not appreciably different from civilians... If you've resolved to murder somebody
How thin do you want to slice this? Apparently not thin enough to actually say they're civilians, but thick enough to say they're "murdered."
In the end, killing is killing.
And here, I suspect, lies the root of our disagreement. I find certain killing to be perfectly acceptable, and would dispute the characterization of killing in wartime as "murder."
So tell me now, since you brought up the food, healthcare, etc: who is helping the people of Iraq? The answer is US troops, who've reconstructed Iraqi hospitals and schools, routinely provide medical care even to wounded terrorists, and deliver the food aid... yes, even those evil, profiteering contractors (like the four Blackwater operators who were burned to death and mutilated in Fallujah protecting a food convoy.
It's telling to me that you will not acknowledge the ethical upsides of this conflict along with the negatives. But then again, your cries of "jingoism," "personal vendetta," and the like tell me all I need to know about your ideological bias.
Perhaps you should re-read the thread, notably the post ahead of mine. This particular tangent was not started by me, but you don't have to apologize for castigating the wrong poster... I have thick skin.
As to your second point, nobody denies that civilians are inadvertantly killed in combat. I was disagreeing with the parent posters point that Iraqi army troops really didn't want to fight, and thus were no different from "civilians."
I will, however, acknowlege your admonition about the manner of my satire.
Do we need to have another definition of "Lawful Combatant" discussed here? This has already been done to death in the Gitmo threads, but we'll go over it again.
These four = lawful combatant. Any such not actively surrendering are fair game, conscripts or not. These things are drilled into EVERY member of the US armed forces, officers and enlisted.
If they were all conscripts, why did they not kill their own officers and surrender? Why did they not overthrow Saddam themselves and retake their country? There's a difference between being forced to fight at gunpoint, and simply being a reluctant participant. How do you propose we tell conscripts from Special Republican Guard or Fedayeen at 800 meters?
It's also better to be a surrendering soldier than a deserter. In previous wars, deserters and soldiers out of uniform were often considered unlawful combatants, who could be (and were) summarily tried and executed in the field. The German army was using teenage and elderly conscripts by the end of WWII, yet nobody cries and weeps and claims that those were "civilian" casualties.
I see a great deal of this conceptual gerrymandering as a thinly-disguised effort by the International ANSWER crowd and their political allies to inflate "civilian casualty" figures, specifically to bludgeon the current administration about their "brutality" and the "unethical, unlawful" war. Sorry, but simply calling everyone, including members of the Iraqi Army "civilians," doesn't make it so.
The distinctions between civilians and combatants are sharp in the minds of every soldier. As a matter of policy and military culture, we don't slaughter surrendering enemy soldiers, and we don't deliberately kill civilians. I was a field-grade officer in those same armed forces, and we don't do that... we just don't.
by your sweeping definition
Not my definition... those are straight from the Laws of War.
Let's set aside the rabid anti-war "OMG!! US is sl4ught3ring 3v3ry1! OMG!!!1eleven" stuff. The US uses guided munitions specifically to maximize combat effectiveness, and minimize civilian casualties... this isn't Dresden. If the United States wasn't concerned about civilian deaths, they'd simply have pulled back from Fallujah and leveled the place with B-52s and artillery (like Jordanian armor did to Palestinians at the end of the six-day war).
Yes, a large number of the Iraqi army didn't want to fight... thus they deserted in large numbers. Why on earth do you think our push to Baghdad was so quick? Where do you think all those young men of miltary age came from that lined the roads as we drove through Iraqi cities?
They're really no different from civilians.
They are not, NOT "civilians." They may have been conscripts of dubious military skill... but they had arms, and the ability to fight. Those that stood and fought were crushed, those who ran survived... but they were not "civilians," and your attempt to lump them in with the populace dilutes that critical distinction, and endangers the innocents in the latter group.
are NOT what the army needs, or wants. Proper therapy and post-combat counseling/guidance can prevent a soldier from becoming a psychological casualty; who becomes an inhabitant of the VA system and never quite recovers his normal life.
Patriotism aside, the army has a huge vested interest in keeping these guys sane and mentally healthy. Combat veterans maintain an institutional memory of the "lessons learned" from their battles and experiences. These are lessons that are learned at great cost in men and material, and can save lives in the future. Seasoned soldiers are far superior to green troops.
Those young NCOs and company-grade officers are the core of the armed forces, and will form the backbone of that force for the next 15-20 years. The military needs every one of those Iraq vets healthy and sane, particularly since they now possess expertise in urban combat, the most-costly and dangerous of military endeavors.
Those combat vets are a national resource, forged in the crucible of Iraq, and they need to be treated as such.
You let the veteran relive his experiences in a non-hostile environment. Through repetition, it allows the individual to "delink" his experience from the autonomic alarm response that these things generate.
Vets with PTSD are often hyper-alert, and exhibit "scanning" type behavior. Simple, common experiences can trigger an immense autonomic fight-or-flight response, complete with panic, sweating, rapid heartrate, elevated blood pressure, flushing, etc...
This isn't about GTA or anything similar... it's real, actual, well-established therapy.
It appears that Rackspace, in a desire to meet the FBI's turnover deadline went ahead and sent the entire drive rather than the specific logfiles. This appears to be a simple effort to meet a deadline, rather than 3v1l kowtowing to teh m4n.
Once the appropriate files had been extracted, Rackspace sent them, and the FBI sent back the drives.
There's no story here. Much as it might disappoint some of our Slashtrolls, for once the FBI wasn't just being the bootheel of the evil imperialist police state, and Rackspace wasn't being complicit in the pillage of civil liberties.
When I was growing up, one of my relatives was a physician in eastern Ohio, and had some amish patients. He was pediatrician and a strong christian, which was something the amish greatly appreciated. As a result, many members of their community brought their children to see him.
He mentioned in passing to one of them that he was thinking of remodeling his kitchen. The amish man immediately stated "we could do that for you."
I was there when they came to redo the place... it was one of the most amazing things I've ever seen. Two truckloads of people, men and women, and they worked from sunup to sundown, breaking only briefly for lunch. The workmanship was incredible... everything fit perfectly. They also put in all kinds of clever little gadgets; sliding racks for table leaves, concealed hangers for towels, pivoting shelves and rack for dishes and pots... I've been in million-dollar homes that didn't have a kitchen as nice.
Whatever criticism are leveled at the amish, there's definitely nothing wrong their work ethic.
I suppose it depends on your point of view. If you're a total mercenary, you wouldn't show a customer jack-squat. You might even deactivate their built-in SP2 firewall. After all, the more infected their PC gets, the more you get to charge (by the hour, 'natch) to fix it. It's a neverending revenue stream...
If you're a smirking misanthrope, you probably get a kick out of delivering the same condescending lecture to all your spyware/virus-infested "luser" customers. Why would you ever push some free tools their way? It would cut down on your fun... because there's nothing more satisfying than pointing out the shortcomings of others.
On the other hand, How many times do you want to see the same PCs coming through your door? The only thing worse than death is boredom.
If you're a benevolent sort, you probably would show them a few things... such little freebies sometimes make a world of difference, not to mention they generate a little goodwill and customer loyalty.
If you're an intellectual individual who likes stretching your abilities with a challenging technical problem, you'd probably at least show them the basics. After all, you'd get bored removing the same Gator/Hotbar/Netsky every day. Where's the challenge? Let them bring you a PC that somebody had to use a little ingenuity to infect...
I'm a benevolent sort, so I fix all kinds of computers for my employees and coworkers... for free. The goodwill it generates more than compensates me for the minimal time and effort it takes to clean out some spyware.
They're not only talking about on-chip DRM, they're also talking about a "feature" called Active Management Technology in their new chipsets.
By the sounds of it, it's a firmware-level mini-OS that allows an administrator (or presumably anyone with the password, or the appropriate exploit) to, and I quote:
"remotely enable, disable or format or configure individual drives and reload operating systems and software from remote locations, again independent of operating systems
Frankly, that worries me quite a bit more than the DRM.
I'm sure there is some anecdotal evidence that withdrawing immunosuppressives can be done, just as there are people seemingly immune to HIV... human genetic variation makes almost anything possible. People transplanting without drugs is interesting, but I don't know how feasible it is for large numbers of patients.
I also wonder how they'd test that on enough people. As scarce as transplanted organs are, it almost seems foolhardy to do this on a large scale, at least in the numbers you might need to get sufficient statistical power. Organs are scarce, and acute rejection is an awfully big risk.
It's quite a leap of faith to just stop the drugs and see what happens. People die every single day in the US because they can't get an organ. You'd hate to take a patient who is doing perfectly well on his medications, take him off, have an acute rejection, and not have another organ available (a real possibility). Now you've wasted an organ AND someone's life...
The cocktail of immuno-suppressive drugs (in some form or another) is something you pretty much take for life after an organ transplant.
I am a physician, and I've never heard of people being completely weaned from drugs. If they were, they would run the risk of their immune system reasserting itself big and ugly, possibly resulting in an episode of acute rejection (which is no joke). I can see them trying to taper the dose down a bit, but immunosuppressive therapy remains the standard of care.
If this is something new, I'd love to see it happen, because those drugs are very problematic for patients. They not only leave you susceptible to common infections, but they also increase your risk for cancers.
Never underestimate how many potential cancers your immune system finds and kills early. You should see some of the post-transplant patients who have spent time in the sun... they grow skin cancers like it's their job.
"storm troopers" eh? Yet another cops-are-all-tools-of-the-fascists post.
I think the chip on your shoulder is obstructing your vision. Otherwise, you'd have been able to read the rest of my post and note the following sentence:
With the exception of a few small-town speedtraps (that have given other cops a black eye), most cops have better things to do than sit on their ass and write tickets all day.
I specifically acknowledged that speed-trap towns are sometimes a problem, and that they give other officers a bad name. Believe me, bub... nobody hates that crap more than the other cops. Why? Because any time you're talking to somebody, as soon as you mention that you're a cop, they immediately whip out their worst speed-trap story... yeah, nothing like having to atone for other officers' bad behavior.
Incidently, I've been caught in one of those speed-trap towns myself (long before I raised my hand) However, I escaped because the officer screwed up reading my license plate and gave me additional citation for an out-of-date registration that wasn't (he failed to consult his pocket 50-state-license-plate and DL guide). Fortunately, I knew enough not to confront the officer during the stop; I immediately drove to the police station and politely explained everything to the sergeant. He promptly ripped up my ticket, apologized, and sent me on my way.
FYI, you might want to keep a lid on that attitude of yours if you ever get stopped. That "wtf you stopping me for, pig??" attitude is a great way to ensure that the officer isn't even going to consider letting you off with a warning. Go ahead, say your piece... I hope it feels good... I also hope the higher insurance premiums you'll soon be paying will persuade you to treat an officer who's just trying to do his job with some common courtesy.
Bringing up the police always seems to generate these "cops are all lazy, greedy, donut-eating, keeping-the-little-guy-down, tools-of-the-fascist-oppressors" posts.
As a slashdotter with a background in law enforcement, I'll let you in on a little secret: with the exception of the highway patrol guys, most municipal/county cops HATE doing traffic. It's boring, repetitive, and most cops would much rather be doing something/anything else.
Most police officers do NOT look on themselves as good little revenue-generators for their respective cities/mayors... the relationship is usually far, far more fractious and antagonistic than that. Besides, the individual cops don't get a cut of those tickets. There is little incentive to bust your butt, deal with the nasty attitudes of the people you stop, generate irate letters-to-the-editor in your local paper, all while doing something that you hate anyway. With the exception of a few small-town speedtraps (that have given other cops a black eye), most cops have better things to do than sit on their ass and write tickets all day.
That said, a good knowledge of the traffic laws can serve you well. If you see someone acting suspiciously, their breaking of a traffic law gives you probable cause to stop them. Then, while writing their ticket, you look through the back window and see a gun and ski mask laying on the floor in the back seat (or you see the occupants madly stashing contraband as you execute your vehicle approach)
BTW, the assured-clear-distance tickets, reckless operation citations, etc are finable offenses, so the "no revenue" accusation doesn't wash. Fact is, fewer of those offenses are ticketed because people take great pains not to commit them in front of police. You would not believe the difference in driver behavior, simply by comparing what you observe while driving your POV to what you observe while driving a marked cruiser.
There's a reason the expression "driving like you've got a cop behind you" exists.
Actually, you're both right. It varies by state, and offense, though it's not automatically for life.
Almost all felons are excluded from owning a gun, AND voting. It's not typically automatic that they regain those rights upon release from prison. The usual procedure involves a petition to have their civil rights restored after they've served their sentence.
Some misdemeanors will also exclude you from firearms ownership, particularly violent misdemeanors (domestic violence qualifies in many states). Again, you can sometimes petition to have your civil rights restored.
There are a few states, IIRC, where you lose your right to vote permanently after a felony conviction.
This is no surprise... it's been this way in flashlights (hand torches, to you brits) for a while, particularly the higher-end ones and those designed for specialty applications.
As an example, some of the weapon-mounted lights being used by the military are also going to LEDs. Some of the regular incandescent bulbs just don't hold up as well to the punishing recoil of most weapons... you were forever changing bulbs. The higher end incandescent lights like the Sure-Fire lights could take the shock, but forget mounting anything like a mag-lite on a weapon.
Best thing about them: they're easy on the batteries. Batteries are heavy, and there's nothing worse than having to carry too many spares. Every ounce counts when you're carrying it on your back.
Pouring alcohol on a cut is painful, and doesn't even come close to sterilizing a wound in the brief period of time it stays on the surface. I used to teach medical students, and our microbiologists did a great demonstration where they cleaned surfaces with alcohol. They then cultured all sorts of nasty bugs off those same surfaces... it illustrated the point quite nicely.
For immediate care of wounds, copious water irrigation is probably best, at least initially. In fact, for a wound contaminated with debris, alcohol would be a very poor substitute for copious irrigation and removal of said debris.
In short, run your cut under the faucet. You don't have to use sterile solutions for external irrigation, regular tap water (assuming you live in a developed country) works just fine.
Clean it, and see somebody about repairing it. Remember, the longer a wound stays open, the more bacteria can grow within it... after 6 hours or so, it grows increasingly risky to sew up an extremity wound, because the bacteria have often reached a critical mass, and the wound is essentially infected. Try to sew it, and it will promptly open right back up. You can sometimes cheat and go a bit longer with facial wounds, but that's only because the blood supply to the head/face is so good.
Also, some types of solutions commonly used for "wound care" and sold for such purposes in pharmacies can actually complicate the healing of uncomplicated wounds. Peroxide, for instance, oxidizes tissues, kills white blood cells, inhibits the growth of new blood vessels, and can actually slow healing. If you're packing an open wound that's healing by secondary intention, regular saline solution is often all you need.
Actually, keyboards could be sterilized with Ethylene Oxide (used in many hospitals to sterilize instruments and such).
Autoclaving is done to some instruments (at least the ones that can take the heat, so to speak) but bronchoscopes and other delicate instruments are usually done by another method.
There are some things that are especially difficult to sterilize, prominent among them are spores and prions (prions cause "mad cow," and are EXTRAORDINARILY resistant to denaturing by the usual methods). Traditionally, surgical instruments used to operate on a patient with Cruetzfeldt-Jakob (another prion disease) were destroyed after the surgery (because you literally couldn't sterilize them).
I think some of the newer ozone systems now claim to kill prions... but I'm not really up to date on them.
The problem is the environment, not the items in it. Hospitals unfortunately house sick patients with multiply-drug-resistant infections. The antibiotics flow like a mighty river... only the toughest bugs survive (and survive they do!).
There was a recent study (can't recall the journal it was in) where they cultured doctors' neckties... they were able to culture all sorts of nasty, drug-resistant organisms.
I am a physician, and I never wear a tie to work (I won't work somewhere where they force ER docs to wear ties)... I only wear scrubs, and get a new set every day... the old ones get washed before they're worn again. I also wash my hands a hundred times a day, and even clean my stethosope with alcohol (admittedly, brief exposure to alcohol doesn't really sterilize anything... but I feel better doing it... how's that for being dogmatic?).
Infection spread is a reality in the hospital. You try to prevent it, but it happens, and off of ANY surface, not just keyboards. Unfortunately, these bugs are out in the community as well... most of the MRSA I see walks right in the front door, often in young people who have never spent a day in the hospital.
And if you're one of those folks who always insists on some antibiotics to "knock out this cold," then you're contributing to this problem.
Don't get mad at me when I refuse to prescibe antibiotics for your viral illness. This is going to sound patronizing, but it's actually for your own good, and helps keep the drugs effective for when you really need them.
The above poster who replied is correct... shooting at an angle means gravity acts as a vector force.
Most urban police sniper/countersnipers I've know train specifically for high-angle shooting, because it changes the dope on your rifle (compared to a flat shot). I know one sniper who made his own nifty improvised protractor/plumb-bob setup that allows him to calculate the change in bullet drop very precisely.
Remember... gravity only acts on the horizontal component of the vector; your bullet travels on the hypotenuse.
if you're living from paycheck to paycheck and don't have any tangible assets they can attach, you're basically scott-free. As the saying goes, "you can't get blood out of a stone."
However, the moment you OWN something, whether it's a house, car, whatever, you become vulnerable to having a lein placed against it. Those leins MUST be settled if you ever sell the item... or you cannot sell it. They can try to attach your wages, but unless you've got a government job, that can be hard to do.
One of my employees ran into this problem when some lowlife did a hit-and-run on her car... no insurance, no nothing. She filed suit against him, went to court, won, and the judge told her "I've seen this same individual in here for paternity suits... he has 9 different children with nine different mothers... you'll never see a dime." He was right.
Bottom line: if you want to live like a gypsy, or be a drifting-from-one-apartment-to-another and living-from-paycheck-to-paycheck individual, you have little to fear from the tort system. However, the moment you try to live the American Dream, you're caught.
A Holter only records the data, it does not interpret it. Holter monitors most certainly DO have a place... but again, they only record the ECG data (not BP) and some give you statistics; a human cardiologist still has to interpret it in the context of that patient's individual situation, history, and pre-existing conditions.
Most ECG machines give you a "machine read" when they record a tracing... but it's very often incomplete/wrong. I don't know a single clinician who bases their treatment soley off the machine's opinion of the tracing (and most hospitals still have all ECGs reviewed by a cardiologist before they go into the permanent chart).
You do make a excellent point about life-saving machines. I prefer machines that can not only sense, but also act: probably the best example is the AICD/ICD (Automatic Implantable Cardioverter/Defibrillator). They monitor heart rhythm/rate, and can deliver a life-saving shock if an unstable or lethal rhythm is detected; they're a true lifesaver for arrhythmia-prone patients at risk for sudden cardiac death.
I'd love to have some smart machines to help me out. Believe me, as stretched and busy as I am at work, it would be great to have some digital assistance that I could trust.
From: superpenis@hotmail.com Subject: MAKE YOUR PENIS HUGE!!!
Didn't you know that all doctors have access to secret penis-enlargement surgeries and drugs that are unavailable to mere mortals? (don't believe me? Watch late-night TV... if there's a conspiracy to keep effective weight-loss and cancer treatments from the general public, you just KNOW we're doing the same for our penis-enlargement treatments).
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not appreciably different from civilians... If you've resolved to murder somebody
How thin do you want to slice this? Apparently not thin enough to actually say they're civilians, but thick enough to say they're "murdered."
In the end, killing is killing.
And here, I suspect, lies the root of our disagreement. I find certain killing to be perfectly acceptable, and would dispute the characterization of killing in wartime as "murder."
So tell me now, since you brought up the food, healthcare, etc: who is helping the people of Iraq? The answer is US troops, who've reconstructed Iraqi hospitals and schools, routinely provide medical care even to wounded terrorists, and deliver the food aid... yes, even those evil, profiteering contractors (like the four Blackwater operators who were burned to death and mutilated in Fallujah protecting a food convoy.
It's telling to me that you will not acknowledge the ethical upsides of this conflict along with the negatives. But then again, your cries of "jingoism," "personal vendetta," and the like tell me all I need to know about your ideological bias.
Perhaps you should re-read the thread, notably the post ahead of mine. This particular tangent was not started by me, but you don't have to apologize for castigating the wrong poster... I have thick skin.
As to your second point, nobody denies that civilians are inadvertantly killed in combat. I was disagreeing with the parent posters point that Iraqi army troops really didn't want to fight, and thus were no different from "civilians."
I will, however, acknowlege your admonition about the manner of my satire.
Do we need to have another definition of "Lawful Combatant" discussed here? This has already been done to death in the Gitmo threads, but we'll go over it again.
1. Wearing a recognizable uniform
2. bearing arms openly
3. accountable chain-of-command
4. follows-the-laws-of-war
These four = lawful combatant. Any such not actively surrendering are fair game, conscripts or not. These things are drilled into EVERY member of the US armed forces, officers and enlisted.
If they were all conscripts, why did they not kill their own officers and surrender? Why did they not overthrow Saddam themselves and retake their country? There's a difference between being forced to fight at gunpoint, and simply being a reluctant participant. How do you propose we tell conscripts from Special Republican Guard or Fedayeen at 800 meters?
It's also better to be a surrendering soldier than a deserter. In previous wars, deserters and soldiers out of uniform were often considered unlawful combatants, who could be (and were) summarily tried and executed in the field. The German army was using teenage and elderly conscripts by the end of WWII, yet nobody cries and weeps and claims that those were "civilian" casualties.
I see a great deal of this conceptual gerrymandering as a thinly-disguised effort by the International ANSWER crowd and their political allies to inflate "civilian casualty" figures, specifically to bludgeon the current administration about their "brutality" and the "unethical, unlawful" war. Sorry, but simply calling everyone, including members of the Iraqi Army "civilians," doesn't make it so.
The distinctions between civilians and combatants are sharp in the minds of every soldier. As a matter of policy and military culture, we don't slaughter surrendering enemy soldiers, and we don't deliberately kill civilians. I was a field-grade officer in those same armed forces, and we don't do that... we just don't.
by your sweeping definition
Not my definition... those are straight from the Laws of War.
Please... insightful?
Let's set aside the rabid anti-war "OMG!! US is sl4ught3ring 3v3ry1! OMG!!!1eleven" stuff. The US uses guided munitions specifically to maximize combat effectiveness, and minimize civilian casualties... this isn't Dresden. If the United States wasn't concerned about civilian deaths, they'd simply have pulled back from Fallujah and leveled the place with B-52s and artillery (like Jordanian armor did to Palestinians at the end of the six-day war).
Yes, a large number of the Iraqi army didn't want to fight... thus they deserted in large numbers. Why on earth do you think our push to Baghdad was so quick? Where do you think all those young men of miltary age came from that lined the roads as we drove through Iraqi cities?
They're really no different from civilians.
They are not, NOT "civilians." They may have been conscripts of dubious military skill... but they had arms, and the ability to fight. Those that stood and fought were crushed, those who ran survived... but they were not "civilians," and your attempt to lump them in with the populace dilutes that critical distinction, and endangers the innocents in the latter group.
Perhaps I mis-stated the point. It's not the reason we're there... it's a side benefit of that conflict.
As a former field-grade officer, I can assure you I'd rather have veteran, experienced, previously-deployed troops than folks fresh out of basic.
are NOT what the army needs, or wants. Proper therapy and post-combat counseling/guidance can prevent a soldier from becoming a psychological casualty; who becomes an inhabitant of the VA system and never quite recovers his normal life.
Patriotism aside, the army has a huge vested interest in keeping these guys sane and mentally healthy. Combat veterans maintain an institutional memory of the "lessons learned" from their battles and experiences. These are lessons that are learned at great cost in men and material, and can save lives in the future. Seasoned soldiers are far superior to green troops.
Those young NCOs and company-grade officers are the core of the armed forces, and will form the backbone of that force for the next 15-20 years. The military needs every one of those Iraq vets healthy and sane, particularly since they now possess expertise in urban combat, the most-costly and dangerous of military endeavors.
Those combat vets are a national resource, forged in the crucible of Iraq, and they need to be treated as such.
It's the concept of desensitization.
You let the veteran relive his experiences in a non-hostile environment. Through repetition, it allows the individual to "delink" his experience from the autonomic alarm response that these things generate.
Vets with PTSD are often hyper-alert, and exhibit "scanning" type behavior. Simple, common experiences can trigger an immense autonomic fight-or-flight response, complete with panic, sweating, rapid heartrate, elevated blood pressure, flushing, etc...
This isn't about GTA or anything similar... it's real, actual, well-established therapy.
Agreed.
It appears that Rackspace, in a desire to meet the FBI's turnover deadline went ahead and sent the entire drive rather than the specific logfiles. This appears to be a simple effort to meet a deadline, rather than 3v1l kowtowing to teh m4n.
Once the appropriate files had been extracted, Rackspace sent them, and the FBI sent back the drives.
There's no story here. Much as it might disappoint some of our Slashtrolls, for once the FBI wasn't just being the bootheel of the evil imperialist police state, and Rackspace wasn't being complicit in the pillage of civil liberties.
Nice to have more of the story.
When I was growing up, one of my relatives was a physician in eastern Ohio, and had some amish patients. He was pediatrician and a strong christian, which was something the amish greatly appreciated. As a result, many members of their community brought their children to see him.
He mentioned in passing to one of them that he was thinking of remodeling his kitchen. The amish man immediately stated "we could do that for you."
I was there when they came to redo the place... it was one of the most amazing things I've ever seen. Two truckloads of people, men and women, and they worked from sunup to sundown, breaking only briefly for lunch. The workmanship was incredible... everything fit perfectly. They also put in all kinds of clever little gadgets; sliding racks for table leaves, concealed hangers for towels, pivoting shelves and rack for dishes and pots... I've been in million-dollar homes that didn't have a kitchen as nice.
Whatever criticism are leveled at the amish, there's definitely nothing wrong their work ethic.
I suppose it depends on your point of view. If you're a total mercenary, you wouldn't show a customer jack-squat. You might even deactivate their built-in SP2 firewall. After all, the more infected their PC gets, the more you get to charge (by the hour, 'natch) to fix it. It's a neverending revenue stream...
If you're a smirking misanthrope, you probably get a kick out of delivering the same condescending lecture to all your spyware/virus-infested "luser" customers. Why would you ever push some free tools their way? It would cut down on your fun... because there's nothing more satisfying than pointing out the shortcomings of others.
On the other hand, How many times do you want to see the same PCs coming through your door? The only thing worse than death is boredom.
If you're a benevolent sort, you probably would show them a few things... such little freebies sometimes make a world of difference, not to mention they generate a little goodwill and customer loyalty.
If you're an intellectual individual who likes stretching your abilities with a challenging technical problem, you'd probably at least show them the basics. After all, you'd get bored removing the same Gator/Hotbar/Netsky every day. Where's the challenge? Let them bring you a PC that somebody had to use a little ingenuity to infect...
I'm a benevolent sort, so I fix all kinds of computers for my employees and coworkers... for free. The goodwill it generates more than compensates me for the minimal time and effort it takes to clean out some spyware.
It's actually quite interesting.
They're not only talking about on-chip DRM, they're also talking about a "feature" called Active Management Technology in their new chipsets.
By the sounds of it, it's a firmware-level mini-OS that allows an administrator (or presumably anyone with the password, or the appropriate exploit) to, and I quote:
"remotely enable, disable or format or configure individual drives and reload operating systems and software from remote locations, again independent of operating systems
Frankly, that worries me quite a bit more than the DRM.
"Doctor Beavis?" heh heh heh mm heh...
I'm sure there is some anecdotal evidence that withdrawing immunosuppressives can be done, just as there are people seemingly immune to HIV... human genetic variation makes almost anything possible. People transplanting without drugs is interesting, but I don't know how feasible it is for large numbers of patients.
I also wonder how they'd test that on enough people. As scarce as transplanted organs are, it almost seems foolhardy to do this on a large scale, at least in the numbers you might need to get sufficient statistical power. Organs are scarce, and acute rejection is an awfully big risk.
It's quite a leap of faith to just stop the drugs and see what happens. People die every single day in the US because they can't get an organ. You'd hate to take a patient who is doing perfectly well on his medications, take him off, have an acute rejection, and not have another organ available (a real possibility). Now you've wasted an organ AND someone's life...
Risky research.
The cocktail of immuno-suppressive drugs (in some form or another) is something you pretty much take for life after an organ transplant.
I am a physician, and I've never heard of people being completely weaned from drugs. If they were, they would run the risk of their immune system reasserting itself big and ugly, possibly resulting in an episode of acute rejection (which is no joke). I can see them trying to taper the dose down a bit, but immunosuppressive therapy remains the standard of care.
If this is something new, I'd love to see it happen, because those drugs are very problematic for patients. They not only leave you susceptible to common infections, but they also increase your risk for cancers.
Never underestimate how many potential cancers your immune system finds and kills early. You should see some of the post-transplant patients who have spent time in the sun... they grow skin cancers like it's their job.
"storm troopers" eh? Yet another cops-are-all-tools-of-the-fascists post.
I think the chip on your shoulder is obstructing your vision. Otherwise, you'd have been able to read the rest of my post and note the following sentence:
With the exception of a few small-town speedtraps (that have given other cops a black eye), most cops have better things to do than sit on their ass and write tickets all day.
I specifically acknowledged that speed-trap towns are sometimes a problem, and that they give other officers a bad name. Believe me, bub... nobody hates that crap more than the other cops. Why? Because any time you're talking to somebody, as soon as you mention that you're a cop, they immediately whip out their worst speed-trap story... yeah, nothing like having to atone for other officers' bad behavior.
Incidently, I've been caught in one of those speed-trap towns myself (long before I raised my hand) However, I escaped because the officer screwed up reading my license plate and gave me additional citation for an out-of-date registration that wasn't (he failed to consult his pocket 50-state-license-plate and DL guide). Fortunately, I knew enough not to confront the officer during the stop; I immediately drove to the police station and politely explained everything to the sergeant. He promptly ripped up my ticket, apologized, and sent me on my way.
FYI, you might want to keep a lid on that attitude of yours if you ever get stopped. That "wtf you stopping me for, pig??" attitude is a great way to ensure that the officer isn't even going to consider letting you off with a warning. Go ahead, say your piece... I hope it feels good... I also hope the higher insurance premiums you'll soon be paying will persuade you to treat an officer who's just trying to do his job with some common courtesy.
Cheers.
I'm sorry, but I need to respond to this.
Bringing up the police always seems to generate these "cops are all lazy, greedy, donut-eating, keeping-the-little-guy-down, tools-of-the-fascist-oppressors" posts.
As a slashdotter with a background in law enforcement, I'll let you in on a little secret: with the exception of the highway patrol guys, most municipal/county cops HATE doing traffic. It's boring, repetitive, and most cops would much rather be doing something/anything else.
Most police officers do NOT look on themselves as good little revenue-generators for their respective cities/mayors... the relationship is usually far, far more fractious and antagonistic than that. Besides, the individual cops don't get a cut of those tickets. There is little incentive to bust your butt, deal with the nasty attitudes of the people you stop, generate irate letters-to-the-editor in your local paper, all while doing something that you hate anyway. With the exception of a few small-town speedtraps (that have given other cops a black eye), most cops have better things to do than sit on their ass and write tickets all day.
That said, a good knowledge of the traffic laws can serve you well. If you see someone acting suspiciously, their breaking of a traffic law gives you probable cause to stop them. Then, while writing their ticket, you look through the back window and see a gun and ski mask laying on the floor in the back seat (or you see the occupants madly stashing contraband as you execute your vehicle approach)
BTW, the assured-clear-distance tickets, reckless operation citations, etc are finable offenses, so the "no revenue" accusation doesn't wash. Fact is, fewer of those offenses are ticketed because people take great pains not to commit them in front of police. You would not believe the difference in driver behavior, simply by comparing what you observe while driving your POV to what you observe while driving a marked cruiser.
There's a reason the expression "driving like you've got a cop behind you" exists.
Actually, you're both right. It varies by state, and offense, though it's not automatically for life.
Almost all felons are excluded from owning a gun, AND voting. It's not typically automatic that they regain those rights upon release from prison. The usual procedure involves a petition to have their civil rights restored after they've served their sentence.
Some misdemeanors will also exclude you from firearms ownership, particularly violent misdemeanors (domestic violence qualifies in many states). Again, you can sometimes petition to have your civil rights restored.
There are a few states, IIRC, where you lose your right to vote permanently after a felony conviction.
This is no surprise... it's been this way in flashlights (hand torches, to you brits) for a while, particularly the higher-end ones and those designed for specialty applications.
As an example, some of the weapon-mounted lights being used by the military are also going to LEDs. Some of the regular incandescent bulbs just don't hold up as well to the punishing recoil of most weapons... you were forever changing bulbs. The higher end incandescent lights like the Sure-Fire lights could take the shock, but forget mounting anything like a mag-lite on a weapon.
Best thing about them: they're easy on the batteries. Batteries are heavy, and there's nothing worse than having to carry too many spares. Every ounce counts when you're carrying it on your back.
I don't recommend alcohol for cuts.
Pouring alcohol on a cut is painful, and doesn't even come close to sterilizing a wound in the brief period of time it stays on the surface. I used to teach medical students, and our microbiologists did a great demonstration where they cleaned surfaces with alcohol. They then cultured all sorts of nasty bugs off those same surfaces... it illustrated the point quite nicely.
For immediate care of wounds, copious water irrigation is probably best, at least initially. In fact, for a wound contaminated with debris, alcohol would be a very poor substitute for copious irrigation and removal of said debris.
In short, run your cut under the faucet. You don't have to use sterile solutions for external irrigation, regular tap water (assuming you live in a developed country) works just fine.
Clean it, and see somebody about repairing it. Remember, the longer a wound stays open, the more bacteria can grow within it... after 6 hours or so, it grows increasingly risky to sew up an extremity wound, because the bacteria have often reached a critical mass, and the wound is essentially infected. Try to sew it, and it will promptly open right back up. You can sometimes cheat and go a bit longer with facial wounds, but that's only because the blood supply to the head/face is so good.
Also, some types of solutions commonly used for "wound care" and sold for such purposes in pharmacies can actually complicate the healing of uncomplicated wounds. Peroxide, for instance, oxidizes tissues, kills white blood cells, inhibits the growth of new blood vessels, and can actually slow healing. If you're packing an open wound that's healing by secondary intention, regular saline solution is often all you need.
Point taken, and you are correct.
Prions are not truly living particles in the classical sense. I'd meant to place "kill" in quotes in that last sentence.
Actually, keyboards could be sterilized with Ethylene Oxide (used in many hospitals to sterilize instruments and such).
Autoclaving is done to some instruments (at least the ones that can take the heat, so to speak) but bronchoscopes and other delicate instruments are usually done by another method.
There are some things that are especially difficult to sterilize, prominent among them are spores and prions (prions cause "mad cow," and are EXTRAORDINARILY resistant to denaturing by the usual methods). Traditionally, surgical instruments used to operate on a patient with Cruetzfeldt-Jakob (another prion disease) were destroyed after the surgery (because you literally couldn't sterilize them).
I think some of the newer ozone systems now claim to kill prions... but I'm not really up to date on them.
The problem is the environment, not the items in it. Hospitals unfortunately house sick patients with multiply-drug-resistant infections. The antibiotics flow like a mighty river... only the toughest bugs survive (and survive they do!).
There was a recent study (can't recall the journal it was in) where they cultured doctors' neckties... they were able to culture all sorts of nasty, drug-resistant organisms.
I am a physician, and I never wear a tie to work (I won't work somewhere where they force ER docs to wear ties)... I only wear scrubs, and get a new set every day... the old ones get washed before they're worn again. I also wash my hands a hundred times a day, and even clean my stethosope with alcohol (admittedly, brief exposure to alcohol doesn't really sterilize anything... but I feel better doing it... how's that for being dogmatic?).
Infection spread is a reality in the hospital. You try to prevent it, but it happens, and off of ANY surface, not just keyboards. Unfortunately, these bugs are out in the community as well... most of the MRSA I see walks right in the front door, often in young people who have never spent a day in the hospital.
And if you're one of those folks who always insists on some antibiotics to "knock out this cold," then you're contributing to this problem.
Don't get mad at me when I refuse to prescibe antibiotics for your viral illness. This is going to sound patronizing, but it's actually for your own good, and helps keep the drugs effective for when you really need them.
The above poster who replied is correct... shooting at an angle means gravity acts as a vector force.
Most urban police sniper/countersnipers I've know train specifically for high-angle shooting, because it changes the dope on your rifle (compared to a flat shot). I know one sniper who made his own nifty improvised protractor/plumb-bob setup that allows him to calculate the change in bullet drop very precisely.
Remember... gravity only acts on the horizontal component of the vector; your bullet travels on the hypotenuse.
if you're living from paycheck to paycheck and don't have any tangible assets they can attach, you're basically scott-free. As the saying goes, "you can't get blood out of a stone."
However, the moment you OWN something, whether it's a house, car, whatever, you become vulnerable to having a lein placed against it. Those leins MUST be settled if you ever sell the item... or you cannot sell it. They can try to attach your wages, but unless you've got a government job, that can be hard to do.
One of my employees ran into this problem when some lowlife did a hit-and-run on her car... no insurance, no nothing. She filed suit against him, went to court, won, and the judge told her "I've seen this same individual in here for paternity suits... he has 9 different children with nine different mothers... you'll never see a dime." He was right.
Bottom line: if you want to live like a gypsy, or be a drifting-from-one-apartment-to-another and living-from-paycheck-to-paycheck individual, you have little to fear from the tort system. However, the moment you try to live the American Dream, you're caught.
A Holter only records the data, it does not interpret it. Holter monitors most certainly DO have a place... but again, they only record the ECG data (not BP) and some give you statistics; a human cardiologist still has to interpret it in the context of that patient's individual situation, history, and pre-existing conditions.
Most ECG machines give you a "machine read" when they record a tracing... but it's very often incomplete/wrong. I don't know a single clinician who bases their treatment soley off the machine's opinion of the tracing (and most hospitals still have all ECGs reviewed by a cardiologist before they go into the permanent chart).
You do make a excellent point about life-saving machines. I prefer machines that can not only sense, but also act: probably the best example is the AICD/ICD (Automatic Implantable Cardioverter/Defibrillator). They monitor heart rhythm/rate, and can deliver a life-saving shock if an unstable or lethal rhythm is detected; they're a true lifesaver for arrhythmia-prone patients at risk for sudden cardiac death.
I'd love to have some smart machines to help me out. Believe me, as stretched and busy as I am at work, it would be great to have some digital assistance that I could trust.
From: superpenis@hotmail.com
Subject: MAKE YOUR PENIS HUGE!!!
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Subject: V14gra 4 cH4Ap
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