I would still think that *MOST* people using Android phones aren't going to be terribly concerned about the OS version they are running. Looking at your list, I'm not terribly interested in most of this, and I'm a geek:
1) Meh. I've got two Android devices using two slightly different keyboards. They both work. The biggest problem I have is that my fingers are a little too big to use the tiny keys on my phone, which means I sometimes hit the upper case button instead of an "A", the numeric key "lock" instead of the "N" or "M", the "L" instead of the backspace, etc., and that's a limitation of real estate on the screen rather than software. The *second* biggest problem I have is that the CPU on my phone, which is getting a bit long in the tooth now, is sometimes bogged down by the various applications running on the phone so that it registers a long key press rather than just a tap, and gives me a special character rather than the simple alphabetic key I actually typed. Again, that's more of a hardware problem than a software problem; a faster CPU, such as I would have in a newer phone, would likely minimize or eliminate this problem (which, in fact, it does on my Streak 7).
2) Again, meh. Maybe I would be more impressed if I had actually seen the "new color schemes, UI changes and polish" but what I have works.
3) I've had this since 2.0 on my phone (I'm running 2.1 now) by installing the "System" app. It's free, and it does everything you describe, so again, not something that I would update for.
4) Okay, this is cool. I've played with Asterisk, so having a SIP phone on my cell phone or tablet would be something I'd like to have, and might even be something I'd upgrade for. However, I doubt that I am indicative of Android users in general. In particular, if I told my wife that she could have a SIP phone on her Android phone, and that she could use it to make VoIP calls through my Asterisk server, she'd probably quote that line from Finding Nemo: "It's like he's trying to speak to me...I can feel it!"
5) Maybe I'm missing the point here (but if I am, odds are non-technical users will, too) but I have a "Downloads" directory on my Android devices, where I can view and control my downloads. I haven't downloaded too many things from other than a browser, so maybe that's the issue, but again, this feature doesn't give me much incentive to upgrade.
As a case in point, my wife is still using 2.0 on her Android phone, even though our carrier has released 2.1.something for our platform. Why hasn't she upgraded? Because 2.0 does what she *needs* it to do: make calls, browse the web, send and receive text messages, check her e-mail. She is also concerned about losing her settings and data if she upgrades. I used an app to backup my settings and data before I updated my phone. Nevertheless, I still had to spend about a week cleaning up my contacts list and I did lose all the data from one application (Fuelage, which I was using to monitor and track fuel consumption on my motorcycle, so not critical, but annoying). In other words, not upgrading is relatively painless for her, while upgrading is potentially painful, so she has decided not to bother. THAT is a typical non-geek Android user's attitude, IMHO.
There also should be laws against big media from promoting any one candidate or black-listing them like they do...
^^^I was with you until here^^^
IMHO, for however much or however little that is worth, a private media company should be allowed to promote or ignore whatever candidates they want without government interference. If I built and ran a successful media company, then I would greatly resent government telling me who and what I was allowed to promote on my network.
Consider it this way...suppose you built a blog on your own web site. Suppose on your blog, you consistently and vocally endorse some political candidate, political party or political ideology. Would you want government telling you that you were required by law to give equal "air time" to opposing candidates, parties or ideologies? The way I see it, this is a First Amendment issue: I have the right to speak my political views without government interference; the government does not have the right to tell me that I may speak my political views ONLY so long as I spend equal time espousing the opposing political view. It may be a moral issue, as well: should Pro-Life groups have to provide equal coverage of Pro-Choice groups? Should organizations supporting gay marriage be required to also promote a Fundamentalist Christian view of marriage? Let's carry it to an absurd extreme, just for grins: should the U.S. Army's web site also spend equal time in support of Al Qaeda? Of course not! So why should private media companies like CBS, Fox, CNN, Time-Warner, etc. be required BY LAW to provide equal coverage to all candidates?
(But then again, I think Ron Paul IS a good candidate, so YMMV;)
Nearly x86 PC since the 1980s has supported BIOS, but every ARM platform has something different.
The operative word being "Nearly".
I own a few x86 devices (2 x Whistle Interjets and 1 Cobalt Raq 550) that are a bit of a PITA to customize with a modern OS. I managed to put my own FreeBSD operating system on the Interjets, but for the life of me, I could not get them to boot Linux (granted, I didn't try really hard since they are 486 machines and FreeBSD was fine for running an internal-only DNS server). I've tried and failed over and over again to get the Raq 550 to boot a Slackware or Gentoo 2.6.x Linux kernel, since IIRC, it was originally designed to run a custom version of Red Hat with a 2.4.x kernel. I've heard some people have had success with Debian...I should probably give that a try some time, but, well...it's not exactly a high priority:)
I know you were making a joke (and for the record, it was kind of funny), but FWIW, the Mayans didn't die out. I was in Guatemala hanging out with a bunch of Mayans not quite two years ago (who, incidentally, were asking me what was with the "Mayan" 2012 thing they had been hearing about, lol). They've largely been incorporated into the culture of the countries in which they now live, but they still keep their ancestral lineage and speak their various Mayan dialects (Tzutachiel, IIRC, was the dialect spoken by the group I was with) as well Spanish.
You will create disasters worse than that of any communist dictator if you think that you can just remove all regulation and have the free market spring into existence, like a maiden from the lake.
I was ready to take exception to this comment, until I decided to check my theory with Google...:
Just off the cuff, it looks like most of these were caused by corporations operating in nominally democratic countries rather than by communist states. I guess maybe you're right on this one...
In theory, that is what laws and government regulations are supposed to do: force the people/companies responsible to internalize the externalities that are the tragedy of the commons.
That's great, in theory, but in reality, the people/companies responsible have the government regulators in their back pocket. What we have right now is a system where there is no natural (for lack of a better word) control upon corporations to get them to look beyond next quarter profits, so we substitute that with an artificial control (government regulation) instead.
If you really want to fix the problem, you need to create a system where things that are bad for the general population are inherently bad for the corporations. Unfortunately, I have no idea how to do that.
Again, as I've mentioned elsewhere in that thread, nothing you said here is unique to corporations. Allow me to provide a government anecdote to illustrate my point:
Back in the day, the city of Chicago accepted Federal funds to build and maintain an airport known as Meigs Field. Meigs Field provided General Aviation (GA) access to downtown Chicago for business and personal aircraft until the '90s when Mayor Daley decided that it would be more profitable for the city to tear up the airport and develop that land for other purposes. The Feds took the city of Chicago to court for violating a contract that said that the city would accept Federal funds for the airport in exchange for continuing to maintain and operate the airport for some period of time, and the courts decided in the Feds' favor: the city of Chicago broke the terms of the contract, and would have to pay a penalty ($150,000-$200,000 IIRC) per month -- or maybe it was per quarter or per year, I don't recall exactly -- until the airport was operational again, or until the contract term was up. Meigs Field is still just a memory, despite the "penalty" because the current development of that land brings in more revenue than the penalty takes away, even after factoring in the loss of airport revenue. In other words, the "penalty" levied against the city of Chicago is no more than just another operating cost. In this case, as you said, it was more lucrative for the city of Chicago to break the law than it was to keep the law, and therefore the law was ignored. Unlike in your explanation, however, the law was ignored by a municipal government rather than by a corporation.
I always find it interesting how people tend to polarize at extreme ends in any kind of debate, with very, very few people -- or at least, very, very few vocal people -- in the middle. It's kind of like an inverse bell curve.
How that applies to the current discussion: I agree that there are significant problems with free market economies. People are inherently greedy, some more so than others, but at our core, all of us are most concerned with self-interest. People are also inherently short-sighted. Since corporations are nothing more than groups of people working together for a common goal (shared greed and shared self-interest), it stands to reason that corporations will display the exact same shortcomings that are inherent in the people who run those corporations. In other words, corporations will *also* tend towards greed and self-interest.
Unfortunately, those problems are not limited solely to individuals and corporations. Governments are also groups of people working together for a common goal, and consequently also inherit those same, ugly characteristics. Politicians, like CxOs, make decisions based upon short-term "profit" -- "what will win the *next* election?"...even if that means you'll have a bigger mess to clean up later.
So yeah, capitalism has it's problems, but so does EVERY other system composed of human beings, including governments. Perhaps I shoudl say "*especially* including governments", since governments, by definition, have the unique ability to coerce their "customers" into paying for their services.
Technically, you are correct, although that's sometimes easier said than done. I'd guess that you probably have never had to wire up a house like mine. I live in a log home that was built in the '70s. Running CAT-5 between drywall panels is no big deal, if you have the tools (fish tape, a long, long drill bit if you want to go between floors, etc.), but running CAT-5 through an already-built log home is a real PITA. Yes, you can just tack the cable to the walls and ceiling, but there are a number of practical reasons not to do that. IME, at least, exposed wiring is much more likely to get damaged than wiring behind a wall. Furthermore, wiring along the floor is likely to be a tripping hazard, and don't forget that there's still a 100m length restriction on CAT-5 cable. My house has three floors, so running cable around all the walls and up all the stairs will eat up 100m a lot faster than you might expect. Also, I'm not sure if you could leave the wires in place when you sell the home, since I found out when I bought my house that any runs of electrical wire (might just be 120v, but I don't know for sure) that is longer than some length (6 feet, IIRC) cannot be left exposed, per the building codes in my area. Finally, tacking wires all over a beautiful log home is just, well, tacky. A married guy (like me) who tried to do something like that wouldn't remain married for long:) Fortunately, WiFi is a much easier, much more aesthetic and suitably workable solution in my neighborhood (not too many neighbors, and generous spacing between the my house and my neighbors).
For OP, filling all the staple holes that were left when you remove the CAT-5 and repainting the walls so the landlord doesn't keep your deposit might be a factor, too.
...but for some reason my house chooses to be the exception to the rule. I've always had trouble getting 2.4GHz to reach to certain portions of the house, but when I added 5GHz (Apple Airport Extreme) I can now easily get a signal from anywhere in the house and even outside...
There's the phenomenon...
...I can see 5-6 (check that, right now it's 9!) neighbors' APs on 2.4GHz, but so far I'm the only one on 5...
...and there, I'd say, is your explanation for it.
Corporations, as a collection of individuals, seek to create wealth, not destroy it.
Corporations seek to control wealth, by any means necessary. [emphasis mine]
Yup. I seem to recall reading somewhere something along the lines of, "he who has the power to destroy a resource, controls that resource." It's been a while, so I may not have the wording exactly right, but you get the point.
Adafruit.com sells a Geiger counter kit. They specifically state that it's not for life-or-death situations, but it sounds to me like all you really need is a little peace of mind. For $99, plus shipping and a little elbow grease, this should do the trick.
If, on the other hand, you have reasonable cause to think that there is a real threat in your area, then disregard my suggestion. I don't know enough about the subject to provide the answers you need.
My point isn't that those who invest the time and effort will always be successful, but rather that those who do are going to have a much, much better chance of success than those who don't. Sometimes you get dealt a losing hand, and even the most skillful card player in the world can't pull out a win; but those who work hard to excel in their chosen field are almost certainly going to do better than those who simply trust to blind luck.
Incidentally, I believe there is a logical fallacy here...:
No matter how much time and effort you put into training a dog, it's not going to be able to write complex software. No matter how much time and effort you put into 100m running, you're not going to run faster than Usain Bolt.
If I am a dog, I am not going to care about writing complex software; I am going to care about running the Iditarod, or retrieving ducks, depending upon what kind of a dog I am. And there is at least a chance that I will be very, very good at one of those things. Likewise, Usain Bolt probably had someone tell him that he would never be faster than whoever his best competitor was...and that person was wrong because Usain Bolt had a talent for running and worked hard to nurture and develop that talent. But I'll bet that I'm a better network administrator than Usain Bolt, because that is an area where I have some degree of skill. So you're right, no, not everyone can be faster than Usain Bolt...but you're also wrong because those who have a talent for running AND who expend a sufficient degree of effort developing that talent will have a much better chance of beating him than someone who simply expects to show up and receive the same reward, which is all I was saying in the first place.
Policitians are the least likely to know what is right: the only thing they care about is what keeps them in power.
Actually, I think it may be even worse than that. With 540 elected officials in the Federal government alone (one president, one vice-president, one hundred elected senators, and 338 congressmen and women), I would wager that someone has the right answer to every problem our nation faces. It's just that most of them are more interested in being popular than in being right.
The motive behind a crime is *THE* number one factor used in judging sentencing.
Okay, I'm with you so far. There are cases where motive will make a difference, for example, you were involved in an accident ("accident" being the operative word) that resulted in someone else's death. If there is no intent to harm others, it's hard to argue a case for murder. You may still deserve some punishment for acting irresponsibly or stupidly, but even I am hard-pressed to argue that someone who simply didn't foresee the consequences of a particular action should be judged as harshly as someone who knew what the outcome (i.e., the death of someone else) would be.
What do you think the difference is between first-degree murder and manslaughter? It's all about motive. Did you plan in detail how to kill the person, channelling your hatred toward your carefully plotted ends, or did you unintentionally, spur-of-the-moment end up causing someone's death? You better believe that matters!
Maybe. If it truly was unintentional, like I described above, then sure, I agree. However, if you are talking about a crime of passion...well, we're starting to diverge a bit.
Look at it this way. Suppose I were to kill someone (VERY unlikely, but just suppose). Does it matter to the victim if his murder was planned out in extreme detail or if it was a spur-of-the-moment crime of passion? He's still dead. His family doesn't hurt less if I just lost my temper than if I planned out the crime beforehand; they still lost a family member. Finally, if I am a murderer, am I really any less a danger to society if I have a tendency to fly off the handle or if I plot out my murders before conducting them? I would argue that giving someone an *excuse* for murdering ("Look, don't sweat it. You caught your husband in bed with someone else. That's a crime of passion. You'll only get five years, and be out on parole in two.") rather making them face the enormity of the crime they committed is inherently a Bad Thing.
Hate crime law is all about *motive*. It's the basic premise that committing a crime because you view their whole "group" (which they have no choice whether or not to belong to) as bad is a particularly vile motive. And you know what? I agree with that premise.
That's fine, but I, for one, *don't* agree with that. "Hate crime" is a made-up label to hide the true evil behind a particular action. As soon as you start implying that it's less evil for someone to commit any particular crime on someone who shares identifying characteristics (sex, skin color, sexual orientation, religion, whatever) than it is to commit an identical crime on someone who does not share those identifying characteristics based upon the presumption that it is those characteristics that was the reason for the crime, then you are bordering on legitimizing the idea of thought-crime. And I say that as someone who has, in fact, been the victim of "hate crime" (I was physically assaulted in high school by three guys who had, ahem, somewhat more melanin content in their skin than I did, even though I had never seen, talked to, or in any other way interacted with them).
For whatever it is worth, I really couldn't care less if those guys hated me because I was white. That's their problem. On the other hand, I very much care that they decided to sneak up behind and sucker punch me. Plenty of people have disliked me in the past, and I suspect plenty more will in the future. Some probably had (or will have) good reasons; others not so much. Whatever; I won't lose sleep over it. However, I would really prefer that those people who are torqued off at me for whatever reason they have *don't* try to break my nose (or worse). In exchange for that consideration, I will extend that same courtesy to those who get on my nerves.
No doubt. I was rather surprised -- and not in a good way -- by the specs, myself.
For comparison, my Suzuki V-Strom (admittedly, with only half as many wheels =) gets between 40 and 60 miles per gallon, depending upon how hard I twist the throttle, and cost less than 10% of the cost of this car, even including all of the aftermarket accessories I've added to it.
People pay for what they value. If low tier jobs have low pay scales, it's because there is a ready supply of labor to fill those positions, even though the pay sucks. OTOH, highly skilled workers, especially in a niche industry, are rather more difficult to come by, and the pay scales reflect that value. That's not pathological, and that's not greedy. That's rewarding those who are willing to invest the time and effort into making themselves more valuable to prospective employers, and that's a Good Thing.
As I understood it, the Tesla Roadster *was* a Lotus Elise, albeit hacked to pieces to fit the electric engine, batteries, etc. in place of the typical internal combustion engine and gas tank.
I'm pretty sure the argument wasn't "just shuffle responsibilities around so it looks like we are cutting waste", but rather was "put departments on the cutting block, move the responsibilities that really are needed to another department, and dispose of the rest."
Life is going to continue happening on local time. It does not matter what the time number is, but lunch is still going to be when the sun is overhead, etc. So instead of having to worry about whether your devices are showing the correct time in-flight (something very few people would care about)...
I think you missed my point.
In flight, I generally couldn't care less about what time zone I'm in; you're right. However, when I am at the airport with a boarding pass that says my flight departs at 11:30, and my watch says 10:15, do I have fifteen minutes or an hour and fifteen minutes to get to the gate (or more, depending upon how many time zones I've crossed)? I also had an experience once where I traveled from Texas to Arizona, where I spent an hour wandering around a college campus until I found a security guard (who thought I was nuts for expecting campus offices to be open at 6:00 am). I had unknowingly traveled from Central daylight savings time to Mountain standard time, making me two hours early for an 8:00 am prospective student orientation. Those are the kind of inconveniences a single, universal time zone would solve. I'm not arguing that everybody around the world would eat lunch when the clock shows noon; rather that we would all have a common number on our clock, no matter where in the world we lived, and as I noted, that would cause other difficulties that may or may not be as bad as the difficulties we already have.
Slashdot Mirror
I would still think that *MOST* people using Android phones aren't going to be terribly concerned about the OS version they are running. Looking at your list, I'm not terribly interested in most of this, and I'm a geek:
1) Meh. I've got two Android devices using two slightly different keyboards. They both work. The biggest problem I have is that my fingers are a little too big to use the tiny keys on my phone, which means I sometimes hit the upper case button instead of an "A", the numeric key "lock" instead of the "N" or "M", the "L" instead of the backspace, etc., and that's a limitation of real estate on the screen rather than software. The *second* biggest problem I have is that the CPU on my phone, which is getting a bit long in the tooth now, is sometimes bogged down by the various applications running on the phone so that it registers a long key press rather than just a tap, and gives me a special character rather than the simple alphabetic key I actually typed. Again, that's more of a hardware problem than a software problem; a faster CPU, such as I would have in a newer phone, would likely minimize or eliminate this problem (which, in fact, it does on my Streak 7).
2) Again, meh. Maybe I would be more impressed if I had actually seen the "new color schemes, UI changes and polish" but what I have works.
3) I've had this since 2.0 on my phone (I'm running 2.1 now) by installing the "System" app. It's free, and it does everything you describe, so again, not something that I would update for.
4) Okay, this is cool. I've played with Asterisk, so having a SIP phone on my cell phone or tablet would be something I'd like to have, and might even be something I'd upgrade for. However, I doubt that I am indicative of Android users in general. In particular, if I told my wife that she could have a SIP phone on her Android phone, and that she could use it to make VoIP calls through my Asterisk server, she'd probably quote that line from Finding Nemo: "It's like he's trying to speak to me...I can feel it!"
5) Maybe I'm missing the point here (but if I am, odds are non-technical users will, too) but I have a "Downloads" directory on my Android devices, where I can view and control my downloads. I haven't downloaded too many things from other than a browser, so maybe that's the issue, but again, this feature doesn't give me much incentive to upgrade.
As a case in point, my wife is still using 2.0 on her Android phone, even though our carrier has released 2.1.something for our platform. Why hasn't she upgraded? Because 2.0 does what she *needs* it to do: make calls, browse the web, send and receive text messages, check her e-mail. She is also concerned about losing her settings and data if she upgrades. I used an app to backup my settings and data before I updated my phone. Nevertheless, I still had to spend about a week cleaning up my contacts list and I did lose all the data from one application (Fuelage, which I was using to monitor and track fuel consumption on my motorcycle, so not critical, but annoying). In other words, not upgrading is relatively painless for her, while upgrading is potentially painful, so she has decided not to bother. THAT is a typical non-geek Android user's attitude, IMHO.
There also should be laws against big media from promoting any one candidate or black-listing them like they do...
^^^I was with you until here^^^
;)
IMHO, for however much or however little that is worth, a private media company should be allowed to promote or ignore whatever candidates they want without government interference. If I built and ran a successful media company, then I would greatly resent government telling me who and what I was allowed to promote on my network.
Consider it this way...suppose you built a blog on your own web site. Suppose on your blog, you consistently and vocally endorse some political candidate, political party or political ideology. Would you want government telling you that you were required by law to give equal "air time" to opposing candidates, parties or ideologies? The way I see it, this is a First Amendment issue: I have the right to speak my political views without government interference; the government does not have the right to tell me that I may speak my political views ONLY so long as I spend equal time espousing the opposing political view. It may be a moral issue, as well: should Pro-Life groups have to provide equal coverage of Pro-Choice groups? Should organizations supporting gay marriage be required to also promote a Fundamentalist Christian view of marriage? Let's carry it to an absurd extreme, just for grins: should the U.S. Army's web site also spend equal time in support of Al Qaeda? Of course not! So why should private media companies like CBS, Fox, CNN, Time-Warner, etc. be required BY LAW to provide equal coverage to all candidates?
(But then again, I think Ron Paul IS a good candidate, so YMMV
Nearly x86 PC since the 1980s has supported BIOS, but every ARM platform has something different.
The operative word being "Nearly".
:)
I own a few x86 devices (2 x Whistle Interjets and 1 Cobalt Raq 550) that are a bit of a PITA to customize with a modern OS. I managed to put my own FreeBSD operating system on the Interjets, but for the life of me, I could not get them to boot Linux (granted, I didn't try really hard since they are 486 machines and FreeBSD was fine for running an internal-only DNS server). I've tried and failed over and over again to get the Raq 550 to boot a Slackware or Gentoo 2.6.x Linux kernel, since IIRC, it was originally designed to run a custom version of Red Hat with a 2.4.x kernel. I've heard some people have had success with Debian...I should probably give that a try some time, but, well...it's not exactly a high priority
I know you were making a joke (and for the record, it was kind of funny), but FWIW, the Mayans didn't die out. I was in Guatemala hanging out with a bunch of Mayans not quite two years ago (who, incidentally, were asking me what was with the "Mayan" 2012 thing they had been hearing about, lol). They've largely been incorporated into the culture of the countries in which they now live, but they still keep their ancestral lineage and speak their various Mayan dialects (Tzutachiel, IIRC, was the dialect spoken by the group I was with) as well Spanish.
By speaking...err, "typing"...in Latin?
You haven't lived until you've eaten fresh duck roasted over a pool of molten lava ;)
What purpose do you tea party guys think the government serves if not to protect its fund-raisers?
I very rarely "FTFY" someone, but...FTFY.
You will create disasters worse than that of any communist dictator if you think that you can just remove all regulation and have the free market spring into existence, like a maiden from the lake.
I was ready to take exception to this comment, until I decided to check my theory with Google...:
Time's Top 10 Environmental Disasters
Lenntech.com's Top 10 Anthropogenic Environmental Disasters
Business Pundit's "World's Worst Environmental Disasters Caused by Companies
Just off the cuff, it looks like most of these were caused by corporations operating in nominally democratic countries rather than by communist states. I guess maybe you're right on this one...
In theory, that is what laws and government regulations are supposed to do: force the people/companies responsible to internalize the externalities that are the tragedy of the commons.
That's great, in theory, but in reality, the people/companies responsible have the government regulators in their back pocket. What we have right now is a system where there is no natural (for lack of a better word) control upon corporations to get them to look beyond next quarter profits, so we substitute that with an artificial control (government regulation) instead.
If you really want to fix the problem, you need to create a system where things that are bad for the general population are inherently bad for the corporations. Unfortunately, I have no idea how to do that.
Again, as I've mentioned elsewhere in that thread, nothing you said here is unique to corporations. Allow me to provide a government anecdote to illustrate my point:
Back in the day, the city of Chicago accepted Federal funds to build and maintain an airport known as Meigs Field. Meigs Field provided General Aviation (GA) access to downtown Chicago for business and personal aircraft until the '90s when Mayor Daley decided that it would be more profitable for the city to tear up the airport and develop that land for other purposes. The Feds took the city of Chicago to court for violating a contract that said that the city would accept Federal funds for the airport in exchange for continuing to maintain and operate the airport for some period of time, and the courts decided in the Feds' favor: the city of Chicago broke the terms of the contract, and would have to pay a penalty ($150,000-$200,000 IIRC) per month -- or maybe it was per quarter or per year, I don't recall exactly -- until the airport was operational again, or until the contract term was up. Meigs Field is still just a memory, despite the "penalty" because the current development of that land brings in more revenue than the penalty takes away, even after factoring in the loss of airport revenue. In other words, the "penalty" levied against the city of Chicago is no more than just another operating cost. In this case, as you said, it was more lucrative for the city of Chicago to break the law than it was to keep the law, and therefore the law was ignored. Unlike in your explanation, however, the law was ignored by a municipal government rather than by a corporation.
I always find it interesting how people tend to polarize at extreme ends in any kind of debate, with very, very few people -- or at least, very, very few vocal people -- in the middle. It's kind of like an inverse bell curve.
How that applies to the current discussion: I agree that there are significant problems with free market economies. People are inherently greedy, some more so than others, but at our core, all of us are most concerned with self-interest. People are also inherently short-sighted. Since corporations are nothing more than groups of people working together for a common goal (shared greed and shared self-interest), it stands to reason that corporations will display the exact same shortcomings that are inherent in the people who run those corporations. In other words, corporations will *also* tend towards greed and self-interest.
Unfortunately, those problems are not limited solely to individuals and corporations. Governments are also groups of people working together for a common goal, and consequently also inherit those same, ugly characteristics. Politicians, like CxOs, make decisions based upon short-term "profit" -- "what will win the *next* election?"...even if that means you'll have a bigger mess to clean up later.
So yeah, capitalism has it's problems, but so does EVERY other system composed of human beings, including governments. Perhaps I shoudl say "*especially* including governments", since governments, by definition, have the unique ability to coerce their "customers" into paying for their services.
Technically, you are correct, although that's sometimes easier said than done. I'd guess that you probably have never had to wire up a house like mine. I live in a log home that was built in the '70s. Running CAT-5 between drywall panels is no big deal, if you have the tools (fish tape, a long, long drill bit if you want to go between floors, etc.), but running CAT-5 through an already-built log home is a real PITA. Yes, you can just tack the cable to the walls and ceiling, but there are a number of practical reasons not to do that. IME, at least, exposed wiring is much more likely to get damaged than wiring behind a wall. Furthermore, wiring along the floor is likely to be a tripping hazard, and don't forget that there's still a 100m length restriction on CAT-5 cable. My house has three floors, so running cable around all the walls and up all the stairs will eat up 100m a lot faster than you might expect. Also, I'm not sure if you could leave the wires in place when you sell the home, since I found out when I bought my house that any runs of electrical wire (might just be 120v, but I don't know for sure) that is longer than some length (6 feet, IIRC) cannot be left exposed, per the building codes in my area. Finally, tacking wires all over a beautiful log home is just, well, tacky. A married guy (like me) who tried to do something like that wouldn't remain married for long :) Fortunately, WiFi is a much easier, much more aesthetic and suitably workable solution in my neighborhood (not too many neighbors, and generous spacing between the my house and my neighbors).
For OP, filling all the staple holes that were left when you remove the CAT-5 and repainting the walls so the landlord doesn't keep your deposit might be a factor, too.
...but for some reason my house chooses to be the exception to the rule. I've always had trouble getting 2.4GHz to reach to certain portions of the house, but when I added 5GHz (Apple Airport Extreme) I can now easily get a signal from anywhere in the house and even outside...
There's the phenomenon...
...I can see 5-6 (check that, right now it's 9!) neighbors' APs on 2.4GHz, but so far I'm the only one on 5...
...and there, I'd say, is your explanation for it.
Corporations, as a collection of individuals, seek to create wealth, not destroy it.
Corporations seek to control wealth, by any means necessary. [emphasis mine]
Yup. I seem to recall reading somewhere something along the lines of, "he who has the power to destroy a resource, controls that resource." It's been a while, so I may not have the wording exactly right, but you get the point.
Adafruit.com sells a Geiger counter kit. They specifically state that it's not for life-or-death situations, but it sounds to me like all you really need is a little peace of mind. For $99, plus shipping and a little elbow grease, this should do the trick.
If, on the other hand, you have reasonable cause to think that there is a real threat in your area, then disregard my suggestion. I don't know enough about the subject to provide the answers you need.
Incidentally, I believe there is a logical fallacy here...:
No matter how much time and effort you put into training a dog, it's not going to be able to write complex software. No matter how much time and effort you put into 100m running, you're not going to run faster than Usain Bolt.
If I am a dog, I am not going to care about writing complex software; I am going to care about running the Iditarod, or retrieving ducks, depending upon what kind of a dog I am. And there is at least a chance that I will be very, very good at one of those things. Likewise, Usain Bolt probably had someone tell him that he would never be faster than whoever his best competitor was...and that person was wrong because Usain Bolt had a talent for running and worked hard to nurture and develop that talent. But I'll bet that I'm a better network administrator than Usain Bolt, because that is an area where I have some degree of skill. So you're right, no, not everyone can be faster than Usain Bolt...but you're also wrong because those who have a talent for running AND who expend a sufficient degree of effort developing that talent will have a much better chance of beating him than someone who simply expects to show up and receive the same reward, which is all I was saying in the first place.
Policitians are the least likely to know what is right: the only thing they care about is what keeps them in power.
Actually, I think it may be even worse than that. With 540 elected officials in the Federal government alone (one president, one vice-president, one hundred elected senators, and 338 congressmen and women), I would wager that someone has the right answer to every problem our nation faces. It's just that most of them are more interested in being popular than in being right.
The motive behind a crime is *THE* number one factor used in judging sentencing.
Okay, I'm with you so far. There are cases where motive will make a difference, for example, you were involved in an accident ("accident" being the operative word) that resulted in someone else's death. If there is no intent to harm others, it's hard to argue a case for murder. You may still deserve some punishment for acting irresponsibly or stupidly, but even I am hard-pressed to argue that someone who simply didn't foresee the consequences of a particular action should be judged as harshly as someone who knew what the outcome (i.e., the death of someone else) would be.
What do you think the difference is between first-degree murder and manslaughter? It's all about motive. Did you plan in detail how to kill the person, channelling your hatred toward your carefully plotted ends, or did you unintentionally, spur-of-the-moment end up causing someone's death? You better believe that matters!
Maybe. If it truly was unintentional, like I described above, then sure, I agree. However, if you are talking about a crime of passion...well, we're starting to diverge a bit.
Look at it this way. Suppose I were to kill someone (VERY unlikely, but just suppose). Does it matter to the victim if his murder was planned out in extreme detail or if it was a spur-of-the-moment crime of passion? He's still dead. His family doesn't hurt less if I just lost my temper than if I planned out the crime beforehand; they still lost a family member. Finally, if I am a murderer, am I really any less a danger to society if I have a tendency to fly off the handle or if I plot out my murders before conducting them? I would argue that giving someone an *excuse* for murdering ("Look, don't sweat it. You caught your husband in bed with someone else. That's a crime of passion. You'll only get five years, and be out on parole in two.") rather making them face the enormity of the crime they committed is inherently a Bad Thing.
Hate crime law is all about *motive*. It's the basic premise that committing a crime because you view their whole "group" (which they have no choice whether or not to belong to) as bad is a particularly vile motive. And you know what? I agree with that premise.
That's fine, but I, for one, *don't* agree with that. "Hate crime" is a made-up label to hide the true evil behind a particular action. As soon as you start implying that it's less evil for someone to commit any particular crime on someone who shares identifying characteristics (sex, skin color, sexual orientation, religion, whatever) than it is to commit an identical crime on someone who does not share those identifying characteristics based upon the presumption that it is those characteristics that was the reason for the crime, then you are bordering on legitimizing the idea of thought-crime. And I say that as someone who has, in fact, been the victim of "hate crime" (I was physically assaulted in high school by three guys who had, ahem, somewhat more melanin content in their skin than I did, even though I had never seen, talked to, or in any other way interacted with them).
For whatever it is worth, I really couldn't care less if those guys hated me because I was white. That's their problem. On the other hand, I very much care that they decided to sneak up behind and sucker punch me. Plenty of people have disliked me in the past, and I suspect plenty more will in the future. Some probably had (or will have) good reasons; others not so much. Whatever; I won't lose sleep over it. However, I would really prefer that those people who are torqued off at me for whatever reason they have *don't* try to break my nose (or worse). In exchange for that consideration, I will extend that same courtesy to those who get on my nerves.
No doubt. I was rather surprised -- and not in a good way -- by the specs, myself.
For comparison, my Suzuki V-Strom (admittedly, with only half as many wheels =) gets between 40 and 60 miles per gallon, depending upon how hard I twist the throttle, and cost less than 10% of the cost of this car, even including all of the aftermarket accessories I've added to it.
Beat me to it, dang it.
When paid for by U.S. taxpayers' money, YES!!!
People pay for what they value. If low tier jobs have low pay scales, it's because there is a ready supply of labor to fill those positions, even though the pay sucks. OTOH, highly skilled workers, especially in a niche industry, are rather more difficult to come by, and the pay scales reflect that value. That's not pathological, and that's not greedy. That's rewarding those who are willing to invest the time and effort into making themselves more valuable to prospective employers, and that's a Good Thing.
As I understood it, the Tesla Roadster *was* a Lotus Elise, albeit hacked to pieces to fit the electric engine, batteries, etc. in place of the typical internal combustion engine and gas tank.
I'm pretty sure the argument wasn't "just shuffle responsibilities around so it looks like we are cutting waste", but rather was "put departments on the cutting block, move the responsibilities that really are needed to another department, and dispose of the rest."
Life is going to continue happening on local time. It does not matter what the time number is, but lunch is still going to be when the sun is overhead, etc. So instead of having to worry about whether your devices are showing the correct time in-flight (something very few people would care about)...
I think you missed my point.
In flight, I generally couldn't care less about what time zone I'm in; you're right. However, when I am at the airport with a boarding pass that says my flight departs at 11:30, and my watch says 10:15, do I have fifteen minutes or an hour and fifteen minutes to get to the gate (or more, depending upon how many time zones I've crossed)? I also had an experience once where I traveled from Texas to Arizona, where I spent an hour wandering around a college campus until I found a security guard (who thought I was nuts for expecting campus offices to be open at 6:00 am). I had unknowingly traveled from Central daylight savings time to Mountain standard time, making me two hours early for an 8:00 am prospective student orientation. Those are the kind of inconveniences a single, universal time zone would solve. I'm not arguing that everybody around the world would eat lunch when the clock shows noon; rather that we would all have a common number on our clock, no matter where in the world we lived, and as I noted, that would cause other difficulties that may or may not be as bad as the difficulties we already have.