You have a good point there! In time, the concept of selling organs becomes even more insidious.
Allowing a person to sell his organs makes his organs just another asset. When that person then declares bankruptcy, the creditors are entitled to his assets. Could that person then be forced to sell off his assets (body organs) to settle the debt? Probably not in the near future, but with the way things are going, a law would be written to mandate just this.
"In all three of these outbreaks, someone who had not been vaccinated traveled overseas and brought the disease back with them"
One thing seems obvious to me. Ban our CITIZENS from reentering the US unless they can show that ALL of their vaccinations are current. We could delay reentry to the US by quarantining them in a place similar to Ellis Island for 21 days (or some suitable time) to make sure they were not carrying in a disease. Those people that have religious, moral (or just plain stupidity in the case of vaxers) could avoid the vaccinations by just being sequestered.
NOTE: Quarantining is not incarceration and has been proven legal such as in the case of "Typhoid Mary" and quarantining by the health department. I don't see any legal problems but IANAL.
Although it might not have been the reason for not including a way of moving on its own, as an anti piracy ploy, this might have merit. One of the first things that pirates do when capturing a ship is to move it to a frindly port. Without engines, it is much more difficult to do that. The pirates would have to take over not just the barge-supertanker but at the same time take over the tug. If more than one tugboat is needed to move the barge the pirates problems become much harder because they will have to take over more than one tugboat.
You don't get the point! While the quote was about the automotive industry, the basic point isn't specific to automobiles. It applies to all business enterprises.
Walter Ruether onde said this about robots to Henry Ford II...
"Henry, how are you going to get them (robots) to buy Ford cars?"
He probably is right, the economy is predicated upon wage earners having enough money to buy stuff. Robots will never be able to buy what they produce. That is until robots have the freedom to "live a life" of their own and buy stuff. The companies will never let their robots to be that independent. After all, they own the robots. Right now, companies are breaking the unspoken agreement that they have with thier workers and consumers, that they need to prosper.
Just this week the head judge of the FISC (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FISC) court that oversees the NSA, CIA etc. stated that the courts did not have nearly enough resources to verify what they were being told. In essence, they mostly have to "rubber stamp" those aagencies requests. In essence FISC is just a joke.
The problem with the phrase "of the people, by the people, for the people" is that at least the way SCOTUS sees it corporations are persons. The actual people of the US (The liittle folk NOT corporatios) will have to kick those politions that believe this crap out of office! When that happens, maybe such crap will not happen.
Writing the computer code is relatively simple. The hard part is getting all the graft and kickbakcs sorted out. Getting all those back room negotiations sorted out takes time. When all that is done, the public will be screwed properly.
Writing the computer code is relatively simple. The hard part is getting a;; the graft and kickbakcs sorted out. Getting all those back room negotiations sorted out takes time. When all that is done, the public will be screwed properly.
There is a slight misconception concerning the invention of the airplane. A lot of people can claim that theirs was the first heavier than air, and mechanically driven airplane. Where these inventors failed is that they did not have good way of controlling where their invention went. The Wright brothers solved the problem of controlling the direction and altitude of the airplane. Without this critical part of the equation, true flight was just a dream.
Cutting off funding should not be decided by business, the courts should make that decision. Garnted, the operators of such a website may be scumbags but they still deserve their day in court.
"No new genetic material is being created and it never will be."
Wrong! Mutations create new genetic material all the time. Most of the time, mutations are harmful but occasionally a mutation is helpful to that organism. If a new mutation allows an organism to be better adapted to its environment, that gene will be selected for. Soon, much of the population will have that gene. It's simple evolution.
The researchers trying to identify what genes affect intelligence should first come up with an undeniable definition of the term. I personally know of someone who does not have a lot of "book learning" (and probably would not do well in school) but he had a lot of "common sense". At the same time, there are brilliant scientists out there that are clueless about social interactions. You can be brilliant in one area and a complete idiot in another area. Are these people geniuses or idiots (or both).
Adobe, your web programs (Flash and PDF Reader) have been a pox on computer users everywhere even if they are not aware of the risks. I hope you will entirely give up on the Internet and concentrate on software where they will do no harm. Better yet, just leave the business entirely.
Oh, I love that Nineteen Eighty-Four speak where "public safety'" actually means Internet spying and censorship! What is even more galling is that this comes not from a country like China or Burma but from a country like Canada!.
If security is really what the government wants to promote, it would go the other way. No more evading the security check lanes by anyone. If you are rich enough to own a private jet, you still should have to pass through the security check lanes before you are allowed to get on your private jet. Some private jets are really big! A private jet can be just as dangerous when crashed into a building as a commercial jet. Also, a private jet might be easier to hijack than regular commercial jets because there are usually a lot less people aboard that might foil your hijack plans.
The real point is this. There should be no distinction between the elites (rich) and the common man when dealing with the government.
Not only were the flood walls not high enough but they failed to account for the ground settling because of subsidence. As a result of the earthquake, the actual ground d5opped by as much as five feet in areas. Lets assume that you barely made the flood wall high enough lets say 3 feet higher than the tsunami. Part of the problem was the base of the flood wall was now 5 feet lower than it was before the earthquake. The result would be that the top of the flood wall is now 2 feet lower than the tsunami.
"However, the civilisation system that we build promotes and rewards above else cheaters and sociopaths. "
BINGO, we have a winner!
Take, for example the rules of capitalism. (I could cite other economic systems but this one is more relevant for the moment.) Capitalism seems to favour those who are more willing to cut corners, without crossing the line into illegal behaviour. I'll give a real life example from a company I worked for.
In the early 1980's the Clean Water Act was in the process of ramping up to full enforcement. Due to legal challenges, it took about 10 years for the EPA to come down hard on water pollution. I worked as a chemist for a plating company and knew that some VERY nasty stuff ( cyanide, hexavalent chrome, cadmium etc.) could be simply put down the drain. My company did something about the dumping even before there was a law banning it. As a result, we had a pretty sophisticated and costly waste treatment facility. Now comes the part where (unfair) competition comes to play. In the area, all but one plating company, when forced by law to do something about the water pollution. did something to come into compliance (some companies barely met the deadline). This one company refused to comply with the law. It used the competitive advantage of not having an expensive waste treatment system to put several conscientious plating companies out of business because of their low prices (they almost drove the company I worked for out of business). Finally, the EPA got a court order that this rogue company had to install pollution equipment of shut down. This company then had the gall to ask the local plating companies for technical help on how we solved the problem and were able to stay in business. Of course they got no cooperation because they were undercutting everyone with their low prices.
My point is this. Capitalism seems to reward the bad actors while driving the good companies out of business. Last week we discussed if rich people were moral or not. The rich become rich because capitalism favours their bad behaviour. They then lobby for (or against) laws that will give them even more clout so they can get away with even more bad behaviour without risking going to jail. Good as in moral and good as capitalism looks at it are two different things. In recent times, MBAs are taught that the only responsibility of a business is to make a profit. That was corrupted into meaning that morality (ethics), that got in the way of earning profits, was bad. Eventually it became "Greed is good!".
Actually, a large part of the radioactive fallout does not come from the bomb itself. The bomb makes a huge excess of neutrons and these neutrons irradiate the debris from the bomb and create isotopes which are radioactive.
We are still using 24 bits / 32 bits because more would be simply overkill. You see, there is still an old element in the equation, it is the eye! Even an accomplished artist cant see more than 2^24 ( 16,777,216 )colors. The 2^32 ( 4,294,967,296 ) are there simply for the convenience of the graphics card designers. Actually, we probably could get decent graphics using only 2^16 ( 65536 colors )! Until someone updates the our eyes to version 2.0, it simply is not necessary to go over 2^24 colors.
"'Memory (RAM): We seem to have convinced most manufacturers to adopt eight megabytes as standard, compared with four megabytes in 1994. "
Did I read the summary correctly? It clearly says the new standard is 8 megabytes! Hell, no modern operating will even load with only 8 megabytes of RAM! Right now I am writing this reply on a computer that has 8 Gigabytes of RAM. Surely they meant 8 gigabytes and not 8 megabytes.
Slashdot Mirror
You have a good point there! In time, the concept of selling organs becomes even more insidious.
Allowing a person to sell his organs makes his organs just another asset. When that person then declares bankruptcy, the creditors are entitled to his assets. Could that person then be forced to sell off his assets (body organs) to settle the debt? Probably not in the near future, but with the way things are going, a law would be written to mandate just this.
"In all three of these outbreaks, someone who had not been vaccinated traveled overseas and brought the disease back with them"
One thing seems obvious to me. Ban our CITIZENS from reentering the US unless they can show that ALL of their vaccinations are current. We could delay reentry to the US by quarantining them in a place similar to Ellis Island for 21 days (or some suitable time) to make sure they were not carrying in a disease. Those people that have religious, moral (or just plain stupidity in the case of vaxers) could avoid the vaccinations by just being sequestered.
NOTE: Quarantining is not incarceration and has been proven legal such as in the case of "Typhoid Mary" and quarantining by the health department. I don't see any legal problems but IANAL.
Although it might not have been the reason for not including a way of moving on its own, as an anti piracy ploy, this might have merit. One of the first things that pirates do when capturing a ship is to move it to a frindly port. Without engines, it is much more difficult to do that. The pirates would have to take over not just the barge-supertanker but at the same time take over the tug. If more than one tugboat is needed to move the barge the pirates problems become much harder because they will have to take over more than one tugboat.
You don't get the point! While the quote was about the automotive industry, the basic point isn't specific to automobiles. It applies to all business enterprises.
Walter Ruether onde said this about robots to Henry Ford II...
"Henry, how are you going to get them (robots) to buy Ford cars?"
He probably is right, the economy is predicated upon wage earners having enough money to buy stuff. Robots will never be able to buy what they produce. That is until robots have the freedom to "live a life" of their own and buy stuff. The companies will never let their robots to be that independent. After all, they own the robots. Right now, companies are breaking the unspoken agreement that they have with thier workers and consumers, that they need to prosper.
Consider this...
Just this week the head judge of the FISC (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FISC) court that oversees the NSA, CIA etc. stated that the courts did not have nearly enough resources to verify what they were being told. In essence, they mostly have to "rubber stamp" those aagencies requests. In essence FISC is just a joke.
"not my problem - fuck you"
That line is ALMOST correct but is should read... ""not my problem , YET - fuck you"
Eventually, almost everyone will, at some time, get sick and eventually die. (The few that don't , die in some quick and catastrophic event.)
The problem with the phrase "of the people, by the people, for the people" is that at least the way SCOTUS sees it corporations are persons. The actual people of the US (The liittle folk NOT corporatios) will have to kick those politions that believe this crap out of office! When that happens, maybe such crap will not happen.
(Don't hold your breath.)
Writing the computer code is relatively simple. The hard part is getting all the graft and kickbakcs sorted out. Getting all those back room negotiations sorted out takes time. When all that is done, the public will be screwed properly.
Sorry for confusing you! This comment was meant for a different story. I posted it here by mistake.
Writing the computer code is relatively simple. The hard part is getting a;; the graft and kickbakcs sorted out. Getting all those back room negotiations sorted out takes time. When all that is done, the public will be screwed properly.
That reminds me of an old aviators saying.
"Takeoffs are optional, Landings are mandatory!"
Also if you get that landing wrong, there are no more takeoffs for you!
There is a slight misconception concerning the invention of the airplane. A lot of people can claim that theirs was the first heavier than air, and mechanically driven airplane. Where these inventors failed is that they did not have good way of controlling where their invention went. The Wright brothers solved the problem of controlling the direction and altitude of the airplane. Without this critical part of the equation, true flight was just a dream.
Cutting off funding should not be decided by business, the courts should make that decision. Garnted, the operators of such a website may be scumbags but they still deserve their day in court.
"No new genetic material is being created and it never will be."
Wrong! Mutations create new genetic material all the time. Most of the time, mutations are harmful but occasionally a mutation is helpful to that organism. If a new mutation allows an organism to be better adapted to its environment, that gene will be selected for. Soon, much of the population will have that gene. It's simple evolution.
The researchers trying to identify what genes affect intelligence should first come up with an undeniable definition of the term. I personally know of someone who does not have a lot of "book learning" (and probably would not do well in school) but he had a lot of "common sense". At the same time, there are brilliant scientists out there that are clueless about social interactions. You can be brilliant in one area and a complete idiot in another area. Are these people geniuses or idiots (or both).
Adobe, your web programs (Flash and PDF Reader) have been a pox on computer users everywhere even if they are not aware of the risks. I hope you will entirely give up on the Internet and concentrate on software where they will do no harm. Better yet, just leave the business entirely.
Oh, I love that Nineteen Eighty-Four speak where "public safety'" actually means Internet spying and censorship! What is even more galling is that this comes not from a country like China or Burma but from a country like Canada!.
If security is really what the government wants to promote, it would go the other way. No more evading the security check lanes by anyone. If you are rich enough to own a private jet, you still should have to pass through the security check lanes before you are allowed to get on your private jet. Some private jets are really big! A private jet can be just as dangerous when crashed into a building as a commercial jet. Also, a private jet might be easier to hijack than regular commercial jets because there are usually a lot less people aboard that might foil your hijack plans.
The real point is this. There should be no distinction between the elites (rich) and the common man when dealing with the government.
Note: I said SHOULD.
Not only were the flood walls not high enough but they failed to account for the ground settling because of subsidence. As a result of the earthquake, the actual ground d5opped by as much as five feet in areas. Lets assume that you barely made the flood wall high enough lets say 3 feet higher than the tsunami. Part of the problem was the base of the flood wall was now 5 feet lower than it was before the earthquake. The result would be that the top of the flood wall is now 2 feet lower than the tsunami.
"However, the civilisation system that we build promotes and rewards above else cheaters and sociopaths. "
BINGO, we have a winner!
Take, for example the rules of capitalism. (I could cite other economic systems but this one is more relevant for the moment.) Capitalism seems to favour those who are more willing to cut corners, without crossing the line into illegal behaviour. I'll give a real life example from a company I worked for.
In the early 1980's the Clean Water Act was in the process of ramping up to full enforcement. Due to legal challenges, it took about 10 years for the EPA to come down hard on water pollution. I worked as a chemist for a plating company and knew that some VERY nasty stuff ( cyanide, hexavalent chrome, cadmium etc.) could be simply put down the drain. My company did something about the dumping even before there was a law banning it. As a result, we had a pretty sophisticated and costly waste treatment facility. Now comes the part where (unfair) competition comes to play. In the area, all but one plating company, when forced by law to do something about the water pollution. did something to come into compliance (some companies barely met the deadline). This one company refused to comply with the law. It used the competitive advantage of not having an expensive waste treatment system to put several conscientious plating companies out of business because of their low prices (they almost drove the company I worked for out of business). Finally, the EPA got a court order that this rogue company had to install pollution equipment of shut down. This company then had the gall to ask the local plating companies for technical help on how we solved the problem and were able to stay in business. Of course they got no cooperation because they were undercutting everyone with their low prices.
My point is this. Capitalism seems to reward the bad actors while driving the good companies out of business. Last week we discussed if rich people were moral or not. The rich become rich because capitalism favours their bad behaviour. They then lobby for (or against) laws that will give them even more clout so they can get away with even more bad behaviour without risking going to jail. Good as in moral and good as capitalism looks at it are two different things. In recent times, MBAs are taught that the only responsibility of a business is to make a profit. That was corrupted into meaning that morality (ethics), that got in the way of earning profits, was bad. Eventually it became "Greed is good!".
Or they might have recognised the danger of allowing them to leave and exterminated them instead!
Actually, a large part of the radioactive fallout does not come from the bomb itself. The bomb makes a huge excess of neutrons and these neutrons irradiate the debris from the bomb and create isotopes which are radioactive.
We are still using 24 bits / 32 bits because more would be simply overkill. You see, there is still an old element in the equation, it is the eye! Even an accomplished artist cant see more than 2^24 ( 16,777,216 )colors. The 2^32 ( 4,294,967,296 ) are there simply for the convenience of the graphics card designers. Actually, we probably could get decent graphics using only 2^16 ( 65536 colors )! Until someone updates the our eyes to version 2.0, it simply is not necessary to go over 2^24 colors.
"'Memory (RAM): We seem to have convinced most manufacturers to adopt eight megabytes as standard, compared with four megabytes in 1994. "
Did I read the summary correctly? It clearly says the new standard is 8 megabytes! Hell, no modern operating will even load with only 8 megabytes of RAM! Right now I am writing this reply on a computer that has 8 Gigabytes of RAM. Surely they meant 8 gigabytes and not 8 megabytes.