A much better example is the steel industry. Look what the unions did for the steel industry in the U.S.. Oh, that's right, there really isn't much of a steel industry in the U.S. anymore.
I am not in favor of making it easier to vote. If people are not willing to go to the minimal effort that is currently necessary in order to vote, they are most certainly not going to go to the effort to have a clue as to who, or what they are voting for. Personally, I would be in favor of making it slightly harder to vote, well, not to actually vote, but to register to vote. I would like to return to the days where you had to make the effort to go into the registrar's office some months before the election (I do not remember what that number was) in order to be eligible to vote in the election. I think it unlikely that there are very many people who would not do that who would spend any time vetting the candidates.
It isn't, but the idea of fingerprinting got well established before we realized how unreliable a way of identifying people it is. Fingerprinting is a decent way of establishing the identity of someone in a setting where you can take their fingerprints in a controlled fashion and compare them to a record of fingerprints taken in a similar manner. However, it is a terrible way of establishing the identity of the person who left fingerprints at a crime scene. There was a study done a few years back where they submitted fingerprint samples to ten experts over a period of time. Only two of the experts returned the same results for the same sample when it was resubmitted to them (with them believing that it was a new sample).
The people who sponsored the 9/11 attacks was never the government of Afghanistan. And they did not locate their base in Afghanistan at the request of the U.S., they did so when their actions against the governments of other Muslim nations made them unpalatable to the government of the Sudan. While the Taliban and Al Qaeda have been allies, they are separate organizations with divergent goals.
It is arguable, but the best evidence I have seen suggests that neither Al Qaeda nor the Taliban were formed with U.S. government assistance (although the Taliban was formed, and continues to operate, with help from elements of the Pakistani government). The groups that the U.S. provided assistance to when the Soviets occupied Afghanistan were those that mostly ended up as parts of what was called the "Northern Alliance" that the U.S. turned to when it decided to oust the Taliban.
Clearly, if you have an issue with the quality of the wages and health care provided to workers at your local Wal-Mart, instead of complaining to the CEO in Arkansas you should go to your local store and yell at the manager on duty.
No, if you have an issue with the quality of wages and healthcare provided to workers at your local Wal-Mart, you should choose to not work there. Of course, I was unaware that Wal-Mart was a healthcare provider. Perhaps if you have an issue with the quality of healthcare provided to ANYONE, you might want to take note of what doctor or hospital is providing the care and ask why they are providing substandard care.
No, the 9/11 hijackers were mostly from Saudi Arabia. However, the group that sponsored them had located their base of operation in Afghanistan (after being evicted from Sudan in 1996). That group bragged of being responsible for the 9/11 attack (and numerous other terror attacks). When the Afghan government (run at the time by the Taliban) was asked to arrest and turn over the leaders, or to, at the very least, evict them from the country, their response was, "No, these are our very good friends who are welcome to remain as long as they wish."
Getting rid of the Electoral College is a bad idea. Someone else has pointed out in a simplified fashion why that is so (and this forum is not one that allows for an in depth explanation of the problem with doing so). I am going to point out that the real problem with democracy in the U.S. is the idea that people like you have that the only election that matters is that of the President. There are really two problems. The first is that too many voters do not pay any attention to who the various office holders they vote for are and what they support. If you really want to change things, paying attention to who your Congressman is and who your state legislative representatives are is much more important than who the President is. The second problem is that every time some new problem crops up, too many people want the government to fix it. Many problems would be better solved by volunteer associations of people who raise funds by donations.
You know, that is a very nice straw man argument you have there. I have never tuned in to Fox News and please tell me what retailer has a "large" number of traditional incandescent light bulbs on their shelves because very few of the retailers in my area stock any traditional incandescent light bulbs, let alone a "large" number of them.
I definitely see this type of data mining as a useful tool, but to what degree of surety are they that the adverse effects are caused by the drugs in question? What percentage of people taking the drugs in question have to exhibit the effect before they consider it a product of drug interaction? It appears that they consider even one occurrence of the effect that does not appear in someone with the same condition not taking the drug to be an effect of the drug. If that is true, that would reduce the usability of this analysis. However, even with that flaw, this is a very valuable study. My stepfather struggled with a respiratory problem this winter that was caused by one of the medications he was on. His doctor never admitted that the medication was the problem, but it only started to clear up after he was taken off of it and that only happened when my mom insisted. She had found information that said the drug sometimes resulted in the respiratory problem he was experiencing.
Antimatter as a power source? Obviously, getting the antimatter to react is the easy part. Sufficient supplies of the antimatter? Again, easy. We do know how to produce it. (free electron lasers)
There is the problem of containment. A fusion reactor is theoretically simpler than an antimatter reactor, yet we cannot build one that is practical to use as an energy source. As far as how easy it is to produce, the question is not how easy (although at $25 billion per gram it is not particularly easy with current technology), the question is, how much energy is consumed in producing it?
Nanotechnology? Life is a working example.
You postulated the ability to deconstruct any frozen object to determine its molecular structure, please give me an example of a life form that does this?
Just because something is theoretically possible does not mean that it is practically possible.
Sorry, I happen to know a local butcher who closed up shop because he could not afford the cost of paying for the USDA inspections. I was a young boy at the time, so I do not remember the details, but I remember my uncle talking about closing down his butcher shop for that very reason.
We are nearing the technological capability to do this.
There are several things in your proposed method of travel that require a technology breakthrough that may not be possible. First, the nanotechnology you are proposing is still some indefinite time in the future and probably will never be nearly as efficient as you imagine. If it is possible, it will require a "genius" breakthrough to come to be.
Second you postulate antimatter reactors as a power source. While they are theoretically possible, they are many times more complicated than fusion reactors, which we have yet to figure out how to build. Additionally, there is the problem of where we will come up with sufficient antimatter for these reactors.
Then there is the issue of building a bussard ramscoop, separating the ship into parts that travel thousands of kilometers apart from each other and then reassembling the ship upon reaching its destination.
According to NASA only 50% of astronauts who have spent more than 6 months in space have eye damage. That is still a significant problem, but not quite as severe as you make it out to be. Additionally, they report that 60% of those who spend more than 30 days in space have some health problems as a result. They are more interested in figuring out why the other 40% do not.
When your house catches fire be sure to shoo the firefighters away. You don't want any government interference now, do you?
Why would I shoo away the volunteer firefighters when they come to fight the fire?
When you buy that tainted beef because you dimwitted neocons have disbanded the FDA, don't bitch when you get sick.
Yes, because the local butchers that were put out of business by the USDA (it is the USDA that "inspects" meat plants, not the FDA) regulations, were known for how often they passed tainted meat off on their customers...oh wait, no that would be the big corporations that were empowered by the USDA regulations that got rid of the small local butcher and are still theoretically regulated by the USDA.
Moron. Those regulations are in place to protect YOU from those who would do you harm -- like multinationsl corporations who are run my money-worshiping sociopaths who don't give a rat's ass who they kill as long as they get their money.
No, my friend, those regulations are in place to make it harder for small vendors to compete with the multinational corporations.
Well, I do know that Democrats founded the KKK and that Woodrow Wilson, a Democrat, re-segregated the Federal Government and that Democrats opposed the Civil Rights Act of 1957. As to what blacks need, why should I believe that it is any different than what anyone else needs? Or are you saying that blacks have special needs (people who say that someone has special needs almost always means that that someone needs someone else to take care of them)?
As to where I got the idea he was talking about Democrats, it was when he mentioned white hoods. Most of the time when people say that, they are referring to the Klu Klux Klan, which was the militant arm of the Democratic Party for many years.
Win 7 Home Prem. is still missing some pretty basic stuff that any sane person would insist should be included like network backups, group policy and remote desktop.
First, that is not related to my point. There is a pretty straight line through the various Win 7 versions. If you want that additional functionality, you buy Win 7 Professional. Win 7 Professional has all of the functionality of Win 7 Home Premium plus those additional features.
I do not see how most home users would have any use whatsoever for group policy. Remote Desktop and network backups I see as more generally useful, but really how many typical home users would actually use them? My gut says very few, but I may be mistaken.
Where government is weak, private corporations are strong,...
Please give an example of this. Every place I know of, where government is strong, private corporations are also strong. In particular, my observation of history notes that as government has gotten more powerful, corporations have used that to increase their own power.
I have never recycled a light bulb in my life. You know, when I said "special trip to the recycling center", I realize that I misspoke because it is actually a toxic waste disposal site. There are not enough of any particular thing in a light bulb to make recycling them efficient (it takes more energy, resources and effort to extract the various resources from a light bulb than it does to obtain than from their natural state).
Windows 2000 represents a strategy mistake on Microsoft's part rather than a software mistake. The strategy mistake actually started with NT, but was not that important as NT was primarily a server/developer's OS (actually that is not quite right, but the point is that NT was never intended to be on an end-user's desktop in any situation). With Windows 2000 and ME, MS tried to divide their OSs into a business OS and a consumer OS. They actually repeated this mistake with Vista in a slightly different way (Vista Business and Enterprise did not support all of the features that were in the less expensive Home Premium*). The problem at the Win 2000 stage was not Win 2000, but with the consumer OS, Windows ME.
*I actually think this might have worked if the Business version had been priced at the same price as the Home Premium version and there had been a version below Ultimate that contained all of the features of Business and Home Premium (maybe priced parallel to Enterprise).
Maybe that is because not many people were interested in using them? Those who wanted a more efficient bulb than a traditional incandescent may have been mostly selecting CFLs. Of course, perhaps you are one of those people who want the government to mandate that everyone use your preferred solution to a particular problem so as to make your life easier. That is all well and good, just don't complain when other people get the government to mandate you use a product you don't like.
I'm glad you know so much better than me what is the best bulb for me to use, even though you have never met me and have no idea what I applications I use lightbulbs for. I am putting in a new light fixture, perhaps you can tell me which one I should buy?
I did not say "improved the traditional incandescent", I said "improved on the traditional incandescent." I still believe that is true. If any of these new bulbs is an improvement on the traditional incandescent than the law that was passed to phase it out was unnecessary. Considering how many slashdotters believe the law was necessary, I can only conclude that they don't really believe these other bulbs are an improvement, but want more people to use them anyway.
And of course now you are going to have to continue to experiment with various bulbs and, in some cases fixtures, until you can find some combination that meets your needs. All because some people decided they knew better than you what you need and what was best for you.*
*this post is not aimed at the poster I am replying to as much as it is aimed at those who think that this government intervention in the market is a good thing (or any government intervention).
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A much better example is the steel industry. Look what the unions did for the steel industry in the U.S.. Oh, that's right, there really isn't much of a steel industry in the U.S. anymore.
I am not in favor of making it easier to vote. If people are not willing to go to the minimal effort that is currently necessary in order to vote, they are most certainly not going to go to the effort to have a clue as to who, or what they are voting for. Personally, I would be in favor of making it slightly harder to vote, well, not to actually vote, but to register to vote. I would like to return to the days where you had to make the effort to go into the registrar's office some months before the election (I do not remember what that number was) in order to be eligible to vote in the election. I think it unlikely that there are very many people who would not do that who would spend any time vetting the candidates.
It isn't, but the idea of fingerprinting got well established before we realized how unreliable a way of identifying people it is. Fingerprinting is a decent way of establishing the identity of someone in a setting where you can take their fingerprints in a controlled fashion and compare them to a record of fingerprints taken in a similar manner. However, it is a terrible way of establishing the identity of the person who left fingerprints at a crime scene. There was a study done a few years back where they submitted fingerprint samples to ten experts over a period of time. Only two of the experts returned the same results for the same sample when it was resubmitted to them (with them believing that it was a new sample).
The people who sponsored the 9/11 attacks was never the government of Afghanistan. And they did not locate their base in Afghanistan at the request of the U.S., they did so when their actions against the governments of other Muslim nations made them unpalatable to the government of the Sudan. While the Taliban and Al Qaeda have been allies, they are separate organizations with divergent goals.
It is arguable, but the best evidence I have seen suggests that neither Al Qaeda nor the Taliban were formed with U.S. government assistance (although the Taliban was formed, and continues to operate, with help from elements of the Pakistani government). The groups that the U.S. provided assistance to when the Soviets occupied Afghanistan were those that mostly ended up as parts of what was called the "Northern Alliance" that the U.S. turned to when it decided to oust the Taliban.
Clearly, if you have an issue with the quality of the wages and health care provided to workers at your local Wal-Mart, instead of complaining to the CEO in Arkansas you should go to your local store and yell at the manager on duty.
No, if you have an issue with the quality of wages and healthcare provided to workers at your local Wal-Mart, you should choose to not work there. Of course, I was unaware that Wal-Mart was a healthcare provider. Perhaps if you have an issue with the quality of healthcare provided to ANYONE, you might want to take note of what doctor or hospital is providing the care and ask why they are providing substandard care.
I was wondering about that. It really seemed inconsistent for Bloomberg to be a campaigner against companies defrauding the government.
No, the 9/11 hijackers were mostly from Saudi Arabia. However, the group that sponsored them had located their base of operation in Afghanistan (after being evicted from Sudan in 1996). That group bragged of being responsible for the 9/11 attack (and numerous other terror attacks). When the Afghan government (run at the time by the Taliban) was asked to arrest and turn over the leaders, or to, at the very least, evict them from the country, their response was, "No, these are our very good friends who are welcome to remain as long as they wish."
Getting rid of the Electoral College is a bad idea. Someone else has pointed out in a simplified fashion why that is so (and this forum is not one that allows for an in depth explanation of the problem with doing so). I am going to point out that the real problem with democracy in the U.S. is the idea that people like you have that the only election that matters is that of the President. There are really two problems. The first is that too many voters do not pay any attention to who the various office holders they vote for are and what they support. If you really want to change things, paying attention to who your Congressman is and who your state legislative representatives are is much more important than who the President is. The second problem is that every time some new problem crops up, too many people want the government to fix it. Many problems would be better solved by volunteer associations of people who raise funds by donations.
You know, that is a very nice straw man argument you have there. I have never tuned in to Fox News and please tell me what retailer has a "large" number of traditional incandescent light bulbs on their shelves because very few of the retailers in my area stock any traditional incandescent light bulbs, let alone a "large" number of them.
I definitely see this type of data mining as a useful tool, but to what degree of surety are they that the adverse effects are caused by the drugs in question? What percentage of people taking the drugs in question have to exhibit the effect before they consider it a product of drug interaction? It appears that they consider even one occurrence of the effect that does not appear in someone with the same condition not taking the drug to be an effect of the drug. If that is true, that would reduce the usability of this analysis. However, even with that flaw, this is a very valuable study. My stepfather struggled with a respiratory problem this winter that was caused by one of the medications he was on. His doctor never admitted that the medication was the problem, but it only started to clear up after he was taken off of it and that only happened when my mom insisted. She had found information that said the drug sometimes resulted in the respiratory problem he was experiencing.
Antimatter as a power source? Obviously, getting the antimatter to react is the easy part. Sufficient supplies of the antimatter? Again, easy. We do know how to produce it. (free electron lasers)
There is the problem of containment. A fusion reactor is theoretically simpler than an antimatter reactor, yet we cannot build one that is practical to use as an energy source. As far as how easy it is to produce, the question is not how easy (although at $25 billion per gram it is not particularly easy with current technology), the question is, how much energy is consumed in producing it?
Nanotechnology? Life is a working example.
You postulated the ability to deconstruct any frozen object to determine its molecular structure, please give me an example of a life form that does this?
Just because something is theoretically possible does not mean that it is practically possible.
Well, 50% is significantly less than "virtually all" as stated by the poster I replied to.
USDA regs didn't get rid of the local butcher,...
Sorry, I happen to know a local butcher who closed up shop because he could not afford the cost of paying for the USDA inspections. I was a young boy at the time, so I do not remember the details, but I remember my uncle talking about closing down his butcher shop for that very reason.
We are nearing the technological capability to do this.
There are several things in your proposed method of travel that require a technology breakthrough that may not be possible. First, the nanotechnology you are proposing is still some indefinite time in the future and probably will never be nearly as efficient as you imagine. If it is possible, it will require a "genius" breakthrough to come to be.
Second you postulate antimatter reactors as a power source. While they are theoretically possible, they are many times more complicated than fusion reactors, which we have yet to figure out how to build. Additionally, there is the problem of where we will come up with sufficient antimatter for these reactors.
Then there is the issue of building a bussard ramscoop, separating the ship into parts that travel thousands of kilometers apart from each other and then reassembling the ship upon reaching its destination.
According to NASA only 50% of astronauts who have spent more than 6 months in space have eye damage. That is still a significant problem, but not quite as severe as you make it out to be. Additionally, they report that 60% of those who spend more than 30 days in space have some health problems as a result. They are more interested in figuring out why the other 40% do not.
When your house catches fire be sure to shoo the firefighters away. You don't want any government interference now, do you?
Why would I shoo away the volunteer firefighters when they come to fight the fire?
When you buy that tainted beef because you dimwitted neocons have disbanded the FDA, don't bitch when you get sick.
Yes, because the local butchers that were put out of business by the USDA (it is the USDA that "inspects" meat plants, not the FDA) regulations, were known for how often they passed tainted meat off on their customers...oh wait, no that would be the big corporations that were empowered by the USDA regulations that got rid of the small local butcher and are still theoretically regulated by the USDA.
Moron. Those regulations are in place to protect YOU from those who would do you harm -- like multinationsl corporations who are run my money-worshiping sociopaths who don't give a rat's ass who they kill as long as they get their money.
No, my friend, those regulations are in place to make it harder for small vendors to compete with the multinational corporations.
Well, I do know that Democrats founded the KKK and that Woodrow Wilson, a Democrat, re-segregated the Federal Government and that Democrats opposed the Civil Rights Act of 1957. As to what blacks need, why should I believe that it is any different than what anyone else needs? Or are you saying that blacks have special needs (people who say that someone has special needs almost always means that that someone needs someone else to take care of them)?
As to where I got the idea he was talking about Democrats, it was when he mentioned white hoods. Most of the time when people say that, they are referring to the Klu Klux Klan, which was the militant arm of the Democratic Party for many years.
Win 7 Home Prem. is still missing some pretty basic stuff that any sane person would insist should be included like network backups, group policy and remote desktop.
First, that is not related to my point. There is a pretty straight line through the various Win 7 versions. If you want that additional functionality, you buy Win 7 Professional. Win 7 Professional has all of the functionality of Win 7 Home Premium plus those additional features.
I do not see how most home users would have any use whatsoever for group policy. Remote Desktop and network backups I see as more generally useful, but really how many typical home users would actually use them? My gut says very few, but I may be mistaken.
Of course this wouldn't be possible without populations with a very high degree of political awareness and participation.
And homogeneity and small populations. Of course, are you really saying that the Scandinavian governments are more powerful than the U.S. government?
Where government is weak, private corporations are strong,...
Please give an example of this. Every place I know of, where government is strong, private corporations are also strong. In particular, my observation of history notes that as government has gotten more powerful, corporations have used that to increase their own power.
I have never recycled a light bulb in my life. You know, when I said "special trip to the recycling center", I realize that I misspoke because it is actually a toxic waste disposal site. There are not enough of any particular thing in a light bulb to make recycling them efficient (it takes more energy, resources and effort to extract the various resources from a light bulb than it does to obtain than from their natural state).
Windows 2000 represents a strategy mistake on Microsoft's part rather than a software mistake. The strategy mistake actually started with NT, but was not that important as NT was primarily a server/developer's OS (actually that is not quite right, but the point is that NT was never intended to be on an end-user's desktop in any situation). With Windows 2000 and ME, MS tried to divide their OSs into a business OS and a consumer OS. They actually repeated this mistake with Vista in a slightly different way (Vista Business and Enterprise did not support all of the features that were in the less expensive Home Premium*). The problem at the Win 2000 stage was not Win 2000, but with the consumer OS, Windows ME.
*I actually think this might have worked if the Business version had been priced at the same price as the Home Premium version and there had been a version below Ultimate that contained all of the features of Business and Home Premium (maybe priced parallel to Enterprise).
Maybe that is because not many people were interested in using them? Those who wanted a more efficient bulb than a traditional incandescent may have been mostly selecting CFLs. Of course, perhaps you are one of those people who want the government to mandate that everyone use your preferred solution to a particular problem so as to make your life easier. That is all well and good, just don't complain when other people get the government to mandate you use a product you don't like.
I'm glad you know so much better than me what is the best bulb for me to use, even though you have never met me and have no idea what I applications I use lightbulbs for. I am putting in a new light fixture, perhaps you can tell me which one I should buy?
I did not say "improved the traditional incandescent", I said "improved on the traditional incandescent." I still believe that is true. If any of these new bulbs is an improvement on the traditional incandescent than the law that was passed to phase it out was unnecessary. Considering how many slashdotters believe the law was necessary, I can only conclude that they don't really believe these other bulbs are an improvement, but want more people to use them anyway.
And of course now you are going to have to continue to experiment with various bulbs and, in some cases fixtures, until you can find some combination that meets your needs. All because some people decided they knew better than you what you need and what was best for you.*
*this post is not aimed at the poster I am replying to as much as it is aimed at those who think that this government intervention in the market is a good thing (or any government intervention).