Lets say your house needs 5000 W. To get through an 8 h dark period, you need 40 kWhr, or 136,000 BTU. That's roughly the energy in 2 lbs of hydrogen. To store that much hydrogen, you either need a balloon of 11 m^3 size, or you need a compressor that allows you to store the hydrogen as compressed gas
11m^3 is a sphere ~2.75m in diameter, which isn't that big of a deal.
What exactly are the charges? Did Sprint Nextel not describe the early termination fees in their contracts? Why would an early termination fee be illegal?
Because early termination fees are liquidated damages, which are only permitted in certain cases (extremely roughly, where they serve as a reasonable proxy for actual damages that would otherwise be hard to pin down.) By not, for instance, prorating the early termination fee (which is notionally justified by the damage Sprint suffers due to subsidizing phone purchases in anticipation of the profits of the contract over the minimum duration), Sprint made it so that the fees are not a reasonable proxy for the damages that justify the fees.
I was just wondering if this will cause a ripple effect to the legality of penalties for early exit from any contract, not just a cell phone contract.
IANAL (but IAA Law Student), but I suspect no, because this is, despite how important it seems (and is, at least for Sprint users) because of the importance of cell phone contracts, in substance a fairly routine application of generally applicable limits on what is acceptable in terms of liquidated damages provisions, which the early terminations fees, in effect, are. So, in terms of legal precedent, I don't think there is anything particularly new here (even assuming it is appealled and upheld on appeal; a trial court decision is of minimal precedential weight to start with,)
So, does this mean that any contract could potentially be reviewed by a court and parts of it thrown out?
This ruling is a product of the fact that this has been a feature of contract law in this country since before this was a country, yes. It doesn't "mean" that in the sense that suddenly now that will become the case where it hadn't been before.
More disturbing to me is the fact that he overruled a jury.
What's disturbing about that? In the US system, the judge is the trier of law. Where there is jury (which there is not in all cases) the jury is the trier of fact. A judge throwing out a jury verdict as inconsistent with the law is really no different than if the judge did not do so but an appeals court did, but no one seems to find the fact that we have an appeals system in addition to trial courts to be a misfeature of our judicial system.
If only the price of oil were going up, that would be true.
The price of oil is, adjusted for inflation, at about the highest it has been since the mid-19th century.
When compared to gold, however, the price of oil has marched lockstep.
Uh. So? While perhaps mildly interesting, gold isn't a reasonably proxy for general price levels or anything else particularly relevant. If the price of oil in gold were constant, that would be no more relevant to whether it was really increasing in price than if the nominal price in dollars were constant (in fact, if we were still on the gold standard, it would be exactly equivalent). The fact is, the price of oil compared to overall price levels (and hourly wages, and just about any other meaningful comparator you can think of) has, overall, been rising pretty strongly since the 2005 production peak.
I have worked at places where the employer provided lots of cushy perks and I found that it tends to attract a certain type of employee: the type who wants the job not because they like the work, but because they like the perks.
Likewise, paying people well attracts employees that like the money, not the work; if you want to only attract employees with a fanatical devotion to the work, you should lock your employees in a dungeon, beat them hourly, and pay them nothing.
The reason people offer money, perks, etc. to attract employees is to attract employees that are good at the work (whether they like it or not), that might otherwise choose to do that work for someone offering better money or perks, or offering less money and perks but in a better geographical location for that worker, etc.
"Cuil may only have launched this week, but it seems that they're already enjoying late-90s boom-style comforts.
AFAICT, such comforts are not all that uncommon in well-funded startups as tools for morale and motivation; what was atypical of the late-90s boom is that companies continued acting like "startups" for much longer than investors would stand for now, not only in terms of comforts provided for staff, but more importantly in terms of continuing to burn through money without turning a profit. And, while doing that, they attracted investment as if they were as solid as blue chip stocks.
If Cuil is around five years from now with similar comforts, a half-billion dollar market cap, burning through a million dollars a week with no prospects of profit in sight, with strong and rising stock prices, that would be a sign that the bubble is back.
No, its really not irrelevant to the common law applicable in US jurisdictions prior to the Constitution and how the Constitution affected change to that law.
There were then, and are now, laws about defamation, and there was never any intent to make defamation Constitutionally protected
Defamation as it was understood in England was much broader than what is Constitutionally (because of the first amendment) prohibitable, and defenses, such as truth, were affirmative defenses. The jurisprudence of the First Amendment turns truth from an affirmative defense into something that must be shown not to apply as a part of the prima facie case for defamation. Additionally, it places even higher requirements for defamation actions where the subject matter of discussion (either the person or the context or both) is one of public concern. I think its kind of hard to argue that these effects were accidental.
If you're getting at the fact that people can be imprisoned for multiple offenses, that still doesn't change the fact that the majority of state prisoners are _not_ in for drug-related crimes.
No, I'm getting at the fact that people that are drug users or drug dealers may be imprisoned solely for other crimes because that's what they are convicted of, and that the prohibition of drugs (whether that policy is on balance justified or not) makes it more likely that any drug user or seller will be involved in violence, so that the proportion of people imprisoned for drug crimes (ignoring any possibility of erroneous conviction) merely sets a floor on the proportion that are "drug users or dealers" (or even that are in prison as a consequence of being drug users or dealers), rather than representing that proportion or setting a ceiling on it.
Part of me thinks that had the technology been around in the mid 1700's the rights of something like Wikileaks would have been enshrined in the constitution by the founding fathers as the ultimate check and balance.
Despite the fact that the technology was far more primitive in the 1700s, the rights of "something like Wikileaks" were enshrined in the Constitution -- that is, in the Bill of Rights:
Amendment I
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
Ted Stevens MIGHT be convicted. Until then he is innocent until proven guilty.
No, he is entitled to be treated by the legal system as if innocent until proven guilty (and even that is really just a loose way of saying he is entitled not be subjected to criminal punishment until and unless he is convicted.) He is not factually innocent until proven guilty, nor are individual citizens legally or morally obligated not to express their opinions about his guilt or innocence or the severity of the offenses they believe he has committed unless he is convicted.
There are far more violent criminals than drug users/dealers in state prisons.
Your claim and the statistics you point to indicate that you think that "drug users/dealers" and "violent criminals" are exclusive sets, and that conviction of a non-drug offense means that one is not a "drug user/dealer".
OK, let me see if I've got this straight. The VIA Isaiah beat out the Intel Silverthorne. Then the VIA Isaiah was renamed the Via Nano, and the Intel Silverthorne was renamed the Intel Atom. Now the VIA is still beating the Intel? So what you're telling me is that a name change has no effect on chip performance?
Uh, no. I think you missed something:
Back in May, when the Isaiah architecture was first disclosed, VIA declared a performance victory over Intel's upcoming Silverthorne technology.
IOW, before they were concrete products that had been benchmarked, VIA made claims. Now there is a test substantiating those claims. The news is not the fact that the code names now have product names and nothing else has changed, its that there is now some evidence to point to in support of the claims.
I drive a 2 ton car. I live in the Midwest, where many other people do too. I am attempting to ensure (to a reasonable extent- I don't drive a semi) that I will either be bigger, or almost as big, as any car I will be in an accident with.
Its true that, from the statistics, you are, per accident, less likely to be injured in an SUV. The social downside is that the person in the other car is more likely to be injured in accident if you're in an SUV, but that's their problem. The personal downside is that you're more likely to be in an accident if you are in an SUV, and that the greater likelihood of an accident negates any advantage from the lower probability of injury. Essentially, from a safety perspective, what an SUV buys you is a greater chance of injury someone else.
Is it a perfect plan? No. But it has worked so far.
Likewise, the magic talisman I wear to ward off bullets has worked so far; as long as I've had it, I haven't been shot.
To teach elementary school, teachers need a BA in something, and an education degree. That's it. There is no requirement for some basic math and science classes, much less basic math and science EDUCATION classes.
Please let me know what university you can go to and get a B.A. degree without "some basic math and science classes": most places I've seen that offer an A.A. require that, much less places that offer B.A.'s.
Elementary teachers need to have a minor in every subject they are to teach.
Given that elementary school teachers teach bits and pieces of English, History, Math, Chemistry, Meteorology, Geology, Biology, Political Science, Physics, and a number of other subjects, this seems somewhat insane.
Elementary school education remains largely the same. But by 9th grade we begin to organize students by trade. By "trade" I mean: College bound, military bound, trade school/certification bound, unskilled trade bound.
Though there is some flexibility, and it is primarily (university bound vs. not university bound), we already do.
Reestablish the tried and true apprentice program used for thousands of years.
Except for the absence of the de jure monopolies of guilds and the restraints of trade they were empowered to employ to keep prices high (which are, arguably, replaced now with industry-led regulatory bodies that have the same general effect), we already/still have such a system in many trades, though many have found it more efficient to establish specialized schools rather than use apprenticeships.
I dunno, I'd say the system prior to mandatory education in government schools worked pretty damned good all other things considered. At that point a lot of people really didn't need the level of education we need these days to succeed so it didn't make always make sense to spend twelve years in a classroom....
Whether or not the system prior to mandatory education worked well enough for its time, it did not have the features you have suggested a system without mandatory education would have, e.g., that it would be better quality, cheaper for those who pay, and widely accessible to those who can't afford to pay because of much broader free charity. And since the U.S. didn't go from "no mandatory education" to "mandatory K-12" all at once, but did so in stages (and often at different times in different places), one would expect plenty of evidence if there was any truth to your suggestion.
And remember, what passed for an 8th grade education back then would be a college freshman today.
No, it wouldn't.
Go watch Ken Burns' miniseries on the 'Civil War' and observe the literacy of those 'barely educated farmers' writing home from the front. Note not only the literacy and writing skills but the knowledge of literature, history and philosophy the writers possessed.
The letters that have been kept, and then selected for use in works like Burns', have gone through many levels of selective filtering for quality and impact on the reader.
The voucher system only helps the 10% (number I pulled out of my ass) who don't have enough for private education already, but have enough to cover the *other* 7-10 grand a year private schools cost.
Probably not even most of them. When you give everyone a subsidy that can be used for purchase of a particular product, what happens to the price of that product?
Look it up if you have to. Failing that, how about some sort of cost-benefit analysis of the time spent in yr average public school (hint: most ppl I know agree that over 2/3 of school time is wasted.)
Well, if you equate "most people I know agree..." with "analysis", I'd be willing to concede that at least 2/3 of your time in school was wasted; probably closer to 1.5 times that amount, really.
Private schools in the heart of Chicago catering to poor black students spend about a third per student compared to private schools and produce standardized test scores that compare favorably with white suburban schools.
Yes, students that have the power to choose which students they will educate can exclude those most expensive to educate, and schools that you only end up in as the result of an active choice by your parents end up with students that have parents that are more involved in their education.
This is not surprising.
Charity will also go a lot further and be better funded with the knowledge that government isn't taking care of it.
This would be easier to argue if it had been true of, say, high school before high-school became mandatory and part of the free public system in most parts of the U.S., or for grade school itself. The fact is, the U.S. had what you recommend earlier in its history, and it didn't work as you describe. So, if you want to convince us that it would now, you need to explain why it would work differently now.
As badly as teachers are treated, you can't even get rid of the bad teachers until you can override the teacher's union.
Or, at least, that's what the bad administrators say so that they can avoid responsibility for failure, just like they sell (and then hide behind) "zero-tolerance" policies so they can avoid responsibility for disciplinary decisions.
They don't want merit-based pay or any of that kind of thing because it means that teachers have to perform, rather than just stay in their job and get tenure.
Or because no suggestion ever raised for "merit-based" pay of teachers has used an assessment method that has much to do with the teacher's merit; they tend to either be subjective ratings by administrators or measures of student performance without any controls on how students are assigned, either of which is easily manipulable into de facto favoritism-based pay.
Not the other way around just because it's in alphabetical order.
Really, the way these are (and, arguably, should be) taught at the High School level, there's not any real dependency between them, anyhow, and the order is mostly a matter of convention (and, at least sometimes, isn't rigid in the first place), and switching it really wouldn't have much effect.
A US$3,000.00 per student/per year federal voucher will fix education very quickly.
Do you mean essentially a cash-equivalent, or do you mean with some use conditions. Once you've answered that, please explain the reasoning and/or evidence which supports that the form of voucher you are proposing would, in fact, "fix education very quickly".
Slashdot Mirror
Lets say your house needs 5000 W. To get through an 8 h dark period, you need 40 kWhr, or 136,000 BTU. That's roughly the energy in 2 lbs of hydrogen. To store that much hydrogen, you either need a balloon of 11 m^3 size, or you need a compressor that allows you to store the hydrogen as compressed gas
11m^3 is a sphere ~2.75m in diameter, which isn't that big of a deal.
Because early termination fees are liquidated damages, which are only permitted in certain cases (extremely roughly, where they serve as a reasonable proxy for actual damages that would otherwise be hard to pin down.) By not, for instance, prorating the early termination fee (which is notionally justified by the damage Sprint suffers due to subsidizing phone purchases in anticipation of the profits of the contract over the minimum duration), Sprint made it so that the fees are not a reasonable proxy for the damages that justify the fees.
IANAL (but IAA Law Student), but I suspect no, because this is, despite how important it seems (and is, at least for Sprint users) because of the importance of cell phone contracts, in substance a fairly routine application of generally applicable limits on what is acceptable in terms of liquidated damages provisions, which the early terminations fees, in effect, are. So, in terms of legal precedent, I don't think there is anything particularly new here (even assuming it is appealled and upheld on appeal; a trial court decision is of minimal precedential weight to start with,)
This ruling is a product of the fact that this has been a feature of contract law in this country since before this was a country, yes. It doesn't "mean" that in the sense that suddenly now that will become the case where it hadn't been before.
What's disturbing about that? In the US system, the judge is the trier of law. Where there is jury (which there is not in all cases) the jury is the trier of fact. A judge throwing out a jury verdict as inconsistent with the law is really no different than if the judge did not do so but an appeals court did, but no one seems to find the fact that we have an appeals system in addition to trial courts to be a misfeature of our judicial system.
The price of oil is, adjusted for inflation, at about the highest it has been since the mid-19th century.
Uh. So? While perhaps mildly interesting, gold isn't a reasonably proxy for general price levels or anything else particularly relevant. If the price of oil in gold were constant, that would be no more relevant to whether it was really increasing in price than if the nominal price in dollars were constant (in fact, if we were still on the gold standard, it would be exactly equivalent). The fact is, the price of oil compared to overall price levels (and hourly wages, and just about any other meaningful comparator you can think of) has, overall, been rising pretty strongly since the 2005 production peak.
Likewise, paying people well attracts employees that like the money, not the work; if you want to only attract employees with a fanatical devotion to the work, you should lock your employees in a dungeon, beat them hourly, and pay them nothing.
The reason people offer money, perks, etc. to attract employees is to attract employees that are good at the work (whether they like it or not), that might otherwise choose to do that work for someone offering better money or perks, or offering less money and perks but in a better geographical location for that worker, etc.
AFAICT, such comforts are not all that uncommon in well-funded startups as tools for morale and motivation; what was atypical of the late-90s boom is that companies continued acting like "startups" for much longer than investors would stand for now, not only in terms of comforts provided for staff, but more importantly in terms of continuing to burn through money without turning a profit. And, while doing that, they attracted investment as if they were as solid as blue chip stocks.
If Cuil is around five years from now with similar comforts, a half-billion dollar market cap, burning through a million dollars a week with no prospects of profit in sight, with strong and rising stock prices, that would be a sign that the bubble is back.
No, its really not irrelevant to the common law applicable in US jurisdictions prior to the Constitution and how the Constitution affected change to that law.
Defamation as it was understood in England was much broader than what is Constitutionally (because of the first amendment) prohibitable, and defenses, such as truth, were affirmative defenses. The jurisprudence of the First Amendment turns truth from an affirmative defense into something that must be shown not to apply as a part of the prima facie case for defamation. Additionally, it places even higher requirements for defamation actions where the subject matter of discussion (either the person or the context or both) is one of public concern. I think its kind of hard to argue that these effects were accidental.
No, I'm getting at the fact that people that are drug users or drug dealers may be imprisoned solely for other crimes because that's what they are convicted of, and that the prohibition of drugs (whether that policy is on balance justified or not) makes it more likely that any drug user or seller will be involved in violence, so that the proportion of people imprisoned for drug crimes (ignoring any possibility of erroneous conviction) merely sets a floor on the proportion that are "drug users or dealers" (or even that are in prison as a consequence of being drug users or dealers), rather than representing that proportion or setting a ceiling on it.
Despite the fact that the technology was far more primitive in the 1700s, the rights of "something like Wikileaks" were enshrined in the Constitution -- that is, in the Bill of Rights:
No, he is entitled to be treated by the legal system as if innocent until proven guilty (and even that is really just a loose way of saying he is entitled not be subjected to criminal punishment until and unless he is convicted.) He is not factually innocent until proven guilty, nor are individual citizens legally or morally obligated not to express their opinions about his guilt or innocence or the severity of the offenses they believe he has committed unless he is convicted.
Your claim and the statistics you point to indicate that you think that "drug users/dealers" and "violent criminals" are exclusive sets, and that conviction of a non-drug offense means that one is not a "drug user/dealer".
These beliefs are not accurate.
Uh, no. I think you missed something:
IOW, before they were concrete products that had been benchmarked, VIA made claims. Now there is a test substantiating those claims. The news is not the fact that the code names now have product names and nothing else has changed, its that there is now some evidence to point to in support of the claims.
Yup. A few.
Its true that, from the statistics, you are, per accident, less likely to be injured in an SUV. The social downside is that the person in the other car is more likely to be injured in accident if you're in an SUV, but that's their problem. The personal downside is that you're more likely to be in an accident if you are in an SUV, and that the greater likelihood of an accident negates any advantage from the lower probability of injury. Essentially, from a safety perspective, what an SUV buys you is a greater chance of injury someone else.
Likewise, the magic talisman I wear to ward off bullets has worked so far; as long as I've had it, I haven't been shot.
Please let me know what university you can go to and get a B.A. degree without "some basic math and science classes": most places I've seen that offer an A.A. require that, much less places that offer B.A.'s.
Given that elementary school teachers teach bits and pieces of English, History, Math, Chemistry, Meteorology, Geology, Biology, Political Science, Physics, and a number of other subjects, this seems somewhat insane.
Though there is some flexibility, and it is primarily (university bound vs. not university bound), we already do.
Except for the absence of the de jure monopolies of guilds and the restraints of trade they were empowered to employ to keep prices high (which are, arguably, replaced now with industry-led regulatory bodies that have the same general effect), we already/still have such a system in many trades, though many have found it more efficient to establish specialized schools rather than use apprenticeships.
Whether or not the system prior to mandatory education worked well enough for its time, it did not have the features you have suggested a system without mandatory education would have, e.g., that it would be better quality, cheaper for those who pay, and widely accessible to those who can't afford to pay because of much broader free charity. And since the U.S. didn't go from "no mandatory education" to "mandatory K-12" all at once, but did so in stages (and often at different times in different places), one would expect plenty of evidence if there was any truth to your suggestion.
No, it wouldn't.
The letters that have been kept, and then selected for use in works like Burns', have gone through many levels of selective filtering for quality and impact on the reader.
Probably not even most of them. When you give everyone a subsidy that can be used for purchase of a particular product, what happens to the price of that product?
Well, if you equate "most people I know agree..." with "analysis", I'd be willing to concede that at least 2/3 of your time in school was wasted; probably closer to 1.5 times that amount, really.
Yes, students that have the power to choose which students they will educate can exclude those most expensive to educate, and schools that you only end up in as the result of an active choice by your parents end up with students that have parents that are more involved in their education.
This is not surprising.
This would be easier to argue if it had been true of, say, high school before high-school became mandatory and part of the free public system in most parts of the U.S., or for grade school itself. The fact is, the U.S. had what you recommend earlier in its history, and it didn't work as you describe. So, if you want to convince us that it would now, you need to explain why it would work differently now.
Or, at least, that's what the bad administrators say so that they can avoid responsibility for failure, just like they sell (and then hide behind) "zero-tolerance" policies so they can avoid responsibility for disciplinary decisions.
Or because no suggestion ever raised for "merit-based" pay of teachers has used an assessment method that has much to do with the teacher's merit; they tend to either be subjective ratings by administrators or measures of student performance without any controls on how students are assigned, either of which is easily manipulable into de facto favoritism-based pay.
Really, the way these are (and, arguably, should be) taught at the High School level, there's not any real dependency between them, anyhow, and the order is mostly a matter of convention (and, at least sometimes, isn't rigid in the first place), and switching it really wouldn't have much effect.
Do you mean essentially a cash-equivalent, or do you mean with some use conditions. Once you've answered that, please explain the reasoning and/or evidence which supports that the form of voucher you are proposing would, in fact, "fix education very quickly".