Of course it's a national security threat. It's not because the government can't understand it, it's more for the same reasons Wikileaks is a national security threat--their operations may lead to the release of secret information.
They may also embarrass people a lot and be a good bogeyman, which doesn't hurt in terms of getting funding to go after them.
First, yes, if it's a stroke or a heart attack and you don't already have a contact that can get you information about who to see very quickly, then it's luck of the draw. A network may still be useful for further work, if you need it.
And yes, the average person doesn't have the right contacts to know who they should be seeing, and doesn't know how to ask the right questions. If they did, there would be a lot more competition to be a good doctor, and also attempts to game the system (e.g. by taking only easier cases). I know of communities where if you get cancer, you die from it. And that really shouldn't be the case in many instances if you have good docs.
Your last point seems to be that without medicare, docs would charge astronomical prices. In reality, without medicare, the market would control the price rather than an oligopoly controlling it (which forces prices way up for people who aren't part of that system, btw). Right now, there are huge transaction costs involved in paying for medicine, and huge uncertainties about cost, and you have to fight about paying your doctor out of the money that you have been putting into a big risk pool in case of emergency. Some docs would become much more expensive, but others would not, and docs would have much more incentive to do the right thing. With scheduled fees, docs get the same amount whether they do a crappy one-hour operation or a very precise and thorough five-hour operation, if they are, in a very general way and under some label, the same operation. So the truly excellent docs aren't marginally compensated for doing a better operation. The only incentive is saving the patient's life. Which is a big incentive for some, but just not enough for many--especially when most aren't trained superbly to begin with.
> your life literally depends on who you happen to get lucky enough to see.
This is why for anything serious, you are very careful about who you see. It's really a combination of luck and networking to reliable people. The hardest part (for a slashdotter) is finding one person who is good enough and knows enough that they will send you to what is probably the right place. Someone can have a wonderful reputation and be a bad surgeon, and sorting wheat from chaff is really, really hard, especially when the medical community is tight-lipped to begin with, and it's not like they provide patients with empirical information.
Someone has to decide what it means. The people whom our society has decided to let decide what it means have decided it has a pretty narrow meaning.
That interpretation is not "illegitimate." Two centuries of precedent makes it legitimate. The fact that it is accepted as legitimate by our lawmakers makes it legitimate. It is not an act of treason for a court which judges a case or controversy arising from the laws of the United States, including the Constitution, to decide that the Constitution should be interpreted in a certain way--at least not where the meaning is not plain from the face of the document.
Originalists would note that at least some of the Founding fathers considered the power of judicial review key--didn't Hamilton write about it in one of the Federalist papers?
Actually, no. The privileges and immunities clause has pretty much been written out of the constitution--it refers only to a very few things, such as the right to petition the government. In the MacDonald case (Chicago 2nd amendment case a few years back) there was an effort to make it mean something, but SCOTUS decided the only reason they wanted it to was to write law review articles--they used the due process clause instead, IIRC, but they certainly didn't use the PI clause.
Constitutional free speech is a "due process" protection--and even that was not clear until long after the Fourteenth Amendment was passed. Look up the incorporation doctrine.
The federal government guaranteed it as against the federal government at first, and it was only later that it applied to the states. Some states also give free speech rights in their constitutions. It still doesn't apply to private actors.
The fourth amendment, likewise, was not incorporated to apply against state agents until Mapp v. Ohio in 1961. It too was incorporated not under the privileges and immunities clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, but under the Due Process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.
Of course, state's rights are almost always the enemy of progress. The upside is the "states as laboratories" which means you can vote with your feet if a law is so onerous it justifies moving out of your state. But on the downside, states' rights have been used to try to hold onto slavery, racism, and a lack of civil rights. If the states' rights arguments had won, we would not have anywhere nearly as powerful a fourth amendment today, or a bill of rights generally. The bill of rights only became applicable to the states after the Supreme Court decided to interpret the Fourteenth Amendment in a novel way.
Keep in mind that every unofficial copy of a protected work isn't necessarily copyright violation. Look up fair use, and consult a lawyer for its application to a given field. You can also ask that the library of Congress put a DMCA exemption on a particular use, IIRC, although that would be more for the field than for your personal use.
If I own 10 shares of X at 7 and it goes up to 10, how has my equity gone down if, for example, the market has gone down 10% in the meantime?
Or do you mean that you will lose if, for example, there is a high Beta involved and the market as a whole has gone the other way, swallowing the gains? Or a microcosm of that, I suppose, and only for day-to-day trading?
Why 1-10 seconds? Why not 1 day? I have to wait three days for trades to settle. Why not limit the frequency of trading generally, increasing the incentive to invest for the actual worth of the underlying company rather than the short-term technical perturbations?
Or maybe you can only sell them once, or once every ten years. That would make them much more of a way of incentivizing employee interest in long-term interest of the company.
They also need a law that will ding the credit agencies when they get it wrong....
Also need?
This isn't a law. It's a piece of proposed legislation. Which usually means something someone can point to in order to say "I support X" while knowing full well that X will never actually be law.
In all likelihood, it has already been referred to some obscure subcommittee and will never be heard from again. (Disclaimer: I'm not sure offhand if he is on the obscure subcommittee, in which case it obviously has a slightly better chance.)
Agreed. Heat sensitivity is quite slow, at least for me. I haven't done a study or measured it empirically, but there is a definite discernible gap between the time when I feel the stimulus and the time I jerk away--at least a tenth of a second, possibly substantially more.
how long was it available.......and how many people KNEW about it......
This was a good result--it's nice to the FTC doing their job and policing false advertising practices, at least a little. Complaints are relatively easy to make to them--and though most go unanswered, enough of them show patterns that the FTC will investigate.
"All scams involve a movement of money from stupid people to smart people "
Smart people get scammed as well, and usually easier.
It really varies. People who are experienced at detecting scams are more likely to detect scams. And people who are smarter will me less susceptible to scams in their field, but (if they have less experience with scams because they tend to interact with more reputable people) will often be more susceptible to scams in unrelated areas.
You can build any house anywhere you want (in residential zones, or outside of city limits to avoid zoning issues), but you have to meet certain standards that we as a society/government have set for safety-related issues...
What? No--aren't building codes *rules*, not standards? There's a huge difference. If they were standards, then they would adopt with times and any method capable of supporting necessary loads would be fine. Rules are more like "You must use Douglas fir for a thirty-two foot span" or "the door must be framed in such and such a manner" or "joists must be placed every X feet" or "The walls must be made of fire-resistant sheetrock at least 3/8" thick." Standards would be more "The floor material must be capable of supporting a load of weight X at its midpoint" or "the building must be capable of withstanding any category 3 hurricane"
Think about calculus. A huge number of people have a real problem understanding calculus. Some of them are quite intelligent. Some of them have tried quite hard, and persistently. Some people pick it up with one quick read through a textbook. It varies. The amount of effort involves varies hugely. But I wouldn't say that someone isn't smart and well-rounded because they never understood it or have major difficulty with it. They can be enormously well-read across a wide range of fields, for example.
You can define it away by saying "a well-rounded person must...," of course. But I'd disagree with you.:)
On the appeal--I did see his, and took it as "in the course of doing this, I have found..." whereas I suppose I responded negatively to your trump because it seemed more like "your thoughts are meaningless because I can trump your appeal." To be fair, his use of "actually" hurts his case, but my relevancy filter excluded that during my initial read. =)
OK, that's fair--I was thinking of situations where they are used for internet access in class, chatting, shopping, watching sports, etc...--which is common.
Oh, I agree, overspecific training isn't helpful. But they do have to worry about malware, because they will have a computer at home later, or even if they didn't grow up with one.
Slashdot Mirror
Even in that context. Being of a certain race does not exclude one from possibly being racist.
What?
I'm black...
Why would we care?
1023? That is a suspiciously round number...
Of course it's a national security threat. It's not because the government can't understand it, it's more for the same reasons Wikileaks is a national security threat--their operations may lead to the release of secret information.
They may also embarrass people a lot and be a good bogeyman, which doesn't hurt in terms of getting funding to go after them.
There are several interrelated issues here.
First, yes, if it's a stroke or a heart attack and you don't already have a contact that can get you information about who to see very quickly, then it's luck of the draw. A network may still be useful for further work, if you need it.
And yes, the average person doesn't have the right contacts to know who they should be seeing, and doesn't know how to ask the right questions. If they did, there would be a lot more competition to be a good doctor, and also attempts to game the system (e.g. by taking only easier cases). I know of communities where if you get cancer, you die from it. And that really shouldn't be the case in many instances if you have good docs.
Your last point seems to be that without medicare, docs would charge astronomical prices. In reality, without medicare, the market would control the price rather than an oligopoly controlling it (which forces prices way up for people who aren't part of that system, btw). Right now, there are huge transaction costs involved in paying for medicine, and huge uncertainties about cost, and you have to fight about paying your doctor out of the money that you have been putting into a big risk pool in case of emergency. Some docs would become much more expensive, but others would not, and docs would have much more incentive to do the right thing. With scheduled fees, docs get the same amount whether they do a crappy one-hour operation or a very precise and thorough five-hour operation, if they are, in a very general way and under some label, the same operation. So the truly excellent docs aren't marginally compensated for doing a better operation. The only incentive is saving the patient's life. Which is a big incentive for some, but just not enough for many--especially when most aren't trained superbly to begin with.
> your life literally depends on who you happen to get lucky enough to see.
This is why for anything serious, you are very careful about who you see. It's really a combination of luck and networking to reliable people. The hardest part (for a slashdotter) is finding one person who is good enough and knows enough that they will send you to what is probably the right place. Someone can have a wonderful reputation and be a bad surgeon, and sorting wheat from chaff is really, really hard, especially when the medical community is tight-lipped to begin with, and it's not like they provide patients with empirical information.
"pretty much." It does still mean something.
Someone has to decide what it means. The people whom our society has decided to let decide what it means have decided it has a pretty narrow meaning.
That interpretation is not "illegitimate." Two centuries of precedent makes it legitimate. The fact that it is accepted as legitimate by our lawmakers makes it legitimate. It is not an act of treason for a court which judges a case or controversy arising from the laws of the United States, including the Constitution, to decide that the Constitution should be interpreted in a certain way--at least not where the meaning is not plain from the face of the document.
Originalists would note that at least some of the Founding fathers considered the power of judicial review key--didn't Hamilton write about it in one of the Federalist papers?
Actually, no. The privileges and immunities clause has pretty much been written out of the constitution--it refers only to a very few things, such as the right to petition the government. In the MacDonald case (Chicago 2nd amendment case a few years back) there was an effort to make it mean something, but SCOTUS decided the only reason they wanted it to was to write law review articles--they used the due process clause instead, IIRC, but they certainly didn't use the PI clause.
https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Incorporation_of_the_Bill_of_Rights
Constitutional free speech is a "due process" protection--and even that was not clear until long after the Fourteenth Amendment was passed. Look up the incorporation doctrine.
The federal government guaranteed it as against the federal government at first, and it was only later that it applied to the states. Some states also give free speech rights in their constitutions. It still doesn't apply to private actors.
The fourth amendment, likewise, was not incorporated to apply against state agents until Mapp v. Ohio in 1961. It too was incorporated not under the privileges and immunities clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, but under the Due Process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.
Of course, state's rights are almost always the enemy of progress. The upside is the "states as laboratories" which means you can vote with your feet if a law is so onerous it justifies moving out of your state. But on the downside, states' rights have been used to try to hold onto slavery, racism, and a lack of civil rights. If the states' rights arguments had won, we would not have anywhere nearly as powerful a fourth amendment today, or a bill of rights generally. The bill of rights only became applicable to the states after the Supreme Court decided to interpret the Fourteenth Amendment in a novel way.
Keep in mind that every unofficial copy of a protected work isn't necessarily copyright violation. Look up fair use, and consult a lawyer for its application to a given field. You can also ask that the library of Congress put a DMCA exemption on a particular use, IIRC, although that would be more for the field than for your personal use.
http://transformativeworks.org/projects/vidding-press-release-DMCA-EXEMPTION
No, most of it goes to the executives. Check the compensation disclosed in the medical sector and compare to net profits of the relevant corporations.
What? How does that make sense?
If I own 10 shares of X at 7 and it goes up to 10, how has my equity gone down if, for example, the market has gone down 10% in the meantime?
Or do you mean that you will lose if, for example, there is a high Beta involved and the market as a whole has gone the other way, swallowing the gains? Or a microcosm of that, I suppose, and only for day-to-day trading?
Why 1-10 seconds? Why not 1 day? I have to wait three days for trades to settle. Why not limit the frequency of trading generally, increasing the incentive to invest for the actual worth of the underlying company rather than the short-term technical perturbations?
Or maybe you can only sell them once, or once every ten years. That would make them much more of a way of incentivizing employee interest in long-term interest of the company.
They also need a law that will ding the credit agencies when they get it wrong....
Also need?
This isn't a law. It's a piece of proposed legislation. Which usually means something someone can point to in order to say "I support X" while knowing full well that X will never actually be law.
In all likelihood, it has already been referred to some obscure subcommittee and will never be heard from again. (Disclaimer: I'm not sure offhand if he is on the obscure subcommittee, in which case it obviously has a slightly better chance.)
Agreed. Heat sensitivity is quite slow, at least for me. I haven't done a study or measured it empirically, but there is a definite discernible gap between the time when I feel the stimulus and the time I jerk away--at least a tenth of a second, possibly substantially more.
how long was it available.......and how many people KNEW about it......
This was a good result--it's nice to the FTC doing their job and policing false advertising practices, at least a little. Complaints are relatively easy to make to them--and though most go unanswered, enough of them show patterns that the FTC will investigate.
"All scams involve a movement of money from stupid people to smart people "
Smart people get scammed as well, and usually easier.
It really varies. People who are experienced at detecting scams are more likely to detect scams. And people who are smarter will me less susceptible to scams in their field, but (if they have less experience with scams because they tend to interact with more reputable people) will often be more susceptible to scams in unrelated areas.
I only wish they would run the country like mobsters running their day to day operations. Mobsters usually deliver the paid-for product.
So does Congress. We just happen not to be their customer, except once every two to six years.
You can build any house anywhere you want (in residential zones, or outside of city limits to avoid zoning issues), but you have to meet certain standards that we as a society/government have set for safety-related issues...
What? No--aren't building codes *rules*, not standards? There's a huge difference. If they were standards, then they would adopt with times and any method capable of supporting necessary loads would be fine. Rules are more like "You must use Douglas fir for a thirty-two foot span" or "the door must be framed in such and such a manner" or "joists must be placed every X feet" or "The walls must be made of fire-resistant sheetrock at least 3/8" thick." Standards would be more "The floor material must be capable of supporting a load of weight X at its midpoint" or "the building must be capable of withstanding any category 3 hurricane"
Why not ask the university? Seriously, any student or professor worth knowing will take five minutes and try to think up a program or two.
PETA was not well-looked-on by the courts. Imagine how this company will be considered.
Think about calculus. A huge number of people have a real problem understanding calculus. Some of them are quite intelligent. Some of them have tried quite hard, and persistently. Some people pick it up with one quick read through a textbook. It varies. The amount of effort involves varies hugely. But I wouldn't say that someone isn't smart and well-rounded because they never understood it or have major difficulty with it. They can be enormously well-read across a wide range of fields, for example.
You can define it away by saying "a well-rounded person must...," of course. But I'd disagree with you. :)
On the appeal--I did see his, and took it as "in the course of doing this, I have found..." whereas I suppose I responded negatively to your trump because it seemed more like "your thoughts are meaningless because I can trump your appeal." To be fair, his use of "actually" hurts his case, but my relevancy filter excluded that during my initial read. =)
OK, that's fair--I was thinking of situations where they are used for internet access in class, chatting, shopping, watching sports, etc...--which is common.
Oh, I agree, overspecific training isn't helpful. But they do have to worry about malware, because they will have a computer at home later, or even if they didn't grow up with one.