Well, often the accountants are short-sighted, but sometimes they really do have a point.
Whenever you make a big investment, a big factor in the decision is how long it will last. In the past software upgrades were not factored into these decisions. Suppose I want to buy an MRI machine for $500k. That's a lot of money, but the scientist in charge says that it is worth it because the machine will last 25 years, and the value it creates makes the investment worthwhile. The accountants attack the math mercilessly and they agree. So, in comes the MRI machine, along with a fancy controller that runs Windows XP. Then in 10 years corporate IT comes along and says that XP is no good, and the computer needs to be upgraded. The scientist points out that the controller software only works with XP, and they checked and an updated version is not available for Win7. Then corporate IT makes a few phone calls and happily reports back to the scientist that they are mistaken, the vendor has a nice fancy piece of Win7 software, and they just need to upgrade to a newer MRI to use it. At this point the accountants get quite angry, because spending another $500k just to do a software upgrade doesn't make sense, and if a 10 year lifetime were anticipated they'd never have authorized buying the machine in the first place.
Modern IT practices often result in writing off capital investments that have substantial remaining book value. That is something that makes accountants cringe. And it is also something that makes them even more reluctant to invest in IT. Sometimes I'm not convinced this is always the wrong decision. I've found that keeping things simple is often a LOT more important than making them complete.
I might not have the vaccine, and neither might my kids.
- well that is YOUR problem, not a problem that government is supposed to be "fixing".
I suppose it is my problem if my next door neighbor hires a bunch of thugs to steal my car? What makes the latter a problem that the government is supposed to fix, and not the former?
strongly influenced by voluntary decisions by others to not vaccinate.
- it's their choice. It's their bodies.
How about abortions, do you want government to control who gets them and who doesn't, if they are legal at all or not?
Well, that's opening a can of worms, but I maintain that the government has the right to restrict the actions of those who cause harm to others. In this case we're talking about harm to an unborn child, so I'm fine with the government outlawing abortion except where the life of the mother is at stake (since in that case we're weighing life against life and not life against personal convenience).
On the other side of the fence, I'm also fine with the government outlawing conception without a license as well. That makes the issue of abortion fairly moot, since it is pretty unlikely that somebody who went to all the trouble to get permission to breed would then neglect the child they already so heavily invested in. Criteria for such a license is the subject of an entirely different debate, and I realize it is a can of worms. However, if you want to protect children you're generally better off regulating who becomes parents than trying to control what they do after the fact.
I might have the vaccine, and yet I can still get sick and die from the disease the vaccine is designed to protect against. Vaccines are not 100% effective, and they never will be.
- do you walk around with a helmet on? Because you know, something may fall on your head too. Somebody can run into you!
In this case, my choice of wearing a helmet only impacts my health, and not others. That makes them none of your concern. However, your choice to vaccinate or not DOES impact the health of others, which makes them my concern.
Your examples, I am not going to quote, I'll just say this about them: I do not want to live in a world where people are forced to do things to themselves. It's a freedom concept you are missing.
Most would disagree with you to some degree. I understand that there is a difference between forcing somebody to take a positive action like vaccination vs forcing somebody not to take a negative action like not killing their neighbors. However, the end results are the same in both cases, and the means are not unreasonable, so I think the end does justify the means in this case.
Now, in the perfect "libertarian" paradise we can then all go to court and sue each other
- you can't win a lawsuit against somebody just because they sneezed on you on a street.
All the more reason to just prevent the problem in the first place. The threat of civil lawsuit is not sufficient deterrent to cause behavior in the public interest.
I used libertarian in quotes up there as I don't really see this as a legitimate libertarian position.
- being a 'libertarian' implies having a position, as in a principle. I don't think you ever had them, people don't drop principles just because their circumstances change. It means you never understood what the hell you thought you were.
Where do I show conflicting principles in my argument? I haven't dropped any principles because of changing circumstances - my principles are just different from yours. I'd argue that my principles are fairly libertarian, and so would you, which just means we disagree on the definition of the word. That's OK, my principles say that you're welcome to be wrong in this case without any interference from me.:)
Hey, I couldn't agree more with you. I wasn't trying to suggest that what the US court was doing was "right" - only that it was likely to be fairly effective. People are asking "how can a US court issue orders about what happens in Germany?" I answered that question. I think what they really mean to ask is "should a US court be able to issue orders about what happens in Germany?"
Most people would answer with an idealistic "of course not" up until the point where they are personally affected by some situation where a local court takes their side and abandoning this ideal lets them get an advantage. It is easy to be against bribing congressmen when you're not a congressman. Integrity is demonstrated when you're actually in a position to benefit from unethical behavior and yet choose not to do so.
Under US law the vaccine manufacturers already do pay for this, under a mandatory insurance system similar to workers compensation.
I'm not sure there is a better alternative. They are knowingly selling a product that kills people, but the reason it is sold is because it saves more people that it kills. The tort system does not handle this sort of situation well. That's one of the reasons self-driving cars will have trouble taking off. If you save 10,000 lives per year, but take 5, you get punished harshly for the 5 despite the fact that those 5 would have been even more likely to die had it not been for your actions.
Too much of our legal system is concerned with effects of decisions, rather than the decisions themselves. If I aim a gun at you and pull the trigger, why should it matter whether I hit or miss?
Keeping sick people quarantined is at odds with our highly competitive culture.
I can take a day off from work anytime I want if I claim to be sick, and generally speaking it won't be questioned. However, I'm still expected to deliver all my work on-time, which means I end up behind. I'm effectively punished even if I just use vacation time.
We've moved to a world where people aren't just paid to show up, but they're accountable for results. In such a world you put yourself at a competitive disadvantage if you just check out for a day. If you show up at work you get more done than if you don't in many cases. Now, that puts everybody else at risk, but since you're evaluated on a bell curve against them it is actually to your advantage to make everybody else in your department sick.
With kids it is no different - you miss school, you still take the same test as everybody who was there. We even give awards for perfect attendance, suggesting that this is something that is within an individual's control.
Your argument points out exactly why you shouldn't be given this choice in the first place.
Let's assume for the sake of argument that your numbers and logic (in the individual case) are 100% correct.
You are clearly doing yourself and your child a service by not getting vaccinated. Thus you make this decision. The situation would be no different for any other parent or child, so they should make the same decision.
Now we live in a world where NOBODY is vaccinated, and now the chances of us all getting exposed aren't the hypothetical 10% you tossed out, but the near 100% rates during childhood that existed before the vaccine was available.
You just illustrated the tragedy of the commons, and an externality. If we all make the best decision in our own interests then we all perish together. When situations like this come up, the best solution usually tends to be to legislate the decision away from individuals, so that all benefit.
Why does blood always have to be on somebody's hands? The fact is that giving a child a vaccine is safer for all involved than not giving them the vaccine. The fact that it doesn't always end well doesn't change the fact that on average it ends better.
The focus should be on making the right decision in the general case, and not the specific outcomes. You can take a vaccine and die, or not take a vaccine and never get sick. Anecdotes shouldn't be used as a substitute for data. The fact is that clinical studies show that certain vaccines are both safe and effective when used as recommended, and as a result they should be used.
That being said the government/medical complex is partially responsible by requiring so many vaccinations.
Uh, vaccines are probably the safest and most effective form of medicine we have. If there were 40 vaccines with good safety profiles, then chances are it would be to the benefit of all for people to take all 40 of them (vaccine recommendations aren't always universal - medical evidence should of course always be our guide).
Why do you think the greedy bastards who run insurance companies are happy to shell out $100 for a vaccine injection? Trust me, it isn't because they're feeling generous. They know that if they don't pay $100 for that vaccine, there will be a lot of situations where they'll be paying $50k to keep somebody in the ICU for a week. Unless you like the idea of spending a week in the ICU while your family frets for your life, chances are you should consider that a good investment as well.
The reason the "government/medical complex" is so in favor of sticking people with needles is because they work so well. Vaccines usually have effectiveness close to 100% and cost $100 or less most of the time. The next best kinds of treatments have much lower success rates and cost much more. Most drugs might have a 40% success rate, compared to 30% for a placebo. Surgery might have a 95% success rate in many cases, but at a cost of $100k and a risk that you die before you make it to the hospital to have the surgery in the first place. A vaccine stops a disease before it ever affects you in the first place.
Anyone who's more willing to listen to a centerfold model/actress for medical advice deserves what they get.
I do feel bad for their children.
And what of the children of others who are affected?
If an adult or child who is has pertussis coughs and some infant less than six months old inhales, then that infant is at risk of contracting the disease, with potentially devestating results. That infant is guaranteed to not be vaccinated, since those most vulnerable to pertussis are not able to tolerate the vaccine. The vaccine can't be given until an infant is six months old.
Now, pertussis can kill older children too, so the vaccine does benefit them. However, in many cases we don't get vaccinated to protect ourselves, but to protect others. This is not unlike recommendations by doctors that boys be vaccinated against HPV, despite the fact that the vaccine confers no benefits to them and even has risks. Vaccines are as much about society as the individual.
If you have your vaccine, your kids have their vaccine, what do you worry about?
Here is the problem with that line of argument:
1. I might not have the vaccine, and neither might my kids. Either can happen due to medical reasons completely beyond anybody's control. In this situation, your chances of getting a disease are strongly influenced by voluntary decisions by others to not vaccinate.
2. I might have the vaccine, and yet I can still get sick and die from the disease the vaccine is designed to protect against. Vaccines are not 100% effective, and they never will be.
Both of these situations come up fairly rarely, but statistically they matter. Let's suppose each group is 1% of the population. Now let's consider two worlds:
In world #1 vaccination is mandatory except for medical reasons. In this world 99% of the population is vaccinated, and 1% of that group is vulnerable without realizing it. Now a random sick person enters the population. Chances are they will not spread the disease much, since only 2% of the people they run into are vulnerable. The disease is contained, and not much happens.
In world #2 vaccination is voluntary. In this world 60% of the population is vaccinated, and 1% of that group is vulnerable without realizing it. Now a random sick person enters the population, and 40.6% of the population around them is vulnerable, so an epidemic breaks out. Within the area of the epidemic (just an entire town if you're lucky) the 39% of the population that chose to not be vaccinated gets sick, as does the 1% who couldn't be vaccinated, as does an extra 0.6% of the total population (people who did get vaccinated but were not protected).
So, that 2% is protected in world #1, and vulnerable in world #2.
Now, in the perfect "libertarian" paradise we can then all go to court and sue each other (well, I guess you sue the estates of the dead people) and vaccine manufacturers (who are guilty I guess of not achieving perfection), and lots of lawyers get rich, and plenty of money changes hands. Nothing changes the fact that there are lots of sick/dead people in a completely preventable calamity, with 1.6% of the entire population of the area impacted despite not having made any personal choice to expose themselves to that risk.
Now let's step back further and consider that those who aren't vaccinated often don't make this choice for themselves in the first place - their parents make the choice for them.
I used libertarian in quotes up there as I don't really see this as a legitimate libertarian position. It really sounds more like anarchy. Most libertarians consider it a fundamental purpose of government to ensure that people are secure in their freedoms of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. I'd be the first to agree that government should not protect people from themselves. However, in this case we're talking about protecting people from the actions of others, which is pretty much the job description for the police.
But in this case, if you are vaccinated and they are not, and they get sick you are still fine because you have been vaccinated.
Just because you are vaccinated doesn't mean that you're immune. Vaccines have a failure rate as well. If everybody is vaccinated it doesn't really matter much, since 98% vaccination is about as good as 100% due to herd immunity. However, If there is an epidemic of polio or whatever going around because we're only 75% vaccinated then an extra 2% of the population getting it is a big deal - especially if these are individuals who didn't chose this for themselves.
in the case of someone who chooses not to be vaccinated getting someone who is yet able to be sick and possibly having them die, i consider that knowingly putting someone at risk of bodily harm and even death, and i believe we already have laws on the books to deal with that.
First, those laws are never enforced in these cases.
Second, your proposal is to let people create a situation where their negligence can kill a bunch of people, and then punishing them for it. Wouldn't it make a whole lot more sense to just prevent all those people from dying, rather than simply having the feel-good measure of taking vengeance? Your argument actually highlights a big problem with our justice system - it focuses too much on effects, and not enough on causes. If I intentionally point a gun at somebody and pull the trigger, does it really matter whether I hit or miss? Killing somebody shouldn't even be a crime - simply attempting to do so should be, or acting with such negligence that a life could have been lost.
If choosing to not be vaccinated truly is criminal negligence, then it should be punished/prevented before it results in loss of life. For a vaccine with a demonstrated good safety profile and the potential to prevent serious injury or death, I don't see how parental preference can even be considered.
Is there proof or merely inference that the owners directly ordered the captain to make this call?
That is the wrong standard to apply.
The question is whether the owners rewarded people who made calls like this, and whether they punished people who made calls like this when it didn't result in disaster.
Suppose I hire 100 people to do somewhat dangerous work. I supply safety equipment and issue orders that it be used. However, the safety equipment tends to slow the workers down. Then every week I fire and replace the 3 slowest workers. I do not punish anybody for not using safety equipment. Then a disaster happens, and somebody is severely injured and was found to not be wearing their safety equipment. I claim innocence, since I supplied the equipment and even ordered people to wear it. However, the fact is that I created the work environment where nobody wears the equipment through how I chose to enforce policies.
Lax safety standards don't come about because bosses tell people to cut corners. They happen because bosses do not punish people for cutting corners (either failing to detect problems, or failing to take action).
How does a US court expect to enforce its decision in Germany?
Simple, they figure out how much MS lost in Germany, and fine Motorola for it in the US (plus punitive damages). Money is fungible, so MS comes out ahead just the same.
You're absolutely right, but while the Germans couldn't care less, Motorola sure could. If they win in Germany and MS suffers a loss, the US court could just force them to pay for it in the US.
Conflicting rulings from foreign courts are hardly new - companies just have to pick and choose where they want to do business when it happens. When that is a choice between the US and German markets, it isn't an easy choice to make.
I can't wait to see it, I can't wait to see a seething German judge issuing an arrest warrant for US judge in contempt.
Other than reducing the vacation travel options for the US judge, this would have no effect.
Alternatively, and somewhat less hilariously, the German judge might just pass the order banning the sale of Windows phones (I believe) and order the authorities to enforce it, leaving Motorola with clean hands in the US court.
At which point MS will complain that they're losing $100M/yr in Germany, and the US court will tell Motorola to write them a check for 3x that.
The only way that the German court has any real power here is if the business done by MS in Germany is much larger than the business done by Motorola in the US. Otherwise any penalty they impose will just be undone on the other side of the ocean.
Of course the German court can't tell Microsoft what to do in a US court.
Sure they can. Then everybody has a choice - tick off the German government, or tick off the US government. If 99% of the relative market share and capital is in the US, then you'd probably rather tick off the German government and ask the US court to force your competitor to reimburse you for any penalties the German government imposes on you.
So the US judge is trying to overrule the German court which clearly is illegal.
By what law, and in what jurisdiction? I am not aware of any US law that says that a US court can't punish somebody for something they do overseas, even if a foreign court finds their behavior OK. Since this is a US court, only US law matters.
The German court of course is free to punish MS - there is nothing the US court can do to prevent that. However, it is entirely possible that the US court might force Motorola to reimburse MS for any gains they make overseas.
I largely tend to agree, but there are some disadvantages of a Netbook:
1. They usually require some level of configuration when you provision them. 2. It is easy to store and work with local data, which means that not all your data will be someplace safe if something bad happens.
I've tinkered with my cr-48 here and there, and one thing that is nice is that I ever mess things up too much I just reimage the thing - takes 15 minutes. Then I turn it on, log in just like I do any other time I turn it on, and in about 60 seconds everything looks exactly how it looked before I reimaged it (minus whatever I messed up by hacking on it).
If you can run a business purely on the web, Chrome OS actually looks like a pretty nice solution. The problem is that web-based apps are pretty limited right now. FOSS options for web-based apps are also quite limited - good luck finding a decent web-based email client that isn't proprietary. The closest you'll find are squirrelmail and roundcube, and neither can hold a candle to gmail.
Wow, the cr-48 is already obsolete? It is only 1.5 years old.
So, is the message that companies shouldn't buy chromebooks unless they want to have an annual hardware replacement cycle? Considering my employer won't replace anything less than 4 years old, and doesn't replace stuff older than that unless it breaks, good luck with that strategy.
No argument that a slippery slope exists. However, I don't really see any alternative. The slippery slope goes two ways - refuse to regulate vaccination one day, and suddenly all your neighbors own nuclear weapons. After all, a compromise in-between is apparently impossible to achieve by your line of argument.
Are you advocating that we should eliminate the police and military? That your only protection from my stopping by in the middle of the night and killing you to take your possessions is your own personal weapons cache and a set of watches through the night? And what happens when I have more thugs working for me than you have working for you? After all, I know when I need to employ thugs, and you do not. If your solution is to form a neighborhood watch, congratulations, you just invented the government.
I don't have access to the raw data, but no vaccine is approved for use on the market if the benefits are significantly better than the risks. Any time a person who takes a vaccine ends up with some problem (whether or not there is a known causal relationship) this gets tracked for possible trends. That actually applies to all drugs.
1. This IS a matter of public safety. Your choice to not vaccinate your kids can potentially increase my own risk of getting some disease. I might not be vaccinated against something due to an allergy, or other contraindication. Or, maybe I was vaccinated but I was one of those rare people that did not receive immunity from the vaccine. With vaccination there is safety in numbers, so these small corner cases don't have much impact as long as everybody else gets vaccinated.
2. I don't see the point in letting parents make a choice without punishing them, but then punishing them if that choice results in a bad outcome. If the risks that choice brings are unacceptable, then outlaw the choice, not the consequences. This is like telling people that they can drive drunk as long as nobody gets killed, or letting somebody off the hook for a botched assassination attempt because they missed their target.
And it isn't even just the children of those parents, but sometimes the children of other parents who want their kids to be vaccinated, but for any number of reasons it just hasn't happened (too young, allergies, etc).
This isn't unlike antibiotic abuse - your decisions affect my health, and that means that what you do with your life is my business in this domain.
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Well, often the accountants are short-sighted, but sometimes they really do have a point.
Whenever you make a big investment, a big factor in the decision is how long it will last. In the past software upgrades were not factored into these decisions. Suppose I want to buy an MRI machine for $500k. That's a lot of money, but the scientist in charge says that it is worth it because the machine will last 25 years, and the value it creates makes the investment worthwhile. The accountants attack the math mercilessly and they agree. So, in comes the MRI machine, along with a fancy controller that runs Windows XP. Then in 10 years corporate IT comes along and says that XP is no good, and the computer needs to be upgraded. The scientist points out that the controller software only works with XP, and they checked and an updated version is not available for Win7. Then corporate IT makes a few phone calls and happily reports back to the scientist that they are mistaken, the vendor has a nice fancy piece of Win7 software, and they just need to upgrade to a newer MRI to use it. At this point the accountants get quite angry, because spending another $500k just to do a software upgrade doesn't make sense, and if a 10 year lifetime were anticipated they'd never have authorized buying the machine in the first place.
Modern IT practices often result in writing off capital investments that have substantial remaining book value. That is something that makes accountants cringe. And it is also something that makes them even more reluctant to invest in IT. Sometimes I'm not convinced this is always the wrong decision. I've found that keeping things simple is often a LOT more important than making them complete.
I might not have the vaccine, and neither might my kids.
- well that is YOUR problem, not a problem that government is supposed to be "fixing".
I suppose it is my problem if my next door neighbor hires a bunch of thugs to steal my car? What makes the latter a problem that the government is supposed to fix, and not the former?
strongly influenced by voluntary decisions by others to not vaccinate.
- it's their choice. It's their bodies.
How about abortions, do you want government to control who gets them and who doesn't, if they are legal at all or not?
Well, that's opening a can of worms, but I maintain that the government has the right to restrict the actions of those who cause harm to others. In this case we're talking about harm to an unborn child, so I'm fine with the government outlawing abortion except where the life of the mother is at stake (since in that case we're weighing life against life and not life against personal convenience).
On the other side of the fence, I'm also fine with the government outlawing conception without a license as well. That makes the issue of abortion fairly moot, since it is pretty unlikely that somebody who went to all the trouble to get permission to breed would then neglect the child they already so heavily invested in. Criteria for such a license is the subject of an entirely different debate, and I realize it is a can of worms. However, if you want to protect children you're generally better off regulating who becomes parents than trying to control what they do after the fact.
I might have the vaccine, and yet I can still get sick and die from the disease the vaccine is designed to protect against. Vaccines are not 100% effective, and they never will be.
- do you walk around with a helmet on? Because you know, something may fall on your head too. Somebody can run into you!
In this case, my choice of wearing a helmet only impacts my health, and not others. That makes them none of your concern. However, your choice to vaccinate or not DOES impact the health of others, which makes them my concern.
Your examples, I am not going to quote, I'll just say this about them: I do not want to live in a world where people are forced to do things to themselves. It's a freedom concept you are missing.
Most would disagree with you to some degree. I understand that there is a difference between forcing somebody to take a positive action like vaccination vs forcing somebody not to take a negative action like not killing their neighbors. However, the end results are the same in both cases, and the means are not unreasonable, so I think the end does justify the means in this case.
Now, in the perfect "libertarian" paradise we can then all go to court and sue each other
- you can't win a lawsuit against somebody just because they sneezed on you on a street.
All the more reason to just prevent the problem in the first place. The threat of civil lawsuit is not sufficient deterrent to cause behavior in the public interest.
I used libertarian in quotes up there as I don't really see this as a legitimate libertarian position.
- being a 'libertarian' implies having a position, as in a principle. I don't think you ever had them, people don't drop principles just because their circumstances change. It means you never understood what the hell you thought you were.
Where do I show conflicting principles in my argument? I haven't dropped any principles because of changing circumstances - my principles are just different from yours. I'd argue that my principles are fairly libertarian, and so would you, which just means we disagree on the definition of the word. That's OK, my principles say that you're welcome to be wrong in this case without any interference from me. :)
Hey, I couldn't agree more with you. I wasn't trying to suggest that what the US court was doing was "right" - only that it was likely to be fairly effective. People are asking "how can a US court issue orders about what happens in Germany?" I answered that question. I think what they really mean to ask is "should a US court be able to issue orders about what happens in Germany?"
Most people would answer with an idealistic "of course not" up until the point where they are personally affected by some situation where a local court takes their side and abandoning this ideal lets them get an advantage. It is easy to be against bribing congressmen when you're not a congressman. Integrity is demonstrated when you're actually in a position to benefit from unethical behavior and yet choose not to do so.
Under US law the vaccine manufacturers already do pay for this, under a mandatory insurance system similar to workers compensation.
I'm not sure there is a better alternative. They are knowingly selling a product that kills people, but the reason it is sold is because it saves more people that it kills. The tort system does not handle this sort of situation well. That's one of the reasons self-driving cars will have trouble taking off. If you save 10,000 lives per year, but take 5, you get punished harshly for the 5 despite the fact that those 5 would have been even more likely to die had it not been for your actions.
Too much of our legal system is concerned with effects of decisions, rather than the decisions themselves. If I aim a gun at you and pull the trigger, why should it matter whether I hit or miss?
Keeping sick people quarantined is at odds with our highly competitive culture.
I can take a day off from work anytime I want if I claim to be sick, and generally speaking it won't be questioned. However, I'm still expected to deliver all my work on-time, which means I end up behind. I'm effectively punished even if I just use vacation time.
We've moved to a world where people aren't just paid to show up, but they're accountable for results. In such a world you put yourself at a competitive disadvantage if you just check out for a day. If you show up at work you get more done than if you don't in many cases. Now, that puts everybody else at risk, but since you're evaluated on a bell curve against them it is actually to your advantage to make everybody else in your department sick.
With kids it is no different - you miss school, you still take the same test as everybody who was there. We even give awards for perfect attendance, suggesting that this is something that is within an individual's control.
What is really sick is the whole system...
Your argument points out exactly why you shouldn't be given this choice in the first place.
Let's assume for the sake of argument that your numbers and logic (in the individual case) are 100% correct.
You are clearly doing yourself and your child a service by not getting vaccinated. Thus you make this decision.
The situation would be no different for any other parent or child, so they should make the same decision.
Now we live in a world where NOBODY is vaccinated, and now the chances of us all getting exposed aren't the hypothetical 10% you tossed out, but the near 100% rates during childhood that existed before the vaccine was available.
You just illustrated the tragedy of the commons, and an externality. If we all make the best decision in our own interests then we all perish together. When situations like this come up, the best solution usually tends to be to legislate the decision away from individuals, so that all benefit.
Who trumpeted that vaccinations are 100% safe?
Why does blood always have to be on somebody's hands? The fact is that giving a child a vaccine is safer for all involved than not giving them the vaccine. The fact that it doesn't always end well doesn't change the fact that on average it ends better.
The focus should be on making the right decision in the general case, and not the specific outcomes. You can take a vaccine and die, or not take a vaccine and never get sick. Anecdotes shouldn't be used as a substitute for data. The fact is that clinical studies show that certain vaccines are both safe and effective when used as recommended, and as a result they should be used.
That being said the government/medical complex is partially responsible by requiring so many vaccinations.
Uh, vaccines are probably the safest and most effective form of medicine we have. If there were 40 vaccines with good safety profiles, then chances are it would be to the benefit of all for people to take all 40 of them (vaccine recommendations aren't always universal - medical evidence should of course always be our guide).
Why do you think the greedy bastards who run insurance companies are happy to shell out $100 for a vaccine injection? Trust me, it isn't because they're feeling generous. They know that if they don't pay $100 for that vaccine, there will be a lot of situations where they'll be paying $50k to keep somebody in the ICU for a week. Unless you like the idea of spending a week in the ICU while your family frets for your life, chances are you should consider that a good investment as well.
The reason the "government/medical complex" is so in favor of sticking people with needles is because they work so well. Vaccines usually have effectiveness close to 100% and cost $100 or less most of the time. The next best kinds of treatments have much lower success rates and cost much more. Most drugs might have a 40% success rate, compared to 30% for a placebo. Surgery might have a 95% success rate in many cases, but at a cost of $100k and a risk that you die before you make it to the hospital to have the surgery in the first place. A vaccine stops a disease before it ever affects you in the first place.
Anyone who's more willing to listen to a centerfold model/actress for medical advice deserves what they get.
I do feel bad for their children.
And what of the children of others who are affected?
If an adult or child who is has pertussis coughs and some infant less than six months old inhales, then that infant is at risk of contracting the disease, with potentially devestating results. That infant is guaranteed to not be vaccinated, since those most vulnerable to pertussis are not able to tolerate the vaccine. The vaccine can't be given until an infant is six months old.
Now, pertussis can kill older children too, so the vaccine does benefit them. However, in many cases we don't get vaccinated to protect ourselves, but to protect others. This is not unlike recommendations by doctors that boys be vaccinated against HPV, despite the fact that the vaccine confers no benefits to them and even has risks. Vaccines are as much about society as the individual.
If you have your vaccine, your kids have their vaccine, what do you worry about?
Here is the problem with that line of argument:
1. I might not have the vaccine, and neither might my kids. Either can happen due to medical reasons completely beyond anybody's control. In this situation, your chances of getting a disease are strongly influenced by voluntary decisions by others to not vaccinate.
2. I might have the vaccine, and yet I can still get sick and die from the disease the vaccine is designed to protect against. Vaccines are not 100% effective, and they never will be.
Both of these situations come up fairly rarely, but statistically they matter. Let's suppose each group is 1% of the population. Now let's consider two worlds:
In world #1 vaccination is mandatory except for medical reasons. In this world 99% of the population is vaccinated, and 1% of that group is vulnerable without realizing it. Now a random sick person enters the population. Chances are they will not spread the disease much, since only 2% of the people they run into are vulnerable. The disease is contained, and not much happens.
In world #2 vaccination is voluntary. In this world 60% of the population is vaccinated, and 1% of that group is vulnerable without realizing it. Now a random sick person enters the population, and 40.6% of the population around them is vulnerable, so an epidemic breaks out. Within the area of the epidemic (just an entire town if you're lucky) the 39% of the population that chose to not be vaccinated gets sick, as does the 1% who couldn't be vaccinated, as does an extra 0.6% of the total population (people who did get vaccinated but were not protected).
So, that 2% is protected in world #1, and vulnerable in world #2.
Now, in the perfect "libertarian" paradise we can then all go to court and sue each other (well, I guess you sue the estates of the dead people) and vaccine manufacturers (who are guilty I guess of not achieving perfection), and lots of lawyers get rich, and plenty of money changes hands. Nothing changes the fact that there are lots of sick/dead people in a completely preventable calamity, with 1.6% of the entire population of the area impacted despite not having made any personal choice to expose themselves to that risk.
Now let's step back further and consider that those who aren't vaccinated often don't make this choice for themselves in the first place - their parents make the choice for them.
I used libertarian in quotes up there as I don't really see this as a legitimate libertarian position. It really sounds more like anarchy. Most libertarians consider it a fundamental purpose of government to ensure that people are secure in their freedoms of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. I'd be the first to agree that government should not protect people from themselves. However, in this case we're talking about protecting people from the actions of others, which is pretty much the job description for the police.
But in this case, if you are vaccinated and they are not, and they get sick you are still fine because you have been vaccinated.
Just because you are vaccinated doesn't mean that you're immune. Vaccines have a failure rate as well. If everybody is vaccinated it doesn't really matter much, since 98% vaccination is about as good as 100% due to herd immunity. However, If there is an epidemic of polio or whatever going around because we're only 75% vaccinated then an extra 2% of the population getting it is a big deal - especially if these are individuals who didn't chose this for themselves.
in the case of someone who chooses not to be vaccinated getting someone who is yet able to be sick and possibly having them die, i consider that knowingly putting someone at risk of bodily harm and even death, and i believe we already have laws on the books to deal with that.
First, those laws are never enforced in these cases.
Second, your proposal is to let people create a situation where their negligence can kill a bunch of people, and then punishing them for it. Wouldn't it make a whole lot more sense to just prevent all those people from dying, rather than simply having the feel-good measure of taking vengeance? Your argument actually highlights a big problem with our justice system - it focuses too much on effects, and not enough on causes. If I intentionally point a gun at somebody and pull the trigger, does it really matter whether I hit or miss? Killing somebody shouldn't even be a crime - simply attempting to do so should be, or acting with such negligence that a life could have been lost.
If choosing to not be vaccinated truly is criminal negligence, then it should be punished/prevented before it results in loss of life. For a vaccine with a demonstrated good safety profile and the potential to prevent serious injury or death, I don't see how parental preference can even be considered.
Is there proof or merely inference that the owners directly ordered the captain to make this call?
That is the wrong standard to apply.
The question is whether the owners rewarded people who made calls like this, and whether they punished people who made calls like this when it didn't result in disaster.
Suppose I hire 100 people to do somewhat dangerous work. I supply safety equipment and issue orders that it be used. However, the safety equipment tends to slow the workers down. Then every week I fire and replace the 3 slowest workers. I do not punish anybody for not using safety equipment. Then a disaster happens, and somebody is severely injured and was found to not be wearing their safety equipment. I claim innocence, since I supplied the equipment and even ordered people to wear it. However, the fact is that I created the work environment where nobody wears the equipment through how I chose to enforce policies.
Lax safety standards don't come about because bosses tell people to cut corners. They happen because bosses do not punish people for cutting corners (either failing to detect problems, or failing to take action).
How does a US court expect to enforce its decision in Germany?
Simple, they figure out how much MS lost in Germany, and fine Motorola for it in the US (plus punitive damages). Money is fungible, so MS comes out ahead just the same.
You're absolutely right, but while the Germans couldn't care less, Motorola sure could. If they win in Germany and MS suffers a loss, the US court could just force them to pay for it in the US.
Conflicting rulings from foreign courts are hardly new - companies just have to pick and choose where they want to do business when it happens. When that is a choice between the US and German markets, it isn't an easy choice to make.
I can't wait to see it, I can't wait to see a seething German judge issuing an arrest warrant for US judge in contempt.
Other than reducing the vacation travel options for the US judge, this would have no effect.
Alternatively, and somewhat less hilariously, the German judge might just pass the order banning the sale of Windows phones (I believe) and order the authorities to enforce it, leaving Motorola with clean hands in the US court.
At which point MS will complain that they're losing $100M/yr in Germany, and the US court will tell Motorola to write them a check for 3x that.
The only way that the German court has any real power here is if the business done by MS in Germany is much larger than the business done by Motorola in the US. Otherwise any penalty they impose will just be undone on the other side of the ocean.
Of course the German court can't tell Microsoft what to do in a US court.
Sure they can. Then everybody has a choice - tick off the German government, or tick off the US government. If 99% of the relative market share and capital is in the US, then you'd probably rather tick off the German government and ask the US court to force your competitor to reimburse you for any penalties the German government imposes on you.
So the US judge is trying to overrule the German court which clearly is illegal.
By what law, and in what jurisdiction? I am not aware of any US law that says that a US court can't punish somebody for something they do overseas, even if a foreign court finds their behavior OK. Since this is a US court, only US law matters.
The German court of course is free to punish MS - there is nothing the US court can do to prevent that. However, it is entirely possible that the US court might force Motorola to reimburse MS for any gains they make overseas.
I largely tend to agree, but there are some disadvantages of a Netbook:
1. They usually require some level of configuration when you provision them.
2. It is easy to store and work with local data, which means that not all your data will be someplace safe if something bad happens.
I've tinkered with my cr-48 here and there, and one thing that is nice is that I ever mess things up too much I just reimage the thing - takes 15 minutes. Then I turn it on, log in just like I do any other time I turn it on, and in about 60 seconds everything looks exactly how it looked before I reimaged it (minus whatever I messed up by hacking on it).
If you can run a business purely on the web, Chrome OS actually looks like a pretty nice solution. The problem is that web-based apps are pretty limited right now. FOSS options for web-based apps are also quite limited - good luck finding a decent web-based email client that isn't proprietary. The closest you'll find are squirrelmail and roundcube, and neither can hold a candle to gmail.
Wow, the cr-48 is already obsolete? It is only 1.5 years old.
So, is the message that companies shouldn't buy chromebooks unless they want to have an annual hardware replacement cycle? Considering my employer won't replace anything less than 4 years old, and doesn't replace stuff older than that unless it breaks, good luck with that strategy.
These aren't cell phones we're talking about...
No argument that a slippery slope exists. However, I don't really see any alternative. The slippery slope goes two ways - refuse to regulate vaccination one day, and suddenly all your neighbors own nuclear weapons. After all, a compromise in-between is apparently impossible to achieve by your line of argument.
So, what is the alternative? Can I design and test nuclear weapons in my basement without regard for neighborhood safety?
Are you advocating that we should eliminate the police and military? That your only protection from my stopping by in the middle of the night and killing you to take your possessions is your own personal weapons cache and a set of watches through the night? And what happens when I have more thugs working for me than you have working for you? After all, I know when I need to employ thugs, and you do not. If your solution is to form a neighborhood watch, congratulations, you just invented the government.
I don't have access to the raw data, but no vaccine is approved for use on the market if the benefits are significantly better than the risks. Any time a person who takes a vaccine ends up with some problem (whether or not there is a known causal relationship) this gets tracked for possible trends. That actually applies to all drugs.
So, two problems with that line of argument:
1. This IS a matter of public safety. Your choice to not vaccinate your kids can potentially increase my own risk of getting some disease. I might not be vaccinated against something due to an allergy, or other contraindication. Or, maybe I was vaccinated but I was one of those rare people that did not receive immunity from the vaccine. With vaccination there is safety in numbers, so these small corner cases don't have much impact as long as everybody else gets vaccinated.
2. I don't see the point in letting parents make a choice without punishing them, but then punishing them if that choice results in a bad outcome. If the risks that choice brings are unacceptable, then outlaw the choice, not the consequences. This is like telling people that they can drive drunk as long as nobody gets killed, or letting somebody off the hook for a botched assassination attempt because they missed their target.
And it isn't even just the children of those parents, but sometimes the children of other parents who want their kids to be vaccinated, but for any number of reasons it just hasn't happened (too young, allergies, etc).
This isn't unlike antibiotic abuse - your decisions affect my health, and that means that what you do with your life is my business in this domain.