Yes and cars cost $8,000 more for airbags and seattbelts now too. A friend of mine had a 1 year old car that was totaled after a relatively minor accident because all the airbags deployed.
All of this caretaking imposes a huge cost on society. It's always very tempting but it has a lot of unintended consequences.
We are smothering under a sea of regulations meant to protect us.
I have downloaded some TV shows in less time than it takes to play them.
If you have 30 seeders and 30 "leechers" you will typically get over 200kbps. I peak just over 500kbps using Azureus which is a java BT client.
For now I've been getting four currently showing programs- alias, lost, desperate housewives and kojak. Haven't seen an episode yet- I'll watch them all in one glorious sitting at the end of the season. I could almost as easily be recording them off my cable. If I buy a DVR for $179, I can definately record them easier than torrenting them.
And those copies I easily edit commercials out of with ULEAD and reburn and give to any of my friends. It's a strange world.
Well they sell OEM versions here in the states for $35 a copy so they could certainly sell them in india for that.
I can now buy a new computer for $500 that would cost me about $800 to build personally. It comes with a Winxp "restore" disk tied to that computer- not a real WinXP disk.
I think in 10 years indian/chinese costs and american/european costs are going to come into line with each other. Consistent constant deflation is occurring here and massive inflation is occuring there.
All kidding aside, My typical windows install takes me over a day. I do not have to sit there during all that but I do have to check in periodically. That includes installing a basic applications stack after I finish installing the operating system (which takes 2-3 hours).
Perhaps you are using a restore CD rather than a real install? Or your hardware is totally current so you don't have to go download drivers for everything?
if you look at the movie, the high point of character conflict was gui-qon getting annoyed at jar-jar at dinner.
Darth fought them and didn't say -anything- for like 15 minutes. He didn't say how strong the dark side was or how pathetic they were or diddly.
Unlike star wars: new hope, where just about everyone was arguing and disagreeing about something, everyone in the first movie just kinda agreed with each other and went through the motions.
Star wars 2 improved on it a little but was weak on the acting and instead of seeming conflicted, anakin just seemed whiny.
I hope this new movie is decent, that will make 3& 1/2 good star wars films.
That is what is strange. While I agree with you and in the past was a pretty straight arrow- I feel the elite of society have broken the social contract and rewritten the rules to an extreme that is no longer fair. Since it isn't fair, I don't feel bound to upload the rules that they bought and paid for any more.
However, since I took that attitude, I get a lot less upset when it happens to me. I am less capable of moral outrage when I get screwed but I'm also upset a lot less when it happens than I used to be. I used to always play by the rules and then get upset when others didn't.
I used to be fair and even handed and then get upset when others were obviously self-centered to the extent that I thought they were delusional (I mean remembering reality different than it really occured when it suits is rediculously common). It's like the republicans and democrats who are firmly for a position until they are firmly against it and were never for it.
However, where possible I try to just withdraw from that society. I listen to freely available alternative music much more and occasionally donate to support it. I listen to canned pay music a lot less. I use free software instead of paid software and occasionally donate to support it. I purchase almost no canned software now even if it involves extra money.
If I see software that suits my needs that is pay software I typically buy it. As far as shows go- if they are cheap, I buy them- if I think they are too expensive then I do not. The break point seems to be about $35 per season- and some part of me realises that at that level we are only talking about $5 worth of physical materials so why do they deserve to be rich for their work?
There is a coming "glut" of entertainment AND software- it's going to demolish these prices. If 2 billion people are going to buy your sofware is it really fair that they pay you $10 a month for it? How much is fair compensation for a person's time? The current grossly inflated prices for actors and developers are not sustainable but reflect conditions that were only going to exist for an instant of history.
Should the artist not be compensated for that. In a different scenario, I am a programmer; Should I be paid only if my programs are run? or should my employer pay me to write them in the first place.
Ask your self if you should be paid every TIME your program is run anywhere for all time.
That's the straw that broke this camel's back. I work hard on programs and I'm paid for them and that's it.
Why do they rate special treatment compared to any other product/program/etc.?
This is only a valid comment if raters who are tracked didn't watch Enterprise because they downloaded it.
In a fundamental way, ratings are a crock. They do not reflect what real people are doing necessarily and it is not in the ratings companies interest to show reality if total usage is dropping. The networks give them heavy pressure when the numbers drop too much.
I'm not talking about kids who are at the legal age of consent with regard to Thailand tho I am suprised to hear the age is so low.
We have had expose shows on TV here in the states about some of the places and I would be suprised if the kids are 10 and they were being kept prisoners.
My own feelings have little to do with what I was stating. I was saying that it was my impression they have loopholes in the law for people close to the same age who on are on opposite sides of the statutory rape line. There is no need to bring on the attitude when I was asking what the facts were.
I do grasp the concept of the age of consent. I also grasp that we have different ages at which we get different rights and that different countries grant those various rights at various ages that differ from ours.
The -question- was, what is your legal status if you go to a foreign country and have sex with an american citizen who is at the legal age of consent by that country's laws not what happens if you go and have sex with a citizen of that country who is of legal age. I know drinking laws don't apply so I was curious.
I'm suprised to hear 16 is the age of consent if one of the partners is much older. I know that some states make exceptions if both are young or one is close to the legal age (like being 18 and having sex with a 17 is carved out I think in some states).
It is kind of the new witchhunt- I agree. OTH, things like the thailand tours with sex with 8 year olds are so clearly wrong that they start the fire.
I look into this now and then (Nanosolar might be promising) and I will be using solar power during day time hours only to lower power usage. I won't bother with batteries- they seem to be a system cost killer.
If you hook it up to your basic power, you need a special electrical switchbox. But you could hook it up to some peltier cooling devices and some LED light fixtures perhaps. And you can pick up a couple 100 watt panels for 400 to 600 dollars and only power your computer with them during the day.
Serious question here.
If you meet a 17 year old American on vacation in Britain would it be legal? It seems like I remember that the age of consent there is 17.
I agree. And in a lot of cases, "facts" are really only 95% probabilities over a large sample set.
There is still a good chance the facts could be off in a minor way and a tiny chance the facts could be off in a major way. If the first 99 black birds we test are crows, we can't conclude that all black birds are crows or that the next black bird we test will be crows.
Our test may be biased- perhaps small black birds are being ignored or crows liked our bait more. Pure random chance could be the reason we got 99 crows out of 10,000 black birds when only 1000 of them are crows.
We are a democracy.
One of the failings of democracies is that when 51% of the people decide something, it can be hard to stop. We do require 60% for some things but they are currently trying to repeal that in the senate. I hope the Dem's hold them back.
OTH, it's better than the countries where 5% of the people can do this.
This really all revolves around abortion. It is what has irritated the religious types enough to do this. They don't care of the corporations take over the country as long as abortion is outlawed.
Lately gay marriage has them going too.
My point is... there is not much you can do. The left is pretty discredited and irrational. They went so hard to the left that most of the "center" allied with the republicans. I would go so far as to say most the the left actually hates america which is kinda sad since it is their own country. It's hard to ally yourself with people who hates their own country.
So we have the religious right + corporations + center vs the center + socialists + communists. The corporations have the money and the religious right have the feet. What I do seriously prepare for is moving from the country if it looks like it is truly going religio fascist.
Another argument comes from the fact that the universe seems fine tuned to life.
and of course this leads to the the counterpoint that any life that exists in an arbitrary universe will be fine tuned for the universe that it is in.
If the universe was entirely made of plasma and it was possible for some kind of life to exist in a plasma, then that life would notice that a wide variety of universes would not be made of plasma and conclude they were very lucky the universe was made of plasma.
If the planet was 100% covered with water, we'd be some kind of intelligent aquatic life. If the planet was dry and arid, we would be adapted like desert mice so that would be the perfect environment and conclude how lucky we were that the planet was not coated with that nasty liquid stuff.
I agree with most of what you say.
That being said, if two species develop long pointy fingers to reach into deep flowers for food, they do not develop matching DNA. There will be different underlying DNA that produces externally similar species.
In some cases different species evolve (because of natural selection) to look almost identical but their DNA is completely different.
From there, a reasonable conclusion would be if we shared 50% identical DNA with sea cucumbers then at some point we share a common ancestor. If we share 96% identical DNA with a chimpanzee then we shared a common ancestor and it was much more recent than the cucumber ancestor.
And scientific studies along this line of reasoning have made predictions and tests which supported it. They have rough estimates for the rate of DNA change and can compare it to the relatively more stable Mitochodria RNA to get "ballpark" guesses for time scales.
If they "pass" the test, then nothing changes for all time. You just have the two of them living pointlessly in the garden for all time.
On the other hand, if they "fail", they get to have sex and create life becoming more like god. And their children who -know- the difference between good and evil make real choices between them.
The point of religion is to explore ethical and moral truths. Everything else are "just so" stories that fail miserably when confronted with any logic or hard data.
DO NOT TRUST THEM.
For god's sake guys- the reason they are willing to sit down is that you are winning in a way that threatens their ability to exist.
I trust them to treat you as well as they did IBM.
I trust them to be as fair as they were to Lotus 123 with DOS.
I trust them to be as fair to themselves as they were with the Word95 certification to run with standard code under Windows95.
Just keep doing what you are doing- it's working.
You should have an external document that says what and how your system should do.
Constraint and validation definitions should be there.
When users propose a change, update that document and review the proposed changes with them. Then implement the agreed on changes in the code.
Comments should be limited. Code should be kept in a source control program with versioning and old commented out code should be removed after a few months to a year if not immediately.
In my experience comments are often wrong on code which has been maintained more than a few years by more than a few programs.
You should require all variable names to be descriptive if their scope is more than a tight loop.
Code should be reviewed by another programmer before it is installed.
You should use a program that does automatic validation of your minimal coding standards.
If he was going to do the 7,8,9 he should really do the Timothy Zahn books.
I missed work over those books they were so good! Furthermore, they are canon, and they take place about 5-10 years after the end of Starwars 6.
That leaves his own material for 10,11,12.
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Yes and cars cost $8,000 more for airbags and seattbelts now too. A friend of mine had a 1 year old car that was totaled after a relatively minor accident because all the airbags deployed.
All of this caretaking imposes a huge cost on society. It's always very tempting but it has a lot of unintended consequences.
We are smothering under a sea of regulations meant to protect us.
I have downloaded some TV shows in less time than it takes to play them. If you have 30 seeders and 30 "leechers" you will typically get over 200kbps. I peak just over 500kbps using Azureus which is a java BT client. For now I've been getting four currently showing programs- alias, lost, desperate housewives and kojak. Haven't seen an episode yet- I'll watch them all in one glorious sitting at the end of the season. I could almost as easily be recording them off my cable. If I buy a DVR for $179, I can definately record them easier than torrenting them. And those copies I easily edit commercials out of with ULEAD and reburn and give to any of my friends. It's a strange world.
Well they sell OEM versions here in the states for $35 a copy so they could certainly sell them in india for that.
I can now buy a new computer for $500 that would cost me about $800 to build personally. It comes with a Winxp "restore" disk tied to that computer- not a real WinXP disk.
I think in 10 years indian/chinese costs and american/european costs are going to come into line with each other. Consistent constant deflation is occurring here and massive inflation is occuring there.
They only want you to watch their show if you pay for it in some way.
* You could pay for cable subscriptions.
* You could watch commercials that come with the show.
* You can buy it on DVD.
Why should they care one whit if you watch their show and they get no revenues for your viewing it?
Understand- I use a lot of TV torrents as well but I'm realistic about the fact that they don't earn money off me.
All kidding aside, My typical windows install takes me over a day. I do not have to sit there during all that but I do have to check in periodically. That includes installing a basic applications stack after I finish installing the operating system (which takes 2-3 hours). Perhaps you are using a restore CD rather than a real install? Or your hardware is totally current so you don't have to go download drivers for everything?
The originals had character conflict and personality.
Since they had a personality, you could care about them.
The two newer movies were devoid of these- the character with the most personality was computer generated.
If you don't care about the characters, all the special effects in the world are not going to save the film.
there was no character conflict.
if you look at the movie, the high point of character conflict was gui-qon getting annoyed at jar-jar at dinner.
Darth fought them and didn't say -anything- for like 15 minutes. He didn't say how strong the dark side was or how pathetic they were or diddly.
Unlike star wars: new hope, where just about everyone was arguing and disagreeing about something, everyone in the first movie just kinda agreed with each other and went through the motions.
Star wars 2 improved on it a little but was weak on the acting and instead of seeming conflicted, anakin just seemed whiny.
I hope this new movie is decent, that will make 3& 1/2 good star wars films.
Star Wars 3, 4, 5, and the first half of 6.
So this is equivalent to allowing windowsupdate to install software on your machine?
Your point is valid.
That is what is strange. While I agree with you and in the past was a pretty straight arrow- I feel the elite of society have broken the social contract and rewritten the rules to an extreme that is no longer fair. Since it isn't fair, I don't feel bound to upload the rules that they bought and paid for any more.
However, since I took that attitude, I get a lot less upset when it happens to me. I am less capable of moral outrage when I get screwed but I'm also upset a lot less when it happens than I used to be. I used to always play by the rules and then get upset when others didn't.
I used to be fair and even handed and then get upset when others were obviously self-centered to the extent that I thought they were delusional (I mean remembering reality different than it really occured when it suits is rediculously common). It's like the republicans and democrats who are firmly for a position until they are firmly against it and were never for it.
However, where possible I try to just withdraw from that society. I listen to freely available alternative music much more and occasionally donate to support it. I listen to canned pay music a lot less. I use free software instead of paid software and occasionally donate to support it. I purchase almost no canned software now even if it involves extra money.
If I see software that suits my needs that is pay software I typically buy it. As far as shows go- if they are cheap, I buy them- if I think they are too expensive then I do not. The break point seems to be about $35 per season- and some part of me realises that at that level we are only talking about $5 worth of physical materials so why do they deserve to be rich for their work?
There is a coming "glut" of entertainment AND software- it's going to demolish these prices. If 2 billion people are going to buy your sofware is it really fair that they pay you $10 a month for it? How much is fair compensation for a person's time? The current grossly inflated prices for actors and developers are not sustainable but reflect conditions that were only going to exist for an instant of history.
Should the artist not be compensated for that. In a different scenario, I am a programmer; Should I be paid only if my programs are run? or should my employer pay me to write them in the first place.
Ask your self if you should be paid every TIME your program is run anywhere for all time.
That's the straw that broke this camel's back. I work hard on programs and I'm paid for them and that's it.
Why do they rate special treatment compared to any other product/program/etc.?
This is only a valid comment if raters who are tracked didn't watch Enterprise because they downloaded it.
In a fundamental way, ratings are a crock. They do not reflect what real people are doing necessarily and it is not in the ratings companies interest to show reality if total usage is dropping. The networks give them heavy pressure when the numbers drop too much.
I'm not talking about kids who are at the legal age of consent with regard to Thailand tho I am suprised to hear the age is so low.
We have had expose shows on TV here in the states about some of the places and I would be suprised if the kids are 10 and they were being kept prisoners.
My own feelings have little to do with what I was stating. I was saying that it was my impression they have loopholes in the law for people close to the same age who on are on opposite sides of the statutory rape line. There is no need to bring on the attitude when I was asking what the facts were.
I do grasp the concept of the age of consent. I also grasp that we have different ages at which we get different rights and that different countries grant those various rights at various ages that differ from ours.
The -question- was, what is your legal status if you go to a foreign country and have sex with an american citizen who is at the legal age of consent by that country's laws not what happens if you go and have sex with a citizen of that country who is of legal age. I know drinking laws don't apply so I was curious.
I'm suprised to hear 16 is the age of consent if one of the partners is much older. I know that some states make exceptions if both are young or one is close to the legal age (like being 18 and having sex with a 17 is carved out I think in some states).
It is kind of the new witchhunt- I agree. OTH, things like the thailand tours with sex with 8 year olds are so clearly wrong that they start the fire.
I look into this now and then (Nanosolar might be promising) and I will be using solar power during day time hours only to lower power usage. I won't bother with batteries- they seem to be a system cost killer.
If you hook it up to your basic power, you need a special electrical switchbox. But you could hook it up to some peltier cooling devices and some LED light fixtures perhaps. And you can pick up a couple 100 watt panels for 400 to 600 dollars and only power your computer with them during the day.
Serious question here.
If you meet a 17 year old American on vacation in Britain would it be legal? It seems like I remember that the age of consent there is 17.
I agree. And in a lot of cases, "facts" are really only 95% probabilities over a large sample set.
There is still a good chance the facts could be off in a minor way and a tiny chance the facts could be off in a major way. If the first 99 black birds we test are crows, we can't conclude that all black birds are crows or that the next black bird we test will be crows.
Our test may be biased- perhaps small black birds are being ignored or crows liked our bait more. Pure random chance could be the reason we got 99 crows out of 10,000 black birds when only 1000 of them are crows.
I will never understand the modding logic here at /.
This seems to be a well reasoned post instead of a troll but whatever.
We are a democracy.
One of the failings of democracies is that when 51% of the people decide something, it can be hard to stop. We do require 60% for some things but they are currently trying to repeal that in the senate. I hope the Dem's hold them back.
OTH, it's better than the countries where 5% of the people can do this.
This really all revolves around abortion. It is what has irritated the religious types enough to do this. They don't care of the corporations take over the country as long as abortion is outlawed. Lately gay marriage has them going too.
My point is... there is not much you can do. The left is pretty discredited and irrational. They went so hard to the left that most of the "center" allied with the republicans. I would go so far as to say most the the left actually hates america which is kinda sad since it is their own country. It's hard to ally yourself with people who hates their own country.
So we have the religious right + corporations + center vs the center + socialists + communists. The corporations have the money and the religious right have the feet. What I do seriously prepare for is moving from the country if it looks like it is truly going religio fascist.
Another argument comes from the fact that the universe seems fine tuned to life.
and of course this leads to the the counterpoint that any life that exists in an arbitrary universe will be fine tuned for the universe that it is in.
If the universe was entirely made of plasma and it was possible for some kind of life to exist in a plasma, then that life would notice that a wide variety of universes would not be made of plasma and conclude they were very lucky the universe was made of plasma.
If the planet was 100% covered with water, we'd be some kind of intelligent aquatic life. If the planet was dry and arid, we would be adapted like desert mice so that would be the perfect environment and conclude how lucky we were that the planet was not coated with that nasty liquid stuff.
I agree with most of what you say.
That being said, if two species develop long pointy fingers to reach into deep flowers for food, they do not develop matching DNA. There will be different underlying DNA that produces externally similar species.
In some cases different species evolve (because of natural selection) to look almost identical but their DNA is completely different.
From there, a reasonable conclusion would be if we shared 50% identical DNA with sea cucumbers then at some point we share a common ancestor. If we share 96% identical DNA with a chimpanzee then we shared a common ancestor and it was much more recent than the cucumber ancestor.
And scientific studies along this line of reasoning have made predictions and tests which supported it. They have rough estimates for the rate of DNA change and can compare it to the relatively more stable Mitochodria RNA to get "ballpark" guesses for time scales.
Who is to say that they failed.
If they "pass" the test, then nothing changes for all time. You just have the two of them living pointlessly in the garden for all time.
On the other hand, if they "fail", they get to have sex and create life becoming more like god. And their children who -know- the difference between good and evil make real choices between them.
The point of religion is to explore ethical and moral truths. Everything else are "just so" stories that fail miserably when confronted with any logic or hard data.
DO NOT TRUST THEM. For god's sake guys- the reason they are willing to sit down is that you are winning in a way that threatens their ability to exist. I trust them to treat you as well as they did IBM. I trust them to be as fair as they were to Lotus 123 with DOS. I trust them to be as fair to themselves as they were with the Word95 certification to run with standard code under Windows95. Just keep doing what you are doing- it's working.
You should have an external document that says what and how your system should do. Constraint and validation definitions should be there. When users propose a change, update that document and review the proposed changes with them. Then implement the agreed on changes in the code. Comments should be limited. Code should be kept in a source control program with versioning and old commented out code should be removed after a few months to a year if not immediately. In my experience comments are often wrong on code which has been maintained more than a few years by more than a few programs. You should require all variable names to be descriptive if their scope is more than a tight loop. Code should be reviewed by another programmer before it is installed. You should use a program that does automatic validation of your minimal coding standards.
If he was going to do the 7,8,9 he should really do the Timothy Zahn books. I missed work over those books they were so good! Furthermore, they are canon, and they take place about 5-10 years after the end of Starwars 6. That leaves his own material for 10,11,12.
flamebait? Seems funny and clever to me. But I have no mod points. Ah well.