I'm no expert in the field of datamining, but while academics have demonstrated that anonymized web searches can be correlated with other data to identify people, can the same be said for DNA data? I'd think you'd need minimum a close relatives name and genetic info already.
Once anonymized DNA data would become next to worthless
Nah, x% of the the sample population is susceptible to breast cancer, along with the sample groups demographics is really valuable data without knowing the name of anyone.
There's a difference between playing politics and being politically correct. Playing politics is about not offending people, political correctness is about refraining from things like racial slurs.
Call someone an idiot all day long if their work shows them to be an idiot. Stay away from ad hominems and you're automatically politically correct.
I was under the impression that the "fair" tax exempted food - i just checked, and it does not.
So I stand corrected, the "fair" tax might not be a cluster-fuck (although business to business purchases are exempt - and that might be tricky to define, not to mention really unfair.) Just horribly regressive.
Just because China is nominally communist, doesn't mean they're trying to destroy the west. Obviously China is more concerned with Chinese growth than US growth, but there is such a thing as win-win. With all the free-traders around here, I'd think that was a given...
China can't build modern war planes or modern subs - what makes you think they can build a useful military space station?
This is the second comment I've seen indicating that the Chinese have received substantial technological help from the soviets. If this is true, could some one point me towards a link that has some details. I was under the impression that Mao and Stalin really, really didn't like each other, and from about Nixon on, the US and China have had closer relations than USSR and China.
I know, for instance, that a good percentage of the weaponry used against the Russians in Afghanistan was Chinese made - typically you don't share advanced military tech with countries that are supplying militaries that are fighting against you.
scrolling though these comments, it amazes me how many people on slashdot have a pretty good idea of what a cluster-fuck sales tax is - yet somehow the "fair" tax idea has traction here.
Any new reactor built should most definitely be a breeder reactor. Anyone who builds a Uranium based nuclear reactor this day and age is a fool.
Iran tried to do just that.
No, staging US nukes in Europe isn't necessary, especially given our boomer fleet. Yes, it's cold war thinking, as is the whole NATO construct. The weapons aren't going to be moved out because, simply, no one is capable of bringing sufficient pressure to bear either economically, diplomatically or otherwise in order to make it happen. Besides, it's more in our interest to keep Italy and the Netherlands happy than it is to appease Iran right now.
No one's forced to be our ally. If Italy doesn't want American nukes it can give them back. If the low countries decide they don't want to be our friends any more, they can go forge a trade deal with China. As it is, with a few exceptions, the nations of the world are falling over themselves for "most favored nation" status with the US.
The US armed forces are prepared to take all comers in a conventional war - the problem is we're not fighting any of those, nor are we likely to any time soon. The only reason anyone fights an asymmetric war is if you're massively outgunned.
I'm actually not a big supporter of the size of the US defense budget, but the implication that there's a nation-state capable of fucking with the US today is laughable. If I were a potentially hostile (non-nuclear) country, I'd bank on "regime change" within weeks, and place my bets on how screwed up things get afterward.
which is so much worse than insurance industry panels in private health care systems that hold meetings to decide if you're worth rationing money to address your illness.
take a lump of uranium and wait for it to spit one out.
aside: unless you can produce and consume the plutonium in situ, AND make it infeasible to interrupt the the process to remove the Pu, that's a really serious proliferation risk.
Iran didn't try to build a breeder reactor. Iran has a small research reactor and a conventional Russian designed LWR. We also just found out about an enrichment facility.
The US does have nukes in a handful of NATO countries - there are a couple of reasons for this. First, the whole reason NATO exists is so Russia doesn't decide to invade Europe, having nukes in Italy reinforces this position. Secondly, it reduces the number of nuclear states - on one hand if the nukes are under the state's control it's a tad disingenuous to call them a non-nuclear state, but on the other, it reduces or eliminates the motivation for that state to develop the knowledge necessary to build it's own devices. Furthermore, I imagine we know where all "our" nukes are, and were war to break out with Italy, they wouldn't retain nuclear capability for long.
No one's threatening to invade the US because we spend about as much money on defense as the rest of the world combined. Not that that gives us the moral high ground, but it puts us squarely on the practical don't-fuck-with-us ground. We're also not seriously contemplating building breeder reactors or even nuclear fuel repossessing because of a combination of domestic social pressures, to avoid sending the "wrong" signals to foreign governments, proliferation concerns.
If you're drinking a sprite, and you live on either of the coasts and someone asks you what you're drinking you might say "a soda." If you live in the midwest, you might say "a pop." If you live in the south, you might say, "a coke."
Of course it depends on where you live - but if you're going to use that argument, don't you think it's a bit dishonest to argue that teachers in NY are overpaid compared to the National median?
I also think you'll find that teachers making that kind of money work in wealthy suburbs - a situation that opens the school funding to criticism more readily than teacher pay.
Teachers have *minimum* 4 year degrees, the median household doesn't. You can only pro-rate a teachers salary like that by counting days, not hours - and teachers are paid hourly.
worth noting that the RIAA's influence has also substantially waned since the last time Congress tried to bone the creatives (1999) thus decreasing the motivation for congress to carry their water.
Music is a bit of a special case, it's not a work for hire, but the author signs over the copyright to the label. This isn't true for any of the other categories you listed.
Whatever would they do if we were home-schooled and brought up to think critically?
Well for starters, you probably won't have said nonsense like, "I was never charged for any materials used in grade school," because you're realize that nothing's free and your parents paid for the supplies either through taxation or tuition. Instead, you'd be spouting nonsense like, "The earth is 6000 years old like the text book my parents gave me said."
There is a home school movement in this country - the problem is that parents who are qualified to teach tend to have other things to do during the day.
Let me start off saying that I think teachers are underpaid.
That said, teacher pay hasn't been addressed in this country for the same reason that veterinarian pay hasn't been addressed There are a lot of idealists who will do the job well for the wage offered. Increasing the wage may even attract less motivated people to the field and actually decrease the quality of the profession. Unlike vet medicine there aren't absurdly selective professional schools keeping the quality of professionals up and quantity down.
Treating lesson plans as work for hire might be fine, but you're going to have to be consistent about it. That means assuming that new hires don't have any supplementary material - in practice this probably means you'd have to pay them for 3 to 9 months before they actually give a single lesson - and I don't know a single school district that's prepared to do that.
in a nutshell, common carriers have to deliver (almost) anything you ask them to deliver, so ISPs really don't want that designation because they would like to maintain the right to throttle or deny service to anyone for any reason (telephone networks and the postal service are examples of common carriers.)
ISPs are shielded under the safe harbor provision of the DMCA which basically says that you'll take down infringing content on your network once you're provided notice, or else you end up liable.
Slashdot Mirror
what, the autofocus doesn't crash, instead it sparkles?
that's a really clumsy way to call someone's mom a whore.
I'm no expert in the field of datamining, but while academics have demonstrated that anonymized web searches can be correlated with other data to identify people, can the same be said for DNA data? I'd think you'd need minimum a close relatives name and genetic info already.
Nah, x% of the the sample population is susceptible to breast cancer, along with the sample groups demographics is really valuable data without knowing the name of anyone.
There's a difference between playing politics and being politically correct. Playing politics is about not offending people, political correctness is about refraining from things like racial slurs.
Call someone an idiot all day long if their work shows them to be an idiot. Stay away from ad hominems and you're automatically politically correct.
I was under the impression that the "fair" tax exempted food - i just checked, and it does not.
So I stand corrected, the "fair" tax might not be a cluster-fuck (although business to business purchases are exempt - and that might be tricky to define, not to mention really unfair.) Just horribly regressive.
knee-jerk cold war thinking.
Just because China is nominally communist, doesn't mean they're trying to destroy the west. Obviously China is more concerned with Chinese growth than US growth, but there is such a thing as win-win. With all the free-traders around here, I'd think that was a given...
China can't build modern war planes or modern subs - what makes you think they can build a useful military space station?
This is the second comment I've seen indicating that the Chinese have received substantial technological help from the soviets. If this is true, could some one point me towards a link that has some details. I was under the impression that Mao and Stalin really, really didn't like each other, and from about Nixon on, the US and China have had closer relations than USSR and China.
I know, for instance, that a good percentage of the weaponry used against the Russians in Afghanistan was Chinese made - typically you don't share advanced military tech with countries that are supplying militaries that are fighting against you.
scrolling though these comments, it amazes me how many people on slashdot have a pretty good idea of what a cluster-fuck sales tax is - yet somehow the "fair" tax idea has traction here.
Wonder where I got that idea...
No, staging US nukes in Europe isn't necessary, especially given our boomer fleet. Yes, it's cold war thinking, as is the whole NATO construct. The weapons aren't going to be moved out because, simply, no one is capable of bringing sufficient pressure to bear either economically, diplomatically or otherwise in order to make it happen. Besides, it's more in our interest to keep Italy and the Netherlands happy than it is to appease Iran right now.
No one's forced to be our ally. If Italy doesn't want American nukes it can give them back. If the low countries decide they don't want to be our friends any more, they can go forge a trade deal with China. As it is, with a few exceptions, the nations of the world are falling over themselves for "most favored nation" status with the US.
The US armed forces are prepared to take all comers in a conventional war - the problem is we're not fighting any of those, nor are we likely to any time soon. The only reason anyone fights an asymmetric war is if you're massively outgunned.
I'm actually not a big supporter of the size of the US defense budget, but the implication that there's a nation-state capable of fucking with the US today is laughable. If I were a potentially hostile (non-nuclear) country, I'd bank on "regime change" within weeks, and place my bets on how screwed up things get afterward.
which is so much worse than insurance industry panels in private health care systems that hold meetings to decide if you're worth rationing money to address your illness.
take a lump of uranium and wait for it to spit one out.
aside: unless you can produce and consume the plutonium in situ, AND make it infeasible to interrupt the the process to remove the Pu, that's a really serious proliferation risk.
Iran didn't try to build a breeder reactor. Iran has a small research reactor and a conventional Russian designed LWR. We also just found out about an enrichment facility.
The US does have nukes in a handful of NATO countries - there are a couple of reasons for this. First, the whole reason NATO exists is so Russia doesn't decide to invade Europe, having nukes in Italy reinforces this position. Secondly, it reduces the number of nuclear states - on one hand if the nukes are under the state's control it's a tad disingenuous to call them a non-nuclear state, but on the other, it reduces or eliminates the motivation for that state to develop the knowledge necessary to build it's own devices. Furthermore, I imagine we know where all "our" nukes are, and were war to break out with Italy, they wouldn't retain nuclear capability for long.
No one's threatening to invade the US because we spend about as much money on defense as the rest of the world combined. Not that that gives us the moral high ground, but it puts us squarely on the practical don't-fuck-with-us ground. We're also not seriously contemplating building breeder reactors or even nuclear fuel repossessing because of a combination of domestic social pressures, to avoid sending the "wrong" signals to foreign governments, proliferation concerns.
obviously it wouldn't be brought up as bribery. You shouldn't assume that every knee-jerk bloviation on /. has a sound legal backing.
It could be anti-competitive behavior though. (reference previous line)
If you're drinking a sprite, and you live on either of the coasts and someone asks you what you're drinking you might say "a soda." If you live in the midwest, you might say "a pop." If you live in the south, you might say, "a coke."
without taxes there is no society. without society you're very likely to experience actual theft and actual gun barrels, but very little services.
I hear there's no taxes in Somalia and it's only a plane ride away.
Of course it depends on where you live - but if you're going to use that argument, don't you think it's a bit dishonest to argue that teachers in NY are overpaid compared to the National median?
I also think you'll find that teachers making that kind of money work in wealthy suburbs - a situation that opens the school funding to criticism more readily than teacher pay.
Teachers have *minimum* 4 year degrees, the median household doesn't. You can only pro-rate a teachers salary like that by counting days, not hours - and teachers are paid hourly.
worth noting that the RIAA's influence has also substantially waned since the last time Congress tried to bone the creatives (1999) thus decreasing the motivation for congress to carry their water.
Music is a bit of a special case, it's not a work for hire, but the author signs over the copyright to the label. This isn't true for any of the other categories you listed.
Well for starters, you probably won't have said nonsense like, "I was never charged for any materials used in grade school," because you're realize that nothing's free and your parents paid for the supplies either through taxation or tuition. Instead, you'd be spouting nonsense like, "The earth is 6000 years old like the text book my parents gave me said."
There is a home school movement in this country - the problem is that parents who are qualified to teach tend to have other things to do during the day.
Let me start off saying that I think teachers are underpaid.
That said, teacher pay hasn't been addressed in this country for the same reason that veterinarian pay hasn't been addressed There are a lot of idealists who will do the job well for the wage offered. Increasing the wage may even attract less motivated people to the field and actually decrease the quality of the profession. Unlike vet medicine there aren't absurdly selective professional schools keeping the quality of professionals up and quantity down.
Treating lesson plans as work for hire might be fine, but you're going to have to be consistent about it. That means assuming that new hires don't have any supplementary material - in practice this probably means you'd have to pay them for 3 to 9 months before they actually give a single lesson - and I don't know a single school district that's prepared to do that.
You'll note, however, that there aren't any rational scientists who say our current knowledge could be flawed - AND THE LHC WILL DESTROY THE EARTH.
the judge isn't suing you - he isn't even on the "the other side."
in a nutshell, common carriers have to deliver (almost) anything you ask them to deliver, so ISPs really don't want that designation because they would like to maintain the right to throttle or deny service to anyone for any reason (telephone networks and the postal service are examples of common carriers.)
ISPs are shielded under the safe harbor provision of the DMCA which basically says that you'll take down infringing content on your network once you're provided notice, or else you end up liable.
George W Bush was a C student at Yale, the home of the gentleman's C, where he was admitted as a legacy.
Clinton was a Rhodes scholar.
They may have had similar quantities of education, but they DID NOT have the same level of education.