I believe that the US taxpayers are already paying when illegals with no money end up in Emergency Room ( and get some treatment there, eventually). That means the cost is not that different, it's just if the system is fixed more people actually get to live longer for about the same amount of money spent. Rather than just getting stabilized and dying soon after (wasted $$$) or making regular visits to ER since they don't get proper healthcare and just "emergency care". And here's another thing to think about - the more people cluttering up the ERs = the less ER resources for you if you ever need it. Even if the hospitals don't treat them, their dead bodies could get in the way of your critically injured body.
To me, it just shows how ignorant most US people are. They are already _paying_ lots of money for their broken system (more per capita than UK's NHS). They pay for Medicare, Medicaid. They pay for illegal immigrant ER. They pay to HMOs, etc. And then when stuff happens, way too many of them don't get much after all that paying (the number of healthcare related bankruptcies is very high in the USA). And then the US people scream "No!!!" when their President actually tries to fix it. Maybe he's trying to fix it the wrong way, but plain "No!!!" isn't going to help much, since the system is clearly broken. Why not just come up with better suggestions? If most of the US people don't think it can be fixed or don't want it fixed, that actually reflects rather poorly on the USA and the US people.
Look, if it's all about economics and "who cares about the health of 'stupid people'", then Governments shouldn't really try so hard to discourage people from smoking. Most smokers live till near retirement age then die around then or not long after, add enough tobacco taxes and they're good for the economy. And if they take down a few nonsmokers with them via secondhand smoke, that's good too. Since on average those nonsmokers will still live past their main productive years - after that they're taking more out than they're putting in (they may be entitled to "take out" after all their contributions but hard economic fact is the longer they live the more they'd take out).
Stupid people will say "But dying from lung cancer is expensive!". Here's the bad news, you will eventually die of something. And the odds are it'll be about as expensive, or even more expensive. And if you follow all those health tips on eating well and keeping fit, you'd lower your odds of dying of heart disease and stroke, but that means the odds of dying from cancer (and other stuff) go up.
Oh and if you live really long, keeping a person in a nursing home for a decade or more isn't cheap. Your body or/and mind[1] will fall apart and you'd need help.
So if people want to talk hard economics, that's some hard economics for them.
My suggestion is there should be subsidized healthcare for everyone. BUT it's limited to a finite quota per person. e.g. stuff like max of 400K every 2 years, with a max of 1 million per lifetime, adjusted for inflation and country's finances. Figures are just for example - let the actuarists and economists work it out.
Once you run out, too bad so sad - the country and taxpayers have done what they can reasonably afford for you. If you have money or other source of money, you can still pay full rate at hospitals (private or otherwise). No more taxpayer money for you.
But what if you are some poor but "exceptionally deserving" person?
OK, here's one workaround (I'm not sure how good and practical it is)- other people can choose to apply to sacrifice some of their quota for you (subject to regulations so that stupid and illiterate people don't get conned too much - hey there's no 100% when it comes to stupidity ok?).
How do you stop people from blowing away their quota on useless treatments? I don't know. It depends on how much freedom you want the system to have. I'd say you wouldn't want to allow people to spend their quota on quack doctors.
Most popular operating systems can be analogous to a house with locks and a separate room for "maintenance personnel only" that's locked, and your personal room with a door and lock too (there may be similar rooms of other people with corresponding doors and locks).
The trouble is when you invite a guest into your house, there is no guest room that _you_ can easily use, so you have to invite him into your personal room. The design of the house is such that you cannot usefully interact with the guest while the guest is in a different room from you.
This means he has full access to your personal room. The geeks who don't understand the real world will say "Ah, but OS XYZ is secure because the "maintenance personnel only" room is locked and unaccessible". But who the fuck cares? You keep most of your stuff and valuables in your personal room! Insurance can take care of recreating the maintenance room stuff - not hard since the stuff in there is the same for every house of that model. They'll never be able recreate your personal documents.
This is changing a bit with Vista and Windows 7, but it's still not good enough IMO. As for Linux, I don't see much help with what I'm talking about for the average desktop user yet. Apparmor is not "desktop ready" yet, and SELinux is barely even ready for average admins.
This test of AV products is like inviting a crook/spy into your whole house, closing your eyes and letting him mess it up (plant bugs if he wants etc), and then get someone to try to clean everything up and restore stuff back to what it was.
Yes it can be done in many cases. But it's foolish to expect the clean up to be 100% in all cases.
If you really want to do that, you use a special house. Then you invite the crook into that special house. Then when he's done, you press a button and the house reverts back to its original state.
I doubt it'll provide more profit for Sony. But if Sony lose and are forced to mod their MMORPGs, I think it may mean more profit for gold farmers. Some of the mods are likely to make it easier for bots to navigate and do stuff:).
I think we should have an international "Obey all traffic signs even if they are stupid" day. That might help remove some stupid signs.
I've seen 60kph speed limits on some highways (>=3 lanes each direction, opposing traffic separated by concrete barrier so low chance of head on collisions). And hardly anybody is following the limit (most driving about 80kph). I think if I drove at 60 kph I'd probably cause more accidents on those highways - even if I don't kill myself, I'd disrupt the flow and so create more chances for accidents (people changing lanes, slowing down etc).
> It's disappointing to many that the New Testament doesn't explicitly say "Free all your slaves"
But that'll be silly. If ALL the slaves were freed where would they go? How many slaves owned land to sow crops, and have places to stay and do business in? Many of the freed slaves would have to sell themselves as slaves to get food and shelter. Whoopee.
I'm sure not all the masters were that rich to give enough property to each and every one of their slaves so that all slaves and masters could survive independently.
So I think Paul did the right thing - tell masters and slaves to treat each other well see Eph 6:5-6. And leave it to them to figure out what should then best be done given the circumstances.
Sure it doesn't seem wonderful, but you have to consider the full implications before writing stuff that you expect everyone to try to follow and follow for a long time.
I find that most people who make fun of stuff in the Bible don't actually use their brains. They just go about looking for the slightest excuse to mock or ridicule it. They're not really trying to understand things, and how things were in the "bad old days". So it's usually a waste of time talking with them.
Good luck trying to get the Assyrians and Enemies together to sign something like the "Geneva Convention". Or abolish slavery, or the popular practice of genocide. Yes that's right, if you were a young guy caught in war, the typically the only way you're going to _live_ is as a slave. In later ages, victors probably found that taking massive numbers of personal slaves didn't scale and didn't help the economy, so they just "enslaved" your country and made it pay tribute, supply resources (slaves, soldiers, money, food etc). But when nations were smaller, killing thousands and taking the rest home as slaves was doable.
Bootstrapping a computer is a process that involves messy compromises. Bootstrapping humanity and human civilizations, cultures, societies and norms, is unlikely to be so easy and "obviously clean" either.
> It was normal that after a war you came back with prisoners and enslaved them.
Back then it was not unusual (for most nations) in the course of war to kill everyone. And some (e.g. Assyrians) if they were really pissed off, threw salt on the losers' fields as well so that any survivors would not be able to grow any crops.
Of course normally you'd just kill all the males of potential warfaring age, and enslave the rest (why "waste" them?).
The result of course was they didn't get so many "insurgents" and "freedom fighters".
So given the "standard operating procedures", what would one expect people to do after a war. Let all the losers and captives go totally free, keep all their land and stuff? So that the next generation will wipe you out?
War back then was certainly not "nice". There was no Hague or Geneva Convention. Not sure how far you would have got if you tried to propose something like that back in the bronze and iron ages. I would suggest that it takes time to change people, takes time to "bootstrap" civilizations, cultures and norms.
As for "owning" and enslaving people, nowadays many corporations (esp US ones) own employee ideas even if the employees come up with the ideas outside of work and in fields unrelated to their work.
I wonder if slave masters in the old days ever had complete ownership over their slaves' music, inventions, writings etc.
Regarding inventions I see one "USA" case - and it became a North-South split (north = public domain, south = slave master's).
> I was in driver training for rolling a stop sign
If you mean not coming to a complete stop at a stop sign, is that a serious offense? There'll be a lot of wasted fuel if everyone stopped at every stop sign.
Of course if you mean literally rolling a stop sign then that's different;).
There have been definite improvements in the past two decades or so (OK so Mao took them backwards a huge bit). So most of the people in China will just put up with it - they are getting richer. Many of them are rabidly proud of their country.
Car analogy: they're stuck in the car and the CCP is driving, the scenery is crap, but getting better and they look like they're getting somewhere[1] (and quite fast too by some standards). So most will stick around for the ride, grumble a bit ("are we there yet?"), but not really care that they can't change the driver. A few will even be singing nationalistic songs of their own free will, and there'll be a bunch who'd get off ASAP and go to some other country.
[1] For example, their ambitious push for more nuclear power stations, which should reduce pollution significantly:
quote: "The country may build about 22 reactors in the five years ending 2010 and 132 units thereafter,"
In contrast I'm not sure when my own country (Malaysia) will significantly reduce its dependence on fossil fuels (without screwing up projects massively) - they don't seem to be good at getting things done and instead are fond of coming up with really stupid ideas.
Politicians already promise to bribe voters with their own money and many dumb voters keep falling for that (they don't bother to use their brains to see whether it's good or bad in the long term or not).
This is just shortcutting the process, and you can ask for the money upfront.
The Freemarket fanatics should be fine with it- willing buyer, willing seller.
As you said, they're not using those votes anyway or care very much about "alternatives". So they might as well sell them. This happens in many 3rd world countries.
If voters really bothered they could work out a system so that they could trade or swap their votes with other voters. I wonder if that would make gerrymandering less predictable;).
> Just remember: fruit is healthy. It never hurts to eat it. Why have a label if this is true anyway?
Because it isn't true.
There are very many fruits in the world that are eaten by humans. They can be very different in their effects.
Many fruits contain lots of sugar. That's not good for diabetics. Some fruits have very high potassium levels - this is normally good for people with high blood pressure, but bad for people with very bad kidney problems. There's a fruit called Ackee that can give you hypoglycemia or even kill you if not ripe or not prepared correctly. But apparently it's popular with Jamaicans. Grapefruit interacts with many drugs - it can make many drugs way more effective than expected. Starfruit (carambola) has significant amounts of oxalic acid which can give kidney patients problems.
And there are still very many fruits which while might be commonly eaten have not had much research done on them on their health effects and nutritional values.
Lastly, I wonder how the laser etching would look like on a whole durian or a rambutan;).
Why are you all so worried about voter intimidation?
Countries where voter intimidation is a significant problem are normally so screwed that you'd be glad you're actually getting paid to vote however they want, rather than them just announcing the results (before the elections even;) ). And if you can't report them to the cops or election officials and still live unharmed, they and their cop friends could escort you to the voting booth and force you to vote the way they want on whatever fancy system there is. So what's the big deal?
The big problem with insecure electronic voting systems is that millions of votes could get tampered with, without a trace. The other big problem is even if there isn't tampering how do you convince the loser and enough of his supporters that he lost fair and square?
At least with this system the losing team can prove to themselves that yes their votes were counted and too bad they really lost, try again next time.
With some crypto voting systems though, the voters could forget or "forget" how they voted and so they may think their votes were tampered with. I don't know whether this could happen with this particular voting system.
> but to request answers in a set time is foolish - if the road conditions don't warrant losing focus, they shouldn't be providing answers.
Why? I'll be happy to be on the same road with them if they can drive while responding to difficult questions[1] (vocally and in some cases via texting) and still react in time to sudden emergency situations, stay in their lane, merge, observe traffic signs, do lane changes AND still avoid motorcyclists/cyclists who pass on either side of the car.
Heck if they can get 25% they'll be better drivers than me and the rest on the road, so if they get the passing score (or somehow 100% ), they are the ones that who should be worried about our crappy driving, rather than the other way around...
Even if they aren't always in the same state of mind, the idea is if they can pass the exam, they would be able to drive better than average while doing cellphone conversations or texting. It would be trivial for them.
I also think we should make the test a requirement to take for all drivers (along with some relevant training) so that everyone can be aware of how crappy they are at even the easier parts of the test.
[1] In categories such as: "small talk", "business deals", "mental processing/calculation", "conversation retention", and tests like those where you hear a continuous random sequence of words, and you are supposed to repeat the seventh or Xth word after the current word you are hearing;).
If you're willing to pay you might still be able to hire someone to patch that Windows XP bug. I believe at least one person in the past has released patches for bugs in Microsoft's stuff and he didn't have the source code. There are people who are quite good at reverse engineering Windows internals and inserting code of their own.
Anyway, to me that just shows how desperate Microsoft is to force people on to Vista and later. They need to get everyone off XP before stuff like Wine and ReactOS get "good enough".
Otherwise Microsoft will be in big trouble. They'd be like Intel trying to get people to jump on board the Itanic and AMD suddenly releases AMD64, and everyone says - hey we now don't need to go through all that pain!
The market will be like the switch from there only being "IBM PC BIOS" to a market with Award, AMI, Phoenix etc. Microsoft is well aware that PC BIOS vendors don't make monopoly profits.
Lastly, I've seen too many WONTFIXes and WORKSFORMEs on OSS bug sites to believe that the OSS stuff is really better than Microsoft's stuff. They're just crap at different things;). I know someone who was using something that's deprecated and documented (IPQUEUE) but he was getting slow performance when there are many VLAN interfaces. His option was to try something that's not deprecated (NFQUEUE?) but poorly documented (at that time).
If one really wants deterrent value, then executing someone painfully in a few minutes or seconds isn't the worst thing you can do to someone.
The marvels of modern medical technology allow people to be kept alive under very extraordinary or even extreme circumstances.
So either kill them quick and painlessly, or make them wish they were dead for the rest of their "way too long" lives, or forget this sort of stuff and just keep them healthy and well in prison.
The common popular execution methods are just crude anachronisms.
If some people can pass a stringent enough driving exam while having higher than normally allowed blood alcohol levels, I'm actually fine with them being on the same road with me as long as they don't go above their licensed limit - but what are the odds? How likely are they to drink past their licensed limit? If they are less likely to do so than normal drivers with the lower normal limits, then why not?
On the other end of the spectrum there are incompetent drivers who can't even stick to their lanes or merge safely when sober and concentrating to the max (probably gripping the steering wheel with whitened knuckles too;) ).
So I think the main problem is: 1) The training isn't good enough 2) The exams aren't hard enough
But governments would probably lose votes in many countries if the driving exams are too hard;).
Did you even read the parts about the exams and tests? There are clearly people who think they can read but can't...
Yes some of the people who pass the exam will later on screw up and kill people, but that is going to happen no matter what you do. What matters is the stats. If these people are still less likely to screw up compared to the average driver, then the training, tests and exams are working just fine.
Also the big benefit of the first exam is most people will fail it - and only manage to pass the "normal exam". This way you have more drivers on the road who know they aren't great and really need to focus on driving.
Rather than just having one exam where nearly everyone passes, and can go on to fool themselves that they are good drivers.
1) Because having a lot of money isn't the same as being rich _enough_. You feel rich when you can afford most of the stuff you want. You feel poor when you can't. This is not as highly correlated with the amount of money you have, as many would believe.
2) And a fair number of smart people are more interested in spending their time on other things than spending it on making a lot of money. Life is short after all[1].
Not that having a lot of money is bad - I'd love to have a lot of money too:).
[1] As for people who believe there's some sort of heaven[2] and eternal life, it would be more logical for them to accumulate good friends (with eternal life) than money.
Eternity is a long time to spend, counting your billions (trillions?) over and over again without any good friends.
[2] But in that heaven somehow the people would have to be made perfect (voluntarily - not against their will) so that they won't get on each other's nerves and make it seem like hell. Eternity is a very long time for the imperfect. Too long.
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I believe that the US taxpayers are already paying when illegals with no money end up in Emergency Room ( and get some treatment there, eventually). That means the cost is not that different, it's just if the system is fixed more people actually get to live longer for about the same amount of money spent. Rather than just getting stabilized and dying soon after (wasted $$$) or making regular visits to ER since they don't get proper healthcare and just "emergency care". And here's another thing to think about - the more people cluttering up the ERs = the less ER resources for you if you ever need it. Even if the hospitals don't treat them, their dead bodies could get in the way of your critically injured body.
To me, it just shows how ignorant most US people are. They are already _paying_ lots of money for their broken system (more per capita than UK's NHS). They pay for Medicare, Medicaid. They pay for illegal immigrant ER. They pay to HMOs, etc. And then when stuff happens, way too many of them don't get much after all that paying (the number of healthcare related bankruptcies is very high in the USA). And then the US people scream "No!!!" when their President actually tries to fix it. Maybe he's trying to fix it the wrong way, but plain "No!!!" isn't going to help much, since the system is clearly broken. Why not just come up with better suggestions? If most of the US people don't think it can be fixed or don't want it fixed, that actually reflects rather poorly on the USA and the US people.
Look, if it's all about economics and "who cares about the health of 'stupid people'", then Governments shouldn't really try so hard to discourage people from smoking. Most smokers live till near retirement age then die around then or not long after, add enough tobacco taxes and they're good for the economy. And if they take down a few nonsmokers with them via secondhand smoke, that's good too. Since on average those nonsmokers will still live past their main productive years - after that they're taking more out than they're putting in (they may be entitled to "take out" after all their contributions but hard economic fact is the longer they live the more they'd take out).
Stupid people will say "But dying from lung cancer is expensive!". Here's the bad news, you will eventually die of something. And the odds are it'll be about as expensive, or even more expensive. And if you follow all those health tips on eating well and keeping fit, you'd lower your odds of dying of heart disease and stroke, but that means the odds of dying from cancer (and other stuff) go up.
Oh and if you live really long, keeping a person in a nursing home for a decade or more isn't cheap. Your body or/and mind[1] will fall apart and you'd need help.
So if people want to talk hard economics, that's some hard economics for them.
My suggestion is there should be subsidized healthcare for everyone. BUT it's limited to a finite quota per person. e.g. stuff like max of 400K every 2 years, with a max of 1 million per lifetime, adjusted for inflation and country's finances. Figures are just for example - let the actuarists and economists work it out.
Once you run out, too bad so sad - the country and taxpayers have done what they can reasonably afford for you. If you have money or other source of money, you can still pay full rate at hospitals (private or otherwise). No more taxpayer money for you.
But what if you are some poor but "exceptionally deserving" person?
OK, here's one workaround (I'm not sure how good and practical it is)- other people can choose to apply to sacrifice some of their quota for you (subject to regulations so that stupid and illiterate people don't get conned too much - hey there's no 100% when it comes to stupidity ok?).
How do you stop people from blowing away their quota on useless treatments? I don't know. It depends on how much freedom you want the system to have. I'd say you wouldn't want to allow people to spend their quota on quack doctors.
Most popular operating systems can be analogous to a house with locks and a separate room for "maintenance personnel only" that's locked, and your personal room with a door and lock too (there may be similar rooms of other people with corresponding doors and locks).
The trouble is when you invite a guest into your house, there is no guest room that _you_ can easily use, so you have to invite him into your personal room. The design of the house is such that you cannot usefully interact with the guest while the guest is in a different room from you.
This means he has full access to your personal room. The geeks who don't understand the real world will say "Ah, but OS XYZ is secure because the "maintenance personnel only" room is locked and unaccessible". But who the fuck cares? You keep most of your stuff and valuables in your personal room! Insurance can take care of recreating the maintenance room stuff - not hard since the stuff in there is the same for every house of that model. They'll never be able recreate your personal documents.
This is changing a bit with Vista and Windows 7, but it's still not good enough IMO. As for Linux, I don't see much help with what I'm talking about for the average desktop user yet. Apparmor is not "desktop ready" yet, and SELinux is barely even ready for average admins.
This test of AV products is like inviting a crook/spy into your whole house, closing your eyes and letting him mess it up (plant bugs if he wants etc), and then get someone to try to clean everything up and restore stuff back to what it was.
Yes it can be done in many cases. But it's foolish to expect the clean up to be 100% in all cases.
If you really want to do that, you use a special house. Then you invite the crook into that special house. Then when he's done, you press a button and the house reverts back to its original state.
See: http://www.physicscentral.com/buzz/blog/index.cfm?postid=3414795237807494042
I think that's just based on a model. But I won't be surprised if it's also true in practice.
I doubt it'll provide more profit for Sony. But if Sony lose and are forced to mod their MMORPGs, I think it may mean more profit for gold farmers. Some of the mods are likely to make it easier for bots to navigate and do stuff :).
I think we should have an international "Obey all traffic signs even if they are stupid" day. That might help remove some stupid signs.
I've seen 60kph speed limits on some highways (>=3 lanes each direction, opposing traffic separated by concrete barrier so low chance of head on collisions). And hardly anybody is following the limit (most driving about 80kph). I think if I drove at 60 kph I'd probably cause more accidents on those highways - even if I don't kill myself, I'd disrupt the flow and so create more chances for accidents (people changing lanes, slowing down etc).
> It's disappointing to many that the New Testament doesn't explicitly say "Free all your slaves"
But that'll be silly. If ALL the slaves were freed where would they go? How many slaves owned land to sow crops, and have places to stay and do business in? Many of the freed slaves would have to sell themselves as slaves to get food and shelter. Whoopee.
I'm sure not all the masters were that rich to give enough property to each and every one of their slaves so that all slaves and masters could survive independently.
So I think Paul did the right thing - tell masters and slaves to treat each other well see Eph 6:5-6. And leave it to them to figure out what should then best be done given the circumstances.
Sure it doesn't seem wonderful, but you have to consider the full implications before writing stuff that you expect everyone to try to follow and follow for a long time.
I find that most people who make fun of stuff in the Bible don't actually use their brains. They just go about looking for the slightest excuse to mock or ridicule it. They're not really trying to understand things, and how things were in the "bad old days". So it's usually a waste of time talking with them.
Good luck trying to get the Assyrians and Enemies together to sign something like the "Geneva Convention". Or abolish slavery, or the popular practice of genocide. Yes that's right, if you were a young guy caught in war, the typically the only way you're going to _live_ is as a slave. In later ages, victors probably found that taking massive numbers of personal slaves didn't scale and didn't help the economy, so they just "enslaved" your country and made it pay tribute, supply resources (slaves, soldiers, money, food etc). But when nations were smaller, killing thousands and taking the rest home as slaves was doable.
Bootstrapping a computer is a process that involves messy compromises. Bootstrapping humanity and human civilizations, cultures, societies and norms, is unlikely to be so easy and "obviously clean" either.
> It was normal that after a war you came back with prisoners and enslaved them.
Back then it was not unusual (for most nations) in the course of war to kill everyone. And some (e.g. Assyrians) if they were really pissed off, threw salt on the losers' fields as well so that any survivors would not be able to grow any crops.
Of course normally you'd just kill all the males of potential warfaring age, and enslave the rest (why "waste" them?).
The result of course was they didn't get so many "insurgents" and "freedom fighters".
So given the "standard operating procedures", what would one expect people to do after a war. Let all the losers and captives go totally free, keep all their land and stuff? So that the next generation will wipe you out?
War back then was certainly not "nice". There was no Hague or Geneva Convention. Not sure how far you would have got if you tried to propose something like that back in the bronze and iron ages. I would suggest that it takes time to change people, takes time to "bootstrap" civilizations, cultures and norms.
As for "owning" and enslaving people, nowadays many corporations (esp US ones) own employee ideas even if the employees come up with the ideas outside of work and in fields unrelated to their work.
I wonder if slave masters in the old days ever had complete ownership over their slaves' music, inventions, writings etc.
Regarding inventions I see one "USA" case - and it became a North-South split (north = public domain, south = slave master's).
> I was in driver training for rolling a stop sign
;).
If you mean not coming to a complete stop at a stop sign, is that a serious offense? There'll be a lot of wasted fuel if everyone stopped at every stop sign.
Of course if you mean literally rolling a stop sign then that's different
There have been definite improvements in the past two decades or so (OK so Mao took them backwards a huge bit). So most of the people in China will just put up with it - they are getting richer. Many of them are rabidly proud of their country.
Car analogy: they're stuck in the car and the CCP is driving, the scenery is crap, but getting better and they look like they're getting somewhere[1] (and quite fast too by some standards). So most will stick around for the ride, grumble a bit ("are we there yet?"), but not really care that they can't change the driver. A few will even be singing nationalistic songs of their own free will, and there'll be a bunch who'd get off ASAP and go to some other country.
[1] For example, their ambitious push for more nuclear power stations, which should reduce pollution significantly:
quote: "The country may build about 22 reactors in the five years ending 2010 and 132 units thereafter,"
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601101&sid=a2lUkzmYNGWI
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2008-08/05/content_8967806.htm
In contrast I'm not sure when my own country (Malaysia) will significantly reduce its dependence on fossil fuels (without screwing up projects massively) - they don't seem to be good at getting things done and instead are fond of coming up with really stupid ideas.
You might also wish to avoid the blue M&Ms:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/science-news/5921266/Blue-MandMs-mend-spinal-injuries.html
Cookies.
Or less likely - detection of cached images or files.
Youtube can give video suggestions based on what was watched using the browser even if an account is not created.
I don't see what's so wrong with voter bribery.
;).
Politicians already promise to bribe voters with their own money and many dumb voters keep falling for that (they don't bother to use their brains to see whether it's good or bad in the long term or not).
This is just shortcutting the process, and you can ask for the money upfront.
The Freemarket fanatics should be fine with it- willing buyer, willing seller.
As you said, they're not using those votes anyway or care very much about "alternatives". So they might as well sell them. This happens in many 3rd world countries.
If voters really bothered they could work out a system so that they could trade or swap their votes with other voters. I wonder if that would make gerrymandering less predictable
Microsoft can't do something similar - there'll be antitrust issues if they tried that ;).
> Just remember: fruit is healthy. It never hurts to eat it. Why have a label if this is true anyway?
;).
Because it isn't true.
There are very many fruits in the world that are eaten by humans. They can be very different in their effects.
Many fruits contain lots of sugar. That's not good for diabetics.
Some fruits have very high potassium levels - this is normally good for people with high blood pressure, but bad for people with very bad kidney problems.
There's a fruit called Ackee that can give you hypoglycemia or even kill you if not ripe or not prepared correctly. But apparently it's popular with Jamaicans.
Grapefruit interacts with many drugs - it can make many drugs way more effective than expected.
Starfruit (carambola) has significant amounts of oxalic acid which can give kidney patients problems.
And there are still very many fruits which while might be commonly eaten have not had much research done on them on their health effects and nutritional values.
Lastly, I wonder how the laser etching would look like on a whole durian or a rambutan
Why are you all so worried about voter intimidation?
;) ). And if you can't report them to the cops or election officials and still live unharmed, they and their cop friends could escort you to the voting booth and force you to vote the way they want on whatever fancy system there is. So what's the big deal?
Countries where voter intimidation is a significant problem are normally so screwed that you'd be glad you're actually getting paid to vote however they want, rather than them just announcing the results (before the elections even
The big problem with insecure electronic voting systems is that millions of votes could get tampered with, without a trace. The other big problem is even if there isn't tampering how do you convince the loser and enough of his supporters that he lost fair and square?
At least with this system the losing team can prove to themselves that yes their votes were counted and too bad they really lost, try again next time.
With some crypto voting systems though, the voters could forget or "forget" how they voted and so they may think their votes were tampered with. I don't know whether this could happen with this particular voting system.
> but to request answers in a set time is foolish - if the road conditions don't warrant losing focus, they shouldn't be providing answers.
;).
Why? I'll be happy to be on the same road with them if they can drive while responding to difficult questions[1] (vocally and in some cases via texting) and still react in time to sudden emergency situations, stay in their lane, merge, observe traffic signs, do lane changes AND still avoid motorcyclists/cyclists who pass on either side of the car.
Heck if they can get 25% they'll be better drivers than me and the rest on the road, so if they get the passing score (or somehow 100% ), they are the ones that who should be worried about our crappy driving, rather than the other way around...
Even if they aren't always in the same state of mind, the idea is if they can pass the exam, they would be able to drive better than average while doing cellphone conversations or texting. It would be trivial for them.
I also think we should make the test a requirement to take for all drivers (along with some relevant training) so that everyone can be aware of how crappy they are at even the easier parts of the test.
[1] In categories such as: "small talk", "business deals", "mental processing/calculation", "conversation retention", and tests like those where you hear a continuous random sequence of words, and you are supposed to repeat the seventh or Xth word after the current word you are hearing
OK here's a reading tip: "TheLink" is not the same as "s-whs".
Yes I know, both usernames confusingly have the letter "h". But please...
Is it my imagination or there's a higher percentage of Slashdot posters with reading difficulties nowadays?
1) You're imagining things if you think I believe I'd be able to pass that exam.
2) You fail.
For my own sake I'd want that "high end" exam to be something I can't pass. Go figure. If you still don't get it, you fail again.
FWIW you're the one who started with the "ad hominem".
That's still 8 years. Longer than Ubuntu LTS.
;). I know someone who was using something that's deprecated and documented (IPQUEUE) but he was getting slow performance when there are many VLAN interfaces. His option was to try something that's not deprecated (NFQUEUE?) but poorly documented (at that time).
If you're willing to pay you might still be able to hire someone to patch that Windows XP bug. I believe at least one person in the past has released patches for bugs in Microsoft's stuff and he didn't have the source code. There are people who are quite good at reverse engineering Windows internals and inserting code of their own.
Anyway, to me that just shows how desperate Microsoft is to force people on to Vista and later. They need to get everyone off XP before stuff like Wine and ReactOS get "good enough".
Otherwise Microsoft will be in big trouble. They'd be like Intel trying to get people to jump on board the Itanic and AMD suddenly releases AMD64, and everyone says - hey we now don't need to go through all that pain!
The market will be like the switch from there only being "IBM PC BIOS" to a market with Award, AMI, Phoenix etc. Microsoft is well aware that PC BIOS vendors don't make monopoly profits.
Lastly, I've seen too many WONTFIXes and WORKSFORMEs on OSS bug sites to believe that the OSS stuff is really better than Microsoft's stuff. They're just crap at different things
If one really wants deterrent value, then executing someone painfully in a few minutes or seconds isn't the worst thing you can do to someone.
The marvels of modern medical technology allow people to be kept alive under very extraordinary or even extreme circumstances.
So either kill them quick and painlessly, or make them wish they were dead for the rest of their "way too long" lives, or forget this sort of stuff and just keep them healthy and well in prison.
The common popular execution methods are just crude anachronisms.
Seems to me like you can't read and you're making things up as you go along.
If some people can pass a stringent enough driving exam while having higher than normally allowed blood alcohol levels, I'm actually fine with them being on the same road with me as long as they don't go above their licensed limit - but what are the odds? How likely are they to drink past their licensed limit? If they are less likely to do so than normal drivers with the lower normal limits, then why not?
;) ).
;).
On the other end of the spectrum there are incompetent drivers who can't even stick to their lanes or merge safely when sober and concentrating to the max (probably gripping the steering wheel with whitened knuckles too
So I think the main problem is:
1) The training isn't good enough
2) The exams aren't hard enough
But governments would probably lose votes in many countries if the driving exams are too hard
Did you even read the parts about the exams and tests? There are clearly people who think they can read but can't...
Yes some of the people who pass the exam will later on screw up and kill people, but that is going to happen no matter what you do. What matters is the stats. If these people are still less likely to screw up compared to the average driver, then the training, tests and exams are working just fine.
Also the big benefit of the first exam is most people will fail it - and only manage to pass the "normal exam". This way you have more drivers on the road who know they aren't great and really need to focus on driving.
Rather than just having one exam where nearly everyone passes, and can go on to fool themselves that they are good drivers.
That's why they have to pass the exam first as I mentioned.
There are people who think they can read but can't, and there are exams and tests for that.
1) Because having a lot of money isn't the same as being rich _enough_. You feel rich when you can afford most of the stuff you want. You feel poor when you can't. This is not as highly correlated with the amount of money you have, as many would believe.
:).
2) And a fair number of smart people are more interested in spending their time on other things than spending it on making a lot of money. Life is short after all[1].
Not that having a lot of money is bad - I'd love to have a lot of money too
[1] As for people who believe there's some sort of heaven[2] and eternal life, it would be more logical for them to accumulate good friends (with eternal life) than money.
Eternity is a long time to spend, counting your billions (trillions?) over and over again without any good friends.
[2] But in that heaven somehow the people would have to be made perfect (voluntarily - not against their will) so that they won't get on each other's nerves and make it seem like hell. Eternity is a very long time for the imperfect. Too long.