File sizes can either be shown in both base-10 and base-2, only base-10, or a user option to choose between the two (but with base-10 set as the default).
So according to this, applications are supposed to display both, or just the base-10, defaulting to base-10. What application designer wants to waste space on two different but similar units?
HD manufacturers are presenting the sizes correctly. SI prefix = hard-defined base-10
Correctly according to who? Standards aren't the laws of physics nor are they laws or government. You can choose to follow one or another or none. This is a case where there was a well established standard for a kilobyte for quite a long time, and HD manufacturers chose to ignore that. "Correct" is a matter of perspective.
So what's the rational for changing from a system that nearly every operating system, program, and computer on the planet uses to represent file size?
The applications themselves can display the file size however they please. So in all likelyhood individual applications are still going to use the base-2 system. Isn't that more than a little stupid to have two different units that most people don't even know there ARE two units to represent file size?
This will only lead to confusion, and has essentially no upside.
It makes me sad the state of our local space exploration.
I suspect you aren't paying much attention to space exploration. Does having two working rovers on Mars for the past several years, a mission to Titan, a probe soon orbit Mercury, more probes sent to Jupiter, multiple orbiters currently circling Mars, multiple different space telescopes, a probe currently en-route to Pluto, and a slew of other missions listed here "make you sad"?
If it does, I suspect you don't understand what space exploration is about.
Even more interesting is that the way we count is completely unnatural. Research with both small children and isolated Amazon tribes indicates that our natural inclination is to count logarithmically
I think what you meant to say is that without exposure to numbers, people count logarithmically. Calling it "natural" leads to some rather strange ideas. People associate "natural" with "good", "how it should be" or "pure".
I actually don't know what "natural" means, other than some arbitrary word people throw at something they like in an attempt to distinguish it from something they don't like. People seem to forget that Anthrax, crude oil, asbestos, bufo-toxin, and the AIDS virus all come from nature.
However, arithmetic with pencil and paper is like pulling teeth for me. I hate it with a passion. Learning how to do square roots in 7'th grade by pencil and paper was torture. Thank Glub for calculators.
A friend of mine hated long division with a passion in grade school. He had a computer, and knew how to program however. He wrote up a basic program to do all the long division for him. You had to "show your work" of course to prove you didn't just use a calculator, so he wrote the logic to do that as well. He told me he wondered if he was cheating or not, but figured that if he could write a program to show all the work, he'd mastered the concepts.
So the point being, pencil and paper arithmetic is stupid, and nobody actually does it. If you're ever forced to do a lot of math without a calculator, you'd be smarter to just learn some shortcuts to do it in your head. Square roots for instance can be estimated if you know some logarithms. Knowing the tedious mechanical process for something is largely useless unless you understand how it actually works. I've seen a lot of idiots go through their whole lives just understanding the surface of things, but never digging any deeper. A shallow understanding is merely that, shallow.
I'm just not sure what is the point of introducing concepts to children, without the ability to explain the reasons for the concepts. Why teach math, with no text book? Why focus so much on obscure terminology, to the point that no one understands why you are even asking a question? Math is about understanding why things happen. Not wrote answers to naming conventions.
Because the curriculum calls for it, and the people teaching it have no clue about the concepts, so they merely teach the rote. No, that's not a GOOD answer to why it's done, but that's essentially the reason why it happens. Our education system feeds on itself, and the problems perpetuate themselves. How many people that actually WERE interested in math actually become elementary school teachers? Some, of course. But I'll bet those people interested in math are going to either become HS or college math teachers, software developers, scientists, or engineers. Elementary school teachers are likely going to be some of the people LEAST interested and knowledgeable about math. You're average cashier at the grocery like knows more math than your average elementary school teacher.
Therefore, if you needed a long enough HDMI cable, as the voltage drops enough from the transmitter to the receiver, you'd start seeing the difference between low quality and high quality cables in that the good cables would work and the others would cut out frequently or not work at all.
Signal loss and error rates aren't about "voltage drop", it's about signal loss and noise gain. Ultimately what matters is the S/N ratio. Also, the HDMI cables are designed with specifications for the allowed signal loss and still transmitting error free transmissions. (The people who designed HDMI weren't stupid and know about signal loss). Unless you're talking about very long cables of 50 feet, I'm guessing the "differences between high quality and low quality" cables are all in your head.
Citation needed. You could also sue someone for over-prescribing drugs. There's not a lot of dis-incentive to order expensive tests, and a lot of incentive to do so. My father was sick about a year ago. He went to the hospital in FL and they ordered several tests (an MRI for one), gave him some anti-biotics and sent him on his way. He didn't get much better, went to the doctor who gave him a different anti-biotic and ordered tests, and sent him on his way. He came back to MN for the summer, called his doctor HERE, and was very quickly diagnosed with hyperthyroid-ism, likely caused by a heart medication he was on. He's doing much better after being prescribed some thyroid lowering medication which he's slowly being weened off of.
The point being, the quality of doctors makes a huge difference. Doctors who don't know what the hell they're doing can order up tests that are unlikely to show much of anything. MRI's are very expensive, but the blood work to detect his hyper-thyroid was extremely cheap. If the FL doctor knew anything, he'd have ordered the thyroid test.
The rest of your post I largely agree with. I'm not sure there's really many hospitals that are actually for-profit. The one thing that might reduce costs of health insurance is the tax on the "Cadillac health plan". The backers of the bill say it's a way to pay for the new coverage, but I think the real reason they put it in was so employers would stop offering these health plans. One of the problems of these plans is since there's zero cost in going to the doctor (not even a minimal co-pay) it encourages people to over-use health care. That may wind up reducing costs by discouraging over-use of the system.
is not going to make a fart in a thunderstorm worth of difference where it really matters. A ridiculously optimistic projection would have it reduce our dependence on coal from 60% to 40%
60% to 40% is "a far in a thunderstorm"? That actually sounds like an enormous amount to me. Even half that is damn good.
The error you make is thinking there's some magic bullet that's going to solve our energy problems. The solution is probably about 10-20 different things. Efficiency is one of them.
There are a great deal of things wrong with the US system, but my post was (mostly) hyperbole of my own.
The biggest problem with the U.S. is that anyone actually thought your post had any truth to it at all. It's as if the more scary and fear ridden something is, the more willing people are to believe it.
The only identity theft I've ever suffered is through the IRS. Supposedly four years ago someone else filed with my SSN.
It sounds to me like the identity theft itself wasn't through the IRS, but through some individual picking your SSN. It's not uncommon for an illegal alien to pick someone else's SSN when applying for a job. It happened to a friend of mine about 10 years ago and he only found out about it when he had a landlord or employer did a background check on him and found a referenced employer that he never worked for. (I think it was some womens abuse shelter and the employer or landlord only read the word abuse, and thought he was an abuser himself).
The problem you bring up I'm sure is entirely real, and it isn't addressed in any way by the GAO report. I'm FAR more concerned about this kind of thing than I am about the nonsense they bring up in the report.
It's good to know that those who deal with SOX compliance and don't come into compliance are slapped hard with penalties,
Anyone who's ever been audited knows that the audit is all about the auditor, not about the rules. In the case of SOX, it's the company being audited who hires the auditor. The company DOING the audit isn't even liable if the the company being audited is fraudulent, and the auditor doesn't catch it. This adds up a huge conflict of interest along the lines of the bond rating companies. Who's going to hire an auditing firm that's a known bunch of sticklers?
the same rules don't apply to the branch of the FEDERAL GOVERNMENT that deals with more sensitive data than any SOX umbrella'd company.
Access to data is a very small part of what SOX is supposed to be about, and about zero reason why it was created in the first place. SOX was a reaction the the Enron scandal where they essentially had extraordinarily deceptive accounting practices that claimed they were worth billions of dollars when in fact they weren't worth much of anything. They did other tricks like create dummy corporations that traded assets back and forth to inflate worth. Citigroup was recently reported as selling their crappy worthless mortgage bonds the day before the end of a quarter for cash in exchange for buying them back the next quarter (this was actually recently). THAT is the real scam, though obviously the SOX rules didn't do much of anything to stop anyone.
If you want to get all pedantic about "the rules", go ahead. I think you miss the larger picture though.
* use passwords that are not complex,
* ineffectively remove application accounts in a timely manner for separated employees,
* allow personnel excessive file and directory permissions,
* allow the unencrypted transmission of user and administrator login information,
* install security patches in an untimely manner
I've seen most of those items every place I've worked. None of them are particularly "red alert" type problems on their own. For instance, are the passwords that aren't complex on publicly accessible systems? Someone logging into IRS.gov with "irs", "password" is a MAJOR MAJOR problem. Someone logging into a system only available in an IRS office with "s.johnson", "skipper2" is far less so.
The report is long and focuses on stuff auditors with no real IT experience sit around and worry about. I'm sure not going to read through the whole thing, but the parts I read are relatively yawn-worthy. An example would be how passwords were set to expire after 118 days on a certain system instead of 58 days. This despite the fact there's wide scale disagreement as to whether requiring people to change passwords has any real effect on security. Another example would be they didn't perfectly segregate important duties properly. (The example given was someone was both a database administrator and a system administrator).
The report is littered with statements like this:
For example, about 120 IRS employees had access to key documents, including cost data for input to its administrative accounting system and a critical process-control spreadsheet used in IRS's cost allocation process. However, fewer than 10 employees needed this access to perform their jobs...which could result in incorrect input and data processing... ultimately jeopardizing the information presented in IRS's annual financial statements.
(excuse me if this isn't something I'm going to write my congressman about)
If this is really the worst the GAO can come up with, I'd say we're all pretty safe. How many controls do you think your local H&R Block has?
Enforcing your copyright over original content is a bizarre license scheme?
Releasing source code, but refusing to allow anyone to modify it and not maintaining it yourself is rather bizarre, yes.
Patching considered bad?
Yes. Forcing people that actually DO want to maintain your code to do so by collecting together a series of patches and apply them to your original code is rather poor software distribution and maintenance. Actually doing something you promised is wrong?
I never said what he did was "wrong", but he's certainly not worthy of praise or the great worship he gets from a small segment of people. Public Domain is a license?
Technically I guess you're right, but the distinction is rather irrelevant to the point that it took him 6 years of doing nothing to finally release his code for modification. Wow, you really have drunk the DJB haters kool-aid.
If you can't see the above are entirely valid criticisms, I can't help you.
Since they only worked for him for a total of 2 years, 20 years ago, it makes you wonder who did the programmer dirty work for the next 17 years. These guys sound like small fish.
He distributed source code, but didn't allow anyone to modify it. Thus why people distributed a series of patches to the software. People have some strange hero worship of Bernstein, but don't understand that an author who abandons his code but doesn't allow anyone else to modify it isn't deserving of much respect.
(Oh, and there are other free, open source alternatives to BIND, so saying both programs suck in different ways and better alternatives exist is perfectly valid)
Right, much better to write code under some bizarre license, ignore it for years forcing people to distribute patches unto patches, then 6 years later finally realize you're not maintaining the code and never will and finally release it under a sane persons license.
Has anyone had a hard answer as to why he turned down the prizes and medals?
What his friends have said is he believes actually proving it is reward enough. It's like being the first person to land on the moon, and someone gives you a "you landed on the moon" prize.
Still, a million dollars is something that can give you a lot of freedom. Turning it down is something that he might regret later.
Futurama's humor was meant for the waning years of the 90's when the world was scared of Y2K and still revered Star Trek and Twilight zone as pinnacle... A time when no man would envy another, and there would be sexbots for all. It was a simpler time. Futurama is dead to me now.
Classic! Strangely enough, your post fell through a wormhole in the space-time continuum, and onto a much earlier Slashdot thread in 1999. It sparked a discussion about how the REAL golden age was actually in the waning says of the 1980s when the world was still scared of the Russians, people still thought Magnum PI was great television, and Ollie North was givin 'em hell, and 2400 baud modems were state of the art. (Simpler times as you say)
If I find a post from 2020 that falls through the space-time continuum I'll let you know what the great things that exist today people are nostalgic for then.
I see you're interested in property. Well have I got a deal for you! I've got the Brooklyn Bridge, recently being sold by NYC in the wake of the recession. Mind you, the WHOLE bridge isn't for sale (who could afford that!), but what I'm selling is a percentage of ownership of the bridge! Act fast! They aren't building another one!
Bridges not your style? How about some excellent prime real-estate in Florida?
Should a smoker dying of lung cancer get a second pair of lungs before a person that is not a smoker and did not choose to be an organ donor, but instead has lung cancer due to second hand smoke? That's a nice gray area for you.
How is it gray? This isn't some reward for moral superiority, it's an attempt to create more donors. You claim to be making some sort of "good guy A vs good guy B" choice. Wrong. The incentive of getting ahead in the queue is to benefit EVERYONE, not the "morally correct". These are hard choices.
Only because you've taken entirely the wrong idea here. I'm just so incredibly tired of the morality card being played. There's more to life than blame, buddy.
No. Life produces things that other things don't produce. Oxygen in an atmosphere for instance. Oxygen is highly reactive with just about anything, so finding it in an atmosphere is a big tipoff of life. See Solaris as just one example out of thousands.
Why is it people try to use science fiction to try to back things up? If you want to start talking about the life we don't know about and thus can't detect, go ahead. It's going to be either a very short conversation, or a very useless and made up one though.
Slashdot Mirror
It's more than just a prefix standardization:
So according to this, applications are supposed to display both, or just the base-10, defaulting to base-10. What application designer wants to waste space on two different but similar units?
HD manufacturers are presenting the sizes correctly. SI prefix = hard-defined base-10
Correctly according to who? Standards aren't the laws of physics nor are they laws or government. You can choose to follow one or another or none. This is a case where there was a well established standard for a kilobyte for quite a long time, and HD manufacturers chose to ignore that. "Correct" is a matter of perspective.
So what's the rational for changing from a system that nearly every operating system, program, and computer on the planet uses to represent file size?
The applications themselves can display the file size however they please. So in all likelyhood individual applications are still going to use the base-2 system. Isn't that more than a little stupid to have two different units that most people don't even know there ARE two units to represent file size?
This will only lead to confusion, and has essentially no upside.
It makes me sad the state of our local space exploration.
I suspect you aren't paying much attention to space exploration. Does having two working rovers on Mars for the past several years, a mission to Titan, a probe soon orbit Mercury, more probes sent to Jupiter, multiple orbiters currently circling Mars, multiple different space telescopes, a probe currently en-route to Pluto, and a slew of other missions listed here "make you sad"?
If it does, I suspect you don't understand what space exploration is about.
Even more interesting is that the way we count is completely unnatural. Research with both small children and isolated Amazon tribes indicates that our natural inclination is to count logarithmically
I think what you meant to say is that without exposure to numbers, people count logarithmically. Calling it "natural" leads to some rather strange ideas. People associate "natural" with "good", "how it should be" or "pure".
I actually don't know what "natural" means, other than some arbitrary word people throw at something they like in an attempt to distinguish it from something they don't like. People seem to forget that Anthrax, crude oil, asbestos, bufo-toxin, and the AIDS virus all come from nature.
However, arithmetic with pencil and paper is like pulling teeth for me. I hate it with a passion. Learning how to do square roots in 7'th grade by pencil and paper was torture. Thank Glub for calculators.
A friend of mine hated long division with a passion in grade school. He had a computer, and knew how to program however. He wrote up a basic program to do all the long division for him. You had to "show your work" of course to prove you didn't just use a calculator, so he wrote the logic to do that as well. He told me he wondered if he was cheating or not, but figured that if he could write a program to show all the work, he'd mastered the concepts.
So the point being, pencil and paper arithmetic is stupid, and nobody actually does it. If you're ever forced to do a lot of math without a calculator, you'd be smarter to just learn some shortcuts to do it in your head. Square roots for instance can be estimated if you know some logarithms. Knowing the tedious mechanical process for something is largely useless unless you understand how it actually works. I've seen a lot of idiots go through their whole lives just understanding the surface of things, but never digging any deeper. A shallow understanding is merely that, shallow.
I'm just not sure what is the point of introducing concepts to children, without the ability to explain the reasons for the concepts. Why teach math, with no text book? Why focus so much on obscure terminology, to the point that no one understands why you are even asking a question? Math is about understanding why things happen. Not wrote answers to naming conventions.
Because the curriculum calls for it, and the people teaching it have no clue about the concepts, so they merely teach the rote. No, that's not a GOOD answer to why it's done, but that's essentially the reason why it happens. Our education system feeds on itself, and the problems perpetuate themselves. How many people that actually WERE interested in math actually become elementary school teachers? Some, of course. But I'll bet those people interested in math are going to either become HS or college math teachers, software developers, scientists, or engineers. Elementary school teachers are likely going to be some of the people LEAST interested and knowledgeable about math. You're average cashier at the grocery like knows more math than your average elementary school teacher.
Therefore, if you needed a long enough HDMI cable, as the voltage drops enough from the transmitter to the receiver, you'd start seeing the difference between low quality and high quality cables in that the good cables would work and the others would cut out frequently or not work at all.
Signal loss and error rates aren't about "voltage drop", it's about signal loss and noise gain. Ultimately what matters is the S/N ratio. Also, the HDMI cables are designed with specifications for the allowed signal loss and still transmitting error free transmissions. (The people who designed HDMI weren't stupid and know about signal loss). Unless you're talking about very long cables of 50 feet, I'm guessing the "differences between high quality and low quality" cables are all in your head.
http://www.bluejeanscable.com/articles/how-long-can-hdmi-run.htm
This makes it mandatory for doctors to carry a heavy burden of insurance and that gets passed on to whoever is paying for the medical care.
Insurance is a very small part of the costs of healthcare. I've heard in the neighborhood of 3%. Look it up at http://makethemaccountable.com/myth/RisingCostOfMedicalMalpracticeInsurance.htm
Doctors over-perform tests and over-prescribe drugs because of fear they may be sued.
Citation needed. You could also sue someone for over-prescribing drugs. There's not a lot of dis-incentive to order expensive tests, and a lot of incentive to do so. My father was sick about a year ago. He went to the hospital in FL and they ordered several tests (an MRI for one), gave him some anti-biotics and sent him on his way. He didn't get much better, went to the doctor who gave him a different anti-biotic and ordered tests, and sent him on his way. He came back to MN for the summer, called his doctor HERE, and was very quickly diagnosed with hyperthyroid-ism, likely caused by a heart medication he was on. He's doing much better after being prescribed some thyroid lowering medication which he's slowly being weened off of.
The point being, the quality of doctors makes a huge difference. Doctors who don't know what the hell they're doing can order up tests that are unlikely to show much of anything. MRI's are very expensive, but the blood work to detect his hyper-thyroid was extremely cheap. If the FL doctor knew anything, he'd have ordered the thyroid test.
The rest of your post I largely agree with. I'm not sure there's really many hospitals that are actually for-profit. The one thing that might reduce costs of health insurance is the tax on the "Cadillac health plan". The backers of the bill say it's a way to pay for the new coverage, but I think the real reason they put it in was so employers would stop offering these health plans. One of the problems of these plans is since there's zero cost in going to the doctor (not even a minimal co-pay) it encourages people to over-use health care. That may wind up reducing costs by discouraging over-use of the system.
is not going to make a fart in a thunderstorm worth of difference where it really matters. A ridiculously optimistic projection would have it reduce our dependence on coal from 60% to 40%
60% to 40% is "a far in a thunderstorm"? That actually sounds like an enormous amount to me. Even half that is damn good.
The error you make is thinking there's some magic bullet that's going to solve our energy problems. The solution is probably about 10-20 different things. Efficiency is one of them.
There are a great deal of things wrong with the US system, but my post was (mostly) hyperbole of my own.
The biggest problem with the U.S. is that anyone actually thought your post had any truth to it at all. It's as if the more scary and fear ridden something is, the more willing people are to believe it.
The only identity theft I've ever suffered is through the IRS. Supposedly four years ago someone else filed with my SSN.
It sounds to me like the identity theft itself wasn't through the IRS, but through some individual picking your SSN. It's not uncommon for an illegal alien to pick someone else's SSN when applying for a job. It happened to a friend of mine about 10 years ago and he only found out about it when he had a landlord or employer did a background check on him and found a referenced employer that he never worked for. (I think it was some womens abuse shelter and the employer or landlord only read the word abuse, and thought he was an abuser himself).
The problem you bring up I'm sure is entirely real, and it isn't addressed in any way by the GAO report. I'm FAR more concerned about this kind of thing than I am about the nonsense they bring up in the report.
It's good to know that those who deal with SOX compliance and don't come into compliance are slapped hard with penalties,
Anyone who's ever been audited knows that the audit is all about the auditor, not about the rules. In the case of SOX, it's the company being audited who hires the auditor. The company DOING the audit isn't even liable if the the company being audited is fraudulent, and the auditor doesn't catch it. This adds up a huge conflict of interest along the lines of the bond rating companies. Who's going to hire an auditing firm that's a known bunch of sticklers?
the same rules don't apply to the branch of the FEDERAL GOVERNMENT that deals with more sensitive data than any SOX umbrella'd company.
Access to data is a very small part of what SOX is supposed to be about, and about zero reason why it was created in the first place. SOX was a reaction the the Enron scandal where they essentially had extraordinarily deceptive accounting practices that claimed they were worth billions of dollars when in fact they weren't worth much of anything. They did other tricks like create dummy corporations that traded assets back and forth to inflate worth. Citigroup was recently reported as selling their crappy worthless mortgage bonds the day before the end of a quarter for cash in exchange for buying them back the next quarter (this was actually recently). THAT is the real scam, though obviously the SOX rules didn't do much of anything to stop anyone.
If you want to get all pedantic about "the rules", go ahead. I think you miss the larger picture though.
* use passwords that are not complex,
* ineffectively remove application accounts in a timely manner for separated employees,
* allow personnel excessive file and directory permissions,
* allow the unencrypted transmission of user and administrator login information,
* install security patches in an untimely manner
I've seen most of those items every place I've worked. None of them are particularly "red alert" type problems on their own. For instance, are the passwords that aren't complex on publicly accessible systems? Someone logging into IRS.gov with "irs", "password" is a MAJOR MAJOR problem. Someone logging into a system only available in an IRS office with "s.johnson", "skipper2" is far less so.
The report is long and focuses on stuff auditors with no real IT experience sit around and worry about. I'm sure not going to read through the whole thing, but the parts I read are relatively yawn-worthy. An example would be how passwords were set to expire after 118 days on a certain system instead of 58 days. This despite the fact there's wide scale disagreement as to whether requiring people to change passwords has any real effect on security. Another example would be they didn't perfectly segregate important duties properly. (The example given was someone was both a database administrator and a system administrator).
The report is littered with statements like this:
(excuse me if this isn't something I'm going to write my congressman about)
If this is really the worst the GAO can come up with, I'd say we're all pretty safe. How many controls do you think your local H&R Block has?
You're right. The wording of "from" is a bit strange.
Enforcing your copyright over original content is a bizarre license scheme?
Releasing source code, but refusing to allow anyone to modify it and not maintaining it yourself is rather bizarre, yes.
Patching considered bad?
Yes. Forcing people that actually DO want to maintain your code to do so by collecting together a series of patches and apply them to your original code is rather poor software distribution and maintenance.
Actually doing something you promised is wrong?
I never said what he did was "wrong", but he's certainly not worthy of praise or the great worship he gets from a small segment of people.
Public Domain is a license?
Technically I guess you're right, but the distinction is rather irrelevant to the point that it took him 6 years of doing nothing to finally release his code for modification.
Wow, you really have drunk the DJB haters kool-aid.
If you can't see the above are entirely valid criticisms, I can't help you.
Since they only worked for him for a total of 2 years, 20 years ago, it makes you wonder who did the programmer dirty work for the next 17 years. These guys sound like small fish.
(huh? Please describe)
He distributed source code, but didn't allow anyone to modify it. Thus why people distributed a series of patches to the software. People have some strange hero worship of Bernstein, but don't understand that an author who abandons his code but doesn't allow anyone else to modify it isn't deserving of much respect.
(Oh, and there are other free, open source alternatives to BIND, so saying both programs suck in different ways and better alternatives exist is perfectly valid)
Right, much better to write code under some bizarre license, ignore it for years forcing people to distribute patches unto patches, then 6 years later finally realize you're not maintaining the code and never will and finally release it under a sane persons license.
Has anyone had a hard answer as to why he turned down the prizes and medals?
What his friends have said is he believes actually proving it is reward enough. It's like being the first person to land on the moon, and someone gives you a "you landed on the moon" prize.
Still, a million dollars is something that can give you a lot of freedom. Turning it down is something that he might regret later.
Futurama's humor was meant for the waning years of the 90's when the world was scared of Y2K and still revered Star Trek and Twilight zone as pinnacle...
A time when no man would envy another, and there would be sexbots for all. It was a simpler time. Futurama is dead to me now.
Classic! Strangely enough, your post fell through a wormhole in the space-time continuum, and onto a much earlier Slashdot thread in 1999. It sparked a discussion about how the REAL golden age was actually in the waning says of the 1980s when the world was still scared of the Russians, people still thought Magnum PI was great television, and Ollie North was givin 'em hell, and 2400 baud modems were state of the art. (Simpler times as you say)
If I find a post from 2020 that falls through the space-time continuum I'll let you know what the great things that exist today people are nostalgic for then.
I see you're interested in property. Well have I got a deal for you! I've got the Brooklyn Bridge, recently being sold by NYC in the wake of the recession. Mind you, the WHOLE bridge isn't for sale (who could afford that!), but what I'm selling is a percentage of ownership of the bridge! Act fast! They aren't building another one!
Bridges not your style? How about some excellent prime real-estate in Florida?
Should a smoker dying of lung cancer get a second pair of lungs before a person that is not a smoker and did not choose to be an organ donor, but instead has lung cancer due to second hand smoke? That's a nice gray area for you.
How is it gray? This isn't some reward for moral superiority, it's an attempt to create more donors. You claim to be making some sort of "good guy A vs good guy B" choice. Wrong. The incentive of getting ahead in the queue is to benefit EVERYONE, not the "morally correct".
These are hard choices.
Only because you've taken entirely the wrong idea here. I'm just so incredibly tired of the morality card being played. There's more to life than blame, buddy.
Animals don't produce oxygen.
No they don't, but plants do. Plants are life.
Atmospheric composition is also not a good indicator;
Of what? We don't need to detect ALL forms of life. One would be a start. The idea here is to go after the low hanging fruit.
You'd have to have feet on the ground.
No. Life produces things that other things don't produce. Oxygen in an atmosphere for instance. Oxygen is highly reactive with just about anything, so finding it in an atmosphere is a big tipoff of life.
See Solaris as just one example out of thousands.
Why is it people try to use science fiction to try to back things up? If you want to start talking about the life we don't know about and thus can't detect, go ahead. It's going to be either a very short conversation, or a very useless and made up one though.