Manned aircraft have to take off and land on runways.
Wrong. I have 8.50x6 tires on my plane. I land in fields, roads, and 'outback' places all over Utah, Idaho and Arizona. In Colorado I keep my off-airport landings to private fields, few of which are labeled as a runway. Kansas is littered with wonderful little grass and dirt strips, as is Oklahoma and Texas.
Plus, you could just get one shipped from another country that does not have ADS-B.
One could also track any such drone with a J-STARS, Rivet Joint, and/or AWACS, then dispatch the operator with a SOPGM. Or just have the FBI review the persistent aerial surveillance, watch where the operators walk and and drive over the course of a 48 hour period, then just knock on their door and arrest them.
Believe me, if you fly in US Airspace and annoy someone enough, there's nowhere you can hide. 9/11 made sure of that.
The FAA actually has a pretty decent infrastructure and plan for this, it's called ADS-B. By the end of 2019 all manned aircraft that fly in US airspace are to have these transponders.
If drones had these then anyone would be able to get the registration data directly from nearby drones, so you could see who the peeping toms flying around your neighborhood are, in real-time, on a map.
It's just a matter of time before any drone capable of interacting with the national airspace system will be required to have such a transponder. Along with that expect inspection and compliance requirements - just like for manned aircraft. You want to take to the sky outside of class G airspace - then prove your craft is compliant. Manned aircraft are inspected at least once per year, commercial craft more often, based on hourly inspection requirements. Hobbyist drone operators should probably also be trained, tested, and required to show competency at least, oh, once every two years, to prove you even know what class G airspace is, and maybe a certificate of training of some kind.
Take your drone to class G airspace and stay there and below 400 feet - do whatever you want. With a functioning transponder. Enjoy the sky, but please realize you aren't alone up there.
California energy policies are penny-wise and pound foolish. The unwashed masses cannot think for themselves, so... mandate!
This same mentality didn't work out so well for French President Macron. What's truly ironic is that a band of miscreant French in Paris helped a young Ceasar Julian overthrow his uncle - Byzatine Emperor Constantius II, because Julian lowered taxes, closed loopholes, and reduced corruption. Left to his own devices, Constantius would have continued taxing the shit out of everyone. As a result, Julain's overall tax revenue went way up, as did his popular support, which helped fund his little military escapade back to Constantinople to take over the empire. To bad he got speared to death by a Scythian right when the empire needed a strong and insightful leader. Oh well, at least the western world still celebrates the Roman December Festivities.
You'd think modern politicians would learn the difference between a mandate and an incentive. A poor incentive largely gets ignored and goes away, but heavy handed mandates lead to revolutions like the Boston Tea Party and the French Yellow Vest riots.
After the disaster that was the Lockheed X-33, NASA crafted a competition between private companies to launch cargo to the ISS. SpaceX and Orbital (now Northrop) won.
NASA basically funded and fueled the development of SpaceX.
So instead of venting at NASA, turn your anger and frustration to Congress.
There will be no $35k Model 3 while the demand is much higher than the supply. Production goals are being met, but the backlog is not declining significantly. Economics is a thing, and Tesla is not a charity.
If you think the $54k+ Tesla Model 3 is not competing or doing well in the market, then you really need to get out more. I saw several on my bike ride home this afternoon. Also, despite the market downturn TSLA is doing rather well, so your negative sentiment is not widely shared where it matters.
In an apples-to-apples comparison is looks like the Falcon Heavy, once it flies, will be able to lift less than half what the Saturn V could lift:. 64 tonnes vs 140 tonnes.
Ah, correct. Good catch. I botched a kg/tonnes/lbs conversion. Still, as I stated, Falcon Heavy is likely to be a short-term stepping stone to BFR, which is a much better comparison.
But more importantly tech nerds have a fixation on LAUNCH COSTS!!!, as being the great obstacle in all space flight, when it is space flight hardware itself that dominates the cost of nearly all missions.
I also disagree with your assessment. When launch costs are so high and margins for SWaP are so tight, space flight hardware cost goes way up. Any time NASA/JPL/LockMart make something, it's very, very expensive, and not likely to ever be a real, flexible, market-competitive product line - everything deployed so far have been very expensive one-offs of exotic materials and expensive engineering. Lower the launch cost dramatically, increase the capability dramatically, then you can make and replace space flight hardware much more cheaply.
... but the Atlas V launcher only cost $109 million, or 4.4% of the mission cost.
While ULA's cost for an Atlas V launcher may have been $109 million, I challenge you to sift through their very clever accounting and show where any NASA launch cost so little. Also, that very clever accounting is hiding all the factors that have inspired both SpaceX and Blue Origin to enter the market, which boils down to cost and availability. I've sat across the table from a ULA CEO and listened to him frost their accounting with thick layers of bullshit. So, perhaps you are right, mission costs may have just as much to do with ULA's inability to compete openly and honestly just as much as launch costs.
In a future where rovers of any level of sophistication capable of surviving in a harsh environment are cheap... Sure. We aren't headed towards such a future.
I disagree. Falcon Heavy can loft two third's as much into orbit as a Saturn V. A Falcon Heavy is more than an order of magnitude less expensive in today's dollars than a Saturn V. It is also important to note that the Falcon Heavy will likely be a brief stepping stone to the much more capable BFR.
We've not seen the results of these drastically lower costs and faster launch turnarounds in the market yet, but we will. Soon.
Legacy launch costs were so high that Size, Weight and Power (SWaP) was everything. Putting cutting edge computing technology on a rover has never been a priority. These things are designed for reliability in harsh operating conditions and high radiation environments. Thus, to date rovers have been little more than marginally autonomous remote controlled science experiments.
The James Webb Space Telescope could have been made out of machined billets of stainless steel and use a concrete heat shield, launched on a Falcon Heavy, and been cheaper and faster than the current program - all due to legacy SWaP limitations. I'm not suggesting JWST is poorly designed. Congress and NASA have mangled the budget and timeline of JWST to the point that it's become an unmanageable nightmare.
Current planetary exploration missions like the Mars rovers have been designed around the SWaP available on the legacy launch platforms. It takes two Delta IV Heavy launches at $435 million each, or $870 million total, to put as much into orbit as a single $100 million Falcon heavy launch. BFR is just going to improve this calculation. Blue Origin will hopefully be successful in their reusable and low cost technology as well. A comparison of launch vehicles can be seen here.
What this means is that we should be able to litter the surface of Mars with more capable rovers in the not too distant future. More capability may come with shorter lifespans - or with service intervals. Why spend a fortune making something that will last a decade when a more capable system can be deployed and replaced for a fraction of the cost?
A human settlement on Mars will be able to make repairs and provide services and interact with rovers in ways that have never been possible, which will magnify the capabilities of both the rovers and the humans. Rovers send image and preliminary sensor data to the humans, who then request that the rovers return samples. The humans follow up with more detailed, harder to obtain samples, and perform analysis at more capable laboratories.
Within one year on the surface of Mars the permanent presence of humans will yield orders of magnitude more scientific data than has been gathered in all the 42 years since the Viking program.
That's rather short sighted of you. If I invest in a rather expensive piece of technology that has the capability to be self-aware, I'd like to be able to have a conversation with "it" regarding it's health, maintenance, and mission priorities.
If NASA is to survive as the ensuing space age develops, they'll have to become independent from the erratic whims of Congress. I'm not sure that's possible, but I can't fault them for trying.
Unless NASA sells their interest in the ISS to a private entity, anything launched from the US and authorized to dock to the ISS will be a NASA flight. It might be contracted from Boeing or SpaceX, but it will be NASA coordinated and controlled in cooperation with the Russian and EU partners. Thus, if NASA does sell seats to ISS, it will almost certainly not depend on SLS.
Spaceflight will always be risky, and there will be failures. The recent Russian Soyuz launch failure highlights this, and ironically, is positive publicity for good engineering. The Soyuz rocket blew up, but the Soyuz capsule returned safely, along with the crew. The SpaceX Crewed Dragon Capsule and Boeing CST-100 Starliner will have similar launch abort systems and good survival capability. A lot of unfortunate lessons were learned from the shuttle program, and comparisons of a well engineered capsule or Dreamchaser-type system to the shuttle are unwarranted.
So far the most promising commercial space venture to replace or compete with the ISS seems to be Bigelow Aerospace and their commercial space station. Their BA 2100 expandable module is truly massive, and interestingly seems to fit with launch capabilities of the SpaceX BFR rocket, as well as the SLS, it it gets built.
I can't see NASA ever owning launch capability to compete with the likes of SpaceX or Blue Origin, but I can see them owning and controlling destinations in Earth orbit. For commercial operations NASA may evolve into, or merge with the likes of the FAA for safety and regulatory oversight.
Things will get really interesting when commercial space operations can leave all that behind and stake their claims in on the Moon and in lunar orbit, and of course, on Mars. I don't think NASA will be in the drivers seat by then. They've been hobbled by Congress for far too long and were never designed to be a commercially competitive entity.
You are reading way too much into my comment. Please read a bit more into what I said here:
Forcing society to pay for the elderly and handicapped is great, but if your choices make you handicapped, then that's on you, not me.
You are glossing over the above when you say:
And based on what you're saying, such a person deserves nothing.
That wasn't what I was saying at all.
Good social protections for the handicapped and elderly is the hallmark of any civilized society. My initial rant was targeting only those who do nothing to care for themselves, then expect society to bare the full cost of their healthcare, all while idling in traffic and raging against rude cyclists.
The whole point of my post was to discuss personal responsibility for one's health, and the social cost for ignoring it. I do not believe anyone would be so foolish as to actually try to chip humans, and I agree, I cannot imagine people being so foolish as to give up so much privacy for nothing more than free universal healthcare.
Please note my original post never said anything about being obese, only about exercise and an attempt to live healthy. The post you responded to was commenting that people spend more effort trying to feel good about themselves than actually trying to be healthy.
I suggest you stop projecting your own personal failings onto the world around you and take responsibility for your own weight and body image issues.
If you cannot seem to lose weight despite a reasonable level of exercise and healthy eating, then have a full thyroid panel performed, do a better job recognizing and manage your type 2 diabetes, and identify any other medical conditions.
Chances are you simply eat too many carbs. Or maybe your TSH is a double digit number and your T4 levels are on the bottom end of the scale, in which case you'll gain weight by just looking at food. This is a very easy condition to correct. Regardless, daily exercise, which was all I was advocating, will still improve your health significantly, no matter how obese you are.
In that case, DanDD, why not chip everyone for mandatory monitoring and execute a death sentence to anyone who violates the rules. This could be carried out easily and inexpensively by a simple poison capsule triggered by the monitoring software locally. No expensive data collection and no burden to society. Think of all that precious money of yours saved from the waste of those deadbeats!
I guess it's easy to be a philosopher on/. Perhaps you should spend more time thinking about the real problem and less about your own selfishness and petty jealousy.
I'm advocating that people take some measurable responsibility for keeping themselves healthy, rather than expecting society to bare the full cost and burden for an individual's health.
I'm also suggesting that if an individual meets some level of expectation of an attempt at healthy living and exercise, that society bare the full burden of healthcare for them.
Nowhere did I suggest that anyone kill anyone. It is interesting that you equate letting someone reap the rewards of poor choices with being executed.
Since you seem to prefer finger pointing and sensationalism, here, let me help:
I suspect you'd be equally unhappy with any policy that restricts people from making any choice that has negative repercussions, so I'm not going to argue with you.
I will, however, point out that I've not advocated that anyone kill anyone. I'm simply suggesting that if people decide to commit suicide in slow motion, that the rest of society not be asked to pay for it.
The easy way is a race to the bottom. Nothing about my suggestion is easy, nor was it philosophical. This and every society needs to accept that there are costs for everything, and that our ability to pay is finite.
My sophomoric little plan above would pay full healthcare for _anyone_ that made a basic attempt to stay healthy, rich or poor. This is _health_ care. Not wealth redistribution. Not a tax. It's about _health_, and that's all.
Wouldn't those things all be considered a handicap? This is what social programs are for, this is why we force people to pay taxes, so that we can care for those who cannot care for themselves. I thought it was rather obvious in my wording above, but I guess not, so I'll state it a different way:
As a society we should put great effort into caring for those who cannot care for themselves. Likewise, we should put great effort into encouraging everyone that can to care for themselves so that they do not become a burden to society. Those that choose to become a burden should not be rewarded for doing so.
Forcing society to pay for the elderly and handicapped is great, but if your choices make you handicapped
Such a handicap wouldn't exactly be a choice, would it?
However, I've seen wheelchair bound people propel themselves quite far and quite well with the muscles that they can use, so... exercise anyway, in any way that you can. Swimming might be a good choice.
Forcing society to pay for the elderly and handicapped is great, but if your choices make you handicapped
If the cancer wasn't the result of a choice - i.e. - you didn't smoke excessively and made some reasonable attempt to be healthy, then it should be fully covered until you are cured, or you die despite all efforts to save you.
Yep, cyclists frequently break traffic laws, which helps them go faster through congested traffic. But, after having bicycle commuted for several years, rude cycling is not the major factor in reduced commute times. Taking up less space and moving continuously while cars idle is what saves the time. I've crossed intersections, waiting for green lights, with scores of pedestrians and other cyclists, all crossing at the same time. Parallel asynchronous flows work with pedestrians and cyclists, not so much with cars, especially in dense cities. And car drivers typically break just as many traffic laws as cyclists, just different laws: speeding, changing lanes in an intersection, driving distracted/talking on cell phones, using bike lanes as turn lanes, etc. Pot, meet kettle.
Every election cycle healthcare becomes an issue, and increasingly CO2 & global warming, energy independence, and global conflicts over energy. Here's an idea: Chip humans and log their blood pressure and heart rate. In order to get any health insurance, your log must show some reasonable level of aerobic exercise - 4 to 6 hours per week, for starters. You are too busy, too important, and don't have the time for this? Fine, pay for your own healthcare. All of it, including vision and dental. No exercise for 1 week - probation. No exercise for 1 month, no coverage, for anything. Probationary coverage resumes the first day you can show a week's worth of exercise, which can be done in half a day. Full coverage after a consistent month of reasonable exercise. A brisk walk per day is plenty good enough. For many, using stairs instead of the elevator would do it. If you exercise, healthcare should be very prompt and comprehensive. The real goal is to get fat, lazy people off their ass and moving around in something other than an SUV.
Is this socialist, bordering on fascist? Yep. But trying to get universal healthcare for a population that doesn't care about their own health is pulling money out of my pocket to keep some twinkie eating lard-ass alive for a few extra years, and that's just as wrong. Forcing society to pay for the elderly and handicapped is great, but if your choices make you handicapped, then that's on you, not me.
I'll take the rude cyclists anywhere, any day, over the lazy, whiny, entitled little bitches. You know who you are.
Please provide citations to substantiate your assertion that any Tesla factory is failing to perform, or that Tesla has hired bad people.
From the 30 seconds of investigation I've found, Tesla does seem to be meeting production targets, although it has taken longer than anticipated. Tesla's production targets have always been very aggressive:
Tesla does seem to be succeeding where many short sellers have been predicting failure.
The production facility in a giant tent in the parking lot was the idea of a Tesla engineer. That gentleman was recently promoted because his idea is paying off.
Elon has also personally hired the engineers at SpaceX, so he does seem to be doing something right in building and managing a good team, so your comment is a little confusing.
Are you sure you aren't just a bitter short-seller? I see that TSLA hit 355 today, nearing it's all time high. So whatever you think about Tesla's failures in CEO management and hiring, the market seems to be rather happy with Tesla overall.
Slashdot Mirror
Manned aircraft have to take off and land on runways.
Wrong. I have 8.50x6 tires on my plane. I land in fields, roads, and 'outback' places all over Utah, Idaho and Arizona. In Colorado I keep my off-airport landings to private fields, few of which are labeled as a runway. Kansas is littered with wonderful little grass and dirt strips, as is Oklahoma and Texas.
Plus, you could just get one shipped from another country that does not have ADS-B.
One could also track any such drone with a J-STARS, Rivet Joint, and/or AWACS, then dispatch the operator with a SOPGM. Or just have the FBI review the persistent aerial surveillance, watch where the operators walk and and drive over the course of a 48 hour period, then just knock on their door and arrest them.
Believe me, if you fly in US Airspace and annoy someone enough, there's nowhere you can hide. 9/11 made sure of that.
The FAA actually has a pretty decent infrastructure and plan for this, it's called ADS-B. By the end of 2019 all manned aircraft that fly in US airspace are to have these transponders.
If drones had these then anyone would be able to get the registration data directly from nearby drones, so you could see who the peeping toms flying around your neighborhood are, in real-time, on a map.
It's just a matter of time before any drone capable of interacting with the national airspace system will be required to have such a transponder. Along with that expect inspection and compliance requirements - just like for manned aircraft. You want to take to the sky outside of class G airspace - then prove your craft is compliant. Manned aircraft are inspected at least once per year, commercial craft more often, based on hourly inspection requirements. Hobbyist drone operators should probably also be trained, tested, and required to show competency at least, oh, once every two years, to prove you even know what class G airspace is, and maybe a certificate of training of some kind.
Take your drone to class G airspace and stay there and below 400 feet - do whatever you want. With a functioning transponder. Enjoy the sky, but please realize you aren't alone up there.
You are delusional.
California energy policies are penny-wise and pound foolish. The unwashed masses cannot think for themselves, so... mandate!
This same mentality didn't work out so well for French President Macron. What's truly ironic is that a band of miscreant French in Paris helped a young Ceasar Julian overthrow his uncle - Byzatine Emperor Constantius II, because Julian lowered taxes, closed loopholes, and reduced corruption. Left to his own devices, Constantius would have continued taxing the shit out of everyone. As a result, Julain's overall tax revenue went way up, as did his popular support, which helped fund his little military escapade back to Constantinople to take over the empire. To bad he got speared to death by a Scythian right when the empire needed a strong and insightful leader. Oh well, at least the western world still celebrates the Roman December Festivities.
You'd think modern politicians would learn the difference between a mandate and an incentive. A poor incentive largely gets ignored and goes away, but heavy handed mandates lead to revolutions like the Boston Tea Party and the French Yellow Vest riots.
NASA didn't want SLS, Congress did.
After the disaster that was the Lockheed X-33, NASA crafted a competition between private companies to launch cargo to the ISS. SpaceX and Orbital (now Northrop) won.
NASA basically funded and fueled the development of SpaceX.
So instead of venting at NASA, turn your anger and frustration to Congress.
Yes, that very same Elon Musk.
There will be no $35k Model 3 while the demand is much
higher than the supply. Production goals are being met, but the backlog is not declining significantly. Economics is a thing, and Tesla is not a charity.
If you think the $54k+ Tesla Model 3 is not competing or doing well in the market, then you really need to get out more. I saw several on my bike ride home this afternoon. Also, despite the market downturn TSLA is doing rather well, so your negative sentiment is not widely shared where it matters.
In an apples-to-apples comparison is looks like the Falcon Heavy, once it flies, will be able to lift less than half what the Saturn V could lift:. 64 tonnes vs 140 tonnes.
Ah, correct. Good catch. I botched a kg/tonnes/lbs conversion. Still, as I stated, Falcon Heavy is likely to be a short-term stepping stone to BFR, which is a much better comparison.
But more importantly tech nerds have a fixation on LAUNCH COSTS!!!, as being the great obstacle in all space flight, when it is space flight hardware itself that dominates the cost of nearly all missions.
I also disagree with your assessment. When launch costs are so high and margins for SWaP are so tight, space flight hardware cost goes way up. Any time NASA/JPL/LockMart make something, it's very, very expensive, and not likely to ever be a real, flexible, market-competitive product line - everything deployed so far have been very expensive one-offs of exotic materials and expensive engineering. Lower the launch cost dramatically, increase the capability dramatically, then
you can make and replace space flight hardware much more cheaply.
While ULA's cost for an Atlas V launcher may have been $109 million, I challenge you to sift through their very clever accounting and show where any NASA launch cost so little. Also, that very clever accounting is hiding all the factors that have inspired both SpaceX and Blue Origin to enter the market, which boils down to cost and availability. I've sat across the table from a ULA CEO and listened to him frost their accounting with thick layers of bullshit. So, perhaps you are right, mission costs may have just as much to do with ULA's inability to compete openly and honestly just as much as launch costs.
In a future where rovers of any level of sophistication capable of surviving in a harsh environment are cheap... Sure. We aren't headed towards such a future.
I disagree. Falcon Heavy can loft two third's as much into orbit as a Saturn V. A Falcon Heavy is more than an order of magnitude less expensive in today's dollars than a Saturn V. It is also important to note that the Falcon Heavy will likely be a brief stepping stone to the much more capable BFR.
We've not seen the results of these drastically lower costs and faster launch turnarounds in the market yet, but we will. Soon.
Yes, I do.
Fiction is what inspired humans to harness the atom for both nuclear power plants and nuclear weapons (H.G. Wells, "The World Set Free")
Fiction inspired the cell phone, the laser, earbuds, robots, and self driving cars.
Fiction is a form of literature. Literature explores and enhances the human condition.
I am prepared to explore the definition of humanity in both literature and in the real world. Are you?
Legacy launch costs were so high that Size, Weight and Power (SWaP) was everything. Putting cutting edge computing technology on a rover has never been a priority. These things are designed for reliability in harsh operating conditions and high radiation environments. Thus, to date rovers have been little more than marginally autonomous remote controlled science experiments.
The James Webb Space Telescope could have been made out of machined billets of stainless steel and use a concrete heat shield, launched on a Falcon Heavy, and been cheaper and faster than the current program - all due to legacy SWaP limitations. I'm not suggesting JWST is poorly designed. Congress and NASA have mangled the budget and timeline of JWST to the point that it's become an unmanageable nightmare.
Current planetary exploration missions like the Mars rovers have been designed around the SWaP available on the legacy launch platforms. It takes two Delta IV Heavy launches at $435 million each, or $870 million total, to put as much into orbit as a single $100 million Falcon heavy launch. BFR is just going to improve this calculation. Blue Origin will hopefully be successful in their reusable and low cost technology as well. A comparison of launch vehicles can be seen here.
What this means is that we should be able to litter the surface of Mars with more capable rovers in the not too distant future. More capability may come with shorter lifespans - or with service intervals. Why spend a fortune making something that will last a decade when a more capable system can be deployed and replaced for a fraction of the cost?
A human settlement on Mars will be able to make repairs and provide services and interact with rovers in ways that have never been possible, which will magnify the capabilities of both the rovers and the humans. Rovers send image and preliminary sensor data to the humans, who then request that the rovers return samples. The humans follow up with more detailed, harder to obtain samples, and perform analysis at more capable laboratories.
What people lose sight of is that rovers are highly specialized, and specialization is for insects.
Within one year on the surface of Mars the permanent presence of humans will yield orders of magnitude more scientific data than has been gathered in all the 42 years since the Viking program.
That's rather short sighted of you. If I invest in a rather expensive piece of technology that has the capability to be self-aware, I'd like to be able to have a conversation with "it" regarding it's health, maintenance, and mission priorities.
I suggest you watch Bicentennial Man, based on an Asimov story: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0...
"I, Robot" is another good one. So is "Terminator".
If NASA is to survive as the ensuing space age develops, they'll have to become independent from the erratic whims of Congress. I'm not sure that's possible, but I can't fault them for trying.
Unless NASA sells their interest in the ISS to a private entity, anything launched from the US and authorized to dock to the ISS will be a NASA flight. It might be contracted from Boeing or SpaceX, but it will be NASA coordinated and controlled in cooperation with the Russian and EU partners. Thus, if NASA does sell seats to ISS, it will almost certainly not depend on SLS.
Spaceflight will always be risky, and there will be failures. The recent Russian Soyuz launch failure highlights this, and ironically, is positive publicity for good engineering. The Soyuz rocket blew up, but the Soyuz capsule returned safely, along with the crew. The SpaceX Crewed Dragon Capsule and Boeing CST-100 Starliner will have similar launch abort systems and good survival capability. A lot of unfortunate lessons were learned from the shuttle program, and comparisons of a well engineered capsule or Dreamchaser-type system to the shuttle are unwarranted.
So far the most promising commercial space venture to replace or compete with the ISS seems to be Bigelow Aerospace and their commercial space station. Their BA 2100 expandable module is truly massive, and interestingly seems to fit with launch capabilities of the SpaceX BFR rocket, as well as the SLS, it it gets built.
I can't see NASA ever owning launch capability to compete with the likes of SpaceX or Blue Origin, but I can see them owning and controlling destinations in Earth orbit. For commercial operations NASA may evolve into, or merge with the likes of the FAA for safety and regulatory oversight.
Things will get really interesting when commercial space operations can leave all that behind and stake their claims in on the Moon and in lunar orbit, and of course, on Mars. I don't think NASA will be in the drivers seat by then. They've been hobbled by Congress for far too long and were never designed to be a commercially competitive entity.
I cancelled my land line and block and ignore callers not in my contact list.
T-mobile also tracks and blocks reported spammers, which does seem to have helped.
However, if cell phone spam continues or worsens, then I'll just revert to voip services, email, and a UPS or FedEx envelope.
To hell with them all, spammers and politicians alike. In fact, during elections they are pretty much one in the same.
You are reading way too much into my comment. Please read a bit more into what I said here:
Forcing society to pay for the elderly and handicapped is great, but if your choices make you handicapped, then that's on you, not me.
You are glossing over the above when you say:
And based on what you're saying, such a person deserves nothing.
That wasn't what I was saying at all.
Good social protections for the handicapped and elderly is the hallmark of any civilized society. My initial rant was targeting only those who do nothing to care for themselves, then expect society to bare the full cost of their healthcare, all while idling in traffic and raging against rude cyclists.
The whole point of my post was to discuss personal responsibility for one's health, and the social cost for ignoring it. I do not believe anyone would be so foolish as to actually try to chip humans, and I agree, I cannot imagine people being so foolish as to give up so much privacy for nothing more than free universal healthcare.
It's not like the road to hell is paved with financial incentives or anything ...
Please note my original post never said anything about being obese, only about exercise and an attempt to live healthy. The post you responded to was commenting that people spend more effort trying to feel good about themselves than actually trying to be healthy.
I suggest you stop projecting your own personal failings onto the world around you and take responsibility for your own weight and body image issues.
If you cannot seem to lose weight despite a reasonable level of exercise and healthy eating, then have a full thyroid panel performed, do a better job recognizing and manage your type 2 diabetes, and identify any other medical conditions.
Chances are you simply eat too many carbs. Or maybe your TSH is a double digit number and your T4 levels are on the bottom end of the scale, in which case you'll gain weight by just looking at food. This is a very easy condition to correct. Regardless, daily exercise, which was all I was advocating, will still improve your health significantly, no matter how obese you are.
In that case, DanDD, why not chip everyone for mandatory monitoring and execute a death sentence to anyone who violates the rules. This could be carried out easily and inexpensively by a simple poison capsule triggered by the monitoring software locally. No expensive data collection and no burden to society. Think of all that precious money of yours saved from the waste of those deadbeats!
I guess it's easy to be a philosopher on /. Perhaps you should spend more time thinking about the real problem and less about your own selfishness and petty jealousy.
I'm advocating that people take some measurable responsibility for keeping themselves healthy, rather than expecting society to bare the full cost and burden for an individual's health.
I'm also suggesting that if an individual meets some level of expectation of an attempt at healthy living and exercise, that society bare the full burden of healthcare for them.
Nowhere did I suggest that anyone kill anyone. It is interesting that you equate letting someone reap the rewards of poor choices with being executed.
Since you seem to prefer finger pointing and sensationalism, here, let me help:
DanDD promotes socially accelerated suicide.
I suspect you'd be equally unhappy with any policy that restricts people from making any choice that has negative repercussions, so I'm not going to argue with you.
I will, however, point out that I've not advocated that anyone kill anyone. I'm simply suggesting that if people decide to commit suicide in slow motion, that the rest of society not be asked to pay for it.
The easy way is a race to the bottom. Nothing about my suggestion is easy, nor was it philosophical. This and every society needs to accept that there are costs for everything, and that our ability to pay is finite.
My sophomoric little plan above would pay full healthcare for _anyone_ that made a basic attempt to stay healthy, rich or poor. This is _health_ care. Not wealth redistribution. Not a tax. It's about _health_, and that's all.
Forcing society to pay for the elderly and handicapped is great, but if your choices make you handicapped
debilitating mental illness, parkinson, alzheimer's
Wouldn't those things all be considered a handicap? This is what social programs are for, this is why we force people to pay taxes, so that we can care for those who cannot care for themselves. I thought it was rather obvious in my wording above, but I guess not, so I'll state it a different way:
As a society we should put great effort into caring for those who cannot care for themselves. Likewise, we should put great effort into encouraging everyone that can to care for themselves so that they do not become a burden to society. Those that choose to become a burden should not be rewarded for doing so.
...why do they get run over by cars ?
Asks someone with the name LordHighExecutioner. Oh, the irony :-p
Forcing society to pay for the elderly and handicapped is great, but if your choices make you handicapped
Such a handicap wouldn't exactly be a choice, would it?
However, I've seen wheelchair bound people propel themselves quite far and quite well with the muscles that they can use, so... exercise anyway, in any way that you can. Swimming might be a good choice.
Forcing society to pay for the elderly and handicapped is great, but if your choices make you handicapped
If the cancer wasn't the result of a choice - i.e. - you didn't smoke excessively and made some reasonable attempt to be healthy, then it should be fully covered until you are cured, or you die despite all efforts to save you.
To hell with my karma.
Yep, cyclists frequently break traffic laws, which helps them go faster through congested traffic. But, after having bicycle commuted for several years, rude cycling is not the major factor in reduced commute times. Taking up less space and moving continuously while cars idle is what saves the time. I've crossed intersections, waiting for green lights, with scores of pedestrians and other cyclists, all crossing at the same time. Parallel asynchronous flows work with pedestrians and cyclists, not so much with cars, especially in dense cities. And car drivers typically break just as many traffic laws as cyclists, just different laws: speeding, changing lanes in an intersection, driving distracted/talking on cell phones, using bike lanes as turn lanes, etc. Pot, meet kettle.
Every election cycle healthcare becomes an issue, and increasingly CO2 & global warming, energy independence, and global conflicts over energy. Here's an idea: Chip humans and log their blood pressure and heart rate. In order to get any health insurance, your log must show some reasonable level of aerobic exercise - 4 to 6 hours per week, for starters. You are too busy, too important, and don't have the time for this? Fine, pay for your own healthcare. All of it, including vision and dental. No exercise for 1 week - probation. No exercise for 1 month, no coverage, for anything. Probationary coverage resumes the first day you can show a week's worth of exercise, which can be done in half a day. Full coverage after a consistent month of reasonable exercise. A brisk walk per day is plenty good enough. For many, using stairs instead of the elevator would do it. If you exercise, healthcare should be very prompt and comprehensive. The real goal is to get fat, lazy people off their ass and moving around in something other than an SUV.
Is this socialist, bordering on fascist? Yep. But trying to get universal healthcare for a population that doesn't care about their own health is pulling money out of my pocket to keep some twinkie eating lard-ass alive for a few extra years, and that's just as wrong. Forcing society to pay for the elderly and handicapped is great, but if your choices make you handicapped, then that's on you, not me.
I'll take the rude cyclists anywhere, any day, over the lazy, whiny, entitled little bitches. You know who you are.
Please provide citations to substantiate your assertion that any Tesla factory is failing to perform, or that Tesla has hired bad people.
From the 30 seconds of investigation I've found, Tesla does seem to be meeting production targets, although it has taken longer than anticipated. Tesla's production targets have always been very aggressive:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/j...
Tesla does seem to be succeeding where many short sellers have been predicting failure.
The production facility in a giant tent in the parking lot was the idea of a Tesla engineer. That gentleman was recently promoted because his idea is paying off.
Elon has also personally hired the engineers at SpaceX, so he does seem to be doing something right in building and managing a good team, so your comment is a little confusing.
Are you sure you aren't just a bitter short-seller? I see that TSLA hit 355 today, nearing it's all time high. So whatever you think about Tesla's failures in CEO management and hiring, the market seems to be rather happy with Tesla overall.