Let's see if I can recall. Nazis and Red USSR communists are always evil. Vietam asians are generally bad. Japan WWII is bad, but afterward is good. China WWI & WWII is good and after WWII is neutral. France is never bad per se, but seeing as we were settled from England; well of course France or "the French" will always be slanted negatively. England is typically the good ole mother country except any games based from the Civil War backwards. Whenever we fight the English, we fight against evil unjust monarchs. Ever since the Desert Storm and/or Desert Shield, any nameless Middle East dictator has been a safe villian for the US or good military to invade and beat up. Now a days, its also Islam or unnamed "bad" muslims for the sake of our religious terror war. Oh, let's not forget any aliens. All aliens are always evil and must be destoried before they take over. Einstein is always the good German Allied Scientist. You can always tell who the good guys are based solely on which side Einstein is on.
How can you possibly not know whether "the entire Mideast conflict thing" is positive or negative? What more do you need to see to realize that it's abominably negative?
Well, we've seemed to mostly have cooled down from the 9/11 bit. Would we still feel a collective anger out for blood if we didn't go invade those two countries? I'm really more pissed that we are going end up bringing our military back and long term the conditions over there won't have changed. I'd be more interested if Iraq or Afghanistan had asked to be admitted to the US as a state. Either of those two countries joining the US as states would have been really good things taken in the long view. Well, end up bringing our military back and over the next 20 years or so Iraq will be the nicer version of Vietam that we constantly complain about. When I say positive or negative, I don't mean just economically expensive. I mean did we do actually anything useful while we were over there? We won't really be able to answer that until 20 years down the line, and even then we'd be split on the issue.
but, I don't think they would survive the loss of the dominance of MS Office. They can port Office to Apple, Linux, heck, Solaris if they wanted to....but if ODF takes off, and they now have to compete with Sun and IBM....seem to me that's a much bigger threat.
Nah, I think that MS could survive open document formats or an open OS quite fine. Open Office is only used in geek homes and the odd business. IBM, Apple, or Sun could write an office replacement, but they'd have to out do office. I kinda of think of MS sort of like Walmart. Walmart doesn't kill small business like MS doesn't kill word processors / offfice suites. If you really look, there are tons of smaller word processors or office suites out there right now. They aren't competing very well with Office though. The same can be said of the small businesses that are trying to out do Walmart at what it does best. If you look around though, there are just as many small busniesses that have survived Walmart just fine. When something better comes along, we start using it. Walmart and MS are better than any other local solutions. It's up to everyone else to out compete the number one company.
To me it means nuclear power and emission free transportation. If the science supports "meddling" with atmospheric properties (and I don't think it does in this case) then I don't have a problem with it to preserve our way of life.
Don't forget - you will always eat. You and I are rich. It is the poor who will starve when the price of food triples.
I was thinking about that the other day when reading about Mexican tortilla prices increasing by 400% over a short timespan. I just thought how I'd adjust if my McDonalds meal went from $6.37 to $19.11 or $25.48 per meal. I'd of course stop going to McDonalds. One of the reasons that I go there though, is that they are one of the cheapest lunch places for me to eat at other than bringing my own bag lunch. You only think that we are rich. Yes, we are wealty compared to the third world. I can afford a $6.37 lunch. I can't afford though if the price of my meals or gas goes up 300-400% over a few short months. I won't be making any additional income so something else will go first.
We must stop screwing with the ecosystems. When I hear of orbiting solar shields and massive projects to paint the desert, I get really scared because a scientist who really understands the delicate balance of the ecosystem would never dare to suggest such an idea. Only one who doesn't and is looking to make a buck and get on time for "saving the planet from global warming" would do it. These ideas will only result in causing more problems then they solve.
Give us an emergency and a Five Year Plan to fix it, and we'll either fix it or make a 20-100 year problem that's a lot worse. What's the worst thing that can happen? It's not like we are playing with the orbit of the Earth or anything important like that.;)
I've been on the fence about shopping at walmart for awhile. They're never my first choice, and I think I've only been shopping there about 5 times in the past year.
You aren't there target. Their target will go to Walmart 5 times within any given month. Heck, there are some times they go 5 times a week or day. You aren't even on their radar.
It's not extortion... Small independent businesses in rural and outlying areas don't have the buying power and shipping infrastructure that these multinational mega corps have. In other words, because Wal Mart buys 100,000 hammers in a year they get them for $5 a piece and only ya $.25 to have them shipped. The mom and pop store in Podunk, Nowhere (BFE) might only buy 100 hammers a year. Because they dont get a bulk rate, they have to pay $7 per hammer, and $.75 for shipping per hammer.
This is just an example but it goes to show that with massive pockets comes distribution and an ability to get bulk rates.
Hey, I live in Arkansas. I've traveled through alot of Podunk Nowhere Arkansas. The US Glue that holds the Arkansas small town together is the Walmart Supercenter and 3 various food places. In other states, small business doesn't know how to compete. In Arkansas, you start with farms, then add Walmart, then you add what farmers don't or won't buy from Walmart. (This is usually large pieces of farm equipement, home building stuff that you'd find at Lowes or Home Depot, or appliances that you only find at Sears.) I've seen people drive hour and half to the nearest Walmart/Sams and be thankful for reaching modern civilization when they get there. I can't wait until Walmart kills off all the truely unprofitable "small businesses" that are in most small towns out side of Arkansas. It'll help the economy as those business adjust to areas where Walmart isn't doing business or gasp actually successfully compete with Walmart. Walmart has been around for more than 20 years, and there are lots of small businesses in Arkansas. They just don't do what Walmart does best.
Now, when I don't know anything much about a particular product (e.g. toothpaste), I will choose the brand I recognise the least. If it works, I'll keep using it. If not, I'll switch to a slightly more familiar one. The ones that blare irritating advertising at me will be last on the list.
This is why I try to go for Sam's Choice or Great Value on as many products as possible. I've never seen an ad for either of those brands once other than the label on the store shelves.
Thankfully, climate scientists have not only already addressed this question but even written lay explanations [realclimate.org] about it. You can find plenty of other discussions about cosmic rays over on realclimate.org [realclimate.org] and they point out that there is considerable reason to discredit the cosmic ray explanation for global warming.
What disgusts me about this whole buisness is that whenever something like this comes up a bunch of people who can't be bothered to actually read the journal articles but think they are entitled to second guess the people who have pipe up and complain about how global warming is just a dogma. Like any topic you have a choice. You can either choose to learn enough about the subject to intelligently weigh the evidence, which in this case would mean keeping up with the actual scientific papers not just media summaries, or you can count on experts to analyze that evidence for you and reach your conclusion on the authority of those experts.
Um, but they could be gasp wrong or atleast underestimating comsic rays actual importance. Quick what's the difference between comsic rays and radition that we get from the sun? That the average slashdoter or slashdot troll can understand. You know what really disgusts me? That to be objective, I have to throw out our entire current research everything done after say 1950 and go back later to find non-political leaning sources. If climate research is so inexact that your average citizen can't understand it and keep current, we shouldn't depend on it for any political movements to change society. Ie. Climate Scientists could become your high priests that your lay population aren't allowed to know why just follow their directives on the future. Um, we live in a republic. If the science can't be reduced to sound bites, it'll be ignored by a large fraction of voters. Um, it doesn't take much sound bites to arguee it out in the media. The problem is that I've tried. It's too freaking difficult to stay remotely current with this topic. I've labeled the entire climate studying field as politically loaded and unusable for any of their output. I try for the long term sustain what resources we have and keep on doing what we've always done. The climate scientists need to dump the GW religious folks and start releasing information that the average voter/industry can use like weather or usable long term climate models. Until they can do that, I don't want to hear from them again. This is worse than evolution vs ID.
Before you people start screaming, "what do they expect us to do about cosmic rays??//?/?" Think. This isn't about "debunking" global warming, nor is it about fearmongering about it. It's about building more accurate climate models.
Forcefields.
O.k. We need selective forcefields because we really want that light from our sun. We might have to play a bit to turn the stars back on at night after our plantery shield is up.
Agreed, and that is why NASA should drop the "man on Mars" crap and refocus on our own biosphere.
I'm kinda different. I think all that biosphere monitoring crap should be spun off just to NOAA and let NASA work at 2 main things, looking at stars and near solar objects, and working at getting there. If we want to look at Earth and use that for weather/climate predication, that should be done and budgeted under NOAA instead of NASA so NOAAs budget could be raised while NASAs is lowered.
If there had been another planebomb, you'd use that to justify Bush getting even tougher. Just like you're surely cheerleading Bush's current escalation in Iraq. You zombie Republicans are so predictable.
No one believes that gibberish about fighting them there so we don't have to fight them here. Except maybe you, Anonymous Dick Cheney Coward.
Um, the only reason that the US is where we are at today is because "every" freaking major war except the civil and revolutionary wars were fought over there on their ground. The EU would is just now getting back to par with the US. They had to rebuild after WWI and WWII. It's been along time since we've had anything similiar. When we get into "war mode" in the US, we send the boys over there. We don't hide the women and kids in bunkers and perpare all the males to fight the invading forces. I think that we've been reacting to 9/11 in alot of negative directions. I don't know if the entire mideast military conflict thing is positive or negative. We needed to get some feeling of revenge out of our system. Did beating up those two countries get the collective feeling for revenge for 9/11 out of our system? I've run into more than a few that would have liked us to have nuked the mideast. That would be stupid idea, but feeling of anger at the mideast was there. They didn't care about terrorists; they just wanted all those that were causing this mess gone by the quickest possible means. (Actually a part of me feels that way, but I'd ban our "media" like CNN, Fox News, and MSNBC rather than the measures that we did take.)
Do you really think it was the car manufacturer's fault that you left the car unprotected, or worse, you handed the keys to an untrustworthy mechanic because he had a professional-looking shop? While I don't think the car's owner should be held criminally responsible, I think they unknowingly forfeited the car when they ignored their responsibility to keep it reasonably secure. Don't be surprised if the government starts fragging driverless cars once they've identified them.
Yes, it would be either the manufacturers or the governments fault.;) How is a consumer supposed to know a "fake" garage that looks exactly like a "real" garage and performs the same exact service? I'd say it'd be upto the government not the manufacturer to secure against this. All the manufacturer could do is keep a database of mechanics around the nation and the car could automatically drive to any one of those mechanics for service without the owners knowledge. (That's how computers work.) Most of us would be pissed if our car left without us telling it to or using any gas to drive there. We'd notice that. Well, if car could only be maintained at one of the manufacturer's mechanics then it'd be on that party if one of their contracted third party mechanic was a long term terrorist cell.
I'm not on this BS blaming the user. We are just now entering an era where anyone can comment on the service of any company and anyone else can easily find those opinions out. How would I know if my local McDonalds wasn't a McDonalds but run by Dr. Terror and he's been feeding me mind control drugs/ads whenever I eat there? It's the same basic concept. I as individual can't "know." I'd hope that the FBI, CIA, or NSA stops Dr. Terror before I'm mind controlled (Ghost in the Shell anyone) to be either a mad bomber, sniper, or commit random acts of terror. If the government doesn't know or find out about Dr. Terror until after I or other mind controlled masses start causing mayhem, it's a bit late. That's our modern spyware, adware, virus pattern except replace government with "freelance" anti-spyware, anti-ad, or anti-virsus companies.
As one designer suggests, 'navigating well-designed vehicles in the physical world... is vastly more compelling than steering a virtual vehicle in a computer-generated universe
Um, you can play with tons of different vehicles or tracks and terrain on video games, and it is near trival to play without cleaning or to even clean up. Do you know how much cleaning is required to drive that remote controlled car over the dirty clothes? Nope, that's just too much work. How much work is required setting up obstacle cources and then finishing it afterwords? I want holographic toys and quick. When the kids are done with them or its bed time, I want all the holograms to turn off and their room to be automatically cleaned.
The very notion of the adult sector claiming that they are somehow driving global DVD sales... that's a laughable notion at best. It really makes me wonder just how much drugs those guys shove up their nose in a day.
This comic applies: http://www.questionablecontent.net/view.php?comic= 815 Those guys have far too much sex and have a sexual over load. The only metaphor that we have for their experience is drug use. Its sad that oversexed individuals are viewed the same as drug users, but hey if that's how you want to look at them.
The third world has the majority of the human population and you begruge them a measly 1/3rd of the sustainable carbon buget while America, with 5% of the world population, emits 20% of all CO2? What about the fact that most enviromental damage happens as a result of 1st-world countries wanting 3rd world resourses? Does the International Decleration of Human Rights mean nothing to you? Are you seriously suggesting that we kill a huge number of people for the inequalities in the system that we imposed on them?
In short, Yes. Most definitely yes. If we could, we'd make the 3rd world pay entirely for our 1st world pollution control measures that they want us to do. The 3rd world doesn't have that kinda of capital though. Hey, it's not nice that we pull shit like this, but you asked what I'd expect. I don't want to pay.01$ more in taxes or increased cost of goods due to any pollution control measures that they want us to make. Now if we could make those teeming poor that are lucky to make $100 throughout a year pay for our projects, yes that's a good thing for us. What why are you looking at me like I'm evil. I'm being honest this is exactly what we'd do. I didn't say it was nice or fair or equal. I'm just being honest about what our population would do the rest if we had the ability to.
Playing devil's advocate, I think a bird flu pandemic is exactly what this planet needs right now. We've added a billion people and welcomed two billion+ populated nations to the industrialized world and we're destroying most of our natural resources. I think a pandemic that could potentially reduce this burden, especially in SE Asia where those countries seem hell bent on destroying the environment in just about every way. Call me sick, but I don't have faith in humanity to reel itself in when it comes to development and consuming more and more in the future. The only solution is fewer consumers.
Are you stupid or sick? We need south east asia and India! Now, Africa on the other hand can have 99% of its population die off, and we wouldn't notice. We'd ask India, China or SE Asia to take over any of those natural resources that Africa has that we need/want. Its not ruining the environment that's the problem. It's being unproductive poor that are ruining the environment that's the problem. We are preparing for the War on Disease. It makes the War on Terror look like heaven. The War on Disease has us all with GPS PDAs monitoring our health and sending instant disease outbreak alerts and avoid certain areas alerts. We'd stop the common cold and bird flu. We'd adjust society if you are sick then you are required by law to go directly home and everyone from your family will be sent home until your disease has run its course. If you die so be it. (Your entire house is burnt to the ground for good measure.) If you survive, yeah, you can go back to school or work after a medical checkup conforms that your family isn't an infection risk to others. The War on Disease will be excuse enough to bread about total population monitoring for increased public health.
Nobody in their right mind expects Indonesians will be able to afford the vaccine, they will die en mass. This is why we have universities and the WHO, where scientists who haven't crossed over to the dark side develop cures for things.
Um, no. We have the WHO and universities to protect ourselves from those diseased poor of the world. If didn't keep a watch on them, they could spread some nasty diseases into the industrialized countries. It's cheaper for the WHO to do this on behalf of the industrialized nations. We don't care about the poor. We care about getting infected by the diseased poor of the world so we've taken steps to build what they think is a charitable organization to do them good.
For an idea of how bad a Flu epidemic can get, try typing "flu 1919" into Google, that epidemic is believed to have killed as many as 60 million worldwide. Today such an outbreak would probably be worse because it would be spread more quickly around the globe, would have many more densely packed cities to infect and a large (certainly in Africa) group of immune-compromised potential victims because of HIV.
Is this a good or bad thing? Disease a part of nature adjusting species population levels. (O.k. I don't want one.) I've read demographics about how 3rd world is our main problem due to their over population, their cutting down vast rain forests and such making about 1/3 of human carbon emissions, and their being potential for clean water/fresh food wars over there shortly. O.k. I don't want New York, LA, London, or Toyko to loose 1/10 to 1/3 of their populations due to disease, but these vast 3rd world folks that I hear nothing but negatives about? Why should I care about them? Oh, we got to help the poor in China and India because they are useful to use, but the rest of the poorer countries? Let evolution take care. We'll either come up with drugs or expensive treatments for ourselves, or a percentage die off. Forget about global warmig, the war on drugs, and the war on terror. Wait until we try the War on Disease. You only think that we've over reacted with homeland security. Wait until we loose a major city due to disease from either illegal immgrants or legal global business travelers. We almost have the tech to monitor everyone in the country. To prevent the spread of disease or to avoid areas where disease has spread, we might go there.
I live near where a recent 'outbreak' of Avian Flu has occurred in England. Forgive me for perhaps not seeing the bigger picture, but what's the big deal? regular flu kills more people every winter in the UK alone than Avian Flu has the world over - ever. AFAIK anyway.
You know I had to do some research. http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr54/nvsr54_19 .pdf This is US CDC data for Death rates for 2004. I don't know what half these things are, but the end number is the raw count of deaths.
33,464 Septicemia 157,218 Malignant neoplasms of trachea, bronchus and lung
40,880 Malignantneoplasmofbreast
54,485 Malignant neoplasms of lymphoid, hematopoietic and related tissue
65,829 Alzheimer'sdisease 862,800 Major cardiovascular diseases
61,472 Influenzaandpneumonia 123,884 Chronic lower respiratory diseases
42,762 Nephritis, nephrotic syndrome and nephrosis
43,947 Motor vehicle accidents
61,761 Nontransportaccidents
31,647 Intentional self-harm (suicide)
It has some tables of top ten causes of death for selected age/sex groups. It seems that until you hit the 25-44 age group that accidents, assaults, and suicides were generally in the top 5. I was surprised that assualt was 4th leading cause of death for the 1-4 age group. In the 46-65, accidents drop to 3 and assaults and suicides don't rank in the top ten that's mainly medical causes of death. In the over 65 group, accidents drop to number 9 on the chart and all the top reasons for death are medical. Diseases of heart, Malignant neoplasms, and Cerebrovascular diseases seem to where we need to spend our medical R&D dollars to really extend the average life expentacy. I'm surprised tha suicides, assualts, and accidents rank so highly through most of your life. So if you can avoid killing yourself, and avoid dieing by accident, and avoid some one else killing you when you are young, odds are its a medical health thing that we kill you.
I'd like to see someone program that for the OLPC laptop. I could easily envision a slashdotter transforming a simple educational device into a hightech potentially offensive military IT resource and giving it to 3rd world kids.
Maybe the submitter has a different definition of all than I, but Gmail still requires either an invation or the ability to receive text messages. While the number of people who can't get text messages may be small, there are still many people who cannot sign up.
Quantum computers even if they can be made practical , will only solve a small subset of problems in computer science that involve highly parallel number calculations or searches. They'll be little or no better than a standard turing machine for sequential (ie most) computing problems where the steps in the program can't be reduced to a simple mathematical formula or sequence or where branching levels are high.
So while various talking heads may waffle on about a new era in computing what they really mean is a new era in certain areas such as factorisation , whereas most of the computing world will carry on as before. Where not going to see quantum powered AI or whatever else we read about in the more on the fringe science mags anytime soon.
What we can't predict is what fields all those parallel computations could open up. I think that the whole duo to quad to xx amout of cores on a consumer chip is just preparing the IT industry to think in parallel processing and mutlithreaded insturctions so everything that can use it does. Let's be honest. Sequential processing is easy to program compared to parallel processing the same task generally. We don't think like that. I tend to think wait 10 years after 8 core desktops become the main percentage of existing consumer desktops; then we'd see some parallel programming advances. We are just starting down that tech tree. We could always decide to travel other paths though.
Don't worry. I guarantee you'll regret being such an jerk to people when you're passing middle age and you've got mountains of "stuff" to your name but not a real friend in the world.
Um, who said that his employees had to be his friends? He could have alot of outside of work friends with the same habits or toys that he has. His employees won't belong to his social set. Friends in his social circle could help in job leads or networking contacts that could help a family member start off making more than his employees ever will. Is this fair? Yeap, it is how humans have always worked. It's the expected norm that friends and family of your peer group help out your peer group while using other peer groups as needed. Don't tell me that you don't keep an ear out for your family or friends and would rather they start off making more money than the same person in India or China. How is one peer group helping its self different from any peer group helping its self. Let's face it. IT folks in general don't have the aptitude to use networking contacts to max out our income with social effort. This is why we get pissed when we see those that do have that ability making more than us or leading us. They aren't better than us. They have and use better social contacts to get where they are.
I firmly believe that a patient should have the right to critisize their doctor, but I also believe the doctors should have the ablitly to defend themselves. I'd have liked to have seen part of a ruling that said they were no longer required to keep confidentiality for that particular patient.
If the doctor is not in a position to put up a web site, with pictures and inimate details of a patient who's gone public, then that person should be refrained from going public. Since that's pretty hard to enforce retroactively the only recourse seems to view the patient's public proclamations as relinquishing all privacy rights with respect to the doctor or hospital involved.
The short answer to that. No. The doctor or hospital doesn't have the right to give up or suspend my confidentiality if I complain. If I use inaccurate facts, then they could sue for my facts to be corrected. I could complain being unhappy about a successful surgery. That doesn't mean the medical institutions have the right to disclose my medical information to the public. The medical folks only have "the right" to sue for libel or to may for proper facts to be stated. If you stick to the facts, but are unhappy with the results, you are safe.
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Let's see if I can recall. Nazis and Red USSR communists are always evil. Vietam asians are generally bad. Japan WWII is bad, but afterward is good. China WWI & WWII is good and after WWII is neutral. France is never bad per se, but seeing as we were settled from England; well of course France or "the French" will always be slanted negatively. England is typically the good ole mother country except any games based from the Civil War backwards. Whenever we fight the English, we fight against evil unjust monarchs. Ever since the Desert Storm and/or Desert Shield, any nameless Middle East dictator has been a safe villian for the US or good military to invade and beat up. Now a days, its also Islam or unnamed "bad" muslims for the sake of our religious terror war. Oh, let's not forget any aliens. All aliens are always evil and must be destoried before they take over. Einstein is always the good German Allied Scientist. You can always tell who the good guys are based solely on which side Einstein is on.
How can you possibly not know whether "the entire Mideast conflict thing" is positive or negative? What more do you need to see to realize that it's abominably negative?
Well, we've seemed to mostly have cooled down from the 9/11 bit. Would we still feel a collective anger out for blood if we didn't go invade those two countries? I'm really more pissed that we are going end up bringing our military back and long term the conditions over there won't have changed. I'd be more interested if Iraq or Afghanistan had asked to be admitted to the US as a state. Either of those two countries joining the US as states would have been really good things taken in the long view. Well, end up bringing our military back and over the next 20 years or so Iraq will be the nicer version of Vietam that we constantly complain about. When I say positive or negative, I don't mean just economically expensive. I mean did we do actually anything useful while we were over there? We won't really be able to answer that until 20 years down the line, and even then we'd be split on the issue.
but, I don't think they would survive the loss of the dominance of MS Office. They can port Office to Apple, Linux, heck, Solaris if they wanted to....but if ODF takes off, and they now have to compete with Sun and IBM....seem to me that's a much bigger threat.
Nah, I think that MS could survive open document formats or an open OS quite fine. Open Office is only used in geek homes and the odd business. IBM, Apple, or Sun could write an office replacement, but they'd have to out do office. I kinda of think of MS sort of like Walmart. Walmart doesn't kill small business like MS doesn't kill word processors / offfice suites. If you really look, there are tons of smaller word processors or office suites out there right now. They aren't competing very well with Office though. The same can be said of the small businesses that are trying to out do Walmart at what it does best. If you look around though, there are just as many small busniesses that have survived Walmart just fine. When something better comes along, we start using it. Walmart and MS are better than any other local solutions. It's up to everyone else to out compete the number one company.
To me it means nuclear power and emission free transportation. If the science supports "meddling" with atmospheric properties (and I don't think it does in this case) then I don't have a problem with it to preserve our way of life.
Don't forget - you will always eat. You and I are rich. It is the poor who will starve when the price of food triples.
I was thinking about that the other day when reading about Mexican tortilla prices increasing by 400% over a short timespan. I just thought how I'd adjust if my McDonalds meal went from $6.37 to $19.11 or $25.48 per meal. I'd of course stop going to McDonalds. One of the reasons that I go there though, is that they are one of the cheapest lunch places for me to eat at other than bringing my own bag lunch. You only think that we are rich. Yes, we are wealty compared to the third world. I can afford a $6.37 lunch. I can't afford though if the price of my meals or gas goes up 300-400% over a few short months. I won't be making any additional income so something else will go first.
We must stop screwing with the ecosystems. When I hear of orbiting solar shields and massive projects to paint the desert, I get really scared because a scientist who really understands the delicate balance of the ecosystem would never dare to suggest such an idea. Only one who doesn't and is looking to make a buck and get on time for "saving the planet from global warming" would do it. These ideas will only result in causing more problems then they solve.
;)
Give us an emergency and a Five Year Plan to fix it, and we'll either fix it or make a 20-100 year problem that's a lot worse. What's the worst thing that can happen? It's not like we are playing with the orbit of the Earth or anything important like that.
I've been on the fence about shopping at walmart for awhile. They're never my first choice, and I think I've only been shopping there about 5 times in the past year.
You aren't there target. Their target will go to Walmart 5 times within any given month. Heck, there are some times they go 5 times a week or day. You aren't even on their radar.
It's not extortion... Small independent businesses in rural and outlying areas don't have the buying power and shipping infrastructure that these multinational mega corps have. In other words, because Wal Mart buys 100,000 hammers in a year they get them for $5 a piece and only ya $.25 to have them shipped. The mom and pop store in Podunk, Nowhere (BFE) might only buy 100 hammers a year. Because they dont get a bulk rate, they have to pay $7 per hammer, and $.75 for shipping per hammer.
This is just an example but it goes to show that with massive pockets comes distribution and an ability to get bulk rates.
Hey, I live in Arkansas. I've traveled through alot of Podunk Nowhere Arkansas. The US Glue that holds the Arkansas small town together is the Walmart Supercenter and 3 various food places. In other states, small business doesn't know how to compete. In Arkansas, you start with farms, then add Walmart, then you add what farmers don't or won't buy from Walmart. (This is usually large pieces of farm equipement, home building stuff that you'd find at Lowes or Home Depot, or appliances that you only find at Sears.) I've seen people drive hour and half to the nearest Walmart/Sams and be thankful for reaching modern civilization when they get there. I can't wait until Walmart kills off all the truely unprofitable "small businesses" that are in most small towns out side of Arkansas. It'll help the economy as those business adjust to areas where Walmart isn't doing business or gasp actually successfully compete with Walmart. Walmart has been around for more than 20 years, and there are lots of small businesses in Arkansas. They just don't do what Walmart does best.
Now, when I don't know anything much about a particular product (e.g. toothpaste), I will choose the brand I recognise the least. If it works, I'll keep using it. If not, I'll switch to a slightly more familiar one. The ones that blare irritating advertising at me will be last on the list.
This is why I try to go for Sam's Choice or Great Value on as many products as possible. I've never seen an ad for either of those brands once other than the label on the store shelves.
Thankfully, climate scientists have not only already addressed this question but even written lay explanations [realclimate.org] about it. You can find plenty of other discussions about cosmic rays over on realclimate.org [realclimate.org] and they point out that there is considerable reason to discredit the cosmic ray explanation for global warming.
What disgusts me about this whole buisness is that whenever something like this comes up a bunch of people who can't be bothered to actually read the journal articles but think they are entitled to second guess the people who have pipe up and complain about how global warming is just a dogma. Like any topic you have a choice. You can either choose to learn enough about the subject to intelligently weigh the evidence, which in this case would mean keeping up with the actual scientific papers not just media summaries, or you can count on experts to analyze that evidence for you and reach your conclusion on the authority of those experts.
Um, but they could be gasp wrong or atleast underestimating comsic rays actual importance. Quick what's the difference between comsic rays and radition that we get from the sun? That the average slashdoter or slashdot troll can understand. You know what really disgusts me? That to be objective, I have to throw out our entire current research everything done after say 1950 and go back later to find non-political leaning sources. If climate research is so inexact that your average citizen can't understand it and keep current, we shouldn't depend on it for any political movements to change society. Ie. Climate Scientists could become your high priests that your lay population aren't allowed to know why just follow their directives on the future. Um, we live in a republic. If the science can't be reduced to sound bites, it'll be ignored by a large fraction of voters. Um, it doesn't take much sound bites to arguee it out in the media. The problem is that I've tried. It's too freaking difficult to stay remotely current with this topic. I've labeled the entire climate studying field as politically loaded and unusable for any of their output. I try for the long term sustain what resources we have and keep on doing what we've always done. The climate scientists need to dump the GW religious folks and start releasing information that the average voter/industry can use like weather or usable long term climate models. Until they can do that, I don't want to hear from them again. This is worse than evolution vs ID.
Before you people start screaming, "what do they expect us to do about cosmic rays??//?/?" Think. This isn't about "debunking" global warming, nor is it about fearmongering about it. It's about building more accurate climate models.
Forcefields.
O.k. We need selective forcefields because we really want that light from our sun. We might have to play a bit to turn the stars back on at night after our plantery shield is up.
Agreed, and that is why NASA should drop the "man on Mars" crap and refocus on our own biosphere.
I'm kinda different. I think all that biosphere monitoring crap should be spun off just to NOAA and let NASA work at 2 main things, looking at stars and near solar objects, and working at getting there. If we want to look at Earth and use that for weather/climate predication, that should be done and budgeted under NOAA instead of NASA so NOAAs budget could be raised while NASAs is lowered.
If there had been another planebomb, you'd use that to justify Bush getting even tougher. Just like you're surely cheerleading Bush's current escalation in Iraq. You zombie Republicans are so predictable.
No one believes that gibberish about fighting them there so we don't have to fight them here. Except maybe you, Anonymous Dick Cheney Coward.
Um, the only reason that the US is where we are at today is because "every" freaking major war except the civil and revolutionary wars were fought over there on their ground. The EU would is just now getting back to par with the US. They had to rebuild after WWI and WWII. It's been along time since we've had anything similiar. When we get into "war mode" in the US, we send the boys over there. We don't hide the women and kids in bunkers and perpare all the males to fight the invading forces. I think that we've been reacting to 9/11 in alot of negative directions. I don't know if the entire mideast military conflict thing is positive or negative. We needed to get some feeling of revenge out of our system. Did beating up those two countries get the collective feeling for revenge for 9/11 out of our system? I've run into more than a few that would have liked us to have nuked the mideast. That would be stupid idea, but feeling of anger at the mideast was there. They didn't care about terrorists; they just wanted all those that were causing this mess gone by the quickest possible means. (Actually a part of me feels that way, but I'd ban our "media" like CNN, Fox News, and MSNBC rather than the measures that we did take.)
Do you really think it was the car manufacturer's fault that you left the car unprotected, or worse, you handed the keys to an untrustworthy mechanic because he had a professional-looking shop? While I don't think the car's owner should be held criminally responsible, I think they unknowingly forfeited the car when they ignored their responsibility to keep it reasonably secure. Don't be surprised if the government starts fragging driverless cars once they've identified them.
;) How is a consumer supposed to know a "fake" garage that looks exactly like a "real" garage and performs the same exact service? I'd say it'd be upto the government not the manufacturer to secure against this. All the manufacturer could do is keep a database of mechanics around the nation and the car could automatically drive to any one of those mechanics for service without the owners knowledge. (That's how computers work.) Most of us would be pissed if our car left without us telling it to or using any gas to drive there. We'd notice that. Well, if car could only be maintained at one of the manufacturer's mechanics then it'd be on that party if one of their contracted third party mechanic was a long term terrorist cell.
Yes, it would be either the manufacturers or the governments fault.
I'm not on this BS blaming the user. We are just now entering an era where anyone can comment on the service of any company and anyone else can easily find those opinions out. How would I know if my local McDonalds wasn't a McDonalds but run by Dr. Terror and he's been feeding me mind control drugs/ads whenever I eat there? It's the same basic concept. I as individual can't "know." I'd hope that the FBI, CIA, or NSA stops Dr. Terror before I'm mind controlled (Ghost in the Shell anyone) to be either a mad bomber, sniper, or commit random acts of terror. If the government doesn't know or find out about Dr. Terror until after I or other mind controlled masses start causing mayhem, it's a bit late. That's our modern spyware, adware, virus pattern except replace government with "freelance" anti-spyware, anti-ad, or anti-virsus companies.
As one designer suggests, 'navigating well-designed vehicles in the physical world... is vastly more compelling than steering a virtual vehicle in a computer-generated universe
Um, you can play with tons of different vehicles or tracks and terrain on video games, and it is near trival to play without cleaning or to even clean up. Do you know how much cleaning is required to drive that remote controlled car over the dirty clothes? Nope, that's just too much work. How much work is required setting up obstacle cources and then finishing it afterwords? I want holographic toys and quick. When the kids are done with them or its bed time, I want all the holograms to turn off and their room to be automatically cleaned.
The very notion of the adult sector claiming that they are somehow driving global DVD sales... that's a laughable notion at best.
= 815 Those guys have far too much sex and have a sexual over load. The only metaphor that we have for their experience is drug use. Its sad that oversexed individuals are viewed the same as drug users, but hey if that's how you want to look at them.
It really makes me wonder just how much drugs those guys shove up their nose in a day.
This comic applies: http://www.questionablecontent.net/view.php?comic
The third world has the majority of the human population and you begruge them a measly 1/3rd of the sustainable carbon buget while America, with 5% of the world population, emits 20% of all CO2? What about the fact that most enviromental damage happens as a result of 1st-world countries wanting 3rd world resourses? Does the International Decleration of Human Rights mean nothing to you? Are you seriously suggesting that we kill a huge number of people for the inequalities in the system that we imposed on them?
.01$ more in taxes or increased cost of goods due to any pollution control measures that they want us to make. Now if we could make those teeming poor that are lucky to make $100 throughout a year pay for our projects, yes that's a good thing for us. What why are you looking at me like I'm evil. I'm being honest this is exactly what we'd do. I didn't say it was nice or fair or equal. I'm just being honest about what our population would do the rest if we had the ability to.
In short, Yes. Most definitely yes. If we could, we'd make the 3rd world pay entirely for our 1st world pollution control measures that they want us to do. The 3rd world doesn't have that kinda of capital though. Hey, it's not nice that we pull shit like this, but you asked what I'd expect. I don't want to pay
Playing devil's advocate, I think a bird flu pandemic is exactly what this planet needs right now. We've added a billion people and welcomed two billion+ populated nations to the industrialized world and we're destroying most of our natural resources. I think a pandemic that could potentially reduce this burden, especially in SE Asia where those countries seem hell bent on destroying the environment in just about every way. Call me sick, but I don't have faith in humanity to reel itself in when it comes to development and consuming more and more in the future. The only solution is fewer consumers.
Are you stupid or sick? We need south east asia and India! Now, Africa on the other hand can have 99% of its population die off, and we wouldn't notice. We'd ask India, China or SE Asia to take over any of those natural resources that Africa has that we need/want. Its not ruining the environment that's the problem. It's being unproductive poor that are ruining the environment that's the problem. We are preparing for the War on Disease. It makes the War on Terror look like heaven. The War on Disease has us all with GPS PDAs monitoring our health and sending instant disease outbreak alerts and avoid certain areas alerts. We'd stop the common cold and bird flu. We'd adjust society if you are sick then you are required by law to go directly home and everyone from your family will be sent home until your disease has run its course. If you die so be it. (Your entire house is burnt to the ground for good measure.) If you survive, yeah, you can go back to school or work after a medical checkup conforms that your family isn't an infection risk to others. The War on Disease will be excuse enough to bread about total population monitoring for increased public health.
Nobody in their right mind expects Indonesians will be able to afford the vaccine, they will die en mass. This is why we have universities and the WHO, where scientists who haven't crossed over to the dark side develop cures for things.
Um, no. We have the WHO and universities to protect ourselves from those diseased poor of the world. If didn't keep a watch on them, they could spread some nasty diseases into the industrialized countries. It's cheaper for the WHO to do this on behalf of the industrialized nations. We don't care about the poor. We care about getting infected by the diseased poor of the world so we've taken steps to build what they think is a charitable organization to do them good.
For an idea of how bad a Flu epidemic can get, try typing "flu 1919" into Google, that epidemic is believed to have killed as many as 60 million worldwide. Today such an outbreak would probably be worse because it would be spread more quickly around the globe, would have many more densely packed cities to infect and a large (certainly in Africa) group of immune-compromised potential victims because of HIV.
Is this a good or bad thing? Disease a part of nature adjusting species population levels. (O.k. I don't want one.) I've read demographics about how 3rd world is our main problem due to their over population, their cutting down vast rain forests and such making about 1/3 of human carbon emissions, and their being potential for clean water/fresh food wars over there shortly. O.k. I don't want New York, LA, London, or Toyko to loose 1/10 to 1/3 of their populations due to disease, but these vast 3rd world folks that I hear nothing but negatives about? Why should I care about them? Oh, we got to help the poor in China and India because they are useful to use, but the rest of the poorer countries? Let evolution take care. We'll either come up with drugs or expensive treatments for ourselves, or a percentage die off. Forget about global warmig, the war on drugs, and the war on terror. Wait until we try the War on Disease. You only think that we've over reacted with homeland security. Wait until we loose a major city due to disease from either illegal immgrants or legal global business travelers. We almost have the tech to monitor everyone in the country. To prevent the spread of disease or to avoid areas where disease has spread, we might go there.
I live near where a recent 'outbreak' of Avian Flu has occurred in England. Forgive me for perhaps not seeing the bigger picture, but what's the big deal? regular flu kills more people every winter in the UK alone than Avian Flu has the world over - ever. AFAIK anyway.
9 .pdf
You know I had to do some research. http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr54/nvsr54_1
This is US CDC data for Death rates for 2004. I don't know what half these things are, but the end number is the raw count of deaths.
33,464 Septicemia
157,218 Malignant neoplasms of trachea, bronchus and lung
40,880 Malignantneoplasmofbreast
54,485 Malignant neoplasms of lymphoid, hematopoietic and related tissue
65,829 Alzheimer'sdisease
862,800 Major cardiovascular diseases
61,472 Influenzaandpneumonia
123,884 Chronic lower respiratory diseases
42,762 Nephritis, nephrotic syndrome and nephrosis
43,947 Motor vehicle accidents
61,761 Nontransportaccidents
31,647 Intentional self-harm (suicide)
It has some tables of top ten causes of death for selected age/sex groups. It seems that until you hit the 25-44 age group that accidents, assaults, and suicides were generally in the top 5. I was surprised that assualt was 4th leading cause of death for the 1-4 age group. In the 46-65, accidents drop to 3 and assaults and suicides don't rank in the top ten that's mainly medical causes of death. In the over 65 group, accidents drop to number 9 on the chart and all the top reasons for death are medical. Diseases of heart, Malignant neoplasms, and Cerebrovascular diseases seem to where we need to spend our medical R&D dollars to really extend the average life expentacy. I'm surprised tha suicides, assualts, and accidents rank so highly through most of your life. So if you can avoid killing yourself, and avoid dieing by accident, and avoid some one else killing you when you are young, odds are its a medical health thing that we kill you.
I'd like to see someone program that for the OLPC laptop. I could easily envision a slashdotter transforming a simple educational device into a hightech potentially offensive military IT resource and giving it to 3rd world kids.
Maybe the submitter has a different definition of all than I, but Gmail still requires either an invation or the ability to receive text messages. While the number of people who can't get text messages may be small, there are still many people who cannot sign up.
= us&new=1&.done=http%3A//mail.yahoo.com&.src=ym&.v= 0&.u=94cvl9h2smgh7&partner=&.partner=&pkg=&stepid= &.p=&promo=&.last=
https://www.google.com/accounts/SmsMailSignup1
What if I don't have any intention of giving google my telephone number? Well, I don't want there service anyways.
I signed up for this service sometime around 98 and they only know what I filled out in the form.
https://edit.yahoo.com/config/eval_register?.intl
Why would the tin hat slashdot crowd want to sign up for a service that wants to know more about you?
Quantum computers even if they can be made practical , will only solve a small subset of problems in computer science that involve highly parallel number calculations or searches. They'll be little or no better than a standard turing machine for sequential (ie most) computing problems where the steps in the program can't be reduced to a simple mathematical formula or sequence or where branching levels are high.
So while various talking heads may waffle on about a new era in computing what they really mean is a new era in certain areas such as factorisation , whereas most of the computing world will carry on as before. Where not going to see quantum powered AI or whatever else we read about in the more on the fringe science mags anytime soon.
What we can't predict is what fields all those parallel computations could open up. I think that the whole duo to quad to xx amout of cores on a consumer chip is just preparing the IT industry to think in parallel processing and mutlithreaded insturctions so everything that can use it does. Let's be honest. Sequential processing is easy to program compared to parallel processing the same task generally. We don't think like that. I tend to think wait 10 years after 8 core desktops become the main percentage of existing consumer desktops; then we'd see some parallel programming advances. We are just starting down that tech tree. We could always decide to travel other paths though.
Don't worry. I guarantee you'll regret being such an jerk to people when you're passing middle age and you've got mountains of "stuff" to your name but not a real friend in the world.
Um, who said that his employees had to be his friends? He could have alot of outside of work friends with the same habits or toys that he has. His employees won't belong to his social set. Friends in his social circle could help in job leads or networking contacts that could help a family member start off making more than his employees ever will. Is this fair? Yeap, it is how humans have always worked. It's the expected norm that friends and family of your peer group help out your peer group while using other peer groups as needed. Don't tell me that you don't keep an ear out for your family or friends and would rather they start off making more money than the same person in India or China. How is one peer group helping its self different from any peer group helping its self. Let's face it. IT folks in general don't have the aptitude to use networking contacts to max out our income with social effort. This is why we get pissed when we see those that do have that ability making more than us or leading us. They aren't better than us. They have and use better social contacts to get where they are.
I firmly believe that a patient should have the right to critisize their doctor, but I also believe the doctors should have the ablitly to defend themselves. I'd have liked to have seen part of a ruling that said they were no longer required to keep confidentiality for that particular patient.
If the doctor is not in a position to put up a web site, with pictures and inimate details of a patient who's gone public, then that person should be refrained from going public. Since that's pretty hard to enforce retroactively the only recourse seems to view the patient's public proclamations as relinquishing all privacy rights with respect to the doctor or hospital involved.
The short answer to that. No. The doctor or hospital doesn't have the right to give up or suspend my confidentiality if I complain. If I use inaccurate facts, then they could sue for my facts to be corrected. I could complain being unhappy about a successful surgery. That doesn't mean the medical institutions have the right to disclose my medical information to the public. The medical folks only have "the right" to sue for libel or to may for proper facts to be stated. If you stick to the facts, but are unhappy with the results, you are safe.