Heck, per a post above, HPV is not exclusively an STD. You can get it via fairly innocuous contact. To prevent spread of HPV, you have the alternatives of vaccination and no physical contact at all. So worry about sexual activity here is like limiting yourself to worry about burns when you're in a fire -- ignoring asphyxiation, risk of being crushed by falling structure, etc.
The problem is about costs to the society. Why should the insurance pool that I pay into cover the costs of someone getting severely injured due to not wearing seat belts?
Since you can get infected with skin warts by contact, about the only alternative explanation would be that it's not HPV that's causing those warts. Anyone who knows the answer?
It doesn't seem to move all that much. The crystals probably stay where they are, they merely twist to align with the electric field. Think ice electrometers. Millions or billions of them...
I know zip about other projects, but I was hacking on Maxima for use in my robotics assignments and something is to be said for conciseness of Lisp's way of dealing with data structures. Something more is to be said for macros: the programmatic generation of code (they are nothing like C macros). Of course you can generate code in C, but it's a shitty experience, and you have to roll it all yourself. The C/C++ languages do not come with any sort of a data structure to express themselves. Even Python has an ast module. I've found that programmatic generation of code is a big win in embedded world, especially on small microcontrollers (RAM in single kilobytes, etc). Most platform libraries become quite bloated if you want to truly fully support all peripherals, even if a typical application only uses a small subset of the functionality. The compilers are usually too stupid to properly optimize it, even if a fairly rudimentary constant propagation would indicate that 90% of the library is dead code. With macros you can easily generate just the code you need. Macros can easily and cleanly replace external tools like lexer and parser generators. They are also great for implementing extra language features. You don't need hacks like Duff's device or coroutine horkage. LISP is powerful enough that you can have features like yield implemented in a library.
In the end, it's all about ease of use. Even though I do a lot in C and C++, I detest their verbosity. I mean, come on, ML family had type inference for three decades! Heck, I have worked with a structured basic running on CP/M Z80 that had rudimentary type inference (although didn't have algebraic types). You didn't have to assign types to your variables, and if you tried adding an integer to a string it would balk -- not at runtime, but before it'd accept the new or modified line of program! Variables were assigned types at first use, and if you had a function returning a value (yes, it had functions, but sadly no tuples), it knew what type it'd be based on the code inside of the function. That was in late 80s! Then you come to C++ and get to experience template metaprogramming -- sure it's powerful, but it feels about as expressive as programming a Turing machine directly. And metaprograms are interpreted by the compiler, in a very inefficient way.
Since there's on the order of a 100 million wiimotes out there, I'd think just that is a good enough reason. There's plenty of drivers for way less popular hardware in the linux kernel! Less as in an order of magnitude or two less popular.
Nope. Not at all. You can't really randomly run into this issue without attaching a device first, and if you can do that you may as well own the server in other ways.
No one knows the answer to this "why". It's like asking why is the Universe the way it is. A silly question. Suppose you knew the answer. Well, try making an answer up and see where it leads you.
Since it is a modular driver, it will IIRC execute nothing at all until the module is pulled in by udev. So there's no need to audit much if you're not using the hardware in question. And if you have physical access to the server, there are ways of subverting it other than hooking up hardware that has security holes in the drivers. So no need for paranoia.
If you're without much assets, right after college, you can declare bankruptcy and the private loans will go away, for a price of sucking credit rating for 7 years or so. With federal loans, there's no running away: they'll be due until you pay them off or you die.
I agree about the housing. Many U.S. campuses are surrounded by student "housing" that's very close to being condemned. Not only are the rents inflated, but also the costs of utilities are sky-high because the technical condition of the buildings is so poor: no insulation, leaky windows/doors, very inefficient HVAC and water heaters, etc. I've heard first-hand accounts where a small 4 student apartment would spend 2-3x more on heating and cooling than a not particularly well built house with a family of 4 living in it. And those were some frugal students who did keep their thermostats at just about bearable settings (64F in the winter, 80F in summer). Well, perhaps they should be thankful they had "working" air conditioning at all...
Healthcare is expensive because it's mostly burdened by overheads. Overheads that are pretty mind-blowing. E.g.: there are corporations out there that offer no other service but handling insurance paperwork for smaller medical practices. Many practices are "managed" by people that think that with 3 or 4 pediatricians around you really need to have 8 nurses, 3-4 clerical workers, and that it's somehow OK for the patients to wait up to an hour after coming on-time to an appointment. Waste and irresponsible management is what hurts, not salaries of the qualified personnel. In a hospital, or even a typical bloated small practice, MD salaries are not very significant.
I've had my kids go to a practice with overheads 5x higher than the practice they are going to now. And that was I think a conservative estimate. Insurance is part of the problem here, since dealing with it is an immense waste of time and effort. Alas, now my kids never have to wait longer than 5 minutes between coming through the door and seeing a nurse. And I get a bill before I'm out the door on my way out. So it can be done efficiently if you're not an idiot.
Lead paint is not a problem as long as you leave it alone. You can paint over it, just don't disturb it by scraping/sanding. Scholarships are very different from loans...
That's pretty clever. It fixes the problem of out-of-work people being hassled for money. Alas, it does not fix the problem of people who don't need to be in college, nor does it fix the rolling education bubble: easy college money -> many people with college education -> devaluing of college education and requiring it for the most menial jobs. I personally think that even in the academic system itself there are plenty of teaching jobs that should require neither tenure nor being a career academician. As an engineer, I'd like it very much for most undergrad courses to be taught by career design engineers, perhaps with "only" B.Sc. to show for their formal education. A Ph.D.-holding teacher doesn't magically "enrich" a linear algebra course only by holding his degree. An engineer, OTOH, might well do because ultimately he/she would have plenty of real-life applications to show.
This is insightful. Something to think about. The demand, though, is partly caused by availability of money. Private student loans won't be given out so easily, as they have fair risk, and would be subject to bankruptcy. It's the federal guaranteeing of stuff (FHA loans, student loans, etc) that creates bubbles, because it puts leverage where it doesn't belong. In a fairy world, poor/disadvantaged people should be able able to afford housing. In the real world, there's a point at which one realizes that part of those people being poor and disadvantaged is lack of financial planning skills. Federal programs should work on that first -- on genuinely teaching people how to manage their money, how not to get into debt, etc. Of course the banking lobby might not like that too much, since it'd cut into their profits...
I think that the federal government's role should be limited. Sure, there needs to be someone to have the power to plan and act to move the education forward. I believe that the states should be doing it. Smaller states can and should cooperate on it (duh).
Remember: RP is about cutting the federal government to the bare minimum, in light of it being run in an entirely financially unsustainable manner. What other choice is there? Economy is, to a point, a closed system. Federal money "evaporating" does not mean that any money really evaporates. Someone, somewhere, is left with more money to spend, and that money may well go into education. Such decisions should be made at a state level, since there's no "one fits all" solution. The socioeconomic situation differs among the states, and pretty wildly at that. There's no way for central decision-making in D.C. to take care of it fairly.
For a generation of students at least loans will still be required. Students would be forced to turn to private enterprise to get loans- which would lead to higher rates for the students.
It won't work like that. Of course there will be enterprise that will offer loans, like there always was. But there also will be a great deal of belt tightening at schools, with some schools going out of business (rightly so). For some people, college is not an option, and there's nothing wrong about it IMHO.
It'd also mean that the barrier to entry into academic teaching would be lowered, but in a good way. I don't think you really need career academicians teaching a lot of undergrad courses. Why the heck can't an engineer with a M.Sc. degree teach some courses?
Slashdot Mirror
Heck, per a post above, HPV is not exclusively an STD. You can get it via fairly innocuous contact. To prevent spread of HPV, you have the alternatives of vaccination and no physical contact at all. So worry about sexual activity here is like limiting yourself to worry about burns when you're in a fire -- ignoring asphyxiation, risk of being crushed by falling structure, etc.
The problem is about costs to the society. Why should the insurance pool that I pay into cover the costs of someone getting severely injured due to not wearing seat belts?
So it answers my question. Thank you!
Since you can get infected with skin warts by contact, about the only alternative explanation would be that it's not HPV that's causing those warts. Anyone who knows the answer?
+1 informative! Thank you!
Please mod +1 informative. Thanks M! Keep those polar bears coming.
Or, contrary to what is claimed, there's a whole lot of undercover atheists out there ;)
Agreed:
* death rate due to adverse reactions to this particular vaccine: 32/25E6 = 1.3E-6
* death rate due to HPV: 3/100,000 = 3E-5
I'd take the death rate due to adverse reactions allrighty -- gives you chances that are an order of magnitude better.
Alas, considering some alternatives, you may be doing just fine :)
It doesn't seem to move all that much. The crystals probably stay where they are, they merely twist to align with the electric field. Think ice electrometers. Millions or billions of them...
I know zip about other projects, but I was hacking on Maxima for use in my robotics assignments and something is to be said for conciseness of Lisp's way of dealing with data structures. Something more is to be said for macros: the programmatic generation of code (they are nothing like C macros). Of course you can generate code in C, but it's a shitty experience, and you have to roll it all yourself. The C/C++ languages do not come with any sort of a data structure to express themselves. Even Python has an ast module. I've found that programmatic generation of code is a big win in embedded world, especially on small microcontrollers (RAM in single kilobytes, etc). Most platform libraries become quite bloated if you want to truly fully support all peripherals, even if a typical application only uses a small subset of the functionality. The compilers are usually too stupid to properly optimize it, even if a fairly rudimentary constant propagation would indicate that 90% of the library is dead code. With macros you can easily generate just the code you need. Macros can easily and cleanly replace external tools like lexer and parser generators. They are also great for implementing extra language features. You don't need hacks like Duff's device or coroutine horkage. LISP is powerful enough that you can have features like yield implemented in a library.
In the end, it's all about ease of use. Even though I do a lot in C and C++, I detest their verbosity. I mean, come on, ML family had type inference for three decades! Heck, I have worked with a structured basic running on CP/M Z80 that had rudimentary type inference (although didn't have algebraic types). You didn't have to assign types to your variables, and if you tried adding an integer to a string it would balk -- not at runtime, but before it'd accept the new or modified line of program! Variables were assigned types at first use, and if you had a function returning a value (yes, it had functions, but sadly no tuples), it knew what type it'd be based on the code inside of the function. That was in late 80s! Then you come to C++ and get to experience template metaprogramming -- sure it's powerful, but it feels about as expressive as programming a Turing machine directly. And metaprograms are interpreted by the compiler, in a very inefficient way.
Since there's on the order of a 100 million wiimotes out there, I'd think just that is a good enough reason. There's plenty of drivers for way less popular hardware in the linux kernel! Less as in an order of magnitude or two less popular.
Nope. Not at all. You can't really randomly run into this issue without attaching a device first, and if you can do that you may as well own the server in other ways.
No one knows the answer to this "why". It's like asking why is the Universe the way it is. A silly question. Suppose you knew the answer. Well, try making an answer up and see where it leads you.
Since it is a modular driver, it will IIRC execute nothing at all until the module is pulled in by udev. So there's no need to audit much if you're not using the hardware in question. And if you have physical access to the server, there are ways of subverting it other than hooking up hardware that has security holes in the drivers. So no need for paranoia.
Agreed.
If the job market is anything to go by, the intrinsic value of college education is quite low or even negative save for very few career tracks.
If you're without much assets, right after college, you can declare bankruptcy and the private loans will go away, for a price of sucking credit rating for 7 years or so. With federal loans, there's no running away: they'll be due until you pay them off or you die.
I agree about the housing. Many U.S. campuses are surrounded by student "housing" that's very close to being condemned. Not only are the rents inflated, but also the costs of utilities are sky-high because the technical condition of the buildings is so poor: no insulation, leaky windows/doors, very inefficient HVAC and water heaters, etc. I've heard first-hand accounts where a small 4 student apartment would spend 2-3x more on heating and cooling than a not particularly well built house with a family of 4 living in it. And those were some frugal students who did keep their thermostats at just about bearable settings (64F in the winter, 80F in summer). Well, perhaps they should be thankful they had "working" air conditioning at all...
Healthcare is expensive because it's mostly burdened by overheads. Overheads that are pretty mind-blowing. E.g.: there are corporations out there that offer no other service but handling insurance paperwork for smaller medical practices. Many practices are "managed" by people that think that with 3 or 4 pediatricians around you really need to have 8 nurses, 3-4 clerical workers, and that it's somehow OK for the patients to wait up to an hour after coming on-time to an appointment. Waste and irresponsible management is what hurts, not salaries of the qualified personnel. In a hospital, or even a typical bloated small practice, MD salaries are not very significant.
I've had my kids go to a practice with overheads 5x higher than the practice they are going to now. And that was I think a conservative estimate. Insurance is part of the problem here, since dealing with it is an immense waste of time and effort. Alas, now my kids never have to wait longer than 5 minutes between coming through the door and seeing a nurse. And I get a bill before I'm out the door on my way out. So it can be done efficiently if you're not an idiot.
Lead paint is not a problem as long as you leave it alone. You can paint over it, just don't disturb it by scraping/sanding. Scholarships are very different from loans...
That's pretty clever. It fixes the problem of out-of-work people being hassled for money. Alas, it does not fix the problem of people who don't need to be in college, nor does it fix the rolling education bubble: easy college money -> many people with college education -> devaluing of college education and requiring it for the most menial jobs. I personally think that even in the academic system itself there are plenty of teaching jobs that should require neither tenure nor being a career academician. As an engineer, I'd like it very much for most undergrad courses to be taught by career design engineers, perhaps with "only" B.Sc. to show for their formal education. A Ph.D.-holding teacher doesn't magically "enrich" a linear algebra course only by holding his degree. An engineer, OTOH, might well do because ultimately he/she would have plenty of real-life applications to show.
This is insightful. Something to think about. The demand, though, is partly caused by availability of money. Private student loans won't be given out so easily, as they have fair risk, and would be subject to bankruptcy. It's the federal guaranteeing of stuff (FHA loans, student loans, etc) that creates bubbles, because it puts leverage where it doesn't belong. In a fairy world, poor/disadvantaged people should be able able to afford housing. In the real world, there's a point at which one realizes that part of those people being poor and disadvantaged is lack of financial planning skills. Federal programs should work on that first -- on genuinely teaching people how to manage their money, how not to get into debt, etc. Of course the banking lobby might not like that too much, since it'd cut into their profits...
I think that the federal government's role should be limited. Sure, there needs to be someone to have the power to plan and act to move the education forward. I believe that the states should be doing it. Smaller states can and should cooperate on it (duh).
Remember: RP is about cutting the federal government to the bare minimum, in light of it being run in an entirely financially unsustainable manner. What other choice is there? Economy is, to a point, a closed system. Federal money "evaporating" does not mean that any money really evaporates. Someone, somewhere, is left with more money to spend, and that money may well go into education. Such decisions should be made at a state level, since there's no "one fits all" solution. The socioeconomic situation differs among the states, and pretty wildly at that. There's no way for central decision-making in D.C. to take care of it fairly.
For a generation of students at least loans will still be required. Students would be forced to turn to private enterprise to get loans- which would lead to higher rates for the students.
It won't work like that. Of course there will be enterprise that will offer loans, like there always was. But there also will be a great deal of belt tightening at schools, with some schools going out of business (rightly so). For some people, college is not an option, and there's nothing wrong about it IMHO.
It'd also mean that the barrier to entry into academic teaching would be lowered, but in a good way. I don't think you really need career academicians teaching a lot of undergrad courses. Why the heck can't an engineer with a M.Sc. degree teach some courses?