As cities struggle to figure out how much taxpayer money will be wasted protecting the stupid, I struggle as to how this will run counter to the concept of survival of the fittest.
In short, fuck those who are smart enough to operate a phone and yet too dumb and ignorant to grasp the dangers of the world around them. Let Darwin do his work already.
I'm sure the $3.50 recycling payment will totally be worth all the work involved in pulling all that out of the wall and schlepping it to the recycling center 30 miles away.
Thank you for confirming the fact that penalizing the shit out of people with heavy fines for improper waste disposal would be a far better way to encourage recycling.
It's rather obvious the average consumer hasn't been convinced to give a shit with paltry rewards.
You know, it doesn't really matter if it's gas, electric, solar, or a Fred Flinstone foot-pedaled model if you're still wasting countless hours sitting in traffic. Sure, alternatives that don't pollute the air are perhaps better for the environment, but it doesn't do much to solve for the growing volume problem we have on our roadways today.
Technology has enabled a lot of jobs to be performed remotely, and yet we continue to fight employers who hold on to an archaic mentality that you must sit in traffic to report to an office building every day. This of course clogs up roadways, adds to the current pollution problem, and even negatively impacts the employee in a physical way, dealing with the stress of commuting as well as the toll of sitting.
From a productivity standpoint, an hour-long commute adds up to 40 hours every month wasted. The financial impact to the employee is $100 - 200 in gas costs every month. With telecommuting, an employee could give back half of those wasted hours in exchange for exercising an hour every day while adding half a week in productivity every month, as well as obtain the financial benefit that would probably exceed the average raise. A healthier and wealthier employee will likely create a dedicated employee.
If common sense doesn't convince corporations of the benefits of telecommuting, then here's a real "green" initiative; start fining them an environmental impact tax for every position that can be performed remotely, but isn't. Managing remote workers isn't rocket science, and neither is using the technology that enables it.
- don't install shit you don't want/need (true for all os)
- don't use windows for browsing (especially if you browse to sites you don't trust)
- don't click and open every damn email and attachment you get...
Telling the masses to not use Windows for browsing is like telling people to not drive 4-wheel vehicles for transportation. No matter how stupidly easy alternate OSes could be to operate, they're not mainstream, and therefore they are not the dominant option for the illiterate masses. And because users are obscenely lazy, a Windows alternative will have to become the default option.
As far as installing shit you don't want/need, that describes 95% of the inventory in every app store. Installing pointless shit has practically become a tradition in the mobile universe. I don't see that behavior changing unless marketing crap suddenly becomes unprofitable.
I think most of the people who want to tax the wealth view rich people like Scrooge McDuck. The rich all have swimming pools inside vaults, full of gold coins to swim around in.
http://s3.fantasticfest.com/_u...
This is their view of rich people.
The financial chasm between the wealthy elite and the other 99.999% of the planet isn't fucking shrinking, and their pool is called an offshore tax haven. They swim around in $100 million dollar yachts, wearing diamond-encrusted watches.
Scrooge McDuck looks like a saint compared to Greed N. Corruption that controls the world today.
We have become a sad population if we reproach people having 3 kids.
We have become a sad population if those having kids these days cannot do simple math. The cost of raising a child to age 18 isn't some financial secret.
Proper (Financial) Planning Prevents Becoming Piss Poor. In other words, don't fucking have kids if you can't afford them. Common Sense.
"With the current administration's attitude toward transparency and catering only to the largest corporate donors, will the American people have any meaningful influence in how the country is run anymore?"
Uh, current administration?
Can someone tell me when the last time any administration was completely transparent and somehow didn't cater to their largest corporate donors? For fucks sake, this has been going on so long it's now considered an American tradition. Not even you great grandfather remembers a time when this wasn't true.
It is easy for me, but hard on the girlfriend. She can watch me eat a can of Chili that has been out of warranty for 5 years (making it 7 or 8 years old) and know that it is fine, but still be unable to take a bite herself.
Same problem with pills.
I get that we all gotta die someday, but that obituary will be a bitch to swallow when your life is expired by a $2 can of old food..
Risk vs. Reward. Mitigate wisely. Your girlfriend would probably appreciate you being around a bit longer.
I'm pretty sure that this experiment didn't set out to prove the FDA is corrupt and is maliciously slapping arbitrary expiry dates on drugs so you would waste your money. The FDA's primary goal isn't drug stability over 15 years, for example, it's what is safe in a reasonable amount of time for those drugs to be consumed. Do you really want to pay the FDA to do decades long studies on all prescription drugs with the intent of seeing how many generations you can pass your prescription drugs cache down?
No, I want the drug manufacturer to be responsible for that testing burden before FDA approval is given, and perhaps all expiration dates can be set to a reasonable time frame. (7 - 10 years)
To put it into perspective, look at your drivers license expiration date. It sure as hell isn't every 18 - 36 months, and for a valid reason.
Of course, even if this did happen, all that would occur is the cost of medications increasing to ensure Big Pharma doesn't "suffer" from the impact of making a few trillion less.
You sound anti-profit. Sir, are you anti-profit, yes or no?
I didn't know Pharma Bro read Slashdot. Is that you Martin?
When it comes to capitalism and profits, there is a reasonable line that tends to be defined by morals and ethics. Big Pharma and the Medical Industrial Complex crossed that fucking line trillions of dollars ago, and much like Pharma Bro, earned their dubious monikers.
There is profit, and there is obscene profit that tends to drive humans to make money regardless of the impact, and continues to widen the chasm between the ultra-rich and the other 99.999% of the planet. When people are dying because they cannot afford a product or treatment, that tends to define how bad the infection of Greed has become in an industry. It also shows how Greed has always been a rather effective form of population control.
I used to work at a drug manufacturer that did stability testing required by the FDA.
From each lot that's manufactured, they put some of the tablets in a bottle and leave the bottle in a large closet with controlled humidity and temperature. Then every couple months someone goes in, gets the bottle, and performs an assay on a bunch of tablets. This keeps going on schedule until the expiration date, when they stop doing the testing and throw the bottle out. In general that's all that an expiration date is- nobody's doing stability tests on that lot of tablets anymore.
Thank you for the detail. There is an outstanding question.
Exactly how does the drug company initially determine an expiration date?
From your explanation, it is not based on testing or science at all. This merely suggests that Greed determines how long an expiration date is. Not that I'm surprised mind you. This is the Big Pharma we're talking about here. Part of the United States Medical Industrial Complex. Greed is part of their Creed.
I would think their lawyers (and hopefully marketers) cringe every time they see a story like this. The name "Autopilot" (while great) implies that nothing needs to be done by the driver so any accidents will be the car's fault, basically by definition.
Every time I hear this excuse regarding terminology confusion, it merely reinforces what has actually been abandoned; peoples ability to use common fucking sense.
Regardless of the industry we borrowed the "confusing" term from, there has never been a commercial plane that has taken off or landed without a licensed pilot at the controls.
Clearly the reason for that is not as stupidly obvious as I thought.
" Desktops, servers, printers, switches, routers, email, internet, database, file/print/DNS/DHCP, along with SPAM filters, firewalls, IDS/IPS, A/V and anti-malware to help protect it all. And we haven't even touched virtualization or voice/chat services yet. Think you're gonna hire one IT person to do it all, or even find someone who holds a competent level of knowledge?"...Yes? At least for a small-medium org that isn't in the IT sector itself. I do all those things except voice/chat, and also some development work. By the way, you forgot backup and disaster recovery planning. There is a market for people who are competent generalists. Not necessarily experts in any given niche, but with a well-rounded understanding a many different technologies, how they fit together, and how they fit into the organization.
Ever wonder why we hear of so many insecure systems and security breaches happening across many different levels of business? It likely has something to do with the expired mentality that a one-man-band can maintain that level of complexity with an adequate level of proficiency.
Aside from putting all of it in the proverbial cloud (which has also been proven to be rather horrible when it comes to maintaining security), the level of complexity surrounding the average IT environment these days tends to demand compartmentalized staffing. In the last 25 years, I can count in one hand the number of people I would consider IT "gurus", which none of them would claim they could sustain it all today. The rest I've met who have some jack-of-all-trades experience tend to know just enough to be dangerous.
How much IT training do you think will need to be funded? It ain't cheap, and most organizations too cheap or too small to hire enough IT staff aren't going to be very accepting to budgeting 6-10 weeks of training per year, which is likely what would be needed to sustain proficiency as an IT "generalist".
When it comes to IT security alone, "well-rounded" doesn't cut it anymore, which reinforces my first point. The environment is fast-paced and ever-changing, and there's a valid reason I compared it to the medical industry who also recognizes compartmentalization is necessary to sustain proficiency due to complexity.
Actually, depending on what OS you are running, especially *nix, YES! I would expect that one IT guy can handle everything and I hire as many as I need to cover the size of my organization.
Even I can handle all that, and I'm basically a software guy.
I've been in IT for over 25 years now. I'm not trying to assume your specific capabilities, but when I hear someone tell me they can handle all that, it usually means I'm talking to someone who knows just enough to be dangerous. Yes, I've gained a considerable amount of experience with everything I've mentioned here and more. I am also accepting of the fact that systems have reached a level of complexity today that no longer sustain the one-man-band argument when it comes to IT, and I would never claim I could do it all anymore.
Maintaining proficiency in IT security alone can create enough work to sustain a full-time position and career, as the threats are that fast-paced and ever-changing. Perhaps the reason we have so many security breaches and insecure systems these days is because companies still assume they can hire one person to handle security who also tries to handle everything else in IT. The reality is most IT "gurus" are capable of maintaining everything just good enough to keep it working, which does not always mean it's working well or mitigating risk sufficiently.
As I said before, compare it to the medical field. If your family needed to have a baby delivered, a brain tumor removed, and the dog needed to be neutered, imagine your response if your family doctor claimed, "Oh yeah, I can handle all that."
BTW, you forgot the most important part: backups.
An inherent part of maintaining servers, but not the most important part. The most important part when it comes to managing IT is respecting the level of proficiency specialists need to maintain in order to manage systems properly, and hire enough staff to mitigate risk in order to sustain business, which is one of the primary missions of IT.
Don't you get tired of constant, pointless Team A vs. Team B bullshit? None of that team nonsense is about helping the country or the people. Why not give up pretending it is?
That "nonsense" you speak if has been around for over 150 years now, regardless of whether it helps or not. We've tried to get a third party in there to try and un-fuck the corrupt two-party system we've had for too damn long. We've tried, and failed. The fact is Team A vs. Team B sure wasn't my idea any more than it was yours. But it's the political landscape that we STILL deal with today, and THAT is what is truly bullshit. And yeah, I'm tired; tired of pretending it will ever change.
... hell-bent on feeding the Educational Industrial Complex with the goal...
Don't you get tired of peddling ultra-exaggerated conspiratorial narratives? Everyone knows this kind of crap is mostly false, even if there's a tiny bit of truth underneath the mountains of nonsense. Why not give up the dramatic storytelling and just be factual?
A motive by government representatives to support the business of education is some kind of conspiracy in a capitalist economy? That's a laugh. One driving factor remains a constant in politics; Greed. As a result, what has become "ultra-exaggerated" is the obscene cost of higher education, which validates the moniker I've bestowed upon the industry that peddles education.
And quite honestly, we should all learn to be a bit wiser and read between the lines when it comes to the motives of any Team, for that may be the only place where truth is buried. Recent leaks in history have certainly proven an ability to convert he craziest of conspiracies into facts. You want to discuss the facts? Yeah, good luck finding it. After all, the politicians lips were moving when they were speaking.
Your sarcasm is unwarranted and misses the point. In fact, it's much simpler: conservatives want higher education to teach conservative values and ideas, while leftists want higher education to teach leftist values and ideas. The leftists have pretty much taken over US academia, and as a result, conservatives want tax payers to pay less for teaching an ideology that they disagree with.
And although dependence on big government programs is likely a nice political side effect for people who generally advocate such things, the primary reason for skyrocketing costs is the same as our public pension crisis: special interests lobby for more government spending for their causes, and traditionally, it's been hard for politiciains to say "no" to subsidizing education. If you subsidize something, prices generally go up.
Uh, the situation appears to be far from "subsidized" when the cost of higher education now approaches the personal debt level of a fucking mortgage. Could we cut grant programs to cut costs? Sure. By doing so would less people end up going to college? Yes, and that would probably be a good thing, It might force employers to stop with the secretary-needs-a-masters-degree bullshit job requirement. We also likely need to re-define what we call "education" as well to ensure it creates a viable workforce, not a generation full of social media philosophers still living with their parents who can't find employment.
The other problem is the Educational Industrial Complex has become massively infected with Greed, and has created a lot of the same financial burdens and pain on citizens that other industries suffering from the same infection have. Education does not need to cost as much as it does, subsidy or not. Education is now on par with Medical when it comes to financial impact in ones lifetime. It's a fucking sad state of affairs to see that obscene Greed runs rampant, and Greed lobbies to ensure that it is never put in check. The chasm between the 0.001% and the 99.999% is not shrinking. Greed ensures the only goal billionaires have today is to become the worlds first trillionaires, no matter the impact to the rest of the planet.
There are many diseases humans suffer from, but the disease of Greed will sadly be our demise.
The problem with employers assuming they can still get away with a jack-of-all-trades "IT guy" position these days is the level of complexity and technical competence required to maintain systems properly. IT has fragmented down quite a bit, and one can make a career out of simply mastering IT security, and not ever even get into managing the other 90% of IT services.
Consider some of the most common services we run today in business. Desktops, servers, printers, switches, routers, email, internet, database, file/print/DNS/DHCP, along with SPAM filters, firewalls, IDS/IPS, A/V and anti-malware to help protect it all. And we haven't even touched virtualization or voice/chat services yet. Think you're gonna hire one IT person to do it all, or even find someone who holds a competent level of knowledge? Do you have only one doctor you see for anything and everything? No. Sure, a lot of those services you could hire the magical "cloud" to run to minimize IT staffing needs, but if you're cloud-adverse (which is becoming more and more of a valid stance), that may not be a viable option. If you run a local data center, now you're talking UPS sizing, generators, fire suppression, and physical security. Should the level-1 junior IT person be in charge ot DR/BCP planning for all IT services? Probably not.
IT should now be compared to the medical industry, where you have many specialists serving a compartmentalized field, due to complexity and skill required in each.. I'm not saying a small company needs to employ a staff of half a dozen specialists every time, but as the requirements list for IT services grows, so does the need for additional staff. Also, redundancy. Companies need to avoid the hit-by-a-bus scenario and ensure for every service the business relies on, you have primary and an alternate person named, and not merely on paper. Again, to compare to the medical industry, ongoing training is critical to maintaining competency.
TL; DR - Even for small business, IT today is not simple or easy. Employers cannot assume to get away with a jack-of-all-trades IT position.
On one side of the isle, you have a group of representatives who appear hell-bent on maintaining an uneducated society in order to maximize the manipulative capability of a government to control the stupid and ignorant masses.
On the other side of the isle, you have a group of representatives who appear hell-bent on feeding the Educational Industrial Complex with the goal of funding capitalism, regardless of the growing lack of return on that investment, or the personal impact of massive debt.
As usual, one has to choose the lesser of two evils.
You were surprised? Yeah, I was too, particularly as to the data you provided, since I believe the point you were trying to make is mosquitoes are necessary and vital to our ecosystem.
Some of your articles hint that eradication would not create an ecological impact. Some also stated that eradication efforts are "not worth it unless there was a very serious public health emergency."
Perhaps the true question is how many humans will have to become infected or die until the latter statement rings true?
Perhaps we look at history to answer that. The mosquito has long been known as the deadliest animal on the planet. They have killed countless humans through the ages. It carries over a dozen diseases, including malaria, which still kills over a million people every year. Now Zika has been added to that infamous list.
Sad when you consider the innocent victims of Zika are babies suffering from microcephaly. The fear of that affliction alone is a form of terrorism when it comes to people wanting to start a family. Imagine the other impacts of areas known to be Zika-prone. Think your home value would not plummet if they found a 300% increase of Zika cases in your zip code? Impact local business that rely on humans being outside but now aren't due to increased fear of infection? I'm willing to bet it would. Much like the global concerns surrounding the Ebola outbreaks a few years ago, humans can get rather panicky when it comes to increased chances of being exposed to a life-threatening disease. Perhaps rightly so.
It would appear that we are doing something now to counter the threat, likely because enough revenue is at risk. Efforts have to be financially justified when it comes to preventing harm or death these days. If we do nothing in response to increased risk, then the mosquito will simply stand as yet another form of population control.
Doesn't fucking matter. The average citizen does not have the financial means to defend even a single unconstitutional action against them. The Legal Industrial Complex is second only to the Medical Industrial Complex in terms of committing financial ass-rape against consumers. And those committing illegal actions against citizens know this.
Your only real chance is to arm yourself with enough legal knowledge to damn near pass a Bar Exam in hopes of diffusing a situation without being forced to defend yourself in a courtroom. Otherwise, you're likely going to be financially fucked. Is pissing away a chunk of your net worth or going into considerable debt really worth not giving up a social media password? Sorry kids, Daddy can't afford to help you with college. Refused to comply with an illegal search a few years ago. Kind of ate up the college fund.
The only Right we have left is the Right to ignorantly assume we can still afford any other Right history has bestowed upon us.
(Common F. Sense) - "(Cough, Cough) I just know he's gonna make me cut my electric vehicle initiatives. Every single day the pollution is worse than the day before it."
(Greed N. Corruption) - "Hello Common, whaaats happening? Ummm, I'm gonna need you to go ahead come in tomorrow. Oh, Oh, and I almost forgot ahh, I'm also gonna need you to go ahead and come in on Sunday too, kay. We ahh lost some demand for oil this week and ah, we sorta need to play catch up. Oh, and one more thing, we're gonna need you to move those pollution-cutting initiatives to the bottom of the priority list. If you could do that, that would be greeeat. Thanks."
Perhaps my estimate was slightly off. But as statistics look into the future, many are predicting a migration to a cashless society, and the death of the ATM, with even the smallest transactions being paid for by a debit/credit card. NFC readers embedded in POS devices also enable a smartphone to be your wallet.
And how does the average percentage of people who carry cash have any relevance to how untraceable and thus dangerous it is to carry?
Cash has always been untraceable, although with the amount of surveillance in our society today, I would challenge that notion now. Why exactly is carrying cash dangerous today? With fewer and fewer people carrying around cash, a thief is less likely to actually obtain a financial reward for committing the crime of armed robbery, and more likely to get caught in the surveillance state we now live in. Increased risk of getting caught and decreased chance of reward somehow equates to a larger chance of it happening? And crime statistics across the last two decades reflect an ongoing decline in robbery?
Nothing about this cash-is-dangerous argument makes sense when you break it down. In fact, the only danger I see is a society who fears untraceable currency. THAT is the true danger, for removing all anonymous transactions from society would be the ultimate goal of the Orwellian world that has been forced upon us. Cash is untraceable, and therefore dangerous? It's as if the brainwashing is working.
And if people think it's dangerous to carry around cash because they might lose it, well that argument also tends to fall flat when they carry a $200 smartphone at all times that holds their entire digital life on it. If you want to watch a person actually panic today, take their smartphone. Everything else becomes damn near irrelevant in a microsecond, including the $20 they might have had in their wallet.
TL; DR - Cash is not dangerous. The mentality that it is dangerous because it is untraceable is the true danger in society today.
Which makes it a more desirable target than credit cards or checks. That's why it's more dangerous to carry than the alternatives.
We now live in a cashless society. There's likely only a 5% chance of a thief even finding someone with cash on their person, so your fear makes absolutely no sense.
You have a larger chance of your credit card or identity being stolen in the environment we live in today. Because to this, I don't even know why we're having this conversation.
Slashdot Mirror
As cities struggle to figure out how much taxpayer money will be wasted protecting the stupid, I struggle as to how this will run counter to the concept of survival of the fittest.
In short, fuck those who are smart enough to operate a phone and yet too dumb and ignorant to grasp the dangers of the world around them. Let Darwin do his work already.
I'm sure the $3.50 recycling payment will totally be worth all the work involved in pulling all that out of the wall and schlepping it to the recycling center 30 miles away.
Thank you for confirming the fact that penalizing the shit out of people with heavy fines for improper waste disposal would be a far better way to encourage recycling.
It's rather obvious the average consumer hasn't been convinced to give a shit with paltry rewards.
You know, it doesn't really matter if it's gas, electric, solar, or a Fred Flinstone foot-pedaled model if you're still wasting countless hours sitting in traffic. Sure, alternatives that don't pollute the air are perhaps better for the environment, but it doesn't do much to solve for the growing volume problem we have on our roadways today.
Technology has enabled a lot of jobs to be performed remotely, and yet we continue to fight employers who hold on to an archaic mentality that you must sit in traffic to report to an office building every day. This of course clogs up roadways, adds to the current pollution problem, and even negatively impacts the employee in a physical way, dealing with the stress of commuting as well as the toll of sitting.
From a productivity standpoint, an hour-long commute adds up to 40 hours every month wasted. The financial impact to the employee is $100 - 200 in gas costs every month. With telecommuting, an employee could give back half of those wasted hours in exchange for exercising an hour every day while adding half a week in productivity every month, as well as obtain the financial benefit that would probably exceed the average raise. A healthier and wealthier employee will likely create a dedicated employee.
If common sense doesn't convince corporations of the benefits of telecommuting, then here's a real "green" initiative; start fining them an environmental impact tax for every position that can be performed remotely, but isn't. Managing remote workers isn't rocket science, and neither is using the technology that enables it.
Antivirus programs are a threat, not a mitigation.
The largest threat is the idiot behind the keyboard.
Good luck with that mitigation. The masses don't give a shit about security. Never have. Never will.
- don't install shit you don't want/need (true for all os) - don't use windows for browsing (especially if you browse to sites you don't trust) - don't click and open every damn email and attachment you get ...
Telling the masses to not use Windows for browsing is like telling people to not drive 4-wheel vehicles for transportation. No matter how stupidly easy alternate OSes could be to operate, they're not mainstream, and therefore they are not the dominant option for the illiterate masses. And because users are obscenely lazy, a Windows alternative will have to become the default option.
As far as installing shit you don't want/need, that describes 95% of the inventory in every app store. Installing pointless shit has practically become a tradition in the mobile universe. I don't see that behavior changing unless marketing crap suddenly becomes unprofitable.
I think most of the people who want to tax the wealth view rich people like Scrooge McDuck. The rich all have swimming pools inside vaults, full of gold coins to swim around in. http://s3.fantasticfest.com/_u...
This is their view of rich people.
The financial chasm between the wealthy elite and the other 99.999% of the planet isn't fucking shrinking, and their pool is called an offshore tax haven. They swim around in $100 million dollar yachts, wearing diamond-encrusted watches.
Scrooge McDuck looks like a saint compared to Greed N. Corruption that controls the world today.
We have become a sad population if we reproach people having 3 kids.
We have become a sad population if those having kids these days cannot do simple math. The cost of raising a child to age 18 isn't some financial secret.
Proper (Financial) Planning Prevents Becoming Piss Poor. In other words, don't fucking have kids if you can't afford them. Common Sense.
"With the current administration's attitude toward transparency and catering only to the largest corporate donors, will the American people have any meaningful influence in how the country is run anymore?"
Uh, current administration?
Can someone tell me when the last time any administration was completely transparent and somehow didn't cater to their largest corporate donors? For fucks sake, this has been going on so long it's now considered an American tradition. Not even you great grandfather remembers a time when this wasn't true.
The American People became irrelevant long ago.
It is easy for me, but hard on the girlfriend. She can watch me eat a can of Chili that has been out of warranty for 5 years (making it 7 or 8 years old) and know that it is fine, but still be unable to take a bite herself.
Same problem with pills.
I get that we all gotta die someday, but that obituary will be a bitch to swallow when your life is expired by a $2 can of old food..
Risk vs. Reward. Mitigate wisely. Your girlfriend would probably appreciate you being around a bit longer.
I'm pretty sure that this experiment didn't set out to prove the FDA is corrupt and is maliciously slapping arbitrary expiry dates on drugs so you would waste your money. The FDA's primary goal isn't drug stability over 15 years, for example, it's what is safe in a reasonable amount of time for those drugs to be consumed. Do you really want to pay the FDA to do decades long studies on all prescription drugs with the intent of seeing how many generations you can pass your prescription drugs cache down?
No, I want the drug manufacturer to be responsible for that testing burden before FDA approval is given, and perhaps all expiration dates can be set to a reasonable time frame. (7 - 10 years)
To put it into perspective, look at your drivers license expiration date. It sure as hell isn't every 18 - 36 months, and for a valid reason.
Of course, even if this did happen, all that would occur is the cost of medications increasing to ensure Big Pharma doesn't "suffer" from the impact of making a few trillion less.
You sound anti-profit. Sir, are you anti-profit, yes or no?
I didn't know Pharma Bro read Slashdot. Is that you Martin?
When it comes to capitalism and profits, there is a reasonable line that tends to be defined by morals and ethics. Big Pharma and the Medical Industrial Complex crossed that fucking line trillions of dollars ago, and much like Pharma Bro, earned their dubious monikers.
There is profit, and there is obscene profit that tends to drive humans to make money regardless of the impact, and continues to widen the chasm between the ultra-rich and the other 99.999% of the planet. When people are dying because they cannot afford a product or treatment, that tends to define how bad the infection of Greed has become in an industry. It also shows how Greed has always been a rather effective form of population control.
I used to work at a drug manufacturer that did stability testing required by the FDA. From each lot that's manufactured, they put some of the tablets in a bottle and leave the bottle in a large closet with controlled humidity and temperature. Then every couple months someone goes in, gets the bottle, and performs an assay on a bunch of tablets. This keeps going on schedule until the expiration date, when they stop doing the testing and throw the bottle out. In general that's all that an expiration date is- nobody's doing stability tests on that lot of tablets anymore.
Thank you for the detail. There is an outstanding question.
Exactly how does the drug company initially determine an expiration date?
From your explanation, it is not based on testing or science at all. This merely suggests that Greed determines how long an expiration date is. Not that I'm surprised mind you. This is the Big Pharma we're talking about here. Part of the United States Medical Industrial Complex. Greed is part of their Creed.
I would think their lawyers (and hopefully marketers) cringe every time they see a story like this. The name "Autopilot" (while great) implies that nothing needs to be done by the driver so any accidents will be the car's fault, basically by definition.
Every time I hear this excuse regarding terminology confusion, it merely reinforces what has actually been abandoned; peoples ability to use common fucking sense.
Regardless of the industry we borrowed the "confusing" term from, there has never been a commercial plane that has taken off or landed without a licensed pilot at the controls.
Clearly the reason for that is not as stupidly obvious as I thought.
" Desktops, servers, printers, switches, routers, email, internet, database, file/print/DNS/DHCP, along with SPAM filters, firewalls, IDS/IPS, A/V and anti-malware to help protect it all. And we haven't even touched virtualization or voice/chat services yet. Think you're gonna hire one IT person to do it all, or even find someone who holds a competent level of knowledge?" ...Yes? At least for a small-medium org that isn't in the IT sector itself. I do all those things except voice/chat, and also some development work. By the way, you forgot backup and disaster recovery planning. There is a market for people who are competent generalists. Not necessarily experts in any given niche, but with a well-rounded understanding a many different technologies, how they fit together, and how they fit into the organization.
Ever wonder why we hear of so many insecure systems and security breaches happening across many different levels of business? It likely has something to do with the expired mentality that a one-man-band can maintain that level of complexity with an adequate level of proficiency.
Aside from putting all of it in the proverbial cloud (which has also been proven to be rather horrible when it comes to maintaining security), the level of complexity surrounding the average IT environment these days tends to demand compartmentalized staffing. In the last 25 years, I can count in one hand the number of people I would consider IT "gurus", which none of them would claim they could sustain it all today. The rest I've met who have some jack-of-all-trades experience tend to know just enough to be dangerous.
How much IT training do you think will need to be funded? It ain't cheap, and most organizations too cheap or too small to hire enough IT staff aren't going to be very accepting to budgeting 6-10 weeks of training per year, which is likely what would be needed to sustain proficiency as an IT "generalist".
When it comes to IT security alone, "well-rounded" doesn't cut it anymore, which reinforces my first point. The environment is fast-paced and ever-changing, and there's a valid reason I compared it to the medical industry who also recognizes compartmentalization is necessary to sustain proficiency due to complexity.
Actually, depending on what OS you are running, especially *nix, YES! I would expect that one IT guy can handle everything and I hire as many as I need to cover the size of my organization.
Even I can handle all that, and I'm basically a software guy.
I've been in IT for over 25 years now. I'm not trying to assume your specific capabilities, but when I hear someone tell me they can handle all that, it usually means I'm talking to someone who knows just enough to be dangerous. Yes, I've gained a considerable amount of experience with everything I've mentioned here and more. I am also accepting of the fact that systems have reached a level of complexity today that no longer sustain the one-man-band argument when it comes to IT, and I would never claim I could do it all anymore.
Maintaining proficiency in IT security alone can create enough work to sustain a full-time position and career, as the threats are that fast-paced and ever-changing. Perhaps the reason we have so many security breaches and insecure systems these days is because companies still assume they can hire one person to handle security who also tries to handle everything else in IT. The reality is most IT "gurus" are capable of maintaining everything just good enough to keep it working, which does not always mean it's working well or mitigating risk sufficiently.
As I said before, compare it to the medical field. If your family needed to have a baby delivered, a brain tumor removed, and the dog needed to be neutered, imagine your response if your family doctor claimed, "Oh yeah, I can handle all that."
BTW, you forgot the most important part: backups.
An inherent part of maintaining servers, but not the most important part. The most important part when it comes to managing IT is respecting the level of proficiency specialists need to maintain in order to manage systems properly, and hire enough staff to mitigate risk in order to sustain business, which is one of the primary missions of IT.
On one side....On the other side...
Don't you get tired of constant, pointless Team A vs. Team B bullshit? None of that team nonsense is about helping the country or the people. Why not give up pretending it is?
That "nonsense" you speak if has been around for over 150 years now, regardless of whether it helps or not. We've tried to get a third party in there to try and un-fuck the corrupt two-party system we've had for too damn long. We've tried, and failed. The fact is Team A vs. Team B sure wasn't my idea any more than it was yours. But it's the political landscape that we STILL deal with today, and THAT is what is truly bullshit. And yeah, I'm tired; tired of pretending it will ever change.
... hell-bent on feeding the Educational Industrial Complex with the goal...
Don't you get tired of peddling ultra-exaggerated conspiratorial narratives? Everyone knows this kind of crap is mostly false, even if there's a tiny bit of truth underneath the mountains of nonsense. Why not give up the dramatic storytelling and just be factual?
A motive by government representatives to support the business of education is some kind of conspiracy in a capitalist economy? That's a laugh. One driving factor remains a constant in politics; Greed. As a result, what has become "ultra-exaggerated" is the obscene cost of higher education, which validates the moniker I've bestowed upon the industry that peddles education.
And quite honestly, we should all learn to be a bit wiser and read between the lines when it comes to the motives of any Team, for that may be the only place where truth is buried. Recent leaks in history have certainly proven an ability to convert he craziest of conspiracies into facts. You want to discuss the facts? Yeah, good luck finding it. After all, the politicians lips were moving when they were speaking.
Your sarcasm is unwarranted and misses the point. In fact, it's much simpler: conservatives want higher education to teach conservative values and ideas, while leftists want higher education to teach leftist values and ideas. The leftists have pretty much taken over US academia, and as a result, conservatives want tax payers to pay less for teaching an ideology that they disagree with.
And although dependence on big government programs is likely a nice political side effect for people who generally advocate such things, the primary reason for skyrocketing costs is the same as our public pension crisis: special interests lobby for more government spending for their causes, and traditionally, it's been hard for politiciains to say "no" to subsidizing education. If you subsidize something, prices generally go up.
Uh, the situation appears to be far from "subsidized" when the cost of higher education now approaches the personal debt level of a fucking mortgage. Could we cut grant programs to cut costs? Sure. By doing so would less people end up going to college? Yes, and that would probably be a good thing, It might force employers to stop with the secretary-needs-a-masters-degree bullshit job requirement. We also likely need to re-define what we call "education" as well to ensure it creates a viable workforce, not a generation full of social media philosophers still living with their parents who can't find employment.
The other problem is the Educational Industrial Complex has become massively infected with Greed, and has created a lot of the same financial burdens and pain on citizens that other industries suffering from the same infection have. Education does not need to cost as much as it does, subsidy or not. Education is now on par with Medical when it comes to financial impact in ones lifetime. It's a fucking sad state of affairs to see that obscene Greed runs rampant, and Greed lobbies to ensure that it is never put in check. The chasm between the 0.001% and the 99.999% is not shrinking. Greed ensures the only goal billionaires have today is to become the worlds first trillionaires, no matter the impact to the rest of the planet.
There are many diseases humans suffer from, but the disease of Greed will sadly be our demise.
The problem with employers assuming they can still get away with a jack-of-all-trades "IT guy" position these days is the level of complexity and technical competence required to maintain systems properly. IT has fragmented down quite a bit, and one can make a career out of simply mastering IT security, and not ever even get into managing the other 90% of IT services.
Consider some of the most common services we run today in business. Desktops, servers, printers, switches, routers, email, internet, database, file/print/DNS/DHCP, along with SPAM filters, firewalls, IDS/IPS, A/V and anti-malware to help protect it all. And we haven't even touched virtualization or voice/chat services yet. Think you're gonna hire one IT person to do it all, or even find someone who holds a competent level of knowledge? Do you have only one doctor you see for anything and everything? No. Sure, a lot of those services you could hire the magical "cloud" to run to minimize IT staffing needs, but if you're cloud-adverse (which is becoming more and more of a valid stance), that may not be a viable option. If you run a local data center, now you're talking UPS sizing, generators, fire suppression, and physical security. Should the level-1 junior IT person be in charge ot DR/BCP planning for all IT services? Probably not.
IT should now be compared to the medical industry, where you have many specialists serving a compartmentalized field, due to complexity and skill required in each.. I'm not saying a small company needs to employ a staff of half a dozen specialists every time, but as the requirements list for IT services grows, so does the need for additional staff. Also, redundancy. Companies need to avoid the hit-by-a-bus scenario and ensure for every service the business relies on, you have primary and an alternate person named, and not merely on paper. Again, to compare to the medical industry, ongoing training is critical to maintaining competency.
TL; DR - Even for small business, IT today is not simple or easy. Employers cannot assume to get away with a jack-of-all-trades IT position.
On one side of the isle, you have a group of representatives who appear hell-bent on maintaining an uneducated society in order to maximize the manipulative capability of a government to control the stupid and ignorant masses.
On the other side of the isle, you have a group of representatives who appear hell-bent on feeding the Educational Industrial Complex with the goal of funding capitalism, regardless of the growing lack of return on that investment, or the personal impact of massive debt.
As usual, one has to choose the lesser of two evils.
My understanding is that they don't occupy a vital niche in the food-chain or otherwise in the ecosystem.
Google is your friend. I knew the answer to this already, but was surprised by how readily available source material was to support my response.
A few notable items:
http://www.nature.com/news/201... http://io9.gizmodo.com/what-if... http://science.howstuffworks.c... https://www.theguardian.com/gl...
Etc.
You were surprised? Yeah, I was too, particularly as to the data you provided, since I believe the point you were trying to make is mosquitoes are necessary and vital to our ecosystem.
Some of your articles hint that eradication would not create an ecological impact. Some also stated that eradication efforts are "not worth it unless there was a very serious public health emergency."
Perhaps the true question is how many humans will have to become infected or die until the latter statement rings true?
Perhaps we look at history to answer that. The mosquito has long been known as the deadliest animal on the planet. They have killed countless humans through the ages. It carries over a dozen diseases, including malaria, which still kills over a million people every year. Now Zika has been added to that infamous list.
Sad when you consider the innocent victims of Zika are babies suffering from microcephaly. The fear of that affliction alone is a form of terrorism when it comes to people wanting to start a family. Imagine the other impacts of areas known to be Zika-prone. Think your home value would not plummet if they found a 300% increase of Zika cases in your zip code? Impact local business that rely on humans being outside but now aren't due to increased fear of infection? I'm willing to bet it would. Much like the global concerns surrounding the Ebola outbreaks a few years ago, humans can get rather panicky when it comes to increased chances of being exposed to a life-threatening disease. Perhaps rightly so.
It would appear that we are doing something now to counter the threat, likely because enough revenue is at risk. Efforts have to be financially justified when it comes to preventing harm or death these days. If we do nothing in response to increased risk, then the mosquito will simply stand as yet another form of population control.
Is there a Chrome extension to track shitty adware Chrome extensions?
"Users also found other Chrome extensions that were also bought by the same company..."
Or perhaps there's a way we can simply put in a filter and block this particular company...
At what point would that become coercion?
Doesn't fucking matter. The average citizen does not have the financial means to defend even a single unconstitutional action against them. The Legal Industrial Complex is second only to the Medical Industrial Complex in terms of committing financial ass-rape against consumers. And those committing illegal actions against citizens know this.
Your only real chance is to arm yourself with enough legal knowledge to damn near pass a Bar Exam in hopes of diffusing a situation without being forced to defend yourself in a courtroom. Otherwise, you're likely going to be financially fucked. Is pissing away a chunk of your net worth or going into considerable debt really worth not giving up a social media password? Sorry kids, Daddy can't afford to help you with college. Refused to comply with an illegal search a few years ago. Kind of ate up the college fund.
The only Right we have left is the Right to ignorantly assume we can still afford any other Right history has bestowed upon us.
(Common F. Sense) - "(Cough, Cough) I just know he's gonna make me cut my electric vehicle initiatives. Every single day the pollution is worse than the day before it."
(Greed N. Corruption) - "Hello Common, whaaats happening? Ummm, I'm gonna need you to go ahead come in tomorrow. Oh, Oh, and I almost forgot ahh, I'm also gonna need you to go ahead and come in on Sunday too, kay. We ahh lost some demand for oil this week and ah, we sorta need to play catch up. Oh, and one more thing, we're gonna need you to move those pollution-cutting initiatives to the bottom of the priority list. If you could do that, that would be greeeat. Thanks."
First your stat is wrong - according to a WaPo story (https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2014/05/12/whats-in-your-wallet-probably-not-cash/), 20% of people carry nominal amounts of cash, with 7% carrying >=$100.
Perhaps my estimate was slightly off. But as statistics look into the future, many are predicting a migration to a cashless society, and the death of the ATM, with even the smallest transactions being paid for by a debit/credit card. NFC readers embedded in POS devices also enable a smartphone to be your wallet.
And how does the average percentage of people who carry cash have any relevance to how untraceable and thus dangerous it is to carry?
Cash has always been untraceable, although with the amount of surveillance in our society today, I would challenge that notion now. Why exactly is carrying cash dangerous today? With fewer and fewer people carrying around cash, a thief is less likely to actually obtain a financial reward for committing the crime of armed robbery, and more likely to get caught in the surveillance state we now live in. Increased risk of getting caught and decreased chance of reward somehow equates to a larger chance of it happening? And crime statistics across the last two decades reflect an ongoing decline in robbery?
Nothing about this cash-is-dangerous argument makes sense when you break it down. In fact, the only danger I see is a society who fears untraceable currency. THAT is the true danger, for removing all anonymous transactions from society would be the ultimate goal of the Orwellian world that has been forced upon us. Cash is untraceable, and therefore dangerous? It's as if the brainwashing is working.
And if people think it's dangerous to carry around cash because they might lose it, well that argument also tends to fall flat when they carry a $200 smartphone at all times that holds their entire digital life on it. If you want to watch a person actually panic today, take their smartphone. Everything else becomes damn near irrelevant in a microsecond, including the $20 they might have had in their wallet.
TL; DR - Cash is not dangerous. The mentality that it is dangerous because it is untraceable is the true danger in society today.
Which makes it a more desirable target than credit cards or checks. That's why it's more dangerous to carry than the alternatives.
We now live in a cashless society. There's likely only a 5% chance of a thief even finding someone with cash on their person, so your fear makes absolutely no sense.
You have a larger chance of your credit card or identity being stolen in the environment we live in today. Because to this, I don't even know why we're having this conversation.