You hit on the cost issue. That is really what is going to force changes in the current system. We spend far more of our GDP than other nations do to get similar results at far greater cost, and we have a unfunded Medicare entitlement of something like $50 trillions. That will either force massive changes in the health care system or put the US into bankruptcy. It also puts US companies at a significant competitive disadvantage.
Insurance companies cover this crap because state legislatures pass laws that require them to in response to lobbyists. It has nothing to do with the validity or efficacy of the practices.
As far as your own personal experiences, ever hear of the placebo effect? Do you really think your anecdotes are the equivalent of the extensive investigations that have been done in these areas?
The National Science Foundation has a good publication on this topic.
As far as acupuncture, did you know the Chinese themselves banned it in 1929? It was only during the Cultural Revolution (trip back to superstition and ignorance) that it became allowed again.
Here is the National Council Against Health Fraud position on Acupuncture.
The reason is that China is probably the main target for this. If they don't toe the line they get screwed for not enacting their own laws to enforce this.
One thing I notice is that it isn't only media companies participating in this process. The biotechs and tech companies are involved. This tells me that countries that are appropriating IP on a large scale basis are a large part of what the target is here, and is probably a good part of the reason national security is being invoked.
Slashdot readers are of course worried and justifiably that their personal entertainment habits are going to get gored. But think of the scale of piracy in Asia with it's multi-billions of Internet connected folks and huge pressure to counterfeit or appropriate EVERYTHING (including milk!) and I think that you will see where the money REALLY is.
99.5% of the various issues that you are describing are the result of some manager going to the engineer and saying "we will launch tomorrow" or "this is too expensive use plaster instead of carbon fiber composite reinforced titanium honeycomb" or "you have to use my brother's company for the batteries" regardless of whether or not it is passing quality tests or operating within design parameters, or is too cold for the O-Rings to work.
Challenger Disaster Report:
"The engineers at Thiokol also argued that the low overnight temperatures would almost certainly result in SRB temperatures below their redline of 40 F (4 C). However, they were overruled by Morton Thiokol management, who recommended that the launch proceed as scheduled. Despite public perceptions that NASA always maintained a "fail-safe" approach, Thiokol management was influenced by demands from NASA managers that they show it was not safe to launch rather than prove conditions were safe. It later emerged in the aftermath of the accident that NASA managers frequently evaded safety regulations to maintain the launch manifest (schedule)."
And:
It is important to learn these lessons. NASA didn't and we lost another shuttle, Columbia, because of it:
The CAIB [Columbia Accident Investigation Board] report concludes that while NASA's present Space Shuttle is not inherently unsafe, a number of mechanical fixes are required to make the Shuttle safer in the short term. The report also concludes that NASA's management system is unsafe to manage the shuttle system beyond the short term and that the agency does not have a strong safety culture.
The Board determined that physical and organizational causes played an equal role in the Columbia accident - that the NASA organizational culture had as much to do with the accident as the foam that struck the Orbiter on ascent. The report also notes other significant factors and observations that may help prevent the next accident.
From Air Force System Safety Handbook for Acquisition Managers, Air Force Space Division, January 1984.
Atlas ICBM Launch failures were caused by bypass of procedural steps, and by management decisions to continue, in spite of contrary indications, because of schedule pressures
Except the spending wasn't scaled back, resulting in huge increases in deficits.
The fact is that your real taxes are what government spends. Some taxes are collected immediately others are deferred and show up in increased inflation or increases in taxes in the future. There is no getting around this.
And as far as temporary vs. short-term - obviously the current economic state of affairs indicates that it was indeed temporary.
Reductions in tax rates without reductions in spending no different than any other government policy that increases the deficit.
The first Frisbies were pie pans from the Frisbie Pie Company of Bridgeport Conn, founded in 1871 by William Russell Frisbie. Yale students were using the term Frisbie for flying discs 50 years before the invention of the Pluto Platter.
When Wham-O bought the rights to the plastic version that Morrison invented one of their executives, Rich Knerr liked the marketability of the name and changed it to Frisbee.
Frisbie pies are still manufactured by Table Talk Inc.
Knerr was also responsible for the Hula Hoop which to this day is recognized as the benchmark American fad toy.
The flaw in this is that Bush did not actually lower taxes. To do that you also need to lower spending. What Bush did was to DEFER taxes by reducing current taxes and borrow the difference. Obviously this is completely untenable as a long term policy. These borrowing will have to be repaid, with the money coming from - you guessed it tax increases, or maybe more subtly as increased inflation.
These is something very fundamental here. Your taxes are equal to what government SPENDS. Not what it collects as tax revenue. Some of those taxes are due immediately, others are payable at a later date.
The idea that Bush's tax cuts improved revenues is transparently wrong - the didn't, revenues went down. Not only that but unemployment is very high now, and we have accumulated a large debt from those tax cuts that will hamper our economy.
I don't believe your assessment of the Bush tax cuts one iota. While they may have had a short term effect in stimulating the economy, they also had a large impact on increasing the Federal deficit, and the full lifecycle effects of this deficit increase have not at all been worked through the economy.
The other priority should be a campaign to combat superstition and promote naturalistic views of the world. Turn on TV you get talk shows promoting psychics and alternative medicines. Open up a phone book and it's full of Chiropractors and Acupuncturists.
How can you expect to make an investment in sciences and develop a sound technological basis for the future of mankind when only 40% of the population believes in a naturalistic explanation of it's own existence?
There is a commercial product already with this sort of technology. The Citizen Eco-Drive watch uses a supercapacitor that supposedly will run the watch for 6 months without exposure to light, and retains 80% of that storage capacity after 20 years of use.
The thesis of this summary is rather exaggerated. Texas is only the 4th most populous state that uses a statewide approval system. States like California and Florida purchase far more texbooks than Texas does.
In addition the Texas selection process has attracted so much attention over the years that it is now a battle between all sorts of interests, not just a forum for the far Right.
If it is true that only compromised computers blue screen then it's hard to fault Microsoft for their patch code choking when it stumbles across the exploit code.
However it is easy to blame Microsoft for not testing on real-world (i.e. exploited) systems, or to blame them for allowing it to be so easy to exploit a Windows XP system.
XP is a 10 years old OS that was meant to be decomissioned years ago
Microsoft has had 10 years to introduce fixes to whatever problems Windows XP has. Systems are supposed to get MORE stable as they age, not get worse or show no improvement over time.
It is still ludicrous. The body temperature rise due to exercise is 2-3 degrees. A cell phone power output is 2-3 watts, nowhere near enough to heat the interior of the head that much.
What you are proposing is that mild exercise increases the likelihood of getting cancer. That shining a 2 watt light on the side of your head will give you brain cancer.
It is completely beyond any sort of reasonable.
These studies are total BS. Science is about understanding mechanism, not trying to wedge research dollars out of some foundation by claiming two unrelated phenomena are related by abusing statistics.
There is a basic rule about writing programs - choose not a vendor specific language, and the useful lifetime of your program will surpass the life of your hardware.
F# is really just an OCaml variant anyway. Why should I buy something that is locked into a particular vendor and OS when I can get the same thing for free and run it on all the systems I own?
This article smacks of marketing to developers too much for me to feel comfortable with it... ok for Microsoft tards but not for people who haven't sold their souls.
MacTCP was introduced with System 6 (1988) and was replaced by Open Transport in System 7.5.
Of course by modern standards everything in the past sucked. But System 7 came with 32 bit memory addressing, a TCP/IP stack and UI that actually was actually reasonably useful.
That's ludicrous. Organic molecules are constantly being bent and deformed due to thermal collisions.
The basal metabolism of the human body is roughly 120 watts. A couple of sit ups releases far more thermal energy than could be adsorbed by the body from a cell phone.
Slashdot Mirror
You hit on the cost issue. That is really what is going to force changes in the current system. We spend far more of our GDP than other nations do to get similar results at far greater cost, and we have a unfunded Medicare entitlement of something like $50 trillions. That will either force massive changes in the health care system or put the US into bankruptcy. It also puts US companies at a significant competitive disadvantage.
Insurance companies cover this crap because state legislatures pass laws that require them to in response to lobbyists. It has nothing to do with the validity or efficacy of the practices.
As far as your own personal experiences, ever hear of the placebo effect? Do you really think your anecdotes are the equivalent of the extensive investigations that have been done in these areas?
The National Science Foundation has a good publication on this topic.
http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/seind00/c8/c8s5.htm
And there is a lot of other literature on the topic, if you are interested in it:
http://www.chirowatch.com/cw-corruption.html
http://www.chiroweb.com/mpacms/dc/article.php?id=42556
http://www.rebuildyourback.com/chiropractic/school.php
As far as acupuncture, did you know the Chinese themselves banned it in 1929? It was only during the Cultural Revolution (trip back to superstition and ignorance) that it became allowed again.
Here is the National Council Against Health Fraud position on Acupuncture.
http://www.ncahf.org/pp/acu.html
These guys are frauds and quacks. Their prevelence in our culture is a simple indication of the failures and limitations of our educational system.
The reason is that China is probably the main target for this. If they don't toe the line they get screwed for not enacting their own laws to enforce this.
One thing I notice is that it isn't only media companies participating in this process. The biotechs and tech companies are involved. This tells me that countries that are appropriating IP on a large scale basis are a large part of what the target is here, and is probably a good part of the reason national security is being invoked.
Slashdot readers are of course worried and justifiably that their personal entertainment habits are going to get gored. But think of the scale of piracy in Asia with it's multi-billions of Internet connected folks and huge pressure to counterfeit or appropriate EVERYTHING (including milk!) and I think that you will see where the money REALLY is.
99.5% of the various issues that you are describing are the result of some manager going to the engineer and saying "we will launch tomorrow" or "this is too expensive use plaster instead of carbon fiber composite reinforced titanium honeycomb" or "you have to use my brother's company for the batteries" regardless of whether or not it is passing quality tests or operating within design parameters, or is too cold for the O-Rings to work.
Challenger Disaster Report:
"The engineers at Thiokol also argued that the low overnight temperatures would almost certainly result in SRB temperatures below their redline of 40 F (4 C). However, they were overruled by Morton Thiokol management, who recommended that the launch proceed as scheduled. Despite public perceptions that NASA always maintained a "fail-safe" approach, Thiokol management was influenced by demands from NASA managers that they show it was not safe to launch rather than prove conditions were safe. It later emerged in the aftermath of the accident that NASA managers frequently evaded safety regulations to maintain the launch manifest (schedule)."
And:
It is important to learn these lessons. NASA didn't and we lost another shuttle, Columbia, because of it:
The CAIB [Columbia Accident Investigation Board] report concludes that while NASA's present Space Shuttle is not inherently unsafe, a number of mechanical fixes are required to make the Shuttle safer in the short term. The report also concludes that NASA's management system is unsafe to manage the shuttle system beyond the short term and that the agency does not have a strong safety culture.
The Board determined that physical and organizational causes played an equal role in the Columbia accident - that the NASA organizational culture had as much to do with the accident as the foam that struck the Orbiter on ascent. The report also notes other significant factors and observations that may help prevent the next accident.
From Air Force System Safety Handbook for Acquisition Managers, Air Force Space Division, January 1984.
Atlas ICBM Launch failures were caused by bypass of procedural steps, and by management decisions to continue, in spite of contrary indications, because of schedule pressures
There have been numerous careful studies of chiropractic and acupuncture. THEY SHOW NO BENEFIT. THEY ARE FRAUDS.
Except the spending wasn't scaled back, resulting in huge increases in deficits.
The fact is that your real taxes are what government spends. Some taxes are collected immediately others are deferred and show up in increased inflation or increases in taxes in the future. There is no getting around this.
And as far as temporary vs. short-term - obviously the current economic state of affairs indicates that it was indeed temporary.
Reductions in tax rates without reductions in spending no different than any other government policy that increases the deficit.
The first Frisbies were pie pans from the Frisbie Pie Company of Bridgeport Conn, founded in 1871 by William Russell Frisbie. Yale students were using the term Frisbie for flying discs 50 years before the invention of the Pluto Platter.
When Wham-O bought the rights to the plastic version that Morrison invented one of their executives, Rich Knerr liked the marketability of the name and changed it to Frisbee.
Frisbie pies are still manufactured by Table Talk Inc.
Knerr was also responsible for the Hula Hoop which to this day is recognized as the benchmark American fad toy.
The flaw in this is that Bush did not actually lower taxes. To do that you also need to lower spending. What Bush did was to DEFER taxes by reducing current taxes and borrow the difference. Obviously this is completely untenable as a long term policy. These borrowing will have to be repaid, with the money coming from - you guessed it tax increases, or maybe more subtly as increased inflation.
These is something very fundamental here. Your taxes are equal to what government SPENDS. Not what it collects as tax revenue. Some of those taxes are due immediately, others are payable at a later date.
The idea that Bush's tax cuts improved revenues is transparently wrong - the didn't, revenues went down. Not only that but unemployment is very high now, and we have accumulated a large debt from those tax cuts that will hamper our economy.
I don't believe your assessment of the Bush tax cuts one iota. While they may have had a short term effect in stimulating the economy, they also had a large impact on increasing the Federal deficit, and the full lifecycle effects of this deficit increase have not at all been worked through the economy.
The other priority should be a campaign to combat superstition and promote naturalistic views of the world. Turn on TV you get talk shows promoting psychics and alternative medicines. Open up a phone book and it's full of Chiropractors and Acupuncturists.
How can you expect to make an investment in sciences and develop a sound technological basis for the future of mankind when only 40% of the population believes in a naturalistic explanation of it's own existence?
There is a commercial product already with this sort of technology. The Citizen Eco-Drive watch uses a supercapacitor that supposedly will run the watch for 6 months without exposure to light, and retains 80% of that storage capacity after 20 years of use.
The thesis of this summary is rather exaggerated. Texas is only the 4th most populous state that uses a statewide approval system. States like California and Florida purchase far more texbooks than Texas does.
In addition the Texas selection process has attracted so much attention over the years that it is now a battle between all sorts of interests, not just a forum for the far Right.
If it is true that only compromised computers blue screen then it's hard to fault Microsoft for their patch code choking when it stumbles across the exploit code.
However it is easy to blame Microsoft for not testing on real-world (i.e. exploited) systems, or to blame them for allowing it to be so easy to exploit a Windows XP system.
XP is a 10 years old OS that was meant to be decomissioned years ago
Microsoft has had 10 years to introduce fixes to whatever problems Windows XP has. Systems are supposed to get MORE stable as they age, not get worse or show no improvement over time.
The path to proprietary lock-in is paved with attractive features.
It's not a tax. Taxes are imposed by people you elect to their positions.
Pick another word. Fraud, Robbery, Extortion are some alternatives.
O RLY? How about the Belarc Advisor fiasco?
What a pile of cruft. Only a monopoly could get away with imposing these sorts of self-serving costs on a customer.
Just read the accompanying article describing the attempt to gain warrantless access to cell phone location data.
Between Easy Pass, Cell Phones and and my computer it is going to be the equivalent of having a tracking device implanted at birth.
What is the next step? An implanted kill switch?
LOL. These photons are lacking sufficient energy by several orders of magnitude. Two isn't going to do it; it would take million photon adsorption.
Once again shown to be overly optimistic.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sturgeon's_Law#.E2.80.9CNinety_percent_of_everything_is_crud.E2.80.9D
It is still ludicrous. The body temperature rise due to exercise is 2-3 degrees. A cell phone power output is 2-3 watts, nowhere near enough to heat the interior of the head that much.
What you are proposing is that mild exercise increases the likelihood of getting cancer. That shining a 2 watt light on the side of your head will give you brain cancer.
It is completely beyond any sort of reasonable.
These studies are total BS. Science is about understanding mechanism, not trying to wedge research dollars out of some foundation by claiming two unrelated phenomena are related by abusing statistics.
There is a basic rule about writing programs - choose not a vendor specific language, and the useful lifetime of your program will surpass the life of your hardware.
F# is really just an OCaml variant anyway. Why should I buy something that is locked into a particular vendor and OS when I can get the same thing for free and run it on all the systems I own?
This article smacks of marketing to developers too much for me to feel comfortable with it... ok for Microsoft tards but not for people who haven't sold their souls.
MacTCP was introduced with System 6 (1988) and was replaced by Open Transport in System 7.5.
Of course by modern standards everything in the past sucked. But System 7 came with 32 bit memory addressing, a TCP/IP stack and UI that actually was actually reasonably useful.
That's ludicrous. Organic molecules are constantly being bent and deformed due to thermal collisions.
The basal metabolism of the human body is roughly 120 watts. A couple of sit ups releases far more thermal energy than could be adsorbed by the body from a cell phone.