In a country of 300M people, $140B is only $50 per person. Comparing the price to Google's market cap is silly. For a big infrastructure project like this they would, of course, seek new capital to cover the cost. This is affordable.
At $50/person, or approximately $225 per household, amortized over 5 years, the cost becomes less than a dollar a week.
The reason they joke is because short of violent revolution there isn't a thing you can do about it. The majority of the media outlets are owned by a handful of rich old insiders that are gonna make damned sure anybody that doesn't "play ball" never gets heard, look up the John Stewart video on Ron Paul where when it looked like people might actually vote for him he became "he who shall not be named" with reporters even listing who came in first, second, FOURTH and fifth, while making sure the name Ron Paul was never spoken. At the end of the clip Stewart shows a reporter who points this out, saying "We are talking about Christie and Palin who aren't even running, and nobody is talking about Paul who is doing good in the polls" to which the anchor got a douchebag smirk and said "Well if you get footage of Palin or Christie let us know, you can just keep the Paul stuff".
You can't fix a corrupt system by following the rules of that system, because they will simply change the rules to insure you can't win. This video on voting says it better than I can but the simple fact is at the end of the day they own the media, they control what the populace knows and is told, and they write the big fat checks to get the laws they want passed. To quote the late great George Carlin "Know why things never change? Because the owners of this country don't want change! They own you, they own everything worth having in this country and they do NOT want things to get better because its not good for business." and that is the truth.
You can protest in your little free speech zone that is far away from anybody that could be bothered, you can occupy until your hair turns grey and you look like just another one of the growing homeless, it just doesn't matter as the top 1% control the government, the money with both the Fed and Wall Street, and they control the media. Short of a full on violent revolution there is simply nothing you can do, all voting does is replace one puppet with another and the one you kicked out gets a cushy job with a lobbying firm so those you elect can see first hand the cushy position waiting for them if they play ball. Your vote means nothing, and unless your last name is Rothschild or Rockefeller your opinion means less than nothing.
Friends are telling me that the USA is going to implode financially. When it happens, because of debt and deficit, they believe the country will divide into four. Texas will go it alone. Alaska will not be defensible financially, and the Chinese which hold so much American dollars will perhaps get paid 1/10th cent for every dollar owed. And this is due to corruption, where citizens or businesses sell out their country.
Yep, that's what US politicians do best, appeasing their sponsors, they will quite happily deny reality and make total fools of themselves because they don't give a flying fuck what anyone else thinks. Doesn't matter that they set up and ran the committee, nor is it relevant that this guy was just doing his job. There was a fuck up, (in that the opinion was released to the outside), someone needs to be sacrificed to appease the gods..err...sponsors.
To me this sort of behavior tells me all I need to know about those particular politicians. They are the type of leaders who would routinely quell dissent by denying reality and silencing sympathizers. More than a few US politicians have the same default policy toward climate change, the ring leader of that well-established group is Senator Inhofe.
Improvements are happening to your webmail all the time, it's just they are for the advertisers and buyers of your personal data;)
Now Google sends ads to your Gmail inbox, and claims you opted into that. You can go to settings and turn it off, but then it displays ads at the top of the screen. This is obviously going to get worse and worse. Like Youtube, where ad infestation is nearly intolerable already and rapidly deteriorating. And it is just downright creepy when Google snoops my mail and runs the same pushy, stupid ad in Youtube over and over. Moral: there is no such thing as a free lunch. Second Moral: if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. Third Moral: the writing is on the wall, the way of Google is the way of pain for the average netizen. Something needs to be done. Not sure what. Google is rapidly becoming what Microsoft always wanted to be: proprietor of the internet. We're probably saved from a worse fate if Microsoft or horrors, Apple managed to secure that position, but it's still bad. This kind of infrastructure needs to be a kind of commons like the highways, power grid, sewage system and so on. A life under the gaze of Google, dancing on Google's string, is just not a life I can accept, and by now it is abundantly clear, that is just where this is all heading, veneer of benevolence notwithstanding.
I opted for yahoo.com mail and paid the annual fee to eliminate many, if not most adverts. I now get more adverts via youtube than via any other internet facility. Still, yahoo.com for $20 per year is less than 10 cents per day and for significantly reduced adverts is great.
Supply and demand. Piss off the doctors and medical industry, and either the docs will retire early, change career path, while disincentivizing the young from entering the field.
If you want to address the "why" of health care being so expensive and limited, maybe you should first understand the "how" of *regulation and it's effects along with the lack of proper industry standards. A lot of our healthcare issues boils down to the entitlement mentality and shoving the burden of support on others without just compensation.
== Many many doctors I have met who worked in the USA, as surgeons, as GPs etc, returned to Canada to practice. Here is what they told me. a) As a heart surgeon, I found so many patients I could cure, but they did not have the means to cover the operations cost. b) After paying fees, and insurance, and always being fearful of a malpractice suit, forcing me to send the patient to innumerable tests, just to cover my ass, found there was no joy in being a medical doctor c) Hospitals are for profit, which means that examinations, or examination approvals are designed to squeeze the last bit of money from the patient or from his insurance company. d)As a surgeon I returned to Canada to practice medicine, free from lawsuits, free to all residents of the province, where the dream of saving lives by entering into medicine, is being fulfilled. e) I returned to a community, I have about 3000 dossiers on active and occasional patients. I am more than a for profit doctor. I earn an above average income. I do not need to have more than two homes. (City and cottage)
This must be a recent thing. I worked for a factory back in the early 1990's that had a mixture of US and German made machinery. We needed to carry both metric and imperial tools and spares.
== Was the imperial toolset for the German or American Machinery? Also, was it not the use of American measure that caused a major satellite to crash due to mis-calculations.
As a way to start towards going metric, the weather could be stated in both F and C degrees, and after 15 months, drop Fareheit mentions. Join Latin America, Mexico, Europe, China, Canada, India, and even England
For the rest of the world 'Made in the USA' means 'Heavy, will break down, and none of your tools will fit'.
May sound harsh, but that is my experience of industrial equipment and the feelings of those who work with it.
== When is the USA going to switch to metric measurements, including screws, nuts, bolts, lengths, and weights. The USA is in a minority position when I buy products, as my metric tool set works with all products but those made in the USA. A close match to an American size is my 13mm wrench, which is a half-inch.
If you're a competent programmer and live in the SF Bay Area, wages are definitely not flat, to the point of absurdity. There are kids just coming out of college making $80k or more as a starting salary, and quickly rising up to $120k+ within only a few years of experience.
Are you one of them? We hear about others, and what the super exceptional person can earn. Normally that wage earner has a doctorate degree to add to his programming skills.
Haven't they seen that there are already wireless charging standards???
Gee, in the old analog radio days, we had slug tuned if transformers (resonance was used to get electrical isolation and high coupling. Tube and early transistor radios used if transformers. (Two stages for a cheap radio, three stages for a very sensitive radio with controllable rf gain. The only idea that I see is that Apple applied this concept to transfer power, in place of signals.
I live in the capital of California. A few months ago, I spent an entire day looking for an alarm clock. Note: Not a limited class Mercedes. Note: Not a one of a kind Van Gogh. A fucking alarm clock. The only alarm clocks to be found were shoddy, cheap pieces of crap without a brand name. The majority of them were ridiculous 'phone docks'.
Amazon? Ten minutes of searching, done.
Instead of spending locally? You know why we're not spending locally? Because brick and mortar stores are fucking clueless.
Aww, is da widdle Best Buy gonna close?
Fuck off. We live in a global economy. I've no duty to support your failed business.
Our dollar store had alarm clocks (quartz operated) for a buck. I have one now for 3 years, and I am on the third penlite cell. I also sleep next to my wife and my clock radio. Both can wake me up.
For my part, everything in my house, save the gaming rigs, uses encrypted storage not because I have anything terribly important stored, but because I want it to be as difficult and time-consuming as humanly possible for the jackboots to find absolutely nothing. I'm sort of an asshole like that.
You are not alone in your thinking. Why don't the police do the archiving and the management. Read Bruce Schiener. http://www.schneier.com/ and his comments about risk, etc.
Microsoft method: Milk them for every cent. Linux method: Free is free. Nobody can hold a gun to your head under the GPL.
Its the reaction to Android, vs W8, to Linux servers vs MS Servers, Open Source Databases vs MSSQL,
MS is on the downhill slippery slopes. In 5 years, MS will be selling off it's assets to generate cash. In 10 years, it will be around as another IBM--lean and mean.
Here is my situation. My home is a duplex. On the main floor my wife and I have a bedroom, and my son-in-law, daughter and three grandkids share the rest of the home. There is a basement bachelor apartment where I do my Compooter Science stuff, and write some humor. My second floor is a tenant residence, where my two sons and significant others reside.
Two years ago I took the flu vaccine and the influenza vaccine (the latter is only once per lifetime) Last year, I choose to take the flu vaccine. The rest of the family poo-pooed the idea, and ignored my pleading. Well... My son in law contracted pneumonia, and the flu, one after the other. He had fully congested lungs, and a few days of medium-high fever. In the period of about two week's the entire house was with the flu, fever. vomiting and bedridden. I was the nurse, as I was the only one to not get ill.
So, do what you wish, but if you are 50+, the vaccine may save your life. Actually, it may save your live no matter your age. The very first year you take the vaccine, your injection point may be a bit tender for a maximum of three days. Each year thereafter, (booster shots), there is no more reaction after the innoculation.
My wife bowed to my wishes and had the innoculations. My siblings and grandchildren did not. Somehow I think my wife and I will be playing housemaid/nurse this year. My wife says "If she did not take the vaccines and fell ill, she would not have to play nurse". I retorted, being alive is better than the consequences.
In Montreal, the vaccine is free if administered from the family doctor or local health Clinic. If we get the pharmacist to do it, there is a $20.00 charge.
Careful with the CamelCase, but http://etherape.sourceforge.net/ is a fun real-time connection visualizer. We used that for a lot of network demonstrations.
The command-line based "iftop" is also really nice to get a quick realtime overview of what's using bandwidth.
I think she'll have lots of fun with any of the Wardriving software, which would also give you maps.
For Android, there are a few pretty interesting real-time displays. "Wifi Analyzer" will have her running all over the place exploring wifi signal attenuation. "OpenSignal" is also a cool app I just started playing with that will let you do the same with cell towers, which also shows their location on a map. Also look at "GPS Status" to visualize where all of the GPS satellites are, and what kind of attenuation you'd get from each one's signal with trees / buildings / mountains in the way.
Have fun!
I think that the child can learn from http://class.stanford.edu/networking/Fall2012 There are some very basic informations. Pictorial representations, and concepts of flow, etc. I as a 13 year old became fixated on electronics, and this child may be fixated the same way on the TCP/IP.
The next generation of students will not even know how to type. SIRI will convert text to words. Now we need a C and a C++ version of SIRI. Even better, lets include a dynamic translator with SIRI.
If you consider North America, the price is right. I acytually bought a Maxwell brand of trickle charger, for about $5.00 and found a no name brand of nickel hydride rechargables at a buck a piece for 2200mah.
It was a good deal. I do believe the NH rechargables costy no more to manufacture than alkaline cells. The extra cost is for perceived benefit, as recharging the cells cuts into future sales, and profit.
Many many years ago I was a camera buff. I used 35mm film; I had a darkroom, and was keen for about 10 years. Then I discovered computers.... I changed hobbies, and saved money.
Hi Chu You are correct. There are many factors governing battery life. The students first tested with flashlights, butwhat level of dim light is an indication of exhausted battery? They tested penlight (AA) batteries with continuous use. We know that the quality is very variable. However, under the identical conditions, the RAY-O-VAC ones outperformed Durocell by 10-15 minutes, using the identical motor, and the same classroom. Students bought their batteries, and it could be that one vendor manufactured a better batch than the other. The students tried about 6 of each type, as there were three test beds. ROV batteries provided the most capacity in the AA package. Panasonic came next. With 19 AA cells from each vendor, we could draw a statistical conclusion that we are 95 percent confident of the differences
I for example, know that for my outdoor weather station, alkaline will basically freeze at -20C and so, lithium is preferred. Battery manufacturers are now promoting 10 year shelf life. The manufacturers cannot compete against each other on milli-amp-hour capacity. For what it is worth, I buy my batteries in packages of 40, from Costco. At that packaging density, the prices are respectable. Durocell and Energiser still demand an unwarranted triple premium price.
I am a pedophile. Note, I didn't say child molestor, as many people seem to equate that it is the same thing. I have never offended against any child, not even hanging around them or anything. I have lots of guilt, shame and self-hatred nonetheless because I know that my fixation is a mental illness. It means I will never be attracted to an adult, essentially meaning I will never have a mate or someone to grow old with, never have kids of my own or be married.
In my case, I acquired my sexual problem because I was in love with my best friend when we were both 12 and then he moved away and I never saw him again. This turned into a fixation on that age group, and by the time I was 18 I was self-medicating with narcotics. I was an addict for fifteen years or so, and during this time I avoided everything, and the result was that I didn't grow emotionally - I was still basically a teenager and stuck with my penchant for boys. I never gave myself a chance to outgrow it and mature. Because it's been so long that I've been stuck there, the fixation is probably permanent now. I'm recovering and growing now (not actively using drugs) and I hope maybe one day I will find myself attracted to adults, but I don't think it's going to happen now. Either way, I will never NOT be attracted to boys. I have been using child porn since I was 15 (and I'm in my mid-thirties now) and it has certainly been one of the reasons that I have been able to lead a chaste life. The other is that I'm on antidepressants and always been on narcotics, both of which utterly destroy your sex drive. Sure, I still masturbate(d), but my sex drive is/was low enough that I never really went into a state of desperation over it.
Of course, I've been suicidal off and on for my entire adult life. I have never grown into an adult. I have no license, no work experience, don't work, have not graduated from college, no degree, no career, never had a boyfriend or girlfriend, few friends, isolated, social anxiety, avoidance personality disorder, no money, no health insurance or anything. Never lived on my own (still live with parents). just completely dependent on my parents and not able to survive on my own.
There's no treatment. There's no group like AA (for us to meet and learn how to live with what we have, how to cope with it; the opposite of NAMBLA). You can't just tell a therapist or psychiatrist 'Oh btw, I'm a pedophile.' You can't just tell your friends, your parents, or anything. There's no support, there's no options for a recovery. There's no treatment. You are just fucked. It's a huge, gaping wound that you live with your entire life. You learn to just live with the daily agony and pain resulting from such a psychologically traumatic problem. It screws up your relationships. It's very depressing. I deserve a throat-slashing like a poor kid deserves presents for christmas. I wouldn't ever do anything to a boy because I would probably kill myself if I did.
I wish my life was over. That said, I am growing, painful as it may be. I've been finding ways to contribute back to society and ways to be constructive and help people. I donate my time and volunteer and things like that (NOT with children, obviously). I avoid boys like they are the 'enemy.' If people knew I was a pedophile they would all hate me and wish I was tortured, my balls cut off, beaten, starved, waterboarded, hanged, drawn and quartered - whatever would be the most extensively painful way to slowly die. It's tough knowing how all of society wishes I was dead. Well, almost all of them.
Most of the time I feel like I'm not a person.
Dear anonomyous Your autobiography fills me with sadness. My wishes are for you to not consider life termination. Your writing is a tragic situation which has gotten the better of you. I am not at all a medical person, but a mathematician, software engineer, with lots of empathy. I guess I try to understand things in a different way than the binary situation of Yes you are or No you are not. I have no
As posted earlier, Chaotic storage is great for automated pick lists and the picking is for low volume or high volumes of items. The reason is apparent. With low volumes, the device goes to the row, aisle bin, and selects the item, goes to the next place, and returns with the goods.
At high volume, (many many picks), the system can reorder the picking to optimise the routes within that warehouse area. Picker units do not cross zones.
If an item is very popular, the idea is to move it closer to the shipping docks where human hands can take it, package, and ship it after invoicing.
Like other picklist systems, the orders are best handled in next day daily batches. Immediate day delivery adds cost. With batching, the sorting for picking for air, road, and rail delivery can be performed at a first level, and then by location within the warehouse as the second level sort.
What's so ridiculous about this? There's dozens of potential battery chemistries which could do this - sodium ion, lithium air, nickel lithium, lithium sulfur, and on and on. The payoff for all fields could be incredible. Why not have an organized program to work on it? High cost, high risk, high reward - the kind of basic research that's perfect for government programs (leaving the incremental tweaking, production optimization, marketing, etc to private industry).
To give an example let's pick one field - transportation. What does "5x energy density and 1/5th the price" mean for transportation?
Current energy densities generally provide EV ranges between 100 and 250 miles. 5x - 500 to 1250 miles driving per charge. Which means a single charge provides a full day of charging. Which means that it doesn't matter how fast you can charge, so long as you can get a full charge when you sleep.
Let's go with 800 miles range. Which would be extended if you plugged in during meals and/or breaks. A car with prius-level streamlining will use about 250 watt hours per mile on the highway. That's a 125kWh pack. With 80% net wall-to-wheel efficiency, you need to provide about 156kWh. Over 8 hours, that's 20kW, or about 80A. Most new homes have in the ballpark of 200A boxes and worst case, you upgrade.
In short, these kind of batteries would entirely eliminate the main two complaint about EVs: range and charge time.
What about price? Li-ions are roughly $200 per kWh nowadays, which would make that pack. That's $25k just for your pack's cells - pretty darned pricey! Now, contrary to popular myth, these packs are generally rated for a decade or so to get down to 80% capacity, and the bigger your pack, the less you stress your cells, so they're not a high-replacement item (there's even a potential aftermarket for used packs). But that's a ton of money. However, $5k for the cells would be a *dramatic* improvement, and quite realistic when you consider how much it simplifies the rest of your vehicle.
All of this would come with a whole range of other benefits. You'd never have to go to a gas station again. Your fuel would cost a small fraction as much as gasoline. Your maintenance would be way lower. Even your brakes would wear down slower (regen). If smart grid features take off, you could make money by simply leaving your vehicle plugged in. Increasing vehicle power is comparatively very cheap versus gasoline and actually *increases* your vehicle's efficiency slightly (fatter conductors to handle the higher peaks = lower losses at under normal driving conditions). On and on and on.
In 2010 my grandkids in their school as a project asked 8 year olds to do a science project. One of the projects was compare the batteries on the market from brands such as Dollar store, Duracell, Ray-o-Vac, Panasonic, Sunbeam, and Energizer. All batteries were alkaline type. To perform the evaluation, they built some home made motors, using mail-order parts. A time clock started when the motors were started, and stopped when the motor armature stopped turning.
The dollar store batteries provided half the time of the others. The longest running batteries were Ray-o-Vac, followed by Panasonic, which retailed about half the cost of the cost of the Durocell and Energizer.
You have never seen a battery manufacturer compare his product against the competition, but these kids convinced me to not believe the TV commercials.
My disclaimer. I am not a pervert. I am a grandfather.
I have often thought of why leaders in children's camps, sports organizations, schools, and even religious institutions give rise to acquiring child pornography. This is my theory. In dealing with children, it becomes an obsession. You love your work, and you want to do your best for the kids under your belt. But this safe honest love for the kids generates a need for the individual to protect himself from doing harm to the kids, So, he seeks out the childporn, perhaps as a curiosity to see what attracts people to download and view it, or, for personal gratification. I bet dollars to doughnuts, that the children are safer because the individual possessed the porn, and probably relieved him/her self. than took that next step.
The evil side of child porn is that a child or group of children are exploited. The child is injured for life. Taking the videos or pictures or whatever, and photographing indecent acts should be met with the death penalty, or incarceration for life on a desert island.
> When you are in the military, you agree to follow the chain of command. If you don't like it, don't > work for the military and then start complaining about the rules.
However you also trust that that chain of command is working in the best interests of the people. When it becomes obvious that they are not, like when they are not actively prosecuting incidents like we saw in collateral murder, then I would say they broke the trust first.
=== The right to dissent must be included, except in war. Your commander may order you to do illegal acts. Who will be prosecuted when found out? Not the commander, that is for sure.
Hi there. Immigrant to the US from Canada here. I figured I'd just respond to the parent (mostly a troll) and some of the siblings here.
Immigration to the United States requires a significant amount of money and time. First, you have to qualify for either one of the immigrant visa categories, or come across on what's called a dual intent visa and then adjust status to Permanent Resident. These processes variously require interviews with USCIS and a significant wait for certain categories (more than a decade in a few, months to years for most), not to mention that the filing and other fees for the whole process can run into the thousands of dollars. (Did you know that USCIS, like the Post Office, doesn't take taxpayer dollars and instead is self-funded from filing fees? Good for you, not great for immigrants.)
If you came over on a nonimmigrant visa, like a visitor, work, or educational visa, you're likely going to have to return home before you can start the real immigration process, unless it's "dual intent" like the K-1 fiance(e) visa as I mentioned before.
No, we aren't required to take a test on civics and English. That is required when one naturalizes, or becomes a United States citizen. This has a prerequisite of legally residing continually in the US for three or five years, depending on the visa category in which you entered. (Oh, and another thousand dollars, thanks.) The process, like other USCIS processes, takes about a year in wait and processing time. The process is also entirely not required; one can continue to be a permanent resident for as long as one likes, as long as one continues to file for an extension of one's Permanent Resident status (i.e. green card).
I personally plan to become a US citizen (well, dual citizen) as soon as possible though, because it allows one to obtain a US Passport (faster border travel), means one is done with USCIS forever (barring very specific, very rare circumstances), and allows one to vote.
So I guess what I'm saying is, the next time you want to make assumptions about legal immigration, look into it first. It's quite complicated, expensive, and not for the faint of heart.
"Give me your tired, your poor"? Not so much.
==== Back to the original topic, the birth rate. Here is my point of view. Demand a standard of living that is above realistic. That is, expensive vacation cruises, Highly mortgaged homes on one acre lots, private schools, private medicine, must have new cars after 3-4 years, high cost of education and the latest electronic toys. So what is it, a new toy or unnecessarily lifestyle, or children? If you establish a need of restaurant living, high life styles, no savings, and debt for the toys, where is the moeny for that second or third child? And while I am not a follower of a religion that frowns on contraception, look to your own conjugal practices. In my province, 50 years ago 85% of couples married with a religious ceremony. Today, 52% are cohabiting without religion in the house. The provincial law now stipulates that a couple, cohabiting and with a child, are, after two years together, legally married. They do not require a justice of the peace to sign papers. So, when you look at why the birthrate is low, you need only look at the society's value system. New or devout religious families are having 7 to 8 children on the low side, and 15 to 18, on the high side. Many do not have TVs, or enjoy American style vacations. Their vacation is measured as success of their children.
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In a country of 300M people, $140B is only $50 per person. Comparing the price to Google's market cap is silly. For a big infrastructure project like this they would, of course, seek new capital to cover the cost. This is affordable.
At $50/person, or approximately $225 per household, amortized over 5 years, the cost becomes less than a dollar a week.
The reason they joke is because short of violent revolution there isn't a thing you can do about it. The majority of the media outlets are owned by a handful of rich old insiders that are gonna make damned sure anybody that doesn't "play ball" never gets heard, look up the John Stewart video on Ron Paul where when it looked like people might actually vote for him he became "he who shall not be named" with reporters even listing who came in first, second, FOURTH and fifth, while making sure the name Ron Paul was never spoken. At the end of the clip Stewart shows a reporter who points this out, saying "We are talking about Christie and Palin who aren't even running, and nobody is talking about Paul who is doing good in the polls" to which the anchor got a douchebag smirk and said "Well if you get footage of Palin or Christie let us know, you can just keep the Paul stuff".
You can't fix a corrupt system by following the rules of that system, because they will simply change the rules to insure you can't win. This video on voting says it better than I can but the simple fact is at the end of the day they own the media, they control what the populace knows and is told, and they write the big fat checks to get the laws they want passed. To quote the late great George Carlin "Know why things never change? Because the owners of this country don't want change! They own you, they own everything worth having in this country and they do NOT want things to get better because its not good for business." and that is the truth.
You can protest in your little free speech zone that is far away from anybody that could be bothered, you can occupy until your hair turns grey and you look like just another one of the growing homeless, it just doesn't matter as the top 1% control the government, the money with both the Fed and Wall Street, and they control the media. Short of a full on violent revolution there is simply nothing you can do, all voting does is replace one puppet with another and the one you kicked out gets a cushy job with a lobbying firm so those you elect can see first hand the cushy position waiting for them if they play ball. Your vote means nothing, and unless your last name is Rothschild or Rockefeller your opinion means less than nothing.
Friends are telling me that the USA is going to implode financially. When it happens, because of debt and deficit, they believe the country will divide into four. Texas will go it alone. Alaska will not be defensible financially, and the Chinese which hold so much American dollars will perhaps get paid 1/10th cent for every dollar owed. And this is due to corruption, where citizens or businesses sell out their country.
Yep, that's what US politicians do best, appeasing their sponsors, they will quite happily deny reality and make total fools of themselves because they don't give a flying fuck what anyone else thinks. Doesn't matter that they set up and ran the committee, nor is it relevant that this guy was just doing his job. There was a fuck up, (in that the opinion was released to the outside), someone needs to be sacrificed to appease the gods..err...sponsors.
To me this sort of behavior tells me all I need to know about those particular politicians. They are the type of leaders who would routinely quell dissent by denying reality and silencing sympathizers. More than a few US politicians have the same default policy toward climate change, the ring leader of that well-established group is Senator Inhofe.
What ever happened to free speech?
Improvements are happening to your webmail all the time, it's just they are for the advertisers and buyers of your personal data ;)
Now Google sends ads to your Gmail inbox, and claims you opted into that. You can go to settings and turn it off, but then it displays ads at the top of the screen. This is obviously going to get worse and worse. Like Youtube, where ad infestation is nearly intolerable already and rapidly deteriorating. And it is just downright creepy when Google snoops my mail and runs the same pushy, stupid ad in Youtube over and over. Moral: there is no such thing as a free lunch. Second Moral: if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. Third Moral: the writing is on the wall, the way of Google is the way of pain for the average netizen. Something needs to be done. Not sure what. Google is rapidly becoming what Microsoft always wanted to be: proprietor of the internet. We're probably saved from a worse fate if Microsoft or horrors, Apple managed to secure that position, but it's still bad. This kind of infrastructure needs to be a kind of commons like the highways, power grid, sewage system and so on. A life under the gaze of Google, dancing on Google's string, is just not a life I can accept, and by now it is abundantly clear, that is just where this is all heading, veneer of benevolence notwithstanding.
I opted for yahoo.com mail and paid the annual fee to eliminate many, if not most adverts. I now get more adverts via youtube than via any other internet facility. Still, yahoo.com for $20 per year is less than 10 cents per day and for significantly reduced adverts is great.
As the Canonical developer's Unity DE shows, Canonical is not really that interested in the opinions of its current users.
Charity begins at home. Ubuntu needs money to cover the cost of all it's offices, staff, and some reserve for growth and support.
If you are not happy about it, switch to another distribution.
I don't know what he was thinking, but I think we all can correctly guess what he learned about Washington and politics in general.
It's an old boys' club, the yes man gets ahead, and messengers get shot when exposing contradictions.
And you forgot to write "Palms get greased".
Supply and demand. Piss off the doctors and medical industry, and either the docs will retire early, change career path, while disincentivizing the young from entering the field.
If you want to address the "why" of health care being so expensive and limited, maybe you should first understand the "how" of *regulation and it's effects along with the lack of proper industry standards. A lot of our healthcare issues boils down to the entitlement mentality and shoving the burden of support on others without just compensation.
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Many many doctors I have met who worked in the USA, as surgeons, as GPs etc, returned to Canada to practice. Here is what they told me.
a) As a heart surgeon, I found so many patients I could cure, but they did not have the means to cover the operations cost.
b) After paying fees, and insurance, and always being fearful of a malpractice suit, forcing me to send the patient to innumerable tests, just to cover my ass, found there was no joy in being a medical doctor
c) Hospitals are for profit, which means that examinations, or examination approvals are designed to squeeze the last bit of money from the patient or from his insurance company.
d)As a surgeon I returned to Canada to practice medicine, free from lawsuits, free to all residents of the province, where the dream of saving lives by entering into medicine, is being fulfilled.
e) I returned to a community, I have about 3000 dossiers on active and occasional patients. I am more than a for profit doctor. I earn an above average income. I do not need to have more than two homes. (City and cottage)
This must be a recent thing. I worked for a factory back in the early 1990's that had a mixture of US and German made machinery. We needed to carry both metric and imperial tools and spares.
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Was the imperial toolset for the German or American Machinery? Also, was it not the use of American measure that caused a major satellite to crash due to mis-calculations.
As a way to start towards going metric, the weather could be stated in both F and C degrees, and after 15 months, drop Fareheit mentions. Join Latin America, Mexico, Europe, China, Canada, India, and even England
For the rest of the world 'Made in the USA' means 'Heavy, will break down, and none of your tools will fit'.
May sound harsh, but that is my experience of industrial equipment and the feelings of those who work with it.
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When is the USA going to switch to metric measurements, including screws, nuts, bolts, lengths, and weights.
The USA is in a minority position when I buy products, as my metric tool set works with all products but those made in the USA.
A close match to an American size is my 13mm wrench, which is a half-inch.
If you're a competent programmer and live in the SF Bay Area, wages are definitely not flat, to the point of absurdity. There are kids just coming out of college making $80k or more as a starting salary, and quickly rising up to $120k+ within only a few years of experience.
Are you one of them? We hear about others, and what the super exceptional person can earn. Normally that wage earner has a doctorate degree to add to his programming skills.
Haven't they seen that there are already wireless charging standards???
Gee, in the old analog radio days, we had slug tuned if transformers (resonance was used to get electrical isolation and high coupling. Tube and early transistor radios used if transformers. (Two stages for a cheap radio, three stages for a very sensitive radio with controllable rf gain.
The only idea that I see is that Apple applied this concept to transfer power, in place of signals.
Right. Instead of spending locally
I live in the capital of California. A few months ago, I spent an entire day looking for an alarm clock. Note: Not a limited class Mercedes. Note: Not a one of a kind Van Gogh. A fucking alarm clock. The only alarm clocks to be found were shoddy, cheap pieces of crap without a brand name. The majority of them were ridiculous 'phone docks'.
Amazon? Ten minutes of searching, done.
Instead of spending locally? You know why we're not spending locally? Because brick and mortar stores are fucking clueless.
Aww, is da widdle Best Buy gonna close?
Fuck off. We live in a global economy. I've no duty to support your failed business.
Our dollar store had alarm clocks (quartz operated) for a buck. I have one now for 3 years, and I am on the third penlite cell.
I also sleep next to my wife and my clock radio. Both can wake me up.
For my part, everything in my house, save the gaming rigs, uses encrypted storage not because I have anything terribly important stored, but because I want it to be as difficult and time-consuming as humanly possible for the jackboots to find absolutely nothing. I'm sort of an asshole like that.
You are not alone in your thinking. Why don't the police do the archiving and the management.
Read Bruce Schiener. http://www.schneier.com/ and his comments about risk, etc.
Microsoft method: Milk them for every cent.
Linux method: Free is free. Nobody can hold a gun to your head under the GPL.
Its the reaction to Android, vs W8, to Linux servers vs MS Servers, Open Source Databases vs MSSQL,
MS is on the downhill slippery slopes. In 5 years, MS will be selling off it's assets to generate cash. In 10 years, it will be around as another IBM--lean and mean.
Here is my situation.
My home is a duplex. On the main floor my wife and I have a bedroom, and my son-in-law, daughter and three grandkids share the rest of the home.
There is a basement bachelor apartment where I do my Compooter Science stuff, and write some humor.
My second floor is a tenant residence, where my two sons and significant others reside.
Two years ago I took the flu vaccine and the influenza vaccine (the latter is only once per lifetime)
Last year, I choose to take the flu vaccine. The rest of the family poo-pooed the idea, and ignored my pleading.
Well...
My son in law contracted pneumonia, and the flu, one after the other. He had fully congested lungs, and a few days of medium-high fever.
In the period of about two week's the entire house was with the flu, fever. vomiting and bedridden. I was the nurse, as I was the only one to not get ill.
So, do what you wish, but if you are 50+, the vaccine may save your life. Actually, it may save your live no matter your age.
The very first year you take the vaccine, your injection point may be a bit tender for a maximum of three days. Each year thereafter, (booster shots), there is no more reaction after the innoculation.
My wife bowed to my wishes and had the innoculations. My siblings and grandchildren did not. Somehow I think my wife and I will be playing housemaid/nurse this year. My wife says "If she did not take the vaccines and fell ill, she would not have to play nurse". I retorted, being alive is better than the consequences.
In Montreal, the vaccine is free if administered from the family doctor or local health Clinic. If we get the pharmacist to do it, there is a $20.00 charge.
Careful with the CamelCase, but http://etherape.sourceforge.net/ is a fun real-time connection visualizer. We used that for a lot of network demonstrations.
The command-line based "iftop" is also really nice to get a quick realtime overview of what's using bandwidth.
I think she'll have lots of fun with any of the Wardriving software, which would also give you maps.
For Android, there are a few pretty interesting real-time displays. "Wifi Analyzer" will have her running all over the place exploring wifi signal attenuation. "OpenSignal" is also a cool app I just started playing with that will let you do the same with cell towers, which also shows their location on a map. Also look at "GPS Status" to visualize where all of the GPS satellites are, and what kind of attenuation you'd get from each one's signal with trees / buildings / mountains in the way.
Have fun!
I think that the child can learn from http://class.stanford.edu/networking/Fall2012
There are some very basic informations. Pictorial representations, and concepts of flow, etc. I as a 13 year old became fixated on electronics, and this child may be fixated the same way on the TCP/IP.
Footnote: I pluraled information
The next generation of students will not even know how to type. SIRI will convert text to words. Now we need a C and a C++ version of SIRI. Even better, lets include a dynamic translator with SIRI.
Bye bye spelling and handwriting.
Brave New World
If you consider North America, the price is right. I acytually bought a Maxwell brand of trickle charger, for about $5.00 and found a no name brand of nickel hydride rechargables at a buck a piece for 2200mah.
It was a good deal. I do believe the NH rechargables costy no more to manufacture than alkaline cells. The extra cost is for perceived benefit, as recharging the cells cuts into future sales, and profit.
Many many years ago I was a camera buff. I used 35mm film; I had a darkroom, and was keen for about 10 years. Then I discovered computers.... I changed hobbies, and saved money.
Hi Chu
You are correct. There are many factors governing battery life. The students first tested with flashlights, butwhat level of dim light is an indication of exhausted battery? They tested penlight (AA) batteries with continuous use. We know that the quality is very variable. However, under the identical conditions, the RAY-O-VAC ones outperformed Durocell by 10-15 minutes, using the identical motor, and the same classroom. Students bought their batteries, and it could be that one vendor manufactured a better batch than the other. The students tried about 6 of each type, as there were three test beds. ROV batteries provided the most capacity in the AA package. Panasonic came next. With 19 AA cells from each vendor, we could draw a statistical conclusion that we are 95 percent confident of the differences
I for example, know that for my outdoor weather station, alkaline will basically freeze at -20C and so, lithium is preferred.
Battery manufacturers are now promoting 10 year shelf life. The manufacturers cannot compete against each other on milli-amp-hour capacity.
For what it is worth, I buy my batteries in packages of 40, from Costco. At that packaging density, the prices are respectable. Durocell and Energiser still demand an unwarranted triple premium price.
I am a pedophile. Note, I didn't say child molestor, as many people seem to equate that it is the same thing. I have never offended against any child, not even hanging around them or anything. I have lots of guilt, shame and self-hatred nonetheless because I know that my fixation is a mental illness. It means I will never be attracted to an adult, essentially meaning I will never have a mate or someone to grow old with, never have kids of my own or be married.
In my case, I acquired my sexual problem because I was in love with my best friend when we were both 12 and then he moved away and I never saw him again. This turned into a fixation on that age group, and by the time I was 18 I was self-medicating with narcotics. I was an addict for fifteen years or so, and during this time I avoided everything, and the result was that I didn't grow emotionally - I was still basically a teenager and stuck with my penchant for boys. I never gave myself a chance to outgrow it and mature. Because it's been so long that I've been stuck there, the fixation is probably permanent now. I'm recovering and growing now (not actively using drugs) and I hope maybe one day I will find myself attracted to adults, but I don't think it's going to happen now. Either way, I will never NOT be attracted to boys. I have been using child porn since I was 15 (and I'm in my mid-thirties now) and it has certainly been one of the reasons that I have been able to lead a chaste life. The other is that I'm on antidepressants and always been on narcotics, both of which utterly destroy your sex drive. Sure, I still masturbate(d), but my sex drive is/was low enough that I never really went into a state of desperation over it.
Of course, I've been suicidal off and on for my entire adult life. I have never grown into an adult. I have no license, no work experience, don't work, have not graduated from college, no degree, no career, never had a boyfriend or girlfriend, few friends, isolated, social anxiety, avoidance personality disorder, no money, no health insurance or anything. Never lived on my own (still live with parents). just completely dependent on my parents and not able to survive on my own.
There's no treatment. There's no group like AA (for us to meet and learn how to live with what we have, how to cope with it; the opposite of NAMBLA). You can't just tell a therapist or psychiatrist 'Oh btw, I'm a pedophile.' You can't just tell your friends, your parents, or anything. There's no support, there's no options for a recovery. There's no treatment. You are just fucked. It's a huge, gaping wound that you live with your entire life. You learn to just live with the daily agony and pain resulting from such a psychologically traumatic problem. It screws up your relationships. It's very depressing. I deserve a throat-slashing like a poor kid deserves presents for christmas. I wouldn't ever do anything to a boy because I would probably kill myself if I did.
I wish my life was over. That said, I am growing, painful as it may be. I've been finding ways to contribute back to society and ways to be constructive and help people. I donate my time and volunteer and things like that (NOT with children, obviously). I avoid boys like they are the 'enemy.' If people knew I was a pedophile they would all hate me and wish I was tortured, my balls cut off, beaten, starved, waterboarded, hanged, drawn and quartered - whatever would be the most extensively painful way to slowly die. It's tough knowing how all of society wishes I was dead. Well, almost all of them.
Most of the time I feel like I'm not a person.
Dear anonomyous
Your autobiography fills me with sadness. My wishes are for you to not consider life termination. Your writing is a tragic situation which has gotten the better of you. I am not at all a medical person, but a mathematician, software engineer, with lots of empathy. I guess I try to understand things in a different way than the binary situation of Yes you are or No you are not. I have no
As posted earlier, Chaotic storage is great for automated pick lists and the picking is for low volume or high volumes of items.
The reason is apparent. With low volumes, the device goes to the row, aisle bin, and selects the item, goes to the next place, and returns with the goods.
At high volume, (many many picks), the system can reorder the picking to optimise the routes within that warehouse area. Picker units do not cross zones.
If an item is very popular, the idea is to move it closer to the shipping docks where human hands can take it, package, and ship it after invoicing.
Like other picklist systems, the orders are best handled in next day daily batches. Immediate day delivery adds cost. With batching, the sorting for picking for air, road, and rail delivery can be performed at a first level, and then by location within the warehouse as the second level sort.
What's so ridiculous about this? There's dozens of potential battery chemistries which could do this - sodium ion, lithium air, nickel lithium, lithium sulfur, and on and on. The payoff for all fields could be incredible. Why not have an organized program to work on it? High cost, high risk, high reward - the kind of basic research that's perfect for government programs (leaving the incremental tweaking, production optimization, marketing, etc to private industry).
To give an example let's pick one field - transportation. What does "5x energy density and 1/5th the price" mean for transportation?
Current energy densities generally provide EV ranges between 100 and 250 miles. 5x - 500 to 1250 miles driving per charge. Which means a single charge provides a full day of charging. Which means that it doesn't matter how fast you can charge, so long as you can get a full charge when you sleep.
Let's go with 800 miles range. Which would be extended if you plugged in during meals and/or breaks. A car with prius-level streamlining will use about 250 watt hours per mile on the highway. That's a 125kWh pack. With 80% net wall-to-wheel efficiency, you need to provide about 156kWh. Over 8 hours, that's 20kW, or about 80A. Most new homes have in the ballpark of 200A boxes and worst case, you upgrade.
In short, these kind of batteries would entirely eliminate the main two complaint about EVs: range and charge time.
What about price? Li-ions are roughly $200 per kWh nowadays, which would make that pack. That's $25k just for your pack's cells - pretty darned pricey! Now, contrary to popular myth, these packs are generally rated for a decade or so to get down to 80% capacity, and the bigger your pack, the less you stress your cells, so they're not a high-replacement item (there's even a potential aftermarket for used packs). But that's a ton of money. However, $5k for the cells would be a *dramatic* improvement, and quite realistic when you consider how much it simplifies the rest of your vehicle.
All of this would come with a whole range of other benefits. You'd never have to go to a gas station again. Your fuel would cost a small fraction as much as gasoline. Your maintenance would be way lower. Even your brakes would wear down slower (regen). If smart grid features take off, you could make money by simply leaving your vehicle plugged in. Increasing vehicle power is comparatively very cheap versus gasoline and actually *increases* your vehicle's efficiency slightly (fatter conductors to handle the higher peaks = lower losses at under normal driving conditions). On and on and on.
In 2010 my grandkids in their school as a project asked 8 year olds to do a science project. One of the projects was compare the batteries on the market from brands such as Dollar store, Duracell, Ray-o-Vac, Panasonic, Sunbeam, and Energizer. All batteries were alkaline type.
To perform the evaluation, they built some home made motors, using mail-order parts. A time clock started when the motors were started, and stopped when the motor armature stopped turning.
The dollar store batteries provided half the time of the others. The longest running batteries were Ray-o-Vac, followed by Panasonic, which retailed about half the cost of the cost of the Durocell and Energizer.
You have never seen a battery manufacturer compare his product against the competition, but these kids convinced me to not believe the TV commercials.
My disclaimer. I am not a pervert. I am a grandfather.
I have often thought of why leaders in children's camps, sports organizations, schools, and even religious institutions give rise to acquiring child pornography. This is my theory. In dealing with children, it becomes an obsession. You love your work, and you want to do your best for the kids under your belt. But this safe honest love for the kids generates a need for the individual to protect himself from doing harm to the kids, So, he seeks out the childporn, perhaps as a curiosity to see what attracts people to download and view it, or, for personal gratification. I bet dollars to doughnuts, that the children are safer because the individual possessed the porn, and probably relieved him/her self. than took that next step.
The evil side of child porn is that a child or group of children are exploited. The child is injured for life. Taking the videos or pictures or whatever, and photographing indecent acts should be met with the death penalty, or incarceration for life on a desert island.
> When you are in the military, you agree to follow the chain of command. If you don't like it, don't
> work for the military and then start complaining about the rules.
However you also trust that that chain of command is working in the best interests of the people. When it becomes obvious that they are not, like when they are not actively prosecuting incidents like we saw in collateral murder, then I would say they broke the trust first.
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The right to dissent must be included, except in war. Your commander may order you to do illegal acts. Who will be prosecuted when found out? Not the commander, that is for sure.
Hi there. Immigrant to the US from Canada here. I figured I'd just respond to the parent (mostly a troll) and some of the siblings here.
Immigration to the United States requires a significant amount of money and time. First, you have to qualify for either one of the immigrant visa categories, or come across on what's called a dual intent visa and then adjust status to Permanent Resident. These processes variously require interviews with USCIS and a significant wait for certain categories (more than a decade in a few, months to years for most), not to mention that the filing and other fees for the whole process can run into the thousands of dollars. (Did you know that USCIS, like the Post Office, doesn't take taxpayer dollars and instead is self-funded from filing fees? Good for you, not great for immigrants.)
If you came over on a nonimmigrant visa, like a visitor, work, or educational visa, you're likely going to have to return home before you can start the real immigration process, unless it's "dual intent" like the K-1 fiance(e) visa as I mentioned before.
Reason has a very good overview of the various paths available.
No, we aren't required to take a test on civics and English. That is required when one naturalizes, or becomes a United States citizen. This has a prerequisite of legally residing continually in the US for three or five years, depending on the visa category in which you entered. (Oh, and another thousand dollars, thanks.) The process, like other USCIS processes, takes about a year in wait and processing time. The process is also entirely not required; one can continue to be a permanent resident for as long as one likes, as long as one continues to file for an extension of one's Permanent Resident status (i.e. green card).
I personally plan to become a US citizen (well, dual citizen) as soon as possible though, because it allows one to obtain a US Passport (faster border travel), means one is done with USCIS forever (barring very specific, very rare circumstances), and allows one to vote.
So I guess what I'm saying is, the next time you want to make assumptions about legal immigration, look into it first. It's quite complicated, expensive, and not for the faint of heart.
"Give me your tired, your poor"? Not so much.
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Back to the original topic, the birth rate. Here is my point of view. Demand a standard of living that is above realistic. That is, expensive vacation cruises, Highly mortgaged homes on one acre lots, private schools, private medicine, must have new cars after 3-4 years, high cost of education and the latest electronic toys. So what is it, a new toy or unnecessarily lifestyle, or children?
If you establish a need of restaurant living, high life styles, no savings, and debt for the toys, where is the moeny for that second or third child? And while I am not a follower of a religion that frowns on contraception, look to your own conjugal practices. In my province, 50 years ago 85% of couples married with a religious ceremony. Today, 52% are cohabiting without religion in the house. The provincial law now stipulates that a couple, cohabiting and with a child, are, after two years together, legally married. They do not require a justice of the peace to sign papers. So, when you look at why the birthrate is low, you need only look at the society's value system.
New or devout religious families are having 7 to 8 children on the low side, and 15 to 18, on the high side. Many do not have TVs, or enjoy American style vacations. Their vacation is measured as success of their children.