apparently you are either woefully uninformed or have a very selective memory regarding US government behavior.
our government has tortured people to death very recently. some of them we knew to be innocent. we have partnered with governments every bit as hateful as iran to outsource even more torture (Egypt as an example.) take your strawmen elsewhere
either the information was damaging and valuable or it was harmless and worthless. you pick. you can't have it both ways like you seem to be trying to.
i can see that you're not in the mood to be swayed by logic, reasoning, or facts, but i will still point out a worthwhile quote by Jay Rosen at NYU School of Journalism, "The watchdog press died; we have this instead."
like covering up the apache killings of the journalists in Iraq when all the government really had to do was admit that a mistake had been made in a war zone?
i guarantee you that if our government's actions were less continually ignoble there would be many fewer leaks across the board.
or perhaps the number one thing the government could do to prevent leaks in future would be to... i don't know... *NOT DO ILLEGAL SHIT* or, and i know i'm way off base, *NOT SUBVERT ITS OWN IDEALS OF FREEDOM AND EQUALITY*
But, sadly James Earl Jones already played the US Government:
Whistler: "I want peace on earth and goodwill toward men." Bernard Abbott: "We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing."
might want to take off those naivety inducing rose-colored glasses.
probable cause is what the arresting officer says it is. and if you live in e.g. Massachusetts you can be arrested for "wiretapping" for recording your surroundings to document that their stated probable cause is bogus.
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
But hey, the democrats think it's just a piece of paper and the republicans think it's a suicide pact.
i think that long term, our society's abandonment of the constitution is the real suicide pact.
Transmission line and impedance matching losses along with NIMBY argue against your belief in top-down, mega reactor reliant infrastructure being more efficient than alternatives. You could still be right, but it's best not to ignore these losses when calculating efficiency. I'd expect that smaller local co-generation (wind, trash to steam, depolymerization etc.) would be more efficient. But best would be to change building codes to require new construction be passivhaus and thus reduce standing energy consumption, saving it for vehicles. Also, change the federal highway trust fund to only fund projects that build railbed into medians of roads with > some threshold of vehicular traffic for eventual and gradual expansion of rail transit.
and a distraction from policy measures that could actually solve the problem (and other pernicious problems at the same time): reducing sugar and ethanol import tariffs drastically.
It is possible that Haiti and other impoverished nations could develop into self-sustaining economies by adopting some of Brazil's agricultural methods while providing a robust, diverse supply of fuel. And with corn's inefficiency versus sugar ethanol, it would go back to its proper market of food, reducing onerous cost burdens imposed on Mexico and Latin America for corn meal, a staple food.
The increase in the amount of corn used to produce ethanol has exerted upward pressure on corn prices, boosted the demand for cropland, and raised the price of animal feed. Those effects, in turn, have lifted the prices of many farm commodities (for example, soybeans, meat, poultry, and dairy products) and, consequently, the retail price of food. The rise in food prices has affected not only the costs to individual consumers but also spending for the federal government’s food assistance programs.
"The price of oil is driving up the price of corn (because of increased ethanol production), which is driving up the price of tortillas," said Peter Navarro, a business professor at UC Irvine. "You push on one thing and another thing moves," added Navarro, the author of "If It's Raining in Brazil, Buy Starbucks."
He said the U.S. ethanol stampede could be thought of "as a regressive tax on Mexico, because it raises the price of a basic commodity. In economics, we call these general equilibrium effects. Something happens in one market and it ripples through other markets."
a solicitor's fine, but for criminal proceedings, i'd have the solicitor grab a barrister. since this is a politically charged case, i'd probably go for a Queen's Counsel.
sigh. well, have fun with your own religious convictions on these matters. i hope you made yourself feel better by mocking me, because that's the only good that could conceivably come of such juvenile behavior.
i mostly objected to your (and the public's at large) absolutism ("there can NEVER be a market in health care"), self-imposed ignorance, and unwillingness to confront the fact that our societal ignorance is contributing to the escalating costs.
and love is a two way street. i'd rather not pauper my family to give me a poor (or at least poorly understood) chance at a year or so more. since it's my decision, my expression of love wins over theirs.
and i take issue with your example of dying young as a representative example of the sorts of things that meangingfully increase the cost burden of our medical system. generally speaking, ailments of youth are easy and cheap to prevent and treat. it's our expectation of care to prevent the inevitable at the end of our lives that is crushing our economy (in addition to rent seekers).
all of this controversy is window dressing around our society's inability to deal with the fact that we are mortal and WILL die. There're very few people whom any has even claimed to have avoided death (leaving the credibility of those claims for another discussion).
oh, and there are ads for ERs all the time. and even "not-for-profit" hospitals are run for the benefit of their corporate officers and their huge salaries and bonuses, just like Cisco has shown itself to be recently in the news.
here's an example... and they have several large billboards strategically placed en route to their competitors.
90+% of my encounters with the medical profession have been under circumstances wherein I could easily, trivially have walked away from the table. regular checkups? there's an opportunity for a market. voluntary procedures? there's another. hey, look! it's laser eye surgery. price keeps dropping every year, yet it's not covered by that many health plans. it's amazing.
and if you were less selfish, your example of "take this expensive drug or die" is also a free exchange. you have certain assets and you are choosing to either give those assets to your family when you die or to a stranger potentially selling snake oil and/or false hope. i would choose my family in such a scenario.
the far greater problem is that people are so conditioned against asking for pricing information from medical professionals that there is a social stigma attached to it. must be nice for those on the receiving end of those rents (in the economic sense of the term rent http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_rent). one could have a far better impact on the cost burden of health care on society in aggregate if providers were required to provide you with pricing information a priori whenever possible (e.g. when you are looking at choosing a general practitioner and visit them).
alternatively you could broaden our use of the inquisitorial system... but i see that rightly raised your hackles. where might that be familiar from? Oh yeah... the Inquisition.
Of course, AGW is turning into religions for and against, so it might be poetic justice after all if we shift to such a system, especially with the correlation between AGW advocates and derision of current christians as violent predicated on the last Inquisition, all to much chuckling.
of course, if the actual misgiving is the politicization of research, then may i suggest that scientists find nonpolitical sources of funding? like philanthropists. or voluntary micro-payment fund-raising. but even that might not help in this case because their research claims that broad societal change is necessary. societal change is inherently political and effects everyone. it's a bit too faux naive to claim to be wounded by the slings of your political opponents unfairly when you are engaged in politics yourself rather than (or in addition to) science.
or make a steering wheel with a chording keyboard in the grips so one can text/email more safely than people do now. (yes i know it'd be better if people didn't do those things, but laws aren't that effective at curbing such widespread, minor behavior.)
Okay, the technology might be a decade away, and the railgun thing obviously wont happen for a while (and was somewhat sci-fi inspired, i will admit), but keeping an eye on that possibility might be a good thing to do
i'm tolerably certain that our RF, EMP, and light emanations over the past century or so will be noticeable by the time they arrive at each star. I think it behooves us to start looking for whoever might be in the neighborhood before they come around and beat our asses for making too much noise. Kinda like an interstellar keger. no one said that once we suspected or confirmed existence of aliens that we had to make contact intentionally...
Marconi's first transatlantic broadcasts alone probably had enough power and covered enough of the spectrum to be detectable quite a long ways off. is it likely given the multiplication of probabilities involved? no. but neither is listening for neighbors likely to do more to attract them than our history and current emanations.
Slashdot Mirror
apparently you are either woefully uninformed or have a very selective memory regarding US government behavior.
our government has tortured people to death very recently. some of them we knew to be innocent. we have partnered with governments every bit as hateful as iran to outsource even more torture (Egypt as an example.) take your strawmen elsewhere
either the information was damaging and valuable or it was harmless and worthless. you pick. you can't have it both ways like you seem to be trying to.
i can see that you're not in the mood to be swayed by logic, reasoning, or facts, but i will still point out a worthwhile quote by Jay Rosen at NYU School of Journalism, "The watchdog press died; we have this instead."
http://vimeo.com/17393373
http://pressthink.org/
like covering up the apache killings of the journalists in Iraq when all the government really had to do was admit that a mistake had been made in a war zone?
i guarantee you that if our government's actions were less continually ignoble there would be many fewer leaks across the board.
or perhaps the number one thing the government could do to prevent leaks in future would be to... i don't know... *NOT DO ILLEGAL SHIT* or, and i know i'm way off base, *NOT SUBVERT ITS OWN IDEALS OF FREEDOM AND EQUALITY*
But, sadly James Earl Jones already played the US Government:
Whistler: "I want peace on earth and goodwill toward men."
Bernard Abbott: "We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing."
actually, it's more like the Emerald city on rails
cool story, bro.
might want to take off those naivety inducing rose-colored glasses.
probable cause is what the arresting officer says it is. and if you live in e.g. Massachusetts you can be arrested for "wiretapping" for recording your surroundings to document that their stated probable cause is bogus.
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
But hey, the democrats think it's just a piece of paper and the republicans think it's a suicide pact.
i think that long term, our society's abandonment of the constitution is the real suicide pact.
you'll want >=8x PCIe since most interesting applications (especially those that distributed computing is worst at) are IO bound.
problem: FPGA parts big enough to have PCIe and DDR interfaces and still do interesting stuff with are expensive on their own @ $600
http://avnetexpress.avnet.com/store/em/EMController/FPGA/Xilinx/XC5VLX50T-1FF1136C/_/R-4696910/A-4696910/An-0?action=part&catalogId=500201&langId=-1&storeId=500201&listIndex=-1
http://www.em.avnet.com/evk/home/0,1707,RID%253D0%2526CID%253D37133%2526CCD%253DUSA%2526SID%253D32214%2526DID%253DDF2%2526LID%253D32232%2526PRT%253D0%2526PVW%253D%2526BID%253DDF2%2526CTP%253DEVK,00.html
$1100 for the board is as cheap as i've seen yet.
nice idea, but it will be dirt slow and 10x as expensive.
btw: welcome to 2003 when Xilinx released the Virtex II Pro.
Transmission line and impedance matching losses along with NIMBY argue against your belief in top-down, mega reactor reliant infrastructure being more efficient than alternatives. You could still be right, but it's best not to ignore these losses when calculating efficiency. I'd expect that smaller local co-generation (wind, trash to steam, depolymerization etc.) would be more efficient. But best would be to change building codes to require new construction be passivhaus and thus reduce standing energy consumption, saving it for vehicles. Also, change the federal highway trust fund to only fund projects that build railbed into medians of roads with > some threshold of vehicular traffic for eventual and gradual expansion of rail transit.
then evolution happens...
???
grey goo... (-- i bet you thought this would say 'profit'.)
and a distraction from policy measures that could actually solve the problem (and other pernicious problems at the same time): reducing sugar and ethanol import tariffs drastically.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethanol_fuel_in_Brazil#Comparison_with_the_United_States
http://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/sc019
http://sugarcaneblog.com/2010/03/22/washington-post-editorial-on-u-s-sugar-policy/
http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=12623
It is possible that Haiti and other impoverished nations could develop into self-sustaining economies by adopting some of Brazil's agricultural methods while providing a robust, diverse supply of fuel. And with corn's inefficiency versus sugar ethanol, it would go back to its proper market of food, reducing onerous cost burdens imposed on Mexico and Latin America for corn meal, a staple food.
http://www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/100xx/doc10057/MainText.4.1.shtml
http://www.econ.ucsb.edu/~tedb/Courses/Ec1F07/tortillas.htm
and you hate freedom. which makes you a terrorist. c wat i did thar?
a solicitor's fine, but for criminal proceedings, i'd have the solicitor grab a barrister. since this is a politically charged case, i'd probably go for a Queen's Counsel.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barrister
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Queen's_Counsel
sigh. well, have fun with your own religious convictions on these matters. i hope you made yourself feel better by mocking me, because that's the only good that could conceivably come of such juvenile behavior.
oh, and here's a news story documenting the efficacy of ER advertising...
http://www2.wsls.com/lifestyles/2010/jun/30/lewis-gale-medical-centers-billboard-ca-57372-vi-12221/
i mostly objected to your (and the public's at large) absolutism ("there can NEVER be a market in health care"), self-imposed ignorance, and unwillingness to confront the fact that our societal ignorance is contributing to the escalating costs.
and love is a two way street. i'd rather not pauper my family to give me a poor (or at least poorly understood) chance at a year or so more. since it's my decision, my expression of love wins over theirs.
and i take issue with your example of dying young as a representative example of the sorts of things that meangingfully increase the cost burden of our medical system. generally speaking, ailments of youth are easy and cheap to prevent and treat. it's our expectation of care to prevent the inevitable at the end of our lives that is crushing our economy (in addition to rent seekers).
all of this controversy is window dressing around our society's inability to deal with the fact that we are mortal and WILL die. There're very few people whom any has even claimed to have avoided death (leaving the credibility of those claims for another discussion).
oh, and there are ads for ERs all the time. and even "not-for-profit" hospitals are run for the benefit of their corporate officers and their huge salaries and bonuses, just like Cisco has shown itself to be recently in the news.
here's an example... and they have several large billboards strategically placed en route to their competitors.
http://www.lewis-gale.com/
90+% of my encounters with the medical profession have been under circumstances wherein I could easily, trivially have walked away from the table. regular checkups? there's an opportunity for a market. voluntary procedures? there's another. hey, look! it's laser eye surgery. price keeps dropping every year, yet it's not covered by that many health plans. it's amazing.
and if you were less selfish, your example of "take this expensive drug or die" is also a free exchange. you have certain assets and you are choosing to either give those assets to your family when you die or to a stranger potentially selling snake oil and/or false hope. i would choose my family in such a scenario.
the far greater problem is that people are so conditioned against asking for pricing information from medical professionals that there is a social stigma attached to it. must be nice for those on the receiving end of those rents (in the economic sense of the term rent http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_rent). one could have a far better impact on the cost burden of health care on society in aggregate if providers were required to provide you with pricing information a priori whenever possible (e.g. when you are looking at choosing a general practitioner and visit them).
you're complaining that our legal system, which is predicated in adversarial contention, is in fact adversarial?
the part you ought to hope is neutral (and able to adjudicate the issues) is the judge.
It's when we try to take the adversarial out of our legal system that we lose. e.g. FISA court.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adversarial_system
alternatively you could broaden our use of the inquisitorial system... but i see that rightly raised your hackles. where might that be familiar from? Oh yeah... the Inquisition.
Of course, AGW is turning into religions for and against, so it might be poetic justice after all if we shift to such a system, especially with the correlation between AGW advocates and derision of current christians as violent predicated on the last Inquisition, all to much chuckling.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inquisitorial_system
of course, if the actual misgiving is the politicization of research, then may i suggest that scientists find nonpolitical sources of funding? like philanthropists. or voluntary micro-payment fund-raising. but even that might not help in this case because their research claims that broad societal change is necessary. societal change is inherently political and effects everyone. it's a bit too faux naive to claim to be wounded by the slings of your political opponents unfairly when you are engaged in politics yourself rather than (or in addition to) science.
or make a steering wheel with a chording keyboard in the grips so one can text/email more safely than people do now. (yes i know it'd be better if people didn't do those things, but laws aren't that effective at curbing such widespread, minor behavior.)
and this is what utilitarianism gets you when used by real people with short utility time horizons.
http://www.livescience.com/common/media/video/player.php?videoRef=080201-railgun
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y54aLcC3G74
might be closer than you think.
or you might be accounting for government program delays.
Yes, please.
i'm tolerably certain that our RF, EMP, and light emanations over the past century or so will be noticeable by the time they arrive at each star. I think it behooves us to start looking for whoever might be in the neighborhood before they come around and beat our asses for making too much noise. Kinda like an interstellar keger. no one said that once we suspected or confirmed existence of aliens that we had to make contact intentionally...
Marconi's first transatlantic broadcasts alone probably had enough power and covered enough of the spectrum to be detectable quite a long ways off. is it likely given the multiplication of probabilities involved? no. but neither is listening for neighbors likely to do more to attract them than our history and current emanations.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spark-gap_transmitter