Solving that distribution problem wouldn't take more resources now, would it? Moving all "that food we can produce" would happen with magic fairy dust, right, not fossil fuels. Distributing all that food would happen with magic neo-awesome materials, not vessels made of iron.
To be fair, most of our distribution problems have been political, not logistical. Almost anywhere people are starving or in need, there's an oppressive government or an active war in progress. For example, it's been determined that much of the donations from Live Aid was lost to the government and battling factions.
Scientists sometimes don't age well. We probably age better on average than rock stars, but then again people pay don't take what rock stars say as seriously as scientists.
I seem to remember Shockley, co-inventor of the transistor, saying some pretty whacky stuff in his later years. His math may have been sound, but he was pretty non-PC in his choices. Rarely does anyone side with the eugenics guy.
I had tmobile on pre-paid. I got a few text spams. I called to complain it was going against my balance. they said there was nothing they could do! not block me on incoming or even disable the sms service.
I had a similar call with AT&T about five years ago as a monthly subscriber. Same problem, same response. Luckily, I think I only got one or two spams in several years.
I hope the sibling is right about this 'limitation' being removed.
But by all means mock the fringe dimwits who don't actually negatively impact society.
Ah, but they do cluster, and vote, and then take over boards of education.
Actually, it just takes one of the nutters in your kid's district to bring education to a stand-still. Our local school official policy, luckily, is that you can contest a book, but the teacher can go on using it until the process has completed. And they've got librarians in at every step of the way. Don't mess with librarians.
My kids' last school had kids pay for lunch with a thumb scan. Parents would consent, school would scan the thumbs, and kids could buy lunch with just a thumb on the scanner.
In some ways, this was genius. While you couldn't control (or tell) exactly what they purchased, you at least had control over how much they spent. Also: there was no risk of lost or stolen lunch money.
On the other hand, it was a privacy nuts worst nightmare - scanning kids. There were assurances that the ID gathered from the thumb was reduced to datapoints which could NOT be used to produce a new image, so no larger database concerns, but still creepy.
In the end, we just had our kids bring their lunches. The school lunches were high-fat crap, usually something fried or made entirely of cheese. Best estimates from our kids was that over half the kids brought lunch, and this was a reasonably affluent town. Crud, if they would just throw in an apple or something once in a while, they'd get more takers.
What the rich guys mean whey they say they're taking jobs that "no one wants" is that they're taking jobs that THEY don't want.
Stephen Colbert had a guest on from "Take Our Jobs" the other day, a group with the premise that field labor work is hard, but skilled, but also doesn't pay very well. The illegal immigrants aren't taking anyone's job, because hardly anyone else here will do it. Their claim: take our jobs, please. It's hard work, and we're stealing nobody's job.
I love the disclaimer on their site before you sign up: "** Job may include using hand tools such as knives, hoes, shovels, etc. Duties may include tilling the soil, transplanting, weeding, thinning, picking, cutting, sorting & packing of harvested produce. May set up & operate irrigation equip. Work is performed outside in all weather conditions (Summertime 90+ degree weather) & is physically demanding requiring workers to bend, stoop, lift & carry up to 50 lbs on a regular basis."
...the various issuing institutions, at least in Britain, have tried to use this to argue that theft/skimming losses should now be the fault of the "negligent" customer, rather than their problem.
Yes, Slashdot covered a similar case a few years ago. "Stolen car!? That's impossible with our current state-of-the-art RFID keys! You must have negligently left your keys where someone could take them; no insurance for you!"
Is that why the FDA produced a "food pyramid" which bases the diet on carbohydrates which we know and for centuries have known will cause heart disease and obesity in cases of overconsumption?
Also: this was the second draft of the food pyramid. The first batch of scientists and nutritionists quit in disgust after the manipulation of their results began, and the second group was more pliable. Still looking for a link...
I'm sure you're thinking to your self, "gee, I'm glad I don't eat very much corn!" Oh, but you do.
"King Corn" is a fascinating movie that touches on this. Two guys rent an acre of farmland to grow corn for a season, documenting every step, from the government buyback contract prices to fertilizer and meeting with the locals. They also make HFCS in the kitchen and drink it straight.
But one of the most interesting scenes was where they break down how much food has a corn component, and actually do a chemical analysis of one of the guy's blood to determine how much of his diet is corn-based.
Reminds me a bit of Bittersweet Symbphony, the Verve song that was deemed to have ripped off an obscure version of The Last Time by the Stones.
Of course, the stones ripped the song off of The Staple Sisters, too, who who got it off of Muddy Waters, who got it off of...
Check out the wiki article on the Stones version, where Richards tells where he got it. Also check out this video from "Rip! A Remix Manifesto" where they show and play the song as it progress through the years.
the unions help drive jobs out of the country by demanding far too much for workers.
A larger source of the problem was starting in the 80s (Reagan) and again in the 90s (Clinton) import tariffs were dropped to almost nothing in the US with the expectation that we'd make it all back in IP jobs and money: entertainment, software and biotech.
We learned that many countries were quite happy to sell to the US with the reduced tariffs in place, but didn't drop their own, and didn't necessarily give diddly-squat about our IP and its rules.
Tariffs are quite high on sugar and textiles, but for electronics and heavy industry, it's almost non-existent.
If you built it into the bicycle's hub, it might not cause nearly as much resistance.
My wife has one of those. Specialized brand made the "Vienna Deluxe" line last year. You can feel the drag when you hit the switch, but it's very subtle.
Okay, that out of the way, the most interesting thing I've heard is that security should be comprised of three things - something you are (snip), something you have (snip), and something you know (snip).
The challenge is that some of these are quite expensive to implement... more than the cost of the resources these things access. If the body responsible for implementing them doesn't really pay for the breaches, then you can expect the cheapest implementation. Compare the variation between slashdot login method vs. getting physical access to some secure government and commercial sites.
"Something you have" often is a good proxy, as the permissions of the credential can often be revoked remotely. Credit cards and access cards (usually RFID-laced) are two examples. This means access is often 'portable' (theft of credentials?) but can be neutralized when necessary. Avenue for attack is then a time-window.
Your SS# has been used as the equiv. of all of them, but rarely does it cost the implementor any real money for mistakes.
I'm not sure this is the right case study for a move to Linux. If they could, they would still run Windows.
I figure it still remains a 'decent' case study, if for no other reason than the fact was that they DID switch unwillingly. If a company makes the switch intentionally, it usually indicates a fair amount of acceptance and willingness to change and try new things, as well as learn. They really WANT the switch to work, or are at least curious about it, and are more willing to accept or adapt to problems.
When a group is dragged into Linux on short notice, it makes a good case study in how things can be made better for the masses who AREN'T curious. They're more likely to complain and balk when things aren't right, and can better help us improve the experience.
Like Best Buy is going to take back an open movie.
To be fair, they'll exchange it for a closed version of the same movie. Were it a more reputable shop, this would be useful since the store would have to deal with the return to the manufacturer. As each Best Buy has a shrink wrap machine on-site, they'll just wrap it up and stick it back on the shelf.
That would be true but the 1996 Bill tied no strings to the dollars. For example Congress typically says, "Raise your drinking age to 21, else your federal highway funds will be reduced by 5%."
The 1996 Act mandated that the local carriers allowed smaller competitors on their wires, but didn't really allow much enforcement of how much the wire-owners charged. I believe that the net-effect was that SBC, for example, was charging smaller DSL companies ~$15/month for wire access, but charging itself ~$8. Also: the wire-owners were notorious for slow response and compliance from requests from the smaller providers. If you were a customer of a small, local shop and had a DSL problem, both you and your provider were at the mercy of the local Bell.
The "carrot" that the RBOCs were promised was unfettered access to the long-distance market. However, when the bottom dropped out of that market, they lost incentive.
The video is misleading. The Opera side begins browsing and clicking on links before the page is done loading, thus the entire page is not loaded, but they count the page towards the total.
Although, to be fair, this is how many of us browse the web, especially on slower connections. Page starts to come up, you see a relevant link, you click it, page stops loading and new page comes up.
If I have to wait for the whole page to render (irrespective of iframes) before I can act upon it, then someone is wasting my time.
Next time you are at your doctor, ask him/her how much the visit will cost if you pay it out of pocket.
Yeah, for the office visit, if it's a single doctor, and not a group practice, this may have a chance. But the minute you involve anyone else it disappears as an option.
My dad is self-employed. Dental insurance is a 'wash' - pays as much - if not more - than it costs and covers. He pays the dentist cash and gets a break. Oh - dentist is a friend of the family and owns the whole practice.
My wife went to a group practice general doctor a few months ago and needed a culture done for a possible infection. We have one of those new "High Deductible" plans - nothing is paid until you reach $2500/person (still costs me $330/month from my paycheck and my employer is kicking in another ~$600-1000/month). Before she hands the container with the sample to the nurse, she asks - " Hey, we pay for everything with the new plan - what does this cost?" Nobody knew. Took 20 minutes of running around and calls. Final answer: $800 for the sample.
Paying cash and getting a reasonable rate is only an option for small practices. If you have an encounter with a larger institution, you may get a break if you specifically ask for the "Blue Cross Rates". They sometimes come through and let you use that rate plan, as they'd rather get 100% of something rather than nothing and have to turn you over to collections.
My own three day stay in a hospital last year would have cost over 20K "out of network" (aka out of pocket), but 4K in-network, and one lab in the hospital insisted on being treated as out of network and charging for an uncovered procedure. That was another $800 out-of-pocket.
No other industry can work with such pricing. Any other business is expected to give you at least a ballpark pricing plan - even the damn cell phone companies. But: medical isn't one of them.
Featuring an easy to learn lift and turn interface, people can pick up a Book and just start reading! And Book has been specifically designed to interoperate with your existing Shelves(tm).
Slashdot Mirror
I agree, although I guess the existing browser bookmarking will have to do in a pinch. "Right-click: bookmark link" or some variation.
The "SeenOnSlash.com" website is also pretty good for these.
To be fair, most of our distribution problems have been political, not logistical. Almost anywhere people are starving or in need, there's an oppressive government or an active war in progress. For example, it's been determined that much of the donations from Live Aid was lost to the government and battling factions.
I seem to remember Shockley, co-inventor of the transistor, saying some pretty whacky stuff in his later years. His math may have been sound, but he was pretty non-PC in his choices. Rarely does anyone side with the eugenics guy.
I had a similar call with AT&T about five years ago as a monthly subscriber. Same problem, same response. Luckily, I think I only got one or two spams in several years.
I hope the sibling is right about this 'limitation' being removed.
Ah, but they do cluster, and vote, and then take over boards of education.
Actually, it just takes one of the nutters in your kid's district to bring education to a stand-still. Our local school official policy, luckily, is that you can contest a book, but the teacher can go on using it until the process has completed. And they've got librarians in at every step of the way. Don't mess with librarians.
In some ways, this was genius. While you couldn't control (or tell) exactly what they purchased, you at least had control over how much they spent. Also: there was no risk of lost or stolen lunch money.
On the other hand, it was a privacy nuts worst nightmare - scanning kids. There were assurances that the ID gathered from the thumb was reduced to datapoints which could NOT be used to produce a new image, so no larger database concerns, but still creepy.
In the end, we just had our kids bring their lunches. The school lunches were high-fat crap, usually something fried or made entirely of cheese. Best estimates from our kids was that over half the kids brought lunch, and this was a reasonably affluent town. Crud, if they would just throw in an apple or something once in a while, they'd get more takers.
Stephen Colbert had a guest on from "Take Our Jobs" the other day, a group with the premise that field labor work is hard, but skilled, but also doesn't pay very well. The illegal immigrants aren't taking anyone's job, because hardly anyone else here will do it. Their claim: take our jobs, please. It's hard work, and we're stealing nobody's job.
I love the disclaimer on their site before you sign up: "** Job may include using hand tools such as knives, hoes, shovels, etc. Duties may include tilling the soil, transplanting, weeding, thinning, picking, cutting, sorting & packing of harvested produce. May set up & operate irrigation equip. Work is performed outside in all weather conditions (Summertime 90+ degree weather) & is physically demanding requiring workers to bend, stoop, lift & carry up to 50 lbs on a regular basis."
"Mining companies..." Spelling Nazis are no so amused either. Bob the Angry Flower is not so amused either.
Yes, Slashdot covered a similar case a few years ago. "Stolen car!? That's impossible with our current state-of-the-art RFID keys! You must have negligently left your keys where someone could take them; no insurance for you!"
Also: this was the second draft of the food pyramid. The first batch of scientists and nutritionists quit in disgust after the manipulation of their results began, and the second group was more pliable. Still looking for a link...
"King Corn" is a fascinating movie that touches on this. Two guys rent an acre of farmland to grow corn for a season, documenting every step, from the government buyback contract prices to fertilizer and meeting with the locals. They also make HFCS in the kitchen and drink it straight.
But one of the most interesting scenes was where they break down how much food has a corn component, and actually do a chemical analysis of one of the guy's blood to determine how much of his diet is corn-based.
Of course, the stones ripped the song off of The Staple Sisters, too, who who got it off of Muddy Waters, who got it off of...
Check out the wiki article on the Stones version, where Richards tells where he got it. Also check out this video from "Rip! A Remix Manifesto" where they show and play the song as it progress through the years.
Wiki even has an article on it. I loved it, and was about 14 at the time.
Yes, but in some locales, the immoral sodomy is also illegal.
A larger source of the problem was starting in the 80s (Reagan) and again in the 90s (Clinton) import tariffs were dropped to almost nothing in the US with the expectation that we'd make it all back in IP jobs and money: entertainment, software and biotech.
We learned that many countries were quite happy to sell to the US with the reduced tariffs in place, but didn't drop their own, and didn't necessarily give diddly-squat about our IP and its rules.
Tariffs are quite high on sugar and textiles, but for electronics and heavy industry, it's almost non-existent.
My wife has one of those. Specialized brand made the "Vienna Deluxe" line last year. You can feel the drag when you hit the switch, but it's very subtle.
The challenge is that some of these are quite expensive to implement... more than the cost of the resources these things access. If the body responsible for implementing them doesn't really pay for the breaches, then you can expect the cheapest implementation. Compare the variation between slashdot login method vs. getting physical access to some secure government and commercial sites.
"Something you have" often is a good proxy, as the permissions of the credential can often be revoked remotely. Credit cards and access cards (usually RFID-laced) are two examples. This means access is often 'portable' (theft of credentials?) but can be neutralized when necessary. Avenue for attack is then a time-window.
Your SS# has been used as the equiv. of all of them, but rarely does it cost the implementor any real money for mistakes.
I figure it still remains a 'decent' case study, if for no other reason than the fact was that they DID switch unwillingly. If a company makes the switch intentionally, it usually indicates a fair amount of acceptance and willingness to change and try new things, as well as learn. They really WANT the switch to work, or are at least curious about it, and are more willing to accept or adapt to problems.
When a group is dragged into Linux on short notice, it makes a good case study in how things can be made better for the masses who AREN'T curious. They're more likely to complain and balk when things aren't right, and can better help us improve the experience.
Wow, there's a +1 insightful and a -1 troll in the same post. I've got mod-points, but was really not able to decide which way to go with this one.
To be fair, they'll exchange it for a closed version of the same movie. Were it a more reputable shop, this would be useful since the store would have to deal with the return to the manufacturer. As each Best Buy has a shrink wrap machine on-site, they'll just wrap it up and stick it back on the shelf.
The 1996 Act mandated that the local carriers allowed smaller competitors on their wires, but didn't really allow much enforcement of how much the wire-owners charged. I believe that the net-effect was that SBC, for example, was charging smaller DSL companies ~$15/month for wire access, but charging itself ~$8. Also: the wire-owners were notorious for slow response and compliance from requests from the smaller providers. If you were a customer of a small, local shop and had a DSL problem, both you and your provider were at the mercy of the local Bell.
The "carrot" that the RBOCs were promised was unfettered access to the long-distance market. However, when the bottom dropped out of that market, they lost incentive.
We could just go the other way and make everyone else color-blind, like in Harrison Bergeron.
Although, to be fair, this is how many of us browse the web, especially on slower connections. Page starts to come up, you see a relevant link, you click it, page stops loading and new page comes up.
If I have to wait for the whole page to render (irrespective of iframes) before I can act upon it, then someone is wasting my time.
Yeah, for the office visit, if it's a single doctor, and not a group practice, this may have a chance. But the minute you involve anyone else it disappears as an option.
My dad is self-employed. Dental insurance is a 'wash' - pays as much - if not more - than it costs and covers. He pays the dentist cash and gets a break. Oh - dentist is a friend of the family and owns the whole practice.
My wife went to a group practice general doctor a few months ago and needed a culture done for a possible infection. We have one of those new "High Deductible" plans - nothing is paid until you reach $2500/person (still costs me $330/month from my paycheck and my employer is kicking in another ~$600-1000/month). Before she hands the container with the sample to the nurse, she asks - " Hey, we pay for everything with the new plan - what does this cost?" Nobody knew. Took 20 minutes of running around and calls. Final answer: $800 for the sample.
Paying cash and getting a reasonable rate is only an option for small practices. If you have an encounter with a larger institution, you may get a break if you specifically ask for the "Blue Cross Rates". They sometimes come through and let you use that rate plan, as they'd rather get 100% of something rather than nothing and have to turn you over to collections.
My own three day stay in a hospital last year would have cost over 20K "out of network" (aka out of pocket), but 4K in-network, and one lab in the hospital insisted on being treated as out of network and charging for an uncovered procedure. That was another $800 out-of-pocket.
No other industry can work with such pricing. Any other business is expected to give you at least a ballpark pricing plan - even the damn cell phone companies. But: medical isn't one of them.
Ah, brings to mind the old Penny Arcade about the iPod from 2003. http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2003/5/28/