Well saying "speed doesn't always kill" will get everyone assuming they're the exceptional driver that can handle higher speeds, and it is the ones who are overconfident that are the problem in the first place. Unfortunately that means "speed kills" is all you can say, as anything else will only encourage the wrong people.
I'm sure Gamestop made this decision with the general population in mind (for PR), not so much with the soldiers in mind. Also, they aren't depriving the soldiers of the game- the soldiers just have to order the game online, go off-base or receive the game as a gift. I don't see a problem here.
Phonetaps are invaluable- you capture the (presumed) criminal's own words, instead of relying on witness testimony. For example, the case against former governor Blagojevich relies heavily upon phonetap recordings (the jury foreman said they were the most damning evidence). Phonetaps are used a lot for white collar crimes, where you have little, if any, physical evidence, and proving intent is often the biggest and most difficult factor in getting a guilty verdict. Another useful situation is when a crime is being planned- a lot harder to prove the case to a jury, but preventing crime is where law enforcement really proves its worth. Keep in mind there's a difference between getting evidence for law enforcement to know a crime was committed, and evidence enough you are sure you can convince a jury.
Of course, I am supporting phonetaps with proper justification (same with search warrants), so Patriot act stuff is over the top and abusive.
Nuclear? Expensive. Solar? Expensive. Wind? Getting there, but not reliable. Coal? Cheap and plentiful, and we will continue using it for decades (at least) whether you like it or not. I don't know about you, but I think trying to clean up the process and contain the mess is much better than nothing. Clean coal will never be "green" and is never intended to be- it just tries to improve upon current coal plants. Unless you come up with something cheaper (and reliable) your choice is clean coal or traditional coal (so I choose clean).
Li-Ion batteries are in fact very bad for the environment: by reducing reliance upon fossil fuels, demand for fossil fuels drops, which reduces prices, which encourages future use, which reduces pressure to research green alternative energy sources, which ultimately means more pollution. Conclusion: drive a Hummer, it's the new green.
I agree it doesn't make a lot of sense to make the patent claim illegal, but a possible compromise is to have products also list the year the patent will expire, and remove all ambiguity.
Even better was the time I told my laptop to shut down because I was low on battery. I came back 5 minutes later to find it hadn't shut down because a Windows dialog had popped up saying I should shut down because I was low on battery (true story).
Pharmaceutical companies make a lot of money off of diabetes and other illnesses that are treated but not cured. They would not want to fund stem cell research unless they can be reasonably sure the cure doesn't undercut their current profits. Not to mention stem cell treatment will (likely) always involve expensive doctors and hospitals, which is a lot more work than churning out pills in a factory and selling them at hundreds of times the cost to produce them.
You don't get it because you make a false dichotomy. Those embryos don't have to be destroyed. It would be like finding the concentration camps and deciding to continue the inhumane research the nazis were doing, rather than saving those imprisoned. I feel creating extra embryos is wrong- if people would eventually stop the practice, we would have a finite supply of extras, which would eventually be depleted (couples who cannot have a child naturally would be interested, for example).
By the way, your notion of ultimate sacrifice is missing the free will part- if the embryo has no part in the decision it's just murder.
He's saying you've got limited funds and multiple avenues of research you could pursue, so it is logical to put the most funds into the most productive research. Both ASC and ESC research may have the potential to cure diabetes, Alzheimer's, etc. so in the end it may not matter if ESC research will eventually be fruitful, should ASC research get there faster.
We don't know for sure which route will actually get us treatment faster (or if there are things ASCs can never treat that ESCs can), so I'm not saying ESC research is irrelevant, but your 'ESCs or nothing' stance misses the point a little.
You need your own stem cells the same way you can only get a transfusion of your own blood. Last I heard there are 200 or so combinations of the tissue equivalent to blood type. It's a lot compared to blood types, but quite feasible still for a hospital to have all types on hand.
As far as I know, ESCs should have the same requirement to match "tissue type", so this is a problem that has to be overcome regardless.
Except for one solution: start responding to physical spam mail, so that it is more profitable to be a mail spammer than an email spammer. Suddenly the USPO will have billions of letters to mail every day and should run at an immense profit. Everybody wins!
To be fair, the company is Blizzard-Activision, and I wouldn't be surprised if SC2 is the product of the Blizzard you know and love, but tainted by Activision. That said, you aren't the only one who really wants to play it but decided to hold out thanks to the DRM and BNet issues.
He asked how a UAV bomber could be a defensive weapon (not specifying this UAV), so I gave an example. Theoretically you could make a UAV that won't get picked up by said SAMs until it's too late. This thing sounds somewhat useless, but you could argue it's a very small first step towards that theoretical UAV, therefore this may also qualify as defensive in intent.
I was responding to your (strongly implied) argument that teachers are paid relatively little because they don't make much money, and I disagreed, all from a pure economics perspective. I never said the unions provide the solution, as I was only talking about talented teachers and not teachers in general. I agree there are some ways for talented teachers to get more pay elsewhere, but that just furthers the market failure by depriving the public schools of good teachers through their poor value of talent. Being a theory-based argument, it is contradicted by reality, but that is kind of the point (hence the market failure conclusion).
You realize there's more than "he's unquestionably innocent" and "guilty beyond a reasonable doubt". You start at the first one before he's accused, and move from there based on what information you have. The GP is talking about people who stay at "unquestionably innocent" no matter what evidence they see. Others go all the way to guilty just on the accusation. Your statement is somewhat misleading, too: just like I might disagree with someone (based on opinion) but support his freedom of speech (based on law), I might consider someone guilty (based on opinion), but respect his presumption of innocence until the jury says otherwise (based on law).
The GP is talking about your personal opinion of the person, while you are talking about person's legal rights. I find your statement is correct, but your implication that it conflicts with the GP to be false.
But a talented teacher (paid by the public) makes a lot of money for the public through increased productivity of the students who learned and enjoyed learning thanks to him/her. The problem is it is hard to define how much a teacher benefits society, so instead people just figure anyone can do the same job and pay them as little as the unions will let them. Just because our short-term-focused capitalist society can't see what good teachers do doesn't mean the government is wrong when they do see that benefit. Our market is imperfect, and always will be thanks to selfish people who will fall for tragedy of the commons and similar fallacies every time. Sure, realistically the market will continue undervaluing good teachers, but only as a case of market failure.
I pitched the idea to my colleagues on the committee (decidedly not a collection of gamers), and they agreed to try Portal and read selections from Goffman's book. After plowing through some installation issues ("What does this Steam do? Will it expose me to viruses?"), we enjoyed the first meaningful discussion about a video game I've ever had with a group of colleagues across disciplines. They got it. They made the connections, and they enjoyed the game.
If non-gamer professors liked it, I am sure the students will be fine.
Well the guy said he intends to fund expansion of this project through fees collected, implying law enforcement might be cooperative. Given all the cops have to do is look at the video and look up the license plate, and the police get money out of it, the job should appeal to both corrupt and lazy cops. The work to get the system working and the police behind you on it should be less than what you need to get traffic lights installed (which require a bunch of politicians cooperating and spending money solely for public good).
I'm not saying his project will be easy to pull off, or necessarily even feasible. I'm just saying some random guy asking for traffic lights sounds like a fool's errand in comparison.
Traffic lights are far more expensive and time-intensive to set up than a simple radar+camera setup- plus the radars can (directly) pay for themselves unlike a traffic light. Maybe if he catches enough reckless drivers, the government will get enough money together to install traffic lights, but those radar setups would still be helpful. He also mentions a hit-and-run driver: a traffic light may reduce such accidents, but his radar data could help track down the person, and a conviction on that might remove a lot of these dangerous drivers from the road for a long while (depending on how the legal system works over there).
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Well saying "speed doesn't always kill" will get everyone assuming they're the exceptional driver that can handle higher speeds, and it is the ones who are overconfident that are the problem in the first place. Unfortunately that means "speed kills" is all you can say, as anything else will only encourage the wrong people.
Am I the only one bothered by the parent failing to use the title "News Flash!"?
I'm sure Gamestop made this decision with the general population in mind (for PR), not so much with the soldiers in mind. Also, they aren't depriving the soldiers of the game- the soldiers just have to order the game online, go off-base or receive the game as a gift. I don't see a problem here.
Phonetaps are invaluable- you capture the (presumed) criminal's own words, instead of relying on witness testimony. For example, the case against former governor Blagojevich relies heavily upon phonetap recordings (the jury foreman said they were the most damning evidence). Phonetaps are used a lot for white collar crimes, where you have little, if any, physical evidence, and proving intent is often the biggest and most difficult factor in getting a guilty verdict. Another useful situation is when a crime is being planned- a lot harder to prove the case to a jury, but preventing crime is where law enforcement really proves its worth. Keep in mind there's a difference between getting evidence for law enforcement to know a crime was committed, and evidence enough you are sure you can convince a jury.
Of course, I am supporting phonetaps with proper justification (same with search warrants), so Patriot act stuff is over the top and abusive.
Nuclear? Expensive. Solar? Expensive. Wind? Getting there, but not reliable. Coal? Cheap and plentiful, and we will continue using it for decades (at least) whether you like it or not. I don't know about you, but I think trying to clean up the process and contain the mess is much better than nothing. Clean coal will never be "green" and is never intended to be- it just tries to improve upon current coal plants. Unless you come up with something cheaper (and reliable) your choice is clean coal or traditional coal (so I choose clean).
Li-Ion batteries are in fact very bad for the environment: by reducing reliance upon fossil fuels, demand for fossil fuels drops, which reduces prices, which encourages future use, which reduces pressure to research green alternative energy sources, which ultimately means more pollution. Conclusion: drive a Hummer, it's the new green.
I agree it doesn't make a lot of sense to make the patent claim illegal, but a possible compromise is to have products also list the year the patent will expire, and remove all ambiguity.
Even better was the time I told my laptop to shut down because I was low on battery. I came back 5 minutes later to find it hadn't shut down because a Windows dialog had popped up saying I should shut down because I was low on battery (true story).
Pharmaceutical companies make a lot of money off of diabetes and other illnesses that are treated but not cured. They would not want to fund stem cell research unless they can be reasonably sure the cure doesn't undercut their current profits. Not to mention stem cell treatment will (likely) always involve expensive doctors and hospitals, which is a lot more work than churning out pills in a factory and selling them at hundreds of times the cost to produce them.
You don't get it because you make a false dichotomy. Those embryos don't have to be destroyed. It would be like finding the concentration camps and deciding to continue the inhumane research the nazis were doing, rather than saving those imprisoned. I feel creating extra embryos is wrong- if people would eventually stop the practice, we would have a finite supply of extras, which would eventually be depleted (couples who cannot have a child naturally would be interested, for example).
By the way, your notion of ultimate sacrifice is missing the free will part- if the embryo has no part in the decision it's just murder.
Just because a caterpillar isn't physically the same as a butterfly doesn't mean they aren't of the same species.
He's saying you've got limited funds and multiple avenues of research you could pursue, so it is logical to put the most funds into the most productive research. Both ASC and ESC research may have the potential to cure diabetes, Alzheimer's, etc. so in the end it may not matter if ESC research will eventually be fruitful, should ASC research get there faster.
We don't know for sure which route will actually get us treatment faster (or if there are things ASCs can never treat that ESCs can), so I'm not saying ESC research is irrelevant, but your 'ESCs or nothing' stance misses the point a little.
You need your own stem cells the same way you can only get a transfusion of your own blood. Last I heard there are 200 or so combinations of the tissue equivalent to blood type. It's a lot compared to blood types, but quite feasible still for a hospital to have all types on hand.
As far as I know, ESCs should have the same requirement to match "tissue type", so this is a problem that has to be overcome regardless.
Wait, what? The parent mentioned religion, but not morals. I'm atheist but morally opposed to destroying embryos.
Except for one solution: start responding to physical spam mail, so that it is more profitable to be a mail spammer than an email spammer. Suddenly the USPO will have billions of letters to mail every day and should run at an immense profit. Everybody wins!
The most obvious ones are where the section to list cons is just used to say more good things ("I have a hard time putting it down!").
To be fair, the company is Blizzard-Activision, and I wouldn't be surprised if SC2 is the product of the Blizzard you know and love, but tainted by Activision. That said, you aren't the only one who really wants to play it but decided to hold out thanks to the DRM and BNet issues.
He asked how a UAV bomber could be a defensive weapon (not specifying this UAV), so I gave an example. Theoretically you could make a UAV that won't get picked up by said SAMs until it's too late. This thing sounds somewhat useless, but you could argue it's a very small first step towards that theoretical UAV, therefore this may also qualify as defensive in intent.
A UAV bomber can be used against enemy aircraft carriers, for example.
I was responding to your (strongly implied) argument that teachers are paid relatively little because they don't make much money, and I disagreed, all from a pure economics perspective. I never said the unions provide the solution, as I was only talking about talented teachers and not teachers in general. I agree there are some ways for talented teachers to get more pay elsewhere, but that just furthers the market failure by depriving the public schools of good teachers through their poor value of talent. Being a theory-based argument, it is contradicted by reality, but that is kind of the point (hence the market failure conclusion).
You realize there's more than "he's unquestionably innocent" and "guilty beyond a reasonable doubt". You start at the first one before he's accused, and move from there based on what information you have. The GP is talking about people who stay at "unquestionably innocent" no matter what evidence they see. Others go all the way to guilty just on the accusation. Your statement is somewhat misleading, too: just like I might disagree with someone (based on opinion) but support his freedom of speech (based on law), I might consider someone guilty (based on opinion), but respect his presumption of innocence until the jury says otherwise (based on law).
The GP is talking about your personal opinion of the person, while you are talking about person's legal rights. I find your statement is correct, but your implication that it conflicts with the GP to be false.
But a talented teacher (paid by the public) makes a lot of money for the public through increased productivity of the students who learned and enjoyed learning thanks to him/her. The problem is it is hard to define how much a teacher benefits society, so instead people just figure anyone can do the same job and pay them as little as the unions will let them. Just because our short-term-focused capitalist society can't see what good teachers do doesn't mean the government is wrong when they do see that benefit. Our market is imperfect, and always will be thanks to selfish people who will fall for tragedy of the commons and similar fallacies every time. Sure, realistically the market will continue undervaluing good teachers, but only as a case of market failure.
I pitched the idea to my colleagues on the committee (decidedly not a collection of gamers), and they agreed to try Portal and read selections from Goffman's book. After plowing through some installation issues ("What does this Steam do? Will it expose me to viruses?"), we enjoyed the first meaningful discussion about a video game I've ever had with a group of colleagues across disciplines. They got it. They made the connections, and they enjoyed the game.
If non-gamer professors liked it, I am sure the students will be fine.
Well the guy said he intends to fund expansion of this project through fees collected, implying law enforcement might be cooperative. Given all the cops have to do is look at the video and look up the license plate, and the police get money out of it, the job should appeal to both corrupt and lazy cops. The work to get the system working and the police behind you on it should be less than what you need to get traffic lights installed (which require a bunch of politicians cooperating and spending money solely for public good).
I'm not saying his project will be easy to pull off, or necessarily even feasible. I'm just saying some random guy asking for traffic lights sounds like a fool's errand in comparison.
Traffic lights are far more expensive and time-intensive to set up than a simple radar+camera setup- plus the radars can (directly) pay for themselves unlike a traffic light. Maybe if he catches enough reckless drivers, the government will get enough money together to install traffic lights, but those radar setups would still be helpful. He also mentions a hit-and-run driver: a traffic light may reduce such accidents, but his radar data could help track down the person, and a conviction on that might remove a lot of these dangerous drivers from the road for a long while (depending on how the legal system works over there).