How many people do you see driving holding a phone and sometimes a drink and not paying a bit of attention to what is going on around them? Usually in those f'ing H2's or Navigators.
This is simply a matter of seeing what you are looking for. My ride is low enough to the ground I don't really see the faces of larger SUV drivers. At least not without looking up there specifically. As a result, nearly every single time I see someone on a cell phone in a vehicle, it's someone in a minivan or sedan. Oddly enough, I rarely see someone else in a Vette or other sportscar/musclecar using them.
You, like many of the masses, expect someone driving "a big bad SUV" to do things you think are stupid or dangerous, so you see it more than in other vehicles. Just like becoming very aware of a particular model will make you "see more" of them on the road. Vette owners as a group notice each other and wave at each other, so we do see more of the other Vette owners on the road in comparson to say Camry owners. Yet the incidence (around here) of Vette owners driving while on their cell phone is less than that of other vehicles I've noted (yes I do keep track... yeah I'm a nerd). I'm not saying Vette drivers are "more responsible", just that your attention is directed elsewhere (the fun of driving the car, for example).
Similarly, I rarely see "ricers" on their phones while driving. Maybe its because the "fart can" exhaust or the thumping stereo pretty well makes such attempts useful, or perhaps they too are merel yenjoying their ride.
Another likely explanation for the perception of SUV owners on their phone while driving is that most of them are women. Women do tend to talk more on the phone in general than men. Of this subset of drivers, mothers tend to be on the phone more often than non-mothers. Often this is due to keeping appointemnts, making them, and coordinating events for their children.
I understand that for most of the vocal masses it is much more entertaining and self-promoting to blame "SUV drivers" as a group rather than think about things. But that still doesn't make it right.
I would find that a true delta configuration would be unlikely as there would be little evolutionary advantage to developing an inherently less stable "wing" configuration for the low speed flying that this creature would be doing.
The whole reason that flight engineers started adopting the delta wing configuration is that it allowed the shockwave for supersonic flight to be better controlled flight by moving the leading edge of the wing back behind the terminus. This is great for high speed flight, but miserable for low speed flight as it requires very high stall speeds that would be....... unlikely in this creature.
This is where most pf us non-evolution experts screw it up. Evolution is a result, not a process. At the fundamental level, evolution describes the process whereby mutations occur and the ones that provide an advantage take precedence. It isn't like "evolution" sat down and said "hey, let us make a flying creature that....".
The wing pattern, if true, may well have been a simple mutation that got nowhere in the long term. However, it may also have gone on for a while, having offered a different advantage - one that had nothing to do with flight. This could range from insulative effects, reproductive effects, or defense effects (appearance often affects whether a predator chooses you or a different creature) to name just a few. We tend to think of the use of delta-shaped wings in terms of flight, particularly high speed flight. Yet this is only our "modern" bias.
I find it interesting that the comments so far have been regarding the delta wing, and not regarding the bi-wing configuration. To me, that is much more interesting. What, if any, flight advantages would that provide the small creature? Does it truly represent adaptation from mere gliding to powered flight? The fact that these dinos had feathers is also interesting.
Well, the article says that it's mostly sponges that get left in patients. I've also heard several stories reported in the news of sponges being left in patients, only to be discovered later when the patient complains of pain. Sponges as you may know tend to absorb blood, so they're difficult to see.
Which is why counting *sponges* is crucial, as well as attaching sponges to handles or other means of making them more visible.
Well, maybe there's no "excuse", (that is, someone isn't directly responsible for the failure) but blaming people doesn't solve the continuing problem. There's always going to be people who miss-count, or miss a sponge no matter how much of a hard-ass you are. So you build those problems into your larger system and have independent redundant parts that catch failures.
And there will always be software/hardware failure in the detectors, failure to actually use the detector, interference from other devices, the RFID tag will fall out of the sponge prior to use, false positives will be created by the tag falling out in the body even without the spong leading to unnecessary re-opening of the boy, and so on. But the essential problem of failing to take the care and measures to actually verify you have removed everything you put in will not only not be addressed by RFID tagging them, but also exacerbated. "Ah hell why bother looking, the detector will catch it". Then we will be right back here lamenting why people don't use the detectors, or why they rely on them knowing they can and will fail, etc., and have spent all this money on "the system" only to get nowhere.
The problem is not a technological one, and can not be solved via technology. Doctors and OR assistants who do not follow a procedure to verify stuff is not left in before the "magic wand of foreign object detection" are not going to follow the magic wand procedure after it is put into place. Indeed, most surgeons may well take it as an insult to their ability and skill and avoid using them right out. The leaving of surgical tools in a patient is a failure of process. Either not having one or not following it. No amount of technology beyond a checklist and training in appropriate procedure will have as much effect.
We are talking about people who have the lives of families on the line here. If you can't be bothered to remember and follow the procedure, your ass needs to be somewhere else - regardless of how much you are paid.
How about instead doctors get publicly available ratings on the amount and/or frequency of foreign objects being left in patients; nurses and surgical assistants as well. The magic wand doesn't do anything other than hide failure to follow process, shoddy work, absentmindedness, etc..
If you think technology can prevent doctors from doing this (leaving objects in patients), just look at how much bad spelling is set loose upon the world in documents and email in spite of spell-checkers. Just as "autocorrect" does nothing to prevent or curtail the root of the problem (user doesn't know the spelling/capitalization/etc.), neither will RFID tags in surgical tools. There are countless more cases where this scenario shows itself.
TO quote one case:
In one of my cases, a huge lap pad (a type of surgical sponge) measuring over 10 inches in length was accidentally left behind in my client's abdomen by the surgical team
A sponge larger than the doctor's hand he left behind. That is as inept as a grade school teaching writing "great job!" on the top of a math assignment that had a mere 3 out of 11 correct. I've also seen the x-rays and reports of 13 inch long retractors, 7-12 inch long clamps, and pieces of equipment that got broke off all being left behind.
From 1985 to 1998, the incidence of objects being left within surgical patients has occurred at a steady rate of more than 40 per year. Specifically, 601 such cases have involved hospitals, surgical clinics, and physicians i
If your in a emergency room, you might have hundreds of tools that you need quick access to. You dont have time to count, or probobly the mental dextarity to remember to count, the number of tools your using when your trying to save someones life. You need to concentrate on what your doing, not on how many clamps you've used.
That is why there are assistants! Seriously dude, you've got people, even in ER, who handle the tools and are not operating. Doctors don't just say "scalpel" and they magically appear in their hand. And they don't have to count either. A pair of trays. One with the tools laid out with a placement pattern below it, and the tools in their place, and an empty one next to it. When a tool is handed back you put it on the blank tray in it's place. No math involved, just your eyes. This type of procedure works well "on the battlefield", there is no reason not to work in a civilian ER.
Furthermore, it isn't that hard to look at the opening for shinys before closing it up. Between the assistants keeping track of tools and the doctor looking at his work to see if there are any tools left there, there should be no excuse for leaving things in. Period.
To be fair, we don't see environmentalists and enviromentally friendly groups pushing on the *easy* (and smart) things to do that would cut energy use without forcing people into it or making it more expensive.
For example., let us look at trucking. Trucking in the US uses huge amounts of energy in the form of diesel. As always there are two ways to use less energy: a) do less or b) do it more efficiently.
Using this, there is proven means for reducing trucking industry fuel consumption. Bigger trucks.
By allowing larger loads on more axles you decrease the number of trips required to get material from A to B. One truck carrying 100% more, for example, consumes less than two trucks carrying 100% more.
The increase in axle count decreases or maintains road pressure, thus doing no more damage to the road than normal and likely less. The same axle increase provides additional braking. In fact, the additional braking is more than is needed to compensate for the increased mass. Thus from a braking standpoint the trucks would have better stopping power. The trucks do not necessarily have to get larger to handle it, either. Remember that this is by weight, not volume.
Just as you get bags of chips that are "half empty" becuase they are packaged by weight, not volume, many trucks are less than full because they are weight limited. This is a huge problem, no pun intended. Sadly, by volume the truckign industry ships more air than anything else due to partially empty shipping containers.
The effects of increasing weight limit (with concomitant axle requirements) are known and have been proven in the real world. With no changes to specific fuel economy, the *effective* decrease in fuel required is tremendous. This is expressed as MPG-e, or Miles Per Gallon equivalent.
The state of Michigan increased their limit to 164,500 pounds. In return their largest food-grade tanker fleet saw huge improvements. They were able to increase their per-trip by a factor of 2.5. With no direct fuel efficiency changes they saw their effective MPG go from 5 to 12.
The cost to the government for raising these limits would be the cost of updating the regulation books. Something that is done yearly as it is. So effectively this is a no-cost option for the government. It also doesn't force anyone to do it, does not create new restrictions, and is a proven method for improving the overall efficiency of our shipping industry. Indeed, for most companies using tractor-trailer setups for shipping, it would reduce their costs w/o requiring significant investment. Processes and some routing would be required, but not much beyond that.
The only people who might stand to lose anything here is rail freight. But not necessarily. An additional bnenefit is that international cargo containers are loaded heavier than the US allows. This means they have to be repacked upon US entry. By moving to at least the 110K pound limit used in Europe (Canada has, IIRC, a 138K pound limit) this inefficiency goes away, as well as many security issues centered around repackaging. This benefits rail transport in that they, too get to carry more cargo weight per trip. Further, a *lot* of energy is used in repacking international shipments. This energy is electrical as well as petroleum based.
But do we see the so-called environmentalist groups pushing for this? No. They would be on the same side as the trucking as well as most industries they generally rail against such as the automotive industry.
A 50+% reduction in trucking industry fuel consumption is nothing to sneeze at. But it doesn't sell books and speeches, now does it? This is an example of the Congress ignoring real (and simple) changes in preference to grandiose do-nothing-of-value bills. And we the citizen literally pay for it.
Until the government has exhausted all of these significant and cheap-to-"free" gains, they should leave the destructive options such as tax increases off the table.
What he means is: "I don't want people who are interested in whay THEY'LL get from the job. I want people who are interested in nothing more than the good of the COMPANY!"
How dare someone be interested in their own benefits!?!?!
Should you ever have a daughter, I'm sure you'll respond the same way. Yeah right. If someone wanted to date your daughter you'd be very interested in whether or not he is interested in "his own benefit" or that of your daughter. There is no difference between that and looking for someone who is interested in doing the work you have for them. In this case curing cancer. How dare he want to pay someone to work instead of paying someone to loaf around. Of all the nerve!
Of course, those who do what they enjoy ar emore likely to get work done, make things better, and be happier than those who are not.
to avoid damaged segments, such as any US restrictions.
... and EU restrictions... and Chinese restrictions... and Canadian restrictions... and Iranian restrictions... and North Korean restrictions... and Japanese restrictions...
OK, now there goes the vast majority of The Internet "routed" around. Routed to where?
In an interconnected world where China has more Net users than the US, and so does the EU, one country standing in defiance of the Net is like a small earthen dam trying to constrain the massive tsunami that will either go around it, go over it, or crush it beneath its massive weight of inevitability.
But take them all together and you've got a stranglehold on the leftovers.
At best it becomes a "pick your poison" buffet. At worst there is so much overalp that there is littlle effective difference between any major locales.
Then there is the business side. The US may have fewer people online, but it does more business online. Indeed, "routing around" the US plays right into the hands of the protectionist pig-dogs in the US. They get the effect w/o the righteous resistance to isolationism and protectionism. And what happens to the econmomies of the world when the largest consumer "goes native"? The market works both ways, y'all.
Among other direct effects would likely be either the UN following US Internet regulatory schemes, or the US adding it to the list and dropping out of the UN. If you happen to be thinking right now "good riddance", first I'd agree. However, second you should realize that with that would go a fifth of the "raw budget" of the UN, and the lion's share of the "peacekeeping" forces and "indirect" budget. With the US out a power struggle would ensue. Maybe China would win. Perhaps Russia. Maybe Japan, they are the second largest source of UN resources. The EU would not be the victor (it isn't a state and thus cannot be a member), nor would any of it's member states individually. Much of the relatively small amount of teeth the UN has is the US. Whether it could revive and resurrect prior to absolute failure is anyone's guess. If the US were followed by Japan the UN would effectively dissolve after losing more than 40% of it's budget.
It is partly the very effect of reverse-isolationism that will likely drive the spread of various regulatory schemes on the Internet by the larger governments. The EU and the US are largely similar in what they are seeking already. Expect to see them "sync up" while simultaneously berating each others' "attempts to control the Internet". Expect this to spread and synchonize up.
but the US implying laws on internet usage will not completely change the internet. The rest of the world won't just follow along, and you'll find hi-tech companies moving to companies that are more forgiving to their line of business.
Yup because only the US is trying to do it. Certianly China will be the bastion of internet freedom with it's documented state control desires. Perhaps the EU? Nope, their imposition of restrictions dates back many many years as well.
If you think it is "THE US Government" or "THE EU Government" or "THE Chinese Government", you miss the root cause. The root cause is the government itself. Government and Power/Intrusion is like an accretion disk forming a celestial body. The spiral grows stronger with time. Every small piece of power given to a government of any sort is like adding mass. More mass means more gravity. More gravity means it will attract more mass. Same equation, different components.
And finally, when you turn over The Internet to "businessed", it will be gone. The Internet is about connections, be they physical, intellecutal, social, etc.. Yes business can be a part of it, but it is not the primal driving force of the Internet. Not yet, anyway.
Nope. Industrial Hemp is more valuable to other industries such as textiles and plastics. As a result, higher bidder will win and you won't have the hemp->methane cycle you seem to want.
And your last link/paste is as wrong as it can be. Methane -> Methanol NOT Methane -> Ethanol. Methanol is WOOD alcohol, Ethanol is GRAIN alcohol. Also, Ford was talking ethanol, not methane/methanol. Methanol is POISONOUS, ethanol is "mildly toxic". Your first quote is incomplete in that it does not include ethanol production from Hemp. However, the aforementioned demand outside of transportation fuels applies here as well (even if less so).
The radio recently reported that my state, Minnesota, published a paper showing that if windmills were erected at all the economically feasible points in the state, our generating capacity would exceed our current consumption by a factor of fourteen. That would mean total independence from fossil fuels for electric production for a long time to come. Just think what that would do towards stabilizing the price of energy, especially when compared to OPEC's cartel.
Unless you get your electricity from oil reserves, it would have no measurable effect on OPEC. Even if it is currently powered by natural gas.
OPEC deals in oil not the generic term "fossil fuels".
I was a libertarian until I realized the philosophy breaks down in the face of concentrated wealth and power. If we had lots of people with ten million dollars it would probably work. When we have a few hundred "people" (some human, some corporate) with billions of dollars, it doesn't work.
You should have continue following the money as it were. How did htese people get the money? By government. Government provided them with special protections no normal person has. Hiding behind the wall of a corproation is a protection/benefit system designed to produce exactly what you correctly identify as a problem. With these "protections" in place both people and companies who become "corporate entities" become an arm of the government (that is what a Charter effectively does - and it is a Corporate Charter) and gain all manner of advantages an otherwise free market system does not provide.
Whether that be the ability to pollute w/o risk of penalty, or deploy anti-competition tactics that would otherwise be illegal, or to use the corporation as a source of money and legal defense funding, it is done so by threat of force (death) by the government. As much as many people like to believe otherwise, libertarian principles did not provide for the wealth of Bill Gates or Larry Ellison. To the contrary it was anti-libertarian (i.e. statist) principles that did so.
Some people will tell you that everyone needs to just get over it, that whites need not apologize for the actions of their ancestors or walk on eggshells to avoid giving offense. Those people don't get it. It's not over yet, not by a long shot. It's going to take a few generations for the emotional aspects of the memory to fade, and probably longer to right the social and economic wrongs that were done. In the meantime, a certain degree of sensitivity can only help.
First, apologize to whom? There are no people living today that were slaves in Early America. It has been "a few generations", the Civil War ended about 140 years ago. If you want to refer to later racism, well it will never end. Preference will allways be there. And news flash: all races share this trait. Racism will never die, it will be continually "adjusted" to always remain a "current problem".
Racism 1.0: Slavery Racism 2.0: Not slaves but no rights Racism 3.0: Slavery free, with rights added Racism 4.0: Racism by proxy...
It is like Maslow's Heirarchy of Needs. Once one "more obvious" aspect of "racism" (perceived or real) is dealt with, we'll just keep moving up the chain to "smaller and smaller" aspects. Eventually this will trigger a reversal. Indeed we can see the signs of a reversal ocurring. So-called "reverse discrimination" is one, and "just get over it" is another.
Ultimately this notion of apologizing and "compensating" (whether in money, service, preferential treatment, "walking on eggshells", etc.) to somebody living today for something someone else did to a different person years, decades, or centuries ago, is utter bullshit.
Japanese people killed "white Americans" during WWII, but somehow that's different. Germans slaughtered Russians by the field-full in WWII. But somehow that's different. You can go back through time and find that every "race" has committed atrocities to other races at some point. None of them have any relevance to what "should" be done today.
If person A does something to person B, then they have something to work out. First between themselves, and if that fails a third party (soem sor tof mediator). If Person A does something to person B, Person C has no right nor reason to force person D to compensate Person C in any way whatsoever as a result.
You'd think though, with the thousands of patents filed daily that we'd have flying cars, microwaves that you can put forks in, better televisions, magic food pills, etc...
Instead we have gas guzzling cars that will end society, microwaves using decades old technology, TV incompatibilities up the wazoo and fake sugar pills sold on SpikeTV at 2am.
"gas guzzling cars..." => Today's cars are loads more efficient than decades ago. They have more bloat - AC, DVD Systems, power seats, heated seats, a hundred pounds of sound deadener, etc. which holds them back.
"microwaves that you can put a fork in..." => My micro is several years old. It browns burgers, makes toast, and I can leave the fork in the microwave depending on what I am cooking. I often leave the spoon in the hot cocoa as I nuke it. No problems.
"better televisions" => oh they are better. Incompatibilities are irrelevant to "better" televisions.
"magic food pills" => First, we've found they are not that appealing. Second "magic food pill" == "sugar pill". We call them "placebos". Fake sugar pills aren't sold on TV. But fake sugar is sold in stores.
Now how about getting off your butt and start inventing *useful* things yourself. If we all wait around for someone else to do it, it will never happen.
Thus, you are getting 'free energy' from outside the system, drawing from the global heat. From the perspective of the room this is energy out of nowhere or free energy.
I believe the Mythbusters called this "free-to-me energy". Well sort of. They were talking about leaching power from nearby power lines. Same essential concept.
I saw the tag "fud" for this article. Sorry, but this is not fud, it is the truth. You can give those standard Linux zealot lines about how if we had given more resources to it, had more, smarter sysadmins with better experience and so on and so forth that it would work. But the managers do not want to hear that,
Management doesn't want to hear that they don't have smart enough sysadmins to actually implement what the sysadmins probably pushed for? yeah I can see that. Sounds to me like your testing was woefully inadequate. If the DB is critical to operations (not all are), then it deserves very rigorous testing.
Don't get me wrong, I don't like Oracle. At all. But given the high number of very intensive RH/Oracle installations I've seen working flawlessly, it is fud to use your single instance of failure (anecdote w/o supporting information) as a full-on black mark on the combo at all. And FWIW, I work in a Fortune 10 company and support Fortune 15 companies. Our RH/Oracle combos have had no issues. Given our effectively unlimited Oracle license, there are many of them.
I am a Linux zealot myself, at home I have a Debian with no non-free software, not even non-free Java. Methinks this may be a piece of the problem. A "Linux Zealot" usually won't know how to properly do Oracle (proprietary commercial software) on RedHat (Open Source Commercial Software). A Linux System Administrator in a large company just might.;)
What I *did* watch was a commercial last night about Arby's having all natural chicken
Was it the one that starts out looking like a Wendys commercial? I love that one. I want to see more commercials like that one. Or their old "Subway" ones.
Now I am "only" male, but I do believe those two (crap and tampons) are not related. Unless your aim is really bad.
Re:"The mst complex machine ever built, blaah, bla
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While this complex machine falls part, Russian "pickup truck"-style space vehicles just get on with the job with little fanfare.
As do American ones. The US still launches many satellites into orbit every year on "good old rockets" using the vertical stack. You know, ones where the crew (return) vehicle is on top of the stack - where it won't get hit by falling insulation.
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For those who don't know Richard Feynman, he won the Nobel prize, helped develop the atom bomb, and suggested ways for geeks to pick up women.
He also isolated the cause of the Challenger explosion.
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Clearly you're ignoring the obvious source. Pterydactls with frickin' laser beams attached to their beaks.
Which would obviously dictate the need for delta winged dinosaurs.
This is simply a matter of seeing what you are looking for. My ride is low enough to the ground I don't really see the faces of larger SUV drivers. At least not without looking up there specifically. As a result, nearly every single time I see someone on a cell phone in a vehicle, it's someone in a minivan or sedan. Oddly enough, I rarely see someone else in a Vette or other sportscar/musclecar using them.
You, like many of the masses, expect someone driving "a big bad SUV" to do things you think are stupid or dangerous, so you see it more than in other vehicles. Just like becoming very aware of a particular model will make you "see more" of them on the road. Vette owners as a group notice each other and wave at each other, so we do see more of the other Vette owners on the road in comparson to say Camry owners. Yet the incidence (around here) of Vette owners driving while on their cell phone is less than that of other vehicles I've noted (yes I do keep track... yeah I'm a nerd). I'm not saying Vette drivers are "more responsible", just that your attention is directed elsewhere (the fun of driving the car, for example).
Similarly, I rarely see "ricers" on their phones while driving. Maybe its because the "fart can" exhaust or the thumping stereo pretty well makes such attempts useful, or perhaps they too are merel yenjoying their ride.
Another likely explanation for the perception of SUV owners on their phone while driving is that most of them are women. Women do tend to talk more on the phone in general than men. Of this subset of drivers, mothers tend to be on the phone more often than non-mothers. Often this is due to keeping appointemnts, making them, and coordinating events for their children.
I understand that for most of the vocal masses it is much more entertaining and self-promoting to blame "SUV drivers" as a group rather than think about things. But that still doesn't make it right.
I would find that a true delta configuration would be unlikely as there would be little evolutionary advantage to developing an inherently less stable "wing" configuration for the low speed flying that this creature would be doing.
....... unlikely in this creature.
....".
The whole reason that flight engineers started adopting the delta wing configuration is that it allowed the shockwave for supersonic flight to be better controlled flight by moving the leading edge of the wing back behind the terminus. This is great for high speed flight, but miserable for low speed flight as it requires very high stall speeds that would be
This is where most pf us non-evolution experts screw it up. Evolution is a result, not a process. At the fundamental level, evolution describes the process whereby mutations occur and the ones that provide an advantage take precedence. It isn't like "evolution" sat down and said "hey, let us make a flying creature that
The wing pattern, if true, may well have been a simple mutation that got nowhere in the long term. However, it may also have gone on for a while, having offered a different advantage - one that had nothing to do with flight. This could range from insulative effects, reproductive effects, or defense effects (appearance often affects whether a predator chooses you or a different creature) to name just a few. We tend to think of the use of delta-shaped wings in terms of flight, particularly high speed flight. Yet this is only our "modern" bias.
I find it interesting that the comments so far have been regarding the delta wing, and not regarding the bi-wing configuration. To me, that is much more interesting. What, if any, flight advantages would that provide the small creature? Does it truly represent adaptation from mere gliding to powered flight? The fact that these dinos had feathers is also interesting.
I dunno ... many (thousands?) of bipedal creatures are extinct now as well. Walking upright on two legs Must be a bad idea.
Which is why counting *sponges* is crucial, as well as attaching sponges to handles or other means of making them more visible.
Well, maybe there's no "excuse", (that is, someone isn't directly responsible for the failure) but blaming people doesn't solve the continuing problem. There's always going to be people who miss-count, or miss a sponge no matter how much of a hard-ass you are. So you build those problems into your larger system and have independent redundant parts that catch failures.
And there will always be software/hardware failure in the detectors, failure to actually use the detector, interference from other devices, the RFID tag will fall out of the sponge prior to use, false positives will be created by the tag falling out in the body even without the spong leading to unnecessary re-opening of the boy, and so on. But the essential problem of failing to take the care and measures to actually verify you have removed everything you put in will not only not be addressed by RFID tagging them, but also exacerbated. "Ah hell why bother looking, the detector will catch it". Then we will be right back here lamenting why people don't use the detectors, or why they rely on them knowing they can and will fail, etc., and have spent all this money on "the system" only to get nowhere.
The problem is not a technological one, and can not be solved via technology. Doctors and OR assistants who do not follow a procedure to verify stuff is not left in before the "magic wand of foreign object detection" are not going to follow the magic wand procedure after it is put into place. Indeed, most surgeons may well take it as an insult to their ability and skill and avoid using them right out. The leaving of surgical tools in a patient is a failure of process. Either not having one or not following it. No amount of technology beyond a checklist and training in appropriate procedure will have as much effect.
We are talking about people who have the lives of families on the line here. If you can't be bothered to remember and follow the procedure, your ass needs to be somewhere else - regardless of how much you are paid.
How about instead doctors get publicly available ratings on the amount and/or frequency of foreign objects being left in patients; nurses and surgical assistants as well. The magic wand doesn't do anything other than hide failure to follow process, shoddy work, absentmindedness, etc..
If you think technology can prevent doctors from doing this (leaving objects in patients), just look at how much bad spelling is set loose upon the world in documents and email in spite of spell-checkers. Just as "autocorrect" does nothing to prevent or curtail the root of the problem (user doesn't know the spelling/capitalization/etc.), neither will RFID tags in surgical tools. There are countless more cases where this scenario shows itself.
TO quote one case:
A sponge larger than the doctor's hand he left behind. That is as inept as a grade school teaching writing "great job!" on the top of a math assignment that had a mere 3 out of 11 correct. I've also seen the x-rays and reports of 13 inch long retractors, 7-12 inch long clamps, and pieces of equipment that got broke off all being left behind.
That is why there are assistants! Seriously dude, you've got people, even in ER, who handle the tools and are not operating. Doctors don't just say "scalpel" and they magically appear in their hand. And they don't have to count either. A pair of trays. One with the tools laid out with a placement pattern below it, and the tools in their place, and an empty one next to it. When a tool is handed back you put it on the blank tray in it's place. No math involved, just your eyes. This type of procedure works well "on the battlefield", there is no reason not to work in a civilian ER.
Furthermore, it isn't that hard to look at the opening for shinys before closing it up. Between the assistants keeping track of tools and the doctor looking at his work to see if there are any tools left there, there should be no excuse for leaving things in. Period.
To be fair, we don't see environmentalists and enviromentally friendly groups pushing on the *easy* (and smart) things to do that would cut energy use without forcing people into it or making it more expensive.
For example., let us look at trucking. Trucking in the US uses huge amounts of energy in the form of diesel. As always there are two ways to use less energy: a) do less or b) do it more efficiently.
Using this, there is proven means for reducing trucking industry fuel consumption. Bigger trucks.
By allowing larger loads on more axles you decrease the number of trips required to get material from A to B. One truck carrying 100% more, for example, consumes less than two trucks carrying 100% more.
The increase in axle count decreases or maintains road pressure, thus doing no more damage to the road than normal and likely less. The same axle increase provides additional braking. In fact, the additional braking is more than is needed to compensate for the increased mass. Thus from a braking standpoint the trucks would have better stopping power. The trucks do not necessarily have to get larger to handle it, either. Remember that this is by weight, not volume.
Just as you get bags of chips that are "half empty" becuase they are packaged by weight, not volume, many trucks are less than full because they are weight limited. This is a huge problem, no pun intended. Sadly, by volume the truckign industry ships more air than anything else due to partially empty shipping containers.
The effects of increasing weight limit (with concomitant axle requirements) are known and have been proven in the real world. With no changes to specific fuel economy, the *effective* decrease in fuel required is tremendous. This is expressed as MPG-e, or Miles Per Gallon equivalent.
The state of Michigan increased their limit to 164,500 pounds. In return their largest food-grade tanker fleet saw huge improvements. They were able to increase their per-trip by a factor of 2.5. With no direct fuel efficiency changes they saw their effective MPG go from 5 to 12.
The cost to the government for raising these limits would be the cost of updating the regulation books. Something that is done yearly as it is. So effectively this is a no-cost option for the government. It also doesn't force anyone to do it, does not create new restrictions, and is a proven method for improving the overall efficiency of our shipping industry. Indeed, for most companies using tractor-trailer setups for shipping, it would reduce their costs w/o requiring significant investment. Processes and some routing would be required, but not much beyond that.
The only people who might stand to lose anything here is rail freight. But not necessarily. An additional bnenefit is that international cargo containers are loaded heavier than the US allows. This means they have to be repacked upon US entry. By moving to at least the 110K pound limit used in Europe (Canada has, IIRC, a 138K pound limit) this inefficiency goes away, as well as many security issues centered around repackaging. This benefits rail transport in that they, too get to carry more cargo weight per trip. Further, a *lot* of energy is used in repacking international shipments. This energy is electrical as well as petroleum based.
But do we see the so-called environmentalist groups pushing for this? No. They would be on the same side as the trucking as well as most industries they generally rail against such as the automotive industry.
A 50+% reduction in trucking industry fuel consumption is nothing to sneeze at. But it doesn't sell books and speeches, now does it? This is an example of the Congress ignoring real (and simple) changes in preference to grandiose do-nothing-of-value bills. And we the citizen literally pay for it.
Until the government has exhausted all of these significant and cheap-to-"free" gains, they should leave the destructive options such as tax increases off the table.
Nothing in terrestrial exploration or habitation is ever 100% either.
Does the never 100% maxim correct apply to this statement as well?
What he means is: "I don't want people who are interested in whay THEY'LL get from the job. I want people who are interested in nothing more than the good of the COMPANY!"
How dare someone be interested in their own benefits!?!?!
Should you ever have a daughter, I'm sure you'll respond the same way. Yeah right. If someone wanted to date your daughter you'd be very interested in whether or not he is interested in "his own benefit" or that of your daughter. There is no difference between that and looking for someone who is interested in doing the work you have for them. In this case curing cancer. How dare he want to pay someone to work instead of paying someone to loaf around. Of all the nerve!
Of course, those who do what they enjoy ar emore likely to get work done, make things better, and be happier than those who are not.
OK, now there goes the vast majority of The Internet "routed" around. Routed to where?
But take them all together and you've got a stranglehold on the leftovers.
At best it becomes a "pick your poison" buffet. At worst there is so much overalp that there is littlle effective difference between any major locales.
Then there is the business side. The US may have fewer people online, but it does more business online. Indeed, "routing around" the US plays right into the hands of the protectionist pig-dogs in the US. They get the effect w/o the righteous resistance to isolationism and protectionism. And what happens to the econmomies of the world when the largest consumer "goes native"? The market works both ways, y'all.
Among other direct effects would likely be either the UN following US Internet regulatory schemes, or the US adding it to the list and dropping out of the UN. If you happen to be thinking right now "good riddance", first I'd agree. However, second you should realize that with that would go a fifth of the "raw budget" of the UN, and the lion's share of the "peacekeeping" forces and "indirect" budget. With the US out a power struggle would ensue. Maybe China would win. Perhaps Russia. Maybe Japan, they are the second largest source of UN resources. The EU would not be the victor (it isn't a state and thus cannot be a member), nor would any of it's member states individually. Much of the relatively small amount of teeth the UN has is the US. Whether it could revive and resurrect prior to absolute failure is anyone's guess. If the US were followed by Japan the UN would effectively dissolve after losing more than 40% of it's budget.
It is partly the very effect of reverse-isolationism that will likely drive the spread of various regulatory schemes on the Internet by the larger governments. The EU and the US are largely similar in what they are seeking already. Expect to see them "sync up" while simultaneously berating each others' "attempts to control the Internet". Expect this to spread and synchonize up.
but the US implying laws on internet usage will not completely change the internet. The rest of the world won't just follow along, and you'll find hi-tech companies moving to companies that are more forgiving to their line of business.
Yup because only the US is trying to do it. Certianly China will be the bastion of internet freedom with it's documented state control desires. Perhaps the EU? Nope, their imposition of restrictions dates back many many years as well.
If you think it is "THE US Government" or "THE EU Government" or "THE Chinese Government", you miss the root cause. The root cause is the government itself. Government and Power/Intrusion is like an accretion disk forming a celestial body. The spiral grows stronger with time. Every small piece of power given to a government of any sort is like adding mass. More mass means more gravity. More gravity means it will attract more mass. Same equation, different components.
And finally, when you turn over The Internet to "businessed", it will be gone. The Internet is about connections, be they physical, intellecutal, social, etc.. Yes business can be a part of it, but it is not the primal driving force of the Internet. Not yet, anyway.
Nope. Industrial Hemp is more valuable to other industries such as textiles and plastics. As a result, higher bidder will win and you won't have the hemp->methane cycle you seem to want.
And your last link/paste is as wrong as it can be. Methane -> Methanol NOT Methane -> Ethanol. Methanol is WOOD alcohol, Ethanol is GRAIN alcohol.
Also, Ford was talking ethanol, not methane/methanol. Methanol is POISONOUS, ethanol is "mildly toxic". Your first quote is incomplete in that it does not include ethanol production from Hemp. However, the aforementioned demand outside of transportation fuels applies here as well (even if less so).
Unless you get your electricity from oil reserves, it would have no measurable effect on OPEC. Even if it is currently powered by natural gas.
OPEC deals in oil not the generic term "fossil fuels".
At least when you aren't drinking whiskey
I was a libertarian until I realized the philosophy breaks down in the face of concentrated wealth and power. If we had lots of people with ten million dollars it would probably work. When we have a few hundred "people" (some human, some corporate) with billions of dollars, it doesn't work.
You should have continue following the money as it were. How did htese people get the money? By government. Government provided them with special protections no normal person has. Hiding behind the wall of a corproation is a protection/benefit system designed to produce exactly what you correctly identify as a problem. With these "protections" in place both people and companies who become "corporate entities" become an arm of the government (that is what a Charter effectively does - and it is a Corporate Charter) and gain all manner of advantages an otherwise free market system does not provide.
Whether that be the ability to pollute w/o risk of penalty, or deploy anti-competition tactics that would otherwise be illegal, or to use the corporation as a source of money and legal defense funding, it is done so by threat of force (death) by the government. As much as many people like to believe otherwise, libertarian principles did not provide for the wealth of Bill Gates or Larry Ellison. To the contrary it was anti-libertarian (i.e. statist) principles that did so.
First, apologize to whom? There are no people living today that were slaves in Early America. It has been "a few generations", the Civil War ended about 140 years ago. If you want to refer to later racism, well it will never end. Preference will allways be there. And news flash: all races share this trait. Racism will never die, it will be continually "adjusted" to always remain a "current problem".
Racism 1.0: Slavery
Racism 2.0: Not slaves but no rights
Racism 3.0: Slavery free, with rights added
Racism 4.0: Racism by proxy
It is like Maslow's Heirarchy of Needs. Once one "more obvious" aspect of "racism" (perceived or real) is dealt with, we'll just keep moving up the chain to "smaller and smaller" aspects. Eventually this will trigger a reversal. Indeed we can see the signs of a reversal ocurring. So-called "reverse discrimination" is one, and "just get over it" is another.
Ultimately this notion of apologizing and "compensating" (whether in money, service, preferential treatment, "walking on eggshells", etc.) to somebody living today for something someone else did to a different person years, decades, or centuries ago, is utter bullshit.
Japanese people killed "white Americans" during WWII, but somehow that's different. Germans slaughtered Russians by the field-full in WWII. But somehow that's different. You can go back through time and find that every "race" has committed atrocities to other races at some point. None of them have any relevance to what "should" be done today.
If person A does something to person B, then they have something to work out. First between themselves, and if that fails a third party (soem sor tof mediator). If Person A does something to person B, Person C has no right nor reason to force person D to compensate Person C in any way whatsoever as a result.
You'd think though, with the thousands of patents filed daily that we'd have flying cars, microwaves that you can put forks in, better televisions, magic food pills, etc...
Instead we have gas guzzling cars that will end society, microwaves using decades old technology, TV incompatibilities up the wazoo and fake sugar pills sold on SpikeTV at 2am.
"gas guzzling cars..." => Today's cars are loads more efficient than decades ago. They have more bloat - AC, DVD Systems, power seats, heated seats, a hundred pounds of sound deadener, etc. which holds them back.
"microwaves that you can put a fork in..." => My micro is several years old. It browns burgers, makes toast, and I can leave the fork in the microwave depending on what I am cooking. I often leave the spoon in the hot cocoa as I nuke it. No problems.
"better televisions" => oh they are better. Incompatibilities are irrelevant to "better" televisions.
"magic food pills" => First, we've found they are not that appealing. Second "magic food pill" == "sugar pill". We call them "placebos". Fake sugar pills aren't sold on TV. But fake sugar is sold in stores.
Now how about getting off your butt and start inventing *useful* things yourself. If we all wait around for someone else to do it, it will never happen.
Thus, you are getting 'free energy' from outside the system, drawing from the global heat. From the perspective of the room this is energy out of nowhere or free energy.
I believe the Mythbusters called this "free-to-me energy". Well sort of. They were talking about leaching power from nearby power lines. Same essential concept.
Management doesn't want to hear that they don't have smart enough sysadmins to actually implement what the sysadmins probably pushed for? yeah I can see that. Sounds to me like your testing was woefully inadequate. If the DB is critical to operations (not all are), then it deserves very rigorous testing.
Don't get me wrong, I don't like Oracle. At all. But given the high number of very intensive RH/Oracle installations I've seen working flawlessly, it is fud to use your single instance of failure (anecdote w/o supporting information) as a full-on black mark on the combo at all. And FWIW, I work in a Fortune 10 company and support Fortune 15 companies. Our RH/Oracle combos have had no issues. Given our effectively unlimited Oracle license, there are many of them.
I am a Linux zealot myself, at home I have a Debian with no non-free software, not even non-free Java.
Methinks this may be a piece of the problem. A "Linux Zealot" usually won't know how to properly do Oracle (proprietary commercial software) on RedHat (Open Source Commercial Software). A Linux System Administrator in a large company just might.
It is people like you that make commercials so much louder than the shows they interrupt.
Was it the one that starts out looking like a Wendys commercial? I love that one. I want to see more commercials like that one. Or their old "Subway" ones.
Now I am "only" male, but I do believe those two (crap and tampons) are not related. Unless your aim is really bad.
While this complex machine falls part, Russian "pickup truck"-style space vehicles just get on with the job with little fanfare.
As do American ones. The US still launches many satellites into orbit every year on "good old rockets" using the vertical stack. You know, ones where the crew (return) vehicle is on top of the stack - where it won't get hit by falling insulation.
He also isolated the cause of the Challenger explosion.