Then don't buy insurance and see how long you last. Go live in a state where auto insurance is not mandated, if you are so opposed. Move to another country. We won't miss you, really. You are not the type of insured that any insurer in their right mind would want to underwrite for anything. I don't need your money, and neither do our competitors.
Why is credit score used? It is used because it is predictive of loss frequency. In every actuarial model and rating plan I have seen, it is one of the single most strongly predictive variables. Since you have not seen the numbers, you are not in a position to dispute this. It is a measure of financial responsibility, which is a subset of personal responsibility, which in turn correlated with propensity for loss. It is not strongly predictive of loss severity (that is to say, amount of loss, given a loss has occurred).
I think that it is important to educate people about what insurance is, what it represents, how premiums are calculated, and the role actuaries play in modeling the financial impact of risk. I think it is important because I find the general public to be terribly uneducated about these matters, and that if they understood these concepts better, they would help to drive down the cost of insurance for everyone. If you want to get upset and accuse me of being a paid lobbyist or a company shill, then it's clear that you've made up your mind and are not interested in learning about what you pay for. Misinformed attitudes such as your own are one of the reasons why insurance costs what it does. And as someone who pays premiums to transfer the financial risk on assets I cannot afford to replace, I also am personally invested in wanting to keep the costs of my coverage low.
The world is full of unscrupulous people. And some of them work for insurance companies. But that is why you, as a consumer, have a choice. Don't buy the product if you feel like it's a scam. On the other hand, insurers are also often the victim of fraud. Our company estimates that in as many as 40% of suspicious fire claims on homeowners' policies, the cause is believed to be arson but the adjusters cannot prove it--and we end up paying for it anyway. From the claims adjustment standpoint, it can be notoriously difficult to figure out which claims are legitimate and which are not. This type of adjustment expense is unfortunately an additional cost to the consumer. Maybe before you accuse the industry of defrauding the public, you should actually try to learn about what goes on inside the companies themselves, rather than look from the outside with little or no credible information.
FWIW, I think health insurance is lousy. I disagree with its fundamental assumptions and its implementation in the US, and this is why I decided I would never work for any health insurer.
Flood is a specific exclusion on any standard homeowner's policy because it is a peril that insurers consider to have too high severity and too low frequency to appropriately model. In many flood-prone areas, insurers will refuse to underwrite a property unless the owner purchases separate flood insurance through the appropriate state agency, even if the policy contract language contains a flood exclusion. This is because insurers have been taken to court by insureds who claimed losses that were due to flood, and subsequently won (judges are very sympathetic to insureds), despite such exclusions. The problem with litigating flood losses is twofold: first, it increases the premiums to other insureds (since legal and settlement fees are part of loss adjustment expenses), and second, exposure to flood is not modeled in the rating plan. A very large flood like Katrina could literally bankrupt most small to mid-size insurers, unless there is some sort of reinsurance contract in place that covers such a contingency (but then why would the reinsurer pay if your contract excludes flood?).
Insurers actually have a duty to protect the rest of their insureds from having to bear the burden of those who file claims for losses specifically excluded in the contract. That is the extent of the insurer's reluctance to pay for losses, because if the ratemaking is done correctly, the developed rate should be sufficient to provide for future expected costs. Failure to set the rate sufficiently leads to insolvency, adverse selection, and intervention by the Departments of Insurance, which have the sole power to revoke the insurer's Certificate of Authority (their ability to write business in the state). An insurer does not (and should not) deny claims through a profit motive because this would distort the reserving trends, and risk many other regulatory issues that are frankly not worth the surplus that the insurer or reinsurer has, not to mention it is VERY bad from a competitive standpoint.
So then you're saying don't insure your home, wait for the state to declare an emergency, and let the taxpayer bail you out, put you in a FEMA trailer for months?
Look at your basic homeowner's policy. It does not only cover the primary dwelling, but it also covers (up to certain limits) separate structures, contents, loss of use, liability, and medical payments to others. From certain companies, if you buy certain endorsements, you can extend coverage further, even into areas that one would not necessarily consider to be part of a typical homeowner's policy (e.g., identity theft). Let's see your federal taxpayer pay for these things and save your ass the day after the catastrophe.
The problem with letting the taxpayer bail you out is that you create a moral hazard. Since you pay nothing in premium, you have less incentive to prevent loss (e.g., you might not think twice about moving to a catastrophe-prone state). The reason why insurance works is that it is a mechanism by which those who have more exposure to loss pay proportionately more than those who do not. When you talk about socializing this process by letting the taxpayer pay losses, then you disconnect this critical link. In either case, the money has to come from somewhere.
As for insolvency risk, blame the state DOIs for not monitoring that more. Insurers are in an unenviable position--if your rates are low, then you invite adverse selection (poor risks flock to your book), and if too low, you may have insolvency risk. If your rates are high, you lose business, and the state DOIs may refuse your rate increases (e.g., Allstate recently filed for an increase in Personal Auto and Commissioner Poizner, who btw is running for Governor, single-handedly told them they had to cut rates by 20%, ignoring the actuarially indicated rate need entirely). And even if you have priced your product perfectly, you still have to deal with the ignorant public, such as yourself, who are under the terrible misapprehension that insurance is a waste of money unless you file a claim, and even then, you end up getting charged more anyway. People have a really hard time understanding that the premium you pay is for the contractual transfer of risk from the insured to the insurer, an intangible that only becomes tangible (and very much so) once a loss occurs.
I don't deny that there are some insurers that behave less than ethically when it comes to certain non-actuarially related business practices. But you hear about these things only because people only like to talk about bad news. You don't get to hear about how insurance companies often end up paying on claims that are due to specifically excluded perils, because paying is cheaper than fighting in court, and the insurer has to think of what's best for the rest of their customers that are in fact playing by the rules.
One more thing I would also like to address in response to your comment....
From a pure ratemaking perspective, it makes no difference whether a discount is applied to those insureds who have a particular characteristic, versus surcharging those insureds who do not. Actuarially speaking, the relative difference among the two risk classes is what matters. If the insurer prices the product correctly (and by correctly, I mean by following accepted actuarial principles), the indicated rates for each risk class will be the same whether the insurer views the characteristic as a surcharge or a discount.
Your statement, then, reveals a misunderstanding about how a rating plan works. Initially, a base rate is selected from the exposure base (which for personal auto is usually number of car-years). Then a series of multiplicative factors are applied depending on the insured's characteristics. So for example, they might start from a base rate of $500, and if they are 35-40 years old, they might have a factor of 0.9 applied to their rate, which becomes $450. If they are male, then they might get a factor of 1.05, and so forth. Now if having a special feature of the vehicle qualified you for a 5% discount (factor of 0.95), and no feature is 0% discount (factor of 1.00), then that's one way to look at the rating plan. But if it were instead a surcharge, so having the feature gives a factor of 1.00, and having no feature gives a factor of 1/0.95 = 1.05263..., then in order to get the same indicated rate, the base rate would be adjusted downward by 5%. In either case, the actual rate stays the same in both risk classes. Not adjusting the base rate while changing the factors would result in an overall 5% increase that would have to then be justified in the rate filing. It cannot be done capriciously or out of a desire for profit, because that is not where the rate can be taken--the DOIs would not approve it.
I am an actuarial analyst for a major property and casualty insurer in the US.
Insurance rates tend to trend upward because inflation, loss costs, and adjustment/expense costs trend upward. Despite popular belief, they do not trend upward because of the profit contingency loading, and this is due to the fact that personal insurance is a very highly regulated industry in the US. If my company simply decided to increase our loading by even 0.5%, you can be assured that every state Dept. of Insurance would write back immediately, asking why we feel justified raising profit loading by that amount, right before they deny our filings.
In layman's terms, loss costs increase because the value of insured properties such as autos and homes tend to increase. What I mean by this is not depreciation, or the decline in value of a single purchased asset, but rather the idea that the average paid value of assets or services rendered increases over time, due to inflation or technological improvements. Health care 10 years ago did not cost what it does today. Cars didn't cost what they do today. And so forth.
Loss adjustment expenses also increase in coordination with inflation and the cost of doing business.
It is also in part because more people survive accidents that the cost of insurance goes up. More survivors = more injured = higher medical payments. Similarly, more technology = higher repair cost. There is also a loose correlation in that safer vehicles tend to lead to less safe driving habits.
I understand that the average consumer is naive about the nature of insurance. If the public truly wishes to decrease their premiums, then in roughly decreasing order of importance, (1) drive less, (2) drive slower and more carefully, (3) don't buy SUVs or large vehicles. Of course, this only applies to the population as a whole. As an individual insured, your exposure as determined by your insurer has to do with your age, gender, location, credit history (where permitted), type and age of vehicle, and driving record, among other variables. The extent to which a group of insureds incurs greater losses is the extent to which those people pay higher premiums. That is the principle upon which actuarial ratemaking is founded, and if the public is unhappy with how much it costs to insure their assets, then stop having so much loss. After all, do you think insurers actually want to increase rates on their policyholders? They don't, because there is so much competitive pressure to keep rates low, for fear of losing business. In fact, if an insurer files a rate change significantly lower than their indicated rate need, that is a red flag to the DOI, because it raises the possibility of insolvency risk.
If you think insurance is a scam, tell that to the people whose entire earthly possessions were wiped out in Hurricanes Katrina and Ike, or the California wildfires. On the one hand, they'll tell you how insurance saved them, but on the other hand, if you don't live in a risk-prone state, you'll wonder why these people thought living on an island right along Hurricane Alley would be a good idea, and why you should be asked to partially subsidize their choice.
Pricing insurance does not, in itself, require a complete (or even partial) understanding of the cause-and-effect relationship between a rating variable and exposure to loss. The insurer (i.e., actuary) need only demonstrate that [1] inclusion of the variable in the rating plan results in a model more predictive of loss than without it; [2] it is verifiable; and [3] the variable is not "unfairly discriminatory"--that is, its use in risk classification is allowed by regulators. In truth, many other issues do come into play but these are the primary factors that the actuary considers when researching a new rating variable.
To the extent that a correlation or causation is hypothesized or believed known, the actuary seeks to confirm it with historical data.
The personal insurance market is very competitive. Insurers will try to develop the most accurate rating plan possible because they want to avoid adverse selection. Thus pricing actuaries do keep on the lookout (especially in bad underwriting cycles such as the one we're in right now) for more sophisticated ways to classify risks in their book, and if it is determined that elderly drivers who play games are a better risk than elderly drivers who do not play games, then a discount is actuarially justified and its use may provide a competitive advantage.
Of course, that doesn't mean an insurer would actually use that variable, as one has to consider whether it can even be reliably known whether an individual is a gamer. What does that mean? You play more than N hours a day? You own a game console? How do you confirm this during the underwriting process? Does it drop off if the insured stops playing? Do they qualify if the grandson is the actual gamer in the household but the insured only plays very occasionally?
To give you an example of how important verifiability is, note that in personal auto, the generally accepted exposure base is car-years, although mileage would be more predictive (think of it: two cars bought on 1/1/2000, one driver drives 40,000 miles/year, the other drives only 1,000 miles/year--which one has more exposure to loss?). The problem with using mileage as the exposure base is that it varies from year to year for a given insured, and is hard to confirm. Your agents aren't going to ask every last one of their policyholders to check their odometer, and even if they did, what is the chance they'll be honest if they know their premiums are directly tied to the result?
That's why I don't put too much stock in this proposed classification--it doesn't seem that it would be sufficiently predictive of loss to justify using it, and moreover, it would be a pain to verify, for the reasons stated above.
Yes, it does, and it did so before the iPhone. But in keeping with my original point, it's not merely about the hardware, but how the software integrates with it. The N95 interface never used the accelerometer the way the iPhone does. So, even though the N95 has features that the iPhone did not have (GPS), and still does not have (video recording capability), it is again about taking the hardware and creating a user interface and applications that maximize its capabilities in an elegant and thoughtful way. That is what distinguishes the iPhone from any previous offering in the mobile handset market, and why it is enormously successful.
What makes Apple special on hardware/software integration? You're seriously asking this question? Since when has Nokia or Motorola come out with anything that looks remotely like iTMS? Since when have they developed a UI that is easy to use and intuitive? If I have to hunt through a labyrinth of nested menus to change a setting on my phone, that's poor design, UI as an afterthought. Who was the first to employ an an orientation sensor in a phone, a multi-touch screen, and other hardware improvements and then integrate that with the software? That is what I mean by "years ahead."
The iPhone was not, and is not, perfect. At least Apple never claimed it to be. The fan base might treat it as such, but as is the case with fans, there's often a love/hate relationship. The consumer is not a monolithic entity. Loving the existing product while buying the next available revision is not logically inconsistent, and in fact, you fail to recognize that some degree of product success is required in order for consumers to be willing to purchase the next version. If you think such behavior is unique to Apple, you've obviously ignored the Playstation, the Wii, and the XBox. They're standing in line because Apple has made a product that people love to use and love to be seen using. It does things that other phones don't do, and it generally does them well. Perfection isn't a prerequisite for a successful product.
They can't name competitors' products because as of the present time, there isn't one. There hasn't been one YET. You again fail to understand the nature of the product. The iPhone is more than just the handset itself, just like the iPod is not just the hardware device. It is the device + iTunes. Once you understand this, you will see that to date, there has not been any other product so tightly integrated on the market. Now, bear in mind I hope Android changes this. I sincerely do. But I really doubt it will ever look and feel as clean, because there is something unique about Apple's long-standing tradition of (obsessively) developing a product from the ground up. Remember, Google has to make a product that works with different hardware, different carriers, and different corporate tastes. In fact, these companies (Sony, Motorola, etc.) are even competing against each other! So do you really think that the result will be anywhere near as monolithic as what Apple has done?
In a way, it might be a good thing. Who knows? And that's my point. People are all excited about Android and making broad claims about the demise of Apple's business model for the iPhone, all over a product that has yet to cut its teeth in the marketplace. It's way, way, WAY too early to tell. Any claims about its ability to compete with a firmly established product as the iPhone is totally premature.
I disagree. I think that the market is largely driven by what consumers want. Apple has a huge head start--they are quite literally years ahead on hardware/software integration, having released a product that has yet to see any equal in overall end-user experience. People absolutely love the iPhone. Relatively speaking, they haven't even heard of what the competitors are offering, and even the recent release of Android has received minimal attention by comparison.
Now that I've established the context, it's easy to see why handset manufacturers and non-AT&T providers in the US are embracing Android. It is their best shot at competing with Apple. They moved too slow, lacked long-term vision, and failed to concede to Apple's demands. And now they're scrambling to keep up. iPhone + iTunes + App Store = killer combination. This has nothing to do with FOSS. Face it, few people have even seen what Android does, let alone have any real-world understanding of how well it will integrate with a variety of handsets and carriers. Because it hasn't happened yet. Maybe it'll be a competitor, maybe it won't. But I can confidently say that whatever the outcome, it won't look or feel nearly as clean as an Apple product.
I've also heard that despite a lot of grumblings by iPhone developers, they generally like the business model. Steve Demeter, for example, is on the record for saying he has no intention of bringing Trism to Android. This coming from a guy who made a quarter million in two months off his blockbuster game. So I don't think you're telling the whole story here. It's the secrecy they don't like, and with this latest turn, Apple has done the right thing.
Frankly, I'm amazed that you didn't get modded down. Your bias is so clearly showing and you lack any evidence to back up your outrageous claims. I think Android can be huge, and I like that Google has stepped up to provide more competition in the mobile computing market. I hope it lives up to the high expectations that the industry has set for it, but I'm not holding my breath because judging from how Motorola, Sony Ericsson, RIM, Palm, Samsung, LG, Nokia, T-Mobile, Verizon, Sprint, etc. have behaved in the past, I don't think they're going to all have some kind of Voltron moment and band together to bring down the "evil Apple."
After all, you're just cheering for one evil corporation to smite the other. Personally, what matters to me most is whether I get the user experience and customer service I expect. If Android facilitates this goal, then I'm all for it. But you won't catch me talking complete bullshit just because I have a stick up my ass about a particular company. That's so last decade.
Oh, of all the times to not have mod points. Why has this gotten +3 Insightful? It's a false argument. As has been already pointed out, the hypocrisy lies not in the public or private nature of personal email, but the use of personal email for public (as in government) purposes, in the (perhaps mistaken) belief that doing so provides legal protection against FOIA.
So next time I hold civil office and use my personal email address to conduct government business, I'll gladly hand over my account password.
Because while it may be an interesting notion, such investigations necessarily cannot be conducted in a scientific context by definition. It is like asking why can't we prove the existence of God as a mathematical theorem. You don't use a knife to drink soup. It's not a question of the validity of the idea--it is a question of the appropriateness of the tool.
And therein lies my main problem with "intelligent design." I find it rather strange that if the Universe has a supernatural force, its existence needs proof or verification through science. Science is dirty, crude, imperfect. It baffles me that laypeople would want to shroud their faith in its mantle. After all, what is the use of faith if science is proof? That is why I can only conclude that this push for teaching ID in science classrooms is not about any genuine belief by its proponents, but more about the politics of religion, power, and control.
Science is not merely about testability or observability, though these characteristics are important aspects of the scientific process, as are others such as parsimony, predictive value, and extensibility. It bears pointing out that string theory, for instance, is under criticism for reasons along the lines that it fails as a scientific theory--the math may be beautiful and it may have explanatory power, but it is perhaps too general, too all-encompassing, to the point where the constructs can predict most anything.
Stephen Hawking in his seminal text "A Brief History of Time" explains the nature of a spacetime singularity, and to paraphrase, the existence of space and time--or lack thereof--is tantamount to the existence of information (or lack thereof). Information "past" a singularity is lost and unavailable to us. We might postulate at length as to what exists there, but by definition its un-observability makes it impossible to develop any theory or understanding of it.
Your response is indicative of someone who would benefit from a more rigorous treatment of the scientific method, as well as cosmology, philosophy, and theology.
Scientists are human, too. They don't always make statements that are scientific. Nobody is prohibited from speculating. But if you ask a cosmologist if the concept of parallel universes is a viable scientific theory, I would be very surprised if they said yes.
Teaching creationism in schools != teaching creationism as science.
Your argument is a red herring. It's not relevant because She has specifically stated that she believes ID/creationism should be taught alongside evolution as a viable alternative theory to explain the origin of species. This is not acceptable because ID is not science. We have been through this REPEATEDLY, and the public and our elected officials STILL don't get it, which is precisely what the ID proponents are banking on. They are relying on the public's ignorance of what it means to do science to blur the line of scientific legitimacy.
By all means, go ahead and teach ID in its historical context. But it has absolutely NO place in the science classroom, except perhaps as a brief exercise in discussing what is, and is not, science.
I'm wondering, from a purely technical point of view, whether this technique would be appropriate for the smug clouds known to exist over parts of Los Angeles. And if so, would you get rain, or an increase in the smugness index?
I don't know if you live in Los Angeles, but in case you haven't noticed, people here are pretty damn smug enough as it is.
The problem as I see it is not whether a sovereign entity has the legal or moral right of immunity from law. That is somewhat misleading for the exact reason and example you provide. The problem is, in my view, thankfully much smaller in scope, and that is the problem of compensation. That is to say, if the government (of the people or otherwise) decides to appropriate a work product without reasonable compensation for that work, then where does this logic end under such legal precedent? Why not simply force companies, manufacturers, and workers to produce goods or services to the government? Now that's one way to cut down on pork barrel spending, isn't it?
Perhaps you have heard of this economic model that I have just described. It's called communism. And you would think that a Republican administration professing to uphold the "enlightened" principles of capitalism and a free-market system, would be the last people on this pillaged planet to use "sovereign immunity" as a lever to appropriate the work of others without proper compensation.
After all it's not like the US government, or specifically, the Pentagon (with the single biggest defense budget in the world) is exactly starving for cash. They don't seem to have a problem throwing wads of it away on the Middle East debacle, or even handing it out to the same Iraqis that tried to kill our soldiers last year.
The truth is that our system of government speaks out of both sides of its mouth. 'Of, for, and by the people' is a lovely sentiment but it is accountability that makes such warm fuzzy feelings ring true.
BTW I don't like the DMCA and I don't support it in any meaningful way. But one doesn't need its backing to understand the problem with the government's assertion of immunity.
You can clearly see that Erik's ampersand is the handwritten form, with an extra curl, hence the similarity to the @ symbol. There do exist typefaces with such a letterform/glyph, as well as the "Et" ligature, from which the & has evolved.
Indeed, most people do write the stem of the "i" before the dot. However, I do not, and my remark was about how the consistent connectedness of the top of the stem to the previous letterform indicates the stroke order in Erik's handwriting. There are the kinds of tiny but important details that, for example, handwriting experts notice (although I am not one).
These are the handwriting samples that I like most. For some reason, both of these individuals write their "d" in a single upward sweeping loop, without the subsequent vertical downward stroke--although Dino seems to do this only for the terminal "d."
Erik's sample is interesting to me because of the unconventional ampersand, and how it is clear that he writes the stem of his "i" before dotting it (I do the reverse when I print, which is my regular script, as opposed to writing in full cursive, which I rarely do).
Sebastian's handwriting is vaguely reminiscent of graffiti artists. I like it, in particular, I like the shape of the "a" and the overall crowded, upright feel.
Eduardo's sample makes me think he's either playing a joke, or he's 7 years old. The apostrophe is absolutely bizarre--it is not so much written as it is drawn.
Marian's "crazy backhand" is actually my favorite among her three styles of handwriting, but what is more curious is that she even *has* three clearly distinct styles of script.
Kris's handwriting looks remarkably--in fact, uncannily--similar to the handwriting of my ex-boyfriend, who is German. I wonder if he studied in Germany.
Finally, Dino's sample is really quite beautiful--it has distinctive touches (the "D", "s", and "g" in particular), is calligraphic, and exudes elegance.
The other samples I found mostly unremarkable. Sorry. There are some shared themes between each designer's handwriting and their typefaces, but I think the comparison is tenuous as well as retrospective. If one did not know in advance which writing sample belonged to which typographer, it would not have been at all obvious how to match them up.
Oh--I forgot to clarify/mention... You could buy those fancy screen cleaning solutions, but you're just wasting money. Good clean water is all you need. And just because your fever has broken, you are still infectious for as much as 7-10 days afterward.
First, turn off the laptop. The aluminum casing of the MacBook Pro can withstand wiping with Lysol, the active ingredient of which is benzalkonium chloride in a low concentration. Do not saturate the surface, but do leave it damp for a few minutes--then go back and wipe down with water. For the screen, simply wipe with distilled water. Use the black cleaning cloth that came with your computer--it is included in the same package as the installation disks.
Under no circumstances should you use anything other than water to clean the display.
If you are *really* paranoid, leave the computer out in bright sun for 30 minutes. While this is not really an "official" way of disinfecting things, the UVB rays could have enough energy to disrupt the activity of bacteria and viruses. If you were really serious about this approach, you'd get a dedicated UVC disinfection unit which would irradiate your laptop. But I don't know what that might do to the hardware. *shrug*
The point is, if you've been coughing as a result of your illness, you've already spread live viral particles all over the place. It's not all that useful to think about sterilization when your living environment is teeming with all kind of infectious organisms--not just viruses, but bacteria and fungi.
Parent post has to be one of the most clear, cogent, and effective rebuttals of the arguments made in the original article. One must always be mindful to consider the social, economic, and regulatory environment in which engineers--and by extension, the technologies they create--operate. And the author of the article simply fails to do this by viewing the problem as (in the words of parent post) "purely an engineering question."
I had mod points a few days ago but they expired. So this is my way of making up for not being able to mod the parent up.
Since we're so singularly focused on Al Qaeda here, and not terrorism in general, I have two simple questions, then:
1. What is your proposed mechanism by which Al Qaeda seeks to destroy the US by targeting civilians, rather than military and political institutions?
2. What reason would the government have to use terrorism as a pretense to abrogate our civil liberties when they can do it willy-nilly? The American people have long lost their actual capability to challenge the policies of the government. A look at the abuses of the Patriot Act demonstrates this fact.
I think your statement misplaces too much intentional malice--it belongs more to Al Qaeda, which is not nearly as inept as people want to believe, and not the government, which is far more inept than we are willing to concede. We have known the modus operandi of terrorism for ages now. It does not matter whether Al Qaeda intends or is even concerned with interfering with our civil liberties--only the outcome matters, which is the likelihood of social and political upheaval due to the direct and indirect consequences of their actions.
You're right, I don't mind at all. I don't mind, because I'd rather type until my fingers fall off or shout until I am hoarse, educating and informing people, rather than stay silent, anonymous, and...cowardly.
Bzzt. Nowhere do I make the claim you are erroneously inferring from my post. Note I make no mention of particular terrorists or their political alignment. What I state is equally true of anti-government militias in the US, ETA in Spain, FARC in Colombia, the militant wing of the IRA, the Janjaweed in Sudan--just about any organization that seeks to overthrow the government through armed violence against unarmed governed civilians.
The very definition of terrorism is to incite fear among the people. It is a form of indirect warfare designed to overthrow governments by sowing the seeds of social and economic collapse. "Eroding civil liberties" in the US is tantamount to having the government oppress its citizens. Doesn't sound so nice when referred to as what it actually is. And when the government gets in the business of targeting its own citizens, we have things like what is happening in Zimbabwe.
It is not necessary to ask why the terrorists do what they do in order to understand HOW they seek to achieve their goals, which is to attack innocent people as a means of indirectly attacking the government.
Bit by bit, the rights of US citizens to privacy and freedom are being taken away by an administration that has repeatedly demonstrated that it has no problem telling the people that such measures are in the interest of national security but are in fact merely lip service whose real intent is to covertly make the population easy to control and manipulate. Showing ID to board a plane seems small--but then we are also seeing millimeter-wave body scanners foisted upon passengers without adequate disclosure, warrantless wiretapping, Real ID, Patriot Act, DMCA abuses...the list goes on.
And it will continue to go on, as long as the people remain ignorant of the real motivations behind them.
How many times do I have to point out the obvious? This sort of eroding of civil liberties is precisely the mechanism by which terrorism seeks to overturn governments. And the sickening part is that these same governments are entirely complicit in this mass upheaval of basic democratic--nay, human--rights.
Put yourself in the terrorist's shoes. Compared to the state, you are vastly underfunded, have no legal recourse, and are entirely disenfranchised. What hope do you have of taking down an entity that is far more well-established than you? Of course, your only option is to subvert it by attacking the citizenry. The government's response is to enact more and more restrictions to "protect" the people, until one finds themselves living under a police state. Of course, the attacks haven't stopped--but now the people are either going to revolt, or the economy is going to collapse, or the government has become the real terrorists.
And the government is complicit because they believe that a fearful populace is one that is most controllable. It is not in their interest to educate the people to think for themselves and question authority--they ARE the authority.
History has shown us time and time again that it is not difficult to overthrow kingdoms, republics, dictatorships, or democracies. All it takes is an idea one is willing to die for. The so-called "war on terrorism" is not successfully fought with weapons, nor with diplomacy. It is fought with knowledge. It is for that reason that the United States is losing to a group of fanatics.
The extent to which those who watch over us are unwilling to be watched by us is the precise extent to which we are not a free and just society.
This has nothing to do with war, or terrorism. It is simply a matter of accountability. The people have a right to know what our elected officials do in the name of ensuring our safety, regardless of whether they actually live up to that goal or not. That we are not able to do so is the true barometer of our freedom, despite whatever a centuries-old piece of paper might proclaim.
If I hadn't looked it up myself just now, I would have been under the impression that "dry pair" refers to the phenomenon of wearing freshly laundered underwear.
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Then don't buy insurance and see how long you last. Go live in a state where auto insurance is not mandated, if you are so opposed. Move to another country. We won't miss you, really. You are not the type of insured that any insurer in their right mind would want to underwrite for anything. I don't need your money, and neither do our competitors.
Why is credit score used? It is used because it is predictive of loss frequency. In every actuarial model and rating plan I have seen, it is one of the single most strongly predictive variables. Since you have not seen the numbers, you are not in a position to dispute this. It is a measure of financial responsibility, which is a subset of personal responsibility, which in turn correlated with propensity for loss. It is not strongly predictive of loss severity (that is to say, amount of loss, given a loss has occurred).
I think that it is important to educate people about what insurance is, what it represents, how premiums are calculated, and the role actuaries play in modeling the financial impact of risk. I think it is important because I find the general public to be terribly uneducated about these matters, and that if they understood these concepts better, they would help to drive down the cost of insurance for everyone. If you want to get upset and accuse me of being a paid lobbyist or a company shill, then it's clear that you've made up your mind and are not interested in learning about what you pay for. Misinformed attitudes such as your own are one of the reasons why insurance costs what it does. And as someone who pays premiums to transfer the financial risk on assets I cannot afford to replace, I also am personally invested in wanting to keep the costs of my coverage low.
The world is full of unscrupulous people. And some of them work for insurance companies. But that is why you, as a consumer, have a choice. Don't buy the product if you feel like it's a scam. On the other hand, insurers are also often the victim of fraud. Our company estimates that in as many as 40% of suspicious fire claims on homeowners' policies, the cause is believed to be arson but the adjusters cannot prove it--and we end up paying for it anyway. From the claims adjustment standpoint, it can be notoriously difficult to figure out which claims are legitimate and which are not. This type of adjustment expense is unfortunately an additional cost to the consumer. Maybe before you accuse the industry of defrauding the public, you should actually try to learn about what goes on inside the companies themselves, rather than look from the outside with little or no credible information.
FWIW, I think health insurance is lousy. I disagree with its fundamental assumptions and its implementation in the US, and this is why I decided I would never work for any health insurer.
Flood is a specific exclusion on any standard homeowner's policy because it is a peril that insurers consider to have too high severity and too low frequency to appropriately model. In many flood-prone areas, insurers will refuse to underwrite a property unless the owner purchases separate flood insurance through the appropriate state agency, even if the policy contract language contains a flood exclusion. This is because insurers have been taken to court by insureds who claimed losses that were due to flood, and subsequently won (judges are very sympathetic to insureds), despite such exclusions. The problem with litigating flood losses is twofold: first, it increases the premiums to other insureds (since legal and settlement fees are part of loss adjustment expenses), and second, exposure to flood is not modeled in the rating plan. A very large flood like Katrina could literally bankrupt most small to mid-size insurers, unless there is some sort of reinsurance contract in place that covers such a contingency (but then why would the reinsurer pay if your contract excludes flood?).
Insurers actually have a duty to protect the rest of their insureds from having to bear the burden of those who file claims for losses specifically excluded in the contract. That is the extent of the insurer's reluctance to pay for losses, because if the ratemaking is done correctly, the developed rate should be sufficient to provide for future expected costs. Failure to set the rate sufficiently leads to insolvency, adverse selection, and intervention by the Departments of Insurance, which have the sole power to revoke the insurer's Certificate of Authority (their ability to write business in the state). An insurer does not (and should not) deny claims through a profit motive because this would distort the reserving trends, and risk many other regulatory issues that are frankly not worth the surplus that the insurer or reinsurer has, not to mention it is VERY bad from a competitive standpoint.
So then you're saying don't insure your home, wait for the state to declare an emergency, and let the taxpayer bail you out, put you in a FEMA trailer for months?
Look at your basic homeowner's policy. It does not only cover the primary dwelling, but it also covers (up to certain limits) separate structures, contents, loss of use, liability, and medical payments to others. From certain companies, if you buy certain endorsements, you can extend coverage further, even into areas that one would not necessarily consider to be part of a typical homeowner's policy (e.g., identity theft). Let's see your federal taxpayer pay for these things and save your ass the day after the catastrophe.
The problem with letting the taxpayer bail you out is that you create a moral hazard. Since you pay nothing in premium, you have less incentive to prevent loss (e.g., you might not think twice about moving to a catastrophe-prone state). The reason why insurance works is that it is a mechanism by which those who have more exposure to loss pay proportionately more than those who do not. When you talk about socializing this process by letting the taxpayer pay losses, then you disconnect this critical link. In either case, the money has to come from somewhere.
As for insolvency risk, blame the state DOIs for not monitoring that more. Insurers are in an unenviable position--if your rates are low, then you invite adverse selection (poor risks flock to your book), and if too low, you may have insolvency risk. If your rates are high, you lose business, and the state DOIs may refuse your rate increases (e.g., Allstate recently filed for an increase in Personal Auto and Commissioner Poizner, who btw is running for Governor, single-handedly told them they had to cut rates by 20%, ignoring the actuarially indicated rate need entirely). And even if you have priced your product perfectly, you still have to deal with the ignorant public, such as yourself, who are under the terrible misapprehension that insurance is a waste of money unless you file a claim, and even then, you end up getting charged more anyway. People have a really hard time understanding that the premium you pay is for the contractual transfer of risk from the insured to the insurer, an intangible that only becomes tangible (and very much so) once a loss occurs.
I don't deny that there are some insurers that behave less than ethically when it comes to certain non-actuarially related business practices. But you hear about these things only because people only like to talk about bad news. You don't get to hear about how insurance companies often end up paying on claims that are due to specifically excluded perils, because paying is cheaper than fighting in court, and the insurer has to think of what's best for the rest of their customers that are in fact playing by the rules.
One more thing I would also like to address in response to your comment....
From a pure ratemaking perspective, it makes no difference whether a discount is applied to those insureds who have a particular characteristic, versus surcharging those insureds who do not. Actuarially speaking, the relative difference among the two risk classes is what matters. If the insurer prices the product correctly (and by correctly, I mean by following accepted actuarial principles), the indicated rates for each risk class will be the same whether the insurer views the characteristic as a surcharge or a discount.
Your statement, then, reveals a misunderstanding about how a rating plan works. Initially, a base rate is selected from the exposure base (which for personal auto is usually number of car-years). Then a series of multiplicative factors are applied depending on the insured's characteristics. So for example, they might start from a base rate of $500, and if they are 35-40 years old, they might have a factor of 0.9 applied to their rate, which becomes $450. If they are male, then they might get a factor of 1.05, and so forth. Now if having a special feature of the vehicle qualified you for a 5% discount (factor of 0.95), and no feature is 0% discount (factor of 1.00), then that's one way to look at the rating plan. But if it were instead a surcharge, so having the feature gives a factor of 1.00, and having no feature gives a factor of 1/0.95 = 1.05263..., then in order to get the same indicated rate, the base rate would be adjusted downward by 5%. In either case, the actual rate stays the same in both risk classes. Not adjusting the base rate while changing the factors would result in an overall 5% increase that would have to then be justified in the rate filing. It cannot be done capriciously or out of a desire for profit, because that is not where the rate can be taken--the DOIs would not approve it.
I am an actuarial analyst for a major property and casualty insurer in the US.
Insurance rates tend to trend upward because inflation, loss costs, and adjustment/expense costs trend upward. Despite popular belief, they do not trend upward because of the profit contingency loading, and this is due to the fact that personal insurance is a very highly regulated industry in the US. If my company simply decided to increase our loading by even 0.5%, you can be assured that every state Dept. of Insurance would write back immediately, asking why we feel justified raising profit loading by that amount, right before they deny our filings.
In layman's terms, loss costs increase because the value of insured properties such as autos and homes tend to increase. What I mean by this is not depreciation, or the decline in value of a single purchased asset, but rather the idea that the average paid value of assets or services rendered increases over time, due to inflation or technological improvements. Health care 10 years ago did not cost what it does today. Cars didn't cost what they do today. And so forth.
Loss adjustment expenses also increase in coordination with inflation and the cost of doing business.
It is also in part because more people survive accidents that the cost of insurance goes up. More survivors = more injured = higher medical payments. Similarly, more technology = higher repair cost. There is also a loose correlation in that safer vehicles tend to lead to less safe driving habits.
I understand that the average consumer is naive about the nature of insurance. If the public truly wishes to decrease their premiums, then in roughly decreasing order of importance, (1) drive less, (2) drive slower and more carefully, (3) don't buy SUVs or large vehicles. Of course, this only applies to the population as a whole. As an individual insured, your exposure as determined by your insurer has to do with your age, gender, location, credit history (where permitted), type and age of vehicle, and driving record, among other variables. The extent to which a group of insureds incurs greater losses is the extent to which those people pay higher premiums. That is the principle upon which actuarial ratemaking is founded, and if the public is unhappy with how much it costs to insure their assets, then stop having so much loss. After all, do you think insurers actually want to increase rates on their policyholders? They don't, because there is so much competitive pressure to keep rates low, for fear of losing business. In fact, if an insurer files a rate change significantly lower than their indicated rate need, that is a red flag to the DOI, because it raises the possibility of insolvency risk.
If you think insurance is a scam, tell that to the people whose entire earthly possessions were wiped out in Hurricanes Katrina and Ike, or the California wildfires. On the one hand, they'll tell you how insurance saved them, but on the other hand, if you don't live in a risk-prone state, you'll wonder why these people thought living on an island right along Hurricane Alley would be a good idea, and why you should be asked to partially subsidize their choice.
Pricing insurance does not, in itself, require a complete (or even partial) understanding of the cause-and-effect relationship between a rating variable and exposure to loss. The insurer (i.e., actuary) need only demonstrate that [1] inclusion of the variable in the rating plan results in a model more predictive of loss than without it; [2] it is verifiable; and [3] the variable is not "unfairly discriminatory"--that is, its use in risk classification is allowed by regulators. In truth, many other issues do come into play but these are the primary factors that the actuary considers when researching a new rating variable.
To the extent that a correlation or causation is hypothesized or believed known, the actuary seeks to confirm it with historical data.
The personal insurance market is very competitive. Insurers will try to develop the most accurate rating plan possible because they want to avoid adverse selection. Thus pricing actuaries do keep on the lookout (especially in bad underwriting cycles such as the one we're in right now) for more sophisticated ways to classify risks in their book, and if it is determined that elderly drivers who play games are a better risk than elderly drivers who do not play games, then a discount is actuarially justified and its use may provide a competitive advantage.
Of course, that doesn't mean an insurer would actually use that variable, as one has to consider whether it can even be reliably known whether an individual is a gamer. What does that mean? You play more than N hours a day? You own a game console? How do you confirm this during the underwriting process? Does it drop off if the insured stops playing? Do they qualify if the grandson is the actual gamer in the household but the insured only plays very occasionally?
To give you an example of how important verifiability is, note that in personal auto, the generally accepted exposure base is car-years, although mileage would be more predictive (think of it: two cars bought on 1/1/2000, one driver drives 40,000 miles/year, the other drives only 1,000 miles/year--which one has more exposure to loss?). The problem with using mileage as the exposure base is that it varies from year to year for a given insured, and is hard to confirm. Your agents aren't going to ask every last one of their policyholders to check their odometer, and even if they did, what is the chance they'll be honest if they know their premiums are directly tied to the result?
That's why I don't put too much stock in this proposed classification--it doesn't seem that it would be sufficiently predictive of loss to justify using it, and moreover, it would be a pain to verify, for the reasons stated above.
Yes, it does, and it did so before the iPhone. But in keeping with my original point, it's not merely about the hardware, but how the software integrates with it. The N95 interface never used the accelerometer the way the iPhone does. So, even though the N95 has features that the iPhone did not have (GPS), and still does not have (video recording capability), it is again about taking the hardware and creating a user interface and applications that maximize its capabilities in an elegant and thoughtful way. That is what distinguishes the iPhone from any previous offering in the mobile handset market, and why it is enormously successful.
What makes Apple special on hardware/software integration? You're seriously asking this question? Since when has Nokia or Motorola come out with anything that looks remotely like iTMS? Since when have they developed a UI that is easy to use and intuitive? If I have to hunt through a labyrinth of nested menus to change a setting on my phone, that's poor design, UI as an afterthought. Who was the first to employ an an orientation sensor in a phone, a multi-touch screen, and other hardware improvements and then integrate that with the software? That is what I mean by "years ahead."
The iPhone was not, and is not, perfect. At least Apple never claimed it to be. The fan base might treat it as such, but as is the case with fans, there's often a love/hate relationship. The consumer is not a monolithic entity. Loving the existing product while buying the next available revision is not logically inconsistent, and in fact, you fail to recognize that some degree of product success is required in order for consumers to be willing to purchase the next version. If you think such behavior is unique to Apple, you've obviously ignored the Playstation, the Wii, and the XBox. They're standing in line because Apple has made a product that people love to use and love to be seen using. It does things that other phones don't do, and it generally does them well. Perfection isn't a prerequisite for a successful product.
They can't name competitors' products because as of the present time, there isn't one. There hasn't been one YET. You again fail to understand the nature of the product. The iPhone is more than just the handset itself, just like the iPod is not just the hardware device. It is the device + iTunes. Once you understand this, you will see that to date, there has not been any other product so tightly integrated on the market. Now, bear in mind I hope Android changes this. I sincerely do. But I really doubt it will ever look and feel as clean, because there is something unique about Apple's long-standing tradition of (obsessively) developing a product from the ground up. Remember, Google has to make a product that works with different hardware, different carriers, and different corporate tastes. In fact, these companies (Sony, Motorola, etc.) are even competing against each other! So do you really think that the result will be anywhere near as monolithic as what Apple has done?
In a way, it might be a good thing. Who knows? And that's my point. People are all excited about Android and making broad claims about the demise of Apple's business model for the iPhone, all over a product that has yet to cut its teeth in the marketplace. It's way, way, WAY too early to tell. Any claims about its ability to compete with a firmly established product as the iPhone is totally premature.
I disagree. I think that the market is largely driven by what consumers want. Apple has a huge head start--they are quite literally years ahead on hardware/software integration, having released a product that has yet to see any equal in overall end-user experience. People absolutely love the iPhone. Relatively speaking, they haven't even heard of what the competitors are offering, and even the recent release of Android has received minimal attention by comparison.
Now that I've established the context, it's easy to see why handset manufacturers and non-AT&T providers in the US are embracing Android. It is their best shot at competing with Apple. They moved too slow, lacked long-term vision, and failed to concede to Apple's demands. And now they're scrambling to keep up. iPhone + iTunes + App Store = killer combination. This has nothing to do with FOSS. Face it, few people have even seen what Android does, let alone have any real-world understanding of how well it will integrate with a variety of handsets and carriers. Because it hasn't happened yet. Maybe it'll be a competitor, maybe it won't. But I can confidently say that whatever the outcome, it won't look or feel nearly as clean as an Apple product.
I've also heard that despite a lot of grumblings by iPhone developers, they generally like the business model. Steve Demeter, for example, is on the record for saying he has no intention of bringing Trism to Android. This coming from a guy who made a quarter million in two months off his blockbuster game. So I don't think you're telling the whole story here. It's the secrecy they don't like, and with this latest turn, Apple has done the right thing.
Frankly, I'm amazed that you didn't get modded down. Your bias is so clearly showing and you lack any evidence to back up your outrageous claims. I think Android can be huge, and I like that Google has stepped up to provide more competition in the mobile computing market. I hope it lives up to the high expectations that the industry has set for it, but I'm not holding my breath because judging from how Motorola, Sony Ericsson, RIM, Palm, Samsung, LG, Nokia, T-Mobile, Verizon, Sprint, etc. have behaved in the past, I don't think they're going to all have some kind of Voltron moment and band together to bring down the "evil Apple."
After all, you're just cheering for one evil corporation to smite the other. Personally, what matters to me most is whether I get the user experience and customer service I expect. If Android facilitates this goal, then I'm all for it. But you won't catch me talking complete bullshit just because I have a stick up my ass about a particular company. That's so last decade.
Oh, of all the times to not have mod points. Why has this gotten +3 Insightful? It's a false argument. As has been already pointed out, the hypocrisy lies not in the public or private nature of personal email, but the use of personal email for public (as in government) purposes, in the (perhaps mistaken) belief that doing so provides legal protection against FOIA.
So next time I hold civil office and use my personal email address to conduct government business, I'll gladly hand over my account password.
Because while it may be an interesting notion, such investigations necessarily cannot be conducted in a scientific context by definition. It is like asking why can't we prove the existence of God as a mathematical theorem. You don't use a knife to drink soup. It's not a question of the validity of the idea--it is a question of the appropriateness of the tool.
And therein lies my main problem with "intelligent design." I find it rather strange that if the Universe has a supernatural force, its existence needs proof or verification through science. Science is dirty, crude, imperfect. It baffles me that laypeople would want to shroud their faith in its mantle. After all, what is the use of faith if science is proof? That is why I can only conclude that this push for teaching ID in science classrooms is not about any genuine belief by its proponents, but more about the politics of religion, power, and control.
Science is not merely about testability or observability, though these characteristics are important aspects of the scientific process, as are others such as parsimony, predictive value, and extensibility. It bears pointing out that string theory, for instance, is under criticism for reasons along the lines that it fails as a scientific theory--the math may be beautiful and it may have explanatory power, but it is perhaps too general, too all-encompassing, to the point where the constructs can predict most anything.
Stephen Hawking in his seminal text "A Brief History of Time" explains the nature of a spacetime singularity, and to paraphrase, the existence of space and time--or lack thereof--is tantamount to the existence of information (or lack thereof). Information "past" a singularity is lost and unavailable to us. We might postulate at length as to what exists there, but by definition its un-observability makes it impossible to develop any theory or understanding of it.
Your response is indicative of someone who would benefit from a more rigorous treatment of the scientific method, as well as cosmology, philosophy, and theology.
Scientists are human, too. They don't always make statements that are scientific. Nobody is prohibited from speculating. But if you ask a cosmologist if the concept of parallel universes is a viable scientific theory, I would be very surprised if they said yes.
Teaching creationism in schools != teaching creationism as science. Your argument is a red herring. It's not relevant because She has specifically stated that she believes ID/creationism should be taught alongside evolution as a viable alternative theory to explain the origin of species. This is not acceptable because ID is not science. We have been through this REPEATEDLY, and the public and our elected officials STILL don't get it, which is precisely what the ID proponents are banking on. They are relying on the public's ignorance of what it means to do science to blur the line of scientific legitimacy. By all means, go ahead and teach ID in its historical context. But it has absolutely NO place in the science classroom, except perhaps as a brief exercise in discussing what is, and is not, science.
I'm wondering, from a purely technical point of view, whether this technique would be appropriate for the smug clouds known to exist over parts of Los Angeles. And if so, would you get rain, or an increase in the smugness index?
I don't know if you live in Los Angeles, but in case you haven't noticed, people here are pretty damn smug enough as it is.
The problem as I see it is not whether a sovereign entity has the legal or moral right of immunity from law. That is somewhat misleading for the exact reason and example you provide. The problem is, in my view, thankfully much smaller in scope, and that is the problem of compensation. That is to say, if the government (of the people or otherwise) decides to appropriate a work product without reasonable compensation for that work, then where does this logic end under such legal precedent? Why not simply force companies, manufacturers, and workers to produce goods or services to the government? Now that's one way to cut down on pork barrel spending, isn't it?
Perhaps you have heard of this economic model that I have just described. It's called communism. And you would think that a Republican administration professing to uphold the "enlightened" principles of capitalism and a free-market system, would be the last people on this pillaged planet to use "sovereign immunity" as a lever to appropriate the work of others without proper compensation.
After all it's not like the US government, or specifically, the Pentagon (with the single biggest defense budget in the world) is exactly starving for cash. They don't seem to have a problem throwing wads of it away on the Middle East debacle, or even handing it out to the same Iraqis that tried to kill our soldiers last year.
The truth is that our system of government speaks out of both sides of its mouth. 'Of, for, and by the people' is a lovely sentiment but it is accountability that makes such warm fuzzy feelings ring true.
BTW I don't like the DMCA and I don't support it in any meaningful way. But one doesn't need its backing to understand the problem with the government's assertion of immunity.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ampersand
You can clearly see that Erik's ampersand is the handwritten form, with an extra curl, hence the similarity to the @ symbol. There do exist typefaces with such a letterform/glyph, as well as the "Et" ligature, from which the & has evolved.
Indeed, most people do write the stem of the "i" before the dot. However, I do not, and my remark was about how the consistent connectedness of the top of the stem to the previous letterform indicates the stroke order in Erik's handwriting. There are the kinds of tiny but important details that, for example, handwriting experts notice (although I am not one).
These are the handwriting samples that I like most. For some reason, both of these individuals write their "d" in a single upward sweeping loop, without the subsequent vertical downward stroke--although Dino seems to do this only for the terminal "d."
Erik's sample is interesting to me because of the unconventional ampersand, and how it is clear that he writes the stem of his "i" before dotting it (I do the reverse when I print, which is my regular script, as opposed to writing in full cursive, which I rarely do).
Sebastian's handwriting is vaguely reminiscent of graffiti artists. I like it, in particular, I like the shape of the "a" and the overall crowded, upright feel.
Eduardo's sample makes me think he's either playing a joke, or he's 7 years old. The apostrophe is absolutely bizarre--it is not so much written as it is drawn.
Marian's "crazy backhand" is actually my favorite among her three styles of handwriting, but what is more curious is that she even *has* three clearly distinct styles of script.
Kris's handwriting looks remarkably--in fact, uncannily--similar to the handwriting of my ex-boyfriend, who is German. I wonder if he studied in Germany.
Finally, Dino's sample is really quite beautiful--it has distinctive touches (the "D", "s", and "g" in particular), is calligraphic, and exudes elegance.
The other samples I found mostly unremarkable. Sorry. There are some shared themes between each designer's handwriting and their typefaces, but I think the comparison is tenuous as well as retrospective. If one did not know in advance which writing sample belonged to which typographer, it would not have been at all obvious how to match them up.
Oh--I forgot to clarify/mention... You could buy those fancy screen cleaning solutions, but you're just wasting money. Good clean water is all you need. And just because your fever has broken, you are still infectious for as much as 7-10 days afterward.
First, turn off the laptop. The aluminum casing of the MacBook Pro can withstand wiping with Lysol, the active ingredient of which is benzalkonium chloride in a low concentration. Do not saturate the surface, but do leave it damp for a few minutes--then go back and wipe down with water. For the screen, simply wipe with distilled water. Use the black cleaning cloth that came with your computer--it is included in the same package as the installation disks.
Under no circumstances should you use anything other than water to clean the display.
If you are *really* paranoid, leave the computer out in bright sun for 30 minutes. While this is not really an "official" way of disinfecting things, the UVB rays could have enough energy to disrupt the activity of bacteria and viruses. If you were really serious about this approach, you'd get a dedicated UVC disinfection unit which would irradiate your laptop. But I don't know what that might do to the hardware. *shrug*
The point is, if you've been coughing as a result of your illness, you've already spread live viral particles all over the place. It's not all that useful to think about sterilization when your living environment is teeming with all kind of infectious organisms--not just viruses, but bacteria and fungi.
Parent post has to be one of the most clear, cogent, and effective rebuttals of the arguments made in the original article. One must always be mindful to consider the social, economic, and regulatory environment in which engineers--and by extension, the technologies they create--operate. And the author of the article simply fails to do this by viewing the problem as (in the words of parent post) "purely an engineering question."
I had mod points a few days ago but they expired. So this is my way of making up for not being able to mod the parent up.
Since we're so singularly focused on Al Qaeda here, and not terrorism in general, I have two simple questions, then:
1. What is your proposed mechanism by which Al Qaeda seeks to destroy the US by targeting civilians, rather than military and political institutions?
2. What reason would the government have to use terrorism as a pretense to abrogate our civil liberties when they can do it willy-nilly? The American people have long lost their actual capability to challenge the policies of the government. A look at the abuses of the Patriot Act demonstrates this fact.
I think your statement misplaces too much intentional malice--it belongs more to Al Qaeda, which is not nearly as inept as people want to believe, and not the government, which is far more inept than we are willing to concede. We have known the modus operandi of terrorism for ages now. It does not matter whether Al Qaeda intends or is even concerned with interfering with our civil liberties--only the outcome matters, which is the likelihood of social and political upheaval due to the direct and indirect consequences of their actions.
You're right, I don't mind at all. I don't mind, because I'd rather type until my fingers fall off or shout until I am hoarse, educating and informing people, rather than stay silent, anonymous, and...cowardly.
Bzzt. Nowhere do I make the claim you are erroneously inferring from my post. Note I make no mention of particular terrorists or their political alignment. What I state is equally true of anti-government militias in the US, ETA in Spain, FARC in Colombia, the militant wing of the IRA, the Janjaweed in Sudan--just about any organization that seeks to overthrow the government through armed violence against unarmed governed civilians.
The very definition of terrorism is to incite fear among the people. It is a form of indirect warfare designed to overthrow governments by sowing the seeds of social and economic collapse. "Eroding civil liberties" in the US is tantamount to having the government oppress its citizens. Doesn't sound so nice when referred to as what it actually is. And when the government gets in the business of targeting its own citizens, we have things like what is happening in Zimbabwe.
It is not necessary to ask why the terrorists do what they do in order to understand HOW they seek to achieve their goals, which is to attack innocent people as a means of indirectly attacking the government.
Bit by bit, the rights of US citizens to privacy and freedom are being taken away by an administration that has repeatedly demonstrated that it has no problem telling the people that such measures are in the interest of national security but are in fact merely lip service whose real intent is to covertly make the population easy to control and manipulate. Showing ID to board a plane seems small--but then we are also seeing millimeter-wave body scanners foisted upon passengers without adequate disclosure, warrantless wiretapping, Real ID, Patriot Act, DMCA abuses...the list goes on.
And it will continue to go on, as long as the people remain ignorant of the real motivations behind them.
How many times do I have to point out the obvious? This sort of eroding of civil liberties is precisely the mechanism by which terrorism seeks to overturn governments. And the sickening part is that these same governments are entirely complicit in this mass upheaval of basic democratic--nay, human--rights.
Put yourself in the terrorist's shoes. Compared to the state, you are vastly underfunded, have no legal recourse, and are entirely disenfranchised. What hope do you have of taking down an entity that is far more well-established than you? Of course, your only option is to subvert it by attacking the citizenry. The government's response is to enact more and more restrictions to "protect" the people, until one finds themselves living under a police state. Of course, the attacks haven't stopped--but now the people are either going to revolt, or the economy is going to collapse, or the government has become the real terrorists.
And the government is complicit because they believe that a fearful populace is one that is most controllable. It is not in their interest to educate the people to think for themselves and question authority--they ARE the authority.
History has shown us time and time again that it is not difficult to overthrow kingdoms, republics, dictatorships, or democracies. All it takes is an idea one is willing to die for. The so-called "war on terrorism" is not successfully fought with weapons, nor with diplomacy. It is fought with knowledge. It is for that reason that the United States is losing to a group of fanatics.
and I'll say it again:
The extent to which those who watch over us are unwilling to be watched by us is the precise extent to which we are not a free and just society.
This has nothing to do with war, or terrorism. It is simply a matter of accountability. The people have a right to know what our elected officials do in the name of ensuring our safety, regardless of whether they actually live up to that goal or not. That we are not able to do so is the true barometer of our freedom, despite whatever a centuries-old piece of paper might proclaim.
If I hadn't looked it up myself just now, I would have been under the impression that "dry pair" refers to the phenomenon of wearing freshly laundered underwear.