I read the report, and the problem wasn't that they were distracted by their laptops, its that they were talking to each other about their laptop software instead of listening to the radio or flying the plane.
On the contrary - your statement makes it blindingly obvious that you didn't read the report. Had you actually read the report, you'd have noted where it is specifically pointed out that, among other things, the laptop blocked the view of certain critical displays.
In another scenario with no laptops on board, they could have leaned back and debated soccer teams with identical outcome.
Actually, having some experience in a situation where constant attention to displays is a matter of life and death (driving a nuclear submarine) or is merely vitally important (operating the missile and torpedo fire control systems on the same submarine), you're almost completely wrong.
With modest intelligence and modest training and experience, it's quite easy to maintain your scan pattern while carrying on an unrelated conversation. (That is, it's possible but not probable for a discussion of soccer to lead to the same result without a serious breach of professional discipline.) Carrying on a conversation, while allowing your eyes to continue their scan pattern and processing the results is a very different matter from using a personal electronic device (such as a laptop) that takes your eyes completely away from your scan pattern.
What? Where did that come from? The link in the summary points to the slashdot posting about the airliner that overflew its destination by a bit. THAT summary talks about the crew using their laptops during the flight. However, I am not sure that's the case. In fact, I am led to believe that they had both nodded off.
They did not nod off, they were distracted by their laptops. Read the NTSB report.
If the OP was someone even remotely like the person you link to, you'd have a point. Since he isn't, you're just another ignorant jackass who mistakenly thinks that because he's got enough intelligence to cut and paste a link that means he has a clue.
From what I have been reading, these have been the biggest issues with US health care, does the bill do anything about this?
The bill does essentially nothing to fix those issues.
Making sure 'everyone has something' seems to be a drop in the bucket to me; or am I missing something?
Nope, you've hit the nail squarely on the head. This bill does nothing to control health care costs or to improve access to medical care. It's actually a massive expansion of welfare combined with minor regulations on the insurance industry.
This is a welfare bill combined with an insurance regulatory bill. It's not a health care bill. It does nothing to control spiraling costs. It does nothing to improve access to health care. It does nothing to encourage people to go to doctors rather than the ER. It does nothing to combat the growing shortage of primary care physicians. It does nothing to cure the perennial shortage of nurses.
It's a palliative that provides a (very expensive) band aid over a minor cut while cancer runs unchecked.
If the annual fine is around $700, that's less than twenty percent of my current annual costs. If both my wife and I didn't have chronic conditions, it would be awfully tempting just to pay the fine.
Here's something funny: if everyone jointly pays for healthcare and everybody gets treated health costs go down. This is because no one puts off going to the doctor because of expense. Cancers are caught sooner, infections are treated before the victim starts coughing up blood.
Here's something funny: This bill doesn't set up things so that everyone pays jointly for healthcare, it sets things up so everyone pays jointly for healthcare insurance. (Which isn't the same thing at all.)
And even if everyone does get insurance, it doesn't really change things much. People will still avoid going to the doctor because they can't take a day off work. (Not that his bill provides access to doctors anyhow.) People will still not go to the doctor because of minor symptoms (thus catching things early) because of the crowds at the ER (still the only access to medical care people have), or the massive and intrusive paperwork, etc...
That's the truly sickening thing about this bill - it doesn't actually fix health care. It's a massive expansion of welfare, combined with some minor regulatory changes to insurance, that doesn't fix the actual problems with actual health care. It not only leaves the (massively broken) for-profit medical insurance and medical care systems in place, it hands those systems the keys to the asylum.
Not being a USA citizen, I can't think of any reason why this bill is controversial. What exactly are the pro's and cons?
Pro's:
If you can't afford health care insurance, insurance will now be provided for you.
Cons
But nobody is actually clear on what that insurance will provide.
Little to nothing is done to control spiraling paperwork.
Little to nothing is done to control spiraling costs.
Nothing is done regarding access to care.
There are some nice features like the removal of caps on insurance payouts and the prevention of denial of coverage for pre existing conditions (nice that is if you're one of the those impacted by those things, not so nice in what it will do to the premiums of others). But the bill does little to nothing to fix the major problems (outlined in the cons above) in the US health care system.
This is actually a welfare bill combined with an insurance regulation bill, not a medical reform bill.
But, with wine, price is not always = quality. I've tested $200 wines that I didn't like (like the Lamadrid Gran Reserva Malbec) , and $20 (5 dollars) wines that I loved (Like Benjamin Nieto Cabernet Sauvignon)
If cost != quality, why do your examples cite what like and don't like? Your likes != quality.
Cheap saws are not inherently less safe than expensive saws. Both use the same standard splitter/riving knife, the same standard blade guards, etc... etc...
Cheap saws are cheap because they use lower quality and lower horsepower motors, cheap drive trains, cheap enclosures, etc... etc..
I investigated the SawStop technology when I wanted to buy a table saw. The inventor WANTS his technology in every saw (I exchanged e-mails with the inventor). He tried to get the major saw companies to license his stuff! The problem is that NO SAW COMPANIES want it for just because of law suits.
You're right, but not for the reason you think - Ryobi et al are indeed afraid of the law suits - the law suits for using an unproven, untestable (since each module is single use), and difficult to validate 'safety' system. They're liable if they don't install the safety system, and they are even more liable if they sell a safety system that had only been tested in it's inventors garage.
From their point of view, absent millions of dollars worth of engineering, testing, and evaluation, it makes no sense to install the safety system. (And the highway robbery royalty demanded by the inventor only makes the situation worse.)
SawStop actually makes their OWN saws, but those are in the four-figure range (too much for a homeowner like me who needs to use a table saw every now and then). No doubt if companies like Ryobi, Craftsman, Rigid, et. al. started including this technology as a standard, the price would drop a lot.
SawStop saws are so expensive because they're the Cadillac's of saws - comparable to the Unisaw or a top end Grizzly or Powermatic. The SawStop module adds little to the cost as in even modest quantities it shouldn't cost more than $20-30 wholesale. (It's not really a complicated device as such things go.)
The owner of the copyright must explicitly grant it to the public domain, or license it for other's use, distribution, sharing, mashing, basically anything more than fair use...
Which is pretty much how copyright has worked for pretty much ever.
Copyright is no longer about promotion of creativity, its a legal exclusivity and an effectively permanent lock on all creative output by business interests.
Legal exclusivity for a limited term is precisely what copy has always been about.
The current copyright laws are simply a denial of any sense of balance or social good in intellectual property.
Like the rest of your rant, this is utter bilge. You keep making claims utterly at odds with the facts.
The problem with Google is they got so incredibly big so incredibly fast without ever having to learn anything about growth or ethics. A lot of the senior staff are very young and have little experience other than Google.
The other problem is that Google has been making other peoples information available for profit, with both tacit and implicit permission, that they don't seem to realize when they cross the boundary into doing something that requires Google to actively request permission. They now view it as their right to publish content for profit whether or not they have the actual right to do so. They cloak it in pretty words like "open access", but that doesn't change the heart of the matter.
"Pirating" is such a slanted, unhelpful framing of using and sharing digital material without permission.
Pirating is term with a long history of being used to refer to stealing other peoples intellectual property. They only people I've seen object to it are those why are trying to (wrongly) convince themselves that they aren't stealing.
From the summary: "If the decision stands, not only will the price of table saws go way up, but other hungry patent-holders will probably get a gleam in their eye."
Indeed - and it's the predatory gleam in Gass's eye that probably stopped Ryobi and other sawmakers from using his technology. He was demanding a royalty of up to 8% of the gross wholesale price of the saw, per saw sold.
And let's keep in mind that serious table saw accidents requiring emergency room treatment are actually pretty rare (31,000 per annum with something over five million table saws in use in the US). Further - 72% of table saw accidents are caused by kickback, when the workpiece binds with the saw blade and is kicked away from it (with tremendous force and right back at the user), which the SawStop device does nothing to prevent. (Kickback accidents should soon start to decline, as saws sold in the US are now required to have riving knives installed which will prevent some of the common causes of kickback.)
Disclaimer: I am a hobbyist woodworker and have been following the issue in various professional and semi professional woodworking blogs and in woodworking forums. The numbers in the paragraph above come from Popular Woodworking's Editors Blog.
You'd think the music companies would have at least one economist on staff who could explain to them, slowly and gently, that under certain circumstances it is actually possible to make more money when each individual unit is priced lower.
You'd think, if you are spouting about economics, that you'd have found an economist to gently and slowly explain to you the meaning of 'elastic' and 'inelastic' markets.
Or, IOW, not lowering their prices isn't a sign they don't have such an economist as it isn't at all clear that lowering their prices will lead to significantly increased sales. People don't buy CD's like toothpaste (because that brand is on sale this week), they buy them because they like the artist.
Re:It is bad, wrong way to go about it
on
Health Care Reform
·
· Score: 1
Is there anything that the government runs that really functions correctly/efficiently?
Post office?
Is a semi independent organization, not really part of the government.
Compared to us Europeans, you guys are increasingly receding into new Dark Ages.
But if you insist on doing your money transfers by engraving them in clay tablets: youre welcome to that. Just don't pretend it is the epitome of modern.
Repeating ignorant bias doesn't make it the truth.
Slashdot Mirror
On the contrary - your statement makes it blindingly obvious that you didn't read the report. Had you actually read the report, you'd have noted where it is specifically pointed out that, among other things, the laptop blocked the view of certain critical displays.
Actually, having some experience in a situation where constant attention to displays is a matter of life and death (driving a nuclear submarine) or is merely vitally important (operating the missile and torpedo fire control systems on the same submarine), you're almost completely wrong.
With modest intelligence and modest training and experience, it's quite easy to maintain your scan pattern while carrying on an unrelated conversation. (That is, it's possible but not probable for a discussion of soccer to lead to the same result without a serious breach of professional discipline.) Carrying on a conversation, while allowing your eyes to continue their scan pattern and processing the results is a very different matter from using a personal electronic device (such as a laptop) that takes your eyes completely away from your scan pattern.
They did not nod off, they were distracted by their laptops. Read the NTSB report.
If the OP was someone even remotely like the person you link to, you'd have a point. Since he isn't, you're just another ignorant jackass who mistakenly thinks that because he's got enough intelligence to cut and paste a link that means he has a clue.
Yet, I can point to links and citations - and you cannot.
Oh? What then is a Trident-II? Or a Long John? (The first isn't a cruise missile, and the second isn't guided, but both attack land targets.)
Hint: I've proven you wrong at every turn, with links and citations.
The bill does essentially nothing to fix those issues.
Nope, you've hit the nail squarely on the head. This bill does nothing to control health care costs or to improve access to medical care. It's actually a massive expansion of welfare combined with minor regulations on the insurance industry.
I've been saying that for months.
This is a welfare bill combined with an insurance regulatory bill. It's not a health care bill. It does nothing to control spiraling costs. It does nothing to improve access to health care. It does nothing to encourage people to go to doctors rather than the ER. It does nothing to combat the growing shortage of primary care physicians. It does nothing to cure the perennial shortage of nurses.
It's a palliative that provides a (very expensive) band aid over a minor cut while cancer runs unchecked.
If the annual fine is around $700, that's less than twenty percent of my current annual costs. If both my wife and I didn't have chronic conditions, it would be awfully tempting just to pay the fine.
Here's something funny: This bill doesn't set up things so that everyone pays jointly for healthcare, it sets things up so everyone pays jointly for healthcare insurance. (Which isn't the same thing at all.)
And even if everyone does get insurance, it doesn't really change things much. People will still avoid going to the doctor because they can't take a day off work. (Not that his bill provides access to doctors anyhow.) People will still not go to the doctor because of minor symptoms (thus catching things early) because of the crowds at the ER (still the only access to medical care people have), or the massive and intrusive paperwork, etc...
That's the truly sickening thing about this bill - it doesn't actually fix health care. It's a massive expansion of welfare, combined with some minor regulatory changes to insurance, that doesn't fix the actual problems with actual health care. It not only leaves the (massively broken) for-profit medical insurance and medical care systems in place, it hands those systems the keys to the asylum.
Pro's:
Cons
There are some nice features like the removal of caps on insurance payouts and the prevention of denial of coverage for pre existing conditions (nice that is if you're one of the those impacted by those things, not so nice in what it will do to the premiums of others). But the bill does little to nothing to fix the major problems (outlined in the cons above) in the US health care system.
This is actually a welfare bill combined with an insurance regulation bill, not a medical reform bill.
If cost != quality, why do your examples cite what like and don't like? Your likes != quality.
Before you embarrass yourself further, you might want to actually read up on the various definitions of cruise missile.
(Hint: Launching platform and intended target are irrelevant.)
http://www.fas.org/nuke/intro/cm/index.html
http://www.atomicarchive.com/Glossary/Glossary2.shtml
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cruise_missile
Yes. But so what?
The range is also on the same order as that of the AGM-84 Harpoon. Nobody calls Harpoon 'just a defensive weapon'.
BrahMos has a range of 290km (180mi), that's not 'relatively close' in any reasonable meaning of the words.
BOMARC was a cruise missile, stereotype or not.
Not the first to deploy either.
Cheap saws are not inherently less safe than expensive saws. Both use the same standard splitter/riving knife, the same standard blade guards, etc... etc...
Cheap saws are cheap because they use lower quality and lower horsepower motors, cheap drive trains, cheap enclosures, etc... etc..
You're right, but not for the reason you think - Ryobi et al are indeed afraid of the law suits - the law suits for using an unproven, untestable (since each module is single use), and difficult to validate 'safety' system. They're liable if they don't install the safety system, and they are even more liable if they sell a safety system that had only been tested in it's inventors garage.
From their point of view, absent millions of dollars worth of engineering, testing, and evaluation, it makes no sense to install the safety system. (And the highway robbery royalty demanded by the inventor only makes the situation worse.)
SawStop saws are so expensive because they're the Cadillac's of saws - comparable to the Unisaw or a top end Grizzly or Powermatic. The SawStop module adds little to the cost as in even modest quantities it shouldn't cost more than $20-30 wholesale. (It's not really a complicated device as such things go.)
Which has precisely zip point zero to do with the issue at hand. Ryobi is no less safe than any other brand.
Which is pretty much how copyright has worked for pretty much ever.
Legal exclusivity for a limited term is precisely what copy has always been about.
Like the rest of your rant, this is utter bilge. You keep making claims utterly at odds with the facts.
The other problem is that Google has been making other peoples information available for profit, with both tacit and implicit permission, that they don't seem to realize when they cross the boundary into doing something that requires Google to actively request permission. They now view it as their right to publish content for profit whether or not they have the actual right to do so. They cloak it in pretty words like "open access", but that doesn't change the heart of the matter.
Pirating is term with a long history of being used to refer to stealing other peoples intellectual property. They only people I've seen object to it are those why are trying to (wrongly) convince themselves that they aren't stealing.
From the summary: "If the decision stands, not only will the price of table saws go way up, but other hungry patent-holders will probably get a gleam in their eye."
Indeed - and it's the predatory gleam in Gass's eye that probably stopped Ryobi and other sawmakers from using his technology. He was demanding a royalty of up to 8% of the gross wholesale price of the saw, per saw sold.
And let's keep in mind that serious table saw accidents requiring emergency room treatment are actually pretty rare (31,000 per annum with something over five million table saws in use in the US). Further - 72% of table saw accidents are caused by kickback, when the workpiece binds with the saw blade and is kicked away from it (with tremendous force and right back at the user), which the SawStop device does nothing to prevent. (Kickback accidents should soon start to decline, as saws sold in the US are now required to have riving knives installed which will prevent some of the common causes of kickback.)
Disclaimer: I am a hobbyist woodworker and have been following the issue in various professional and semi professional woodworking blogs and in woodworking forums. The numbers in the paragraph above come from Popular Woodworking's Editors Blog.
Remember that to the average Slashdotter, usual business decisions are sinister greedy motivations.
You'd think, if you are spouting about economics, that you'd have found an economist to gently and slowly explain to you the meaning of 'elastic' and 'inelastic' markets.
Or, IOW, not lowering their prices isn't a sign they don't have such an economist as it isn't at all clear that lowering their prices will lead to significantly increased sales. People don't buy CD's like toothpaste (because that brand is on sale this week), they buy them because they like the artist.
Is a semi independent organization, not really part of the government.
Repeating ignorant bias doesn't make it the truth.