The only issue with that plan is that while in theory you can get the coverage with 1/4th the towers you might not be able to get the capcity.
In many areas existing cell phone providers have to put in more towers than needed for coverage just so that they can run everything at reduced power and get less interference.
If you have 22MHz in bandwidth, and split it up among 1000 users, now each have 22KHz of bandwidth - which is probably marginal for voice (I am not an expert). If you have 100,000 users each would only get 200Hz of bandwidth, and I don't think even Google will find some way to pull that off.
There are a lot of cell phones in a 30 mile radius.
The reality is that you'll more towers than that. Granted, the 30 mile spacing would be really nice for rural coverage.
Yes, but in the federal government costing money to fix is considered a good point. It means overtime, contractor selection (translate - kickbacks), increased budget, and maybe an opportunity for the computer security guys to expand their turf slightly. The only issue is whether after spending this money they'll actually fix the problem - if they don't then they have an execuse to repeat the whole exercise the next year...
Uh, 20 years ago ALL the enterprises in Russia were state-owned.
The problem with state-owned enterprises is that they tend to not work very well.
Now, if you're talking about an occasional enterprise that doesn't work very well privately (roads, parts of utilities, etc) you probably have to live with it (best option available). But in those cases the 90% of industry that is private has no trouble raising enough revenue to pay for the rest.
Once 95% of your industry is government-owned, give it 50 years and you're going to be so far in the dark ages you'll look like...well...Russia.
1. Booting the windows XP cd and running the recovery repair mode. Or just wipe and reinstall.
2. Opening up your mp3 player. Unsolder the FLASH memory from the PCB. Place FLASH memory on a programmer. Reprogram the chip. Solder back into PCB. Stuff all the parts back into the case. Pray it works.
Bricking usually refers to rendering a piece of hardware unusable without taking it apart. And I'm not talking just loss of data - total inability to ever use the device again without replacing chips or taking similar measures.
If you can restore the device to factory condition using commonly-available hardware and instructions found online then you haven't really bricked it.
A very valid point - this same sort of issue could happen just as easily on linux unless you're using a package manager that protects against file collisions (not many do to my knowledge - gentoo does if you enable optional features). With collision protection you'd get an error pointing out that the fancy-game and system-bootstrap packages are both trying to own init or rc or whatever.
Re:Leaving money on the table is not always bad
on
What If Yoda Ran IBM?
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· Score: 4, Insightful
A company like IBM can add some significant value to large customers:
1. They have expertise in the kinds of hardware you'd find in a huge corporate datacenter. Your local small business probably doesn't need an EMC SAN, but a credit card company would. When this kind of stuff breaks you need major help in a major way - and you pay them in gold.
2. They can handle enormous projects and be a single-point-of-accountability. Just write an eight-figure check to IBM and your problem goes away. And you have somebody to sue if it doesn't. Not just anybody can burn through that much cash and actually deliver something.
Often big companies are a big waste to deal with, but in the right circumstances they are the best choice.
For example, I've had two occasions to have to work with a consultant from Oracle. Both times they were insanely expensive, but both times they were worth the expense. It just doesn't make sense to have that kind of detailed expertise on-staff at all times, but when you really need them it is amazing who they can dig up. I saw one fix an extremely obscure file corruption on a VAX-based database product that hadn't been sold in about a decade. I consider myself fairly skilled in tinkering with software, but I wouldn't have known where to begin. They got it up and running in what seemed like a few hours, and educated some of our staff on what they did. They also gave a few recommendations that kept the problem from recurring. In the end they were well worth their price.
If you're a small business you're almost better off finding somebody local - not necessarily a single person, but a small IT firm that will take care of you long-term. IBM doesn't hire people from your neighborhood - they'd burn your budget just flying people in. You just have to be careful that you don't end up with somebody without the discipline to solve your problems for the long-term (tossed-together solutions are just asking for trouble).
Uh, if you don't like the idea of discriminatory pricing, then you probably won't like OLPC. I think the people making it will charge double-price to individuals, with the extra money going to donate one overseas. A nice gesture on one hand, but it means that fewer will get sold overall which means higher prices and thus less children with one overseas...
Despite the issues with many publicly-traded companies the fact remains that they actually do turn out productions. The mortgage bubble didn't result in my not being able to buy anything the last time I went to Walmart.
Sure, private industry does have it issues, but simply because neither private nor public solutions are perfect doesn't mean that they are equally bad for all things. They both have their pros and cons and in many cases replacing one with the other is likely to yield a significant improvement. The private solution is only likely to improve things if there is competition - that is what keeps private industry honest. (Well, except in private industries that live on government handouts - see the airline industry. It would run efficiently if the government just let half of the companies go out of business.)
I don't think he was opining about converting it to a satellite. He was questioning why it wasn't designed this way in the first place. If the thing had been built just to be a standalone satellite we obviously wouldn't have any kind of conversion/damage issues to deal with. The question is whether it would have cost a whole lot more to do it this way up-front.
The first hypothesis can be tested, whether by observation or by directed experiment. (In particular, it is possible to check for contrary evidence: if any is found, there's something wrong with the hypothesis, and it can be either revised or rejected.) The second hypothesis can never be tested as it is in principle impossible to do so. (In particular, it is impossible to check for contrary evidence as there is no phenomenon that would ever weaken the hypothesis in the eyes of any of its adherents.) By virtue of these facts, one is science; the other is, at best, a distraction. QED.
Uh, I think you've lost me there. How exactly can you distinguish whether some particular change was the result of a random or non-random/directed process?
I'm fine with the argument that you can't test ID by virtue of the fact that you can't create a reproducible experiment to show whether it happens or not. However, there is no experiment that you can create to show whether a particular event in the past occurred due to random chance. You could prove that it is possible that the event COULD have been the result of random chance, but you could never prove that it actually did happen that way.
My big issue with the whole evolution-is-science-ID-isn't argument is that the ID camp isn't debating whether evolution happens - it is debating whether it DID happen. That isn't a question of science - it is a question of history. There is no scientific experiment that you can perform to determine whether the Romans or the Persians triumphed in some particular battle - it is a question of what actually happened and not what could have happened. At best science can be used to determine whether a particular evolutionary process could have occurred, not whether it did occur.
Think of it this way - you drop some ice cubes on the floor and go out for a few hours, and come home to a puddle of water. Scientifically you can reproduce that ice cubes left on their own melt into puddles of water. However, there is no way to know without additional evidence whether this is what happened to your particular ice cubes - somebody could have broken in, picked up your ice cubes, and spilled some water in their place. You can argue Occam's razor and all that, but the fact is that the scenario I described COULD have happened.
Personally I find it amusing that people get so worked up arguing these kinds of semantics. The only thing that annoys me is the thought of who is paying all these folks to argue about this stuff (on both sides). It seems like rather than engaging in legitimate discussion everybody is just looking for legal loopholes to get their particular viewpoint promoted more strongly in schools (and that goes for both sides).
Uh, your point seems to be that it requires a knowledge of evolution to study the evolution of some biological system. Is anybody actually disputing this here?
The other guy is stating that quite a bit of work in biology can be performed without any knowledge of evolution at all. It all depends on what you're trying to accomplish.
Personally, I tend to agree with him, and I'm hardly a flaming anti-evolutionist. Evolution is certainly an important subject for any biologist/biochemist to understand. Is it the single most important concept in all of biology? I think that is questionable. I'm sure I wouldn't get tenure at Harvard professing something like this, but a lot of good science gets done outside of Harvard...:)
It is actually debatable whether people who buy software own it or are licensing it. Sure, the EULA states that you don't own it, but whether that is binding with respect to that statement hasn't really been well-tested. Traditionally the way copyright has been handled in the courts was to treat a sale as a sale - you own it, but you can't copy it. When one person hands money to somebody else in exchange for a box, the normal way of handling it is like any other sale.
Now, if you're talking about complex multi-million-dollar licensing deals or anything at a corporate level the law would probably change views. However, when you're dealing with consumer products the courts usually apply consumer-oriented law. In the same way the recourse available when company A sells a highrise to company B is different than what might be available when somebody buys a single family home to live in (the law protects consumers more than it does corporations, since the latter is expected to perform more due-diligence).
Basically, the only reason that software vendors haven't gotten clobbered in courts regarding the sale-vs-license issue is because they don't push their luck - they generally don't try to restrict consumers from doing stuff that a sale would normally permit them from doing. If a major software vendor tries to greatly restrict what users can do with the software that they've paid for they could end up facing a class action lawsuit regardless of what the EULA clearly states.
Think of it like buying a house. I put a clause in the agreement of sale stating that I'm not responsible in any way for anything that happens to the next owners regardless of my knowledge / ability to prevent / etc. We both sign it. Two weeks after you move in a kid gets killed by a faulty wiring problem. It can be proven that I knew about the defect and didn't disclose it. If I reach a settlement with the new owner then the clause in the agreement of sale will escape court scrutiny, but if I try to point to the clause and get out of it then there is a good chance that a court will void that clause. There are a number of circumstances that would make a court lean either way, but in general you can't use an agreement to limit liability for serious safety issues unless there is clearly informed consent and some kind of consideration.
And I'm not a lawyer - so don't just take me at my word. The bottom line is that just because you put something on paper doesn't make it stick.
The irony is that even the soviet union was capitalist in a sense. They just didn't trade in cash. The main currency was political power, and the market in political favors worked pretty efficiently.
I'm not worried about capitalism being banned from the Earth - I think it is the most natural form of government and inevitable barring some change to how human brains operate.
Like I said in another message, competing with Capitalists is not necessarily the ideal goal.
Uh, you can't really choose not to compete - unless you restrict the ability of your population to emigrate. Even then you still HAVE to compete, unless you internally possess all the resources necessary to sustain your economy. And even then you're depending on the benevolence of your neighbors not to overrun you.
If you allow free travel then your best and brightest citizens will realize they could be a whole lot better off elsewhere, and they leave. If you don't possess all the resources you need then you find that some capitalist country across the ocean can afford to pay $20/barrel more for oil than you can (because they are more efficient and can make a profit even with a higher cost of raw materials) - and now you can't buy oil.
And eventually, if you isolate yourself for too long, you end up being the Incas in the world of the Europeans. Granted, nuclear weapons may have helped put an end to the arms race, but you'll find yourself conventionally outgunned in every way. Any attempt to maintain parity of arms will bankrupt your economy - since you aren't competitive.
Competition really isn't optional in the modern world. EVERYBODY competes whether they choose to or not - if they opt out they really just lose out. Even the USSR was highly competitive, but it was more about political power and favoritism than money.
You are correct as to the fact that this technology does not predict certainties, but only risks. However, the fundamental issue exists that as knowledge increases, insurance tends to fail. Rates HAVE to be based on known risks or else the industry fails.
You're right of course that it is lousy that people end up paying the price for stuff they have no control over.
As this technology improves the uncertainty of future medical problems will steadily decrease. If the cost of treating those problems does not fall just as quickly, then insurance will rapidly become unaffordable, and socialized medicine will be needed to fill the gap. Remedies like price-fixing or non-discriminatory pricing laws will only cause the industry to fail.
The one hope is that as the ability to predict major health issues goes up the technology to treat those problems will improve as well - at a rate sufficient to contain costs. That would be a win-win for everybody - sure you know you're prone to diabetes, but some genetic therapy will just fix the problem (or whatever the cure ends up being). Costs stay under control and no need for socialized medicine (at least not due to this problem).
Well, ultimately I think that these kinds of advances will inevitably lead to socialized medicine. And I'm actually not a big fan of socialized medicine.
Here's why:
1. If you allow insurance companies to charge based on genetic risk, then people from birth won't get affordable insurance if they're going to have any major health problem. These people will end up being cared for by government.
2. If you allow individuals to find out their genetic risk but keep it secret from insurers, then individuals won't bother getting insurance if they won't get sick, and they'll sign up if they will get sick. This will rapidly bankrupt the insurance industry, and now everybody gets cared for by the government.
It really isn't any kind of conspiracy or anything like that - just a fundamental problem with the whole concept of insurance. Insurance is protection from the unknown. Once ANYBODY knows what the future holds then it can no longer be insured in an financially viable manner.
Socialized medicine doesn't face these issues because it is compulsory - the healthy don't get to opt out of paying for the sick. It has other problems - mainly a lack of personal choice. Some might prefer to spend more for better care, or less for worse care. With socialized medicine, your heath becomes a matter of public priorities, and we can't have those with means getting better treatment than those without means (although it is perfectly fine to give special treatment to politicians/celebreties/etc).
Actually, it isn't anything quite as sinister as people are making it out to be, but rather a fundamental problem with the insurance industry. The purpose of insurance is to protect you against the unknown, and to balance risks across society. Most people don't incur huge health costs before they become old, so this allows everybody to pay in a moderate amount (relatively) and then the few that really need it can spend huge sums.
The whole thing breaks down when health issues are no longer an unknown quantity. And you can't do ANYTHING about it with any form of non-compulsory insurance system. Price fixing doesn't work, nor does preventing price discrimination based on genetic factors.
1. Suppose you prevent price discrimination based on genetic factors. This makes insurance an average cost for everybody. People will look at their own genetic makeup and work out what their expected cost of health maintenance will be. If they are likely to be very healthy they'll just get accident insurance and drop health insurance. If they're likely to get sick they'll buy insurance. Suddenly the insurance rolls get MUCH smaller (most people won't get sick and opt out), and those who stay on the rolls are the most expensive ones to care for. Prices skyrocket until everybody just opts out (the premium prices would be no better than what you'd pay just to personally fund your own care).
2. Suppose you fix prices. Exactly the same thing happens - the healthy drop out and the sick stay in. You go out of business even faster because you can't raise prices as the financials no longer work out.
Imagine being an auto insurer in a world where anybody could tell if they were going to have a car crash a year in advance. It just wouldn't work - nobody would buy your services unless they knew they'd have a crash, and then you'd have to charge the full replacement value as a premium since you know that if they're signing up you're going to have to pay it out.
Once you have a high level of knowledge about the future the only form of "insurance" that works is compulsory insurance - ie tax-funded insurance / socialized medicine. I'm actually opposed to socialized medicine in general, but I do tend to think it will be the only viable option once we can predict major health problems. Even so, I am all for funding advances, as these same advances will tend to lead to the elimination of these health problems entirely which is only a win for society...
I've worked with software vendors that would issue patches in the same day if possible (though a few days was more typical). You could wait a month for the regular release cycle as well and benefit from not having to manage 14,000 individual patch releases a year. They would support just about anything they sold in the last ten years, and backport both bugfixes and minor enhancements anytime it was practical.
They also charged a fortune for their software, maintenance, and support. And their customers happily paid it.
This is one of those industry-specific software packages that just about every major coproation depends on. If you're willing to pay for it you can find companies that will be there when you need them. The software easily pays for itself, and some bugs (security or not) are important enough that you really do want them turned around fast.
Most states that have absentee ballots also allow you to show up and vote in-person, overriding your absentee ballot. If you just allow people to send in more than one ballot to cancel their vote that would solve this problem.
Yes, but in the US a person in the same situation with no medical coverage would have had his acute pneumonia problem dealt with on the spot. The prescription antibiotics might not have been given freely, but those usually aren't very expensive (maybe $50 in total). You'd owe the hospital for the treatment, but you would be alive.
In the UK you could just die waiting to see the doctor depending on the problem.
Again, I'm not saying there isn't significant room for improvement in the US, but the situation for the poor isn't quite as bad as some would have you believe. And what is the point in bothering to get a job if people are just going to hand you food, clothing, shelter, and medicine upon request?
There is a balance. I'm not sure the US has it right, but I'm definitely sure that Europe doesn't...
Yes, but what exactly should the US have done differently?
Suppose you're the head of ASW operations for the task force. You spot a diesel sub headed towards the carrier. You have some choices:
1. Blow up the sub. Not a good move if you don't want a war. 2. Ping away at the sub and try to scare it off. In theory the sub can just ignore you if it wants since it knows you won't do #1. 3. Pretend you don't see it. Enemy gets all cocky but you know that in a real war you could just do #1. 4. Run away at top speed to put distance between the carrier and the sub. This still gives away what you're doing and has the side effect of disrupting whatever you were planning on doing with the carrier.
I'm guessing #3 is the way it would play out. There is no way for anybody to know whether the US spotted the sub early enough to do something about it or not. Ditto for the Aussies. The Chinese don't really know for sure if they snuck up or not, and so they still need to be nervous. The only people who really know what happened is the US Navy, giving them the upper hand.
I'm guessing there is no proof that this is impossible, but there is no proof that it is possible either. In other words, it is an unanswered question; there may be a law waiting to be discovered that it is impossible.
Sure, the proof that it is possible would be somebody doing it. The proof that it is impossible would probably be harder as it is a negative.
While I agree it may be *physically possible* to float in mid air without expending energy, it would require changing the properties of atmospheric air (or finding a way to stop air from being displaced by the denser object.)
It might have nothing to do with air. For example, magnetic levitation requires no energy expenditure, and works just as well in a vacuum as in air. If you had a strong enough magnet you might be able to levitate off of the Earth's magnetic field. I'm guessing a superconductor of sufficient surface area (probably absurdly large) would work as well.
My basic point is that levitation is not impossible in any theoretical sense. It certainly is difficult in an engineering sense, and new physics would probably be needed to make it practical. However, there is no known law of physics that prevents this technology from being created. That makes levitation a far easier problem than it would be if a particular law of physics indicated that it was impossible.
And no, I wouldn't buy stock in any companies purporting to be right around the corner from solving the anti-gravity problem...
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The only issue with that plan is that while in theory you can get the coverage with 1/4th the towers you might not be able to get the capcity.
In many areas existing cell phone providers have to put in more towers than needed for coverage just so that they can run everything at reduced power and get less interference.
If you have 22MHz in bandwidth, and split it up among 1000 users, now each have 22KHz of bandwidth - which is probably marginal for voice (I am not an expert). If you have 100,000 users each would only get 200Hz of bandwidth, and I don't think even Google will find some way to pull that off.
There are a lot of cell phones in a 30 mile radius.
The reality is that you'll more towers than that. Granted, the 30 mile spacing would be really nice for rural coverage.
Yes, but in the federal government costing money to fix is considered a good point. It means overtime, contractor selection (translate - kickbacks), increased budget, and maybe an opportunity for the computer security guys to expand their turf slightly. The only issue is whether after spending this money they'll actually fix the problem - if they don't then they have an execuse to repeat the whole exercise the next year...
They missed the part where somebody puts the whole article up for deletion as He Man is a fictional character and not "noteworthy" enough...
Uh, 20 years ago ALL the enterprises in Russia were state-owned.
The problem with state-owned enterprises is that they tend to not work very well.
Now, if you're talking about an occasional enterprise that doesn't work very well privately (roads, parts of utilities, etc) you probably have to live with it (best option available). But in those cases the 90% of industry that is private has no trouble raising enough revenue to pay for the rest.
Once 95% of your industry is government-owned, give it 50 years and you're going to be so far in the dark ages you'll look like...well...Russia.
Yes, but I think there is a difference between:
1. Booting the windows XP cd and running the recovery repair mode. Or just wipe and reinstall.
2. Opening up your mp3 player. Unsolder the FLASH memory from the PCB. Place FLASH memory on a programmer. Reprogram the chip. Solder back into PCB. Stuff all the parts back into the case. Pray it works.
Bricking usually refers to rendering a piece of hardware unusable without taking it apart. And I'm not talking just loss of data - total inability to ever use the device again without replacing chips or taking similar measures.
If you can restore the device to factory condition using commonly-available hardware and instructions found online then you haven't really bricked it.
A very valid point - this same sort of issue could happen just as easily on linux unless you're using a package manager that protects against file collisions (not many do to my knowledge - gentoo does if you enable optional features). With collision protection you'd get an error pointing out that the fancy-game and system-bootstrap packages are both trying to own init or rc or whatever.
A company like IBM can add some significant value to large customers:
1. They have expertise in the kinds of hardware you'd find in a huge corporate datacenter. Your local small business probably doesn't need an EMC SAN, but a credit card company would. When this kind of stuff breaks you need major help in a major way - and you pay them in gold.
2. They can handle enormous projects and be a single-point-of-accountability. Just write an eight-figure check to IBM and your problem goes away. And you have somebody to sue if it doesn't. Not just anybody can burn through that much cash and actually deliver something.
Often big companies are a big waste to deal with, but in the right circumstances they are the best choice.
For example, I've had two occasions to have to work with a consultant from Oracle. Both times they were insanely expensive, but both times they were worth the expense. It just doesn't make sense to have that kind of detailed expertise on-staff at all times, but when you really need them it is amazing who they can dig up. I saw one fix an extremely obscure file corruption on a VAX-based database product that hadn't been sold in about a decade. I consider myself fairly skilled in tinkering with software, but I wouldn't have known where to begin. They got it up and running in what seemed like a few hours, and educated some of our staff on what they did. They also gave a few recommendations that kept the problem from recurring. In the end they were well worth their price.
If you're a small business you're almost better off finding somebody local - not necessarily a single person, but a small IT firm that will take care of you long-term. IBM doesn't hire people from your neighborhood - they'd burn your budget just flying people in. You just have to be careful that you don't end up with somebody without the discipline to solve your problems for the long-term (tossed-together solutions are just asking for trouble).
The patch isn't a derived work - it would be 100% RH code. RH can distribute it under any license they like.
Now, a patched kernel WOULD be a derived work, and that would have to be GPL.
Anybody can apply a patch to anything without any licensing issues, but you might not be able to redistribute the resulting product.
If RH were distributing a patched kernel not under the GPL, that would definitely be a problem.
Yes, but the DA does have to pay you a hefty witness fee - I think it is something like $5/day.
For some crimes the witnesses end up being punished more harshly than the defendants (who may not show up and have their cases dropped).
Uh, if you don't like the idea of discriminatory pricing, then you probably won't like OLPC. I think the people making it will charge double-price to individuals, with the extra money going to donate one overseas. A nice gesture on one hand, but it means that fewer will get sold overall which means higher prices and thus less children with one overseas...
Despite the issues with many publicly-traded companies the fact remains that they actually do turn out productions. The mortgage bubble didn't result in my not being able to buy anything the last time I went to Walmart.
Sure, private industry does have it issues, but simply because neither private nor public solutions are perfect doesn't mean that they are equally bad for all things. They both have their pros and cons and in many cases replacing one with the other is likely to yield a significant improvement. The private solution is only likely to improve things if there is competition - that is what keeps private industry honest. (Well, except in private industries that live on government handouts - see the airline industry. It would run efficiently if the government just let half of the companies go out of business.)
I don't think he was opining about converting it to a satellite. He was questioning why it wasn't designed this way in the first place. If the thing had been built just to be a standalone satellite we obviously wouldn't have any kind of conversion/damage issues to deal with. The question is whether it would have cost a whole lot more to do it this way up-front.
The first hypothesis can be tested, whether by observation or by directed experiment. (In particular, it is possible to check for contrary evidence: if any is found, there's something wrong with the hypothesis, and it can be either revised or rejected.)
The second hypothesis can never be tested as it is in principle impossible to do so. (In particular, it is impossible to check for contrary evidence as there is no phenomenon that would ever weaken the hypothesis in the eyes of any of its adherents.)
By virtue of these facts, one is science; the other is, at best, a distraction. QED.
Uh, I think you've lost me there. How exactly can you distinguish whether some particular change was the result of a random or non-random/directed process?
I'm fine with the argument that you can't test ID by virtue of the fact that you can't create a reproducible experiment to show whether it happens or not. However, there is no experiment that you can create to show whether a particular event in the past occurred due to random chance. You could prove that it is possible that the event COULD have been the result of random chance, but you could never prove that it actually did happen that way.
My big issue with the whole evolution-is-science-ID-isn't argument is that the ID camp isn't debating whether evolution happens - it is debating whether it DID happen. That isn't a question of science - it is a question of history. There is no scientific experiment that you can perform to determine whether the Romans or the Persians triumphed in some particular battle - it is a question of what actually happened and not what could have happened. At best science can be used to determine whether a particular evolutionary process could have occurred, not whether it did occur.
Think of it this way - you drop some ice cubes on the floor and go out for a few hours, and come home to a puddle of water. Scientifically you can reproduce that ice cubes left on their own melt into puddles of water. However, there is no way to know without additional evidence whether this is what happened to your particular ice cubes - somebody could have broken in, picked up your ice cubes, and spilled some water in their place. You can argue Occam's razor and all that, but the fact is that the scenario I described COULD have happened.
Personally I find it amusing that people get so worked up arguing these kinds of semantics. The only thing that annoys me is the thought of who is paying all these folks to argue about this stuff (on both sides). It seems like rather than engaging in legitimate discussion everybody is just looking for legal loopholes to get their particular viewpoint promoted more strongly in schools (and that goes for both sides).
Uh, your point seems to be that it requires a knowledge of evolution to study the evolution of some biological system. Is anybody actually disputing this here?
:)
The other guy is stating that quite a bit of work in biology can be performed without any knowledge of evolution at all. It all depends on what you're trying to accomplish.
Personally, I tend to agree with him, and I'm hardly a flaming anti-evolutionist. Evolution is certainly an important subject for any biologist/biochemist to understand. Is it the single most important concept in all of biology? I think that is questionable. I'm sure I wouldn't get tenure at Harvard professing something like this, but a lot of good science gets done outside of Harvard...
It is actually debatable whether people who buy software own it or are licensing it. Sure, the EULA states that you don't own it, but whether that is binding with respect to that statement hasn't really been well-tested. Traditionally the way copyright has been handled in the courts was to treat a sale as a sale - you own it, but you can't copy it. When one person hands money to somebody else in exchange for a box, the normal way of handling it is like any other sale.
Now, if you're talking about complex multi-million-dollar licensing deals or anything at a corporate level the law would probably change views. However, when you're dealing with consumer products the courts usually apply consumer-oriented law. In the same way the recourse available when company A sells a highrise to company B is different than what might be available when somebody buys a single family home to live in (the law protects consumers more than it does corporations, since the latter is expected to perform more due-diligence).
Basically, the only reason that software vendors haven't gotten clobbered in courts regarding the sale-vs-license issue is because they don't push their luck - they generally don't try to restrict consumers from doing stuff that a sale would normally permit them from doing. If a major software vendor tries to greatly restrict what users can do with the software that they've paid for they could end up facing a class action lawsuit regardless of what the EULA clearly states.
Think of it like buying a house. I put a clause in the agreement of sale stating that I'm not responsible in any way for anything that happens to the next owners regardless of my knowledge / ability to prevent / etc. We both sign it. Two weeks after you move in a kid gets killed by a faulty wiring problem. It can be proven that I knew about the defect and didn't disclose it. If I reach a settlement with the new owner then the clause in the agreement of sale will escape court scrutiny, but if I try to point to the clause and get out of it then there is a good chance that a court will void that clause. There are a number of circumstances that would make a court lean either way, but in general you can't use an agreement to limit liability for serious safety issues unless there is clearly informed consent and some kind of consideration.
And I'm not a lawyer - so don't just take me at my word. The bottom line is that just because you put something on paper doesn't make it stick.
The irony is that even the soviet union was capitalist in a sense. They just didn't trade in cash. The main currency was political power, and the market in political favors worked pretty efficiently.
I'm not worried about capitalism being banned from the Earth - I think it is the most natural form of government and inevitable barring some change to how human brains operate.
Like I said in another message, competing with Capitalists is not necessarily the ideal goal.
Uh, you can't really choose not to compete - unless you restrict the ability of your population to emigrate. Even then you still HAVE to compete, unless you internally possess all the resources necessary to sustain your economy. And even then you're depending on the benevolence of your neighbors not to overrun you.
If you allow free travel then your best and brightest citizens will realize they could be a whole lot better off elsewhere, and they leave. If you don't possess all the resources you need then you find that some capitalist country across the ocean can afford to pay $20/barrel more for oil than you can (because they are more efficient and can make a profit even with a higher cost of raw materials) - and now you can't buy oil.
And eventually, if you isolate yourself for too long, you end up being the Incas in the world of the Europeans. Granted, nuclear weapons may have helped put an end to the arms race, but you'll find yourself conventionally outgunned in every way. Any attempt to maintain parity of arms will bankrupt your economy - since you aren't competitive.
Competition really isn't optional in the modern world. EVERYBODY competes whether they choose to or not - if they opt out they really just lose out. Even the USSR was highly competitive, but it was more about political power and favoritism than money.
You are correct as to the fact that this technology does not predict certainties, but only risks. However, the fundamental issue exists that as knowledge increases, insurance tends to fail. Rates HAVE to be based on known risks or else the industry fails.
You're right of course that it is lousy that people end up paying the price for stuff they have no control over.
As this technology improves the uncertainty of future medical problems will steadily decrease. If the cost of treating those problems does not fall just as quickly, then insurance will rapidly become unaffordable, and socialized medicine will be needed to fill the gap. Remedies like price-fixing or non-discriminatory pricing laws will only cause the industry to fail.
The one hope is that as the ability to predict major health issues goes up the technology to treat those problems will improve as well - at a rate sufficient to contain costs. That would be a win-win for everybody - sure you know you're prone to diabetes, but some genetic therapy will just fix the problem (or whatever the cure ends up being). Costs stay under control and no need for socialized medicine (at least not due to this problem).
Well, ultimately I think that these kinds of advances will inevitably lead to socialized medicine. And I'm actually not a big fan of socialized medicine.
Here's why:
1. If you allow insurance companies to charge based on genetic risk, then people from birth won't get affordable insurance if they're going to have any major health problem. These people will end up being cared for by government.
2. If you allow individuals to find out their genetic risk but keep it secret from insurers, then individuals won't bother getting insurance if they won't get sick, and they'll sign up if they will get sick. This will rapidly bankrupt the insurance industry, and now everybody gets cared for by the government.
It really isn't any kind of conspiracy or anything like that - just a fundamental problem with the whole concept of insurance. Insurance is protection from the unknown. Once ANYBODY knows what the future holds then it can no longer be insured in an financially viable manner.
Socialized medicine doesn't face these issues because it is compulsory - the healthy don't get to opt out of paying for the sick. It has other problems - mainly a lack of personal choice. Some might prefer to spend more for better care, or less for worse care. With socialized medicine, your heath becomes a matter of public priorities, and we can't have those with means getting better treatment than those without means (although it is perfectly fine to give special treatment to politicians/celebreties/etc).
Actually, it isn't anything quite as sinister as people are making it out to be, but rather a fundamental problem with the insurance industry. The purpose of insurance is to protect you against the unknown, and to balance risks across society. Most people don't incur huge health costs before they become old, so this allows everybody to pay in a moderate amount (relatively) and then the few that really need it can spend huge sums.
The whole thing breaks down when health issues are no longer an unknown quantity. And you can't do ANYTHING about it with any form of non-compulsory insurance system. Price fixing doesn't work, nor does preventing price discrimination based on genetic factors.
1. Suppose you prevent price discrimination based on genetic factors. This makes insurance an average cost for everybody. People will look at their own genetic makeup and work out what their expected cost of health maintenance will be. If they are likely to be very healthy they'll just get accident insurance and drop health insurance. If they're likely to get sick they'll buy insurance. Suddenly the insurance rolls get MUCH smaller (most people won't get sick and opt out), and those who stay on the rolls are the most expensive ones to care for. Prices skyrocket until everybody just opts out (the premium prices would be no better than what you'd pay just to personally fund your own care).
2. Suppose you fix prices. Exactly the same thing happens - the healthy drop out and the sick stay in. You go out of business even faster because you can't raise prices as the financials no longer work out.
Imagine being an auto insurer in a world where anybody could tell if they were going to have a car crash a year in advance. It just wouldn't work - nobody would buy your services unless they knew they'd have a crash, and then you'd have to charge the full replacement value as a premium since you know that if they're signing up you're going to have to pay it out.
Once you have a high level of knowledge about the future the only form of "insurance" that works is compulsory insurance - ie tax-funded insurance / socialized medicine. I'm actually opposed to socialized medicine in general, but I do tend to think it will be the only viable option once we can predict major health problems. Even so, I am all for funding advances, as these same advances will tend to lead to the elimination of these health problems entirely which is only a win for society...
I've worked with software vendors that would issue patches in the same day if possible (though a few days was more typical). You could wait a month for the regular release cycle as well and benefit from not having to manage 14,000 individual patch releases a year. They would support just about anything they sold in the last ten years, and backport both bugfixes and minor enhancements anytime it was practical.
They also charged a fortune for their software, maintenance, and support. And their customers happily paid it.
This is one of those industry-specific software packages that just about every major coproation depends on. If you're willing to pay for it you can find companies that will be there when you need them. The software easily pays for itself, and some bugs (security or not) are important enough that you really do want them turned around fast.
Most states that have absentee ballots also allow you to show up and vote in-person, overriding your absentee ballot. If you just allow people to send in more than one ballot to cancel their vote that would solve this problem.
Yes, but in the US a person in the same situation with no medical coverage would have had his acute pneumonia problem dealt with on the spot. The prescription antibiotics might not have been given freely, but those usually aren't very expensive (maybe $50 in total). You'd owe the hospital for the treatment, but you would be alive.
In the UK you could just die waiting to see the doctor depending on the problem.
Again, I'm not saying there isn't significant room for improvement in the US, but the situation for the poor isn't quite as bad as some would have you believe. And what is the point in bothering to get a job if people are just going to hand you food, clothing, shelter, and medicine upon request?
There is a balance. I'm not sure the US has it right, but I'm definitely sure that Europe doesn't...
Yes, but what exactly should the US have done differently?
Suppose you're the head of ASW operations for the task force. You spot a diesel sub headed towards the carrier. You have some choices:
1. Blow up the sub. Not a good move if you don't want a war.
2. Ping away at the sub and try to scare it off. In theory the sub can just ignore you if it wants since it knows you won't do #1.
3. Pretend you don't see it. Enemy gets all cocky but you know that in a real war you could just do #1.
4. Run away at top speed to put distance between the carrier and the sub. This still gives away what you're doing and has the side effect of disrupting whatever you were planning on doing with the carrier.
I'm guessing #3 is the way it would play out. There is no way for anybody to know whether the US spotted the sub early enough to do something about it or not. Ditto for the Aussies. The Chinese don't really know for sure if they snuck up or not, and so they still need to be nervous. The only people who really know what happened is the US Navy, giving them the upper hand.
I'm guessing there is no proof that this is impossible, but there is no proof that it is possible either. In other words, it is an unanswered question; there may be a law waiting to be discovered that it is impossible.
Sure, the proof that it is possible would be somebody doing it. The proof that it is impossible would probably be harder as it is a negative.
While I agree it may be *physically possible* to float in mid air without expending energy, it would require changing the properties of atmospheric air (or finding a way to stop air from being displaced by the denser object.)
It might have nothing to do with air. For example, magnetic levitation requires no energy expenditure, and works just as well in a vacuum as in air. If you had a strong enough magnet you might be able to levitate off of the Earth's magnetic field. I'm guessing a superconductor of sufficient surface area (probably absurdly large) would work as well.
My basic point is that levitation is not impossible in any theoretical sense. It certainly is difficult in an engineering sense, and new physics would probably be needed to make it practical. However, there is no known law of physics that prevents this technology from being created. That makes levitation a far easier problem than it would be if a particular law of physics indicated that it was impossible.
And no, I wouldn't buy stock in any companies purporting to be right around the corner from solving the anti-gravity problem...