It depends on the weeds. Pretty much all of them can bind carbon from the air. Some have the ability to work with bacteria that can bind nitrogen from the air, which plants need in bound form in order to use the nitrogen - the N2 in the air is pretty much inert and unusable for higher life forms like plants. Clover and field peas are examples of nitrogen binding plants, and so are some "weeds".
You rent your home full of your stuff to a total stranger. What do you expect?
The same as any B&B who rents out a room expects - someone who stays, behaves, pays, and leaves.
People like this should be sentenced to military conscription, with every paycheck going to the victim until all damages are paid off with interest. That should teach them some respect.
And for those that are wondering, she pays about 50% income tax, plus around 25% VAT
To be fair, when Americans cite numbers like these, they don't consider that the income tax includes both medical and retirement, and that a VAT is only applied to the final price, not every single step like US sales tax. The latter is a significant difference. If a US product is sold four times from it leaves the primary industry until the end user buys it from a retailer, at an average of 6% sales tax, that equals a 26.25% VAT. In reality, far higher because factories and distributors also add their profit margins, which are also subject to multiple instances of sales tax.
One of the reason for cost difference for purchases in Europe compared to the US is due to the US being caveat emptor. In Europe, warranties and reclamation rights are mandated by law, and the typical mandatory warranty is stronger than the best you can pay extra for here in the US. Another reason is the wage level, where factory and retail staff in Europe earn a lot more than their US counterparts, with much better benefits. This raises the costs, but much of that is funnelled back into the system because the staff is better paid and pay more taxes and spend more money. So the standard of living is not worse - rather the opposite.
I too have lived in Europe with universal healthcare. And my experience is that the European system was way better. No arguing with insurance companies over treatments, and having to accept substandard treatments because they're cheaper. No avoiding going to the doctor because the co-pays alone can be a fortune. No three-month wait for an appointment to see a cardiologist.
But most of all, the quality of treatment is superior outside the US, because the US system is tailored to increase profits while reducing the liability for doctors and hospitals, meaning it's test-heavy and risk-averse. As an example, I have bilateral total hip replacments, done in Europe. The doctors consulted with me before the procedure and gave me alternatives. I opted for uncemented threaded implants, which allows me to run as much as I want, do yoga, and pretty much function better than with the original hips. They will never have to be replaced, although the ball caps can be replaced with minor surgery. The risk is slightly higher during the initial surgery, but the quality of life afterwards is immensely better. This is not even an option for insurance-paid surgery here in the US. The slightly higher risk and higher cost of a longer surgery prohibits it. US hip replacement patients are always given cemented screwed hips, and told that they must not run or do anything hard, for the rest of their life. And that the hips will last for around 20 years.
Another example is laser vision correction surgery, which was available in the Soviet Union and then in Europe long before it became available in the US. Yet the average American thinks it's an American invention not available elsewhere...
And non-NSAID, non-opioid pain medications? There are several whole groups of medicines that have been successfully used in Europe for decades now that aren't available in the US, mostly due to lobbying from the existing drug producers.
And people here in the US accept that crap? And think they have the best healthcare in the world?
It sucks. It really does. For anything serious, I book a plane and go back to the country for which I still hold a passport. Because the service is so incredibly much better, focused on quality of life for the patients, and not maximizing profits and minimizing liability for hospitals and their marionettes. It's truly a world of difference, and not in favour of my new country.
My boss went in for his annual check up, and when the doctor asked if there was anything bothering him or he felt the doc should know about, my boss just said "I've been feeling tired". That answer adjusted his 15 minute visit from a routine health check-up that's more or less covered under his insurance to a consultation that cost him $160 out of pocket
I had a similar experience. Annual check-up was supposed to be covered in full by my insurance plan, and when I went in, there was even a sheet I had to sign stating that any other concerns raised would be billed. I made doubly sure I did not ask a single question, and did not bring up any health issues (not that I had any). Yet, I ended up with bills on top for several hundred dollars that were not covered by what the insurance company paid for the annual. The doctor noticed a mild anaemia and ordered extra tests to be done on the blood I had already given (without consulting me), and I of course was billed for that. And billed for an "office visit" so she could tell me that I had a mild anaemia (something I already knew, and which is perfectly normal for someone who runs a 10k every day). Then they tried to bill me for a follow-up that I said I didn't want.
The biggest problem is that I have no way to not pay for this. They get to decide what to bill for, whether true or not. I can contest until I'm blue in the face, but that does not stop them from sending the bills to collection. And the insurance company doesn't give a fuck either - they follow scripts and won't ever go "wait a minute... you didn't order this?" If the doctor's office submitted the paperwork correctly, that's all they care about. They have no script for "the doctor is billing for something the patient never agreed to".
The end result: I no longer will have an annual physical.
The only thing I will use non-ER doctors for now is writing prescriptions for things like antibiotics. Otherwise, they're worse than useless.
But how long would whales last if every major country returned to commercial whaling?
How long would deer last if we all returned to deer hunting?
The solution is the same - monitoring the populations and setting quotas accordingly.
Outright bans cause problems too - the migratory bird hunting ban here in the US, for example, where enormous flocks of Canadian geese wreak havoc, the populations having exploded (in part due to corn fields and golf courses, and in part due to killing off their other predators).
For whales, some of the whale species are in direct competition with otherwise sustainable fishing, and some are even threatening other vulnerable marine life that's at risk of extinction. Sure, if we stopped overharvesting and polluting the oceans, it would be less of a problem, but fat chance of that. As it is, our mass hunting fish and shrimp without also culling their predators like whales is becoming a real problem.
Whales shouldnÃ(TM)t be hunted for food at all. They are nearly extinct.
"Whales" comprise around 90 different species, some of which are endangered and some which are quite numerous. Among the species which are classified by IUCN as Least Concern (i.e. not qualifying for a near threatened, vulnerable, endangered or critically endangered status) are Bowhead Whales, Southern Right Whales, Common Minke Whales, Humpback Whales, Grey Whales, and various dolphins. The Minke whale, which is currently the most common catch for whalers, is quite abundant, with over 180,000 in the North Atlantic alone.
I think I saw some research that actually when using both sides of escalator it actually increases the amount of people goes though. But the argument leaving other side free is to let those who are in the hurry walk and rest who are not that in a hurry just stand.
It's problematic looking at just the throughput of the escalator itself. It's part of a longer pedestrian journey. By reducing the clogging on the escalator itself, you just shift it to occur on either side, so while the overall throughput figures for the escalator might be better, it's not better for the walkers.
Or think of it another way: The slower people are going to be slower no matter what - they are not held back. So it's no improvement for them. On the other hand (or foot), if they occupy both sides of an elevator, they create bottlenecks, both on the elevator itself and after getting off the elevator until they can file over to the right again.
The only concrete fact is that they are eliminating street parking.
Right, and this will open up another lane's worth of space on the street, allowing more space for bikers, taxis and handicap vehicles. This is more important than in the US, because most European cities weren't designed, but evolved over more than a thousand years. Not only are the streets generally narrower, but square four-way intersections are generally the exception and not the rule. And what I remember from Oslo was that even more of many inner city streets had trams, making parking difficult already.
For trucks and other large utility vehicles, I believe most Scandinavian inner cities with substantial foot traffic already ban them during daytime.
I'm sure then that you've never had the feeling that someone was "like a son" to you. Biology isn't all there is to being a parent.
That is biology. The drive to be a father figure to children that may not be yours is a response to the female tricks of hidden ovulation and infidelity. When the males can't know for sure whether the children are theirs (or children of male relatives that share a large percentage of one's genes), the best survival tactic from the genes' point of view is to err on the side of caution and raise as many nearby children as one has resources for. Even if you know the children aren't yours, your genes don't, so the drive will be there.
Elizabeth Warren was at most 3% Native American which corresponds to a great-great-great grandparent. From what I read, that was the "at most" value, and that the probable range was 1/64th to 1/1024th, with 1/512th being most likely.
Then I guess that once the infidelity is revealed, said cuckolded male should not not have to pay alimony after kicking the said bitch out.
But the courts think otherwise unfortunetely. Ah yes the the great patriarcal system.
A countermeasure from our genes' point of view is keeping the women confined so they won't see other males, especially not high status males. That's basis for the patriarchal system. And when that fails, infanticide.
If a dad took the test only to find out whether his child was his or not
Where do you get this if from? How do you know he didn't take the test for other reasons, and found out something he wasn't expecting?
At any rate, I won't take any genome test until there is a test facility that (a) will anonymize submissions and (b) will destroy all genetic materials and results after providing the results. Paying extra for the two is fine.
A fair amount of infidelity is to be expected. Where reproduction is concerned, we're merely acting in the best interest of our genes. Because it's very limited how many children a woman can raise, their genetic goal is to (a) obtain help raising children to the best possible level, and to (b) pair the genes with the best possible male genes. This encourages women to infidelity with more successful males than their partners, as long as it isn't found out.
That this is fairly common shouldn't surprise anyone. Being cuckolded is a part of human life. Deal.
Do you know what is inside the firmware of your WiFi card?
It doesn't matter as much as you'd think, given that the data is encrypted before it hits the card and decrypted after it's left the card. And it has no way to communicate whatever it can capture, given that the other side of the WiFi connection requires that encryption to talk. It would require a sideband connection from the card to a compatible wireless device, which while feasible in theory would be difficult in practice, and what it could capture would not be the raw data, only metadata like number and size of packets, SSIDs and destination addresses.
So no, that's not my biggest worry. Someone installing a physical keylogger while I sleep and removing it later seems a greater risk.
Incomplete knowledge is worse than none. 1: Intel AMT SOL is only present in vPro enabled CPUs. That excludes almost all laptops. (And, if you have a rare model that does, it's disabled by default.) 2: Intel AMT SOL needs a physical network connection. The SOL stands for "Serial Over Lan". I don't know about you, but these days, most people including me use laptops with wireless connections.
It's cute that you think that -- unless you're willing to clip the microphone (and the speaker too since in some laptops, the speaker can act as a microphone too), you can't reliably lock down a laptop.
Given that I control every piece of software that goes onto my laptop from bootloader, kernel and up, I'd say I can. Granted, there might be firmware that behaves badly, but it won't get access to the network to send anything out - for that, it needs to go through the OS which holds the credentials, and the OS, I control.
Even worse, it was now changed without adding a note about the change. Doing so would have had you thrown out of any respectable publishing business back before Murdoch.
And Slashdot of all places defends that you cannot edit posts (for many good reasons). But that's worthless if silent editing happens, no matter what the reason or how severe. If it is done once, it can be done other times.
Slashdot Mirror
Whale poop can be quite valuable.
It depends on the weeds. Pretty much all of them can bind carbon from the air. Some have the ability to work with bacteria that can bind nitrogen from the air, which plants need in bound form in order to use the nitrogen - the N2 in the air is pretty much inert and unusable for higher life forms like plants.
Clover and field peas are examples of nitrogen binding plants, and so are some "weeds".
You rent your home full of your stuff to a total stranger. What do you expect?
The same as any B&B who rents out a room expects - someone who stays, behaves, pays, and leaves.
People like this should be sentenced to military conscription, with every paycheck going to the victim until all damages are paid off with interest. That should teach them some respect.
If you want to act like a hotel, be prepared for people to treat you like one.
Which hotel allows you to throw parties with hundreds of people?
And for those that are wondering, she pays about 50% income tax, plus around 25% VAT
To be fair, when Americans cite numbers like these, they don't consider that the income tax includes both medical and retirement, and that a VAT is only applied to the final price, not every single step like US sales tax. The latter is a significant difference.
If a US product is sold four times from it leaves the primary industry until the end user buys it from a retailer, at an average of 6% sales tax, that equals a 26.25% VAT. In reality, far higher because factories and distributors also add their profit margins, which are also subject to multiple instances of sales tax.
One of the reason for cost difference for purchases in Europe compared to the US is due to the US being caveat emptor. In Europe, warranties and reclamation rights are mandated by law, and the typical mandatory warranty is stronger than the best you can pay extra for here in the US. Another reason is the wage level, where factory and retail staff in Europe earn a lot more than their US counterparts, with much better benefits. This raises the costs, but much of that is funnelled back into the system because the staff is better paid and pay more taxes and spend more money. So the standard of living is not worse - rather the opposite.
I too have lived in Europe with universal healthcare.
And my experience is that the European system was way better. No arguing with insurance companies over treatments, and having to accept substandard treatments because they're cheaper.
No avoiding going to the doctor because the co-pays alone can be a fortune.
No three-month wait for an appointment to see a cardiologist.
But most of all, the quality of treatment is superior outside the US, because the US system is tailored to increase profits while reducing the liability for doctors and hospitals, meaning it's test-heavy and risk-averse.
As an example, I have bilateral total hip replacments, done in Europe. The doctors consulted with me before the procedure and gave me alternatives. I opted for uncemented threaded implants, which allows me to run as much as I want, do yoga, and pretty much function better than with the original hips. They will never have to be replaced, although the ball caps can be replaced with minor surgery. The risk is slightly higher during the initial surgery, but the quality of life afterwards is immensely better. This is not even an option for insurance-paid surgery here in the US. The slightly higher risk and higher cost of a longer surgery prohibits it. US hip replacement patients are always given cemented screwed hips, and told that they must not run or do anything hard, for the rest of their life. And that the hips will last for around 20 years.
Another example is laser vision correction surgery, which was available in the Soviet Union and then in Europe long before it became available in the US. Yet the average American thinks it's an American invention not available elsewhere...
And non-NSAID, non-opioid pain medications? There are several whole groups of medicines that have been successfully used in Europe for decades now that aren't available in the US, mostly due to lobbying from the existing drug producers.
And people here in the US accept that crap? And think they have the best healthcare in the world?
It sucks. It really does. For anything serious, I book a plane and go back to the country for which I still hold a passport. Because the service is so incredibly much better, focused on quality of life for the patients, and not maximizing profits and minimizing liability for hospitals and their marionettes.
It's truly a world of difference, and not in favour of my new country.
My boss went in for his annual check up, and when the doctor asked if there was anything bothering him or he felt the doc should know about, my boss just said "I've been feeling tired".
That answer adjusted his 15 minute visit from a routine health check-up that's more or less covered under his insurance to a consultation that cost him $160 out of pocket
I had a similar experience. Annual check-up was supposed to be covered in full by my insurance plan, and when I went in, there was even a sheet I had to sign stating that any other concerns raised would be billed. I made doubly sure I did not ask a single question, and did not bring up any health issues (not that I had any).
Yet, I ended up with bills on top for several hundred dollars that were not covered by what the insurance company paid for the annual.
The doctor noticed a mild anaemia and ordered extra tests to be done on the blood I had already given (without consulting me), and I of course was billed for that. And billed for an "office visit" so she could tell me that I had a mild anaemia (something I already knew, and which is perfectly normal for someone who runs a 10k every day).
Then they tried to bill me for a follow-up that I said I didn't want.
The biggest problem is that I have no way to not pay for this. They get to decide what to bill for, whether true or not. I can contest until I'm blue in the face, but that does not stop them from sending the bills to collection. And the insurance company doesn't give a fuck either - they follow scripts and won't ever go "wait a minute... you didn't order this?" If the doctor's office submitted the paperwork correctly, that's all they care about. They have no script for "the doctor is billing for something the patient never agreed to".
The end result: I no longer will have an annual physical.
The only thing I will use non-ER doctors for now is writing prescriptions for things like antibiotics. Otherwise, they're worse than useless.
Quite. You can tell what they are when they fly over and go "honk, eh".
But how long would whales last if every major country returned to commercial whaling?
How long would deer last if we all returned to deer hunting?
The solution is the same - monitoring the populations and setting quotas accordingly.
Outright bans cause problems too - the migratory bird hunting ban here in the US, for example, where enormous flocks of Canadian geese wreak havoc, the populations having exploded (in part due to corn fields and golf courses, and in part due to killing off their other predators).
For whales, some of the whale species are in direct competition with otherwise sustainable fishing, and some are even threatening other vulnerable marine life that's at risk of extinction. Sure, if we stopped overharvesting and polluting the oceans, it would be less of a problem, but fat chance of that. As it is, our mass hunting fish and shrimp without also culling their predators like whales is becoming a real problem.
Whales shouldnÃ(TM)t be hunted for food at all. They are nearly extinct.
"Whales" comprise around 90 different species, some of which are endangered and some which are quite numerous.
Among the species which are classified by IUCN as Least Concern (i.e. not qualifying for a near threatened, vulnerable, endangered or critically endangered status) are Bowhead Whales, Southern Right Whales, Common Minke Whales, Humpback Whales, Grey Whales, and various dolphins.
The Minke whale, which is currently the most common catch for whalers, is quite abundant, with over 180,000 in the North Atlantic alone.
Errata: s/lev/scal/g;
I think I saw some research that actually when using both sides of escalator it actually increases the amount of people goes though. But the argument leaving other side free is to let those who are in the hurry walk and rest who are not that in a hurry just stand.
It's problematic looking at just the throughput of the escalator itself. It's part of a longer pedestrian journey. By reducing the clogging on the escalator itself, you just shift it to occur on either side, so while the overall throughput figures for the escalator might be better, it's not better for the walkers.
Or think of it another way: The slower people are going to be slower no matter what - they are not held back. So it's no improvement for them. On the other hand (or foot), if they occupy both sides of an elevator, they create bottlenecks, both on the elevator itself and after getting off the elevator until they can file over to the right again.
The only concrete fact is that they are eliminating street parking.
Right, and this will open up another lane's worth of space on the street, allowing more space for bikers, taxis and handicap vehicles.
This is more important than in the US, because most European cities weren't designed, but evolved over more than a thousand years. Not only are the streets generally narrower, but square four-way intersections are generally the exception and not the rule. And what I remember from Oslo was that even more of many inner city streets had trams, making parking difficult already.
For trucks and other large utility vehicles, I believe most Scandinavian inner cities with substantial foot traffic already ban them during daytime.
I'm sure then that you've never had the feeling that someone was "like a son" to you. Biology isn't all there is to being a parent.
That is biology. The drive to be a father figure to children that may not be yours is a response to the female tricks of hidden ovulation and infidelity. When the males can't know for sure whether the children are theirs (or children of male relatives that share a large percentage of one's genes), the best survival tactic from the genes' point of view is to err on the side of caution and raise as many nearby children as one has resources for.
Even if you know the children aren't yours, your genes don't, so the drive will be there.
Elizabeth Warren was at most 3% Native American which corresponds to a great-great-great grandparent.
From what I read, that was the "at most" value, and that the probable range was 1/64th to 1/1024th, with 1/512th being most likely.
Then I guess that once the infidelity is revealed, said cuckolded male should not not have to pay alimony after kicking the said bitch out.
But the courts think otherwise unfortunetely. Ah yes the the great patriarcal system.
A countermeasure from our genes' point of view is keeping the women confined so they won't see other males, especially not high status males. That's basis for the patriarchal system.
And when that fails, infanticide.
If a dad took the test only to find out whether his child was his or not
Where do you get this if from? How do you know he didn't take the test for other reasons, and found out something he wasn't expecting?
At any rate, I won't take any genome test until there is a test facility that (a) will anonymize submissions and (b) will destroy all genetic materials and results after providing the results. Paying extra for the two is fine.
A fair amount of infidelity is to be expected. Where reproduction is concerned, we're merely acting in the best interest of our genes. Because it's very limited how many children a woman can raise, their genetic goal is to (a) obtain help raising children to the best possible level, and to (b) pair the genes with the best possible male genes. This encourages women to infidelity with more successful males than their partners, as long as it isn't found out.
That this is fairly common shouldn't surprise anyone. Being cuckolded is a part of human life. Deal.
Do you know what is inside the firmware of your WiFi card?
It doesn't matter as much as you'd think, given that the data is encrypted before it hits the card and decrypted after it's left the card. And it has no way to communicate whatever it can capture, given that the other side of the WiFi connection requires that encryption to talk.
It would require a sideband connection from the card to a compatible wireless device, which while feasible in theory would be difficult in practice, and what it could capture would not be the raw data, only metadata like number and size of packets, SSIDs and destination addresses.
So no, that's not my biggest worry. Someone installing a physical keylogger while I sleep and removing it later seems a greater risk.
Wrong
Incomplete knowledge is worse than none.
1: Intel AMT SOL is only present in vPro enabled CPUs. That excludes almost all laptops. (And, if you have a rare model that does, it's disabled by default.)
2: Intel AMT SOL needs a physical network connection. The SOL stands for "Serial Over Lan". I don't know about you, but these days, most people including me use laptops with wireless connections.
Yes, it's a concern, but not for laptops.
It's cute that you think that -- unless you're willing to clip the microphone (and the speaker too since in some laptops, the speaker can act as a microphone too), you can't reliably lock down a laptop.
Given that I control every piece of software that goes onto my laptop from bootloader, kernel and up, I'd say I can. Granted, there might be firmware that behaves badly, but it won't get access to the network to send anything out - for that, it needs to go through the OS which holds the credentials, and the OS, I control.
Even worse, it was now changed without adding a note about the change. Doing so would have had you thrown out of any respectable publishing business back before Murdoch.
And Slashdot of all places defends that you cannot edit posts (for many good reasons). But that's worthless if silent editing happens, no matter what the reason or how severe. If it is done once, it can be done other times.
Oh, Susan!
That makes a lot more dense. Thank you.
No, you can't, because due is not a transitive verb.
Using a rocket on at least two payloads successfully, which I understand has been done.
I don't think that is enough to earn the "reliably" description.
"Come eat at my fugu restaurant! The last two customers didn't die!"