The risk of becoming seriously ill from, for example, chickenpox or measles, is very low today. People died in large numbers a few hundred years ago mostly because they were under-nourished, had bad sanitation, and had a low resistance against diseases.
When you measure the risk in parts per thousand, or even million, you have to weigh the cost and inconvenience of vaccination against the risk reduction. It's not immediately obvious which is the more rational choice. For example, people willingly drive cars because they value their time and convenience higher than the small risk of dying in a traffic accident.
With some treatments, the risk of contracting the illness from the treatment is roughly as large as the chance of curing it - this has turned out to be the case with programs that pre-emptively screen women for breast cancer using x-rays.
My government offered free vaccinations against the swine flu a few years ago, because they had signed a contract with a pharmaceutics company which obliged them to buy two shots for every citizen if the WHO declared a pandemic, and WHO subsequently changed their definition of a pandemic so it included the swine flu. It eventually turned out the swine flu was a non-issue here in Europe, and the WHO experts who classified the diseases were in a conflict of interest, since they were employed by the pharmaceutical companies which sold the vaccines.
I don't regret declining the free vaccination - I put my life in greater risk by exposing myself to the ordinary flu (which takes more lives every year), or by choosing to travel by car.
Well, I'm not an expert in the field, but some people argue that those diseases were wiped out by enhanced sanitary conditions, and that they declined sharply before vaccines came into common use.
The point is that you should be careful to dismiss people as idiots before you know what information they base their decisions on - and after too.
This isn't at all like the rumours game. People started doing entirely new things on their own when they came into contact with the game; they didn't slightly modify the message over generations.
Specifying use of non-alphabetic characters is a stupid, stupid, stupid mistake. It makes passwords harder to remember, harder to type, and creates a completely false sense of security.
I agree. To put it in even simpler terms, if your password is "heatsink", randomising the case:
HeATsiNk
only adds 8 bits of complexity. You get more complexity if you just add two lower-case characters:
heatsinkas
... and it's much easier to remember.
The same goes for mixing in numbers - it only adds a little complexity.
And yet, many, many systems complain if you choose a complex password like
zebras are plentiful
... while happily approving passwords which fall easy prey to an intelligent attack, like
An intelligent dictionary attack tries the passwords in order of likeliness. That means passwords belonging to a distinct subset of the search domain (e.g, all upper-case, or all lower-case, or all alphanumeric) will be tried relatively early. E.g, both "secret" and "SECRET" will likely be tried before "SeCrEt".
If users mix upper and lower case, the average time an attacker has to search will be increased by a factor of roughly 2^(length of password), but if users limit themselves to passwords that are either all upper-case or all lower-case, the search time will only be doubled, which is not nearly good enough.
There's also a chance the attacker knows someone's password habits, including the domain.
I'm guessing this is why password strength meters assume the shortest search domain the password fits in (out of the common ones). It represents the worst-case scenario where the attacker is really smart and tries the right domain first.
Nobody claims it adds security... it adds convenience in case you forget your password. Still, it detracts so much from security that using a hard-to-guess password becomes pointless.
Ok, I'm starting to see where you're coming from. I think we're talking past each other because we handle refugees differently.
Here in Sweden, refugees are naturalised and offered citizenship after four years, provided they can prove their identity and haven't been involved in criminal activities. The vast majority of immigrants *are* refugees (or relatives to them) who've been naturalised.
This is both for humanitarian reasons, and because it's more expensive to keep people as refugees indefinitely than letting them join the labour force.
Receiving ordinary immigrants is the easier option for society, because it means you can pick and choose who you want to receive. For example, you can have rules saying that immigrants need to have a job offer and be able to support themselves - i.e, people who are integrated from the get-go.
With refugees, you're forced to accept anyone who qualifies for refugee status, which includes children, elderly, mentally or physically wounded, the uneducated, and so on, which means you end up with a number of people who are hard to integrate, at a higher risk to commit crimes, and become much more costly for society. This in turn leads to tensions in society - only a few racists object to the well-integrated immigrants, but many people object to the ones who are jobless or criminal.
Do you see why receiving refugees isn't the easier option?
You're trying to portray Europe as some kind of morally superior entity.
No, I was just responding to the claim that Europe just had started to care about refugees.
I think it's pointless trying to prove whose country is morally superior. If you haven't noticed, I've pointed out a number of flaws with Europe.
In Europe, the death penalty has been misused as a political tool by governments for centuries, so it appalls Europeans and Europe should prohibit it.
Using the death penalty as a political tool happens because courts are politically controlled and there's a lack of rule of law. It doesn't happen because a country is European. There's no more reason to believe, say, France, would use it as a political tool if it had it than the USA.
I've noticed that many Americans reason as if European countries were still governed by the same principles as they were in the 1700's, when America broke free. I've some good news: you won. The principles you based your government on were eventually adopted by all democracies, with minor variations. Congratulations.
I can imagine Russia using the death penalty as a political tool, since it's thoroughly corrupt, but even there it's hard, since courts are required to follow rule of law and political influences need to take place unofficially.
Europeans have always been really good articulating grand visions, writing great books, and expounding compelling philosophies and principles. But putting those into practice is a different matter. Strident pacifism works as poorly as rampant militarism, and writing human rights and equality into one's constitutions is neither necessary nor sufficient for achieving them.
I'm not sure there's any difference between Europeans and Americans in that respect. The Declaration of Independence and the Constitution also contain grand visions and compelling principles, which are hard to put into practice (which also many Americans complain about).
I think the main difference is that Europeans place greater emphasis on positive rights and freedom from abuse by the government, while Americans place greater emphasis on freedom of choice and freedom from meddling by the government.
I don't know what "strengthen one's economy" means.
I mean, achieve long-term economic growth.
And, frankly, I think nobody would really trust Europe to take on that responsibility either, given the political changes occurring in Europe.
You're thinking about the disaster with Greece's economy? I'm inclined to agree with you. I'm not sure having a common European currency is a good idea to begin with.
I'm sorry, but what planet are you from? Really, before engaging in discussions about economics, get the facts.
Sorry, my fault. China has the potential to pass both USA and Europe due to its large population and rapid economic growth, but it's still only has about a third of the US economy.
The US isn't "holding back" anything; it is printing more money, which is what you need to do to drive down the value of a currency.
Yes, and according to the article, it isn't helping. The US central bank could keep printing money until they succeeded in depreciating the dollar, but they chose not to. That's what I mean by "holding back".
That would instantly wipe out much of the US debt, increase US exports, and decrease US imports, all good things as far as the US is concerned. The only reason that would hurt the US is because it would create global chaos.
It's not that simple, or nations would try to depreciate their own currencies all the time. If the dollar falls too much, it could cause serious inflation within the USA.
Do you have any article describing the global chaos USA fears would happen after a Dollar depreciation? I'm interested in learning.
I seriously doubt the international community would feel comfortable using the Yuan. More likely, the Euro would replace the dollar.
I think so too, although the Yuan could be adopted by some Asian countries.
Yes, and refugee status is the last resort if you don't have other options, like immigration. The US has taken in large numbers of Iraqi and Kurdish immigrants.
Even if we add all the Iraqi immigrants from 2003 to 2006, it's less than the number of Iraqi refugees accepted by Sweden alone.
Saddam Hussein created the refugee problem, and it existed long before the Iraq wars and long before Europe suddenly started caring about this issue.
Europe has cared since at least the 1950's, when the UN's Refugee Convention was created. We've taken in refugees for humanitarian reasons for many decades. It's part of a larger movement for human rights, where practically all European nations have agreed to abolish the death penalty, abolish torture, follow the Geneva conventions for warfare, and so on.
You can't base your ideas of Europe on how it was in the 1800's. Both Europe and the USA have changed drastically since then.
If it's any comfort, you're still ahead in terms of political, economic and cultural power, and IMHO your society is in many respects more vital.
Sorry, I managed to drop the links, so I'm posting again.
The vast majority of foreigners moving to Europe come from former European colonies, plus guest workers summoned by European companies in times of labor shortage; not exactly a stellar record. The US, on the other hand, has received very large numbers of immigrants and refugees since its founding, and by and large without serious tensions.
The vast majority of foreigners moving to Europe come from former European colonies, plus guest workers summoned by European companies in times of labor shortage; not exactly a stellar record. The US, on the other hand, has received very large numbers of immigrants and refugees since its founding, and by and large without serious tensions.
Sources?
It's definitely not true today. Germany alone harbours more than twice as many refugees as USA.
From Afghanistan, Europe harbours more than eight times as many refugees as USA. .
Since USA invaded Iraq and up until 2007, it had granted refugee status to a measly 800 Iraqis, while Sweden had accepted 18 000.
I'm going as far as saying, USA doesn't take responsibility for the refugee problems it's creating.
P.S. It seems that China has made it difficult for USA to depreciate by buying up dollars so the value is kept high. China's economy is much larger than USA's, and they can decrease the dollar value at a time of their choosing by selling off their dollar reserves. That could be a reason USA is holding back their depreciation; the more dollars they release into the market, the more China can buy up, and the more it can hurt USA in a time of crisis by flooding the market with dollars. Or China can flood the market with dollars at a time of their choosing to trigger a switch to yuan.
The article seems to have been deleted, and Google doesn't have it cached, but I believe you.
EU politicians want a higher dollar rate because it makes foreign products more expensive and saves European jobs in the short term. Since the USA carries the costs for overvaluing the dollar, it's a free lunch for European industries.
I doubt that is the reason for the USA to keep the dollar value up. I suspect it has more to do with keeping people from trading their savings in dollars for euros or yuan, which could trigger a switch to those currencies for international trade. With a little diplomatic language, the switch from dollars to euros or yuan could be described as "economic instability".
If the USA is keeping the value of the dollar up artificially, I think it's a good idea to let it slowly depreciate. (I thought you were talking about undervaluing the dollar at first.)
China's currency is undervalued and the Chinese government has been intervening to keep it that way; both Europe and the US are constantly complaining about that.
It could have something to do with China's attempts to make yuan into the currency of choice for international trade. I don't think you can strengthen your economy in the long term by undervaluing your currency; it's like pumping government subsidies into all export businesses.
Slashdot Mirror
That's true - for some diseases, vaccines are indispensible (at least until they've been wiped out).
That's just one type of game - games like Sim City or The Sims aren't based on risk-taking.
The risk of becoming seriously ill from, for example, chickenpox or measles, is very low today. People died in large numbers a few hundred years ago mostly because they were under-nourished, had bad sanitation, and had a low resistance against diseases.
When you measure the risk in parts per thousand, or even million, you have to weigh the cost and inconvenience of vaccination against the risk reduction. It's not immediately obvious which is the more rational choice. For example, people willingly drive cars because they value their time and convenience higher than the small risk of dying in a traffic accident.
With some treatments, the risk of contracting the illness from the treatment is roughly as large as the chance of curing it - this has turned out to be the case with programs that pre-emptively screen women for breast cancer using x-rays.
My government offered free vaccinations against the swine flu a few years ago, because they had signed a contract with a pharmaceutics company which obliged them to buy two shots for every citizen if the WHO declared a pandemic, and WHO subsequently changed their definition of a pandemic so it included the swine flu. It eventually turned out the swine flu was a non-issue here in Europe, and the WHO experts who classified the diseases were in a conflict of interest, since they were employed by the pharmaceutical companies which sold the vaccines.
I don't regret declining the free vaccination - I put my life in greater risk by exposing myself to the ordinary flu (which takes more lives every year), or by choosing to travel by car.
Well, I'm not an expert in the field, but some people argue that those diseases were wiped out by enhanced sanitary conditions, and that they declined sharply before vaccines came into common use.
The point is that you should be careful to dismiss people as idiots before you know what information they base their decisions on - and after too.
Sounds like Rohrer got a lot of people thinking about their place in the universe.
This isn't at all like the rumours game. People started doing entirely new things on their own when they came into contact with the game; they didn't slightly modify the message over generations.
I bet you believe Elvis is dead too.
Be silent, heathen!
The point is that you only get one chance, so you need to treasure it.
Specifying use of non-alphabetic characters is a stupid, stupid, stupid mistake. It makes passwords harder to remember, harder to type, and creates a completely false sense of security.
I agree. To put it in even simpler terms, if your password is "heatsink", randomising the case:
only adds 8 bits of complexity. You get more complexity if you just add two lower-case characters:
The same goes for mixing in numbers - it only adds a little complexity.
And yet, many, many systems complain if you choose a complex password like
At least not if the password is generated according to a system... if it's just randomly generated, I think it's okay to divulge it.
Please mod parent funny :)
An intelligent dictionary attack tries the passwords in order of likeliness. That means passwords belonging to a distinct subset of the search domain (e.g, all upper-case, or all lower-case, or all alphanumeric) will be tried relatively early. E.g, both "secret" and "SECRET" will likely be tried before "SeCrEt".
If users mix upper and lower case, the average time an attacker has to search will be increased by a factor of roughly 2^(length of password), but if users limit themselves to passwords that are either all upper-case or all lower-case, the search time will only be doubled, which is not nearly good enough.
There's also a chance the attacker knows someone's password habits, including the domain.
I'm guessing this is why password strength meters assume the shortest search domain the password fits in (out of the common ones). It represents the worst-case scenario where the attacker is really smart and tries the right domain first.
Please mod parent "Informative" or "Insightful".
Nah, you're right, it is encryption.
Fortunately, we keep the login list key encrypted - we're always careful to lock the office door on our way out.
That's steganography, not encryption, you insensitive clod!
Nobody claims it adds security... it adds convenience in case you forget your password. Still, it detracts so much from security that using a hard-to-guess password becomes pointless.
Ok, I'm starting to see where you're coming from. I think we're talking past each other because we handle refugees differently.
Here in Sweden, refugees are naturalised and offered citizenship after four years, provided they can prove their identity and haven't been involved in criminal activities. The vast majority of immigrants *are* refugees (or relatives to them) who've been naturalised.
This is both for humanitarian reasons, and because it's more expensive to keep people as refugees indefinitely than letting them join the labour force.
Receiving ordinary immigrants is the easier option for society, because it means you can pick and choose who you want to receive. For example, you can have rules saying that immigrants need to have a job offer and be able to support themselves - i.e, people who are integrated from the get-go.
With refugees, you're forced to accept anyone who qualifies for refugee status, which includes children, elderly, mentally or physically wounded, the uneducated, and so on, which means you end up with a number of people who are hard to integrate, at a higher risk to commit crimes, and become much more costly for society. This in turn leads to tensions in society - only a few racists object to the well-integrated immigrants, but many people object to the ones who are jobless or criminal.
Do you see why receiving refugees isn't the easier option?
You're trying to portray Europe as some kind of morally superior entity.
No, I was just responding to the claim that Europe just had started to care about refugees.
I think it's pointless trying to prove whose country is morally superior. If you haven't noticed, I've pointed out a number of flaws with Europe.
In Europe, the death penalty has been misused as a political tool by governments for centuries, so it appalls Europeans and Europe should prohibit it.
Using the death penalty as a political tool happens because courts are politically controlled and there's a lack of rule of law. It doesn't happen because a country is European. There's no more reason to believe, say, France, would use it as a political tool if it had it than the USA.
I've noticed that many Americans reason as if European countries were still governed by the same principles as they were in the 1700's, when America broke free. I've some good news: you won. The principles you based your government on were eventually adopted by all democracies, with minor variations. Congratulations.
I can imagine Russia using the death penalty as a political tool, since it's thoroughly corrupt, but even there it's hard, since courts are required to follow rule of law and political influences need to take place unofficially.
Europeans have always been really good articulating grand visions, writing great books, and expounding compelling philosophies and principles. But putting those into practice is a different matter. Strident pacifism works as poorly as rampant militarism, and writing human rights and equality into one's constitutions is neither necessary nor sufficient for achieving them.
I'm not sure there's any difference between Europeans and Americans in that respect. The Declaration of Independence and the Constitution also contain grand visions and compelling principles, which are hard to put into practice (which also many Americans complain about).
I think the main difference is that Europeans place greater emphasis on positive rights and freedom from abuse by the government, while Americans place greater emphasis on freedom of choice and freedom from meddling by the government.
I don't know what "strengthen one's economy" means.
I mean, achieve long-term economic growth.
And, frankly, I think nobody would really trust Europe to take on that responsibility either, given the political changes occurring in Europe.
You're thinking about the disaster with Greece's economy? I'm inclined to agree with you. I'm not sure having a common European currency is a good idea to begin with.
I'm sorry, but what planet are you from? Really, before engaging in discussions about economics, get the facts.
Sorry, my fault. China has the potential to pass both USA and Europe due to its large population and rapid economic growth, but it's still only has about a third of the US economy.
The US isn't "holding back" anything; it is printing more money, which is what you need to do to drive down the value of a currency.
Yes, and according to the article, it isn't helping. The US central bank could keep printing money until they succeeded in depreciating the dollar, but they chose not to. That's what I mean by "holding back".
That would instantly wipe out much of the US debt, increase US exports, and decrease US imports, all good things as far as the US is concerned. The only reason that would hurt the US is because it would create global chaos.
It's not that simple, or nations would try to depreciate their own currencies all the time. If the dollar falls too much, it could cause serious inflation within the USA.
Do you have any article describing the global chaos USA fears would happen after a Dollar depreciation? I'm interested in learning.
I seriously doubt the international community would feel comfortable using the Yuan. More likely, the Euro would replace the dollar.
I think so too, although the Yuan could be adopted by some Asian countries.
Yes, and refugee status is the last resort if you don't have other options, like immigration. The US has taken in large numbers of Iraqi and Kurdish immigrants.
Even if we add all the Iraqi immigrants from 2003 to 2006, it's less than the number of Iraqi refugees accepted by Sweden alone.
Saddam Hussein created the refugee problem, and it existed long before the Iraq wars and long before Europe suddenly started caring about this issue.
Europe has cared since at least the 1950's, when the UN's Refugee Convention was created. We've taken in refugees for humanitarian reasons for many decades. It's part of a larger movement for human rights, where practically all European nations have agreed to abolish the death penalty, abolish torture, follow the Geneva conventions for warfare, and so on.
You can't base your ideas of Europe on how it was in the 1800's. Both Europe and the USA have changed drastically since then.
If it's any comfort, you're still ahead in terms of political, economic and cultural power, and IMHO your society is in many respects more vital.
Sorry, I managed to drop the links, so I'm posting again.
The vast majority of foreigners moving to Europe come from former European colonies, plus guest workers summoned by European companies in times of labor shortage; not exactly a stellar record. The US, on the other hand, has received very large numbers of immigrants and refugees since its founding, and by and large without serious tensions.
Sources?
It's definitely not true today. Germany alone harbours more than twice as many refugees as USA.
http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/imm_ref_pop_by_cou_or_ter_of_asy-refugee-population-country-territory-asylum
From Afghanistan, Europe harbours more than eight times as many refugees as USA.
http://www.staff.city.ac.uk/~rc391/shanaz/linda/diaspora.html
Since USA invaded Iraq and up until 2007, it had granted refugee status to a measly 800 Iraqis, while Sweden had accepted 18 000.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Refugees_of_Iraq#United_States
I'm going as far as saying, USA doesn't take responsibility for the refugee problems it's creating.
The vast majority of foreigners moving to Europe come from former European colonies, plus guest workers summoned by European companies in times of labor shortage; not exactly a stellar record. The US, on the other hand, has received very large numbers of immigrants and refugees since its founding, and by and large without serious tensions.
Sources?
It's definitely not true today. Germany alone harbours more than twice as many refugees as USA.
From Afghanistan, Europe harbours more than eight times as many refugees as USA. .
Since USA invaded Iraq and up until 2007, it had granted refugee status to a measly 800 Iraqis, while Sweden had accepted 18 000.
I'm going as far as saying, USA doesn't take responsibility for the refugee problems it's creating.
P.S. It seems that China has made it difficult for USA to depreciate by buying up dollars so the value is kept high. China's economy is much larger than USA's, and they can decrease the dollar value at a time of their choosing by selling off their dollar reserves. That could be a reason USA is holding back their depreciation; the more dollars they release into the market, the more China can buy up, and the more it can hurt USA in a time of crisis by flooding the market with dollars. Or China can flood the market with dollars at a time of their choosing to trigger a switch to yuan.
http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2010/11/26/playing-chicken-china/
The article seems to have been deleted, and Google doesn't have it cached, but I believe you.
EU politicians want a higher dollar rate because it makes foreign products more expensive and saves European jobs in the short term. Since the USA carries the costs for overvaluing the dollar, it's a free lunch for European industries.
I doubt that is the reason for the USA to keep the dollar value up. I suspect it has more to do with keeping people from trading their savings in dollars for euros or yuan, which could trigger a switch to those currencies for international trade. With a little diplomatic language, the switch from dollars to euros or yuan could be described as "economic instability".
If the USA is keeping the value of the dollar up artificially, I think it's a good idea to let it slowly depreciate. (I thought you were talking about undervaluing the dollar at first.)
China's currency is undervalued and the Chinese government has been intervening to keep it that way; both Europe and the US are constantly complaining about that.
It could have something to do with China's attempts to make yuan into the currency of choice for international trade. I don't think you can strengthen your economy in the long term by undervaluing your currency; it's like pumping government subsidies into all export businesses.