The other factor everyone's missing is: why do people need to make more money for a "living wage"? Simple: too many of their costs have ballooned. And it's not across the board (technology gadgets are cheaper; look how much computers used to cost in the 80s), it's two very specific sectors: housing and healthcare.
Housing costs have skyrocketed in the last 10-15 years thanks to the housing bubble and foreign "investment". What have the politicians done to fix this issue? Nothing.
Healthcare costs have also skyrocketed. ACA was attempted to deal with this, but it didn't address the reason the costs were so high in the first place, it just tries to spread the costs out over everyone, so anyone who's middle class ends up subsidizing everyone who's lower middle class. What have politicians done to address the actual costs of healthcare (as epitomized by the EpiPen issue)? Nothing.
Fix the reasons that people think they need so much more money to live and maybe they won't need such higher wages.
Eh, if you're going to be technical about it then software engineering isn't engineering.
I am a mechanical engineer. People can get seriously injured if the projects I work on don't work correctly. It has to be right the first time.
-1 ignorant
The people who write embedded avionics and automotive software can say exactly the same thing about their projects. MISRA and DO-178 standards exist for a reason.
You can shove it as far as I'm concerned. If you want privacy, don't run for public office; it's that simple.
And yes, Congresspeople and SCOTUS should have their medical records public too. Again, if you want privacy, don't run for public office in top levels of government.
If you don't have anything to hide, then what do you need privacy for? That's what these leaders have been preaching to us for ages. It's time they took their own advice.
A person's medical condition is personal. The public has no right to the details.
Complete and utter bullshit. The public has every right to the medical records of someone who has the nuclear launch codes. The decisions the POTUS makes affect not only every American in a profound way, but people across the planet. There absolutely should be transparency with their medical records and condition, and a medical test to be qualified for office. And from what I've seen so far, both Hillary and Trump would probably fail that test, which would be good for Americans and for the world.
100% of Trump supporters claim Hillary is unfit for President!
Yes, and they're absolutely correct.
Also, 100% of Hillary supporters claim Trump is unfit for the office, and they're absolutely correct too. We should follow the advice of both camps and disqualify both candidates.
Ronnie shouldn't have been allowed to serve with Alzheimer's. Your father didn't have nuclear launch codes and make executive decisions affecting billions of people. This job should be reserved to someone who has unquestionable mental health. Hillary isn't qualified. (And I think that if we got an unbiased team of doctors to examine Trump, they'd find a good reason to disqualify him too.)
Oh, I agree. Maybe I wasn't clear, but I think Ronnie should have been disqualified because of the rather-obvious Alzheimer's he had, not skin cancer. Lots of people get skin cancer, and at early ages too; it's not that big a deal and is pretty easily treated if caught early enough. But things that affect your mind are serious, when talking about the "leader of the free world" and the person with the nuclear launch codes.
I see the Hillary shills are out in full force. This isn't a troll, he's completely correct: both parties have managed to select the worst possible candidates.
Presidential candidates shouldn't just have to release their records (since they could have a complicit personal physician after all). They should be required to be examined by several independent physicians, who can then decide whether the candidate is medically qualified or not.
They should also be required to release their tax returns and other financial records and also the transcripts for any paid speeches. I demand nothing less than full transparency.
No, because that allows either of them to back out.
I say it should be required for both of them to release 1) their medical records, 2) their tax returns, and 3) their transcripts for any speeches. Refusal to release any of this results in them being disqualified from the race. It should be mandatory that any candidate for this office release all that info.
Lastly, the election system should be revised so that someone can only win with at least 60% of the popular vote.
I think they're probably completely correct: she should be disqualified. I think we should have an independent medical examination required for all candidates in fact, starting this year. Hopefully they'd disqualify both Hillary and Trump.
What state do you live in? (Come on, there's only 50 of them, it's not like someone's going to come to your front door by posting it here.) I live in Virginia, generally regarded as a swing state, and I certainly don't hear people spouting alt-right stuff at the local Walmart or gas station, even though I happen to live in a more right-wing-populated part of the state currently. In fact, I don't hear people spouting anything, I just see them going about their regular daily business at these places, refilling their gas tanks, shopping for groceries, etc. I do see a few houses with giant "Trump" signs in their yards over in Maryland when I cross over the river. It does seem like the general attitude among people in the more rural parts of this state is for Trump, but that mainly seems to be because the Democrats haven't really done anything for working-class white people that they can see, and instead all they see is massively increased rents and healthcare costs along with no or poorly-paying jobs after 8 years of a Democratic president, and Dems just telling them they need to go to college, not because they really love the guy, but only because he actually addresses their concerns unlike all the other candidates on both sides of the aisle. I'm not working class myself (or else I wouldn't be here), but I'm around them enough to understand their lives and their concerns and I can completely understand why they want to vote for Trump.
With 5000 members, I'm thinking maybe I should make sure any doctors I see aren't affiliated with this group. I wonder if their membership list is public.
I think at some level we all know why: the people that attack Clinton, don't really care about the truth of their attacks, they just hope that if they make enough noise, then people will think there is a real problem
Oh bullshit, you're just shilling for her like all the other shills.
If she has medical issues that can affect her mental health (as a serious concussion would), and is still suffering from medical issues that can affect her performance in office, then she should absolutely be disqualified. We can't have someone running the country who's having mental lapses or needs to go to the hospital. There's plenty of other healthier people who can do the job.
why was it not disqualifying that Reagan kept getting skin cancer? And if I remember correctly, he also, allegedly, suffered from Alzheimers.
He should have been disqualified too.
There absolutely should be a strict medical requirement to be eligible for the highest office in this country, with independent testing by multiple doctors. Someone in Hillary's state of health has no business being President, and I'd be happy to see Trump get disqualified too; he probably has something wrong with him as well. As for Reagan, I don't know what that has to do with much except that two wrongs don't make a right. I'm not sure why you're bringing him up, since Hillary is basically a clone of Reagan anyway.
If you can't do the deed naturally, then maybe you have other issues too. You can get a healthier kid by having a healthier male father the kid. Plus the wife will enjoy it a lot more than artificial insemination.
I'm not arguing that SkyTran the company is not vaporware, or is capable of pulling any kind of project off really. My whole fundamental argument is about technically feasible things being impossible because of politics and human nature. I brought out SkyTran as an example of this because I think it's a good one: if we as a species were smart and well-organized, we wouldn't have very many cars any more, and we'd already be buzzing around in SkyTran pods, because they're completely do-able from a technical point of view using our existing technology. But we don't do it because we're too stupid, greedy, dysfunctional, etc. Car companies certainly aren't interested in SkyTran because it would kill their profits. Oil companies certainly aren't interested because it would put them out of business mostly (you'd still need oil for trucks, and the few remaining personal vehicles, and ships, but the lion's share of our usage is cars and SkyTran, once fully built-out, would eliminate most of that, and only rural-dwellers and certain specialists (like tradespeople who need a truck full of tools) would still have them). Vested interests do not want to see something like this take off, the bought-off politicians aren't going to help it take off, and the general public is too ignorant and short-sighted to support it and demand their representatives support it ("b..b..but how will people tow their boats with it??!! b.b..b..but how will I carry my 8 kids in it?").
Personally, I don't expect to see SkyTran happen any time soon; instead, I expect to see catastrophic climate change and a massive (probably nuclear) war and possible extinction of humanity; I don't think our species is really smart enough to survive much longer, or if it does, it's going to go through another "dark ages". Maybe we'll just turn into a smaller-brained aquatic animal like some Vonnegut book I read in high school. But whether the failure of SkyTran to reach any fruition is due to things internal or external to the SkyTran company, I have no idea, but it's really irrelevant to the point I was making.
We don't even necessarily need SkyTran per se; it's not the only example of PRT (personal rapid transit), and certainly not the first (that would probably be the system that's still running at West Virginia U, though it's not quite "personal" with 6-person pods IIRC, but it was installed in the 70s). There's nothing stopping someone else from making something similar, and others have tried, and none of those went very far either. Basically, as far as I can tell, we humans really suck at planning and implementing large infrastructural projects. The best we've done is railroads and (asphalt) roads, and those are technologically rather primitive since they don't have any kind of actual control system and are just a way for vehicles to avoid rolling directly on bare ground. We're great at making small, personal devices, but big projects that require lots of cooperation from government, not so much. It's really a wonder we managed to pull off the Apollo project.
It's not "engineeringly complete" yet, no. It really sounds like a problem with things like bad management, poor funding (for the size of the project), etc. There's all kinds of things that are technically very feasible but never get off the ground because of funding and management. This is no different. From everything I've read, the needed technologies are all in place: the InducTrack is already built and proven, and that's probably the most difficult part. The next most difficult part is the routing and planning systems; well those are nothing compared to what Google Maps does, since SkyTran is physically confined to operating on its own rail system, and is able to control all the vehicles at once. From a software point-of-view, it's not that hard, not compared to other things we've already done. Tesla's Autopilot is more complicated (SkyTran, on its elevated rails, doesn't have to worry about kids running out in front of it, or another driver swerving into its lane, or icy roads, etc).
I don't have any contacts in SkyTran to know anything about how it's run internally and what its problems might be, but there's no shortage of corporations that manage to screw up the stuff they do, even though they're not doing anything really new and groundbreaking. Just look at HP Enterprise (formerly EDS): the IT systems and services they provide barely work at all. Or how about the healthcare.gov website when it first went live? There was nothing technologically new or difficult there at all.
Not quickly enough for the transition, no. Making machines to automate most of our drudgery today isn't pretty easy really, and that's why we've done so much of it. Making machines to repair machines is far more difficult. Making machines to design new machines requires strong AI. Make the AI strong enough and give the machines the ability to do all of society's functions themselves and pretty soon they'll realize their human masters are unnecessary.
No real thinking, just "hey that's new, let's try it and see what happens" (typically teenagers). Or "hey that's new (even though it's not), let's mandate that everyone must do it and see what happens" (typically these people call themselves 'liberals').
There's also: "this ancient book written by primitive goat-herders says such-and-such and makes a bunch of supernatural and downright ridiculous claims, so we need to follow it blindly" (typically these people call themselves 'conservatives').
Slashdot Mirror
The other factor everyone's missing is: why do people need to make more money for a "living wage"? Simple: too many of their costs have ballooned. And it's not across the board (technology gadgets are cheaper; look how much computers used to cost in the 80s), it's two very specific sectors: housing and healthcare.
Housing costs have skyrocketed in the last 10-15 years thanks to the housing bubble and foreign "investment". What have the politicians done to fix this issue? Nothing.
Healthcare costs have also skyrocketed. ACA was attempted to deal with this, but it didn't address the reason the costs were so high in the first place, it just tries to spread the costs out over everyone, so anyone who's middle class ends up subsidizing everyone who's lower middle class. What have politicians done to address the actual costs of healthcare (as epitomized by the EpiPen issue)? Nothing.
Fix the reasons that people think they need so much more money to live and maybe they won't need such higher wages.
Eh, if you're going to be technical about it then software engineering isn't engineering.
I am a mechanical engineer. People can get seriously injured if the projects I work on don't work correctly. It has to be right the first time.
-1 ignorant
The people who write embedded avionics and automotive software can say exactly the same thing about their projects. MISRA and DO-178 standards exist for a reason.
You can shove it as far as I'm concerned. If you want privacy, don't run for public office; it's that simple.
And yes, Congresspeople and SCOTUS should have their medical records public too. Again, if you want privacy, don't run for public office in top levels of government.
If you don't have anything to hide, then what do you need privacy for? That's what these leaders have been preaching to us for ages. It's time they took their own advice.
I agree, he should be disqualified. So should almost all the other candidates who ran on both sides.
There should be a test for sociopathy before one can hold public office. That would clean out almost all our politicians.
A person's medical condition is personal. The public has no right to the details.
Complete and utter bullshit. The public has every right to the medical records of someone who has the nuclear launch codes. The decisions the POTUS makes affect not only every American in a profound way, but people across the planet. There absolutely should be transparency with their medical records and condition, and a medical test to be qualified for office. And from what I've seen so far, both Hillary and Trump would probably fail that test, which would be good for Americans and for the world.
100% of Trump supporters claim Hillary is unfit for President!
Yes, and they're absolutely correct.
Also, 100% of Hillary supporters claim Trump is unfit for the office, and they're absolutely correct too. We should follow the advice of both camps and disqualify both candidates.
Ronnie shouldn't have been allowed to serve with Alzheimer's. Your father didn't have nuclear launch codes and make executive decisions affecting billions of people. This job should be reserved to someone who has unquestionable mental health. Hillary isn't qualified. (And I think that if we got an unbiased team of doctors to examine Trump, they'd find a good reason to disqualify him too.)
Oh, I agree. Maybe I wasn't clear, but I think Ronnie should have been disqualified because of the rather-obvious Alzheimer's he had, not skin cancer. Lots of people get skin cancer, and at early ages too; it's not that big a deal and is pretty easily treated if caught early enough. But things that affect your mind are serious, when talking about the "leader of the free world" and the person with the nuclear launch codes.
I see the Hillary shills are out in full force. This isn't a troll, he's completely correct: both parties have managed to select the worst possible candidates.
Presidential candidates shouldn't just have to release their records (since they could have a complicit personal physician after all). They should be required to be examined by several independent physicians, who can then decide whether the candidate is medically qualified or not.
They should also be required to release their tax returns and other financial records and also the transcripts for any paid speeches. I demand nothing less than full transparency.
No, because that allows either of them to back out.
I say it should be required for both of them to release 1) their medical records, 2) their tax returns, and 3) their transcripts for any speeches. Refusal to release any of this results in them being disqualified from the race. It should be mandatory that any candidate for this office release all that info.
Lastly, the election system should be revised so that someone can only win with at least 60% of the popular vote.
A broken clock is right twice a day.
I think they're probably completely correct: she should be disqualified. I think we should have an independent medical examination required for all candidates in fact, starting this year. Hopefully they'd disqualify both Hillary and Trump.
If the voters were sane, they wouldn't have voted for Hillary in the primaries. They had literally 4 other choices on the Democratic ticket alone.
Also, if the voters were sane, they wouldn't have voted for any of the Republican candidates who were popular (Trump, Cruz, Rubiobot, Carson, etc.).
What state do you live in? (Come on, there's only 50 of them, it's not like someone's going to come to your front door by posting it here.) I live in Virginia, generally regarded as a swing state, and I certainly don't hear people spouting alt-right stuff at the local Walmart or gas station, even though I happen to live in a more right-wing-populated part of the state currently. In fact, I don't hear people spouting anything, I just see them going about their regular daily business at these places, refilling their gas tanks, shopping for groceries, etc. I do see a few houses with giant "Trump" signs in their yards over in Maryland when I cross over the river. It does seem like the general attitude among people in the more rural parts of this state is for Trump, but that mainly seems to be because the Democrats haven't really done anything for working-class white people that they can see, and instead all they see is massively increased rents and healthcare costs along with no or poorly-paying jobs after 8 years of a Democratic president, and Dems just telling them they need to go to college, not because they really love the guy, but only because he actually addresses their concerns unlike all the other candidates on both sides of the aisle. I'm not working class myself (or else I wouldn't be here), but I'm around them enough to understand their lives and their concerns and I can completely understand why they want to vote for Trump.
With 5000 members, I'm thinking maybe I should make sure any doctors I see aren't affiliated with this group. I wonder if their membership list is public.
Kaine is "far more progressive" than HIllary? Where'd you get that idea? Neither of those two is a progressive, or even close.
I think at some level we all know why: the people that attack Clinton, don't really care about the truth of their attacks, they just hope that if they make enough noise, then people will think there is a real problem
Oh bullshit, you're just shilling for her like all the other shills.
If she has medical issues that can affect her mental health (as a serious concussion would), and is still suffering from medical issues that can affect her performance in office, then she should absolutely be disqualified. We can't have someone running the country who's having mental lapses or needs to go to the hospital. There's plenty of other healthier people who can do the job.
why was it not disqualifying that Reagan kept getting skin cancer? And if I remember correctly, he also, allegedly, suffered from Alzheimers.
He should have been disqualified too.
There absolutely should be a strict medical requirement to be eligible for the highest office in this country, with independent testing by multiple doctors. Someone in Hillary's state of health has no business being President, and I'd be happy to see Trump get disqualified too; he probably has something wrong with him as well. As for Reagan, I don't know what that has to do with much except that two wrongs don't make a right. I'm not sure why you're bringing him up, since Hillary is basically a clone of Reagan anyway.
On the other hand, they gave us UCSD Pascal and BSD UNIX
They did that stuff decades ago. What have they given us recently? Probably nothing.
I say this school should have all its government funding cut off. See how long they survive as a private school.
If you can't do the deed naturally, then maybe you have other issues too. You can get a healthier kid by having a healthier male father the kid. Plus the wife will enjoy it a lot more than artificial insemination.
I'm not arguing that SkyTran the company is not vaporware, or is capable of pulling any kind of project off really. My whole fundamental argument is about technically feasible things being impossible because of politics and human nature. I brought out SkyTran as an example of this because I think it's a good one: if we as a species were smart and well-organized, we wouldn't have very many cars any more, and we'd already be buzzing around in SkyTran pods, because they're completely do-able from a technical point of view using our existing technology. But we don't do it because we're too stupid, greedy, dysfunctional, etc. Car companies certainly aren't interested in SkyTran because it would kill their profits. Oil companies certainly aren't interested because it would put them out of business mostly (you'd still need oil for trucks, and the few remaining personal vehicles, and ships, but the lion's share of our usage is cars and SkyTran, once fully built-out, would eliminate most of that, and only rural-dwellers and certain specialists (like tradespeople who need a truck full of tools) would still have them). Vested interests do not want to see something like this take off, the bought-off politicians aren't going to help it take off, and the general public is too ignorant and short-sighted to support it and demand their representatives support it ("b..b..but how will people tow their boats with it??!! b.b..b..but how will I carry my 8 kids in it?").
Personally, I don't expect to see SkyTran happen any time soon; instead, I expect to see catastrophic climate change and a massive (probably nuclear) war and possible extinction of humanity; I don't think our species is really smart enough to survive much longer, or if it does, it's going to go through another "dark ages". Maybe we'll just turn into a smaller-brained aquatic animal like some Vonnegut book I read in high school. But whether the failure of SkyTran to reach any fruition is due to things internal or external to the SkyTran company, I have no idea, but it's really irrelevant to the point I was making.
We don't even necessarily need SkyTran per se; it's not the only example of PRT (personal rapid transit), and certainly not the first (that would probably be the system that's still running at West Virginia U, though it's not quite "personal" with 6-person pods IIRC, but it was installed in the 70s). There's nothing stopping someone else from making something similar, and others have tried, and none of those went very far either. Basically, as far as I can tell, we humans really suck at planning and implementing large infrastructural projects. The best we've done is railroads and (asphalt) roads, and those are technologically rather primitive since they don't have any kind of actual control system and are just a way for vehicles to avoid rolling directly on bare ground. We're great at making small, personal devices, but big projects that require lots of cooperation from government, not so much. It's really a wonder we managed to pull off the Apollo project.
It's not "engineeringly complete" yet, no. It really sounds like a problem with things like bad management, poor funding (for the size of the project), etc. There's all kinds of things that are technically very feasible but never get off the ground because of funding and management. This is no different. From everything I've read, the needed technologies are all in place: the InducTrack is already built and proven, and that's probably the most difficult part. The next most difficult part is the routing and planning systems; well those are nothing compared to what Google Maps does, since SkyTran is physically confined to operating on its own rail system, and is able to control all the vehicles at once. From a software point-of-view, it's not that hard, not compared to other things we've already done. Tesla's Autopilot is more complicated (SkyTran, on its elevated rails, doesn't have to worry about kids running out in front of it, or another driver swerving into its lane, or icy roads, etc).
I don't have any contacts in SkyTran to know anything about how it's run internally and what its problems might be, but there's no shortage of corporations that manage to screw up the stuff they do, even though they're not doing anything really new and groundbreaking. Just look at HP Enterprise (formerly EDS): the IT systems and services they provide barely work at all. Or how about the healthcare.gov website when it first went live? There was nothing technologically new or difficult there at all.
Not quickly enough for the transition, no. Making machines to automate most of our drudgery today isn't pretty easy really, and that's why we've done so much of it. Making machines to repair machines is far more difficult. Making machines to design new machines requires strong AI. Make the AI strong enough and give the machines the ability to do all of society's functions themselves and pretty soon they'll realize their human masters are unnecessary.
Or you could save a fortune and just find a healthy male friend to father your child....
But ... ask yourself, would you prefer to have never been born?
That line of thinking will lead you to the conclusion that it's morally wrong to allow any human ovum to go un-fertilized.
No real thinking, just "hey that's new, let's try it and see what happens" (typically teenagers). Or "hey that's new (even though it's not), let's mandate that everyone must do it and see what happens" (typically these people call themselves 'liberals').
There's also: "this ancient book written by primitive goat-herders says such-and-such and makes a bunch of supernatural and downright ridiculous claims, so we need to follow it blindly" (typically these people call themselves 'conservatives').