Moore didn't exactly show the experience of the average Cuban. He and his prop were treated like a VIPs so Castro could embarrass Bush and the US. I've been to Cuba and know people currently living there. The healthcare system sucks there. My friend's family members always ask us to bring basic medical supplies, aspirin, antibiotics, vitamins, antiseptics, you name it.
Dental amalgam is very safe. The mercury exposure is much less then that from other environmental sources. Your dentist got the biggest dose when he mixed it.
Mercury is extremely toxic so why increase your exposure if it's unnecessary. In addition, you may eventually need to have that cavity reworked and then your exposure risk to mercury is much higher with a drill shooting bits around your mouth.
Obama was one of the extortion artists for ACORN who started off the whole "write loans that will never work, then bundle them as "securities" bit... and also just-so-happens to have been the second biggest recipient of Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac lobbying money during the time when their financial fraud was being uncovered.:(
Any links to back up your claims on ACORN? I find it hard to believe they had anything to do with bundling of securities, and the CRA stuff is a joke.
Any links to show how Obama helped out Fannie and Freddie. It's not enough to show he received money, you also need to show it bought something.
Basically, pain taught me to absorb the impact with the front of the foot when hitting the ground. It's not a very natural movement because you can't do it when moving forward, but for standing in place it works perfectly.
You're only supposed to hit heel first when jogging. The best way when running/sprinting is to only use the front of your feet; your heel should never touch the ground. Still, your advice for jogging in place is good and is another place where staying off the heel is wise.
So - the legal drugs, with the widest exposure - provide the worst cases. Is that possibly because they provide the most cases?
The GP is referring to the common symptoms of drug abuse, not a study of outliers. It's more about the average response to different levels and durations of addiction. It's not about looking at the extremes. Alcohol addiction has typical symptoms that are very destructive. These statistics do not depend on the popularity of the drugs.
Would legalising other drugs provide greater acceptance, and presumably greater uptake? Even if it didn't produce more users, would it increase consumption by existing users? Would that increased consumption result in greater "bodily harm" and worse "withdrawals"?
When addicts are given better access to drugs their consumption tends to go down since they are less likely to exhibit binging behavior. Also the physiological response for different drugs depends more on the drug then the level of addiction. People don't die from marijuana withdraw no matter what their level of addiction.
Alcohol is a particularly nasty drug, and we are lucky it is legal. Prohibition would only make it worse. Addicts of illegal drugs are often stigmatized making it harder for them to get help. This is just one of the many harms caused by prohibition. While removing prohibition might increase the consumption of some currently illegal drugs that is just one factor in the cost/benefit analysis. In addition, there are many ways to legalize drugs. Some of these ways should reduce the number of addicts for certain hardcore drugs.
Those payroll taxes look at little low. Remember that the employer matches the employee payroll tax, so the real tax rate is double. If the employer didn't have to match the payroll tax then the employee could earn a higher salary. Of course, rich people don't have to pay nearly as much payroll tax with the cap around 100,000.
Wrong. An upper bound in big O notation does not give any indication as to constant factors of the "real" bound (nor to other summands which are in o(log n)). In fact, your statement doesn't even make sense, because it is an asymptotical bound and hence can't be applied to a fixed size of the input size.
It's an example, to give a feel for the order of magnitude. If the particular constant was very large, one would have to increase n to show the same effect, but the idea would hold. In addition, it has nothing to do with my argument. You can mentally delete that sentence if it bothers you. It has no impact on my point.
Uh, in O(log n) time their algorithm can't even read all the
input. Maybe they meant to compare parallel quantum vs parallel
classical?
Maybe you should READ the damn thing and notice how that's addressed
in the first half-page.
It's not completely addressed or at least all the implications are
not spelled out. They talk about dealing with sparse matrices but
they would have to be O(log n) sparse to be useful for a single
application of the algorithm. For example, a matrix with n=1000000
would have to have around 15 non-zero values and a trillion zero
values. I don't know if that's practical.
It still might be useful if one needs to perform the operation
repeatedly say for an iterative algorithm. As long as one only
loaded the O(n) data once. However, I doubt that is likely for
quantum computers since one probably needs to reset the quantum state.
However, perhaps the algorithm can be adapted to solve iterative
problems.
To be honest, I don't think there should be any inheritance tax. My
parents' assets transferring to me is not really a transaction. It's
not income. It's something that belongs to me as the current
incarnation of the bloodline.
You can call a dog a cat, but it's still a dog. When someone gives
you money it's income; your wealth has increased. You might want to
redefine the rules, but don't justify it by redefining the words.
Personally, I think the estate tax is one of the few fair taxes we
have in the US. The government spends a significant portion of its
resources protecting assets and creating infrastructure that helps
people build assets. You would think a fair tax would be based on
people paying an amount of tax proportional to their yearly derived
benefit. Instead, the primary source of taxation is income. This
creates a system that allows rich people to stop working and live off
their investments.
With estate tax, the government finally gets a share of those assets.
While not a perfect tax, it at least helps equalize the imbalance.
Instead, you think it should be abolished. You think the children
should continue the aristocracy and leach off our economic system.
For those who qualify for estate tax, the children will still receive
a decent amount of money. However, they might need to do a little
work to bring their style of living up to Dad's old standards.
The American myth of the individual is dangerous on a lot of
levels. If people truly were individuals, then we wouldn't need
affirmative action.
One purpose of our laws is to protect the rights of individuals. You
might be correct that certain aspects of humanity tend to subvert
these rights, but that is why we form a government.
It's not like the price of legal drugs are low, Zolpidem (generic ambien) is ~$3 a pill (without insurance) from a legit brick pharmacy - and it takes a few to get high.
Yes patents are not the only reason drugs are overpriced. As the article I previously linked to explained, generics are also overpriced. But this doesn't have much to do with the issue.
Just because there are expensive drugs that can be used to get high does not mean that legalization can not kill the black market. If the drugs are intrinsically expensive to make then any drug dealer will also have to pay that price. In fact, they are probably more expensive for the dealer because they are complicated to make; drug dealers would probably have to spend a lot more then a major drug manufacturer. In addition, I imagine these expensive prescription drugs would have minimal abuse potential since other recreational drugs would be so much cheaper.
Unlike alcohol and cigarrettes, the danger of a short term injury the type easiest to litigate, with illegal drugs (marajuana being an exception) is much higher.
Actually, alcohol is one of the most dangerous drugs in the short and long term. Overdosing on alcohol is very easy and the drug is extremely intoxicating. Long term use is devastating to the body and withdraw symptoms can be so severe as to cause death. But again that is besides the point. Just as with alcohol and cigarettes, people would be made aware of the dangers and would use at their own risk. If there are problems with the courts interpretation of the liability that could be fixed with legislation just as legalization would be enacted by legislation.
I'm also sure the government won't allow pure stuff to be sold, you'll end up with tiny little "recommended" doses (a couple mg a pill), at $2 a pop and have to take 5 or 10 to get the euphoric effect.
This is about as straw as it gets. You assume it will be structured in a way that will not work and then conclude it will not work. One of the purposes will be to remove the black market. If the price is set so high that the black market still exists then lower the price. The actual manufacturing cost of these illegal drugs is insignificant. That is why there is a black market even with a war on drugs because the profits are obscene.
The combination of inelastic demand, government regulation, and litigation risk means few suppliers and higher prices.
Illegal drugs are dirt cheap to make. They are currently sold at huge a markup because they are illegal. By enacting proper legislation, they can be sold at a price that eliminates the profitability of any significant black market. You might claim that this it is unlikely for the government to do this, but that is not the point. The point is what they should do.
I should clarify that, in my opinion, not all drugs should be sold in the same way as alcohol. There are many strategies to "legalize" drugs and remove the black market, but the cost of the drugs is not an issue.
Why is it so hard for legalization advocates to understand that the war on drugs is really a war against drug use, and not drug sales. Eliminating drug dealers is supposedly a means to eliminating drug use. Any plan to eliminate dealers that involves users getting their drugs from somewhere else defeats the intent.
They do understand this fact. The legalization advocates argue with several different reasons why the war against drug use is wrong. One reason is in terms of harm reduction. Advocates claim that prohibition does more harm than many types of controlled legalization. In this case, it is important to argue that many of the harms that come from prohibition will be eliminated with the proposed type of legalization. Many people mistakenly think that most the problems we see today with drug use are intrinsically caused by the drugs and do not realize that many of the problems are caused by the laws.
The GP was showing that the black market problems associated with illegal drugs can be removed by giving the drugs away for free. This has been shown to be a good strategy for heroin abuse. Have a heroin clinic that tests users for addiction. If they are addicted allow them to receive and use the drugs at the clinic. This will remove all the hard core addicts from the black market and lower the profitability of heroin. If this successfully destroys the black market then you don't have to worry about new users. If it doesn't then other measures can be taken to further restrict new users.
This strategy address both your desire to lower use, and it reduces the harm done by the war on drugs. We should be open to other strategies that include more than the scientifically refuted idea of prohibition. One should consider why we have a war on drug use, what this implies, and how we can best achieve those goals. Personally I think harm reduction is a good basis, but there are many other reasons why the war on drugs is a bad idea.
While this would work for most goods on the black market, prices wouldn't change much for illegal drugs. It's cheaper to buy some illegal drugs than legal ones because of massive regulation and liability. Just wait until a heroin user's family sues because their kid OD'd. The drug industry as a whole is screwed up, legal or illegal
The price of prescription drugs is primarily high because of the monopoly caused by patents. Just look at how many generic drugs are available at Walmart for about 10 cents a day. Also check out http://www.lef.org/magazine/mag2002/apr2002_awsi_01.html This website gives information on the markup for many common currently patented drugs. There are markups of over 5000 times the cost of the active ingredients. Of course, the cost of active ingredients for the currently illegal drugs is very low.
Obviously, there would be no patents on the currently illegal drugs. In addition, liability would be minimized because the only legal advertisement for these drugs would be negative government advertisement. The liability of tobacco was caused by misinformation from the tobacco companies. In addition, decriminalization/legalization of drugs does not mean they have to be sold out of vending machines or even liquor stores. There are many ways to destroy the black market and control addiction such as clinics for heroin users.
Some drugs would be sold to adults through government approved stores. I assume the main component of their price would be tax based. However, it is easy for the government to control the taxes to eliminate the black market. The price might even be slightly higher than a potential black market, but I assume most consumers would prefer to buy from a source of know quality with no legal ramifications. (Consider alcohol as an example.) This would effectively put the black market out of business, and generate a new revenue stream for the government instead of funding organized crime, gangs, and terrorists.
What Goedel proved is that a sufficiently complex formal system can not be both consistent and complete when using a recursive set of axioms
In other words, for any useful set of mathematical axioms, there will always be legal statements in the language that are undecided by the axioms. The statements can be assumed either true or false and the system will still be consistent.
That's the message to take from Goedel's Incompleteness Theorem. Mathematics can never be complete because there is always a new statement that is neither true nor false. We can either add the statement or its negation to create a new axiom. Either choice is just as valid; there are no fixed Platonic truths. Just choose the one that is most convenient for what you are trying to do.
That's the answer, right there - wealth is created by people doing stuff and making stuff. They trade with other people who make and do other stuff. When people stop doing and making stuff, they haven't got anything to trade with other people who you get a vicious spiral. The means of prodyuction are still there, but standing idle and nobody wants to make the first move.
That's a big part of it. Of course, if most of the goods they create are being throw into the ocean then they aren't really creating more wealth. What they are doing is redistributing the wealth through inflation. The government is increasing the money supply to pay all these people for the war. These previously broke people can now compete for the existing wealth and afford a better life. The rich lose some buying power, but they can still live comfortably.
When the war is over, hopefully all this infrastructure can be converted to civilian needs. Now everybody benefits because more people are working to create real wealth instead of throwing things into the ocean.
I don't think I was advocating WW-III as a shock, but more abstractly that there needs to be some sort of shock otherwize usually nothing happens. In the parable, the hidden variable is there doesn't seem to be any trigger event to give the impetus for shop keeper to improve his store with double pane glass or a skylight to cause this "positive" chain of events until the stone is thrown. I'm just hope we all survive whatever that shock happens that gets up going again (of course if the shock is WW-III many may not survive).
Most shop keepers will put that money into a bank account or some other type of investment. Hopefully the bank will invest that money in a responsible way. Perhaps the shopkeeper's money is being used to finance a neighbor's mortgage which stimulates the housing market, which gives contractors more work, which gives construction workers more work, which gives material suppliers more work...
Except that if you create more money, as you said, all money becomes worth less. This loss of value by the existing money IS the marginal cost of creating more money. This means it isn't all that tempting to print more money. Which is why our government typically doesn't use that method to pay more more spending. Instead they take out debt (a problem in and of itself), which actually has the effect of _removing_ liquidity.
Governments often sell those bonds to the Fed, which pays the government by printing the money. This is why people say we have a debt based monetary policy. This money is multiplied by our fractional banking system and creates our money supply. This is why government debt is a tax because it causes inflation which is an expansion of the money supply.
You must have test your algorithm on some pretty easy breast cancer cases and/or tested on a pretty small sample. They are reporting 87.6% accuracy using a human and their CAD system, while you are getting 96% using just a computer designed for a different type of cancer. Something doesn't add up.
I won't find any justifiably good definitions until the science (experimental and theoretical) gives us more information. We have very little idea how the mind works and just philosophically thinking and introspecting about these concepts will not lead to much progress. I would contend that the reason there is so much disagreement is that everyone is using their own slightly different definitions. When/if we get a reasonably solid formal understanding of the mind then we can give these terms precise meanings that relate to our old imprecise notions.
I claim that if I have sufficient self-awareness to reflect on a choice and make a decision, then I have free will.
While intuitively I agree with you, the next question would be what do you mean by self-awareness and reflect. No matter what answers you give, your still not going to be able to define free will in a way that people will accept. The term is not well defined. Eventually, we might have a decent formal definition that is related to this folk psychology notion; however, I'd be more interested in good definitions for things like consciousness and self-awareness.
Fourth, anyone who believes that Exxon makes excessive profits is a moron. 11.68 billion on 138.07 billion of revenue- 8.45% profit. That's considered an average profit in the business world.
I have to agree with kestasjk. Your argument amounts to why you like Perl not what makes Perl well suited to a browser scripting language. I'm sure we would all like to have our favorite languages used in popular applications and standards.
That's the main political problem. Current methods of efficient reprocessing are actively discouraged because they produce fuel that can be easily processed into bomb-grade materials.
Do you have any references to back that up? While that is often given as the main concern to reprocessing, I've heard it's actually very difficult to make bomb-grade materials from breeder reactors.
Have you seen this? I'm not sure if it's exactly what
you're talking about, but it does show that 1080p or even 720p can
certainly be "as good as it gets" depending on screen size and viewing
distance. The chart appears to be accurate as well, I checked it out
on my 1080p 42" with 1:1 pixel mapping and the distance where I could
no longer tell each pixel apart matched that predicted by the chart
very well.
At theater distances and screen sizes, it looks like 1440p might be
enough for resolution. There are other problems, but I assume they
have more to do with the projection equipment than the source.
Actually, you might be surprised (for 35mm film at least; I don't
think there's any question that 70mm films surpass HD format
resolutions.) See this website for a detailed comparison between the
two:
Note that they did that study with actual viewers in an actual
theater; on paper, 35mm may be higher resolution, but the actual
viewers couldn't tell the difference when both were projected onto the
same screen, so practically there is no difference. And the viewers
they chose were a "panel of experts."
While this is interesting, film still has higher resolution. It's
just that the method used to project the film loses a lot of the
resolution. There are systems that can use some of this higher
resolution. For example, Maxivision improves
resolution and removes some artifacts.
It's also likely that digital conversion can capture the extra
resolution. As HD standards increase we should be able to do
transfers of higher quality. At some point, we will hit diminishing
returns. Do you know of any studies that test the limit of resolution
for a person with 20/20 vision? (It probably can be approximated from
eye chart information.)
Slashdot Mirror
Yet Cuba is only two countries below the US according to the World Health Organization's rankings. The US is 37 and Cuba is 39. http://www.photius.com/rankings/healthranks.html
Mercury is extremely toxic so why increase your exposure if it's unnecessary. In addition, you may eventually need to have that cavity reworked and then your exposure risk to mercury is much higher with a drill shooting bits around your mouth.
Any links to back up your claims on ACORN? I find it hard to believe they had anything to do with bundling of securities, and the CRA stuff is a joke.
Any links to show how Obama helped out Fannie and Freddie. It's not enough to show he received money, you also need to show it bought something.
You're only supposed to hit heel first when jogging. The best way when running/sprinting is to only use the front of your feet; your heel should never touch the ground. Still, your advice for jogging in place is good and is another place where staying off the heel is wise.
The GP is referring to the common symptoms of drug abuse, not a study of outliers. It's more about the average response to different levels and durations of addiction. It's not about looking at the extremes. Alcohol addiction has typical symptoms that are very destructive. These statistics do not depend on the popularity of the drugs.
When addicts are given better access to drugs their consumption tends to go down since they are less likely to exhibit binging behavior. Also the physiological response for different drugs depends more on the drug then the level of addiction. People don't die from marijuana withdraw no matter what their level of addiction.
Alcohol is a particularly nasty drug, and we are lucky it is legal. Prohibition would only make it worse. Addicts of illegal drugs are often stigmatized making it harder for them to get help. This is just one of the many harms caused by prohibition. While removing prohibition might increase the consumption of some currently illegal drugs that is just one factor in the cost/benefit analysis. In addition, there are many ways to legalize drugs. Some of these ways should reduce the number of addicts for certain hardcore drugs.
Those payroll taxes look at little low. Remember that the employer matches the employee payroll tax, so the real tax rate is double. If the employer didn't have to match the payroll tax then the employee could earn a higher salary. Of course, rich people don't have to pay nearly as much payroll tax with the cap around 100,000.
It's an example, to give a feel for the order of magnitude. If the particular constant was very large, one would have to increase n to show the same effect, but the idea would hold. In addition, it has nothing to do with my argument. You can mentally delete that sentence if it bothers you. It has no impact on my point.
It's not completely addressed or at least all the implications are not spelled out. They talk about dealing with sparse matrices but they would have to be O(log n) sparse to be useful for a single application of the algorithm. For example, a matrix with n=1000000 would have to have around 15 non-zero values and a trillion zero values. I don't know if that's practical.
It still might be useful if one needs to perform the operation repeatedly say for an iterative algorithm. As long as one only loaded the O(n) data once. However, I doubt that is likely for quantum computers since one probably needs to reset the quantum state. However, perhaps the algorithm can be adapted to solve iterative problems.
You can call a dog a cat, but it's still a dog. When someone gives you money it's income; your wealth has increased. You might want to redefine the rules, but don't justify it by redefining the words.
Personally, I think the estate tax is one of the few fair taxes we have in the US. The government spends a significant portion of its resources protecting assets and creating infrastructure that helps people build assets. You would think a fair tax would be based on people paying an amount of tax proportional to their yearly derived benefit. Instead, the primary source of taxation is income. This creates a system that allows rich people to stop working and live off their investments.
With estate tax, the government finally gets a share of those assets. While not a perfect tax, it at least helps equalize the imbalance. Instead, you think it should be abolished. You think the children should continue the aristocracy and leach off our economic system. For those who qualify for estate tax, the children will still receive a decent amount of money. However, they might need to do a little work to bring their style of living up to Dad's old standards.
One purpose of our laws is to protect the rights of individuals. You might be correct that certain aspects of humanity tend to subvert these rights, but that is why we form a government.
Yes patents are not the only reason drugs are overpriced. As the article I previously linked to explained, generics are also overpriced. But this doesn't have much to do with the issue.
Just because there are expensive drugs that can be used to get high does not mean that legalization can not kill the black market. If the drugs are intrinsically expensive to make then any drug dealer will also have to pay that price. In fact, they are probably more expensive for the dealer because they are complicated to make; drug dealers would probably have to spend a lot more then a major drug manufacturer. In addition, I imagine these expensive prescription drugs would have minimal abuse potential since other recreational drugs would be so much cheaper.
Actually, alcohol is one of the most dangerous drugs in the short and long term. Overdosing on alcohol is very easy and the drug is extremely intoxicating. Long term use is devastating to the body and withdraw symptoms can be so severe as to cause death. But again that is besides the point. Just as with alcohol and cigarettes, people would be made aware of the dangers and would use at their own risk. If there are problems with the courts interpretation of the liability that could be fixed with legislation just as legalization would be enacted by legislation.
This is about as straw as it gets. You assume it will be structured in a way that will not work and then conclude it will not work. One of the purposes will be to remove the black market. If the price is set so high that the black market still exists then lower the price. The actual manufacturing cost of these illegal drugs is insignificant. That is why there is a black market even with a war on drugs because the profits are obscene.
Illegal drugs are dirt cheap to make. They are currently sold at huge a markup because they are illegal. By enacting proper legislation, they can be sold at a price that eliminates the profitability of any significant black market. You might claim that this it is unlikely for the government to do this, but that is not the point. The point is what they should do.
I should clarify that, in my opinion, not all drugs should be sold in the same way as alcohol. There are many strategies to "legalize" drugs and remove the black market, but the cost of the drugs is not an issue.
They do understand this fact. The legalization advocates argue with several different reasons why the war against drug use is wrong. One reason is in terms of harm reduction. Advocates claim that prohibition does more harm than many types of controlled legalization. In this case, it is important to argue that many of the harms that come from prohibition will be eliminated with the proposed type of legalization. Many people mistakenly think that most the problems we see today with drug use are intrinsically caused by the drugs and do not realize that many of the problems are caused by the laws.
The GP was showing that the black market problems associated with illegal drugs can be removed by giving the drugs away for free. This has been shown to be a good strategy for heroin abuse. Have a heroin clinic that tests users for addiction. If they are addicted allow them to receive and use the drugs at the clinic. This will remove all the hard core addicts from the black market and lower the profitability of heroin. If this successfully destroys the black market then you don't have to worry about new users. If it doesn't then other measures can be taken to further restrict new users.
This strategy address both your desire to lower use, and it reduces the harm done by the war on drugs. We should be open to other strategies that include more than the scientifically refuted idea of prohibition. One should consider why we have a war on drug use, what this implies, and how we can best achieve those goals. Personally I think harm reduction is a good basis, but there are many other reasons why the war on drugs is a bad idea.
The price of prescription drugs is primarily high because of the monopoly caused by patents. Just look at how many generic drugs are available at Walmart for about 10 cents a day. Also check out http://www.lef.org/magazine/mag2002/apr2002_awsi_01.html This website gives information on the markup for many common currently patented drugs. There are markups of over 5000 times the cost of the active ingredients. Of course, the cost of active ingredients for the currently illegal drugs is very low.
Obviously, there would be no patents on the currently illegal drugs. In addition, liability would be minimized because the only legal advertisement for these drugs would be negative government advertisement. The liability of tobacco was caused by misinformation from the tobacco companies. In addition, decriminalization/legalization of drugs does not mean they have to be sold out of vending machines or even liquor stores. There are many ways to destroy the black market and control addiction such as clinics for heroin users.
Some drugs would be sold to adults through government approved stores. I assume the main component of their price would be tax based. However, it is easy for the government to control the taxes to eliminate the black market. The price might even be slightly higher than a potential black market, but I assume most consumers would prefer to buy from a source of know quality with no legal ramifications. (Consider alcohol as an example.) This would effectively put the black market out of business, and generate a new revenue stream for the government instead of funding organized crime, gangs, and terrorists.
What Goedel proved is that a sufficiently complex formal system can not be both consistent and complete when using a recursive set of axioms
In other words, for any useful set of mathematical axioms, there will always be legal statements in the language that are undecided by the axioms. The statements can be assumed either true or false and the system will still be consistent.
That's the message to take from Goedel's Incompleteness Theorem. Mathematics can never be complete because there is always a new statement that is neither true nor false. We can either add the statement or its negation to create a new axiom. Either choice is just as valid; there are no fixed Platonic truths. Just choose the one that is most convenient for what you are trying to do.
That's a big part of it. Of course, if most of the goods they create are being throw into the ocean then they aren't really creating more wealth. What they are doing is redistributing the wealth through inflation. The government is increasing the money supply to pay all these people for the war. These previously broke people can now compete for the existing wealth and afford a better life. The rich lose some buying power, but they can still live comfortably.
When the war is over, hopefully all this infrastructure can be converted to civilian needs. Now everybody benefits because more people are working to create real wealth instead of throwing things into the ocean.
Most shop keepers will put that money into a bank account or some other type of investment. Hopefully the bank will invest that money in a responsible way. Perhaps the shopkeeper's money is being used to finance a neighbor's mortgage which stimulates the housing market, which gives contractors more work, which gives construction workers more work, which gives material suppliers more work...
Governments often sell those bonds to the Fed, which pays the government by printing the money. This is why people say we have a debt based monetary policy. This money is multiplied by our fractional banking system and creates our money supply. This is why government debt is a tax because it causes inflation which is an expansion of the money supply.
You must have test your algorithm on some pretty easy breast cancer cases and/or tested on a pretty small sample. They are reporting 87.6% accuracy using a human and their CAD system, while you are getting 96% using just a computer designed for a different type of cancer. Something doesn't add up.
I'm far from an expert, but these should get you started http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend_and_extinguish http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Microsoft
I won't find any justifiably good definitions until the science (experimental and theoretical) gives us more information. We have very little idea how the mind works and just philosophically thinking and introspecting about these concepts will not lead to much progress. I would contend that the reason there is so much disagreement is that everyone is using their own slightly different definitions. When/if we get a reasonably solid formal understanding of the mind then we can give these terms precise meanings that relate to our old imprecise notions.
I claim that if I have sufficient self-awareness to reflect on a choice and make a decision, then I have free will.
While intuitively I agree with you, the next question would be what do you mean by self-awareness and reflect. No matter what answers you give, your still not going to be able to define free will in a way that people will accept. The term is not well defined. Eventually, we might have a decent formal definition that is related to this folk psychology notion; however, I'd be more interested in good definitions for things like consciousness and self-awareness.
Fourth, anyone who believes that Exxon makes excessive profits is a moron. 11.68 billion on 138.07 billion of revenue- 8.45% profit. That's considered an average profit in the business world.
And Forest Gump lost money at the box office.
I have to agree with kestasjk. Your argument amounts to why you like Perl not what makes Perl well suited to a browser scripting language. I'm sure we would all like to have our favorite languages used in popular applications and standards.
Do you have any references to back that up? While that is often given as the main concern to reprocessing, I've heard it's actually very difficult to make bomb-grade materials from breeder reactors.
At theater distances and screen sizes, it looks like 1440p might be enough for resolution. There are other problems, but I assume they have more to do with the projection equipment than the source.
While this is interesting, film still has higher resolution. It's just that the method used to project the film loses a lot of the resolution. There are systems that can use some of this higher resolution. For example, Maxivision improves resolution and removes some artifacts.
It's also likely that digital conversion can capture the extra resolution. As HD standards increase we should be able to do transfers of higher quality. At some point, we will hit diminishing returns. Do you know of any studies that test the limit of resolution for a person with 20/20 vision? (It probably can be approximated from eye chart information.)