Uh, that's complete bullshit. If you actually have ever read or seen any of the interviews given by the Harrier pilots concerned you'd know that VIFFing became their deadliest weapon against the faster (and mainly supersonic) fighters put up by the Argentine Air Force and Navy.
Not familiar with the insurance industry? You can insure yourself against virtually anything. How do you think that sports stars, Hollywood actors and actresses, etc can insure individual body parts?
Everything can be assigned a risk quotient. And anything that can be so assessed can invariably be insured.
Yes, I have donated blood. But I live in a country where such donations are 100 percent altruistic. That's not the case in the US, however.
You may not have been paid for your donation, or you might not be aware that some donations are paid for, but it does happen in the US. At least one other person who replied to my original post has had direct experience of paid donations.
Just because you haven't experienced something first hand, it doesn't mean that it doesn't happen.
Oh My God. You've never seen an article on the news or in a respectable newspaper about people paying to adopt newborn babies? You're totally unaware that there is a whole industry based around this practice in the US? Or that surrogacy is big business too?
Did you even bother to click the Google link that I provided and investigate some of the links supplied on that page for yourself if you were so skeptical of what I had to say? I provided the means for you to verify what I said but you decided to skip that, dismiss my contribution as hearsay and call me an idiot.
Wow. And they say that most AC posts are full of rubbish.
Yeah, and having travelled from one end of India to another, I've never seen a "hearts for sale" sign anywhere. Furthermore, I've yet to read of even one person who's obtained a heart or other critical organ from a healthy developing world donor in exchange for cash. Yet I have heard (several times, in fact) of people in the US arranging to have babies for other people and being "compensated" for their efforts or of surrogate births.
In other words, what the original poster said about organs for sale in India is pretty much hearsay but there's documented evidence of blood, babies and wombs for rent in the US. If you don't believe that this stuff happens then just click some of the links that appear when you google for the word "surrogacy".
It doesn't matter what I personally believe is right or wrong, the original poster wasn't talking about personal ethics, it matters what the law and the courts decide is right or wrong.
If ever someone busts your ass for anything, whether it's an overdue library book or murder, feel free to knock on my door asking what I feel is right or wrong but don't expect the law to agree with everything I say.
Rightly or wrongly, as I said before, ignorance is often no defence at all in the eyes of the law. If that offends you, well, I don't know what to suggest because that's pretty much standard practice everywhere on the planet.
If the original poster had talked about putting things right if things go wrong then perhaps I wouldn't have posted. But seeing as he worded his post to say "Who can I sue?" I responded accordingly.
Of course medical procedures don't always go perfectly and of course doctors sometimes make mistakes: they are human too, you know. But I'm sure that's an issue that's come up once or twice in the past before, and I'm equally sure that if your health insurer didn't underwrite the cost of restitution if things went wrong then you could take some of the money that you saved by being a medical tourist and use that to buy yourself a nice, big insurance policy to cover you if the worst was to happen.
Buying insurance would be cheap too. After all, it's not like people are in the habit of taking good organs out and leaving the bad ones behind: people with sort of history don't retain their medical privileges for long.
Ignorance rarely is a valid defence in the eyes of the law. If you're speeding at 70mph in an area where the speed limit is 50 mph then you not knowing that you were above the speed limit is not a valid defence.
Similarly, if you hold a barbeque and your kids sneak off with some beers, get drunk and do something stupid then you're still liable for any laws that you may have unknowingly broken (providing alcohol to a minor, etc).
Just because you didn't know you were breaking the law that doesn't excuse you from any possible punishment. Look at what happened to the grandfather who got hit with a hammer by RIAA because his grandkids used his PC to download copyrighted material over P2P networks without his knowledge. He had no clue what the kids were up to but he was still held liable for their actions.
If your theoretical "cookingrecipes.zip" defence was held up in court I'd be surprised. It would be carte blanche for copyright infringers, paedophiles and anyone else intent on evading the law to disguise their activity by giving the files they were swapping innocent file names and then claiming that they "didn't know" what the files really contained.
People in the US sell their blood for personal profit. Or their babies. Or hire out their wombs. Selling parts of yourself for financial gain isn't exclusive to India, or even the developing world in general: it happens in the developed world too.
Shhh, don't tell anyone but movies make mucho money, especially ones that are practically guaranteed bums on seats before a single take has been shot (or animated).
The Simpsons movie would be a lock to fill cinemas, appealing as it does to TV nostalgia (a la Star Trek, Charlie's Angels, The Fugitive, Lost In Space, South Park, etc) and a loyal fan base of both young and old viewers.
And, of course, nothing will get the merchandising revenue rolling in like a movie release. It's all money in the bank, at the cinema, at the toy store, at the supermarket, at the burger joint, at the local gaming emporium.
Remember, movies make mucho money. Don't tell anyone though, OK? It'll be just our little secret.
While I feel sorry for your friend's loss, please realise that RailTrack is not/was not ever owned by the UK Government.
RailTrack was a private company, and after its collapse, its assets were taken over by Network Rail, a not-for-profit company that's sole purpose is to run the railways as efficiently as possible and at maximum benefit to rail passengers. Unlike RailTrack, any money that Network Rail makes is ploughed back into the system, and not one penny is paid to any investor in the form of dividends.
I'm sorry that Network Rail's rent increase couldn't be effectively absorbed by the cafe concerned but shit happens. I know first hand: I've got a family member who's building work has been held up by Network Rail's lawyers for months and is having to pay 5,000 pounds for the privilege of erecting scaffolding on a small section of a narrow strip of disused Network Rail-owned land for a couple of months. Shit happens.
But blaming the UK Government for the actions of a limited company like Network Rail is just plain silly.
Code to standards but make sure that your code is happily displayed without any quirks in a range of browsers and on a range of platforms.
Browsers you should be worried about (in no particular order, so don't start flaming me about ranking): MSIE, Opera, Mozilla, Netscape Navigator, Safari.
Platforms you should be worried about: Windows, Linux, Mac.
Of course, if you're intending your content to be viewed on the move, make sure you've got WAP/portable browser friendly pages too. Oh, and remember resolution: you might have a 1600 by 1200 desktop but the average web user doesn't. 800 by 600 is as high as you should design unless you want to alienate the majority of surfers.
If the various combination of browsers and platforms scares you, don't worry. There are various apps out there (and websites) that will show you what your pages will look like in several browser/platform configurations. Someone more immediately familiar with them them than I am will surely (hint, hint) provide you with some useful URLs.
If all I need is just a PIM (calendaring, contacts, notes, money, short messages), then what would be the reason to choose PalmOS vs Linux on PDA?
If all you need is just a PIM (calendaring, contacts, notes, money, short messages), then why would you ever consider choosing a Linus over PalmOS on a PDA?
PalmOS is built for the job, fast enough to do what you want (and more), power efficient, etc.
Stop looking for a sledgehammer to crack a nut and give serious consideration to a Zire or Tungsten. Which one is best for you depends on how honest you are when you say you're looking for "just a PIM".
If that were true then I'd expect to hear the BBC refer to Palestinean suicide bombers as martyrs and their victims as infidels, neither of which is the case.
The BBC position is to cover the situation as a whole. Yes, they highlight the suffering caused to innocents by Israeli incursions into Gaza and the West Bank as well as the atrocities on both sides.
But if you think that showing the futility that is life for the average Palestinean is something that the BBC should apologise for then that's quite sad. Perhaps you'd rather they stuck to reporting on cats stuck up trees rather than reporting on human plight in general?
So shall we just forget about the former Yugoslavia? Or Rwanda? Or Zimbabwe? Or Congo? Or Afghanistan? Or Iraq? Yeah, lets just pretend bad things don't happen.
This isn't a technology journalist you're talking about, it's a business journalist. Just like you get poor managers who don't always handle their programming teams properly, you get poor business journalists who don't always handle the technology side of their stories properly.
To dismiss an entire company because of one bad experience with one individual or a news-gathering organisation because of one bad article by a business journalist who isn't 100 percent au fait with his subject matter is ridiculous.
The BBC is the world's largest news-gatherer. Their website runs to millions of pages. Just because one guy got it partially wrong that shouldn't reflect on the fantastic work the BBC does.
Would that be the same John Graham-Cumming referenced in the article who figured out how to defeat said filter?
No, the guy who did that is the first guy's evil clone. And he wants $1 billion, billion dollars or else he'll use it. And copyrights over putting your little pinky to the corner of your mouth too.
Seriously, did you think there were two people out there called John Graham-Cumming, one working to defeat spam and one working to propagate it? That's funny.
A lot of concessions and compromises have kept the space station from realizing it's potential.
Yeah, "concessions and compromises" like, say, allowing redundancy in the type of supply vehicles so that if, say, the shuttle fleet was grounded, Russian Soyuz supply ships would still be able to get supplies and replacement crews to the ISS, as well as getting them back.
Yeah, I can see how those "concessions and compromises" are a major bummer. Not.
If you want to blame that shit on someone blame it on the penny-pinching politicians who scaled back the ISS's scope to cut costs.
Flawed analogy. The pilgrims knew where they were going, and they were going there for good.
Nobody (not NASA, not ESA, not the Chinese) is seriously considering a one-way manned mission. Glorified soil sampling is all they are considering.
Going back to your New World analogy, you forgot that before America was colonised by Europeans that it was explored by them beforehand. Exploration is always the logical first step, whether we're talking about undiscovered continents (Americas, Australasia), extremes (South Pole), or heavenly bodies (the Moon, Mars).
Slashdot Mirror
Uh, that's complete bullshit. If you actually have ever read or seen any of the interviews given by the Harrier pilots concerned you'd know that VIFFing became their deadliest weapon against the faster (and mainly supersonic) fighters put up by the Argentine Air Force and Navy.
Not familiar with the insurance industry? You can insure yourself against virtually anything. How do you think that sports stars, Hollywood actors and actresses, etc can insure individual body parts?
Everything can be assigned a risk quotient. And anything that can be so assessed can invariably be insured.
Yes, I have donated blood. But I live in a country where such donations are 100 percent altruistic. That's not the case in the US, however.
You may not have been paid for your donation, or you might not be aware that some donations are paid for, but it does happen in the US. At least one other person who replied to my original post has had direct experience of paid donations.
Just because you haven't experienced something first hand, it doesn't mean that it doesn't happen.
Oh My God. You've never seen an article on the news or in a respectable newspaper about people paying to adopt newborn babies? You're totally unaware that there is a whole industry based around this practice in the US? Or that surrogacy is big business too?
Did you even bother to click the Google link that I provided and investigate some of the links supplied on that page for yourself if you were so skeptical of what I had to say? I provided the means for you to verify what I said but you decided to skip that, dismiss my contribution as hearsay and call me an idiot.
Wow. And they say that most AC posts are full of rubbish.
Yeah, and having travelled from one end of India to another, I've never seen a "hearts for sale" sign anywhere. Furthermore, I've yet to read of even one person who's obtained a heart or other critical organ from a healthy developing world donor in exchange for cash. Yet I have heard (several times, in fact) of people in the US arranging to have babies for other people and being "compensated" for their efforts or of surrogate births.
In other words, what the original poster said about organs for sale in India is pretty much hearsay but there's documented evidence of blood, babies and wombs for rent in the US. If you don't believe that this stuff happens then just click some of the links that appear when you google for the word "surrogacy".
QED.
It doesn't matter what I personally believe is right or wrong, the original poster wasn't talking about personal ethics, it matters what the law and the courts decide is right or wrong.
If ever someone busts your ass for anything, whether it's an overdue library book or murder, feel free to knock on my door asking what I feel is right or wrong but don't expect the law to agree with everything I say.
Rightly or wrongly, as I said before, ignorance is often no defence at all in the eyes of the law. If that offends you, well, I don't know what to suggest because that's pretty much standard practice everywhere on the planet.
If the original poster had talked about putting things right if things go wrong then perhaps I wouldn't have posted. But seeing as he worded his post to say "Who can I sue?" I responded accordingly.
Of course medical procedures don't always go perfectly and of course doctors sometimes make mistakes: they are human too, you know. But I'm sure that's an issue that's come up once or twice in the past before, and I'm equally sure that if your health insurer didn't underwrite the cost of restitution if things went wrong then you could take some of the money that you saved by being a medical tourist and use that to buy yourself a nice, big insurance policy to cover you if the worst was to happen.
Buying insurance would be cheap too. After all, it's not like people are in the habit of taking good organs out and leaving the bad ones behind: people with sort of history don't retain their medical privileges for long.
Ignorance rarely is a valid defence in the eyes of the law. If you're speeding at 70mph in an area where the speed limit is 50 mph then you not knowing that you were above the speed limit is not a valid defence.
Similarly, if you hold a barbeque and your kids sneak off with some beers, get drunk and do something stupid then you're still liable for any laws that you may have unknowingly broken (providing alcohol to a minor, etc).
Just because you didn't know you were breaking the law that doesn't excuse you from any possible punishment. Look at what happened to the grandfather who got hit with a hammer by RIAA because his grandkids used his PC to download copyrighted material over P2P networks without his knowledge. He had no clue what the kids were up to but he was still held liable for their actions.
If your theoretical "cookingrecipes.zip" defence was held up in court I'd be surprised. It would be carte blanche for copyright infringers, paedophiles and anyone else intent on evading the law to disguise their activity by giving the files they were swapping innocent file names and then claiming that they "didn't know" what the files really contained.
Typical. You're more worried about who you'd be able to sue than the fact that you'd be left without a healthy kidney.
Is it any wonder lawyers piss all over everyone in the US when there are people like you who worry more about litigation rights than their own health?
People in the US sell their blood for personal profit. Or their babies. Or hire out their wombs. Selling parts of yourself for financial gain isn't exclusive to India, or even the developing world in general: it happens in the developed world too.
Shhh, don't tell anyone but movies make mucho money, especially ones that are practically guaranteed bums on seats before a single take has been shot (or animated).
The Simpsons movie would be a lock to fill cinemas, appealing as it does to TV nostalgia (a la Star Trek, Charlie's Angels, The Fugitive, Lost In Space, South Park, etc) and a loyal fan base of both young and old viewers.
And, of course, nothing will get the merchandising revenue rolling in like a movie release. It's all money in the bank, at the cinema, at the toy store, at the supermarket, at the burger joint, at the local gaming emporium.
Remember, movies make mucho money. Don't tell anyone though, OK? It'll be just our little secret.
D'oh!
While I feel sorry for your friend's loss, please realise that RailTrack is not/was not ever owned by the UK Government.
RailTrack was a private company, and after its collapse, its assets were taken over by Network Rail, a not-for-profit company that's sole purpose is to run the railways as efficiently as possible and at maximum benefit to rail passengers. Unlike RailTrack, any money that Network Rail makes is ploughed back into the system, and not one penny is paid to any investor in the form of dividends.
I'm sorry that Network Rail's rent increase couldn't be effectively absorbed by the cafe concerned but shit happens. I know first hand: I've got a family member who's building work has been held up by Network Rail's lawyers for months and is having to pay 5,000 pounds for the privilege of erecting scaffolding on a small section of a narrow strip of disused Network Rail-owned land for a couple of months. Shit happens.
But blaming the UK Government for the actions of a limited company like Network Rail is just plain silly.
Code to standards but make sure that your code is happily displayed without any quirks in a range of browsers and on a range of platforms.
Browsers you should be worried about (in no particular order, so don't start flaming me about ranking): MSIE, Opera, Mozilla, Netscape Navigator, Safari.
Platforms you should be worried about: Windows, Linux, Mac.
Of course, if you're intending your content to be viewed on the move, make sure you've got WAP/portable browser friendly pages too. Oh, and remember resolution: you might have a 1600 by 1200 desktop but the average web user doesn't. 800 by 600 is as high as you should design unless you want to alienate the majority of surfers.
If the various combination of browsers and platforms scares you, don't worry. There are various apps out there (and websites) that will show you what your pages will look like in several browser/platform configurations. Someone more immediately familiar with them them than I am will surely (hint, hint) provide you with some useful URLs.
...can you mount it on the head of a shark?
If all I need is just a PIM (calendaring, contacts, notes, money, short messages), then what would be the reason to choose PalmOS vs Linux on PDA?
If all you need is just a PIM (calendaring, contacts, notes, money, short messages), then why would you ever consider choosing a Linus over PalmOS on a PDA?
PalmOS is built for the job, fast enough to do what you want (and more), power efficient, etc.
Stop looking for a sledgehammer to crack a nut and give serious consideration to a Zire or Tungsten. Which one is best for you depends on how honest you are when you say you're looking for "just a PIM".
I'll ask again, this time more directly, shall I?
How is the does the BBC reporting on the situation in Palestine for the average Palestinean constitute bias?
If that were true then I'd expect to hear the BBC refer to Palestinean suicide bombers as martyrs and their victims as infidels, neither of which is the case.
The BBC position is to cover the situation as a whole. Yes, they highlight the suffering caused to innocents by Israeli incursions into Gaza and the West Bank as well as the atrocities on both sides.
But if you think that showing the futility that is life for the average Palestinean is something that the BBC should apologise for then that's quite sad. Perhaps you'd rather they stuck to reporting on cats stuck up trees rather than reporting on human plight in general?
So shall we just forget about the former Yugoslavia? Or Rwanda? Or Zimbabwe? Or Congo? Or Afghanistan? Or Iraq? Yeah, lets just pretend bad things don't happen.
This isn't a technology journalist you're talking about, it's a business journalist. Just like you get poor managers who don't always handle their programming teams properly, you get poor business journalists who don't always handle the technology side of their stories properly.
To dismiss an entire company because of one bad experience with one individual or a news-gathering organisation because of one bad article by a business journalist who isn't 100 percent au fait with his subject matter is ridiculous.
The BBC is the world's largest news-gatherer. Their website runs to millions of pages. Just because one guy got it partially wrong that shouldn't reflect on the fantastic work the BBC does.
Nice of you to provide balanced coverage by including links to Palestinean news sources too. Oh wait, you didn't did you?
Next time, why don't you try doing that? That way you won't come across as someone with a not-so-hidden agenda.
If that's your best attempt at sarcasm then don't give up your day job.
Would that be the same John Graham-Cumming referenced in the article who figured out how to defeat said filter?
No, the guy who did that is the first guy's evil clone. And he wants $1 billion, billion dollars or else he'll use it. And copyrights over putting your little pinky to the corner of your mouth too.
Seriously, did you think there were two people out there called John Graham-Cumming, one working to defeat spam and one working to propagate it? That's funny.
...called Get MetaCarta.
A lot of concessions and compromises have kept the space station from realizing it's potential.
Yeah, "concessions and compromises" like, say, allowing redundancy in the type of supply vehicles so that if, say, the shuttle fleet was grounded, Russian Soyuz supply ships would still be able to get supplies and replacement crews to the ISS, as well as getting them back.
Yeah, I can see how those "concessions and compromises" are a major bummer. Not.
If you want to blame that shit on someone blame it on the penny-pinching politicians who scaled back the ISS's scope to cut costs.
Flawed analogy. The pilgrims knew where they were going, and they were going there for good.
Nobody (not NASA, not ESA, not the Chinese) is seriously considering a one-way manned mission. Glorified soil sampling is all they are considering.
Going back to your New World analogy, you forgot that before America was colonised by Europeans that it was explored by them beforehand. Exploration is always the logical first step, whether we're talking about undiscovered continents (Americas, Australasia), extremes (South Pole), or heavenly bodies (the Moon, Mars).
You forgot asshole@optinbig.com, moron@optinbig.com, prick@optinbig.com, retard@optinbig.com, etc, etc.
Seriously, that's what this guy is and he knows it. He doesn't care who he pisses off or pisses on just as long as he gets rich quick.