Yeah, sorry, health care quality sucks in those systems you love. Government rationed product. You can keep it. Meanwhile, US health care costs are high because we subsidize all the world's health care research.
How about we have the EU and Canada for everyone who loves the way the EU and Canada do things, and the US for the rest of us? Freedom for all. If only California would get off its lazy ass and secede.
I don't follow. Medicare doesn't care about normal insurance companies. It has it's own claims process, and pays what it wants to pay. Further, it's funded from taxes (mostly) and monthly premiums (a bit). It's the single biggest budget line item in the US budget (Social Security is second).
Medicaid is currently funded at about 1/4 of the total federal budget (~$1 T), or about 1/3 of total federal revenue. It's probably funded at half what it needs to be, long term. Putting more people on it seems unlikely to end well.
WTF do for-profit insurance companies have to do with Medicare costs? Medicare decides what they will pay for care. Did you have an argument beyond proclaiming that insurance is evil?
And you inability to understand reality won't make me change my signature - though I'll get bored with it soon enough.
BTW, shouldn't you be busy Brexiting? Or arresting journalists with a secret trial and then putting a gag order on the whole thing?
I wish we could get a national referendum. Take out the deep south and the rural parts of Texas and Arizona and you've got over 60% in favor of medicare for all.
Take out the people who disagree with me and everyone agrees with me!
As far as "medicare for all", Medicare is underfunded by $27.9 trillion (by GAAP), or about $230k per taxpayer. We can't afford it now - how's it supposed to work financially if we pile more people into it? And remember, you still need (supplemental) health insurance if you have Medicare, as there's a lot it doesn't pay for, and Medicare itself isn't free, so it's not like all the money that currently goes as health insurance premiums could go as taxes.
People will argue that there's less paperwork cost with Medicare, and that's true, but the increased fraud cost eats up a lot of that, and then you have the paperwork cost for the supplemental insurance.
The one sure win here is for the government to standardize claims forms. That would be a massive reduction in paperwork costs with no downside in care provided.
Do you understand what "castrophic care" insurance is? Because it doesn't seem like you do. That's insurance which only pays for the big stuff - so you're not covered for routine doctors visits, but your losses are capped at $5k or $10k when something big happens.
It's an odd thing: a policy with a $5k annual deductible can be more than $5k/year cheaper than one that covers everything. Think about that for a minute - you come out ahead even if you have $5k of costs, none of which are covered. It just goes to show how big paperwork processing costs are as a percentage of healthcare.
I did have one employer who offered such a plan, and I was all over it, but they've vanished in the past few years as they aren't Obamacare-compatible. If I has the choice, I'd totally get the higher salary from my employer and get my own catastrophic care policy - I'd come out way ahead, in every scenario.
Luke would never have abandoned the order - he was defined by being hopeful in the face of reality. He never would have seriously considered killing his student - I know you didn't like RTJ, but the second half of the movie was about him taking an extreme risk for the longshot chance that the most evil man he knew was redeemable.
That wasn't fucking Luke.
Finn was cool in TFA anyway - he was the only character with an actual arc. Ruined by random walk-on character in TLJ of course, but he had an arc.
The series needs some credible threat for Ma-Rey Sue to face. Kylo became a joke. The military leader of the Empire - can't remember his name now - was at least somewhat interesting in TFA, but became a joke in TLJ. Snoke should have been the final boss, but was a joke in TLJ. There wasn't a single character in TLJ who was worthwhile, full stop. The plot was as non-nonsensical as the first prequel. All TLJ had going for it was pretty visuals.
For many people, the last one does not exist due to the simple logic. * AI is not very intelligent today * Ergo, AI will never be very intelligent
The better argument is: there has never been an "AI" with general intelligence, and there is no evidence this is possible. What some call "strong AI" is an extreme of general intelligence - human-equivalent or -superior intelligence, but there's a lower bar here that hasn't been cleared. No "AI" has ever been able to solve a problem is hasn't specifically been trained to solve, and it would be a surprise to experts if that ever happened with current methods.
Strong AI and weak AI are not different points on a continuum from an implementation perspective. They are very different in kind. Strong AI is simply not anything like weak AI with more processing power.
Could it happen in 100 years? Sure - that's a long time. But it's not some natural evolution of what we have today.
Not sure why you keep bringing up the prequels - no one wanted to see more of those, and anyway all those characters were long dead.
Don't dismiss the cartoons. Clone Wars the cartoon was much better than the prequels. Not great, but as TV generally compares to movies it compared to the real SW films (the main weakness was the long list of characters you know can't die, but the writers eventually figured that out and moved the focus towards new characters). Rebels has been actually good - it respects the canon, and pulls some of the good stuff from the EU without taking the whole (mostly crappy) EU as canon.
But you're missing the whole point of why TLJ was a steaming pile. It's not that it killed off Luke: that was inevitable. It's that that fucking wasn't Luke! You can listen to Mark Hamill explain why, if it's unclear. Character by character, old and new, the arcs were so bad and unbelievable that there was no watchable movie left.
It doesn't matter what the majority of people believe, it matters what the majority of gun owners believe, since that what it will come down to. It's worth remembering that the American Revolution began with an attempt by the British governor to seize guns from civilians.
I guess it depends on where you fell in the target audience?
I just think people over-emphasize Yoda vs Ewoks. The Yoda scenes were great and the Ewok scenes were a vision of things to come, but each was a small portion of its respective movie. I find everything in ESB except Yoda and Vader forgettable, while I find the majority of RTJ very good. Jabbas palace, the space combat, the final confrontation - all great stuff.
Rogue One could admittedly have been more, but after being subjected to Lucas' shockingly amazing lack of vision, it was nice and refreshing.
Fair point. I think most would rank it first after the original three.
That does effectively destroy the canon and I can understand why some would be upset. I hold it's a good thing.
Firm proof you were never a Star Wars fan, and probably liked the Transformers movies.
I mean, really, make a different SciFi franchise if you're rejecting the SW canon, but don't make a SW film.
TLJ ruined Luke Skywalker, ruined every character on the Empire side, ruined Finn's arc, total BS with Admiral Akbar, most of the heroic moments went to new characters introduced in the film that we had no emotional attachment to at all.
Rogue One was boring and bland, but at least showed some respect for the canon.
Check out minds.com. It's trying to be the uncensored, open source, decentralized Twitter. No clue if it actually is any of those things, but it would be nice.
Slashdot has come to a sad place when discussions about physics are being downmodded.
BTW, for those unfamiliar with Noether's theorem, it's both very fundamental and very cool - it explains why there are conserved quantities in physics. There's a lot of good material on it on YouTube, too.
The EM drive, if it works, violates conservation of momentum, which can easily be used to also violate conservation of energy.
1) Momentum is not conserved in our universe. 2) Conservation of momentum is not required for conservation of energy 3) Energy is not conserved in our universe
Your argument is so over-simplifying physics that it's nonsense. Conservation of energy and of momentum are mathematical consequences of Euclidean space and time, by Noether's theorem. We don't, of course, live in Euclidean space or time. Note that the two conservation principles are unrelated - conservation of momentum comes from spatial symmetry, while conservation of energy comes from time symmetry. Either can be true without the other being true. That's just math.
Under special relativity, momentum is not conserved because of course we don't inhabit Euclidean space. Even so, energy is conserved in special relativity. The thing is, while momentum is not conserved, a different quantity is - we call it "relativistic momentum", but it doesn't look much like momentum except at low energy levels.
Do you see the point? If this EM drive thingy were to turn out to violate conservation of Newtonian momentum, that would be very interesting, but it would "only" imply new physics, and a new conserved quantity, not the ability to build perpetual motion machines.
Of course, under general relativity energy isn't conserved anyhow, because time flows at different rates at different places and times. And yet you still can't build a perpetual motion machine. Once again, there's new physics and a different conserved quantity, that happens to look like energy in the familiar special case of low gravity.
Ah, I see - I can buy books through my Kindle app. Originally, I remember Apple wanted 30% on anything used in-app even if it wasn't sold in app. I guess that was the point of compromise.
What do you mean "when"? You don't think they already verify robocaller IDs against the list of campaign contributors? It's just like why physical mail is 95% spam by weight.
Eventually, owning and carrying a smartphone will be compulsory - it will serve as your government ID and will sub for driver's licence, passport, Social Insurance / Social Security card, health card, etc.
So, sort of like WeChat in China then. Oh, it might not be technically required, but good luck getting very far without it. And don't forget your social credit score!
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah, sorry, health care quality sucks in those systems you love. Government rationed product. You can keep it. Meanwhile, US health care costs are high because we subsidize all the world's health care research.
How about we have the EU and Canada for everyone who loves the way the EU and Canada do things, and the US for the rest of us? Freedom for all. If only California would get off its lazy ass and secede.
I don't follow. Medicare doesn't care about normal insurance companies. It has it's own claims process, and pays what it wants to pay. Further, it's funded from taxes (mostly) and monthly premiums (a bit). It's the single biggest budget line item in the US budget (Social Security is second).
Medicaid is currently funded at about 1/4 of the total federal budget (~$1 T), or about 1/3 of total federal revenue. It's probably funded at half what it needs to be, long term. Putting more people on it seems unlikely to end well.
But what do insurance companies have to do with funding Medicare adequately?
WTF do for-profit insurance companies have to do with Medicare costs? Medicare decides what they will pay for care. Did you have an argument beyond proclaiming that insurance is evil?
And you inability to understand reality won't make me change my signature - though I'll get bored with it soon enough.
BTW, shouldn't you be busy Brexiting? Or arresting journalists with a secret trial and then putting a gag order on the whole thing?
I wish we could get a national referendum. Take out the deep south and the rural parts of Texas and Arizona and you've got over 60% in favor of medicare for all.
Take out the people who disagree with me and everyone agrees with me!
As far as "medicare for all", Medicare is underfunded by $27.9 trillion (by GAAP), or about $230k per taxpayer. We can't afford it now - how's it supposed to work financially if we pile more people into it? And remember, you still need (supplemental) health insurance if you have Medicare, as there's a lot it doesn't pay for, and Medicare itself isn't free, so it's not like all the money that currently goes as health insurance premiums could go as taxes.
People will argue that there's less paperwork cost with Medicare, and that's true, but the increased fraud cost eats up a lot of that, and then you have the paperwork cost for the supplemental insurance.
The one sure win here is for the government to standardize claims forms. That would be a massive reduction in paperwork costs with no downside in care provided.
Do you understand what "castrophic care" insurance is? Because it doesn't seem like you do. That's insurance which only pays for the big stuff - so you're not covered for routine doctors visits, but your losses are capped at $5k or $10k when something big happens.
It's an odd thing: a policy with a $5k annual deductible can be more than $5k/year cheaper than one that covers everything. Think about that for a minute - you come out ahead even if you have $5k of costs, none of which are covered. It just goes to show how big paperwork processing costs are as a percentage of healthcare.
I did have one employer who offered such a plan, and I was all over it, but they've vanished in the past few years as they aren't Obamacare-compatible. If I has the choice, I'd totally get the higher salary from my employer and get my own catastrophic care policy - I'd come out way ahead, in every scenario.
Luke would never have abandoned the order - he was defined by being hopeful in the face of reality. He never would have seriously considered killing his student - I know you didn't like RTJ, but the second half of the movie was about him taking an extreme risk for the longshot chance that the most evil man he knew was redeemable.
That wasn't fucking Luke.
Finn was cool in TFA anyway - he was the only character with an actual arc. Ruined by random walk-on character in TLJ of course, but he had an arc.
The series needs some credible threat for Ma-Rey Sue to face. Kylo became a joke. The military leader of the Empire - can't remember his name now - was at least somewhat interesting in TFA, but became a joke in TLJ. Snoke should have been the final boss, but was a joke in TLJ. There wasn't a single character in TLJ who was worthwhile, full stop. The plot was as non-nonsensical as the first prequel. All TLJ had going for it was pretty visuals.
For many people, the last one does not exist due to the simple logic.
* AI is not very intelligent today
* Ergo, AI will never be very intelligent
The better argument is: there has never been an "AI" with general intelligence, and there is no evidence this is possible. What some call "strong AI" is an extreme of general intelligence - human-equivalent or -superior intelligence, but there's a lower bar here that hasn't been cleared. No "AI" has ever been able to solve a problem is hasn't specifically been trained to solve, and it would be a surprise to experts if that ever happened with current methods.
Strong AI and weak AI are not different points on a continuum from an implementation perspective. They are very different in kind. Strong AI is simply not anything like weak AI with more processing power.
Could it happen in 100 years? Sure - that's a long time. But it's not some natural evolution of what we have today.
Not sure why you keep bringing up the prequels - no one wanted to see more of those, and anyway all those characters were long dead.
Don't dismiss the cartoons. Clone Wars the cartoon was much better than the prequels. Not great, but as TV generally compares to movies it compared to the real SW films (the main weakness was the long list of characters you know can't die, but the writers eventually figured that out and moved the focus towards new characters). Rebels has been actually good - it respects the canon, and pulls some of the good stuff from the EU without taking the whole (mostly crappy) EU as canon.
But you're missing the whole point of why TLJ was a steaming pile. It's not that it killed off Luke: that was inevitable. It's that that fucking wasn't Luke! You can listen to Mark Hamill explain why, if it's unclear. Character by character, old and new, the arcs were so bad and unbelievable that there was no watchable movie left.
It doesn't matter what the majority of people believe, it matters what the majority of gun owners believe, since that what it will come down to. It's worth remembering that the American Revolution began with an attempt by the British governor to seize guns from civilians.
might suggest looking to Australia for examples we can use, regarding gun turn-in or buy-back programs.
Come and take it, soy boy. Or, as we say in Texas, "no step on snek".
The vast majority of the public, for example, does not require a semi-automatic rifle of any kind.
The world does not require your sorry ass either, but here you are. Fortunately, the Second Amendment doesn't care what you think is required.
Every adult male was part of the militia. These days that's changed of course: women are welcome too.
I guess it depends on where you fell in the target audience?
I just think people over-emphasize Yoda vs Ewoks. The Yoda scenes were great and the Ewok scenes were a vision of things to come, but each was a small portion of its respective movie. I find everything in ESB except Yoda and Vader forgettable, while I find the majority of RTJ very good. Jabbas palace, the space combat, the final confrontation - all great stuff.
Rogue One could admittedly have been more, but after being subjected to Lucas' shockingly amazing lack of vision, it was nice and refreshing.
Fair point. I think most would rank it first after the original three.
That does effectively destroy the canon and I can understand why some would be upset. I hold it's a good thing.
Firm proof you were never a Star Wars fan, and probably liked the Transformers movies.
I mean, really, make a different SciFi franchise if you're rejecting the SW canon, but don't make a SW film.
I liked RTJ better than ESB. Come at me bro!
TLJ ruined Luke Skywalker, ruined every character on the Empire side, ruined Finn's arc, total BS with Admiral Akbar, most of the heroic moments went to new characters introduced in the film that we had no emotional attachment to at all.
Rogue One was boring and bland, but at least showed some respect for the canon.
One day I would understand why people hate The Last Jedi, I really enjoyed it.
It shat all over the classic Star Wars characters.
It shat all over the new Star Wars characters.
It made no kind of damn sense, and ruined the canon.
It was very visually appealing.
It was basically "Ass", the movie from Idiocracy.
Check out minds.com. It's trying to be the uncensored, open source, decentralized Twitter. No clue if it actually is any of those things, but it would be nice.
Slashdot has come to a sad place when discussions about physics are being downmodded.
BTW, for those unfamiliar with Noether's theorem, it's both very fundamental and very cool - it explains why there are conserved quantities in physics. There's a lot of good material on it on YouTube, too.
The EM drive, if it works, violates conservation of momentum, which can easily be used to also violate conservation of energy.
1) Momentum is not conserved in our universe.
2) Conservation of momentum is not required for conservation of energy
3) Energy is not conserved in our universe
Your argument is so over-simplifying physics that it's nonsense. Conservation of energy and of momentum are mathematical consequences of Euclidean space and time, by Noether's theorem. We don't, of course, live in Euclidean space or time. Note that the two conservation principles are unrelated - conservation of momentum comes from spatial symmetry, while conservation of energy comes from time symmetry. Either can be true without the other being true. That's just math.
Under special relativity, momentum is not conserved because of course we don't inhabit Euclidean space. Even so, energy is conserved in special relativity. The thing is, while momentum is not conserved, a different quantity is - we call it "relativistic momentum", but it doesn't look much like momentum except at low energy levels.
Do you see the point? If this EM drive thingy were to turn out to violate conservation of Newtonian momentum, that would be very interesting, but it would "only" imply new physics, and a new conserved quantity, not the ability to build perpetual motion machines.
Of course, under general relativity energy isn't conserved anyhow, because time flows at different rates at different places and times. And yet you still can't build a perpetual motion machine. Once again, there's new physics and a different conserved quantity, that happens to look like energy in the familiar special case of low gravity.
octopi don't lie.
A cube of cheese no larger than a die
The bait to catch a wandering mie
But the mountain likely will erode
Before I catch an octopode
Burma Shave
As much as I fantasise about panspermia
I don't think that word means what you think it means.
Ah, I see - I can buy books through my Kindle app. Originally, I remember Apple wanted 30% on anything used in-app even if it wasn't sold in app. I guess that was the point of compromise.
What do you mean "when"? You don't think they already verify robocaller IDs against the list of campaign contributors? It's just like why physical mail is 95% spam by weight.
Eventually, owning and carrying a smartphone will be compulsory - it will serve as your government ID and will sub for driver's licence, passport, Social Insurance / Social Security card, health card, etc.
So, sort of like WeChat in China then. Oh, it might not be technically required, but good luck getting very far without it. And don't forget your social credit score!
Weren't there endless wars about e.g. Apple taking 30% of anything sold through the Kindle app? I didn't realize a peace accord had been reached.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...