Hello, anyone in there??? How would people buying and selling EVENT futures based on housing prices, on an Irish exchange, affect the ACTUAL prices of housing? Housing prices were driven up by low interest rates, lax credit qualifications putting more people into the market, and HOMEBUYERS SPECULATING on the homes themselves. No futures market is going to affect that. The only affect is in the other direction. That's by design.
Do you have any idea what Intrade does, and what their contracts look like? It sounds like you don't.
No of course not, actual prices could never be affected by futures speculation, this has been proven over and over again, just look at commodities, say precious metals like silver, er... Never mind, I meant the energy sector, look at crude oil and gasoline prices, where you can clearly see that... No, wait, wait, I uh... Surely there must be, um, something,,,/sarcasm
Seriously, you honestly think the packaging of real estate mortgages into futures-like securities had no effect on the actual prices of homes during the run up to the meltdown??? Or that what's being discussed here is so very different from that?? Are we living in the same universe? In my world the real estate bubble was almost entirely driven by the big banks and big institutionalized traders, the poor home owners mostly just got taken along for the ride, either intentionally or by happenstance.
We find that the shutdown had a negative, yet insignificant effect on box office revenues.
You have misquoted the article, leaving out an important qualifier. The true quote actually reads:
"we find that the shutdown had a negative, yet in some cases insignificant effect on box office revenues.”
I need hardly add that this is not a trivial distinction. Assuming you used copy and paste for the quote, you must have then deliberately removed the text reading "in some cases" before you posted. Why exactly would anyone do this, except to change the meaning of the quote, however slightly?
There was a 'scam' a few years ago where a bunch of people got together and opened a business selling sex toys online. But after ordering them, you'd receive a check for the amount of the order and a note saying it wasn't actually legal to sell sex toys in the jurisdiction they were based out of. The catch was the check was from a very obscene-sounding place, like "Anal lover's paradise empornium" or somesuch. As a result, many people didn't cash those checks, and they kept the money. It turned out to make them a lot of money, and it was completely legal (at the time anyway). While this is certainly unethical behavior, it wasn't fraud.
I doubt the scam you describe ever really happened, it's actually a throwaway line from one of my favorite movies, Guy Ritchie's "Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels". I suppose Ritchie could have based his dialog on a real life scam he heard about, but your description is practically word for word from the movie, so I'm guessing that's where you heard it. Or maybe someone else saw the film and passed on the description of the scam without attribution, who knows? Maybe it's become an urban myth? Regardless, I've always thought it's a great concept.
A key that opens many locks is a master key. A lock that can be opened by many keys is a shitty lock.
Not saying I agree with it, but the analogy fits fairly well.
Why exactly is the lock associated with (as I presume you must mean) the female, while the male gets to be the key? Why not the other way round? When you think about it, the whole analogy makes very little sense, in fact it's really nothing but thinly disguised male-supremacist propaganda. I'm guessing you probably first learned it from some religious text or religious authority figure, very likely Christian. Which is rather interesting, don't you think?
I wish more things in life had side effects like that. Of course, that would necessitate certain changes to one's wardrobe, but I think the minor additional hassle would be well worth it...
:-P
Spontaneous orgasm is also one of the symptoms of heroin/opiate withdrawal - really, look it up! - but I'm in no hurry to experience that, either. Some things just aren't as good as they might seem to be at first (see also for example Priapism, another potential side effect of certain pharmaceuticals). I know, we're posting on Slashdot, we're likely desperate for thrills of this kind, but still...
... rather then the ER which is free if you don't have insurance.
No. While it is true that the ER cannot deny you care, they will bill you if you do not have insurance. Failure to pay will have all of the same implications of ignoring any other bill.
This "we don't have to insure the poor because they can just go to the ER" trope has got to stop.
My mod points seem to have just expired, unfortunately, but... Thank you, thank you, thank you. I have been trying to get people to understand this point for years, with little success. In particular, the "free ER healthcare for the poor" meme seems to be permanently embedded in the brains of conservative Republicans. Hell, even Mitt Romney got this one wrong recently. So ER care is free to the poor and uninsured in the US, Mitt? OK then, I'm currently unemployed with an income well below the poverty level, perhaps you could explain this whole free ER thing to the bill collectors currently hounding me over a recent ER visit? No, didn't think so. And that's precisely why I'm not voting for you, you have absolutely no conception at all of what it really means to be financially insecure and uninsured in modern day America.
You keep telling your self that. It won't make your eternal torture in hell go away. Don't claim you weren't warned. God is just. You will suffer for all your infinitely large sins against Him*. You have broken His commandments and stand guilty before Him. The perversions you follow as morals won't help you when judgement day comes. How you followed some of them won't cover how you broke Gods commandments. How God isn't following your "morals" isn't relevant as He is judging you, not the other way around. Crying about how we all are His children won't help you. Screaming at me for violating the brotherhood of man by agreeing with God on what you deserve is pathetic. You are not His child and I am not your brother*. You are now closer to the day God will judge you than you were when you wrote your post. You are therefore closer to Hell*.
I actually read the Bible front to back and saw what kind of a psycho asshole your god really is. If it truly exists, (doubtful) it has no right to judge anyone. Your god embodies malice to a degree that no human could ever hope to reach.
Biblegod is clearly the product of a harsh, primitive, barbaric culture and it definitely shows.
Oh absolutely, wish I had mod points. To cite just one personal sticking point: any god who would inflict eternal torment upon otherwise good and honest people simply because they happen to hold different religious beliefs (or none at all) is not deserving of our worship! Period. It doesn't even matter whether He exists or not, if eternal damnation of unbelievers is part of the dogma, then the entire Church is no good. This should be absolutely self-evident to anyone with even a rudimentary sense of morality. There may or may not be sufficiently evil acts to render a human being truly deserving of an eternity of torment in Hell, but non-belief isn't one of them, and proclaiming that it is merely serves to proclaim the inner corruption of a particular faith.
I seem to recall that back in the day it was pretty fucking obvious what would happen if we allowed them in the first place. Fat lot of fucking good that did, however...
Oh yes, I remember well the fear of software patents back in the day, and the big relief felt by most programmers when it appeared the issue was dead. Software was not patentable, the issue was settled, and the nascent PC software writing community heaved a sigh of relief went on about its business. It's worth noting that that was an era of absolutely stunning innovation, with new software ideas cropping up everywhere, seemingly overnight. Nobody worried about patents, and the industry flourished. And yet, somewhere along the way, the idea of software patents refused to die, and eventually managed to rise from the grave, bringing about the mess we currently find ourselves in. I know of no better argument against software patents then to look at the amount of innovation and success to be found in the IT field, especially amongst newly emerging small businesses, back in the '70s and '80s, as compared with what you find today. It's like the whole industry now labors under a crushing weight of fear, fear of the inevitable but often unforeseeable patent lawsuit. It's crazy that anyone could think software patents are a good idea. I firmly believe that the whole personal computing revolution would never have happened under the current restrictive IP rights regime. It just couldn't have survived. And yes, to this day, I don't quite understand how a seemingly settled legal argument could reemerge from the grave like that, complete with unholy powers and an unquenchable appetite for gobbling up the nation's brains. Indeed, I do despair sometimes, because clearly, the zombies are winning.
Recently I was reading an old Jack Vance story from 1974 called "Assault on a City" and was a bit stunned to come across an accurate description of an ipod. Both the physical description of the device and manner of its use were pretty much spot on:
From his pocket he brought a small black case. A window glowed to reveal an index; Waldo set dials. "here's an example of Vaakstras, it's not obvious music.'"
to be mass-produced for monster truck rallies here in the states.
As usual science fiction is way ahead of reality, ten years to be precise. What you describe was the exact plot of Allen Steele's short story "Mudzilla's Last Stand", initially published in January of '93!
From an article about Steele:
His writing shows a passion for the sometimes lurid tone and language of the lowest forms of popular culture, as in "Mudzilla's Last Stand," which details how future announcers will promote the battle of Mecha-men robots as a working class entertainment on the same order as Monster Truck Rallies.
I remember reading the story in Asimov's when it first appeared. Aside from being prophetic, it was a pretty good read. The plot is that a Japanese company builds a real battle mech much like the one in the TFA. The robot was intended to be genuine military hardware, but there were no takers because it turns out giant man-like metal monster robots are somewhat impracticable on real battlefields. Eventually the only prototype gets sold to, you guessed it, a promoter of monster truck rallies. You can guess what happens next... Or read the story.
I have an att.net email account which for some reason has to be accessed through Yahoo, I guess they're corporate partners or something... The point is, I have always protected my email address with religious fervor, and as a result I do not get spam, ever, period, not once. Until today, that is. Make of it what you will, but to me this is just way too much of a coincidence. I strongly suspect it will come out that the hack went deeper and compromised much more than what is currently being reported. To repeat, I have had a totally spam-free yahoo mail address for 5 years and all of a sudden today I get spam, despite the fact that my address is NOT listed in the list of compromised accounts. Make of this what you will, but personally I'm not very happy with Yahoo at the moment.
Why do people keep repeating the absolute lie that anyone can always get free care at the emergency room? True, they have to treat you, but you absolutely will get billed, and if you don't pay that bill it will be handed over to a professional debt collector. I should know, I'm currently being hounded for a $1200 ER bill. A few years ago a local hospital made national news by actually putting liens on the houses of any poor person unlucky enough to still retain a family home. Yes, they actually took poor people's homes if they didn't pay up. This is not my or anyone's definition of free! Furthermore, in my State even if you're eligible for the local flavor of medicaid, any money that the State pays out for your care is considered a loan, NOT a benefit! This means that if you are covered under this so-called plan and later on you hit the lottery, or inherit, or make it big as a rock star, or just have a good night at the casino, if the State finds out about it they will come and take your money, right up to the last cent that they ever spent on you. So once more, with feeling: emergency room care is NOT FREE in the USA. Some people do manage to avoid payment, but that's another story entirely. There is currently no free care available to anyone at hospital emergency rooms, not if you mean free as in beer. This is a maddeningly pervasive urban myth that conservatives especially seem to like to promulgate, but it simply is not true.
"The fact that artists are spending much less TIME recording can only mean they have less money or expect to make less money.
What??? There are so many things wrong with that blanket statement - which he bases solely on data self-supplied by the large recording studios, no less - that I didn't read any further in the article. There were other statements equally as nonsensical. The summary indicated Lowery had both the experience and the data to back up his rant, but after reading a good chunk of it all I see is another idiot with preconceived ideas, barely coherent logic, cherry-picked data, and multiple straw-man arguments. Seek elsewhere for a reasoned analysis backed up with solid evidence.
If Netflix has it in HD, it's ONLY available in HD.
Besides, SD looks like complete crap at 42 inches or higher
Only available in HD on Netflix? That's wrong, you can set the quality to whatever you like. To pull up the stream manager just hit shift-ctrl-alt-s, then check off whatever bit rate/quality you want.
How is this any different from telling a pollster that you approve of something? It's basically the same thing, and if stating one's opinion on a political poll is not protected speech under the 1st amendment, I don't know what is. The judge doesn't seem to have thought this through. Note that arguments about whether employers should or shouldn't be able to fire people based on their beliefs are pretty much irrelevant here, because if the judge says this is unprotected speech and the ruling is upheld, the precedent would apply in any situation, not just employment disputes. Unprotected is unprotected. Hopefully a higher court will revisit the issue and overturn the ruling.
Wait, wait... So kids these days routinely take naked pictures of themselves and then send them to themselves??? That has got to be the most perverse method of masturbation I've ever heard of! I suppose sexting oneself could conceivably be seen as a natural outgrowth of the ever-more-pervasive role of the internet in modern sexuality, but still... I find the need to send oneself naughty pictures a bit strange. In fact, behavior like this deserves a name: "auto-erotic techno-narcissistic syndrome" or something. Jeez, in my day we just looked at girly mags.
... pulls content from an array of open-education sources to knit together a text that the company claims is as good as the designated book...
A noble intention but I am suspicious of "as good as". Pulling stuff from various sources and slapping it together quickly is not a strategy known for producing "as good as" products. Perhaps a "good enough" product though.
However is the "knitted together" text better than, or even different from, just googling and reading some of the top sites, reading various topics on wikipedia?
Also with respect to "as good as" I am *not* counting the missing homework problems against it.
You're making an assumption that there must be some kind of standard of quality to commercial textbook publisher's products. Sure, there are probably standards set by some accreditation body somewhere, but nonetheless I strongly suspect that "pulling stuff from various sources and slapping it together quickly" is probably a pretty good description of how most of the pros go about it. I can easily believe the free product described in TFA is "as good as" the average commercial offering. Remember, these are introductory courses we're talking about here, not advanced topics. The fact is, at this level the freely available online stuff is probably as good as anything else, and the publishers know it, which is why they are turning to lawsuits. We've all seen this kind of thing before, it's just the final dying spasms of dinosaurs who don't have the brains to recognize their own imminent extinction.
Your healthcare link for #4 is broken, should be this:
http://silver.neep.wisc.edu/~lakes/iatrogenic.pdf
No one noticed, though, because they were all going "LA LA LA LA LA I CANT HEAR YOU!" and covering their eyes with their hands.
1. Adding or removing genes from an organism to give the organism a useful new phenotype (corn that makes bt toxin).
2. A process for manufacturing a protein that includes taking it out of the original organism and expressing it in a different one so that you get a higher yield.
3. A diagnostic based on the presence of a particular version of a gene or protein (what this case was about)
4. A new version of a protein that is more useful than the natural one.
Some are still pretty obnoxious though.
But none of the things you list actually require that a gene be patented, they are all more or less processes that happen to involve genes or make use of genetic information. For instance, in principal there is no reason that a genetic diagnostic test manufacturer has to patent the gene that is being tested for, they could just patent the test, except that their lawyers told them it would be a good idea to include the gene itself in the patent application, and geniuses down at the patent office have gone along with this insanity. IANAL, but it seems to me the types of patents you list could all in theory exist in some form without granting anyone exclusive ownership of a naturally occurring gene.
Maybe if we evolve into the Q we'll finally understand it all, but that's definitely not the case now.
Uh, if we evolve into the Q it will be pretty clear that evolution exists. I mean, one can't evolve in the absence of evolution, can one? So if we evolve into the Q, we may or may not understand every last little detail about the evolutionary process, but I think intelligent design will be pretty much disproved!
Yes indeedy, I suspect the best way to make ID disappear is to evolve beyond it. Sadly, even then there will probably be a few reality-denying fundamentalist throwbacks.
But isn't "thinking of the children" exactly what we are trying to discourage (at least in child porn enforcement)?
Someone should mod parent up, even though there's no way to mod +1 Ironic. Because it's true, this has become a pure thought crime, which leads to some rather ludicrous scenarios.
"Think of the children, the poor children! Er, wait, don't do that, do NOT think about children, no no no, think about anything else but not children, never children, not even imaginary ones..."
Yes, Vance absolutely should be on the list, in fact I consider Jack Vance pretty much THE forgotten genius of SF and Fantasy. To the must-read works by Vance that others have mentioned I would add the five Demon Princes novels, some of the best space opera ever written, but pretty much almost anything by Vance is worth looking at.
The other great forgotten SF novel I would recommend is The Stars My Destination by Alfred Bester. This is a mind-blowing kaleidoscope of a novel, a true classic that easily holds its own when compared to the best modern SF, the style and writing is so far ahead of its time it's almost impossible to believe it was first published in the '50s.
Yea?... and who's fault is it that they started using heroin to begin with? Are you saying they shouldn't be subject to the consequences for their choices?
So let's see, if Heroin use is a terrible thing with awful consequences, and all users of heroin deserve whatever happens to them, then... Why bother to make it illegal at all? If it's so bad, then anybody who decides to use it will automatically get their just rewards in the end. Problem solved!
Slashdot Mirror
Hello, anyone in there??? How would people buying and selling EVENT futures based on housing prices, on an Irish exchange, affect the ACTUAL prices of housing? Housing prices were driven up by low interest rates, lax credit qualifications putting more people into the market, and HOMEBUYERS SPECULATING on the homes themselves. No futures market is going to affect that. The only affect is in the other direction. That's by design.
Do you have any idea what Intrade does, and what their contracts look like? It sounds like you don't.
No of course not, actual prices could never be affected by futures speculation, this has been proven over and over again, just look at commodities, say precious metals like silver, er... Never mind, I meant the energy sector, look at crude oil and gasoline prices, where you can clearly see that... No, wait, wait, I uh... Surely there must be, um, something,,, /sarcasm
Seriously, you honestly think the packaging of real estate mortgages into futures-like securities had no effect on the actual prices of homes during the run up to the meltdown??? Or that what's being discussed here is so very different from that?? Are we living in the same universe? In my world the real estate bubble was almost entirely driven by the big banks and big institutionalized traders, the poor home owners mostly just got taken along for the ride, either intentionally or by happenstance.
The actual conclusion of the researchers was:
We find that the shutdown had a negative, yet insignificant effect on box office revenues.
You have misquoted the article, leaving out an important qualifier. The true quote actually reads:
"we find that the shutdown had a negative, yet in some cases insignificant effect on box office revenues.”
I need hardly add that this is not a trivial distinction. Assuming you used copy and paste for the quote, you must have then deliberately removed the text reading "in some cases" before you posted. Why exactly would anyone do this, except to change the meaning of the quote, however slightly?
There was a 'scam' a few years ago where a bunch of people got together and opened a business selling sex toys online. But after ordering them, you'd receive a check for the amount of the order and a note saying it wasn't actually legal to sell sex toys in the jurisdiction they were based out of. The catch was the check was from a very obscene-sounding place, like "Anal lover's paradise empornium" or somesuch. As a result, many people didn't cash those checks, and they kept the money. It turned out to make them a lot of money, and it was completely legal (at the time anyway). While this is certainly unethical behavior, it wasn't fraud.
I doubt the scam you describe ever really happened, it's actually a throwaway line from one of my favorite movies, Guy Ritchie's "Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels". I suppose Ritchie could have based his dialog on a real life scam he heard about, but your description is practically word for word from the movie, so I'm guessing that's where you heard it. Or maybe someone else saw the film and passed on the description of the scam without attribution, who knows? Maybe it's become an urban myth? Regardless, I've always thought it's a great concept.
A key that opens many locks is a master key. A lock that can be opened by many keys is a shitty lock.
Not saying I agree with it, but the analogy fits fairly well.
Why exactly is the lock associated with (as I presume you must mean) the female, while the male gets to be the key? Why not the other way round? When you think about it, the whole analogy makes very little sense, in fact it's really nothing but thinly disguised male-supremacist propaganda. I'm guessing you probably first learned it from some religious text or religious authority figure, very likely Christian. Which is rather interesting, don't you think?
No, seriously, it sounds like he isn't getting any, in which case he might want to try clomipramine / Anafranil.
Apparently around 5% of users report spontaneous orgasm when yawning.
I wish more things in life had side effects like that. Of course, that would necessitate certain changes to one's wardrobe, but I think the minor additional hassle would be well worth it...
:-P
Spontaneous orgasm is also one of the symptoms of heroin/opiate withdrawal - really, look it up! - but I'm in no hurry to experience that, either. Some things just aren't as good as they might seem to be at first (see also for example Priapism, another potential side effect of certain pharmaceuticals). I know, we're posting on Slashdot, we're likely desperate for thrills of this kind, but still...
... rather then the ER which is free if you don't have insurance.
No. While it is true that the ER cannot deny you care, they will bill you if you do not have insurance. Failure to pay will have all of the same implications of ignoring any other bill.
This "we don't have to insure the poor because they can just go to the ER" trope has got to stop.
My mod points seem to have just expired, unfortunately, but... Thank you, thank you, thank you. I have been trying to get people to understand this point for years, with little success. In particular, the "free ER healthcare for the poor" meme seems to be permanently embedded in the brains of conservative Republicans. Hell, even Mitt Romney got this one wrong recently. So ER care is free to the poor and uninsured in the US, Mitt? OK then, I'm currently unemployed with an income well below the poverty level, perhaps you could explain this whole free ER thing to the bill collectors currently hounding me over a recent ER visit? No, didn't think so. And that's precisely why I'm not voting for you, you have absolutely no conception at all of what it really means to be financially insecure and uninsured in modern day America.
I actually read the Bible front to back and saw what kind of a psycho asshole your god really is. If it truly exists, (doubtful) it has no right to judge anyone. Your god embodies malice to a degree that no human could ever hope to reach. Biblegod is clearly the product of a harsh, primitive, barbaric culture and it definitely shows.
Oh absolutely, wish I had mod points. To cite just one personal sticking point: any god who would inflict eternal torment upon otherwise good and honest people simply because they happen to hold different religious beliefs (or none at all) is not deserving of our worship! Period. It doesn't even matter whether He exists or not, if eternal damnation of unbelievers is part of the dogma, then the entire Church is no good. This should be absolutely self-evident to anyone with even a rudimentary sense of morality. There may or may not be sufficiently evil acts to render a human being truly deserving of an eternity of torment in Hell, but non-belief isn't one of them, and proclaiming that it is merely serves to proclaim the inner corruption of a particular faith.
We need to end software patents
I seem to recall that back in the day it was pretty fucking obvious what would happen if we allowed them in the first place. Fat lot of fucking good that did, however...
Oh yes, I remember well the fear of software patents back in the day, and the big relief felt by most programmers when it appeared the issue was dead. Software was not patentable, the issue was settled, and the nascent PC software writing community heaved a sigh of relief went on about its business. It's worth noting that that was an era of absolutely stunning innovation, with new software ideas cropping up everywhere, seemingly overnight. Nobody worried about patents, and the industry flourished. And yet, somewhere along the way, the idea of software patents refused to die, and eventually managed to rise from the grave, bringing about the mess we currently find ourselves in. I know of no better argument against software patents then to look at the amount of innovation and success to be found in the IT field, especially amongst newly emerging small businesses, back in the '70s and '80s, as compared with what you find today. It's like the whole industry now labors under a crushing weight of fear, fear of the inevitable but often unforeseeable patent lawsuit. It's crazy that anyone could think software patents are a good idea. I firmly believe that the whole personal computing revolution would never have happened under the current restrictive IP rights regime. It just couldn't have survived. And yes, to this day, I don't quite understand how a seemingly settled legal argument could reemerge from the grave like that, complete with unholy powers and an unquenchable appetite for gobbling up the nation's brains. Indeed, I do despair sometimes, because clearly, the zombies are winning.
From his pocket he brought a small black case. A window glowed to reveal an index; Waldo set dials. "here's an example of Vaakstras, it's not obvious music.'"
to be mass-produced for monster truck rallies here in the states.
As usual science fiction is way ahead of reality, ten years to be precise. What you describe was the exact plot of Allen Steele's short story "Mudzilla's Last Stand", initially published in January of '93! From an article about Steele:
His writing shows a passion for the sometimes lurid tone and language of the lowest forms of popular culture, as in "Mudzilla's Last Stand," which details how future announcers will promote the battle of Mecha-men robots as a working class entertainment on the same order as Monster Truck Rallies.
I remember reading the story in Asimov's when it first appeared. Aside from being prophetic, it was a pretty good read. The plot is that a Japanese company builds a real battle mech much like the one in the TFA. The robot was intended to be genuine military hardware, but there were no takers because it turns out giant man-like metal monster robots are somewhat impracticable on real battlefields. Eventually the only prototype gets sold to, you guessed it, a promoter of monster truck rallies. You can guess what happens next... Or read the story.
I have an att.net email account which for some reason has to be accessed through Yahoo, I guess they're corporate partners or something... The point is, I have always protected my email address with religious fervor, and as a result I do not get spam, ever, period, not once. Until today, that is. Make of it what you will, but to me this is just way too much of a coincidence. I strongly suspect it will come out that the hack went deeper and compromised much more than what is currently being reported. To repeat, I have had a totally spam-free yahoo mail address for 5 years and all of a sudden today I get spam, despite the fact that my address is NOT listed in the list of compromised accounts. Make of this what you will, but personally I'm not very happy with Yahoo at the moment.
Most criminals are stupid.
Wrong. Most criminals who get caught are stupid. We don't hear much about the successful criminals, which is precisely how they like it.
Why do people keep repeating the absolute lie that anyone can always get free care at the emergency room? True, they have to treat you, but you absolutely will get billed, and if you don't pay that bill it will be handed over to a professional debt collector. I should know, I'm currently being hounded for a $1200 ER bill. A few years ago a local hospital made national news by actually putting liens on the houses of any poor person unlucky enough to still retain a family home. Yes, they actually took poor people's homes if they didn't pay up. This is not my or anyone's definition of free! Furthermore, in my State even if you're eligible for the local flavor of medicaid, any money that the State pays out for your care is considered a loan, NOT a benefit! This means that if you are covered under this so-called plan and later on you hit the lottery, or inherit, or make it big as a rock star, or just have a good night at the casino, if the State finds out about it they will come and take your money, right up to the last cent that they ever spent on you. So once more, with feeling: emergency room care is NOT FREE in the USA. Some people do manage to avoid payment, but that's another story entirely. There is currently no free care available to anyone at hospital emergency rooms, not if you mean free as in beer. This is a maddeningly pervasive urban myth that conservatives especially seem to like to promulgate, but it simply is not true.
"The fact that artists are spending much less TIME recording can only mean they have less money or expect to make less money.
What??? There are so many things wrong with that blanket statement - which he bases solely on data self-supplied by the large recording studios, no less - that I didn't read any further in the article. There were other statements equally as nonsensical. The summary indicated Lowery had both the experience and the data to back up his rant, but after reading a good chunk of it all I see is another idiot with preconceived ideas, barely coherent logic, cherry-picked data, and multiple straw-man arguments. Seek elsewhere for a reasoned analysis backed up with solid evidence.
If Netflix has it in HD, it's ONLY available in HD. Besides, SD looks like complete crap at 42 inches or higher
Only available in HD on Netflix? That's wrong, you can set the quality to whatever you like. To pull up the stream manager just hit shift-ctrl-alt-s, then check off whatever bit rate/quality you want.
How is this any different from telling a pollster that you approve of something? It's basically the same thing, and if stating one's opinion on a political poll is not protected speech under the 1st amendment, I don't know what is. The judge doesn't seem to have thought this through. Note that arguments about whether employers should or shouldn't be able to fire people based on their beliefs are pretty much irrelevant here, because if the judge says this is unprotected speech and the ruling is upheld, the precedent would apply in any situation, not just employment disputes. Unprotected is unprotected. Hopefully a higher court will revisit the issue and overturn the ruling.
Wait, wait... So kids these days routinely take naked pictures of themselves and then send them to themselves??? That has got to be the most perverse method of masturbation I've ever heard of! I suppose sexting oneself could conceivably be seen as a natural outgrowth of the ever-more-pervasive role of the internet in modern sexuality, but still... I find the need to send oneself naughty pictures a bit strange. In fact, behavior like this deserves a name: "auto-erotic techno-narcissistic syndrome" or something. Jeez, in my day we just looked at girly mags.
... pulls content from an array of open-education sources to knit together a text that the company claims is as good as the designated book ...
A noble intention but I am suspicious of "as good as". Pulling stuff from various sources and slapping it together quickly is not a strategy known for producing "as good as" products. Perhaps a "good enough" product though. However is the "knitted together" text better than, or even different from, just googling and reading some of the top sites, reading various topics on wikipedia? Also with respect to "as good as" I am *not* counting the missing homework problems against it.
You're making an assumption that there must be some kind of standard of quality to commercial textbook publisher's products. Sure, there are probably standards set by some accreditation body somewhere, but nonetheless I strongly suspect that "pulling stuff from various sources and slapping it together quickly" is probably a pretty good description of how most of the pros go about it. I can easily believe the free product described in TFA is "as good as" the average commercial offering. Remember, these are introductory courses we're talking about here, not advanced topics. The fact is, at this level the freely available online stuff is probably as good as anything else, and the publishers know it, which is why they are turning to lawsuits. We've all seen this kind of thing before, it's just the final dying spasms of dinosaurs who don't have the brains to recognize their own imminent extinction.
Your healthcare link for #4 is broken, should be this: http://silver.neep.wisc.edu/~lakes/iatrogenic.pdf No one noticed, though, because they were all going "LA LA LA LA LA I CANT HEAR YOU!" and covering their eyes with their hands.
That's not what the patents cover.
They usually cover:
1. Adding or removing genes from an organism to give the organism a useful new phenotype (corn that makes bt toxin).
2. A process for manufacturing a protein that includes taking it out of the original organism and expressing it in a different one so that you get a higher yield.
3. A diagnostic based on the presence of a particular version of a gene or protein (what this case was about)
4. A new version of a protein that is more useful than the natural one.
Some are still pretty obnoxious though.
But none of the things you list actually require that a gene be patented, they are all more or less processes that happen to involve genes or make use of genetic information. For instance, in principal there is no reason that a genetic diagnostic test manufacturer has to patent the gene that is being tested for, they could just patent the test, except that their lawyers told them it would be a good idea to include the gene itself in the patent application, and geniuses down at the patent office have gone along with this insanity. IANAL, but it seems to me the types of patents you list could all in theory exist in some form without granting anyone exclusive ownership of a naturally occurring gene.
Maybe if we evolve into the Q we'll finally understand it all, but that's definitely not the case now.
Uh, if we evolve into the Q it will be pretty clear that evolution exists. I mean, one can't evolve in the absence of evolution, can one? So if we evolve into the Q, we may or may not understand every last little detail about the evolutionary process, but I think intelligent design will be pretty much disproved!
Yes indeedy, I suspect the best way to make ID disappear is to evolve beyond it. Sadly, even then there will probably be a few reality-denying fundamentalist throwbacks.
Now, what did teenagers have to spend their dough on before the 2000s?
Well, I don't know about you, but in my school we spent it mostly on drugs. Hell, cocaine was friggin' expensive back in the late '70s and early '80s!
But isn't "thinking of the children" exactly what we are trying to discourage (at least in child porn enforcement)?
Someone should mod parent up, even though there's no way to mod +1 Ironic. Because it's true, this has become a pure thought crime, which leads to some rather ludicrous scenarios.
"Think of the children, the poor children! Er, wait, don't do that, do NOT think about children, no no no, think about anything else but not children, never children, not even imaginary ones..."
Ludicrous.
Yes, Vance absolutely should be on the list, in fact I consider Jack Vance pretty much THE forgotten genius of SF and Fantasy. To the must-read works by Vance that others have mentioned I would add the five Demon Princes novels, some of the best space opera ever written, but pretty much almost anything by Vance is worth looking at.
The other great forgotten SF novel I would recommend is The Stars My Destination by Alfred Bester. This is a mind-blowing kaleidoscope of a novel, a true classic that easily holds its own when compared to the best modern SF, the style and writing is so far ahead of its time it's almost impossible to believe it was first published in the '50s.
Yea? ... and who's fault is it that they started using heroin to begin with? Are you saying they shouldn't be subject to the consequences for their choices?
So let's see, if Heroin use is a terrible thing with awful consequences, and all users of heroin deserve whatever happens to them, then... Why bother to make it illegal at all? If it's so bad, then anybody who decides to use it will automatically get their just rewards in the end. Problem solved!