Who cares about the derivative, the point is how many people die. You are extrapolating trends, which is something that cannot be done as carelessly as you are doing now.
First of all, it's all about the trends. People who ignore trends are fools. Do you really deny that terrorism has become much more rampant and deadly in the last 40 years? Do you seriously see it stopping or slowing down in the coming decades? Isn't it obvious this trend is not going to change anytime soon? In the 60's 1 or 2 people would die in a terrorist act (Achilles Laurel). In the 70s it was 10s of people (Munich). In the 80s it was 100s (Lockerbie). Then in the 90s/00s it became 1000s. And all it would take is one dirty bomb to kill hundreds of thousands. Do you think the terrorists would refrain from using such a weapon given the opportunity? Do you really believe we can stop them? We ignore trends at our own peril. That is why everyone is so worked up about a 1 degree increase in the earth's average temperature. People are extrapolating that trend to predict death, pestilence, famine, and vanishing species. Are they being foolish?
You are also falling into a common trap in citing the lack of substantial US terrorism deaths since 9/11. BTW, many people use this same factoid to *prove* that the war in Iraq is succeeding in combatting terrorism. Do you subscribe to that line of reasoning? Using that "logic" I could just as easily cite the unusually cold April to disprove the global warming projections. But no, climate change is a macro-trend. And the ascension of terrorism is also a macro-trend. You cannot predict with any certainty how many will die in any given year. However, you can be confident that many will die over the course of a decade. And based on the growth of terrorism over the last 40 years, you can also confidently say that many more will die of terrorism in the next 10 years than died in the preceeding 10 years.
I never said it would happen imminently. I merely stated that I believed I would see the cross-over in my lifetime. It is painfully obvious to me that terrorism has dramatically expanded with no sign of abatement during my years on this planet. Conversely, cars have been getting safer. Do you really think it is a stretch to extrapolate these two trends?
As further support for my argument, I will mention that I often read (especially in these parts) about how the Bush administration's actions in the MidEast only inflame the terrorists and serve as "recruiting posters" for creating an even larger and more hateful generation of terrorists. If this is indeed true then my extrapolation would seem to be a slam dunk. Perhaps you believe Bush's war is slowing down terrorism?
PS. What does the second derivative have to do with your argument? If anything the second derivative further supports my claims as terrorism is accelerating (the 2nd derivative is positive) whereas the 2nd derivative regarding automobile safety is most definitely negative.
Do you understand derivatives? Rate of change? Which would you say is accelerating faster - American deaths by terrorism or American deaths by auto accidents? This is not complicated.
Ah, but you ignore the derivative. Since 1968 the US State Department has been keeping track of the number of deaths caused by terrorism (http://www.answers.com/topic/history-of-terrorism) Note, the annual rate has tripled since then. Contrast that with the rate of traffic deaths, which has actually gone down over the same period ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Highway_Traf fic_Safety_Administration The rate of traffic deaths has dropped 16% in the US from 1979 to 2002. If we extrapolate the two trends, inevitably a crossover happens. When will more Americans die from terrorism in any given year than die on America's highways? I believe we will see that occur in our lifetime.
Regarding your sig... there are over 200 million cars in the US which, together, are "equivalent to 80 Bin Ladens" in terms of carnage. Therefore, any single car like mine is roughly 80/200,000,000 or 0.0000004 Bin Ladens.
Early this month, Mr. Kasyanov's and Mr. Kasparov's Web sites were blocked, though it was unclear by whom.' Kasparov was later released from detention, though he was still fined for participating in the event."
Actually, I can't remember the last time I bought a PC *with* Windows. I buy parts and build, and have been doing that for going on 10 years now. But you are right about MS affecting me even though I don't buy their products. The parts I buy are very inexpensive thanks to the fact that Microsoft broke the hammerlock hardware vendors had on us. Thank you Microsoft!
... they delayed Leopard for 4 months. Does that mean that the iPhone is more important to Apple than Mac OS?
This tells me that Leopard was not in very good shape. This sounds like a convenient way to extend its schedule so they could address Leopard's problems while spinning it as a positive commitment to the iPhone. Clever, but transparent.
They tend to be more interested in creating botnets or routing spam
I believe you are correct. Though I will hasten to add that this type of system compromising does very little to hurt Grandma, if she even notices. Perhaps making it easy for hackers to compromise a machine actually helps to protect Grandma's data, since it is in the best interest of the hackers to keep her machine intact so they can illicitly use it. Ironic, eh?
I'll save you the time of reading all those complicated tables of numbers you'll find at that site. In 1979 (the earliest date in the table) the top 20% paid 56.4% of total federal tax liabilities. In 2004 (the most recent data in the table) the top 20% paid 67.1% of same. More interestingly, as for the share of individual income tax liabilities, the top 20% paid 64.9% in 1979, and paid a whopping 85.3% (more than the 80% cited by the OP) in 2004. And guess what? In both cases these percentages have gone *up* during the Bush years, contrary to popular belief that the Bush tax cuts were "for the rich".
One last statistic that is also interesting. The bottom 40% now "pay" a negative precentage of individual income taxes. And the bottom 60% combined pay less than 1%. That means the top 40% pay over 99% of individual income taxes.
I think these inconvenient facts show that your statements are the real propaganda, ignorance and prattling truisms.
Re:Not the creation...the propogation...
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Palm to go Linux
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· Score: 1
But it is not fair to say IMHO that without MS there would be no unbundling.
Technically, I suppose you are correct, since none of us can say with any certainty what *would* have happened if Microsoft had never come to be. However, as things played out, you cannot deny that it was Microsoft that played *the* pivotal role is unbundling the software from the hardware. DR and others may have been there first, but it was Microsoft that actually pulled it off (with a large dose of help from IBM, whose arrogance and cluelessness were very helpful to Microsoft).
I said So, it is not surprising to me that you would find it easier to buy equipment in the public sector The public sector is the same as the government sector. I think I said it right.
The difference is the government can just "print more money" or increase taxes to increase its revenue. The private sector has to successfully compete to increase its revenue. So, it is not surprising to me that you would find it easier to buy equipment in the public sector - there are no competitors to worry about. That said, if a good economic argument (like electricity costs or productivity) can be made, *smart* companies will do the right thing and buy the equipment.
... from well-off candidates being able to distribute printed fliers as often and as broadly as their finances allow, whereas lesser-healed candidates can't do the same? At least with YouTube, people have to take the initiative to go find the video. Conversely, fliers simply appear at your doorstep or are shoved into your hands at the mall. In my mind this is a far more "unfair" practice.
His crystal ball says the Yankees will win 110 games this year, a pretty safe bet, many might agree.
Winning 110 (or more) games has only happened 6 times in all of MLB history (out of over 2000 chances)! There are just too many things that can go wrong to make this a "safe bet". The odds are dramatically stacked against it.
OK, I downloaded 2.2 and redid my test. Guess what? It actually got a factor of two slower!!! Now it takes over a minute to display this graph and resume responding to user input. After clicking Create I get nothing for about 8 seconds, then I get an hourglass for about 20 more seconds, then I see the graph, but the application is not responding. 40 seconds later it again responds to mouse clicks. This is on a dual core with 2GB of RAM. What could they have done, with "minor bug fixes", to slow things down this much? My guess is it's the new JRE that was downloaded along with Oo. Which makes me think that anything else that depends on the JRE in Oo also got alot slower.
Out of curiosity I tried other graph types - all of the ones I tried were equally slow. Then I tried smaller data sets (I had observed in 2.0.3 that smaller data sets graphed faster, but still extremely slow by Excel standards). Anyhow, even a set one fourth the size (512 point pairs) took over 30 seconds (also a factor of 2 slower than Oo 2.0.3).
I am running 2.0.3 This has been verified by several people. What version are you running? BTW, I have done this on a dual core machine with 2GB of RAM, running Windows XP, and nothing else of any consequence.
Re:Numeric keypad still unusable in Calc
on
OpenOffice 2.2 Released
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· Score: 5, Interesting
And another thing... it uses semicolons instead of commas to separate fields in things like IF statements. Very irritating. I use Excel quite a bit and the few times I've tried Calc it drives me crazy with its different syntax.
And don't get me started about the graphing function. Here's a fun parlor trick. Using Calc, make a couple of columns of about 2000 numbers each. Then highlight them and graph them as lines. Be prepared to wait awhile. Go get a coffee. Maybe read War and Peace. And no, your computer didn't crash even though the UI is frozen... give it time. Voila... you are now rewarded, after a looonnngggg time, with a crappy looking graph (the default Xaxis labels are "ROW ROW ROW ROW..." - who thought that was a good idea?). Try the same thing on Excel. The graph appears instantly and you don't have to fiddle around with it to make it presentable. The graphing feature in Calc is pretty bad.
Another parlor trick with Calc. Save those two columns of numbers as a CSV file. Exit Calc. Change the CSV file to read only. Now open it with Calc. Try to graph it again. Note how it lets you highlight and select graph... and then.... nothing. It appears to ignore you. Try it again. Same thing. Try the same file in Excel. It will warn you the file is read only. Graphing works fine.
OO's word processer and spreadsheet are pretty much on par with Microsoft.
Well, I can't really comment on the word processor, but I can say definitively that the spreadsheet is a far cry from Excel - especially the graphing feature, which is very poor. As I understand it, the whole graph subsystem of Calc is scheduled for a ground-up rewrite, which substantiates my claim. So, if you require graphing capabilities in your spreadsheet, it is best to avoid Calc and use Excel.
Portraying MA as a completely Democratic state isn't precisely right;
Umm, about 90% of the state legislature are Democrats. The entire congressional delegation is Democrat. Both senators are Democrats. When I voted this past November almost every Democrat on the ballot ran unopposed. I felt like I was voting in a communist country (which isn't far from the truth). True, there was a string of Republican governors, but they have been unable to do much of anything since on those rare cases where they tried to veto legislation their veto was not just overturned, but rather, trampled.
One interesting example that summarizes exactly what I mean just occurred a few weeks ago. When former governor Romney took office 4 years ago, one of his first actions was to ask the legislature to give him control over the Mass Turnpike Authority. This is one of those autonomous state agencies formed to give good paying, lifetime jobs to former pols and their friends and relatives. The agency has been out of control for quite some time (as an aside, this is the group that was responsible for managing the Big Dig). Anyhow, Romney tried for 4 years to get control of them, but the legislature blocked him. Then, almost immediately after the newly elected Democratic governor (Patrick) was elected, control of the Turnpike Authority was granted to the governor's office. What an amazing coincidence.
The reason the MA party remains weak is that the national Republican party is much more aligned with southern social conservatives
While I agree with your assessment of the national Republican party, I don't agree this is the cause of the party's weakness in Ma. The problem is there are far too many people with an interest in perpetuating the status quo (which you correctly described as the old boy network). Every "autonomous" agency is packed with former pols (Democrats). The administrations of almost every state university and college are staffed by former pols (Democrats). The teacher's union is hyper-powerful and is 100% aligned with the Democrats. There are reams of high-priced "consultants" hired by the state (I know a few) - especially by the "autonomous agencies". And guess what? All of these people vote. So do their relatives and friends. And guess which party they all vote for? Guess which party they tell their friends and relatives to vote for? Why, the one that keeps the money spigot turned on, of course!
Democracy stops working when more than half of the *voters* (as opposed to "eligible voters") have a personal financial stake in the outcome of the election. That, in my opinion, is the situation in Massachusetts. And the ever-shrinking minority of people who are not included in this extensive "good old boy network" are leaving... hence the shrinking population. This naturally only pushes the state even more towards a single party.
Ordinarily I don't bother responding to AC's, but your silly post deserves special treatment.
It's just that the Republicans are so inept that they can't get anyone elected except for the governor, who usually turns out to be the most inept of them all.
Electing Republican governors was the electorate's feeble attempt to supply *some* oversight. However, it hasn't worked out that way because, sadly, the democrats control almost 90% of the legislature, and so every governor veto is routinely and easily overridden. As far as "throwing the bums out", too many people are on the take (whether it's via a no-show government job, or having a juicy state contract, or having a relative benefitting from same) to ever get rid of their local rep, so voters instead elect a Republican governor, hoping he or she will somehow prevent everyone else from dipping into the trough, while they can still keep themselves well taken care of.
One more thing... congratulations for getting out of Massachusetts. I can't wait until I can leave. It is no coincidence that this state is the only state in the union losing population.
Slashdot Mirror
You are also falling into a common trap in citing the lack of substantial US terrorism deaths since 9/11. BTW, many people use this same factoid to *prove* that the war in Iraq is succeeding in combatting terrorism. Do you subscribe to that line of reasoning? Using that "logic" I could just as easily cite the unusually cold April to disprove the global warming projections. But no, climate change is a macro-trend. And the ascension of terrorism is also a macro-trend. You cannot predict with any certainty how many will die in any given year. However, you can be confident that many will die over the course of a decade. And based on the growth of terrorism over the last 40 years, you can also confidently say that many more will die of terrorism in the next 10 years than died in the preceeding 10 years.
As further support for my argument, I will mention that I often read (especially in these parts) about how the Bush administration's actions in the MidEast only inflame the terrorists and serve as "recruiting posters" for creating an even larger and more hateful generation of terrorists. If this is indeed true then my extrapolation would seem to be a slam dunk. Perhaps you believe Bush's war is slowing down terrorism?
PS. What does the second derivative have to do with your argument? If anything the second derivative further supports my claims as terrorism is accelerating (the 2nd derivative is positive) whereas the 2nd derivative regarding automobile safety is most definitely negative.
Do you understand derivatives? Rate of change? Which would you say is accelerating faster - American deaths by terrorism or American deaths by auto accidents? This is not complicated.
PWND
Ah, but you ignore the derivative. Since 1968 the US State Department has been keeping track of the number of deaths caused by terrorism (http://www.answers.com/topic/history-of-terrorism ) Note, the annual rate has tripled since then. Contrast that with the rate of traffic deaths, which has actually gone down over the same period ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Highway_Traf fic_Safety_Administration The rate of traffic deaths has dropped 16% in the US from 1979 to 2002. If we extrapolate the two trends, inevitably a crossover happens. When will more Americans die from terrorism in any given year than die on America's highways? I believe we will see that occur in our lifetime.
Regarding your sig ... there are over 200 million cars in the US which, together, are "equivalent to 80 Bin Ladens" in terms of carnage. Therefore, any single car like mine is roughly 80/200,000,000 or 0.0000004 Bin Ladens.
Blatant lies!?! You cite a blog for your "proof"? How about a reputable site like http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/TaxFacts/Tfdb/TFTem plate.cfm?DocID=457&Topic2id=20&Topic3id=22 ?
I'll save you the time of reading all those complicated tables of numbers you'll find at that site. In 1979 (the earliest date in the table) the top 20% paid 56.4% of total federal tax liabilities. In 2004 (the most recent data in the table) the top 20% paid 67.1% of same. More interestingly, as for the share of individual income tax liabilities, the top 20% paid 64.9% in 1979, and paid a whopping 85.3% (more than the 80% cited by the OP) in 2004. And guess what? In both cases these percentages have gone *up* during the Bush years, contrary to popular belief that the Bush tax cuts were "for the rich".
One last statistic that is also interesting. The bottom 40% now "pay" a negative precentage of individual income taxes. And the bottom 60% combined pay less than 1%. That means the top 40% pay over 99% of individual income taxes.
I think these inconvenient facts show that your statements are the real propaganda, ignorance and prattling truisms.
You speak the truth. They don't like that around here if it clashes with group-think.
As of 2003, there were 52 million school age children in the US (http://usgovinfo.about.com/cs/censusstatistic/a/l atestpopcounts.htm).
l )
As of the end of 2006, there were 42 million iPods sold (http://reviews.cnet.com/4531-10921_7-6416165.htm
It strikes me that a large percentage of the Michigan school kids probably already have iPods.
I said So, it is not surprising to me that you would find it easier to buy equipment in the public sector The public sector is the same as the government sector. I think I said it right.
The difference is the government can just "print more money" or increase taxes to increase its revenue. The private sector has to successfully compete to increase its revenue. So, it is not surprising to me that you would find it easier to buy equipment in the public sector - there are no competitors to worry about. That said, if a good economic argument (like electricity costs or productivity) can be made, *smart* companies will do the right thing and buy the equipment.
... from well-off candidates being able to distribute printed fliers as often and as broadly as their finances allow, whereas lesser-healed candidates can't do the same? At least with YouTube, people have to take the initiative to go find the video. Conversely, fliers simply appear at your doorstep or are shoved into your hands at the mall. In my mind this is a far more "unfair" practice.
OK, I downloaded 2.2 and redid my test. Guess what? It actually got a factor of two slower!!! Now it takes over a minute to display this graph and resume responding to user input. After clicking Create I get nothing for about 8 seconds, then I get an hourglass for about 20 more seconds, then I see the graph, but the application is not responding. 40 seconds later it again responds to mouse clicks. This is on a dual core with 2GB of RAM. What could they have done, with "minor bug fixes", to slow things down this much? My guess is it's the new JRE that was downloaded along with Oo. Which makes me think that anything else that depends on the JRE in Oo also got alot slower.
Out of curiosity I tried other graph types - all of the ones I tried were equally slow. Then I tried smaller data sets (I had observed in 2.0.3 that smaller data sets graphed faster, but still extremely slow by Excel standards). Anyhow, even a set one fourth the size (512 point pairs) took over 30 seconds (also a factor of 2 slower than Oo 2.0.3).
I am running 2.0.3 This has been verified by several people. What version are you running? BTW, I have done this on a dual core machine with 2GB of RAM, running Windows XP, and nothing else of any consequence.
And another thing ... it uses semicolons instead of commas to separate fields in things like IF statements. Very irritating. I use Excel quite a bit and the few times I've tried Calc it drives me crazy with its different syntax.
... give it time. Voila ... you are now rewarded, after a looonnngggg time, with a crappy looking graph (the default Xaxis labels are "ROW ROW ROW ROW ..." - who thought that was a good idea?). Try the same thing on Excel. The graph appears instantly and you don't have to fiddle around with it to make it presentable. The graphing feature in Calc is pretty bad.
.... nothing. It appears to ignore you. Try it again. Same thing. Try the same file in Excel. It will warn you the file is read only. Graphing works fine.
And don't get me started about the graphing function. Here's a fun parlor trick. Using Calc, make a couple of columns of about 2000 numbers each. Then highlight them and graph them as lines. Be prepared to wait awhile. Go get a coffee. Maybe read War and Peace. And no, your computer didn't crash even though the UI is frozen
Another parlor trick with Calc. Save those two columns of numbers as a CSV file. Exit Calc. Change the CSV file to read only. Now open it with Calc. Try to graph it again. Note how it lets you highlight and select graph... and then
... in 3D like pages in a Rolodex, then I'm not interested. (sarcasm off)
One interesting example that summarizes exactly what I mean just occurred a few weeks ago. When former governor Romney took office 4 years ago, one of his first actions was to ask the legislature to give him control over the Mass Turnpike Authority. This is one of those autonomous state agencies formed to give good paying, lifetime jobs to former pols and their friends and relatives. The agency has been out of control for quite some time (as an aside, this is the group that was responsible for managing the Big Dig). Anyhow, Romney tried for 4 years to get control of them, but the legislature blocked him. Then, almost immediately after the newly elected Democratic governor (Patrick) was elected, control of the Turnpike Authority was granted to the governor's office. What an amazing coincidence. While I agree with your assessment of the national Republican party, I don't agree this is the cause of the party's weakness in Ma. The problem is there are far too many people with an interest in perpetuating the status quo (which you correctly described as the old boy network). Every "autonomous" agency is packed with former pols (Democrats). The administrations of almost every state university and college are staffed by former pols (Democrats). The teacher's union is hyper-powerful and is 100% aligned with the Democrats. There are reams of high-priced "consultants" hired by the state (I know a few) - especially by the "autonomous agencies". And guess what? All of these people vote. So do their relatives and friends. And guess which party they all vote for? Guess which party they tell their friends and relatives to vote for? Why, the one that keeps the money spigot turned on, of course!
Democracy stops working when more than half of the *voters* (as opposed to "eligible voters") have a personal financial stake in the outcome of the election. That, in my opinion, is the situation in Massachusetts. And the ever-shrinking minority of people who are not included in this extensive "good old boy network" are leaving
One more thing