As the article said, the "long term trend" is actually warming more per decade. Only when you take a shorter term, starting with an exceptionally hot year does the trend get lost in the short term noise. People dwell on the cold winter, but many parts of the world such as Australia are hotter than normal. It was 5 or maybe 10 years ago that one scientist replied in an interview that rather than just getting warmer, we'd see much more varied and extreme weather. Hotter hot, and colder cold, wet periods offset with drought in other areas, but the long term trend would be ever upwards until the cold spells would be no lower than the current average. Last winter here in MI it was 20 to 30 degrees above normal for most of the winter and we along with N. Dakota had record rainfall. Still the deniers pick the cold spells as proof and those pro warming pick the hot spells. It is the long term trend that is important, not whether we have a hot or cold year or two. The long term is figured on a running 30 year average. Shorter than that and the average can get lost in the short term noise. These cold spells were predicted, long ago in the global warming scheme. It's unfortunate that they are using global warming for more taxes. Carbon credit and carbon taxes are one of the main reasons many say it has to be a hoax.
And officers, whether active or retired are supposed to know how to de-escilate these situations. We don't know why the guy retired. It might have no been for reaching retirement age. Many times people in these high stress, high risk professions are "retired" because of "other reasons".
"No Guns" areas are more prone to crime than those that allow guns. The only areas where I'd not carry, or avoid, are those such as lrgal buildings,(court house, police stationd,) or bars. Those are defined by law. Each state, or town is different so caveat emptor. I'd avoid the anti gun policies of some chains as well, but there I do not use their services either. OTOH I don't purchase Sony since the Root Kit fiasco, but thats for a different reason. I'm probably remember how Sony screwed computer user, destroyed operating systems, and only had to replace the CDs.
Ever see someone die accidentally or on purpose? Some one you knew? It's an experience you'll never forget! It's an experience that will likely change your life and the way you respond to death the rest of your life. I watched an airplane crash and I was so close, I had to turn away and kneel because of the heat and I knew the guy who was in the center of that fireball. Yes, it changed me, but there was a short term response and a quite different long term response. At first, I thought I'd never want to go to another air show, but that only lasted for a day and now I'm back at it. OTOH, I view the aerobatics differently. Not with fear, but with a knowledge of what can happen. This was an accident, but a person's responses are similar to murder, including sense of loss and anger. The same thing happens to some people like was mentioned earlier. Police, first responders, Doctors, nurses, and soldiers. You develop a bit of dark humor, particularly if you want to keep your sanity. This is foreign to the average person and particularly those brought up under and in the Protective, Progressive culture in today's over protective, PC schools. Much of our survival and ability to deal with adversity comes from experiences in early life. When kids are protected from speech they might find offensive, or information on different religions, they are not prepared for real life experiences and failures. Nor are they prepared to handle/suppress their own, natural violent feelings toward actions and words that offend them. This in itself often leads to violent actions. It sounds counter intuitive, but over protection and preventing children from ideas and speech which differs from their beliefs can lead to violent behavior later in life. Look at the kid who is pleading that his parents never taught him right from wrong, yet his statements show he's learned to play the system and escape manslaughter from killing 4 people while DUI. I think they call it afluenza.
See: thisisham.com/smh-rich-teen-kills-four-people-while-drunk-driving-and-receives-no-prision-time/ I have this up on a different computer so I hope I typed it correctly. If not just do a search on the topic.
Those who commit these horrific crimes and the terrific media attention encourages others to seek the same kind of attention. Where the woman shot the guy planning on another attention grabbing headline put a chilling effect on those thinking along those lines. It's a crime that the media give these events, little or no attention. It seems to me like they want more horrific disasters, rather than fixing the society that rewards the Psychos with attention grabbing headlines and days, or weeks worth of publicity. Yes the story should make headlines without the perps name ever being mentioned and then the story dropped. Unfortunately the public eats these stories up and wants every detail no mater how small. Again, they are creating an atmosphere favorable to encouraging more of the same. So the readers and viewers are also guilty of encouraging some nut job to repeat the crime.
In Britain, you get stabbed, or hacked to death while people stand around and watch as in the soldier who was hacked up while a crowd stood around watching and then talked with the perpetrators afterwords. We have had a drastic decrease in all types of violent crime since the 1950's.
"according to official FBI and U.S. Department of Justice reports, the rates of violent crime in the U.S. are now at their lowest level in 40 years? " and "violent crime rates of 2010 were 1/3 the rates of 1994"! That's just in 16 years and with high jobless rates and an economy in the tank.
That and it's been shown (as others have posted) that crime has gone down where more people are licensed to carry. Also in the same period where violent crime has been reduced, the number of firearms has tripled or quadrupled to somewhere around 200 to 300 million privately owned firearms here in the states. The media jumps on nut cases like this, but ignore the cases where a private citizen prevented a crime, or a crime was prevented when the intended victim was save just by having a firearm with out firing a shot. The number saved is many times the number killed, but those stories are not considered news worthy and are contrary to the message the media wishes to convey.
After the first shot is fired and the adrenalin rush hits, your fine motor control is gone. Most people including cops are lucky to hit the side of a car once someone takes a shot at them. You may be "cool hand luke" but that adrenalin dump is likely beyond your control.
Not long after that there was anothe movie theater incident that only a few of the mainstream media covered. A guy started shooting and a woman with a CCW Dropped him, quite likely saving many lives.
1: Having a cell phone turned on in the theater?
2: Having the phone turned on?
3: Answerinc calls?
4: Making calls?
5: Talking on the phone?
6: Taking a phone into the theater?
7: And of course, Texting in there?
Here I formatted this and / dot will throw it all away.
OTOH: I find noisy gunfire a bit anoying as well! And another OTOH Someone (another patron) who carries might put a quick and permanent stop to the noise!.
Some years ago, when Global Warming was becoming recognized by the scientific community, a scientist was asked in an interview how global warming (GW) would manifest itself (paraphrased). His reply was that instead of a steady increase in temperature he warned that GW would present us with lots of weather extremes. A warning if you will that although the USA in home to the most violent weather we would see increasing extremes with hot and cold spells, wet and dry, with an increase in strong tornadoes and hurricanes. . IOW we would see see hotter summers and colder winters at times, but the long term average would show a gradual increase. Eventually the coldest spells would not exceed the current average lows. So the current frigid weather, which isn't really all that cold in most areas if you're over 40 and is to be expected. It was forecast to be a part of GW quite a few years back. Contrary to news and comics, there is little irony in the current cold spell or the ship trapped in the Antarctic ice. It only shows the lack of knowledge of those calling it so.
I don't find green veggies and others all that expensive in Midland. You do have to shop carefully, but a nice salad once a day isn't out of the budget, even though Iwe're both retired. I guess everything is relative.and a lot depends on choice.
Ever wonder why there are subsidies to pay for land not in production? That came about back in the 40's and 50's when there were surpluses of crops and the prices were so low, the small farms could not survive. I say small. A 100 acres might just be enough to make it, but the big farm of over 300 acres or more were the only ones that could have survived and even that is doubtful as it cost more to grow the crops than selling the harvest would yield. The idea behind those subsidies was to keep the farm land available for farming and not have it sold off for housing development. Had they not had supports "back then" food prices would be higher than they are now as there would be shortages. Back then, approximately 40% of families lived on farm. Now it's about 1% or less. Even with supports, the small farms were gobbled up by the larger ones and conglomerates. Even large industries own vast amounts of farm land today. The supports are still needed, but like many of the entitlements the way the are issued and to who needs to be revised. The wide spread use of supports did keep "some" land from development, but led to the development of the huge conglomerates. There are still families farming 600 or a 1000 acres, but they are having a hard time competing with the conglomerates who also control who can sell what and seed has been engineered so it's only good for one season and the resulting harvest will not germinate. OTOH the seed producers require their customers to sign contracts that they will not use second generation seed.
Weather, Politics, Government, Socialism. You only need go back one generation, let alone two or three, to see mistakes repeated, history rewritten to suit the currant trends and we do it over and over. If you are over 40, you look at the forecasts and say, so what. This is nothing new, yet weather stations, government, and people are crying catastrophe is upon us. Dress for the weather, Prep your car and home for winter as we did 40 years ago. The calm, moderate weather we've experienced for not just the last 40 years, it includes that terrible weather as far back as a century, or a bit more is not normal. Even the "Global warming” scientists warned that with the warming trend, we'd see much wider swings in temperature with records being set for hot and cold temps. We were warned, yet the deniers point to a year or two of frigid weather as proof that AGW doesn't exist, while the proponents point to the hot spells as proof it does exist. Both ignore the opposite extremes elsewhere on the globe. If we haven't seen something for 10 years, it must be abnormal. Look at history! It's why they teach it. It's why modern history is being rewritten. It's our recent weather that's not normal, Socialism was proven not to work, The first colony in America was based on communism and half the colony starved until they went to capitalism. We Liberated Millions in WWII, yet history is now ignoring the good that was done. They dwell on the hundreds of thousands killed with the atomic weapons, Not the many times that killed with the fire bombings og Dresden and Tokyo, not the millions saved (civilian and military) because we didn't have invade Japan. We have gone to extremes with political correctness allowing Islamic Sharia law in locals and teaching that it's extremists, not moderates causing the terrorism, yet they teach convert or die and to them the moderates are in the same category as us. The belief that the Israelis were not slaughtered by the millions in the Holocaust is being spread. I had a cousin that was there. It did happen. It's not just the weather that is misrepresented, It's any history that doesn't fit our modern ideals. Like The Muslims teaching/indoctrinating the very young with repetition, when our generations are raise to think the current situation, or beliefs are normal, it only takes a generation to forget reality be it weather, religion, or politics.
Here they have to pay retail, although that may soon change.
Unfortunately a large enough installation to go off grid is very expensive and a long way from reaching parity, Two years ago it was nearly $50,000 abd our home is only 1200 sq ft. OTOH it is very efficient. Even with incentives, I'd be looking at over $30,000 and my house is oriented N/S instead of E/W. We also have zoning that is not solar friendly.
It's more than that as they usually have to "buy back" the power at a premium. Often as much as they can sell it for. IOW here they are forced to purchase at least 10% of their power at retail.. That cuts deeply into their earnings, particularly if they use natural gas which has dropped to near 10% of its cost a few ywars ago. So that means the consumer supplied power costs them many times the cost of generating their own, and as much as they can sell it for.
Just a few years back a large wid farm was built in Wisconsib or MN. The state agreed to purchase any excess power. Turned out, there wasn't enough grid capacity to handle it. The state was stuck with some huge bills for electricity that no one could use..
We were lucky as some major users of electricity in the area closed up shop, leaving ready made grid capacitu for new installations.
There are many corporation with thousands of computer each. The medical industry and in particular hospitals and clinics with custom software based on. or integrated into XP and many of these are little more than a year old. Industry tends to be a bit pragmatic. If what they have, does what they want, they aren't going to change. They hjave a lot of protection between them and the outside world. I was a project manager at a large, multinational corporation. We had thousands of PCs. We only changed software when we changed hardware. Both were multi-million dollar projects. Add to that, training many thousands of employees (most of whom knew little about computers) and we can add another million or two. Then there is the economy. Why on earth woul anyone expect companies to spend millions to upgrade when it adds nothing to the bottom line in an economy where every cent counts? As for that, If what you have, does what you want, why change. As a consultant, that is my first question. Or in the old parlayance, If it ain't broke, don't fix it.
I would expect there will be millions of PCs staying on XP for years and MS's reputation still rests on that old, outdated OS. If it causes a massive problem, they will be the ones to take the blame with the fallout costing them far more than continued support of the old system.
30 years ago we wouldn't have paid much attention to a broken CFL if we'd had them. That was before the regulation hysteria about mercury. Break a thermometer? Just sweep the mercury into your hand and dump it in the wastebasket. Smart? No it wasn't, but neither is the current hysteria over mercury. Generating the extra power used by incandescents releases several times the amount of mercury into the air that is contained in an equivalent CFL.
Every light in my house is either fluorescent or CFL. The CFL has no where near the mercury of those 4 and 8 foot tubes.
I've only had to replace 1 CFL in the last two years except for the big ones in the unheated garage.
We wouldn't have evacuated the room if we broke one then and we wouldn't now.
No, I don't like the govt telling me I have to buy them, but I do so without their heavy hand.
LEDs are great, but don't neglect the large amount of nasty chemicals used in the semiconductor industry.
I worked in that industry for over 30 years and there is definitely pollution associated with any solid state device. Many of them, carcinogenic.
Except for serious pre conditions the insurance is extremely expensive (if you qualify...Not every one does) and unbelieveable co pays of as much as $10,000. So the "everyone is covered is a myth and preconditions are often too expensive for the needy so it's likely many preconditions will remain un insured. There have been quite a few examples of that on the Net. One young mother with MS had insurance for a few hundred a month that covered her treatments, but because of an ACA technicality she was canceled. The only insurance she could get through the exchange was over a thousand a month with a 10,000 co pay and no help from the government. She is now without insurance as it would cost more than what she makes, so she still has to pay the fine and now has no insurance. Young people who were expected to support the system can just pay a minimal fine and fogo the insurance.
The ACA does not fix anything. It does raise medical cost considerably, Raises insurance rates by 50% or more...much more in many cases. It says pre existing conditions must be covered, but it allows the insurance companies to tack on the expected cost. So if you can't afford the exorbinate cost of the new insurance you no longer have coverage. The millions losing insurance, did not lose sub standard insurance. They lost insurance that didn't cover services they didn't need and paid well for things they did need. Read what the ACA really covers and costs It's not at all what the administration claims.
What corporation in their right mind would put their data on some one el;se's servers? That opens it to government snooping as if it weere public data according to the administrations interpetation. It also removes it from their direct control.and it would need to be stored in duplicate at different sites, with archival backup. I coud never recommend that anyone store their data like that, let alone a coreporation. Like the power grid. It opens up many more avenues for failure and data compromise.
Generally there is no need for that if the person has a living will. That is typically one of the first thing the hospital asks when you are admitted with a life threatening illness. Stroke, Heart attack, cancer, etc. A living will can state, No life prolonging procedures so you don't have to spend your last days in pain.
My wife's father was in his 90's and sharp right up until his body began shutting down. He knew it was the sign of the approaching end. He had a living will. All they did for several weeks in the hospital was keep him comfortable till the end. Other than that he was given no medication.
In most of those cases, if they remove life support, or treatment, the end comes quickly.
Having lived through McCarthyism, I used to feel that way, but when I see the direction our Politically correct country is taking , I'd take McCarthy over the DHS any day even, if he was a nut job. He was far more rational and consistent than DHS.
Slashdot Mirror
As the article said, the "long term trend" is actually warming more per decade. Only when you take a shorter term, starting with an exceptionally hot year does the trend get lost in the short term noise. People dwell on the cold winter, but many parts of the world such as Australia are hotter than normal. It was 5 or maybe 10 years ago that one scientist replied in an interview that rather than just getting warmer, we'd see much more varied and extreme weather. Hotter hot, and colder cold, wet periods offset with drought in other areas, but the long term trend would be ever upwards until the cold spells would be no lower than the current average. Last winter here in MI it was 20 to 30 degrees above normal for most of the winter and we along with N. Dakota had record rainfall. Still the deniers pick the cold spells as proof and those pro warming pick the hot spells. It is the long term trend that is important, not whether we have a hot or cold year or two. The long term is figured on a running 30 year average. Shorter than that and the average can get lost in the short term noise. These cold spells were predicted, long ago in the global warming scheme. It's unfortunate that they are using global warming for more taxes. Carbon credit and carbon taxes are one of the main reasons many say it has to be a hoax.
And officers, whether active or retired are supposed to know how to de-escilate these situations. We don't know why the guy retired. It might have no been for reaching retirement age. Many times people in these high stress, high risk professions are "retired" because of "other reasons".
"No Guns" areas are more prone to crime than those that allow guns. The only areas where I'd not carry, or avoid, are those such as lrgal buildings,(court house, police stationd,) or bars. Those are defined by law. Each state, or town is different so caveat emptor. I'd avoid the anti gun policies of some chains as well, but there I do not use their services either. OTOH I don't purchase Sony since the Root Kit fiasco, but thats for a different reason. I'm probably remember how Sony screwed computer user, destroyed operating systems, and only had to replace the CDs.
Ever see someone die accidentally or on purpose? Some one you knew? It's an experience you'll never forget! It's an experience that will likely change your life and the way you respond to death the rest of your life. I watched an airplane crash and I was so close, I had to turn away and kneel because of the heat and I knew the guy who was in the center of that fireball. Yes, it changed me, but there was a short term response and a quite different long term response. At first, I thought I'd never want to go to another air show, but that only lasted for a day and now I'm back at it. OTOH, I view the aerobatics differently. Not with fear, but with a knowledge of what can happen. This was an accident, but a person's responses are similar to murder, including sense of loss and anger. The same thing happens to some people like was mentioned earlier. Police, first responders, Doctors, nurses, and soldiers. You develop a bit of dark humor, particularly if you want to keep your sanity. This is foreign to the average person and particularly those brought up under and in the Protective, Progressive culture in today's over protective, PC schools. Much of our survival and ability to deal with adversity comes from experiences in early life. When kids are protected from speech they might find offensive, or information on different religions, they are not prepared for real life experiences and failures. Nor are they prepared to handle/suppress their own, natural violent feelings toward actions and words that offend them. This in itself often leads to violent actions. It sounds counter intuitive, but over protection and preventing children from ideas and speech which differs from their beliefs can lead to violent behavior later in life. Look at the kid who is pleading that his parents never taught him right from wrong, yet his statements show he's learned to play the system and escape manslaughter from killing 4 people while DUI. I think they call it afluenza. See: thisisham.com/smh-rich-teen-kills-four-people-while-drunk-driving-and-receives-no-prision-time/ I have this up on a different computer so I hope I typed it correctly. If not just do a search on the topic. Those who commit these horrific crimes and the terrific media attention encourages others to seek the same kind of attention. Where the woman shot the guy planning on another attention grabbing headline put a chilling effect on those thinking along those lines. It's a crime that the media give these events, little or no attention. It seems to me like they want more horrific disasters, rather than fixing the society that rewards the Psychos with attention grabbing headlines and days, or weeks worth of publicity. Yes the story should make headlines without the perps name ever being mentioned and then the story dropped. Unfortunately the public eats these stories up and wants every detail no mater how small. Again, they are creating an atmosphere favorable to encouraging more of the same. So the readers and viewers are also guilty of encouraging some nut job to repeat the crime.
In Britain, you get stabbed, or hacked to death while people stand around and watch as in the soldier who was hacked up while a crowd stood around watching and then talked with the perpetrators afterwords. We have had a drastic decrease in all types of violent crime since the 1950's. "according to official FBI and U.S. Department of Justice reports, the rates of violent crime in the U.S. are now at their lowest level in 40 years? " and "violent crime rates of 2010 were 1/3 the rates of 1994"! That's just in 16 years and with high jobless rates and an economy in the tank. That and it's been shown (as others have posted) that crime has gone down where more people are licensed to carry. Also in the same period where violent crime has been reduced, the number of firearms has tripled or quadrupled to somewhere around 200 to 300 million privately owned firearms here in the states. The media jumps on nut cases like this, but ignore the cases where a private citizen prevented a crime, or a crime was prevented when the intended victim was save just by having a firearm with out firing a shot. The number saved is many times the number killed, but those stories are not considered news worthy and are contrary to the message the media wishes to convey.
After the first shot is fired and the adrenalin rush hits, your fine motor control is gone. Most people including cops are lucky to hit the side of a car once someone takes a shot at them. You may be "cool hand luke" but that adrenalin dump is likely beyond your control.
Not long after that there was anothe movie theater incident that only a few of the mainstream media covered. A guy started shooting and a woman with a CCW Dropped him, quite likely saving many lives.
1: Having a cell phone turned on in the theater? 2: Having the phone turned on? 3: Answerinc calls? 4: Making calls? 5: Talking on the phone? 6: Taking a phone into the theater? 7: And of course, Texting in there? Here I formatted this and / dot will throw it all away. OTOH: I find noisy gunfire a bit anoying as well! And another OTOH Someone (another patron) who carries might put a quick and permanent stop to the noise!.
Some years ago, when Global Warming was becoming recognized by the scientific community, a scientist was asked in an interview how global warming (GW) would manifest itself (paraphrased). His reply was that instead of a steady increase in temperature he warned that GW would present us with lots of weather extremes. A warning if you will that although the USA in home to the most violent weather we would see increasing extremes with hot and cold spells, wet and dry, with an increase in strong tornadoes and hurricanes. . IOW we would see see hotter summers and colder winters at times, but the long term average would show a gradual increase. Eventually the coldest spells would not exceed the current average lows. So the current frigid weather, which isn't really all that cold in most areas if you're over 40 and is to be expected. It was forecast to be a part of GW quite a few years back. Contrary to news and comics, there is little irony in the current cold spell or the ship trapped in the Antarctic ice. It only shows the lack of knowledge of those calling it so.
Comparing a soft drink with a food isn't a valid comparison..
I don't find green veggies and others all that expensive in Midland. You do have to shop carefully, but a nice salad once a day isn't out of the budget, even though Iwe're both retired. I guess everything is relative.and a lot depends on choice.
Ever wonder why there are subsidies to pay for land not in production? That came about back in the 40's and 50's when there were surpluses of crops and the prices were so low, the small farms could not survive. I say small. A 100 acres might just be enough to make it, but the big farm of over 300 acres or more were the only ones that could have survived and even that is doubtful as it cost more to grow the crops than selling the harvest would yield. The idea behind those subsidies was to keep the farm land available for farming and not have it sold off for housing development. Had they not had supports "back then" food prices would be higher than they are now as there would be shortages. Back then, approximately 40% of families lived on farm. Now it's about 1% or less. Even with supports, the small farms were gobbled up by the larger ones and conglomerates. Even large industries own vast amounts of farm land today. The supports are still needed, but like many of the entitlements the way the are issued and to who needs to be revised. The wide spread use of supports did keep "some" land from development, but led to the development of the huge conglomerates. There are still families farming 600 or a 1000 acres, but they are having a hard time competing with the conglomerates who also control who can sell what and seed has been engineered so it's only good for one season and the resulting harvest will not germinate. OTOH the seed producers require their customers to sign contracts that they will not use second generation seed.
Weather, Politics, Government, Socialism. You only need go back one generation, let alone two or three, to see mistakes repeated, history rewritten to suit the currant trends and we do it over and over. If you are over 40, you look at the forecasts and say, so what. This is nothing new, yet weather stations, government, and people are crying catastrophe is upon us. Dress for the weather, Prep your car and home for winter as we did 40 years ago. The calm, moderate weather we've experienced for not just the last 40 years, it includes that terrible weather as far back as a century, or a bit more is not normal. Even the "Global warming” scientists warned that with the warming trend, we'd see much wider swings in temperature with records being set for hot and cold temps. We were warned, yet the deniers point to a year or two of frigid weather as proof that AGW doesn't exist, while the proponents point to the hot spells as proof it does exist. Both ignore the opposite extremes elsewhere on the globe. If we haven't seen something for 10 years, it must be abnormal. Look at history! It's why they teach it. It's why modern history is being rewritten. It's our recent weather that's not normal, Socialism was proven not to work, The first colony in America was based on communism and half the colony starved until they went to capitalism. We Liberated Millions in WWII, yet history is now ignoring the good that was done. They dwell on the hundreds of thousands killed with the atomic weapons, Not the many times that killed with the fire bombings og Dresden and Tokyo, not the millions saved (civilian and military) because we didn't have invade Japan. We have gone to extremes with political correctness allowing Islamic Sharia law in locals and teaching that it's extremists, not moderates causing the terrorism, yet they teach convert or die and to them the moderates are in the same category as us. The belief that the Israelis were not slaughtered by the millions in the Holocaust is being spread. I had a cousin that was there. It did happen. It's not just the weather that is misrepresented, It's any history that doesn't fit our modern ideals. Like The Muslims teaching/indoctrinating the very young with repetition, when our generations are raise to think the current situation, or beliefs are normal, it only takes a generation to forget reality be it weather, religion, or politics.
Here they have to pay retail, although that may soon change. Unfortunately a large enough installation to go off grid is very expensive and a long way from reaching parity, Two years ago it was nearly $50,000 abd our home is only 1200 sq ft. OTOH it is very efficient. Even with incentives, I'd be looking at over $30,000 and my house is oriented N/S instead of E/W. We also have zoning that is not solar friendly.
It's more than that as they usually have to "buy back" the power at a premium. Often as much as they can sell it for. IOW here they are forced to purchase at least 10% of their power at retail.. That cuts deeply into their earnings, particularly if they use natural gas which has dropped to near 10% of its cost a few ywars ago. So that means the consumer supplied power costs them many times the cost of generating their own, and as much as they can sell it for.
Just a few years back a large wid farm was built in Wisconsib or MN. The state agreed to purchase any excess power. Turned out, there wasn't enough grid capacity to handle it. The state was stuck with some huge bills for electricity that no one could use.. We were lucky as some major users of electricity in the area closed up shop, leaving ready made grid capacitu for new installations.
There are many corporation with thousands of computer each. The medical industry and in particular hospitals and clinics with custom software based on. or integrated into XP and many of these are little more than a year old. Industry tends to be a bit pragmatic. If what they have, does what they want, they aren't going to change. They hjave a lot of protection between them and the outside world. I was a project manager at a large, multinational corporation. We had thousands of PCs. We only changed software when we changed hardware. Both were multi-million dollar projects. Add to that, training many thousands of employees (most of whom knew little about computers) and we can add another million or two. Then there is the economy. Why on earth woul anyone expect companies to spend millions to upgrade when it adds nothing to the bottom line in an economy where every cent counts? As for that, If what you have, does what you want, why change. As a consultant, that is my first question. Or in the old parlayance, If it ain't broke, don't fix it. I would expect there will be millions of PCs staying on XP for years and MS's reputation still rests on that old, outdated OS. If it causes a massive problem, they will be the ones to take the blame with the fallout costing them far more than continued support of the old system.
I've only had one car with stability control. It didn't seem any different than the 4WD SUV I'm drivinfg now, without stability control.
30 years ago we wouldn't have paid much attention to a broken CFL if we'd had them. That was before the regulation hysteria about mercury. Break a thermometer? Just sweep the mercury into your hand and dump it in the wastebasket. Smart? No it wasn't, but neither is the current hysteria over mercury. Generating the extra power used by incandescents releases several times the amount of mercury into the air that is contained in an equivalent CFL. Every light in my house is either fluorescent or CFL. The CFL has no where near the mercury of those 4 and 8 foot tubes. I've only had to replace 1 CFL in the last two years except for the big ones in the unheated garage. We wouldn't have evacuated the room if we broke one then and we wouldn't now. No, I don't like the govt telling me I have to buy them, but I do so without their heavy hand. LEDs are great, but don't neglect the large amount of nasty chemicals used in the semiconductor industry. I worked in that industry for over 30 years and there is definitely pollution associated with any solid state device. Many of them, carcinogenic.
Except for serious pre conditions the insurance is extremely expensive (if you qualify...Not every one does) and unbelieveable co pays of as much as $10,000. So the "everyone is covered is a myth and preconditions are often too expensive for the needy so it's likely many preconditions will remain un insured. There have been quite a few examples of that on the Net. One young mother with MS had insurance for a few hundred a month that covered her treatments, but because of an ACA technicality she was canceled. The only insurance she could get through the exchange was over a thousand a month with a 10,000 co pay and no help from the government. She is now without insurance as it would cost more than what she makes, so she still has to pay the fine and now has no insurance. Young people who were expected to support the system can just pay a minimal fine and fogo the insurance. The ACA does not fix anything. It does raise medical cost considerably, Raises insurance rates by 50% or more...much more in many cases. It says pre existing conditions must be covered, but it allows the insurance companies to tack on the expected cost. So if you can't afford the exorbinate cost of the new insurance you no longer have coverage. The millions losing insurance, did not lose sub standard insurance. They lost insurance that didn't cover services they didn't need and paid well for things they did need. Read what the ACA really covers and costs It's not at all what the administration claims.
What corporation in their right mind would put their data on some one el;se's servers? That opens it to government snooping as if it weere public data according to the administrations interpetation. It also removes it from their direct control.and it would need to be stored in duplicate at different sites, with archival backup. I coud never recommend that anyone store their data like that, let alone a coreporation. Like the power grid. It opens up many more avenues for failure and data compromise.
Generally there is no need for that if the person has a living will. That is typically one of the first thing the hospital asks when you are admitted with a life threatening illness. Stroke, Heart attack, cancer, etc. A living will can state, No life prolonging procedures so you don't have to spend your last days in pain. My wife's father was in his 90's and sharp right up until his body began shutting down. He knew it was the sign of the approaching end. He had a living will. All they did for several weeks in the hospital was keep him comfortable till the end. Other than that he was given no medication. In most of those cases, if they remove life support, or treatment, the end comes quickly.
It was far more free back then than now. We used to be the good guys.
Having lived through McCarthyism, I used to feel that way, but when I see the direction our Politically correct country is taking , I'd take McCarthy over the DHS any day even, if he was a nut job. He was far more rational and consistent than DHS.
I don't think your "Private" US medical records are private from the government.