Such as the... the obese... who can continue with their merry lifestyles, safe and secure in the knowledge everyone else is forced to hand over their money so they don't have to take personal responsibility for their actions, right?
Selective quoting, because in principle I agree with your point. However, I know that some (and I must stress some) obese people don't actively chose to put their health in danger on a whim or shirk personal responsibility. Some people are obese because of events in their past (eg. violent sexual abuse) have framed their thinking in different ways.
For example (this is a real example): Abuser: You would look prettier if you lost a few pounds Abused: (message = putting on weight will stop the pain)
Later in life: Stress = pain; putting on weight will stop the pain; therefore eat a bit more.
Now, how exactly is the said obese person living a merry life here? It's actually a pretty wretched existence. In this particular example, we solved the problem by my wife seeing a psychologist and working through all the issues. It took 2 1/2 years to resolve things, and the outcome is great: no fad dieting but constant, sustained weight loss and a better outlook on life. Because no health insurance sees obesity as a psychological problem, we paid for those sessions out of our own pocket. It would have been nice to offset even a bit of the cost, but that's the way things are.
I know this wasn't the point you were trying to make. But maybe, just maybe, there needs to be a little compassion for those who at first glance look like they are shirking personal responsibility. Maybe they are. But maybe, just maybe, they aren't.
Posting as an Australian living in the US (and having to have US healthcare)... it might cost more, but daaaaaaaamn it's better that back in Australia!
Just think, you could have had universal healthcare, single payer, provided by the government
Except that Australia (at least) is backing away from that as fast as it can because of the mounting costs. Heck; you get penalties for NOT having private health insurance.
"Provided by the Government" means "provided by taxpayers".
By the 1970's, quite a bit of material relating to WWII was still classified. In the DVD notes to The World At War (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_World_at_War), a documentary series commissioned in 1969, Jeremy Isaacs noted this.
I **believe** that some of the crypto stuff is still classified - 69 years later.
It was a US army base developing a weaponized superflu. From memory, the superflu was more a McGuffin than anything important... it was the cause of societal breakdown that allowed The Devil to come to earth.
However, the characters did have a discussion about what would happen if any of the survivors accidentally opened another one of those labs.
As a counterpoint to this argument, consider the X-Planes of the 50's and 60's; these were all done precisely that way: by attracting the best and brightest to remote locations, cut off from population centers and given a remit to do the best they could. Think the Bell-X1, for example, or Lookheed's A-12 (which became the SR-71).
An island is hardly isolated; something airborne could possibly make it to land or be carried by migratory birds.
The moon is an interesting idea; however consider the consequences of a rocket explosion during takeoff. Or, even more horrifying, consider the consequence of rocket failure and the payload crashing on to a populated area.
We use Zander Insurance's Identity Theft plan (http://www.zanderins.com/idtheft/idtheft.aspx). In the event of identity theft, they assign a case worker to do the legwork of cleaning up the mess. A credit freeze is only good IF the company issuing credit actually checks.
So, disclaimers: I am not a Zander employee; I do not work for any affiliate of Zander. I heard about this on the Dave Ramsey show, so for the cost we thought it was a no-brainer.
You're assuming that Fluke was behind all of this. Fluke has never been the bad guy here; it was US Customs that denied entry to the multimeters. As has been discussed, this is a nice PR exercise for Fluke towards SparkFun, and now a nice PR exercise for SparkFun. Both companies come out looking better because of this - and quality Fluke multimeters end up in the hands of people eager to learn.
But, let's take your approach. Suppose SparkFun dropped these multimeters onto eBay to make a few bucks. SparkFun comes across as curlish, and Fluke probably wouldn't even see a sales blip. Who actually wins here? Fluke still gets the PR kudos, SparkFun look like a bunch of gits, and some high-quality instruments **don't** make it into the hands of up and coming electronics people.
One camera might get accidentally obstructed, but suppose a couple of cops turn up. If all the cameras are suddenly malfunctioning, that's looking less like technology and more like collusion.
Either that, or some wise-arse built a camera jammer.
Anyway, lets suppose there isn't. You still need to convince a bankruptcy judge that you didn't enter into this amount of credit card debt with the intention of committing fraud.
That's because you are looking at climate models calibrated against that data that you are comparing to. Circular logic.
If you look at the predictions from past IPCC reports, very few of their predicted temperature profiles match the later observed conditions. That is a failure of the models' predictive power. That doesn't mean there isn't warming, just that the Earth's climate is a more complex system than can be accurately simulated with modern computing hardware.
I would have said that the models are fundamentally flawed rather than blaming computer hardware. Processing power has followed Moore's Law for the entire time these temperature predictions have been made, so that really isn't the issue.
The single biggest problem is clouds: accurate cloud modelling isn't happening; cloud activity is averaged to the grid size in the model. This leads to assumptions about planetary albedo. Look at the story the other day about the reduction in albedo in the Arctic: as the ice cover has shrunk the albedo has also shrunk. But polar albedo isn't where the action is; it's tropical albedo that is the world's thermostat, and tropical albedo is controlled by cloud formation.
When that particular comment was made, the ubiquity of the home router dolling out DHCP addresses probably wasn't considered. Nowadays, you only need one IP address for your home and let the router sort it out.
There's still a problem, but people seem to prefer to adapt and come up with (very) clever workarounds rather than get some new solution shoved down their throat that renders existing equipment obsolete for no good reason.
Windows person first and foremost; I'm a Dynamics AX technical consultant (please don't hurt me).
I've been evaluating various Linux distros for my desktop, as my hobby time is more and more Linux (hello, Raspberry Pi and robotics!). I looked at Wine, and learned about CodeWeaver's CrossOver (this is probably old news to you). Once I had appropriate 3D drivers installed for my Toshiba S955 (that was a battle), I was able to install some stuff from GOG. Medal Of Honor: Allied Assault, for example, ran flawlessly in an XP bottle. Unreal was a disaster. That's my experience so far, which matches with what I read on CodeWeaver's site.
So, whilst having GOG support Linux would be ideal, that's not going to happen. This seems to be a good alternative.
(FWIW, I certainly got a buzz out of seeing Office 2010 install and run flawlessly on Fedora 19!)
Supposedly a scientist extracted every known vitamin and nutrient from rat chow, and fed it to rats, leaving out the leftover "non-nutrients." Eventually the rats sickened and died. The lesson of this, as told by the nutrition types I heard it from, was that we have not identified all necessary vitamins and nutrients in foods, so it's risky to think you can make fully nutritious artificial food.
You've just identified the problem with multivitamin pills: The vitamins might be there, but all the other essential proteins, fats and acids that allow our bodies to process the vitamin aren't. So the vitamin is excreted. A good example is spinach (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spinach): although iron rich, the body can't readily get at the iron unless additional oxalic acid is present - say a serving or potatoes or pumpkin - to overcome the oxalate in the spinach. That's why we need to eat different vegetables together, so they can help release the essential nutrients.
VHS had a simpler tape path, too. A Betamax machine needed to unspool the tape 3/4 around the head drum, and had other mechanisms that needed the tape to move out, too. If something went wrong, despooling the tape became problematic. VHS, on the other hand, spooled tape out in a "M" fashion: two arms pulled the tape out and achieved a 1/2 wrap of the drum head. Because of that pattern, if the tape failed to retract getting it out wasn't as hard.
Serviceability played a major part in VHS winning the format wars, too. If you needed to replace a Betamax head, you needed all sorts of aligning jigs, test tapes and oscilloscopes to make sure the head was in exactly the right position. VHS heads, on the other hand, simply required 4 wires desoldered, the head lifted off with a single tool, the new head being slid into position and those 4 wires soldered back on. 10 min job with a quick clean + cost of head; easy money.
In truth, Betamax wasn't that much better than VHS in terms of signal quality. Betamax put a high frequency "ring" in the signal when there were abrupt changes in the luminance signal. This gave the appearance of a higher definition, as the edges seemed sharper than they actually were. VHS simply blurred the same scene.
Slashdot Mirror
Such as the ... the obese ... who can continue with their merry lifestyles, safe and secure in the knowledge everyone else is forced to hand over their money so they don't have to take personal responsibility for their actions, right?
Selective quoting, because in principle I agree with your point. However, I know that some (and I must stress some) obese people don't actively chose to put their health in danger on a whim or shirk personal responsibility. Some people are obese because of events in their past (eg. violent sexual abuse) have framed their thinking in different ways.
For example (this is a real example):
Abuser: You would look prettier if you lost a few pounds
Abused: (message = putting on weight will stop the pain)
Later in life: Stress = pain; putting on weight will stop the pain; therefore eat a bit more.
Now, how exactly is the said obese person living a merry life here? It's actually a pretty wretched existence. In this particular example, we solved the problem by my wife seeing a psychologist and working through all the issues. It took 2 1/2 years to resolve things, and the outcome is great: no fad dieting but constant, sustained weight loss and a better outlook on life. Because no health insurance sees obesity as a psychological problem, we paid for those sessions out of our own pocket. It would have been nice to offset even a bit of the cost, but that's the way things are.
I know this wasn't the point you were trying to make. But maybe, just maybe, there needs to be a little compassion for those who at first glance look like they are shirking personal responsibility. Maybe they are. But maybe, just maybe, they aren't.
Posting as an Australian living in the US (and having to have US healthcare)... it might cost more, but daaaaaaaamn it's better that back in Australia!
Just think, you could have had universal healthcare, single payer, provided by the government
Except that Australia (at least) is backing away from that as fast as it can because of the mounting costs. Heck; you get penalties for NOT having private health insurance.
"Provided by the Government" means "provided by taxpayers".
Weren't something like 6 million people kicked out of their existing health plans and had to enroll in a new one?
So 7.1 million enrollments less the 6 million who already had health plans makes 1.1 fresh enrollments. Those numbers seem right in that case.
Well... today is :)
By the 1970's, quite a bit of material relating to WWII was still classified. In the DVD notes to The World At War (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_World_at_War), a documentary series commissioned in 1969, Jeremy Isaacs noted this.
I **believe** that some of the crypto stuff is still classified - 69 years later.
It was a US army base developing a weaponized superflu. From memory, the superflu was more a McGuffin than anything important... it was the cause of societal breakdown that allowed The Devil to come to earth.
However, the characters did have a discussion about what would happen if any of the survivors accidentally opened another one of those labs.
As a counterpoint to this argument, consider the X-Planes of the 50's and 60's; these were all done precisely that way: by attracting the best and brightest to remote locations, cut off from population centers and given a remit to do the best they could. Think the Bell-X1, for example, or Lookheed's A-12 (which became the SR-71).
An island is hardly isolated; something airborne could possibly make it to land or be carried by migratory birds.
The moon is an interesting idea; however consider the consequences of a rocket explosion during takeoff. Or, even more horrifying, consider the consequence of rocket failure and the payload crashing on to a populated area.
This was the basis for a Stephen King story in 1978, "The Stand".
Also "The Hot Zone" was a non-fictional account of an Ebola outbreak from a lab.
We use Zander Insurance's Identity Theft plan (http://www.zanderins.com/idtheft/idtheft.aspx). In the event of identity theft, they assign a case worker to do the legwork of cleaning up the mess. A credit freeze is only good IF the company issuing credit actually checks.
So, disclaimers: I am not a Zander employee; I do not work for any affiliate of Zander. I heard about this on the Dave Ramsey show, so for the cost we thought it was a no-brainer.
You're assuming that Fluke was behind all of this. Fluke has never been the bad guy here; it was US Customs that denied entry to the multimeters. As has been discussed, this is a nice PR exercise for Fluke towards SparkFun, and now a nice PR exercise for SparkFun. Both companies come out looking better because of this - and quality Fluke multimeters end up in the hands of people eager to learn.
But, let's take your approach. Suppose SparkFun dropped these multimeters onto eBay to make a few bucks. SparkFun comes across as curlish, and Fluke probably wouldn't even see a sales blip. Who actually wins here? Fluke still gets the PR kudos, SparkFun look like a bunch of gits, and some high-quality instruments **don't** make it into the hands of up and coming electronics people.
One camera might get accidentally obstructed, but suppose a couple of cops turn up. If all the cameras are suddenly malfunctioning, that's looking less like technology and more like collusion.
Either that, or some wise-arse built a camera jammer.
Nope; I meant that one. There's far too many standards in the world; so a grand-unifying standard will make everything work better.
But I do like your XKCD, too...
http://xkcd.com/927/
Isn't there a five-year lookback on bankruptcy?
Anyway, lets suppose there isn't. You still need to convince a bankruptcy judge that you didn't enter into this amount of credit card debt with the intention of committing fraud.
That's because you are looking at climate models calibrated against that data that you are comparing to. Circular logic.
If you look at the predictions from past IPCC reports, very few of their predicted temperature profiles match the later observed conditions. That is a failure of the models' predictive power. That doesn't mean there isn't warming, just that the Earth's climate is a more complex system than can be accurately simulated with modern computing hardware.
I would have said that the models are fundamentally flawed rather than blaming computer hardware. Processing power has followed Moore's Law for the entire time these temperature predictions have been made, so that really isn't the issue.
The single biggest problem is clouds: accurate cloud modelling isn't happening; cloud activity is averaged to the grid size in the model. This leads to assumptions about planetary albedo. Look at the story the other day about the reduction in albedo in the Arctic: as the ice cover has shrunk the albedo has also shrunk. But polar albedo isn't where the action is; it's tropical albedo that is the world's thermostat, and tropical albedo is controlled by cloud formation.
Since when was stating facts trolling?
When that particular comment was made, the ubiquity of the home router dolling out DHCP addresses probably wasn't considered. Nowadays, you only need one IP address for your home and let the router sort it out.
There's still a problem, but people seem to prefer to adapt and come up with (very) clever workarounds rather than get some new solution shoved down their throat that renders existing equipment obsolete for no good reason.
Windows person first and foremost; I'm a Dynamics AX technical consultant (please don't hurt me).
I've been evaluating various Linux distros for my desktop, as my hobby time is more and more Linux (hello, Raspberry Pi and robotics!). I looked at Wine, and learned about CodeWeaver's CrossOver (this is probably old news to you). Once I had appropriate 3D drivers installed for my Toshiba S955 (that was a battle), I was able to install some stuff from GOG. Medal Of Honor: Allied Assault, for example, ran flawlessly in an XP bottle. Unreal was a disaster. That's my experience so far, which matches with what I read on CodeWeaver's site.
So, whilst having GOG support Linux would be ideal, that's not going to happen. This seems to be a good alternative.
(FWIW, I certainly got a buzz out of seeing Office 2010 install and run flawlessly on Fedora 19!)
Mod this up to 11!
Accenture...
That's a bit unfair; they've only just taken over.
"The missile has moved. You must reboot your cockpit for this change to have an effect"
Supposedly a scientist extracted every known vitamin and nutrient from rat chow, and fed it to rats, leaving out the leftover "non-nutrients." Eventually the rats sickened and died. The lesson of this, as told by the nutrition types I heard it from, was that we have not identified all necessary vitamins and nutrients in foods, so it's risky to think you can make fully nutritious artificial food.
You've just identified the problem with multivitamin pills: The vitamins might be there, but all the other essential proteins, fats and acids that allow our bodies to process the vitamin aren't. So the vitamin is excreted. A good example is spinach (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spinach): although iron rich, the body can't readily get at the iron unless additional oxalic acid is present - say a serving or potatoes or pumpkin - to overcome the oxalate in the spinach. That's why we need to eat different vegetables together, so they can help release the essential nutrients.
VHS had a simpler tape path, too. A Betamax machine needed to unspool the tape 3/4 around the head drum, and had other mechanisms that needed the tape to move out, too. If something went wrong, despooling the tape became problematic. VHS, on the other hand, spooled tape out in a "M" fashion: two arms pulled the tape out and achieved a 1/2 wrap of the drum head. Because of that pattern, if the tape failed to retract getting it out wasn't as hard.
Serviceability played a major part in VHS winning the format wars, too. If you needed to replace a Betamax head, you needed all sorts of aligning jigs, test tapes and oscilloscopes to make sure the head was in exactly the right position. VHS heads, on the other hand, simply required 4 wires desoldered, the head lifted off with a single tool, the new head being slid into position and those 4 wires soldered back on. 10 min job with a quick clean + cost of head; easy money.
In truth, Betamax wasn't that much better than VHS in terms of signal quality. Betamax put a high frequency "ring" in the signal when there were abrupt changes in the luminance signal. This gave the appearance of a higher definition, as the edges seemed sharper than they actually were. VHS simply blurred the same scene.