Printers these fast are often quite dangerous. A mistake can often be very costly and disruptive.
In a related context, sometimes envelope/statement miss matches occur, and that can be very ugly depending on what the statement is coming in the mail.
In some states, driver's licenses are printed right there in the individual DMV, but in others, the picture is transferred to a head office, the license printed, and sent in the mail.
California is like the latter, and they probably print off 30,000 driver's licenses per day. A few years back, there was a mismatch between the license making and the envelopes, and in just a few hours, nearly 6000 licenses were accidentally sent to the wrong address.
I imagine procedures are now in place to make sure such an event does not occur again.
Apple sends out patches almost every 2 weeks if not more, and Apple users unlike Microsoft users, the bulk of which just have no clue, tend to actually patch their software on a regular basis.
I don't know if I agree so much with the clue'd in part as much as I would say the reason for greater patch diligence by Mac users is that the Apple software update works so much better than Windows Update (not just from an interface point of view, but also from a regular patching point of view.)
It's great advice. So good, I'm sure you can find a lot of people who have done the same in a similar situation.
Of course not.
So many projects in the world have gone bad because people either think they know what they are doing, and don't have the humility to ask questions when they start seeing things go wrong, or they already don't know what they are doing, but are too meek to admit to it.
At least the questioner has the humility to ask the question. With any luck, he can put together a good system, and become a fountain of advice for the next sys admin who needs to build an email system to deal with a million accounts.
When I was over in the States recently, quite a few cashiers would notice my chip'n'pin card, mention that the US would be moving over to them soon, and saying how nice it will be to have that extra security.
I disagree, I don't believe we will see chip and pin in the US.
It's much more profitable for Visa/MC when debit card transactions are debited via Visa/MC systems. In the United States, this is done by selecting "credit" on the hypercom and signing a receipt.
Choosing "Debit" on the hypercom and entering in a PIN has the transaction run through the EFT, skipping the Visa/MC system and all its profitability (though merchants prefer it on many transactions because it's cheaper for them.)
In order for Visa/MC to keep people using their system, they have to encourage people choose credit and sign their receipts...and discourage "Debit" usage with the PIN (and I've seen Visa commercials with this message.) A chip and pin system would resemble the "debit" transaction sequence too much. (In any case, most credit card fraud is online, and there is a PIN available for credit card transactions done online.)
States along the Gulf get hit by destructive hurricanes than California gets hit by destructive earthquakes: why is California spending so much more on mitigation than Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida?
Depending on how you look at it, California isn't mitigating more. Only 13% of Californians have earthquake insurance. That's clear indication that Californians themselves take a relaxed attitude about earthquakes.
Which has nothing to do with Ayn Rand and Libertianism.
It was a pre-emptive strike in regards to discussion that people couldn't see how a charity system could replace the system we have now. As for the statement that they were FEMA on a smaller scale, I actually don't know enough about them to agree or disagree. I could see them being smaller, but I could see them arguably being larger.
I fail to see the applicability of this to the discussion.
You're line was that altruism didn't exist in the libertarian mindset. Accurately speaking, in the Objectivist perspective it's not considered to exist all by itself, but is defined as a type of contract, as I said above. I felt that saying that altruism does not exist in the libertarian world is a regurgitation of a principle of objectivism, but in the wrong context and was misleading by itself (becaus it implies that libertarians aren't charitable, which is not true, it's not necessarily even their philosophy.)
Keep in mind, I'm a left-libertarian (I actually call it "progressive libertarian") and some of these issues I'm not great at arguing.
But I would posit that vast majority of Libertarians I run into so far would be of the, as you defined it, objectivist-libertarian-selfish-ass type, and of the I-am-too-sexy-for-my-shit class and the gimme-gimme-screw-everyone-else sub-variety.
The odd thing is that there are so few rich Libertarians, of any type. You could count the millionaire Libertarians on two hands.
During the 1920's and 1930's a whopping 2/3rd of Americans belonged to "mutual-aid" societies...which were different organizations that dealt with poverty, hunger and related issues. The altruism has been displaced by government programs (although, I feel they've been more than disproportionally displaced and I really don't know why.) I point this out because true altruism was alive and well not 100 years ago.
And on a technical note, altruism is a type of contract anyway. Charity is a way of assuaging guilty or freeing your conscious, in exchange for money.
The innovation is found in the fact that Mercedes technology may only save a few hundred lives per year when MB implements it. GM's implementation may save thousands, or even hundreds of thousands, in the long run. GM is trying to install the technology is cars of $20,000 and not just worry about people who can afford S-class vehicles.
Usually I'm not a GM apologist (especially since I drive a Saab--a vehicle that GM has diminished) but it seems that GM is sincerely trying to get lifesaving technology in all their models.
The solution here (echoed by other posts) isn't all that new are amazingly innovative. In the end, it's a nifty hack for preventing database theft/back-end/internal theft. There *is* concern about that (I personally predict that it's inevitable that someone will get their hands on a major biometric database...for instance, a datatape that holds the photographs for an entire state's DMV license-state ID archive.)
However, the complexity in stealing the back-end pales in comparison to stealing the actual biometric itself (since, after all, just you walking around makes your face easily photographed, or you touching things leaves your fingerprints everywhere.) This nifty hash system can't change that.
Half a degree means nothing to employers because it means that you don't finish what you start, or don't like to do stuff that isn't fun.
I don't disagree with your points, I almost put some of them in my post.
However...
a.) I don't know if employers (or at least HR departments) actively seek degreed people because those people are more likely to finish things. It's almost just a little too much credit to give them.
b.) They may think it, but it's hard to say if it's true or not. People who don't finish degrees may be scatterbrained and unfocused, but it may also be indicative of an individual who knows when something is no longer worth persuing and can apply their resources more effectively.
c.) There's a reason why they make you take courses that don't apply to your major. They help to broaden your knowledge. On this note, I simultaneously agree and disagree. The part of me which disagrees is very cognizant of the politics involved in the establishment of core curricula. Often requirements are added in under the pretext of broadening knowledge, which may or may not be achieved, but what is definitely achieved is the procurement of work for professors and departments involved. Education is simultaneously the most noble profession, as it is the most self-aggrandizing.
I'm not inherently anti-education (I've got 3 degrees, one of which is in French language.:-) Nevertheless, I find myself bothered by an institution whose facade is about broadening knowledge, but whose motivation is self-aggrandizement carried by a need for (often irrelevant) meritocratic discrimination in the process of applying for work.
When an auto manufacturer ships a new engine, they don't immediately halt production of the old ones that it is destined to supplant.
I hate to criticize the analogy, but auto makers don't phase transition auto production. (Though I would have to think if automakers would produce a little bit of the old engine for parts.)
One of Honda's main claims to fame is that it can transition from one model (say the X generation Honda Accord) to a completely different model (the X+1 generation of the Honda Accord) very quickly. They plan out the transition on the assembly line meticulously in advance and make the changes to the line as the final car rolls its way through. Hondas goal (and the PR claims they succeed) is to have the first car of the new generation Accord begin production as the last one rolls off the line.
Prior to this, automakers would often shut down their assembly plants for weeks or even months while retooling occurred between different model generations.
I seem to remember reading somewhere that an economist posits that the purpose of college degrees is to shift the costs of finding the right employee from the employer to the employee. Because of the complexities and expense of college degrees it automatically eliminates about 50-70% of the potential job seekers with just one line on the resume.
If the college courses were relevant to the job, and the employer thought of them as such, then we would see scenarios in which partial degrees would be valuable to employers: "I see by your transcript here that you got all the relevant classes in, but we don't really care about your failure to take French and Sociology." However, this is rarely the case. The degree is a filtering mechanism for the employer (an extremely expensive one for the employee) so it's value only comes in the form of a all-or-nothing existance on the resume.
Certifications play a similar role...though I strongly suspect that the software companies had their own reasons for certifications: "Well, we (some company) are trying to decide on which server to go with, and we could do Linux, Netware or Windows, but Bob here has a MSCE...."
Hacking is a state of mind, but not in the typical sense of the word hacker.
If this article had appeared on Slashdot 5 years ago about half of the responses would have lamented the fact that few people used "hacker" correctly--and that an individual who breaks into other's machines is accurately called a "cracker."
It appears that the hacker community has given up on on the differentiation, and all you can do is pick up what type of hacker people are talking about by the context.
That's a shame, because the breaking into the other's machines definition for hacker is overwhelming the solving problems in interesting ways definition, and the latter is a rather beautiful and unique concept that doesn't seem to have another word to use.
Intel is inventing a solution for a problem that has never really been determined to be a problem.
There are plenty of existing ways of securing an existing Wi-Fi network. Those who care will.
A lot of the reason people don't know how to secure their networks is because people have never been give a reason to learn. In spite of all this talk from the security conscious about why they should lock down their networks (the most compelling justification I feel is to make sure illicit things (terrorism, kiddie porn, illegal downloading) are not done on the network--I have not seen a single article which has some poor loser lamenting their failure to lock down their network. (I predict that the situations will remain non-existant or few and far between.)
If those situations started popping up--where individuals pay a price for an unsecured network, then everyone else will take it more seriously.
a number of business sites are saying Latin America is the new India for outsourcing.
I definitely see the potential. In the early 1990s Costa Rica became very aggressive at teaching English to students (although I don't know if it's a potential outsourcing destination--it's often more expensive than India labor wise.)
My cousin in Costa Rica works at a gaming call center. Not exactly an outsourced job, because Costa Rica is one of a few countries that would allow that type of call center, but she does make $10/hr, which is equivalent to what many make in call centers here in the US (and, on that note, there are American expats who work with her.)
Does that mean all of the Spanish-only speakers came here to the US???
Indivduals in Latin America who speak English usually can live a pretty good lifestyle on the income they make down there. Certainly a good number will immigrate, but they don't have to immigrate for economic survival reasons.
Many of the economic migrants are uneducated/undereducated, so they likely have little knowledge of English.
So, yes, a far greater percentage of non-English speakers come to the US than what are found as a percentage of the original country's population.
or you could continue telling me that my feelings of anger are invalid, and that i should be a mindless emotionless robot when confronted with terrorism
Oh no, I never said that. I've got a similar combination of fear and anger that manifest in regards to my thoughts on civil liberties, my concern that they will perish in the future, et cetera (and which is always alarmed that fear and anger on your side is more compelling.) I'm going to be the first to admit that I'm not reacting objectively, and that I'm not motivated by some sorta objective goal/thought. But when it comes to presenting the case for liberty, I'll put together the facade necessary to make my case.
surely this is a superior approach to dealing with the problems facing us today: don't fight the problems, just alter our understanding of how human behavior works!
*giggles*
What's frightening is that I think your last paragraph was ripped right from Machiavelli.:-)
Fear and anger are often lumped together as similar emotions. (I can't seem to recall where I got that from...however I recall something that the only negative emotion that was not related to the others was jealousy.)
In either case, you can go ahead and replace the word scared/fearful with angry, and the text means the same (at least for me.) In hindsight, anger should have been there from the beginning (as well as the more general "stress.")
On a side note, in all the time I lived in the city, I only heard myths regarding inhabitants of the Times Square area, but never actually met one.
Until September 11, 2001, I worked at the World Trade Center...I just watched the same religious militants bomb the London Underground...I have ancestors who fought and died in the Revolutionary War.
So you know what I think?
Yes. You are very very scared. It's wonderful that you can admit to that. Those who disagree with you request the following.
a.) That you understand that there are those of us who are very very scared of the side-effects of mitigating the things which scare you.
b.) That it's possible that you are being manipulated, unjustifiably, by others, through the medium of your fear.
c.) That it's possible that you are not necessarily in a position to assess, objectively, the situation, because of your fear.
And as long as you admit to that, I'll be happy to admit to the same above as well, except, my deep seated fears come from a different source, but I will try to understand a, b, and c from your point of view.
Health care is one of the areas where capitalism is really the wrong motivation (because our long term health is not their concern - just short term costs).
This is not entirely true, after all, from their perspective, the best outcome is a person who lives long (pays premiums) but doesn't spend all that much money while they are living. That requires a certain amount of prevention. (And of course, dies in their sleep. 1/3rd of health costs in the US (or, alternatively, 4% of GNP) is spent on the last 60 days of life...which I consider a problem, but with no easy solution. Another way of looking at that--2 hours of your 40 hour work week are spent putting money away toward the time that you're on your deathbed, but the health insurance system is throwing everything at you to keep you living. That certainly is a short term decision.)
At any rate, oddly, the US health system is actually pretty uncapitalistic. One article talks about the fact that a family in Kansas City MO could have health insurance for $172/month but the same family would pay $800 in New York State and $1200 in Jersey. The failure here is that NY and NJ have a massive amount of requirements that insurance companies have to pay for, and the result is that a lot of people are priced out of the market. (The article discusses a possible solution.)
In other countries of the world, it's not unusual to see clinics talk about the cost of certain procedures. Let's say you don't have insurance, and you need an MRI. I would not hesitate to tell you to fly to another country and have it done there. For instance, this clinic in Bombay can get you an MRI for 3500-13500 Rupees (about $75-$300.) Counting in airfare and a hotel stay, you're probably spending just 1/3rd of the cost of an MRI in the states. (Though I dont know the cost of an MRI in the states.)
As a result of this, I've been very excited about putting together a business which would charter a flight down to a country, arrange MRIs, cat scans, X-rays, dental surgery...what have you, in a much cheaper country, and fly them back. If I personally don't do that, I'm sure someone else will.
How are they going to stop the sun from destroying the video display?
What about cold weather (which the doors can't help with.) I've seen LCD implementations which work fine in some weather, but work poorly in very cold weather. (Some gasoline pump LCD screens are a good example--the their response time just becomes impossibly slow in the cold.)
And you've learned by now that it makes no difference. It's just a nifty term some state's founders like and stuck into their constitutions.
People like to pretend there's a difference, but the commonwealths are the same as the states.
However, one state is actually truly different from the others, and that's Louisiana. It's legal system is civil/napoleonic law, built on the legal system that was in place prior to it becoming a state, which the French brought to it. The other 49 states are based on common law, which is the system the British gave us.
It would require quite a lot to go through the differences, but there are some huge differences, and yet, it's still just the State of Louisiana.
Slashdot Mirror
Printers these fast are often quite dangerous. A mistake can often be very costly and disruptive.
In a related context, sometimes envelope/statement miss matches occur, and that can be very ugly depending on what the statement is coming in the mail.
In some states, driver's licenses are printed right there in the individual DMV, but in others, the picture is transferred to a head office, the license printed, and sent in the mail.
California is like the latter, and they probably print off 30,000 driver's licenses per day. A few years back, there was a mismatch between the license making and the envelopes, and in just a few hours, nearly 6000 licenses were accidentally sent to the wrong address.
I imagine procedures are now in place to make sure such an event does not occur again.
Apple sends out patches almost every 2 weeks if not more, and Apple users unlike Microsoft users, the bulk of which just have no clue, tend to actually patch their software on a regular basis.
I don't know if I agree so much with the clue'd in part as much as I would say the reason for greater patch diligence by Mac users is that the Apple software update works so much better than Windows Update (not just from an interface point of view, but also from a regular patching point of view.)
Resign.
It's great advice. So good, I'm sure you can find a lot of people who have done the same in a similar situation.
Of course not.
So many projects in the world have gone bad because people either think they know what they are doing, and don't have the humility to ask questions when they start seeing things go wrong, or they already don't know what they are doing, but are too meek to admit to it.
At least the questioner has the humility to ask the question. With any luck, he can put together a good system, and become a fountain of advice for the next sys admin who needs to build an email system to deal with a million accounts.
When I was over in the States recently, quite a few cashiers would notice my chip'n'pin card, mention that the US would be moving over to them soon, and saying how nice it will be to have that extra security.
I disagree, I don't believe we will see chip and pin in the US.
It's much more profitable for Visa/MC when debit card transactions are debited via Visa/MC systems. In the United States, this is done by selecting "credit" on the hypercom and signing a receipt.
Choosing "Debit" on the hypercom and entering in a PIN has the transaction run through the EFT, skipping the Visa/MC system and all its profitability (though merchants prefer it on many transactions because it's cheaper for them.)
In order for Visa/MC to keep people using their system, they have to encourage people choose credit and sign their receipts...and discourage "Debit" usage with the PIN (and I've seen Visa commercials with this message.) A chip and pin system would resemble the "debit" transaction sequence too much. (In any case, most credit card fraud is online, and there is a PIN available for credit card transactions done online.)
States along the Gulf get hit by destructive hurricanes than California gets hit by destructive earthquakes: why is California spending so much more on mitigation than Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida?
Depending on how you look at it, California isn't mitigating more. Only 13% of Californians have earthquake insurance. That's clear indication that Californians themselves take a relaxed attitude about earthquakes.
Which has nothing to do with Ayn Rand and Libertianism.
It was a pre-emptive strike in regards to discussion that people couldn't see how a charity system could replace the system we have now. As for the statement that they were FEMA on a smaller scale, I actually don't know enough about them to agree or disagree. I could see them being smaller, but I could see them arguably being larger.
I fail to see the applicability of this to the discussion.
You're line was that altruism didn't exist in the libertarian mindset. Accurately speaking, in the Objectivist perspective it's not considered to exist all by itself, but is defined as a type of contract, as I said above. I felt that saying that altruism does not exist in the libertarian world is a regurgitation of a principle of objectivism, but in the wrong context and was misleading by itself (becaus it implies that libertarians aren't charitable, which is not true, it's not necessarily even their philosophy.)
Keep in mind, I'm a left-libertarian (I actually call it "progressive libertarian") and some of these issues I'm not great at arguing.
But I would posit that vast majority of Libertarians I run into so far would be of the, as you defined it, objectivist-libertarian-selfish-ass type, and of the I-am-too-sexy-for-my-shit class and the gimme-gimme-screw-everyone-else sub-variety.
The odd thing is that there are so few rich Libertarians, of any type. You could count the millionaire Libertarians on two hands.
remember, altruism = a Libertarian no-no
During the 1920's and 1930's a whopping 2/3rd of Americans belonged to "mutual-aid" societies...which were different organizations that dealt with poverty, hunger and related issues. The altruism has been displaced by government programs (although, I feel they've been more than disproportionally displaced and I really don't know why.) I point this out because true altruism was alive and well not 100 years ago.
And on a technical note, altruism is a type of contract anyway. Charity is a way of assuaging guilty or freeing your conscious, in exchange for money.
So where is the innovation?
The innovation is found in the fact that Mercedes technology may only save a few hundred lives per year when MB implements it. GM's implementation may save thousands, or even hundreds of thousands, in the long run. GM is trying to install the technology is cars of $20,000 and not just worry about people who can afford S-class vehicles.
Usually I'm not a GM apologist (especially since I drive a Saab--a vehicle that GM has diminished) but it seems that GM is sincerely trying to get lifesaving technology in all their models.
The solution here (echoed by other posts) isn't all that new are amazingly innovative. In the end, it's a nifty hack for preventing database theft/back-end/internal theft. There *is* concern about that (I personally predict that it's inevitable that someone will get their hands on a major biometric database...for instance, a datatape that holds the photographs for an entire state's DMV license-state ID archive.)
However, the complexity in stealing the back-end pales in comparison to stealing the actual biometric itself (since, after all, just you walking around makes your face easily photographed, or you touching things leaves your fingerprints everywhere.) This nifty hash system can't change that.
Half a degree means nothing to employers because it means that you don't finish what you start, or don't like to do stuff that isn't fun.
:-) Nevertheless, I find myself bothered by an institution whose facade is about broadening knowledge, but whose motivation is self-aggrandizement carried by a need for (often irrelevant) meritocratic discrimination in the process of applying for work.
I don't disagree with your points, I almost put some of them in my post.
However...
a.) I don't know if employers (or at least HR departments) actively seek degreed people because those people are more likely to finish things. It's almost just a little too much credit to give them.
b.) They may think it, but it's hard to say if it's true or not. People who don't finish degrees may be scatterbrained and unfocused, but it may also be indicative of an individual who knows when something is no longer worth persuing and can apply their resources more effectively.
c.) There's a reason why they make you take courses that don't apply to your major. They help to broaden your knowledge. On this note, I simultaneously agree and disagree. The part of me which disagrees is very cognizant of the politics involved in the establishment of core curricula. Often requirements are added in under the pretext of broadening knowledge, which may or may not be achieved, but what is definitely achieved is the procurement of work for professors and departments involved. Education is simultaneously the most noble profession, as it is the most self-aggrandizing.
I'm not inherently anti-education (I've got 3 degrees, one of which is in French language.
But they don't transition all models at the same time.
Ahhh....yes indeed. Apologies. I see the concept now.
When an auto manufacturer ships a new engine, they don't immediately halt production of the old ones that it is destined to supplant.
I hate to criticize the analogy, but auto makers don't phase transition auto production. (Though I would have to think if automakers would produce a little bit of the old engine for parts.)
One of Honda's main claims to fame is that it can transition from one model (say the X generation Honda Accord) to a completely different model (the X+1 generation of the Honda Accord) very quickly. They plan out the transition on the assembly line meticulously in advance and make the changes to the line as the final car rolls its way through. Hondas goal (and the PR claims they succeed) is to have the first car of the new generation Accord begin production as the last one rolls off the line.
Prior to this, automakers would often shut down their assembly plants for weeks or even months while retooling occurred between different model generations.
To get past the HR Trolls!
I seem to remember reading somewhere that an economist posits that the purpose of college degrees is to shift the costs of finding the right employee from the employer to the employee. Because of the complexities and expense of college degrees it automatically eliminates about 50-70% of the potential job seekers with just one line on the resume.
If the college courses were relevant to the job, and the employer thought of them as such, then we would see scenarios in which partial degrees would be valuable to employers: "I see by your transcript here that you got all the relevant classes in, but we don't really care about your failure to take French and Sociology." However, this is rarely the case. The degree is a filtering mechanism for the employer (an extremely expensive one for the employee) so it's value only comes in the form of a all-or-nothing existance on the resume.
Certifications play a similar role...though I strongly suspect that the software companies had their own reasons for certifications: "Well, we (some company) are trying to decide on which server to go with, and we could do Linux, Netware or Windows, but Bob here has a MSCE...."
Hacking is a state of mind, but not in the typical sense of the word hacker.
If this article had appeared on Slashdot 5 years ago about half of the responses would have lamented the fact that few people used "hacker" correctly--and that an individual who breaks into other's machines is accurately called a "cracker."
It appears that the hacker community has given up on on the differentiation, and all you can do is pick up what type of hacker people are talking about by the context.
That's a shame, because the breaking into the other's machines definition for hacker is overwhelming the solving problems in interesting ways definition, and the latter is a rather beautiful and unique concept that doesn't seem to have another word to use.
Intel is inventing a solution for a problem that has never really been determined to be a problem.
There are plenty of existing ways of securing an existing Wi-Fi network. Those who care will.
A lot of the reason people don't know how to secure their networks is because people have never been give a reason to learn. In spite of all this talk from the security conscious about why they should lock down their networks (the most compelling justification I feel is to make sure illicit things (terrorism, kiddie porn, illegal downloading) are not done on the network--I have not seen a single article which has some poor loser lamenting their failure to lock down their network. (I predict that the situations will remain non-existant or few and far between.)
If those situations started popping up--where individuals pay a price for an unsecured network, then everyone else will take it more seriously.
a number of business sites are saying Latin America is the new India for outsourcing.
I definitely see the potential. In the early 1990s Costa Rica became very aggressive at teaching English to students (although I don't know if it's a potential outsourcing destination--it's often more expensive than India labor wise.)
My cousin in Costa Rica works at a gaming call center. Not exactly an outsourced job, because Costa Rica is one of a few countries that would allow that type of call center, but she does make $10/hr, which is equivalent to what many make in call centers here in the US (and, on that note, there are American expats who work with her.)
Does that mean all of the Spanish-only speakers came here to the US???
Indivduals in Latin America who speak English usually can live a pretty good lifestyle on the income they make down there. Certainly a good number will immigrate, but they don't have to immigrate for economic survival reasons.
Many of the economic migrants are uneducated/undereducated, so they likely have little knowledge of English.
So, yes, a far greater percentage of non-English speakers come to the US than what are found as a percentage of the original country's population.
or you could continue telling me that my feelings of anger are invalid, and that i should be a mindless emotionless robot when confronted with terrorism
:-)
Oh no, I never said that. I've got a similar combination of fear and anger that manifest in regards to my thoughts on civil liberties, my concern that they will perish in the future, et cetera (and which is always alarmed that fear and anger on your side is more compelling.) I'm going to be the first to admit that I'm not reacting objectively, and that I'm not motivated by some sorta objective goal/thought. But when it comes to presenting the case for liberty, I'll put together the facade necessary to make my case.
surely this is a superior approach to dealing with the problems facing us today: don't fight the problems, just alter our understanding of how human behavior works!
*giggles*
What's frightening is that I think your last paragraph was ripped right from Machiavelli.
anything else i can help you with today?
:-)
Yes!
Fear and anger are often lumped together as similar emotions. (I can't seem to recall where I got that from...however I recall something that the only negative emotion that was not related to the others was jealousy.)
In either case, you can go ahead and replace the word scared/fearful with angry, and the text means the same (at least for me.) In hindsight, anger should have been there from the beginning (as well as the more general "stress.")
On a side note, in all the time I lived in the city, I only heard myths regarding inhabitants of the Times Square area, but never actually met one.
Until September 11, 2001, I worked at the World Trade Center...I just watched the same religious militants bomb the London Underground...I have ancestors who fought and died in the Revolutionary War.
So you know what I think?
Yes. You are very very scared. It's wonderful that you can admit to that. Those who disagree with you request the following.
a.) That you understand that there are those of us who are very very scared of the side-effects of mitigating the things which scare you.
b.) That it's possible that you are being manipulated, unjustifiably, by others, through the medium of your fear.
c.) That it's possible that you are not necessarily in a position to assess, objectively, the situation, because of your fear.
And as long as you admit to that, I'll be happy to admit to the same above as well, except, my deep seated fears come from a different source, but I will try to understand a, b, and c from your point of view.
Health care is one of the areas where capitalism is really the wrong motivation (because our long term health is not their concern - just short term costs).
This is not entirely true, after all, from their perspective, the best outcome is a person who lives long (pays premiums) but doesn't spend all that much money while they are living. That requires a certain amount of prevention. (And of course, dies in their sleep. 1/3rd of health costs in the US (or, alternatively, 4% of GNP) is spent on the last 60 days of life...which I consider a problem, but with no easy solution. Another way of looking at that--2 hours of your 40 hour work week are spent putting money away toward the time that you're on your deathbed, but the health insurance system is throwing everything at you to keep you living. That certainly is a short term decision.)
At any rate, oddly, the US health system is actually pretty uncapitalistic. One article talks about the fact that a family in Kansas City MO could have health insurance for $172/month but the same family would pay $800 in New York State and $1200 in Jersey. The failure here is that NY and NJ have a massive amount of requirements that insurance companies have to pay for, and the result is that a lot of people are priced out of the market. (The article discusses a possible solution.)
In other countries of the world, it's not unusual to see clinics talk about the cost of certain procedures. Let's say you don't have insurance, and you need an MRI. I would not hesitate to tell you to fly to another country and have it done there. For instance, this clinic in Bombay can get you an MRI for 3500-13500 Rupees (about $75-$300.) Counting in airfare and a hotel stay, you're probably spending just 1/3rd of the cost of an MRI in the states. (Though I dont know the cost of an MRI in the states.)
As a result of this, I've been very excited about putting together a business which would charter a flight down to a country, arrange MRIs, cat scans, X-rays, dental surgery...what have you, in a much cheaper country, and fly them back. If I personally don't do that, I'm sure someone else will.
Take a look at this this for example(don't want to go there with IE, BTW)
I have never wanted to go to a website so much after I saw that warning.
After I submit this post, I'm restarting Mozilla, as that site has caused it to memory leak worse than the Exxon Valdez.
How are they going to stop the sun from destroying the video display?
What about cold weather (which the doors can't help with.) I've seen LCD implementations which work fine in some weather, but work poorly in very cold weather. (Some gasoline pump LCD screens are a good example--the their response time just becomes impossibly slow in the cold.)
Virginia is not a state. It's a Commonwealth.
And you've learned by now that it makes no difference. It's just a nifty term some state's founders like and stuck into their constitutions.
People like to pretend there's a difference, but the commonwealths are the same as the states.
However, one state is actually truly different from the others, and that's Louisiana. It's legal system is civil/napoleonic law, built on the legal system that was in place prior to it becoming a state, which the French brought to it. The other 49 states are based on common law, which is the system the British gave us.
It would require quite a lot to go through the differences, but there are some huge differences, and yet, it's still just the State of Louisiana.