Well if you take the computer analogy further, you might not want to modify your "software" so that you have a higher chance of "hanging" or "deadlocking" the "master process".
Nah. "Less weight" sex should be better than weightless sex;). Low G should be more fun than zero G - zero G = too easy to fly/float apart and not stop.
You know what else would be fun? Strapping on wings in "higher" chambers near the axis and flapping to fly about. Might get nausea in a small station due to coriolis sort of effects, but on a large enough one I think it should be ok.
And how about playing real-life "Joust" (with the appropriate safety gear and all that);).
Oh well, sure looks like most of us will be stuck on earth.
AFAIK idle=poll doesn't come at a performance penalty, in fact it might be very very slightly faster.
Basically the CPU just keeps polling for something to do, rather than taking a nap till there's something to do.
Running a distributed computing project _instead_ of doing idle=poll probably won't help, since it is unlikely to 100% guarantee that your CPU will never HLT.
BUT, doing idle=poll AND running a distributed computing project could make sense if you cared about not wasting compute cycles - basically when there's "nothing" to do, the computer will be doing the distributed computing, and when there's absolutely nothing to do, it'll be spinning around polling for something to do.
There are plenty of apps that would like the TSC's to be synced. Even typing on the Linux console can get strange when stuff goes out of sync. Having nonmonotonic times in your syslog is doesn't look good. Stuff that does stuff and then waits for now()+10 seconds later to do some more stuff will behave strangely.
Sure I could probably use PMTMR (I believe that makes calling the gettimeofday() function take a fair bit longer), but it's not like desktop CPU power consumption at the office is a big issue. The machine seems to run long enough to shutdown properly on a 2 year old el-cheapo UPS, after all it's still an AMD X2 and not an Intel P4... So I'll prefer to just keep the TSCs synced and any naughty apps that directly access tsc and don't use gettimeofday will still work.
But, the AMD X2s in the office have got the unsync'ed TSC problem (which causes stuff like time appearing to go backwards aka nonmonotonic time, which can cause programs to have problems). Sure in theory you're not supposed to assume they're in sync. BUT in practice on consumer-grade motherboards there's not much choice - often you don't get stuff like HPET or it's broken. Plus if your TSCs are synced, they are a better choice - the other timing methods are actually quite crappy[1].
So the workaround I use at work is to never let the cores idle and always run them at full speed. Boot linux with idle=poll.
Ironically, the AMD X2s supposedly use less power than the Core 2 Duos while idle...
Apparently AMD say they're going to fix the TSC stuff, and though it's been quite a while since they said that, AFAIK I don't think it's been fixed. So if I had to buy a CPU today for a desktop computer, it'll be a Core 2 Duo. The alleged Core 2 Duo security bugs don't appear to be being exploited by hackers all the time, whereas this AMD X2 TSC problem is always there.
I believe there are Windows gamers who are having problems with their AMD X2s and end up running the game/app only on one core and it's probably due to this TSC problem. Yeah the programmers shouldn't use TSC etc etc. But really what are their choices? See [1]
[1] Why can't the CPU + hardware + OS people get together and come up with something good for something as basic as time keeping?
As Vojtech Pavlik summarizes: RTC: 0.5 sec resolution, interrupts PIT: takes ages to read, overflows at each timer interrupt PMTMR: takes ages to read, overflows in approx 4 seconds, no interrupt HPET: slow to read, overflows in 5 minutes. Nice, but usually not present. TSC: fast, completely unreliable. Frequency changes, CPUs diverge over time. LAPIC: reasonably fast, unreliable, per-cpu
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/11/18/261
Re:Once again, they didn't read the article.
on
Attacking Sandboxes
·
· Score: 1
Sure that's called running stuff in a sandbox with hardware sandbox support.
No. It's restricted to people who can submit the correct username and password, and correct number from the keyfob, in the three fields on the bank's login form, within X minutes for when the number from the keyfob is valid.
Alternatively, if you have a smart keyfob, you punch in your password (cached for say 5 minutes) and then out comes some new number which you then use to log in.
There are plenty of other alternatives - ask the crypto people.
Still you do not want to be using an untrusted computer since once you are logged in, the malware will presumably get the resulting cookie and could do the naughty stuff secretly (BUT some banks require you to revalidate for important stuff like transferring money).
Given that you actually suggested rewriting in C instead of Python or something similar, I think your boss made the right call.
To be blunt: writing VB business apps in C is usually a stupid idea. Business app requirements change often and usually for nontechnical reasons. C is a low level language. But for business apps you'd only need to manipulate stuff at the "Lego level", not the "molecular level". So why use it?
It's near impossible for a normal company to hire programmers who can _rapidly_ write reasonably bug free C and maintain it AND _WILL_ do so.
And it usually takes a lot longer to get a new C program to decent standards than say a Python/Perl/Ruby program.
Getting a faster machine to run app = $$. Weeks of programmer coding, testing and debugging = $$$$ Weeks of programmer NOT being able to do other stuff because busy rewriting old stuff = $$$$$$ - $$$$$$$$
Assuming a reasonable programmer ability, if you used a higher level language, changes would usually be done faster and with a better chance of correctness.
So my suggestion for most stuff nowadays is: 1) Use a high level language. Usually the performance bottlenecks for a business app are not due to the language but the architecture and design, or just plain IO. 2) Spend a lot of time designing it right with the future in mind - getting time and resources to rewrite in a business environment is rare - so if you do it right you maximize the lifespan of your software before cruft builds up to extremely annoying or even dangerous levels. 3) Leave the low level stuff to the John Carmacks.
So what if those high level languages are 20x slower than C? Unless totally braindead they are a _CONSTANT_FACTOR_ slower, so if they are fast enough NOW, then that's good enough. In 3-5 years time, even if the performance requirements may go up, new hardware is likely to run the programs at least 2-3X faster, and it's probably about time to replace the hardware as part of a preventative measure. If you are lucky and wise and your architecture can scale OUT instead of UP then that's a good situation to be in.
A sign of age perhaps;). As you grow older in this imperfect world you may start to realize why most creatures get older and die.
It's just too hard to keep fixing all that crufty old code - after a while you're no longer sure what's a bug and what's a feature. And the fixing gets more and more difficult AND dangerous on each fix. And after enough fixes/changes, the whole thing eventually stops working.
Hopefully a less crufty younger version was made before that...
Yes, but who is allowed to carry laptops vs who is allowed to enter the server room?
Are the people carrying laptops really going to wait for the poor "server room" person to carry their laptops in and hook them up?
After all he did say it's "for security reasons".
I'd just let people use their laptops wherever they are on a separate network, turn on various security stuff on the switches etc.
Plus if I were in Sales or some other not-IT dept, I wouldn't even want me or stuff assigned to me to have been in the server room and risk even being blamed for bad stuff happening in the server room.
Imagine if the Sony batteries in a laptop blew up while it was in the server room.
Here read this: http://www.phac-aspc.gc.ca/publicat/cdic-mcc/18-1/ c_e.html (I just picked it at random from Google).
It's typical of those one sided studies. If you see "Figure 4", the various "guesstimates" of smoker costs by different studies are "all over". Also this particular study claims "$10.5 billion in lost future earnings", I don't know where they get that figure from and how they justify the final amount being used. After all, say a canadian drops dead suddenly 5 years before retirement, sure that canadian loses 5 years of future earnings, and Canada loses 5 years of tax. BUT that canadian will have paid the system decades of tax and is not going to be taking out much. If they just used X years of future earnings multiplied by Y people dying before their time, then that 10.5 billion figure is definitely wrong. And that's 10.5 out of the 16.5 billion costs they claim. BTW they kind of threw away data when it seemed certain age group smokers were less prone to absentism.
Then see: "As part of the analysis, future hospital costs were estimated for those ever smokers who died in 1991, using the PVA method. It was assumed that if they had not died from smoking, smokers would have used hospitals at some future date. Their hospital utilization was estimated using self-reported hospital use data of never smokers from the GSS '91 as the "normal rate of use."15 "
Like I said - they're comparing deathbed smokers vs "nondeathbed nonsmokers", as if nonsmokers will never die - they'll just use the hospital normally and die cleanly and cheaply. I'm assuming very few of the nonsmokers who died in 1991 did self-reporting of their hospital use (after all the figures are from "General Social Survey", not General Hospital survey).
I'm not using this particular study as a strawman. It's just an example of how most of the studies are. When you take their figures and actually think carefully, it's fair to say, in many countries you don't have to have extremely high tobacco taxes and smokers will still pay their way.
Go read my points again and use google if you want. If what I've already said hasn't already benefited you, then I don't think much else I say would. I see no reason to continue, at least for free[1].
I don't see why you should say "you're trying to justify your habit" as it's not relevant at all. I've never smoked (first hand never, 2nd hand smoke unavoidable) and don't intend to for the forseeable future. But I'm not going to bother trying to prove to you that I'm a nonsmoker either;).
[1] You get those first few posts/points for free, but after that...;)
"One major smoking related illness will cost more to treat than many many cartons of cigarettes"
See my post. That's the wrong way to look at things.
You have to calculate stuff more this way: Probability of smokers getting major illness x cost of that illness - probability of nonsmoker getting a major illness x cost of that illness. Not exactly as simple as that but I hope you get my point.
The difference is what the taxes should cover (plus a fudge factor for overheads of course). Talking about the total is deceptive.
Most of the antismoking stuff when calculating the cost of smoking ignores the fact that a large percentage of nonsmokers also get expensive to treat illnesses that are not caused by smoking (and smokers get those diseases too, but nevermind about that for now).
Sure there is a cost of smoking, but you should compare the "incremental/additional" cost of smoking over nonsmoking. And they don't count that.
For example: Say 50% of nonsmokers will eventually die of heart problems or cancer (they are eventually going to die of something right?). And 50% of smokers will eventually die of heart problems or cancer.
So where's the added cost? The cancer is harder to treat? OK say smokers are 2 x more expensive to treat.
But say the smoker dies at 60. And the nonsmoker dies at 85 after 25 more years of collecting pensions, getting treatments for chronic but nonfatal health problems etc.
So which costs more now? Smoking?
In one of the European countries, the long living nonsmoker could cost more, and the smoker could be paying for the nonsmoker by paying the same high Socialist taxes as the nonsmoker during working years but not taking as much out of the system because of an early death:).
Explain away smoking related illnesses? Nothing to explain away - they're caused by smoking.
My recommendation is: Don't smoke.
BUT, I'm fine with people smoking, as long as: 1) Practically everyone is educated about it beforehand (too bad about the older ones) 2) The stuff is taxed (heavily) so that it's a net gain (see below) 3) It's regulated/controlled so that nonsmokers and smokers can coexist reasonably - no smoking in lifts and other places where you can't reasonably avoid or should not be allowed (hospitals, fuel stations). Designate fairly convenient smoking areas - where it's easy for them to throw their cig butts safely etc. Sure there are risks from second-hand smoke, but I just avoid restaurants and places that I find too smoky. 4) It's regulated so that it's not more dangerous than it needs to be - while nicotine is a key ingredient, I bet smokers don't get any extra pleasure from more polonium or perhaps tar (how many smokers like more tar in their smokes?). 5) It's regulated so that people are unlikely to start till they reach the age where they are legally responsible for their actions.
If you put the taxes high enough, smokers will pay for the damage if not more. Most studies conveniently ignore the fact that people are going to die of something whether they smoke or not, and that last disease they get could also be just as expensive to treat and about as unpleasant. It's just smokers tend to die sooner and are more likely to get a certain set of diseases.
I find it strange that the developed nations (especially the socialist ones) keep worrying about the "aging population problem" and at the same time are so anti-smoking. After all smokers tend to die younger, not long after their most productive years, so coupled with hefty tobacco taxes, it could be a significant net gain. Plus even if they don't die young, they are likely to continue paying the tobacco tax AFTER their retirement. So smokers will collect pension/social security for fewer years and pay more taxes.
To cap it off, most of them will grudgingly accept being taxed extra too. So do the math objectively and set the taxes accordingly.
I once told a smoker stuff like this, and he decided to try to quit. I wonder why. If he actually succeeded I guess we'll miss his extra contribution to society.;)
AFAIK a giving out a voucher isn't the same as giving out a title deed.
I can give you a voucher to a free coffee from Starbucks, I don't think that automatically makes me a coffee distributor, bound under the laws that regulate the selling of coffee.
You're overreacting. It's all about the dosage and usage.
Lots of people go for botox treatments, and allegedly some of them end up looking better;).
People consume poisons all the time - capsaicin (in spicy foods), cyanide (in almonds), caffeine, and nicotine. Chrysanthemum is often made into a tea, but it contains pyrethrum which is a "natural pesticide".
In fact, it may be that a lot of smokers are dying more due to the radioactivity than the nicotine or tar.
wiki: "One study found that tobacco grown in India averaged only 0.09 pCi per gram of polonium 210, whereas tobacco grown in the United States averaged 0.516 pCi per gram."
"In support of this hypothetical link between radioactive elements in tobacco and cancer is the observation that bladder cancer incidence is also proportional to the amount of tobacco smoked, even though nonradioactive carcinogens have not been detected in the urine of even heavy smokers; however, urine of smokers contains about six times more polonium 210 than that of nonsmokers, suggesting strongly that the polonium 210 is the cause of the bladder carcinogenicity, and would be expected to act similarly in the lungs and other tissue."
But would they understand how it works, why it works once it seems to work?
A lot of these AI stuff seems to be throwing stuff together and hoping for the best.
I have quite a low opinion of "making AI" that way.
After all, if I wanted to get an intelligent non-human entity without really understanding how it works, I could just go to the local pet store and buy one.
So that I (and my relatives etc) don't have to set up subusers etc.
Basically when I launch some program I see: "Program: 'Fun ScreenSaver' requires 'Normal ScreenSaver Install' privileges"
Allow: Yes/No? Give [Drop down list of sandbox templates] privileges instead. Checkbox - remember decision for this program.
Then I might choose Yes, and the screensaver will be installed as per a normal screensaver - no extra stuff AND when it is launched, it'll only have screensaver access to the system - very sandboxed.
But if I see: "Program: 'Fun ScreenSaver' requires 'Full User Install' privileges" with a red background I'd probably click No. Same for 'Full System' privileges.
It's not that easy of course - since you need to define a lot of decent defaults - like a safe, flexible and user friendly way to configure the screensaver. AND the templates have got to work - otherwise everyone will just choose 'Full System';).
But I think that is what's needed for "Personal Computing Security for the Masses". Not the crap called Vista UAC.
You might use SELinux (or AppArmor) as building blocks, but they are far from sufficient by themselves.
Slashdot Mirror
"ego death"
Well if you take the computer analogy further, you might not want to modify your "software" so that you have a higher chance of "hanging" or "deadlocking" the "master process".
"Mmmm, weightless sex. Sounds fun.".
;). Low G should be more fun than zero G - zero G = too easy to fly/float apart and not stop.
;).
Nah. "Less weight" sex should be better than weightless sex
You know what else would be fun? Strapping on wings in "higher" chambers near the axis and flapping to fly about. Might get nausea in a small station due to coriolis sort of effects, but on a large enough one I think it should be ok.
And how about playing real-life "Joust" (with the appropriate safety gear and all that)
Oh well, sure looks like most of us will be stuck on earth.
Yeah. But I'm not running windows on the X2s, and I did mention that.
Does anyone have any opinion on how effective the "AMD Dual-Core Optimizer" is and the drawbacks if any?
I'm sure the Linux people would be happy if there's a _decent_ way of keeping the TSCs in sync.
AFAIK idle=poll doesn't come at a performance penalty, in fact it might be very very slightly faster.
Basically the CPU just keeps polling for something to do, rather than taking a nap till there's something to do.
Running a distributed computing project _instead_ of doing idle=poll probably won't help, since it is unlikely to 100% guarantee that your CPU will never HLT.
BUT, doing idle=poll AND running a distributed computing project could make sense if you cared about not wasting compute cycles - basically when there's "nothing" to do, the computer will be doing the distributed computing, and when there's absolutely nothing to do, it'll be spinning around polling for something to do.
There are plenty of apps that would like the TSC's to be synced. Even typing on the Linux console can get strange when stuff goes out of sync. Having nonmonotonic times in your syslog is doesn't look good. Stuff that does stuff and then waits for now()+10 seconds later to do some more stuff will behave strangely.
Sure I could probably use PMTMR (I believe that makes calling the gettimeofday() function take a fair bit longer), but it's not like desktop CPU power consumption at the office is a big issue. The machine seems to run long enough to shutdown properly on a 2 year old el-cheapo UPS, after all it's still an AMD X2 and not an Intel P4... So I'll prefer to just keep the TSCs synced and any naughty apps that directly access tsc and don't use gettimeofday will still work.
But, the AMD X2s in the office have got the unsync'ed TSC problem (which causes stuff like time appearing to go backwards aka nonmonotonic time, which can cause programs to have problems). Sure in theory you're not supposed to assume they're in sync. BUT in practice on consumer-grade motherboards there's not much choice - often you don't get stuff like HPET or it's broken. Plus if your TSCs are synced, they are a better choice - the other timing methods are actually quite crappy[1].
So the workaround I use at work is to never let the cores idle and always run them at full speed. Boot linux with idle=poll.
Ironically, the AMD X2s supposedly use less power than the Core 2 Duos while idle...
Apparently AMD say they're going to fix the TSC stuff, and though it's been quite a while since they said that, AFAIK I don't think it's been fixed. So if I had to buy a CPU today for a desktop computer, it'll be a Core 2 Duo. The alleged Core 2 Duo security bugs don't appear to be being exploited by hackers all the time, whereas this AMD X2 TSC problem is always there.
I believe there are Windows gamers who are having problems with their AMD X2s and end up running the game/app only on one core and it's probably due to this TSC problem. Yeah the programmers shouldn't use TSC etc etc. But really what are their choices? See [1]
[1] Why can't the CPU + hardware + OS people get together and come up with something good for something as basic as time keeping?
As Vojtech Pavlik summarizes:
RTC: 0.5 sec resolution, interrupts
PIT: takes ages to read, overflows at each timer interrupt
PMTMR: takes ages to read, overflows in approx 4 seconds, no interrupt
HPET: slow to read, overflows in 5 minutes. Nice, but usually not present.
TSC: fast, completely unreliable. Frequency changes, CPUs diverge over time.
LAPIC: reasonably fast, unreliable, per-cpu
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/11/18/261
Sure that's called running stuff in a sandbox with hardware sandbox support.
Just wait till Intel VT and AMD Pacifica improve.
If you can't do blind hijacking then TCP is fine and doing it's job.
Just use SSL if you want more security. There's no point paying the extra cost of encryption when you don't need it.
You need to do lots of extra stuff (check certs etc) if you do not want to be hijacked by MITM attacks.
No. It's restricted to people who can submit the correct username and password, and correct number from the keyfob, in the three fields on the bank's login form, within X minutes for when the number from the keyfob is valid.
Alternatively, if you have a smart keyfob, you punch in your password (cached for say 5 minutes) and then out comes some new number which you then use to log in.
There are plenty of other alternatives - ask the crypto people.
Still you do not want to be using an untrusted computer since once you are logged in, the malware will presumably get the resulting cookie and could do the naughty stuff secretly (BUT some banks require you to revalidate for important stuff like transferring money).
Let me know how long it takes to start OpenOffice on BeOS.
Given that you actually suggested rewriting in C instead of Python or something similar, I think your boss made the right call.
To be blunt: writing VB business apps in C is usually a stupid idea. Business app requirements change often and usually for nontechnical reasons. C is a low level language. But for business apps you'd only need to manipulate stuff at the "Lego level", not the "molecular level". So why use it?
It's near impossible for a normal company to hire programmers who can _rapidly_ write reasonably bug free C and maintain it AND _WILL_ do so.
And it usually takes a lot longer to get a new C program to decent standards than say a Python/Perl/Ruby program.
Getting a faster machine to run app = $$.
Weeks of programmer coding, testing and debugging = $$$$
Weeks of programmer NOT being able to do other stuff because busy rewriting old stuff = $$$$$$ - $$$$$$$$
Assuming a reasonable programmer ability, if you used a higher level language, changes would usually be done faster and with a better chance of correctness.
So my suggestion for most stuff nowadays is:
1) Use a high level language. Usually the performance bottlenecks for a business app are not due to the language but the architecture and design, or just plain IO.
2) Spend a lot of time designing it right with the future in mind - getting time and resources to rewrite in a business environment is rare - so if you do it right you maximize the lifespan of your software before cruft builds up to extremely annoying or even dangerous levels.
3) Leave the low level stuff to the John Carmacks.
So what if those high level languages are 20x slower than C? Unless totally braindead they are a _CONSTANT_FACTOR_ slower, so if they are fast enough NOW, then that's good enough. In 3-5 years time, even if the performance requirements may go up, new hardware is likely to run the programs at least 2-3X faster, and it's probably about time to replace the hardware as part of a preventative measure. If you are lucky and wise and your architecture can scale OUT instead of UP then that's a good situation to be in.
A sign of age perhaps ;). As you grow older in this imperfect world you may start to realize why most creatures get older and die.
It's just too hard to keep fixing all that crufty old code - after a while you're no longer sure what's a bug and what's a feature. And the fixing gets more and more difficult AND dangerous on each fix. And after enough fixes/changes, the whole thing eventually stops working.
Hopefully a less crufty younger version was made before that...
And sometimes the main reason a synthetic is used is because it can be patented, not because it's better :).
"Another consideration is complex organisms don't die evenly it's not like turning off a light switch, all or nothing,"
What you need is turning _on_ a light switch of a very very very bright light.
You @ ground zero + nuke = die very evenly.
You might leave a shadow mark on some rock...
The dying process should be about as painless as it gets.
1) Retry
2) Restart
3) Reboot
4) Reconfigure
5) Repatch
6) Reinstall (app)
7) Reformat
8) Rebuild (os + app)
9) Retry (everything from 1-8)
10) Relinquish/Reassign/Reject (project/task)
11) Resign
12) Resume/Resumé
Yes, but who is allowed to carry laptops vs who is allowed to enter the server room?
Are the people carrying laptops really going to wait for the poor "server room" person to carry their laptops in and hook them up?
After all he did say it's "for security reasons".
I'd just let people use their laptops wherever they are on a separate network, turn on various security stuff on the switches etc.
Plus if I were in Sales or some other not-IT dept, I wouldn't even want me or stuff assigned to me to have been in the server room and risk even being blamed for bad stuff happening in the server room.
Imagine if the Sony batteries in a laptop blew up while it was in the server room.
How do you know that the math is bogus?
/ c_e.html
;).
;)
Here read this: http://www.phac-aspc.gc.ca/publicat/cdic-mcc/18-1
(I just picked it at random from Google).
It's typical of those one sided studies. If you see "Figure 4", the various "guesstimates" of smoker costs by different studies are "all over". Also this particular study claims "$10.5 billion in lost future earnings", I don't know where they get that figure from and how they justify the final amount being used. After all, say a canadian drops dead suddenly 5 years before retirement, sure that canadian loses 5 years of future earnings, and Canada loses 5 years of tax. BUT that canadian will have paid the system decades of tax and is not going to be taking out much. If they just used X years of future earnings multiplied by Y people dying before their time, then that 10.5 billion figure is definitely wrong. And that's 10.5 out of the 16.5 billion costs they claim. BTW they kind of threw away data when it seemed certain age group smokers were less prone to absentism.
Then see: "As part of the analysis, future hospital costs were estimated for those ever smokers who died in 1991, using the PVA method. It was assumed that if they had not died from smoking, smokers would have used hospitals at some future date. Their hospital utilization was estimated using self-reported hospital use data of never smokers from the GSS '91 as the "normal rate of use."15 "
Like I said - they're comparing deathbed smokers vs "nondeathbed nonsmokers", as if nonsmokers will never die - they'll just use the hospital normally and die cleanly and cheaply. I'm assuming very few of the nonsmokers who died in 1991 did self-reporting of their hospital use (after all the figures are from "General Social Survey", not General Hospital survey).
I'm not using this particular study as a strawman. It's just an example of how most of the studies are. When you take their figures and actually think carefully, it's fair to say, in many countries you don't have to have extremely high tobacco taxes and smokers will still pay their way.
Go read my points again and use google if you want. If what I've already said hasn't already benefited you, then I don't think much else I say would. I see no reason to continue, at least for free[1].
I don't see why you should say "you're trying to justify your habit" as it's not relevant at all. I've never smoked (first hand never, 2nd hand smoke unavoidable) and don't intend to for the forseeable future. But I'm not going to bother trying to prove to you that I'm a nonsmoker either
[1] You get those first few posts/points for free, but after that...
"One major smoking related illness will cost more to treat than many many cartons of cigarettes"
:).
See my post. That's the wrong way to look at things.
You have to calculate stuff more this way: Probability of smokers getting major illness x cost of that illness - probability of nonsmoker getting a major illness x cost of that illness. Not exactly as simple as that but I hope you get my point.
The difference is what the taxes should cover (plus a fudge factor for overheads of course). Talking about the total is deceptive.
Most of the antismoking stuff when calculating the cost of smoking ignores the fact that a large percentage of nonsmokers also get expensive to treat illnesses that are not caused by smoking (and smokers get those diseases too, but nevermind about that for now).
Sure there is a cost of smoking, but you should compare the "incremental/additional" cost of smoking over nonsmoking. And they don't count that.
For example:
Say 50% of nonsmokers will eventually die of heart problems or cancer (they are eventually going to die of something right?).
And 50% of smokers will eventually die of heart problems or cancer.
So where's the added cost? The cancer is harder to treat? OK say smokers are 2 x more expensive to treat.
But say the smoker dies at 60. And the nonsmoker dies at 85 after 25 more years of collecting pensions, getting treatments for chronic but nonfatal health problems etc.
So which costs more now? Smoking?
In one of the European countries, the long living nonsmoker could cost more, and the smoker could be paying for the nonsmoker by paying the same high Socialist taxes as the nonsmoker during working years but not taking as much out of the system because of an early death
Explain away smoking related illnesses? Nothing to explain away - they're caused by smoking.
;)
My recommendation is: Don't smoke.
BUT, I'm fine with people smoking, as long as:
1) Practically everyone is educated about it beforehand (too bad about the older ones)
2) The stuff is taxed (heavily) so that it's a net gain (see below)
3) It's regulated/controlled so that nonsmokers and smokers can coexist reasonably - no smoking in lifts and other places where you can't reasonably avoid or should not be allowed (hospitals, fuel stations). Designate fairly convenient smoking areas - where it's easy for them to throw their cig butts safely etc. Sure there are risks from second-hand smoke, but I just avoid restaurants and places that I find too smoky.
4) It's regulated so that it's not more dangerous than it needs to be - while nicotine is a key ingredient, I bet smokers don't get any extra pleasure from more polonium or perhaps tar (how many smokers like more tar in their smokes?).
5) It's regulated so that people are unlikely to start till they reach the age where they are legally responsible for their actions.
If you put the taxes high enough, smokers will pay for the damage if not more. Most studies conveniently ignore the fact that people are going to die of something whether they smoke or not, and that last disease they get could also be just as expensive to treat and about as unpleasant. It's just smokers tend to die sooner and are more likely to get a certain set of diseases.
I find it strange that the developed nations (especially the socialist ones) keep worrying about the "aging population problem" and at the same time are so anti-smoking. After all smokers tend to die younger, not long after their most productive years, so coupled with hefty tobacco taxes, it could be a significant net gain. Plus even if they don't die young, they are likely to continue paying the tobacco tax AFTER their retirement. So smokers will collect pension/social security for fewer years and pay more taxes.
To cap it off, most of them will grudgingly accept being taxed extra too. So do the math objectively and set the taxes accordingly.
I once told a smoker stuff like this, and he decided to try to quit. I wonder why. If he actually succeeded I guess we'll miss his extra contribution to society.
AFAIK a giving out a voucher isn't the same as giving out a title deed.
I can give you a voucher to a free coffee from Starbucks, I don't think that automatically makes me a coffee distributor, bound under the laws that regulate the selling of coffee.
You're overreacting. It's all about the dosage and usage.
;).
Lots of people go for botox treatments, and allegedly some of them end up looking better
People consume poisons all the time - capsaicin (in spicy foods), cyanide (in almonds), caffeine, and nicotine. Chrysanthemum is often made into a tea, but it contains pyrethrum which is a "natural pesticide".
In fact, it may be that a lot of smokers are dying more due to the radioactivity than the nicotine or tar.
wiki: "One study found that tobacco grown in India averaged only 0.09 pCi per gram of polonium 210, whereas tobacco grown in the United States averaged 0.516 pCi per gram."
"In support of this hypothetical link between radioactive elements in tobacco and cancer is the observation that bladder cancer incidence is also proportional to the amount of tobacco smoked, even though nonradioactive carcinogens have not been detected in the urine of even heavy smokers; however, urine of smokers contains about six times more polonium 210 than that of nonsmokers, suggesting strongly that the polonium 210 is the cause of the bladder carcinogenicity, and would be expected to act similarly in the lungs and other tissue."
But would they understand how it works, why it works once it seems to work?
A lot of these AI stuff seems to be throwing stuff together and hoping for the best.
I have quite a low opinion of "making AI" that way.
After all, if I wanted to get an intelligent non-human entity without really understanding how it works, I could just go to the local pet store and buy one.
I'd rather have "sandbox templates".
;).
So that I (and my relatives etc) don't have to set up subusers etc.
Basically when I launch some program I see:
"Program: 'Fun ScreenSaver' requires 'Normal ScreenSaver Install' privileges"
Allow: Yes/No?
Give [Drop down list of sandbox templates] privileges instead.
Checkbox - remember decision for this program.
Then I might choose Yes, and the screensaver will be installed as per a normal screensaver - no extra stuff AND when it is launched, it'll only have screensaver access to the system - very sandboxed.
But if I see:
"Program: 'Fun ScreenSaver' requires 'Full User Install' privileges" with a red background I'd probably click No. Same for 'Full System' privileges.
It's not that easy of course - since you need to define a lot of decent defaults - like a safe, flexible and user friendly way to configure the screensaver. AND the templates have got to work - otherwise everyone will just choose 'Full System'
But I think that is what's needed for "Personal Computing Security for the Masses". Not the crap called Vista UAC.
You might use SELinux (or AppArmor) as building blocks, but they are far from sufficient by themselves.
"An interface designed at least partially around physically moving the unit"
Cue: quantum leap + al + ziggy + thwack!
Yes, but in theory a culture could survive the extinction of its original substrate species. It just needs to find or _create_ more hosts.
I'm not so sure if that thing would be as appreciated in the more "proper" world of Python ;).
;).
Whereas in perl there's already Acme::Bleach