People move to a country with socialised medicine because they want to avoid Obama's boneless attempt at socialised medicine?
Canada does not require you to buy insurance. Every Canadian lawful resident is entitled to some level of healthcare. It is financed from taxes that everyone pays. If this healthcare is against your religion you don't have to use it. Canadian healthcare's dues are very low and nearly invisible on the paycheck, IIRC. You know that your contribution will not become profit of insurance companies.
That method is infinitely better than Obama's boneheaded attempt at forcing everyone to purchase an expensive service from a private company. That service violates a bunch of religious norms of a bunch of people (and even moral norms, if you are not religious at all.)
In the past, there have been people with warnings like yours. There have always been more jobs, and we get nicer and nicer things.
We ran out of those jobs already. Sure, there are jobs for miracle surgeons, and for mathematicians who can solve unsolvable differential equations in their sleep, and for businessmen who can take a walking disaster of a company and make it into another Intel or Apple. But the thing is... nobody qualifies to take those jobs. This is why the country has so many of its citizens on entitlements and without jobs.
You can treat China as a remotely located robotic factory, because for all intents and purposes it is. You pay a little for materials (robots are not yet free!) and you get back a cheap product.
But your own population cannot compete with those robots. It cannot manufacture anything that doesn't require creative, human intelligence. Artists are safe for the moment, but car makers are not. Steel makers are history. Few remaining machinists are old guys within reach of retirement, and they charge an arm and a leg for milling a part. The only jobs remaining are in areas where robots can't yet work - in restaurants, in massage salons (as you mention), in lawyers' offices, and a few other places. But those jobs are not creative - they do not bring the money in that you can give to robots. The number of truly creative jobs is miniscule (writers, movie makers, performers, top notch engineers.)
a lot of those displaced factory workers are now working as massage therapists.
Who is going to buy the therapy, with what money? This would be OK in a closed society, where Alice gives massage to Bob for $10 and Bob cuts Alice's hair for $10. However Alice needs to buy cream from Charlie the Robot for $2 every day, and Bob needs to buy scissors from Charlie the Robot for $2 per day. After 5 days both Alice and Bob run out of money and cannot buy anything from each other. Charlie would be willing to pay $2 per day - but only to a licensed robot tech. Neither Alice nor Bob are such. Besides, Charlie only needs three techs, and Charlie already has three. Those techs need a haircut once in a month and massage once in a month, but that income is too small for Bob and Alice to even maintain their businesses (they have to close after 5 days in this scenario.)
In essence, the society separates into two groups. One group has members who buy and sell within that group. Robot Charlie makes parts for Robot Echo, and robot Echo makes parts for robot Delta, and tech Xev maintains robots Charlie and Delta in exchange for food from the robot Foxtrot. Another group is a group of people who have nothing that the "productive" group wants. We already have such groups today, they are called ghettos. A ghetto dweller wants many things that you have; but he has nothing to offer to you in exchange (aside from your life.) In the new robotic society all humans, except a few that are directly involved in the robotic manufacturing, will be that ghetto. Robots may feed the new ghetto if they want to... or not. Fact is, those humans are useless; a truly robotic AI can logically conclude that and order their extermination. That wouldn't affect the robotic manufacturing cycle in any way.
Although now that automation is starting to replace the Chinese workforce as well, there's really no reason for American companies not to move their manufacturing back to the US and save on overseas shipping and export/import regulations and taxes.
The USA still has plenty of red tape. Your robot factories will be still polluting water and air. They need even more power for those robots. You need building permits for all those factories. You need to pay royalties (a.k.a. taxes) to Obama - and those taxes tend to grow, as more and more displaced ex-workers join the crowd of permanently unemployed. Those factories require high initial investment to get started; and they will not be profitable unless you sell to the whole world. Will your prices support such sales? Do you even have retail connections all over the world to make those sales?
Compare that to the simple process of buying $k gizmos from China for $m dollars apiece and reselling here at $m+$n dollars. Your investment is short-term, and it is limited to about $k*$m dollars, and you get it all back plus $k*$n of revenue within months.
In other words, to compete with China the USA has to become China. This is possible from both ends. Either the USA lowers its standards of living (environmental, OSHA, minimum salary, taxes) or China increases theirs. Which they do, slowly. But the USA keeps increasing the burden on manufacturers to feed the entitled, so I don't know if the gap is growing or shrinking.
So Mr. Cuban thinks that if he goes to myspace his fan base will follow? Somehow I doubt it.
I'm not a member of anyone's fan base. However if I were, I would easily open a free account with yet another social network to keep track of what's happening with my precious.
This would be doubly so if the orders to switch come direct from my Gods (such as the people who I am a fan of.) Besides, what fans are pressed for time and cannot be bothered to register at a web site?
The list of medical procedures covered should be those deemed medically necessary, or appropriate by an elected board of medical doctors.
Doctors != angels. Hello, corruption! A $10K bribe is a good investment if in return you are approved for a $100K heart replacement, or something.
It will also be happening in the opposite direction. Necessary procedures will be denied or delayed until the point is moot. This, reportedly, is happening in UK right now, under their NHS.
Since the law will delegate the decisions to those panels, there is no way to accuse those doctors of bias. You have to catch them red-handed, with bribe money in the pocket, videotaped. But who wants to do that if one day he may need the same service from another doctor? If this panel denies you the surgery, as NHS does from time to time, you will die - unless you are rich enough to go to another country where money buys you whatever you want, including medical services. The USA used to be such a country.
That is why you require them to vote on the laws one at a time.
"You" have no power over your elected representatives. Your only recourse is to elect other representatives, who you will also have no power over.
They will only re-enact the laws that they really find to be important.
It is too scary to think what laws they will find important.
I think you can easily spell out the rules for a law in 1 page.
Even the list of medical services that the healthcare bill provides or does not provide will be longer. You cannot leave those decisions to bureaucrats for obvious reasons, and you cannot pay for every medical procedure known to man (cosmetic, lifestyle, etc.)
I believe that all laws should automatically have a 10, 20, or 40 year sunset clause
"Members of the Parliament, today we vote on the package of old laws that need renewal. There are 10231 laws in this package. Please vote when ready, but don't take too long - there is another package like that coming up tomorrow. Our job security has never been better!"
There is no point in having laws so complex that no one can understand all the nuances of the law.
Vague laws give too much leeway to prosecutors and judges. Overly complex laws give advantage to the crooks and tax cheats. Nobody in the government wants to change that.
That matters because the huge hidden cost of space science is the idling of Earth-side science infrastructure.
Then you are argiung against your own position. Human spaceflight is not just far more expensive; it is plain impossible at the moment if you think of Mars. Nations of the world are struggling with financial crises; this is not a convenient time to launch a few meatbags on a two-year trip to Red Planet. The trip may also kill them; that won't be good for popular support of space missions.
You are asserting that humans can make decisions on the spot. But practice shows that there is no need for such decisions. Robots report back; scientists drink coffee in the safety and comfort of their offices and look at the data. Then they issue new orders to the robots, until the pnenomenon is understood.
A modern planetary research robot is basically a wheeled platform with equipment and a decent radio link. No human would be able to carry all that, so if we send a human then the robot will be still present. Perhaps the human will want to drive the thing himself, but the actual research will be done by the same set of cameras, probes, drill bits, spectroscopes and whatnot. A human can only instruct the robot to do this or that. Those are the same instructions that can be given from Earth at the leisure of scientists - and without being pressed for time ("Hey, Bill, our oxygen runs low, we cannot go to that rock and inspect it - gotta be some other time!")
Most of science is not about sporadic enlightment that occurs to select few scientists. Majority of it is hard work on researching all possibilities and rejecting those that prove to be false. You cannot claim to have Mars researched if you only look at a couple samples and rush back home. Earlier Martian rovers went through several yearly cycles of weather - what human would be able to stay around for that long? That's the reason why if you open a modern weather station cabinet you will find instruments there, and not a meteorologist curled up. Robots are far better at doing the same boring thing over a long time.
There's also a natural synergy between humans and high energy projects.
In the context of this thread the only high energy project that comes to mind is NIF. And it is already managed by humans. Unless you are referring to the enthusiasm of masses. But you cannot do science while entertaining the crowd. If you hope you can do it, banish the thought - it will become a circus that is driven only by emotions. That's why Apollo missions ended - because the crowd got bored. You cannot run science like that because science cannot deliver "juicy bits" to you on demand - and the crowd wants that, and more, and always more. Science, like programming, is not a spectator sport.
humans make pretty good robots for surface exploration
I don't know any human who could fly to Mars without food and air for a year, then be dropped to the surface with 20G deceleration, then pick himself up and walk around for two years while sending detailed images of the planet to Earth via a transmitter in his backpack, and living all this time on solar power alone. That human also has to be suicidal because he will be abandoned on that remote planet.
A human researcher is needed only if the communication link to Earth is unacceptably slow. But even that can be dealt with by sending smarter robots. A human does not have built-in hi-res cameras or chemical labs or lasers in fingers. Robots do. Who is better now?
I just hope that someday, before you die, you smoke a joint or have a drink -- just to know what it's like
Thank you, but I respectfully refuse. I have made my decision already, and that's how it will be. I have no use of drug-induced hallucinations. I like it when my mind works correctly, as it should. I'm not deathly afraid of addiction, though my knowledge of science tells me that it is possible, over time. A far more important reason for my rejection of drugs because I would be no longer a rational person. I like to live in the real world, and I will stay here. You wouldn't want to stab your hand with a sharp knife to just experience what it feels like? I guess not. And I will not stab my brain.
If you don't, it's your loss.
I agree, and I am ready to pay that price. I honestly don't care. The only things that I care about are real objects and events - tools, products, processes, people, environment. Things that, you know, exist. Rainbow smoke within my head has no value to me. I am the ultimate materialist.
Besides, you'd suspect me of being a robot even faster if I instead say "the amount of time and effort that are currently allocated to activities that are not essential for survival but rather intended for maintenance of a proper chemical balance of the main wetware processing unit."
Well, I should have written more before hitting "Submit." I see that you are interested in "experiences." That is fine, of course - and it would be foolish to judge your goals in any way. My personal opinion, as I implied, is that a certain balance is needed in the society between taking in and producing. Otherwise you may want to wire yourself into the Matrix; there will be as many experiences as you can take, all realistic.
As long as it's relatively safe and has little chance of causing me any permanent harm, I've never seen a reason not to do something.
Well, here is a test scenario. You are in a forest, alone, with a knife in your hand. You meet a little girl and she says she is lost for weeks and nobody knows where she is. You never killed before; this will be a new experience. If you kill her, nobody will ever find out. Will you partake in that new experience?
The obvious answer is, of course, NO. But why? Clearly, the list of conditions is not expansive enough. Not only you have to be reasonably safe - others also need to be reasonably safe. You didn't mention that, but we have to assume so. Drug use is not safe - neither for you nor for others. You may think it's safe for the moment, but in small quantities everything is safe enough. Over time that safety disappears. Most people get addicted to alcohol, even if the addiction is mild. I have no need for that. I know that alcohol has mood altering effect, but my rational mind tells me that I don't need it.
You might go through life never trying -- Chocolate.
I don't like chocolate, or sweet things in general. I have no chocolate at home. I heard that some people love it, but it doesn't register with me.
if you're doing it simply because you're afraid you might not be able to control yourself because of how your father or whatever was, I think that's the wrong reason
If you look at my home page that I configured on Slashdot you will find that in the country where I was born alcohol is not exactly unknown. As matter of fact, you will be living among drunks. This is bad. I am not afraid of being unable to control myself, though if anyone is to poison me with alcohol then that would be a predictable effect. You don't have to be afraid of being unable to steer your car at 300 mph - you just know, scientifically, that it would be iffy, and you don't do it.
At the same time growing up in a country where any child could get access to barely diluted ethanol removed the sheen of exclusiveness from that option. Anyone could drink it; there is nothing special about that. I suspect that in countries where young adults are forbidden to drink the effect of forbidden fruit is strong.
I live in Europe and having a glass of wine with dinner or a beer with lunch is quite common and believe it or not -- enjoyable.
I would refuse to go along with the "common" just on rebellious grounds. It will be "I have decided, and that's it. Take it, or I leave." If you go along just because "everyone does it" then you are being controlled by the majority. I have a problem with that.
Going through life never taking any risks -- even the smallest -- because something might go wrong is just sad to me.
Taking no risks whatsoever would be boring indeed. I do take risks. For example, driving 600-700 km per day in a personal car is riskier than a quick anal probe by the TSA and then flying to the destination. But I take that risk. Hunting with firearms is riskier than laying in bed at home. I take those risks as well. Ham radio antennas are risky to install and maintain. And so on. The key here is that I choose a different set of risks. This is my own set, optimized for me. Things that I like to do are accepted even if they are somewhat risky. But I would not jump from a bridge with a bungee cord regardless of safety - it's simply not something I care doing. You couldn't pay me enough to jump from a bridge, or to dance, or to sing, or to read
What's the point of life? I'm actually interested in your view on this
There are, naturally, as many answers as there are people on the planet. For me, the purpose of life is primarily in being useful to others. I design things, I build devices, we sell them, and everyone benefits. Of course, all work and no play would be bad for anyone's mind, so some healthy amount of play is required. Right now I have a PCB open on one monitor and/. on another, as an example. Time for books will be in the evening. On the weekend I will hack a bit on home automation, or will design a gizmo that I find interesting. Or I may go to a range - or, starting in January, will go see some varmints, closely. Some of those trips require two days on the road, which is also fun in my Prius (CVT, love it.) Ham radio activities are available every weekend, if daily ragchew is not your thing. (JT65 is fun.) With all that workload and playload I don't even have time to think about altering my mind. I think it's in good enough condition already:-)
Going through life never knowing what they've missed.
That's from the point of view of an external observer. However subjectively I haven't missed anything. I have no reason to escape into a dream world; I'm very much OK with reality. Alcohol won't help solve your problems in any case; it only can make them worse.
From reading about effects of alcohol, and from seeing drunks now and then, I certainly haven't missed the money that other people waste on alcohol, and I haven't missed the headaches, and I haven't missed DUI convictions, and I haven't missed liver damage, and I haven't missed days of life lost while laying drunk... Why would I drink if there is so many things to do, so many books to read, so many places to see? Now I'm going back to work; do not distract me with all that childish foolishness:-)
No, of course not. That would fall into the category of organic solvents. I'm using alcohols (ethanol and isopropanol) as cleaning agents, but it would never occur to me to drink them. Why would I want to hurt myself?
You are correct. I do not use drugs of any sort - foliage, or organic solvents, or any other chemical waste. I understand that many people like to poison themselves, for whatever reasons; as long as they don't bother me I have no objection to that.
Majority of coding work should be preemptive coding for scalability.
PHB: Listen, Bill, I have a small programming task for you. We need an application that pops a dialog up, asks for a number, and appends that number, as plain text, to a file. Could you put this together before lunch?
Bill: Hey, boss, this is a major undertaking. Since we want to ensure scalability of this application I need to make it so it accepts a form definition language, parses it, executes scripts in another language, and then spits it into a variable, programmable set of databases which could be plain text files as you want, or ODBC connections, or The Cloud. Of course we want strong crypto on all that, and biometric authentication at every step. My team of ten will probably do it within a year or two.
Creative programming and creative problem solving.
Majority of coding work is not creative. Take an interactive form with 20 fields in WPF, for example - with data binding, with triggers, with validators.
I'm not even sure what coding is creative these days. Perhaps yet another scheduler for Linux? That certainly would be very creative. But even a driver for Linux is 99% slogging through the datasheets and through the sample code. For that you need clear mind, and not this.
By the time the tasks are allocated to coders the problems are already cut into bite-sized chunks - forms, interfaces, graphics, styles, database schema, etc. Real problem solving usually starts at a higher level, during system design. What does the customer really want here? What hardware and software should we select, and why? What are the risks? How much it will cost? How could the impossible task X be done at all? What is the plan B? Who is going to do this and that? But you'd better not be drugged out of your mind when you answer those questions.
I'm wondering how the situation could be approached tactfully so maybe Bob will see how much easier a new system could be for everyone, including him."
If the situation is as bad as you describe then there is a person (Bob) who holds the entire company hostage, and nobody is willing to defy Bob's will - not even the CEO or whoever there is.
If the CEO is not willing to cross Bob then why should you? Is there a reason why you'd sacrifice yourself for the common good? Your fellow board members aren't willing to deal with Bob, they want to sit it out while you and Bob are fighting. Do you want that role? What is the upside for you?
The company in such a shape is already in trouble. It cannot govern itself; instead of being governed by rational decisions that are based on facts the company is governed by personal opinions of strongmen who refuse to consider alternatives no matter what. This is not a healthy company to work for. Bob can flip his lid at any time, for any reason. If he, being omnipotent, wants you gone then you will be gone. If that describes the company well enough then I would quit - there is no future for the company, and there is no future for you as a part of it. The only alternative is to seize control of the company. I don't think this is what you are thinking toward because in that case Bob and his problems would be discarded as a bad dream, and you wouldn't need to ask Slashdot how to deal with a generally simple management problem (a rogue employee, a.k.a. a loose cannon.)
Sparks fly from under the grinding wheel when I'm sharpening a drill bit. Consider that each such spark is an entire Universe, with its own laws of nature and its own civilizations. Do you think the sparks in the end will magically reform into new particles of silicon carbide and steel and stick back to where they came from? No, they just burn up and become dust.
Or, like, do the robot upload dance, and you're not getting me inside one of those things any time soon.
Not any time soon, perhaps. However in the age of 95 most people would be begging for a robot body from their deathbed. It's not like they have many choices at that time...
Our number one export apparently, in terms of money spent. And yet, we can't actually have democracy at home.
Of course. You exported it all; nothing remains for domestic use. Besides, who said that the US government wants democracy for the USA? All US Presidents in last century ruled like kings. Temporary kings, but kings nevertheless - with their own court, with their own budget for fun vacations, with their own Praetorian Guard, with their secrets, and with their complete lack of responsibilities. And with the army that obeys them.
How much of a banana republic do we need to become before the UN starts to intervene
Lower than Zimbabwe. The USA will be already aflame by then, so the UN will not have a chance to save the country (not that they could anyway.)
and forces us to be monitored by their people to make sure we have a fair election?
*Forces*? Hmm. I can't think of too many americans who would cheerfully embrace such a development. The reaction is likely to be somewhat different.
Aside from ease of manipulating the picture to show anything that you wanted it to show
If the vote buyer waits just outside of the polling station you will not have time to alter anything. Even if your boss is waiting at work you still don't have the luxury of going home and spending 30 minutes on hacking in Photoshop. Besides, how many people have such software (free or not) and know how to use it? It's not just pressing buttons, you need to be somewhat an artist to copy something from area A into area B convincingly. I know how to use the GIMP, PS, Paint.Net - but I can't tell you that I can predictably do it.
Only that you have a better list of houses. The wardriving will really narrow down the list of houses.
I don't think thieves would pay much attention to that. It requires a lot of samples to determine what levels of activity coincide with occupancy. At night, for example, power consumption is the same regardless of whether you are asleep at home or awake at work. As others mentioned, you also need to know the meter ID, and for that you need to collect all this information directly from meters, making yourself very visible. Some people will talk to a "meter reader" and ask why he is here at a wrong time for a reading; people will remember that!
Slashdot Mirror
People move to a country with socialised medicine because they want to avoid Obama's boneless attempt at socialised medicine?
Canada does not require you to buy insurance. Every Canadian lawful resident is entitled to some level of healthcare. It is financed from taxes that everyone pays. If this healthcare is against your religion you don't have to use it. Canadian healthcare's dues are very low and nearly invisible on the paycheck, IIRC. You know that your contribution will not become profit of insurance companies.
That method is infinitely better than Obama's boneheaded attempt at forcing everyone to purchase an expensive service from a private company. That service violates a bunch of religious norms of a bunch of people (and even moral norms, if you are not religious at all.)
In the past, there have been people with warnings like yours. There have always been more jobs, and we get nicer and nicer things.
We ran out of those jobs already. Sure, there are jobs for miracle surgeons, and for mathematicians who can solve unsolvable differential equations in their sleep, and for businessmen who can take a walking disaster of a company and make it into another Intel or Apple. But the thing is... nobody qualifies to take those jobs. This is why the country has so many of its citizens on entitlements and without jobs.
You can treat China as a remotely located robotic factory, because for all intents and purposes it is. You pay a little for materials (robots are not yet free!) and you get back a cheap product.
But your own population cannot compete with those robots. It cannot manufacture anything that doesn't require creative, human intelligence. Artists are safe for the moment, but car makers are not. Steel makers are history. Few remaining machinists are old guys within reach of retirement, and they charge an arm and a leg for milling a part. The only jobs remaining are in areas where robots can't yet work - in restaurants, in massage salons (as you mention), in lawyers' offices, and a few other places. But those jobs are not creative - they do not bring the money in that you can give to robots. The number of truly creative jobs is miniscule (writers, movie makers, performers, top notch engineers.)
a lot of those displaced factory workers are now working as massage therapists.
Who is going to buy the therapy, with what money? This would be OK in a closed society, where Alice gives massage to Bob for $10 and Bob cuts Alice's hair for $10. However Alice needs to buy cream from Charlie the Robot for $2 every day, and Bob needs to buy scissors from Charlie the Robot for $2 per day. After 5 days both Alice and Bob run out of money and cannot buy anything from each other. Charlie would be willing to pay $2 per day - but only to a licensed robot tech. Neither Alice nor Bob are such. Besides, Charlie only needs three techs, and Charlie already has three. Those techs need a haircut once in a month and massage once in a month, but that income is too small for Bob and Alice to even maintain their businesses (they have to close after 5 days in this scenario.)
In essence, the society separates into two groups. One group has members who buy and sell within that group. Robot Charlie makes parts for Robot Echo, and robot Echo makes parts for robot Delta, and tech Xev maintains robots Charlie and Delta in exchange for food from the robot Foxtrot. Another group is a group of people who have nothing that the "productive" group wants. We already have such groups today, they are called ghettos. A ghetto dweller wants many things that you have; but he has nothing to offer to you in exchange (aside from your life.) In the new robotic society all humans, except a few that are directly involved in the robotic manufacturing, will be that ghetto. Robots may feed the new ghetto if they want to... or not. Fact is, those humans are useless; a truly robotic AI can logically conclude that and order their extermination. That wouldn't affect the robotic manufacturing cycle in any way.
Although now that automation is starting to replace the Chinese workforce as well, there's really no reason for American companies not to move their manufacturing back to the US and save on overseas shipping and export/import regulations and taxes.
The USA still has plenty of red tape. Your robot factories will be still polluting water and air. They need even more power for those robots. You need building permits for all those factories. You need to pay royalties (a.k.a. taxes) to Obama - and those taxes tend to grow, as more and more displaced ex-workers join the crowd of permanently unemployed. Those factories require high initial investment to get started; and they will not be profitable unless you sell to the whole world. Will your prices support such sales? Do you even have retail connections all over the world to make those sales?
Compare that to the simple process of buying $k gizmos from China for $m dollars apiece and reselling here at $m+$n dollars. Your investment is short-term, and it is limited to about $k*$m dollars, and you get it all back plus $k*$n of revenue within months.
In other words, to compete with China the USA has to become China. This is possible from both ends. Either the USA lowers its standards of living (environmental, OSHA, minimum salary, taxes) or China increases theirs. Which they do, slowly. But the USA keeps increasing the burden on manufacturers to feed the entitled, so I don't know if the gap is growing or shrinking.
So Mr. Cuban thinks that if he goes to myspace his fan base will follow? Somehow I doubt it.
I'm not a member of anyone's fan base. However if I were, I would easily open a free account with yet another social network to keep track of what's happening with my precious.
This would be doubly so if the orders to switch come direct from my Gods (such as the people who I am a fan of.) Besides, what fans are pressed for time and cannot be bothered to register at a web site?
The list of medical procedures covered should be those deemed medically necessary, or appropriate by an elected board of medical doctors.
Doctors != angels. Hello, corruption! A $10K bribe is a good investment if in return you are approved for a $100K heart replacement, or something.
It will also be happening in the opposite direction. Necessary procedures will be denied or delayed until the point is moot. This, reportedly, is happening in UK right now, under their NHS.
Since the law will delegate the decisions to those panels, there is no way to accuse those doctors of bias. You have to catch them red-handed, with bribe money in the pocket, videotaped. But who wants to do that if one day he may need the same service from another doctor? If this panel denies you the surgery, as NHS does from time to time, you will die - unless you are rich enough to go to another country where money buys you whatever you want, including medical services. The USA used to be such a country.
That is why you require them to vote on the laws one at a time.
"You" have no power over your elected representatives. Your only recourse is to elect other representatives, who you will also have no power over.
They will only re-enact the laws that they really find to be important.
It is too scary to think what laws they will find important.
I think you can easily spell out the rules for a law in 1 page.
Even the list of medical services that the healthcare bill provides or does not provide will be longer. You cannot leave those decisions to bureaucrats for obvious reasons, and you cannot pay for every medical procedure known to man (cosmetic, lifestyle, etc.)
I believe that all laws should automatically have a 10, 20, or 40 year sunset clause
"Members of the Parliament, today we vote on the package of old laws that need renewal. There are 10231 laws in this package. Please vote when ready, but don't take too long - there is another package like that coming up tomorrow. Our job security has never been better!"
There is no point in having laws so complex that no one can understand all the nuances of the law.
Vague laws give too much leeway to prosecutors and judges. Overly complex laws give advantage to the crooks and tax cheats. Nobody in the government wants to change that.
That matters because the huge hidden cost of space science is the idling of Earth-side science infrastructure.
Then you are argiung against your own position. Human spaceflight is not just far more expensive; it is plain impossible at the moment if you think of Mars. Nations of the world are struggling with financial crises; this is not a convenient time to launch a few meatbags on a two-year trip to Red Planet. The trip may also kill them; that won't be good for popular support of space missions.
You are asserting that humans can make decisions on the spot. But practice shows that there is no need for such decisions. Robots report back; scientists drink coffee in the safety and comfort of their offices and look at the data. Then they issue new orders to the robots, until the pnenomenon is understood.
A modern planetary research robot is basically a wheeled platform with equipment and a decent radio link. No human would be able to carry all that, so if we send a human then the robot will be still present. Perhaps the human will want to drive the thing himself, but the actual research will be done by the same set of cameras, probes, drill bits, spectroscopes and whatnot. A human can only instruct the robot to do this or that. Those are the same instructions that can be given from Earth at the leisure of scientists - and without being pressed for time ("Hey, Bill, our oxygen runs low, we cannot go to that rock and inspect it - gotta be some other time!")
Most of science is not about sporadic enlightment that occurs to select few scientists. Majority of it is hard work on researching all possibilities and rejecting those that prove to be false. You cannot claim to have Mars researched if you only look at a couple samples and rush back home. Earlier Martian rovers went through several yearly cycles of weather - what human would be able to stay around for that long? That's the reason why if you open a modern weather station cabinet you will find instruments there, and not a meteorologist curled up. Robots are far better at doing the same boring thing over a long time.
There's also a natural synergy between humans and high energy projects.
In the context of this thread the only high energy project that comes to mind is NIF. And it is already managed by humans. Unless you are referring to the enthusiasm of masses. But you cannot do science while entertaining the crowd. If you hope you can do it, banish the thought - it will become a circus that is driven only by emotions. That's why Apollo missions ended - because the crowd got bored. You cannot run science like that because science cannot deliver "juicy bits" to you on demand - and the crowd wants that, and more, and always more. Science, like programming, is not a spectator sport.
humans make pretty good robots for surface exploration
I don't know any human who could fly to Mars without food and air for a year, then be dropped to the surface with 20G deceleration, then pick himself up and walk around for two years while sending detailed images of the planet to Earth via a transmitter in his backpack, and living all this time on solar power alone. That human also has to be suicidal because he will be abandoned on that remote planet.
A human researcher is needed only if the communication link to Earth is unacceptably slow. But even that can be dealt with by sending smarter robots. A human does not have built-in hi-res cameras or chemical labs or lasers in fingers. Robots do. Who is better now?
I just hope that someday, before you die, you smoke a joint or have a drink -- just to know what it's like
Thank you, but I respectfully refuse. I have made my decision already, and that's how it will be. I have no use of drug-induced hallucinations. I like it when my mind works correctly, as it should. I'm not deathly afraid of addiction, though my knowledge of science tells me that it is possible, over time. A far more important reason for my rejection of drugs because I would be no longer a rational person. I like to live in the real world, and I will stay here. You wouldn't want to stab your hand with a sharp knife to just experience what it feels like? I guess not. And I will not stab my brain.
If you don't, it's your loss.
I agree, and I am ready to pay that price. I honestly don't care. The only things that I care about are real objects and events - tools, products, processes, people, environment. Things that, you know, exist. Rainbow smoke within my head has no value to me. I am the ultimate materialist.
You know, sometimes a word is just a word :-)
Besides, you'd suspect me of being a robot even faster if I instead say "the amount of time and effort that are currently allocated to activities that are not essential for survival but rather intended for maintenance of a proper chemical balance of the main wetware processing unit."
Well, I should have written more before hitting "Submit." I see that you are interested in "experiences." That is fine, of course - and it would be foolish to judge your goals in any way. My personal opinion, as I implied, is that a certain balance is needed in the society between taking in and producing. Otherwise you may want to wire yourself into the Matrix; there will be as many experiences as you can take, all realistic.
As long as it's relatively safe and has little chance of causing me any permanent harm, I've never seen a reason not to do something.
Well, here is a test scenario. You are in a forest, alone, with a knife in your hand. You meet a little girl and she says she is lost for weeks and nobody knows where she is. You never killed before; this will be a new experience. If you kill her, nobody will ever find out. Will you partake in that new experience?
The obvious answer is, of course, NO. But why? Clearly, the list of conditions is not expansive enough. Not only you have to be reasonably safe - others also need to be reasonably safe. You didn't mention that, but we have to assume so. Drug use is not safe - neither for you nor for others. You may think it's safe for the moment, but in small quantities everything is safe enough. Over time that safety disappears. Most people get addicted to alcohol, even if the addiction is mild. I have no need for that. I know that alcohol has mood altering effect, but my rational mind tells me that I don't need it.
You might go through life never trying -- Chocolate.
I don't like chocolate, or sweet things in general. I have no chocolate at home. I heard that some people love it, but it doesn't register with me.
if you're doing it simply because you're afraid you might not be able to control yourself because of how your father or whatever was, I think that's the wrong reason
If you look at my home page that I configured on Slashdot you will find that in the country where I was born alcohol is not exactly unknown. As matter of fact, you will be living among drunks. This is bad. I am not afraid of being unable to control myself, though if anyone is to poison me with alcohol then that would be a predictable effect. You don't have to be afraid of being unable to steer your car at 300 mph - you just know, scientifically, that it would be iffy, and you don't do it.
At the same time growing up in a country where any child could get access to barely diluted ethanol removed the sheen of exclusiveness from that option. Anyone could drink it; there is nothing special about that. I suspect that in countries where young adults are forbidden to drink the effect of forbidden fruit is strong.
I live in Europe and having a glass of wine with dinner or a beer with lunch is quite common and believe it or not -- enjoyable.
I would refuse to go along with the "common" just on rebellious grounds. It will be "I have decided, and that's it. Take it, or I leave." If you go along just because "everyone does it" then you are being controlled by the majority. I have a problem with that.
Going through life never taking any risks -- even the smallest -- because something might go wrong is just sad to me.
Taking no risks whatsoever would be boring indeed. I do take risks. For example, driving 600-700 km per day in a personal car is riskier than a quick anal probe by the TSA and then flying to the destination. But I take that risk. Hunting with firearms is riskier than laying in bed at home. I take those risks as well. Ham radio antennas are risky to install and maintain. And so on. The key here is that I choose a different set of risks. This is my own set, optimized for me. Things that I like to do are accepted even if they are somewhat risky. But I would not jump from a bridge with a bungee cord regardless of safety - it's simply not something I care doing. You couldn't pay me enough to jump from a bridge, or to dance, or to sing, or to read
What's the point of life? I'm actually interested in your view on this
There are, naturally, as many answers as there are people on the planet. For me, the purpose of life is primarily in being useful to others. I design things, I build devices, we sell them, and everyone benefits. Of course, all work and no play would be bad for anyone's mind, so some healthy amount of play is required. Right now I have a PCB open on one monitor and /. on another, as an example. Time for books will be in the evening. On the weekend I will hack a bit on home automation, or will design a gizmo that I find interesting. Or I may go to a range - or, starting in January, will go see some varmints, closely. Some of those trips require two days on the road, which is also fun in my Prius (CVT, love it.) Ham radio activities are available every weekend, if daily ragchew is not your thing. (JT65 is fun.) With all that workload and playload I don't even have time to think about altering my mind. I think it's in good enough condition already :-)
Going through life never knowing what they've missed.
That's from the point of view of an external observer. However subjectively I haven't missed anything. I have no reason to escape into a dream world; I'm very much OK with reality. Alcohol won't help solve your problems in any case; it only can make them worse.
From reading about effects of alcohol, and from seeing drunks now and then, I certainly haven't missed the money that other people waste on alcohol, and I haven't missed the headaches, and I haven't missed DUI convictions, and I haven't missed liver damage, and I haven't missed days of life lost while laying drunk... Why would I drink if there is so many things to do, so many books to read, so many places to see? Now I'm going back to work; do not distract me with all that childish foolishness :-)
Do you drink?
No, of course not. That would fall into the category of organic solvents. I'm using alcohols (ethanol and isopropanol) as cleaning agents, but it would never occur to me to drink them. Why would I want to hurt myself?
I assume you aren't a recreational pot smoker.
You are correct. I do not use drugs of any sort - foliage, or organic solvents, or any other chemical waste. I understand that many people like to poison themselves, for whatever reasons; as long as they don't bother me I have no objection to that.
Majority of coding work should be preemptive coding for scalability.
PHB: Listen, Bill, I have a small programming task for you. We need an application that pops a dialog up, asks for a number, and appends that number, as plain text, to a file. Could you put this together before lunch?
Bill: Hey, boss, this is a major undertaking. Since we want to ensure scalability of this application I need to make it so it accepts a form definition language, parses it, executes scripts in another language, and then spits it into a variable, programmable set of databases which could be plain text files as you want, or ODBC connections, or The Cloud. Of course we want strong crypto on all that, and biometric authentication at every step. My team of ten will probably do it within a year or two.
PHB: Bill, are you high?
Creative programming and creative problem solving.
Majority of coding work is not creative. Take an interactive form with 20 fields in WPF, for example - with data binding, with triggers, with validators.
I'm not even sure what coding is creative these days. Perhaps yet another scheduler for Linux? That certainly would be very creative. But even a driver for Linux is 99% slogging through the datasheets and through the sample code. For that you need clear mind, and not this.
By the time the tasks are allocated to coders the problems are already cut into bite-sized chunks - forms, interfaces, graphics, styles, database schema, etc. Real problem solving usually starts at a higher level, during system design. What does the customer really want here? What hardware and software should we select, and why? What are the risks? How much it will cost? How could the impossible task X be done at all? What is the plan B? Who is going to do this and that? But you'd better not be drugged out of your mind when you answer those questions.
I'm wondering how the situation could be approached tactfully so maybe Bob will see how much easier a new system could be for everyone, including him."
If the situation is as bad as you describe then there is a person (Bob) who holds the entire company hostage, and nobody is willing to defy Bob's will - not even the CEO or whoever there is.
If the CEO is not willing to cross Bob then why should you? Is there a reason why you'd sacrifice yourself for the common good? Your fellow board members aren't willing to deal with Bob, they want to sit it out while you and Bob are fighting. Do you want that role? What is the upside for you?
The company in such a shape is already in trouble. It cannot govern itself; instead of being governed by rational decisions that are based on facts the company is governed by personal opinions of strongmen who refuse to consider alternatives no matter what. This is not a healthy company to work for. Bob can flip his lid at any time, for any reason. If he, being omnipotent, wants you gone then you will be gone. If that describes the company well enough then I would quit - there is no future for the company, and there is no future for you as a part of it. The only alternative is to seize control of the company. I don't think this is what you are thinking toward because in that case Bob and his problems would be discarded as a bad dream, and you wouldn't need to ask Slashdot how to deal with a generally simple management problem (a rogue employee, a.k.a. a loose cannon.)
Sparks fly from under the grinding wheel when I'm sharpening a drill bit. Consider that each such spark is an entire Universe, with its own laws of nature and its own civilizations. Do you think the sparks in the end will magically reform into new particles of silicon carbide and steel and stick back to where they came from? No, they just burn up and become dust.
Or, like, do the robot upload dance, and you're not getting me inside one of those things any time soon.
Not any time soon, perhaps. However in the age of 95 most people would be begging for a robot body from their deathbed. It's not like they have many choices at that time...
Our number one export apparently, in terms of money spent. And yet, we can't actually have democracy at home.
Of course. You exported it all; nothing remains for domestic use. Besides, who said that the US government wants democracy for the USA? All US Presidents in last century ruled like kings. Temporary kings, but kings nevertheless - with their own court, with their own budget for fun vacations, with their own Praetorian Guard, with their secrets, and with their complete lack of responsibilities. And with the army that obeys them.
How much of a banana republic do we need to become before the UN starts to intervene
Lower than Zimbabwe. The USA will be already aflame by then, so the UN will not have a chance to save the country (not that they could anyway.)
and forces us to be monitored by their people to make sure we have a fair election?
*Forces*? Hmm. I can't think of too many americans who would cheerfully embrace such a development. The reaction is likely to be somewhat different.
Aside from ease of manipulating the picture to show anything that you wanted it to show
If the vote buyer waits just outside of the polling station you will not have time to alter anything. Even if your boss is waiting at work you still don't have the luxury of going home and spending 30 minutes on hacking in Photoshop. Besides, how many people have such software (free or not) and know how to use it? It's not just pressing buttons, you need to be somewhat an artist to copy something from area A into area B convincingly. I know how to use the GIMP, PS, Paint.Net - but I can't tell you that I can predictably do it.
Only that you have a better list of houses. The wardriving will really narrow down the list of houses.
I don't think thieves would pay much attention to that. It requires a lot of samples to determine what levels of activity coincide with occupancy. At night, for example, power consumption is the same regardless of whether you are asleep at home or awake at work. As others mentioned, you also need to know the meter ID, and for that you need to collect all this information directly from meters, making yourself very visible. Some people will talk to a "meter reader" and ask why he is here at a wrong time for a reading; people will remember that!
11. Call the house (using White Pages) and if anyone answers say "This is Rachel from Cardholder Services..."