Since even Slashdot carries a cross-section of population we probably have our share of murderers, religious fanatics, spammers, hardrockers, hells angels, priests and shamans here too. And some of them doesn't like truth so they try to gain cred and then mod down the truth.
In Neal Stephenson's Cryptonomicon, there's a scene early in the book where the Allies are assembling the personnel for Station X (aka Bletchely Park). Statistician, turned Nazi codebreaker Lawrence Waterhouse, points out that his Nazi counterpart Rudy von Hacklheber, would notice something was amiss with the Allied personnel changes based the statistics of people being transfered to Bletchely Park, and then quickly deduce that the Allies are attempting to break the Enigma code. To camouflage the transfers, Waterhouse suggests creating ficticious personnel and have some of them transfered to Bletchely Park as well. However the military can't just make any random fake person, the fictious people must be statisitically drawn from a distribution that when added to distribution of real Bletchely Park personnel, the combined distribution is statistically insignificant (i.e. fail to reject the null hypothesis) than any other large military base.
If Research 2000 did what is suggested, they failed to taint the polls with the right kind of fake data, just like what the novel warned about.
Well it's the initiative process. We have initiatives that lock the budget down, and can't be modified without another initiative. (No other state has the combination of budget, tax, and initiative laws that California does. That's what makes it ungovernable.) One of the largest pieces of the budget is the horribly overcrowded prison system. We spend more on prisons than we do on higher education. Why? Three strikes. We've locked our budget so that any increase in spending in one area, requires an proportional increase in school funding. Raised some money for roads? Well the schools get half of that.
It's absurd. I'd eliminate the initiative process.
Except California already has the highest sales tax (when local taxes are added). Not to mention one of the highest costs of living in the country. I would say that's a pretty good indication that our problem is related more to our spending than our taxing.
Well that's more of an artifact that property taxes revenues are stagnant and income taxes have remained low as well. A tweak of either one of these could finance a reduction in the regressive sales tax. Sales taxes are the easiest to get through the legislature, so of course they're going to be the most frequent target during crises.
The main reasons why the cost of living is so high in California is due to property values, and property values remain high because people still want to move to California. Yes, California has had a net loss of 200k of migration, but it is still in the top 10 of all attracting states in the country.
However, my point is as always that anything government gets into that relates to economics, to equalizing outcomes for people, the government will turn into giant pyramid schemes, which will eventually collapse.
I didn't realize that the CDOs and Enron were government schemes. The fact of the matter is that throughout history you can trace every economic collapse to one thing, lack of regulation. Oh sure, it sounds nice, but it doesn't work in practice. Just like command economies, anarchy, and laissez-faire economics. You like to do these simplistic one variable thought experiment because when presented with actual economic data, the argument falls apart. The world simply doesn't work they you think it does.
Get government out of economy, take government's ability to screw with market prices out of the equation
Take a step back and listen to your world view and the private insurers' argument for a second.
1. The government is horribly inefficient, and always will be. 2. The private sector is intrinsically efficient due to profit motive and competition. 3. Private insurance can't compete against the government.
Private insurance can't compete on cost and service against the organization that's bloated and can't find it's own ass with both hands and an electronic ass finding machine? If that's the case, how the fuck can private insurance even exist?
AFAIC all government behavior that touches economy leads to pyramid scheme being created.
Luckily for the rest of us, that's simply not true.
There is a systemic problem in the US that is well document: that of wrong incentives in the system (over-testing by doctors because of bad payment models, lack of litigation protection, etc). Not easy to fix.
Actually the fixes are well known. You can look at Canada, Germany, Japan, even Taiwan's transitions. You simply remove the profit from basic health plans and focus on prevention.
What's not easy is to deal with those that scream "nazi communist" at every turn while simultaneously going home and saying, "Gee, something really ought to be done." But you know how you deal with them? You ignore them.
False. The second part is true but the first is false, because Cuba's government hospitals often don't treat people at all. Since those persons are left to die, they never become part of the system and don't appear in the statistic. Plus given the type of government (totalitarian) it wouldn't surprise me to learn unfavorable stats are removed by the government. (See the scene in 1984 where negative news is expunged and rewritten into positive news.)
[citation needed]
Seriously. Do you have anything to backup these statements? You've made a rather bold and novel statement about Cuban hospitals leaving people to die without anything even remotely to back that up. Then you follow that outrageous statement by just making shit up, which is exactly what "it wouldn't surprise me to learn" means.
Exactly. California is ungovernable and run buy a bunch of tax and waste (it's a stretch to call it tax and spend) idiots.
Well actually it's spend and don't tax. In that sense, it's a model Republican state.
Lest we forget Prop 13 that essentially froze property tax income at 1970s values, it's constitution that makes initiatives sacrosanct, the constitutional amendment that requires a 2/3s supermajority to raise (but not lower) taxes, and a 2/3s supermajority to balance a budget, and a marginalized set of political extremists that just happen to hold 2 seats over the 1/3 minority in both houses. (Yes, slashdoters, 2 people hold the entire state hostage.)
Fuck the initiative process. Fuck the 2/3s supermajorites. Grow the fuck up.
The refrain that taxes are "too high" has no basis on reality. Taxes are at a 50 year low nationwide, and taxes haven't been able to be raised in California for since the 1970s. Nationwide, the US is significantly below the OECD average at 28%. (The OECD average 36%.)
If I was King of California, I'd know what I'd do solve the budget problems of California. I'd raise taxes.
Maybe because less imagination was used than even you think? Religious folk tend to believe the people witnessing those miracles were reporting what they saw, not fabricating stories.
Yeah, that's why altruism doesn't exist, not even in animals. Seriously Randroid. You know nothing of ethics, biology, or even naturalistic ethics.
But you're right. There's a conveniently different set of punishments for those that steal with a ledger as opposed to those that steal with a knife or a gun. That needs to change.
Of course there's no evidence that even the non-miraculous statements of Exodus (i.e. Hebrews held as slaves in Egypt) are true. When even the most plausible parts are bupkis, there's no reason to believe in the least plausible parts.
Pretty sad when something can be shot down without even resorting to bringing up a completely incompatible "divine history."
Maybe because less imagination was used than even you think? Religious folk tend to believe the people witnessing those miracles were reporting what they saw, not fabricating stories.
Yeah, but the "miracles" today are quite lacking. I guess God used up all his good stuff 4000 years ago, and now is stuck trying to draw pictures with refried beans.
Bring back Zeus and him turning into a bull so he could fuck women. Now that was god that knew how to get shit done.
I do oppose embryonic stem cell research, because it creates a demand for dead babies, which I have a huge moral problem with.
You do realize that there's already a glut of "dead babies," don't you? Every time a couple goes to an in vitro clinic, approximately many (~10) eggs are fertilized. They are then frozen until implantation. When the couple is ready for pregnancy, a subset (~3) of these eggs are chosen for implantation. The others remain frozen. The reason why multiples zygotes are created is due to the high rate of failure. After the couple conceives and gives birth, the extra zygotes remain frozen until the couple says they no longer need them, or the clinic loses contact with couple for a specified amount of time. At that point, the "babies" are incinerated as medical waste.
The problem of creating a "demand for 'dead babies,'" but rather it's an affirmative choice to deny treatment and medical research to those that need it. Believing that somehow denying treatment is saving "babies" is simply wrong. They're frozen. They aren't alive, and at no point will ever be implanted. It's simply using them to potentially save a life, or consigning them to the dumpster.
The "pro-life" position you've chosen, means your choosing death for the born, and death to unborn.
You appear to be advocating "protecting terminally ill patients from themselves". Seeing as how they are already terminally ill that seems just a bit silly. Who better to experiment on than a terminally patient with nothing to lose who is willing to give it a shot?
Why is it silly? Even if someone is terminally ill, there's a duty to try to extended a quality life for them. Even terminally ill patients that opt for medical trials are given state of the art care. They're not given placebo or Formula-409. They're given best-treatment-plus-placebo or best-treatment-plus-Forumula-409. What you're arguing for is the recklessness and effectiveness of snake oil salesmen, homeopathy, and herbal supplements. ("If Extenze didn't do something amazing could we afford to give it away?" Well yes. Your costs would be negligible. Sales do not necessarily correlate with efficacy.)
Our health care choices are already far too restricted -- ever notice how the word "prescription", which actually means "recommendation" is used as if it means "license"? If you need a substance but the witch doctors who represent Big Pharma say you don't you can be imprisoned for posessing it -- now that's real insanity!
Well no. Given that serious risks and side effects involved, there's no reason why a untrained person, especially an fool that believes that their lack expertise and training means they know better than experts should treat themselves. If you want to do that, by all means, cure your infections with a big swig of bleach or some other antibacterial cleaner.
Corollary 1: When any doctor can pad his wallet by ordering tests, you can bet there will be plenty of unneeded medical tests prescribed for everyone and costs will skyrocket.
Corollary 2: When any patient can request test at no cost to them, you can bet there will be plenty of unneeded medical tests prescribed for everyone and costs will skyrocket.
Unfortunately it seems to fail on those damn "Here's a list we've spread out out over 80 pages." I one time was INCREDIBLY bored and went though an entire "80 Hottest Women in Sci-Fi" things from Digg or Reddit or something like that, and found duplicates. Jesus.
If you post a comment during prerelease (i.e. the story bar is grey) they get whacked when the story is posted (i.e. the story bar is green) Perhaps that shouldn't be the case, but it is.
I seriously doubt you'd switch over something as trivial as an image. And the reason why everyone switched to Google from Yahoo and Alta Vista was because web search had become unusable. Google was fast (which has nothing to do with image loading, and everything to do with indexing strategies) and placed the most relevant things at the top. It was faster and better. That's why everyone switched.
You are misremembering your history due to your outrage over a trivial change that had zero usability impact.
But seriously, you do anything, and you're going to find people a vocal group, perhaps even a majority that hate it. But you know what? It doesn't matter. It's a trivial change. Who is going to say, "Oh, they have a background on their default page. That completely changes my search experience. Screw that. I'm switching to Ask.com." No one, that's who. If this is what you can find to complain about, there's nothing to complain about.
Times like this I'd find it refreshingly honest if Google's FAQ said:
Q: How can I disable the background image? A: You can't. Get used to it. You can't change the Google Doodle either.
During and after Katrina everyone attacked Bush, often very personal attacks for the Federal and even state responses to that event.
Yet here we are nearly two months after this started and there has been very little vitriolic attacking on the current President.
Why is that I wonder? The Obama administration was in charge of the offices at the Interior that oversaw this and no changes were made. The Justice Department could have been turned on to BP and people could be in jail right now, but nothing was done.
I'll field this one.
Why is the difference between Deepwater and Katrina? Well multiple reasons. First, Katrina was a natural disaster, and Deepwater was a man-made one, no matter how many times BP and anti-government apologists claim it was a "natural disaster" or an "Act of God". While not all the facts are in, it's looking increasingly likely criminal negligence and lack of proper enforcement of regulations due to long time corruption in the Mines and Minerals Service are to blame. The government has always had a role in the preparation and recovery after natural disasters. In fact, there's a whole agency dedicated just to that, the Federal Emergency Management Agency. States and even large cities have similar agencies. Man made disasters? Not so much. The government simply doesn't have the tools or expertise in repairing deepwater drills. It never did. Now we can argue whether or not the government should have the tools and the expertise in-house for future events, but it has never had this. Second, Katrina had warning. Days of warning for Katrina specifically, and years of warning about the possibility. Sadly, the devastation of Katrina pretty much played out exactly as predicted. The Bush Administration simply failed to prepare because he appointed political allies instead of the (albeit recent) tradition of professional emergency managers. Finally, and this is the biggest difference. The economic and human toll of the two disasters are simply incomparable. The death toll for Katrina is literally 100 times greater. The economic impact is equally disproportionate.
You talk about coverups, but the only coverup I'm aware of is BP's not the government's. Keep in mind, BP was repeatedly denying access to the site by outsiders and providing the absurdly low estimates. Not the Coast Guard, nor any other government agency.
Slashdot Mirror
Since even Slashdot carries a cross-section of population we probably have our share of murderers, religious fanatics, spammers, hardrockers, hells angels, priests and shamans here too. And some of them doesn't like truth so they try to gain cred and then mod down the truth.
Murderers? Yup.
I'll leave the rest of the scavenger hunt for others. ;)
In Neal Stephenson's Cryptonomicon, there's a scene early in the book where the Allies are assembling the personnel for Station X (aka Bletchely Park). Statistician, turned Nazi codebreaker Lawrence Waterhouse, points out that his Nazi counterpart Rudy von Hacklheber, would notice something was amiss with the Allied personnel changes based the statistics of people being transfered to Bletchely Park, and then quickly deduce that the Allies are attempting to break the Enigma code. To camouflage the transfers, Waterhouse suggests creating ficticious personnel and have some of them transfered to Bletchely Park as well. However the military can't just make any random fake person, the fictious people must be statisitically drawn from a distribution that when added to distribution of real Bletchely Park personnel, the combined distribution is statistically insignificant (i.e. fail to reject the null hypothesis) than any other large military base.
If Research 2000 did what is suggested, they failed to taint the polls with the right kind of fake data, just like what the novel warned about.
overall network (WCDMA) performance will be degraded for all users in the neighborhood.
Good thing the iPhone uses UMTS.
Well it's the initiative process. We have initiatives that lock the budget down, and can't be modified without another initiative. (No other state has the combination of budget, tax, and initiative laws that California does. That's what makes it ungovernable.) One of the largest pieces of the budget is the horribly overcrowded prison system. We spend more on prisons than we do on higher education. Why? Three strikes. We've locked our budget so that any increase in spending in one area, requires an proportional increase in school funding. Raised some money for roads? Well the schools get half of that.
It's absurd. I'd eliminate the initiative process.
Except California already has the highest sales tax (when local taxes are added). Not to mention one of the highest costs of living in the country. I would say that's a pretty good indication that our problem is related more to our spending than our taxing.
Well that's more of an artifact that property taxes revenues are stagnant and income taxes have remained low as well. A tweak of either one of these could finance a reduction in the regressive sales tax. Sales taxes are the easiest to get through the legislature, so of course they're going to be the most frequent target during crises.
The main reasons why the cost of living is so high in California is due to property values, and property values remain high because people still want to move to California. Yes, California has had a net loss of 200k of migration, but it is still in the top 10 of all attracting states in the country.
However, my point is as always that anything government gets into that relates to economics, to equalizing outcomes for people, the government will turn into giant pyramid schemes, which will eventually collapse.
I didn't realize that the CDOs and Enron were government schemes. The fact of the matter is that throughout history you can trace every economic collapse to one thing, lack of regulation. Oh sure, it sounds nice, but it doesn't work in practice. Just like command economies, anarchy, and laissez-faire economics. You like to do these simplistic one variable thought experiment because when presented with actual economic data, the argument falls apart. The world simply doesn't work they you think it does.
Get government out of economy, take government's ability to screw with market prices out of the equation
Take a step back and listen to your world view and the private insurers' argument for a second.
1. The government is horribly inefficient, and always will be.
2. The private sector is intrinsically efficient due to profit motive and competition.
3. Private insurance can't compete against the government.
Private insurance can't compete on cost and service against the organization that's bloated and can't find it's own ass with both hands and an electronic ass finding machine? If that's the case, how the fuck can private insurance even exist?
AFAIC all government behavior that touches economy leads to pyramid scheme being created.
Luckily for the rest of us, that's simply not true.
There is a systemic problem in the US that is well document: that of wrong incentives in the system (over-testing by doctors because of bad payment models, lack of litigation protection, etc). Not easy to fix.
Actually the fixes are well known. You can look at Canada, Germany, Japan, even Taiwan's transitions. You simply remove the profit from basic health plans and focus on prevention.
What's not easy is to deal with those that scream "nazi communist" at every turn while simultaneously going home and saying, "Gee, something really ought to be done." But you know how you deal with them? You ignore them.
False. The second part is true but the first is false, because Cuba's government hospitals often don't treat people at all. Since those persons are left to die, they never become part of the system and don't appear in the statistic. Plus given the type of government (totalitarian) it wouldn't surprise me to learn unfavorable stats are removed by the government. (See the scene in 1984 where negative news is expunged and rewritten into positive news.)
[citation needed]
Seriously. Do you have anything to backup these statements? You've made a rather bold and novel statement about Cuban hospitals leaving people to die without anything even remotely to back that up. Then you follow that outrageous statement by just making shit up, which is exactly what "it wouldn't surprise me to learn" means.
Exactly. California is ungovernable and run buy a bunch of tax and waste (it's a stretch to call it tax and spend) idiots.
Well actually it's spend and don't tax. In that sense, it's a model Republican state.
Lest we forget Prop 13 that essentially froze property tax income at 1970s values, it's constitution that makes initiatives sacrosanct, the constitutional amendment that requires a 2/3s supermajority to raise (but not lower) taxes, and a 2/3s supermajority to balance a budget, and a marginalized set of political extremists that just happen to hold 2 seats over the 1/3 minority in both houses. (Yes, slashdoters, 2 people hold the entire state hostage.)
God I wished Repair California actually had their act together.
Fuck the initiative process. Fuck the 2/3s supermajorites. Grow the fuck up.
The refrain that taxes are "too high" has no basis on reality. Taxes are at a 50 year low nationwide, and taxes haven't been able to be raised in California for since the 1970s. Nationwide, the US is significantly below the OECD average at 28%. (The OECD average 36%.)
If I was King of California, I'd know what I'd do solve the budget problems of California. I'd raise taxes.
Is there a link, or are we just supposed to read the blurb.
Oh hell, this is slashdot, no one reads the article anyway. Never mind. Carry on.
They can get the government off their back as soon as they stop using the publicly owned spectrum.
It's not my fault their business model hinges on using a "socialist" property.
Maybe because less imagination was used than even you think? Religious folk tend to believe the people witnessing those miracles were reporting what they saw, not fabricating stories.
Yeah, that's why altruism doesn't exist, not even in animals. Seriously Randroid. You know nothing of ethics, biology, or even naturalistic ethics.
But you're right. There's a conveniently different set of punishments for those that steal with a ledger as opposed to those that steal with a knife or a gun. That needs to change.
According to Exodus
Of course there's no evidence that even the non-miraculous statements of Exodus (i.e. Hebrews held as slaves in Egypt) are true. When even the most plausible parts are bupkis, there's no reason to believe in the least plausible parts.
Pretty sad when something can be shot down without even resorting to bringing up a completely incompatible "divine history."
Maybe because less imagination was used than even you think? Religious folk tend to believe the people witnessing those miracles were reporting what they saw, not fabricating stories.
Yeah, but the "miracles" today are quite lacking. I guess God used up all his good stuff 4000 years ago, and now is stuck trying to draw pictures with refried beans.
Bring back Zeus and him turning into a bull so he could fuck women. Now that was god that knew how to get shit done.
I do oppose embryonic stem cell research, because it creates a demand for dead babies, which I have a huge moral problem with.
You do realize that there's already a glut of "dead babies," don't you? Every time a couple goes to an in vitro clinic, approximately many (~10) eggs are fertilized. They are then frozen until implantation. When the couple is ready for pregnancy, a subset (~3) of these eggs are chosen for implantation. The others remain frozen. The reason why multiples zygotes are created is due to the high rate of failure. After the couple conceives and gives birth, the extra zygotes remain frozen until the couple says they no longer need them, or the clinic loses contact with couple for a specified amount of time. At that point, the "babies" are incinerated as medical waste.
The problem of creating a "demand for 'dead babies,'" but rather it's an affirmative choice to deny treatment and medical research to those that need it. Believing that somehow denying treatment is saving "babies" is simply wrong. They're frozen. They aren't alive, and at no point will ever be implanted. It's simply using them to potentially save a life, or consigning them to the dumpster.
The "pro-life" position you've chosen, means your choosing death for the born, and death to unborn.
Sad but true.
You appear to be advocating "protecting terminally ill patients from themselves". Seeing as how they are already terminally ill that seems just a bit silly. Who better to experiment on than a terminally patient with nothing to lose who is willing to give it a shot?
Why is it silly? Even if someone is terminally ill, there's a duty to try to extended a quality life for them. Even terminally ill patients that opt for medical trials are given state of the art care. They're not given placebo or Formula-409. They're given best-treatment-plus-placebo or best-treatment-plus-Forumula-409. What you're arguing for is the recklessness and effectiveness of snake oil salesmen, homeopathy, and herbal supplements. ("If Extenze didn't do something amazing could we afford to give it away?" Well yes. Your costs would be negligible. Sales do not necessarily correlate with efficacy.)
Our health care choices are already far too restricted -- ever notice how the word "prescription", which actually means "recommendation" is used as if it means "license"? If you need a substance but the witch doctors who represent Big Pharma say you don't you can be imprisoned for posessing it -- now that's real insanity!
Well no. Given that serious risks and side effects involved, there's no reason why a untrained person, especially an fool that believes that their lack expertise and training means they know better than experts should treat themselves. If you want to do that, by all means, cure your infections with a big swig of bleach or some other antibacterial cleaner.
Corollary 1:
When any doctor can pad his wallet by ordering tests, you can bet there will be plenty of unneeded medical tests prescribed for everyone and costs will skyrocket.
Corollary 2:
When any patient can request test at no cost to them, you can bet there will be plenty of unneeded medical tests prescribed for everyone and costs will skyrocket.
Unlike sitting there and watching everything else that's one television.
OOO! New Stargate!
Ask and you shall receive.
UGO's 75 Hottest Sci-Fi Girls as of Jan 22, 2010
#35 Rose Tyler of Doctor Who
#10 Rose Tyler of Doctor Who
Unfortunately it seems to fail on those damn "Here's a list we've spread out out over 80 pages." I one time was INCREDIBLY bored and went though an entire "80 Hottest Women in Sci-Fi" things from Digg or Reddit or something like that, and found duplicates. Jesus.
If you post a comment during prerelease (i.e. the story bar is grey) they get whacked when the story is posted (i.e. the story bar is green) Perhaps that shouldn't be the case, but it is.
I seriously doubt you'd switch over something as trivial as an image. And the reason why everyone switched to Google from Yahoo and Alta Vista was because web search had become unusable. Google was fast (which has nothing to do with image loading, and everything to do with indexing strategies) and placed the most relevant things at the top. It was faster and better. That's why everyone switched.
You are misremembering your history due to your outrage over a trivial change that had zero usability impact.
People actually go to the Google homepage?
But seriously, you do anything, and you're going to find people a vocal group, perhaps even a majority that hate it. But you know what? It doesn't matter. It's a trivial change. Who is going to say, "Oh, they have a background on their default page. That completely changes my search experience. Screw that. I'm switching to Ask.com ." No one, that's who. If this is what you can find to complain about, there's nothing to complain about.
Times like this I'd find it refreshingly honest if Google's FAQ said:
Q: How can I disable the background image?
A: You can't. Get used to it. You can't change the Google Doodle either.
Heck, I wonder if he played golf that day.
Probably. Even war couldn't stop his game.
During and after Katrina everyone attacked Bush, often very personal attacks for the Federal and even state responses to that event.
Yet here we are nearly two months after this started and there has been very little vitriolic attacking on the current President.
Why is that I wonder? The Obama administration was in charge of the offices at the Interior that oversaw this and no changes were made. The Justice Department could have been turned on to BP and people could be in jail right now, but nothing was done.
I'll field this one.
Why is the difference between Deepwater and Katrina? Well multiple reasons. First, Katrina was a natural disaster, and Deepwater was a man-made one, no matter how many times BP and anti-government apologists claim it was a "natural disaster" or an "Act of God". While not all the facts are in, it's looking increasingly likely criminal negligence and lack of proper enforcement of regulations due to long time corruption in the Mines and Minerals Service are to blame. The government has always had a role in the preparation and recovery after natural disasters. In fact, there's a whole agency dedicated just to that, the Federal Emergency Management Agency. States and even large cities have similar agencies. Man made disasters? Not so much. The government simply doesn't have the tools or expertise in repairing deepwater drills. It never did. Now we can argue whether or not the government should have the tools and the expertise in-house for future events, but it has never had this. Second, Katrina had warning. Days of warning for Katrina specifically, and years of warning about the possibility. Sadly, the devastation of Katrina pretty much played out exactly as predicted. The Bush Administration simply failed to prepare because he appointed political allies instead of the (albeit recent) tradition of professional emergency managers. Finally, and this is the biggest difference. The economic and human toll of the two disasters are simply incomparable. The death toll for Katrina is literally 100 times greater. The economic impact is equally disproportionate.
You talk about coverups, but the only coverup I'm aware of is BP's not the government's. Keep in mind, BP was repeatedly denying access to the site by outsiders and providing the absurdly low estimates. Not the Coast Guard, nor any other government agency.