So does Google now believe that there's a genuine 'risk of disclosing a user's real identity'? Or is this just a case of Google's left hand not knowing what its right hand is patenting?
Google does not believe. They do not believe in protecting anonymity, nor in advancing reliable identities. Google wants money and power. There was a time when it was reasonable to think that Google believed in things, that they wanted to do good, but those times are gone. Google wants to make money on anonymity because they want to make money, not because they believe free speech depends on anonymity. They want to make money on reliable identities because they want to make money, not because they believe identities should be reliable. They want to make money on being the only one who knows the real identities because they want to make money, not because they believe one company should be the sole authenticator.
Most sufficiently large corporations have no beliefs. "I want as much stuff as I can get" is not a belief. Beliefs are things for which you are willing to make deep sacrifices. When a company sees that the patent system is broken and its public response is that they need to get more aggressive about patents, it is a clear statement that they lack motives outside of acquisitiveness and will-to-power. Avarice is not a belief, it is our default state when we choose not to elevate ourselves above the animals. Google does not believe.
There are entire professions dedicated to intentionally offending people. Acerbic entertainers like Lisa Lampanelli and Howard Stern use intentionally offensive statements and behavior to entertain. And it is not limited to comic, ironic, or throughtless statements: Rush Limbaugh, Michael Moore, and Richard Dawkins all use intentionally offensive statements as a rhetorical device to promote their views and their work. Denying the existence of the intent to offend is utterly ridiculous.
If you can't see how this is seriously bad for indies then you are blind. if Zynga gets away with this why should I buy "Plants VS Zombies" when some corp will hire a bunch of Chinese coders and I can have "Shrubs VS The Undead" next week for free on FB? Why buy Minecraft when I can have MineBuilder for free? One of the great things that has come along is the way the Internet allows small artists to compete and sell their wares no different than the big guys, but if this kind of shit isn't stopped when it comes to games they won't have a prayer, either they work for the megacorps who have enough money to sue, or everything they do will be taken from them. That is frankly a shitty choice and as much as I don't care for EA they are 100% in the right on this one and I hope they crush Zynga like the bugs that they are, go EA!
How much space does EA own around each game? What you are saying is very valid, but not absolute -- it is a matter of degrees. Does the hypothetical "Shrubs v. The Undead" infringe "Plants V. Zombies"? What about another lane-based tower defense game? What about non-linear path tower defense? What about free-roaming tower defense? How close were Zynga's copies, and how close is wrong? How much space does EA own around each game?
I agree that instant and indistinguishable duplication of an entire game is harmful to our society, and I tend to think that Zynga went over the line with premeditated, malicious intent. But beware of the "steal their product" position as a generalization -- it can easily turn into overbroad regulatory monopolies, like we are seeing in the mobile device lawsuits.
You know, in Mahatma Gandhi's time, there were people who wanted to violently fight the British. They felt that Gandhi's actions were not enough, etc. Yet he ended up being extremely effective with his passive resistance.
From Wikipedia:
In 1906, the British declared war against the Zulu kingdom in Natal, Gandhi encouraged the British to recruit Indians. He argued that Indians should support the war efforts in order to legitimise their claims to full citizenship. The British accepted Gandhi's offer to let a detachment of 20 Indians volunteer as a stretcher-bearer corps to treat wounded British soldiers. This corps was commanded by Gandhi and operated for less than two months. The experience taught him it was hopeless to directly challenge the overwhelming military power of the British army -- he decided it could only be resisted in non-violent fashion by the pure of heart.
Gandhi chose nonviolence because it was the best means in context, not because it is the best strategy in all contexts. In information warfare, I have more powerful weapons than most. On the side that I am on, I also have the advantage of being objectively right. When you have the better weapons, direct assault is an effective strategy.
But, clearly you have strongly held opinions about the way you see the world. It's all good, I know lots of sharp people who take that view of things. It is a vastly superior philosophy to mine for achieving inner peace, and has shown some success in influencing policy on occasion. As far as I see it, though, we're in a shooting war that they started, and I've got big guns. There's a lot to be said for setting yourself on fire to oppose a war, and I wish you nothing but success. I'll stick to taking them head on. The best strategy is all of them.
I believe that next to reason, nothing that shills and other dishonest marketers can do is ever going to have the appearance of merit or any persuasive power at all.
Yet, as long as so many people are this way, there will always be fertile ground for shills, scammers, lying politicians, and all sorts of deceitful people.
Those two statements cannot both be true.
I never felt like I had to use the shills' own tactics against them, resisting their dishonesty with suspicion and derision.
You should be suspicious of dishonest people. It is a very important survival trait.
I have not used derision anywhere in this thread.
What they absolutely do not want to do is to calmly discuss the facts of the matter in an objective manner.
Actually, sucking opponents into drawn-out discussions, like this one, is one of the standard practices of shilling.
There is little point in trying to eliminate individual rats while you continue to leave rotting food laying around everywhere. The scope of this problem is huge. It is not easily fixed. It took a long time to become the way that it is and it will not be resolved overnight. The very best you can hope for is damage control
"It's hard" is not a good reason to give up on a just cause.
and not yourself being part of the problem
Telling people to lie down and take it is being part of the problem. Fighting the problem is not.
In that case, you imagine yourself a better master than the ones currently pulling most of the strings.
I am not pulling strings. I am advocating for the exposure of paid shills in the discussion.
I really believe that you mean well.
An amusing attempt to manipulate the reader to perceive you as being in a morally superior position.
I also sincerely believe you are merely hacking at the branches because the root of the problem is so big, so menacing, and so ugly that you'd prefer to deny it.
Deny it? What are you referring to?
I think the focus needs to be not exposing shills point-counterpoint style,
Again you are contradicting yourself:
What they absolutely do not want to do is to calmly discuss the facts of the matter in an objective manner.
I suspect the contradiction comes from using a set of poorly thought-out talking points.
Until then, you have an enormous game of whack-a-mole that tends to favor the adversary.
May tend to, but it is not working out so well in this thread.
The reason for telling you that is to highlight something which is easily overlooked: there is in fact a sort of built-in justice to things. It just tends to take its sweet time before having its full effect in cumulative form.
The shill getting a hypothetical karmic ass-kicking sometime in the future doesn't stop the people who hired him from distorting our society in the short run. The distortion of our society is the threat, not the shill and his conscience.
If the presence of shills causes us to be so suspicious of each other
Being suspicious of the existence of shills is the correct response to the existence of shills.
to never extend benefit of doubt
Nobody suggested that was the case. I, and I suspect most people here, assume every post is genuine unless it triggers our suspicion. Like this one did.
to be less tolerant of unpopular speech,
That's a tricky phrase. If the speech is unpopular because of groupthink, we should not be less tolerant of it. If it is unpopular because it is ill-formed, we should be less tolerant of it. Noise lacking signal should be attenuated in order for substantive dialog to rise to the fore. That is the express purpose of the moderation system.
above all to use down-mods as a substitute for well-written rebuttals
Well-written rebuttals are the right response to reasoned discourse by free people. Shill posts are not reasoned discourse by free people, they are for-profit attempts to manipulate public perception and behavior and to affect public policy. Detection of shills is tricky, but attenuating shills is objectively pro-social.
The best way to combat actual shills is to know in your mind and understand in your heart why they are wrong, because hearts and minds are what they want to capture.
That is the best way to defend yourself against them, but it is a completely ineffective way to combat them. Things that happen entirely inside your head have no effect on the outside world. If the objective is to achieve inner peace, then your advice is spot-on. If the objective is to prevent shills from distorting our society, then we must combat them.
That knowing and understanding is the product of informing yourself and does not depend on anything someone else does.
It is not enough to simply defend yourself. Their intent is to have an effect on public perception, behavior, and policy. While being informed is a sound foundation for engaging them in the court of public opinion successfully, informedness is not -- in itself -- sufficient to protect our society from them. Protecting our society depends rather heavily on things other people do. Preventing shills from having their intended effect on those people is a pro-social pursuit.
Consider also that if he actually is that much of a corporate whore, his inability to respect himself in any real way is far worse than thousands of down-mods.
That is only true in the sense of how it affects a shill inside his head. The purpose of shilling is not to affect the shill's mind, it is to manipulate society. Likewise, the purpose of combating shilling is not to make the shill feel bad, it is to protect our economy. If there were a way to defend society against the shill while simultaneously giving him a big warm hug and a pat on the back, I'd do it.
So, according to you, because I don't toe the slashdot monoculture line, I must be a troll and a shill.
No. According to me, because of the way you presented your opinion, you are indistinguishable from a shill.
I believe in the benefits of a lively and spirited debate from people who are steeped in the issues.
You were not presenting a spirited debate about the merit of a policy, you were attempting to pursuade people to engage in a particular behavior in response to a threat posed by bad policy. In effect you were telling people to be more obedient or face the wrath of the legal system. That is not spirited debate, it is authoritarianism.
I'm sorry for you that you feel differently.
Awww, that's pretend nice of you to say. I guess I won't slit my wrists now that I know you care.
I'm going to assume that is a serious question and give you the straight answer:
The reason they are marking you "troll" is because it is the closest thing to "shill" in the mod system. Your comment is indistinguishable from that of a copyright industry shill and you have a high user ID. There's more to it than that in the way your post is presented -- it looks suspicious -- but I'm not going to tell you any more. If you are a shill, I don't want you to know where your veil is thin.
Stuck in the library researching whatever interests you, eh? Next you'll tell me that after your shift you're going to hang out in the quad with twenty year old coeds and I'll really pity you your suffering.;)
Their decision was made because it was the short-run profiteering thing to do.
There, fixed that for ya. The fiscally responsible thing to do is to ensure the long-run fitness of the United States and global economy.
The MPAA and RIAA are pushing for increasing the strength of their regulatory monopolies to channel a larger share of GDP into their products, which shifts us further out on the cultural supply curve. That increases units produced and per-unit price, which has the effect of increasing cultural production while reducing the per-unit cost efficiency. That would be a good thing if we were suffering from a shortage of cultural production and the economy was running strong. Since we are on the opposite side of both those balances at the moment, however, supporting that agenda to curry their favor is short-run profiteering -- not fiscal responsibility.
How extensive is the undiagnosed population, and how fast is that population growing, and how much will they cost to treat?
Yes, exactly. That is exactly what I meant with my post. Health care allocation decisions should be based on rational analysis, not whether some individual had worms in her brain on Christmas day. You are adding data points to the analysis, and that is good. I'm not saying my cursory glance is sufficient to find the right answer, just that the decision should be rational, and that even a cursory glance at the numbers is better than ignoring them.
only costs a few hundred dollars per case if it's caught before it becomes severe.
What will it cost to catch the cases before they become severe? Consider the prostate exam -- we started doing them at age 40 because it is better to catch prostate cancer early. Turns out, though, that prostate cancer is so rare at 40 that misdiagnoses were causing more harm than good -- and that didn't even address the cost of the screenings themselves.
The more rare an illness is, the less likely it will be cost effective to screen for it. At 1 in 100,000, this malady is so rare that screening for it probably doesn't make sense -- but let's ask the experts:
Unfortunately, though neurocysticercosis is horrible, doctors and governments need to prioritize health concerns - and neurocysticercosis just isn't one of them.
It explains it right in the article, but our natural, human, irrational reaction is only to see the poor woman with brain worms in the hospital on Christmas day -- and we get a new round of required tests and the cost of a trip to the ER goes up another $1500.
Budgeting for health care means focusing the available resources on the most cost effective problems first -- the things that affect the most people.
The CDC estimates that there are 1,900 diagnosed cases every year, 386 annual cases in California alone which can cost upwards of $66,000. Often it is paid through Medicare - costing taxpayers thousands.
California Population: 37m
The phrase "upwards of" jumps out at me. Let's be generous and assume the number they quoted is only twice the average.
386 cases at $33,000 = $13m per year
The cost per Californian is under $0.50 per year. Given the weasel phrase, "upwards of", it is probably a lot less than $0.50 per year. You have a one in 100,000 chance of getting it each year in California. If you are a California resident, you are less likely to get hit by lightning, but not by a whole lot.
Health care resources are limited. If we waste them on 1:100,000 shots, people with more common ailments will suffer. That is a bad economics and socially heartless.
'We started with the premise that we wanted an uncompromised physical form,' executive vice president Kevin Shields, said. 'To put an SD card slot in it would have defiled it.'
Hmm, Kevin: If you're trying to channel Apple, you have the order wrong. First you build a strong following among artistic folks by consistently bringing pretty technology to market. Then you talk like an effete douchebag. If you get the order backwards it sounds pretentious.
YouTube doesn't use the DMCA for the big guys anymore. They have automated takedown based on signatures that does not require an affidavit and they do not restore videos upon counter-filing like the law allows under the DMCA. YouTube is doing it voluntarily, going beyond the requirements of the DMCA, because they make a lot of money through Vimeo and they do not give a damn about what is right.
Emergency services needs to encourage hackers like this guy to explore many connectivity alternatives. A mobile broadband unit would be less reliable than a swarm of smaller agents in some contexts. Having both options is better than having only one. Having a swarm and a broadband unit working together would solve still more cases. Emergency services is an excellent place to be advancing the state of disaster-tolerant communication networks -- both from the top down and the bottom up.
If that meant "we" owned the infrastructure, not the media companies. One requirement would HAVE to be net neutrality.
Yes, this.
Would you pay a buck or two extra for fast access â" or vote for someone who thinks you should?
If it includes net neut? I'd pay an extra $20/month. Better yet, I'd pay 20% ($26 with my big pipe and static IP), so the people with smaller connections don't have to pay as much as I do, because that seems fair to me. Heck, I'll pay a progressive rate so I'm paying a higher percentage than the typical home user or people who have a tighter budget.
I feel like the pro-pot people: Please, tax me and make the policy serve the people instead of the special interests and authoritarians. I'll pay, happily. I'll pay more than most. I'll sing your praises while I do it. And I don't even do anything nefarious with my connection that would make me worry about the ISPs spying; I just think it's the right thing to do.
Slashdot Mirror
So does Google now believe that there's a genuine 'risk of disclosing a user's real identity'? Or is this just a case of Google's left hand not knowing what its right hand is patenting?
Google does not believe. They do not believe in protecting anonymity, nor in advancing reliable identities. Google wants money and power. There was a time when it was reasonable to think that Google believed in things, that they wanted to do good, but those times are gone. Google wants to make money on anonymity because they want to make money, not because they believe free speech depends on anonymity. They want to make money on reliable identities because they want to make money, not because they believe identities should be reliable. They want to make money on being the only one who knows the real identities because they want to make money, not because they believe one company should be the sole authenticator.
Most sufficiently large corporations have no beliefs. "I want as much stuff as I can get" is not a belief. Beliefs are things for which you are willing to make deep sacrifices. When a company sees that the patent system is broken and its public response is that they need to get more aggressive about patents, it is a clear statement that they lack motives outside of acquisitiveness and will-to-power. Avarice is not a belief, it is our default state when we choose not to elevate ourselves above the animals. Google does not believe.
A movie can not have the intent to offend
There are entire professions dedicated to intentionally offending people. Acerbic entertainers like Lisa Lampanelli and Howard Stern use intentionally offensive statements and behavior to entertain. And it is not limited to comic, ironic, or throughtless statements: Rush Limbaugh, Michael Moore, and Richard Dawkins all use intentionally offensive statements as a rhetorical device to promote their views and their work. Denying the existence of the intent to offend is utterly ridiculous.
If you can't see how this is seriously bad for indies then you are blind. if Zynga gets away with this why should I buy "Plants VS Zombies" when some corp will hire a bunch of Chinese coders and I can have "Shrubs VS The Undead" next week for free on FB? Why buy Minecraft when I can have MineBuilder for free? One of the great things that has come along is the way the Internet allows small artists to compete and sell their wares no different than the big guys, but if this kind of shit isn't stopped when it comes to games they won't have a prayer, either they work for the megacorps who have enough money to sue, or everything they do will be taken from them. That is frankly a shitty choice and as much as I don't care for EA they are 100% in the right on this one and I hope they crush Zynga like the bugs that they are, go EA!
How much space does EA own around each game? What you are saying is very valid, but not absolute -- it is a matter of degrees. Does the hypothetical "Shrubs v. The Undead" infringe "Plants V. Zombies"? What about another lane-based tower defense game? What about non-linear path tower defense? What about free-roaming tower defense? How close were Zynga's copies, and how close is wrong? How much space does EA own around each game?
I agree that instant and indistinguishable duplication of an entire game is harmful to our society, and I tend to think that Zynga went over the line with premeditated, malicious intent. But beware of the "steal their product" position as a generalization -- it can easily turn into overbroad regulatory monopolies, like we are seeing in the mobile device lawsuits.
Obligatory Streisand Effect link to the video that they are acting against: Innocence of Muslims
And, for bonus points, here's an emoticon depiction of The Prophet Mohammed: 0-<-<
Come get me.
You know, in Mahatma Gandhi's time, there were people who wanted to violently fight the British. They felt that Gandhi's actions were not enough, etc. Yet he ended up being extremely effective with his passive resistance.
From Wikipedia:
In 1906, the British declared war against the Zulu kingdom in Natal, Gandhi encouraged the British to recruit Indians. He argued that Indians should support the war efforts in order to legitimise their claims to full citizenship. The British accepted Gandhi's offer to let a detachment of 20 Indians volunteer as a stretcher-bearer corps to treat wounded British soldiers. This corps was commanded by Gandhi and operated for less than two months. The experience taught him it was hopeless to directly challenge the overwhelming military power of the British army -- he decided it could only be resisted in non-violent fashion by the pure of heart.
Gandhi chose nonviolence because it was the best means in context, not because it is the best strategy in all contexts. In information warfare, I have more powerful weapons than most. On the side that I am on, I also have the advantage of being objectively right. When you have the better weapons, direct assault is an effective strategy.
But, clearly you have strongly held opinions about the way you see the world. It's all good, I know lots of sharp people who take that view of things. It is a vastly superior philosophy to mine for achieving inner peace, and has shown some success in influencing policy on occasion. As far as I see it, though, we're in a shooting war that they started, and I've got big guns. There's a lot to be said for setting yourself on fire to oppose a war, and I wish you nothing but success. I'll stick to taking them head on. The best strategy is all of them.
I believe that next to reason, nothing that shills and other dishonest marketers can do is ever going to have the appearance of merit or any persuasive power at all.
Yet, as long as so many people are this way, there will always be fertile ground for shills, scammers, lying politicians, and all sorts of deceitful people.
Those two statements cannot both be true.
I never felt like I had to use the shills' own tactics against them, resisting their dishonesty with suspicion and derision.
You should be suspicious of dishonest people. It is a very important survival trait.
I have not used derision anywhere in this thread.
What they absolutely do not want to do is to calmly discuss the facts of the matter in an objective manner.
Actually, sucking opponents into drawn-out discussions, like this one, is one of the standard practices of shilling.
There is little point in trying to eliminate individual rats while you continue to leave rotting food laying around everywhere. The scope of this problem is huge. It is not easily fixed. It took a long time to become the way that it is and it will not be resolved overnight. The very best you can hope for is damage control
"It's hard" is not a good reason to give up on a just cause.
and not yourself being part of the problem
Telling people to lie down and take it is being part of the problem. Fighting the problem is not.
In that case, you imagine yourself a better master than the ones currently pulling most of the strings.
I am not pulling strings. I am advocating for the exposure of paid shills in the discussion.
I really believe that you mean well.
An amusing attempt to manipulate the reader to perceive you as being in a morally superior position.
I also sincerely believe you are merely hacking at the branches because the root of the problem is so big, so menacing, and so ugly that you'd prefer to deny it.
Deny it? What are you referring to?
I think the focus needs to be not exposing shills point-counterpoint style,
Again you are contradicting yourself:
What they absolutely do not want to do is to calmly discuss the facts of the matter in an objective manner.
I suspect the contradiction comes from using a set of poorly thought-out talking points.
Until then, you have an enormous game of whack-a-mole that tends to favor the adversary.
May tend to, but it is not working out so well in this thread.
The reason for telling you that is to highlight something which is easily overlooked: there is in fact a sort of built-in justice to things. It just tends to take its sweet time before having its full effect in cumulative form.
The shill getting a hypothetical karmic ass-kicking sometime in the future doesn't stop the people who hired him from distorting our society in the short run. The distortion of our society is the threat, not the shill and his conscience.
If the presence of shills causes us to be so suspicious of each other
Being suspicious of the existence of shills is the correct response to the existence of shills.
to never extend benefit of doubt
Nobody suggested that was the case. I, and I suspect most people here, assume every post is genuine unless it triggers our suspicion. Like this one did.
to be less tolerant of unpopular speech,
That's a tricky phrase. If the speech is unpopular because of groupthink, we should not be less tolerant of it. If it is unpopular because it is ill-formed, we should be less tolerant of it. Noise lacking signal should be attenuated in order for substantive dialog to rise to the fore. That is the express purpose of the moderation system.
above all to use down-mods as a substitute for well-written rebuttals
Well-written rebuttals are the right response to reasoned discourse by free people. Shill posts are not reasoned discourse by free people, they are for-profit attempts to manipulate public perception and behavior and to affect public policy. Detection of shills is tricky, but attenuating shills is objectively pro-social.
The best way to combat actual shills is to know in your mind and understand in your heart why they are wrong, because hearts and minds are what they want to capture.
That is the best way to defend yourself against them, but it is a completely ineffective way to combat them. Things that happen entirely inside your head have no effect on the outside world. If the objective is to achieve inner peace, then your advice is spot-on. If the objective is to prevent shills from distorting our society, then we must combat them.
That knowing and understanding is the product of informing yourself and does not depend on anything someone else does.
It is not enough to simply defend yourself. Their intent is to have an effect on public perception, behavior, and policy. While being informed is a sound foundation for engaging them in the court of public opinion successfully, informedness is not -- in itself -- sufficient to protect our society from them. Protecting our society depends rather heavily on things other people do. Preventing shills from having their intended effect on those people is a pro-social pursuit.
Consider also that if he actually is that much of a corporate whore, his inability to respect himself in any real way is far worse than thousands of down-mods.
That is only true in the sense of how it affects a shill inside his head. The purpose of shilling is not to affect the shill's mind, it is to manipulate society. Likewise, the purpose of combating shilling is not to make the shill feel bad, it is to protect our economy. If there were a way to defend society against the shill while simultaneously giving him a big warm hug and a pat on the back, I'd do it.
So, according to you, because I don't toe the slashdot monoculture line, I must be a troll and a shill.
No. According to me, because of the way you presented your opinion, you are indistinguishable from a shill.
I believe in the benefits of a lively and spirited debate from people who are steeped in the issues.
You were not presenting a spirited debate about the merit of a policy, you were attempting to pursuade people to engage in a particular behavior in response to a threat posed by bad policy. In effect you were telling people to be more obedient or face the wrath of the legal system. That is not spirited debate, it is authoritarianism.
I'm sorry for you that you feel differently.
Awww, that's pretend nice of you to say. I guess I won't slit my wrists now that I know you care.
to those who are itchy to mark me troll - why?
I'm going to assume that is a serious question and give you the straight answer:
The reason they are marking you "troll" is because it is the closest thing to "shill" in the mod system. Your comment is indistinguishable from that of a copyright industry shill and you have a high user ID. There's more to it than that in the way your post is presented -- it looks suspicious -- but I'm not going to tell you any more. If you are a shill, I don't want you to know where your veil is thin.
Stuck in the library researching whatever interests you, eh? Next you'll tell me that after your shift you're going to hang out in the quad with twenty year old coeds and I'll really pity you your suffering. ;)
Nice thumbnail stats summary. Thank you.
Their decision was made because it was the short-run profiteering thing to do.
There, fixed that for ya. The fiscally responsible thing to do is to ensure the long-run fitness of the United States and global economy.
The MPAA and RIAA are pushing for increasing the strength of their regulatory monopolies to channel a larger share of GDP into their products, which shifts us further out on the cultural supply curve. That increases units produced and per-unit price, which has the effect of increasing cultural production while reducing the per-unit cost efficiency. That would be a good thing if we were suffering from a shortage of cultural production and the economy was running strong. Since we are on the opposite side of both those balances at the moment, however, supporting that agenda to curry their favor is short-run profiteering -- not fiscal responsibility.
Excellent post. You have concisely captured the costs of advertising to our economy and society. Those costs are too often overlooked.
How extensive is the undiagnosed population, and how fast is that population growing, and how much will they cost to treat?
Yes, exactly. That is exactly what I meant with my post. Health care allocation decisions should be based on rational analysis, not whether some individual had worms in her brain on Christmas day. You are adding data points to the analysis, and that is good. I'm not saying my cursory glance is sufficient to find the right answer, just that the decision should be rational, and that even a cursory glance at the numbers is better than ignoring them.
only costs a few hundred dollars per case if it's caught before it becomes severe.
What will it cost to catch the cases before they become severe? Consider the prostate exam -- we started doing them at age 40 because it is better to catch prostate cancer early. Turns out, though, that prostate cancer is so rare at 40 that misdiagnoses were causing more harm than good -- and that didn't even address the cost of the screenings themselves.
The more rare an illness is, the less likely it will be cost effective to screen for it. At 1 in 100,000, this malady is so rare that screening for it probably doesn't make sense -- but let's ask the experts:
Unfortunately, though neurocysticercosis is horrible, doctors and governments need to prioritize health concerns - and neurocysticercosis just isn't one of them.
It explains it right in the article, but our natural, human, irrational reaction is only to see the poor woman with brain worms in the hospital on Christmas day -- and we get a new round of required tests and the cost of a trip to the ER goes up another $1500.
Budgeting for health care means focusing the available resources on the most cost effective problems first -- the things that affect the most people.
The CDC estimates that there are 1,900 diagnosed cases every year, 386 annual cases in California alone which can cost upwards of $66,000. Often it is paid through Medicare - costing taxpayers thousands.
California Population: 37m
The phrase "upwards of" jumps out at me. Let's be generous and assume the number they quoted is only twice the average.
386 cases at $33,000 = $13m per year
The cost per Californian is under $0.50 per year. Given the weasel phrase, "upwards of", it is probably a lot less than $0.50 per year. You have a one in 100,000 chance of getting it each year in California. If you are a California resident, you are less likely to get hit by lightning, but not by a whole lot.
Health care resources are limited. If we waste them on 1:100,000 shots, people with more common ailments will suffer. That is a bad economics and socially heartless.
'We started with the premise that we wanted an uncompromised physical form,' executive vice president Kevin Shields, said. 'To put an SD card slot in it would have defiled it.'
Hmm, Kevin: If you're trying to channel Apple, you have the order wrong. First you build a strong following among artistic folks by consistently bringing pretty technology to market. Then you talk like an effete douchebag. If you get the order backwards it sounds pretentious.
(under the provisions of the DMCA)
YouTube doesn't use the DMCA for the big guys anymore. They have automated takedown based on signatures that does not require an affidavit and they do not restore videos upon counter-filing like the law allows under the DMCA. YouTube is doing it voluntarily, going beyond the requirements of the DMCA, because they make a lot of money through Vimeo and they do not give a damn about what is right.
Emergency services needs reliability.
Emergency services needs to encourage hackers like this guy to explore many connectivity alternatives. A mobile broadband unit would be less reliable than a swarm of smaller agents in some contexts. Having both options is better than having only one. Having a swarm and a broadband unit working together would solve still more cases. Emergency services is an excellent place to be advancing the state of disaster-tolerant communication networks -- both from the top down and the bottom up.
Outstanding. Very good rant. Lewis Black would be proud. :)
Facebook programmer Kent Beck.
That seems a little like saying, "Google employee Vint Cerf."
And, as an aside: Damn, Kent. Facebook? I thought you were cool.
If that meant "we" owned the infrastructure, not the media companies. One requirement would HAVE to be net neutrality.
Yes, this.
Would you pay a buck or two extra for fast access â" or vote for someone who thinks you should?
If it includes net neut? I'd pay an extra $20/month. Better yet, I'd pay 20% ($26 with my big pipe and static IP), so the people with smaller connections don't have to pay as much as I do, because that seems fair to me. Heck, I'll pay a progressive rate so I'm paying a higher percentage than the typical home user or people who have a tighter budget.
I feel like the pro-pot people: Please, tax me and make the policy serve the people instead of the special interests and authoritarians. I'll pay, happily. I'll pay more than most. I'll sing your praises while I do it. And I don't even do anything nefarious with my connection that would make me worry about the ISPs spying; I just think it's the right thing to do.
That's a horrible example. You'd be much, much better off defining named entries in the SSH config.
Tunnels, nitwit. I'm tunneling to an endpoint through an intermediary host.
Its basically a kludge from bygone days before DNS
It is wise to avoid disparaging what you do not use. You may simply be ignorant. Here's a few lines from my hosts file:
127.0.2.1 slave1
127.0.2.2 slave2
127.0.2.3 slave3
127.0.2.4 slave4
127.0.2.5 slave5
127.0.3.1 master
I also have a couple dozen SSH tunnel host overrides and various custom paths. The hosts file is used to define per-machine address resolution.
Do you really believe that diplomatic immunity was *intended* to be used ... to shield an alleged criminal from prosecution?
What do you think diplomatic immunity is? If the subject is not accused of wrongdoing, immunity would be irrelevant.