Some things aren't the way they are because people are stupid/lazy. Somethings are the way they are cause some things are hard.
Oh bullshit. The insurance industry is the way it is because insurance companies are stupid, lazy, greedy, and evil.
As far as change goes: any time you think "hey, that's stupid, we'll change it.. its so stupid it should be easy to change".. remember that every situation is the way it is for a reason.
Yes, but not necessarily a good reason.
In every stupid situation there will be some people who make money on the situation precisely because it's stupid, and you'll have to convince them to give up their cash.
Why convince them? Convince the rest of the population who suffers from their greed, and throw the thieving criminal bastards in jail. If you make your livelihood by implementing bad policy and standing in the way of good policy, you're no better than a thug on the street with a gun.
A cynic would also know that billing system software is some of the most byzantine crapware on the face of the planet. It's hacking on this kind of software--plus payroll, HR, accounting, etc--that sustains both Oracle and IBM, plus thousands of smaller consulting firms.
Who fucking cares? That doesn't make a damned bit of difference to sick people who need care they can't afford. The fact that the insurance industry is too stupid to count doesn't mean they should be relieved of that responsibility.
Limit out of pocket costs now, and sue the shit out of them for non compliance. If they go bankrupt, so what? Better the greedy fucking insurance industry than you or me.
Delaying this mandate is yet another black mark of corporate subservience on Obama's legacy.
If I feel that one candidate is 10% in line with my ideals, another one is 50% in line with my ideals, and a distant third candidate with no realistic hope of winning is 75% in line with my ideals, I'd rather use my vote to bring in the 50% candidate rather than vote for the 75% candidate knowing that makes the 10% candidate more likely to win.
The percentages in reality are more like this:
R: 99% evil. D: 98% evil Third party:50% evil
In this case, voting for either D or R is a complete waste of a vote. Vote for a third party or don't vote at all. Anything else is harmful.
Most people in the military understand why they shouldn't even consider getting involved in politics...if you need to understand why military shouldn't be involved in politics, I cannot help you. A history book can, however.
The founding fathers understood that a standing army should not even exist. And history books will back them up. This is one of the reasons. If we didn't have a standing army, the question of whether it should be involved in politics would never come up. We wouldn't have to deny thousands of our citizens basic rights.
In time of actual war, great discretionary powers are constantly given to the Executive Magistrate. Constant apprehension of War, has the same tendency to render the head too large for the body. A standing military force, with an overgrown Executive will not long be safe companions to liberty. The means of defence against foreign danger, have been always the instruments of tyranny at home. Among the Romans it was a standing maxim to excite a war, whenever a revolt was apprehended. Throughout all Europe, the armies kept up under the pretext of defending, have enslaved the people. James Madison
Of course there can be conflicts in rights, eg the Canadian Supreme Court has ruled that in some cases an individuals right to fundamental justice can, for a while such as the length of a court case, override the groups right to speech as having an impartial jury is important to having a fair trial.
Courts mistake an informed jury for a partial jury. By allowing courts to manage the information a jury hears, they in fact create partial juries. The correct solution to a jury that is swayed by speech is more speech that counters the first speech. Whoever runs out of valid arguments first is the loser.
Can you imagine if we held scientists, who are also supposed to be impartial judges of evidence, to the standards of a jury? Instead of submitting papers for peer review by experts, we'd be submitting them to people who are prohibited from knowing anything about the field.
But the reality is that you get free content where the percentage of pixels on a page devoted to ads is typically much less than the percentage minutes of ads on free OTA television, and less than the percentage of inches in a $4.95 magazine. Oh boo-hoo.
The reality is, we pay for that content. Someone somewhere is buying something they otherwise wouldn't have, and is paying enough extra to fund the creaton of that content. Since we're paying either way, it stands to reason that it will be more efficient if we pay for it directly and cut out the middle man AND we'll get more honest content, instead of that slanted towards getting the most clicks, and showing advertisers in a good light.
Ad supported content is crap all around. It's a nasty hack on capitalism that would have no reason to exist in an economy that serves the people, instead of the other way around.
Also, gag orders. Just last week someone shut down their encrypted email service and was not able to talk about what happened for legal reasons. That's a blatant violation of his first amendment rights.
And that's exactly why "reasonable suspicion" is an insufficient standard. Terry was a bad decision, and a big step towards the police state in which we find ourselves today. There is absolutely nothing reasonable about Terry stops.
Indeed, Windows 3.11, being a DOS program is officially supported by DOSBOX now. Windows 95, being mostly a DOS program, is unofficially supported by DOSBOX.
How will you overcome the built-into-the-chip hardware backdoor in your hardware switch?
And how is the chip based malware going to provide power to the radio when a hardware switch has broken the circuit? That's why a hardware switch is important.
I said I might accept a software switch, since the OS is open source, but other posters have pointed out that binary blobs are everywhere on mobile devices, so I can't trust the OS even if I compile it myself.
There's a much simpler and cheaper solution to your problem, and I'm saying that without being sarcastic: Wrap it in tin foil. (Or something prettier.)
Removing the battery is another good option. But most phones don't make it easy, including this one if the images are any indication. A hardware switch to the radio would allow me to use the phone for apps while preserving my privacy, but that's not a deal breaker. Relying on unauditable software to ensure radio silence is a deal breaker.
The problem lies elsewhere: What's the point of a mobile phone if you can't call anyone or be called with it?
With a switch, I can decide whether or not making contact with someone is worth revealing my location. Without a switch, I'm tracked all day every day.
What you need is end-to-end encryption capability. And working-brain capability in your friends. (The latter is a near impossibility in today's Idiocracy of NPCs.)
That still reveals my location to the cell phone company, who will then turn it over to the government without warrant.
I think beets get a bad name due to everyone using canned beets. I haven't prepared fresh beets myself, but I've had beet coleslaw made from fresh beets that was fantastic. Julienned beets, red cabbage, shallots, oil & vinegar, IIRC. Really pretty too.
Is there a hardware radio switch for those of us who don't want to be tracked by the government all the time? Failing a hardware switch, a software one could be acceptable since I can compile the OS myself.
At that price, running an open source OS, this might be my first cell phone.
IBM has an artificial brain with as many synapses as a human brain right now.
I bet it has 10 times as many atoms as a human brain. Not that that has anything to do with anything.
Fusion energy is on the verge of a breakthrough
And will always be on the verge of a breakthrough.
3-D printers are almost cost effective on a per-household basis
Sure, if your household needs hundreds of shower rings for some reason.
solar power is dropping to the cost of coal power
Perhaps at the quantites we can produce today. Try scaling solar power up by a factor of 1500.
Moore's law has held steady for decades..
Exponential decreases in the size of transistors can't continue forever in a granular world made of molecules.
We are at the start of a second industrial revolution
Or we're at the end of an incredibly bountiful time, where man has used a limited resource to pick all the low hanging fruit off of the tree of knowledge. Fossil fuels are going to run out, and nothing comes close to meeting todays needs, let alone projected growth. Climate change will disrupt economies across the world, making warfare a much bigger priority than science, even more than it already is. And without cheap energy, any science that gets done will take longer and longer to accomplish.
The world will be totally unrecognizable in a hundred years.
I agree with you there. But I expect it to look more like Mad Max than Elysium.
Yes, all the correspondance is shared with everyone in an encrypted container, and you only read what your key can decrypt. This will have scaling problems, but if retroshare gets big enough that that's a problem, that's a big success.
If one could protect who the keys are distributed to and posessed by, then this could work
The whole point of public key encryption is that you don't need to protect who the public keys are distributed to and possessed by. And the private keys never need to be transmitted.
They took present-day versions of the protein in living organisms, used a computer to interpolate a hypothetical common ancestor, then 'found' sequence homology
Look into Retroshare. It provides end to end encrypted communications, with analogs to email, IM, forums, status feeds, with file sharing and VOIP too.
Most ISPs block port 25 because of spam. Most customers of ISPs can't be trusted not to leave their mail server as an open relay.
What you want to do is use GPG on top of email (or any other text medium, USENET, web forums, whatever) or use something like Retroshare. To be honest, plain old email needs to go the way of Telnet.
Slashdot Mirror
Some things aren't the way they are because people are stupid/lazy. Somethings are the way they are cause some things are hard.
Oh bullshit. The insurance industry is the way it is because insurance companies are stupid, lazy, greedy, and evil.
As far as change goes: any time you think "hey, that's stupid, we'll change it.. its so stupid it should be easy to change".. remember that every situation is the way it is for a reason.
Yes, but not necessarily a good reason.
In every stupid situation there will be some people who make money on the situation precisely because it's stupid, and you'll have to convince them to give up their cash.
Why convince them? Convince the rest of the population who suffers from their greed, and throw the thieving criminal bastards in jail. If you make your livelihood by implementing bad policy and standing in the way of good policy, you're no better than a thug on the street with a gun.
If the answer is "Yes," then you're some kind of barbarian, and we're done here.
You misspelled libertarian.
And my appendices were taken out within 3 hours of diagnosis.
How many did you have?
A cynic would also know that billing system software is some of the most byzantine crapware on the face of the planet. It's hacking on this kind of software--plus payroll, HR, accounting, etc--that sustains both Oracle and IBM, plus thousands of smaller consulting firms.
Who fucking cares? That doesn't make a damned bit of difference to sick people who need care they can't afford. The fact that the insurance industry is too stupid to count doesn't mean they should be relieved of that responsibility.
Limit out of pocket costs now, and sue the shit out of them for non compliance. If they go bankrupt, so what? Better the greedy fucking insurance industry than you or me.
Delaying this mandate is yet another black mark of corporate subservience on Obama's legacy.
If I feel that one candidate is 10% in line with my ideals, another one is 50% in line with my ideals, and a distant third candidate with no realistic hope of winning is 75% in line with my ideals, I'd rather use my vote to bring in the 50% candidate rather than vote for the 75% candidate knowing that makes the 10% candidate more likely to win.
The percentages in reality are more like this:
R: 99% evil.
D: 98% evil
Third party:50% evil
In this case, voting for either D or R is a complete waste of a vote. Vote for a third party or don't vote at all. Anything else is harmful.
Microsoft aren't ever going to be the company that rolled out Windows XP and was threatened with anti-trust around the world ever again
Right, because they learned their lesson and grease the right palms now. You can violate anti-trust all you want if you pay the right bribes.
Most people in the military understand why they shouldn't even consider getting involved in politics...if you need to understand why military shouldn't be involved in politics, I cannot help you. A history book can, however.
The founding fathers understood that a standing army should not even exist. And history books will back them up. This is one of the reasons. If we didn't have a standing army, the question of whether it should be involved in politics would never come up. We wouldn't have to deny thousands of our citizens basic rights.
Of course there can be conflicts in rights, eg the Canadian Supreme Court has ruled that in some cases an individuals right to fundamental justice can, for a while such as the length of a court case, override the groups right to speech as having an impartial jury is important to having a fair trial.
Courts mistake an informed jury for a partial jury. By allowing courts to manage the information a jury hears, they in fact create partial juries. The correct solution to a jury that is swayed by speech is more speech that counters the first speech. Whoever runs out of valid arguments first is the loser.
Can you imagine if we held scientists, who are also supposed to be impartial judges of evidence, to the standards of a jury? Instead of submitting papers for peer review by experts, we'd be submitting them to people who are prohibited from knowing anything about the field.
But the reality is that you get free content where the percentage of pixels on a page devoted to ads is typically much less than the percentage minutes of ads on free OTA television, and less than the percentage of inches in a $4.95 magazine. Oh boo-hoo.
The reality is, we pay for that content. Someone somewhere is buying something they otherwise wouldn't have, and is paying enough extra to fund the creaton of that content. Since we're paying either way, it stands to reason that it will be more efficient if we pay for it directly and cut out the middle man AND we'll get more honest content, instead of that slanted towards getting the most clicks, and showing advertisers in a good light.
Ad supported content is crap all around. It's a nasty hack on capitalism that would have no reason to exist in an economy that serves the people, instead of the other way around.
Also, gag orders. Just last week someone shut down their encrypted email service and was not able to talk about what happened for legal reasons. That's a blatant violation of his first amendment rights.
And that's exactly why "reasonable suspicion" is an insufficient standard. Terry was a bad decision, and a big step towards the police state in which we find ourselves today. There is absolutely nothing reasonable about Terry stops.
Indeed, Windows 3.11, being a DOS program is officially supported by DOSBOX now. Windows 95, being mostly a DOS program, is unofficially supported by DOSBOX.
For those feeling nostalgic, Windows 3.11 works in Doxbox quite nicely. Grab the microsoft entertainment pack and play some skifree.
How will you overcome the built-into-the-chip hardware backdoor in your hardware switch?
And how is the chip based malware going to provide power to the radio when a hardware switch has broken the circuit? That's why a hardware switch is important.
I said I might accept a software switch, since the OS is open source, but other posters have pointed out that binary blobs are everywhere on mobile devices, so I can't trust the OS even if I compile it myself.
There's a much simpler and cheaper solution to your problem, and I'm saying that without being sarcastic: Wrap it in tin foil. (Or something prettier.)
Removing the battery is another good option. But most phones don't make it easy, including this one if the images are any indication. A hardware switch to the radio would allow me to use the phone for apps while preserving my privacy, but that's not a deal breaker. Relying on unauditable software to ensure radio silence is a deal breaker.
The problem lies elsewhere: What's the point of a mobile phone if you can't call anyone or be called with it?
With a switch, I can decide whether or not making contact with someone is worth revealing my location. Without a switch, I'm tracked all day every day.
What you need is end-to-end encryption capability. And working-brain capability in your friends. (The latter is a near impossibility in today's Idiocracy of NPCs.)
That still reveals my location to the cell phone company, who will then turn it over to the government without warrant.
I think beets get a bad name due to everyone using canned beets. I haven't prepared fresh beets myself, but I've had beet coleslaw made from fresh beets that was fantastic. Julienned beets, red cabbage, shallots, oil & vinegar, IIRC. Really pretty too.
Is there a hardware radio switch for those of us who don't want to be tracked by the government all the time? Failing a hardware switch, a software one could be acceptable since I can compile the OS myself.
At that price, running an open source OS, this might be my first cell phone.
IBM has an artificial brain with as many synapses as a human brain right now.
I bet it has 10 times as many atoms as a human brain. Not that that has anything to do with anything.
Fusion energy is on the verge of a breakthrough
And will always be on the verge of a breakthrough.
3-D printers are almost cost effective on a per-household basis
Sure, if your household needs hundreds of shower rings for some reason.
solar power is dropping to the cost of coal power
Perhaps at the quantites we can produce today. Try scaling solar power up by a factor of 1500.
Moore's law has held steady for decades..
Exponential decreases in the size of transistors can't continue forever in a granular world made of molecules.
We are at the start of a second industrial revolution
Or we're at the end of an incredibly bountiful time, where man has used a limited resource to pick all the low hanging fruit off of the tree of knowledge. Fossil fuels are going to run out, and nothing comes close to meeting todays needs, let alone projected growth. Climate change will disrupt economies across the world, making warfare a much bigger priority than science, even more than it already is. And without cheap energy, any science that gets done will take longer and longer to accomplish.
The world will be totally unrecognizable in a hundred years.
I agree with you there. But I expect it to look more like Mad Max than Elysium.
Beet beet, sugar beet
Beet, sugar beet
Sugar beet beeeet!
Transparency is not the issue. Constitutionality is.
Yes, all the correspondance is shared with everyone in an encrypted container, and you only read what your key can decrypt. This will have scaling problems, but if retroshare gets big enough that that's a problem, that's a big success.
No, he's saying that sysadmins are particularly trustworthy. As such they have no place at the NSA.
If one could protect who the keys are distributed to and posessed by, then this could work
The whole point of public key encryption is that you don't need to protect who the public keys are distributed to and possessed by. And the private keys never need to be transmitted.
They took present-day versions of the protein in living organisms, used a computer to interpolate a hypothetical common ancestor, then 'found' sequence homology
Did they fill in the gaps with frog DNA?
Look into Retroshare. It provides end to end encrypted communications, with analogs to email, IM, forums, status feeds, with file sharing and VOIP too.
Most ISPs block port 25 because of spam. Most customers of ISPs can't be trusted not to leave their mail server as an open relay.
What you want to do is use GPG on top of email (or any other text medium, USENET, web forums, whatever) or use something like Retroshare. To be honest, plain old email needs to go the way of Telnet.