Come to Australia, mate. Here our biggest (and ex-government-owned) telco, Telstra, has two sorts of plans:
- Those that are "unlimited", i.e. standard allowance + speed limiting beyond the allowance; - and plans that have a data allowance, and then they charge you 15 cents *per megabyte*. Yep, that's $150 per gig. So you pay (say) $39.95 per month for 2 gb allowance, then if you use 3 gb, your bill is $189.95 for that month:>
Oh! One concession though... Telstra thoughtfully adds to their T's & C's that "excess usage charges for the Turbo 2GB and Elite 2GB plans are capped at $300 per bill cycle". How generous of them!
Insane. I mean, I love a sunburnt country, but Telstra is just rubbish.
It involves a tooth bud made from adult stem cells and ultrasonic stimulation of the tooth bud, it's not exactly rocket science.
Eh? Are you serious?
A tooth bud, made from adult stem cells - do you have any idea how hard it is to harvest adult stem cells, then wind them back into seedable stem cells?
And then ultrasonically stimulate them. Using certain frequencies and powers of ultrasound (disclaimer: I'm a sonographer). For certain duty cycles.
Do you really think all this stuff is obvious, to *anyone*? Whatever you might spout out, the stuff you're casually mentioning *is* pretty close to rocket science. If you don't believe me, go off and do the procedure yourself, on your own. Sheesh!
I agree regarding the likelihood of there being intelligent life on other planets.
The way I look at it, there's a fantastically small chance - as near as may as well be zero, dammit - of there being another planet with life out there. And every planet we find that *doesn't* have life simply decreases the odds of "life on another planet" by 1/(n+1).:>
Now that's worst case scenario, it's probably costing more like 10mwh per day more energy consumption, because they are using these computers for school.
(Assuming you mean wh, not mwh).
That assumption only holds up for the 8-10 hours per day that the machines would be normally active. What about the 14 hours per day, after hours and at night, when they'd be merely idling (or off)? For those 14 hours, the extra power usage would be closer to that order-of-magnitude you mentioned.
The activation circuitry is usually passively powered. It is very unlikely somebody wouldn't notice somebody holding a programmer by their chest.
True enough. If you wander out on a hypothetical limb, though...
With all the recent R&D going into wireless power, wireless device charging, etc., and a couple of companies claiming things like 80 cm charging ranges - and this for a consumer device, which requires a lot more juice (most likely) than the passive implant activation circuitry - might it not be conceivable that at least this second point of your argument will eventually be worked around?
Scary thought, that. Modified wireless power equipment, and a dodgy employee at a medical devices company willing to sell comms protocol documentation, and you might be able to affect implants from (maybe) 2-3 metres away. That's something I could believe is possible with time.
If you told the thing to give me even an extra 1 ml dose
I think you probably meant 1 IU (1 unit). 1 ml (100 IU) would wipe out most horses.
True, some may think I'm nitpicking, but I figure I'll get slack because I've had Type 1 for 21 years myself. Not on a pump yet, though... psychological factors mean I'm really not happy about the idea of being attached to a permanent infusion pump. And I work at a hospital too, so pumps aren't exactly an alien thing!
Would *you* marry a woman who had been lying to you for 8 years? And defrauding money from you?
How does that thought process work?
"Yeah, ok, so I've been lied to and scammed for 8 years now. I know, let's get married to the conwoman, and she can *continue* to lie to me forever after! Hmm, she'll probably start having an affair on the side... and now she is entitled to half (or more) of all my stuff, too! Yeah, great idea!"
Hey, if you're halfway intelligent (say, enough to use a computer?), then you should have thought something along the lines of:
You: "I wonder if posting these pictures to a publically-accessible forum is a really good idea?"
Because if you had, and you *were* halfway intelligent, this would have happened:
Your Commonsense: "No, it's not worth it, because I *know* that although my mates won't judge me harshly, future employers (sic?) may, and once these photos are out there there's no pulling them back. Not worth it!"
(And yes, I'm assuming that since you're quoting a figure of 50 pictures, that they're *your* pictures you've posted. If they're posted by someone else, then... well, life doesn't come with any guarantees, does it? Ya get wasted, you *might* get photographed these days).
Nah, not buying that last line. Driving is inherently dangerous, but intelligent human beings undertaking the activity will do what they can to reduce extra risks on top of that.
For example... the extra risk induced by texting whilst driving.
You've generalised too far - if we decided to go your way, then we'd still have Ford Pintos around, blowing up every time they were hit from behind: Mr Ford: "Bah, stuff the consumers, don't they realised that driving is dangerous?
As it happened though, we got a different line: Civilized society: "G'day Mr. Ford, we're going to make you liable for your actions. Fix your problems, or else. P.S., please pay us $MANY_DOLLARS."
I prefer that second way, call me square though you may.
Historically cigarettes have always been a good bartering item. They're a (mild) drug of dependence, and when everything is going wrong around you, smokers will give almost anything for another hit. And if a smoker has something you want, then...
The second world war was a good example of this (soap was valuable, too).
I second your first point. I work in neurology ultrasound at a large public hospital, where we have a heavy bias towards stroke treatment. We've spent about 30 years getting the stroke treatment flowcharts and procedures tuned up, and it makes an enormous difference.
If one of my family were (heaven forbid) to have a stroke or a suspected TIA, I wouldn't send them anywhere else in the city than where I work. I'd probably try and force the decision on the ambulance driver, though, rather than drive them there myself (45 mins). When you've got 3 hours maximum after the onset of symptoms to get them to hospital, assessed, and having a tPA infusion (if not contraindicated), then you don't waste time and stuff around, for *anything*.
As my department ex-director said, "Time is brain."
Being a health care worker, I would have thought that being responsible, and *not* bypassing the hospital's IT access controls - no matter how "pathetic" - was part of your job?
True. One upside might be that with a working test for Alzheimer's, doctors (especially those who aren't experienced in it) will not put you on other neuro-type treatments for diseases that look somewhat like Alzheimer's. At least then you won't be on unnecessary drugs.
Note that religion is strong among the least educated and therefore lowest quality people.
Ouch. I hope you mean this in an abstract way; summarily dropping all of your fellow man who happen not to have had the opportunity of a decent education, into a bin marked "lower quality people", is the hallmark *of* a lower quality person.
Education and civilization are supposed to make you understand that *all* people are, at the base level, no worse than anyone else. Circumstances vary, and that's about it. If you put your "high quality", educated self into the same position as some of these so-called "low quality" people, it's an open question as to whether or not you'd manage to avoid ending up in the same state.
No argument with you. You're entitled to take that position.
It's not my job to pay for things for other people either.
But if someone paid for me to see some entertainment for free, I'd be happy. Remember the last time someone did something or gave you something, for nothing in return? Remember how good that felt?
Again, though, you are entitled to take any position you like.
Was tempted to leave it, but I'll cover your post and the GP post in one shot.
First, the GP - yes, at the last stage of my post, I was generalising my point to cover what would happen were this attitude of "I'll only pay for myself" to continue unchecked, forever. Sometimes you have to sit back, look at things, and figure out where your current compass course will eventually lead you.
Second, the post above - you've crossed a wire somewhere while reading my post. I was suggesting donating *personal* money, like the original poster was being asked to do (by PBS). Not government money. Heck, I'll happily donate $100 to this man's local PBS to pay for RD8.
My local PBS asked me to donate $100 to obtain Red Dwarf 8 for airing. Instead I bought the DVDs for $25. So in my opinion PBS is not worth supporting; I'd rather spend my money on DVDs
This is true, if you only consider yourself. Hopefully there are enough other people in your local area who are prepared to pay a little bit extra so that others can see Red Dwarf, even though they haven't paid for it.
When will people figure out that the "what a waste, any money I spend beyond helping [myself] is pointless" attitude is slowly killing society?
No argument with your statistics. A curfew *will* save lives. Teenagers *do* get hurt/killed more often while hanging out than doing something specific. These are facts.
What I argue is that:
a) taking away the freedom for teenagers to just hang out is wrong
and on a slightly different tack:
b) your post's last line is preposterous - teenagers do not WANT to kill/harm themselves or others, no matter how much of a cool-sounding line it makes for your posting.
Sorry mate, but you're wrong - depriving people of the freedom to simply do what they want is wrong.
I'm not talking about illegal actions. They're prohibited, as they should be. But stopping people - young or old, or whoever they are - from just hanging out with friends late at night?
but I am happy to curb their rights when they want to kill themselves and take other people with them
Absolute rubbish. Teenagers driving around late at night don't want to kill themselves or others. You're spouting sensationalist crap.
That's just the cost of living. You can go and start a country where everything is rules-controlled down to the point where life is just advanced automatism, though, if you like! I hear "Jonestown" was a good example - go and have a read up!
Leave the rest of us alone. We don't want you in charge of us, as your ideas are just too restrictive. I'd never vote for you.
You could probably make a homebrew version of the data capture, processing, analysis and display equipment (i.e. the stuff that can be done in software/basic hardware, on a PC) without much more than a decently powerful PC, a PhD in mathematics, and a few tens of thousands of hours. Our new-ish ultrasound machine (XP based) uses a dual-processor Xeon motherboard as the main data-aggregation, display, and front-end software/UI processing hardware.
Just add in a quad processor, quad-core motherboard with oodles of RAM, and that could most likely handle the signal processing.
The killer would be the very small, very specialized, finely engineered ultrasound probes - row upon row of ultra-precisely-aligned piezoelectric crystals, with backing layers of carefully mixed ceramic & alloy materials, focusing layers of carefully made ceramic materials, and so on. These things cost us (in Australia) anywhere from $10k to $23-25k each. Also, this isn't a static field in terms of R&D - ask anyone who's used an older Philips HDI5000 to compare the quality of the images they got with that machine's probes, versus what they can get on (say) the newer IU-22 family machines, or the Siemens Antares machine. The difference is beautiful - makes my job a whole lot easier.
You could do a homebrew, but without using a third-party, already built probe, you'd have a piece of all-but-useless junk. Buy a modern machine and two probes - you can do so for under $175k for a top-of-the-range unit, with a fair few software-processing extras included. Much, much cheaper options exist too (under $40k).
Hang on a sec... perhaps you need to broaden your perspective a bit. If we don't spend the fruits of our technological advances on increasing the viability of life, then what *are* we going to spend it on?
Cultural and intellectual pursuits for the naturally healthy masses? (I'd argue that we do that anyways, and there are still resources left over.)
Mindlessly accruing wealth in various forms, for it's own sake? (Again, I'd argue that we already do that.)
Surely the point of gaining some level of mastery over "good ol' mother nature" is to make us, as a species, more viable? Advanced (and yes, often expensive) medical treatments do this. I can only repeat my original question of you at this point: what else are you going to spend humanity's technological progress on (both knowledge and resources)?
Disclaimer of bias: I'm a type 1 diabetic, and I work in a hospital in a stroke unit.
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Come to Australia, mate. Here our biggest (and ex-government-owned) telco, Telstra, has two sorts of plans:
- Those that are "unlimited", i.e. standard allowance + speed limiting beyond the allowance; :>
- and plans that have a data allowance, and then they charge you 15 cents *per megabyte*. Yep, that's $150 per gig. So you pay (say) $39.95 per month for 2 gb allowance, then if you use 3 gb, your bill is $189.95 for that month
Oh! One concession though... Telstra thoughtfully adds to their T's & C's that "excess usage charges for the Turbo 2GB and Elite 2GB plans are capped at $300 per bill cycle". How generous of them!
Insane. I mean, I love a sunburnt country, but Telstra is just rubbish.
It involves a tooth bud made from adult stem cells and ultrasonic stimulation of the tooth bud, it's not exactly rocket science.
Eh? Are you serious?
A tooth bud, made from adult stem cells - do you have any idea how hard it is to harvest adult stem cells, then wind them back into seedable stem cells?
And then ultrasonically stimulate them. Using certain frequencies and powers of ultrasound (disclaimer: I'm a sonographer). For certain duty cycles.
Do you really think all this stuff is obvious, to *anyone*? Whatever you might spout out, the stuff you're casually mentioning *is* pretty close to rocket science. If you don't believe me, go off and do the procedure yourself, on your own. Sheesh!
I agree regarding the likelihood of there being intelligent life on other planets.
The way I look at it, there's a fantastically small chance - as near as may as well be zero, dammit - of there being another planet with life out there. And every planet we find that *doesn't* have life simply decreases the odds of "life on another planet" by 1/(n+1). :>
Now that's worst case scenario, it's probably costing more like 10mwh per day more energy consumption, because they are using these computers for school.
(Assuming you mean wh, not mwh).
That assumption only holds up for the 8-10 hours per day that the machines would be normally active. What about the 14 hours per day, after hours and at night, when they'd be merely idling (or off)? For those 14 hours, the extra power usage would be closer to that order-of-magnitude you mentioned.
The activation circuitry is usually passively powered. It is very unlikely somebody wouldn't notice somebody holding a programmer by their chest.
True enough. If you wander out on a hypothetical limb, though...
With all the recent R&D going into wireless power, wireless device charging, etc., and a couple of companies claiming things like 80 cm charging ranges - and this for a consumer device, which requires a lot more juice (most likely) than the passive implant activation circuitry - might it not be conceivable that at least this second point of your argument will eventually be worked around?
Scary thought, that. Modified wireless power equipment, and a dodgy employee at a medical devices company willing to sell comms protocol documentation, and you might be able to affect implants from (maybe) 2-3 metres away. That's something I could believe is possible with time.
Ugh... I can't help it:
If you told the thing to give me even an extra 1 ml dose
I think you probably meant 1 IU (1 unit). 1 ml (100 IU) would wipe out most horses.
True, some may think I'm nitpicking, but I figure I'll get slack because I've had Type 1 for 21 years myself. Not on a pump yet, though... psychological factors mean I'm really not happy about the idea of being attached to a permanent infusion pump. And I work at a hospital too, so pumps aren't exactly an alien thing!
People are funny, eh? :>
Ugh, ugh, ugh... please disregard my post. Sorry, Golddess!
It's *my* brain that's turned off this morning :(
Would *you* marry a woman who had been lying to you for 8 years? And defrauding money from you?
How does that thought process work?
"Yeah, ok, so I've been lied to and scammed for 8 years now. I know, let's get married to the conwoman, and she can *continue* to lie to me forever after! Hmm, she'll probably start having an affair on the side... and now she is entitled to half (or more) of all my stuff, too! Yeah, great idea!"
Seriously mate, turn ON brain before posting.
Hey, if you're halfway intelligent (say, enough to use a computer?), then you should have thought something along the lines of:
You: "I wonder if posting these pictures to a publically-accessible forum is a really good idea?"
Because if you had, and you *were* halfway intelligent, this would have happened:
Your Commonsense: "No, it's not worth it, because I *know* that although my mates won't judge me harshly, future employers (sic?) may, and once these photos are out there there's no pulling them back. Not worth it!"
(And yes, I'm assuming that since you're quoting a figure of 50 pictures, that they're *your* pictures you've posted. If they're posted by someone else, then... well, life doesn't come with any guarantees, does it? Ya get wasted, you *might* get photographed these days).
Nah, not buying that last line. Driving is inherently dangerous, but intelligent human beings undertaking the activity will do what they can to reduce extra risks on top of that.
For example... the extra risk induced by texting whilst driving.
You've generalised too far - if we decided to go your way, then we'd still have Ford Pintos around, blowing up every time they were hit from behind:
Mr Ford: "Bah, stuff the consumers, don't they realised that driving is dangerous?
As it happened though, we got a different line:
Civilized society: "G'day Mr. Ford, we're going to make you liable for your actions. Fix your problems, or else. P.S., please pay us $MANY_DOLLARS."
I prefer that second way, call me square though you may.
On the other hand, there would be widespread chaos as every unprotected electronic device across 2/3 of the continental US is instantly incapacitated.
That's really scary. Welcome back to 1850, boys and girls!
We're getting way offttopic here, but - ouch! Dare I ask what you're insuring that costs $1500/year?
Even in Australia, that's the sort of money required to insure a sports car. Or a regular car, if you're 19 years old :>
Historically cigarettes have always been a good bartering item. They're a (mild) drug of dependence, and when everything is going wrong around you, smokers will give almost anything for another hit. And if a smoker has something you want, then...
The second world war was a good example of this (soap was valuable, too).
I second your first point. I work in neurology ultrasound at a large public hospital, where we have a heavy bias towards stroke treatment. We've spent about 30 years getting the stroke treatment flowcharts and procedures tuned up, and it makes an enormous difference.
If one of my family were (heaven forbid) to have a stroke or a suspected TIA, I wouldn't send them anywhere else in the city than where I work. I'd probably try and force the decision on the ambulance driver, though, rather than drive them there myself (45 mins). When you've got 3 hours maximum after the onset of symptoms to get them to hospital, assessed, and having a tPA infusion (if not contraindicated), then you don't waste time and stuff around, for *anything*.
As my department ex-director said, "Time is brain."
Ouch, ouch, ouch, ouch.
That whole set of events hurt just to read. I wish I could offer something more than just some goodwill and sympathy.
(Don't be too hard on yourself.)
Being a health care worker, I would have thought that being responsible, and *not* bypassing the hospital's IT access controls - no matter how "pathetic" - was part of your job?
Just sayin'...
True. One upside might be that with a working test for Alzheimer's, doctors (especially those who aren't experienced in it) will not put you on other neuro-type treatments for diseases that look somewhat like Alzheimer's. At least then you won't be on unnecessary drugs.
Note that religion is strong among the least educated and therefore lowest quality people.
Ouch. I hope you mean this in an abstract way; summarily dropping all of your fellow man who happen not to have had the opportunity of a decent education, into a bin marked "lower quality people", is the hallmark *of* a lower quality person.
Education and civilization are supposed to make you understand that *all* people are, at the base level, no worse than anyone else. Circumstances vary, and that's about it. If you put your "high quality", educated self into the same position as some of these so-called "low quality" people, it's an open question as to whether or not you'd manage to avoid ending up in the same state.
No argument with you. You're entitled to take that position.
It's not my job to pay for things for other people either.
But if someone paid for me to see some entertainment for free, I'd be happy. Remember the last time someone did something or gave you something, for nothing in return? Remember how good that felt?
Again, though, you are entitled to take any position you like.
Was tempted to leave it, but I'll cover your post and the GP post in one shot.
First, the GP - yes, at the last stage of my post, I was generalising my point to cover what would happen were this attitude of "I'll only pay for myself" to continue unchecked, forever. Sometimes you have to sit back, look at things, and figure out where your current compass course will eventually lead you.
Second, the post above - you've crossed a wire somewhere while reading my post. I was suggesting donating *personal* money, like the original poster was being asked to do (by PBS). Not government money. Heck, I'll happily donate $100 to this man's local PBS to pay for RD8.
My local PBS asked me to donate $100 to obtain Red Dwarf 8 for airing. Instead I bought the DVDs for $25. So in my opinion PBS is not worth supporting; I'd rather spend my money on DVDs
This is true, if you only consider yourself. Hopefully there are enough other people in your local area who are prepared to pay a little bit extra so that others can see Red Dwarf, even though they haven't paid for it.
When will people figure out that the "what a waste, any money I spend beyond helping [myself] is pointless" attitude is slowly killing society?
Be an adult and see beyond yourself.
No argument with your statistics. A curfew *will* save lives. Teenagers *do* get hurt/killed more often while hanging out than doing something specific. These are facts.
What I argue is that:
a) taking away the freedom for teenagers to just hang out is wrong
and on a slightly different tack:
b) your post's last line is preposterous - teenagers do not WANT to kill/harm themselves or others, no matter how much of a cool-sounding line it makes for your posting.
Sorry mate, but you're wrong - depriving people of the freedom to simply do what they want is wrong.
I'm not talking about illegal actions. They're prohibited, as they should be. But stopping people - young or old, or whoever they are - from just hanging out with friends late at night?
but I am happy to curb their rights when they want to kill themselves and take other people with them
Absolute rubbish. Teenagers driving around late at night don't want to kill themselves or others. You're spouting sensationalist crap.
That's just the cost of living. You can go and start a country where everything is rules-controlled down to the point where life is just advanced automatism, though, if you like! I hear "Jonestown" was a good example - go and have a read up!
Leave the rest of us alone. We don't want you in charge of us, as your ideas are just too restrictive. I'd never vote for you.
You could probably make a homebrew version of the data capture, processing, analysis and display equipment (i.e. the stuff that can be done in software/basic hardware, on a PC) without much more than a decently powerful PC, a PhD in mathematics, and a few tens of thousands of hours. Our new-ish ultrasound machine (XP based) uses a dual-processor Xeon motherboard as the main data-aggregation, display, and front-end software/UI processing hardware.
Just add in a quad processor, quad-core motherboard with oodles of RAM, and that could most likely handle the signal processing.
The killer would be the very small, very specialized, finely engineered ultrasound probes - row upon row of ultra-precisely-aligned piezoelectric crystals, with backing layers of carefully mixed ceramic & alloy materials, focusing layers of carefully made ceramic materials, and so on. These things cost us (in Australia) anywhere from $10k to $23-25k each. Also, this isn't a static field in terms of R&D - ask anyone who's used an older Philips HDI5000 to compare the quality of the images they got with that machine's probes, versus what they can get on (say) the newer IU-22 family machines, or the Siemens Antares machine. The difference is beautiful - makes my job a whole lot easier.
You could do a homebrew, but without using a third-party, already built probe, you'd have a piece of all-but-useless junk. Buy a modern machine and two probes - you can do so for under $175k for a top-of-the-range unit, with a fair few software-processing extras included. Much, much cheaper options exist too (under $40k).
Hang on a sec... perhaps you need to broaden your perspective a bit. If we don't spend the fruits of our technological advances on increasing the viability of life, then what *are* we going to spend it on?
Cultural and intellectual pursuits for the naturally healthy masses?
(I'd argue that we do that anyways, and there are still resources left over.)
Mindlessly accruing wealth in various forms, for it's own sake?
(Again, I'd argue that we already do that.)
Surely the point of gaining some level of mastery over "good ol' mother nature" is to make us, as a species, more viable? Advanced (and yes, often expensive) medical treatments do this. I can only repeat my original question of you at this point: what else are you going to spend humanity's technological progress on (both knowledge and resources)?
Disclaimer of bias: I'm a type 1 diabetic, and I work in a hospital in a stroke unit.