Order-fulfillment automation is an existing business. Little bins filled with product that spit one or two or three of their contents onto a conveyer taking everything to a central boxing location -- or bagging in the case of fast food.
You need people refilling the bins, but one person doing burgers can multitask and refill the fry making machine every half hour or so with little interruption.
And yes, it's even simpler for there to be a touch-screen to take your order and money acceptor to take your payment. If you haven't noticed, bill readers have gotten a lot better and more versatile in the last decade, and NFC makes paying by cellphone trivial.
It may not be a $35k robot doing all of this, but it will replace enough people in the processing chain that it will pay for itself.
If somebody with clear ulterior motives decides to "recommend" that you take a teaspoon dose of the contents of a plain white box they mail to you, do you do it?
You've already said that you will automatically ingest any contents of any box they send you when they recommend that you do it. That's what "automatically install recommended updates" means.
What if they send you a sheet of paper saying "for description of contents, go to this site to read bulletin"?
I don't think anyone who is complaining that Windows 10 was installed "without their permission" has any need for a paper telling them to go to some other website for a description. I think they're pretty clear on the concept of what Windows 10 is and that they don't want it. The only problem is, they told their current OS that it was ok to apply updates that were recommended, based on the precedent that "recommended" didn't include free updates to a different OS.
Since the update is free, there is no reason why MS couldn't say it was recommended. "Recommended" is the opinion of the source, not the recipient.
I also wouldn't expect the e-mail client I've been happily using for years to one day automatically schedule an update that reorganised its whole UI,
It's not your email client that scheduled the update, YOU told it that it could automatically install any recommended updates that were available. YOU gave it blanket permission to update based on what other people thought you ought to have.
You also propose an email client that makes massive updates and THEN notifies you that it is going to happen. That's not what is happening here. You're being told about the update ahead of time, that is scheduled to happen and you can stop it, and you clicked on the "dismiss this notice" option -- choosing to do nothing to stop what you've previously chosen to do.
If nothing else, this shows the danger of letting other people decide when your software should be updated.
There are very, very few positions that could be automated in a way that makes sense financially at $15/hr that wouldn't also make sense at $5/hr.
There is an awful lot of automation that doesn't make sense when the workers are cheaper and the payback is far off, and a factor of three is a good bit of money here. If your labor costs double because the minimum wage doubles, then there is a lot more incentive to find ways to automate those jobs. Some people "don't buy" that economic fact, but it's true.
Basically, automating that position will either be super-cheap or super-expensive.
The excluded-middle of "costs a little less to automate at a wage of $15/hour but more than $7/hr" still exists. It surprised the heck out of me when I saw my first automatic french-fry machine, but it was obvious that the costs of paying someone to do that job were going to be a lot more than the cost of the machine and paying someone to refill the freezer every so often.
Its disingenuous to tie it to the current debate over moving the minimum wage back up to a living wage.
It is disingenuous to claim that the minimum wage ever was, or was intended to be, a "living wage". It is supposed to be an entry-level introduction to employment wage. Saying "moving... back up to" when it never has been is silly at best.
Sorry, no. MS is knowingly and deliberately defying standards and expectations for the GUI in order to pull a fast one.
The 'x' is expected to mean "close this window and take no action". This is exactly how Microsoft is using it.
What you're missing is the fact that the window is a notification window reporting that an update has been scheduled, and giving the user the option of stopping the update. There is an option to act to stop the update. If the user clicks 'x', he is saying "close the window and take no action", which means "don't do anything". If you don't do anything when you are told that an update has been scheduled, that's your choice.
It's NOT a question "update to Windows 10 now?" It's "your going to get updated unless you choose to stop it, because you chose to allow automatic recommended updates." Clicking 'x' is clearly the "close window and take no action" option.
Listen up MS, no means no.
But you didn't say 'no'. You said "install recommended updates automatically" at some point in time, and this window is simply telling you that the system is going to do what you told it to do.
Should Windows 10 be a recommended update? From the point of view of Microsoft, of course. By accepting recommended updates automatically, you've given Microsoft the choice of what updates take place.
Why do you allow your son to have administrative privileges on the computer
What administrative privileges does it require to close a notification window alerting you to the fact the admin has allowed automatic installation of recommended updates and that a major one has been scheduled to take place?
It wasn't the fault of the non-admin 9 year old that the admin turned on automatic updates. It's the fault of Microsoft for making Windows 10 a recommended update, although I don't know who would be deciding an update is "recommended" other than the source of the update itself. "Unwanted" is a different word.
Unless you cancel, it will upgrade. That's pretty automatic.
If you enable automatic updates, that pretty manual. That's what's happening here. Users who have opted to automatically install recommended updates are being notified that there is a scheduled update to Windows 10. Clicking the "x" on the notification doesn't stop the scheduled update, it only closes the notification window -- which is what the 'x' is supposed to do.
It's like a notification that pops up that says "you have new email". You wouldn't expect the system to delete your email if you click on the 'x' to close the notification, would you? Of course not. Well, this is a notification that tells you that there is a scheduled update going to happen. Clicking 'x' closes the notification. If you don't want the scheduled thing to happen, change the schedule.
The issue is NOT that "clicking the x performs the update", because it doesn't. The issue is that Microsoft made Windows 10 a recommended update, which is catching people who have automatic updates turned on.
We know there are large swathes of people that simply do not accept change, no matter how good it might be
"Good" is a subjective term, and I'm tired of people who think they know that Windows 7 is "better" (or how "good" it would be to upgrade to) for me.
The computer I've got runs the software I need. You may think it is "good" to be forced to upgrade just because something is new, but not all of us do.
But so has the push back, the FUD from sites like Slashdot and other supposed "tech" blogs.
It's "FUD" to say that Windows 10 doesn't run the one piece of software that I bought the last two computers with Windows 7 to run? Two computers that I bought only because XP doesn't support that same software.
If you have an Android phone and are bitching about Windows 10 you're a fucking hypocrite, full stop.
Your arrogance is amazing. I don't know how you come up with this ridiculous insult. I'm guessing that you think that everyone who doesn't like Windows 10 and how pushy MS is over installing it is automatically upgrading their Android version the second it comes out. Sorry to burst your nearsighted bubble, but that's nonsense. I stopped doing updates when 4.2 broke the external storage. My latest phone came with 5.0, and that's where it is staying.
a CIA spokesperson has said another unopened computer disk with the full report is still locked in a vault at agency headquarters.
And we'll be happy to open the disk and give you a copy of the contents just as soon as we locate the Torx T10 driver we need to do so... can we keep the cool magnets?
Pranks cross the line when emergency services (police, EMS and fire primarily) need to get involved, even to disprove a situation as an actual event.
I am frankly surprised that John Quinones hasn't been beaten to a pulp for some of the stunts he hosts on "What Would You Do?". Or the bad-guy actor, at least. One where some college students were trying to force one of their party to drink heavily despite her objections, and especially the one where one actor was playing the part of a battered woman and her alleged batterer was inflicting emotional abuse in public. Or any of the ones where they have people stealing bikes, or a drunk mother telling her child to "just get in the car". Or the one where the actor was observed spiking his "date's" drink...
The fact that the police know they are doing this and don't have someone standing there to ruin the stunt is... well, condoning this nonsense. It's "entertainment".
"Impractical Jokers" is only saved because their stunts are so absolutely ridiculous. As is the "Santa" stunt another person replies to this with. The question is whether a reasonable person would believe that something dangerous or life-threatening is happening. Santa? Hardly. Seeing a woman who is obviously in distress and bruised being emotionally abused by her companion, I think meets that test easily. Bomb hoaxes? Maybe twenty years ago. Not today.
Except for health care, pensions, and vacation time.
IIRC, the value of my health insurance (not health care -- my employer is not a hospital or doctor so I don't get my health care from them) was a line item somewhere on my taxes. I didn't bother checking what it did.
But for pension -- I haven't gotten that money yet, and I will be taxed on it when I do. It's not "tax free compensation". And the wages I am paid while on vacation are taxed at the same rate as wages while I am not. There is no "tax free compensation" there.
The closest that vacation is tax-free is when I choose to take a vacation while on business travel, so the employer pays for the travel to and from and I am not taxed on that money, but he's paying that money anyway. The rest of the vacation is on my own dime, taxes at the standard rates when it was income.
If there were no tax benefits, how many people would want their employer to choose their doctor?
I can get a tax break if I let my employer choose my doctor? Wow. News to me.
United doesn't schedule your connections, you schedule your connections (or your travel agent / website does on your behalf).
However, their website does offer flights with connections that are ridiculously short, usually as the cheapest or cheaper options. That may be a natural result of trying to help optimize YOUR travel time (shortest layovers are usually shortest trips overall), but I don't believe it is a conspiracy to try to get you to miss flights. Why would they do that? It costs them money. If they run out of standbys for the flight you missed, they have an empty seat. If they have to reimburse you, they lose money.
But ultimately, it is the traveller's responsibility to scroll further down the page and pick an itinerary that has adequate layover time. Personally, an hour his my minimum, and I always go for three when it's an international connection.
I suspect that, by the time they would have converted the miles to dollars, their net profit was negligible.
And had they actually used the miles, their profit would be negative. United has some very high co-pays for award travel. So much so that it is almost cheaper to just buy an economy ticket in the first place.
Science does not in any way shaper or form require you to live a life of risk minimisation.
I didn't say it did. I said "IF you live your life scientifically", which in context means "you live your life based on scientific evaluation of every action and choose only that which is the most likely to provide the greatest good to the greatest number of people first, and then to oneself second." Skydiving, evaluated under such criteria, would never happen.
What science can help you with is learning about the risk, and as our sense of risk is really, really bad, that's a good a necessary thing.
That may be so. But if your risk evaluation is the sole criterion for choosing which action to take, then you are, in the context of this discussion, as I used the phrase, living your life "scientifically".
You have to weigh the benefit against the cost in everything you do.
No, actually, you don't. Science does not require that. Nor does life as a whole. Sometimes people do things "just because", not because there is some grand benefit to society (or even to themselves) by doing it. Sometimes they do it despite knowing there is a detriment.
Now of course, that people sky dive, climb, cave dive or whatever, is a complete straw man and not at all analogous with refusing vaccine.
You say that because you did not understand the point and thought I was saying that science demanded certain choices. It is a good analogy to the claim that something must be done because "science" says it should. "Science" says that everyone must be vaccinated. But you already pointed out that "science" doesn't say that. It's philosophy that says that, and philosophy isn't a science.
However, refusing vaccine for yourself doesn't just put yourself at risk, it puts me and esp. my children (who have difficulty getting certain vaccines due to medical reasons) at risk.
As many times as that is repeated, it is still not true. Your children are at risk because of their own systems, not because someone in Canada chooses not to have their child vaccinated. If that unvaccinated child got sick, then the disease is still out there and your child can get sick, too, without ever coming anywhere close to them. Life isn't perfect. Children who aren't vaccinated aren't death threats to other people.
Science tells me that,
There truly is more to life than "science tell me that". As an "alpinist", you should know that. Science tells me that falls from high places are deadly. Yet you deliberately go into high places where falls have a high probability. Science tells you that?
If you aren't sitting naked in a cave and eating raw maggots you live in a technocracy.
No. You don't understand the meaning of the word. It isn't "a world made better by science", it's "rule by science". Like theocracy is a rule by religion. The fact that people are free to live sitting naked in a cave if they want to proves we do not have a technocracy.
Having 0 cases in a year doesn't mean the disease is "officially eradicated". It means there were 0 reported cases of the disease.
Incorrect. The child is a threat to other un-vaccinated children,
Who have had a parent make a choice not to vaccinate them. That may be because there is a greater risk for them, but still. And since a VACCINATED child can still get the disease, you still have the threat to all of those who cannot be vaccinated without risk. It's not a black and white, "your child is going to kill my child" issue, and treating as such is just blatant zealotry.
Most vaccines are actually only 90-99% effective at providing immunity,
As such, they should also be obligated to take out an insurance plan to actually PAY for the medical bills of children made ill because of their decision.
Since clearly the only children that their children will pass the disease (if it happens) onto will be the unvaccinated ones, the parents have already assumed responsibility for care for those children and have no standing to sue.
Do the parents of the first unvaccinated child get to sue someone for their child's illness? No? Then why should any other parents of unvaccinated children get to sue them?
or when 50 children get sick because of something that could have been done, but was not?
If those 50 vaccinated children are getting sick because one unvaccinated child came down with what the vaccine protects against and spread it to them, then just how effective is that vaccine anyway? The vaccine didn't protect those 50 children, so why should it be forced upon the one whose parents choose for it not to be?
If the vaccine is that ineffective, then vaccinating the one currently unvaccinated child will not prevent him from getting the disease and spreading it to the other 50. Nor will it prevent any one of those 50 from getting the disease and being the carrier to all the others.
Either everyone must be vaccinated because it will protect them, or the protection is so weak that one exposure to a source will create an epidemic. (And yes, 50 cases from one carrier is an epidemic.)
My grandfather is going to throw a party once polio is officially eliminated.
How long have we been vaccinating against polio and it still isn't officially eliminated? It sure looks like the mass vaccinations are not working to "officially eliminate" anything. That's ok, because they weren't intended to.
Our kids might be the last that have to be vaccinated for polio.
The first kid that isn't vaccinated against polio is taking the lives of every other child they contact into their hands. That's the argument the mandatory vaccination proponents use.
The reality is, an un-vaccinated child is no threat to others, because the others have been vaccinated to prevent them from contracting that disease. Either vaccinations protect people from getting a disease or they don't. You can't argue that one child can spread death to all his vaccinated neighbors with one voice, and then argue that vaccinating him will prevent him from getting, and carrying, that same disease with another.
And sorry, but the word "freedom" means that not everyone must do everything science tells them is good and right, and that will do the most good for society as a whole.
That is, the extrapolation from methylated mercury to ethylated was probably not a thermodynamically sound one.
The difference between methymercury and ethylmercury is tiny, thermodynamically. The extra CH2 doesn't change things that much. The extrapolation is quite valid; it turns out there is a difference when testing is actually done.
Piston-driven propeller planes that fly over my head all day long still use tetra-ethyl lead as an additive to their aviation fuel. I live in a densely populated area.
You do realize that leaded aviation fuel IS a health issue, don't you? It's just not a glaringly obvious one because few people know it still exists. Work is being done trying to find a replacement, but the problem of finding something that doesn't cause problems for existing engines keeps the lead from being removed. The danger of an aircraft engine failing in flight is well known; the danger from the lead from that engine is tiny.
Further, just because the element mercury is in something doesn't mean it is dangerous. An example analogy is sodium.
It isn't the reaction of mercury as an element when it is ingested that is the danger, so your "example analogy" is flawed. It is the presence of mercury compounds that causes trouble. You know, the element that has already reacted with something to form an ionic species. Whether sodium reacts with water or not is irrelevant.
Then they should take another course which shows them all the good that science has done for them.
It's not an issue of knowing or trusting science, or knowing "all the good that science has done". It's an issue of not believing that life needs to lived as a technocracy, or using rigid scientific principles as the only guide.
If people understood the risk of skydiving, for example, and lived their lives "scientifically", nobody would ever skydive. Nobody would ever eat fugu. There are lots of activities that carry a lot more risk than not vaccinating their child that occur every day.
Having a government that punishes people for exercising freedom is not reasonable. And being forced to take time off work to take an indoctrination class ("look at all the good things science does for you, shouldn't you obey science?") is a punishment.
Probably simpler to say they have to give up pretty much everything they have except for a few things like animal skins, home made bows and spears.
Yes, let's make people who don't live the way we want them to do things the way we want them to in the most severe way possible.
Freedom means that people can do things that we don't personally agree with, and that don't always obey strict scientific principles, and even sometimes don't produce the maximum benefit for other people.
All I am ignoring is your assertion that you need to own a car.
I didn't make that assertion. I made the assertion that it is ignorant to claim that there is no need to own an autnomous verhicle, and I gave you examples of what I do today with my car that I could not do with an autonomous "service" car.
All the issues you mention can and will be solved.
No, I'm sorry, they won't. I can point to one very simple issue that you ignored: radios. No car service is going to allow me to install them in every one of the vehicles they might supply, I can't afford to do that, and the agencies whose frequencies I use wouldn't allow it if I could.
The vision that I am looking at (and is being seriously considered by some major cities) is one in which only autonomous vehicles are allowed in the city.
How sad. And it doesn't speak to the claim you made that it makes no sense to own an autonomous vehicle. That's what I replied to.
Once you have that restriction in place, many things are possible.
Yes, and none of them negate the reasons I gave for why it can, and does, make sense to own your own autonomous vehicle. You ignored every one of them and started on a tangent of how cities might prohibit non-autonomous vehicles in their city. How does that change the logic of owning your own?
For example, lots of space is freed up because there is no longer a need for people to park their cars.
Space that will be taken by the large number of autonomous vehicles as they "rest" between calls. You gain nothing with regard to space, you just move it around a little bit. Considering the "drive around the block until I need you" option, you don't save much at all.
You don't think that you will actually own an autonomous car, do you? That would make no sense.
I'm sorry, what? Of course I'd own an autonomous car (WHEN and IF that becomes the only option for private transportation, that is). Why wouldn't I? I have things I keep in the car so they will be there when I need them. I have two radios installed so I can communicate when I need to. I sometimes need to go somewhere NOW, not after someone else gets done with the car. And sometimes I am the one who needs the car for a long time. It's an hour and a half to the closest major airport, which takes that car out of service for local users for three hours. Imagine my delight at calling for a "service car" after dining out with a date and finding that it was last used by a drunk who puked in the back seat.
Car services may be sufficient for some people, just like taxis are today. But not for everyone, and claiming it makes no sense to own one is ignoring that fact.
Slashdot Mirror
It's gonna take my order and my money too?
Order-fulfillment automation is an existing business. Little bins filled with product that spit one or two or three of their contents onto a conveyer taking everything to a central boxing location -- or bagging in the case of fast food.
You need people refilling the bins, but one person doing burgers can multitask and refill the fry making machine every half hour or so with little interruption.
And yes, it's even simpler for there to be a touch-screen to take your order and money acceptor to take your payment. If you haven't noticed, bill readers have gotten a lot better and more versatile in the last decade, and NFC makes paying by cellphone trivial.
It may not be a $35k robot doing all of this, but it will replace enough people in the processing chain that it will pay for itself.
If somebody with clear ulterior motives decides to "recommend" that you take a teaspoon dose of the contents of a plain white box they mail to you, do you do it?
You've already said that you will automatically ingest any contents of any box they send you when they recommend that you do it. That's what "automatically install recommended updates" means.
What if they send you a sheet of paper saying "for description of contents, go to this site to read bulletin"?
I don't think anyone who is complaining that Windows 10 was installed "without their permission" has any need for a paper telling them to go to some other website for a description. I think they're pretty clear on the concept of what Windows 10 is and that they don't want it. The only problem is, they told their current OS that it was ok to apply updates that were recommended, based on the precedent that "recommended" didn't include free updates to a different OS.
Since the update is free, there is no reason why MS couldn't say it was recommended. "Recommended" is the opinion of the source, not the recipient.
I also wouldn't expect the e-mail client I've been happily using for years to one day automatically schedule an update that reorganised its whole UI,
It's not your email client that scheduled the update, YOU told it that it could automatically install any recommended updates that were available. YOU gave it blanket permission to update based on what other people thought you ought to have.
You also propose an email client that makes massive updates and THEN notifies you that it is going to happen. That's not what is happening here. You're being told about the update ahead of time, that is scheduled to happen and you can stop it, and you clicked on the "dismiss this notice" option -- choosing to do nothing to stop what you've previously chosen to do.
If nothing else, this shows the danger of letting other people decide when your software should be updated.
There are very, very few positions that could be automated in a way that makes sense financially at $15/hr that wouldn't also make sense at $5/hr.
There is an awful lot of automation that doesn't make sense when the workers are cheaper and the payback is far off, and a factor of three is a good bit of money here. If your labor costs double because the minimum wage doubles, then there is a lot more incentive to find ways to automate those jobs. Some people "don't buy" that economic fact, but it's true.
Basically, automating that position will either be super-cheap or super-expensive.
The excluded-middle of "costs a little less to automate at a wage of $15/hour but more than $7/hr" still exists. It surprised the heck out of me when I saw my first automatic french-fry machine, but it was obvious that the costs of paying someone to do that job were going to be a lot more than the cost of the machine and paying someone to refill the freezer every so often.
Its disingenuous to tie it to the current debate over moving the minimum wage back up to a living wage.
It is disingenuous to claim that the minimum wage ever was, or was intended to be, a "living wage". It is supposed to be an entry-level introduction to employment wage. Saying "moving ... back up to" when it never has been is silly at best.
Sorry, no. MS is knowingly and deliberately defying standards and expectations for the GUI in order to pull a fast one.
The 'x' is expected to mean "close this window and take no action". This is exactly how Microsoft is using it.
What you're missing is the fact that the window is a notification window reporting that an update has been scheduled, and giving the user the option of stopping the update. There is an option to act to stop the update. If the user clicks 'x', he is saying "close the window and take no action", which means "don't do anything". If you don't do anything when you are told that an update has been scheduled, that's your choice.
It's NOT a question "update to Windows 10 now?" It's "your going to get updated unless you choose to stop it, because you chose to allow automatic recommended updates." Clicking 'x' is clearly the "close window and take no action" option.
Listen up MS, no means no.
But you didn't say 'no'. You said "install recommended updates automatically" at some point in time, and this window is simply telling you that the system is going to do what you told it to do.
Should Windows 10 be a recommended update? From the point of view of Microsoft, of course. By accepting recommended updates automatically, you've given Microsoft the choice of what updates take place.
Why do you allow your son to have administrative privileges on the computer
What administrative privileges does it require to close a notification window alerting you to the fact the admin has allowed automatic installation of recommended updates and that a major one has been scheduled to take place?
It wasn't the fault of the non-admin 9 year old that the admin turned on automatic updates. It's the fault of Microsoft for making Windows 10 a recommended update, although I don't know who would be deciding an update is "recommended" other than the source of the update itself. "Unwanted" is a different word.
Unless you cancel, it will upgrade. That's pretty automatic.
If you enable automatic updates, that pretty manual. That's what's happening here. Users who have opted to automatically install recommended updates are being notified that there is a scheduled update to Windows 10. Clicking the "x" on the notification doesn't stop the scheduled update, it only closes the notification window -- which is what the 'x' is supposed to do.
It's like a notification that pops up that says "you have new email". You wouldn't expect the system to delete your email if you click on the 'x' to close the notification, would you? Of course not. Well, this is a notification that tells you that there is a scheduled update going to happen. Clicking 'x' closes the notification. If you don't want the scheduled thing to happen, change the schedule.
The issue is NOT that "clicking the x performs the update", because it doesn't. The issue is that Microsoft made Windows 10 a recommended update, which is catching people who have automatic updates turned on.
We know there are large swathes of people that simply do not accept change, no matter how good it might be
"Good" is a subjective term, and I'm tired of people who think they know that Windows 7 is "better" (or how "good" it would be to upgrade to) for me.
The computer I've got runs the software I need. You may think it is "good" to be forced to upgrade just because something is new, but not all of us do.
But so has the push back, the FUD from sites like Slashdot and other supposed "tech" blogs.
It's "FUD" to say that Windows 10 doesn't run the one piece of software that I bought the last two computers with Windows 7 to run? Two computers that I bought only because XP doesn't support that same software.
If you have an Android phone and are bitching about Windows 10 you're a fucking hypocrite, full stop.
Your arrogance is amazing. I don't know how you come up with this ridiculous insult. I'm guessing that you think that everyone who doesn't like Windows 10 and how pushy MS is over installing it is automatically upgrading their Android version the second it comes out. Sorry to burst your nearsighted bubble, but that's nonsense. I stopped doing updates when 4.2 broke the external storage. My latest phone came with 5.0, and that's where it is staying.
a CIA spokesperson has said another unopened computer disk with the full report is still locked in a vault at agency headquarters.
And we'll be happy to open the disk and give you a copy of the contents just as soon as we locate the Torx T10 driver we need to do so... can we keep the cool magnets?
Pranks cross the line when emergency services (police, EMS and fire primarily) need to get involved, even to disprove a situation as an actual event.
I am frankly surprised that John Quinones hasn't been beaten to a pulp for some of the stunts he hosts on "What Would You Do?". Or the bad-guy actor, at least. One where some college students were trying to force one of their party to drink heavily despite her objections, and especially the one where one actor was playing the part of a battered woman and her alleged batterer was inflicting emotional abuse in public. Or any of the ones where they have people stealing bikes, or a drunk mother telling her child to "just get in the car". Or the one where the actor was observed spiking his "date's" drink ...
The fact that the police know they are doing this and don't have someone standing there to ruin the stunt is ... well, condoning this nonsense. It's "entertainment".
"Impractical Jokers" is only saved because their stunts are so absolutely ridiculous. As is the "Santa" stunt another person replies to this with. The question is whether a reasonable person would believe that something dangerous or life-threatening is happening. Santa? Hardly. Seeing a woman who is obviously in distress and bruised being emotionally abused by her companion, I think meets that test easily. Bomb hoaxes? Maybe twenty years ago. Not today.
You've freely chosen it,
Citation required.
Except for health care, pensions, and vacation time.
IIRC, the value of my health insurance (not health care -- my employer is not a hospital or doctor so I don't get my health care from them) was a line item somewhere on my taxes. I didn't bother checking what it did.
But for pension -- I haven't gotten that money yet, and I will be taxed on it when I do. It's not "tax free compensation". And the wages I am paid while on vacation are taxed at the same rate as wages while I am not. There is no "tax free compensation" there.
The closest that vacation is tax-free is when I choose to take a vacation while on business travel, so the employer pays for the travel to and from and I am not taxed on that money, but he's paying that money anyway. The rest of the vacation is on my own dime, taxes at the standard rates when it was income.
If there were no tax benefits, how many people would want their employer to choose their doctor?
I can get a tax break if I let my employer choose my doctor? Wow. News to me.
United doesn't schedule your connections, you schedule your connections (or your travel agent / website does on your behalf).
However, their website does offer flights with connections that are ridiculously short, usually as the cheapest or cheaper options. That may be a natural result of trying to help optimize YOUR travel time (shortest layovers are usually shortest trips overall), but I don't believe it is a conspiracy to try to get you to miss flights. Why would they do that? It costs them money. If they run out of standbys for the flight you missed, they have an empty seat. If they have to reimburse you, they lose money.
But ultimately, it is the traveller's responsibility to scroll further down the page and pick an itinerary that has adequate layover time. Personally, an hour his my minimum, and I always go for three when it's an international connection.
I suspect that, by the time they would have converted the miles to dollars, their net profit was negligible.
And had they actually used the miles, their profit would be negative. United has some very high co-pays for award travel. So much so that it is almost cheaper to just buy an economy ticket in the first place.
Science does not in any way shaper or form require you to live a life of risk minimisation.
I didn't say it did. I said "IF you live your life scientifically", which in context means "you live your life based on scientific evaluation of every action and choose only that which is the most likely to provide the greatest good to the greatest number of people first, and then to oneself second." Skydiving, evaluated under such criteria, would never happen.
What science can help you with is learning about the risk, and as our sense of risk is really, really bad, that's a good a necessary thing.
That may be so. But if your risk evaluation is the sole criterion for choosing which action to take, then you are, in the context of this discussion, as I used the phrase, living your life "scientifically".
You have to weigh the benefit against the cost in everything you do.
No, actually, you don't. Science does not require that. Nor does life as a whole. Sometimes people do things "just because", not because there is some grand benefit to society (or even to themselves) by doing it. Sometimes they do it despite knowing there is a detriment.
Now of course, that people sky dive, climb, cave dive or whatever, is a complete straw man and not at all analogous with refusing vaccine.
You say that because you did not understand the point and thought I was saying that science demanded certain choices. It is a good analogy to the claim that something must be done because "science" says it should. "Science" says that everyone must be vaccinated. But you already pointed out that "science" doesn't say that. It's philosophy that says that, and philosophy isn't a science.
However, refusing vaccine for yourself doesn't just put yourself at risk, it puts me and esp. my children (who have difficulty getting certain vaccines due to medical reasons) at risk.
As many times as that is repeated, it is still not true. Your children are at risk because of their own systems, not because someone in Canada chooses not to have their child vaccinated. If that unvaccinated child got sick, then the disease is still out there and your child can get sick, too, without ever coming anywhere close to them. Life isn't perfect. Children who aren't vaccinated aren't death threats to other people.
Science tells me that,
There truly is more to life than "science tell me that". As an "alpinist", you should know that. Science tells me that falls from high places are deadly. Yet you deliberately go into high places where falls have a high probability. Science tells you that?
If you aren't sitting naked in a cave and eating raw maggots you live in a technocracy.
No. You don't understand the meaning of the word. It isn't "a world made better by science", it's "rule by science". Like theocracy is a rule by religion. The fact that people are free to live sitting naked in a cave if they want to proves we do not have a technocracy.
Science put an end to plague and famine.
On which planet?
3. We only had 74 cases in 2015. We are so close.
Having 0 cases in a year doesn't mean the disease is "officially eradicated". It means there were 0 reported cases of the disease.
Incorrect. The child is a threat to other un-vaccinated children,
Who have had a parent make a choice not to vaccinate them. That may be because there is a greater risk for them, but still. And since a VACCINATED child can still get the disease, you still have the threat to all of those who cannot be vaccinated without risk. It's not a black and white, "your child is going to kill my child" issue, and treating as such is just blatant zealotry.
Most vaccines are actually only 90-99% effective at providing immunity,
Like I said, in different words.
As such, they should also be obligated to take out an insurance plan to actually PAY for the medical bills of children made ill because of their decision.
Since clearly the only children that their children will pass the disease (if it happens) onto will be the unvaccinated ones, the parents have already assumed responsibility for care for those children and have no standing to sue.
Do the parents of the first unvaccinated child get to sue someone for their child's illness? No? Then why should any other parents of unvaccinated children get to sue them?
or when 50 children get sick because of something that could have been done, but was not?
If those 50 vaccinated children are getting sick because one unvaccinated child came down with what the vaccine protects against and spread it to them, then just how effective is that vaccine anyway? The vaccine didn't protect those 50 children, so why should it be forced upon the one whose parents choose for it not to be?
If the vaccine is that ineffective, then vaccinating the one currently unvaccinated child will not prevent him from getting the disease and spreading it to the other 50. Nor will it prevent any one of those 50 from getting the disease and being the carrier to all the others.
Either everyone must be vaccinated because it will protect them, or the protection is so weak that one exposure to a source will create an epidemic. (And yes, 50 cases from one carrier is an epidemic.)
My grandfather is going to throw a party once polio is officially eliminated.
How long have we been vaccinating against polio and it still isn't officially eliminated? It sure looks like the mass vaccinations are not working to "officially eliminate" anything. That's ok, because they weren't intended to.
Our kids might be the last that have to be vaccinated for polio.
The first kid that isn't vaccinated against polio is taking the lives of every other child they contact into their hands. That's the argument the mandatory vaccination proponents use.
The reality is, an un-vaccinated child is no threat to others, because the others have been vaccinated to prevent them from contracting that disease. Either vaccinations protect people from getting a disease or they don't. You can't argue that one child can spread death to all his vaccinated neighbors with one voice, and then argue that vaccinating him will prevent him from getting, and carrying, that same disease with another.
And sorry, but the word "freedom" means that not everyone must do everything science tells them is good and right, and that will do the most good for society as a whole.
That is, the extrapolation from methylated mercury to ethylated was probably not a thermodynamically sound one.
The difference between methymercury and ethylmercury is tiny, thermodynamically. The extra CH2 doesn't change things that much. The extrapolation is quite valid; it turns out there is a difference when testing is actually done.
Piston-driven propeller planes that fly over my head all day long still use tetra-ethyl lead as an additive to their aviation fuel. I live in a densely populated area.
You do realize that leaded aviation fuel IS a health issue, don't you? It's just not a glaringly obvious one because few people know it still exists. Work is being done trying to find a replacement, but the problem of finding something that doesn't cause problems for existing engines keeps the lead from being removed. The danger of an aircraft engine failing in flight is well known; the danger from the lead from that engine is tiny.
Further, just because the element mercury is in something doesn't mean it is dangerous. An example analogy is sodium.
It isn't the reaction of mercury as an element when it is ingested that is the danger, so your "example analogy" is flawed. It is the presence of mercury compounds that causes trouble. You know, the element that has already reacted with something to form an ionic species. Whether sodium reacts with water or not is irrelevant.
These people already distrust anything science.
Then they should take another course which shows them all the good that science has done for them.
It's not an issue of knowing or trusting science, or knowing "all the good that science has done". It's an issue of not believing that life needs to lived as a technocracy, or using rigid scientific principles as the only guide.
If people understood the risk of skydiving, for example, and lived their lives "scientifically", nobody would ever skydive. Nobody would ever eat fugu. There are lots of activities that carry a lot more risk than not vaccinating their child that occur every day.
Having a government that punishes people for exercising freedom is not reasonable. And being forced to take time off work to take an indoctrination class ("look at all the good things science does for you, shouldn't you obey science?") is a punishment.
Probably simpler to say they have to give up pretty much everything they have except for a few things like animal skins, home made bows and spears.
Yes, let's make people who don't live the way we want them to do things the way we want them to in the most severe way possible.
Freedom means that people can do things that we don't personally agree with, and that don't always obey strict scientific principles, and even sometimes don't produce the maximum benefit for other people.
All I am ignoring is your assertion that you need to own a car.
I didn't make that assertion. I made the assertion that it is ignorant to claim that there is no need to own an autnomous verhicle, and I gave you examples of what I do today with my car that I could not do with an autonomous "service" car.
All the issues you mention can and will be solved.
No, I'm sorry, they won't. I can point to one very simple issue that you ignored: radios. No car service is going to allow me to install them in every one of the vehicles they might supply, I can't afford to do that, and the agencies whose frequencies I use wouldn't allow it if I could.
The vision that I am looking at (and is being seriously considered by some major cities) is one in which only autonomous vehicles are allowed in the city.
How sad. And it doesn't speak to the claim you made that it makes no sense to own an autonomous vehicle. That's what I replied to.
Once you have that restriction in place, many things are possible.
Yes, and none of them negate the reasons I gave for why it can, and does, make sense to own your own autonomous vehicle. You ignored every one of them and started on a tangent of how cities might prohibit non-autonomous vehicles in their city. How does that change the logic of owning your own?
For example, lots of space is freed up because there is no longer a need for people to park their cars.
Space that will be taken by the large number of autonomous vehicles as they "rest" between calls. You gain nothing with regard to space, you just move it around a little bit. Considering the "drive around the block until I need you" option, you don't save much at all.
You don't think that you will actually own an autonomous car, do you? That would make no sense.
I'm sorry, what? Of course I'd own an autonomous car (WHEN and IF that becomes the only option for private transportation, that is). Why wouldn't I? I have things I keep in the car so they will be there when I need them. I have two radios installed so I can communicate when I need to. I sometimes need to go somewhere NOW, not after someone else gets done with the car. And sometimes I am the one who needs the car for a long time. It's an hour and a half to the closest major airport, which takes that car out of service for local users for three hours. Imagine my delight at calling for a "service car" after dining out with a date and finding that it was last used by a drunk who puked in the back seat.
Car services may be sufficient for some people, just like taxis are today. But not for everyone, and claiming it makes no sense to own one is ignoring that fact.