Still great after all these years
on
Opera 10.0 Released
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· Score: 2, Insightful
I have been using Opera since Opera version 4 ish - still prefer it above all others and have tried all the rest, but it is still faster, better layout, and more customizable to my taste than any other option. It also wins completely on GUI speed, and on keyboard navigation.
Just started with 10 now, and Opera still has it.
When I do web development, and want "inspect this" element and a browse-able dom tree - I use Firefox. To do layout checking and rendering checking, we fire up both Safari and IE. But for day to day, with 20-50 tabs open, browsing around... Opera is the one that works best.
ALREADY one new feature I LOVE: inline spell checking while I write! (This was one thing I wanted but it took a while for Opera to catch up to FF, and had to add a JavaScript user-side spell checker.)
Providing a different option will be hard for us. Please provide us relief."
Seems to me like this issue is exactly why monopolies are bad for consumers.
The last PC I helped someone fix (bloated and slow, crippled with malware) didn't even come with system reinstall disks - they had to order and pay for them separately once the computer arrived. Oops!
Great question. I don't have a great answer. Not everyone sees the current situation as a problem, which is copyright is the way it is today.
Here is what I think, and from that, others perhaps will understand why I think the current situation is unreasonable.
Intellectual property, like property, is a complete social fiction - its a very useful one, but nonetheless - a fiction.
Property is a big unspoken social agreement we have that assigns resources to individuals and entities and gives them superior rights of control over those resources. This assignment we call "ownership", and is a critical part to nonviolent resource distribution with many independent entities. In civil society it is simply given that this property mapping of things to people/organizations is "real", but in fact it is only supported, like all rules, (both laws and social mores) if people generally agree - both agree that the rules are reasonable, and agree that they each will (in the vast majority) follow those rules. If people don't agree, laws don't work.
Intellectual property extends the idea of this big shared social mapping of resources (property) to intangible "intellectual" creations (written words, music, video and most anything translatable into computer bits). The basic idea of intellectual property says that if one entity (person, company) did a lot of work in creating something, they should have superior rights to control it for a while. By itself, this is a very reasonable idea.
On the other hand, there is no physical basis to support property rights on information objects like there are on working land or creating physical things. Many would argue extremely convincingly that in a highly connected world, most people would be much better off if there were no intellectual property at all. That only those large organizations profiting from culture creation and limiting access to culture would be those harmed by eliminating IP entirely.
However, most important to the debate from my perspective is one of culture. The shared actions of humans that create the beauty, education, entertainment, and everyday existence for human beings is now encoded very often in digital information used to create experiences we all share. The fundamental question at hand is this: are we better off with human experience owned by corporations, or not? To me, this is the essence of the whole copyright debate - it has nothing to do with the specifics of law or legality, the politics of lobbying groups, or even the money people make off IP - it has to do with what kind of entity gets to create and control human culture, and whether it happens primarily by and for individuals in an open way, or whether it happens primarily under corporate ownership in a closed way.
Currently, we unequivocally have the latter. Large corporations primarily own the most valuable and most widely shared cultural elements in all 1st-world countries. The length of copyright basically only benefits and perpetuates corporations now. Governments with WIPO and other treaties are trying to enforce long, strong copyright protections globally. Its not individuals' creative expression driving how we live, how we think, how we get news and information, how we are entertained, how we are educated - but rather (and I'm being extremely general here) - it is corporations. These statements are extremely broad and there are many counter examples, but I'm referring to the largest factors and the most momentum in society.
I see it as unreasonable that culture created today will never be available to me openly and legally in my lifetime. The only reason the system works this way is because large companies profit more from IP working this way than other ways. The social fiction of IP is no longer a good deal for the individual in this case. This basic understanding that this legal fiction is no longer a good deal for individuals is why so many people redistribute mus
There can be no rational discussion about copyright until people acknowledge that current copyright laws, created almost entirely to meet corporate interests, are completely out of whack with people's expectations and with any semblance of fairness or social good for individuals.
This means that *NOTHING* created by artists, musicians, or *ANY* of the culture created today will move into the public domain in your lifetime (expected lifetime) unless the people or companies who control the rights let you have access to it through licensing or sales. You will die first before the vast majority of today's' culture is available to you legally.
That is absurd. It is not how the intellectual property system was ever intended to work.
All of the textbook except one included a share-friendly license. One Biology book did not, and the content was not included. The Physics texts were published about a year ago.
This is my experience to support that statement: Apple has people on staff that contribute to open source projects, people I've met personally. Apple has macports (port), which maintains systems to integrate and install open source software on Mac OSX. Bash and X11 work out of the box on OSX.
No idea where your connection to Communism came from.
I've been using different GUI front ends for programming and work for over 10 years now - and Apple laptops for the last 5 years of so.
Open office is now a fully acceptable spreadsheet and word processor. Gimp is fully functional for photos. Most other services are web based. VLC, media playing, etc are all working on Linux too. Issues that used to be common are now well supported in the open-source community with networking, video acceleration, disks, USB, drivers, etc.
Apple with it's BSD-based kernel and more open culture than Microsoft, could openly embrace the open source community, however, it seems to be working actively to prevent open access to a large number of their software-hardware combinations, and refuses to embrace and support the console-using, computer-hacking crowd (like me). It is understandable from a short-term financial standpoint, but long term, I think this is a mistake for Apple. I think taking the position at the genius bar of "if you open Terminal, we won't help you" alienates the most dedicated and supportive users in the marketplace. It is that community that could rocket Apple forward with more contributions and functionality - but now they continue to be pushed to support Linux instead.
It is disappointing to me that we live in a world where large companies like Apple still grow primarily based on marketing, selling and distributing physical things over digital products, or from monetizing the support and services (and maintaining a community) around increased productivity.
The difference in price between all these products is small compared to the value of ones times spent dealing with issue that arise. Regardless of how one values their own time - after any major screw ups taking many, many hours to fix - you have already surpassed any difference in price between the systems. Reliability, functionality, and real security (and how much time you have to spend later to get those) are the real value of owning a laptop for several years, not just the initial price.
But all in all, lack of Apple support for hacking means I'll be looking seriously at a Linux-based laptop (at 1/2 the price and more open standards) for my next laptop.
security theatre: (1) security countermeasures intended to provide the feeling of improved security while doing little or nothing to actually improve security, usually resulting from political absurdity, poor engineering, the need to present an image of security more than real security, or some combination of these factors. (2) The real mission of the Transportation Security Administration.
Examples: airport screening, "No-Fly" lists, random searches on subway systems, 1950's "duck and cover" drills in U.S. public schools
theism vs. atheism are a different axis to gnosticism vs agnosticism
theism is belief that there is a God. vs. atheism is belief that there is not a God.
gnosticism comes from 'gnostic', an old series of beliefs primarily notable by the belief (a prerequisite for theists) that humans can now if God exists - gnostic systems predate most of the world's modern religions. vs. agnosticism is a belief that humans can not know for sure if God exists.
The two concepts are close, but different. It is not a matter of percents or certainty.
Given the corruption they have now, what makes them think corruption won't continue?
Stealing someones biometric data will mean an increasing arms race for technology to identify someone. It will eventually fail as corrupt agencies and criminals have the same methods to read biometry data and create the id cards. As a way to slow this down - do not give the biometric data to the person, explained thus:
Instead, people should be issued replaceable, hard to fake credentials (ID cards) - that do NOT have biometric readings on them, rather just a long random number. These would be easy to read - and the random number identifies the holder.
Creation and issuing of credentials would be done only based on government-run biometric scans. The identifying agency keeps the biometric data secret at the time of issue or re-issue, and links the biometric data to the replaceable credentials/random number.
This way if an ID is stolen or in dispute, the person comes in, gets scanned again and a new credential/card/random number is issued and the old one is cancelled.
This allows one upside: no big, central DB of biometric data - each local area keeps their own. By removing a central identity DB, corrupt officials will have smaller targets to break.
That food supply data adequately fits the logistic model of human population dynamics provides evidence that, consistent with ecological notions typically applied only to nonhuman species, human population increases are a function of increased food availability.
Yup, you're wrong -- you have misinterpreted my intent and attributed arguments and implication to me that I did not make.
Changing population and rates of population change will take *generations* to accomplish.
The important piece is this: " focus on moderating the needs of people to fit within a natural environment ".
There are hundreds of different specific tactics individuals can and do take that help solve the issues at hand. However, there needs to be a radical shift in human expectations of growth and prosperity and a more humble appreciation of the natural world before we will truly fix the issues.
If you want to understand better where I'm coming from, please go read the citations I posted in the other posts, and watch this http://www.home-2009.com/ to get a better understanding of where the rest of the developing world lives today.
This is flagrantly incorrect. The population of the U.S. is an immediate and obvious counterexample. Humans don't actually (organically) breed like viruses; we only consume like them.
Nope. The US and developing world numbers represent a counter example to larger trends (and which, ironically represents a way of living that is *UNSUSTAINABLE* for the current human population). The US is only about 5% of the world population.
For me, this question is simply one of survival of the human species. 10,000 years ago humans did not have the capability of destroying the environment. Over the last 300 years we developed the ability, though it would have taken a lot of effort or severe negligence to make the world unlivable for humans. Today, we have the capability to destroy human survivability on Earth by accident, or unintended consequence of otherwise sound choices. In this situation, the philosophical issues take a back seat to the glaring practical issues of future famines, floods, and man made disasters that we can prevent with proper planning.
As to why survival is important, in my view, there is intrinsic value in maintaining an environment on earth that will sustain human life supported by many lines of reasoning.
Honestly, the argument the GP is making is that we should, by our inaction, allow some poor people in some far away country to starve to death.
What??? No.
Please show me how you conclude this. Whomever modded this as insightful is as confused as you are.
If the GP really wants to make a difference and free up some resources, maybe he should start with himself.
You know nothing about me. I ride a bike to work, I grow my own food. Do you?
People on this thread need to go read some research on the issues of food and population. Most every post I read here is grossly off base, including you:
According to the empirical research (Hopfenberg 2003), human population growth is a rapidly cycling positive feedback loop in which food availability drives population growth and this growth in human numbers gives rise to the mistaken impression that food production needs to be increased even more.
see also Hopfenberg R. Human carrying capacity is determined by food availability. Popul Environ. 2003;25(2):109117.
The USA *ALONE* produces more than 6 times the food requirements of the entire human population.
This is an enormously complex area, but some countries that demonstrate negative population growth fails to discredit the larger pattern of 10,000 years of human history (and many other species) that food availability drives population.
People have been altering the genetics of plants and animals for as long as we have practiced agriculture.
However, doing this with modern techniques can present incredible risks, possibly as large as the risks we face from environmental damage. There are significant consequences to altering genomes of existing creatures, and mostly, people would try to be as careful as possible. Most all of the changes we've made have been exceedingly helpful.
But there are a few unavoidable truths:
1- Humans cannot contain nature indefinitely - so whatever we create will eventually enter the environment and compete with the existing species.
2- Genomes, the resulting organism, and the myriad interaction with other species, viruses, and environmental conditions are far too complex for humans predict any outcome reliably. We are blindly stabbing at potentially world-changing effects.
3- "Monocultures" increase risk. Even if this program is wildly successful, and they create a huge supply of "perfect" Tuna - they will be a single species, and their success will be a risk - a single other species or virus could wipe them out.
We want to establish a complete aquaculture system that will produce fish that have good strength, are resistant to disease, grow quickly and taste delicious.
In many ways TFA sounds a lot like the mentality Monsanto has: make more food for more people with fewer resources. This is completely backwards, and will fail us in a devastating way long term. Food availability is the single most important factor that drives population growth. The solution we need is not to re-engineer nature to meet the demands of growing populations better, but rather to focus on moderating the needs of people to fit within a natural environment created over 2 billions years which we *cannot* recreate if we destroy it.
In the end, the environment we live in has much "momentum" and "power" to inflict damage to the human race than we have power to control and shift the natural world to our needs.
given the nature of computers and the Internet, almost every action one takes makes a copy of digital content - making the "automatic copyright" at the heart of the current problems. copying is using, which makes all content created near useless without specific permission (fair use aside).
it seems to me, things would work a lot better if copyright had to be claimed, and it could be claimed by an easy and free method, digitally (eg submit a hash to a central registry, get a number, and post the number with the work) - and all other content was granted an automatic CC-BY or similar rights to the creator if they do nothing.
remain in place the system and penalties for infringement of claimed copyrights - but allow the rest of the world to create an open exchange of content and creative expression that encourages sharing and copying.
many companies, large and small benefit directly from open source.
Those companies making significant profits could be asked to contribute to a central pool, a non profit or mutual benefit co. - that hires small teams to make useful open source tools more polished, secure, and user friendly.
while in general this seems like a poor idea, for many reasons that will be posted by others, by pushing forward a good online voting system, many other benefits could arise, such as:
- longer voting periods than one day - like a week or even a month to lock in a vote
- verification that your real vote has been received and counted while voting is still possible,
possibly reducing some voter fraud types
- different voting methods than the simple, single vote, winner take all
- better support for various languages
- increased interest and participation by younger, more Internet savvy voters
- state developing and using strong cryptographic system for ensuring privacy and security of votes
- better, more frequent accounting of population
- increased social support for secure Internet systems and Internet access
- new open source, open standard systems for secure electronic voting
- Increased delivery and accountability of government services via the Internet
wants to throw open the health care licensing gates to anybody who wants to take care of a patient.
No.
What, exactly, are you proposing as an alternative to the current system?
What the US has now is not a "system" - it is non functional. Much could be done to improve the health of the population, but it reaches far outside what people typically call "healthcare".
implication in why physicians didn't adopt EMRs 30 years ago
Adopt??? Read my post again. Physicians could have built it, but didn't want it then or now, for obvious reasons. The mess physicians are in now is of their own creation.
Frankly, I do know the technology very well, and the issue is *not* technology (order entry, data storage, SOAS, vocabularies, data security... all work pretty well), rather, it is our imprecise understanding of medicine and the habits, training and practice of medicine by physicians that now prevent electronic health data storage and exchange.
Re:one word: protectionism
on
IT and Health Care
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· Score: 1, Insightful
Sorry, but as a physician, you come to the table with a prior of zero credibility in a discussion of financial matters.
Most physicians ought to try working in any other profession besides the guaranteed-high-salary-MD-world before commenting on who it is that lives in a parallel universe.
I'm a strong supporter of anyone who creates high value earning as much as possible. When one builds value or manages high responsibility, they get the money.
Unfortunately, physicians in the US are not creating significant value despite the costs and their salaries. The costs to the US society have gone now above 17% of the nation`s Gross Domestic Product (GDP), and rising at rising four times faster on average than workers` earnings since 1999. That means more than 1 in 6 of *EVERY* dollar of value created in the US goes to this racket (sic). High cost, by itself, not a problem: health is extremely important BUT, health results in the US are not very good, on a cost comparison basis with other 1st world countries: http://www.commonwealthfund.org/Content/Publications/Fund-Reports/2006/Sep/Why-Not-the-Best--Results-from-a-National-Scorecard-on-U-S--Health-System-Performance.aspx
For all this expense, and all those salaries, US health is not as good. Why?
Becuase care providing is a controlled, state-sponsored monopoly. In any other industry physicians would all have been fired and improved long ago for such a horrible financial mess coupled with such poor comparative results. As a physician you and your peers created and profit directly from the high costs in the system.
I agree with any of your assessment of EMRs. They are dead on - but interested physicians driving this technology forward with a sincere interest in human health and not solely on protecting their business and on profits would have made EMRs a priority more then 30 years ago when research in this area first started, and solved all those issues.
And as for "Medical care in most locales in the US has long been collaborative, team-based system" - that`s comic. A physician`s definition of "team" and what everyone else in the work world means with that word are miles apart.
ironically, lording over the data is a large reason why care providers often still have to make SWAG diagnoses, instead of having a long progression of better medical knowledge fueled by accessible research and outcomes data.
Slashdot Mirror
I have been using Opera since Opera version 4 ish - still prefer it above all others and have tried all the rest, but it is still faster, better layout, and more customizable to my taste than any other option. It also wins completely on GUI speed, and on keyboard navigation.
Just started with 10 now, and Opera still has it.
When I do web development, and want "inspect this" element and a browse-able dom tree - I use Firefox. To do layout checking and rendering checking, we fire up both Safari and IE. But for day to day, with 20-50 tabs open, browsing around... Opera is the one that works best.
ALREADY one new feature I LOVE: inline spell checking while I write! (This was one thing I wanted but it took a while for Opera to catch up to FF, and had to add a JavaScript user-side spell checker.)
"Dear Court:
Providing a different option will be hard for us.
Please provide us relief."
Seems to me like this issue is exactly why monopolies are bad for consumers.
The last PC I helped someone fix (bloated and slow, crippled with malware) didn't even
come with system reinstall disks - they had to order and pay for them separately once the
computer arrived. Oops!
Why exactly is this a problem?
Great question. I don't have a great answer. Not everyone sees the current situation as a problem, which is copyright is the way it is today.
Here is what I think, and from that, others perhaps will understand why I think the current situation is unreasonable.
Intellectual property, like property, is a complete social fiction - its a very useful one, but nonetheless - a fiction.
Property is a big unspoken social agreement we have that assigns resources to individuals and entities and gives them superior rights of control over those resources. This assignment we call "ownership", and is a critical part to nonviolent resource distribution with many independent entities. In civil society it is simply given that this property mapping of things to people/organizations is "real", but in fact it is only supported, like all rules, (both laws and social mores) if people generally agree - both agree that the rules are reasonable, and agree that they each will (in the vast majority) follow those rules. If people don't agree, laws don't work.
Intellectual property extends the idea of this big shared social mapping of resources (property) to intangible "intellectual" creations (written words, music, video and most anything translatable into computer bits). The basic idea of intellectual property says that if one entity (person, company) did a lot of work in creating something, they should have superior rights to control it for a while. By itself, this is a very reasonable idea.
On the other hand, there is no physical basis to support property rights on information objects like there are on working land or creating physical things. Many would argue extremely convincingly that in a highly connected world, most people would be much better off if there were no intellectual property at all. That only those large organizations profiting from culture creation and limiting access to culture would be those harmed by eliminating IP entirely.
However, most important to the debate from my perspective is one of culture. The shared actions of humans that create the beauty, education, entertainment, and everyday existence for human beings is now encoded very often in digital information used to create experiences we all share. The fundamental question at hand is this: are we better off with human experience owned by corporations, or not? To me, this is the essence of the whole copyright debate - it has nothing to do with the specifics of law or legality, the politics of lobbying groups, or even the money people make off IP - it has to do with what kind of entity gets to create and control human culture, and whether it happens primarily by and for individuals in an open way, or whether it happens primarily under corporate ownership in a closed way.
Currently, we unequivocally have the latter. Large corporations primarily own the most valuable and most widely shared cultural elements in all 1st-world countries. The length of copyright basically only benefits and perpetuates corporations now. Governments with WIPO and other treaties are trying to enforce long, strong copyright protections globally. Its not individuals' creative expression driving how we live, how we think, how we get news and information, how we are entertained, how we are educated - but rather (and I'm being extremely general here) - it is corporations. These statements are extremely broad and there are many counter examples, but I'm referring to the largest factors and the most momentum in society.
I see it as unreasonable that culture created today will never be available to me openly and legally in my lifetime. The only reason the system works this way is because large companies profit more from IP working this way than other ways. The social fiction of IP is no longer a good deal for the individual in this case. This basic understanding that this legal fiction is no longer a good deal for individuals is why so many people redistribute mus
<< steps up >>
There can be no rational discussion about copyright until people acknowledge
that current copyright laws, created almost entirely to meet corporate interests,
are completely out of whack with people's expectations and with any semblance of
fairness or social good for individuals.
The current norm is "Life + 70 years" with a comprehensive list here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries'_copyright_length
This means that *NOTHING* created by artists, musicians, or *ANY* of
the culture created today will move into the public domain in your lifetime
(expected lifetime) unless the people or companies who control the rights let
you have access to it through licensing or sales. You will die first before
the vast majority of today's' culture is available to you legally.
That is absurd. It is not how the intellectual property system was ever
intended to work.
<< / steps down off my soapbox >>
"by any stretch of reality"...
perhaps not in this stretch: http://rspa.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/early/2009/07/28/rspa.2009.0080.full.pdf
only time will tell. The universe still has a great many secrets undiscovered.
LegalTorrents does hosting and distribution of open licensed content:
see http://www.legaltorrents.com/books
"Twitter is a reflection of what people are interested in right now"
=>
"Twitter is a reflection of what the twits are twatting in right now"
Can you see the problem?
Our volunteers just finished a download compilation here:
http://www.legaltorrents.com/torrents/680-california-learning-resource-network-textbooks
All of the textbook except one included a share-friendly license. One Biology book did not, and the content was not included. The Physics texts were published about a year ago.
This is my experience to support that statement: Apple has people on staff that contribute to open source projects, people I've met personally. Apple has macports (port), which maintains systems to integrate and install open source software on Mac OSX. Bash and X11 work out of the box on OSX.
No idea where your connection to Communism came from.
I've been using different GUI front ends for programming and work for over 10 years now - and Apple laptops for the last 5 years of so.
Open office is now a fully acceptable spreadsheet and word processor. Gimp is fully functional for photos. Most other services are web based. VLC, media playing, etc are all working on Linux too. Issues that used to be common are now well supported in the open-source community with networking, video acceleration, disks, USB, drivers, etc.
Apple with it's BSD-based kernel and more open culture than Microsoft, could openly embrace the open source community, however, it seems to be working actively to prevent open access to a large number of their software-hardware combinations, and refuses to embrace and support the console-using, computer-hacking crowd (like me). It is understandable from a short-term financial standpoint, but long term, I think this is a mistake for Apple. I think taking the position at the genius bar of "if you open Terminal, we won't help you" alienates the most dedicated and supportive users in the marketplace. It is that community that could rocket Apple forward with more contributions and functionality - but now they continue to be pushed to support Linux instead.
It is disappointing to me that we live in a world where large companies like Apple still grow primarily based on marketing, selling and distributing physical things over digital products, or from monetizing the support and services (and maintaining a community) around increased productivity.
The difference in price between all these products is small compared to the value of ones times spent dealing with issue that arise. Regardless of how one values their own time - after any major screw ups taking many, many hours to fix - you have already surpassed any difference in price between the systems. Reliability, functionality, and real security (and how much time you have to spend later to get those) are the real value of owning a laptop for several years, not just the initial price.
But all in all, lack of Apple support for hacking means I'll be looking seriously at a Linux-based laptop (at 1/2 the price and more open standards) for my next laptop.
security theatre: (1) security countermeasures intended to provide the feeling of improved security while doing little or nothing to actually improve security, usually resulting from political absurdity, poor engineering, the need to present an image of security more than real security, or some combination of these factors. (2) The real mission of the Transportation Security Administration.
Examples: airport screening, "No-Fly" lists, random searches on subway systems, 1950's "duck and cover" drills in U.S. public schools
bzzzt. no.
theism vs. atheism are a different axis to gnosticism vs agnosticism
theism is belief that there is a God.
vs.
atheism is belief that there is not a God.
gnosticism comes from 'gnostic', an old series of beliefs primarily notable by the belief (a prerequisite for theists) that humans can now if God exists - gnostic systems predate most of the world's modern religions.
vs.
agnosticism is a belief that humans can not know for sure if God exists.
The two concepts are close, but different. It is not a matter of percents or certainty.
Given the corruption they have now, what makes them think corruption won't continue?
Stealing someones biometric data will mean an increasing arms race for technology to identify someone. It will eventually fail as corrupt agencies and criminals have the same methods to read biometry data and create the id cards. As a way to slow this down - do not give the biometric data to the person, explained thus:
Instead, people should be issued replaceable, hard to fake credentials (ID cards) - that do NOT have biometric readings on them, rather just a long random number. These would be easy to read - and the random number identifies the holder.
Creation and issuing of credentials would be done only based on government-run biometric scans. The identifying agency keeps the biometric data secret at the time of issue or re-issue, and links the biometric data to the replaceable credentials/random number.
This way if an ID is stolen or in dispute, the person comes in, gets scanned again and a new credential/card/random number is issued and the old one is cancelled.
This allows one upside: no big, central DB of biometric data - each local area keeps their own. By removing a central identity DB, corrupt officials will have smaller targets to break.
???
No.
That food supply data adequately fits the logistic model of human population dynamics provides evidence that, consistent with ecological notions typically applied only to nonhuman species, human population increases are a function of increased food availability.
Yup, you're wrong -- you have misinterpreted my intent and attributed arguments and implication to me that I did not make.
Changing population and rates of population change will take *generations* to accomplish.
The important piece is this: " focus on moderating the needs of people to fit within a natural environment ".
There are hundreds of different specific tactics individuals can and do take that help solve the issues at hand. However, there needs to be a radical shift in human expectations of growth and prosperity and a more humble appreciation of the natural world before we will truly fix the issues.
If you want to understand better where I'm coming from, please go read the citations I posted in the other posts, and watch this http://www.home-2009.com/ to get a better understanding of where the rest of the developing world lives today.
This is flagrantly incorrect. The population of the U.S. is an immediate and obvious counterexample. Humans don't actually (organically) breed like viruses; we only consume like them.
Nope. The US and developing world numbers represent a counter example to larger trends (and which, ironically represents a way of living that is *UNSUSTAINABLE* for the current human population). The US is only about 5% of the world population.
see:
http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=1247545
http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=1332674
http://panearth.org/panearth/WVPI/Papers/CarryingCapacity.pdf
citing above, "the number of other factors that influence human population size is beyond human capacity to list, comprehend, and synthesize."
For me, this question is simply one of survival of the human species. 10,000 years ago humans did not have the capability of destroying the environment. Over the last 300 years we developed the ability, though it would have taken a lot of effort or severe negligence to make the world unlivable for humans. Today, we have the capability to destroy human survivability on Earth by accident, or unintended consequence of otherwise sound choices. In this situation, the philosophical issues take a back seat to the glaring practical issues of future famines, floods, and man made disasters that we can prevent with proper planning.
As to why survival is important, in my view, there is intrinsic value in maintaining an environment on earth that will sustain human life supported by many lines of reasoning.
Honestly, the argument the GP is making is that we should, by our inaction, allow some poor people in some far away country to starve to death.
What??? No.
Please show me how you conclude this. Whomever modded this as insightful is as confused as you are.
If the GP really wants to make a difference and free up some resources, maybe he should start with himself.
You know nothing about me. I ride a bike to work, I grow my own food. Do you?
People on this thread need to go read some research on the issues of food and population. Most every post I read here is grossly off base, including you:
from http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=1332674
According to the empirical research (Hopfenberg 2003), human population growth is a rapidly cycling positive feedback loop in which food availability drives population growth and this growth in human numbers gives rise to the mistaken impression that food production needs to be increased even more.
see also
Hopfenberg R. Human carrying capacity is determined by food availability. Popul Environ. 2003;25(2):109117.
The USA *ALONE* produces more than 6 times the food requirements of the entire human population.
and a wiki discussion:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overpopulation#Population_as_a_function_of_food_availability
This is an enormously complex area, but some countries that demonstrate negative population growth fails to discredit the larger pattern of 10,000 years of human history (and many other species) that food availability drives population.
People have been altering the genetics of plants and animals for as long as we have practiced agriculture.
However, doing this with modern techniques can present incredible risks, possibly as large as the risks
we face from environmental damage. There are significant consequences to altering genomes of existing
creatures, and mostly, people would try to be as careful as possible. Most all of the changes we've made
have been exceedingly helpful.
But there are a few unavoidable truths:
1- Humans cannot contain nature indefinitely - so whatever we create will eventually enter the environment and compete with the existing species.
2- Genomes, the resulting organism, and the myriad interaction with other species, viruses, and environmental conditions
are far too complex for humans predict any outcome reliably. We are blindly stabbing at potentially world-changing effects.
3- "Monocultures" increase risk. Even if this program is wildly successful, and they create a huge supply of "perfect" Tuna - they will be a single species, and their success will be a risk - a single other species or virus could wipe them out.
We want to establish a complete aquaculture system that will produce fish that have good strength, are resistant to disease, grow quickly and taste delicious.
In many ways TFA sounds a lot like the mentality Monsanto has: make more food for more people with fewer resources. This is completely backwards, and will fail us in a devastating way long term. Food availability is the single most important factor that drives population growth. The solution we need is not to re-engineer nature to meet the demands of growing populations better, but rather to focus on moderating the needs of people to fit within a natural environment created over 2 billions years which we *cannot* recreate if we destroy it.
In the end, the environment we live in has much "momentum" and "power" to inflict damage to the human race than we have power to control and shift the natural world to our needs.
given the nature of computers and the Internet, almost every action one takes makes a copy of digital content - making the "automatic copyright" at the heart of the current problems. copying is using, which makes all content created near useless without specific permission (fair use aside).
it seems to me, things would work a lot better if copyright had to be claimed, and it could be claimed by an easy and free method, digitally (eg submit a hash to a central registry, get a number, and post the number with the work) - and all other content was granted an automatic CC-BY or similar rights to the creator if they do nothing.
remain in place the system and penalties for infringement of claimed copyrights - but allow the rest of the world to create an open exchange of content and creative expression that encourages sharing and copying.
many companies, large and small benefit directly from open source.
Those companies making significant profits could be asked to contribute to a central pool, a non profit or mutual benefit co. - that hires small teams to make useful open source tools more polished, secure, and user friendly.
everyone wins.
while in general this seems like a poor idea, for many reasons that will be posted by others, by pushing
forward a good online voting system, many other benefits could arise, such as:
- longer voting periods than one day - like a week or even a month to lock in a vote
- verification that your real vote has been received and counted while voting is still possible,
possibly reducing some voter fraud types
- different voting methods than the simple, single vote, winner take all
- better support for various languages
- increased interest and participation by younger, more Internet savvy voters
- state developing and using strong cryptographic system for ensuring privacy and security of votes
- better, more frequent accounting of population
- increased social support for secure Internet systems and Internet access
- new open source, open standard systems for secure electronic voting
- Increased delivery and accountability of government services via the Internet
wants to throw open the health care licensing gates to anybody who wants to take care of a patient.
No.
What, exactly, are you proposing as an alternative to the current system?
What the US has now is not a "system" - it is non functional. Much could be done to improve the health of the population, but it reaches far outside what people typically call "healthcare".
implication in why physicians didn't adopt EMRs 30 years ago
Adopt??? Read my post again. Physicians could have built it, but didn't want it then or now, for obvious reasons. The mess physicians are in now is of their own creation.
Frankly, I do know the technology very well, and the issue is *not* technology (order entry, data storage, SOAS, vocabularies, data security... all work pretty well), rather, it is our imprecise understanding of medicine and the habits, training and practice of medicine by physicians that now prevent electronic health data storage and exchange.
Sorry, but as a physician, you come to the table with a prior of zero credibility in a discussion of financial matters.
Most physicians ought to try working in any other profession besides the guaranteed-high-salary-MD-world before commenting on who it is that lives in a parallel universe.
Physicians in the US have created a closed system that requires a *state license* to enter, and then they earn 3-10+ times the median salary:
http://www.payscale.com/research/US/People_with_Jobs_as_Physicians_%2F_Doctors/Salary
commensurate with remarkably low unemployment (while the rest of the US are now around 9.4% and rising).
I'm a strong supporter of anyone who creates high value earning as much as possible. When one builds value or manages high responsibility, they get the money.
Unfortunately, physicians in the US are not creating significant value despite the costs and their salaries. The costs to the US society have gone now above 17% of the nation`s Gross Domestic Product (GDP), and rising at rising four times faster on average than workers` earnings since 1999. That means more than 1 in 6 of *EVERY* dollar of value created in the US goes to this racket (sic). High cost, by itself, not a problem: health is extremely important BUT, health results in the US are not very good, on a cost comparison basis with other 1st world countries:
http://www.commonwealthfund.org/Content/Publications/Fund-Reports/2006/Sep/Why-Not-the-Best--Results-from-a-National-Scorecard-on-U-S--Health-System-Performance.aspx
For all this expense, and all those salaries, US health is not as good. Why?
Becuase care providing is a controlled, state-sponsored monopoly. In any other industry physicians would all have been fired and improved long ago for such a horrible financial mess coupled with such poor comparative results. As a physician you and your peers created and profit directly from the high costs in the system.
I agree with any of your assessment of EMRs. They are dead on - but interested physicians driving this technology forward with a sincere interest in human health and not solely on protecting their business and on profits would have made EMRs a priority more then 30 years ago when research in this area first started, and solved all those issues.
And as for "Medical care in most locales in the US has long been collaborative, team-based system" - that`s comic. A physician`s definition of "team" and what everyone else in the work world means with that word are miles apart.
ironically, lording over the data is a large reason why care providers often still have to make SWAG diagnoses, instead of having a long progression of better medical knowledge fueled by accessible research and outcomes data.