I'd be willing to consider arguments for certain objections...but it sounds like a good general rule to me. I.e., people who shouldn't get a flu shot are also people who shouldn't be doing health care work... unless you can't find ANY replacements.
When I say that I'd be willing to consider arguments for objections, this doesn't imply that I can think of any cases where an exception is reasonable. So far I haven't. It's just that I can't think of a proof that no such cases exist.
It sounds like he's allergic to horse serum. Whooping cough doesn't have anything to do with that, so it would probably a much lesser risk. (Still, he shouldn't be in a line of work where he would be likely to act as a vector.)
So I find the case ambiguous. If someone is threatening you, it's generally recognized as self defense if you attack them. It gets a bit ambiguous when one asks "How serious was the threat?" and "Was the level of response justified?"
In this case there don't seem to be any "good guys". One company was threatening to sue another, so the other company sued first. Nobody's clearly right or wrong. And you can't really say the second company wasn't defending itself, even though it *was* Microsoft.
Reasonable. I'd prefer Ada, but you've made an argument that Java is a quite reasonable choice. I believe that the prior license agreement required that you not use it on nuclear reactors (and a few other high risk environments). Now that it's GPL, though, such requirements are gone.
As I heard the discussions with MS were initiated by Tom Tom, and Tom Tom threatened to sue before MS actually sued first.
Additionally, I believe that there were some questions about Tom Tom's adherence to the GPL. Something about their not making code available. It's the kind of thing that the FSF usually handles by negotiation, but it does represent a slight amount of "unclean hands" (though not towards MS). OTOH, my memory isn't clear about this, so I could well be wrong, and I can't think where to check it.
Be fair. The Tom Tom case is ambiguous. If I didn't already consider MS to be vile, that wouldn't cause me to think them so.
OTOH, there are many other things you could point to. Just because one argument is weak, doesn't mean the conclusion is wrong. Most of them are less visible than the Tom Tom case, but that doesn't mean that they aren't stronger arguments. I've heard, e.g., that the organizational structure of CodePlex is such that MS has total control over what happens and is allowed to happen within that organization. So trusting yourself to it is like trusting yourself to MS. I'd start by tracing out what rights they acquire by hosting code, and who decides how they will exercise those rights. (Trusting an analysis by someone else, it boils down to MS gets the rights to use the code as they see fit, and they can remove any code they want.)
There are indeed people at MS who publicly support OpenSource. I don't know of any that publicly support FreeSoftware, but it's possible.
The thing to notice, though, is that those people aren't in a position to decide corporate actions or policy. They can't decide to release software under an open or free license. That kind of decision is made elsewhere in the company. The people I know of are public faces. I.e., PR. Nominally they're in technical roles, but that's because it's the technical community that they're attempting to influence.
I'll start considering that MS might have changed slightly when they release some software under GPL that wasn't infringing on other GPL software before they released it. (Sorry, I'm a FreeSoftware person, not an OpenSoftware person, so BSD and MIT licenses don't speak to me.)
Actually the Tom Tom case is rather ambiguous. If I didn't already distrust MS, that wouldn't cause me to distrust them. In that case they WERE using the patents in a basically defensive manner. (Tom Tom may not have initiated the lawsuit, but they made clear threats.)
This, however, does not excuse their actions in many other cases. Before you even THINK about CodePlex, read their agreements...preferably get a lawyer to analyze it for you. It's as bad as any EULA you might encounter.
From the analysis I've read of the CodePlex charter...it's not something anyone in his right mind would agree to. It seems to be based on the idea that, as with an EULA, most people won't understand what they're agreeing to.
As I result I don't trust anyone who recommends joining CodePlex. The excuse at the time was "The organization is still in beta". Perhaps. I haven't heard that they've changed the ground rules yet. Maybe they will. If they do, maybe I'll consider it again. But I wouldn't bet on it. I only have so much time that I'm willing to spend considering licenses. That's *one* of the reasons that I like the GPL. It cuts down on the amount of time I need to spend thinking about licenses. (Note that any other standardized license would serve the same purpose, so that's *NOT* a sufficient characteristic. Merely a desirable one.)
Charles Stross: Accelerado (Possibly just Lobsters). Tolkien: Lord of the Rings Asimov: I Robot John W. Campbell: Who goes there? (Or "The Cloak of Aesir" or "The Moon is Hell") E.E.Smith: Skylark of Space Balmer & Wylie: When Worlds Collide
I tried to get one per decade, but my memory isn't that organized. Reading the list I notice that there are few short stories. And I left out a bunch to shorten the list. But one noteworthy factor is how the themes change over the decades.
That's like the claim that species never go extinct.
While it's true that THIS finite resource will never run out, because there will always be the same number if addresses, that's not what you said. And this sloppy thinking infects the rest of your argument.
E.g., NAT is already used in a large fraction of the cases where it is a satisfactory solution. This means that it will increasingly be used in cases where it's not a satisfactory solution, because there isn't any alternative.
OTOH, I agree that 734 days is too precise a prediction. I'd have said somewhere in the range of 600-1000 days. And there will be a continued dribble of a supply as entities drop their IP that will last for at least years. But it will be just a trickle supply.
However, I haven't heard of any technical problem with IPv6...though I admit I haven't been paying attention. To me it looks as if the only problem is lack of adoption by the nets. And I'm not sure if there's any reason for that beyond inertia.
I haven't gotten the flu in that time either. OTOH, at that time I lived in close proximity to *many* other people. I haven't done that since I moved out of the dorms. (A single family doesn't count as *many*.) I doubt that there's a definite boundary, but I'd tend to place the lower edge at 15 people. There is no upper edge, except that implied by bodies occupying space.
IOW, lifestyle is a very important factor. You might wear gloves when you use public transit, and wash them after one wearing. That's generally too much bother, so if you're nervous, but don't want to bother with gloves, carry around a bunch of those hand sanitizer packages, and use them when your hand are likely to have been exposed. (Check the alcohol content, though. If it's not over 30% they're probably more placebo than effective.)
O, and don't let people cough on you. The masks are effective in preventing transmission from the wearer to the potential infectee. They barely work at all in the opposite direction.
P.S.: I still get flu shots when my doctor recommends them. Not otherwise.
N.B.: I tend to spend all my time at a computer, so I'm not very exposed to flu (except for buses). My wife, however, is a teacher. So I am exposed indirectly. For some reason, however, she rarely gets sick. So my exposure is still minimal.
OTOH: I'm just getting over an episode of bronchitis. I've no idea how I got it...except that it *is* going around. So one doesn't always know when one's been exposed.
Amtrak is so terrible be cause the system is controlled by the freight lines, which don't want ANY passenger trains on their system. But we NEED decent trains. Who knows what airplane fuel is going to cost next year? A replacement system is mandatory. These "High Speed Trains" are only reasonable where there's a LOT of excess demand. Moderate speed trains are the reasonable choice in most places. They could generally be made to work by upgrading the current rail maintenance program and giving passenger trains priority over freight. And who cares that they only average 50 mph when you look out and see freeways being used as parking lots. A steady 50 mph looks a lot better. (I understand that this is standard on the East Coast, but I haven't been there since I was eight, so I don't know for sure.)
FWIW, when I first came to California the train service was both better and cheaper than it is now. But then the companies that owned the lines were paid by the passengers. Now Amtrak is paid, and it doesn't own the lines.
Yeah, but "High Speed Track" comes with high expenses. What's needed is good modern track, well maintained, and which passenger trains having priority over freight. (The density is rarely high enough to justify separate grades for passenger trains and freight trains.)
Even ordinary rail lines are expensive to maintain. They're cheaper than highways, but that's not saying enough. The freight handlers can get away with relatively shoddy maintenance as little that's time critical goes by rail, so they can have the train sit there while they repair things. (That's expensive, and they try to avoid it. But they don't try hard enough to satisfy a passenger centric system.)
More than hyper-speed trains we need good, cheap, passenger trains. These only happen in small corridors with dense passenger traffic. (Note that the SFBay BART system is, in effect, a high speed passenger line. But it only has something like 20-30 stops in the entire metropolitan area. It uses buses and cars as feeders, and the parking lots are full, but it's got a lot less penetration than is needed. Partially BECAUSE it's a high speed rail system. (The stops need to be far enough apart for it to pay for the train to pick up speed.)
I'll admit that I'm not sure of the details, but until the Post Office "went private"(whatever the facts are) UPS kept a very low profile. FedEx wasn't heard of. Similarly for the other parcel delivery services.
(I think there's something in the constitution that's been interpreted to give the "official" post office a monopoly on delivery of mail, but all I can find is authorization for congress to establish post offices & post roads.)
Do you think this thing would be your only source of magnesium? This is just about the entire recommended dose being supplied directly to the blood stream (which is a lot more efficient that digesting it).
Possibly the body contains mechanisms to not absorb magnesium in excess of it's needs...but one can't count on such. Many metals don't have any such safety regulator.
Amtrak is insanely costly compared to what the train service used to cost. I don't see this as being any cheaper. And the current right-of-way isn't well maintained. This would need even more in the way of maintenance than the current system.
The rail lines right-of-way is owned by the freight haulers. They put their priorities first, and passenger trains regularly get delayed. The last time I rode the train from Nevada to Berkeley (well, Emeryville...the Berkeley station was closed) the train was delayed for over four hours. With no explanation or estimate of when the problem would be fixed.
Yes, we definitely need better train service. But lets go for improvements that we know can reasonably be made. Like the Dept. of Transportation in charge of the right of way, so that freight trains can't arbitrarily pre-empt the lines from passengers. (I'm not thrilled with how the DOT maintains highways, but it does a better job than the railways do with their right of way.)
OK. To me a Netbook is still a laptop that uses flash instead of a hard disk. (Notice that there aren't very many that fit this definition...but it was one of the original selling points.)
If a half pound of magnesium dissolves in 2 years, how much is that per day?
1 pound = 453.59237 grams ((453.59237 grams) / 2) / (2 years) = 0.310473688 g / day (Thank you Google)
So around a third of a gram a day. Yeah, that's a lot larger an amount than I thought. Either it takes a lot longer than 2 years to dissolve away, or you probably need to take special cleation chemicals. And likely calcium supplements.
For capitalism to allocate resources with even moderate fairness there needs to be considerable competition.
This is not the case in the health care industry.
In particular, when you have an urgent need for medical attention, you don't have a lot of choice about who you get.
Given this, I'm not in favor of "capitalism" as a solution to this. It should not be used where either monopoly or desperation is a factor, and in the case BOTH are involved.
The government has a record of being adequate. Sometimes the system is gamed, but it can produce good results when there is strong oversight. (How much did the post office improve after it went private? [If you don't remember, service deteriorated markedly.])
OTOH, now that there are competitive services, the quality of service from the Post Office is improving again. If you can maneuver the situation so that monopolies are ended in the field of health services, then an alternative to government provision may be preferable, except in cases of urgent need. This means breaking the exclusive monopolies that employers give to health insurance companies, however. These almost all result in the user of the service having only one supplier, i.e., being a monopoly customer. (It may not be a legal monopoly, but if you have, effectively, only one supplier of the service then it's a monopoly by the meaning that I have intended throughout this post. E.g., if it costs you $10 for a doctors appointment if you use the approved service, and $100 for a doctors appointment if you use someone else, then it's a monopoly.)
Unfortunately, I don't see any feasible way for the government to remove the monopoly that these deals have created, since it's not a party to them. So the only answer I see is for the government to OFFER such a service. To everyone. At what it sees as a reasonable cost.
I'd be interested in hearing alternate proposals. I also don't trust any monopoly, including the government. But if we're going to deal with a monopoly anyway, then it might as well be the government.
This is about a government web site specifically aimed at being accessible. So, no, the comments aren't going too far.
P.S.: It's not just a government web site, it's one that some people got paid a rather large amount to create, and expect to be paid another rather large lot to keep working.
My feeling is that the web site should be marked not satisfactory, and all payment withheld until they do it right.
Depending on your decade and location... Fry's was a grocery store that was open all night...and had this large tech section.
Now it's an electronics store with the emphasis on consumer, and it's no longer open all night. But that's one place where it started around 1960. (I was just too early, and just too far away...but I sure heard about it!)
It's also the time to charge. With current batteries/chargers the best option would be to have two batteries...one in the car and another in the charger. Of course, cheaper batteries would make that more practical, too.
Slashdot Mirror
I'd be willing to consider arguments for certain objections...but it sounds like a good general rule to me. I.e., people who shouldn't get a flu shot are also people who shouldn't be doing health care work ... unless you can't find ANY replacements.
When I say that I'd be willing to consider arguments for objections, this doesn't imply that I can think of any cases where an exception is reasonable. So far I haven't. It's just that I can't think of a proof that no such cases exist.
It sounds like he's allergic to horse serum. Whooping cough doesn't have anything to do with that, so it would probably a much lesser risk. (Still, he shouldn't be in a line of work where he would be likely to act as a vector.)
So I find the case ambiguous. If someone is threatening you, it's generally recognized as self defense if you attack them. It gets a bit ambiguous when one asks "How serious was the threat?" and "Was the level of response justified?"
In this case there don't seem to be any "good guys". One company was threatening to sue another, so the other company sued first. Nobody's clearly right or wrong. And you can't really say the second company wasn't defending itself, even though it *was* Microsoft.
Reasonable. I'd prefer Ada, but you've made an argument that Java is a quite reasonable choice. I believe that the prior license agreement required that you not use it on nuclear reactors (and a few other high risk environments). Now that it's GPL, though, such requirements are gone.
As I heard the discussions with MS were initiated by Tom Tom, and Tom Tom threatened to sue before MS actually sued first.
Additionally, I believe that there were some questions about Tom Tom's adherence to the GPL. Something about their not making code available. It's the kind of thing that the FSF usually handles by negotiation, but it does represent a slight amount of "unclean hands" (though not towards MS). OTOH, my memory isn't clear about this, so I could well be wrong, and I can't think where to check it.
Be fair. The Tom Tom case is ambiguous. If I didn't already consider MS to be vile, that wouldn't cause me to think them so.
OTOH, there are many other things you could point to. Just because one argument is weak, doesn't mean the conclusion is wrong. Most of them are less visible than the Tom Tom case, but that doesn't mean that they aren't stronger arguments. I've heard, e.g., that the organizational structure of CodePlex is such that MS has total control over what happens and is allowed to happen within that organization. So trusting yourself to it is like trusting yourself to MS. I'd start by tracing out what rights they acquire by hosting code, and who decides how they will exercise those rights. (Trusting an analysis by someone else, it boils down to MS gets the rights to use the code as they see fit, and they can remove any code they want.)
There are indeed people at MS who publicly support OpenSource. I don't know of any that publicly support FreeSoftware, but it's possible.
The thing to notice, though, is that those people aren't in a position to decide corporate actions or policy. They can't decide to release software under an open or free license. That kind of decision is made elsewhere in the company. The people I know of are public faces. I.e., PR. Nominally they're in technical roles, but that's because it's the technical community that they're attempting to influence.
I'll start considering that MS might have changed slightly when they release some software under GPL that wasn't infringing on other GPL software before they released it. (Sorry, I'm a FreeSoftware person, not an OpenSoftware person, so BSD and MIT licenses don't speak to me.)
Actually the Tom Tom case is rather ambiguous. If I didn't already distrust MS, that wouldn't cause me to distrust them. In that case they WERE using the patents in a basically defensive manner. (Tom Tom may not have initiated the lawsuit, but they made clear threats.)
This, however, does not excuse their actions in many other cases. Before you even THINK about CodePlex, read their agreements...preferably get a lawyer to analyze it for you. It's as bad as any EULA you might encounter.
From the analysis I've read of the CodePlex charter...it's not something anyone in his right mind would agree to. It seems to be based on the idea that, as with an EULA, most people won't understand what they're agreeing to.
As I result I don't trust anyone who recommends joining CodePlex. The excuse at the time was "The organization is still in beta". Perhaps. I haven't heard that they've changed the ground rules yet. Maybe they will. If they do, maybe I'll consider it again. But I wouldn't bet on it. I only have so much time that I'm willing to spend considering licenses. That's *one* of the reasons that I like the GPL. It cuts down on the amount of time I need to spend thinking about licenses. (Note that any other standardized license would serve the same purpose, so that's *NOT* a sufficient characteristic. Merely a desirable one.)
Charles Stross: Accelerado (Possibly just Lobsters).
Tolkien: Lord of the Rings
Asimov: I Robot
John W. Campbell: Who goes there? (Or "The Cloak of Aesir" or "The Moon is Hell")
E.E.Smith: Skylark of Space
Balmer & Wylie: When Worlds Collide
I tried to get one per decade, but my memory isn't that organized. Reading the list I notice that there are few short stories. And I left out a bunch to shorten the list. But one noteworthy factor is how the themes change over the decades.
That's like the claim that species never go extinct.
While it's true that THIS finite resource will never run out, because there will always be the same number if addresses, that's not what you said. And this sloppy thinking infects the rest of your argument.
E.g., NAT is already used in a large fraction of the cases where it is a satisfactory solution. This means that it will increasingly be used in cases where it's not a satisfactory solution, because there isn't any alternative.
OTOH, I agree that 734 days is too precise a prediction. I'd have said somewhere in the range of 600-1000 days. And there will be a continued dribble of a supply as entities drop their IP that will last for at least years. But it will be just a trickle supply.
However, I haven't heard of any technical problem with IPv6...though I admit I haven't been paying attention. To me it looks as if the only problem is lack of adoption by the nets. And I'm not sure if there's any reason for that beyond inertia.
I haven't gotten the flu in that time either. OTOH, at that time I lived in close proximity to *many* other people. I haven't done that since I moved out of the dorms. (A single family doesn't count as *many*.) I doubt that there's a definite boundary, but I'd tend to place the lower edge at 15 people. There is no upper edge, except that implied by bodies occupying space.
IOW, lifestyle is a very important factor. You might wear gloves when you use public transit, and wash them after one wearing. That's generally too much bother, so if you're nervous, but don't want to bother with gloves, carry around a bunch of those hand sanitizer packages, and use them when your hand are likely to have been exposed. (Check the alcohol content, though. If it's not over 30% they're probably more placebo than effective.)
O, and don't let people cough on you. The masks are effective in preventing transmission from the wearer to the potential infectee. They barely work at all in the opposite direction.
P.S.: I still get flu shots when my doctor recommends them. Not otherwise.
N.B.: I tend to spend all my time at a computer, so I'm not very exposed to flu (except for buses). My wife, however, is a teacher. So I am exposed indirectly. For some reason, however, she rarely gets sick. So my exposure is still minimal.
OTOH: I'm just getting over an episode of bronchitis. I've no idea how I got it...except that it *is* going around. So one doesn't always know when one's been exposed.
Amtrak is so terrible be cause the system is controlled by the freight lines, which don't want ANY passenger trains on their system. But we NEED decent trains. Who knows what airplane fuel is going to cost next year? A replacement system is mandatory. These "High Speed Trains" are only reasonable where there's a LOT of excess demand. Moderate speed trains are the reasonable choice in most places. They could generally be made to work by upgrading the current rail maintenance program and giving passenger trains priority over freight. And who cares that they only average 50 mph when you look out and see freeways being used as parking lots. A steady 50 mph looks a lot better. (I understand that this is standard on the East Coast, but I haven't been there since I was eight, so I don't know for sure.)
FWIW, when I first came to California the train service was both better and cheaper than it is now. But then the companies that owned the lines were paid by the passengers. Now Amtrak is paid, and it doesn't own the lines.
Yeah, but "High Speed Track" comes with high expenses. What's needed is good modern track, well maintained, and which passenger trains having priority over freight. (The density is rarely high enough to justify separate grades for passenger trains and freight trains.)
Even ordinary rail lines are expensive to maintain. They're cheaper than highways, but that's not saying enough. The freight handlers can get away with relatively shoddy maintenance as little that's time critical goes by rail, so they can have the train sit there while they repair things. (That's expensive, and they try to avoid it. But they don't try hard enough to satisfy a passenger centric system.)
More than hyper-speed trains we need good, cheap, passenger trains. These only happen in small corridors with dense passenger traffic. (Note that the SFBay BART system is, in effect, a high speed passenger line. But it only has something like 20-30 stops in the entire metropolitan area. It uses buses and cars as feeders, and the parking lots are full, but it's got a lot less penetration than is needed. Partially BECAUSE it's a high speed rail system. (The stops need to be far enough apart for it to pay for the train to pick up speed.)
Because nobody else wants the job?
I'll admit that I'm not sure of the details, but until the Post Office "went private"(whatever the facts are) UPS kept a very low profile. FedEx wasn't heard of. Similarly for the other parcel delivery services.
(I think there's something in the constitution that's been interpreted to give the "official" post office a monopoly on delivery of mail, but all I can find is authorization for congress to establish post offices & post roads.)
Do you think this thing would be your only source of magnesium? This is just about the entire recommended dose being supplied directly to the blood stream (which is a lot more efficient that digesting it).
Possibly the body contains mechanisms to not absorb magnesium in excess of it's needs...but one can't count on such. Many metals don't have any such safety regulator.
Amtrak is insanely costly compared to what the train service used to cost. I don't see this as being any cheaper. And the current right-of-way isn't well maintained. This would need even more in the way of maintenance than the current system.
The rail lines right-of-way is owned by the freight haulers. They put their priorities first, and passenger trains regularly get delayed. The last time I rode the train from Nevada to Berkeley (well, Emeryville...the Berkeley station was closed) the train was delayed for over four hours. With no explanation or estimate of when the problem would be fixed.
Yes, we definitely need better train service. But lets go for improvements that we know can reasonably be made. Like the Dept. of Transportation in charge of the right of way, so that freight trains can't arbitrarily pre-empt the lines from passengers. (I'm not thrilled with how the DOT maintains highways, but it does a better job than the railways do with their right of way.)
OK. To me a Netbook is still a laptop that uses flash instead of a hard disk. (Notice that there aren't very many that fit this definition...but it was one of the original selling points.)
If a half pound of magnesium dissolves in 2 years, how much is that per day?
1 pound = 453.59237 grams
((453.59237 grams) / 2) / (2 years) = 0.310473688 g / day
(Thank you Google)
So around a third of a gram a day. Yeah, that's a lot larger an amount than I thought. Either it takes a lot longer than 2 years to dissolve away, or you probably need to take special cleation chemicals. And likely calcium supplements.
For capitalism to allocate resources with even moderate fairness there needs to be considerable competition.
This is not the case in the health care industry.
In particular, when you have an urgent need for medical attention, you don't have a lot of choice about who you get.
Given this, I'm not in favor of "capitalism" as a solution to this. It should not be used where either monopoly or desperation is a factor, and in the case BOTH are involved.
The government has a record of being adequate. Sometimes the system is gamed, but it can produce good results when there is strong oversight. (How much did the post office improve after it went private? [If you don't remember, service deteriorated markedly.])
OTOH, now that there are competitive services, the quality of service from the Post Office is improving again. If you can maneuver the situation so that monopolies are ended in the field of health services, then an alternative to government provision may be preferable, except in cases of urgent need. This means breaking the exclusive monopolies that employers give to health insurance companies, however. These almost all result in the user of the service having only one supplier, i.e., being a monopoly customer. (It may not be a legal monopoly, but if you have, effectively, only one supplier of the service then it's a monopoly by the meaning that I have intended throughout this post. E.g., if it costs you $10 for a doctors appointment if you use the approved service, and $100 for a doctors appointment if you use someone else, then it's a monopoly.)
Unfortunately, I don't see any feasible way for the government to remove the monopoly that these deals have created, since it's not a party to them. So the only answer I see is for the government to OFFER such a service. To everyone. At what it sees as a reasonable cost.
I'd be interested in hearing alternate proposals. I also don't trust any monopoly, including the government. But if we're going to deal with a monopoly anyway, then it might as well be the government.
Not worse. Not even quite as bad.
But, you know, saying about a company "They're not quite as bad as Microsoft...", that's sort of carrying "Damning with faint praise" to an extreme.
So don't take any government money.
This is about a government web site specifically aimed at being accessible. So, no, the comments aren't going too far.
P.S.: It's not just a government web site, it's one that some people got paid a rather large amount to create, and expect to be paid another rather large lot to keep working.
My feeling is that the web site should be marked not satisfactory, and all payment withheld until they do it right.
Depending on your decade and location ... Fry's was a grocery store that was open all night...and had this large tech section.
Now it's an electronics store with the emphasis on consumer, and it's no longer open all night. But that's one place where it started around 1960. (I was just too early, and just too far away...but I sure heard about it!)
It's also the time to charge. With current batteries/chargers the best option would be to have two batteries...one in the car and another in the charger. Of course, cheaper batteries would make that more practical, too.
You just replace them with transparent aluminum.