Although the defense spending is huge, it's still less than that for health care. In the 2010 federal budget there were $743 billion allocated for health care, compared to $663.7 billion for defense. Cutting defense costs would be great, but reducing health care costs would be even better.
Bank bailouts have a negligible cost compared to the others, because most of it was in the form of loans that have been repaid.
Of course, you're also ignoring the fact that Mt Saint Helens put more CO2 into the atmosphere than all of mankind before that point, so we really aren't making that big of a dent.
CHECKTHEFACTS befor posting bullshit. Human activities generate 150 times as much CO2 as volcanos.
Because of the only two available explanation -- evolutions and divine intervention
And why do you assume there are only two available explanations?
What, you have a third explanation?
Note that he mentioned AVAILABLE explanations, not possible conjectures. You are welcome to create a new explanation for biological diversity and present credible evidence for that, please!
on Slashdot where people can completely lose their claimed open-mindedness.
Being open-minded does not mean the same as being feeble-minded. The fact is that science progresses towards the truth, even if the absolute truth may never be reached.
Being open-minded does not mean one should reject all the facts that have already been discovered. If and when stronger evidence becomes available, only then will the open-minded scientist abandon current ideas that have been proved plausible through experimental observations.
Being open-minded means one might do further testing on known truths, in order to discover possible errors in experimental data, in order to refine the model, or in order to close the gaps in current theory.
Being open-minded does NOT mean one should give equal time to ideas that are complete bullshit, that have no evidence for them.
Well my "casual" observation shows there was another global warming period during the time of Ancient Egypt (circa 3500 BC) and again in the Roman Empire (circa 300-1300).
Clearly those global warming periods were not caused by cars, so there's no reason to think the present period is either. We need to find the REAL cause for these three Warming periods, which are not man-made.
Also Julius Caesar was assassinated in 44 BC, long before firearms were invented.
Clearly he was not killed by a firearm, so there's no reason to think someone could die as a result of being hit by a gunshot.
That wiki article doesn't help your arguments much. Apart from some oil-rich places there are no good examples of guaranteed basic income effectively working anywhere.
The BIG problem with all forms of socialism is that they reduce society to a zero-sum game. Socialism inevitably takes something away from someone to give it to someone else. Under capitalism there's always an incentive to produce more.
Imagine the consequences of that guaranteed basic income system. You tax the producers and give the results to people who are unemployed. They buy stuff with that money, driving up demand for things that they did not help to produce. The result is inflation, with the workers being forced to pay higher taxes at the same time prices rise.
The inevitable next step is price control. Then the producers have no capital left to invest in increasing production. They lay off people, so there's more people to receive that basic income, which means higher taxes, less production, etc.
TFA says "Also, if the wormhole is short, so that the two stars it links don't lie far apart, an observer might see another unusual signpost -- two closely spaced objects with nearly identical properties."
However, the wormhole doesn't need to be short, which would mean regions of the universe far apart from each other would have similar properties if wormholes existed.
This would solve one of the big problems in modern cosmology, the horizon problem: how can regions of the universe that couldn't possibly have communicated with each other in the lifetime of the universe have similar properties?
There is nothing different than a group of kids in the park bitching about their teacher.
Yes, there is a big difference. No one has ever been sent to jail because a bunch of kids bitched about him in the park. It's the consequences of the act that matter, people at seventh grade should know about that.
the suspect has the opportunity to defend themselves; they MAY have reason to believe the person actually IS a pedophile, rapist or suffer from bipolar disorder
And the teacher has no opportunity to defend himself?
Do you mean that if someone accuses you of a serious crime, his right to defend himself against a libel charge comes before your own right to defend yourself against a criminal accusation?
Maybe next time they can record audio/video of said allegations. Wouldn't be the 1st time that would show the kids were right on their claims. Then again if it's just audio they could still claim its falsifying the teachers voice or something of those lines of thought.
Furthermore, if it is more than one kid claiming bad behaviour from the teacher part, i believe the chances of being true claims are quite higher.
It's people like you who make the draconian decision by the school necessary.
People's lives have been destroyed by false accusations. Hysterical parents who should never have had children, greedy lawyers, those are worse than pedophiles, because they can cause more harm to more people.
The punishment against a false accusation should be at least as severe as the punishment against the crime itself.
In KDE you still have the minimize and maximize buttons. "If you want to minimize, you can right-click the titlebar, then click minimize, or using ALT+F9"??? WTF, I have been using computers since 1975 and find that difficult, how about n00bs?
In KDE, if you are a "power user", you can middle-click the maximize button to maximize the window vertically while maintaining the horizontal size, or right-click it to maximize the window only horizontally. Nice, easy, simple, and keeps working what has always been working.
In other words, you can always improve something, but ***IF IT AIN'T BROKEN, DON'T FIX IT***
Cuba does not have great political or personal freedoms but they have very high quality of life, education, and health care.
I seriously doubt that. i have a friend whose wife was a pediatrician in Brazil some 10, 15 years ago. There was an epidemy there, meningitis IIRC, and Brazil imported vaccines from Cuba. She said she felt dirty about having to fill out so many death certificates for children she herself had vaccinated. Those Cuban vaccines, which were all the public hospitals in Brazil had, were totally ineffective.
Where there's no press freedom, you have to disregard any good 'facts' about a country as propaganda.
an insanely cool energy-to-matter converter capable of creating atoms in the precise configuration as to generate a person.
Well, I don't have any energy-to-matter converter, but i have an instrument that, if inserted in the proper interface, will cause said interface join atoms in the precise configuration of a person.
Reading Slashdot for years, virus writers seem to be better thought of.
Protecting oneself from viruses is easy and has few side effects.
There's no protection against spam that doesn't also kill some of the utility of email. There was a time when one could put an email address everywhere and be contacted only by interesting people. I even had my email address published here in Slashdot.
Spammers killed all that. They are much worse than virus writers.
You could put the high or a higher standard first, but you would have to fund it
OK: have the applicants pay for the needed experts. After all, the idea of a patent is to let the inventor profit. The inventor cannot afford it? That's what banks are for. If the idea is good, he can get a loan based on his future profit. Or get a venture capitalist to fund him.
Pigs are more easily trained, have a better sense of smell, and have been proven to do the job equally, if not better. Pigs are also thought to be smarter than dogs and as such, learn faster; which in turn drives down training costs.
Besides, Muslim extremists hate pigs so much they wouldn't want to fly if that meant being smelled by a pig.
I can't blame a language or runtime for piss poor design
You can blame the choice of a language ill suited to the task.
Java may not be the best choice for a real time environment, for one thing there's the garbage collection to consider. A language that stops from time to time to perform some internal task isn't what I would choose for a time-critical system where human lives may be in danger.
Slashdot Mirror
Although the defense spending is huge, it's still less than that for health care. In the 2010 federal budget there were $743 billion allocated for health care, compared to $663.7 billion for defense. Cutting defense costs would be great, but reducing health care costs would be even better.
Bank bailouts have a negligible cost compared to the others, because most of it was in the form of loans that have been repaid.
What really surprised me was to learn that Uranus isn't considered a gas giant...
Of course, you're also ignoring the fact that Mt Saint Helens put more CO2 into the atmosphere than all of mankind before that point, so we really aren't making that big of a dent.
CHECK THE FACTS befor posting bullshit. Human activities generate 150 times as much CO2 as volcanos.
Because of the only two available explanation -- evolutions and divine intervention
And why do you assume there are only two available explanations?
What, you have a third explanation?
Note that he mentioned AVAILABLE explanations, not possible conjectures. You are welcome to create a new explanation for biological diversity and present credible evidence for that, please!
on Slashdot where people can completely lose their claimed open-mindedness.
Being open-minded does not mean the same as being feeble-minded. The fact is that science progresses towards the truth, even if the absolute truth may never be reached.
Being open-minded does not mean one should reject all the facts that have already been discovered. If and when stronger evidence becomes available, only then will the open-minded scientist abandon current ideas that have been proved plausible through experimental observations.
Being open-minded means one might do further testing on known truths, in order to discover possible errors in experimental data, in order to refine the model, or in order to close the gaps in current theory.
Being open-minded does NOT mean one should give equal time to ideas that are complete bullshit, that have no evidence for them.
Well my "casual" observation shows there was another global warming period during the time of Ancient Egypt (circa 3500 BC) and again in the Roman Empire (circa 300-1300).
Clearly those global warming periods were not caused by cars, so there's no reason to think the present period is either. We need to find the REAL cause for these three Warming periods, which are not man-made.
Also Julius Caesar was assassinated in 44 BC, long before firearms were invented.
Clearly he was not killed by a firearm, so there's no reason to think someone could die as a result of being hit by a gunshot.
That wiki article doesn't help your arguments much. Apart from some oil-rich places there are no good examples of guaranteed basic income effectively working anywhere.
The BIG problem with all forms of socialism is that they reduce society to a zero-sum game. Socialism inevitably takes something away from someone to give it to someone else. Under capitalism there's always an incentive to produce more.
Imagine the consequences of that guaranteed basic income system. You tax the producers and give the results to people who are unemployed. They buy stuff with that money, driving up demand for things that they did not help to produce. The result is inflation, with the workers being forced to pay higher taxes at the same time prices rise.
The inevitable next step is price control. Then the producers have no capital left to invest in increasing production. They lay off people, so there's more people to receive that basic income, which means higher taxes, less production, etc.
My bet would be that, if a hole in the moon is full of derby, that would be Derby cheese, not hats or horses.
TFA says "Also, if the wormhole is short, so that the two stars it links don't lie far apart, an observer might see another unusual signpost -- two closely spaced objects with nearly identical properties."
However, the wormhole doesn't need to be short, which would mean regions of the universe far apart from each other would have similar properties if wormholes existed.
This would solve one of the big problems in modern cosmology, the horizon problem: how can regions of the universe that couldn't possibly have communicated with each other in the lifetime of the universe have similar properties?
There is nothing different than a group of kids in the park bitching about their teacher.
Yes, there is a big difference. No one has ever been sent to jail because a bunch of kids bitched about him in the park. It's the consequences of the act that matter, people at seventh grade should know about that.
the suspect has the opportunity to defend themselves; they MAY have reason to believe the person actually IS a pedophile, rapist or suffer from bipolar disorder
And the teacher has no opportunity to defend himself?
Do you mean that if someone accuses you of a serious crime, his right to defend himself against a libel charge comes before your own right to defend yourself against a criminal accusation?
Public school teachers only work/teach half as much as they did 25 years ago.
Who will sue them for STEALING an education from students for their own personal comfort/laziness?
And you think the right punishment for being lazy is being jailed on a false accusation of pedophilia?
Tell that to your boss next times he catches you reading Slashdot at work.
Maybe next time they can record audio/video of said allegations. Wouldn't be the 1st time that would show the kids were right on their claims. Then again if it's just audio they could still claim its falsifying the teachers voice or something of those lines of thought.
Furthermore, if it is more than one kid claiming bad behaviour from the teacher part, i believe the chances of being true claims are quite higher.
It's people like you who make the draconian decision by the school necessary.
People's lives have been destroyed by false accusations. Hysterical parents who should never have had children, greedy lawyers, those are worse than pedophiles, because they can cause more harm to more people.
The punishment against a false accusation should be at least as severe as the punishment against the crime itself.
Wait... pedophile + rapist = suspension, while bipolar = expulsion? Where is the logic in that one?
Maybe the teacher was a pedophile in the manic phase and a rapist in the depressive state?
In KDE you still have the minimize and maximize buttons. "If you want to minimize, you can right-click the titlebar, then click minimize, or using ALT+F9"??? WTF, I have been using computers since 1975 and find that difficult, how about n00bs?
In KDE, if you are a "power user", you can middle-click the maximize button to maximize the window vertically while maintaining the horizontal size, or right-click it to maximize the window only horizontally. Nice, easy, simple, and keeps working what has always been working.
In other words, you can always improve something, but ***IF IT AIN'T BROKEN, DON'T FIX IT***
...this strikes me as someone who has too much time on his hands.
Oh, great, then I have the right job for him.
Cuba does not have great political or personal freedoms but they have very high quality of life, education, and health care.
I seriously doubt that. i have a friend whose wife was a pediatrician in Brazil some 10, 15 years ago. There was an epidemy there, meningitis IIRC, and Brazil imported vaccines from Cuba. She said she felt dirty about having to fill out so many death certificates for children she herself had vaccinated. Those Cuban vaccines, which were all the public hospitals in Brazil had, were totally ineffective.
Where there's no press freedom, you have to disregard any good 'facts' about a country as propaganda.
Yeah, right, Cuba respecting personal freedom... Why not add North Korea to that list?
an insanely cool energy-to-matter converter capable of creating atoms in the precise configuration as to generate a person.
Well, I don't have any energy-to-matter converter, but i have an instrument that, if inserted in the proper interface, will cause said interface join atoms in the precise configuration of a person.
I always thought that if things really got bad enough, I would have to finally take the plunge and expatriate.
Where would you go? It's the same shit or (usually) worse everywhere.
Reading Slashdot for years, virus writers seem to be better thought of.
Protecting oneself from viruses is easy and has few side effects.
There's no protection against spam that doesn't also kill some of the utility of email. There was a time when one could put an email address everywhere and be contacted only by interesting people. I even had my email address published here in Slashdot.
Spammers killed all that. They are much worse than virus writers.
You can't use the world 'Tolkien' or the Troll estate will be after you.
FTFY
You could put the high or a higher standard first, but you would have to fund it
OK: have the applicants pay for the needed experts. After all, the idea of a patent is to let the inventor profit. The inventor cannot afford it? That's what banks are for. If the idea is good, he can get a loan based on his future profit. Or get a venture capitalist to fund him.
Pigs are more easily trained, have a better sense of smell, and have been proven to do the job equally, if not better. Pigs are also thought to be smarter than dogs and as such, learn faster; which in turn drives down training costs.
Besides, Muslim extremists hate pigs so much they wouldn't want to fly if that meant being smelled by a pig.
people don't like the idea of a swarm of mice crawling over their luggage every time they fly.
I'm sure they'll like the idea of a swarm of mice crawling over their table when they dine even less...
I can't blame a language or runtime for piss poor design
You can blame the choice of a language ill suited to the task.
Java may not be the best choice for a real time environment, for one thing there's the garbage collection to consider. A language that stops from time to time to perform some internal task isn't what I would choose for a time-critical system where human lives may be in danger.