On the other hand, I had to wait hours online to get through to a level 3 tech (actual engineer who worked on the product) for a famed "3.5x CD drive", mechanism by Toshiba, box by someone else I can't remember. (Tosh had changed the firmware on the mechanism and no one there was told [or was paying attention] and the company kept slapping them in boxes...)
> But I also know that most kids do not need, will
> not learn, and will not benefit by a lot of it.
Will not benefit? How about learning how to think? How to solve problems? How to abstract out reality, and go from abstract back to reality? It would, frankly, stop them from being buffoons. They might be able to get a job better than "garbageman". They might no longer need a politician to threaten violence against businessmen, forcing them to pay more than the labor is actually worth.
I remember an odious scene in "Peggy Sue Got Married" with Kathlene Turner where she verbally balks at the algebra teacher saying why did she need to learn it? She never used it!
Then a few minutes later, she's trying to pre-invent pantyhose and is having a hell of a time, so she hands it off to her genius friend. "Common sense" idiocy on top of idiocy on top of idiocy.
> Drug supply is massively restricted, and the
> deaths start moutning by the millions because of
> greedy corporations
This, my friends, is the Socialist Shortsighted Fallacy (for lack of a better term.)
If I want to get rich, and cure cancer tomorrow, and charge $10,000 per cure, I'm somehow evil (!) Yet I have cured cancer.
If I am prevented from doing this (why bother? No profits...) then there is no cure for cancer.
...and people continue to die by the millions, content that they are not being "ripped off".
History shows time and again that the former is always, always better than the latter.
The number of deaths "caused" by this ficticious greedy corporationn (that Charles Dickens would no doubt love) are greatly exceeded by many, many orders of magnitude by the very real effects of socialism in slowing advancing technology.
A world where greedy corporations "ripped off" people with their cures would, year after year, have far fewer deaths than those that prevent "ripoffs".
> In fact, there is no monopoly for government-run
> schools, as evidenced, ironically, by the private
> and Catholic school systems that you elsehere
> praise.
Remember, though, that the purpose of monopoly, ultimately, is to get your money.
Public schools still get the money per student, regardless of whether that student goes to private school or not. See, there's this socialist nonsense that you're "paying for a public service" whether you use it or not...
True, at least private schools are not outlawed (yet.)
However, when politicians proposed that a student could take half, but only half of the government-allocated money with them to a private school, and the public school could keep the other half as icing on the cake for doing nothing my god, how big government socialists howled. Remember that currently, a parent sending their kid to private school gets none of that, but still pays school taxes.
> Therefore, disruptive or difficult students are
> simply expelled. On the other hand, a public
> school will sometimes have trouble expelling a
> violently disruptive student because such a child
> has a disability...I don't think I have to explain
> why that makes a huge difference.
And thus does "society" stab itself in the foot by making herculean efforts to eke out the last 97%...98%....99%.
>> would be nice if the average person had a
>> greater exposure to science.
>
> And I repeat the original question: What's the point?
>
> To what end? Why does anyone have to know anything about science?
>
> I don't know how an electric/gas hybrid car
> works...I put bread in the toaster, press a
> button and out pops toast...The TV turns on when
> I press a button...What common technology is so
> complex that I would need to learn science to
> interact with it?
Oh horror of horrors! Modern industrialization is destroying the environment, which will destroy us! Let's pass all kinds of government draconian laws to control free enterprise (curiously, supported by people who could NOT get such laws passed in a socialist way.)
Scientifically valid argument for such laws? I guess, as far as you know...
> The government education system was established
> specifically to destroy the ability of students to
> think.
Yes, those first public schools in Little House on the Prarie were established to STOP the farmboys from getting too smart by sloppin' dose hoggies all day.
Building giant stadia for the purpose of puffing your socialist or communist People's chest has long been a staple, but politicians here doing it because the team will move away if they don't, and the politician will lose the next election really takes the cake.
Moreover, if evolution is just a "theory", then what, pray tell, is an ancient book loaded with goofy, unbelievable tales, many morally dubious concepts, and the idea that you should worhip a god who threw a bunch of people into a world where they could harm each other?
To say "faith" lets you believe requires an insulting level of suspension of disbelief that makes the "you're just a battery, coppertop!" and "the mind makes the injury real" crap from The Matrix sound like a reasoned ancient Greek argument about the irrationality of PI.
> stated matter-of-factly that the United States was
> "not, in any sense, founded on the Christian
> religion"
Of course not. God punishes you for producing wealth under the discredited notion that you are being greedy rather than a productive boon to those around. The United States does not. The United States is superior, morally and ethically, to Christianity.
> Almost agreed with you, until I got to the wiccan
> part. Then again, maybe there is nothing wrong
> with practicing a made-up religion.
Like Christianity, too?
> little hint: The fundamentalists worhsip a deity
> whose true unrevealed name is Hallelujah
I believe that means "praise Yah," as in a corruption of Yaweh, or that small mountain god worshipped by that nomadic tribe...
There are other gods, even the Bible acknowledges it. There were these titans of olde who mated with the daughters of men, since Monday morning quarterbacked into being angels or demons or something that fits with the mythos, rather than just another old legend cobbled into the OT before anythought about consistency.
Also, "though shalt have no other gods before me" refers to other, real, existing gods, not "money", or idols or (other) made-up gods. After all, only gods can create life, not even Satan can do that, so who made the pharoa's main cleric's staff into two snakes, only to be eaten up by Moses's staff made into a snake by Yaweh?
>> Quite simply, if you don't like it, then don't use it.
>>
>
> Unfortunately in many areas there is no
> alternative for high speed access other than
> excite@home, so they have a monopoly.
Just start voting for politicians who will guarantee these types of freedoms. Companies can't get away with it (or, more likely won't be forced to do this) if the laws prevent instead of encourage them to do this.
> Even here in the UK there have been a number of
> high-profile decisions whereby the National Health
> Service has decided not to provide life-saving (or
> dignity-gaining) treatments purely because of cost.
>
> And the UK is supposed to be a developed country -
in the top 20 worldwide.
But would seeking that treatment independently be illegal? Had Clintons had their way, it would have been over here. In the Netherlands, the govt. provides (last time I checked, about 10 years ago) a minimum level of care, and you could buy better care on top of that. In UK, (correct me again) you can exempt yourself but only if you're rich, like worth > 5 million pounds. Still hardly optimal, and certainly having nothing to do with free choice.
The problem is if they substantially less for Brazil, then richer countries' politicians start beating their chests, saying "Wellll, why should WE get ripped off if Brazil doesn't have to pay very much? Those EVIL DRUG COMPANIES! I will bash the heads of those evil people who cure drugs, for you, The People!"
And the ignorant crowds cheer.
And drug companies can't cover research, research is slowed or halted, and over the years, far more people die than would have. But they won't show up on any stats.
It's a little too sophisticated for The People to understand that millions die because health care technology is stuck at the year 2000, whereas in a parallel universe it's up to 2010, another it's 1994 and a third, 1978.
Nah, better to save a few lives now and get the brownie points than to save millions later to a hazy concept few understand.
As they derive from inalienable rights like the right to your own body, the right to property (property must be used to survive), and the right to deal with other people freely (right to your own body and their right to their own body), profits certainly are a *right*.
> No. The political problem appears when Brazil
> decides that life is more important than the stock
> quotes in some other country far north.
For now, but...
> Brazil thus transformed an ethical problem into a
> political problem. My opinion is, it's a net gain.
For now...but what if all countries did this on all "important" drugs? Drug development is massively slowed, and the deaths start mounting by the millions because of slowly advancing technology -- people who wouldn't have died had technology kept advancing at a good pace. Millions, tens of millions, hundreds of millions.
Yet, to a politician, or the hoi polloi, one death they can see (or prevent) today is worth millions tomorrow.
> Operating systems are incredibly expensive to develop.
No they are not. Was the original DOS some massive thing requiring billions? No. There are plenty of RTOS's (Real-Time Operating Systems) that have optional windowing systems, comples graphics primitives, TCP/IP stacks, Java virtual machines, etc. Why not slap together a CPU and stuff it onto one? Why, because there are no apps for that.
> Gay people not propegate the human species.
> Therefore they are as useless as Microsoft Bob.
Technically true, but 99% of sex is not intended to propagate the species. Intelligent, free, consenting adult humans can elect to engage in non-propagatory activities. We do not create governments to regulate such things.
Slashdot Mirror
Or, in discrete, rather than continuous terms (which one of my friends actually did in this order):
Engineering/CS -> economics -> liberal arts -> communications -> Spanish major (hey, it's the future!)
ISTFG that is the truth.
Bastard married a thin blonde lawyer so he could be rich anyway.
On the other hand, I had to wait hours online to get through to a level 3 tech (actual engineer who worked on the product) for a famed "3.5x CD drive", mechanism by Toshiba, box by someone else I can't remember. (Tosh had changed the firmware on the mechanism and no one there was told [or was paying attention] and the company kept slapping them in boxes...)
> But I also know that most kids do not need, will
> not learn, and will not benefit by a lot of it.
Will not benefit? How about learning how to think? How to solve problems? How to abstract out reality, and go from abstract back to reality? It would, frankly, stop them from being buffoons. They might be able to get a job better than "garbageman". They might no longer need a politician to threaten violence against businessmen, forcing them to pay more than the labor is actually worth.
I remember an odious scene in "Peggy Sue Got Married" with Kathlene Turner where she verbally balks at the algebra teacher saying why did she need to learn it? She never used it!
Then a few minutes later, she's trying to pre-invent pantyhose and is having a hell of a time, so she hands it off to her genius friend. "Common sense" idiocy on top of idiocy on top of idiocy.
> Drug supply is massively restricted, and the
> deaths start moutning by the millions because of
> greedy corporations
This, my friends, is the Socialist Shortsighted Fallacy (for lack of a better term.)
If I want to get rich, and cure cancer tomorrow, and charge $10,000 per cure, I'm somehow evil (!) Yet I have cured cancer.
If I am prevented from doing this (why bother? No profits...) then there is no cure for cancer.
...and people continue to die by the millions, content that they are not being "ripped off".
History shows time and again that the former is always, always better than the latter.
The number of deaths "caused" by this ficticious greedy corporationn (that Charles Dickens would no doubt love) are greatly exceeded by many, many orders of magnitude by the very real effects of socialism in slowing advancing technology.
A world where greedy corporations "ripped off" people with their cures would, year after year, have far fewer deaths than those that prevent "ripoffs".
That is the counter-intuitive truth of reality.
> In fact, there is no monopoly for government-run
> schools, as evidenced, ironically, by the private
> and Catholic school systems that you elsehere
> praise.
Remember, though, that the purpose of monopoly, ultimately, is to get your money.
Public schools still get the money per student, regardless of whether that student goes to private school or not. See, there's this socialist nonsense that you're "paying for a public service" whether you use it or not...
True, at least private schools are not outlawed (yet.)
However, when politicians proposed that a student could take half, but only half of the government-allocated money with them to a private school, and the public school could keep the other half as icing on the cake for doing nothing my god, how big government socialists howled. Remember that currently, a parent sending their kid to private school gets none of that, but still pays school taxes.
> Therefore, disruptive or difficult students are
> simply expelled. On the other hand, a public
> school will sometimes have trouble expelling a
> violently disruptive student because such a child
> has a disability...I don't think I have to explain
> why that makes a huge difference.
And thus does "society" stab itself in the foot by making herculean efforts to eke out the last 97%...98%....99%.
> fancy football stadiums
Actually, at the high school level, these are mostly, if not entirely, paid for by donations, bake sales, etc.
At the college level, the football teams carry their own weight, as do the basketball teams. It's the Title IX crap that costs.
>> would be nice if the average person had a
>> greater exposure to science.
>
> And I repeat the original question: What's the point?
>
> To what end? Why does anyone have to know anything about science?
>
> I don't know how an electric/gas hybrid car
> works...I put bread in the toaster, press a
> button and out pops toast...The TV turns on when
> I press a button...What common technology is so
> complex that I would need to learn science to
> interact with it?
Oh horror of horrors! Modern industrialization is destroying the environment, which will destroy us! Let's pass all kinds of government draconian laws to control free enterprise (curiously, supported by people who could NOT get such laws passed in a socialist way.)
Scientifically valid argument for such laws? I guess, as far as you know...
> The government education system was established
> specifically to destroy the ability of students to
> think.
Yes, those first public schools in Little House on the Prarie were established to STOP the farmboys from getting too smart by sloppin' dose hoggies all day.
> Garbage in = garbage out. (and then you get folks like GWB)
And Al Gore; witnesseth all his pandering to environmental extremism.
Building giant stadia for the purpose of puffing your socialist or communist People's chest has long been a staple, but politicians here doing it because the team will move away if they don't, and the politician will lose the next election really takes the cake.
Moreover, if evolution is just a "theory", then what, pray tell, is an ancient book loaded with goofy, unbelievable tales, many morally dubious concepts, and the idea that you should worhip a god who threw a bunch of people into a world where they could harm each other?
To say "faith" lets you believe requires an insulting level of suspension of disbelief that makes the "you're just a battery, coppertop!" and "the mind makes the injury real" crap from The Matrix sound like a reasoned ancient Greek argument about the irrationality of PI.
> stated matter-of-factly that the United States was
> "not, in any sense, founded on the Christian
> religion"
Of course not. God punishes you for producing wealth under the discredited notion that you are being greedy rather than a productive boon to those around. The United States does not. The United States is superior, morally and ethically, to Christianity.
> Almost agreed with you, until I got to the wiccan
> part. Then again, maybe there is nothing wrong
> with practicing a made-up religion.
Like Christianity, too?
> little hint: The fundamentalists worhsip a deity
> whose true unrevealed name is Hallelujah
I believe that means "praise Yah," as in a corruption of Yaweh, or that small mountain god worshipped by that nomadic tribe...
There are other gods, even the Bible acknowledges it. There were these titans of olde who mated with the daughters of men, since Monday morning quarterbacked into being angels or demons or something that fits with the mythos, rather than just another old legend cobbled into the OT before anythought about consistency.
Also, "though shalt have no other gods before me" refers to other, real, existing gods, not "money", or idols or (other) made-up gods. After all, only gods can create life, not even Satan can do that, so who made the pharoa's main cleric's staff into two snakes, only to be eaten up by Moses's staff made into a snake by Yaweh?
>> Quite simply, if you don't like it, then don't use it.
>>
>
> Unfortunately in many areas there is no
> alternative for high speed access other than
> excite@home, so they have a monopoly.
Just start voting for politicians who will guarantee these types of freedoms. Companies can't get away with it (or, more likely won't be forced to do this) if the laws prevent instead of encourage them to do this.
< :) >funnier text< :( >
That really should be fixed. Text mode really isn't text mode, is it?
They could add <strike>, for humour's sake.
> with a trailing slash: so/>
It takes far fewer <'s to do a smile than a smirk.
Who says you have to describe yourself accurately?
"& brainsize -IQ:350>"
"& weinersize -units:"inches" -length:25 -girth:40 -numweiners:4>"
etc.
> Even here in the UK there have been a number of
> high-profile decisions whereby the National Health
> Service has decided not to provide life-saving (or
> dignity-gaining) treatments purely because of cost.
>
> And the UK is supposed to be a developed country -
in the top 20 worldwide.
But would seeking that treatment independently be illegal? Had Clintons had their way, it would have been over here. In the Netherlands, the govt. provides (last time I checked, about 10 years ago) a minimum level of care, and you could buy better care on top of that. In UK, (correct me again) you can exempt yourself but only if you're rich, like worth > 5 million pounds. Still hardly optimal, and certainly having nothing to do with free choice.
The problem is if they substantially less for Brazil, then richer countries' politicians start beating their chests, saying "Wellll, why should WE get ripped off if Brazil doesn't have to pay very much? Those EVIL DRUG COMPANIES! I will bash the heads of those evil people who cure drugs, for you, The People!"
And the ignorant crowds cheer.
And drug companies can't cover research, research is slowed or halted, and over the years, far more people die than would have. But they won't show up on any stats.
It's a little too sophisticated for The People to understand that millions die because health care technology is stuck at the year 2000, whereas in a parallel universe it's up to 2010, another it's 1994 and a third, 1978.
Nah, better to save a few lives now and get the brownie points than to save millions later to a hazy concept few understand.
> Profits are not a *right*
As they derive from inalienable rights like the right to your own body, the right to property (property must be used to survive), and the right to deal with other people freely (right to your own body and their right to their own body), profits certainly are a *right*.
> No. The political problem appears when Brazil
> decides that life is more important than the stock
> quotes in some other country far north.
For now, but...
> Brazil thus transformed an ethical problem into a
> political problem. My opinion is, it's a net gain.
For now...but what if all countries did this on all "important" drugs? Drug development is massively slowed, and the deaths start mounting by the millions because of slowly advancing technology -- people who wouldn't have died had technology kept advancing at a good pace. Millions, tens of millions, hundreds of millions.
Yet, to a politician, or the hoi polloi, one death they can see (or prevent) today is worth millions tomorrow.
> Operating systems are incredibly expensive to develop.
No they are not. Was the original DOS some massive thing requiring billions? No. There are plenty of RTOS's (Real-Time Operating Systems) that have optional windowing systems, comples graphics primitives, TCP/IP stacks, Java virtual machines, etc. Why not slap together a CPU and stuff it onto one? Why, because there are no apps for that.
> Gay people not propegate the human species.
> Therefore they are as useless as Microsoft Bob.
Technically true, but 99% of sex is not intended to propagate the species. Intelligent, free, consenting adult humans can elect to engage in non-propagatory activities. We do not create governments to regulate such things.