If you can find any of it, I think you might enjoy reading a guy from Colorado named Ray Morris. He was a big pot guy in Colorado , active with NORML in the early nineties.

It has become obvious that you're currently unable to grasp the concept that there can be a conversation about something other than weed ( too stoned?), so if you're in Colorado, please stay there. All we have down here is Mexican dirt weed anyway. You wouldn't like it.

> You're the one glossing over the destruction of a person's life just because they smoke or possess weed.

The morality of drug laws is not the topic of discussion in this thread. As I keep telling you:
What we're discussing here is jobs and the economy in Texas.

> And I get you think that legalized marijuana smoking is somehow worse economically than the current state of affairs with its destruction of people and the rule of law.

There's no "think" about it, the fact is that the economy in Colorado, California, and other liberal states has been getting worse and worse compared to Texas, which is thriving relative to those states. It's simple arithmetic. The unemployment umbers aren't somebody's opinion.

I'm sure someone would like to discuss drug policy with you in some other thread. I'd discuss it with someone else, someone who is still able to acknowledge that there is such a thing as arithmetic. maybe when you're a little less high.

> As a result, we have to expect and accept that people will on occasion act in ways that we don't like and perhaps even contrary to their own well-being.

Perhaps that's applicable. There are enough gray areas to that question that we could go on for hundreds of pages discussing it. We'd never all agree, because it's a philosophical question, no a factual question. It's rather a different topic, though. What we're discussing here is jobs and the economy in Texas. In other words, as I said in the post you replied to:

        while smoking pot might be fun, and these
        liberal policies may have some benefits, they
        are bad for an economy - bad for jobs

Similarly, maybe you think that "regulating" your employer to bankruptcy is more "fair". You and your boss can be homeless together. Okay, fine it fits your definition of "fair". I won't argue that. You are welcome to your philosophy*. It probably has some good points. Putting the employers out of business is clearly bad for jobs and bad for the economy - that's a provable statement of fact.

* You are very welcome to enjoy and IMPLEMENT that philosophy in a place where your neighbors agree with it. I request that you please do not run away from it's effects and bring it here. If you don't like the effects of your policies in California, change them, or come to Texas and become a Texan.

Hard-cooked and soft-cooked eggs should be cooked in water just below boiling. Quoting the best selling cookbook in history, Betty Crocker's Cookbook:

2. Heat to boiling in saucepan; REMOVE FROM HEAT. Cover and let stand 18 minutes. Immediately cool briefly in cold water to prevent further cooking. Tap egg to crack shell; roll egg between hands to loosen shell, then peel.

(emphasis mine)

If you keep the water boiling, you get that nasty green film and the albumen becomes rubbery.

I'm really glad I have high speed internet from Suddenlink. I think I get about 50 Mbps, and that's great. I did purposely buy a house in town rather than out in the boonies because things like quick internet and quick access to the grocery store are more important to me than having acreage and scenery. What the FCC is dealing with right now isn't what speed you WANT, but what speed someone whonlives out in the countruly to have acreage for their horses NEEDS in order to survive in the modern world.

>. When you start talking about VoIP, you need roughly 100 kilobits/s to handle a single voice conversation and side-channel control, considerably more if you have side-channel "whiteboard" traffic. That's per phone conversation. It adds up when your household has a number of people, and more so in SOHO.

I'm happy with 64K voice, but let's assume 100K. 3Mbps allows more than 30 simultaneous phone calls in the house. ("More than" because not everyone would be talking at the same instant).

3-4 Mbps also allows two standard definition video streams, or one at 1080p. I don't think the horse owner has a fundamental right to force you and me spend an extra $12,000 to give him more than that. They decided they wanted to live far away from everyone else, and have 20 acres to themselves. That means that to get fiber to their houee, the fiber has to be run across their 20 acres of pasture. That's just a physical fact, and a natural result of their decision to put a mile between them and their neighbor. Who pays for wiring that mile they wanted tonput between themselves and everyone else? If they can already stream HD Netflix, I don't think you should have to pay to upgrade their connection to fiber.

Let's see, a one-pound degausser will work at about 1 inch away.

We want to do it from at least 360 inches away.

The magnetic field strength falls at roughly the cube of distance, so we need a 46,656,000 pound degausser, approximately.

Your hobby drone can't carry 47 million pounds?

Yeah, I was being lazy when I wrote that, and I knew it. Funny that I didn't feel like taking a few seconds to do the arithmetic, given the subject line of my post.

Eyeballing it, Texas programmers effective salary is actually about 16% higher. I still don't feel like double-checking my math on that, but feel free to.

Exactly. "Bugging rooms, and breaking into phones or computers" requires agents to specifically go to a certain location, probably after getting a specific search warrant. That's how policing should be done.

The relevant law that the FCC is supposed to be carrying out is more specific than the general term "broadband". Rural areas tend to have slower connections, of course, and the FCC is supposed to measure which areas have usable service and which don't. The law says the FCC is supposed to measure whether areas have an option which:

        enable users to originate and receive high-quality voice,
        data, graphics, and video telecommunications

Voice: Broadcast AM radio is 25 Khz, which very roughly correlates to 25 Kbps. Copper phone lines (POTS) are 52 Kbps max. So most nay internet connection allows for "high-quality voice", given correct settings in the software.

Data: Faster is always better, but Google or Slashdot will load in 2 seconds on a 4 Mbps connection.

Graphics: Facebook recommends uploading at 1200x600 for "full size" display. Such an image will load full size in 1-2 seconds on a 512 Kbps connection.

Video: Netflix 1080p is 3 Mbps.

So it would seem that the standard the law requires them to use ends up meaning about 3-4 Mbps.

We'd all like faster internet, obviously. Te FCC isn't deciding how fast internet should be. It's deciding how fast is required to "enable high quality voice, data, graphics, and video". 1080p is high-quality video, and that's 3 Mbps.

Absolutely Google is targeting ads to her based on many database entries associated with her userid. She gets ads for $8 off a $27 pack of baby formula, exactly the brand she uses, because Google's database indicates she has a baby. That's absolutely the price she pays for heavily using YouTube, gmail, Google search, Maps, etc.

That would also be true if she was using Google maps, YouTube, etc on Linux. We've decided that we like YouTube, we even like Google Now, and in exchange for all of these services we're willing to let ONE company have us in their database. The other option would be to have an email provider who has access to our emails, someone else have our search history, maybe Microsoft maps and navigation would know where we go. We've chosen Google - on our Linux machines, our Android phones, my OSX Mac Pros.

I understand other people might make a different choice. YouTube on Linux isn't really any different, though.

23 years ago, my mother moved to Austin because that's where she found a nice job with a tech company, Dell, and a nice house for about $120k. Since then, gas has gone to about $4, gone back up and down. The Texas economy has done well throughout. This is the point where someone will point out that the Texas economy wasn't as good 30 years ago (when Democrat Ann Richards was governor).

Shale oil has been good to Texas in the last three years, but again we've been doing well much longer than that, and tech is strong, independent of energy. The state has a large rainy day fund - money set aside, saved up. So fiscally we're prepared for hard times, unlike areas that have large debt they'll be paying on in the future.

People and companies have also been moving here from Colorado, where the tech sector has been weakening relative to Texas. My honest assessment is as I hinted above - business is coming to Texas FROM the states that are making pot legal, increasing regulations, etc - liberal states. That suggests to me that while smoking pot might be fun, and these liberal policies may have some benefits, they are bad for an economy - bad for jobs. I get it - I used to be a member of NORML. So I understand that point of view - I wrote some of the literature they read. It just hasn't worked well for the jobs and cost of living situation. The people coming to Texas for jobs are voters, however. They've come from Colorado and California and brought their pothead ballot initiatives with them. If they team up with other liberal groups to gain majority control, they'll likely vote for the same policies here, and we'll end up with the same results. That's when the Texas economy will fall long-term, I think.

The cost of living is 28% higher in California:
http://livingwage.mit.edu/stat...
http://livingwage.mit.edu/stat...

The average dollar salary of a programmer is 10% higher:
http://www.indeed.com/salary/q...
http://www.indeed.com/salary/q...

Texas programmers therefore have average effective salaries 18% than in California. I AM having good luck.

>. You are welcome to your state where a lack of laws allows employers to restrict your opportunities to change jobs. Yeah, welcome to your overlords who use the lack employee protection to push your income down.

Yeah, it was Texas where that happened, not California, right? It was Google and Apple conspiring against employees. Nope, must have been Toyota and Texas Instruments who did that.

The thing is, when the statehouse is deeply involved in business, those three or four businesses who purchase state senators have a huge advantage over all the smaller companies. Those three or four companies collude and the employees are screwed. When the politicians are expected to stay out of the way, you have hundreds of companies hiring just at one job fair in Austin alone. It's not possible for 500 tech companies in Austin to ALL collude.

Many, many people are moving from California to Texas, often following companies who are either moving their headquarters or like Apple, who is moving their new development to Texas. They come here because this is where the jobs are, and the cost of living is so much lower. The same person might make two to three times as much real income after accounting for cost of living.

They come to Texas because Texas has jobs, Texas has affordable housing, Texas has a road system that works, unlike California gridlock. Yet they bring with them the very same political ideas that have failed so badly in California. If you want to regulate your employer out of business, please STAY in California. Your welcome to come here and join in our success, but your also welcome to stay there and keep your fail. Please don't bring your fail here.

The Colorado representatives favor ULA, of course. So they asked for information about the full costs to have SpaceX do it, mentioned that SpaceX has a higher rate of cancelled launches, etc. Just as SpaceX and their representatives point out the downsides of the ULA contract. I think that's a good thing, that the House and the American people hear both perspectives, then make decisions.

      Certainly you wouldn't want the administration to make these choices behind closed doors, with no public information about why they chose one vendor over another and what the options were, would you?