Yeah, because recycling paper doesn't take any carbon dioxide emissions at all. The collection and transport of recycled paper is a 100% carbon neutral endeavor--it is not in any way a capitalist activity, it's pure of heart, so it's carbon use is neutral. Fluffy bunnies with hearts over their heads accompany every single big, black-cloud spewing recycling truck as it makes its rounds. You know, the one that follows the trash truck from door to door. The trash truck has little farting cows following it around. Black ones.
The idea that recycling paper is good for the environment is like dipping your Oreos in Diet Coke to get rid of the calories. All of the carbon costs of collecting recycled paper are FREE, but all the costs of making the paper in the first place are bad. That way the recycling cult in this country gets its math to come out right.
Which uses more energy: Using large machines to pick up and dismember trees, turning them into new paper, or taking a few dozen significantly smaller garbage trucks around from house to house (or, if you will, driving a thousand Prius [what is the plural of Prius anyway?] to a recycling center to get the equivalent mass)? If you voted for the Prius, you're wrong.
(By the way, while I think recycling paper is stupid, recycling aluminum, steel, and some plastics is a very GOOD idea, because the processes to create those materials are VERY energy intense and/or have nasty byproducts, and recycling those materials is carbon negative even if you have to drive around to every house and pick the stuff up. Go read up on how aluminum is refined from bauxite if you want to see the very definition of "energy intensive".)
If you're that worried about recycling paper, QUIT USING THE STUFF and start campaigning against physical junk mail. 99% of the paper I throw out is junk mail. The other 1% is pizza boxes and other food wrappings.
Ubuntu has exactly 0 value for me if my hardware doesn't work. I'm not complaining about Ubuntu any more than I'd complain about anything else really. If the Ubuntu folks want me to use their operating system, it has to work. Seems pretty straightforward.
Honestly, I don't care who's fault it is. It works, or it doesn't. Or it can be made to work with a minimum of effort.
Ubuntu either doesn't or can't. That's all I needed to know.
There were no obvious instructions for installing hardware.
Sitting and rebooting while I do something else consumes no time at all. Actively having to search for "how do I get my video card to work under Ubuntu" takes time I could be doing something else with.
After not being able to get it to work after working with it for about a month or so, I paid $99 for a copy of XP home.
This was on the previous version ("stable") of Ubuntu.
Will I have hardware accelerated 3D video from my NVidia card without having to spend an hour doing Google searches for the proper procedure and drivers, and then spending another hour trying to find ones that actually, you know, WORK?
If not, just stop. I don't care WHY not. I don't care about whining about the genetic licensing purity of an operating system. If it doesn't work, completely, out of the box, then this is of no use at all. OK, I'll even give it a pass on the "out of the box" thing and say this. It's gotta work with no more than 1 trip to NVidia.com to get the latest driver package. Which is all it takes to get working under Windows. I hold every operating system to that VERY LOW standard. It's a low bar to meet. Ubuntu has yet to meet it.
Answers that contain the words "recomplile the kernel" and/or "recompile x11" are from people who really don't get my point.
The US Military is the global first responder to natural disasters worldwide. Find a single natural disaster, even in countries where we're hated (Iranian earthquake anyone?) and you'll find the military and civil law enforcement doing search and rescue, communications, command, and control infrastructure. The tsunami in the indian ocean. The iranian earthquake.
And the exact response we get when we develop technology that has no real application to us making war, and only serves to make it easier for us to respond to disasters?
"fuck the military"
Yeah. Just die in the earthquake next time jackass.
You thundering moron. You didn't read the article, or you fail at reading comprehension.
The *AA would have sued DRM makers, IF they didn't update their DRM after it was cracked. That's straight from the article, which you didn't read. AND the reason that licensing FairPlay is too hard is because of the logistics in getting the patches out after someone cracks it. So you completely screwed up reading BOTH of those points from the article. YOU DID NOT READ THE ARTICLE.
The *AA have likely licensed the iTunes store specifically so it can't sell any non-DRM'd content from anyone. Why? Because they know that given the choice people will choose non-DRM content, and since they insist on having DRM'd content it would leave them at a competitive disadvantage. Not stated in the article, but VERY strongly implied that iTMS doesn't sell non-DRM content because they're not allowed to by the contracts they have. I think that this probably violates American anti-trust law, but that's OK because that would have to be investigated by the US Attorney General, and he's too busy prosecuting porn consumers.
Because, yeah, Apple, despite their CEO just saying exactly the opposite thing, wants to lock customers in with DRM. OK, let me put it to you this way. How is iTMS going to make more money: by continuing to sell DRM locked songs when people can buy a CD for the same price that has no DRM, or by selling unlocked content at the same price. That was the point of the article that you didn't read. Jobs wants the iTMS to make MORE money and GROW market share by selling a more competitive product, which he can't do as long as either the iTMS is forced to use DRM. It's not a level playing field, and he wants to level it in the favor of the consumer, because Apple has an angle to profit from a level playing field.
Steve Jobs is not saying this for altruistic purposes. He's saying he wants to get rid of DRM because Apple will make more money without it because they'll be able to sell more music. Due to the cut of each sale that the record companies get AND the distribution costs, iTMS has to be a volume business to turn a decent profit. They want to increase their volume. Without the DRM they can sell music to people on ANY player, not just the iPod, and users will be able to play that music on more software than just iTunes.
Not industry influential. How can I tell? Well, if you ship a half million consoles, your company (SCEA) gets 2 spots in the top 25. If your company has an MMORPG on the PC with 7 MILLION paying subscribers, you get squat. Zero, zilch, not even an "honorable mention". So, you effect a a half million, 2 spots, you effect 14 times as many, you get 0 spots. Even the XBox 360, which Microsoft wants to ship, what, a couple million of? gets very high billing.
The console industry is not the games industry. It is a part of the industry, but not the entire industry. I'd argue it may not even be the most popular or influential part of the industry.
The pathing is horrible. The workaround to the horrible pathing is micromanaging every character. I spend so much time in the other characters I spend next to no time trying to get a feel for my own class.
If you're in combat and for whatever stupid pathing reason can't reach your target, you get neither an error message nor any automatic movement.
If your character isn't a healer, you'll have a way harder time advancing since you pick up two damage dealing characters first. Prepare to go through every potion you pick up.
All in all, it's marginally above Bejeweled while I'm waiting for my WoW server to restart.
There have been cases of riot police using water jets and having their vehicle overturned. At that point, things got...ugly. Water jets are, largely, point-focus weapons.
OK, and exactly, and use small words here, because obviously I'm stupid, exactly how do tear gas and rubber bullets designate between someone who poses a threat and someone who doesn't? Because that's the solution now.
Everybody's so hung up on "OMG YOU CAN USE THIS TO TORTURE!!!11!!"
Here are the options to clear a group of protesters: Non-lethal area denial weapon The usual water cannon/rubber bullet/tear gas in-your-face personal approach.
One of those will put a lot of riot cops in close contact with rioters. The other will not. Given the choice, I'd rather keep the riot cops far away, so they don't get hurt. Why? Because an angry riot cop is more likely to seriously injure/kill someone than a non-angry riot cop. Both approaches are equally likely to cause a stampede problem and trampling death. The nice thing about the "at-a-distance" approach is the beam could be focused near the exit points first, and then swept towards the front of the riot, hopefully reducing the problem. The only way to use the in-your-face method is to start at the end away from the exit and "push" the rioters.
That's just one use for these. Let's look at another application that you're not thinking of.
Consider for another moment a need for a more permanently installed area denial weapon. The standard choice for this, for decades:
Land mines.
This could be a very nice replacement for large minefields, or at least a supplement to anti-personnel mines (I think you'd probably still need anti-tank mines, but this would help reduce the number of the far-more-dangerous-to-children anti-personnel land mines). This could be less expensive over the long run, easier to deploy and maintain, so it's a very attractive military alternative to anti-personnel mines. Accidentally zapping a kid with one of these weapons is much less permanent than having the kid step on a land mine.
There are ways this could be used in torture. But guess what: Just about anything can be used for torture. Rubber hoses are far cheaper. I don't think "ooh, you can torture people with this" is a valid argument, or we'd be looking at wanting to ban rubber hoses also.
Re:Keywords: Government. Health Care. Disaster
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Biggest IT Disaster Ever?
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· Score: 2, Insightful
A friend of mine and I ware having a discussion about healthcare.
He lives in Canada.
My proposition: So, you go out skiing and screw up your knee. Doctor pops a brace onto it and sets you up for a specialist, who recommends scoping the knee, fixing it, and a physical therapy regimen. How long until you get surgery in Canada.
His answer: 6 months.
If I wasn't out of physical therapy inside of 6 weeks I'd be finding someone to sue.
Our system in the US is way more expensive. It also works, it works quickly, and people don't go without. We don't let people bleed out in an ER because they don't have insurance. That's ILLEGAL, in addition to any moral/ethical issues. It'll flat get people thrown into jail. Stories of those things happening are either made up or they don't include the "oh, then the attending physician in the hospital went to PMITA prison for 20 years" endings.
Do we want to make our system more efficient? Yeah. How? By reducing government in it, not increasing it. By reducing the sheer volume of paperwork required to get payment from an insurance company, paperwork required by the feds, oh, unless it's a medicare claim, in which case the paperwork is significantly less. Yes, less. Why? The government doesn't have the time or personnel to handle the paperwork, but they force private insurers to do it. If medicare was held to the same standards as your insurance company and had to live within the same liability framework, medicare would be even more untenable than it is.
My warlock has 97 days played. Over almost 2 years. Call it 600 days, that's probably about right.
My druid has like 20-25. Hunter is way less (you can level a hunter to 60 in about 5 days/played if you know your way around). A few random other alts that are fun, but highest level on any is 42, with 3 days played.
Yeah, I play a lot. I have a full time job, a wife, a house, two dogs, and still take vacations, go to movies, and see friends. I do plan the friend time around the raid time occasionally. But at about the same rate that my wife plans friend time around knitting circle time, scrapbooking time, etc.
It's a hobby. I make time for it, schedule it. Have I lost sleep over it? Yeah. How many folks have lost sleep because of their hobbies? Anyone who has any passion about them.
Where'd the time come from?
I watch no television. I cook really fast (stir fry in 30 minutes, fried chicken with mashed potatoes and gravy and veggies in 45, grilled steaks and veggies in about 30...). I'm eating healthier (even homemade fried chicken is healthier than takeout burgers) than before, because it's faster to make my own food than go out of my way to pick up something. (Side note: Parents, teach your kids how to cook, and they'll figure out, eventually, that they're better at it and faster at it than restaurants that serve bad-for-you food, even counting cleanup time). I've pretty much given up drinking. I've streamlined the household chores, doing a bit more than my share to keep wife aggro down:). I manage my workday so that I don't spend an hour stuck in traffic. I exercise, 2-3 times a week, pre-raid.
In other words, all things that are probably better life choices in the long run.
One bad thing is I'm not reading nearly as many books as I used to. My books read/year is way way down.
My lifestyle (good job, no kids) has given me an excess of free time. This is how I choose to spend it.
They store data. They provide processing power to aggregate that data so you get what you need, and only what you need, on your local system.
The data center as described, where the aggregation is done at the edge of the network instead of at the datacenter, implies a quantity and quality of bandwidth we don't have now. And when we get there, there will still need to be some central repositories for data. And those repositories will also have to function as security and payment clearinghouses.
The data center may turn into nothing more than a glorified SAN, but it'll still be there. Because with all the ubiquitous computing we have, the cell phones, the PDA's, the laptops, it's all got one very simple thing in common: it's easy to lose, break, have stolen and otherwise destroy. And the backups have to be somewhere, or the system doesn't work. And that's what data centers will become. Places where data is stored, centrally.
Huh. Maybe the name's a little more forward thinking than we thought?
Free markets have requirements. A legal system, at least a civil system, with torts is pretty much required in order to have contracts. Without contracts, you have no free market.
The free market is EXACTLY how this should be fixed.
It's currently regulated so that the free market has NOTHING TO DO WITH THE PROBLEM.
The primary issue, and this is exactly out of Mr Schneier's playbook, is that Microsoft has no direct civil liability for their defects. It's exaclty as if you couldn't sue Ford becase your Pinto's gas tank exploded. Ford would have no reason to fix the defect. Well, the same problem here: if you buy defective software, you have no recourse to sue the manufacturer of the product. Remove that lack of liability and you'll start to see problems get fixed very very quickly.
If Microsoft was civilly liable for every piece of spam that was sent by a Windows zombie PC, there would very quickly be patches.
Less protection of corporations, and more market forces, would fix this problem. This is EXACTLY the kind of problem markets are very good at fixing. The problem is that the current regulation circumvents the market.
Actually I've saved so much money on games since I started playing WoW.
I used to buy 2 new games per month. That's $80/month, for second-line games. Warcraft, flat $15/month. Way cheaper.
"Oooh...you have to have an internet connection for WoW!". Yes, and I need one for work, for patching my horribly qa'd operating system and video games, and you know, basic things like email. I also need electricity, food, water and heat (at least in the wintertime), and I don't see that added to the list.
A new study by the Tax Foundation gives Michigan a mediocre overall rating for its business tax climate. Dragging down the state is the Single Business Tax, which was ranked the 49th most onerous tax out of 50 states.
Each year, CFO magazine asks financial executives to assess the business-friendliness of tax policy in their respective states, which the magazine then compiles and ranks. Ranking in the bottom 10? California, New York, Michigan, Texas, Ohio, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Illinois and Massachusetts -- the very states that seem to be bleeding jobs. The most recent unemployment figures from the Labor Department put California, Texas, Ohio, Illinois, and Michigan all in the bottom 10 there, too, all with unemployment rates at 7.0 percent or higher.
The Bain report concluded one of the major reasons for moving jobs out of California is the cost of doing business here:
* Taxes are 19 percent higher than in other western states.
* The cost of electricity is 127 percent higher.
* Property costs are 77 percent higher.
* State regulatory costs are 105 percent higher.
* Employee costs are 25 percent higher.
Interesting, the California Chamber of Commerce reports that most jobs lost in California go to....Texas.
American businesses can: Hire people they want to hire Fire people they want to fire Pay people what they are worth
Corporate taxes are much lower here than in Europe.
There is no mandatory "3 months paid time off" if you choose to have a child. There's no mandatory 8 weeks of vacation per year. There's no mandatory 35 hour workweek.
I've long thought that the electric/hybrid car marketing was completely stupid and backwards. Who do they market to? Two groups: environmentalist wannabees and a few gadget and tech obsessed folks.
This is stupid. For a couple reasons. How many upper-middle class folks are environmentalists or gadget obsessed geeks? Dozens!
How many upper-middle class folks are car nuts? Judging by the number of performance package BMW's I see running around, lots. A lot more than there are environmentalists, by a factor of 100 at least. Folks in that class of buyer are more likely to buy a fast car, they've got the cash to do it, and many many of them love cars.
Build me an electric car. Make it a simple 2-seater, along the lines of a nissan 350z. Seats with nice lateral support comfortable for long drives. Responsive suspension and steering, excellent brakes (regen's fine, if it can S-T-O-P stop, not "hmm...maybe someday" stop). A decent, but not ludicrous, stereo. Nice sight lines so I can see what's coming at me and get out of the way. Build me a car that can not just survive a crash, but avoid it. Because those are the cars that are FUN to drive.
Then give it so much torque that if I stomp the accelerator off the line it strains my neck, enough torque so it shreds the tires off the line.
Then design me some new tires and a better headrest.
I don't want a friggin minivan. I don't want a car that weighs 3000 pounds with batteries and has 90 HP. I don't want a big whale of an SUV, and I don't care how many horsepower it has, it'll handle like a cow through turns. I want a car. A fast car. A fast car that I can send into the nice twisty turns and come out the other end leaving that poor sucker in the BMW M3 wondering "WTF was that!".
Build me a 350Z, not a Previa. Build me an NSX, not a Civic.
Build cars for people who LOVE to drive. The folks who ignore their phones when they're driving, because whatever someone's calling about isn't as important as the road they're on. And don't apologize for it. Then your cars will advertise themselves. To other car people, and to wannabe car people. Then you'll be the company with that really hot car, that everybody wants to buy minivans and sedans from.
Start selling cars to people who love cars instead of people who tolerate them. The profit margins are much higher, and the coattails are huge.
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Yeah, because recycling paper doesn't take any carbon dioxide emissions at all. The collection and transport of recycled paper is a 100% carbon neutral endeavor--it is not in any way a capitalist activity, it's pure of heart, so it's carbon use is neutral. Fluffy bunnies with hearts over their heads accompany every single big, black-cloud spewing recycling truck as it makes its rounds. You know, the one that follows the trash truck from door to door. The trash truck has little farting cows following it around. Black ones.
The idea that recycling paper is good for the environment is like dipping your Oreos in Diet Coke to get rid of the calories. All of the carbon costs of collecting recycled paper are FREE, but all the costs of making the paper in the first place are bad. That way the recycling cult in this country gets its math to come out right.
Which uses more energy: Using large machines to pick up and dismember trees, turning them into new paper, or taking a few dozen significantly smaller garbage trucks around from house to house (or, if you will, driving a thousand Prius [what is the plural of Prius anyway?] to a recycling center to get the equivalent mass)? If you voted for the Prius, you're wrong.
(By the way, while I think recycling paper is stupid, recycling aluminum, steel, and some plastics is a very GOOD idea, because the processes to create those materials are VERY energy intense and/or have nasty byproducts, and recycling those materials is carbon negative even if you have to drive around to every house and pick the stuff up. Go read up on how aluminum is refined from bauxite if you want to see the very definition of "energy intensive".)
If you're that worried about recycling paper, QUIT USING THE STUFF and start campaigning against physical junk mail. 99% of the paper I throw out is junk mail. The other 1% is pizza boxes and other food wrappings.
Ubuntu has exactly 0 value for me if my hardware doesn't work. I'm not complaining about Ubuntu any more than I'd complain about anything else really. If the Ubuntu folks want me to use their operating system, it has to work. Seems pretty straightforward.
Honestly, I don't care who's fault it is. It works, or it doesn't. Or it can be made to work with a minimum of effort.
Ubuntu either doesn't or can't. That's all I needed to know.
I did have it on my secondary machine.
There were no obvious instructions for installing hardware.
Sitting and rebooting while I do something else consumes no time at all. Actively having to search for "how do I get my video card to work under Ubuntu" takes time I could be doing something else with.
After not being able to get it to work after working with it for about a month or so, I paid $99 for a copy of XP home.
This was on the previous version ("stable") of Ubuntu.
Will I have hardware accelerated 3D video from my NVidia card without having to spend an hour doing Google searches for the proper procedure and drivers, and then spending another hour trying to find ones that actually, you know, WORK?
If not, just stop. I don't care WHY not. I don't care about whining about the genetic licensing purity of an operating system. If it doesn't work, completely, out of the box, then this is of no use at all. OK, I'll even give it a pass on the "out of the box" thing and say this. It's gotta work with no more than 1 trip to NVidia.com to get the latest driver package. Which is all it takes to get working under Windows. I hold every operating system to that VERY LOW standard. It's a low bar to meet. Ubuntu has yet to meet it.
Answers that contain the words "recomplile the kernel" and/or "recompile x11" are from people who really don't get my point.
The US Military is the global first responder to natural disasters worldwide. Find a single natural disaster, even in countries where we're hated (Iranian earthquake anyone?) and you'll find the military and civil law enforcement doing search and rescue, communications, command, and control infrastructure. The tsunami in the indian ocean. The iranian earthquake.
And the exact response we get when we develop technology that has no real application to us making war, and only serves to make it easier for us to respond to disasters?
"fuck the military"
Yeah. Just die in the earthquake next time jackass.
The police are not there to protect you.
The police are there to do the paperwork after you are unable to protect yourself.
You thundering moron. You didn't read the article, or you fail at reading comprehension.
The *AA would have sued DRM makers, IF they didn't update their DRM after it was cracked. That's straight from the article, which you didn't read. AND the reason that licensing FairPlay is too hard is because of the logistics in getting the patches out after someone cracks it. So you completely screwed up reading BOTH of those points from the article. YOU DID NOT READ THE ARTICLE.
The *AA have likely licensed the iTunes store specifically so it can't sell any non-DRM'd content from anyone. Why? Because they know that given the choice people will choose non-DRM content, and since they insist on having DRM'd content it would leave them at a competitive disadvantage. Not stated in the article, but VERY strongly implied that iTMS doesn't sell non-DRM content because they're not allowed to by the contracts they have. I think that this probably violates American anti-trust law, but that's OK because that would have to be investigated by the US Attorney General, and he's too busy prosecuting porn consumers.
Because, yeah, Apple, despite their CEO just saying exactly the opposite thing, wants to lock customers in with DRM. OK, let me put it to you this way. How is iTMS going to make more money: by continuing to sell DRM locked songs when people can buy a CD for the same price that has no DRM, or by selling unlocked content at the same price. That was the point of the article that you didn't read. Jobs wants the iTMS to make MORE money and GROW market share by selling a more competitive product, which he can't do as long as either the iTMS is forced to use DRM. It's not a level playing field, and he wants to level it in the favor of the consumer, because Apple has an angle to profit from a level playing field.
Steve Jobs is not saying this for altruistic purposes. He's saying he wants to get rid of DRM because Apple will make more money without it because they'll be able to sell more music. Due to the cut of each sale that the record companies get AND the distribution costs, iTMS has to be a volume business to turn a decent profit. They want to increase their volume. Without the DRM they can sell music to people on ANY player, not just the iPod, and users will be able to play that music on more software than just iTunes.
Read TFA
Comment
Is it that hard to get those into the correct order?
First follow the link. That's the part that's underlined above, usually highlighted in blue. Read the contents of the link.
Then come here and comment.
My main character has over 100 days /played
I have 4 level 60's. Some with just 10-12 played, one with like 30.
You are not prepared.
Oh, console influential. I get it.
Not industry influential. How can I tell? Well, if you ship a half million consoles, your company (SCEA) gets 2 spots in the top 25. If your company has an MMORPG on the PC with 7 MILLION paying subscribers, you get squat. Zero, zilch, not even an "honorable mention". So, you effect a a half million, 2 spots, you effect 14 times as many, you get 0 spots. Even the XBox 360, which Microsoft wants to ship, what, a couple million of? gets very high billing.
The console industry is not the games industry. It is a part of the industry, but not the entire industry. I'd argue it may not even be the most popular or influential part of the industry.
The camera problems are inexcusable.
The frame rates are atrocious.
The pathing is horrible. The workaround to the horrible pathing is micromanaging every character. I spend so much time in the other characters I spend next to no time trying to get a feel for my own class.
If you're in combat and for whatever stupid pathing reason can't reach your target, you get neither an error message nor any automatic movement.
If your character isn't a healer, you'll have a way harder time advancing since you pick up two damage dealing characters first. Prepare to go through every potion you pick up.
All in all, it's marginally above Bejeweled while I'm waiting for my WoW server to restart.
I think the deterrent effect in DMZ's without the long-lasting nasty cleanup problems of anti-personnel landmines is justification enough.
There have been cases of riot police using water jets and having their vehicle overturned. At that point, things got...ugly. Water jets are, largely, point-focus weapons.
And water is dangerous. Ask any drowning victim.
OK, and exactly, and use small words here, because obviously I'm stupid, exactly how do tear gas and rubber bullets designate between someone who poses a threat and someone who doesn't? Because that's the solution now.
Everybody's so hung up on "OMG YOU CAN USE THIS TO TORTURE!!!11!!"
Guess what: YOU CAN USE ANYTHING TO TORTURE.
BAN RUBBER HOSES!
Here are the options to clear a group of protesters:
Non-lethal area denial weapon
The usual water cannon/rubber bullet/tear gas in-your-face personal approach.
One of those will put a lot of riot cops in close contact with rioters. The other will not. Given the choice, I'd rather keep the riot cops far away, so they don't get hurt. Why? Because an angry riot cop is more likely to seriously injure/kill someone than a non-angry riot cop. Both approaches are equally likely to cause a stampede problem and trampling death. The nice thing about the "at-a-distance" approach is the beam could be focused near the exit points first, and then swept towards the front of the riot, hopefully reducing the problem. The only way to use the in-your-face method is to start at the end away from the exit and "push" the rioters.
That's just one use for these. Let's look at another application that you're not thinking of.
Consider for another moment a need for a more permanently installed area denial weapon. The standard choice for this, for decades:
Land mines.
This could be a very nice replacement for large minefields, or at least a supplement to anti-personnel mines (I think you'd probably still need anti-tank mines, but this would help reduce the number of the far-more-dangerous-to-children anti-personnel land mines). This could be less expensive over the long run, easier to deploy and maintain, so it's a very attractive military alternative to anti-personnel mines. Accidentally zapping a kid with one of these weapons is much less permanent than having the kid step on a land mine.
There are ways this could be used in torture. But guess what: Just about anything can be used for torture. Rubber hoses are far cheaper. I don't think "ooh, you can torture people with this" is a valid argument, or we'd be looking at wanting to ban rubber hoses also.
A friend of mine and I ware having a discussion about healthcare.
He lives in Canada.
My proposition: So, you go out skiing and screw up your knee. Doctor pops a brace onto it and sets you up for a specialist, who recommends scoping the knee, fixing it, and a physical therapy regimen. How long until you get surgery in Canada.
His answer: 6 months.
If I wasn't out of physical therapy inside of 6 weeks I'd be finding someone to sue.
Our system in the US is way more expensive. It also works, it works quickly, and people don't go without. We don't let people bleed out in an ER because they don't have insurance. That's ILLEGAL, in addition to any moral/ethical issues. It'll flat get people thrown into jail. Stories of those things happening are either made up or they don't include the "oh, then the attending physician in the hospital went to PMITA prison for 20 years" endings.
Do we want to make our system more efficient? Yeah. How? By reducing government in it, not increasing it. By reducing the sheer volume of paperwork required to get payment from an insurance company, paperwork required by the feds, oh, unless it's a medicare claim, in which case the paperwork is significantly less. Yes, less. Why? The government doesn't have the time or personnel to handle the paperwork, but they force private insurers to do it. If medicare was held to the same standards as your insurance company and had to live within the same liability framework, medicare would be even more untenable than it is.
Hmm...
/played if you know your way around). A few random other alts that are fun, but highest level on any is 42, with 3 days played.
:). I manage my workday so that I don't spend an hour stuck in traffic. I exercise, 2-3 times a week, pre-raid.
My warlock has 97 days played. Over almost 2 years. Call it 600 days, that's probably about right.
My druid has like 20-25. Hunter is way less (you can level a hunter to 60 in about 5 days
Yeah, I play a lot. I have a full time job, a wife, a house, two dogs, and still take vacations, go to movies, and see friends. I do plan the friend time around the raid time occasionally. But at about the same rate that my wife plans friend time around knitting circle time, scrapbooking time, etc.
It's a hobby. I make time for it, schedule it. Have I lost sleep over it? Yeah. How many folks have lost sleep because of their hobbies? Anyone who has any passion about them.
Where'd the time come from?
I watch no television. I cook really fast (stir fry in 30 minutes, fried chicken with mashed potatoes and gravy and veggies in 45, grilled steaks and veggies in about 30...). I'm eating healthier (even homemade fried chicken is healthier than takeout burgers) than before, because it's faster to make my own food than go out of my way to pick up something. (Side note: Parents, teach your kids how to cook, and they'll figure out, eventually, that they're better at it and faster at it than restaurants that serve bad-for-you food, even counting cleanup time). I've pretty much given up drinking. I've streamlined the household chores, doing a bit more than my share to keep wife aggro down
In other words, all things that are probably better life choices in the long run.
One bad thing is I'm not reading nearly as many books as I used to. My books read/year is way way down.
My lifestyle (good job, no kids) has given me an excess of free time. This is how I choose to spend it.
Data centers serve two purposes.
They store data. They provide processing power to aggregate that data so you get what you need, and only what you need, on your local system.
The data center as described, where the aggregation is done at the edge of the network instead of at the datacenter, implies a quantity and quality of bandwidth we don't have now. And when we get there, there will still need to be some central repositories for data. And those repositories will also have to function as security and payment clearinghouses.
The data center may turn into nothing more than a glorified SAN, but it'll still be there. Because with all the ubiquitous computing we have, the cell phones, the PDA's, the laptops, it's all got one very simple thing in common: it's easy to lose, break, have stolen and otherwise destroy. And the backups have to be somewhere, or the system doesn't work. And that's what data centers will become. Places where data is stored, centrally.
Huh. Maybe the name's a little more forward thinking than we thought?
Free market anarchy.
learn2economics
Free markets have requirements. A legal system, at least a civil system, with torts is pretty much required in order to have contracts. Without contracts, you have no free market.
The free market is EXACTLY how this should be fixed.
It's currently regulated so that the free market has NOTHING TO DO WITH THE PROBLEM.
The primary issue, and this is exactly out of Mr Schneier's playbook, is that Microsoft has no direct civil liability for their defects. It's exaclty as if you couldn't sue Ford becase your Pinto's gas tank exploded. Ford would have no reason to fix the defect. Well, the same problem here: if you buy defective software, you have no recourse to sue the manufacturer of the product. Remove that lack of liability and you'll start to see problems get fixed very very quickly.
If Microsoft was civilly liable for every piece of spam that was sent by a Windows zombie PC, there would very quickly be patches.
Less protection of corporations, and more market forces, would fix this problem. This is EXACTLY the kind of problem markets are very good at fixing. The problem is that the current regulation circumvents the market.
Actually I've saved so much money on games since I started playing WoW.
I used to buy 2 new games per month. That's $80/month, for second-line games. Warcraft, flat $15/month. Way cheaper.
"Oooh...you have to have an internet connection for WoW!". Yes, and I need one for work, for patching my horribly qa'd operating system and video games, and you know, basic things like email. I also need electricity, food, water and heat (at least in the wintertime), and I don't see that added to the list.
From the Detroit News: http://www.detnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=
From a paper at the Cato institute, with appropriate source references sited: http://www.cato.org/dailys/02-25-04-2.html
Finally, the state of california, which is pretty much the slant of the original aritcle:
http://www.calchamber.com/CC/Headlines/Archive/Ec
Interesting, the California Chamber of Commerce reports that most jobs lost in California go to....Texas.
How many citizens benefit from a business friendly environment?
All the ones with jobs?
All the ones who want to start businesses?
Just as a start. That pretty much encompasses the whole workforce I'd think.
American businesses can:
Hire people they want to hire
Fire people they want to fire
Pay people what they are worth
Corporate taxes are much lower here than in Europe.
There is no mandatory "3 months paid time off" if you choose to have a child. There's no mandatory 8 weeks of vacation per year. There's no mandatory 35 hour workweek.
I've long thought that the electric/hybrid car marketing was completely stupid and backwards. Who do they market to? Two groups: environmentalist wannabees and a few gadget and tech obsessed folks.
This is stupid. For a couple reasons. How many upper-middle class folks are environmentalists or gadget obsessed geeks? Dozens!
How many upper-middle class folks are car nuts? Judging by the number of performance package BMW's I see running around, lots. A lot more than there are environmentalists, by a factor of 100 at least. Folks in that class of buyer are more likely to buy a fast car, they've got the cash to do it, and many many of them love cars.
Build me an electric car. Make it a simple 2-seater, along the lines of a nissan 350z. Seats with nice lateral support comfortable for long drives. Responsive suspension and steering, excellent brakes (regen's fine, if it can S-T-O-P stop, not "hmm...maybe someday" stop). A decent, but not ludicrous, stereo. Nice sight lines so I can see what's coming at me and get out of the way. Build me a car that can not just survive a crash, but avoid it. Because those are the cars that are FUN to drive.
Then give it so much torque that if I stomp the accelerator off the line it strains my neck, enough torque so it shreds the tires off the line.
Then design me some new tires and a better headrest.
I don't want a friggin minivan. I don't want a car that weighs 3000 pounds with batteries and has 90 HP. I don't want a big whale of an SUV, and I don't care how many horsepower it has, it'll handle like a cow through turns. I want a car. A fast car. A fast car that I can send into the nice twisty turns and come out the other end leaving that poor sucker in the BMW M3 wondering "WTF was that!".
Build me a 350Z, not a Previa. Build me an NSX, not a Civic.
Build cars for people who LOVE to drive. The folks who ignore their phones when they're driving, because whatever someone's calling about isn't as important as the road they're on. And don't apologize for it. Then your cars will advertise themselves. To other car people, and to wannabe car people. Then you'll be the company with that really hot car, that everybody wants to buy minivans and sedans from.
Start selling cars to people who love cars instead of people who tolerate them. The profit margins are much higher, and the coattails are huge.