This is a very intriguing treatment. The "games" aren't exactly Counter-Strike or WoW, though. In fact, they're very similar to this toy. The presentation I saw had kids with electrodes on their heads looking at a monitor that had a dude hanging on a red balloon. The object was to keep the balloon at a specified altitude based on input from the electrodes. Supposedly, after a few months of these types of exercises, someone in this program will be able to keep the balloon steady at will. This is supposed to build concentration skills that can be transferred over to help on things like studying and professional work. The doctor giving the presentation said that only about 60% of people who enter the program are able to successfully develop these skills.
I have moderate ADD (no H) myself and have had great success using the drug Adderall. I went from getting C's and D's in school to getting nearly straight A's as a result of using the medication. However, the drugs make me feel a bit subdued and this is not always desirable. There's also a psychological factor in that I'm somewhat bothered by the idea of having to rely on a chemical stimulant to be able to sit and do the things that other people can do without drugs. I was highly interested by this treatment, but it's quite costly and time-consuming (several thousand USD over about 2 years). My insurance company would not cover any of it and I doubt most companies would since it's largely experimental at this point. This coupled with a low-ish success rate have deterred me thus far. Are there any 'dotters out there that have tried this? The idea seems sound, in theory, but I never actually have spoken with someone who underwent the treatment.
...can't you just drop the $12 on an older game like Q3A? Even if you got a measly 5 hours of play during the entire lifetime of your ownership, it would be hard to argue that it's not worth that price. It's fun, there are still tons of players, and you can pick it up and drop it without drama. Don't get me wrong, I appreciate and understand why there is free software in the world, but really good, comprehensive games almost universally cost money. The exception is probably id's free gift to the world Return to Castle Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory, which you can download and play completely free of charge and it even has an available Linux client. However, this is not an "arena-style" fps, so I guess it doesn't quite fit the bill. It's class-based, but doesn't generally use timed rounds and there are a variety of map styles. I suppose it's possible to find a server that has arena-like settings.
Communication is critical to developing civilization and lifespan is critical to developing communication. Let's pretend for a moment that octupuses have the same cognitive capacity as human beings and that they have somehow established a form of communication as verbose as our spoken/written language. It takes a human child at least 5 years to gain reasonable command of the language to express his/herself effectively, and many more years after that to communicate complex ideas about society. The brightest of us may be able to grasp these harder concepts by the late teens, while most people probably won't quite get it until at least their mid-20s. If octopuses are only living to the age of 5, they'll never be able to establish a suitably verbose language, nor will their offspring be able to absorb and command this language before their own deaths.
I am a person with "slow" eyes who can't generally see the flicker, but there are a few models of cars that I've noticed flicker on as my eyes pan side-to-side. Almost none of the newer ones do, but every time I see an older Cadillac SRX (~2004 model year) I can see the flicker as long as the brake lights aren't on. These are obviously operating at significantly less than 60 Hz. I'm sure manufacturers are aware of this situation, which is why more current models have fixed this issue.
I've been an iPhone owner for about 6 months (please don't hit me) and there are ways in which it works exceedingly well and other ways in which it does not.
Pros:
-Acute positional control. I can align my web site or image in exactly the way I want to. This is something that I've found to be difficult with a scroll wheel or ball on other devices.
-Mutable UI. Since there aren't static buttons or controls, the UI can be designed specifically for the application which allows for less clutter and more efficiency. (this is also a con, see below)
-Typing. This really only applies to the mobile arena and I know there's great disagreements about this, but given the small size of the keyboard, it actually works quite well as long as it's combined with the predictive text algorithm. I had a Samsung Blackjack prior and I ended up typing faster on the iPhone after only about a week simply because of the time saved from actually having to exert force on the keys.
Cons:
-Obstruction of the screen. While some of the core typing features sort of circumvent this by popping up what's under your fingers, there are many 3rd party applications where field obstruction quickly becomes annoying. In particular, there are puzzle games that require rotating pieces with two fingers while one finger is entirely covering the piece so that you're unable to easily tell how far you've rotated it.
-Mutable UI. As a Mac fanboy, I've grown to love the idea of a UI that's consistent across applications. As the UI of touch interfaces is generally specific to the application, many of the ideas have to be relearned for every application you use. This isn't just control placement, but also gestures, which I've found different developers like to use quite differently.
-Lack of real buttons/tactile feedback. I'll go back to the example of games again because it seems most relevant. Games like Tetris or Pac-man were designed to use a game pad or joystick. As a result, the developers of these types of games like to simply overlay bitmapped representations of these controls on to the screen. The problem is that while you're watching the game, your finger tends to wander off of the overlaid control and you end up missing a button or pushing the wrong one and screwing yourself. I wish there were some real buttons on the iPhone to serve this purpose because there is no better type of input for these types of apps.
-Popular operating environments aren't designed for this. The iPhone works well because it was designed from the ground up to work exclusively with touch input. Windows, OS X, popular desktop Linux distros, etc. were not. I played around with the HP TouchSmart for awhile, and it's basically a Vista PC with touch shoehorned into it. The handful of apps that come with its little touch "suite" work well enough, but once you wander back to the real desktop, it becomes essentially pointless. Try clicking a dropdown menu or close a window with the corner X and you'll quickly remember why you bought a mouse. I hear the same sort of things about the BlackBerry storm. It's the vanilla BB OS with only a couple apps designed for touch input.
If we ever expect touch to go mainstream, we're going to need to see what a full desktop environment designed for touch input will look like. It does not exist as of yet. They will continue to not exist until there is a need for it. Ask yourself, do you need a desktop or laptop with a touch interface? I don't feel that I do, although I think it would be "neat". The possibility for productivity gains from this type of input is relatively meager, while the cost and time required to develop a suitable touch-driven replacement for the desktop environment is significant.
Econ 101 explains why this is necessary in the telecommunications industry. It will be this way forever unless a mainstream technology emerges to provide service without an egregious amount of infrastructure. In exchange for exclusivity for digging holes or jamming posts into the ground all over town in order to lay wire, the government sets price caps on telecom services. This has certainly been the case for traditional voice service, but there has occasoinally been action taken regarding internet service as well. Relatively recently, when the "New AT&T" started piecing itself back together from the Baby Bells, they were ordered to provide DSL service for $10/mo to many markets (side note: this was controversial because getting information on this deal was made to be extremely difficult). The simple course of action should be to extend existing agreements to include provisions for net neutrality in exchange for these ISPs keeping their monopolies. If they don't want to play ball, then just let the market squeeze them until it becomes financially impractical to maintain their infrastructure and then they'll see the light.
Officials from McColo did not respond to multiple e-mails, phone calls and instant messages left at the contact points listed on the company's Web site before the site was taken offline.
Well, what the hell do you expect when their ISP dropped all their connections? Sheesh.
This also theoretically opens the door to watching movies in Windows WITHOUT having to use IE. I never understood why IE was required to begin with since the current non-beta DRM was Windows Media-based.
The somewhat less fancy way of check verification comes in the form of a service like Certegy which keeps a history of any bad checks. Basically, if someone writes a bad check (insufficient funds, fraudulent, etc.), they'll have both their checking account and their ID number (from things like driver's licenses or passports) flagged and will have a remarkably difficult time writing any more checks out of that account or ID number. Certegy acts as sort of a cartel that many retailers use and so if I write a bad check to Home Depot this week, then next week when I try to buy groceries at Safeway, they'll tell me to go pound sand. The retailer can also take other steps like denying the return of merchandise or withholding merchandise that has yet to be delivered/installed.
This, of course, is not a perfect system. Obviously, it can't stop the initial incident that triggered the customer being flag and there are ways to defeat it. A good way around it is to steal real checks (from an account that actually has enough money to cover your dubious purchases) and then use a fake ID, but in the grand scheme, this type of situation reflects only a small percentage of check problems that these companies face.
As a former employee of a company that used Certegy, I can tell you that over 80% of the check problems are from legit people writing checks from their accounts, but don't realize they don't have enough cash in their account to cover it. As a rational human being, this is mind-boggling to me, but it's absolutely a reality. The real comedy comes when you see someone's name on the "bad" list who is actually one of your employees. I've literally seen a couple of them continue to show up as deviant for a period of several months, though I suppose this should be seen as a signal to the company that they're not paying their employees enough ^_^
Despite a couple of high-profile CAPTCHAs being cracked, the fundamental principle behind them is still fairly sound. It's at least an order of magnitude easier for a programmer to develop a reasonably difficult CAPTCHA than it is for an attacker to develop the crack for it. Image/character recognition is extremely difficult. Ask anyone who's done any work on OCR or something similar. Even in what would be considered a fairly homogeneous environment, character recognition is still a huge pain in the ass.
Just like with any security measure, a few of the inferior implementations will have to be broken to prove which ones are actually superior.
Re:Ignorance vs. the Unknown
on
LHC Success!
·
· Score: 1
They were virtually certain it wouldn't happen, but since humanity had never caused an energetic fission event before they had no definitive experimental evidence to back that up.
I fear the day that the words, "In response to an imminent threat, we created an energetic fission event in the city of Tehran" come out of our President's mouth. Unfortunately, we may not immediately realize what actually happened because it'll probably come out something like, "enigmatic fishin' event."
The most common harm I see is people developing a sense of apathy toward life because they believe there are supernatural forces that are actively controlling their destiny. For example, my mother is a devout Jehovah's Witness and she constantly talks about the time that they believe God will wave his hand and make peace on earth (Jehovah's Witnesses have a much different concept of heaven than most main line Christian sects. They instead believe in a "perfect" earth as the place where they'll spend eternity.) I often have heard her say things like, "Oh, none of this really matters. One day God will make it perfect," in regards to difficulties she might be having in her life. The harm that's caused here is that she doesn't make a great deal of effort to solve her problems because she believes that they will eventually be solved for her by a supernatural power.
This expectation of assistance is fairly evident in their stance on higher education (which is basically "don't get any"). The harm is that there's lost opportunity in devoting one's time to something that could be false. Instead of living a full life and making meaningful contributions to society, the use of time is diverted to other areas.
I was actually at a book signing event last night for Fake Steve Jobs in LA where FSJ (Dan Lyons) was there. Two things of note:
1) There was a linux enthusiast there that seemed to have some sort of agenda to push on him. The linux guy asked Dan to formally apologize for a comment he had once made about the SCO case where he had said something like, "the linux nerds were right". I guess this dude was upset about being called a "nerd", even though Dan said he didn't think there were negative connotations with that term (which I agree with). Despite this, in a room of about 30 "nerds" (myself included), this one dude was clearly the nerdiest there.
2) When it was mentioned by an audience member that the FSJ blog conveys some good industry analysis, his response was something to the degree of, "if you really want some good analysis, you should be reading Groklaw". This was not said in a joking or sarcastic manner. He didn't have any such complements for any other sites.
Anyway, even if Dan "hates" groklaw as the title says, he does have a great respect for them, so you have to give the guy a little credit.
All the things they're wanting to charge for are things that are essentially within most people's control and that's why I have a hard time disagreeing with this idea. I would not imagine that you would be charged for having cancer since it's not something that you could do anything about changing.
With a handful of exceptions, people are in direct control of their own weight, glucose level, cholesterol level, blood pressure and smoking habits. Since this article is only really a summary of this policy, it doesn't appear to go into detail about things like genetic predisposition to high blood pressure and the potential monetary exceptions that may go along with that. My question is, if directly saving money is offered as an incentive for people to make themselves healthier, then why not go for it? Healthy parents teach their children to be more healthy. Also, friends who have been able to revitalize their health can inspire others to do the same.
Insurance is, in fact, about spreading risk. When talking about risk as it pertains to health, I'd say there's always a natural "risk" of people getting cancer, heart disease, etc. However, smoking cigarettes and allowing (for those who have control, which is most people) yourself to be overweight is NOT *risk*. It's asking for trouble. As someone who has to pay for my own insurance, I don't especially like the idea of having to pay for some other guy's lung cancer because he had a good time smoking for a few decades. It may sound callus, but it's better for both him and me if there's an incentive for him to stop. We should give this idea a chance.
Though I doubt the macbooks would get a feature that their pro bretheren do not have first...
There's already been one (sweet) feature that the regular MacBooks got before the Pros: the magnetic latch. The MBs and the MBPs are on different product refresh cycles, so it's definitely plausible that one may get something before the other, simply due to the time tables being staggered.
...just not so much the ones that were mentioned in the original post. The most important is having a much stronger emphasis on math and science in our schools. It's no secret that the US is falling behind in these areas. Developed countries like Japan and Germany are more or less kicking our asses in these areas and even China is practically breathing down our neck, at least in the manufacturing arena. After WWII, when America could easily be called the world's technological leader, the economy was fantastic and we had a strong middle class. Now this is all changing. The de-emphasis on math and science will ultimately lead to economic decline, so this is actually a huge issue. As the richest nation in the world, there is no excuse why we shouldn't be the technological leader. Any presidential candidate that recognizes this would earn major points with me personally. Unfortunately, I get the feeling that Al Gore would be the best choice for this, but he hasn't thrown his hat in yet.::sigh::
I'm a big fan of the hard drive->freezer method. It has been alleged that putting a broken hard drive into a freezer can sometimes make the data readable again for a short period of time.
Yeah, this is a tactical nightmare for military applications, I'd think. The end of the article explains how the UAVs are much more expendable than a pilot or an expensive fighter yet. However, in a combat situation, if the enemy knows that the pilot of the fighter is the one in control, they're going to make him the primary target and do everything they possibly can to take him out first. It's a nice idea that they don't want to risk the pilots' lives, but in doing it this way, they draw all of the enemy's focus on trying to bring the piloted fighter, NOT the UAVs, down. I'd rather be in a squad of several other manned fighters so that I'd at least have some chance of the enemy picking one of them first.
Slashdot Mirror
This is a very intriguing treatment. The "games" aren't exactly Counter-Strike or WoW, though. In fact, they're very similar to this toy. The presentation I saw had kids with electrodes on their heads looking at a monitor that had a dude hanging on a red balloon. The object was to keep the balloon at a specified altitude based on input from the electrodes. Supposedly, after a few months of these types of exercises, someone in this program will be able to keep the balloon steady at will. This is supposed to build concentration skills that can be transferred over to help on things like studying and professional work. The doctor giving the presentation said that only about 60% of people who enter the program are able to successfully develop these skills.
I have moderate ADD (no H) myself and have had great success using the drug Adderall. I went from getting C's and D's in school to getting nearly straight A's as a result of using the medication. However, the drugs make me feel a bit subdued and this is not always desirable. There's also a psychological factor in that I'm somewhat bothered by the idea of having to rely on a chemical stimulant to be able to sit and do the things that other people can do without drugs. I was highly interested by this treatment, but it's quite costly and time-consuming (several thousand USD over about 2 years). My insurance company would not cover any of it and I doubt most companies would since it's largely experimental at this point. This coupled with a low-ish success rate have deterred me thus far. Are there any 'dotters out there that have tried this? The idea seems sound, in theory, but I never actually have spoken with someone who underwent the treatment.
I checked, and I found I couldn't access the information using an ID3 tag editor
All iTunes songs are AAC or Apple Lossless. ID3 is used almost exclusively for MP3 and certainly not for any iTunes song.
...can't you just drop the $12 on an older game like Q3A? Even if you got a measly 5 hours of play during the entire lifetime of your ownership, it would be hard to argue that it's not worth that price. It's fun, there are still tons of players, and you can pick it up and drop it without drama. Don't get me wrong, I appreciate and understand why there is free software in the world, but really good, comprehensive games almost universally cost money. The exception is probably id's free gift to the world Return to Castle Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory, which you can download and play completely free of charge and it even has an available Linux client. However, this is not an "arena-style" fps, so I guess it doesn't quite fit the bill. It's class-based, but doesn't generally use timed rounds and there are a variety of map styles. I suppose it's possible to find a server that has arena-like settings.
Communication is critical to developing civilization and lifespan is critical to developing communication. Let's pretend for a moment that octupuses have the same cognitive capacity as human beings and that they have somehow established a form of communication as verbose as our spoken/written language. It takes a human child at least 5 years to gain reasonable command of the language to express his/herself effectively, and many more years after that to communicate complex ideas about society. The brightest of us may be able to grasp these harder concepts by the late teens, while most people probably won't quite get it until at least their mid-20s. If octopuses are only living to the age of 5, they'll never be able to establish a suitably verbose language, nor will their offspring be able to absorb and command this language before their own deaths.
FATAL1TY
I am a person with "slow" eyes who can't generally see the flicker, but there are a few models of cars that I've noticed flicker on as my eyes pan side-to-side. Almost none of the newer ones do, but every time I see an older Cadillac SRX (~2004 model year) I can see the flicker as long as the brake lights aren't on. These are obviously operating at significantly less than 60 Hz. I'm sure manufacturers are aware of this situation, which is why more current models have fixed this issue.
I've been an iPhone owner for about 6 months (please don't hit me) and there are ways in which it works exceedingly well and other ways in which it does not.
Pros:
-Acute positional control. I can align my web site or image in exactly the way I want to. This is something that I've found to be difficult with a scroll wheel or ball on other devices.
-Mutable UI. Since there aren't static buttons or controls, the UI can be designed specifically for the application which allows for less clutter and more efficiency. (this is also a con, see below)
-Typing. This really only applies to the mobile arena and I know there's great disagreements about this, but given the small size of the keyboard, it actually works quite well as long as it's combined with the predictive text algorithm. I had a Samsung Blackjack prior and I ended up typing faster on the iPhone after only about a week simply because of the time saved from actually having to exert force on the keys.
Cons:
-Obstruction of the screen. While some of the core typing features sort of circumvent this by popping up what's under your fingers, there are many 3rd party applications where field obstruction quickly becomes annoying. In particular, there are puzzle games that require rotating pieces with two fingers while one finger is entirely covering the piece so that you're unable to easily tell how far you've rotated it.
-Mutable UI. As a Mac fanboy, I've grown to love the idea of a UI that's consistent across applications. As the UI of touch interfaces is generally specific to the application, many of the ideas have to be relearned for every application you use. This isn't just control placement, but also gestures, which I've found different developers like to use quite differently.
-Lack of real buttons/tactile feedback. I'll go back to the example of games again because it seems most relevant. Games like Tetris or Pac-man were designed to use a game pad or joystick. As a result, the developers of these types of games like to simply overlay bitmapped representations of these controls on to the screen. The problem is that while you're watching the game, your finger tends to wander off of the overlaid control and you end up missing a button or pushing the wrong one and screwing yourself. I wish there were some real buttons on the iPhone to serve this purpose because there is no better type of input for these types of apps.
-Popular operating environments aren't designed for this. The iPhone works well because it was designed from the ground up to work exclusively with touch input. Windows, OS X, popular desktop Linux distros, etc. were not. I played around with the HP TouchSmart for awhile, and it's basically a Vista PC with touch shoehorned into it. The handful of apps that come with its little touch "suite" work well enough, but once you wander back to the real desktop, it becomes essentially pointless. Try clicking a dropdown menu or close a window with the corner X and you'll quickly remember why you bought a mouse. I hear the same sort of things about the BlackBerry storm. It's the vanilla BB OS with only a couple apps designed for touch input.
If we ever expect touch to go mainstream, we're going to need to see what a full desktop environment designed for touch input will look like. It does not exist as of yet. They will continue to not exist until there is a need for it. Ask yourself, do you need a desktop or laptop with a touch interface? I don't feel that I do, although I think it would be "neat". The possibility for productivity gains from this type of input is relatively meager, while the cost and time required to develop a suitable touch-driven replacement for the desktop environment is significant.
Econ 101 explains why this is necessary in the telecommunications industry. It will be this way forever unless a mainstream technology emerges to provide service without an egregious amount of infrastructure. In exchange for exclusivity for digging holes or jamming posts into the ground all over town in order to lay wire, the government sets price caps on telecom services. This has certainly been the case for traditional voice service, but there has occasoinally been action taken regarding internet service as well. Relatively recently, when the "New AT&T" started piecing itself back together from the Baby Bells, they were ordered to provide DSL service for $10/mo to many markets (side note: this was controversial because getting information on this deal was made to be extremely difficult). The simple course of action should be to extend existing agreements to include provisions for net neutrality in exchange for these ISPs keeping their monopolies. If they don't want to play ball, then just let the market squeeze them until it becomes financially impractical to maintain their infrastructure and then they'll see the light.
It really seems super-impractical, but I'm sure certain people will enjoy it if that's their only option. Check it out
Well, DUH. We already knew we'd have it by 2015.
Officials from McColo did not respond to multiple e-mails, phone calls and instant messages left at the contact points listed on the company's Web site before the site was taken offline.
Well, what the hell do you expect when their ISP dropped all their connections? Sheesh.
This also theoretically opens the door to watching movies in Windows WITHOUT having to use IE. I never understood why IE was required to begin with since the current non-beta DRM was Windows Media-based.
The somewhat less fancy way of check verification comes in the form of a service like Certegy which keeps a history of any bad checks. Basically, if someone writes a bad check (insufficient funds, fraudulent, etc.), they'll have both their checking account and their ID number (from things like driver's licenses or passports) flagged and will have a remarkably difficult time writing any more checks out of that account or ID number. Certegy acts as sort of a cartel that many retailers use and so if I write a bad check to Home Depot this week, then next week when I try to buy groceries at Safeway, they'll tell me to go pound sand. The retailer can also take other steps like denying the return of merchandise or withholding merchandise that has yet to be delivered/installed.
This, of course, is not a perfect system. Obviously, it can't stop the initial incident that triggered the customer being flag and there are ways to defeat it. A good way around it is to steal real checks (from an account that actually has enough money to cover your dubious purchases) and then use a fake ID, but in the grand scheme, this type of situation reflects only a small percentage of check problems that these companies face.
As a former employee of a company that used Certegy, I can tell you that over 80% of the check problems are from legit people writing checks from their accounts, but don't realize they don't have enough cash in their account to cover it. As a rational human being, this is mind-boggling to me, but it's absolutely a reality. The real comedy comes when you see someone's name on the "bad" list who is actually one of your employees. I've literally seen a couple of them continue to show up as deviant for a period of several months, though I suppose this should be seen as a signal to the company that they're not paying their employees enough ^_^
Despite a couple of high-profile CAPTCHAs being cracked, the fundamental principle behind them is still fairly sound. It's at least an order of magnitude easier for a programmer to develop a reasonably difficult CAPTCHA than it is for an attacker to develop the crack for it. Image/character recognition is extremely difficult. Ask anyone who's done any work on OCR or something similar. Even in what would be considered a fairly homogeneous environment, character recognition is still a huge pain in the ass.
Just like with any security measure, a few of the inferior implementations will have to be broken to prove which ones are actually superior.
They were virtually certain it wouldn't happen, but since humanity had never caused an energetic fission event before they had no definitive experimental evidence to back that up.
I fear the day that the words, "In response to an imminent threat, we created an energetic fission event in the city of Tehran" come out of our President's mouth. Unfortunately, we may not immediately realize what actually happened because it'll probably come out something like, "enigmatic fishin' event."
The most common harm I see is people developing a sense of apathy toward life because they believe there are supernatural forces that are actively controlling their destiny. For example, my mother is a devout Jehovah's Witness and she constantly talks about the time that they believe God will wave his hand and make peace on earth (Jehovah's Witnesses have a much different concept of heaven than most main line Christian sects. They instead believe in a "perfect" earth as the place where they'll spend eternity.) I often have heard her say things like, "Oh, none of this really matters. One day God will make it perfect," in regards to difficulties she might be having in her life. The harm that's caused here is that she doesn't make a great deal of effort to solve her problems because she believes that they will eventually be solved for her by a supernatural power. This expectation of assistance is fairly evident in their stance on higher education (which is basically "don't get any"). The harm is that there's lost opportunity in devoting one's time to something that could be false. Instead of living a full life and making meaningful contributions to society, the use of time is diverted to other areas.
Certain lazy tacos don't seem to feel the need to include a dept. name for certain posts. This will not go unpunished.
I was actually at a book signing event last night for Fake Steve Jobs in LA where FSJ (Dan Lyons) was there. Two things of note:
1) There was a linux enthusiast there that seemed to have some sort of agenda to push on him. The linux guy asked Dan to formally apologize for a comment he had once made about the SCO case where he had said something like, "the linux nerds were right". I guess this dude was upset about being called a "nerd", even though Dan said he didn't think there were negative connotations with that term (which I agree with). Despite this, in a room of about 30 "nerds" (myself included), this one dude was clearly the nerdiest there.
2) When it was mentioned by an audience member that the FSJ blog conveys some good industry analysis, his response was something to the degree of, "if you really want some good analysis, you should be reading Groklaw". This was not said in a joking or sarcastic manner. He didn't have any such complements for any other sites.
Anyway, even if Dan "hates" groklaw as the title says, he does have a great respect for them, so you have to give the guy a little credit.
sku - n.: 1)stock keeping unit 2) a unit with which one keeps his/her stock
All the things they're wanting to charge for are things that are essentially within most people's control and that's why I have a hard time disagreeing with this idea. I would not imagine that you would be charged for having cancer since it's not something that you could do anything about changing. With a handful of exceptions, people are in direct control of their own weight, glucose level, cholesterol level, blood pressure and smoking habits. Since this article is only really a summary of this policy, it doesn't appear to go into detail about things like genetic predisposition to high blood pressure and the potential monetary exceptions that may go along with that. My question is, if directly saving money is offered as an incentive for people to make themselves healthier, then why not go for it? Healthy parents teach their children to be more healthy. Also, friends who have been able to revitalize their health can inspire others to do the same. Insurance is, in fact, about spreading risk. When talking about risk as it pertains to health, I'd say there's always a natural "risk" of people getting cancer, heart disease, etc. However, smoking cigarettes and allowing (for those who have control, which is most people) yourself to be overweight is NOT *risk*. It's asking for trouble. As someone who has to pay for my own insurance, I don't especially like the idea of having to pay for some other guy's lung cancer because he had a good time smoking for a few decades. It may sound callus, but it's better for both him and me if there's an incentive for him to stop. We should give this idea a chance.
Though I doubt the macbooks would get a feature that their pro bretheren do not have first...
There's already been one (sweet) feature that the regular MacBooks got before the Pros: the magnetic latch. The MBs and the MBPs are on different product refresh cycles, so it's definitely plausible that one may get something before the other, simply due to the time tables being staggered.
...just not so much the ones that were mentioned in the original post. The most important is having a much stronger emphasis on math and science in our schools. It's no secret that the US is falling behind in these areas. Developed countries like Japan and Germany are more or less kicking our asses in these areas and even China is practically breathing down our neck, at least in the manufacturing arena. After WWII, when America could easily be called the world's technological leader, the economy was fantastic and we had a strong middle class. Now this is all changing. The de-emphasis on math and science will ultimately lead to economic decline, so this is actually a huge issue. As the richest nation in the world, there is no excuse why we shouldn't be the technological leader. Any presidential candidate that recognizes this would earn major points with me personally. Unfortunately, I get the feeling that Al Gore would be the best choice for this, but he hasn't thrown his hat in yet. ::sigh::
I'm a big fan of the hard drive->freezer method. It has been alleged that putting a broken hard drive into a freezer can sometimes make the data readable again for a short period of time.
Yeah, this is a tactical nightmare for military applications, I'd think. The end of the article explains how the UAVs are much more expendable than a pilot or an expensive fighter yet. However, in a combat situation, if the enemy knows that the pilot of the fighter is the one in control, they're going to make him the primary target and do everything they possibly can to take him out first. It's a nice idea that they don't want to risk the pilots' lives, but in doing it this way, they draw all of the enemy's focus on trying to bring the piloted fighter, NOT the UAVs, down. I'd rather be in a squad of several other manned fighters so that I'd at least have some chance of the enemy picking one of them first.
Am I the only one getting this article rendered as though the CSS was written by throwing the keyboard down the stairs? (Firefox 2 on Linux)