Simple, I don't want to pay for the health care of the WalMart Employees in my area. Other retail outlets that have gone out of business because of competition from "the low price leader" paid health insurance for all there employees. WalMart has driven these health community business out and hire their employees for less money and NO HEALTH INSURANCE. Post WalMart our area has seen a tripling of ER walk-ins (Government slang for people using the ER as a free clinic because they don't have insurance) Now the county wants to raise taxes to pay for the health care that WalMart is not providing. When WalMart pays for it's fair share of community resources, I'll stop bitching about it.
There are a lot of good suggestions in the thread, and I agree the simplest are the best. Another suggestion is to seek out the Hospital Chaplain -- even if you and/or your grandmother are not religious. Most likely, they will have dealt with this kind of situation. They will be able to help you and your grandmother talk (not just communicate. And unlike anyone else you will meet in the hospital, can probably invest some serious time helping you.
There are a couple of solutions I can see. First, using an older maintained kernel version like the 2.0 series that is unlikely to have a major security issue discovered between certification and election day. Second, certify the system then allow for additional patches to be certified as time goes on.
Actually we'd prefer that the machines not do either of those tasks. Instead, the machine needs to provide an accessible on foolproof user interface for generating valid ballots. If it can count the ballots great, but we don't want to have to trust the machines count.
I'll Grab my pitchfork and torch. Just let me know what we're going to burn! Black Board is a Horrible user interface and deserves to die a slow death. Please folk let the academic community know that BlackBoard is not there one stop solution for that "Internet thing."
This is more about where I'd like to see computers go in general. Someone has mentioned Kernel Level support for Java, I'd like to add Kernel level support for dynamic languages. I find that Ruby, LUA, and Lisp are becoming more then just script writing languages. With Hardware diversifying rather then simply getting faster, it is time to move the application programmer one more level back from the hardware. I would therefore advocate for any future Linux kernel to Make these paradigms as efficient and standard as possible.
There are some well documented cases of just such things having happened in the 50's and early sixties. I know for a fact that in is not the case in the Emergency Department I worked with, but there were still three cases in my three month CPE unit of patients refusing needed transfusions because they feared that they were getting "dirty blood."
Racism is not just the extent of current actions, it is also the mistrust bread by past experience. This mistrust is compounded when one adds to it poverty, bureaucratic abuse, and mental illness that are common in the homeless population. This is not an angle. It is simply my reflection on the realities of life and death in our health system as I got to know it.
I can tell you that no matter what the ultimate decision, being caught between needing blood and keeping faith is a heart breaking and guilt ridden experience for doctors, patients and families.
Yeah but for secular darwinists it's a laugh and a half. I promise you that not even an atheist physician is laughing when they have to be part of a decision like this. Even if you actively deny religion, telling someone they must choose between loosing their life and loosing all connection with their family and community it heart-breaking for anyone with even a shred of (possibly secular) humanity.
This is a big deal for a lot of reasons. I'd like to point out a few of the less obvious
Jehova's Witnesses have already been mentioned, but add to this list dome forms of Judiasm, branches of Meninite Christianity, and others as divers as the Hmong refuse blood transfusions. Artificial plasma (sometimes called artificial blood) is acceptable as are the use of cell savers. Unfortunately neither of these are effective against the uncontrolled loss of blood, or against blood based diseases that kill of red blood cells. The ability to artificially add O2 capacity and not just volume to the blood will a very welcome thing for these groups. From first hand experience being with families, I can tell you that no matter what the ultimate decision, being caught between needing blood and keeping faith is a heart breaking and guilt ridden experence for doctors, patients and families.
The other issue I want to bring up is the trust of the blood supply. There is an unfortunate and sad history of treating minorities in the US with inferior medicine, which has included infected blood. The rumors that such practices are ongoing persist particularly in the homeless populations. My perception from talking with some of the people who believe these rumors is that artificial blood would be perceived as safer. Perception is often stronger then reality when it comes to patient compliance, and even if this remains a sub-optimal solution when compared to whole blood (my guess is this will remain the case though IANAD) it is better then refusing treatment.
I hope that this is proven to be save and effective.
California thought this way and historically held it primary towards the end of the season. We would be "the decider." Unfortanutly there has not been an election in the last 3 decades where a winner hasn't been declared in both parties before the CA primaries. Instead the primaries became a chance for big money corps. to push special interest propositions when most people would not be voting.
The challenge here is to avoid media group think. (cf Slashdot) If a candidate wins 3 small state it becomes clear that no one else can present a real alternative, so say the talking heads. From my point of view, we hold the general election all together on the Tuesday after the first Monday of November, why not hold the primaries all together on the Tuesday after the first Monday in February.
I know that my nerd credentials are going to be revoked for this, but I think the problem lies not in some exotic form of energy/matter, but in the equations used to derive there existence. We know that there is something wrong with either General Relativity or Quantum Mechanics because at the moment the two theories contradict each other. What if there is a fundamental principle of GR that is yet to be discovered? I think that Dark Matter/Energy is going to end up sitting next to Aether as a theory with insufficient understanding. DM/E has all the properties of a bogus theory: it is there to fix the observation to match theory, it has become increasingly non-detectable except by using the theory it is fixing, it is homogeneous and universal (why are there not lumps in dark matter). Having said this, looking for the stuff may well pin down enough observations to make a more fundamental solution clear.
JFMILLER
P.S. If you are not familiar with the discoveries of GR and QM or what was thought before their discoveries, the Wikipedia article is a good read.
Even if you fact check all your information Academic cite-o-phobia these days says you still should site wikipedia. Even if only footnoting the sources in 2 as obtained from wikipedia.
With the Disproportional penalties for plagiarisms in Academia I, and many other students have been counseled to note meticulously everything we read or even touch on a research topic. Even if one never intentionally refers to it anything one reads is likely to be part of the thought process, and God forbid 3 words from a well know internet source end up in the same order in your paper and you haven't listed it the best you can hope for if to flunk the class. I would advise all students to add a line or foot-note to every paper saying "Wikipedia pages titled '...' were consulted in the research for this paper" even if you don't actually quote or paraphrase it intentionally. You never know a phrase like "enlightened traditional ideology" might trip the plagiarism meter on the overzealous and inaccurately paper checker your Prof. got from a box of Crackerjacks.
For my two cents writing research papers is Academic Hazing and has no real value in undergraduate or professional level education.
Have your religion, feel free to it. Keep it out of my Government, my Schools, and my Laws. If you don't believe in Gay Marriage, don't marry one. If you think that stem cells are life, don't work with them. That is all a *personal* choice. Don't mandate into law what YOUR God doesn't like.
Would you be willing to add to this rant "if you don't think grown men should have sex with children then don't bring your's over."? The point here is that morals are not just personal choices, but standards you would insist for those around you as well. I don't know you at all, but I insist that you do not murder people. Not just me, mind you I insist that you. not murder anyone.
The difficulty is that you, I and Mr. Hardison all have different standards about what are personal choices and what are morals. I would suggest that a far stronger argument would be to claim that larger society is justified in not enforcing Mr. Hardison's morals.
I think the copyright is to ensure that society benefits from artists, musicians and authors work and encourages them to produce material and release it to the public. Ah, but does it do that? I would like to think that I am a decent amateur singer. I'll never have a big recording gig but, I'll sing in the church choir. Having copyright to my music is worse then worthless. It certainly doesn't encourage me to sing.
So then what about Pink Floyd. Would they have been a hit music group if they had only been able to make $50,000? Of course they would have! They are a very talented group of artists whose music has wide appeal. The money didn't make them great (as copyright proponents claim) they got money because they were great. Further, I posit that even if their music was all in the public domain, their fans would be willing to pay the artists to continue to perform.
Finally, the question can dead artists be encouraged to produce? I state that J.R.R. Tolkien will never write another book no matter how much money we pay his estate. Why then do we continue to allow copyrights to be held (remember the only reason to have them is to encourage artiste to produce material) by the estates of people who are dead.
I think a good balance could be struck by reducing the term of copyright to 3 years on published music and fictional literature, until time of death for performance and all other works. Further copyright ought to be non-transferable publishers would be allowed exclusive license for a copyright, but could never own it.
The US Copyright laws that we have imposed on most of the developed world are based in Western European common law, so I stand by my original statement.
However, you right of Religious texts. I hope you will accept my apologies for my limited knowledge of Islam, it was not something I had the opportunity to study in seminary. The way you write about these texts implies that you are thinking of canonical texts (the Qur'an), but are not Islamic scholars and poets renowned for their contributions to sciences and the fine arts. These works were also copied freely. There was no need of copyrights.
Perhaps you can help my understanding. I know that in the Qur'an there are a number of commandments that relate to the fair practice of trade. What does your holy book say about trade in knowledge, or is the concept even present?
I have no idea what they are using on the big skyscrapers, but all the houses, schools, strip malls, etc.. being build are still being done in 2D because its faster and for the most part the drafting skills are easily learned by most people. 3D is much more cumbersome to work with using a mouse and screen. The time saved in creating projections from the 3D model never makes up for the difficulty of modifying the model as changes come in, particularly when one considers that a lot of information on a drawing is actually 2D. (ie dimensions, text, hatches, symbols, consultant drawings). After making a new projection these pieces must be modified on the 2D drawing. I can see on a big in house project with lots of difficult to project elements (eg sports stadiums) where there would be savings, but for a cookie-cutter strip mall, AutoCAD in 2D wins every time.
Wrong Question. Throughout most of recorded history it has been accepted that the replication of information was not only permissible but encouraged. There are at least a couple saints whose claim to the title rests in their prolific ability to copy not only the bible but scholarly books as well. The value of a late medieval musician was in his ability to remember the words and tune to a song after only a single hearing. It has only been in the past 200 years where copying has become a sin. It comes from the industrialization of creativity. Instead of paying people to create we are now paying for the commodity of the created work. Notice that it is the commodity whole saler (RIAA,MPAA) and not the creator that are spending the most effort to protect the commodity market. Copyrights are artificial monopolies granted by the government to encourage commodity production. Lets write this again copying is the historical universal human right, copyrights are the limiting of those rights.
Please go study a bit of history. (You'll probably have to pay to do this, because you don't have the right to read it freely any more.)
When the British empire controlled India, they levied a small tax on the production of all salt in the country. It was not that the government made much by this tax, nor was it that the people were burdened by it. But india ran on salt, and by taxing it the British controlled it. It was for this reason that Gandhi lead a march to the sea to do the very simple thing of making salt in oppisition to british rule.
When I read that a government that was created by the power and witness of such acts now wished to tax the production and transmission of light, It makes me wonder if they have even read their history.
By default D2 uses a thread ordered, chronological display. The old system had many other sort modes, but I'm not how sure how effective these are once threaded. So I may simply leave the old system in place for users who want to see a flat discussion ignorant of threads ordered by date or score. Since this is only a tiny percentage of users, I figure it can wait.
I would be a member of that tiny percentage that reads/. Highest score first. I normally only what to read the best 10-20 comments. For mature discussions reading at score 5 is fine but for new or non-front-page stuff it would still be nice to have a way to get the best 10 comments only.
I know somewhere there was a CmdrTaco Journal entry about just this phenomina but I cannot find it (also mentioned changing the moderation system).
I am required to fly the cheapest ticket availible:
United - Lost and never found
American Airlines - lost 3 time, all delivered to my hotel 1 day after big meeting
Southwest - lost 2 times, requiring a trips to Airport after meeting
Delta - lost once picked up my luggage just in time to fly home
LAX International Baggage Screening - 5 hours waiting to go through customes
I want my luggage to be on time for my meetings as well. If it's not, you can send it back to my house sence I've bought a new suit anyway. I don't want to take double the luggage through the system again. But really what I want is a deturant from loosing my luggage in the first place. I got $350 for my lost luggage from United, but that would not have replaced my laptop.
Slashdot Mirror
Somebody Mod this up, please.
Simple, I don't want to pay for the health care of the WalMart Employees in my area. Other retail outlets that have gone out of business because of competition from "the low price leader" paid health insurance for all there employees. WalMart has driven these health community business out and hire their employees for less money and NO HEALTH INSURANCE. Post WalMart our area has seen a tripling of ER walk-ins (Government slang for people using the ER as a free clinic because they don't have insurance) Now the county wants to raise taxes to pay for the health care that WalMart is not providing. When WalMart pays for it's fair share of community resources, I'll stop bitching about it.
There are a lot of good suggestions in the thread, and I agree the simplest are the best. Another suggestion is to seek out the Hospital Chaplain -- even if you and/or your grandmother are not religious. Most likely, they will have dealt with this kind of situation. They will be able to help you and your grandmother talk (not just communicate. And unlike anyone else you will meet in the hospital, can probably invest some serious time helping you.
JFMILLER
There are a couple of solutions I can see. First, using an older maintained kernel version like the 2.0 series that is unlikely to have a major security issue discovered between certification and election day. Second, certify the system then allow for additional patches to be certified as time goes on.
Actually we'd prefer that the machines not do either of those tasks. Instead, the machine needs to provide an accessible on foolproof user interface for generating valid ballots. If it can count the ballots great, but we don't want to have to trust the machines count.
I'll Grab my pitchfork and torch. Just let me know what we're going to burn! Black Board is a Horrible user interface and deserves to die a slow death. Please folk let the academic community know that BlackBoard is not there one stop solution for that "Internet thing."
This is more about where I'd like to see computers go in general. Someone has mentioned Kernel Level support for Java, I'd like to add Kernel level support for dynamic languages. I find that Ruby, LUA, and Lisp are becoming more then just script writing languages. With Hardware diversifying rather then simply getting faster, it is time to move the application programmer one more level back from the hardware. I would therefore advocate for any future Linux kernel to Make these paradigms as efficient and standard as possible.
JFMILLER
There are some well documented cases of just such things having happened in the 50's and early sixties. I know for a fact that in is not the case in the Emergency Department I worked with, but there were still three cases in my three month CPE unit of patients refusing needed transfusions because they feared that they were getting "dirty blood."
Racism is not just the extent of current actions, it is also the mistrust bread by past experience. This mistrust is compounded when one adds to it poverty, bureaucratic abuse, and mental illness that are common in the homeless population. This is not an angle. It is simply my reflection on the realities of life and death in our health system as I got to know it.
Yeah but for secular darwinists it's a laugh and a half. I promise you that not even an atheist physician is laughing when they have to be part of a decision like this. Even if you actively deny religion, telling someone they must choose between loosing their life and loosing all connection with their family and community it heart-breaking for anyone with even a shred of (possibly secular) humanity.
IANAD, but I have worked as a hospital chaplain.
This is a big deal for a lot of reasons. I'd like to point out a few of the less obvious
Jehova's Witnesses have already been mentioned, but add to this list dome forms of Judiasm, branches of Meninite Christianity, and others as divers as the Hmong refuse blood transfusions. Artificial plasma (sometimes called artificial blood) is acceptable as are the use of cell savers. Unfortunately neither of these are effective against the uncontrolled loss of blood, or against blood based diseases that kill of red blood cells. The ability to artificially add O2 capacity and not just volume to the blood will a very welcome thing for these groups. From first hand experience being with families, I can tell you that no matter what the ultimate decision, being caught between needing blood and keeping faith is a heart breaking and guilt ridden experence for doctors, patients and families.
The other issue I want to bring up is the trust of the blood supply. There is an unfortunate and sad history of treating minorities in the US with inferior medicine, which has included infected blood. The rumors that such practices are ongoing persist particularly in the homeless populations. My perception from talking with some of the people who believe these rumors is that artificial blood would be perceived as safer. Perception is often stronger then reality when it comes to patient compliance, and even if this remains a sub-optimal solution when compared to whole blood (my guess is this will remain the case though IANAD) it is better then refusing treatment.
I hope that this is proven to be save and effective.
California thought this way and historically held it primary towards the end of the season. We would be "the decider." Unfortanutly there has not been an election in the last 3 decades where a winner hasn't been declared in both parties before the CA primaries. Instead the primaries became a chance for big money corps. to push special interest propositions when most people would not be voting.
The challenge here is to avoid media group think. (cf Slashdot) If a candidate wins 3 small state it becomes clear that no one else can present a real alternative, so say the talking heads. From my point of view, we hold the general election all together on the Tuesday after the first Monday of November, why not hold the primaries all together on the Tuesday after the first Monday in February.
A hell of a lot better one then I am. Sign me up.
I know that my nerd credentials are going to be revoked for this, but I think the problem lies not in some exotic form of energy/matter, but in the equations used to derive there existence. We know that there is something wrong with either General Relativity or Quantum Mechanics because at the moment the two theories contradict each other. What if there is a fundamental principle of GR that is yet to be discovered? I think that Dark Matter/Energy is going to end up sitting next to Aether as a theory with insufficient understanding. DM/E has all the properties of a bogus theory: it is there to fix the observation to match theory, it has become increasingly non-detectable except by using the theory it is fixing, it is homogeneous and universal (why are there not lumps in dark matter). Having said this, looking for the stuff may well pin down enough observations to make a more fundamental solution clear.
JFMILLER
P.S. If you are not familiar with the discoveries of GR and QM or what was thought before their discoveries, the Wikipedia article is a good read.
Even if you fact check all your information Academic cite-o-phobia these days says you still should site wikipedia. Even if only footnoting the sources in 2 as obtained from wikipedia.
With the Disproportional penalties for plagiarisms in Academia I, and many other students have been counseled to note meticulously everything we read or even touch on a research topic. Even if one never intentionally refers to it anything one reads is likely to be part of the thought process, and God forbid 3 words from a well know internet source end up in the same order in your paper and you haven't listed it the best you can hope for if to flunk the class. I would advise all students to add a line or foot-note to every paper saying "Wikipedia pages titled '...' were consulted in the research for this paper" even if you don't actually quote or paraphrase it intentionally. You never know a phrase like "enlightened traditional ideology" might trip the plagiarism meter on the overzealous and inaccurately paper checker your Prof. got from a box of Crackerjacks.
For my two cents writing research papers is Academic Hazing and has no real value in undergraduate or professional level education.
I wrote my masters thesis on a method automatically generating semantic webs from plaintext.
I would really be interested in reading this if it could be posted somewhere
Would you be willing to add to this rant "if you don't think grown men should have sex with children then don't bring your's over."? The point here is that morals are not just personal choices, but standards you would insist for those around you as well. I don't know you at all, but I insist that you do not murder people. Not just me, mind you I insist that you. not murder anyone.
The difficulty is that you, I and Mr. Hardison all have different standards about what are personal choices and what are morals. I would suggest that a far stronger argument would be to claim that larger society is justified in not enforcing Mr. Hardison's morals.
Cheers,
JFMILLER
So then what about Pink Floyd. Would they have been a hit music group if they had only been able to make $50,000? Of course they would have! They are a very talented group of artists whose music has wide appeal. The money didn't make them great (as copyright proponents claim) they got money because they were great. Further, I posit that even if their music was all in the public domain, their fans would be willing to pay the artists to continue to perform.
Finally, the question can dead artists be encouraged to produce? I state that J.R.R. Tolkien will never write another book no matter how much money we pay his estate. Why then do we continue to allow copyrights to be held (remember the only reason to have them is to encourage artiste to produce material) by the estates of people who are dead.
I think a good balance could be struck by reducing the term of copyright to 3 years on published music and fictional literature, until time of death for performance and all other works. Further copyright ought to be non-transferable publishers would be allowed exclusive license for a copyright, but could never own it.
JFMILLER
The US Copyright laws that we have imposed on most of the developed world are based in Western European common law, so I stand by my original statement.
However, you right of Religious texts. I hope you will accept my apologies for my limited knowledge of Islam, it was not something I had the opportunity to study in seminary. The way you write about these texts implies that you are thinking of canonical texts (the Qur'an), but are not Islamic scholars and poets renowned for their contributions to sciences and the fine arts. These works were also copied freely. There was no need of copyrights.
Perhaps you can help my understanding. I know that in the Qur'an there are a number of commandments that relate to the fair practice of trade. What does your holy book say about trade in knowledge, or is the concept even present?
JFMILLER
Right! But also a good reason to push for the adoption of encrypted e-mail. Who knows what your ISP's data retention practices are.
JFMILLER
I have no idea what they are using on the big skyscrapers, but all the houses, schools, strip malls, etc.. being build are still being done in 2D because its faster and for the most part the drafting skills are easily learned by most people. 3D is much more cumbersome to work with using a mouse and screen. The time saved in creating projections from the 3D model never makes up for the difficulty of modifying the model as changes come in, particularly when one considers that a lot of information on a drawing is actually 2D. (ie dimensions, text, hatches, symbols, consultant drawings). After making a new projection these pieces must be modified on the 2D drawing. I can see on a big in house project with lots of difficult to project elements (eg sports stadiums) where there would be savings, but for a cookie-cutter strip mall, AutoCAD in 2D wins every time.
JFMILLER
Wrong Question. Throughout most of recorded history it has been accepted that the replication of information was not only permissible but encouraged. There are at least a couple saints whose claim to the title rests in their prolific ability to copy not only the bible but scholarly books as well. The value of a late medieval musician was in his ability to remember the words and tune to a song after only a single hearing. It has only been in the past 200 years where copying has become a sin. It comes from the industrialization of creativity. Instead of paying people to create we are now paying for the commodity of the created work. Notice that it is the commodity whole saler (RIAA,MPAA) and not the creator that are spending the most effort to protect the commodity market. Copyrights are artificial monopolies granted by the government to encourage commodity production. Lets write this again copying is the historical universal human right, copyrights are the limiting of those rights.
Please go study a bit of history. (You'll probably have to pay to do this, because you don't have the right to read it freely any more.)
JFMILLER
When the British empire controlled India, they levied a small tax on the production of all salt in the country. It was not that the government made much by this tax, nor was it that the people were burdened by it. But india ran on salt, and by taxing it the British controlled it. It was for this reason that Gandhi lead a march to the sea to do the very simple thing of making salt in oppisition to british rule.
When I read that a government that was created by the power and witness of such acts now wished to tax the production and transmission of light, It makes me wonder if they have even read their history.
JFMILLER
By default D2 uses a thread ordered, chronological display. The old system had many other sort modes, but I'm not how sure how effective these are once threaded. So I may simply leave the old system in place for users who want to see a flat discussion ignorant of threads ordered by date or score. Since this is only a tiny percentage of users, I figure it can wait.
/. Highest score first. I normally only what to read the best 10-20 comments. For mature discussions reading at score 5 is fine but for new or non-front-page stuff it would still be nice to have a way to get the best 10 comments only.
I would be a member of that tiny percentage that reads
I know somewhere there was a CmdrTaco Journal entry about just this phenomina but I cannot find it (also mentioned changing the moderation system).
JFMILLER
I want my luggage to be on time for my meetings as well. If it's not, you can send it back to my house sence I've bought a new suit anyway. I don't want to take double the luggage through the system again. But really what I want is a deturant from loosing my luggage in the first place. I got $350 for my lost luggage from United, but that would not have replaced my laptop.
JFMILLER