs has just recently taken off and can make such a difference, as well as Walmart's push for concentrated laundry detergent, etc, etc, isn't this a sign that we have many, many more areas where efficiency improvements can be made. Lets look at trimming the waste.
Certainly, and I don't think most advocates for nuclear power would disagree, but that misses the point. Currently the majority of our power (power grid + transportation) comes from burning coal, oil and gas, with millions of tons of harmful emissions. If we reduce our fossil fuel use (which we need to do) then something has to take it's place, and currently nuclear power is the only thing that can generate the power needed 24/7 and at most geographic locations.
- What REALLY is the solution to nuclear waste? Isn't it kind of a joke to assume that any human government or corporation will be around and responsible enough to babysit these waste storage locations for 50 or a hundred thousand years? That's THOUSANDS of generations of humans!!! Puh-lease!
Integral Fast Reactors. As been stated elsewhere in this thread, allow the reprocessing of fuel (typical reactors used in the US use ~1% of available energy, IFR 99%+) and the volume of waste would be greatly diminished. (There are other reactor types that solve this problem, IFR looks to me, as an interested non-professional, like the best solution.) What makes nuclear waste dangerous is what makes it still usable as a power source, so if we get most of the energy out then we have ~200 year waste in a smaller quantity (small enough to even store on-site), not the many tons 100k year waste.
- It seems to me that it's kind of a give-up to say nuclear is the 'only' solution.
I definitely agree. Solar, wind, geothermal, tidal, bio(waste|diesel), ethanol, clean coal, etc., all have their place (and a more significant one than they do currently), and intelligent reduction of resource usage is very much needed. However, nuclear power alone is usable most everywhere (no need for highly specific geographies like wind paths, coastlines, geothermal vents, etc.,) is highly available (24/7 power,) has manageable emissions, and is doable now with today's technology. The safety issue is largely settled, as TMI would illustrate from the fact that there were no deaths as a result and the long history of successful safe operations elsewhere (France, US navy,
As comments in that thread point out, if you don't inspect(and therefore don't know) the traffic on your open Wi-Fi then you don't have to report anything. However, should you inspect and find something obscene (however it's defined) then you have to report it.
It's a silly law, but not the 1984 nightmare some are making it out to be.
Perhaps you're thinking of Douglas Adams' quote?
Anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job.
From the summary, the $1M is for the rest of your life, and you're talking about investing the $1M in the current election. Still, I liked your idea, but think it could be extended longterm using compound interest.
Assume 10% return (approximate stock market average over 30 years), investing $1M now would give you ~$100000 to invest in the '08 election, which is a little less that 1 year away. That could buy a lot of votes of those who would sell them for an Ipod (5000 votes at $200)
Spending that, you'd be down to $1M again, but 4 years invested at 10%, compounded annually, would give you $464000 above your principle, which could then buy a lot more votes. Leaving in enough to cover inflation (assume high estimate of 4%) and you'd still have ~$260000 to buy other votes (or advertise, if or prefer.)
Alternatively, you could take that interest and use it to fund yourself at ~$60k/year to lobby full time for whatever you feel like, which would likely have greater impact than just casting your vote. Doing this you could also influence all those non-presidential elections, which are typically more important and more ignored.
Thanks for prompting this line of thought... initially I'd condemned those selling their lifetime votes for $1M, but thanks to your post I realized it could be a effective move. It'd be interesting to see what a lifetime of votes would sell for on Ebay, if it was legal.
Timothy Zahn had a book (Cobra series, I think, might be Blackcollar) in which the right to vote (and therefore any political office) was tied to military service. There were allowances for non-combat roles (medical, mail, etc) for the conscientious objectors or medically disabled. Seemed like a reasonable system to me.
Slashdot Mirror
Did you read the article? This is thermal solar power. Storing heat is easy, and it can be released as/when needed.
Water usage had a flat fee where I grew up (B.C., Canada). I don't know if that's still the case, but it made sense since water was abundant.
I now live in New Mexico. It's a desert, so it makes sense to meter water here.
I think bandwidth is more like water in BC than NM, because once you build your infrastructure there's no supply issue.
I think "Department of Peace" is more likely.
Sorry, Paul already beat you to the punch by a couple thousand years. This is one of the core concepts of Christianity, if you're interested, read Matthew 5-7 (Sermon on the Mount) and Romans 3-8 or so, where Paul explains the relationship between the OT Law and the NT's grace. Actually almost all of Romans is about that, those chapters more so though.
As a quick summary though, in the OT, the Jews related to God through the Law. In the NT Jesus fulfills the law, so Christians are freed to relate to God through Jesus. (Hebrews 9,10 explain this more) 9 of the 10 OT commandments are repeated by Jesus in the NT (keep the Sabbath being the exception) which is why Christians seem to follow them. None of the verses you cited were from Exodus 20, where the 10 commandments are found. The OT Law was much more than the 10 commandments and included stuff like "don't wear mix fiber clothes", "don't eat pigs or shellfish", "move out if your house gets moldy," and the stuff you mentioned. None of that stuff is repeated in the NT and there is no instruction or need to follow those rules. The rules in the NT basically boil down to "Love God" and "Love your neighbour." (Luke 10:25-37)
For perspective, ENIAC was unveiled in 1946. According to the wiki it could do 385 multiplications / second, or 3 square roots a second. Your cell phone is in a different league.
Slashdot is News for Nerds, as you say. JRRT was an alpha nerd, focusing of languages. He was an expert in several historical languages and developed several of his own languages. One of the primary purposes of his writings is to give those invented languages a context. Tolkien gets a lot of respect around here because we, as nerds, appreciate his skill and talent. As for the fantasy/nerd link, I think that's because nerds typically have active imaginations. Reality can be rather mundane but stories can stimulate our imagination. This isn't necessarily escapism, though that can be a component, it's more that there's an excess of mental energy. Fantasy/sci-fi stories provide a decent dump for that energy. Holy books are different and in my experience, often misread. The story of Jesus feeding 5000+ people with a few loaves of bread and a couple fish isn't about Jesus feeding 5000+ people with a few loaves of bread and a couple fish. I'm not getting into that now though.
Pure python isn't the best for web dev, but the Django framework is great stuff. Powerful, clean, versatile, and exceptionally well documented.
Python/Django. Beautiful, powerful web development.
I like the math articles on here. Usually I'm reduced to a "eh??" (I've ~30 credits of college math but most of the interesting stuff is well beyond that) but when someone here takes a significant discovery and breaks it down so I can understand it ... that's one of the things I most love about /.
When I last renewed my driver's license in New Mexico I could choose to get a 4 or 8 year one. I hate the process (lines) so I decided to get the 8 one. 7.5 years later (about 1/4th of my life) I've gone from a buzz cut to shoulder-length hair and started wearing glasses. The 1" square lowish resolution photo is fading. I've been looked at with some skepticism when I've used it as my photo ID, but no one has turned it down as invalid. Still, if I pass as the person in the picture, a good portion of Caucasian males could too.
With this license I've learned 2 things: 1) Don't get an 8 year license (though I don't think NM doesn't offer them anymore) 2.) Photo IDs are far from foolproof.
I was recently on jury duty and was surprised by how interesting I found it. Law is a complex structured system that I had little experience with, and although the case I was on was dull (6 year old traffic accident), the process was fascinating. Lots of rules + data analysis + novelty => meaningful output. Why wouldn't a geek find that intriguing?
In the UK there's a fuel tax which goes to the construction/upkeep of roads, unlike here in the US where significant parts of transportation costs are paid for from other taxes. So, the fuel itself isn't subsidized here, but road vehicle transportation costs are.
Slashdot: News for nerds. Stuff that matters.
Many international/foreign news organizations are covering the US primaries, so I don't see how the primaries would be less relevant on a US based site with global readership.
Besides, this is in the Politics section: "Politics for nerds. Your vote matters." If you don't want to see it, turn it off in your preferences.
This includes Ann Coulter.
Some churches use TVs to display seminar or sermon content (live feeds, DVDs, sermon illustrations, etc.) Another use is for displaying song lyrics (instead of hymnals) though I expect projectors are more common for that.
There's two fairly normal examples, I'm sure there's others.
Obama: I think the bubble-sort would be the wrong way to go.
Anyone who honestly believes there is no contradiction between science ... and religion (the demonization of critical thinking, the elevation of dogma and preservation of ignorance, and the use of iron-age superstition and irrationality to 'understand' the universe) is either ignorant, stupid, fucntionally schizophrenic (as I said in my first post) or all of the above.
While some religions and religious people fit your description of religion, it's far from the universal truth you seem desperate to believe. To make such sweeping claims you have be, to paraphrase you, ignorant of history and religion or stupidly ignoring it. For example, C.S. Lewis's book "Mere Christianity" is one of the more well known and best selling Christian books of the last centuryReality is "the Seen." That's all reality is, and all it could possibly be. That's all human beings are - by definition - capable of knowing. There is no domain outside of reality. And this is the problem: religion doesn't just make senseless claims about imaginary things; it makes pernicious claims about reality that are patently false.
Reality may be "the Seen", but it may include more. Historically it's notoriously contentious to verify one way or the other, regardless of whether that "something more" includes "Allah", "YHWH", "FSM" or whatever. But your categorical claims that "reality could only be the Seen" or that that's all humans can know, and that the "religions' claims about reality are patently false" are gross violation of critical thinking. Perhaps the religions' claims are false, but to the extent they're unverifiable, they're hardly patently false; rather their congruence with reality is unknown, perhaps even unknowable. It should be obvious that making absolute claims about the truth values of unknowns is poor logic.I don't see the problem with teaching the methods that are simpler first (Turk method multiplication, Java programming) and later going into more of what's going on. It's not like we have one memory module for "multiplication method" or "memory management" that irreversibly closes to all other methods once we learn some technique. Disclaimer - I learned programming first with Pascal in high school and later C++ in college, but now mostly use Python. I learned the traditional long division/multiplication methods in school but use techniques similar to the ones shown in the above (GP) video for most mental math.
How would you get the verification digit? If it's printed out, then you have a record to show your boss. If it's an audio clip or displayed on a screen, most cell phones could record that pretty easily, and your boss could require that evidence. Though, I suppose it'd be easy enough to claim you didn't charge your phone or lost the paper or something, if you were so inclined.
William Poundstone had a article on NYTimes where he discusses a system where a voter gets a receipt for another person's vote that they could check online. You couldn't check your vote, but even if a relatively small group checked, it turn up any significant voter fraud. I was intrigued.
The "He" in the verse is God, some people take this to mean the Bible says the earth is round. What the verse means gets debated, but that it's saying the earth is round is a viably arguable perspective.
- How are we 'maxxed out' on hydro?? I guess I'm thinking in terms of Canada too.
Transporting electricity long distances isn't cheap, so more hydro in parts of Canada isn't an ideal solution. Also, much of the US is in a drought stage (which may be status-quo and we mis-interpreted good years as typical) so it's looking like we've over-maxxed out hydro. Also, hydro can have some pretty harmful side effects too.
- Why did she skip from hydro to fossil fuels and nuclear? What happened to wind, solar hot water heat, energy conservation - increased energy efficiency, etc? I know that in my Canadian home town... they are close to approving the largest wind project in Canada for my county- the first one in the county. Proof that we are far from 'maxxed out' on wind for example.
Similar to hydro, wind power has a significant problem of being geographically sensitive, as you have to use in a high wind area. It also has consistency issues (as does solar) and isn't cheap initially, particularly in land area cost. Obviously most of Canada has an advantage here compared to more densely populated areas.
- If the sudden popularity of compact fluorescent lightbulbs has just recently taken off and can make such a difference, as well as Walmart's push for concentrated laundry detergent, etc, etc, isn't this a sign that we have many, many more areas where efficiency improvements can be made. Lets look at trimming the waste.
Certainly, and I don't think most advocates for nuclear power would disagree, but that misses the point. Currently the majority of our power (power grid + transportation) comes from burning coal, oil and gas, with millions of tons of harmful emissions. If we reduce our fossil fuel use (which we need to do) then something has to take it's place, and currently nuclear power is the only thing that can generate the power needed 24/7 and at most geographic locations.
- What REALLY is the solution to nuclear waste? Isn't it kind of a joke to assume that any human government or corporation will be around and responsible enough to babysit these waste storage locations for 50 or a hundred thousand years? That's THOUSANDS of generations of humans!!! Puh-lease!
Integral Fast Reactors. As been stated elsewhere in this thread, allow the reprocessing of fuel (typical reactors used in the US use ~1% of available energy, IFR 99%+) and the volume of waste would be greatly diminished. (There are other reactor types that solve this problem, IFR looks to me, as an interested non-professional, like the best solution.) What makes nuclear waste dangerous is what makes it still usable as a power source, so if we get most of the energy out then we have ~200 year waste in a smaller quantity (small enough to even store on-site), not the many tons 100k year waste.
- It seems to me that it's kind of a give-up to say nuclear is the 'only' solution.
I definitely agree. Solar, wind, geothermal, tidal, bio(waste|diesel), ethanol, clean coal, etc., all have their place (and a more significant one than they do currently), and intelligent reduction of resource usage is very much needed. However, nuclear power alone is usable most everywhere (no need for highly specific geographies like wind paths, coastlines, geothermal vents, etc.,) is highly available (24/7 power,) has manageable emissions, and is doable now with today's technology. The safety issue is largely settled, as TMI would illustrate from the fact that there were no deaths as a result and the long history of successful safe operations elsewhere (France, US navy,
As comments in that thread point out, if you don't inspect(and therefore don't know) the traffic on your open Wi-Fi then you don't have to report anything. However, should you inspect and find something obscene (however it's defined) then you have to report it.
It's a silly law, but not the 1984 nightmare some are making it out to be.
From the summary, the $1M is for the rest of your life, and you're talking about investing the $1M in the current election. Still, I liked your idea, but think it could be extended longterm using compound interest. Assume 10% return (approximate stock market average over 30 years), investing $1M now would give you ~$100000 to invest in the '08 election, which is a little less that 1 year away. That could buy a lot of votes of those who would sell them for an Ipod (5000 votes at $200) Spending that, you'd be down to $1M again, but 4 years invested at 10%, compounded annually, would give you $464000 above your principle, which could then buy a lot more votes. Leaving in enough to cover inflation (assume high estimate of 4%) and you'd still have ~$260000 to buy other votes (or advertise, if or prefer.) Alternatively, you could take that interest and use it to fund yourself at ~$60k/year to lobby full time for whatever you feel like, which would likely have greater impact than just casting your vote. Doing this you could also influence all those non-presidential elections, which are typically more important and more ignored. Thanks for prompting this line of thought ... initially I'd condemned those selling their lifetime votes for $1M, but thanks to your post I realized it could be a effective move. It'd be interesting to see what a lifetime of votes would sell for on Ebay, if it was legal.
Timothy Zahn had a book (Cobra series, I think, might be Blackcollar) in which the right to vote (and therefore any political office) was tied to military service. There were allowances for non-combat roles (medical, mail, etc) for the conscientious objectors or medically disabled.
Seemed like a reasonable system to me.