Remember when they complained about how disruptive the horseless carriage was to ordinary, decent horse-drawn traffic?
Yeah, me neither. Everyone who said that is long dead now, and so is the concept of horse-drawn traffic in modern cities. This simple point is worth keeping in mind for people who complain about cell phones being disruptive.
For anyone outside of the group of my conservative friends that gets their GOP knickers in a twist at the slightest hint of liberal bias anywhere, this is a statistical nothing, Without getting into the actual merits of the bias claim here, I'd have to take issue with you dismissing it as a "statistical nothing". This is ranked on a scale of 1 to 10, and so the difference between 5.9 and 7 is 11%. That's huge, particularly when applied to politics. (Just look at how many major races are won by a margin smaller than 11%!)
Well, there are NP-complete problems and NP-hard problems. NP-complete means (simplified version) that it's very difficult to compute, but easy to verify the right answer once you see it. Factorization belongs to this category: once you have the factors, it's simple arithmetic to verify that they are indeed the factors of the number in question.
The Traveling Salesman problem, on the other hand, is not easy to verify. It asks which permutation of possible routes the salesman may take is the fastest, and this necessarily requires you to compute every possible permutation of routes (or at least a significant percentage of them, if you're clever enough to find a way to prove some of them can be pruned early) and then see which of them is the shortest. A problem that's very difficult to both compute and verify is called NP-hard, and they're significantly worse than ordinary NP-complete problems.
The prevailing economic theory in developed nations is that people act in response to incentives, and that if you rearrange the incentives, it will change the aggregate behavior of the people in question. While this is obviously a useful way to model human behavior up to a certain point, it's all too common to not understand where that certain point is.
For example, the incentives theory says that if interest rates are low and inflation is high, you will have a stronger incentive to take on debt and spend money than if interest rates were high or inflation low. So ever since the financial crash of 2008, the US Federal Reserve has been taking widespread measures to suppress interest rates and create inflation... and yet the inflation hasn't shown up and people aren't borrowing and spending.
Why? Because we're at a point in the USA where this particular incentive is essentially equivalent to "pushing on a rope." Consumer spending--the largest segment of the economy--is driven by the largest segment of the consumer base, which is, as it has been for decades, the Baby Boom generation. But they're getting into retirement age, or at the very least seriously-preparing-for-retirement age, which is a time when you want to spend less, save more, pay down debts rather than take on new ones, and set your financial house in order to attempt to secure your future.
Of course trying to create incentives for someone to very obviously act against their own best interest isn't going to work! (Particularly when doing so for a massive group of people.) And yet the theory doesn't take this into account, so people keep trying it and it keeps not working...
Of course, economics is also somewhat controversial. Sometimes it's described more like a science, and other times as a more wishy-washy "social" science, and then, to many, it's nothing but a scam.
They say that an economist is someone who can authoritatively explain to you tomorrow why the thing he authoritatively predicted yesterday didn't end up happening today.
"Readily" in this context means "about as readily as any other US sub-population." My brother lives out that way, and I've never noticed any higher propensity towards obesity among locals when I've gone out to visit him.
Interesting. You claim it would lead to a flood of bogus reports to avoid running afoul of the law, then cite Senator Wyden saying it would have the opposite bad effect: cause the existing stream of (voluntary) reporting to dry up, to avoid running afoul of the law.
Anyone want to place bets on which screwed-up scenario is more likely?
The fee to recover the car are not unreasonable. They are high, but they represent the costs related to operating the tow truck, of securing the vehicle for the period of time, and the process of returning it in a legal manner.
A guy I used to know got his car impounded once. He was pulled over for speeding and the officer discovered that he had a perfectly valid driver's license... from out of state. (Apparently that's enough to impound your car in some states.)
Due to obnoxious circumstances beyond his control, it was a week before he was able to get it out of the impound. It cost about $500, and the bulk of that was the cost of holding it there for a week. So $850 seems completely unreasonable and out of line. (And that's if this were actually an impound; as others have pointed out, there's a big difference between that and asset seizure.)
The thing about public shaming is, it can work surprisingly well, if done right.
Several years ago, I was part of a certain online community based around a game no one plays anymore today. One of the guys posted one day that he had upgraded his video card and he wondered if anyone wanted the old one. It was better than what I had, and he was offering a good price for it, so I took him up on the offer and sent him some money over PayPal.
After a few weeks, he still hadn't sent it. And he continued to not send it, and not send it, despite repeated reminders from me. You know, a bunch of "Oh yeah, I just have to get around to it," etc.
After about two months, I decided enough is enough, and I posted about my frustration with his failure to deliver the merchandise that I had paid him the agreed-upon price for, on the community forum.
Within less than a week, the video card arrived at my place.
the leading Democratic Presidential candidate who will almost certainly win the nomination
You know, that's what they were saying about her 4 years ago. It was inevitable, 2008 was to be Hillary's coronation, etc. But then actual people started actually voting in the primaries, and she turned out to be such a horrible candidate that she literally lost to a rookie with no qualifications.
The only significant thing that's changed since then is that she's actually up against a worthwhile opponent in the Democratic primary this time.
Wow. So much fail here; it's like the guy doesn't understand anything about the Internet at all.
the First Amendment protects not only the right to speak without government interference but also the right to remain silent and the right not to be coerced into speech by the government. Nowhere is the right to be free from compelled speech more important than the Internet.
That might make sense if it wasn't utter nonsense. Content delivered by an ISP is not the ISP's speech; it's the speech of the people who created it. The ISP's business is package delivery, not speech.
In an America with network neutrality rules, purveyors of indecent material and groups such as ISIS have a right to enter American homes through the Internet, and consumers lack the corollary right to have their broadband providers kick them out.
Nope. In an America with network neutrality rules, purveyors of indecent material and groups such as ISIS have a right to make their objectionable content available through the Internet, but it only enters American homes if the Americans in their homes bring it in. If someone tries to push their content in uninvited, that's a crime, with or without Net Neutrality.
This isn't "good old capitalism." Try reading Adam Smith sometime.
Free market principles only work when freedom exists in the marketplace, and that means strong, healthy competition. When there isn't competition, everything breaks down and you end up under a system of monopoly economics, which looks more like extortion than capitalism, especially when the product being sold is necessary to prolong life.
No, a milliliter is a cubic centimeter. (If you ever see a doctor on TV measuring a drug dosage in "CCs", this is what it means.) A millimeter is 1/10 of a centimeter, so a cubic millimeter would be 1/10^3 (or 1/1000) of a CC.
Wait, what's with this claim by the University of Glasgow to have just discovered how to cheaply make graphene sheets by CVD on copper foil? That technique was discovered a while back by Shou-En Zhu, a PhD student studying in the Netherlands. Here he is talking about it, back in March.
If more than one researcher/group of researchers discovered it independently, though, then that's kind of awesome. But the Glasgow guys aren't the first to come up with it.
On the post: Dave Chappelle Thinks A Sock And A Dream Will Keep People From Using Phones At Shows
Yeah, me neither. Everyone who said that is long dead now, and so is the concept of horse-drawn traffic in modern cities. This simple point is worth keeping in mind for people who complain about cell phones being disruptive.
On the post: DailyDirt: Quantum Computing Works Now (Sorta)
Re: Re: NP-complete means (simplified version)
On the post: No, Google Isn't 'Pushing' People To Vote For Bernie Sanders
Without getting into the actual merits of the bias claim here, I'd have to take issue with you dismissing it as a "statistical nothing". This is ranked on a scale of 1 to 10, and so the difference between 5.9 and 7 is 11%. That's huge, particularly when applied to politics. (Just look at how many major races are won by a margin smaller than 11%!)
Just saying...
On the post: DailyDirt: Quantum Computing Works Now (Sorta)
Re: Re: Travelling Salesman
The Traveling Salesman problem, on the other hand, is not easy to verify. It asks which permutation of possible routes the salesman may take is the fastest, and this necessarily requires you to compute every possible permutation of routes (or at least a significant percentage of them, if you're clever enough to find a way to prove some of them can be pruned early) and then see which of them is the shortest. A problem that's very difficult to both compute and verify is called NP-hard, and they're significantly worse than ordinary NP-complete problems.
On the post: Techdirt Reading List: Economics Rules: The Rights And Wrongs Of The Dismal Science
Re: It is very dismal
The prevailing economic theory in developed nations is that people act in response to incentives, and that if you rearrange the incentives, it will change the aggregate behavior of the people in question. While this is obviously a useful way to model human behavior up to a certain point, it's all too common to not understand where that certain point is.
For example, the incentives theory says that if interest rates are low and inflation is high, you will have a stronger incentive to take on debt and spend money than if interest rates were high or inflation low. So ever since the financial crash of 2008, the US Federal Reserve has been taking widespread measures to suppress interest rates and create inflation... and yet the inflation hasn't shown up and people aren't borrowing and spending.
Why? Because we're at a point in the USA where this particular incentive is essentially equivalent to "pushing on a rope." Consumer spending--the largest segment of the economy--is driven by the largest segment of the consumer base, which is, as it has been for decades, the Baby Boom generation. But they're getting into retirement age, or at the very least seriously-preparing-for-retirement age, which is a time when you want to spend less, save more, pay down debts rather than take on new ones, and set your financial house in order to attempt to secure your future.
Of course trying to create incentives for someone to very obviously act against their own best interest isn't going to work! (Particularly when doing so for a massive group of people.) And yet the theory doesn't take this into account, so people keep trying it and it keeps not working...
On the post: Techdirt Reading List: Economics Rules: The Rights And Wrongs Of The Dismal Science
They say that an economist is someone who can authoritatively explain to you tomorrow why the thing he authoritatively predicted yesterday didn't end up happening today.
On the post: The Great Dirty Soda War In Utah Is Trademark Gone Stupid
Re:
On the post: The Great Dirty Soda War In Utah Is Trademark Gone Stupid
Re: Re: readily imbibe sugar
On the post: Senator Feinstein Brings Back Horrible Bill Forcing Internet Companies To Report On Your 'Suspicious' Behavior
Anyone want to place bets on which screwed-up scenario is more likely?
On the post: New Mexico Legislators Sue City For Refusing To Follow New Asset Forfeiture Law
Re:
A guy I used to know got his car impounded once. He was pulled over for speeding and the officer discovered that he had a perfectly valid driver's license... from out of state. (Apparently that's enough to impound your car in some states.)
Due to obnoxious circumstances beyond his control, it was a week before he was able to get it out of the impound. It cost about $500, and the bulk of that was the cost of holding it there for a week. So $850 seems completely unreasonable and out of line. (And that's if this were actually an impound; as others have pointed out, there's a big difference between that and asset seizure.)
On the post: Cable Company Publicly Shames, Lectures Overdue Customers On Facebook
Several years ago, I was part of a certain online community based around a game no one plays anymore today. One of the guys posted one day that he had upgraded his video card and he wondered if anyone wanted the old one. It was better than what I had, and he was offering a good price for it, so I took him up on the offer and sent him some money over PayPal.
After a few weeks, he still hadn't sent it. And he continued to not send it, and not send it, despite repeated reminders from me. You know, a bunch of "Oh yeah, I just have to get around to it," etc.
After about two months, I decided enough is enough, and I posted about my frustration with his failure to deliver the merchandise that I had paid him the agreed-upon price for, on the community forum.
Within less than a week, the video card arrived at my place.
On the post: The Two Leading Presidential Candidates -- Clinton And Trump -- Are Both Mocking Free Speech On The Internet
You know, that's what they were saying about her 4 years ago. It was inevitable, 2008 was to be Hillary's coronation, etc. But then actual people started actually voting in the primaries, and she turned out to be such a horrible candidate that she literally lost to a rookie with no qualifications.
The only significant thing that's changed since then is that she's actually up against a worthwhile opponent in the Democratic primary this time.
On the post: USMC Entertainment Liaison Not About To Let The Marines' Good Name Be Dragged Down By 'Low-Culture' Reality TV
North Korea, apparently, since that's who the enemy got changed to in the remake.
On the post: RadioShack Attempts To Shock Itself Back Into Relevance Using Dumb Tactics From Five Years Ago
Does that make me weird? :P
On the post: Former FCC Commissioner Idiotically Claims Net Neutrality Helps ISIS
That might make sense if it wasn't utter nonsense. Content delivered by an ISP is not the ISP's speech; it's the speech of the people who created it. The ISP's business is package delivery, not speech.
Nope. In an America with network neutrality rules, purveyors of indecent material and groups such as ISIS have a right to make their objectionable content available through the Internet, but it only enters American homes if the Americans in their homes bring it in. If someone tries to push their content in uninvited, that's a crime, with or without Net Neutrality.
On the post: No Matter What You Think Of Gun Control, Relying On The No Fly List For Anything Is Monumentally Stupid
On the post: Can You Defame Someone By
DirectlyCreatively 'Quoting' Them? New York Court Says You Can.Re:
On the post: Express Scripts Pushing $1 alternative To Turing's $750 Daraprim Pills
Re: "...tale of greed."
Free market principles only work when freedom exists in the marketplace, and that means strong, healthy competition. When there isn't competition, everything breaks down and you end up under a system of monopoly economics, which looks more like extortion than capitalism, especially when the product being sold is necessary to prolong life.
On the post: DailyDirt: Lots Of Cool Carbon-Based Molecules
Re: cubic millimeter?
On the post: DailyDirt: Lots Of Cool Carbon-Based Molecules
If more than one researcher/group of researchers discovered it independently, though, then that's kind of awesome. But the Glasgow guys aren't the first to come up with it.
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