What are the disadvantages of this? Privacy? What, don't you want people to know what your face looks like either? It's not really a privacy issue: if I want to know what your DNA is, I can find it. Steal your keyboard, sit next to you in a restaurant and take your cup, punch you in the face, whatever. It's not hard. If you think your DNA is private, you're wrong. You leave it everywhere.
This argument is specious. The question never was if my privacy could be compromised, starting from the assumption that it is both super-secret and some sort of inviolable right. The point that applies here is Reasonable Expectation (of Privacy). Have a look at this, or consider that the cops have to have probable cause to search you. The same thing applies to looking into your DNA files. Sure, I leave my DNA everywhere, but I also have no reason to expect people like you will be collecting it. And no, that isn't my mistake, that's the mentioned reasonable expectation.
Sure it will be used to find people, and of course examples like the Unabomber, and (for heaven's sake, let's not forget to) think of the children, etc.
Similarly, it's horribly easy (per your example) to leave or plant DNA evidence at a crime scene, both for cops and for people who want to fuck with you. Because that kind of abuse will also be happening soon, if it isn't already.
That's one of the things I'm worried about, and it has fairly little to do with conspiracism.
DNA evidence is already considered "very dependable", but it's also potentially very easily abused, especially once it really goes mainstream. I wouldn't want to be the one to go into history as the person whose trial created the awareness that ultimately resulted in the discrediting of DNA evidence; Would you?
So yes, thought about it (while writing this post). Also, i'm glad you're so optimistic about american society. those GOP people had me worried last year when they started whining about mexicans.
Regardless, one wonders why it is so hard to think up a law that effectively blocks spam (with the intent to deceive people into either buying shit, or paying for stuff that isn't actually being sold, etc.) while not also apparently blocking the right for political candidates/parties to "inform" you of the fact that they're running for some sort of office (or similar).
Not that I'd be any more interested in hearing what said politician or party wants to tell me any more than I'm interested in viagra ads, but hey..
Anyway, is the lack of legislation a competency issue, or is it due to politicians just not caring, or protecting some sort of interest? (which seems unlikely) It seems sort of odd that there still isn't any legislation that forbids this nonsense, or requires opt-in lists, or something.
As a jaded cynic I have just this to say -
You voted for one of the Republicans or the Democrats and you expected a change?
Then why not include the other (mini)parties as well? It's not like voting for them would get you anything (especially considering your silly winner takes all system), but you still seem to think that voting for them would somehow "do you good" (or at least better).
The whole point of being a cynic is that you don't believe in "anything" anymore, not that you just don't believe in the status quo, but do believe in the workability of fringe beliefs (such as those espoused by silly paul)
I mean, how likely are you to be able to refuse to sign this, if your health is at stake?
How likely is it period to expect your physician to put this form under your nose before being willing to help you? It seems somewhat comparable to a EULA in that regard, seeing that there is no way to test the product other than by 'buying' it first. Can that be binding?
the NDA comparison doesn't seem to apply, since you don't generally sign NDAs in life-threatening situations, or situations in which you are perhaps intentionally kept uninformed of the consequences of signing such a thing.
And what happens then? Can your physician refuse to treat you? Can he do so always, only in 'non-life-threatening' cases, or never? It seems very murky, medical ethics-wise.
Kindle 2's experimental text-to-speech feature is legal: no copy is made, no derivative work is created, and no performance is being given. Furthermore, we ourselves are a major participant in the professionally narrated audiobooks business through our subsidiaries Audible and Brilliance. We believe text-to-speech will introduce new customers to the convenience of listening to books and thereby grow the professionally narrated audiobooks business.
Nevertheless, we strongly believe many rightsholders will be more comfortable with the text-to-speech feature if they are in the driver's seat.
Therefore, we are modifying our systems so that rightsholders can decide on a title by title basis whether they want text-to-speech enabled or disabled for any particular title. We have already begun to work on the technical changes required to give authors and publishers that choice. With this new level of control, publishers and authors will be able to decide for themselves whether it is in their commercial interests to leave text-to-speech enabled. We believe many will decide that it is.
Customers tell us that with Kindle, they read more, and buy more books. We are passionate about bringing the benefits of modern technology to long-form reading.
While ranting is all well and good, he refers to things i've never seen in XP. While i've never had the intention to install WMM, I should think i would recognize at least most of the stuff he refers to in this email.
I mean, what does This is after I was told we were doing delta patches to things but instead just to get 6 things that are labeled in the SCARIEST possible way I had to download 17meg. mean, exactly? it's almost like he wrote this at 3am without being allowed his caffeine fix first.
Maybe they fixed all of this after he'd complained about it, but it sounds like something entirely different from my own winXP experience.
Those black folks who are released after 25+ years in prison because they are somewhat belatedly found innocent (and who got there through sheer negligence/racism) never get any government compensation either. why should those kids get anything?
AFAIK the state cannot be sued, and cannot/need not admit guilt if they do something wrong. All they are required to do is release you [and perhaps say "oops"].
Actually, that is what you can get when you hack away at the fundamental beliefs of a fundamentalist who was running on hope only. Yes, I liked her, but I do think it was realistic to pick her as someone who kills herself (and whom the officer core cared about). Nobody else would've worked, but they needed a catalyst.
Sure you can. Just make it money that comes with strings attached, or create a government oversight body that checks if prices are 'realistic', and enforces a maximum price for goods.. or create regulation that forces ISPs/carriers to lower prices, say 1-3% per year each year, so that they're forced to become more efficient to keep the same profits (in a semi-monopolistic market).. They've done it to the former monopolist ISP/phone/mobile carrier over here (Holland), and it works just fine. The company is doing better than ever, infrastructure is still being maintained & upgraded, competition is thriving, and prices are going down anyway.
What a marvellous world we live in, where regulation rules the roost.. (yes, I realise the concept of government oversight probably wouldn't work in the US, as it would be a "private" body that would soon be bought up by one of those ISPs, but try to imagine a world in which they had created legislation to prevent that from happening)
You can be sure it's genuine, and not at all based on whim. Like another guy in another branch of this thread already said: The Queen hands out the knighthoods, but the guys/girls picked out for the knighthoods are chosen by the government, not the Queen.
Saying "she does it" and "it's sad to be praised by the status quo/those in power" is little more than being petty. The Queen (really the government) only praises those who made "substantial contributions to the country('s cultural or whatever) life".
Anyway, the "better" the literature you write is, the smaller the (contemporary) audience will be, (even though it will have a much longer history than more popular titles) so why do you feel that "writers should depend on praise given by (living) readers only"?
Insurance, in law and economics, is a form of risk management primarily used to hedge against the risk of a contingent loss. Insurance is defined as the equitable transfer of the risk of a loss, from one entity to another, in exchange for a premium, and can be thought of as a guaranteed small loss to prevent a large, possibly devastating loss. An insurer is a company selling the insurance; an insured is the person or entity buying the insurance.
So you're saying this *does* apply to taxes and public healthcare, but not to private health care?
because it seems to me to be really, really arbitrary how you don't see one as stealing, but you do the other.
And considering that US per capita health care spending is more than double that of the other G7/European countries, (see my other comment in this thread if you like) I'd say you should care more about getting the care costs down, as that will automatically lower (the need for those idiotically high) premiums.
It's outright sad that one third to half the US doesn't have access to health care, and that (anecdotal point) "Free Clinics" can still charge you 200$ for their free services. (this was for an SF guy i know who needed an allergy prescription worth 20$)
And it's all made possible because of that weird fiction that health care is something special, rather than a basic right.
It allows doctors to charge more (although they also have to pay enormous tuition fees because of lack of government funding), insurers to require more (because people can opt out, there's less carrying power or whatever it's called, because of the reduced number of people paying into the system, which means the costs can be spread less), and so on.
imagine how much more affordable health care could be if spending was more in line with european spending.. you'd be able to keep healthy 60-80% more people easily at the same cost, people who then would also have smaller chances of contracting other illnesses (prevention is better than cure and all), who could work more (because they were healthier), and so on.
Choosing to have a partially-diseased workforce is stealing from your GNP just as much as other things are.. it just depends on how far ahead you're able/willing to look.
Your "Facts" are wrong on so many levels it isn't even funny.
Please have a look at this pdf (which admittedly uses OECD data from AD 2000, so they might be somewhat outdated, but it will do to make my point)
On page 9 you'll see that public health spending (as a %age of total) is lowest in the US, (and highest in Sweden) and on page 10 you'll see that the total amount spent per person on healthcare in the US is nearly 73% higher than in the next country listed (Germany).
Next, if you have a look at the CIA World Factbook: (website isn't working here, so using wikisource) and look at the figures for average life expectancy in the US compared to socialist Europe, the average in the US: about 74 (male) and 80 (female), whereas in Sweden, (which admittedly has better life expectancy than some EU countries, but i can't be arsed to find the median country) it's 78/82 years (2004 est)).
Additionally, the Infant mortality rates:
US: 6.63 deaths/1,000 live births
Swe: total: 2.77 deaths/1,000 live births
Sweden's per capita spending: less than 1700$
United States per capita spending: 4100$
Please show me how or why "government healthcare is bound to fail", or, alternatively, have a look at actual data.
(Disclaimer: since 2004 a number of european countries are reforming/considering reforms to health care funding, because it's inefficient in some ways. Nevertheless, the fact remains that health care spending here costs less than half of what it costs in the US.)
I take it you're also wholly principally against software company policies forcing their workers to "meet deadlines", (either with or without paying overtime)?
And you also believe that companies would've of their own accord stopped laying off anyone even considering going on strike (for higher pay or working conditions) if the unions had never been established when they were?
You seem to be leaving little room for ideas that aren't generally accepted by the field you're working in. How likely would it have been that those guys would've been allowed to reformulate their contemporary thinking in the way they thought best if they'd have been forced to justify everything immediately to their colleagues?
All this may work fine in periods of evolutionary growth of a theory (or complex of theories), but it seems rather less workable if and when people get stuck. (this is not to say that both these things can't be looked into by different researchers simultaneously, one still working and adding to the old paradigm while the other might be reformulating it, but the point you're making sort of ignores the aspect of office politics.) "string theory" might be one such example.
Reason #1: Indexed databases/libraries are searched/browsed more quickly than file systems, and in multiple ways. And #2: because libraries can contain and search through tag info/content, which can be queried (well, in Foobar you can. ie. "%last_played% BEFORE 2008-07-04" or w/e)), which makes my library a lot more managable (see for instance my GUI setup)
Still, that doesn't mean Joe Sixpack uses his library the same way I do, but even he probably enjoys a (dumbed-down) centralized search iTunes features, even when they have only 300 files to search through.
> It's called freedom of choice and expression. Two of the things the American settlers left the old world for.
I was under the impression those settlers left the Netherlands because the Dutchies were too liberal?
Furthermore, "Freedom of religious beliefs" was only agreed upon in the US because it [turned out to be/was] impossible to prosecute every heresy people could think up. I don't believe the Colonies actually settled in the US because they wanted Freedom of Religion, they just wanted to live somewhere where *they* could be the Top Dog [most colonies early on did try to enforce Orthodoxy of some kind or another, they just didn't succeed at it]. Only when they realized they couldn't do so did they settle for Tolerance, in stead of creating their beloved Second Eden. In essence, pretty much the same as what happened in the OW, only with the caveat that it has been misremembered/-interpreted by modern day Americans, who now at times enjoy "mocking" (or whatever it is supposed to be that they're hoping to do) 'unfree' (Continental?) Europe. [Where we actually have the right to be atheist] To be honest, I haven't a clue what part of the world he was contrasting the USA with by putting so much stress on "Freedom of choice [between interchangeable consumer goods]", but whatever makes him happy, I suppose.
Still, it's nice that some people still believe that shtick about Freedom.
This based on the assumption that individual people and/or communities are more powerful, as well as more directly concerned with what will happen to them?
Why do you think we can watch movies like "Erin Brockovich" and 'connect' with the notion of Big Corporation fucking with Small Town, and Small Town not even realising what is happening? [until the heroÃne with the impressive cleavage shows up, anyway]
There are so many basic assumptions in the Libertarian "belief collective" that are wrong that I think even the Amish are less naive.
Against money-creation, against government [regulation], against the corporations that fuck with them as soon as there is no regulation [which is a given, but it is somehow not seen as a basic fact, but as a 'special case' of corporation behavior], and if they don't believe in corporations in the first place they leave open what should take its place [I see amazingly few Libertarians espousing Hunter/Gatherer societies, and commie/feudal/communitarian setups are probably not what they're looking for either.
But yes, let's be "Against government". "the market [which in an earlier post here is equated with 'the community']" will regulate itself, create money [they just tried that, it didn't work out], and presumably now stone the culprits.
It isn't deregulation, but "Fannie and Freddie" caused the fact that it was legal for mortgage salesmen to give everyone loans without doing credit histories.
If you'd have had the (European) system where mortgage debt is personal debt, and you can't just give up on a house if you can't pay for the mortgage anymore, this shit would never have happened in the first place, because at least then you people would've been afraid of making a "bad choice".
But i guess that would've hampered "Consumer choice" as well, and thus the exploitation of the common man. Which would've been "unjust" because "everyone has to have the right to choose what he or she wants" and whatnot. Except children (aren't assumed to be able to deal with that)/don't have that right, and especially not when it comes to their sex life, because you have to protect Them, but not the average Joe with what, K-9 'education'? And if they're really dumb, (ie. mentally retarded) you chemically castrate them (well, until the '60s), but that wasn't even called regulation, or taking away the rights of people.
Dear Lord, what I would give to live in such a place.
In attribution theory, the fundamental attribution error (also known as correspondence bias or overattribution effect) is the tendency for people to over-emphasize dispositional, or personality-based, explanations for behaviors observed in others while under-emphasizing situational explanations. In other words, people have an unjustified tendency to assume that a person's actions depend on what "kind" of person that person is rather than on the social and environmental forces influencing the person. Overattribution is less likely, perhaps even inverted, when people explain their own behavior; this discrepancy is called the actor-observer bias.
Not that i regularly approve of the (more often than not vacuous) terminology "invented" (look up the "definition" of self-esteem variability and its effects if you're ever bored for a particularly painful example of such a concept), but yours is just about the paradigm case for a f.a.e., even if you *were* kidding:P
I've been living like this for a long time - about twenty years. I'm forty now. I used to be in the civil service; I no longer am. I was a wicked official. I was rude, and took pleasure in it. After all, I didn't accept bribes, so I had to reward myself at least with that. (A bad witticism, but I won't cross it out. I wrote it thinking it would come out very witty; but now, seeing for myself that I simply had a vile wish to swagger - I purposely won't cross it out!) When petitioners would come for information to the desk where I sat - I'd gnash my teeth at them, and felt and inexhaustible delight when I managed to upset someone. I almost always managed. They were timid people for the most part: petitioners, you know. But among the fops there was one officer I especially could not stand. He simply refused to submit and kept rattling his sabre disgustingly. I was at war with him over that sabre for a year and a half. In the end, I prevailed. He stopped rattling. However, that was still in my youth. But do you know, gentlemen, what was the main point about my wickedness? The whole thing precisely was, the greatest nastiness precisely lay in my being shamefully conscious every moment, even in moments of the greatest bile, that I was not only not a wicked but was not even an embittered man, that I was simply frightening sparrows in vain, and pleasing myself with it. Such is my custom.
And I lied about myself just now when I said I was a wicked official. I lied out of wickedness. I was simply playing around both with the petitioners and with the officer, but as a matter of fact I was never able to become wicked.
While I'm sure someone within the next 5 years would've figured out a way to get this to be declared unconstitutional, the next McBush who becomes president would demand "something similar to replace the current 'search right/practice' with" anyway, so don't you think this is the pragmatic thing to do?
"ISS" doesn't use windows at all.. Most if not all of the actual hardware seem to be running on different versions of linux (mind you, quite a bit of the hardware is from around the Y2K or before, so you'll see p233s with 64mb ram running things).
The only things infected were a couple of laptops running "nutritional programs", (whatever the hell those are).. Even then, all ISSEarth communication goes through fairly tough screening, and is not directly linked to the 'net, so it's not as if planting trojans on astronaut's laptops is very useful, or challenging (seeing how the laptops weren't running AV Software, and are far from mission critical equipment).
Slashdot Mirror
What are the disadvantages of this? Privacy? What, don't you want people to know what your face looks like either? It's not really a privacy issue: if I want to know what your DNA is, I can find it. Steal your keyboard, sit next to you in a restaurant and take your cup, punch you in the face, whatever. It's not hard. If you think your DNA is private, you're wrong. You leave it everywhere.
This argument is specious. The question never was if my privacy could be compromised, starting from the assumption that it is both super-secret and some sort of inviolable right. The point that applies here is Reasonable Expectation (of Privacy). Have a look at this, or consider that the cops have to have probable cause to search you. The same thing applies to looking into your DNA files.
Sure, I leave my DNA everywhere, but I also have no reason to expect people like you will be collecting it. And no, that isn't my mistake, that's the mentioned reasonable expectation.
Sure it will be used to find people, and of course examples like the Unabomber, and (for heaven's sake, let's not forget to) think of the children, etc.
Similarly, it's horribly easy (per your example) to leave or plant DNA evidence at a crime scene, both for cops and for people who want to fuck with you. Because that kind of abuse will also be happening soon, if it isn't already.
That's one of the things I'm worried about, and it has fairly little to do with conspiracism. DNA evidence is already considered "very dependable", but it's also potentially very easily abused, especially once it really goes mainstream. I wouldn't want to be the one to go into history as the person whose trial created the awareness that ultimately resulted in the discrediting of DNA evidence; Would you?
So yes, thought about it (while writing this post). Also, i'm glad you're so optimistic about american society. those GOP people had me worried last year when they started whining about mexicans.
Regardless, one wonders why it is so hard to think up a law that effectively blocks spam (with the intent to deceive people into either buying shit, or paying for stuff that isn't actually being sold, etc.) while not also apparently blocking the right for political candidates/parties to "inform" you of the fact that they're running for some sort of office (or similar).
Not that I'd be any more interested in hearing what said politician or party wants to tell me any more than I'm interested in viagra ads, but hey..
Anyway, is the lack of legislation a competency issue, or is it due to politicians just not caring, or protecting some sort of interest? (which seems unlikely)
It seems sort of odd that there still isn't any legislation that forbids this nonsense, or requires opt-in lists, or something.
As a jaded cynic I have just this to say - You voted for one of the Republicans or the Democrats and you expected a change?
Then why not include the other (mini)parties as well?
It's not like voting for them would get you anything (especially considering your silly winner takes all system), but you still seem to think that voting for them would somehow "do you good" (or at least better).
The whole point of being a cynic is that you don't believe in "anything" anymore, not that you just don't believe in the status quo, but do believe in the workability of fringe beliefs (such as those espoused by silly paul)
I mean, how likely are you to be able to refuse to sign this, if your health is at stake?
How likely is it period to expect your physician to put this form under your nose before being willing to help you? It seems somewhat comparable to a EULA in that regard, seeing that there is no way to test the product other than by 'buying' it first. Can that be binding?
the NDA comparison doesn't seem to apply, since you don't generally sign NDAs in life-threatening situations, or situations in which you are perhaps intentionally kept uninformed of the consequences of signing such a thing.
And what happens then? Can your physician refuse to treat you? Can he do so always, only in 'non-life-threatening' cases, or never? It seems very murky, medical ethics-wise.
these enough?
Kindle 2's experimental text-to-speech feature is legal: no copy is made, no derivative work is created, and no performance is being given. Furthermore, we ourselves are a major participant in the professionally narrated audiobooks business through our subsidiaries Audible and Brilliance. We believe text-to-speech will introduce new customers to the convenience of listening to books and thereby grow the professionally narrated audiobooks business.
Nevertheless, we strongly believe many rightsholders will be more comfortable with the text-to-speech feature if they are in the driver's seat.
Therefore, we are modifying our systems so that rightsholders can decide on a title by title basis whether they want text-to-speech enabled or disabled for any particular title. We have already begun to work on the technical changes required to give authors and publishers that choice. With this new level of control, publishers and authors will be able to decide for themselves whether it is in their commercial interests to leave text-to-speech enabled. We believe many will decide that it is.
Customers tell us that with Kindle, they read more, and buy more books. We are passionate about bringing the benefits of modern technology to long-form reading.
More Whiny Goodness cast in the "uhoh, business threat" mold
While ranting is all well and good, he refers to things i've never seen in XP. While i've never had the intention to install WMM, I should think i would recognize at least most of the stuff he refers to in this email.
I mean, what does This is after I was told we were doing delta patches to things but instead just to get 6 things that are labeled in the SCARIEST possible way I had to download 17meg. mean, exactly? it's almost like he wrote this at 3am without being allowed his caffeine fix first.
Maybe they fixed all of this after he'd complained about it, but it sounds like something entirely different from my own winXP experience.
Those black folks who are released after 25+ years in prison because they are somewhat belatedly found innocent (and who got there through sheer negligence/racism) never get any government compensation either. why should those kids get anything?
AFAIK the state cannot be sued, and cannot/need not admit guilt if they do something wrong. All they are required to do is release you [and perhaps say "oops"].
Actually, that is what you can get when you hack away at the fundamental beliefs of a fundamentalist who was running on hope only. Yes, I liked her, but I do think it was realistic to pick her as someone who kills herself (and whom the officer core cared about). Nobody else would've worked, but they needed a catalyst.
"We" also invented the stock market (and the still-used model for government bonds)? ;-)
Sure you can. Just make it money that comes with strings attached, or create a government oversight body that checks if prices are 'realistic', and enforces a maximum price for goods.. or create regulation that forces ISPs/carriers to lower prices, say 1-3% per year each year, so that they're forced to become more efficient to keep the same profits (in a semi-monopolistic market)..
They've done it to the former monopolist ISP/phone/mobile carrier over here (Holland), and it works just fine. The company is doing better than ever, infrastructure is still being maintained & upgraded, competition is thriving, and prices are going down anyway.
What a marvellous world we live in, where regulation rules the roost.. (yes, I realise the concept of government oversight probably wouldn't work in the US, as it would be a "private" body that would soon be bought up by one of those ISPs, but try to imagine a world in which they had created legislation to prevent that from happening)
You can be sure it's genuine, and not at all based on whim. Like another guy in another branch of this thread already said: The Queen hands out the knighthoods, but the guys/girls picked out for the knighthoods are chosen by the government, not the Queen.
Saying "she does it" and "it's sad to be praised by the status quo/those in power" is little more than being petty. The Queen (really the government) only praises those who made "substantial contributions to the country('s cultural or whatever) life".
Anyway, the "better" the literature you write is, the smaller the (contemporary) audience will be, (even though it will have a much longer history than more popular titles) so why do you feel that "writers should depend on praise given by (living) readers only"?
Insurance, in law and economics, is a form of risk management primarily used to hedge against the risk of a contingent loss. Insurance is defined as the equitable transfer of the risk of a loss, from one entity to another, in exchange for a premium, and can be thought of as a guaranteed small loss to prevent a large, possibly devastating loss. An insurer is a company selling the insurance; an insured is the person or entity buying the insurance.
So you're saying this *does* apply to taxes and public healthcare, but not to private health care?
because it seems to me to be really, really arbitrary how you don't see one as stealing, but you do the other.
And considering that US per capita health care spending is more than double that of the other G7/European countries, (see my other comment in this thread if you like) I'd say you should care more about getting the care costs down, as that will automatically lower (the need for those idiotically high) premiums.
It's outright sad that one third to half the US doesn't have access to health care, and that (anecdotal point) "Free Clinics" can still charge you 200$ for their free services. (this was for an SF guy i know who needed an allergy prescription worth 20$)
And it's all made possible because of that weird fiction that health care is something special, rather than a basic right.
It allows doctors to charge more (although they also have to pay enormous tuition fees because of lack of government funding), insurers to require more (because people can opt out, there's less carrying power or whatever it's called, because of the reduced number of people paying into the system, which means the costs can be spread less), and so on.
imagine how much more affordable health care could be if spending was more in line with european spending.. you'd be able to keep healthy 60-80% more people easily at the same cost, people who then would also have smaller chances of contracting other illnesses (prevention is better than cure and all), who could work more (because they were healthier), and so on.
Choosing to have a partially-diseased workforce is stealing from your GNP just as much as other things are.. it just depends on how far ahead you're able/willing to look.
Please have a look at this pdf (which admittedly uses OECD data from AD 2000, so they might be somewhat outdated, but it will do to make my point)
On page 9 you'll see that public health spending (as a %age of total) is lowest in the US, (and highest in Sweden) and on page 10 you'll see that the total amount spent per person on healthcare in the US is nearly 73% higher than in the next country listed (Germany).
Next, if you have a look at the CIA World Factbook: (website isn't working here, so using wikisource)
and look at the figures for average life expectancy in the US compared to socialist Europe, the average in the US: about 74 (male) and 80 (female), whereas in Sweden, (which admittedly has better life expectancy than some EU countries, but i can't be arsed to find the median country) it's 78/82 years (2004 est)).
Additionally, the Infant mortality rates:
US: 6.63 deaths/1,000 live births
Swe: total: 2.77 deaths/1,000 live births
Sweden's per capita spending: less than 1700$
United States per capita spending: 4100$
Please show me how or why "government healthcare is bound to fail", or, alternatively, have a look at actual data.
(Disclaimer: since 2004 a number of european countries are reforming/considering reforms to health care funding, because it's inefficient in some ways. Nevertheless, the fact remains that health care spending here costs less than half of what it costs in the US.)
I take it you're also wholly principally against software company policies forcing their workers to "meet deadlines", (either with or without paying overtime)?
And you also believe that companies would've of their own accord stopped laying off anyone even considering going on strike (for higher pay or working conditions) if the unions had never been established when they were?
You seem to be leaving little room for ideas that aren't generally accepted by the field you're working in.
How likely would it have been that those guys would've been allowed to reformulate their contemporary thinking in the way they thought best if they'd have been forced to justify everything immediately to their colleagues? All this may work fine in periods of evolutionary growth of a theory (or complex of theories), but it seems rather less workable if and when people get stuck. (this is not to say that both these things can't be looked into by different researchers simultaneously, one still working and adding to the old paradigm while the other might be reformulating it, but the point you're making sort of ignores the aspect of office politics.)
"string theory" might be one such example.
I'd say go for Cowon's iAudio's.. they're quite attractive, and in about the same price range as Apple's "designs."
Reason #1: Indexed databases/libraries are searched/browsed more quickly than file systems, and in multiple ways. And
#2: because libraries can contain and search through tag info/content, which can be queried (well, in Foobar you can. ie. "%last_played% BEFORE 2008-07-04" or w/e)), which makes my library a lot more managable (see for instance my GUI setup)
Still, that doesn't mean Joe Sixpack uses his library the same way I do, but even he probably enjoys a (dumbed-down) centralized search iTunes features, even when they have only 300 files to search through.
> It's called freedom of choice and expression. Two of the things the American settlers left the old world for.
I was under the impression those settlers left the Netherlands because the Dutchies were too liberal?
Furthermore, "Freedom of religious beliefs" was only agreed upon in the US because it [turned out to be/was] impossible to prosecute every heresy people could think up.
I don't believe the Colonies actually settled in the US because they wanted Freedom of Religion, they just wanted to live somewhere where *they* could be the Top Dog [most colonies early on did try to enforce Orthodoxy of some kind or another, they just didn't succeed at it]. Only when they realized they couldn't do so did they settle for Tolerance, in stead of creating their beloved Second Eden.
In essence, pretty much the same as what happened in the OW, only with the caveat that it has been misremembered/-interpreted by modern day Americans, who now at times enjoy "mocking" (or whatever it is supposed to be that they're hoping to do) 'unfree' (Continental?) Europe. [Where we actually have the right to be atheist]
To be honest, I haven't a clue what part of the world he was contrasting the USA with by putting so much stress on "Freedom of choice [between interchangeable consumer goods]", but whatever makes him happy, I suppose.
Still, it's nice that some people still believe that shtick about Freedom.
Why do you think we can watch movies like "Erin Brockovich" and 'connect' with the notion of Big Corporation fucking with Small Town, and Small Town not even realising what is happening? [until the heroÃne with the impressive cleavage shows up, anyway]
There are so many basic assumptions in the Libertarian "belief collective" that are wrong that I think even the Amish are less naive.
Against money-creation, against government [regulation], against the corporations that fuck with them as soon as there is no regulation [which is a given, but it is somehow not seen as a basic fact, but as a 'special case' of corporation behavior], and if they don't believe in corporations in the first place they leave open what should take its place [I see amazingly few Libertarians espousing Hunter/Gatherer societies, and commie/feudal/communitarian setups are probably not what they're looking for either.
But yes, let's be "Against government". "the market [which in an earlier post here is equated with 'the community']" will regulate itself, create money [they just tried that, it didn't work out], and presumably now stone the culprits.
It isn't deregulation, but "Fannie and Freddie" caused the fact that it was legal for mortgage salesmen to give everyone loans without doing credit histories.
If you'd have had the (European) system where mortgage debt is personal debt, and you can't just give up on a house if you can't pay for the mortgage anymore, this shit would never have happened in the first place, because at least then you people would've been afraid of making a "bad choice".
But i guess that would've hampered "Consumer choice" as well, and thus the exploitation of the common man. Which would've been "unjust" because "everyone has to have the right to choose what he or she wants" and whatnot. Except children (aren't assumed to be able to deal with that)/don't have that right, and especially not when it comes to their sex life, because you have to protect Them, but not the average Joe with what, K-9 'education'? And if they're really dumb, (ie. mentally retarded) you chemically castrate them (well, until the '60s), but that wasn't even called regulation, or taking away the rights of people.
Dear Lord, what I would give to live in such a place.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/10/14/AR2008101403343_pf.html today was also fairly interesting to read, even though it does lack (references to) some background info needed to fully understand the impact..
In attribution theory, the fundamental attribution error (also known as correspondence bias or overattribution effect) is the tendency for people to over-emphasize dispositional, or personality-based, explanations for behaviors observed in others while under-emphasizing situational explanations. In other words, people have an unjustified tendency to assume that a person's actions depend on what "kind" of person that person is rather than on the social and environmental forces influencing the person. Overattribution is less likely, perhaps even inverted, when people explain their own behavior; this discrepancy is called the actor-observer bias.
Not that i regularly approve of the (more often than not vacuous) terminology "invented" (look up the "definition" of self-esteem variability and its effects if you're ever bored for a particularly painful example of such a concept), but yours is just about the paradigm case for a f.a.e., even if you *were* kidding :P
I've been living like this for a long time - about twenty years. I'm forty now. I used to be in the civil service; I no longer am. I was a wicked official. I was rude, and took pleasure in it.
After all, I didn't accept bribes, so I had to reward myself at least with that. (A bad witticism, but I won't cross it out. I wrote it thinking it would come out very witty; but now, seeing for myself that I simply had a vile wish to swagger - I purposely won't cross it out!)
When petitioners would come for information to the desk where I sat - I'd gnash my teeth at them, and felt and inexhaustible delight when I managed to upset someone. I almost always managed.
They were timid people for the most part: petitioners, you know. But among the fops there was one officer I especially could not stand. He simply refused to submit and kept rattling his sabre disgustingly. I was at war with him over that sabre for a year and a half. In the end, I prevailed. He stopped rattling. However, that was still in my youth. But do you know, gentlemen, what was the main point about my wickedness?
The whole thing precisely was, the greatest nastiness precisely lay in my being shamefully conscious every moment, even in moments of the greatest bile, that I was not only not a wicked but was not even an embittered man, that I was simply frightening sparrows in vain, and pleasing myself with it. Such is my custom. And I lied about myself just now when I said I was a wicked official.
I lied out of wickedness. I was simply playing around both with the petitioners and with the officer, but as a matter of fact I was never able to become wicked.
While I'm sure someone within the next 5 years would've figured out a way to get this to be declared unconstitutional, the next McBush who becomes president would demand "something similar to replace the current 'search right/practice' with" anyway, so don't you think this is the pragmatic thing to do?
"ISS" doesn't use windows at all.. Most if not all of the actual hardware seem to be running on different versions of linux (mind you, quite a bit of the hardware is from around the Y2K or before, so you'll see p233s with 64mb ram running things).
The only things infected were a couple of laptops running "nutritional programs", (whatever the hell those are).. Even then, all ISSEarth communication goes through fairly tough screening, and is not directly linked to the 'net, so it's not as if planting trojans on astronaut's laptops is very useful, or challenging (seeing how the laptops weren't running AV Software, and are far from mission critical equipment).
anyway, see this possibly partial, old entry on what some parts of ISS are run on.